What I've Been Playing

Summers here in New England are a frantic time, wherein we attempt to compress 12 months of outdoor fun into 3  months of nice weather. (And of course by "nice" I mean, "oscillating between frigid, torrential rain and humid, 100+ degree heat".) I've never been to Old England, but I can only assume the weather there resembles that of a post-apocalyptic hellscape, because anything less and the British colonials never would have chosen to stay on this side of the Atlantic.

Amidst all the running, hiking, traveling, camping, drinking, working, and occasional parenting, I've hardly had any time to write about video games. Nevertheless, I did manage to play video games, because for some mysterious reason there's always enough time for that. Here are a few of my favorites from this summer. You'll notice most of them are PC games—summer console releases are sparse even when these systems aren't gasping their last breaths, so unless you're interested in playing an atrocity like Smurfs 2, let's hope you dropped some cash on the Steam summer sale.

What I've Been Playing: The Feel-Good Edition

We're well into 2013 (actually, it's about 4% over at this point), and that means somehow I made it through another holiday season.

That previous statement is a bit disingenuous... saying "somehow I made it through" implies that I didn't knowingly leverage my other responsibilities (such as work and home repair) to escape from the annual rituals of holiday shopping, frantic housekeeping, food preparation, and entertaining our families. Nevertheless, we all made it through Christmas, New Year's, and the Mayan apocalypse, succeeding in buying ourselves another 10 months or so until we have to deal with another joyous holiday season. The new year is afoot, and in the immortal words of Journey, "the wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'".

Anyone who knows me might expect I would scoff at the idea of "New Year's resolutions", as though celebrating an arbitrary discontinuity in the way we measure the Earth's orbital progression should have any bearing on one's choice to quit smoking or lose weight. However, I accepted long ago that traditions are an essential part of society, and our annual making and inevitable breaking of the oaths of self-betterment seem to be as important a tradition as any.

To get in the spirit of things, I've resolved to be more positive and generous in the New Year, a commitment I fully expect to last at least as long as it takes to finish this post. (I've also resolved to bring my lunch to work every day and to go to the gym twice a week, but I'm totally going to keep doing those things forever, from now on, no matter what.) Rather than my usual routine of degrading the creative accomplishments of others, I thought that instead I could run through each of the games I've been playing lately and say something nice about each of them.

Assassin's Creed III (Xbox 360)

Well... fuck. Way to ease myself into this.

If you've read my review of Assassin's Creed III, you know I was pretty disappointed with this game, and might suspect that saying nice things about it would be a challenge. Looking back on my critique, though, I was actually quite positive about certain aspects of the game, although these rare triumphs made its shortcomings sting all the more.

However, putting on my positive thinking hat, I'm forced to admit that after five games, maybe I've simply forgotten what was so utterly amazing about the Assassin's Creed series to begin with. For starters, realizing that the games take place within the Animus was one of the great reveals of this console cycle. Though admittedly trite, the whole "Matrix" angle was so well integrated with the narrative and gameplay that it made this tired old trope feel fresh and new again.

A screenshot from the first Assassin's Creed. Like its most recent sequel, AC1 had its share of issues, but still managed to do some truly amazing things.

More importantly, though—and what still makes Assassin's Creed great today—is the extent to which the franchise expanded the "acrobatic exploration" style of gameplay pioneered by the modern Prince of Persia games. Free climbing, running, and vaulting through the massive historical cities in the Assassin's Creed games really is a complete joy on both a visual and tactile level, and it's easy to forget what an incredible accomplishment this is. It is in this sense that Assassin's Creed III best carries the mantle of its predecessors, and further refinement of this art is arguably its most significant accomplishment.

Halo 4 (Xbox 360)

Speaking of games that are easy to take for granted, let's talk about Halo 4. My recent review echoed the prevailing attitude that this latest entry in the Halo franchise was essentially "more of the same", and I've wondered if the only reason I and others didn't critique Halo 4 more harshly was because everyone simply gave the new developers a bit of a pass. However, like Assassin's Creed III, Halo 4 does certain things so skillfully and effortlessly that they're easy to overlook.

Shoot the big one first.

I thought about this further as I pondered why I prefer Halo games to so many other shooters. (In fact, only Gears of War 3 beats out Halo 3 for the "space marine game" spot on my desert island list.) It's not simply that I'm much, much better at it than something like Call of Duty, though admittedly it's hard to enjoy Black Ops when you can't seem string together enough kills to buy yourself an exploding toy car, whilst everyone else is regularly calling down orbital laser strikes.

