Tag Archives: XBox 360

Assassin’s Creed II

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Assassins-Creed-2_X360_BXSHT_ESRBI’m always so happy when I finish a game! Though in this case, it was long enough that I may need to take a break (or at least a palate cleanser) before I start anything else serious. So, remember when I hated Assassin’s Creed? But I thought I would still love Assassin’s Creed II after a brief glance at it? So, yeah, that turned out to be true. It is the same as the other game in most important respects, only subtly better every time there’s a comparison to be made. Giant sandbox of a game, this time set in 15th Century Italy, where assassins must battle Templars for control of the hearts and minds of people, and, well, also the future. But that’s okay, because the future is in every bit as much evidence as the past; in fact, you’re not really in the past so much as your near-future guy is going into a cool machine that lets him live the memories of his ancestors (I think?) and learn from them, both skills and information. So while the game is open and sandboxy and actiony and jaw-droppingly beautiful, the plot is science-fictional and always interesting. Plus also, if you for some reason don’t care for the high-level plot, the plot on the street is of this kid first learning about his family’s secrets and then, when things take a wrong turn, setting about fixing everything, over 25 years of life. Good drama!

And if none of that does it for you, you also get to climb really tall buildings, wander around dusty tombs, and sometimes pounce on people from 40 feet above to stab them in the throat. And hang out with Leonardo da Vinci all the time. And learn a lot about regional history[1]. And… y’know, if you’re not persuaded by now, I really don’t know what I could add. Damn fine game, though, and I feel bad for you.

[1] I quickly decided the easiest thing to do would be to assume everything that happens in the past portion of the game is historically accurate. I’m pretty sure it was, anyway, so.

Portal 2

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A handful of years ago, a game came out that did something entirely new in the genre of first-person shooting. This was not a surprise in the scheme of things, Valve having been long known for such innovations.[1][2] But the degree of new was pretty surprising. Sure, the Half-Life games have always had an element of puzzle solving, but Portal was purely puzzle solving in a way that forced you to think of spatial relationships and three-dimensional physics as you had never done before. And it had a great deal of humor and plot crammed into its several hours of gameplay. Now, I can’t say a whole lot about Portal 2, but I’ve figured that I can almost certainly say more than most reviews I’ve seen, which are that it’s amazing and you should play it and anything else would be a huge spoiler.

Mind you, I am saying a good deal of that, I’m just working my way around the last part. Since it’s my job to, and all.[3] So, basically, in the recently-updated ending to Portal, you are dragged off by robots at the conclusion of your apparently-not-so-successful-as-all-that escape from the Aperture Laboratories facility. After a non-specific but implied period of time passes, you wake up and some brief plot occurs, followed by a nod to people who never played the original or who haven’t in a very long time, in which you learn controls and physical concepts. And then, well, then you are launched down a rabbit hole full of history, psychology, morality, and, just like last time, really a lot of puzzles and humor. And all manner of troubling revelations, also just like last time. And, well, okay, there’s a lot of just like last time to this game, although rest assured that the puzzles and the plot alike have significant updates as well. The point is that it’s not a brand new game that will leave you amazed nobody ever did this before.

It is, however,  the best interactive story I’ve ever seen, from both the interactive and story sides of that equation separately. The fact that they’ve been joined into one game? I guess it’s like this. I don’t imagine it’s the best game that will ever be made, and I would easily accept arguments from people saying the first game is better; it’s all down to taste and what you want from your experience. But I cannot imagine a way that a game named Portal 2 could have been better than this one. As best I can tell, it is entirely without flaw.

And if you care about the mythology of that shared dystopian future world (which I do), I was impressed anew today by how I can take a joke line about the Black Mesa research facility from the first game’s closing song and both extrapolate very nearly precisely when Portal occurred in the shared timeline of the multiple game series and also a good deal of information about… well, and there’s that rabbit hole full of spoilers again. Because I actually don’t want to provide the hint about what else I was able to determine from that line of song, lest it simultaneously hint at events in the game you might otherwise never have anticipated. Because seeing this stuff cold? It has always been the best way. The point of this closing digression, I think, is that I expect more insights into both this game and the world of shared games as I think more about it all. And also, there’s an entirely separate two-player cooperative Portal experience that I have yet to touch. But I wanted this review while things were still very fresh; if there’s enough innovation or storyline revelation to warrant it, I’ll just have to revisit the game with another review sometime in the uncertain future.

[1] For innovating the way storylines and characters are handled in the genre, there’s the original Half-Life.
[2] For innovating the ways in which you can interact with the random detritus of your environment, look no further than Half-Life 2‘s gravity gun.
[3] And anyway, if I can’t work my way around seemingly-insurmountable obstacles in a review about a game derived from Portal? I’m clearly doing something wrong.

