2012 Game Review Haiku, #35 – Red Faction: Armageddon

Corridor after
Corridor of aliens
To boringly shoot

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For all the games I complete in 2012, instead of wasting time writing a review made up of points and thoughts I’ve probably already expressed here in various posts at Grinding Down, I’m instead just going to write a haiku about it. So there.

2012 Game Review Haiku, #34 – LEGO Lord of the Rings

Destroy the One Ring
In LEGO Mordor, watch for
Bugs wreathed in shadow

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For all the games I complete in 2012, instead of wasting time writing a review made up of points and thoughts I’ve probably already expressed here in various posts at Grinding Down, I’m instead just going to write a haiku about it. So there.

A return to where it all began in Mass Effect

With 2012 coming to a close, there’s naturally a whole bunch of “game of the year” talk, with Mass Effect 3 popping up in various ways and categories. Some are for it, some are against it, some loathe its very existence, and some, like me, still haven’t even played it. More on that topic later this month. Regardless, the third entry in the franchise–and the Shepard trilogy–certainly created a response. Loyal fans were disappointed, new players felt confused, some players were pleased nonetheless, a cut devoted themselves to the multiplayer only, some grew angry, some took anti-depressants, some began to eat more junk food, and so on.

So, what am I doing to get in on all of this hot discussion? Playing through the original Mass Effect for a second time…duh.

Earlier this year, I finally took a Big Boy step forward and experienced Mass Effect 2, which was long overdue. Overall, I was not wowed with Shepard’s second adventure, finding the recruiting of crew members to be more akin to checking off a list, but still enjoying all the lore and dialogue and even the scanning mechanic. But I felt a disconnect, probably because it had been so long since I played the original game, as well as that I was unhappy in a number of choices I had previously made. Sure, I could’ve just started fresh in Mass Effect 2, selecting a bunch of choices then and there, but that didn’t feel genuine. And with all the talk about where Shepard started and where Shepard ended, I’ve been itching to go back and remember.

Now, according to my Achievements list, I first completed Mass Effect in May 2009. I dipped back into it some seven months later, continuing on a second playthrough with my first created Shepard with hopes of, I guess, seeing more and hitting that magical Level 60. Think I upped the difficulty level, too, which really built up a wall between me and progress. However, I really wanted to start fresh, and so I constructed my first female Shepard, gave her some pretty red hair, a mean scowl, a whatever background story, and labeled her as an Infiltrator to mix things up. So far, the class has been a little tough to learn, especially since using sniper rifles is extremely difficult from the get-go, with instability a key factor in my missing many headshots. It’s a weapon I’d like to get really good at sooner than later, letting my teammates (Garrus and Wrex) move in with assault rifles and shotguns and special abilities while I hang back and pick off the stragglers.

I’m playing Mass Effect for a second time slowly, mostly because I missed a ton of content my first time through. Think I was just rushing overall. I know this because I didn’t unlock any of the Achievements for experiencing most of the game with X and Y, as well as the one for just seeing a majority of the game. I know for a fact I skipped nearly all the missions on the Citadel, more excited to get out in space and visit alien planets. This time, I’ve spent a majority of my playthrough on the Citadel, running around and solving problems for quest givers. Can’t seem to find two Keepers though. Only just became a Spectre and started exploring the galaxy; I’m staying away from the main storyline planets for now, taking the uncontrollable Mako around on undiscovered planets for side missions and such.

Part of the “playing it slow” tactic has also earned me a new Achievement, one I initially missed on my first playthrough. See here:

Scholar (25G): Find all primary Alien: Council Races, Extinct Races and Non-Council Races codex entries

To end for now, Mass Effect has some of the greatest music and most infuriating music this side of the biz. The title screen and galaxy map tunes are beautifully calming, and the chomping, dark-as-space riff that plays when you die is just adding salt to your open wounds. I’ve already heard it three or four times, and I never want to hear it again, but know that I will continue to. Technically, it’s pretty rough, hitching up constantly on the Xbox 360 and with lots of mid-level loading and sketchy framerates. That’s still all pretty excusable when you get to have a fantastically written conversation with someone, playing both the good and evil side of things, and learning everything you can in one big gulp.

I’ll be back if any more thoughts come to mind for Mass Effect, and you can probably expect me to play Mass Effect 3 some time in 2013.

2012 Game Review Haiku, #33 – Eversion

Zee Tee to rescue
Princess of Flower Kingdom
Is eaten instead

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For all the games I complete in 2012, instead of wasting time writing a review made up of points and thoughts I’ve probably already expressed here in various posts at Grinding Down, I’m instead just going to write a haiku about it. So there.

