Old World Blues is all talk, no action so far, and that’s fine

I promptly downloaded Old World Blues for Fallout: New Vegas last night when I got home from work. Once MasterChef was finished and poor, lovable Giuseppe was out the door, I loaded up my most recent character Kapture, a dude that loves Energy Weapons and that looks like he’d be right at home watching children playing at a local park from inside his dark, seedy van, and headed to the specific map marker to get things rolling. To start Old World Blues, the Courier must make his way to a drive-in movie theatre, wherein a broken robot satellite will show them a movie. Then it’s lights out, and waking up elsewhere, with strange surgical cuts all over your body.

You’ll make your way inside a large science research building called the Sink (or is it the Think Tank?) at the Big Empty, eventually finding a bunch of whacky robots. The leader, Dr. Klein, will then explain the situation, with colorful commentary from the other local bots peppered throughout. You’re brainless. And have no heart or spine. That’s why you feel so weird, so calm and uncaring. These robots cut those organs out of you, and it’s not entirely clear how you’re, uh, still alive, but whatever, it’s a videogame, and that’s certainly some strong motivation there for completing this newest DLC: recover your brain, heart, and spine. Also, steal some technology from their nemesis Dr. Mobius.

What’s most notable about this DLC is that the first 30 to 45 minutes are spent talking. With crazy robots. Since I don’t ever skip dialogue, a good chunk of my playtime last night was spent with the controller resting gently on my lap, only picking it up occasionally to make a speech selection. Even after the main chunk of talking is dead and done, and the Courier has his main mission, he/she can still explore the Sink and Think Tank to talk further with these deranged robots. I exhausted every dialogue option, gaining three to four more additional sidequests from this. Doctor Dala is extremely creepy, and I was pleasantly surprised–as was Tara–to discover that Doctor O is voiced by a true cartoon doctor…Dr. Venture‘s James Urbaniak!

So far, Old World Blues has some of the strangest and funniest writing to date for the series, with the word penis popping more than you’d ever expect, and drowning in it–the dialogue, not the penises–first and foremost for the DLC is not the worst thing ever. Though I am looking forward to exploring outside the Sink/Think Tank and maybe shooting something. Maybe.

There’s no “i” in Team Fortress 2, but there is a “me”

Over the weekend, I picked up two games thanks to some coercing coupons from GameStop, but really I picked up six games, as one game is actually five games bundled nicely on a single Xbox 360 disc. It’s called The Orange Box, and it’s one helluva package, especially as a used copy; for just over $20.00, I now have access to Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Portal, and Team Fortress 2. Man, that’s a lot of 2s in there. I’m sure I’ll be musing about those first four games at some point, but let’s use today to dive into Team Fortress 2, a game I didn’t think I would like, but am having fun with, as well as a game that is sadly not the be-all, end-all version of itself.

Team Fortress 2 is an online, team-based, first-person shooting multiplayer bonanza. You pick a class, a map, and a type of game (capture the flag, capture/defend control points, arena, and so on), and you’re off to shoot non-team members, capture sections of the map, and wait patiently for your character to respawn. On the Xbox 360 version, there’s six maps available, and I’ve gotten to try ’em all once, which should be obvious to all y’all Achievements stalkers:

World Traveler (5G): Play a complete game on every map.

The six maps are all about the same size, a medium build, with a few spots of elevation, but otherwise there’s a lot of staircases and tight corridors to contend with. Each team has a home base where they can restock on health and items. No real direct interaction with anything on the map though, and there’s no destruction a la Red Faction tech. My favorite playground is whatever the snowy one is called. Snowscape? Snow City? Las Frozen Vegas? I can’t remember, and I’m definitely too lazy to look it up.

As y’all know, I’m pretty terrible at competitive shooting games, and that fact has not changed one bit since giving Team Fortress 2 an hour or two of my gaming life. I get sniped from afar, set aflame all the time, and knifed in the back the moment I step into enemy territory. But regardless, I’m having fun. I think it has something to do with the wonderful art style, a loose, cartoony feel that evokes Pixar’s The Incredibles and gives me a sense that everyone else is just here to have fun and not take it so seriously like a lot of Call of Duty fanatics. The controls and simplicity of the gameplay also help; most classes only get two gun-type weapons to use and one melee weapon, and there’s no rain showers of endless grenades. I think I actually did my best with the Medic class, as I kept away from the firefights and healed teammates as they needed.

Do you play Team Fortress 2? What’s your favorite class? And if you’d like to shoot me in the (cartoony) face or help take down others with me, please add me on Xbox Live; my gamertag is PaulyAulyWog.

