Perpetually Gaming » Impressions

Groundhog Day

Bryan Wojciechowski — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 02:51:00 +0000

I don’t know why I do these kinds of things to myself. I know full well that I am not going to like a game, but I play it anyway, and continue playing it. However, as a part of my quest to play the big name titles of 2008 I never got around to, I find myself here.

This week, my poison of choice is Mirror’s Edge, which arrived last Friday from GameFly. This game was hyped to all hell, and then upon its release, it provided average reviews. However, this then sparked discussion about reviewers overlooking innovation. All that is long since water under the bridge. I’m just here to lament, since this is my stump to speak from. I’m going to leave alone the cutscenes that look like they were designed in Flash (Chris Remo’s line I believe), and instead focus on the soul-breaking gameplay.

A training ground, a prologue, and three chapters into the game, I hardly have an urge to return to it. It has been said before (ugh, don’t remember my source on that line) that you should not have a platformer that you cannot see your feet in, and I wholeheartedly agree. They did a good job of making about 60% of the environments simple, with jumps that can be easily assumed and lots of room for error. However, the other 40% of the time is just grueling. For a game to essentially tell me I have to jump off a board at a certain point in order to successfully complete a wall-run, but not give me the ability to see my feet and know when I’m at that point, it becomes trial and error. I kept replaying through the same parts over and over again, because the points where the level design is in that other 40% is simply brutal. I wished Elika was there to hold my hand and catch me when I fell.

Ah, Prince of Persia. You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. Maybe that’s why I am so bad at this game, because my last platforming was in Prince of Persia as well as PoP: The Sands of Time, and both of those are extremely well done platforming games with rather lenient death mechanisms. However, outside of Mario games, combat is something that really befalls a platforming game. While a quick jump on an enemy’s head does the job most of the time, these other platformers see you in a near-choreographed dance with your opponents. Except Mirror’s Edge. The game tells you in the training ground and on loading screens to avoid combat, but then puts you in situations where you have no choice but to fight.

I was at a section where three “blues” (police officers) descended from a “bird” (helicopter to us normal folks), and the only way through the section was climbing up some pipes behind them. I managed to get around them and not get shot until I tried climbing the pipe, at which point I was turned in to a slice of Swiss cheese. I then was forced to fight these soldiers, who are wearing body armor and carrying assault rifles, with nothing on my person. Luckily, in those situations where you must enter combat (thus-far), the AI is comprised of the dumbest cops possible who will alternate between the shooting animation and the rifle-butting animation if you just take a step backward and then a step forward.

The only reason I keep playing is the absolutely awesome art style, which you may have noticed by now that I am a sucker for, but even that may not be enough to keep me going. When a game forces me to relive the same moments over and over until I learn where to jump or how to fight, I eventually lose interest. Maybe I’ll be playing Far Cry 2 sooner than I think.

Impressions: Rock Revolution

Bryan Wojciechowski — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 09:43:00 +0000

TERRIBLE.

I rented it from Gamefly, knowing it would not be that great, and we quit half-way through the first song.

I feel bad for anyone who accidentally picks this up thinking “Hey! It has the word Rock in the title, so maybe it is like Rock Band!” only to be sorely disappointed.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed – Jedi Temple DLC Impressions

Bryan Wojciechowski — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 06:55:00 +0000

So I snagged the DLC for TFU for $10 USD, or 800 MSP, and JSYK, IMHO, it is alright. LOL, for good measure.

I think some great, conspiring power was at work here. The DLC was released as I’m in possession of the game from Gamefly. It’s like they knew. Like there was some great force controlling the way everything worked.

For reals, though, it is average. The level is short, and I kind of wonder how it took MTV’s Stephen Totilo a whole 70 minutes to play through it. It took me all of 30 minutes on the Sith Warrior difficulty. I’ll give Stephen the benefit of the doubt, and assume it is because he is rusty in his ways of the Force, while I just finished the game less than 48 hours ago.

I was a little upset that I had to start a new game to play it, because it is self-contained. Your Jedi Temple save is separate from your normal game save. It takes place outside the story, and you are given a Starkiller with your rankings near-fully specced out. It really adds nothing spectacular to the story, as you would expect from DLC. If anything, it’s on par with a deleted scene from a movie, and we know those are generally non-canon. [spoiler]Judging by the guidance of Kota, I assume this takes place roughly before Starkiller begins to put the wheels in motion for the Alliance.[/spoiler]

As gameplay goes, it gives you a bit of what the endgame of the story did not: A ton of stuff to throw around and break apart. At least 60% of the environment is destructible once you get inside the temple. To encourage this, the stormtroopers are of the advanced variation that can throw up Force-resistant shields, encouraging you to launch a globe or some rubble at them. What bothered me was the sheer number of enemies they crammed into this tiny little package. Immediately upon touching down at the temple, you’re swarmed by enemies, and the assault is relatively relentless as you move through the rooms. A large number of Evo Troopers (the kind with the sheilds), Jumptroopers, and Snipers await you as you move through the halls, and they can get irritating. That just makes it all the more gratifying to crush them.

There is also a training chamber with some near-infinitely spawning droids, which I assume would be great if you still need your achievements for using force powers X times, as well as a “Jedi Mind Trial” where you get to use your force grip to move a ball along a path. It’s the closest the game has come to puzzle solving, so we’ve got to take what we can get.

It seems to lock up sometimes while it saves checkpoints, and I had a frequently recurring glitch when entering the main chamber, it took a moment to load everything and I could see through the non-loaded floor to Coruscant below. Quite a view, actually. The audio always seemed to lag, especially with voiceover parts.

With the inclusion of a costume pack containing a handful of costumes that include a very awesome version of Starkiller, as well as Mace Windu, we’re given a little bang for our buck. However, the price point of $10 still doesn’t sit right. I’ve paid less for Rock Band track packs and spent far more time playing them. I managed to get all but one achievement in just over an hour and a half. Spend it if you’ve got the points laying around and are longing for some new TFU content, but if you’re not, I’m sure you can wait until the recession passes.