Category Archives: Software

Portal 2

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A handful of years ago, a game came out that did something entirely new in the genre of first-person shooting. This was not a surprise in the scheme of things, Valve having been long known for such innovations.[1][2] But the degree of new was pretty surprising. Sure, the Half-Life games have always had an element of puzzle solving, but Portal was purely puzzle solving in a way that forced you to think of spatial relationships and three-dimensional physics as you had never done before. And it had a great deal of humor and plot crammed into its several hours of gameplay. Now, I can’t say a whole lot about Portal 2, but I’ve figured that I can almost certainly say more than most reviews I’ve seen, which are that it’s amazing and you should play it and anything else would be a huge spoiler.

Mind you, I am saying a good deal of that, I’m just working my way around the last part. Since it’s my job to, and all.[3] So, basically, in the recently-updated ending to Portal, you are dragged off by robots at the conclusion of your apparently-not-so-successful-as-all-that escape from the Aperture Laboratories facility. After a non-specific but implied period of time passes, you wake up and some brief plot occurs, followed by a nod to people who never played the original or who haven’t in a very long time, in which you learn controls and physical concepts. And then, well, then you are launched down a rabbit hole full of history, psychology, morality, and, just like last time, really a lot of puzzles and humor. And all manner of troubling revelations, also just like last time. And, well, okay, there’s a lot of just like last time to this game, although rest assured that the puzzles and the plot alike have significant updates as well. The point is that it’s not a brand new game that will leave you amazed nobody ever did this before.

It is, however,  the best interactive story I’ve ever seen, from both the interactive and story sides of that equation separately. The fact that they’ve been joined into one game? I guess it’s like this. I don’t imagine it’s the best game that will ever be made, and I would easily accept arguments from people saying the first game is better; it’s all down to taste and what you want from your experience. But I cannot imagine a way that a game named Portal 2 could have been better than this one. As best I can tell, it is entirely without flaw.

And if you care about the mythology of that shared dystopian future world (which I do), I was impressed anew today by how I can take a joke line about the Black Mesa research facility from the first game’s closing song and both extrapolate very nearly precisely when Portal occurred in the shared timeline of the multiple game series and also a good deal of information about… well, and there’s that rabbit hole full of spoilers again. Because I actually don’t want to provide the hint about what else I was able to determine from that line of song, lest it simultaneously hint at events in the game you might otherwise never have anticipated. Because seeing this stuff cold? It has always been the best way. The point of this closing digression, I think, is that I expect more insights into both this game and the world of shared games as I think more about it all. And also, there’s an entirely separate two-player cooperative Portal experience that I have yet to touch. But I wanted this review while things were still very fresh; if there’s enough innovation or storyline revelation to warrant it, I’ll just have to revisit the game with another review sometime in the uncertain future.

[1] For innovating the way storylines and characters are handled in the genre, there’s the original Half-Life.
[2] For innovating the ways in which you can interact with the random detritus of your environment, look no further than Half-Life 2‘s gravity gun.
[3] And anyway, if I can’t work my way around seemingly-insurmountable obstacles in a review about a game derived from Portal? I’m clearly doing something wrong.

Resident Evil 4

Although completion of the main game revealed several shorter alternate game options, and although I actually do intend to look into and maybe even fully play through those options[1], I think it is fair to review Resident Evil 4 solely on the strength of the main storyline. The setting is some years after the fall of the Umbrella Corporation and the destruction of the T-virus, famous for its ability to create zombies. You play as Leon Kennedy, formerly of Resident Evil 2, who is now part of the Secret Service (I guess?) and has been sent to a small village in Spain to follow leads on the kidnapping of the President’s daughter, Ashley, whose only real utilities are a) to provide a sense of immediacy by being constantly kidnapped again or otherwise placed into danger and b) to provide a sense of fan service by wearing a Catholic schoolgirl skirt and hitting on the late 20s-something Leon according to the script of a Gordon Sumner song.

Of course, no Resident Evil game would make sense without zombies, and this is no exception. Well, that is, they aren’t technically undead zombies so much as parasitically-controlled voodoo zombies, but the point remains the same. Add in several more-dramatically mutated foes and a variety of ever-larger weapons with which to fight them, plus a handful of familiar antagonists and allies and a truly inspired Napoleonic midget, and, well, now it’s sounding like a Resident Evil game. Thankfully, I really enjoy those, and so with this, despite not having a modern console on which to generate acceptable graphics. Still, that’s what Resident Evil 5 will be for, once I get around to it. As far as the Wii aspect of the game? I actually think that the specialty controller makes this kind of game more immersive, what with the actually aiming at the screen and all, but still. It is telling that I’ve only ever finished two games on the Wii over the lifespan of the console.

