Update: Hiatus

Apparently someone out there reads my reviews and commented anonymously about my lack of posts. I had explained on Facebook that I was on hiatus while I take on new work to avoid possible conflicts. I pretty much assumed there wasn't anyone out there reading this ... the site tells me my traffic is from Facebook and image searches.

Anyway, thanks for the concern! I'll think about returning to this blog after the contract is up. Cheers, yo.



Here's that gif of Pennywise again for no reason!

Plants Vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time

Rating: 1 out of 3 Stars (why only 3 possible stars?)

Genre: Tower Defense

ESRB: N/A (I'd say it's an E10+ for cartoony zombie dismemberment)

Estimated hours of gameplay (thorough play/quick play): 24/8

Developer: PopCap Games

Wiki page

I can handle free-to-play games. I really can. I still play Avengers Alliance on Facebook and a new game called Ascend on XBLA. But this particular free-to-play game makes it really hard for me to see it as an actual attempt at making a sequel rather than the cheap, dirty cash-grab that it is. I'm not going to be particularly verbose this week. I'll cut to the chase.

Please spend money to NOT play our game!

The original Plants Vs. Zombies didn't really have a story, so neither does this one. But it does try a familiar sequel treatment by having the player do the same thing as last time but in different time periods. Ultimately this means that different zones have different zombies to fight rather than different zones being more oriented around different sets of plants. So I'll give it a good grade for the effort there.

Play the same level again? Hooray!

A similar lack of effort went into the gameplay. While the story and setting are accomplished by minimalist design choices- which works for both this game and the last one- the gameplay was what kept the game interesting before. Here, it's a number of things taken away without much added. The newest additions are plant food and super powers. The first is accumulated off of random zombies and can be used on an individual plant to make it briefly ultra-powerful. Visually and tactically satisfying at times, but when and how much plant food you have don't make it feel like a fully balanced part of the game. The super powers are used simply by spending coins, which can either be farmed or bought with real world cash. Basically, both are ways to cheat at the game but at least the plant food is rationed off in a way that seems custom tailored to the difficulty of a given level.

Other than being able to repeat levels to earn stars (which only serve to prevent you from playing the rest of the game) and a new key system which keeps you from new upgrades and tantalizing you into spending real world money, there's nothing else new. With a game like Plants Vs. Zombies, I can see how little needs to be added on to improve it. But this is definitely getting into the territory of feeling like a weird spin-off rather than an official sequel. 

There aren't many new plants and many old plants are completely gone AND a shocking number of favorite plants from the first game can only be acquired with real life money (Ex: Snow Pea, Jalapeno, Imitater). The few new plants aren't all gems either. Bonk Choy and Snap Dragon don't seem useful most of the time. And the Lightning Reed seems to completely replace the Bloomerang. Plants can no longer be upgraded (for example, the Twinflower is now its own individual plant) which allows for more variety in your arsenal, but that variety is generally only needed because certain unique zombies for a zone require a unique plant from that zone to beat (like the Spring Bean, which is ONLY useful on the pirate levels). The challenge mode maps in the previous game let you change out plants as you got further in, so you could use regular Sunflowers at first and then equip Twinflowers later. But now challenge mode has frustrating random plant selection and less depth because there's less need to switch plants around.

How can I live without Imitater and Snow Pea? Wahhhh!

Conclusion:

Just some more Plants Vs. Zombies levels packaged as a free-to-play game. I bought a bundle of items for eight bucks, I think, because I feel it's good to spend money on a game if one plays that game a lot. Doing some research on my phone, I found that the original game only costs $1 on the App Store. If you haven't played this franchise before, do yourself a HUGE favor and just play that one.

The Bureau: XCOM Declassified

Rating: 2 out of 3 Stars (why only 3 possible stars?)

Genre: Third Person Cover Shooter; Sub-genre: Squad-based RPG

ESRB: M (profanity and machine gun violence)

Estimated hours of gameplay (thorough play/quick play): 18/8

Developer: 2K Marin

Wiki page

This is such an amazing year for games with unusual and unfortunate development cycles. Here we have a game that had a bad premise from the beginning that they tried to change time and time again to get it to work. But the end result is actually surprisingly good, I'd say. In fact, it's only minor grievances that grind in my head and turn into bigger problems that force me to scale back from a three star rating. I say this because before, during, and after my time playing Metro: Last Light I felt like I was burnt out on games and bored. But this one was fun enough that I managed to complete it on the hardest difficulty and enjoyed doing so. I wanted to classify this as one of those games that's "just a fun game," but it fell short of that. Here's why.

In the 60's, men were required to wear suits and hats into combat.

Why does this game take place in 1962? Why does any story take place at any certain time? This represents a deliberate choice on the part of the storyteller. Some fantasy settings like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings muddy up the concept of time and make the universe being shown have no connection with our own. This is done to establish unique rules for that universe and properly prepare the audience so that they can understand the surroundings. A movie like Inglourious Basterds takes place in the 40's because the characters are directly involved in World War II and a plot to assassinate Hitler. So how does the setting serve this game?  As far as I can tell, it's so that the main character (William Carter) can look dapper and wear a hat while he shoots aliens. And he doesn't even wear that hat past the first couple levels.

