Review: A Planet Lost and Found
Capcom started off this generation strong, with early announcements of new IPs in Dead Rising and Lost Planet, and it was as if the hype for one title boosted hype for the other (both titles were also under the supervision of Capcom star Keiji Inafune). The two games were somewhat of a pair of twins, both action titles with impressive graphics, and with enough of an original concept in each of them to make them stand out on store shelves. And while both were instant hits in retail upon their release, Dead Rising managed to become a cult-classic in the minds of many, while Lost Planet seems to have become “just another shooter” that failed to hold onto a larger audience. Going into these games, I myself thought that Dead Rising would be my preferred title of the two as well, but after hours spent with each game, there’s practically no doubt in my mind; I’m in love with Lee Byung-hun. [Rest of the review after the jump]
Audio Diary (Press A): The Fallout from Bioshock
There is extremely little of anything spoilerific in this post so don’t worry about that. It is essentially a review/final thoughts.
Bioshock was a game that deserved to succeed whe n it did. As a shooter with a little more brain behind each pull of the trigger, it rose above the sea of other shooters that were coming out around it. It was also a pretty tightly wound package, you weren’t going to find any sniper levels or shitty car controls level inside the game. 
And with its unique aesthetic, it wasn’t a safe product to be putting out on the shelves. Bioshock deserved its at the time success, although I can’t say it deserves a spot among games that should absolutely be remembered 10 years from now.
I think just about everyone who played the demo was impressed. The left-hand/right-hand approach was too clever for being so simple and it seemed like there was so much to take in. Hacking and adventure portions also helped to break up the up-close combat. But then when you get around to the whole game,you start to realize the other secret about Rapture, there’s really not much else to it than those parts I told you about. I actually spent most of my time with the game about 6 months ago, saw the big reveal/twist, and promptly stopped playing, only to pick it up again and finally beat it just now.
I read from a blog Jeremy Parish posted a while back that when the developers were concepting the game, the gameplay took center stage and the storyline just kinda grew up around it. It’s a little strange since I’d imagine without the story aspects prodding you along, the game would’ve fallen on its ass in retail. The gameplay really doesn’t do the story any favors and actually at times, I felt a disconnect between the overall story and what my avatar was doing in my wanderings around Rapture. There’s all these interesting characters that you hear about in the audio diaries, who’ve done terrible things behind closed doors and you want to really see these faces while playing through the game. But first here’s a bunch of gunner splicers to get in the way and hold you off for a few minutes. And then some spider splicers, and a turret, etc. When you finally get around to meeting a few of the characters (you won’t meet all of them), it’s like you’re in Oz since they end up being extraordinarily ordinary, you fight them much like you do any other bad guy. Except they have a ton more health, which just ends up making it frustrating.
The battles around Rapture actually have a real sense of random encounters to them, and in traditional random encounter strategy, by the end of the game you’re so tired of trying to spice up the battles on your own that you just attack the crap out of everything. Most plasmids aren’t that functional and most feel awfully close to another despite having very different properties (having the enemy run around with their ass on fire vs. electrocuting them, they’re both essentially a stun in the end). And since switching from a plasmid to a gun isn’t as fluid as it could’ve been, by the latter third of the game I’d just about abandoned my left hand and simply sprayed everyone with my machine gun or shotgun. It wasn’t much fun, especially since later enemies are mostly just the same guys from the beginning with a lot more health, no new patterns or anything to refresh your approach towards them. Even the Big Daddy battles, which start out amazingly intense and compelling, can for the most part be finished with some well-placed, high-octane blasts later in the game. Your left hand will be scratching your own ass in the meantime. The most ironic thing here is that the Big Daddy battles are almost completely optional (I think one is required) so some players might not even see the most exciting parts of the game if they choose to ignore these guys.
The very real problem with Bioshock is it commits what I’d consider a cardinal sin of video games. It just isn’t that much fun for a lot of the time. Despite the seeming kitchen-sink range of options in guns, ammo, and plasmids, most of it will never be practical for progression so you’re much more limited than they’d want you to think. Now that I’m finished with the game, I might be having more fun than I was in the last few hours. No longer needing to scrounge around for bullets and chips and all that stuff, I just go wherever I want, do whatever I want, avoid all the idiots along my path, and have a good time. I’m also reading some FAQs about the characters along with story analyses and it’s almost painful how much more interesting it all seems in the FAQs than within the game.
