The Wii isn’t the XBOX 360, Playstation 3, nor PC.  We understand you may be angry you got stuck playing a game on the Wii, but getting angry about Nintendo’s cheap-ass decision to skimp on the Wii’s hardware specs isn’t going to change the fact that the Wii platform, as a whole, is crap.  Coincidentally, it also won’t make Wii titles magically become HD-quality…SO STOP DINGING WII GAMES FOR CRAP GRAPHICS, adapt a professional standard where you grade titles based on the limitations of a system’s specs and how they make use of/take advantage of said specs instead of what they don’t have because the specs don’t do it.

Not meant as a knock at all to some of the smaller independent game review sites, but it’s just pathetic that the larger review sites—like IGN, Game Informer and the like—have such juvenile and short-sided “professionals.”  Why is that worse?  It’s how they are making their living, you’d think…well, I dunno.  That they’d know that kinda thing.  Unless it has a big fat “Nintendo” stamp on the label though, the dipshit is going to cry about it not being another noisy & washed HD title.

Have a goodnight, folks.

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Let me start off by saying that Halo: Reach is truly an awesome game.  I’m addicted to playing it, I’m eager to finish my second single player run-thru on the legendary difficulty and multiplayer has never, ever been better.  The achievements this time feel fair (I really hated the Halo 3 multiplayer achievements), I love the character customization, and combat’s exhilarating.  The only real big issue I have with the game is the story, and not even the story itself—more so the lack of what it could have (or, in my opinion, should have) been.  As a Halo fan, I was very excited to have a shot at being part of what would become known as the Fall of Reach.

To start with, one of the largest problems I have with the game is the cinematic style chosen for it.  Truth be told there is really not any “right” way they should have been done I suppose, it really just comes down to personal preference. 

Halo 3 introduced what I thought was a really poor game design choice—one I figured Bungie would learn from as any game designer can (or should) admit we’re all guilty of those “well, it seemed like a good idea at the time” moments…taking control away from the player.  You would have these moments where Cortana would kind of take over your vision, forcing you to move sluggishly…it wasn’t a big deal, but it bugged the hell out of me as a player and I’d hoped it wouldn’t return.  Which it didn’t, technically.  However in the cinemas you will often go into this forced first-person perspective for a good chunk of time.  While in this first person view, it feels like you should be playing the game yet you’re being forced to wait & watch instead…essentially like someone is grabbing your head and forcing you to look a certain way.

Which takes us into the next problem I had, the camerawork.  The cinematography is a mixture of handicam unsteady shots (similar-ish to the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica), mounted surveillance cameras (think dashboard cam, NASA camera on a shuttle’s rocket), and then more cinematic/major motion picture camera work which is more or less what’s been in the Halo franchise up until now…tack on to the end some kind of satellite imagery shots that are really glorified user interface stills.  It’s this mixture of camera work that leaves the cinemas feeling like they’re patched together and trying too hard to be too many things to me, like they couldn’t pick one to stick with so they just went at it with them all.  This may appeal to some people, but for me it just makes everything seem like it’s falling apart…incoherent, no focus.

So, that covers the cinemas…I think that if they would have picked one style instead of multiple slapped together it would have been a stronger focus visually & better convey the story elements to the player/viewer.  It felt like I was just playing a video game, not experiencing a story…and to be honest, that’s probably just fine for some folk.  I just expected better than “just a game.”

The second major area I had a problem with was the telling of the story itself.  Being a Star Wars nut and former writer of fan fiction for fun, I’ve learned the difference between assuming and not assuming things as far as telling background information to the viewer.  One of the only things I knew going into Reach was that Noble Team is not made up of Spartan II’s like Master Chief was, they are Spartan III’s—the mass produced version that’s of far less quality but a hell of a lot cheaper to make.  I did manage to pick up, on my own, that Jorge was a Spartan II though (the only one on the team), hence his much larger size than the rest of the team…I grasped this when Noble team meets Doctor Halsey and Jorge is the only one she recognizes (she’s the “mother” of the Spartan II program and knows every one of the Spartan’s as she recruited each and every one when they were children decades before).

