Not That Kind of Croft

Anyone alive out there?

It’s been a crazy month in terms of personal lives and whatnot so allow me to quell your fears of this blog fading into the void of the interwebz.

So what’s been happening? What’s been going on?

Oh! E3!

Right, that little thing.

I must confess that I actually didn’t pay too much attention while everything was going on. With Twitter getting flooded with updates I went into a sort of media blackout with the entire event and am only just now starting to seek out information I’m interested in. That being said, holy shit guys – I’m excited for the new Tomb Raider:

Honestly, I’ve been excited for this reboot since the new Lara was revealed but this trailer just blew my mind. As Nicole Tanner wrote in her recent article entitled “Female Characters Get Real”, past iterations of Lara were portrayed as utterly fearless, hardened, snarky heroines. While that may be a break from the norm, it’s not real. This Lara is scared, unsure, and knows when she needs help. She cries out in pain when bandaging her wounds – the old Lara would never have done that. Yet, despite that, I dare you to watch that trailer and tell me what you see isn’t a strong character. I absolutely cannot wait to play this game. I think this new Lara is going to make a terrific example how women in games can be strong and beautiful and still be real. Somewhat ironic when you consider Ms. Croft’s history, huh?

May I also point out before I move on that I find it delightful that while buzz is being created about this new perception of women in games, Duke Nukem Forever has finally been released and is tanking? I know, cheap shot. Sue me. Actually, maybe I shouldn’t say that. Jim Redner might hear.

The only other bit of news from E3 that really got a reaction from me (other than making fire engine noises in regard to Nintendo’s new console) was the trailer for Silent Hill: Downpour:

I’m not thrilled. Yeah, sure, the trailer itself doesn’t really look too bad until you get to the end and you go, “wait, this is Silent Hill?”. There is nothing in this trailer that reminds me of the games I love from this series. Maybe it will surprise me, but after Homecoming and Shattered Memories I’m probably just going to wait and see what the reviews say before and if I pick it up. I truly, truly hope I’m wrong and the game ends up being amazing but I’m not holding my breath.

And anyway, I’ve got Tomb Raider to look forward to.

This Isn't New York

Last year, I proclaimed Rockstar’s action Western “Red Dead Redemption” to be the best game I’d played in 2010. Naturally, when Rockstar announced that their film noir style detective epic would be released this year I was eager to see how it would play out. On one hand, I wasn’t too enthused about the setting. Sure, I could see the appeal of a rich and dramatized Los Angeles set in the late 40s but how could 20 something hours of investigating crime scenes possibly hold my attention?

At PAX this year, Lynsey and I were treated to a 30-minute demo of the game, which certainly piqued my interest but still left the aforementioned question unanswered.

Having finished “LA Noire” last night I now know: yeah, I really can spend 20-something hours investigating crimes scenes and not get bored.

As detective Cole Phelps I began my career as a lowly street cop only to work my way up the food chain of the LAPD from traffic to homicide to vice and then finally arson. And yes, arson is the last division you’re assigned to thanks to some surprising plot twists. Then again, this is Rockstar isn’t it? Plot twists are what it’s all about.

As Phelps you spend your time driving from case to case – occasionally stopping to assist in 1 of 40 street crimes that randomly pop up – and trying to piece together what exactly happened and who you need to haul downtown to answer for the nefarious misdeeds. As you wander through a crime scene, your controller vibrates to let you know a clue is nearby. Well, sometimes it tells you nothing: Phelps often picks up items that turn out to be worthless but are still able to be fully examined. Let me tell you, I think the guy has a fetish for hairbrushes.

