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Archive of "XBox360" Category
If You Had a Portal Gun
Where would you go? This awesome question was posed on the forums yesterday, and I’m still mulling it over.
On the attainable but perhaps not dreaming big end of the spectrum, a couch-to-refrigerator portal is a humble but convenient addition to life. Conversely, all sorts of portals to the bedrooms of unattainable lady figures were also suggested, and I don’t think would work out very well – or for very long (if we assume the following):
- The portals are not limited by geographic distance
- The portals must, however, be placed in areas you can aim at/have access to at least once
- The portals can be seen by everyone, and so should be in a place reasonable to have a portal
- Other people may want to use your portalWith those in mind, I think a portal from my residence (the office, perhaps?) to my brother’s on Oahu is the best option, which was really an extension of Smokey’s idea that he could eliminate his commute to work. It seems that old people like us really want to get rid of the hassle of travel, while the younger types are content to dream of cinnamon buns and locker rooms. None of us get to attain these portal dreams, but I know which of us is going to be more annoyed by our next Delta flight.
This Gun Makes Holes
Had Portal 2 for lunch today, and Stephen Merchant as Wheatley is fantastic. It’s like listening to an episode of The Ricky Gervais Show, if it was The Stephen Merchant Show, and the show was about an independent personality core. Wheatley’s dialog makes for a very compelling opening sequence, and I look forward to bumping into him at every opportunity.
Only having completed through Chapter 3 (and no co-op played yet), Portal 2 is more engaging than Portal – or maybe it’s more likable. Yep, I just plain like it more.
Picked it up for PS3, what with the Steam integration and all, but this presented a very snarly snag in the general proceedings of our home. Game time usually goes something like Adam plays a game on console, I pick up the laptop and fire up Civ (vice versa, fill in game [here]), but with Steam getting all up in the PS3 it prevented me logging into the Steam account. Logging out of PSN while he played solved the problem, and it was another reminder of not only the weird difficulties that crop up as a gaming couple, but that our original notions of cavorting in co-op are not going to work out.
N4G’s Gears 3 Beta Code Giveaway
If you’re interested in getting into the Gears 3 Beta, I’ve got a post over on N4G you’ll want to check out today. Don’t worry, I went easy on you guys.
G4′s Skyrim Todd Howard Interview
Also culled from the net today, this video of Sessler talking Skyrim with executive director Todd Howard:
Dragon Age 2 Codex Entry
There’s a truth to ZeroPunctuation reviews that can’t be argued with. Sure, the schtick is one-hundred percent snarky, but everything he says about a game is true – all that’s left afterwards is the hull of a generally eviscerated game that you either dismiss, or persist in liking despite its (stick figure animated) flaws.
Dragon Age 2 is more or less like that. It is a cash in, the assets are recycled in such a way that early on in the game it’s downright confusing that so darn much is happening in the same cave (the same cave with access points all over the place), the graphics are improved but not beautiful, character models are rote, and the combat is either mind-numbingly mash-friendly or hair-tearingly nigh impossible. All these things could make up a tidy portion of a “con” list, but there’s more to it than that.
Dragon Age 2 is not a western RPG so much as it is a story driven action game with tactical combat – no matter what you choose, things are going to go very badly at the end. The character dialog in the game is one of the strongest achievements of the title, but the larger story that these contribute to is a lesson in “there are no good decisions”. Lacking the subtlety of shades of grey, this particular story works out more to whether you were Diplomatic or Aggressive on your path to the predestined horrible conclusion. Couple that with the heavy-handed Mage propaganda, and it becomes clear that in Dragon Age 2 the writers have given you a “wrong choice” and a “right choice”. Trouble is, I completely disagree with their “right choice”.
Throughout the game you’re savagely conscience raped by Mages and their woes. You can’t go on a quest without bumping into some wronged mage or other, or having to help them work out their latent Circle issues. Players get it, the Circle and the Templars often get into a serious abuse of power situation while on their protect the populace from the mages crusade – all while the mages cry, whimper, moan and manifesto the heck out of the idea that people don’t need to be protected from them.
