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SuperWes
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SuperWes
Updated the banners, but not his title
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Joined: 07 Dec 2004
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 18, 2009 11:27 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I don't think it counts, but I beat Street Fighter IV last night. 10+ times. I unlocked everyone except for Seth. It's the best fighting game since Third Strike. Woo!

-Wes
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ApM
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Location: Ottawa, ON

PostPosted: Wed Feb 18, 2009 1:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

SuperWes wrote:
Finished Flower last night. It was a great feeling game and I totally appreciate it as art, but as something I paid $10 for I feel kind of ripped off. I tried to make it last by playing it over 3 days, but even then it felt like 10 minutes a day. It sucks when 1/7th of a game is the credits.

Not to downplay the experience, but play it at a friend's house if you've got the option.

I'm about halfway through, I guess. So far I feel much more satisfied with the $10 I spent on Flower than the $400 I spent on a Playstation 3. Not that I think it's perfect and beautiful and you're a philistine for not seeing it for the incredible heartfelt emotional love poem that it is, because it's definitely flawed.

They put far too much emphasis on holding the player's hand through this gorgeous landscape -- it's way too easy to get focused on "Go here! Now go here!" and completely miss the joy of blowing around, drinking in the scenery. There's all this encouragement to follow the path it lays out for you, and no encouragement to go see what's behind that hill. The third level, which I think of as the "mine cart level", was especially silly about this. Why would you not give me a reason to hang out in the beautiful landscape I just coloured? Why is there so much emphasis on flying around quickly, low to the ground, when it's so much nicer to fly way up and take in the whole huge view at once?

I am enjoying the experience, but I wish it had the courage to forgo the flower trails and the overt camera pans ("Oh look! More flowers over there! Go touch them!"), or at least make them more subtle and optional. It's too gamey to naturally take your time with, but it's not gamey enough for people not to ask where the beef is. If it were just a little less linear, it would be a lot more compelling.
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SuperWes
Updated the banners, but not his title
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PostPosted: Thu Feb 26, 2009 11:23 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Finished Rock Band 2 last night with Christina and her sister. The ending was very satisfying. I was thinking as we were playing that games like Rock Band are the kinds of things kids nowadays are going to look back on and think "this was a great part of my childhood" in the way we look back on Mario and Zelda like that. It has to do with the community aspect. We used to invite friends over to watch each other play, but now people can actually play together in a specialized role.

I also beat an iPhone game called "the Creeps." It's a really charming Tower Defense game that was well worth the $1.

-Wes
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daphaknee
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 04, 2009 11:21 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

wes what ive seen of your street fighter 4 strategy is so cheap
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SuperWes
Updated the banners, but not his title
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 04, 2009 2:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

daphaknee wrote:
wes what ive seen of your street fighter 4 strategy is so cheap

What does this mean?

-Wes
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SuperWes
Updated the banners, but not his title
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 07, 2009 7:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Finished Halo Wars this afternoon! I think I played through 10 of 15 stages straight. It's really good once you get past the 3rd and 4th missions!

-Wes
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SuperWes
Updated the banners, but not his title
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 22, 2009 11:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Today I finished both Resident Evil 5 and Peggle (Xbox Live Arcade version). The two games are totally different, but they were both really great.

For all of the flak Resident Evil 5 is getting for making the admittedly controversial decision to feature black zombies in Africa as enemies, if you're able to look past that you'll find an incredibly solid action game. The game plays most like Resident Evil 4, but it adds in a partner and interesting-yet-simple two-character oriented puzzles. This sounds like a mostly minor addition, but in practice simply having different gimmicks in each and every area creates a pacing that never feels bogged down with repetition.

Although RE5 borrows most heavily from RE4, the storyline brings together bits and pieces every game in the series, making it feel like a necessary part of the series rather than the co-op spinoff it could have been.

The loss of Shinji Mikami's touch isn't overtly obvious, but there is a nagging feeling that the design is slightly more reserved than intended. The co-op focus and strange mishmash of western shooter controls and Resident Evil's stop-to-shoot that makes up the default control scheme indicate that it clearly wants to break out of the series roots but isn't quite confident enough to become its own thing.

RE5 isn't perfect, but it's the best 360 action game I've played since Gears of War 1. If nothing else it's the closest I've come to playing a Hollywood Action Movie, and that's a fitting place for a game that began life as the closest videogames had come to a Hollywood Horror Movie.

As for Peggle. Man it's good. I'm unashamedly a huge fan of Bejeweled, Bookworm, Zuma, and now Peggle. Popcap games are just simple, mindless, solidly-designed fun. They're exactly the simple fun that the Wii promises to be, but without the misguided notion that simplicity must equate to a total lack of depth and/or challenge. Granted, Peggle is just slightly more dependent on luck than I'd like it to be, but somehow when you do happen to get lucky you still feel like it was your own skill that somehow caused it. I don't know how Popcap accomplished this feeling, but it's one unlike any other game I can think of.

In short: I recommend Peggle to your mom.

-Wes
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SuperWes
Updated the banners, but not his title
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 23, 2009 9:41 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

This morning I finished Yahtzee Adventures on the iPhone. It's kind of strange to have a story mode in Yahtzee, but honestly if it wasn't there I probably wouldn't have put near as much time with it. The game does a good job of expanding on the Yahtzee formula in ways that are only possible in a digital format, but without breaking the core design. The story was necessary fluff, but I kind of like the Yahtzee-centric world they created for the game. It's not anything revolutionary, but it's charming enough to make me want to actually read what the characters say.