Assassin’s Creed

71233_frontTo be clear, this is a pretty old game. I remember reading about Assassin’s Creed in Gamestop’s magazine sometime in 2006 and being really excited about what they were doing with the cities full of random people and the ways you could run and climb and otherwise interact seamlessly with the environment, and without a lot of weird button combinations and things. Plus also the plot, which pits historical Assassins against the Knights Templar in the Crusades setting; it seemed to have a lot to offer on both the very pretty and the very cool scales. The framing story, which has a faceless but clearly very wealthy corporation essentially kidnapping a man who is a descendant of one of these assassins, because they can put him in their cool sci-fi device and use the blood link to pull genetic memories from him, seemed like it may also have been cool, but I really didn’t get far enough into the game to form a valid opinion.[1]

So, right, that part is probably relevant. Despite all of the real coolness inherent in the gameplay and plot in concept, in practice I found it absolutely unplayable. Part of this, I realize now after the fact, is that the introduction was weak and did not provide as much direction as I think I needed to latch onto the plot. The other part, that caused me to stop playing out of pure frustration, was mechanical in nature. Without a clear set of roadsigns to pull me quickly into the plot, I was still enamored of the beautiful countryside, and on top of that there were collectible items and very tall towers with expansive views to enjoy, so I started poking around into that, still perfectly happy with what was going on around me. Until I learned that any time I ran (or ran my horse) past a soldier, I would be targeted for death. It’s not like I had started murdering people yet, and it’s equally not like it was based on some recognition of me, as obviously a walking person is easier to look at. No, the designers just made a terrible decision in which any person who is running must be evil and in need of capture. And once I had to enjoy the expansive open world at a snail’s pace always instead of slowing down at the parts I wanted to explore in greater detail, or else I’d have to fight all the time? And I still didn’t really have a feel for the actual main game on top of that? It was rendered unplayable.

In the meantime, people have sung the praises of its sequels, and while nobody seemed to hate the one game-breaking aspect of the first game the way I did, everyone seemed to claim that the sequels fix a lot of other small problems that I never really saw for myself, and the whole is a massive improvement. My completionism still left me believing I might try to pick up the original again someday, but having played a few hours of its first sequel (review forthcoming, though likely not anytime very soon) and seeing that on top of my complaint, it really does feel a lot more polished and playable in ways I can’t even explain the differences for, it has become clear to me that I would only be punishing myself by going backward.[2]

Anyway, this right here? Kind of a horrible game that thankfully got another chance at life. Because the concept I loved so much? It works every bit as well as I had imagined.

[1] The wikipedia summary that I recently read tells me it probably would have been very interesting, though.
[2] Hence the wikipedia summary.

Beautiful Katamari

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I really don’t know how to review Beautiful Katamari in a way that would be any different from my original review of Katamari Damacy. It has equivalent zaniness, equivalent gameplay, an equivalent plot, a different but equivalent J-Pop soundtrack, significantly fewer Lego people observing the zaniness, and a higher number of goals than to merely make the biggest Katamari possible. But for the most part, they made exactly the same game as they have done over and over again since the original was released, in the tradition of the best slasher horror movies. And that’s all I have to say about that.

Mirror’s Edge

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So, it is celebration time here at Wit’s End[1], because I finished another videogame. Woohoo! Mirror’s Edge is a light, breezy even, rush of a game. You are a runner, tasked with moving information along the rooftops of The City at blinding speeds, using native instinct to know when you can make a jump between buildings or clear an obstacle. What exactly the information is, or why it needs to be moved discretely, or why the cops usually don’t bother the runners, these questions are never really addressed. The only thing that matters is, things have changed, times are suddenly far more dangerous, and it’s up to you to unravel the mystery!

Luckily, the gameplay, which consists of a constant barrage of running, jumping, ducking, dodging and weaving that optimally should never involve gunplay[2], is more than exciting enough to make up for the tragically thin plot. It’s not so bad that the information above is missing, except that it quickly becomes central everything you’re doing, and I feel like I might have gotten more engaged in the story if I’d known why the bad guys wanted to wipe out the runners, or even what [else] exactly they had done to become the bad guys in the first place. I kind of started to get distracted during the cutscenes, because they weren’t really making enough sense to me. Or else the distraction caused me to miss something vital? Yeah, I just don’t know. But the game itself, divorced from all these concerns? I say again: pretty good stuff.

Man, I really need to play an RPG now, though. If only I actually had a new one in my house. Maybe next month!

[1] That is what I call my home. There is even a sign!
[2] Although I acknowledged my lack of utility against the heavy gunners early on and started blasting away at need; but you’re just so slow-moving with a gun, they clearly intend you to have avoided them, and I always felt like I was letting the game down a little bit whenever I pulled a trigger.

