Game Reviews

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Written by Eric Layman

Category: News and Other Musings

Published: 03 March 2013

Hits: 2896

The PlayStation classic Persona 2: Eternal Punishment finally made its way to the PlayStation Network last week. Atlus sent over a code, presumably for reviewing purposes, but I felt there was something odd about using our modern(ish) rubric to evaluate a game in the exact form that it arrived in over a decade ago. Eternal Punishment isn’t, however, unworthy of discussion.

There’s some weird history behind Persona's lineage. Following the 1997 PlayStation release Revelations: Persona, Persona 2: Eternal Punishment was the second Persona game to come stateside. When it was released in Japan a year earlier, however, Eternal Punishment was born a follow-up Persona 2: Innocent Sin. Both games came with the Persona 2 label, but were essentially opposite sides of the same coin. Less savvy North American gamers were ignorant to this fact, but still managed a beloved appreciation of Eternal Punishment anyway.

2007's Persona 3 and 2008's Persona 4, despite being very different from their predecessors, thrust the Persona brand back into the limelight. Atlus responded by issuing an updated version of the first title in the series, Revelations: Persona, for Sony's PlayStation Portable in 2009. More than a traditional port, the PSP iteration restored significant content that had been cut out of the initial release, updated some of its music, and gave it a fresh (and somewhat less racist!) localization. With 2010 came a PSP iteration of Persona 3, dubbed Persona 3 Portable, ensuring Atlus' Persona series had found a welcomed home on Sony's portable machine.

Later in 2011, Atlus delivered a fully localized and somewhat updated version of the proverbially long lost Persona 2: Innocent Sin to the PSP. Resurrecting a niche title, attaching a first rate localization, and delivering it to a content-starved machine was a brilliant move on Atlus' part and gave a whole new generation of fans an easy (and legal!) way to play a forgotten classic. Finally, Innocent Sin had come stateside.

Naturally, when a similar PSP revamp of Persona 2: Eternal Punishment was announced for the Japanese market, the North American Atlus faithful were waiting with baited breathe. Unfortunately it started looking like that particular iteration of Eternal Punishment would never make it over here. Atlus has stated vague, "unusual circumstances" surrounding its appearance, or lack thereof, but the writing seems to be on the wall: (1) It's 2013, (2) the PSP software library (despite an attractive digital presence for Vita) is pretty much dead, and (3) the financial success of a retail PSP release is doubtful. Take your pick, but it's probably a combination of the three.

Releasing a the original Eternal Punishment as a PS1 Classic on PlayStation Network seems like a safer bet, and that's exactly what Atlus did. It lacks the modern amenities we were granted in the updated ports of Revelations: Persona and Innocent Sin and it doesn’t quite mesh with Innocent Sin’s updated localization, but it's fundamentally content-complete and makes good on the dream of owning literally every Persona game on one portable console.

Well, sort of. As of this writing Eternal Punishment can neither be downloaded on nor transferred to a PlayStation Vita. It can only be played on a PlayStation 3 or PSP. This is a huge god damn bummer, but SCEA claims to be working on it and it will very likely be updated in a few weeks. Update! It's now transferable to Vita! Then, my friends, then we can have the PSP iterations of Revelations: Persona, Persona 2: Innocent Sin, Persona 3 Portable, Eternal Punishment as a PSone Classic, and the Vita exclusive Persona 4 Golden on one portable device. That in itself is a machine for the ages and the collective pinnacle of interactive entertainment known as Persona (please note possible hyperbole).

Oh, right, the actual game. I've put an admittedly shallow ten hours into Eternal Punishment (and employed my PSPgo for the first time in three years), and, yeah, it sure is Eternal Punishment. Those only familiar with Persona 3 and Persona 4 may be in for a rough transition. Early Persona games, with their penchant for demon negotiation and dungeon crawling, were closer to traditional MegaTen games than their more accessible later entries. They were remembered more for their narrative, a high school setting is still relatively unique in gaming, rather than their gameplay. It's still fun and engaging, but as I noted in my old review of Innocent Sin, somewhat out of step with modern design sensibilities.

Innocent Sin seems attractive; it's the long awaited opposite half to a cult classic, and it comes with a few bells and whistles to ease it into the 2011 landscape. While I adore the soundtrack and can appreciate the effort put toward a great localization, actually playing the game made me feel like I was trapped in some of the worst parts of 90's era game design. Interesting systems are in place but it’s slow, aimless, and, and most of it has done much better in Nocturne or newer Persona games. Of course this is a known quantity to the Atlus faithful who will buy (and love) Innocent Sin anyway, but I'd caution an approach from a newcomer.

Those words got me annihilated on forums! What I didn't understand at the time, and still don’t really get, is why it upset people. Persona fans knew what game was and likely didn't require analysis from a critic. It’s for everyone else who may not know what they’re getting in to. Eternal Punishment follows the same playbook. It doesn't arrive with the tender loving care of its made-over predecessor, but it’s also $30 cheaper at $9.99. If you can accept Eternal Punishment's understandably dated systems and pacing, you'll find a game that's just as engaging, deep, and rewarding now as it was a decade ago. $10 is fair trade for a great game – provided you know what you’re getting in to.  

