Frustrating Ninjas!

***WARNING***THIS POST MAY CONTAIN MILD SPOILERS REGARDING NINJA GAIDEN II ***END WARNING***

     I finished Ninja Gaiden II yesterday. It's not something I was playing diligently, I would pick it up every once in a while. For the most part it lacked some of the ridiculous difficulty that the first game had. For the most part, I said. The last two levels were filled with somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 boss battles. The frustration come in two parts. Number one Ninja bass battles are Hard...usually. That is to be expected with this game though. The second, more frustrating, issue is that I thought I was fighting "The Last Boss" no less than 4 times. I could expound upon how irritating that bosses were, but I feel that would just be belaboring the point.
     I've been playing a little bit of Dragon Age, but I've stalled a little on that game. Dragon Age deserves it's own post, so I won't go into detail right now. I finished Gears of War since my last post and started Gears of War 2, but am taking my time with it. I really want to play both games' campaign as co-op, so I sent feelers out on the Fear the Boot forums for some people to help make that happen. I think playing that co-op will be a game-changer.

   















   
     Finally, every 3 - 4 years I try to play through Final Fantasy III (that's VI if you use the original Japanese numbering system) and I've gotten the itch to try it once again. I've never actually finished FF3/6, not because it is especially difficult, but because I hit a certain (optional) dungeon in the game that I really want to finish, and that dungeon (the Magic Tower, for those who have played it) is especially difficult. Since I always get hung up there, at the very end of the game, I've never actually beat it. But hey, 8th time's the charm.

Cogs of War

Real-life has been interrupting postings the last week. I'm updating because I've got a minute to spare, but I haven't advanced the cause of gaming too much recently. A few days ago I picked up the Gears of War pack that includes Gears 1 and 2 and much if not all downloadable content for Gears 2. I've played the single player campaign before, but I'm sending out some feelers to hopefully find a co-op partner to play with. The only other remarkable moment has been getting to play Last Night on Earth again. Always a treat.

 











I've been playing some multiplayer recently, because it's easy to pick up for a bit then put down. In most cases it's very easy to put down. Anyway, I'm not bragging about my "mad skilz" but I've gotten to the point that in most multiplayer matches I play (not game specific) I usually end up in the top 3-5 players in the match. Gears of War is the exception to this. I've got a couple theories, so get ready! #1- I'm just not good at Gears of War. This is possible, but it feels like an easy answer. I prefer theory #2: Each Gears match provides significantly less opportunity to hone your playing skills. Most multiplayer games allow for and are based around respawns. Some dude explodes your head with a sniper rifle, you wait about 8 seconds, then you're back in the fight to get said head exploded again...in seconds...by the same douche bag. Many of the Gears of War multiplayer games don't allow that. Once you die, you're dead for the match. Clearly, for many of the games that means, as a new player, you run out, get killed and you're done. Quite a 180 from games like Dead Space 2 or Halo where, if you're tenacious, or bad, enough, you can get killed again and again, racking up as many as (possibly) 20 deaths. So you have opportunity after opportunity to try to not die. I can't think of any verbose ending to this post, so I'll just end it abruptly here.

Aftermath

I waited a few days before posting anything new. I wanted to give myself time to let it sink in that the vast majority of my previous game collection is gone. It has. I don't miss it. I was holding on to a bunch of crap titles that I had finished and kept around because I told myself I'd go back and get those last few achievements. Or for the mythical time that I "got into" the multiplayer. Well no more. A game surfaces in my head every few days that I miss for about 5 minutes, then I'm over it.
     Now: Portal 2. It was great. Finished single and mutliplayer. It was short, but I was anticipating that. It was also really fun (also anticipated that), but I think the multiplayer was stronger than the single player game. Some downloadable content is supposed to be out "this summer", whenever that is. And best of all, it's going to be free. Don't believe me? Check Joystiq!
     When I was talking about Dragon Age I had not yet given the game a fair shake. It is awesome! I am more enthusiastic about Dragon Age then I am about Portal 2. It's so good, and so similar to Star Wars: KOTOR that it makes me think: if I had KOTOR on console instead of PC, maybe I'd actually finish the game, instead of finishing the first 8-10 hours and never picking it up again. Wow. I really need to go back to that game once Dragon Age is done.

