Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World: The Game

I realize that watching the Scott Pilgrim movie and then not immediately purchasing the graphic novel makes me a poor excuse for a recently converted fan boy, but when I saw the game on Playstation network I figured I could just do the next best thing.  What’s ten dollars in this day and age anyway?

I’ll tell you what it is- it’s the “Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World: the Game” game!

Now it’s not my hobby to review movies so without getting into that (go see it right now.  Yes, right now! Get out of your chair! Go you fool!) let me just say that SPVtW:tG stands on its own.

This game is a throw-back to the classic arcade side-scrolling beat-‘em-ups of the 90’s. (Meaning SPVtW:tG is a CAS-SB’EU.)  Just like the movie, the game is replete with classic videogame references that will make the gamer in all of us smile warmly, but not in a creepy way.

The gameplay is typical CAS-SB’EU (that’s going to catch on) where you walk to the right and smash in the faces of anyone trying to lower your health, but goes much deeper by including a simplified character building system.  We have all seen it before: end some lives, level up, get cool new ways to end some lives.  Unfortunately, all of the characters seem to get the same moves in the same order, which I thought was a bit lazy when the game’s source material is so ripe with originality, character and the development thereof.

There is also a shop system, which allows Scott and crew to gain stats as they play.  The problem is the shops are few and far between, meaning the only dependable way to buff yourself (eww!) is to replay the end of the first level as nauseam.  The only other problem I had with shopping was that the player could only see what effect the item had on his character after he bought it, meaning until you play through you are shopping blind.

Shopping and generic leveling aside, this game is a masterpiece.  The beat-‘em-up action is fluid and feels fresh after all these years of not having any new titles in the genre.  The co-op play works well too because even with an army of enemies on screen you can see who’s character is whose and continue to dole out the harshness (like Dr. Tran.)

Above all, I am in love with this game’s soundtrack.  It’s that classic 8-bit groove from everyone’s 90’s childhood.  It filled every level and boss fight with Casio funk and really made me miss my NES and SNES (abbreviation quota filled!)

I would recommend buying this game based solely on the soundtrack, but this game is so much more than that.  It’s just fun, and loading with classic, cult-gaming appeal.  Also, despite what one would assume to be repetitive gameplay, it has immensely high replay value and is great to play solo then bring it to a friend’s house and start all over again.

Moreover, I think what makes this game great is the fact that the gameplay is so simple.  A game makes itself great when it falls into the category of “easy to learn, difficult to master.”  This is why games like checkers, chess, tic-tac-toe, and the original Mario bros. are still played day: because they possess a simple design that draws in new players and grows in complexity over the course of the experience.

(I knew that SPVtW:tG had this universality once I got my girlfriend to play it.  She enjoyed it, despite her ability to play games ranking somewhere around “Amish.”)

Return to ModNation

Summer is coming to an end and as promised I have taken another look at ModNation Racer with bright, hopeful puppy dog eyes, praying that the boot of disappointment does not find its path to my puppy dog stomach.  So how disappointed was I to find out nothing had changed at all?  I got puppy dog punted.

Bacon skin, whitey-tighties, and rain boots. Dressed for success.

Upon re-entering the world of ModNation I once again found myself loading, after which I could begin playing.  So I loaded up my favorite mod (a mentally handicapped child with bacon for skin.  I Call him Bryan the Baconstein) and I decided to play some tracks.  The XP scene was right where I had left it: players racing on the story-mode tracks for arbitrary level-ups.  It was clichéd, but still serves as the only fair means of multiplayer.  I know because I jumped back into the lion’s den that was the player-made tracks and I really wish I hadn’t.

Still, I don’t want to leave you, my esteemed reader, with nothing but a pat on the head and the assurance that everything is the same as it ever was.  I took the time to reexamine my experience and I give you this: here are the two rules that govern ModNation Racer’s player-made tracks.

