Category Archives: Game Logs

Escape from Oblivion!

I sure have been slacking on updates lately. Truthfully though, it’s not because I haven’t been gaming – I was simply in the mood to play a little more Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion after my last Garn update and so I decided to run out and pick up a used copy of the Xbox 360 GOTY version and go achievement hunting. Great plan, eh? Kind of at odds with trying to burn through my backlog though, especially with as little time as I’ve been gaming lately. 4 months later and I’m finally done. Ugh.

This was my first time playing Oblivion on console and I found playing the game with a controller surprisingly comfortable. With that, I also finally understand some of the odd choices they made with the interface in Oblivion – I always knew they were for the benefit of console players but the Oblivion interface actually works quite decently on Xbox 360. I admit it was a little odd not being able to apply mods or use the console for quick fixes but all in all it was quite a smooth experience and it was nice to play the game “pure” again considering my Garn playthrough is stacked with all kinds of mods.

I ended up rolling a female dark elf focused on stealth and archery. First, I don’t usually play females in RPGs, usually opting to make my characters rough approximations of myself, but the whole point of this playthrough was to try doing things a little differently. Likewise, I know the whole “stealth archer” path is extremely popular in the newer Elder Scrolls games but I’ve never found the idea of going with archery as a primary weapon all that appealing. Very quickly into this game my opinion changed, however. While stealthing around and doing most of my killing from afar is definitely a little slower paced, it feels much more empowering than doing traditional melee or magic builds. Stealth headshots for huge damage insta-kills are extremely satisfying though I admit I did find myself using my sword more and more as my character grew in power simply to speed things along.

“Into The Mouth of Madness!”

I decided to play her as a ruthless (but not quite evil) assassin and brought her through the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild quest lines first. I still find the Arena, Fighters Guild and Mages Guild quest lines to be rather tedious to repeat though, especially after not wrapping up the later too long ago in my Garn playthrough. It was interesting to observe that I was almost shepherded into being a semi-lawful, good character as I went through those later guilds and finally into the main storyline. By the time I was done my character didn’t quite feel like the one I had started out with and I didn’t feel like that change was all too voluntary either. Sure, I suppose I could have stolen everything not nailed down and killed random NPCs indiscriminately along the way but that really isn’t what I was going for with her. Instead I found no real outlet to express my characters “alignment” (if you will) much of the time. Ah well, I suppose that’s more Bioware’s bag than Bethesda’s.

More interesting, this was the first time I played through the Shivering Isles expansion! I enjoyed the campaign quite a bit overall though I think I’m really starting to sour on expansion and DLC packs that feel too much like separate content rather than continuations or additions to the main game content. With Shivering Isles, for instance, the tone of, well, everything about the experience really felt a little “off” after just beating the game’s main campaign. I know the expansion pack was probably intended to be played after the player had already abandoned the game for a while as sort of a “return to the game” experience and I’m sure it works much better that way. Regardless, I had fun stopping the Greymarch and who doesn’t love the mad god Sheogorath?

Well, now that all of that is over with, more Garn posts coming soon!

Flashpoint Defense

I’ve been absolutely pining to play ArmA again lately – perhaps finally dedicating myself to an organized team with regular play schedules, even. For now I’ve been sticking to watching a ton of ArmA 2 related videos on YouTube. I’ve found them to be a great source of background noise and entertainment while at work, especially some of the better channels like Dslyecxi’s fantastic ShackTac stuff.

Additionally, I’ve decided to scratch the itch by replaying the original Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis and Resistance campaigns (using the PC re-release version, ArmA: Cold War Assault.) This is actually the first time I’ve played through the whole game on PC – most of my quality time with the original OFP was actually done with the Xbox “Elite” version, which was pretty much identical apart from some (barely) improved sound work, models, and textures and some enhanced graphical effects here and there. It even had a more or else intact editor and the same rad online co-op action as the PC version.

“Ahh, we were so innocent in those early missions…”

The PC version has aged pretty badly in some respects – barren looking landscapes thanks to a lack of ground-cover, the annoying, choppy radio chatter (A staple of the engine, which seems god awful when you first hear it but after getting used to it and even starting to rely on its information, is rather useful) and the ridiculous soldier models and animations. Regardless, the landscapes are still massive, the vehicle models are still quite serviceable, and the immersion of the soldier simulator-inspired action is still hard to beat in “Tactical FPS” circles once it clicks with you. I’m actually enjoying myself though I really don’t remember some of these missions be so brutally fucking difficult. Ugh!

Oh, and coincidentally, I also came across this excellent OFP retrospective after I started replaying it. Fun read.

“M60 versus T80. Seems fair…”

Will I get around to dedicating myself to ArmA 2? That’s hard to say. I plan on playing through ArmA and ArmA 2’s various official campaigns first and then… well, by then ArmA 3 should be officially released. That’ll be perfect timing to hop on that bandwagon, although I might need to build an entirely new gaming rig to play it smoothly. 🙁

On the console front I just wrapped up playing through Defense Grid: The Awakening’s main single player campaign on XBLA. If you’ve never heard of it, Defense Grid is a fantastic sci-fi tower defense game. You probably have though – the PC version was quite popular years ago on Steam. Regardless of which version you go with I’d say it’s a “must play” if you’re a fan of the genre – it’s excellently executed on all fronts. Good graphics and sound, challenging and varied maps, and absolutely refined, classic tower defense gameplay. I’ve said it before, but I love a well-done tower defense game and I had a hard time putting this one down for long. I’ve still got plenty more of them on my backlog but I’m pretty sure I’ll be returning to Defense Grid to play the Portal themed “You Monster” DLC campaign at some point in the future.

“The more towers the merrier!”

Next on the 360 will be yet more exploration of my backlog. I’ve been feeling like a World War II shooter lately so I think it’s finally time to give Call of Duty: World at War’s campaign a spin, despite how much I’ve grown to hate Call of Duty’s single player gameplay in recent years. Wish me luck with making it through that one without pulling out my fucking hair…

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!