November 2009

Borderlands

November 5, 2009

Can a mish-mash title that steals from many different genres succeed in being better than the sum of its parts? Borderlands asks this question by blatantly borrowing the theme from Fallout, mechanic elements from Mass Effect, multiplayer aspects from Team Fortress 2 and character progression from World of Warcraft, all while being a solid first-person-shooter with role-playing characteristics.

Welcome to the world of Pandora, a desolate wasteland of a planet that nobody in their right mind should come and visit, unless you are looking for wealth beyond your wildest dreams; seems there is a legend surrounding Pandora and a lost vault full of alien technology that will make its finder powerful, rich and cooler than anyone else in the universe. Naturally this brings out a lot of treasure hunters and rogues looking to make a quick buck or die trying on this lawless rock. Fresh off the bus, you step in the shoes of one of four treasure hunters looking for clues to this mysterious vault, making potential allies to aid in your quest or killing anyone who gets in your way.

From here the game gets harder to describe as standard first person shooter mechanics are tweaked by class specific special attacks and talent trees that vary depending upon how you spec your character. For every level you get past level five, you can spend points to improve talent branches that tend to help your special attacks or increase weapon damage. For examplem you could spend points to increase the hunter’s bloodwing attack damage, or use it to get bonus drops whenever the same attack is used. While these mostly are extras for the single player mode, they quickly add up in multiplayer as the soldier can spec into a medic tree to have his turret heal others when it is out. Regardless the game allows you to respec, for a small fee, and try out different branches of the talent tree to find what works for you.

Each character is supposed to have a specialty with particular guns, such as the siren’s affinity for sub-machine guns, but every character can use and build up any gun skills the more they use a particular weapon. The benefits gained from using a specific class of weapon range from increased damage and reload times to the more helpful sniper gun bonus of stability, but you are encouraged by the plethora of weapons to find something that works for you without limiting you in the least. Adding to the already mind-boggling different types of weapons you can also find, there are also weapons with additional stats such as elemental attributes and explosion/corrosive natures that are just fun to see pulled off; for the longest time I kept a lower damage incinerator machine gun just because I loved seeing my enemies randomly catch on fire. The game is built for fun, whether you pop the head of an enemy from a distance with the sniper rifle or are running head-first in the fray with a shotgun.

Leveling up is accomplished by completing and turning in quests that are sometimes stringed to together but the game is very unforgiving with bosses who may be higher than you. For such cases grinding may be required to finish off a level or two to be comparable, but if you are diligent completing side optional quests and aren’t teleporting past enemies a bunch this shouldn’t be too much of a factor. In addition to the grind and questing route for experience the game introduces a nice side mechanic called challenges which are sometimes linked to achievements/trophies. Completing any of the 100 challenges nets you experience and can be completely addictive as you drive over enemies to get the “blood on the tires” achievement/challenge or continue to run over enemies to get the “school bus driver” challenge and experience. After seeing the same enemies over and over again, you may just want to put that challenge high on your list to do.

While driving may be a slight presence in the game, the multiplayer and co-op options are not. One of the best implementations of multiplayer in years, you can play split screen with a friend on your couch, grab a team of 4 online to head out and quest in the wastelands, or just go for the throat and enter team multiplayer matches. With the first two options the game ups the ante by increasing the risk/rewards with harder enemies and better loot drops, in addition to you keeping the experience you gain as you head back into your single player mode. As mentioned above, your spec can really make or break a team in multiplayer, and if you really feel like your spec is better than another’s you can challenge them to a duel in the arena to prove it.

Borderlands is a game that succeeds in stealing other games’ elements to create a unique experience, from its beautiful cell-shaded graphics to its accessible yet involved gun and item system and unbeatable multiplayer, it is a game that satisfies on many different levels.

ESRB: M for plenty of head-exploding cartoonish violence and language

Plays Like: Stylized mish-mash of Fallout, Mass Effect and WoW

Pros: Fun wasteland adventure, with awesome co-op and multiplayer options

Cons: Repetitive enemy types

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

November 5, 2009

PS3 / Reviews / by Justin Last /

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune is one of the finest PlayStation 3 games available on the system. The writing is great, the characters are likeable and well-developed (well, the heroes are likeable anyhow), the shooting feels great, and the set piece battles felt like scenes ripped straight from a movie. Uncharted 2 managed to take all of those positives, polish them just a little bit more, and add in two excellent multiplayer modes. The single-player experience is wonderful and worth replaying on higher difficulties, and the multiplayer – particularly Uncharted’s take on Gears of War 2’s Horde Mode and Halo 3: ODST’s Firefight – is great.

