Anomaly: Warzone Earth – Impressions

When a comet tears through the atmosphere and impacts on the surface of planet Earth, no one has to tell the 14th Platoon that it’s going to be a very bad day. Instead of the anticipated explosions upon impact, the pieces of the comet hit and created massive domes of energy that wiped entire cities out in one blow.
When the 14th Platoon is sent out to do reconnaissance, things go from bad to worse. At the center of each energy dome is a piece of an alien spacecraft, presumably destroyed in an unrelated incident light-years away. Which was bad enough already before the battalion is met with heavy resistance from an unknown force.
It’s a terrible kind of day.

But, then again, is it ever a good day for an alien invasion?

In Anomaly: Warzone Earth, you take command of the company known as 14th Platoon, investigating and ultimately taking on the alien forces threatening humanity. The game is a unique hybrid of real-time strategy and tower defense and the mash-up works surprisingly well. And, from what I saw, the story sounds moderately interesting, albeit nothing new.

Real-time strategy games generally don’t transfer well to consoles because the interface is so much better suited for a mouse than a controller. I find them to be a frustrating affair. When I want to select a group of units and move them across the map, I’d rather control one that is designated as a “leader” and have the rest of the group follow suit than use a cursor to point and click on the desired destination. All that pointing and clicking is an inefficient way to wage war with a controller, especially in real-time.

Apparently indie game company 11-bit Studios heard my cries and Anomaly is their response. You control a single unit leading a group of assault vehicles to different objectives as you fend off the encroaching alien threat. Each level consists of a map made of multiple paths and you choose the direction your squad will take at each intersection. Before each level begins, you set the route you want to take. This isn’t a permament choice- you can modify it at any time during gameplay. Which is a good thing because you’ll always need to be ready to adjust your route as strange events occur, like the emergence of enemy reinforcements or when electrically-charged debris falls in your path. As the commander you are free to roam the map in its entirety, straying from the main roads to gather supply drops that you’ll need to complete each mission.

The game takes place from a top-down perspective and the graphics are flashy and polished. ‘Nuff said.

Anomaly has a unique approach to traditional strategy mechanics in that it plays like a tower defense game in reverse. As you traverse the roads to your objective, you will encounter stationary foes determined to impede your progress through the streets of cities like Baghdad or Tokyo. Enemies in the demo range from simple laser turrets to nastier foes that fire devastating missiles. You cannot attack outright, but your squadron will open fire as soon as hostile forces are in range. You are there to provide support by performing maintenance, gathering resources and calling in reinforcements. Each level provides a new ability or unit at your disposal, such as commanding three vehicles instead of two or calling in a laser strike to decimate enemy forces ahead.

For an indie game, Anomaly: Warzone Earth is quite the catch, successfully appealing even to skeptics like myself. I would definitely recommend checking it out.

Platform reviewed: PS3
Impression: Pretty good. A unique blend of RTS and tower defense, Anomaly is worth a look.

Red Johnson’s Chronicles: One Against All – Impressions

Red Johnson is a man with a price on his head. After besting and (needlessly) executing the latest in a long string of bounty hunters sent his way, he decides it’s time to go into hiding and try to piece together why he is being hunted. Red is a private investigator, a man of many words and possibly questionable morality.  He explains his situation in this truly remarkable opening voice over:

“It’s been six months now that a price has been on my head. Twenty-three failed attempts and a few collateral victims. And despite it all, they’re not letting up. They’re sticking to their guns, waiting for my funeral. Not one has given up. No truce! No respite. The troops are motivated. The last ones who tried were real enthusiasts. Trigger happy homicide junkies. Holy men on a crusade of murderous revenge.”

I kid you not, that is an exact quote. Those bounty hunters must be lousy at their job.

Red’s words are remarkable to me because they display a total failure on behalf of the developer in the form of completely inept writing. To top it off, those lines are delivered with the grace and candor of a bored eleven-year-old doing his best private eye impression for a school play. Honestly, words don’t do it justice- I recommend hearing it for yourself.

The game’s graphics are passable but nothing special.

