Some games i've played recently
Yep. I'm a gamer. You all know this by now, yeah? Anyway, I thought I'd review a few games I've played in the last few months.
Scribblenauts
A puzzle game where every level is "Help your avatar get the star." To get the star, you will need to use some item or combination of items to get your avatar from where he starts to where the star is without him getting killed by such things as dinosaurs, sharks, pirates, frat boys, ninjas, etc. The items you can use are, literally, limited only by your imagination and vocabulary. You can have God fight Zeus and Cthulu if you like.
Sounds great, doesn't it? It is, for about an hour, hour and a half. I and a couple other people I talked with found ourselves falling back on the same tried and true items to get things done. Ladders to go up, wings to cross cliffs, rope to pull things, etc. It just because very monotonous and repetitive.
Duck Duck Go
A board game! Fletcher gave me this game for my birthday this past year, and I've only recently gotten to play it (I kept forgetting to bring it with em to game nights until a few weeks ago). It's not overly complicated, really. The premise is that the board is a bathtub, and you are controlling a rubber duck as it drifts around the tub. The goal is to be the first duck to pass through three marker buoys and then go down the drain. You control your duck through movement cards that dictate what direction you are drifting in and what way you can face at the end of your turn. You have a selection of cards in your hand, so it's not completely random. It's a simple, moderately paced game that's fun for, if nothing else, letting you play a board game with rubber ducks. :)
Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story
The latest in the Mario RPG series. Once again Bowser comes to kidnap Peach, but this time he's interrupted by Fawful, who we first met in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga. Bowser ends up inhaling a significant portion of Mushroom Town, including Mario and Luigi. It's really best not to try and think of the physics involved, especially since you can (in the latter part of the game) enter and exit Bowser via pipes.
If you liked the other M&L games, you'll probably like this one. Same play style, same graphics, same humor, with a few new attacks, some new jokes, and the amusing fact that you are inside Bowser. In a few sections of the game, Bowser needs to push something really heavy, or lift something or simply survive being crushed. In these instances, you play as Mario and Luigi as they work to make Bowser stronger, more powerful, etc. It's rather well done. There is also a mechanic where, while playing as Bowser, you can inhale some enemies and have Mario and Luigi battle them inside Bowser. This minimizes the enemies Bowser has to face as well as giving M&L a bit more experience to level up.
New Super Mario Bros. Wii
It's actually really fun, though it's very ripe for griefing. The levels are often patterned after levels in the original Super Mario Bros. from the 80s. The Koopa Kids from Super Mario Bros. 3 are back, as is the world layouts where you follow a path from one world to the next with item houses and "random" enemy encounters along the way.
I mentioned that the game is ripe for griefing, and that's my second biggest problem with an otherwise fun game. You can pick up other players and throw them (off a cliff, into an enemy, etc.), turtle shells and such that you throw hurt other player, and players provide obstacles for other players. This means that there is a multitude of ways to "accidentally" kill each other. Additionally, you can "bubble" (no hearthing) by pressing the A button. This surrounds your toon in a bubble, rendering them "out of the game" and can save your life from an otherwise fatal fall, enemy attack, etc. However, you can't get yourself out of the bubble at all. You must get another player to "pop" your bubble to let you out. What does this have to do with griefing? Simply put, if everyone else is in a bubble, a player can bubble himself, and you have to restart the level, since no one is "in play" anymore. Thankfully, this does not cause you to lose lives.
The biggest problem I had with the game is similar to my biggest complaint about the Smash Brothers series of games: Too much stuff going on at the same time on screen. We were playing with four people last night on a 50" HDTV, and it was still difficult to keep track of your own player, especially if you had star power. The constant zooming in and out of the camera as players moved closer to or farther from each other certainly didn't help. After a couple hours of this, eye fatigue really started setting in, more so than other Wii games that don't have the crazy random zooming.
The four players on screen thing also had another negative side effect. Several levels require precise timing in your jumps, dashes, etc. Given that players collide with each other, this means that some of them won't be able to make some jumps and those that do will get in the way of others trying to make the same jump. This is especially bad in auto-scrolling worlds and worlds with moving platforms. We found that in these worlds, you basically had to have one player go through the level and have everyone else bubble to stay out of their way. Even that's not certain to help, though, since they will op out of bubble if they get too close to the active player. It's *especially* bad if they get in front of them mid-jump, bubble pops, suddenly they're an obstacle, the active player can't make the jump, the popped person can't make it, everyone dies, restart.
I think the single-player game would be a lot of fun, though I didn't get a chance to play that part of it last night. Without the other players to interfere, many stages seem that they'd definitely be easier to get through. Conversely, there are some secret exits (to level-warp canons and such) that you *need* at least one other person to get to.
Overall, having not yet played the single-player version, I would give it a solid B edging to a B+. I'd give it an A, but the inherent mechanics caused the multi-player to get frustrating after too-short a while.
