Obama and Palin in Mercs2

Fallout 3, Fallout 3, Fallout 3!  The Game Seers talk extensively on Fall Out 3 this week.  There are also a few Obama / McCain jokes cracked now that the shit storm of the 2008 election is over!  Jeff has run out of blog material.  Ryan goes home after a hard days work (in the military) to play a video game about being in the military (Call of Duty 4) — Irony.

 

 Post-Election World! (Finally) [69:32m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (55)

I’m psyched to announce a new Podcast will be joining forces with us here - from Australia it’s Super Defective! Their site is currently under construction and their previous 9 episodes will be available too. Please give them a warm welcome!

http://www.thegamingseers.com/superdefective

- Ryan

This week the Game Seers talk about World of Goo, Wario Land: Shake It and Fallout 3. Mike Frangione rejoins the Game Seers from the safety of a closet and Joe says 1 word. Join us once again for this week’s episode!

 

 World of GameSeers [50:31m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (64)

Skype Link ***

*** You will need to install Skype to chat with us, show time is every Thursday at 12 AM EST. However, today’s show (Episode 16) will be 12 AM EST Friday 31 Oct 2008. Please feel free to join us.

- Ryan

The basic premise of World of Goo is simple; your goal is to get a certain number of goo balls to an exit pipe, while using those same goo balls to build the structure that delivers the balls to the pipe. When you begin a level there will be a base structure to build off of. The standard goo ball can be attached to two nearby points to form a triangle. With enough goo balls you can build almost anything. The game has a very advanced physics engine, so these structures will react realistically to the forces of gravity. The shapes are solid, but by no means rigid. Since they are made of goo, the forms will bend and sway as gravity takes hold. If a single joint in the structure is put under too much pressure, it will eventually crumble. It becomes a literal balancing act between the architectural integrity and weight of your goo structure. All the while you must keep in mind the number of goo balls you have to work with and how many have to be delivered safely to the exit pipe in order to complete the stage.

Throughout the game you’ll be introduced to many different “species” of goo, many of which have special attributes. Some can be taken apart and reassembled. Others can stick to walls or touch dangerous surfaces. Some burn, some explode, some hang limp, some float like balloons. You’ll have to use the specialty of each type of goo to get through the level and achieve your goal. Every type of goo is used in imaginative ways that only get more ingenious as the game progresses. As soon as you think you’ve got it all figured out, the game throws something at you that will force you to use a type of goo in a way you never thought of before. You’ll be using new techniques right up until the last stage.

The game has incredible style. The art direction is somewhere between Dr. Seuss and Tim Burton. Every chapter has an overarching visual theme, and every stage is unique enough that you will never feel like you’re in the same place twice. There are times where you will be amazed that you are playing a WiiWare game. It would be nice to see these graphics in HD, but in all honesty, you will not notice unless you make a point to. There are certain levels in the game that are stunningly beautiful, not just in a graphical sense, but as a genuine piece of art. The visuals are crisp, clean, and colorful, and it works perfectly with this type of game.

The music in World of Goo is just as impressive. There are a lot of different styles represented here. Some tracks remind me of epic movie scores, while others seem to take another page out of the Tim Burton library. The main theme is very reminiscent of Beatlejuice. Certain areas, the windmill stage for example, work incredibly well as a combination of music and visual art. It really is amazing. Sometimes you have to take a second to soak it all in. Like the levels themselves, there is so much variety in the music. You will never get sick of these themes.

Though this game is mostly about puzzle solving, there are bits and pieces of a story that ties the whole thing together. These little details are delivered through signs located around the stages. They consist mostly of the observations and insights of the unnamed sign painter, and they often add a touch of humor to the game. They’ve even snuck a few geeky jokes in there that are sure to get a chuckle for those in the know. They have no reservations about breaking the 4th wall either. On one occasion the sign painter even pokes fun at the fact that the game doesn’t run in HD. On another sign he mentions how life seems to be nothing more than a big physics demo. It all helps add to the charm of the world, making the game build up it’s own personality that sets it apart from the competition.

