GIAdam Blog

Master Of Orion: Best Strategy Game Ever

Adam Biessener — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 15:00:00 GMT

The first MOO truly is the Baldur's Gate II of strategy games. You think it isn't? Come on in and see how wrong you are.

[This is the second in a series of posts informing everyone which exactly are the best games ever. Read the inaugural Baldur's Gate II entry here.]

MOO vs. Civilization IV

What's more fun: counting out worker forest-chopping turns, or deciding between research on gatling lasers or planetary shields? How about the difference between designing a space cruiser with the right balance of pulsar missiles and disruptor cannons, or picking between +10 percent healing and a 25 percent bonus to defense in forest tiles? Hint: The answer is the one that makes you feel like an awesome space dictator.

Civ IV lets you customize your empire in dozens of unique little ways. That's great and all, but MOO gives you 90 percent of the effect (i.e. where your people and robots are spending their time and resources) with 10 percent of the effort. Do you really care about the type of pollution your factories are dumping into the environments of your colonies? I suppose you might, but I'm busy ordering my enormous space fleets to hustle to the other end of my empire to fend off an incoming invasion of silicon-based rock people and their Death Spores. Can't I just throw a big pile of money at my environmental protection agencies and have them deal with it? Yes, yes I can. Master of Orion's simple sliders for resource allocation give plenty of control and nuance without bogging down the player with lame, insignificant decisions.

Civilization's embrace of alternative victory conditions is admirable, but it comes at a price. Make sure your people are farming enough food to let the idle rich doodle away on art so your culture grows! Don't forget to build courthouses so your minions can't siphon off huge chunks of your money with corruption in outlying provinces! Fund expensive universities so your society keeps up with worldwide research, or die ignobly!

Ugh. Sometimes you just want to conquer the galaxy without holding your entire empire's hand. Nobody ever became Master of Orion by having the fanciest pants.

Master of Orion vs. Total War: Shogun 2

Man, talk about diplomacy. Shogun 2 is less about honorable combat as it is making sure your daughters are married off to the right lords and your foreign bribes are kept up to date. I could conquer Japan in a single evening of play if it weren't for the fact that I have to check what my diplomatic modifiers with the entire freaking country are every turn.

Screw all that. One people: yours. One goal: Kill everyone else. Everything comes down to that. Sick of endgame tedium? Skip the "conquest" part of the invasion and sterilize the enemy's worlds from orbit. Tired of diplomatic wrangling? Skip it – you'll be murdering them later anyway. Yes, you can beat the game by winning a Galactic Council election, but that pretty much only happens because you've thinned out the voting population sufficiently to ensure yourself a majority.

And then there's battle. Shogun 2 basically has two kinds of units: Cannon fodder and awesomesauce death machines. The twist is that ADMs get tired if they murder too much cannon fodder, and then they get swarmed over by the endless legions of peasants the AI insists on building.

You know what doesn't get tired? Laser cannons. My proud fleets of fully customized starships never complain about being so amazing that they've murdered every last one of the alien scum trying to wipe out their wives and children. I like to think that they thank me, their benevolent emperor, for giving them the opportunity to defend their loved ones (and claim their descendants' rightful places as uncontested masters of the galaxy) with the fancy toys I provide my admirals with.

Master of Orion vs. Master of Orion II

I've got a lot of love for MOO II, but man alive is that game broken. You can win at game creation by choosing the Psilons (or a Creative custom race), or the Sakkra (or a Subterranean custom race), or the Humans (or a Charismatic custom race), or by not being terrible at games (or any custom race).

Seriously. I've had fantastic, challenging games of Master of Orion (despite the craptastic AI, which of course isn't any better in MOO II) with every single race. The unique racial abilities are a perfect balance of being nice, noticeable bonuses (unlike Civ IV's often-invisible traits, for example) without breaking the game through the kind of obscene, obvious imbalances in MOO II.

If you're not into picking overpowered abilities, just equip your ships with multi-warhead missiles. Or auto-firing phasors. Or inertial stabilizers and decent engines. I can think of a half-dozen near-invincible ship designs off the top of my head, and MOO II is a game from 1996.

Unlike the sequel, you almost never get stuck hammering the end turn button. It's often the most effective play to turtle up and build colony improvement after colony improvement in MOO II, since they have such a massive feedback loop in goosing your planets' output. Stopping expansion (and later, invasions) in Master of Orion is a quick way to lose, which means that every session is a mad scramble to colonize more planets, protect what you have, and blow up the other empires before they can do unto you.

I'm sure I've missed a few reasons why Master of Orion is better than other games, and why newer games fail to match the brilliance of Steve Barcia's peerless classic. Let me know in the comments!

Or bring some weak arguments as to why some other game might approach Master of Orion in overall genius, so we can all have a good laugh.

I Think I Broke Final Fantasy Tactics

Adam Biessener — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 15:00:00 GMT

It's far from the first, and probably not the most purely effective Final Fantasy Tactics party setup ever. But my crew of Blade Grasping atheists is pretty close to invincible.

So I've been replaying Final Fantasy Tactics. Again. What, it's not like I have a problem. I can stop any time I want. Anyway, I'm at the point with this game that I'm running out of gimmick parties to see how they work. My latest experiment is the best one yet.

Everything about this strategy comes down to FFT characters' Bravery and Faith scores. You see, with a little bit of grinding, you can set your party's Bravery and Faith to whatever you like courtesy of Ramza and Orator skills. The Samurai's Blade Grasp reaction ability (Shirahadori in the PSP remake, but I prefer the goofy original ability name translations) sets your physical evasion for both ranged and melee attacks at your Bravery score. Hello, permanent 97 percent evasion!

Faith, on the other hand, affects how effective your spellcasting is as well as how susceptible you are to enemy magic and status effects. The bad news: low-Faith heroes are utterly worthless spellcasters. The good news is that Faith does not have any impact on how effective you are at a) punching dudes in the face, b) stealing and/or breaking all of their equipment, or c) distributing potions and other recovery items to your allies. Crank that Faith score down to its permanent minimum of two (out of 100), and the nastiest Firaga is a light tickle that immediately precedes your dual-wielding death machine gutting everything.

So, you're 97 percent immune to physical attacks and roughly 98 percent immune to magical attacks. Most encounters are complete walkovers at this point; large portions of the enemy's army will be incapable of doing anything to you. The world is largely your plaything at this point...but you're not bulletproof.*

* Actually you are, because Blade Grasp blocks bullets, but bear with me here.

The few things that can hurt you are mostly monster abilities – typically magic-type attacks that don't check the target's Faith in their damage calculation. Skeleton "Soul" attacks, for example, can still hit you and do reasonable damage. Red and black chocobos can get their specials past your defenses. Malboros can wreck you with their Bad Breath. Many Zodiac boss abilities still connect.

Fortunately, there are only a handful of fights in the game that have a threatening number of enemies who use that small subcategory of attacks. And that's what giving a few of your party members Item and Throw Item is for anyway.

Go now, and laugh your way to the conclusion of the War of the Lions. Zodiac, schmodiac – no army in Ivalice will be able to come close to standing up to your forces.

