Magicka is 1337

By: scott posted Feb 5th, 2011 - 1:13 am

I have to say it... I am so glad I bought Magicka. I want to also say how impressed I am with Arrowhead for working around the clock to fix all of the bugs that plagued the launch of this truly delightful game.

It would have been easy for them to patch the game weeks later, fixing all the bugs in one fell swoop, but that's not what they did. Apparently, there is a massive team of two programmers working on this game and they must be downing Red Bull and coffee non-stop because the patches just keep coming.

When I first reviewed Magicka, I said it was one of the most amazing games I had ever played were it not for the bugs. As of the time of this writing, I have not encountered a single one of those bugs that had ruined the experience for me before.

Magicka is everything I thought it could be: charming, thrilling, hilarious, interesting, and a time vampire of the highest order. (Vlad isn't a vampire, in case you were wondering.)

The game creates a lot of replay value by making the list of spells you can cast and combine nearly endless. Many of my favorite spells are ones I came up with by experimenting. It seems as if I am constantly finding new ways to obliterate my foes.

The game is very similar to other dungeon crawlers in appearance and perspective. It has a diagonal overhead perspective and bright, colorful artwork. The gameplay involves walking around by clicking in the direction you'd like to go. As you walk around exploring or completing objectives you are attacked by various monsters, goblins, and other things that go bump in the night.

The game is linear and follows a set storyline. Although there is not much to explore, doing so usually is a good thing because that's how you usually find new spell books and weapons. The spell books give you one of the 22 pre-made spells in the game. You cast them by combining the elements in the order that the spell requires and hitting the space bar.

Many of these spells are required to beat the game or are extremely useful as the game goes on. Some of them I didn't seem to use as much as the others but I can definitely see how they might come in handy when playing with other people sometimes.

Speaking of spells...

The spell effects are gorgeous and this game looks incredible. The audio is respectable and I honestly can't find any single thing to nitpick about the game as it stands now. Arrowhead should be very proud of themselves and their achievements with this title.

Magicka is one of those rare games that comes along and defines a new genre of game. I honestly expect clones to come out of the woodworks and I also expect the spell system to end up in other games as well.

I am so glad that it turned out to be the game I wanted it to be because I have had so much fun playing this game that it is easy to lose track of everything else I should be doing.

It's still very challenging as a single-player game but I have also had the opportunity to play multi-player. It gets even more fun with three people to play with you. The great news is that this game is only ten dollars! Go buy it right now on Steam. Trust me, this game is easily worth double the price.

One word of caution. This game does not do well on integrated graphics cards and the developer would rather spend time adding features and content than optimizing the game. Definitely download the demo and make sure it will work on your system before pulling the trigger. If it does, you are in for the ride of your life.

This is how video games should be.

Dark Souls (Demon's Souls gets a Second Chance)

By: Gloam posted Feb 1st, 2011 - 7:18 pm

Demon's Souls is one of the best games to grace the PlayStation 3, and for that it's garnered much acclaim. Many website gave the game a Game of the Year award or PlayStation 3 game of the year, and yet, there's still something of a stigma surrounding the game. Many podcast pundits and games writers dismiss the game as being 'too hard', 'too archaic' or (my favorite) 'too Japanese'.

All three of these points have their faults. For a start Demon's Souls, is not too hard, it's just not overly easy, the game does not pat you on the back every step of the way but does encourage you to explore and learn as you do so, only through this process of exploration and discovery can you overcome the game's various challenges, something which proves itself immensely satisfying in the long run. Criticisms concerning the game's archaic nature are also misguided, the game is actually ingeniously forward thinking in terms of online integration and player interactivity but people will ignore this fact simply because they die a coule of times. Lastly, the game is said to be overly Japanese in style, this could be a synonym for 'hard' but instead often reads more like a stand-in for poorly designed, something which Demon's Souls is not. The game itself is a masterclass in Western RPG design, how quickly we forget the Gold Box AD&D adventures or the Wizardry series, and furthermore how fun it is to remember these games. Give the game a chance and it will reward you with what is perhaps the best Japanese developed Western RPG of all time.

