jeffmoeller Here's a good overview of the next #SC2 game I thought Zerg was last but I guess it's the next game.

PC Games to Keep an Eye On

12:00am on 17th January 2010; 3 Comments

I could easily list all the games I am looking forward to this year, but I thought I’d instead spotlight the the PC games that I am most interested in playing. I consider the PC to be my main platform for gaming and I thought it had a great 2009 and I hope it is at least as good in 2010.

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Alpha Protocol (Obsidian Entertainment)
I am a pretty big fan of Obsidian and especially Chris Avellone, who I think is among the premier game writers and designers in an industry where writing is typically poor. So it is no surprise that this is one of the games I am looking forward to most this year. For the unaware, Alpha Protocol is being called “The Espionage RPG” and is basically just that, a modern-day spy RPG. There are varying ways to play the game, from a suave James Bond-type to a bust in and kick ass Jason Bourne-type. Originally slated for early 2009 and now having suffered numerous delays, I hope that the extra time publisher Sega has given Obsidian has really helped to give the game the level of polish it deserves.

BioShock 2 (2K Marin)
This one shouldn’t take too much explaining why I am excited for it, with the first game being one of my favorite games of all time. I actually do not expect this to be as good as the first, but I’m certainly willing to be pleasantly surprised. I expect for the overall gameplay to be more polished, but perhaps the story and characters to not be as engaging. The multiplayer mode sounds great too which I have written on before.

Fallout: New Vegas (Obsidian Entertainment)
Another Obsidian-developed title, there is not much info widely available about this game yet other than it will use the Gamebryo engine (see Oblivion and Fallout 3) and it will not be related to the Fallout 3 story, merely take place in the same universe. Having recently played and beaten Fallout 3 for the first time, and this coming from one of my favorite studios, even the little info we have on this is enough to make me excited, and it is potentially the game I am looking forward to most in 2010.

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty (Blizzard Entertainment)
Like BioShock 2, this should need no explanation for why it is on this short list. Blizzard has been working on this game for years now and I expect it to be one of the most polished experiences of 2010. I have probably not played the original StarCraft for 10 years so it is definitely time.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II Chaos Rising (Relic Entertainment)
The first expansion to 2009’s Dawn of War II, Chaos Rising will add an entirely new campaign, continuing the story of the Blood Ravens Space Marines, this time in their fight against the Chaos Space Marines. I am already a Warhammer fan, having played the tabletop game for more than several years in the past and I just loved this game’s main campaign. The game combines RPG and RTS elements (loot drops, fixed number of squads with no base building) to make for a truly unique strategy experience.

So there you have the games on PC I want to get my hands on most this year. Do you share the same anticipation or are your top upcoming games completely different?


My Top 10 Games of 2009

3:56am on 24th December 2009; 1 Comment

I am a sucker for making and reading lists so of course I had to make my top 10 games of 2009 list. Let me know what you think of my picks.

10. Braid (Number None, PC)
Amazing art style, and fun and addicting puzzles. Couldn’t leave this off the list. The PC version came out in 2009 which is what I played.

9. New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Nintendo, Wii)
I actually don’t care for the art style so much in this game, it just looks very generic to me. But the gameplay, especially when playing with 3 other players is so much fun and there is so much variety to the levels. Definitely a “must-play” for Wii owners.

8. Torchlight (Runic Games, PC)
Ever play Diablo 2? Think that with 3D graphics and WoW’s art style and you have Torchlight. Just one more level…

7. The Beatles: Rock Band (Harmonix, Xbox 360)
Aside from, you know, The Beatles, what separates this game from all the other band-specific music games out there is the amount of polish and the level of uniqueness given to this title. The visuals are amazing, each song has a custom backdrop, and the addition of vocal harmonies really does make this a standout title.

6. Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II (Relic Entertainment, PC)
No base-building + loot drops = a great RTS formula. This game was probably a big risk since it strays so much from what people think of as an RTS game but it was definitely worth it.

5. Assassin’s Creed II (Ubisoft, Xbox 360)
I personally loved the first Assassin’s Creed so this one is a no-brainer for me. Improved mission variety, still the same fun gameplay from the first.

4. Batman: Arkham Asylum (Rocksteady, Xbox 360)
It was tough for me to decide which I enjoyed more, Assassin’s Creed II or Batman, but I think it just came down to the fact that it’s Batman and we’ve never had a Batman game even close to how amazing this is. The brawler aspects are fun but I think the detective and stealth parts are my favorite.

3. Left 4 Dead 2 (Valve, PC)
Too early for a sequel? Definitely not, this game improves upon so much from the first game. I have already played this more than I played L4D1. The only thing I like better from the first game is the characters.

2. Resident Evil 5 (Capcom, Xbox 360)
Probably an unpopular pick but I loved almost everything about this game. Resident Evil 4 was my first exposure to the series and I flat out loved it so it’s no surprise that I loved this one as well. One thing about this is to get the full enjoyment out of it, you must play it co-op as I did.

1. Dragon Age: Origins (BioWare, PC)
By far my favorite game this year, I don’t know if I have any real complaints about it other than technical issues. The characters are what really shine though, you actually care about what they think of you and they are just very believable. Definitely a worthy successor to Baldur’s Gate, one of my favorite games.

Honorable Mentions (Listed alphabetically)
Halo 3: ODST (Bungie, Xbox 360)
Mirror’s Edge (DICE, PC)
Tales of Monkey Island (Telltale Games, PC)

Copied from my post at LucasForums.


Halo 3: ODST: Great Halo Game or Greatest Halo Game?