Have any of your own silly FF Tactics party configurations (besides Calculators, we all know about those already)? I'd love to hear about them in the comments.

Free Game Of The Moment: Missilebreak Outvaders

Adam Biessener — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 22:09:00 GMT

How many homages to classic Atari games can you fit in a single Flash game and still have it be awesome? I believe Missilebreak Outvaders is the current record holder at three.

Missilebreak Outvaders is Missile Command, and Breakout, and Space Invaders – all at the same time. The pixellated invaders are slowly dropping down the screen, firing missiles at the five cities that line the bottom of the screen. With your paddle, you have to deflect the missiles back at the aliens – but they keep bouncing basically forever, so the situation quickly gets out of hand.

Once you deflect a missile with the paddle, it turns from red to blue. It'll still blow up a city if it hits it, but a left-click of the mouse detonates all blue missiles on the screen. Resetting the madness every so often is a necessity, but it helps to keep things running as long as possible to clear the board of aliens more quickly.

In practice, this mostly plays like a super-gonzo-multi-ball Breakout with moving blocks. I found myself usually playing with one or two cities left un-nuked, since defending more than that quickly becomes untenable. Even with only a few points to defend, though, Missilebreak Outvaders requires a deft touch to survive more than a few waves.

The Atari-style presentation is amazing, and the music is a grand modern love letter to '70s chiptunes. For the price, you can't beat what Missilebreak Outvaders has on offer.

[Disclaimer: Kongregate is owned by Game Informer's parent company, GameStop. If you have a problem with that, I'm sure you can find a different Flash portal to play Missilebreak Outvaders on.]

I Met Joe Mauer Today

Adam Biessener — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 21:06:00 GMT

However brief it may have been, it was cool to see one of my idols in person. Even though he was being pushed through literal buckets of stuff to autograph on his way to do a promotional appearance at the Mall of America to launch his new Joe Mauer-branded Nike shoe on a game day, Mauer was the most polite celebrity I've had the pleasure to meet.

As much time as I spend interviewing people with cool jobs and great personal wealth, Mauer is a celebrity on a different level. Even for a simple promo spot like this, he's got various PR and marketing representatives -- people from Sony, Nike, Mall of America, his own endorsement rep -- surrounding him at all times, making sure simultaneously that he is happy and taken care of as well as ensuring that they get their own slice of his time and attention.

Six takes on a line to be later spliced into a Kevin Butler commercial. Pose with a plaque bearing his shoe. Run through the script and marketing bullet points about the virtues of his shoe, then record several shots at explaining why it's so great. Wish happy birthday to the Mall of America for a video promo on Facebook. Sign video games. Sign baseballs. Smile and shake hands with everyone in the room. Reassure event planners that he truthfully does not care if he wears the white hoodie he came in with or one of several sizes of red Nike sport jacket laid out on a conference table.

This all takes place in fifteen minutes in the green room. After a firm handshake that engulfs my reasonably sized hands (I'm over six feet, not a small guy, and he dwarfs me in every dimension) in Mauer's enormous mitts, I'm trying to be unobtrusive standing in the corner while Mauer takes care of his business. I have no idea when I'm going to get a chance to ask Mauer questions (the pitch that got me to drag myself out to my personal hell the Mall of America in the first place), but it's all good. This is probably the best baseball player to play for my favorite team in my lifetime, and I'm not ten feet from the guy.

I'm amazed watching Mauer handle all of this with grace, dispensing genuine smiles to everyone he meets. I'm sure he's been through similar situations dozens of times through his lauded baseball career, but he honestly seems like more of a down-to-earth regular guy than half the level designers I meet. Being around him, you get the sense that he's just happy to be who he is and lead the life he does. He's certainly got enough reason to, but fame and fortune don't always breed the humble type.

All video recorded, wearing his new shoes and still rocking the white hoodie and a pair of blue jeans, Mauer is ready to head up to the event itself. We jump on a cart that navigates through the extensive tunnel network from the VIP entrance and green rooms we were just in to a freight elevator that takes us up to the Nike store. My chance to ask Mauer questions finally arrives, and I get two minutes to pick his brain about Sony's baseball game as the electric cart hums along its way.

Gabe Newell could give you a month's worth of thoughts to chew on in two minutes. Joe Mauer, not so much. I get a few marketing bullet points rearranged nicely into sound bite form (MLB The Show developer Sony San Diego is attentive to detail? Really? Do tell!) and a chuckling admission that he doesn't like to "lift weights and all that, but I kind of have to for my job." I'd be very surprised if Mauer even knows what Game Informer is, but he smiles, laughs, and gives every appearance of being perfectly happy to answer inane questions about a video game.

And then it's over. I get the Sony rep to snap a photo of Mauer and myself that throws into stark contrast the fact that he's a handsome star athlete and I'm...not (check out next month's GI Spy section in the magazine to see just how dumpy I look compared to a $23 million dollar professional baseball player). We head up to the Nike store, where it seems that every employee who could make an excuse to do so is hanging out in the back to lend their hands to the round of applause that greets Mauer as he enters the back room.

Again, Mauer smiles like he just got to a surprise party with his best friends, shakes hands with everyone, and lets himself be guided from station to station as the various marketing/PR types go over their endorsement needs at the soon-to-begin event. Asked whether or not he is any good at the Home Run Derby mode he's about to play high school kids at onstage, he chuckles and says, "We'll find out." Mauer relays stories about how amusing the actor who plays Kevin Butler in the Sony commercials is in real life, and reveals that many of the funnier bits from that ongoing marketing campaign were ad-libbed by Butler on set.

Twins announcer John Gordon's amplified voice comes through the walls as he pumps the assembled high school baseball and softball teams up to lay eyes on their hometown hero. Mauer glides through the door, waits for his cue, and treats the gleeful fans to that same smile as he parts the curtain and walks onstage. I snap a few photos myself and make myself scarce; my brush with fame is over.

The whole morning is entirely useless from an informational perspective, not that I expected to glean any grand video game insights from Mauer. The shoe is...not something I would wear (seriously, a Playstation logo on the tongue of an athletic training shoe?). The custom PS3 setup Sony presented Mauer with (see photo below) is freakin' sweet. It would look fantastically stupid with my chrome-and-glass entertainment stand, but I probably wouldn't turn it down.

Yeah, I didn't love setting an early alarm on a Friday night. There was a little less pain involved than in climbing into an early-morning flight from Cologne, Germany with Gas Powered Games' Chris Taylor as we both attempted with mixed results to recover from the festivities that bookended the exhausting week-long GamesCom trade show, though.

One Way To Lose At Total War: Shogun 2

Adam Biessener — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 19:13:00 GMT

Playing the heck out of Total War: Shogun 2 for the review didn't prepare me for the Tokugawa clan's unusual starting conditions. What follows is an excerpt of the shortest Total War campaign I've ever played.

Tokugawa starts as a vassal of the Imagawa to the east (i.e. they get half of your income and military access) and at war with Oda. Okay, fine, crushed the Oda army that starts next my capital, no problem. Parked my army just inside my border to get some replenishment with a plan to march on the Oda capital next season. Forged trade agreements with Saito and Kiyo to the north, leaving me with just the Oda to stomp on quick and then a reckoning with my Imagawa "masters."