Red Johnson’s Chronicles: One Against All is played in the style of a traditional point-and-click adventure. You have no control over the movement of your character; instead, you move a cursor around to interact with characters and objects. While this approach works for some games, my problems began here. Clicking on items requires pixel-precise cursor movements and I found myself frustrated from the very start. While some adventure games (like The Walking Dead series) can pull it off, this type of interface is better suited to a mouse and keyboard than a controller.

You play as the title character who also narrates the game. As I touched on earlier, the voice acting is truly awful. Red’s dialogue makes Ben Stein’s dull inflection as Ferris Bueller’s history teacher seem genuinely rousing. His lines are delivered flat as cardboard, as if the actor was instructed to simply read the script out loud into the microphone. Other characters don’t fare much better. The worst offender is Red’s friend Saul, a caricature of a black man who speaks and dresses like a pimp from a 1970s blaxploitation film.

That being said, the writing is just as bad as the voice acting. The faux-noir dialogue is painful to behold. Attempts at humor fall flat on their face, like when Red mentions his two brothers named Brown and Black. There are lines scattered throughout the game that are equally as appalling. Phrases like “unwilling to admit the unadmittable,” “not the slightest hint of a smidgen of an ounce of anything,” and my personal favorite, “computers are an inexhaustible source of comprising material” pummeled my ears with their inanity.

No, that’s not a typo up there. Computers could indeed be an inexhaustible source of “compromising” material, but “comprising” material? Come on guys, it’s like you’re not even trying.

Developer Lexis Numerique is based in France so it is possible that these linguistic gaffes are the result of shoddy translation. Besides, script quality and voice acting can be overcome by good gameplay, so I brushed it off and moved forward. It’s an adventure game, after all, not a movie.

I spent no less than twenty minutes spinning this box around.

Sadly, the puzzles I encountered are as baffling and meaningless as the worst that the genre has to offer. Back in the 90s, developers and gamers alike thought that convoluted puzzles were “thought-provoking” and “artistic.” Series like Myst and Resident Evil took this to extremes: you search for arbitrary items like medallions to place into an arbitrary object like a statue in order to open a lock in a different area and so on. This sort of crap was seemingly mandatory in any adventure game, be it survival horror-themed or the more traditional point-and-click.

One Against All‘s puzzles harken back to the days when developers didn’t think puzzles needed even an iota of believability in the context of the game world. One involved unlocking a box given to Red as he sits in a bar drinking a beer. There was a padlock with four digits requiring an unknown combination. I manipulated that box for 20 minutes, rotating it in all directions. I purchased useless clues from my pimp friend. The location of the combo? On the back side of the box, there was a label with a scrawl across it that concealed the necessary digits. I found the exact angle I needed to look at it from to see the code by sheer luck . Even then, it was nearly impossible to make out what it said.

Another such puzzle involved a drawing on a desk that contained clues to the password I needed for a computer. Like a schizophrenic’s idea of a matching game, I had to place squares of paper on very specific places of the drawing. After that, I was staring at a series of digits that…told me absolutely nothing about the password. I even consulted the glorious cheat sheet that is the internet to no avail. I found a lot of people infuriated by the puzzle, but not one who had the solution.

WHAT…DOES…IT…MEAN?!

At this point, I gave up.

Primarily known for their educational titles on the PC, Lexis Numerique has been branching out into console games in recent times. Here’s my advice to their team: fire your staff. Replace them with competent people who have actually played video games from the last five years and for God’s sake, hire translators that aren’t bargain priced.  As far as this game goes, I think it’s best summed up with another quote from the protagonist:

“It’s a frickin’ s**t trap.”

Stay far away.

Platform reviewed: PS3
Impression: With laughably bad acting, cringe-worthy dialogue, and maddening puzzles, Red Johnson’s Chronicles: One Against All should be avoided at all costs. You’ve been warned.

Sleeping Dogs – Impressions

It seems like a typical day in the office for triad enforcer Wei Shen at the start of Sleeping Dogs. Meet up with your boss, get assigned to take care of a drug territory dispute, move out. Unfortunately, the police aren’t so appreciative of your talents. You’re arrested, interrogated and threatened with the worst the Hong Kong PD can throw at you before your real boss bursts in and tells the detective the truth: you’re not a triad enforcer. You’re an undercover officer from San Francisco assigned to infiltrate and bring down the Hong Kong gang Sun On Lee.

