Wednesday 26 January 2011

Most anicipated games of 2011

I've pissed and moaned about last years disappointments, praised the games I enjoyed and I might well be doing the same next year but before that comes around there's the process of anticipation and reaction for this years crop of releases. So what am I looking forward to over the course of 2011? Read on and that useless knowledge will soon be yours...

February
Marvel versus Capcom 3
Over a decade of slowly mounting fan pressure has resulted in Capcom finally releasing a follow up to the seminal Marvel Versus Capcom 2 and it looks good, damned good.
Over the last few months the character roster has bulked out to an impressive 32 characters as of writing and, whilst many of them are tried and true classics with established move sets, there are a decent number of completely new characters I'm curious to try out. What's interesting is the apparent move away from constant screen filling moves and focusing more on closing in on opponents if the teaser videos are anything to go by, though I'd expect that those hell bent on fireball spamming from the side of the screen will still be able to do their thing.
This being Capcom though, there's one gripe I can air even before release. Day one DLC characters. Shuma Gorath and Jill Valentine will be available to collectors edition buyers for an entire month before they become available via download. Not only does this play into what I've complained about previously with regard to Capcom using DLC as a means of getting players to pay for pre-existing content but to add insult to injury the special edition of the game isn't available in the UK so I and anyone else over here who wants those character will have to wait while American players get a head start in terms of practice. With any luck the game will be good enough to warrant forking out for the extras all the same, it'd be a shame to see this game fail after Street Fighter 4 reignited interest in fighting games so nicely.

March
Dragon Age 2
Whilst the first entry in the series captured my imagination with its strong characterisation and brilliantly subtle results from seemingly innocuous actions it certainly wasn't without its faults. Be it the myriad glitches and asorted issues that plague the game to this day, the incredibly harsh difficulty spikes, disconnection from the action in battle or the sometimes unrelenting slog through dungeon areas (Orsamar I'm looking at you); Dragon Age had problems. But it seems Bioware took note of these and has made changes, though whether they're for the better remains to be seen.
A great deal of time seems to have been spent on the combat system in order to make it more visceral. Interviews with the developers frequently talk about making button presses translate into direct action which is a major change from the real time turn based hack and slashery of the original. Little has been said about how this translates to team management but those of us more inclined towards a sedate pace with less hammering of buttons should be catered for as mid-battle pausing is allegedly still on offer.
Beyond that, there's not been all that much information regarding other features of the game but as is the trend for new releases there is day one DLC to discuss and for a change I kind of like the way they're doing it. Right up until January 12th, if you preordered the game you got an instant upgrade to the signature edition which features an extra character for your team much like Shale, the downloadable character given away with the first game upon release. Alas I missed that by two days, but the idea is one I can get on board with.
On top of that there's even more content being given away for free provided you preorder the game and as far as I'm concerned this is far better than the offers made by a certain Japanese fighting game company I'm a tad sick of complaining about. Rewarding customers for showing early support for the game and providing the business heads some reassuring pre-order sales figures is a mutually beneficial way of going about this kind of thing and doesn't smack of blatant money grabbing.
On top of that content there are also a number of cross promotions such as the Penny Arcade belt, a staff given away for signing up to a newsletter and, perhaps coolest of all, armor based on Dead Space 2s Isaac Clark. The first two are free for all who claim them and the last is a cross promotion with Dead Space 2, none of them require you to pay for the item by itself, they're just nice little extras for those who happen to have found them or bought another EA game. This is a model for day one DLC that doesn't leave me feeling ripped off and it's one I hope other companies follow suit on.

Crysis 2
There's not all that much that can be said about Crysis 2 that isn't blatantly obvious. It looks stunning for a start. The gameplay trailers look fast paced and exciting. The free running and special ability element looks interesting enough to raise this game above the likes of dull run of the mill shooters like Call of Duty. And that's enough to stand out from the saturated FPS market for me to take an interest.
The Xbox 360 exclusive multiplayer demo was released yesterday and it's in my download queue behind a couple of large GTA 4 add-ons so as soon as it's on my hard drive I'll give it a whirl and report back on whether my anticipation has been raised or squashed.

