Pressing Buttons

Zombies have become too cool

Zombies and video games go hand in hand. Of course, I'm sure that were I writing about soap, I'd say that it went hand in hand with our favourite past time. But just stick with me here.

While it's hard for me to pin down when I first went up against the living dead in a game, it's even harder for me to say when the whole thing started. I'm sure there's some text adventure game out there that begat everything, so we'll leave it be.

What I'm talking about is this bizarre Zombie renaissance we're going through right now. It's as if everyone at the same time figured out that our brain eating friends are cool and hip.

Left4Dead's rise to fame must have something to do with it. What was once a fun little game from Valve has become the new game from Valve, makers of Half Life (you have to say this bit with a big, musle-y voice). It's their big Christmas game, and many a folk are going nuts for it.

So suddenly, despite years of being awesome, Zombies have made a coincidental return to fame? I doubt it.

In both GTA 4 and World of Warcraft, players were turned into walking corpses as Blizzard and Rockstar got into the Halloween spirit. Just announced recently was that Call of Duty: World at War will be bringing along a zombie mode, turning the sincerity of a WWII game on its head and sending it into embarassing directions. When you're trying to pack an emotional punch with a cinematic shooter like the CoD series, don't throw in a zombie infestation mode. Or at least dress it up enough to seperate the two products. Besides, would I rather kill zombie Nazi's with some rusty old gun, or blow up terrorists with modern day smart bombs? For me, the answer is pretty clear.

What else is coming our way? Well there's downloadable titles Zombies!! and Animales de la Muerte, Litle Red Riding Hood's Zombie BBQ, and Dead Rising's Wii port. I'm sure I've already missed a dozen or so, but you get the picture.

When Resident Evil, a series that's succeeded from an established formula, changes its ways and rids itself of the now passe zombie, we need to know that the times have changed.

Let's hope we get over this lack of originality bump by next Halloween. Let's see a Power Rangers spoof in World of Warcraft instead. Or maybe you can dress up in fatigues from competing MMO's, a Conan-looking Dwarf would be pretty swank. and much appreciated by the female dwarf community.

The Goo that's good for you. And that's pretty rare.

Oh my lord, don't ever count on me to rebuild the world's structures should anything happen. I'm likely to be deemed the world's worst engineer.

Don't put any of those fancy designers on the either in our time of need. I need a bridge to get me from A to B, not one that makes me question my existence on the way.

I'm playing World of Goo by 2D Boy, a game where you building structures from one point to another. Sounds like game of the year material, doesn't it? If not, it's because I'm describing it poorly, so let me continue!

Yes, you build structures out of the titular goo, hoping to read your goal with enough goo mucking about that you'll meet the stage's quota and pass on to the next. So if you're given 20 goos, and need 8 to succeed, you can only build something out of 12. The challenge comes from the stage's design, because there's no way the game could let you build without throwing some obstacles in the way. Be it wind, spikes, or rotating gears, the level's are never as easy as them may appear. Most of the challenge come from building your goo towers or bridges at all. Adding some spice to this gaming gumbo is differently coloured, and therefore differently abled, goo. Green goos are able to be put into place and removed at leisure, a trait that others goos don't have. Problem is, if you need to remove a green goo, you better hope it wasn't a load bearing one.

World of Goo is a real charmer. If it's visuals don't grape you by the hair and demand kisses, then it comes down to the gameplay, so you're damned no matter what. I've probably retried stages in this game more than any other, and it's hard to explain what it is that appeals to me. I've given up much faster on easier games, but there's something about building a disaster that compels you to press on. I've gotten to the top of a stage only to be one short of meeting the quota, and I quite happily started over. I never got that one frustrating mission you can't stand, akin to Notorious Level A from any of the Grand Theft Auto games.

I believe I saw in an interview with the creators that they formerly worked for EA. Say what you will about that big, evil, demon-baby of a company, but they know how to make good games. When you play Dead Space, the polish gleens like store's shoe section. I find that same polish in World of Goo. It's just so well constructed and paced. Strewn throughout the levels are signs from the Signmaker, which almost feels like the developer's disembodied "voice". The signs often crack wise, and othertimes go on about something irrelevent. As well, all the goo balls you collect are stored at the World of Goo corporation. Here you can manipulate your goo to build a tower as high as the heavens, a sort of leaderboard you construct yourself. No matter how high I got a cloud bearing the name and nationality of someone who's done just a little better floats by. Aggrevating stuff, but it pushes me further.