Saints Row 2

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Saints Row 2 is the rare sequel that follows the horror movie rule of good sequels: make exactly the same thing again, only adding an incremented number on the end of the title. Five years after the rise and sudden fall of your character from Saints Row, he (or, this time around, possibly she!) wakes up from a coma ready for revenge. Only, revenge will have to wait: the 3rd Street Saints are no more, crippled in power by the total loss of their leadership[1], crippled geographically by the corporate gentrification of their seat of power, and crippled statistically by the rise of three new gangs who have taken advantage of the power vacuum to once more carve up the sad and inexplicably water-bound city of Stilwater.

The game, being a carbon copy, has flaws in keeping with the original: the glorification of gang lifestyle and graphics that seem almost hokey when held up next to Grand Theft Auto IV are the most obvious. But the newly chatty main character[2] is so over-the-top in her villainy and love of chaos that it felt a little less scuzzy than the voiceless original protagonist upon whom one inevitably would imprint their own motivations. As with the first game, I completed something like 93% of the available game, leaving out only a few races and stunt jumps and such. The series has been very good to me, on a value basis.

There is a remaining inevitable question to be answered. Having played them in such proximity, how does Saints Row 2 compare with Grand Theft Auto IV? Well, the similarity of game is a bit of a plus here; I really appreciated that the map of the city was so familiar, as opposed to Liberty City being so vastly different in GTA. (Then again, the time between sequels was only a couple of years rather than a decade, so I understand Rockstar’s point of view on the Liberty City update.) Storywise, GTA is the clear victor, hands down. Niko Bellic is a meaningful, tragic character while the nameless leader of the Saints is a caricature. And the respective stories very much reflect that comparison. All the same, I think Saints Row is the more fun of the two games; mindless mayhem and frequently-thin story motivations did not leave me wallowing in misery, the way Niko’s life did. And Saints Row’s story does have a handful of dark and dramatic turns, don’t get me wrong. If it wasn’t for the graphical disparity, I think I’d have to say it’s down to a matter of taste. But no, less fun-filled or not, GTA is objectively the better game.

[1] Some to retirement, some to the corporate sector, some to (seriously) the police force, and of course there’s the one that’s been imprisoned and in a coma.
[2] To my surprise, there was no option to import the previous character design from the original game. In compensation, there’s an ongoing joke about the character having “new hair”. Since mine changed gender, yeah, I found the understatement pretty amusing.

Condemned 2: Bloodshot

Three years ago and more, I played the original Condemned game. Creepy homeless people, a serial killer, crime scene investigations… fun, scary times! So, anyway, turns out there’s a sequel. Condemned 2 is every bit as creepy, with all the angry homeless people and new bonus extra-creepy people who have bizarre mouth and body-modifications. Not to mention hallucinatory slime people and evil animated dolls and all manner of bad times. The story part of the game is… well, pretty silly? See, the same characters from the previous game are back: Agent Ethan Thomas has turned to the bottle after his successful crusade to take down Serial Killer X resulted in no body, no proof, and a long-term suspension. His lab contact Rosa is doing fine, but the wealthy Malcolm Van Horn is being hunted by… a secret society. That has sinister plans for Agent Thomas.

On the one hand, yay for explaining all the crazy homeless people, probably better than the first game did. On the other hand, changing from a serial killer series to a conspiracy series without so much as a how-do-you-do is just a bizarre choice. One that will work better, I think, if there’s no third game. Really, the story thing isn’t a complaint per se. The game was scary and that’s what I was looking for. My complaint, if one is needed, is that it was entirely too short. Well, and there was maybe not quite enough studying crimes while nervously watching over a shoulder for a well-wielded pipe wrench. …yeah. Okay. Scary enough or not, it just wasn’t nearly as good as the last one. Oh, well.

Halo 3

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It occurs to me to state for the record that I did finally finish playing Halo 3. A few weeks ago, I guess? I forgot it was a noteworthy event, as it happens. The Halo games, as you may or may not be aware (but probably you are), chronicle a three-way war between humans (led by Master Chief, a genetically improved guy in a big metal powersuit), um… a confederation of aliens that I distinctly recall having a name that escapes me at the moment (led by religious fanatics), and the Flood (about whom the less said the better in the unlikely event that you care about spoilers for a game that is almost a decade old). The war is fought in a variety of places, but mostly on giant terraformed rings called Halos which figure prominently in the fates and histories not only of the aliens and the Flood, but of the galaxy itself.

In this game, a first-person shooter like the others, you control the Master Chief as always, and up to three other players in co-op play, which at the time was pretty new. Other games have made good roads into that space in the meantime, but, that’s how it goes. And you continue to fight against the other two sides of the war and try to save the galaxy and all. Also, there’s some pretty fantastically customizable multiplayer components to the game.

