Diogo Ribeiro

Great Dungeon in the Sky It's apparently made by a group or someone calling themselves Rocket Ninja Games. It's retro pixel cute, simple hack and slash platforming somewhere between Pokemon and Spelunky. The trick is you kill enemies to collect enemy classes, which you can then use on the next level or after you lose. Quirky, quick fun.

I'm the opposite, though: the Robotron 2084 vibe spliced with over-the-top weapons (not necessarily the violence) looks like the good kind of ridiculousness more games should aspire to.

Yeah, they'll become as "culturally accepted and representative" of us like hentai and rape games are of Japan.

He's a rank amateur compared to the Nintendo DS and iPhone slogans. It's like it's marketed at pedophiles.

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/tools-of-dead-rising/61820 Moose head for the win.

And then, it was done. Finished the game again, this time harvesting all the Sisters and killing off the three characters. It's nearly exactly the same and the changes themselves only relate to a character, who only spouts a different lines before presenting you with an ending very close to the other one I mentioned. The only difference is that Two final details. During my first playthrough I saved two characters and killed a third one, Gil, whose pleas for me to release him led to that choice. But today I found out there's an Achievement if you save all three. Strange since the game suggests that leaving Gil alive is the same as confining him to a slow death, which could be seen as a "wrong" decision or at least, morally condemnable. So it's not exactly clear why sparing two characters while damning a third one makes me a paragon of virtue of sorts. Also, I was considering a third replay to investigate the possibility of a neutral ending - or at least to see if it was possible to ignore the Little Sisters altogether. But I suspect it doesn't: one level in the game activelly requires you to deal with them, meaning at some point, you are forced to make a choice regarding them. If there is a "neutral" ending, I neither know what would trigger it nor do I have the time or inclination to go through it all again, at least not right now. I think this concludes my impressions, review and last words on Bioshock 2. Now all that's left is to try some MP next week, and write some ruminations on my blog. And then, adios Rapture. May you rust in peace. EDIT: Funny detail: one Achievement is called "Look at you hacker", gained after killing 50 enemies using only hacked security

@Slowtrain: you're welcome And I pretty much feel like that, yeah. It's surprising how, even in the face of the respawn-o-mess and a number of seemingly less armed opponents who still manage to do the wire-fu on you, there's some fun to be had in those sieges. I'm leaning towards SP being one large tutorial for MP because at points, that's how it feels. You have nice moments but otherwise it's demoralizing to see it unfold. There's no "magic" to be had playing as a Big Daddy and, really, when the very first Tonic you get enables you to move faster, that kinda hammers the point home: barring the industrial drill on the arm, he's just an ordinary guy. Moves, shoots, behaves like one. I think I'm about halfway through the game again; this time I'm consuming the tykes. I'll probably do a very minor update to point out the differences between my past choices and these. Only difference so far is a personal one: I'm a sap and I can't help but flinch at hearing the little ones begging me to stop or, based on how I've been treating them, realize the utter fear as they say "I've been good, Daddy, I promise" or somesuch.

^Alright. Which is to say, good enough. But 1) the Plasmid/Weapon combos weren't exactly taxing but hand-switching between them felt like an unecessary layer of management and for a game intended to be grounded on shooty-bangs, the absence of dual wielding seemed like an oversight (fortunately corrected now as each hand is basically independent); 2) in Bioshock, for the most part, the fighting was a horizontal affair across large spaces or at least, large enough for each fight to feel individual, more something you chance upon. Here, the environments where the skirmishes occur require different approaches and tactics given their layouts and enemy numbers. They are forced on you when you harvest Adam, true, and if you make it a challenge not to collect Adam from the Little Sisters at all, you may very well not engage in these fights; but when you do, it becomes much more a fight for your life than a random encounter (which can be good or bad given your perspective; I enjoyed the challenge of these moments but do miss some of the more incidental encounters of the first one but I guess it comes with the territory - in B1, the Splicers were mostly as confused as you in Rapture; in B2, they're territorial packs). At some points you get the feeling the SP is a training ground for MP, though.

And the ending has the character cowboy riding an ICBM across the wasteland, while big text reads: "Bethesda - Thank you for all the laughs!"