So yeah, despite a looming recession, spend $15 (WiiWare) or even $20 (PC) and be the better for it. That meal at East Side Marios can wait. You've got much more important things to do.

Letting the Dead occupy my living Space

Excellent title, or excellentest title? Probably neither.

Ladies and gentlemen, Dead Space is officially a great game. Despite the entire universe proclaiming this to be true for a week or so, I've put my tramp stamp of approval on it.

Let's get my ridiculous reason for loving it so dearly out of the way, considering it is quite silly. In most game, when there's some ammo lying around, it has a certain value to it, say, 10 bullets. If you need one bullet, you'll pick up the whole thing, but only receive one bullet. You don't get a reserve or any such thing. That's a huge problem for me, something that's almost gotten under my skin like a tick. Now, DS does things a little differently. When there's an ammo drop of say, 9 rounds, and you have room for only 3, you'll pick up just that. When you do pick up those three you need, 6 will remain behind. If nothing else is learned from this generation of systems and games, this must be it.

It's been well publicized that I'm the biggest wuss out there. But much like Resident Evil 4, if a game is good enough, there's no way I can say no. Dead Space is scary, and not just in "Good lord, some sort of half scissor half man thing just burst out of that air duct" kind of way. I've literally jumped at my own shadow. I turned around really quickly, and the lighting of the room hit me and the shadow I cast scared the poo out of my colon. The environment you're in sets the mood nicely, as much like Alien, you're alone on a distressed ship. The lights go out and flicker, all the while you hear tiny foot/claw steps scattering around you.

Dead Space escapes the whole "Shoot them in the head or until they're dead" mechanic quite nicely. RE4 tried something unique with Las Plagos and having a monster pop out of a post-head shot body, but really, after one successful headshot, you'd just perform another. The much hyped feature of DS is strategic dismemberment, and it works beautifully. You kill the enemies by disarming them in the literal sense, using your space janitor tools you cut off a bad dude's appendages. When one takes a run at you, shoot it's leg, then it's arm for good measure. It's a treat seeing an enemy scrape his way towards you, only to end in a crunchy boot stomp.

A lot of thought went into this game. A quick click of the right stick beams your path on the ground, but it's not because of poorly designed stages. It's just a quick help tool. If you do decide to brave on without using this feature, you'll probably do better than those that do. It points you in the direction of your objective, but there's lots of side rooms and detours that result in a far greater payout then being a nerd. Sure curiousity killed the cat, but this time the cat has power tools to cut through what attacks it.

While the game is in third person, they do tell a narrative in a way we're really only seen from first person games like BioShock and Half Life. Your character never speaks, and all the story is told from text files, and audio and video clips. Your character has a projector built into his suit, so all incoming transitions play out infront of you. And when i think about it, there's no hud either. There is a pause screen, but you can't access anything that affects the gameplay from it, so there's no real reason to use it unless you do indeed need to pause. This insures that the flow of the game isn't broken by pausing to go into your inventory. In fact, healing yourself is assigned to the Square/X button, so if you're low on health you just press it and watch your spine-o-meter (health bar) rise.

The way the game handles upgrades is excurciating, if only because your decisions become so hard. To upgrade your weapons, you sacrifice a power core. They're scattered throughout the game, but they're not thrown into your lap. You need to scavenge for them, so you never feel safe to just go upgrade crazy. Making your decisions even more difficult is that your weapon and suit upgrade system is presented like a map. You have to start somewhere, but to make your way to other upgrades, you have to use one of your power cores. Problem is, to access a point of interest, it must be parallel to an activated area. So you'll have an upgrade, a blank spot, and another upgrade. To get the second, you must use a power core on the first and the blank space afterwards, which of course nets you nothing. Further complicating things is that there's rooms that require a power core to access. What's inside is a guessing game, so you need to take a lot of risks to get big rewards.

As one of the earlier games to be released as part of the holiday rush, it's easy to get lost in the hype of the much ballyhoed future releases. Please keep your sights on Dead Space. EA's not kidding around with this game, it really is something else. They're taking a big risk with this and Mirror's Edge, but I can promise you that this half of the equation is a huge success. The developer's really achieved something, and everyone should take notice.

