A small update just to share an awesome site with ya'll. I came across it about two weeks ago, and yes, I've just now gotten around to posting this.
Say hello to Digital Distribution Deals!
It's a blog that keeps track of sales on not just Steam, but Direct2Drive, Good Old Games, and whatever other direct download providers are out there.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
What's the world come to?
(Thanks, Wikipedia!)Intro:
SiN Episodes: Emergence is the follow-up to the Half-Life competitor SiN (and its expansion, Wages of SiN), and much like the continuing adventures of Gordon Freeman, the SiN Episodes were meant to be individualized Source engine-powered chapters following John Blade and his gangly crew at HardCORPS. The series was designed around digital distribution on, what else, Steam.
Originally, this review was written prior to me getting a clear glimpse of the original SiN game (they're packaged together on Steam, don'tchaknow), but having gotten a good look at it, I now intend to compare and contrast the two a bit, since it's relevant. So if some parts of this review seem a bit disjointed...shut up.
Story:
It's 20 minutes into the future and all is not well! A mega-corp called SinTEK is up to no good, creating horrible mutants and injecting people with strange chemicals. John Blade and his partners Jessica Cannon and JC Armack (yeah) must put a stop to SinTEK CEO Elexis Sinclaire's naughty plans. Unfortunately, that bit has to wait because Viktor Radek, a smooth-talking foreigner type is...being evil! And that's more or less the plot of the game.
SiN: Emergence's biggest flaw is the fact that it feels very episodic. Fair warning right now, but you're going to have to put up with lots of Half-Life comparisons during this review, I'm afraid, because the two game series are eerily similar at times. So. Unlike the Half-Life 2 episodes, that are nicely concentrated bites of Half-Lifey goodness, SiN just doesn't feel focused.
The game starts with a cold open. John Blade wakes up on an operating table, and overhead Elexis and Radek jabber about being evil. John's injected with god-knows-what, and is promptly saved by Alyx V...Jessica Cannon, his spunky but lovable sidekick for this outing (who, notably, is voiced by the lovely Jen Taylor, AKA Cortana from Halo and Zoey from Left4Dead). Jessica rapid-fire implies backstory we're not privy too, followed by explaining that there's some sort of big plan, and that Blade has to get moving and meet someone, and all the while John is far too busy blacking out and having visions of Elexis in a bikini to pay attention.
I...um...uh...yeah.This felt like a really odd way to start the game. The game's plot is entirely brand new, not a direct extension of the original SiN's or its expansion pack's, and unlike in Half-Life 2 where the cold open was used to great effect, here it just seems like an excuse to set up the series' main plot device, which was apparently meant to be Blade's injection of god-knows-what. And this is where the game's episodic nature hurts itself - there's no resolution of this plot point at all in the first game (Spoiler alert! Or is that an anti-spoiler?). In fact, it barely seems to come into play at all in the game, despite being one of the main motivations to go after the two eeeevil villains. You spend half the game going after Radek, only for him to tell you he doesn't know anything. And yet he's still who you end up going after for the rest of the game. Gah.
Even worse, Blade barely even has a role in his own game. Once again taking a page out of Half-Life's playbook, John seems to fall into the role of silent observer to the game's events. Yet unlike Gordon Freeman, he's definitely not mute; there are occasional small snippets of dialogue from him. He was much more wisecracking and likeable in the original SiN outing, so this is both odd and disappointing.
I don't want to be too hard on the game here, because it clearly doesn't take itself as seriously as Half-Life, but the plot really doesn't mesh. In lighter games, the story tends to be over the top to match the gameplay, whereas SiN's plot seems to be shooting for Half-Life's complex, layered structure, but puts it right next to big jiggly tits and more classical FPS run-and-gun action.
Graphics and Sound:
Since this is the Source engine, the graphics are yummy, and they run smoothly to boot. The enemy models are lively without being too distracting, though the major NPCs slip towards the uncanny valley. Also Radek has double sideburns and I hate him for it.
Seriously. What a douchebag.The environments are unfortunately...um...familiar. Industrial complexes, warehouses, old canal tunnels, construction sites, docks... They're never outright derivative of Dr. Breen's Happyfuntown (AKA City17), and I'm not exactly complaining, but it stuck out at me. These retread locations do at least have some personality of their own and eventually give way to the more fresh palatial SinTEK highrise.
The sound is good, epecially on the weapons, which have an interesting sound style that for whatever reason I just like. The soundtrack is actually quite rich, if not particularly memorable. Its implementation falls a bit short, though. Basic triggers seem to be used to activate each piece, leading to times where I'd trigger the big fight music, only to go "oh yeah, I need ammo" and go back to the previous rooms to loot some extra bullets with the music blaring at me.
Enemy sound effects are probably the biggest problem. The generic mercenaries of SiN do take a cue from Half-Life 2 and FEAR by using reactive voice clips, such as a soldier calling out when they're the only one left of their squad, and that's great. But basic enemies (and their weapons) otherwise manage to have a very small sound footprint, unlike their distant cousins the Combine. There were actually times where I'd be shot at, couldn't find the shooter, and discovered that he was standing right next to me. The AI compounds this problem, as I'll explain soon.
Gameplay:
SiN: Emergence is...an FPS. The end. Yeah, I know.
There's nothing strictly wrong with SiN's gameplay, but...it has problems.
1) This is going to sound absolutely bizarre, but...the Source Engine. Let me explain. The original SiN ran on a modified version of the Quake 2 engine, which powered its fast and frantic "classical" FPS run-and-gun style, and it did it extremely well for a game of its time.
As much as I love Source to death, it does not do run-and-gun well. Source is appropriate for the methodical shooting/puzzle-solving of Half-Life 2, or the mindbending physics of Portal, but I've never felt a great sense of speed when playing in the engine. Run-and-gun relies on abusably fast movement, and fast-firing guns. SiN Episodes really doesn't have either.
It would be interesting to see how different the game is in Dimension B where SiN Episodes was crafted using the Unreal 2.5 engine. (Also, presumably in Dimension B it went all the way up to Episode 20 or something, before becoming a major motion picture, and then getting a reboot game based on the movie.)
2) Three weapons. Yeah. Three. They're not bad, but there's only three! This could've been alleviated somewhat if their alternate firing modes were true secondary firing modes, but instead their ammo is rare and kept clamped to prevent overuse. The original SiN didn't have that many more (a Heavy Machine Gun and some kinda BFG, in addition at least), but more guns > fewer guns. Since it'd be easy to do so, here's a quick rundown:
- The M90 Magnum. Not really a magnum by my standards, but a surprisingly accurate and powerful pistol. This is your workhorse for about the first third of the game. The secondary fire is a "D.U.A.G (Depleted Uranium Anti – Gen) Round" but it's known to me as the "fuck you" shot, as it will generally one-shot the basic enemies, though the usefulness of this is slightly suspect when a single headshot will usually do the same.
- X-380 Prototype Scattergun. AKA the Shotgun. I find this to be a rather weird weapon. While it does shoot straight (rather than at 45 degree angles), it felt like the pellets from this had a tendency to dodge around a target. And it noticeably lacks any stopping power. When combined with its somewhat slow firing rate and small clip, this makes the Shotgun pretty dangerous to use. It will at least kill the most basic soldiers in one or two shots at close range, but that luxury doesn't last forever. Secondary fire is a shrapnel burst, very similar to the Flak Cannon from Unreal Tournament, but with more emphasis on its ability to ricochet. The usefulness of this is slightly suspect, because bouncing grenades around is hard enough.
- M590 Assault Rifle. The most generic of the weapons. Rapid fire, noticeable recoil, scoped zoom, grenade launcher secondary fire. This basically replaces the other guns for a good portion of the game due to lack of ammo for the others and the need for fast takedown power.
- G50 Incendiary Phosphorus Grenades. I love fire. The only problem I have with these is that they lack weight, leading to easy over-shoots and annoying tendency to bounce around. Therefore, their usefulness is slightly suspect.
3) Lack of health/armor balance. Half-Life 2 had a very well-balanced health and armor system. Barring bad luck or stupidity, there was never really a time where you had to suck it up and try and get past some kind of gauntlet with just 30 health or something equally harsh. In Half-Lfe 2 there were three units of health: 10 HP vials (from enemies, somewhat rare), 25 HP medkits (from crates, common), and 50 HP healing stations (occasional). Armor came in small chunks of 15 or stations that gave 30.
SiN, despite being so Half-Life-ish, throws this away. Health comes in three units: 10 HP vials (from enemies as well as crates, fairly often), 50~ HP (from breaking health canisters), and full 100 HP heals from healing stations (increasingly scarce). While sometimes you get lucky and receive more than one 10 HP vial from a crate, you still never normally get much more than 30 extra health, whereas in Half-Life 2 you almost always get 50. Plus, most of these crates are secrets and therefore are rather well-hidden.
The ability to break open loose health canisters for a boost is dubiously useful. About ninety percent of the time these canisters appear in tandem with an empty healing stations and therefore installing them is worth more health. Of course, they're often lightly hidden as well, but at least the sight of an empty station is a good hint that one is available somewhere. The other obvious problem is that...they're breakable! While I didn't run into this problem too often, it's still possible to accidentally blow up your health for that segment. Also, unlike HL2's medkits, breaking one of these open requires you to stand in the healing vapors for several seconds, which means they're largely worthless for mid-combat healing.
While I understand that it's more realistic, featuring health stations that have already been partially used is bullshit as well, and feels like an artificial way to ramp up the difficulty. Also, you cannot pop out a used-up canister and replace it with a fresh one, to my dismay.
As for armor...there isn't any! That's right, zero. Max Payne had bullet time to help prevent his body from getting swiss-cheesed. Blade has no such gimmick.* This means that issues with the health system are magnified, as it's the only thing you can rely on. It also means that a single grenade is usually enough to completely ruin you. And yes, SiN had armor! In fact, it had a surprisingly detailed and realistic armor system no less!
*Okay, this is actually only half-true. There are these green barrels full of eeeeevil chemicals left lying around willy-nilly throughout the levels, and shooting them will fill the area with eeeeevil green gas. This gas produces a slow-mo effect, and the game implies that using it to your advantage is a good thing, but I never figured out how they were anything other than a hazard, as they obscure your vision and slow you down too.
4) Cheap enemies and difficulty. Ugh. The computer is a cheating bastard. There are often shotgunners who will hide around blind corners, you will be sniped across the map, and enemies seem to occasionally decide to shrug off bullets. Oh yeah, and enemies use the same guns you do, including the secondary fire. Have fun getting fuck you'd.
Likely to blame for the absurd difficulty curve is the fact that SiN uses an adaptive difficulty system, but it feels terribly off-kilter. Wikipedia says that "a bug present on release in the dynamic difficulty system caused the system to never ease up on players making it overly challenging and unforgiving. An update released through Steam on May 17 2006 resolved this problem." Honestly it feels like this bug still exists. Oftentimes I'd get mowed down (mind you, on a relatively low difficulty setting), only to restart from a checkpoint and have the encounter get rebalanced with harder enemies! WTF?
Another lauded element of the adaptive difficulty is that enemies will learn your playstyle, and...adapt...in order to ramp up the challange. Unfortunately, this effectively manifests as a direct punishment to the player for being good, or consistent, since getting lots of headshots will give enemies head protection, which isn't always obvious to discern while trying to snipe at them. Or even when at mid-range (some get faceplates instead). Presumably this applies for other kinds of shots as well. I suspect that it's also easy to game the system; acting like an idiot early on will make the rest of the game a little easier.
I've taken the liberty of translating what these sliders actually mean. Keep in mind that I never went past exact medium, and still eventually encountered soul-crushing difficulty.In terms of basic AI, most of the enemies are actually rather simplistic (or just dumb). While they will rip you apart if you let them, they have two modes: run suicidally into your bullets or hang back and snipe at you, while standing absolutely still, sometimes ducking behind really lousy cover. Bizarrely, you can very rarely come across inert NPCs that you apparently haven't quite triggered yet and more or less kill for free...
These four issues make the game less of a fight against SinTEK mercenaries and more of a fight against broken game mechanics. It reminds me slightly of Max Payne in that regard, but at least Max Payne had an actual plot to follow and a bolder style to help prop it up.
Final Thoughts/Price:
There are things I actually like about this game, honest!
