Resistance 3 and new Ratchet & Clank

Insomniac Games have announced their new Resistance and Ratchet and Clank games. The latter is not something I want to see as much, but just check out this teaser trailer for Resistance 3. This is THE most stylish video game trailer I’ve seen in my life. Maybe I should abandon that Heavy Rain shit and finally go for Resistance 2.

That is, not to say that Heavy Rain is a bad game, quite the contrary. My Samsung TV screen is broken anyway at the moment.

uDraw

No one is surprised that Kinect is hitting stores in November. Namely—4th in the U.S. and 10th in Europe. I’m not gonna say how useless and marketing-based that controller is—you already know all about it and even if you don’t, just google it.

The thing I’d like to talk about is new controllers from third-party devs. For example, check out this uDraw video from Gamescom. This device is made by THQ.

It comes with a few games and applications, which are all drawing-based. This device will be selling at $69.99 and new games for it will be available for $29.99. And of course, it will hit retail “just in time for the holiday season.”

I am really interested how this device will affect falling Wii sales. The whole “I’m gonna make teh controller you ain’t gonna beat” thing is getting funnier each month. It’s like returning to the era of PlayStation 2 with all those ridiculous swords and guns you could plug in. It seems that people are starting to remember what the arcade machines look like.

On Starcraft 2

If you talked to me about games during the previous several weeks, you have probably noticed that I’ve been quite offensive towards new Blizzard’s game—both before and after its release. There are two reasons for that kind of reaction.

The first one is that I grew up on games from the C&C series, including Tiberian Sun and Red Alert, and also this little but fun Herbert-based Dune series. These games have always had the right mechanics, the right amount of units and no need for extreme micro controlling. The action was slow paced, and you always had plenty of time to think about what you do.

Then, everyone knew what Blizzard did. In Warcraft they simply took these Westwood mechanics, tweaked them slightly, changed them a bit, and voi-la! A new game was born. Well, -ish. What’s interesting about first games in Warcraft series is that they were surprisingly similar to C&C. In fact, to the extent where an RTS player sometimes didn’t have to memorize new hotkeys. That’s why WC and WC2 both were like fun change of pace for me, not really like a new type of game.

And here I have to say one more thing: I never played Starcraft back then. I was scared of the space setting, the name sounded bizarre, hence the whole thing got onto my HDD some time about WC3 release. The latter, by the way, seemed odd straight away—they changed the interface, they changed the mechanics, they added heroes and, what’s more—it was my first 3D RTS game. Not sure if it was THE first, but my first impression was shock, to be honest.

And then I saw SC. It was like a revelation—I knew from the start that I didn’t want to play this. The interface and the whole feel of the game was very like WC3 and nothing—I repeat—nothing like WC2. Mechanics were a bit odd, but nothing special, really, I just didn’t enjoy playing it. In fact, each time I played SC I desperately wanted to quit and open Red Alert 2. That’s probably why I only made it to the end of Zerg campaign and got rid of the whole thing afterwards.

That was the first reason I didn’t wait for SC2 whatsoever. Here comes the second.

THE GAME IS AWFUL. Guys come on, I don’t really give a lot of shit about multiplayer, but this campaign is a total and absolute disgrace. Mechanics haven’t changed A BIT. Graphics look like 3 or 4 years old. At least. This plot is just pathetic in 2010. I mean, come on, rebels and oppressive government? And a badass dude sitting in a bar grieving about his lost gf? Are you taking us for morons and teenagers, Blizzard? And then this wonderful payment system, when you have to buy game cards to play a single bloody player game. How fucked up is that? I mean, yeah, I know, Bobby Kotick and stuff, but I really don’t give a shit who's fault is that—I just think that Ubisoftish protection systems must die a fast death and that if I’ve bought a game, I would really like to be able to play it—not to bloody pay again. What the hell.

I know that this subscription model is applied only to Russia, Ukraine and several other countries in Eastern Europe. What I don’t know is whether Activision thinks that everyone here is idiotic enough to pay every month for a single player game.

Magic The Gathering awesomeness

They don’t design cards like this anymore. There is no way you are going to see anything like this in one of those shiny World of Warcraft boxes. I claim that this is what makes collecting card games fun: über-cards that make you want to shuffle your deck properly and scream like a kid when you are finally able to put them into play. Resource cost of this particular card is such that you won’t be able to gather that amount of lands until the latest stages of the game. But just check out this design. I mean, hell, it is divided into two parts! I dream of being able to create something like this one day.

They don’t design cards like this anymore.

More about PoxNora

Yesterday, I wrote about new SOE’s MMO card game being released on Facebook. Well, guess what, I have finally tried it out properly, and now I am quite sure that it is the most sophisticated game for social sites so far. PoxNora is made for competition and multiplayer. There are different types of lobbies for casual, ranked and training games, and you can even observe games. You will compose decks (or battlegroups), collect or buy new runes and try to beat your friend, strangers and even AI.  There aren’t much players in game yet, however, I really think they will come as soon as more social features are implemented. The tutorial is a little bit tiresome, but, on the other hand, how do you expect a person who has never seen a card strategy game before to know how to play it? I can’t yet say anything about balance, but I certainly like the mechanics.

The bottom line is you don't have to play Mafia and Poker anymore—something new and awesome (and competitive too) has arrived. That is not to mention PoxNora has definitely come to stay. Facebook is evolving into a gaming platform after all.

