Games I Like « Microcosmologist

Posts Tagged ‘Games I Like’

Games I Like: Assassins Creed Brotherhood

2011 - 01.05

Tags: Games I Like, general nerdery, video games
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Games I Like: Assassins Creed Brotherhood

Probably the sweetest part about the series as a whole is its historical fiction. Two main characters you’re interacting with are Leonardo da Vinci and Machiavelli. And you’re running around the coliseum in Rome. Nice! The series is also renown for an impressive continuity between games. For the inquisitive player, there are troves of hidden, secret plotlines to go after and uncover. The overall thrust of the tale is pretty interesting to begin with–it’s a centuries-spanning conspiracy plot about two groups of Illuminati vying to be the power who secretly controls the world.

I’ve played them all and this latest version is the king of the heap. The AC designers have hit their stride and the resulting experience feels more cohesive and polished than ever. Your map is littered with different pursuits to go after, and so far, the game has been set exclusively in Rome, which I’d say is a good thing. I never cared for the wide-open countryside, devoid of things to do. They’ve lowered the number of viewpoints to climb, which is also a good thing. One of the chief complaints about past installments in the series was repetitive gameplay.

There is certainly repetitive gameplay still in here (how many Assassins do I have to recruit?!) but a lot of the repeated elements have been shaken up for variety. Killing the guard commander at a Borgia tower (the main bad guys are called the Borgia) is a challenge you will almost certainly screw up on your first attempt. Each time the setup is slightly different, and you don’t know if he’s going to stand and fight you, or bolt for his panic room at the first sign of trouble. The guy who bolts is actually harder, since he moves quick and you have limited time to get him, with lotsa guards in your face.

The vast majority of the time you’re playing, they turn you loose to explore the city. It’s sandbox action in the 1400s! You can choose what you feel like doing and there’s plenty of options… thief assignments, assassination contracts, shops to renovate, money chests to loot, treasures of Romulus to get, viewpoints to climb, Borgia towers to take over, and so on.

As far as things to complain about, I get very tired of the loading screen, which is a blank empty space that they allow you to run around in. You can at least re-familiarize yourself with the controls while waiting, but there are many places where I wish they played a cool animation instead… for example when you use the secret underground tunnels to get around town, I wish they showed a quick video of Ezio running down the tunnel instead of dumping you into the generic loading screen. And there’s also many missions that have annoying quirks which cause you to die and replay the same section 10 times over because some guard always sees you and you just can’t figure out what they expect you to do.

But loading screens and bang-your-head-against-the-wall sections aside, there’s certainly a lot to explore and love about this latest installment. And as implausible as some of the weapons may seem for their era, I see on Wikipedia that Leonardo actually DID design a tank just like the one in the game! Huh! Well there you have it.

Games I Like: Angry Birds

2010 - 12.31

Tags: gadgets, Games I Like, smartphones, video games
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I think this one’s been done to death in the game world already, so I’ll give it just a brief shout out: Angry Birds. It’s got the 4 basics of a good mobile game: tolerable controls, simplicity, a clean/distinct art style, and bite size levels. Good sound design too. I enjoy the silly ca-caawing of the birds and the oinking of the pigs.

Games I like: Doodle Jump

2010 - 12.27

Tags: gadgets, Games I Like, smartphones, video games
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The first mobile phone game I’ll be giving a nod to in the “Games I Like” series: Doodle Jump.

First off I’d like to comment about mobile games: They say that the iPod Touch and the iPhone have surpassed Nintendo’s handhelds in the size of the userbase. And for a long time people have been heralding them as the new portable gaming machines. Having a 1st gen iPhone I was excited to get in on the action, then very disappointed when I saw the games. Katamari Damacy, a game I loved dearly on the PS3, fell completely flat on the iPhone. Jerky. Slow. Hard to control. Tedious to play. And you’d think this would be a perfect game for tilt controls. In order to get the ball rolling enough, it was necessary to tilt the screen so far that it’s hard to see what you’re even doing. You end up hunched over the phone and leaning your torso way to the side whenever it’s time to make a big turn. I imagine you’d look like an idiot doing this at the bus stop. Super Monkey Ball (and others) suffered the same flaws.

Other games were far worse. Especially irksome to me were the games that had an on-screen d-pad, mimicking old Nintendo controls. FAIL! Not only have we wasted precious screen real estate, but touchscreens are NOT even CLOSE in responsiveness to buttons. It’s like a cruel joke. I really wish Apple would have came out with some gaming accessory that added a d-pad and a few buttons. They would have completely blew up the market, but their form-over-function ideology prevented this. (Apple has never understood gaming anyway.) Well, this is really a whole massive rant unto itself.