For one, it has classic level secrets. As I'm the kind of gamer that will constantly ask "can I get up there," having rewards for that curiosity is always appreciated. This doesn't always work out, sadly, as there were a few secrets that were hazardous to get (due to fall damage or enviromental damage), and there were others that felt like they should've been standard "end of a big fight" caches of health, but they're otherwise generally well-handled and clever. Though there was also at least one secret that spawned an ambush for some goddamn fucking reason.
The level designs (stock environments aside), while usually relying on ubiquitous locked doors to move you along the linear path, are otherwise fresh and fun to play around in. And the pseudo-run-and-gun, when it isn't unbalanced by the broken AI or adaptive difficulty, is actually pretty enjoyable.
Jen Taylor adds a spark of life to what is otherwise a fairly blah T&A sidechick, and there are clear signs of potential throughout the entire game. This being the first episode of what was meant to be an ongoing series, a lot of the more obvious flaws would've likely been phased out over time.
I'm really in a odd spot, I guess. The game is what I would call fun, or at least has the potential for fun, but it eventually got keyboard-slammingly frustrating. The game is derivative, but somehow stands out despite its similarities to others in the genre. I love it, but I hate it.
I suppose the real agony of it all is that the game will never improve. Most unfortunately, a few key developers left the company, and the rest of the team was absorbed by a tangentially-related company, one uninterested in making FPSes with tits and explosions. Bah.
On the plus side, SiN Episodes: Emergence is only a mere $9.99 on Steam, and comes with the original SiN to boot. Ten bux for a Half-Like and its surprisingly engaging predecessor is definitely worth it if you're looking for some quick, cheap FPS action like I was. Just cross your fingers and pray for the AI Director's bratty predecessor to be nice to you.
(Also, fuck heavy machine gunners and fuck double sideburns.)
These friendly fellows were what caused the first draft of this review to be filled with 30% more swearing.These fun people made SiN Episodes: Emergence fun (while it lasted).
Friday, September 25, 2009
A rant that nobody asked for: Metroid Fusion
While we (and by we I mean you, yes you, suckerrr) wait for a proper update, as grabbing screenshots from a game is hard when you're terminally lazy, I present to you a new feature here at Bargain Bin Gamer Enterprises Ltd. Etc.: Rants nobody asked for!
Today we take a hard look, as well as a nerdrage-fueled look, at my least favoritest Metroid game, Metroid Fusion.
Why I Hate Metroid Fusion
Metroid Fusion takes a glance back at every other Metroid game that came before it, and then proceeds to totally miss the point.
Let's put this into perspective. The year is 2002. There hasn't been a Metroid game in 8 years. The last we'd seen of Samus Aran was in the widely-claimed "best SNES game ever" Super Metroid. On the same day in November, not only did a new 2D adventure with the bounty hunter land, but so did the revolutionary Metroid Prime. Metroid fever was in the air, or something.
Okay, here's what Metroid Fusion does right: The engine is one of the best 2D engines ever, and it also powers the 99% awesome Metroid Zero Mission. And honestly, that's about it.
The trouble starts right from the get-go as before even getting to take a single step as Samus, we're treated to a lengthy cutscene explaining how everything went tits up when Ms. Aran returned to SR388 for...some reason, got infected with a virulent parasite, almost died, and was then saved by being injected with Metroid juice, which Samus muses is her life being saved a second time by the Metroid hatchling, awww.
Wait, huh? Uh, Samus, honey, that Metroid died. He's dead. Killed by Mother Brain. Do you seriously think that the scientists on Ceres Station divised this cure-all in the five minutes they had the hatchling before it was violently stolen by Ridley? (Samus holding the idiot ball is not important to the plot at all, honest!)
Problem 1: RETCON ALERT. It's revealed that the blandly-named, gooey X Parasites were the natural prey of Metroids on SR388 (as opposed to ANY BIOLOGICAL CREATURE), but since Samus kind of killed all of them, the X have flourished. Of course, no such evidence of their existence...existed in Metroid II, which shows Samus' stint at Metroidal genocide.
It also serves as a very convoluted method of making Samus weak to ice, able to eat X parasites, and spilling all of her old items, of course, as well as changing her power suit, as the med-team could only remove portions of it for...some unexplained reason. (The fact that it's left so vague is what peeves me, especially since an explanation is pretty easy to come up with.)
It also also serves as yet another way to force in another retarded retcon where Metroid is Chozo for "Great Warrior". GET IT? SAMUS IS A GREAT WARRIOR SO SHE'S A METROID TOO HURRRRRR. (It also means they don't have to have Metroids in a game called Metroid.) This meaning of course makes no goddamn sense, since the Chozo created the damn things (which is also retarded, honestly), and nothing about them implies a great warrior in the slightest. Maybe the Chozo were just daft and everyone was too polite to say anything.
Also also also, as part of some deal with the Space Federation (that're not evil, honest!), she gets a new ship 'cause she lost her old one in the whole "almost dying" thing and it has a talking AI on board! Yaaay! Wait, what?
Problem 2: Metroid is about isolation. Every other game in the series achieves its atmosphere by providing a sprawling world where Samus (and by proxy the player) are all alone, carrying out a dangerous mission. Giving Samus an AI to talk back to is nonsensical.
Oh, she nicknames the AI "Adam" after herfavorite character from MGS3 old commanding officer who died or something. (This is in no way important to anything, honest!)
So, they return to the biological research station (as in, space station) where the rest of the X Parasite stuff, including her busted up suit pieces, was transported to. And all is not well! There's a strange explosion in the quarantine room and...seriously, guess. You'll never ever figure it out, honest! So now Samus has to deal with the entire station being infected with X, as well as a mysterious saboteur! (Spoilers: It's SA-X, a clone of Samus wearing her power suit, and it has all her items ohno.)
So now Samus has to undertake a series of missions to prevent the X from spreading (which of course does dick, and they of course take everything over). Wait. Missions?
Problem 3: Missions. At the start of every Sector of the station, Adam talks to Samus and gives her an objective...and the MAP. You are never flying blind in Metroid Fusion. (Sort of.) There's also an energy refill and save station at each of these hubs, which is actually fine, since the game is meant for a portable platform and convenient save points are a good thing.
Inevitably, the missions you're sent on herd you along in the proper plot, power-up, and scripted event order the game wants, which is pretty goddamn boring, really. There's some leeway to explore, but god help you if you get caught in a major plot event, since Adam will actually lock down every other part of the game except for where you need to go.
Problem 4: Adam locks the fucking doors. What the hell?? This is insulting, since it makes the game feel like both "Metroid: EXTREEEEME" and "Baby's First Metroid" which obviously doesn't work well. Considering you're always given explicit instructions by Adam, and a map beacon, it seems like a really flimsy attempt to stop you from breaking the scripted sequence or freeing the developers from having to worry about fiddling with the other Sectors during the event.
What's the worst thing about this? You're never told the doors will be locked, yet the elevators leading to each Sector entrance are left online. Which means you take one of those slow ass Metroid elevators all the way down...to a locked goddamn door. Gah!!
The thing that kills me the most is that there was no obligation to provide the map. The plot could have easily included a simple "oops the map system is busted, good luck Samus" explanation, which would have made the game better. This map system creates another issue, that basically destroys any credibility of the setting.
Problem 5: A space station built by a fucking idiot. Google up a map of Metroid Fusion and compare how large the purple (meaning pre-mapped) sections are, versus how much green (meaning hidden or un-auto-mapped) sections there are.
Some of the green corridors make a very vague bit of sense as Adam explains security rooms are left off of the map for security purposes. Okay. Now explain why a space station has secret crawl spaces and breakable walls leading to bizarre, sealed-off rooms containing extra explosives!
In every other Metroid game, Samus is visiting a planet said to be touched by the Chozo and their technological prowess. It's a weak explanation as to why there are power-ups scattered everywhere, but I can buy it. The space station in Fusion is not related to the Chozo in any way. Moreover, because the game is insane, Samus' missiles are downloaded data(!?) somehow transformed into biological constructs (as they're refueled by a special X parasite much like her health). The concept of capacity upgrades seems silly in this new context, especially since the items are still the same classic "missile in glass jar" they've always been.
Oh, and since these missiles have to be a biological construct of some kind, how exactly does the Ice Missile upgrade work? It's introduced to give Samus an alternative to the Ice Beam (since, again, she's weak to ice), but they come from the same damn gun on her arm sooooo...
Alright, they've nuked the entire concept of exploration by forcing you along in more or less a straight line. How do they ensure there are no survivors?
Problem 6: Be dicks about item collection. In one of the very first areas of the game, before you've even got the Morph Ball yet, there is a completely unmarked tile in the ceiling of a room that leads to a secret chamber with an Energy Tank. It gets better. Come back there once you have the Screw Attack, and you'll find a room beyond that room with ANOTHER Energy Tank. What. The. Fuck?!
That is Metroid Fusion in a nutshell. The large majority of items are hidden away not in cleverly disguised secret passages, but rather in spots nobody would ever find on their own, ever. This turns the series' staple of "exploration" into "use a Power Bomb in every room, no exceptions". And then of course, half of those secrets will probably require the Screw Attack (gotten nearly right at the end of the game) so hahaha fuck you.
But wait! There's a new dimension to the gameplay! The Samus clone, the SA-X is stalking Samus the entire time, since the X hate Metroids because...Metroids eat X. Back the fuck up, game. You're implying that the X have an emotional intelligence here, I guess because they cloned Samus? That's not the awful part though. Neither is how this is the second time our favorite bounty hunter has to fight an eeeeevil clone of herself in the timeline.
Problem 7: The SA-X is stupid. No, not the infamously dumb AI they attached to it. The gameplay concept is stupid. Every once in a while, you'll encounter the SA-X stalking around and the game'll play scary music at you, and you have to be quiet because the SA-X HAS THE ICE BEAM SHIT. And then you wait for it to disappear out of a door. Just...gone, even if you follow its path out of the room. Uh-huh. Also, it fails for not using the X-Ray Scanner to search for Samus when she's hiding.
However, once in a while the game will force you into its path, at which point OH FUCK CHASE SCENE. Really frustrating, needlessly difficult chase scenes ensue involving timing, platforming, and everything that I don't give a shit about. Oh, and inexplicably, despite the fact that it wears Samus' temperature-resistant Varia Suit, you can freeze it with Ice Missiles. Uh-huh.
During all of this random chaos, Samus is also tracking down other organisms infected by X who are both large and angry. These are the game's bosses. A turbo eel, a gravity robot (it has an organic brain shut up), and other monstrosities make up the menagerie of power-up providers.
Problem 8: What was Metroid about again? Oh yeah, boss fights, obviously! These bosses are fucking hard just for the sake of it. And unlike in any other Metroid game, where you can do the equivalent of level grinding by finding a few more items to give you an edge, good luck doing that here. Oh, and the special red X that fill up all of your energy and missiles that you get just prior to a boss fight to prepare you for it only fill up a finite amount of each for some idiotic reason.
Said gravity robot, who exists for dubious reasons, is beaten by the strategy of "shoot so many rockets at its face the game slows down, and its face melts, and you win before it can actually attack because goddamn this boss is too fucking hard". Shameful.
I'll admit, having the bosses represent the power-up they're going to give is at least clever and creative. A mutant rolly-polly gives you the Morph Ball, the eel the Speed Booster, the robot the Gravity Suit, etc, etc.
But oh wait, let's twist the thumbscrews a bit more. Pretty much every time you defeat a boss, you also have to fight a Core X afterwards. Think big space porcupine egg that wants to kill you. Basically, after losing large chunks of your health to a difficult boss that came before, you now have to deal with a miniboss as well. For non-beam abilities, it just tries to ram you, and is weak to missiles, but is tricky to jump over. For beam abilities it hounds you, firing its signature beam at you. Either way, you can pretty easily die to these minibosses even though you won the real boss fight, due to the low margin for error. Lame.
Okay, so let's get back to the plot. Spoiler warning, if you care.
It turns out that the reason why one of the sectors on the space station replicates SR388 is because the Evil Space Federation is...cloning Metroids! Bum bum BUM! Where else would they get the Metroid juice to shoot up Samus with?
Problem 9: This makes NO FUCKING SENSE ARGH. The Federation were the ones who sent Samus to SR388 in the first place to kill all of the Metroids!!! And remember how that hatchling sorta died? Where did they get this DNA from?
