Epic Franchise Time!

This time, I play the latest entries in three epic franchises that have been around almost as long as I have! One is no surprise, one is a great surprise, and the other, well, it's a surprise too, I guess. So turn on your grand, sweeping orchestral music and enjoy!

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

• Wii
• Release Date: 11/19/06 (4 years behind!)
• 1 Playthrough @ 50 hours
• Waggle Factor: Medium/High

Caveat: I lost all my notes on this game, so this may be shorter than it should be.

I beam with a bit of gamer self-satisfaction when I say that I've not only played every major Legend of Zelda game, but I remember when each of them came out. I even ate the LoZ breakfast cereal (and threw it up one morning on my way to school!) Of course, it's not long before I realize that this doesn't make me awesome, it just makes me old.

The games themselves, however, are indeed awesome, and Twilight Princess continues this and many of the franchise's other traditions. Twilight Princess has all the ingredients that we know and love from the series. All the characters are there, there's the Master Sword, bow and arrrow, bombs, a massive overworld, and huge sprawling dungeons. After 25 years, how do they keep the formula fresh? By altering and tweaking the role that each element plays. Twilight Princess is perhaps the most mature entry in the series. (At least the ESRB thought so, it got a T rating) Link is an adult, or close to one, and the story is arguable darker than the rest of the series. However, it's executed nearly perfectly. The world is beautiful (or was in 2006) and huge, and it's very easy to lose yourself in.

That is, once you've passed one of the series' more onerous staples, the far-too-long village intro sequence. It drove me nuts in Ocarina, it drove me nuts in Wind Waker, and it drove me nuts here. No, I don't want to find your cat or round up your stupid goats!

Another serious frustration has to do with the platform I played it on. At launch, Twilight Princess was released for both the GameCube and the brand new Wii. I imagine the controls for the GameCube version were alright having played Wind Waker, but the overly gimmicky and far too imprecise Wii controls cheapen a lot of the experience at best, and hinder the gameplay at their west. Emnara quit playing the game after dying three times in a row due to this issue.

I didn't however, and for the most part I'm glad I stuck with it. The game is fantastic, and certainly worthy of all the praise it's received over the years. Hopefully, the forthcoming Skyward Sword (due in November) will show improvement due to having been developed of the Wii instead of ported from a last gen system, and maybe Emnara will finish it, and I won't be yelling "******* Wii ****!" every half hour while playing it.


Castlevania: Lords of Shadow

• PS3
• Release Date: 10/5/2010  (4 months behind!)
• Playthroughs: 3@15 hours each
• Trophies: 100% (before DLC)

One of the big trends in gaming right now is franchise reinvention. Just one of the plethora of factors contributing to this: franchises in the gaming world tend to stick around a lot longer than a lot of their  film counterparts, so reinvention becomes absolutely necessary every other generation or so. Many recent examples of this went back to the franchises roots to rediscover what was fun about the game in its early days. Others make a radical departure, leaving nothing intact but it's surface elements. This latter approach is a big risk, and can wind up costing a series its fans forever.

Fortunately this is not the case with Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. Developer Mercury Steam, with the collaboration of Konami and the legendary Hideo Kojima, have changed Castlevania's fundamental formula from the accumulated legacy traits over the last 25 years to a God of War meets Lord of the Rings style epic. To be honest, I never expected to care about the series again. After the fantastic Symphony of the Night, still considered by many to be the pinnacle of the series, we were dealt a number of experiments in 3D on the Nintendo 64 and PS2, which ranged from the mediocre to downright horrific. Lords of Shadow is arguably the first 3D entry in the series to get it right, and it has done this by calling in all the favors the God of War series owes to it. This formula is very well traveled, but this skill of its implementation makes it noteworthy. Aesthetically, Lords of Shadow owes a debt to Lord of the Rings. The first third of the game finds protagonist Gabriel Belmont traveling a lush countryside through murky swamps dotted with crumbling, unbelievably ancient ruins. The level of detail is absolutely amazing and certainly worthy of comparison to the epic films. The soundtrack brings the epic feel even more in the art direction however. It feels more like a film score, and it does not like to sit unobtrusively in the background. While it is a bit heavy handed in the beginning, and even managed to epic me out at first, it grew on me, so much so I would go so far as to say it's my favorite game soundtrack of 2010, and that's not just my opinion. It won a BAFTA last year.

Several more elements one would not expect to find in castlevania games of yesteryear that Lords of Shadow has in spades are story and character. While the story seems like your basic video game plot at first, some truly inspired twists and turns begin to take their toll on Gabriel. Some excellent voice acting (including none other than the legendary Patrick Stewart!) fleshes out a story that truly redefines the Castlevania universe, and makes this a landmark for not just the series (which would not be that impressive), but gaming as well.

Lords of shadow could be called a God of War clone gameplay wise, but it doesn't clone it perfectly. Blocking and parrying is nowhere near as precise is it should be, especially given how many bonuses are tied to the action. With combat as unforgiving as Lords of Shadows', my recommendation for the first playthrough is dodge, dodge, dodge. However, as you buy more upgrades on subsequent playthroughs, you'll become so powerful as to negate the need to block. Mostly.

Lords of Shadow is easily the best Castlevania since Symphony of the Night. That title made the series relevant again by adopting many of the concepts that made Super Metroid a success. Lords of Shadow does the same thing. Story wise, if you're a fan of Castlevania, or non-sparkly vampires in general, (you can tell the devs are gamer geeks: I found references not only to Portal, but my old Vampire: The Dark Ages pen and paper RPG!) you owe it to yourself to give Lords of Shadow a shot.

Final Fantasy XIII

• PS3
• Release Date: 3/9/2010 (1 year behind!)
• Playthroughs: 1 @ 45 hours
• Trophies: 52%

When I was a little kid, I loved hot dogs. Like, eating them cold out of the fridge loved them. One year, I discovered pizza. I still like hot dogs, just not nearly as much as I used to. The same can be said of Final Fantasy, of course, I'm sure hot dogs haven't changed as much as Final Fantasy has in the last 20 years.