Facebook and the Cradle of Awesomeness

Sony’s new game has been launched in its beta state, and it is already the most awesome game I’ve seen on Facebook. Perhaps it is the first one among those Big titles we will be playing on Facebook for the few years to follow—two of them being of course Brave Arms and Civilization. I’ll be trying it out shortly, but all you really need to know about it right now is that it is a browser-based MMO card game and that you can find it right here: http://apps.facebook.com/poxnora

Machinarium

This article was written as an example mini-review for my new media globe project. 

Machinarium is a perfect game if you like naive fairy-tale plots and great artwork. It also has some other good stuff, such as fun puzzles to solve and cool minigames to play. The game is what they call independent, and its marketing budget is only 1000 bucks, which is quite impressive taking how much work was done here. If you want a game reference of what has the most similar stuff to this puzzle-adventure, you are looking for a highly underrated game from a guy named Doug TenNapel and Steven Spielberg's studio DreamWorks Interactive called Neverhood. Developers took 3 mil tons of plasticine and created probably one of the best point-and-click adventures in the history of interactive media.

As you might have already guessed, Machinarium offers us the same level of greatness as Neverhood, which makes it simply the best adventure in like ten years. The coolest thing about both games is this unforgettable feeling of presence you get playing them. The game world in Machinarium is rather steam-punky futuristic, with only robots living there, which is quite odd if you think about it without the Robots cartoon comparison.

The plot tells us about a little robot, who tries to stop his city from being captured by a bunch of bad guys. I'm not going to spoil it for you, but there is one thing you should know about it and it is that there are no words in the game at all. All you get for dialogs is comic-like thinking bubbles, which look quite funny and atmospheric.

We also get hints via these bubbles and believe me, you want to get a hint here, because some puzzles in the game are quite hard to find a solution for. Speaking of which, you can always open an in-built comic-book, describing each scene of the game in detail, giving player a perfectly clear idea of what and how to do next. Some people might say that it takes all of the fun away, but I really don't think so. Instead, it makes the game absolutely suitable for kids and those adults who don't have much time to waste on a puzzle which is too hard to solve. In order to open the book, you have to win in a simple arcade game, which involves killing spiders with a shooting key. Sounds crazy, but looks quite natural in there.

The game also has a beautiful interpretation of the old arcade machine back from the 1978 called Space Invaders. Frankly speaking, I was not even born yet, when those were in use, but we all know how that kind of 8-bit oldschool is popular nowadays. And the best thing about it is that you don't have to pay coins for playing on it: you get money for winning instead! Isn't that like living a childhood dream?

All in all, the game is awesome and you probably should at least check out the free demo, which can be downloaded at machinarium.net/demo/. And if you haven't tried Neverhood back in the mid-90's, you must see it as well.

Left4Dead 2 is a joke?

The original Left4Dead has won our praise by its great dynamic gameplay, tons of blood, brilliant and still quite exotic for that time cooperative multiplayer and a great deal of replayability.

The sequel was met with a protest by the game's community which claimed that it is not fair to release a sequel without any significant gameplay innovations and making everybody just buy a content-pack for a price of a new game. Some people supported this point of view, some met it sceptically.

But from what I can see right now, Left4Dead 2 is indeed a great, massive content-pack, which features five new campaigns and two new playing modes: Realism and Scavenge. The first one is basically an ultra-high level of difficulty for campaigns, and the second one is a new round-based mode about gathering canisters and refueling the car.

This stuff really could be released in the form of downloadable content like Valve did with Team Fortress 2, but this time they decided to make a whole new game out of it and, frankly speaking, we cannot blame them for this decision.

The game itself has some really cool levels, new characters and a couple of new zombie behaviors, but the core game mechanics haven't changed a bit, and neither have the graphics. Nothing surprising so far, and I have already finished 4 out of 5 campaigns. In fact, all we've got here is another portion of good old (holy cow—that's a year!) Left4Dead gameplay.

If you liked it, you probably have already bought the sequel. If you didn't like it, the sequel won't by any means change your feeling about it. If you haven't played neither, you should probably go for the Valve's special offer and buy the bundle for 70 bucks. Or not. It's up to you.

I'll be writing a full-scale review of the game for mikportal.org in a few days, so you will see its English version here, but I'm quite sure that nothing will have changed by then.

A little sthg about Dragon Age: Origins

Dragon Age is perhaps the best CRPG since Fallout 2. There are reviewers out there who say that it has nothing new to offer the genre, but I haven't seen anything deeper, more authentic and sophisticated  in almost ten years and, frankly speaking, I don't quite give a fuck about how innovative it is.

The game gives you an impression of a nice fantasy book. It doesn't give you a set of rules and a setting—it gives you the world and its laws. Those who don't obey shall perish like thousands did before them.

I think I've already written this on Twitter, but every time you don't read a journal (codex) entry in Dragon Age, somewhere dies a kitten.  The game world's history and mythology is so interesting and thought-out, that one may even say that codex itself is a whole full-scale fantasy book.

But the coolest thing about Dragon Age is that the game alongside with recent Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 shows us how a 'hardcore' title may be financially successful and recognized by the mass market. And TV commercials, I guess, played a major role here. Nobody remains indifferent after watching the great 30 Seconds to Mars Dragon Age video.

And that is exactly what everybody's been talking about since the dawn of commercial development. The games are maturing, becoming a totally independent media, and the games marketing keeps getting more significant. You need to know how to sell your game and it is just as important as knowing how to make a fun one.