Vague inspiration

Nothing like flashes of motivation to resurrect forgotten blogs. This is true both for this, and Bigheadmode, which burned very brightly for a very short amount of time. We did bite off more than we could chew, but it’s not completely dead yet! We briefly discussed making it just a podcast, by which I mean Nick pitched the idea and the rest of us said, “OK.”

With PAX coming up in a month, I needed some place to deposit all my excitement both pre- and post-show, and here’s the place to do it. I’m a bit rusty on writing in the blog style; all I’ve written in the last six months has been fiction (look at me, I’m a writer, I like to puff out my chest). Also, note the semicolon. Very professional.

Concerts, movies, and general things are also still up for discussion. I’ve gotten in to the habit of recounting the day and what tomorrow will bring every night before bed, but that doesn’t help me be better at words (clearly something I need practice with). A blorg-o-blog will help me multitask! Hooray!

Finally, the title of this post is a reference to a god-awful music page on MySpace, and I really wish I could remember the guy’s name, but it eludes me. Assuming he still has it up. He had a song called “Vague Inspiration”, which was just as confusing as it sounds. What kind of inspiration is vague? Is he inspired, but doesn’t know what by? Or is he just half-heartedly inspired? At the end of the song, he encourages us to all find our own vague inspiration, so there is a message behind it. That’s what we’re led to believe, at least. I doubt there’s anything to it at all, apart from a name that sounded just conflicted enough to fit in with the disco keyboard and monotone singing.

New site is live!

So when I said that you’d know when other people knew, I lied. There are about 100 or so people that know, but being fashionably late to the party is always acceptable. Big Head Mode is the super secret project in question. Written by myself and fellow game nerds Corey Greenhawk, Nick Snyder and Chris Fabugais, the site went live a few weeks ago, and while we’re trying to update it as often as possible, we’re still in that initial stage of dragging our feet. Different features are being planned, there are talks of adding more people to work on it, podcasts are being recorded. We didn’t bite off more than we can chew, it’s just an awfully big bite of very chewy food.

I’m doing a terrible job of promoting it, but bookmark it and visit regularly, I think you’ll like what’s there.

Pertaining to pinatas and the future of this site

The first Viva Pinata game was released just under two years ago, to mixed reviews and low sales figures. Critics cited confusion as to exactly what its targeted demographic was. It’s visuals and theme was very Saturday morning cartooney, yet the gameplay was pretty complex, so much so that the ten year olds who got it were probably frustrated when they just could not get their Raisants and Buzzlegums to stop fighting.

So now we have the sequel, Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise, and much remains the same. The visuals this time around seem to be even brighter than before, which is hard to believe considering playing the first was like looking at the sun. Pinatas appear more often as well, and have less demanding requirements for them to stay in the garden.

The biggest change lies in the inclusion of two new areas, the Dessert Desert and the Pinartic, neither of which you can start a garden in. Instead, these areas allow you to capture pinatas that wouldn’t appear in your normal Central Garden. For instance, to obtain a Sweetle, after traveling to the Dessert Desert, you must lay down a trap and put some bait on it, attracting and then capturing the Sweetle. They can then be brought back to the regular garden and tended to like any other pinata.

Other new features include a “Just For Fun” sandbox mode (with an infinite amount of gold, access to all tools, and more rapid pinata appearances) and a co-operative system where up to three other players can assist the main gardener with basic gardening tasks, such as watering plants, directing pinatas around, or selling unnecessary items.

Now, to the second part of the post’s title. Things are underway which might render parts of this blog obsolete, or at least not as tended to. These things are not ready to be revealed, but rest assured, when the six of you find out, at least two will be interested. When I know, you’ll know. Well, that’s not true, I do know and you don’t. When other people know, you will as well. There, that’s better.

Civ Rev, followed by Vin Diesel

I’ve gotten flak in the past for liking the Civilization games, mostly about it being turn-based, and therefore boring. In fact, one of the chief reasons I want to get an actual PC is to play Civ IV (it’s available on Mac, but reviews on Amazon all mention it’s crashing problems). I had no idea there was a new one (Civilization Revolution) in the making for consoles until I saw the demo, which I played more than a demo should be played. Then it came out. And I didn’t buy it.

