The Gaming Experiment

So a weird thing happened on my way to playing Brütal Legend. My girlfriend ended up wanting to play more than I did.

I was able to play a couple hours before she muscled her way to the controller. She is having a blast, calling it one of the best games she's ever played. I will have to politely disagree. Like I said, I haven't made my way through much of the game, but my first blush is that the writing and voice acting are phenomenal. The game play... not so much. But I will need to dig in a bit more.

The gameplay is a bit clunky, but manageable. However, I find myself rushing through the gameplay to get to the cut scenes. I don't know if that's a good thing to be doing.

Are you playing Brütal Legend? What do you think about it so far?

Scribblenauts is a DS exclusive puzzle game that’s tagline is “Write Anything, Solve Everything”. The premise is fantastic, write a word out, using either the keyboard or the in-game writing recognition (which didn’t work very well) to have the written object to appear and be utilized in the world. The in-game dictionary is enormous, clocking in a more than 20,000 words.

How cool does this premise sound? The game was chosen as Gamespy’s game of E3. I have been really hyped for Scribblenauts for a while too.

Unfortunately for the game, the premise is great, but the execution is not very good.

Positives:

Huge Dictionary – You can’t complain about a dictionary that has more than 20,000

Cool Art style – Maxwell (your character) looks pretty cool, and the style of the puzzles are pretty cool too

No Real Title Screen - This allows you to just have fun with the dictionary in a free-form fashion

Negative:

Controls - This single-handedly killed the game for me. The stylus is used for moving your character as well as interacting with they puzzle, and it fails badly because it's imprecise and sloppy.

Only one real negative so far, but it's a fundamental issue that can't be overlooked. It's really unfortunate, but I will keep at it for a while longer. If my opinion changes, I'll be sure to update the entry.

Are you playing Scribblenauts? Let me know what you think about the game in the comments.

Shadow Complex is an XBLA exclusive game from Chair Entertainment.

I haven't completed the game yet, however, I can already say that this is the best offering on the service to date. It does a lot of things right. The graphics look fantastic, the gameplay is tight and rewarding, and it's the right price.

Pros:

Graphics: The game looks great, some of the cut scenes with facial close ups aren't the best, but for it really looks great otherwise

Gameplay: The gameplay of Shadow Complex is in a 2.5D style however, what makes it different from the Metroidvania style games is that there are enemies in both the background and foreground. Another great aspect of the gameplay is pacing of the game, it isn't a difficult game, however, it rewards you on a regular basis with weapon and suit upgrades.

Price: This feels close to a full-fledged however, it has a low bargain price of $15 or 1200 Microsoft space bucks

Cons:

So far none.

I think that if you have an Xbox, you need to download this game! Let me know in the comments if you've enjoyed the game, and what you think about it so far.

For the experiment this week, I was able to finish up Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars (hopefully there will be a write-up pretty soon), mostly because I have been on a ton of road trips the last couple weeks, and that has been great for my portable gaming.

But I have also been able to sink some time into one of the games that I need to play; Red Faction Guerrilla (RFG), made by Volition. This is one fantastic game, unbelievable really. The setting is Mars, and humans have terraformed and colonized the red planet. But of course, there is an evil corporation (EDF) that is all about money and bringing the hard working people of Mars down. You play Alec Mason, a miner coming from Earth looking for a job to pay the bills, he meets up with his brother, who is part of a resistance group. You're brother is killed by the EDF right in front of your eyes and you vow to not only join the resistance, but to avenge your brother's death.

It's an open world game, like a GTA or Saints Row (Volition's other open world game), on Mars. You have a sledgehammer and an assortment of other weapons, like remote mines, rocket launchers, and assault weapons. There are some main storyline missions, but also some side missions that will give you scrap, the games currency for weapon upgrades. But probably the coolest part of this game is the absolute destruction that you can wreak in the world. You sledgehammer is your friend.

So, I'm about 4 hours in or so, and this is a long game. I've already wreaked damage of over $200 Million, and am having a blast.

If you've played Red Faction, or are playing it, let me know what you think about this one!

This Thursday, a Playstation Network exclusive game, Punisher: No Mercy hit the store and I picked it up. It's $10 and a pretty good value. There is a single player component, but with little replay value. The only reason you would play single player is because it unlocks the first couple weapons, primary, and secondary perks. The story is pretty through away, but allows you to get adjusted to the maps and the weapons.

