So as of this writing I have just finished getting 1k points in both Fallout 3 and Cars. Yes, I am willing to shamelessly use children’s games to boost my score, though in this case I nearly paid for it with my sanity. (Cue flashbacks of hours playing Open Season…*shudders*)
Firstly I want to say that, unequivocally and without a doubt Fallout 3 is one of the best games I have played in the past 10 or so years. It’s Oblivion without all the same sword and sorcery bullshit that I have been playing since my father winked at my mother and she thought he might not suck. It is a game in which not only do we have the moral flavor of the month club, but things ACTUALLY change depending on what you do. Towns are wiped off the face of the post-apocalyptic planet or become more important to you depending on your choices. Still, how hard is it in this day and age to write a game with just one extra ending in it? I mean an honest-to-god real, no fakes, no whammies, different ending that depends on the choices you made. I know somewhere out there I have played a game that had more than one ending. Maybe even two.
Aside from that, I think it has one of the most interesting combat systems I have seen in a long time and on top of that, I never felt that I was playing just for the sake of playing…. But that being said, here is why I want to sterilize the developers:
They took one of the best games I have ever seen and tried to make you play it more than once - not for the sheer enjoyment of the game (which I would have done) but no… they tried to make me by giving me achievements to fulfill for EVERY FREAKING MORAL PATH. The only crappy time I had was making sure I didn’t level past one of the achievement marks without first saving my game, then reloading and making the damn level AGAIN for each path. I can only hope that every time they think about using this whorebag of an idea again in the future, a monkey leaps out of a nearby closet and rapes them so they snap out if it and help us, the people they are actually making the game for, avoid unnecessary monotony throughout a long, long game.
Now what could this possibly have to do with Cars do you ask? Here is a cute little racing game, modeled after a Pixar movie that is both funny and had great amounts of charm. So what do they do? They remove all the clever and funny and replay a few songs and clips from the movie till you are vomiting so hard it is spraying from your nostrils. And that’s really all you have to look forward to as you proceed through the next 10ish hours (give or take with your trips to empty your bucket-o-vomit).
But even if you were smart enough to turn the sound off (admit it, you other achievement-whores out there, it didn’t occur to you to do it until an hour before you finished the game), once again the lords of achievement-making decided to hide 20 postcards in the three sectons of a kid’s game in places that no child would ever think of going. It made me want to punch a baby, how’s a kid going to deal? They hid them so well, in fact, that I had to search for a youtube video of someone else getting them, then watch it and mimic what they were doing. I never thought a game targetted for kids would make me want to smash my TV into small bits and force feed the jagged parts to an innocent bystander.
So in the end, all I can conclude is that I seriously think that the achievements for games are planned by cannabalistic clowns. You’ll never convince me otherwise.
Mass Effect has been beaten, 3 & 4/5th times! Ugh!
Come here often, baby?
Once on Casual!
Once on Hardcore!
Once on Insanity!
And, um, 4/5th of another run on Casual!
Why would you ever want to do a game, that many times? Because the achievements told me to! Sigh. But even if that was not the case, Mass Effect, on the outset seems like one of the best rpgs for replay value, so it’s not too bad, right?. One of the best types of games to do multiple playthrus on, is rpgs within the subgenre of “Moral choice RPGS”*. They’re pretty few and far between, but the euphoria of allowing your character to either be a nice guy, or a complete homicidal manic, is fairly satisfying.
Mass Effect is a game of choice, letting you choose how to respond to situations, thus giving you what appears on the outset as a limitless possibilities. But here’s the clincher, nothing really changes. After your second playthru, you’ll realize, your morale choices do not effect the game, at all, really. The game is quite simply linear. There are 5 areas you must go to, and everything else is a side quest. No matter what dialogue option you choose, all you’re really doing is choosing a different dialogue, the scenario completes fairly much the same. Sure, it’s fun to pick the options that make you sound like an asshole, but it really doesn’t change the game. “But, Rookerith! I choose an option that made some guy die, but tried it on another playthru and he lived!” Yes, true enough, but you still got the experience/pass code/key card/whatever, either way you did it. Their family doesn’t come after you. You never wake up in cold sweats because you let the guy die. Your crew mates don’t leave you based on their moral beliefs. You just generated a different cut scene and say, “rock on, I got 25 renegade points for pwning that fool.” I guess I shouldn’t really complain, the replay value is there, you are seeing another possible outcome to a scenario, but there was honestly, no option to change the course of the game.
What this really is, is a linear game. It’s not a strait line, but it’s more or less a wave, where you control just how jagged the line is on the way. Don’t get me wrong, as I showed in an earlier blog post, it’s definately fun to see your character react to a certain situation differently, it is indeed a linear rpg.
