Coop, Continued

I have spent a little time recently talking about the resurgence of cooperative play as seen in Left 4 Dead. This weekend, my cousin and I have been playing Gears of War 2 in coop, which I have never done before, and have been having a really fun time. In some sense, Gears of War 2 is a much better coop game than most other FPSs in my opinion, with L4D being the notable exception.

As a single player game, I have never been terribly impressed with either of the Gears games. This is not an insult to Epic, but for some reason the series has never really been exciting for me. Personally, I think the guns lack personality (which is saying something when the assault rifle has a freakin' chainsaw on it, see above for a double chainsaw assisted kill). Basically, all of them feel more or less the same. There is the single-shot rifle which I usually use mid/long range, the aforementioned fully-automatic AR/chainsaw creation, a handful of pistols, and some awkward weapons which are always interesting but a little awkward to use effectively (mortar, et al.).

You also have the Gears themselves, who are big, hulking nasty brutes with hearts of gold. Unfortunately, their body armor slows them to the point that controlling them can sometimes be a pain. While the controls are a far, far cry away from the "please kill me now" control experiences of games like Stormrise, some aspect of the movement system has always put me off. It lacks the clean, smooth, responsive movement of Halo 1-3.

But Gears of War 2 is an absolute blast to play coop. It's still no Left 4 Dead, but it's a great experience working with the teammates, reviving them when they fall, and flanking enemies or racing to get a chainsaw kill/bash the head in of the last baddie who is barely clinging to life. The all-too-common forks in the road also work masterfully in the game, allowing you to cover and set up on your best buddy's flank. This is a much more fun coop experience than Halo 3, which for some reason always felt a little watered down and not very tactical, probably as a result of the level design and the respawn system.

The Xbox Live system, of course, really makes the magic happen, as you get about two-thirds the benefit of having your ally right there with you, but don't have to split off any precious screen real estate.

I haven't really gotten into horde mode much yet, but our experience with it has been very positive thusfar, and I'm looking forward to trying it some more in the next few weeks.

-Jon

Schizoid Impressions

Well the weekend is here, and seeing as I am finally getting a chance to stay in the city this weekend, I can try out some new games. However, my cousin, who doesn't play games not named Magic: the Gathering, is also in town, which may dampen my efforts somewhat. Not that that's all a bad thing.

I did talk him into playing the Schizoid XBLA demo with me though. Schizoid is billed as a simple coop game in which a team of two ships, orange and blue, team together to fight hordes of alien monsters. The twist is that unlike other monster slaughtering games, there are no weapons. Ships can merely ram into one another. The orange ship pwns all the orange monsters, but gets pwned by the blue monsters, while the blue ship pwns the blue monsters, but rolls to the orange monsters. Pretty simple stuff.

Anyways, the game has something like 136 levels. We had a pretty good time playing the XBLA demo, but not good enough to make me want to slap down the money for the full game. Schizoid is overall a pretty intense experience, if the last few levels of the demo were any indication. There are tons of mobs all over the place, and it will take some pretty coordinated teamwork, but the game feels a little simpler than it could have been. The power-ups that I played around with were definitely fun, and I wish I could have seen some more. However, I wanted Schizoid to prove to me, beyond a reasonable doubt, that it a great, arcadey, coop experience, and it didn't quite get there.

If I had another dedicated player who wanted to really give this game their all with me, I would probably get it, but given that I don't have anyone living with me that would be willing to make the sacrifice, I suppose Left 4 Dead will have to do for now.

-Jon

Golden Joystick GotY Awards

Well, I started taking my blog seriously a little too late to post during most of the GotY awards earlier this year for 2008, but I can use the Golden Joystick GotY awards as a proxy for those, I suppose. The awards are supposed to be awarded to outstanding games released between May 22, 2008 and May 22, 2009. I say "supposed to" because some of the chronology in here is a little messed up, and some of the games that shouldn't be on the ballot are. Some games that should definitely be in more categories, like Braid, also are suspiciously absent from some categories.