So, finished it last night. SPOILERS YES. Collecting my thoughts about the experience renders the game as a good shooter. Sometimes a very good shooter and really, past all the glitzy artwork and themes, the first Bioshock was "simply" a shooter. What Bioshock 2 does is to make that nature a lot more obvious. So, combat's great. Plasmid combos and weapon upgrades are there and remain great, sure, but now that you can use both plasmids and weapons simultaneously means neither of them gets shafted: they're both effective and reliable tools you can use at all times. Triple shocking Splicers while pumping them with buckshot can be very satisfying, and lordie, that Speargun. But sweet jeebus, it is brutal. Towards the endgame encounters ramp up and the last setpiece envolves hacking away at handfuls of tough Splicer variants. Some later places where you have the tykes harvesting ADAM are veritable architectonic traps: small corridors, hiding places, several floors, etc. What these encounters lack in finesse - and I stress the good and bad I've highlighted before (namely that Splicers can go from using the environment in a "smart" way to being uncerimoniously spawned near you) - they try to balance with some novelty and attrition. One corpse may be in a large circular room, another may be in a low ceiling room, another in a wide open space in a theater, etc. Setting up Trap Rivets (I called them Mine Rivets before, my mistake), Mini Turrets and Proximity Mines is almost a puzzle in itself, and can go from glorious to catastrophic results. 2K Marin's job was difficult from the start. There are the mandatory nods and winks to the first. It's also a simpler and more contained story than BS1, more consistent in the telling even, but if you damn the first game for a lack of ambition in that regard, BS2's problem is a lack of talent in seeing it through. It's an executive order to give continuity to something you'd feel had a satisfying ending or one which, whether good or bad, brought closure. It's not easy doing that and while the team did try what I presume to be their best, I'm divided on the results. There are nice touches. Lamb is a reasonable antagonist, whose actions echo Ryan's own twisting of his own dream (the lengths you go to promote your ideals). Rapture's citizens become so indoctrinated into her speeches they begin treating Little Sisters as deities, looking at the vents they crawl through as temples to their glory (complete with offerings). But the imagery, the concept, the very themes feel spent, tired, washed out. Big Sisters are nothing short of wasted potential: much like the Big Daddies and Little Sisters, which went from novelty to routine in the first, so they too become mini boss encounters that, their agility and resilience aside, never captivate beyond that first contact. There's really nothing on the same level as "Would You Kindly?". And to some, the straightforward tale in BS2 won't elicit the same discussions as the first game, which might be seen as either blessing or curse. What it does, at least from the ending I've achieved, is to wrap it up nicely even if unsurprisingly. Oh yes, the end. Throughtout the game there are moral decisions. Rescuing or harvesting all of the Little Sisters aside, some key characters have had a part in the events that befell Rapture but more importantly, things concerning your past. Even here, the game tries to make it a more personal tale, making Lamb's lieutenants much more ingrained to the main character. There's the singer, Grace; the sleaze, Stanley Poole; and the scientist, Gil Alexander, You can decide if you want to kill them or not but the DIY morality is still divise. On one hand Grace is a woman tired of fighting and surrenders to your will so it makes sense she simply gazes at you, accepting whatever you decide. On the other Poole is a coward who just whines and begs for forgiveness inside his booth - expected perhaps, but no less jarring that he stays rooted in his spot, not even trying to save his worthless hide. Gil is... Well, the "Alexander the Great" nickname is kind of fitting given his condition, and the choice here is no different and I ended up killing him ("releasing him", more like it). All of these, along with saving all of the Sisters, seems to result in a "good" ending of sorts, There's no final twist that I could see. There are mentions of several characters in the BS lore Won't spoil further than that but will say that it was kind of lukewarm. I kinda saw it coming, yet not. It's like going through Rapture and then one part of the game forcing you to read internet fanfiction, a "what if?" as gentle and inconsequent as a boner at 3 AM when you're dreaming of naval construction yards. There's context but there's also a tenuous excuse to include it. The "reward" for saving Grace is apparently only felt twice - once right after you save her (where I mentioned she sent Elite robo-turret-choopers) and further down the line where she sends a care package through the city's pneumos. Other than that, nothing else ever happens. There were no consequences to sparing Poole and killing Gil that I could see but I'm going to start replaying today, being a metal jackass, trying to find out what changes. So. There's really no other way I can say this but, unfortunately, what resides in my memory after a playthrough are the moments of tension rising from the sieges the Splicers launch on you when the girls are harvesting ADAM. All else, while possibly tremendous in concept, ends up being merely competent (not necessarily a complaint) or lacklustre in execution. I can see why Bioshock was a hit among the console crowd, and I can feel myself kind of dreading the review I have to write for that very same crowd. In a world of Gears and Halos, where Ultimas and Deus Exes were left undiscovered, it's no wonder it proved a hit. But even by the standards of other console shooters, BS2 is a precarious thing. It provides several very good action moments and the plasmid/weapon combos can be, I daresay, delicious. I suspect many gamers will give the MP a whirl . But while it feels a more refined shooter, it's one that seems to use the core of Bioshock and Rapture as a prop. It