Firstly, the host is going to win.  This should be obvious. He made the track, after all, so he knows the trick to it (and there is ALWAYS a trick.  It could be shortcuts, or stashes of weapon pods, or that he made the track as short as possible and covered it with boosts so if you don’t get a good start you automatically lose).  This rule means that whenever you play player-made tracks you are always battling for second, or even third if the host has a friend playing split screen.   Also, you will usually spend these races blowing up or falling off of the course, meaning you have to respawn constantly.  Luckily for me this ties neatly into rule number two:

Blue shell syndrome, the bane of experienced racing gamers.  For those of you who have never played Mario kart I ask you to close your eyes (if you realized that you cannot close your eyes and continue reading then you may now laugh at everyone who now has their eyes closed) and imagine you are racing.  You are doing very well.  Your driving has been top notch the entire race, and you have not hit a wall or even veered into the grass.  You left your opponents behind during lap one and have not heard heads or tails of them since.  You are the god of this track.  Then, as you clear the final turn, as victory lays before you in splendid glory, WHAM!  Someone had been hording a homing weapon and decided that the end of the race is the only time to fire it.  So you explode, and five people fly from behind you and cross the finish line as you slowly begin to accelerate again.  At least in Mario Kart the blue shell only attacked the leader.  In ModNation Racer the level 3 weapon hits everyone in front of whoever launched it.

If I had critics, this is where they would say you can just stop it with your shield.  Unfortunately, this is only true if three things happen.  First, you need boost to operate your shield, and you need more boost then you would think.  Second you have to time it right.  The shield takes a second to kick on, and after it’s on you have to hold the button down until the weapon hits.  This drains boost over time (that’s why you need a lot).  Finally, you have to pray the game doesn’t glitch and let the weapon hit you anyway.  This happened to me at least a half dozen times, and usually I had the entire boost meter filled.

But enough rage, I want to end this review on a positive note.  Those of you still racing in the ModNation, I offer you this advice as a means of winning on the player-made tracks.  If you are on a track with any segment of unpaved road, press select to blow your own car up and respawn.  You will respawn on the next patch of paved road on the track.  This is called the reset glitch and I think it is only fair that everyone know it.

Now remember kids: Blue shells end friendships.

Transformers: War for Cybertron

I don’t think I need to mention just how late this review is.  War for Cybertron has been out for more than a month and here I am finally getting a post out.  Luckily I have a good excuse: Starcraft 2 now owns my soul and most of my physical body.  I am a slave to the machine, so if any of you care to join me in my Starcraft escapades then my character name is Fuzzypuddles and my code is 825.

But were here for PS3 games…

A friend of mine saw the art and thought this was a Gundam game. True story.

This latest cash-in to the Transformers franchise should come as a boon for hardcore fans.  This game is all about the experience of being at the start of the war.  Really this game acts as a prequel to every Transformers franchise ever created, and if you’re a fan then you will fall in love with this game.  To all of you who like to only skim my posts, you can stop reading now.

For those of you with tact: This game works well as an immersive experience that allows the fans to live out their best Transformers fantasies.  The first thing a player notices is that the world is alive.  The planet, the characters, and every aspect of the game is constantly moving and re-arranging itself (transforming. Who’d a thought?) creating environments that feel like even the planet itself had a higher machine intelligence.  I have to admit that the game could use more color, though.  Sure everything is moving, but most of it is either gunmetal grey or depression purple.  In fact, all of the Decepticons are exactly the same colors, too.

Still that’s a fairly minor flaw.  If you want a big flaw then we need to talk about gameplay.  I have always been skeptical when picking up a third-person shooter.  It seems to me that that genre just gets a lot wrong in terms of game design.  In this case the problem is that War for Cybertron can’t seem to decide whether it wants to be Gears of War or Bad Company 2.  All of the campaign sequences are littered with “hold them off” areas, when you’re stuck in a room with waves of baddies coming at you.  This would be fine if you could A) kill enemies quickly, or B) properly take cover, but the game allows for neither.  For example, the game wants you to take cover when you defend yourself, only you can’t