Anyways, I'll go through my ballot (pictured at right) and talk about my decision. I know, in fact, I hope, that some of you vehemently disagree with my position. It is, after all, inevitable, but also fosters creative and enlightening debate. With that said, on to the awards!

Family Game of the Year - Free Realms: This one was one of my easier decisions. While World of Goo was certainly a tempting pick, I couldn't get past how different a game like Free Realms is from the average MMO, and how much potential it has to change our perceptions of MMO games. From beginning to end, it is designed to be a safe and fun place for the entire family. Players of all ages can get into the game, and it is simply a phenomenal game.

Handheld Game of the Year - Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars: I didn't get to play many of the games that were up for this award. While I liked Pokemon Platinum and Chrono Trigger, neither of these titles really added substantially to gaming. Rhythm Heaven was probably an excellent alternate choice, but I didn't have a chance to play the game. However, GTA Chinatown Wars re-examined the original GTA games and reworked them to be much more entertaining, intuitive and exciting. I really enjoyed the time that I spent playing this game.

Mobile Game of the Year - Bejeweled 2: This was definitely the category that I am least familiar with, but Bejeweled has really taken hold in casual gaming and my bosses (for whatever reason) really love it. I am not as big of a fan, but I certainly cannot deny how popular this game is. I didn't feel bad voting for it because there was nothing else that really stood out to me.

Multiplayer Game of the Year - Left 4 Dead: This decision, for me, was a complete layup. No game has defined multiplayer gaming so much this year as Left 4 Dead. A year ago, I would have told you that competitive multiplayer, much as I might not like it, was the preferred choice for the vast majority of gamers. L4D was perhaps the single most important game in the shift towards co-operative play that has occurred in the last year, and has completely changed the way that at least I view multiplayer gaming. While I can't say that most players now prefer co-op play, we've definitely at least moved in that direction. The game is also an absolute blast to play, which always helps for these sorts of things.

Nintendo Game of the Year - Okami: Again, another category that I am unfamiliar with, but this is one where I felt Okami was simply the best option. The second best option on the ballot, if it had been there, would have been Mario Kart Wii, but despite coming out a week or so after Okami, it wasn't. Decision made. Sorry Mario. Awkwardly enough, neither should have been on the ballot. The other game I was thinking of, Wii Fit is MIA. It has certainly sold well enough to be here, and unlike Okami or SMK Wii, released during the correct timeframe. Does GJ really think it isn't a game?

The One to Watch - Diablo III: I'm sure Diablo III in this spot will be one of my more controversial picks, but I am definitely an ARPG kind of guy, and really enjoyed Diablo II and D2X. More than that, the game looks and seems to play great. It is definitely the game that I am most looking forward to, though some upcoming MMO's like Global Agenda, the new Star Wars MMO, and other games are certainly outstanding nominees.

Online/PC Game of the Year - World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King: I picked the World of Warcraft Expansion in this slot due to both its popularity and the quality of the game as delivered. WoW, to me, is clearly the best MMORPG out there, and is certainly deserving of the online award. For the PC, the biggest contenders in my book were WoW, Braid, Fallout 3, L4D, and perhaps Warhammer 40K DoW II and Empire: Total War (they probably aren't, but I am a big fan of both games). WoW was simply a quintessentially PC game that continues to define gaming and online play with every release.

Playstation Game of the Year - Metal Gear Solid 4 Sons of the Patriots: Another category I wish I was more familiar with, but MGS4 seems to be a hot pick for GotY overall and certainly looked outstanding to me. I wish I owned a Playstation, but don't, and this was the only release this year that really made me want to buy one. Positive word of mouth was probably the biggest reason for this selection.

Publisher of the Year - Rockstar Games: This decision was easy because this studio was responsible for not one but two award-winning games this year. Although I found the car controls and framerate issues in GTA IV annoying enough that I didn't really want to give it any general GotY awards, I certainly don't feel justified in denying this award to the fine folks at Rockstar Games.

Retailer of the Year - Valve (Steam): No single retail outlet has had as dramatic an impact on game sales this year as Valve's Steam Client. Steam has brought games back from the dead, spurred game sales, and become a one-stop-shop for all varieties of PC games. In addition some games only work through Steam, making it tough to discount this platform as the most important game deployment and distribution platform since Xbox Live and Apple's online store.

