Defense Grid: The Awakening

I'm a big fan of tower defense and I've been wanting this game for a while (among many others). Fortunately with all my trade-ins last week I was able to stock up on most of the console games I wanted for "free", so I quickly hopped on Steam and bought this.

I bought it for twenty bucks but I heard Steam had a sale at one point and sold it for half that. I think it was worth twenty although it would have been nice to get it for ten. You can grab the demo on Steam, or wait for it to come out on XBLA, which it is supposed to do at some point.

I could probably write for hours about the game but I'm not sure anybody would like to read that. So I'll just give you ten quick points. If you want a "real" review, try Destructoid or Rock Paper Shotgun) :

1. The Major Wrinkles
   
   From a gameplay perspective, what does this game bring to Tower Defense? One thing, mostly : three dimensional, highly varied maps.
   
   Some maps allow you to reroute the enemy, some don't. Sometimes you have to defend multiple ingress/egress points and multiple "energy sources" (or whatever it is that you are defending). Some maps allow strategic tower location to drastically alter the path of units, which is cool.
   
   It might not sound like much but it's a big step up from the (mostly flash) TD games I usually play.
   
   
2. Restarting Is Really Fast
   
   Now, some games I've been playing lately have really slow reload times if you die. I don't want to name any names, so let's just call this particular slow game "Gears of Woo 2". Anyway, in "Gears of Woo 2" if you die you have to wait like 30 seconds for your save point to reload.
   
   DG:TA (I can call it DG:TA, right?) reloads instantly, which is good because I had to reload many many times to get through certain levels.
   
   
3. There are very few Technical Faults
   
   I don't want to say the game is perfect, but from a control and interface perspective it is nearly perfect. The only three issues are 1) Clicking the "Achievements" button on the menu doesn't take you to the achievements, 2) It's a little hard to control your cursor with the mouse, and 3) sometimes it's hard to discern how height and line of sight affect your towers.
   
   That's really really good in my book.
   
   
4. Replayability
   
   The game has achievements and leaderboards. Each of the twenty maps has a bronze, silver, and gold medal, and all maps have several challenge modes.
   
   I'll probably play again sometime to get the rest of the achievements.
   
   
5. Overall
   
   I'm glad I got the game. I'd say it can be added to the very short list of necessary retail tower defense games.
   

The Games of January

I'm still catching up with all the games from last year. Here are all the games I've recently purchased and/or am trying to play ...

Gears of War 2

Still having a blast playing this game. I love "Horde" mode, which pits five players against wave after wave of Locust. I've been playing the regular multiplayer for the achievements when I get a chance. It's not shootie enough for my tastes (since you regen health the emphasis is on quick kills, specifically those found in close quarters) and I'm also exceptionally bad. I often say I'm bad at things, but in the Gears 2 multiplayer I'm always at the very bottom of every single statistic.

Age of Booty

This was my wife's "Christmas XBLA Game" and I've played it a good bit as well. It's pretty good and I just have one mission left in the single player. The greatest feat it has achieved (or any strategy game has every achieved) is being simple enough that my wife could get into it. Kudos!

Lock's Quest

I love tower defense, and tower defense games have just started to show up at retail. Lock's Quest is Nintendo DS role-playing / tower defense game, which is certainly different. I've only started playing the game but I really enjoy it.

Defense Grid : The Awakening

Another retail tower defense game, this one purchased from Steam. This is the game that's been getting the most play from me, largely becase of ...

Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures

My wife and I really liked the Lego Star Wars game. I mostly liked it for all the Star Wars Lego stuff (since I'm a big fan of both). I haven't really gotten into this game though -- the lack of Star Wars and all. My wife's been playing it on the 360 most nights, which is why I'm stuck on the PC like a loser.

Ratchet: Deadlocked

I had extra GameStop trade-in dollars so I picked this up after many many years. I really really like Ratchet and Clank games. How much do I like them? Well, this year I'm hoping to get a PS3 largely to play Ratchet and Clank Future and whatever this fall's sequel will be called.

Sometime before then I'll need to punch through Ratchet: Deadlocked, aka "The One Without Clank." I do not have high expectations for the game. The best PS2 R&C (of the first three that I've played) was the second, "Up Your Arsenal."

Penny Arcade Adventures 2

I haven't actually purchased this yet, but I got the necessary points last weekend. I adore Penny Arcade and I can't wait to play the game.

Moria

I'll admit that I didn't buy this game. But I was just thinking today that I should re-embark on my 13 year quest to defeat the Balrog.