Honestly, the fable series, and most other series fail at breaking the linear tradition. I think Bethesda might have the formula for morale choice rpgs down better then most. Elder Scrolls presents a primary goal, but the world is completely open, and slaughtering cities, or saving every girl in every town, on your way to the ultimate goal, is completely up to you. Unlike Bethesda, I think Biowareis simply attempting to make a linear game, where you relate to the characters more, by controlling their voice. I don’t necessarily see anything wrong with that, but I’d have liked to have seen more things change to make subsequent playthrus more exciting.
So, upon finding this game so linear, why did I play it so much? Simple, because I wanted to have sex with the other chick also. *coughs* I meant to say, achievements. Bioware set the game up in such a way, that if you want all the achievements, you will be doing ATLEAST 3 playthrus.
1) The companions. Six people join your ‘team’ early on, and you can select two to accompany you on any of your away missions. It’s actually kinda cool, because you can pretend you’re in some Star Trek adventure, picking your perfect team for the given mission. Not that it matters who you pick, because someone will always say whatever needed to be said at any given scenario, but it’s fun to pretend, right? It’s not like you get a “Crap, no computer expert, we’re screwed.” Nope, the Krogan idiot just starts typing away like he’s a computer hacker. *shrugs* This idea is thrown completely out the window by the companion achievements. There is one for each companion and they all read as “Play with this companion, for the majority of the game” and boy, do they mean it. With taking two at a time, you’re stuck at atleast 3 playthrus.
2) The difficulties. The game starts with Normal, and Casual difficulties open. One playthru on either setting opens Hardcore. Another playthru on Hardcore opens “Insanity”, and yay, there is an achievement for playing the game on Insanity. Why developers feel they need to lock difficulty settings away, until we beat the game once, and in this bloody case, twice, is beyond me. Add in the fact that you can replay your game with an existing character, wtih all his items, money and equipment, and insanity isn’t even hard. I just don’t get the point.
Thanks Prey, thanks for locking your “Cherokee” difficulty. Thanks Call of Juarez, for making me collect hidden stuff in an easier difficulty to unlock “Very Hard”. Mass Effect, thanks so much for locking TWO difficulty settings, one behind the other! Classy of all three of you. I bet you all hang out together, in some snobbish english bar, musing together about just how clever you all are as you stroke your elegant English mustaches and drink your english brandy. Very posh of you! But we all know the truth, you tranny beer swilling yobs! Jolly good show, damnable brits! Where was I again, oh..
While I understand the reasoning, somewhat, for having achievements that require multiple playthrus, I think these games do themselves a disservice. Our first playthru of an rpg is magical. Our second is tedious. The third time thru? We start to notice all the problems with the game. Few rpgs get multiple playthrus from people. They are meant to be epic, a one time affair. People play through rpgs multiple times because it’s one of their favorites. Mass Effect should have gotten multiple playthrus because people wanted to experience that magic again. I’ve played through Final Fantasy IV many times, because I love the game. If I was ‘forced’ to, I might not have enjoyed it. Let this be a lesson to those that make rpgs! Make the game standup on it’s own. Make achievements award players for beating the game. Make your game good enough that people want to play it again, not a chore because they want some obscure achievement that requires a second playthru.
Moving on..
Vehicle in Mass Effect: What. The. Fuck. Thanks Bioware, for creating, what I figure is the first rpg that isn’t an mmo, with downtime. I don’t care how hard it was to drive the beast, having to wait 5 minutes for my shields to repair on my vehicle because the only thing that would fix it was ‘waiting’ was stupid, horribly stupid. I read half the 2nd Mass Effect novel while waiting for shields to repair. Good game.
Elevators in Mass Effect: What. The. Fuck. I honestly don’t mind them, hehe. It’s just ‘popular’ to complain about them. I’m sure they’re used as loading devices to load the next area, without a traditional loading screen. Unfortunately, the time they take is static. Even after installing the game to the harddrive of your xbox, the speed is not improved. They made the time static, because they added filler. You unlock missions via news reports heard in the elevators, and you hear fun banter between your two chosen companions now and again as you ride. What really bothers me, is, it’s used for basically a recap of all your moral choices. You’ll hear, “All the children died in the nursery as Spectre Shepard decided to burn the place down, to kill one terrorist.” vs “Shepard let a terrorist go free, at the cost of some rundown building full of expendable kids, bastard.” — That example of a morale choice, de-evolves to a radio broadcast. I just somewhat wish it meant more, as unrealistic as that appears to be.