Perhaps the question, then, is why do I suck so much less at Halo? I believe one reason is that compared to many other games, I find the game design elements communicated by its artistic choices to be much more intuitive. The moment when your shields go down, the reaction of an Elite to a thrown grenade, the subtle visual cues that indicate how an armored foe can be damaged—in all these cases, Halo works very hard to inform your gameplay through intelligent choices in its artwork and animation. In many ways this is thankless work, but it ultimately leads to Halo being one of the toughest, fairest, and most enjoyable shooters around.

Tales of the Abyss (Nintendo 3DS)

For me, Japanese-style role-playing games (J-RPGs) have always been a bit of a comfort food. Whenever I find I've run through a few particularly challenging titles in a row, it's nice to revert to a genre possessing the kind of story and gameplay pacing that allows you to save the world with one hand while absentmindedly soothing a screaming baby with the other.

To extending the J-RPG / comfort food analogy: if the Final Fantasy series is a favorite sugary cereal from your youth that now tastes like being orally sodomized by a high-fructose dildo, then by contrast the Tales series is a favorite ice cream, reliably waiting in your fridge to console you after your wife divorces you because you gained all that weight from eating sugary cereal. From Tales of Symphonia on the GameCube to Tales of Legendia on the PS2 to Tales of Vesperia on the Xbox 360, Namco Bandai has made a habit over the years of releasing high-quality RPGs that improve with each iteration while remaining comfortably familiar. Since I missed playing Tales of the Abyss when it first came out on the PS2, the 3DS re-release seemed like a perfect opportunity to pick up a title for my mobile gaming pleasure I could be certain I'd enjoy. So far I haven't been disappointed.

Batman: Arkham City (Xbox 360)

I'm pretty compulsive about finishing the games I start, so it's significant when I tell you that a few days after picking up a copy of Batman: Arkham City, I found myself back at the store, receipt in hand, considering whether I wanted to return it. As we're still being positive though, let's ignore the many glaring design flaws that nearly caused me to give up on this supposedly critically acclaimed game, and instead focus on its incredible combat system.

Don't fret, gentlemen... there's plenty of beat-downs to go around.

Having never played Rocksteady's first Batman game (Arkham Asylum), I found the learning curve for Arkham City's combat system to be pretty steep, but was doubly impressed once I started to get the hang of it. I've rarely played a game that deals with crowd control quite so elegantly. In most hack-n-slash games (such as Diablo or God of War), the mechanics for dealing with swarms of enemies follow a simple, standard formula that balances light, heavy, and area-of-effect (AoE) attacks. Often the AoE attacks serve as a sort of "panic button", allowing graceless players like myself to substitute cheap shots and giant explosions for actual combat finesse.

A remarkable thing about Arkham City is that the splashy AoE attacks are largely absent, forcing you to take each of your foes out behind the wood shed for an individual old-fashioned whuppin'. In almost every melee battle, you'll hit a point where you start to fantasize about casting Ultima and vaporizing everyone, but with a bit of discipline and practice, eventually you'll have the Dark Knight leaping around the room breaking arms and smashing heads so handily, it will feel less like a game and more like an expertly choreographed fight scene in a badass martial arts movie.

So that about wraps up my holiday gaming, and other than my use of the term "high-fructose dildo", I'd say I stayed pretty positive. Maybe this whole resolution thing isn't such a joke after all... which I suppose could be a good thing, as I've also resolved to write blog posts more often.

What I've Been Playing

October has been a hell of a month. First of all, on October 20th I completed the Extra Life 24-hour gaming marathon, and (with the help of some very generous friends) raised $1,462 for Boston Children's Hospital. Other exciting events included catching a debilitating stomach virus during which I literally lost a week down the toilet, my son turning four, and a hurricane. And now I realize there's more excitement yet to come, as I look upon this freshly delivered copy of Assassin's Creed III. Here's a rundown of everything (at least, everything video-game-related) that happened this month.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown (Xbox 360)

It's hard for a pessimist like me to remember this, but sometimes dreams do come true. XCOM: Enemy Unknown—the recent remake/reboot of the 1994 game XCOM: UFO Defense—turned out to be every bit of the experience I hoped it would be, and then some.

Most of what I needed to say I put in my review, but to summarize: Firaxis did a superb job of translating an 18-year-old PC cult classic to a modern console setting, by staying true to the spirit of the original while making some bold changes to the core gameplay. Perhaps the best assessment of this balance came from Chris Schilling in his review at VideoGamer.com: "Enemy Unknown is respectful of Julian Gollop's 1994 turn-based strategy classic, but it's not reverential." Whether you're a fan of the original, or simply a fan of turn-based strategy, aliens, challenging gameplay, and/or being eviscerated by mutant cyborg space bugs, you should check out XCOM: Enemy Unknown.

