My First Impressions of inFAMOUS

Yesterday my friend picked up a copy of inFAMOUS for his PS3. This game is one that I saw when it first started ramping up the media buzz and thought “I’d almost buy a PS3 for that”. I’ve taken notice of the many favourable reviews out there for the game, but I’ve also noticed some solid criticism pointing out the game’s shortcomings both at Penny-Arcade and Listen Up!. I was glad to have a chance to take a look at things for myself. I should plainly state that this is not a review of the whole game. It’s my first impressions after a few hours, both playing myself and watching my friend play.

inFAMOUS is not terribly new in terms of superhero games. You explore a sandbox of a metropolitan city with a variety of variations on a specific skill set. The city is populated with civilians who will either cheer or loath you as you pass and gangs of bad guys for you to fight. You start your quests at specific points when you choose. You’re also able to traverse the environment in a unique way. In this case, the main character doesn’t so much use parkour as he scales walls by frequent jumping. Try as I might, I wasn’t able to get this movement to look fluid rather than a series of double jumps. You also upgrade your character by levelling up after fights and by collecting hidden icons throughout the city. The story follows Cole, an unlikely hero given super powers through an explosion that killed everyone else it touched. You know, the standard fare.

There are moral choices which shape the game, but these are obvious and binary. You are able to unlock certain powers only if you’re good or evil, and the people do react differently to you depending on your alignment. Ultimately, however, the game pretty much asks you to play it twice to get the full experience.

The graphics of the game are quite nice. I didn’t find them exceptionally astounding compared to what I’ve seen in other sandbox games, but it does look nice. The lightning looks similar to the effect in Bioshock, which is to say damn cool. The story is told not through cut scenes, but rather comic-esque stills with voice-over narration. I never really get tired of seeing comic presentation in games, and I think that using this technique definitely asserted the superhero quality of the game.

Where inFAMOUS really seemed unique to me was the combat. While I didn’t get a chance to try more than the first few attacks, I found the basic moves nothing special in them selves. In fact, I would say that many of the effects could/have been done in games such as Spider-Man: Web of Shadows and even Hulk: Ultimate Destruction. What is unique is the use of a cover system. You see, Cole isn’t like most superheroes. He’s quite susceptible to bullets, which means that if you decide to stand still and aim your lightning over his shoulder, you’ll quickly die. Instead, the game allows you to crouch behind fans, crates, and barricades while you line up your shot, then Cole will pop his head up to take the shot on command. While this system isn’t perfect (the AI have a tendency not to adapt for your use of cover), it is fresh, and something I’d like to see with some of my classic favourite characters (Captain America and his shield anyone?).

Since inFAMOUS is being released really close to Prototype, there have been a lot of critics trying to compare the two games. That’s the analysis which dominates the discussion on Listen Up. However, since Prototype isn’t out yet, I remain unable to make such comparisons, though rest assured I will be picking up Prototype for my 360. The game which I do wish to compare, with both other games, is Spider-man: Web of Shadows. It’s clear to me that all three games share many similarities, but I admit that I really didn’t feel inFAMOUS was exceptionally different from the game that came out back in November. Both games have tons of collectable icons throughout the open world which upgrade your character. The moral system in WoS was better implemented, in my opinion. While your actions resolving small incidents, such as a mugging, in inFAMOUS may affect you alignment, it’s not clear saying so. In WoS, however, the HUD displayed every incidence of moral choice. Oh, and WoS allowed you access to all the abilities at the same time, meaning you were either good or bad because of how you used the powers, not because of which powers you used.

Don’t get me wrong: I quite enjoyed playing inFAMOUS, and if I owned a PS3 I would definitely purchase a copy. That being said, I didn’t find it to be a game that was entirely different from anything I could get for my current console. The combat was good, but the rest of the game, the environment, the characters, the narrative, was so derivative and predictable to me that it just doesn’t move me to take the plunge. If you’re into superhero games and you own a PS3, I’d definitely recommend you pick this up, but if you don’t own a PS3, you shouldn’t loose any sleep over it.

Next week I get to pick apart E3. Whoot!

Why Super-Hero Games Can Exist

On a recent episode of the Listen Up podcast, Garnett Lee and John Davidson claimed that videogames “let down the super-hero genre”. Stephen Totilo posted a good summary on Kotaku with nice block quotes. I’ve mentioned Listen Up a few times here because I’m a fan of the podcast. It’s arguably my favourite gaming podcast, and even when I disagree with Garnett or John I have to respect their opinions and knowledge. When it came to this issue, however, I felt that as a super-hero geek and gamer I could perhaps lend a different perspective to their argument.