Soundtrack of the Year - Braid & Burnout Paradise: This is not something I'm really concerned with, but Burnout Paradise has a fantastic soundtrack. My first choice for this award was Braid (and I did write in to GJ over it), but I certainly don't feel bad about picking Burnout Paradise here either.

UK Developer of the Year - Criterion: The quickest connections that I made here were Rockstar North to GTA IV and Criterion to Burnout Paradise. There was no Lionhead Studios (Fable II) option. Given that restriction, I simply feel that Burnout Paradise was the better game for me. Although GTA IV certainly has an immersive and well-developed world from beginning to end, great foot controls, and an outstanding story and cast of characters, framerate issues and awkward car handling (am I faulting a game for being too realistic? Yes.) really detracted from my enjoyment of the game. While the storyline and shooting controls were good enough to get me to finish the game (this is a huge compliment, I almost never finish games unless I really enjoy them), I really wished that the car controls and graphics were a little bit more appealing to me. While Burnout Paradise was a huge step forward from Burnout Revenge, I couldn't say the same about the transition from San Andreas (one of the best games I have ever played) to Grand Theft Auto IV. Needless to say, I have a great deal of respect for both of these studios.

The Ultimate Game of the Year - Left 4 Dead: This decision was really tough. I feel like if I had played MGS4 I might have a different pick here. To me, it came down to Left 4 Dead, WotLK, Braid (which wasn't an option, sadly), Burnout Paradise, and Warhammer 40K DoW II (again, a personal favorite that probably shouldn't win). Of these, I simply felt that L4D was the most complete and revolutionary gaming experience here. It was certainly a tough decision.

Xbox Game of the Year (why is this here and not with all of the other system awards?) - Braid: Sorry Call of Duty fans, Braid was simply the best 10 hours of game that I played all year. While it was tough to pick Braid as an overall Game of the Year since it was so short, I certainly didn't feel bad about picking it in a more narrow category.

Whew! That was a long one!

-Jon

Left 4 Dead Player Count Over Time

This ties back into two of my recent posts on Games on Sale and Today Only Left 4 Dead ON SALE. QforQ, a community manager over at GamerDNA, a neat website that tracks your gaming interests, recently released an image that tracked the "engagement level" of L4D's players on GamerDNA.

This image is pretty interesting to me because it shows the magnitude of the impact that a sale, free to play weekend, and/or holidays can have on a game's sales.

I would be hesitant to take this graph at face value, however. I'm not sure how these numbers are calculated, but GamerDNA has certainly been growing fairly rapidly in the last few months, which could have affected these results. In addition I would assume that more people have been linking their Steam accounts to Gamer DNA, which could also be affecting things.

However, the conclusion that I do feel comfortable drawing is that free weekends, new content, and limited-time price reductions on games do significantly drive game sales. I also feel safe saying that I am really looking forward to seeing more of these charts in the future.

Thanks GamerDNA!

-Jon

Defense Grid: The Awakening Review

Defense Grid: The Awakening Review
Innovation: 5/10
Mastery: 9/10
Greatness: 7/10

Tower Defense is a simple game system that is casual-friendly and can be quite advanced when you get down to it. I've been playing Tower Defense games since the Warcraft III days, and they are one of the best time-wasters I know of. Widely available on websites such as Kongregate and Newgrounds, there are literally hundreds of different Tower Defense games out there, which for the most part have their own special game elements to them. Plants vs. Zombies, PopCap's newest game, is an interesting take on the genre. However, if you are looking for the "best of breed" Tower Defense game, look no further than Hidden Path Entertainment's Defense Grid: The Awakening.

I purchased Defense Grid last weekend on Steam for a paltry sum of $5 (It's still on sale for $5, this week only) after its graphics piqued my interest, I read a few reviews, and played through the game's demo on Steam.