Uncharted 2 has a bit more focus on platforming than its predecessor did, and it all manages to feel organic. You’ll explore a museum in Istanbul, ancient ruins in Borneo, run-down and crumbling buildings in Nepal, and ice caves in the Himalayas. Naughty Dog has clearly been watching and paying attention to their Indiana Jones movies as the locales are larger than life and areas are clearly designed with blockbuster moments in mind.

As you globetrot from place to place you’ll undoubtedly need to shoot some of the big bad’s hired mercenary’s as you try to catch up with him. All of the weapons from Uncharted 1 make a return for the sequel, and there are even a couple new ones to play around with. Nate can still only hold one pistol and one rifle (or shotgun), but the way grenades are handled has been changed. You won’t need to select them anymore. Simply aim your gun and press L2 to lob a grenade at your crosshairs. Or hold down L2 for the familiar throw arc and release the throw. The change is a small one, but it really made me consider using grenades much more often. And there are plenty of baddies to use them on – I recommend using them on those that carry riot shields personally, but they work well on everyone if you can aim your throw properly.

The story, which I won’t spoil for you, features a lot of boss encounters. The jet ski sections have been replaced with epic fights that are more fun than frustrating, and while you will almost assuredly die on your first time through it will always feel like it was your fault and not the game’s. Naughty Dog has retained the challenge of the original Uncharted while removing the frustration that comes with clearing a room only to have more baddies spawn behind you for no reason. This time around when you clear a room it stays cleared, but it’s more difficult to take care of everybody in the first place. To help with that Drake has easier access to more powerful weapons. I was picking up Desert Eagles and Moss-12 shotguns shortly after the tutorial was over. And when you run out of ammo for those it feels perfectly natural to fall back on the AK-47 and pray and spray until a better gun comes along.

The medal system is back as well, and earning medals in single player and multiplayer earns you money to spend in the store. This is where you’ll buy things like character skins, weapon upgrades for multiplayer and infinite ammo weapons for single player. Even more than tying many of them to PSN trophies, having and in-game reward scheme really makes it fun to unlock the game’s various medals.

Multiplayer is a new addition from Drake’s Fortune, and whether you prefer competitive or cooperative multiplayer, Uncharted 2 has you covered. Cooperative multiplayer has you beating back wave after wave of villains while using your platforming skills from the single player to collect treasures and complete other objectives. Competitive multiplayer takes the core single player gameplay elements – the excellent shooting and platforming – and turns you loose in team deathmatch, plunder, elimination, and chain reaction. Team deathmatch is exactly what it sounds like – one team is heroes and the other villains; the first team to 50 points wins. Plunder is the Uncharted 2 version of capture the flag where each team tries to grab the treasure in the middle of the map and return it to their base. Elimination is team deathmatch with no respawns; the first team dead loses. Your team wins the match if you manage to take the other team completely out three out of five times. Chain Reaction is interesting because each team has a different objective, or at least a different objective order. There are five flags on the field. One team works from flag 1 to flag 5 while the other team works from flag 5 to flag 1. It’s still in your best interest to take the other team out, but a high kill count is not required to win the match. Split-screen is not available in any mode, but you really want to be watching Uncharted 2 in full-screen. It’s too gorgeous to share.

Uncharted 2 is everything that I want in a game: great gunplay, fun characters and dialog, and a wide variety of multiplayer options. The single player is fair – even on its highest difficulty, the set piece battles make me feel great when I get past them, and it feels like an action movie. Too often video game sequences feel like they were designed only with the player in mind – Uncharted 2 feels like it was designed to be fun for me playing it and to be entertaining for my wife to be watching it. If you own a PS3 and can only pick up one game this holiday season it really ought to be Uncharted 2.