Mr. Lee and Mr. Davidson have essentially two parts to their argument. One is that by using established characters, such as Wolverine and Spider-Man, you want to play the character from the mythology and not something you customize or create. The other is that death is a false bottom in a super-hero game since super-heroes are often invulnerable. Let’s look at these arguments one-by-one shall we?

One of the great advantages that super-hero videogames have is that their characters have rich back stories filled with conflict, most of which is physical. It should, therefore, be a simple matter to translate this to a game environment. Videogame conventions, however, are not as simple as narrative and conflict. No, they require a certain amount of user input, and one common convention is that of character building through a reward system. In the new X-Men Origins: Wolverine you are stripped of your powers at one point and need to regain them all, similar to Metroid or any number of other games. During the game you also have to collect upgrade tokens (in this case “mutagens”) to customize your character’s statistics, such as more physical damage or increased health. What the gentlemen at Listen Up are saying is that they don’t want to assemble a version of Wolverine, they want to pop in the game and play as Wolverine, start to finish. At first glance that would appear to be a rational expectation.

The problem is that comics, and the super-hero genre by extension, are not rational. Characters are in multiple comics simultaneously, often taking place in alternate dimensions, or sometimes not (Wolverine is on pretty much every X-Men team at the same time, even when they’re on opposite sides of the world). We’re constantly finding new aspects in a hero’s powers (Archangel/Angle from X-men didn’t always have a healing factor, and he eventually found out that he could heal others with his blood). These “reasonable” exceptions are not without limit though. I remember playing the original X-Men Legends and being frustrated at the need to have my mutant-power gage drain while Rogue flew. She should just fly, and clearly I wasn’t alone in this demand since the sequel rectified this issue. I am willing, however, to accept some things I will have to earn. Do I relish the thought of loosing all Wolverine’s powers half-way through a game? Absolutely not. Am I willing to accept that throughout the course of the game I can change the arbitrary statistics built into it’s world so as to allow Wolverine’s claws to cause more damage at the end then they did at the beginning? Hell yes. The problem here isn’t the videogame convention of building a character, it’s the dissonance in translating a character from lines on a page to a world with actual physics and quantity. This dissonance is something individuals such as myself are willing to overlook in order to watch Logan’s flesh knit back together or to swing through New York as Spider-Man.

The second issue is super-hero death. That one is almost a non-issue to any comic geek. The reason I say comics and not super-heroes is that film and television seldom are willing to actually kill off a super-hero. Comics, however, have been killing, and resurrecting, characters for years. Remember a few years ago when Magneto levelled New York, killing thousands, and was killed in turn for his crimes? Less than six months later he was back. Apparently that first guy was a clone. What about Colossus, who sacrificed himself to destroy the legacy virus? He’s back too. Apparently he was in some lab or vault or some such thing. These aren’t alternate dimensions or anything. We’re talking one universe, one character. Sure, some times they snag an alternate dimension character who takes up permanent residence somewhere else, but my point is that super-hero death is damn common. The other thing which you may want to note is that super-heroes seldom actually die in videogames. They often just collapse. That’s another thing that’s not too uncommon. A hero will collapse in one situation and revive later, only to endure a trial twice as difficult as the one that rendered them unconscious. Such is the world of the super hero.

You may notice that these arguments are from the perspective of the hard-core fan. I don’t hold it against the casual fan to ask questions, such as “Can Wolverine really loose his powers?” or “Wait, wasn’t that guy dead?”. My point is that the fans who ought to have the most trouble with these issues can often explain the answers easily. As for the use of video-game conventions, if the game is well put together we fans are often willing to overlook any liberties the developers take in order to experience slicing limbs as Logan or swinging as Spider-Man. I didn’t mind the large holes in Web of Shadows because it was just plain awesome to kick ass as the black-suited Spidey. However, when the experience broke down in Spider-Man 3 I was severely disappointed. While there are a number of awful super-hero games out there, I think we can say there are some pretty damn great ones too. Super-heroes my not be the perfect fit for videogames, but I think that we’re starting to get some pretty good cooperation between the two genres.

My Dr. Mario Sickness

When I was playing my original Game Boy, I didn’t have many games. My parents weren’t too keen on this whole video game thing and therefore were reluctant to buy me games. Most of the games in my tiny collection were purchased after many weeks of saving my precious allowance. As a result, I played a few games many times. Arguably the game I played the most was Dr. Mario. For a long time Tetris was my most frequent game, but it didn’t take me too long to master the art of “four lines at once” and to reach my personal plateau. That was it. Every game of Tetris felt the same to me. Not so with Dr. Mario.

