Bring out yer dead! (TellTale's The Walking Dead, PC)

*SPOILER WARNING*

A slight warning to readers: while I will do my best to avoid specific spoilers. Since The Walking Dead is as much about the journey as it is the destination, even generic ones may end up removing much of the emotional punch that the game has to offer. Forewarned is fair warned. To those who want my suggestion without the spoilery details, know that the game comes highly recommended to both fans of the show/comic and newcomers alike.


Up until I played the game, I had never before read or seen The Walking Dead (TWD) in any other medium, so I was not entirely sure what to expect when I started playing. I had been hearing good things about the game, but my lack of investment in the series kept me from following it. Having received a few hearty recommendations from friends, I decided to give the game a try. What I ended up playing did not disappoint and remains one of the highlights of 2012, doing so well as a game that it sold me on the premise of the series and got me into the tv show and even comic. The game, though, stands out as the strongest of the three, and that has everything to do with TellTale's expertise in dialogue, story telling and characters.

Aside from the whole 'zombie apocalypse' thing, TWD is firmly rooted in being a realistic portrayal of 'normal' people desperately trying to survive the end of the world. The series is built around the question "What would you do to survive in a world bent on killing you?" As a player, you will get to live these decisions on your own choice and decide how you should react to events.

While TWD is sprinkled with Quick Time Events and standard fare inventory/environment management puzzles, most of the real gameplay comes by way of dialogue options with other characters. You decide almost (if not all) of Lee's (the main chracter) interactions with other characters. Each conversation choice will prevent with several options to choose from, with 'say nothing' even being an option in most cases. Decisions (or indecisions) you make can directly affect the story and will definitely change how other characters perceive you and interact with you in future situations.

However, you are not given an infinite amount of time to think about the decisions before you have to act. Almost all of them are 'real time' decisions, and while this may sound frustrating it actually makes the decisions you make feel far more natural and impactful. It actually helps reduce the urge to 'min/max' the game to try to make 'perfect' decisions and instead brings out more basic instincts and really prove who you are and what you would do when placed on the spot. Much of the impact of the gameplay occurs outside of the 4-5seconds you have to decide, as you personally come to grips with what made you make that split second decision and how you are going to deal with the repercussions.

While it can be frustrating that 'major' decisions are not explicitly labeled as such, I found that by not doing this, Telltale made the rest of the game more engaging. By not knowing which decisions are considered 'major' and which ones are just fluff conversation pieces, each conversation becomes important as you have no indication otherwise. It helps lend additional weight to the feeling that every decision is important and can have an impact on how the story plays out and how people react to you.

Speaking of characters, Telltale does an extremely good job of creating believable characters, situations and dialogue that helps emphasize their growth and place in the world. This is crucial for a world like TWD where characters are by no way guaranteed to make it past the next hour, let alone by the end of the game. It helps to make decisions more personal and more engaging when you have a level of investment in actual characters as opposed to nameless fodder and helps to give TWD that extra emotional punch that sets it above the pack.

The story and gameplay are also well paced throughout most of the episodes. Your time will swap between light puzzles (which are all very logical and do not involve trying to combine every weird combination of items you can pick up), conversation and quick action (QTEs). This helps to cover up one of the few flaws the game has, which is it's not much of a "game". Light, easy puzzles, QTEs and selecting dialog choices does not make for incredibly compelling gameplay. However, since it's paced well (and the story/characters are engaging enough) the game rarely begins to feel tired or samey and helps to keep you playing. Recapping major decisions at the end of each episode (and showing comparisons vs. other players) helps to keep the impact of your choices in mind and gives a good conversation starter for seeing how you and your friends played differently.

Possibly the only other complaint I would have - and one that I really only got after reading up on the game after completing it - was the fact that, over time, many of your decisions still do not "matter". If you just play the game through once, though, you would be hard pressed to notice it... in fact, the choices and story are so well placed that they VERY successfully give you the illusion of choice, even while rarely providing it.

*WARNING*: Continuing on to the next section is probably the most spoilery part, so if you are still trying to read this and want to avoid spoilers, DO NOT CONTINUE TO READ :*WARNING*

While most of your decisions will have short term impacts (who lives, who dies, who goes and who stays), very few have long term decisions as plot points tend to neatly tie themselves up one way or another. Did you piss someone off early? They might 'forget' if you help them on something later. Were you a helpful saint or a ruthless tyrant? Doesn't matter!

Now I'm not saying there are no decisions that have a meaningful impact, as some do and the rest are masterfully crafted to feel that way. But take a peek behind the curtain and it just doesn't feel as magical as it is if you don't. It is one of the few times that replaying the game can actually make the entire experience worse, not better.


Overall, The Walking Dead is a strong game and a breath of life into the well-tread Adventure genre. The game is not perfect, but it's a solid first offering and I look forward to how they improve in "Season 2".

On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Awesome

Sometimes, when a game franchise switches developers mid-stream, things go awry. It just isn't as good anymore. Things are different for no good reason. New gimmicks are introduced. It just doesn't work.

Penny Arcade's On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3 is the exception.

The first two episodes looked pretty good, yes. All the concept art came directly from the source and was turned into pretty backgrounds and character designs by professional animators. You (yes, you) were even a player in the game! Personally, though, I always thought the best part of the first two games was the writing, which came straight from the source, unfiltered. As a result, the games are intensely funny. However, I never thought they were really terribly great games. The combat was repetitive and a tad boring, and I thought the attempts to inject action-RPG elements into the game always fell a bit flat.

That said, I think I speak for both proprietors of this here blog when I say that we were kind of disappointed that the third game apparently wasn't going to come out. Hothead (the previous developer) and Penny Arcade had, uh, differences and they split up. Making up for it, PA published what is essentially a novelization of the plot of the third game online. (As one might guess, that link is pretty much 100% spoilers.)

And then, a simple page appeared in our programs at PAX 2011.

It was like this, except there wasn't a date on it yet.

Could it be? Yes, it was. And now it is. Zeboyd Games is pretty much two dudes who develop retro-style console RPGs with modern sensibilities. Though I was not familiar with their previous work, I had at least heard of it from hanging out on the Penny Arcade forums, which is where they started their enterprise. Suffice it to say, these dudes have a healthy respect for the source material.

This game picks up where the 2nd left off. The player is no longer represented in the game with a character, and there is no way to import your character into the new generation of games. Like I said, since to me the best part of the previous games was the writing, I don't view this as a terribly big loss. Speaking of which, the writing is great in this game too, as it's pure Tycho (Jerry Holkins). The story that I linked to above was expanded, messages, and adapted for the game by Tycho, and all the other text you need for a game (item descriptions, flavor text, etc.) were also written by the man himself. Suffice it to say, this is the funniest game I have played since the last Rain Slick game. (Yes, Portal 2 was funny, but there's something about poking fun at RPG tropes while playing a RPG to be really hilarious.)

I've basically been paying for Tycho's writing for years by purchasing all the Penny Arcade books, so I would basically like anything that had most of the text written by him. However, unlike the first two games, this game is also fun.

Okay, yes, there's a bit of grinding in some places, but that's part and parcel of the retro feel. The vast majority of the game aims to recreate the experience of the 16-bit SNES heyday of the console RPG. However, there are modern sensibilities. The squad regains their health after every battle, for instance. There is a pretty cool class system, allowing each character in the party to have up to two sub-classes. (Examples of classes in the game include "slacker", "cordwainer", and "hobo".) These sub-classes grant additional actions and abilities.

