In the early 90s, Coktel Vision (which later became Sierra On-Line) released a quirky point and click adventure game titled Gobliiins which had players bouncing between three different Goblins to find a cure for good King Angoulafre.
Sometimes when you are browsing the internet for information on how to do something, you stumble upon ideas or projects or even games that people might be working on...
What a meow-gnificent evening it is to send your paw-rcels out to those family and friends! Are mew looking to pick up an item or send something out? Well at Cat Mail Co. we can send and receive all your deliveries!
Have you ever grown up feeling like you don't belong? For our Heroine, that's the feeling she lives with everyday in her small farming village. But it's not her only secret...
STARSEEKER: Astroneer Expeditions is just that! Massively co-operative and not an MMO! When you first run the game you are instantly into the tutorial...
Today we’re looking at what has rapidly become an absolute favorite in the open-world RPG genre for me. An interesting story, memorable NPCs, stunning visuals, and a setting absolutely dripping with flavor, Dread Delusion sets its tone immediately and sticks with it.
I enjoy simulation-type games, and I enjoyed the original release of House Flipper, but I never got around to getting the DLC. When the remastered version of the game was released, I figured it would be the best way to experience the DLC while checking out how the base game was upgraded.
GranBlue Fantasy: ReLink released in 2024 bringing the GranBlue universe to an action adventure JRPG format. With a party of up to four members, this band of skyfarers set out for new skies, adventures, and dangers. Two years later, Endless Ragnarok...
70s-Style Robot Anime Geppy-X is a mouthful of a title, but you know what? It’s quite the challenging game to describe as well. At its core, 70s-Style Robot Anime Geppy-X is a shooter...
The fairly new action MMO APB has already said they are closing down, though there's rumors that Epic may be interested in picking it up.
Team ICO has a release collection for Shadow of the Colossus and Ico (two very cool old school games) - basically getting the God of War collection HD update - with 3d graphic support.
And then for the big gaming elephant in the room, a humble little title called Halo: Reach rolled out this week - to the tune of $200 million in the first 24 hours. Of course not all is roses on this front, as there's been reports of some disc errors. Still, the reviews have been good from most of the critics and it sure seems like Bungie put out a ton of effort for this last release in the series (from them. No doubt Microsoft will keep sequels, prequels and spinoffs coming). Here's a brief article where Bungie discusses their interest in their new contract to work with Activion - largely due to Blizzard's standing as one of the top online entities in gaming. You can read about it here.
And in other Halo news - I too succumbed to it yesterday. A combination of good deals got me on board with it. First, Microsoft is offering 40% off if you upgrade from silver to gold this week - making it $30 instead of the usual $50. And the price goes up in a couple of months to $60, so if you're on the fence for this, it is not a bad idea to consider the upgrade. They are also offering some sort of a helmet/avatar throw-in that you get a code emailed to you in a few weeks. On top of that, Walmart is giving away $20 gift cards if you purchase Halo: Reach this week (one of my co-workers said he got the same deal through Best Buy as well). With it came a code for a helmet addon in-game and it had a nice free 2 day gold code I gave to my son for when he plays.
I haven't touched campaign mode yet - I logged about 5 hours of online last night though, and my impressions are quite favorable so far. I had a lot of fun, but want to dig into some of the other features before making a full post review of it. I'm also close to the end of Limbo and plan to write up a review on that as well, but wanted to beat it and grab a few of the achievements before sharing that review as well - so I should have a couple coming in a matter of days if time allows. Until then - take care.
So, here's some stuff I've seen lately that caught my eye:
Valkyria Chronicles 2 for the PSP has been getting some good reviews (I need to grab this one still), and now there's some free DLC coming soon too - very cool!
I used to be a really heavy World of Warcraft player over two different periods of time, but I quit playing back around the new year. The monthly costs were just starting to get to me. The rather well-received Lord of the Rings Online game however just went free-to-play today. Reviews have been good in the past, and you can apparently download the core game that supports leveling up to 50, and you don't even need a credit card to start playing. You can however purchase in-game items with money if you so choose, and if you want the expansions you do have to shell out for that as well. Still, might well be worth looking into - I believe I will be soon.
For those Mac users lacking a PC or console system who have long craved some mayhem, the Grand Theft Auto 3-pack for the Mac may be just what you're looking for. Never been a huge fan of the series myself, but I know a lot of people are, so this may be worth a peek.
Good news of the Dissida: Final Fantasy game for the PSP (this would so very much include me, who is still grinding away at it) - There's going to be a sequel and a couple of characters have been announced. One of them is Lightning from the most recent Final Fantasy 13 game.
I sunk a lot of time into this year’s NCAA college football game before posting a review. Well, I probably doubled that for Madden 2011. I’ll start by saying I really like college football and in general, football games, but I am a huge fan of the NFL. I have anywhere from 3-5 fantasy football leagues every year that I participate in. I can name the starting qb and hb and #1 wr for pretty much any team in the league. My first real exposure to football was the dual-discovery of Barry Sanders on Sundays and early Madden and Tecmo Super Bowl games. I spent way too much time using the Lions and/or Buffalo Bills during the Tecmo Super Bowl game for my NES. I would rack up some pretty incredible single season stats. I’m also someone who tends to pick up Madden every year, despite the cries of those who feel that Madden is nothing more than a yearly roster update that should be offered for $10 or $15 downloadable content instead of a full $60 game purchase. So, I will try to look at this game and review from a few different angles, making comparisons to last year’s iteration and this year’s college football at times. I also kept quite a few stats from the majority of my first season of Madden, including comments and notions I jotted down. Basically, I made it a lengthy homework assignment. The aspect of the game I get the most mileage out of is the Franchise mode, but I will touch on the others as well. Here goes:
Graphics – 8.0:
This is sort of a personal preference, but I actually liked the look of NCAA’s player models better. Somehow they looked grittier to me, a bit more real. The Madden models seem so bright in some of their uniforms that they almost look cartoon-like at times to me. That’s not to say that they are bad – just sort of a personal preference/observation. The animations get better all of the time it seems, and this year was no different. Many of the tackling animations looked really good, and there were some really good catch animations. All in all, it looks really good, though I don’t know that it is a huge improvement from last year’s version on this front – but it is better. I did see some weird stuff going no with hands from time to time – but that’s probably to be expected. Still, every now and then you see hands going through a player’s body, or a ball ‘sticking’ to a hand that has some transparent space between them, which makes the fingers look oddly unrealistic as well. Still, this is nitpicking an overall great engine.
Sound and Music – 8.0:
The commentary is good. For those who follow the series, you know it started with John Madden and some of his Bang! and Pow! Maddenisms many years ago, and then over the years they began to layer on actual commentary in response to the action on the field. There have been some ups and downs in this area (including taking the voices overs out completely during the first year’s release on the current gen systems) – but the addition of Gus Johnson was a solid one I think, and I’ve always liked Chris Collinsworth in real life as well, so hearing these two talking about the action on the field is actually quite nice.
