April 2011

New Game+: A sense of community

April 15, 2011

Features / New Game+ / by Andrew Passafiume /

The term “sense of community” is one commonly used by sociologists to focus on the experience of a community. And how does this relate to video games? Every time you play a game online, you are interacting with a community of some sort; the experience may be positive or negative, depending on both the game and the platform.

Depending on the game, the community involved could either be seen as a positive or negative thing. Games like Call of Duty: Black Ops are known for their great online, but not their great online community. “Why does this matter?,” you may be asking. People still play Black Ops consistently, regardless of other idiots they may be playing with. But what makes people stick around? Clans. If they never found a group of people similar to them, chances are a lot of people would not be playing the game as much as they are, thus reinvigorating the sense of community involved.

LittleBigPlanet 2 is an example of a game that has an amazing community. The original game stuck around as long as it did because of the creativity of both the developers and the everyday gamers involved. It created a strong sense that people are truly passionate about the game and the creativity it allows them to express. LittleBigPlanet 2 expanded upon it in the best ways possible, adding even more possibilities and creating an even larger community to continue to explore the potential the series has to offer.

LittleBigPlanet 2 isn’t known solely for having great multiplayer, but instead for having a great community of gamers who love to create and share their ideas as well as experience the ideas of others. With any community, you will get a few bad eggs, but they fail to ruin the experience of playing this game with a group of friends or even with random strangers. Exploring the levels, seeing the creativity at work, it’s an experience like no other.

The community involved in that game is what strings it all together. Like your clan in Black Ops, the LBP community as a whole is like one giant gaming family. There are people who help each other create objects and levels as they continue to improve upon their last work. If a level needs improvements or features some major flaws? The creator isn’t flamed, but criticized constructively by their peers.

Comparing Call of Duty: Black Ops and LittleBigPlanet 2 may seem silly, but it goes to show there are two different worlds of gamers out there. And it has nothing to do with the genre, as I’ve seen many shooters that offer the same great community as a game like LBP2; Tribes 2 comes to mind immediately, as does a game like Team Fortress 2. You can find it in a lot of games, but it seems to be less common than it used to be.

Why do people keep coming back to MMOs? Why is the original Everquest still being played despite the fact that there are many other more polished and less-dated MMOs on the market? I think you know where I’m going with this. Black Ops may win in popularity, but people won’t be talking about it for nearly as long as they will about LittleBigPlanet 2.

inFamous 2, a game that we never thought would have any kind of potential for community building, offers players the ability to create their own missions and share them online. If you play the game while connected to PSN, you’ll be able to see missions created by other people all over the city. It’s hard to say how well it will work, but you can see just how developer Sucker Punch is taking the brilliant idea established by Media Molecule and expanding upon it to work with their game. It’s something that can carry it a long way.

It’s not about the multiplayer, and it’s not about the amount of modes and levels you have available. It’s about creating a game that allows players to attach to it in some way or another. It’s about filtering out the idiots who go out of their way to annoy and flame from the people who just want to have fun. LittleBigPlanet shows us this, and it allows us to go back to why we play games online in the first place: a proper sense of community.

Pilotwings Resort

April 15, 2011

3DS / Reviews / by Graham Russell /

Pilotwings Resort is, in many ways, a nostalgia trip. The series saw installments on SNES and N64, but hasn’t been seen in fifteen years. That said, this isn’t Kid Icarus. We think people can generally understand the appeal of a game that lets you strap on a rocket belt and fly around places.

Oh, and glide around on a glider, and fly a plane. Those are the three things you do.

For the uninitiated (and with the 15-year hiatus, we’re sure that’s many of you), the game issues various challenges that you take on in these aircraft, and it grades you on your ability to hit targets, follow paths and land gracefully. Attaining certain levels get you one, two or three stars, and you need at least one star in things to move on to the next set of missions. In this version, you fly around Wuhu Island of Wii Sports fame. That’s really rather arbitrary, but it explains why things seem familiar. (Oh, and all the reused assets.)

While it starts off reminiscent of the original games, it soon develops a feel more similar to Monster Games’ other titles, Excite Truck and Excitebots. Everything is structured similarly, from the menus to the challenge design. While those titles were solid, they didn’t exactly burn up the sales charts, so it’s a bit surprising that they didn’t try to rock the boat.