I want to point this out because this is where the minor problems that become big problems immediately become evident. This game doesn't know what to give the audience; it's just some random ideas flung out there. Does this game feel like an XCOM game? No. Does it emphasize the nostalgia of the 60's or use this time period to influence the path of the story? No. Going further, I argue that it doesn't know many other important elements of its story. Is this game supposed to be serious or silly? I would say serious because everyone's so damn somber and angry the whole time and no one seems to be enjoying a war with "little green men." But then the music teeters on becoming a fun, brassy old timey serial romp as you charge into battle with your Ghostbusters backpack while being dropped off by a black pilot that no one even mentions is black. Yeah. Wouldn't that be kind of a big deal in 1962? Deliberately avoiding this kind of heavy subject seems like something that belongs in a more light-hearted game.

And then there's the ending. I won't give any spoilers, but it goes from being a simple enough story of repelling an alien invasion into a story rife with "video game nonsense." You know what I mean? Needless, silly plot twists that just leave the audience confused. My advice to video game writers is to just make a simple, effective story. If you try too hard to defy our expectations, you end up denying us things we WANT. That's the thing about expectations; sometimes they reflect what we want from a story rather than causing us to groan about you being cliche.

All in all I'd rate this story as "tolerable." But what we all wanted was a light-hearted adventure with nostalgic silliness! Have Carter say things like, "Listen here, toots. Don't you worry your pretty little head about those little green men. I'm gonna go up to their leader and belt him right in the kisser. You'll see." And then he tips his hat as he makes his way to the inter-galactic bar brawl while some fun and memorable music accents the action. I found myself humming things like the theme to The Naked Gun and Cowboy Bebop as I wished the game would just stop having a stick up its rear and be FUN already. I say all these things because I think Carter is pretty cool! The artists managed to capture a face that's reminiscent of actors like Clint Eastwood, Peter Fonda, or maybe even Humphrey Bogart or something... I don't know. And his voice was over-the-top as the "older, grizzled war veteran," but that makes it all the better in a more light-hearted story. He doesn't have to express a full range of emotions, he just needs to be cool.

Men just don't look like this anymore.

Completely ignoring the setting, the gameplay works great. While your teammates are complete idiots (as is unfortunately the case in many squad-based games) you can exercise a decent level of specific control over them. This is amplified by the fact that many of their abilities don't require line of sight. That helped massively while playing on the hardest difficulty as I was able to run clear away from the battlefield and throw abilities from behind an entire mountain so I could safely pick things off one by one. I did this more often than I liked since the game features a dreaded backwards difficulty curve. On lower difficulties, though, that should be lessened. Along with the ability to actually move around from cover to cover more often. Although that is still ill-advised and requires a defensive cooldowns to be blown. Personally I feel that I always find myself locked down in the same spot for too long in these games and The Bureau inflicts that problem big time. But when you get used to strangling the AI and abusing it to get what you want, the end result is often rewardingly tactical.

Despite my enjoyment of the combat, I believe this might be the highest point of warning to consumers. You see, my time with the Mass Effect series has shown me something. And that's that most players are too lazy to use the tactical features. Watch any gameplay video of this game (or Mass Effect or Dragon Age) and you'll see many people avoiding using the ability wheel, usually using it begrudgingly. I'd wager I spend well over 75% of my time issuing orders around. That other 25% is expending only a few rounds. If that sounds unpleasant, then you likely won't play the game as it was meant to be and you won't get the appeal.

Bringing up this wheel gives you so much more!

Conclusion:

Not a game for XCOM fans or people nostalgic for decades past. It's really just a tactical shooter with some RPG elements (especially lots of talking). Even the RPG elements are shallow due to oversimplified classes and conversations with choices that generally don't affect anything. The ending is stupid, too. Maybe this is best suited for achievement hunters since it's not too difficult to get 34/34 awards in a single ~18 hour playthrough. Although I did miss one due to a possible bug ("Spring Cleaning").

Metro: Last Light

Rating: 2 out of 3 Stars (why only 3 possible stars?)

Genre: First Person Shooter; Sub-genre: Stealth

ESRB: M (profanity, machine gun violence and arbitrary female nudity)

Estimated hours of gameplay (thorough play/quick play): 24?/??

Developer: 4A Games

Wiki page

I suppose this was bound to happen eventually. For the first time I am attempting to review a game that I played but did not play completely to the end. Looking at a walkthrough on Gamefaqs.com, I've determined that I've gotten about halfway through it. So why am I still reviewing it? Well, it took a significant chunk of my time away from me. So I'm writing a review, dammit. But why did I stop playing it? It's simple: it's booooooooooooring. 

Oh, boy! Nothingness!

I put it on a harder difficulty and that did little to make the game a challenge (there's another difficulty you can add called "Ranger Mode" but that is only available as a pre-order bonus or paid DLC). Perhaps if I played the game as the achievements screen wanted me to by using all stealth and not killing anyone I would have had a challenge. But considering the lack of features in stealth (your best weapons are waiting, melee punching, and blinding night vision) and the fact that that is a boring way to play a game that gives you a whole bunch of guns, consumables, and ways to customize said guns I don't see why I would want to. The problem with both the stealth and the gunplay is that they exist in these limiting levels and they step on each other's toes. The game takes place in an underground subway thing so most of your time is spent in incredibly cramped, dark hallways. The enemies are bored out of their minds staring at the black walls so there's no extra fun things to watch while you wait and survey the land. A game like Hitman: Blood Money makes waiting interesting because the NPC's have THINGS TO DO so it's fun to see what their lives entail. Also, in that game and not this one, the levels are big and open with all kinds of paths to explore. Another stealth-heavy game, The Last of Us, makes stealth interesting through use of tension. Here, it doesn't matter if you fail because you have a selection of awesome guns with unending ammo; at any point you can just blast everyone in sight. And because of all the stealth mechanics in place the enemies are so much easier to defeat using conventional methods.

