Category Archives: Game Logs

Row, Row Row…

At long last I’ve finally gotten around to playing through Volition’s Saints Row for Xbox 360. I’d been curious about this “GTA Clone” style open world game since before the launch of GTA IV (which I’ve talked about on here numerous times) given that it was one of the first games of this type released this generation. It was also one of the few semi-well received ones at the time – it seemed like Rockstar were the only developers capable of really pulling this formula off for a while there. Volition helped change that.

“Every muthafucka here knows!”

Saints Row really does feel like a GTA clone through and through though. Of course, pre-dating GTA IV and all of the other open world games from this generation, it looks and plays closer to Grand Theft Auto III and its follow-ups, Vice City and San Andreas, than anything else. It actually feels pretty odd to go back and play this now considering some of the innovations it (and later games) introduced into the genre that are now rather common place. For one, Saints Row gave us auto check points before missions and an easy retry option. It’s far from perfect however, as there are no check points for different stages of missions and some of those stages (such as driving to the place where mission ACTUALLY begins) are definitely tedious and highly skippable. Saints Row also introduces an aiming mechanic that feels more like a normal third person shooter than the janky, inaccurate, lock-on nonsense of the GTA games. Yep, gunplay in Saints Row is actually almost kind of fun! I also dug the ability to recruit followers to help gun for you – particular useful for drive-by shootings, of which I am want to participate in rather frequently.

While I’m being complimentary, one of my favorite things about Saints Row has to be the ability to completely customize your character. This has been a major component of the Saints Row series since this first game and in the sequels gets taken even further with picking the voice of your character and therefore voice actor and to a minor degree tone and script of the entire story. In this one, however, it mostly relates to designing your physical appearance and customizing your wardrobe. For comedic effect I made my character look about as close to President Obama as I could manage and later even made him run around wearing an appropriate shirt and tie ensemble. Nah, this wasn’t political commentary, I just find the image of President Obama doing drive-bys in the hood to be rather fucking hysterical. Yes, I’m a horrible person.

“RPGs… the real reason to own a convertible.”

As for the negatives, the entire game doesn’t quite manage to muster up anything really resembling Rockstar’s levels of wit and style. This reflects on everything, from the general humor in the world (which is often less on the clever and more on the offensive side) to the less immersive nature of the city of Stillwater. That’s not to say any of that stuff is dreadful but it’s a comparison that I feel has to be drawn. I mean, Freckle Bitches? Come on. The world they paint also tends to ride a rough line between extremely violent and almost comical – I was slightly disgusted the first time I automatically shot someone point blank when I jacked their car. Harsh. Likewise, one time I jacked some random driver and gave them a single, swift punch to the head… you know, to teach them some respect? Yeah, my purple-clad follower ran up to him and proceeded to brutally stab him over and over again with a huge fucking knife until his corpse lay crumpled on the street. Err, wow…

“About to fuck some shit up!”

Technically speaking, I fully expected Saints Row to be embarrassingly buggy and unpolished, especially after some of the hilarious glitch videos I’d seen on YouTube years ago. Not so much, really. I actually thought it did just fine other than occasional sometimes severe pop-in issues. I suppose this might have been a benefit of playing the game way, waaayyyy after release after it has been patched, probably multiple times, and we’re now able to load the disc image onto our 360’s hard drives for I/O gains, which I more or less always do these days. Hopefully the engine used in Saints Row 2 (which is definitely in my backlog!) is a little more capable of handling things.

My biggest complaint with Saints Row has got to be whole “respect” grinding system though. In order to start story missions you need to have your “respect” meter filled up which you can do by completing all sorts of random activities scattered around the city. The activities are quite varied and some of them are even quite a lot of fun (Insurance Fraud gets brought up a lot though the Drug Trafficking activities were favorites of mine) but still, the need to have to crank out a few of these between every mission really drew the game out and did awful things to the overall pace. I can kind of see what they were going for by making these things mandatory (forcing you to explore what would normally be optional content) and I bet the design looked great on paper, but in reality it’s all rather tedious. While I pushed through it without too much trouble several of my friends bailed out of the game early specifically because of this grind.

