Heavy Rain

One of four of the Heavy Rain characters, in titular rain.

Way back when, I had the fortune of picking up Indigo Prophecy for the Playstation 2, a gem of a game that was lauded for its interactive fiction and nuanced return of adventure gaming.  I really enjoyed the title, up until the writers all got slipped a substantial amount of acid and the game went from "what happens next" to "what the fuck is happening?"

I'm all about some weird shit happening in games, but Indigo Prophecy took it just a few steps beyond my comfort zone.  And then just kept going.

Luckily, David Cage and his company, Quantic Dream, moved forward from Indigo Prophecy's less-than-stellar conclusion and went on to make a much more normal adventure whodunit in the form of Heavy Rain.  Set for a PS3 exclusive release, the breathtakingly beautiful Heavy Rain was much anticipated, and the demand met the hype.

Firstly, the game is beautiful.  No one could play Heavy Rain and think: "this just didn't look very good."  You also can't go into the game expecting something (rain) and not get it (it rains a lot).  The problem - as is a problem with several adventure games and interactive fiction models - is that it feels less like a game, and more like a movie that wants you to hold the buttons of the controller in weird ways.  Which is still a hell of a lot better than a movie that wants you to push X every couple seconds.

Of Mice and Sequels

George Steinbeck never had any sequels to his literature published, but I have a conspiracy theory that they exist.  For example, there were plenty of plot points remaining in Of Mice and Men that could have been answered in Of Mice and Men and Rabbits.  Or what about The Great Gatsby 2: Return to West Egg?  I think there's a lot of potential here!

A quick look at the games I'm playing now (Portal 2, Dragon Age 2, Uncharted 2) will showcase that game developers have the same mindset of squeezing cash from the cow of cash giving until no more sweet cash-like milk will errupt from her utters.  But how many times will developers crack open perfectly sealed stories to capitalize on the notion of "franchise" in order to gain a few extra bucks?  And do we - as fans - contribute to this madness?

I was thinking about writing a bit on sequels last night as I was falling asleep, and when I awoke in the morning and started my internet surfing, I'd found that Yahtzee Croshaw had already written a damn treatise on the subject.  Curse you, Croshaw!  It's like this English/Australian hybrid-man who speaks too fast is simultaneously invading my dreams and sucking out the nectaur of creativity like a viscuous fluid to nurish his savage and wanton needs.  And what's more, the bastard is doing it using time travel since he wrote the article supposedly days ago, when I've just had the idea last night.

JealousyAnimostity aside, I have to say that while I partially agree with Yahtzee, there certainly is some fun in playing a sequel, again evidenced by my current queue's love of the number 2.  So what's the what?  Why are sequels so prevalent, and why do we keep playing them?

Sequels - that is to say, direct continuations of the previous game, not franchise continuations with completely seperate characters and stories - are most successful when planned.  Let's take Bioshock and Bioshock 2 for example.  In the first title, the exploration and mystique of Rapture had been fully detailed and played out.  You had a nice little story and it was concluded with some finality.  The coffin firmly nailed in the story is then accosted by a crowbar in an effort to pump the corpse for some missed cash.

However, I was thrilled at the chance to go back into the underwater city.  There was a lot of Rapture we hadn't seen, and I was more than okay with giving that a go.  The problem errupts in that the story of BS1 was wrapped up too nicely, leaving no dangling threads to explore in the future.  This requires a sequel to create threads, which BS2 actually did in the form of theressomethinginthesea.com - an online marketting campagin featuring a man who had his daughter kidnapped and taken to Rapture, but instead of following up on this man's plot point, the game pretty much delegates him to an NPC with some audio logs and dismisses the whole ordeal.

I still enjoyed the game for what it was, but I'd love to see less recycling and more innovating.  Andrew Ryan's greatest fear was that his city would be discovered, which is why secrecy was so keen.  You want a sequel?  Capitalize on that.  U.S. government discovers Rapture, fixes it up and continues its ill-advised scientific experiments with the genetically splicing ADAM.  Shit goes wrong (as shit does) and you get hired as a merc to get out some government big wig who is trapped in his office.  This is a chance to bring fans back to the environment (Rapture), but explore wholy new story concepts and introduce some substantially different gameplay.   BAM, better sequel made.  You can pay me in chocolate, 2K.

So sequels can be good, but they must be planned, or they must be inventive and creative.  And I wouldn't expect to be picking up The Raisins of Wrath from Amazon.com anytime soon.

Fallout: New Vegas News - Summer DLC Packs

In addition to Dead Money (which I still haven't gotten a spin at) - three new DLC packs are coming out for Fallout: New Vegas which add new environments and expand upon story elements left unfinished.  In true Bethesda style, the level cap will increase and there are new perks, new trophies, and new weapons to bring a more diverse experience to the Mojave Wasteland.

• Honest Hearts - Releases in May 2011 - DLC that gives you more background on the Burned Man, Ceaser's right-hand man who was believed dead.
• Old World Blues - Releases in June 2011 - after the Courier is captured and exposed to laboratory testing, you learn more about how some of the monstrous denizens of the Mojave came to be.
• The Lonesome Road - Releases in July 2011 - finally!  We get to learn more about the courier who turned down the Platinum Chip job and caused the entirety of the events in Fallout: New Vegas.

Each pack rounds up to a $10 price tag, making a $50 gift card to the Playstation Store an obvious choice for my birthday (July 8).

PSN Returns

The Playstation Network (PSN) is back online with (very nearly) full functionality.  In related news, if you are friends of mine on Facebook, I inadvertently spammed your newsfeed with a bunch of trophy notification.  I've been busy, alright?