If I have any complaints it's that setting up a two-player game isn't as intuitive as I'd like it to be, but that's obviously a minor thing. Overall it was well worth the $3 and I'd recommend it to anyone.

-Wes
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 13, 2009 7:27 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yo, saw THIS and thought of you for some reason today. I'm wondering once you have your kid how soon you'll teach them how to play video games ^_^. Which one would you have them play first?!?! Razz
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SuperWes
Updated the banners, but not his title
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Joined: 07 Dec 2004
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PostPosted: Mon May 25, 2009 10:34 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Finished Bionic Commando for 360 yesterday. I'm sort of surprised at the negative reviews and sort of not. Objectively the game ain't too hot. it's got terrible load times (coupled with a load screen that gets more annoying every time you see it), uneven difficulty, possibly the worst main character in the history of videogames, and a questionable story. But it's called Bionic Commando, and it has a grappling hook, which, for me, automatically forgives it of all flaws. The control is absolute perfection, outside of some bad collision when walking around (which you should never be doing anyway). Swinging around is intentionally hard to master, but when you do you begin chaining together awesome attack/swing combos that really make you feel like a badass. I don't fault the reviewers - not everyone has an insatiable taste for grappling hooks, but if you do I recommend ignoring reviews and picking it up anyway. It's good!

-Wes
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SuperWes
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PostPosted: Wed May 27, 2009 1:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ignore everything I said about Bionic Commando, apparently I just have bad taste in games. I've spent the last few days playing 007: Quantum of Solace and enjoying the hell out of it.

Quantum of Solace is in no way a good game. It's a cover shooter where you've got near-perfect aim from behind cover, every area has twice as many exploding crates as enemies, and melee attacks trigger the ultimate in game cliche's - a quicktime event. The plot follows the Quantum of Solace movie for the first half, then suddenly goes into a flashback where you play through the entire Casino Royale movie before coming back to Quantum of Solace for the final stage. There's nothing unexpected and nothing to anticipate, and if you haven't already seen the movies it would make no sense at all. And despite all of this, I really enjoyed it.

Quantum of Solace runs on a modified version of the Call of Duty 4 engine, with a third person cover system added. It uses this engine to create highly scripted moments of bad-assery where all of the big moments from the movies are experienced from the perspective of Bond. This is the game's biggest strength. It takes excellent movie action setpieces and moments, and lets you experience that action first-hand. This is the promise of all movie games, but Quantum of Solace is the first time I've really felt like a game has really nailed that premise. It's a total popcorn game, and taken as a pure popcorn game it's one of the most enjoyable I've played it years.

And I got it for $10, which was nice since it'd probably feel ripped off at more than $20.

-Wes
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SuperWes
Updated the banners, but not his title
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PostPosted: Thu May 28, 2009 9:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I didn't write about it, but for completion's sake I wanted to mention that I finished the Terminator Salvation iPhone game.

If you haven't heard of it, It's a 3d, 3rd person cover shooter that looks a little better than a PS1 game and plays like a modern console game. Technologically, it's the most impressive thing I've seen the iPhone do, but beyond that, it's surprising that the designers used the iPhone's dual-touchscreens to create an interface that allows for the complexity of something like Gears, but is restrained enough to not toss in unpolished gimmicks. If developers would start putting this type of design-thought into Wii games (games that cost 5-10 times as much as Terminator did and rarely offer as much polish) that system would start getting a lot more respect from people who actually play games as opposed to just buying them.

Aside from being short (around 3 or 4 relatively filler-free hours), the biggest complaint I can give Terminator Salvation is that a bit too by-the-numbers. It doesn't have any sense of identity apart from strong technology, great polish, and some borrowed characters from a Summer blockbuster. Still, at this point in the iPhone's lifespan, technology can carry a game a lot further than it probably should, and I'd recommend Terminator Salvation to most-anyone who enjoys modern console action games and sweet technology.

-Wes
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PostPosted: Thu May 28, 2009 3:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Oh Wes, we already knew you had terrible taste in games!

I want to love Bionic Commando so badly. Dunno if the demo has dropped for us Xbox Live Silver peons, though, and I don't spend $50 on a videogame unless I'm fucking sure it's great, so I haven't played it yet.
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SuperWes
Updated the banners, but not his title
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 22, 2009 1:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Continuing in my quest to log every game I finish, the past few weeks I've had time to complete Infamous on PS3 and Final Fantasy 4: The After Years on WiiWare.

Infamous is very mechanically sound and technically impressive, but as I played through it I kept wanting more than it gave me. There's a huge open world, but your character's moves are so subdued and never really take off. I realize that making the character a huge powerhouse doesn't leave much room for challenge or game design, both of which Infamous gets absolutely perfect also, but it also doesn't leave much room for fun. I enjoyed it well enough to beat it, but I never really cared about the story and never really cared about the morality system. Only once did I ever make the "wrong" choice (to save the girlfriend), and the results blatantly went against what my actions, as the player, were.

So I sound like I didn't really like it, but as I said, it's very mechanically sound and technically impressive, so I probably enjoyed it more than it deserves. Bionic Commando was better.

And Final Fantasy IV: The After Years I'm including here, but I don't really consider myself having finished it. I made it through what, according to the website, constitutes the first 3 chapters of a 9 chapter long episodic story. As soon as I finished these and watched the credits I bought and began the fourth chapter, accidentally deleting my progress in the first three. It pissed me off, but it wasn't so long that I'd be unwilling to play through it again.