Pros: great medal system, wide variety of multiplayer options, access to good weapons early in story
Cons: no split-screen multiplayer
Plays Like: Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, Tomb Raider: Legend, Gears of War 2
ESRB: T for blood, language, suggestive themes, and violence

Madballs in…Babo: Invasion

November 4, 2009

PC / Reviews / by Michael Walbridge /

Madballs in…Babo: Invasion has a weird title, so you’d think it’s one of those indie titles that tries to break the mold by doing something extremely weird and abstract.

It is not one of “those titles”, though. It may seem a curious comparision, but I’ll make it now—it’s a game that is not “retro” as it’s not patterned after games from the 80s and early 90s, but it does hearken to the days of the N64 and the PS1. The madballs are like the products of the 80s, large balls with a face on them.

In this title, the balls are characters that are part of two warring factions, and they shoot each other with lasers, machine guns, rockets, and your other standard projectile fare. For the single player fare, there are two campaigns that last a few hours. The sprites and backgrounds look really good for a budget game that take up only 400 MB. They are bright, colorful, varied, and original. The levels are linear in design but not in geometry, with a few sections requiring Sonic-style bursts of speed over twisting curves, others requiring jumps on to platforms, and yet others having mini-puzzles such as pressing buttons in the correct sequence.

The star of the campaigns, though, are the bosses. They have a lot of flair and character to them, and they have the enjoyable old-school flavors of shoot, dodge, shoot, dodge, and “figure out the weakness” to them. The challenge with these bosses (and the levels) is only moderate, with the focus appearing to be on high scores rather than on whether you can beat it. The ride is enjoyable, even though the levels are blazed through. Online co-op is not featured in enough games, either, and this game has it, thankfully.

Multiplayer has potential but ultimately falls flat. There are a handful of levels and modes, but it is poorly balanced, with some heroes and weapons generally being superior. Certain levels especially favor certain strategies, making the competition feel less about skill and strategy and more about uncontrolled chaos. Even worse, it requires plenty of play in single and/or multiplayer to unlock all the weapons and characters. Weapons and loadouts can be changed in between deaths, like in many FPS titles.

I played the demo on Xbox LIVE. The unfortunate thing is that the mouse provides much smoother control and precise aiming, but the console is where all the players are, whether it’s for co-op or versus modes. At either rate, Madballs price-tag is highly reasonable (ten dollars eitherway) and you get a very polished and original take on gun-based action, if not challenging or competitive.

ESRB: E10+ for balls shooting at each other in a cartoony context

Pros: Has co-op, original, lots of content for the money, well-polished

Cons: Community is lacking in Steam when mice are better, versus modes have balance issues, too many unlockables take too much time

Armored Core 3 Portable Giveaway

November 3, 2009

News / by Chris Rasco /

We ended up with 4 extra codes for Armored Core 3 Portable for the PSP and in the spirit of giving, 4 lucky people will end up with those codes. We will give away 1 code per day starting this afternoon. 2 codes will go to randomly selected readers who post in this comments thread. The other 2 codes will go to readers who retweet our post about this contest so make sure you are following @SnackbarGames!

Snackbar Speculator: Net Profits

November 1, 2009

Features / Opinion / by Shawn Vermette /

Welcome to the first edition of Snackbar Speculator, where we present you with the biggest and latest rumors and tell you how likely we think they are to actually happen. We’ll summarize each rumor for you and then Snackbar’s Andrew Passafiume, Graham Russell and Shawn Vermette will weigh in on what we think of each rumor and how likely, or unlikely, we consider each rumor. We’ll also revisit rumors in later editions once they are confirmed or denied and keep track of how accurate each of us are in our predictions.

For our introductory edition, we’re covering some new rumors, some recycled rumors, and perhaps even a rumor that will anger you.

PS3 Cross-game Chat

According to a recent, and now deleted, post by a staffer at Naughty Dog, the next PS3 firmware update will finally allow for cross-game chat over PSN. This rumor has surfaced many times before, but has yet to come to fruition.

