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!

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!

Weekend Gaming Session 10/9

10/9 At a Glance

Currently Playing:
Fallout 3 (working on Devil and True Mortal)

Recently Completed:
Heavenly Sword (story playthrough), Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII

On Hold:
Halo Wars, Dead Rising

One agonizing week of waiting for the new TV down, one to go. Of course, it's entirely possible that there could be up to two more weekends before I can really sit down and enjoy the new set, but, once it's here, its time for MEGA HD REPLAY MADNESS!!!!!! Um, yeah. More on that later. I'm saving Halo Wars and Dead Rising for when the new set gets here, but before that, I'm also saving my replay of Broken Steel for the new set, and with that, my last 4 levels before 30, and Devil and True Mortal will put me over the 15,000 mark. Hooray.

Anyway.

Finished Crisis Core this week and promptly sent it back. To be honest, I didn't expect the game to have as much side content as it did, however, in this case, the focus was surely on quantity over quality, and I figured I could sleep at night without experiencing ALL of it. Final verdict: A solid story for fans of the series, but a monotonous and contrived battle system kills any potential for long term enjoyment.

My Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Stats

• Platform: PSP
  
• Playthroughs: 1
  
• Trophies: N/A
  
• I compare it to: Kingdom Hearts without jumping, strategy, or Disney.
  
• Play it again?: Nope.

To get me through this last weekend of SD gaming, and to try to manipulate GameFly into sending me Uncharted 2 on launch day, I ordered Heavenly Sword, just to try it out. Rarely has a game left with such mixed feelings. (well, actually, Crisis Core did too) To be brutally honest, Heavenly Sword's gameplay is, for the most part, derivative at best, and utterly frustrating at worst. A few technically heavy boss battles begin to shine, but the inconsistent difficulty mars even those. And let's not get into the motion control segments.

However, you NEED to play this game for a reason I don't often recommend (outside of MGS), for the cutscenes. The motion capture for this game is downright AMAZING, as is the story it acts out. It should come as no surprise that these aspects of the game were supervised by mocap guru Andy Serkis, who after his excellent work on Lord of the Rings and King Kong, got into the field of gaming, and has really left his mark with Heavenly Sword (and, it's a good bet he'll do the same with Enslaved). In my opinion, HS has, arguably, the most convincing and realistic voice and mocap acting of any game. Serkis himself plays antagonist Bohan, and brings to life one of the most illustrated, despicable (and hilarious, and creepy), and fresh villains yet seen in the gaming world. HS is one of few games that have been able to evoke an emotional reaction from me by the strength of the scene alone. During a confrontation between Kai and Flying Fox, the few short flashes of the backstory along with the emotions in the scene conveyed something not even the last few survival horror games I've played made me feel, a moment of real terror.
Heavenly Sword was great for story and cinematics, just not for gameplay. I hope that for Enslaved, Ninja Theory will be able to bring the latter up to par with the former.

My Heavenly Sword Stats

• Platform: PlayStation 3
  
• Playthroughs: 1
  
• Trophies: N/A
  
• I compare it to: Devil May Cry, moreso than God of War (besides, I compare EVERY game to GoW)
  
• Play it again?: Only for the cutscenes.

When the new TV arrives, it will be time for.....MEGA HD RE...(right, stop that!!!), um, time for me to replay all of my current gen games in HD, hooray! I'm just having a tough time deciding which should be first, so I'll put it to you for your opinions. The top contenders are:

Metal Gear Solid 4
Bioshock
CoD4 (campaign)
Batman: AA
Mass Effect

So, that's it for this weekend. I'm hoping to have some impressions of Uncharted 2 for you next Sunday, as well as a new TV to game on! Until then!

B.