because your character is off to the side of the screen and you cannot properly tell how much of you is concealed.  Gears of war fixed this problem by creating a “Velcro button” that sticks you to a piece of cover and assures you that you’re safe from at least one angle.  War for Cybertron lacks such a function, as well as anything that passes as decent cover, so instead the player spends his gunfights weaving frantically back and forth between a wall and shooting, hoping to not be flanked, and praying that your frantic shots are reducing the obnoxiously long enemy health bars.  As a rule, any shooter game with health bars is going to get aggravating.  That’s just the reality of shooting things.  After all, what’s the use of a gun that takes 4 seconds to kill someone?  Well War for Cybertron slaps health bars on everything, and if you thought it dragged out the campaign, you should try the multiplayer.

Now the multiplayer has a lot of good points.  Being able to create and build your own transformer is very exciting, especially for fans, even if you are restricted to pre-made looks and colors (again Decepticons can only be grey and purple).  Leveling up your Transformer is an RPG-esque experience and it kept me playing after I had beaten the campaign, but leveling takes so long and the abilities are so far apart that I began to feel bogged down and lost interest.  The game’s unintuitive player matching system didn’t help either.  How is it fair for me to play opponents 20 levels higher than me?  That’s one hell of a learning curve.

I think this game’s biggest flaw is the era it was released in.  We gamers live in a world where Modern Warfare 2 has completely defined the shooting genre, and I have to admit that everything I did in War for Cybertron’s multiplayer I was comparing to MW2.  So maybe the genre is dead and anything involving guns will now be passé.  I think this is a good thing.  It shows that the age of shooters is finally over, capped by MW2, and developers can start making other games.  Personally, I think we could use some more puzzle games.

Prince of Perisa: The Forgotten Sands

I love the giant orange "16" because it looks gaudy and distracts from the artwork.

I just recently finished playing Prince of Persia: the Forgotten Sands, and it got me thinking about some things.  See, I fancy myself an amateur philosopher, and there are a lot of areas in gaming where some contemplative thought can have its advantages.  I do not simply mean this as a player, we have to face the facts and admit that not all games are especially thought-provoking.  Instead, my message today is for the game designers of the world and how their games are interpreted by players.

That brings me to Prince of Persia: TFS.  If you, my readers, (all 11 of you, Hi Mom!) are as internet savvy as, say, a tree, then you have heard about Yahtzee and his game review webisodes. (Zero Punctuation, google it.)  Yahtzee has coined the term, “leap of Faith Gameplay” to describe platformers wherein the player must leap for platforms that are off screen.  Poorly designed games use these jumps far too often (Yahtzee likes to use Tomb Raider as an example.)  Of course, these jumps cause the gameplay to land on a spectrum somewhere between “hilarious” and “frustrating,” and after a while “fills player with murderous intent.”  Now, Prince of Persia had its share of leaps of faith, but what amazed me is that I was never taken off guard.  The game’s design stands up so well that even when I could not see the wall, pole, or platform I was supposed to land on, I knew it was there.  A bond of trust was soon formed between myself and the game which caused the speedy platforming to never break flow.  It’s something a player might remember from the original Sonic the Hedgehog games, a flow and trust that the modern sequels and knockoffs severely lack.

The bond of trust had one more nice effect.  Whenever the game presented me with a particularly frustrating area, such as a seemingly impossible jump or a puzzle sequence I could not find the beginning of, I was not overwhelmed.  Something deep in my gut told me that there was a solution to this problem and the game had somehow supplied it.

Therein lays the pinnacle of game design: designers have to WANT players to beat their games.  It sounds obvious saying it out loud, but from a player’s perspective this idea is vital.  Completion is the ultimate goal and it’s the reason basic concepts such as level design and difficulty curves matter in a game’s creation.  It’s the reason your level 1 knight doesn’t walk into a room full of level 86 ancient red dragons, because such an experience would be so frustrating that that player would send that game back to his local Gamestop before his mom could ask him where he’s going (and if he’ll be back in time for supper.)

This concludes the philosophy section, now back to the game.