So far, Red Faction: Armageddon asks very little, gives even less

I initially balked at the Humble THQ Bundle, confused by what it was. Certainly not indie, which was taken away from the collection’s overall title, but far from humble, too. These are triple A titles from a major company. So I slept on it. In the end, I just couldn’t pass up the chance to play Darksiders, Metro 2033, and Red Faction: Armageddon for the low, low entry fee of a buck. Yeah, that’s right; I went as low as I could. No need for me to go above and beyond the average amount paid for Saints Row: The Third, a fantastically fun videogame that I already own for the Xbox 360 and have played to nearly completion (minus the lackluster DLC). And I highly doubt there will ever come a day that I actually install the three Company of Heroes games, let alone one of them. I am so not interested in real-life war games. Oh well.

And for $1–or really $0.33 if you break it up between the three games I wanted from the whole caboodle–Red Faction: Armageddon is functionally fine. But that doesn’t absolve it from being a horribly backwards sequel that strips away everything that made Red Faction: Guerrilla a fun time: an open world, the freedom to destroy what you wanted and how you went about it, the various modes for online play, the impact a sledgehammer could deliver. And more, surely. Now, for those that don’t remember–heck, even I kind of forgot this–I played the demo for Armageddon back in May 2011, not really finding too much to talk about within it. I walked down a dark corridor and shot some alien monsters off walls, as well as reconstructed some ruined platforms and staircases. Yeah, very different from the previous outing.

In this one, you play as Darius Mason, another checkbox in a long list of white, disgruntled-looking, bald videogame protagonist men. Don’t get him confused with other bald, white men in the game. It is 2017, and he must reclaim cultist fortifications on the disaster-ravaged surface of Mars, as well as defend colonists from hostile Martian creatures thriving in the mines and chasms below. To do this, Mason will use various tools and weapons, such as the Nano-Forge and Magnet Gun, to dish out destruction or repair what’s fallen. He will also walk forward in a straight line and shoot swarms of alien monsters to death before repeating this process a few feet further down. The plot is dished out in small, predictable chunks, with characters being stock and uninspiring, and Mason as a action movie star wannabe. Really, his one-liners need to stop.

Then again, the plot in Guerrilla wasn’t that great, but the openness of the world and the freedom of your tools more than made up for that. Here, in Armageddon, all that is gone. It is a non-stop corridor crawl. Dark corridors too, filled with the same swarms of alien monsters which you can kill in one melee hit so don’t bother trying to shoot them in the shadows. The game occasionally teases you by bringing you above-ground, but it’s still just a straight run or vehicle-driven sequence that does not encourage exploration. In fact, if you stray too far from the zone where all the fighting is going down, you get a warning message from the game coupled with a countdown to return to the fight. I have to imagine if you don’t by the time the countdown ends, it’s game over. Yeah, none of that.

Overall, despite a fun set of tools at your side like the Magnet Gun and that super powerful sledgehammer, Armageddon is shockingly boring. You just follow a guided path and kill monsters along the way until you get to a cutscene or new section, doing it all again. Boss fights are uninteresting, requiring little skill and thought and just a better ability to roll out of danger while continuing to fire your assault rifle. I’ve been playing on the Normal difficulty, and it’s felt a little like Godzilla squashing a city of people; haven’t died once, haven’t run out of ammo, haven’t really found myself in a tough pickle. According to my upgrades wheel, I’m almost 75% through the story. Think that’s three or four more levels to slog through.

The Humble THQ Bundle recently added in the Path to War DLC for free since I already purchased the collection. I have no idea what it is and entails, but I imagine it is just more of the same missions from the main game. I’ll give it a try once I finish off Armageddon‘s campaign, as well as try some of the multiplayer options, before shelving the game for good and remembering back to the good ol’ times I had with the franchise back in Red Faction II and Guerrilla.

2012 Game Review Haiku, #32 – Angry Birds (Poached Eggs episode)

Sixty-three levels
Flying birds, dying pigs, wee
No more Angry Birds

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For all the games I complete in 2012, instead of wasting time writing a review made up of points and thoughts I’ve probably already expressed here in various posts at Grinding Down, I’m instead just going to write a haiku about it. So there.

Perfection is earning all the Seals from every level in Mark of the Ninja

Well, this certainly didn’t happen over night, but it finally happened nonetheless:

Perfection (15G): Earn all the Seals in every level.

For those that don’t know, Seals are basically optional objectives, and there are three for every level in Mark of the Ninja. Some require you to reach a specific spot within a certain time limit and others are more tricky, requiring restraint and patience. Such as the last one that I got to unlock the above Achievement, which tasked our ninja friend with pickpocketing two keys instead of killing the guards holding them and taking them from their sliced up bodies. Well, that’s how I did it my first time through, but going the stealthier route forced me to move more slowly and be very aware of my surroundings. Which is fine, because this game is so dang rewarding, making one feel like he or she really is the shadow in the night, the hand from the darkness, the unseen that moves like the wind.

