Splinter Cell HD Impressions

Splinter Cell HD is exactly what it sounds like (although it’s not “true HD”, as Sony execs call 1080p true HD). It’s the first Splinter Cell, but in HD.  Those who read the PlayStation Blog periodically are inundated with stories about the “remastering” process applied to God of War Origins. They write posts reminding us that the Ico / Shadow of the Colossus collection is 1080p and includes making of videos.

Splinter Cell HD has none of this. It’s the original game, exactly as it was, but uprezzed to 720p. To be honest, Ubisoft did the bare minimum here, making series of release date delays inexplicable. Menu layouts and navigation remains horrid, character textures are laughable (environments, however, are surprisingly nice), contextual actions are still tricky at times, etc. This isn’t like Zelda 3D with it’s cleaned up interface and sexy textures.

The worst part is that the framerate often drops from 60fps during action scenes, or when there is one or more light sources in a room, or anytime the screen isn’t all black. The game doesn’t chug, but it does slow down, which is distracting after some 60fps ventilation shaft sneaking. This makes absolutely zero sense to me; even if Ubisoft had to include an entire PS2 emulator and this game, you’d think the infinitely powerful PS3 could run it.

This game is only nine years old, but feels so archaic to me. You can’t invert the camera Y-axis. Your lock picks aren’t available contextually at doors, you have to manually equip them. The AI is laughable, being half-blind yet with hypersensitive hearing. Guards who are actively being shot at by other NPCs will perk up and search for you with one wrong footstep, and they will beeline directly towards you until they are about five feet away, no matter how stealthily you try to evade them. If you throw a bottle or can from behind a pair of guards, one will investigate the noise and the other will inexplicably investigate the exact location where you threw the can from, even if they could not have seen the trajectory. Sam Fisher cannot open doors while carrying a body.

Despite all that, I’m really digging Splinter Cell HD. The lighting and shadows remain better than some modern games, and the core gameplay is extremely satisfying; avoiding guards just feet away feels great! I love this game, and sneaking up on guards is always fun. It’s just weird to think about just how far we’ve come in only nine years.

It's unlikely that I'll write up Impressions posts on Pandora Tomorrow & Chaos Theory, but I might do a double-post discussing the two (or even three) of them again.

Nintendo 3DS Initial Impressions

Despite my dour prediction regarding the 3DS launch, I excitedly picked one up during my work break. While I initially considered the black 3DS simply to keep it looking distinct from my girlfriend’s blue handheld, but the more I looked at the blue, the more I liked it, especially considering how lame my black DSi looks. I gave in.

 Fresh in the box.

Cute, isn’t it?

My 3D Baggage

My biggest worry about the 3DS wasn’t about the device itself, but rather about it’s core gimmick: 3D. My experiences with modern 3D have been generally neutral, save for Avatar. I foolishly decided to see Avatar relatively soon after it’s big release, but at my cinema the only seat I could get was front row. I could have returned my ticket and tried going back next week. I instead made the poor choice to watch Avatar in the front row.

One hour and one nauseated-bathroom-run later, I came out with an extreme  distaste to 3D. I later saw Alice In Wonderland & Tron (twice) in 3D, and even though I got excellent seats for those movies, I still felt slightly sick, mostly from remembering how I felt during Avatar. So I was worried that my 3DS would make me feel sick every time I used it, simply by reminding me of my Avatar experience.

Aside from my own personal experiences, I truly wasn’t sure about the 3DS’s effect. It’s not real 3D, in the sense that moving your head left will present you with a different angle. I’ve read some reviews where the critic seems surprised or dismayed that they aren’t receiving tactical benefits from the 3D, as if the developer is doing 3D wrong. Unfortunately, that’s just how our 3D technology works.

Now, keep in mind this entire section is the baggage I brought into the 3DS experience, prior to actually trying it. What did I think?