Items work in a similar manner. Items have two sorts of upgrades: quantity (the number of times per battle the item can be used) and quality (the level of the item). Characters can also use magic, as dictated by their classes. Every battle turn each character gains 1MP, with various items and abilities allowing one to gain MP more quickly. The turn systems itself is worthy of note, more akin to something one would find in a modern RPG. All characters and enemies appear on a timeline, with two parts: waiting to get an action, and then shortly afterward, actually doing said action. The key drama here is whether one's speedier characters can pass enemies before they act. There is also one sub-class that can manipulate the flow of action, such as kicking enemies out the short period between when they enter and action and before they act on it. I know this sounds complicated, but it works pretty well in practice. And, most importantly, it's a lot of fun.

And as previously said, I didn't really say "fun" in relation to the gameplay in the first two games a whole lot.

Many folks would pay $25 for a game like this. More would pay $15. What if I said this game was only $4.99 though? That's a downright steal. Even better, it's on Steam and XBox Live Arcade.

asim's "tl;dr" summary: This game is more fun than many games that cost 12 times as much. There's almost nothing to lose by getting this game and it's the most intentionally funny game that's come out since the last Rain Slick game.

Other stuff: Yeah, I was going to write a Mass Effect 3 review. But it might be awhile before I'm ready to approach that minefield again. Not sure how much there's left to say about it at this point. It was sort of like that Steven Spielberg move A.I.. It was really good until the last 45 minutes.

World of Iterate-craft

I've had a few people over time ask me to write my thoughts on World of Warcraft for various reasons: some were curious of what I thought about it, some wondered exactly how I would tear it down and some just wanted me to write about games they had actually played so that they could agree or disagree in the comments.

I've had a really hard time figuring out exactly how to do this. How does one write a review about a game that is evolving and expanding so quickly and so much that after as little as 2 years the game has been altered on almost every level? Reviews like this become stale and meaningless in a world where the game doesn't remain constant. That's not to say that snapshots in time or thoughts on a current direction aren't warranted, but for someone like me who invests his time in this only to still be behind the times by several months, it seemed like an impossible task. There are also so many aspects of the game that I don't play or particularly care about (like arenas, battlegrounds, 25 man raiding or dps) that overall the review just wouldn't be very interesting to a very large audience.

I, however, am not one to back down from a challenge and so I'm going to attempt to do my best to cover a bit of the general game's history and current condition, as well has how it has evolved itself - and the genre - over time. I don't really feel this will be a terribly useful review for someone who has never heard of WoW or mmos at all, but for someone who is at least familiar with it it may provide some insight as to just how far Blizzard has taken their mammoth mmo in the past 6-7 years, and perhaps where they could be going or areas I feel they could still improve.

When it first started, World of Warcraft was known (and highly praised) for taking a lot of the grueling punishment and work out of an mmo and instead attempting to streamline it for a slightly more casual audience. I say 'slightly' because most people who are only familiar with Wrath of the Lich King and beyond have no idea of much much MORE streamlined the game became in the 4 years following its already impressive launch. Reputation grinds were far more common (and more tedious) in vanilla, raid content was 'gated' to players both inside (staggered numbers available per week) and out (strict limitations for 'earning' your ability to get into an Onyxia, BWL or Naxxramas instance). The game was a HUGE time and gold sink by today's standards, even though it was better overall than most other products by not severely penalizing you for death and even adding 'dungeon' tiers for people who did not often raid. As it moved forward, Blizzard eventually began adding 20 man content (instead of the current standard of 40) to promote a smaller guild and smaller team environment that were unique from their 40 man counterparts, and updated 5 man gear to give even smaller groups something to work on.

Original WoW also saw a few iterations on a 'PvP' style system. While they had no reward structure to speak of at launch, they started by offering rewards for simply killing one another but eventually added more goal oriented 'battlegrounds' such as Capture the flag (Warsong Gulch) or Capture/Defend (Arathi Basin). PvP was excessively grindy and the absolute best rewards were only given to those capable of dedicating the highest amount of time to it. Being a top-tier PvPer in vanilla almost assuredly meant you did nothing but play WoW (or had multiple people playing the same account).


The Burning Crusade moved everything one step further, adding new 'tiers' for players that helped to segregate content out a bit more by skill or dedication. Dungeons would have both a 'normal' and a 'heroic' mode, which would allow leveling and 'casual' players to experience all 5 man content without feeling too overwhelmed by difficulty or time commitment (though many normals were still considered quite a challenge when under-geared). 'Heroic' dungeons added the next step up in difficulty and gave the more dedicated player a place to go for pre-raid gear that also allowed you a way to farm reputation for different factions while you played. There was a sort of 'gate' to this content in that you needed a friendly reputation with specific factions to unlock those heroics, which made gearing up alt characters or players who joined a bit late difficult.

Blizzard also began a movement forward with TBC of completely abandoning the 40-man raid model and instead focusing on smaller 25 man groups. Blizzard also offered an olive branch to even smaller guilds by starting the expansion off with a 10 man raid: Karazhan. TBC would eventually also see a 2nd 10 man raid in Zul'Aman, but otherwise the rest were 25 man raids.

Raid gating was more abundant but (somewhat) less difficult depending on the place. Karazhan had a fair amount of 5 man content that was required to complete before being unlocked, but only 1 person in the group would need it to open it for everyone else. 25 man content had a more fine-grained content lockout system that generally required guilds to defeat easier bosses before they could unlock harder ones, but this really only became a problem as newer guilds formed later in the expansion and had to go redo content over again to unlock it for newer players. (Fun fact: Blizzard actually poked fun at themselves that year with an April Fools joke detailing a laughably ridiculous set of rules and circumstances required to get Black Temple Attunement). It did, however, help keep older content 'relevant' later into the expansion, even if only by force.

TBC added some new PvP toys - Arena matches (2v2, 3v3, 5v5 deathmatch) and a new battleground, removing much of the absurd grinding requirements while pushing WoW towards a more 'esport' style pvp system while still allowing for more 'casual' battleground style pvp.

Wrath of the Lich King, to me, feels like the first time Blizzard really started taking this plan of 'give everyone something to play' to heart. Building on the popularity of Karazhan and Zul'Aman, blizzard made EVERY raid in WotLK both 10 and 25 man capable. The new 'path' was meant to be: Level --> Normal dungeons --> heroic dungeons --> 10 man raids --> 25 man raids, and as such, 25 man content still contained better gear and (debatably) harder content. Blizzard also introduced a boss (Sartharion) that had variable difficulty depending upon how many drakes you left up, rewarding you more for doing the harder versions of the fight. This proved an incredibly popular concept and, thus, the next raid included a slew of bosses that could have their difficulty increased in a similar matter. By the last raid, every boss had a 'heroic' mode on offer and essentially doubled the amount of content available to players. It also ended a problem that blizzard had significant issues balancing for some time: How to make something everyone could see and do while still offering a challenge to those who have seen and done everything.

Not everything was coming up roses though - while initial raids were EXTREMELY easy and had record numbers of people participating in them, later tiers were more appropriately tuned and many were incapable of playing at that level. These people were left in a strange state of 'limbo' for a good portion of WotLK, as almost no single or small group content was added to the game during this time, and normal/heroic dungeons were so quick and effortless with the new Dungeon Finder system that many people were left with nothing to do. By the end of the expansion, new daily quests were added and even 4 brand new 5-man dungeons, but in 'internet time' this felt like eons. Add in problems balancing healer and tank classes (especially the new Death Knight), burst PvP woes, issues with gear scaling and the painfully short 5-boss raid 'Tier 9', and WotLK can be remembered for about as many ups as it had downs. Perhaps the worst part of WotLK was the fact that it's final 'tier' raid was released 1 day shy of a whole year before the next expansion, meaning that aside from a single extra boss you were facing the same 13 bosses for 12 months straight. Not exactly the best way to keep players hooked, and certainly not a way to drum up much excitement.

