The Tide Comes In

As I slowly progress through my solo run of Dead Island: Riptide, a number of worthy topics pop into my head. This game is nearly identical, yet subtly different from its predecessor.

This is an extremely dangerous building. Don't go in alone!

The engine appears identical. Controls are still a bit stuttery. The audio is still pretty good. It looks to me like the animations haven’t changed at all, but otherwise the graphics seem improved. I chalk it up to improved textures. Foliage, in particular, looks fantastic. The overdone bloom effect from the original DI has been drastically scaled back, so it no longer feels like you’re staring into a light bulb while playing the game.

Gameplay-wise, character advancement and weapon customization have not changed one iota. I’ve noticed one thing over the past few hours in the game, though: zombies seem to have a much longer reach than they used to, or perhaps my kicks are shorter than they used to be. I keep finding myself taking tons of damage from weak swipes that I honestly don’t think should have hit me. Perhaps the field of view (FOV) changed on me but the zombies on my screen are, apparently, closer than they appear. And another thing: those weak swipes are capping me for upwards of 30% health. I can’t absorb more than three hits without hitting the dirt. That’s not cool when you’re playing solo.

Speaking of difficulty, enemies and items appear to respawn really fast. It seems every time I turn around, I can harvest the same huts for loot and materials over and over again. At the same time, enemies have respawned (unless you’re in a safe area). I can’t walk 100 feet down the beach and back without fighting the same overwhelmingly large (I’m playing solo) groups of zombies at least twice.

Which brings me to another point. There are a ton of zombies in this game. They apparently move in herds now, coming in tightly-knit family groups of three or so. Each family group is located ridiculously close to another family group. Woe be to the solo player who accidentally aggresses multiple groups simultaneously.

Not that I don’t enjoy the difficulty. I like hard games, but I still feel like Riptide, just like its predecessor, is a game best played with a few friends. Solo, it’s way harder than DI. Opportunities for being surrounded are numerous, and it’s just plain scarier that way. Why doesn’t Riptide scale the number of enemies with the current player count? Or perhaps provide AI teammates when humans aren’t in-game?

I played the original DI with a group of three and we facerolled the game in an almost comical fashion, with the notable exception of this one room in the middle of the city in Act 2 where raging, ludicrously fast, infinitely-spawning Infected continuously flood in to wreck you. I can only imagine how easy the game would have been with all four players. Riptide is different, though. I think it will challenge my group of three enough to make us pressure the reclusive fourth member of our gaming group into joining us.

Weekly Report - 06/21/2013

This week I finished Demon's Souls - it's a short game, much shorter than its successor. In fact, I prefer Dark Souls in pretty much every way possible. Demon's Souls, for one, doesn't have a poise system at all. That means it's possible to totally stunlock your opponents (or be stunlocked) for an entire fight. It's cheap, and when it happens to you it's no fun at all. It's not all bad, though. Demon's Souls seems to offer a more coherent story than Dark Souls, but really the narrative takes a back seat in both titles. That said, Demon's Souls is an awesome game. It's a real asset to the Playstation 3 and I think it deserves much more attention than it received.

Wondering what to do next, I picked up Darkfall: Unholy Wars on the PC. It's a sandbox MMORPG with a wide open world and full loot PVP (think EVE). Unfortunately, it's no fun. I'll explain in another post later.

I decided instead to go back into Dark Souls and try the DLC and maybe some PVP. So I picked up Dark Souls: Prepare to Die edition from Steam and hooked my PC up to my TV. I'm currently enjoying my fourth playthrough of Dark Souls and looking forward to some PVP.

Weekly Report - 06/14/2013

I've spent the past few weeks in Far Cry 3 and Demon's Souls. Far Cry 3 is pretty refreshing, but it does become stale about halfway through. It's a wide open sandbox world, which is where all the fun is. The shooting and movement mechanics aren't that great - most of the fun in this game is in how you approach various situations.

I found myself growing somewhat bored after defeating the game's initial villain, Vaas. I gathered enough hides and radio towers very early on to craft the important gear I wanted (e.g. expanded holsters), so for the remainder of the game I had no distractions from the rapidly deteriorating storyline missions.

Speaking of storyline missions: my biggest gripe about this game is its "boss fight" mechanic. You typically get stabbed or shot or something, then the screen fades to black. You wake up in a hazy purple fog and are forced through an obnoxious, awkward quick time event sequence. At the end, if you manage to complete the proper button presses, the "boss" dies. It's outrageously unsatisfying, particularly in the case of Vaas, who is a real contender for video game villain of the year...

Post-Far Cry 3 I started in on Demon's Souls. It's a very familiar game to me as a Dark Souls player. It's really neat to see where the latter game gained so much of its inspiration in level design, enemy behavior, and so on. More to come as I progress farther in the game.