There are some levels that take place topside, out of the subway, but they are shorter. You have to manage your gas mask filters and can run out of air if you waste too much time. So instead of allowing me to explore this beautifully tragic world I'm forced to hurry along and finish the level. The ONE thing I kept wanting to do in this game was explore. This game does NOT want you to explore. Even if you find an area to be a little more open, it is very minorly so and only rewards you with some gas mask filters to make up for lost time (that's if you are lucky).

Look out, Spiders! Next you might have to fight a Giant Rat!

If this game has a strong point, it is the story. Not that I cared about what was going on for a single second, but this world has been carefully crafted. For some reason the player character doesn't speak. That wouldn't be so strange if not for the fact that he narrates the opening of the game and between each level. Is he just socially awkward or something? Luckily, everyone in the world is rather used to dealing with psychotic mutes and is able to maintain a one-way conversation as though that's a commonplace practice. Putting that aside as best I can, it's hard to connect with this game. I tend to blame myself for this one as this setting is too familiar for me. A setting is generally much more emphasized in a video game than any other media because the player is meant to form his or her own feelings and opinions on it rather than view those things occurring to the characters in the story. I've seen this stuff before, so I just don't care.

So the world was destroyed by nuclear war yet, somehow, Nazi's are back?

Conclusion:

A competently put-together game. It has no flaws other than my expectations for something more. It should probably be given three stars, but because I was so unbelievably bored it became a one star. I compromised and gave it two.

5 Reasons This is a Great Era for Gaming

From time to time I hear people saying how much they used to like games and how things have gotten rotten. I've also heard many people saying that the industry is dying in various ways: PC games are dying, this will be the last generation of consoles, so and so publisher is trying to rob our children, etc. There are a lot of bad things going around, sure. But there's also so much good. People tend to forget how archaic things were in the nostalgic past, hoping things will go back to how they were.

Well, I sure as hell don't want that to happen. And I also don't want certain things to get out of hand. Let's take a moment to reflect on what's going on now before Big Money crashes the whole industry around us.

Here's five things that are pretty awesome about NOW.

5. Little to No Ad's

There are five Coke logos in this shot alone. All facing the camera.

I know there are examples of advertisements in video games- like the Playboy magazine posters everywhere in Deadrising 2- but for the most part they do not happen. Compare games to movies. There are TV commercials that run for 45 minutes before having 20 minutes of movie trailers. Then the movies themselves usually have Coca-Cola cans or other stupid crap facing right at the camera. And how about theme parks that have rides that exit through the damn gift shop?

It's really funny because we've all seen an advertisement in a game at some point. And every time players see one, we IMMEDIATELY get annoyed. Yes, video games are expensive. But so is everything else. It's quite amazing that we're allowed a break from something that fills every second of our lives otherwise.

4. The Majority of Games are Rated "M" 

PG-13 zombies can't act like zombies.

Many people (IE: not gamers) are concerned over this one. But the plain reason this is the case is simply due to marketing: most of the money the gaming industry makes is from people old enough to play M rated games. It has nothing to do with violence. At least, not excessive violence. Take Halo for example. I don't think I've heard a single F-bomb in the entire franchise. The blood is rather minimal, and there's absolutely no gore. It barely counts as M.

So why is this significant? Well, it means games are free to be more adult. Even though many games lack any intellectual depth, the freedom to pack in heavier stuff is great. And think about my example, Halo. It's one of the best-selling games of all time. Yes, it's about shooting a bunch of machine guns at aliens. But it's not anywhere near as obscene as something like God of War.

Why is that freedom important? Look at movies. Most movies are PG-13. The reason being is that EVERYONE goes to see movies. Something that is PG-13 means it's heavy enough to interest adults, but not too heavy for kids. How many kids frequently watch R rated movies? How many adults frequently watch PG or G rated movies? It's marketing! But that kind of middle-of-the-road rating is limiting. Think of a game like The Last of Us as a PG-13 movie. It would have no grit, no teeth, no realism.

Freedom is a good thing. Freedom is American.

3. DLC and "Pay-to-Win" Not as Thieving as Arcades

This is a game where you took damage just by breathing air. Better pump more coins in!

Everyone complains about DLC pricing and free-to-play games that are "play-to-win." I complain about that stuff, too. But do you remember arcades? Yeah, I'm sad they're gone, too. But around 2002-ish they were completely out of control. You could easily spend a whole dollar on a measly 5 minutes of gameplay.

Considering many DLC missions last at least an hour of gameplay and add ons can be used for the whole game while pay-to-win games generally offer endless gameplay hours, it maths out to be way better now, man.

2. The Internet!

You can ask it anything!

