Charles Randall

Darksiders is a fairly by-the-numbers 3rd person action game in the style of God of War / Devil May Cry. However, as I play it, I’m seeing some nice subtle design tweaks that make it stand out against the games from which it obviously drew inspiration.

Particularly, the way the instant kills work. To pull off an instant kill, you simply need to press B when in range of a stunned or vulnerable enemy. Somewhat like God of War or Assassin’s Creed 2, but unlike God of War, there’s no quick time events involved. Where it differentiates itself is that you can interrupt a combo in progress to start an instant kill, and you can chain instant kills together as part of the combo system. This leads to some great moments, like when you get mobbed by winged enemies who are easily killed. You can actually jump once, and just keep aiming and hitting B to kill one after the other without ever touching the ground.

So, Left 4 Dead is pretty cool. It is, for sure, the best zombie survivor game I’ve ever played. And I certainly enjoy it in co-op. But I can’t help but feel a little let down, because honestly, there are so many little things they’ve done which either ruin the experience, or at the least, pull you out of the game.

First though, things I like. The pacing of the game is, for the most part, fantastic. It doesn’t suffer turtlers, and it doesn’t mind killing people who rush headlong in to the fray. Except… death doesn’t really mean death really in L4D. Which is a good thing. The system is ridiculously forgiving and allows for many frantic situations where you are trying to save someone when everything is going to shit around you. I don’t know how many times we’ve only just made it in to the next safe house. (It’s worth noting that so far I’ve only played on Advanced mode, based on input from friends. And frankly, on advanced sometimes it feels a little too easy.)

On one hand, you are a great game. Amazing game mechanics, puzzles, and a mature and meaningful story and presentation that is as unique as the mechanics themselves. Art, music, sound, writing, all are top notch. A notch above, I might add, any game I’ve played made by any kind of business driven development house.

Sure, I could talk about how your difficulty curve is imperfect. How I spent much time frustrated at a few puzzles for knowing what I needed to do, but not how to do it. How I was forced, at one point, to hit up youtube for a solution (which, in the end, told me that I was doing exactly the right thing, just off by a tiny amount). Of spending nearly an hour on one puzzle completely frustrated because I hadn’t yet discovered a mechanic that could’ve been introduced to me transparently through gameplay.

So, I’ve been playing Mass Effect lately. Or more to the point, I’ve been hating Mass Effect lately. Don’t get me wrong, I want to like it. The dialogue is fantastic, and gives a level of maturity to Bioware games that’s been solely lacking.

Now, if only they could manage to make a good game. The more I play Mass Effect, the more angry I get at it. Why play if you are angry, you ask? Because hidden in there, beyond the horrible interface, poorly implemented action, and generic filler quests, is a good game. I think.

(Note, the following are my own personal opinions, and not those of Ubisoft)

So, I’d always figured Assassin’s Creed would end up being a love it or hate it kind of game. So I was surprised when no one actually hated it. In fact, the reception has been predominantly positive. But, there are a few low reviews. I’ve read a bunch of them, and ultimately, a lot of the negative points have to do with the game not being what the reviewers wanted it to be, or thought it would be. Now, I suppose, in some fashion, that’s a valid critique. But if you expect fruit, and you get an apple when you expected an orange, does that make the apple bad? I’m no good at analogies.

Before I get in to this post, let me say that despite my skepticism about the Wii, I did hope that when I finally got to play, controller(s) in hand(s), it would feel perfectly natural, and everything Nintendo claimed it would be.

Well, after spending about a half hour with Monkey Ball, I must say I am somewhat crestfallen. Played the single player standard game for a bit, and it felt okay. Not spectacular, but I could (mostly) control it. Then I played some minigames. I’m hoping that the minigames are just bad games, with poor use of the controller. With almost no exception, the minigames were hard to control, and there seemed to be no direct relation between the motions you were doing and what was happening on screen.

I’ve been playing Gears of War sporadically over the past week. Ultimately, I was left ambivalent about the game. Looks good, sounds good, great voice acting. But the main gameplay mechanic is ’learn through failure’, the difficulty levels need an extra step, and there’s a whole hell of a lot of instant death, despite the forgiving health mechanic. So I was playing it, but not really enjoying it that much.

Neverwinter Nights 2 is the prime example of what happens when you give a bunch of green developers a big game to do, with not enough people and/or time. Say what you will about the first game, at least it had a level of polish to it. NWN2 is an object lesson in poor design.

I want to like it. I really do. Maybe after an upgrade. And about twelve patches.