Thing is, how would you know any of this?  My friend Eric is playing Halo for his first time here, which is kind of cool in one way (he can actually experience the story in order if he goes on to play Halo 1/2/ODST/3), he never would have known this back story.  However with just a bit of explanation through discussion, maybe an extra 60 seconds of story telling, any player could have known who Doc Halsey was or that Jorge is a Spartan II not III.  Halsey could have talked with Jorge and Carter taken a step back, then  the player—Noble Six—could have asked him who she was and explain she was the founder of the Spartan II program.  The whole game felt like it was missing these moments where the Noble Six character could have better fulfilled his role as “new guy/gal on the team” and asked pointed questions of the other Nobles to better explain the world to players.  Asking who Halsey is, while Emile has a chip on his shoulder, how Kat lost her arm, what a Spartan II is doing on a Spartan III team…the list goes on.  Instead, there’s no effort to answer any of these questions.

The Fall of Reach is a tragic event.  Very tragic, we’re talking about what’s the equivalent of a second Earth (in terms of civilization and population) being completely wiped out by alien forces that we’ve so far been completely ineffective at fighting against.  Billions of people dying, the planet being “glassed” as Covenant weapons super heat the sand (turning it to glass).  The general idea is given to us, but we’re never really shown the “before” as the game takes place during the “after.”  At one point in the game when you return to the city you find slain citizens all over, and any person capable of empathy feels a sense of loss for them however slight.  Imagine how much more horrifying a sight this would have been if you’d walked across these same walkways when they were full of people?  Perhaps at the beginning of the game, making your way to a transport to be taken to Noble team for your new assignment?  Kids running around, couples sitting, some jerk business guy cutting you off (and conveniently found slain by a news terminal later on)…the impact of the events could have been driven home far, far more effectively.

My biggest problem with this game however is the character development.  There are a few basic descriptions of character types in stories to describe (basically) the level of depth their character has…more often than not, for example, the protagonist (hero role, which is supposed to be Noble Six, I think—more on this later) is the majority of the time a “round” character.  Round characters have many sides to them that are all well defined and the reader is aware of them.  Antagonists (the bad guy) that are well fleshed out tend to be this type too.  Then there are dynamic characters (almost always the protagonist), flat characters (background characters), static (they do not change at all in the story), and stock characters (little depth, rely on stereotypes for the viewers to understand them).  Noble team is almost entirely made up of stock characters…Carter the clean cut military man, Kat the tough chick with an attitude, Emile the wannabe badass, Jun the quiet precise zen guy (for goodness’ sake he’s even a sniper).  Playing devil’s advocate, I put up the question “so…there are plenty of action movies with what you’re describing as stock characters.  What’s your problem?”

It all comes back for me to the tragedy of the story, and how it feels like Bungie was relying heavily on the player/viewer knowing this story and empathizing solely on the gravity of the situation instead of trying to make you feel like a member of this world, of this team, and the feeling of loss that comes with it.  If you’re familiar with the story ahead of time (the Fall of Reach, mind you…not the game’s story specifically), you know that no one left on Reach survives.  So as the game goes along (spoiler warning…) all of Noble team dies in the line of duty.  Since Jorge receives at least a little bit of character development time (while trying to comfort the girl earlier, and the farmers before that, we see how compassionate he is), when he goes there is a sense of loss—his sacrifice is felt.  However when Kat dies Bungie seems to hope the “women in the refrigerators” approach will suffice for us feeling her loss—which isn’t much of one as the only thing revealed about her up to then is she’s kinda bitchy?  She could have shared a sad story about how she lost her arm, or held out to the end and cracked her harder shell to show a little more of the human behind the standard-issue Spartan III nonsense.  Emile could have shown that instead of being some kind of badass (which was by far the weakest link—I was disappointed to see bickering within a Spartan squad, but then again they’re only Spartan IIIs so perhaps that’s why), he was actually just scared out of his mind and ashamed of it.  Perhaps confronting that fear later.  Carter…well, I don’t know.  Tales of his previous commands, further illustrations of him doing what’s right, etc.

