I’m going to just detail how Move (and navigation controller) works within the game, this is in no way a review of the game itself, just how functional the application of motion control is.
Upon glancing at the control scheme I had a sense this was going to be a complicated experience but then again what good RTS doesn’t give that initial impression? My first few moments of game-play mostly consisted of ‘wtf?’ moments and wild camera swinging. One by one I eased into each control feature starting with camera zoom, which worked more by tilting the controller as opposed to using the depth sensing capabilities.
Then onto troop selection, which works best in a couple of ways. First individual troop selection is as simple as pointing at the unit and hitting the Move button. You can also hit square to select all similar units in view and there are handy D-pad shortcuts for aviation units i.e. bombers and recon. The navigation controller trigger can be used to create a circle of various sizes, depending on trigger pressure, which can ‘paint’ troops. I found this most useful under pressure when quick selection of various units is needed to meet a growing threat.
I found some of the pop-up menus a little confusing at first as my mind had trouble deciding where the motion to swipe open a menu and the navigation sticks ability to browse began and ended. Also I kept selecting unwanted units when trying to move another or accidently moving ones I didn’t want to. This was basically due to my inexperience with the controllers more than anything and a bit practice went a long way.
The cursor moves swiftly and accurately and has a handy ‘snap-to’ feature when hovering over important locations or enemy troops. After a while and with a bit of mental adjustment I was able to jump from troop to troop, adjust view accordingly and lay out orders at a speed I could only dream of with a DualShock.
To wrap up I’d like to say that the controls worked well, even though the game was not originally developed with Move in mind. It left me quietly optimistic that the RTS genre can become relevant on consoles and, when a game built from the ground up with Move in mind comes along, I have the feeling it will be as intuitive and speedy as it’s PC cousins, if a little less versatile. It’s just a shame that the first RTS to utilise the Move was a pretty average game, don’t let it put you off future releases though as the quality of the game is not a true reflection of the new control method.
Simple Earning -Good Site to join
Showing posts with label Free Linux Games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Free Linux Games. Show all posts
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Friday, October 21, 2011
2010: The year of crap endings
Is it just me, or did a lot of game endings suck this year? (last year, whatever) I don't expect incredible endings from every game, but usually the AAA titles should be decent. Yeah, we got Red Dead's very meaningful and arguably taboo-breaking finale, and the epic suicide mission in Mass Effect 2. Hell, in Bayonetta you get to punch God into the sun. I'm freaking catholic and I thought that was awesome. But nearly every other major game I played just, ugh. Here are the worst (in games that were pretty good up until that point)
Heavy Rain: consequences? what are those?
I'm not even going to touch that plot twist here (if you haven't played it, just imagine if like 3 other people talked to Bruce Willis in the Sixth Sense. It's like that) and the endings are good when they make sense. But chances are they don't. Really, the endings all depend on two or three conditions, and all the other ones don't have impact when they should. Examples:
Ethan: gets to walk free even if he killed a guy to save his son.
Madison: Someone congratulates her on catching the killer, regardless of whether she actually caught him, or even if he was caught. (just so long as she reaches Shaun's location at the end)
Jayden: All the parts when you choose to resist or give into his addiction have no impact on whether he quits or OD's at the end.
Shelby:... actually, these are all pretty awesome.
God of War III: Kratos loses all FOUR of his testicles
What's your favorite God of War weapon? The classic chained blades? The hammer that summons ghosts? The boxing gloves shaped like lions? How about the power of hope? Yes, after killing the last titan and god in a single blow, God of War takes a turn that freaking yu-gi-oh would call "kind of corny" and Kratos fights Zeus with hope. As much as I'd like to see Kratos redeem himself, this turn is FAR too sudden. And to top it all off, Athena, the LAST likable character in the series, decides to betray you and try to take the power for herself. So Kratos offs himself and somehow this restores hope to the world or something. As the credits rolled I thought "well, I lost all emotional investment near the end there, but at least it had the balls to end Kratos's story and not do some stupid, lazy set-up for a seq- MOTHERFU
Blazblue: Continuum Shift: the plot has taken two freaking steps
At the end of Calamity Trigger, our hero fights a robot lolli in the city's power reactor, the true villain reveals himself and sets up the sequel. Continuum Shift ends with our hero fighting a robot lolli in the city's power reactor and the true villain reveals HERself and sets up the sequel. Yeah. Okay, a lot of stuff happened in between but still, holy crap. There really isn't any more closure than there was in the first game, and most events just further complicated the universe. Heck, We still don't know exactly what the hell was going on in the VERY FIRST cutscene of Calamity Trigger. If anything, it feels like the whole series is still setting up, and I'm not getting my hopes up for the next game's ending.
