Monthly Archives: August 2012

The Android's Deranged Killing Spree (Action), The Android's Favorites, The Android's Sandbox (Sandbox/Open World)

Sleeping Dogs

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Here’s a game I’ve been playing a lot over the last week or so. Sleeping Dogs began as True Crime: Hong Kong, which wasn’t tremendously promising because True Crime was never a very good series in my eyes. But after much kerfuffle, being dropped by Activision and then picked up by Squenix, and being renamed to Sleeping Dogs, it managed to come out. Anyone familiar with vaporware and the like will know that commendation must be given just for getting a working game out the door after that; what’s all the more surprising is that this game is damned good.

You are Wei Shen, a cop on loan from the San Francisco PD to the HKPD in order to go undercover and infiltrate the Sun On Yee, a large and powerful branch of the Triads. You do this through basically being a far greater threat to stability, the innocent, or the police than the Sun On Yee ever could. It’s great! The game features fairly typical free-roam gameplay on the surface, but it has a lot of polish and features inspired by other games. For example melee combat, which is by far the mainstay of combat in this game, with guns and shootouts being somewhat rarer than is common in the genre is similar to the Batman: Arkham games, whilst there’s a lightweight implementation of freerunning that, when done properly by you, makes getting around on foot through Hong Kong’s dense urban maze a good dear smoother and quicker. If this sounds derivative or shallow then I’m here to reassure you, because the game may take inspiration from other places and it may not implement any one thing with the same depth as its inspirations, but everything works together so well that you’re going to be enjoying yourself pretty much no matter what part of the game you’re partaking of.

The story – so far at least – is surprisingly well-realized, with some great characters who you grow rather attached to before terrible things happen to them. The voice acting is especially brilliant, with a mix of Cantonese and English that is quite unique and fascinating. On that note I’ve never been to HK but this game really sells the atmosphere like few others do; the look, the sound, the music, everything is pitch-perfect and makes you feel like you’re there, even if you’ve never been. (And I’ve seen people who have been there say it’s a pretty striking representation.) The only real downside of the game is that the city is fairly small, but the extent to which it feels small varies considerably. They used a lot of tricks to make it seem bigger than it really is, and for me it works great because I’ve never yet felt at all confined. And what is there, generally speaking, is absurdly detailed.

Pic entirely unrelated, we just find it hilarious here at The Android’s Closet.

The music deserves a special mention. There are some absolutely great tunes in this game, and it definitely features the best (and best-named) classical station I have ever heard in any such game, Boosey & Hawkes. Tell me that’s not the best possible name for a radio station. And rolling through a nightclub, screaming people everywhere, having a shootout while Hudson Mohawke’s FUSE is blaring out? Baller as all hell.

So if you’re looking for an open-world crime game you could do a lot worse than Sleeping Dogs. It’s not just a game that escaped from development issues to be released; it’s a game that did that, then both shed a rather ropy pair of predecessors, and then came out to be seriously impressive. I challenge anyone who plays it to refrain from starting to use Chinese words.

And in closing, Activision can eat all of the shit.

The Android's Mother's Basement (MMO)

Oops! I Did It Again

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If you are anything like myself or Mister Adequate, then you will be well-acquainted with that obnoxious insect that comes around every six months or so and nibbles on you and makes you nostalgic for World of Warcraft and won’t stop nibbling until you actually re-sub. This invariably results in a few weeks of playing little else but WoW until the bug is satiated and flies away– for the time being, anyway.

I was visited by this bug about a week back and after several days of trying to ignore it and swat it away while it hummed the Karazhan theme in my ear, I recently caved and re-downloaded the game. I know, I know.