There are a few additions in Resort that are a bit gimmicky. During your flights you can take 3D photos of the island, and sometimes you’re required to. We understand the fun of taking 3D photos of things around you. We’re not so enamored with the ability to take shots of the eight or so things on this island we see the whole time we play the game. You can save them! You can share with friends! We are trying really hard over here to care about that.

Somewhat surprisingly for a first-party title, Pilotwings has a higher tendency than most games to kick you out of focus. The world’s nice and lush, but this problem (that is sure to be the recurring nightmare of the system) takes you away from it a bit. Otherwise, visually, we can’t complain, though with all these assets being used before for Wii Sports Resort, we’re just not enamored with them.

But we like Pilotwings. The controls work well, the Rocket Belt is still a freakin’ Rocket Belt and the challenges are varied if small in number. That last part is really the problem here. There are only a handful of missions for each craft, and they’re not long. If you’re the type to keep trying to get a perfect score, you’ll find it to be worth your time, but if you’re less persistent about those things, the missions will be over in a few hours. There’s a Free Flight mode, and that sounds relaxing. Right? Relaxing? Well it is in theory, but for some reason there’s a time limit on it, so you can’t just kick back and glide around for as long as you want. We didn’t notice anything in Free Flight mode like a score or a challenge, so it just seems silly to have a limit there.

At launch, Pilotwings is the most traditional first-party option, and it’s not a bad time. It’s just over fast enough that you may start reconsidering the costs of the game and system you just purchased.

And yeah, that photo thing. We’re still not sure what that was supposed to be.

Pros: Smooth flight, return of a classic

Cons: A little short and devoid of extra features

The 3rd Birthday

April 14, 2011

PSP / Reviews / by Justin Last /

The 3rd Birthday is rife with things that don’t make any sense. The story is all over the place, the RPG elements are nearly non-existent, the genre (third person shooter) typically does poorly on the PSP so it has been dumbed down to the point of removing any trace of challenge and, when taken altogether, the entire package does not feel like a part of the generally high-quality Square Enix library.

The 3rd Birthday is not a Parasite Eve game in either name or mechanics. Horror is traded for quick easy fights, and Aya, since she was sent back in time and is able to trade whose mind she inhabits at will, is nearly invincible. If you’re running low on health just jump to another ally a la Mindjack. While the concept is just as interesting here as it was there it realistically only serves to lower the difficulty and make moving through the battlefield ridiculously simple.

Shooters tend to do poorly on the PSP for a very simple reason. The device is not designed for a player to control the camera, the character, and the character’s gun simultaneously. The absence of a second analog input makes everything harder than in should be because when you move camera control to the shoulder buttons you’ve lost the natural location for a trigger, and when you move camera control to the directional pad you insist that the player perform to vital functions with his left thumb. Games like Killzone: Resistance manage to avoid these problems by moving to an isometric perspective which delivers a great and unique gameplay experience. The 3rd Birthday, on the other hand, just has its difficulty ratcheted down to make up for the PSP’s lack of inputs.

This, obviously, takes away from the atmosphere. You move through the bland environments in this fashion for 10 hours. Move forward, lock on to an enemy, unload a clip into it, take cover. Remove lock-on and you have a good formula. Gears of War has been using it successfully for years, but it has some other things going for it. Weapons feel different and are useful in different situations, and moving from cover to cover is vital to keeping your guy alive. The 3rd Birthday‘s difficulty level negates cover, and whatever weapon you have equipped will do the job since you can lock on and be guaranteed that your shots are connecting with their intended target.

Parasite Eve is a series that deserves to be revisited lovingly, and I hope that someday it gets the revival it deserves.

Pros: Battles start and end quickly

Cons: Combat is astoundingly easy, RPG elements are overly light and not taken advantage of, the game’s difficulty is low to compensate for the PSP’s control setup

Tomb Raider Trilogy

April 14, 2011

PS3 / Reviews / by Paul Bishop /

Just in time for the reboot of Tomb Raider later this year, Crystal Dynamics has re-issued its recent back catalog of titles in high definition. With this PS3 exclusive, players have access to the last three games produced: Legend (2006), Anniversary (2007) and Underworld (2008). Including a story thread that links all three titles, these games are natural to appear on one disc and provide some minor extras to make this a value at $39.99.

Lara Croft travels the world hunting artifacts, but none are as personal as the sword Excalibur that is somehow linked with her Mother’s disappearance years ago. Told across all three titles, Lara battles enemies old and new to finally close this chapter in her life. Never before has the Tomb Raider series looked so good. All three games look beautiful with Underworld still looking just as good as any current title.

