Grumpy XBone Post #2

So Microsoft released more details on the XBone and it's not terribly reassuring for many people. Ars Technica has an overview on the new info here. In parsing out the new data, there are actually some decent features being pesented.....but they're modest and hard to appreciate in the wake of the other more draconian elements. Specifically:

1. You can have a family account with up to ten people on it. This is pretty neat actually, something Steam doesn't provide for on PC and something the current Xbox 360 only touches on with family accounts. On the other hand, I can pop a disk into my 360 and anyone can play it. In fact I am pretty sure the only limits right now are on DLC and XBLA downloads purchased on my account. Even Sony's PS4 is a bit more reasonable than that, allowing a certain number of current accounts to access my downloaded content (so my wife can play Demon Souls too, basically).

2. The phone in online-every twenty four hours or every hour at a friend's thing doesn't really bother me because I'm always online at home, but the friends part does because I like to drag my Xbox 360 to my friend's house once in a while for some Halo or Gears of War gaming and he's got occasional internet issues (also, he doesn't even have an Xbox Live account so we usually don't go online at all). The new Xbone doesn't favor this freedom. The loss of offline functionality for more than 24 hours is problematic for the two or three times a year that Comcast/Xfinity craps out, too. I've always been able to lean on the 360 in the past to fill those periods with gaming. Admittedly, that's not a big concern for me....I am not lacking for offline entertainment, I admit....but it's still a negative, another loss of freedom that Xbone's predecessor offered.

3. The used games issue isn't a deal breaker for me either, as I don't buy many used games. However, the key reason I will buy a used game is if I want to try it out but want to return the game should it prove to be a terrible experience, and Gamestop still offers that sort of return one week from date of purchase. I also happen to think that Microsoft's got lots of evidence on its own current XBLA store that they don't really plan on moving to a competitive digital sales model ala Steam, simply because they barely touch upon the concept now. Xbox Live weekly sales are occasionally cool, but 95% of the time most sales are "meh" at best and the typical cost of games on their current digital service are disproportionately high relative to the long-tail value of PC titles, for contrast. If you want even more compelling evidence that Microsoft has no interest in consumer-friendly pricing structures and sales look at the travesty that is the Games for Windows Live store. So in this regard I have to clearly state that Microsoft's demonstrated how it handles digital sales, and it's not pretty.

4. There's no upside best as I can tell to the always-on Kinect elements, and I'm going to show my paranoid colors here by stating that for every other issue with the Xbone, this is the one which kills it for me. Actually, the language Microsoft itself used is what's the deal breaker, as the curious covert double speak, suggesting that the Xbone can and will be recording if you don't specifically opt out, is a tacit implication that it can spy like this, and therefore one must assume at some point it will do so. Someone coined the phrase "Xbox1984" as a title for the new machine, and I think it's apt. Yes, they do state "we won't record you," but the fact that they then discuss "opting out" as a process you have to go through suggests the default setting for the machine is "we can record you if we want, unless you specifically tell us otherwise. And even then, who knows!" The level of detail the Kinect is capable of recording is even more disturbing.

 At this point, literally the only reason I can see to purchase an Xbone is if I want to continue with the Halo franchise. Gears of War was a great series, I quite enjoyed it....but it was clear with Gears of War: Judgement that the franchise was done and had just released one more retread that I strongly suspect was intended originally to be a DLC content pack for GoW 3 before Cliffy left Epic. Meanwhile Halo 5 will have direct competition from its progenitors at Bungie with Destiny....which, of course, will also be on the PS4.

All Sony needs to do is announce a PS4 that operates in the same core model of digital sales and distribution as the PS3 currently, with continued support for used game sales and I think they've won this console war before the first machine is ever sold. We'll see. That...or Wii U needs to do some aggressive advertising and Nintendo needs to display a distinct uptick in the number of third party releases for its machine. However, if the PS4 jumps on the Xbone bandwagon and Wii U continues to look irrelevant....then I think PC gaming is going to dominate.

Resident Evil 6: The Leon Kennedy Campaign

Meet Helena and Leon

I've been promising to talk about it for a bit, so here goes. To fill you in, Resident Evil 6 (currently only out on consoles although it sounds like a PC edition is slated for next year) features four entire campaigns, which interweave but are otherwise solid tales in their own right. This concept is not new to the franchise, which allowed for two separate tales in the very first game, where you could play as Jill Valentine for the easy mode game and Chris Redfield in the hard mode campaign. Back then the subtleties were slight; most of the two tales were fairly similar and all located in the Spencer Mansion, but fast-forward to the present and Resident Evil 6 offers three primary campaigns and one unlockable campaign on top of a multi-player experience. Each of these campaigns appear to be about as long as each prior campaign we've played, so the RE6 experience is directly equivalent, it would seem, to four other RE games bundled together.