I also picked up Star Craft 2 for PC. I've played 3-4 levels of it and am overwhelmed with my lack of an opinion. Not that it's bad. It's probably really great, but I'm not feeling the Real-Time Strategy right now.

Last, and certainly least, I started playing the free trial of Warhammer online. I'll describe the game like this: World of Warcraft. Same thing. If you've ever played WoW you know exactly what to expect. I'm not criticizing the game; I haven't played enough for that yet, but I've already been there. Done that.

Game Collection: Purged

I made a rather rash decision yesterday. I sold the vast majority of my game collection back to a local imperialist game-trading company. I got  a surprisingly large amount of store credit for everything and left with Portal 2, Dragon Age: Origins (Ultimate Edition), and a new controller cuz my 360 thumbstick has been twitchy for a long time. In this case "a long time" means "since I bought it. A word to the wise: sped the extra money and buy a new controller, don't buy used.

So far Portal 2 is really fun. Valve has built on the concept significantly so that it's not just a longer version of the first one and the story has taken some surprising (and fun) twists so far. I haven't touched multiplayer yet, but I hope to do some of it tomorrow. I don't really want to rant about it because there are probably a million and one sites that expound how great it is. I will probably write at about it at length once I've done some multiplayer and have finished the single player which seems like it is going to be pretty short. It's not like the first installment which you could only call a full game if you had the most jaded sense of humor, but I'm going to guess that it will clock in at around 10 hours for a full play-through.

Dragon Age seems pretty good for the hour or two I've played. However, I think I had some misconceptions about it before I got it. I expected to be playing a Mass Effect clone in a fantasy setting. I think it would be more appropriate to say that Dragon Age spans the gap between Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect. On top of that, considering the game is less than 2 years old (according to google) the graphics look disappointingly dated. That may not be the case if I has an HDTV, but I'm playing it on a tube television. That's not really a complaint, it's just that Mass Effect looks so good that I was expecting the same caliber of quality throughout Dragon Age. But, like Portal 2, I'll probably have more to say once I put a little bit more time into it.

My friend bought Descent: Journeys in the Dark the other day. As you can see above, it's an extremely elaborate boardgame. We had a good time, but no one had played before so we played this very complex boardgame and tried to learn the rules (rule book is like 30 pages) at the same time. It was fun, but it took forever because no one knew the rules or the strategy. The game is like an adaptation of an old-school Dungeons and Dragons dungeon crawl. What that means is that one player runs the dungeon and wants to kill the adventurers. The other players control said adventurers, they work together and try to kill all the monsters in the dungeon and steal all their stuff (gold, potions, weapons, etc.). It's a good game, but I think the intense learning curve would turn off players who are not pretty intense gamers.

To conclude, my EVE online subscription expired. Will I be renewing it? Maybe, but Portal, Dragon Age, and Lost Odyssey to play, so the jury is still out on weather I will come back to EVE or not.