The latest entry in the most oxymoronically named series ever bears practically no resemblance to the Final Fantasy I grew up with, and just passing resemblances to the last several entries. While Final Fantasy games have always had that one character you couldn't stand, it seems like they comprise most of the cast in FF XIII. Some truly atrocious dialogue such as "Heroes don't need plans," and "heroes don't run from fight," greet you in the very first scene, which aside from the inane dialogue is just confusing and disorienting as hell, and really gives you no clue what's going on until hours into the game. This approach isn't always bad, unless the game assumes you already know what's going on.

It's not like the story gets better as it goes though. There is practically no complexity or depth to the characters, and a lot of the game's story plays out like some weird fan fic translated into Japanese then re-translated back into English, with heavy liberties taken on both sides.

One of the game's most glaring flaws is its tyrannical linearity. One of the best things about the series has always been its side quests and freedom to explore, and FFXIII gives NO chance for either until the penultimate chapter, and by then, you're so close to the end of the game you'll just want to power through and finish the final level.

On the plus side, combat isn't too bad. I'm still not a fan of real time battles and not being able to directly your party members, but the Paradigm system (a predefined set of AI behaviors/rules that you level with experience) is far more fluid and user friendly than XII's. (while that game had a lot more customization options, I felt like a programmer more than once) This makes combat very fast paced, sometimes too much so.

I've been asking myself, if I had played Final Fantasy VII for the first time at 30, would I be as critical of it as I am of XIII? Conversely, if I played XIII at 17, the age I was when I first played VII, would I feel the same way about it as I did about that game? No and no, for these reasons. 1. VII, I think , is not remembered as much for the game it is than the promise it showed of what games were becoming. 2. XIII lacks most of the things I loved about VII, which were exploration, complex characters (some of them, anyway) and a clear conflict and goal in the story. VII isn't the best Final Fantasy, but it's whole is far more than the sum of its parts. XIII is a clear victory of style over substance, and sadly, an indication of the direction the franchise is going. I won't be going with it, if that's the case, and with Final Fantasy XIII-2 just announced, yeah really, there's no reason for me to go there either.

By the way, Mass Effect is the pizza to the Final Fantasy hot dog. I'll bet no one else has ever put those words together before.

Nightmare Fuel, In Space!

This particularly late edition of A Step Behind (about 9 months late) is devoted entirely to my new favorite survival horror franchise, the excellent Dead Space series, by Visceral Games (formerly EA Redwood Shores). Not only are the games themselves great, influenced by some of my own favorite movies, but, as you'll find later on, I actually have a personal connection to it! Read on, and don't get eaten. Or blown out the airlock. That really sucks.

Dead Space

Aliens + Event Horizon + RE4 = My new favorite survival horror franchise!
 

• PS3/360
• Release Date: 10/13/08 (2 weeks behind)
• 3 Playthroughs each system @ 8 hours each.
• Achievements/Trophies: 100%/100% Completed #1 / Platinum #13

As a general rule, I don't replay games on another system once I've finished them. In the 3 years I've had these systems, there's only been one game upon which I've bestowed the dubious honor of playing on both the 360 and PS3, and that's Dead Space. I ripped through it in during a two week rental after it first came out in 08, making it the first 360 game I got 100% on, and I loved it so much that I vowed I would buy it someday, and I did, for the PS3, several years later in my anticipation for Dead Space 2.

Having been a fan of sci-fi horror since first seeing Aliens as a kid, I was nothing short of thrilled when I first heard that EA Redwood Shores (now known as Visceral) was developing a new IP heavily inspired by the Alien franchise and another of my favorites, Event Horizon. After playing it right after release, and then again two years later, I can honestly say that neither time was I disappointed.

Dead Space features one of the greatest openings to any survival horror game (rivaled only by it's sequel in this regard), somehow managing to pull me right in despite my distaste for being defenseless. It manages to keep the tension ratcheted up through most of the game, and is full of enough "Holy Shit!" moments to keep you from putting the controller down, no matter how bad you might need to.

Dead Space's gameplay formula is more or less identical to that of the legendary Resident Evil 4, (who can blame it, really, it's a great formula!) of 3rd person, over the shoulder, precision aiming, and character and weapon upgrades. One major difference though, is the ability to MOVE AND AIM! (Several months after DS released, Capcom put out Resident Evil 5 without this ability, claiming that being able to move and aim would undermine the tension. I called bullshit.)

In Dead Space, you play as Isaac Clarke (named after two sci-fi heavyweights I need not name), an engineer dispatched to the USG Ishimura, a huge planet cracker starship (which mines planets by literally pulling them apart) along with army dude Hammond and hacker chick Kendra (yes, they are stereotypes), to figure out why the Ishimura dropped out of contact. As soon as they land on the ship (a rough landing, which prevents them from being able to turn around in leave, in true horror movie fashion), they find out. The security team is slaughtered by horrifying deformed and reanimated dead bodies, later called necromorphs. Isaac runs for his life, until finding a weapon (the franchise's now iconic plasma cutter) and reestablishing contact with Hammond and Kendra. Together, they must find a way to escape the Ishimura, and stop the outbreak from spreading.

The Ishimura, much like the Nostromo in Alien and the Event Horizon in, well, Event Horizon, is a charcter in it's own right. Its dark and claustrophobic corridors, while occasionally somewhat repetitive, are the perfect environment for the tense and occasionally frantic gameplay. The necromorphs are truly terrifying enemies. They're vicious, fast, deadly, and very hard to kill. A headshot won't do it here, you must dismember them in order to kill them, requiring speed, focus and skill. All based around deformed human morphology, the enemies are truly disturbing to look at, and range from tiny and fast to utterly massive.

The larger story of Dead Space has been well fleshed out in other media, from the comic series and anime film to book tie ins. There's a lot of lore to be found in the game as well, from the ubiquitous text files and audio logs that we all know and love.

Dead Space isn't perfect, to be sure. The environment is occasionally repetitive, and there is a bit of Resident Evil style backtracking (though not to the extent RE did). The breakout sequences can get frustrating, and there's a few instances of instadeath that you have to learn the hard way to avoid. Ammo is scarce, especially on the harder difficulty levels, but whether or not that's a bad thing is really an issue for the individual gamer to decide.