So I’ll sidestep that soapbox and segue into what I think makes a good mobile game:
1. Tolerable controls (no fake buttons, no extreme tilt)
2. Simplicity. Above all else.
3. Clean, distinctive art style
4. Playable in bite size installments

Doodle Jump has all of these things, and at it’s core is really an old arcade-style high-score slugfest with a cutesy veneer of hand-drawn art. The objective is simple: go up. Fall off the bottom, you die, just like old 2 player Contra! The Doodler finds powerups to give him a boost (springs, trampolines, propeller hats, and a jetpack) and there’s obstacles to avoid (monsters of various shapes/colors, black holes, UFOs, etc). There’s also a dash of trickery thrown in with the platforms themselves, like moving ones, breakable ones, and ones that explode a few seconds after appearing.

The formula doesn’t change as the game goes on, however as the score gets higher the pressure definitely builds. Getting a very high score demands a high amount of concentration, as the platforms begin moving faster and there are fewer stationary green ones. A big part of it too is the pressure you begin to put on yourself as you watch the score get higher… Don’t F it up!!

The best part is the competitive element. You don’t need to be a veteran analog-stick jockey to pull off a high score on this game–anyone can play it, and with enough desire, beat you. I’m both sheepish about/proud of my long career as a “hardcore” gamer, and I’ve been getting in a score war with my girlfriend, someone who never owned a console.

On my Droid X I initially held the record at 59k, until she took it one day with a dramatic 76! I was like, okay, you’re ON! After failing early on for a few tries, I broke into the high range and almost beat her. At 74k I dropped out on purpose, a dare to her; I knew she could get a much higher score (and I also knew she’d be mad at me for beating her so soon!). She was a bit upset that I lost on purpose, but I said well, I wanted to give you a chance to beat your own record. Aaaand I was right. The next day she put down a whopping 102,140. I’m so proud. I knew she could do it!

The 102 still reigns… for now. I will have to work hard if I want to reach over 100k. There are plenty of random ways to die.

On a final note, I’ll comment that I like the Android version better than the iPhone version. It lacks the dark blue platforms you have to move with your finger, the sections where handwriting tells you to stomp the monsters and the wide number of themes (I never use them anyway), but I think it handles better (though that may be the accelerometers in the Droid X versus a 1st-gen iPhone), I like the Android sounds better (they’re slightly different) and best of all, you don’t have to aim when you shoot! Technically, I know aiming adds another dimension to the game and makes it more of a challenge, but in practice, it just gets tedious. It’s more fun to blast away indiscriminately. After all, this is a mobile game, not Team Fortress.

Games I like: Super Mario Brothers X

2010 - 12.25

Tags: amusement, analog life, Games I Like, general nerdery, nostalgia
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In one sentence: It’s every NES mario and Super Mario World, all combined.

Yes. That’s right. There are plenty of things missing from it, but man, there is a lot here. Every color Yoshi, the Tanooki Suit, Raccoon Tail, every flavor of Goomba and Koopa, Birdo, Hammer Brothers, vegetables, and level art from all of the above. It’s like playing some weird mashed-up version from a dream where they all just blurred together. The overall experience is addictive, incredibly nostalgic, and well, maddeningly difficult. There are different episodes that various level builders have made (did I mention it has a level editor!) but the one that comes with the game by default is incredibly punishing… yet somehow I cannot resist the urge to keep playing. Eventually, you figure out what they want you to do and you win.

It’s like rewinding childhood memories in fast forward. All the different kinds of brick, the music, the strange enemies, the rare power ups like 3-up moons–all these have some association for me, of who I was hanging out with at the different ages I played these various Mario games, and the general feeling just how life felt at the time. It’s a bit like hearing a song you haven’t heard in ages.

If I had some things to pick on with it, my chief complaint would be that there is still a ton of stuff that didn’t make it into the game. The slot machines from M2, the frog suit from M3, the cape from SMW, a ton of assorted music, etc. And there is a bunch of stuff in here that isn’t Mario as well. You can play as Link, for instance. There is a bunch of art from Metroid as well. It’s cool that the people behind it want to pay tribute to those other games , but personally I prefer it when it’s Mario art only. And there are also strange permutations of Mario establishment. Such as the billy gun, a bullet bill cannon that you can pick up and unleash insanity with. And pink, purple, grey, and black yoshis. The pink one spits vegetables. And Ice Mario (pictured above on the green Yoshi) who shoots balls of frozen ice that turn enemies into blocks which can be grabbed or stood upon. Kinda neat!

All in all, if you love mario 1-3, you gotta go play this. It’s free for the pc, so there’s no reason not to.

Microcosmologist

Posts Tagged ‘Games I Like’