But that's ok, because the announcement (and plethora of changes later) of Cataclysm gave many a fan hope where once only a cold, undead shell remained (see what I did there?). Blizzard promised (and delivered) huge systems changes designed to solve a fair number of problems that really stuck out during the WotLK days. Things like significantly larger health pools (to cut down on 2-shot scenarios in PvP and PvE), stat re-balancing (to fix problems with heroic gear scaling seen in ICC), a significant overhaul to the healing playstyles (to reduce the 'wack-a-mole', single-spam feel), as well as a MASSIVE change to nearly all level 1-60 content.

In 'The Shattering', the entirety of Azeroth as we knew it was forever changed and Blizzard took this opportunity to go back and try to clean up nearly all of the 'old world' Vanilla content that had grown stagnant compared to more recent content. Nearly everything was changed. Thousands of quests were added, changed, or updated to provide a better play experience. Quest flow was substantially improved to prevent having to constantly fly across huge continents to find level appropriate content. Many zones had updated looks to provide a more interesting visual experience (leaving many names like 'Barrens' or 'Desolace' being much less appropriate titles). Political control ebbed and flowed across continents to provide new points of contention and make old battles feel like that had some amount of impact. Talents and skills were rearranged to give classes 'core' abilities earlier on while still adding complexity and unique abilities at later levels. To many players of 'Vanilla WoW', the game seemed almost entirely different and often times worth another playthrough; to new players, content was updated to be far more modern and to take into account many of the features and design choices created out of nearly 6 years of evolution.

Cataclysm is interesting to me in that despite the fact that Blizzard has dominated the market for over 7 years now, they are still making tweaks, iterations and overhauls to their own game design. Watching how people reacted to the difficulty level of heroics raids and taking that to heart in the Firelands patch and again in Dragon Soul, the HUGE daily quest hub zone in the Molten Front, the addition of Transmogrification (the ability to visually wear one piece of gear while getting the stats from another) and LFR (Looking-For-Raid, an easier difficulty, dungeon-queue style raid), revamping the Darkmoon Faire, and even more subtle differences like the Vengeance changes all prove that Blizzard is not one to rest on it's laurels.

And rest, it is not! Deathwing may have fallen already, but new adventures await Azerothian heroes (and heroines) in Mists of Pandaria, and while the details are obviously anything but finalized, the current plans certainly seem to indicate Blizzard is once again trying to shake things up. Sure, you'll get a new level cap, spells and raids, but there's also a new class (monk), a new 'neutral' race (Pandaren), a dungeon challenge mode, small group 'skirmishes', and a pet battling system. On top of all of this, they say they have learned a great deal from how they did questing/zones/dailies in Cataclsym and will be working on fitting these lessons (such as not allowing flying until max level or relying less on world phasing) into the new zones to improve the overall player experience with them.


So there you have it. My thoughts on the past 7 years of life on Azeroth. If nothing else, Blizzard has taught us that trying to make something for everyone ('casuals' and 'hardcore' alike), coupled with a very iterative design process and a constant strive for perfection, can create a game that can be enjoyed by millions for over half a decade. With the MMO space having grown, well, massively in the past 7 years and many companies looking to try and muscle in on Blizzard's turf (RIFT, SW:TOR, GW2, etc) or going Free To Play and being handsomely rewarded for it (LOTRO), it will be interesting to see how these outside forces affect Blizzard's decisions for how to continue to move World of Warcraft forward. And let's not forget that they are still working on their brand new MMO, Titan, which will obviously release soon (tm) and promises to flip the genre on it's head again. Though if you think about it, doesn't that mean it will just be back to being right side up...?

I'm ASimPerson, and This is My Favorite Mass Effect Review on the Citadel

Observant readers of this site have probably noticed another contributor sitting up in the top left for sometime now. That person is, in fact, me. I'm not as verbose as Chris, but I hopefully be only slightly less skilled a reviewer.

My plan here is to start off with Bioware's blockbuster sequel to, um, its 2007 blockbuster Mass Effect. For reference, here's Chris's original Mass Effect review.

Mass Effect 2 (PC)

If Mass Effect (ME) was Bioware's attempt to get first person shooter gamers into RPGs, then Mass Effect 2 (ME2) goes even further in that direction. Oh, there's still character customization - Shepard can now customize his (sorry female Shepard fans) individual armor pieces according to function and can apply any color he wants. However, almost as though it was a reaction to the terrible customization UI in the first game, the broad range of choices for armor and weapons is now gone. For each kind of weapon Shepard can equip there anywhere from 2-4 choices at the end of the game, and there is no inventory for weapons and armor. I'm not crazy about that, but it does at least mean the death of the "you have too many items" dialog box. All characters (excepting class requirements and the rare character-specific items) can equip any weapon. Class still does play a role here, though, as the weapons characters are proficient with will have more ammo available.

Yes, I did state that correctly - ME2 brings back ammo management. While the first game's weapons could overheat but had unlimited ammo, ME2 has finite ammo. I'm personally not a fan of this change, as it seems to contradict some of the other changes. In addition, this now means that ammo needs to massaged and managed. While occasionally this calls for strategy (for instance, the "best" weapons for non-soldier characters only have 20-30 shots, so they need to be saved for when it's neccessary) this mostly just means most players will have to waste time looking for SMG clips on the ground, which isn't really a lot of fun.

The character abilities have also been simplified in ME2. Instead of allocating points to abilities, skills, and force powers biotics, each character has 6 areas to allocate abilities to. Experience and ability points are earned very sparingly - while Shepard still gains levels, experience and points and now earned only after missions. This also means the ability system is simpler. Instead of the Knights of the Old Republic style 3/6/9 points system (where each ability generally levels up after so many points, but you only expend one point at a time) like ME did, ME2 uses a 1-2-3-4 system (where the first level of an ability is 1 point, the second is 2, etc.). At the 4-point level, the ability gives you some stat bonuses and that's that.

Missions are definitely more discrete in this game than in ME. Each time a mission is completed in ME2, the game tosses up a summary screen with some text and how much money, experience, and ability points were earned. While some folks may welcome this, I found it sort of jarring—especially early in the game where upon completing a mission I was sent back to my ship, while I still had things to do back on the space station I was just on. Nonetheless, that's a pretty minor complaint.

I will complain about the mining, though. Those who played the first game may remember the infamous mining subquest. Well, at least that one was at least optional. In ME2, minerals are required to build weapon, armor, ship, and character upgrades. The only way to acquire minerals is process which I personally referred to as "strip mining the galaxy". Upon visiting a planet in a solar system, the planet is scanned for minerals, and then automated probes are sent to pick them up. The scanning is, at best, tedious. At least on the PC version (which I played), the mouse is dragged around a globe representation of each planet while a chart tells you the concentration of each mineral in the area over which the scanner currently is. To add insult to injury, the probes used to actually pick up the minerals are not free and must be bought (also, fuel is not unlimited either, but this only applies to travel within local clusters, not solar systems). Given that your ship is actually smarter in this game makes this even worse (i.e., why can't the ship scan the planet?). I suppose the only way this could be worse than it already is if I had to drive the Mako down to the planet and get the minerals, a la the first game. (Good news: no Mako missions in this game!)

