Friday, November 4, 2011

What To Play This Holiday Season




 me:  there's some good games on amazon buy 2 get 1 free.... but I don't need more games 
 Sent at 1:21 PM on Friday
 Steven:  Yeah
I'm already getting kinda sick of battlefield
Their rewards are too slip apart.  It doesn't give you enough incremental benefits
I think I'm going to try to learn how to play the jets and helis though
 Sent at 1:38 PM on Friday
 me:  bummer
yeah i guess they should have made 2143 instead
SEE
 Sent at 3:28 PM on Friday
 Steven:  haha, maybe
I might be more on board now
 me:  the future is the future man
 Steven:  But it's gotta be a lot spacier
 me:  lol
so.... Quake 3?
 Steven:  Giant walking spider bots spacy
that would awesome!
now the Quake 3
but spider bot tanks
 me:  if they just added a conquest mod and vehicles, done
 Steven:  They already tried that though, Quake Wars
It was quite terrible
 Sent at 3:37 PM on Friday
 me:  oh yeah
haha
well, maybe they should let DICE develop it
actually, maybe DICE should just make my goddamned mirror's edge 2
 Steven:  haha
 me:  this game seems to be kind of a let-down
for people
do you think MW3 is going to be any good?
 Steven:  I don't think it's a let down.  It's everything I wanted in BF, I just realized that everything I wanted can be kinda boring
 me:  lol
 Steven:  it's MY fault!
 me:  LOL
 Steven:  I dunno about that MW3
It's fun until you realize that it's bullshit



I guess I'll just keep playing Dark Souls.  You should do that too, if you aren't already.  It's great, 10/10.



Wednesday, October 19, 2011

The New 52! DC Dark Line Impressions

This is just rad.
So I've had sort of a roller-coaster relationship with DC's "New 52!"  It is safe to say that I was a little bit skeptical at first, especially when you consider that the new 52 contains no less than 11 Batman books.  This type of nonsense sort of sums up my beef with the major publishers and their spandex lines.  I experienced the horror of this first hand during the Superman "New Krypton" storylines which actually were composed of six distinct story arcs: New Krypton, World Without Superman, Codename: Patriot, World Against Superman, Last Stand of New Krypton, and War of the Supermen.  To make matters worse, they split the story up among all the super books so you had to buy Action Comics, Superman, Super Girl, Adventure Comics and a variety of other Super-books to get the whole story.  All in all, the thing ran for like 50 issues, which is a lot to ask of the random dude (like me) who just feels like reading some goddamned Superman stories.

So that was the end of spandex clad superheroes for me, which brings us back to my disinterest in the new 52. Yes, 52 new #1s, but half of them are Bat-books, Super-books and Lantern-books.  September sort of came and went, and I started to hear news through the grapevine that the new 52 were doing very well, and that there were actually some good fresh titles coming out of DC's dark line.  The dark line consists of weird stuff that maybe would (and in the past would have) be more suited to DC's Vertigo line, like Swamp Thing and JLA:Dark (which includes John Constantine and Madame Xanadu) but also houses a variety of other titles including Animal Man, I Vampire,  Resurrection Man, Frankenstein: Agent of S.H.A.D.E. and Demon Knights.   I had been hearing especially good things about Swamp Thing and Frankenstein, so i went down to the local comic shop to pick those up, and this has started a cycle of enjoyment that'll eventually have me just collecting the whole dark line.  What follows are the ones I've read so far.

JLA:Dark 
Here's a book with an interesting premise- why not have a magically oriented version of the JLA to deal with the type of weird crap Superman actually CAN'T deal with by throwing it into the sun. The first issue just collects the characters and presents their first nemesis, Enchantress, but any team that includes John Constantine, Madame Xanadu, Deadman and Zatanna is FINE BY ME. Also, the art is very nice.  My only beef is that they took Zatanna out of her amazing magician's costume and put her into some bullshit outfit. SAD.

I Vampire
To be honest, I have no idea what this book is or who the characters are. There's nothing new here, just your usual conflict between vampire A who is all, "we're bad and shouldn't eat people" and vampire B who says, "no, we should inherit the earth and eat EVERYONE!" That said, the art and writing in this book is tops, and if you have managed to dodge the plethora of vampire themed pan-media bullshit that has been sweeping the nation for the past couple of years then you might enjoy this one.  If you're not into comics but still want good vampires, watch this.

Animal Man
I'm still waiting on the reprint of issue #1, but if issue 2 is any indication then this book is going to be rad. Animal man is an interesting character because his superpowers are just BONKERS. The guy can do more or less anything any animal can do.  NUTS! Incredible art, good writing, creepy covers. It seems his daughter is developing powers even stranger than his in this first arc, and it's starting to get a little WEIRD.  Check it out!


Sort of Hellboy-esque
Frankenstein: Agent of S.H.A.D.E.

Here's an unusual book. Frankenstein as the leader of the Creature Commandos in this one.  The book has good this sort of a B.P.R.D. thing going on, but a lot lighter and pulpier.  The first issue finds the team investigating a sudden outbreak of monsters in a small town.  So far my favorite character is the mummy Khalis, who also happens to be the team's medic. What's that about?

Anyway, those are the books I read so far. As it stands, I'm pretty impressed with the quality of work they've put out in the past month and I hope they can keep these teams cranking out #1 quality for the next 6-12 months at least.  Next time I'm down at the shop I think I'm going to just have to go ahead and pick up the rest of the line.  I didn't realize that Dan Abnett was writing Resurrection Man, and I very much enjoyed his work on all those Warhammer 40k novels he did. That just leaves Demon Knights, and I like Etrigan well enough so why the hell not.  Go buy some comics.

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Limbo - Review. Also Mirror's Edge

So mostly I've been catching up on my pile of games and trying to get a steady schedule of painting progress on my Finnish Jakaari Kompania (note: mine look like shit compared to these).  I've got most of the base colors done on the first combat platoon, and the second platoon has arrived in the mail and is patiently waiting for the weather to cool down so I can bear to sit at the table and trim some flash off of the models. I've found that the amount of time I can stand to sit and paint is approximately the length of one album, so I've been just throwing something on and having a listen most every night this past week while I get these dudes ready for some action this holiday season.  In the meantime, I played two games. They were Limbo and Mirror's Edge.  One of those games is A LOT better than the other one.