So Oda moves in his main force to take my vacant capital. He can't get there in a single season, of course, and my force controls the road so he ends up trying to take a silly detour through the woods. No big, I'll rout him in the field then storm his castle. Except that the Saito clan apparently had a stack waiting to lay siege to the Oda capital themselves, and wipe out the clan by doing just that.

Well, hell. So I've got my army sitting on my western border with nobody to fight, the Imagawa to the east and their Takeda and Hojo allies north of that. Eh, screw it, the day of Tokugawa destiny will just come a bit sooner than planned. So I declare war on the Imagawa (which is the only way to break your vassalage). My daimyo takes an honor hit for that, which sucks, but is necessary. He's not likely to become Shogun as a vassal to the Imagawa anyway.

The problem is that the dishonour of breaking my treaty with the Imagawa plus the additional "broken treaties" diplo penalty puts me all the way down to "indifferent" with Kiyo and Saito. Even if you're trading with them, clans who are indifferent toward you don't have a big problem declaring war if they see weakness.

Of course, my western border was rather weak indeed because the Imagawa required all of my attention. I win a series of battles and take two Imagawa provinces,* slaughtering a couple thousand of their troops, hooray! My daimyo is a three-star general, my secondary general is rallying the reinforcements from the homeland, and I'm ready to make the final push to the Imagawa capital.

* Taking a second-level castle (fortress, I believe, is the game term) with nothing but ashigaru sucks. I lost over half my army in my Pyrrhic victory over the defenders of the second Imagawa province I took.

So, you know how Saito was indifferent? Yeah, about that. I'm not sure how much the AI is cheating with the fog of war, but simply knowing that I was embroiled in a serious war with Imagawa/Takeda/Hojo in the east would be reason enough for me to declare if I were in their position. So they did, capturing my home province with ease.

Meanwhile, Takeda has finally managed to navigate a large army through the woods separating his lands from the conquered Imagawa holdings I'm sitting on. My daimyo and his proud but tattered army are holed up in the fortress they so dearly captured, while my Commissioner for Warfare and his fresh recruits are on the other side of a Takeda army that is larger than my entire military combined. The Imagawa will be a long time regrouping after the ass-kicking they suffered at my hands, but that's small comfort in the face of a thousand armed Takeda poised to rip the heart out of my domain.

The foretold day of Tokugawa destiny may be rather farther off than I'd hoped. I'll be surprised if I survive the coming year. I have no force available to oppose the Saito rolling up my western provinces, and Takeda has no enemies to distract him from crushing my army – if not with the men that are already marching on my daimyo, then with their reinforcements. I have little capacity to reinforce my weakened armies, and too many fronts to fight on. I fear that this is the end of the line for the proud Tokugawa clan.

---------------------------------

I love that I'm still learning new things after a few hundred hours with Shogun 2.

1) Having a weak diplomatic position sucks.

2) Not having any allies really sucks.

3) Following 1) and 2), Honour is super crazy important.

3) While I can generally outmaneuver the tactical AI on hard, it's hardly a cakewalk.

4) The Tokugawa start with a market in their home province instead of a dojo of any kind. Not being able to recruit samurai off the bat is a killer.

5) One neat thing about Tokugawa is that they start with a metsuke. The less neat thing is that metsuke are pretty *** worthless early on in the game. Having a de facto invulnerable scout is nice, though.

Baldur's Gate II: Best RPG Ever

Adam Biessener — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 22:01:00 GMT

Would I lie to you? BioWare's 2000 magnum opus is still the best RPG of all time. I'll prove it. With science.

BG2 vs. Oblivion

It says something terrible that no matter how poorly Advanced Dungeons & Dragons was balanced (and the ruleset used in BG2 is hilariously imbalanced, with the inclusion of silly rules like monks and class kits), it pales in comparison to the mess that is Oblivion's system. In BG2 you have the freedom to create massively awesome parties by including whatever mix of the brilliantly written NPCs you wanted. Some combinations are better than others, and certain main character builds are borderline ridiculous (oh hi there, dual-class fighter-mage katana grandmaster!), but it's nigh impossible to gimp your group into unplayability if you pay any attention at all.

Meanwhile, in Oblivion, several advancement paths effectively send you backwards. Not leveling any Endurance-related skills? Have fun with the durability of a newborn kitten wrapped in wet paper towels! Picked Mercantile or Speechcraft as a major? Try not to talk to anyone, because while you get marginally better at a sub-game that nobody cares about, the monsters are out there pumping iron and finding better equipment to eviscerate you with. On the flip side, Oblivion is stupidly easy to break to the point where you're de facto invincible. Try stupid crap like that against a BG2 lich and see how far it gets you.

Furthermore, there are more than five faces on characters in BG2. And the women don't look like ugly men. And the dungeons are actually fun and full of neat side paths and alternate solutions, not filled with boring random monsters. But you get the point.

BG2 vs. Mass Effect

Well, for one thing, BG2 is an RPG with progression and equipment that actually matter and aren't vague nods to those games we used to play in ages past. For another, BG2 has fun, lighthearted bits in it and doesn't rely solely on testosterone-fueled WE HAVE TO SAVE THE GALAXY RIGHT NOW EVERYTHING IS DOOMED BUT SHEPARD IS THE UBERMENSCH HOORAY FASCISM. I dare you to find anything in Mass Effect or the sequel that's as flat-out amusing as Edwin's poorly researched work on the Nether Scroll (spoilers: He turns himself into a girl and is simultaneously upset and intrigued at his new…attributes). And while I lament the fact that you never get a chance to strap Jan and his unbearable turnip blather to a nuclear bomb, you do at least get to rat him out to the cops and go taunt him in his jail cell.

Do I even need to bring up combat? Because there's more to BG2 than "point gun, pull trigger." So that's a plus. You can summon up meat shields to tie up the enemy melee while harassing their spellcasters with ranged attacks. You can stealth up, backstab a dude, and lure his friends into a trap-filled ambush. You can drop entangling webs to block off an enemy group's attack vector while engaging another party. Your creativity is the primary limiting factor in how battles play out.

As for Mass Effect, I'm not saying that there's more tactical thinking in Call of Duty single-player…no wait, that's exactly what I'm saying.

BG2 vs. Final Fantasy X

Let's start with the fact that BG2's ensemble of characters doesn't consist of King *** and the cast of Dawson's Creek. Nobody wants to listen to your problems, Tidus, because they are boring and you are stupid. And we definitely don't want to listen to that godawful fake laugh for fifteen minutes or however long that cutscene goes. Also, Rikku is like sixteen so stop trying to sell her as a sex symbol, ya pervs. BG2 challenges you to help a friend through the emotional fallout of having her husband murdered, explain racism and tolerance to a renegade dark elf, and choose between upholding the duly written law of the land or assisting a good-hearted man caught in the gears of the system. One of these things is obviously better than the other.