Included with the games, players will have access to development diaries for all three titles, as well as trailers for the downloadable Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light. In addition to the videos, the disc includes PlayStation Home avatar clothing, trophy support and a PS3 theme to tempt fanboys even more. While these are nice to have, they don’t add significantly to the overall value of the title and will only appeal to die-hards.

The platforming and puzzle solving of Tomb Raider set the bar in the late ’90s, and if you haven’t had a chance to play these titles, then you should consider picking it up for your collection to see the final chapters.

Pros: Great game value for one disc, beautiful updating of graphics

Cons: Extras don’t add much value

The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky

April 13, 2011

PSP / Reviews / by Gerry Pagan /

Despite having immense popularity in Japan, the Legend of Heroes series has never enjoyed the same success stateside, in no small part to the lukewarm reception to the PSP Legend of Heroes releases in the US by Namco Bandai. While The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky was released in Japan in 2004, the massive effort that localizing it would require due to the enormous script resulted in no publisher looking to bring the game stateside for years. Taking up that mantle, XSEED struck a deal with Falcom to localize Ys Seven, Ys: Oath in Felghana, Ys I & II Chronicles and the entirety of the Trails in the Sky trilogy. This is great news for RPG fans, as Trails in the Sky is an excellent showing of things to come.

Trails in the Sky takes place in the Kingdom of Liberl, a world where orbments, magically-powered devices power all aspects of daily life: from the common streetlights to airships to more complicated combat orbments that allow people to use magic-like arts. Estelle Bright, the game’s main protagonist, and his adopted brother Joshua Bright are accepted as into the Bracer’s Guild, which is a local mercenary-type group that does jobs on request for all the local citizens, with branches all over Liberl. On their journey to become full-fledged bracers, they become involved in events that affect the history of the entire kingdom.

The gameplay starts off as nothing spectacular. Combat is turn-based and takes place on a movement grid, where you can move about to deliver attacks to any opponents you come by. While early battles don’t deviate much from simply using the attack command, each character slowly opens up their combat orbments as the game progresses, giving each new slots for new abilities and spells. These are completely customizable though, as characters can be tailored to fit your individual play style. You do this with a combination of stat-boosting, support, healing, status effect among other “quartz” that can radically change what a character excels at, outside of his default parameters and unique skills. By the end of the game, it encourages you to experiment with different abilities and arts on party members and plan out fights for the long-run with tactical decisions. In addition, the game has a “retry offset” feature that makes enemy encounters easier every time you choose to retry after a game over. This can be turned off for the hardcore players, but it’s a nice feature to have nonetheless.

Trails in the Sky’s strongest point, though, lies in its narrative. The whole cast is unique and likable, and while not entirely avoiding the RPG stereotypes, it plays them out well and expands on every character instead of making them out to look completely generic. Every NPC has something to say at all times, with text changing after every minor plot point in the game. Even the minor side quests have unique dialogue between characters and are very well-written. Trails in the Sky is extremely text-heavy, almost to the point of being absurd. As a result, it’s understandable that the only voice acting is done in one-liners and grunts during combat, as fully voicing a game with more than 50,000 strings of text is something I wouldn’t expect of any developer. It’s safe to say that you’ll spend more time watching characters say things than actually fighting, so the more action-y type of player might be put off by that.

Another impressive feat accomplished in Trails in the Sky is the sheer amount of optional content. Even during the game’s prologue, you have 15-20 total side quests available during entirety of the chapter, though a lot of the game’s side quests are time-limited. The quests are highly varied as well, with quests ranging from escorting people to locations to using a cat dictionary to catch a smoking culprit. It’s highly unlikely for one to experience everything Trails in the Sky has in one playthrough without the use of a guide. While nothing stops you from going barebones and only playing through the game’s main missions, completing side quests is the only way to get some of the best quartz and accessories in the game, making it harder to not do side quests before progressing in the game’s plot.

This being only the first chapter in a trilogy, Trails in the Sky is nonetheless well-worth the asking price. You’ve got a minimum of 40 hours worth of content, and even more if you’re the compulsive completionist type that just loves to explore every nook and cranny, talk to every single NPC and do every mission available to them. It’s an excellent starting point for newcomers to the Legend of Heroes series, as well as the beginning of events seen in the to-be-released second chapter.

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