Dawn of War : Soulstorm

Forgot about this. Bought this to get in the DoW 2 Beta early, and also because I just wanted to play Soulstorm, especially when I get it on sale from Steam for $7.50

Dawn of War 2 : Multiplayer Beta

This is kind of embarassing because it has never happened to me before, but here goes : DoW 2 won't start on my computer because my video card is so bleeding old. I'm going to buy a new card in a week or two so I can Play Games, something I consider important. Hopefully soon after that I'll be able to get an LCD monitor (I'm still using a 19" CRT).

(Honorable Mention) Ninja Town

Another DS Tower Defense game, GameStop was out of stock but I also hope to pick it up soon. Bloody GameStop.

In a way I think I've gone crazy though -- I've bought (or will have bought) eight games in the past month. That's usually a half year or a year's supply of games for me.


UPDATE: Oh yeah, Assault Heroes

Forgot about that -- I was listening to a very old Bombcast because I was bored, and they mentioned that Assault Heroes, the venerable dual joystick shooter, had dropped down to 400 points (five bucks). So I picked that up too.

As My Gaming Shelf Lay Dying

Oh, if our Gaming Shelves could talk! I'm sure they would tell us many stories -- of the old (standard) oversized PC game boxes, the move to the new (standard) book-sized boxes, and of oversized collector's editions, evidently filled with bricks! What might they say of console games? From big cartridges to smaller cartridges to small containers, then again to that ubiquitous book-sized box.

Shelves value style over substance, of course, so I doubt they'd spend much time discussing the changing quality or changing styles of the games they held. But I am sure some of the shelves -- the older ones, perhaps -- might detect a little bit of a sea change coming. They might try to hide it, but you can only hear so many references to "The Good Old Days" before the undercurrents become apparent.

The duties of my Gaming Shelves have lessened as of late. It was only about two years ago that every new game meant making space on the shelf. But then it all slowly started to change.

It started with the insidiously downloaded games of Xbox Live Arcade. I found myself curious about indie games but put off by the all-too-frequent twenty dollar price point. Once I bought my 360 I could buy any indie they offered for ten or (sometimes) five dollars. I also stocked up on a few of my old arcade favorites, and before long had build myself a small, respectable collection of XBLA games.

There were also the 360 retail games. They bested the online games in dollar value but not in quantity. As far as my non-wife-oriented purchases go, XBLA games outnumber retail titles three to one. All in all I've purchased twenty-one 360 games since I bought it eighteen months ago -- only six were purchased retail, which leaves fifteen downloaded from Arcade.

As for PC games, only Steam stands against a wave of ill-advised Collector's Editions. A little quick googling shows that my initial suspicions were correct -- I have no "standard edition" PC retail boxes less than two years old (The Burning Crusade turned two ten days ago). The only exceptions are my (ill-advised) Warhammer : Age of Reckoning Collector's Edition and my (so ill-advised it makes the purchase of the WAR Collector's Edition seem like genius) Hellgate: London Collector's Edition.

The Gaming Shelf's loss is the gain of my HDD, I suppose. Steam shows an Orange Box-fortified yet sturdy array of games. There's Company of Heroes and expansion, the Dawn of War: Soulstorm expansion, Left 4 Dead, the five X-COM games from the X-COM package deal, and of course the aforementioned Orange Box games (HL2, HL2:ep1, HL2:ep2, HL2:LC, Portal, and TF2 which is the only one I ever played). I also bought Defense Grid: The Awakening over the weekend. Even considering all the package deals, that's seven online purchases versus two retail purchases.

To add shelf insult to shelf injury, my hobby of collecting old video games has been rendered quaint, what with emulation and all. So this weekend I decided (for the first time ever) that I would trade in a number of my old games. So off to the Glue Factory (GameStop) went most of my old PS2, GameCube, and (original) Xbox games, along with all-but-one of our DS games. (You see, lately the wife and I had grown tired of all-but-one of our DS games.)

So that's the state of the Gaming Shelves right now. The console shelf is now half empty, while the PC gaming shelf is chock full of old, forgotten games. Farewell, Sweet Gaming Shelves.

Meanwhile, the DVD shelves stand packed and defiant, for now...

Is the Death of PC Gaming Imminent? Depends on What You Play.

Oakstout recently opined on the state of PC gaming and found it wanting. He mentions that sad state of PC games at GameStop, one I also lament.

But it's not all gloom and doom. The local Best Buy devotes as much space to PC games as it does to any individual console. Gamestop (in the past ten or so years I have patronized it) never had much of a PC game selection to begin with, and this might be more due to a lackluster secondhand market than anything else.

Oakstout dismisses Valve because they port most of their games to consoles, but I don't agree with the reasoning. I think everyone understands that if you really want to play a Valve game and have access to all the neat mods and server types you'll need to play on the PC. The PC is the "main" version, and any console versions are mere "ports". It's great if the console versions of Team Fortress 2 or Left 4 Dead are lucrative for Valve, but even if they outsell their PC partners (I have no idea if they have) that does not diminish the PC-ness of these titles. If you play Left 4 Dead on the PC you play the "pure" version. If you play it on the 360 you are playing a console port of a PC game.