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Written by Chris Stone

Category: News and Other Musings

Published: 26 February 2013

Hits: 3080

The year of 2013 is getting real! This week, we've got Metal Gear Rising, Antichamber, Little Inferno, Dead Space 3, and other conduits to burning and maiming. As per usual, we act like we know what we are doing, but introduce a late plot twists that is designed to confuse the listener. The Retroactive Shitstorm is back, with the wonderful and wild year of 1995, otherwise known as the year that Chrono Trigger existed. Come enjoy!

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Written by Eric Layman

Category: News and Other Musings

Published: 21 February 2013

Hits: 3474

Like 500,000+ others, most of us at Digital Chumps spent two hours glued to our chairs watching Sony's PlayStation 4 reveal. What follows doesn't represent the opinion of Digital Chumps as a whole, but rather my haphazard, rambling speculation based on my relatively informed opinion. This guarantees you, the reader, that after reading my opinion you'll feel at least 20-25% more informed than you would at our competing sites.

I'm kidding. Probably. The big thing to remember is that we still basically know nothing, and armchair criticism is all we've got until real people starting getting hands on with some of Sony's impressive tech. Here we go!

Seeing Sony immediately pawn off the Vita by acknowledging its assumed importance and then literally nothing else seemed like a brief admission of a global failure, honestly (especially after that Vita specific event earlier this week failed to announce anything of remote importance).  It felt like a nervous laugh, a warm-up joke before the big reveal. It did make an appearance later when it was shown working in tandem with the PlayStation 4, but I'll get to that a bit later.

And yeah, hats off to Sony for going with their gut and titling their machine, "PlayStation 4." That wide font P S 4 logo looked slick as hell, and the very act of seeing it in an official capacity actually gave me goose bumps. Gone is completely baseless speculation, and seeing that text on screen gave the remaining two hours an air of legitimacy I hadn't considered beforehand. Finally, it started feeling real.

Mark Cerny out on stage was great, as was the name drop for Marble Madness. His resume speaks for itself, and allowed him to speak with a believable air of authority on the PlayStation 3's architecture. In the past we've always heard the PlayStation 3 (and to a lesser extent, PlayStation 2) were relative hell to develop for. Cerny's messaging repeatedly telegraphed the PS4 would be more of a traditional, developer-friendly experience for small and large teams alike. Announcing that the PS4 would be packing 8gigs of memory was perhaps a more impressive announcement, or at least that's what systematically detonated my Twitter feed.

The DualShock 4 was leaked by Destructoid nearly a week ago, but it was still need to see in three dimensions. The glowy bits at the top were sort of assumed to be a Move controller, but the bigger surprise in terms of motion technology was Sony's Kinec...ah, ahem, I mean stereo camera motion sensing device. They pulled the curtain on that thing almost as soon as they brought it out, so hopefully we'll get more information on it later in the year. In any case the remolded analog buttons look more comfy, and the elongated form factor (hopefully) won't matter very much.

Knack, Cerny's project, looked alright. In the absence (and relative stagnation) of Ratchet and Clank, it certainly captured that cutesy feel of latter day PlayStation platformers. It didn't look dramatically different than what we're seeing on our current gen consoles, however the amount of activity on screen were vaguely impressive.

Suspending and resuming play sessions sounds simple, but it felt huge. I've always held an appreciation for sleep modes in portable devices, and it's a fantastic feature to include in consoles. I do wonder, however, whether it will persevere through unexpected power outages. Along similar lines, titles being playable while they're downloading is a great idea - and hey maybe it'll be fast enough for buyer's remorse not to set in when we all effortlessly blow $180 downloading three retail games at the same time.

Video compression and constant streaming sounds incredible. That was actually a small feature of Just Cause 2, a game particularly prone to outrageous hyjinx, and personally I think I wound up with a ton of YouTube videos because of it. If there's true live streaming through a reliable and accessible web interface then that might actually earn the overwrought "gamechanger" title, earning the Dual Shock 4's "share" button as perhaps the PS4's secret best feature.

They mentioned this a couple of times, but taking over your friend's games via Gaikai's cloud service sounds absolutely insane. Do you have to both own the game, or just your buddy? Do you earn trophies, or does he/she? Is there a time limit on how long you can assume control. Like anything else it raised more questions than answers, but the potential and intrigue it left behind are both tantalizing.

Declaring that games would be preloaded on your system after Sony's network "learns" your tastes sounded like a fancy way of saying, "Hey prepare for a ton of ads so we can sell you things you didn't even know you wanted." After undergoing an insufferable bombardment of focus-group demo'd content every time I turn on my Xbox 360 I can firmly say both, "ugh" and "no thanks" to that feature. Perhaps I don't speak for gaming as I whole, but I certainly know what I want, and that's not it.

Gaikai appears primed to break out. Instantly being able to play any demo is a huge get for Sony, though it was disappointing to hear that their backwards compatibility solution had yet to be realized.  I'm personally skeptical, cloud based gaming just seems too unreliable, but Sony's huge financial investment in Gaikai surely means they're on to something. Right? Guys?

