Category Archives: Now Playing

Thief — 3Q2014 issue

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Pho­to cour­tesy of Polygon.com

It takes a thief

You know, once in a while, a game comes along that is just full of fun stuff and guilty

William Har­ri­son, GI con­tribut­ing editor

plea­sures that make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Ladies and gen­tle­men, this is that game. Thief is a game that when I first heard about the orig­i­nal — way back when it was only avail­able for PC — I thought it was one of those games I would have liked to play but didn’t think it would be fun. Man, was I ever wrong.

Thief places you in the role of mas­ter thief Gar­rett as he works his way through a city run by a greedy and blood­thirsty Baron and his guard known as the WATCH. Use the shad­ows to your advan­tage and tru­ly make what is theirs … yours.

Eidos/Montreal and Square ENIX put forth a great effort in mak­ing this game a real­i­ty and bring­ing it to home sys­tems. Thief is actu­al­ly the fourth incar­na­tion of the series, set dur­ing the time peri­od around the same time as the Black Plague, I think; they don’t real­ly tell you when it’s set or where it is rel­e­vant to any time peri­od. I only say dur­ing the time of the Black Plague because of the dis­ease that runs ram­pant called the gloom, which is a lot like it.

The stealth game­play is the main rea­son why I’m a huge fan of this game. I like the fact that it’s a major part of the game and there is an achieve­ment for mak­ing it through the game unseen. There is the rat­ing sys­tem where I seem to always strad­dle the line between ghost and oppor­tunist in my quest to see if I’m still as sneaky in stealth games as I claim to be.

As of press time, I haven’t fin­ished Thief but the sto­ry and the free roam­ing aspect are awe­some. At times, I wan­der from the sto­ry to explore, roam aim­less­ly and rob peo­ple blind just like in real life.

The city and the char­ac­ters are beau­ti­ful­ly designed and ren­dered but it seems to be miss­ing some­thing. The music — as far as atmos­phere goes — is OK but it seems that you can’t real­ly hear it. And, a lot of times the inter­ac­tions between char­ac­ters is almost a joke because you can some­times bare­ly hear what a NPC or your­self are say­ing. Appar­ent­ly, sub­ti­tles are a bit of a must to catch every­thing being said.

I’m not quite sure how the old Gar­rett match­es up to the new Gar­rett since I haven’t played the PC titles but hope­ful­ly it’s not too far off. I real­ly do enjoy this game, but it seems that it isn’t real­ly all that long, at least not when you get into the sto­ry-spe­cif­ic mis­sions. There is still a free roam ele­ment there but there are also points where you can’t go back and that seems like it’s pun­ish­ing the play­er and slap­ping you say­ing, “You want to explore?! NOW!? The fate of the world is at stake!!”

Thief is a real­ly good stealth, make-you-feel-guilty-in-a-good-way sort of game and should def­i­nite­ly be played by all. The fact that it’s the fourth game but also a reboot of the series is fine, but the fans of the old­er games may have a prob­lem with the dif­fer­ences. Sound issues aside, this is a hell of a steal.

Titanfall — 3Q2014 issue

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Photos courtesy of Shacknews.com

Pho­tos cour­tesy of Shacknews.com

Pho­tos cour­tesy of GameSpot.com

Keep calm and pre­pare for Titanfall

Hel­lo, pilots and wel­come to the Fron­tier. The long-antic­i­pat­ed Titan­fall is up for review

William Har­ri­son, GI con­tribut­ing editor

and let me tell you, I had a lot of fun with this one and so will you. It posts a few unique inno­va­tions as well as an online only style all of its own. And, of course, giant robots … every­thing is bet­ter with giant robots. The cam­paign mode is weird at first but it’s noth­ing that can’t be handled.

Titan­fall takes place in the dis­tant future and in anoth­er col­o­nized area of space. Two war­ring fac­tions, the IMC and the Fron­tier Mili­tia, are fight­ing for con­trol of their lit­tle pieces of space and the place they call home. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the IMC seem to be look­ing to con­trol the area under the flag of Ham­mond Indus­tries, a galac­tic wide­spread com­pa­ny that has its hands in … well, pret­ty much every­thing. Then in comes the Fron­tier Mili­tia, who believe the peo­ple are bet­ter off with­out the watch­ful eye of the IMC and Ham­mond Indus­tries telling you what to do.

