DEMO IMPRESSIONS: LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4

If I wanted to be dramatic, I’d start this post off with something like, “I thought this day would never come!” But it did. I knew a few days ago that the Xbox 360 demo for LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 would be released soon, and all I had to do was wait, then download it, and then fall in love. Simple as that.

The demo comes in two parts. The first section opens up in a classroom setting with Professor Flitwick teaching his students how to perform the levitation charm Wingardium Leviosa. This is a pretty iconic scene in the movie/book as we really get a good sense of who is good at magic and who isn’t; in that vein, Ron is a total flop and I don’t suggest using him, but Hermione can pull off the spell with ease. We’re tasked with rescuing three students trapped up in the rafters, and using some spells to move items around (kind of like using the Force in LEGO Star Wars) to solve several puzzles, they are all quickly saved. Not much else to do except beat up some books so we’re off to the next scene…

…which involves Harry, Ron, Hermione, Draco, Fang, and Hagrid! A demo after my own heart. See, Hagrid is my absolute favorite character in the books. We’re heading into the Forbidden Forest as punishment for sneaking around the castle after “lights out,” and as expected, then divided into two teams. Harry has to deal with a unicorn while Draco is more or less the wuss he’s always been. I got to control Ron, Hermione, Fang, and Hagrid, and this section really shows off a lot of gameplay.

Like in previous LEGO games, a lot of progression relies on using different characters and their abilities for specific purposes. What’s nice here is that, since a lot of the characters are wizards, instead of swapping weapons and people, you’ll be selecting new spells instead. At my disposal for the Forbidden Forest level were two spells: the previously learned Wingardium Leviosa and a spell for dealing with the local violent plant life that I can’t recall that name of. Fang can dig up stuff (and climb a ladder, which looked ridiculous), and Hagrid wields a crossbow, as well as his magical umbrella. Again, don’t bother using Weasley.

You destroy things, you collect studs, you solve puzzles, you collect a host of other items, and you move forward, putting to memory all the stuff you missed or couldn’t unlock yet. It’s a LEGO game, and it’s going to be good fun when it comes out. The Harry Potter world is seemingly a perfect fit for the formula, and I’m really curious about all the stuff not shown in the demo: class lessons, Diagon Alley, riding on broomsticks, co-op, and so on. The few cutscenes work well too, relying on mute characters and a previous knowledge of the plot to hit home some humorous moments.

But speaking of collecting, there’s going to be a lot to gather up. There’s four pieces of the Hogwarts crest to find in each level, as well as a student in peril, true wizard status, items that unlock special characters, studs galore, and gold bricks. Probably more, too. Definitely gonna keep one busy for a bit.

Ultimately, I’m really looking forward to LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 releasing at the end of June. And then visiting the actual castle in October.

DEMO IMPRESSIONS: Snoopy Flying Ace

Peanuts characters and aerial dogfighting. It seems like an obvious and punny combination, right? Well, Snoopy Flying Ace, an Xbox Live Arcade game that is all about chaotic multiplayer and shooting down the Red Baron, puts it to the test.

Here’s the official game description:

“You can’t have aerial dogfighting without the dog! Join Snoopy, Charlie Brown, and the rest of the Peanuts gang in the premier online flight shooter on Xbox LIVE Arcade, Snoopy Flying Ace. With simple flight controls and a hangar full of customizable planes and weapons, all you need are nerves of steel to climb the Leaderboards and become a Flying Ace! Snoopy Flying Ace takes addictive, fast-paced airborne combat to new heights, with fantastic solo and co-op challenges testing your skills against the Flying Circus of the dreaded Red Baron. Remember, it ain’t the size of the dog in the fight… it’s the size of the fight in the dog!”

The trail demo offers up a bunch of missions to play, as well as some online multiplayer. The first few are more or less tutorials: learning how to fly your plane, learning how to speed up and make sharp turns, learning the different weapons you have at your disposal, and learning how to hop to the ground to operate anti-aircraft gunnery. Then, after that, you’ll have your first big fight against Lucy and a swarm of goons as you’re set to protect a location with all you got.