Bomberman LIVE (Xbox LIVE Arcade)

As I've mentioned in the past, my friends and I have a standing Thursday night Xbox LIVE play-date, brilliantly dubbed "TNGN" (Thursday Night Game Night). Though traditionally staunch Gears of War supporters, we recently began to tire of blowing each other away with sawed-off shotguns, something I genuinely thought we would never tire of.

To break the monotony, last month we dug out our old Halo 3 discs, and soon we were joyriding in Banshees across the Valhalla map like we'd never left. (For a five-year-old game, it holds up incredibly well.) Of course, we quickly realized that with Halo 4 coming out November 6, perhaps we should find another way to spend Thursday nights in October. (Besides, of course, with our families.)

I don't know who mentioned it, but someone pointed out that there was a Bomberman game on Xbox LIVE Arcade, and we were sold. After all, we all remembered that Super Bomberman for the SNES was the ultimate party video game when we were kids. It was easy to learn, difficult to master, fun as all hell, and once the bad blood started to build up after a few rounds of cheap shots and broken alliances, no other game was better at causing a bench-clearing brawl. Good times.

However, before you go out and drop 800 credits ($10) on the XBLA version, a quick word of caution. There have literally been dozens of Bomberman games, and although I'm nowhere near well-versed enough to claim that Bomberman LIVE is the worst among these, I have to believe it's somewhere near the bottom. There's little in the way of single-player options (e.g. no campaign), its menu system is so poorly designed that it almost appears to be intentionally obtuse, and the online support is cumbersome, requiring you to re-invite your party to the game whenever you change the slightest details of the match setup. Having voiced those complaints, I can now say that once you do finally manage to get an eight-player match of Bomberman LIVE working, you realize that playing even a half-assed version of this classic game online with seven of your best friends from around the country is a hell of a good time.

Dishonored (Xbox 360)

I played Dishonored for almost the full 24 hours of my Extra Life marathon, and before I took ill last week, I fully intended to write a review of it. Unfortunately, with Assassin's Creed III now in my hands, a review is seeming somewhat less likely. Nevertheless, I thought it was a high-quality game deserving of some careful discussion, so I'm going to hold off on my comments for the time being, with the hope of publishing a review by the end of the week.

LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga (Xbox 360)

Like music, televison, or film, finding quality video games that are appropriate for young children can be difficult. However, as is true for the Beatles, Sesame Street, or Pixar movies, some of the best video games transcend generations, appealing to kids and adults alike.

When I first played LEGO Star Wars on the PlayStation 2, it was a magical experience. Legos, Star Wars, and video games: three pillars of nerd culture, impossibly combined into a thoroughly enjoyable experience that didn't feel anywhere near as exploitative as it should have.

Unfortunately, like so many wonderful things in this life, I totally forgot about LEGO Star Wars until a friend recently reminded me about it. After spending 60 seconds and $20 on Amazon, two days later my son and I were chasing down our lost droids on Tatooine. Now I get to spend quality time with my son while playing a game that's actually fun for an adult.

The only problem is that now my son believes the canonical version of Star Wars is the one where Jedi use the Force build their own spaceships out of Lego bricks.

So that pretty much wraps up October. Now, I'm off to re-fight the American revolution in Assassin's Creed III. If I'm lucky, I'll be so busy patriotically murdering redcoats for the next week that I won't have to see another political ad between now and the election.

What I've Been Playing

October is going to be a great month for gaming. Not only am I looking forward to the releases of Dishonored, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and Assassin's Creed III, I'm also eagerly anticipating the 24-hour video game marathon I'm doing on Saturday, October 20th as part of the Extra Life 2012 charity event, to benefit Boston Children's Hospital. (Here's the link to my donation page! Give, for the children!)

Of course, even though October appears pretty stacked, September certainly was no slouch. Here's a quick rundown of the games I managed to play last month during the calm before the storm.

Spelunky (Xbox LIVE Arcade)

"Roguelikes" seem to be the hot indie trend for 2012. Unfortunately, I tend to view the genre as the video-game equivalent of the band Wilco: I keep giving them a shot, but for some reason I just can't see why people like them so damn much.