Worlf of Goo will take you between four to six hours to complete on your first attempt, but that’s not to say you couldn’t sink many more hours into the title. After you finish the main game, you can go back and try to finish the special “OCD” challenge in each level. These include collecting a certain number of goos in a given level or finishing in under a certain amount of time. These challenges will certainly have you scratching your head, and maybe even pulling out your hair on occasion. They’re extremely difficult, and will keep you busy for a very long time. At the end of the game there is also a special area unlocked where you can go and try to build the tallest possible tower of goo. You can see the top scores of other individuals around the world and try to beat their records. You use the extra goo you rescued from the entirety of the game here, which gives you more incentive to go back and try to finish every stage as efficiently as possible. It’s amazing what you can build when you have several hundred goo balls at your disposal. It is a shame though that there is almost no information given about the record holders around the world. The only thing you know about these individuals is their country of origin. This kind of takes some of the thrill out of going for the world record, knowing that no one will ever know it was you. This is most likely a result of Nintendo’s limited online functionality, so it‘s hard to hold this against the game. In the end it’s still a welcome addition.

All of this adds up to an amazing package that’s a steal at only $15. World Of Goo is not only the best WiiWare game to date, it’s one of the best Wii games period. Its simple, addictive gameplay design may be hard to describe, but by the time you finish the first stage, you‘ll realize what all the fuss was about. You owe it to yourself to play this game, even if it means hooking up your Wii for the first time in months. Just do it — you’ll be happy you did.

In this weeks episode of Game Seers - the guys all talk about Dead Space, a whole lot of dead space.  As well as “the man” (Nintendo) - and their practices of late.  Lots of other random things happen as well, see this page (http://www.thegamingseers.com/archives/170) to see a bunch of things we talked about.

 

 Dead Spacing Out [60:36m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (68)

Last week I picked up Dead Space as planned (day one of course), and just a couple hours ago I finished the last chapter. In the end the game comes close to delivering in all the ways we knew it would; the visuals and sound are above and beyond anything we’ve seen this year; but it does fall short when it comes to some of the more technical game mechanics. Though the atmosphere and presentation are unmatched in quality, it’s the underlying details that keep this game from being truly excellent. That being said, Dead Space is still a good, maybe even great, game, and it’s an experience every hardcore gamer should try, even if it’s only in the form of a rental.

By now we all know the basics. You play as Isaac Clark, an engineer sent to repair the interstellar mining vessel, the USG Ishimura. When you arrive at the desolate ship, you quickly learn the entire crew has been turned into grotesque monsters that want nothing more than to rip you to shreds, literally. It’s not long after that the repair vessel you came in on is destroyed, and you are left to survive with only a hand full of allies (from which you are quickly separated), and the former crew of the Ishimura to keep you company. Your first goal is to survive, your second is to get off the ship through any means necessary, and you’ll need to hack your way through countless monsters to accomplish your task.

But there’s a hitch with the enemies you find in the game; to do any significant damage you need to sever their arms and legs. These monsters will do anything they can to get to you, and you need to use “strategic dismemberment” to make them unable to do so. Shoot off an enemy’s head and it won’t be able to see, but it will still attack wildly. If you take off a leg, it will drag itself along the ground to get to you. Cut off both it’s arms and it will use it’s mouth, or tail, or whatever it can to kill you. It’s an interesting mechanic, and it works as expected. After a while you begin to learn what body parts each enemy can’t live without, and it makes for some interesting confrontations, giving you something to think about rather than aiming at the head and chest over and over. Sometimes it takes more than one shot to completely destroy a limb, but the enemies will always react to the shots accordingly. In fact, that’s one thing I really liked about the combat in Dead Space, the enemies don’t just absorb bullets until their hit-points finally drop like in many other shooters, they will always react to a shot. It gives a more solid feel to the weapons, and makes encounters with large groups a little more manageable.