But seriously, now. One game has you play the half-divine child of the God of Murder who is trying to prevent a power-hungry mage from ripping the divine essence out of mortals and corrupting it for his own ends. The other dresses up teenage daddy issues in asymmetrical clothing. One doesn't screw around with deadly enemies – powerful mages are quite happy to drop a meteor swarm on your whole group, disintegrate your best friend, and gate in a balor during the time stop they cast on the first round of combat. The other has a final boss that you literally cannot die to.

Also: Wakka.

Any other RPGs you want to front about being better than Baldur's Gate II? Because I'll demolish those weak arguments just as thoroughly.

Journey Through Press Conferences With Me

Adam Biessener — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 21:22:00 GMT

Have you ever wondered what attending a day of video game press conferences is like? Based on my email inbox, you probably have. Allow me to tell the story of my day today and just how very exciting the life of a game journalist can be.

After a day full of travel – ten hours in the air on a pair of airplanes and a ten-hour death march through Amsterdam that is a story for another time – the GI crew got a well-deservved long sleep in our Köln hotel. This morning saw a much-needed shower (seriously, death march) and Ben, Bryan and myself abandon Jeff to his Microsoftian fate and fill our bellies with schnitzel. Feeling human again, we made our way to the Schanzenstrasse (literally “the entrenched street” or “redoubt street” – will have to discover what the heck is up with that later) for the EA and Sony pre-GamesCom press events.

The line for EA wasn’t that bad. Twenty minutes cursing the insane international data rates on our phones ($20/MB indeed) and trying not to choke on the dozens of cigarettes burning around us (I swear Euros smoke twice as much as Americans, and being around it is way less pleasant than it was when I was a smoker myself), and we were in.

What followed was a ear-blastingly loud hour of EA hyping the next six months of its big-budget releases to us. Ever been to a punk rock concert? This was loud like that, except you have a seat (yay!) and a bunch of marketing spiels between bouts of onstage action (boo!). Compared to many of the dozens of press conferences I’ve attended, though, EA’s GamesCom event was a model of brevity. No graphs showing their market-leading blah blah blah, no poorly cloaked shots at the competition, no paper-thin attempts at being our friends. Just brief introductions to ten games that ranged from bleh (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) to meh (Crysis 2 multiplayer) to freakin’ sweet (Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, Dead Space 2, Borderlands Bulletstorm).

A few things stood out amid the damage to our cochlea. In no particular order:

•    The actors who play the Weasley twins came onstage to demo Deathly Hallows’ Kinect capabilities for no good reason. There wasn’t even any amusing banter. They just came on, waggled on stage left for ten minutes while the game was broadcast on the big screen, then left. Presumably picking up their check and bailing out as soon as possible.
•    BioWare’s Dr. Ray Muzyka got excited whispers as he was announced, and big cheers as he stepped onstage to say that The Old Republic is awesome but not show it.
•    Dead Space 2 got huge cheers from the largely European audience. Also, the spacewalk in the demo was stunning.
•    Need for Speed didn’t get huge cheers when it was announced, but it sure did after the demo concluded. This is what Need for Speed should be. I can’t wait for it.
•    The Medal of Honor producer’s impressive, bushy beard elicited a hearty chuckle from the audience.
•    The melodramatic announcement of soccer star David Beckham’s involvement with EA Sports Active 2 was greeted with…crickets? Truly, the U.S. is where soccer careers go to die.
•    Bulletstorm producer Tanya Jessen and director Adrian Chmielarz got huge cheers. Tell you what, Europe: You keep demonstrating such discerning taste in games, and I’ll stop making fun of your pants.
•    I promise I paid full attention to Peter Moore drone on about motion sensing, not the pretty girl doing aerobics behind him on stage right.
•    How much does Microsoft pay for every time someone says “The magic of Kinect” at one of these things? At $10,000 a pop, EA just made twenty grand.

That was about it for EA, excepting some Eurocentric stuff I don’t care about like FIFA 11 (seriously, do they even sell that in the U.S.?). With Sony’s event literally across the street, this should be an easy day.

[Next up: The Sony conference – but first, an hour and a half in a parking lot!]

The B-List: Notes From Nintendo

Adam Biessener — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 17:57:00 GMT

You already know about the high-octane announcements that came out of Nintendo's press conference. Out of my twelve pages of notes, however, a few things stand out that you might have missed. I apologize for the punny title (it’s my last name, get it?), but everyone needs a schtick, right?

I had to watch Miyamoto to understand the Zelda demo. You always look at the screen during game presentations – watching some dude man a gamepad conveys no useful information. During the Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword demo, I found myself having to force my attention to Miyamoto’s gestures to understand why I should care about what I was seeing. This seems like a small thing, but I’ve never had to do that before in the thousands of game demos I’ve seen in my career. Hopefully Nintendo’s excuse about wireless interference is legit and the control isn’t as awkward as it looked at times.

The enemies’ screams when whipped are hilarious. I couldn’t suppress my giggles at the squeals coming from Link’s enemies as Miyamoto whipped them in the face. The best part is that you can’t kill anything bigger than bats with the whip itself, so you’re free to continue the torment as long as it maintains your interest. Yeah, it’s sadistic, but don’t tell me you never ran over a pedestrian in GTA just for the hell of it.

The scorpion boss Link faces uses the same blocking mechanic as the plants. Nintendo didn’t show off live gameplay of this, but the trailer reel that played after Miyamoto’s demo clearly showed the scorpion boss using the same vertical/horizontal blocking method that the plants used to protect the weak spots inside its pincers. Between the scorpion, the dudes with swords, and the plants, that’s three enemies already shown that use the same mechanic…

Mario Party Mix includes nationball. You probably called it something different when you were a kid, but this game was easily my playground favorite. You put teams on either end of a tennis court, basketball court, or similarly shaped playing field. Then you try to peg each other with playground balls – but if your throw gets caught, you’re out instead. Unless I miss my guess, that’s exactly what the mystery game in Mario Party Mix is. I couldn’t be more excited unless it was pinguard.

Mickey’s ink effects looks awesome. The Epic Mickey demo was impressive overall, but this one little detail stood out. As Mickey moves, little streamers of ink fly off of him just like in the art from the GI cover last year. It’s an incredible effect that does a great job of selling a sense of motion and contributes a lot to the overall tangible paint aesthetic. Between the cool demo and Warren Spector’s obvious affection for the source material, I’m sold on Epic Mickey.

I’m not interested in “taking Metroid down new emotional corridors.” The Metroid: Other M trailer focused on Samus’s face under her helmet several times, clearly trying to sell the story via her expressions. Then Reggie talked about how Team Ninja is focusing on storytelling, yadda yadda. I’m not feeling it. The beauty of Metroid – and I’m a huge fan; Metroid Prime is my favorite title of the last console generation bar none – is in the way it sells a story with a minimalist musical score and a sense of desolation and desperation imparted by the visuals. If you have to resort to telling the story via a bunch of explicit cutscenes and dialogue, you’re doing it wrong (in Metroid, anyway). Reggie paid lip service to the franchise’s traditions, but I’m not buying it yet. Hopefully the final game proves me wrong.

