Game Backlog: The Dilemma

As I’ve brought upin previous posts, my game backlog has become outright ridiculous. Seeing as how my progress is getting nowhere as of late, I thought it’d be therepeutic to list ALL the games I have to play (that I own) and what my progress is with them. After reading through the list, you should let me know on what you think I should play next, get rid of or give up on altogether.

PlayStation 2:
- Persona 3: FES (NOT FINISHED ~15 hours in)
- Disgaea: Hour of Darkness (NOT PLAYED YET)
- Monster Hunter (NOT PLAYED YET)
- Shadow of the Colossus (NOT PLAYED YET)
- Onimusha (NOT PLAYED YET)
- Rachet & Clank (NOT PLAYED YET)
- GrimGrimoire (NOT PLAYED YET)
- Dragon Quest VIII (NOT FINISHED ~15 hours in)
- Twisted Metal Black (NOT PLAYED YET)
- Final Fantasy X (NOT FINISHED ~10 hours in)
- Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (NOT PLAYED YET)
- ICO (NOT FINISHED ~5 hours in)
- Gran Turismo 3 A-Spec (NOT PLAYED YET)
- God of War (NOT PLAYED YET)

XBox 360:
- Project Gotham Racing 4 (NOT PLAYED YET)
- Sonic the Hedgehog (NOT FINISHED ~2 hours in)
- Elder Scolls IV: Oblivion (NOT PLAYED YET)
- Ultimate Alliance (NOT PLAYED YET)

PlayStation 3:
- Metal Gear Solid 4 (NOT PLAYED YET)
- Grand Theft Auto IV (NOT FINISHED ~3 hours in)

PlayStation Portable:
- Monster Hunter Freedom 2 (NOT FINISHED ~40 hours in)
- Patapon (NOT PLAYED YET)
- P2 (NOT PLAYED YET)

Computer:
- MLB ‘09 (NOT PLAYED YET)
- Messiah (NOT PLAYED YET)
- Crysis (NOT FINISHED ~4 Hours in)
- Half Life 2 (NOT FINISHED ~15 hours in)
- Half Life 2: Episode I (NOT PLAYED YET)
- Half Life 2: Episode II (NOT PLAYED YET)
- X-Com: UFO Defense (NOT PLAYED YET)
- System Shock (NOT PLAYED YET)
- Day of the Tentacle (NOT PLAYED YET)

EA to Nintendo: “Get your crap together.”

Nintendo hasn’t been having a good past couple of weeks, months, quarter or even year. Apparently the world has *finally* woken up and realized the Wii is a pretty crap system and got sales mostly through gimmicks and high profit margins by using circa-2001 hardware. Now, though, it seems, EA’s CEO John Riccitiello is speaking up about his disappointment in the system and the way Nintendo is treating their users and third-party publishers.

“To be honest with you, I think the Wii platform has been a little weaker than we had certainly anticipated. And there is no lack of frustration to be doing that at precisely the time where we have the strongest third-party share…”

EA is undoubtedly the Wii’s largest 3rd party supporter so I can see why they’d be upset a bit. However, that being said, when EA constantly pushes tripe like Charm Girls Pajama Party, MySims Racing, Nascar Kart Racing, Smarty Pants, etc., I can’t feel too bad for them (in total EA has released 50+ Wii titles since the system’s launch [>1/month]). I mean, if they wanted to point fingers for undelivering products, they need to take a look at EA. In other words, physician heal thyself.

“Frankly, I think they need more beats in the year than they get out of a first-party slate – to be able to have the Wii software platform perform as well as they would like.”

That is a good point because I think it brings up a key issue in WHY the Wii, its games and Nintendo (at this point in time) are doing so poorly and have reputations that are getting worse and worse with every passing month. I mean, what was Nintendo last BIG first-party game? Super Smash Bros. Brawl? That came out in March 2008. Over a year and a half ago. Sure, you could argue that Wii Sports Resort & WiiFit are “games”…but for hardcore gamers, those are a far cry from anything worth lumping together with Zelda, Mario or even Super Smash Bros. franchises.

