Retro has been a big theme for every console's online offerings these days. Why not? It's like the DVD release of something like Knight Rider - you already own the content, it takes next to no work or any real cost to get it re-published on the new format, and it's practically guaranteed to sell enough to turn a small profit and justify the whole venture. Easy money, really. Granted, I usually pass on them because I have the original; I own almost every major console released in the US and have an extensive library of games for each of them, but most people either don't have that kind of money, don't have that kind of time on their hands, or both. A decent percentage of those people look at the new title on Live Arcade and say, "hey! I remember that game. I loved that game! I wouldn't mind having it to play every now and again."
So what's the problem? Well, the first has been covered extensively by Penny Arcade. Why are these games being reviewed? How can you possibly assign a numeric value to a title that is probably older than you are? As Tycho says: "it is fucking Pac Man." An easy response might be - well, much like a DVD release of old material we are also judging the extras with it. This is certainly a debatable point, but it brings me to what I think is really wrong with the whole damn process.
Developers...you are releasing a video game, not a DVD. Stop trying to treat it like one. Extras? What fucking extras can you tack onto Pac Man or Xevious? What could you possibly stick onto Contra that would really be worth a damn? Nothing. Nothing! Screw the extras, just release the game. Clean it up, sure. Make the emulator run it at HD or in widescreen. Those kinds of things aren't rocket science and as a developer I know they take minimal work.
The next step - now that we've decided extras are worthless and we just want the game...let's go with $5 (400 Microsoft points), alright? It blows my mind to see Contra on XBLA with a couple of silly "extras" whacked on for $10. $10! It simply staggers me to think they (Microsoft and to a lesser degree the developers) cannot comprehend how many more sales they would make at a $5, even $7 sweet spot. At $5 I would end up buying every damn game just to get the achievement opportunities.
Now...I'm really only talking about the retro, emulated stuff. Original games or modern Windows games that have been ported are in a different category; while I certainly wish they were cheaper, I cannot dispute Popcap's right to $10 for Bejeweled 2 or Zuma. In the end it doesn't matter anyway, of course. While everyone cries and moans about the prices of most content present on Xbox Live, people are still paying hand over fist for every bit of it. They charge $10 because they know they can. I may not be buying those games and there might even be many, many more people that aren't buying those games, but enough did and continue to do so. I just wish they would figure out that less is more and volume selling really does work.
(Addendum: I'm going to shut my pie-hole. Most of these games are now $5. Initially several weren't, but that's obviously changed and I'm going to start purchasing.)
Friday, September 21, 2007
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Armored Core 4 (Xbox 360)
I'm going to preface this review with a warning: Armored Core 4 killed my first 360. I mean yes, it really just happened to be the game I was playing when the system started suffering heat death - but since the demo months earlier locked up on me...well, I just can't help but wonder. I did keep that particular GameFly rental long enough to play it successfully on my Microsoft-supplied replacement console, so don't think it spells certain doom for you.
This franchise has always held a certain kind of fascination for me. I've never really been that good at it, but big battlin' robots are almost always a good time for at least a few hours. I own Armored Core 2 for the PS2, and while the lack of analog control is sometimes puzzling and always frustrating - it's a solid game. For the fourth installment From Software oddly enough decided to finally pay attention to the traditional and loudest criticism over the franchise; they turned the more simulation-oriented game into an arcade experience. The missions move faster, the action is more shoot-em-up versus strategic movement, and the controls have been loosened up to let you zip all over the place. While hardcore fans immediately cried foul, I cheered. This should have been a slam dunk all the way, a beautiful-looking, fast-paced, Bruckheimer-styled mech game and something I could not wait to play.
Well considering the game is posted here, you can guess how things turned out.
