Fan Appreciation Time!

As I'm sure you're all aware, the Steam Summer Sale wrapped up last week.  As some of you are aware, thanks to Bastion hitting an all-time low of $2.25 per copy, I ended up with an extra 10 gift copies.

What do I plan on doing with these gift copies?  The same thing I plan on doing with my extra gift copies of Mark of the Ninja, Hotline Miami, Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams, and Amnesia: The Dark Descent.

These are for you guys.  Appreciation for the readership and a publicity stunt of sorts.  I'm currently working on a Facebook contest that I plan to have up by Friday.

For the contest and more details, check us out on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/ZeroToleranceGames

You can also follow the official Zero Tolerance twitter:
@ZT_Games

I'm sorry this isn't a real post, but as @Tsaikotyk stated, there's been very little going on in the industry as of late, and he's pretty much brought us up to speed on it all.  Now I need to work on some graphics and figure out how I want to divvy out these Steam gifts.

- Nik "Latency" Trumble

The Good, The Bad, and The Incredibly Stupid - July 2013

We've been fucking it up here a bit as of late, with our personal lives and such getting in the way a bit, so this will be a bit of a catch-all potluck of miscellaneous stories.

Rant: Open-World "versus" Linear gameplay

An issue I find with most of us "gamers" is that we find the overwhelming need to contrast things.  Sony VERSUS Microsoft, First-person VERSUS third-person, Marvel VERSUS Capcom, Sonic VERSUS Mario.  It's apparently not enough to just enjoy two different things for what they are.  We have to enjoy one more than the other.  More so, we have to put the other down for not being "as good" as our preferred.

Evo 2013: Divekick

While I was at Evo 2013, I had the chance to play a title called Divekick, and it quickly jumped to the top of my most anticipated list for this year.

Re-Review: Remember Me

Remember Me has an astoundingly fitting title, though not in the way Dontnod and Capcom would want. Instead, it's remembered for trying to do too much of what it thought was right, and failing miserably, falling behind only the Children's Crusade in this category of legendary failures. It attempts to prove its competence in multiple genres in the most painful of ways. Imagine attempting to prove your skill at walking by doing so on ice, through an oil slick, all while wearing treadless teflon-coated shoes.

The platforming aspect has an on-rails feel to it, with the ledges you can interact with highlighted by a yellow arrow, as if to say, "We shall allow you to continue here, and nowhere else," and normally, you have to be in fairly close proximity to even get these markers to appear. However, as the game progresses, there are times where, for no foreseeable reason, even though the marker appears, and Nilin is in position to make the jump, you will fail, leading to an ultimately unsatisfying death.

The combat is slow-paced and tedious, with nearly no room for the creativity as far as what attacks to use and when. There's no reel animation or hitstun, and every attack is incredibly delayed. If you try to transition between combos or hit multiple enemies, the guy you just dropkicked can punish you for it. It's problematic as hell. The oft-touted Combo Lab is way more convoluted than it should have been. I get that the interface was trying to be minimalist, but when I don't have enough information to figure out what I'm doing, then you're just wrong. It's even worse because it was meant to give you more freedom, but really just restricted you that much more. Each Pressen could only be used once across all combos, and each of the same button and category does THE EXACT SAME THING, with only the number of moves before it altering the outcome. They didn't explain that very well in the tutorial either. Dodging also feels incredibly delayed. While there is a way to dodge in the middle of a combo string, and continue it afterwards for maximum payoff, at times the game arbitrarily decides to make you start over, even when executed perfectly. About a third of the way into the game, you acquire a projectile weapon. It has incredibly low damage, and the controls for it are terrible. It has an energy bar instead of ammunition, though it drains around six times as fast as it refills. There's no manual aim, only auto-lock, and trying to get the proper target in the midst of combat is incredibly disorienting, as it makes the camera jump around in haphazard ways.