Okay, I'll be fair, this plot could work, theoretically speaking. The Federation becomes opportunistic and decides "well let's develop Metroids as a weapon after all" since they got lucky and there was the hatchling who somehow gave them its DNA despite being in their custody for like a day. This means they'll have the exclusive use of the Metroids in warfare against the pirates. I can see it working, maybe.
BUT. Why did the Federation send Samus out to murder the green pusbags in the first place? Because the Metroids presented a massive threat to the galaxy, ie, they're very powerful! Gaaaah!! There's no obvious evidence that the Federation is suddenly under new management by the time of Metroid Fusion, so this comes off as a shaky conspiracy plot and discredits the intelligence and/or evilness of the Federation circa Metroid Prime 3, Metroid II, and even Super Metroid, regardless if you can piece all of it together with enough rationalizations.
Not to mention that using Metroids as weapons would have the inevitable result of allowing the Space Pirates to get their hands on them again, what with the entire crisis of Super Metroid beginning with Ridley stealing a glass jar with a baby space jellyfish inside. All it would take is a single space pirate holding a net and doing his best Spongebob Squarepants impression to bring the galaxy back to square one on Metroid-related matters. This whole snafu characterizes this shadowy version of the Federation as short-sighted dipshits, which is maybe what they were going for probably not.
Samus finds the Metroid breeding farm, as well as the SA-X who is killing them all 'cause that's how it rolls. This is all bullshit, so Samus jettisons the entire lab wing into space, and it explodes, 'cause fuck that noise. At least there's no more SA-X, huh?
Oh wait, Adam informs Samus that there's like, at least 10 on board because...Samus had secretly stashed 10 extra sets of power suits on the station when nobody was looking, obviously. (No, asexual reproduction, for no clear explanation is the explanation.) Also, don't worry, this doesn't lead to any sort of interesting mechanic like Bioshock's Big Daddies, in fact, the plot just kind of forgets about them entirely.
Oh, by the way, that lovable AI scamp, Adam? Well, in addition to becoming huge pricks lately, the Federation has also gotten into the habit of putting the brains of outstanding military officers into computers because...they can? So that nickname Samus gave to her stupid AI friend for the hell of it? IT WAS REALLY THE REAL ADAM THE WHOLE TIME WHAT THE GODDAMN I AM GOING TO SHIT BLOOD OVER THIS.
Then Samus does some more crap, including fighting an X-infected Ridley, who the Federation had frozen in their giant space freezer. Why? Because they're eeeeeevil I guess. It's never explained.
Sooooo...Samus is finally all "fuck this, the X have to die too! they're too dangerous kinda like those Metroid fellows" and Adam is all "I can't let you do that, Samus. The Federation has taken an interest in the X, kinda like those Metroid fellows." and locks all the doors, and activates the drone guns, and shuts off her oxygen supply, and brutally murders her. Game over.
No, not really. Despite being a puppet for the eeeeevil Federation, after a stern talking to by Samus, Adam, lacking any kind of loyalty or programming enslaving him to his eeeeevil masters, just goes "Oh yeah, that was sort of a retarded plan, wasn't it?" and they decide they're going to blow up the space station. And then ram it into SR388.
Problem 10: WHAT?
Problem 10a: Yes, let's basically copy the premise of Metroid II and turn Samus into a genocidal fuckwit for the second time running. The first time through she only killed one whole species. This time? Let's orbital drop this fucker and destroy the entire planet! Brilliant! The moral qualms of this are addressed only as an afterthought, which I guess is a one-up from Metroid Il, though that kind of had a pass what with it being a first-generation Gameboy game.
Obviously the X had some kind of vague intelligence, considering the actions of the SA-X(es) and all, which makes the entire plan morally unsound. An ending monologue by the gal in orange simply says something like "Wow, I totally blew up a planet, and people are probably going to be a bit mad about that, but screw them 'cause I knew it was the right thing."
Problem 10b: What in the hell is the point of having a facsimile of SR388's ecosystem on a space station right next to SR388? Why not just build the research facility on the planet itself, where Metroids could be grown with less effort, and there's even accessibility to the X parasites once that absurd plot thread picks up.
Stylistically, this would have ironically been more clever despite copying Metroid II, since it would've provided an updated Metroid II environment (thus potentially leading to a remake ala Zero Mission), as well as following the theme of Samus always having to return to a planet twice to blow it the fuck up.
Problem 10c: Why do the X do jack shit about this? A single SA-X, in fact, the original SA-X maybe even, confronts Samus before she can start the self-destruct protocol. What are the rest of them doing? Lesbian goo-clone orgy? Parts of the plot hinge on the X absorbing the human intelligences of the station's staff, so why wouldn't it think to do something like get in an escape pod? Or jump out of an airlock, seeing as how the power suits are space-worthy? Or steal Samus' unguarded ship and fly out of there in that?
In fact, wouldn't it be cool if it came to the same conclusion that Samus did, what with it being a clone of her and all, and try to get an upper hand sooner? It's also not like the other Sectors are dead of life. Sure they might be lesser X-infected beasts, but surely they could do something to disrupt Samus at this point.
No, instead, Samus fights a single SA-X, starts the self-destruct, runs back to her ship as the timer counts down just like any other Metroid game more or less, and flies off into space.
Problem 11: Oh wait there's a timed boss fight first. One of the Metroids from the Metroid farm survived somehow and then grew up into an Omega Metroid (think Metroid crossed with an ugly dinosaur) and then magically appeared in the airlock.
And then, despite having run off earlier at its three-way defeat as Samus clone, mutated SR388 creature thing, and a Core X, the SA-X comes back to give Samus the Ice Beam which she can now use because...? And Samus uses it to defeat the Omega Metroid (if you don't fuck around too much and die either to the boss or the time limit) and then finally finally finally escapes, not once milling over the fact that the SA-X seemingly helped her do so. Good thing they're all dead, haha, genocide is always the answer!
More fun: The Metroid Wiki helpfully points out that there are interesting (and by interesting I mean suspicious) similarities between Fusion and Aliens and Alien: Resurrection. Awesome.
How I would have done it, or a Metroid game I'd like to see that would be better than this:
In Metroid: Hunted, Samus Aran would discover a massive Space Pirate operation already under way in an isolated space station far outside Federation territory. It turns out they have successfully raided a Chozo planet and are reverse engineering the technology. Why? To make their own answer to Samus, of course.
Samus must now fight for survival inside the massive pirate complex as she's hunted by a suped-up Space Pirate. She explores across the vast sectors of the space station, made up of the stolen and salvaged bits and pieces of other ships and worlds, trying to nab the vital, stolen Chozo-made power-ups before the Pirate Hunter can.
Where are the Metroids in this game? Well, the pirates have a damn good testing methodology. If their super soldier can completely wreck up Metroids, they're good to go. If they can't, they die.
Obviously Ridley would be somehow connected to this mad scheme, prompting a fight with everyone's favorite Space Dragon.
Inspiration for this whole thing comes from the Frigate Orpheon from Metroid Prime and the Wrecked Command Ship and Pirate Homeworld from Metroid Prime 3. Plus I like being meta when it's actually interesting.
Update 10/17/10
After revisiting the game with the help of a Let's Play (good god I am never actually playing Fusion again), it turns out I fucked up just a tad.
The SA-X does not come back to help Samus (and I don't think she mentions it, either). The implication, based on earlier events, is that the SA-X sees the Omega Metroid and just goes back to mindlessly trying to kill it because once again Metroids eat X therefore X hate hate hate Metroids. Right.
This lowers the stupidity of things from "really bad" to "obnoxiously convenient". If the SA-X hadn't shown up, Samus would be dead.
Also, another thing I caught was that when first crafting her brilliant plan, Samus states that the X are "heartless" and that despite being able to copy knowledge, DNA, etc. from their hosts, they lack a soul. How the fuck do you know, bitch?
There's also the fact that the Federation is apparently single-mindedly obsessed with getting their hands on X, hence why Samus couldn't just blow up the space station and then put a "Do Not Enter" sign on SR388, I guess.
Honestly? If we're already in the territory of making the snap-judgement to commit genocide, why not just fight the Federation? Hell, let the idiots come to the station, sabotage their ships so they can't leave, and when the X inevitably catch them, then blow everything up.
I'm amazed at the self-restraint of the plotting, really. Any option that keeps some X alive would mean room for a sequel.
But oh wait, apparently Samus also magically knew that the X would never stop feeding, growing, expanding, or fighting, and would just eventually consume the universe. Again, how the fuck does she know that? She's spent a long day (maybe a few at most) fighting the X in the worst case scenario. There's really no clear answer how the X would affect the rest of the galaxy.
There's also the sudden realization that oh, hey, the X are a natural organism. And yet the Metroids were engineered to eat them. So what they're saying is...SR388's ecosystem spawned a creature that would have naturally consumed the entire planet, eventually? In fact, why hadn't that already happened if the X are supposed to be so damn fast at what they do, and had no Metroids around to stop them? Apparently everything I learned in biology was wrong! Fuck you, Metroid Fusion.
Another few things that get swept under the rug concerning the Feds: For one, not only are they interested in the X, but also the SA-X (presumably because, hey, cloned power suits and power ups? Or cloned super soldiers? It's never elaborated upon.). Samus has no particular comment on this potential defilement of Chozo technology. Also the Federation never thought to check the million billion Chozo worlds seeded with Chozo technology, I guess.
Adam also explains, however, that the Feds explicitly withheld upgrades from Samus, fearing she might kill the SA-X and ruin everything. Early in the game, these upgrades are explained as increasing Samus' chances for survival. In other words, the Federation was perfectly okay with potentially getting Samus killed in exchange for the SA-X. She has no comment on this development, either. Fuck you, Metroid Fusion.
Today we take a hard look, as well as a nerdrage-fueled look, at my least favoritest Metroid game, Metroid Fusion.
Why I Hate Metroid Fusion
Metroid Fusion takes a glance back at every other Metroid game that came before it, and then proceeds to totally miss the point.
Let's put this into perspective. The year is 2002. There hasn't been a Metroid game in 8 years. The last we'd seen of Samus Aran was in the widely-claimed "best SNES game ever" Super Metroid. On the same day in November, not only did a new 2D adventure with the bounty hunter land, but so did the revolutionary Metroid Prime. Metroid fever was in the air, or something.
Okay, here's what Metroid Fusion does right: The engine is one of the best 2D engines ever, and it also powers the 99% awesome Metroid Zero Mission. And honestly, that's about it.
The trouble starts right from the get-go as before even getting to take a single step as Samus, we're treated to a lengthy cutscene explaining how everything went tits up when Ms. Aran returned to SR388 for...some reason, got infected with a virulent parasite, almost died, and was then saved by being injected with Metroid juice, which Samus muses is her life being saved a second time by the Metroid hatchling, awww.
Wait, huh? Uh, Samus, honey, that Metroid died. He's dead. Killed by Mother Brain. Do you seriously think that the scientists on Ceres Station divised this cure-all in the five minutes they had the hatchling before it was violently stolen by Ridley? (Samus holding the idiot ball is not important to the plot at all, honest!)
Problem 1: RETCON ALERT. It's revealed that the blandly-named, gooey X Parasites were the natural prey of Metroids on SR388 (as opposed to ANY BIOLOGICAL CREATURE), but since Samus kind of killed all of them, the X have flourished. Of course, no such evidence of their existence...existed in Metroid II, which shows Samus' stint at Metroidal genocide.
It also serves as a very convoluted method of making Samus weak to ice, able to eat X parasites, and spilling all of her old items, of course, as well as changing her power suit, as the med-team could only remove portions of it for...some unexplained reason. (The fact that it's left so vague is what peeves me, especially since an explanation is pretty easy to come up with.)
It also also serves as yet another way to force in another retarded retcon where Metroid is Chozo for "Great Warrior". GET IT? SAMUS IS A GREAT WARRIOR SO SHE'S A METROID TOO HURRRRRR. (It also means they don't have to have Metroids in a game called Metroid.) This meaning of course makes no goddamn sense, since the Chozo created the damn things (which is also retarded, honestly), and nothing about them implies a great warrior in the slightest. Maybe the Chozo were just daft and everyone was too polite to say anything.
Also also also, as part of some deal with the Space Federation (that're not evil, honest!), she gets a new ship 'cause she lost her old one in the whole "almost dying" thing and it has a talking AI on board! Yaaay! Wait, what?
