The design and business of gaming from the perspective of an experienced developer

Category: Design Reviews (Page 3 of 5)

Subverting the Paradigm

Like many others around, I’ve been playing a lot of Puzzle Quest lately. I had already bought it for the DS, and really enjoyed it, but to be honest, I’m not a huge handheld guy unless I’m spending a lot of time on airplanes. Playing it on my big screen TV turned an enjoyable experience into an utterly addictive one.

What’s interesting to me is why its so addictive. After all, the core mechanics are just a less polished version of Bejeweled, with a couple of snazzy abilities. The easy answer is the RPG elements (and funny, how other game genres are trying to incorporate them while MMO players beg us to reduce them). But there’s something else interesting going on. Continue reading

Games of the Year

This year’s game of the year, without a doubt, is Portal (remember this awesome trailer?). It’s three hours long and has one of the best endings I’ve ever seen. If you profess you love games, you owe it to yourself to give it a shot. To quote the normally hateful Zero Punctuation, if you don’t like it, you’re stupid. (Also, for those who beat it, here is a link to the sublime ending)

As a side note, much of the writing was done by Chet and Erik of Old Man Murray fame. They are possibly most famous for their ranking of games based on time to crate. This is funny, because one of the key ‘characters’ in the game is the Weighted Companion Cube. Continue reading

Shadowrun’s “If You Can’t Beat ‘Em” Gameplay

The Shadowrun game (recently discussed here) came out over the last week or so and… well… you owe it to yourself to try the demo out. Disregarding whether or not it is true to the Shadowrun license’s feel (as well as my own personal longing for a Bioware-style RPG set in the SR universe), it does some very interesting things in terms of design.

The game is unabashedly a shooter, but the powers have all been tweaked to stretch what has been done in FPS titles previously, most notably things like using powers to see through walls, glide between buildings and teleport at will into the next room over. It’s… well, it’s very different. Continue reading

Dear “Blitz: The League”…

You had me at ‘piledrive the opposing quarterback’.

Actually, I’m having a hell of a hard time, as I always do playing football games. I love playing offense, but any attempts to play defense usually ends up breaking the play wide open for the other guys, just as it did in Madden and NFL 2k5. So I spend half the game with my controller on the couch next to me.

Still, I’m sure I’ll persevere and the Austin Larpers will persevere.

Original comments thread is here.

Gears of War Review

(Old Salvaged post from 2007, reposted by request – attempting to set the date)
Well, I finished it on Casual because, as readers of the site may have surmised, I am not actually hardcore. I am fine with this. I’m splitting time with lots of games right now anyway.

I’m still not good at shooters on a console. I’m better than I was. I can actually target something with a sniper rifle pretty quickly, but I can’t seem to compensate for weapons going off-target as I hold down the trigger.

David’s suggestion to change the art to ‘not suck’ in the options screen was right on, and helped a great deal. It came a little late, though it made the final boss mob fight a much more pleasant experience.

Remember how Unreal and Quake used to go to great lengths to show how beautiful they could make a gaming space? Both Rainbow Six and GoW seemed intent on showing me they could do squalid.

I’m pretty sure I didn’t fall asleep in any story bits, but I still left not knowing exactly what happened, or why we made a pit stop at my dad’s house.

It seemed like the overall backstory was pretty cool, too, but the only place I can seem to find information about it is GameFaqs. And whoever wrote that FAQ berated me for not being hardcore enough to know this stuff.

It’s cool when monsters say ‘Boom’. Especially right before they explode.

That freaky crossbow is the most difficult to use weapon since the goo gun in Unreal.

What happened to health bars and health packs in shooters?

It’s 10X easier to use Rainbow Sixes cover system, but it’s 10X cooler when Gears of War’s works right.

Hey, Epic, if you’re going to have huge levels that depend on you only walking in certain parts of the map, how about making the AI for your sidekicks smart enough to not walk there? Kthx.

While you’re at it, if you could make the AI smart enough to not run kamikazi charges into the final boss monster, that’d be great.