Mafia II: This year's Modern Warfare 2
Remember in Uncharted 2 when it looks like Elena is dying after the last boss fight? Okay, now imagine the game just cut off there. I'm serious, that's Mafia II's ending. It's heavily implied that your friend is about to be killed, and Vito's just like "eh" even though they just fought for each others' lives against their own boss. Asshole. Any reasonable story would have had him kill the driver of the car he's in (still got your guns) turn around and save him. What was Mafia II too "sophisticated" for a gratifying ending? The current holder of the world record for most cursing in a video game? Go f*** your f***ing self, you f***ing snooty motherf***er.
Metroid: Other M: Aren't we forgetting someting? like half the plot?
Other M's story actually gets pretty decent near the end, as opposed to the rest of it. What would have made it great was the Metroid Queen tearing out Samus's voice box, but it's still alright. Some legitimately good plot twists and revelations about the experiments that were taking place on the ship. The only question left is who started killing the other marines. And the game just drops it. And I don't mean it was dropped halfway through. This was definitely brought up during the last hour or so of the game. But the feds show up on the ship and everything's okay. Yay! Worse yet, there are only two people it could have been, and Samus actually drives one of them home. Does that make her an accomplice?
Also, that first-person bit at the end where all you had to do was look at a certain part of the screen. I spent like ten lives trying to actually kill things. Hate it.
(For the record, the post-endgame after the credits was pretty awesome)
9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors: Sudoku
Let me be clear, this game's story is terrific, and the "true" ending is no exception, with one of the most mind-blowing plot twists in anything ever. But after all the traps and puzzles, which were often symbolic in nature, what is Zero's final challenge of the Nonary game?... Sudoku. The final boss is freaking Sudoku. I can't make this up. What's next? A Silent Hill game that ends with a crossword? (Though if you do what I did and crank up some Blind Guardian during it, it is pretty epic)
Fable III: Screw you
Now this might just be the worst endgame of this generation. Your life as king starts out alright. Your brother reveals he was a giant douche because these shadow things were going to come and invade the kingdom in precisely one year, and he needed money to stop them. Now it's your responsibility. You're going to fail. There are just so many things wrong with what happens next:
-Why can I plunge the kingdom into debt for everything BUT hiring an army?
-Why does the game try to invoke sympathy for my brother, and then turn around and call me a bastard when I do the same thing?
-Why can I "not explain" what the shadow creatures are like? They're gonna kill everyone! It's not difficult to understand!
-What am I doing the 350 days of the year I don't actually play?
And those are just the little problems: The big ones? The game has the nerve to label you good or evil. "Good" essentially means being naive and short-sighted, and building a brothel instead of a school is "evil" even when it saves 1.5 MILLION LIVES. And then, AND THEN the game jumps from "120 days to the invasion" to ZERO! NO WARNING! No little pop-up that says "the invasion will begin when you finish today. You're screwed." Now I kind of like it when a game throws a lose-lose situation at the player. But it has to be reasonable, don't say I have so much warning, and then spring it on me. Worse yet, nearly everyone in my kingdom died, and Theresa is freaking CONGRATULATING me for being a good person as king. But the final insult is that people hate you no matter what. If this were Fable II, I could just dance and fart my way into their hearts. But this one makes me do a mini-quest for EVERYONE. If I play this game again, I'm just gonna kill everyone. I decided.
Heavy Rain: consequences? what are those?
I'm not even going to touch that plot twist here (if you haven't played it, just imagine if like 3 other people talked to Bruce Willis in the Sixth Sense. It's like that) and the endings are good when they make sense. But chances are they don't. Really, the endings all depend on two or three conditions, and all the other ones don't have impact when they should. Examples:
Ethan: gets to walk free even if he killed a guy to save his son.
