This is a blog for Thumbmonkey's staff members to write about gaming, music, movies, the internet, what we've been up to lately, and whatever the heck else we want. Enjoy!
The Champions Online beta is over and the game is finally ready to go live for everyone. A few thoughts on the game so far…
This is far more like City of Heroes than any other MMO I’ve tried. Not that that’s a bad thing. From the way level upgrades are handled to the way gangs sort of hang around, it’s very familiar.
The storyline(s) are ridiculous and cheesy. This has been debated online a bit, but I like the B movie flavor of it all.
The character creator is unbelievably fun. I’ve seen some excellent toons out there. Favorites I’ve seen include Josie from Josie and the Pussycats, Duke Nukem and what looked a lot like Samus from Metroid. There are plenty of generics too, but the variety is pretty awesome.
CoH/CoV had pedestrians spouting funny lines at you when you’d run by. The enemies do more of that here. Hearing (or rather, reading) goons in nuclear waste talking about their latest mutations is entertaining.
There need to be more open objectives that can be done with large groups ala Warhammer Online. There are some, but more would be welcomed.
Millennium City feels like a ghost town. It’s big, it’s shiny, but it needs way more activity. This may change in later levels, I don’t know. For now going there for any reason other than that you have to feels pointless. I was hoping to “want” to go there.
If you visit the official site forums you’ll be bombarded with topics like “you guys broke the game!”, “I’m not playing this anymore” and “Cryptic, why did you nerf my class?”. Every MMO has message boards that look exactly like these, pay them no mind. I’ll be back with this topic another time, I need to sink another 3 months into it first.
If you see me playing, say hello! I’m usually online with the Mrs. who plays as Nurse Death.
Usually, the average gamer gets screwed when it comes to games. Paying $60 for a 5 hour third person shooter is a bit to ask for. Paying $10 for a 15 year old game with a new coat of paint is straight up rip-off. But once in a great while, the gaming comunity gets rewarded for all their wasted money and is rewarded with a package that, for once, is worth more than they paid.
The first major bargain came in 2007, with The Orange Box for the Xbox 360 and PC, and later PS3. It featured the award-winning Half-Life 2, its two episodic sequels, the multiplayer extravaganza Team Fortress 2, and the surprise hit Portal. $60 for five fully featured and amazing games is unbelievable!
Now, in 2009, we are graced with a deal that is JUST shy of being equally amazing: the Metroid Prime Trilogy for the Wii. This is a single-disc package, featuring all three Metroid Prime titles. The original two for GameCube, and the third one for the Wii. All three games are critically acclaimed, beautiful, moody, and incredibly well-made. The best part of it, though? The original two have been completely revamped with the third installment’s Wii controls! So now all three games can be played with the precision aiming of the Wii remote, as opposed to the archaic control scheme of the original two which didn’t even allow movement while aiming.
The way it was meant to be played.
All three games are absolutely mind-blowing. They take everything that made the 2D Metroid games special and somehow perfectly translate them into a 3D world AND with a first person perspective. With so many games of the past having so much trouble adjusting to modern times, the Metroid series smartly skipped the ugly world of the 64 bit era and jumped onto the GameCube to critical acclaim.
Not only do the games come on one disc, but for once Nintendo actually went the extra mile and gave it special packaging. Featuring a metallic case, a see-through slip-cover, AND an art book, the game actually feels like a complete collection. The menus of the game allow you to launch any game from a single interface as well, so it’s not like the three games were slapped in there with a menu to choose one. They’re all integrated together as a single unit. They even include achievement-like accomplishments for each game to unlock bonus features!
Whether you’ve played the old Metroids or not, whether you own all three games or not, you owe it to yourself to pick up this huge package for only $50. If the Orange Box never happened, this would be the best deal in gaming.
Rare has shared a couple of comparison shots from the Xbox Live version of the Nintendo 64 classic Perfect Dark that’s coming out, and it looks good. Makes-me-want-to-play-Perfect-Dark-again good. Visit PC World for the shots and a little bit of info.
Looking to kill some time? Here are some of my favorite Flash games from the past year or so.
10,000 years after this robot-filled city shut down, it’s up to you to bring it back to life. Little Wheel’s an excellent point and click adventure that could be your thing.
Play some Atari 2600 games online and relieve your youth. Ok, my youth. Now I feel old.
Aether is an imaginative puzzle game. Well done, good music and an overall neat idea. Swing through the galaxy and discover new planets with different goals.