Overall, though, the AI in GoW runs circles around the AI in Rainbow Six. (Wouldn’t it be cool if we could put ‘em in the same game?) Still, there were numerous times I was begging for the ability to give my troops a direct order – a feature that GoW definitely skimped on.

I didn’t hate the voice acting, which is rare, and I actually liked 3 of the four main characters. Unfortunately, the fourth is Dom, the guy who has all the personality of a peanut shell, and who is with you on all the two man missions. Don’t look now, but Baird’s character actually showed evidence of character development!
Not enough sniper rifles lying around. I spent far too much time using the gun that looks really cool but isn’t. And no, I didn’t use the cool looking bayonette even once.

If you’re going to make me choose a weapon based on icons and not names, how about making sure the weapons have easily identifiable silhouettes? Why am I confusing a sniper rifle for the shotgun?

Why straight humanoid enemies? Why are they called locusts when they really appear to be just pruny people?

Their change of pace levels were pretty good. The berserker levels were tense as hell. The APV and mine cart episodes were frivolous fun.  I really enjoyed the reloading minigame, once I got used to it. This, of course, was on the final boss level. It’s easy with a sniper rifle, and undoable with the machine gun. That game took me something like 7 hours, and I suck. One wonders how fast someone with Halo chops would get through it, or how much longer
it would take me on Hardcore or Insane. My sample attempt at it was… not encouraging. In Hardcore reality, the fate of the human race is decidedly screwed if they’re depending on me.

Overall, a good pickup, despite my bitching. I’d definitely pick this one up if you get a chance.

My Real Thoughts on Gears of War

Well, I finished it on Casual because, as readers of the site may have surmised, I am not actually hardcore. I am fine with this. I’m splitting time with lots of games right now anyway.

I’m still not good at shooters on a console. I’m better than I was. I can actually target something with a sniper rifle pretty quickly, but I can’t seem to compensate for weapons going off-target as I hold down the trigger. Continue reading

Rainbow Six: Vegas

I just finished R6:V.

I think I really enjoyed it, but since I haven’t played it 60 to 80 hours, I can’t really be sure.

By the end, I had truly mastered the art of using my squadmates like canaries in the coal mine, in hopes that their deaths might point out muzzle flash I could use. And then it was snipe, snipe, snipe. Which I seem to be getting better at. At some point, I’ll go online and be disproven of this. Continue reading

My Worthless Opinion on Various Things…

Casino Royale: This is both a deeply flawed film with horrible timing, as well as the finest Bond film in years. I think I have a longer essay on me about it, but let’s just say I enjoyed it up to a certain point, and anyone who has seen it probably knows exactly which point I mean.

Sneak King: The Burger King game that involves sneaking up on people to do a little dance and whip out a Whopper for them is utterly hilarious, and totally engaging for about 20 minutes or so. So it was well worth the price tag ($3.99).

Dexter: With all apologies to Heroes, Dexter is the best new show of the fall. Dark, creepy, thought-provoking — good stuff.

Time Spiral: The new Magic expansion is a lot of fun. The new expansion borrows heavily on older mechanics and vibes, and therefore leans heavily on nostalgia. Anyone else whose playing on MTGO, send me mail.

Borat: I laughed all the way through this movie, only feeling marginally guilty about it. Probably the hardest I’ve laughed at a film in a theater in a long time — at least for a film that was intentionally funny.

Prey: I keep trying to get into this game. I keep washing out. I’m sure I’ll get through it at some point.

Original comments thread is here.

Guitar Hero and Election Joy

Sara and I spent the evening watching the election results. Right now, the Senate is tied 49-49 with two votes to go. That’s close enough to guaruntee at least gridlock. Good enough me.

We also spent time playing the new Guitar Hero II. Yeah, yeah, I couldn’t wait. First impressions is that … some of the song covers are really bad. In particular, the songs with distinctive lead singers really were jarring: Rage Against the Machine is the worst, with Nirvana, Aerosmith, and Alice in Chains all coming out pretty bad as well. I really don’t remember having this reaction to the first one.

Still having a blast, though. More to come.

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