I'm a swinger: Pandemic, FEAR 2 Demo, Left 4 Dead MP, Bejeweled 2

I've had a chance to do a bunch of "brief" gaming over the past couple of days. There were highs and lows and in-betweens. I dealt with my biggest "low" in a previous post re: Sonic Chronicles (the DS game by Bioware).

Some of the highs and interestings:

Pandemic is a great co-op board game. There are many things that this game does well, but I think that the key things it executes on are: 

• Vicissitude: The game plays like one imagines a real pandemic might play out -- lots of ups and downs, some randomness that never seems arbitrary or unfair, and a constant feeling of tension.
• Flow: Unlike many competitive turn based board games, the fact that players are constantly engaged and working together means that you're always "in the game".
• Accessibility: I can't remember a board game that had such instant appeal to gamers and non-gamers alike. I still remember the first night of game play (over New Years) when I was listening to people play (a mix of gamers and non-gamers). The non-gamers were the first to chime in with "Can we play again?" after they'd watched the world succumb to pandemic.

The FEAR 2 demo had its ups and downs. On the plus side, I love the IP and the feel of the world. 

• The initial experience was very well polished: Creepy, engaging, and it taught me the game play basics in an engaging and entertaining way.
  
• Controls seemed a little overly complex. But I'd recently been playing Fallout 3 (as a small arms gunner) and Left 4 Dead, so I did expect a learning (and unlearning) curve.
• I also appreciated their Game Shell UI: It had a nice flow that only a few other games have used. First it helped me calibrate my display screen (it's a dark game, so it needs to be optimized based on display device -- CRT, Projector, LCD, TV, etc). Second, it had helpful descriptive labels for difficulty settings (self-reported behavior) to help players get into the right experience.
• My main dislike is that I don't like the way my character moves. I can't remember if there was the sense of gravity and inertia in the original (I played it a bit on the PC). But it's distracting and even slightly nauseating to me -- and I can't turn it off or reduce it. I like a little bit of loping/head bobbing (I think Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay got it right) or using some gravitational force/drag when my character is injured, but I think it was ratcheted up a little too high for default running around. Felt almost like Conker when he woke up hungover and unable to move. Frustrating.
• I'm torn re: health packs. I thought I never wanted to see them again after playing a bit of Call of Duty 3 (rest and recover model) and then trying Resistance: Fall of Man (old school med kits). However, games like Left 4 Dead remind me that health packs can add to the experience.

I then jumped into Left 4 Dead to play some MP. Basically I wanted to find out what it was like to play as a zombie. True to most Valve games, there was a ton of depth and a myriad of cool things to explore from the zombie side of things. The stats were detailed so as to make the scoring system transparent -- although I still never really grasped how team points really worked. 

One of the coolest parts of playing as a zombie (other than vomiting, strangling, and otherwise tormenting survivors) is that you get to see the game through several different sets of fresh eyes:

• As director: You get a glimpse of the "set" from behind the scenes. You see the "actors" (the survivors) doing their thing and fade more into the background. It's really quite surreal and often it is quite fun to just watch the action unfold while waiting to respawn.
• As a study in AI: You have goals (kill survivors, score points, retribution) and abilities (climbing, moving, attack, special). The level is seeded with various grippy UI (where undead can climb and go); closed doors are marked as "breakable"; and you can see silhouttes of your various conspirators and the survivors. I couldn't help but try to deconstruct how AI bots must "see" the level and pursue their "goals" because many of the in-game UI elements seemed like debug tools (albeit with a fine sheen of visual polish) to study and optimize AI behavior.

I kind of wish I could play as the zombies against an entire AI party of survivors. maybe the survivor AI hasn't been optimized for "leaderless" level progression, but still it would be cool to see (although I concede it may not be fun to play).

I finished the night off with some XBLA Bejeweled 2. I've written about my love-hate relationship with Bejeweled Blitz (Facebook) elsewhere, but I basically just wanted to check out the mechanics on the Xbox controller and see if I couldn't learn some more strategies by being able to take turns > 1 minute in length.

