CampusIntel

Uptown – Drake feat. Bun B & Lil’ Wayne

Hey everyone!  It’s been a while since I’ve posted, and that’s due to a few things.  First of all, my ass has been severely bruised by mid-terms, so I’ve been recovering from that.  Secondly, I’ve been working on some awesome things that’ll (hopefully) make it into the next post.  The first thing is a “fail reel,” which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like.  I’m taping all of my glorious phails from my gaming in between posts.  The second thing, which is considerably more exciting, is the beginning of my very own webcomic created entirely from videogame stills.  Yes, it will have it’s own story, and all that, so I strongly suggest you check it out!

Anyways, segwaying away from that, recently, the Wii has made me smile instead of making me sigh and shake my head.  No More Heroes 2 is out, and naturally, due to my status as a broke-ass university student, I cannot afford to play it.  Regardless, the game has been released to generally positive reviews, averaging out at about a pretty solid 8.7.  Also,  Tatsunoko vs Capcom: Ultimate All Stars recently to great reviews as well.  On top of that, we still have big third-party games like Red Steel 2 and Trauma Team to look forward to, as well as Japanese imports like Monster Hunter Tri, Sakura Wars and Shiren the Wanderer that all look pretty cool coming over here soon as well.  I feel like the release of the MotionPlus brought about renewed sense of third-party support for the Wii.  Maybe it has something to do with the attachment’s capabilities, but I doubt that because a lot of games that are coming out don’t even use the MotionPlus.  Truth is, I have no idea what caused it, but I do know that I’m going to enjoy it.

Two more games that I can’t play at the moment, Mass Effect 2 and Bioshock 2 have both shipped recently.  They’ve both been released to great reviews, so I suppose that’s an indication that they aren’t too bad of games.  I’ve been stupendously excited for Mass Effect 2 since I heard it reads your saves from the first game and reacts accordingly.  Talk about frakking awesome.

Anyways, hopefully when I get some money, I can tell you what I actually think about these games, rather than just telling you what other people think.  Well, I suppose an advantage of that is that I’m more persistent in finding games like Steven Poulton and Ben Chandler’s Hope.

Hope

In other news, Traveler’s Tales is whipping up a LEGO: Harry Potter Years 1-4, which I think is pretty sick.  I feel like the Harry Potter games are hit-and-miss.  The first two were okay, I really enjoyed the vastness of Hogwarts in Azkaban, four sucks, and I hear the last two are pretty sweet.  I suppose this excites me because I never thought movies were a good form for the Harry Potter series.  I think a TV series would capture the everyday-familiarity of the Harry Potter universe, so I’m hoping by covering 4 years in 1 game, the game will feel more like a day in the life of Harry Potter rather than a sparse collection of his most intense moments.

Anyways, I believe that’s it for now, take care all…

Until next time…

Love Like Rockets – Angels and Airwaves I’ve been a fan of the Sims since a childhood friend told me about it during recess in grade three.  I’ve bought most of their nine-billion expansion packs and more or less respected the way they treated gamers.  But once the internal studios of EA took over the development of the franchise from Maxis with The Sims 3, they compromised customer satisfaction for profits. In my books, that’s something you don’t do….so this is my official complaint about The Sims 3.

SHOW ME THE DREADS!

First of all, the developers failed to include an editor like The Sims 2’s “Body Shop,” which allowed players to create clothing, hair, skin tones, and eye colour.  On top of that, the game launched with a few downloadable packs full with different hairstyles, clothing and whole furniture sets.  I could see if they released it even a month after they launched the game, but at the same time?  That means they were fully capable of putting all of that stuff into the game, but instead they figured they could just sell it to the audience.  Despicable!  And worst of all, they STILL haven’t released a good-looking head of dreadlocks, which to me, is leaving out a crucial hairstyle–the second game came with it at launch! I understand how ridiculous it might be for an 18 year-old guy to be complaining about the lack of a few articles of clothing, furniture sets and dreadlocks in a virtual life simulator, but I stress that it’s a conflict of two distinct sets of principals that is causing the problem.  Think about it: you’re buying a more-than-full-price game already, and then they cut stuff out and then try and sell THAT to you on top of it!  It’s not like The Sims wasn’t a profitable franchise before either; they’re really not the people that need to robbing people–that’s worse that Bethesda selling a decent ending for Fallout 3. Anyways, that’s enough about that game, I think I’m done ranting for now.  In other news, zOMGies, a Flash run-and-gun zombie game has made quite a spectacular splash (the rhyme was completely unintended).  I enjoy it thoroughly, as it provides a unique, but very exasperating sense of desperation as wave after wave is thrown–or better yet, run at you.  The developers also nailed the controls, as you’ll have to squeeze and slip by zombies in order to get good shots off, while maintaining forward momentum at the same time.  You definitely get a little friendly with zombies, which is cool, because that’s something most people try and avoid. That’s some quality advice for anyone planning on fighting zombies anytime soon… That’s all folks…

