Saturday 19 July 2014

No Game New Year: Game Backlog

Hi there.

This week, I've been playing more Gotham City Impostors and Streets of Rage II. I haven't really got time to write a full review of what I've been doing as I'm about to go on holiday, however last night I saw a post from Cassandra Brabon mentioning a Kotaku article about managing and playing your way through games more efficiently. The article did suggest some good ways to organise your play-throughs, though it is a little presumptuous about how long it will take to play through most games. It fails to take into account the fact that I suck. Nonetheless, after reading this, I decided to compile a list of my games to check my progress on them, and I thought I'd share it with you today.

So, there are 3 things I'm looking for (my list, my rules):
  1. Whether or not I've played the game, because I'm always horribly astonished when I count the games I own and never actually played.
  2. Whether or not I've completed the game, that is to say got to the end credits. Where N/A appears here it is because it is not a game you "complete" in the usual sense, usually either because it's a puzzle game that goes on indefinitely or it's a multiplayer-only game with no single-player campaign.
  3. Whether or not I've got all the achievement points, which is the point at which I decide I don't need to own the game any longer. Where N/A appears here it is because the game does not use achievement points.
Also, please be aware that this list refers only to the Xbox 360. I have yet to compile similar lists for the Xbox (original,) Playstation 2, Playstation 1, Nintendo DS and Gameboy Advance. That will take me a lot longer.

Xbox 360 Compilations inc. Played Completed Achievement Points
Ascend: Hand of Kul x
Assassin's Creed x
Batman: Arkham Asylum x x
Batman: Arkham City x
Battleblock Theater
Beyond Good and Evil HD x
Bioshock x x
Blood Bowl x
Borderlands: Game of the Year x
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons x x
Brutal Legend
Call of Duty Classic x
Capcom Arcade Cabinet
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow
Charlie Murder
Civilisation: Revolution
Command and Conquer x
Crackdown x
Dark Souls
Dead Island
Deadlight
Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Dishonored x
Dragon Age: Origins x
Dragons Dogma x
Dungeon Defenders
Dust
Dynasty Warriors 7 x
Fable 2 x x
Fable 3
Fallout 3 x x
Farcry 2 x
Farcry 3 x
Gears of War x x
Gears of War 2
Gears of War 3
Gotham City Impostors x N/A
Grand Theft Auto 4 x
Grand Theft Auto 5 x x
Halo 3
Hitman: Absolution
Injustice: Gods Among Us x x
Iron Brigade
Kill Team x x
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning x
L.A. Noire x
Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light
Lego Harry Potter I-IV x
Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga x
Madden 12 x
Marvel: Ultimate Alliance x
Mass Effect x
Mass Effect 2
Mortal Kombat (2011) x
Oblivion x
Prototype x
Rad Raygun x x N/A
Rainbow Six Vegas
Red Dead Redemption x
Resident Evil: Code Veronica X x
Resident Evil 4 x x
Saints Row x
Saints Row: The Third
Sega Megadrive Ultimate Collection Alex Kidd x x
Alien Storm x x
Alien Syndrome N/A
Altered Beast x x
Altered Beast Arcade N/A
Bonanza Bros. x x
Columns x N/A x
Comix Zone x x x
Decap Attack
Dr Robotniks M.B.M x x x
Dynamite Headdy N/A
E-SWAT
Ecco the Dolphin x x
Ecco: The Tides of Time x
Fantasy Zone N/A
Fatal Labyrinth x x
Flicky
Gain Ground x N/A
Golden Axe x x
Golden Axe 2
Golden Axe 3
Golden Axe Warrior N/A
Kid Chameleon x x
Phantasy Star x N/A
Phantasy Star II N/A
Phantasy Star III N/A
Phantasy Star IV N/A
Ristar
Shining Force N/A
Shining Force II N/A
Shining in the Darkness N/A
Shinobi III x x x
Shinobi Arcade x N/A
Sonic the Hedgehog x x x
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 x x N/A
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 x x
Sonic & Knuckles x x N/A
Sonic Spinball x x
Sonic 3D: Flickies' Island x
Space Harrier x N/A
Streets of Rage x x x
Streets of Rage II x x N/A
Streets of Rage III x
Super Thunder Blade x x
The Story of Thor
Tip Top N/A
Vectorman x
Vectorman 2
Zaxxon N/A
Shadowrun x N/A
Shoot Many Robots
Skyrim x
Sonic CD x
Space Marine x x
Spartacus Legends
Super Street Fighter IV
Tomb Raider x x
WW12 x
WW13 x
The Wolf Among Us
XCOM: Enemy Unknown x x
XCOM: Enemy Within x

As you can see, I've still got a long way to go...

