The August Madness

August was pretty crazy for me. Parents went on vacation for two weeks and came back with a bad flu, I worked like crazy at the Tim Hortons because a few other bakers were on vacation and I barely had time to write anything. So I basically took two weeks off. Not like there was anything interesting anyway...

I wrote a very quick news post today on Bitmob about Jane McGonigal and co.'s new project, GAMEFUL. Check it out, it sounds pretty awesome. 

As far as my own writing goes, I'll also try to get back into reviewing indie games and iPod Touch games. Hopefully I'll be able to keep up a good writing rhythm with university starting in a week.

I've got a plan.

My plan is simple. Each week until IGF 2010, that's about 16 weeks if my calculations are alright, I will make a review of one of the 306 entries for this year's IGF. And I may even try to get the GW community to get interested in indie gaming by making them participate in some way.

I guess I'm putting this together pretty quickly but I needed to get a post out here to at least force me to actually make it. I'll iron out the details this week but I have a name: The Road to IGF 2010.

Machinarium and Kill Screen

First thing first, my review of Machinarium is up on GW. Check it out dudes and gals.

Second thing, thanks to the lovely Leigh Alexander (birthday girl today), I found out about the upcoming new gaming magazine Kill Screen. Looks like someone is finally making the kind of gaming magazine that I've always been looking for:

"We were asking "Why doesn't something like this exist?" We talked about games all of the time but there wasn't something that met the bar, both intellectually and aesthetically, for this genre. That's not to say there aren't lots of lovely blogs that write wonderful things about games and their obvious cultural import, but we wanted something we could hold. An artifact. An object. It had to be beautiful. The sort of thing that stays on your shelf and you pass on to your children. We wanted Kill Screen to be an heirloom."

The only gaming magazine I was ever subscribed to was (shamefully now that I look back on it) Nintendo Power. I will now have to look for a place to store all those old mags to make place for the new ones if they, hopefully, make more than one issue. Suffice to say, their vision was enough to sell me backing them up with a nice 50$. Can't wait for more info on this.

Oh yeah, I had a blog.

After a few months hiatus of Press A to jump, I am back in force. I am writing a bunch of stuff right now and I may as well post what I do here. So here's a link to two reviews I did on iPhone/iPod Touch games for GamingW.

Enjoy

Critic vs. review

From Destructoid:

"However, I'd suggest that all contributors to the specialist games media should err on the side of criticism - they are, after all, writing for gamers, not casual onlookers who happened to have glanced a game review while looking through a newspaper."

I totally agree on that point. The issue here is that most gamers don't make the difference between a review and a critic. A review is simply pointing out the pros and the cons of a game in order to give an idea if I should or not buy the game. A critic may give a quick overview of those points but will rather look at the themes of the game's story, the different gameplay methods used and if it's relevant to the media as an whole, especially to such a young media as gaming. Games like Mirror's Edge needs reviews and critics to look at both side of the issue. One to look at "if gamers are gonna like it" and the other to look if it will leave a mark in the history of the medium which will interest more the academics than the gamers.

It's also a matter of where you're looking. If I want a deep critic of a game, I'll go to the escapist, not Destructoid.

Also @ Cyberxion
"Why does Wario get slammed almost entirely for its lack of innovation, whereas a game like Megaman 9 gets a pass? "

It's because Wario as the pretencion of being a new game but does little to actually do anything new. From a reviewers standpoint, it may not be a bad thing ; don't fix what isn't broken, but from a critic point of view that game isn't really relevant. Megaman 9 on the other was made to be some kind of window to an older era. It gives a glimpse to younger gamer of how it was back in the days. It's like making a movie in black and white in 2008. The style (and gameplay in the case of a game) is the same but they rely on modern technology. You may argue that gameplay evolved since then and you are right but gameplay is also a very important aspect of the medium and had to be the same for the main goal of the game from a critic standpoint "opening a window to the early NES era" to succeed.

