While this news is certainly unrelated to my own backlogging progress, Andrew has just posted an excellent review of Hack ‘n’ Slash over at the Beat That Backlog YouTube channel. You can also watch it embedded below. I highly recommend watching it – Andrew has done an wonderful job at both reviewing the game and putting together a video that really captures the essence of the game.
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Oracle of Seasons was a game my brother and I got for a long car trip one day when we were kids. I can’t say I remembered much about the game except I know we got pretty far in it, and that it was all around a fairly good game. I went back to it recently since I thought it might be worthwhile to clear out my short list of handhelds on the backlog (anything for motivation, of course).
“Fairly good” is selling it short, though. Oracle of Seasons is downright amazing. It takes all of the great things about the previous 2D Zelda titles, sprinkles in a few elements from the 3D titles, and presents itself as a worthy addition to the Zelda franchise. That’s why it comes as a surprise to many people that the game was even developed by Nintendo. It was developed by Capcom.
Wow, looks like I got a lot more feedback on that last post than I originally anticipated! Several people, either in passing or via Facebook, mentioned some of the games I took off my backlog. It’s kind of flattering, actually, that so many people took notice of the games I pulled of the list. I wasn’t aware that this blog was hovering on so many people’s radars. Either way, the support everyone gave me has made me want to reassess my decisions and have another go at a couple of the games I eliminated, though not all of them will be returning to the list.
I’ve been playing through Scribblenauts lately, and one thing is becoming abundantly clear: I am not having a good time with it. It’s controls are beyond frustrating, and the puzzles, with their potential to be unique an interesting, are banal and repetitive. Two of my friends noted you could beat most of the puzzles with a helicopter and a rope. Their assessment was dead accurate.
As I ground my way through it’s 200 levels or so levels at a snails pace, I had to stop and wonder whether I was actually having a good time with Scribblenauts. I mean, playing this game was actually becoming stressful. So why did I keep pushing through it? To simply check it off my list and move on to the next game? Something seemed wrong about that to me.
It’s been a busy time for us lately, but that hasn’t stopped us from playing some more Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield in the meantime. We’ve got four more episodes up on YouTube, which you can watch below or on our channel. We’re also happy to announce that our good friend Michael Drewes has joined in on the Rainbow Six action. Seriously, how cool is it that you can still organize five player co-op games like this? It almost makes me disappointed that we’ll be capping our player limit at four once the more modern games.
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I’m proud to announce the start of our next Let’s Play adventure, Rainbowing Some Sixes, an online co-op play through of Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield and its expansions with my friends Andrew, Jeremy, and Dan. For the past several months we’ve been playing the classic Tom Clancy tactical shooters with the intent of going through them one by one, starting with the earliest and progressing to the most recent releases. We recently finished Ghost Recon and moved onto Rainbow Six 3 last week, and the new game was perfect time to get started on a new Let’s Play series of our co-op nights.
Already all of us are really enjoying Rainbow Six 3. The original Rainbow Six was the first game we beat together, and Andrew, Jeremy, and I (Dan didn’t join us until Ghost Recon) all had a positive experience with it. Rainbow Six 3 keeps what was most enjoyable about the first game but improves it in almost every way, and throws a heap of polish on top of it to boot. Jeremy commented that it seemed to be “the quintessential Rainbow Six game”, and I found it easy to agree with him. RS3 has a lot to offer for someone looking for a good multiplayer-based tactical shooter.
Overall, I think most of us are delighted to be moving away from Ghost Recon, a game that just took us about five months to beat. In order to keep our experiences with the Tom Clancy games interesting, we decided ahead of time we would switch between series whenever we beat a game. Ghost Recon presented an interesting problem though: it had two expansion packs, Desert Siege and Island Thunder, in addition to the primary campaign. Since none of us saw the use in returning to an expansion pack after a game was beaten, we decided to strong-arm it through the entire set of games in one go.
Needless to say, it took us a lot longer than expected.
Besides the obvious issue of syncing up everyone’s busy schedules for a night of co-op, most of the problem actually came from the expansions. The original game contained sixteen story missions, and each expansion contained eight. By that math, it should have taken us just as long to beat both expansions as it did to complete the main game.
Unfortunately, the expansions also came with what most of us perceived to be a drastic spike in difficulty. It was perhaps more subtle in Desert Siege, but noticeable in Island Thunder. Whereas we might finish have previously finished one or two missions of the main campaign in a single sitting, we were suddenly becoming bogged down in hours-long trial and error sessions against frustratingly hard enemies.
In fact, it’s not unfair to say that the AI cheated quite a bit in Island Thunder. If an enemy soldier became aware of your position, it almost certainly spelled immediate doom since enemies seemed to possess uncanny accuracy and instant reflexes. Therefore, the only way to beat each level was through trial and error to memorize troop locations. And even then you weren’t guaranteed a perfect play through. We played some missions for several hours on a few nights. Some of those nights we didn’t even beat the damn levels. Hell, I have recordings of us starting the first expansion in the middle of March. It’s really taken us that long since then get through them.