I spent the majority of my break playing three games on my faulty 360. Due to a combination of a lack of money, and being apart from the system from so long, I’ve been playing Resident Evil 5, Batman: Arkham Asylum and The Bourne Conspiracy. Right off the bat, I’d like to say that so far, they’re all great games, for some similar, and many unique reasons.

Once a crimefighter, always a crimefighter...

I’ve been a fan of Batman since I can remember. Growing up on Batman: The Animated Series, the game really pays homage to that rendition of the series; its developer Rocksteady Studios and Eidos Interactive managed to get Kevin Conroy and Luke Skyw -ahem- I mean, Mark Hamill to voice Batman and the Joker respectively. The only game in recent history I can say that came close to delivering an experience like the one in Arkham Asylum would be Batman: Vengeance, which was one of the first Batman games on last gen systems. Anyways, other Batman games have managed to recreate different aspects of what it must feel like to be Batman, but Arkham Asylum is the first one to really put them all in one package. Apart from the amusing detective parts (which are pretty simple as WayneTech can do everything) and the incredible use of the series’ characters and environment, Arkham Asylum’s combat engine is a nearly-perfect fit for the game.

The combat system really only has two main buttons, attack and counter, which at first seems kind of meagre. The thing is, as Batman rarely fights thugs one-on-one, this system really focuses on one-on-many fights. It boils down to pressing the attack button while pushing the analog in the direction of the enemy you want to fight. Batman will close the distance himself, whether it is by rolling, flipping or something equally as badassed, allowing the player to concentrate on other things. The challenge comes from the baddies’ aggressiveness. In other games (such as The Bourne Conspiracy), fighting in groups means that have several one-on-one fights in a row, however in Arkham Asylum, this isn’t the case. Joker’s thugs are not afraid to take cheap shots whenever the opportunity arises, whether it would be from behind, from the side, or while you’re in the middle of punching someone else. This is where the counter button comes in. The player is tasked with pressing the counter button whenever they see an enemy getting ready to strike. Batman then will block and counter that attack. The system seems kind of rudimentary in theory, but when Rocksteady decides to throw 10 thugs at you at once, it works almost flawlessly. There’s also a slight rhythm element to system, if you attack at a certain pace, the attacks become critical hits.

The only thing I can really say that I dislike about this system is something that is shared by most combat systems in existence: the fact that you can die from a single jab. I mean, it would be one thing if you were caught with your back to the wall in a hailstorm of punches, but in both Arkham Asylum and the Bourne Conspiracy you can be at low health, but be fighting for a good 4 minutes afterwards and then someone gets a cheap jab in and you die. Oddly enough Def Jam Vendetta: Fight for NY found a way to circumvent that problem. In that game, you can be beaten to a pulp indefinitely, but until someone gets a good, strong hit on you while you’re in the “red zone,” you’ll continue to keep on truckin’. I’d really like that element to be implemented into more games with melee combat.

Anyways, until next time, folks…

Ahem….excuse that giant empty space.  Playing around with Grooveshark hasn’t yielded perfect results yet.

A few days ago, I started playing Io-Interactive’s Freedom Fighters for the second time. It’s one of those games that I remember very fondly. I played it back in 2003 or so on the Gamecube, when the game first came out. It is set in an alternate universe where the good ol’ Reds were the ones that developed the atomic bomb first, and consequently, dropped it on the Nazi’s and ended World War II. Fast forward to 2003, and they’ve more or less attained control of Western Europe and South America, leaving the land of Liberty as pretty much the last Western nation standing. The game starts when the Soviets attack, and drops the player into the role of as Christopher Stone, a plumber-turned Freedom Fighter.