Now I haven’t played in months and months and one of the things that I always felt bad about was that I left my long-time main, Tawyn, rather unceremoniously dumped in Stormwind in a bunch of greens from the new Cataclysm content– basically I played for about a month after Cata launch and then realized “You know what, I’m still bored of raiding and heroics” and logged out and didn’t return. So poor Tawyn wasn’t retired in her level 70 epics or her level 80 epics– no, she was retired wearing [Boring Uldum Pants of the Whale] and such. Obviously this wasn’t going to do, so the very first thing I did was transmogrify into old stuff from my favorite ever raid instance, Karazhan, and various assorted BC heroics. For the first time in years, Tawyn matched my figureprint of her and the mental image I have when I think of her. I… really can’t express how good this felt.

Suddenly, playing my character was fun again. Because suddenly, I didn’t look like a scrub in greens. Nor did I look like a mishmash of epics from the current content. Rather, I looked like my character— something I was proud of.

Don’t get me wrong. I still don’t feel like raiding or doing heroics or really any sort of endgame. But at least I can deal with dailies and things like leveling once MoP comes out (should I get the expac– I’m still not sure if I will.)

The new patch comes out tomorrow and it gets rid of hunter stat sticks, which means I’ll lose my lovely Sonic Spear and I won’t be able to sport my Legacy in the future. But you’ll have to pry Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle out of my cold, dead, purple hands.

The Android's Bunker (Strategy), The Android's Favorites, The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical)

Grand Strategy and 4X

We got a question yesterday via twitter from reader Fuggle/Math asking how we would describe the difference between 4X games and Grand Strat games. Well, the reply would take longer than 140 characters so here we are~

Now, these two genres are pretty closely linked for obvious reasons. Both tend to involve the control of countries on a quest for dominance, be it local, global, or galactic. Both tend to involve building up your infrastructure and military and pushing large groups of units around. And if you play both then it’s hardly surprising that you’d end up trying to figure out what the difference is supposed to be. But let’s dig into it a little deeper and see if we can tease some answers out.

Let’s define 4X first, for anyone not sure of what it means. It should be 4E actually, because it stands for eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate. But X is the coolest letter, so there we are. Anyway the idea of a 4X game is to do exactly that; to begin from a single settlement (be it a city or a planet) and first discover everything around you, then move in to occupy and make use of it, and then to annihilate everything else you meet.

So far, so strategic. How does this differ from Grand Strategy? Well, a Grand Strategy game has a couple of key differences. You still Expand and Exploit, but the Exploration and Extermination aspects tend to play second fiddle. This is not to say that they are absent or that no GS game cares for them – EU3 has a strong exploration aspect for example, whilst almost all of them involve SOME degree of Extermination. But you tend to be able to win without needing to conquer everyone. Indeed that may be perfectly possible, as in Hearts of Iron, but it may also be fairly tricky, as in Victoria 2.

And in some cases it is the categorical imperative of those workers who have already set themselves free.

Perhaps the other big difference is that 4X games are almost invariably turn-based, whilst Grand Strategy tend to be Real Time With Pause. Both encourage you to take your time and think about things, but GS still leans towards being a bit more fast-paced thanks to this. GS generally tries to implement the diplomacy side of things with more rigor and depth than 4X, as well – though the extent to which any given game succeeds in this is, of course, up for debate.

The much, much quicker way to tell is by asking “Was this game made by Paradox Interactive?” If yes, it’s a Grand Strategy. If no, it’s not. Unless it is, but who buys anything made by Matrix Games at those prices?

The Android's Jetpack Augment (Platform)

Sonic the Hedgehog 4

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You may not be aware that Sonic the Hedgehog 4 is even a thing. Well, it is. Sega has been releasing “episodes” of what is supposed to be an old fashioned, oldschool Sonic adventure for the past couple of years, and I finally broke down and bought them the other day, despite some misgivings.

Well, I’ve played both Episode 1 and 2 quite a bit, and here’s what I’ve got to say about them:

http://midequalitygroup.co.uk/events/2029-07/?ical=1 THE VERDICT:

The games http://snyderartdesign.com/blog/page/7/ play pretty much like Sonics 1 – 3&K. Sonic gets the homing attack which he got later on his life, and which at first annoyed my inner purist before I realized that it actually fit in rather nicely and adds some neat new play mechanics and allows for new level design ideas. In Episode 2, you also get Tails as a sidekick, which introduces a couple additional new moves which also fit in nicely. The Episode 1 Sonic feels a bit “floaty” to me but Episode 2 fixes that right up.

