The Devil Beats the Protoss

At least the rumor is that Diablo III will beat Starcraft 2 to the market. I, for one, have absolutely no problem with that whatsoever. I saw Starcraft 2 at PAX and it looked beautiful, but pretty much the same as Starcraft 1.

I suppose the same could basically be said for Diablo III vs Diablo II. So sue me. I want Diablo III far more than I want Starcraft 2.

Spore Backlash Backlash(?)

First there was Spore, then there was the Backlash. Now there seems to be a backlash to the backlash: here are some alternative and forgiving takes on the game. Hopefully the dissent will be fruitful… more updates as events warrant.

Brainy Gamer: “I haven’t finished Spore, if finishing it is even possible. But I have devoted many hours to it, and I consider what I’ve seen so far a stunning achievement. Astonishing, really.”

RPS: “I think reviewers are afraid of being the Black & White reviewers and are deliberately upping their criticism - which is one reason why even the positive reviews seem to be full of complaints.

Multiplayer Blog: “What I can tell is that this game feels so different to play than anything I’ve touched before. It relates to me as a player so distinctly that I recommend any gamer find a way to experience the sensation of playing through “Spore” for themselves. Try it. It’s a worthwhile experiment.”

One caveat: although I see a lot of negative comments from gamers, reviews actually appear to me to be too forgiving - lumping in some negative notes in review text but tacking on a rather high score (most reviews are in the 80-90%s on Gamerankings). Is this backlash just anecdotal?

Spore and Its Discontents

I’ve been playing quite a bit of Spore recently, and think the reviews have summed up the game reasonably well.  I thought I’d share some particular thoughts, however, on its negatives.

Spore is a maddening game - a brilliant conceit, charmingly developed, and executed so haphazardly that you begin to wonder if Will Wright’s genius took too many vacations during its development.  The huge potential  is belied by the fact that almost every segment of the game has serious flaws.  A problem for a game that’s not particularly complex in the first place.  I suspect that the reason so many reviews trend into the upper 80s and lower 90s is that the game is being graded on a curve, given credit for massive ambition rather than mediocre execution.

Read the rest of this entry »

Steam PSA

Thanks to commenter Rob for pointing this out - some very attractive Steam promotions going on right now, including the entire id catalog for $35, all the XComs for under $15, and both Oddworlds for the same price.

Uh Oh, Spore

Disappointing first reviews for Will Wright magnum opus Spore - in the 70’s from 2 German game magazines.  It did score a 91 from the UK PC Gamer - take this with a grain of salt, since it’s from a cover review when most reviews have been embargoed.  Hopefully these are anomalies…

OK, I Take It Back

It’s acceptable to mock Peter Molyneaux for this.  But you should still reserve judgment on the game itself until it gets released.

Oh, Is That All?

I’m only slightly less shocked to note that it only takes $100M, not $1B, to successfully compete with World of Warcraft.  That’s still the budget of a moderate Hollywood blockbuster.  I’ve mentioned before that the economics of an MMO seem pretty bizarre to me - there are a lot of them in a genre that can really only support a few real successes - but this seems to put them in the realm of the stratospheric. 

By the way, Warhammer seems like one of the few MMOs that I’d consider getting back into the genre for, although I almost certainly won’t - I don’t have that much free time.  Still, if you’re interested, it seems like it’s worth checking out… and I say that as someone with no real familiarity with the setting.

Retro PC Gaming

EA and Ubisoft are giving away free copies of Red Alert (1 and 2) and Far Cry (the original) as promos for preorders of RA3 and FC2.  Here’s a question for you: why the different attitudes towards older titles between PC gamers and consoles?  I doubt you’d see a console giving away older games for free - they’ve discovered that those games can easily be resold, often for fairly exorbitant prices, to gamers as part of the retro gaming craze.  Yet here we are.

The more I thought about it, the more it seemed odd.  I’ve often wanted to play older PC games again, and I’d love for someone to hand me a nice, shiny package that would let me do that without the need to worry about things like DOS compatibility, game speeds, and so on.  (Look at the recent remake of Quest For Glory II, which was an entirely freeware effort and involved a complete graphical overhaul.)  So why are PC game makers so loathe to provide this?

I can think of a few reasons - IP is probably harder to trace through the maze of PC games, whose developers fold, merge, and acquire other companies faster than, say, Nintendo.  Also, there’s no pre-ready install base of hardware to sell through to.  And more people probably have fonder memories of their old Genesis or NES than of their PCs.  But still.  It seems like a missed opportunity - or am I missing something?

Healthy Skepticism

Far Cry 2 has released its system requirements, and forgive me if I’m somewhat skeptical that a Core 2 Duo processor, 2 GB of RAM, and an nvidia 8600 GTS are really all that will be required to run the game at the quality that we’ve been seeing it.  I’ll start by pointing out that those requirements are relatively steep for most non-hardcore PC gamers to begin with, Game Life’s surprise notwithstanding, and end by pointing out just how much systems sputtered at even the recommended requirements for Crysis and Far Cry upon their release. 

I note this simply to point out how insular PC gaming culture is… I’ve been out of the loop for all of a year or two, and the investment required to allow me to play a new computer game at a reasonable level of quality is already fairly high.  How must new inductees into PC gaming feel?

Why Is Braid So Big?

There’s been quite a fuss over the release of Braid this Wednesday, and it’s interesting to think about why a small-scale game is creating so much buzz.  After all, but Braid is at its heart not particularly notable: there are a ton of short, inventive, puzzle-oriented games out there that haven’t gotten the press coverage that it has received.  Big-scale games have imaginative, impressive art too… and more complex play mechanics.  (I don’t mean to diminish the game’s accomplishments - I haven’t played it, and a lot of people who have seem to think it’s pretty good.)  So what’s the deal?

Let me suggest that it’s basically because of what Braid represents.  To the large development community that comprises much of the blogging landscape, and the many smaller media voices out there, Braid is essentially the realization of their indie dreams: a game that was essentially made by a handful of people in a couple of years and whose ascendance to XBLA release demonstrates conclusively that independent success just might be possible indeed.  In other words, it’s a Cinderella story: it creates a ray of hope for people who are often chained to a large, soulless publisher. 

Sure, Braid features a pretty interesting play mechanic - but playing with time isn’t something we haven’t really seen developed as a gameplay concept plenty of times before, and it’s not the first to be inventive.  It simply uses time in a slightly different way.  It’s what the game symbolizes to people that makes it so interesting to them.