Io-Interactive's Freedom Fighters

Upon replaying the game, my biggest problem with it so far is how quickly other characters just assume you are the saviour of the revolution. At the beginning of the game, you happen to be assigned to take a look at the pipes in the apartment of the leader of an extremist armed anti-communist group. A brutish Soviet officer barges in and demands to know where she is. He then takes your brother (and plumbing partner) hostage and leaves. Then, you make your way outside to find the Soviet invasion of the American mainland to be fully underway.

Apart from a random old man giving arbitrarily you the responsibility of rescuing the leader of the fledgling resistance movement, and then that leader giving you command of some of her best soldiers, the rest of the game is solid, albeit starting to feel its age. I find, especially after playing Brothers in Arms, that the system for commanding your troops is a little rudimentary. However, due to the fact that Freedom Fighters came out first, I feel like I should judge the system used in games like Brothers in Arms as more of a progression of the system in Freedom Fighters, rather than something in direct competition with it.

I was talking with a friend about how odd it is that gamers are starting to be able play the difference between games that will age well and games that will not age well. For instance, although a at the time I played it, Freedom Fighters was a really awesome game, now I can really feel out some of the flaws in its design. Something like Viewtiful Joe, in my opinion, will have less trouble aging, as the mechanics and design of the game are solid enough to allow the player to feel as though they can do everything that they think they need to do in order to be immersed in the game. When playing Brothers in Arms or Call of Duty 2, I find myself wishing I could sprint short distances, but due to a lack of a mechanic, I can’t. Yet, when I play over Half Life, I don’t feel like I need to be able to sprint, just because the game is built in a way that almost doesn’t allow me to consider that. The pacing, and relative speeds of the characters in the game make the player content with the speeds they can move at within the design of the game.

Hmm, I think that’s enough for now.

Until next time…

Many facets of gaming culture are starting to rear their heads in popular culture. It wasn’t until I found out about G4TV and their segment, “Attack of the Show,” that I really began to comprehend the movement forming behind video games.

Luigi in There Will Be Brawl

Across the internet, there are series like “There Will Be Brawl,”“Alice and Kev,” “Mega64” and “Pure Pwnage” that are entirely focussed on games and gaming culture. The web comic “Penny Arcade” recently began a web-documentary as well.

I think the best part about all of these is that it connects you to other people that share the same intimacy with video games. I can remember a time when there weren’t many people that were really appealing to the gaming community as a whole. Now we have guys like MC Chris, MC Frontalot, and even Basshunter really representing the gaming community musically.

I cringe with joy everytime I find myself looking at a stranger donned in clothing from a familiar website, and attempt to squeeze in a “I Understand Your Struggle” nod without overtly exposing our connection with members of our respective parties who –for lack of a better term– may not truly understand the importance of a public sighting of an unfamiliar gamer.

And I’m not talking about your typical I’ve-played-COD-and-Starcraft “pop-gamer,” but rather, the type of person that  lives and breathes the medium. These are the type of people who’ve picked up a few words in German from the several thousand (give or take a few) WWII shooters on market, or that have fallen asleep at their desks, the words, “one more turn,” barely escaping their lips. These are the people who truly connect about the topic of video games, and unfortunately, a group that doesn’t have many public places to interact with each other.

Apart from computer cafes, game retail stores and maybe comic book stores (though comic book and gaming nerds are TWO DISTINCT breeds, they do occasionally mix), gamers don’t really have many public places to meet. There are expos like Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) in Seattle, Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in California, Montreal International Games Summit (MIGS) and many others in Europe and Japan that serve as kind of the big events of the international gaming community.

But, other computer cafes (and they aren’t really the best), there are no casual places for gamers to get together. My major problem with computer cafes is that they’re quite expensive in a lot of cases, and many gamers have completely capable systems where they live.

What I guess I’m really getting at, is the idea for a really casual, inexpensive place that gamers could convene and do what they like. I’m not trying to build a business plan or anything, I just think that, if done right, it’s something that quite a few people would be interested in, and as long as someone could make the venue worth more than just playing games on a network without being too ridiculous on the prices.

Yeah, and might as well throw world peace in on top of that, right? A man can dream. Anyways , I think that’s where I’ll sign off, but, just remember: Han shot first.

That’s all folks…

Post Track : The Big Fight – Stars

Allo!