It could have been much, much more with a more coherent vision brought to the cinematic approach and it’s story telling.  Sprinkling in a few story building moments at a few different points in the game, giving some character development time, letting you learn about this new world through the eyes of Noble Six.  Returning to the city to see it in ruins, thousands slaughtered, and feeling the rage build in you as you then head out and cut down every last one of the rotten Covenant scum that did this.  Revenge, justice, anger, sadness…could have all been there.  Unfortunately…they weren’t.  At least not for me, I was hoping for more and got a lot less.

In closing, one thing I meant to give a shot-out to and didn’t…the visual effects in Reach are absolutely phenomenal—amazing and inspiring work, just look at a waterfall and you’ll be amazed.  Dust kicked up has motion to it, there’s a real sense of atmosphere and weather around you, just wonderful stuff.

G’night.

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That said…what an odd mixture of pleasure & pain this game is.  For those that don’t know, Reach is all about the fall of the planet Reach during the war with the Convenant.  It’s the immediate precursor to the events from the first Halo game…when the Pillar of Autumn blindly jumps into the system that carries the first Halo ring in it, they were jumping away from the mass slaughter that was later called the Fall of Reach.  The book was amazing, very sad but exciting. 

Unfortunately, and somewhat shocking, Bungie decides to say “fuck continuity, we’re gonna rewrite it,” thus dissolving everything about that last epic battle you’d read in the book and loved.  I was a little shocked; I had a feeling when I saw the almost generic, Gears of War feeling characters in the first trailer that they were going down the path travelled by everyone rather than sticking to their less traveled path…it was that sort of moment where you know something’s going to turn out for the worst, but you blindly keep hoping it won’t be.  Then it is, and you’re still a bit deflated.  Reach is the perfect setup for a beautiful tragic piece, you see—there are no survivors.  Reach was the battle that kills all of the Spartans save for Master Chief, trying to defend the planet that ends up falling anyhow to the Covenant.  It could have been beautiful, even just taking the story from the book with minor alterations could have been amazing.

Sadly, the story in Reach is somewhere between bland and non existent.  You’re a generic, “mysterious background” guy or gal given the callsign Noble Six, filling a previously emptied gap in Noble team.  You discover none of this past aside from knowing how to pilot—which apparently everyone else does too so you aren’t so special—nor do you learn anything about the gap you’re filling.  The Spartans on the team are almost laughably bad, save for Jorge…I’m not sure why, but Jorge receives actual character development time (the only one in the whole game—and he dies first).  You have Carter, the standard issue GI Joe leader type with a perfectly generic voice to match.  Kat, the Russian tough chick.  Emile, the chip on the shoulder guy that likes knives.  Jun, the quiet sniper.  Then Jorge, the big teddy bear guy whom you see reach out to both a survivor and later Dr. Hallsey.

I came to wonder as the story just got more and more bland and forgettable if Reach is actually the equivalent of those action movies you see only for the action.  It’d be a fair argument I think, but given the immense amount of background detail and lore available it’s hard to accept that reason—as it feels more like an excuse—for what Bungie did to this game’s story.  The cinemas are horrible, while the animation is actually looking a lot better to me in this game than previous titles (and the character art) the cinemas are somewhere between amateur and embarrassing to watch.  It’s confusing, given Bungie’s past and their usual stellar job framing cinematic moments, but this just felt like it was lead by someone with no experience or clear vision.  No character development moments, you don’t really give a shit when someone gets killed, and it’s only the final shot of the final cinema that really evokes any strong emotion in me.

The few highlights of the story was the minimal amount of development time given to Jorge, seeing Doctor Hallsey for the first time (creator of the Spartan program and model Cortana was created from), and the short cameo Cortana makes near the end of the game.  I really think they could have gone an extra step and have you interact with—or see—Master Chief at one point as a bit of fan service.  Give you that feeling of passing the torch, so to speak.

So, story…overall it’s a big disappointing let down.  If you like story in your Halo games, just prepare yourself to be disappointed.  If you succeed with that—the rest is great!