Of course, this would not be a Bioware game without a healthy dose of plot. Being a sequel, it's pretty much a given that this game is darker than its predecessor, but fortunately it trends more toward The Empire Strikes Back end than, say, the second Prince of Persia game. NPCs now swear more, and Shepard's "neutral" dialog options are even a little more, well, angry than the first game. Of course, this is still a Bioware game, so everyone is still pretty much transparently good or evil, including Shepard. ME's "dialog wheel" is back, and again the vast majority of conversations will have three options that progress the conversation: Space Goody-Two-Shoes, Space Switzerland, and Space Nazi. Based on my experience, players will generally end up on one of the two extremes unless they're purposely switching around.

Choices made in the first game can change the second somewhat significantly - the core plot will still be there, but just about everything around it will be different. (Hint, though: the "default" or "canon" choices from the first game are, fitting in the tone of the second, mostly the renegade options.) Your crew will be a mix of newcomers and old faces, and some other NPCs interactions are also flavored by choices you make in the first game. I think that's about all I can say without getting to plot spoilers, which I'd like to avoid for either game. Basically, your job is to, once again, save the galaxy against statistically long odds. The game makes it abundantly clear there will be a third installment as well, so go ahead and clear out some space on your 2012 day planner.

I'm late to the Mass Effect party. I only played the original after getting on sale on Steam back in January, figuring I should see what Chris and my brother had been going on about for the past two years. Turns out, they were on to something, and after beating the original I pre-ordered the second game. Since I finished the first game on a couple days before the second came out, this meant I had over a month of uninterrupted Mass Effect goodness. This is basically the gaming equivalent of getting into a TV show during the middle of its run, and then realizing that now you have to wait for the rest of the episodes to come out, just like everyone else. And here I am, waiting with baited breath with the rest of the Internet for the remaining downloadable content packs and the announcement of Mass Effect 3.

asim's "tl;dr" summary: they "fixed" inventory from the first game by getting rid of inventory management, combat edges closer to the FPS scale, but there's still a rich, deep RPG here that's addictive and fun. It's darker than the first game, but avoids overdoing the "edgy" thing.

In Memoriam

Last April 14th, the plug was pulled on the authentication for the original Xbox Live servers. Once the king of Live, and quite possibly the reason why Live still even exists, today Halo 2 is all but dead, as those who've managed to keep their Xboxes online since then are the only ones left. I played a lot on the last night and was hit with a wall of gaming nostalgia that I thought was only possible with games from my childhood. In particular, it brought back all those nights in college spent with my roommates from 2005 and 2006 when we'd go on there as a party, continually seek out the shotguns and plasma grenades, and make incessant "Juggernaut" references. ("I like your raincoat!", "You can't run!", "Jugs ain't got no power steerin'", etc.) So I guess what I'm trying to say is... thanks for the memories, Bungie.

Let's do the time warp again

The Xbox Live Arcade has really come through in the past year or so in terms being able to release quality content at reasonable prices. Great new games like Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords, 'Splosion Man, and Penny Arcade Adventures have found a happy home with quality remakes and re-releases like Worms, Banjo-Kazooie and Uno. But one of the best parts of the service is the fact that small games can be made for small budgets and released to a real audience without need for huge marketing pushes and big box co-operation. This allows for a bit more risk, and where there's risk there's innovation, and that can makes things very interesting.

Leading up to its release, Braid was the XBLA golden child - the definitive proof that people pointed to when they wanted to show that arcade games could be as "big of a deal" as retail games were. To many, it was going to be the proof that downloadable games were the future and could compete directly with retail in terms of sales and revenue for game companies. Considering it was receiving heaps of awards when it was still in its infancy (2 years before being released), that should be no surprise. But even (and perhaps especially) with all the pomp and circumstance, Braid had something to prove in an area that was still largely new in the console space. So after all the hype and fanfare, did Braid make a case for 'triple A' downloadable games or was it simply more chaff? After playing it, I have to say that, in every way, Braid proves that you really can do some impressive things with limited space and budget. And here's how.

The game begins as what seems like a simple platformer but quickly goes beyond that, using time itself to take platforming to a whole new level. Oh, sure, time manipulation has been tried in games before, but Braid handles it so well it becomes nearly seamless in execution. It's not the familiar that makes it so good, but the unfamiliar that really helps it to stand out. The interesting uses in some of the later levels - including position-dependent time, 'shadows' and time warping - are what really solidify it as an innovative, original game.

Which is amazing, really, because time manipulation is a very difficult gameplay mechanic to get right. You have to hit the sweet spot between too simple and too complex, balance the completely obvious and the ridiculously obscure, all while trying to maintain enough diversity to keep the game feeling fresh. Even the slightest drift too far in one direction and the house of cards begins to tumble, easily taking the game from 'fun' to 'frustrating'. Braid does all this and more, always evolving and continually challenging the player with new play options and twists. At first it's just a simple jump-stomp platformer, then they mix in a bit of the all-too-familiar "hey you can rewind time" mechanic, but after that it's anybody's guess and everyone's surprise. Most 'puzzles' are fairly obvious and become a simple matter of executing properly (or determining how to execute properly), which keeps players from getting frustrated because the goal is clear and the tools are all explicitly laid before you.

There is one puzzle in a late level  that did throw me for a loop and begin to frustrate because you think you know how to work it but it seems to just require absolutely perfect execution. Instead, a bit of dumb luck and a realization of my own mistakes causes it to become an actual point of pride when I was able to work it out the correct way.

Perhaps the only true fault of gameplay is that there just isn't enough of it, but like Portal, that is almost a guaranteed statement for a game that you really enjoy and would like to continue playing. It is very easy to say "the game went on too long and became repetitive" and blame the developer for trying to stretch too much gametime out of a single concept, so I find it difficult (if not impossible) to actually blame a game for being "too short". I would rather the game be shorter and very good (see: the Half Life 2 Episodes or Portal) than try to forcibly extend the game for fear of it being "too short" (see: backtracking in Halo, excess travel in GTAIV, or level grinding in RPGs). A reviewer knocking the game for being "too short" really translates to (the significantly more positive) "does not overstay its welcome", and is more the sign of a desperate reviewer digging for something negative to say than an actual flaw in an effort to appear unbiased. Either way, it is fair to say that Braid will leave you wanting more.

...or if not more, at least a book of references, because the story is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Braid's story, while almost completely baffling upon closer inspection, is perhaps one of the best proofs that video games add a completely new dimension to entertainment that, when used properly, takes storytelling to a whole new level. Books are something of an interactive medium, feeding you information but allowing you to use your mind and imagination to fill in the gaps and recreate the scene. Movies are visually impressive and often stunning in execution, but leave very little to the imagination and offer little in terms of stimulation aside from bright lights and big sounds (a few exceptions aside, of course). Video games, however, are designed as an interactive medium and allow the player to feel deeply invested in the story (like books) while maintaining a very impressive visual clarity (like movies). Most games try to really fall back on one of the two sides to carry them to greatness (the classic graphics vs. gameplay argument), but Braid finds a great story to tell with a great gameplay system that mesh together so well it leaves you almost stunned speechless at the end. It is difficult to explain without giving it away, but the last level alone is one of the finest moments in entertainment and requires almost no words or fancy visual effects.

That's what makes it so sad to say that the 'real' story - depending on who you believe - is so confusingly hidden and ambiguous that is it really takes away from the experience as a whole, assuming you bother to look long enough. Braid is really telling almost 4 different stories at once, sometimes jumping back and forth between them with no real clear indication that it has done so. As you play, it seems like it makes sense (granted, even the most basic of interpretations seems very weird) but as you near the end it just explodes into a tangled mess of plots, subtle metaphors and completely blank holes. Even now, you can search far and wide on the internet for different "interpretations" of the games plot and events (do yourself a favor and do not do this until you've played it at least once) and almost all of them will be different. There is something to said for stories being "open to interpretation", especially with regards to character motivations and thoughts, but when you can't even piece together the basic plot of the story it starts to cross a line.