However, it’s probably time to update the system in some fashion. Basically pre-recorded ‘clips’ get assigned to the action on the field, and it doesn’t feel as fresh or ‘real’ as it did years ago. They did the same thing for Joe Montana’s talking football many moons ago – a couple of system generations back. Obviously this is much better, but maybe they can find ways to break up the pieces just a bit more and put them together a bit more fluidly. Because right now you hear most of the commentary the game has to offer in a single game or two, and I find many of the same things get said about the same guys over and over again. This is probably more pronounced when you do a franchise of some sort than say, online play where you might change the team you are using frequently, because you are using the same players game in and game out.
The music soundtracks they use are just fine – generally consisting of rock music that is a bit older like Crazy Train, but as that is some of my favorite music I can’t say I mind, and many of the songs compliment the game’s hard-hitting action. They primarily play during menu screens or between kickoffs – you don’t really hear it during the game action.
Gameplay – 8.5:
Madden has traditionally been a pretty smooth game to play. You won’t see a ton of innovation here on this front overall. Menus are still easy to navigate, your players control well. The addition of locomotion – using both analog sticks to control your ball carrier’s body a bit more precisely – feels good however. I love running the football. I probably have about a 60 or 65% run rate for my offensive plays, so this was a welcome if somewhat subtle change for me. Raising the game level in difficulty does tend to strain reality a bit once in awhile (watching a middle linebacker pull off a 1-handed stretching interception of a bullet pass on Madden difficulty is one of those blood pressure raising events that Madden has always been able to annoy me with). The blocking has been greatly improved as well. As a fan of pounding the run game down my opponent’s throat – that’s a nice, subtle change as well. Better yet, they seem to have addressed one of my biggest grips from Madden games of years past and even this year’s college football. The pancake numbers seem much more in-line between played teams and simulated ones.
In years past (all but 1 or 2 in fact, once they added/tracked the pancake stat, which is when an offensive player lays out a defensive one with a block), the simulated teams would get tons of pancakes. League leaders would get upward of 150 on the season. Meanwhile played teams might get 1 or 2 a game. 3 if you were really ramming the ball at them 70 or 75 percent of the time. This really affected your player’s development since you could not build up good stats in this area. Now? I’m finding that my mediocre Lions line’s best pancaker is finishing out the season well out of first place, but by a margin that’s a bit more realistic. At the end of year 1, my leading blocker had 6 pancakes. Not a great total, but the Lions line is very ‘meh’. League leader? 23. So the discrepancy is not bad at all. Of course, it may be a moot point if you consider that stats really don’t factor into development now, but I’ll go into that in a bit.
There are a lot of customization here as well – sliders for various aspects of the game for both the player and the computer, difficulty settings, volume controls, etc.
One of the newest features being plugged by EA has been Game Flow. This was a feature I was very skeptical of when I first heard of it. Basically, it’s a dressed-up version of the long-standing “Ask Madden” feature where it tries to select the play from your playbook that best suits the situation. I don’t always find myself agreeing with those choices, but most of the time they’re fine. It also does seem to speed up the game a bit (roughly 10 minutes per game), and does lend more variety to your attacks on offense and defense. This is also a handy feature for newer players, or so I would imagine. It saves having the player fly around the playbook frantically looking for a play that might work while being pressed for time. There’s also a bit of audio commentary with play selection that breaks down what’s happening on the field. I don’t really gain anything from it, but my kids seem to so it serves a purpose depending on your level of skill.
Intangibles – 8.0:
I love Franchise Mode. I take my poor beleaguered Detroit Lions to the Super Bow that they will never likely reach in real life, and watch as their young, high draft picks from recent years turn into amazing NFL superstars. But I don’t feel like there was much change to the franchise mode this season. If anything, some stuff got stripped out. They used to approach player progression in different ways years past. You could do drills before the season or during the week (depending on how far back in the annals of Madden you want to go) to give you some customized development of your young talents. In other years they offered improvement around every 4 weeks or so, based on your statistics. In other years they only did it once, at the end of the year, based on your season stats (in what other world could Joey Harrington become a 99 overall QB? In the one I play football in!). This year sort of strips all of that out though. I much, MUCH preferred the beginning of the year training camp drills with bigger boosts than the much smaller, incremental boosts that came with weekly training. Now? You get neither. Also, the only progression takes place at the end of the year, and from what I’ve seen, it has a lot more to do with their ‘potential’ rating than any impressive (or pathetic) numbers they hung up over the course of the season. I really preferred the every four weeks route myself with a smaller gain at the end of the season, but to have my stats mean little to nothing? It feels cheap, and there’s a lot of people online who insist that stats don’t factor at all – that it’s strictly potential-based, which would be a mistake.
Online Team play is something I don’t do much of, but it’s done pretty well this year. It’s the kind of feature I’d have used more probably in years past when my friends kept up on the current versions of Madden, but they tend to fall into the ‘it should be a yearly $15 roster update’ category. There’s mixed feelings about the ‘boosts’ you can get. For example if you play WR and play it really well, you will gain statistical ‘boosts’ when you play that position in future Online Team games.
Next up is the Superstar mode. This is probably my 2nd favorite mode. So that it, like Franchise Mode, doesn’t feel any different – that’s a pretty big disappointment to me, honestly. I like that you can import your Road to Glory player from NCAA 11 into the Superstar mode, but that’s not a new feature and I’d like to see it get a bit more attention sooner than later.
There’s a new Ultimate Team Mode – think of it as getting virtual football cards to help design a team to play against other teams. It’s a cool concept, but it doesn’t feel like it was fully fleshed out. It also feels like a bit of a money grab from EA in that you can spend actual money to buy more virtual cards. It, like many of the boosts you can buy for your teams (seriously – improved development, keep a player from retiring, etc?) – these are paid for features you can apply to your franchise modes – both offline and it looks like online. I have to speculate on this feature because there’s no way I’m paying more money just to improve my players, but there’s going to be people out there who do, and that’s doubly annoying in my mind, since your opponent may be getting better due to a credit card payment, not actual skill. I have a small complaint about the way Madden and EA in general have been handling these extra money grabs in general – I am a huge opponent to the idea of online passes where you have to buy the game new, or if you want online access you have to go online and pay for a code that grants it to you. I buy almost all of my games used. Madden is one of the few I actually do buy new, but on principle it gets me riled up as they apply it to more games like Mass Effect 2 and the Cerberus network. Anyway, end of rant, but that mode led up to it perfectly.
There’s a lot to do and there’s a lot of ways to do it. That generally makes Madden a pretty good value. Here’s the question when considering intangibles – do you have last year’s game? If so, then it may not be worth it to you to pick up this year’s game. Most of the new changes are well implemented, but if like me you spend most of your time in a relatively untouched Franchise mode, you’re essentially getting a few general engine changes and a roster update. If you’re someone who likes to play online, then there’s a lot more mileage to get out of the game. If it’s been a couple of years and you have an NFL itch this year? Then you’re looking at a quality game that should keep you entertained for quite some time.