In case you're unfamiliar with it, the term "roguelike" refers to the 1980 Unix game Rogue, which was characterized by certain gameplay elements like an aggressive level of difficulty, randomly generated levels, and permanent character death. Today, these gameplay elements seem to have found a wider audience of people who demand crushingly difficult and frustratingly unpredictable game experiences, because they seem to be popping up in every third indie game that comes out.

One such game is Spelunky, a roguelike action platformer released this summer for Xbox LIVE Arcade. Having never played the original version (which was released for PC in 2009), nor having played any similar games (such as La-Mulana), Spelunky was a new experience for me—an experience that involved dying a gruesome death and restarting the game from the beginning about every 2 to 3 minutes.

Spelunky would be like the movie Groundhog Day if instead of learning the piano, Bill Murray just got shot in the face with a poison arrow every morning.

After logging a few good hours of play, I did eventually develop some basic Spelunking skills like running, jumping, climbing ropes, dodging spiders, whipping bats, rescuing damsels, murdering shotgun-toting shopkeepers, and not getting impaled by spikes, to the point where I even finally made it to the second of the five major areas in the game. Unfortunately, by that point I'd decided that Spelunky was probably not the game for me, at least not if I wanted to make it to Thanksgiving without hurling my Xbox controller through my TV screen.

The Binding of Isaac (PC / Mac)

By contrast, a roguelike that does it right is The Binding of Isaac, a Steam title from 2011 that I only recently started playing. A deeply disturbed interpretation of the Bible story of the same name, The Binding of Isaac follows the child Isaac as he flees the murderous zealotry of his mother, descending in to a dungeon of unholy terrors armed only with his tears.

Be warned: this game is pretty disturbing.

Gameplay-wise, Isaac is sort of a dungeon-crawling shooter, like a comfortable mix of The Legend of Zelda and Smash TV. As a roguelike, it's certainly difficult, and death is very much permanent; however, what it really captures about the spirit of roguelikes is the element of randomness. Every time I play, I encounter something I've never seen before (and often, something I hope I never see again). Moreover, the game is balanced such that randomness of the powerups and items firmly guides the gameplay, without undermining player skill to the point where you feel like you're simply a sinner in the hands of an angry random-number-generating God.

Mark of the Ninja (Xbox LIVE Arcade)

Having had my fill of indie roguelike self-flagellation, I abandoned for a time playing as either an archeologist with a death wish or a crying child. Instead, I turned to the other extreme: becoming the baddest ninja warrior that has ever existed. Mark of the Ninja is hands-down my favorite XBLA game of the year so far, and may well be my favorite game for 2012 overall. Pretty much everything I wanted to say about the game I put in my recent review, so I think I'll leave it at that. Mark of the Ninja: play it!

Borderlands 2 (Xbox 360)

In my recent Darksiders II review, I claimed that I prefer a game that is too ambitious to one that plays it safe. Well, that claim was put to the test last month by Borderlands 2, which is basically an expanded, more polished version of its predecessor.

Still, sometimes it's the little things, and Borderlands 2 improves a lot of the little things. The difficulty is a little better balanced, the missions are a little less repetitive, the weapons are a little more diverse, and the enemy AI is a little less moronic. All of these little changes—along with some genuinely funny writing—add up to a total Borderlands experience that I've really been enjoying, so much so that perhaps I was full of crap with that whole "respecting games that take risks" nonsense. I'll say more in the review I'll be posting this week, but for now you should know that Borderlands 2 is a pretty solid pick, especially if you either never played or you absolutely loved the original.

So, that was my September. For my October, I'm really only searching for two things: (1) donations to help sick kids, and (2) suggestions for games I could probably win when playing against sick kids. I mean, I'm willing to donate money to help them fight cancer, but I'll be damned if I let those punks beat me at Halo.

What I've Been Playing

After a July full of PC gaming, I returned last month to the comfortable embrace of my Xbox and Nintendo 3DS. Let's look at some of the titles I checked out during August.

Dark Souls (Xbox 360)

With no new titles immediately demanding my attention, I began last month's gaming by returning to an older title, one that I lovingly refer to as "my Waterloo". As I imagine is true for a lot of folks who've played it, Dark Souls is a perpetually ongoing and highly ambitious undertaking, like that novel you've been writing on since college or that growth you keep meaning to ask a doctor about. However, despite receiving pretty much universal critical acclaim and garnering a zealously devoted fan base, I'm still surprised how many casual gamers haven't yet heard of Dark Souls.

Yeah, you're going to see this screen a lot.