In the end, none of the Seals were too painful to get, just time-consuming. I tried to get what I could during my first playthrough of Mark of the Ninja, but due to tiny text syndrome, my bad eyes, and an iffy font choice, I had a hard time reading most of the instructions. So I skipped a lot of Seal tasks or just plain missed doing something because I didn’t know it could be done. And so, long after the fact, I did something I haven’t done in a while and don’t do often just from a sheer dislike in following along instead of figuring things out on my own: printed out a checklist from an online guide. The last time I did this? Hmm. Probably the alchemy recipes for Dragon Quest VIII. Well, I also began to record some item collecting in Borderlands, but that fizzled out fast as soon as Borderlands 2 dropped. Regardless, it really helped a lot to know exactly what tasks were in each level beforehand and then cross them off as I accomplished them.

Still working on completing all the Challenge Rooms, finding all the hidden haiku thingies, earning all upgrades for the ninja, and acquiring a ranking of three stars for each level. Yeah, all those tasks–at once. I’m pretty close on each of ’em, but it’s a slow creep, with constant checking and sometimes having to replay the entire level to make ends meet. After this, all that’s left for me to experience in Mark of the Ninja is a New Game+ playthrough, which I’m hesitant about doing. I like to pretend I’m a great ninja, but truthfully, I’m great ninja because of all the systems already in place; remove those, and I’m just a dude in a funny costume hopping off walls like a madman. At least, that’s what I suspect. I’ll probably give it a try, but if the early levels prove troublesome, then there’s no way I’ll get through the final ones on my skills alone.

Epic fail at tossing coins and strangling dudes in Hitman: Blood Money

I meant to write about Hitman: Blood Money some months ago, but I played it during an extended weekend over the summer where I hurt my lower back real bad and passed the days in somewhat of a fever haze. I mean, heck…I drew this comic during what I might consider my sanest moment. So maybe a part of me doesn’t believe how bad the controls were and frustrating the opening tutorial level was. Maybe I just wasn’t up to snuff with hitting controller buttons well. I’d try again, surely, and with all the talk about the newest Hitman: Absolution game hitting the market…well, I was in the mood for some stealthy kills.

On paper, these Hitman games sound like my kind of experience. They are described as a series of stealth action games, in which players are encouraged to use sneaking, disguises, and trickery instead of raw firepower to take out target assassinations. You control Agent 47, an assassin-for-hire, and take out targets using various methods. So far, all I’ve experienced of the franchise is the opening tutorial level in Blood Money, the hideout right after, and the beginning of the following level. I’m having a real hard time going the stealth route, instead skimping by on raw firepower, which is extremely disappointing and 100% less fun.

The controls are the biggest problem. Now, I’m playing Blood Money on the PlayStation 2. I picked this version up a long time ago for somewhere around $6, which seemed like a fair price. The beginning tutorial level, called “Death of a Showman,” is specifically constructed to show players all the different ways to be stealthy and crafty. Your assassination target is one Joseph Clarence, better known as “Mr. Swing King.” An accident at his amusement park caused the deaths of several children, and one parent seeks vengeance. The level is clearly divided into snippets, each one there to teach you a new trick: distraction, strangling, hiding bodies, wearing disguises, pretending to be someone else, messing with the environment, taking enemies as human shields, sniping, poisoning food and water, making the kill, and setting bombs. That’s…um, a lot of systems. Probably some I’m not even naming, such as using weapons (aiming, firing, reloading, figuring out how to equip/unequip) and hiding in closets. The two biggest hurdles for me are throwing coins and strangling dudes.

For tossing coins, you first have to hold the square button down to bring up the inventory. Yes, I wrote hold. You can then toss a couple of coins on the ground. The tutorial text tells you to do this. And so I do, over and over and over again. But the coins just drop at my feet, when clearly I need to get them out an open window to distract some guards nearby. You’d think the game would tell me how to aim, but no. I try using the R1 button, which is how you aim in first-person mode with a gun, but that does nothing. I try running and throwing the coins to no avail. It’s absolutely ridiculous. Eventually, I go online and learn that you have to hold in L3–which is the analog stick you walk around with–and that brings up an aiming cursor. Let me make sure this is clear: the stick you walk around with is also the stick you aim with. That means walking and aiming happen at the same time. Thankfully, Agent 47 is up against a desk, but otherwise I can’t see this working well one little bit.

