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Now that Nintendo and Microsoft have made it much easier to both develop and release video games for their respective consoles there are quite a few indie developers pumping out truly innovative and intriguing new titles. One such game that was recently released is the woefully under marketed “World of Goo.” Anyone who hasn’t seen this particular gem yet owes it to themselves to check it out as soon as possible. Blending cutesy graphics, an awesome soundtrack, addictive gameplay, and a world class physics engine, World of Goo has definitely taken its place as one of the best games to come out in recent memory.
The basic premise of the game is to take balls of goo and use them to build various structures to reach your destination. You might have to build a tower straight up, a bridge across a chasm, or even go around an obstacle like a whirling blade or a pit of spikes. Your structure will topple if you don’t properly consider things like braces, top weight, and in some levels even wind speed. Another level of complexity is added because there are multiple types of goo balls that have different properties. Black goo balls stay stuck wherever you put them, green goo balls can be used repeatedly to construct and destruct your structure however you need to, clear spit goo balls are much more flexible and go farther, and pink goo balls float like balloons so they can be used as anchors or help you get over an obstacle.
The level designs are also uniformly amazing from start to finish. One level might have you building all the way down a chasm to wake up more sleeping goo balls to use and then build all the way back up, while another has you using balloons and spit balls to your advantage in a hurricane to float over a rotating blade. In one level you have a pre-built goo structure which you have to float across a chasm by placing and then quickly removing balloons in a circular fashion.
The only real problems with the game are evident on the Wii version, where the sensitivity of the Wiimote sometimes makes it hard to grab specific objects or causes you to accidently hit a spike when you didn’t mean to. After a couple of rounds of practice it quickly becomes a non-issue though.
World of Goo is available as a download on your PC or directly onto your Nintendo Wii. Check it out, because you will not be disappointed!
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September 22nd 2008 18:50
The Force Unleashed has finally made its debut and it’s time to see if it lives up to the initial hype. For the most part, this is one of the best Star Wars games around and it will probably be awhile before anything better comes around. It’s certainly not without flaws, but overall The Force Unleashed is quite a satisfying experience. The full game is far better than the demo would have indicated, with tons of options, force powers, upgrades, power ups, and more that weren’t even hinted at before. Your Jedi characters uses a “level up” system somewhat similar to Knights of the Old Republic, but without the d20 system trappings. As you progress in “levels” you can either choose new tiers of force powers or upgrade already existing ones. There are a massive number of powers, and most of them are actually useful. Some of them, like Force Punt, are a bit on the silly side and aren’t worth purchasing, but almost all of the others are uniformly awesome. The many varied environments also look much more amazing than the simple star ship interior we saw in the demo. There is also the huge plus of actually getting to play a level as Darth Vader, which doesn’t happen often in Star Wars games.
The cinematic nature of the boss fights is simply second to none. It uses a system similar to what was seen in God of War or Resident Evil 4 where you press specific combinations of buttons to execute movie style attacks that you can’t normally use. Because Jedi wielding amazing force powers in lush environments are involved, they get pretty freaking sweet. The boss designs themselves are top notch as well. Kazdan Paratus, the little Jedi with the mechanical arms, has officially surpassed General Grievous and Bobba Fett as coolest Star Wars character of all time.
Now, on to the not –so-awesome stuff. First off, it has been scientifically proven that Darth Vader never jumps. If the lawful evil dark lord of doom ever needed something that he couldn’t reach, he would use the force to bring it to him. He certainly wouldn’t lower himself to physical exertion to get to something located on a higher level than himself. Yeah, it’s a weird complaint, but it did actually affect the level immersion I felt in the Vader level. Another immersion problem that will probably annoy more people than just me is that the level of realism in the game keeps boomeranging back and forth between extreme and comical. Objects sway in the wind, people grab on to things to save themselves from being thrown of a ship, trees come crashing down when a tie fighter slams into them, and so on. Everything is very detailed and realistic, until an object gets destroyed. Sure, you can slam an enemy into a tree repeatedly until it comes crashing down on top of the rest of the squad of storm troopers, but then the tree literally disappears. What is the point in having repercussions for actions if they just disappear immediately after occurring? It’s like we are back in the SNES days when enemies blinked rapidly and then disappeared after you have dispatched them.
The force powers also could use a bit of tweaking. You can use the force to levitate and throw objects on the up and down and side to side axis, but you can’t rotate them. This is especially frustrating because there is a puzzle that requires you to move objects into specific positions using your force powers, so you have to repeatedly pick them up, move them over, set them down, and pick them up again because you can’t rotate the angle of the object. There is also the annoying fact that you can’t switch between targets when using the force to lift up objects. The game auto-targets what it thinks you are looking at, and it often gets it completely wrong.
