Best games of 2008 (Part 4)

Favorite Xbox Exclusive: Fable 2

Although Gears of War 2was a strong contender in this space, ultimately it was Peter Molyneux’s redemptive masterpiece that offered a fresh, unique experience on Microsoft’s machine.

No, Fable 2 doesn’t have the best graphics or the best story, but it does offer an incredibly fun experience that genuinely gets richer and more rewarding the more you invest in it.

Fable 2 is a game that really does give you the leeway to play however you want, and doesn’t punish you for making “bad” choices. Want to play the morally upright hero? Go ahead, that’s what I did. But terrorizing the population with wanton killing and banditry is an equally valid way to play, though you can expect the world to have a markedly different feel should you turn to the dark side.

Fable 2 also offers a wealth of secondary activities. Buy a fish stall and get a steady income that lets you buy more properties, all the way up to a massive castle. Hammer away as a blacksmith, pull drinks at the local pub, or chop wood in the countryside to earn a few extra coins. Woo a local woman (or two, or three), or go nuts with prostitutes in the seedier hamlets. Buy a home and upgrade the furnishings. Win the town’s adulation with displays of heroism, or turn them off with fart jokes.

Fable 2 is an approachable, deep, and quite funny twist on the fantasy role-playing game. Its numerous innovations make it my favorite Xbox 360 exclusive ahead of more graphically rich and intense fare like Gears of War 2.

Reality check: Oddly, for a game that asks, “Who do you want to be?”, Fable 2 doesn’t give you much leeway with character creation. You can choose to be a boy or a girl at the start, and that’s about it. To be sure, your choice of diet influences your physique, and you can pay for hair styles, clothes and tattoos throughout. I also recommend reading up on how to use your repertoire of facial expressions and gestures, and, just as importantly, how to quickly gain new ones. These are essential to enjoying the in-game socializing and I only gained proficiency as I neared the end of the main quest.

 

Best Game I’m Most Eager to Play Once I Finish What I’m Currently Playing: Dead Space

EA’s creative resurgence continues with this critically acclaimedtake on the survival horror genre, with sci-fi spin. You play a mechanic sent to an orbital mining station that has lost communications, only to find that something has wiped out the thousand-strong crew.

Several things make Dead Space noteworthy. The exquisite pacing keeps you on the edge of the couch waiting for the next horrific moment to spring. Your character is just an engineer trying to defend himself with tools and objects, not some buff space marine bristling with high-tech weaponry. There’s also a great implementation of the HUD-less display. There’s no health bar, weapon icon showing how much ammo you have left, and no map screen that pauses the action. All the information you need as a player is visible right there as part of the environment.

I also look forward to what I hear is brilliantly implemented zero-G combat and a clever way to convey sound in the hard vacuum of space.

Dead Space reminds me of nothing more than Doom 3, and I say that as someone who loved Doom 3 and its creepily lit hallways, disturbingly twisted monsters, and captivating storyline that you uncovered through recordings and e-mails as you explored.

Reality check: One colleague complained to me that his biggest issue with Dead Space was that “You’re always just the engineer.” Meaning, I guess, that you don’t evolve much or grow more capable as the game progresses. I’m also half-expecting that the horror aspect of the game will translate into slow progress as I play it in easily digested chunks.

Best Unfinished Game: Fallout 3

Considered a Game of the Year contender by many outlets, Fallout 3 is in many ways “Oblivionwith guns”, a reskinning of Bethesda’s excellent fantasy-themed role-playing game from 2005. Oblivionis still one of my favorite Xbox 360 games and still ranks as one of the most evocative gaming experiences I’ve enjoyed.

Indeed, the basic Fallout 3 mechanics will be instantly familiar to Oblivion fans: the sense of movement, the placement of objects in the world, the basics of the inventory system have all essentially been carried over.

Fallout 3 makes two huge strides forward.

The first is the area of gameplay with the introduction of the VATS targeting system that lets you single out specific parts of an enemy’s body when attacking. It’s an immensely satisfying feature that never grows old.

The second improvement is in narrative. Oblivion, for all its considerable charm and intriguing side-quests, suffered mightily from a main story that forced players to go on cookie-cutter missions that quickly lost their appeal. That is the reason I never finished Oblivion despite falling in love with the broader world it took place in.

So far, and I would guess I am halfway through the main storyline, the Fallout 3 narrative has suffered no such missteps. Every quest is unique and there appear to be multiple ways to complete them. For instance, it is possible to obliterate the first town you come across with an atomic blast. I opted to save the town, figuring correctly it would be an important home base for resting, healing and restocking of supplies. But the choice was mine to destroy it, and I can only imagine the impact it would have made on the story arc.