To get even more insulting and stupid, I went to Nintendo’s site and went through all 838 games released for the Wii since it’s launch, looking for first party titles. I didn’t count Wii Ware releases — just Nintendo published titles. I even included casual titles like Wii Sports & Wii Fit. Here are the total #s of first party games released in each year, since 2006:

• 2006 – 2
• 2007 – 12
• 2008 – 6
• 2009 – 8 (4 are re-releases of Gamecube titles)

My point is this: Nintendo — as it has done with every console system since Nintendo 64 — is ridiculous when it comes to keeping platform interest high through 1st party releases. In fact, one could say the only reason why the N64 had as good of lineup as it did for the first few years was solely because of the help of 2nd-party Rare producing games like Banjo Kazooie, Diddy Kong Racing, GoldenEye, Donkey Kong, Conker’s Bad Fur Day and Perfect Dark.

Since 2006 not one new console IP has been created under the Nintendo label and Nintendo has all but ignored franchises like Star Fox, Pikmin and Kid Icarus for proper sequel treatment. Instead, gamers get Mario over and over and over and over again.

John continued saying, “…because very, very few multiplatform titles are succeeding on the Wii.”

Well, duh. A quick look at Nintendo’s official release listing page for the Wii shows a terrifyingly high number of crapware — games no one over the age of 5 would ever want. If it weren’t for the useless casual gamers, hipster middle-aged folk and clueless grandmas in the country, no third party trashware would be bought. The solution? Keep making Wii-exclusive third party software instead of just porting over superior console’s games and hoping for the best. And, if you’re gonna make a quick n’ dirty Wii release (eww, that sounds nasty when written),  just keep it as a Wii Ware title. Less risk for a publisher and less chance of consumer disappointment if they buy it in a store, hoping it to be a quality title.

I know 3rd party games in general have been failures on the Wii, but couldn’t publishers have made games like Madworld, Dead Space Extraction and Monster Hunter 3 back in late ‘06/early ‘07? They could have…but they didn’t. I’ll tell you why — because when the Wii was announced, every 3rd party publisher (including EA) thought it would suck and get crappy 1st party support as usual, just like the Gamecube. After they realized it was a hit (thanks to moron casual gamers and gimmick-duped hardcore gamers), they all rushed out to release as much crap as possible to grab some consumer money. They had no plans to come out with anything unique at any point and after seeing the types of buyers who were getting Wiis, they became even lazier because, let’s face it, casual gamers will buy just about anything.

To hear EA moaning now about lack of 3rd party success 3 years into Wii’s life is pretty funny, actually. If they had done more than port crap and release shovelware for the first 24-36 months, perhaps their Wii endeavors wouldn’t have been so painful.

Finally, John said, “…we are reaching out to Nintendo to find ways to partner to push third-party software harder.”

So what, EA wants to bundle its games with Wii hardware? Yeah, that ain’t gonna happen EA. Please tell me what incentive Nintendo would have to pursue something like this. I mean, look at them — they would have kept the Wii at its $250 price for another holiday season if it weren’t for the big drops in PS3 and 360 pricing this Fall. And even with a drop in Wii system price, there is NO variation in the bundle from what was originally offered in 2006. Nintendo simply has no plans to give anything of value away to consumers this generation and they just don’t care. They know full well a game-hungry consumer (after they had their fill of Wii Sports) will aim for a Nintendo-brand game next before they even consider a 3rd party game. That’s why Nintendo published games released 2-3 years ago still have their $49.99 price tag…while 99% of 3rd party games go to the bargain bins within a few months of release.

UPDATE:
Finally, in what I call icing on the cake for this ridiculous situation is the newly announced plan for EA to FIRE 1,500 workers and spend about $400 million for casual game maker Playfish.com. So one hand you have EA’s CEO crying about Nintendo not doing a good enough job making a system attractive enough to consumers so they spend even more on 3rd party games and on the other hand you have EA making huge, dramatic changes internally so it can focus even more on the casual markets it apparently hates so much (you know, the ones who WON’T buy 3rd party games…because they’re idiots). Bravo EA, bravo.