Problem 2: Metroid is about isolation. Every other game in the series achieves its atmosphere by providing a sprawling world where Samus (and by proxy the player) are all alone, carrying out a dangerous mission. Giving Samus an AI to talk back to is nonsensical.
Oh, she nicknames the AI "Adam" after her
So, they return to the biological research station (as in, space station) where the rest of the X Parasite stuff, including her busted up suit pieces, was transported to. And all is not well! There's a strange explosion in the quarantine room and...seriously, guess. You'll never ever figure it out, honest! So now Samus has to deal with the entire station being infected with X, as well as a mysterious saboteur! (Spoilers: It's SA-X, a clone of Samus wearing her power suit, and it has all her items ohno.)
So now Samus has to undertake a series of missions to prevent the X from spreading (which of course does dick, and they of course take everything over). Wait. Missions?
Problem 3: Missions. At the start of every Sector of the station, Adam talks to Samus and gives her an objective...and the MAP. You are never flying blind in Metroid Fusion. (Sort of.) There's also an energy refill and save station at each of these hubs, which is actually fine, since the game is meant for a portable platform and convenient save points are a good thing.
Inevitably, the missions you're sent on herd you along in the proper plot, power-up, and scripted event order the game wants, which is pretty goddamn boring, really. There's some leeway to explore, but god help you if you get caught in a major plot event, since Adam will actually lock down every other part of the game except for where you need to go.
Problem 4: Adam locks the fucking doors. What the hell?? This is insulting, since it makes the game feel like both "Metroid: EXTREEEEME" and "Baby's First Metroid" which obviously doesn't work well. Considering you're always given explicit instructions by Adam, and a map beacon, it seems like a really flimsy attempt to stop you from breaking the scripted sequence or freeing the developers from having to worry about fiddling with the other Sectors during the event.
What's the worst thing about this? You're never told the doors will be locked, yet the elevators leading to each Sector entrance are left online. Which means you take one of those slow ass Metroid elevators all the way down...to a locked goddamn door. Gah!!
The thing that kills me the most is that there was no obligation to provide the map. The plot could have easily included a simple "oops the map system is busted, good luck Samus" explanation, which would have made the game better. This map system creates another issue, that basically destroys any credibility of the setting.
Problem 5: A space station built by a fucking idiot. Google up a map of Metroid Fusion and compare how large the purple (meaning pre-mapped) sections are, versus how much green (meaning hidden or un-auto-mapped) sections there are.
Some of the green corridors make a very vague bit of sense as Adam explains security rooms are left off of the map for security purposes. Okay. Now explain why a space station has secret crawl spaces and breakable walls leading to bizarre, sealed-off rooms containing extra explosives!
In every other Metroid game, Samus is visiting a planet said to be touched by the Chozo and their technological prowess. It's a weak explanation as to why there are power-ups scattered everywhere, but I can buy it. The space station in Fusion is not related to the Chozo in any way. Moreover, because the game is insane, Samus' missiles are downloaded data(!?) somehow transformed into biological constructs (as they're refueled by a special X parasite much like her health). The concept of capacity upgrades seems silly in this new context, especially since the items are still the same classic "missile in glass jar" they've always been.
Oh, and since these missiles have to be a biological construct of some kind, how exactly does the Ice Missile upgrade work? It's introduced to give Samus an alternative to the Ice Beam (since, again, she's weak to ice), but they come from the same damn gun on her arm sooooo...
Alright, they've nuked the entire concept of exploration by forcing you along in more or less a straight line. How do they ensure there are no survivors?
Problem 6: Be dicks about item collection. In one of the very first areas of the game, before you've even got the Morph Ball yet, there is a completely unmarked tile in the ceiling of a room that leads to a secret chamber with an Energy Tank. It gets better. Come back there once you have the Screw Attack, and you'll find a room beyond that room with ANOTHER Energy Tank. What. The. Fuck?!
That is Metroid Fusion in a nutshell. The large majority of items are hidden away not in cleverly disguised secret passages, but rather in spots nobody would ever find on their own, ever. This turns the series' staple of "exploration" into "use a Power Bomb in every room, no exceptions". And then of course, half of those secrets will probably require the Screw Attack (gotten nearly right at the end of the game) so hahaha fuck you.
But wait! There's a new dimension to the gameplay! The Samus clone, the SA-X is stalking Samus the entire time, since the X hate Metroids because...Metroids eat X. Back the fuck up, game. You're implying that the X have an emotional intelligence here, I guess because they cloned Samus? That's not the awful part though. Neither is how this is the second time our favorite bounty hunter has to fight an eeeeevil clone of herself in the timeline.
Problem 7: The SA-X is stupid. No, not the infamously dumb AI they attached to it. The gameplay concept is stupid. Every once in a while, you'll encounter the SA-X stalking around and the game'll play scary music at you, and you have to be quiet because the SA-X HAS THE ICE BEAM SHIT. And then you wait for it to disappear out of a door. Just...gone, even if you follow its path out of the room. Uh-huh. Also, it fails for not using the X-Ray Scanner to search for Samus when she's hiding.
However, once in a while the game will force you into its path, at which point OH FUCK CHASE SCENE. Really frustrating, needlessly difficult chase scenes ensue involving timing, platforming, and everything that I don't give a shit about. Oh, and inexplicably, despite the fact that it wears Samus' temperature-resistant Varia Suit, you can freeze it with Ice Missiles. Uh-huh.
During all of this random chaos, Samus is also tracking down other organisms infected by X who are both large and angry. These are the game's bosses. A turbo eel, a gravity robot (it has an organic brain shut up), and other monstrosities make up the menagerie of power-up providers.
Problem 8: What was Metroid about again? Oh yeah, boss fights, obviously! These bosses are fucking hard just for the sake of it. And unlike in any other Metroid game, where you can do the equivalent of level grinding by finding a few more items to give you an edge, good luck doing that here. Oh, and the special red X that fill up all of your energy and missiles that you get just prior to a boss fight to prepare you for it only fill up a finite amount of each for some idiotic reason.
Said gravity robot, who exists for dubious reasons, is beaten by the strategy of "shoot so many rockets at its face the game slows down, and its face melts, and you win before it can actually attack because goddamn this boss is too fucking hard". Shameful.
I'll admit, having the bosses represent the power-up they're going to give is at least clever and creative. A mutant rolly-polly gives you the Morph Ball, the eel the Speed Booster, the robot the Gravity Suit, etc, etc.
But oh wait, let's twist the thumbscrews a bit more. Pretty much every time you defeat a boss, you also have to fight a Core X afterwards. Think big space porcupine egg that wants to kill you. Basically, after losing large chunks of your health to a difficult boss that came before, you now have to deal with a miniboss as well. For non-beam abilities, it just tries to ram you, and is weak to missiles, but is tricky to jump over. For beam abilities it hounds you, firing its signature beam at you. Either way, you can pretty easily die to these minibosses even though you won the real boss fight, due to the low margin for error. Lame.
Okay, so let's get back to the plot. Spoiler warning, if you care.
It turns out that the reason why one of the sectors on the space station replicates SR388 is because the Evil Space Federation is...cloning Metroids! Bum bum BUM! Where else would they get the Metroid juice to shoot up Samus with?
Problem 9: This makes NO FUCKING SENSE ARGH. The Federation were the ones who sent Samus to SR388 in the first place to kill all of the Metroids!!! And remember how that hatchling sorta died? Where did they get this DNA from?
Okay, I'll be fair, this plot could work, theoretically speaking. The Federation becomes opportunistic and decides "well let's develop Metroids as a weapon after all" since they got lucky and there was the hatchling who somehow gave them its DNA despite being in their custody for like a day. This means they'll have the exclusive use of the Metroids in warfare against the pirates. I can see it working, maybe.
BUT. Why did the Federation send Samus out to murder the green pusbags in the first place? Because the Metroids presented a massive threat to the galaxy, ie, they're very powerful! Gaaaah!! There's no obvious evidence that the Federation is suddenly under new management by the time of Metroid Fusion, so this comes off as a shaky conspiracy plot and discredits the intelligence and/or evilness of the Federation circa Metroid Prime 3, Metroid II, and even Super Metroid, regardless if you can piece all of it together with enough rationalizations.
Not to mention that using Metroids as weapons would have the inevitable result of allowing the Space Pirates to get their hands on them again, what with the entire crisis of Super Metroid beginning with Ridley stealing a glass jar with a baby space jellyfish inside. All it would take is a single space pirate holding a net and doing his best Spongebob Squarepants impression to bring the galaxy back to square one on Metroid-related matters. This whole snafu characterizes this shadowy version of the Federation as short-sighted dipshits, which is maybe what they were going for probably not.
Samus finds the Metroid breeding farm, as well as the SA-X who is killing them all 'cause that's how it rolls. This is all bullshit, so Samus jettisons the entire lab wing into space, and it explodes, 'cause fuck that noise. At least there's no more SA-X, huh?
Oh wait, Adam informs Samus that there's like, at least 10 on board because...Samus had secretly stashed 10 extra sets of power suits on the station when nobody was looking, obviously. (No, asexual reproduction, for no clear explanation is the explanation.) Also, don't worry, this doesn't lead to any sort of interesting mechanic like Bioshock's Big Daddies, in fact, the plot just kind of forgets about them entirely.
Oh, by the way, that lovable AI scamp, Adam? Well, in addition to becoming huge pricks lately, the Federation has also gotten into the habit of putting the brains of outstanding military officers into computers because...they can? So that nickname Samus gave to her stupid AI friend for the hell of it? IT WAS REALLY THE REAL ADAM THE WHOLE TIME WHAT THE GODDAMN I AM GOING TO SHIT BLOOD OVER THIS.
Then Samus does some more crap, including fighting an X-infected Ridley, who the Federation had frozen in their giant space freezer. Why? Because they're eeeeeevil I guess. It's never explained.
Sooooo...Samus is finally all "fuck this, the X have to die too! they're too dangerous kinda like those Metroid fellows" and Adam is all "I can't let you do that, Samus. The Federation has taken an interest in the X, kinda like those Metroid fellows." and locks all the doors, and activates the drone guns, and shuts off her oxygen supply, and brutally murders her. Game over.
No, not really. Despite being a puppet for the eeeeevil Federation, after a stern talking to by Samus, Adam, lacking any kind of loyalty or programming enslaving him to his eeeeevil masters, just goes "Oh yeah, that was sort of a retarded plan, wasn't it?" and they decide they're going to blow up the space station. And then ram it into SR388.
Problem 10: WHAT?
Problem 10a: Yes, let's basically copy the premise of Metroid II and turn Samus into a genocidal fuckwit for the second time running. The first time through she only killed one whole species. This time? Let's orbital drop this fucker and destroy the entire planet! Brilliant! The moral qualms of this are addressed only as an afterthought, which I guess is a one-up from Metroid Il, though that kind of had a pass what with it being a first-generation Gameboy game.
Obviously the X had some kind of vague intelligence, considering the actions of the SA-X(es) and all, which makes the entire plan morally unsound. An ending monologue by the gal in orange simply says something like "Wow, I totally blew up a planet, and people are probably going to be a bit mad about that, but screw them 'cause I knew it was the right thing."
Problem 10b: What in the hell is the point of having a facsimile of SR388's ecosystem on a space station right next to SR388? Why not just build the research facility on the planet itself, where Metroids could be grown with less effort, and there's even accessibility to the X parasites once that absurd plot thread picks up.
Stylistically, this would have ironically been more clever despite copying Metroid II, since it would've provided an updated Metroid II environment (thus potentially leading to a remake ala Zero Mission), as well as following the theme of Samus always having to return to a planet twice to blow it the fuck up.
Problem 10c: Why do the X do jack shit about this? A single SA-X, in fact, the original SA-X maybe even, confronts Samus before she can start the self-destruct protocol. What are the rest of them doing? Lesbian goo-clone orgy? Parts of the plot hinge on the X absorbing the human intelligences of the station's staff, so why wouldn't it think to do something like get in an escape pod? Or jump out of an airlock, seeing as how the power suits are space-worthy? Or steal Samus' unguarded ship and fly out of there in that?
In fact, wouldn't it be cool if it came to the same conclusion that Samus did, what with it being a clone of her and all, and try to get an upper hand sooner? It's also not like the other Sectors are dead of life. Sure they might be lesser X-infected beasts, but surely they could do something to disrupt Samus at this point.