Donkey Kong Country Returns makes awesome use of its backgrounds. I love me some DKC, and I can’t wait to play it (holiday 2010 release, yay!). The thing that struck me the most about the brief trailer at Nintendo’s press conference was its excellent use of its environments to create gameplay. A giant octopus smashing out platforms with its tentacles and a pirate ship firing cannonballs both appeared, and one sequence showed DK and Diddy being fired onto another 2D plane from a barrel. I have nothing else to say about this but hell yes.

Kid Icarus Uprising moves really fast. While everyone else was nerding out over Nintendo resurrecting yet another dead C-list franchise, I was marveling at how fast the game moves. Starting with Halo, unusual control schemes and new technologies have slowed down the action to accommodate the imprecision inherent in changing gameplay paradigms. Kid Icarus moves more like Ninja Gaiden than Zelda. I’m surprised and impressed that Nintendo seems to be aiming at core gamers with its big first-party 3DS launch title.

Come back later for more observations from E3 and beyond that you wouldn't find on anyone's news feed, and try to enjoy all the crazy news coming out of LA this week as much as we are!

What Microsoft Didn't Do Wrong

Adam Biessener — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 23:33:00 GMT

I’m all out of hate. Maybe Microsoft’s strategy was to get the Kinect launch’s vast stupidity out of the way at the Cirque du Soleil show so that I could roll my eyes and move on. That’s not to say that there weren’t some cringe-worthy moments – the awkwardly forced stage banter between Kinect engineer “lollip0p” (ugh) and her twin sister via Kinect’s video chat was nearly as wooden as the infamous Jeff Bell/Reggie Bush fiasco from years past. Still, I was impressed by a few things that I didn’t see coming at all.

I could spend my time spewing vitriol all over the many terrible moments at the press conference, but I think I got most of that out of the way last night. Let’s talk about what didn’t suck instead.

ESPN on 360. The little bits of interactivity, like choosing your side in an ongoing game and voting in SportsCenter polls during play, display all the technical prowess of trivia challenges at Buffalo Wild Wings. On the other hand, I will totally use the hell out of them. Sports fandom is best enjoyed in a social context. Anything that brings the home viewing experience closer to being in a crowded bar at playoff time is awesome. Live HD streams from ESPN’s impressive coverage of the wide world of sports at no extra cost is a great selling point. I’ll be dumbfounded if you can get much on your local team via the service – blackout restrictions are a big deal in sports, and the lucrative TV contracts the major leagues are signatory to typically prevent any online streaming that the TV networks (rightfully) think might interfere with their product. Even so, I’d love to have been able to watch Strasburg’s masterful 14-strikeout debut and interact with other baseball nerds from my couch, even in the banal ways highlighted in the announcement. I wonder if we’ll get any ESPN original content, from SportsCenter to athlete features like the in-depth look at the greatest player of our lifetimes, Joe Mauer.

Your Shape Fitness Evolved. Cyberpunk godfather Philip K. Dick would be proud of the digital incarnation of the player that Your Shape Fitness Evolved puts onscreen. More importantly, this 1:1 representation of what the Kinect camera sees exists in the gameworld, so it would seem that you’ll have an easier time visualizing how to interact with the game. The announcement presentation showed players getting instant feedback on their technique in aerobic and yoga activities, which would be a great tool to get my doughy physique moving in the correct way. I realize that this is being marketed directly at women, but I’m secure enough to say that I could absolutely see myself using this if it means hiding my shame in my living room rather than putting it on display at the gym – if it is founded on real training programs, anyway, which looks to be the case.

Beyond those two surprisingly interesting announcements, Microsoft’s 2010 press conference did little to impress. Metal Gear Solid and Gears of War looked amazing, as expected. The rest of the Kinect stuff looked as lame in the light of day as it did last night. The new 360 hardware is cool, I guess, but in the absence of a price cut or an aggressively priced Kinect bundle, I don’t see it as a game-changer.

If you’re coming to my blog for the hate, don’t worry – I’m sure that my batteries will be recharged shortly. With the overwhelmingly negative response to Microsoft’s conference out there on the Net, though, I felt like these two announcements deserved a shout-out for not sucking.

Microsoft Ruins Cirque Du Soleil

Adam Biessener — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 05:23:00 GMT

Cirque du Soleil tickets go for what, $80? I wish I were exaggerating when I say that you would've had to pay me more than that to go to Microsoft's embarrassing Kinect (nee Project Natal) event.

I was all jazzed up to see the lauded performance group do their thing, even if it was in service to a larger corporate marketing agenda. What I didn't expect was to have Cirque du Soleil's indisputable creativity subsumed almost entirely by Microsoft's message.

Outside of some genuinely impressive floor gymnastics that took place before the event itself started and a vertically rotating "living room" stage where the main show happened, this might as well have been a promo reel for crappy waggle games. Oh wait, it was.

Seeing a marketing-approved all-American family of four "interact" with each other and Kinect in the staged gaming made me laugh out loud, and not in a good way. You can play doubles beach volleyball with four people, but only in the context of playing two at a time versus CPU opponents? Competing in a Muscle March-esque moving platform minigame looked...awful. I have no idea what kind of dirt the Xbox team has on the folks at Harmonix, because that studio's contribution -- the dancing title shown toward the end of the event -- was the worst of all, making players mimic a selection of shameful breakdancing-inspired moves that would get you kicked out of any reputable townie bar, much less a dance club. The Star Wars thing looked kinda cool, but that was about it.

The games were not good, is what I'm saying.

The message from Redmond is that Kinect is brings families together, with the "boys versus girls" Olympic-style competition and the family-friendly cartoon visuals. I hope that my children, should I be so lucky to have any at some point in the future, will have better taste than to play these Wii Sports cutting room floor rejects. I know my wife does. I love playing a round of Mario Kart Wii (a waggle game with actual gameplay) with my nephews, but sharing what I saw tonight with them would make me the lamest uncle ever. And I work at a video game publication.

I could forgive the ham-fisted event if it had contained a nugget of interesting software or hardware, but it didn't. If the "family" was actually playing Kinect games while onstage, it was the most well-rehearsed event in history. I'll hold my final judgment until I get my own hands on Kinect on the E3 show floor, but I can't think of a worse way to have been introduced to it.

Congratulations, Microsoft. You engaged one of the premier entertainment ensembles in the entire world to help you sell it, and Kinect still looked terrible. Kudos on wasting my time.

Back From 1995: A Master of Magic Story

Adam Biessener — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 17:24:00 GMT

With Master of Magic going up on GOG.com this week ($6 and it works perfectly on my modern PC? Yes please!), I've been totally obsessed with it all over again. I adored this fantasy 4X empire builder when it came out back in the day, but does it hold up?

Given that it sucked me back in enough to write a gigantic after-action report, I think Master of Magic holds up quite well, thank you very much.

And so, without further ado: the first half of an iron man (no saving or reloading except on exiting the game) session on Hard difficulty using a randomly picked Freya/barbarian start. I'll try to explain the particulars of gameplay as I go along, but it's a complex game – I won't be surprised if people who never played it get a little lost.