So as I said, the platforming is fantastic.  The game even included an interesting innovation where the Prince could use water as solid objects and thus platforming tools.  This was interesting but it did leave questions about some of the ridiculous water placement in the desert palace.  By the end of the game it was obvious that the platforming had been set up with only the idea of difficulty in mind, and though the levels flowed smoothly, it made me stop and consider who would have built this palace apart from the game designers?  The immersion was broken, especially in consideration to the previous games which made the platforms appear to have been carved out of wreckage and the Prince was just agile enough to use the aftermath as a mode of travel.

The other differences from past titles are just as jarring.  First off, there is no dagger of time.  It is not mentioned or used anywhere in the game, and even the concept of time travel seems to baffle the Prince as it re-enters his life like a zombified spouse.  Yet the omission that bugged me the most was the elimination of dual-wielding.  Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones had fun and intricate combat that used dual-wielding, stealth kills, and even segments where the Prince went Dr. Jekyll and destroyed baddies with a blade-whip.  Comparatively, Forgotten Sands has one sword held in only one hand for the entire game, and instead of finding a use for that empty off hand the game throws in a leveling system, full of spells that don’t really do anything and aren’t explained.  Since when can the prince control elemental magic, and why does the Prince need the ability to leave fire where he walks when he is most dangerous flipping around, ripping out innards like a spetsnaz?

Even if you avoid the spells, (you won’t miss much) the combat moves at a dragging pace.  Both the prince and the sand army use long wind-ups before every attack, and the combat becomes blatantly frustrating as everything you do involves a long pause.  Not to mention the hordes of sand army zombies don’t pose a threat as each one can be stun locked or killed before they have a chance to bring their arm down.

The series as a whole is still a testament to the joy of a good platforming game, but Forgotten Sands’ combat is like the tails end of a coin.  All the flow and speed of jumping and climbing are instantly killed when the game lands you in a room full of the same zombie one hundred times over and all you can do is slowly carve away at all of them.  For future Prince games, Ubisoft needs to start trying again, to build on the beautiful platform design the made the series great, and to bring back the superior combat systems of the previous titles.  And when I say previous titles, I don’t mean that cell-shaded spin-off.  Instead, consider the possibility that what may have brought down Forgotten Sands is the idea that the previous game may have been fresh in the developers’ minds.

ModNation Racers

In a way, I think I chose poorly in terms of which game to review first, because ModNation Racers’ online community was still incomplete when I played through in the first week of its release. What a disappointment too, because I really wanted to know what this game could do.  As soon as I heard there was a game with simple dynamics where the player could create everything short of the physics, I saw potential. I saw the future, and it propelled me to explore every aspect of this game like an over-enthusiastic gynecologist.  If only my subject had not been too young for proper examination.

Now what is this mind-blowing catastrophe I am describing? Why, it’s nothing short of the player-made content.  The intense tracks, interesting characters, and badass karts simply are not there yet.  Most of what the player sees feels “samey.”  For example, the most popular Mods for the entire time I played the game were replicas of Mario, Ironman, and Spiderman, and the most popular Karts were a model of an actual car, an uninteresting van, and the Mystery Machine.  No originality, and nothing really sticks out as fantastic.

(note: I would have downloaded the mystery machine, but the “van” kart body is DLC.  DLC created at the launch of the game.  Call me old fashioned but I really think one could show customer loyalty by just adding that content to the game in the first place, not trying to grub as much as possible like the homeless person who lives outside my house.  I call him Toothless Tommy.)

Player-made tracks are even worse.  Those come in about three flavors.  First are the overachiever  tracks, made by the guys who want get all the trophies as fast as possible, presumably so they can get back to sulking and reminding themselves what loneliness feels like.  These tracks are boring, with a strict focus on being able to get every trophy in one run with as little effort as possible.  You know who you are, and I hope you feel like you accomplished something.

The second kind of track is just a series of massive spirals, forcing the player to spend the whole race drifting.  This was fun at first, but these tracks are so focused on drifting that the weapons, boosting, and other fun things in the game have to be ignored.  I have no idea why the top track for the entire time I played was basically a parking garage ramp.