Following the crime scene investigates, you move on to the interrogation of suspects and this is where “L.A. Noire” really shines. Using an elaborate network of 32 cameras, the developers flawlessly recorded the actor’s faces as they spoke their lines. This may seem excessive to any outsider but when a large portion of your success in the game depends on your ability to read people’s expressions (are they not meeting your eyes? Is their mouth twitching? Are they blinking too much?) this is crucial and Rockstar pulled it off beautifully. Take a look at this video to get an idea of the effort that went into this technology and how marvelous it truly looks:

That being said though, the facial animations really are the star of the show here. Yes, the story is engaging but truthfully once you’ve played one Rockstar I feel as though you’ve played them all in some respect. I went into this game knowing that at some point I would be betrayed and that my character or someone I was close to wouldn’t make it to the end credits. I’m certainly not going to go into details on that here but let’s just say I wasn’t surprised by the game’s twists and ultimate conclusion.

I will say it again however, this predictability doesn’t make the story any less fun.

The other staples of the mechanics work wonderfully as well: the music, the background noises, shooting and cover systems, they all come together nicely with the exception of the repetition of the conversations NPCs would have around you. It wasn’t long before I found myself memorizing lines like “if olive oil comes from olives . . . where does baby oil come from?”.

This lack of variety did play a role in my disappoint with the overall level of interaction with the open world of this game. Yes, it looks beautiful but really, there just isn’t much to do in the streets of Los Angeles. I never felt the urge to explore like I did in “Red Dead Redemption” but I suppose it’s not really fair to compare the two and I will say that while Red Dead only had a handful of “random” encounters that were recycled in different areas of the world, all 40 of the street crimes in L.A. Noire are wholly unique.

That’s impressive.

Impressive. That’s really a good word all around for this game. It lived up perfectly to my expectations, neither falling below or above them. L.A. Noire is a fantastic game and is everything I’ve come to expect from Rockstar. In fact, I’m planning on starting another playthrough as soon as I finish this review. There has already been talk of a sequel and I can earnestly say I’d love to see more of this world, perhaps within a game where it’s a little easier to get yourself happily lost outside the main quest.

And She'll Scream, and She'll Shout, and She'll Pray

Video games, like other forms of media, often comment on the nature of society. In fact one could argue that that is the very nature of media: to comment on society, the good, the bad, the ugly, the confusing and the complicated.

Kotaku recently published an article concerning the nature of the relationship between Elizabeth, a woman from the highly anticipated (read OMFG IS IT HERE YET?!) Bioshock: Infinite and Songbird, her mechanical captor. When she first appeared in the teaser trailer Elizabeth was shown as nothing more than a beautiful face, trapped high in a tower, being held against her will by something lurking and monstrous. She seemed to be a very real princess trapped in a very real tower waiting on a man to come to her rescue.

Needless to say, I wasn’t terribly impressed with her.

Then the 10-minute demo footage was released. Here, I saw this woman in the midst of the fight, more than holding her own. She didn’t seem to need any help or protection which in addition to giving her more of a unique personality put my fears of escort missions aside.

What also caught my attention was the fact that Elizabeth spent a fair amount of time in the demo struggling to breathe as she raced through the chaotic streets of Columbia in a corset. I know it may seem strange that such a thing really stuck with me but I think it speaks volumes in the developer’s quest to make her a real person. Society demands that she forcefully constrict her body to accentuate her hips and bust while making her waist seem impossibly small all in the name of what’s considered beautiful and appealing – never mind that it also compresses her lungs, ribs, and organs. Elizabeth is a woman restricted by her environment and is now being revealed as a woman fleeing an abusive relationship.

In the article, Kevin Levine describes how Elizabeth pleads to the protagonist – you – not to let Songbird take her back, implying she’d rather die than fall back into his mechanical hands. Yet, when the synthetic beast catches up with her she tearfully apologizes for running away and asks it to take her back home.

She is strong and clearly capable but still frightened, made weak by her fear and inability to keep the hopelessness of her situation out of her mind. She resigns herself back into captivity to save your life, as abused women often do for the sake of their children.

I find it brave of Irrational Games to explore this type of relationship. I truly do.

Elizabeth seems damaged, trapped, strong, intelligent, and real.

I can’t wait to get to know her better and find out how her story ends.