Overall, The After Years is a shoddily made FF4 fanfiction with no respect for how the original game was constructed or paced and total respect for the original game's story. As such, it's kind of a guilty pleasure. I loved the story and characters in FF4, and I've rebought the SNES game three times (PS1, GBA, and DS) just to spend more time with them. Having another quest, even if it does kind of shit on the excellent pacing of the original, is worth my time, but I really wish they would have taken the same story and put a little bit more effort into making sure you were actually having fun most of the time instead of simply dangling more plot in front of the player as motivation. Still, it's FF4 and I'll be buying all of the installments and frothing for the next one in between releases. I'm easy.

I foresee my next couple of completed games to be Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers and Prototype. Both are on 360 and both are much better than the previous two games I finished!

-Wes
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SuperWes
Updated the banners, but not his title
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 29, 2009 8:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

More games! Peggle on the iPhone, Prototype on 360, and Rydia's Tale from FF:The After.

Peggle was great, as always, and is really better suited for the road than the Live Arcade one.

Prototype started to drag near the end, but overall was really great. I'd put it about even with Spiderman 2, which is very high praise coming from me.

Rydia's tale was actually much better than the main part of The After. I attribute this to having a party of 4 adventurers for the majority rather than a bunch of 2-person or solo quests.

-Wes
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SuperWes
Updated the banners, but not his title
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 15, 2009 11:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Finished the Yang's Tale part of FFIV: The After tonight. It was pretty good. It's a bite sized look into Yang's relationship with his daughter. I guess this had a bigger impact on me as someone who now has to decide how to raise his own daughter. I buy the relationship way more than I've ever bought Cecil and Rosa's. Possibly because I always use Namingway to rename Rosa to Igor.

Regardless, I find it interesting that all of these short stories are so concise, but still manage to feel epic. The only one that's felt meandering has been the initial offering, which hasn't been very representative of the mini-tales at all. As I finish the tales I'm left wondering how each of these stories will fit into the bigger picture. Whether I view The After as a success or a failure lies in the answer to that question, and it could go either way at this point.

-Wes
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SuperWes
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 18, 2009 2:26 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Pallom's Tale was pretty interesting. It revolved around Pallom training a new Mage in Black Magic. In the process he gets to know his pupil and they do everything in their power to protect the Earth Crystal. This quest probably felt the most like FFIV of any of the ones I've played so far. Strangely, it also features the fewest actual ties to FFIV of any of the chapters I've played so far.

The next tale is Edge's. The description says something about Edge sending 4 ninja pupils out on a quest. Ninjas are f-n sweet so I'm pumped for this one.

-Wes
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SuperWes
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 27, 2009 7:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I finally finished Magic: The Gathering and Red Faction: Geurilla.

Magic: The Gathering was great simply because I've never understood how to play the game before, and between the tutorials, the help messages, the challenges, and the campaign, I feel like I finally get it. The Xbox version is a bit dumbed down from the real game since you can't make your own decks, but I'm actually ok with this, since it meant I never had to wonder if I was losing because my deck sucks or if I was losing because I suck. It takes a lot of guts to make such a drastic change to an established formula, so even though it may not have been the right choice, I'm glad they made it.

Red Faction was really great, and really like nothing I've ever played before. I guess I'd say it's a like GTA with total destruction and without the guilt. You can go anywhere and destroy anything, but you're always encouraged to only intentionally destroy bad guys' stuff. It's also got jetpacks, which instantly makes any game better. My only issue is that near the end of the game you're left without any optional missions, and driving such long distances with nothing to distract you begins to feel like a waste of time. Still, totally worth it. As someone who appreciates unique design wrapped in a strong polish, I'd say Red Faction is probably my favorite game yet this year. Until Uncharted 2 at least...

-Wes
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SuperWes
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 18, 2009 5:58 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I've been continuing to make my way through The After Years. I've completed all of the tales and am waiting patiently for the finalle in early Sept. My thoughts on the remaining Tales:

Edge's tale was excellent. The story is primarily one of 4 ninjas that get sent on different assignments to find out why the world is messed up. You can play any of these assignments in whatever order you want. Up until then I had been convinced that single character parties didn't work well within the ffiv framework. They can! And it makes it that much more awesome when your party gets together at the end.

Edgar's tale was strange. I never really liked Edward from a play or story perspective. I still don't like him from a play perspective, but I really like what they were able to accomplish with his tale. He grows as a character in those 3 or 4 hours and I like that.

Porom's Tale was horrible. It exists completely to frame other characters' tales, but since I played it almost last it felt like I had already seen all of the key scenes. If you're thinking of playing this game I'd do Porom's tale pretty early on just to make sure you can get something from it.

The Lunarians' tale was pretty good, and surprisingly difficult considering your team consists of Golbez and Fusoya. There's one caveat though: there feels like an awful lot of padding for such a concise story. At least it ends really well.

-Wes
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SuperWes
Updated the banners, but not his title
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PostPosted: Thu Aug 20, 2009 11:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm watching the credits for Shadow Complex right now. My score was:

6:05:59
score: 1062050
time bonus: 2x
kills: 978
points: 2261250
Hardcore Bonus: 1.5
Items: 73%
Points: 1464566
Completion Bonus: 2x

Total Points: 4787866

it's good! I want to play it again and go for a better score, but now it's bed time.

-Wes
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SuperWes
Updated the banners, but not his title
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 23, 2009 2:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Shadow Complex 100% run.