First quarter - no release date set
Micheal Jackson: The Experience
Provided this includes a high def remake of the Moonwalker game I'm in. Cause I wanna be like Micheal and save little girls from cupboards then get a chimp to sit on my head until I track down Joe Pesci for a dance off! Imagine the Kinnect possiblities!...In fact, perhaps you shouldn't.

May
LA Noire
Rockstar is a company that, as far as I'm concerned, has done no wrong for over a decade and that's a serious achievement in the world of big business game making. Everything they've released has been an incremental improvement on their previous work, elements of each successful game taken, refined and added to the next installment of Grand Theft Auto to create more and more immersive worlds for the player to wreak hovock within. And the next game they're publishing, created by  Team Bondi, seems to be keeping the trend going.
Very little detail has been revealed about LA Noire, as is Rockstars way with their releases. Two trailers have been unleashed but the most information can be found right here in this comprehensive preview. Truth be told, I just found that preview whilst researching for this little bit of blabber so this is a completely fresh reaction.
WOW! Not only does the game look to raise the bar for interractive story telling with its motion captured performances and case based mission structure but its attention to detail is amazing. Hearing that the cases are based on real life events really piqued my interest, the notion of having to think about how to solve the crimes is a fascinating idea. If I wasn't already excitied enough to play this game before I'm possitively overflowing with anticipation now. Time to make another pre-order methinks...

Spring - No set release date
Stacking
It's a game by Double Fine. It's easy to expect reams of imagination from this game even with the slim amount of information available given the pedigree of previous releases, even if the likes of Brutal Legend weren't perfect they were a lot of fun. It's a game about Russian dolls. God knows how it works but I'm interested to find out when more details make their way to the internets.

That's all for now so check back later for part two.

Tuesday 18 January 2011

The Sonic 2 HD Preview is Here!

Well that countdown I mentioned is over and the surprise has been unveiled; a teaser trailer for the upcoming fan driven remake. And damn does it look and sound excellent. Check it out -

I'd expect your excitement is going to be based on just how much nostalgia you have for the original game but regardless, this looks great. The crisp graphics, perfectly updated to high definition, are stunning and are much more in keeping with what I had envisioned before the first Sonic 4 screens came out. And that music remix! Wow!

The one fear I have off the back of this is that Sega will pull the plug and the teaser will be all the public ever see of this game. Of course, Sega would be fools to do this unless they were to pick the game up for release themselves because frankly they're a mess of a company these days with very little good will left in their fans hearts.
Personally, the lack of decent in house production over the last decade has left me uncaring about almost everything that they put out and killing this project would likely be the finishing blow to my fandom. And that would suck frankly.

Thursday 13 January 2011

Gaming disappointments of 2010 part 2

Hello and welcome back to the bitch-fest that is my gaming disappointments of 2010. Ready for round 2?
FIGHT!

Sonic 4 Episode 1
As a kid I was as big a Sega and Sonic fan boy as you might ever have hoped to avoid. Given the choice between a fat plumber and a super sonic rodent with a totally radical 90's attitude I took the far cooler option. The 2d iterations of the series were my games of choice and I ploughed through any I could get my hands on, only the MegaCD based Sonic CD escaped me.


The one that got away.
As a teen I played each Sonic game in turn as they were released, right up to Sonic Adventure 2. At the time the first Adventure game was groundbreaking and whilst it wasn't a gameplay masterpiece it did at least capture some of what made Sonic great (whilst adding a fishing cat...the less said about that the better...). Adventure 2 refined the experience but continued on a path that was to trample my affection for the series - terrible voice acting, diabolical plotlines and a slew of needless side characters. In amongst those characters was the Anti-Sonic himself, a creature designed to appeal to the emo generation as Sonic had been designed for the 90's cool kids; Shadow The Hedgehog. After his arrival I gave up on Sonic, the time for my generations enjoyment of the series was over and it was time to move on as far as I was concerned.