Some say this is a reason to put Braid above the rest - that it deserves praise for not dumbing down the story and for being a bit more open to interpretation than, say, "a plumber that fights a dinosaur to save a princess of a kingdom of mushroom men" - but I'm going to have to disagree. It does not detract enough to really punish the game for it, and in fact it does a good job of getting people to continue to talk about the game after the fact, but a story does not have to be cryptically written to be good.

Graphically, Braid is arguably the perfect blend of stunning art and wonderful artistic direction. There is not a single point about it that leaves you with the impression that it is a simple downloadable game, and it is even more impressive than most AAA titles released that year (in terms of production quality). It really shows off the true power behind HD gaming and makes you wonder what could be done with a full retail title in 2D. The amount of detail in the scenery, incredible use of colors and smooth animations all add up to a beautifully rendered, completely unique look that really captures your attention and refuses to let go. Couple this with the soothing violin playing in the background and you can easily get lost in the splendor of it all. While graphics can't make bad gameplay better, it does act as a very nice bow to wrap up an already strong package.

Despite all of the praise it received, Braid was still a magnet for criticism, mostly surrounding its length and price. I've covered the whole 'length' argument at length (ba-dum-tsh), but cost is an entirely different issue. I think one of the biggest reasons why cost was even such a big problem for most people is because 1) companies had been burning people on the cost of DLC already (see: Horse Armor in Oblivion), 2) A pattern was starting to emerge that XBLA games were $10 so that is the price people expected, and 3) players tend to directly compare cost with perceived length to determine "value". Braid was bucking that trend, and it brought up bad memories of companies trying to overcharge for downloadable content, which is often cheaper to distribute than going through retail channels. Penny Arcade Adventures ran into the same problem when they released Rain Slick for $20 earlier that year. Couple that with the noticeably short playtime and it really set some people off.

For some reason, video games are still the only medium where a direct correlation is drawn between cost of the product and length of total entertainment. I've almost never heard of someone complaining about how they could pay $10 for a 3 hour movie instead of $10 for a 2 hour movie, without mentioning the quality of the film at all. Sure, video games work with numbers that are significantly larger (20-60 hours in some cases for $50-$60) but why is it that gamers do not wish to think of their purchase in terms of quality, but instead in terms of quantity? $15 for 4-8 hours (more if you're into speed runs) of gameplay is not a terrible investment considering the length and cost of other entertainment options (many full price games, the movies, etc). Granted I purchased the game when it was a "deal of the week" for a mere ten dollars, but that was because I had always wanted to buy it and was pretty sure it wouldn't drop to that price again, not because I felt fifteen was unreasonable. If you have any appreciation for good games with very high production values, $15 is a great price.

To me, Braid remains one of the biggest surprises to the (potential) quality of XBLA games and the power of downloadable games as a whole. Before playing it, I had purchased few (if any) XBLA titles, and the ones I had purchased were 'safe bets' that were from companies I knew or extensions of known series. Now, I'm much more attentive to what is coming out each week on Xbox Live because you just never know when you might find the next "diamond in the rough". Considering how long it took me to purchase and then play it, the information is now a tad dated, but if you have yet to play Braid you should definitely look into purchasing it (or at least downloading a demo). And, hey, now it is available other places too - PC, MAC, and even PSN. So you don't even need an Xbox 360 anymore to enjoy it. So go out there, faithful readers, and do the time warp again!

It'll leave you wishing for an apocalypse...

A friend of mine recently reminded me (read: chided me) for not reviewing recently, and after looking here and realizing I haven't written anything since early September, I have to completely agree with him. I've been lazy and should really fix that. So, here we go, the completion of  something I started in September (although I don't feel bad because the game is over a year old at this point) and promise of attempting to be more diligent in the future (we're heard that one before though, right?).

I actually had someone request two reviews of me: one was for World of Goo, which I was more than happy to do, and Fallout 3. While it looks like I'm merely doing these because I was requested to (more requests are certainly appreciated, hint hint), the fact that I just very recently finished it is equally as good of an excuse to write a review for it. So, while the game is not exactly new, my experience of definitely it is.

I will honestly say that, besides being aware of the Fallout franchise, I was otherwise completely oblivious to anything about it. I haven't played the first two games, nor any of the spinoffs associated with it, so I was completely oblivious of its history and roots. The first time I actually even saw a Fallout game was at PAX08, watching the Bethesda team show off their demos on the expo floor and going to the Fallout 3 panel to watch them more fully explain/show off what the game could do. The game looked impressive visually, but I had one small problem with it that I couldn't overcome that prevented me from getting hyped about it. Ironically, that problem is freedom.

You see, I am one of those people that still has nightmares about Morrowind. I can not even begin to tell you how many times I have started Morrowind, only to get so engrossed and so involved in the game that I completely forgot where I was, what I was doing or where I was attempting to go. The freedom offered by those games actually paralyzes me to the point that I no longer find interest in the game because I cannot keep focused on anything and get overwhelmed at what I've gotten myself into. Case in point: on one play though, I was playing through Morrowind and had gotten about as far as I'd ever gotten. I'd done my best to try and stay focused on ONLY the main story and to give it my best shot at "beating" the game, if it's even possible to call it that. I played off and on for several weeks, not devoting my full attention to it but simply attempting to continue to move through the game. I got to a quest in the game that required me to retrieve a special book of some kind, I don't exactly remember what, but I had (apparently) already gone and picked up this book... and promptly lost it. I looked around the town to see if I had sold it somewhere, or perhaps placed it down in one of my impromptu "houses" but it was completely lost. My freedom to steal, sell, and place absolutely anything anywhere had found a way to block my progress yet again, and to this day I've never gotten farther than that.

So when people talked about Fallout being "like Oblivion" (which I had never picked up for much the same reasons), and it was being created by pretty much the exact same team, I was instantly turned off. Another open world game that I'm going to get completely lost in? Yeah, no thanks. So I managed to survive the hype, watching as Bethesda released the game to huge critical and commercial success, pushed out a truckload of extra DLC goodies, and maintain a constant stream of coverage in gaming news and commentary articles everywhere. But eventually, as I tend to do, I caved. Too many people just said too many good things about this game for me to ignore it anymore. I just had to play the final copy for myself to see if it was actually something I can get into.

100 hours later, I think I can safely say that was a good decision (if not a really, really long one).

The game has a very interesting way of starting you off in a sort of glorified tutorial, letting you see your own birth, determining what you would look like in the future, using your baby years to determine your stats, and your teenage years to determine your skills or style of play. It does a pretty good job of catering to both newcomers and replayers alike, allowing you to skip the test parts to determine your own stats directly without requiring you to know the specific answers you need to choose. It is always nice when a developer takes the boring (yet often necessary) tutorial and spends time working it into their world. Certainly much more friendly, intuitive and fun to do than sitting through screen after screen of character creation options like I did in Morrowind.It really helps add to that sense of being involved in the story and a part of the world.

After your story really begins, well, you step out into one of the most expansive and marvelous spans of desolation and destruction I've seen in a while. Yes, it suffers from your standard "realistic graphics" problems - lots of greys and browns with nothing really stylized or colorful to speak of - and the post apocalyptic setting does absolutely nothing to help this. Most of what you'll see in the world is little more than an eerily empty wasteland, occasionally inhabited by wild creatures or bandits. But that doesn't mean the entire world suffers for it. It may be hard to have the drab, boring landscapes take you in, but that style really does capture the state of the world quite well and help make the few inhabited areas of the world feel a little bit more lively. Despite not being much to look at aesthetically, some areas really will catch your attention. Maybe it's the skyscraper that stands tall over the otherwise ruined buildings, the luscious trees clumped together in the middle of the barren world, or just the shock of seeing the more iconic monuments of Washington D.C. partially destroyed and overrun with mutants. It may be somewhat bland and dark, but the game presents itself quite well and uses what it has to full effect.