The crux of the the game is the multiplayer though. There are your standard types, I didn't have any problem finding a game so it looks like the community is big enough to sustain games. There are 8 maps and they have some variety to them.

However, the biggest problem with this game has absolutely nothing to do with the game itself, but rather a multiplayer-centric shooter coming out a week later; Battlefield 1943. BF1943 is a partial remake of the fantastic FPS, Battlefield 1942, with 4 maps remade in a new engine.

I will definitely be picking BF1943 up next week and I'll let you know how it is.

Put your Xbox 360 or PSN gamertag in the comments and we can get a couple matches going.

Two weeks ago or so, I bought the PS3 exclusive inFamous. I still haven’t played inFamous, it’s on my pile, but I did crack it open for the Uncharted 2 multiplayer beta code. The download itself will run you about 1.3G of hard drive space. If you remember, Uncharted was the first game that I completed for this experiment, and I loved it. The beta that was bundled with inFamous has two separate approaches to multiplayer. The two modes are your standard stable of competitive multiplayer (deathmatch, capture the flag), and a co-operative objective based mode.

Right off the bat, this game looks great, the graphics are even better than the first Uncharted. This is in the same aspect as uncharted, a third person view. The options that are provided in the beta are limited, and I hope that more game types will be offered in the final product. I was able to level myself to 10, I didn't notice any perks that were granted, but there were 'Boosters' that were available. They are like boosts to accuracy, or ammo boosts, but I'm sure there will be more variations to the booster system once the game ships in the fall.

The beta comes with 2 competitor multiplayer maps and 2 gameplay variants, Team deathmatch and a capture the flag variant called Plunder. The matches were easy to get into without much waiting in lobbies. There is a party system, but I haven't used it yet. The two maps provided are medium sized that are great for the 5 vs 5 format of the competitive multiplayer. The weapons would be familiar to people who played the last Uncharted. The teams are broken up between Heroes and Villains. On the Heroes side, you can play as Nathan, Sully, Elena, and a couple other characters that are in Uncharted 2. The Villain side are more generic bad guys.

I was able to spend quite a bit of time with the beta and I really enjoyed the pace of the game, respawning is fast and keeps the action going. Also, medals were added, similar to the Halo 3 multiplayer medals like killing 5 players in a row, or committing a melee takedown. Getting these medals help increase your tally for leveling. Team deathmatch was a satisfying iteration of that all too common variant, however, it was the Plunder variance that I really enjoyed. Plunder has you bringing a treasure back to your base, the first to 5 teasure captures, wins. I liked this variant for a couple reasons, especially because it really goes with the story of the game, Nathan is a treasure hunter. But Naughty Dog does add on feature to Plunder that, if used at the right moment, might change capture the flag scenario gameplay for the better. You can actually throw the treasure to help it get to your base a bit faster. It adds an interesting dynamic.

One major problem I have with the beta so far is that the grenades are far too powerful, they are being launched too much and their blast radius is a little too wide. I ended up getting killed more with grenades than with guns. This is exactly what betas are used for, to help balance out the gameplay, and I am confident that Naughty Dog will come through. It was kind of weird because earlier on saturday there was less than 400 people playing, I hope that this isn't any indication of what the Uncharted multiplayer community will look like. Especially that inFamous sold 175,900 copies in may.

The other portion of the beta was a co-operative portion of the game that sits outside of the main story proper. Again, Naughty Dog twists the normal conventions again with three player co-op versus the two player co-op of Gears of War and the 4 player co-op of Halo 3. I only played one round, but it was fun, and if you can get two other people that are willing to work these aspects out, it could be a lot of fun.

I'm going to head back to play some more. Jump on, it's a lot of fun.

After the God of War 3 videos hit the web last week, I went out and bought God of War 2 for the PS2. I am extremely excited for GoW3. I popped GoW2 in and thought i'd talk about my short time with it so far.

For a PS2 game, it looks great. I was worried, I have tried to play a couple older PS2 games on my PS3 and they dont hold up as well as I hoped. The combat is quite fun and Kratos' weapons are a lot of fun to play with. They give you a sense power, like you were once a Greek God.

I'm not too deep into the game yet, however, I think that I'll be sinking in a lot of time into this title.

P.S. I should have week #3 experiment write-up on the site within the next day or so. I'm still not fully certain how I felt about that last one.