Ridge Racer 6
I picked up a used copy of Ridge Racer 6 today, along with House of the Dead 2 & 3 for Wii. There's little that needs to be said of House of the Dead; it's brilliant, and the Wii can use more games like this (note to self: shame on you for not getting Umbrella Chronicles right away). One thing I did find is that playing a light-gun game with a nakes Wiimote sucks because it's like using a pistol that has a trigger and no grip. Playing with my hand tilter forward not only strains my wrist and cripples my accuracy, but feels wrong in the context of a game like House of the Dead. I'm going to pick up a copy of Link's Crossbow Training (with the Wii zapper dealie) as soon as I have the chance.
Anyway, Ridge Racer 6 has been really good so far. My biggest worry was that the game wouldn't resemble earlier Ridge Racer titles, particularly in terms of gameplay, and that it would end up being merely a bland, weaker version of Project Gotham Racing. Ridge Racer Revolution, Rage Racer, and Ridge Racer Type 4 were among the most fun PlayStation games that I've ever played, and I wanted Ridge Racer 6 to be like those. Thankfully, it is.
One huge complaint that I have is that the audio in the game sucks. What really drives it over the edge is are the frequent interjections from your "sidekick," who gets to be pretty obnoxious after a while. They really should have toned that down. I'll be looking for an option to turn it off the next time I play.
Also important to note here is that Ridge Racer 6 has a very unconventional control scheme compared to games like PGR and Gran Turismo. As my buddy Fritzkrieg says, Ridge Racer games play more like combo-based fighting games than proper racing games. Knowledge of cars and road physics are utterly useless here, so hardcore racing fans may be turned off. I doubt that anyone like that reads this blog anyway, but it doesn't hurt to be clear about that.
I've also only just scratched the surface of RR6, but if my opinion changes much (in any interesting way, that is) I'll write about it some more.
By the way, if you're looking for some fun, free PC games on the web, here are a few that I've found worthwhile lately:
HarpoonedEvery ExtendTetroid 2012I have yet to start playing Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core. :/
Warlords Online
Did you know that the classic PC fantasy wargame series
Warlords and the popular multi-platform puzzle RPG fusion game
Puzzle Quest are
directly related? I didn't, until
Warlords Online recently hit the web.
My initial reaction was "yes, Warlords!" Then I realized how much it was like Puzzle Pirates or some such, and I started to think "how could Warlords have come to this?" And then I recalled Warlords IV and what a travesty that was...
I was introduced to the series with the rather late title, Warlords III: Darklords Rising, after it was already years old. Even though the game was quite dated and didn't run properly under Windows XP without some coaxing, I was blown away by the addictive simplicity of it. It wasn't long before I'd also tried out Warlords I and II, and I found that the whole series up to that point was brilliant. I pretty much ignored Warlords Battlecry on principle, since I wasn't looking for another RTS to play.
I was stoked when I first heard about Warlords IV and eagerly awaited its release. Unfortunately the game pretty much sucked ass owing to many problems that, in my opinion, stem from one common theme: the game had lost its vision of simplicity. From the look and feel of everything to the functionality of the world map, menus, and combat system, Warlords IV felt busy and cluttered. Earlier Warlords games had the simple elegance of Advance Wars and emphasized exactly those properties that make 4X games so gut-wrenchingly addictive, whereas Warlords IV felt like one of those myopic fantasy strategy games that uses layered and arbitrary complexity to mask the absence of compelling content. I still sometimes force myself to play Warlords IV because I just can't get over what a huge letdown it is and I keep expecting to someday "get it" even though I can't say what "it" is. (I have similar episodes with Master of Orion III.)
In a sense, Warlords Online is a step in the right direction because it takes Warlords closer to its roots of simplicity and addictive gameplay. That said, I just don't feel right playing a Bejeweled-like game when I could by playing Warlords II or III. (I've also been known to play Disciples II, which I bought on Steam last year. Fucking righteous game, that one.)
Capcom!
It's a fucking sweet time to be a Capcom fan. First off, you've got the recently released
Devil May Cry 4 along with a
Devil May Cry anime series.
Lost Planet is being released as a greatest hits title dubbed "Lost Planet Colonies" with additional content.
Street Fighter IV seems to be nearing completion, as is
Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD being produced by
Dave Sirlin. And finally, there is a veritable feast of forthcoming XBLA Capcom projects including
Bionic Commando Rearmed,
Plunder,
Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando 3, and
1942: Joint Strike.
Capcom is killing me--just killing me.
Super Smash Bros Brawl
How many hours have you spent playing Brawl so far this week? I'm only up to three, since I haven't been dedicated enough to skip work or anything like that.
Contrary to the
VG Cats strip from a few weeks ago, Captain Falcon is present in Brawl as a playable character. I also found
Joystiq's Nega-Review of Brawl amusing. A lot of those Nega-Review observations strike me as criticizing Smash Bros simply for being Smash Bros--it would be roughly the same thing to criticize Final Fantasy X for having a turn-based combat system and linear storyline.