I have to say, and I was really surprised here, but the controls are fantastically sharp. You use the left analog stick to steer and direct, and the right analog stick is for flipping upside-down or rolling left/right to avoid getting shot. It handles like a dream, which is a simile I’ve never really understood, but I will just say it simpler then: it handles really well. You’ll be swooping this way and that, firing off rockets and bullets, switching tactics on the fly (more puns!), and you won’t really get dizzy or ever feel out of control.

Plus, you’re doing all of this with Peanuts characters. I can’t stress that enough. They are adorable as they blow each other to smithereens. Take that, General Lucy! Pew pew pew!

I basically only did the single-player missions, as the online multiplayer kept kicking me out. I’m sure that’s fun, too, and probably the true selling point of Snoopy Flying Ace. For 800 Microsoft Bucks, it’s a solid entry. At least give the trial demo a try.

Smoking cigs and killing Nazis

The Saboteur is far from perfect. Far far far far far. That’s five fars for those not counting. It is littered with glitches and bad control schemes, suffers from unclear mission objectives at times, and fails graphically once France starts slipping back into color. But I can put that all aside because–and this is important here–the game is a lot of fun. And it’s more forgiving than Grand Theft Auto IV ever tried to be.

So yeah, here’s the summary so far. You’re Sean Devlin, an Irishman now living in Paris, France, who gets sucked into a plot to take down some Nazis. Revenge is the fire in his blood, and along the way he’ll meet a cultured cast of characters, as well as strengthen the resistance of the people to the Nazi regime. I’m not too far into the main missions yet so that’s kind of all I know at this point. Maybe he’ll meet Brad Pitt…I mean Lt. Aldo Raine at some point. No one can predict the future.

The main missions so far are of the usual open-world ilk. There’s one where you follow another car, but don’t get too close to it. There’s another that charges you with escorting a lady friend around. There’s one that puts you into the sniper role, handing out death from high above. A lot of the missions are just set before you with a generic objective: kill the Nazis, for instance. It’s up to you to figure out how to make the end happen. You can either be sneaky and go around the enemy base or charge right in, guns a-blazing. I don’t recommend the latter. While Sean can certainly handle guns and grenades and setting off timebombs, he’s a much stronger assassin. It might take an extra ten minutes or so, but sometimes it is safer to walk the long and slow road, creeping by, silencing those that need it.

But the best thing about The Saboteur, for me at least, is the ambient freeplay missions. These show up on your map as tiny white dots, indicating that something there is important. It might be a Nazi sniper tower you have to destroy or a lookout point (a la Assassin’s Creed) or even just a perfectly placed spot to do a wicked car jump. Either way, there are hundreds of these. Maybe thousands. Remember, I can’t count higher than five. Just check this image out, which is only a tiny part of the world map:

Yeaaaaaaaah. But what is so nice about this is that it caters to my completionist OCD and allows me to just pop into the game for thirty minutes, take out a few ambient freeplay missions, save, and shut down for the night, fully knowing that I at least accomplished something. That I whittled the number of white dots down a sliver.

There’s always something to do in The Saboteur. Going after perks, ambient freeplay missions, collecting cars, playing the game’s main missions, just exploring, smoking cigs, saving citizens. It kind of goes on and on.

That said, Sean, just like Niko, is hard to like. He curses a little too much and a little too dramatically; there was one comment he made about eating a nun’s arse. I don’t know. I cringed? Yes, I cringed. Then again, he’s easy to like because he kills Nazis. And we all dream about going back in time and doing that ourselves. Well, maybe I do. Can’t speak for you, silent reader.

But all in all, a fun game. Maybe even an underappreciated one. Will come back to that claim once I’m further through it.

Discovered Eridian Promontory and then ran away

I’m sure my readers (all three of you) are just dying to see me get through Borderlands so I can shut up about it and move on to other ramblings about videogames. Me too, actually. But alas, I’m not done with the Capital Wasteland just yet.

I made it to the Eridian Promontory last night only to discover my assault rifle-wielding soldier is not ready to move on. That’s not a LOST metaphor either; he totally got creamed fast by two enemies at the start of the level, and so I ran away, back to New Haven, to finish up a bunch of sidequests I wasn’t interested in before. Either way, they’ll be extra experience points and maybe a new weapon or two depending on the quest rewards.

It’s funny that the enemy types don’t really get tough or more varied until you reach the Vault, which I’m assuming is pretty much end-of-game time. Besides numerous Crimson Lance soldiers, the zone is flooded with Guardians, which, depending on your level and skill set, can be a whole new bag of tricks. They got shields, they got speed, and they got you gasping for a Second Wind before you know it. Again, having a co-op player in these sorts of situations is much desired. Alas, my pillows have no opposable thumbs and so I’m out of luck there.

That said, going back to do some of these sidequests was almost downright silly. Bandits barely touched me, and I flew through everything without a single worry of being taken down. Overpowered in one place, underpowered in another. The mantra of RPGs, I guess.

I’m somewhere around the middle of level 35/36, I think. Not sure when a good time to return to the Eridian Promontory is or whether it’s just me and the set of guns I’m using, but I will try again shortly. Gotta get inside the vault and discover what secrets it holds! Speculative spoiler: I bet it’s more guns.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS: Borderlands

After a short and lighthearted cutscene, Borderlands is off and running, having you pick your character class. There’s four of ’em, and each relates to typical archetypes a la Diablo II such as the assassin and rogue and tank. I, however, decided to pick Roland, the Soldier class. This is rather surprising and I’ll tell you why: I’m always, hands-down, 100% of the time attracted to stealthy characters. In BioShock, I quickly fell in love and never let go of the plasmid that turns you invisible when standing still. Also, in Fallout 3, one of the first things I did on my very first playthrough was acquire the ninja assassin suit that, more or less, turns you completely invisible. In Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, I would literally hide in the grass for up to twenty minutes, making sure I got enemy movement patterns down and taking extreme caution in every move I made. The boss battle against The End was simply a bowl full of sushi with extra bliss sauce on top.

Case in point: I like taking my time in a gunfight and planning accordingly so as to not ever actually engage with the enemy, but simply take it down hard and fast from a distance. You’d think then that I’d have picked the Siren, a woman all about sniper rifles and phasing in and out the world. But no, I went for the Soldier. Wanted to try playing a game differently for once, and I’m really pleased so far with how it’s turned out.

So, the first chunk of missions are more or less a tutorial, but they do well to teach you the mechanics of the game, and pretty soon the fights begin to intensify, the loot becomes better and plentiful, and the quest log starts to fill up. I played for about two hours last night, got up to level 7, and finished off the first boss, Nine-Toes (also, he has had three balls).

I think the game looks amazing. Rarely has a cel-shaded game ever let me down, and the way the background blurs as you zoom in with your fire-starting pistol is a beautiful touch. The thick outlines and bright character colors contrasting with the drab Fallout 3-like setting make for an eye-grabbing mix. The draw distance isn’t terribly great though like in the newest Prince of Persia where you can see far and wide and it all looks rock solid. And the menu presentation is slick and easy to navigate, which is pretty crucial when it’s all about looting.

My only hesitation so far is in figuring out which weapon is better, and whether or not I should hold on to it or sell it for money. Here’s a helpful tweet tip from fellow Borderlander Greg Noe: It’s good to know about weapon rareness: white > green > blue > purple > orange

Other than that, I just got to the point where I’ve taken on multiple quests at once and have the freedom to explore them at will. Love the challenge log, too, which are like mini Achievements that give you tasks and reward you with experience points. Makes sense to me. Anyways, can’t wait to head back to Pandora tonight!