Overall – 8:
Overall, it’s a good game. Is it perfect? No. Is it a huge change and improvement over last year’s game? Not really. I took a lot of note on stats, things that happened, how long games took, etc – to give you an idea of some of the settings as well. I’ll put those down here in the Overall section, in case they’re of interest to you at a glance.
Game #2 of the season (pro difficulty):
Stafford had 17 completions for 357 yards and 5 tds. I had 96 yards running with no TD’s on my primary halfback. Both my TE and #1 WR had over 100 yards and 1 td’s. I won 62-3 and the game took 40 minutes to get through while skipping most of the replays while using Game Flow to make my play selections
Game #4 of the season (pro difficulty):
Stafford ha 8 completions for 239 yards, 5 tds, and my rb had 205 yards, 2 tds. The score was 70-31 and I called my own plays throughout instead of using Game Flow. It took 48 minutes to finish. There were 2 very cool animations in this game:
#1 – A TE tried to make a leaping sideline catch, bouncing up and down on one leg like a human pogo stick as he tried to stay inbounds to make the highlight catch, but was unable to get the 2nd foot down inbounds.
#2 – I threw a bomb to the endzone with a DB and WR jumping up for the ball and colliding in the air, hitting the nearby ref and forcing him to the ground to crawl away as they landed beside him. Cool stuff.
Next game was with all default settings – speed, using Game Flow throughout, watching the replays and Pro difficulty. The results:
I won 52-10. Stafford threw for 11 completions and 171 yards with 3 tds, though no receivers broke 60 yards receiving. My running back, Best, went off for 252 yards on 24 carries and 2 tds. The game took 51 minutes to complete. Some more observations I made while taking notes after the game:
I experienced an audio oddity – after a fumble recovery for a td by my defensive end, Collinsworth went straight from talking about how hard it is to scoop up one of those footballs and run with it, into talking about what a perfect route he ran for a touchdown catch.
There was a cool animation showing a WR getting hit after getting both hands on the ball, and then a 2nd defender came in to knock it out of his hands for the incomplete
Game Flow failed to recognize that the opposing team was doing an onside kick, lining me up for a traditional return, so I had to call a time out and manually call this one play.
Cool yet annoying animation when fielding a deep kickoff in my own endzone – but a would-be blocker motions for my returner to stay in the endzone and down the ball. It was neat-looking, but on the next play I came out anyway and this blocker was now way out of position.
Neat cut scene – it was Rams at Detroit, and there was a fan wearing a Rams’ player’s jersey (Jackson’s) – with 7 seconds left in the 4th during a dead ball. It showed the player wearing the losing team’s jersey shuffling toward the exit , visibly disheartened.
As I increased the difficulty, the scores certainly got closer. In Madden difficulty I had a few games decided by less than a touchdown, so that felt considerably more authentic than the default difficulties, which makes perfect sense really.
So, I'm diverging just a bit from my usual posts - as is very evident by now, I am a huge fan of video games, but I also grew up on tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, etc. Along the way, I discovered text-based online communities called MUDs. I played a few on and off over the years, but then in August of 2010 my wife and I started our own called Kingdoms of the Lost. It's swords and sorcery fare, and we've met and worked with a lot of amazing people over the years. We're actually celebrating our 10 year anniversary at KotL
This type of game's obviously not for everyone. In the day and age of modern MMORGP's like World of Warcraft, Everquest, Lord of the Rings Online - MUDs have fallen off the map somewhat. However, right now we have 12 people on, and last night we had about 20 on - 5 years ago we had 60 on, so while it's dwindled, it hasn't gone away. To see who's on now, you can click here.
Still, it's free. It's a community. It's an opportunity to roleplay, meet new people, kill some time at work (if you're like me and lucky enough to have cpu access) or between classes - whatever. Anyway, there's a lot going on this week, so if you have any interest in taking a peek in, this is a good time to do so. We're giving away lots of free in-game stuff, we've just added a ton of new content and we've seen some of our old friends resurface lately on there as well. 10 years... It's been a long, fun ride.
How to play? Well, you need to connect, either via telnet or by downloading a client - I use GMUD - and directing it to kotl.org port 2222
I remember playing the original Vandal Hearts a very long time ago and enjoying it thoroughly. As I commented recently as well, I really enjoy strategy/rpg games quite a bit, which is why even though I thought some of the aspects of Agarest War could have been better, I'm currently giving it a 2nd playthrough. Well, a couple of months ago there was a deal where you could buy Xbox 360 arcade games at a discounted price, and this game was among them.
Graphics - 4:
I realize it's an arcade game, so the bar tends to be a bit lower, but they are pretty bad here. The combat maps are at least more visually interesting than Record of Agarest War, with different levels and surprisingly expansive terrains. Now, for the cut scenes - what the heck? The disproportionate looking characters are odd to look at and it doesn't look very good either. When people speak, the picture that pops up is very average (at best) as well. At least I was able to appreciate the overall artistic direction of Agarest War. I'm not sure what direction they were going with in Vandal Hearts, but the result was very poor.
Music and Sound - 6:
The music's not bad - I especially like the somewhat chorus-like startup music. They make little comments with voice overs I can actually understand (unlike the Japanese laden voices of Agarest - sorry, I'm going to keep comparing these two as they're similar games I'm playing right now at the same time). There's some varied combat sounds to help keep things from getting too repetitive as well. Still, some of those combat sounds really got on my nerves - especially when you were hitting someone. My wife asked me why my characters were continually kicking dogs at one point, the wolves were making such a horrible whimpering sound every-single-time-I-hit-them. And if you have a spell that hits 3 or 4 guys at once, they all make a loud combined sound that had a tendency to be a bit grating. Plus, while it was nice understanding what my characters were saying, they didn't have a lot of variety in what they said on the map.
Gameplay - 7:
Not bad at all. It's mostly menu-driven stuff, but it is easy enough to navigate them and moving around the map isn't too hard. The camera angles were sometimes a tad bit annoying, but you can spin the camera and tilt the landscape to vary your view, though it seemed like on some maps I was doing this for every single turn, which was a bit annoying. Still, the combat moves along at a brisk pace and things like flanking, terrain types, height of terrain, etc - all of that is a factor, which is very cool.
Intangibles - 7:
I've only beaten it once, but I've heard there's at least 2 different endings so I'm giving it a 2nd play through now. Still, a built-in reason for an extra play is nice. There are questions along the way you are asked to answer - I'm curious to see if these actually change the story or just alter what's said right after - we'll see. The game's not terribly long, but there's hidden maps to find and the system used for character progression is kind of cool - basically the more you use a skill - melee, archery, magic - the better you get in that area, so you can customize a character if you want to, though some of them are predisposed to certain things so it's easier to just continue along that path.