Remote play to the Vita was expected, but if it's anything like remote play from the PS3 to the PSP or Vita, count me out. Lag is a serious issue, and it renders almost every game that supports that feature thoroughly worse than its console counterpart. If Sony and Gaikai can figure that out, as they implied with that "closer response time" (paraphrasing) slide, then it might pose a significant challenge to the Wii U, but I wouldn't get my hopes up.

Killzone: Shadow Fall certainly looked pretty. It was great to see bright, beautiful colors in a world that's usually drenched in muted colors. Too bad it seemed to play like every other shooter out there.

Driveclub was a surprise. I always assumed Evolution Studios would focus on racing games, but the social, car porn territory they've decided to enter always seemed like Gran Turismo's territory. Either GT6 won't be coming for a very, very longtime, or Driveclub is going to be something else entirely.

Infamous: Second Son didn't show actual gameplay, but it looked intriguing. Could have done without the oppressed white dude talking about how bad police are, but hey at least the concept looked interesting. If we're lucky Cole and crew won't have a major role, as I thought that storyline went out with a whimper at the end of Infamous 2.

Getting Jonathan blow out on stage represented the first and only time I said, "holy shit" in my chair. Something of a tortured genius, his annoyance and criticism of the console space is well known to people who follow his work. The Witness, Blow's game, sounded interesting when he was talking about it, but when it came to footage it looked like a Myst homage with puzzles from an iPhone game. That, and 30+ hours with, quote, "no filler," is a bold claim. Hopefully this will be one of those times where I'm intensely wrong about an observation; I loved Braid so very much and I've been dying to see and play his next creation. He said it would be exclusive to the PS4 at launch, which means we'll play it on other devices sooner or later.

I can respect David Cage's passion, but I refuse to believe anything he actually says. It was weird for him, of all people, to be touting the technical prowess of the PS4, but hey that real time render of David Carradine's head was sort of neat.

I love Media Molecule, but I have no idea what their presentation was about. That sculpting tech demo is fuel for a million penises, and its follow-up demo produced flashbacks to Wii Music. Not a good place to go, but little of what they showed was from an actual game, so we'll have to wait and see with them.

Capcom's Yoshinori Ono is one of my favorite human beings and I was tickled to death (almost literally) when he came out on stage. He immediately said he wasn't going to be talking about Street Fighter, which was a drag, but hey at least he was honest. Their CG target render for Deep Down (probably Dragon's Dogma 2) looked okay, but after the Killzone 2 fiasco it's best to not believe any of those until they start hitting in-game footage.

On that same note, Square-Enix had the worst showing of the evening. They brought a year old trailer and seemed to imply it was PS4 footage, which seemed disingenuous. They actually had me on the edge of my seat when I thought they were finally going to announce Final Fantasy Versus XIII, but instead all we got was the promise of something Final Fantasy related at E3. I'm glad Square was there, honestly, but given their in-house development on PS3 has been a massive letdown, it's hard to expect much.

Ubisoft's Watch_Dogs continues to look neat. The new demo featured a more traditional (and realistic looking) chase sequence, but absent was most of the future-tech that made 2012's demo so intriguing. Still, that's a small slice of what's in store - and the potential of the game, how far it goes to let the player explore its take on Chicago, is what'll reel me in. If it's a heavily scripted affair then count me in as disappointed.

Blizzard was huge. The words, "strategic partnership" were huge. Diablo 3 on PS3 and PS4; probably not a huge, but definitely a step in the right direction.

Along similar lines, public footage, exclusive content, and a tangible commitment from Activision and Bungie for Destiny was perhaps the biggest statement of the night. I've never considered Bungie or the Halo games to be extraordinary, but Destiny looks primed to take over the world. I'll take ambition over iteration any day, and that's exactly what it looks like Destiny is prepared to embrace.

And there you have it, a brain barfed analysis and observation of the PlayStation 4 reveal. Of all that we now know, remember that there's quite a bit we don't. Missing details include:

- Price

- Used game strategies

- Whether or not games will hit retail and digital day and date

- What the damn thing looks like

- How much of that amazing social content will be locked behind a pay gate

- The fate of PlayStation Plus

- A solid answer on backwards compatibility

- How much of that hardware will be in the box

- The Last Guardian

- The Last Guardian

- The Last Guardian

(that's like Beetle Juice, right?) Four months until E3.

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Written by Chris Stone

Category: News and Other Musings

Published: 04 February 2013

Hits: 2234

Set your posi-forks and eat your peta-balls, we're taking on the early stages of 2013 with a look at some of the early and quirky games we've been tinkering and tailoring. We're talking Don't Starve, Dark Souls, Metal Gear Rising, EscapeVektor, The Cave, and Spaceteam...as a spaceteam!

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Written by Eric Layman

Category: News and Other Musings

Published: 22 January 2013

Hits: 2998

Battle Royale is a kind of insane Japanese novel where a junior high class goes to a remote island, each student receives a random weapon, and then they all have to kill each other. It's not as sadistic and exploitive as one might expect, instead employing its premise as a means to contextualize survival, isolation, and loyalty amidst absolute chaos. It's powerful, haunting and only a little goofy, and the 2000 cinematic adaptation is reasonably faithful to its source material. It also contained a small scene that perfectly encapsulates my entry point into Dark Souls.