If you are a fan of the survival horror genre and you haven't played Dead Space, let's not mince words. You are SCREWING yourself over with deprivation. If you don't do scary, keep your distance. This game gave ME nightmares. It was pretty much the scariest game I'd played until.....

Dead Space 2

• PS3
• Release Date: 1/25/11 (Not behind! Release date shipping FTW!)
• 3 Playthroughs @ 24 hours
• Trophies: 91%

I'm catching my breath. I can't afford to stop, but I can't run anymore. I'm hurt badly, limping down a barely lit corridor praying I'll find some more ammo or a medpack before the next wave of these things finds me. My nerves are shot, I can't take any more of this, but I can't stop. I hear a crash far behind me. I have two shots left in my plasma cutter. There's a window looking out on the Spawl and Saturn  just ahead. If I can get them close enough, I can shoot out that window and decompress the room. The question is, will I be fast enough to shoot the emergency shutter before I get sucked out myself?

....until Dead Space 2, which bests its predecessor in almost every way. It starts with an utterly horrifying (and unfair) escape sequence and does not let up, even at the end.

A quick note of disclosure, I'm proud to be able to say that I have a small personal connection to Dead Space 2. Protagonist Isaac Clarke, a classic video game mute in DS1, is now full fledged character, voiced and mocapped by my friend and co-worker Gunner Wright! Aside from being one of the nicest guys I know, Gunner more than rises to the challenge of building a personality for a character that literally had none in the first game. Clarke is unstable, dangerous, and more than a little insane at this point. The events of Dead Space have left him scarred and mentally broken, and Wright illustrates this with gut-wrenching intensity. Gameplay-wise, little details like Clarke screaming "Motherfucker!" occasionally when stomping on a dead necromorph are an example of the far more immersive experience that Dead Space 2 provides.

Dead Space 2, like its predecessor, takes the survival horror experience we know and at times get bored of, and pushes it into the territory of real horror. For instance, the first time you're ambushed by the pack (an unsettling mob of undead prepubescents) and force yourself not to think about the children these monsters obviously once were as you shoot off their limbs to keep them from tearing you apart. The Sprawl, a massive space station orbiting Saturn, is a very different place than the tight corridors of the Ishimura. You can tell this is a very different game when you come across your first blood-stained family apartment.

Zero gravity is a far more fluid experience now, and is a vast improvement over the turn/aim/jump mechanic of the original. Overall, DS2 is one of the most, if not THE most intense survival horror game I've ever played. On the base game, I secured every trophy with the exception of one: Hardcore mode is exceedingly brutal. With being allowed to save 3 times over the course of the entire game, very limited ammo and respawning enemies, Visceral has created a challenge as brutal as it is time consuming.

A note on the DLC: Severed  is another hour or two of intense Dead Space action but the writing is awful. You've been warned.

Survival horror fans MUST play this game. That is all.

If you're a Gunner Wright fan, like me, you can see one of the videos we've worked on for Verizon Wireless Here. (Fun facts, I'm the voice on the phone at 0:05 and the long-haired roadie at 1:38!) Also, look for him soon in LOVE (trailer below) and Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar!  A very special thanks to Gunner for putting up with my geeking out. :)




A quick note on Dead Space: Extraction, which comes with the PS3 version of DS: I was going to review it along with DS1 and 2, however, I've decided to include it in my upcoming Broken Arm Rail Shooter Extravaganza, coming in September. Oh, it won't be that far off. We all know I date these for when I played the game, not when I wrote them. :P

The Royal Wii

Thanks to TigerWife, we now have another system to write on! Adding the Wii to the mix necessitates a new dimension to these reviews, and that's the exciting, old frontier of motion control. I'll be relating this with a highly subjective (and occasionally sarcastic) system called the Waggle Factor. With my snarky little comments, I hope to convey the extent to which the game relies on (or ignores) the technology, how well integrated into the experience it is, and just how tired your arm will get. (Quiet, you.)

Wii Sports

Shake that thang! And....pretend like you're playing outside.

 

• Wii
• Release Date:11/19/06 (4 years behind!)
• 6 games @ 2 hours total
• Waggle Factor:Exxxxxx--treeeeeeme!

My time with Wii Sports was short, and so is my review.

Tennis = Lame

Boxing = Lame

Baseball = Super Lame

Bowling = Awesome

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

 

 

• PS3
• Release Date: 11/16/10 (1 1/2 months behind!)
• Playthroughs: 1 @ 50+ hours
• Trophies: 87% 

I've always felt a little guilty for not writing a longer blog on Assassin's Creed 2. A page-long entry wouldn't have begun to do that excellent game justice, to say nothing of the measly little paragraph I gave it in my rush to get “caught up” last year. What a joke.

I intend to make amends this year by recounting the excellent time I had with Brotherhood, which continues the story of Ezio Auditore da Firenze (and Desmond Miles, of the far more boring name) who has been forced to Rome to hunt down Rodrigo Borgia, now Pope Alexander VI, whose life he spared at the end of AC2. Ezio, now a full fledged Assassin, realizes that he cannot take on the Borgia establishment on his own, and begins recruiting new initiates into the order.

While I have to admit that I wasn't very excited for AC:B at first (A multiplayer AC? An unnumbered entry? Can you say, Cash in?) I'm more than happy to accept being wrong. The campaign was just as engrossing and intriguing as 2, if not more so, easily coming in at 60 hours to find everything. It could be said that Brotherhood is Assassin's Creed II-2 (but that type of name would never fly, oh wait), and I'm more than ok with that. 2 and Brotherhood both have such sprawling stories and settings, I can't help but feel a great deal of gratitude that Ubisoft didn't try to cram it all into one game.

The gameplay has improved by leaps and bounds, and engagements that used to take 5 minutes or more are reduced to seconds. With timing and skill, Ezio can now chain kills together. After finishing one enemy, all it takes it a button press to kill the next, and the next, and as long as you don't get hit, a whole mob of enemies can be leveled in this fashion. If that wasn't enough, Ezio can now call Assassin recruits to fight by his side (as well as assassinating targets and wreaking havoc for distractions).

