Shmee.Me

May 22, 2015

Exploring The Broken Age! (Part 2 Update)

I am not going to go over the first part of the Broken Age, but you can read my thoughts here.

I loved Broken Age part one by Tim Schafer and Double Fine games, and for the most part I love part 2, but it lacks a little something from the first half. That little something is discovery. There are only a couple of new areas in the second half of Broken Age, and they come towards the end of the game. Discovering the beautiful areas Tim and his team thought up were a lot of what I enjoyed in the first part, so going back over the same areas wasn’t exciting. This may have been less disappointing had I waited to play the whole game once it was finished instead of playing the first half so long ago.

That doesn’t mean I think the game is a bad. Far from it. People wanting challenging puzzles should be happy, they upped the puzzle count a lot, and none of them are as obvious as the puzzles in the first half, so you really have to think things through and go back over all the areas to find what you missed. I know this made a lot of people angry, but it is an adventure game so what were they expecting?

Also the wonderful characters are still here, and it is great to see Vela and Shay try and save the people they love while continuing their coming of age tale. Story telling really is the strength of adventure games, and Tim Schafer doesn’t waste this opportunity. The story feels a little rushed at the end, but everything leading up to the conclusion is wonderful.

Games like Broken Age are why I love Double Fine studios so much. They create games from the heart that tell great stories that charm and delight. You may never get your action game fix from them, but you will get something unique and thought provoking, so I think you should give Broken Age a shot. It is going to be out on pretty much every major platform (except Xbox), so there is no reason not to give it a try. Well unless you hate adventure games.

April 23, 2015April 23, 2015

Hitman On The Go!

Before Hitman Absolution I pretty much loved every Hitman game ever made, but I was skeptical when Square Enix Montreal made a turned based puzzler out of the franchise, and then they put it on mobile devices. Still somehow this game gets to the core of what Hitman is all about. Finding a way to take out your target.

This game doesn’t have a story it has a series of boards, and Agent 47 is now a piece on that board. You need to move him from one location to another without getting killed. It is easier said than done, and a few of the boards are super aggravating. Still 47, a plastic piece or not, is up to the task.

The game is on its surface is very simple. You move 47 one space, and then the computer moves all its pieces based on their type. Blue Guard pieces don’t move, but always stay looking forward; Yellow Guard pieces move one space in a straight line until they hit a wall or something and then turn around; Green Guard pieces just spin every turn, and the Grays are back to back, so you have to stay to the side of them.

Now you will get tools to help take out these guards, and they are placed all over the game board. If it is gun it lets you shoot to a specific location, cans and rocks let you make noise one space away from you to attract the guards to that location, and costumes that disguise you as one of the guard types. Though once you land on a space with an object on it you have to use it right away, so timing is everything.

What I love about this game is that it understands what makes the Hitman games great. Problem solving. In the main line games it is how to sneak around to get that prefect kill, but in this game it is how to move your piece properly. It is pretty much the same thing, just it is a very distilled experience with Hitman Go. Now with Go there is pretty much one right way to do things, but in the big budget games there are lots of ways (in the good ones anyway). Still, it feels the same and that is what matters.

This game is always on sale for like a buck, and that is more than reasonable for what you get. If you love the Hitman franchise like I do, or you just want a mobile game that makes you think and isn’t always asking for your credit card, Hitman Go is a must own. For everyone else, you should get it anyway because it is a great game.

March 5, 2015March 5, 2015

GDC 2015 Highlights!

Usually there isn’t a lot of news that comes out of the GDC (Game Developers Conference) since it is primarily a show for developers not the public, but this year was a little different, so I thought I would give you some highlights.

Everyone is in to VR now:

Oculus Rift showed that VR could be done well and cheaply, and since then everyone has jumped on the bandwagon. This year Sony showed off more of its Project Morpheus which will work with its PS4 due in 2016, but Valve and HTC’s Vive stole the show. Apparently it is the best VR headset ever demonstrated, so we will see how that turns out.