8:21:31
327725
1.0

1517
3191250
1.5

100%
5000000
5

8518975

-Wes
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SuperWes
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 06, 2009 8:19 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Beat Yard Sale: SunnyVille last night for the iPhone. It's one of those seek and find games combined with kind of Refinishing Mama mini-games. I liked it! The iPhone is the perfect platform for casual games. It's really hard to get into anything deep, so short distractions that you can get into and out of quickly are perfect. Especially when you're playing with a 3 month old baby sitting on to of you. Don't be surprised if the next game I post about is Yard Sale's sequel.

-Wes
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SuperWes
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 20, 2009 12:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Despite feeling like I haven't had much time to play, I've finished 3 games in the past week.

Professor Layton and the Mysterious Box: this was great. Just like the first, but paced much better. The story kept me coming back, and every time I did come back I never dreaded being faced with an impossible puzzle like I did with the first. Thinking back on it, I'm kind of disappointed with how the story played out, but while it lasted I was intrigued.

Dexter: for the iPhone. I did not like it. I'm a huge Dexter fan, and given the excellent 3d engine, and long development time I had high expectations. What I ended up with was a game that exhibits everything that's wrong about branching storytelling. Sure, I wrote my own story, but it was total shit, and rather than being inspired to go back and rewrite the story, I'm inspired to delete the game from my phone and never touch it again. Interesting only as a perfect example of how borrowing elements from other games is only a good idea when you understand the design role those elements played.

Batman: Arkham Asylum: On the one hand, it's my favorite game I've played this year, but on the other I feel like all of the amazing elements were underutilized, while the average ones were reiterated far too often. I'll go into more detail if anyone's interested.

-Wes
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 20, 2009 1:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm interested in your thoughts on Batman: AA. My main gripe with the game was that there were too many empty areas. I loved the fighting mechanics and I loved the stealth mechanics but there were just too few enemies to use them on during the main storyline.

That being said, I love that they included the challenge rooms so if I want to get into a quick fight, I can just jump into one of those.
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SuperWes
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 30, 2009 9:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well, I thought the first half was amazing. Learning how to play the game and watching how the world evolves as the enemies began getting injected, enemies began getting smarter and setting traps for Batman, and Ivy's plants started taking over was amazing. The storytelling was also incredible near the beginning, as Joker used the long hallways with TVs in them to taunt Batman. Then, about 2/3rds of the way through they just gave up on trying to bombard you with story details and context and just kind of let the game deteriorate into a standard action game. Granted, it's an amazingly well-done action game, but they sort of blow their wad up front.

I also think that out of the three types of fights you can get into (hand-to-hand, stealth against enemies with guns, and injected enemy boss-fights), the proportions were kind of messed up. I wanted way fewer boss fights, more spread-out hand-to-hand battles, and more stealth opportunities, but the amazing stealth engine was underutilized. Sure, I could go back and do the challenges, but as I mentioned above, the context was one of the greatest strengths of the game, and without it I don't think I'd get much enjoyment from them.

The final boss was also a little bit too Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 for my tastes. I wish they would have at least made his voice deeper.

So yeah, I love the game, but with just a little bit of tweaking it could be so much better.

Last Saturday I finished Halo: ODST on Solo Heroic. I didn't really like the hub world as much as I expected to, but the levels themselves ware incredible. There's not a bad one in the bunch. My issue with the hub world is just that it all looked a bit samey and there was rarely any motivation to get into a fight. As soon as I stole a Ghost from one of the brutes I breathed a sigh of relief and ended up just barreling through everyone as I made my way from level to level. Yeah, I realize I was probably playing it wrong, but without any context, direction, or real motivation to explore I didn't feel the need to take my time.

Good game though! I play firefight every chance I can get.

-Wes
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 19, 2009 2:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Finished Uncharted 2 over the weekend. It was outstanding, as I expected. Near the beginning I kind of joked how by the end I'd become desensitized to "awesome" and, strangely enough, that kind of happened. The ending area was beautiful and the story wrapped up decently, but a day later I'm left feeling like I haven't grown at all as a person. I realize it's a strange thing to criticize about a game, but when games reach the storytelling equivalent of movies I'm left demanding the same sort of thematic resonance that I do from them. Yes, I'm criticizing the game for being too good, and that's why it's definitely worth playing.

-Wes
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 02, 2009 11:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Beat Yard Sale 2. It was basically an expansion pack to the first game with new areas. I didn't like it as much! It kind of made me realize that the whole seek and find genre doesn't really do enough interesting to have an entire casual game genre based on it. The last few hours I was more or less forcing myself to finish so that I could move on to something else.

I'm still sort of curious to know what others have done to keep the genre interesting. Has anyone reading this spent much time playing these games? If so, what's the best one and what makes it so interesting?

-Wes
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 29, 2009 2:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Finished ODST again, this time on Legendary in co-op. Since I knew what to expect it only took 3 sittings this time. I realized that I like Halo 3's campaign a whole lot more, probably because there's just so much more variety. In Halo 3 I can think of several specific scenes where cool shit happens, but in ODST it kind of feels like one long sequential firefight, with the samey hub being the only thing that breaks it up.

That said, because ODST is so concise and so focused I can see it being more of a game where I return to the campaign periodically just for the hell of it. With so many games designed around one-shot stories, games where you're playing purely to enjoy the mechanics of fighting are getting far less common.

-Wes
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PostPosted: Mon Dec 14, 2009 11:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Watching the credits roll on Assassin's Creed 2 as I type this. It was an excellent, excellent game. Not perfect, near the end I started to feel like I was being put through busy work, but 90% of the game was totally engrossing. Polished to an outstanding degree, freeform without sacrificing structure, and a seemingly endless series of unique missions that explore every possible use of a lot of interesting mechanics.

