Why Brink Sucks

1. Implementation of menus:

They really tried to reinvent the wheel here.  My biggest problem is that it's too hard to figure out what's going on.  In campaign mode if you are at the mission select screen you can see little dots next to each mission.  If they are filled in it means you completed the mission.  That's great but there is nothing to tell you what difficulty they have been completed on, which is important since they put an achievement in the game where you have to beat every level on hard or in adversarial.  The challenge menu doesn't even tell you which challenges you have beaten.

2. Speaking of challenges:

In order to unlock any weapon or weapon related attachment you have to complete challenges.  Each challenge has three difficulty levels.  Levels one and two unlock weapons and attachments while level three will unlock the privilege of being on the leaderboard.  Wow, I get to be on another leaderboard where I can be 349745th?  Sweet.  That's a great incentive to sit through this frustration.  The challenges are punishingly hard.  You really have to level up your guy a lot before you can do well in them.  That's not the stupid part though.  Brink is a game designed to be multiplayer co-op.  The challenges can be played with friends and are much easier if you do so.  But you don't unlock anything unless you play solo!  What the hell.

3. Multiplayer implementation:

Playing the game with other people is actually fun.  But getting the game set up right can be tricky.

Here is how the rest of the world does it:  Start a multilayer lobby, invite your friends, pick a map/game mode, the game then matches you with other parties and individuals, play the game.

Here is how Brink does it:  Pick a map/game mode,  load into a match, bring up the lobby menu, hit the "invite party" button, realize that you are already in a full game and your friends can't get in, back out to the main menu and try again.

4: Bots.  Oh sweet Jesus the stupid, stupid bots:

This isn't a problem with just Brink.  A lot of team based multiplayer games have this problem.  You need bots to fill in when you don't have other people.  Bot's are great at doing exactly what they are programed to do, which never includes strategy or thinking intuitively.  This is a problem in a "thinking man's FPS" as Brink likes to style itself.  FYI bots, if I'm sprinting towards an objective to get there before the enemy does and you are supposed to be escorting me, it might be a good idea if you sprinted too!  And I don't know, maybe get BETWEEN me and the enemy while I hack the door or whatever, you know, so I don't get shot?

Brink isn't a bad game necessarily but it's designers made some decisions that were questionable at best.  I do enjoy and applaud the character creation.  It's deep an well executed.  I was running into a bug though were my friends an I were seeing default models instead of our own for about half the match.  Even so, well done on the characters.

Anticipation 2010

For me summer is all about waiting for the fall blockbusters. By this time we’ve had E3 and we know what will be coming out for the Christmas season, and we’ve had a glimpse at what lies beyond. I thought it would be a good time to list my top ten most anticipated games.
…But then I could only think of five:

5. Warhammer 40,000 Dark Millennium Online
Publisher: THQ, Developer: Vigil, Release: TBA

I Don’t play MMORPGs. This game might change that. E3 brought us the first trailer but no real gameplay demo. I wasn’t impressed with the trailer but it’s still early on. At this point I’d love to just get some details. Basically, if they make a game where I can grow from a mewling heretic into a civilization-crushing Chaos Lord then I’m in.

4. Rock Band 3
Publisher: MTV Games, Developer: Harmonix, Release: Octoer 26th

Music games aren’t as hot as they were two years ago when Rock Band came out. Back then every party I went to had people playing Rock Band or Guitar Hero. I never got Rock Band, mostly due to the price and space requirements of all those damn peripherals. I’m thinking of jumping in with both feet this time. Rock Band 3 will support 7 players. It will have a two octave keyboard and a Pro guitar with 102 buttons for every note on a real guitar. It will have a Pro mode, a setting above expert were you can play the real notes. It will support all the songs from RB 1, 2 and RB: Green Day, as well as all the DLC. This is the Cadillac of music games. They are pulling out all the stops, and my prediction is that this will be the game that decides if music games stay in the spotlight or prove to be just a passing fad.

3. Fallout: New Vegas
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks, Developer: Obsidian, Release: October 19th

I’m a longtime fan of Fallout. I played the first game on a 133 MHz Pentium Uno. It was a serious time investment because moving from one screen to the next took a full minute or more to load. I’ve spent more time with Fallout 3 than I did with the first two games combined, and I still haven’t finished with it. I’ve got DLC for it I haven’t even touched. So I’m fairly psyched about New Vegas. Two points of interest: One, it’s being developed by Obsidian, a developer with members of the original Black Isle team than made the first game. Two, they are revamping the NPC system. That second point might not seem exciting, but as I may have mentioned before, the ONLY significant problem with Fallout 3 was that your NPC companions were drooling idiots who consistently ran head-long into flaming death. Keeping them alive became a whole game in itself and it made having companions more of a liability than an asset. New Vegas is supposed to fix that by making the AI more robust and giving you more command options as well. For me the idea of putting together an actual team rather than deploying living SCUD missiles is very appealing.

2. Castlevania: Lords of Shadow
Publisher: Konami, Developer: Mercury Steam, Release: Q3 2010

3D Castlevania games have not done very well in the past. There have been decent 3D offerings from the series but they never stood up to the pedigree of the 2D games. I enjoyed Curse of Darkness on PS2, but I have to agree with the vocal majority that it was missing that spark of greatness. It just seemed like it was made by a second-rate studio, not a giant like Konami. Lords of Shadow is supposed to change all that. It’s hard to say exactly why I’m so optimistic about this game. All I’ve seen are a few trailers with gameplay footage… but it just looks awesome! I’ve got a good feeling about this one.

