I haven't blogged in ages, and I'm not publishing this on the forums for various reasons, so I'm hoping someone will read this!
I've been a bit concerned with the quality of Giant Bomb's content recently. The issue came up when I heard that a bunch of people on NeoGAF were not reupping their subscription because they felt quality of original output on GB had dropped, and I can't really blame them. The question is, what are the problems?
'Stale' content - For a while now, there hasn't been a new original video series on Giant Bomb, with the exception of the recent Betting the Farmville series. It's just been Quick Looks, mostly. Now I understand why the crew doesn't want to rush into another Endurance Run completely, but the fact that content over the summer has been slim, with no ongoing series like TANG or ER, is a bummer. Happy Hours also seem to have fallen into a safe formula. What happened to excellent stuff like Creeper Jeff? Will and Norm's food-hijinx are so predictable at this point they're not really that amusing anymore.
Lack of enthusiasm - Maybe this is just me, but I'm missing some of the vital spark, especially in Quick Looks, that Giant Bomb used to have in spades. I rarely find myself laughing during QL's anymore, yet when I look at some of the excellent Best of Quick Look compilations on Youtube, I'm frequently in stitches. Maybe they're not covering as many weird/bad/obscure games as they used to, but I feel like they're kind of going through the motions a lot of the time. Also, it seems like everyone has gotten that much worse at playing videogames, and I hate to sound like one of those guys, but it's just frustrating to watch so many times. Like they're all awful at parsing on-screen information or just, y'know, reading what the screen says. The Warhammer 40k Kill Team QL was a great example, with Brad wondering why his ranged weapon sucked when he clearly picked a melee dude, and not melee'ing at all for like the first 5 minutes (I hadn't played the game myself at that point).
I don't know, mostly just rambling here, but I'm not really feeling much of the content anymore. I'm not putting this on the forums because then I'll probably get shot to shit, this is just the way I've been feeling about the stuff GB has been putting out the last few months. Anyone agree/disagree? Is it just me?
I played through Bulletstorm over the course of the last two days and some of the things I experienced are worth writing down. Join me as I navigate the labyrinthine passageways of my own thought process!
The ad campaign for Bulletstorm was god-awful, I think we can all agree on that. The Epic people tried so incredibly hard to drive home the point that Bulletstorm is totally crazy and fun, and look at how ridiculous it is, that they totally overshot the mark. Yeah, Bulletstorm is pretty ridiculous, but not at all in the teeth-grindingly irritating way that those ads of Cliffy B telling us a shitty joke about his girlfriend's pregnancy are. They should have let the game speak for itself instead of overselling it to the point of almost unselling me on the entire game in the process.
Seriously, this guy probably brushes his teeth with a toothbrush made of baby bones Yeah, the game has a lot of made-up swearing, ridiculous situations and outrageously larger-than-life characters, most notably the protagonist, Grayson Hunt, and his arch-nemesis, the evil General Serrano, who is so incredibly evil that you almost like him for being so shameless about it. What's refreshing about the game's story and characters is that they're so unpretentious. So many games these days want to be like a movie and take themselves way too goddamn seriously, or don't know how to properly inject some levity or comic relief without ruining the pacing or introducing some terrible character. Bulletstorm never, ever tries to take itself seriously. It's actually legitimately funny in spots, and most surprisingly of all, the story is actually half-decent. I think it's because of this total lack of pretention, because of its knowing stupidity, that it ca n pull this off. Yeah, Grayson Hunt is a total moron, so what? At the end of the game, he's a total moron who knows he's been a total moron for the duration of the game and the events preceding it. Hardly amazing character development, right?
The characters are two-dimensional stereotypes and the writer never attempted to make them anything more than that, which is why it works. Many games try to have interesting characters, but in spite of pretenses, very few pull it off. Mass Effect 2 is one of the few. Then there's Red Dead Redemption, which looks and sounds so much like a movie, it has a lot of people fooled into thinking it actually has a great story, and isn't 90% about a guy running errands for insufferable jackasses. But at the end of the day, the characters in that game are no more layered than Bulletstorm's characters, with the possible exception of Marston's wife and kid.
Bulletstorm's total lack of pretension, both from a gameplay perspective and a narrative one, is a refreshing blast of fresh air in a landscape of grimdark games that try to make you care about their characters by using well-worn archetypes and plot devices lifted from other media. As a result, Bulletstorm is a game that has heart. It's an entirely nebulous concept with no real definition other than what I just made up, but to me that's what it is. Which is a far cry from the incredibly cynical ad campaign Epic ran for the game. Give it a chance, and space morons just may win you over.