Why DLC Is a Waste

Alright, it’s been pretty obvious that I thoroughly enjoyed Ultimate Alliance 2. I loved the variety of characters, powers, levels and story. In fact, I enjoyed the game so much I happily played through it a second time to see everything (something I rarely do) and by the end was still craving more levels to explore and characters to try.

Then, I heard about UA2’s DLC and the disappointment set in. Here was a game I was totally up for playing again and again because I liked the formula…and the developer/publisher pretty much killed me wanting to do so within weeks of playing it. I mean, according to this post on Kotaku, the DLC pack for UA2 features 5 new characters and 4 challenge missions…for $10. So, while I’m all for extra characters being added…what’s with the lame challenge maps and $10 price tag???

Seriously, what the hell people?

I mean, I already shelled out $60 for the game. It’s barely ONE month old. The characters can’t be that hard to create (afterall, the game features two dozen of them). And the challenge maps are not even comparable to REAL, ACTUAL LEVELS.

This is what pisses me off about DLC. From what I’ve seen over the years, DLC is a major waste. All developers see it as is an added way of getting money…but beyond the “getting money” point, they seem to not care at all about the GAMER’S experience. When I say that, I mean look at what was done in UA2’s case: The game’s not even two months old, hasn’t dropped even to $50 on store shelves yet and despite some less-than-stellar reviews, most people seemed to enjoy the game. In other words, at this point, if a developer is going to release DLC, it should be either content TRULY WORTH purchasing -or- even if it’s so-so content, it should be completely free.

I don’t really care if free content is so-so because it’s FREE. You don’t have to pay anything for it (Even Arkham Asylum’s short DLC was fine because it was FREE). That being said, if the content you need to “get online” is actually stored on the disc…AND FREE, than I think that content should have been available 100% w/o online activation from the start. (RE5’s Vs. mode comes to mind). That especially rings true with PAID DLC that actually resides in full on the original game disc (again, RE5’s Vs. mode comes to mind). Paying $10 or more to download a 100k “access key” that unlocks data on your game disc is just shady business.

But, like I was saying, FREE content doesn’t make me upset. PAID content, however, does. And it REALLLLY pisses me off. Here’s why:

You have a game that costs you $60. Let’s say it has 24 levels (actual story levels, NOT challenge maps), 12 hours of story-based gameplay and 24 playable characters.

If we were to say $10 was a reasonable price for additional DLC, shouldn’t it also be reasonable to assume the following?:

$10 (which is 1/6 of the original game price) should consist of 4 new, real levels, 2 hours of story-based gameplay and 4 new characters. Period.

But that’s not what we’re getting. Gamers are expected to pay 17% of the game’s original price for 5 new characters and 5 challenge maps (which may only provide an hour or so of gameplay, if you like them). There’s absolutely no new story-based content and there’s no new, real levels to explore with your new characters. It’s complete BS. Essentially what the developer/publisher is saying is that this $10 DLC pack is equivalent to 1/6 of the original game’s appeal.

NOT IT ISN’T.

It’s not worth $10. It’s not worth $5. It’s not even worth $1.99. I don’t see anything of significant importance that required any extra development time. If anything, I suspect the developer (like so many others), made X amount of content for the major release and then purposely subtracted Y amount of content in order to release that as “premium DLC” later on.

I just feel like DLC is a waste. And it’s not like Ultimate Alliance 2 is the only game I have issues with in regards to this topic. Halo, Little Big Planet, Pain, etc. are all games that sell content that is either completely underwhelming, should otherwise be free or both.

I may be a curmudgeon for saying this but back in the day before all these internet-connected consoles developers couldn’t pull this crap on gamers/consumers. If you wanted to put certain content in a game, you made sure it was included from the start. If that meant delaying a game’s release or cutting back on other features to make it happen, so be it. In the end, it was the gamer who ultimately won because when they bought a game, they got everything they were expected to have from the start. There was no going back later and saying, “Hey, I realize you like Character X or Stage Y…but in order to play those, you gotta fork over another $5 or $10.” Even up until the last generation, this crap was a non-issue

No New Games For Awhile… :(

I don’t like to admit it…but I’m gonna have to put a hold on my gaming budget for awhile. Despite my desire to play Dragon Age, Cities XL, Dawn of Discovery and others I simply can’t afford to keep spending $30-60 a pop for a game that may only keep my interest for 1-2 weeks.