Strangling dudes is just as hit or miss. Agent 47 comes pre-packed with some fiber wire. With this, he can sneak up behind someone, throw the wire around their neck, and choke them to death both silently and efficiently. Well, theoretically. I only had this scenario go down flawlessly once, and that’s the part where you’re supposed to do it anyways. Again, to bring the wire out of your inventory, you first have to hold square and then select from the items. To sneak, you hold down L1. However, to sneak with the wire ready to go, you instead hold down R1. Strangely, you can also do both if you love holding buttons down and hate your pointer fingers immensely. Then, to strangle a target, you have to get behind them and release the R1. That’s right. Letting go of a button creates the action, and what’s worse, there is no prompt so it is all guess work. Most of the time Agent 47 would just abruptly stand up behind the target, alerting them and other guards, forcing me to bust out a shotgun and blast my way to the next part.

The newspaper at the end of the level–which I think is a fantastic element–said that 28 people were slaughtered, one of them an innocent bystander. Well, that’s what happens when stealth fails and there’s no turning back. That’s not what I was going for, and without being able to play stealthy successfully, Blood Money is nothing more than a clunky, third-person shoot-em-up. After the tutorial level, you are in your hideout, where you can try other weapons and purchase upgrades for them. I started the next level, called “A Vintage Year,” but fell into the same problems previously mentioned when trying to choke a patrolling guard, thus throwing everything into shambles. Which, ultimately, is a big shame.

And no, you can’t change any of the controls. Trust me, I tried. Looked high and low and even in the middle. The most you can do is go inverted. So yeah: it’s either learn to play this way or go do something else. I think I know what I’ll be doing then.

The Bright Moon loomed, and the Scythian labored

If you follow me on Twitter, I must both apologize and then apologize for apologizing, as I went on a tweeting rampage last night due to there being a full moon in the sky, as well as a pixelated one in Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP. In case you missed all the intense action, here’s a taste:

I love the absurdity of that dog-infused tweet jarringly placed among all the ones about saving sylvan sprites and working on obtaining the Bright Moon Trigon. But really, Capybara Games is to blame as they went ahead and made every scrap of text tweet-able, and dang if the writing wasn’t so bizarre and strangely amusing. One could most definitely tweet out the entire Sworcery experience–if they didn’t mind losing all their followers, that is. Right. Moving on…

I last played Sworcery a couple weeks back, completing sessions one and two in a single go, absolutely absorbed into the strange world, its fiction and sounds and meticulous aesthetics. I started exploring the lands a bit in session three, just to see what was to come, but was firmly planted in my Scythian’s tracks, as progress further depended on phases of the moon. More specifically, a Full Moon and a New Moon. And these phases had to correspond with real life. One could totally cheat by looking up when the next desired phase was and adjusting the clock on their computer or iPad, but I’m not into that. Plus, years of living a digital life via Animal Crossing: Wild World has taught me the patience required for waiting for a specific day to do something. And so I waited, about two weeks, to play.

Last night, between the fresh snow and the full moon, the outside was nearly as bright as the inside. In Sworcery, not much looked different, except for a noticeably bright and full moon hanging in the sky on just about every screen. I loved this, the mixing of real life and not, the fusing of sides A and B, the glimmering blur of there and here. Unfortunately, with a full moon comes full problems, as that antler-headed god-demon ghost-thing now appears more frequently to challenge you in a fight. I took it on twice and won, but later would just run to the next screen to avoid it.

But with the moon full, the Scythian could now find more trapped sprites in the environment, eventually getting enough to find the way to the Bright Moon Trigon hid, duking it out with shield and sword until it could fight no more. Pretty much the same way we got The Gold Trigon. Figuring out the correct music cues for each sprite is never hard and always enjoyable, and the reward of that song is all I really ever need in life. I will admit though that I got stuck on the ducks puzzle, as I had completely forgotten the ability to drag items around. That’s part of the problem in a game forcing you to take these long breaks based on moon phases–not everything remains.

So, it seems like there will be a New Moon around December 13, 2012. I guess that’ll be the next time I play more Sworcery. Sigh. I’m not terribly disappointed in having to wait, though it can feel a little limiting, especially considering that I want to play it a whole lot right now, but can’t, unless it’s just walking around, listening to the music, and getting nowhere with Girl. I can do that just fine on my own with the coupled soundtrack I got from the Humble Bundle package, but it’s not quite the same without a tree or bush to click on in rhythm.

2012 Game Review Haiku, #30 – Borderlands 2, Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate’s Booty DLC

Pirate-themed desert
Home to back-stabbing captain
Anti-climatic

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For all the games I complete in 2012, instead of wasting time writing a review made up of points and thoughts I’ve probably already expressed here in various posts at Grinding Down, I’m instead just going to write a haiku about it. So there.