Guns and motorcycles - when making fun games about blue hedgehogs running fast and jumping around wears thin you know you've got to make it EXTREME to keep the fans happy. Or not as the case may be.
I watched as the Anti-Sonic got his own game, more and more needless side characters piled up and the quality of the franchise as a whole gradually declined right up until last year when Sega finally anounced something I could get on board with; a 2d high definition sequel to Sonic 3, a true successor to the original games. Promises were thrown around about pleasing old school fans and returning to the roots of what made Sonic great. I was excite!
Time passed and the first pictures surfaced, along with the news that the game would be split into multiple "episodes" and my heart sank a little. It wasn't the 2d graphics promised, it was a 2d perspective with 3d models. It also sounded like Sega were going to try and charge full price for part of a full game, an increasing issue with DLC and one of my pet peeves.
"Okay, not the high definition sprites I was hoping for but also not the terrible 3d gameplay that had failed to evolve over the course of the franchise" I figured to myself. Problem was, on top of that, the jump animation looked off and the size of the screen around Sonic was too small. Balls. Seemingly minor problems at a glance, but in a game where charging at the side of the screen and accurately jumping is the core it's clear why it got me ready to write off the game well ahead of release.
And then a gameplay video emerged of a minecart level that looked to not only be a tad rubbish but also controlled by someone with spanners for hands. And damn did it look terrible. This never made it to the final game, but it didn't do Sega any favors to have the first look at what ought to have been a stellar return to form appear to be a gimicky mini game.

Relegated to the iPhone version of the game. Pity those who bought it.
Cut to the full release and I finally got to play the demo. Lo and behold, the problems I had seen in the trailers were still present and on top of that the way Sonics momentum worked felt very different to the original games in the series. Failed by inflated promises of past glory regained.

But wait! There might be hope yet for us die hard old school Sonic fans. Mere days ago a group of fans made an announcement and launched a site with a countdown for what will hopefully be a very strong kick up the collective sphincter of Sega -

You can always rely on the fans to give their fellow fans what they want.

This is a link to the teaser site, currently host only to a countdown. Here's hoping at the end of it there's something special to enjoy.

Resident Evil 5:Gold Edition
Starting to see the theme of disappointing sequels? Anticipation is a bitch and when a game like Resident Evil 5 comes along with a decent pedigree behind it and falls flat it tends to sting a little more than a stand alone game. Now admittedly I'm picking on a game that is in fact from 2009 but seeing as Capcom trotted it back out for a second outing last year with little but already available downloadable content to justify its release I consider them to be asking for it frankly.


Hmm, now where did that racially insensitive main character go?
Resident Evil 4 managed to redifine the franchise beautifully. Whilst it no longer involved zombies, new threats were added that at the time were enough of a change to make things interesting without completely altering the feeling of slow moving enemies unrelentingly attacking in cramped spaces. The atmosphere felt eerie, though not quite so much so as the locations of Resident Evil 1 or 2 for example. Gameplay was fresh, challenging and enjoyable, particularly in the case of the Wii edition when using the remote for manual aiming. It was easy to have high expectations of progression from the next game in the franchise, or at least that a follow up would match the quality of its forbearers. And yet Resident Evil 5 stinks.

I'm inclined towards leaving it there frankly, mentally retreading the game is a real chore, but what kind of pissy blogger would I be if I did? A shit one ladies and gents, I'd be a shit one. So for the sake of raising myself up to the dizzy heights of mediocrity I'll begin.
First things first. Daylight. When the initial previews of the game were going around it was one of the biggest gripes and one that held true when the game came out. There's no tension in wandering around deserted towns in bright sunlight, it's really as simple as that. And all that talk of characters sweating and attracting enemies, Capcoms justification for the setting, was rubbish.
Partner to the lack of darkness and shadow is the complete and utter lack of scares or even attempts at creating them. Right the way up till RE5 each game had at least one moment of pant wetting, unexpected horror; be it the dogs jumping through the windows in RE1, the T-1000 breaking through walls in RE2 or otherwise. Resident Evil 5 seemed to actively work on removing such scares. The best example of this is the way lickers, one of the most freaky fear inducing creatures in RE history, are relegated to caged animals literally waiting for you to take them out with consumate ease. If I'm not worried about what's around the next corner I'd might as well play Gears of War and be blessed with a far better control scheme and pace as well as musclebound cliches. Speaking of which...