Unfortunately, that means both the good with the bad. People still look and 'feel' more like robots than they do humans, shuffling stiffly from area to area and never really looking 'normal' doing so. Dialogue and facial animations are even worse, never quite selling you on what is being said and the emotion being portrayed, which is sad because the voice acting in the game is rather top-notch. The radio personality "Three Dog" (or is it "dawg"?) has a very powerful and interesting personality over the radio, made even stronger by the fact he is often your last connection to humanity as you traverse the empty wastes in your quest, but in person the mystique and personality is just ruined by clunky animations and awful facial expressions. Maybe Valve has really spoiled us with the amazing work they did on Half Life 2, but it has been very hard of late to find games that can truly overcome the stiff, robotic feel of physical movement and speech.

Fortunately for you, very little of that matters because you will be so busy lapping up the detailed world and all of the things you can do in it that you'll hardly notice (or care) all that much about those things. While Fallout 3 is probably as expansive (if not more so) than Morrowind, it solves many of the problems I had with it through better gameplay decisions and UI choices. While there are many missions you may choose to go on at any time, they are all noted, collected and organized directly with your map in a way that leaves absolutely no question as to where you need to go or what you need to do. Even notes or speech that triggered the objective are kept around in case you would like to listen again or might need a specific piece of information to guide you in the right direction. This is especially true of the main story, where it is most needed, and really helps because often times you will spend 8-10 hours doing side tasks and completely forget what you were doing and where you needed to go.

There are still some small quests that have no formal means of tracking, but these are usually side quests that have no real bearing on the story (or your character) and are more for the rewards, back story, or just to add general flavor to the world. While it is easy to get lost or forget what you were doing on those, I'm personally OK with that because it did not hinder me from 'beating' the game and allows those who are interested in doing so they chance to really explore the world on their own. Despite being so adamant about wanting to make sure I always have a firm grasp of where I'm supposed to go and what I'm supposed to do next in a game, I still believe that there should be some reward and sense of accomplishment for just exploring, as that is something that many people still like to do.

Fast travel is an amazing addition, letting you quickly travel to any place you've been to before, from anywhere in the world, so long as you aren't near enemies or in an area where you shouldn't be able to do so. Some may argue that it ruins the size of the world by being able to do that, but very rarely do I want to spend 20-30 minutes trekking back to a town just to buy or sell something. I get a good enough idea of the size and scope of the world as I am uncovering new places and going new areas. I don't want to be reminded of how big it is when the game tells me I need to go halfway across the map for my next quest, I just want to get back to the action!

Like any good Bethesda RPG, you can customize your character in any number of ways - from hair to shape to stats and abilities - and can play the game multiple different ways and still succeed. I chose to play as a sneaky, small arms type but you could just as easily be a tough, big arms type or a quick, melee weapon fighter (or even a more dialogue and bartering type, although there are parts where combat is difficult if not impossible to avoid). How you interact with the populace and complete missions can effect your karma score, making you and angel or a devil in the eyes of the world and changing how they interact and deal with you in other ways. Maybe as an evil character, good NPCs might be more wary of you or unwilling to co-operate, or as a good player you are showered with gifts and adoration from the ones that you have saved from the harsh realities of the wasteland.

There is nothing terribly fancy that occurs based on your alignment (with a few notable exceptions), and typically it is just another "stat" that you can customize that affects what your character has access to, but the system is well implemented throughout and would make a second playthrough as the opposite type feel and play very different. Unfortunately it is extremely easy to become evil and very difficult and time consuming to go back to good, and occasionally you will perform actions that have consequences you did not expect or intend, but overall it does help make you feel like you are having a real impact on the world around you and the lives you are affecting (for good or ill).

The combat is generally fun and entertaining - especially as you crit and blow off limbs or the like - and the VATS system helps break it up a little bit by letting you aim for weak spots and take down enemies faster. Of course, there is so much to do in the world and so many different places to explore that eventually it can start to feel very repetitive and boring regardless of how fun or interesting it was, especially on enemies to whom you are not well equipped (or built) to handle. For instance, my small arms character had a very difficult time with many of the robotic enemies because few (if any) of my weapons did significant damage to them and they tend to have very large health pools to go with their very high damage resistance. The combat is just no longer very interesting when you have to dump 5-6 entire clips worth of ammunition into something and continuously heal hoping that you can kill it before it kills you. I suppose that, when playing as a character that focused on bigger, more powerful weapons, those types of mobs might not be very tedious, but then you couldn't sneak past many fights like I could, so it seems like every playstyle might have a few aggravating moments to it. Not that 'a few moments' are enough to ruin a 100 hour experience, but they are still worth noting.

Occasionally, combat bugs out and will shoot areas you did not intend or otherwise not perform as expected, but this is a rare (and unfortunate) occurrence that is just one part of a much larger problem the game suffers from: bugs. And I don't mean the radscorpions that hunt you down in game. I mean the "whoops my game froze and I haven't saved in a while", "I'm being attacked but can't see my enemy", " I'm looking for an NPC who hasn't spawned or is walking the wasteland for no apparent reason" kind. You would be hard pressed to play 2-3 hours of the game without running into some kind of bug, although most of them are small and not huge deal breakers. There are enough big ones to really give you a headache, and in fact I stopped playing after nearly 100 hours due to a bug that prevented me from collecting all of the bobble heads, so the game is far from perfect on that. I feel bad even mentioning it, considering what a monumental task it must be to expect someone to actually be able to test, find, and fix every single bug in a game as massive as Fallout 3, but just because I understand the amount of time it would take to find and fix it does not assuage me when I fall victim to one myself. If I had one *real* complaint about the game it would be the number of bugs that still exist, even after all of the patches.

Despite this, the game maintains a very nice level of overall polish that really helps it stand out. The individual portions of the game might not be incredible on their own - the story is good but not exceptional, the voices are well done but the characters are poorly animated, etc - but the way that Bethesda has weaved them all together and just the sheer amount of love and detail that has gone into creating this world is more than enough reason to give this game a shot. Not only does the disc itself have enough content to last you 60+ hours, but there are 5 downloadable expansions that can easily extend the game into the 100 hour range (note: I only downloaded and played Broken Steel, which I thought was very good), and if that's not enough you could always play through again as a different combat style or alignment for an almost completely new experience. If you are the kind of person that hates buying games for a 6 hour campaign only to then shelf it for life, you do not need worry here. This game will be with you a long, long time.

So what are you waiting for? Post Apocalyptic America is calling your name.

Proof that Physics is Phun!

In the past few years I have slowly come to grips with the fact that the video game industry is producing more content than I am capable of actually partaking of. Despite having interest in dozens of new games each year, the physical limitations placed upon me by the flow of time cause me to purchase and really play about 6 or so. This problem is further compounded by used and older game prices falling drastically over time, allowing me to make impulse decisions and purchase games I might not otherwise have purchased simply for the sake of experimentation (I certainly would have not purchased something like The Simpsons at full price, although it ended up being slightly better than expected). What does this mean? Well, it means I'm staring a fall release schedule square in the face, 4 months away from the yearly gift giving extravaganza, a stack of almost 8 games either unbeaten or unplayed across multiple platforms sitting next to me, and many still sitting on store shelves currently tempting me with tales of intrigue and adventure. It's just not fair, I tell you.