Like many other Tower Defense games, in Defense Grid you are given the task of deploying towers along a path to protect an area from an unending assault of mindless mobs. While most TD games allow you to either place towers in predetermined areas out of the mob's path or allow you to create your own path for the mobs within a certain area, Tower Defense features both types of gameplay. You have a variety of towers (10, with three levels each to be precise) with which to inflict punishment on the baddies, and each has its own strategic purpose. Most enemies (particularly as the game goes on) have resistances, immunities, or special aspects that make them resistant to certain damage types.

Defense Grid starts out pretty easy, but ramps up the difficulty significantly by the end of the game. In addition, since you can receive bronze, silver, and gold medals based on your performance in each level, there is a fair amount of replay value for most levels. In addition, you can increase the speed of the game at any time by holding down the F key, which is great for figuring out a level quickly or fast-forwarding through the time between waves. Lastly, the game saves your progress for you in the middle of levels, allowing you to load previously saved progress. This is something that is pretty unique for the genre and definitely a welcome addition if you don't have the time to play through some of the later levels several times over.

Although the balance of the various towers and the monster variety make this game stand out, it is also Defense Grid's cores system that makes this game the best Tower Defense game out there. In most TD games out there, monsters begin on one side of the screen and make their way to the other side. In Defense Grid however, monsters begin at point A, move to the power generator where the cores are stored, pick up cores and either return to point A or advance to another point B. If you kill them while they are returning cores, the cores will slowly waft their way back over to the generator. However, if all of the cores are gone from the generator, mobs will be able to pick up the cores which are making their way back, which significantly increases the pace of the game at some points, and acts as another factor in your building decisions, since it is no longer always best to build at the points along the path that mobs will pass the most en route to their final destination. While this sounds pretty elementary, in the later levels of the game this delivers a true challenge to the game, and significantly increases the intensity and exhilaration that the game provides, while somewhat helping with the game's immersion factor (something lacking in nearly all TD games).

Defense Grid isn't terribly innovative, but completely master's the Tower Defense mini-genre, and is worth the purchase for any fan of Tower Defense games out there. In short, if you are looking for the current definitive Tower Defense experience, look no further than Defense Grid: The Awakening.

-Jon

Twilight Imperium Impressions

News has been a little slow lately, which has been unfortunate because although I've wanted to write up a few more entries, I haven't been seeing interesting enough content worth discussing as of late. I've spent the last week or so playing Left 4 Dead, which I finally spent enough time playing to really get into. I've also been replaying the campaign for Dawn of War II, a game that appeals to me personally and I think has been underrated by the gaming public.

This weekend, I spent the week up at a friend's house near Albany NY. We saw the Star Trek movie in IMAX (which was insane by the way, go and see it now) and geeked out on board games.

We played one game of Power Grid, Puerto Rico and Twilight Imperium 3rd edition each, and several games of Colossal Arena (which is a great game for casual gamers and also great when you only have three or four people. I don't recommend playing it with more than four).

Power Grid and Puerto Rico are two games that we have played before and have really enjoyed. Power Grid in particular is a fantastic game, though our first few game experiences were significantly hampered by one of the worst rulebook layouts I have ever seen.

Twilight Imperium, though is the topic of the post. Twilight is one of those games that tries to be the "game of the ages" and attempts to bite off more than it can chew. The game costs about $80, and the rulebook for this game is intense. The basic jist of the game is that you control a space faring empire that is trying to take over the galaxy. The gameboard is built during each game and can be balanced or very one sided. There is battle, trade, sabotage, exploration, technology, alliances and mission systems which must all be understood by each player, and a lot of book-keeping to go along with the game's relatively slow pace.

It took us about two hours of explaining the rules to the new players (only three of the players knew how to play the game) before we finally felt comfortable starting the game up. We had taken some time beforehand to make sure that all player's starting stacks were somewhat balanced (so one person didn't have too much production, influence, etc). We were also playing with all of the errata for the game (yes, there is a lot of errata in this game), including a custom change for the Imperial action to make it require players to control Mecatol Rex in order to get the 2 Victory Points.