The 3D Effect

Nintendo clearly took the presentation of 3D into effect when designing the 3DS’s initial experience. It doesn’t slam you with 3D, or scare you. It starts off entirely in 2D, guiding you into ensuring the 3D slider is set properly, you know roughly what distance to hold the DS from your face, etc. They do their best to ensure that the initial experience is great. When you’re ready, it gives you a short 3, 2, 1 countdown, then presents the Nintendo 3DS logo gently levitating up and down. Very non-threatening.

The menus use 3D in a very relaxed fashion. It doesn’t feel like it’s out to prove anything nor put the 3D in your face. It’s just … there, and I like that. It’s pretty slick, with the bottom screen being the actual menu and the top screen showing a gentle animation or description of what you have selected. After tooling around in the menu and going online and creating some Miis (see below), I decided it was time to really turn on the 3D with a 3D game.

So I popped in my 3D game, which was not Splinter Cell; Ubisoft stealth delayed a second Splinter Cell game (sort of impressive, actually). Pilotwings looked dull, I’ve bought Street Fighter twice, and I generally don’t care for sports games, so my choices fell to Steel Diver or Ghost Recon. I decided on Steel Diver, then I actually looked at Ghost Recon and realized that it was not only tactical, but also developed in part by the original X-COM creator?

Sold.

Ghost Recon also started rather quietly. I still hadn’t really realized how tactical it was, so I did expect to have cheesey bullets fly past me. Instead, it rather felt like I was looking down on a battlemap with miniatures, or looking at a diorama of the map. It was pretty immersive. After a short tutorial mission that ends rather abruptly, there’s a quick and simple cinematic and you’re whirled into another mission. No bullets flying at the screen, nothing terrible. Admittedly, the game is more Advance Wars than anything, but I’m a big Advance Wars fan, so I’ve got no complaints with that!

3D photos look a lot better than I expected as well. The overall quality of them is VGA, so you won’t be printing these up and sticking them on the wall anytime soon, but they’re a fun distraction. 

It’s a really neat effect, but as many people have noted, it’s totally optional. If you don’t like it, or if you play on the bus like I do, you can turn it off without interrupting gameplay and turn it back on when you want. They really nailed this.

Non-3D Elements

The 3DS is full of great Nintendo silliness. While creating horrific Mii versions of yourself on the Wii was pretty fun, it’s much more fun to have the 3DS take a photo of you and create a Mii. The animation is funny, and watching a photo of your good friend be mangled into a horrid representation of your face is always priceless. Me and four of my friends were all given huge noses, and I’m unsure if we have large noses or if it just is more tuned for slender Asian faces. Either way, we look pretty funny, so that was a good time.

Documentation

Now, as a weird little nerdling, I enjoy reading good product documentation, and Nintendo is consistent with their instruction manuals. Informative, with widely mocked Ikeagrams, yet with a few blank holes of total uselessness. For example, it has an incredibly detailed, step-by-step “get your 3DS online” section for people who don’t really get wireless networking, and it’s solid. But for the menu option “Resetting blocked-user settings’, the operations manual is totally useless. What the hell does that option mean? No idea. Here’s a screenshot from their PDF Operations Manual (note that the watermark is not present in the printed manual):

Seriously, why even bother with the photo? They could have fit more details on another option beneath “RESET TO BEGIN”.

This is classic Nintendo documentation; explaining that you need to tap this then tap reset, but not explaining what exactly this resets. 

Or what about StreetPass details for 3DS Sound? It mentions, in passing, that you can create a StreetPass “playlist”, but doesn’t explain how to create the playlist. After pressing every button in 3DS Sound, I’ve come to the assumption that you require an actual MP3 file, rather than the silly recordings you can make. But there are zero details on this. Their explanation is laughable.

Aside from the black holes that  their writers obviously didn’t care about, the documentation is excellent. The visual guides can get virtually anyone up and running on their 3DS in no time, and it answered a number of questions for me, such as how many StreetPass applications can be simultaneously transmitted (12; after more than 12 applications are registered for StreetPass, you have to disable some).