The stealth and non-remix(We'll get to those in a moment.) puzzle sections feel like they were quickly tacked on during crunch to make the game have more "substance". The stealth sections consist of avoiding patrolling droids, under penalty of insta-death. It's not fun, there's nothing clever about it, and it really takes away from the whole experience. The puzzle sections, on the other hand, involve doing one of two things with the projectile weapon. One involves locking on to a target and breaking it, to release a door, or something to that effect, and the other involves transporting power cores around, like the dark matter orbs from Half-Life 2. Neither of these really adds much to the game either.

The memory remixes, which are supposed to be major plot points, were a kind of cool feature, but the execution was flawed. Needing to grind out circles on my analog stick to rewind and fast forward through the sequence to see if I had found(and activated) the proper pieces to complete the puzzle took entirely too long and made me hate doing them. The pre-determined conclusions, as dictated to you by the game, were a little ridiculous as well. The first memory remix happens when a bounty hunter surprises you, and is about to kill you. To complete it, you need to convince her to join your side by altering her memory in such a way that a doctor kills her husband in treatment. It's way over the top, and for a secondary character that was just introduced, and acts as a glorified taxi in-between chapters, it's entirely too much.

Overall, I'd strongly recommend skipping this atrocious pile. I had wanted it to be good too, but it wasn't. I wanted it to be good so badly that I was willing to pay 60$ for it and not pick it up for 20$ in 6 months at -insert used games retailer of choice-.And I'm not just talking about the awkward controls, or the random bugs like the one that redwashed everything on screen for half of chapter 7, or the terrible combat, or the atrocious platforming, or the camera. I'm not even talking about the Aug Eye, which does nothing until you get a prompt(which is usually when you're lost) to point you towards your objective, even if it's on the other side of 16 walls. I'm not even talking about the underdeveloped setting, or unlikable characters, or the counter-intuitive(at best) boss fights. I'm not even talking about the story which ends so poorly, and I mean the entire final act, not just the ending, that M. Night Shymalan could do better after a frontal lobotomy and a bottle of Jagermeister. I'm talking about the entire package.  I didn't want to believe it either. I thought "It can't all be this bad," and yet, it somehow finds a way to keep disappointing. 

Pros - Game is short

Cons - NOT SHORT ENOUGH.

Rant: Sequel-itis - A Deadly Disease

Recently, I've come up with a whole list of topics I felt deserved a good rant. Things like open-world “versus” linear titles and the growing popularity of eSports as spectator sports. However, this article from Monday put me in an entirely different mood.

First Impressions: Dishonored - More like Disinterested

Now let me start this by saying that I'm not one for stealth games. Drop me in the middle of a guns-blazing firefight rather than a high-security facility any day. But with all the praise I've been hearing for Dishonored, I figured “what the hell, I'll give it a shot” (that and the cover art looks cool).

Now I went into this expecting some grizzly tale of revenge and bloodshed, as the back of the box would lead you to believe. Not so, I quickly discovered. Within the first 10 minutes of gameplay, you're assaulted by more cliches than a full season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (those who weren't raised in the 90's or aren't obsessive Joss Whedon fans have no idea what I'm talking about).

You play as Corvo, the Empress' trusted bodyguard and seeming father figure to her daughter *cough*. After returning from an assignment in which you were to seek aid from other city-island-states for the awful plague crippling your home *cough*, you meet with her majesty. Now why, in god's name, the Empress sent her personal guard on a diplomat's mission is beyond me, but we roll with it. Shortly after returning home, the Empress is attacked by masked assailants *cough* that fizzle into ashes as you kill them off. Eventually they overpower you, murder the Empress *cough*, and kidnap her daughter *cough*. With her majesty dying, and more importantly bleeding, in your arms, the captain of the guard and the spymaster general find you with a dead Empress and no princess.... empress... ess... whatever. So the two come to the logical conclusion that CORVO must have murdered the Empress! *coughcoughhackcroak* They imprison you and sentence you to death. The day of your execution, which the Spymaster and new Lord Regent make very clear must be public and painful, someone has decided to help you escape so you can join their resistance! *cough* Yes! For they know that you are innocent and that someone, perhaps the corrupt Spymaster or Lord Regent must be guilty! *coughcoughcoughcoughcough*

