Currently Playing, 12-27-15

            Recently I completed both American McGee’s Alice, one from my backlog, and Wolfenstein: The Old Blood, a 2015 release. I’ve posted “Thoughts On” features for both of them, which I will do for each game I complete or reach near the end of.

            Currently I’m playing The Witcher 3 still, with a plan to soon finish the main quest; also Alice: Madness Returns and Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze. The latter I just started today, and I’ve really enjoyed it. I also played through the main mission of Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes. I plan on getting to MGSV: The Phantom Pain early next year.

            Later this week I want to purchase Super Mario Maker. It sounds great and I want to dig into it before 2015 slips away. I recently purchased Grim Fandango Remastered, which I plan to get into later this week as well. I gave up on Hotline Miami as it got ridiculous in difficulty (this is more against me than the game. I think it’s a great game, I just started getting burned). Otherwise I’ve got Mass Effect 3 on tap.

            My forecast for next year includes the following. I list them in terms of my interest and anticipation:

~2016 forecast:

-Zelda Wii U

-Dishonored 2

-Doom (4)

-Rise of the Tomb Raider

-Kingdom Come: Deliverance

-Mirror’s Edge 2

            I don’t list X-COM 2 as I haven’t played enough of the X-COM games, old or recent, to get psyched. But I will get to them!

            I think Dishonored 2 has the chance to be another great “closest thing you’ll get to a solid new Thief game and what BioShock should have been” experience, like its predecessor (which is my top game of 2012). But Zelda Wii U is my top anticipated for 2016. It has the potential to be phenomenal, especially given what a masterpiece Zelda: A Link Between Worlds was (that was my top game of 2013).

            2015 was a great year for games, and 2016 will be too. This is great as 2014 was mostly dry for me, but dang if I don’t have a lot of catching up to do!

Thoughts On...

American McGee’s Alice

PC, 2000

EA, Rogue Software

~

 

American McGee’s Alice is an older PC game (if you consider 2000 old) that I did not play back in the day but finally got around to a couple of years ago. Even after ‘getting around to it’, it sat in my backlog for two more years. This isn’t because it is a bad game, but because it sits in a pile of other games that I incrementally play through, all the while keeping up with new releases. (It’s hard to be a gamer…) I recently finished it, and here share my thoughts.

Mr. McGee’s Alice is a straightforward action game. There is platforming in the game, and you could say it’s part platformer, but this misses the main drive of the game: moving forward and killing enemies.

It’s more comparable to Quake and Quake II than it is to any of the platformers of its era. This is no surprise given the game’s pedigree: Rogue Software made an expansion pack for both Quake and Quake II, and American McGee began his career in games working for id on Doom II.

Alice is built on the Quake III engine and feels like a mod you had downloaded for the game. The model of Alice running around acts how you would picture the Quake marine running, if you were ever to zoom the camera out to a third-person perspective in that game. You cycle through a weapon roster much like you would in Quake. There was even a moment when an enemy gave me an unintentionally helpful rocket jump, by shooting a projectile right at my feet, which sent me upwards to a higher platform.

So the gameplay is accessible action. For the most part, the game isn’t difficult, save for a few sections of tricky platforming, large numbers of enemies assaulting you at once, or maybe one of the boss battles. But the game’s save-or-quick save-anywhere feature, so wonderfully present in most PC games contemporary to Alice, blunts these segment’s difficulty.

So what do you play this game for? It can be fun to ride through a simple action game. And Alice has some strategy, as certain weapons work better on certain enemies and in certain situations. But the main draw of the game for me was being able to play as Alice in a grim fantasy setting. I also liked the characters you encountered: the dialogue of the Cheshire cat, whenever he appears, is usually well done. The Mad Hatter and other characters from the Wonderland fiction also appear, each in ‘messed-up’ form. And the soundtrack has a Quake I atmospheric-‘chillingness’ to it, appropriate as it is composed by a Nine Inch Nails member, Chris Vrenna. So the draw of Alice is the characters, the setting, and the atmosphere. And the action gameplay is good enough to hold it up.

American McGee’s Alice is a “good, not great” game that you should check out if you are at all interested in PC games of the 90s and early 2000s, or in the works of id Software alum. Oh, and, of course, if you are interested in Alice in Wonderland fiction.

 

Thoughts On...

Wolfenstein: The Old Blood

Standalone add-on and prequel for Wolfenstein: The New Order

PC, XONE, PS4; 2015

Bethesda, Machine Games, id Software

~

 

            The Old Blood is built like The New Order. There are combat scenarios that you can either sneak through or shoot through and a fair amount of character interaction and story development to break up these combat sections. There are also letters and secret areas to find, this time the secret items being gold bars. Old Blood is a solid gameplay package that results in another “first-person shooter with some extra spice” for us to enjoy.

