April 2010

Gaming Unplugged: Tobago

April 11, 2010

Features / Unplugged / by Chris Ingersoll Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Fans of logic puzzles will probably find Tobago (published by Rio Grande) to be a treasure, although you don’t actually need to be able to solve one of those to enjoy it. Featuring a modular board and some awesome bits, this game will quickly catch your eye before it grabs your mind.

The three sections that make up the board are double-sided and can combine in over 30 ways to create distinct layouts for the island. Additionally, ten landmarks (three statues, three trees, and four huts) are placed on the map in nearly random locations (they can’t be within 6 spaces of an identical object and statues can’t be adjacent to the ocean/edge of the map) to further make each game unique. Players (from two to four) each place their ATV pawn anywhere they wish, and then the treasure hunt begins! 

Initially, each player in turn draws one map card and places it next to one of the four colored piles (white, black, brown, and grey), with each player seeding a different pile (with less than four players the unseeded piles just start out that way). Each map card lists either where the treasure is or where it is not; one card might say “adjacent to the largest forest”, while another might exclude any space within view (one or two spaces away from) a hut. The map cards use a symbology that is both universal and requires no actual reading. No single card will ever be able to pinpoint the exact location of a treasure, so once the initial cards are played each player draws four and the actual game starts.

On your turn, you can either play one card to one pile or make a move with your ATV. A card can only be played if it reduces the number of potential locations by at least one hex and does not create an illegal situation; if the treasure is already known to be “on a beach” you can’t then say that it “is not adjacent to the ocean” because there is no such space in any configuration of the boards. If you play a card, you indicate that it is yours with one of your colored claim markers and then draw one to keep four cards in your hand at all times. An ATV move consists of up to three “legs;” a “leg” is defined as either crossing from one terrain type (forest, lake, beach, plains, mountain, river) to another or moving as far as you want within your current terrain. Picking up an amulet (which I’ll get to in a second) ends your leg; unearthing a treasure ends your move.

Once enough cards have been played, the number of potential locations for each treasure will narrow. As soon as it reaches the point where you can place the provided cubes on the potential spaces you should do so, as this will help to visualize what is and isn’t a legal card to further play for that treasure. A treasure must be reduced to only one potential location before it can be raised via ATV move.

The player who raises the treasure makes one final claim on it, and then each player is dealt one Treasure card (valued form 2 to 6) per claim they have on it. After looking at these cards, all of the dealt cards are mixed together, one unseen card is added from the deck (to keep things interesting), and the cards are revealed one at a time. Starting with the player who raised the treasure and working back to the first clue, each player gets to either take the card or pass on it. When a player takes a treasure card he places it face down in front of him and then removes the claim marker that actually took the card (e.g., if the claims are 3-1-3-2 and player 3 takes it on his second offering, the next card will be offered in the order of 3-1-2). If a treasure is passed up by all players it is discarded. Once all claims are satisfied (or once the available cards run out) the player who took the last card begins a new hunt for that treasure by using one of the map cards from his hand, with the last remaining card (if any) being discarded.

There is a danger to claiming treasure, however; somewhere after the first dozen cards in the Treasure deck lie two Curse cards. When a Curse card is revealed, all remaining cards in that treasure are immediately discarded and anyone who still has a claim on that treasure instead loses their highest-valued treasure from their collection. This is a potent threat that encourages players to not invest too heavily in a single treasure in case they get completely screwed by a Curse, but sometimes the risk can be worth it. Fortunately, the treasure-loss effect of curses can be avoided by possessing a magic amulet, which possess other powers as well. 

After each treasure is finished, the three statues will “fire”, depositing a magical amulet on the edge of the map directly in front of them before rotating 60 degrees clockwise (the manual even insists that you make a creaking/grinding noise when you do this). Anyone who picks up one or more of these has access to the following abilities in addition to the curse protection: they may play an additional map card, they may make an additional three-leg ATV move (although they may not pick up any amulets with this bonus move), they may discard their map cards in hand for four new ones, or they may eliminate one potential location of a specific treasure. Using any of an amulet’s powers causes the amulet to be discarded, but there is no limit to the number of amulets you may use in a given turn. The later stages of the game will almost certainly be decided by shrewd use of amulets, so plan accordingly.