Sunday 13 July 2014

No Game New Year: Gotham City Impostors


While deciding what game to play through next I became aware that my Xbox 360 is running out of memory. With the Games on Gold downloads meaning that I’ve somehow managed to acquire 20 or so games for absolutely nothing, I’ve got a log going on with my hard drive now and have roughly 60 gigabytes left. Not a small amount of memory given that the laptop that I’m writing this on only has 80GB altogether, but given that this time last year it was something like 180, I realised that perhaps I might need to play one or two of these games I’ve been downloading so I can farm all their achievement points and delete them.

That being said, I was as surprised as anyone at the game I found myself playing this week:

 
Gotham City Impostors

This is a multiplayer-only 6v6 shooter that is currently available to download free with an Xbox Live Gold membership, and that is how I came to own it. It’s got some nice little quirks, not the least of them the setting: Seemingly normal people in Gotham City, dressing up as the “Batz” and the “Jokerz” that make up the two factions of the game. The differences between them are aesthetic, as you might expect from a balanced shooter, but the unusual art style and customisation options makes for quite a varied set-up.

Now if this hadn’t come out as a free download I probably would never have played it, and here’s why: I thought the idea of the game was absolutely ridiculous. If I was going to play a multiplayer-only game, I wanted to be using DC’s own super-heroes, not a bunch of people dressed up as Batman and The Joker!

I’m also not a massive fan of multiplayer games for one simple reason: I’m terrible at them. I haven’t really got the reflexes to be able to pull accurate headshots, I’m not good at combining load-outs etc for maximum effect, and I die far too easily to people who are far better at it than me. I’m not saying I’ve never had any fun playing multiplayer games, but I would not usually buy a game purely for the purpose of playing multiplayer.

I think Yahtzee made the point quite succinctly in his review of Halo Reach: “A full-priced game has to stand up on single-player, because there are always factors in the way of multiplayer that the game can’t help, like its servers becoming tumbleweed-haunted ghost towns three months down the line, or the aforementioned[1] meta-****s doing what they do best at full volume in my ear.” And I’m absolutely convinced that the same will become true of Gotham City Imposters in the not too distant future, presumably once the next Call of Duty game comes out. That being said, right now the game is free, which means a tonne of new people will have downloaded it so there will be people playing on the servers and perhaps not all of them will be, er , ‘power gamers.’[2] It is for this reason, more than anything, that I decided to give this game a go.

 
You can use foot traps as well. He's about to die...
Getting into the game, I was pleasantly surprised by how much fun it actually is. As you might expect, it doesn’t take itself too seriously. The maps are bright and colourful, the game has a good variety of modes and the usual gunplay is augmented by ‘mods,’ ‘gadgets’ and support weapons. It is with the latter point that the game really comes into its own, because it gives you the freedom to decide how YOU want to play the game. Want to play a sniper on roller skates? You can do it. Want a melee-oriented thug who can glide? No problem. Want to play a ninja who can turn invisible? Yes, you’ll have to work for it, but you can do it. The end result is that your ‘teams’ consist of a mixed bag of eccentric personalities and perhaps isn’t always so coherent. This is made up for by the gadgets being a lot of fun to use, like the grapple-hook which allows some fast movement to a high place, and the roller-skates which increase your speed but decrease your accuracy and control.

I’m not good at the game, by any stretch of the imagination. But I do OK and I tend to finish around about mid/low table, depending on who else is in the game. I went with a ‘tough’ (average) build with a semi-automatic rifle, a sub-machine gun, grenades and I switch between the Grappling Hook and Roller Skates depending on the map. I’ve been having a decent amount of fun being the guy shooting into a firefight and taking down two or three enemies, or sneaking up behind people who don’t know I’m there and gunning them down. That’s where most of my kills come from because in a straight fight I rarely come out with my arms raised. The game shows a ranking of the top three most valuable players at the end; rarely do I make it onto this list but I’ve been pleased with my performance on the few times that I have.

There are some performance issues that I think mainly relate to having a lot more people playing the game than its servers are capable of coping with. All too often I see other characters flutter in and out of sight as the game struggles to keep up with them – a bit of a problem when you’re trying to aim! Sometimes the game apparently remembers that about 4 different people have now been killed, and sometimes the server goes down completely. There may also be some balance issues relating to some of the combinations of builds, weapons and mods, but to be honest in a game this diverse that was always going to be hard to avoid!

I also liked the micro-transactions in the game, simply because I’m at no point obligated to buy them. As far as I can see, the only difference that any of the items you’d spend actual money on are aesthetic. It’s not like you can buy the best weapon in the game and spam it; your money affects your costume and nothing else. If you want the weapons, you have to play through the game and earn them, and rightly so.