Mordis says: “Bottom-line it for me”
1) Make your damn non-linear games actually branch out, make the choices I make, take me farther down a seperate path. Stop drawing me back towards the main path every time I try my damn hardest to get off of it.
2) Stop making achievements to make me play your horrible games multiple times. I’ll play them a second time if they were good. It’s the same basic annoyance I have with multiplayer achievements in games, that force you to play what is often a horrible tacked on multiplayer experience. Be like Call of Duty 4 and up. No multiplayer achievements there. People play the multiplayer because it’s good, not because they want a stupid achievement to play 10,000 multiplayer rounds, or something of equal stupidity.
* Some more RPGS with Moral choice: Fallout, Fable come to mind (Whew, this was a good year for moral choice enthusiast!) There is also a few on PC, like Vampire the Masquerade - redemption, the Witcher, and to some degree, KoToR, Jade Empire, and NWN. Bioware and Bethesda are both good places to look, as their catalog of rpgs tend to defer to that subgenre.
Ran across this today. It’s about nine shades of awesome. Fan-made movie of Mega Man that if this trailer is any indication, it doesn’t blow. Here’s a link to Eddie Lebron, the director’s page about it. The actual movie’s site seems to be down due to traffic.
Anyhow, I thought you’d enjoy seeing this, what good fan fiction of MegaMan is, after my dreadful Yaris/Mega Man fan fiction.
Xbox360 got a Netflix streaming channel, for Netflix subscribers to stream movies that they could traditionally stream via computer, to their 360. Big news, as entertainment center computers are still few and far between, and this has the potential to propel streaming movie media in the same way that PlayStation3 is the biggest push in the blu-ray market.
‘Magically’ the night before the Netflix channel is released, Sony suddenly has licensing issues with the 360’s use of Netflix, and pulls their movies in relation to that media outlet.
Maybe they realized just how big a potential this has, and how it will eat into their christmas dvd/blu-ray sales? Streaming media, in my opinion, has the potential to rival blu-ray in use, if not dvd. The ease of access and price point of streaming video, is easily more important then the expensive cost of blu-ray’s higher quality media.
Maybe they just don’t like Microsoft’s Xbox360, being that their company contains one of Xbox’s biggest completing platforms.
Maybe they just see consoles as a separate entity, that they can milk for more money.
Whatever the reason, they knew this was coming, and they waited until the bloody day before the Netflix’s channels official release, to ask to have their movies pulled, thus marring the release of this fantastic service. This wasn’t a coincidence. This was loop-hole finding, waiting for the right moment spitefulness. It may not have had to have been the 360, it could have probably been any highly popular device that finally had the potential to harm their sales of their movie media.
In the end, as a consumer, only increases my dislike for the sony brand.
I’m enjoying the NXE (New Xbox Experience). Will we eventually have to start calling it something other then the New Xbox Experience? In one of my nonsensical Mordis debates, he suggested we call it the “Now Experience”, I’m cool with that. Honestly, I can’t wait to start using the NNXE acronym for the “Next New Xbox Experience”!
Lots of cool upgrades.
1) Being able to install games to your harddrive, big plus. Sure, it still needs the disc to run disc checks now and again, but this brings down the noise level of the disc drive, and it increases the loading speed of games. Huge pluses. Mass Effect loading screens and the little load freezes I’d get as I ran around a map, are noticeably shorter in time, making me a less sad panda.
2) A much, much better marketplace experience. Gone are the days of Searching 300+ titles all in alphabetical order. The searches are a lot more user friendly. If you know the title you want, you can pick the first letter in the title, and get just all the titles of that letter, and the genre search tools and the such make it far easier. They also added in a better game description viewer, the ability to see some pre-selected screenshots, all and all, the marketplace seems to be better!
3) Party chat! Haven’t used it, but it’s one of the big hurdles for mmos on your console, assuming they keep raid sizes 8 people and under. it also can allow you to have those Gears of War style private team chats, so you don’t have to talk to the other schmucks playing with you.
4) Netflix. One of the best things about the NXE! With a Netflix account, you could always stream movies to your computer. Well, now that support has extended to the Xbox 360. I’ve actually cut into my gaming time, and been watching about one movie a day worth of streaming Netflix. Something is just magical about finding a movie, and watching it within a minute of selecting it. Sure, there are some video fidelity issues, but the xbox seems to upscale the video fine enough that my “Laziness vs High Quality” meter easily gives the Netflix streaming the Double-Thumbs up!