Except that they do.
Because every stinking dissatisfied mage you come across (with the exception of that fellow in the Hanged Man too stupid to hope for more than a few minutes alcohol-infused air and a bar wench) is really into using Blood Magic and killing things. Worthy cause-wise, it’s difficult to make a positive impression when you’re murdering people, their friends, families and dogs, and playing host to Abominations. In spite of all this rampant senseless murder it’s clear at the end of the story that cracking down on mages is not the “right choice”, no matter how many deeply personal wrongs you’ve been made to suffer on this doomed log flume ride. No matter, Mage Hunter is the save worth keeping.
Interview with Runic Games
Erich Schaefer, Brock Jones, and Wonder Russell answer my questions about Torchlight for 360 (achievements!), Torchlight 2 (new pet!), and what to do with PC gaming doomsayers.
DA 2 Skill Trees
N4G Moderator Columbo and I may or may not be a bad influence on each other when it comes to DA 2. There will definitely be support groups in the future. He passed this along today, pretty extensive DA 2 skill tree info.
Dragon Age II Achievements
Came across this list of Achievements* for Dragon Age II this morning (thanks, Columbo!). There aren’t any spoilers included, unless you’re really trying to avoid anything and everything about the game.
A couple interesting ones:
- Enchanter and Master Craftsman reference enchanting and crafting, didn’t realize those were in the game (and hope they’re more tempting than the largely unused trap-making?)
- Epic: complete Dragon Age II twice or once with an imported save of Origins.
- A Friend in Need: Upgrade the Armor of one of your party members. So, is there a fixed set of armor to a party member that cannot be changed, or sets that you can swap and upgrade? Wording makes it sound a bit like the former.
And, of course, 5 “secret” Achievements.
*And assuming the list is the same for Trophies!
Win Xbox 360 DLC Codes: Billy Joel 12 Pack
If you couldn’t gather from the title, the awesome folks at Harmonix have given N4G some Billy Joel 12 Pack DLC codes (Xbox 360)!
Win Xbox 360 DLC Codes: Bon Jovi 12 Pack
If you couldn’t gather from the title, the awesome folks at Harmonix have given N4G some Bon Jovi 12 Pack DLC codes (Xbox 360)!
Leave them wanting more
That’s my best guess as to why I keep playing Fable games, the phenomenon that leaves you with a frustrated ache for more – because Fable 3 is heavy on frustration.
If you get me going, I could gripe for an age about things I think Fable III (and II, and the first…) gets wrong (re-appropriating “Start” to your inventory system), does badly (the inventory system) and leaves out (customisation), and it would only be the tip of a very gripe-y iceberg. Ultimately, though, I keep playing. Through the mediocre graphics, the frustratingly stupid sparkly trail of idiocy, the tedious quests and character interactions, and the predictably moralistic and heavy-handed storyline, I play on.
I’m left with this conclusion: Evil genius.
BRINK – Hands-on at PAX
Going into the BRINK demo at PAX I can’t say I entertained more than an idle curiosity in the game. I didn’t even know much about it, really, and this was the first time I got to dive into actual gameplay. The demo opened with an intro video covering the four different classes and weapons, and gave a glimpse at the character customization – I lamented that I couldn’t wear a beret on top of my gas mask, but when it comes to accessorizing Brink is serious business. When it comes to gameplay, well then it’s just serious fun.
Sharing a lot with other squad-based shooters, classes and teamwork are key to success in the game. You can swap between each of the four classes (soldier, operative, engineer and medic) at a console station in the game environment, making the most of their unique abilities. It’s dead easy to change your class, and since everyone was trying out different things at the demo it was funny to look and see that once when I was injured there were six medics en route. If you’re thinking “Team Fortress 2” that’s OK, just add in additional customization and and a dash of darkness.