The last kind of track is the unplayable track.  These are the ones made by trolls who just want to see people fail.  Those races are spent running into walls, falling off the track, and being blinded by giant chickens, and let me tell you that once you have been blinded by a giant chicken you are never quite the same again.  Basically, these tracks are like Rainbow road, but in Hell.

And yet, I think this game can sort itself out, if given time.  Sure, right now there is no Da Vinci of the ModNation, but as I said before the game is still young.  I would bet the innovation is still in the mail.  What gives me hope is the game’s solid base.  It has simple and fair racing mechanics, something similar to Mario Kart with an even simpler combat system.  I think given a balanced and interesting track set this game could truly start to take off, and that means none of my above complaints were damning.

So what is the truly damning flaw of ModNation Racers?  The correct answer is ‘waiting.’  Waiting for a room to fill takes a ridiculously long time, especially if you try to play an XP match which allows your character to level up.  Many players avoid the XP matches because leveling is arbitrary, as far as I could tell, and XP matches do not take place on player-made tracks but rather on the story mode tracks.

(note: In a game based on player created content, does that seem hypocritical to anyone else?  Ironically, making the players race the story tracks for experience points is a totally justified decision when compared to the disasters that are the player-made tracks.)

So now that you have finished waiting, what next?  Now you are loading, and this game loads like its legs are broken.  The loading takes so long in this game I would often take the opportunity to check my facebook, or clip my toenails, or file my taxes.  I realize that PS3 games are technological marvels, but this was simply ridiculous.  A player should not have to find something to do while he is playing a game.  If I were to use math to explain how bad this is, (and I will, too) I would calculate that between the wait time and the loading time, a player is not playing the game for about ten minutes before he finds himself racing again.  Now, on a long track, a race could last five minutes.  This means you are only actually playing the game a third of the time.  (Disclaimer: all mathematics are a rough estimate.)

But Wait!

Ridiculous load times only pertain to the online mode.  The game’s story campaign gives you race after race against a full bracket of computer opponents.  There are also challenges to complete and tokens to collect, all for the sake of unlocking more pieces you can use to customize mods, karts, and tracks.  Of course, to collect everything you have to replay some races ad nauseam, and even then you might not get what you want.  Some of the challenges felt downright impossible, or required huge amounts of chance.  As a rule of thumb, I stopped replaying a track after a dozen attempts.  After all, I had a game to review, and I wanted to hear more of the commentators.  The game’s two race commentators, Biff Tradwell and Gary Reasons, are the source of most of the game’s humor during the numerous cut scenes, and listening to Biff tear into Gary is one of the best parts of the whole game.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that they were genuinely funny to my adult tastes in a game that seemed so set on marketing to children.

So, to sum it all up, ModNation Racers seems to be less than spectacular, and normally I would say this means the consumer should avoid it, but I cannot say that and mean it this time.  Actually, I would suggest buying this game, then getting your friends to buy it, then getting some more people to buy it it, because I want to know what this game could be with a full community and with some real creative geniuses at the helm of the track creator.  In fact, I want to check up on this game in the future, after the culture develops, and write a follow-up review.  Until then, I say give this game a try, because the potential for something great is obviously there, I just do not know what it is yet.

Game Review Mission Statement

Videogames are becoming ever more a hardcore, expensive investment.  Consoles have evolved from simple devices to computers, and games are constantly increasing in complexity and price.  Not everyone is rich, and no one can afford to waste money on an aggravating game.  Gaming also takes up an extensive amount of time, with even short games takes a minimum of ten hours on average, and rising in multiplayer rankings can take hundreds of hours.  I believe it is the mission of the critic to separate the worthwhile plays and the wastes of time and money, and this is accomplished via competent and objective reviews.

Because this is a blog, I will be able to post reviews in a timely manner.  I hope to post reviews just a few days after a game releases so the consumer (you) can make a decision about buying a game without wasting any of your time.