– Rant Section Below
It’s nice to see a console that actually upgrades itself, instead of removing features. I’m looking at you Sony, with your Playstation 3 and it’s removal of PS2 backwards compatibility with later models. What the hell is with that? Sorry, I didn’t want to throw this tangent, the backwards compatibility can be a whole post unto itself, it’s just, the NXE was mired with the pettiness of Sony. Oh, you didn’t hear? Right before the release of the NXE, Netflix suddenly pulled all of Columbia/Sony movies from their streaming service, but only for use on Xbox. Did you catch that? Sony pulled their movies from Xbox. It’s being said this is simply a licensing issue. I believe it, but I think the licensing issue is this:
Sony: “Whoa, Netflix, what the hell? We said you could use our movies on computers, 360 isn’t a computer, remove it immediately.”
Netflix: “Dude, it’s a computer, who cares what people watch it on, we payed you to let people watch these movies however they wanted as long as we protect them from being pirated through nasty DRM related proprietary software.”
Sony: “No! It’s not fair! WAAAGH!”
Seriously, that’s how I see this. You can easily tell this was added at the last minute, based on Sony complaints:
1) Sony movies worked fine for those in the beta. I watched Spiderman 3 and Walk Hard while in the beta, it was only after discussions broke down/Sony realized at the NXE’s release that they had a valid claim to this argument.
2) Their site wasn’t built to handle player-specific item blocking. Each item added to your streaming que has a “Note” field. Traditionally, the note field has been used to show the movie’s expiration date, IE: “Until Dec 01, 2008″. Due to contract conditions with movies and networks, some movies are only on the plan for a limited time. Now, with the addition of Sony’s crybaby tactics, the field is also being used to hold “Not Available on Xbox”, thus hiding the fact that items are expiring soon from non-xbox members. If this hadn’t been a quick reaction to Sony’s asshood, I’m sure Netflix would have upgraded their site’s look to incorporate the Xbox compatibility better.
What this in the end does, is gives Sony even more bad press. unbelievable. Did they not see the consumer backlash from this? Sigh. Sony is trying to make it seem like it’s not an Xbox related issue.
“This issue is not specific to Xbox or any other individual platform,” said a Sony Pictures spokesperson in an e-mailed statement. “Sony Pictures is currently in discussions with the relevant parties to resolve certain licensing matters related to the distribution of its motion pictures. Given the ongoing nature of these discussions, we don’t think it is appropriate to comment further at this time.”
Yeah, well, bullshit. Having the notes saying “Not Available on Xbox” means it is specific to Xbox. The best scenario I can think of, as related above, is that they agreed to streaming on PC and not console, and Xbox just happens to be the only console that dishes out Netflix.
Betcha 5 bucks this would be a non-issue if Netflix was a Playstation 3 exclusive.
Released Oct 07 for the 360 Live Arcade, Yaris was basically a video game ad for the Toyota Yaris. There was a commercial campaign for the Yaris a year ago, here are a couple of the videos from it:
The first video is definately the inspiration for quite a bit of the game; they even use it as the intro when you load the game. Both videos give the game it’s over-the-top unrealistic feel that the designers just took, and kept taking past the realm of logical sense. What we end up with, is a circa 2007 Toyota fuel economical vehicle, driving 200mph (magically) in a very F-zero style world. It’s pretty obvious early on that this game has no reason, no plot, and is just a, “Duude, lets just put a Yaris in a racing game and mess this shit up, yo!” So I intend to add a story to the game, and make sense of the insanity:
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Yes, this hobo will do perfectly. Now, get the Justice League!!!
Yari’s World: The Year is something like 21XX. Our hero is Doctor Light, because I think it’s bullshit that he never got to be the hero and was regulated to opening and closing cut scenes and deserves a more primary role. Doctor Light had lived the good life for many years, leeching millions from govermental robotic contracts, claiming his need to upgrade his cyborg MegaMan, to fight Doctor Wily. This was all bullshit of course. Light simply made a pretty badass gun and a mind control helmet, that he’d strap on a random hobo kid and dub him “The MegaMan”. I mean, come on, be honest, good guys can’t be cyborgs, cyborgs are inherently evil, but I digress.
After Doctor Light’s 22nd fake attempt to stop Doctory Wily, he accidently succeeded. His current Mega Man had just defeated EMP Man, and without thinking, Doctor Light’s gun, which was famous for assimilating the properties of other defeated cyborgs, fired off an EMP pulse, destroying doctor Wily’s pacemaker. In that instant, Doctory Wily was dead and Doctor Light was not only a hero but completely broke. Bye-bye to Govermental contractual paychecks. Having spent his money as if it would never end on cocaine, party favors and cyborg fembot prostitutes, shit got real, real fast.