I’ll have more to write on the 3DS in the future; I’ve barely spent an hour with it. I haven’t tried Face Raiders, or AR Cards, talked about Friend Cards, or even met my entire Ghost Recon squad yet. But so far, I’m excited: It’s pretty damned cool.

Evolution Isn't Always Black & White

Spoiler Alert: I spoil the Pokemon Black/White Water-type starter evolution chain, as well as one of the earliest Pokemon you can catch in tall grass.

I don’t really … get some of the new evolutions found in Pokemon Black & White. The Pokemon games have always had some questionable evolutionary chains. Still, lots of them are excellent, so let me provide an example of the best evolutionary chain I can think of:

Hell-yes. (Images from Bulbapedia)

Now, that makes sense. Salamanders and dragons are both lizards, and the evolution track is visually obvious. He retains his flaming tail, his claws get longer and sharper, and it ends with a classic draconic symbol: wings. Smaller, less obvious details are retained; look at how the belly remains consistent, and how he grows a ‘backward-horn’ on his head each time he evolves. That’s a good, solid, logical evolution; I wasn’t surprised at all by his final form. I was actually delighted, because Charizard is super badass.

Squirtle’s evolution to Blastoise and Bulbasaur’s evolution Venusaur follow similar paths; you shouldn’t be at all surprised by your Pokemon’s final forms, save perhaps for Blastoise’s pair of cannons (although Wartortle does hint at them). I like it when Pokemon evolve like this: while surprises are great, nobody wants to pick a Pokemon that evolves in a completely unexpected Pokemon, especially for a starter Pokemon that you’re semi-stuck with. Plus, it helps maintain visual continuity across evolutionary chains, so if you see a Charmeleon you can probably figure out who he evolved from.

The new Pokemon Black & White has a lot of hype because it’s all new Pokemon until you beat the game; in other words, you can’t fall back on classics like Gyrados and Alakazam. Since the focus is on the new Pokemon, it’s refreshing to hear that “The new Pokémon are just as amazing as the old ones, if not more so” (Jonathan Holmes, writing Destructoid’s Pokemon Black/White review). Sounds good so far! Still, I looked at the three new starters and nothing jumped out at me. When I saw Charmander, I knew I was picking him. Not with these guys, but that’s okay; I just had to do some research to see how they turned out!

So I spoiled myself the starter evolutionary chains. I didn’t want to take the chance that the Pokemon evolve weirdly. And it’s a good thing I did:

What is this I don’t even

What …? While the first guy, Oshawott, looks a bit like an otter, I really don’t see how that ends up with his final form, Samurott. They share nothing in common except a blue & white colour scheme. Oshawott’s two little blue blips on his head spike out slightly for his second form, then vanish completely and are replaced by a helmet with a three spikes of a different colour, aimed in totally different directions, and they look more spiky rather than little protrusions. He goes from bipedal to aquatic; Samurott looks like he’d be ungainly outside of the sea, whereas Oshawott can run around comfortably. His little front paws become more hand-like when he evolves the first time, then less hand-like after his second evolution. While he maintains a few visual links to his original form (the whiskers, tail) they’re otherwise distinct enough that they could easily be completely unique Pokemon, rather than a common evolutionary chain. And he’s definitely no longer an otter.

I’d argue that Samurott looks more like a Lapras than he does an Oshawott.

Now, don’t get me wrong, Samurott is a total badass. In fact, I ended up choosing Oshawott specifically because he evolves into Samurott. Otherwise, I probably would have picked the Fire-type like I have in every game since Red. But I could see somebody picking Oshawott because he seems otter-like, or for being bipedal, or whatever, and being pissed because his final form is completely different. And not only is his final form dramatically different from how he starts, it’s also dramatically different from the middle form; there’s absolutely no continuity at all. If he were to change dramatically, but progressively: fine. But it’s like the designers forgot what he was going to look like and swapped in a totally different Pokemon at the last minute. “It’s blue!”.