Mirror's Edge

Mirror's Edge effectively sums up everything that's wrong with the games industry and the game playing public.  Basically, Dice made a game that is down-right transcendent at times, and somewhat frustrating the rest of the time. The end result was a unique first-person platformer that sold pretty poorly and was destined to be the only entry in the series until fairly recently. I have to admit I am guilty of not voting with my wallet this time around. I recall playing the demo and seeing the potential there, but for some reason I didn't wind up picking up a copy until just a few months ago at $20. I'm sure I'm not the only one.  Anyway, maybe it says something about how pampered we are by easy modern games, but apparently people didn't like how you could expect to die every 15-30 seconds playing this game (which is humorous considering how well received the next game I'm going to talk about was).  If you can get past the frustration of getting riddled with bullets at each enemy encounter and missing a fair number of jumps, what you're left with is a wonderful looking game that manages to be satisfying and fun in spite of all of its flaws.  The story was some pretty brainless hippie bullshit, but luckily it doesn't get in the way that much.

Limbo


I took the opportunity to pick up limbo on the disc based XBLA triple pack that was on sale at Best Buy recently for $10, so I guess I paid about $3.33 for it.  I sort of feel sorry for the suckers who paid $15 for this on XBLA when it came out (not sure what the price is now) and can understand the outrage at the same PSN pricing. Limbo is a perfect example of all style and no substance.  What you get is a lot of "creepy", lethal black and white environments to platform and solve basic physics based puzzles on for about 3 hours.  What you don't get is any coherent narrative whatsoever, or any reason to give a rat's ass about the little boy who is traversing these areas.  The game was also intentionally designed on the premise that you should die unexpectedly and with nearly no chance to avoid failure at every puzzle, which seems like a cheap and lazy design choice.  Rather than expecting that the player might succeed through skill or smarts, the game requires them to have additional knowledge that it is not presenting up front, and this leads to feeling like you're being cheated at every turn. I had a hard time understanding what people liked about this game.  The gameplay itself was too simple to really be fun, and though I did get stuck on some of the puzzles for maybe 10 or 15 minutes, I don't think it was terribly challenging.  The game got a lot of praise for its aesthetics which are fine, but really they came up with a decent looking style and did very little with it, making maybe 2 or 3 unique looking environments in the whole game.  Luckily Trials HD was on the same disc, and that game is pretty RAD.

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Post Game Report Gen Con Indy 2011 - Blood Bowl: Team Manager Review


I'm still sort of reeling from my trip to Indianapolis this past weekend. Between long days patrolling the show floor looking for cool games to demo, long nights gaming and little sleep between one day and the next, I still feel as though my brain is floating somewhere up above my skull, not quite all the way in. I played a lot of stuff on the floor and in the gaming hall, and had a really great time.

Since I'm pretty wasted still, here are the quick hits:

Relic Knights has some of the most beautiful models, and some pretty clever gameplay, but I didn't like them both together. My friend Peter said, "it's like puzzle quest."  Yep, match-three gameplay and anime robot girls. The One Shot model makes me want to learn how to paint better.

THQ's Space Marine feels like a pretty derivative 3rd person shooter, though only being able to regenerate health by performing brutal melee attacks is a cool idea. The weapons felt nice, the action was decent, and THQ's love for the Warhammer 40K setting is well established at this point, so while this might not be a day 1 purchase for most, 40K fans will probably get a lot out of it.

Tanto Cuore was my obsession during the show, partly because of how ludicrous it was and partly because I secretly wanted it to be the best deck-building game I'd ever played. I liked it better than dominion, however the $50 price point seems way off base, even if the art and production values seemed pretty high.  There are some solid ideas in that game, the best being the private maids and the ability to chamber maids by taking actions, pulling them out of your deck and scoring more points at the end of the game.  Surprisingly, the demo consisted of an entire game.  Misogyny..... sometimes it takes a game about being the "master" of a house of Japanese maids to make you realize what a pig you are.


Rune Age is a deck building game set in Runebound's world of Terrinoth. Ugh..... I didn't like this game. Not sure if it is because deck building games are pretty boring once you crack the formula to winning, or if because I generally dislike everything that has to do with Runebound. As much as I like FFG's Silver Line of games, I have to say STAY AWAY.

Blood Bowl Team Manager was the best game I played all show. Unfortunately it sold out on Thursday and I couldn't get a copy. A friend of mine did, however, and you can see my review in a bit.

Ascension..... that's another deckbuilding game.  I like this one more than Dominion, but that's not saying much. It's easy to see the influence of Magic: The Gathering pro-tour players in the gameplay, but really they made a game that's like really linear Rochester drafting where you only sometimes get to pick the card you want.  I accidentally made my friend buy the whole line.  WOOPS!

Star Wars LCG.  A cooperative LCG. I had a fun time demoing it, even though we only played it for one round. This is a game I would like to sit down and play any time, but not one that I would ever buy.  I'm not a big fan of cooperative games (except for Space Hulk: Death Angel, of course), but I had a fine time playing this demo.  It will probably sell pretty well.

Sedition Wars is Mike McVey's game.  The models aren't bad looking. I hear the game is in beta still. The rules felt pretty rough to me.  It didn't stand out.

Psi-Duel is a two player card-game about two psychics trying to melt each other's brains.  I liked it enough to drop $15 on a copy. What it comes down to is a lightning fast (3-4 rounds) hand management game with some rock<paper<scissors elements.

The Ares Project is like a game me and Peter were working on, except finished and really good.  Basically it is like a computer real-time strategy game. Think build orders, fog of war, base development, scouting, skirmishes, and attacks. We only played a very little bit during the demo but even that stuff seemed really cool, so I can only imagine what the rest of that game is like.

Dust is getting miniature rules that they were demoing on a very attractive table. The minis are rather nice, and the setting seems cool, but I was not super turned on by the miniature rules themselves.

Quarriors was another deck-building game, though this one used dice instead of cards and was designed in part by Eric Lang who worked on the Call of Cthulhu CCG. I liked Quarriors because it had a bit more player interaction (sort of), though I imagine that like most deck-building games it might get somewhat stale after multiple plays.  In terms of depth, it ain't no Puerto Rico, but it was fun.

whew, i think that's all the stuff I played, except for the best game of all....