In fact, the Assassin Recruit missions were as strangely addictive to me as the Merc management in MGS: Peace Walker. I guess I just like throwing underlings into harms way. These missions level up your band of merry men and women, and net you a good deal of money in the meantime. It's too bad that once you begin the mission, you only get a succeeded/failed message when they return. A little animation or something like would have been nice.

While playing this series, I've never once thought to myself, hmmm, this would be a fun multiplayer game, so when the mode was announced for Brotherhood, I was quite skeptical. After a few hours of trying it out, it's a lot more fun than I expected, but still not enough to “convert” me. The main mode consists of hunting an assigned target while evading the player hunting you, and this simple formula is pretty engaging. However, my problem with Brotherhood's multiplayer is the same problem I have with most online multiplayer, and that's I get bored of doing the same thing fairly easily.

In short, if you've played and enjoyed the first two, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood is a natural fit for you. Also, if you're looking for an alternative to the run and gun online multiplayer formula, you might find Brotherhood a worthwhile diversion. Brotherhood delivers on all fronts, and hopefully, AC3 won't be too far off.

Next time! Dismembering for fun and profit! Or just to escape with your skin.

The Wrath of MoHGoW!

MoHGoW, the dreaded beast of Acronymia strikes again! He is come, filled with wrath and the desire to reboot your stale franchise, or continue it if it doesn't suck yet! The result is a much shorter post than last week! Read on!

Medal of Honor

Call of....I mean, Medal of Honor!

 

• Platform: 360
• Release Date: 10/12/10 (2 months behind!) 
• Achievements: 500/1000
• Playthroughs: 2 @ 20+ hours

As I mentioned in a previous entry, I played my share of Medal of Honor back in the day, when WW2 shooters were still novel and cool (and before we'd been making them longer than the actual war went on), but lost interest after the excellent Frontline. After the success of Call of Duty (which, ironically enough, was made successful by the same guys that made the really good MoH games), EA decided to resurrect this series to do battle with the CoD juggernaut by setting it during Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, 2002. The campaign is based around the idea of the scalpel and the sledgehammer. As the scalpel, a Tier 1 operative (are they Delta, SEALS, CIA? Who knows! They all have beards though!), you undertake clandestine missions to assess enemy strength, eliminate High Value Targets, kick Al Qaeda in the nuts, and rescue your buddies when they screw up. As the sledgehammer, an Army Ranger, you assault Taliban positions, try not to get shot, and rescue your buddies when they screw up.

I had a few technical gripes with MoH, mainly that as pretty as it is, it still only runs at 30 frames a second. I've come to regard the sense of realism that 60 frames provides as necessary for a military shooter, and I guess CoD has spoiled me in that way. This and the fact that MoH's default control scheme is practically identical to CoD's (who can blame them, it's a great setup) most likely led to to the campaign's dismissal by many critics, predisposing them against what, after a while, I came to regard as a very solid and occasionally memorable experience. Not so much in the way of providing anything new (CoD has pretty much taken all of that in the military shooter genre) but the occasional moment in the campaign (most notably part of the Ranger campaign) made me think : I've heard this story, from friends and relatives who were/are actually in this place, fighting this very real war, and that's a feeling I haven't gotten from CoD in a long time.

That's not to say the story is a masterpiece, in fact, as strong as the narrative is on the ground, the interstitial cinematics featuring bickering between the field commander and the general in Washington derails it considerably, and the story would have been far better without it. The Tier 1 guys occasionally come off as dorks, but I'd never tell that to any of their heavily armed and heavily bearded faces.

One thing I've always really liked about the Medal of Honor games is the reverence it has always held for the veterans, and this entry is no different. I come from a military family, so solemnly acknowledging the sacrifice of those who have served our country is an easy way to get in my good graces. If you're a fan of military FPS's other than CoD, I'd definitely give this a shot.

And before you ask, No, I didn't play multiplayer on this one.

God of War: Ghost of Sparta

A well deserved se-prequel, or is it a pre-sequel?

 

• Platform: PSP
• Release Date: 11/2/10 (2 weeks behind! Thanks job!)
• Trophies: None!
• Playthroughs: 1 @ 8 hours (will play again in the future)

It's a tough thing for developers to share a franchise. Just look at the bad vibes between Treyarch and the late Infinity Ward. A great deal of resentment came out of the fact that IW had to share (and by share I mean give away) an engine and assets they created to another studio so the publisher could count on steady, yearly releases.

Santa Monica Studio and Ready at Dawn don't seem to have this problem, and it shows in the latest from each of these developers, the grand epic God of War 3 from SM, and the excellent Ghost of Sparta from Ready at Dawn. Chains of Olympus (RaD's previous PSP GOW) was certainly surprising in its scope, grandeur, and quality of it's execution, and Ghost of Sparta builds upon that to an unprecedented degree (the jump from God of War 1 to 2 notwithstanding). It's important to note that during my playthrough, no less than 5 times did I hear myself say, “I didn't know the PSP could do that!”

Apart than and above from it's razor sharp graphics and gameplay, which we expect from this series, the greatest achievement of Ghost of Sparta is it's story. Ghost of Sparta takes place between GoW 1 and 2, and manages to incorporate some exciting ideas from 1's extras that I had given up on seeing.  Ready at Dawn gave us a great deal of insight into Kratos as a character during Chains of Olympus (some of which was actually incorporated into GoW3), but Ghost of Sparta ties up so many loose ends from the series that that alone makes it a must play. One of my biggest questions from 2 was if Kratos was made a god of Olympus, why is he still so pissed off at all the rest of them? Oh, you'll find out.

This deft handling of Kratos' fiction, as well as all of the epic scale of the God of War franchise in this HANDHELD title demand the attention of any serious gamer.

Next time! Wii Stab!

The CoDpiece!

Or CoDfish and chips! Or CoDswallop! (I can do this all day)

I hope you're sitting down, because this is easily one of the longest episodes of A Step Behind that I've done. This week we take a look at two entries in (whether you like it or not) what is possibly the biggest franchise in gaming right now, Call of Duty. I absolutely LOVED CoD 4, and sunk endless hours into both the single player campaign and multiplayer. It's successors, however, well, check out my review for Modern Warfare 2, and this week's entry. I bring up a few points later on that I'd like to hear from you, the reader about, so please, feel free to leave a comment here or on Facebook.