Though these encounters will happen quite often, they are not where Dead Space really shines. The atmosphere and presentation is what elevates this game above the competition. The game looks incredible. The lighting and particle effects are some of the best we’ve ever seen. Dark rooms illuminated only by a spinning alarm light and reserve power. Engine rooms glowing with hot ash, blasting through as the engines burn. Hallways left just dark enough to make you wonder what could be in the shadows. And the silent gloom of outer space that is left cold and still after the air has been evacuated. It all looks incredible. But as beautiful as this game is, Dead Space does suffer from a bit of repetitiveness when it comes to the environment. Since almost the entire game takes place on-board the Ishimura, the hallways, crew cabins, and dining areas all begin to look alike. The unique areas; engine rooms and industrial mining sections filled with massive set pieces, help to break up the monotony of hallways; but they are over fairly quickly, placing you back in the same old hallways all to soon. When you finally get a look at the sky near the end of the game, you begin to wish more of Dead Space took place in open air, rather than the single claustrophobic environment you‘ve been looking at for the past 12 hours. Though it was an obvious design decision to keep you trapped on the ship through the majority of the game, harkening back to so many classic science fiction films, it may not have been the best choice for a game that lasts many times longer.

The repetitive environments also compound one of the games biggest flaws, a lack of direction. Though you are given a brief description of a goal by an ally before setting out, you rarely actually know where you are going or for what reason. Throughout the entirety of the game, you are traveling to location A to get item B to return it to location C, but rarely do you remember just what those are until you actually get there, find the item, and get another briefing.
The game makes finding these locations and items easy though. Pressing down on the right thumb stick briefly draws a glowing blue line on the floor pointing to your goal, but it seems the designers use this more as a crutch than anything else. Without this marker you would never have any idea where you were going, and thanks to the limited variety of environments, it’s very hard to tell where you’ve actually been before. In place of clear goals and directions, the game designers chose to simply hold your hand the entire way, leading you to and through enemy encounter after enemy encounter, right up to your goal and back again. This mechanic is, at the same time, necessary but unrefined, discouraging exploration and causing players to simply follow along. You’re never lost, but at the same time you never quite know where you’re going.

That being said, the game does remain interesting as you slowly learn more about the Ishimura, it’s crew, and the events leading up to it’s current state. You will want to continue if for no other reason than to find out one more detail about the unfolding story. It’s done in an interesting enough manner that you will feel compelled to progress.

Better than any game before it, Dead Space never breaks out of itself, keeping you immersed in the roll almost completely. There is no HUD, all vital information is displayed on Isaac’s suit and the ammo indicator displays on the guns. When a character talks to you over com-link or via holographic video, it doesn’t pause the action or prevent you from doing anything you normally would. You can rotate the camera, brows your inventory, fire your gun, or traverse forward, all while being briefed. It keeps you in the action all the time. Something many other games should take note of. There are also no traditional cut scenes in Dead Space, you either watch them pan out right in front of you, or they are integrated with seamless animations going into and out of cinematic scenes without ever feeling like you’ve left Isaac’s shoulder.

This carries into enemy encounters as well. If you get attacked by and enemy and are forced to fend it off by hand, the camera may change angles slightly to show off the amazing animation, sometimes lasting for quite a while as Isaac fends off and beats the living daylights out of the unlucky foe. Or at least, that’s how you hope it happens. If Isaac is killed by these enemies, the deaths are done as seamless and cinematic as anything else, going straight from you controlling Isaac, to him being ripped apart. One of my favorite animation’s in the game is when Isaak gets killed by a small enemy that looks something like half octopus, half human head. The goal of these enemies is to rip your head off and take over your body, and when they do, it looks spectacular. After your head is disposed of, the camera pans in to show the enemy stick it’s legs into your neck, falling limp as it turns away and slowly pulling itself back up as the camera gets closer and pans around, walking out of frame with it’s new body. It looks like it could be part of a cut scene, but it can happen anytime, anywhere these enemies are present, and it really makes dieing seem like and appropriate end to Isaac’s life, how ever many times it happens.

The sound in this game, for the most part, is equally spectacular. The ambient noise and the harmless sound of the ship’s operation will freak you out more than anything else in the game. Every once in a while you will hear the sound of a pipe hitting the floor, or what you swear is the sound of a enemy moving around, without ever knowing where it came from, and without ever finding out. There is nothing scarier than not knowing what is around you, and this game will often have you walking around corners and through doorways with your gun drawn, so sure there is going to be something there, even when there is nothing. The sound of machinery kicking on; an engine roaring or a massive door creaking open; can be just as disturbing because, for a brief time, it makes you unable to detect enemies that may be around you, drowning out any sound they might be making. Even though enemies will rarely get the jump on you in these locations, it will put you on edge every time. Not knowing what’s around you is a scary feeling, and that’s often the effect the sound has in Dead Space.