So how do I ‘play through’ a purely multiplayer game? I look for all the achievement points. So far I’ve got 4 out of 12, and it is going to take me a long time to get all the rest. For example, I have to max out all the ‘feats’ that relate to a single weapon – which usually means get a certain number of kills, a certain number of headshots, and a certain number of kills with each mod. I’m about halfway through the latter but like I said, I’m not very good at this sort of thing and I’m not getting the kills I need. I have a feeling I might be tired of this before I get there. I’m trying to achieve multiple points by playing the right game mode (the Psychic Warfare mode is played by attaching a battery to a brainwashing machine. If the enemy activates theirs, it sends you mad and all you can do is slap people. One of the achievement points I’m chasing involves getting 50 kills in this manner.) but I think I may be fighting for a lost cause with the Nemesis one (I think that just means you have to kill someone twice without dying) because I’ve not managed it even once yet.

Not sure what this is all about but it's amusing...
I’ll keep playing Gotham City Impostors for now because I’m still having fun with it. I’m glad I didn’t spend any actual money on it, but it’s a good game for what it is. While it is still essentially free to play, and should be for another day, I’d more than recommend giving it a go. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised, as was I…


[1] Referring to a previous comment relating to the game’s fanbase.
[2] While I’ve got no problem with using the word Yahtzee used when referring to the same demographic, I do need to be aware that other people read my blog and will be none too pleased to see such language!

Monday 7 July 2014

No Game New Year: Half Way Through with Sonic 2! See what I did there?


Hi there!

Once again, I haven’t posted for a while, largely for girlfriend-related reasons though I have to say that I needed to give myself some time to play the games as well!

So we’re at the half-way point of the challenge, and so far I’ve been doing OK. By that I mean I’ve managed to get through the last six months without buying a game or any DLC of any kind, and any games I’ve acquired during this time have been absolutely for free. And as we approach the back half of the year, I’ll take this opportunity to reflect on the challenge, and how it’s made me approach games:

It’s no secret to anyone who knows me that it is easy for me to fall in to the trap of buying games habitually. The huge stack of Xbox games, both original and 360, in my bedroom is testament to that. This year I’ve had to make a conscious effort not to do this. And to be perfectly honest it’s been a lot easier for me than I dared to hope at the start of the year!

This is largely because of the new generation of consoles that are coming out. The line-up for the new generation is the Playstation 4, the Xbox One and the Wii U, and I don’t own any of them. Therefore I can’t be tempted to buy games for them! Not that there are many to get at this point, and most of the ones you can buy were available on previous-gen as well. I’ve spent some time thinking about which one I’m going to get when I am allowed to do so, but that’s a whole different discussion for another time.

When I buy games, I tend to go for the ones on special offer. GAME – the main retailer for games in the UK – often has deals on that mean you can get 4 games for £20, or something similar. The games are usually pre-owned, but that’s never bothered me since I usually buy games because I want them, not because they’re a new release. I’ve got something like 60 games for my 360, and I think only 3 of them I’ve bought new or even close to release. (Both XCOM games and GTAV, if you want to know.) So I walk into a shop, see what games I like and then go ahead and buy them if I can make a good deal out of it. Because of the challenge, I’ve not been going in to game stores, and I actually find it more of a faff to order physical copies online, so it’s not been particularly hard to avoid!

Where the challenge has presented me with, well, a challenge is when it comes to actually thinking about the games I own. I know I’ve been a bit spotty with this over the last few months, but the original idea behind the blog was to post updates about what I think of the games I’ve been playing and whether or not I want to keep them, this that and the other. And I’ve seen some of the other guys playing games on their posts and getting through a significantly higher number of games than I am, and I’m wondering if I should be doing more. Not playing more games; we all have different schedules so if I don’t have time to play as many as I’d like, or as many as other people do, then it’s not really a problem. But I sometimes ask myself whether I should be doing more to say how I’m getting on.

What I’ve been doing, then, is while I play the game, I think about what I want to say about it. Not just for the sake of the challenge, though. I think it’s quite a good thing that, given how much of my time I spend playing video games, it’s good to ask myself why I’m actually enjoying it – and if other people want to know, then that’s fine by me. So I mutter to myself passages that eventually end up in the blog, in the hope that someone’s going to read it and find it interesting…

Case in point: This week’s game.