Blood Bowl: Team Manager




So, for those who don't know, Blood Bowl is the game of fantasy football. That is, fantasy as in there are elves and orcs and beastmen running around on the field.  Based on Games Workshop's miniature/board game hybrid, Blood Bowl Team Manager is sort of the fantasy football game of fantasy football.  Instead of controlling the actions of individual athletes on the field, players commit cards representing athletes to  highlight cards (1 for each player) during each week of the season.  Each week there are also special events that effect play and sometimes tournaments which function as sort of extra highlights that all teams can play on simultaneously.  Each highlight can support two opposing teams, and the team with the most star power on one side of a highlight wins a reward printed in the center of the card, though both teams also receive a reward just for showing up.  Rewards include fans (VPs), team-specific upgrades that give you static bonuses, star player cards and coaching staff upgrades that give you special abilities usable once per week.  The goal of the game is to end the season with the most fans.

Each team (there are 6 in the game) has 12 athletes on it who play various positions including linemen, blitzers, throwers, blockers, and sometimes monsters like trolls and ogres. Each athlete has a Star Power attribute when standing, a Star Power attribute when tackled, and might have a number of icons that indicate which skills they have (tackle, cheat, sprint, or pass). They might also have a special ability written in text on their card.  When an athlete is comitted to a highlight they resolve their icons in order, so they might cheat first and take a cheat token and then throw a tackle against an opposing athlete on the other side of the highlight, or they might pass which moves the ball (adding two star power to the team who possesses it) closer to their side of the highlight.  The icons are all pretty useful, though I found that tackle and pass were a bit more useful than cheat and sprint.

Fans of the original will  appreciate the tackle mechanics, which are resolved with special tackle dice that are very similar to those used in the miniature game except that star power doubles as strength in this game.  Tackled athletes have lower star power, drop the ball if they're the ball carrier, have blanked text boxes and are removed from the pitch as casualties if tackled again.   Including dice in the game introduces some variance and makes for some great upsets when your favorable tackle sometimes winds up knocking your own athlete down and reducing your team's starpower for the highlight.  I thought the ball passing mechanic was nicely done, and makes for some great swings where your ball carrier can get tackled, returning the ball to midfield, and then the opposing player can play a thrower with the pass icon out of their hand to gain possession and the extra star power the ball gives. Even linemen, who are generally the worst players on each team come in handy with their ability to take a hit for another player, thus protecting your precious ball carriers.  Cheating is a swingy mechanic that places a cheat token on the athlete that resolves when the highlight is being scored, and sometimes adds star power or fans, but can also get your athlete ejected from the game. Sprinting allows you to draw an athlete from your team deck and discard one from your hand, effectively letting you cycle linemen and other weak atheletes out of your hand in favor of strong blitzers, monsters and star players.

Each round players will usually draw and commit a total of 6 athletes split between two different highlights, though occasionally you might find yourself playing for more highlights.  There is a lot of decision making here, as sometimes you will not be sure how committed your opponents are to winning a particular highlight until it is too late, and you might find out that you should have played more or better athletes to try and secure one highlight instead of spreading yourself too thin between two.  After all players have committed their athletes, each highlight is scored and rewards are distributed, then a new week starts with new highlights.  Play continues for 5 weeks and at the end of the season the team with the most fans wins.

Blood Bowl Team Manager is an absolute blast to play for newcomers and fans of the miniature game alike.  The designers have managed to include a great assortment of teams which feel very different in play style and include Humans, Wood Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, Chaos and Skaven.  The game is quick to learn but very challenging, and you will find yourself having to make tough decisions each turn. Play is quick, taking about an hour per game once you've got it all figured out. I expect that  the great variety in teams, star players and upgrade cards along with the variance introduced by the tackle dice, special event and highlight decks will give this game great replay value.  The production value was very nice, with excellent artwork and high build quality throughout, though I could have done without the tiny upgrade cards.  I spent most of my free time at Gen Con playing this game and I highly recommend it to anyone who is even remotely curious about it.  There isn't a lot that I didn't like, though I can see where some might not enjoy the variance in tackles and special events.

On a scale of 1-10, I'd give it a solid 8.5, which is relatively close to some of my favorite games including Shogun, Puerto Rico and Command's and Colors: Ancients, which I would score above a 9.  At an MSRP of $35, this is a game you can't afford not to buy.



Sunday, July 17, 2011

Have You Seen The Yellow Sign? A Kirby's Dream Course Review.

I've been on a HP Lovecraft rampage lately. Finally picked up a copy of Call Of Cthulhu RPG, along with a book of published scenarios one of which I am hoping to run at Gencon Indy with some friends I'm meeting up with. This week I played the Catherine demo and it would be conservative to say that it left an impression on me. I am really, really, really looking forward to that game's arrival. In the meantime I'm working on a retrograde review article for Kirby's Dream Course (update 7/21/11, it's done). I think all the Cthulhu is getting to my head because it's hard too look at the spiky cloud guy and not think of Azathoth.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

The Pile - My Backlog

It's that time of year again...


I've got a few short weeks to get through this before new releases start getting lumped on top. I discuss my priorities in that regard here.

In other news, Scars of Mirrodin block drafting is about as good as it gets. Didn't win that one, but played well considering my deck was kind of a trainwreck.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

E3 2011 Summarized



me: I guess the Vita will be available for holidays this year
cmon black friday deal....
Steven: Yeah, that would be great
Sent at 4:10 PM on Tuesday
Steven: I think I understand the Wii U a little more now. It's like a DS
me: It seems more like the Wii Community College than the Wii U though
still slightly retarded
Steven: lol
did you write that in the comments?
me: it's like it needs a 2 year degree before it can be a real console
no
Steven: haha, that's a good one
me: i'll put that in there
Sent at 4:57 PM on Tuesday
Steven: Yeah, I think Nintendo is slipping up
me: they're going to sell a billion units of that thing
Steven: I'm not interested in anything they have to offer, atm
yeah
me: yo MS sold 10 million KINECTS
WTF
Steven: yeah, Kinect I think has TONS of novelty value



more riveting E3 coverage at GameBlurb

Monday, April 11, 2011

Back to Basics - Yomi Review

Despite the fact that Sony's PSP is an almost universally reviled piece of hardware in the Western press, there continue to be a steady stream, or more of a gently flowing creek, of amazing releases on the platform. These occasional blessings are likely in no small part due to its relative success in Japan, and soon another heavenly gift will have managed to float downstream to us here in the west in the form of the upcoming Final Fantasy IV Complete Collection. Originally released as Final Fantasy II on SNES, and then again with the correct Japanese enumeration on various platforms throughout the years, the game is arguably one of the best titles in a series now desperately in need of a break. In a refreshingly traditional move, this one will feature fresh sprites instead of the abominable 3D graphics that were found on the Nintendo DS releases of Final Fantasy III and IV. In an era where your average triple-A titles, which include the last few entries in the series, have production values that are through the roof it's nice to see Square Enix realizing that they can just go back to the essence of what made them a great company and turn that into something we all desperately need. Lets hope that when they cast their baleful gaze on Final Fantasy VI they will have the good sense to not disturb the bones of that game too much. A little bit of a touch-up is nice, but when you have a game that so perfectly defines the genre there's no need to go and mess with the basic ingredients. Which brings us to a new game that succeeds primarily because it presents the essence of a genre to a player in almost as pure a form possible.