[1] Cue derisive laughter

Assassin’s Creed

71233_frontTo be clear, this is a pretty old game. I remember reading about Assassin’s Creed in Gamestop’s magazine sometime in 2006 and being really excited about what they were doing with the cities full of random people and the ways you could run and climb and otherwise interact seamlessly with the environment, and without a lot of weird button combinations and things. Plus also the plot, which pits historical Assassins against the Knights Templar in the Crusades setting; it seemed to have a lot to offer on both the very pretty and the very cool scales. The framing story, which has a faceless but clearly very wealthy corporation essentially kidnapping a man who is a descendant of one of these assassins, because they can put him in their cool sci-fi device and use the blood link to pull genetic memories from him, seemed like it may also have been cool, but I really didn’t get far enough into the game to form a valid opinion.[1]

So, right, that part is probably relevant. Despite all of the real coolness inherent in the gameplay and plot in concept, in practice I found it absolutely unplayable. Part of this, I realize now after the fact, is that the introduction was weak and did not provide as much direction as I think I needed to latch onto the plot. The other part, that caused me to stop playing out of pure frustration, was mechanical in nature. Without a clear set of roadsigns to pull me quickly into the plot, I was still enamored of the beautiful countryside, and on top of that there were collectible items and very tall towers with expansive views to enjoy, so I started poking around into that, still perfectly happy with what was going on around me. Until I learned that any time I ran (or ran my horse) past a soldier, I would be targeted for death. It’s not like I had started murdering people yet, and it’s equally not like it was based on some recognition of me, as obviously a walking person is easier to look at. No, the designers just made a terrible decision in which any person who is running must be evil and in need of capture. And once I had to enjoy the expansive open world at a snail’s pace always instead of slowing down at the parts I wanted to explore in greater detail, or else I’d have to fight all the time? And I still didn’t really have a feel for the actual main game on top of that? It was rendered unplayable.

In the meantime, people have sung the praises of its sequels, and while nobody seemed to hate the one game-breaking aspect of the first game the way I did, everyone seemed to claim that the sequels fix a lot of other small problems that I never really saw for myself, and the whole is a massive improvement. My completionism still left me believing I might try to pick up the original again someday, but having played a few hours of its first sequel (review forthcoming, though likely not anytime very soon) and seeing that on top of my complaint, it really does feel a lot more polished and playable in ways I can’t even explain the differences for, it has become clear to me that I would only be punishing myself by going backward.[2]

Anyway, this right here? Kind of a horrible game that thankfully got another chance at life. Because the concept I loved so much? It works every bit as well as I had imagined.

[1] The wikipedia summary that I recently read tells me it probably would have been very interesting, though.
[2] Hence the wikipedia summary.

BioShock 2

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It’s been rather a long time since I finished a game, though thankfully not as long as it’s been since I finished BioShock. All the same, definitely too long. But over the past few weeks and culminating in an enforced snow day on Tuesday, which is slightly ironic when you consider that I never bothered to get the plasmid that lets you freeze people into ice sculptures, I played its unimaginatively-named sequel, BioShock 2, to completion. It seems overly harsh to proceed by saying that “unimaginative” was a convenient choice of word since it can serve double duty by also describing the gameplay, which has a few cosmetic changes but nothing especially new. Honest, yes, but harsh; and I think that feeling of harshness stems from the part of my brain saying, “well, it’s a sequel, of course the game play is the same. That would be like complaining that Halloween II had a tall guy in a mask who went on a murderous rampage while trying to schedule a family reunion![1]”

If, like me, you accept my brain’s premise there, the really important question is, how does the game rate on the basis of plot and theme? And the answer to that is a little complicated. BioShock, as you may remember, was unapologetically cruel to the objectivist philosophy described by Ayn Rand. Or, depending on your perspective, it was compellingly accurate about the end results of objectivism run amok. BioShock 2 seems on the surface to be written as apologism for that cruelty. At least, the simultaneously cartoonish and ham-fisted portrayal of Sophia Lamb as Andrew Ryan’s philosophical nemesis reminded me so much of the strawmen used by Terry Goodkind throughout his Sword of Truth series that I assume the main point of BioShock 2 was apologia.[2] “That doesn’t sound complicated at all,” you are no doubt thinking. And you’d be right, except that there are moments of real brilliance (mostly in the end game[3]) that shine through that muck and leave me considering aspects of both the original and this game all over again in that light. So, yeah. Complicated.

[1] Insofar as, y’know, of course he did, that was the whole point of it being a sequel.
[2] There is every chance that this is a real word, and a slightly lessened but still significant chance that I’ve just used it correctly.
[3] And therefore firmly in the territory of spoilers. See the ROT13 comment I’ll leave by tomorrow for more detail.

