Dark Souls Coming to PC, DLC Forthcoming

Now to contrast the unfortunate news of the previous post, here’s something we can all be thankful for.  From Software’s will be bringing their 2011 hit suicide simulator Dark Souls to the PC on 8/24.  “So what?” you might be saying.  “I already own it for the PS3 / 360.  What does this matter to me?”  Well you’ve got a lot of nerve, mister.

As it happens, the PC port will include some new DLC dubbed “Artorias of the Abyss”.  This will feature new areas, enemies, bosses and equipment.  Best of all, it’s going to be brought to the console versions this coming winter.  Happy now, you lousy ingrate?

Pictures of my Gaming Collection – Summer 2012 Edition

Hey folks, I’ve decided to redo my collection shots! Why? Well, I’ve gotten new things, I’m in the process of getting rid of several games, and for some reason I really liked doing this last time. I think it allows me to see what exactly I have and …gloat or something? Anyway, you can compare these shots to last December’s if you’d like. And as before, the pics are after the jump. There’s a little more reconstruction to do, and some of these may change in a week or two.

Eurogamer Unearths Second Sight

I am a fairly big fan of Free Radical’s Second Sight, a game that got lost in the midst of massive releases (Half Life 2, anyone?) and the more advertised Psi-Ops from Midway. However, Eurogamer does the gaming world a service by revisiting the forgotten title, analyzing its various qualities and recommending a playthrough. It is indeed a splendid little game, hampered a bit with some convoluted controls as the article states. Still, if you can bypass that issue, you’ll be rewarded by the game’s fascinating plot (which I warn you now the article completely spoils the twist at the end!) and well-done gameplay mechanics.

Wildcat’s Fifteen Favorite PC Games

Well, I fell off of the “favorite games per platform” bandwagon for a couple months…school can do that to you, I suppose. With a bit of a break in my workload, I wanted to finally share my personal picks for the best in PC gaming enjoyment.  This will include Commodore 64 titles alongside the contemporary. Let’s start!

Portal (Valve)

Portal really is one of the most astoundingly brilliant games I’ve played. It balances an amazing gameplay mechanic, clever level design and a gripping narrative into one seamlessly glorious experience. Well worth looking into this one!

Morrowind (Bethesda Software)

Morrowind is by far one of the most engrossing games I’ve sunken time into. I love wandering around in its vast world with my avatars, creating their mythos and fleshing out their characters. The combat is a little boneheaded, but otherwise I have no complaints with this game whatsoever. More on it here.

M.U.L.E. (Electronic Arts/Ozark Software)

Man, I am still stunned this game is as old as I am, because it’s so sophisticated for its age (see here). The creators of M.U.L.E. were incredibly progressive, and this gem of a strategy game shines because of it. Consider Planet M.U.L.E., the game’s modern update, if you’re curious to try it out.

Deus Ex (Eidos/Ion Storm)

My first taste of the gameplay philosophy of Warren Spector went incredibly well, I must say. This melding of FPS and RPG is wonderful to play, and it provides plenty of replay thanks to its extensive skills/augmentation tweaking.

Age of Mythology (Microsoft/Ensemble Studios)

I really like the mechanics of this game, making it one of the few cases of real-time strategy I’ve enjoyed. Although the difficulty is a little skewed towards experts of the genre (Medium brings the pain), I have relished playing all three civilizations and leading them to victory.

Heroes of Might and Magic IV (3D0/New World Computing)

This is such a great game, it really is. It may climb a little higher in time as I refresh my memory over the summer, but this is an excellent example of PC strategy at its finest.

Sam & Max Season 1 (Telltale Games)

I love these guys, I really do. I need to get more episodes. *ahem* The narrative power of the first three episodes is among the finest writing in any game I’ve played, and the quirky world of Sam and Max is endearingly charming (even with all the threats of violence!).

Agent USA (Scholastic/Tom Snyder Productions)

Edutainment done right. Agent USA mixes in compelling gameplay into its educational mission, and succeeds at both teaching and engaging the player. Kudos.

The Bard’s Tale II: The Destiny Knight (Electronic Arts/Interplay)

My favorite of the trilogy, probably due to it being the first western RPG to really capture my interest. It’s a massive beast of a game and I never got very far, but the atmosphere was compelling enough for me to think fondly of the time spent with it. More here.

Sid Meier’s Pirates! (2K Games/Firaxis)

Man, I really do love this game, too. I wish the “siege” and “stealth” parts of the game were a little better than they are, but this medley of gameplay concepts is otherwise exceptional.

Jumpman (Epyx)

While it appears to be ripping off Nintendo’s Donkey Kong at first glance, Jumpman is much more fluid and insane than Shigeru Miyamoto’s creation. Jumpman’s hazards vary greatly per stage, and it manages to feel incredibly fresh despite the initial “rip-off” impression.

Cave Story (Studio Pixel)

A rich, difficult and fantastic game. Cave Story channels a lot of nostalgia for the games of old within its design, and it’s all the better for it.

Diablo (Blizzard)

I like Diablo quite a bit, although I’m apprehensive at the difficulty climb. The town is a little too spread out for its own good, too. However, it is clockfull of intense gameplay and dark ambiance. I need to dig back in, methinks.