The real tragedy of the whole mess is that it's not a terrible game, it's just completely mediocre and boring. I mean fall-asleep-at-the-controller boring. I can't even snark that much because the game just sits there blandly; I feel as though I can only break its faults down succinctly:
There's always uncertainty when you monkey with the formula of a successful franchise. It's not unusual for someone to get it right and make a good sequel, but admittedly it's far more common that it stinks to high heaven. Armored Core 4 is one of the rare examples of tinkering the formula into forgettable mediocrity instead.
This franchise has always held a certain kind of fascination for me. I've never really been that good at it, but big battlin' robots are almost always a good time for at least a few hours. I own Armored Core 2 for the PS2, and while the lack of analog control is sometimes puzzling and always frustrating - it's a solid game. For the fourth installment From Software oddly enough decided to finally pay attention to the traditional and loudest criticism over the franchise; they turned the more simulation-oriented game into an arcade experience. The missions move faster, the action is more shoot-em-up versus strategic movement, and the controls have been loosened up to let you zip all over the place. While hardcore fans immediately cried foul, I cheered. This should have been a slam dunk all the way, a beautiful-looking, fast-paced, Bruckheimer-styled mech game and something I could not wait to play.
Well considering the game is posted here, you can guess how things turned out.
The real tragedy of the whole mess is that it's not a terrible game, it's just completely mediocre and boring. I mean fall-asleep-at-the-controller boring. I can't even snark that much because the game just sits there blandly; I feel as though I can only break its faults down succinctly:
- While the mechs look beautiful, the environments you fight in are unbelievably simple and repetitious. One mission had me fighting in the future equivalent of a parking garage, a square gray room with evenly spaced columns. That's it. Draw distance? I'm not even going to talk about it.
- The new mech control scheme is definitely brilliant and supremely enjoyable...but the missions rarely last more than three to five minutes long. What? Why am I even being timed? A little hint - when you pull the plug on something that's just started to get fun, you're doing it wrong.
- It's easy. Way too easy. Add that to the shortness of each individual mission and it's just dull through-and-through.
There's always uncertainty when you monkey with the formula of a successful franchise. It's not unusual for someone to get it right and make a good sequel, but admittedly it's far more common that it stinks to high heaven. Armored Core 4 is one of the rare examples of tinkering the formula into forgettable mediocrity instead.
Sonic the Hedgehog (Xbox 360)
It's gotten to the point where I shed a single tear every time a new 3D Sonic game is announced. Just like the commercial - it's the single piece of trash thrown from the car, I'm the Indian up on the hill. The original franchise had spunk, great graphics, clever level design; the games were a true pleasure to play. On the other hand 3D has not been kind: Sonic Adventure (and its sequel) on the Dreamcast treated gamers to a sudden and serious case of franchise erectile dysfunction. Sonic was there, the graphic capability was there, the very idea of moving in any direction was initially arousing everyones' interest...and yet the games simply hung there, flaccid and lifeless. Gamers everywhere end up with a pair of blue hedgehogs and no real release in sight.
I got two posts in before using a dick joke - that might be a new personal best.
I did hope against hope that the 360 version might somehow be different. That the power of next generation hardware could somehow overwhelm and erase any suck the development team might accidentally - or intentionally - bring to the table. Trust me, I am well aware that it's a blind hope; if THAT'S how things worked the Playstation 3 would be selling like hotcakes and Sony wouldn't be looking like a jock in his Mustang that just tore his transmission out down-shifting from fourth to first trying to impress the ladies in the Cabriolet one lane over. I was even stupid enough to keep hoping a tiny bit that the game would work out after playing the awful demo. I couldn't even get off the small starting island, the controls were so terrible I would shoot off into the void and fall to my death repeatedly. After two or three tries I said fuck it and moved on, and yet...and yet...once I had my GameFly subscription I simply couldn't help myself. Sonic got added and moved relatively high up in the queue, and it wasn't long before it arrived.