Holy crap! When I was a kid, this was not a thing. Want to know if a game is good? Duh, buy it and find out. You can't just go to Metacritic and read what everyone is saying. Want to know where all the secrets are? You can't go to Gamefaqs and read a walkthrough, you need a strategy guide. Want to play some multiplayer? See if your friends can come over. Oh, you're not in school any more? They're probably all busy then.

And then there's digital downloads. So if the game isn't available in your country but you have internet access, then you can still get it. My word, how this one thing alone has made gaming ten times better than it was before!

1. Indie Gaming is Bigger Than Ever

And then there's XBLA, iOS and PSN, too! Indie games everywhere!

While games like Call of Duty soak up all the money so that players are able to buy little else, Indie games still get by. And they do more than get by. Tools like Steam, Unreal Dev Kit, and an internet connection let ANY ONE make a game out of their house and then send it up for the whole world to see on the web. Steam in particular has gone insane with it. Every time I load that thing up they've "Greenlit" another dozen Indie games.

The real problem, though, is the middle tier. Some gaming companies are much too big to be considered an Indie studio. It's just too hard for smaller dev teams to compete with triple A titles, and yet they're too big to made due by squeaking out a little game. And that does make me sad. Games like the Witcher series and XCOM: Enemy Unknown get made by smaller teams still, but they are few and far between.

As time goes on, Indie games will get smaller while triple A games get bigger and in the middle will be a vast nothingness. I don't look forward to any of those things. There's already way too many Indie games out there. I'm not kidding when I say any one can do it. People who have no business making games do it. Ugh.

Deadpool

Rating: 2 out of 3 Stars (why only 3 possible stars?)

Genre: Beat-'em-up; Sub-genre: Third Person Shooter

ESRB: M (excessive uncensored profanity and sexual language, excessive blood)

Estimated hours of gameplay (thorough play/quick play): 16/8

Developer: High Moon Studios

Wiki page

Wade breaks the fourth wall by imitating how the player feels playing this game.

For the first time I feel the need to explain my conclusion right at the beginning. I can get into details below, but let's get this straight now: this is a one star game. The second star I had to give because the writing captures so much of what this comic book character is about. Even if you don't give a crap about the Marvel character, this is one of the strangest and most insane games I've played. Not in the sense of acid trip games that try to bend your mind (many Indie and Japanese games try to accomplish this), though. It tries so hard to illustrate how broken and self-absorbed Deadpool's (Wade Wilson) crazy mind sees things that it's never really clear what is going on. Yeah, it's played off as a joke that Deadpool doesn't care about the plot... constantly. But it becomes a curiosity trying to figure out what's on screen versus what is actually supposed to be happening in the world around him. This is particularly noticeable when completely and unnecessarily impossible things happen- like when Deadpool's dog, Shuggems, inexplicably makes his way to Genosha from the other side of the globe- and when other heroes do things out of character. Also, at some point Wade is talking to Death herself and Cable asks him, "Who are you talking to?" There are any number of things to pull the player in, especially with such a good performance on the part of the actor playing the titular character, and many of you who aren't humorless robots like myself will enjoy how funny this game supposedly is (I did still get a couple laughs out of it).

Humor in video games: hit the player in the face with it.

Unfortunately this is a video game. And it's not going for high art like Journey. So that means people gotta enjoy pushing buttons. High Moon went out of their way to throw a lot of STUFF for the player to use in combat. I can see how they wanted Deadpool to fight like Batman (not the character, the game) by putting a lot of focus on gadgets and counters. But it has none of the polish or brilliant decision-making of the Arkham games. Swapping weapons and "throwables" is awkward and not explained through the UI (user interface), often causing me to take a lap around the cycle before finding the thing I want. Then there's the unnecessary combos. Oh, joy. So many combos I'll never use. Always helpful. Good use of your animation department, having them do that instead of focusing on making everything cleanly flow and randomly change. Nevermind the nitty gritty, the counter system falls short in big, obvious ways. Since dodging and countering are the same button, there will be tons of times that Deadpool will stop to counter someone when you are trying to get the hell out of danger. And I can tell they tried to code it so that other enemies will not attack during a successful counter, thus making an attempt at the instantly choreographic feel that the timing of the Arkham games have. But High Moon didn't figure out all the prioritizing and invincibility frames that Rocksteady did. Topping it off are the Momentum bar moves (like "Musou" or super moves). The button combinations to use them are horribly difficult to spit out in a clutch situation (LB+A or LB+B etc.) and the start up and ending frames combined with the lack of directional movement cause endless, frustrating misses. To sum it up, the beat-'em-up portion of the game is nothing special. It tries, but not hard enough.

What really steps on the toes of the combat is the level design. I'm convinced that the levels in this game are somehow stock levels. You know, like stock photos or clip art? I say this because Deadpool stumbles on everything and has no room to breathe! Not only that, but they are all such boring set pieces: a sewer, ruins, an office building, a prison, and floating rocks. That doesn't go hand-in-hand with fantastical powers and insane, reality warping, goofy nonsense.