Age of Empires III (Microsoft/Ensemble Studios)

This is this low mainly because I couldn’t really enjoy it on my old PC due to it chugging horrifically. Now that I have a infinitely better laptop, I plan to revisit this and reconsider its status.

Way of the Exploding Fist (Melbourne House)

An early fighting game that really impressed me in my youth, even after exposure to Street Fighter II. Stunning animation for its age makes the gameplay flow smoothly, and its versatile moveset is rather robust for a game with a sole joystick and button to engage with.

Contenders:

The Bard’s Tale III: The Thief of Fate (Electronic Arts/Interplay)

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Bethesda Software)

Civilization III (2k Games/Firaxis)

Song Highlights – Heroes of Might and Magic IV, Final Fantasy, Blast Corps, Street Fighter II

Terrain Swamp, Heroes of Might and Magic IV (PC, 3DO/New World Computing, Paul Romero, Rob King, Steve Baca, Paul James)

Man, I forgot how lovely the Heroes music was until I was listening to a few of the songs recently.  This is among one of my favorites from the game.  I love the overall ambiance of the instrumentation and vocals.  Great song.

Temple of Fiends, Final Fantasy (NES, Square-Enix, Nobuo Uematsu)

I heard a remix of this Darangen did (I’ll put it up later on this week as part of the Spring Break Remixfest) and was reminded of how great the original Final Fantasy music actually is (apparently, this is a “something reminded me” type of post. XD ).  Anyway, this is menacing and well-tempoed.  A good way to build the tension on the way to Chaos.

Angel City, Blast Corps (N64, Nintendo/Rare, Graeme Norgate)

Surprisingly rocking stuff on the N64 soundchip.  Rare was no stranger to making that thing rock, but this is one of the better examples of a hard-hitting tune.

Chun Li’s Theme, Street Fighter II (Arcade, Capcom, Yoshihiro Sakaguchi, Yoko Shimomura, & Tetsuya Nishimura)

Another piece from the SF2 STK, this time the theme to Chun Li’s stage.  I like the distinctly Chinese sound this song eludes.

Assassin’s Creed III Reveal Trailer

Hey, that’s looking pretty sharp (punny, punny).  You know, I’ve stayed away from the Assassin’s Creed games.  I’ve yet to be compelled by them, but this particular trailer, with its unique spin on American Revolutionary times, may be the game that garners my first purchase of the franchise.  Between Jason and I I’m sure we’ll keep you covered on the game’s development.

Assassin’s Creed III Makes Like Prince, Heads to the Revolution

Well color me surprised.  An employee at Best Buy has leaked details to Kotaku about the new Assassin’s Creed, revealing that it supposedly takes place during the American Revolution.  Further, the new protagonist appears to be a Native American.  If true, this is definitely intriguing news.

The current rumor is that Ubisoft will officially reveal the details of the game on March 5th.  That leaves us with four days to wildly postulate just how you’re supposed to hop around from rooftop to rooftop in Colonial America.  Still, this should be a fun game.

Certainly better than three games in a row with Ezio.  The guy was great, but damn.  That was overkill.

Wildcat Update – It’s real!

News Roundup: 2/10/2012

Hey, it’s been a while. :p

Anyway, let’s focus in on a few things that have happened the last week.  First off, Atlus is making me happy by re-releasing Radiant Historia in late March for $35 – the game was getting pretty bonkers on the resale market and I had just about given up hope on it.  With any luck I’ll be able to snag it thanks to the reprint.  Thanks, Atlus, for listening!

As a pre-order bonus for Tales of Graces f (which is also coming this March, on the 13th to be exact), Gamestop is offering some of the bonuses Namco featured for its Japanese release – Tales of Destiny inspired costumes for three of the protags, plus a XMB skin.  Further details and a clip here.

Want 15 minutes of Gravity Rush footage?  Why not?

Fire Emblem: Awakening, the latest chapter in the excellent Strat-RPG series for the 3DS, is combining various bits and pieces from prior games, like Sacred Stones’ world map, and the My Unit feature from New Mystery of the Emblem (Japan-only DS) allows you to customize a main protagonist for the game’s plot.  It also is allowing more gameplay strategies by featuring multi-unit attacks and stat boosts, evolving the series’ character bonus perk.  Sounds wonderful – it may be a system seller if you localize it, Nintendo!

I enjoyed Portal 2 immensely.  I may have to get my hands on Thinkgeek’s latest product – PotatOS:

And since we’re marveling over cool stuff, let’s cap this with an insane Skyrim mod that depicts an epic battle:

Mad, mad kudos, Tyrannicon.

Gamer’s Playlist – Vikingguitar Shreds Apart Cave Story

I am a big fan of Vikingguitar’s work – he’s quickly become one of my favorite remixers with hard-hitting takes on Blaster Master, Chrono Trigger, Metroid, Castlevania and plenty more.  Recently he released a new EP focusing on games with robots called “Made of Metal”, and it’s full of Cave Story remixes such as this one.  This reaffirms my belief in his excellence – I hope you feel the same.

His Bandcamp page can be found here.