Apparently I drink too much coffee, because my hand is just not steady enough to succeed at Dodge Bubbles.
As someone that plays a lot of games, and as someone that is terrible at most of them, I’ve come to realize that there’s a lot to be frustrated about in games. Whether it’s something in games of the past or modern frustrations, games are always going to find new and exciting ways to make people angry and annoyed. So right now, I am going to go over a few of the worst.
8 Million Random Battles in an RPG
I pretty much want to die whenever I’m playing any RPG with random battles, and you can’t take two steps without entering battle. Exit a battle, and enter one right away. Then walk another three steps, BATTLE. And oh man, nothing’s worse than when you are JUUUUST about to exit one room and go into another and you have one last battle before that. And then there’s when you see a save point up ahead, and get like three battles in a row before you hit it, and then die. Ugh. Luckily random battles are dying a slow and awesome death, but the games that still have it still have that problem.
Escort Missions
Snake, protect me even though before this point in the game I have proven myself to be totally capable of taking care of myself in battle!
Nothing is worse than having to babysit another character in a game. You’ve got yourself to worry about, and then some other character comes along who is weak and powerless, and you have to take care of them too? AND they’re controlled by AI, a technology that has yet to prove itself after being in games from the beginning? NO THANK YOU. The above image is from Metal Gear Solid 3, where you’ve got to protect Eva, a woman who has proven herself to be quite powerful in battle. She may be injured a bit when you have to take care of her, but still, it’s the worst. You have to give up all your food and items to heal her, she gets weak really quickly, and she is painfully slow. All escort missions are the worst, but that one always sticks out because it ruins an otherwise amazing game.
The one exception to the rule here is Ico, where the entire game is an escort mission. But the game is such a beautiful work of art that it’s exempt from being annoying.
Inventory Management
This would be a lot easier if I had room in my inventory for a shotgun, but NO, I have 7 different types of ammo and an egg taking up all that room.
I am all about games shooting for realism, and trying to make you feel like you’re in the game, but come on. I want infinite inventory all the time because nothing is worse than having to shift around objects and items to accommodate stuff. The Resident Evil games are the worst with this, ESPECIALLY the first one. Having to get rid of stuff and drop stuff and move stuff around and sacrifice stuff is beyond frustrating, because you just want to have everything. I know there’s challenge and strategy there, but it also presents itself with a ton of unfair situations that make the game entirely impossible to enjoy. Resident Evil 5 fixed this a bit, with tons of space to store stuff that you can’t access until the next checkpoint, but you’re still stuck with only nine items when you play. And if you get a fancy new gun but have no place to store the ammo, well, have fun with your paperweight.
I could go on for about 20 more years of frustrating things, but I am already in a horrible mood from writing this article. Thanks a lot, games industry. Maybe I’ll bust out another installment when I have nothing better to write about.
Blogga blog blog. Hi from Katy once again. It’s a cloudy, rainy, and generally unpleasant day here in the Boston area, where I have only lived for about two years now (and I am still not used to the weird weather), but none-the-less, my mood is fine! The Thumbmonkey office is very quiet today and I am listening to some Jose Gonzalez (great for a rainy day) and reminiscing about the hours of play I have put into Spore over the past few days.
Now, I know what you’re thinking (or I like to pretend), and it’s probably “SPORE?! But… why?”. This game has received very consistent poor reviews and without a doubt did NOT live up to it’s initial hype. I won’t BS you, I hate all of the stages of the game that come after the “Creature” stage, which means that I repeatedly only play two stages of the game. The “Cell” stage and the “Creature” stage have kept me entertained for months, particularly in my zone-the-f-out period before I pass out for the night. There is just something so satisfying about creating and controlling an entire species before falling into a nice, deep slumber. Some people zone out with Tetris, and I prefer Spore! (Not dumpin’ on Tetris, though. I <3 it.)
Here’s why I play:
The Cell stage is short and sweet. Create a funky little dude, cruise around looking for food, try not to get eaten by bigger, meaner dudes. How poetic, but in all seriousness, though, it’s a zen thing. I’ve always had a soft spot, too, for the creating and customizing aspect in most video games that offer it, and the Spore creature creator is truly the epitome of what games can offer as far as customizability goes.