Infection

I've not posted in a week or so because I had to prepare for finals. Also, coincidentally, I haven't had much to say about gaming. Now that finals are over I bought and have been playing Prototype like it's my fucking job. I rented Prototype about a year ago and played through it super fast. I thought at the time that I played it so obsessively because it was a rental, and had to go back in 4-5 days. I realize now that I played through it so fast because it's addictive and incredible.
     I feel a little strange bit of guilt saying that its so great because it was a big deal when it came out. It shouldn't deserve the hype it got on it's release because it's little more than a Grand Theft Auto clone. A clone that has super powers. Don't misunderstand me though. I love this game. Activision essentially took their Spider Man 2 game, which was total crap, and over hauled it to make Prototype. Prototype is so derivative of other games (GTA and Spider-Man) that I feel like it should have no merits of it's own, but I cannot stop playing it. And this is after already playing the game to it's completion. Not to belabor the point, but Prototype has so much working against in my mind that the fact that I'm giving the game a virtual "Thumbs up" should communicate that this is an amazing game. A little short, but unadulterated fun!
     Other than that I want to blab on about a couple up coming games. This year is going to be a big one for games that make me excited like a little girl. Mass Effect 3 is supposed to be out near the end of the year! Some people poo-poo ME and ME2. Those people are fucking dumb-dumbs. If YOU didn't like ME or ME2 than I'm including you under the dumb-dumb umbrella. Mass Effect 2 might be my favorite game ever. And I'm putting that up against titans such as Chrono Trigger and Metal Gear Solid. Needless to say, I'm highly anticipating Mass Effect 3. Another big 'un is Skyrim: Elder Scrolls V. I only got into the Elder Scrolls series in the last 4-5 years. I played through the majority of Morrowind and loved it, I played the fuck out of Oblivion and it took Morrowind and kicked it in it's dated-graphics ass! I don't have anything more to say about it. Finally, a game that is already out: Portal 2. I want it so bad it hurts. If anyone reading this has $60 to spare send it to me immediately and I will buy Portal 2. I hope against hope that there will be a tie-in to Half Life 3 because ***SPOILER ALERT*** Half Life 2 Episode 2 had Aperture Science show up at the very end ***END SPOILER ALERT*** Regardless, I got to play a little bit of Portal 2 last week and it certainly delivered on the Awesome-ness. Rant Status: Over

Alan Woke

I just finished Alan Wake. It was really good. Despite that I will now critique it, as my nature demands I do with all things.
     The story kept me coming back to the game eagerly. The game play, however, got to be a touch redundant by the end. This could be because I played the game start-to-finish in about four days, though. The environments were cool and creepy. Unfortunately there were only about 4 different environments to enjoy: Scary Woods, Scary Abandoned Farm-ish Town, Not So Scary Building Interior, and...well...more Scary Woods.
     People who get their hackles up about ambiguous endings will probably (read: definitely) be frustrated by this game. I don't mind ambiguity too much. I'd prefer the writers hold my hand at the end explaining (but not over explaining) exactly what happened, but I can deal with it.
     Replay has become a huge concern for me. Had I bought it instead of renting I would get at least one of the two available DLCs. Beside the DLC I could see myself doing another play of Wake and then (realistically) trying it on hard then losing interest and not finishing it. That's a long way of saying I think the replayability is not so great.
     All of that being said, I really enjoyed Alan Wake and would recommend it to anyone that enjoys horror...and good things.
     I also met up (in game) with a new xbox friend from the Fear the Boot forums. We played a few levels of Lost Colony 2. Good times.

Wake up!

I've mentioned in previous posts that I don't do video game reviews. I'm not back peddling on that, but I do need to gush about a game I rented yesterday. This is not a review!
I just got around to renting Alan Wake for xbox. It is amazing. The closest comparison I can make is that it is similar to survival horror, but Alan Wake is less a traditional video game than it is an interactive story where you shoot stuff. The narrative format is similar to the most recent Alone in the Dark title which took the concept of an episodic television series and tried to apply that to a video game. Each "level" is presented as an episode, starting with a "Previously on ..." and while Alone in the Dark ended each episode literally with closing credits, Alan Wake simply gives you a "End of Episode" splash screen which plays some of the haunting music from it's soundtrack. Which is incredible by the way. The first episode ends with Roy Orbison's surprisingly appropriate and haunting "In Dreams". Alan Wake's "episodes" also (as far as I've played) end with a brief cinematic which ends with a televisionically predictable cliffhanger-like plot reveal. Don't misunderstand me, please, I'm not saying the plot of Alan Wake is predictable, I'm saying that in this style of narrative you usually anticipate an "oh shit!" moment at the end of the episode and Alan Wake does not fail to deliver.
     While the only thing that was truly interesting about Alone in the Dark was this tv-like format, Alan brings a lot more to the table. I am already hooked by the story, which seems heavily influenced by Stephen King stories. Alan Wake has a fantastic narrative, both in terms of the story being told and how the story is told. The game play is tight, killing the creepy baddies is gratifying, and the atmosphere is eerie. I like it, and I'll probably rant more on it once I finish it.