Granted, it’s a bit cliche, but stellar voice acting and great dialog elevates Sleeping Dogs above the standards of the genre. Sleeping Dogs holds a very dark, somber tone, leaving little room for camp. The tongue-in-cheek nature that Grand Theft Auto 3 brought to this type of game is nowhere to be found.

You can always grab a hostage in a tight spot.

It’s hard to say a lot about Sleeping Dogs because the demo only encompasses two short missions. That being said, I was thoroughly impressed. Thirty minutes of gameplay was long enough to show off all the things developers United Front Studios and Square Enix London got right. Every part of the game reeks of style and panache. The world of the demo is so polished that I wonder if they can keep it up throughout the full game.

The Hong Kong that I witnessed in Sleeping Dogs is a gritty, vibrant, colorful place. The environment has more of an Assassin’s Creed feeling than GTA – the camera is closer and more personal, the perspective and scale of the city is more proper. Movement is fluid and realistic. Free-running over obstructions in your path is seamlessly integrated. Bumping into people while walking elicits an appropriate response; run into someone and risk getting tripped up and losing your momentum.

FATALITY.

The combat mechanics are top-rate as well. Hand to hand combat utilizes an intricate system of strikes, counters, and grapples, reminiscent of Arkham City. Enemies can be grabbed and thrown into the environment for some exciting (and violent) take downs. Some of the kills I accomplished reminded me of Madworld or Mortal Kombat fatalities from back in the day- impaling foes on meat hooks, shredding their face with fan blades, and so on. Everywhere I looked there were more options for such feats. Weapons are available as well, and the knife fighting I engaged in was particularly brutal and satisfying.

Since the demo was so short, I don’t have much else to offer. I can’t comment on the driving aspects because they were omitted from the demo completely. I can only hope the rest of the game stacks up.

I’m certainly going to be picking up a copy myself.

Platform reviewed: PS3
Impression: Between the amazing combat, stylish world and gritty dialogue, Sleeping Dogs might just have it all. Here’s hoping the game lives up to the demo.

The Expendables 2 Videogame – Impressions

I can usually find a redeeming quality or two in just about anything – including games that are a waste of the developer’s time and money – but every so often something mind-bogglingly awful slips in and blows me away. I had one such experience today with The Expendables 2.

Granted, I went in with low expectations. This is a game based on what I consider to be a mindless and mediocre action movie franchise. Because of that, I expected no more than a mindless and mediocre action game. However, what I found was not just mediocre, but also something that belongs in 2002, not 2012.

Sadly, being released a decade earlier wouldn’t have saved this game.

I had a sinking feeling immediately after starting it up. The loading screen made sure to clarify that this was a video game by including “Videogame” in its title. “Oh boy…here we go,” I thought, wincing just a little as a familiar crew of rugged mercernaries graced my screen.

Yes, this is seriously what you’ll be seeing when you play. How much can you make out in this image?

The Expendables 2 is essentially a 3D arcade game whose graphics brings to mind 1998′s Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines and the more recent Renegade Ops. However, where Renegade Ops was bright and colorful, The Expendables 2 is visually drab and repetitive. And where Commandos: BEL was an innovative and fun title, this is the opposite. The landscapes and pixelated trees reminded me of the archaic Operation: Flashpoint (circa 2001). Character models brought to mind the PS2’s Metal Gear Solid 2, but unlike that title they generally remained redundant and generic.

Everything takes place from a fixed isometric perspective as you run around with your squad of four, blasting bad guys and blowing stuff up. This could be fun, but the action ended up being mind-numbingly dull. To compound the simple run-and-gun gameplay, aiming is next to impossible. There was no visible sight for any of the default weapons unless using the sniper character and tracers were hard to see. The camera was always too far away from the scene and the controls were too touchy. It was very difficult to know where I was shooting. Most of the time I couldn’t tell if I was hitting anything at all, so I spent the entire demo emptying clips wildly, hoping to hit my targets.

