Ryse:Son of Rome

A lot has been said about Ryse, and I have to say myself that I did not have particularly high expectations walking in. Having said that, I have actually gotten a lot of satisfaction out of the game. I did not find the violence as excessive as some have decreed, and the gameplay nowhere near as repetitive as others have suggested. 

So let's qualify this a bit.

The game is pretty simple and straightforward. Attack, strong attack, block, and dodge, are our basic actions and from these you fight one on one and, more often than not, three on one. Your enemies come in various classes, and each may be described by their weapon arrangement (single weapon, dual weapon, weapon and shield, and brick-shithouse). Also thrown in the mix are "executions" as quick-time-events; an execution is a finishing move which may confer one of four benefits when performed (life, experience, focus, and damage bonus). Armed with these basics, each fight becomes a small tactical challenge - timing attacks, juggling opponents, and choosing an execution.

Interleaved with these is the occasional phalanx charge and other mini-games that break up the action and keep things fresh.

Being something of a game veteran, my initial playthrough was on Centurion (third of four) difficulty. Combat was not especially difficult, but presented enough of a challenge to keep me engaged. Decisions had to made in the midst of combat, either to take exploit a weakness, deflect a blow, or press an advantage.

Of course, the game is real pretty too. It is very difficult to distinguish between pre-rendered cinematics and in-game engine, and some of the set pieces (like Trial by Fire, mission 3, beach landing) are spectacular.

Overall, I really like Ryse. It has its flaws (buggy focus-time, and scaled Legendary difficulty), but if you are seeking something novel and willing to give it a try, I heartily recommend it!

Dead Rising 3:Day One Edition, freezes every 5 minutes

Recently I digitally purchased Dead Rising 3: Day One Edition, and much to my chagrin found that it froze 5 minutes into gameplay. Preceding the freeze, level of detail (LOD) would stop and so textures would look blocky, smaller items would stop spawning, and no voice tracks would play (with subtitles enabled, you will see the caption, no voice). As it turns out, I may not be the only one.

After discovering DR3 is continuously placing me in a "party" when I start up, I surmised the periodic freezes were online-related (barring something more pathological in their level-streaming, the fact the game is taking online action without my explicit action raised my suspicion).

Some experimentation later, I have found a technique that seems to work quite well:

1. Clear game state (eg start a different XboxOne game, or simply power console off and then back on)
2. Start Dead Rising 3
3. While it is loading or at title screen
• Start Party App, and leave party if you are a member of one
• Unplug network cable
4. Continue playing

This seems to let me play continuously without freezing, but clearly multiplayer will be completely neutered.

Update:

Not sure when they fixed this, but as of Thurs 13 Feb, DR3 is playable online.

Dead Rising 3:Day One Edition

Hm, how to start. Overall, I am not sure how I feel about Dead Rising 3. There are elements that I like and are fun - slaying zombies, the multitude of challenges, side quests, simple and melodramatic story lines, and character leveling - and then there is a whole lot that I do not like, and frankly, makes it incredibly painful to play.

Let's start with what I do not like. These are completely personal preference, and touch mostly on design and aesthetic. Speaking of which, what is with all of the muted colours? I love Dead Rising and Dead Rising 2 for their vibrant beautiful non-gritty look and feel. Those titles managed to straddle a fine line between horrific gore and child like fantasy. That is completely gone now in lieu of a darker uglier feel more reflective of the ever-popular The Walking Dead (cable and game) series.

Also gone is the rush and tension of getting survivors to safety. Half the time, there are stranded survivors just running off screen, the other time survivors just tag along and safely return to safe houses on their own. I can understand the change in the mechanic, but in its predecessors saving people was a big deal. That stress and tension, acting as shepherd and a leader to keep them alive, was very rewarding. Now, I find these survivors more of a nuisance than not.

The same may be said of weapon and clothing lockers. Not a deal breaker, but it really knocks down any sense of challenge or accomplishment.

