In Third Person

Despite all the negative things I've said about Silent Hill: Homecoming over these last few posts, I was ready to let all that slide. I was already over half way done the game, and I thought I could put up with the game's faults for a few more hours for the sake of completing it. That will never happen now. Or ever.

In my last Silent Hill post, I said I would continue playing it until the game committed a heinous act against fun. It just did.


I played the game for about half an hour just now, and I got to the puzzle pictured above. The only picture I could find was of the completed puzzle. When you start out, the pieces are all scrambled and you have to slide them around the space to create that emblem. No big deal, right? These types of puzzles have been in thousands of video games before, and can usually be beaten if you slide the pieces around enough. Not this time. I tried it over and over again, but there was one piece in particular that would be stuck on the opposite end of the board. I normally don't have the patience for these types of puzzles in games, so the moment I get stuck, I hit a guide.

To my horror, the very first step in every guide I found said to move the double block in the top right hand corner one space to the left. I looked at my screen and realized that my screen didn't have a double block in that position. I watched video solutions on YouTube and realized that my blocks were laid out completely differently from what everybody else got.

Dude, what?

So in fact, the puzzle the game gave me really was impossible to beat. I did more research on this, and apparently I'm not alone. This IGN forum user ran into the exact same problem as me. The only solution for her? Restart the game from the last save point. In this GameSpot thread, user peetowser said he wasted 3 hours of his life trying to solve this glitched puzzle until he realized it was broken. When he reloaded it, it worked fine. For those forum users, maybe their tolerance towards the game's deficiencies are higher than mine. But for me, this game ends right here. I've been force-feeding this experience to myself since the beginning, and if the game requires me to go back 30 minutes into the game just so the puzzle pieces can reset, it can go to hell. I am not giving that game any more of my time.

Even if I pass that, there's a chance that the game's next set of puzzles might glitch out for them too, just like it did for these people. Just like with Fight Night Round 4, I refuse to support games that are broken to the point that they actually prevent you from finishing them. I don't have any immediate plans on checking out any of the other entries in the Silent Hill series, but if they're as janky as this, I'll dedicate my gaming time towards other things.

With not much going on in my life right now, I spent most of today in my basement completing The Secret Armory of General Knoxx. I know, this is the third Knoxx post in as many days, but now that I've beaten the main quest and most of the side missions, I'm ready to write down some final impressions of the DLC.

As mentioned in my first two posts, this DLC starts out ludicrously hard. If you just completed playthrough 1, or have a maxed out level 50 character on playthrough 2, you will die in the beginning. A lot. I got destroyed by the very first bad guy I saw, and continued to be dominated throughout most of the experience by flying drones. I can see a lot of people giving up on this DLC at the start, but if you can tough it out, you'll be rewarded with a really good add-on.

If you're starting this DLC in between level 35 and 50, then your experience will vary wildly. My brother is level 43, and this was how I found out that General Knoxx does not scale to your character. If you play with a level 43 character in playthrough 1, you will demolish everything in your path. If you play with a level 43 character in playthrough 2, you literally wouldn't stand a chance against anything.

For me, the moment I hit the jail level was where the experience finally came into its own. The jail level was easily my favourite part of the DLC because I felt that level captures Borderlands at its best. Yes, that's half-way through the DLC, but at this point regular encounters were tough, but fair. From that point on, it played just like you would hope it would. You get to shoot lots of guys, level up your character, and there are no shortage of big-time guns (elemental ones in particular).


The ending to General Knoxx was much more satisfying than the main game. Without spoiling it, the boss fight is much better (and still tough) and the payoff is much improved (and exciting).

The only major aspect of this DLC I haven't tried yet is the ultimate boss. There is a level 64 boss that is practically impossible to beat by yourself, but with a party, you may stand a chance. If you beat the boss, you will have a chance to get some of the best guns in the game. The boss will never go away, so you can take a crack at it as many times as you want.

