Eador: Masters of the Broken World will keep you busy for a very long time. That’s not to say the gameplay is bogged down by clumsy GUI problems or that it proceeds at a snail’s pace. Rather, it gives you a series of randomly generated miniature fantasy worlds to conquer, and the worlds are rich with challenge and opportunity.
Read more »
In this episode, Jonathan’s finally finished Bioshock Infinite and he has stuff to say.
Before that, though, Sam tells us about his new internet service, and Alex tells us about previews of XCOM: The Bureau.
Sam is actually still playing Uncharted 2, rather than having finished it like I might’ve written in the show notes last week. He has, though, completed Candy Box, and has also played his first Zynga game, What’s the Phrase?
Alex is in the beta for Card Hunter, and it’s exactly what he thought it was going to be and that’s great news. He’s also been playing Monaco, and so long as you don’t mind throwing stealth out the window, you’ll have a great time playing it with friends.
All Jonathan talks about this week is Bioshock Infinite, and he doesn’t have particularly good things to say about it. This isn’t because the game is particularly bad, but more because the media surrounding the game made it out to be something far greater than it really is.
The Holmberg’s official rating for Bioshock Infinite: Rent it.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Platform: Xbox 360, PS3, PC, Mac
Developer: Irrational Games
Publisher: 2K Games
Genre: 1st Person Shooter
Rating:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
I don’t get packages often, folks, but when I do–and this isn’t a “Most Interesting Man In The World” thing–it’s always a surprise. This time, it was a preview copy of the Crysis 3 strategy guide, made by Bradygames.
Now, I’m no stranger to strategy guides. I played many a JRPG in my youth, and got the strategy guide along with the title to ease my way along. My last strategy guide was for a recent JRPG, a big hardcover book, with a stylized format almost an inch thick.
First, the book itself. The book is made of high quality stationary, and has a big picture of the protagonist, Prophet, on the cover. Once I wrangled it out of the packaging, it flopped around a bit. I wasn’t sure what to think.
That changed when I settled in to play Crysis 3 with the book next to me.
The book’s soft stationary and non-rigid cover fixed the largest problem I had with my last, not-to-be-named strategy guide; the hardcover book would randomly close on its own. The Crysis 3 guide can sit, unattended, open on the cushion next to me. It sits, patiently waiting for you to turn the page. It’s relaxed, knowing that your style of play may take more time per page than others.
Before I get to the content of the book, some background about me and the Crysis franchise first. I’ve not played the first title, and the second was something I enjoyed quite a bit. I lacked some background on the setting, though, and the second game was a bit hard to follow due to my lack of knowledge. The book in my hands took care of that though.
The first section of the BradyGames guide summarizes the happenings in the Crysis universe. It details the rise of the squid-like alien Ceph; the humans involved in the story; and their totally sweet Nanosuits.
I skimmed the controls section (as I had played the game before, and many other shooters at that), but still found some content interesting around the Nanosuit upgrades, which are summarized in four easy-to-read tables. It helped me pick out a combat suite for my playthrough quite nicely.
A neat summary of enemies was next. I had issues telling enemies apart in the game. Skimming this gave details about weak spots, weapons used, and locations throughout the game.
I read through the weapon section, though. The fiction around each of the guns, as well as the “dot-table” for describing strengths and weaknesses, was intriguing. I’m a sucker for a good setting, and it gave me pause and helped me take advantage of a few of the weapons I’d left unused so far.
In the walkthrough section, the real meat of the book, I noticed there are two separate playthroughs; one for the Sam Fisher / Solid Snake folks, and one for those of us who favor the Rambo / Schwarzenegger approach to problem solving. I took care to read through both.
I’m usually cautious about running into spoilers in these books. Have no fear folks, this strategy guide glosses over the major points of the story and doesn’t show detailed maps of single-palyer areas. The descriptions of the areas you traverse are covered with still frames and an easy-to-follow narrative.
The stealth walkthrough focuses on an almost pacifist approach, with tips for getting through certain areas with many of the enemies unharmed. The action playthrough, however, revels in every opportunity to dispatch as many of your enemies as possible with extreme prejudice, using fists, arrows, bullets, and high explosives. These two walkthroughs gave me a reason to play through a few troublesome areas again. I found myself saying, “Hey, there is a tunnel over there” more times than I’m proud to admit. That said, it added a layer of replayability to Crysis 3 that I hadn’t anticipated.