Madison: Someone congratulates her on catching the killer, regardless of whether she actually caught him, or even if he was caught. (just so long as she reaches Shaun's location at the end)
Jayden: All the parts when you choose to resist or give into his addiction have no impact on whether he quits or OD's at the end.
Shelby:... actually, these are all pretty awesome.
God of War III: Kratos loses all FOUR of his testicles
What's your favorite God of War weapon? The classic chained blades? The hammer that summons ghosts? The boxing gloves shaped like lions? How about the power of hope? Yes, after killing the last titan and god in a single blow, God of War takes a turn that freaking yu-gi-oh would call "kind of corny" and Kratos fights Zeus with hope. As much as I'd like to see Kratos redeem himself, this turn is FAR too sudden. And to top it all off, Athena, the LAST likable character in the series, decides to betray you and try to take the power for herself. So Kratos offs himself and somehow this restores hope to the world or something. As the credits rolled I thought "well, I lost all emotional investment near the end there, but at least it had the balls to end Kratos's story and not do some stupid, lazy set-up for a seq- MOTHERFU
Blazblue: Continuum Shift: the plot has taken two freaking steps
At the end of Calamity Trigger, our hero fights a robot lolli in the city's power reactor, the true villain reveals himself and sets up the sequel. Continuum Shift ends with our hero fighting a robot lolli in the city's power reactor and the true villain reveals HERself and sets up the sequel. Yeah. Okay, a lot of stuff happened in between but still, holy crap. There really isn't any more closure than there was in the first game, and most events just further complicated the universe. Heck, We still don't know exactly what the hell was going on in the VERY FIRST cutscene of Calamity Trigger. If anything, it feels like the whole series is still setting up, and I'm not getting my hopes up for the next game's ending.
Mafia II: This year's Modern Warfare 2
Remember in Uncharted 2 when it looks like Elena is dying after the last boss fight? Okay, now imagine the game just cut off there. I'm serious, that's Mafia II's ending. It's heavily implied that your friend is about to be killed, and Vito's just like "eh" even though they just fought for each others' lives against their own boss. Asshole. Any reasonable story would have had him kill the driver of the car he's in (still got your guns) turn around and save him. What was Mafia II too "sophisticated" for a gratifying ending? The current holder of the world record for most cursing in a video game? Go f*** your f***ing self, you f***ing snooty motherf***er.
Metroid: Other M: Aren't we forgetting someting? like half the plot?
Other M's story actually gets pretty decent near the end, as opposed to the rest of it. What would have made it great was the Metroid Queen tearing out Samus's voice box, but it's still alright. Some legitimately good plot twists and revelations about the experiments that were taking place on the ship. The only question left is who started killing the other marines. And the game just drops it. And I don't mean it was dropped halfway through. This was definitely brought up during the last hour or so of the game. But the feds show up on the ship and everything's okay. Yay! Worse yet, there are only two people it could have been, and Samus actually drives one of them home. Does that make her an accomplice?
Also, that first-person bit at the end where all you had to do was look at a certain part of the screen. I spent like ten lives trying to actually kill things. Hate it.
(For the record, the post-endgame after the credits was pretty awesome)
9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors: Sudoku
Let me be clear, this game's story is terrific, and the "true" ending is no exception, with one of the most mind-blowing plot twists in anything ever. But after all the traps and puzzles, which were often symbolic in nature, what is Zero's final challenge of the Nonary game?... Sudoku. The final boss is freaking Sudoku. I can't make this up. What's next? A Silent Hill game that ends with a crossword? (Though if you do what I did and crank up some Blind Guardian during it, it is pretty epic)
Fable III: Screw you
Now this might just be the worst endgame of this generation. Your life as king starts out alright. Your brother reveals he was a giant douche because these shadow things were going to come and invade the kingdom in precisely one year, and he needed money to stop them. Now it's your responsibility. You're going to fail. There are just so many things wrong with what happens next:
-Why can I plunge the kingdom into debt for everything BUT hiring an army?
-Why does the game try to invoke sympathy for my brother, and then turn around and call me a bastard when I do the same thing?