Another day, another patch for Fallout: New Vegas

Old World Blues will be released on all platforms on July 19, but before that can happen, a patch must hit to fix some problems with Fallout: New Vegas. And when I say some, I really mean a plenitude of glitches and bugs and outstanding wonkiness. One might have thought a lot of these would’ve gotten taken care of back when an earlier patch was also put together. Oh well. Can’t get 100% in V.A.T.S.-patching all the time. Right, Obsidian?

This newest patch is a big one, so I’ll put all of its updates and corrections below a cut. Clickity click to read on.

A vacation is having nothing to do and all day to do it in

Hey, Grinding Down readers, did I mention that I’m on vacation? Well…I am.

That’s not to say I haven’t been gaming some because vacation, to me, does imply some videogaming, but just not enough to get the creative juices flowing for writing over here. I did end up purchasing two more downloadable titles for my Nintendo 3DS: Super Mario Land and Dragon Quest Wars. I love the former for nostalgia and beat it in one sitting in less than half an hour, and the latter is a little weird and unclear, but I’ll continue to give it a sporting try.

Speaking of sports, I’ve also played some golf while on vacation, and this is real life golf, with real life sweating and real life swings and real life pars. I got par on a par 3 hole, and that’s all I will ever need out of that sport, truthfully. I also ended up winning minigolf last night at the Ocean City boardwalk, using my skillz efficiently and effectively. Going golfing again today; don’t be too jealous.

When not using my Xbox 360 to show my sisters the greatness that is Game of Thrones, I’ve been playing some more L.A. Noire. Closing in on the end of the game, methinks. Hoping it all comes together in the end because it seems more like we’ve already reached the title’s peak, and now there’s nowhere to go but down. Like, I’m still waiting for the newspapers and war flashbacks to click, and then for Cole to make something of himself in Los Angeles.

Naturally, while on vacation, I’m spending some time thinking about what I’ll do after vacation is over. The third DLC for Fallout: New Vegas, Old World Blues, comes out next week, as does Bastion…I think. Too lazy to actually look this up for confirmation. Being a videogame journalist is tough work, y’know. Then there’s the final Harry Potter movie, as well as A Dance With Dragons to zoom through and beginning to slowly move out of the Leaky Cauldron, making for one crazy stressful time upon returning to the real world.

Oh, and there’s been a lot of Munchkin happening in South Jersey. More on that later, but I will say that Munchkin Zombies is particulary fantastic. Mmm brains…

Okay, gotta put pants on to go golfing. The course I’m going to has a strict “must wear pants” policy.

Games Completed in 2011, #24 – Red Faction: Guerrilla

I thought Red Faction was really neat, what with their revolutionary tech at the time of being able to blow a hole in a wall and then go through said hole. Red Faction II did all of this as well, but tried to mix up the gameplay too much and also annoyingly threw in waves of zombie monsters. While the main mission stunk, I did enjoy myself in the local multiplayer against bots; yes, this was around the time that everybody and their brother were playing Halo over the Internet, but I lacked such a connection, and so it was bots for me. No big deal. I got really good, especially on Deathmatch, and you’ll just have to take my word on that.

Red Faction: Guerrilla is not Red Faction III. Still not sure if that’s a good or bad thing though. This time, the game is set on an open-world Mars and is not a first-person shooter. Instead, it’s a third-person action adventure title (with some driving, too), and our main dude Alec Mason is out for revenge over his brother’s murder, as well as to bring down the oppressive Earth Defense Force. That harkens back a bit more to Red Faction‘s plot where a no-name miner begins the great uprising. As Mason moves forward with his retribution plan, he’ll befriend some folk and make many enemies and destroy a bleep-load of EDF property, slowly whittling down their numbers and resources.

I originally played the game for a good amount of time upon initial purchase, but stopped after some of the Dust missions proved too hard and frustrating. Mission instructions were not very clear, and the moment you were caught out in the open and not hiding behind a crate, you were most certainly dead. It was when–many months later–I switched the difficulty from Normal to Casual that I saw myself advancing better. And I’m totally okay with that. There’s no reason to not to if it’ll help me experience and play a game I bought with hard-earned Space Credits. After the difficulty switch, it was a quick run through the remaining missions, which all lead up to an underwhelming finale that saw Mason rushing towards his target, throwing like ten sticky bombs on it, and blowing it up nice and good. And so:

Red Dawn (100G): Liberated Mars.