You know what else mucks up the combat? The third person shooter aspects. The problem with combining these genres is that it means one of two things: guns will be way more useful and the player will strive to use them as much as possible (like Space Marine) or the guns will simply be a means of extending your combo (like Bayonetta). The former turns the beat-'em-up parts into a waste of time, and the latter makes guns into nothing more than a fancy light show. Deadpool... somehow causes both grievances. At least on the harder difficulties, since things have so many more hit points. All guns save for the laser guns are ineffective in one way or more. And only the laser guns can hit things at long range reliably. Keep in mind that there are no consumables or super moves to fight things at these harsh distances either. And for some strange reason Deadpool seems to have a lead allergy. Yeah, a guy who reportedly "can't die" is easily killed by a simple pistol. Moreover, for a guy who actually has a significant level of regenerative healing power, it takes him a hell of a long time to get his health back. Is that supposed to be another joke? That his regeneration is WORSE than every other game that overuses that feature? Topping all this off is the enemy AI. My word they are spazzy! They dart, lunge, spin around, and just do whatever they want all while hipfiring with 100% accuracy. Deadpool has an aim assist feature to deal with this. The best way to describe how that works is to simply say that it doesn't.

Another thing that I feel is some kinda running joke are the checkpoints. They are improperly placed as they force you to rewatch cutscenes because you died on an obviously difficult part of the game. And despite having the ability to put as many checkpoints as they want during a simple section of walking, they never give the player that leniency during a trying section of platforming or an overlong, multi-wave battle with a horde of enemies. Furthermore, items on the ground respawn from previous checkpoints. Yeah! So any time you are able to backtrack to an earlier checkpoint (one level has several checkpoints all within the same little area) you can take a lap around and pick it all up again.

I still remember Deadpool just being a loudmouth. I miss him not being so overplayed.
I don't miss Rob Liefield's artwork, though.

Conclusion:

For what it's worth, it's a game that tries hard to please both comics fans (specifically of Deadpool's comics) and gamers alike. As far as I know, it just got hit with the "licensed game" bug and couldn't fight it all the way. Hell. Deadpool complains about the budget constantly during the game. Probably had budget issues, yo.

5 Pro Tips for ALL Games

Most movies follow a three act structure, and most modern music is set to a 4/4 beat. Naturally, there are commonalities in video games. While I can't assume knowing these things means I can teach you how to make a game (unless you actually have a job making games, in which case I will pretend to know more than you do) I CAN use this knowledge to bestow you goobers with fundamentals that will allow you to have a kind of video game "Spider Sense" and also give you strategies on how to avoid things like "dying constantly."

Because these are fundamentals, they are incredibly basic. But if playing games with online modes has taught me anything it's that people have no freaking common sense. Or, at least, have not developed a common sense for video games. So listen up, you damn dirty children!

5. Unless There's a Timer on the Screen, There is No Time Limit

The one exception that immediately comes to mind is the recent Max Payne 3. And most modern games will give you some visual to indicate if something is getting away from you like a villain you are engaged in a foot chase with. But most of the time the absolute best thing to do when slapped with a deadly ultimatum is relax. It's actually quite stupid because developers will try to trick you by making the shiniest goodies only available during this time. These goodies are usually entirely missable if you follow the story and hurry to the objective.

FF7 is probably the best example. In the late game the main villain, Sephiroth, summons a meteor that will destroy the planet if the player doesn't hurry up. But it doesn't matter! What matters more is finishing up that Chocobo training and getting Knights of the Round!

4. Go the Wrong Way First

Nowadays, just about every game has collectibles in it. And games like The Last of Us and Bioshock Infinite have tons of items that are actually useful secreted away in obscure locations for clever players to find. Want to know how to find 75% of them? Go the wrong way first!

Level designers don't like making things that the player won't see. So if the game tells you to go one way but there's definitely a second way to go, you can bet that the second way will have some stuff stashed away like ammo or power-ups.

3. Bad Guys Don't Like it When You Do Objectives

Plain and simple. Is the room empty? Is there a generator or switch you need to hit? Brace yourself. The second you touch that thing the bad guys will straight up teleport right behind you and en masse. It doesn't matter what the rules are of the game or the game's universe; they will teleport!

It also doesn't matter how smart they are. I've noticed that even the most brainless zombie-type enemy will know EXACTLY when you are doing something critical to your survival and will strategically decide to bum rush you to stop you from doing it.

2. Fire Explosive Weapons at Your Enemies' Feet

The Halo series requires this knowledge to this day.

Have you ever noticed how hard it can be to hit a moving target with a fully automatic machine gun? How is it that most people then do not calculate how much harder it will be to hit the same target with a projectile that flies at half speed that can only be fired once? Stop trying to land a direct hit! The blast usually gets the job done. Get that blast to go off kinda near them by shooting the ground. The blast is a lot bigger than the rocket!

The worst offender I've come across are players of Mass Effect 3's multiplayer. The Missile Launcher (which is a misnomer, because the rockets are not guided) has a blast radius the size of a living room and does an amount of damage that's enough to one shot EVERYTHING. This is a valuable consumable! Think before you waste it!

1. Diligence!

At first I thought this idea was going away; that you should do every side quest and explore everything in order to beef up your character. Developers now fear putting in content that players will refer to as a "grind." They want players to feel like every action is immediately important and pushes the story forward. But now that "free-to-play" games are here, it's more important than ever.

Plants Vs. Zombies 2 came out for iOS recently. It constantly offers the player ways to skip through the game to access new levels or items. But if you play the game like it's old school by going through EVERY level and doing EVERY little mission and task then you can play the game entirely for free (unless you want a few extra pricey power-ups).