 
Sonic the Hedgehog 2

This game will always be very special to me. Back in 1994, I got my first Sega Megadrive, (Genesis,) and I’d been after one for literally years. I remember I was 8 years old, and my Mom bought me a Megadrive with Sonic 2 on it. It wasn’t my first ever game; we’d had an Acorn Archimedes computer before that and we’d had plenty of games for it. But the Megadrive was mine, and so was Sonic 2. I played it almost non-stop until the end of the school year when I was bought another couple of games – more on that later. I come to own it now from the Sega Megadrive Ultimate Collection that I’ve spoken about before, and I thought 20 years later, now was the time to give it another play-through.

Turns out I’d forgotten two very important things about the game. The first is how much fun Sonic is! And the second was how hard those old games are.

So Sonic 2 is a great game, it really is. Side-scrolling platformers were hardly uncommon 20 years ago, but few games did it so well. It encouraged speed by having Sonic move incredibly fast for a video game, but punished carelessness by throwing spikes and pit traps in your way. The levels were designed in vastly different styles, each with their own gimmicks, traps and enemies – but with enough similarity to tie it all together. The fact that there were different enemies on each level was actually not that common, if I remember rightly; most of the games I remember playing at the time used the same or similar enemies across multiple levels. The sound track is nothing short of iconic. I know that word should not be used lightly, but just do a quick search on YouTube for the number of people who’ve done videos of Bass Guitar covers of the Chemical Plant Zone theme.[1] And most importantly of all, whether you got through the game or not were entirely up to you.

“Well, no shit,” I hear you cry. “You’re in control of the game; of course it’s up to you whether or not you beat it!” Yes… but it’s not that simple. You have a lot of control over what happens in the game for a few reasons:

  1. Sonic 2 was a competently-made game. That means that it had been play-tested so the dev team knew it all worked properly, and there were no game-breaking bugs or glitches that would screw you over. That’s not to say there weren’t any bugs or glitches in there at all, in fact some of them were quite beneficial, but none of them would harm your progress, and they weren’t even taken out for the game compilation I’m playing it on! Thankfully most of us remember a time before there was scope for games being patched for bugs, so the developers really had to work hard to make sure that everything worked. They didn’t always get it right, but they got a lot more right than many of their contemporaries manage these days!
  2. The game wasn’t designed to be played for you. There were no button prompts, no “Hit the Crawl from the rear or you’ll just bounce off him” or “Jump to avoid these spikes/that pit trap.” If you avoided the traps, it was because you saw them coming. If you destroyed a badnik without getting hurt, it was because you’d considered the best way to approach it. If you managed to beat the bosses, it was because you’d analysed their attack patterns and developed your counter-attack from that. Or more likely, you’d buggered it up fifty times before you got any of it right – which made the game a challenge, but not unfair. There was a lot of trial and error, and the sense of accomplishment from finally getting it right was where a lot of the longevity of these games comes from. I’m still playing it 20 years later!

It was quite strange, playing it through again. Those muscle reactions that I thought long gone were coming back to me as I played my way through the early levels of the game, only to get stuck later on because I kept dying. Rarely from a Badnik (evil robot.) No, I’d always get trapped, or fall down a pit, or drown or something or other. I remember finding the game a lot easier when I was younger and I found myself wondering, are games getting easier in the last few generations? Or am I getting rubbish at them in my old age?

It turns out the answer doesn’t relate to either of those things. In actual fact, when I played this game when I was 8 years old, I had all the cheat codes to it and could select whichever level I want, and was also able to change into Super Sonic any time I wanted as well. So I had plenty of opportunity to practise those harder levels. I actually can’t remember, even in my younger days, playing the game through from one end to the other more than a couple of times, though I did complete the game several times by cheating. I can’t remember any of the codes now, even if I wanted to cheat – though I do remember you input the codes by playing certain tracks from the Sound Test in a particular order. I don’t think they’d work now even if I wanted to do it, because I did play back some of the tracks and my 360 seems to be a lot less happy about doing this than my old Megadrive was. (It crashed after a couple of tracks.)

That being said, Sonic 2 is also a lot harder than today’s contemporary games because here you have a fail state. You start with three lives. You can gain more, but if you ever lose them, you have to start all over again. This just doesn’t happen in modern games, and rightly so, because modern games are sometimes quite a lengthy procedure that would not survive having the whole thing de-railed because you’d died too many times. But in the early games, those lives were your lifeline. You had to hang on to them, and try not to lose them.