“Braaaaaaaaaap!”

Anyway, Saints Row was fun. The story interested me even less than I thought it would and the game overall didn’t QUITE scratch that GTA itch like I was hoping for but it was certainly worth a quick visit to. If I had played it back in 2006 before GTA IV and the plethora of other “Grand Theft Auto clones” I’m sure I would have enjoyed it even more. I’ll be visiting many of those other open world games in the near future, including Saints Row 2. I can’t wait!

As usual with Xbox 360 games, I totally jacked all of these pictures. 3rd Street represent!

Braid Your Pitts

I haven’t posted in nearly 4 months. Shameful, I know. I have been gaming a bit though, for sure. In fact one of the main reasons for my lack of updates in the last 6 or 7 months was climbing back onto the vile World of Warcraft bandwagon. I haven’t mentioned it much on here because I’ve been about ready to quit again, once I completed the last of several goals I’d been working on. After that I planned on writing an entry all about my return and what I had accomplished with my time. Unfortunately that last goal has turned out to be a total pain in my ass – expect that post if I finally do meet my goal but I’ve all but stopped again as it is so that seems unlikely.

“Braid is goddamn pretty.”

I got around to playing Braid on XBLA. I actually played through the demo at around the time of its launch and honestly most of my critical analysis of the awesome, creative puzzle mechanics is probably back there somewhere since I was pretty blown away by them originally. Even blasting past that topic, I loved the art style and absolutely adored the music. Despite how mind-bendingly difficult some of the puzzles might seem to some players (personally, most came to me easily, though I did definitely struggle hard with a few of them) it’s still very worth checking out. Notice how I skipped talking about the narrative? 😉 Seriously though, I actually enjoyed it at first and like what they’re were going for though the end came out of nowhere and didn’t really do much for me. In the end though, it didn’t seem crucial to the experience – how much did the story in any of the Super Mario games (and the comparison here is appropriate given all of the obviously influence and callbacks) ever matter?

I finally finished my run through of Fallout 3 + all of the DLC. I got pretty much all of the achievements I could get in one play through and had a blast. My insanely sporadic playtimes made me come to some odd conclusions about my gaming habits as of late: I’m getting too old for this shit. Seriously, I seem to only want to jump into most games (basically anything I’m either not insanely addicted to, or anything that isn’t extremely “pick up and play” friendly) when I have a couple of hours or more free in one sitting, and even then I have to be “in the mood” which I’m often not after a long day at work or whatever. If it is going to take me a year to finish a decent sized RPG for now on I suppose I’m going to have to stop spending as much time and money on this hobby as right now it’s just a little out of whack.

“We’re going vault hopping tonight, baby!”

Back to the game though. Obviously I loved Fallout 3 – I mentioned that in my last update about it. How could I not? I loved the original Fallout games and I love the Elder Scrolls series so… yeah? I’m not going to get into a big, detailed review of it or anything but I did want to mention one unexpected surprise: The Pitt DLC campaign. Whaaa? Although I know it often gets praise as being one of the better DLC add-ons for Fallout 3 I don’t remember hearing anything about the whole moral dilemma you’re faced with in it. Hell, maybe I did and simply forgot all about it since then, but in any case… spoilers in the next two paragraphs!

So, the basic setup for The Pitt (I’ll try to keep it fairly general) is that you’re contacted by a runaway slave who wants you to infiltrate the city which is overrun by an oppressive, ruthless group of slavers who force their slaves into working in their factories while they reap the benefits. They also all have some horrible radiation sickness and the leader of the slavers is apparently hording the cure for his very own. Seems straight forward enough and when you arrive as sure enough, sick slaves everywhere and the people in power are stacking the bad karma deck without question. Once you finally infiltrate the slavers and confront the leader, however, you learn that all isn’t as it appeared – the cure is actually a baby and the ex-slave who talked you into the whole thing in the first place is actually an ex-slaver who was forced out after a failed coup attempt looking for revenge. Seems like the situation is getting greyer. Still, why would I want to leave the baby in the hands of these assholes? Plus, who cares if the other guy is an ex-slaver himself, he clearly wasn’t lying about this place being packed with slaves and this sickness killing everyone. I stole the baby and vaporized the leader of the slavers, and most of the rest of them while I was at it.