With the announcement of Project Dark at TGS, a select few breathed a satisfied sigh and put aside money in their bank books, for what should be one of the more hotly anticipated releases of 2011. Still, only a whimper was heard amongst the enthusiast press. The principle reason for this is miscommunication, it would seem that the game's PS3 exclusivity (in Japan) read as exclusivity the world over, and thus the major sites and podcasters were uninterested in the announcement. It pains me to think that come the release of Dark Souls at the end of the year the blogsophere and gaming 'literati' will be up in arms over the 'innovation' and 'uniqueness' seen in Dark Souls... For the XBox 360. It seems odd to me that a game that was so heavily overlooked on PS3 will potentially see a second lease of life on 360, and while it annoys me that Demon's Souls continues to get the high hat as regards mainstream recognition and praise the thought of more people enjoying the game's formula due to the ubiquitous nature of the 360 only makes me smile.

Magicka... the horrible game I wanted to love.

By: scott posted Jan 29th, 2011 - 9:20 pm

Magicka is one of the most amazing, and shitty, games I have ever had the opportunity to play. It is a game which, at its core, is lovingly crafted in all the ways that I can't help but enjoy very much. There are so many geeky jokes and references in the game that it is hard to imagine that the development team is anything less than a group of uber-geeks who wanted this game to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Well, it was... but not for the reasons I was expecting. When I purchased this game on Steam I hadn't read any reviews beforehand. The game had just come out that morning and I was excited to try it for myself. The preview video and screenshots had me almost salivating for the opportunity to craft magick out of the different elements and blast my foes to smithereens.

It was with great anticipation that I launched the game for the first time only to have the menu stutter so badly that I spent almost 15 minutes trying to change my resolution to something that the game could handle. Please keep in mind that although my computer is by no means the most powerful gaming rig ever created, it would be considered by most standards to be a high end gaming machine.

I finally settled on 800x600 and the game ran well enough to play with a decent frame rate. Actually playing the game made me giddy. I love all the quirky little things about this game. Everything from the running "I am not a vampire" joke to the gibberish voicing of the NPCs made me grin to myself. There was a very obvious King's Quest reference as well as an achievement by the same name. I was truly immersed and thrilled as the beginning levels unfolded around me.

It wasn't until I had gotten to a harder area that I began to notice the warts. Oh boy, and did it ever have them. One of the issues I've encountered is that I have dual screens and it is possible to accidentally click onto the other screen while you are playing and completely derail the game. You have to click back on the taskbar to get it to come up again and it will resume right where you left off. Unfortunately, that seems to be right before a bomb blows you into tiny giblets. It's too bad that my right click was onto the second desktop and not to blow the bombs back at the goblins.

Speaking of goblins, there are just as many enemies regardless of how many players are playing the game. Yes, you heard me... this game is not balanced for single player. Fuck you if you don't play it multiplayer. Oh, and good luck with that. It's not really working. If you judge by the angry forums it looks like most people feel like me. They want to love this game. They want to defend Paradox. They want to give it glowing reviews but it is just so buggy and terrible that you can't.

There, I said it. I want to give this game a loving and glowing review but right now it seems like that's going to have to wait a while. I will probably re-review this game after what is apparently the public alpha phase is done. I wouldn't even say this game is polished enough to be called a public beta right now. To be fair, Paradox has owned up to how horrible the game is and they are working like crazy to make it work. I tried to get an interview with them prior to writing this review but they didn't respond to me. Hopefully, this is because things are at defcon 5 over there and they are rowing like mad towards some massive game patches.