Titan­fall is a very impres­sive and beau­ti­ful­ly ren­dered game. It’s cur­rent­ly out for the Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PC. I have it for Xbox One and it’s about the only first-per­son shoot­er that I cur­rent­ly play. The game­play is pret­ty much like Call of Duty, but that’s to be expect­ed when Infin­i­ty Ward closed its doors and reopened to a split in the com­pa­ny not called Respawn Enter­tain­ment and Sledgham­mer Games. Respawn Enter­tain­ment is pret­ty much made up of the devel­op­ers that made the COD series sto­ries and games what they were.

The addi­tion of the Titans (25- to 30-foot-tall robots) and the abil­i­ty to either pilot or have the AI con­trol it makes for a new num­ber of things that can be done. There is a cam­paign mode but it is mul­ti­play­er-based, mean­ing that the sto­ry is con­trolled by the out­come of the win­ning team in some mis­sions. It only allows for 6v6 (12v12, if you include hav­ing the AI-con­trolled Titans on the map as well) so that the games can remain as lag free as pos­si­ble. Don’t want to ride inside your own Titan, well hop out and switch your Titan to either guard or fol­low to help hold a posi­tion or for a lit­tle back­up. I must admit that I am rarely rid­ing inside my Titan when I play. They have a nice selec­tion of weapons for the pilots but only about six for the Titans them­selves, which is fine by me.

The mul­ti­play­er is done real­ly well, but right now there are only sev­en play modes, with the sev­enth as a mash-up vari­ety pack that con­sists of all play modes on all maps ran­dom­ly select­ing both. I believe the Xbox 360 ver­sion is miss­ing a mode or two.

Here is how I see it: Titan­fall is one of those games you hear about and think it would be awe­some if they can pull it off right. Respawn did their home­work and came up with a game that is fun and immer­sive. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it kind of hin­dered itself by being online only, and although the down­load need­ed to play it on Xbox 360 isn’t as mas­sive as the GTAV down­load (1.3 GB ver­sus 7.9 GB), it’s still a bit annoy­ing. How­ev­er, you don’t have to delete data to play. A match­mak­ing option that puts you with peo­ple in the same skill lev­el would be a nice idea, too. If you haven’t played it, then you should def­i­nite­ly “Pre­pare for Titanfall.”

DDR Max 2 — 2Q2014 issue

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Choos­ing a sev­enth dance card

There comes a time in every long-run­ning gam­ing fran­chise when said fran­chise has to grow up. That tran­si­tion may come in the form of a new coat of paint or through a purg­ing of char­ac­ters, a reboot, if you will. But every fran­chise goes through it, and Bemani and Dance Dance Rev­o­lu­tion, in par­tic­u­lar, are no strangers to this. By the point of Max 2, the sev­enth main mix in the series, DDR had to do some­thing at the risk of grow­ing stale. So, con­tin­u­ing the trends start­ed in Max it was.

Max 2 presents itself as an inter­est­ing beast, even if you’re inti­mate­ly famil­iar with the series. There’s a new mode to play, Oni — which intro­duces the con­cept of a “three strikes and you’re out pol­i­cy” with cours­es to play — and the over­all look and feel has been upgrad­ed from the days of yore. Max 2 rep­re­sent­ed the mid­dle of a new era for DDR, begun with the whole­sale do-over of Max. There’s not much new in the way of con­cepts for Max 2, and that’s all fine and well. Since Max’s changes were regard­ed as a fail­ure and an unnec­es­sary slash-and-burn of the fran­chise, Max 2 works toward undo­ing the mess made previously.

The game does well with updat­ed aes­thet­ics. The song wheel (intro­duced in 5th Mix), the foot rat­ing (dropped in Max), Groove Radar (intro­duced in Max in favor of the foot rat­ing) and Freeze arrows return. The re-intro­duc­tion of the foot rat­ing sys­tem is the best idea that could have come from clean­ing up Max’s mess. The Groove Radar and foot rat­ing sys­tem give you all of the per­ti­nent song dif­fi­cul­ty infor­ma­tion that you will ever need. The song wheel looks bet­ter than ever since it’s now in its third iter­a­tion and Freeze arrows don’t seem to be such an aber­ra­tion as they once were in Max.

The song list is inter­est­ing mix of updates to old favorites as well as new entries aimed at adding some­thing new to DDR. Not that Max did­n’t do that very well, but Max 2 is about a greater vari­ety of songs and it shows in the fact that there’s not a new Para­noia in sight — at least in the arcade ver­sion. The home ver­sion attempts to inject a new iter­a­tion of the famil­iar song, but it’s not near­ly as suc­cess­ful as it thinks it is. Yes, Para­noia Sur­vivor, one of the boss songs of the sequel Extreme, is present and avail­able for play in the Japan­ese con­sole ver­sion, but its inclu­sion as a pre­view song isn’t real­ly nec­es­sary. And it does­n’t make a whole lot of sense. Why destroy the myth of Sur­vivor — the first 10-foot­er Para­noia — by show­ing its hand ear­ly? My prob­lem with Max 2 is illus­trat­ed by this point: The game some­times feels like a re-tread of pre­vi­ous entries, and it should­n’t. I was under the impres­sion that the rea­son for the deba­cle cre­at­ed by blow­ing up DDR with Max was to avoid just the sort of prob­lems that you’re going to run into with Max 2. Though, in its favor, Max 2 has Maxx Unlim­it­ed, which is my favorite Maxx song out of the entire bunch.

