Grand Theft Auto III turns 14 years old this year. The series has grown and evolved quite a bit since then. And yet in all that time, a few problems have lingered. No, I’m not talking about the lame guessing-game approach to mission design. I’m talking about the fact that this is what GTA looks like when you’re driving around:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Grand Theft Simulated Traffic”
Link (YouTube) |
On Metacritic, The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct (which we covered last week) has 38 on metacritic while Dead Island has a score of 80The scores are closer if we go by user reviews, with scores of 2.5 and 6.8, respectively.. This makes no sense to me. Both are mechanically confused and unpolished games about fighting zombies. Is the knife-execution move of Survival Instinct really that much dumber than the high-kick of Dead Island? Don’t they both have about the same desultory approach to dialog and “story”? They both have the same energy drink = healing idea. Both have glitchy unpolished art, although I concede that Dead Island looks technically superior even if it’s artistically on about the same level.
I’m not saying the two games are equal. I’m just curious as to why Dead Island is rated so much higher. And I’m not just talking about review scores. Dead Island was given a larger spotlight, more favorable reviews, and was a current story for longer after release, while Survival Instinct was a passing joke.
Is it because the eye-grabbing trailer give us journalists something to talk about? Is it because Dead Island has more modern graphics? Is it because Survival Instinct is a licensed game and nobody takes those seriously anyway?
Link (YouTube) |
Let’s talk about the stamina meter:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Dead Island EP 2: What Do We Have Here?”
Zombie month continues with Dead Island, a game that isn’t just disappointing, it’s famously disappointing. For a late entry into the zombie craze, that makes this game something extra-special.
Link (YouTube) |
Here is the Dead Island trailer we were discussing at the start of the show. I know the whole discussion of the trailer vs. the game is really familiar territory to anyone who followed Dead Island at release, but it’s pretty hard to discuss this game without the topic coming up. And in case some of my points sound a little familiar, here is the half-assed review I did of the game when it was new.
At the nine minute mark: How can carboard boxes possibly block a fire door and prevent you from using the stairs to exit the building? Since this floor of the hotel is clear of zombies and the outside isn’t, what idiot barricaded us in? What is it about the zombie apocalypse that caused the elevator cables to snap? How did you survive such a huge drop? If the cables did indeed snap, then what brought the elevator to a stop one floor short of the bottom of the shaft and hold it there for a second? What videocamera is our mystrious helper using to see us? How is the videocamera still working when both the power and the elevator have failed? How is it that the still-glowing light fixtures in the elevator aren’t giving off any light?
Around the twelve minute mark: I was complaining about how the game doesn’t explain why you’re immune to zombie-itis, when I should have been complaining about the nonsensical relocation. You lock yourself in a room, get ambushed by a single zombie, and pass out. Then you wake up in a bungalow far from the hotel.
How did a single zombie knock you out in one punch? Why did that zombie not subsequently eat you? How did the other survivors reach you? How did they transport you? Why did they bother? Why did they bring you into their safehouse and lay you out on the bed when you’re obviously covered in bite marks?
(Yes, there’s a tiny bit of a fig leaf on some of this later when it makes it clear that Mr. Radio Guy somehow knew you were immune and asked Sinomoi to come get you, but that raises more questions than it answers. More on that in a minute.)
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Dead Island Ep 1: Oar and Peace”
Quite a few people have been asking me what I think of Galaxy, the new client from Good Old Games. “It’s too soon to tell, but I’m impressed so far,” isn’t long enough to fill an entire column, so I did another round-up of all the other digital distribution platforms and compared them.
In the column I said that UPlay is the new Games for Windows LIVE. Thinking more about it, it seems like UPlay might actually be somehow more useless than GFWL. GFWL purportedly offered some sort of cross-platform play between Windows and Xbox players, and I’ve never heard of UPlay offering anything like that. On the other hand, UPlay doesn’t have quite as many comical failures when trying to do simple things. On the gripping hand, UPlay came out years after GFWL and had every chance in the world to avoid or correct for the failings of its predecessor. And then didn’t.
I am a creature of habit. I don’t like doing new things. But if I do something long enough that it becomes part of my routine, then I hate not doing it. And I find it really irritating when I get pushed off my routine. Some of my habits are so ingrained I’m not even aware of them.
“Taking a nap?” my wife says to me one afternoon last summer.
I stop. Yeah, I guess I am. I just stood up from the computer and I was about to head for the bedroom. But only because I had insomnia last night and it’s just catching up with me now. This isn’t my usual naptime. “Hang on a second,” I say, cocking my head to one side, “How did you know?”
“You just took off your socks. You always do that right before going to sleep.”
“Wow, really? I never noticed that.”
After that exchange I began trying to spot other odd tics and habits of mine, and it turns out they’re innumerable. This is good for all of us, since one of my ingrained habits is running this site. Here is one week of running Twenty Sided:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “One Week”
Link (YouTube) |
We’ve been kind to the game this week. We’ve admired it for what it tried to do. We’ve talked about what the game might have accomplished if it had been given more time and money. We tried to find the good among the bad. But then in the comments someone pointed out that right now, TODAY, Activision is asking FIFTY DOLLARS OF US AMERICAN UNITED STATES OFFICIAL MONEY for this horrendous low-quality cash-in. That’s disgusting, but also mindbogglingly stupid.
Making a zombie game so long after the zombie craze has come and gone is bad. Making a cheap zombie game to cash in on a license is worse. Asking full AAA price is worse still. Doing so when your trailer looks awfulAnd yet is still dishonestly better looking than the actual game. is more worser. Asking full AAA price when the jig is up, everyone knows the game sucks, and there are literally tens of thousands of far better games on the shelves for a fraction of the cost is insane.
In case you’re wondering, Activision published this.
I think we’re going to go through with our plan and make May “Zombie Month”. We’ll see how it goes. Thanks to Chris for putting the time and effort into putting these episodes together.
Just how big IS No Man's Sky? What if you made a map of all of its landmass? How big would it be?
This is it. This is the dumbest cutscene ever created for a AAA game. It's so bad it's simultaneously hilarious and painful. This is "The Room" of video game cutscenes.
As someone who loves Tolkein lore and despises silly MMO quests, this game left me deeply conflicted.
No Man's Sky is a game seemingly engineered to create a cycle of anticipation and disappointment.
Both a celebration and an evisceration of tabletop roleplaying games, by twisting the Lord of the Rings films into a D&D game.
Valve still hasn't admitted it, but the Half-Life franchise is dead. So what made these games so popular anyway?
Why are RPG economies so bad? Why are shopkeepers so mercenary, why are the prices so crazy, and why do you always end up a gazillionaire by the end of the game? Can't we just have a sensible balanced economy?
An attempt to make a good looking cityscape with nothing but simple tricks and a few rectangles of light.
What is this Vulkan stuff? A graphics engine? A game engine? A new flavor of breakfast cereal? And how is it supposed to make PC games better?
Crunch-mode game development isn't good, but sometimes it happens for good reasons.
T w e n t y S i d e d