Overall - 6:
The game could be a bit longer - and the graphics really hurt the score. That said, if you're a fan of this type of game, you're not in it for the graphic realism most of the time. It appeals to me the same way Record of Agarest does. Vandal Hearts is not as good - it's not as deep of a game. You won't be playing it nearly as long and there's not as much to do in it. That said, if you're looking for a turn-based strategy game, that's relatively inexpensive (I got it for around $8, and I believe the regular full price rings in about $15 on both Xbox and Playstation 3) - so it's still a pretty good price for what you are getting.
I commented on the increase to Xbox live costs the other day, but on the other side of that coin Nintendo is lowing the cost of their DS Lite and XL's - the latter of which is kind of surprising given how little time it's really been on the market. There's been a lot of speculation about when the Nintendo 3DS will be coming out - with most of it saying early next year. Still, this reported price drop does have people wondering if perhaps Nintendo is aiming for a last moment push before the holiday season. Considering how the units being shown at the last few conferences have been fully functional, it would appear the hardware is there. Probably the biggest concern is the launch lineup and if it is ready to be put out there yet.
Borderlands was a very popular and well-reviewed game - and sadly one I haven't gotten around to playing yet. Still, this Game of the Year edition with all of the extra content may be just the reason to pick it up for the first time.
Castle Crashers is making its way to the Playstation Network. It's late to the game in arriving - it's been out on the 360 for quite some time now. But, this was a well-reviewed game and a favorite of my kids'. I've had a couple of playthroughs on it as well with my kids and overall it was a pretty cool game. If you haven't had a chance to play this one on the 360 yet, it may well be worth a peek if you're a ps3 owner.
Last but not least, the Playstation Move is a peripheral I've been curious about, and though I'm unlikely to pick one up, at least out of the gates, I have been watching for news on it. Well, IGN gave me a lot of news on it today. They've posted quick blurbs saying that they were using the device for a while now, but today they had a chance to actually review it and their launch titles. What were the results?
The hardware fared good, scoring an 8.5 - though I suspect it would get mixed results in my house because the camera would be pointed right at the window as a backdrop for the players, which could affect sensitivity.
Sports Champion came in at a decent 7.5 - not breaking any new ground, but as Wii has proven a variety of sports mini games can prove entertaining.
Eyepet was one that I thought would really appeal to 1 or 2 of my kids, especially my youngest daughter. With the 8.0 score it ranks as the highest of the release scores from IGN and looks to ooze cuteness if that's your thing.
Kung Fu Rider did not hold up nearly as well, getting a 3.5. The visuals scored well, but the controls and gameplay apparently were quite poor.
Racquet Sports did not fair much better, with it's 4.5 score.
Overall, the technology seems decent, but the launch titles seem to leave a bit to be desired. One of my primary concerns with Move and Kinect are that they feel like addons. The Wii has the motion controls enabled for almost every game, and while they're not always well implemented by the developers, the developers know that every Wii owner has already got the potential to utilize these controls. This encourages development using motion controls. However, if the Move and the Kinect do not make big sales right out of the game, will developers make games for these peripherals knowing that maybe only a small percentage of the PS3 or 360 market can even play the game? That makes the launch titles very important and it would seem that the Move's launch set is very questionable. The next several titles that are released for the Move could very well make or break its early success, so we'll have to wait and see.
... with several reasons at fault. First, I've been replaying a few games I'd recently beaten, just to try some new things on them, so that's prevented me from rolling out some new reviews on other newer games. I did however snag a few more games recently - 3D Dots Heroes, Eternal Sonata, the new Lara Croft game, Monday Night Combat, Limbo, Vandal Hearts: Fire of Judgment - so expect a few reviews to be coming on that front. By grabbing Lara, Limbo and Combat - I also qualified for Microsoft's 400 point bonus, which I will likely be putting toward the new Scott Pilgrim beat-em up or Snoopy's Red Baron game - no doubt my kids will decide that one for me. So, do I have anything new to toss out there? Only that I'm finding my 2nd playthrough of Agarest War to be fun (I know, I know - I gave the game a low overall score - but that was based on technical merit. I'm a sucker for srpg games - hence the acquisition of Vandal Hearts).
Got an interesting article here on how Xbox Live Gold accounts will be going up in price somewhat soon as well. Seeing as I recently let my own Gold subscription go, this doesn't exactly fire me up to get it. I'd rather pay out for the Playstation Plus and see if any of those extras are worth the price of admission - but basically what me and a handful of my friends have decided is if the game's got multiplayer and it comes out on both consoles - we're getting the PS 3 version since the online play is free. I also am unlikely to buy Halo: Reach. I may play it at a friend's house - he's a hard core Halo fan and will no doubt get it, but without the online, it's probably not worth it to me. So, depending on how Microsoft wants to look at it, it's losing sales to me and several of my friends -we can't be alone on that front, can we?
Anyway, I do have a few reviews I plan to get out this weekend - I should have a nice 4 day weekend for the holiday (My last two were very busy with family visiting from out of town), and I'm hoping to reward whoever follows this blog for their patience. :)
Childhood television shows are making for popular source material these days. Shows like He-Man get a new animated series, others like Transformers and G.I. Joe get the movie and game treatment – and all of it is received with mixed results. Generally Transformers has fared a bit better than its counterparts, but even then most people felt that the 2nd movie was inferior to the first and that the movie tie-in games were average at best.
Then it was announced that High Moon was making a Transformers game that was a prequel to the movies and cartoons – dubbed War for Cybertron. The graphics looked pretty good in early stills that were released and seeing an intro video with Omega Supreme walking with other Autobots (I loved the Omega Supreme toy as a kid – c’mon, who doesn’t like seeing that one?) to Peter Cullen’s voiceover as Optimus Prime – it sure felt like High Moon was making a game that had the potential to appeal to diehard Transformers fans. So – how’d they do?
Graphics – 8:
What is there looks very cool. The robots are well animated and the backgrounds have a nice look to them too. Cybertron feels alive with movement and energy, just like its mechanical inhabitants. The transformation animations are especially cool and it looks like a ton of effort was put into the entire process. That makes the occasional framerate stutter all the more frustrating during heavy action sequences, because it really pulls you right out of the experience and can impact combat as well. Also, for as cool as Cybertron looks, it lacks the variation of Earth or other organic worlds. After awhile the textures start to look the same and you don’t have a great deal of variation. Color pallets change but you’re still dealing with moving squares and pulsating energy – from start to finish. It’s a limitation of the source material, but it all does still seem to blur after a time with few standout set pieces that games like Bayonetta become remembered for.
Music & Sound – 7:
The music’s good and fits the pace of the action, but there were few parts that were particularly memorable after you’ve turned off the game either. The voice work is good enough and for fans of the series hearing Peter Cullen reprise Optimus Prime’s voice immediately made a good impression. The sound effects are good and help make the environment and combat feel very alive, but as is often the case with games like this where you fire off a few million rounds, they can get a bit repetitive as well.