In Battle Royale, survival packs are distributed at random - and not all are created equal. One student unzips his and finds a sword while another discovers a machine gun. Another unfortunate son of a bitch gets a garbage can lid, and the wave of panic and dread that washes over him is palpable and terrifying. He's fucked. Hopelessly fucked, and if memory serves me right he got an arrow through the face after about ten seconds. He wasn't prepared to deal with what was about to happen.

This is exactly what happened to me in the first few hours of Dark Souls. I had a weapon, but any potential threat took advantage of my inexperience and relieved me of everything I had. By design, Dark Souls forces new players to risk everything they have with every foot step. It's an intimidating premise because for the last fifteen or so years games have transitioned from this obtuse thing you figure out and have fun with to a routine event with familiar structures.  Especially (but not only) if you play a lot of games, it's not hard to figure out what's going on and plow through content.

It's like being a math prodigy when you're a kid but then relying on calculator for so much of your adult life that you've forgotten basic computation operations. Dark Souls knows players aren't challenged like this anymore, but it's also aware and confident that a smart player can evoke a dormant ability to press forward and adapt to his or her surroundings. It's a significant risk in game design, and certainly one that would have been focus-grouped straight to the dumpster had it been developed in North America. Everyone who pays for modern game X is supposed to get an A to justify their purchase whereas Dark Souls forces the player to earn their grade (and show their work in the process).

Dark Souls' deliberate obfuscation of its systems doesn't make this easy but the potential of any gratification makes it possible. No matter what, you're the kid with the garbage can lid lost in a world of violent monsters. You fold either in cowardice or indifference, or you can rekindle your latent ability, turn garbage into gold, and then wield it to victory. 

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Written by Chris Stone

Category: News and Other Musings

Published: 20 January 2013

Hits: 1983

In order to finalize this year's Power Rankings, we must walk the line of the piss-fart. Don't ask, just grasp on your buddies and hope for the best, because it all comes down to this. Alternate titles: The Shaming of Steve, Ironic Use of Insane Clown Posse Songs. 

As we finalize our final rankings for the year, remember that we also begin our limited Power Rankings for 2013, which is way obscure for this time of year. It should be a great time as the three best buds in the universe take three hours to shame each other into believing what they do not believe. 

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Written by Eric Layman

Category: News and Other Musings

Published: 09 January 2013

Hits: 2141

With Chris  Stone out of town Eric and Steve welcome back our second favorite special guest, Mark Shepherd. Mark recently spent two weeks in Japan, mostly hustling the locals at arcades, and is loaded with stories about that and other cultural weirdness. Mark's friend Mika, who acted as Mark's international parent/guardian on said trip, also makes an appearance.   It's a delightful hour. 

BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE. 

Our least favorite special guest, Chris Smith, is on as well. After Mark and Mika depart Chris asks a question and we three idiots speak lies and half truths trying to solve it for the remaining hour. 

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Written by Eric Layman

Category: News and Other Musings

Published: 22 December 2012

Hits: 3209

My ten best games for 2012. This list is subjective!

Previous years: 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011

Spelunky

Derek Yu / Xbox Live Arcade

Spelunky made me feel like a kid again. As a relatively normal middle class child of the 80's, my parents bought me a Nintendo Entertainment System and a couple of games a year for Christmas or my birthday. Maybe because I was eight, possibly because there were few other options, or conceivably because these games were some of the greatest games ever made, I wound up playing the same games over and over and over. My Saturday routine for at least a year was to wake up and beat Mega Man III. I didn't play games to beat them, I played games to see if I could beat them. These days I can't imagine waking up on a Saturday morning and finishing Darksiders top to bottom fifty two times a year. That's not fun, that's torture.

But what if a game could somehow be fun and torture? What would it take for white hot anticipation to appreciate rather than dissipate upon repeated failure? How in the world could I not only tolerate, but willfully submit to starting a game completely over every time? "Roguelikes," the objective genre to which Spelunky conforms, are nothing new, and I'd be damned if I would comply with their noble principles. Super Meat Boy was immensely punishing and vastly rewarding, but even it had enough sense to measure progress through traditional levels. Spelunky merely says "well kid, tough shit," and starts over again.

And it's awesome. Most of my goodwill toward Spelunky was earned through the manner in which it randomizes its levels. Each set of four levels carry the same theme, traps, and enemies, but their structure is randomized every time. Little bits of architecture become recognizable over time, filling some desperate need of familiarity, but generally the only part of Spelunky that remains consistent is its challenge. You need to figure out how to overcome any obstacle at any time, and then balance that with the genius risk of literally leaping into the unknown or opting for a safer, more time consuming, and costly path to the exit.

Spelunky is an incredible challenge, and it's flourished with an interesting set of variables. Bonus items like a shotgun or cape can help immensely, and even items as pedestrian as more bombs or rope can create a huge advantage. Note that these items also carry their own risks, as anyone who accidentally assaulted a shopkeeper will come to find out. On top of that Spelunky is packed with incredible Easter eggs and entire secret levels, of which the requirement for access will easily be beyond the skill of most everyone who attempts to enjoy it. Tough shit. Spelunky seems like it was created for a very narrow audience, and I was as surprised as anyone to find myself included. For me it's one the most difficult, rewarding, and (most importantly) repayable games of 2012

Signature Moment: Your mileage may vary, but for me it was carrying a key from world 1-2 to world 3-4 so the tunnel man could dig me a warp to 4-1. The precision, care, and testicular fortitude required to execute that insane task had me sweating buckets for hours on end. The satisfaction generated when I finally did it was one of my all time high points in gaming. I imagine I'll experience something similar when/if I finally manage to finish the damn game.

