Video Games: October 2005 Archives

I’m really digging the hell out of Far Cry Instincts for the Xbox. This first person shooter was out on the PC a year ago. I tried it and couldn’t get out of the water without getting shot. The Xbox version got a high metacritic score, so I took a chance and bought it.

Far Cry pushes the Xbox graphics hardware to places it’s never been before. Water has never looked better, whether it’s in the ocean, lakes, or rivers. In case you haven’t heard, FCI takes place on a tropical island near South America. You play Jack Carver, a tour boat operator who gets his one and only customer kidnapped by an unknown army that inhabits the island. Jack survives by diving underwater, and once he gathers his wits long enough to grab a few guns, you’re in a goddamn Bruckheimer movie (thankfully it’s not directed by Michael Bay). Carver’s voice is by actor Stephen Dorff; the script has him say fuck this and those fuckers and so on. The gaming press has criticized this, but I find it refreshing—it just makes me relate to Jack that much more!

The plot to FCI doesn’t seem like much at first, but it gets better as you go along. As you trek through the jungle, blowing away bad guys, certain plot elements will smack you upside the head. The game has a stealth feature, where you have incentive to sneak up on enemies before they sound an alarm. I fail at this most of them time, but I am completely suckered into the idea of being in danger on an island. It feels like the TV show LOST, rustling through the foliage, not knowing what’s up ahead. The weapons in the game are standard issue, but you can double-wield. The sniper weapon is pretty good. Much cooler are the vehicles. So far I’ve commandeered a dingy, an airboat, an ATV, and a jeep with a mini-gun. The promos show a hang-glider that I can’t wait to get to. Much, much cooler are the animal powers that Jack gets injected with—they give him this Wolverine-claw slash instant fatality move. It reminds you of the Halo sword, but I think Marvel should take note—there’s a great Wolvy game you can rip out of this.

I tried multiplayer for five minutes and kept getting killed the minute I appeared. To hell with that, right now I love the single player experience (although it does allow you to create your own maps). Far Cry Instincts is right up there with Halo and Doom 3. If you’re an Xbox shooter fan, you need to get it. For the week of 10/31/05, Best Buy has it on sale for $30. Nuff said.

SSX may be my favorite game series for the consoles. Ever since it appeared alongside the Playstation 2, it’s always had a special status in my collection. The series has evolved over time: SSX Tricky had a whacked-out course like pinball machine; SSX 3 had avalanches, Uber tricks, and streaming technology that allowed a 30-minute ride down an entire mountain. With the fourth iteration, SSX: On Tour, I was slightly alarmed by the news that Larry LaPierre (the executive producer at EA) wasn’t behind this one. LaPierre is working on Need For Speed: Most Wanted and SSX in the hands of younger producers. So have the young guns ruined the franchise or saved it? After playing SSX On Tour (Xbox version) for a little over 5 hours, I’d say this edition is two steps forward and one step back (but opposites attract, according to Paula Abdul).

Here’s the good news: SSXOT has tracks that are bigger, bolder, and longer than ever. The streaming technology is used all over the place, not just in the final race, but in some of the beginning stages. The weather/environment effects are nicer this time around, with blizzards, falling trees, and races taking place at different times of the day. For the first time, you have to race around other skiers and boarders that are on the slopes. The tracks are incredibly well designed. One track features a plethora of fallen logs, rails, and wooden planks for you to grind on. All of the tracks make it easier to get air-time and perform complicated tricks to boost your meter. The amount of content in the game in incredible: medal races, slopestyle trick events, and new variations like racing the ski patrol or trying to attain as much cumulative air time as possible. There are tons of little collectible do-dads scattered everywhere: boost, money, and photo-ops. The other day I jumped upward, grinded on a helicopter rail, and received a special photo. I haven’t even tried the Skiing mode yet (have to do it with a separate character) because there’s so much for my snowboarding hot-chick to do. Compare all of this to the 8 tracks in the original SSX, and you see how far we’ve come in this generation of consoles.

So what’s not so good? A few things I need to nit-pick. Performing the Monster (aka Uber) tricks is just a matter of flicking the right joystick in any direction. This just feels dumbed down compared to learning the button moves. The producers wanted to depart from the techno and hip-hop soundtracks of past SSX titles. SSX 3 had such a great soundtrack that I actually bought the CD and still listen to it today. We get a list of rock songs, some of which are classics, others are so-so. I think the producers should have given us two or three song styles. In SSX 3, the music made me feel like I was boardin’ with a multicultural crowd from California or New York; SSXOT makes me feel like I’m hangin’ with a bunch of white Mormons from Utah. The producers of this new title also selected graphics for the menus and items that look like Beavis and Butt-Head sketching in their Pee-Chee at high school. I kind of like them all right, but they did some weird stuff with the Career menus. Instead of choosing different mountain regions, you get one big mountain with lots of venues. Each venue may contain different race styles. If you just want to race, it’s not quite clear how to progress. Still, I have to give them credit for not making me wait in the tram to travel to another site.