For the uninitiated, the goal of the game is to clear the field of all the viruses. These baddies come in three flavours: red, blue, and yellow. Each field (shaped as a medicine bottle) is randomly populated with these evils and you have to match up coloured capsules which Mario tosses in the top. Any four-of-a-kind disappears, allowing you to not only clear up mistakes but also snag cool combinations such as sneaking capsules in between two nearby viruses. Every capsule has two sides, each coloured, giving you six possible combinations thereof. Even with a preview of the next three capsules it’s hard to plan given the fast pacing.

What I love about this game is that every play field is different from the last. While I always wanted to move on to the next level or a higher speed, I also found myself simply replaying the same level over and over with a different dissemination of viruses. For me, the art was in crafting brilliant combinations and watching them unfold. Defeating not just one or two, but three, four, or five viruses after planting that perfect capsule is an exhilaration I always enjoy.

Dr. Mario express coming to the DSi Ware catalogue was definitely a breaking point for me. I hadn’t played the game since my original Game Boy days and was eager to start again. Little did I know what I was unleashing upon myself. I would say that I’m definitely addicted. I’ve been late getting to bed for no other reason than when I would clear a screen I couldn’t move the cursor down to “Quit Game” before moving on. Having never played the console version of Dr. Mario, the bright colours are a wonderful new addition, as well as the “VS CPU” option. In that mode I try to make combos to release random capsule halves into my opponent’s screen while at the same time lamenting combinations of his own. This variation is particularly deadly since I will often get caught in a “Try Again?” loop: pushing myself further than ever before.

I’ve tried playing other games, but the last week or two has been pretty hectic, often leaving me only a few minutes to play. That’s what makes this game ideal, although I also find myself caught in a downward spiral where five minutes becomes the hour and a half I could not afford at the outset. This character flaw is the reason I don’t yet own a variation of Lumines or Peggle (though I think I’m about to crack).

The bottom line is this: I recommend all puzzle game enthusiasts/addicts check out Dr. Mario, and if I’m late posting to this blog again you can blame it on the game.

Until next time kittlings…

A Review of Conan

If you haven’t read any of Robert E. Howard’s original Conan stories, you owe it to yourself to do so. You can find them in anthologies of their own or in anthologies of Mr. Howard’s other works. There are also some comics out there, and from what I’ve seen they’re pretty decent too. I’m even a fan of the old movies starring Arnold. I suppose you could then say that I’m the target audience for this game, and I’ve been eyeballing it for quite some time, but only picked it up recently as an impulse buy for $20.

I think the best way to qualify this game is to explain that it’s made by THQ. I say this because THQ has a bit of a history releasing what I would call solid ‘B’ games. I don’t have any problem with that, but I think it’s fair to know what to expect on your way in.

Many reviews pointed out that Conan was a God of War knockoff, but since I have never played God of War and do not foresee myself buying/borrowing a Playstation to do so, this seems an adequate Xbox alternative. The third-person game moves from arena to arena in each stage, affording you with wave after wave of enemies to kill. Occasionally you have to solve a puzzle or kill a boss with the assistance of quick-time-events, and that’s something I like. They don’t feel overdone and add more than just “Press X to open doors.”

The writing isn’t terrible, but it doesn’t stand up to Howard’s moulding of the character. Ron Pearlman’s voicing is bang on, and it’s clear that they put forth an effort to try and bring out some of the character’s more enjoyable attributes. There’s sex (the naked maidens you rescue are a nice touch) and he refers to opponents as dogs frequently, but the actual narrative it follows is not what I would call ‘essentially hyborian’. However, it is worth noting that this is better than the films, where the wit of the character is often clouded by an absence of dialogue.

Graphically, this game is okay. It doesn’t feel particularly next-gen or shiny, but it’s good enough (as I expect from most THQ games). Despite the fact that your enemies are similar (pole-axe vs. spear vs. large sword), each stage has its own style, giving you a slightly different feel for who you’re cleaving in two. These are some of the best looking parts: you get some pretty cool animations of the damage being inflicted. Once I even had a glitch that left a guy’s intestine hanging in the air after his corpse had been dispatched.

The combat is really where this game shines. There are tons of moves which are made cooler by tons of weapons. The variety of swords, shields, and long weapons you can wield is awesome, not to mention the various combinations. There’s an upgrade system which allows you to purchase more elaborate moves, and you will want to take the time to master them in order to get the bonuses later in the game. The only hole is that later in the game the combat can become frustrating. All the cool combos in the world don’t mean squat when the enemies can counter before you even get started. I actually still haven’t finished the final boss off, not even defeating his first form (of a reported six) once in the last week. Given the fact that statistically few gamers play their games through to completion, it would appear that either the last bit fell through quality assurance or they decided to ramp up the difficulty for the hardcore few who followed through to the end.