Dragon Age: Origins
I finished this game last night after about 42 hours of game time. I did not get the achievement for setting foot in all parts of the game world. I did not get the achievement for completing at least 75% of the quests. I have fewer than half the achievements unlocked. That all means that, if I wanted to, I could easily squeeze another 15 or 20 hours of gameplay from this game without too much trouble, but I've completed the main storyline, though, so I'm not sure if I will yet. I may take a break from Dragon Age: The Bleeding for a while.
First of all, my initial reaction after finishing the game was to call it "the second coming of RPGs," but I do realize how hyperbolic that sounds and, frankly, my exposure to computer RPGs if fairly limited. So, reining in the gushing, I do want to say that the game was absolutely amazing to play. The combat was fast-paced, fluid and exciting, but when it got too much to handle, you could pause the action and go through your party to make sure all your party members were doing what you want them to do. In a system similar to Final Fantasy XII's Gambit System, DA:O has a tactics system which will guide your NPCs. If X, do Y.
There's a lot of politics in DA:O. In fact, there are two different civil war arcs in the game that you get caught up in trying to mediate/end. As you go from quest hub to quest hub, the decisions you make along the way will impact your effectiveness and the eventual outcome of these civil wars. I didn't realize that for a while, and even at the end of the game, some of my very early decisions came back to either haunt or help me.
In addition to the political plot lines and the adventure plot lines (Go recover this person's stuff from these bad guys), there are relationships which you can foster or abandon between your main character and the NPCs of your party. No NPC has to stay in your party. You can piss off all of your party members to the point where they will abandon you. On the reverse, there are certain party members which can open up romance options if they like you enough. Mind you, there's a bug with one romance potential that's kind of annoying. If you miss the romance option dialogue hook the first time, you have to "break up" with them and start over in order to get the hook to reappear. Very time consuming.
What impressed me the most about the game, though, was its ability to draw me into the story and get me interested in the characters and what was happening around them and to them. Watching as my character left his beginnings and joined the Grey Wardens and then as he grew in fame and popularity as he traveled throughout the country in an effort to end the invasion of darkspawn was entrancing.
The final battle was one of the best I've played in any game, and the post-battle ending was easily on par with Final Fantasy 6. Once again, choices and decisions I'd made throughout the game came back to affect my ending.
Did I mention how completely awesome the soundtrack was in the game? Yeah. The soundtrack was awesome.
I'm going to play back through the game. That's a given. I'm just not sure when. I need to pay some more attention to World of Warcraft for a bit. Another week long holiday started yesterday, so I need to go do a bunch of achievements to get a fancy hat and a new in-game pet.
Scribblenauts
A puzzle game where every level is "Help your avatar get the star." To get the star, you will need to use some item or combination of items to get your avatar from where he starts to where the star is without him getting killed by such things as dinosaurs, sharks, pirates, frat boys, ninjas, etc. The items you can use are, literally, limited only by your imagination and vocabulary. You can have God fight Zeus and Cthulu if you like.
Sounds great, doesn't it? It is, for about an hour, hour and a half. I and a couple other people I talked with found ourselves falling back on the same tried and true items to get things done. Ladders to go up, wings to cross cliffs, rope to pull things, etc. It just because very monotonous and repetitive.
Duck Duck Go
A board game! Fletcher gave me this game for my birthday this past year, and I've only recently gotten to play it (I kept forgetting to bring it with em to game nights until a few weeks ago). It's not overly complicated, really. The premise is that the board is a bathtub, and you are controlling a rubber duck as it drifts around the tub. The goal is to be the first duck to pass through three marker buoys and then go down the drain. You control your duck through movement cards that dictate what direction you are drifting in and what way you can face at the end of your turn. You have a selection of cards in your hand, so it's not completely random. It's a simple, moderately paced game that's fun for, if nothing else, letting you play a board game with rubber ducks. :)
Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story
The latest in the Mario RPG series. Once again Bowser comes to kidnap Peach, but this time he's interrupted by Fawful, who we first met in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga. Bowser ends up inhaling a significant portion of Mushroom Town, including Mario and Luigi. It's really best not to try and think of the physics involved, especially since you can (in the latter part of the game) enter and exit Bowser via pipes.
If you liked the other M&L games, you'll probably like this one. Same play style, same graphics, same humor, with a few new attacks, some new jokes, and the amusing fact that you are inside Bowser. In a few sections of the game, Bowser needs to push something really heavy, or lift something or simply survive being crushed. In these instances, you play as Mario and Luigi as they work to make Bowser stronger, more powerful, etc. It's rather well done. There is also a mechanic where, while playing as Bowser, you can inhale some enemies and have Mario and Luigi battle them inside Bowser. This minimizes the enemies Bowser has to face as well as giving M&L a bit more experience to level up.
New Super Mario Bros. Wii
It's actually really fun, though it's very ripe for griefing. The levels are often patterned after levels in the original Super Mario Bros. from the 80s. The Koopa Kids from Super Mario Bros. 3 are back, as is the world layouts where you follow a path from one world to the next with item houses and "random" enemy encounters along the way.