If you're not familiar with the game, I'll try to describe briefly what makes it such a big deal. At first glance, Dark Souls appears to be a drably gothic third-person action RPG with a middling combat system and an uninspiring plot. Once you start playing it, though, you quickly realize its appeal: it's brutally difficult, but in a rigorously fair-handed way. In each new area, you will die repeatedly at first, and it will probably depress you. However, by gaining equipment and levels, by learning your way around the environment and its many fiendish traps, and by becoming attuned to the patterns and weaknesses of your adversaries, eventually you will progress (albeit to the next crushingly difficult area of the game). It's the kind of difficult that is much less characterized by controller-throwing frustration, and much more about terrified, crippling paranoia interspersed with occasional bouts of cautious jubilation.

One of the most engaging aspects of the game (other than its innovative twist on multiplayer, which I won't get into here) is the checkpoint system. Whenever you die, you are revived at the last "bonfire" you camped at, but without all of your souls (which serve as both experience points and currency) and humanity (another important commodity in the game). Moreover, resting at a bonfire refills your health, spells, and stock of healing potions, but also revives any non-boss enemies you have slain in the area. This system works in concert with the game's merciless difficulty to present some difficult choices to the player. If I'm forging a path through an unknown new dungeon, but I'm running low on health and have accumulated a hefty cache of souls, should I try to make my way back to a previous bonfire, or try to tough it out to the next one... knowing that if I fail, all my efforts will have been for nothing? (For an added dose of sweaty-palmed intensity, note that it is possible to reclaim your lost souls and humanity after you die, but only if you make it back to the location of your demise without dying again.)

Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance (Nintendo 3DS)

I recall playing the original Kingdom Hearts on the Playstation 2 as being quite a magical experience. Thrust into a bizarre world where Disney cartoons, Final Fantasy characters, and Haley Joel Osment somehow coexisted, I raced through the game in about a week, desperately anxious to find what treasured memories from my youth I would uncover in each new world. And even though Kingdom Hearts was covered in a layer of nostalgia so thick that it bordered on exploitation, underneath was a solid action-RPG with a rich story, engaging environments, and genuinely fun gameplay.

Nearly 10 years and several confusingly named sequels later (most of which I didn't play), I decided it was time to revisit this idiosyncratic franchise with Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance for the Nintendo 3DS. Unfortunately, while this newest Kingdom Hearts has a mountain of new and complex battle systems big enough to get an A for effort, it manages to capture very little of the magic of the original. The worlds and characters are limited primarily to Disney's more obscure and/or disregarded properties, and the Final Fantasy influence is practically nonexistent. After about 20 hours I have yet to beat it, but at this point I'm almost ready to put it to bed anyway and pick up Tales of the Abyss for the 3DS instead.

10000000 (iOS)

Finally, a compelling reason to match
three arbitrary pictures of things.

Ever since I bought a Nintendo 3DS, I've largely ignored my iPhone as a game platform, except during particularly boring technical seminars or at unusually long traffic stops. However, after hearing about 10000000 (i.e. "ten million") on the Gamers With Jobs podcast last month (which featured a great interview with the creator), I decided to give the game a shot. After about five minutes I was hooked, to the extent that for a few bizarre days last month, my iPhone was my go-to gaming platform.

10000000 is a typical match-three game (like Columns or Bejeweled), except that matching items affects the progression of your avatar as he crawls through a linear dungeon at the top of the screen. For example, matching swords performs a melee attack, matching shields bolsters your defense, and matching keys opens locks on chests and doors. During each run you collect gold, experience, and resources, which can later be used to upgrade your character in various ways. The uninspired name "10000000"—and wow, it really is an awful, awful name—refers to the high score you must reach in a single run to beat the game.

10000000 is rendered in a pixel art style accompanied by chiptune audio tracks, and its tutorials and menu interfaces suggest a lack of polish that one might expect from a homebrewed title like this. However, don't let these rough edges fool you; the gameplay itself is actually quite refined. The sliding controls are smooth and responsive, and the block animations, combo notifications, and sound effects are fluid and well-timed. Take it from someone who isn't a die-hard puzzle game fan: 10000000 is well worth $1.99 and 6-8 hours of your time.

Darksiders II (Xbox 360)

Most of what I needed to say about this game I said in my recent review. However, looking back over what I wrote, I realize that I may have understated how disappointed I was with this game. For me, the first Darksiders was one of those rare games I really fell in love with, the kind of game that you start over again from the beginning the moment you beat it, or that you lend to your friends so that you can talk to them about how awesome you think it is. Darksiders II isn't a bad game by any metric, but it certainly hasn't inspired me the way its predecessor did, causing me to proselytize to my friends until they started blocking my phone calls. If the franchise continues, I'll be interested to see if Darksiders really was lightning in a bottle, or if somehow Vigil Games manages to recapture the magic of the original.

