Fun Friday: Giving In Edition

I've discussed at some length why I hesitate to play Resident Evil 5. However, I broke down and started playing the game today. On one hand, this game creates an absolutely atrocious first impression with frustrating controls combined with an opening sequence that gives the player no time to come to grips with them. Even playing on the easiest difficultly so I am not punished as quickly and so I can try to enjoy the game somewhat, but that initial "boss" with the axe is still ridiculous. On the other, once I finally got past him, I started to get some of the same feelings that I remember Resident Evil 4 evoking.

Yahtzee does have a point about the inventory system; it makes absolutely no sense.

Fun Friday: Odd Mashup Edition

I like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I also like hip hop. Do I like them together? Is it like chocolate and peanut butter? Not quite, but it is pretty awesome.

8tracks | teamteamwork | The Ocarina of Rhyme

Fun Friday: Real Life Achievements Edition

Life would be some much more exciting if this were real. At the very least, I'd be more motivated. Funny thing about this video, one of the guys in the drinking coffee was an intern when I was there, 5 years ago.

Parents Just Don't Understand

Over at GameSetWatch, James Portnow has posted an essay looking at the secret language that has developed in each of the different gaming genres as a way for the player to feel unique and special. One of the groups he asked to partake in the study was the parents of gamers. The following two quotes are from different people (I think) but are hilarious when read together.

I can't keep up. He comes to the dinner table and I try to be involved, but one week it's a 'dwarf enchanter' and the next it's 'Solid Snake.'

I don't know if he's talking to his friends about doing drugs or playing a game.

As a gamer and a parent, I think the notion that I could have no idea what my son is talking about is ludicrous. Granted, I'm a life long gamer who understands this language but I still think it stems from a lack of involvement in what interests their kids. Just as my dad had to learn about soccer when I chose that over baseball, I will have to learn whatever my son is into, whether that's gaming, sports, or whatever he gets into. And this attitude that gaming is a foreign language and detrimental to society will change as my generation gets older and has more kids of our own.

So, does anyone know where I can score some "Solid Snake?" I need a fix.

Bioshock 2 to Include Big Sisters

The April 2009 cover of Game Informer has revealed what has already been rumored: Big Sisters. I really like their design, they appear sleaker, speedier, maybe even stealthier than our lumbering Big Daddies of old. One commenter I read speculated that they could be as agile as the spider splicer, which is a scary thought.

One thing that struck me is that in the original game, the Big Daddies foreshadowed what the player would become: a protector of the Little Sisters and a father figure for them, literally donning a Big Daddy suit. Does the inclusion of a Big Sister imply that the main character for Bioshock 2 will be a woman? I guess will have to wait at least for the next issue of Game Informer to find out.

Of course, this could also be an April Fools joke. If so, why, Game Informer, why?

Awesome Quote of the Week

They buy the Wii games that they buy for the same reason that people go to McDonald's. McDonald's doesn't win a lot of restaurant critic awards but they are approachable, they're consistent, and you know what they're going to serve you.

-Michael Pachter on what it takes to make a must-have Wii game

Well, since I count the number of times I've been to McDonald's in the last ten years on one hand, that explains why I have so few Wii games.

Designed Frustration

Capcom may or may not be aware that some people found the controls in the Resident Evil 5 demo to somewhat cumbersome to say the least, myself included. Either way, they are doing their best to defend it. Producer Jun Takeuchi explained,

We went in knowing that we weren't making a typical third or first person shooter; we were making a Resident Evil game. It was important for us to go with the design choices that would make the best Resident Evil game that we could. When it comes to Resident Evil, we feel that by imposing a restriction on the player you actually increase the tension that they feel while playing.

I really have to disagree here. Tension is not the same as frustration. The entire time I spent with the demo, about an hour, was spent fighting the controls. It had been a few years since I had played Resident Evil 4 but I couldn't get to grips with the controls. It wasn't even the fact that I had to stop to aim; I really think that when they brought the controls from the GameCube controls to the 360 controller, they weren't sure what to do with all of the extra buttons and made the controls overcomplicated.

The other problem I had with the scheme, and the idea that there the same as RE4 so what's the big deal, is that while they updated everything else, the controls stayed the same. There are more enemies and the enemies are smarter and faster but the player feels slow and dumb. It's not really a sound strategy to shoot a couple of zombies in the legs, run to the other side of the room, turn and repeat until they're dead. This tension, it's tedium.

Finally, I just finished plying through Dead Space. That game is tense. And guess what, you can shoot and run at the same time. Look for my thoughts on Dead Space later this week (preview: I loved it).

