Okay so Henry has been writing a bunch of reviews and making everyone else look bad. So in the spirit of camaraderie (and making him shut up) I decided to do a couple quick reviews of the last games I played.
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare for the XBOX 360
But easily the best parts of the game are when it slows down. The air support section could easily be mistaken for one of those military videos that leak on the internet showing real people get really killed. It's shocking really, how the most removed section of the game is the most startling. Then there's the sniping section, the stealth, the infamous nuke scene... it's all just compelling gameplay linking to excellent set piece scenarios to reward your slog through scores of troops.
My few qualms with the game come from some wonky close quarters stuff (why would you put back the knife if there's another guy right over there?) and the fact that by the end of the game, every motherfucker in the Red Army has an RPG with them. Still, it isn't enough to upset the delicate crystal clear excellence the game has formed, or to take it's rightfully earned 1 out of 1.
PathPix from the Apple App Store
Not as complicated as it looks.
I will go out on a limb and call this the best puzzle game the App Store has to offer. Nay, this is the best game the App Store has to offer. Fuck Plants vs. Zombies and it's Hipster Bullshit. For 2 bucks you get 169 nifty little colored logic puzzles that form a neat little pixelized image paired with a quote. And the higher level images are pretty well made.
The rules are easy enough to understand. If you've played sudoku or picross, any of those other cute number games for white people, this will all come easy enough. Just link pairs of colored numbers with a line that occupies the number of squares indicated by the number. The logic flows naturally from this and it just becomes second nature. I've even solved multiple puzzles in the midst of conversations with real people. Bottom line, this application is just a great way to sink some time.
Now, I tried not to over-analyze this one, but there's just so much time to think when doing some of the easier puzzles, and I've concluded that PathPix is actually a carefully laid out statement on Autotheism. That, or bears.
Lots and lots of bears.
1 out of 1.
Click for Final Fantasy 12, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, and more!
Final Fantasy 12 for the PS2
To maintain some semblance of relevance.
I'm beginning to think I just don't get Final Fantasy. The series as a whole can almost be considered a sub-genre of the JRPG (already a sub-genre) unto themselves. Sorta like Metal music I guess. You got rock (role playing game), metal (JRPG), and melodic metal (Final Fantasy). Except rock is in no other way like the RPG. Also JRPGs? Metal? Okay, I admit that was actually a pretty terrible analogy.
ANYWAYS. Final Fantasy 12 is a vast departure from the standard JRPG (mechanically anyways). At least, it's a departure from single player RPGs. It takes on a style very similar to massively multiplayer RPGs, but without all that pesky human interaction getting in your way. It certainly has an addictive quality to it, though there's a strange emphasis on grinding for experience and monster drops and such. I don't GET it. I thought people hated grinding. I thought I was doing it wrong when I was grinding. But here comes Final Fantasy XII (and most Final Fantasies really) with it's brand new battle system that it tells you the very most bare minimum about. Then it leaves you with a single party member for the first few hours, so you can know how much using a single party member sucks of course. Every game has felt like some odd trial and error, that's punishing only because its progenitors have been. So, it feels to me like the new system has taken the worst parts of the MMO formula: the waiting around, the grinding. But left out any means of learning the tricks, what's needed to succeed.
Am I supposed to talk to every single person with a speech bubble above their head? Am I supposed to have an internet connection and a gameFAQs forum membership and finialfantasy.wikia.com bookmarked? Am I supposed to grind and feel my way along, effectively doubling the game's total play time? WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO FINAL FANTASY? JUST TELL ME FINAL FANTASY. JUST TELL ME SO I WILL KNOW AND I CAN ENJOY THESE GAMES.
SO ENJOYABLE.
Ahem. So yeah. I guess FF12 is the reason Squeenix went to the other end of the spectrum and made FF13 basically Adventures in Handholding: The Movie, but it could have easily been avoided. Reduce the grinding needed. Give me a few tips on the first few bosses. Even if they're overt, it couldn't possibly take me out of the experience more than the main character already has.
Now, the main character thing is quite a point of contention surrounding the game. There really is no main character. The story surrounds a number of people and deals with quite a few circumstances. It's really more of an ensemble. But Vaan, the focal point of it all, has got to be one of the worst written, worst voiced, worst realized characters I've ever seen. Period. Perhaps it's a reflection of the series's shift as a whole, or the whole directorial debacle for this game in particular. Regardless, Vaan is terrible, and brings down whatever semblance of care I could ever hope to muster for the game.
I also feel I should mention that FF10 and FF9 are my most liked of the series. So if that explains anything to someone who gets it maybe you just need to show me what's up. FF10 would tell you what's up from moment to moment (except for fuckmothering blitzball), and FF9 was rooted so much in series and genre lore that it really needed no explanation (plus it was charming to a point almost bordering on obscene).