Reality check: Fallout 3 offers up more of the grey and brown color palate that has so imbued recent games. It requires constant inventory management — repair of gear, making sure you’re not over your weight limit, switching weapons, and taking medicine to ensure you survive your next fight and the radioactive environment itself.

Tomorrow: Favorite Xbox Exclusive, Best Game I’m Most Eager to Play Once I Finish What I’m Currently Playing, and Best Unfinished Game!)

Ugh

So much for my plan to post something every day in 2009. Two weeks ago, Harlan came down with something nasty that caused him to miss nearly a full week of school. Relieving Tala from sick parent duty became rather more pressing than refreshing the blog. Of course, once Harlan got better, I came down with the same thing. The bug has been gestating in my chest all week. I worked from home on Wednesday and would have taken a sick day on Thursday, but I figured yesterday wasn’t a good day to not show up at the office. And today my bug blew up into something pretty nasty. Hopefully regular programming will return soon.

Probably not the last of Steve Jobs health issues

Bad news for Apple investors today. For what it’s worth, I think there’s better-than-even chance that Jobs is out of Apple or even dead by mid-year. Let’s review the course of events here:

• Jobs is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2003
• Luckily, he is one of 1% of people for whom the cancer is operable, but Jobs reportedly refuses to undergo the surgery that will save him because he thinks he can cure the cancer through homeopathic and nutritional methods
• Jobs gets the surgery only after his doctors tell him he will die without it
• By the way, none of this is disclosed to Apple investors until after the surgery, months after the diagnosis
• At an Apple event in June 2008, Jobs appears looking gaunt as a scarecrow, sparking speculation that the cancer has returnd
• After letting the rumors swirl for a couple days, Apple says Jobs is taking antibiotics for a “common bug”
• When the speculation doesn’t go away, Jobs tells a NYT reporter on background what the issue is. The NYT reporter can’t report details but says it’s not as serious as cancer but is considerably more serious than a “common bug”
• In late December, Jobs pulls out of the upcoming Macworld keynote — an address he has given for years — and Apple says this will be its last year attending the event. The announcement triggers fresh rumors that Jobs is ill or even near death.
• As the health speculation hits a fever pitch, Jobs issues a statement saying he has a “hormonal imbalance” that will require several months of treatment to recover from
• Today, he announces a six-month medical leave of absence

I’m sorry to sound such a gruesome note, but this is a guy who has been in fantasy denial about his own health problems, and he and his company have a track record of misleading investors and the public about the situation.

 

It’s a morbid prediction, but I don’t think Jobs/Apple have yet come entirely clean about what is going on here. Each revelation is more serious than the last, and all the while Jobs is proclaiming this is the final word on the matter.

 

The last story I ever wrote for Reuters ran on June 20, 2008, my last day at the news service. It was about how Apple was well-placed to thrive in a post-Jobs world. After the news broke today, Reuters dusted off that story and ran it on their main page. Here is an updated view on the matter by the new Apple beat reporter there.

Conversations with Harlan

We watched Jurassic Park the other night. If you remember, they thought the dinosaurs were all female but because they had used frog DNA to fill in the gaps in the dino DNA, the dinos developed the ability to switch sex and reproduce.

Harlan: “Dad, if I had a dinosaur I would name him Bob. But if he suddenly started laying eggs, I would call it Alissa.”

Harlan’s friend Matthew came over the other day.

Harlan: “Let’s pretend we’re half man, half wolf!”

Matthew: “Yeah! And half monkey!”

Delay

I’m sorry that there’s been a delay in getting the last couple installments of my “Best games of 2008″ series up. I’m hoping to post them in the next day or two.

$0.02 on Macworld

Apple’s marketing chief Phil Schiller delivered the company’s final keynote at Macworld yesterday:

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Apple Inc said on Tuesday it was dropping copy protection from songs sold on the Internet and debuted its slimmest 17-inch laptop yet, but with no dramatic products or master pitchman Steve Jobs, the company’s final Macworld performance disappointed Wall Street.

Guess the pressure from Amazon’s MP3 store – where many are turning as an alternative to iTunes — finally caused Jobs to cave on the variable pricing issue, which labels have long clamored for.

Tuesday’s event produced few surprises. Apple announced a $2,799 17-inch laptop that is the company’s lightest and slimmest ever, as well as tweaks to software for home movies and photographs.

We’re heading into what is possibly the biggest recession since the Great Depression and Apple rolls out a $2,800 laptop?