You’re welcome.

It’s an okay game. The truest fun comes from exploring the map, seeing some building you want to crumble, and then doing it however you want. The missions and driving aspects are less fun, often punishing or too nit-picky on how they want things done. After beating the game, I went back to clean up some Achievements, but there’s several for collecting things like ore deposits and radio tags that I just don’t want to go for. Too big of a map for such trivial thingies. Oh well. Online multiplayer is fun and something I expect to revisit from time to time, but waiting ten minutes for a game to start is not fun. So it has its pros and cons just like Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood‘s multiplayer.

Let’s end this post with a quote taken out of context from Red Faction: Guerrilla, but something all of us gamers can understand completely, yes? Here it is:

“If the EDF didn’t want us shooting these explosive barrels, they shouldn’t leave them around so much! Right?”

Damn skippy.

Games Completed in 2011, #23 – Borderlands, Claptrap’s New Robot Revolution DLC

Okay, time to be honest. Not that I’ve never not been honest with y’all, but it’s a good, catchy phrase to start a post, and I guess the honest part here stems from the fact that I feel very guilty about not remembering very much about the last DLC for Borderlands, the one all about Claptraps, the one awesomely titled Claptrap’s New Robot Revolution. I do remember that I had to collect a boatload of Claptrap parts, which was not very fun, and then after that it gets fuzzy. Think there were some boss fights with bosses I had already defeated in the main game, but this time they were Claptrapped, but not any harder or different from their true, former selfs. At the end, I took down a giant Claptrap that spawned an endless army of Claptraps with a few shots from my always helpful turret, a couple grenades, and a tiny pistol that sent shocking bolts of electricity from bot to bot to bot. Credits rolled.

That’s kind of it. It’s mostly one large fetch quest, and then several crawls across the map to fight a boss you already once fought.

The add-on’s biggest re-playability comes in the form of its Achievements, many of which I will not unlock for many, many months. Several are based on collecting special dropped loot from Claptraps, and while there are plenty of chattering robots to shoot, the drop rate of panties, 3D glasses, pizza slices, oil cans, bobbleheads, and fish in bags is amazingly low. Like, staggeringly low. I once spent half an hour and shot up over 50+ Claptraps to only earn a single pair of 3D glasses, and at that point, I had already unlocked It’s so realistic!, the Achievement for getting five 3D glasses. I’ve gone back several times to see if I can inch closer to collecting all these bizarre items, and each time it’s only one or two of the desired loot, more often than not stupid 3D glasses, of which I NEED NO MORE. So that’s annoying.

I guess if there’s anything to be remembered about Claptrap’s New Robot Revolution is that it’s…annoying. Bring it on, Borderlands 2!

The top five greatest things about L.A. Noire

L.A. Noire is not Grand Theft Auto IV set in the 1940s, and for that I’m eternally happy. That’s not what I wanted. I wanted that open-world feel, but more guidance, more direction, and that seems to be the case here, pun intended. A linear game set in an open Los Angeles that, if you want, you can go explore and get lost in and attempt to run citizens over. But you’re a good-natured detective, and a detective like that moves slowly, meticulously, combing crime scenes for clues and interrogating suspects and musing with partners over possible plans of action. Sometimes action takes precendence, with Cole chasing suspects on foot or car, or trying to survive a shootout, or desperately trying to keep his hat on during a fistfight. But it’s the detective work and questioning of suspects and branching paths that make L.A. Noire its own game, and not just Grand Theft Los Angeles.

Oh, and here are five other great things about L.A. Noire:

5. Make a face, any face

This might surprise some to find my praise of the facial animation not number one of this insignificant list of mine, but that’s how I roll. I like the face work, I do. It’s very impressive, especially considering that both Tara and I immediately recognized Greg Grunberg as Hugo Moller just on his face alone. We were like, “Hey, it’s that guy!” And we were right. It was that guy. And we recognized him before he spoke, whereas it is often the opposite that confirms a suspicion about a voice actor in a videogame. And then Hugo began to talk, and it was like I wasn’t even in a videogame anymore, just a show on TV, where a guy was being questioned, and he was answering accordingly, twitching and looking away and furrowing his brow as we all do, and we had judgment calls to make.

4. All that jazz

In the late 1940s, after the horror of World War II, music reflected American enthusiasm tempered with European disillusionment. Jazz and solo singers breaking free from big band ensembles ate up the limelight, and Rockstar took it a step further for L.A. Noire‘s soundtrack, utilizing the remixing skills of some of today’s best DJs to create new versions of the old. Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and Lionel Hampton are re-imagined in spectacular ways. Take a listen, I promise you that the songs are intoxicating and hypnotic. It’s a shame that I don’t drive around more to listen to them, but more on that in a bit.