It looks like I completed 95% of the game. I don't see myself going for 100%, but I do see myself picking up the sequel whenever it comes out. If the leap is as big as the leap between the first and second games let the froth never end.

-Wes
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 18, 2009 1:33 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I just finished Modern Warfare for the first time. Modern Warfare 1. I was about half way through back when it came out, then I got the RROD, then I got through maybe 1/4 more, then tonight I played through the final 1/4th. It was good! It was much better when it came out originally and I didn't have games like Uncharted 2 to increase my storytelling standards. I remember it being really Half Life 2 level awesome when I first played it, but going back today it felt pretty tame.

One thing I've learned for sure is that I should never play all-aiming-no-strategy fps games on hard. I kind of didn't enjoy myself very much tonight at all! I would say 90% of my very frequent deaths were caused by things I felt were totally out of my control. The game seemed to revel in putting about-to-explode grenades under my feet. Still, I don't blame the game. It was my fault for putting it on hard, and honestly, when I finally was successful on a section it was because I learned from my earlier mistakes. I'm starting Modern Warfare 2 soon, and if there's one thing I've learned, it's to play on medium.

-Wes
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PostPosted: Sat Dec 19, 2009 2:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

New Super Mario Bros Wii is now complete. Well, I say complete, but technically I still have World 9. It's definitely the best Mario game since Mario 64. I think what makes it so much better than New Super Mario Bros DS is a real sense of danger. It wasn't what I would call a hard game, but after the first world (by far the game's weakest) I began feeling like if I screwed up I would actually die. It's neat to play a Mario game like that again after so many years of hand holding. Even though I finished the game with 80 lives I still felt like I had accomplished something.

I hope the sequel borrows from Super Mario 2/USA. Warts and all.

-Wes
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 26, 2010 2:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Modern Warfare 2 is complete. I ignored my advice from two posts ago and went ahead and played it on hard. Doing so really helped me appreciate the subtle improvements they've made for the sequel. Mechanically Modern Warfare 2 is very similar to the first, but little things like making sure enemies are always big enough to see when you get into a firefight with them, and rarely putting you in situations where you die without knowing why work wonders for making the game feel both more fun and more fair.

Much like the first game, this one stops trying to blow you away around 3/4ths of the way through. In this case, the game blows its wad just after the White House segments, but up until that point there wasn't a single moment that didn't floor me. Defending a Burger King from parachuting Russian terrorists may be one of the highlights of my gaming career.

The game shines brightest when it's ignoring the military wankery and just putting you in ridiculous situations ripped out of movies and reconstructed for its own use. It's disappointing to me that people will instantly dismiss the most popular game of 2009 because:

A. It's extremely popular.
B. It's too realistic.
C. It glorifies war

I've read a lot of articles and comments on articles doing just this, and it's kind of depressing. Point A is a dumb reason to dismiss anything outright, and the other two are just wrong. No game in history has made me think about what War means more than Modern Warfare 2, while at the same time taking everything to such an extreme level that it's more like a crazy action movie than a war film.

I guess what I'm saying is that Modern Warfare 2 isn't a game to miss.

-Wes
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 10, 2010 8:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hey Wes, you guys still working on TGQ or is it on hold now while you explore the possibilities of a new format? Btw, I'm heading back to Japan and will be living in Tokyo come this spring. I'd love to eventually put some information together for your magazine.
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 10, 2010 10:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

It's pretty much dead. I have some ideas on how it could be resurrected, but it's super ambitious and if it didn't take off after putting all of the effort into it I'd be really pissed. So yeah, probably dead.

Congrats on the job in Japan though! I'm glad that your hard work is actually paying off!

-Wes
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 20, 2010 10:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Starship Defense successfully defended! You might not have heard of Starship Defense, but you should. It's an amazing tower defense game for the DSi by Dillan Cuthbert's Q-Games, who also made Pixel Junk: Monsters.

What's immediately striking about Starship Defense is the art style. Everything is very small and consists of just one or two colors. Actually, the entire game uses no more than maybe 10 colors at once, max. It has a motif that evokes the feeling of colored pencil drawings dancing around graph paper, but it does so without feeling childish or lacking in technical competence. It's interesting.

I haven't said much about the game, but I will say that I think it's probably one of the best games the DS has ever seen. Every part of it was perfectly built around the DS's screens and interface, and the way each stage makes you come up with unique strategies means that none of its 30 stages are filler. My biggest complaint is how little reward was given for actually making it through all 30 stages. The ending was quite literally just a text box congradulation message. After all of the buildup, not even seeing a credit roll (they're available just off of the title screen) was kind of disappointing. Even without a big finish, Starship Defense is one of 3 or 4 games that made the upgrade to the DSi worth it.

-Wes
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PostPosted: Fri Feb 26, 2010 9:47 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

After a little over a month of playing it on and off I've finally finished Darksiders. If you're aware of the game, it's been described everywhere as a mixture of God of War and Zelda. I think that's a fair comparison, but saying this downplays the fact that both of these games are themselves derivative of countless other games, if nothing else the previous games in their own respective series. Darksiders borrows from many games, but the fabulous art direction helps give it a unique feeling. Every area has a unique tone and feeling that is full of detail and laid out with an eye for surprisingly good pacing.