Despite the disinterested tone of the review, it really is a great game. It doesn’t have quite the strength of storyline of Halo 2, but the game play is equivalent and probably improved, so, decent tradeoff. If it weren’t for the fact that the game play in the original game was iffy, I could unreservedly recommend the whole trilogy as a pretty good sci-fi yarn wrapped around finding a bunch of guns and using them to kill things. Which, I mean, they’re aliens. That’s why they’re on the screen!

Grand Theft Auto IV

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I’ve played but not reviewed previous Grand Theft Auto games. Most of the modern ones pre-date my reviews, of course, but then San Andreas was never finished by me. There was this thing with impossible-to-fly biplanes that I finally gave up on, since there were only going to be more planes in the future, and the training aspect had overtaken the fun. That said, I have reliably enjoyed all of them, and each more than the last. Grand Theft Auto IV is likely the best in the series; it has kept each of the improvements developed across the previous three games while quickly ejecting the overly bloated chaff that came with San Andreas. The result is a streamlined and mostly trouble-free game experience. Mission-based play and a large world guarantee that there are times when a mission replay will be exasperating, but at least for me, this problem was rare. The sandbox design is even improved, with ever more reasons to wander the streets for the hell of it. Plus, y’know, it is about as pretty as the generation gets.

All of which to say: I am impressed with the game design and playability, and that’s good. Which leaves storyline. On one hand, it’s the same as previous Grand Theft Auto games. You wander the city as it gets gradually opened up to you, making deals with bad people and doing worse things in order to get money. You’re pretty much a bad guy, or at best amoral in pursuit of your own goals. But on the other hand… Nico Bellic is an interesting, conflicted character who is drawn in by events beyond his control at least as often as he makes bad choices. And there are a handful of secondary characters (if not more!) with depth that nearly matches Nico’s. It is possible to disapprove of this game’s morality and not need to know more than that to make your decision. But I’m pretty sure it’s impossible to play the game for any duration[1] and not get emotionally invested in more than one of the characters. The game is every bit as story-deep as Mass Effect, and well worth almost any gamer’s time.

[1] For my part, I played it over the course of 18 months. I almost never come back to games once I’ve played stuff in between or let more than a few weeks pass.

Left 4 Dead

These past several Mondays, my regular game of Halo 3 has rapidly and with a feeling of potential permanency changed to a new game. Left 4 Dead is close to unique in my experience in that it has almost no single-player component, no particular plot beyond the thumbnail sketch of world destroyed by zombiepocalypse with which we are all so familiar, no character growth to speak of. It is a pure game experience, divorced entirely from any other considerations. I mention this primarily to explain why you’re getting this review instead of a variety of other games I have played for considerably more hours but not yet completed. Halo 3, for example!

The inevitable big question, therefore, is how does the gameplay work out? I haven’t played by myself, but I’ve played a few other ways: two-player split-screen, two-player online, four-player online, and up to four-versus-four player as well, in all four game maps. So I’ve pretty much hit the whole thing by now. In case you don’t know what a zombiepocalypse is… you know what, nevermind. I think you’re just not allowed to read this anymore. Because, come on! Anyhow, there are these four single-dimensional survivor characters about whom you can tell basically everything just by looking at them, and they are surrounded on all sides both by hordes of zombies and by specialized über-zombies that grow to incredible strength, have entangling frog-tongues, pouncing cat leaps, or blinding toxic sludge. And the goal is to either cross the dead, destroyed city (or whatever) to unexpected safety, or, on the other side of the aisle, to devour all flesh.

Hey, look! I haven’t really said how the gameplay works out! It is frenetic, fast-paced terror as the survivors. Everywhere you turn, there could be a zombie with nothing to lose, whose only goal is to hurt you a little bit more, in the knowledge that you’ll be dead eventually. You’ve got limited weapons and ammo, limited ability to heal yourself, and essentially unlimited enemies. And as the zombies, it’s a strategic game of cat and mouse, in which you have nigh unlimited ability to find the survivors, and if you’re doing it right, herd them into cooperative traps with your über-zombie cohorts. You always come back, the only penalty for death being a period when you can’t keep attacking. On the downside, you’re pretty easy to kill and it’s hard to attack people who can shoot you from across the parking lot, well outside your range.

I guess it’s like this. Remember when Roddenberry introduced the holodeck in Star Trek, and any time the writers got tired of aliens, they’d have the opportunity to do a historical simulation of some kind, inevitably from the ever-popular twentieth century? The way I see the game is like this: thanks in part to the brilliantly conceived XBox Live network’s capability for connecting you with friends and letting you easily communicate with them however you want to, but mostly due to the beauty of the game itself, I see Left 4 Dead as pretty much the last necessary link for zombiepocalypse experience other than the invention of the holodeck.[1] It might actually be the perfect video game experience.

[1] Which really won’t ever happen, since the event itself will hit long before our technology is ready for a holodeck version.