Apologies, I have a terrible cold. *ahem* Now all cliches and pathetically uninteresting story aside, these weren't Dishonored's only short-comings. The game employs an interesting “morality” system, in that, as an assassin, you have the option to kill, or merely knock out your enemies and targets. Now, as I felt Corvo might be a tad-bit bloodthirsty after his wrongful imprisonment and near execution, I decided to opt for the more violent route. I have to say that I'm not opposed to morality systems affecting my gameplay, however, this one's different. The city of Dunwall is dynamic in the way that it adjusts to your preferred method of dealing with hostiles. If you're a genuinely nice man, and wish to repent for all the things you haven't done wrong, you'll sneak about the town putting a lot of people in sleeper holds. But in my case, I did my best to sneak my way up behind every possible guard and introduce the pointy end of my switchblade to his jugular. Though, more often than not, I found myself involved in 3-on-1 sword fights and silently delivering a crossbow bolt to anyone who noticed me.

The way in which this affects Dunwall, is that the plague mentioned in the introductory paragraph expands. There are larger rat populations, which makes them significantly more aggressive, and the game starts infecting normal townsfolk and effectively turning them into zombies. Now, as per the advice offered in loading screens, it would appear that the city is a lot nicer when you're nicer to its people, but what I'm really not a fan of is the game punishing me for playing the way I like. Allow me to compare Dishonored's morality system to those of a few other games I've enjoyed.

Mass Effect: your actions affect the story and the story alone. There are virtually no gameplay changes that take place (unless you were a total dick and got your party killed off near the end of 2).

Prototype: So smashing in Military or Infected installations might not really be a morality meter, but the city did change according to whose house you wrecked. Though enemies were enemies none the less. It never got harder or easier, it was all just a matter of dealing with soldiers or zombies.

Infamous: You get different powers based on your alignment. S'bout it. The 2 different endings in the game boiled entirely down to a simple choice near the end. You could play evil all game and still select the heroic ending. Yeah that makes sense.

Dishonored: sneak around – game gets easier (so sayeth the load screens), slaughter everyone – game gets harder (so sayeth my experience).

The actual core gameplay is, in a nutshell, Bioshock. You have your melee weapon in one hand, and can use various magic spells and ranged weapons with your other. Honestly, after the first couple hours, I just found myself wishing I'd been playing Bioshock instead. Can't say anything bad about the graphics, it's up to par with your average console games of today. The sound can be a bit irritating, especially when you've managed to escape combat, but the music continues.

All things considered, I'd be willing to finish Dishonored... if it weren't my game. As it stands, the poor bastard gets to go back to GameStop and I'll never know what happens to little Emily. Oh well.

Review: Saints Row: The Third

It's been a while since I last did a review.  This is partially because of E3 and all the "fun" I had covering it, but it's also partially because so many developers seem so concerned with the amount of content that they have to ram down your throat.  Fair enough though, because I'm about to drop the hammer on one of the most enjoyable open-world experiences I've had the pleasure to playthrough.

Flying Solo

I'll be taking the helm this week as @Tsaikotyk is in Las Vegas for the Evolution Championship Series fighting game tournament(s).  You can find out more about Evo and how it's run by visiting their player guide. Team Sp00ky and iPlayWinner will be streaming the event live on TwitchTV this weekend here, here and here.  I, personally, will be following Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition, with a lesser focus on Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and Persona 4 Arena. 

I will still be posting my usual updates Wednesday and Friday, and Tsaikotyk will resume regular posts next week when he returns.  Sorry for the inconvenience folks and I hope you enjoy the show!