Most of these complaints can be overlooked because of how awesome the rest of the game is. Hopefully the developers will learn from the experience and make the next Force Unleashed style game just a bit closer to perfection.
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The newest Star Wars epic hits shelves this month, and from all indications this one is going to be one of the better titles in a series that has had its share of hits and misses. My brother in law has been carefully watching the development of The Force Unleashed at a level that has border lined on complete obsession, so even though I’m not that big a fan of the series or action games in general, I have become rather interested in this game because of its three separate engines that cover things like physics, motion, and character self-preservation.
In general demos seem like a bad idea, as they take people away from the main development of the game, and there is no way to know how much of what is in the demo will actually still be in the game itself. Will the bugs in the demo be present in the game? Will the graphics be of the same quality? Will the controls have changed? Are all of the powers available to the main character on the demo the only ones in the game? Playing a demo really puts too much guess work into the process of deciding which games are worth it and which aren’t. They can serve as a general guideline, but really don’t give any specific information to help in your decision.
With that warning in mind, I did get a chance to play The Force Unleashed demo, and overall it looks like it’s shaping up to be a pretty great game. On a humorous side note, when you download the demo on Xbox Live, the title says “Star Wars: TFU Demo.” This is odd because there is more than enough room on the title bar to have written out “The Force Unleashed,” and it provides some unintentional humor since it seems like they are going for a shortening of the popular internet acronym STFU. Are they trying to say Star Wars: The F*&! Up Demo?
Anyway, on the demo itself. There is a tutorial that shows how to use the force powers so the player doesn’t get frustrated when playing through, and it’s pretty comprehensive yet easy to grasp. The force powers themselves are uniformly awesome, but you could probably play the whole thing through just using the push and pull mechanic and completely ignoring other abilities such as force lightning. There are plenty of things to grab in the environment and throw at enemies, like boxes, droids, other enemies, and even huge TIE fighters.
There are really only two complaints worth raising about the demo. The first is the lack of blood and gore. The game makes a point of focusing on how much damage your light saber can do to anything. If you strike a wall, there will be a permanent gash in that wall. If you hit a droid, it will fly into two pieces. Yet for some reason when you strike a storm trooper or rebel guard with it, they simply get knocked backward and then disappear when they die? It really ruins immersion, and makes the game less believable. I understand the developer’s plight though, as a certain terrible writer who for unknown reasons has millions of dollars and a huge franchise under his control wants to make certain that that franchise never gets out of a PG-13 range. The other issue is rather minor, and may not even be present in the game itself. When you have the character jump in the air, he automatically uses his force powers to keep himself floating if you attack with your light saber, which allows you to remain suspended above the ground to attack large objects or flying things. It would have been nice if there was also an option to do a downward attack, jumping into the air and then striking downwards with the saber to hit an enemy below. The demo ends with a large scale battle between the main character and a contingent of storm troopers backed up by an imperial walker. It’s a fun and challenging battle, and they throw in a mechanic very similar to what the “God of War” series does. Once the boss is reduced to a certain health level, you have to hit a specific combination of buttons on the controller to pull off a finishing move. In this case, cutting the walker completely in half with your light saber.
Overall the demo seems to indicate that The Force Unleashed will probably become the best Star Wars game in recent memory. It’s a shame that the amazing use of force powers couldn’t have been mastered by earlier games. Imagine if Knights of the Old Republic had been this in depth with use of force powers!
Moving away from video games, while I was watching the latest season of Lost (love being able to download them on Xbox Live!) I noticed something rather amusing. In one of the last episodes of this season, when Sun is about to accost Mr. Whidmore about the secrets of the island, there is a brief moment where you can see him in the background talking to some colleagues and you just barely make out the end of their conversation. He very clearly says “Orgasm, thanks!” and then walks away. What could a group of high profile businessman on the street be talking about that ended that way? A secret for the ages I suppose…
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Pretty much anyone who played RPGs during the Super Nintendo days fondly remembers a little number called Chrono Trigger and how it basically blew away any and all competition at the time. It’s very distinctive art direction, interesting pixel art images that used all kinds of neat tricks to make the graphics seem far better that it actually was, compelling storyline, and awesome side quests made it the go to game of the console. There have been a few other games that reference it, like the text based Radical Dreamers, or the sorta but not really sequel Chrono Chross, and the game itself even got a Playstation re-release with a few added Japanese Anime style cut scenes, but in all, Chrono Trigger basically got the shaft and never turned into the franchise that it should have. With the right marketing it really could have been as big or bigger than the Final Fantasy series.
