Monthly Archives: June 2010

Naughty Bear…or….20 minutes of game play I’ll never get back

Posted by on June 30, 2010 No comments

Tuesday is new game release day, and Wednesday is new comic day.  Now I don’t typically buy as many new games as I buy comics, but I tend to keep an eye on what’s getting released in the same way.  This last Tuesday saw two releases that I have been watching for a while now.  Lego Harry Potter, and Naughty Bear.  I knew what to expect with any Lego game, while they may tell different stories, the game play is similar across the board.  The Sleeper was Naughty Bear.  I had seen a number of preview videos and some of the trailers, and to be honest, they did their job well and I was enticed.  It looked funny/cute in a “Happy Tree Friends” sort of way.

Sadly, I was wrong.  I bought Naughty Bear at 7:30pm on Tuesday night, got home and played through the first “episode” and instantly knew that I had made a mistake.  I toughed it out and finished the episode, then packed it up and headed back to Gamestop.  Thankfully the gracious personnel there were nice enough to let me swap it out for Lego Harry Potter.

Side note here.  I was warned, by Erin when I bought Naughty Bear, that it was going to be bad.  I decided to make my own judgment.

So what made it so bad?  Well, The idea was good and funny.  Unfortunately that was the extent of the good.  The Premise was that you played Naughty Bear, the bastard step child of this “Care Bear” style island where everything is puppies and kittens.  Some of the other bears on the island have treated you unfairly and you decide to get back at them by being naughty.  Being Naughty can range from scaring them, sabotaging their stuff, or even bashing their stuffed heads in with a baseball bat.  Who wouldn’t think that could be fun?!

What it ended up being was a series of “Challenges” where you had to sneak around and scare/kill your fellow bears while disrupting their activities.  I guess that you could play the game more Sam Fisher style and sneak in the bushes then pop out and scare them, but after the first time you do that they all know you are there, so no more sneaking will help you.  From there is just becomes “I’m going to run around and hit you with a bat”.  When you finish with the bears, you can gain a few extra points by smashing stuff.  And that was it!  After a while, even the narration is grating.

Now, I think the game may be not as bad as I am making it out to be if it weren’t for one more glaringly bad problem, it was release at the price point of $49.99.  For the same price as something like Lego Harry Potter, you get a game that may have done well as an Xbox Arcade title, for maybe $10-$12 bucks

The Graphics were just ok, the actual game mechanics were horrible.  I had to maneuver myself around and fumble with the view to get into a position where I could actually scare another bear.  Just Awful, one of the worst games I have tried.  This may, and I emphasize MAY, be worth it when the price drops down to like $5, which I have no doubt that it will fall to that.

Alan Wake

Posted by on June 24, 2010 1 comment

Abut a month ago I made this post to Twitter:

Me: Alan wake is a “psychological action thriller”. Sarah: That’s code for “scary as shit!”

Thus began my decent into the darkness that claimed Alan Wake, the latest story driven thriller on the Xbox 360.  I had decided to hold off on playing Alan Wake due to my obsession with Red Dead Redemption.  Since RDR took quite a while to get through the story, it delayed my run of AW.  Of course once I finished AW I had planned to write up my review but my house was set upon by a plague of darkness on it’s own with everyone catching some sort of head cold.  This leaves me behind on quite a few posts, but I will do my best to catch up.

So, Alan Wake lives up to it’s tag line (and thusly, Sarah’s translation).  The main story gets played out as a kind of a Television episodic story that is broken up into 6 parts.  Even though I spread it out over the course of the month, the actual game play was exactly 6 days.  I did this because I really didn’t want to cut off an episode mid way.  Each episode was approximately 2-3 hours of game play, so in hind sight, the whole game was just about 15ish hours of play time.  Some of you would think that is short but trust me, the story is more than worth it.

The story is where Alan Wake really shines.  Most games that come out these days have amazing graphics, outstanding music, etc, etc.  The story is really one part where many games loose it just a little.  Case in point, I loved the story in Red Dead Redemption, but there were enough holes, and missing elements that, as a player, I missed out on.   With Alan Wake, the whole game was very linear so that the string the player follows is the story the developers want to tell.  When the story is done, you may want for more, but it’s not from holes in the story, it’s from the story being so compelling that you want more of it.

Ok, Spoiler time, if you don’t want to know, don’t read any further.

Alan Wake is a troubled writer who, with his wife, vacations to a lake side town of Bright Falls.  Unfortunately, the town has it’s own dramatic flare.  A haunted lake claims Alan’s wife as it’s hostage and forces Alan to write infusing his story with it’s own powers of darkness to gain strength.  Alan escapes the story by writing himself into it (I know, it’s weird but it does make sense, kinda) so that he can rescue his wife.  You spend the bulk of the game racing through town trying to learn about the whereabouts of your wife and following a trail of dropped manuscript pages that “you” wrote for the story.  The really mind blowing meta comes from the last two episodes where you learn that Alan’s Father was trapped by the same lake and forced to write a story that leads to Alan coming to the lake, to get trapped, and forced to write a story where he encounters his father’s story…. I’m going to stop there before my head explodes.

Now, as for the likes and dislikes:

Bright Falls (Likes)

Story – The story was so well written that you really felt like you were playing out a good novel or enjoying a really well written TV show.

Ambiance – In order to set the mood for the story, the ambiance in the town flows with the story both for daytime and night time.

Narration – I loved that Alan was Narrating the whole story as I played it out.  It added more of that “I am in a novel” feeling.