Admitting to videogame rage

I think it’s official: Grand Theft Auto IV makes me videogame rage. Not like this or this, mind you, but it seriously gets on my nerves and even has gotten me uttering phrases like “Oh come on!” and “Fuuuuck!” when alone in my apartment. That’s not a good sign. Just ask my neighbors.

Last night, I spent 40 minutes on a single mission–it’s called “Museum Piece” and it involves escaping a museum heavy with enemies and then avoiding further detection from them once outside in the public park–and then failed thanks to unclear directions. Inside the mansion, I meticulously took out every goon shooting a gun my way, a process which took some patience and a lot of crouching.  I’d already previously failed the mission for running blindly around a corner and was not going to let that happen yet again. But it was worth it because I had a full thing of body armor still and was ready to venture outside.

So I exited the park in hopes of hi-jacking a car for getaway purposes. My original ride got blown to bits from a tossed grenade. I don’t get three steps across the street before two black cars zoom by and run me over. As Niko slowly gets to his feet after this traumatic event two goons pump shotgun blasts into him. Body armor and health vanish instantly.

When you die, you are revived back at the hospital and pay a small fee. Not only that, but all the ammo I used on the mission is gone, as well as that 40 minutes of my time. I can restart via a text message or reload to at least get my ammo back. Neither option sounds appetizing after all that worthless work.

Seeing as I’ve done several posts on GTA IV and my hating on it, some might be wondering why I keep playing. It’s simple. I’m a masochist. Also, I bought the game with hard-earned money (eh, it was $12.00 used)  so I might as well experience it.

Honestly, I’ve never griped about so much in a single game before. I could go on for days about GTA IV‘s faults. For instance, why did Rockstar design the Xbox 360 controls to be horrible? You press Y to steal a vehicle, but if you want to say take a tour or cab ride…you hold Y. But if you don’t press it down hard and fast enough, guess what? You just stole a helicopter and taxi cab when you were just trying to play the game. Fun, fun, fun dumb. Why not instead, just like when you want to buy a hot dog or soda, press the left bumper? WHY NOT?!

I enjoy Liberty City’s openess and the sandbox potential, but maybe I just have to take off the blinders and see GTA IV for what it is: not a game for me. The mission structure and harshness of lost time, money, and bullets for failure is just too punishing. Maybe Saint’s Row is more up my alley?

IMPRESSIONS: Just Cause 2

The demo for Just Cause 2 is undeniably the most open demo I’ve experienced so far. You are shown a mini cutscene kind of explaining why Rico Rodriguez is heading to the fictional tropical island of Panau in Southeast Asia. And then, well…you have 30 minutes to do whatever you want.

The developers would love (and reward you) if you devoted the next half hour of gaming to causing as much chaos as possible. The demo features an area of 35 square miles located in the desert, with light aircraft and many civilian and military vehicles available. There’s plenty to see and do…and destroy.

Controls take a bit getting used to, especially the grappling hook. I wasn’t comfortable using it until about 20 minutes had passed, and then I was zipping from building to building, car to car, tree to tree. It made getting out of tough situations a breeze, and using it to take down guards is fun and imaginative.

Right, back to causing chaos. Love that this is Just Cause 2‘s currency, and that the player is rewarded for going ape-shit. Since it took me awhile to get the hang of parachuting and moving from zone to zone, I caused very little chaos during my 30 minutes. Some chaos, mind you, but not enough to make newspaper headlines. Will try harder next time to, y’know, maybe hook a guard to a moving car and then crash it into some water tanks while parachuting off it to safety some many yards away. Amazingly, that’s all very possible.

Anyways, it’s a refreshing demo, one that I can see myself heading back into again and again to try out new stuff. Not sure if the full game would be for me as a lot of open-world games lose their appeal early on, but this is perfect for getting a feel for the game’s nuances and desires. Let the chaos continue!

IMPRESSIONS: Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing

The kart racer is dead, long live the kart racer!

