April 2011

Back to the Future: Citizen Brown

April 6, 2011

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

“Okay, Doc, let’s see what kind of nightmare alternate timeline I’ve landed in this time.”

That, one of the opening lines of Back to the Future: The Game‘s third episode, basically sums up the plot arc of this installment. 

Note: we’ll try not to spoil the plot of the third installment, but don’t read further unless you’ve played the first two. Rest assured, it’s not a good jumping-in point and there’s no reason to play it before the initial episodes.

Marty has crash-landed in this alternate 1986, into a world where Edna Strickland changed Doc’s life from that of an eccentric scientist to one full of, in true Strickland tradition, discipline. He’s the man behind the curtain, and you spend most of the installment trying to gain an audience with him in this locked-down police state.

If you’re looking for technical observations like visuals, controls or structure, this is the wrong place. It’s clearly just another chapter of the game, so we won’t cover all that again. 

In Citizen Brown, the writing team seems to be transitioning from the earlier episodes’ awkward placement of movie quotes and new character dialogue to a more cohesive flow of lines that are variations on themes from the films. The alternate timeline has wiped out Marty and Doc’s film adventures, so there are a lot of items reminiscent of the world found at the beginning of the first film. That’s interesting, as while we still find the first episode’s immersion to be more fun, it could only reference the altered world with successful McFlys and such.

In reviews of previous episodes, we had talked about the awkward inclusion of original characters, particularly Edna. While this one makes the others no less awkward, you can see where they were going with the inclusion, and that’s helpful.

While the story finds a rhythm, the game does too, but in a not-so-great way. Each little problem to solve seems like something we’ve done before, whether it’s the “move left or right” action scenes or the “here’s the time when we give you a list of three things to do and let you wander around until you stumble upon a new conversation” structure before the big plot point. The game throws in more dialogue options that do absolutely nothing, but what we really like are the ones that seem like they could help if part of a big chain. That’s what the genre’s for! We’d at least get more movie references stuck in here and there, and it’s a big reason people are playing this. It’s a good thing the story’s compensating for the tedium of progressing through it, but we hope there’s a bit more variation in the last two parts.

Ultimately, people who think Back to the Future Part 2 is the best film in the series will enjoy the story’s turn in Citizen Brown. We say stick it out and keep going. At least for now. 

Pros: Story becoming more cohesive, still the same game

Cons: Gameplay becoming more stagnant, still the same game

 

Preview: SOCOM 4

April 6, 2011

News / by Paul Bishop Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Editor’s note: writer Paul Bishop took a look at the beta for Zipper Interactive’s SOCOM 4, out April 19th. Here are his impressions.

While the name SOCOM stands for something for a lot of die-hard fans, SOCOM 4 takes the core gameplay and updates it with some Call of Duty mechanics, and throws in a good measure of MAG multiplayer awesomeness. Almost a reimagining of the series, this title hopes to lure in the fanboys and the newbies with a revamped scheme. 16-on-16 battles make for great action, as the PS3 shows its true colors maintaining these complex confrontations without missing a beat. The game is beautifully rendered, and character models are some of the most detailed available for a multiplayer title. Unfortunately, the two beta maps only show a washed-out color scheme. The Port Authority map has a reason to be drab and gray due to the shipyard location, but the Assault and Battery semi-jungle map could be more lush. READ MORE

Body and Brain Connection

April 6, 2011

Reviews / Xbox 360 / by Graham Russell Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Many of the Kinect’s successes have come from games mimicking hit games for the Wii. Kinect Sports was clearly inspired by Wii Sports. Dance Central certainly marketed to the Just Dance crowd. Your Shape went after the market championed by Wii Fit. Body and Brain Connection goes in a slightly different direction: trying to follow in the footsteps of a DS title, Brain Age.  

It’s not subtle, either. Namco Bandai even used Dr. Kawashima, Brain Age‘s mascot and generally-creepy laughing floating face, as its centerpiece. (Sure, now he looks like a rather-normal-seeming Xbox Avatar, but it’s still him.) The game tracks your “age” on the same scale, features daily tests and challenges your reasoning skills with little challenges.

What sets Body and Brain Connection apart is clearly its control scheme. It’s a Kinect title, after all, so you’ll be moving your body into various positions to indicate answers, kick right choices into goals and such. It’s a fun way to pick these choices, but we can’t help but feel that it doesn’t lead to a result that really says anything. It’s training something, to be sure, but sometimes we’re judged on when the system realizes we’ve gotten our arms into position.

There are twenty exercises in five categories, and each is supposed to test your mental quickness. They seem like things you do with Brain Age, just with enough difference to not get sued and enough Kinect gimmicks to make it seem like it’s taking advantage of the platform. You can also look at these as body-controlled minigames with a veneer of something brain-related, as that’s sometimes what it is too. After all, are you dumber if your arm moves an inch or two in a direction while you’re swinging your other arm around? 

Ultimately, it’s the execution that makes the game falter. The game’s grading system seems a bit harsh, and unlike Brain Age, it just doesn’t feel like you’re getting any better at them as time goes on. There’s a multiplayer mode, but what activities happen to come up usually determine the winner before you even do them.

If you love Brain Age and want something just a bit different, Body and Brain Connection may fit the bill. But it’s not something you’ll want to play for very long, and the nature of the Kinect means you’re not precisely training much of anything. 

Pros: Basically like Brain Age, lower-than-average price

Cons: Arbitrarily on Kinect, harsh progression

 

MLB 11: The Show

April 5, 2011

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

This year, Sony mixed things up by making more changes to the MLB The Show series than they’d done before. An entirely new control scheme, a new game mode, 3D enabled graphics, and a revamped Road to the Show all pull together for what is arguably the best and most realistic baseball simulator to date. 

