Free Candy For Everyone

On occasion, I like to broaden my horizons. I have game genres I’m comfortable with and know I like (hello RPGs!) but it’s also good to try other games to get inspired and see what folk out there are doing. To that end I borrowed Devil May Cry 4 from the games library here at work. I’d never played any of the other games in the series and I was really looking forward to it. Turns out this game is not for me.

I played about halfway through the game, I believe, and the more I played, the less I liked it. Here’s what I liked:

The production values
The game is gorgeous. The cut scenes are amazing. The environments are impressive, the ingame animation is great was well. Here’s a trailer with a good mix of cut scenes and in game gameplay - I recommend you check it out in HD.

I love that there’s an extensive story moment before almost every level as well as before and after most every boss fight. Whenever a new enemy is introduced there’s a lovely cutscene as well showcasing what makes them interesting and suggesting how to deal with them. It’s really polished and well done and initially made me really like the game.

Um, I think that’s all the I like about the game. I thought I was going to be making a list but I’m kind of done. The only other thing I like is the story. I haven’t played a DMC game before so I don’t know if the story is the same as the other games or what, but I find myself curious to see what will happen next. But then there’s what I don’t like.

The difficulty
I’m not exactly a complete novice when it comes to action games, but I’m not that good at them. And even on the easier difficulty setting, this game is just too hard for me. It started out alright. I think I got through the first three levels without incident at all. But they gradually introduce enemies who have one and really only one viable tactic to defeat. If you can’t figure that tactic out or aren’t so good at pulling it off, you’re going to bang your head against a wall. A banged my head against a lot of walls. I think for the last four bosses I fought before giving up I spent a good portion of each fight yelling at the screen “I hate you! I hate this game!” which probably isn’t a good sign. If my tv weren’t so pretty I probably would have hurled the controller.

The puzzles
Ok, the puzzles aren’t exactly hard, but I object to timed jumping/dodging sequences. There were many occasions where it was clear what I had to do but my coordination just failed me. For instance, on a certain level there are devices you activate to slow down time for a limited period. Then, while time is slowed you have to jump up a sequence of spinning platforms to safety. I found myself frequently fighting the camera, in that I couldn’t judge which direction to jump in accurately because the darn camera was spinning on its own or something like that. There’s only so many times you can repeat a sequence before you just want to hurt someone. My most favoritist moment (and probably the death knell for me and this game) was a timed escape sequence, where you had an actual clock counting down for your escape from a collapsing building. Then I had to slow down time and jump over light beams of doom and while I did make it before time ran out there was a lot of grunting and screaming at the game while I kept screwing up.

The camera
And while we’re complaining, the camera was pretty annoying. There are two camera modes, fixed and free. The game switches between them willy-nilly. You walk through a door and all of a sudden you’re in a fixed camera mode, running into the camera. You nudge the stick and are suddenly running backwards. OMG, so annoying. Then you run through another doorway and the camera is suddenly free cam and you can spin it around all you want. There didn’t seem to be much to decide when one or the other would do, but I found it frequently disorienting, and there were some jumping sequences that I think would have actually benefited from a fixed cam since the darn camera kept rotating on its own and changing which way I needed to move to make the jump. RARGGHH.

I played through 12 missions, which I think is more than half the game. I would like to see the rest of the cutscenes on the big screen in HD but I just can’t bear any more of the frustration. There are so many games that I actually find fun that it makes no sense for me to continue playing a game that makes me so aggravated.

I respect the game and what it accomplishes, but it’s really just not for me.

I’ve mentioned a quirky, dark intriguing PS2 RPG by the name of Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 a couple of times now. Unfortunately, after that latter post I never picked the game back up again. I got caught up in lots of other games and Persona 3 has been sitting alone, sad and rejected.

But wait! Now’s the time for you to pick it up too! Persona 3 is published by Atlus and most of their games have small print runs which sell out. It can be really hard to find a copy mere months after it’s come out. Persona 3 was in this boat, with copies selling for up to $90 on ebay. But then they announced FES addition. It’s an expansion pack as well as a full copy of the original game. And it’s out today! So if you missed out on Persona 3 and you want to give it a try, I highly recommend picking up this new edition.

I’ve mentioned my opinions on the art direction of Soul Calibur before, but a new trailer has come out so I thought I’d bring the topic up again.

This trailer gave me a little hope. Many of the female characters are actually wearing full armor and decently clad. But if you look closely at some animation of Ivy and later Taki, you’ll see the dreaded huge-boob-jiggle. Come on, I noticed it when it was flying by for only a moment. I can’t imagine how egregious it will be when I’m actually playing a match with these ladies. I want this game, I love the gameplay. But if they keep up this nasty habit of hyper-sexualizing the characters I don’t know how much longer I can stomach it.

Note to the developers: You have female fans! We are offended!

[Via Joystiq]

For a very long time, my co-workers and I had been playing the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game at lunch. It has, however, been dethroned from its place of honor. For the past few months we have been playing Race for the Galaxy in an obsessive, addicted, just-one-more-game sort of way.

It’s a card game, not collectible, just pick it up an play. The quick description is San Juan in space. And for those of you that doesn’t help, it’s sort of a card game version of Puerto Rico. And if that still doesn’t help you then you need to go check out some board games! Just kidding.

In all three games you select from a pool of different roles that let you acquire resources or build things. You are trying to get the most points and the ending point is when the point pool is empty or enough buildings have been constructed. While I really like Puerto Rico and San Juan they just don’t compare to Race for the Galaxy in how they hold my interest. As my friend Brian said, as soon as we finish a game we just want to play another one. How many games can you say that about?

I’d say we’ve been playing an average of three or four games a day for the last two or three months. Every game is still different and interesting. There are many different strategies to victory. Luck plays a factor in the game as the cards in your hand determine what you can do but there’s also skill in looking through what you’ve been dealt and formulating a strategy from it all.

There’s an expansion pack due out sometime in the next few months and we just can’t wait for more ways to play. I continue to be excited about playing this game every day. And in just a few short months it has infiltrated the top ten games on Board Game Geek and that is an impressive feat. This is the list board gamers use to find what’s good. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it continue to rise in the ranks, it’s just that good.

I fear it’s happened again. I hit 70 with my Shaman and my interest in playing her has dropped off. I’ve always been a huge fan of leveling characters. Getting to the next level, seeing what new skills I get, knowing there’s an area I couldn’t get to yesterday that will be open to me tomorrow, these are all aspects of progression I enjoy. But now that Myrendra is 70 all that’s left is getting better gear.

At this point we grind reputation, we grind honor, we farm instances all as methods to the same goal of better gear. This new gear let’s us enter new raid instances, and that’s about the only thing I find at all interesting about this whole process. Sure I’d love to be geared out in fantastic purple epics and riding a super l33t flying dragon but I don’t really want to grind hours every day to get the gold and such required. Grinding doesn’t equal fun.

I’ve started another alt. Of course I have. Heh. I’m still playing my Shaman, but only to run instances with people. The social group aspect is always fun. Running through a dungeon and trying to down things that are a challenge keeps me thinking and on my toes! That’s fun. But running around on my (super slow) flying mount and gathering herbs for hours? Nah, I can’t do too much of that. That’s not playing, that’s some sort of job and the one I have is more than enough of that. There are still dungeons I haven’t been into at all and I’d really like to get around to those, but not if the entry fee is hours of repetition. In the meantime, you’ll find me leveling another druid. Or maybe a warlock. Or maybe…