But in reality, the person it's not fair for is not me - it's smaller developers. How does an independent developer compete with companies like Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft and Blizzard - not just in quality, but in marketing, visibility and promotion? It was often very hard trying to sell niche games in profitable quantities when the only thing on a gamer's mind was a mutli-million dollar budget, super huge mega-triple-AAA first party title that was coming out soon. It wasn't exactly impossible, but you had to make deals with devils - often getting bigger companies like Activision or Ubisoft to help publish and promote you, at the obvious cost of some independence and profit. Even with a promoter and critical acclaim, many unique titles fell by the wayside due to sheer glut of the market. You always hear stories about these types of games - like Pyschonauts, Okami or Beyond Good and Evil - that get rave reviews but still bomb in the marketplace. Breaking out in the industry is not easy.

Enter: digital distribution. Things like Steam, the Xbox Live Arcade, WiiWare and PSN have helped to dramatically improve and streamline distribution channels to the end consumer. The limited number of potential users (vs. Retail), restrictions on content (file size), and general scope of the game (usually smaller, cheaper titles; possibly episodic) for a time scared away big developers used to the tried and true method of "release to retail at $50/$60 and sell millions". It was a new frontier of delivery and many companies were afraid or just didn't know how to handle the changes to the norm. But it's time like these where little developers willing to take risks and innovate can really shine and become known. And, thus, World of Goo was born. Or Oozed. Or whatever.

Moving on.

It seems likely you've heard of World of Goo by now: the media was in a love affair over the game and it is often touted as the poster child for how digital distribution can be done properly. And, to be fair, rightly so. Like Braid, the story of it's development cycle seems to be something based on a work of fiction instead of real life. That 3 people could collaborate and create a game for as little as $100,000 (as a point of reference, Halo 3 is reported to have cost $30 million to develop, not including marketing/promotion) that could go on to win numerous awards and receive critical praise, wide industry awareness and strong sales is an absolutely astonishing feat. World of Goo has helped to show that Digital Distribution is the savior of unique, niche, or independent titles that otherwise could never make it in the original industry model. But you're not here for a history lesson, are you? You want to know if the game was actually worth the $15. The answer is, unequivocally, yes.

Graphically, do not approach this game thinking you will be partaking in high art, seeing super-realistic-looking environments, or being blown away by special effects. The game looks like it could have been drawn by a child and, by and large, makes no attempts to stun or wow you with effects and colors. But what it lacks in "traditional" graphics, it makes up in spades with atmosphere, simplicity and innovation. The first time you look at World of Goo, it seems very rudimentary. But the game builds upon this very simple base and transports you places and shows you things that will often surprising and intrigue you. Maybe it's the subtle animations of the "characters", the goo that you interact with as you play the game bursting to life. Maybe it is the bizarre and interactive environments, like the frog creature you build a bridge out of, or the green tinted, pixelated backdrops. Whatever it is, World of Goo has ways of grabbing and maintaining your attention in ways that are not standard in the industry, and that makes the final product that much more appealing. It is no where close to the best looking game I've ever played, but that hardly keeps it from being enjoyable to look at.

Where the game truly begins to shine is in it's deceivingly simple but additively challenging gameplay. At it's core, World of Goo is nothing more than your basic, run of the mill physics puzzle: build a structure spanning point A to point B and win. The first few levels hardly deviate from this base, but as you progress with the game new options and new challenges await. New goo balls are added as you progress that drastically alter what you can do in the world and how you go about achieving your goals. Balloon type goo balls help to hold your colossal structures aloft, but perhaps there are now hazards on the ground which must be avoided. Red goo balls are highly flamable, so you have to make sure that you don't get them near any sort of flame or your whole tower will come crumbling down in a ball of fire. There is also goo that detaches and can be reattached to make progressive, "moving" structures, slimey goo that merely hangs off wherever it is attached, goo balls that may be flung as projectiles to new locations... the list goes on and on. Just when you think you've mastered the current set of tools given to you, a new goo type is introduced and you are required to rethink all of your strategies to adapt to this new addition. It really helps to keep the game fresh and new over the course of the five chapters.

That fact alone is probably what sold me on World of Goo being so good. The amount of content available, the variety, and the way it is presented is done very well and keeps you engaged throughout the entire game. It doesn't throw it at you too fast, nor does it hold your hand the entire way (although it does give you hints and tips as you first meet different goo types). Nothing feels forced or awkward; each type is well fleshed out to provide unique challenges that keep gameplay fun. You hardly, if ever, play the same level twice, although it will sometimes ask you to peform similar tasks with new twists. Despite being essentially the same thing over and over again (build tower or bridge, get to pipe, win level), there is so much that changes and alters the world that it always feels different. In a sense, it is like Portal: a simple, unique gameplay element that is aways modified slightly to constantly evolve into newer and better things without feeling stale. But don't worry, World of Goo will give you more play time than Portal.

That's because, not only are there dozens of levels and tons of different goo types, but each level has a specific challenge (called OCD) that is specific to that level. Sometimes it is finishing the level with a large number of extra goo balls. Other times, it's completing the level in a specific amount of time. (Personally, those are the most annoying, because being both quick and accurate on the PC/Wiiware is more aggrivating than it is worth.) And these aren't throw away challenges, either. These are genuinely hard. Heck, many of the levels themselves are exceptionally difficult without going for challenges. OCD is a perfectly appropriate term for people who are dedicated and willing enough to try and earn all the flags. This is not, by any means, an easy task.

To top it off, the game also includes a completely optional sort of "sand box" mode, where you are tasked with taking all of the goo balls you save on each level and build it into as tall of a tower as you possibly can. This is then constantly updated into their online data base, which you can compare against your friends and against other people in the game. It will show you (in the background) people whose towers are just a little bit higher than yours, always taunting you to continue the climb and try to reach that next level of edificial fame. I'm pretty sure that's not a real word, but I like the sound of it so I'm going with it.

Perhaps it's just the engineer in me talking, but all of this together made for a very fun, extremely addictive game that I was able to complete over a span of a few weeks. It is nice to have games like World of Goo, that are very easy to pick up and put down for any length of time while still feeling like you are accomplishing something (that is, if you can drag yourself away from it long enough to put it down). While it does have it's share of frustrations, especially as you build a large tower only to have it topple 5 yards from the goal, there is a way to "go back" a few moves on most levels to prevent yourself from having to start all over. Don't waste them, though, because you eventually run out and do have to start from scratch.

All in all, World of Goo represents the coming of the digital, independent age. It is living proof that a good idea does not need thousands of developers and millions of dollars to be a critical and commercial success. Sure, it didn't make as much as Halo does and it may not sell as many copies as a Mario game, but proves that all it takes is a great idea and a few good people and you can make your way in the industry. The future of digital distriution has never looked so bright.... or gooey. If you have even the slightest interest in this genre, it comes highly recommended.

Bioshock actually shocks me

I'm going to be honest here; when the game first came out, I ignored it. To me it was just another FPS in an already crowded, bloated and generally boring market of games aimed at kids with twitch fingers and appetites for violence and mindless action. I've gone on record stating many times that just about the only FPS I play anymore is the Half Life series, to due it's excellent pacing, puzzles, story, characters and overall polish. When Halo 3 came out - one of the biggest FPS releases since, well, Halo 2 - I only played the last 2 levels because I happened to be at a friends' house when they were finishing it on 4 player. I didn't even play through the whole thing until after a friend in Austin purchased the game and wanted someone to play co-op split screen with. That's right, I don't even own it. And while I do own Team Fortress 2 - a game I actually rather enjoy - I'm just not good enough or interested enough to keep playing an FPS for more than a few days.