Call of Duty: World At War

• Platform: 360
• Release Date: 11/11/08 (2 years behind!) 
• Achievements: 1000/1500
• 2+ playthoughs @ 40+ hours
• I compare it to: It's Call of Duty, in World War 2! Again!

I really didn't want to play this game. Really. Modern Warfare was my first Call of Duty game; this was due to having played a lot of Medal of Honor back in the day, I was pretty burned out on WW2 as a game genre and setting as a result. So, after finding out that not only would the next Call of Duty not be developed by Infinity Ward, and on top of that would go BACK to the WW2 setting, I immediately set this entry to ignore.

A big part of that did have to do with the developer and the politics surrounding this franchise. If you follow gaming news like I do, feel free to skip to the next section. Sometime after Call of Duty 2, Activision (publisher) decided that to maximize the franchise's earning potential (at the time, CoD 2 was the best selling 360 launch game) they needed to maneuver it into a position that could facilitate yearly releases. The only real way to do this was concurrent development, split between Infinity Ward, the creator of the game's phenomenal engine, and Treyarch, who would use that engine and assets as they so chose. Infinity Ward has never been ok with this, and for a long time I was mad on their behalf.

So, I totally ignored World at War for about a year and a half after it released. The only reason it wound up in my queue was the fact that I enjoyed CoD2, and figured one more WW2 game couldn't hurt. And I wanted to see for myself what Treyarch did with the Modern Warfare engine. I'll just come right out and say it, I was pleasantly surprised. World at War is a great game. However, there are changes in the formula, that while I can understand the reasoning behind them, just don't sit well with me. And one change that I love and that will probably never die.

World at War re-adopts the multiple campaign model from the older CoDs, but limits it to 2. The first takes place during some of the most intense battles of the Pacific Theater, such as Makin Atoll, Peleliu, and Okinawa. You follow Sergeant Roebuck (voiced by Kiefer Sutherland) through banzai ambushes, seemingly impossible assaults against hardened Japanese positions, and the terror of fighting an iron-willed foe who does not fear death.

Treyarch really ratchets up the story element for the Russian campaign however. You wake up, lying in a pile of dead, staying as still as you possibly can so the Nazi soldier finishing your friends off will pass you by. Once he's gone, you find you're not alone. This is where you meet Sgt. Reznov (the one and only Gary Oldman), the merciless, battle-hardened, nigh-insane survivor of the Nazi invasions. Starting by hunting down and assassinating a German general, Reznov leads you on a journey of pure revenge into the heart of the Reich itself.

The Russian campaign is much more powerful story-wise, but both are very strong in terms of gameplay, especially the breakout sequences. The tank level is great, but the Black Cat sequence is AWESOME. *SPOILER AHEAD* One great detail I have to mention: The end of most WW2 games I've played usually take place at the end of an advance, or particular part of the campaign, then have a short history lesson about how the war in Europe ended. Not World at War. The last two levels take place during the Russian assault on the Reichstag itself. No other game has given me the sense that I was fighting in the “final battle” of World War II, and it felt appropriately epic. This particular level was incredibly difficult on Normal, and took me a month's worth of attempts on Veteran. Not since Mile High Club in CoD4 have I been so happy to finally get past something. *END SPOILER*

The action and visuals in WaW are top notch, which is to be expected from this franchise. The trademark Call of Duty cinematic-style intensity is in place, supported by an excellent score by Sean Murray. The score, as exciting and booming as it is, does have its anachronistic moments, namely with some metal riffs, some electronic beats, and much darker orchestral movements. (as compared to Graeme Revell's seemingly period-appropriate score for Call of Duty 2) This got to me a bit on an intellectual level, however, while it doesn't fit the aesthetics of the period, it does fit the tone of the story, and I understand that it was created to heighten the drama and be relevant to contemporary audiences. Tiger Wife, however, would have a lot to say about it.

If there was anything I didn't like about WaW (other than the ridiculous tendency of every enemy onscreen to throw grenades at your exact position at once), it's certain little details that I feel compromise some of the “values” that the series has held. For instance, in previous games, the first of your bullets that goes astray and hits a friendly NPC forces a checkpoint restart, with the unambiguous declaration, “Friendly fire will NOT be tolerated!” Apparently, in WaW, it is tolerated, and your squadmates react to being shot as if you'd just given them dead-leg. I know, its a video game, and having to restart a checkpoint because the AI took a dive into your line of fire sucks, but there's just something about being able to plink your teammates with impunity that doesn't sit well with me. Another addition that Treyarch made to the engine seems like a natural element for a war game, but somehow misses the mark for me. Graphic dismemberment makes its series debut in WaW, with limbs flying through the air after a powerful enough explosive or big enough round. I'm well aware that this is part of war, but in this case, I'm not sure that it feels anything other than gratuitous. While I do understand that this could seem hypocritical coming from me, being a lifelong fan of gory franchises like Mortal Kombat and God of War, the real difference here is tone. MK and GoW are crazy, over the top experiences that couldn't ever be mistaken for reality. This boils down to a matter of personal opinion, but I think that the dismemberment in WaW still feels somewhat frivolous and unnecessary, and works against the respect for the soldier that I feel Infinity Ward was so good with. I'd love to hear some opinions on this, especially from service members.

One more note about World at War, aside from the main campaign and multiplayer (which actually includes campaign co-op), there is a mode that I have to recommend as a must play, and if you aren't thrilled just by hearing the name, then you're not a gamer. Nazi Zombies! Trapped in a house, killing a flood of the combination of the two things gamers love to kill. That is all.

Call of Duty: Black Ops

• Platform: 360 
• Release Date: 11/09/10 (Not behind! Thanks, TigerWife!)
• Achievements: 890/1000
• Playthroughs: 2+ @ 35+ hours
• I compare it to: The CoD franchise's application for membership in the SCA.

Call of Duty: Black Ops is the series's largest grosser so far. Of course, with CoD, thats like saying its the first one since the last one. Huge sales numbers don't surprise me anymore for this franchise, but a decent story does, and I'm glad to say that Black Ops actually has a fairly long and enjoyable campaign.

