Bionic Commando (360) Review

I feel awful that Grin has folded even if Bionic Commando is extremely uneven.

Up front, the best part of the game is arguably the whole point of the game, swinging with your bionic arm. It feels amazing and I take almost no issue with the mechanic. What I do take issue with is the obnoxious radiation and the loading screen you have to suffer through if you venture too far away from the straight line that you have to go down.

Here's a quick run down of the plusses and minuses.

+ Swinging mechanic

+ "Challenges"

Combat is a lot less boring when you try to kill enemies in creative ways to get bonuses. Great example of how to make a game more fun by asking the player to go above and beyond regular combat.

+ Bizarre Dialog

I thought I was crazy when I heard Super Joe telling me to do some crass things with a boss.

- Terrible Dialog

The whole story and dialog was garbage. It got stupidly edgy and I hated the character I was playing. He was just some dumb brute in a constant rage black out. I occaisionally mistook his lines as enemy lines.

- Radiation

The invisible wall of this game was either water or radiation, both of which were really obnoxious. I'd rather just run into an invisible wall and continue exploring.

- Collectibles

A friend pointed out that if you tried to stop and collect any of the collectibles it sucks the fun momentum out of the game. So true, not only were you punished by blue radiation if you explored too much for collectibles, but they're in truly inane spots that had me swinging back and forth to get them. Unlike the combat challenges where I could pursue a challenge as the game continued, either I got a collectible or I had to give up and leave it forever (you can't collect collectibles or accomplish challenges in 'Level Select' mode).

- Polycrafts... or robots

The robots driven by humans were no fun to fight. Taking them down with weapons was not all that much fun. But it was too tough to use any of your bionic arm abilities on them, making the fights frustrating and unstatisfying (I only got to use my 'adrenaline' move on the polycrafts twice).

- Loading

If I walk 2 feet and die, why does it have to reload the whole level again?

All in all, BC was worth the $20 I paid for it new, and I'm sad that Grin won't be around to iterate on the game because I feel the things wrong with the game have very little to do with the basic mechanics and more to do with horrible design decisions. Oh and the ending was kind of awesome.

Political ads in video games

Obama has decided to advertise his campaign in Burnout as well as Madden this year. I don't think I've ever seen advertising used in this way but I don't think it will be very effective on those playing the game itself. I saw a map of how to find the one Obama billboard in burnout and it looks like something that will be effective just because its going to get media coverage from the mainstream media as well as blogger like myself. Personally I don't think its going to give Obama any type of noticeable bump among gamers but its nice to see politicians trying new things to actually go after the youth vote which most do not bother with. Hopefully this will just stay to background stuff that is not too noticeable or something that works itself into the story because if this turns into a trend that ruins the flow or immersion of the game it would be very disappointing.

I love Fable

SO, I just finished Fable for a second time. This is long after I have forgotten what Molyneux hyped Fable to be, so I won't be commenting on how it lives up that. I'm just going to make a pros and cons list to keep this simple and maintain your attention.

Pros:

1. Separate Experience: You would get strength experience, skill experience, and will experience based off of your use of said abilities. It really enforced with me a feeling of working on the strength of my character by getting strength experience through swinging my sword and helped define my character's passing interest in will use by supplying me with a piddly amount of will experience. This made selecting the attributes of my character a more engrossing experience since it was tied to what I was doing.
2. Combat Modifier: I absolutely loved the combat modifier. Basically, the more hits you land on enemies without them hitting you the more your combat modifier increased. This meant that the experience you gathered would be multiplied by that value. This made it so even if I was not in danger of dying during certain encounters, I still had a vested interest in fighting the best way I could. This made every fight interesting for me.
3. Apperance: I loved wearing scary clothes, and rocking scary body modifications, haircuts/tattoos. This made villagers and other people react to me in a funny way since I did overwhelmingly good things.
4. Combat variety: I was a fast slashing ranger that used will to further increase my quick a nimble sword fighting. This was drastically different from my archery focused previous character. This made the game fresh again and I was able to enjoy the whole game a whole other time.
5. Boasts: Before going on a quest, you could make a boast which is basically risking some gold on a challenge to get more gold and renown if you accomplish it. Doing this added more challenge to quests in creative ways that are optional to the player. This made this specific playthrough to me and I got really good at going on quests naked (a popular boast).
6. Renown: I enjoyed having renown in the world and having it reflected in my interactions with people. I liked running around town and showing off my severed balverine head and having everyone cheer. I also enjoyed taking more quests to have more renown. It was overall a cool system and I hope it's improved upon for the sequel.
7. Non cinematic heavy story: I hate sitting passively and watching the TV, I enjoyed the brief cinematics in Fable. If I'm going to spend a lot of time on a game, I want most of that time to be playing it, not watching it.

Cons:

1. Other Heros: Apparently there's this guild of heros in the game.... consisting of 2 heros? You actually see more than 2 heros, yourself and whisper (another hero around your age) but they're only around for no more than 3% of your playtime. You really don't feel like Albion is lorded over by this guild of heros but instead feel like some sort of lone hero, which is highly displeasurable. Not a fan of the lone hero storylines. I prefer there to be other people around.
2. Was this game finished? I know now in retrospect there were other releases of Fable, that apparently fleshed out some of the content. But I wonder if they also fixed some other mechanics. It may be the case that I was too stupid to be able to, but I was unable to cancel a mission. Which is unfortunate because areas are then set up for that mission once you accept it, so a part of town will be teaming with town guards out to kill you when you don't want them to. I just wish there was some better mission management.
3. Loading screens: The areas were tiny and loading times between them. I found it obnoxious to travel anywhere, and I would have actually travelled on foot throughout the world, trading with wandering traders and fighting off bandits if it weren't so frustrating. Hence I used the quick travel more than I probably should have.
4. Prison: Fuck prison, I don't like being in prison and don't like playing a character in prison either. I'm not fucking Tobias Funke, don't make me a frightened prisoner.
5. Shit thats not loading screens but feels like it: When I dug anything up with a shovel it had a mini cut scene that was obnoxious and took longer than I wanted. I hope Fable 2 has little to no loading. PERIOD.

I was going to have an end note, but this is already far too long.

Grinding to progress

Here's an interesting article that gamasutra has that covers a topic that is highly contentious when discussing RPGs of all types. Its got some good food for thought, and I think designing for progress is a precarious line to balance on but ultimately creates the greatest rewards.

Dead Space out tomorrow

As I talked about in a previous review, Dead Space which i have been anticipating will be finally coming out tomorrow. It is available for the PS3 and the Xbox360, and in the days leading up to release some reviews are getting their copies early and attesting to the games horror factor. I love a good horror game like fear, where you don't know whats happening, the game itself in terms of gameplay was not scary but the ambient things going on were what made that game great. You see the little girl walking around or waiting for you up a the top of a ladder only to be gone the next second, all while getting very random and unsettling radio signals. The best example in fear is when you first run into the stalkers, been awhile since i played fear so i think that is what they were called. You went through an office setting without running into an enemy for, at the pace i was taking it, a good five to ten minutes only to run into some of the hardest enemies you'll fight in the game at the end of the sequence. If Dead Space uses its ambience in the same way I will definetly love the game and from what I have heard it passes that test with flying colors, i will be picking up my copy tomorrow if my local store can keep them in stock.