Dyad

Shawn McGrath/ PlayStation Network

Dyad is the most videogame videogame on this list. That statement is inherently stupid because it doesn't make objective sense, but to understand what videogames are, to really process that alien sensation of controlling a virtual space through abstracted input all in the name of accomplishing pointless goals, well, it's hard to do it better than Dyad. Let's briefly cut to a gif of Polygon's Justin McElroy reacting to Dyad at E3 last year.

Ok, good. That's a typical first encounter with Dyad. It's also typical of every encounter with Dyad. The game is an all out audio/visual assault designed to overwhelm not only those unfamiliar with its medium, but especially those who have engaged and enjoyed it for years. Young or old, beginner or veteran, man or machine, whatever, Dyad's going to blow your brains out. The key is bridging the gap between apparent nonsense into agency and, much later, mastery of what's occurring on screen. What's occurring in Dyad is very much under the player's control, and wielding it, which might at first seem like a Jedi manipulating The Force, slowly becomes second nature. Becoming proficient is a completely different story, as all of Dyad's punishing Trophy Levels can attest, but coming to an understanding of what's going on is a surprisingly rewarding process. The beautiful visual display and diverse soundtrack help, of course, but Dyad's a great game with an interesting set of mechanics, too. My Review

Signature Moment: I'm breaking my own rules because Dyad boasted at least two defining instances. The first was on my initial play through on final level, Eye of the Duck. The closing minutes of that sequence (or whatever you want to call it) are an almost perfect epilogue to the entire experience. As it concluded I was prepared to run outside, find the nearest stranger, and demand to know the current year, President, and whether or not Taco Bell won the franchise wars. The other instance was after a two hour marathon of trying to beat the trophy level for Danger. I not only beat a score that was just one point short of the goal, I doubled it and in the process pushed Dyad so hard that it was basically a collage of light and colors with no distinguishing features. Basically, I felt like Neo looking at the code in the matrix - and for that Dyad gained my terrified praise.

Mass Effect 3

Bioware / PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii U, PC

Mass Effect 3’s backlash took me completely by surprise. I had finished the game and awarded it a high score before it fell into the hands of the masses, and couldn't believe a vocal majority rejected the game so harshly that Bioware folded and edited the game's ending. Baring a few issues with pacing and storytelling I considered Mass Effect 3 as close to perfect as we were going to get with this generation's role playing games.

Some say the universe was oddly constricted around the messianic Shepard, but I viewed it as a personal story of a type of superhero exclusively possible through interactive entertainment. I wanted to run into my old friends from the previous game, and I expected to resolve storyline's as minor as Kasumi's lost partner to as significant as the species eradicating-genophage. The entirety of Mass Effect 3 placed a bow on a myriad of storylines, and reducing its grand narrative to binary choices in the closing scene sells the game (and the series) well short of its accomplishments.

Disappointment only arrives because of how much we appreciate the establishment and are subsequently disheartened by where it takes us. Preserving the importance of a personal story against the backdrop of a galactic catastrophe, Mass Effect 3 respects its foundation as much as it understands and indulges in the player's choices, and it does it better than anything else. I can't speak for new players, but my investment in Mass Effect 3 and the series as a whole was ultimately fulfilling and free from the pangs of disappointment. My Review

Signature Moment: (minor spoiler) Smarter players probably saw it coming, but EDI’s transformation from ship AI to a physical crew member took me completely by surprise. It also foreshadowed the choice of my ending some forty hours later, and emerged as a metaphor for the world as Shepherd (or rather any survivors) would come to know.

Journey

thatgamecompany / PlayStation Network

Journey feels like it was constructed in a vacuum where videogames didn’t have to be anything. A statement like that is usually constructed to rationalize the bullshit notion of “art games” or otherworldly concepts in search of a meaningful experience (Unfinished Swan, I’m looking at you), but in Journey’s case I got the feeling that it was constructed by masters of the medium with careful consideration for essential (and non-essential) elements of game design. In doing so thatgamecompany created one of the most altogether distinctive, attractive, and most importantly playable adventures in interactive entertainment. My Review

Signature Moment: (heavy spoilers) All of Journey’s strengths converge in its climactic accent. My anonymous friend-buddy and I, moments after presumably collapsing and dying the snow, were revived with a renewed sense of purpose. Set to the tone of Austin Wintory’s absolutely perfect score, we worked our way up the mountain and triumphantly reach our destination. “Well, we finally got to the top of that mountain,” can sound like an empty accomplishment, but the degree to which Journey nailed that sensation, in the mutual satisfaction of getting there with a like-minded stranger, it created a sensation unique to its medium. It was a moment of pure celebration, one that begs other developers to take notice and recognize that it’s still possible to create a wholly unique experience no matter the hardware.