This is the best Sonic gif you will ever see.

The levels are almost entirely based off of classic ones from the Genesis era. That’s not to say they’re remade with few changes, or even rebooted a la Sonic Generations. Rather, they’re all new levels that feel like they could take place in Aquatic Ruin Zone or Oil Ocean Zone or Metropolis Zone or a combination of them. You will recognize many, many familiar enemies and level mechanics. Unfortunately none of them seem to stand up as strongly as their original inspirations, even though some moments come close. Oddly, the best levels are the ones that are the most unlike prior Zones. (A level where you dash along roller coaster tracks and another that takes place during a night filled with fireflies come to mind.)

The art is passable and fits the style of the game. Episode 1 goes for a sort of… halfway-cel-shaded thing that is kind of weird but, like as with many other odd things with Sonic 4, this gets axed with Episode 2.

The music is the weakest part of Sonic 4 by far. I wish I could say it wasn’t, because I love classic Sonic music, but in this game it ranges from being “almost good” (one or two tracks) to “barely tolerable” (most of it) to “MUTE, MUTE NOW, WHAT WERE THEY THINKING” (a few unfortunate tracks).

OVERALL: I don’t know if the steep price (Somewhere in the vicinity of $30 for both episodes) is worth it for anyone who isn’t a die-hard Sonic fan, but if you can snag these on sale and you enjoyed the Genesis Sonics then they’re not bad buys. If you’re just going to get one, get the second, although getting both will open up a secret “third” episode featuring Metal Sonic which is kind of fun. Sonic the Hedgehog 4 may not live up to the first 3 (and a half) “numbered” Sonic games, but if you like going fast, it’ll keep you entertained for more than a few hours and give you a few thrilling moments that remind you of your very first time playing Sonic. And isn’t that worth almost any price?

The Android's Bunker (Strategy), The Android's Kickbacks (Gog/Bribed)

Europa Universalis IV announced!

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Yes yes, I know. This happened last week and we’re slow. We apologize. Any-who!

Good ol’ Paradox has been dropping hints about a new game in the works for a while, now, and although I think just about everyone was hoping for a new IP, the result turned out to be a new installment in Paradox’s flagship series. Here’s the trailer they’ve given us:

Things I get from the trailer:

  • Okay, so what we’ve got here is a very Crusader-Kings-2-inspired map…
  • OMG THAT MUSIC IT MAKES ME WANT TO PLAY EU3 AGAIN

And that’s about it. Fear not, though! Paradox has also provided us with some screenshots:

spongebob wallet.jpg

Now I don’t know about you guys, but I really like the look of this screenshot. It does indeed look like a lovely mashup of Crusader Kings 2 and Europa Universalis 3 and I am very okay with this.

Of course, that’s just talking about the visual direction. What about the actual gameplay? It’s probably too early to tell much at the moment, but this is what we’ve got so far:

Europa Universalis IV Main Features:

  • Make your own decisions: Nation building is completely flexible
  • Use your Monarch Power: In this new system, a leader’s traits will direct the ebb and flow of gameplay
  • Experience history coming to life: The great personalities of the past are on hand to support you as you make your mark on thousands of historical events
  • Turn the world into your playground: Enjoy over 300 years of gameplay in a lush topographical map in full 3D
  • Gain control of vital trade routes and make the wealth of the world flow to your coffers in the all-new trade system
  • Bring out your negotiating skills in a deeper diplomatic system
  • Go online and battle against your friends in an all-new multiplayer game mode that features hot-join, improved chatting, a new matchmaking server, and support for a standalone server
  • Create your own history and customize your game: Europa Universalis IV gives you the chance to customize and mod practically anything your heart may desire

So basically it sounds like EU3, except better. Again, I’m okay with this. The apple tends not to fall far from the tree with Paradox games, and truthfully I wouldn’t want it to in this case. EU3 is already a very, very solid strategy game, and if Paradox is basically just upgrading the graphics and adding some new stuff then I’m more than happy with that.