I feel the need, at this point, to say a few more nice things about the game because this review is feeling a little more harsh than I intended. This game is charming. I love the graphics (even at 800x600) and it is a very stylish game. The spells are interesting and unique and I've enjoyed discovering new combinations of spells. The spell-casting system is incredible, if flawed. Sometimes it is frustrating that the game lags so much that it won't register your elements as fast as you can type them. I am hoping that this one issue will be patched soon along with the rest.

Even with all of its problems Magicka is a game that I've enjoyed. It kind of reminds me of a restaurant where the food is incredible and the service is atrocious. You want to love it. You will keep coming back and hope that the service improves. If it doesn't after a while, you will probably never try it again. At the end of it all, it doesn't matter how much I love the flavor of Magicka... the delivery is all wrong.

Good luck Paradox/Arrowhead! I hope you successfully make the game you set out to make. If you do, I'll be back.

That's a tiny little gun you have there...

By: scott posted Jan 25th, 2011 - 4:30 pm

I will be the first to admit that I don't buy the collector's edition of games very often. I suppose it is because I hardly ever get excited about the extra stuff that they include with the game.

Needless to say, when I found out that the Collector's edition of Dead Space 2 had release day shipping and a goddamn plasma cutter replica I was sold. I ponied up for the cash on Amazon and went to bed that night with visions of necromorph evisceration dancing in my head.

If you have ever opened a pair of socks on Christmas morning as a child you know how I felt today when I hastily unboxed my shiny new copy of Dead Space 2. Tearing into the package, noticing how small it was in real life, I could only think one thing.

Fuck.

Please bear in mind that this is not the review of Dead Space 2 the actual game. This is nothing more than me sharing my disappointment with you. I am including some photos of the unveiling so you can experience with me how it felt. I even included a Christmas tree to aid in your experience.

I feel swindled. It will be a long time before I shell out more than sixty dollars for another video game again. I can't help but already feel slighted by how some video game websites used their early release copies of the game that I've been dying to play for months.

Now, if you will excuse me, I need to actually go play the game.

Empty Suits

By: scott posted Jan 24th, 2011 - 2:35 am

I know that the internet is buzzing with nerd-rage posts like this one about the recent and controversial rumors that Sony will be employing PC Game style CD keys to "combat piracy" on the PS3. This would be, of course, a knee-jerk reaction by a bunch of empty suits to the recent discovery of the PS3 root key.

Even though I had already written a scathing blog post about this rumor, I decided to re-write it from scratch. Why? I brought this up on the podcast today and nobody else seemed to really give a damn. Are we so beaten down as consumers that we can't find even a little outrage at being treated like criminals anymore?

I mean, how much is it going to take before the average consumer starts voting with their wallets about how much it sucks to be treated this way? Let's break it down again in simple language so that the idiots who endorse these tactics can understand.

1. If you sell a virtual product, it is going to be pirated.

2. No, you can't do anything to stop it.

3. By imposing DRM and other such tactics on your consumers, you are making it more difficult for them to buy and enjoy your product.

4. The pirates are not inconvenienced by your DRM.

5. The pirates get a better product and enjoy a better experience than your customers.

6. Instead of punishing your customers, you should be rewarding them. Try using the carrot instead of the stick.

7. You should be fired if you are too stupid to figure this out.

It really is that simple. Unfortunately, piracy is a fact of life. I don't condone piracy. It hurts real people who are trying to make a living creating the content that we know and love. I haven't always felt this way. Like many people, I grew up thinking "What's the big deal?"

I now know that it is an ugly thing and I would never defend it under any circumstances. In fact, people who pirate as some sort of protest need to wake up and realize that the only true way to protest is to not use the content at all.

Boycotting is the only solution and I would encourage you to do it when a game publisher decides to employ DRM of any kind.

So this is my statement. If Sony decides to go this route with the PS3 I will never buy a single game that requires a key to play. It will become a glorified Blu-Ray player to me. I went to console gaming to escape this crap. Please reward your customers instead of punishing them. Is that really so unreasonable?

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