Kaftan, I think it's safe to assume that if you disliked the core gameplay - juggling plasmids, weapons and tonics; the combat itself; the hacking; scavenging through debris and trash cans - you'll dislike it here since it's still the same. Main difference is the combat is a bit more refined, there's a couple of tough as nails new enemies and you do get a small piece of brilliance called the Speargun, along with some engaging moments where you need to protect the Sisters from 10+ Splicers coming from all sides. But even then, those moments where you protect the Sisters really only happen if you decide to rescue rather than harvest them. Otherwise it's right on par with the first.

Today I thought about posting on the Obsidian forums. Been a long time since I posted here (uhm if you discount some posts I did last week). It's weird how, after months or years after having been part of a community, I move away and kinda slip into this total eclipse of the mind. I posted here recently because numbers man left a comment in my profile. Numbers man! A guy I vigorously argued with and against in the past. Which is awesome, in a way. I keep wondering what is it that moves me towards, and pushes me away from people and communities. The other day I dropped by the Codex and it's like an assembly line of aligators which, upon smelling blood on the water, go Mel Gibson or Christian Bale on people. On the other hand I had some nice moments there. But I've yet to feel like going back. I don't actually have that much time for myself nowadays but I still do my best to look around places I used to visit. Why do I go away, though? I didn't had a heart to tell Sun-Ha my hard drive had three consecutive failures, totally laying to waste my NWN2 mod. Metadigital went away. Llyranor is apparently no longer a jerk. Volo still is (lolz). Gromnir still role-plays. Is Gabs still around? Obsidian back into Fallout? With all of this stuff I still manage to get sidetracked from here, and other places with a great story behind them are also somewhat forgotten. Still can't understand what's wrong with me. Today I thought about posting on the Obsidian forums. That is all.

These are first impressions, mind you, albeit I've sunk quite a few hours into it; I've been told there's an "excellent twist" towards the end. I can't verify this yet, but I am checking out the slog that proceeds it. For the most part it's the same system, tweaked and polished and slick, but one which generally makes the options you have more engaging than the times you have to use them. I've found at least two or three moments where I have oil spills, cameras and water right next to a corpse waiting to be drained of ADAM. I like choices but there's often this surplus that you can't help but wonder if it's not overkill. I thoroughly enjoy charging up Plasmids and double whammy enemies with them, but there's nearly always a way in which their use is so painfully obvious it kind of defeats the purpose. Like, at some points, you carefully booby trap an area then "trigger" the hordes only to realize they're attacking, and coming from the metal girders up there, which is kinda awesome and makes you go "DURR why didn't I think vertically?"; while at other points I'm laying all kinds of mines and mini-turrets around a circular area and enemies bypass them because they seem to have conveniently spawned right by the perimeter defenses. That a game manages to make me feel both smart and stupid in equal measures is nice; that it kinda feels its cheating by placing enemies according to the way I set up defenses rather than how the level is designed (I set up Mine Rivets across all 4 doors and after the skirmish, they're all virtually intact because THEY DID NOT CROSS THE DOORS EVEN THOUGH THEY ARE THE ONLY ACCESS POINTS INTO THE ROOM) is bad. Had they applied the same tweaks to world and character exposition - rather than still waiting for me to casually pick up audio logs or to listen and see this type of memory flashbacks - it could feel a lot better. I *hope* to be a bit more optimistic as it moves forward but I'm not holding my breath. Still, I'll try to be. And I'll try to update the more I get into it.