Bioshock would’ve surely been a better game if it was more focused on isolating the player, so they can crawl around, take in the environment and those few encounters with those story characters would’ve been that much more impactful. Instead it seems like they’ve been locked away in a vault and some mindless enemies have taken over the joint, they’re now the show. I’ll be expecting more next time Mr. Levine.
#4 – Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Back in 1999, Nintendo really struck gold with Super Smash Bros. Playing with my buddies in eighth grade was always a blast and I couldn’t have been impressed more with this game that seemingly came out of nowhere. Unfortunately, I never got into Melee the same way. It seemed like a tighter game but at the cost of the original’s charm.
In an effort to give the series another shot, I purchased Brawl first chance I could (esp. with not much else of interest coming for the Wii). 
I played through all of Subspace with some friends of mine and was basically burning away hours at a time with the game when it first came out. In short, I got my money’s worth.
Now that the game has been around for a few months, I’m realizing that any “hope” of me becoming some SB fanatic isn’t going to happen. It’s still Melee just with even more polish present. When I pop in the game now, it’s mostly just to have some fun with friends, although that fun often degrades into outright fury. Perhaps that’s a good thing. It does feel like some concessions were made in quality of gameplay in order to add more fanservice to the game (thinking Olimar and New Pork City here), but I try not to look at those things when I’m pounding away at people with King Dedede’s hammer.
Anyone expecting the next SSB game to blow away the gameplay of the first few titles and to push for a new direction hasn’t been watching closely. Luckily Nintendo and the Sakurai team still have an idea of what “fun” is all about so the package is still rewarding. It’s a game that’ll be sure to yield some good times, even if you only dig the game out every few months. Kat Bailey over at Gamespite shares my sentiment:
I might not play Brawl everyday, but I’ve got the feeling that it will be finding its way back into my Wii for many Thanksgivings to come. And besides, the Pokemon Trainer is still the greatest character. Ever.
After I myself have removed any trace of pretension surrounding this game, I can start to see the magic again. With this franchise, you can’t make it into someone else’s experience (ie. BEST FIGHTER EVER or drunken hilarity), you just have to find your own way.
#3 – Halo 3
Again this count-up is not being done in any fixed order. Some of these titles are certainly more recommended than others, but the point here is to highlight what I enjoyed about them.
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I’ll admit, I was part of the Halo hate squad without even giving the games a chance, having never owned an original Xbox. I purchased the third game on New Year’s Eve of last year, with much of the reason being a conceit to my friends so we could 
have something to play together on my then new 360. And while the first few single-player missions didn’t impress, the game became more engaging the more I played and revealed it’s methodology.
Eventually I got on Live, finished the single-player both on my own and in co-op and then continued to play some more. I’m now a Lieutenant (Grade 3!) with perhaps the only positive kill:death ratio in any FPS I’ve ever played. Jeremy Parish was right in that the game seems the most impressive in single-player on Heroic. Only then do you really start to see the AI, level design, and gunplay come together. I’d recommend anyone new to the franchise to give some of Heroic a shot before completely blowing off the franchise.
After months of playing on Live, I’m really starting to understand what is magical about the multi. Sure there was a snowball effect when the first game came out that helped it reach monstrous sales numbers, and the original title did fill in a major FPS gap on consoles, but let’s give it more credit than that. First-off the controls, esp. in the 3rd title are incredibly intuitive and easy to pick-up and play. Each shoulder side roughly represents an arm (shoulder=arm haha), and all the face buttons have one purpose matched to each. Any game’s controls are going to take some time to get used to, but Halo’s controls are able to make a case for why FPS on consoles can still be a lot of fun. The most important reason for the game’s popularity is its realization of what I’d call a “soldier’s playground”. There’s always grenades flying, vehicles rolling around, magazines falling to the ground, and extremely colorful avatars to boot. The player characters are more than capable of flexibility in their fighting so you choose what you want to do. If you want to jump up, spray the enemy in front of you with a few bullets, and then finish the kill with the incredibly powerful downward melee attack, well don’t be surprised if he wants to do the same. Or you can just splatter him with a Warthog as well.