It’s been a while since I’ve made a new post, the other two I’ve posted so far have been reposts.  With the launch of the redesign, things are a little hectic, but I hope things should return to normal soon. Anyways, in the rare case that you actually read any of my stuff pre-redesign stuff, you may be wondering what the hell this “post track” thing is. Basically, I’ve decided to attach a song I’ve been listening to that is meant to be listened to along with reading the post. That way you get to look at some pictures, read a terribly entertaining post (no boost!), and on top of that, you get to listen to an awesome song. Anyways, that’s what the post track is.  I’m also re-posting some of my previous stuff, so they may be a little dated, but bare with me.

Okay, on to today’s topic. Eric Ruth made gaming news recently for creating an 8-bit “demake” of Valve’s ultra-popular shooter, Left 4 Dead.  The game can be downloaded for free here, I strongly suggest you check it out.  Ruth gets a lot of things right with the game, and what I really like about it is that he doesn’t try and remake Left 4 Dead in 8-bit, but instead makes an 8-bit version of the game.  What I mean by that, is that the roles of the special infected aren’t exactly the same, and Ruth’s been able to determine what the roles those would have been given the game was made 17 or 18 years ago.   For instance, instead of the Boomer attracting a horde of zombies and obscuring the vision of the player that gets its bile on them, the Boomer shoots it’s bile much like Octoroks do in the original Zelda.

Surviving the Zombie apocalypse has never been easy.

Anyways, it’s really an interesting game that anyone with the slightest bit of interest should look into, as it’s completely free, and like 6 mb of harddrive space, so there’s really no excuse for not at least trying it. In other news, Irrational Games [formerly 2K Games Boston (Formerly Irrational Games)] has been revived.  The studio behind System Shock 2, Freedom Force, SWAT 4, and the fabled Bioshock has reclaimed their identity after being bought out by 2K Games.  They’re hoping to cultivate a new-and-improved dialogue with the gaming community with the launch of their new site.  We’ll see how that works out in the long run for them. Perhaps more excitingly, Irrational Games is working on a super-secret FPS, but there are rumours circulating that it’s a new X-Com game, as 2K bought the rights after (the last attempt at an X-Com game) X-Com Enforcer flopped.  If that’s the case, then I will be one happy little girl when the time comes for Irrational to reveal exactly what it is that they’re working on.

That’s all folks…

Post Track : Raw Sugar – Metric

Between classes, work and other less academic post-secondary pursuits, I don’t have as much time to game as I used to. In terms of games, I’ve been struggling to keep up for years, and this lull isn’t really helping. When I get chance these days, I take a crack at games like Call of Duty 2 and Star Trek Bridge Commander, most times only resulting in the completion of a mission or two.

Another game that I have, admittedly, recently played for the for the first time is Rome: Total War. It has given me a totally new perspective on how pre-empire Rome operated. When I took Ancient Civilizations in High School, the course really failed to put the status of the Roman Republic in context with other nations of the time.

Now, while I’m playing  Total War, I understand the relation between the Roman and families and groups like the Carthaginians and the Britons. I chose the Scipii family and after every turn, Gaul and Britannica always have a few seconds to do what ever it is they do up in the snowy fog-of-war.

F-Zero GX

I also had the opportunity to play F Zero GX for the first time in years over the past week, and I’ve got to say, I’ve forgotten how awesomely ridiculous it is. It wasn’t until three friends and I took a spin on Fire Field: Cylinder Knot, that I truly understood what it meant to be an intergalactic hover car racer. However old it is, it still hasn’t aged in terms of gameplay, and I’d recommend anyone who wanted a racer with a little more than your average dose of speed to try that one out for sure.

I’m not sure what I think about the recent release of Silent Hill: Shattered Memories for the Wii, as it’s a game I’ve been following for quite a while now. Now that it’s out, I realize that I really have no means of buying it, so I’m kind of in a rough spot. IGN gave it a pretty good review of 8.6, and from what I’ve seen about the game so far, I’m not too surprised; once I heard that this game psychoanalyzes the player, then proceeds to change and react based off of those conclusions, I was more or less a believer. Hopefully, I’ll be able to take a crack at it sometime over the break.