Speaking of emptying clips wildly, friends and foes alike brush off bullets like they’re paintballs striking kevlar. Even the most mundane enemies take a ridiculous amount of bullets to take down. I know this is an arcade-style game, but come on. Between the lack of damage incurred and the terrible aim, I resigned myself to running in circles while spraying constantly, a mindless alternative to quality combat mechanics.

“Cluttered” is the…nicest way to describe the visual style of The Expendables 2.

Since the game requires that I have a squad of four, the AI took the reins for my squadmates. Perhaps I misspoke when I said AI, because that implies that the actions of my squadmates were somewhat intelligent. They always stayed clustered up around me, firing blindly into the groups of enemies presented. They never took cover and never strayed far from my position. Compounding my frustration even further, my otherwise-worthless squadmates were able to aim and fire somewhat accurately. Opposing combatants didn’t fare any better, running around aimlessly and with reckless abandon. This must be what a 10-year-old imagines war looks like.

Technical problems were abundant as well. Invisible barriers impeded movement through apparently open terrain. Objects slid across the ground like an oiled sled on a snow-covered hill. Sometimes cars would explode when shot, sometimes they wouldn’t. Fallen bodies disappeared immediately and abruptly.

Developer ZootFly doesn’t have an impressive track record to speak of, but they really dropped the ball on this one. I wouldn’t recommend it to even the most casual gamer. The Expendables 2′s flaws are so glaring that I could’ve written this after ten minutes with the demo.

Fun fact: that’s exactly what I did.

Platform reviewed: PS3
Impression: The Expendables 2 tries to be an homage to arcade shoot-em-ups of days past, but it’s an atrocity in terms of gameplay and technical merit. Don’t waste your money on this.

Retro/Grade – Impressions

Imagine this, but moving in reverse.

Rhythm games are going the way of the dinosaur.

As an avid Guitar Hero player back in the day, I can say with some certainty that the genre is dead. If I want to make music with a controller I’ll pick up Guitar Hero III for five bucks at the used game store and dust off my fake guitar.

However, many independent developers have taken it upon themselves to fill this particular void by making rhythm-based games in different genres. Releases such as Dyad and Audiosurf all prove one thing: developers think that this variety of game just needs an overhaul to become a cash cow again.

While I’ve kept an open mind towards rhythm games, I can’t say I agree.

Retro/Grade is a side-scrolling shooter (a la Gradius) with a neat gimmick: when the game begins, you destroy the final boss and the credits roll. I was momentarily confused until time reversed and a bit of text explained that I had destroyed the time stream and I now had to undo the damage. How? By reversing all my actions I had ‘already taken’ earlier in the game.

This is better described by example: An enemy ship comes together in an explosion in front of you. You line your ship up with the enemy and press the fire button to absorb your laser coming back at you, while dodging any projectiles coming from behind you that the enemy fired. The enemy then retreats. This is all performed on a horizontal rhythm track, which will immediately be familiar to anyone who has played a Guitar Hero-esque game.

It is hard to describe in words but once you start playing, the design and action work. However, Retro/Grade suffers from the same problem as all recent rhythm games: the music element feels forced into the mix. Why is this a rhythm game? This would’ve been a perfectly acceptable little arcade shooter if the developers had left that part out. To compound matters, sometimes the effect my actions had on the music was barely noticeable. Like a dusty sweater knitted for you in grade school, it succeeds only at being a unique artifact of times past.

Graphically speaking, Retro/Grade is gorgeous, bombarding you with colors and lights that dance to the music, and the soundtrack I experienced was mostly down-tempo electronic beats that I can really get into.

However, overall it feels cluttered. You can play with a dual-shock controller or with a guitar controller. Maybe I’m just rusty with my fake guitar, but I found it nearly impossible to get the hang of it with the latter. It doesn’t feel natural at all. Instead of scrolling vertically, it scrolls horizontally. The rhythm track is difficult to see amidst the action. It just feels…wrong.

It’s a shame they felt the need to force this into the rhythm genre instead of keeping it as the beautiful and unique side-scroller it could’ve been.

Platform reviewed: PS3
Impression: Good and bad. Retro/Grade had potential, but forcing the rhythm elements into the gameplay left a bad taste in my mouth.