What is this? Diligence in a game like BioShock Infinite or The Last of Us will allow you to make your character stronger. That's still true of free-to-play games... sometimes. But designing games to work this way means that only impatient people have to pay while the people who play way more will be doing so with no cost. So you pay money to get LESS game? I can't help but call this concept an "idiot tax." Sorry if that's rude. But you should worry more that game makers are trying to trick you out of your cash. Don't let them!

5 Video Game Catch Phrases to Yell at Real Life

Been a while since I made a dumb list. And last time I talked about catch phrases it was things I made up myself (or got from SOME where) that were meant to be therapeutic in treating game rage. But you know what's more aggravating than video games can ever be? Real life. So I'm flipping it around and taking some things from video games that I've heard over the years and found myself quoting out loud at varying situations.

Why? Well, sometimes profanity doesn't get the job done. And these are more fun!

5. "I can't move!"

From: Captain America and the Avengers (arcade)

Sample: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGuK8g3XHeQ&feature=youtu.be&t=5m

I have a real distaste for having my movement restricted. So do a lot of people since car traffic is a common ailment among many people on this planet. But what makes this one so much fun- like a lot of these entries- is the delivery. Note the Shatner-esque, dramatic pausing between each word. The hero (they all have the same voice) tries to stand up and shudders in terrible pain, only to collapse back down to the ground.

And who doesn't love being that overdramatic in the mundane situations of every day, non-super hero life? I know I do!

4. "By the gods, there's a psychopath on the loose!"

From: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (XBox 360, PS3, PC)

Sample: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpG4TdoGLmE

I don't understand people a lot of times. I know most people don't understand one another. Who made this horrible mess in the office kitchen? Which roommate ate all the food and left the rest of us to starve? By the gods, there's a psychopath on the loose! What other explanation could there be for such a heinous act?

It's also a good mnemonic device for remembering the difference between "loose" and "lose."

3. "Try to transport fuel NOW, you pipeline jerks!"

From: Just Cause 2 (XBox 360, PS3, PC)

Sample: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nt9DHAubfOY

This is gonna be a stretch. I can't help it. Is Rico saying that the PIPELINES are jerks? Or the people who made them? I prefer to think it's the former, rather than think this is some kind of weird attempt at English by the Swedish developers who made the game.

When do I say this? Iunno. Whenever. Usually after performing some act of petty revenge, like taking the last piece of company birthday cake when getting seconds because you didn't get any last time.

2. "This is why everyone keeps dying!"

From: Dynasty Warriors: Gundam (XBox 360, PS3, PS2)

Sample: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKC0pYL-4gc&feature=youtu.be&t=8m10s

This comes with its own catch phrase to yell back. That being, "Because you keep killing them!"

Sometimes problems in life are futile and pointless. Sometimes these problems are your own fault. It's fun to sarcastically take accountability, I say.

1. John Marston hates nature

From: Red Dead Redemption (XBox 360, PS3, PC)

Sample: "Stupid, damn animal!" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VS_Ck6rtVmc&feature=youtu.be&t=1m)

There is a better one I like, but I couldn't find it online: "Stupid nature!" Because, really, nature is stupid. I'm tired of hippies and hipsters talking about recycling this and organic that. Shut up. I'm sitting in an air conditioned room on a couch eating fast food I didn't have to work to make myself. I am ridiculously comfortable. And I despise most animal owners because they're so unapologetically bad at it. If your dog is growling at me, get your dog away from me! Oh, he's "nice?" Oh, yeah. I see a lot of evidence to support that claim.

Rabble rabble rabble rabble! Get off my lawn, you damn kids!

SPECIAL BONUS HONORARY BEST MENTION:

Everything!

From: Resident Evil (PS1, PC, Sega Saturn)

Sample: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVyOCssIXgQ&feature=youtu.be&t=26s

Everything in this horribly, horribly written and poorly "acted" game is stupidly quotable. I can't pick one thing, nor can I think of relevant situations to say any of this stuff. I just do. And you should, too.

But just take a look at this! It's Forrest! Oh my Ghahd!

Fuse

Rating: 1 out of 3 Stars (why only 3 possible stars?)

Genre: Third Person Cover Shooter; Sub-genre: Forced Co-op

ESRB: M (cartoony blood and profanity)

Estimated hours of gameplay (thorough play/quick play): 12/8

Developer: Insomniac Games

Wiki page

I was hoping this would at least be a 2 out of 3 stars. And there are a lot of things that could have been done that could have made it such. Maybe it could have even been three stars. Sometimes the little things can make all the difference. This isn't a bad game, really. It just doesn't provide players with what we really want by missing too many notes. There are also BIG misses, too, so I'm not just dinging them purely from being nit-picky.

Calling your game "Fuse" is a pretty big mistake, too.

You almost called it "Overstrike." Who decided to change that? Can I have his/her job?