Yomi - Boardgame (2011)

Yomi is a remarkable card game that expertly simulates the core tension that exists in a fighting game like Street Fighter. The game was designed by David Sirlin, who is a well respected competitive Street Fighter player and game designer who was responsible for the balancing on one of the best versions of Street Fighter ever released: Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. So, before even looking at the cards it's safe to assume that the guy knows a thing or two about fighting games. The game consists of 10 pre-constructed decks of cards(i.e. it's non-collectible) that represent individual fighters with their own special abilities, moves, strenghts and weaknesses. The decks are patterned after poker decks and feature the standard array of cards from ace to king in four suits. Two players will each pick a deck and proceed play the various attacks, throws, blocks and dodges printed on each card, hoping to beat their opponent's moves and do damage to them. It is basically rock-paper-scissors at its core, with attacks beating throws, throws beating block and dodge, and block and dodge beating attack. Dodges and blocks are unique in that successful blocks are returned to your hand and allow you to draw an extra card, and successful dodges allow you to strike back with a single attack. Players select their moves secretly and reveal them simultaneously and the game ends when one fighter is reduced to zero life, usually after about 10-15 minutes of play.

The core mechanics of Yomi are pretty simple, but once you get past the basic rules you'll see that much like the video games that inspired it there is quite a bit of depth to plumb for those who are so inclined. For starters, each card has two maneuvers printed on it so the direction that you play the card in matters and there are a lot of special moves with extra rules that go along with them like discarding extra cards, drawing cards or penalizing your opponent somehow. Trying to predict what move your opponent is going to throw based on how they tend to play and what moves they've played in the current match is the main thrust of the Yomi, but hand management also becomes a major consideration in a game where you're usually only drawing one additional card per turn. This is primarily because most attacks allow you to combo into additional attacks out of your hand, but your opponent can invalidate your combo after your first hit by playing a face down joker (the equivalent of the Burst move in the Guilty Gear fighting game series), so you might lay out an impressive and highly damaging combo only to have those cards go to waste. You also burn through your hand by discarding pairs, three of a kinds and four of a kinds to search your discard and library for aces which are usually a character's best attacks and can sometimes only be played in multiples. The mechanics of the Yomi breed a tension that comes from deciding when it's right to sacrifice cards and go all out to lay your meanest attack on your opponent or to hold back, keep your options open, and slowly build up your hand. Once you get the hang of it you'll learn to hold your big attacks until after you successfully dodge or your opponent is knocked down or in some other penalized state where you'll have an edge because their potential plays are limited. The intricacies of the combat system such as attack speed, knockdown and some of the deeper combo rules add a necessary granularity to an otherwise simple system, and the combination of fast play and tough choices each turn make Yomi a pretty engaging game overall.


So what's the deal with the 10 decks? For starters, the cards are well made and feel similar to a high quality deck of playing cards rather than your standard CCG cards. They're thin and flexible but not flimsy. The art is very high quality with a consistent and generally imaginative design, but it would have been nice to see more variety in the art for the normal attacks and throws. The differences between each deck are much more than cosmetic with each character having a unique set of moves and special abilities. Rook, for example, has no dodge moves, is throw oriented and though his normal attacks are slow they are very strong and he can sometimes just attack through an opponent's faster attacks. He's sort of the Zangief of the game. On the opposite side of the specturm, you have a character like Valerie, who is reminiscent of Chipp. Her individual strikes are weak but her attacks are fast she can combo any basic strikes together meaning she can pull off explosive combos regularly almost regardless of what cards are in hand. The other 8 characters are equally varied and include ninjas, diplomats, pandas and fish men among other things, and each one takes a bit of practice before you begin to understand what their best attacks are and how they match up against other characters. The game is available as matched pairs of 2 opposing characters ($25), or as a deluxe of all 10 that comes with play mats, counters and a box ($100). It's expensive, but the combination of portability and replay value mean that you'll more than get your money's worth out of it. Some tabletop or eurogaming purists might balk at the theme but it's hard to not recommend this game to anyone, especially if they have an appreciation for the material that inspired it.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

One Dimension Too Many - PAX East 2011 3DS Impressions

This past weekend the second PAX East was held at the Boston Convention Center. The venue was noticeably larger than that of the inaugural PAX East, and this was most obvious was on the expo floor. The floor seemed roomier, with wider aisles, larger booths and more games to see and play. The idea of queuing up just to SEE a game like Battlefield 3 or Portal 2 was obviously appealing to some considering the length of the lines, even if that video would eventually be on the internet anyway. There were also a lot of playable demos for upcoming titles, including the now destined for the bargain bin Homefront, the hotly anticipated Star Wars: The Old Republic, and Gears of War 3 which from appearances might as well be called Gears of War 2: Green Sleeveless Edition. The expo floor was also a first chance for many attendees to see the soon to be released Nintendo 3DS in action. Given Nintendo's incredible success with the DS, one would expect the next iteration to advance the brand's dominance exponentially. However, after spending some time with it, it's hard not to think of the Virtual Boy. Obviously it won't be such a grotesque failure, but it's possible that Nintendo may have put too much into the gimmick of this device.

Closely resembling the later model DSi, the 3DS adds a number of features including more graphical power, an analog stick, a gyroscopic sensor, fancier cameras and of course glasses free 3D. Nintendo's last two major hardware releases, the DS and the Wii, managed to really push stylus (touch) and waggle (motion) controls and make those things that everybody understands. Both pieces of hardware seemed crazy at the time they were released, but now touch only devices like the iPad/iPhone are sometimes seriously referred to as gaming platforms and both Microsoft and Sony have taken their first steps into the motion control arena. With 3D becoming a staple of modern blockbuster movie releases and 3D televisions making their way into homes and finding support in some games, it seems like putting such a small and relatively inexpensive device into the hands of consumers might just be Nintendo being ahead of the trend curve again. After spending a few moments with the unit in Nintendo's little demo corral though, how far ahead they are seems questionable.