The game ends when the final treasure card is passed out; if the last treasure requires more cards than there are left in the deck then the discarded cards from previous treasures are reshuffled to provide the remaining ones. The player with the highest total treasure value is the winner.

Tobago is quick-playing, with a session  rarely taking more than an hour (after setup). The symbology on the map cards can be awkward and/or arcane at first, but the reference page is a big help and eventually you will pick it up. The logical aspect of Tobago’s treasure hunt is very unique, although it can be frustrating to have no legal plays in your hand and have to waste your turn moving your ATV for no real reason. I love the presentation of the game, which in many ways reminds me of Taluva, another tropical island Rio Grande game and one of my favorites.

Image by GamerChris

WarioWare DIY

April 11, 2010

DS / Reviews / by Graham Russell Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Nintendo’s Intelligent Systems studio has developed some of the company’s more interesting releases over the years, including Paper Mario, Fire Emblem, WarioWare and Advance Wars. One game they co-developed, though, has been painfully without a sequel: Mario Paint. As their other franchises have taken off, they’ve never had the opening to get back to the art and music creation title. But you can tell they wanted to. With WarioWare DIY, they did it, and they did it by slamming it together with a game they were going to make anyway. And it’s pretty cool.

Of course, there’s the WarioWare part, and it’s as solid as always. For the uninitiated, you’re trying to complete three-to-five-second “microgames” in succession, and the challenges are as bizarre as they get. This time, there are 90 to start with, and you can download more. Of course, you can always make them yourself– and that’s where this game’s new features kick in.

Nintendo has created a simplified interface for creating games, but for the scope of your three-second challenges, it’s more than suitable. It’s intuitive, but in classic Nintendo style, it forces you through the tutorials anyway. (Don’t worry…the Treehouse localization team did what it could to keep the “teaching” dialogue from Wario and Penny as entertaining as possible, so it’s bearable.) Everything is touch-controlled, and programming is essentially a few lines of if/then statements. You can get it to do what you need it to, though.

Also included is a full editing suite for art and music. You can use these in your games, create standalone songs and comics, or just mess around. You can start with any element that exists in the game or start from scratch. You can share any or all of these elements with friends, and that’s certainly where the depth in DIY lies.  

If you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop, here it is: we’ve learned from the console versions that the staying power comes from multiplayer. And…it’s not really here. The $8 WiiWare download, DIY Showcase, adds a batch of games to the DS version, and yes, there’s a multiplayer mode. Unfortunately, it’s barebones, and since it lets you mess up opponents’ games, it’s just a matter of who randomly gets the games you can’t sabotage.

Without the sustained outlet of solid multiplayer, WarioWare DIY is just an amusing single-player toy. Of course, so was Mario Paint, and that one’s a classic.

Blue Toad Murder Files

April 11, 2010

PS3 / Reviews / by Justin Last Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Blue Toad Murder Files: The Mysteries of Little Riddle is a murder mystery that draws more from children’s television than the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. You’ll need logic and observation to solve the 12 puzzles provided in each episode, but the puzzles are simple enough that you won’t be left scratching your head. And in the off chance that a puzzle is beyond you the game won’t lock you out of further content – just choose to bypass the puzzle and you’re free to move on with the story.

Puzzle types are fairly standard. You’ll solve riddles, anagrams, math puzzles, and you’ll answer questions based on how well you paid attention to the story cinematics. The puzzles don’t change from play to play, but what really sets Blue Toad apart is that each mystery can be played by up to four people. Each puzzle is set against a timer, and the only penalty for missed attempts is a lesser medal awarded after the puzzle is solved (one miss means a max of silver, two misses means a max of bronze). In addition to puzzles not changing, the narrative doesn’t branch or randomly change either which means that the killer is always the same and that the replay value is absolutely zero.