Dishonored

Arkane Studios / PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC

Dishonored allows a perfect sense of creative freedom in what’s ultimately a controlled environment. It respects its audience by not only trusting them with a myriad of options, but also having the courtesy not to stand in their way. Its gameplay systems are open and intuitive, and reaching their potential feels special in a manner unrealized by any of its contemporaries. In a world where multiplayer suites didn’t pollute game design Dishonored would be the latest in a long line of great, dedicated single player games. Instead it’s an anomaly, a game almost too good for its time. It has problems, namely the free fall that is the final act, but it’s an experience that, at least until BioShock Infinite, remains unrivaled among its peers. My Review

Signature Moment: The masquerade ball. Up until that point Dishonored had been fairly content with plopping Corvo in familiar, for lack of a better term, videogame spaces. Factories and alleyways were consistent with Dishonored’s steampunk-ish theme and wholly interesting with regard to its fiction, but still not too far out of the norm. Arriving at an area where Corvo’s mask was the norm, and engaging all the neat instances that came with it, was simultaneously unexpected and welcomed. (Oddly that was also the only mark for which I wasn’t able to find a non-lethal means of disposal, adding further incentive for another run through the game).

The Walking Dead

Telltale Games / PlayStation Network, Xbox Live Arcade, PC, iOS

The Walking Dead probably had the most disproportionate expectation to satisfaction ratio of any game on this list. After Jurassic Park and Back to the Future, not many people, myself included, expected much from Telltale's licensed endeavors. The end product wound up being a four month point of praise and debate on our podcast, Flap Jaw Space, cranked out five fever dream reviews at Digital Chumps, and merited a place alongside or above titles with budgets and legions of fans far outside of Telltale's typical reach.

In an age when zombie games have been done to hell and back Telltale went and created a zombie game that had almost nothing to do with zombies. Strengths included an effective use of violence and player agency, unusually accessible adventure game puzzles, and some of the most believable character dialogue around, but The Walking Dead's trump card, what it's going to be remembered and reproduced years down the line, is how well it allowed the player to define Lee Everett. It's hard to care about videogame characters, especially when some of the best stories in gaming are about as good as a bad episode of Battlestar Galactica - but through Lee's choices and his relentless desire to protect and prepare Clementine Telltale forged a bond between player and character unlike anything I had ever seen before. Lee's relationship with Clementine was a bond rather than a burden

When you step back and look at it the story really wasn't very much under your control and the choices Lee made didn't exactly reward the player in a traditional videogame manner, but that's precisely were The Walking Dead succeeded. It asked of me as a person with genuine thoughts and feelings and not like a guy sitting on the couch reading a FAQ to see how to get obscure achievement. It prayed on my soul and not my dopamine distribution system, and for that it's earned the praise of the critical community ranging from the ridiculous VGA's to individual awards from sites both large and (ahem) small. Reviews: Episode 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Signature Moment: (spoilers) It's funny, Episode 5 is probably the weakest of the series, but it contained most of my favorite moments of the entire game. It's pure payoff; the opening sequence dealing with Lee's "solution" had my fiancé and I screaming, the one-on-one dialogue with the supposed antagonist had us utterly transfixed, and the penultimate scene where Lee and Clementine said goodbye left us both openly weeping. That's a stacked deck of human response generated by a medium traditionally used to make players feel powerful and little else, and for that Episode 5, and The Walking Dead as a whole, realizes and understands the power of a proper narrative and characters.

Fez

Polytron / Xbox Live Arcade

You'll never play another game like Fez. It's a selective blend of madness and terror designed specifically to reproduce the forgotten sensation of being trapped in your mother's womb. This impression is subjective (and also lifted wholesale from a statement made by Steve Schardein on Flap Jaw Space), but it's not completely unfounded. Fez is a bonkers head trip that has more depth and obscure secrets packed into every pore of its visage than practically any other game in existence, and it's a fine credit to Polytron's rigorous attention to detail and utter indifference to deadlines that it was even possible. No normal person should have enabled Phil Fish to do make this, but I thank Jesus Christ and all of his Superstars that they did.

Oh, right, Fez is also a fairly inventive 2D/3D platformer. Its mechanics involve rotating Gomez' 2D world 90 degrees horizontally, thereby combining fundamentally different areas of the foreground and background into different surfaces ripe for platforming. It's a bit like Echochrome, I suppose, but with incredible faux-nostalgia inducing art and (probably) the best soundtrack of the year delivering sweet aural lullabies the whole way through. For a lot of people, that's all Fez is ever going to be, and they won't even worry about pulling back the ridiculous veil necessary to reveal anti-cubes. For others, obviously myself included, it's a one way ticket to prodigious insanity

Signature Moment: When you figure it out. This is an incredibly vague way to describe the revelation experienced when finally uncovering one of Fez's gifts, but when you figure it out, when you actually see what the hell Fez was trying to do the whole time, it's crazy. Nothing exactly like Fez will ever happen again, and it's an event worthy of celebration.