Do I talk about WiiWare too much? Well, here I go again

It's arguable that Sony and Microsoft pay little to no mind to their downloadable offerings. Microsoft has definetly  changed their tune this past summer, building up the month of August as one belonging to XBLA, your one stop shop for downloadable content (both Braid and Castle Crashers were released that month). Sony's efforts have been pretty poor, as they rarely try to make a big deal out of their own products. Thursday's come with great content sold over their PSN service, and yet unless you scoured Neogaf or Kotaku, you'd have no real idea of what to look out for.

But hell, at least there's some effort behind their services. Every now and then some elbow grease shows through.

Nintendo on the other hand really needs to toot the horn myself and many others have to constantly commandeer.

I'm being so cynical because I think that over the last few weeks, there's been plenty to talk about on the Wii. While I could go on yet again about how the Wii landed a major coup with Telltale Game's Strong Bad series, I'll spare you....EPISODE TWO HURTS ME SO GOOD.

No. Instead I think it's important to spread the word on Nintendo's Art Style games. When the first Art Style game was released, the first thing to assume was that it was another throwaway WiiWare game. But after some detective work, I found out that Art Style: Orbient was a remake of Orbital, a Game Boy Advance game from Japan. Late in the GBA's life, Nintendo published these games under the Bit Generation name, a label of sorts for games that presented themselves in the simplest of ways. I believe the goal was to show that no matter the appearance, fun is fun. And now with the Art Style line, Nintendo is hoping to do it all over again. And so far so good. Orbient is a lot of fun, and can become a real challenge. As a planet of sorts, you hold down A to draw yourself closer to oncoming planets, while B pushes you away. But due to the pull of these planets, you're always being drawn into their orbits, which can be bad if your planet is much smaller. Simply enough, you want to absorb smaller planets into your own orbit, eventually growing big enough to move onto the next zone. You can see a visual example of whatever the hell I'm talking about, here. The difficulty comes in the layout of the planets within each stage. Developer Skip came up with some devlish stages, but because of the game's simplicity, you always feel that a victory is close by.

Cubello is the more recent of the two, and it's even more interesting. A grid of blocks form around a core, and your goal is to get rid of the excess weight and leave the big cheese (the core) standing alone. By connecting four like coloured blocks together, they fall off and you continue to widdle your way down to the core. There's something about the game's minimalist design that makes it so beautiful. You really feel as if the game was really well thought out. You're only provided with a few blocks when you begin, but as you knock others off, you earn more. Your turn ends when you run out of blocks. I'm probably making it sound really awful, so watch this video and see its splendor, you may even see a condom commercial like I did. As you play, the collection of blocks slowly spins round and round, so sometimes that sweet spot you saw isn't readily available. But you can't sit around waiting either as the grid will make its way closer and closer to the foreground, and then it becomes almost impossible to see anything. Of the two, I highly recommend Cubello. It's just a lot of fun, and I honestly believed the last truly fun matching block game was Meteos. I'm glad I was wrong.

With another Art Style game coming this month, I can only hope this little experiment turns into a success. As much as I love the large adventures we're seeing with titles like Braid and Quest for Booty, I love these tiny experimental games just as much. It's what I hoped for when these three services were launched. All three companies need to promote these titles more, and not count on an internet savvy group of gamers to save the day. There's only so many people that I know. And half of those will even listen to me.

The new Brothers in Arms game that is actually good

Is the Brothers in Arms franchise one of those nutty ones that no one really talks about but plenty enjoy?

It's hard to think of anything that would compare to this situation, as it obviously sells decently enough to warrant a sequel or two. It's just some weird beast that akwardly shows up at times when much more talked about monsters are strutting their stuff.

Ignoring all the rambling, Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway is something I've never played before. But not just in the lame "Yuck, yuck, yuck! It just came out! Of course it's new to me!" kind of way, I mean it's unlike anything I've played before. I should have just said that.