Are you the all-out combat type or the passive cruiser type? Carnivorous or herbivorous, it’s your choice. I typically prefer to play as an herbivore for the following reasons: food is extremely plentiful and you don’t have to fight for it (lazy, much?) and it’s fun to add tons of ridiculous-looking armor to my creatures for protection from meat-eaters. Playing as a carnivore has it’s perks, too. There is more play involved, and it’s more fun as you progress into the Creature stage.
The Creature stage! My favorite. I spend hours playing it (even after my species has “evolved” and is capable of moving to the next stage). Understandably, the game play becomes somewhat more complex, but is still simple and does not require an extreme amount of effort (keeping perfectly in line with my whole lazy/zen theme). The point is to expand on your species. In this stage, you have the option of controlling an entire pack, as opposed to simply one creature. The same basic concepts are in place, though. Duh, the game is about surviving and evolving. You eat, fight, explore, and can also choose to socialize with other species.
The idea is to gain “DNA”, which acts as a kind of currency you use to expand on your creature with a HUGE selection (which you slowly accumulate throughout the game) of parts to improve on the quality and sustainability of your species. Prefer multiple appendages? No eyes? A giant tail? Want your species to be giant blobs with tiny mouths? Anything goes. My goal is to eventually move away from my usual type of creature, which almost always ends up looking like a small t-rex with horns and wings. I’m boring, what can I say?
A few ways to make the Creature stage more awesome:
- Get WINGS! Flying through Spore world is WAY more fun than walking. The graphics are not at all what I would consider amazing, by any means, but some of the in-game scenery is still very cool (meteor showers!), and a birds-eye view of all of the other species is pretty nifty. You can also surprise-attack this way, and navigate the world slightly faster.
- Seek out Rogue creatures and befriend them. Screw your species. You want a pack that consists largely of Rogues (yes, you can do that). They’re stronger than you, and it will help you to pwn any other species you wish.
- Find the Epics. They’re the MASSIVE creatures wandering around that can typically squash you with one stomp. I’ve found that there are usually 3 or 4 roaming around, which is very few for how massive the world is. You can’t befriend these guys, but you CAN kill them. It’s a serious challenge (for Spore, anyway), but it’s a lot of fun. They have 1,000 health, and you’ll have no more than 200ish. Good luck! P.S.- You get an “achievement” for killing an Epic. They also provide a ton of food (if you’re a carnivore).
- Lure Epics to Epics. A two-Epic creature fight is a lot of fun to watch, and though i’ve never tried it, i’ve heard of some people reducing the heath on Epic creatures this way, and then finishing them off. If this works, let me know, because I have no idea.
So, that’s that. Here’s to hoping the rain stops, and I don’t have to travel home soaking wet this afternoon. *Cheers with my coffee*
I’m very cranky and tired because I’m getting over a cold and I’ll be moving soon, so I haven’t had time to play any video games for a full week — no exaggeration. This pains me greatly, but what I can do amidst the horrid packing and cleaning and coughing up green stuff is listen to the lovely 8-bit arrangements of the BlazBlue soundtrack.
Sure, listening to the soundtrack is no substitute for the real thing, but I’ll take what I can get. Let’s start with the fairly epic Opening Theme. I can’t decide if I prefer it with the vocals or not, but this just makes me so happy.
The Rachel vs. Ragna theme would fit right in as a long lost level from Castlevania, hmm I wonder why.
So while I like Noel as much as Brock lieks mudkips, her theme is alas not my favorite. That would be Rachel’s theme because I’m a sucker for stereotypical gothic-lolita crap. And parts of the 8-bit version remind me of MegaMan. And I could play the crap out of Tetris to this…
Even though I don’t care for Bang much as a character, his music is good (all the music’s good though ;P ) and sounds like it would make great airship music. Enthusiastic ninja away!
Noel’s theme because I’m not just telling myself I like it!
Someday, I’ll stop playing Noel so much and I’ll get to hear all the nice music in game…someday…
A lot of games have some pretty heated and legendary rivalries. Mario vs. Bowser, Link vs. Ganon, Cloud vs. Sephiroth, etc. But there is not a single final battle that is as amazing and brilliant as Solid Snake and Revolver/Liquid Ocelot. Final battles are meant to develop over entire games, sometimes an entire series of games, but when they finish off, they might not be as amazing as you’d hoped. Sometimes the final boss isn’t REALLY the final boss, and there’s actually ANOTHER one waiting to take you down. Sometimes the final boss morphs into something unfamiliar. What is truly rare is going one on one against your equal.