Resident Evil 6 is also designed for co-op play, with split-screen support (A HUGE perk which all negative reviews to date have failed to consider; this game could be below average but split-screen play still bumps it up a notch for console gamers). This has allowed me to enjoy the single-player version while also playing the co-op version with another RE fan friend of mine.

Since I'm so slow on playing through this (reasons being: I can only take high-intensity 3rd-person shooter action in modest doses, can't even think of playing this game until my child is asleep, and I HATE QTE EVENTS) I will review each campaign as I finish it.

The C-Virus zombies are sprinters and leapers

The Leon Kennedy Campaign

First, Spoilers and all that. You've been warned!

Leon Kennedy's campaign starts with an elaborate "here at the end" montage of action events in a Chinese city Lanshiang where a zombie outbreak is afoot. Cut to the present (well, June 2013) and Leon Kenndy is forced to shoot the zombified president in the White House after a bioterrorism attack at an event where the President is about to reveal the truth of what happened at Raccoon City in 1998.

Now, there's a lot of exposition going on, and almost none of it is provided in-game in a memorable way; it took me a while to figure out what was going on, as the game focuses on a sort of action cinematic style initially, filled with QTEs (quick time events) before relecutantly relinquishing control of the plot and direction you must take and letting you explore a post-bioterror attack Washington D.C. riddled with zombies.

Before I bitch about the gameplay, let me finish the plot summary so I can complain about (or commend) various issues:

Leon is paired with Helena, a Homeland Security agent who's somehow involved and thinks she's responsible for the President's conversion to zombiehood and death (she is). She promises an explanation which will take maybe six to eight hours of playtime to get to before you really have a clue as to what is going on, and the enigmatic "I can't tell you, better if you see" explanation is so painfully lame when all is revealed that one wishes Leon was chaotic evil so he could explain to her how badly she screwed things up with her whole breathing and moving around and withholding information thing.

Seriously: if she had said five minutes in to meeting Leon, "My sister is being held captive by the head of Homeland Security who is off his rocker and forced me to release the C-Virus to infect the President because he's megalomaniacal and thinks that we all need to be reminded that we need Homeland Security to stop bioterrorism like the secret installation full of bioweapons he's manipulating beneath an old church on a high hill with a bottomless cave of evil beneath it and would you mind helping me out pleaze???" I think Leon, having survived RE 4 and RE 2, would have said, "Yeah, okay, let's do this. I've seen stranger plots."

Instead, Leon trusts blindly in her and her unbearable cuteness and follows her through hell and highwater, in order:

A zombie-infested White House and neighborhood, the sewers, subways, and blasted city streets of the Washington D.C. 

On a bus out into the woods through a scary graveyard, then a big old church in which sits on top of a big old hill, where a batch of survivors are holed up just waiting to become zombies.

Into the secret labs beneath the church where the C-Virus project was well underway, to try and develop a means of immortality (but of course it went horribly wrong).

Through the labs and into a vast series of catacombs that go ever deeper into the earth. Eventually they open up into a sort of Mister Toad's Wild Ride version of a giant mine/cavern of Temple of Doom level quality.

Out of the temple of doom realm and off to China, on a zombie-infested aircraft.

Crashland in Lianshang, China and wreak endless havoc through the streets of the city, including a never-ending ascent up a series of eroding skyscrapers.

Dude, you need a Mentos

The game plays out over five lengthy chapters, and it saves periodically, although not often enough (you'll wish it let you save wherever the hell you wanted to). In fact, on a few occasions I would log out at where I thought was a good spot, only to come back later and find out the actual checkpoint was twenty minutes of playtime behind where I'd stopped. Capcom, this is...like...2012. We don't do that anymore. Seriously.

The game's choice of venue is a mixed bag. The city sections at the beginning and the end work well, except when they don't. There are moments where stuff is happening in tightly confined spaces and you will have NO CLUE what the hell is going on, just wildly swinging and shooting and trying not to die. The spots where the respawn point is way, way back are the most annoying.

The quicktime events are indescribably baroque and needless. Apparently you can bypass them by playing in easy mode, but I struggled through on "normal." If you're not partial to what mode you play in, I suggest easy so you can skip them. I have played games with QTE events before, and for some reason Capcom just doesn't seem to understand that these aren't actually fun, and in high-intensity non-stop action games like these, most gamers don't actually want them. When you give us a cool cinematic, we just want to chill for a few seconds and enjoy it. I do not like having to hold my controller with baited breath, waiting for the inevitable crazy-ass QTE icon to appear demanding I shake my analog stick while pressing A or whatever.