Then there is the painful. I am not certain how widespread the problem is, but 5 minutes into playing DR3 the game froze. Ok, start it back up and then another 5 minutes later, froze again. This happened ad nauseum for at least an hour as I tried to make incremental progress through the introductory chapter. Convinced the game was broken I switch to Ryse to play some multiplayer, and noticed I had been placed into a "party" of 1. Some experimentation later, and I discover the source of these game freezes in DR3 strongly correlates to its multiplayer components.

This last point has really soured my experience with the title. It makes it extremely difficult to recommend a title that is broken in such an obscure way (I consider myself fairly computer literate, and could work around this, I have no hope for the average gamer to fare better).

A real shame, since as I have said, there are some things to like. If they manage to fix this continuous freezing, then DR3 would be a good GTA meets The Walking Dead mash-up.

Oblivion

With a slew of Sci-Fi flicks coming out this year, was not expecting very much from this Tom Cruise vehicle - but was very pleasantly surprised! Let's skip straight to the point; the film reads like a Classic Sci-Fi flick from the seventies with modern sensibilities. The visuals and aesthetics are striking, vistas beautiful, and mechanical elements bold. The soundtrack also has that seventies vibe with long tonal synthetic original tracks, and more literally with seventies classic rock by Zeppelin and Procol Harum.

There are more aspects to the film that, in its treatment, execution, plot points, remind me of that bygone era, but that would be spoiling. In a lot of ways, I think they pulled off what Mass Effect did in games. Maybe Classic Sci-Fi is the new Vampire and Zombie.

All the good stuff aside, I'll throw in a little commentary. Tom Cruise is a great and accomplished actor, and this shouldn't be taken as a slight, but I couldn't help but think throughout the entire two and half hours that this would be the perfect vehicle for an up and coming unknown actor. Like Mark Hamil in Star Wars. Again, nothing against Tom Cruise, but I tend to find him both bane and boon - and I know more than a few people that will likely skip this film based on that alone, to their detriment. And casting Jaime Lannis - er,
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau? I mean, I like him, but he's not just a "hot item" right now but positively radioactive!  Again, kinda broke that fourth wall.

Well, honestly if critiquing casting for their success is the worst thing going for you, you're in pretty damn good shape.

Watch Oblivion!

Bioshock Infinite

Wow. So, in addition to a lot that's already been published about this game, just want to throw my 2 cents in.

First and foremost, this is an amazing game. Well, more accurately, an amazing story. The narrative is very well written and executed. Even for a Bioshock veteran expecting that classic Irrational Games twist, they managed to pull off an incredible reveal for the finale. Well worth the engagement.

As for game mechanics, nothing too groundbreaking here. The game's pacing was well balanced, mixing combat with exploration with narrative. Combat itself wasn't too challenging - and the harder difficulty settings simply seemed to scale things up (ie enemies inflict more damage, you less, and on occasion they throw in an additional troop or two).

One thing I found odd, is that for a game which was clearly put together very meticulously, it seemed rather callous to make gear attributes random. I suppose that's to add a bit of replayability, but just seems weird.

Anyway, for anyone who has not yet played it: go for it! Or at the very least put it on a must-play list!

Assassin's Creed Revelations

Alright, so WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED HERE? You know it takes just one bad apple, or one bad bite of an apple to really make you appreciate what you got before.

To be clear, Assassin's Creed Revelations isn't a total failure. It's not even that bad a game. It has all the hallmarks of an Assassin's Creed title; animus, parkour, assassinations, action, weapons, an even deeper brotherhood mechanic, bombs even, and a brand new city and environment to explore! All the things I would expect, all, but one. Story telling.

Playing the first few minutes of ACII, AC Brotherhood, and even ACIII demonstrates a completely distinct flare for narrative. Characters and dialog feel natural, appropriate for both period and locale. Reflecting back on it, you feel as though someone took time, care, and love for their script. However, playing through Revelations feels like watching someone stumbling through their first playscript. Ezio's dialog feels stilted and disjoint, Yusuf is merely a teaching mechanic, every bad guy is just cardboard cut-out, and Altair is just cruel-caricature of the man I remember leaving behind in the original Assassin's Creed.

I feel the narrative quality is so poor that I sometimes wonder if I am playing a proper AAA instalment of the series. Then a quick reminder that I am running through entirely new assets, custom maps, and new mechanics reminds me that Ubisoft did invest a lot into this vehicle. I cannot understate the severity, the impact, the detrimental effect that poor writing has on an otherwise well designed and implemented game.