I won’t bother showing the other two starters and their evolutionary chains; both of them are much more logical, and I’d rather keep spoilers down to a minimum. You won’t be terribly surprised with the Grass or Fire final forms, and their evolution chain is fairly consistent.

While I’m making a big deal out of this, in the few hours I’ve spent in the world of Pokemon White, this is the exception to the rule. The Pokemon so far have been well crafted, in the fine tradition of basing them off of real concepts, often with terrible puns and wordplay. My favourite example is a new Pokemon, Purrloin. Purrloin is a small cat Pokemon, Dark-type, who happens to be a thief, according to the PokeDex. Of course, people whose brain functions as a tattered dictionary (myself) might recognize this as a reference to the word ‘purloin’, meaning to steal, but also with a terrible pun on how cats purr. What makes this triply delightful is that Purrloin is a cat - the Pokemon is literally a cat burglar. Brilliant.

P.S.: On a final, slightly related note, why the hell do Fire starters always pick up a Fighting type along the way? Including Black/White, the past three games have him evolve into Fire/Fighting; I know it’s cheap to make a joke about these games never evolving, but in some ways, they really need to.

Global Agenda Impressions - A Tasty Cocktail

So I bought Global Agenda on it’s Steam Sale the other day, mainly because I think it’s an interesting idea. I like shooters, I like RPGs, why not combine them? Well, the obvious reason is that shooters and RPGs have two different philosophies. Shooters are based almost entirely on personal skill, on your ability to shoot. In an RPG, skill matters too, but your character’s stats are also incredibly important. It’s very possible to be too low level for an area, where in a shooter, you can usually make up for extreme difficulty with extreme headshots.

Now, I’m not a fan of unbalanced competition (i.e. Killzone 2’s online rank system), so I’m more interested in Global Agenda’s cooperative PvE gameplay. And frankly, I think it’s a great idea. I’ve spent four hours playing Global Agenda so far, split across two characters, and I’ve really enjoyed it so far.

• Like most shooters, it’s quick to play. Even a situation that you might recognize as a “dungeon” (four characters attack an AI controlled camp, ending with a boss battle) takes a maximum of fifteen minutes - there’s a literal timer.
• Also like other shooters, you can pretty much jump in right in. After the skippable tutorial and a few “quests” designed to teach you the talent tree, you can start queuing for these missions, and be quite effective!
• And did I mention how short the wait time is? You can queue for these missions at any time, so right when I began a quest I queued, expecting a Warcraft-style 45 minute wait … I was thrown into a mission before I even left the quest hub!
• It’s great for the same reason that Halo’s Firefight is popular. It’s fun to play shooters, it’s more fun to play with other people, and these missions take you and some other people, drop you in a mission, and let you rock and roll.
• Unlike MMOs, your personal skill level makes a really notable difference in damage taken and dealt. Managing your power & using your jetpack to dodge while having enough power to shoot is an interesting mechanic, and it makes gameplay a lot more exciting than a Warcraft spell priority system. Fighting a boss really feels like fighting a boss, rather than just standing back and doing your spell rotation while ensuring you aren’t standing in fire. Even in solo play, ducking behind cover can help you last for much longer before having to rest; in something like Warcraft, if an enemy targets you, his spells can go through walls and cover, making that sort of pointless.
• At the same time, the game also takes some of the more negative elements of these genres. For example, the open nature of the MMO style gameplay hampers your ability to learn to play. The tutorial does a great job of introducing the core gameplay elements, but once you’re dropped into the game world, you have a fair amount of other “stuff” that makes no sense. What the hell is a Boost? I found out by accident, but it isn’t very clear at all. same with weapon descriptions; I have “RIfle” and “Rifle [d]”. A simple explanation of what the letter codes mean seems to be important, because I see people in chat selling “Mega Rifle [d][d][r][p][w][n]”.
• It’s also not as polished as a standalone shooter. When exploring my backpack, I have two different jetpacks; the default jetpack (“hands-free) and a second one. It turns out that the second jetpack doesn’t let you shoot while flying, but it has no benefit whatsoever compared to the default (i.e. it isn’t faster, it doesn’t let you fly further). It seems to me that this old jetpack is a remnant of how the game used to be played. Why new players have it in their inventory is beyond me. The game is full of little weirdnesses like that. And the interface is clunky as hell.