I mentioned that the game is ripe for griefing, and that's my second biggest problem with an otherwise fun game. You can pick up other players and throw them (off a cliff, into an enemy, etc.), turtle shells and such that you throw hurt other player, and players provide obstacles for other players. This means that there is a multitude of ways to "accidentally" kill each other. Additionally, you can "bubble" (no hearthing) by pressing the A button. This surrounds your toon in a bubble, rendering them "out of the game" and can save your life from an otherwise fatal fall, enemy attack, etc. However, you can't get yourself out of the bubble at all. You must get another player to "pop" your bubble to let you out. What does this have to do with griefing? Simply put, if everyone else is in a bubble, a player can bubble himself, and you have to restart the level, since no one is "in play" anymore. Thankfully, this does not cause you to lose lives.
The biggest problem I had with the game is similar to my biggest complaint about the Smash Brothers series of games: Too much stuff going on at the same time on screen. We were playing with four people last night on a 50" HDTV, and it was still difficult to keep track of your own player, especially if you had star power. The constant zooming in and out of the camera as players moved closer to or farther from each other certainly didn't help. After a couple hours of this, eye fatigue really started setting in, more so than other Wii games that don't have the crazy random zooming.
The four players on screen thing also had another negative side effect. Several levels require precise timing in your jumps, dashes, etc. Given that players collide with each other, this means that some of them won't be able to make some jumps and those that do will get in the way of others trying to make the same jump. This is especially bad in auto-scrolling worlds and worlds with moving platforms. We found that in these worlds, you basically had to have one player go through the level and have everyone else bubble to stay out of their way. Even that's not certain to help, though, since they will op out of bubble if they get too close to the active player. It's *especially* bad if they get in front of them mid-jump, bubble pops, suddenly they're an obstacle, the active player can't make the jump, the popped person can't make it, everyone dies, restart.
I think the single-player game would be a lot of fun, though I didn't get a chance to play that part of it last night. Without the other players to interfere, many stages seem that they'd definitely be easier to get through. Conversely, there are some secret exits (to level-warp canons and such) that you *need* at least one other person to get to.
Overall, having not yet played the single-player version, I would give it a solid B edging to a B+. I'd give it an A, but the inherent mechanics caused the multi-player to get frustrating after too-short a while.
Dragon Age: Origins
I finished this game last night after about 42 hours of game time. I did not get the achievement for setting foot in all parts of the game world. I did not get the achievement for completing at least 75% of the quests. I have fewer than half the achievements unlocked. That all means that, if I wanted to, I could easily squeeze another 15 or 20 hours of gameplay from this game without too much trouble, but I've completed the main storyline, though, so I'm not sure if I will yet. I may take a break from Dragon Age: The Bleeding for a while.
First of all, my initial reaction after finishing the game was to call it "the second coming of RPGs," but I do realize how hyperbolic that sounds and, frankly, my exposure to computer RPGs if fairly limited. So, reining in the gushing, I do want to say that the game was absolutely amazing to play. The combat was fast-paced, fluid and exciting, but when it got too much to handle, you could pause the action and go through your party to make sure all your party members were doing what you want them to do. In a system similar to Final Fantasy XII's Gambit System, DA:O has a tactics system which will guide your NPCs. If X, do Y.
There's a lot of politics in DA:O. In fact, there are two different civil war arcs in the game that you get caught up in trying to mediate/end. As you go from quest hub to quest hub, the decisions you make along the way will impact your effectiveness and the eventual outcome of these civil wars. I didn't realize that for a while, and even at the end of the game, some of my very early decisions came back to either haunt or help me.
In addition to the political plot lines and the adventure plot lines (Go recover this person's stuff from these bad guys), there are relationships which you can foster or abandon between your main character and the NPCs of your party. No NPC has to stay in your party. You can piss off all of your party members to the point where they will abandon you. On the reverse, there are certain party members which can open up romance options if they like you enough. Mind you, there's a bug with one romance potential that's kind of annoying. If you miss the romance option dialogue hook the first time, you have to "break up" with them and start over in order to get the hook to reappear. Very time consuming.
What impressed me the most about the game, though, was its ability to draw me into the story and get me interested in the characters and what was happening around them and to them. Watching as my character left his beginnings and joined the Grey Wardens and then as he grew in fame and popularity as he traveled throughout the country in an effort to end the invasion of darkspawn was entrancing.
The final battle was one of the best I've played in any game, and the post-battle ending was easily on par with Final Fantasy 6. Once again, choices and decisions I'd made throughout the game came back to affect my ending.
Did I mention how completely awesome the soundtrack was in the game? Yeah. The soundtrack was awesome.
I'm going to play back through the game. That's a given. I'm just not sure when. I need to pay some more attention to World of Warcraft for a bit. Another week long holiday started yesterday, so I need to go do a bunch of achievements to get a fancy hat and a new in-game pet.