Bottom Line:
Buy if: You want to turn your brain off for a bit and tear up some faceless enemies. You’ve got to like QTE’s and hack-and-slash games, but at a low price it could be a few hours of solid fun.
Rent if: Can’t really think of who should rent this. If you’d like it enough to pay for a rental you should probably buy a copy.
Pass if: You’re expecting something exceptional in any respect. This game is one that you need to accept on its own merits as something simple and fun.

Why I Bought a DSi

Many moons ago, Nintendo introduced a handheld gaming platform with wireless capabilities and a touch screen. This little gem was the Nintendo DS, and I confess that I was smitten. I did my best to resist, but it didn’t take long before I, a student at the time, folded and bought a shiny silver first-generation Nintendo DS (which would later become known as a “DS fat”). Without any knowledge of the mess that would be “friend codes”, I was optimistic about a Nintendo-ised version of Microsoft’s Live, and I expected to soon be playing Mario Kart on my handheld over WiFi.

Unfortunately, I quickly fell out of love with the software. Friend codes made my fantasies of simple network play a thing of the past, and I found myself using my DS more for playing GBA Final Fantasy re-releases than anything else. Bundle that with the fact that not long after I bought my DS, Nintendo launched a new, sleeker model which was a more reasonably portable and had bigger and brighter screens. My portable gaming dropped off significantly and set aside my DS, not to be played again for many more moons.

Fast forward to a little while ago. Nintendo announced, much to the shagrin of the popular media, that they would be launching another new DS. Titled the DSi, this DS would have not one, but TWO built-in digital cameras. There were many outlets, including the podcast Listen Up, who claimed there was little-to-no reason for people to upgrade to this new model. However, I, a hardcore gamer who hadn’t touched his DS in years, did just that. Why would I pick up a new version of a system I hadn’t played in so long? Let me tell you why.

It ought to be said that there were games which I had missed out on, like The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass and Mario Kart DS. Chrono Trigger, my introduction to a love-affair with JRPGs, was recently re-released for the DS and a new innovative platformer called Henry Hatsworth and the Puzzling Adventure was getting some buzz. I also had titles such as Final Fantasy III and The New Super Mario Bros. just sitting on my shelf, so it’s safe to say the idea of getting back on the DS train wasn’t too much of a stretch. Along with that, I was thinking about upgrading my DS to a DS Lite. An expensive proposition for something I didn’t really need, but I craved bigger screens and a size that would lend itself to being carried to my girlfriend’s place.

It may be natural to assume that the DSi would be the automatic choice for an upgrade, but times being what they are I wasn’t about to throw an extra $60 down for a system when I could save that for more games. I wanted the DSi to be genuinely better than the DS Lite. Here’s a quick breakdown of what makes the DSi special and my reception of these features:

1) The cameras: Can’t really start anywhere else with this handheld. I’m not going to try and defend the puny megapixels on these things, but rather elect to ignore them completely. I have a digital camera and a camera phone, I don’t need another. As for gameplay, I suspect I’ll avoid camera games just as I avoid microphone games.

2) The screens: Bigger and brighter again when compared to the DS Lite, which means noticeably better than my DS fat. Very pretty and totally worth the upgrade.

3) The GBA/SD slots: I kept my DS fat for the GBA slot, and I still have the Game Boy Player for my Gamecube. Since I don’t play Guitar Hero on my handheld, I don’t miss it. The SD slot is awesome, since it will allow me to store lots of extra stuff, and I’m sure Nintendo will make the most of that in the future.

4) Downloadable software: Here’s the big one. I don’t have a Wii, so I have had to adore classic re-releases from afar, until now. I’ve already purchased and downloaded Dr. Mario Express and love it. I can’t wait for more great games to come down the pipe. (This feature is another reason I love the SD slot).

5) Upgrades under the hood: This point is one that I feel almost all outlets overlook: the DSi has twice the processing power and twice the RAM of the DS and DS Lite. While there is no immediately discernable benefit (load times remain the same), I think that it’s only a matter of time before we start getting bigger and better games for the DSi.

6) Better speakers and customizable OS: I put these together because while I’m sure I appreciate both, they weren’t really selling points. We’ll have to see what they do with these in the future, but I don’t currently notice any marked improvement.

After weighing these features and my gaming dollar, I decided that the new model of DS was worth the investment and, at the time, the wait. After a few weeks using the new system (one weekend with the power out too), I have to say it’s lived up to my expectations so far. While Nintendo may claim that the DSi and the DS Lite are to remain friends on the retail shelf, I think it is clear that over time the DSi is the next step in handheld gaming. Only time will tell if all this potential actually makes it to the consumer though.