I can't really comment on the story other than to say it gets in the way. I know I've been singing the praises of The Last of Us and Mass Effect for having such immersive stories, but this is a co-op game. And, really, co-op games need as little story as possible. Video games present an interesting challenge to writers in that their time to explain and talk about things is generally very limited. The reason being is that it's a GAME. Ergo, every second a player spends not playing is frustrating. And this effect becomes heightened exponentially for every player added to the mix. Look at a game like Left 4 Dead as a good example: the story is pretty much explained just by the premise and setting while the ambient chatter of the characters is all you get for personality and motives. Now look at Fuse: uninteractive cutscenes that are awkwardly long and don't make a whole lot of sense; not at first glance (mine was "so... we're mercenaries or something?") and not in the story telling itself. When I beat the last boss with my co-op buddy, we both had no idea who he was, what his motives were, or what relation any of us had to him. He said something about bringing peace through terrifying nuclear war, but that's it. It's hard to pay attention, too, in a co-op situation. People crack jokes, walk around and get snacks... it's not the most suitable to immersive gaming.

Stopping to climb walls like Prince of Persia is also distracting.

I've said co-op a lot. If you haven't guessed, this is the type of game that gives you crappy AI controlled teammates that you're forced to have with you at all times if you don't have three other people to play with. You know, Insomniac, I commend you trying so hard to make co-op a thing again. But why alienate solo players? You decided to just leave yourself open to the inevitable complaints of how dumb the AI is. Why? You're only shooting yourself in the foot. Here are some ways you can make the non-player characters less annoying:

1. Make them invincible.

2. Give them unlimited ammo (already present?)

3. Make them care about the damn objectives; either making them able to do them or understand how to help the player do them.

4. Make them prioritize reviving the player above all else.

5. Make them understand the rules of the game, for crying out loud!

That number five one? One of the characters is a healer. I seriously got healed by her a total of one time during the campaign. Sure, we didn't figure out that we needed to spend her skill points for her for a while, but that still was a good several hours that she never did it when she could have. And why doesn't she just get some default skillset when I don't actively control her? Who would want to play a healer just to heal non-player characters?

I haven't even gotten to the actual gameplay yet. The enemies are too unvaried and don't have unique enough designs. Those that do have unique designs use robotics that feel out of place and unexplained (this may be due to the fact that the game got a redesign at some point during its development since it was originally called "Overstrike"). Boss characters have a stupid amount of health with little feedback on what is effective against them. I understand shooting their fuel tanks, but what about xeno-whatever guns and using their combo effects? And the characters all have virtually the same talent tree! Why have four completely different classes play so similar? And why is Dalton (the meathead) the ONLY one with a weapon fully committed to being his class (that being "shield guy")? I think Kimble as a sniper/chain lightning(?) guy is cool. But Izzy's assault rifle sucks. It's supposed to be for crowd control, but the stun takes so many hits to trigger that a lot of times you can simply just kill whoever you are trying to stun. And Naya can turn invisible. That is NOT helpful in a game so oriented around teamwork. What's funny is that the same ability is incredibly useful in Mass Effect 3's multiplayer. But that's because there are objectives that it can be used to achieve while the group survives and kites bad guys. 

This all lends the game the feel of being an overlong demo. There are clearly some ideas at play, but the good ones are few before more half-hearted ones take place for everything else.

Look how buff Dalton is. This in no way affects his abilities compared to the others!

There is a single multiplayer game mode aside from the main campaign: Echelon. A strange name for what we all know as "horde mode." Funny enough, this is all I really could want from a game like this. The execution doesn't offer as much content as Mass Effect 3's, but the little improvements this game does have give it some strength. ME3's multiplayer is an entirely slapped together affair. And its clunky controls really drag it down. So one big strength for Fuse is that it looks and feels a lot cleaner. The buttons are much better (a dedicated cover button!) and the animations are smoother; characters can enter cover from any direction easier and don't have crappy hiccups like having their reload animations reset while sliding to a wall. But Fuse has the opposite problem: boring enemy design, less classes with less depth, less maps (all borrowed from single player, too), and spawning and objectives are a little bit sloppier (I've had a weapon crate spawn so far away with so many enemies on it that there was no way to even touch it before it was destroyed!).

More confounding is the matchmaking system. The game REQUIRES there be one player for each character. So if you really want to play as, say, Dalton? Hope you're willing to wait longer to find a game where a Dalton spot is open. It's also strange that a failed map will reload with the same four people, but a successful map will kick all four people separately back to the matchmaker. That's backwards! I don't want to keep playing with losers, I want to keep playing with winners!

Playing games with people who aren't stoned or drunk is actually really damn fun, believe it or not!

Conclusion:

If you're really hungry for a co-op game, you will enjoy this purely for being a co-op game. Don't plan on playing split-screen, though, since the screen is split the wrong way: vertically!

Additional notes on split-screen:

In my experience with XBox live, the "guest" player's progress never gets saved. So I used a second account for the second player. Only one of the two accounts is a "gold" account, so that meant we had to play in offline mode; we were stuck with computer controlled teammates. Cold dog!

Journey

Rating: 1 out of 3 Stars (why only 3 possible stars?)

Genre: Artsy; Sub-genre: Platformer

ESRB: E10 (I honestly don't know what makes it above an E)

Estimated hours of gameplay (thorough play/quick play): Not applicable/2

Developer: Thatgamecompany

Wiki page

I guess I stopped believin', Journey, because I really didn't find you to be that impressive. You are very pretty and have nice sand and snow effects for an Indie game, but your simple visual story was meaningless and you don't offer enough gameplay interactivity for me to consider you a game. I'm sorry if I'm rude, I'm merely going to be as short with you as you were with me.