Gameplay – 8:
The characters handle well and aiming is really sharp so I had have to give it solid marks there. Also the integration of transforming was handled rather well and plays nicely into some of the online modes, giving them a really unique feel while reprising some of the more common online modes you find in other games. I did have a tendency to run out of ammo fairly frequently, which is one of the factors that adds to a shooting game’s challenge of course, but it does feel like perhaps there was just too little ammo spread around the game at times. I’m torn on the boss battles – they looked impressive and had a nice, epic feel to a few of them, but on the other hand they had a tendency to grow a bit repetitive and somewhat boring in a few instances. Also it should be pointed out that the AI for both enemy and ally alike is fairly limited – they were not terribly smart or creative most of the time. Still, the transformation mechanic is huge in this game and it is a lot of fun, where as in the prior movie tie-in games I thought the mechanic was often flawed and cumbersome.
One area that was a miss was a the lack of a cover system. The game in many ways moves and handles like Gears of War, but feels more like a 3rd person Modern Warfare – you can duck behind the environment – and you have to do so often. But it feels like there should have been an actual cover mechanic put in place that would have given the robot mode just a bit more distinction from the vehicular mode.
Intangibles – 8:
Aside from telling a good story about a beloved franchise and shining a light on events that most people would not be aware of, the game itself is simply a lot of fun to play. It does clock in at a modest 11-14 hours for most gamers, which is about average for a game of this nature. Getting to play as both Decepticons for one part of the story and Autobots for another was pretty cool as well. The multiplayer co-op makes this fun for you to sit down with friends or a kid as well. The online modes are pretty good too. They’re nothing terribly new in and of themselves, but they feel a bit fresher thanks to the transformation modes. One of my friends has been dropping a ton of time into the online mode, which has a decent amount of customization to it and gives you a nice sense of ownership over your transformer that is lacking in games like Modern Warfare 2 where you are a nameless, generic charcter.
Overall – 7.75:
It’s nice to see this kind of a game come out of an established IP. I think it helps that High Moon got to work with more original storyline and was not tied to the plot and characters of the movie. This allowed them to flex their creative muscles a bit – though given the excellent handle they seem to have of the source material, I am certain I am not alone in hoping that they continue to make more games in this series down the road.
Just a handful of notes over the last few days that caught my eye…
Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light will be coming out for the Xbox 360 first, but it does not include multiplayer right at first. That functionality will be patched in later when the game releases for the PC and PS3 later.
Dragon Age: Origins Ultimate Edition is scheduled for release this fall. There’s no details for it yet, but I would guess that the various download packs such as the $40 retail release Awakenings and a few others would come with it. Not a bad deal if you’ve yet to play this game, but probably not much there for people like me who have played through it a few times already. Still, following their recent announcement of Dragon Age 2 – this is a good idea for BioWare to keep interest in their new IP high.
On the collections front, it looks like Ubisoft is going to drop collection packs of Splinter Cell and Prince of Persia. Right now the listings show PS3 only apparently but I suspect we’ll see these show up for the 360 as well.
I enjoy the Guitar Hero and Rockband games – they’re fun with friends and family, and though I feel that they’ve over saturated the market (I dug the Aerosmith and Metallica releases, but these single-group centric releases are starting to feel like a bit much) – I still look forward to the main releases. Well, the Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock track list was potentially revealed and here’s what it has:
1. A Perfect Circle - "The Outsider" 2. Aerosmith - "Cryin'" 3. AFI - "Dancing Through Sunday" 4. Alice Cooper - "No More Mr. Nice Guy" 5. Alter Bridge - "Ties That Bind" 6. Anberlin - "Feel Good Drag" 7. Anthrax – "Indians" 8. Arch Enemy - "Nemesis" 9. Atreyu - "Ravenous" 10. Avenged Sevenfold - "Bat Country" 11. Bad Brains - "Re-Ignition (Live)" 12. Band Of Skulls - "I Know What I Am" 13. Black Sabbath - "Children Of The Grave" 14. Blind Melon - "Tones Of Home" 15. Blue Öyster Cult - Burnin' For You 16. Bush - "Machinehead" 17. Buzzcocks - "What Do I Get?" 18. Children Of Bodom - "If You Want Peace… Prepare For War" 19. Creedence Clearwater Revival - "Fortunate Son" 20. Deep Purple - "Burn" 21. Def Leppard - "Pour Some Sugar On Me (Live)" 22. Dethklok - "Bloodlines" 23. Dire Straits - "Money For Nothing" 24. Dragonforce - "Fury Of The Storm" 25. Drowning Pool - "Bodies" 26. Fall Out Boy - "Dance, Dance" 27. Five Finger Death Punch - "Hard To See" 28. Flyleaf - "Again" 29. Foo Fighters - "No Way Back" 30. Foreigner - "Feels Like The First Time" 31. George Thorogood And The Destroyers - "Move It On Over (Live)" 32. Interpol - "Slow Hands" 33. Jane's Addicton - "Been Caught Stealing" 34. Jethro Tull - "Aqualung" 35. John 5 Feat. Jim Root - "Black Widow Of La Porte" 36. Kiss - "Love Gun" 37. Linkin Park - "Bleed It Out" 38. Lynyrd Skynyrd - "Call Me The Breeze (Live)" 39. Megadeth - "Holy Wars… The Punishment Due" 40. Megadeth - "Sudden Death" 41. Megadeth - "The Day We Fight!" 42. Metallica Feat. Ozzy Osbourne - "Paranoid (Live)" 43. Muse - "Uprising" 44. My Chemical Romance - "I'm Not Okay (I Promise)" 45. Neil Young - "Rockin' In The Free World" 46. Nickelback - "How You Remind Me" 47. Night Ranger - "(You Can Still) Rock In America" 48. Nine Inch Nails - "Wish" 49. Orianthi - "Suffocated" 50. Pantera - "I'm Broken" 51. Phoenix - "Lasso" 52. Poison - "Unskinny Bop" 53. Queen - "Bohemian Rhapsody" 54. Queensrÿche - "Jet City Woman" 55. R.E.M. - "Losing My Religion" 56. RX Bandits - "It's Only Another Parsec…" 57. Rammstein - "Waidmanns Heil" 58. Rise Against - "Savior" 59. Rush - "2112 Pt. 1 - Overture" 60. Rush - "2112 Pt. 2 - The Temples Of Syrinx" 61. Rush - "2112 Pt. 3 - Discovery" 62. Rush - "2112 Pt. 4 - Presentation" 63. Rush - "2112 Pt. 5 - Oracle: The Dream" 64. Rush - "2112 Pt. 6 - Soliloquy" 65. Rush - "2112 Pt. 7 - Grand Finale" 66. Silversun Pickups - "There's No Secrets This Year" 67. Slash Feat. Iggy Pop - "We're All Gonna Die" 68. Slash Feat. Ian Astbury And Izzy Stradlin - "Ghost" 69. Slayer - "Chemical Warfare" 70. Slipknot - "Psychosocial" 71. Snot - "Deadfall" 72. Soundgarden - "Black Rain" 73. Steve Vai - "Speeding" 74. Stone Temple Pilots - "Interstate Love Song" 75. Strung Out - "Calling" 76. Styx - "Renegade" 77. Sum 41 - "Motivation" 78. Tesla - "Modern Day Cowboy" 79. Third Eye Blind - "Graduate" 80. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - "Listen To Her Heart" 81. The Cure - "Fascination Street" 82. The Dillinger Escape Plan - "Setting Fire To Sleeping Giants" 83. The Edgar Winter Group - "Free Ride" 84. The Hives - "Tick Tick Boom" 85. The Offspring - "Self Esteem" 86. The Ramones - "Theme From Spiderman" 87. The Rolling Stones - "Stray Cat Blues" 88. The Runaways - "Cherry Bomb" 89. The Vines - "Get Free" 90. The White Stripes - "Seven Nation Army" 91. Them Crooked Vultures - "Scumbag Blues" 92. Twisted Sister - "We're Not Gonna Take It" 93. ZZ Top - "Sharp Dressed Man (Live)"
PlayStation Plus announces their publishing schedules for the next month as well as a change in their scheduling. Instead of weekly updates they are moving to bi-weekly. Not exactly the end of the world, but not exactly what people were told to expect either and it’s got a few people riled up on forums already.