I've never been a fan of commanding a squad from the confines of a controller's D-pad. It just always felt tacked on, especially when you never had a squad from the outset. Most of the time, you couldn't even count on these goons to carry out the job. Even in the ever glorious Half-Life 2 my fellow freedom fighters got lost in the chaos. At one point, my screen displayed a cavalry of two people follwing my lead, unfortunelty they must have been stuck to a tree somewhere, as they weren't anywhere to be found.

But Brothers in Arms (at least this latest installment, I can't quite yet speak for the two previous games) does things so well, it's hard to not stop and take notice. Outside of directing your squad around, it's a pretty fun first person shooter. But it takes plac during World War 2, so I'm sure a lot of people are out their sighing over the fact. Well, get over it, losers. It was kind of a big deal, and if the game's good, who cares. I've also played a lot of futuristic shooters too, and you don't see me or anyone else saying "Ugh, space again?!"

But, by punching down on the old left trigger, the game's camera pulls up a bit, and you now control the blue cursor of doom (for the Nazis at least). With this, you can direct where you want your troops to go, as well as tell them what to do. Place them near a wall, they'll duck for cover. Tell them to lay down surpressing fire on some nubs, and they'll do it with a smile. And here's where the strategy comes in. What you're generally aiming for is the ability to surprise and flank (come around from the outside) the enemy. You place some soldiers and tell them to shoot at the bad guys. A little circle pops up over the enemies heads, and when this turns grey, it means they're too occupied with your buddies to pay any notice to you. So you take yourself (and perhaps another crew with you if available) over to the antagonist's side and lay into them, military style.

It feel great guiding your troops around the map, especially when you obtain various groups. I'm not too far in, but I've already got a rocket launching bunch, as well as my basic grunts. It's pretty great flanking with the rocket launchers, but I'm sure it won't be so easy as I play on.

Considering how successful Gearbox has made this system, I'm surprised no one's stolen it yet. It works swimmingly, and is far more impressive than four choices on a D-pad.

Oh well, at least for the time being I know who to turn to for my tactical shooter fix.

DLC, best served early?

I know that downloadable content is good business. And there ain't no business like good business. Show business is far more cutthroat than you've been lead to believe. No one wants anything to do with that stuff anymore. Not even dying people.

You can't argue with numbers, because they'll cuss you out and say things you haven't even heard before. Guitar Hero and Rock Band are living (in an odd digital way) proof that offering up a steady supply of DLC will line one's coffers quite nicely.

But times, they are a changing as someone once said. I think it was Hideo Kojima or Atsushi Inaba. Somebody had to have said it.

See, for the longest time, DLC would come after a game's release. Well after. Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion's first expansion pack was released a year after it's initial release on the Xbox 360 and PC. But, as time goes on that's become the exception. Downloadable content was no longer a business mechanism used to reinvigorate sales once the game's relevance began to slump. Instead, it was used to support a game from the get go. Saying support gives off the impression that DLC was primarily used positively, but any discussion with most gamers would reveal the opposite to be true. Many came to the conclusion that this quickly released DLC was not material that was picked up off the cutting room floor. Instead, many believed it was content that was purposely omitted for later sale. 

This idea became even more widespread when extra content was seeing release day and date with the retail copy of the game. Soulcalibur IV launched with extra costumes and the like on day one. It was a tiny purchase, but it's highly suspect that this was not intentional.

And today DLC progresses, some would say regresses, even further. EA's upcoming survival horror title, Dead Space, has an extra set of armour available for purchase, 4 days before its release. What makes it sting even more is that thing content is game changing, the armour provides a different experience due to its exclusive abilities.

Everyone knows of pre-ordering a game, but who's ever thought of pre-loading a game with content? Is this a way to get around the critical eyes of those disgusted with day one content? Or possibly this has been done to get money out of those who may just rent the title.

In general, I gladly support DLC. While I favour Burnout Paradise's free content packs, I'm not opposed to paying for something that deserves payment. Warhawk for the PS3 is a great example, there's been three game altering booster packs released, but there's still plenty of people and servers that don't consider them a necessity. But if this trend of insubstantial DLC continues, we'll be buying shells of games before we know it. It's like pre-purchasing a hamburger patty before the bun's eventual release, and I can't stand by it.

The many faces of Noby Noby Boy

So after being quite vocal about his unwillingness to carry on the Katamari Damacy series (it seemed like he even dissapproved on his sequel), a lot of people have been wondering what Keita Takahashi's got up his sleeve.