Playing it now. Left quick impressions on Rock Paper Shotgun. SPOILERS, somewhat, follow. On one hand it’s somewhat meatier – as in, enemies seem cleverish and often seem to use environments to draw the player in and to set up small ambushes. Having a Little Sister drain up a corpse requires you to set perimeter defenses to protect her since it draws up Splicers – these battles, small in scope, are actually quite intense and require you to have a good feel for the environments. Also the hacking “minigame” seems more appropriate. Personally I’d ditch it entirelly but now, from interface to intention, it’s a lot more natural. On the other hand, the unbefugginliveable respawns are a pain. They’re a lot more pronounced than the first game, to the point where for the most part you can’t even take a few minutes to breathe before being attacked. It seems overtly ridiculous now when you just came from a dead end and something attacks you from behind… Three times in a row, in the same area. Again, this is from experience, and several times you aren’t made aware of them – it’s not Fable mass respawning all the citizens you’ve just killed, mind you – but it’s egrarious to hack a turret, turn back, take a few steps then suddenly hear the “CLANG” in your helmet from a Splicer that just respawned. And it did respawn because the turret didn’t had the time to trace and bullet rape it, and you just came from a dead end. This side of Rapture is also a bit more contained. It’s like Dead Space: one large world divided in levels across a tram ride. It also perpetuates unreachable/invincible NPCs through glass proof booths. It’s also not very clear why draining a corpse of ADAM raises Splicer awareness, or why I’m getting warnings to prepare myself against an oncoming Big Sister. You hear screams and the screen flashes red, which several hours into the game you’ve already come to realize means one’s coming. And people complain about Nintendo and Zelda and always having to read “you’ve found a key!”. Something in the options, perhaps? It’s a bit grating. Fighting them can be hard since they're super fast and resilient. It's been a decade since I felt like going from Normal to Easy difficulty, and not because it's hard - simply, because most skirmishes are so numerous and off putting that I'm left wondering "how can I make this end quicker?". I won't change difficulty levels because I'm a good trooper, but therein lies the rub: is it a better experience when I can't move across two small rooms without something spawning on my ass? Is it more "intense" when I spend three minutes defending my and a Little Sister's position against a wave of enemies, then scour the remains to jack up my ammo and health, only to be attacked again the minute I'm more or less back on my feet? Suddenly, I miss Resident Evil 2's PC options where you could reduce zombie numbers to "improve performance", except we all know what we used that for. It’s certainly a lot more “shooter” than the first game, which leaves me undecided. The morality in the first game was pretty hamfisted but the world was a lot more… Shall I say mysterious? I felt the first game was a lot more about discovery – of the Daddies, the Sisters, the things which made and unmade Rapture. Here, part of the mystery is gone. You are a Big Daddy who doesn’t really play or control any different than any other FPS main character. I mean, drilling Splicers makes me smile, but then I’m using machine guns and hacking tools and I’m wondering “why am I playing with a Big Daddy who behaves like everyone else?”. And then the familiar aspects of the first are both welcome and repetitive in a way – why am I still finding these audio logs scattered around? Do these people really have nothing better to do than leave messages about? At one point, you enter a room where there’s a tape on a bed. You hear it and the woman talking feels that Lamb’s poster on the wall is looking down on her. When I heard that, I told my girlfriend who was watching me play “wanna bet that there’s something behind the poster and that it’s going to open a door behind that closet?” And then, I defecate you negative, there is a goddamn switch behind the painting that opens the closet next to it so you can move forward! Also, I was very disappointed with the intro. The first one’s was clearly one of the best intros ever, like Half-Life and Modern Warfare, to really give players a sense of place and of self all the while limiting your interaction and just letting you soak up the environments by looking, at your own pace, to what was around you. Here, it’s a ride. We were already spoiled on being a Big Daddy, sure, but you don’t have the satisfaction of realizing this yourself: the game forces the character to look into a glass and see his own reflection. The one thing that seems to be very good – potentially, at least – is the feeling that dealing with key characters in a certain way may affect the final outcome or at least, how certain things play out. There’s a big hoopla about the main character’s past and how he was a “monster”. At one point you are confronted by a woman whose jaw was broken by you. You have the chance to either kill her or let her go. Crude morality, perhaps, but the result is nice – she starts doubting the reputation you had and decides to help you by sending Elite versions of those robo-turret-choppers to help out againt an ambush. I suspect that had I killed her I wouldn’t have had any means to get some. And I’ve yet to see if these decisions do matter in the long run or if they’re confined to each level, but it’s a nice touch. Though over the course of the next levels, I fought two bosses where buckshot was the only diplomatic discourse available. The combat is definitely a notch up. It's actually easy to imagine a multiplayer environment here, with certain powers having been tweaked and subtly changed, and how this applies to frantic but somewhat tactical approaches to combat. I'll only be able to try the MP next week but the basics seem good enough for it to be balanced (and it already is, somewhat, in SP). Of course, stuff like having a chance to freeze enemies with the Drill kinda seems like overkill, but there's still a lot to enjoy in the powers (and it's still a chance to freeze, not something that happens automatically). I know I'm jaded, and a jerk, and a nitpicker. It's not being a sequel that bothers me, or that it's more intent on being a shooter that carries over half of the spirit of SS2 or Deus Ex. Its just that the first gave me plenty of reasons to play, even if it wasn't best game ever material. The sequel has its sights on going further down the rabbit hole, which is nice, but the overall feel - up until now - is not so much "I want to find out what else happened to Rapture" but "I want to find out what was the point of going back to Rapture". Sadly, among kung-fu spawning splicers and the over reliance on street vendors still not making much sense in Ryan's utopia, I still have yet to find a reason.