Side note: In a few days I’ll get a surprise summer gift in the form of Castlevania: Harmony of Despair. I love the 2D “Metroid style” Castlevanias. While the series has faltered on consoles it has flourished on handhelds. While I enjoyed my time with titles like Circle of the Moon, I always found myself wishing I could play them on a TV with a controller (the Game Boy Advance SP was not made for giant man-hands or old people eyes). Now just yesterday I found out about Harmony of Despair, a 2D side scroller for XBLA. The game will have a co-op element and a new way to explore the castle. Instead of uncovering little bits at a time you can zoom out to see the entire thing including where the boss is. You then have to figure out the best way to reach him. And it comes out in two weeks!!!

1. Brink
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks, Developer: Splash Damage, Release: Q1 2011

I seem to be starting a trend where I have one shooter per year that I play the hell out of. In 2009 it was Rainbow Six Vegas 2, 2010 is the year of Modern Warfare 2, next year it will be Brink. Probably. This game looks sick. I saw it played at PAX last year and was very impressed with the whole package. It has:

- Progressive character development and customization
- Adaptive mission system within competitive multiplayer
- Some sort of new movement system that allows previously unseen agility and obstacle navigation

It’s going to be hot, I can’t wait. Have a great summer everyone!

Stuff that's not Final Fantasy

Taking a break from Final Fantasy this week. I've been playing a few rounds of Modern Warfare 2 each morning when I get home from work. I feel like I'm getting better at it. I play mostly free for all deathmatch and I manage to get a "kill-cam" win about once a session now. It may sound noobish to get excited about such things but the feeling of improvement is one of the best feelings a human being can have and it's one that "1337" players seldom get to enjoy. I've found tremendous success with the care package and sentry gun kill counts. Using a care package as camping bait is an old strategy but I like the twist of planting a sentry gun and letting it do my camping for me. The 4 and 5 kills necessary to get these makes it easy to do.

I had to go to the doctor the other day which required me to drive to a part of town with a Play N Trade nearby. Proximity to a Play N Trade almost guarantees a purchase. I went in looking for SNES or PS1 games as usual but ended up with copies of KOTOR2 and Twilight Princess in my hands. KOTOR2 was less expensive but I've been eyeing the Zelda game for few years now. Damn Gamecube games are still hella expensive for their age but you know you're buying quality. Plus if they haven't gone down in price buy now they're not going to later, or get any easier to find. Although I'm not likely to play through the whole game (much like Metroid Prime) I'm glad I grabbed it and now I'm considering TLoZ: The Wind Waker and Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door to round out my GC collection.

...OK and Starfox Assault. But that's it!

So I had a scare the other day. I was tidying up and accidentally dropped my wife's 14 year old Game Boy Pocket. I guess the glue had worn out because the plastic shield over the LDC screen popped right off. There was a moment of panic but it turned on just fine. A light application of modeling glue and a few hours later the shield was back in place. My Spring cleaning endeavors also resulted in me moving my SNES and old 13" TV into the office. This opened up a lot of space on my dresser which is cool because I had some framed photos I needed to find a place for. I had to store all my modeling supplies to make room for the SNES and TV but I play way more video games than I do modeling.

Lastly I mentioned Brink in a previous post after seeing it at PAX last year. I saw the most recent videos for it yesterday and it looks like it's going to be a fantastic game. I have a feeling I'll be doing some campaigning among my friends come fall to get them to buy it.

PAX09 For Realz This Time

Oh all right all right! Fine. I'll write a proper post.

Lets talk about games shall we? I only played one hands-on demo: Darksiders. It was pretty fun I guess. I walked away feeling like I had just played a next-gen God of War. You run around beating people with a sword and climbing things. The coolest part is that you can pick things up like people or cars. Grabbing enemies buy the neck and insta-killing them was pretty fun. So you're supposed to have a horse in the game but that wasn't in the demo. So... yeah, God of War.

Best demo I watched someone else play: Bayonetta. This one's been on my radar for about as long as Darksiders has. It's another third-person action hack-and-slash staring a... um, yeah the plot escapes me... she's a gun... witch? Whatever, she runs around killing stuff. The first guy I watched play the game was pretty good at it. I watched him take down two bosses. I think they were bosses; they were pretty epic. As she fought these huge monster things they destroyed the environment in ways that completely changed the battlefield. There were at least four "oh snap" moments in the 3 min of gameplay I witnessed. The shifting environment during the boss battles were half of them. The finishing moves used to kill the bosses were the other. Apparently the player's character has the ability to use her hair and clothes to turn giant beasties into piles of goo, and in a ludicrously spectacular manner. I'm not going to go into detail because you really have to just see it, but wow. Wow.

Also impressive was Brink. They had a big screen set up and a guy with an English accent was giving live demos every hour or so. The game takes place on this floating island and you play as a soldier from one of two opposing factions. Your goal is to complete missions, but the twist is that the missions are generated by the AI. Your character class can be switched around during the battle and your missions are assigned to you based on the class you are playing. You can choose which mission you want to do from a pop-up menu, so you're not stuck having to do one thing. I think this is especially cool because I hate getting stuck on one mission! To me this approach could streamline and maximize the fun factor. There is an RPG element with your character as well. It wasn't made clear to me exactly what you would be improving stat-wise, but he did go over a pretty robust visual customization system. As your character progresses he (or she?) will have access to more armor and regalia. Also cool is this action button they built in where your character can intuitively move around the environment, traversing obstacles, and just not getting stuck on stuff. It looks pretty slick in action, and I can imagine it will be pretty important because the environments I saw were tangled, jungle-like mazes of metal and debris.

So PAX was sweet. There were a lot of great games there but Bayonetta and Brink were the two that really caught my eye.