Chris Redfield, a simple cipher with little to no personality, was turned from average man in over his head into a steroid abusing action man with arms like the thighs of a normal person. Instant fail in terms of evolving a character. I'm not interested in seeing a character that serves no purpose other than to be seen as my avatar within the world turned into a stereotypical alpha male fantasy. Capcoms reasoning? Attempting to appeal to an American audience. Poor show by Capcom seeing as appealing to the common denominator is no way to go if they want their franchise to last much longer.
Then there's Sheva, the latest in a string of typically stoic female ciphers. Except she's worse than any who have come before if only for one reason. Before the game even hit shelves some were in uproar over the apparently negative portrayal of Africans as animalistic and barbaric. Many came to the games defense arguing that Africa just happened to be the location, that the infection was the obvious cause of the seemingly barbaric acts of the trailer, but when Capcom released the game with an entire section of spear throwing infected tribe members their credibility fell apart. Then the following was revealed as an unlockable -

Wow Capcom, you take that famous xenophobia driven Japanese racism to whole new level.
I'd harp on a bit about the plot but frankly it was so bad that I never quite finished it, nor can I remember all that much of the specifics. I got to one of the very last boss fights and just stopped, never once feeling like I wanted to know what was coming. Repeated trampling of previous games plots and constant allusions to events never witnessed as being important resulted in the plot becoming laughable very quickly. Whilst previous entries had high camp value at times but regularly managed to keep in in check with enough tension and scares, in this case it was just pure campy tosh.

And finally, the additions added to the Gold edition. Three pieces of DLC, one of which is actually on the first RE5 disc but was locked away for money making purposes (multiplayer), two plot additions that undoubtably raised the convolution meter well above the fabled 9000. As well as that, another Mercenaries mode and some costumes are all you get. Hardly a reason to put what was already a below average game back on shelves.
What's more, and this is particularly silly, is that the Xbox version actually comes with a slip of paper with a download code for the content instead of having it on the disc, thus rendering the whole thing futile given that players who might have wanted the gold edition because they weren't online would be left in the cold (this is the only logical reason I can see for anyone to want to buy this re-release by the way).

And so my faith in the franchise is gone and it's going to take something special to get me back into it. My suggestion? A complete reboot taking the series back to the roots of a zombie outbreak with characters who are suddenly thrust into circumstances they cannot begin to understand. All this stuff about taking down Umbrella and visiting the remains of lab sites around the world leaves me far too cold, even in the bright sunlight.


So that's it for the bitchfest that was my look back at the crappier games of last year, though there is one main offender I've yet to dissect. It is the final nail in the coffin for a franchise and company I once followed and spent money on without question.
What might that be you ask? Well I'm not telling, but they do say that XIII is an unlucky number...

Wednesday 5 January 2011

Gaming disappointments of 2010

Hot on the heels of my top games of the last year, I've got some bones to pick with a few other games. These are the ones that ought to have been great but for one reason or another fell flat.