No, instead, Samus fights a single SA-X, starts the self-destruct, runs back to her ship as the timer counts down just like any other Metroid game more or less, and flies off into space.
Problem 11: Oh wait there's a timed boss fight first. One of the Metroids from the Metroid farm survived somehow and then grew up into an Omega Metroid (think Metroid crossed with an ugly dinosaur) and then magically appeared in the airlock.
And then, despite having run off earlier at its three-way defeat as Samus clone, mutated SR388 creature thing, and a Core X, the SA-X comes back to give Samus the Ice Beam which she can now use because...? And Samus uses it to defeat the Omega Metroid (if you don't fuck around too much and die either to the boss or the time limit) and then finally finally finally escapes, not once milling over the fact that the SA-X seemingly helped her do so. Good thing they're all dead, haha, genocide is always the answer!
More fun: The Metroid Wiki helpfully points out that there are interesting (and by interesting I mean suspicious) similarities between Fusion and Aliens and Alien: Resurrection. Awesome.
How I would have done it, or a Metroid game I'd like to see that would be better than this:
In Metroid: Hunted, Samus Aran would discover a massive Space Pirate operation already under way in an isolated space station far outside Federation territory. It turns out they have successfully raided a Chozo planet and are reverse engineering the technology. Why? To make their own answer to Samus, of course.
Samus must now fight for survival inside the massive pirate complex as she's hunted by a suped-up Space Pirate. She explores across the vast sectors of the space station, made up of the stolen and salvaged bits and pieces of other ships and worlds, trying to nab the vital, stolen Chozo-made power-ups before the Pirate Hunter can.
Where are the Metroids in this game? Well, the pirates have a damn good testing methodology. If their super soldier can completely wreck up Metroids, they're good to go. If they can't, they die.
Obviously Ridley would be somehow connected to this mad scheme, prompting a fight with everyone's favorite Space Dragon.
Inspiration for this whole thing comes from the Frigate Orpheon from Metroid Prime and the Wrecked Command Ship and Pirate Homeworld from Metroid Prime 3. Plus I like being meta when it's actually interesting.
Update 10/17/10
After revisiting the game with the help of a Let's Play (good god I am never actually playing Fusion again), it turns out I fucked up just a tad.
The SA-X does not come back to help Samus (and I don't think she mentions it, either). The implication, based on earlier events, is that the SA-X sees the Omega Metroid and just goes back to mindlessly trying to kill it because once again Metroids eat X therefore X hate hate hate Metroids. Right.
This lowers the stupidity of things from "really bad" to "obnoxiously convenient". If the SA-X hadn't shown up, Samus would be dead.
Also, another thing I caught was that when first crafting her brilliant plan, Samus states that the X are "heartless" and that despite being able to copy knowledge, DNA, etc. from their hosts, they lack a soul. How the fuck do you know, bitch?
There's also the fact that the Federation is apparently single-mindedly obsessed with getting their hands on X, hence why Samus couldn't just blow up the space station and then put a "Do Not Enter" sign on SR388, I guess.
Honestly? If we're already in the territory of making the snap-judgement to commit genocide, why not just fight the Federation? Hell, let the idiots come to the station, sabotage their ships so they can't leave, and when the X inevitably catch them, then blow everything up.
I'm amazed at the self-restraint of the plotting, really. Any option that keeps some X alive would mean room for a sequel.
But oh wait, apparently Samus also magically knew that the X would never stop feeding, growing, expanding, or fighting, and would just eventually consume the universe. Again, how the fuck does she know that? She's spent a long day (maybe a few at most) fighting the X in the worst case scenario. There's really no clear answer how the X would affect the rest of the galaxy.
There's also the sudden realization that oh, hey, the X are a natural organism. And yet the Metroids were engineered to eat them. So what they're saying is...SR388's ecosystem spawned a creature that would have naturally consumed the entire planet, eventually? In fact, why hadn't that already happened if the X are supposed to be so damn fast at what they do, and had no Metroids around to stop them? Apparently everything I learned in biology was wrong! Fuck you, Metroid Fusion.
Another few things that get swept under the rug concerning the Feds: For one, not only are they interested in the X, but also the SA-X (presumably because, hey, cloned power suits and power ups? Or cloned super soldiers? It's never elaborated upon.). Samus has no particular comment on this potential defilement of Chozo technology. Also the Federation never thought to check the million billion Chozo worlds seeded with Chozo technology, I guess.
Adam also explains, however, that the Feds explicitly withheld upgrades from Samus, fearing she might kill the SA-X and ruin everything. Early in the game, these upgrades are explained as increasing Samus' chances for survival. In other words, the Federation was perfectly okay with potentially getting Samus killed in exchange for the SA-X. She has no comment on this development, either. Fuck you, Metroid Fusion.
Monday, August 10, 2009
We hold these games to be self-evident...
(Get it? It's from the Declaration of Indie-pendence? I'll stop now...)
Five Way "Quick" Review - The Greatest Indie Pack
The Greatest Indie Pack, as previously mentioned, is a now-defunct Steam package of five indie game releases. From what I can figure, these games were placed together for the sole purpose of going on sale at $10 (compared to the original total price of $45). I snapped it up, because I'm an absolute sucker for getting multiple games with one purchase.
Unlike my other reviews, which I intend to give after playing a game all the way through (or eventually giving up out of pure frustration), I don't think it's terribly necessary to play all the way through these, since the games are either short, simplistic, or in one case, multiplayer-oriented.
Let's begin.
Eets - $10
Eets is a fluffy puzzle game along the lines of Lemmings crossed with the Incredible Machine. You're in indirect control of the titular lagomorphic rabbity thing, and must guide him to the goal of each level, denoted by a puzzle piece.
The puzzles in the game generally revolve around Eets' moods. Eets can be happy, angry, or scared. When he's happy, he'll gleefully hop off ledges (and usually to his doom). When angry, he flips out and will do his best Sonic the Hedgehog impression as he leaps across long chasms. When scared, Eets is too chickenshit to jump down a bottomless pit, and instead toes the edge and turns around, repeating this until his mood changes (or is simply moved).
Before action begins, you place various provided items into the level, and then let the scene unfold. Items include fruits that change Eets' mood, whales that suck Eets (and other items) up and spits them across the level, explosives, a trio of things that shoot other things, including a pig that farts out super exploding pig babies, lightbulbs, and mine carts. Then you hit the play button and let things unfold. Some of the items are interactive, so you can't always rest on your laurels as Eets does his own thing.
Pictured: Super Exploding Pig Babies, and other stuff too, I guess.
The game's only noticeable flaw is its physics. While the "character" items (like the aforementioned pig-shooting-pigs) will stay put at all times, Eets, the fruits, and other doodads are at gravity's (and sometimes anti-gravity's) whim. This has the unfortunate effect of sometimes rendering even the absolutely correct, official solutions to the puzzles invalid due to something bouncing wrong, forcing you to retry. Sometimes the interaction between Eets and certain surfaces screws up and instead of landing correctly, he just bounces off (usually to his doom). Very occasionally you can run into "pixels" of land, too (fans of the Worms series will be quite familiar with the phenomenom).
On the plus side, the game's difficulty is cleverly designed. Instead of a strictly linear progression, you're only required to beat a certain number of puzzles to unlock the next set, and usually that number is equal to the number of easy (or easiest) puzzles in the bunch. Eets also features a hint button that will clue you on where to place an object. It's nice, but not always as helpful as it could be. It only ever shows one specific item, which means that it could be the item you already placed correctly. And on more complex puzzles, you're only getting anywhere from 1/4 to 1/8 of the solution. I long for a smarter hint button.
While I'm not a huge puzzler fan, I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by Eets. I would have never sought it out on my own, but it turned to be a nice diversion and a pretty good boredom buster. Unlike the rest of the games on this list, I've actually almost played this one all the way through.
Recommendation: Check it out. (Plus it's kid friendly.)
Gravitron 2 -$5
Here's a headscratcher. As part of the world's worst practical joke, Gravitron 2 defaults to the super-challenging bonus level pack (listed simply as "OfficialPack1") instead of the normal game ("Standard"). Not just when first starting, but when you always start it. Ugh.
So, originally, I was ready to decry this game as the worst one ever, because seriously now, those bonus levels are crazy hard. But after finding out about the switch-up on the Steam board for the game, I played the real deal and I'm...hrm. I'm not impressed, but I'm not turned off.
This is not the right level 1 aaaagh!
Gravitron could be called a mash-up of Lunar Lander and Defender, wrapped up in Geometry Wars-style neon-on-black graphics. The game, is in fact, a homage to pretty much every omni-directional, inertia-based shooter ever - Thrust, Oids, Sub-Terrania, whatever. You take control of a spaceship, and fight against turrets and gravity itself (hence the name?), to rescue scientists from the surface of planets, then blow up their reactors and get the fuck out of dodge before they explode. Just don't run out of fuel.
It's arcadey. It's not awful, but it does grate on my nerves in places. I suspect that it might just not be for me.
For one, it has limited lives, which are just blah in any game these days. Second, while not mind-blowingly difficult, it is unforgiving, with collision damage against everything, turret fire that makes you flip out of control, and insta-kill lasers. The gravity aspect is also annoying at times, since most objects are below you, so you must turn upside-down to fire at them, but you have no backwards thrusters. Reverse thrusters would have been nice to have, and could've been balanced by making them weaker than normal. Without them, the game feels artificially unfair, which is perhaps what they were going for.
On the plus side, Gravitron 2 is the only game out of these five that is only $5, so the risk is minimal.
Recommendation: If you like puzzle-y shmups, you'll probably like it. If you like Nintendo Hard games, you'll probably like it. And it's dirt cheap.
I-Fluid - $10
Oh I-Fluid. I wanted to like you.
I-Fluid is a...um...puzzler/platformer type...thing. Basically, you control a cute little droplet of water. You can pick up moisture from wet stuff, as well as free-standing droplets, which makes you grow, effectively standing in for health. But on the flipside, absorbent materials will soak you up, hot things will evaporate you, and both will kill you dewey ass quickly if not immediately.
Your droplet (controlled with WASD and the mouse) can jump, double jump, cling to smooth objects and crawl up them, and most bizarrely, take control of fruit and vegetables, rolling them around for all manner of strange purposes.
Each level contains various goals for your droplet to carry out, and there are bonus challenges available, such as time attack.
The concept is pretty good, but I was ultimately disappointed by its presentation, especially due to various problems and limitations.
1) A little too varied, bad progression curve. Every level is pretty much completely different from the last. In one, you might have to knock five walnuts out of their containers using physics. In another, you might have to do exciting platforming shenanigans. "Put all five tomatoes in their containers." and then "Follow the firefly." in the level following.
This wouldn't be as bad if the game gave you a gentle curve of simpler challenges before shoving you along. For instance, the first real platforming exercise, jumping up leaves of ivy, was extremely tedious if not outright difficult, which nearly put me off of the game right there.
2) Physics! Just like Eets, physics rears its ugly head. There were a number of times where physics got in the way of fun. For instance, with the walnuts. At least one of the walnuts you have to simply push out of a shallow bowl. But...this boiled (haha get it) down to pushing a big round thing with something else that was much smaller and had less mass. It's not a difficult task, just a frustrating one.
Mind you, sometimes the physics were used really cleverly. My favorite was riding inside a plastic bottlecap, scooting along long stretches of fabric. But for every clever use, something else would piss me off. One level's ultimate goal was getting into a swinging ladle and knocking over a pyramid of cups. I did exactly that...only to die when one of the cups landed exactly inside the ladle and crushed me. Gah!
I was going to get a screenshot of cool bottlecap-sliding, but I got stuck instead. The ramp in the foreground is where I have to go up, coming down are infinitely spawning chocolates.
Not pictured: Thoughts of suicide.
3) A lacking application of core concepts.
- Missed opportunity: there's a limit on how big your droplet gets, and it's not very large at all. Wouldn't it be more interesting if you could just keep growing up to a much higher limit, with the idea being that the larger the droplet, the harder to control and the harder to keep your extra water?
- The tutorial helpfully tells you to "use your common sense" when determining what materials will and won't kill you. I find this to be somewhat reprehensible. Imagine any other game telling you this regarding basic game mechanics. I understand what they were going for, but you're a tiny little water droplet (and not to mention that the game's graphics aren't top notch). Common sense cannot be relied upon when the game changes the player's perspective like that. I can't recall this ever majorly biting me in the ass, but when it came to any kind of wood, I was extremely confused that it usually wasn't lethal.