There wasn't a point to begin with, apparently.

Fixed.

Fi®st impressions. Cooling clips are functionally the same as ammo, idiots! You're not being clever! /fi®st impressions.

You press buttons. Or you don't. Some things happen. Or they don't. You click to walk over to a car, to open the door, to sit down, to close the door, to put on the safety belt. And then don't actually drive the damn thing. Well yeah, "unique" is one way to put it. Farenheint was pretty "unique", too, if you know what I mean.

To its defense, Jade Empire had a certain brevity that's gone missing from recent Bioware games. The story was pretty bare bones but it was refreshing and honest of them to say you were the special one right from the start instead of obfuscating it with 20 hours of tutorial NPCs, and it's certainly more of a "small epic", which I prefer over drawn out stuff. I also enjoyed the combat: slick, to the point, none of that "turn-based rules shoved into a realtime with pause engine that thinks its so clever and hardcore but we can still see you people standing around being attacked because it isn't your time yet and look at that arrow bending around the corner just to hit you don't tell anyone the system is rubbish here is a giant space hamster lulz". The invisible barriers were ****e, though. The lack of inventory was tolerable - much more than The Bard's Tale - as it traded virtual pocket trash for something substantial to the character and theme.

Brutal Legend. Gawd, I'm torn between the love of metal and the bollocks of the open world. It's like Schafer resents having to create a "game" and then it's peppered with pointless fluff. The collectibles, the sandbox, the multiplayer. None of which seems to play to BL's strenghts, barring the MP in concept at least, since I haven't touched that much. Dragon Age: Origins. If RPGs are dead this is the funeral pyre. Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World. The male protagonist is one of the most divisive examples of characterization I've seen in recent years, bawling, sobbing, mewling, apologizing for everything, having flashbacks of things that happened 5 minutes ago of flashbacks of things that happened 5 minutes ago of flashbacks of things that happened 5 minutes ago. And then, at some point, the dude grows a pair and becomes quite confident. POWER OF FRIENDSHIP, etc., until it goes somewhat murky again in the later parts. Torchlight. Clicking la dungeon loca.

Geek Craft Notice anyone familiar on the 4th picture?

It was clearly a game about Vanilla Sky.

It was quite good