That's another thing. All these QTE commands? They suck. Stop it, please. It adds nothing to the game. I've thought about this...about the difference between QTE events and regular gameplay. Technically you can refuse to do either and the game simply stops....but with regular controls you have a range of options, and you have some autonomy in how to execute them and why. QTE's are for things which are bottleneck pass/fails. You either see this cutscene or you stop playing. Don't double-gate these moments with QTEs, Capcom, it ruins the experience.

Part of the QTE problem is that there really are a lot of scripted events in the Leon Kennedy campaign. So many scripted events that it becomes clear after a while that Capcom probably realized that they were pulling a Squeenix* and that they had too much movie and not enough gameplay going on. The solution? QTEs! Wrong.

Something is really wrong with Japanese game design. They seem obsessed with this idea that Simon Says is the pinnacle of game design.

Beside the QTE problem, there's a second issue, and it relates to the autonomy issue I mentioned. The best moments in the game so far are those bits where you have some measure of autonomy. There aren't too many of them, but they do exist. The graveyard, for example, or the bit when you're in the secret labs. There are a couple spots where it is not immediately clear you are in a linear corridor shooter, forced to travel a straight-line path (no matter how dolled up the graphical environments, it's still a straight path), often being interrupted by moments where the game specifically wants you to do something a certain way, and of course forces you to do it.

This heavy-handed scripting is what makes Resident Evil 6 (so far) less satisfying an experience than prior games in the series, although we see the obvious origins of this approach in RE 4 and RE 5, especially #5 where the linearity is obvious and a number of QTEs rear their ugly head.

I did have a problem with the way the Leon Kennedy Campaign slams us with non-stop action, and how it boils over the top and dribbles deep into Video Game Logic on several occasions. Those are the moments where you realize you're playing a video game, that no matter how much it pantomime's reality through good graphics, you are forced to concede that what is happening is just about as logical as Mario or Qbert's realities.

Be ready to get killed by trains a few times in the subways

For example, when they find the catacombs and then the vast mine shaft beneath the hilltop church and laboratory, I was at first interested. Admittedly, I was perplexed at who built these amazingly well-populated catacombs, and what purpose they served....the game offers pretty much no story exposition like prior tales in the series, with no video recordings, diaries, scribbled notes or even just an occasional comment by the characters to explain where they are and what's up with their crazy environment. This is a huge mark against the game, as such extraneous story bits were pretty much vital to the story and atmosphere of prior games.

So not only would I like to have known who made the catacombs and why, I'd like to know why so many zombies were running around rigged to blow with dynamite, or had burning ember spears (there's enough that one would expect to encounter a factory churning them out). The implication is that Director Simmons, evil mastermind of Homeland Security, is behind all this....but there's a massive bridge in logic between "I'm using C-Virus research to perfect human immortality, and also job security by staging my own bioterror attacks" to "I also like to release dynamite-wired zombies into a vast network of hidden catacombs and mines, and also experiment on sharks and stuff."

I've never been to Washington D.C. though, so maybe the region is riddled with bottomless chasms filled with old mines and catacombs. If so, I need to move, that sounds like a lot of dangerous fun.

Speaking of mines, the catacombs eventually connect with a vast mine and a staggeringly deep pit filled with precarious stone pillars. This is one of those moments where you know you're deep in Video Game land, that special place where underground architecture is completely unrelated to the real world, and you might as well be snorting herbs to heal up. Oh wait.

Anyway, after starting in the church, descending to the labs, descending again to the catacombs and then descending into the deep pit, then the mines, then the mine-carts, then the water level with a giant mutant shark-fish that takes you deep, deep, deep into the bowels--BOWELS I SAY!!!!--of the earth, you emerge somewhere outside along a river, just in time to watch Washington D.C. get nuked.

I am still very, very bothered about just how much space...and depth....was inside that church hill.

Amidst all this there's a lengthy boss encounter with Deborah, Helena's sister-turned-C-Virus-Super-Mutant. It was actually one of the better boss fights in the game, and I wasn't insanely frustrated (unlike the first boss when you get to Lianshang, which was tedious and painful). It was also more than a little disturbing just how much effort the Capcom programmers put into Deborah-mutant's naked model. She's disturbingly realistic, in a sort of "undead mutant erotica" kind of way that taps deep into the insane well of Japanese crazy culture.

