02 Jun

Who’s Afraid of Gordon Freeman?

I’ve spent the past month trying to convince myself to play more of a game that will be 16 years old in a few months, but in the end, a little over an hour of Half-Life: Opposing Force was all I could muster. It’s not that Opposing Force is a bad game. It’s just that I didn’t want to keep playing it.

Dead guysSince I’ve summarily pushed nostalgia onto the ground, let’s give it a few kicks for good measure. I played some of Half-Life and found it decent, though, like so many games, I never finished it. I also found it more than a bit tedious. Read More

05 May

Learning to Fly

Well, I certainly didn’t intend to take a month-long break, but now that I’ve gone and done it, I suppose there’s nothing to be done but to forge onward. And what better way to do so than with first-person grappling game A Story About My Uncle? ASAMU was primarily on  my radar because it’s published by Coffee Stain Studios, the company behind the decent action-tower-defense games Sanctum and Sanctum 2, but more importantly the developers of the sublime Goat Simulator.

ASAMU is a game that is entirely based on movement and momentum. It’s a game where you fly through the air with a mysterious crystal-powered energy-grapple that emerges from your gloves and attempt to land on various rocks, platforms, and other bits of terrain. It’s a game where you repeatedly fall to your demise and try again. It’s a game where, ostensibly, there is a story about an uncle. Read More

09 Apr

I’m From the Bureau

I feel bad for The Bureau: XCOM Declassified. It’s like the poor middle child, born with the XCOM name but not given the responsibility of the eldest son (the well-respected though absolutely confusing old-school X-COM: UFO Defense) nor spoiled rotten as the critical darling who’s just so like his older brother, isn’t that darling XCOM: Enemy Unknown. No, not only does The Bureau have the misfortune of being in a family with those two, but in this tortured metaphor, I’d go so far as to say that The Bureau is their sister: the single outnumbered girl constantly being told how great her brothers are.

Go Eagles!And here’s the thing – it’s a prestigious family. It’s hard to stand out when your older brother is considered one of the greatest original tactical games ever invented and your younger brother is considered one of the greatest modern tactical games ever invented and you’re a game that has shooty gun bits. How good can an XCOM shooter be, anyway? Is The Bureau a modern-day X-COM: Enforcer? Read More

25 Mar

Over the Line

I’m not a big fan of multiplayer shooters. I tend to spend most of my time either crawling through vegetation looking for a point of interest, or staring at the stats of the person who has just killed me and wondering what I could have done differently. It’s mainly a sad, contemplative experience, and it’s an experience I can easily attain by booting up various Battlefields, Halos, or Call of Duties that I own across multiple platforms. When I cracked the plastic wrap on Battlefield: Hardline, I resigned myself to another go on this melancholy merry-go-round.

Cop StuffI had heard only bits and pieces of the marketing for Hardline, but one of the things I’d heard was that they were going to deliver on a strong story for the single-player experience. I’ll admit that I scoffed. I’ve played my fair share of shooters, all of which have either complex stories based on a lore that I’ll never understand or essentially boil down to killing the right mans with a side of “isn’t war terrible” thrown in. While I’ve been impressed with level design and certain environmental moments that shooters have been able to present, the actual story, plot, and characters have always felt a bit amateur hour to me. Would Hardline be any different? Could it? Read More

18 Mar

I Built This City

It seems odd to talk about a game that was actually released recently, because this blog isn’t supposed to be a collection of reviews. I’m not a game journalist; I’m a designer, and each entry is simply a short rambling of my thoughts on how a particular game works or doesn’t work for me. I also try – often poorly – to pinpoint any designs in the game that I feel are particularly strong or weak. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk a bit about Cities: Skylines.