Replayability aside, the first trip through The Mysteries of Little Riddle is very enjoyable. The characters are entertaining caricatures, the story is full of twists and turns, and the whole package satisfies my love for dialog and situations that are brimming with over-the-top British charm. The visuals feel cartoony, and that is not intended as an insult. The cartoon aesthetic allows the characters to have bigger than life personalities and personality quirks which help you to solve the murders. We can’t all be Sherlock Holmes so it’s nice to be thrown a bone. It’s nice to feel smart – even if the game did have to push me in the right direction to get there.

Blue Toad Murder Files is fun the first time, but each chapter can be played in about an hour, and with no reason to replay since the puzzles never change and the answers are flashed up on screen if you give up you’ll only be coming back to visit Little Riddle when picking an easy to pick up game for a group of four.

Plays Like: Professor Layton and the Curious Village, Clue

Pros: Great aesthetic, friendly to gamers of all ages

Cons: No replay value, very short

 

MLB ’10 The Show

April 7, 2010

PS3 / Reviews / by Shawn Vermette Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Last year, Sony took baseball games to new heights with MLB ’09 The Show. It was by far the best baseball game available on the market, and I eagerly awaited this year’s installment to see how they would improve on the tried and true formula that was so much fun last year. Unfortunately, MLB ’10 is something of a mixed bag. It does improve upon last year’s game, but only by a fraction.

The gameplay was already spot on, so it was nice to see that rather than try to tinker with something that already was working very well they tried to improve the aspects of the game that didn’t work as well. In order to hit or throw the ball, all you need to do is simply press the X button. The longer you hold it down, the harder you throw it. This old, yet simple mechanism is far more enjoyable than trying to hit or throw the ball by flailing the right thumbstick (I’m looking at you, MLB 2K10).

The franchise mode is one of the deepest I’ve ever seen in a sports game, and should satisfy almost any fan of sports simulations. You can control everything from the players on your 40-man roster to the regular season draft. You can control what kind of advertising your team has; how much you spend on scouting, training, and medicine; even what stalls and vendors you have in your stadium and how much they charge! There’s a rule 5 draft you can participate in, salary arbitration, waiver wires, anything you can associate with professional baseball is in the Franchise Mode (except for the steroids and work stoppages, they left those out). All of this is great and amazing to find in a baseball game, but none of it is new.

The next mode you should check out is the Road to the Show mode. This is where you create your own rookie player, customizing everything about him you could ever imagine, and then enter the draft. After being drafted by a team, you’ll get sent to AA with the goal of improving both your in-game stats, and your overall stats. Each game you’ll get points to upgrade your player based on how well you played. All of this is old hat for The Show series, the only real addition to this mode is the ability to play as a catcher and call the games for your team. Sony claims that you’ll get points based on how well you call the game, but from my time with it, I never noticed any penalty for calling a bad game, or a benefit for calling a good one. If you’ve been wanting to play as a catcher, then this is there for you, but I preferred not being held responsible for every pitch in the game.

As far as playing MLB ’10 online, it definitely plays better than MLB 2K10 does, largely due to the better controls. It does have a little bit of lag, but it is noticeably better than MLB ’09 was. MLB ’09 was unplayable online, while MLB ’10 is easily playable, you’ll just need to get used to a little bit of lag between pressing a button and the action happening on screen.

This year, they also added a Home Run Derby to the mix. In the Home Run Derby, you can select almost as many competitors as you want, then duke it out elimination style. The top half of the field will advance every round until a winner is crowned. It’s not a huge addition, but it’s the only mode that more than 2 people can play at the same time.

Graphically, MLB ’10 is the best looking baseball game available. The players are very detailed and the stadiums look exactly like the real ones, right down to the smallest detail. However, the commentary isn’t as good as it is for the 2K series. I like the voices better in The Show, but the variety of comments just isn’t there.

In the end, MLB ’10 The Show is the best baseball game out right now. It may not make a lot of changes or additions to last year’s model, but sometimes improving a proven concept is a better idea than making changes for the sake of change.  