Character customisation is pretty detailed for a bunch of dudes, and that customised character will be playable in your game as well as your friend’s with a persistent leveling system. Since there are different classes and RPG elements in play here BRINK allows you to create and save multiple characters. Choosing and modding your weapon is also a big part of BRINK, though I didn’t spend too much time with the character customisation and even less with the weapons since we were all itching for a fight. Given the volume of assault rifles and SMGs I’m thinking there was a lot of nuance there.
After choosing what looked like a good catch-all assault rifle I spawned as a medic, and got shot. OK, some stuff happened in between, like me figuring out that I could bolster the health of an ally and successfully dispensing at least one syringe to a fallen teammate, but then I pretty much got shot. As a medic, however, this wasn’t quite as much of an obstacle to progress since I was soon able to stab myself with one of those healing juice syringes and hop back up. Leveling as a medic was pretty easy as points are awarded for actions like healing teammates, which you can do from a short distance with little downtime by chucking those aforementioned syringes at them while they lie writhing on the ground. There is a cost: if you heal an ally then get taken down, you won’t be able to immediately heal yourself and will likely have to wait for the next respawn, which is the primary choice for non-medic classes.
The weapons you wield are more dependent upon the character you develop than the class, though three of those four classes should plan on firing less than the average soldier. All classes can feel free to target enemies if they choose, they just won’t be rewarded for it like the soldier and the leader boards will likely surprise those that prefer to run and gun regardless of class, as score is determined by more than just KD ratio. An engineer, for example, is rewarded for buffing weapons and completing objectives like repairing the robot and an operatives for disguising as a downed enemy or interrogating them for intel.
There are two factions at war on Ark, one of those last bastions of humanity sort of places. When tasked with a mission it is comprised of smaller objectives that you can take on, like escort missions, or rescuing a fallen team member, and you can change those objectives at the same in-game station where you swap classes. The mission is timed, with extensions granted as you progress. At first there’s a temptation to just run out there and get tangled up in a firefight, and folks from the Splash Damage team were on hand to guide our focus when we played like naughty school children that just want to eat the paste. I set up a turret or two as the engineer, and otherwise I was trying to do things like buff weapons and get a robot tank working so the team could progress. After repairing the bot once and watching it crawl all of ten feet before being halted again by damage from enemy fire I realized what a united effort this needed to be.
A touted feature of Brink is SMART (Smooth Movement Across Random Terrain), a sort of enlightened sprint that allows you to move quickly through the environment with the AI handling vaulting obstacles. It’s like shooter Parkour, so far as I can tell. I got to use SMART a bit more after I respawned, as the spawn points aren’t right at the action all the time. With SMART I was able to skirt the outside of the battleground, climbing up to some new areas and finding a better (safer) way to flank the enemy. As you play with more gamers that are familiar with the maps, I strongly suspect that using the environments creatively will become a necessity.
I’m not some awesome multiplayer shooter gamer that can drop in and destroy everyone in sight, but I wasn’t exactly rubbish at BRINK, either. There’s an accessibility that comes from the team-driven effort, the task-oriented classes. When you do get something right – that turret goes up, the robot is moving down the alley, you heal an ally – it’s rewarding, both to your score and to the team. BRINK is a hard game to dive into not because it’s unintuitive but because there are a lot of good things going on, too many good things to absorb and parse in so brief a time on a crowded show floor, with the PAX throngs looming behind you. What I got to play of BRINK left me wanting more, lots more.
Scheduled for a Spring 2011 release on 360, PS3 and PC.
Dragon Age II – Hands-On at PAX Prime
Before getting our hands on the game we were given our Dragon Age 2 lessons. Seated in a room at their booth a fresh batch of gamers were taught the three tenets of the game’s sequel, each of them things from Origins that the team said most needed fixing: story, combat and graphics.