I loved Dead Space. I still need to get the Wii version to try and play at some point, but for those of us who like the series, there’s been talk of a movie for awhile now and it looks like it will be a prequel to where the game picks up. Hoping they don’t much this up.
Annoyingly it looks like EA’s method of getting people to buy their sports games new using the online pass is working according to this article. As a big proponent of buying used games, this new approach by them, THQ with their UFC game, and the White Knight Chronicles sequel I griped about before – well, I simply think it sucks. It’s content you would expect to have, and that they advertise and while I understand why they do it, I strongly dislike it.
Crysis 2 has been delayed and there’s an announcement by EA that there will be a Speed Shift 2 game.
Most people who follow the console basketball games know that the 2k series has been ahead of EA’s Live series both in reviews and sales for a few years or so now. This year both companies look to be bringing their best to the table, but EA decided to up the ante by including a code to download a watered down version of NBA Jam as well. Not a bad play, but I want to see what their newly renamed ‘Elite’ series does first. I’d rather have 1 solid, fully functional hoops game this fall, than 2 that are lacking.
Surprise, surprise. Starcraft II has been selling like crazy. As someone who has had coworkers conspicuously absent from the company this week, I can vouch for the game’s popularity. My poor desktop won’t handle it without becoming a puff of smoke and flames, but one coworker in particular has been singing its praises to me the last few days and IGN scored it a solid 9.0 today. Oh, how’d it sell? 1.5 million copies in the first 48 hours. Wow.
Following the success of the recently released Transformers: War for Cybertron (which I have been playing quite a bit and will post a review to hopefully in the next week) – there is an announcement that there will be a Transformer’s Online game next year, though details are a bit scarce still.
Can’t get enough God of War? SCEA is counting on that as Ghost of Sparta is slated for the PSP Nov 2nd. As a big fan of Chains of Olympus, I’ll likely be grabbing this at some point as well.
Fable III is trying to get you to preorder by offering a ‘Villager Maker’ creation tool on their site. With Fable 2 there were some cool interactions with doing an online flash ‘story’ and having it carry over to your character online, and this looks to be a similar tie-in. A lot of people didn’t care for Fable 2, and it was certainly flawed in places and somehow lacked the charm of the first, but I still enjoyed it and am looking forward the 3rd in the series now.
Record of Agarest War is one of the few turn-based strategy games I’ve played in quite some time. I used to love this particular genre. I first got hooked on them back during Shining Force and Warsong (Or Langrisser as it was known overseas). I love turn-based strategy games – I recently picked up Sonic’s Genesis Collection for my 360 – mainly for the Shining Force and Phantasy Star games.
Record of Agarest War tries to do something a bit different as well though, mixing in something of a ‘dating sim’ aspect. Your lead character winds up in a potential relationship with one of three female characters. The layout is an overworld map that you can traverse where you have towns, battles, quests and events occur. The events are usually cut scenes that help to advance the storyline along, and it’s during these cut scenes where you sometimes have to make decisions . Sometimes it is just a matter of answering someone’s question, other times you make decisions on a path to take. These choices can affect things such as available routes, the affections of the three women you can romance and affect a light/dark gauge.
Let’s break the game down a bit and see how it all plays out.
Graphics – 6:
The artwork of the characters during scenes is nice, and the maps themselves have a nice, painted look to them. Until you realize that they are completely static and that there is not much variety in them. The quest modes have a nice feel to them as well, again continuing with this hand-drawn look, but sometimes there is a lack of clarity as to where you need to go. In the first cavern you visit, for example, the far left upper edge is black and that leads to more of the cavern. This could have been larger or perhaps had more attention drawn to it in some way, because it really did not look much different than the rest of the cave, so I found myself running around in circles for awhile before ‘bumping’ into that spot and being whisked off to the next section. The sprite-based combatants during combat are okay – kind of fuzzy and they feel like they would be right at home on a DS, but they feel a bit underwhelming on the much more powerful Xbox 360. The biggest problem for me is just the lack of variety. Even some sort of parallax background, lighting effects or smoke/fog effects to add some visual interest to the combat fields would have helped a lot.
Music & Sound – 4:
I really liked a handful of the tunes, like on the overworld map and when you start the game. Some of the quest exploration tunes are at least catchy if nothing special. So why the low score? I generally hate most of the battle music. The overworld map has such a full, orchestral sound to it and then you get into the battle maps and it’s less Lord of the Rings and more garage electric guitar. It’s quieter, and it completely feels out of place with the rest of the game’s theme. Additionally, there is a fair amount of voice to be heard during combat – but it’s all in Japanese. They never localized the speaking parts to English, which is a bit grating at times. The sounds are repetitive enough, but the inability to know what they are saying just adds to the frustration. Half the time I played this, I had music playing on my computer instead.
Gameplay – 8:
It seems like there is a lack of explanation at times as you play through the game. There’s just small things that are not explained real clearly or at all. That said, once you have the hang of it, the game is pretty easy to control, the menus are fairly easy to navigate (though would it have killed them to make a ‘page up/page down’ using bumper buttons when going through long lists of items like Titles or Shop Inventories?). There’s a nice fast-forward feature for cut scenes you don’t want to sit through (especially if you’re on a part that has a lengthy dialog before a big fight you have to do over again), but the option to hit ‘start’ and skip those ones that don’t require you make choices would have been quite nice (or a start that takes you to your first choice).
The strategy aspects are pretty good, but not perfect. There is an emphasis on what direction you are facing, because there are blocks that can ‘link’ you to another player – allowing for combined attacks. You don’t get this fundamental early on, but it is really helpful later. However, there is no flanking or backstab damage, so the impact of unit direction is somewhat minimalized. Also, all of the combat takes place on these painted backdrops with flat ground. As far back as there have been strategy games, there have been things impacted by terrain such as damage/defense and range, but there is none of that here. This coupled with the lack of terrain/graphical movement make the maps feel small and somewhat lifeless.