“Fireworks are always better when they’re made out of your enemies.”

The plot thickens. Audiotapes reveal that the leader of the slavers was an Paladin of the Brotherhood of Steel who got stranded there after cleansing the ruins of the city long ago. Hm, well that still doesn’t mean he wasn’t an asshole, I suppose. Left there alone, he built up his gang and the settlement himself including bringing the factories back online. He regretted the slave labor but viewed it as a necessary evil and even planned to eventually set them all free. Hmm. He was also the father of the baby in question and, it’s revealed, seemed to genuinely care for the kid. He also viewed his research into the cure in a philanthropic way – he didn’t seem to be hording the cure at all, it simply wasn’t finished. *gulp* I might have made a bad decision but… well, at least the slaves are free, right? So then I get back to the people I was working for to discover the guy acting like a total fascist asshole himself and implying that the baby was now in much worse hands. It also only took me about 2 seconds to notice that the slave labor still appeared to be in full effect around the settlement – maybe the people in the chains had changed, but still… what exactly have I done here?!

This is one of the most interesting moral dilemmas I’ve run into in a game in recent memory. Most fascinating was probably the fact that I really wasn’t ever asked to make any clear cut, black and white choice on the matter. Sure, I was forced to pick a side but it was before I had all of the intel. Even after all of the cards were on the table it was still a pretty nebulous situation with no obvious right choice… and the fact of the matter is, not unlike after the big reveal in Bioshock, I felt totally played after it was over. Nice!

“These guys, yet again…”

What else? Oh yes, I bought and played Halo 4. I’ve talked about the Halo series on here a lot in the past so I’ll skip the background and the in-depth analysis and just say that 343 Studios did a fine job. It still feels very much like a proper Halo game yet makes necessarily measured steps into new directions. I enjoyed the new multiplayer advancement (for example) though so far I prefer Firefight over Spartan Ops. Most of all, I just enjoyed returning to a universe that I’ve always really enjoyed. As far as that goes though, I might have enjoyed watching Forward Unto Dawn more than playing the actual Halo 4 campaign. *shrug*

Next up is a play through of the original Saints Row, if I can manage to slog through the grind. Oh, and I also started a new blog which I’ve been filling full of random non game related stuff – mostly related to music and just general expressive bullshit. I’ll link to it eventually when I have more content. Hell, maybe I’ll even merge it into this one and make it a little less gaming focused. Stay tuned!

Duking it Out 2

Duke Nukem Forever doesn’t need much of an introduction – it’s incredibly well known even if mostly thanks to its lengthy stint as the official Internet poster-child for vaporware. The game did take an utterly ridiculous 15 years to see the light of day so fair enough. Upon release though, the game got trashed by seemingly every other person on the Internet with a keyboard and a passing knowledge of it. I suppose it’s somewhat understandable, I mean no game could possibly live up to 15 years of built-up hype and it would have taken a miracle to convert public perception of the game after that long. Whatever! I hate pile-ons and I’m willing to look at it with an open mind. So is it really that bad?

“Somehow they made me hate octabrains even more.”

Just like Duke Nukem 3D, Duke Nukem Forever is a first person shooter in which you play as the venerable hero Duke Nukem as he tries to stop an alien invasion of near-future earth. Despite the similar story setups the gameplay makes a notable veer away from that of the first game. Considering how dramatically the FPS genre has changed since those early days it would probably be more notable if it didn’t, though. Instead DNF takes obvious queues from its successors. Games such as Half Life 2 and Halo are obvious influences with a much more guided, linear approach to level design, cutscenes and somewhat of an actually recognizable plot, driving and turret segments, and even physics puzzles. Controversially, it also incorporates features such as recharging health and a limit to how many different types of guns you can carry at a time.