- Bad level design. For one thing, I was rather disappointed to find most absorbent materials used simply as roadblocks, rather than actual hazards. Worse still, this made a lot of the levels more confusing than they needed to be, as I stumbled about trying to find the correct path. And at least once I hit an invisible level boundry, while still on a safe surface, and abruptly died.
But by far the most egregious incident was an early level challenge to skid as quickly as you can across hot(?), wooden(!), segmented(?!) cooling mats. Flying in the face of common sense, the only hazardous thing about these mats is their warmth. Instead of getting trapped between the segments, they merely act as speedbumps. As far as I could tell, there is no obvious strategy to winning. You just try it sixteen times until it works. Your time to completion is tracked on each level. Generally I clocked in around two to five minutes. That level? Twenty minutes.
Recommendation: Skip it. (I probably make it sound worse than it is, though.)
Multiwinia: Survival of the Flattest - $10
Multiwinia is the multiplayer follow-up to the hit game Darwinia. I can basically stop writing right there. Introversion is a pretty cool company, releases good games and doesn't afraid of anything (not even Microsoft).
(Incidentally, I've never actually bought or played much of Darwinia, mainly since every time I've tried the demo, it would break in some bizarre way, so I've always been too scared to commit. But enough tangential snarkiness. Picked up Darwinia as part of the recent massive indie game super sale pack on Steam, despite my better budgement, that is, budget judgement.)
In short, Multiwinia has you take control of computer programs to defeat other computer programs in a deliciously retro 3D bit-scape. There are several different game modes, like capture the flag, king of the hill, or just plain elimination.
Much to my delight, Multiwinia distills the RTS formula down to its basics, and then uses those basics to craft an almost party-game styled affair. This reminds me of one of Introversion's other titles, DEFCON, though unlike the Wargames-inspired nuke-tastic march towards mutually assured destruction, Multiwinia feels a bit more newbie friendly.
Unlike its precursor you don't have immediate access to the directly player-controlled Squad programs (big tough soldiers that wipe out viruses), instead you guide clusters of the dimunitive and cute stick figure Darwinians right into battle, watching as the little guys shoot the crap out of anything not their color.
Even computer programs are filthy, filthy racists.
(This screenshot is from a game I lost to the Easy AI, a testament to my leet skillz.
I played again and whupped 'em, though.)
Power-ups are dropped randomly onto the playing field and must be retreived in order to gain various bonus units, such as a troop carrier, or a tank. These can be crippling or overpowered in the right circumstances, but that lends to the playful, pick-up-and-play nature of the game.
The controls are simple, but sometimes not as intuitive as they could be. WASD and the mouse control your camera view. Holding down the left mouse button expands a circle used to select groups of units (very Pikmin-esque), and is then used to tell those units where to move. The right mouse button can be used to make a Darwinian a "leader" which will give the rest of the Darwinians who encounter him a simple directive, usually "go over there". It's also used to control the special units. Spacebar cancels any unit selection.
The problem I ran into was mostly when dealing with the troop carrier. You have to cycle between its modes, two of which are "load all surrounding Darwinians" and "eject all Darwinians inside". It just lead to some awkward fumbling about to make sure it was doing what it was supposed to.
Ultimately, as someone who has never really enjoyed strategy games, real time or turn-based, I was very surprised by how fun Multiwinia is, regardless of some of its awkwardness (which will assuredly pass with some practice).
Recommendation: If you can get some friends to play with you, don't hesitate. Otherwise, pick it up at your leisure.
Trials 2: Second Edition - $10
This is going to be another fast one. Trials 2 is, in brief, one of those balance-on-your-bike-while-doing-stunts type flash games, but in fully rendered 3D. And it costs $10. One thing that does set it apart is that when you wipe out, instead of just giving you a very disatisfying sound effect and an "OOPS!" sign, you get a nice dramatic rag-dolling, bone-cruncher of a fuck up, immediately making me want to play Stair or Truck Dismount again.
So, the gameplay is derivative. It does add in a few clever tricks, like using the lean system to duck under obstacles (or fit through pipes!). My only real complaint came down to the game's initial tutorial levels, and a pet peeve with all of these types of games.
For starters, viewing the tutorial demonstration of a level loads up a demo right onto the instance you're playing in! This means that trying to see how to do a trick halfway through the level, it will restart the entire thing. Ugh.
Another issue I found was that the game doesn't really talk to the player well. The demos include a graphic of what buttons to press when, but this never felt particularly useful when the timing is so finicky (because, why else, physics!). Moreover, the game launches right into talking about the inner-workings of its own systems, referring to the center of gravity for the bike and its rider and such, right in the middle of the tutorial. That sort of in-depth, high-level talk could really have been saved for a more advanced training stage. Similarly, instead of getting you accustomed to the fundamentals slowly and evenly, it tends to fly right into technique (the aforementioned finicky button sequences).
As for the pet peeve, it's crappy level design and lack of checkpoints. Trials 2 does actually feature checkpoints in its levels, but sometimes they simply do not come often enough, or they checkpoint you in a very inconvenient place, like in a valley between two steep ramps or three jumps prior to a big trick. Barring this, the game is rather entertaining.
Vroom, screech, etc.
Trials 2 isn't terrible, but it does make me question what it really offers. While the game looks nice, the graphics feel a little pointless, mainly concerning the really high-level bells and whistles, since it leads to more headaches in ensuring the framerate doesn't crap out.
Incidentally, it does have a worldwide leader board and downloadable levels, but still... *shrug* I ultimately have no strong feelings one way or another.
Recommendation: If you really like bike games? If you couldn't get enough of the flash variants? (Not bad, just lacking in draw. Lack of a level editor is a massive letdown.)
Credits!
These fantastic people made Eets fantastic.
These groovy people made Gravitron 2 groovy.
These smooth people made i-Fluid smooth.
These wonderful people made Multiwinia wonderful.
These crazy people made Trials 2 crazy.
(Dang it's hard to find comprehensive info on some of these developers.)
And that's all you need to know about the Greatest Indie Games Pack!
Five Way "Quick" Review - The Greatest Indie Pack
The Greatest Indie Pack, as previously mentioned, is a now-defunct Steam package of five indie game releases. From what I can figure, these games were placed together for the sole purpose of going on sale at $10 (compared to the original total price of $45). I snapped it up, because I'm an absolute sucker for getting multiple games with one purchase.
Unlike my other reviews, which I intend to give after playing a game all the way through (or eventually giving up out of pure frustration), I don't think it's terribly necessary to play all the way through these, since the games are either short, simplistic, or in one case, multiplayer-oriented.
Let's begin.
Eets - $10
Eets is a fluffy puzzle game along the lines of Lemmings crossed with the Incredible Machine. You're in indirect control of the titular lagomorphic rabbity thing, and must guide him to the goal of each level, denoted by a puzzle piece.
The puzzles in the game generally revolve around Eets' moods. Eets can be happy, angry, or scared. When he's happy, he'll gleefully hop off ledges (and usually to his doom). When angry, he flips out and will do his best Sonic the Hedgehog impression as he leaps across long chasms. When scared, Eets is too chickenshit to jump down a bottomless pit, and instead toes the edge and turns around, repeating this until his mood changes (or is simply moved).
Before action begins, you place various provided items into the level, and then let the scene unfold. Items include fruits that change Eets' mood, whales that suck Eets (and other items) up and spits them across the level, explosives, a trio of things that shoot other things, including a pig that farts out super exploding pig babies, lightbulbs, and mine carts. Then you hit the play button and let things unfold. Some of the items are interactive, so you can't always rest on your laurels as Eets does his own thing.
Pictured: Super Exploding Pig Babies, and other stuff too, I guess.The game's only noticeable flaw is its physics. While the "character" items (like the aforementioned pig-shooting-pigs) will stay put at all times, Eets, the fruits, and other doodads are at gravity's (and sometimes anti-gravity's) whim. This has the unfortunate effect of sometimes rendering even the absolutely correct, official solutions to the puzzles invalid due to something bouncing wrong, forcing you to retry. Sometimes the interaction between Eets and certain surfaces screws up and instead of landing correctly, he just bounces off (usually to his doom). Very occasionally you can run into "pixels" of land, too (fans of the Worms series will be quite familiar with the phenomenom).
On the plus side, the game's difficulty is cleverly designed. Instead of a strictly linear progression, you're only required to beat a certain number of puzzles to unlock the next set, and usually that number is equal to the number of easy (or easiest) puzzles in the bunch. Eets also features a hint button that will clue you on where to place an object. It's nice, but not always as helpful as it could be. It only ever shows one specific item, which means that it could be the item you already placed correctly. And on more complex puzzles, you're only getting anywhere from 1/4 to 1/8 of the solution. I long for a smarter hint button.
While I'm not a huge puzzler fan, I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by Eets. I would have never sought it out on my own, but it turned to be a nice diversion and a pretty good boredom buster. Unlike the rest of the games on this list, I've actually almost played this one all the way through.
Recommendation: Check it out. (Plus it's kid friendly.)
Gravitron 2 -$5
Here's a headscratcher. As part of the world's worst practical joke, Gravitron 2 defaults to the super-challenging bonus level pack (listed simply as "OfficialPack1") instead of the normal game ("Standard"). Not just when first starting, but when you always start it. Ugh.
So, originally, I was ready to decry this game as the worst one ever, because seriously now, those bonus levels are crazy hard. But after finding out about the switch-up on the Steam board for the game, I played the real deal and I'm...hrm. I'm not impressed, but I'm not turned off.
This is not the right level 1 aaaagh!Gravitron could be called a mash-up of Lunar Lander and Defender, wrapped up in Geometry Wars-style neon-on-black graphics. The game, is in fact, a homage to pretty much every omni-directional, inertia-based shooter ever - Thrust, Oids, Sub-Terrania, whatever. You take control of a spaceship, and fight against turrets and gravity itself (hence the name?), to rescue scientists from the surface of planets, then blow up their reactors and get the fuck out of dodge before they explode. Just don't run out of fuel.
It's arcadey. It's not awful, but it does grate on my nerves in places. I suspect that it might just not be for me.
For one, it has limited lives, which are just blah in any game these days. Second, while not mind-blowingly difficult, it is unforgiving, with collision damage against everything, turret fire that makes you flip out of control, and insta-kill lasers. The gravity aspect is also annoying at times, since most objects are below you, so you must turn upside-down to fire at them, but you have no backwards thrusters. Reverse thrusters would have been nice to have, and could've been balanced by making them weaker than normal. Without them, the game feels artificially unfair, which is perhaps what they were going for.
On the plus side, Gravitron 2 is the only game out of these five that is only $5, so the risk is minimal.
Recommendation: If you like puzzle-y shmups, you'll probably like it. If you like Nintendo Hard games, you'll probably like it. And it's dirt cheap.
I-Fluid - $10
Oh I-Fluid. I wanted to like you.
I-Fluid is a...um...puzzler/platformer type...thing. Basically, you control a cute little droplet of water. You can pick up moisture from wet stuff, as well as free-standing droplets, which makes you grow, effectively standing in for health. But on the flipside, absorbent materials will soak you up, hot things will evaporate you, and both will kill you dewey ass quickly if not immediately.
Your droplet (controlled with WASD and the mouse) can jump, double jump, cling to smooth objects and crawl up them, and most bizarrely, take control of fruit and vegetables, rolling them around for all manner of strange purposes.
Each level contains various goals for your droplet to carry out, and there are bonus challenges available, such as time attack.
The concept is pretty good, but I was ultimately disappointed by its presentation, especially due to various problems and limitations.
1) A little too varied, bad progression curve. Every level is pretty much completely different from the last. In one, you might have to knock five walnuts out of their containers using physics. In another, you might have to do exciting platforming shenanigans. "Put all five tomatoes in their containers." and then "Follow the firefly." in the level following.
This wouldn't be as bad if the game gave you a gentle curve of simpler challenges before shoving you along. For instance, the first real platforming exercise, jumping up leaves of ivy, was extremely tedious if not outright difficult, which nearly put me off of the game right there.
2) Physics! Just like Eets, physics rears its ugly head. There were a number of times where physics got in the way of fun. For instance, with the walnuts. At least one of the walnuts you have to simply push out of a shallow bowl. But...this boiled (haha get it) down to pushing a big round thing with something else that was much smaller and had less mass. It's not a difficult task, just a frustrating one.