Silent Hill

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It is a true fact that a few weeks ago I read a graphic novel whose primary accomplishment was making me itch to play the games, none of which I had ever finished besides the first one, and that with the worst possible ending. The itch is not really scratched, since there are so many chapters in the series and so very little revealed storyline per entry[1], but I have indeed replayed that first Silent Hill game. Which is impressive when you realize that it’s 11 years old and yet seems to have no more than double the graphic quality of a 2600 game.

I am perhaps exaggerating, but man was it hard to play on this giant, giant screen. The sound was still awesomely atmospheric and scary as I remembered, except for the bug that would randomly set up an unstoppable whine when I fired weapons. And the story… it’s a mess. It’s like, I really wanted to know what was going on, and I do more or less have some idea, but there had to have been a way to throw more cohesive plotting in with the creepy faceless knife-wielding children and possessed nurses and ubiquitous skinless dogs and pterodactyls to fight-or-run-away-from. What plot there was, I liked, though? Apparently, this guy and his daughter decide to visit a town, only to get into a car accident on the outskirts resulting in the girl going missing, and the guy fighting his way across a town in the throes of both demon worship and a hallucinogenic drug ring. …for some reason? I don’t know if there’s more I should expect to learn later or if I should just be rolling with it. At least I was able to in my mid-twenties, and I do still want to play more of them and see what else I can figure out.

[1] This reminds me of the Saw movies.

Beautiful Katamari

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I really don’t know how to review Beautiful Katamari in a way that would be any different from my original review of Katamari Damacy. It has equivalent zaniness, equivalent gameplay, an equivalent plot, a different but equivalent J-Pop soundtrack, significantly fewer Lego people observing the zaniness, and a higher number of goals than to merely make the biggest Katamari possible. But for the most part, they made exactly the same game as they have done over and over again since the original was released, in the tradition of the best slasher horror movies. And that’s all I have to say about that.

Mirror’s Edge

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So, it is celebration time here at Wit’s End[1], because I finished another videogame. Woohoo! Mirror’s Edge is a light, breezy even, rush of a game. You are a runner, tasked with moving information along the rooftops of The City at blinding speeds, using native instinct to know when you can make a jump between buildings or clear an obstacle. What exactly the information is, or why it needs to be moved discretely, or why the cops usually don’t bother the runners, these questions are never really addressed. The only thing that matters is, things have changed, times are suddenly far more dangerous, and it’s up to you to unravel the mystery!

Luckily, the gameplay, which consists of a constant barrage of running, jumping, ducking, dodging and weaving that optimally should never involve gunplay[2], is more than exciting enough to make up for the tragically thin plot. It’s not so bad that the information above is missing, except that it quickly becomes central everything you’re doing, and I feel like I might have gotten more engaged in the story if I’d known why the bad guys wanted to wipe out the runners, or even what [else] exactly they had done to become the bad guys in the first place. I kind of started to get distracted during the cutscenes, because they weren’t really making enough sense to me. Or else the distraction caused me to miss something vital? Yeah, I just don’t know. But the game itself, divorced from all these concerns? I say again: pretty good stuff.

Man, I really need to play an RPG now, though. If only I actually had a new one in my house. Maybe next month!

[1] That is what I call my home. There is even a sign!
[2] Although I acknowledged my lack of utility against the heavy gunners early on and started blasting away at need; but you’re just so slow-moving with a gun, they clearly intend you to have avoided them, and I always felt like I was letting the game down a little bit whenever I pulled a trigger.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

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I visited my parents over the weekend, since my schedule is about to be in flux and it seemed like a good time before the flux takes hold, plus the holidays and all. So I spent just about the whole of Thanksgiving break with them, except that I worked on Friday. That’s nice! While there, I inadvertently treated them to a full-length, multi-hour cinematic extravaganza in the form of a Playstation 3 game. After the success of my recommending Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune when he bought the system and wanted something to play on it (not that he actually plays much of anything, but, you know)[1], he picked up the sequel a few weeks ago. And what began as a way to pass a few hours Saturday night quickly turned into a full weekend obsession during which I played the last third of the game for four hours past when I had planned originally to leave, because I was just sure that the climax was right around the corner, and I didn’t want to make them wait weeks for the conclusion and have time to forget what was going on.[2]

If you’re picking up on an undercurrent of admiration for the game’s writing and seamless graphics in that description of my weekend, well, you’re not imagining it. As to the latter, the only real difference between playing the game and watching its gorgeous cutscenes is that the game-play has fewer close-ups. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves picks up explorer Nathan Drake some brief years after the events of the previous game, convinced by shady friends to join in a search for Marco Polo’s lost expedition, a journey that will take him from the jungles of Borneo to the dizzying heights of Tibet and Nepal, not to mention deep into the legends surrounding Kublai Khan. Along the way he’ll crack wise, make lots of new enemies, and see lots of new ancient ruins! It’s good stuff. But on top of that, the writing is not merely good in and of itself, as it was last time; it actually takes note of the past and uses it. If I had been on the fence about the loss of meaningful breast-motion physics from the Lara Croft games to the Uncharted series, I no longer would be in any measure. I care about these people, and want to know what’s going to happen next. That I also get to play a video game along the way? It justifies the expense, but other than that, it’s purely bonus.