Now don’t get me wrong — I don’t regret getting Ultimate Alliance 2. Still my favorite game I’ve played this year so far (Well, not counting Persona 4…technically). But what I’m saying is that even though I may want Gran Turismo, the Persona remake or even Marvel Superhero Squad for the PSP, I **know** deep down I probably won’t be playing them anytime soon.

I mean, a little over a week ago I bought Half-Life 2 and Episodes 1 & 2 off Steam because they were so cheap ($15!) but realistically, I knew before I hit “Buy” that I wouldn’t play these games for a long time…maybe not even until a year or so from now.

One perfect example of my gaming problem is Crysis. I originally got that game around this time in 2007. Since then I have tried to play it twice and have given up to play something else. That is NOT a mark against Crysis, but rather a perfect indicator of my issues with staying focused on games for a length of time that is reasonable. If I had finished Crysis, that’d be one thing…but the fact that I haven’t bugs me to no end.

And it didn’t help that this summer I walked into a Gamestop and then walked out 45 minutes later with about 12 PS2 games under my arm (like Ico, Sly Cooper, Dragon Quest VIII, Twisted Metal Black, etc.). A month or two ago I picked up a Guitar Hero World Tour 2-pack guitar controller and GHWT game for the 360 for a mere $23…and I **STILL** haven’t even opened it.

So it’s not that I don’t want to play games or that the new games coming out don’t make me drool…but it really bothers me that I have this backlog of 20+ games (probably, if I counted them all up) and I want to ADD more games to the list instead of wittle it down to a more reasonable amount. I mean, if I had 2 or 3 unfinished games around, it wouldn’t bother me so much…but when I have a $12 copy of Metal Gear Solid 4 and a $7 copy of Grand Theft Auto IV (in addition to tons more) just collecting on my shelf, I have to start seriously considering WHAT THE HECK is going on in my noggin’…

Plus, not buying those expensive games for awhile will help me on the real things I need to pay for…like BILLS.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 [PS3] Review

Superhero games have always been a strange thing to me. Sometimes, you get to play a game starring your favorite superhero and the execution is very well done and appropriate (like Capcom’s Marvel Super Heroes fighter, Data East’s amazing Captain America and the Avengers or Konami’s fantastic 2-screen X-Men arcade game)…most times though, you have to force yourself through a generic action game with comic book characters thrown in and the experience is average at best.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 however is probably the best console superhero game I have ever played…In fact, I’m still playing through the game (to unlock as much as possible) and not only is it a fantastic game, it’s probably my favorite PS3 game to date.

The game’s story revolves around a “Super Hero Civil War” in which S.H.I.E.L.D. and the U.S. Government want super heroes to register with the government and be monitored at all times…otherwise they face imprisonment…or worse. Eventually the player comes to a point where they must decide which side they believe in more and from the there on the game splits apart to provide two different storylines. If you’re not a fan of Marvel, there’s no reason you should even be checking this game out…so making non-comic fans happy isn’t what this game is about. If you’re a fan of ANY marvel character in the slightest though, you’ll enjoy the intricate story and gameplay options that allow you to play as your favorite character(s) while you team up with some of Marvel Universe’s most iconic heroes and villians.

At its core, Ultimate Alliance 2 is a beat-em-up game. And why shouldn’t it be? Super heroes are all about physically affecting the world around them and trouble usually only goes away when they push back. What makes UA2 stand apart from other generic brawlers though is that the excellent story, pacing, visuals, enemy variety and character choices provide every player with a unique gaming experience.