Good luck with that.

Best games of 2008 (Part 3)

Biggest Game That Failed to Capture My Imagination: Metal Gear Solid 4

Perhaps the last of the great third-party exclusives, this PlayStation 3 epic was a serious contender at many outlets for game of the year. I’d never played a Metal Gear game prior to this, so I tried to prepare by reading up on the back-story. It was a lot to digest, but when I played the game what really turned me off was just the weird control scheme.

For Xbox fans, the Splinter Cell series has really defined stealth-action, and the controls in that series were generally so well thought-out that Metal Gear Solid 4’s scheme is just clunky and odd in comparison. The game also does a horrible job of bringing you up to speed on the mechanics. Normally, tutorial levels step you through increasingly intricate moves until they’ve covered the basics you need to strike out on your own. But MGS4 gave you incredibly brief sequences where, say, you move around a vehicle, and then you get thrown in another lengthy cut scene until the next short sequence, which, in terms of teaching you how to play the game, bears little relation to the previous sequences.

Reality check: Given the accolades heaped on this game, creator Hideo Kojima obviously did something right. Just today, a coworker said MGS4 had some absolutely epic moments in it that are worth suffering through the crummy bits. This may be one to revisit later in 2009 during the midyear lull.

Favorite Downloadable Game: Braid

An evocatively melancholy story about lost love, Braid was one of the most critically acclaimed and innovative games of the year. Mechanically, it’s an homage to Super Mario Bros., but with the added element of time manipulation. Braid’s unique visuals are rendered as gorgeous Impressionist-style paintings, and the slow, cello-heavy soundtrack heightens the doleful mood. Each level is a polished gem of design, and your time-bending abilities get more intricate as the game progresses.

Reality check: Braid can be wickedly hard. In fact, it’s probably the hardest game I played last year. Of course you can go online if you need help, but the satori-like revelation that comes with cracking the puzzles unaided is its own reward.

 

 

 

Favorite Unsung Masterpiece: Mirror’s Edge

This was hands down one of the most original games of the year. Essentially a first-person 3D platformer, Mirror’s Edge is set in an authoritarian city-state of the near future that blends atmospheric and architectural elements of Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong, New York, LA and London. You play as a “runner”, or underground courier of illicit information, who eludes police by running, leaping and sliding through urban landscapes.

The first thing you’ll notice about Mirror’s Edge is the vibrant aesthetic. Absent are the grays and browns of (excellent) games like Gears of War 2, Fallout 3 and Call of Duty. From the sparkling blue sky to the bold primaries of many of the buildings you run on and through, Mirror’s Edge presents a world blossoming with color.

Of course you’ll also notice the unique perspective as a player. There’s nothing new about first-person games, but here, you’re not brandishing a gun and you frequently see your hands and feet. Mirror’s Edge is basically a parkour simulator, and the first-person viewpoint allows for some truly vertiginous moments, especially if you ignore your mother’s old advice and sit (or stand, which is even more immersive) too close to your television. One thing I loved is that you are encouraged to finish the game without firing a single shot at a human being. You can certainly obtain guns by disarming police that stand in your way, but I found it more believable and interesting to eschew weapons entirely and rely on speed and smarts to get me out of trouble.

The story in Mirror’s Edge deserves special mention as well. It’s not perfect, but this marked one of the few games that made me care about the main character. Electronic Arts’ DICE studio crafted a believable and sympathetic person in the character of Faith, and I found myself eager to see how the next chapter played out. There are some decent if clichéd twists, and although the ending is somewhat unsatisfactory in the sense that it doesn’t tie off all the loose ends, there is enough of a payoff emotionally and game-play-wise to deliver a sense of closure.

Reality check: There are a few really nasty difficulty spikes in the game that require you to pull off a series of complex moves with little or no margin for error. Expect a four to five places where you will die 20 to 40 times trying to execute one of these intricate sequences. I normally hate games that are so demanding, but in this case was so intrigued by the story and visuals that I kept plugging at it.

(Tomorrow: Favorite Xbox Exclusive, Best Game I’m Most Eager to Play Once I Finish What I’m Currently Playing, and Best Unfinished Game!)

Passing of a hero

From the Seattle P-I today:

The great raider has died.

Robert Prince, a Seattle native and Army Ranger who was the assault force commander of the daring World War II mission to liberate Allied prisoners that was portrayed in the 2005 movie “The Great Raid,” passed away New Year’s Day in Port Townsend, his family confirmed.

Prince was a genuine American hero. His bravery in war was exceeded only by his humility and graciousness in peace.