“Scoring a headshot in the awesome intro sequence.”

The game was nice and short, clocking in at around 10 hours for me. I think my favorite parts of the campaign were the sections where you got shrunk down in size. Sure, it’s a bit gimmicky but it reminded me of all of those old “giant” user made maps we used to deathmatch on in games like the original Unreal Tournament. Too fun! I was actually reminded a lot of Prey during the game, somehow, which is mostly a very positive comparison to make. All said my only real complaint about the gameplay (noting that I played this patched meaning I could hold 4 weapons instead of just 2… thankfully) is that I felt like the difficulty was noticeably inconsistent, with boss battles being a big spike up compared rest of the game. I know that isn’t necessarily unusual (bosses are supposed to be hard, duh!) but I’d literally go for a few levels without ever being in any real danger only to die 10 times in the first phase of a boss fight. Irritating.

“This screenshot is gross on so many levels…”

DNF still features all of the referential humor and satire that Duke Nukem 3D was known for only this time it’s totally cranked up. I swear, some of the damn silly lines Duke delivers and situations he gets in this time around make the game seem almost like parody of Duke 3D and I often found that funnier than the actual jokes. Unfortunately the casual objectification of women of the previous Duke Nukem games is also cranked up to absurd if not outright offensive levels and where Duke 3D flirted with nudity DNF has tits and ass all over the place. Thankfully despite large doses of it early these scenes make up a relatively small portion of the game and the aforementioned ridiculous tone of the whole thing makes it hard to take too seriously. I do have to wonder if they really missed the boat on their target audience by delaying the game so long though. That is, it seems it probably won’t resonate with today’s younger gamers and since so many of us who played Duke 3D did so as kids and teenagers it likely won’t appeal to us in quite the same way either. I guess what I’m saying is that Duke is a bit of a relic.

Moving on from the negativity for a moment, also back from Duke Nukem 3D are most of the weapons and enemies, all more or less intact. Hell, the game even starts out with you reenacting the boss fight from act 3! Awesome bit of fan service there. I was disappointed that they got rid of Duke’s “mighty boot” as an always available melee attack (a feature that was ahead of its time!) but I still enjoyed tearing up alien scum with the ripper and sending rockets into the asses of those annoying octabrain bastards. There were plenty of other throwbacks to Duke 3D in the game, from classic lines to all of the neat little interactive environment objects (which now actually serve somewhat of a purpose) but my favorite of all had to be the glorious introduction to the game which recounts the plot of Duke 3D in a highly stylized, James Bond movie intro sequence like way.

“Offroading in the Mighty Foot.”

The graphics got panned a lot when the game was first released but I found them to be decent enough with the character faces and animations being the main low points. I was actually pleasantly surprised to find that the game did a good job of representing your whole body from first person – something somewhat rare that I personally really find helps me get more immersed in first person games. The sound is decent and while the music seems like it mostly consists of throwbacks to the classic soundtrack of Duke 3D let’s not forget that people fucking love the soundtrack of Duke 3D! I didn’t really encounter any of the bugs, performance problems, or any of the other technical issues I heard a lot about though I understand those issues were mostly with the console versions, never mind the fact by the time I got around to playing DNF it had already been patched more than once.

“I’m not entirely sure what’s going on here but I like it.”

Overall, while it definitely doesn’t feel like 15 years of work (because it isn’t, technically) it is a fairly solid effort and even with its modernized systems it manages to feel like a bit of a throwback to the golden era of FPS games. That said, unless you’re a big fan of Duke Nukem it doesn’t really have all that much to offer. Still, the answer to my original question is a resounding “no!” Duke Nukem Forever might not be amazing, it might be offensive to some, not at all funny to others, and not at all worth waiting 15 years for, but it certainly isn’t the horrible train wreck piece of trash that you’ve probably been led to believe it is. Bandwagons… blech.