Gamer Corner Reviews

Leviathan Wakes by S.A. Corey

balerion@fourlight.net — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 20:58:00 EST

Heinlein without the Heinlein

I picked this up after it was recommended on George R.R. Martin's blog a few weeks back and finished it last week. It's a page-turner, hard sci-fi, space opera, mystery set in a future in which humanity has colonized the solar system but hasn't quite made it to the stars yet.

Is it the best science fiction you'll ever ready? Probably not, and in some ways the plot is pretty humdrum stuff. But what pulls it together is the writing, the rapid shift in viewpoints, and the wry wit of the characters. The whole thing felt very reminiscent of Moon is a Harsh Mistress, particularly the strong descriptions of the physics involved in near-future space colonization. No gravity generators, no hyper drives, and human bodies and social mores are warped and changed by living in the harsh conditions of non-atmosphere environments.

I found myself having trouble putting this book down, and am eagerly waiting for the next book in the series, though this one was a complete plot in and of itself (for those of us with aversions to reading series that aren't fully written).

Score: A-

Final Fantasy XIII-2 (PS3)

talraen@fourlight.net — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 09:56:54 EST

Square Enix Has Balls/I Guess I Am Just a Fanboy

Opinions on FFXIII-2 have been mixed, but having just finished the game (and only at about 1/4 of total completion), my feelings aren't mixed at all - I loved this game. Of course, I was one of the few who liked FFXIII, so maybe I just need to give up any pretense of being unbiased. That said, aside from sharing a combat system, this game isn't really much like FFXIII at all. (In that way, it's sort of the opposite of FFX-2's relationship with its predecessor.)

Before I go on, I should point out that FFXIII-2's very existence is a minor ending spoiler for FFXIII, in that it reveals the fate of several characters from that game. I'm not going to go through any contortions trying to avoid talking about that, so if you're super hardcore about FFXIII spoilers, you should stop here. (Realistically, it's not a big deal, though.)

Having just finished the game, my inclination is to talk about the story, but let's start with the mechanics, since that's the meat of the game. As previously mentioned, FFXIII-2 features the same combat system as FFXIII, though with a few improvements. The biggest of these is that you can change your leader during combat, and thus don't immediately get game over if your leader dies. Also, this time around you have two standard characters, with your third slot being occupied by monsters you recruit and level up. Monsters use the same roles as other characters, so the net effect is that your third character is incredibly customizable.

The monster-recruiting mechanic is one that seems to get a lot of discussion. I haven't played Pokemon, so I can't speak to that particular comparison, but the ability to customize monsters is pretty great. Your main characters are pretty limited in certain areas - they're good at hitting things, but not great at support magic, healing, and the like. At the end of the game, rather than everyone having a huge list of abilities, you have to rely on monsters for a lot of the good stuff. Given the simplification of the leveling system, I think this is a good thing.

Monsters may randomly be captured after battles where they are defeated, while using other monsters' special attacks to finish them will make this much more likely. Monsters are advanced in two ways - through items (acquired as drops or purchased directly) and through consuming other monsters. Just getting through the game didn't require a huge expenditure of these items, but if you actually want to customize dozens of monsters for specific situations, it would get costly. Fortunately, every battle yields gil now, so at least it's theoretically feasible.

The crystarium system for your main characters has also been changed significantly. It is now entirely linear, with you choosing which role to advance at each level. While this adds some nice wrinkles for character customization itself, some advancement nodes yield extra bonuses based on which role you level with them. It's really easy to focus advancement in one particular area, especially since there are only three stats (strength, magic, and HP).

Gone is the overly complicated weapon and accessory leveling system of FFXIII. In its place, you will mostly buy or find these items. You can also use dropped items, along with gil, to create new items at a shop. The end result is a lot of the same customization that was available in FFXIII, but without the math. Another nice wrinkle is that accessories now have an equip cost rather than all taking up a single slot, which allows for much more powerful accessories to exist.

So those are the mechanics, and they are fun. But what about the gameplay? This is where Square Enix, despite my review title, has completely capitulated to the internet whiners. Gone is the excessive linearity in favor of a very open-ended game with tons of optional exploring. I finished the main plot in 20 hours (which really felt like the perfect duration), but only found 40 of the 160 "fragments" that mark the major quests, sidequests, and secrets of the game. The plot is heavily related to time travel, though you won't find many "hit this button in the past to open something in the future" puzzles. Most of the time travel stuff is esoteric weirdness that's directly related to the plot, at least along the more well-traveled paths.

You'll also find a few cities, people to talk to, and shops that are more than just a menu. However, those shops take the form of a very strange chocobo-woman named Chocolina, who is inexplicably all over the place. I'm not sure how she managed to not be as annoying as she could have, and should have, been, but I kind of enjoyed her volatile emotional range and unabashed item hawking in the face of apocalypse.

Also, I have to mention that your exploration is assisted by a moogle. The moogle can reveal secrets, talks and generally acts silly, and can be thrown to reach distant items. Like Chocolina, this is not as annoying as it should be (kupo!). I'm not sure why not. Maybe it's because you can throw the moogle, and its reaction to being thrown is pretty much what one might expect if it were real.