I gotta say this: Global Agenda is pretty great. I honestly have no idea why none of the news sites I read really mentioned this game (or maybe I just ignored them). I wouldn’t pay monthly for it, but for eight dollars and change it’s a great deal. For it’s regular price of $30? Well, I can’t totally say after only four hours of gameplay, but it seems solid overall.

Gamma World - First Session!

I’ve talked relatively little about pen & paper games here on the site. It’s high time I changed that. I snagged Wizards of the Coast’s new Gamma World boxed set on Friday. I had been on the fence about Gamma World; it sounded like a lot of fun, but it’s a bit of a pain to coordinate a pen & paper game sometimes. Then I read the following:

”I had them all create characters at the table before the game and right away everyone was already laughing. After rolling for their starting gear they ended up with a busted pick up truck being pulled by horses and a sack of flashlights. From that moment I think they were sold on the world.“(Mike Krahulik, of Penny-Arcade fame)

Count me in as sold too. And having played Gamma World once now, let me state this unequivocally: Gamma World is one of the most enjoyable pen & paper games I’ve ever played.

Photo by Maciek

Post apocalyptic worlds are actually pretty ripe for humour if you stop and think about it. They can also be extremely dire and dark [1. And award-winning.], but you’re stuck on this planet after the end of the world has already happened. That’s gotta be brutal for the guys who love the “if it was the end of the world, would you …” line.

Gamma World exploits the potential weirdness of this sort of world, throws in mutations, and then cranks up the meta jokes to a level that’s not so high as to make the game feel like a bad joke, but just high enough to make it truly hilarious for geeks [2. Let’s face it; geeks love references, we squee at the mildest of head nods.].

The entire package is incredibly well designed. Opening the box was a great experience, with the rulebook lying atop the deck of cards. Moving the cardboard up revealed the rest of the package. The box is a bit bigger than it needs to be, but I view this as a good thing; I’ve now got a spare pencil and a few dice in the box, and the extra room will come in handy for those future expansions and the like. The game rulebook is very well written, with a lot of really useful advice. My favourite bit was the paragraph about how you determine what your character looks like. To that end, the weapon chart was incredibly abstract to the point where my players thought I was reading off headings (“One handed melee light weapon, two-handed melee light weapon…”). The idea is incredibly clever and appropriate for the setting; rather than listing off 400 weapons with rules for improvised weapons, there is simply a huge set of broad categories. Fighting with a stop sign? Two-handed heavy. Fighting with a dagger? One-handed light. Fighting with a piece of an Ikea bookshelf? One-handed light (no assembly required!).

Character creation was a total snap. The character sheets brilliantly act both as a record of your stats, but they also guide you through the character generation process. The steps are literally numbered on the sheet [1. Although they artificially lower the amount of numbered steps by including 2a, 2b, and so forth. Still, it’s typically for related elements of the creation process so I can’t whine too much.], making following along and not missing anything quite easy. Page numbers would have been nice, but I could see them being a bit of a pain once your character has already been made. Despite not having had the time to read the rulebook prior to playing I was able to help my three friends create characters quite easily.

The first person who created a character made “Sir Geribald the 14th”, a giant [2. More great humour from the Gamma World writers; the description for ‘Giant’ actually says something along the lines of “Think Andre the Giant size”. Funny stuff!] cat-man. He carried with him a flashlight, several rolls of duct tape, nightvision goggles and a reinforced cane. I invite you to think about an eight foot tall anthropomorphic cat with nightvision goggles and not smile. The best part is that his two origins had abilities that both are useful and make logical sense; when falling 50 feet or less, our felinoid giant will always land on his feet (!). Oh, and his Constitution score ended up being an unfortunate seven [3. For the non-D&D geeks out there, a score of 7 for Constitution means his character is physically frail and possibly sickly; the average human being has a score of 10, give or take a point.]. He also had a weird mutation allowing him to create a force field, and last but not least, a Freeze Ray [4. Not a death ray nor an ice beam, that’s so Johnny Snow; the card for the Freeze Ray specifically mentions that it’s neither of those. Another +10 awesome points for the Gamma World writers!]