There’s definitely a place for nail-biting shooters like CoD where you can be killed simply because you stepped out from behind that rock and didn’t run. But Halo shows that shooters that have a one-man army as its players are extremely appropriate today as well.
#2 – Devil May Cry 4
Not wanting to try and revolutionize the genre like both DMC1 and 3 arguably did, Capcom decided it instead would try and combine the best of both worlds to their ability. For the most part, I thought they succeeded. DMC4 wasn’t as inherently exciting since it wasn’t as fresh an experience as the previous two games were, but it helped show that their was a lot of life to the 3D action genre and that the games weren’t a one-generation wonder.
Rookie Nero’s adventure more than impressed me with his Devil Bringer mechanic, despite having only 1 weapon at his control. I admittedly stopped right at the infamous switch between him and Dante and didn’t pick up the game again for a few months, but this was a premature decision on my part. Dante’s quest was a step back to some degree (since Nero made chaining enemy combos much easier and fluid), but given some time, he was still a load of fun to play. Sure you were going through the exact same levels as Nero, another major complaint, but any DMC fan should recall that both the first and third title had a decent amount of repetition themselves, only just given a face paint. Both characters had a unique feel to them, and I don’t think any fans of the franchise expected them to both feel relevant and worthwhile, but that was the ace Capcom really pulled off in this game.
In my opinion, the franchise hasn’t lost a step in terms of how exciting the games are to play. And I think with this game, Capcom may have finally captured a unique aesthetic and style for the series. Yuji Shimomura’s cutscene direction also blew me away when most swordfighting action in film these days is just plain boring to watch (*cough* Advent Children). Most importantly, the enemy design has made a fantastic recovery since 3′s weakly done “7 sins + some chess pieces” style. Capcom wasn’t in a position where they could please everybody since 3 created some fractures among what the fans wanted, but with the direction they took, I thought they did an excellent job.
Will I be expecting a fresher game the next time around? Most likely, but my ambition for the next title hasn’t suffered 1 bit. Just…just rethink the music for all of us please.
[Screen from TeamXbox]
My top gameplay experiences over the year – #1!
As a consumer, I don’t have easy access to all the year’s biggest games, often I must instead look to years of missed opportunities for my fantastic experiences. So while all the big sites are doing their favorite games of the year, here’s a game-by-game recall of my favorite games that I actually got around to playing this year (and yes some of them are from this year). This is in no real particular order as entrance is more a reward than denial a red mark.
1. Genma Onimusha
Prior to playing Onimusha, I had just come out of finishing my first classic style RE with Resident Evil for the Gamecube. While that game was designed in a more modern day, the experience often felt forced and overdone. It wasn’t even about the controls or the difficulty, I just didn’t have that much fun in hindsight. Part of the appeal in Onimusha was that there was a certain charm to its general simplicity and lack of pretension. It was a rather straightforward adventure game with a great aesthetic, atmosphere, and design. It’s known these days as a DMC-lite, but when playing the game I didn’t feel that it would have benefited from a much more rigorously designed combo system. Some slashes here and a sidestep there seemed more than sufficient. At the time, I thought of the experience as a “gamer’s soul food” as I felt I could get a lot of fun out of Onimusha without having to utterly dedicate myself to the game. And sometimes that’s all that’s necessary to have a good time.
The greatest asset Genma Onimusha has going for it is a classy level design. It may be a bunch of consecutive corridors with some pre-rendered artwork plastered on the walls, but with some well-placed enemies, each location has a unique and memorable feel attached to it. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same of many games that come out today. Keiji Inafune produced the series and I can easily see the same attention to crafting a great package as was given to his Mega Man franchise. Onimusha is a classic example on how to follow the tenets of game design to control the experience rather than overloading the player with gimmicky systems and bloated periphery.
I have no idea why this game is not more often cited for the hilariously bad voice-acting though.
[Image off of TeamXbox]