Gameplay is what we’ve come to expect—it feels tight, it’s fun, the difficulty was a little higher than Halo 3 (a lot of playing in Heroic reminded me of Legendary in Halo 3).  Space flight was freaking awesome to me, perhaps a little simple but a lot of fun…I would love to see some kind of space flight multiplayer map come out for matchmaking.  I only really have two complaints…one, vehicles felt lighter to me in this game, I was flipping my warthog a lot more often than I remember (but, this could just be my own fault).  Second, the new armor abilities are great—armor lock, stealth, sprint, etc.  I was really disappointed though when I saw Elites using the armor lock ability though, down to the same animation…suddenly I felt less special to have the ability.  At the very least they could have done a unique animation that then made theirs seem different, or even better just given them a different ability than this one.

The sound was solid, though I have to admit I wasn’t a fan of the new grunts.  They certainly look creepier, but now they sound like rapid little beasts more than actual intelligent creatures.  This may just be a case of liking the way they sounded before this in all of the other games.  The music was a little bit ho-hum to me, just as ODST was.

Animation felt better across the board to me, I’ve never been a particular fan of Bungie’s character animation until now.  Characters felt like they had weight to them, animations blend a lot smoother and overall leave a much greater impression.

Art…gorgeous as always.  Amazing skybox matte paintings, environment is beautiful and looking better than it ever has and the characters look amazing.  I really like the character customization and that it persists in the (shitty) cinemas.  I like the new look for the Covenant, though the story lover inside of me is slightly annoyed they make a prequel that looks different than the sequels, the art itself looks great and the new direction is a good one.

Multiplayer…best multiplayer yet in the Halo series, and seeing as it’s what Halo is known for more than anything else this is a pretty great thing.  I’ve never felt like I was in better matched games, skill-wise, ever for Halo which may just keep me playing for the months to come…Halo 3 eventually broke me to where it wasn’t fun to play anymore as it always felt like I was stuck with guys just a level or two ahead of me.  Not so here though, every match is fun.  The new weekly and daily challenges give me a reason to login and check out what’s new for the day, and the completionist in me loves trying to knock them all out in a short hour or so play session.  Being able to unlock new armor pieces is especially cool and I certainly hope they continue to add new pieces later on down the line.  Firefight is a ton of fun, I wish you could specify more options for these games to make them more challenging but they’re a blast nonetheless…it’s so satisfying to team up with four others and fight out several waves of Covenant troops!

So, that’s Halo Reach for me…the story is lame at best, cinemas bad, music ho-hum…gameplay, art, and multiplayer fantastic.  Now I’m off to bed!

G’night!

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When I read reviews, I tend to skip ahead to see a score or summary first and then decide if I care to read what someone thought of the game after that…so I like giving a basic summary upfront.  For Ninja Gaiden II, the best way I can say it is if you’re a fan of the previous generation Ninja Gaiden (or Ninja Gaiden Black, whatever flavor(s) you played through) and you just want more of the same–you’re in for a treat.  If you’re new to the series, or expecting much more–you will likely feel let down by this game.  For me this wasn’t Ninja Gaiden II, just Ninja Gaiden v2.0.

To be fair, I don’t think Team Ninja set out to make some kind of revolution in 3rd person action adventure games.  They have their own little place that proved pretty succesful before in round one, so here in round two they’ve played it safe and refined what was already a pretty tight control scheme and group of game mechanics.  For this reason, fans are going to play this game and (if they’re like me) really like the revisions and small touch-ups they’ve given the game.  Looking around the environment is a little easier, the new quick-switching items and gear setup on the d-pad helps a lot, and the combat moves feel much more accessible and even forgiving in some cases.

I absolutely love looking at the mess I’ve made of enemies after a big fight, that’s probably my favorite portion.  Later in the game…I want to say around Chapter 10 or 11, there is a part that has you going up this extremely tall set of stairs into a temple, surrounded by walls on the way up.  Every bit epic looking as you slaughter your way through what must have been hundreds of Spider-clan ninja…when it finally finished and I got to breath, I turned around to see the blood stained walls and steps like something straight out of a proper action movie.  It was awesome, and truly an experience I’ll carry with me as a developer for a long, long time.

Unfortunately, there are too few moments in the game like that, and little “new” to the game either.  While the art is amazing to look at, I can help but feel like it feels a year or so past it’s expiration date too.  Ryu’s costume looks more dated than ever now to me, with his very strange unisex crotch area (either that or the jewels got whacked off at birth?)…I get that it’s stylized, but adding something as simple as texture to it could have gone a long way.  It may have been touched up a bit since the last-gen games, but you’d have to put them side by side to notice.