On the bright side, I like the world designs and races (especially the bunny girls, mmmmm), and the other characters are actually quite strong. Maybe it's because I finished playing Strange Journey just prior, but all these minor flaws (like why do I have to sell my loot? Why can't it just automatically be sold and be added to my total?) seem to pile up and make the game seem like it's all just there so people will spend longer with the game. But this conclusion feels wrong. Why would someone intentionally design their game as a time sink? Especially a game from such a fantastic pedigree? I must be missing something. I must not get it. Or maybe Squeenix is the one that doesn't get it.
At the very least, there's one thing FF12 certainly doesn't get, and that's a one out of one.
Cause it got a 0 out of 1. I hope that's easy enough to see.
Picross 3D for the DS
I'm pretty trendy. Also photogenic.
Hey. Shut up.I'll have you know that the original Picross DS is easily the best money to time spent ratio I've ever had for a game (that is ~8 dollars for 100+ hours of gameplay). Well the 3D spinoff mixes things up quite a bit. The game as a whole is more friendly to newcomers and has a more directed sense of progression, but at the same time it can begin to feel restrictive if you can't seem to sole a puzzle perfectly and it's the only one preventing you from reaching the next set.
Yeah, completing a puzzle perfectly requires finishing it without mistakes and under a set period of time. I honestly don't know why they do this. Who would be content with anything less than perfect on puzzles like these? Why not just make it a fail condition and remove the ratings?
Everything else is pleasant enough. The designs are cute, and the interface is effective enough though it was clearly designed with the DSi XL in mind, because my dying DS Lite had a few problems with missed stylus taps.
All in a day's work!
Ultimately I have to give the game a 0 out of 1. Unless you are absolutely nuts about logic puzzles and can see yourself unflinchingly committed to this you should just stick to Picross DS (probably available now for less than 8 dollars), or PathPix up there. Picross 3D is just too restrictive in its methods, so maybe you should be more restrictive with your puzzle game choices.
Next!
Silent Hill: Shattered Memories for the Wii
Better than the actual cover.
I had actually considered passing this one up. After completing Silent Hill Homecoming I had become convinced that anything like the first two entries just could not be made anymore. At least, not with that kind of sincerity. But I'd slowly begun to notice a positive buzz for the game gathering around the camp fire. So, I figured it was worth a shot.
In short, Shattered Memories is simply a very interactive novel. Any player of whatever skill will have no problem reaching the end, it's just a matter of how. Through multiple little behavioral observations made throughout the game, alterations are made ranging from tiny details like different advertisements to completely different storyline paths. But the real hook is in the exploration and the detail of the world. The environments look more like an actual location than anything else I've seen in a video game. However the focus has noticeably shifted from horror to something a little flimsier. This iteration is all about the psychological aspects of Silent Hill and attempting to tailor them to you.
It sounds intriguing, and it's good to see people still dedicated to trying something new on the Wii and in commercial video games at large. But the beautiful big picture falls apart immediately under any scrutiny. For one thing, there is almost zero conflict. There is no combat whatsoever, and it's impossible to lose in the exploration segments. Outside these segments are chase segments where the surroundings take on their trademark "other world" makeover and where you can actually lose if enough boring humanoid monstrosities gang up on you and stop you from progressing. And that's basically the entire "game" aspect. Besides that, it's a lot of watching, a lot of reading, and a lot of listening.
Though to be fair, what's there is kind of interesting.
See, I don't think anyone who's made a Silent Hill game since 3 understands what made the originals so appealing. Silent Hill 2 (reviewed by our very own Henry) was a beautiful masterstroke of a game, that was only ascribed that title years after its release. When someone finally called it that, and people began naming it the "greatest game ever" and such it was all over. The jig was up. No one can ever make something like Silent Hill 2 ever again. And that's all anyone has ever tried since. There just isn't the sincerity anymore. All Shattered Memories is trying to do is replicate that same feeling you got when you found out, at the end of Silent Hill 2 that the world is much deeper than you ever suspected. People lie, people kill, and sometimes it's hard to point the finger and call someone guilty.
Shattered Memories is the illusion of such depth. It's 20,000 monkeys in a room full of typewriters trying to program the Mona Lisa. The motion of it is entertaining, but the individual parts don't make sense when put together. In trying to make something new, the makers of this game kept too much of the same. It's like everything new they proposed was appended with "but it's like Silent Hill 2 because...". Silent Hill games are scary! So we need to make the players think that what they're doing is scary.
There's a decent story and a decent concept underneath the Silent Hill enfranchisement. I'm curious to see what would have been made if Shattered Memories was its own IP. They wouldn't have felt the need to be scary, or namedrop characters from the first game, or do anything really out of a sense of commitment. Eh. It might have sucked anyways.
Shattered Memories gets a very intact 0 out of 1.
Solitaire for the PC
It's a game for lonely people.
So lonely.
0 out of 1.
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