ODST: The real sequel to Combat Evolved
There was palpable disappointment following the release of "Halo 2," and not just due to the 'well, I guess we'll stop here' ending. From the first teaser, the tone of the marketing campaign was that you (well, Master Chief) are the only guy who can defend Earth. Combine that with the "I Love Bees" alternate reality game, which concluded with the characters' lives being interrupted by air raid sirens, and you were ready to save humanity from the Covenant when you walked out of that store on November 9.
The fact that you end up playing as one of them for half of the game was quite a betrayal of expectations. But "Halo 3: ODST..." Well, if you squint and look at it hard enough you might see a version of "Halo 2."
After all, it takes place entirely on Earth, and the player is always fighting the Covenant invaders. You spend a lot more time defending New Mombasa than Master Chief does in the second game's opening levels. Additionally, the radio play you assemble through picking up collectibles really drives home the fact that this is a city on Earth that people used to live in. It also calls back to the excellent pre-"Halo 2" "I Love Bees" alternate reality game's radio drama, and for good reason - some of the same people are responsible.
The game's mechanics are also a callback to the original "Halo." The absurdly fun yet incredibly overpowered scoped pistol makes a silent return, and its balance is no longer a problem thanks to the lack of competitive multiplayer.
You also have a health bar again, and pick up refills for it, just like "Combat Evolved." ODSTs also take fall damage after a large enough drop, just like Master Chief did in his freshman outing.
Of course, there are many things about "ODST" that are the same as "Halo 3," or wholly new to the series. You don't fight elites, for instance, just brutes, and nearly all of "Halo 3's" weapons make an appearance alongside the reborn pistol and silenced "Halo 2" SMG. However, it is curious how many of "ODST's" changes are callbacks to Bungie's original breakout hit.
This post originally appeared at Bitmob.
Review: The Beatles: Rock Band
It seems impossible to write an introduction to this review, especially considering how self-explanatory the title is. Here: "The Beatles: Rock Band" is a "Rock Band" game with the Beatles in it. You have guitar, bass, drums and this time, up to three microphones, and you faux-play music using on-screen guides. It is amazing. If you have any affinity at all for "Rock Band" and the Beatles, you should go to the store and purchase it.
"Well," you say, "that was a shitty review! How about some details and comparisons. What makes it amazing?" Okay.
The rest at Nintendorks...
Review: Ghostbusters: The Video Game
I have been trying to write this review for quite some time, in one way or another. Part of that was just finding the drive to finish the game, something I have yet to do. I doubt I will. Though there is nothing particularly wrong with it, it's just not a terribly interesting experience. I simply feel no desire to continue playing.
"Ghostbusters," or as the PR people would put it, "Ghostbusters®: The Video Game," is of course a followup of sorts to the Ghostbusters movies from the 80s. If you don't know what that is, you should probably just stop reading now. This game was built assuming that you thought Ghostbusters was awesome as a child and continued to be funny as an adult, and being unfamiliar with the source material would remove the only reason anyone ever paid attention to this already unremarkable game.
The game takes place a few years after "Ghostbusters II." You are a new hire, which allows all the famous characters to keep referring to you as "chief" and "the rookie" instead of giving your character an identity. You run around various locations in Manhattan, using the sweet proton pack laser beams on various ectoplasmic baddies. The controls are basically that of a first person shooter, and the default setup works fine. Good thing, too, as there are no customizable controls. (This game is no "Conduit," thank god.)
Combat basically consists of blasting ghosts enough to either destroy them or tire them out enough for you to "wrangle" them into those sweet traps that you also wanted the toy of as a kid. There are plenty of variations on this, including tossing various things around gravity gun style, as well as new attachments for your proton pack. The one I got was basically a shotgun.
One issue I had is that the basic beam doesn't really feel like it's hitting anything when you actually hit your target. A health meter starts to tick down, but there is no visible reaction otherwise. It's especially jarring because the environment is awesomely destructible. Overall, the combat isn't quite as engaging as you'd like it to be, but it never really gets annoying or overly difficult, and it would be worth putting up with if the rest of the game was great.
It, unfortunately, is not. Dan Akyroyd's script is wasted on cutscene directing and editing that could be called horribly pedestrian at best, and at worst, simply bad. Either way, it's not good. Don't get me wrong, it elicits a chuckle here and there, and it is indeed a pleasure to see these characters doing stuff again, but timing is a huge part of comedy, and, from what I saw, this game largely fails at it.