Journey is about finding your way to Tuna Mountain... a mountain which does not exist.

There is no story. No emotion, personality, or conflict. No more so than a painting of a pretty landscape. Yes, you can take a lot of meaning from paintings... especially when a bunch of them comprise a two hour game. But that's not enough to call it a "story." The main character, who I assume is named Steve Perry, just walks towards a mountain. Normally I don't give spoilers, but that's literally the entire story. I didn't find an emotional connection because no connection was offered. What's more, despite being such a simple story it still managed to squeeze in a Deus Ex Machina. How deep and meaningful.

"Why are there now two of me? Is this a new power?" -my reaction to multiplayer

I daresay there's even less gameplay to be offered than story. Steve Perry is capable of really high, floating jumps and he can chirp loudly. The former is used for "duh video games" and the latter as his only means of interacting with everything. The jump is flowing and well-tuned and has the intriguing limitation of needing a power gauge to use it. But this is never developed into a complex mechanic. Neither is chirping. Ultimately, Steve spends the majority of his time just moving forward.

I must have forgotten that this game had multiplayer, because it surprised the hell out of me when it happened. Randomly in the middle of my game I noticed another hooded figure (with no gamer tag, chat, or messages indicating someone had joined), who I assumed was named Neal Schon. Admittedly, this was the highlight of my game but for the wrong reasons. I was watching Neal's movements, confounded by how human-like this sudden NPC was acting. Then while we were making our way up a freezing, snowy mountain he became irritated with my constant chirping. So he jumped off a cliff and died forever. I was saddened by this turn of events, and it wasn't until the end credits that the game told me that I was indeed joined by another player. "Neal," I thought, "You don't have the patience to walk forward for two hours? You must suck at video games."

This game has none of their hits on it!

Conclusion:

I'm not much of an artsy guy. I'll admit that. But this game just made me bored. I was actually glad it was so short! I'll give them credit for trying hard and doing something unusual, but I am not as quick to offer my enthusiasm as everyone else seems to be. And hey! I played Braid and loved it despite it's ridiculous pretentiousness. Why? Because it was FUN.

And if you want a PS3 game with pretty landscapes that makes you cry, try The Last of Us. THAT is quite a journey. Whew!

Call of Juarez: Gunslinger

Rating: 2 out of 3 Stars (why only 3 possible stars?)

Genre: First Person Shooter

ESRB: M (Cartoony blood splatter, profanity)

Estimated hours of gameplay (thorough play/quick play): 8/4

Developer: Techland

Wiki page

Another DLC stand-alone game from an established franchise like Farcry 3: Blood Dragon. I'm not entirely sure what this trend is, but I kind of like it. I'm worried that it means big companies are trying to invade the sales space of Indie games, but they're still quite nice. So far, each has had a $15 price tag on day one. Now these games are much smaller than the "legit" entries of the franchise, but considering the length of them they are a deal and a half (at least in terms of "gameplay hours," which gamers often make more important than we should). I find myself hoping a franchise I like- say, Mass Effect- would try it out as well. Not every game needs to be some $60 giant budgeted affair with a ridiculously long development time. And I don't want to always dedicate so much time to a game. There's nothing wrong with a quickie, yo.

Oh yeah! Wait, this game features like one cutscene total worth of female. What is this ad for?

The story of this game is basically the draw of it. When someone wants a cowboy game, they want to enjoy a good cowboy setting with lots of cowboy cowboy'ing. It functions well, for the most part. Nothing that astounds me or is too immersive. Just a fun romp of a tall tale from a drunken guy with a southern accent. I will complain that the music wanders around in genres, making me wonder if it's just some leftovers from other games. I know this isn't something that is generally worth noting, but in this case it becomes downright distracting to enjoying the setting. The cutscenes and levels follow a simplified format, but it's well suited to this lower-budget attraction. The ending does wrap the game up well, but it does something that offends many: a binary choice is given with no precedent to it. Quite precisely, the game just pauses and asks you to either spare the final bad guy or kill him (in a rather awkward menu, I might add). I chose to spare him, which made no sense. Especially considering the crazy amounts of people Silas (the player character) kills during the story to find him. I'd have preferred there be no choice at the end at all, but Techland probably wanted to give us a reason to play through the game a second time for more of those precious gameplay hours.

Bullet time! Everyone's favorite!

A bit ago I reviewed Max Payne 3 and shot it down for relying too much on bullet time. I will admit that being able to slow time to make perfect head shots is still fun, it definitely works better in a shorter game. It also helps that this game has a mini-leveling system with skills. Once you get to a high level, you can do some ridiculous crap like create infinite bullet time combos (so long as the enemies come at you fast enough). But this is where the game is showing its "not terrible but not great" aspects. Like a realistic shooter, you spend the entire game using the same guns to shoot the same kind of enemies over and over. Which is weird because this is a game about tall tales from the west at their tallest. Why not throw some Frankensteins or Gundams at us? I don't know. You do get to fight ghosts, but they are the same as regular people. There are boss fights and duels, but neither of those are ever interesting. I found myself dreading them and being happy when they were over.

They even manage to squeeze in a turret section here and there. Really?

Conclusion:

A fun, cheap vignette. But not strong enough in any category to feel vital for any kind of gamer.