3. That carrot is not irrelevant

When at a crime scene and searching for clues, Cole can pick up and inspect a number of items, many of which are either red herrings or simply inconsequential to the case. My favorite pick-ups are inside a suspect’s house, where Cole will meander into the kitchen, pick up a carrot, and stare at it for minutes before finally deciding that, yes, it’s most likely not the murder weapon. I’ve also noticed his love for picking up boxes of laundry detergent. Either way, it’s nice that they kept these items in, as it does give the feeling of truly examining a crime scene, no matter how silly they ultimately are. Always examine shoes, too.

2. Baby steps up the stairs

Y’all might think the facial motion capturing work in L.A. Noire is its greatest achievement, but you’d be wrong. Somehow, after seven years of programming and coding and researching, the people at Rockstar and Team Bondi were able to perfectly capture the way people climb stairs. If you don’t hold down the run button, Cole will climb a set of stairs in itty bitty steps, bobbing his head all the way up, like a jogger running in place. It’s hilarious and at the same time instantly recognizable; we’ve all gone up stairs like this at one time or another, placing both feet on each step all the way to the top, and it only helps to nail down immersion and authenticity.

1. You drive, I’m lazy

Most cop-work is done in pairs. Partners are not just a stereotype of the cop genre, but an integral aspect of working the streets and solving crimes. Plus, they can act as a personal chauffeur. At just about any point, you can hold down a button and have your partner drive to the next location. This is wonderful. You still get to listen to the interactive dialogue you’d hear if you yourself drove, but now you can listen without worrying about running into another car or careening off a cliff. If there’s no dialogue to be had, you simply warp to the desired location via a short loading screen. Again, this is wonderful.

One of my biggest gripes with Grand Theft Auto IV is how sadistic the mission structure was, often having you drive across two bridges and many miles to start a mission. Upon death or failure, you’d have to do all that again. It was even hard to stay on track in games like The Saboteur and Red Faction: Guerrilla. Here, in L.A. Noire, arrival at your destination is guaranteed. Occasionally, I do drive, but it’s always messy, and I rear-end a lot of cars, which gets my partner all huffy and puffy. Not needed. Hopefully this is something every open-world game can implement though how is not a quick answer to me. The fact that you are constantly paired up with a second person surely helps.

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Don’t think I’m 100% sweet on the game though. There’s plenty I dislike, and if y’all are good and enjoy this post and share it with Reddit and Kotaku and StumpledUpon and the whole Interworld so that I can get rich and famous fast, then I’ll do a post on the five worst things in L.A. Noire.

Old World Blues DLC for Fallout: New Vegas delayed until July 19, 2011

Notice that I didn’t say “scheduled for release” or “dropping on” or anything official or fun like that. That’s because, when all crime scene components are scrutinized and reviewed, when the coroner is done determining the cause of death, this is actually a delay, not an official release date. See, we were told some months back that a rush of Fallout: New Vegas would be hitting us after the lengthy quiet period from Dead Money until Honest Hearts. That last DLC add-on came out in May on time, and the next two–Old World Blues and Lonesome Road–were lined up to follow in June and July, respectively. Bing, bang, boom–one after the other after the other. As an admitted Fallout junkie, this sounded heavenly to me.

Part of the delay of Old World Blues is to make room for yet another patch to fix further problems in the game. That’s good and all, but now I have to wait until the middle of July or so to explore new content when, all along, I’ve been getting ready for such adventuring since the beginning of June.

Not gonna hide it, but I’m pretty bummed about this. I’m going on vacation next week, and it’s the sort of vacation where one just lounges around, drinking peach-flavored sangria and playing games and enjoying the peace and stillness, the walks to WaWa, the carpet beneath bare feet. I was hoping to purchase this beforehand and then spend some time kicking back in the Big Empty. Guess not. And it looks like Bastion also comes out right when I return from vacation. What a shame. Don’t gaming developers know my schedule and plan accordingly?!