Trials Evolution

Red Lynx / Xbox Live Arcade

If at first you don't succeed, try again. And again. And again. And 500 more times because, yes, you will hit that absurdly high number in some of Trials Evolution's later stages. Having never played any other iteration of Trials, Evolution was my first dive in the Red Lynx's deceptively simple series. On one hand it's really not much more complicated than Excitebike, all you have to worry about is the angle in which your bike makes contact with the ground and how much gas you're willing to give it before takeoff. Somehow this translates to a tormenting and endearing process where you'll try and fail at something literally a hundred times before finally nailing it and making it to the next checkpoint. Such a payoff feels amazing, and Evolution is packed with opportunities to earn those stripes.

Only in the later stages are you made aware of just how much thought and detail was put into the controls for the game. The tiniest adjustment here or there matters, and thanks to a Super Meat Boy-like instant restart after a mistake, I rarely felt discouraged enough to throw in the towel. Super Meat Boy is actually a great comparison because Evolution generated eerily similar amounts of profanity and celebration over the course of its tracks. Oddly, the game rarely ends up replicated any of its challenges, and the vistas in which you undertake them are stylish, technically impressive, and in most cases, categorically insane.  Evolution feels like more than a $15 title, and when you see what other games are trying to pass off as meaningful content for a similar (and even greater) price tag, Evolution feels like a tremendous value.

Signature Moment: The first time I completed an Expert/Flatline difficulty track. Profanity and failure that numbered into fifty-instances-per second punctuated each checkpoint before I was able to crank out a victory. Giving the bike just the right amount of gas and tilting it at just the right angle was a recipe for madness, and the rages of a thousand suns seemed to burn hotter with each failure. In the end I finished off three of the last seven tracks through some temporary, savant-like burst of skill that I will probably never be able to match again. For the rest of my life. Ever. That was as good as I’ll ever be at that game.

Sound Shapes

Queasy Games / PlayStation Network, PlayStation Vita

Sound Shapes boasts an effortless dedication to intoxicating the player's senses through its sights and sounds. Call it distilled bliss or displaced affection, but there's an explicit sense of euphoria acquired through absorbing Sound Shapes' rich presentation. It's great at being a platformer, but it's better understood as favorite song or album. It's something to be played and enjoyed if for no other reason than the sheer pleasure of repeating the process. My Review

Signature Moment - I'll admit, when I heard Beck was composing a set of levels, I thought it was a poor choice. So how wonderfully ironic is it that his three levels ended up being my favorite? Beck's prodigious and detached monotone falls right in line with Pyramid Attack's dystopian, comic-like artwork. "Cities" starts slow, but slowly incorporates vocals (some of which literally spill out onto the screen) that seem to encourage the player to rise and shine out of the urban pandemonium spilling out of the streets below. Hearing Beck's passive howl of "AAHHHHHHHHH," seeing those words appear on screen, and being able to physically traverse that word created a sympathetic admiration of ”Cities” tone and atmosphere. It really struck a chord with me, and ultimately stood out as my favorite part of the Sound Shapes.

Hitman: Absolution

IO Interactive / PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC

If games were a line graph of highs and lows, Hitman: Absolution probably had higher peaks than any other game on this list. When it was good, it was really good and it when it leveled off it still wasn't that bad. Most of Absolution's levels could have been completed in ten minutes if you wanted to completely skip out on Absolution's challenge and interpret it as a kind of shitty third person shooter, but if you had to patience to poke around at its systems, to look in every corner of its artifice and examine its potential, Absolution was one of the more rewarding games of the year.

The 2012 landscape has left most games refined and accessible for a wider audience (and there's nothing wrong with that), but it's so refreshing to see Absolution go the extra mile to reward that vocal minority that craves planning and payoff and still leave it open enough for the casual player. It had its problems, specifically the flawed disguise system anytime it broke down into a pure stealth game, but they're easy to look past when indulging in the possibility of its set pieces. The courtroom, the gun range, Chinatown, and the dance club were all sequences that I immediately replayed and still want to go back and do again. Absolution is flawed, but absolutely essential for hungry segment of players. My Review

Signature Moment: Fight Night. My mark was a participant in a wrestling match. On my initial approach I managed to sneak behind the bar, ascend the catwalks above, and, after evading well armed security, dropped a light fixture onto the ring, killing both combatants. Hey, accidents happen. I replayed the mission and, after checking out Absolution's list of optional mission challenges, found one that strongly hinted I could become the other wrestler in the ring. Said wrestler was under such metaphorical lock and key that gaining access seemed impossible. An hour or so later I finally devised an insane method to take him out and steal his clothes, and then I participated in the same wrestling match that was death from above'd in a previous life. Absolution indulges in options like these, and the intended challenge is discovering how to engage them.

Twelve more titles that pained me not to include on my list…

Xenoblade Chronicles (Monolith Soft, Wii) - Xenoblade Chronicles is a top ten game for sure, but I couldn't include it two years in a row. Having imported it from Europe, it was a part of my 2011 top ten. My Review

Persona 4 Golden (Atlus, Vita) - Persona 4 Golden is the best game on the Vita and one of my favorite games of all time. It's also a remake of a four year old PlayStation 2 game. That doesn't discount its quality, Persona 4 still does a lot of things other games aren't even interested in (and it does them well) but 95% of Golden was an experience I had before, and I couldn't manage a sheepish inclusion in this year's top 10. My Review

Kid Icarus: Uprising (Nintendo, 3DS) - Kid Icarus: Uprising is an incredible achievement. It's loot system and smart difficulty settings make it almost infinitely replayable, it's story is very self aware and legitimately entertaining, the characters are some of the most fun around, and the level design pays homage to everything from Star Fox to the original 1986 classic. Unfortunately more than half of the game controls like slippery dog shit, thus barring it from any reasonable top ten list. Greg's Review

Frog Fractions (Twinbeard Studios, Browser) - You really need to play Frog Fractions. Telling you why would completely ruin the fun, but I will say that if don't understand why I'm recommending it you're probably playing the game wrong.