Black Ops is pretty much what you'd expect from the title, namely focusing on the shady activities we're pretty sure the CIA undertook in Cuba, Vietnam, and Russia in the 60's, during the height of the Cold War. Centering on Alec Mason, or is it Mason Briggs, or Nick Mason? Ah, ok, ALEX Mason. Note to video game industry: Time to retire the name Mason. (10 bucks to anyone who can tell me which games the others are from without using the Internet) You play as Alex Mason (Sam Worthington, thoroughly enjoying his best year ever), a CIA operative who is captured by the Soviets after a botched (but action packed!) assassination misson. After being held captive for three years, he manages to escape the gulag in which he's imprisoned with the help of a familiar face, WWII veteran Viktor Reznov (Gary Oldman, again), and returns to the CIA, which puts him right back to work alongside handler Jason Hudson (Ed Harris), despite the fact that Mason is still under the influence of Soviet brainwashing.

While Treyarch doesn't have the same flair for over-the-top set pieces as the late Infinity Ward, Black Ops makes up for it with an actual story with plot and character development, some neat twists, and a real ending. It's also nice that Mason isn't the standard issue silent protagonist, and while he's not the most compelling of characters, it does help to forge an stronger connection with the player. (Also, Treyarch doesn't seem to hate its player characters as much as Infinity Ward.) Black Ops also does a pretty good job of capturing the paranoia of this particular era, with its motifs of brainwashing, espionage, and the threat of WMDs, even if by the end it resembles a James Bond movie more than anything else.

Black Ops is a hotbed of anachronism, even more so than World at War. Some really good period classic rock tracks (Sympathy the Devil makes for a nice touch) occupy the soundtrack, along with returning composer Sean Murray's cinematic-style score. The testosterone milking metal chords are back, along with a heavy electronic bass beat running through one level. While it doesn't fit with the period aesthetics, like WaW, it works for the game. (the bass beat level gets particularly exciting) Murray also revisits some of his best motifs from World at War for a key character, and that really gets things going.

Black Ops takes a few liberties with the history of this period, besides not being based on real events, and I get why they do that. That doesn't bother me. (Besides, I've always said that playing Call of Duty to learn about history is like watching porn to learn anatomy, but I digress.) What does bother me is the blatant and constant weapon anachronisms that run throughout the entire game. I understand Treyarchs reluctance to downgrade the arsenal from Modern Warfare 2, which would have been fine if it was limited to multiplayer, but seeing weapons which are obviously not from the era they're portraying pulls me right out. For instance, not everyone knows that the G11 automatic long range rifle wasn't prototyped until 1992, but seeing an AKS-74 (made in, you guessed it, 1974) during a sequence that takes place in 1965 is just insulting to my intelligence. It's like seeing an AK-47 in a World War II game. (thankfully, the historical advisors for WaW didn't let that happen.)

After all that, one thing that I really have to give to Black Ops is that it's a LOT of content for the price of admission. In addition to the satisfyingly long campaign (which most welcome after the 4 ½ hour Modern Warfare 2,) there's several other game modes and a ton of easter eggs.

I'm sure you've heard plenty about multiplayer already, so I'll limit my thoughts to a few words: Yes, it's fun. No, I don't play it a lot. Why? Because I suck at it. Moving on.

The undead return in Black Ops in the form of the now sadly generic sounding Zombies mode. (I was very disappointed to find out that it would just be called Zombies. Commie Zombies would have given my heart nigh-eternal joy.) It's been expanded, with larger maps, objectives, etc. The problem is that the objectives (turning on the power) are practically impossible to find, requiring looking up online or playing with someone who's done it before. By the time you've killed enough zombies to afford some exploration, the zombies start coming with enough force to make sure you don't get far. This doesn't mean it's not a blast though, and playing with a group of friends is a perfectly acceptable way to kill an evening.

Another feature that I hope isn't getting overlooked by too many people is the ludicrously fun (and ludicrous) easter egg game, Dead Ops Arcade. This top down, Smash TV style dual stick shooter is retro to its core, the graphics engine notwithstanding. It hearkens back to the colorful arcade cabinets of the 80's, with their flashy concept art that may or may not have had anything to do with the game inside, if indeed that cabinet housed its original game.

It should be no surprise by now that Black Ops is easily one of the most polished games I've played. There is so much money behind this brand that it can't help but drip production value. With top notch voice actors (Gary Oldman, Ed Harris, Ice Cube, and others), and one of the most highly refined game engines on the market, Black Ops has been genetically engineered to be as successful as it is. We keep buying them, they keep making them. If you're sick of Call of Duty, you've only got yourself (and about 50 million other gamers) to blame.

Next time! Feel the wrath of MoHGoW!

Spartans Vs. Ninjas, err, Samurai

This time, a game that I actually play online! Incroyable! And a collection of games I used to play in the arcades when the Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter cabinets were full. Enjoy!

Halo: Reach

• Platform: Xbox 360
• Release Date: 9/14/10 (2 weeks behind!)
• Achievements: 1000/1000 Before DLC
• Playthroughs: 4+ @ 80+ hours
• I compare it to: Low Fat Halo (Now with Jetpacks!)
• Play it again? Yeah, too fun not to.

If you haven't already read about my history with the Halo franchise in the review for Halo 3: ODST, I'd suggest taking a quick look at that. Ok, so, Halo:Reach. I'm actually going to break with one of my conventions here and first, talk about *gasp!* multiplayer!

Aside from being the best free game I ever got (you'll have to ask me about this if you don't already know), Reach was remarkable in another sense: I've probably played more Reach online than any other game. Why? Several reasons. One, the Halo formula was extremely strong to begin with and it's only gotten better over the years. Reach actually incorporates some of the mechanics from Halo 2 (my previous multiplayer favorite) that I loved that were missing from Halo 3 (no more sword nerf!), along with the great addition of armor abilities, including, wait for it, the JETPACK! That + Rockets = Hours of Fun. And some other things too. (Play Firefight mode Gruntpocalypse. You won't be disappointed.)