Dust: An Elysian Tail (Xbox LIVE Arcade)

After putting Darksiders II to rest in peace (see what I did there?), I moved on to my other most-anticipated game of the summer: Dust: An Elysian Tail. I first heard about Dust at PAX East this spring, when I got a chance to speak with the game's developer, Dean Dodrill. (Note the singular noun "developer", as in one single dude.)

Dust shows me that even in today's 3D-dominated world, there's still plenty of room to be amazed in two dimensions.

With its beautifully animated graphics, rich environments, and engaging gameplay, Dust turned out to be everything I hoped it would be. Even its characters were well-acted and charming enough for me to look past their excessively cutesy appearance an occasionally cloying dialogue. I'll save the rest of my analysis for my review, but for now you can know that Dust gets my seal of approval.

So that about wraps up my recent gaming experiences, as well as another New England summer. Soon it will be time for fall jackets, changing leaves, pumpkin-spice lattes, and most excitingly, Borderlands 2.

What I've Been Playing

Summer is one of the toughest times in the childhood of a video gamer. Even back when I was in elementary school, I remember lamenting the cutting irony of the fact that summer vacation arrived (a) well after I had thoroughly exhausted all interest in whatever game I'd gotten for Christmas, (b) well before my autumn birthday (at which time I would inevitably recieve gifts of clothes and school supplies anyway), and (c) at a time of year when hardly any new games were released. In the end, I suppose all these barriers to gaming were likely of little real consequence; even if I'd had a stack of unplayed cartridges at my disposal, my fascist parental overlords probably still would have forced me to play outside.

As an adult, I find summers to be much more palatable. Sure, I don't get two months of contiguous vacation, but instead I have disposable income, free will, and air conditioning. And even though there aren't many triple-A game releases this time of year, there's a nearly endless supply of cheap downloadable fun to be consumed via Steam's Summer Sale (which just ended) and Xbox LIVE's "Summer of Arcade". Here's what I've been playing...

Diablo III (PC / Mac)

Released this May following a 12-year hiatus in the franchise, Diablo III has been the preeminent time-sink for something like 10 million people this summer. Despite its success on paper, the game itself has traveled kind of a bumpy road, one rife with server issues, bizarre gameplay limits, and game hacks and exploits. In a typical video game, these issues would be less of a problem; however, Diablo III incorporates a "Real Money Auction House", which (for those of you who don't know) is a virtual marketplace that allows players to buy and sell in-game equipment and commodities using real-world currency. Apparently, the lesson to learn here is that if you create a virtual economy that is already incredibly unstable because of its implicitly artificial nature, piling a bunch of additional problems on top of it yields results that are somewhat of a total clusterfuck.

Is there someone out there willing to drop $200 on a "Focused Beating"? Only time will tell.

Being one of those crazy people who doesn't play games so I can farm loot to sell on the Internet, I tended to approach Diablo III as... well, a "game". While Diablo III is undoubtedly highly-tuned, expertly polished, and addictive as hell, even after my first 30 hours of gameplay I'm still not sure if it's actually "fun". It's entirely possible Blizzard has simply figured out an algorithm for directly triggering the pleasure centers in my brain via randomized loot drops.

Resonance (PC)

Eventually I took a break from Diablo III and returned to my traditional summer practice of snapping up old titles and indie games in bulk off of Steam. One of my first purchases was Resonance, an indie point-n-click adventure game in the old-school pixel art style.

Resonance: why wrestle with Diablo III server issues when instead you could be riding the subway as a particle physicist?

Compared to staring at Battle.net error codes, I much preferred Resonance as a way to pass the time. Although the puzzles aren't terribly mind-blowing and the voice acting has the kind of stilted, canned quality that is hard to avoid in adventure games, Resonance is still well-executed in many ways. Not only does it build on the traditional adventure-game formula with a few interesting gameplay innovations, but its plot and character development were more than enough to make Resonance worth a few hours of my time.

Penny Arcade's On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3 (PC)

I really enjoy the webcomic/blog/Internet institution Penny Arcade. I think one of the reasons I like Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik's commentary so much is that it spans the full dynamic range of the human experience from the existential to the profane, in much the same effortless manner of comedians like Jon Stewart or Louis C.K.