-Nik "Latency" Trumble

Latency's Indie-pendence Day Special

Alright, a day late and a gimmicky title.  If you're so brilliant, you think of something better. 

Yesterday, I awoke at 8:45 AM like I do every work day, with the exception that since this was a national holiday, I had the day off.  Unable to force myself back to sleep, I fired up my laptop and hopped on Steam to finish Bastion once more.  The gears in my head had barely started to shift and so I found it amusing that my first act on Independence day was to complete one of the most well-designed and highly praised indie games.  This got me thinking that, thematically, I should do a piece on indie titles for July 4th.  Well, Mike's scheduled for Thursdays, so I put mine off a day.

I could ramble about how I've watched the indie game scene grow thanks to hugely successful titles like Bastion, but I'd rather gush about a few games that I think everyone should give a try, if they haven't already.  In no particular order, here are my top 5 indie titles.

Bastion - The breakout hit from Supergiant Games who have another isometric beat-'em-up coming out in 2014 called Transistor.  The thing that was recently brought to my attention is that, gameplay-wise, Bastion didn't do anything new or different.  That's not what hooked me though.  What hooked me into the game were two things.  One, the "adaptive" narrator.  Having that deep, intriguing voice narrate everything I was doing AS I did it was something special.  Two, watching the ground form up from underneath you as you moved about in the world was different and exciting, especially considering the gorgeous art that formed this game's visuals.  That being said, the other points that rounded out this superb indie title were its beautiful art work, its wondrous and memorable soundtrack (that I still listen to on occasion), and it's very solid gameplay.  This is a title that I still revisit from time to time, partially due to nostalgia and partially due to its very strong construction.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent - No indie list would be complete without Amnesia.  Fractional Games is no stranger to survival horror and Amnesia seems to have taken all its lessons from their Penumbra series and a whole mess of Lovecraftian fiction.  Amnesia is still the only game I've seen that actually tells you to turn OFF all the lights in your room.  The game is so incredibly atmospheric that the developers tell you how to get the most from the experience, by making your room as dark as possible and using headphones, and to be honest, who doesn't do this when playing survival horror?  Games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill are best played under these conditions and Amnesia is no different.  What makes Amnesia's scare tactics so effective is the lack of combat.  The protagonist literally has no means of self-defense against the grotesque horrors that drive him mad at the mere sight of them.  This "realistic" interpretation of monsters only enhances the atmosphere of the game, and that's really all it is.  The story doesn't make any form of sense, and offers little to no background, but still we play Amnesia because it scares the piss out of us, like so few games can do these days.

Hotline Miami - Dennation Games' ultra-violent-retro-stealth-action-shooter is something everyone should experience.  This is the only painfully unforgiving game that I've thoroughly enjoyed, despite the absurd number of times I died each level.  Every single hit in this game is fatal, from bullets to bludgeons, for both yourself and the enemies.  Sure, shotguns are king of the ring, but with all the noise they make, you might just find another 3 armed mobsters kicking in the door each time you fire a shot.  The story is disjointed and confusing, but it doesn't muddle the gameplay at all, and is rather intriguing, all things considered.  Personally, I suggest playing this game on the PC.  While the mouse and keyboard controls feel awkward at first, they feel tighter and more controlled than when I used an Xbox 360 controller for the same game.

Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams - So I might never have heard of this game if I didn't religiously follow the band Machinae Supremacy, but that doesn't mean it's subpar in the slightest.  You play as a pair of sisters caught in contrasting worlds.  For the sake of this article, we'll call them Nice and Punk.  Nice has been thrown into the decaying, fungal Nightmare World whereas, her sister, Punk, has been thrown into the happy, green Dream World.  The game freely lets (and occasionally requires) you to switch between sisters, which adjusts the level and atmosphere accordingly.  Imps from Nice's Nightmare World become Owls in Punk's Dream World.  Aside from the really well-crafted platforming, two things make this game special.  First, the switching.  Seamless changes from Nightmare to Dream and back again as you swap between sisters.  Not only does the level ebb and flow as you would expect, but the background and foreground landscapes change in a very appropriate manner.  Gross brown mushrooms change to lively green trees, the dead landscape perks up.  Everything is rendered in 3D and feels very fluid.  Second, the soundtrack.  Nice's upbeat, dreamy platformer music is composed by Chris Hülsbeck and the same exact tunes flow directly into Punk's heavy metal versions of the same songs composed and recorded by Machinae Supremacy.  The game also includes an option to limit yourself to one version of the soundtrack in the menu, which is really cool for those that prefer one over the other.  Giana Sisters is extremely reminiscent of your early platform games like Super Mario Bros. and will be well appreciated by anyone that grew up with those games.

Mark of the Ninja - Okay, so you've heard me say it a dozen times.  I don't like stealth games.  I abhor it when developers/publishers tell me that I can play a game "any way I want" and I go in guns blazing, only to be punished by an insurmountable number of enemies coming out of the woodworks to put the 2-3 bullets into me that will end my life.  I generally go out of my way to avoid games like Metal Gear Solid, or the more recent Dishonored, that have an extremely strong stealth focus.  Well, I'm happy to inform you that this is the game that may have changed my mind and stance on the whole issue.  Mark of the Ninja is all about being just that, a Ninja.  Hiding in the shadows, assassinating soldiers, sneaking about in the dark, the whole shebang.  There's something so gripping about the game's side-scrolling design and freedom of movement that actually brought me about to liking it.  I haven't finished the game yet, but I can safely say that I plan to.  It's also helped me change my outlook on titles like Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which had a very strong stealth focus, since Adam Jensen the walking cybernetic badass, fucking died after taking two bullets.  Sure, we rebuilt his carcass from scratch after he was thrown through a fucking wall in that intro sequence, but we built him to be roughly 20 times as fragile as your average hero.  Now, I've started to embrace the stealth and non-lethal aspects of such games (though there's nothing non-lethal about being a ninja) and am actually starting to enjoy them.  All thanks to this little indie gem.

Now, you may have noticed that my entire list consisted of A-list indie games.  That's just my point.  We live and game in an era where there is an A-LIST OF INDIE GAMES.  If two guys in San Jose can realize their dream of creating a game about some kid in an artistic take on a post-WMD-apocalypse world, and it can sell near 2 million copies and be handed accolades out the ass, who knows what will come of Sony's support and nurture of indie devs in the future?  I get giddy just thinking about it.

On Manuals, Tutorials, and Replay Value

One of the biggest developments this console generation has been the digital release of retail titles, which has led to the eschewing of the traditional packed-in manual with a large number of recently released triple-A titles. This has led to a larger number of introductory tutorials in games, which I feel causes more harm to the overall structure and integrity to the game than it benefits the player.

The problem here is that it is, in most cases, an unskippable segment appended to the beginning of the game, and some run far too long. Borderlands 2 is a fine example of this. It feels far more linear and forced than it's predecessor, and in a game that encourages you to try multiple character classes, and sit through two to three playthroughs with each, it reaches a point where it's just wholly obnoxious and unneeded. This in turn, reduces overall replay value compared to titles where the tutorial is optional, or only shown on the first play. Vanquish, Injustice: Gods Among Us, and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance all do a fantastic job of making the tutorial optional, while not making you go out of your way and searching through the menu to get to it initially, but still have the option on the menu if you would like to revisit it at any time. Max Payne 3 is an example of the other end of the spectrum, where, what were previously tutorial sequences become regular sequences in subsequent playthroughs, and still maintain a feeling of fun either way, however, there is no way to revisit tutorial sequences, which can be problematic if picking the game up again after 6-8 months.