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These are my favorite games of 2010, the ones I enjoyed the most and/or consider the best for various reasons. It was very hard to whittle this list down to just 10 and rest assured there were more games that I really enjoyed. Shout outs to games that JUST didn't make it: Civilization V, Red Dead Redemption, Just Cause 2, Rock Band 3 and Battlefield BC2.
Hands-down the most emotionally engaging game I have ever played. I started playing this at some point in the evening and was so enthralled by it I finished it in a single sitting around 4 AM. No other game has ever done that to me except for Max Payne 2. Yes, it has some uncanny valley and dodgy voice acting going on but I was able to see past that. Very rewarding and very emotional.
The most ambitious MMO expansion ever made improves on the core game in every conceivable way. Making a new character is fun like never before. The way story has been integrated into questing with cut scenes and phasing is phenomenal. No MMO can touch this.
Making good on everything the first game was supposed to be, Mass Effect 2 delivers the most polished shooter/RPG hybrid to date. Great characters, great choices, great action and plenty of replayability.
I was not expecting Brotherhood to be anything more than a glorified AC2 expansion pack. Boy was I wrong. The singleplayer campaign is long and makes some great changes to the combat, and the introduction of the assassin's guild is the coolest thing in the entire series. The story takes some significant turns for Desmond and I can't wait to see where it goes. Meanwhile, the multiplayer is exhilerating if you're playing with people that aren't running all over the place like madmen.
Alan Wake's gameplay isn't the most exciting thing in the world but it does the job, but the storytelling in this game is phenomenal. The episodic structure keeps you glued to the plot and always gives momentum to the story. A lot of games could learn from this. Even after waiting for this game for years, I was not disappointed.
God of War III reclaims the overused word 'epic' and shows all those other mamby-pamby videogames what it actually means. Immense scale, same bone-crunchingly satisfying combat and a fitting end to Kratos' vengeful journey. Something tells me we haven't seen the last of him.
A lot of yang got talked about Alpha Protocol. Having not played it when it came out and picking it up for cheap in November, I was very pleasantly surprised by it. Great dialogue and choices with meaningful consequences. I played it as a stealth and pistols guy and found the gameplay fun, a few lame bossfights notwithstanding. I genuinely enjoyed it a lot.
I am not at all an RTS guy, and Starcraft II is the first RTS game I finished the entire campaign of. Super polished, interesting mission design and decent story kept me hooked all the way through. I didn't even touch the multiplayer and it still deserves a spot.
This game gets short thrift from a lot of people. It delivers on the vision of the original game better than it ever did in my opinion, with your choices actually having an impact on how the story plays out, which isn't so much the case in the first game. Gameplay is better, setting is still interesting and the Minerva's Den DLC alone gives this game a spot on the list.
Improving the already-stellar SFIV in every meaningful way and adding Juri, my personal favorite character makes this game well-deserving of a top 10 spot.
In the most egregious of ways. Yes my friends, in my 1,5 year long absence, some hooligan has hacked into my WoW account and sold a large number of my gear and probably stole a bunch of gold as well, though I have no idea how much I had. I log back on and find that almost all of my Protection (Paladin) gear is gone, so I went from being a pretty good tank to no tank at all. What I'm left with is an assortment of Retribution gear, PVP gear and a few Protection pieces, making me a shitty jack of all trades. I am sadface. I have just enough Ret gear to pull my weight in an instance, but I have to build up a new set of Prot gear. Oh well, the expansion hits soon anyway so it's not a huge deal. I contacted Blizzard support in-game, and apparently they have a good track record of restoring lost items due to stuff like this so here's hoping. Anything similar ever happened to you?
New Browse Experience For 100 Percent Completed Games -- you spent a lot of time and effort earning those Achievements, so instead of only being able to view your first dozen completed games, we're giving you a new and better way to browse all of them.
Are you crazy like me, and do you have over 20 S-Ranks? You want to stroke your e-peen and pore over all of them? FUCK YES YOU DO. Microsoft recognizes the plight of the achievement whore.
Oh, I guess the improved voice chat is pretty cool too. WHATEVER. Brad doesn't care about your stupid voice, douchewad.