Actually, it’s not so much dead. More like…hard to stand out in the crowd. See, Nintendo created the kart racer many moons ago with Super Mario Kart for the SNES, a game that still holds up remarkably well today. The fiancée and I play it a lot, actually, and I like to throw false information at her such as telling her about secret teleports hidden in spots of water. Alas, she’s learned not to trust my “advice.” Anyways, Super Mario Kart naturally spawned some imitators, the majority of which failed to live up to the flagship’s standards. Save for Crash Tag Team Racing; I like that one for reasons I’m not ready to say.

So the demo for Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing felt very much like it should: formulaic. You select your racer, you select your track, you hit the gas, you pick up weaponry from floating somethings, and you zip along until you’ve crossed the finish line. We know how to play it; we’ve been playing this game for years.

Definitely the one place where Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing outshines Nintendo is in its roster. Given the game’s title and much like in SEGA Superstars Tennis, there’s a unique gathering of characters from all sorts of previous games. You can definitely play as the blue blur himself, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Eggman, Big the Cat, moody Shadow, Ulala, AiAi from Super Monkey Ball, and Beat, among others (Banjo and Kazooie if you’re lucky to play it on the Xbox 360).

The demo only offers up one character to play (Sonic) and one course (a rather generic level). Driving is simple and fun, and getting Sonic to do his “all-star” move, turning him into Super Sonic, a speeding blue blur of death, is awesome. However, the track itself was very straightforward, and I never once felt like I would steer the wrong way or anything. Had an “on rails” sort of feel to it, despite not being that. The audio works well, with actual commentary happening live as you do stuff, but I did notice one of Sonic’s lines was taken directly from SEGA Superstars Tennis, which seems a bit lazy.

It’s not the worst thing to ever hit a console though it definitely lacks innovation. If you don’t own a Wii or dusty SNES, sure, give this a chance. Otherwise, you might want to stick with what you know already.

And of course, it’s still hard to wrap your brain around the fact that Sonic the Hedgehog, one of the fastest critters around the gamesphere, is racing in a car. And losing at times. Oh well…

Some early impressions for Dragon Age: Origins

Just crossed the ten-hour mark for Dragon Age: Origins. In ten hours, as an elf mage, I’ve done very little. Conversely, I’ve experienced a lot. I’m currently mucking about in Redcliffe, on a quest to storm the town’s castle and find out what is happening with Arl Eamon. It’s definitely turning into a great game, and I know in my heart of hearts that I will love it immensely, but I can’t help and nitpick because some of the issues I’ve noticed should most definitely not be there in a game of this caliber.

Right. Onwards to lists of things…

THINGS I LOVE

• The world. Amazingly detailed even if it is more or less a mesh of Tolkien’s Middle-Earth and George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. And I’ve only unlocked…14%. Love the treatment of elves, as well as the Circle of Magi and their emotionless servants. The Codex can be a bit overwhelming at first, but it’s worth scouring for sure.
• The writing. It’s sort of BioWare’s thing.
• So much to do, so many options. And most of the time you don’t get to pick them all or go back and try another, which makes perfect sense. Some games are just more forgiving than others; not this one; your actions are yours. And even if it didn’t have the different origin stories, Dragon Age: Origins has plenty of replay value. The dialogue options are great and varied, the structure of quests have multiple outcomes, and once you get to Lothering it becomes a sort of choose-your-own adventure; I most likely won’t go straight to Redcliffe with my next character.

THINGS I’M UNSURE OF

• The inventory menus. They are deep and fairly organized, but still a bit of work to get through. Especially when assigning spells to the controller’s face buttons. It can be clunky, but it might just take me some more time to get used to.
• Combat tactics. Have not set any of these up, but I want to. The problem? The interface is not very clear.
• Why can’t a mage unlock treasure chests? I should at least be able to cast a magic missile on it.