There has to exist a happy medium somewhere on the spectrum. If you're going to force your tutorial, keep it succinct and fun, with something to strive towards in later attempts, such as the optional boss at the end of the Demon's Souls tutorial. If you're going to make it optional, keep it short, make it easy to revisit, and do not place any collectibles in, or base any achievements/trophies on finishing the tutorial. If you're going to go the Max Payne 3 route, have an option to reset tutorial progress on subsequent playthroughs, so that your players are not flying blind after spending 2 years playing other titles.

The forced tutorial in an increasingly large number of games is why I feel that I haven't replayed as many games this generation than I did in the prior two, and unless work is done to change this in the industry, replay value will suffer, and we will continue to see quick turnarounds of titles in the second-hand market. 

Next-Gen Garbage: Revisited

So E3 is over.  Now that Sony is done making Microsoft look like an ass and Microsoft is done making Microsoft look like an ass, it seemed like the perfect time to revisit this topic.  I know that I was originally pretty hard on both consoles, but this was also at a time where all we had to look forward to was a new Assassin's Creed, a new Call of Duty, and Watch_Dogs, which is releasing on both current and next-gen platforms.

Now, after press conferences from both MS and Sony, along with two major developers that will be releasing content on both platforms,  I have to say that I've got somewhat of a new outlook on the future of gaming.  That doesn't, however, mean that it's bright.

Re-Review: The Last of Us

Often, towards the end of a console generation, there's a lot of questioning as to whether or not it is the time to move on to newer, better hardware, and to how much untapped potential lies in the current generation. The Last of Us, by Naughty Dog, is the finest example of why it's time for next-gen, pushing the PS3 to its limits, and leaving a nigh unreachable bar in its place as the standard for the end of the current generation.

I've gushed about it an earlier piece, and still feel I have not praised this game enough. In every sense of the word, The Last of Us is an experience, and one that, should you have the means and a PS3, you should partake in. Graphically, it is THE most beautiful title currently on the market, and will likely remain so until the next generation releases. It doesn't suffer from brown palette syndrome, the use of ambient lighting and color makes the space really come alive, and it doesn't suffer from obvious texture pop-in. From urban decay to the wilderness, the world looks and feels vibrant and alive. The designers and artists have even gone as far as creating handwritten notes left behind by others that can be viewed, opposed to just being a blurry texture and the HUD font placed over it. It is also one of the most incredible sounding games this generation, without having been over-produced. It can be so reserved and subtle at times, with the unsettling silence in places to create a larger fear of the unknown.

The gameplay in The Last of Us is something of a hybrid, with pieces coming from the traditional 3rd-person shooter, the survival horror, and stealth genres. Items are scavenged for from the environment, and are more often found as requisite components as opposed to finished goods. Crafting takes place in real time, as does healing, adding to the tension of every encounter. Ammunition is scarce, and the melee combat is brutal and, at times, off-putting, due to the sheer savagery of it. The shooter and cover mechanics are very solid, however, Joel, not being a highly trained soldier, has some accuracy shortcomings at times. While commonly thought of as a single player game, The Last of Us does include multiplayer. While sometimes criticized for it's small team sizes, this was likely a design choice to make it fit into the setting better, and it is highly enjoyable.

Where The Last of Us really shines, however, is in its characters. With a strong and diverse supporting cast, and some of the best portrayals of actual human beings, the weight of the story is increased, and it compels you to see it through to its conclusion. It's incredibly easy to get very attached to these characters, and when it's over, it feels a bit like losing a friend. This seems to stem from the way Naughty Dog uses their voice actors for motion capture as well, forcing the actor to give a more convincing performance overall, and giving the digital artists more to work with on the animations and faces. The story, while set in a variation of the overused zombie motif, is one that manages to break away from the stereotype, and will both shock and surprise you. From the cold open, all the way to the closing moments, the pacing and writing are superb, and to say much more than that would only spoil it. The Last of Us will be talked about for years to come, and is a highly memorable and moving ride.