This year, Sony decided to try its luck with thumbstick based batting and throwing, and they did a far better job with it than the MLB 2K series ever has. Rather than vary the movement required based on the pitch, they simply made speed and accuracy vary based on speed and straightness of your stick movement. It also factors in the rating of the player when determining how accurate and fast the pitch is. As for batting, simply pull back on the thumbstick to rear back and release it to swing. Pushing it forward gives the swing more power, though, and the angle at which you push it will help determine any pull the ball has. For those who don’t prefer the new control scheme, Sony has thankfully included both of their older button-based options.

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 and 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 and waiver wires. Anything you can associate with professional baseball is in the franchise mode (except for the steroids and work stoppages). All of this is great and amazing to find in a baseball game, but none of it is new.

The Road to the Show mode is back, this time with more customization than ever, along with a new training point system. 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. After each at-bat, you’ll be given points based on how “good” your performance was. For a pitcher, you’ll want to either strike out the batter or get them out with as few pitches as possible for the best scores, while as a batter you want to make the pitcher throw as many pitches as possible, and preferably get on base. Additionally, your stats have changed to allow 60 days of not being worked on before they start declining instead of just 30.

As far as online gaming is concerned, it is largely the same as it was last year. Connectivity and lag will always be a problem for games like this that require such precise timing. A new competitive online mode called Challenge of the Week has been added though, which is quite enjoyable. In this mode, a challenge is posed each week, and players compete in the same challenge for top scores. Real prizes are up for grabs each week and everyone gets one free chance to compete, with extra chances available for 25 cents.

The Home Run Derby is back again, this time with move support. This is a nice added feature for players who’ve been looking forward to showing how good, or bad, they are at actually swinging a bat at major league pitching.

Graphically, MLB 11 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. This year Sony went an extra step and added 3D support as well, for those of who you own a 3D TV. They also added a third commentator, Eric Karros. Unfortunately, his lines are very sparse, with nearly all the commentary recycled from last year.

While it may not seem like it on the surface, MLB 11: The Show has a number of significant changes and additions that make it worth a purchase for any fan of baseball games.

Pros: Road to the Show is better than ever, franchise mode is very deep and detailed, 

Cons: Online play is still laggy, commentary is largely recycled

 

Moon Diver

April 5, 2011

PS3 / Reviews / by Graham Russell Make a comment! / Tweet it!

We first really noticed Moon Diver at E3 2010, as a trailer running in Square Enix’s booth. Back then, it was known as Necromachina. Before that, it was Moon Diver. No, we don’t know why, but neither name really makes sense anyway, so it doesn’t matter. Anyway, the game looked like a fast-action side-scroller with physics and craziness, like a cross between Strider and Super Smash Bros. Brawl‘s Subspace Emissary mode. (That Strider thing makes sense, as it’s made by some of the same people.) We’re suckers for four-player co-op, and the customizable elements kept it firmly on our radar. 

Now that we have it, it’s everything we thought it would be. Not everything works out as well as we imagined, though.

You play as one of four characters, each with strengths and weaknesses. The three base stats are all fairly close between the four, but leveling up gives you a point to increase one stat, and each character has certain attributes that go up more with each point. For example, there’s a guy who is incredibly adept at power, and his will go up twice as much per point as the rest. The problem is that you sometimes do need a bit more health or something, and that balance-vs.-specialization tension can be interesting.

In the game, you jump around, attack things, hang onto walls, climb across ceilings, and generally do everything. At first, the freedom is fun, as there are so many ways to take on enemies. You can hang off platforms and shoot special attacks, you can jump around everywhere and slash, or you can remain on the ground and hit an attack button until you fall asleep. At some point, it starts being less liberating and more frustrating, since the lack of restraints makes for not-as-interesting level design, but it’s still fun.

Moon Diver focuses on speed, though, so you’ll power through things quickly. Whether it’s constantly-spawning bombs at your position that hit you if you don’t keep moving, enemies that blow up and explode in lines across the screen Bomberman-style or just hordes of bad guys that spawn right as you hit the last platform that you can just speed past, this isn’t a game in which you’ll ponder situations.

Along the way, you can pick up special attacks to equip to your character. These are called “MoonSault Combinations,” but that sounds ridiculous, so we’re not saying that again. Each character starts with one, and you can assign four to each direction on the D-pad. These can be big screen-clearing items, shields, buffs or just slightly-enhanced basic attacks that use small chunks of your meter. We wish these were tailored for each character to give them some, well, character, but everyone can access the same moves if they collect them on a stage. It’s still probably best to go with your strengths, though.

Moon Diver plays up to four players both locally and online, which is wonderful. Playing alone feels more like an old-school action game if you want that, though the levels are clearly designed for team play and will thus be less tightly-woven in single-player. There are leaderboards to try to climb after the game’s done, though we see this more as an evening-with-friends game than something to train at. 

There are many downsides to the trend toward $15 downloadable titles, but the upside is that we’re seeing a lot more attempts from larger companies. Moon Diver would get a wholehearted endorsement at $10 (and we could see a sale in the future), but even as it stands it is a worthy purchase, simply because the team knew what a game needs to have some staying power. If a sequel comes (and we hope for one), we’d like to see a bit more variety in the characters’ fighting styles, and some changes of pace in the level design.  

Pros: Fast-paced play, co-op, interesting character progression

Cons: A bit too frantic, Story so bad we didn’t mention it until now

 

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