Until now, when long hours in a powerless gatehouse demanded more use of my DS. And what better way to lose a chunk of the day? Civ Rev on DS is everything I need it to be. At launch, reviews criticized it for shortening game length to a few hours, yet providing no save system, requiring a game to be finished in one sitting. The portable version doesn’t have that problem, since thinking that someone will be playing their DS for five hours in a row every time they turn it on is outrageous. There’s nothing lost in the transition from big to small screen, save for graphics quality, but that’s to be expected.

The only issue I have with it is the difficulty associated with opening negotiations with opposing civilizations. There’s no clear menu system, and the only way I ever found to start talks was to march your troops into an ally’s territory, prompting a “What the shit are you doing?” message from your foreign adviser.

Smoothly transitioning, we could ask the same question of Mathieu Kassovitz, director of Babylon A.D. Here’s a movie that has Vin Diesel looking like Pitch Black Vin Diesel. A mercenary who just wants some money and doesn’t care how he gets it? That’s the only role he should be playing these days. But something happened along the way. Maybe it was the director of Gothika being in charge, that’s just a guess.

Plot twists contradicted things that happened earlier, or at least were questionably sincere, given some character’s earlier motives. For instance, Vin Diesel’s character hates having to deal with the girl he’s in charge of smuggling, along with her adoptive mother. But about halfway through, after some “heartfelt” talks, he’s laughing and drinking with them in the Arctic Circle. His entire dark, brooding mood is shattered, and their dislike of him is equally whisked away. Not to mention the scene at the end reminded me all too much of The Pacifier.

Help a brother out.

Not me. This guy.

That’s Andrew Zimmer, known to the internet as MagicSwordKing, and his blog, The Chaos Fold, has recently asploded with hits, enough to inspire him to create a new website to further internet evolution. Or maybe set it back!

The guy’s a talented writer, and if I can give a little boost to get him noticed by some people in suits with checkbooks in their pockets, then dammit, I’m going to.

PAX: The Panels and The Pictures

I’m rolling the last parts of my PAX extravaganza into one, since I only went to one genuine panel, that being “Game Criticism and Old Games Journalism”. The pictures I got of it are pretty low quality, I was seated about halfway back in a surprisingly crowded room.

Seated from left to right, that’s Chris Kohler from Game|Life , Gus Mastrapa from The A.V. Club, and Karen Chu, formerly of 1UP. Not pictured on Karen’s left is Patrick Klepek from MTV’s Multiplayer blog.

Kohler was kind enough to put up the majority of the panel’s audio, save for the Q&A session. Although, as I recall, most of the questions were just clarifications on points already made, so you’re not missing out on much.

I took a lot from the session, mostly pointers on how to stay honest in reviews and how to shake off angry forum trolls.

The only other panels I attended was the keynote speech by Ken Levine, of Bioshock fame, and the 1UP Yours Live session. I’m sure the audio for Ken’s speech will be around soon enough, so keep your eyes peeled. 1UP Yours is already out, grab it from iTunes or check the two-part video.

As for the pictures, there’s not a whole lot to see, in that I didn’t take many, and most of the ones I have are not very pleasant to look at. Here’s the photobucket page with them (along with screens documenting my adventures in WoW and Halo 3), but there are a few I’m especially fond of.

Patrick Klepek playing Rock Band 2

Karen Chu and Chris Kohler playing “Give It Away”

Following the autograph, there were pictures to be had with Felicia Day

I had meant to post a few from 1UP Yours, but somehow those are magically larger than the rest to the point of being cut off.

So that’s that, I don’t have anything more to report from Seattle. I got a few T-shirts, but no noteworthy swag. I guess it’s back to regular updates now. /sigh

PAX: The Games

I didn’t hit the show floor until Saturday, but in the two days I was able to walk around it, I got play time with every game I wanted to, save for Left 4 Dead (holy God, those lines were long) and Mirror’s Edge. Word of mouth got around with that one, and the lines got longer every day, until they spilled over into the Fallout 3 booth. I’m going to practice what Kohler told me about writing tiny, tiny reviews, since writing everything I want to say about the nine games I played would be way too long. Well, except for Fallout, which was too hard to edit down.

Fallout 3
Having not played the previous Fallout games, but a fan of Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls series, I came into the Fallout booth with a strange mix of confusion and a head full of hype, the latter of which was well deserved. It was the longest demo I played, lasting for 15 minutes or until you died. I didn’t make it the 15 minutes.