As it turns out, Bejeweled isn't very fun to play with the Xbox controller. It's hard to quickly move your selector to a place of interest and there are aiming issues (I often moved a gem the wrong direction by mistake) which makes the game very different, strategically speaking, from the tightly time-constrained FB version. 

I also think that playing on my projector made the game harder to play because I had to physically turn my head to see parts of the board instead of being able to take the whole board in at a glance on the PC monitor-sized version.

That said, it was still a relaxing game to play. I had fun trying to cheese out some Achievements even though I didn't really learn any new strats.

Finished The Darkness (and played some God of War 2)

I just completed The Darkness. It was created by the folks behind Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. I quite enjoyed the ride, even if it wasn't as polished an adventure as Uncharted and the combat never lived up to its potential (weapons + demon powers + minions) in terms of challenge or tactical/strategic feel.

What did I like most? I really liked the way I got to get to know my character better through his dreams and visions. These played at various plot points of the game -- and key ones repeated during reloads. Not only did this make load times much more interesting, but it really captured the feel of the moody/tormented main character.

The game was definitely adult themed and quite graphic and gory at times -- much like a good action/thriller movie. The sequence involving the death of my girlfriend was one of the more powerful sequences in a game. They captured the frustration, helplessness, and anger that I was supposed to feel just right.

As far as God of War 2 goes, I'm playing it more for research purposes right now. I've got a couple of games that I'm working on that are going for action combat. While I really enjoy the combination of action combat and quick time events, I think that it's a little unforgiving on default difficulty. I wonder if I would have been able to complete the first hour of game play without having played a bunch of the first version. That said, the first hour was a wild and fun ride. I look forward to playing more.

More The Darkness

The Darkness is still enjoyable, but it is seeming less and less like an action adventure and more like an adventure. It really does fall more in line with Eternal Darkness than Chronicles of Riddick.

I'm finding the story and character development engaging even though it plays on rather tired stereotypes of New York lowlifes and mobsters. The main character reminds me a bit of the main character in Prey: Rough around the edges, but likable.

The combat aspect of game play, sadly, is not all that satisfying. While there is the promise of interesting/tactical/puzzle solving squad based combat, this has yet to be delivered in any compelling way.

Another frustrating aspect is in-game lighting and level design. I often find myself lost and not sure where to go next and need to refresh my memory with the journal or (worse) check street maps to figure out where I am and where I need to get to. Seems like the designers could do a better job subtly pointing my nose in the direction I need to wander in.

I think I'm engaged enough in the story that I'll try to blow through and complete the game in order to get some resolution. It still does amaze me that I'm willing to set aside the varied complaints I made in order to complete the story.

The Club: Demo Impressions

So, The Club has been getting some good press. And, I must admit that I was intrigued based on the trailers I have seen. The game looked humorous and like it might have a fresh twist on the shooter genre.

My overall impression after playing the demo was that I was basically getting Doom crossed with PGR. This might appeal to some folks who like to strive against themselves (and others) in various race-like competitions, but to me I found the experience lacking. I guess I really do require two things from my shooters these days: Great story and No Health Packs.

Story is a given for me. I need to be immersed in the world and feel like I have an emotional tie to my character.

No Health Packs is really just a generalized reference to the fact that I think it's time for shooters to leave some of their old school conventions behind (e.g., shields, health bars, and health packs) in favor of the new guard conventions (world desaturation, regenerate while hiding). I realize that the same systems are in play -- that the world turning red is the same thing as my shields being depleted, and my response should be the same "take cover". But to me, I just prefer the current generation of games giving you the same information via within-fiction feedback instead of via statistical HUD displays.

Now, on to my initial experience with the game.

I loved the attract movie -- it reminds me of the beginning of The Chronicles of Riddick where a guy is running across a frozen plain, pursued by a chopper (well, spacecraft in Riddick).

However, the Game shell UI made me nervous.