For example, early on I found myself wanting to use Iron Man exclusively (because I always liked him). When the story changed and I was forced to pick another character to take his place (when Iron Man went off on another part of the plot) I found myself using Gambit mostly. Then, when I got the chance I started using Captain America. Finally, on my first play through, after trying out many characters I decided on DeadPool as my main character because frankly, he kicks butt. Not only is he a wise-cracking, borderline-crazy masked-hero, he’s also incredibly fast, can teleport (JUST like you see in X-Men Origins: Wolverine), do ranged-attacks with guns and is deadly with his dual katanas. On my second play-through, my characters were different and I often found myself using Thor and Hulk most of the time (Thor is super powerful).

In short, Ultimate Alliance 2 allows gamers to play through the game using a customizable cast of characters that would make any Marvel Universe fan happy. It also doesn’t hurt that the game features elements of role-playing games like experience points, stat customization and party line-up choices. Now, don’t expect the depth of Final Fantasy, but do expect an action game experience where you feel like the developers made an effort to let the players do more than just the linear, predictable point-A to point-B gameplay. It’s not quite perfect in execution or incredibly complex, but the RPG elements are welcomed for sure.

Let me say again how well done all of the characters were handled…every time you try a new character like Storm, Thor, Spiderman or Thing you actually feel like you are playing as them. The way they take damage, the speed at which they move and dodge attacks and even the ways you inflict damage all feel accurate and unique to each character. If that weren’t enough, you have the ability with each character to join powers with another character to create super powerful “fusion” attacks that can affect all enemies on screen, a certain section of the screen or can be directed at will for a short duration. Each character has their own unique special attack and with two dozen characters to pick from the possible fusion attacks number well over 250 (even though the animations/presentations for them often are repeated). Fighting hordes of enemies is also not as bad as you might think because the variety and presentation is so well done. Every level and area seems to feature a new enemy type or dangerous obstacle to overcome, breathing life into what could have been a mind-numbingly repetitive action title.

The graphics in the game are extremely well done and look extremely faithful to the comic book characters you grew up with. There are slight framerate and screen tearing issues here and there but overall the game looks wonderful. Seeing your team of four characters take on 30 enemies at once in high definition is amazing to say the least. Even the menus, art style and cutscenes look great (they use in-game characters…something I’m always a supporter of…though the pre-rendered video encoding quality could have been better). Plus, I’m glad the game featured such a large variety of different levels to explore…no one stage looked like any other and it made exploring them much more interesting.

The sound is excellent as well and large cast of voice actors in the game is a huge plus (it really feels like a big alliance of different people working with or fighting you). The story is helped immensely by the fanastic voice-overs for Captain America, Iron Man, DeadPool and Nick Fury specifically. The music is also great and features a highly appropriate and catchy superhero theme through many parts of the game, making those climactic battle/key cut scenes even that much more spectacular. In short the game sounds amazing and is exactly what you need to hear in a superhero title this. The *only* thing I wished for was the dialogue in all aspects of the game to be spoken (not just be text), but that’s really nitpicking.

The control in the game is great overall and very fun to try and master. Like I said, all of the characters control differently and their individual powers and attack styles can greatly affect the way you approach certain enemies, obstacles and stages in general. It’ll take you a lot of time to discover the strengths and weaknesses of them all and don’t be shocked if you find yourself picking a select group of characters and playing with them through the entire game (you’ll grow that attached to them, their controls and their wisecracks). Every day I’ve played Ultimate Alliance I have been excited to play as whatever character is on screen because of how polished and accurately they are presented. If I had to mention any faults for the controls, it would be that sometimes the action gets so chaotic on screen you lose your focus on the character you control and that sometimes your CPU-controlled allies just stand there and do less than they could while you attack enemies (like bosses).

To make it clear once and for all, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 is an excellent game that you need to go out and buy immediately — especially if you are a comic book fan. The sheer amount of characters to play as, the variety of levels and enemies to encounter and depth of the storyline to absorb (the game is well over 15 hours long…even longer if you play through both sides and collect everything) make this game have a replayability and entertainment value level few games can match.

Graphics: 9 | Sound: 9 | Play Control: 9 | Fun Factor: 9 | Final Score: 90%