In Metal Gear Solid, Snake first faces Revolver Ocelot on Shadow Moses. They engage in an epic gunfight, like the old west, and the battle ends with Ocelot losing his hand at the hands of a cyborg ninja.
In Metal Gear Solid 2, Ocelot is back, having Solid Snake’s clone, Liquid Snake’s, arm grafted onto his own as a replacement. Under the split personality of himself and Liquid, Ocelot destroys a ship that Snake is on, leaving him to die. The two clash several times for the rest of the game, with Ocelot behind the events of many other events. It was getting heated.
He is one bad dude.
In Metal Gear Solid 3, we go back in time and see that Ocelot, as a teenager, clashed several times with Snake’s father, Big Boss. This was now going back generations.
Once Metal Gear Solid 4 hit, the very end of the series, Ocelot had gone crazy. Having his personality completely taken over by his arm, he is on a massive quest to basically control the world’s army. He practically kills Snake, kills those close to him, and destroys a lot of lives and places in the world.
Then it all comes to a close.
Snake vs. Liquid
The two soldiers, on top of a ship, finally meet, one on one. Snake has ruined Ocelot’s plans, destroyed the evil takeover, and lived to tell the tale. Ocelot, with nothing left to lose, takes on Snake in a fight to the death.
What takes place is nothing short of magical. A one on one fist fight, nothing else. No guns, no shooting, no cover, no stealth. For a game known for sneaking around and heavy firefights, the final battle is a very close, very personal fight. Starting off as Liquid, you slowly beat the Liquid out of him until he is just Ocelot. Fists flying, takedowns, a little bit of wrestling, and music from throughout the series playing as the fight goes on, this is an amazing and perfect culmination of everything the series has done.
No games do this. The final battle is always some giant monster or something infinitely more powerful than you. But nothing makes a battle more intense than going up against your perfect equal. One man vs. one man, a rivalry built up literally over years (Revolver Ocelot was introduced to the series in 1998, and the series finished in 2008), one last fight to the finish.
Any other game would have had Ocelot turn into some kind of monster at the end, or had something to stack the odds up against Snake. But Hideo Kojima’s masterpiece, Metal Gear Solid 4, made the final boss fight as personal and emotional as you could ever imagine, and as a result it was easily the greatest final boss fight of all time.
If you have never played the series, do it. Start with Metal Gear Solid on the PSOne, then Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3 on the PS2, and finish off with Metal Gear Solid 4 on the PS3. It is some of the best in-game storytelling ever created, mixed with incredible gameplay, mind-blowing visuals (even the original game’s visuals hold up pretty well), and some very inventive and clever mechanics. And the stories all connect so well, and have so many running themes about life itself, that you would be hard pressed to find another series that is so solid (no pun intended) as a whole.
So yeah. Take 80 hours of your life and play through the entire series. It’s one game that proves that video games can be an infinitely more rewarding medium than anything else.
My name is Christine, and I’m a fairly awkward semi-otaku with anti-social tendencies, so naturally, I work at Thumbmonkey. Besides anime and manga, video games are a huge part of my life – particularly 2D fighters and RPGs, and yes, I share Mike’s soft spot for retro games (FFIV, FFVI, Tetris Attack, and MegaMan 3 are some old favorites).
Ahhhh, memories....
So this Sunday, I spent a solid 8 hours straight playing even more BlazBlue. For years I’ve been into Guilty Gear (stubbornly maining Anji), so much that I haven’t really moved on from Accent Core on PS2, so BlazBlue is my first real go at a current gen fighter. There were some brief attempts at SoulCalibur IV and Street Fighter IV, but let’s save that trauma for later.
So BlazBlue is awesome. There are so many features and new shiny things and pretty character design – though at first, I had some mixed feelings. I really had my doubts about the “Easy Specials” settings (using directions on the right analog stick to automatically perform special and drive attacks) – probably where the notion that BB is just “GG for casuals” came from (not that I’m so hardcore anyway). Of course, it can be disabled, but really? Easy specials?
But the more I get into it, the more I realize that hoping to pick it up and feel as at home as I do with GG was entirely the wrong approach. When I first started playing BB, it felt so weird compared to what I expected. I considered switching the D button to HS position; blocking with A and B instead of P and K was so awkward; accidentally doing a Barrier Burst while trying to block was a bit of a nightmare; even figuring out where to look took me some getting used to. But it is actually starting to feel comfortable now that I know a bit of what I’m doing, at least enough to stop rage button mashing or spamming D quite so much. I’ve somehow managed to work my way to Level 30 with Noel, and getting the “Carpal Tunnel” trophy is sadly rewarding in its own way.