It want to say that everything it does well made it worth playing, but honestly if I didn't commit myself to finishing it before I started playing I don't think I would have. I'm glad I did, since the last dungeon was probably the best Zelda Dungeon of all time, but the rest of the game left me feeling sort of empty. I think the problem is that I've slowly become the kind of gamer that needs a narrative to motivate me to play a game. I wasn't always like this, but as I get older and have less free time, my tolerance for busywork and pure hack and slash action has deteriorated. For a game to really grab me it needs to make me aware of why I'm doing things. Darksiders isn't the worst offender in this regard by a longshot, but a combination of the early part of the game being full of semi-well masked tutorials and 90% of the game consisting of a singular mission that consists of "kill 4 boss monsters" made it feel like it dragged on longer than it really did.

There is a story in Darksiders, but it's presented more as backstory than as motivation, and it very rarely tries to integrate itself into the gameplay. The few times that it does - mostly near the end of the game - it shines, but these moments are few and far between.

Despite sounding very down on the game, when/if a sequel comes out, I know for sure that I will pick it up. Darksiders is extremely close to greatness, and I'm confident that if the developers spent a little more time with what they've got it would yield even more impressive results.

-Wes
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PostPosted: Fri Feb 26, 2010 9:59 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Finished Shoot 1up last night!

It's worth mentioning because it's probably one of the best shooters I've played in years. The concept is that your ship consists of a group of all of the lives you currently possess and as you gain more 1ups they instantly increase the size and power of your ship by attaching themselves directly to your frame. This makes you more powerful, but it also makes you a larger target, creating a perfect system of risk and reward. You can use the L and R buttons to increase and shrink the area that your ships make up. Also, each level has a section where the player can decide which path they'd like to take by simply moving to different parts of the screen when prompted. This works better than you'd think.

What makes the game such a breath of fresh air isn't just the concept, but also the execution. Every area is full of unique enemies and enemy patterns, most of which are either completely insane, enormous, or a combination of both. Standard enemies very regularly take up half of the screen, and are often standing in the way of precious 1ups, leading to some tough decisions.

Oh yeah! And it was $1! If you've got an Xbox 360 you owe it to yourself to pick it up. It's exactly the kind of game that XNA Indie games was created for.

-Wes
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 15, 2010 6:09 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Last night I "finished" Just Cause 2. I put finished in quotes because technically I'm only 28% complete, but there's no way I'm going to put 50+ hours into getting 100%. Not that I didn't enjoy myself. Just Cause 2 is exactly the kind of sandbox I can appreciate. The scale is enormous, the physics give every action a unique and over-the-top reaction, and the travel options available to you are superb. You can wrp anywhere you've been, but it's so much fun to drive, fly, or slingshot your parachute places that I almost never used it.

Where this game succeeds that other sandbox games fail is in density of achievement per area. Everywhere you go you'll find collectables, stuff to explode, and triggers to flip. Strangely, somehow they've created a design where the missions are a diversion from the free form exploration. You're not travelling around the map searching for scripted missions, you're doing so to avoid the scripted missions. The designers must have realized this because there are over 1000 fuel canisters to explode and only 10 story missions. I never once saw it as a problem.

So yes, I recommend Just Cause 2 to anyone who liked Crackdown in single player, thinks Spiderman 2: The Movie: The Game is one of the best sandbox games ever, or has a grappling hook fetish. All 3 are true for me, so I was in heaven. True tobthe title, it's a good game to play just 'cause.

-Wes
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 19, 2010 11:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The credits are rolling now on God of War 3. I enjoyed it overall, but honestly, the series is starting to wear itself thin. Everything about God of War 3 is completely polished and impressive aside from the more-formulaic-than-usual hunt for boss battle story, but, maybe because everything was so incredibly well done, the game just feels redundant.

Earlier this week a coworker of mine was talking about what it means for a TV series to "jump the shark." He claims it's when an episode is so good that it will never be topped. I said "you can't get much cooler than jumping a shark, so you might as well just give up after that." God of War 3 jumps a shark in the intro sequence and never really gets much better until the last half hour.

I have a lot more issues with the game, but I don't want to give the impression that I didn't like it. It's a good game, I just think that unless they really do something innovative for the next installment (rumored to be "God of Modern Warfare", which just might do it) I'm done with the series.

-Wes
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 28, 2010 5:30 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Finished Miles Edgeworth yesterday on the DS. I hated it. The last case took me a month because it was so pointlessly drawn out and boring. The rest of the game was pretty standard Phoenix Wright, but that last case really ruined it for me.

-Wes
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 20, 2010 7:42 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Been kind of quiet about finishing games lately, but here's an update on where my recent game time has been going:

I got to the final boss of FFXIII, but he's too hard for the level I am and I'm unwilling to grind, so that's not happening.

I got about half way through Red Dead Redemption and riding my horse between missions is starting to take its toll on me. Probably won't finish it.

I'm 90% of the way through Picross 3D, so that one should show up here soon.

After over a year I did finally finish Pixel Junk Monsters in co-op with my wife. The game is a great game to play with your wife, so I'd highly recommend it. It's hard not to yell at each other until you both become decent, but when you learn how to play it really shines.

Most of my time has been spent working on an indie game on commission for some dude in Texas. It's almost done, but he's bringing someone else in to do online play. We'll see how much longer it takes! The game is called Saathus, so keep an eye out on the Xbox indie games channel for it.

-Wes
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 27, 2010 8:27 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Finished Risk Factions the other day. It's really awesome! Potentially Carcassone awesome! It plays a lot like standard Risk, but instead of taking 4 hours per game and making the people who aren't in the lead feel helpless, it takes maybe 20 minutes, and is over before that happens. It's an outstanding update to the standard ruleset that's both complex and enjoyable, and is no doubt much better when you have a computer to do the math for you.