Not me though, I didn't care much for Katamari Damacy. The throwable stones are to your right.

Well, last year we got a glimpse. It was merely a tech demo, but Takahashi quickly impressed with another quirky as all hell design, one that relied heavily on physics and the cutie-pie factory.

And with Tokyo Game Show beginning to rear is malformed head, we learned a little more about what was once a salami bodied adventure.

If you watch this video, you'll see that Noby Noby Boy has changed significantly since we last saw it. Now it's...well, I don't know exactly what it is. Maybe this is all a ruse too. Maybe Takahashi is really working on those children parks he said he wanted to, and Namco just chooses to drag us along so we buy some other wacko game.

Thing is, I'd probably play whatever it is they're showing us there. It looks like Irritating Stick, except movement is constant, and your stick is less irritating and more pleasant. As it stands, it appears to be a definite PSN release, as a disc based release for that is asking a bit much. Well, unless it's disc based and super cheap. But downloadable titles are all the rage these days, why bother go any other way!

The review that made my world stand still

Nothing upsets me more than a bad review for a game I want.

Having your initial expectations of "How in god's name could this be bad?" turn into "How in god's name could this be that bad?!" is enough to kill a man. I might die from a bad review, did you ever think of that? It's soul-crushingly sad, but true.

For the longest time, I thought the Wii port of the first two Brothers in Arms was nothing short of genius. Take two games that I haven't played, inject their first person controls with the awesome provided by the Wii remote, add in some ugly as all hell box art, and you have a winner.

Despite tons of delays that I attributed to Gearbox working on far too many games at once (at the time it was this, Samba De Amigo, Aliens: Colonial Marines, and Borderlands), I consistently had high hopes for Brothers in Arms: Double Time. For every Nazi I took down in it's future release, I promised I would offer up that many first borns. My girlfriend would understand, it's a video game were talking about. A video game!

But then IGN had to go on and review it. Poorly. Very, very poorly.

I'm still hoping that this is a case of the grumpy writer, and a number of other sources will bounce back with glowing reviews, but it's not likely.

It's going for $30 on Amazon, and at that point, I'm kid of wondering if I can still tolerate it. I found the first game on Steam for $10, but not the second. I'm hoping a few more reviews will make it easier to decide between a purchase and a mental breakdown, but they sure aren't flowing in. 

Well, maybe there are some Heroes after all...

So, despite people wanting you to believe No More Heroes was a complete and utter disapointment in any which way, somebody thought it was good enough to bankroll a sequel. And that person is possibly a body of people, perhaps this group of people combine to form a publisher. And maybe that publisher is Marvelous, a publisher who obviously named themselves quite appropriately.

If you played and beaten No More Heroes, then your ascent into whatever you feel comes after this life is all but assured. As one of those people, I'll pass on the knowledge that NMH hinted at a sequel more than once in it's post-game run-down. So, here it is; No More Heroes: Desperate Struggle. The subtitle seems a bit serious when juxtaposed against the game's odd demeanor, but hell, I'm sure it'll be something ridiculous in the end. Probably about as ridiculous as a lady wearing the latest in Dr. Octopus styled wear.

From what I've read, it's definitely another Wii exclusive. Despite his criticisms, I think Suda knows the Wii quite well, or at the least, motion control. It's funny too, despite how much I loved the first game's fighting controls, it would be interesting to have NMH2 use the MotionPlus to create the Wii's first "true" lightsaber game.

Goichi Suda and Grasshopper Manufacture really have their hands full, and I wonder where this fits into their development cycle. I imagine the Wii/PS3/360/PC survival horror game for EA is at the top of the list, but hopefully Suda can stretch himself thin enough to get this out sooner than later.

Also, I wouldn't be surprised if Marvelous handled the North American release this time around. They seem to be making greater strides in America, teaming up with XSeed Games to publish the upcoming Little King's Story for Wii. Atlus is awesome and all, but the more niche-Japanese publishers we can get, the better.

Lost Odyssey: The breakening

That's right folks, it has become that worthless to me.

I recommend blinking around the ten second mark. No real reason, but you should really give your eyes a break.

This may in fact be the lamest post ever.

Oh, and the bosses in Lost Odyssey are a real pain.