Available to demo were a number of games, including the AR game Archery, Dead or Alive: Dimensions, Super Street Figher IV, Steel Diver, Nintendogs and Cats, Kid Icarus:Uprising, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D and Pilotwings Resort. Playing these games was interesting, but revealed some pretty deep rooted flaws in the fundamental premise of the platform. The 3D effect works, but the actual amount of depth seems inconsistent between titles and it generates a pretty noticeable amount of eye strain. Steel Diver, for example, looks very flat even though the field of vision is very similar to that of Pilotwings which looked noticeably more 3D, though neither title was helped by incredibly bland artistic designs. Certainly the raw graphical output of the device is more than that of the DS, but it was not head and shoulders above recent PSP games, which is disappointing considering the PSP was released more than 6 years ago. Kid Icarus looked the best out of all the games on display, resembling sort of a Space Harrier meets Panzer Dragoon with some Virtual-On thrown in for ground-based action, but with so much on-screen activity the difficult to focus on 3D effect makes it impossible to clearly see more than any one thing at a time. The gyroscopic sensor and camera work nicely for Archery when you're aiming at targets that appear around an actual card that is sitting on the table in front of you (the game utilizes the 3DS camera), and AR games are admittedly awesome conceptually, but when the fidelity of the 3D is based completely on your viewing angle, moving the device is not an option unless you move your entire body to maintain direct line of sight. The real problem though, was that the thing just felt like a chore to look at after about 20 minutes. You can use the slider on the device to turn down the 3D effect and mitigate some of the eye strain, but if you're going to have to turn off the main feature of the device what's the point?

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

The Penalty For Death - Difficulty & Death in Games



Difficulty has changed a lot since the early days of electronic gaming. Back then most games were brutally hard, probably since they were born on arcade machines designed to destroy your quarters in a relatively small amount of time. Failure in most games comes in the form of death, and in the past we were dying a lot. Now we have games where you literally can't die. At some point publishers probably realized that there's no need to torture the player with heinous difficulty since you've already dropped $50 or $60 on the title, and that all they need to do is make sure you feel like you got their money's worth so that you'll buy the inevitable string of sequels. Make a game too hard and it's likely that your audience probably won't even finish it, let alone buy the next one. Games do need to have some kind of challenge though, otherwise they don't feel satisfying. Where should developers draw the line, and how do you punish failure and keep the player coming back for more at the same time?

Demon's Souls is a pretty good recent poster boy for gratuitous difficulty. Its reputation as a game for the truly hardcore and the legacy of previous From Software titles like King's Field were able to garner enough sales to see a sequel announced, much to the joy of mashocists everywhere. This was a game that innovated by making death matter in an era where save games and frequent checkpoints have all but eliminated its relevance. You could spend 45 minutes navigating the dark corridors of the game's world only to get struck down in mere seconds by a tentacle faced-wizard, losing your night's progress. You heard his bell chiming in the distance before you even saw him, and then at the critical moment the trajectory of your dodge maneuver is slightly off and you're paralyzed by his ranged attack, left to watch helplessly as he comes to devour the contents of your skull. This is the sort of thing that happens in Demon's Souls the time, and for some it was too much but for many it was just what the doctor ordered. The possibility of succeeding against a machine so expertly designed to destroy you was motivation enough to keep throwing yourself back into its gears.

Super Meat Boy, on the other hand, is a game that managed to be incredibly difficult without having any penalty for death whatsoever. Playing the later levels of SMB for even a few minutes means you will die countless times, and after each death you will be ready to attempt the stage again within half a second. An errant jump that sends you into one of the game's many spinning buzz saws doesn't send you back to some loading screen, or cost you a life, or penalize you in any way really. When you're going to fail thousands of times, this is an inspired design choice. It's not all plummeting into lava and getting disintegrated by lasers though. Between all of the death and frustration there is the moment of exhilaration when you discover that the path to victory you thought was just a naive fantasy is actually possible. The carrot can barely be seen dangling over the horizon, but it is within your reach if you're willing to try for it. You may have to try many, many times, but when the consequence of failure is so minimal why shouldn't you?

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Offline Low-tech Co-op - Space Hulk: Death Angel Review

With the advent of online matchmaking services such as Xbox Live and PSN there has been a marked shift away from local multiplayer towards the inclusion online multiplayer in games, be it cooperative or competitive. In fact, a lot of titles now have online multiplayer modes that seem as though they've been shoehorned in by developers, probably at the urging publishers who are hoping to give their customers a reason not to sell games on the secondary market after finishing them. In the past multiplayer usually meant 2-player with the exception of some arcade cabinets which were made to support multiple players. Even up to the previous console generation online multiplayer was a thing that happened almost exclusively on the PC, which has never come close to being the vast cultural phenomenon that console gaming has become. It may seem unfair to say something like that about the PC as a gaming platform, but the PC gaming demographic seems to have not changed at all within the context of a larger culture which has evolved to the point where the elitists now derisively comment about how Call of Duty is a game for frat boys. Taken in that light it seems clear that the home console is now defining online multiplayer to a greater extent than the platform on which the feature originated. There was a time, though, when local multiplayer was the standard rather than the exception. When afternoons were whiled away on games of Battletoads, Street Fighter II, Golden Eye, and Guilty Gear X2. That time is over now, but a bastion of local multiplayer still exists in the realm of board games.

Board games?! No, not those board games that killed so many weekend afternoons in youths, but good board games. The past couple of years have seen an incredible rise in the popularity of Eurogames, which differ from the classic American boardgames in a number of ways. In general, Eurogames are not luck based (little or no die rolling), do not have player elimination (everyone plays to the end), and have themes can seem somewhat outlandish. They're mostly competitive but we have seen a number of cooperative eurogames over the years in which players compete against the board, but these games suffer from a fatal flaw compared to cooperative video games. In a video game, each player controls their "character" or "guy" or whatever and they're the only one who can do it due to the nature of the inputs (i.e. game pads or controllers). In a cooperative boardgame like Arkham Horror, depending on group dynamics, the slow paced turn based nature of the medium can lend itself to an experience of playing by committee, where an individual player's experience is sometimes diminished by a desire to go along with everyone else and not rock the boat. Fantasy Flight Games seems to have at least partly solved this problem by with the release of Space Hulk: Death Angel, which is not a Eurogame in any sense, but manages to rise above the pitfalls of traditional American board game nonetheless.

