Review: Portal 2

     Some reviewers make you wait until the end of their reviews to see their final scores. I may sometimes, but this needs to be said right off the bat: Portal 2 gets a 5/5. It's a great game and if you have any love for the first game, then you owe it to yourself to pick this up immediately. If you've never played Portal 1, I strongly urge you to pick it up before attempting to play Portal 2. The first game is a great game in its own right and entirely necessary to play through in order to truly appreciate its sequel.

      With that out of the way, let's get into the review proper. I just don't have enough good things to say about Portal 2. The writing is stellar, the voice acting is phenomenal, the puzzles are clever, and the game design is brilliant. What more could you ask for?

     I know that a major concern going into Portal 2 is the length of the game, considering how short the first game was. The single-player campaign in the second game is no marathon, but it certainly feels complete. In my opinion, it's just the right length. It took me somewhere between 8 and 10 hours to complete. I did take my time looking at the world and taking in as many of the sights and sounds as I could, but it's a pretty solid campaign length. Honestly, I'm not sure if I would have wanted it to be any longer. In my opinion, Portal 2 is well worth the $60 asking price for the single-player experience alone and the co-op campaign (which I have yet to try) only sweetens the deal.

     As I said earlier, everything about this game is great. Each time a new character was introduced I loved them almost immediately and pretty much any time dialogue was spoken I stopped what I was doing so I could just listen. It has some truly breathtaking moments mixed in with some of the most hilarious lines I can ever remember hearing in a game. GLaDOS is a treat once again, Cave Johnson (voiced by JK Simmons) is a welcome addition, and Wheatley (voiced by Stephen Merchant) is entertaining throughout the entire game. Valve somehow manages to stay away from the easy jokes at every turn and most of the jokes from the first game have been retired with style here.

     To be quite honest, when Valve announced Portal 2 I breathed a sigh and thought to myself, "I really just want Half-Life 2: Episode 3." Even though it isn't the game I wanted from Valve, Portal 2 surpasses every expectation I have for a video game. I was blown away by it from the very beginning and that feeling stayed with me throughout the entirity of the game. I won't talk plot at all, because I won't spoil the experience. It's best discovered for yourself.

     I can truly say that Portal 2 is one of the best games I have ever played and will remain very high up on my list of favorite games for a long time to come. It lifts itself up way over the bar in everything I could have hoped for and knocked my socks off. I can't say how much I love this game. I can't wait to jump back in to the single-player to clean up some achievement points and I definitely can't wait to get started on that co-op campaign. Valve, you've done it again.

Portal 2: 5/5

What I paid: $55 + $20 credit

What it's worth: $60

I pre-ordered Portal 2 from Amazon for $55 dollars with a $20 credit in addition. I played through the entire single-player in about 8-10 hours on the XBox 360, accruing 290 achievement points and 3 Avatar awards. I never launched the co-operative campaign.

Deadly Premonition: Night 1

     I must admit that when Deadly Premonition first came out, I had quite a few misgivings about it. I didn't really know what to think of it and all the reviews of it that I saw were either glowing or putrid. When I started listening to the Giant Bombcast, they would talk about it every once in a while and mentioned that they had done an Endurance Run of it. I never watched the Endurance Run, because the things they would say about it made it sound more and more like this was something I may want to see for myself.

     A few days ago, I decided that I had waiting far too long to play this game, so I ordered it from Amazon and made a pact with myself. I've had a large problem with finishing games lately (I have so many half-completed games that it's really starting to get frustrating), so I decided that after it arrived I would play it for at least one hour every night. Later I decided that it would be fun to tweet about it while I played it and blog about it afterwards.

     Enter today: A package at my doorstep. It starts now.

A few hours later, I even got the shrink wrap off!

     Starting the game for the first time, I honestly was expecting horrendous graphics due to what I had heard from others, but I have to say I've seen much worse. Many of the character models look pretty nice and I really like most of the animation. Sure, some of the textures look a little weird, but all-in-all I think it looks fine. Stylistically, I really like what I've seen so far and though they're certainly stand-out graphics for current generation consoles, I never once thought "Wow, this looks bad," during my first hour-ish with the game. I also feel that the graphics fit in perfectly with the kind of game this seems to be so far.