“The Great Raid” was a good movie, but not a great one. For an absolutely fantastic telling of that story, read the book the movie is based on, Ghost Soldiers, by Hampton Sides. It is probably one of the five best books I have ever read. Not only was the rescue mission of absolutely epic proportions, but Sides’ prose is top-notch. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Best games of 2008 (Part 2)

Favorite Driving Game: Burnout Paradise

Why it’s a winner: Open world. Dozens of sweet cars. Spectacular crashes. Hundreds of challenges. Seamlessly integrated online play. Sure, Burnout Paradise isn’t the most realistic racer around, but when you’re smashing through a billboard 50 feet up in the air at 120 mph, who cares?

This is also a game I could pick up and play for just 15 minutes, or for hours on end. It’s also one I could share with Harlan. A benefit of the open-world, menu-less design is that it encourages exploration and lets you just cruise around checking stuff out. Perfect for a 7-year-old who doesn’t have the fine motor skills required to thread a speeding muscle car down a narrow alley or nudge an opponent just enough to send them careening into a concrete pillar without dooming yourself to the same fate.

Not only is there an incredibly variety of stuff to do in this game, but impressively, Electronic Arts and Criterion are keeping things fresh with new downloadable content such as new cars, new game modes, and even plans for an entire island that will be one giant playground for pulling outrageous stunts.

Reality check: If you like more authenticity and the chance to try out real-world cars and tracks, then driving simulators like Forza 2 and Gran Turismo 5 Prologue are probably more up your alley.

Favorite Online Game: Left 4 Dead

Less a shooter than your own personalized zombie survival movie, Left 4 Dead attains its fullest brilliance when you play online with three other people. Sure, there are only four levels, but each time it feels fresh due to the different strategies you and your cohorts come up with. In the weeks after Left 4 Dead came out, the halls at work each morning were filled with conversation about the previous night’s exploits. It’s one of those games that will have you asking in disbelief: “Did you see that?”

Left 4 Dead has delivered the most polished co-op experience to date. If you do not work with your teammates, you will die, and they will die, and the story will end. Yet you don’t have to rely on the goodwill of your friends, incentives to help out are built right into the game. Tight and taut, with the perfect mix of jump-out-of-your skin horror and campy humor, Left 4 Dead is a fresh and compelling online experience.

Reality check: Left 4 Dead might prove to be too limited, given that there are only four missions, only five firearms, and the same four characters to choose from. It remains to be seen how much staying power it has, but there are certainly hours of zombie-blasting fun to be had here nonetheless.

Biggest Time-Suck: Rock Band 2/Guitar Hero World Tour

It was clear more than a year ago that these competing franchises aimed to evolve into platforms offering a whole new way to enjoy your favorite music.While most people seem to gravitate to one or the other, I find my playing time split pretty evenly between them. Between Rock Band and Guitar Hero series, I’ve logged hundreds of hours of playing time, saving me the hassle and expense of constructing a real life or learning an actual instrument.

Rock Band 2 has so far shaped up as the critics’ choice as Harmonix and MTV fixed almost everything that was wrong with the already excellent first installment. The game does a great job of paying homage to rock music while not taking itself too seriously. Rock Band also offers the best selection of downloadable songs, with literally hundreds of tracks spanning classic rock, punk, country and metal.

Yet the wildly popular Guitar Hero has proven to be the sales king, and World Tour cuts into Rock Band’s turf in a big way by offering a new drum set and redesigned guitar that are best-in-class. Developer Neversoft also came up with a character creation tool that is superior to Rock Band’s. While their downloadable content isn’t as robust as their rival’s, they have some key acts like Jimi Hendrix, and they are doing cool things with bands like Aerosmith and Metallica.

Either way, whether it’s picking up an axe to relax by jamming through a few songs at the end of a long day, or breaking out the whole band kit for social fun when company is over, these music games deliver massive amounts of playing time and more than justify their expense.

Reality check: Selling at nearly $200 for the full band kits, these games cost almost as much as the console you play them on. While you’re sure to find many songs that please you, there will be quite a few that you hate but still have to slog through to proceed in career mode (yeah, I’m looking at you, PDA by Interpol). Getting four people up and playing is also still a bit of a chore.

(Tomorrow: Favorite Downloadable Game, Best Game That Failed to Capture My Imagination, Favorite Unsung Work of Art)

Better late than never: The best games of 2008 (Part 1)

I’ve been meaning to crank out a “Best of 2008″ for a couple weeks now but a few things kept getting in the way. For one thing, I hadn’t played enough of a few key titles to make judgements about them.