12:36am on 13th October 2009; 2 Comments
halo3odst61

I received my copy of Halo 3: ODST in the mail last week, Bungie’s not-a-sequel but not-an-expansion to Halo 3. I would not say I am a Halo fanboy; I don’t play much online multiplayer and I have barely even played Halo or Halo 2. But I did really enjoy Halo 3 and thought it deserved the generally high review scores it received. A lot of people I encounter on the Internet like to hate on Halo, whether because a lot of 12 year olds play it, it’s the cool thing to hate on, or whatever other reason. I liken Halo on consoles to World of Warcraft on PC: it’s a great game (or in this case games), but the stereotypes give it a bad name. But I digress. I thought Halo 3’s campaign was still really well done and when playing with friends (I don’t come close to matching up with people who play the game online regularly) multiplayer is a blast.

I did not even get into the whole debate about whether ODST was worth the $60 price tag it received. From all the previews I read, it sounded like a good enough experience and that was good enough for me.

So, about the game: it’s great. Since I haven’t played much of Halo or Halo 2, I can’t say whether the campaign is the best, but to me it was an improvement from Halo 3. The game has a hub world which is where you play as Rookie, and takes place at night. When you come across clues for what happened to your squad, you are taken to a flashback sequence and get to play out what happened to them as a different character. While these flashbacks turned out to be the meat of the game, I actually enjoyed the nighttime parts as Rookie best. For me, it was a combination of the environment and the soundtrack. It was also the most different from traditional Halo. There was a lot of exploring and listening to audio logs rather than just constantly killing aliens. While some might say collecting audio logs is just a gimmick, I thought it added a nice element to the story.

That said, remember that it’s still Halo. Don’t go into this expecting a deep and compelling story. Saying the story is better than Halo 3 isn’t saying much. I play Halo games for the gameplay as I think they are the best FPS gameplay on consoles. You’ll see a lot of the same weapons in ODST as you did in Halo 3, but that is hardly a complaint from me. Also, rather than having regenerating health with a shield like Halo 3, you have a health bar with stamina. Your stamina acts like the shield does in Halo 3, and when your stamina is depleted, the screen turns red and you begin to lose health. This further reinforced that you do not play as Master Chief and you have to adjust your gameplay style accordingly.

ODST also contains a great multiplayer mode called Firefight. For this, think Gears of War 2’s Horde mode, where loads of enemies continue to spawn and you try to survive as long as possible while killing them all. This can be played with up to four players co-op which makes it a great experience. It still has some competitive nature as it records who scores the most points on your team but it is not on the same level as Halo 3 deathmatch.

All in all I really like what Bungie did with ODST. They had a very short development cycle and they made the most out of it. It’s great to see they don’t have to rely on Master Chief to make a successful game and it makes me even more excited to see what they have in store for us next with Halo: Reach.


Burned Out

10:39pm on 26th September 2009; 2 Comments
gtaiv_lola

No, I don’t mean over blogging, though obviously I haven’t published anything in a while. A big complaint about a lot of games this generation is that they are too short. $60 for a 6 hour campaign and no multiplayer? That doesn’t seem like a good value. But have you ever thought about it the other way around? If a game has a 6-12 hour campaign, it’s pretty likely that a relatively good percentage of people who buy the game will beat it.

Obviously if I start an RPG, I know what I’m getting myself into. I expect to have to put many hours into the game to get the most out of it. And it’s rare that I find myself frustrated with the gameplay in an RPG, at least the ones I most often play, because it’s very familiar and if things don’t go well you can simply reload. Of course one might become bored with an RPG before the ending, but that is not where I’m going with this. I’ve also had my fair share of MMO experience (WoW) and know all about putting in endless hours and even days (last I checked, my /played time was over 60 days on my main character).

Over the past few weeks, the game I have played the most is Grand Theft Auto IV. I got the game earlier in the year, got to maybe 10-20% completion rate, and didn’t get to play it all summer. I picked it back up and am now quite far in it, probably nearing the end of the main story mode. But each time I boot it up, I find myself taking a break or ending my play session quicker and quicker. The story is excellent, and the overall gameplay is fun, but the frustration that goes along with having to restart a mission completely from the beginning is getting to me. The main problem with this is the lack of a checkpoint system. Let’s look at any of the driving or racing missions. If your target escapes, or you wreck your car, you should start right where the driving part of the mission starts. But instead, as many of you probably know, you have to do everything over. The mission starts like it’s the first time you’ve played it. So when I fail a mission two or three times in a row, I normally just stop playing for a while. I really don’t like to get frustrated from gaming, but with things like this, I can’t help it.

I’ve gotten a little off topic, but where I wanted to go with this was, are games ever too long? In gameplay hours, I have probably logged 20-25 hours into the game. But this does not take into consideration the numerous times I have shut the console off after dying, which easily puts it well over 30 hours. Typically I like it when a game can give me over 20 hours of enjoyment, but I just feel tired of getting frustrated with GTA IV after less than an hour gameplay session, when I could just as easily pop in The Beatles: Rock Band and have a blast. I hope I can eventually beat the main story in the game, and I hope the ending is rewarding as I have really enjoyed following the story. If only some of the more trivial missions had been cut out and I could have been done with the game by now, I’d probably have great things to say. And when I do eventually finish it, I probably will say great things; hell, I already can, the game is damn good. But for now this one is on hold until I am ready to suck it up and power through it.


A Mobile Post

11:10pm on 10th July 2009; Comment

To show off how hip I am, I’m writing this post from my iPod touch. I can actually relate this to videogames too as I have been a bit addicted to lemonade tycoon on the busrides home from work. Definitely a recommended timewaster from the app store. I also recently upgraded my touch to the 16gb 2g so I’m enjoying being able to fit video on as well. Well that’s all I’ve got for this pretty random post.