Oddly enough, the times intended to be the most shocking end up falling flat. Whenever an enemy jumps out at you or even just walks up to you, there is such a barrage of string crescendos and noise, that it breaks any sort of real fear you may have been feeling. Humans are inherently programmed to jump at loud noises, and that works the first time, but after the fifth and fiftieth time you are hit with one of those crescendos, the effect is totally gone. When something jumps out at you accompanied by a loud noise, that is not real fear, it’s an instinctive reaction that quickly fades. Getting someone to jump at a moment like this is a cheap way to get a reaction, and every film maker knows it. It’s just that Dead Space does it over and over and over. In games like Resident Evil there was nothing more terrifying than absolute silence broken only by the sound of your own footsteps and gunshots. When an enemy noise did come out of this silence, even if it was just the sound of footsteps other than yours, you were scared out of your wits. Those games didn’t need a deafening crescendo to accomplish that. Dead Space never gives you that same feeling. Every encounter is filled with so much noise that it becomes ineffective very early in the game. Becoming nothing more than a minor annoyance by the time you’re through. You kill enemies until the noise stops and you move on. The outer space sections are the exception here. While in a vacuumed there is only muffled sound, and it works wonderfully. Sometimes less is more, and that’s something Dead Space could have really benefited from, both in terms of sound and enemy encounters.

In spite of it’s problems, Dead Space remains one of the most interesting games of the year. If nothing else, it’s refreshing to play an original IP that’s not a first person shooter. And the areas in which the game suffers are made up for by the incredible presentation. Any gamer that likes sci-fi themes, engaging story telling, and tense, violent action should definitely give this game a try. But unless you are a diehard fan of the genre, you may want to consider renting the game first.

-Aaron Thornton

I’ve been playing THQ’s new title De Blob for a while now over the past few days and feel its about time to  write a fair and descriptive review of the game that perhaps is a little less biased than some of the other reviews out there.  To clarify that statement, it seemed to me that many other reviews were written by people who were somewhat close to the game - or people who really wanted this to be an amazing game.

The Story:  Essentially you’re a blob whose objective is to save the black and white city that lost all of its color to the evil INKT Corporation.  Playing as De Blob, you must make your way through the city returning color and saving the Greylings by coloring their apartments and then adding color to them, destroying INKT propoganda devices, and there are some other challengs too.  That’s really about it.

The Premises:  As stated before you’re playing as De Blob whose mission it is to return color to the black and white city.  How you do this is to attack these monster things that have colored ink in them (which you can also blend multiple colors) and just touch everything to turn it that color.  Basically the game is a big puzzle.

The Controls:  This is De Blob’s number one problem.  The controls are awful.  To jump it requires you to flick the wii mote and then you have to haphazardly guide yourself in air with the nunchuck’s analog stick all the while battling the less than perfect camera system.  De Blob has a Kirby-esque feel when he goes airborne but has far less control which can add a lot of frustration when you’re trying to scale some buildings and meeting tons of Resistance.  Not because the game is hard but simply because it seems to be a serious design flaw.

Thoughts:  Overall De Blob is moderately fun in spite of the horrid controls.  The premises is neat enough and the animations are pretty pleasing to look at.  Yes, it can be fun at times to go around acting as a giant paint bucket but this alone does not seem to justify the $49.99 USD Price tag.  Realistically the game is worth about $29.99.  I feel the game got hyped up unjustifiably and that is why so many people have written such praising reviews.  The music is quite nice to listen to and does add to the environment but if you’re anything like me - which you may or may not be - you will see it hard to justify having to flick the wiimote to jump when a simple button press would have sufficed.  Perhaps I’m being to knit picky but to me I am greatly disillusioned in just how the game feels.  Great concept, not so great execution.  Overall I’d say the game is a 7.1 and that’s pushing it.  If you’re really into this type of game pick it up, otherwise rent it or wait for a price drop.

The Breakdown
Graphics - 8.5
Controls - 5
Music - 9
Replay - 5
Concept / Story - 8

OVERALL SCORE: 7.1