I find this all very odd considering a recent article on Ubisoft's Alice.

Looking forward to wrapping this one up quickly and moving back on to ACIII

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood

So, as perviously mentioned, totally had to go back and play through Assassin's Creed Brotherhood. Not only did I feel as though I had missed some major plot points, but I also had heard it was a very good single player experience. Of course, I have to say I really enjoyed Assassin's Creed and its promising premise, and thoroughly enjoyed Assassin's Creed II, so this wasn't a particularly difficult sell.

First and foremost, Brotherhood is a worthy successor to ACII. They took a lot of what they learned there (great story telling, well paced incremental learning curve, city renovations, etc) and improved (flag maps, feather maps, additional side quests, and of course the titular brotherhood mechanic).

Yeah, great title, great experience.

Har, my only complaint is that some of its achievements are multiplayer-exclusive, a very difficult feat to obtain them when there are so few people left playing. Meh. I suppose that's what happens when you're late to the party!

Dead Space 3

Dead Space: quite possibly one of the best new IPs from 2008. Was a dark, brooding, malevolent master-piece. Was so singularly successful in its execution that it has garnered immediate buy-in for anything that follows. Dead Space Ignition, Dead Space 2, and yes, even the somewhat deviant Dead Space 3.

Deviant because they are straying further from their horror-genre roots, against "expectations". To be honest, that is not necessarily a bad thing since you can only beat that shtick so many times.

I really enjoyed playing the game, blasting necromorphs in a more action-oriented mode. Weapon crafting is deep, and allows a lot of variance and encourages experimentation. The story made sense, and revealing ever so little more about the Marker artifacts, culminating in a final epic confrontation that is worthy of a third "trilogy" instalment. Of course, cannot go on without mentioning co-op, and the joy of sharing the experience with someone you know.

As for its misses, my personal gripes are relatively few; I think the first is that no one (other than Carver) seems to be affected by the Marker even though you are smack dab in the middle of a Marker world! I mean, Isaac sure, this is all old-hat for him so get that he has his shit together. Ellie, well .. ok she survived Titan station, but everyone else was fair game. Crazy is always fun! So I think that was a missed opportunity. The second lesser gripe is that optional content got fairly repetitive quick. The main campaign featured a lot of original set pieces and a changing environment that kept things fresh, but slogging through the optional quests actually got a little mindless and confusing. I do have one fun anecdote about this though: I was playing co-op with a friend who never played a Dead Space title before, this was his first. He was playing Carver, and we had a shit-tonne of fun playing through his side story. No spoilers, definitely worth a playthrough!

So yeah, not that bad all-told. A lot of what other people are rambling on about, like micro-transactions and such, I don't really find that big a deal. I did splurge on the resource-bot DLC, but was completely unnecessary. There is little to no struggle through the game for additional resources, and I found the option less intrusive than some. I concede on the "fourth-wall" argument, but [shrug] it's a game. Though I suppose that says it all.

Overall, enjoyed it - even as a Dead Space fanboy. Very curious to see where the IP goes from here.

Assassin's Problem

So, played through Assassin's Creed and Assassin's Creed II when those games launched a few years back. To be honest, the spat of games that then followed (Assassin's Creed Brotherhood and Revelations) I thought I could pass by.

Boy was I surprised when starting up Assassin's Creed III that I have missed some obvious plot points. Whoa, where'd that Piece of Eden come from? John de Lancie is who?!

So back to the animus; grabbed Brotherhood and Revelations as digital downloads and playing through those.

Up to this point, the first three sequences of ACIII are a blast, Brotherhood was a good romp, but Revelations seems to lack that AC narrative flare ...

Halo 4

Long time no see - just to the point, Halo 4 is pretty awesome. I haven't yet attempted Spartan Ops, but single player and multiplayer grind-fest is great fun. I have even attempted the campaign solo on Insane, and its actually do-able.

The game looks absolutely spectacular, and while some of the meatier parts of the plot and character development occur late in this instalment, it is well worth the investment.