For 800 MS points, you get a lot of content from The Secret Armory of General Knoxx. Lots of new gear, quests, missions and a raised level cap are more than enough motivation for someone who just beat the game to go back to Borderlands. Playing through the main quest and the side missions will take you approximately 8-12 hours, which is very good considering the price. Just be warned that if your character is in the low 40's, you won't find a playthrough that fits for you and if you're coming into it maxed out, you're in for a rough start.

A few weeks ago, I vented my thoughts on the possibility of me purchasing Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars. I was interested in the game, but maybe not enough for me to buy it. However, it was also an opportunity as a core Wii owner to show the world that I will buy hardcore games if companies put them out on the platform. This moral dilemma also hit me shortly before I lost my job. With all of the things stacked against it, Tatsunoko vs. Capcom seemed out of my grasp for the time being.

With my final severance check arriving in the mail a few days ago, I figured that I owe it to myself to have one last hurrah. Was it worth all the fuss that went on in my head, or did it just leave me salty?

As someone who didn't really get into Marvel vs. Capcom 2, it's a bit of a surprise to me how well I've transitioned into Tatsunoko vs. Capcom. The MvC 2 experience just felt excessive for me. There were too many characters to learn, too many characters you have to manage at once, too many gameplay systems, the game was too fast and combos required too much twitch skill for me to pull off. There are many people who play MvC 2 on a much more casual level, but playing it that way didn't feel very satisfying for me. TvC is toned down just enough for me to grasp without losing the frantic fun. Instead of 3-on-3 matches, they're 2-on-2. The game's pace is slightly slower. For me specifically, I can pick this up and still feel like I'm doing something. Right away, I got a general feel for the fighting system and was able to perform some decent combos and hyper combo set-ups.


Playing TvC made me realize that the TvC style of play is what I was really looking for in BlazBlue. BlazBlue is a pretty good fighting game in its own right, but the barrier to entry for me is far too high because of all the command inputs you have to learn. Every single character has unique button commands for every single special move, which is a lot more effort than I would like to put into a fighting game at this time. TvC sticks to the standard Capcom control conventions so that players that played the original Street Fighter II can jump right in.

I don't say this very often about Wii games, but the graphics are gorgeous. The art style does a lot to overcome the inherent weaknesses in the Wii's graphical capability. Backgrounds are well done and the cell-shaded characters look and move great. Hyper combo animations in particular are about as zany and flashy as you would hope for in a "Versus" game. On my 42" plasma, the characters look a bit jaggy up close, but if I sit about 10 feet away from my TV, it looks awesome. The only other downside is that I feel the game could look a bit sharper. While there are a lot of colours, the colours don't pop out as I think they should.

I respect the fact that Capcom put in support for all the "main" controller options Wii users have at their disposal. You can play this Wii remote only, Wii remote and nunchuck, Gamecube controller, classic controller or with a joystick. If you want to play for real, then a joystick or classic controller are your only options. I can only imagine how much of a train-wreck this would be to play with Wii remote and nunchuck or Gamecube controller, as neither of those control setups are optimized for fighting games. If you want to play it like Smash Bros., the Wii remote only option changes the controls so that it sort of plays like it. One button is dedicated to all your normal moves and the other is dedicated to special moves. For my younger cousins who want to try this out, I think it's a great way to ease them in.

Dante's Inferno hits my soul in a very weird spot. I don't even care about actually playing any of the games in the same category of Dante's Inferno, because it's just not my thing. From everything I've heard about its gameplay, it plays competently. However, I've been thinking about this game for quite a bit over the last year because I absolutely hate the thinking behind this game.

If there was a game that you could say a marketing team had too much control in making, it's this one. In my head, I think the thought process behind the game went down like this:

Marketer A: "Hey, our sales are down. How can we make more money?"

Marketer B: "How about if we make a game like God of War? Those games sell like crazy, and if we make one just like it, we'll sell like crazy too!"

Marketer A: "Genius! Ok, where do we start?"

Marketer B: "Um...We need something like Greek mythology but not exactly Greek mythology."

Marketer A: *goes on Google* "How about the Divine Comedy and Dante's Inferno?"

Marketer B: "Awesome! Does he fight in it?"