Weekly Report - 05/31/2013

Over the weekend I managed to finish the tactical challenges in Vanquish. I have to say, challenges 4 and 6 were particularly serious. I spent five and eight hours on them, respectively. Those two challenges alone up took more of my time than playing through the campaign twice. That said, the Tactical Challenger achievement is the single most difficult I have acquired. More difficult than Mile High Club from Modern Warfare and all those veteran achievements from World at War (remember that grenade spam). For hours I felt as if I couldn't beat them - particularly challenge 6 - but after numerous hours and taking several breaks to cool off I finally prevailed. Mastering an insane challenge comes with a really great feeling, doesn't it?

I followed up by purchasing two new (to me) games: Far Cry 3 and Demon's Souls. I haven't started the precursor to Dark Souls just yet, but Far Cry 3 is a truly refreshing title. As an open world RPG with numerous activities and side quests, it's totally different from the narrow, traditional FPS of the original Far Cry. In fact, it sort of reminds me of Dead Island without the zombies...

Weekly Report - 05/24/2013

Vanquish is developer Platinum Games' chronological precursor to Bayonetta, but that doesn't mean the two titles have anything at all to do with one another. In fact, they are entirely different beasts. Vanquish is a fast-paced third-person shooter with an arcade-like feel.

It's quite a fun game. Initially I wondered why I had never even heard of this title, but I'm starting to suspect it didn't gain much popularity due to its lack of certain features. Namely, it lacks multiplayer and there are only two game modes: campaign and tactical challenges. The campaign is three hours short if you burn through it on casual or normal difficulty (hard difficulty will take you about eight hours). There are six tactical challenges which behave essentially like a horde mode. Sadly, this is where the bulk of your time will be spent - at least, if you're a completionist. The tactical challenges are ridiculously, outrageously challenging - particularly challenges 4 and 6.

That said, it's a game well worth picking up. I found it for $12.99 at a nearby video game shop.

Weekly Report - 05/10/2013

Ghost Recon: Future Soldier was really easy. I fired it up on Elite difficulty right away, but still only died a handful of times (and usually to something cheap anyway). The story took a backseat to the gameplay, which surprised me given the franchise Ghost Recon is based upon.

The graphics in Ghost Recon are fantastic. The lighting and particle effects are very impressive, particularly for a console game. Animations are solid, though I still haven't seen anything that matches Rage in this category. Textures are pretty good - they are large and high-resolution - but some areas suffer from some blur when you look closely.

Ghost Recon attempts to blend the sharp, snappy shooting gameplay of Call of Duty with the solid cover-based third-person action of Gears of War. It ends up doing a pretty good job. The cover system is not quite as satisfying as GoW but the shooting is more precise and Call of Duty-esque.

The AI for your three squadmates is essentially overpowered. You can call targets for them to take out silently, which they always accomplish perfectly. They are never spotted (only you can fail a stealth section). If anything, they are a bit slow in navigating the levels. But still it seems feasible to get through the game without firing very much. Your team can do it all, even on Elite difficulty.

The best feature of Ghost Recon is weapon customization. The game allows you to modify nearly everything about your equipment from cosmetic paint jobs to custom barrels, muzzle attachments, under- and side-barrel attachments, and so on. It's really comprehensive and allows you to play the game the way you want. Unfortunately, however, the weapon customization feature is not available in Guerilla mode (basically Horde mode).

The single worst feature of the game is the Ubisoft online pass you have to purchase for $15 in order to play online (even just for co-op).

Weekly Report - 05/03/2013

Having completed an S rank run through the extremely challenging Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, I stopped by my favorite video game shop and picked up Bioshock: Infinite. I have beaten it (almost twice) already - it's kind of short.

Infinite is a great game, though it is debatable whether it measures up to the original Bioshock. Set in the floating (in the air!) city of Columbia, Infinite guides the player through a convoluted plot so full of twists that only get weirder and weirder it seems the game is designed purely to blow gamers' minds.

Seriously though, the story is compelling and interesting - at least until the ending. I've seen quite enough existential nonsense in literature during my brief time on this planet, so Bioshock Infinite's plot comes across as trite to me. Still, it's far above the usual video game tripe. Infinite manages to keep the player's attention but ultimately its philosophy, while thought-provoking, is emotional and irrational at best.

The gameplay is what I characterize as "fast and loose" which means it is quick in pace but the controls are not particularly sharp. Aiming is muddy and enemy characters are difficult to hit. They're small and they have tiny, tiny heads. Think Timesplitters. The vigors (basically plasmids) interact well with one another and combine very neatly with the game's available weapons. Most of all, I kept missing the different ammo types that made firefights so dynamic in the original Bioshock. Overall the combat is fun, but as a pure shooter it's not up to par with the likes of the Call of Duty or Halo series. Luckily there's more to Infinite than straight combat.

The most fun to be had in Infinite is through exploration. It's tons of fun to set the difficulty on 1999 Mode and attempt to earn the Scavenger Hunt achievement. This forces you to explore every nook and cranny of the game world to scavenge for gear since you cannot purchase any from the vending machines that frequent Columbia.