It's because I enjoy the eccentricities of the Penny Arcade world view so thoroughly that I've continued to play their "Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness" series, despite the fact each installment thus far has been decidedly middling. Granted, this newest offering is a departure from the two previous Hothead-produced titles, rendered instead in the style of a 16-bit console RPG by the qualified retro enthusiasts at Zeboyd Games. However, the end result is still a mediocre role-playing game that could (and should) be ignored by anyone who isn't a Penny Arcade fan.

Assassin's Creed: Revelations (Xbox 360)

As I've mentioned before, seeing the Assassin's Creed III gameplay trailer at PAX earlier this year really got me getting back on the AC bandwagon. After playing Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, I decided to ride the sequel train right on through Assassin's Creed: Revelations, the third part of the "Ezio Trilogy". This (hopefully) final chapter follows Ezio's exploits in 16th-century Constantinople, where despite being well into his fifties, he somehow manages to keep free solo climbing, base jumping, and serial murdering as though he was still a teenage assassin.

Apparently three decades of jumping off rooftops and stabbing dudes in the face really ages a guy.

Unless you are deeply fascinated by the lore of the Assassin's Creed universe, AC: Revelations is a sequel that could easily be skipped. While it is certainly as expertly crafted as other entries in the series, its more-of-the-same gameplay and its insistence on extending the already overdrawn Ezio plot line offers more exploitation than revelation.

Double Fine Happy Action Theater (Xbox LIVE Arcade)

Recently my kids and I had a playdate with a friend of mine and his two children. After a three-hour maelstrom of toys, tears, and bathroom mishaps, we were starting to run out of hope, as well as beer. Enter Double Fine Happy Action Theater, an Xbox LIVE downloadable arcade game for the Kinect that also seemed to be a safe and legal toddler narcotic. Although it's little more than a tech demo of 20 or so minigames, Happy Action Theater includes some of the most innovative uses of the Kinect sensor I've seen thus far, and each is delivered with trademark Double Fine flair. If you have young children I highly recommend it... at $10, it's one of the cheapest and most effortless ways you'll find for wearing out your offspring.

Terraria (PC)

The first time anyone hears about Terraria, it's always the same description: "It's 2-D Minecraft." To be fair, it's an accurate description; Terraria not only borrows Minecraft's core gameplay concepts (i.e. "mining" and "crafting"), it also borrows almost everything else. However, it's a testament to how genuinely well designed and innovative Terraria is that it can plagiarize so heavily while ultimately delivering an experience that is quite different from that of Minecraft. While life in Minecraft is an exercise in solitary exploration that occasionally borders on survival horror, Terraria is like Legend of Zelda would be if after conquering a dungeon you could lug it up to the surface and use pieces of it to build yourself a kick-ass fortress.

Now if only I would put this much effort into my real house.

My only gripe about Terraria is that the difficulty curve is steep. Even with heavy coaching from online walkthroughs and FAQs, after 20 hours I still couldn't beat the first boss. In the end, I decided just to be happy with the fact that I had built another sweet residence to my long list of virtual properties.

Well, that pretty much wraps up July's gaming exploits. God and Amazon Prime willing, this time next month I should be writing about one of my most-anticipated games of 2012: Darksiders II.

What I've Been Playing

As I've mentioned in the past (and as known by anyone who has had the misfortune of meeting me personally), I love criticizing things. Unfortunately, the writing of game reviews brings with it a host of other problems, and since I started blogging I've noticed that my gaming habits have changed significantly. These days I almost exclusively play new releases, rushing through each game as quickly as possible in the hopes that I can pen some sort of semi-informed review while anyone still cares. (In fact, in the 10 days it took me to finish Mass Effect 3, everyone had already become sick of debating its "controversial ending".)

So, for a change of pace I decided for the month of April to play whatever I felt like playing whenever I felt like playing it. (At least, as long as "whenever" happened after the kids went to bed.) Rather than write exhaustive reviews for each game, I figured I would instead attempt to condense my standard several pages of witty commentary and dick jokes into just a paragraph or two about each game.

Xenoblade Chronicles (Wii)

After spending an uninspiring winter term studying at the University of Final Fantasy XIII-2 (The "Safety School" of J-RPGs), I was anxious for a role-playing game that would really spike my cocoa. Enter Xenoblade Chronicles, (nominally) spiritual successor to the other "Xeno games" (i.e. Xenogears on the PS1 and Xenosaga on the PS2). Xenoblade Chronicles was originally released in 2010 for the Wii, and like most Wii games, it wasn't released in North America. However, unlike most Wii games, it was supposedly quite good... in fact, it was apparently so good that a fan campaign led to it being released here nearly two years later.