The only downside to the digital version is that it's short. Really short. Like 2.5 hours or less for the whole thing. Still, the presentation is great, and it was only $10 (it feels like a $15 download/full price title), so I'd say it's well worth it. I've started going back and doing skirmishes I like it so much.

-Wes
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 13, 2010 12:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

And another two bite the dust.

I finished Picross 3D and Crackdown 2 on Sunday.

Picross 3D was initially a huge let down, but I ended up playing every single puzzle, so I guess it did something right. For one, it lacks the simple elegance of 2D Picross. In 2D picross you're given the illusion that the puzzles are writing themselves. Like any given tiled image just happens to inherently contain a neat little puzzle. In Picross 3D all of the puzzles clearly began this way, but had information removed - sudoku style - until an actual puzzle remained. This works, but it's not as satisfying as the original.

My other issue is with the structure itself. Every puzzle has a set time limit and a set number of times you can mess up. If you fail to do a puzzle perfectly within the time limit, you are allowed to pass, but will have to come back later if you want to unlock all of the other puzzles. This is lame. Once you know what the picture is you shouldn't have to replay the puzzle. I'd rather they had gone with what they did in the original, where failures ding your time at an incremental rate.

Still, these are minor issues, and overall I enjoyed the game.

Next up: Crackdown 2. But it'll have to wait. Gotta work!

-Wes
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 09, 2010 9:58 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Beat Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands last night. I'm still trying to piece together my feelings on it, so this may come off as rambly. For the first hour or two it seemed like a low-budget, rushed to meet movie release concession to all of the people who hated the fact that you couldn't die in the reboot and wanted something more like Sands of Time, but the game slowly over time turned into a very well-produced true sequel to the reboot (I liked the reboot).

What drove me crazy at the beginning was how the game draws explicit attention to how scripted it is. There's a scene where you make your way along a wall, jumping from ledge to ledge as arrows come flying behind you barely missing you. There is no tension in these moments at all because it's clear the arrows are simply a scripted event. They also look like shit, like low-res 2D sprites that suddenly appear in an HD wall.

But somewhere near the end of the game - as the enemies get bigger and the sands get kicked up - all of the production issues seem to disappear, and everything looks really impressive. At this point your moveset has also increased and you're being forced to use every button on the controller to meld the world around you as you leap from pillar to pillar. You feel like a bad-ass and you're up against non-scripted threats, like swinging spike posts, bottomless pits, and lots of timers. The rhythmic feeling of the reboot is back again, and you're playing the game that Prince of Persia was always meant to be. Then it's over. The credits roll, some wrap-up story shows up (on the title screen - they couldn't even be bothered to create an ending sequence) and the game is over.

I waited for The Forgotten Sands to drop in price before I picked it up, and I'm glad I did. By saying that I mean both that it wasn't worth $60 and that I felt it was probably worth playing.

-Wes
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PostPosted: Thu Aug 12, 2010 6:33 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Beat Castlevania: Harmony of Despair last night, though it wasn't really through much of my own effort. The final three levels were played as a party of 5 and I spent the last two boss fights simply trying to survive. I consider myself good at Castlevania, it's just that I hadn't grinded nearly enough to take even a couple of incidental hits. I'm glad I had my party with me!

I like the game a lot, and find myself drawn back to it often, though I'm not sure why. It's incredibly repetitive, and it's possible, even likely, that you'll spend an entire evening grinding for loot just to walk away empty handed. But I guess that's Castlevania for you. The mechanics are so solid and satisfying that they make you want to play despite some stuff that sucks.

-Wes
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 22, 2010 10:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Scott Pilgrim complete!

I'm a huge Scott Pilgrim fan. I read the books, bought the game, and saw the movie asap.

I initially didn't care much for the game. The characters start out with too few moves to be effective and the design is just all over the place. You often get killed and it doesn't seem like your fault, which goes against what I consider basic game design. The art is what made me keep playing though. This is basically TGQ: The Game, since Persona and Kinuko from these very pages worked on it. The technology is all retro, since the game runs at a chunky, widescreenified 320x240 resolution, but the art that this technology renders is fabulous.

Ultimately, I'm glad I did keep playing because I actually enjoyed the game almost because of its ill informed design decisions. Scott Pilgrim doesn't just look like an 8/16-bit game, it's also designed like one, and it wasn't until I realized that the issues it has might be intentional that I was able to appreciate it. Back in the NES days when we played games we didn't expect to have our hands held and we didn't expect our mistakes to be forgiven. We put a little bit of effort into figuring out the limitations of the game's systems and we found workarounds because doggonit we got this game for a gift and we were going to play it until our next birthday.

Only in this case I was playing Scott Pilgrim because it was so pretty Wink I'm shallow!

At any rate, my lowest point in playing Scott Pilgrim happened after I had grinded for an hour or so to build up $505 to pay off Scott's late fees. I had heard that if you pay off the late fees you unlock the ability to buy some incredible items for just $5 each. I saved up all of my money and got $507, just enough to pay off the late fees. So I go into the store, pay off the late fees, then leave the store to kill a few enemies and get $5. I quickly earned $5 and went back in only to discover that the unlock is a one time deal and you need to pay off the $505 again if you want to unlock the sale items again. I started flipping out for a minute, then I realized that the game only resets when you actually leave an area. I reset the system, then loaded up my save game to find my $507 intact. Whew!

It was frustrating, but who didn't have an experience like that (minus being able to reload your save) in the 80s? You'd be playing Deadly Towers, Rygar, or River City Ransom and you'd try something you've never tried before only to realize that the game didn't do what you expected, causing you to lose a lot of progress.