The barbarians of this huge continent have wisely chosen me, Freya, to lead them. Apparently my promises of lots of cheap warbear meatshields resonated with the constantly drafted townsfolk.

Races in MoM are a key concept. Each has strengths and weaknesses, and your starting race plays a large part in shaping the game to come. Some races are strong warriors with little capacity for building advanced cities, others grow slowly but build fabulously wealthy cities and strong units, etc.

Barbarians are awesome. They can't build as much high-end infrastructure – universities, cathedrals, etc – as High Men or High Elves, but they grow very quickly and their regular troops get an additional thrown attack that acts as a first strike on offense and gives them a big edge over most other regular troop types.

My first act as despot is to crank my paltry fortress mana generation into my mana reserves – this is going to be key to fulfilling my campaign promises. In the meantime, I summon up some Sprites to assist my spears and swords in early scouting duty. I find a surprisingly low amount of unguarded ruins, which kinda sucks. On the other hand, there's a lightly defended hamlet of neutral High Men nearby to the south, so both of my scout Sprites head over to take it on.

In Master of Magic, you gain mana from various sources starting with your Wizard's Fortress. You can assign your mana income to three things: reserves to be spent casting spells later, research to discover new spells, and skill to be able to cast faster.

Sprites are cheap, summoned flying units with a weak ranged attack. They make excellent early-game scouts and ranged support, as ranged units typically don't come into play until a little later in the game due to building prerequisites and cost.

And lose. Sigh. Sprites aren't quite as good at killing crappy swordsmen as I remembered. The good news is that one of them survives and continues scouting as my regular army moves in. Supported by proper troops, I conquer the place without further issue. Also, my capital has a granary, at last! My already-fecund people start multiplying even faster, and my smithy goes to work forging swords for the bloody work of subjugating Lo Pan, who conquered a much larger High Man town to my west and has to be dealt with quickly before he out-booms me. 39MP Warbears are going to be a big help here.

Lo Pan has a couple of crappy heroes and some shaman (what is it with the AI and building a ton of shaman? They're way too expensive to use as the ranged backbone of an army), but spends his magic foolishly casting phantom warriors, which are easily dispatched by my sprites as my superior warbears and barbarian hordes chew through his ranks. The town is mine, and his capital follows shortly thereafter.

Enemy wizards are your rivals in Master of Magic. They have all the same powers that you do, and are ultimately the biggest obstacle between you and world domination. Fights against enemy wizards are much more dangerous than neutral forces, as they can fling nasty spells at your troops or summon additional units to the battlefield.

The battle for Lo Pan's house is probably the closest match I've ever seen in MoM, mostly because he casts a fire elemental instead of more phantom warriors and I forgot to alchemize myself some mana beforehand, so I can't cast much at all. I get a couple lucky rolls and make good use of my dudes (and particularly my barbarians' throwing attack, which they only get on offense, but is amazing).

Anyway, the point is that I prevailed, and now have three decently sized cities and a small one, which I have to imagine is a fairly sizable lead. The bad news is that I have no mana generation (I'm actually running a deficit with my mana slider maxed just from keeping up my summons) and a single crappy hero (Valana the worthless Bard) hanging out at my capital. Anyway, I use this breather to conquer the rest of Lo Pan's former empire and get a farmers' market and a few settlers built in my capital. I really want to raise taxes, but I need to get more religous infrastructure in place – going to 1.5 taxes, where I like to be, ends up with two rebels in three of my cities. Lame. The warbears get dismissed after finishing up Operation Lo Pan, since they're two mana per turn and I don't have any current enemies.

Heroes are a big deal. They can grow to truly immense power levels with experience and magical artifacts – but you have to keep them alive in order to do so. Bards are generally the worst type of hero, as they back up mediocre melee ability with slight spellcasting. Lame. I'd much rather have the drake-riding Draconian or lightning-shooting Warlock, but I'm at the mercy of random chance here.

Taxes are necessary to maintaining empires, just like in real life. Each building and most regular (non-summoned) units require gold upkeep, plus you can alchemize gold into mana or spend it to rush construction in towns. Having a strong economy is critical. However, the higher you raise taxes, the more unrest you have in your cities. Crank up the tax rate too far without religious buildings or strong garrisons to quell the unrest, and your productivity plummets as your people refuse to work.

Of course, three turns after I get rid of my bears Kali shows up with a bunch of halflings and heroes. Bad news. Really, really bad news. Fortunately, she is only interested in two things: taking my capital (which her stacks aren't quite big enough to do) and reinforcing her own. If she'd gone after my outlying villages, I'd have been in much bigger trouble, but I'm able to prevent any significant losses while swordsman production (every two turns, holla!) gets online at my capital.

My barbarian hordes are quite capable of defending my territory, notching several key victories in the field and capturing a strangely placed hamlet of Kali's to my north. The halflings are tough, but I've got a fairly serious numerical advantage due to my low swordsman costs – plus Kali's magic sucks on the battlefield. All she's casting is Life Drain, which is good for killing about half a unit of swords per battle – not a significant threat. Some time in here I remember that Nature is awesome for early-game barbarians: Giant Strength is cheap as hell to cast and buffs my thrown attacks in addition to melee strength. Once I remember this, I start kicking a bit more butt, as alchemizing the significant taxes from my backcourt empire of Men provides me with plenty of mana for slinging spells.

Throughout this whole ordeal, I'm able to keep my Men on infrastructure-building duty since my capital is pumping out so many swords. I'm getting my granaries, farmers' markets, marketplaces built all over the place, so I'm going to be in a great position moving into the midgame.

Eventually Kali's left with little in the field, so Valana leads a stack of bears and swords (and my single remaining sprite, who is still somehow holding on) in search of Kali's fortress. We quickly find it, and reasoning that I don't give a crap about any of the units I may lose, I throw the stack into battle.

Hoo boy, did that not work. Her shaman tear through two units of swords before I even get a turn. I foolishly advance, hoping that she was just rolling oddly well. Nope, there go the rest of my swords. Retreat is my only option here, and the random number generator takes pity on my stupidity and spares the immortal sprites and Valana. Clearly I need a new plan, as my astrologer doesn't think much of my chances if I were to call of the war now.

The remaining sword reinforcements meet up with Valana and keep Kali bottled up while my capital quickly erects an Armory and a Fighters' Guild. Berserker production is now online, and Kali's days are numbered. (As a side note, I investigate my spellbook and discover that Resist Elements gives +3 defense against magical ranged attacks such as that employed by shaman. Yeah, that might make a difference.)

RED POWER! My gingers rip through Kali's defenses like nothing. The RNG is fickle and keeps Kali's basilisk from falling into the cracks I call at its feet, but it kills all of half a unit of 'zerkers before falling. The red hordes do absurd damage against anything short of third-tier summons or heavily enchanted midgame units, as Kali finds out to her sorrow.

And that's where I stop for the night. I haven't even explored my whole continent, but I've defeated two rival wizards and built a solid infrastructure. Valana is about to go dungeon diving behind a sea of spiky red hair while my citizens crank out the buildings necessary to fuel the next evolution of my war machine. Even if someone's waiting for me on Myrror with a mature empire, I should be able to get Paladins online before it's a serious problem. Things are looking good.