I opted to go in a different direction than the people who played before me, who all went into an elementary school to the left of where the demo started. To the right was a broken highway and some rocks. It didn’t look as exciting as the town, but I wanted to see something new after watching 45 minutes of dark classrooms. One of the perks of Fallout 3 is that, unlike Oblivion, the game doesn’t scale to your level. It’s not possible to play straight through the main storyline, or stumble upon a set of ruins and run through them with no trouble. I found out about the ruins one the hard way. After following the road for a bit, I strolled into an intersection with three enemies, one of which had a flamethrower. This was the end of my demo. There’s a feature in the combat called VATS, and it allows you to hit the right bumper (the demo was on the 360) and pick which area of the enemy you want to shoot at, allowing you to disarm them or make them limp around, or just plain shoot them in the head. It’s entirely optional, so the game can be played as a straight up shooter.

LittleBigPlanet
This would be the reason I buy a PS3. I’m still surprised that something like this is coming from Sony, but now I’m more jealous than anything. The controls consist of two buttons, the level I played was actually difficult, the minigame was a blast, even the guy running the booth was fun to talk to, and he’s the US producer for the game. If only Sony would keep the price of PS3s down instead of lowering it only to phase out an old version of the system.

Fable 2
It’s more of the same, but that’s not a bad thing. The demo was a co-op one played on the same screen, which I didn’t know was possible. A glittery golden trail guides you to the next point in the story, but it’s smart enough that if you wander off the beaten path a ways, it disappears, so it won’t nag you. The one-button combat mechanic is easy to pick up and deep enough that it allows for some creativity. The only concern I have is for the linearity of it. Hopefully only the demo has tiny, straight paths with no open field in sight.

Guitar Hero: World Tour
It’s not Rock Band 2. When I say that, I’m not implying that it’s not as good, I simply mean that, despite being essentially the same, it’s not. The drums, for instance, feel better, and now a multi-colored bar appears on the guitar and bass parts, signifying the need to strum without hitting any buttons. There’s also a beginner mode now, which I only saw in use on the drums, which eliminates the individual notes, just requiring you to hit anything in time. On the vocals, there’s a helpful track that shows how much higher the next note is, allowing you to hum until you’ve got an idea of what pitch to sing before you sing it.

Resistance 2
Only the multiplayer was playable, and that wasn’t really anything remarkable. In fact, I don’t think I would have remembered playing it were it not for the T-shirt I got afterwards. Something about the analog sticks being so close together and right next to each other was just uncomfortable. I didn’t notice this much with the PS2, but I never played a shooter on that either. This is not my reason to get a PS3.

Legendary
Turok with werewolves, this felt like a good idea executed poorly. I make the Turok reference because it featured extended sections of bad first-person platforming. The idea of having to kill something in order to heal yourself is refreshing, as you’re forced to seek out enemies in order to survive, instead of sneaking around in search of health packs. Plus it’s brutal to cut off a werewolf’s head with your ax to release it’s magic healing dust.

Mushroom Men
This is the one game I can say I genuinely hated. The trailer I saw before the keynote played up the spore powers, but I hardly used any of them, only briefly picking up a baseball and dropping it again, as there was no logical way to throw it. The platforming was awkward, the camera was troublesome, and the world was two shades of brown. If this is supposed to be one of the games to save the Wii’s core audience, we’re in trouble.

Lock’s Quest
A strange combination of Desktop Tower Defense and Zelda, this picked up steam as the show went on with it’s much talked about hourish demo, which takes place in a tiny village under siege by robots. You’re tasked with building walls, gates and turrets to stop the invaders, along with fighting some yourself. Battles begin with a build phase, where you set everything up and repair structures damaged in the previous fight, if you haven’t already done that during it. If you have designs for new items, this is also where you build them. After this is done, the battle phase beings, with enemies spawning in predetermined locations and throwing themselves at your defenses in an attempt to overtake a single point on the map. The story was barely touched on, but it’s very good. It comes out next week.

Echochrome
Yes, I know it’s out, but I don’t own a PSP, so I tried it at the show. It’s not easy to wrap your head around the concept, but it’s fun to try. Rather than give my limited take on it, read a couple reviews.

Those were the only games I played, but I watched a lot of Left 4 Dead, Project Origin, and Starcraft 2, all of which look very promising. I can tell I’ll be losing hours and hours to Left 4 Dead.

PAX: The General

I’m well rested after the red-eye flight back, which must have been at least 1/3 PAX attendees. The guy next to me was a bungie.net community member, I went through security with someone in media from Atlanta (forgot to ask the publication), and there were three or four conversations going on in the terminal about games people played and panels they went to.