I have to com­mend Kon­a­mi for at least try­ing to right the wrongs com­mit­ted with Max’s well- mean­ing phi­los­o­phy of start­ing over. It just feels a tri­fle like Max 2 is slack­ing into old habits. Max 2 may not feel like it’s cheat­ing on its diet start­ed by Max’s slim­down but by hav­ing a few extra songs, Max 2 isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly push­ing the plate back like it should and it shows.

Metroid Prime — 2Q2014 issue

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Pho­tos cour­tesy of GameSpot.com

The return of Samus after 8 years is welcome

As a long­time fan of the Metroid fran­chise, I sup­pose I could be for­giv­en for not mak­ing the imme­di­ate leap onto the Prime band­wag­on. After all, Super Metroid is my bea­con of hope still shin­ing for 2D games, a sym­bol of the pin­na­cle that the genre reached. I mean, I plan to name my first­born daugh­ter Samus. That’s how much I love Metroid. So, when Prime hit the shelves, I was duly skep­ti­cal. It had been eight long years with­out so much as of a whiff of Samus’ scent in the mar­ket of solo games and I was starv­ing. Enter Prime.

Prime isn’t so much a pure Metroid game as it is a com­bi­na­tion of Metroid and first-per­son shoot­ers of the day. What you need to know to under­stand Prime is that it’s set between Metroid and Metroid II: Return of Samus, and it’s the first real game in the series to start putting the pieces of the Metroid saga togeth­er. Samus roams around Tal­lon IV to uncov­er the past of the Chozo (her care­tak­ers after the death of her par­ents in a Space Pirate raid), and takes on the vil­lain­ous group, who are con­duct­ing bio­log­i­cal exper­i­ments on the plan­et. That’s the meat of the sto­ry essen­tial­ly, but it most­ly means that you’re going to do some explor­ing. This being Metroid and all.

The first-per­son con­trols could have been haz­ardous to the game’s health but they aren’t. They’re actu­al­ly sim­ple to use and sur­pris­ing­ly easy to get used to even if you’re inti­mate­ly famil­iar with Super Metroid’s set­up. My main con­cern was how does Samus’ action trans­late to the first-per­son mold? Can she still move around flu­id­ly? And, how is the action han­dled when she has to switch to Morph Ball mode? All of these ques­tions were imme­di­ate­ly answered with a sim­ple playthrough. Action is flu­id and move­ment is clean and paced well. There are no prob­lems with switch­ing modes, and I rather liked how that is han­dled. It’s almost as if some­one on the devel­op­ment team at Retro Stu­dios remem­bered what it was like to imag­ine you were Samus in the Varia Suit.

I appre­ci­at­ed the atmos­phere of Prime, con­sid­er­ing that if a game is to be called Metroid in any way, it must have the “Metroid atmos­phere.” I cer­tain­ly got that as I mean­dered through maze-like cav­erns with fore­bod­ing music play­ing gen­tly in the back­ground. What I appre­ci­at­ed about the sound­track most­ly was the use of old themes to tie the games togeth­er. You can tell you’re play­ing a Metroid game if you lis­ten hard enough, and I liked that the issue was­n’t thrown in my face con­stant­ly. I did­n’t need to be hit over the head repeat­ed­ly that this is a Metroid tale, and the music was polite about remind­ing me.

My only prob­lem with Prime is that while it feels like a Metroid game should, I was­n’t that immersed in the tale. Every Metroid game released up to this point, I played through and was engaged thor­ough­ly. Prime? I real­ly could­n’t get into the sto­ry that much, and I did­n’t real­ly care all that much about the Chozo. I real­ized that because of the way Metroid ends, Samus can’t real­ly go back to the Moth­er Brain issue. How­ev­er, Prime just struck me as boring.

Prime was the start of a good thing, obvi­ous­ly, since there are two sequels and a host of spin­off games. What I was most pleased with, how­ev­er, was the fact that Samus returned in top form. It was about time. Eight years was way too long to go with­out using some ver­sion of the “Metroid instinct.”