You'll enjoy exploring Xenoblade Chronicles' lush and expansive world, especially since there won't be any pesky high-definition graphics getting in your way.

Right now I'm about 20 hours in, and so far the game's primary effect has been to remind me that the Wii's graphics are on par with a PS2 that's been left out in the rain, and that its controls handle like an old Atari joystick made out of a live weasel. That said, it's impressive that such an underpowered system can support a game of this scope. The stereotypically inane J-RPG dialogue--while still present--is softened by the choice to make everyone have a British accent, and the initially simple battle system continues to become increasingly more layered. So, I suppose for now I'll forge ahead with the hope that all that hype was founded in some sort of reality I have yet to experience.

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (Xbox 360)

Seeing the extended-gameplay trailer for Assassin's Creed III at PAX East rekindled my interest in this series, or at least nudged it enough that I was willing to drop $21.99 on Amazon and about 20 hours of my life on Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (which I passed on when it came out back in 2010). I have to admit, I'd forgotten how much I love these games. Although largely unchanged from the formula of Assassin's Creed II, there are a few subtle changes that go a long way towards enhancing the AC gameplay experience.

I had heard that the real contribution of ACB was its innovative multiplayer, but unfortunately I didn't explore this aspect very much... in part because I didn't want to tarry before moving on to Assassin's Creed: Revelations, but mostly because I didn't feel like getting the ol' hidden-blade-to-the-brain-stem treatment by the few die-hard assassinos still lurking on the servers after 18 months.

Gears of War 3 (Xbox 360)

For about half a year now, Gears of War 3 has reigned as the official game of TNGN (Thursday Night Game Night), my weekly multiplayer gaming session with my friends from high school (or as my wife calls it, my "standing Thursday play-date"). As much fun as it is to frag complete strangers, there's a lot to be said for engaging in multiplayer with folks who respect a request of "don't kill me for a few minutes; I need to go change a diaper".

"RAAM's Shadow" introduces the new character Michael Barrick. He can be easily distinguished from other characters in the Gears canon by his gravelly voice, terse demeanor, and impossibly large musculature.

Actually, I think there must have been quite a few diapers that needed changing during the month of April, because more than once our TNGN crew seemed a little thin. In fact, one week I was a party of one, but instead of sobbing into my Manhattan and cursing children everywhere, I instead took the opportunity to wrap up the GoW3 RAAM's Shadow DLC. It turned out to be a surprisingly enjoyable and well-executed addition to the campaign, especially the parts where you get to play as General RAAM (the final boss from the first Gears of War).

Dragon Quest IX (Nintendo DS)

They say the birth of a child is a happy event. I'm inclined to agree, because the birth of my daughter in January resulted in my three-year-old son getting an Xbox Kinect and myself getting a Nintendo 3DS. After playing The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D for about an hour, I opted instead to go back and dive into some of the old Nintendo DS games I missed, such as Dragon Quest IX.

Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies is an RPG in the classic Dragon Quest (a.k.a. Dragon Warrior) style, meaning that you can't blow your nose in the game without it being accompanied by several pages of text narration. While this results in a gameplay experience that is doubtlessly padded, it also has a certain laid-back charm that is well suited to a portable gaming experience. In the past few months, somehow I've managed to sink 50 hours into this game (mostly in 15-minute chunks), and I still haven't beaten it.

Fez (Xbox LIVE Arcade)

Last month's indie darling Fez looks on the surface to be simply a perspective-based puzzle-platformer, reminiscent of Crush or Echochrome. Though its pixel-art graphics and chiptune soundtrack are not without their charm, most folks are unlikely to be blown away during the three hours it takes to collect "32 Cubes" and beat the game.

What does it mean??

However, once you beat the game and unlock New Game +... that's when things begin to get weird. As you start over on your quest for the "32 Anti-Cubes", you begin to realize that the pixel-art world of Fez is rife with cube-based iconography, and that the environments you've been carelessly hopping through are littered with snippets of language, numbers, history, astrology, and religion, much of which is integral to solving the puzzles in this second half of the game. The culture of this strange little universe is so deep and interwoven that at one point (around 2:00 AM) I started to believe an entire race of 2-D people actually lived inside my Xbox. It's been a long time since a puzzle game forced me to write actual notes on actual pieces of paper.

Well, that's about it for the April Game Roundup. In other news, we're closing on our new house tomorrow. Perhaps in another month I'll be writing about my new favorite games, which are likely to include such titles as Wallpaper Removal Challenge 2012, DIY Home Wiring: First Aid for Minor Electrical Burns Edition, and Moving All Our Crap to a New House.