My last real complaint is the dating simulation. The questions can be a bit vague at times – you answer them expecting different results quite often, and that’s fine I guess. It keeps you from metagaming for the best possible results. That said, at the end of a generation, you automatically pick the woman you have the most ‘affection’ from. There is already a system in place where the stronger the bond, the stronger the next generation’s character will be. So why not let the player pick who they want to marry, for better or for worse? Still, the overall impact of this system is pretty cool, and it reminds me of the often underappreciated Phantasy Star III: Generations game I played repeatedly on my Genesis once upon a time (to the point where I had seen all possible endings). There are five generations handled in this fashion, where your relationship with who you marry affects your child not only statistically but with skills and weapon type.
The combat itself is pretty interesting with a fairly decent range of skills and spells of varying ranges. There is also an SP counter that goes up over time when you attack, are attacked or a team member dies. Enemies do have an annoying habit of teaming up on a single character and killing him or her before you can do anything about it, but this allows your chars to return the favor from a powered-up standpoint. Also characters can link together, otherwise attacking creatures that would have been outside of their range, or creating combination attacks – like two double strike attacks equal a quadruple attack that both characters perform together at the same time.
Intangibles – 8:
I already touched on the dating simulation aspect and the varied children you can have as a result. It would be cool if this was somehow more impactful on the storyline. In Phantasy Star III it actually gave you completely different views on events and storylines – in one of the instances if I recall correctly, you could even wind up with twins. The impact here is a bit less as the new character each generation is a neat mix of the two parents, but somehow feels more like a skin to an existing storyline. There are other systems though as well that really help to add to the value.
There is a monster capturing feature as well that feels like a missed opportunity. If you lower a creature’s health far enough (less than 5%) and you have a character with the capture skill, you can attempt to finish the creature off by capturing (notice I said creature – not humanoids but wolves, skeletons, mummies, etc). You can combine monsters to get new ones (sometimes), and you can trade them in for items. I usually do the latter. Their function if you don’t trade them in, is that you can add them to your group as a leveling party member – and here is where I feel like maybe it was a missed opportunity. I have not felt the urge to replace my existing party members with one of these less interesting monsters. It might have been more fun if you could summon them for a few rounds or use them as spells – something that doesn’t take away from your group configuration. Hence, why I trade them in.
Gear can be purchased, found and crafted from various components. The gear can also be enhanced using a type of combat experience exclusively for this process and it improves the stats. There are a wide variety of items, equipment and spells/skills to be created, improved and equipped and I enjoy it quite a bit. These smaller systems all help add some variety to what is a very long game, and without these systems the game could become quite a grind. I have heard a lot of people complain about the length of the game and how repetitive it was, but I guess these side items help add some value to it for me.
The leveling system is nice as well, because you gain points you get to put into different statistical areas. Not all areas are created equal for each character though – a magic user might need only 2 points to improve intelligence, but 4 points to improve vitality. So while you are certainly herded into certain directions, you are not restricted to them and it is a nice bit of customization you can apply to your characters.
All in all, there is quite a bit to do to keep you busy, and it’s capped off with a kind of new game+ for people who want to replay again. You can replay and keep your stuff, and play it again at that difficulty or less (so for example if you opt for normal difficulty (there are 3 to start) – you can do a new game+ on easy or normal – but not difficult).
Overall – 6.5:
It depends on what you want from the game. I’m willing to forgive a game like this for lower quality graphics and sound than I might be a first person shooter where the environment is a big part of the gameplay. Here it is more about tactics, storyline and loot.
I’ve sunk a ton of time into this game already. I’ll probably give it a new game+ just to try out different combinations of decisions, romances and so on. I’ve always been one of those people who can grind and grind and level up with sometimes ridiculous efficiency in both roleplaying and strategy games, and this one feeds into those interests of mine rather nicely. However, there are flaws in this game as well. The music and graphics are substandard overall, and the lack of localized voice just feels lazy. There are a vast number of subsystems, but if you find that you don’t like them or use them often, then the combat could start to feel pretty repetitive. A little variation in the landscapes both visually and strategically would have carried this game so much further and maybe helped edge it into the realm of classics like Shining Force or Final Fantasy Tactics, but instead it lags a bit behind them and it is a shame because I definitely want to see more games like this in the near future.
If you are a fan of turn-based stategy games in fantasy settings, this game might be for you. If those subsystems sound like fun, then you should find plenty to do and the game definitely gives you some mileage - I've read comments from players saying they've gone well over 100 hours on it. However, if action is more your thing and none of the above premises particularly grabbed your attention, then there is not enough technical achievement to probably interest you either as graphics and music have certainly been done better elsewhere. Also, the game does come with a teen rating, so while the sprited characters are cute enough and the gameplay relatively easy for younger players to pick up, there are some alcohol references, mild fantasy violence, mild language, and suggestive themes.
My review was for the Xbox 360 - I've read that there is some additional content out there for the Playstation 3 version but I can't say as I've tried any of it so I did not weigh in on that. All things being equal, I believe that they perform equally (albeit averagely) on both system so if you have access to both, it may be worth getting it on the PS3 (my acquisition price was considerably smaller on the 360 however).
This is going to be my longest, most detailed review to date. I’ve only played the Xbox 360 version, but I’ve been told by friends with the PS3 version who have played the Xbox one that they are for all intents and purposes the same – so I’ll consider this a review for both systems.
There’s a major preface I need to start with – I love football. I watch more NFL than college, but all in all I’ve been watching both for years. I’ve been playing them for years as well – over several generations of video game console. It seems like each time we move up to a new generation of console, the sports games suffer the most from failed expectations and it takes them a couple of years to find their proper legs.
If you’re not a fan of football games – you probably aren’t going to like this one. If you bought last year’s game, you’ll have to decide if the $60 price tag is worth the updates. NCAA Football 2011 is my favorite so far from the series, but in the areas I care about most, I don’t feel like it’s made enough strides. The be a legend mode feels almost unchanged. In fact, I’m fairly certain that the Erin Andrews videos are reused from last year’s game. The online stuff is a lot better, but I tend not to use it as much. For whateve reason, most of my friends play Madden every year, but don’t get the NCAA games so it’s more fun for me to league up with buddies on Madden than NCAA, but there are some nice improvements on this front as well. I also felt like the Dynasty mode has finally made some nice strides – and since this is where I spend the vast majority of my time, this does tilt the review in this year’s iteration favorably. I’ve already played through 3 seasons with another about half done, and put a player about halfway through the created player mode – so I’ve definitely seen most of the good and bad that the game has to offer. Here goes:
Graphics - 8.5:
Overall, the graphics are good. Player movements are fluid, the game moves along at a crisp pace, the stadium design looks solid and I never had any trouble telling what was going on during gameplay. The crowd has some cool animations now, but they feel fairly generic – then again, I would imagine that more detail and movement would cause the framerate to stuffer more than it already does during some action heavy sequences. The replays from on-field look better than most of the other angles in my opinion. There is one graphical glitch I have gotten to occur about every 6 or 7 games. I tend to do a lot of no huddle/hurry up stuff and so I’m often pressing buttons and getting out of replays – it’s just how I play. Well, several times now I’ve gotten the game’s graphics into a goofy state where the live gameplay still looks good, but all of the replays and scenes behind the playbook menus wind up in this out of focus blur filter that seems to accidentally get applied for the rest of the game. Get out of that particular match up though, and the next one is back to normal again. It kind of reminds me of the most recent Angry Video Game Nerd video about Graphics Glitches (not appropriate for kids).