Barry – Your agent comes to “rescue” you in Bright Falls and ends up tagging along on most of the ride through the story.  His comedy relief is a great add to the whole experience.

Night Falls (Dislikes)

Lip Sync – This was the BIGGEST distraction of the game.  The voicing is good by the sync with the character models became such a distraction that I had to force myself to not watch the character faces during cut scenes because it was detracting from the game.

Scavenger Hunt – One of the things you have to do in the story is to hunt around and find various scraps of the manuscript.  Hidden along the way there are also a number of Coffee Thermoses, weapon stashes, and radio/TV shows you can tune into.  The problem I had with this is that I would walk into an area and start searching the areas that were more off the path of the story in order to try and find these things.  In some respect it’s cool, but in many it’s just a distraction.

Over all I felt Alan Wake was an amazing game.  I can’t wait for the next two episodes that are due out as DLC soon.  Hopefully the game won’t suffer in numbers due to being released opposite Red Dead Redemption.  Go Buy It!!

E3 Week and Kinect

Posted by on June 14, 2010 No comments

So this is the start of E3 week and the big news so far is the new Kinect controller, or the Controller formerly known as Natal. We all knew it was coming and now it’s hear. The pictures so far look great. I am not too sure about the list of games though. According to USA Today the release list of games at launch will include:

•Kinectimals lets you train and play with 20 different virtual cats, including a lion, cheetah and tiger.

•Joyride, a racing game, lets players use their hands to hold an imaginary steering wheel — pull your hands toward you and push back out for an acceleration boost — and their bodies to execute jumps and tricks.

•Kinect Sports has six activities including boxing, bowling, beach volleyball, track and field, soccer and table tennis. To serve a volleyball, you mimic the real motion; in soccer, you can kick the ball or do a header.

•Kinect Adventures includes a river-raft time trial and obstacle course, playable by up to four players. On the raft, playing as a duo, you and a partner must lean one way or another to steer. Jumping helps the raft reach special areas for extra points.

•Dance Central, in development by MTV Games, incorporates immersive, full-body dancing without the need for a controller.

•Star Wars characters and iconic Disney favorites will be featured in separate new games being developed at Microsoft in conjunction with LucasArts and Disney.

In other E3 news, some new game trailers have been released for a few games I am really looking forward to seeing.

The Force Unleashed II:

Rock Band 3:

Spiderman Shattered Dimensions:

Yeah, it’s gonna be a fun week!

Red Dead Redemption

Posted by on June 7, 2010 1 comment

Yeah it’s been a little while since the last update, mostly because I have been powering through Red Dead Redemption, the latest open world game from Rockstar Games.  (There was also a little time spent down with friends in Fredericksburg, Aw Yeah GhettoCon!)  So after much playing and venturing back and forth from New Austin to Mexico, I have finished the game.  (and to those who know, you just lost the game)

One of the things I love about the open world games from Rockstar is that they know how to write a good story, and then they let you play it out as you like, when you like.  This happened with Grand Theft Auto IV as well.  The story was so engaging that I really felt for some of the characters and cared about what happened with them.  When one of the characters wronged me, I felt no compunction when it came time to choose to kill them or let them live.  I also became attached to certain characters and found myself wondering if there would be more missions with them or if I would even run into them again.

This happened in spades in RDR.  From the very start of the story I began to meet characters that made me want to work on the story more than the side missions.  I almost wish that there was some sort of random mission generator that would involve the storyline characters more instead of just standard NPC’s, but I am getting ahead of myself.

The story starts out with John Marston getting escorted into a train to the middle of nowhere in New Austin to Confront one of his old Gang Member friends Bill Williams.  John, not being all that smart, confronts Bill outside of a heavily guarded fort and gets himself shot.  Thankfully, a local Rancher, Bonnie MacFarlane, comes to your rescue and nurses you back to health.  As it turns out these Shady government types have kidnapped your Wife and Son and are holding them until you turn in your former game members.  The story has you venturing all through New Austin to hunt down these gang members. Along the way you learn how to ranch, hunt down other law breakers, fuel a Mexican Revolution, and explore a number of interesting characters.  So as to not spoil anything, I will stop there with the story and move to game play.

Rockstar is very well known for their open world games and with RDR they took it to the next level.  The setting was absolutely stunning.  Everywhere I went I found myself stopping for a moment to admire the graphics and the environment.  There is something about watching the sun set over the Mexican desert while sitting on the back of your horse who just saved you by outrunning the bandits that were chasing you down.  As I have stated before, the story is awesome.  It engages you, it pulls at your heart strings, and even enrages you at some points.  (I found myself exclaiming as certain points “Damn I hope I get to kill that guy!)

I actually had only a few issues with the game.  There is an aiming system that allows you to snap to a target, kind of like Modern Warfare of Bad Company, when zooming in.  This is a blessing and a curse.  I found myself accidentally snapping to the wrong target a few times and shooting Lawmen instead of Bandits, Stagecoach drivers instead of Bandits, etc.  This resulted in some unwanted bounties and loss of honor.  I didn’t bother to reload thought because. well, accidents happen!  Also, watch out for bears.  There is a reason why they are the Number One Threat to America.  My last complaint is a little bit of a spoiler so I will do my best to talk around it.  After the ending, which is very touching and I loved it, being able to continue roaming the world is great, but I felt very disconnected from the character after that point.  Through all the rest of the story you really start to identify with Marsten and his troubles, after the ending, Marsten just isn’t the same and I felt awkward playing as him.

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Overall the game is outstanding and well worth the many many many hours spent playing it.  I only wish there were more story.

Also….Poor Bonnie.