I have a feeling Mr. Akyroyd was not prepared for the amount of dialogue necessary for an entire video game, nor does he understand how it should fit into the game. There are one or two movie-type scripted scenes in between each level, and then it's largely all incidental "over there, kid!" type dialogue until the end each section of the level, where you are treated to 10-15 seconds of exposition followed by more of you and one other character running around bustin' ghosts. Basically, there is very little interesting dialogue during gameplay, which is unfortunate, because game writing is at its best when it actually involves the "game" part.
I don't mean to sound so negative - it's not terrible. It's just not good. The good parts are these:
- Cartoon chariacture graphics are vastly preferable to the uncanny valley fest present on the other consoles.
- Original voice actors are largely unawkward and turn in good performances, though it's pretty easy to tell they recorded separately from one another.
- Good level design from what I saw, aside from the Wii-specific level that replaces the streets of New York section early on.
- It is not difficult, which would completely wreck anything it has going for it. You would not play this game for the tactical combat experience, and it knows it.
Unfortunately, it basically boils down to it being just about the sum of its parts. Okay script + okay combat and mechanics + good graphics = okay game.
I went to E3!
It was quite an experience! I gave Jeff Green a Nintendorks condom. I also wrote some things.
Wii Sports Resort
Mass Effect 2
Alan Wake
Halo 3: ODST
The Beatles: Rock Band
Tiger Woods Wii, Split Second, Army of Two PSP
Blur, DJ Hero, Span Smasher
Dark Void, Forza 3, Dirt 2, PSP Go
ALSO, here is a video of me playing the Conduit multiplayer, and a podcast where I talk about the whole experience.
Review: Ninjatown (DS)
Tower defense games have an interesting history. After being born in mods for Blizzard’s RTS games, the genre spread to the Flash game circuit, where it was again iterated on incessantly. Between the two, it seems like almost every gameplay permutation possible had already been divised and experimented with. Recently, dedicated commercial tower defense games have started to appear; Ninjatown is one of them.
Ninjatown the brand is apparently a spinoff of a thing called Shawnimals, which are admittedly amusing cute-ified designs of everyday non-ninja objects. Let's face it – at this point, ninjas are Interneté passé. Nerds on forums have picked the ninja corpse funny bone clean. (I’m hoping this fate does not befall hoboes, which are currently my go-to amusing group of historical individuals.)
Ninjatown, though, is so damn charming it overcomes its ninja cliché roots and is just plain hilarious. Behold, the Ninja Consultant. His skill with charts and graphs will make your troops just that much more efficient. However, unlike its art style, Ninjatown can’t quite pretty up the gameplay enough to make it stand totally above and beyond the myriad of other takes on the genre all over the Internet. Though it is derivative and it brings nothing truly innovative to the table, it’s an excellent execution of the concept and it’s a hell of a lot of fun.
Ninjatown is a corridor-based TD game, none of this free-form, place your towers wherever you want insanity. Bad guys (in this case, demons who want to steal the ninja cookie recipe) walk down a path, and you have to stop them from getting to the end. Standard stuff.
I am probably not the most skilled TD player around, but I have played a fair amount of them, and Ninjatown is hard. You’ll start to be challenged after only a few levels, and it quickly gets even more challenging, but in a fun way. The fact that the game is separated into levels, unlike the traditional marathon structure, means that the difficulty never feels unfair, and the short levels encourage experimentation with different strategies, which will be required. The game isn’t too cruel to players new to the genre, however; MY GIRLFRIEND had never touched a TD game and was able to progress without too much frustration.
There are a few twists to the gameplay. The old man ninja, seen lurking to your right, gains a number of stylus and microphone based special powers which can be used directly by the player to great effect in the right situation. The maps can also contain various twists on the formula that occasionally stumble, but generally enrich the experience with a bit of variety.
Ninjatown’s greatest strength is its premise. The art is buoyed by appropriately hilarious writing and plot developments, which is augmented by its fun-but-pedestrian gameplay. The tower defense genre is rather appropriate for a handheld, and I hope to see more of them on the DS, but it will be hard for one to top the charming premise present in Ninjatown.