I opened the envelope with just a touch of dread, because I knew that there was simply no way it would be any better than the demo. I pressed ahead anyway. The game started, the cutscenes played, and all I could think about afterwards is how outright creepy it is to consider Sonic hooking up with a human princess. Furries for the mainstream. How would that even work? I know some girls scream faster, but...alright, that's a joke I don't need to make. So I end up with control and I'm in a town, and while I find the interactions and dialogs to be very silly on the whole the experience wasn't too bad. I made the distinct mistake of relaxing just a bit, and finally managed to find my way to the first real level.
Again, the initial experience was...surprisingly not too bad. It wasn't anything that made me smile, but I was running around collecting rings and moving forward with a bit more control than the Sonic Adventure games, so I relaxed a bit more. Finally, the game struck like a cobra. Within minutes I reached a spot that I simply could not control properly, and I died. Over and over and over. It wasn't a matter of getting a little further each time or just barely missing the move, it was a metaphorical brick wall a mile thick that stopped me dead. After the fourth or fifth identical death I silently stood up, ejected the disc, wrapped it back up in the GameFly packaging, and walked it out to the mailbox.
My final analysis? The graphics are alright, the audio not too bad, the premise is creepier than the offer of candy in a white full-conversion van, and the controls are so fucking sloppy it's completely unplayable. I think the only positive aspect of the entire experience is that it may have sold so poorly Sega might put poor Sonic to rest, at least in the 3D realm.
I got two posts in before using a dick joke - that might be a new personal best.
I did hope against hope that the 360 version might somehow be different. That the power of next generation hardware could somehow overwhelm and erase any suck the development team might accidentally - or intentionally - bring to the table. Trust me, I am well aware that it's a blind hope; if THAT'S how things worked the Playstation 3 would be selling like hotcakes and Sony wouldn't be looking like a jock in his Mustang that just tore his transmission out down-shifting from fourth to first trying to impress the ladies in the Cabriolet one lane over. I was even stupid enough to keep hoping a tiny bit that the game would work out after playing the awful demo. I couldn't even get off the small starting island, the controls were so terrible I would shoot off into the void and fall to my death repeatedly. After two or three tries I said fuck it and moved on, and yet...and yet...once I had my GameFly subscription I simply couldn't help myself. Sonic got added and moved relatively high up in the queue, and it wasn't long before it arrived.
I opened the envelope with just a touch of dread, because I knew that there was simply no way it would be any better than the demo. I pressed ahead anyway. The game started, the cutscenes played, and all I could think about afterwards is how outright creepy it is to consider Sonic hooking up with a human princess. Furries for the mainstream. How would that even work? I know some girls scream faster, but...alright, that's a joke I don't need to make. So I end up with control and I'm in a town, and while I find the interactions and dialogs to be very silly on the whole the experience wasn't too bad. I made the distinct mistake of relaxing just a bit, and finally managed to find my way to the first real level.
Again, the initial experience was...surprisingly not too bad. It wasn't anything that made me smile, but I was running around collecting rings and moving forward with a bit more control than the Sonic Adventure games, so I relaxed a bit more. Finally, the game struck like a cobra. Within minutes I reached a spot that I simply could not control properly, and I died. Over and over and over. It wasn't a matter of getting a little further each time or just barely missing the move, it was a metaphorical brick wall a mile thick that stopped me dead. After the fourth or fifth identical death I silently stood up, ejected the disc, wrapped it back up in the GameFly packaging, and walked it out to the mailbox.
My final analysis? The graphics are alright, the audio not too bad, the premise is creepier than the offer of candy in a white full-conversion van, and the controls are so fucking sloppy it's completely unplayable. I think the only positive aspect of the entire experience is that it may have sold so poorly Sega might put poor Sonic to rest, at least in the 3D realm.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Circus Maximus (Xbox)
Jebus this game is terrible. I mean seriously, who green-lighted this? Who sat in a boardroom full of adults - adults in suits - and said, "I've got it: chariot racing!” Even with perfect execution this would be a very silly game, and the people that made this game obviously couldn't hit perfect if it were the ugliest drunk left in the bar after last call. Star Wars: Episode One managed to inspire a desire for pod racing games, but where would we get chariot racing? Ben Hur? Yeah, I'm sure little Timmy just couldn't wait to try that out after catching it one Monday afternoon on Turner Classic Movies. That's all the rage with kids these days.