Noel is my new Anji...they both have a weapon in each hand, so it was an obvious choice right?
So what most impresses me is the network play. This is a totally new addictive experience for me, enough that I end up just hitting Quick Match, and before I know it, it’s 3 AM. I might even start looking forward to the snarky-comment headset guys, it is so much fun, and so much more rewarding than just playing the CPU. Arcade or story on Hell difficulty doesn’t even push you to strategize the way that another person will. (And somehow Hakumen and Nu seem easier on Hell – wtf?)
Thanks to my older brother, I also like watching video games, and the ability to review matches from other players is amazing to me. That you can go to the ranking lists and download a match from just about anyone (like the top-ranked player of your favorite character) is just so nice. Even if I watch and think “Wow, I suck compared to them,” it’s totally worth it to see the combos, holy crap the combos. I prefer watching matches, but there are also some really nice combo videos out there:
So BlazBlue has a really complex story and all this unlockable artwork, and I just waste time playing arcade (practicepracticepractice!!!) and network matches. I’ll get around to the rest of it eventually, but until then, I’ll be failing against every Tager on PSN.
Tl;dr: BlazBlue, party time, excellent. I hate Tager.
The question I get asked the least as a customer service rep is “Scott, thanks for the truly amazing help, but I just have to know… what game are you most anticipating this year?”. I’m glad you didn’t ask. That game can be summed up in two words, Champions Online.
Now I know what you’re probably not thinking, “Another MMO? Wow. That’s exciting”. You’d be right and wrong. Right because it is exciting, and wrong because I know you thought that in a snarky way and weren’t being at all serious. Champions Online is being made by Cryptic, the studio best known for the early and excellent MMO entry City of Heroes, and the so-so pseudo sequel City of Villains. I loved City of Heroes when it came out, the design was cool and the gameplay was actually pretty original. Add on the ability to soar through a city and I was hooked for a while. Then it started raining MMO’s. It seemed like there was an MMO coming out every other weekend. Some were good, some were bad. Well, ok, most were bad. The bulk of them died quick and deservedly painful deaths, but a few have managed to stick it out and have loyal fanbases. I was one of these loyalists with my allegiance pledged to CoH for quite a while. You can probably guess what happened then. Yep, a free trial of World of Warcraft was sent my way. With that, I couldn’t go back. It felt like I was going from DVD back to VHS. Not that WoW doesn’t have its faults (it does, really), but it did have what CoH didn’t have enough of, things that kept my attention like differing landscapes, a variety of enemies and well-defined PvP. I grabbed the WoW by the horn and played like there was no tomorrow. Many tried to tempt me, but none could tear me from the beauty that was my WoW.
It’s been a long time, but a challenger actually appears to be here and damnit, I’m ready. I’ve suffered through broken promises (I’m looking at you Tabula Rasa), crappy mid-level gaming (hello Age of Conan), amazingly empty worlds (hi there Guild Wars) and possibly the worst game I’ve ever played (cough. Vanguard. cough.). I’m ready Champions Online, and you better not disappoint me. So far the game looks like they’re actually making exactly what I’ve been looking for, taking what made CoH/CoV excellent and allowing you to roam through what appear to be an interesting world that doesn’t feel like you’re just fighting the same 5 people looped over and over in a warehouse you swear you’ve been to already.
Now this could just be a case of me wanting a game not to be terrible because it sounds good, and I’ve been through this before with many others. Still, the footage I’ve seen and the feedback it’s getting are both excellent. The only thing that I’m not psyched about is that it’s going to be grouping both PC and Xbox 360 players together. No offense Xboxers, I’m with you in most cases, but the thought of listening to a 12 year old complaining in a voice that’s yet to change that this isn’t as fun as Call of Duty 9 doesn’t excite me. Taking that awful thought away, I’m going to be there on day one. I may not be there on day twelve, but here’s hoping Cyptic can do it again and actually hold my attention while other companies try to sway me with shiny objects. Oh, did I mention that this game is going to have a huge assortment of super powers to use? Did I forget to tell you that the character customization is going to be truly awesome? Sorry ladies, I’m taken.
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