Mind you, sometimes the physics were used really cleverly. My favorite was riding inside a plastic bottlecap, scooting along long stretches of fabric. But for every clever use, something else would piss me off. One level's ultimate goal was getting into a swinging ladle and knocking over a pyramid of cups. I did exactly that...only to die when one of the cups landed exactly inside the ladle and crushed me. Gah!
I was going to get a screenshot of cool bottlecap-sliding, but I got stuck instead. The ramp in the foreground is where I have to go up, coming down are infinitely spawning chocolates.Not pictured: Thoughts of suicide.
3) A lacking application of core concepts.
- Missed opportunity: there's a limit on how big your droplet gets, and it's not very large at all. Wouldn't it be more interesting if you could just keep growing up to a much higher limit, with the idea being that the larger the droplet, the harder to control and the harder to keep your extra water?
- The tutorial helpfully tells you to "use your common sense" when determining what materials will and won't kill you. I find this to be somewhat reprehensible. Imagine any other game telling you this regarding basic game mechanics. I understand what they were going for, but you're a tiny little water droplet (and not to mention that the game's graphics aren't top notch). Common sense cannot be relied upon when the game changes the player's perspective like that. I can't recall this ever majorly biting me in the ass, but when it came to any kind of wood, I was extremely confused that it usually wasn't lethal.
- Bad level design. For one thing, I was rather disappointed to find most absorbent materials used simply as roadblocks, rather than actual hazards. Worse still, this made a lot of the levels more confusing than they needed to be, as I stumbled about trying to find the correct path. And at least once I hit an invisible level boundry, while still on a safe surface, and abruptly died.
But by far the most egregious incident was an early level challenge to skid as quickly as you can across hot(?), wooden(!), segmented(?!) cooling mats. Flying in the face of common sense, the only hazardous thing about these mats is their warmth. Instead of getting trapped between the segments, they merely act as speedbumps. As far as I could tell, there is no obvious strategy to winning. You just try it sixteen times until it works. Your time to completion is tracked on each level. Generally I clocked in around two to five minutes. That level? Twenty minutes.
Recommendation: Skip it. (I probably make it sound worse than it is, though.)
Multiwinia: Survival of the Flattest - $10
Multiwinia is the multiplayer follow-up to the hit game Darwinia. I can basically stop writing right there. Introversion is a pretty cool company, releases good games and doesn't afraid of anything (not even Microsoft).
(
In short, Multiwinia has you take control of computer programs to defeat other computer programs in a deliciously retro 3D bit-scape. There are several different game modes, like capture the flag, king of the hill, or just plain elimination.
Much to my delight, Multiwinia distills the RTS formula down to its basics, and then uses those basics to craft an almost party-game styled affair. This reminds me of one of Introversion's other titles, DEFCON, though unlike the Wargames-inspired nuke-tastic march towards mutually assured destruction, Multiwinia feels a bit more newbie friendly.
Unlike its precursor you don't have immediate access to the directly player-controlled Squad programs (big tough soldiers that wipe out viruses), instead you guide clusters of the dimunitive and cute stick figure Darwinians right into battle, watching as the little guys shoot the crap out of anything not their color.
Even computer programs are filthy, filthy racists.(This screenshot is from a game I lost to the Easy AI, a testament to my leet skillz.
I played again and whupped 'em, though.)
Power-ups are dropped randomly onto the playing field and must be retreived in order to gain various bonus units, such as a troop carrier, or a tank. These can be crippling or overpowered in the right circumstances, but that lends to the playful, pick-up-and-play nature of the game.
The controls are simple, but sometimes not as intuitive as they could be. WASD and the mouse control your camera view. Holding down the left mouse button expands a circle used to select groups of units (very Pikmin-esque), and is then used to tell those units where to move. The right mouse button can be used to make a Darwinian a "leader" which will give the rest of the Darwinians who encounter him a simple directive, usually "go over there". It's also used to control the special units. Spacebar cancels any unit selection.
The problem I ran into was mostly when dealing with the troop carrier. You have to cycle between its modes, two of which are "load all surrounding Darwinians" and "eject all Darwinians inside". It just lead to some awkward fumbling about to make sure it was doing what it was supposed to.
Ultimately, as someone who has never really enjoyed strategy games, real time or turn-based, I was very surprised by how fun Multiwinia is, regardless of some of its awkwardness (which will assuredly pass with some practice).
Recommendation: If you can get some friends to play with you, don't hesitate. Otherwise, pick it up at your leisure.
Trials 2: Second Edition - $10
This is going to be another fast one. Trials 2 is, in brief, one of those balance-on-your-bike-while-doing-stunts type flash games, but in fully rendered 3D. And it costs $10. One thing that does set it apart is that when you wipe out, instead of just giving you a very disatisfying sound effect and an "OOPS!" sign, you get a nice dramatic rag-dolling, bone-cruncher of a fuck up, immediately making me want to play Stair or Truck Dismount again.
So, the gameplay is derivative. It does add in a few clever tricks, like using the lean system to duck under obstacles (or fit through pipes!). My only real complaint came down to the game's initial tutorial levels, and a pet peeve with all of these types of games.
For starters, viewing the tutorial demonstration of a level loads up a demo right onto the instance you're playing in! This means that trying to see how to do a trick halfway through the level, it will restart the entire thing. Ugh.
Another issue I found was that the game doesn't really talk to the player well. The demos include a graphic of what buttons to press when, but this never felt particularly useful when the timing is so finicky (because, why else, physics!). Moreover, the game launches right into talking about the inner-workings of its own systems, referring to the center of gravity for the bike and its rider and such, right in the middle of the tutorial. That sort of in-depth, high-level talk could really have been saved for a more advanced training stage. Similarly, instead of getting you accustomed to the fundamentals slowly and evenly, it tends to fly right into technique (the aforementioned finicky button sequences).
As for the pet peeve, it's crappy level design and lack of checkpoints. Trials 2 does actually feature checkpoints in its levels, but sometimes they simply do not come often enough, or they checkpoint you in a very inconvenient place, like in a valley between two steep ramps or three jumps prior to a big trick. Barring this, the game is rather entertaining.
Vroom, screech, etc.Trials 2 isn't terrible, but it does make me question what it really offers. While the game looks nice, the graphics feel a little pointless, mainly concerning the really high-level bells and whistles, since it leads to more headaches in ensuring the framerate doesn't crap out.
Incidentally, it does have a worldwide leader board and downloadable levels, but still... *shrug* I ultimately have no strong feelings one way or another.
Recommendation: If you really like bike games? If you couldn't get enough of the flash variants? (Not bad, just lacking in draw. Lack of a level editor is a massive letdown.)
Credits!
These fantastic people made Eets fantastic.
These groovy people made Gravitron 2 groovy.
These smooth people made i-Fluid smooth.
These wonderful people made Multiwinia wonderful.
These crazy people made Trials 2 crazy.
(Dang it's hard to find comprehensive info on some of these developers.)
And that's all you need to know about the Greatest Indie Games Pack!
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Friday, June 5, 2009
Cheapskates rejoice!
Check it.
My favorite cheapskate tool just got easier to use.
Ironically, there are no deals on the list I'm currently interested in. Oh well!
(More reviews coming very soon. The Indie Pack is basically finished, and I've got another one lined up too.)
My favorite cheapskate tool just got easier to use.
Ironically, there are no deals on the list I'm currently interested in. Oh well!
(More reviews coming very soon. The Indie Pack is basically finished, and I've got another one lined up too.)
Monday, March 16, 2009
Nothing is a cliche when it's happening to you.
No, no, no. I said addiction to painkillers. Plural!
That's better.Story:
Max Payne is a man tortured. After losing his wife and child to a couple of drug-addled maniacs, he transfers from the NYPD to the DEA. In a single night, while undercover, the shit hits the fan and Max is wanted for murder, among other things, and takes a police-dodging journey across a blizzard-choked New York to destroy the Punchinello crime family, as well as figure out who really pulled the proverbial trigger on his family, all the while gunning down anyone dumb enough to get in his way.
That's a short write-up, but honestly I don't want to spoil too much.
Max Payne is unique in that it doesn't use cutscenes, instead employing graphic novel-style panels, speech bubbles and all, alongside voiceovers and sound effects. While occasionally coming across as goofy (Max is modeled by the writer for the game, who doesn't always quite nail it), they are eye catching, having been nicely rendered through what I assume to be a Photoshop filter and other such touch-ups, with possibly more (I'm not a great judge of photoshopping).
They're quite effective at drawing you into the story, and they're quite effective at capturing the noir feel of the entire game. James McCaffrey is sublime as the gritty, wearied voice of Max, shaping him into a compelling protagonist.
Stolen from Wikipedia!
Graphics:
Outside of cutscenes, graphics are...well. Max Payne was released in 2001 (there seems to be a bit of contradiction as to when the PS2/Xbox versions came out, but I thought I'd let you know anyway that there was a PS2 and Xbox version). The visuals are not bad by any stretch, but they are dated. Character models are a little blocky and are somewhat reminiscent of the GTA III trilogy's models. Max's head is tauntingly squared, as if a cruel mathemagician cursed him prior to the events of the game.
Um. Yeah.
To be fair, I did play through the entire game on an older graphics card, and had everything on medium. But going back now, not a huge improvement on High settings. And, since I did play it on the PC, I have no idea how the PS2/Xbox visuals compare.
In short, you'll probably notice the graphics, but if you put down the game because of them, in spite of what the game has to offer (and in spite of them not being particularly awful), you are a cur.
Holy fuck!! Are you okay, dude?
Max Payne is a man tortured. After losing his wife and child to a couple of drug-addled maniacs, he transfers from the NYPD to the DEA. In a single night, while undercover, the shit hits the fan and Max is wanted for murder, among other things, and takes a police-dodging journey across a blizzard-choked New York to destroy the Punchinello crime family, as well as figure out who really pulled the proverbial trigger on his family, all the while gunning down anyone dumb enough to get in his way.
That's a short write-up, but honestly I don't want to spoil too much.
Max Payne is unique in that it doesn't use cutscenes, instead employing graphic novel-style panels, speech bubbles and all, alongside voiceovers and sound effects. While occasionally coming across as goofy (Max is modeled by the writer for the game, who doesn't always quite nail it), they are eye catching, having been nicely rendered through what I assume to be a Photoshop filter and other such touch-ups, with possibly more (I'm not a great judge of photoshopping).
They're quite effective at drawing you into the story, and they're quite effective at capturing the noir feel of the entire game. James McCaffrey is sublime as the gritty, wearied voice of Max, shaping him into a compelling protagonist.
Stolen from Wikipedia!Graphics:
Outside of cutscenes, graphics are...well. Max Payne was released in 2001 (there seems to be a bit of contradiction as to when the PS2/Xbox versions came out, but I thought I'd let you know anyway that there was a PS2 and Xbox version). The visuals are not bad by any stretch, but they are dated. Character models are a little blocky and are somewhat reminiscent of the GTA III trilogy's models. Max's head is tauntingly squared, as if a cruel mathemagician cursed him prior to the events of the game.
Um. Yeah.To be fair, I did play through the entire game on an older graphics card, and had everything on medium. But going back now, not a huge improvement on High settings. And, since I did play it on the PC, I have no idea how the PS2/Xbox visuals compare.
In short, you'll probably notice the graphics, but if you put down the game because of them, in spite of what the game has to offer (and in spite of them not being particularly awful), you are a cur.
Holy fuck!! Are you okay, dude?Gameplay:
Max Payne is a third-person shooter. You run around with nice, tight controls, with the only off-putting thing being Max's odd/realistic ability to jump, which tellingly pegs him as a white man. In fact, now that I think about it, even allowing Max to jump seems like an afterthought, and I only recall maybe one or two times when it's useful or required, not including the secret area in the tutorial (which is itself a little weird).
More importantly, Max carries an arsenal of guns in his fifth dimensional pocket (or maybe it's just a really good trenchcoat), once again showing that raw badassery beats out cybernetic enhancement in the "carrying enough guns" department.
My only real complaint with the bullet-spraying penis metaphors is that they seem a bit unbalanced. Dual Berettas, provided you consistently get headshots (hard to not do with mouse look), always seemed like a better choice than the slow-firing Desert Eagle. The Pump-Action Shotgun was good for mowing guys down in close quarters, but I never saw the need for the Sawed-Off. And, once you got the Assault Rifle, there was barely ever a time where you'll need anything else.