The last section of the guide focuses on the multiplayer content. I’m not a big fan of competitive multiplayer, but the toughest barrier to entry is getting to know the maps. Here is where the guide shines; it has detailed overviews of the game types, maps of the areas, and tactics for getting the most out of your time spent chasing others around a closed arena. It also details the many modules you work with in multiplayer.
In summary, this guide may not have added strategy to my rather boorish approach to shooters, but it did add replayability. It showed me the places I had overlooked in my mad quest to recover all my precious arrows. It gave me some alternate ways to get around the areas that had caused me frustration. The details on weapon types and uses helped me get the most out of my equipment, which would have helped a lot in my first few hours as the K-Volt isn’t the greatest for taking down soldiers. Who knew?
All in all, the book lowers the barrier to entry for multiplayer, adds richness of content to Prophet’s story, and gave me a reason to play Crysis 3 again. So if you’ll excuse me, I have some new hiding places to try out. That Predator bow won’t fire itself.
Your deck has agents, sites, and actions. Agents score points in a region commensurate with their power if left to their own devices for a certain amount of time. Sites do the same, but remain in a region. Their power can diminish depending on the strength of enemy sites placed in the same territory. Actions have a variety of powers, including the power to place memories back into your or your opponent’s hand, taking them out of the game altogether or even scoring points in regions directly.
The great constant in this game is time. A timer is constantly ticking away during the game, and everything you do takes a certain amount of time. Putting an agent or a site into play takes “half a day” (the game alternates between day and night icons and apparently considers each “a day.”) You only get cards in the middle of a “day.” Conflicts between agents take half a day as well.
So much like a true assassin, there’s a lot of timing involved here. If a big bad guy comes into play on your opponent’s side, and you know that it takes half a day for him to do anything, you might want to spring one of your agents on him at the last possible second in order to keep him out of the control of your opponent for the maximum amount of time.
At the end of a battle, you’re awarded a certain amount of currency with which you can buy more cards. You’re awarded more for winning, though, so you have a vested interest in making a winning deck of memories.
The Holmberg: Recollections’ timing mechanic is its most interesting feature, and its biggest downfall. Yes, there are interesting opportunities for stopping a big play right at the last second, but there’s also a whole lot of waiting around. Full days take at least a minute to cycle through, and when I sat down to time the rounds, I found that they get longer as the game passes.
I find this problematic for two reasons. One, at the start of the game your cash flow is extremely slow; it takes half a day to earn one florin. If you don’t have cheap cards right at the start, you’ll be stuck waiting, doing nothing.
Two, you only draw when a new day begins, so when you’re out of cards, you’re stuck waiting again. Even better, the turns are longer, and the computer often has cards that wipe out all of your agents, so you stand a good chance of yet again doing nothing. There’s nothing fun or strategic about waiting.
Those annihilation cards also remove from the game any sense of accomplishment. I didn’t outplay my opponent; I was just lucky they didn’t pull the right cards. Everything takes so long to resolve that you have no choice but to lay your cards out immediately, which plays right into the hands of a discard/counter setup. I’ve seen no way to counter an action card, leaving you entirely at their mercy.
I’ll admit I’ve not tried multiplayer, but the only thing that makes the game bearable is the “fast-forward” button, which can’t work in multiplayer, so no thank you.
Finally, a word about the story: it’s incomprehensible. Do these card battles represent actual battles or subtler political clashes? The story can’t seem to decide. Worse, it’s told in three-paragraph chunks that try to sound significant, but ultimately convey nothing.
The Producer: You will get no argument from me about the meaningless story in the single-player campaign. It seems like a convenient way to introduce key characters from the Ezio saga and/or themed decks, but ultimately it isn’t worth reading.
Regarding cash flow at the start of the game, there are many cards that boost your income across all the doctrines. You can not only win with an all-agent deck or an all-site deck, it’s also possible to put an economic beatdown on your opponent.
Yes, the waiting between moves can be aggravating. I recently had a match against an opponent that seemed to be nothing but denial cards. He had sites with which to earn points, and all my agents were eliminated from play via action cards. It felt like an agonizingly slow death, but even so, the match probably lasted less than 10 minutes.
The luck factor, however, is the same with any other CCG. The idea is for your deck to have a better system than your opponent. The more cards you have, the more you can tweak and improve the way it plays.
Recollections is unique, intricate, and free. It’s definitely worth a try.
The Holmberg: You can win with all-sites or all-agents, but have you accomplished anything?
Based solely off the cards I’ve been able to buy playing for free, I’ve seen too few cards with interesting abilities allowing for very little in the way of compelling combos. Magic may be luck-driven, but there’s skill in matching up and executing your various abilities. No such system seems present in Recollections, and if I’ve got to drop cash on premium boosters in order to see the interesting cards, the game’s not free anymore.