The biggest thing that surprised me was the complete and total lack of interaction with your environment.  Other than a table or barrel here and there, you almost never can have an impact on your surroundings.  I want to be able to throw (or be thrown) through windows, smash gear and controls everywhere, really trash the world around me during a fight and sit back to grin at the work afterwards.  I mean…I’m working on a Nintendo Wii game for chrissakes–an admittedly horsepower-lacking-system–that has damn near everything available to be destroyed around you.  There is just no excuse for a modern fighting game to have such a hardwired, linear experience like this…especially something of the caliber of a Ninja Gaiden title to not keep up with the times here.

All that said…it’s still fun to play, as a Ninja Gaiden fan.  I doubt I’d have gotten nearly as into it if I hadn’t enjoyed the previous incarnation as much as I did…but Ninja Gaiden v2.0 is good enough for me, even if I’d expected an actual sequel.

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The demo for “Too Human” came out last week, available for download on in the marketplace for XBOX Live users.  I’ve been waiting for this game for awhile now, especially after getting a chance to hear one of it’s creators–Dennis Dyack–talk about the game at GDC 2008.

To say I was…disappointed…would be an accurate subject line for this.  Please keep in mind this is about the demo for the game, and for all I know when the full version comes out some of these issues won’t even matter (I have no clue how they address the story in the game).  Also, while displeased I was interested enough to plan on picking up a copy eventually of the game, it just may be a previously owned copy is all.

To start with, while I can see there is a definitely a rich story lying somewhere in the shadows of Too Human, it also stuck out that the cinematic approach was sorely lacking for the game.  To be blunt, I’ve seen better from games 4–5 years older than this game which is just unacceptable from a game that’s had this long to be polished up.  Especially a story-driven game, where the storytelling is important.  Like I said, though–this may not be the first few minutes of the real game, and a scrunched up version instead for the demo.

The other elements have no excuse as being shortened in a demo, though.  The first thing that surprised the hell out of me was the character art…to me, it looks like a sloppy launch title’s art to me.  I could have forgiven the flat, horribly proportioned characters if this was a couple years back.  The male lead?  NO TORSO!  Literally, there is no sign of a torso or ass at all there, it’s just this kind of alien-looking straight shot down to the thighs.  Textures are sharpish, but uninteresting and flat.

Animation of the main character looked like it was a joke to me as well…ever heard of “air lats?”  Those guys who think they are buff, so they hold their arms out at their sides a foot or so beyond what is natural and look like idiots doing it?  Apparently the main character’s insecure about something.

Those can kinda be attributed to one’s own tastes I suppose, but it’s just the surface.  For some ungodly reason, Silicon Knights decided to remove the camera-control of the right thumbstick all players have been used to for damn near a decade now and moved control of your melee weapon there.  Oh yes–you have NO control over swinging that sword unless you’re jamming in the direction you want to attack with the sword.  I’m the first to give thumb’s up on trying new things, but I can’t see any reason to fix what isn’t broken.  It left the controls feeling unresponsive and clunky to me the entire time I played the game, at one point ready to just drop the game altogether which seems like something a demo should never make you want to do.

It could be somewhat mitigated if the camera was at least intelligent enough to keep up with me while I played, but during combat I instead found myself fighting the camera to keep it where I wanted it focused while trying to slash around like a fool.  To me the game just screams for the need of smooth, easy controls over the character and instead I felt like I was being punished for trying to fight.

Overall I felt like I had been playing a Bollywood version of Mass Effect with survival-horror controls, which is an ugly baby best left with the dirty water.

I do hope they’ve had time to fine-tune certain aspects of this in the meantime, and pray there’s an option to turn the damned right-thumbstick deal off altogether (which I doubt will exist).  Like I said, I will pick a copy of this up when it comes out despite all of this…I’m sure I’ll eventually get used to having sub-class controls in order to explore the story more, and I am quite interested in rying co-op out.  Perhaps I’ll rent it first and see what happens from there.

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