Couldn't find a picture of Brad, but this dude and his beard agree with me. 18 Comments
Confession time: I am not enjoying this game very much. Partly this is my own fault, I really expected the world from this game, I was kind of setting myself up for another Arkham Asylum event, and this game is not that level of quality, not even close. So for one, my expectations were literally through the roof. This was my most anticipated game of this year.
So what's the problem? Several. But let's start with the positives. The basic combat is good. There are enough combos and elements to it, like the magic stuff, that gives it a decent amount of depth and makes it more than a button masher. It does feel a lot like God of War, but I love that series so that's not a bad thing. However, the camera is not ideal and often, enemies will be just off-screen and lunge at you.
The level design is not good. They added a shitload of branching paths for no purpose other than to make you backtrack a ton for collectibles, which you want to have because they make you stronger. The game is exceedingly pretty and the backdrops look great, but that's no excuse for making you run through the labyrinthine paths several times, without a map I might add, it's just so much needless padding. This extends to a lot of encounters as well. Oh look, here's a bridge I can't cross without taming and riding a big wolf, that's cool. But why does that same scenario pop up again five minutes later?
I'm only midway through chapter 2 but there have only been 2 eventful cut scenes so far, the other missions you're just ploughing through waiting for something to happen in the story. Which brings me to the terrible, overwrought narration. It's pretentious and trite fantasy shit and Patrick Stewart seems to miss no opportunity to just ham it up in the worst way, delivering his best version of "dramatic narrator guy". A more low-key performance by him would've gone a long way, even with the overwrought writing, but they just compound each other.
My expectations got the better of me.
It really pains me, because I wanted this to be amazing so badly, but it's just not gelling for me. The pacing is just bad, there's no momentum at all, both in the story (so far) and in the level design, which is confused at best. And hearing that the game is apparently like 20 hours long, which I can easily see given the 12 chapters, each consisting of several levels, it makes me wonder why some of the needless padding wasn't cut. Quantity =/= quality.
I am very disappointed. This is what I get for getting so hyped up I guess, and why it pays to usually keep my expectations in check. Just the last few games I've been super hyped for (Heavy Rain, God of War 3, Batman) have been amazing, so I guess I had this coming.
Obviously it's not a complete shit show, all this is coming from someone with extremely mismanaged expectations, but the game clearly has some issues. To be fair, I'm not far in yet at all, so it may get better, and I'll certainly keep playing in the hope that it does, but I just thought I'd let y'all know how I feel about it thus far. Peace.
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Single-player DLC can be a tricky thing. In Bioshock 2's case, the story had a clear beginning and ending. Rather than just splicing (ha!) a new level in the middle of the campaign or making stand-alone challenge levels (like the recent Protector Trials), 2K has this time opted for a self-contained bit of narrative set in areas of Rapture that we haven't seen yet in the previous games. For 800 Microsoft points ($10), you get a good chunk of content that will easily last you 5-6 hours and delivers a fantastic story that stands entirely on its own.
Saying too much about the story would risk spoiling it, but suffice it to say that you're a Big Daddy on a quest to leave Rapture with the help of a scientist. The plot revolves around a big supercomputer at the center of Rapture, The Thinker, which is apparently in control of all the day-to-day functions of Rapture. This being a Bioshock story, of course not everything is as it seems, but the climax is fantastically well done and honestly, I felt it was as great a narrative as either Bioshock 1 or 2 delivered, albeit on a smaller scale. I could even argue that the shorter length means the story is a lot more focussed and there is less filler. Given that the history of Rapture and the context in which the story unfolds is already known to the player from the main Bioshock games, the DLC focuses purely on its own strain of narrative and does so to great effect. If you think Rapture is played out or that there are no more interesting stories to tell within it, Minerva's Den will convince you otherwise if you give it half a chance.
Having not played Bioshock 2 for about half a year, I had forgotten that it's actually really fun to play. Minerva's Den takes on roughly the same formula of progression of its big brother, but shrinks it down to accomodate the length of this DLC. What that means is that you'll have access to the majority of the Plasmids and Tonics in the Gatherer's Garden right off the bat, but you'll have to pick and choose your skills because there isn't enough Adam to go and buy it all. Weapons and upgrades are found in the world, and before the end of the DLC you'll have all the guns of the main game plus a new laser cannon, and a cool new plasmid that creates a black hole to knock splicers around.