Dragon Age 2 will cover roughly a decade, or ten times the fictional timeline than Origins. Making this possible is the use of framed narrative, better known as story-within-a-story, and it should do away with that lengthy text epilogue and instead show the effects of actions within the game. The core of the story is that you play as Hawke (or Hawkette?), a human refuge fleeing Lothering for Kirkwall. Ultimately you become the Champion of Kirkwall, how is up to you, and while Verick tells lofty tales of your exploits Cassandra is trying to get to the barest truth of the story (that would be the story framing the Hawke story). OK, school’s out.
Kicking off as Lothering is destroyed and apart from any initiation, that Grey Warden you came to know so well is off fighting their own battles while you struggle along refugee style. Who knows, maybe you’ll bump into them in Lothering. I wouldn’t pick a fight with them, that story is written.
Classes are supposed to work more distinctly, so that warriors won’t play like rogues and that (according to BioWare brand manager David Silverman) “when you press a button something awesome happens”. Furthermore, they wanted to eliminate those queued up attacks that made for a Dragon Age potty break. The crux of the combat in Dragon Age was the ability for the player to “think like a general” and in 2 they are striving to retain that – you can still pause, switch, queue up attacks – but now in addition to thinking like a general you’re going to be “fighting like a spartan.”
With those promises in mind I picked out my lovely lady rogue. With only a few special attacks available there was some dangerous button-mashing potential, especially because the rogue’s combat is looking so much livelier. Instead of hitting a button and watching your character shift into position you hit a button and the move is executed, creating a tighter and more action-savvy feeling. The rogue’s acrobatics are much more fun to watch in game, and since this is my preferred class it’s fair to say I’m pleased, very pleased. No more of feeling like a gimped warrior, the rogue is nimble, acrobatic and deadly. A flurried attack took down multiple weakened enemies, while an evasion move used a lovely leap to put some distance between me and the fray.
Much of this action will be occurring like flashbacks as the story unfolds between Cassandra and Verick. The cinematic trailer for Dragon Age 2 is an awesome, action-packed temptress created out of something purely visceral. Of course, that’s not quite what we get in-game. Here’s the thing: I skipped the cut-scenes. In part for efficiency’s sake – it was a long demo and I wanted to get to the combat – and in part, well, I was being selfish, wanting to save the story for when I play the game properly.
The team working on Dragon Age 2 is 90% the same as that from Origins, so fans can rest in that while critics might hold out hope for that remaining 10%. Dragon Age 2 does look better, yet it does so without looking markedly different. If you just couldn’t stand the Origins aesthetic, there’s not going to be much for you here. It’s improved, but it’s not amazing. What the team says they’ve done is create consistency, something they readily admit was a problem in Dragon Age: Origins, and while our playtime wasn’t long enough to see how the graphics are treated across the game it’s reassuring to hear that this shortcoming was a high priority fix.
Coming back from PAX and playing through Witch Hunt made me really appreciate the progress visible in the sequel. The frame rate is better, things are slightly crisper, but the colors and design are still the same Dragon Age you’ve come to know and hopefully, love. The sequel looks to be Origins done better, richer, and somehow more. Good on you, Warden.
Spy Party Hands-On at PAX Prime
My favorite game at PAX doesn’t have a release date.
Chris Hecker has made an ugly game that only lets you fire a gun once, or not at all. At PAX, you could wait in line for up to an hour to play. You could then pass the time by studying the game’s four page guide that teaches you the game principles and controls so that when it is finally your turn the person you’re playing against won’t “utterly own you”. Yeah, there’s definitely a barrier to entry.
Check out that focus. (Can you guess which player is me?)
You play as a Spy or a Sniper with up to four possible missions at a small cocktail party. In its current form (which is something like pre-pre-Alpha) the action takes place in a narrow room viewable through windows from two sides by the Sniper. The Sniper observes as a party takes place, with characters drinking, talking, walking around, visiting bookcases and sculptures, and looking out the windows. As the Spy you must complete your mission(s) – in any order – before the clock runs up and without the Sniper detecting your shady dealings and taking you out of the game with his single bullet.