Music & Sounds – 7:
The commentary is effective enough, and I like the announcers but they are starting to get a bit stale this year. School theme songs boom nicely, fans react more loudly in appropriate situations and really help the home field advantage feeling. The hits on the field and the quarterback cadences all sound like you would expect them to. It’s not a game like Modern Warfare where stereo effects really play into the game and surround sound gives you an actual advantage. One oddity that has occurred twice to me – my sound cut out mid-game. Just… completely gone. Unlike the blur filter issue, it did not clear up the next game. I had to back out to my main Xbox dashboard and then it came back. I’ve never had that problem with any other game, and it’s only been twice, so nowhere near as problematic as the blur filter, but more annoying.
Gameplay – 7:
This is going to be a long section, but in sports games I can live with so-so graphics and sound – good gameplay is a must. I really wanted to give it a 9, but there were a few things holding this score back. I’ve had a few glitches during the gameplay. Probably the most annoying bug I’ve had yet happened only once, on a PAT. The opposing team had just scored on me, and the ball hit the upright and the PAT was no good. Odd thing happened then, the ball fell to the endzone and one of my defensive players plucked it out of the air. And then we lined up to kick and… I was lining up to kick. Somehow the game had read that since I had possession, I was to kick off? Just a weird, weird glitch in what was a very close game at the time. I’ve tried repeatedly to replicate it, but I’ve yet to have another PAT miss fall into the endzone like that.
Next up? The blocking is a lot better overall, especially the run blocking – in most instances. The Maryland formation is basically broken then. If I run a counter or power, it’s a complete crapshoot. The formation calls for three backs in the backfield, with two serving as blockers for the halfback. They just seem to bust out and up just a bit regardless of who is coming. Once in awhile they’ll latch onto the defender and block, but at least two out of three times, my blockers just barrel ahead and don’t move toward the logical blockers. At least once every 3 or 4 plays, I will do a counter out of the formation and you’ll see a linebacker run right through all three potential blockers and hit me untouched. This isn’t the linebacker racing through the middle of the offensive line after jumping the snap count, but a guy who moved laterally and then made a beeline right for my halfback without any of his blockers reacting to pick that linebacker up.
This leads me to one of my biggest football video game pet peeves ever. Offensive line pancakes just need to happen more. This was a problem for years on the Playstation 2 versions of both NCAA football and Madden football – your linemen simply would not get pancakes. At least, not at the rate of other simulated teams. I once had a center who dropped 13 points overall in Madden due to this programming oversight because he had no pancakes and gave up no sacks over a full season of starting. So the game viewed him as not having played at all. When a league leader has 125 pancakes and makes an All-American team, it’s frustrating when your 97 overall guard has 11 pancakes at season’s end. And it’s not like I don’t run the ball. My RB won the Hiesman all but one year – I run the ball a ton. Well, they fixed this during the last couple of years of the Playstation 2 generation… only to reintroduce this problem in the current generation of systems. I’ve seen people complaining about it on forums, I’ve submitted it as a bug/feature request/problem at least a dozen times over the last three years. The only way to get more is to jack up the line play for your team in the sliders menu, or lengthen the game, but all of the rest of the stats would be hugely out of alignment then. Anyway – this is still broken, much to my annoyance.
Next up – punt returns. Most punt return formations you get about 3-5 yards per return. On the hardest level of difficulty, you basically fair catch or fumble because they barrel into you so fast every time – it doesn’t matter which return formation you use – except one. I’ve had pretty good luck with punt block return – a formation that fakes like you are going to rush and try to block the ball, but you actually bring two guys back as blockers. Mostly it just makes the computer pack their punt gunners back behind the line for protection. It’s cheap – and it gets me about 12 yards each time. There’s absolutely no hope of ever taking back a punt return for a touchdown though with the blocking mechanic so badly broken at the higher difficulties.
Boy, I must really hate this game, right? Quite the contrary, these things are more exception than rule, and the things that the game does regularly, it does very, very well. Playcalling is easy. The pass blocking is pretty good most of the time. I don’t see the abundance of interceptions I used to see in older games – the db’s do more knockdowns than pickoffs. I once had a season of NCAA where my cornerback had over 75 interceptions. Now? My top one had seven and I loved it. Big hits happen, but whiffing on them can cause all sorts of problems. I used to try and level big hits with impunity – but now I have to pick and choose my spots. More than any other football game I can think of, this year’s version of NCAA feels the most authentic to date.
A couple of the big things I really like now, after all that whining before:
The blocking is improved. Route running and endzone/sideline catches by receivers are much better. If a WR catches an out route, they stay inbounds now instead of just darting out of bounds. This new sideline awareness is amazing. Menu navigation is solid. The new running controls utilizing the right stick for moves and balance is cool. Defensive moves along the line feel better to me than they did the past.
Intangibles – 9:
There’s a lot that goes on in these games. The different modes are cool, though I still get the majority of my mileage out of Dynasty mode. I like saving out the draft classes, because I know I will be importing them into Madden in a few weeks when it comes out. The Dynasty mode is deep and the recruitment process feels great. It takes up a bit of time, but not too much time. The online modes are pretty cool and the way you can access them from online away from the console is a really nice innovation that should help keep the seasons moving. My experience in the past with these is that sometimes online dynasty/franchise modes would buckle because of inactive players. The system for creating highlight videos and images works very well and the variety of angles that the videos can be created from is very cool. With so many modes, the game gets some serious replay value.
Overall – 8:
Your mileage may vary of course. You have to like football. It helps to like college football. It helps if you don’t own last year’s version, because while there are obvious improvements over last year’s model of the game, there are some areas where the strides taken were not so great. However, this game usually drops in price in a few months once it’s been out for a bit and Madden has steamrolled onto the store shelves, so it can be had at a lower price if that is a point of contention for you. All games have bugs – the fuzzy filter and audio cutting out can be forgiven. For me, the blocking/return game stuff is a bit tougher to swallow, but I’ve had a chance to acclimate to it over the years and I’ve learned it’s part of the package and to deal with it. It’s just disappointing that such obvious problems still have not been fixed after all this time. My goal is to have at least 7 or 8 seasons under my belt before I pick up Madden. Inevitably I wind up playing Madden in favor of NCAA and I like having those classes to import. The game is a lot of fun if you can live with its shortcomings, which I certainly have and can.