     Let's get to the story (First hour spoilers): Francis York Morgan, an FBI agent and avid smoker, is driving to the town of Greenvale to investigate a murder when he runs his car off the road into a nearby forest. Getting out of his car, he finds himself in an eerie fog with some strange-looking twitchy corpse-things. Fighting his way through them, he eventually makes his way towards Greenvale where he meets up with the Sheriff's assistant and the Sheriff, who makes it clear that he does not want York to be there. York then stays the night at the local hotel, eats breakfast with an old lady, gets his fortune from his coffee (yes, you read that right), and then heads to the nearest phone, where he reports his findings (saves the game). That's as far as I've gotten so far and it has drawn my interest even though so little has happened.

     I have to say, though, the character of Francis York Morgan has been great so far. He's constantly making pop culture reference and doing bizarre things without ever acknowledge that the things he's doing are strange. He talks to a character named Zach (presumably imaginary, though many player actions are specifically asked of Zach), which makes for a great way to have interesting monologues when only York is present. As I said before, he also reads into his coffee every morning to find a fortune to help him throughout the day. As odd-ball as he sounds, he really is an interesting character and I can't wait to see what else he has in store.

     The gameplay so far feels a bit like classic Resident Evil with the view and aiming system of RE4, though all of it takes place in an open-world setting (that I haven't really gotten to yet). York finds melee weapons, which seem strong but degrade over time, and starts out with an FBI standard pistol, which doesn't pack much of a punch, but has infinite ammo. Strange twitchy corpses walk and teleport around the environment and York has to shoot them while solving some basic puzzles. In practice it's more fun than it sounds, though you have to be one that appreciates the survival horror genre. If you want fast-paced action, you should definitely go elsewhere. I can't really speak much about the gameplay yet as the first hour or so is very story heavy and I would hate to over-generalize it.

     With all that said, the first hour of Deadly Premonition left me waiting for tomorrow to play it some more. It certainly has surprised me in a pleasant way. I thought that I would either love this game or absolutely hate it and if the beginning is any sign of what's to come, I'm in for one enjoyable ride.

     

     

Deadly Premonition Nights Incoming

     I bought Deadly Premonition from Amazon the other day and as soon it arrives, I'll be doing a series of blog posts where I play at least one hour of it every night until I beat it. I will also be tweeting as I play it, which makes it twice as fun. It was supposed to get here today and DPN was going to premiere tonight, but I guess it'll have to wait until Monday.

Gears of War 3 Beta Madness

     I've just recently become a rather large fan of the Gears of War and am quite excited about the upcoming Gears of War 3, but the amount of madness surrounding these early access codes to the Gears 3 Beta is just ridiculous.  #Gears3beta is the third highest trend on Twitter at the moment and everyone is clamoring for them. People have been creating accounts just to beg for codes all day. I love my Gears and all, but this is just silly.

Want Another Humble Indie Bundle?

     The guys at humblebundle.com don't disappoint with their current Humble Frozenbyte Bundle, their latest pay-what-you-want indie games bundle for charity. The bundle includes PC and Mac versions of Trine, Shadowgrounds: Survivor, Shadowgrounds, and a pre-order of a game called Splot. It's definitely work checking out.

How Pac-Man: Champion Edition DX Personifies Modern Game Design

     In the earliest days of video games, arcade games were the meat of the market. Games were designed to be difficult and kill the player often in order to sucker them into giving the machine the next quarter, the next quarter, and hopefully the one after that. The original Pac-Man was an incredibly fun game at the time; it was also indicative of game philosophy at the time. While expert players like Billy Mitchell have learned to master the game, most of us just remember the sound and animation of when Pac-Man was caught by those pesky ghosts.

Remember this? Don't lie.

     Last November, Namco introduced us to Pac-Man CE: DX, which completely revolutionized the Pac-Man experience. It took the refinements of Pac-Man CE and, well, made them crazy. In my head, I always like to think that someone brought the original Pac-Man to a group of game designers and said, "Here. Make this better."

I hear Quicktime Events are popular...    

     As crazy as that sounds, though, what's crazy is that they actually did. By introducing seemingly simple things like sleeping ghosts, bombs, and a slight slowdown when near-death, Namco turned Pac-Man from a food connoisseur who occasionally snacked on ghosts into a creature that could single-handedly depopulate an entire planet full of ghosts. After all those years of being killed by ghost after ghost, building up a chain of them just to turn around and chomp them into oblivion feels so good. It's downright cathartic.