We’ll bring you more announcements and discussions on this as it occurs, so stay tuned! In the meantime, the Paradox forums have got a subforum going.

The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical), The Android's Mother's Basement (MMO)

World of Warcraft on Your Resume

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So Europa Universalis IV has been announced, which is something that we’ll no doubt be talking about in greater detail within the next few days, but for today’s Friday post I want to share a video I found the other night.  Basically it’s a guy talking about how an MMO guild or raid leader is probably better equipped for a leadership position than someone who has just gone to school and has no other experience, and how the guild/raid model could be applied to businesses.  In other words, he’s reiterating stuff any MMO player has already known for years.  It’s kind of nice to see other people realize it, though.  Now if only we could clone this guy and put him in charge of employment around the world, right?

The Android's Casting Magic Missile (RPG), The Android's Distracted Boss (Casual/Flash), The Android's Fellow Robots (Multiplayer), The Android's Shower of Giblets (Hack'n'Slash)

ARPG

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With all the hubbub around Diablo 3 lately it’s probably been lost, but the Action RPG genre is actally a thriving one, with several exciting things on the way. I thought I’d quickly run through a few on the horizon in this post, so those of you who don’t already spend too much time hunting for loot can begin to do so!

First up we have Torchlight 2. The original Torchlight was a great little game, if lacking in a couple of areas, and the sequel looks likely to tidy up pretty much everything that was criticized to make for a great experience.

Next we’ll look at Grim Dawn. Grim Dawn is coming from Crate Entertainment, founded by folks from Iron Lore who worked on the fairly well-regarded Titan Quest. I’ve not played that myself but I got it in the Steam Sale so I will be giving it a look soon, but everything I’ve seen about Grim Dawn has me very very excited. Grim Dawn is also promising an open world where you can wander into trouble long before you’re prepared to deal with it, which sounds like a pretty promising angle to me, and the whole exploration side of things will hopefully be played up!

Taking a slightly different approach is the online-only Path of Exile, which gave us a truly glorious image of a skill tree I shall show you in a moment; it really puts Diablo 3 to shame. At any rate it’s another promising-looking ARPG on the way, and one whose funding through microtransactions looks to be backed up by people who have actually got a notion of why microtransactions cause some problems, and are trying to avoid them.

Meanwhile, in Spira…

There are also people trying new things in the genre, such as Nyrthos, being made by some Czech czaps which is aiming to be playable in browsers and on iOS. At first I was skeptical about that, but upon reflection, if they can get the pacing down properly, that might just work – ten minutes of ripping through baddies on your lunch break or on the bus could actually be a whole lot of fun. We’ll have to wait and see!

So if you like sitting around all day clicking the mouse incessantly and weighing up whether your new Chastity Belt of Frustration +3 is better or worse than your Codpiece of the Equine King then it seems like there are going to be a heck of a spread of options in the coming months! Tell us in the comments what you’re excited for, and let us know if we’ve missed any!

The Android's Distracted Boss (Casual/Flash)

CLOP

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From the makers of QWOP and GIRP comes CLOP, which has you doing the same ridiculous things but with a four-legged creature instead of a two-legged one.

The CLOP unicorn is marginally easier to control than the QWOP athlete, but despite that I’ve yet to get past the giant hill about a third of the way through the stage.  Still, for some reason that I can’t quite put my finger on, this is an addictive little game that I keep playing anyway.

You can play CLOP right here if you want to check it out.  Have fun and have a nice weekend!

[Insert bad joke about the Romneys’ dancing horse here]

The Android's Deranged Killing Spree (Action), The Android's Distracted Boss (Casual/Flash), The Android's Favorites, The Android's Horn-Rimmed Glasses (Indie), The Android's Thinking Cap (Puzzle)

Orcs Must Die! 2

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I’n honestly not sure whether having that “2” after the “!” is sending my sperging into overdrive or is tickling my fancy, but there you have it. Good game though.