Space Hulk: Death Angel (Board Game, 2010)


Released about a year after Games Workshop's 3rd Edition Space Hulk, Death Angel is a pared down version of the beloved miniature/board game hybrid that manages to condense the incredible flavor and intensity of the original into a sandwich sized package that plays just as well with 2 players as it does with 6. The theme is pretty rich and beyond the scope of this post, but the tag-line on the box sums it up well as "man versus alien in a desperate struggle."  This flavor is carried very well by the card art and gameplay, so players familiar with the Warhammer 40k setting will feel right at home.  Inside the box you'll find cards representing space marines, genestealers (4-armed scythe-taloned alien monstrosities), actions, locations and events.  You'll also get a number of thick cardboard tokens and a special die.  The die and tokens are nice but the cards are a little small and thin, though they do shuffle very well.  Overall, it is a nice package and a solid value at $25.

During the course of the game, space marines controlled by the players will work together to move through the decks of a derelict spaceship infested with genestealers intent on tearing them to shreds. Each player controls the actions of 1 or 2 teams of space marines, with each team consisting of one basic marine and one command marine (seargent or librarian), heavy weapons marine (heavy flamer or autocannon), or close combat specialist (lightning claws or thunder hammer and storm shield). Each team of marines has three unique action cards which dictate what they do each turn (attack, move and activate, and support), and each turn the team will perform one action so long as it is different from the action they performed last turn. Each space marine, location, and genestealer is represented by a card, and at the start of the game the space marines are lined up in a column which is flanked on both sides by corridors, doors, vents, dark corners and other features of the ship from which emerge genestealers. Throughout the course of the game the space marines will clear sections of the ship and advance through a series of increasingly dangerous random locations by eliminating genestealers until they arrive at the final location where they'll have to satisfy a specific victory condition such as kill the genestealer broodlords or activate a special control panel.

The tension of the original board game is recreated here by the near-constant tide of genestealer cards which are spawned from blip piles based on the location of the marines in the ship, which changes whenever a blip pile is exhausted (i.e. the space marines have survived long enough in the location and killed enough genestealers). The number of genestealers, their locations, and their movements around the formation of space marines are based on a random event card that is resolved at the start of each turn, and the regularity with which they spawn makes it seems like the marines are fighting an uphill battle most of the time. Combat is resolved with a simple die roll, and players must take advantage of each of the unique marine's special abilities to get the most out of their actions each turn, because any genestealers left after actions are taken will attack back, forcing a defense roll that is more difficult depending on how many genestealers are engaging the defending marine. Eliminated space marines are gone for good, so a big part of the game is trying to figure out which marine is most expendable, and making sure your more valuable special weapons marines are not having to make defense rolls that are too difficult. In lieu of attacking, space marines can maneuver around the formation and change facing to interact with special locations  by taking movement actions, or gain support tokens which allow re-rolls on attack and defense by taking support actions. All of the actions have additional benefits that are team specific, triggering a unique bonus effect once those actions are taken, such as firing multiple shots with an autocannon, counterattacking on defense rolls or locking a group of genestealers under a stasis field.

So how does this game solve the problem of gaming by committee that plagues most co-op boardgames? It does so by stipulating that players choose what actions they take secretly and then resolve them based on initiative order (determined by a number on each action card). How much each group of players wants to do this is up to them, so it's a nice option to have in case you get worn down by this unforgiving game in which space marines live and die by the dice. One criticism of the game could be that it the outcome is too dependent on die rolls and luck with the event deck, but if you're coming into Death Angel expecting the tactical depth of Twilight Struggle you're setting yourself up for a big disappointment. This is a light, fun, flavorful game that's good as a warm-up for your game night's main event or as game to share with less experienced gamers who will appreciate the short play time and quick to learn rules.

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Scrubland - RPGs can have Scrubs Too


People play games for a lot of reasons. Some gamers might organize their social lives around their hobbies, while others might play games as an escape from the everyday. For some, having fun is enough, while others have more fun when they win. Most games are competitive, so ostensibly people who are playing them are on some level doing so with the intention of winning. However, there are a ton of games that aren't competitive and there are equally many people who play competitive games without any true intention of winning. David Sirlin who is best known as a competitive Street Fighter player and game designer who balanced Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix and Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix (arguably the best Street Fighter) has written extensively on the subject of people who don't play to win, and refers to those people somewhat pejoratively as "scrubs." Scrubs are people who create artificial rules and self-imposed restrictions that keep them from being able to win, usually saying that certain tactics or plays are "cheap" or "not fun", which is unhealthy for a competitive game like Street Fighter. In most cases, scrubs are bad for a game because they don't promote high level competitive play. In some environments though, being a scrub is actually the best thing a person can do for their game, especially with regards to collaborative games where being competitive can be downright destructive.

Take a game like Magic: The Gathering. There is no doubt that MtG is a competitive game, and in fact its continued endurance as a franchise nearly 20 years after its inception is largely based on the strong competitive environment that Wizards of the Coast has fostered for it. You'd think that WotC would develop their game solely with competitive play in mind considering that competitive players drive the vast majority of their business, but lead designers over at WotC have stated on numerous occasions that they design bad cards with casual or "kitchen table" magic players in mind. It's exactly these players who must find a ways to level themselves (i.e. be scrubs) in order to keep their game alive. Imagine that you have a group of 3 other friends who play MtG and typically you all choose to play tier 2 or 3 decks that wouldn't be competitive for tournament play, and suddenly one of your friends shows up with a tier 1 net-deck that is dominant and just can't be beat by the rest of the group. He is playing to win, and this has severely unbalanced what was before a perfectly functional casual MtG group. The other players have been put in a situation where they have to decide whether or not to invest in better decks to compete in the arms race, be scrubs and choose not to play against that deck, or in the worst case stop playing altogether. Clearly none of these are good outcomes.