The boys(or girls) are back in town

I know I have a weird definition of tomorrow but I got busy with a lot of work related stuff and that led me to not have much time to write a proper review for Saint's Row 2 for last thursday. I know it's a lame excuse but damn I wish I could win the lottery so I could just focus on writing and school. But since I doubt it's going to happen, I will just have to try harder. Other then SR2, I also played a bit(and a real short bit) of Dead Space. I won't talk much about it since I gave this game very little time, but I can say that they really did a great job in giving it a scary, survival horror atmosphere. You feel alone, the corridors are dark and creepy, you can hear the monsters walking around you and you're not a beefy space marine. I wish I could play more with it but my october playlist is pretty filled(LBP and Fallout 3, which one of you should I buy?) and it seems I'm not the only one thinking that. But anyways, on to my short Saint's Row 2 review. Note that I haven't touched multiplayer and I won't take it into account.


Coming back to Stillwater after 5 long years feels just like it should. A feeling of familiarity but not without the changes of time. This feeling affects almost all aspects of Volition's crazy "gang simulator". But before going into the obligatory exercise of comparing this game to it's predecessor, let's resume the basic storyline. After five years in coma caused by the explosion of the ship your character was on , you wake up in a prison hospital, your appearance and maybe even your sex changed(I guess the explosion was pretty powerful), and you promptly escape with the help of little Carlos. From then on, you discover that the Saint's are no more and it's up to you to rebuild them. You go through 3 highly colorful gangs, killing your way up and disposing of their respective leaders. And once all that is done, there's always the big evil corporation to go after. As you can see, we are not breaking new grounds of storytelling here but that does not mean there's nothing to enjoy in it. Unlike GTA4, there's no pretension of having an immersive story. It's just the story of a violent gang leader, doing violent things to other violent people. It's still better than the story in the first game where you just have to substitute "gang leader" by "gang thug". Your character have at least some dialogues and emotions in this game. There are some particularly touching scenes in this game(not on the level of Lost Odyssey of course) but I won't spoil them.

To get back to that feeling of familiarity, the city of Stillwater changed but retained the same "out of a comic book" taste. the old areas were redesigned and new areas, almost all west of the original city, were created. A couple of new underground and inside areas were also created to expand even more the game playing field. The activities were also changed. They do not follow the formula of "one of every activity per gang territory" the first game used. All of the activities come in different numbers and they are based on location more than gangs. It forces you more to go around the city to find the different kind of activities as some of the more entertaining won't be near where you start the game. Not that getting around Stillwater was ever that hard. Talking of getting around, the game decided to take the GTA4 road and introduced us a new vehicles to use. You now have bikes, boats, copters and planes. It adds variety but beyond the bikes and the copters, you will rarely use boats outside of missions since getting around Stillwater is still faster with a car and much of the action is not on the coast and planes are just a pain to lift off. You can only use them from the only airport in the game and landing them in the city is well, as easy as it would probably be in real life. The activities themselves are rather entertaining and challenging but some are down right sadistic on higher levels. Missions to tend to follow the old "kill them, blow this" formula but they also try to vary the way you do it and I must say it worked pretty well. I never really felt bored of the missions.

But the feeling of familiarity also comes back with the less loved glitchess. I have seen less glitches in this game than in the first but the game did crash on me a few times and some glitches are really taking the fun out of you. The worst is, they are the exact same ones from the first game. Homies tend to get stuck or idle, civilian's car will try to ram you during missions or activities(and not the activities where they are supposed to like insurance fraud) like they hate you or something and targets will sometime spawn in walls making them very hard to kill without an exploding car at your disposal. At least the hilarious "dude, where's my car" glitch that made your car go suddenly invisible has not been seen yet.

So, what is this game worth ? I know october is going to cost a lot to gamers but I must recommend a buy for this one. If you feel bored of GTA4 and watch "big american titties!" with cousin Roman, just sell back the game and get Saint's Row 2. The fun will probably last you until the next sandbox game comes out.

Pros: Very high fun factor and replayability. Nice customization options.

Cons: Glitches tends to take the fun into the woods and shoot it in the head. And it's the kind of game where, sadly, glitches come as you explore more.

To conclude this short, written between reading a book for school and sleeping, review I will say that this game is the proof that just like movies, television and books, not all games needs to be deep and filled with meaningful themes. Sometimes all we need is some low intellectual entertainment with guns, explosions and tits.