The game wasn’t without its flaws of course, such as a few attempts at humorous dialog that fell flat or were simply too juvenile to be taken seriously, but in defense of the game it did come out back when people felt that games where just for kids. The real thrust of the game was the possibility of finding twelve or more separate endings that were all actually significantly different from one another, and some of them couldn’t be obtained unless you played the game through more than once using the “New Game ” feature. A personal favorite of mine was that if you defeat the big baddie Lavos using the hidden portal at the beginning of the game before the party defeats the Reptites way back in the dinosaur age, the end of the game features all Reptites and no humans, because the party didn’t ever go help the humans overcome their opposing race. Of course, there are all kinds of loopholes there, like how did the party exist in the first place if they didn’t already go back in time and help the humans survive their war with the Reptites, but time travel storylines can’t have perfect resolutions. Another really cool feature of the game was that at one point Chrono is killed, and you don’t have to bring him back from the dead. The game can be finished leaving him in his grave, using only the secondary characters, leading to a very melancholy ending
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Back when the RPG was nowhere near a mainstream phenomena and a 16 bit console was at the top of the food chain, a game called “Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen” was released in the U.S. with little fanfare that meshed together tactical strategy warfare with strong role playing elements. Although it didn’t bring rake in massive amounts of cash or convert hordes of gamers over to role playing fanatics, it has become one of the most beloved Super NES games since that console’s demise, taking absurdly high bids on eBay and seeing countless ROM downloads. While a few aspects of the combat system took flak from internet critics, Ogre Battle still ranks among the top SNES games alongside favorites such as Chrono Trigger or the Final Fantasy series.
Ogre Battle’s art scheme and sprite based graphics are at the top of the many reasons to love the game. Much like Chrono Trigger after it, Ogre Battle uses two distinctly different graphical styles for different areas of the game. When deploying units and sending them across the various areas of the game to liberate cities from the forces of the evil Zetegenian Empire the sprites are simplistic and slightly dumbed down. When engaged in battle, or occupied in dialogue with the games huge number of characters, the graphical style changes completely to a much more advanced style. Each character is beautifully rendered with a bright and lush color scheme. The game came from Japan, so it goes without saying that many of the creatures were ridiculously cute, such as the pixies or angels, but the game knew how to do high fantasy well and made sure the knights seemed adequately chivalrous and the demons were properly menacing
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My last post about Lionheart got me thinking about the tragedy of Black Isle's disbanding and the various modded games that were birthed by fans who figured out how to tinker with the Infinity Engine. In December of 2003 every single member of the Black Isle staff was laid off by Interplay with no forewarning of any kind. While there was never an official statement from Interplay about it, many speculated it was because Interplay was having money problems and was trying to reduce their costs. Although this could not be independently verified, one of the staff members who was laid off claimed that all the V.P.s and the CEO gave themselves huge bonus checks later that month that probably came from the money that would have gone to paying Black Isle's salary. Many of the folks who got canned went on to work for either Troika games, which is also now defunct, or Obsidian Entertainment, which developed Neverwinter Nights 2, Knights of the Old Republic 2, and is now working on an Aliens RPG.
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"Defending the Maligned" spotlights games that get lots of negative press that either don't deserve it, or are simply worth playing despite their flaws. Much like "Skewering Sacred Cows", the segment isn't meant to cause conflict or force anyone to start enjoying a game they don't like; it will just explain the reasons why the game is worth giving a chance.
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There have been a lot more changes to the Dungeons and Dragons game than were expressed in the last post, so in an effort to help people make a more informed decision before deciding whether to switch I'll give an overview of some of the other differences.
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The 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons has been the subject of intense debate since publisher Wizards of the Coast first announced its existence, and the progenitor of enough name calling, flaming, and incomprehensibly dumb arguments to put the recent American Presidential primary to shame. Dungeons and Dragons 4.0 has been out for just over a week now, and there is little sign that all the unpleasantness is going to end anytime soon. There are those who will defend this edition tooth and nail to their last breathe because it's new and takes the game in a direction they like, and then there are the people on the other end of the spectrum who will have an unwavering hatred for it because it changes something they consider critical to their beloved role playing system. The main focus of the argument right now is whether or not fourth edition is conducive to heavy role playing or if it is detrimental to the role playing experience and is focused too heavily on combat.
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If you can name an obscure or out of print role playing game, I've probably got it on my bookshelf. From the old Lord of the Rings Adventure Game box set to Nephilim, the one and only (despite the outcries from many a concerned religious parent to the contrary) role playing game actually based on occult concepts, I've seen it, played it, or spent way too much for it on EBay. One such relatively obscure gem is the off the wall "Paranoia". The game has seen a bit of resurgence in recent years with the release of the newest edition, Paranoia XP in 2004, but on the whole the game isn't nearly as well known as any of the staples of role playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons or Vampire: The Masquerade.
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