These are minor nits. On the whole, this is a good title. At a $40 price point, if you like SSX you will have to get it. Nuff said.

Here we go, proof positive that old fogies play video games! I am not alone.

Business Week: Attack of the Gaming Grannies
Old Grandma Hardcore's Gaming Blog

I am not an aberration. Look at the videos of Grandma playing in her lazy-boy chair.

I think we need a study to see if video games can prevent Alzheimers.

Nuff said.

Dean Takahashi reminded us that today is the 20th anniversary of the Nintendo Entertainment System. I bought the NES just after it came out. I remember playing Super Mario Brothers and being amazed at the "depth" of the game. I had played it in the arcade, but didn't realize it had so many hidden pathways thru the pipes and so on. SMB didn't have a save-game feature, so to beat the whole game, you had to play through in one long stretch. I think I left the NES on for a few days before I beat it.

I loved Metroid, and I even liked a funky game called Kid Icarus. The NES game that made the biggest impression on me was The Legend of Zelda. It was revolutionary for a console game because it came in a gold cartridge, with a flash-memory chip that allowed you to save the game. I had never before played an RPG type of game and I was enthralled for a month. I couldn't believe it when I thought I should be done and an entire second half of Hyrule opened up. Nintendo Power asked us to call in when we beat the game and I did so. I figured I had to be among the first, but the support rep told me that a 7-year old beat it in a week.

One thing I'll never forget: after I beat Zelda I went to Toys R Us looking for something else to play. I saw a much older man, obviously retired, asking the sales clerk if the sequel to Zelda had arrived yet. He said that he liked to play Zelda with his wife. I felt sorry for him as I knew the sequel would be a couple of years away. But that's when I knew that video gaming was starting to hit the mainstream. Games weren't just for kids anymore.

I think I'll be playing games when I am retired, too. Much to my wife's chagrin. Nuff said.

I was trying to be a good boy and finish the games in my stable before buying any new ones. I have a plethora of unfinished driving games: Forza, Midnight Club 3, NFSU2, Rallisport Challenge 2, and Burnout 3. But with a Metacritic score of 90, I could not resist buying Burnout: Revenge (for the Xbox).

I did hold off buying it a few weeks after it appeared on shelves. During that time, I perused the message boards and found that some fans didn’t necessarily appreciate traffic checking. I think checking is the best feature of the game. I love it during a road rage event, when I slam into the back of a NPC (non-player car), make it careen down the road and into my opponent. (This feature was partially inspired by the freeway car chase in Bad Boys 2, where cars fall off a truck and do barrel-rolls.) There’s a special race mode built around traffic checking, where you try to slam into as many cars as possible while the clock counts down. It’s utterly simple, yet addictive. The clock quickly goes down, but you can extend the time by slamming into more cars. I found myself slammin’ way past the point I earned a gold medal. Another addition is the vertical takedown, where you can jump and fall on the hood of your opponent. There’s an endless number of trophies for all the various car wrecks.

The other new tweak is the gas/nitro meter start to the Crash mode. Many articles refer to this as the Golf meter. Instead of winding up a club, you are determining how big a Nitro boost your car will get at the start. This is critical because on some courses, you will need to jump from a ramp. If you don’t get enough boost, you may just fall into a chasm and not get any points. It took me a while to master this meter. The trick is that you want to hit the button when it’s in the top Green bar, and then hit the button again when it’s in the bottom Green bar. You’ll get a full boost every time. This feature really makes the Crash mode more exciting, as you’ll constantly be retrying to figure out how to jump and land on the right set of cars for maximum carnage.

Some people think that this version is too easy. I think the AI is better, because the cars actually try to ram you into a corner. Once this happens, your opponent gets a Red Revenge target indicator. If you destroy this car later, you will get extra style points. I also love the branching pathways on the road. While not as extensive as Midnight Club, it provides some nice variety. There are more hidden branches than you would imagine—after following some cars on Xbox Live, I found an alternate path that provided an enormous ramp to jump over a city modeled on Rome. The graphics in this version are tweaked and provide some glorious views of the scenery. The graphic designers went for a washed-out look to most of the tracks. There are so many sun flares, you’ll wish you had sunglasses. The sound is fantastic, especially if you have surround sound, you’ll hear cars/objects flash by as you ride a crazy rocket through the streets.

There are only two complaints that I have about the game. One is what I read on a number of boards: there’s no single player option to just play Road Rage, Eliminator, etc. It’s a bit strange as Burnout 3 had this and it was great. You could play Road Rage on a random set of tracks. In Revenge you have to find the game type in different cities spread across 10 levels. The other problem is that there’s no way to save your settings for the car view: my preferred POV is through the windshield, but I have to make this choice at the start of each race.

I did play some games on Xbox Live and enjoyed it. I’ve also played it with the Fanatec ForceShock Driving Wheel—support is much improved over Burnout 3, and the force feedback signals to the wheel are strong. All in all, this is one of the top five Xbox games this year. No other game conveys a sense of speed like Burnout: Revenge. Nuff said.