Far Cry 3 (Ubisoft Montreal, PC – PS3 – 360) - The first seven or so hours of Far Cry 3 were awesome, but then my interest level dropped precipitously when the narrative didn't follow through with the alluring Fight Club like experience it seemed to be leading toward. I've rarely seen such a waste of potential. In the end Far Cry 3 is an amazing anecdote generator with a beautiful world, and eventually a disappointing experience.

Velocity ( Futurlab, PSMini) Velocity, a PlayStation Mini, got the most mileage out of my Vita for the first half of the year. It's not much to look at, but it's a smart vertical shooter with interesting, addictive mechanics and over fifty levels. At some point I became obsessed with earning a gold medal for every mission and I never actually finished it, but damn is it a great value for like $8. If you have a Vita or are still farting around with a PSP you owe it to yourself to check out Velocity.

TOKYO JUNGLE (SCEJ, PSN) - In Tokyo Jungle you play as a Pomeranian (among other creatures) struggling to survive amidst blood thirsty carnivores and environmental hazards occupying post-apocalyptic Tokyo. What sounds like a goofy joke or a classic example of inaccessible Japanese wankery is actually a respective, roguelike-ish survival game with solid mechanics and great couch co-op. I'm utterly terrible at it and wound up using real money to unlock different characters, but the concept is worth appreciating and the experience, almost by definition, is insane.

Asura’s Wrath (Capcom, PS3 – 360) – Because holy shit. Steven's Review

Papo & Yo (Minority, PSN) - Papo & Yo isn't an especially great game. It's got some interesting ideas and a few surreal concepts that really shine, but it's mostly workmanlike offering that isn't too terribly engaging. It's on the list because of its dramatic and powerful final sequence in which the metaphor of its monster is clearly defined, and the rotation and light effects involved in presenting it were both wonderful and haunting.  The payoff alone is worth the three or four hours it might take to finish. My Review

Max Payne 3 (Rockstar Vancouver, PC – PS3 – 360) - Most of my time with Max Payne 3 was spent wondering how much money Rockstar Vancouver spent generating assets for such a pretty looking game. It was an ok shooter, I suppose, but its penultimate sequence in the airport terminal reached for the stars and actually got a pretty good grasp. The setting is oddly sterile, mostly white off-white with a few hints of red in the ceiling, but it was set against music ("Tears" by HEALTH, who did a fantastic job with the entire soundtrack) that created this surreal, otherworldly landscape unlike anything other environment in the game. It was a weird moment, and one that still stands out some six months later.

Twisted Metal (Eat Sleep Play, PS3) - Twisted Metal and its sequel were the reason I wanted a PlayStation, and the 2012 update didn't disappoint. EatSleepPlay made an earnest attempt at recreating a genre of game left for dead over a decade ago, and for fans of the series it’s hard to say they didn't succeed. Twisted Metal had a great lineup of cars, absolutely incredible arenas backed with secrets and detail, and fun and engaging multiplayer options. It was the only competitive game I played online for any length of time this year, and it makes me sad it never caught fire. My Review

Syndicate (Starbreeze, PC – PS3 – 360) - Syndicate was an above average shooter with some neat ideas and interesting set pieces. What set it apart, or at least what I remember some ten months after the fact, was the hell of a time I had with its cooperative multiplayer. In one particular instance fellow Digital Chumps editor Chris Stone and I were two-manning a mission intended for four players, and the ridiculous lengths that we had to go to in order to dispatch the four (or five?) bosses at the end was a tale for the ages. I never finished the multiplayer suite and, really, maybe that may have made me remember the game more fondly than I should. I went out on a high note with plenty left on the table, and there wasn't room for it to disappoint. My Review

Regrets? I didn't have time and/or money to play Spec Ops: The Line, Virtue’s Last Reward, XCom: Enemy Unknown, Hotline: Miami or The Last Story. 

Details

Written by Chris Stone

Category: News and Other Musings

Published: 02 December 2012

Hits: 2668

Some major shake ups are in store this week, as we blather about Hitman: Aboslution, Assassin's Creed 3, and all things WiiU. Also, sports, pants, and a prominent waxing of why we like what we like and what the hell cliffhangers have to do with whatever the hell Steve is talking about. Come feast on the blood of digital animals!

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Details

Written by Chris Stone

Category: News and Other Musings

Published: 18 November 2012

Hits: 3143

We did another Barf Mode. If you're not familiar with Barf Mode, then you're very, very lucky. Barf Mode is an experience where we turn on our microphones and let our brains barf an extraordinary amount of anti-knowledge. You've been warned! (No, seriously, it's pretty good.)

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