Because lose them I do; usually either to aforementioned traps, or boss battles. Some of the latter are ridiculously easy, some are insanely hard, and the last boss battle is borderline impossible. I’ve fallen down on the last couple of bosses several times, and even though it is frustrating, I don’t particularly mind. Let’s be honest; this is what these games are about. Smashing your way through levels, exploring them fully to find their secrets – they will give you cool stuff but you have to earn it – praying that you’re still in good enough shape to battle the end-of-level boss, and then when you’re exhausted and your concentration is slipping, have one last duel to the death between you and the final boss. Whatever happens at that point, it is a fitting end…

I managed to beat the game last Sunday night, and allowed myself a small smile of overcoming the challenge, as hitherto I always fell down on the last couple of levels. But I would like to make a few comments on the game itself, how it is different from the other Sonic games, and what I think of the mechanics involved with it.

For a start, Sonic 2 is a very good sequel. Over the last few generations, we’ve been seeing more and more sequels that haven’t been as effective. On one hand, some sequels iterate rather than innovate, basically releasing the same game 4 or 5 times. *cough* Dynasty Warriors *cough* On the other hand, some games take it too far the other way, and release games where the mechanics and design are so different that it is barely recognisable as part of the franchise. (Less often, though I think some of the more recent Sonic games are guilty of this!)

To contrast, Sonic 2 is basically Sonic 1, but better. He can still do everything he could do before, in the same way – but now he can do more things. Here’s a few alterations to what had gone before that made Sonic 2 an improvement on Sonic 1:

First, the Dash Attack. Sonic’s been able to do this for so long, sometimes it’s hard to remember that it wasn’t always the case. You could now duck on the floor and charge a ground-based spin attack, whereas before you had to do it from a run. This was very useful for opening some item boxes and hitting some of the enemies where precision was required. It’s no surprise that they kept this one!

Second, the Special Stage. This was a massive improvement over the rotating special stage from Sonic One, where one wrong move would take you straight back into the main game. For a start, it was much easier to get to – get 50 rings and find a Star Post, then jump through the ring of Stars that appears there. A challenge, certainly, but better than praying you still had enough rings left at the end of the level. And then there was the Special Stage itself. The sort-of-3D graphics looked amazing for the time, and the setting made the age-old premise of ‘collect the good stuff (rings) and avoid the bad stuff (mines)’ a lot more interesting. Plus, if you did muck it up, the game would drop you back in the same level next time, rather than move it on. This was good because some of the seven stages were actually really hard!

Third, Super Sonic. This was your reward for getting all seven Chaos Emeralds out of the Special Stage. If at any time after this you collected 50 rings and hit the jump button, Sonic turns yellow and becomes Super Sonic. I remember Sonic The Comic (published in the early-to-late 90s, I got most of them up to 1999,) portraying Super Sonic as an out-of-control demon, super-strong, invulnerable and very, very angry. The Super Sonic you control in the game is pretty much like that except he can’t fly. There were no morality issues either; in pretty much every game before 1995, you were either the good guy, or in a very small number of cases, you weren’t. Sonic, Super or otherwise, has always been the good guy and rightly so. Super Sonic is faster than Sonic, won’t take any damage that would normally result in losing your rings and can jump higher. But he’s less accurate to control, which is not good during some of the precision platforming you have to employ late in the game. Also, getting him was something of a blessing and a curse – he drains your rings for every second he’s in the game, and there’s no way to turn him off short of letting him drain them all. And it was almost impossible not to do it because the trigger was the jump button. Try getting through any Sonic game without jumping and see what happens! This was all well and good, except that the best way to collect extra lives was to collect 100 rings, and playing as Super Sonic prevented this. So, the individual levels were easier, but the end of the game was harder as it allowed less room for error.

Finally, Tails/2 player Co-op. Sadly, I think they missed a trick here. True, Tails became one of the most famous characters of the franchise, and the idea of a fox with two tails that can fly is a good one. But as there was no way to make him fly in the game, it didn’t make the slightest bit of difference whether you played him or Sonic. This undermined what could potentially have been a great innovation into the game, allowing Tails to reach harder-to-reach areas. The Co-op mode was, I suppose, a good way to allow a younger player to play with a more experienced player, since Tails couldn’t die or lose any rings. But the second player is shut out of the last couple of levels since Tails doesn’t appear in them, for the story’s sake as much as anything else. You could, of course, allow the AI to control tails, but this rarely helped. His role seemed quite reactive; i.e. if a Badnik hurt Sonic, Tails would attack it. If Sonic lost his rings, Tails would pick them up. He was no use at all on the Special Stage, as he would follow Sonic and his reactions were delayed by about half a second, which meant that he would more often than not run into the mines you were trying to avoid! Most of this was fixed for Sonic 3 though.

So, to conclude, a great game, and I was happy to have the opportunity to play it through again. I think I will cover Streets of Rage 2 at some point as well, but for now, I’m going to decide what to play next in amongst the multitude of things I’ve got to do…


[1] Then do another, much longer search for one who actually got it right…