Two: The credit system and daily/weekly challenges provide a lot of incentive to keep playing an already excellent game. Credits are earned for playing all modes of the game (including the now excellent co-op Firefight mode), and finally buying that Firefight voice (get Buck!) or Armor Effect you've been saving up for is a great feeling.

And Three: Halo is the franchise I'm probably best at online. In CoD, I die a LOT. I progress only through sheer attrition and only play team based games. In Halo, I often do free for all, and I often win. No other game gives me the sheer ego boost that comes with a 30+ kill count at the end of a match. Yes, I just said I like it because I'm good at it. At least I'm honest.

Now, the things I usually discuss.

The Reach campaign takes place on the doomed UNSC military base planet of, wait for it, Reach. Die hard Halo fans know this period in the Halo timeline as the events leading up to the first game, and those of us who read The Fall of Reach (or if you just read that book title) know that it will not end well.

You play as Noble Six, the FNG in a fireteam of Spartans. Thankfully, you're neither mute, nor a rookie. You're just new to this team and say little, which I'll gladly accept after a year of way too many laconic neophytes. Six joins Noble team right as the Covenant begin their invasion of the human population center / military stronghold planet (In retrospect, maybe we shouldn't have put those in the same place. Hmmmm. Live and learn). Fighting through the advance scouts, Noble team discovers that the Covenant is after something other than just the annihilation of the planet's population, and they're willing to launch a full scale invasion to get it.

Like multiplayer, the Reach campaign streamlines the established Halo formula, giving us more of the things that have been great about the series and less of what's been dragging it down. You won't find a single Flood spore in Reach, and I couldn't be happier about that. There's even a very well executed space combat sequence (I haven't loved it so much since Rogue Squadron), whose only real flaw lies in it's unfortunate brevity. Reach also has several great new weapons, some of which I think should have been around since the beginning. The needle rifle and grenade launcher are great fun, but none beat my personal favorite, the DMR, (I like to think that it stands for Deathifying Murdermachine Rifleocalypse, or even just Death Making Rifle, but I'm sure there's a more canon appropriate Back-ronym floating around out there.) a closed bolt, semi-automatic engine of optimal headshot production. Seriously, if you can't pull off a headshot with this thing, there is no hope for you.

After playing the campaign through a few missions, you will notice that the tone is far more serious than the rest of the series. Though Noble Six and his teammates score some significant victories against the alien invaders, the significance quickly dwindles as the odds become more and more overwhelming. Reach surprised me not only with the tone, but with the connection it manages to forge with it's characters. Six is about as developed as Master Chief ever was, but the time you spend around Carter, Kat, Jorge, Jun, and Emile (you do at least one mission fighting alongside each), and the feeling like you're beginning to know them makes the moment when each meets their fate almost devastating.

A quick note for the hardcore geeks out there. If you're wondering if Reach is unwaveringly true to the canon established in the book, don't worry, it ISN'T. So just accept that right now.

Between the darker tone, the multi-dimensional characters (some of the best in the series, IMHO), and the overall improvement in storytelling, Bungie has set a new bar for the series that made the Xbox and Xbox 360 as successful as they are. Too bad it's the developer's last Halo. Most likely, that means it will be mine too. I refuse to put money on that, however.

Samurai Shodown Anthology

• Platform: PSP
• Release Date: 3/10/09 (1 1/2 years behind!)
• Trophies: None!
• Playthoughs: >1 @ >1 hour
• I compare it to: That game I occasionally used to play. 6 times.
• Play it again: Nope, I've had my fill.

I have fond memories of Samurai Shodown. Between playing it for a few minutes at a time when I was tired of Mortal Kombat at the arcade and my friend's Super Nintendo, I had a lot of good times slicing and dicing as badass ninja Hanzo. No one else was really worth playing, I thought. So, it was with this same vibrant enthusiasm that I queued up Samurai Shodown Anthology. Not having a terribly compelling interest in the series as a whole, I decided to play my favorite character up as far as I could without losing in each iteration. 1 and 2 were about as fun as I remember (complete with 90's spraying blood if you score a lethal strike at the end of a match, and if you're REALLY awesome, cutting your opponent in two, although the level of detail was limited to a severed sprite which flashed into oblivion.), although nostalgia does tend to lose some of its color to the harsh bleach of reality. 3 onwards were simply exercises in repetition with minor tweaks, and no dismembered sprites. I lost interest and sent it back. If you lived and died for these games in the 90's, I'd buy this right now. Otherwise, a (short) rental will do you just fine.

Next Time! Cape CoD! 

A Week Without Trophies.....

My epic quest to get my write ups caught up continues! This time, I play two games with no periodic psychological validations (I also call them Trophies and Achievements) whatsoever! In fact, both of them even berated me, one with it's increasingly convoluted series canon, and the other with an actual psychiatrist! Read on!

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker

• Platform: PSP
• Release Date: 6/8/10 (3 months behind!)
• Trophies: None!
• Playthroughs: 1@32 hours
• I compare it to: A REAL handheld Metal Gear Solid

Let me throw this out there right now: Loving a franchise doesn't necessarily mean you automatically love each entry. Portable Ops, the first Metal Gear on PSP, was a mess, story and gameplay wise. It was a pain to do just about anything, and after my one and only playthough, I pretty much regretted my 3-day valley-wide search for a used copy. I am very happy to say that its follow up, Peace Walker, is much easier to mistake for an actual Metal Gear Solid game.

Graphically, PW runs circles around it's predecessor. While PO fell far short of the high bar set by MGS2 in 2001(!), PW looks almost as good as Snake Eater and really pushes the limits of the PSP hardware. It's seriously gorgeous for a handheld game, especially the jungle environments.

As with pretty much any game with shooting on the PSP, the controls are an issue. The right-stick camera control that was used to great effect in MGS: Subsistence and MGS4 has been, like most PSP shooters, mapped to the face buttons, and I want to break the control scheme with my face every time I play one of these. However, MGS:PW does it better and less painfully than just about anything I've played. That doesn't make it right though.