Pros: Graphics are gorgeous and almost realistic; Controls are responsive and simple; Road to the Show is addictive; Franchise mode is best out there

Cons: Online play is still laggy

Plays Like: MLB ‘09

 

MLB 2K10

April 7, 2010

Reviews / Xbox 360 / by Shawn Vermette Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Last year’s baseball offering from 2K Sports was disappointing, to say the least. However, since then Take Two brought in some of the people who worked on the MVP series for EA and promised to revamp the next iteration of the 2K baseball series to make it more enjoyable. Unfortunately, their improvements don’t deal with the biggest problems from last year, making MLB 2K10 feel like just another licensed game cash-in.

To be fair, 2K Sports did fix many of the gameplay imbalances from last year. It is now easier to pitch and to hit than it was in years past, and games no longer devolve into either pitchers duels or home run derbies as regularly as they did last year. Unfortunately, there is no way to change the way you hit or pitch the ball- you are required to move the thumbsticks in specific ways and at specific speeds to pitch and hit this year. The lack of an option to use the easiest and simplest control method- hitting a button- is a huge oversight because it would make the game much more enjoyable. The thumbstick control has never been precise enough, and this year is no exception. Even upon completing a difficult maneuver with the thumbsticks perfectly fine, I often found it telling me I either did so too quickly or that I wasn’t precise enough. Perhaps the trouble with the controls isn’t imprecision, but too much precision. Either way, pitching is not very enjoyable when you are told pitch after pitch that you are doing it wrong. Eventually I simply threw fastballs, but even those I was told I did incorrectly fairly often.

The biggest addition to the 2K series is the My Player mode. This mode was present in NBA 2K10, and greatly enhanced the enjoyment of that game, and it does the same for MLB 2K10. While the franchise mode wasn’t much fun because of the controls, My Player mode added a new dimension to the game, making it a little more enjoyable to play the game. It adds a little RPG flavor to the otherwise frustrating game. Every time your created player does something good, he gets experience points in baserunning, fielding, or batting. It is then up to you how you allocate those points. You can turn your double-AA batter into the next Babe Ruth, or make him the next Rickie Henderson. You could even swing for the fences and try to become a combination of the two. Want to be the next Nolan Ryan or Greg Maddux? You can customize your pitcher’s improvement just as much as you can your batter. The only down side to the My Player mode is again the controls. The My Player mode could be an addictive addition to the game, but the controls drag it down like they do everything else in MLB 2K10.

The final mode in MLB 2K10 is the online mode. In this, you can play ranked or quick games against anyone else who likewise picked 2K10 instead of MLB ’10. This time the controls aren’t a hindrance because your opponent has the same problem you do with the controls. This mode is done in by lag, a large amount of it. The lag isn’t as bad on the 360 as it is on the PS3, but there’s still way too much. In order to reliably hit the ball when batting, you have to swing almost as soon as the pitcher throws the ball. This means you have no chance of deciding whether it will be a ball or strike and you simply have to swing at everything. When pitching, the lag affects the timing of your pitching as well, so you’ll never throw that perfect put-away pitch. You’ll be lucky to throw anything other than a fastball near the plate, even with the best pitchers.

Graphically, 2K10 looks fine. Surprisingly it looks much better than last year’s version. The players are fairly detailed, and the crowds are actually 3D models this year, rather than 2D sprites which greatly adds to the feeling of playing in an actual stadium.

One redeeming quality of the MLB 2K10 game is the wonderful commentators. Yes, I said they were wonderful. They have a large repertoire of comments to make, and all of them are placed correctly and timed well enough that the commentary almost felt like it was covering a real baseball game. Unfortunately the soundtrack is more of the same, annoying music that 2K has licensed for the last decade.

Unfortunately, on the 360, this series is your only option for baseball right now. This game does represent a fairly impressive improvement over last year; however, it still isn’t worth the full price tag.

Pros: The gameplay is much improved over last year; The balance is much better; My Player mode is fun

Cons: Soundtrack is annoying; Batting and pitching controls are imprecise and frustrating; Online play is laggy

Plays Like: MLB 2K9

 

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