What is a Hero/Mad Scientist to do? Make cars for the famous intergalatic races Grand Prix known as F-Zero races. All the cool companies like Mad HubCatz, Activehicle, Vivendiesel, (EA) Electronic Autos already had pretty badass vehicles, but there was one foreign automaker that still needed a badass car for the races, Toyota. Doctor Light Approached Toyota, and the rest is history. He designed the Mega “Yaris” Man car, equipped with a snake-like growth from the front of the car that incorperated the Mega Man blaster technology, the Yaris was ready for the tracks.
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Sorry, I know that was complete drivel, but I accomplished three things:
1) I wrote MegaMan Fan Fiction, which probably is the prelude to a megaman tattoo or something equally as stupid.
2) I wrote YARIS fan fiction. I am probably the only person in the goddamn world who has ever done that.
3) I gave this game a goddamn back story. Hi developers, just like murders, games need motive, give us a reason for the game to exist if you expect us to care!
Quick explanation of the game:
8 Tracks. 3 laps a track. Complete unrealistic tracks, in a simplistic F-zero style setup.
Scripted Monsters attack you as you drive through at unrealistic 200+mph speeds in your…Yaris. Unrealistic “MegaMan” style monsters. Roller blading Toasters, flying something, Gas Pump Spiders, tricycle riding sumo wrestlers, if you can dream it, Yaris probably fought it. That being said, you should really consider having better dreams.
You have a gas pump-type gun, shooting out of your car, that gets different weapon upgrades as you race along the track. I’m sure every single weapon has been in a Mega man game, the most noteable being Metal Man’s razor discs, which is what inspired the above fanfiction!
This all being said, despite the high insanity of the game, it did have a learning curve, and I felt myself getting better the longer I played. The car’s physics were interesting, the faster you were going, the more traction you had, as the tracks were not a linear lane and had curves, and some were circular, getting enough speed allowed you to stay at stranger angles without sliding down to the lowest point of gravity. All in all, the game did have some strategy to it in that regard.
What prompted me to finally play the game and get the 200 Gamerscore for it was, it was recently pulled from xbox live! You can no longer download it, and those that did download it before lost it off their download history. It seems this was only a year long contract for hosting by Toyota, and the game is no longer present. This irritates me to no end. You have to understand, downloading games like this is completely new territory for the consoles. The expectation in my mind is these games will be available whenever I want, however long I decide to wait to download them. Unlike traditional retail game purchases, that disappear as shelf space warrents, downloadable games do not have shelf space as a limitation, and we expect them to be there when we get around to wanting to play them.
The unfortunate truth is, they can disappear at any moment. Of course no one is making a stink about Yaris. It was shit. And it was free. If it did cost money, I can promise you people would be up in arms about it’s removal. In response to it’s removal, I emailed Gamescore blog, but they were asses and ignored me. So I did the natural thing, and emailed Major Nelson, who was much less of an ass, and said he didn’t believe any other game had a expiration date like Yaris. So, that’s a good thing, for the most part, one less thing to worry about, and Major Nelson earns awesome points for responding, and I earn awesome points for making this knowledge available to the public.
Whew! Last things last. Those Yaris Achievements? Not too bad except for one complete bullshit one. “Earn 1 million dollars”, which easily took me 20+ hours of grinding Race Track 5, over and over. I had to take breaks while doing this, every couple hours I’d watch some DVRed simpsons, and during the Yaris marathon I managed a Leprechaun movies 1-4 Marathon. Could you honestly picture anything worse? Playing the shame that is Yaris with the campy horribleness that is Lepherchaun? Talk about self loathing. By the way, the 4th Lepherchaun movie, they just gave up all attempts at all at being serious. It’s freaking “Lepherchaun 4: In Space”, it’s completely fantastic. That being said, there is a good chance this explains my penchant for horrible games.
I thought this was worth a cynical chuckle. Amazon.com’s deal of the day is for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning! $25.98 scores you a copy of the game, quite a savings. Someone at Amazon must get my brand of humor, because today is the release of WoW: Wrath of the Lich King. Perfect day to start a sale you don’t expect anyone to snap up! I’d be very surprised if they get many bites at all.
1) Mordis buys Culdcept Saga for 20 bucks at Gamestop.
2) Everyone that has the game that I know, agrees to play the tournament.
Edit: I’m not putting an end date on the first round, as it may take me a few days and the such to bug everyone and make sure this can happen.
Rules: Best Two out of three matches wins. No Custom rules, both opponets agree to the map selected. You can use whatever deck you want for whatever match. If the game disconnects, redo — Honor system in that respect unless someone appears to be abusing it.
to shamelessly use children’s games to boost my score, though in this case I nearly paid for it with my sanity. (Cue flashbacks of hours playing Open Season…*shudders*)
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