Marketer A: "Not really. But maybe in our version, Dante can be a warrior. And he can carry around a giant scythe that works like the God of War chain-blade thing! And he'll fight through the seven layers of Hell, named after each sin."

Marketer B: "You're on a roll! But I just wanted to say one thing. This has to sell to teenage males, because our demographic research show that they spend the most money on these types of games."


Marketer B: "Ok, this is just a thought. How about, in the Lust level, we have giant demon women and when you cut off their nipples, spiders come out. And they have 8-foot vaginas that you have to grab and throw into other 8-foot vaginas?"

Marketer A: "That's what the kids would call, "Cool.""

Marketer B: "Isn't "cool" an old expression by now? Why don't you find the new word for cool on that Urban Dictionary thing."


Pardon me for being pessimistic, and maybe a bit condescending towards marketers (even though I've worked in both advertising and marketing), but this game is creatively bankrupt and conceptually a blatant cash-grab first and a game second. I'm not a communist, I understand that people make games to make money, and I understand that not every game needs to push the medium forward, but how can you not see what Dante's Inferno is at its core? Even the great reviews for this game call it a rip-off of God of War.

Maybe the game plays just fine, and if you enjoy it, great. But my sentiments against the product's existence are so strong that I already feel insulted as a gamer from knowing this product is available now and will probably sell well. If there's any statement I can make to show my displeasure, it's to not buy the game and not talk about. I won't be buying Dante's Inferno, and I'll stop talking about it...now.

I've only been playing this game for about four hours. At this moment, what's another four hours? I could still get to experience what is good about this game, if I can bear with its weaknesses. There are also achievement points to be had, which seem to be coming at a decent rate. Ultimately though, I should be playing games because their fun, right? And there are definitely other games I could play that would be more fun. But maybe this game will be fun enough for the four more hours I'll need to beat it.

Maybe I'm just a game snob, but I don't like having to think about whether or not I want to continue playing a game. If it's good, I'll keep going. If it's not, forget it. But when you play a mediocre game and already have invested some time in it, the choice of whether or not to play it gets murkier than it really should.

So what am I to do with Silent Hill: Homecoming? I have decided to play it through to the end on two conditions. One, I will only play from one checkpoint to another. I don't ever want to get stuck want to quit between checkpoints ever again, and I won't know when the next one will arrive. The other condition? If this game commits another heinous crime against fun, then I'll bury it once and for all.

If you've been following my blog for the past few months, then you'll know that I am a huge fan of Street Fighter IV and a fan of iPhone games. However, like the thought of eating a steak topped with ice cream, the recently announced Street Fighter IV iPhone port has made me throw up in my mouth just a little bit. I can't imagine this being anything but an absolute nightmare to play.

The problem with controlling "traditional" games onto the iPhone is that the iPhone doesn't have the proper interface to handle these games. Without physical buttons on the platform, developers have tried to shoehorn in traditional games with on-screen buttons and directional pads, all of which I've thought have failed horribly. I've tried Megaman 2, Earthworm Jim, Resident Evil 4 and Sonic the Hedgehog on the iPod Touch, all of which I could have controlled better using my feet if I had a regular controller. Not having physical buttons and tactile feedback completely takes away the precision and usability required to properly play these games. The other problem is that your thumbs eat up almost half the screen, making it difficult to actually see what you're doing.

What makes Street Fighter IV on the iPhone even more baffling is that Street Fighter in its traditional form requires at least six action buttons and precision controls. Many players will only play Street Fighter with a joystick. At the very least, having six buttons is critical to the way that game was designed. I've played Street Fighter on the Genesis with a 3-button controller and Street Fighter on the Gameboy, which only had 2 buttons and both were awful. Knowing what I know about controlling games on the iPhone and seeing how they've laid out the buttons, I can't see this being anything other than a complete mess.


If there's a demo, I'd definitely give it a shot. Also, I hate to be judgmental about a game that isn't even out yet. However, knowing what I know about both Street Fighter and the iPhone doesn't give me high hopes for this product. Let's hope for the best, but my expectations are fairly low.