2010 MLB Season Simmed In Honor Of Nick Punto Day

Adam Biessener — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 17:24:00 GMT

It's Nick Punto Day! Don't ask me why. I just woke up to Twitter assaulting me with all kinds of sarcastic and amusing tidbits about our favorite Italian Stallion. For instance, you can check out his rookie Phillies card to see what a twelve-year-old would look like in a major league uni, courtesy of Minneapolis' own Phil Mackey.

Me, I remembered that I have a build of 2K Sports' MLB 2K10 at my desk, so I simulated the season to see how Visual Concepts thinks the year is going to go for Little Nicky.

Unfortunately, MLB 2K10 doesn't seem to have a terribly high opinion of the Twins going into this year. It should be noted that this version of the rosters doesn't include the recent addition of Orlando Hudson, so second base is a noticeably different situation than it will be in reality.

I could regale you with an after-action report about my digital 2010 baseball season, but we all know that Joe Mauer is the True MVP (actually, Grady Sizemore took that home with a mammoth .300/.385/.548 season [that's batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage] where he launched 38 bombs and stole 43 bags while knocking in 109 and scoring 122 runs himself) and everything else is immaterial.

Angels fans can take heart with fallen-from-grace prospect Brandon Wood winning the AL Comeback Player of the Year award, hitting .288/.379/.574 with 29 dingers. Captain Cheeseburger Sabathia took home the 2010 Cy hardware with a 3.88 ERA, 179 strikeouts, and a 1.37 WHIP – rough times for AL pitching, no doubt.

Things probably happened in the National League. I didn't pay attention until the Red Sox somehow managed to lose the Series to the Dodgers, with Andre Ethier knocking 6 out of the park and hitting .344/.440/.703 for the series.

Finally, the updates we've all been waiting for: Nick Punto's 2010 season. He split time at 2B and 3B with Alexi Casilla and Brendan Harris, hitting 11 (!) home runs in 312 while batting .269/.349/.429. There's no stat for headfirst slides into first base or gritty tough gamer firecracker play, but we can safely assume that he led the league in those critical categories.

Pitchers and catchers report in a week and a half. Can I just sleep until then?

The Best Game You've Never Heard Of: Spectromancer

Adam Biessener — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 20:38:00 GMT

What if I told you that Magic: The Gathering designer Richard Garfield had created a Magic-esque video game that included online leagues, a replayable single-player campaign, and didn't require shelling out for collectible cards? You'd be falling over yourself to hand over the $20, right? I thought so. You guys have great taste, and I applaud you.

Spectromancer is that game, and it came out in 2008. I can't fault you for not knowing about it, since it's literally my job to know these things and this one slipped under my radar, too. Now that it's got its teeth in me, though, I can't put it down. It's the perfect storm of accessibility, depth, and entertainment. Matches typically take between three to 15 minutes, and are packed full of tense strategic decisions. Best of all: you can beta test the expansion right now – which adds three new classes and new modes for both single- and multiplayer – for free.

The basic gameplay is much simpler than...well, anything. Each turn, you play one card – either a creature onto the field or a spell that has an instant effect. Then all of your creatures attack. That's it. Unopposed creatures hit the enemy's life total, and the first to hit zero life loses. It's simple but far from easy, as we'll see in a moment.

Playing a card doesn't remove it from your hand, nor do you draw any cards during the game. The twenty spells available to you at the start can be played over and over for the whole game. Thus the whole card advantage metagame of Magic, which ultimately determines the outcome of nearly every duel in that game, is not present in Spectromancer. Instead, the game hinges on tempo and mana advantage.

Tempo is a concept familiar to any experienced competitive strategy game player. Based on the condition of the board (here, what creatures are out and how wounded they are), one player is going to be active while his opponent is forced into a reactive state. At the most basic level, consider this:

Player A has three Trolls on the board, while Player B has two. If it's Player B's turn, he has an uncontained threat (the third, unopposed Troll) that he has to deal with or face getting smacked in the face for six damage every turn. He has to react to the threat, which limits his tactical options. Clearing the board via a powerful card like Stone Rain would eliminate his disadvantage, but would merely net him a one-Troll gain (since he'd lose his own two Trolls) for the high cost of casting Stone Rain and leave Player A with the next move anyway. Playing a creature strong enough to take on the unopposed Troll would even the odds, but likewise leave Player A with the advantage as it would be A's move with an even board.

If it's Player A's move, he can do whatever he wants. He could play a mana advantage card like Meditation, securing a better position moving forward while minimizing his exposure to "reset buttons" like Armageddon that could wipe out his whole army. He could play another creature, pressing his advantage and going for a kill. He could play Natural Ritual to heal up one of his Trolls (and himself) and thereby solidify his strong position without overextending himself. This is what having a tempo advantage does for you, and the gain and loss of tempo is as critical to Spectromancer as a Purple Jesus fumble in the NFC Championship is to football.

The second primary strategy vector is mana advantage. In Spectromancer, every one of your mana types (Fire, Water, Air, Earth, and your specialty) increases by one every turn. Playing cards drains this built-up mana. More expensive cards are obviously more powerful, letting you pack more punch into each turn and thereby gain a tempo advantage. Mana generators like Priests of Fire are tremendously powerful, as they increase the growth of your Fire mana by one every turn. Being able to play a massive Dragon instead of a puny Forest Sprite is a big deal.

These mana-producing creatures weave a second layer onto the battle for control of a duel's tempo. Elf Hermits and their attack power of one aren't a huge threat to your life total, nor do they control the board with any authority. Generating two Earth mana per turn and thereby accelerating the dropping of beasts like Hydras or Trolls is a game-changer in its own right. Protecting your mana accelerators while killing your opponent's can determine the outcome of a match on its own.

The variety and fantastic balance between cards elevates Spectromancer from a neat ruleset to a great game. Since the cards you draw at the beginning of a duel are your arsenal for the whole game, and you only have access to four spells at a time from each house, every match is different. A simple set of rules determining what you can get (you won't ever get stuck with all high-cost spells in a single house, for instance) keeps things reasonable, as does the outstanding balance between the different special houses. Garfield, along with co-designers Alexey Stankevich and Skaff Elias, has learned a lot since the days of Black Lotuses and Channeled Fireballs.

Spectromancer's multiplayer support is fantastic, with smooth matchmaking and global rankings. The expansion, League of Heroes, promises even more multiplayer bells and whistles. Since the demo allows online play with a single class, you'll unfortunately run into a ton of whichever free class is unlocked, but that's about the only bad thing I have to say about it.

In single-player, a three-act campaign slowly introduces you to new cards while throwing unusual duel conditions at you. One scenario might have a Fetid Swamp on the board that damages every creature in play each turn, while another features a creature you have to keep alive for a certain number of turns. Jacking the difficulty up and playing different specialties can wring hundreds of hours of gameplay from the single-player. The upcoming expansion features a whole new mode as well.

At $20 (or less from time to time, by the fickle whims of Steam sales), Spectromancer is a steal. I dare any of you to buy it and come back here and tell me you didn't get far more than your money's worth in entertainment out of it. Depending on my mood, I might even love it more than fellow low-price-point gems Plants vs. Zombies and Torchlight.

