Sparky

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon

May 062013

Status: Complete Most Intriguing Idea: I Love the 80s: the FPS! Best Design Decision: High walls around outposts Worst Design Decision: As usual, zombies Summary: Video game violence is mostly stupid and unbelievable. This makes Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon a superior FPS almost by default, as it is one of the few first-person shooters with a story and world dumb and ridiculous enough to match its gameplay. Sergeant Rex Power Colt punching a cybershark with his cyber-fist makes sense in a way that Dude McBro gutting a jaguar to make himself a new purse never did. What’s more, Blood [Read more...]

Guacamelee!

Exploratory Platformers, Short Take No Responses »

Apr 172013

Status: Complete Most Intriguing Idea: Transforming into a chicken to save the world. Best Design Decision: Enemies you can wrestle! Worst Design Decision: Bosses you can’t wrestle. Summary: To avoid the dreaded term “Metroidvania”, I’ll call Guacamelee! (really feels like it needs an inverted exclamation point in front) an “exploratory platformer” starring a tequila brewer turned Luchador named Juan. The game has many points of similarity with Metroid, with new combat powers serving to remove obstacles in addition to taking down enemies, and the chicken form mimicking some purposes of the morph ball. The world, however, is a loose web rather [Read more...]

Shooting and missing

Critique, Immersive Shooters 1 Response »

Apr 162013

The discussion around BioShock Infinite‘s combat doesn’t just involve the question of whether its quantity of violence is essential to the story (yes), or whether telling a story where its quantity of violence is essential is interesting or worthwhile (no). Some of the discussion has centered around the question of whether the combat mechanics are any good. Eric Schwarz has written a fantastic post that describes most of the combat mechanics, and I want to expand on it a little. Even though I think violence helps to express the kind of character Booker is, I don’t think the combat systems of [Read more...]

Thomas Was Alone

Puzzle Games, Short Take No Responses »

Apr 162013

Status: Finished Most Intriguing Idea: Introducing powers as characters Best Design Decision: Giving characters one purpose or power at a time. Worst Design Decision: Over-reliance on narration. Summary: I heard many good things about Thomas Was Alone last year but I didn’t get around to playing it until recently. It’s a minimalist platformer that tends more towards puzzles than reflex play, which is just as well since I felt the controls weren’t quite as crisp as I would like. The game starts off with a single rectangular character, the titular Thomas, and slowly adds new characters with different jumping and environmental characteristics. [Read more...]

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