Last time I spoke about Silent Hill: Homecoming, I focused mainly on how freaked out the game made me. It took a lot of will from within for me to overcome my psychological shortcomings to get through that opening sequence. As a survival horror game, I thought it started out really well.

Unfortunately, my mental fortitude hasn't been pushed nearly as hard since. Part of that has come from growing familiar with the world. But most of my growing weariness towards the game comes from the game's design faults and squandered potential.

I guess before I talk about the game it could have been, let me preface this post by saying that I'm still far from finishing it. I've only gotten to the Grand Hotel, which should be enough of an indicator for those that have played it and not enough of a spoiler for those that haven't. Also, let's start by talking about what I think is still good about the game.


Sound-wise, this game is spectacular. The music is appropriately haunting all the time. During action moments, it does a wonderful job of making your toes curl in fear. On the other hand, during down-time, the game's music does just enough to make you not feel comfortable. Sound effects are also equally appropriate at accomplishing tension. I consistently get freaked out when I walk into a random object in the world and hear it fall over. For a game released in 2008, the visuals hold up fairly well, particularly during the "nightmare" segments. The visual filters do a great job if making the game look "gritty".

It's past that where the game really begins to unravel. When I got past the "nightmare" segment and into the desolate city, the world of Shepherd's Glen and Silent Hill so far come off as boring rather than creepy. A lot of the tension is lost when you're walking around a foggy and plain-looking city.

I enjoy the game's more "traditional" approach to survival horror, but it also takes with it some really annoying design elements. I hate having to wander around each and every inch of the world, constantly hitting the "A" button to make sure I don't miss an item. If I were in the shoes of the character, there's no way I would be carefully scouring through my environment looking for stuff. I'd be doing everything I could to get the heck out of there. Due to the nature of the world's and how the developers want to lead the player down a certain path, there are a number of locked doors and closed off pathways. This wouldn't be a problem if the game wasn't designed to be explored. In turn, this forces the player to check every single door in the game, of which 80% of them are "locked" or "jammed" or whatever other excuse the game gives you for not letting you go beyond the door.


None of this though is as offensive as the game's fundamentally-flawed and arguably broken combat. In any survival horror game, the biggest fear you should have as a player is physical fear. The fear that something or someone is going to kill you. However, the moment your health is in danger, all you can think of as a player is, "Crap, I need to go through this combat junk."

The basics of how combat works is that the majority of your confrontations are (to this point in the game) one-on-one affairs. You hold the left trigger to lock onto your enemy, then you have the choice of attacking with a quick or strong attack. The problem with the trigger is that it doesn't always center the camera or your guy to the bad guy. I've had the game both not center the camera on the bad guy and not even adjust my character to face the enemy, which leads to me wildly swinging my weapon in the wrong direction.

Even worse than this is the actual act of combat. Neither of your attacks feel good to execute and neither of them feel like they have any weight to them. The combo system is also a joke, which boils down to you hitting two quick attacks and one strong attack repeatedly. You have the ability to dodge attacks when timed correctly, but I have yet to make this work with any sort of consistency. During my last playthrough, I got a gun, which has been pretty useless thus far. The weight and impact of your shots isn't there, and it seems like it takes a whole clip to take anything down. In a game where you only get 10 bullets every 30 minutes, that isn't going to cut it. Regardless of what you do to kill your enemy, it doesn't feel like you do anything more than stand in front of your enemy and hit buttons until your enemy dies. All of the tension and fear is lost when it just looks like you and your enemy aimlessly flailing at each other. I've heard that combat in the Silent Hill series has always been an Achilles heel to the point that the latest version of the game removes combat completely.

I'm at a crossroads with this game. I love the music and am intrigued to find out where this game's story goes. But is that enough for me to bear with checking hundreds of doors and having a horrible time beating up zombies and other monsters one at a time? Maybe it's best to cut this homecoming short.

With the release of Bioshock 2 only days away, I thought I would take a minute to reflect back on my time with the original Bioshock.