Fun Friday: Time to Dust off the DS Edition

While I have yet to really play through GTAIV proper, this version for the DS, Chinatown Wars, looks more and more fun every time I see a new trailer for it. I like the look and game play style these videos project, it's very "arcade-like" and looks a lot less serious. This may just be what the series needs; a little injection of that old school fun.

Reaching Another Milestone

It's been another year and a half since my first 10k, but I've done it again. Earlier today I reached a gamerscore of 20,000. Here are some of my favorite achievements earned along the way.

• Paramour (Mass Effect) - I found out what all the fuss was about, and guess what, it wasn't a big deal. But you know what was, the game. It was awesome (except the driving sections, those can go).

• Brass Balls (Bioshock) - I didn't need much encouragement to play through this game again but the challenge made it all the more sweeter.

• Defiant (The Orange Box) - The best part about this secret achievement is that I got it without knowing how to get. Take that can and shove it, buddy!

• Blade in the Crowd (Assassin's Creed) - Each and every time I stealth killed a enemy with the hidden blade, I was filled with great satisfaction. Should I see a doctor about that?

• No-one Left Behind (Left 4 Dead) - I have never had so much fun playing with my friends in an online Co-op game.

Now, the Bad News

News hit the Internet pretty fast today as one of our QA offices suffered quite a blow. As part of our company's plan to return to profitability, the vast majority of our testers in Champagne,IL will soon be out of work. Being on the Nintendo Compliance team, I had no direct contact with them as far as projects are concerned (they concentrated on PS3/360/PC testing), but it's never easy to hear that co-workers have lost their jobs.

Best of luck, guys, and we all hope that you land on your feet soon.

First, the Good News

I totally forgot about this last week, but I have to give a shout out to the folks at Blue Tongue for the success that de Blob has achieved. Since launch in September, we've sold over 700,000 copies! Not bad for a non-Nintendo title.

Now if I can just find out how Deadly Creatures is doing...

Fallout 3: Looking Back

I beat Fallout 3 last week. Wait, I need to repeat that: I beat Fallout 3 last week. We'll come back to that point latter.

Fallout 3 was at the top of my list of missed games this last Fall. I picked it up for my birthday and spent the better part of February exploring the vast wastelands of post-apocalyptic Washington D.C. In the end, I spent about 120 hours with the game which is about half of what I spent in the world of Oblivion. Since I had not played any of the previous Fallout games, Oblivion was my point of reference for what to expect. This may have tainted my early experience.

Right off the bat, I was trying to play the former like the latter and it just didn't work for me. In Oblivion, my character was a brutal yet stealthy melee attacker. I struggled with this at first until I reconciled with the V.A.T.S. system. It felt like the game was forcing me to play a first-person shooter or a ranged character from Oblivion (which I hated for the most part). As I grew more accustomed to the new system, it felt more natural and lent itself to more strategy even if I couldn't sneak up on many enemies. It helped that my character quickly leveled up rather quickly as well.

But at first, locales seemed far and few between in the beginning. Traveling the vast countryside most definitely captured the essence of a barren, oppressive and bleak world, almost to game's detriment. Playing in small chunks of time, about an hour, I was struggling to get from placed to place in one sitting due to sheer distance required to be traveled. Going back to the Oblivion comparison, there were always areas to explore between story checkpoints, I didn't have this experience in Fallout 3. And again, I reached a point where I abandoned the story quest and found myself exploring the wastes with great joy, moving from place to place rather quickly.

The story was largely forgettable (but Oblivion's was as well), involving some annoying fetch quests to advance with a few rather jolting turns. Which made switching gears from saving the world to just wandering the lands so much more appealing. It really becomes an open-world adventure when the player is left to their own devices and adopt the life they want to live, hopping from place to place, inserting himself into the lives of others and changing them for the rest of their lives. On one hand, I would almost like to see a game like this drop the player in a world with no story and just let them create their own way. On the other, the story provides structure but there is no way that the game should end just because the main quest is over.

These quibbles with the game may be due to the way I played and every one's experience will be different, but it still leads me to believe that the pacing was wrong throughout the game. There are abrupt shifts between nothing to do and too much to do or struggling against the enemies to feeling like a one-man, unstoppable army. But then again, I spent 120 hours with the game. I clearly enjoyed it, right? Well, of course I did. I just didn't enjoy it as much as I hoped due to the sheer joy and satisfaction I garnered from Oblivion. Fallout 3 was a solid experience with a few hiccups, but left me longing for the return of the Elder Scrolls series.