In due time, I will finally play Portal 2 co-op so that I can actually review the whole game proper, complete with spoilers.  In the meantime, the spoiler-free review is here.

Dragon Age II Follow-up

Maybe I was blinded by my extreme love for the game, but there is a substantial complaint that was omitted from my original review.

Here's the deal.  I love the game, the gameplay, the combat, the characters, and the intrinsic story about politics and mages versus Templars.  No really, love the whole damn thing.  Except, here's the thing: for some reason...

The only cave in Thedas, on film.

There is only one cave in all of Thedas, apparently.  I'm all for recycling some content, especially when there is a plot purpose to do so, but the amount of recycling present in Dragon Age 2 borders on digital environmentalism.  In addition to the caves, mansions/manors, and sewers are all recycled from the same base model (sometimes with a frustrating un-openable door to make the place feel more diverse).

I don't know how difficult it is to make new environments, but it would have been nice to see a little nuance, at the very least from the different settings Hawke and Company explored during their adventures.  If it is, in fact, a chore to make new places, I hope Bioware keeps in mind the needs of its developers when setting dates.

Dragon Age II

I wish I could review Dragon Age II without putting up a spoiler-alert, but it's nearly impossible to capture the awesomeness I had for the game without going into at least some of its incredibly detailed story.  So if you want a spoiler-free, TL;DR version, here it is:  this game was fucking awesome and I'm a little upset that it was so awesome because I was borrowing it from a friend and now I have to buy it instead of buying groceries.

First of all, a non-spoiler thing: I don't often get eye-candy in video games, since I have less than usual tastes, but thank you, Bioware for Varric.  Handsome rogueish dwarf with wit and a super-spring loaded crossbow?  Yes, please.  Unfortunately, upon trying to flirt with him, he said I was too high maintenance.  Does this game know me or what?

How Long To Beat?

Real quick post here.  A new website called howlongtobeat.com is growing in popularily and I want to give it some cred.  This is an EXCELLENT site, doing what I've threatened to do for ages: compile a list of video games and how long it has taken me to playthrough them.  It averages the times from users' input, and allows you to determine whether or not that $60 game is a good investment from a dollar/hour standpoint.

Playstation Network (Still) Down

Hopefully you don't rely on this blog for updates on what's going on in the world of the video games, but in case you do (hi Mom!) - you should probably know that the Playstation Network has been down for about a week now.  This means that no online features are available, or online play (like, co-op in Portal 2, for example), can't access the PSStore (to spend money I don't have).  And there may have been some accidental leaking of personal data, like where I live and stuff - but nothing that wasn't already leaked by the Texas Comptroller's office.  Sony assures me that credit card numbers were encrypted, but I dare the hackers to try to use that card to buy anything more than a hot dog.

So today, Playstation released some presses (it was actually yesterday, but I was asleep) - saying that as sort of a "sorry" that users would be getting a month free of the Playstation Plus, and some mystery content (or maybe a choice between several types, as is rumored by the internet).  This is kind of exciting, because despite my rant about Playstation Plus, I actually kind of love free stuff - especially getting a trial at something.  This might be the sort of thing I angle to get for my birthday.

In the meanwhile, I've been trying my hand at Dragon Age II, and borrowing it is not going to work out - I'm going to have to own this eventually, because I already know I want to play it AGAIN, and I'm barely a couple hours in.

Did you want to buy me something?  That's so sweet.  You can check out my Amazon wishlist here: http://amzn.com/w/1HLFDVW8GNHV2.

Portal 2

No beating around the bush: Portal 2 lived up to and exceeded my expectations (which were high).  And here's how:

1.  Simple game mechanics explored by every angle imaginable.

The game play is pretty easy to understand: open up a blue portal, open up an orange portal.  Whatever goes in the blue portal comes out the orange portal.  Lasers, weighted cubes, yourself.  Use the portals to get from the entrance of each area to its exit while evading any obstacles designed to cause your demise.

Any time I'd get stuck on a puzzle (it happened a couple dozen times), the solution was nearly always a simple return to the basics: take a step back and open up some portals.

2.  Stupendous writing coupled with excellent voice acting.

The bar for comedic writing was set fairly high in the original Portal, and I'm delighted to say that Portal 2kept up pace incredibly well.  The three "main" characters have excellent interactions with each other and plenty of great monologue opportunities when interacting with the player character.  But in addition to just being hilarious: the writing creates excellent moments of sympathy for the characters.

And the voice work is exactly what it needs to be.  Each character is full defined and encapsulated within their first few lines of dialogue.

3.  Story, story, story - but don't shove it down my throat.

We also get a great look into Aperture Laboratories and its development, but it is fully at the player's own interest to discover it.  There is very little delivered narrative, but plenty to discover, which earns Portal 2 an A+ in creative writing and story delivery.

And that's just the single player campaign.  Once I've got a chance to play co-op I'm sure I'll be continuously wow'd.  Worth a pick up, indeed!  Though the game was somewhat brief (I bested it in about 6 or so hours, total), I'm sure it'll be the kind of game I play again and again...

Portal 2 Released

I just thought I'd add to the internet ethosphere (I just made that up) of the number of times Portal 2 appeared in newsposts and blogs and the whatnot.  I haven't had a chance to get my salacious mitts on the thing, to be honest, but I'll be plenty excited when the time comes.  All in good time.

I am a bit dubious about the multi-player aspects, mostly because I believe video games are selfish isolations from the cruel, cruel world around us, but I've had some success in some multi-player ventures, so it might be fair to give the dog another chance.

Finally, if I was a professor, I would have sent out this e-mail too: