December 22, 2014
[2014 Top Pickz] Best Co-op Game: War in the North

Here’s my end-of-year GOTY feature, my Pickz for 2014. Please note that I will be covering games that I played and reviewed this year, not necessarily games that came out this year. Also the categories are kind of being thought up at the last minute as I review my post archive. Of course, it’s all very subjective; I’m rating my experience as much as the game itself.

To start with I wanted to highlight an experience that I enjoyed a few times throughout the year, that of sharing a game with another; most often my wife. We love playing Lego games and so on, but we also tried out a few others. Kirby’s Dream Land 3 proved too hard to do together, and our attempt at Child of Light unfortunately didn’t last long; there’s not much for the firefly player to do. But it’s not all bad news.

Lord of the Rings: War in the North was something we both enjoyed as Middle Earth fans, and despite being pretty much noobs to this genre. Big points in its favour were its faithfulness to that universe and the cool stuff it let you do around the characters and concepts we love; having a fairly linear structure that kept us going; not to mention the ability to play through as a woman, which is a great thing for any game.

Despite a raft of technical problems, gameplay flaws, and accessibility issues, we had a good time with it and that’s why it was my favourite co-op memory of the year. It was a close call with Lego Batman 2, though, but I liked being pushed out of my comfort zone with this.

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Filed under: top pickz Lord of the Rings: War in the North 
March 10, 2014
The Lord of the Rings: War in the North (PS3)

Ah, here we go. This is the closest thing to a “serious” game I’ve played in a long time. You know the ones, the mature, the big-budget, the “hardcore”. I’m not sure those labels really would apply, but it’s further up on that spectrum than the Avatar games, you know. It’s a Western action RPG and all that.

The real reason for playing this was the LOTR connection. The wife and I are big fans, and even if this wasn’t exactly penned by JRR (we’re on a first three initials basis), it’s at least in the cinematic universe and it explores corners of Middle Earth we don’t often see. I was just interested in being in that world.

As a bonus we got a game that we didn’t mind playing together. We picked the easiest difficulty, which I think was a bit easy for me but to be honest l didn’t want it to be more than breezy, it would have been frustrating. Doubly so for my wife. We had enough issues with the bugs and the clunky UI, I’m not sure the game would have handled loading from a checkpoint. One of the more amusing bugs was a persistent chain-rattling in an Orcish fortress that steadily grew louder until it overwhelmed all other sound effects, even when we left that room far behind.

There was also a heavy Uncanny Valley element, along with environments jam packed with invisible walls. It’s clear that this is one of those games with more vision than budget, although having said that in terms of ambition it wasn’t overly creative. But again, we weren’t there for an amazing gaming experience, we were there to play around in Tolkien’s world and laugh at the cheesy voice acting. Actually a lot of the voice work was quite good, but any character who has appeared in the films (Elrond, Gandalf, etc) was a pale imitation.

But yeah it was just fun shooting orcs, finding phat lootz, meeting new folks, getting a bit lost, levelling up. Because we were doing it together. There’s a new LOTR action game in development that looks kinda interesting, Shadow of Mordor. But it’s single player only. You just can’t forgive as many flaws when you’re playing alone. I was excited thinking we could play that together too, but nope.

But oh, I just loved meeting Radagast, finding a hidden dwarven fortress, learning the history (which is canon) of places like Gundabad or Fornost, interacting with eagles and dragons and Black Numenoreans. I’ve said before that I don’t care what the general consideration is whether something is canon or non-canon. It’s all canon to me, as much as I can make. I just can’t learn and remember details and characters and then dismiss them as not real. We had this experience, it’s real to me.

I played the ranger Eradan, and Everbloom played the elven sorceress Andriel. Local co-op ftw baby! We had fun poking fun at Farin, the AI third wheel. You also get in your party a personal eagle taxi who flies you all over the north like an obedient Pidgeot, and can do Sky Attack to enemy formations. I got pretty attached to these characters, and they in particular are voiced very well.

I had a look at some PC videos afterwards and oh my goodness that version looks so much nicer than the PS3. I would have thought that by 2011 developers could have worked out the kinks in developing for the console, but I guess that whole graphical creep issue had come into effect. Loading times were pretty long, but for all I know that’s normal. Like I said, not really into playing the newest hottest games on the scene, dudebro.

Well I think I’ve said what I wanted to. This game was a real novelty, it had a lot to like, but mostly for the lore and the co-op play. As a game apart from that it’s competent but not amazing. It’s also different to my usual forte so familiarising myself with that style was fun. Just don’t compare it too closely to Skyrim or whatever you kids are playing these days. Any LOTR fans though should definitely check it out, and set it to easy if you need to.

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Filed under: review lotr lord of the rings: war in the north snowblind lord of the rings ps3 
June 16, 2013
Update time! E3 Special

Very busy week. Seems like I’ve been spending more time looking at E3 stuff than playing games. My impressions over all are pretty similar to most people, I think. Microsoft was awful and the Xbone looks like a bad thing for gamers. Sony was boring as those two usually are but had some impressive rebuttals to Microsoft. Nintendo was perplexing (3D Mario and Mario Kart 8 look pretty but the gameplay and other choices are questionable), mind-blowingly exciting in parts (Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze and Smash Bros trailer including Mega Man!), and covering old ground in other parts (third party and indie stuff, and their other games).

I am so happy about Smash and new DK, but I keep getting more disappointed with Wind Waker HD. No new OR restored content, Tingle Tuner removed and replaced by an admittedly interesting implementation of Miiverse. It seems like the only thing they added were new item button options and a “go fast” button on the ship. You really need more than that to make the Triforce quest not boring to people (I didn’t mind it, I liked the ship). The Tingle thing was the last straw to me. There you are with all these control schemes and one has a screen on it, just like the GBA! You show the GBA-GCN connection in the trailer! Then you just cut the whole thing out to tack on a feature you can access any time with the Home button. In its original form, the Tingle Tuner was an interesting way to get a second player involved for an “asymmetric” experience. Well Nintendo, isn’t that your magic Wii U word? Ridiculous. That turned me off, and I think not restoring the content they planned but had to scrap for development constraints in the original will lose others. And rightly so, what’s the point of a remake if you remove content? All the other Zelda remakes have had an extra dungeon or a Master Quest (except BS Zelda, which was actually smaller, but the graphics were leagues better). Anyway enough Zelda ranting.

So excitement! Donkey Kong looks simply amazing, and I squee’d like a fangirl when I saw Dixie. Other details like the level archetypes, the cool new baddies, just how nice it looks, and the coup of securing David Wise for music are making it shape up to be a must-have for me. For the baddies, the worst case was getting Tikis back, we all wanted Kremlings back, but this third option is intriguing. A rumoured fourth character is also cause for speculation and interest. Another great piece of news about this is Miyamoto’s supposed lack of involvement! Great stuff! Keep your meddling hands off, Shiggy! In case you don’t know, he enforced the weakest mechanic of DKCR, the blowing. He also ruined Sticker Star :’(

And Smash. What can I say, I knew I was going to get both versions even before I knew anything about it. Mega Man is the best news, even if the reveal was spoiled by the Wii U’s eShop front page, which is where I went to watch the Direct. I’m drinking in every little detail that leaks out, and loving it.

I don’t think I need to say anything about all dem Mario games. That’s what the masses are drooling over, I just think they look bland. Good thing for Peach to be playable again, but why Blue Toad not proper Toad? Sigh. Dream Team looks good, still haven’t decided about that one.

I approve of the strategy Nintendo has been easing into, with regular Directs instead of blowing a massive load once a year. So E3 will get less relevant, to me anyway. But enough E3 rubbish. What have I had time to play?

Since I haven’t written in a couple weeks, a few things actually. Did I mention I finished Doodle God? And I’ve completely sworn off Rockman Xover, haven’t touched it since. So on my phone I’ve opened up Lego Harry Potter 1 again to complete it (it’s quite easy once you’ve unlocked the automatic spell caster thing). Good times, the handheld games seem to be a little more baked than the console ones. Having said that, I have fallen through the world several times and had a few crashes. Ok I guess they’re not too different. ;)

Since my SNES died, I tried emulating Yoshi’s Island to check how hard those Super FX graphics are to emulate (rumoured to be the reason YI is not on the VC). Turns out Snes9X handles it perfectly, Nintendo is just lazy. I did notice it seemed to run fast, then I realised I was emulating the 60Hz American version, rather than the 50Hz Pal one I was used to. No big deal though. I then went though the GBA remake, also emulated. If you recall, I got to the second-last boss before the SNES stopped, so I still had a bit of game to go. Plus the Advance version has a new set of secret levels, and I don’t think I ever originally unlocked the first set on the SNES version (too hard for my childish skills). It’s inferior in a few ways. First, the sound effects they added (voices for Yoshi and Shy Guys) sound out of place, and others are modified and lack the impact of the original. Second and more importantly, the screen is much smaller while the sprites are the same size, which is a huge bummer. It’s harder to see hazards or items you need to get, you can’t take in the environments as much, it’s a very claustrophobic experience. But hey it’s Yoshi’s Island, the quality shows through and I really want to get to those extra levels.

On the console front, me and the wife started a new co-operative game. Lord of the Rings: War in the North got our attention as a sidestory to the main events of the books/movies. It interests me as an example of the Western action-RPG genre that is so big now, and also as a local two-player game whose difficulty can be toned down, in addition to the lore and universe stuff. It’s really good for both of us, me being kinda new to the type of game and my wife being, well, “not a gamer” per se. We’re playing on easy and both loving it. Setting up a game is tricky and unintuitive but the menus in the game are quite good. The gameplay is pretty standard I think, but that LOTR touch makes it engaging. The cutscenes are quite uncanny, in the “Uncanny Valley” sense, but at least I can give my guy a sweet mustache and customise his hairdo. (I’m the ranger btw, Everbloom is the elf mage). It’s one of the things the PS3 has allowed me to enjoy, which I appreciate. You can’t be a Nintendo fanboy forever (well, you can, but I found some other things that are good too).

And that’s about it. I’ve got some posts on game series and lore and fan theories and stuff in the works, as well as some scanlations ticking over in the background. So er, expect posts in the future on this blog. Thanks for reading!

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(Notes: 1)
  
Filed under: update e3 lego harry potter: years 1-4 yoshi's island lord of the rings: war in the north 
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