Okay, so what have we got in the game itself? Chariot racing in ancient Rome. We have blocky and poorly drawn teams from around the world flogging jerky and wooden looking horses through a landscape containing collision detection on par with a blind grandmother driving a 1972 Chevy Impala. We have a flat soundtrack that barely makes itself heard over the gritty and poorly sampled sound effects. We have a control scheme that requires no less than 14 fingers! What genius! Did anyone in development or testing even bother to play the goddamn game? I mean honestly, if a company won't even subject their own employees to their own product, what chance do we have? I'd like to think perhaps someone did play the game and decided it was so terrible the only way to save the public was to make it impossible to play, but that's using a sense of universal faith in game developers as a species that died in 1982 - the moment I first played ET.
What, you think I'm kidding? Allow me to illustrate the insanity. The control scheme for Circus Maximus uses both joysticks, both triggers, and several buttons simultaneously. Okay, time for some class participation: go get an Xbox controller. If you don't have one, find a picture. Ready? The left stick steers the chariot. Okay, that's pretty important. The right stick controls the warrior riding shotgun, and you'll need to extend him left or right to fight off opposing racers...that's important too. The black, white, Y, and B buttons make the warrior attack, which becomes a bit problematic when you realize attacking without extending won't hit anybody. Oh, and you'll need to hold the the A button down the entire time to move the chariot forward at faster than normal speeds. Can't forget that. I believe they meant for you to only need that action occasionally as the chariot will drive at an average speed on its own, but relying on cruise control in a race is about as intelligent as attempting to slap box your way through a heavyweight championship. The finishing stroke? Both triggers are a necessity for making sharp turns or reigning in the horses to dodge low-hanging branches, which the courses contain in spades. I'm not even going to comment on the logic of low-hanging branches on a race course for people standing upright in what is essentially a glorified packing crate with wheels.
Now, for those of you that were following along you'll notice that's every goddamn button on the Xbox controller outside of Start, Back, and the d-pad...although I guess I should feel lucky the developers couldn't think of some active function to cram on those as well. Now I know what you're thinking, but I'm here to tell you that there is no way to edit or alter this control scheme. I did manage to find a way to hit all the needed controls to win some races, but after about ten minutes my hands were cramping and Fastlou was laughing at how retarded I looked. This is the core reason I think no one actually played the game before shipping, even taking the overall crappiness into account. Either that or Kodiak Interactive employs mutants with three hands in their testing department.
Of course even if you can figure out how to work the controls you'll still hate this game. It's incredibly repetitious; after two races I couldn't remember which track I was on because they all looked the same: featureless, boring, and with backgrounds that look like the original Genesis version of Road Rash. You get money from the races to pay to get to the next one, but all that does is extend the torture. I will certainly give them credit for having the balls to make you pay for the continued privilege to suffer horribly.
If you haven't deduced how I feel about Circus Maximus by now then this site probably isn't for you. Parents, take note. If you want a way to get your kids to stop playing video games, Circus Maximus could be the perfect tool...although a game this bad may also convince them that there is no just and loving god.
Okay, so what have we got in the game itself? Chariot racing in ancient Rome. We have blocky and poorly drawn teams from around the world flogging jerky and wooden looking horses through a landscape containing collision detection on par with a blind grandmother driving a 1972 Chevy Impala. We have a flat soundtrack that barely makes itself heard over the gritty and poorly sampled sound effects. We have a control scheme that requires no less than 14 fingers! What genius! Did anyone in development or testing even bother to play the goddamn game? I mean honestly, if a company won't even subject their own employees to their own product, what chance do we have? I'd like to think perhaps someone did play the game and decided it was so terrible the only way to save the public was to make it impossible to play, but that's using a sense of universal faith in game developers as a species that died in 1982 - the moment I first played ET.