Let's revisit a prior point -- the shelf space issue. At my local Best Buy there is rougly equal shelf space for PC games and games for individual consoles -- but that isn't the full story. There is a clear difference in target genres.

So what's going on? Well, let's look at NPD's top twenty PC games for 2008 (courtesy Rock Paper Shotgun) :

1. World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Expansion Pack
2. Spore
3. World of Warcraft: Battle Chest
4. Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures
5. Warhammer Online: Age Of Reckoning
6. Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
7. The Sims 2 Double Deluxe
8. World Of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Exp Pk Collector’s Ed
9. Fallout 3
10. World Of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Expansion Pack
11. Call Of Duty: World At War
12. The Sims 2 FreeTime Expansion Pack
13. World Of Warcraft
14. Sins Of A Solar Empire
15. Warcraft III Battle Chest
16. The Sims 2 Apartment Life Expansion Pack
17. Crysis
18. Left 4 Dead
19. Diablo Battle Chest
20. The Orange Box

All of these games I would consider "Pure PC Games" except for Fallout 3. And Fallout 1 and 2 were "Pure PC Games" so that provides a little context for that aberration.

One thing about this list probably pops out at you as it did me. Specifically, there are only five genres represented : MMORPG's, Sims, First Person Shooters, RPG's and Real-Time Strategy. And every one of those genres has a 2008-released, Pure PC, triple-A title.

Now let's look at the top twenty console games for 2008 (courtesy Gamasutra) :

1. Wii Play
2. Call of Duty: World at War (360)
3. Wii Fit
4. Mario Kart (w/Wheel)
5. Guitar Hero: World Tour (Wii)
6. Gears of War 2
7. Left 4 Dead
8. Mario Kart
9. Call of Duty: World at War
10. Animal Crossing: City Folk
11. Wii Music
12. New Super Mario Bros.
13. Personal Trainer : Cooking
14. Fallout 3
15. Club Penguin: Elite Penguin Force
16. Link's Crossbow Training
17. Guitar Hero: World Tour (PS2)
18. Madden (360)
19. Call of Duty: World at War (Wii)
20. Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip

There are a number of Wii and DS "boutique" games that kind of defy genrefication (casual games, perhaps?) but a number of recognizable game genres are represented : FPS, Racing, Rhythm, Third Person Shooting (aka Action), RPG's, and Sports. These genres are really the strength of consoles, other than the FPS games which (even though they were released simultaneously) I consider ports.

So, if you like to play the FPS games, the MMORPG's, the RTS games, or simulation games, the PC is where it's at. If you like racing games, action games, rhythm games, or sports games, the console is where it's at. This is the present, past, and future of PC vs. console gaming.

So, back to the original question -- are PC games dying? It depends on how you look at it. If you look at retail sales numbers (which do not include hardware, online sales, or MMORPG subscription numbers) then PC gaming is dying. However, if you're a fan of Real-Time Strategy, First Person Shooting, MMORPG's, or Simulation games, the PC continues to be the only source of native triple-A titles.

Whither Blogroll

The first order of "back to blogging" is to blog. The second order is to shake off the dust we've accumulated in our three month hibernation. Funny that it I felt the need to take three months off after blogging for only three months, eh? My new years resolution is to blog for at least four (perhaps three and a half) months this time out.

So I decided to visit the old WAR blogroll to see how everybody's doing:

Archmagery used to be the most frequently updated non-Syp, non-group WAR blog. Now it's "mostly dead", by which I mean "about as dead as this blog has been," with sporadic bi-monthly posting.

Bloghammer Online has a "goodbye" post at the top of the page from early October.

Book of Grudges, which to me was "it" when I was blogging, shuttered at the end of November.

Echoes of Nonsense is, if anything, more active than it was before. Way to hold the fort, Ardua!

OMGompers hasn't posted since October 4th.

When I visited The Greenskin I saw the UI in this post and immediately thought, "I guess he's playing WoW now." But it was a WAR UI, which I gather have evolved quite a bit. Still active.

The Order of Destruction cannot even be viewed. It is now "protected".

The Tome of Ignorance, has similarly been wiped clean. All that remains is a message at the top :

This blog have been shut down due to lack of interest from the writer, probably for good.

Waaagh has been movin' on up to the East Side, to a Deluxe Apartment in the GameRiot.

And finally, Zizlak's Travel Diary is still going strong, although each page only has one post, which is a little irritating.

Well, that's it for slimming down the WAR blogroll. Now I get to beef up the regular-gaming-blogroll (of which I guess I am now a member).