Make or Break – Tutorials

Man, I really meant to do these more than every one and a half years. XD

Anyway, welcome back to Make or Break, where I analyze a particular aspect of gaming, with good and/or bad examples.  Last time way back when was Sound Repetition, a rather lovely topic that spun around several games like Madworld, International Superstar Soccer 98 and King of Fighters, discussing how the abuse of sound and voice can be okay in some cases and not in others.  This time, I’m going to dig into the tutorial aspect of games.  Let me begin with what inspired me to write this in the first place.

I really want to love Zelda: Skyward Sword.  It does a lot of things beautifully.  It looks incredible, has some astoundingly good music, the motion controls are mostly solid and fun to play around with, and the dungeons and bosses are up to the usual Zelda standard, if not more so in some situations.  However, it suffers from a particularly fatal flaw in that it truly must think that the player is a fucking idiot.  Fi, a fascinating character design with moments of awesomeness, unfortunately gets saddled with being the most overbearing nuisance of a guiding figure I’ve experienced in a long time.  Her computer-styled personality does not aid her in this regard.  She has a nasty habit of overexplaining the obvious, offering advice when it really wasn’t necessary, and, through her ability to allow Link to dowse for items and people, forces the player to mandatory open the dowsing menu whenever she creates a new one, even if the location is clearly somewhere the player can get to without the dowsing (i.e. getting to Lanrayu Desert).  She could have been a contender for coolest assistant, but Midna continues to wear that crown.

Beyond Fi, though, it boggles me to no end that Nintendo must sincerely suppose their Zelda fanbase has forgotten how the franchise works, or that they need constant refreshers on common items, because it takes the pleasant “you found a ‘item’” messaging to the extreme in Skyward Sword.  In Twilight Princess, it wasn’t too bad getting the occasional 20+ rupee notice, but did they take it to fucking 11 here with the consistent stopping of the game to prattle off whatever crap you picked up each and every time you start the game up.  I don’t need to be reminded about the Jelly Blob all the time, and I certainly do not need to be shown where it is in the damn menu EVERY startup.  It really makes the game drag in short playthroughs, which is what I’m able to do right now.  It’s truly a shame, because that one quibble is enough to ruin what is otherwise exceptional gaming joy.  The game just can’t stop tutoring the player.

Another example of tutorial done wrong is the lengthy Oblivion intro.  It seems I find myself attracted to nitpicking Oblivion in these articles, and it’s not anything deliberate (despite my belief it’s the weakest of the four I’ve played in the Elder Scrolls series), but let me explain my grief and maybe you’ll see why I’m attacking it again.  Oblivion begins with Uriel Septim marching into your jail cell (as a sidenote, why are you always a criminal when you begin these games?), which features a hidden passage.  He’s under attack from Morag Bal’s minions, and the Blades, his bodyguards, believe this is the safest route out of the castle.  Septim chats you up for a while, which always the player to determine their class, race and facial features, and then the group march off.  Since you’re not an fool, you follow behind in order to escape yourself.  Well, this is all well and good, but this soiree becomes a 20+ minute dungeon crawl that forces the player to experiment with gear and quickly learn the ropes in a confined, anti-Elder Scrolls fashion.  You see, the beauty of this franchise is to be able to create a hero or heroine (or villain or villainess, or anything in between, really) and let them be exactly what you think they ought to be.  This tutorial breaks that mold.  It drags on and on and on, forcing you into situations you may not want to do (like getting face-to-face with goblins, say), and requires use of items or weapons you may not care to use (the bow, for one).  I was very pleased Skyrim ditched this approach and allowed for a shorter, more engaging introduction to its world, and it gave the player the chance to determine what they yearned to be and act upon it.

For a tutorial done right, it may surprise you to learn that I consider Dead Space Extraction to be one of the finest tutorials ever implemented in a game.  It’s unobtrusive, popping up if it feels the player needs some guidance, isn’t backed by some annoying buzzer or garishly large font (it’s tucked under the RIG bars dead center), and it doesn’t interfere with the enjoyment of the game.  It’s the ideal system – helping when it needs to, and leaving the player along if they don’t.  Even the later Dead Space 2 didn’t quite master Extraction’s smooth tutorial explanations, preferring to go a more or less Skyward Sword route with pop-ups that block chunks of the screen that force the action to grind to a sudden halt.  They at least don’t occur in battle often.

In conclusion, I feel that the aiding of players to understand mechanics needs to be more than an afterthought and done in a way that it doesn’t hinder the overall experience.  The ability to shut off tutorials and hints would be a good place to start, as would following Extraction’s example of detecting the player’s ability and giving appropriate response (or lack thereof, if they seemingly have got the game’s controls and abilities down).  Perhaps making the tutorial a completely separate level that can be bypassed (a la Half Life or Perfect Dark) by expert players or those just wanting to get their feet wet would also be a good plan.  Tutorials can be beneficial, but only if they treat the player with the proper respect.  Don’t drag it out, don’t belittle the gamer’s intelligence, and don’t make it mandatory (at least for replays).

I may expand this down the road, but as of right now I’m pretty pleased with it and feel it expresses what I want it to.