Recollections is slow, poorly balanced, and ultimately frustrating. It’s not worth your time.
I’m about to complete Tiny Tower (iOS, Android). As it stands right now, I am just twenty-four hours from the grand opening of a karaoke club in my tower, the last business I can build. Once open, all 285 of my bitizens (tower residents) will be working their dream job. I’ve completed all the achievements and all the missions. Soon, I’ll have nothing to do but wait for the next update.
“So what?” you may ask. “Games come to an end all the time.” Sure, but Tiny Tower is kind of like Farmville with a SimTower skin. It’s a freemium game. A freemium sim game should never come to an end. If you listen to the investors, a good game will keep you trapped in a constant cycle of mild discontent, with the promise of true happiness if you simply chuck a couple of bucks at the game. And yet, Tiny Tower is a very good game. Read more »
BradyGames was kind enough to send me a review copy of their Batman: Arkham City Signature Series strategy guide. I received it and then promptly set it aside because I didn’t want any spoilers. When I wrapped up the main story, I picked up the book and found it to be well-written, extremely pretty, and almost entirely redundant. Please understand, though, that it’s not BradyGames’ fault that their strategy guide is a bit pointless. They’ve put together a great book here.
The artwork and screenshots are fantastic: big, vibrant, and sharp. The information in the book is well-written and overflowing. Open to any page and you’re greeted with tons of character information, gameplay tips, and art.
By and large, the book is laid out really well; it’s clear and understandable. The sections flow naturally one into the other: gameplay introduction into character introduction, main story missions separate from Catwoman’s missions, side-quests then Riddler challenges. I do have a complaint about the maps section. I wish it had been organized geographically, rather than according when in the story you visit each area, but that’s a really small nitpick overall. I got used to it eventually. I’d also liked to have seen the Riddler challenges organized according to their placement in the Batcomputer, rather than their placement on the maps, but again, that’s a small complaint.
So it’s a great book all around, but unfortunately, that doesn’t make it any less pointless. The trouble is in Rocksteady’s design of Arkham City. All of the information you can get from the book is in the game. All the backstory, all the character information, even all the hints and tricks. When I couldn’t figure out how to fight Mr. Freeze, the game recognized that I wasn’t getting anywhere and had me pull up the Batcomputer, which laid out twelve different strategies where I only needed three or four. Even finding the Riddler trophies is handled in-game.
In the guide’s favor, I will say that a few of the trophies and challenges were a bit too challenging for me. In those instances, I did turn to the book for assistance. The maps were easy to read, and the tips were extremely useful, but I’m not sure I need a full book just for the ten or so riddles (out of 400+) that I had trouble with. BradyGames’ map app for iOS seems like the better choice, and Google is free.
If you want something more robust than a Google search and don’t have an iOS device, or if you’re a major Batman collector, then BradyGames’ strategy guide is for you. Otherwise, the design of Arkham City pretty much negates any need for a guide. On the one hand, you can’t fault Rocksteady for designing a great game. On the other, it’s unfortunate, because BradyGames put together a great book. It’s extremely pretty. It’s extremely thorough. It’s just not all that useful.
Platform: Xbox 360, PS3, PC
Developer: Relic Entertainment
Publisher: THQ
Genre: 3rd Person Shooter
Rating:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Platform: Xbox 360, PS3, PC
Developer: Team Bondi, Rockstar Leeds
Publisher: Rockstar
Genre: Action Investigation
Rating:
The Holmberg: Classic
The Producer: Buy It
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Reaching two hours in MindJack was difficult. The gameplay is dull. The story is incomprehensible. The level designs are boring. The dialogue is representative of the “best” of the early Resident Evils. All of which is disappointing because MindJack has some interesting ideas.
First, you can jump in and out of various innocent bystanders’ minds, commandeering them to fight for you. The trouble is, nothing changes when you jump into a new body. If unarmed, the mindjackee materializes a gun out of thin air, and the enemy immediately recognizes you as a threat, ruining any stealthy options. No special abilities. No new ways to overcome obstacles. Just another body for the firefight.
Also interesting, you can open up your game, allowing others to jump in and fight for or against you, gaining experience as you progress. Unfortunately, I never felt like I was playing a well-crafted single-player game, but rather a series of random multiplayer maps with some terrible connecting dialogue.
The gameplay is passable, and could be enjoyable if the story was compelling, but it’s not. Yahtzee explains why better than I can here. I’ll just say skip this one. MindJack didn’t deserve the two hours I gave it.