What, you think I'm kidding? Allow me to illustrate the insanity. The control scheme for Circus Maximus uses both joysticks, both triggers, and several buttons simultaneously. Okay, time for some class participation: go get an Xbox controller. If you don't have one, find a picture. Ready? The left stick steers the chariot. Okay, that's pretty important. The right stick controls the warrior riding shotgun, and you'll need to extend him left or right to fight off opposing racers...that's important too. The black, white, Y, and B buttons make the warrior attack, which becomes a bit problematic when you realize attacking without extending won't hit anybody. Oh, and you'll need to hold the the A button down the entire time to move the chariot forward at faster than normal speeds. Can't forget that. I believe they meant for you to only need that action occasionally as the chariot will drive at an average speed on its own, but relying on cruise control in a race is about as intelligent as attempting to slap box your way through a heavyweight championship. The finishing stroke? Both triggers are a necessity for making sharp turns or reigning in the horses to dodge low-hanging branches, which the courses contain in spades. I'm not even going to comment on the logic of low-hanging branches on a race course for people standing upright in what is essentially a glorified packing crate with wheels.
Now, for those of you that were following along you'll notice that's every goddamn button on the Xbox controller outside of Start, Back, and the d-pad...although I guess I should feel lucky the developers couldn't think of some active function to cram on those as well. Now I know what you're thinking, but I'm here to tell you that there is no way to edit or alter this control scheme. I did manage to find a way to hit all the needed controls to win some races, but after about ten minutes my hands were cramping and Fastlou was laughing at how retarded I looked. This is the core reason I think no one actually played the game before shipping, even taking the overall crappiness into account. Either that or Kodiak Interactive employs mutants with three hands in their testing department.
Of course even if you can figure out how to work the controls you'll still hate this game. It's incredibly repetitious; after two races I couldn't remember which track I was on because they all looked the same: featureless, boring, and with backgrounds that look like the original Genesis version of Road Rash. You get money from the races to pay to get to the next one, but all that does is extend the torture. I will certainly give them credit for having the balls to make you pay for the continued privilege to suffer horribly.
If you haven't deduced how I feel about Circus Maximus by now then this site probably isn't for you. Parents, take note. If you want a way to get your kids to stop playing video games, Circus Maximus could be the perfect tool...although a game this bad may also convince them that there is no just and loving god.
Greetings
My compatriot Fastlou and I have a lot in common. The most relevant to this blog: we're both sick bastards and enjoy the pain of terrible entertainment. Together we are the Dynamic Duo of True Crap; he specializes in movies, I specialize in games. We've attempted to get our own site together for some time with which to review both the good and the bad, but putting a full site together requires work and we are also the Dynamic Duo of Laziness. Besides, as any reader of Seanbaby or Something Awful knows, it's the bad that's funny to talk about...so an easy-to-use blog of crap reviews became the obvious solution.
I'll be starting off with some edited and revamped reviews already written for the aforementioned vaporware review site, and then moving on into uncharted territory of still more games that just hurt to play. These games will be both new and old and from any system, because we all know that success is fleeting but the stench of failure is everlasting. Naturally because of the nature of this writing qualities such as "fairness," "thoroughness," and "journalistic integrity" are right out the window, so take comfort - any insinuations or outright insults are intentional and something I revel in each and every day.
I'll be starting off with some edited and revamped reviews already written for the aforementioned vaporware review site, and then moving on into uncharted territory of still more games that just hurt to play. These games will be both new and old and from any system, because we all know that success is fleeting but the stench of failure is everlasting. Naturally because of the nature of this writing qualities such as "fairness," "thoroughness," and "journalistic integrity" are right out the window, so take comfort - any insinuations or outright insults are intentional and something I revel in each and every day.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