The second player created a doppelganger speedster, loaded down with more duct tape, another flashlight, and a generator. This character actually proved to be another incredibly awesome combination, as he could create a duplicate of himself (doppelganger), and with his speedster speed send the doppelganger quite the distance to attack while he hung out behind a boulder.  He kitted himself with Voldo-style katar blades. He ended up getting both a mutation and an Omega Tech (essentially phat loot) that helped heal himself.

The third player ended up with the most logical character origin; an electro-powered android. Sort of a dry start, but she compensated by setting him up with an electro-powered katana and randomly rolling a pretty good healing item, plus a sweet ray gun. She ended up with more duct tape (!!!), another flashlight, and a wagon. She really went for the whole “Android death grip” thing and ended up just choking enemies to death with her machine hands, then possibly throwing them into pits if they survived.

As I didn’t really feel like making it up as I went along, I began by introducing the players to the adventure that comes with Gamma World, but quickly realized that they had nothing; no setting, no knowledge of where they were, nothing. I thought of the last post-apocalyptic setting I could and was reminded of Claptrap from Borderlands … so they found themselves in the town of Clap, so named because “The only working electronic device in Clap is a broken ‘Applause’ sign, and nobody can pronounce that word here”. I fit the adventure in this town and within a few minutes the players were investigating the trail of a potential android attack. Rather than tracking the androids, looking for information, talking with the people who had their belongings stolen, they immediately canvassed the town for car wheels, tied those to the wagon, attached the generator and some duct tape, then duct taped their flashlights to the front and … voila, Rolls-Royce was born [5. I realize that a busted pickup truck and a sack of flashlights does bear some similarity to a wagon powered by busted up wheels with flashlights acting as headlights, but I didn’t tell them the Penny-Arcade story prior to us playing, promise! People just like fashioning ghetto cars.]. By this time, we were roaring with laughter.

They then followed the trail to a clearing where they genuinely snuck up on some anthropomorphic badgers and pigs and began the assault.

One thing I find in a lot of RPG games is that a lot of character elements and traits go unused. Players might learn languages that never end up spoken, or forget to use their abilities, or have abilities that are so niche they only get used once or twice. Because Gamma World is so goofy anyways, my players didn’t mind using tactics they normally wouldn’t have, making the fight both more dangerous and exciting but also funnier.

Player 3’s Android may have had a ‘classic’ origin pairing, but nobody complained when she ripped out a foe’s guts with her machine hands. Everything went well until the last foe knocked Player 2’s speedster into the radioactive crater; between the initial hit and the fall, the poor guy was not only brought to one hit point, he was also irradiated and would take 8 damage at the start of his next turn. But one of his mutations saved the day, then the android healed him and he escaped successfully from the pit, over which a force field was then constructed, for safety reasons. And the giant cat did fall off a cliff, and he did land on his feet. Everyone playing was roaring with laughter; the whole thing was ridiculous, but also incredibly dangerous: one person was reduced to near death in a single attack.

Alas the night ended far, far too soon as bedtime drew near and people had to retire. The session essentially ended right when the first fight did, preventing us from even finding any Ancient Junk, which is unfortunate. Still, everyone is itching to play again. I agree with the majority of reviews that I’ve read in that I don’t think Gamma World is appropriate for a full-time, months long campaign, and that’s alright; I also don’t think it’s intended to be. But as a break, or as just a really fun game to play over a few hours, Gamma World is barrels of fun. The other night was easily one of the most enjoyable pen & paper sessions I’ve ever played, and I look forward to the next one.