So I’m ready to say there could have been no better way to end the summer than the three day stand-in-line party that is the Penny Arcade Expo. Meeting my fellow CQYers wasn’t as strange and awkward as I imagined. I met some press at the event, most notably Chris Kohler of Game|Life fame, who told me about writing 50 word reviews and sat next to me at lunch on Saturday (bestill my nerd heart).

All in all, it was a crazy weekend stuffed with mostly awesome games, criticisms from Felicia Day on my unpreparedness at The Guild booth, and being the target of a birthday party dare card, resulting in a messy smooch with the newly 21, but a few hours drunk, birthday girl.

Pictures and impressions on the way!

Jedis and airplanes.

The Force Unleashed demo is out and I strongly encourage everyone who can to go give it a try. The idea of Darth Vader having a secret apprentice is so cool I can’t believe it hasn’t been done before. The combat is that perfect blend of simple and complex, where it’s easy to run around hitting people with your lightsaber, but if you want to delve into the system more, a few more button presses channels lighting through it, or launches storm troopers into the air.

The environments seem for the most part to be entirely interactable, and while that’s not officially a word from what I can tell, it does mean that it’s possible to bend an overhanging steel bar in such a way that a passing TIE fighter will hit it and explode. I know next to nothing about the story, although from the trailer at the end of the very brief demo, you’ll go to a few different places and wear some different colored robes. All this only makes me want that KoToR MMO even more.

Aside from that, PAX is coming up in just a few days. Here’s hoping I don’t get sick on the plane. I’ve got a rough idea of which panels I want to see, the ones I’m most looking forward to being on Saturday.

Friday:
4:30-5:30 – Keynote
6:30-7:30 – 1Up Yours Live

Saturday
12:00-1:00 – Hal Haplin and Geoff Keighley
1:30-2:30 – Game Criticism and Old Game Journalism

Sunday:
11:30 – 12:30 – The Wil Wheaton Panel!
2:30 – 3:30 – Spore

The hours in between will be spent wandering the show floor, playing tiny pieces of games I’ll have to wait months to play again. The concert on Friday night has a solid lineup as well, including Jonathon Coulton and Freezepop.

I’m looking forward to the whole thing, though it will certainly be surreal to actually meet my fellow CQYers after a year of playing with them, then proceeding to share a hotel room with them, maybe even a bed, depending on how /roll goes. My theories on the anti-spooning pillow will be field tested for the second time, hopefully with similar results to last time, that being that it does, as intended, stop potential spooning.

I right stuff, write?

Apologies to my two readers out there for the lack of updates. I’d think of a reasonable excuse, but in reality I just forgot that this existed. Which is really bad, considering I missed the entirety of E3. How about that Nintendo conference?

So let’s talk about Too Human while we’re here.

If you played the demo at all (which should be a good amount of people, considering it was the seventh most played thing on Xbox Live at one point), you got a great idea of what the game is all about. Point the right stick in the direction of some robots, and pick up the stuff they drop when they’re dead. It’s clear that Silicon Knights was really shooting for a “Diablo-on-consoles” sort of thing, and they did it well, or at the very least better than any one has in recent memory.

Despite mediocre scores (C- from 1UP, and a 68 on metacritic at the time of this posting), I expect it to still sell well, thanks in no small part to the hype its built up over the better part of a decade during its development. There’s a vocal part of the gaming community (/wave NeoGAF) who won’t buy it simply because the man behind it, Denis Dyack, has become so closely tied to the project that anything he says apparently hurts the game. Let me soothe those worried few by saying that he hasn’t hidden any subliminal messages about a one console future in the game, so you can safely check it out.

To the game itself, it plays well. The controls take some getting used to, or rather, it take time to relax your button mashing thumb. Honestly, thinking about going back to button presses for every attack is just uncomfortable. Sure, it dumbs down the combat, much the way two-stick shooters have dumbed down the arcade shooter genre, but it’s nice to be able to sit back and watch Baldur smash through some robots with a hammer. The RPG elements are also toned down, such that the talent trees for each class aren’t too diverse from each other, and even converge at the end, so the only real benefits from each is how your spider behaves, as well as the effect of your battle cry.

Hopefully the story picks up towards the end (I’m in the final act) enough to warrant this being called a trilogy and not just Too Humans 1-3.