I vividly remember reading video game sites and listening to podcasts who were hyping up how amazing this game was. I didn't care. The screenshots looked pretty, but I didn't care that it came from the guy who made the System Shock games cause I'd never played them before. I didn't care about the Little Sister dynamic. I didn't care that you could add elemental powers to yourself to add variety to the combat.

Then I played the demo. Oh, my, God.

The way that game starts has to be one of the greatest openings in video game history. When your plane crashes and you find the pod that leads you to this incredible looking underwater city, it's mind-blowing. Then you get in there, and the world is equal parts beautiful and creepy. Without spoiling the demo (which if you haven't already tried, you really should), it's wonderfully paced to a climactic end that left me saying, "I need this game. Now."

So within the span of 45-minute demo, I went from indifferent to "zOMG!!!111". I bought that game the moment my local Best Buy opened and hunkered down on the sofa to explore the world of Rapture.


Throughout the game, the atmosphere of the game was always my favourite part of the Bioshock experience. I loved exploring the fantastically-designed world that was part futuristic, part historical and part apocalyptic art deco. Each of the different zones brought something slightly different to the table, which made the game wonderful to look at. To add to the experience, the music was spot-on for the environments, as they went with old-time music from the era the world of Rapture existed in before everything crumbled to crap. At the time, the tapes that were left behind added an extra layer of depth to the world by narrating to you what happened before you got there. This idea has been done to death since, but Bioshock really made that popular.

Character design was also a big win for Bioshock. Save for the last boss, everything you encounter in that game from the splicers to the Little Sisters are wonderfully designed to fit that world. The Big Daddy's themselves have become so iconic, that it's hard not to talk about this generation of gaming without mentioning them.

Speaking of the Big Daddy's, these were arguably the best and one of the weaker parts of the game. As a player, I was always intimidated by them initially due to their size and arsenal. But thanks to the chambers where you were brought back to life with little penalty, it took a lot of wind out of fighting a Big Daddy. Knowing that you could die and come back with the Big Daddy at the same health you left him took away a lot of tension once you figured that out. I also did not like the Little Sister choice system. On a base level, I get the concept of either saving a Little Sister to revert her to human or killing a little sister to harvest her energy. However, the game doesn't really reward you for going down the middle, or harvesting all the Little Sisters. The moment you harvest one little sister, you automatically get the "bad" ending and lose out on the achievement points you would have gotten if you saved them all. Maybe I would have ended up a stronger character in the end if I harvested all the girls, but I beat that game just fine.

I don't know if it was just me, but actually playing the game wasn't as great as the world they gave you to play in. I thought it played fine and the combat was fun, but it's not as good as the top first-person shooters on a mechanical level.

One other thing I wanted to say before I wrap this up: the plot and pacing of Bioshock was incredible...to a point. There is a very distinct point in the game where the plot peaks and slowly devolves from there.

At the time of its release, Bioshock to many was game of the year, and to some the best game of this generation. I'm not sure if I could go that far in stating my love for the game, but the overall product was (and still is) excellent. Here's to hoping that they did not ruin the Bioshock reputation with the (in my opinion) unnecessary sequel.

I was never the biggest Sonic the Hedgehog guy, but I have a soft spot in my heart for the first two games. Also, he's one of the most recognizable figures in this medium I love. It was downright tragic to see Sega drag the franchise down into the gutter. Even when the fans vehemently asked for a return to the series' roots, Sega would completely ignore their cries and graft on another stupid gimmick to an already bad 3D game.


Sonic the Hedgehog 4 doesn't guarantee us much of anything, other than it being a 2D Sonic game that will be downloadable in episodic form. It could still suck. It could still feature some of the elements that made the more recent Sonic games awful. But I am glad to see Sega finally care about the people it makes games for and at least attempt to create a product with them in mind. Will Sonic rise to prominence on par with Mario like he did back in the early 90s? Maybe that's a bit much to ask. Let's see if we can get a good Sonic game first, then we'll talk.

Due to circumstances beyond my control, today is my first day of being unemployed since I started working in 2001. I will be diligent in trying to get back on my feet, and I hope this spell of unemployment doesn't last for long. I have been pretty good at saving my money and my expenses are relatively low, so I should be able to hang out for a few months if things get that hairy. I pray that they don't.