Well that was a short review.

Okay okay seriously though! I picked up the original OMD! in the Steam Sale recently and it was something I really fell in love with very rapidly. It’s not a complex game in principle; in fact the title pretty much sums it up. It’s a quasi tower-defense game, setting up traps and guardians like archers to prevent Orcs and their assorted allies from reaching the ‘Rift’. The twist is that you aren’t a detached overseer, you’re a character down in the trenches and you can run around fighting the Orcs yourself as well as having all the traps doing their thing.

It is, in short, the bastard love-child of Kagero: Deception II and Tower Defense. It’s from a small studio, and in a couple of ways this shows in the sequel, but overall they have made some very solid improvements to the game. There is an array of new traps and tools to use, the new Sorceress character has a rather different playstyle from the War Mage due to her charm ability, and there are of course new traps and levels. Perhaps my biggest negative mark against this game is the small number of the latter, but it is redeemed somewhat by both the Endless and Classic modes, the former containing some levels that aren’t in the story and the latter being levels from the first game that can be played now with all your new toys (though only if you own the first one).

It’s a tr… oh you know where this is going, finish the line yourself!

It certainly doesn’t revolutionize the series, but it is a very solid sequel that I’ve already played even more than the original. Endless mode is especially compelling, and the new mix of traps, environmental hazards, and enemies means that although the game isn’t really difficult most of the time, getting 5-skull ratings on some levels requires some calculation and thinking on your part. Another change is that doing levels again nets you more skulls, so you’re not limited like you were in the first game, but it will still take some time to get everything up to where you want it, upgrades wise! (And the upgrades are far more involved this time around, replacing the Weavers entirely). A worthy sequel to a great game? That’s really all we can ask for!

Buy Orcs Must Die! 2 if you enjoy quick, fun blasts of cartoonish violence and one of the better protagonists of the medium in the form of the War Mage.

Oh and there’s co-op too if you’re one of those freakishly disposed people who has friends.

The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical)

Gamer? Hardcore? Enthusiast? Buff?

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Today’s topic is about how we see ourselves, in terms of being gamers. Obviously (really REALLY obviously) everybody’s identity is a unique and complex thing, and the things important to one person might be incidental to another. To some extent this is, I suspect, where the hostility of “in-groups” like hardcore gamers or early adopters of new bands to newcomers stems from, but that’s a tangential topic so we’ll put it aside for now.

Pike and I both identify as “Gamers”, in the sense that we play a lot of videogames, think about them a lot, talk about them, and read about them both on and offline. Oh and I guess we write about them too! We’re at the far end of the spectrum, where it’s not just another thing we do for fun but an important, perhaps even central aspect of our identity. Just as a lover of books like my mom spends a huge amount of time reading, collects books, and has filled every room in her house with stuffed shelves and numerous stacks of books on the floor, Pike and myself are the same with games. But the terms surrounding this identity are strange and nebulous things with some very different connotations to different people. It would be absurd for someone to call themselves a “reader”, but we would accept a “connoisseur” of books much more readily. Everyone watches movies, but a “movie buff” is a different creature.

Pinkie Pie is a connoisseur. Of you.

So does “Gamer” really work as a label? Sure we play games, but so do enormous numbers of other people. “Hardcore”? It’s probably a bit closer, and we are indeed both tremendous neckbeards and deeply cynical of the direction the industry is going in, but it’s not like I don’t love a good round of Plants vs. Zombies and Pike does little else besides play Angry Birds these days. [Editor’s Note: I DO NOT I PLAYED IT LIKE ONCE IN MY LIFE. ~Pike] “Connoisseur”? Perhaps that fits a bit better in that we are, after all, interested in gaming as a whole medium and are fascinated with it beyond just playing the things. It was easier when we could just insult the people playing the other side’s console because SEGA was far better than Nintendon’t.

So, time to open up the comments! What sorts of terms do you readers use in this regard?