Personally, I can't claim to be a real Smash Bros fan. I've never played the original, and I've only played Melee at friends' places. I do like the game, but to me it isn't as satisfying an experience as fighting games like Capcom vs SNK 2 or Tekken 5. I'm sometimes confused as to what makes Smash Bros such a huge phenomenon in the first place, since so many other excellent games barely get a second look. Case in point: I would have thought that Mario Galaxy would be a much bigger deal, but people have been way more fanatical about Brawl, it seems.
On the other hand, Smash Bros does manage to tap into my inner Nintendo fan--that kid who lived for NES and SNES games back before it all went wrong. I also have to commend it for having an unconventional fighting system--something quite different, in my experience, from the standards set by Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Virtua Fighter, and Tekken--that works so well. When I say that I'm not a real Smash Bros fan, I only mean that I've tended not to make enough time for it in the past, and that I'm not nearly as into it as the hardcore players. It will always be one of those classic game series that commands respect and revisiting. And if the series goes awry after this, I'll just keep playing Brawl.
Sins of a Solar Empire, Army of Two
I'd almost resolved to let this blog die, but I keep thinking of stuff to talk about. Maybe I should just admit to myself that nothing I have to say is very interesting. Anyway...
Sins of a Solar Empire is the best 4X game I've played since Master of Orion 2. The biggest thing that it lacks is the ability to design your own ships, which is a fan favourite feature of games like Master of Orion and Galactic Civilizations. Personally, I don't miss it all that much.
Other aspects of SoaSE, aka "Sins," resemble WarCraft III. Capital ships act like hero characters in that they gain experience and levels which lead to ability upgrades. Sins even uses the term "autocast" to refer to having abilities set to go off automatically, which is definitely WarCraft III terminology and seems anachronistic given that we're talking about spaceships consuming antimatter rather than spell casters consuming mana.
Fortunately, Sins lacks the frantic pace of a typical RTS. Individual units behave intelligently enough on their own to not need constant babysitting, and build queues are sophisticated enough that you can even queue something that requires, say, a tech that is still being researched. Every design decision is geared towards making the game playable at an immense scope (the smallest game maps involve six planets around a single star, while the largest involve over one-hundred planets in five different star systems) while allowing the player to enjoy the 4X nature of the game (exploration, development, epic fleet battles).
Sins also has multiplayer. I've read
Galactic Civilizations: The Case for No Multiplayer and I'm not really convinced. Sure, I understand that multiplayer development takes a great deal of development effort to implement, and yes, I agree that a developer could potentially craft a better single-player experience by ditching multiplayer. But 4X games scream for multiplayer, especially in a game as close in form to Master of Orion as GalCiv is. At the very least they could develop a multiplayer version of GalCiv that lacks AI altogether. I'm pretty sure people would buy that. People have certainly bought Sins of a Solar Empire:
100k copies in two weeks, in fact.
On the shallow front, Sins doesn't have cutting edge graphics, but it does have a certain visual appeal that sci-fi fans will easily appreciate. I don't usually give a crap about audio, but Sins is an affront to my ears (awkward, repetitive verbal cues) and I prefer to play it while listening to something else entirely.
Army of Two is obviously EA's attempt to tap into the same market that holds Gears of War aloft. I haven't played Army of Two extensively, but it strikes me as the kind of game that would be better if it were a touch more respectable. Some of the tactical elements are satisfying and remind me of Full Spectrum Warrior. This element of the game is all but buried by the jockish thuggery of "pimped out" weapons (they seriously use the phrase "pimped out" in the weapon upgrades menu) and
fist pounding. By comparison, the heroes in Gears of War seem down-right intellectual.
Still, the gameplay in Army of Two is surprisingly solid, and as a co-op FPS it has me hooked. I do have friends who will probably never play it with me because of its crass attitude, but I am pleasantly surprised by the overall quality of this game. It's likely to succeed in the marketplace, but unlikely to steal any thunder away from Gears of War 2. If anything it will probably serve to whet gamers appetites.
Finally, I'd like to mention Castlevania: Lament of Innocence, which is one of my series of cheap PS2 games being revisited. I'd heard many times that Lament of Innocence is awful, and it is. However, I'm also surprised by how close it is to being good.
The visuals are somewhat bad but, I think, good enough, and the soundtrack is good Castlevania material. Lament of Innocence seems to understand that exploration and combat are the soul of Castlevania, but somehow manages to screw both of these elements up to the point where the result is barely playable. Navigation and moving around the map is tedious, while combat is sluggish and quite frustrating. If this game had been some new and unknown franchise it would not seem so bad, but as a Castlevania fan this title is somehow insulting.
Lament of Innocence seems to get worse the more you play it. I'm about 20% through the game and I'm having a hard time continuing--basically, I can only bear to play the game when I'm feeling brain-dead and want to play something bland. In some ways,
God Hand is a better game.