A Kingdom for Keflings

A Kingdom for Keflings is an XBLA game from NinjaBee, they of Outpost Kaloki X, Band of Bugs, and Dorito Dash of Destruction fame. You play as a giant building a town for the Keflings, as well as assigning them their own tasks.

It's pretty good.

My wife also thought it looked fun, so we took turns playing our own little towns and had a pretty good time. You start out by picking a giant, and one of the available giants is your new-with-NXE "Avatar", which I quickly did because my avatar is awesome (he wears a white suit with white gloves). Then you and your keflings gather four types of resources and take them to a workshop where they are used to make "rooms" that you'll put together to make more buildings. Eventually you'll create buildings that refine the original resource types (logs turn into planks, crystals turn into gems, etc.) and then take those advanced resources to even better workshops that make better rooms that make still better workshops ... you get the idea.

It took about nine hours for me to get through the "campaign" but it doesn't seem like there is much to do after that, unless you want to make your town prettier. That makes it pretty short for an XBLA game compared to XBLA games, but not too short for an XBLA game compared to a retail game.

Once I finished the game I did hold out a little hope -- I thought maybe I could try for a high score. But after reading this post on gamefaqs it does seem like there is a glitch that increases your score, so high scores go to people who are willing to glitch thousands of times. Not fun.

One problem I ran into was with framerate -- when there was a lot going on the game got a little choppy, and that was distracting. But overall it was a pretty cool game and I'd recommend it to anybody who's willing to exchange ten dollars for ten hours of entertainment.

Gears of War 2 and The Better Boss Fight

Why is it that otherwise competent game designers so often design lousy boss fights?

I don't know for sure, but I have my suspicions. I read a dev diary (on gamasutra, I believe) once about "How Developers Should Play Games." The dev explained that you need to play a game long enough to "get a feel" for it, then move on to the next game.

That would explain why game developers make such lousy boss fights -- they have no experience fighting bosses.

The original Gears of War suffered from not one, but three lousy boss fights. The Berserker bosses (the first two, anyway) were awful, and so was the final boss, General RAAM. Why were they awful?

To win the Berserker fights you had to creep around until the Berserker smelled or heard you (they couldn't see you). Then they'd charge, and you'd dive out of the way, and you'd use a special weapon to attack them. They were quite difficult, but that's ok -- it's ok for bosses to be hard. The problem was the huge disconnect between the regular gameplay and the boss gameplay. The rest of the game you hide behind cover to avoid fire, and try to find flanking positions to take out the enemy. All of the sudden you're this Cyber Satellite Matador or something and it's terrible.

The way I see it, parts of your game can be hard. Or they can be different. But they can never be both. I am playing a shooter because I like shooters. In fact, by playing the game I get better at shooters. So making a boss that plays to that shooter mechanic is a great idea. Throwing a bullfight at your players is not.

Gears of War 2, I'm happy to say, has fantastic boss fights. The most difficult section of the game is not a boss fight at all -- it is a tactical shooting section like every other one in the game, except that it required hours of reloading in Hardcore mode until I could beat it.

The boss fights are, in fact, very different than the normal gameplay. However, while different, they are not incredibly difficult. The most delightful "boss" (the last two sections of the game) is incredibly easy -- it's basically a reward for the actual-most-difficult section you had to play through to get there.

So, here's to you, Gears of War 2 Boss Fights.

The Three Things I Learned From My Warhammer Blog

1. I never want to do a single-game blog again
   
   I've never played any game continuously for more than about thirteen months. If you exclude World of Warcraft the time falls to six months. So a single-game blog is not really a long term solution for me.
   
   Of course, I never intended it to last forever -- I was going to blog for a year and see how that played out. Instead I only made it about four months, right about the time I got tired of Warhammer.
   
   While I don't wish to do a single-game blog again, I do think it was a good start. There was a loose-knit community and everybody was very supportive and I appreciated that.
   
   
2. I never want to do a solo blog again
   
   There are at least a dozen reasons why I'd rather do a group blog than another solo blog. The big ones are content (I want new content on a blog every day, but I don't want to write new content on a blog every day), feedback (be nice to have a small group of people that you can chat with), web design (I am awful at it, let others to handle this), cooperation (i.e. I force them to play multiplayer game demos with me), and podcasts (again, I would force the others to do them with me).
   
   
3. I'm at a loss to explain why I don't like WAR
   
   If you remember my four months of blogging (so long ago) you may remember that time and again I talked about how great the design of WAR is, and how it compared so favorably to WoW. And yet --
   
   and yet I haven't logged into WAR in two months even though I have a six-month subscription. On the other hand I get a WoW craving about once a week (which I have yet to act upon).
   
   I think achieving things in WoW meant something to me, and I never really connected with WAR in that way. I do sympathize more with the UO hounds who are still playing, eleven years after release (nine years after it became irrelevant).