On another note, the other day I got nostalgic and installed a copy of Rogue Spear. After booting it up, hurrying through planning and then eagerly waiting for the mission to load, I was promptly met with two bullets through me and a nearby hostage, causing me to fail it almost immediately. And, this didn’t happen just once—or even just twice. After a good five or six attempts, I retreated back to planning stage and tried to edit the main flaw (you know, the getting massacred part kind of sucked) out of the default plan. It just strikes me as so odd, because when I was younger, I distinctly remember running through the same level effortlessly. Maybe I’m getting old.

In closing, I’d just like to mention Toronto’s own Capybara Games, and their new releases, Might & Magic : Clash of Heroes for the DS, and Critter Crunch as a downloadable title on the PSN. I haven’t had the chance to play either of them myself yet, but once I do, I’ll be sure to report my findings.

Until next time…

Post Track : Geto Heaven Pt. 2 – Common ft. Macy Grey

I think Bethesda’s Fallout 3 was in many respects, a success. In many other ways however, I find the game infuriating. I think the part that bothers me the most is the fact that the first two games in the series already had the solution for most of my issues; it’s as if Bethesda took a few steps backwards on some key concepts in the design.

Anyways, as my point is not to bash Bethesda’s efforts, I find it incredibly annoying that the game constantly uses the “skill level is too low” excuse, which when examined closely, is nothing but lazy game design. In the first two games (developed by the late Black Isle Entertainment), in order to most accurately represent pen and paper RPG’s, all skills were calculated with dice rolls. In other words, this means that the act of using a skill was a calculation of several different variables working in tandem, rather than simply comparing two values and determining the greater one. What’s great about the dice roll method is that it deals with chance and the likeliness factor. For instance, Player A with a low lockpicking skill is far less likely to unlock a high level lock than Player B with a high lockpicking skill. The beauty about it is the fact that Player A could still unlock the door, but they would have to be considerably lucky.

If you consider the primary function of video games to be recreating a certain reality, then in your perfect game, lockpicking would actually be the physical act of picking a lock. Seeing as we certainly don’t have the technology to do that yet, the developers of the first two games decided that instead of leaving the act to the player’s own capabilities, they left it to chance. To give the player the sense of progression, they allowed them to increase their chances, thereby illustrating the idea of growth.

Bethesda did it a little differently, and tried to leave the success of lockpicking to the player through a minigame. For those of you who haven’t played it, in this minigame, the player has to use the mouse (the left stick on consoles) to rotate a bobby pin around the lock in an effort to find the “sweet spot.” At the same time, the WASD keys (or the right stick on console) is used to apply pressure to a screwdriver under the bobby pin; if too much pressure is applied to the bobby pin when it is not in the “sweet spot,” then it breaks and the player has to start again.

Fallout 3's Lockpicking System

The minigame at its least, is a solid recreation of the physical act of lockpicking. My problem with the system is that the game doesn’t get much harder. From the first lock you pick, to the very last, nothing changes except the size of the sweet spot, which at first may pose slight discomfort, but is quickly overcome. However, the game also checks the player’s lockpick skill when allowing them to attempt to pick the lock. This means that regardless of the whether the player is able to successfully complete the most difficult lockpicking minigame (which actually isn’t that hard) or not, they won’t be able to try unless they are a high enough level. In other words, instead of measuring how good the player is at completing the lockpicking minigame, and judging whether or not they are able to pick the lock based on that, Bethesda decided to base it on an arbitrary “level” variable that supposedly evaluates how effective the player is at picking locks. This completely defeats the purpose of the minigame in the first place. Instead of the act of picking a lock being based on chance or the player’s own ability, it’s based on an unrelated variable, completely disregarding the player’s ability to open locks.

Despite my venomous attack on these types of game mechanics, there games (such as Bioshock’s hacking system) that get it right. Those games are fundamentally based on the player’s ability to complete the minigames.

Sigh…

Come back Black Isle…..

(A man can dream)

I would love to get to the point where companies like Apple, Sony, Tom Tom, and RIM send me their products for review.  CampusIntel.com will hopefully become the hub we dream it to be for the 18-24 demographic in Canada…and if we realize this dream, then I’m sure we can start reviewing all sorts of cool technologies for you. Hey…we can build killer websites, killer web apps, and deliver over 1,000,000 sample products to university and college students across Canada, there is no reason why we can’t dominate the digital sphere as well.

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