More Set-Top Boxes:

Valve is not content to stay on your computer it wants a piece of your TV as well. It announced that Steam Box, a PC based console, will finally launch this year, and it is also launching the Steam Link. A little box that Streams your PC games to your TV, so that if you already have a gaming rig you can play your games anywhere in your house. It is an interesting concept, and for a certain subset of gamers I can see it being very attractive. nVidia announced a new Android TV based console that is part of their Shield line. It can stream games from the internet as well as play games locally. We will see how that works when it launches for $200 later this year.

nVidia wants AMD out of the game:

nVidia has been busy launching new video cards in its great GeForce GTX 900 line, while AMD can’t seem to get their Radeon R9 300 series out the door, so nVidia went for the knockout blow by announcing the Titan X. It has 12 GB of RAM and 8 Billion transistors. I am sure this card will cost a mint, but there is nothing faster than it on the planet.

Game development is now free to try:

You can now download and try to make your own games using the Unreal Engine 4 or Unity Engine 5. Tools like these used to cost upwards of $10,000 a license, but now they are available to anyone. These are not the stripped down versions either. You are getting the full set of tools. Once you are start to make money you will have to pay for them, but if you just want to try it out you are free to do so.

Microsoft’s one OS world comes in to focus:

Microsoft is getting serious about only having one OS. At the GDC it explained more about its universal app store, updates on the new DirectX 12 API, Xbox to Windows 10 cross play and cross buying, Xbox One to PC streaming, and lastly a bunch of new games coming out to its platforms using the ID@Xbox program. Most notably Elite: Dangerous. I think it is clear that Microsoft sees itself as an underdog at this point, and is working really hard to try and be a dominant player again. We will see how their plans work, but at least it is good to see them truly trying again.

It has been a great GDC, and still has a couple of days left, but all the major players have had their say. If anything else noteworthy happens I will update this post. I can only hope next year’s GDC is as interesting.

October 1, 2014October 1, 2014

Windows 10?!

Well Microsoft threw us all for a loop yesterday by announcing Windows 10. It wasn’t surprising that they announced a new Windows OS, but that they skipped 9. Some are speculating that since it means “Suffering” in Japanese, “No” in German, and bad luck in China that 10 is a nicer number to market. They did the same thing when they skipped build 13 for Office, not that anybody paid attention to that. It also catches them up with OSX on Mac.

Other than that everything else went as planned. The start menu is coming back. Windows RT and Windows Phone are merging, so there will be only one version of the ARM OS, and from the pictures it also looks like Xbox One will be joining the party in some way. So other than the name it is exactly what people predicted.

If you want to try out Windows 10 they are releasing a Technical Preview today around noon Pacific Time. You can get it by clicking here. It goes without saying that this is an early beta, and you should only install it if you are willing to deal with numerous issues. I will probably be giving it a shot, and I of course will let you know what I think!

September 29, 2014September 29, 2014

The Problem With Always Online Worlds!

So last night I decided that I wanted to play some Destiny, but instead Lizard Squad decided that they would go and DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) Activision, so instead I got to play a screen that said I couldn’t connect to Bungie’s servers, and that I should look up the error code “cattle”. Now this is Lizard Squad’s fault, but really if Activision wants give me always online games they need to be prepared for guys like this coming to take them down. A lot. Because these guys love ruining people’s day, or night in this case.

As more and more games try and deliver always online experiences the more stuff like this is going to happen. Now if Destiny had allowed an offline mode that let me play single player I would have had a lot of fun, but no, this new MMO style setup let people like Lizard Squad rain on my fun. The more we rely on the cloud and services like Xbox Live and PS+, the more power we give jerks with a bunch of malwared-up computers. So developers are either going to need to do a better job of protecting their servers from these guys, or give us more ways to play their games.

I hope they are going to do both that way I don’t have a lot of wasted Sunday nights watching loading bars and disconnection screens. Those are not very fun games, though I might be more willing to play them provided they gave me loot for it!