THINGS I HATE

• At least three times during a cutscene, a character has completely walked through another character. Not even in a fantasy world like Ferelden should that be possible.
• Also a cutscene complaint: with friendly fire, I accidentally set Alistair on fire with a flame spell, and then we hopped into a cutscene where, limbs ablaze, Alistair stood calmly and spoke without any realization that that horrible burning smell was actually him.
• My character, Carys, likes to wear an enchanter’s cowl. It helps with his magic and/or willpower (I can’t actually remember at this point). Anyways, he’s definitely wearing it when running around town or doing battle, but the moment we hop into a cutscene…he is not. Yet if I changed his staff or robes, that’s been updated. I don’t understand this.
• Nineteen things happening all at once, all of them going by in a blur of swooshes. So, say you just talked to a dude. When the cutscene ends, you get a bunch of pop-up messages that say “New codex entry!” “New quest!” “Quest updated!” “Items received!” “Alistair approves (+3)!” “Morrigan disapproves (-7)!” And then it’s all gone before you even realized what happened.
• And the graphics. Sometimes they are pretty, most of the time they are not. Thankfully, gameplay makes up for them each and every time. I’m just surprised it’s not as polished-looking as, say, Mass Effect 2, made by the very same company.

Either way, I’m itchin’ to play more.

Nancy Drew and the Mystery of a Terrible Game

Recently, I borrowed two DS games from my mother’s collection: Hidden Mysteries Titanic: Secrets of the Fateful Voyage and Nancy Drew: The Mystery of the Clue Bender Society. Both have extremely long titles, and both are terrible abominations that I can’t believe got made and stocked at full price. Anyways, I breezed uninterestedly through the former-mentioned title, but got stuck with Nancy Drew and eventually just gave it back unfinished. Mom plans to trade them in for pennies and nickels.

Still, I have thoughts. Most of these end with question marks, such as “Why couldn’t they give a clearer hint here?” or “Is Nancy Drew really a complete fool?” or “What’s up with that one dude’s beard?”

Nancy Drew: The Mystery of the Clue Bender Society is evidently the second outing for the young, teenbop sleuth. I missed the first one…thankfully. In this one, she gets a mysterious letter from the shadowy Clue Bender Society, inviting her over for a visit to join their awesome club of super-detectives. Or something like that. Once there, Drew must find a stolen tome that may or may not contain crazy cult secrets powerful enough to destroy the world. I know, pretty heavy stuff there for a Valley Girl who is more at home when finding her lost cell phone.

Generally speaking, it’s a puzzle game. You might be inclined to say the game has puzzles, emphasis on the s. But it doesn’t really. The puzzles are just minigames: time-wasters, space-fillers, extra screens to tap at furiously, call ’em what you will. These minigames don’t even give you basic instructions; you’re thrown into the lion’s den and must tap your way out. Ultimately, there’s very little, hmm, clue bending in Nancy Drew: The Mystery of the Clue Bender Society.

And the writing…sigh. Having known them to be quite popular, but never reading much of Nancy Drew’s adventures, I expected a solid story with a whodunnit mystery. The writing, right from the get-go, is a trainwreck. Like, derailed and then flipped and then exploded and then anything that didn’t explode melted like that one dude’s face in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. My favorite “writing” moment (quick, turn on your sarcasm meters!) is when Nancy is meeting a friend in a local cafe. The friend gives her a device to pick up fingerprints and tells her to try it out on her coffee cup; Nancy does and then is extremely shocked and surprised to find her friend’s fingerprints on the mug. Like, oh my gawd! What…an…idiot. I almost want to know what Nancy’s SAT scores look like and if they are just a wee higher than my last bowling record.

Everyone meet Nancy's biggest clue-bending challenge: doors.

But there’s no guidance within the game. I’m not talking guided hand-holding, but there could’ve been more hints as to what to do next. Alas, a lot of time is spent going back and forth from room to room in the mansion, hoping you’ll find something new to click on to set things in motion again. You’ll get a bunch of items you may or may not use (e.g., her cell phone). And there’s an unneeded amount of rooms that have nothing in them. Unfortunately, I got stuck on a part of the mansion where every room offered nothing new, and I had no idea what to do next. My quest instructions said, “Find the tome.”

And now she never will. Oh well. Guess then it’s goodbye, world.