Now, it would be unfair to say that Ghost Recon is merely a broken game in some way. It’s not. It’s definitely hard, but otherwise its a wonderful game that really encourages tactical thinking and teamwork. Each mission gives you a lot of freedom in how you can approach your goals, and so there’s a lot of active strategizing that goes into each mission. And man, when you manage to pull off your plan just right, you feel like you’re the marines from Zero Dark Thirty. Besides that, the game can be ran in native resolution, and the graphics still hold up for a game from 2001.
I’m happy to report, though, that Rainbow Six 3 retains all of it’s challenge but dials back the unfair deaths by a substantial amount (you can hear me expressing my relief towards the beginning of the second episode). Yes, we do still get killed quite a bit, but the difference this time is that we aren’t feel quite so cheated by it. It won’t take us five months to beat the game, at any rate (at least we hope).
More than anything else in the new Super Smash Bros., I am most looking forward to the newly implemented For Fun or For Glory Multiplayer. I can’t say Nintendo has been entirely loyal to their hardcore fanbase in recent years, but I must say they’ve really hit the nail on the head with this idea. The moment my roommate Andrew told me about its inclusion, I knew I was pumped for this game, and I finally put down my reservation for it today (now to just pick up that 3DS…).
Here’s why I think the multiplayer split was a great idea: My gaming friends are divided into two groups when it comes to Super Smash Bros. – the no items, Final Destination only group, and the all items (minus Smash Ball), any stage group. We have constant arguments over which mode to put it on, and almost always wind up switching our game settings in between matches when the controllers trade hands. Oftentimes it’s a compromise between the two play styles, but this inevitably leads to some friction between players when someone feels they’ve been cheated from a fair fight. Super Smash Bros. has it’s classic holy wars: Up vs. y-button. Time vs. Stock. Brawl vs. Melee. But the iconic Glory vs. Fun debate is a particularly prickly issue – one that divides people on how the game as a whole should actually be played.
Patience certainly has its rewards. After hours of hard work and sacrifice, Andrew and I finally beat Super Meat Boy. While both of us had a hell of a good time playing through the game, I don’t think either of us were expecting the level of challenge we faced during the last couple of levels, including the ones we beat during our previous Let’s Plays. On top of that, we only achieved the minimal level of completion in this game. If we really wanted to get serious, we’d have to do all of the bandages, the A+ times, the dark world, and all of the hidden portals. Not to mention the unlocked seventh world, Cotton Alley, which I’m not even going to try to attempt to do (for now, perhaps….). Super Meat Boy is truly not a game for the faint of heart.
To me, racing games fall into one of two categories: uber-realistic racing simulators like Forza, Gran Turismo, and Need for Speed, or their fictional arcade counterparts like Mario Kart, F-Zero, and Cruisin’ USA. I don’t necessarily feel worthy (for lack of a better word) to play racing simulators, since I basically don’t know shit about cars, so that left me to enjoy the games within the latter group for most of my life.
Burnout, though, was really the best of both worlds. My friend Randall introduced me to Burnout 2 right around the time it had come out the United States, and for a while we enjoyed it thoroughly on our old GameCubes. The environments were beautiful and the maps reflected the feel of real city streets, with simulated traffic patterns and highways that were all connected to one another. The crashes were wonderfully simulated (and were, in fact, a major component of the game). Hell, even your turn signal would blink as you were about to go around a turn.
This past week I tried out Crusader Kings II, a game I actually received for free as a gift from a friend. I recall seeing him play it and realizing how deep the game play went, but let’s just say I wasn’t prepared for how… intricate the game really was.
Crusader Kings II is crack for micro-managers. It is a grand strategy game set during the high to late middle ages where you take control of a dynasty and grow it to become one of Europe’s most prestigious royal families. I say you take control of a dynasty rather than a kingdom because you aren’t truly in control of a kingdom – you are just the person holding that title. In reality, there may be dozens of duchies, principalities, or jarldoms underneath you, all of which compose your kingdom. In turn, those duchies are ruled by your house or other houses, all of whom seek more favor in your court, or who may even desire the throne themselves.
Hell, you don’t even have to start out as a king yourself. The game map, which stretches from Iceland in the west all the way to the Tibetan plateau in the east, is divided into hundreds of counties that make up the vast empires of medieval Europe, India, and even parts of Africa. It is entirely possible to start as “Duke Nobody of Nowhere” in the middle of Who Gives a Damn and build your house up to be rulers of the Holy Roman Empire.
What’s even more impressive is that the game is uber-historical, with the map constantly shifting with the times. In 1066 you may be William the Conqueror as he begins his invasion of Britain, whereas in 1187, depending on who you are you may be launching the Third Crusade, or defending against it. Each ruler even has a button which links to its Wikipedia page. The vastness of knowledge this game has to offer is simply mind-boggling.
However, after doing a little research today, I discovered that Crusader Kings II is a game that has no real objective. There is a de facto objective of simply obtaining more prestige than any other house in Europe, but it isn’t a stated objective, and it seems like there’s no real fail state in the game either. Rather, I’m invoking Rule #6 of the backlog and striking it off the list.
Don’t get me wrong, of course. This is definitely a game with a lot of depth, and one I’m definitely going to be returning to explore in the future. But for now, there are still plenty of games to be beat. One day, though, Crusader Kings II will return.
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