Part of this is likely due to the enemy design. Rather annoyingly, whenever a gun is wielded by an enemy, it does about twice as much damage to you than vis versa. This is probably worse on the higher difficulty levels. Max, being Max, packed all the guns but not the body armor. D'oh!
What Max does have is a Max-imum (har har! put a bullet to me!) of nine bottles of Painkillers that he munches down whenever necessary to heal. However, the pills are not a substitute for magical insta-heal health kits of the future; the pills take some time to actually kill the pain, which means that they're not really all that great for in-combat heal-ups. This also has the unfortunate side-effect of occasionally forcing the player to wait to heal before moving onto the next room full of mooks.
Said army of mooks sitting between Max and his goal packed a more balanced set of equipment that morning, however, leading to the later levels feeling extremely unfair as you struggle to line up headshots while taking heavy fire by guys in kevlar, sometimes wielding fucking grenade launchers.
The AI doesn't help, as all the enemies seem to have the reflexes of a cyborg, immediately supplementing you with lead if you so much as peek out from a doorway. Later in the game, where goons are wielding the Assault Rifles, Sniper Rifles, and yes, the fucking Grenade Launchers, it really felt like a crapshoot whether or not I'd survive a given encounter, leading to save game abuse.
The one leg-up on the mah-sheens that Max has is everyone's favorite cliche, bullet time. But! Max Payne was one of the first to actually have this space-time continuum-warping element, and it uses it for a clear stylistic reason, rather than just for the hell of it.
Though, somewhat oddly, the true "Bullet-Time Mode" never really did much for me, since it slows the entire game down, even Max, leading to me slow-moing my face into an already-fired bullet or simply being unable to dodge properly when Max is so sluggish to control.
Similarly, basic dodging is clunky and dubiously useful, performed by holding down the jump button and moving in any direction but forward, something that I rarely had time to consider in the middle of combat. The dodge controls (outside of changing the jump button) aren't even re-bindable, but there's still one good use for dodges:
Max Payne will return in Max Payne 2: Electric Boogaloo
The true fun is in the unstable, violent lovechild of Bullet-Time and Dodging, the "Slow-Mo Dodge" (aka Shootdodge, according to the options) where Max can dodge (read: dramatically dive) in any direction while slowing down time. This is where the real game is, as, perhaps a bit unwisely, the Slo-Mo Dodge only costs a small piece of Max's hourglass meter. One of my favorite maneuvers is dodging straight backwards and shooting a line of lead into a goon's face before he can even fire.
It's abusable as all heck, but damn if it isn't entertaining. After all, isn't that what action movies are about...?
Wait what? Action movie? Yup. To quote Wikipedia, out of laziness and to prevent being accused of stealing from it, "Max Payne is heavily influenced by the Hong Kong action cinema genre, particularly the work of director John Woo, as well as hard-boiled detective novels by authors like Mickey Spillane."
Max Payne is a gritty tale of revenge and sorrow overlaid atop a solid foundation of balls-to-the-wall action movie bullet trading (with a sprinkling of yummy Norse mythology for good measure). There's even a dramatic bullet-eye's-view (if the bullet's eye was somewhere vaguely above and behind it, I suppose) when you use the Sniper Rifle to splatter some poor bastards brains out, though this moment is occasionally spoiled by bad surface clipping, leading you to heroically propel a bullet into a piece of railing or a buggy corner. And then get blown up by a fucking Grenade Launcher.
Hey, who are those guys way up there?
Circled: guys with fucking grenade launchers.
Fuuuuuuuuck!
The game is also delightfully filled with moments when you can overhear various guards shoot the shit, usually about action movies if I recall, including a serious conversation about bullet-time. This is something that I wish more developers would make use of, as it's always funny or interesting.
Final Thoughts/Price:
But alright, enough about heralding the game as the second coming of Steve (not good enough to be Jesus, I'm afraid), how much does it cost?
On Steam (and elsewhere, but I'd rather not give them the business), it costs a mere $9.99, or, even better, the Max Payne Bundle, which includes the second game as well, for only $14.99. The games are also part of the Rockstar Collection but that's a bit excessive, in my opinion. I'm unsure how much the PS2 or Xbox version is, but I'd expect it to comparable in price by now, even better if used.
I'd definitely pick it up. While rough around the edges, Max Payne is damn fun, and from what I've played thusfar of the sequel, that's worth the money too.
These awesome people made Max Payne awesome.
Max Payne is a third-person shooter. You run around with nice, tight controls, with the only off-putting thing being Max's odd/realistic ability to jump, which tellingly pegs him as a white man. In fact, now that I think about it, even allowing Max to jump seems like an afterthought, and I only recall maybe one or two times when it's useful or required, not including the secret area in the tutorial (which is itself a little weird).
More importantly, Max carries an arsenal of guns in his fifth dimensional pocket (or maybe it's just a really good trenchcoat), once again showing that raw badassery beats out cybernetic enhancement in the "carrying enough guns" department.
My only real complaint with the bullet-spraying penis metaphors is that they seem a bit unbalanced. Dual Berettas, provided you consistently get headshots (hard to not do with mouse look), always seemed like a better choice than the slow-firing Desert Eagle. The Pump-Action Shotgun was good for mowing guys down in close quarters, but I never saw the need for the Sawed-Off. And, once you got the Assault Rifle, there was barely ever a time where you'll need anything else.
Part of this is likely due to the enemy design. Rather annoyingly, whenever a gun is wielded by an enemy, it does about twice as much damage to you than vis versa. This is probably worse on the higher difficulty levels. Max, being Max, packed all the guns but not the body armor. D'oh!
What Max does have is a Max-imum (har har! put a bullet to me!) of nine bottles of Painkillers that he munches down whenever necessary to heal. However, the pills are not a substitute for magical insta-heal health kits of the future; the pills take some time to actually kill the pain, which means that they're not really all that great for in-combat heal-ups. This also has the unfortunate side-effect of occasionally forcing the player to wait to heal before moving onto the next room full of mooks.
Said army of mooks sitting between Max and his goal packed a more balanced set of equipment that morning, however, leading to the later levels feeling extremely unfair as you struggle to line up headshots while taking heavy fire by guys in kevlar, sometimes wielding fucking grenade launchers.
The AI doesn't help, as all the enemies seem to have the reflexes of a cyborg, immediately supplementing you with lead if you so much as peek out from a doorway. Later in the game, where goons are wielding the Assault Rifles, Sniper Rifles, and yes, the fucking Grenade Launchers, it really felt like a crapshoot whether or not I'd survive a given encounter, leading to save game abuse.
The one leg-up on the mah-sheens that Max has is everyone's favorite cliche, bullet time. But! Max Payne was one of the first to actually have this space-time continuum-warping element, and it uses it for a clear stylistic reason, rather than just for the hell of it.
Though, somewhat oddly, the true "Bullet-Time Mode" never really did much for me, since it slows the entire game down, even Max, leading to me slow-moing my face into an already-fired bullet or simply being unable to dodge properly when Max is so sluggish to control.
Similarly, basic dodging is clunky and dubiously useful, performed by holding down the jump button and moving in any direction but forward, something that I rarely had time to consider in the middle of combat. The dodge controls (outside of changing the jump button) aren't even re-bindable, but there's still one good use for dodges:
Max Payne will return in Max Payne 2: Electric BoogalooThe true fun is in the unstable, violent lovechild of Bullet-Time and Dodging, the "Slow-Mo Dodge" (aka Shootdodge, according to the options) where Max can dodge (read: dramatically dive) in any direction while slowing down time. This is where the real game is, as, perhaps a bit unwisely, the Slo-Mo Dodge only costs a small piece of Max's hourglass meter. One of my favorite maneuvers is dodging straight backwards and shooting a line of lead into a goon's face before he can even fire.
It's abusable as all heck, but damn if it isn't entertaining. After all, isn't that what action movies are about...?
Wait what? Action movie? Yup. To quote Wikipedia, out of laziness and to prevent being accused of stealing from it, "Max Payne is heavily influenced by the Hong Kong action cinema genre, particularly the work of director John Woo, as well as hard-boiled detective novels by authors like Mickey Spillane."
Max Payne is a gritty tale of revenge and sorrow overlaid atop a solid foundation of balls-to-the-wall action movie bullet trading (with a sprinkling of yummy Norse mythology for good measure). There's even a dramatic bullet-eye's-view (if the bullet's eye was somewhere vaguely above and behind it, I suppose) when you use the Sniper Rifle to splatter some poor bastards brains out, though this moment is occasionally spoiled by bad surface clipping, leading you to heroically propel a bullet into a piece of railing or a buggy corner. And then get blown up by a fucking Grenade Launcher.
Hey, who are those guys way up there?
Circled: guys with fucking grenade launchers.
Fuuuuuuuuck!The game is also delightfully filled with moments when you can overhear various guards shoot the shit, usually about action movies if I recall, including a serious conversation about bullet-time. This is something that I wish more developers would make use of, as it's always funny or interesting.
Final Thoughts/Price:
But alright, enough about heralding the game as the second coming of Steve (not good enough to be Jesus, I'm afraid), how much does it cost?
On Steam (and elsewhere, but I'd rather not give them the business), it costs a mere $9.99, or, even better, the Max Payne Bundle, which includes the second game as well, for only $14.99. The games are also part of the Rockstar Collection but that's a bit excessive, in my opinion. I'm unsure how much the PS2 or Xbox version is, but I'd expect it to comparable in price by now, even better if used.
I'd definitely pick it up. While rough around the edges, Max Payne is damn fun, and from what I've played thusfar of the sequel, that's worth the money too.
These awesome people made Max Payne awesome.
Friday, March 13, 2009
Things To Come
My first deluge of reviews will likely be from these two package deals on Steam, one of greatest cheapskate tools ever:
Eidos Collector's Pack 20 games, $100. Is it worth it?
And the...um...apparently defunct Indie Games Pack (link goes to the news post proving it once existed, and at over 75% off at that). As it says there, it included Eets, Gravitron 2, I-Fluid, Multiwinia, and Trials 2. I got it for a mere $10, but since each game is still available, and they're all pretty cheap by themselves (hint: emphasis on "by themselves"), I'll do a five-in-one review anyway.
Of course, I've barely touched most of these games (I've spun through half of the Indie Pack, at least), so I might very well start with a game I actually finished! Indeed, the story of a man on a mission and his addiction to painkillers...
Eidos Collector's Pack 20 games, $100. Is it worth it?
And the...um...apparently defunct Indie Games Pack (link goes to the news post proving it once existed, and at over 75% off at that). As it says there, it included Eets, Gravitron 2, I-Fluid, Multiwinia, and Trials 2. I got it for a mere $10, but since each game is still available, and they're all pretty cheap by themselves (hint: emphasis on "by themselves"), I'll do a five-in-one review anyway.
Of course, I've barely touched most of these games (I've spun through half of the Indie Pack, at least), so I might very well start with a game I actually finished! Indeed, the story of a man on a mission and his addiction to painkillers...
The Beginning
Welcome to the Bargain Bin Gamer, where you can learn to be an even bigger cheapskate. How, you ask?
Well...there's a lot of games out there. A lot of really cheap games, too. But, before you go spending that pocket change on 'em, why not get an opinion? I like spending money, but dang if I don't still feel ripped off when I buy something that doesn't live up to expectations, even for $5.
My plan is to review games that go for dirt cheap, while examining if they're worth the price. Plus I'll let you know where I found my copy so you can share in the bargains if the game's actually worth it.
I'll also be occasionally delving into game design criticisms that might pop up since, hey, that's usually why I'd give a game a bad score. Even if the games are old, I still figure I can rant since I payed good money to do it!
Well...there's a lot of games out there. A lot of really cheap games, too. But, before you go spending that pocket change on 'em, why not get an opinion? I like spending money, but dang if I don't still feel ripped off when I buy something that doesn't live up to expectations, even for $5.
My plan is to review games that go for dirt cheap, while examining if they're worth the price. Plus I'll let you know where I found my copy so you can share in the bargains if the game's actually worth it.
I'll also be occasionally delving into game design criticisms that might pop up since, hey, that's usually why I'd give a game a bad score. Even if the games are old, I still figure I can rant since I payed good money to do it!
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