The Zed Word

In-game screenshots from the upcoming zombie sandbox game "Dead Island" were released today.

You're welcome.

Here We Are Again. It's Always Such a Pleasure.

This review was really difficult to write.

Also, a little startling.

After all, it’s not every day that a seasoned gamer gets that feeling of pure, unadulterated satisfaction upon seeing digital credits roll. It’s even more rare when that sated feeling starts translating into thoughts of, "that’s the best game I’ve played in a long time" and “that’s . . . that’s one of the best games I’ve ever played in my life.”

Yeah. It happened.

Like so many others I fell in love with the 2007 original game and was crazy excited for the sequel. However, part of me worried about how the simple (I use that word very loosely) idea of the 4-hour experiment would translate into a full-fledged game. Would I get tired of the same routine after 8 or so hours? Would all the puzzles manage to be unique from one another? Would the addition of an actual plot deter from the mechanics at all?

In short, the answers are no, yes, and absolutely not.

Waking up in a dilapidated sleep chamber, you are quickly introduced to perhaps the strongest element of the game: the incredible and hilarious writing coupled with some seriously impressive voice work. While I was thrilled beyond belief with knowing that Ellen McLain would be returning as GLaDOS (who is quickly becoming my favorite video game villain) I was floored at how good Stephen Merchant was as Wheatley – your spherical and astoundingly funny companion. It’s hard to remember him opening his mouth (so to speak) and me not laughing.

J.K. Simmons also does an incredible job as Cave Johnson, the CEO of Aperture Science who hates you almost as much as GLaDOS does and seems to have a firm belief in everyone around him being a loser who will do anything for $60.

In addition to the awesome writing and voice talent, the game’s designers deserve immense praise. Not only are the puzzles brilliantly designed but the game does a great job of switching up your surroundings to avoid repetition. Just when I would start to get sick of an area, I would be thrown into an entirely new one. Yes, I definitely got frustrated more than once and I’m not too proud to admit that a few puzzles took me over half and hour to solve.

But oh man, when I did. GLORIOUS.

I can’t even begin to fathom how the developers came up with all the puzzle designs but I’m pretty sure we’d find the origin of the universe in their collective brains should we be given the chance to dig around in there.

The single player campaign of Portal 2 really is, from start to finish, genius. Absolute genius. The co-op mode however, introduces something new to the franchise. You and a buddy play as Atlas and P-Body, two robots built by GLaDOS specifically to run her diabolical courses. Lynsey and I have run through the first course and had a blast.

Well, up until I accidently killed her.

GLaDOS seemed okay with it though.

Really folks, I don’t have too much more to say. This is really a game that has few, if any, flaws. In fact, the only one I can think of off the top of my head is that the scripted events can take awhile sometime and upon additional play-throughs it may be a chore to sit through them all again. But why would you want to skip them anyway?

. . .

Yeah, that’s all I’ve got. Really. That’s the only thing I can think of that could potentially be wrong with this game. I’m sayin’ it, Ladies and Gentlemen: Portal 2 is perfect. Perfect. It’s the kind of game that only comes around once in a blue moon and absolutely should not be missed by anyone. Also, it's rated “E” so you’ve got no excuse.

Get out there and get yourself a copy of what is bound to become the gold standard of puzzle games.

That Was A Joke. Ha Ha.

If you're like me and anxiously awaiting the release of Portal 2 then you probably just about lost your mind when, hidden inside Valve's "Potato Sack" collection of indie games were hints pertaining to Portal 2, including the date 4/15/11 and the time 9:00 PST. Fans were eager to think that this suggested Portal 2 would be release at that time instead of the scheduled date of the 19th.

The fact that the game started to pre-load on Steam last night only added fuel to the fire.

Then, a mysterious countdown clock appeared.

We all waited with bated breath while the time ticked down to zero and then . . . nothing.

Well, no, not quite nothing.