There are definitely moments where you'll probably get a slight sense of déja-vu, as the new areas don't feel radically different from what you've seen of Rapture in the past, but by the same token Rapture is as fun to explore as it always has been, and you will learn some interesting bits of Rapture's backstory in the form of its ubiquitous audio diaries. The strong visual style of Bioshock still carries it very far indeed, even if you might think there is little reason to go back to Rapture. If you've found yourself enjoying the atmosphere of these games in the past, you'll probably be surprised just how much enjoyment there still is to glean from just being in Rapture, partly because it's still a wholly unique setting in videogames.
I was blown away by Minverva's Den. For DLC to deliver such a lengthy chunk of gameplay complete with a fulfilling, self-contained narrative was beyond what I was expecting. It encapsulates everything that is great about the series: interesting stories, a beautiful and unique setting and an addicting gameplay formula. If this is the last time we return to Rapture, then it's a wonderful goodbye letter.
I finished Red Dead Redemption a few days ago. Great game, fantastic ending, but it had some problems. My main issue lies with the narrative of the game. This doesn't just apply to Red Dead, I think it also goes for GTA 4 and games that take a similar approach to storytelling in a sandbox environment. Some mild Red Dead Redemption spoilers follow so it's probably best if you've completed the Mexico portion before reading this.
Who is John Marston?
This is John Marston. He's a little bit schizophrenic. The first, and maybe most important question. We are expected to care about John Marston's plight throughout the course of the game, and thus we should care about him as well. He's a former outlaw who retired from his outlawing ways to settle down with his wife and son to be a rancher. Then he gets picked up by government agents to track down his former gang members and bring them to justice. These actions imply that Marston is done with the lifestyle of the outlaw and wants to live a relatively wholesome life. We can expect him to occasionally stray from the straight and narrow because he makes it clear that his priorities lie in getting back to his family, no matter what. What I won't accept from this character, however, is him letting himself get jerked around time and time again by people who say they'll help him but ultimately don't. Not only that, but in the Mexico part of the game, he switches sides back and forth between the Rebels and the Mexican government, seemingly without any care for either party. Yet he does help Luisa with her problems, even though she doesn't even promise to help him. If he cares for her, why would he also still help the government? If he doesn't, why would he help her at all? There is no satisfying answer to this, it's just game filler.
There's no real imperative for Marston to do most of the things he does, especially during the Mexico portion of the game. For someone who just wants to be with his family again, he sure doesn't really seem to mind being given the runaround time after time. The entire Mexico section of the game is pure filler that does not advance the story in any meaningful way at all. Bill Williamson could've been at Fort Mercer, Rockstar could have cut out all of Mexico and literally nothing would have been left out, apart from Javier Escuella, who is just thrown in there out of the blue as more filler. The plot would have been much tighter as a result.
A sanbox environment combined with linear storytelling don't mix
So we know who John Marston is, even if he seems a little confused sometimes, and we know that a lot of missions in the game are filler and that there is no good character-driven reason for Marston to do a lot of those missions. However, Red Dead also contains a binary morality system: You gain honor for being good and helping people, and lose honor for killing innocents, lawmen or siding with bandits in random encounters. The problem is, Marston's character does not change depending on how you actually play the game. Sometimes he'll be a seemingly ruthless outlaw, like when he switches sides in Mexico, and sometimes he's just a good guy, like when he's helping Luisa. It doesn't make sense. It seems like Rockstar just threw a little bit of Honor and Dishonor into his character to cater to both styles of players, without really going whole-hog either way. A better scenario would've been that John Marston the Dishonorable would be able to play both sides of the Mexican civil war against each other to get what he wants, whereas Honorable John Marston helps Luisa and the rebels because it's more or less the 'right' thing to do.
If the way you play the game is not reflected at all in the character, why include a morality system in the first place? Leaving aside the fact that binary morality systems are pretty dumb and black and white, if it's not reflected in the story or the gameplay in a meaningful way, then what is the point?
I appreciate the effort that Rockstar made to incorporate the theme of nature versus nurture later on in the game, but it's too little, too late, and with very few actual choices to make, it's not wholly realized. Creating a fun sandbox game that lets you do whatever you want and telling a good but linear story with believable characters are two goals that are simply at odds with each other. Imagine this, but with more cowboys and less space. I propose the following: Red Dead and GTA 4's structure combined with the character development of, say Mass Effect, or other Bioware games. The story could alter in relatively small but meaningful ways based on your choices, and certain characters will like you or not. This seems like the direction these kinds of games need to head in if they want to have a really good story mixed with the freedom of an openworld game.
Thanks for reading and feel free to agree or disagree in the comments! 8 Comments
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