Of course, then Bioshock exploded. It was given all sorts of awards and lauded as an incredible, "not to be missed" game. I chalked this up to those who like to talk up games on their favorite system which are not on other, rival systems (even though it is now). I'd heard more hype about Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4 and was not rivited by either, what could this no-name offshoot offer me that these two behemoths did not?

When I received Bioshock for my birthday, then, I was somewhat surprised. I hadn't really mentioned it to anyone, but I suppose when you have a teenager in the family making suggestions on what he'd like to buy someone who plays games, he knows which ones are the big names. After a few months of sitting on the shelves, I took it down to give it a whirl (as a diversion for all the JRPGs I had just finished playing), and I must once again admit that I was terribly, horribly wrong. I seem to be doing this alot lately.

My 'problem' with most FPS's is that they are more well suited for quick-fingered, aggressive thrill seekers than strategic, tactical min/maxers like myself. There's no real numbers, reason, logic or strategy, just run here, shoot stuff, run there, shoot more stuff. Most games that I play (and most enjoy) are turn based and involves lots of numbers, elements, variables, options and calculating. I know that in many FPS's enemies have 'weaknesses' or whatever and that you can master weapons and enemies just as well with brain as with brawn, but overall the genre is composed more of brute force combined with trial and error than not. And while this may, in many respects, be true of the basic core of Bioshock, it is hidden and masked so well that it really did not bother or frustrate me as much as normal.

That may be, of course, because Bioshock is not 'just' and FPS. It is an experience, a world and narrative so rich and engrossing that you perhaps forget yourself in it. It starts off with an intriguing enough beginning, which is a breath of fresh air compared to most "lone man saving the world from destruction" story so typical to the genre (even my beloved Half Life series!). Your plane crash lands and you find yourself in an underwater city, surrounded by sociopaths and lunatics. At this point you are not trying to save anything but yourself, and not only is it a nice change of pace from the norm but also sets itself up well to feed into the rest of the story.

I'll do you a favor and not talk about the story in great detail from here on out, because to do so would ruin pretty much everything that makes the game what it is. Suffice it to say that while you may find the plot predictable you still will not expect it, while you may see characters as shallow you will discover them to be quite deep, and while the place may seem droll and lifeless you'll find plenty of times that you wish it were. The environments suffer from the usual 'too realistic ' nonsense found in most games these days, dark with slightly varying shades of brown and grey, but there is some variety and it all fits surprisingly well together with the theme and atmosphere of the game. Most of the time you will be too busy lost in the incredibly rich atmosphere or frantically running away from that pissed off big daddy to notice (or care) about nit picky things like that anyway. It looks nice and does the game service, in this case that's more than enough.

The number of different 'plasmids' (body altering chemicals) you can make and weapons you can weild keeps most of the combat interesting and gives you strategy and choice when moving forward in the world. Do you take the upgraded shotgun to help with the big daddies or upgrade your pistol to help against splicers? Do you take the hacker plasmids that help against turrets and cameras or do you need the extra health to survive all the enemies? It helps to customize the game in ways not normally seen in shooters and gives an otherwise linear experience a bit more freedom and choice. It also means that you can make the game more stealthy (camo and quiet footsteps combined with a few good wrench-based beatings) or more twitchy (big guns with huge clips and giant explosives) so it caters to your playstyle if you play your cards right. It won't be as tactiacl as Metal Gear nor as run and gun as Halo but it finds a happy medium and gives you the power to play it as you like.

Now a days, most shooters are very short single player experiences and rely on online play to keep you interested (and to keep you from turning around and selling it back to Gamestop). To compare, Halo 3 took me a paltry 6 hours to beat, Call of Duty 4 clocked in at a slightly more impressive 8. Multiplayer? Barely touched either, didn't care. Bioshock has NO multiplayer and doesn't even have co-op (on the 360 anyway) but the 'main' game took me nearly 20 hours to play through. This is not some halfway done attempt at single player to put a bullet point on the box of a mostly multiplayer focused game. It will take you a few days to beat (or, if you go at my pace, about a month) and won't leave you feeling like you were shortchanged. Aside from a *few* uses of the feindishly evil backtracking parts (i.e. make the game longer on the cheap), it's new and interesting at every turn and, assuming you can keep going without being creeped out by the characters and story, keeps you coming back for me. For those who have mastered the game I'm sure you can plow through it faster, but harder difficulty settings and special 'survivor' modes on the PS3 add even more to its length and replayability.

It's not all roses, of course, but it's hard to think of many things that are actually "bad" about this game. Hacking is cool at first but when every room has 2 cameras, 3 turrets, 4 vendors and a safe it gets old REALLY fast. On some of the easier difficulty levels you will probably end up just buying autohacks, buying them out, destroying them, or just plain ignoring them. It's not that the minigame itself is poorly designed (it's actually quite fun when it becomes semi-challenging), it's the fact that you are spending 30 minutes clearing a room of hackable things only to have to do it all over again 5 minutes later that it starts to get annoying. If you do enough research you can auto hack some of them by that point it's too little too late and a drop in the bucket compared to what you've done so far.... and what you have left that still has to be done. I can only imagine how much more annoying it must be on the harder difficulties, where you don't have the cash to burn or the ammo to waste on these foolish things.

Speaking of bots and cameras, some of them are in the weirdest or most annoying places - often to disasterous (or frustrating) consequences. I found myself the unwanted recepient of a bot swarm a few too many times playing through the game, usually because I stepped around some corner and directly into the line of sight of a camera that I had no idea was there, only to be completely out of luck. Add the fact that you must then run to some 'security bot deactivate' switch - which could be so far away from your current position that you might as well just fight them off and wait it out - equals to a minute of annoying, flying mechanical demons that like to come from nowhere and aren't very happy with you. Usually it's not a problem - cameras give off light that's pretty easy to see as it moves along the otherwise dark and uninteresting metallic grey interior - but when you think you are being careful or cautious and STILL get caught it's no longer a gameplay mechanic, it's now a frustration mechanic. Considering the list of good things about this title, though, these are really just some unfair nit-pickings and are no reason whatsoever to not give this game a fair shake.

Overall, the one thing you can say about the game is that it delivers. It took the single player aspect of the first person shooter, gave it a unique twist, threw in and incredible story and a very well designed locale and just lets you go to town. It even gives you a fair amount of freedom for a game that is otherwise a purely linear experience. It may not play or even handle any different than your normal FPS, but honestly that is not the genre's problem. It doesn't need a new gimmick, it needs people with decent ideas and the ability to deliver them. Bioshock may only be good because it is a refreshing change in an otherwise stale and overharvested genre, but sometimes that's all it takes to make a masterpiece. And believe me when I say.... they have.

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With Christmas comes new games, and that means more things to review. I have 10+ games practically unopened and several more in various states of completion, so I expect this list to grow MUCH faster than I can possibly keep up with it. Well, than I choose to keep up with it, anyway. At least the first half of this year will cool off a bit, I'm not even really looking foward to anything (that I know of) until Resident Evil 5 hits in march, which gives me a good bit of time to work through my back catalogue.

Currently playing:
WoW:WotLK (PC)
Ace Attorney: Apollo Justice (DS)
Professor Layton and the Curious Villiage (DS)
Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn (Wii)
Lost Odyssey (360)
Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts (360)
Fable II (360)

What should be next (no particular order):
The World Ends With You (DS)
Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (DS)
Spore (PC)
Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced 2 (DS)
Rock Band 2 (360)
Banjo Kazooie (XBLA)