Cities: SkylinesWait, wait, I’m actually not done with disclaimers. Before we actually dive into Skylines, I want to talk a bit about my relationship with SimCity, because I think it’s important. I’m not what you would call an “avid” SimCity player. Back in the day, when SimCity was a fresh new piece of intellectual property, I found the game and simulation to be hard and unforgiving. I would immediately spend all my money trying to build a city only to find out I was bankrupt and had to sit and wait for a few months to go by to get enough in the budget to build another power plant or police station or school. I was frustrated that the game let me believe I could run free with my city-building imagination only to smack me down with gameplay incentives to take it slow. Read More

10 Mar

A Mighty Pirate

Let’s go back in time a bit. Let’s walk down memory lane, hand in hand with Telltale Games, to a time when they made point-and-click adventure games for the adventure game crowd. Before the Walking Dead became a storytelling hit that would forever seed the path of all their future games, before every game that came out of that studio was a fictional tour de force with heart-wrenching player choices with little of the adventure game puzzle-solving that their early work was known for.

A SwordfightPerhaps it was fate that I rolled Chapter 2 of Tales of Monkey Island (The Siege of Spinner Cay). I had finished Chapter 1 eons ago and enjoyed it, but had never ventured further down the Tales of Monkey Island path. Other shiny baubles had distracted me and I had never come back. So when Guybrush Threepwood’s exaggerated features and shiny face peered out at me once more, I was curious what I’d find when I returned to this past life, both for me and Telltale Games. Read More

03 Mar

I Got 99 Spirits

A clarifying point, to start: I didn’t actually roll 99 Spirits. I rolled Tsukumogami, the original Japanese version of 99 Spirits. As the two games are very similar if not identical – other than language – I decided to play a game in which I could understand the story and instructions. And a good thing too!

Exposition!

Because wouldn’t you know it, one of the main mechanics of 99 Spirits is guessing words and had I been playing in the original Japanese, I would have done quite poorly indeed. What an odd creature 99 Spirits is. If you were to ask me who should play 99 Spirits, I’d be flummoxed. Let’s see if I can arrive at a good answer before I call it a night. Read More

24 Feb

Sure Plays a Mean Pinball

I likes me some pinball. It’s why I have a good dozen tables in Zen Pinball 2, a copy of Pinball Hall of Fame for my 360 (in case I want another go at a virtual Medieval Madness, a table that was in my college cafeteria), fond memories of my visits to the Pacific Pinball Museum, and a copy of Odama – the Gamecube pinball war game that required voice commands – tucked away somewhere.

BackstorySo it was with a bit of trepidation and a good deal of excitement that I loaded up Rollers of the Realm, a pinball adventure RPG game. While my favorite Zen Pinball tables include a good deal of technical wizardry and more than a few mini-games that are impossible to recreate on physical tables, I hadn’t played an actual pinball hybrid game since Odama. How pinball is Rollers of the Realm? How RPG is it? How fun is it? Read More

15 Feb

Defenders of Gallia

Valkyria Chronicles was one of the first games I played on my PS3. I borrowed it from a friend for several years, never beat it, and eventually returned it to him when he wanted to play the DLC. When I saw that the game had been recently ported to PC (all DLC included), I couldn’t help myself and bought it, fully intending to play it once more and make it all the way through.

Alicia and WelkinI gave myself two weeks to play Valkyria Chronicles, intending to make it further than I had gotten before and toyed with giving it two full entries, because I knew going into it that I would love this game. But, life got in the way. Work has been grueling and one of our cats passed away quite suddenly. It’s been a draining few weeks, but for a few moments here and there, I’ve managed to sneak off into the woods of Gallia and spend some time with Welkin Gunther and Squad 7, and boy is this game wonderful. Read More

29 Jan

Sums and Guns

If you had asked me a week ago what a game named Super Killer Hornet: Resurrection might be about, I would have cast about for a while in my imagination before settling on a sequel (or remake) of a game called Super Killer Hornet, which of course was an arcade hit about a hornet that flew around picnic areas stinging people to death. Something to cash in on the whole Descent/TIE Fighter craze (movement in 3 axes!) but appealing to the Japanese demographic of wanting to play as an insect.

Title ScreenIt turns out I wasn’t entirely wrong. It is the follow-up to a game called Super Killer Hornet and there’s kanji on the title screen. However, instead of a literal hornet, you play a metaphorical hornet and a literal spaceship shooting aliens. It’s a shmup! A shoot-em-up! A bullet hell! Is it also a hell-of-a-game (as in attaboy) or a hell-of-a-game (as in Hades)? Let’s find out. Read More