As we took our seats across from each other, each facing screens and clutching our wired to PC 360 controllers the tension set in. We played with all four missions available, Bug the Ambassador, Steal the Statue, Contact the Double Agent and Transfer the Microfilm. All of these can be completed methodically, stealthily even, and of course there are better ways to achieve your goal than others. For example, when you Bug the Ambassador you can do a super-smooth walk by where it looks like little more than an NPC hand gesture. Or, you could stand next to him with your back to the window with your butt-grabbing bug gesture in full Sniper view. Similarly, when you contact the Double Agent the words “Banana Bread” can be heard above the din, even by the Sniper, so you want to be in a large group when you pull this one off. The Sniper is positioned in some kind of rooftop floaty space outside the party, peering in through either of the two windowed sides of the room, alternately dimming people they’ve removed from suspicion (the waiter, security guard, Ambassador, Double Agent) and highlighting possible spies.
RTFM indeed!
This, of course, is all wisdom gleaned after playing the game – going into it, not so much. On the upside, my opponent had never played the game either. Downside, he’s the type that’s really good at reading manuals and going from there (what can I say? I’m a learn as I go type). After skimming the document I knew I would be a better Sniper than Spy, so I was grateful that was the arrangement for the first round. The match began and it’s a true flood of information to the Sniper and far too easy to become distracted by all those wandering NPCs and lose your focus. I stuck by my strategy, quickly memorizing the six statues located in the room. Then, I waited. I knew that the countdown timer would start as soon as the Spy completed all four missions, I would have to be quick on the draw and I wasn’t sure if there was a downside to aiming too early. So I sat quietly, and watched those statues. Suddenly, one statue was different. I looked to see who was nearby, a lady in beige, otherwise nondescript, easy to miss. I felt a moment of hesitation as I took my aim (what if I was wrong?), then, Boom. Headshot. Game Over.
I Spy...
I went on to survive and win my round as Spy, but I can’t say it was with much grace. In fact, my opponent claims he knew for some time which character I was. Bummer. At this stage the most noticeable tell for the poor Spy is simply jerky movement and I know this was my near-downfall in the match, an immediate cue to my Sniper which of the characters was definitely not operating with AI. Still, I fumbled through all four missions, the clock ran down, and I survived. Hecker says that the NPCs will be tweaked so that they, too, move a bit irregularly providing another mask for the Spy. In the four-mission format, I think things are currently skewed in favor of the Sniper. Playing again I would likely adopt the same strategy, memorize the statues, watch, and wait – a task so simple it almost seems game-breaking.
In its current form the game is simple, strategic, challenging and tuned only for players of comparable skill and experience. It’s already easy to see where Spy Party might grow, from additional rooms to additional missions, more party goers and party-like events, more of the simplest of tweaks that completely change the strategy for Sniper and Spy. For example, things are complicated for the Spy by the recent addition of cocktails. Drinks, such a simple change – rife with potential for things like poison – that at their base already complicate matters: a Spy with a drink in hand cannot mess with the statue and it limits which side you can bug the Ambassador from, but chugging the drink at the beginning of the match is pretty darn conspicuous.
Spy Party in its infancy is clever and compelling. Hecker has made a fascinating game, a game that is talked about, a game that has mythic potential. It requires smart and skillful gaming and delivers an experience so far from its dry “Read the Manual” directives that I was laughing out loud by the time my turn was up. Release date? Doesn’t have one. Spy Party, it’s love, and I’ll wait for you.
N4G Contest: 360 Slim and Halo Reach details
The contest has begun!
If you listen to the N4G Podcast, then this is old news. For everyone else, you might want to check out the details here.
See you on the forums!
About
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