And that brings me to the story. This story doesn't make any more sense than any other Final Fantasy story. It all fits together, I suppose, but when your antagonist states his nihilist aims two minutes into the opening video, it's pretty clear things are going to get weird. The basic plot is that, after the events of FFXIII, the timeline went all out of whack, and only Lightning's sister Serah seems to notice that anything is amiss. Lightning is now basically a valkyrie (don't be fooled by the cover art - she's barely in the game), and a new character, Noel, joins the group from an apocalyptic future. The previously mentioned antagonist, Caius, is defined mainly by having a cool voice, apparently wielding the Soul Edge, and wanting to destroy history. (All in all, a pretty typical villain for the series.)

What made me enjoy the story so much is that it has a lot of twists and turns that played out like I hoped, but didn't actually expect, that they would. Sure, there are some silly time-travel solutions to major issues, but this game actually has real consequences. This extends to your own actions - a notable boss fight is repeated over and over until you figure out the right way to end it (fortunately it's pretty quick). What makes this work is that your choices make sense, and your characters expect them to work, but then they don't for logical reasons. (Or at least internally consistent reasons.)

I can't talk about the specifics of the ending, obviously, and having no one to discuss it with will be frustrating, but the ending sequence is what really sold me on this game. As a sequel to a numbered game, Square Enix was free to take some chances, and they certainly did that. For once, all four stages of the last boss fight make at least a modicum of sense, and the actual ending takes a screeching left turn into "wait, they actually did that?!" territory. I was left stunned. Was it, objectively speaking, some masterwork of storytelling? No. This is Final Fantasy, people! But damn if it didn't give me chills, and left a (completely inappropriate) smile on my face.

Maybe the Final Fantasy series is degenerating into something only the hardcore fanboys, blinded by loyalty, can appreciate. If so, well, at least I'm getting something I like. This is a fun game with an interesting story, and I enjoyed it more than I thought I would based on what I'd heard. The combat and leveling systems are top notch - for instance, I was completely dominated by the final boss sequence, but an hour of leveling and focusing on a monster strategy made that fight relatively easy. That's the strength of FFXIII's battle system, and your ability to adapt is only enhanced by the monster recruiting mechanic. I'm hesitant to give the game a full A, because it's the sort of score I'll probably look back on one day and find ridiculous, but screw it - I really loved playing this game, and I'd highly recommend it if you've finished FFXIII. (And honestly, if you haven't, it's probably still pretty good because the characters are there but their history isn't really important here.)

Score: A

Assassin's Creed (360)

talraen@fourlight.net — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 14:27:19 EST

A Great Idea with Pretty Good Execution

Assassin's Creed is one of those games that has a lot of good, original ideas, but was released before the implementation of those ideas could be perfected. The biggest knock against the game is that it's repetitive - indeed, after the first few assassination missions, you will not see any new gameplay mechanics introduced. As a result, the game overstays its welcome a bit. But that said, it's still a really fun game, because the basic idea is very good.

Assassin's Creed feels in many ways like a Medieval-era Grand Theft Auto (or Crackdown, which has a very similar plot structure). You'll spend most of the game exploring and fighting off or running from guards. A number of mechanics make these things a lot of fun. First and foremost is the parkour style running system. It's a bit unwieldy (you have to hold down the right trigger and A to really go for it), but jumping around on things and running all out never really gets old. I do wish that it was a bit less exacting - missing a ladder by a few degrees can result in you wasting time running up a wall, which can be a real problem if you're running from guards. And don't get me started on the dock area - apparently assassin's can swim no better than the Avatar in Ultima VIII could.

Running around is fun, but it has to have a purpose. Assassin's Creed features three cities, each divided into three districts, and throughout the game you will thoroughly explore each of these nine districts. The first order of business is usually to climb the tallest buildings you can find, which reveals nearby map elements (including mission requirements). While this mechanic can get a bit boring by the end of the game, it's one of my favorite exploration mechanics of all time. This is partly because climbing around on buildings is fun (again, see Crackdown), and partly because the whole "look at the city from high places to find out what's going on" idea makes sense and seems rewarding as a result.

Your actual missions require you to do a number of investigations. You don't need to do all of them, and completionist that I am, I'm not sure what happens if you don't. (The game implies the actual assassinations would be more difficult.) While there are over 50 investigations in the game, there are only 5 types of them, and they really don't differ much. Some get harder as the game goes on, but others are just the same thing, and a few can be pretty frustrating.

That brings me to the biggest issue I have with Assassin's Creed, the behavior of guards. They will use any excuse to come after you, which is fun and interesting early on, but can get annoying later in the game when there are guards everywhere and they are extra paranoid. The problem is that angering a guard quickly degenerates into an escape sequence which really just feels like a waste of time. The escape mechanics are cool - you need to break line of sight and then get into one of the dozens of "hide spots" in each area - but escaping is often more frustrating than it needs to be. Many times guards regained line of sight literally a step before a hide spot, effectively starting the chase from scratch. And once you do escape, you're often on the other side of the city from whatever you were trying to do.

One key way in which Assassin's Creed differs from GTA is that here you don't need to run from the guards - you can just kill them all. Of course, later in the game this will mean killing as many as a dozen or more. The combat mechanics are really good, but they don't have the depth to support that much fighting, especially not over and over. Toss in the fact that being seen by the guards often resets your progress in your current investigation, and it really starts to wear on you.

In the end, Assassin's Creed needs to either be shorter, or have more variety of gameplay. Despite that, it's really fun - combat is great, as is parkouring around the city. What really made me fall in love with the game, though, is the way gaining skill in the game directly pays off. There is a large incentive to learn how to avoid guards, how to escape, and how to fight, more so than many games. For that reason, despite its flaws, I can't help but give the game a very high rating.

Score: A-