-Why can I "not explain" what the shadow creatures are like? They're gonna kill everyone! It's not difficult to understand!
-What am I doing the 350 days of the year I don't actually play?
And those are just the little problems: The big ones? The game has the nerve to label you good or evil. "Good" essentially means being naive and short-sighted, and building a brothel instead of a school is "evil" even when it saves 1.5 MILLION LIVES. And then, AND THEN the game jumps from "120 days to the invasion" to ZERO! NO WARNING! No little pop-up that says "the invasion will begin when you finish today. You're screwed." Now I kind of like it when a game throws a lose-lose situation at the player. But it has to be reasonable, don't say I have so much warning, and then spring it on me. Worse yet, nearly everyone in my kingdom died, and Theresa is freaking CONGRATULATING me for being a good person as king. But the final insult is that people hate you no matter what. If this were Fable II, I could just dance and fart my way into their hearts. But this one makes me do a mini-quest for EVERYONE. If I play this game again, I'm just gonna kill everyone. I decided.
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Moderation confusion
If you take a look at the guidelines of this site and then take a look at news stories and comments here, I bet you'll be confused as to how the moderation is on this site. According to the guidelines, blog posts will not be posted as news, flamebait is not allowed, trolling is not allowed, etc...
But what is seen everyday? Every single type of infraction gets passed until someone with the power to change it is bored and decides to enforce the rules.
Now, I was recently "restricted" from posting comments for indirectly implying someone I was replying to was dumb after they directly stated that I was. You can take a look at the story and my comments here...
http://n4g.com/news/804825/...
I was replying to dantesparda which is the post right above mine.
Now, I was restricted from commenting because of that post and lost a bubble and there's nothing I can do to change that, but the point here is that the moderation is completely random and seems to rarely be about the guidelines and more about what a mod or admin is doing at the time.
How many of you can say that you've seen, time after time, a person has received many debubble votes after trolling and yet nothing happened. The troll continues to troll without consequence. How many times have the worst infractions been committed unchallenged? And then there's the flamebait news articles and the incessant repetition as was seen during the Anon/Lulzsec/PSN hack moments.
It's as though the mods spend all their time in the Forums and forget the main aspect of this site until it dawns on them to check it out, and then random debubbling and comment hiding/restrictions ensue.
Now I'm sure I'm going to get the standard apologist "if you don't like it leave" comments here, but I really don't care. I'm here because I want to be, and when you say nothing about inaccuracies and inequities and a generally poor standard of moderation then nothing is going to change. It's kind of like a cop who has a traffic ticket quota to fill. If he doesn't fill it before the end of the month, you can bet your behind that your chances of getting a ticket for going 1 mile over the speed limit are drastically increased.
But what is seen everyday? Every single type of infraction gets passed until someone with the power to change it is bored and decides to enforce the rules.
Now, I was recently "restricted" from posting comments for indirectly implying someone I was replying to was dumb after they directly stated that I was. You can take a look at the story and my comments here...
http://n4g.com/news/804825/...
I was replying to dantesparda which is the post right above mine.
Now, I was restricted from commenting because of that post and lost a bubble and there's nothing I can do to change that, but the point here is that the moderation is completely random and seems to rarely be about the guidelines and more about what a mod or admin is doing at the time.
How many of you can say that you've seen, time after time, a person has received many debubble votes after trolling and yet nothing happened. The troll continues to troll without consequence. How many times have the worst infractions been committed unchallenged? And then there's the flamebait news articles and the incessant repetition as was seen during the Anon/Lulzsec/PSN hack moments.
It's as though the mods spend all their time in the Forums and forget the main aspect of this site until it dawns on them to check it out, and then random debubbling and comment hiding/restrictions ensue.
Now I'm sure I'm going to get the standard apologist "if you don't like it leave" comments here, but I really don't care. I'm here because I want to be, and when you say nothing about inaccuracies and inequities and a generally poor standard of moderation then nothing is going to change. It's kind of like a cop who has a traffic ticket quota to fill. If he doesn't fill it before the end of the month, you can bet your behind that your chances of getting a ticket for going 1 mile over the speed limit are drastically increased.
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