This is for stealing all my quarters!

     And it's not just that it feels good as revenge. It's fun. There's no other way to describe it. Now that game designers aren't just after your quarters, they can really craft an experience that is fun for the player, not frustrating. With all of the helpful items to swing things in Pac-Man's favor, that dying animation is very rarely even seen, changing Pac-Man from a battle of survival into a test to see who can eat ghosts faster. After seeing what Namco has done with CE:DX, I look forward to see what other game companies can come up with in the future. Taking classic ideas and characters and melding them into modern gameplay ideals seems to be a pathway to a whole new source of innovation.

     Now that they've improved Pac-Man, I can't wait to see what they do to the wheel.

      

  

Common Sense: Don't Steal GameStop's 3DS Displays

     The last time I was at a GameStop, I overheard a conversation between the cashier and a Nintendo representative about the security on their 3DS display units. Just in case you didn't know, if you ever did manage to get the console out of its display, it would still require a power source to run because they don't have batteries in them. Also, most of the features are blocked out, which should be pretty obvious to anyone. The most hilarious thing, though, was that she gave a sort of menacing grin to everyone in the store and said, "If you steal this and try to log in to the Internet with it, you're in for a nasty surprise."

If you steal it, they will come.

      

Thinking It Through: Day One DLC

     Hello, everyone. Welcome to the new blog. I'm going to kick things right off with a section called Think It Through, which is just that: me thinking through topics that are a bit controversial and maybe a bit misunderstood.    

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     Today's the day: release day. You drive to the store to pick up that game you've had pre-ordered for months, plop your sixty bucks down on the counter, grab the game and leave the store smiling. Driving home quickly, the anticipation builds inside you like a Lego set. Clink! goes the disk drive as you hastily insert the disc to its rightful place. Your heart begins to race as the disc picks up speed. The game fades in and politely asks you to press the start button. You gladly oblige and read the main menu: new game, settings, the usual. Your eyes glance at the bottom of the screen as some letters scroll by slowly, menacingly. Your heart sinks. "Downloadable content available now!" Day One DLC. How could they? You just gave them sixty of your hard-earned dollars for this game and before you even get the chance to play it, they're already asking for more! It may be a bitter pill to swallow, but this is a trend that will probably continue for a long while. 

     A major misconception about video games is that they're worked on until the very last minute the game goes on the shelf. In actuality, games have to go through a rigorous certification process by the the console companies (Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, etc.) before the game can be greenlit for production. Even after that, it can take quite a while for games that have "gone gold" (production of discs has begun) to reach the hands of the consumers.  As all this is happening, teams from the developer can start making more content for the game. Though it may seem like it sometimes, most companies are not trying to sell you content they had ready when the game was sent for certification, but content made afterwards while waiting for the game to hit store shelves. Dragon Age: Origins did this very well with Warden's Keep; it was a small piece of content made after the game was finished that gave whoever wanted it a few added quests, items, and a handy item chest. The game was in no way incomplete without it.

     Why do they have to sell it on release day, though? You bought the game, right? They should let you have that moment without sticking their grubby mitts back in your face, begging you for more cash. 

     While this is an argument I can completely understand and respect, I also understand the other side of the argument. Announcing or releasing DLC on day one lets gamers know that additional content will be released for the game. Not only does this give the game a little bit more longevity in the gamer's eye, it may also keep the gamer from trading that copy of the game in so soon. Mass Effect 2's Cerberus Network DLC, for example, gave customers the promise of free DLC later on and even some instantly. Hanging on to that copy for a little while longer meant getting to go back to the game later and having some extra quests waiting for you. This allowed them to convince consumers to keep their games until they could prepare more content, resulting in longer than usual support for paid DLC with Arrival coming out over a year after the game's initial launch.

     When you think about it, day one DLC  isn't as evil as it may seem. With the used market being such a huge percentage of the video game industry, game companies are having to come up with more and more unique ways to get people to keep their games instead of selling or trading them in. When it all comes down to it, dealing with DLC on day one is a price I'm more than willing to pay in order to keep the industry healthy.