Still, after all that errata, it really wasn't a good play experience. The game becomes bogged down with several of its elements, and many mechanics seem to reward sitting back and hoping that the other players take each other out with you moving in for the kill. We quit about 5 turns into the game simply because noone wanted to make an aggressive move until we got bored enough and had played nearly all of our units.

The biggest problem with the game for me was simply that I got caught between the two "best" players at the table in my estimation. I had a pretty defensive race, which I didn't realize when I picked it but was made abundantly clear as the game went on. At one point I wanted to move on the player to my left, but the best that I could do was attack one of the worlds adjacent to his homeworld, beat up his small fleet there, and get counterattacked by his fleet at the adjacent sector after he had built at his homeworld in the interim.

The whole experience made me realize one thing about game design: design games that encourage people to take risks and PLAY THE GAME. By the time we stopped, no-one could tell who was in a strong position simply because it was so difficult to identify all of the ships in one space, so even evaluating attacks required us to broadcast our intentions to the rest of the group.

I think TI might have worked better in another group that was more risk-taking and perhaps had a better grasp of the rules. Still, it is sometimes fair to judge a game on the merit of a single playthrough, and although I will probably end up trying TI again at some point, I can certainly say that the game would be better off if it was a bit easier to understand and encouraged players to take risks.

-Jon

Game Preview: Ruse (Ubisoft)

I've been spending some time the last few days browsing the internet for games and gaming news (as I am oft want to do) and have come upon this fascinating-looking game coming in 2009 (according to GameSpot anyways, it was announced at GDC in March).

Ruse appears to be a tactical RTS game set in World War II. Needless to say, the graphics engine is fantastic, but the graphical element most appealing to me is their zoom feature, which appears to seamlessly transition from unit-on-unit combat to a master campaign or battleview. The pacing of the game is pretty fast (see a preview of the game action here).

Some of the game mechanics are also very intriguing. The game's namesake mechanic seems to be very interesting indeed, as you can create fake units to deploy or break the enemy's code to see their battle plan. Although I won't profess to be an expert on the game, it seems that there is an Advance Wars sort of balancing system to the game, which is great. I loves me some Advance Wars.

I, for one, will be keeping up with the game as it moves through development.

-Jon

Today Only Left 4 Dead ON SALE

Today only, Valve's hit game, Left for Dead, is on a 40% sale ($23.99). While I have a zombie/horror aversion that keeps me from being a huge fan of this game, I spent a few hours playing it and can say without a doubt that it is the best co-op gaming experience out there right now. If you have a few casual gamer friends, let them know too. This is an outstanding game that everyone should try, at least once. It will likely be on your now playing list for quite some time.

-Jon

Sign Up for the Battlefield Heroes Beta!

So I have not been blogging for about a week now, but there's a pretty good reason for that. I just got into the Battlefield Heroes beta, and have been immensely enjoying that. I won't talk about it too much for fear of breaking my NDA (though the NDA does a terrible job of telling me what I can and can't do).

However, I will tell you that the game is excellent, and since I got the chance to play the game at New York Comic Con, I can at least tell you things which pertain to what I learned at that convention.

Battlefield Heroes is a fairly traditional multiplayer shooter with highly stylized cartoonish graphics a la Team Fortress 2 that is monetized through appearance and exp-boost microtransactions. While you can outfit your character with new weapons and abilities, all of that stuff is free, meaning that the most advantage you can derive from microtransactions is faster leveling.

Gameplay wise, the primary game mode is a Conquest gametype, where each team starts controlling one of four flag points on a map. Each team also starts with a number of reinforcements. When you kill someone, the team loses a number of reinforcement points which varies depending on how many flags you control.

The game is fast and loose with physics, and it's sort of hard to take the game too seriously, which is great. There are several basic weapon categories and vehicles which are difficult to handle initially, but great once you get the hang of it. On top of that, the graphics are great and really sell you on the whole package.

This post feels like a little bit of a cop out since I'm not actually saying anything, but if there's one thing to take away from the post, it's to go to http://www.battlefield-heroes.com/, sign up for the beta, and keep your head up for more information about this fun, casual FPS that almost anyone can get into.

-Jon