Looks like I should try to save some L.A. Noire for vacation time then. One million bottle caps says that Lonesome Road doesn’t come out in July; more likely in October to help celebrate one year of the most unpolished game ever. I still like it though, but yeah…

Color versus black and white in L.A. Noire

L.A. Noire is defaulted to play in color, which is a bit odd given its namesake and obvious admiration for film noir, low lighting, and unbalanced compositions. You do have the option to switch between playing in color and playing in black, white, and gray, but you can only select this option after starting the game and getting through its first chunk of cutscenes. That’s unfortunate because now you’ve already experienced the game in color, albeit just for a bit, and I guess it’s kind of like making a turkey sandwich, taking a bite, deciding that today isn’t turkey’s day, stripping the sandwich of its meat, and then replacing it with bologna. I mean, why didn’t you just make a bologna sandwich to begin with?

Okay, food analogies aside, after the opening narration and cutscenes, I switched over to black and white via the main menu options just as young, calm detective Cole Phelps and his partner began searching an alleyway for clues about a recent shooting. The change from color to black and white was phenomenal, striking even, especially with both detectives wielding flashlights, casting these sharp, bright cones of white on everything. It made searching for clues a little tougher due to the epic wash of white, but you truly felt like a bit part in a hardboiled police procedure.

And then a little later the game informed me that doors with golden yellow handles are open to Cole while doors without golden yellow handles cannot be opened. Great. In grayscale L.A. Noire, all door handles look exactly the same: a solid gray. There’s no way to tell the difference except to have Cole walk into every single door, making him look like a complete tool eight times out of ten. Strike one against black and white. The second strike came a tiny bit later as I was flipping through the game’s manual and noticed that, during gunfights and skirmishes, loss of health is indicated by the world’s color fading from color to black and white. The more muted it gets, the closer Cole is to his coffin. Perfect. In grayscale L.A. Noire, you can’t tell how much damage you’ve taken because the world around you is already muted and monochrome. The world doesn’t, for instance, revert back to color upon being wounded. It just stays the same. Strike two.

There’s no strike three. Two reasons were enough to convince me to switch back to color, and while it is not as aesthetically pleasing, at least I can be sure that playing the game will be easier. Certainly, I’ve found doors with golden yellow handles much quicker.

The Saboteur did not make a big splash on the gaming scene, but it’s a game that surprised me and took me for a wild ride across Paris; as the Nazis were destroyed and pushed back, color returned to France. It was a neat gimmick, but those early levels of the game where the only color you can see is red were so attractive and haunting. Same kind of goes for Fallout 3, wherein the Lone Wanderer is transported back to a simpler time before the bombs dropped, to Tranquility Lane, a virtual reality simulation housed in Vault 112. Here, the player will have to free his father from the same trap while dealing with a small neighborhood of 1950s-perfect people. Everything is seemingly pulled straight out of Pleasantville. Both games have a lasting impression on me, and both for the same reason: the excellent inclusion of effective noir stylings. It shouldn’t get in the way of gameplay, but it should definitely set a tone, pun intended.

Other than not being able to truly play in black and white and enjoy myself, I’m having a great time in L.A. Noire staring down suspects and searching for clues. As well as letting my partner drive me to and fro. Every open-world game needs chauffeurs. Yup, even you, LEGO City Stories. I just got up to the first case for Homicide called “The Red Lipstick Murder,” and I’m looking forward to solving some more mysteries this weekend. With Tara’s help, too. She’s like my very own personal assistant detective. “She’s lying! Look at her face!”

Stephen Stills and Kim Pine as adorable vigilantes

On a whim, I played a teeny bit of Scott Pilgrim VS. The World: The Game the other day, a game I haven’t touched since I completed it in February. And within a few minutes, after killing maybe ten to fifteen camera-wielding paparazzi goons, I unlocked the following Achievement:

Vigilante (20G): Defeated 1,000 enemies.

Do you know what that means, Grinding Down readers? It means that, for months–for MONTHS–I was just sitting pretty, only a few pummeled punks away from a seemingly impossible Achievement. There’s no in-game tracking system, and while it did feel like Tara and I as Kim Pine and Scott Pilgrim, respectively, killed a ton of dudes, I never imagined that number would’ve climbed high enough to be even an inch close to the big total of 1,000. And Stephen Stills was the one to take us to the edge and over, dropping one heck of an elbow. Truly, it was a magical moment, and I rewarded Stills as any man should be rewarded, with one of everything at the Fancy Chip Wagon.

And then there wasn’t anything else pulling me forward so I turned the game off, squeezing in some Street Fighter IV online fights and Borderlands. The remaining three Achievements in SPVTWTG are very grindy, and considering how much I struggled through the main game on the easiest of difficulties, I doubt I’ll put myself through it again. I think toppling 1,000+ enemies is more than enough for our ragtag bunch.