No stills I have seen remotely do justice to how erotic and disturbing Deborah is

Throughout the campaign Ada Wong shows up. She's alive again (I won't say how) and up to form, providing enigmatic clues and assistance to her remote action boyfriend Leon Kennedy. I appreciated the Ada who shows up to make things more confusing for a change, instead of the weird Aliceverse Ada of the recent movie who actually helped explain everything clearly.

By the Lianshang chapters, once you survive the painful plane crash and first boss encounter in the city, the game once again feels fairly Resident-Evilish, and the final boss encounter (once I looked up what I was doing wrong on gamefaqs) was actually pretty easy to snuff out.

It's a weird campaign. Early on I was bouncing between hate it/love it, with moments that felt very Resident Evil ruined by claustrophobic encounters that didn't work well for the point of view of the camera and controls. Midway through I was cursing it and ready to quit in annoyance and disgust, and then suddenly I was through, only to be assaulted by two inanely painful experiences unrivaled in recent years by other games, followed by a more familiar series of events that were quite fun. Then I had to climb a god-damned skyscraper with my bare hands on dangling cables and was busy trying to figure out where John Maclaine was hiding. Then a series of increasingly irritating boss fights that kept making me wonder just where the boss's extra mass was coming from (all pretense of science is out the window by now) and finally it all ended. It was bittersweet.

If this was all there was to the game, I'd give it a C- and state it was worth playing if your tolerance level for QTEs and railroaded action sequences is sufficiently high. It is also worth it if you are, like me, a Resident Evil fanatic. But there's more to come....next up, the Chris Redfield campaign!

Leon gets all the girls

*A Squeenix: making a movie full of cut-scenes before remembering you're supposed to be making a game. See Square/Enix's Final Fantasy XIII for an egregious example.

 

Soul Not So Dark, and Raccoon City Under Siege Again, Film at 11

I gave up and traded Dark Souls in for Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City after one final, earnest effort to get somewhere without wanting to ragequit the game. After ragequitting (again) and then moving on, I feel as if I finally got out of an abusive relationship. On the downside, Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City is not the stellar game I (didn't really) expect it to be, although it is fun. It's key problem right now is that it is a bit of a genre break from the traditional Resident Evil format, and so far after only a short time playing through its clear that the game is influenced a bit more by the amoral badassery of Milla Jovovich's character in the movies and slightly less so by the more plodding, sense-of-dread and threat ambience of the classics. It's also clear that this game is trying damned hard to inject a little bit of the RE universe into the Left 4 Dead/Call of Duty/Gear of War multiplayer co-op mode. In fact, just about every move you can make in those aforementioned games is available here.

RE:ORC so far underwhelms for two reasons, though: so far its a linear cooridor slog, and although it's trussed up nicely the fact that I noticed this about 5-10 minutes in is a bad sign of linear cooridors to come. There's nothing wrong with linear game design, I feel, so long as the game's level design does a good enough job of fooling you into not noticing; this is not doing a good job of it. It seems like a lot of Japanese-developed games (for example FFXIII) have this problem.

Second, and more importantly, the game feels kind of by-the-numbers, like the lead developer had a list that marketing gave him after they played L4D, MW and GoW and other games, of each game feature or element they wanted represented here. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it may be the reason the game feels less like an original romp, and more like a "trace"  of  these other games.

Also, there's a lot of classic "hide behind conveniently scattered industrial boxes while capping enemies too dumb to crouch low enough not to have their noggin blown off" gameplay.

It's too early yet for me to say anything else, but if it gets better I'll talk about it more. I do like the character models....the Umbrella goons in your squad are all a bunch of fine, evil looking/acting/talking psychopaths. And Hunk, the unfortunately named side character from the bonus quest in Resident Evil 2 (or was it 3?) shows up right off as a truly malicious patron/insitgator (and ally, at least for now) from the get-go. That part is a lot of fun, and distinguishes this game from the rest of the RE series in a cool, interesting way.

And for the record, as new co-op multiplayer games go, this one has other recent efforts (like the unfortunate Payday: The Heist) beat hands down with better gameplay and even better AI so far. On the other hand, like many co-op games these days its missing a split-screen mode, which disappointed my wife greatly. Not gonna go out and buy a second copy (or second Xbox) anytime soon just to play with her. Hmmmm.....it would be a good excuse, though.....




It's kind of weird, really, it feels like the late 90's all over again with the old PS1. I have Silent Hill: Downpour, the Silent Hill HD Collection and now Resident Evil's latest game all sitting in my console collection waiting for Marcus to fall asleep so I can play. The more things change...