One of the features in Portable Ops that I never got into was the soldier management system. Acquiring new recruits was so cumbersome that after the first three or so, I didn't even bother getting them from the field. Capturing mercs is SO much easier in this entry, thanks to the Fulton Recovery System (a balloon you attach to downed soldiers). No more dragging passed out men back to the shady truck for purposes unknown! This enables you to actually build a proper army of captured soldiers, and as a result, I got ridiculously involved in the mercenary combat mission mini-game. This, more than anything else, I what found myself addicted to during my time with Peace Walker. I caught myself saying things like “Oh, just one more sortie” and, “I really should send this back, but I don't want to just yet” that took me by surprise. The mini-game REALLY gets fun when you acquire a certain piece of hardware.

The story is told in the same animated graphic novel style cutscenes as PO, except this time, you may be surprised by the occasional integrated quick time event (usually resulting in surprise and death if you're not paying attention). This game is a far more important link in the chain, begun in Snake Eater, that sees the hero Naked Snake transform into the villain we know by the first Metal Gear as Big Boss. (In my opinion, as a character, Big Boss is arguably more dynamic and compelling than Solid Snake.) It's filled with more than its share of anime style ludicrosity (yeah, it's a word. MY word) and blatant technological anachronism, but its still a great look at the reasons why one of America's greatest Cold War heroes became a despotic warlord. And a whole bunch of other stuff that I don't even bother telling the wife about.

In short, if you're a fan of Hideo Kojima's continuing dude soap, Peace Walker is a must play. If not, go play something else. I don't have time to explain the backstory (and I can't risk Tiger Wife hearing me tell you).

What's that, Konami? You have another game from one of my legacy franchises for me to play?

 

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories

• Platform: PS2
• Release Date: 1/19/10
• Playthrough: 1@10 hours
• Trophies: None!
• I compare it to: Silent Hill: Now with Waggle! But not, since it's on PS2.

It's pretty easy to tell when a game is designed for the Wii. When the graphics are PS2 quality, when there are extraneous minigames (like opening a cabinet and removing a key) that scream “MOTION CONTROL, COOL HUH!!!!” , and when said game is ported to PS2, that pretty much seals the case. And this begs the question from me, if a motion control game is ported to a non-motion control system, was it any more fun with the motion controls? In the case of Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, probably not.

To be fair, the Silent Hill games have never been much “fun” in the traditional sense. The first one was a new level of unrelenting nightmare for me when I first played it on the PS1 in 1999, and I was so enthralled with its new type of atmospheric horror that I didn't really notice how shitty the controls were. (That happened a lot in those days) The controls have never been fluid and easy, but they've incrementally improved over the years. The franchise's shift to motion control, and the shift back for the port only tell me that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Shattered Memories is a reimagining (reboooooooot) of the original Silent Hill and still tells the story of Harry Mason and his search for his lost daughter Cheryl in the haunted resort town, but it has changed significantly. Instead of the hellish rusty/bloody chain-link, barbed wire, tar-drenched underworld that the dark side of the town transformed into for the original, it is now an equally hellish frozen graveyard, with every tree, building, person, blade of grass covered in a shroud of ice. Exploring doesn't ever reach the heights of dread that the previous entries did, but it's still kind of creepy and fun to look at.

Combat is plagued with game-breaking flaws, the most glaring of which is the fact that YOU DON'T EVER ACTUALLY FIGHT! Enemy encounters literally consist of “Run away, run through glowing door, jump to glowing edge, OMG you're caught mash some buttons!1!!!11! Run some more, hide for a second, OMG you're caught! Rinse, repeat until by an extremely frustrating process of trial and error, you finally arrive at your destination (and in one particularly infuriating example, you have to run back out to, I kid you not, look at the colors on a toucan's nose. No shit.). I've played games where your only option was to run, such as Clock Tower, and those can be fun/scary if they're well designed, and there's an eventual way to outwit and thwart your pursuer, such as a trap to lead it into, an environmental hazard to turn to your advantage, or a finding a big ass rocket launcher. However, Shattered Memories gives you no way to fight back, and as a gamer, this adds nothing to my experience but frustration. Maybe this makes me a dumb alpha male, but I like to confront my fears head on, and I don't like to run unless I'm running to get a better weapon to kick its ass with. Analyze that.

And that brings me to what I actually really like about Shattered Memories, and that's it's storytelling style. The game begins with a home video of the Mason family, at home, at an amusement park, etc. After the video has played, your psychiatrist ejects it, talks to you a bit, then has you fill out a questionnaire. The questionnaire has several vanilla questions, then gets into what Captain Hammer would call the “weird stuff.” Questions about substance use, sexual proclivities, things I generally only talk about when I'm drunk. Your answers to these questions actually influence the game, and your further “sessions” with the psychiatrist (who really doesn't pull any punches, he's actually kind of a dick), which serve as bookends to the game's levels contribute to this along with (seemingly random) things you do during the game. In classic Silent Hill fashion, there are multiple endings, (Fun fact: I'm sure that EVERY guy that's played this has gotten the “perv” ending. Ask me why, I dare you.) and characters throughout the story adapt to your actions. I was also very happy to find that Shattered Memories has one of the best story twists since the end of Silent Hill 2.

The other thing I liked about Shattered Memories has probably been my favorite thing about every Silent Hill game, and that's the excellent soundtrack by series producer Akira Yamaoka. Ever since the first Silent Hill, the series has had some of the most distinctive tunes in the entire industry. I have most of the soundtrack albums. While he didn't compose all of the music in this entry, Yamaoka's tracks on the Shattered Memories soundtrack are just as powerful and emotive as they've always been. I'm trying to put together a two-hour “Best of Video Games” playlist right now, and what I'm stuck on is finding the “best” track to represent Silent Hill. There's too damn many.

Silent Hill is a franchise that has struggled to get it right and I'm not sure it ever will. Psychological horror is utterly defeated by the confidence of a gamer who has learned a well polished control scheme; that sense of empowerment is very difficult to shake and few games ever get there (a few newer franchises have, see Dead Space and Metro 2033). Will I keep playing Silent Hill? With Yamaoka's departure from the franchise (as well as his music), it doesn't look likely. But, who knows. Maybe a future entry will have something new to offer.

Next Time! 2 down, 16 to go!