[1] V nz chggvat guvf va ebg13 fb ur pna’g frr vg, ohg V cerqvpg V trg n pbzzrag sebz uvz gung ur qbrf fb lhu-uhu cynl Unyb fbzrgvzrf. (Nyfb, vs V’z evtug nobhg gung pbzzrag bppheevat, vg vf yvxryl gb nfx jung guvf tvoorevfu vf nf jryy.)
[2] To be fair, this applies to me as well.

Saints Row 2

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Saints Row 2 is the rare sequel that follows the horror movie rule of good sequels: make exactly the same thing again, only adding an incremented number on the end of the title. Five years after the rise and sudden fall of your character from Saints Row, he (or, this time around, possibly she!) wakes up from a coma ready for revenge. Only, revenge will have to wait: the 3rd Street Saints are no more, crippled in power by the total loss of their leadership[1], crippled geographically by the corporate gentrification of their seat of power, and crippled statistically by the rise of three new gangs who have taken advantage of the power vacuum to once more carve up the sad and inexplicably water-bound city of Stilwater.

The game, being a carbon copy, has flaws in keeping with the original: the glorification of gang lifestyle and graphics that seem almost hokey when held up next to Grand Theft Auto IV are the most obvious. But the newly chatty main character[2] is so over-the-top in her villainy and love of chaos that it felt a little less scuzzy than the voiceless original protagonist upon whom one inevitably would imprint their own motivations. As with the first game, I completed something like 93% of the available game, leaving out only a few races and stunt jumps and such. The series has been very good to me, on a value basis.

There is a remaining inevitable question to be answered. Having played them in such proximity, how does Saints Row 2 compare with Grand Theft Auto IV? Well, the similarity of game is a bit of a plus here; I really appreciated that the map of the city was so familiar, as opposed to Liberty City being so vastly different in GTA. (Then again, the time between sequels was only a couple of years rather than a decade, so I understand Rockstar’s point of view on the Liberty City update.) Storywise, GTA is the clear victor, hands down. Niko Bellic is a meaningful, tragic character while the nameless leader of the Saints is a caricature. And the respective stories very much reflect that comparison. All the same, I think Saints Row is the more fun of the two games; mindless mayhem and frequently-thin story motivations did not leave me wallowing in misery, the way Niko’s life did. And Saints Row’s story does have a handful of dark and dramatic turns, don’t get me wrong. If it wasn’t for the graphical disparity, I think I’d have to say it’s down to a matter of taste. But no, less fun-filled or not, GTA is objectively the better game.

[1] Some to retirement, some to the corporate sector, some to (seriously) the police force, and of course there’s the one that’s been imprisoned and in a coma.
[2] To my surprise, there was no option to import the previous character design from the original game. In compensation, there’s an ongoing joke about the character having “new hair”. Since mine changed gender, yeah, I found the understatement pretty amusing.

Condemned 2: Bloodshot

Three years ago and more, I played the original Condemned game. Creepy homeless people, a serial killer, crime scene investigations… fun, scary times! So, anyway, turns out there’s a sequel. Condemned 2 is every bit as creepy, with all the angry homeless people and new bonus extra-creepy people who have bizarre mouth and body-modifications. Not to mention hallucinatory slime people and evil animated dolls and all manner of bad times. The story part of the game is… well, pretty silly? See, the same characters from the previous game are back: Agent Ethan Thomas has turned to the bottle after his successful crusade to take down Serial Killer X resulted in no body, no proof, and a long-term suspension. His lab contact Rosa is doing fine, but the wealthy Malcolm Van Horn is being hunted by… a secret society. That has sinister plans for Agent Thomas.

On the one hand, yay for explaining all the crazy homeless people, probably better than the first game did. On the other hand, changing from a serial killer series to a conspiracy series without so much as a how-do-you-do is just a bizarre choice. One that will work better, I think, if there’s no third game. Really, the story thing isn’t a complaint per se. The game was scary and that’s what I was looking for. My complaint, if one is needed, is that it was entirely too short. Well, and there was maybe not quite enough studying crimes while nervously watching over a shoulder for a well-wielded pipe wrench. …yeah. Okay. Scary enough or not, it just wasn’t nearly as good as the last one. Oh, well.