            The characters are solid for a Wolfenstein cast. Like in New Order, player-character B. J. Blazkowicz offers up some cheesy action-movie-esque one-liners. There are some great lines in this one, many of which are only funny in context, but one I can quote here: “Well I’ll be, it’s raining Nazis.” I loved New Order’s cheesy humor, but if you didn’t, Old Blood’s won’t do anything for you. The quasi-humorous Wolfenstein 3D dream sequences also make a return.

B.J. is tracking down a document with the location of Deathshead’s weapon-making compound. B.J. must contend with Rudi Jager and Helga Von Schabbs, two greatly psychotic Nazi adversaries. Rudi has a pack of dogs he’s very fond of, and Helga’s after a long buried secret of King Otto, the Holy Roman Emperor, lost beneath a ruined church in Wulfburg. Long-time fans of the series know this is a throwback to part of Return to Castle Wolfenstein's story. So, yes, there is some occult and undead stuff here.

            Most of The Old Blood pits you against the living, and this is the stronger part of the game. The game is divided into eight chapters, which are split between two parts. The first five chapters are really good, but the last three are weak by comparison. In these latter segments—spoilers?—undead Nazi come in. The combat loses its cover-and-fire core as ‘standard’ battle scenarios are now complemented by segments with undead running at the player. The gameplay flow breaks down because of this (though you do get a sawed-off shotgun in this stage of the game, which makes up for it, I suppose). It leads into a ridiculous ‘keep-pounding-in-the-ammo’ final boss fight that long overstays its welcome.

            Personally, I would have loved more tombs, and more interesting undead enemies. Some King Otto-era zombies with sword and shield like in Return to Castle Wolfenstein would have been an interesting opponent. As it is, all the freshly undead Nazi zombies are like the Flood in Halo.

            The humor also tapers off once you get deep into the undead segment, with a strangely morose ending that sets up for The New Order. So Old Blood’s an uneven package, but mostly good, and I’d recommend it. The non-undead combat, cast of characters and humor make for a great time.

           

Currently Playing ~ 12-24-15

Today is Christmas Eve, the day I have always preferred to Christmas Day. Tonight is when my family opens gifts and really celebrates Christmas. I will be keeping Christmas by playing the Thief II fan mission “A Thieves’ Holiday” tonight. In it you don’t thieve, but prepare your home for a Christmas party. It was uploaded to TTLG.com in 2004, another great one from user Yandros.

Christmas time also means it’s time for the big Steam sale. Last night I purchased Wolfenstein: The Old Blood and played it for a while this morning. I love it, especially its references to the occult portions of Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

I also picked up where I left off in Hotline Miami. I cleared chapter 9! Only to get stuck at chapter 10. Tough game.

Otherwise I’ve been playing Mass Effect 3. I’m constantly flashing back to Mass Effect 2, which I played a ton of, but back in 2010. I love being taken back, as ME2 was one of my favorite games of 2010. It’s good to be Commander Shepard again.

It’s also good that it’s Christmas again. 2015 has been a great year for games. The only downside is that it’s hard to keep up with them all!

Currently Playing ~ 12-19-15

     One reason my gaming backlog is massive and continues to grow is because I get sidetracked. Today, I opened up Steam, and soon after saw a recommendation for a remastered Turok: Dinosaur Hunter. Yes, optimized for PC, and all that. I’ve loved the N64 version, but it can be uncomfortable to play because of the controls and a field of view that’s even bad on a TV. This PC optimized version is extremely playable. And there’s an adjustable field of view! Yes, a PC port of an eighteen year old N64 game has more graphics options than PC ports of current releases.

     I also have determined to finally play Mass Effect 3. I recently copied over my old ME2 character files to my current gaming PC for this very reason. ME3 will be the sci-fi complement to the high fantasy of Witcher 3, which I also continue to play. In Witcher 3, I have also gotten used to
the combat and bumped up the difficulty to "Story and sword!", and then again to "Blood and
Broken Bones!" This to update my earlier post where I noted I had the difficulty on "Just the story".

     I will now go against the “playing” portion of this post by sharing that this past Tuesday night I saw the encore showing of Rifftrax’s live riffing of Santa Claus and the Ice Cream Bunny. It was hilarious, top notch material from those guys, shorts included. Last night I saw Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. It was okay to good. The original Star Wars trilogy has such a mythic quality to it that no new Star Wars will satisfy in quite the same way. So I don’t expect that. Even still, nothing great about the new Star Wars. But it is good. Certainly okay.

     I know I promised new entries in my top ten lists such that said entries are now overdue. My apologies. Maybe this next week?

I will also say Merry Christmas here, lest I not post again before that holiday. So Merry Christmas! And a happy new year… though I hope I post at least once more before it’s 2016!