That's the mindset of Scott Pilgrim the game. It's from a different time and it wears that on its sleeve, providing a form of nostalgia that's either intentional or genuinely misguided, but is certainly effective. And yeah, it's so authentic you might throw your controller, so watch out!

-Wes
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 24, 2010 1:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Wanted: Weapons of Fate

Finished it.

It was pretty good!

Of what I've played recently, the game Wanted most reminds me of is 007: Quantum of Solace. It's full of gratuitous explosions and leads you by the hand through a tightly paced story. Lately, my life feels very fast paced and busy, leaving me too tired to play anything that's super involving. My wife and I turned on "The Road" over the weekend, and we didn't last 15 minutes. I'm sure it's an amazing movie, but between a baby running around, work, and all of our chores we're too tired to devote our brains to anything cerebral and depressing.

So she read a book and I put in Wanted.

2 hours that night and a few the next and it was over with. Nothing but good times blastin', cussin', and cuttin' dudes. Towards the end of the game I started thinking about how few of these games end up in my posession. Everything these days has "RPG elements" and "hundreds of guns." Wanted has 2 guns, and the closest thing it has to RPG elements is adding a slot to your adrenaline meter every time you kill a boss (there are a total of 4 slots).

Wanted's development studio, Grin (RIP), was really good at honing a mechanic and building a very tightly constrained game around it. They did this with Bionic Commando: Rearmed, and again with the Bionic Commando reboot. Unfortunately (or fortunately, as I kind of believe), this type of design seems to only be respected in the domain of cheaper downloadable games these days. Whatever the case, I waited for Wanted to drop to $10 before II picked it up because it seemed like a fun summertime one-trick-pony to play between big releases, and that's exactly what I got.

At $60 it was highway robbery, but at $10 or $15 it's pretty excellent. It's interesting to consider why it was they priced it the way they did though, the game looks and feels like a $60 game, it's just short. I can see why it's short also, since the design isn't really deep enough to support a 12 hour game. What's there must have taken a lot of work. Each area is totally unique, and there isn't a lot of obvious overuse of environment items or textures. This, despite environments built almost entirely of hallways where they could easily have gotten away with a lot of environment reuse abuse.

Grin knew what they were doing, they were just doing it for an audience who largely doesn't care how good your design is if they feel like they're not getting their money's worth.

Personally, I'm on the fence. I don't want to see games that are bloated beyond what their mechanics support, and I don't want to see the complete abandonment of games that are stripped down to the bare essentials and focus on just one really great idea. It's also important to state that I don't want to pay $60 for a 5 hour game. I'm not sure there is a solution outside of a revamped pricing structure where 30 hour epics cost 5x as much as 4 hour experiences with the same level of polish. We're getting there, but I feel like that's more a result of the big guys trying to push us in the direction of paying $60 for downloads than a conscious effort to create a market for games of this nature.

I can't tell what the future holds, but I guess I'll be happy as long as there continue to be price drops.

-Wes
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 14, 2010 6:01 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

At some point I should talk about Metroid: Other M, Dead Rising 2: Case Zero, and Splinter Cell: Conviction, but with Halo Reach coming today I'm not sure when that will be.

-Wes
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 23, 2010 11:24 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The day is now, apparently. I'll talk about Halo: Reach first, which I finished last weekend in co-op on Heroic, then I'll come back and make more posts about the other games.

Reach was, as expected, a pretty good time! But I don't really like the direction they decided to take with game balance.

Halo 1 was all about Headshots and aiming. The pistol is way overpowered and it's pretty much the only weapon you need if you're good enough at aiming.

Halo 2 put less emphasis on pure aiming by improving the weapon balance. Each weapon has its own use, and the game is all about putting yourself into situations where your set of weapons will be useful. I've always likened this to your character having separate classes, since each weapon has a sort of role assigned to it.

Halo 3 kept this concept and focus on weapon-balance, but went slightly further in a strategic direction by introducing deployable equipment. Your basic class was still tied to your weapons, but with the right equipment you could take some risks and still end up ok in the end.

Halo Reach seems to downplay weapon choice by favoring the aim-based weapons like Halo 1 did. Everyone requires a lot more damage to kill, and even sure-thing, close range weapons like the plasma sword require two hits to kill an enemy at full health. They attempt to offset this with the addition of armor abilities, but these feel like awesome ideas that have had their usefulness tweaked just enough to only be extremely useful if players work as a team.

I'm definitely complaining, but overall there's no doubt that Reach is a great game that was designed well. It's just less accessible than before. It feels built to cater to an audience that wants there to be no doubt that the best player ends up being the winner. I think I just tend to favor the more casual end of the spectrum. I like it when the underdog gets a few lucky kills and has a few right-place-right-time moments that bring on an upset victory.

I have been playing Reach a lot and will continue to do so, but I was hoping to move on and never look back and it looks like that's just not going to happen. Long live Halo 3!

-Wes
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SuperWes
Updated the banners, but not his title
Updated the banners, but not his title


Joined: 07 Dec 2004
Posts: 3725

PostPosted: Sun Dec 19, 2010 10:43 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

So the reason I haven't updated this lately is because I've been doing my completion log at SuperWes.com. Check it out! And feel free to comment!

In the future TGQ (if it happens) I'm hoping to include an RSS agregator for staff, so staff can do their blogs wherever. Don't consider this the last of the holdouts giving up. Consider it the beginning of a new beginning.

-Wes
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