Collaborative games are another beast altogether. Role playing games are a good poster child for the genre since there truly are no winners and losers. In an RPG, the Game Master and players work together to craft a story that is enjoyable for everyone. The Game Master invents challenges and situations for the players to overcome, but he is not trying to beat them. In fact, beating the players is no work for the Game Master at all, since they are the final authority when it comes to resolving in-game situations and conflicts it is easy enough for them to obliterate the rest of the player characters, but this is not fun. To preserve the game, the GM must not try to win. Likewise, the players must also not try to win. You might be wondering how you can even play to win in a game like Dungeons & Dragons or Rogue Trader. Some people try, and those people are frequently referred to as power gamers. A power gamer is a person whose intention is to have the most powerful character in an RPG group, frequently (but not always) because they want to break the game (i.e. "win"), and they are generally unhappy if they cannot accomplish this. They use a lot of unsavory methods to achieve their goals, including but not limited to rules lawyering and meta-gaming, which most will agree can really drag a game down. GMs will often make certain types of characters or options unavailable to players specifically to try and ward off power gaming, which only deepens the power gamer's desire to win. To the power gamer, failure to craft their ideal character means that they have lost and the GM has won. In this case the GM is being a scrub to a certain extent, but when playing to win ruins the game he has no choice. It would be nice if everybody could just do what is best for the game, but then again we don't all play games for the same reasons.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Get Physical - Meatspace Preorder Bonuses


When Sony released the comically inadequate PSP Go, it seemed as though physical media might not be a thing that made the transition into the next generation of handhelds. On paper that seemed like a fine idea, especially for people who wanted to carry around a library of games without the hassle of lugging around a collection of UMDs, miniscule though they may be. Unfortunately, with no way to transfer their existing collection of UMD games onto their PSP Go, owners of the handheld were stuck with the unappealing and frankly criminal prospect of having to repurchase their games on PSN, those which were available anyway. This is probably the single largest contributing factor to the failure of the PSP Go, and although support for full retail releases on PSN has been adequate, there are still a lot of gaps in the library and far from every title is available. Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together was just released this week and is available on PSN, but there's still no legitimate reason to ever purchase it as a downloadable title unless of course you only have a PSP Go to play it on, and not one of the many superior older model PSPs.

For starters, pre-ordering the retail box game would have got you this incredibly sweet tarot card set featuring the 22 original art major arcana that you might remember from playing Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen on SNES so many years ago (or on Wii Virtual Console not so many years ago). Even if you didn't preorder, this game comes with a manual so thick it hearkens back to the days of PC gaming before there stopped being any particular reason to buy boxed PC games (i.e. Steam). It's imaginable that they would have made the manual thicker if there weren't such a limited amount of space in the box. It is crammed full of the kind of useful information that is necessary to succeed playing a game which requires a bit more effort than most modern games which simply task you with remember that square is a light attack and triangle is a strong attack. They must have simply ran out of room judging by the absence of the ludicrous "notes" pages that occasionally still appear in the flimsy pamphlets that pass for game manuals these days. God of War III, does your manual really need a notes section? The answer is an emphatic "NO."



So what is the deal with downloadable games anyway then? It makes sense on a platform such as Apple's app store, where there has never been a precedent for boxed games since the devices have never had physical media drives. It also makes sense for PC games which are becoming an increasingly niche market, and also exist on a somewhat of an eternal format. You can rest assured that your Windows PC games you purchased on Steam will always play on a Windows PC for as long as the platform is around, which will probably be forever. Consoles and handhelds are a different matter altogether though on account of their generational hardware iterations, unless you're Nintendo, who have recently been pretty stellar about maintaining backwards compatibility across their platforms. The exception of course are titles that are available only as downloads due to their narrow appeal or insubstantial nature that does not warrant a full box release. How long, though, until the new generation of consoles or handhelds no longer have physical media drives? When will box sales become negligible to the point that publishers no longer care about maintaining a relationship with brick and mortar retailers? Hopefully that day will never come, for more than a few reasons.

First of all, you can give a goodbye kiss to most of your ownership of the games you laid hard earned cash down for. As of now there's no way to share downloadable titles, sell them back to the store (if you're into that sort of thing) or even lend them to friends, and it seems unlikely that such a system would ever be implemented. Additionally, the incentive for publishers to offer awesome preorder bonuses or collector's editions goes right out the window. Without a physical product, there is no medium by which to deliver things like original soundtracks, art books, terrible "making of" documentaries, or the rare creepy perverted mouse pad. Obviously there are huge incentives for publishers to eliminate physical media if they can do so without impacting sales, and luckily that time has not yet come. Unfortunately, it seems inevitable the infrastructure required to deliver that product to every potential customer will someday exist, and that will be a sad day for us all. Until then, keep it real.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Retro Active - Where New Games are Terrible


At some point, electronic gaming matured to the state where a sub-culture of gamers known as retro-gamers could appear. It's hard to say when this happened exactly, as I'm sure there were a ton of people kicking it old school and consistently jamming through NES Marble Madness playthroughs during all subsequent hardware generations. It's also hard to say how old a game needs to be to qualify, since recently we saw the release of an updated Golden Eye on the Wii and during the lead-up to its release whole pages of commentary recalling the good old days of playing the original on N64 sprang into existence. Clearly, games from that era (1997) hold some kind of retro-cachet, but it's only more recently that brand new titles have been delivered to us with deliberate retro qualities. Throw in the huge number of straight up ports that are available, especially on handhelds (ahem, 3DS first party ports), and you could probably make a stack of new-old games to keep you busy indefinitely. Playing these titles now can teach us a lot about games, including how far the medium has come, how sometimes it doesn't need to go very far, and how occasionally you wish it could just go back to the where it came from.

In terms of how far games have traveled from their origins, playing a game like Pacman Championship Edition DX is a real eye opening experience. It's like all bets are off and you can imagine a world where as soon as you think you understand how a franchise works, especially one so rooted in its own conventions, they go and add bullet time, "ghost trains", techno music and bombs. This has been tried before, but Pacman CE DX is the true realization of the potential that can be unlocked when you take something so well understood and ever so gently turn it on its head. It is simultaneously so Pacman and so not Pacman, and I was not surprised to hear it at least mentioned during a variety of game of the year discussions last year.