• Options aren't arranged in a traditional menu format. There are floating selectable thingies. And I can't tell which one is highlighted.
• The font is almost impossible to read (some sort of ghetto stylized text). Maybe it's just my projector. But wow. I can barely read the text.
  
• Only one of the "Cars" (I mean characters) is available in the demo. I have a feeling I'd want to test out a couple of different characters to make sure that the variety was fun.
  

Then the game tells me I'm going to be thrown into a tutorial:

• The voice talks to me. There are all sorts of rules that sound important. But I just want to play.
  
• And then I realize: It's not a tutorial. It's a lecture. Boring.
• Moreover the pacing is all off. I'm being told about the RB and bleeding and... Never mind. The game is starting now.
• It was at this point that I said "ah... of course, it's by Bizarre Creations." They've basically taken the Kudos system from PGR and applied it to a shooter.
  

Game play:

• The camera and VO are introducing me to the race track. Interesting.
• They offer me "casual" game play mode (in addition to Reckless, Insane, and a locked "Real"). There isn't any help text, but I can see that difficulty mode affects the amount of points I need to get before I can pass the level.
• Just before the level begins, up flashes an insanely complex image of controller with all kinds of buttons and functions. Skip it.
• I realize it's a 3rd person shooter. And I need to invert my camera. My guy feels a little rigid. Maybe I'd some of the others will feel more athletic?
  
• I'm trying to figure out basic controls. Why is B mapped to grenades?
• It really does feel a bit like Doom. There are oversized novelty health and ammo pickups. The enemy AI is pretty uninteresting. They have behaviors that you can learn and will probably require strategizing against at higher difficulty levels, but on "Casual" the enemies just seem lame and uninvolved.
• This game is obviously designed to appeal to the racing folks who like to master tracks. I imagine there will be "ghost" images that you can save and send to friends and compete that way (the kind of asynchronous competition that made PGR2 so addictive for a lot of my friends).
• I completed the default mode and then tried the "Timed mode". I guess I will be running laps around a course. If I fail, microexplosives will detonate in my skull.... Hmm... Not exactly the kind of compelling story I was hoping for.
  
• The weapons don't feel that sweet. The shotgun feels kind of lame. I can't tell much difference between the various machine guns (other than slight audio tweaks). The pistol is pretty satisfying, though.
• I complete the race and wonder whether it would be fun to be chasing a friend's ghost.
  

Overall, this one is a rental for me. I am curious as to whether there are ghosts in this game. I think it would be super cool to be able to watch friends complete single player experiences. I am left to dream how cool Portal 2 might be if I could compete against my friends' ghosts.

That would be cool.

They're here.... And now they're gone!

Well, the undead have finally arrived in Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. I'm kind of sad about how the 6-axis functionality was incorporated into the game play (shake the controller when one of them jumps on your back) but it's not awful. Unlike the melee combos (which I could never master and thus never do hand-to-hand combat) I needed to figure out this maneuver in order to complete the initial encounter.

Oh -- and they answered the "how am I going to find guns in a dungeon with populated by the undead from the time of Sir Francis Drake". Nazis discovered the dungeon during WWII and left some sweet weapons and ammo behind. Say hello to my little friend... The MP40.

Then back to humans and... we're done.

Great game. Definitely Hudson Hawk with strong elements of Indiana Jones. It also made me think of how much cooler Crimson Skies could have been and makes me sad that there won't be a Crimson Skies II. I still remember cringing at one of the original visions for that game where you "play the movie" -- and now I'm with the impression that I did just play a movie and it was a great gaming experience.

I'd really have to put this game in the category of Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay and Eternal Darkness. The game mechanics in both of those games were fun. Not great, but fun. Yet both of those games really made me feel like I was in the middle of the movie and able to guide the lead with my thoughts and button presses.

Could the combat have been better? Yep. The puzzling? Definitely. But I developed an attachment to the main characters of the game that was as deep as in any movie. The ending was truly satisfying (in terms of the story resolution moreso than the final battle) and left me looking forward to the sequel.