I also had trouble carving out time over the holidays to sit down and write a meaty post. I took my first vacation days in more than eight months, and pretty much avoided coming near a keyboard for most of that time.

Also, I kept getting intimidated as various news outlets and blogs rolled out their “best of” lists, either pre-empting what I wanted to say, or making me revisit my own picks.

By the time I really started getting my thoughts down, I was pretty sure I didn’t want to do a typical top 10 list or break down by genre. So I looked at the games I liked and then made up categories to accomodate them. I’ll run three each day all week.

Favorite Handheld Game: Patapon

Why it’s a winner: I admit, handheld gaming has never grabbed me, apart from about a six-month infatuation with the DS when it first came out. I just don’t have a niche in my life that can accomodate portable gaming. If I’m at home, I have a stack of console games I want to get through. If I’m commuting or travelling, I prefer to read books or magazines.

But Patapon, published by Sony for its PSP device, was so wildly different, so cute, so enthralling that it proved to be one of the rare titles to overcome my resistance to handheld gaming.

Patapon is so weird it’s almost impossible to describe. In the language of games, it’s a side-scrolling, rhythm-based, role-playing real-time strategy game. In English, that means you raise and equip armies of little round creatures called patapons, and lead them into battle against large beasties that are terrorizing the tribe. You issue orders by tapping different buttons in time with the rhythm of the tribe’s war drums: pata-pata-pata-pon, pon-pon-pata-pon, etc. Different rhythms result in different actions, such as advance, attack and retreat. It’s incredibly creative and charming.

Reality check: Patapon has a moderately steep learning curve, and you can expect to lose quite a few battles as you learn the ropes of the command and combat system. You also need to be pretty accurate in timing your button presses to the rhythms. A Guitar Hero-style difficulty selector would have been welcome.

Favorite Wii Game: Wii Fit

Why it’s a winner: A lot of people won’t even classify Wii Fit as a game, but in my book it qualifies as such thanks to one crucial quality: it’s simply fun to play. It also marks the first credible effort to bring health and fitness content to the medium of video games.

There is a wide array of strength, yoga and balance exercises available, and they can be surprisingly demanding. The balance board peripheral is really a fancy digital scale, allowing Wii Fit to track your weight and progress. Certainly the product has resonated with U.S. consumers, who have snapped up more than 3.5 million of the $90 game since in launched here in May.

Ultimately, Wii Fit’s significance will be similar to that of Wii Sports – a simplified and fun proof of concept that should open the door to more engaging products.

Reality check: Despite Nintendo’s early claims, Wii Fit just isn’t going to be something that you stick with every day and genuinely make a part of a serious fitness regimen. If you’re serious about exercising at home, there are a lot more productive things you can be doing.

An aside: A lot of hardcore gamers named No More Heroes as the Wii game of the year. I, too, loved the Kill Bill aesthetic of gushing blood but found the game-play far too repetitive: run until an enemy approaches. Wiggle the remote to decapitate/eviscerate/impale said enemy. Repeat 100 times. Reach boss, fight boss in same way.

Favorite Shooter: Battlefield: Bad Company

Why it’s a winner: This was a remarkable game and although it was largely eclipsed by Call of Duty 4, which came out more than half a year previously, Electronic Art’s latest attempt at transfering its groundbreaking PC franchise to consoles was superior in several ways.

If CoD4 is the Black Hawk Down of war video games, Battlefield: Bad Company is the Three Kings. CoD4 is about the deadly seriousness of war, but Bad Company focuses on its absurdity. The dialogue is snappy, and your squadmates are the most engaging since Brothers in Arms.

The game is no slouch in the looks department, either. The graphics and sound are excellent and smoke billows in a spectacularly realistic fashion, which is good since you’ll be generating quite a bit of it and you rampage across Eastern Europe.

And it wouldn’t be a Battlefield game without giving you a selection of vehicles to try out. Perhaps there’s no single moment that matches the A-10 gunship level of CoD4 but you’ll get a multitude of lesser yet still very impressive opportunities to take control of mobile death dealers from tanks to helicopters.

Reality check: The control scheme, especially swapping weapons, is plain weird and takes time to get used to. If you die, you respawn at the last checkpoint, which aren’t all that frequent. Weirdly, anything you killed or blown up remains dead and destroyed, so if you die near the end of a level, you will trek back through all the territory you laid waste to, a pain if you had a vehicle that got destroyed as well.

Tomorrow: Favorite Driving Game, Favorite Online Game, and Biggest Time-Suck!