Dead Rising 2
Earlier in the year, instead of creating an expensive demo for Dead Rising 2, Capcom decided to create a stand alone prologue to the game called Case Zero available for the reasonable price of 400 Microsoft points. And that's what's spoiled the main event for me believe it or not. Not because it was bad, but because it was great.
Case Zero truncated the overal experience of playing Dead Rising into a managable two hour-ish experience that was action packed, well designed and paced and above all fun to play. Figuring out how to get the most from your time was a challenge but one that wasn't too punishing considering the short length of time you're dealing with. The whole thing stayed fresh and intense from start to finish, never outstaying its welcome or punishing a player too hard for a mistake.
"Just wait here one minute honey, Daddy has to go beat up the bad men with frying pans and plastic swords..."
The full game itself though suffers from being an open world after that experience, for me at least, and there's little of the noticable pace and clever design on show. Gone is the manageable township and back is the dauntingly huge area laden with nasty irritations to kick first time players up the arse. To compound the struggle getting to grips with the location you've got a familiar problem from the original to contend with; terrible psycho placement and difficulty. Having a mission marker direct you into an inescapable boss fight, often far beyond your capabilities at a low level is not fun. Having to go back a save and consciously avoid it or, even worse, restart the game is seriously irritating to say the least.
Add to that the lack of change to the game concept and the omission of voice acting for almost every in game conversation and the mountain of little niggles I could overlook in the original from the early days of the Xbox 360 suddenly seems enough to stop me from wanting to play the game.

Perhaps the latest DLC release, Case West, will pick up where Case Zero left off in terms of level design and pacing.
So, what could be done to improve it? Simply put, make it like Case Zero. Break the game into sections lasting two to three hours, limit what we can see and do so that the particularly tasty weapons are kept back till later and generally reign the concept in so it feel more like a game and less like a sandbox with a restrictive time limit. And when you finish the game, THEN open the world up and let us go exploring after we've already got a feel for what to expect. After all, it is fun to ride head long into a group of zombies on a tricycle dressed as a demented cross dresser from time to time but only if you've not got to go medicate your daughter half way through the massacre.


Front Mission Evolved
Continuing as I mean to go on, here's another lackluster sequel, though one I feel the need to pick fault with for a particularly specific reason. I have not played this game. So why, you might ask, am I putting this on a list of gaming disappointments? Well, a little history lesson is in order.
Way back in the futuristic space year of 2000 Squaresoft were in their prime, releasing a huge number of games for the PS1 in a very short space of time including Final Fantasy 8, Saga Frontier 2, Ehrgeiz and, most importantly for this tale, Front Mission 3. This was a golden age of RPG gaming and marked the first time the Front Mission franchise had made its way to Europe, being layabout teen at the time I made the most of this glut of great games (apart from Ehrgeiz of course, not even Final Fantasy 7 cameos could save that).


A forgotten classic.
Front Mission 3 offered something I'd not seen before; a tactical, grid based, futuristic RPG with big ass robots. Graphically it made the most of the PS1 and technically it was epic, with a deep combat system and an in game internet function that could easily swallow more than ten hours if you invested time investigating every nook and cranny. Its plot was a branching epic revolving around the theft of a new weapon of mass destruction and the circumstances surrounding the event, both political and personal.
I fell in love with the game and have held it high as a niche classic but since that time Square have failed to follow up with a Front Mission release in the UK. Front Mission 4 made it to the US and part five only hit the stores in Japan so for over ten years I've been left in the cold, having to content myself with reading details about the other games in the series and tracking down fan made translations of the original Front Mission for the SNES.
Cut to last year and Front Mission Evolved appeared on a release list. My eyes lit up upon reading the news and suddenly it seemed the perpetually waning Square Enix had finally come to their senses and released a current generation iteration of one of their most enjoyable series. Then I saw my first preview to find something unexpected had happened to the franchise - it wasn't a tactical RPG anymore. No, it was now a Mech Commander-esque affair. I think this particular meme best expresses how I felt when I read that -

-uuuuuccckkkinnngggg Ssssqqquuaaaarreeee!
My only question is why ditch a unique and interesting game style for something so utterly generic, especially given the mech piloting genre is already saturated with more than enough franchises to keep fans distracted? I wish I had an answer, but it seem to be part of what's wrong with Square Enix these days. What might that be you ask? Well that's an article for another time I answer.

That's it for part one of this little look back at the disappointing games of last year, check back later this week for part 2.