Andrew Passafiume: With this being such a popular option for Xbox 360 owners, and how frequently it is demanded, I can’t see this NOT happening. Although a lot of PS3 users who play online do not have headsets, I could see it still being a very useful and frequently used feature. 95%

Graham Russell: Internal dev teams have talked about it, and it’s certainly technically feasible with a firmware update. This isn’t a money thing, and it isn’t a PR thing, so there are no barriers to implementation when they get it working. 70%

Shawn Vermette: Hm…Sony likes to promote how the Playstation Network offers all the features of Xbox Live without the monthly fees, but that just isn’t the case. Offering cross-game chat would go a long way toward evening the online playing field. However, Sony has also had three years to get this implemented and there is no way it would have taken them this long if they truly thought it was something worth doing. 65%

PSP Digital Rental Service

Sony has added new information sections to the PSP Games on the PSN that are identical to the ones used for their video rental download service. Notably, a web survey surfaced a few months ago detailing a subscription rental plan that would allow members to download a certain number of PSP games per payment cycle.

Andrew: This seems like it would be an interesting service, especially considering the recent launch of the PSP Go. Something like this might encourage more people to check out the Go. Although I think this all depends on the success if the Go itself, since something like this might rely on a huge fan base of that system. And considering the sales of the Go are pretty much up in the air right now, it’s hard to say. 50%

Graham: While this is something they’re capable of, subscription services tend to hurt only one party: the publishers. It’s true with Netflix, and it’s true with Gamefly. It could be okay if it was really expensive, but then no one would want it. I still can’t rule out Sony being illogical, though. 20%

Shawn: Sony seems to really be trying to push this digital distribution thing with the PSPGo so why not introduce something like this? Especially after the whole fiasco over transferring UMD games over to digital copies bit Sony very hard just a week before the PSPGo was released. Considering it can do nothing but make even more money for Sony(and considering it would be accessible by the PSP Go or regular PSP), this seems like a shoo-in to happen. 100%

Xbox Live Gold Membership Price Hike

Industry analyst Michael Pachter theorized recently that Microsoft could raise the price for their Xbox Live Gold membership from $50/year to $100/year in the near future in order to reap more profit from their online subscriptions. In response, Microsoft stated that they foresaw no scenarios where they would double the price of Xbox Live in the next couple months.

Andrew: Considering how many people pay for Xbox Live a year, I can see this being a very real possibility. Although I doubt it will happen in the near future, I can see it possibly happening within the next few years. But at the same time, Microsoft could lose a lot of Xbox Live support from people who feel like a price increase might be a betrayal. 65%

Graham: This is a really bad idea for Microsoft. One of the key talking points for Sony purists is that PSN is free and full Live access costs money. Double that money at the same time the PS3 has a price drop and some high-profile titles, and this quick cash grab may make the 360 lose some ground in the console war. 5%

Shawn: To me, the fact that Microsoft actually commented on this rumor is very important to me. It means that they have seriously considering doubling the price of Xbox Live. At the same time though, I think that Microsoft has done a very good job of paying attention to consumer chatter, and I believe they realize that doing so could either increase the amount of time and games people play on their PS3, if they have both systems, or cause people to skip over the Xbox 360 for the PS3 when deciding on a console purchase. I believe it will happen eventually, I just don’t believe it will happen until the next console cycle. 15%

Microsoft to Package Natal With Xbox 360

Rumors have abounded since E3 regarding Project Natal, so of course, we had to include one of the more recent ones here.

According to Mark Rein at Epic Games, Microsoft plans to package Natal in with every Xbox 360 they sell, once it is released, and that they then hope to sell Natal to everyone who has already purchased an Xbox 360. With dozens of developers signed up to incorporate Natal into their games, surely Microsoft has told them something regarding their launch plans…wouldn’t you think?

Andrew: I can’t see this not happening, especially considering how Microsoft will be marketing the Natal. Whether or not it will be a success does not matter, with the right amount of support, Project Natal can become a huge hit for Microsoft and bring a brand new audience to the system. And I think it’s clear that Microsoft has been trying to do it for years. 100%

Graham: There’s absolutely going to be a bundle, and it’s going to be pretty common. I don’t know if it will be in every SKU like Rein thinks, but they’d be crazy not to put together a box that just directly competes with the Wii. 90%

Shawn: Considering the effort, time, and money Microsoft is putting into developing Natal, I have a hard time believing Microsoft wouldn’t also do anything they could to give it the best chance of succeeding and taking off. Additionally, considering the amount of developer support Microsoft has been attempting to secure, it also makes sense that they would promise a way to make sure there will be a reasonably large sized user base to sell their games to. 100%

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