Because there are a lot more important things in life than gaming, I am putting a voluntary and immediate hold on all video game related spending. Video games are not a cheap hobby to maintain, and for the next little while I'll have 0 income to offset my expenses. I haven't had to limit myself in this department ever since I began making my own money, so it will take some adjusting on my part. It will be a weird feeling let games I want on day one pass by for a while (or for forever), but the ability to eat, pay my bills and maintain my health trumps whatever fun I could have from any video game.

When I'm not hustling towards the next career opportunity, I will still have downtime and still be looking for something to do. Heck, I'll have more time than ever to play video games, technically. So what am I going to do as an unemployed gamer?


1. Get a job.

It may seem awesome on the surface to have all the time in the world to play video games, but I can't be one of "those people" who throws their life away by vegging out on the couch with a controller in their hands. I need to focus on getting my life back together first and foremost.


2. Play games I started and never finished.

Off the top of my head, I know that I still have Super Mario Galaxy, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Boom Blox 1 and 2, Punch-Out!!!, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, Mirror's Edge, Silent Hill: Homecoming and Army of Two. Not all of these are great games, but are a lot of games I have that I never got the full experience from. I'll have time to go back and finish the job. In particular, I'm looking forward to finishing the Mario games, because I know I'm missing out.


3. Start playing games to 100% completion.

I'm normally not the type of player that aims to needs to complete everything a game has to do. But desperate times call for potentially desperate measures, and I do have a few games that could fit the bill. In Assassin's Creed 2, I still have a number of side missions left to do. In Borderlands, I'm almost done playthrough 2 with a level 50 soldier, so the opportunity is there to finish the job. Should I really want to go all-out with it, I could try and max out the other three characters too. That process would take up a good 150+ hours of game time. Maybe the most heinous crime against video games I've committed recently is that I've barely played any Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer. There isn't a better time than now to chase Prestige...or get shot in the head repeatedly by 12 year-old kids that are way better than me.


4. Exercise...video game style.

My mom is a huge exercise video game junkie. Because of her, we have Wii Fit, both EA Active games and Your Shape in the house. I used to be in tip-top shape before my second go-around at college and working full-time ravaged my body. I have gained a notable amount of weight and haven't done much of anything to stop it. Now will be a great time to exercise not just my thumbs, but the rest of my body as well.


5. Start actively playing for achievements.

The last time I wrote about achievements, I said that I was more concerned with playing fun games or new games rather than grinding through a game for points. With the extra time on my hands, now can grind through the Endless Set-list in Lego: Rock Band or whatever other game with achievements to spare. I've only collected about 1/3 of the total possible number of points across all my games, so committing to boosting my score could eat up quite a bit of time, should I so choose to go down this path.


6. Train to be a Street Fighter IV master.

Ever since I began following the professional scene last year, I've steadily improved my abilities in Street Fighter IV to the point where I have 2500+ battle points, over 3000 wins and a winning percentage of roughly 80% by taking what I've learned from the pro scene and applying it to my own game. It's made the game far more fun and exciting than I ever imagined Street Fighter could be. In spite of my personal gains, I'm far from a grand master and I would probably get destroyed at any local competition. There are a number of resources available to help me get there, but I've always frowned upon having to "work" in training mode to get better. Committing to being good at the Street Fighter IV series of games could take potentially years of my gaming life away.


7. Dig into the "Pile of Shame".

Maybe it's time to settle some old scores once and for all. Games such as Metroid Prime 2: Echoes and Wind Waker are among a handful of games I own that I have never played. With no foreseeable games on the horizon for me to purchase due to my work situation, now could be an awesome time to dust off a few old consoles and figure out why I invested in these games in the first place.


With all that written down, it appears as though I have a lot of great gaming ahead of me. Maybe I do. However, nothing would bring me more joy than to get a new job to mend my crushed spirit, career and income. To be honest, I think my video game playing plan is a lot more thought out than my plan to get working again, which is pretty sad. I guess before I tackle anything on this list, I better go update my resume and get back on the grind.