It seems that GLaDOS did effectively hack into Steam but now she needs help re-booting so that Portal 2 can be released early. So how can you help? Buy buying and playing the 13 indie games from the Potato Sack. If enough people play these games, Portal 2 can in fact be released before Tuesday. The Aperture Science main page where the countdown was now displays a real-time meter showing the progress of this endeavor.

I'm not sure how I feel about this.

On one hand, I'm kind of pissed that Valve is all, "Hey! Give us money now so that you can give us more money sooner!" but on the other hand, it is pretty cool to see them support independent games. Plus, can we really be upset about not getting something ahead of schedule?

Valve Time schedule, that is. Remember, the game was already delayed by a month.

Of course, being a console gamer none of this really matters to me but this has been . . . interesting regardless.

I'm already dead... to you

Since I've made the switch over to PS3 from the 360, life has been very different. I wouldn't think of positives and negatives or bads and goods so much as just... different. I've finally added my PSN card to the side page of our blog and there you can see the games I've played and the trophies I've earned. But since I haven't really gone into much PlayStation stuff since the switch, I thought I'd talk a little about each game I've played thus far.

INFAMOUS: Really enjoyed the gameplay, and I thought the story was new and exciting. Honestly, have yet to finish the game so I can't say too much more on it.

DEAD RISING 2: Not much to say, honestly. I didn't play this game much because I found the beginning disappointing. I'm not going to give up on it, I just haven't gotten back to it yet. I dunno, maybe I take my zombie-killing more seriously.

FALLOUT: NEW VEGAS: I can't wait to finish this game. Truly, this game is certainly like a very large expansion pack but I bought it full price for my 360 before it died, then I went back and paid for it AGAIN for my PS3 -- I'm serious about this game.

UNCHARTED: This is another game I started and haven't finished (yes, I know, I know), but Drake is a truly refreshing character. And the gameplay is fun, but sometimes repetitive, to be honest. Don't worry, I'm going to finish this one when I can.

HEAVY RAIN: The first game I played (and immediately completed) on my PS3 -- one of my favorite games of all-time. I think this is the kind of game that shows what games are truly capable of being. It's easier to talk about what this game did right in so many ways and not so much on what could be improved.

DEAD SPACE 2: What hasn't been said about this game already by us? Cary and I have so much faith in the Dead Space franchise and this game was more than I could have expected. The gameplay was so much more rewarding, Isaac was a more worthy protagonist, and Ellen kicked some serious ass. For real.

MASS EFFECT 2: This is why I haven't finished so many other games, guys. THIS. I'm something like 15 hours into this game and I am not ready for it to end. I still have yet to pinpoint exactly what it is that has drawn me into this game -- the gameplay doesn't have much in the way of variety, to be honest, and the load screens still take a really long time, but my lady Shepard is a fucking badass. She head-butted a krogan. And she'll do it again.

Next up: Portal 2 (OMG DUH, GUYS) and L.A. Noire. The guys at Valve are bringin' it with this sequel, guys, and when Cary and I were sitting in that booth at PAX East with Chet Faliszek 5 feet away from us, we were stupid giddy. Valve fangirls to the end. Also: Rockstar's L.A. Noire looks utterly promising -- it looks to be going the way of Heavy Rain in terms of gameplay and story, and I'm really excited by that new direction in gaming.

As an aside, has anyone had issues connecting to the PlayStation Network at all? I wasn't having issues until the last month or so and its been intermittent connectivity. Forums haven't been the most helpful in isolating the issue.

One last aside: I had to actually call to cancel my Xbox Live Gold subscription and the experience was actually quite hilarious. When the representative asked me why I was canceling my service, I told him I didn't have my console anymore because it broke on me a third time. When he told me I could repair it OOW for $90, I didn't know and I told him I didn't know, to which he said, "Oh, so you just gave up on the situation?" And literally "tsk tsk"ed at me. Sorry, Xbox Live and Microsoft, this is an unacceptable method of saying goodbye to loyal customers who were forced elsewhere because of your faulty hardware and lack of clear technical support. Try harder next time.