Sometimes a brand new game can still feel incredibly modern even if it hasn't gone through any significant updates since earlier titles in the franchise, even when those games were released over 15 years ago. Playing Donkey Kong Country Returns for any amount of time will trigger an almost Pavlovian surge of joy deep within you. This is in spite of the fact that not a whole lot of innovation has occured since the orignal Donkey Kong Conutry. It's all mostly the same, except now the fidelity is incredibly high, with sharper looking graphics and crisper sounding tunes. The gameplay consists mostly of the same stuff we were doing on the SNES all those years ago, so you'll spend a lot of time running, jumping, launching out of barrels and riding in mine carts, and all of that is just dandy. There's no shoehorned competitive online multiplayer, no DLC, no pan-media saturation campaign, and that's fine.

Lastly, you sometimes play a 13 year old game and wonder what the hell went wrong since then. Maybe that game is Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions, which you've picked up on the PSP to satiate some ravenous hunger for turn-based strategy RPGs the likes of which are rarely made in modern times, while you await the remake of Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together. Realizing that the genre peaked so many years ago can only be torturous for people who have been with Square from the beginning, enough to make them start saying "geez Square Enix really needs to just stop." It might be true SE needs to change how they do things on account of their recent record of mediocrity and rampant franchise milking (2011 will see at least five "Final Fantasy" releases), but what becomes apparent is that SE really needs to do is stop trying to fix things that aren't broken. Stop taking away equipment slots. Stop simplifying the level up and magic systems. Stop making games were all you do is travel between cut scenes featuring ridiculously dressed characters who blather incomprehensibly about having to save the blah by collecting the bleh with the right fighting spirit. It's in rare cases such as these, in this golden age of gaming where there's literally something for everyone, that it doesn't seem dishonest to pine for a past which was arguably worse in almost all other ways.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Behind The Curve - Dead Space: Extraction Review

So there's a lot of content on the inter-webs regarding new stuff. I know, because I spend a lot of time scouring blogs like Kotaku to learn about the latest releases, and to keep on top of the recent developments in my areas of interest. Unfortunately, most products are most expensive when they're brand new, so rarely do I get to experience anything while it is still new. A lot of gamers are this way I think, especially with video games, which compared to traditional games, experience a dramatic decline in sticker price as they age on the shelves of retailers. A title that costs $60 at release can easily be $30 within 6 months, depending on how popular it is. This being the case, I rarely play one when it's new, on account of the fact that I can sometimes buy 3 or 4 old titles instead of buying a new one. For example, if I wanted to I could go out and buy Dead Space 2 which came out today for $60, or I could go ahead and buy Dirt 2 , A Boy and His Blob , Vanquish , and still have a few bucks leftover for an after lunch coffee.

When I was younger, before all my dreams were crushed, I used to think the ideal job would be writing game reviews. I mean, to a 14 year old it sounds pretty awesome to play games all day and write what you thought about them. While the reality of that situation is a little more on par with the reality of being in quality assurance for a major publisher then it is with having free reign to the enjoy the bounty of the chocolate factory (wow that just sounds dirty when I read it back), Web 2.0 has given me the ability to live my childhood dream without having to slog through some grueling 60 hour JRPG to make ends meet. To that end, I'm going to write about some of the media I've enjoyed recently, and you can be sure that it's stuff that's been out forever and is dirt cheap now.

Dead Space: Extraction
(Wii, PS3)

The Wii exclusive prequel to EA's mysteriously under-performing multiplatform science fiction action-survival-horror game Dead Space, Dead Space: Extraction takes advantage of the excellent pointing capabilites of the Wiimote to deliver a pretty riveting on-rails shooter. With a story that picks up just before the events of the original, you play mostly as P-Sec Detective Nathan McNeil, as he tries to hold together a group of survivors trying to escape from a mining colony that is overrun with horrifying monsters referred to as "necromorphs", who begin appearing after the discovery of "The Marker," a bizarre obelisk found on the planet. There's a pretty diverse cast of principal characters which include a sleazy colony overseer with ulterior motives, a hardened soldier, and the helpless female love interest. The graphics are pretty decent for a Wii game (awesome overused cliche!), and sound effects taken directly from the original Dead Space will instantly put fans on edge. On top of that, the story moves along at a nice pace and the dialog and voice acting are high quality, so all in all this game earns fine marks for presentation. Additionally, the game is set in some kind of awesome British future where everyone has an English accent, which I think earns it some pretty legitimate science fiction street-cred.

The gameplay has it's roots in classic arcade light gun games like House of the Dead , so you'll spend most of your time blasting on-screen necromorphs, reloading your weapons whenever you have a moment of respite. Extraction implements a Gears of War inspired perfect reload system which allows you to get a faster reload if you hit the button again at a predetermined time indicated on the reload timer around your aiming reticule, so even reloading your weapons is an engaging activity. The weapons are mostly direct ports from Dead Space, and feature a variety of mining and maintenance equipment that have been re-purposed to cleave the limbs off of necromorphs, which it turn out is the most effective way to slay them. Your basic weapon is an unexciting rivet gun, but there are some more exotic guns thrown into the mix, like the ripper which shoots a buzz saw blade out and suspends it spinning in mid-air about 5 yards in front of you, the plasma cutter which shoots horizontal or vertical cutting lines, and its big brother the line cutter. In general, the shooting is well executed and satisfying, mostly due to the jerky movements of the necromorphs, which can make hitting them a challenge sometimes. You also have a stasis power that allows you to freeze enemies in place for a brief time, and a telekinesis power that's used for solving environmental puzzles, catching and throwing projectiles back at enemies, and also for grabbing a sometimes impossible number of ammo packs, weapon upgrades, and audio/text logs.

The campaign is split into about 10 chapters, each being roughly 25-40 minutes in length, and will take you just 5 or 6 hours to finish. After that, theres some unlockable difficulty settings and a challenge mode which is basically just a collection of high-score shooting galleries set in different locales from the campaign. The enemies come in a multitude of shapes and sizes, and in general they're pretty terrifying, but once you realize that the best thing to do is just shoot their joints and use your stasis to freeze the faster guys so you can proceed to shoot their joints, the combat can start to feel a little stale. This is compounded by the fact that during the game there are only 2 boss encounters, and one of those is an unintuitive mess that will leave you scratching your head while a giant plant monster bashes it in. In the end though, for the price I paid for it ($12.36 + tax), I'd have to say that I totally got my money's worth, and that it's pretty much a mandatory play for fans of Dead Space. Many people who purchase the limited or collectors edition of Dead Space 2 on PS3 will get this game for free, and it's also available for $15 on PSN so if you have a Move controller there's no reason not to play it on that console.

Next Time on Recidivism and Moral Inertia...