On Authorship And Vision, or More Reasons To Love Mass Effect 2

Adam Biessener — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 19:56:00 GMT

Mass Effect 2 is brilliant. We all know this. What I'm here to tell you today is that it's amazing for a bunch of reasons that you aren't thinking about, but that you should be. For a primer to what I'm getting at, go listen to our Mass Effect 2 special edition podcast, which you should have already done because our voices are like butter. And because you will finally understand Ben's odd relationship with fish.

We all would have been happy with a Mass Effect 2 that cleaned up some of the more egregious stupidities of the first one (the Mako and the inventory system, for starters) while clearing the high bar set by its unparalleled universe and storytelling. Nobody would have complained. Well, "nobody" in video game terms meaning "a small and easily ignored contingent of haters on the Internet".

BioWare had other ideas.

Instead of applying a few Band-Aids, the team performed major reconstructive surgery. Inventory system sucks? Gone! Mako sucks? Junk it! Progression is boring? Toss it! BioWare took one look at our expectations for the sequel, laughed, and made the game that they wanted to make. And the world is a better place for it.

I respect the studio more than ever for taking this route. It would have been far easier to do the expected, and nobody would've said boo. It takes both serious stones and a strong creative vision to mess this extensively with a successful game. BioWare took chances, set its sights high, and ended up making what will very possibly be the defining RPG of this generation.

Games are too often designed in boxes. The rules creating a military Shooter, real-time strategy game, or role-playing epic might as well be passed down on stone tablets from father to son. Who are you to deny your customers their expected skill points, randomly generated loot, and geometric XP curve? How dare you remove the safety net of a predefined narrative? I know you've been telling me that I'm responsible for the well-being of my team and the world in every RPG ever, but the ironclad plot has always determined who lives and who dies.

By stomping on convention, BioWare demonstrates something that sometimes feels lacking in gaming: authorship. Somewhere in Edmonton there is a vision for what Mass Effect is, how players interact with it, and why the limits that have traditionally bound video games don't apply to it. Mass Effect 2 feels like the antithesis of the designed-by-focus-group pablum that publisher executives love for its predictable return on investment. It's a bold statement by the developers that challenges our preconceptions as gamers, rather than catering to them.

I try to avoid hyperbole in my daily life, but we've been told for years that half of what Mass Effect 2 does is impossible. Every sequel to a game with multiple endings has to have a canon ending to the first one...unless it's Mass Effect. The fate of major story characters who are deeply entwined in the narrative has to be prescribed by the author...except for in Mass Effect. No doubt some of this towering accomplishment is made possible by the enormous piles of money dumped into the project, but all the outsourced art in the world can't craft the kind of compelling, mutable narrative found here.

As you may have guessed, I'm pretty excited about Mass Effect 2. How about you?

Next week: BioWare calls me to let me know that level progression tested poorly in focus groups and EA executives made them streamline the game against their wishes.

My Games of All Time are Better Than Yours

Adam Biessener — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 18:51:00 GMT

Believe me, you're not the only one up in arms about our Top 200 Games of All Time list from issue #200. From calls from my brothers to Facebook messages from dudes I went to high school with, I've been hearing about it from all quarters. Every time, my response is the same:

"I hear you. You think I didn't fight those battles before we published?"

I'm not trying to present myself as some selfless martyr for the more discriminating gamer. Everyone on staff has their own issues. I'm sure Joe wanted Vagrant Story or some garbage on the list, Miller wouldn't say no to like every freaking music game ever made. Ben...well, fill in your own ridiculous assertion for Ben. The point is that the list is a compromise; for every Heroes of Might & Magic III there, I have to suck up a Punch-Out.

Today, though, it's my blog and I don't have to compromise on nuthin'. I present to you the most egregious snubs I can think of.

Master of Orion, Master of Orion II, and Master of Magic

These old Microprose 4X titles probably crush Civilization and World of Warcraft combined when it comes to the amount of time I've spent with them. They each have their own special place in my heart. MOO updated the old Reach for the Stars formula and provided a great macro-level space sandbox to build an empire in. MOO II introduced me to the hilarity of overpowered ship designs (you think you can front on autofire phasers, but you would be wrong. You haven't lived until you've blown up the entire Antaran home fleet with a half-dozen cruiser-class ships). MoM is still my favorite concept for a strategy game ever, with heroes who level up and massive, world-breaking magical spells at players' disposal grafted onto a solid 4X core. Hilariously broken and imbalanced, of course, but good enough nonetheless to inspire me to win with just about every starting position imaginable. I really, really hope that Stardock does its legacy proud with Elemental.

Deus Ex

Yeah, it's on the list, but nowhere near high enough. Deus Ex might be my favorite game of all time; I can never decide between it, Baldur's Gate II, and whatever 4X I'm currently obsessed with. I haven't seen a gameworld crafted that even comes close to the fascinating fiction of Deus Ex. I don't care if the textures are dated and the character models embarrassing in their low polygon counts nowadays. Everyone should still go back and play this masterpiece. Twice. It's that good.

Empire

Empire is more or less the original strategy game. Cities pop up on a randomly generated map. Each turn, they can work toward producing one unit. When that's done, the unit is ready for use. Players take turns moving their pieces, taking over more cities to produce more armies to conquer more territory. It's like Advance Wars, but in some ways better -- and it was released in 1983. There's a great history written by the game's author here; I suggest you check it out.

Rogue

Rogue is to RPGs what Empire is to strategy games. The first computerized implementation of a system similar-to-but-legally-distinct-from Dungeons & Dragons, Rogue had me diving into the Dungeon (there was just the one) late into the night as a kid. The "roguelike" genre still exists, as evidenced by Japanese console releases like Chocobo Mystery Dungeon and Shiren the Wanderer. More importantly, there's a fantastic game called Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup that you should totally play because it's free and awesome. It's kinda sad, but I've been neglecting Dragon Age for Crawl lately. It's that good. Just don't freak out at the permadeath; it's part of the game.

Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord

Whatever Rogue didn't do for RPGs, Wizardry did. This party-based dungeon crawl is still cited by developers from the U.S., Japan, and Europe as a primary inspiration. It's still reasonably playable, though the lack of an automap is rough. You could check out The Dark Spire instead, which is a reasonably recent DS ode to Wizardry. Don't come crying to me when you die, though. It's meant to be hard.

Myst

Seriously. Myst. I'll let someone else write the paeans to its glory since adventure games make me want to chug Drain-O, but c'mon. Freakin' Myst. Sigh.

Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon

Still the best business sim ever. I can go back and play this thing for hours, even today. I learned more than anyone should ever know about the minor cities that dot the U.S. countryside from it, too. Decatur's a gold mine if you exploit it properly.

And there you have it. Yes, they're all PC games. That's because PC games are awesome, and all y'all need to respect your roots. Besides, I was conquering galaxies and buying out rival corporations while console suckers were stuck having to pretend that learning a rote button-pressing rhythmin Punch-Out!! was the pinnacle of gameplay.