Bytica

In the past two weeks since E3, I’ve had a lot of people ask me what I thought of the show. I’ve generally told everyone the same story, but one I think is much more succinctly illustrated by the E3 Game Critics Awards nominees, announced this week.

Just look at “Best of Show:” — four sequels (Modern Warfare, Splinter Cell, Uncharted, Mass Effect) and one new franchise that doesn’t seem overly impressive (Brutal Legend). That pretty sums up what this E3 was about: it may have been at least a partial return to the Big Show feel of previous E3s, but in terms of the actual games, it was more about big publishers milking existing franchises like Halo or God of War or Rock Band rather than anything really new to get hot and bothered over.

Of course, not everything at E3 was a sequel or spin-off, but even many of the E3 panel’s “original” games, like Alan Wake and Heavy Rain, were titles we’ve seen many times before.  Raven’s Singularity looks cool, but the show demo was a bit underwhelming. Splash Damage’s Brink was locked away upstairs at the Bethesda booth, and I doubt many people even knew it was there. Activision made a lot of noise with DJ Hero, but it was hard to tell exactly how the game worked unless you had a back-room demo. It’s almost like publishers have gotten so comfy with the routine of marketing existing franchises that they’re not sure what to do with anything really new.

And so that’s what E3 2009 was about: a lot of stuff you’ve seen before. Which isn’t a bad thing, as the games I most want to play are titles like Modern Warfare 2 or The Beatles: Rock Band. But if you’re wondering what was new and cool this year, the easiest answer is: “the same stuff that was cool last year.”

(P.S. No, I have no idea why this text is showing up so small. Time for some WordPress investigation this weekend. )

Ten notes from the Expert guitar campaign of GH: Smash Hits:

1.      “I Wanna Rock,” which appeared in GH80s as a master track — but the lower-pitched album version — has the familiar single version included in Smash Hits.

2.      Kiss’s “Rock and Roll All Nite” has no solo. Where did it go?  

3.      “Monkey Wrench” has been toughened up a bit with some tricky rhythm parts.

4.      The live version of Pantera’s “Cowboys From Hell” is pretty decent.

5.      The live version of Helmet’s “Unsung” is not. It sounds like a bland bar band. 

6.      The master track of “Freya” is considerably less annoying than the GH2 cover version. 

7.      “Beast and the Harlot” has been made just sliiiiightly easier, so you could actually hit the first solo.

8.      The new version of “Play With Me” has an INSANE rhythm part.

9.      If it were possible, “Psychobilly Freakout” is now twice as hard as the GH2 version.

10.  The intro madness to “Raining Blood” is harder than GH3’s version, but the “Flood” section at the end is much easier. And the final chord is pretty comical.

You could hardly blame anyone for pigeonholing Guitar Hero: Smash Hits as a lame attempt by Activision to cash in on the popular rhythm-game franchise.  48 songs that have already appeared in previous Guitar Hero games? Why should anyone buy that?

A bunch of reasons, as it turns out.

Maybe it’s because there are a lot of songs from the original Guitar Hero, which was only released for the now-archaic PS2. Maybe it’s because this version includes full band support, so you can play drums or vocals and get your friends in the mix.  Maybe it’s because all 48 songs are master tracks, instead of the often-lacking cover versions that appeared before. Or maybe you just want to revisit these songs with all the engine tweaks that have been added to the series over the years (working hammer-ons!). So while Smash Hits doesn’t push the series forward much, it still ends up being a worthy pickup.

Smash Hits pulls its set list from five previous games: Guitar Hero (14 songs), Guitar Hero II (19), Guitar Hero Rocks the 80s (6), Guitar Hero III (8), and Guitar Hero Aerosmith (1). In a nice touch, the entire setlist is unlocked in Quickplay mode from the start, so while there’s a Career mode with the traditional progression, you can just skip to whatever songs you want to play right out of the box. Which is exactly what I did, going straight to master tracks of “Beast and the Harlot” and “Bark at the Moon” before starting career mode.

At first glance, the career appears to be set up similarly to Guitar Hero: Metallica: there are a handful of songs in each tier, unlocking the next one after earning a set number of stars. However, before you unlock the final group of songs, you have to complete every song before it (at least on Expert), so you can’t skip songs if you’re chasing Expert career achievements. Like GH3, World Tour and GH Metallica, the game contains similar animated cutscenes detailing familiar GH characters getting together for a reunion tour.

On guitar, the biggest in-game changes are the little tweaks added to the GH engine over the years. Obviously, functional hammer-ons and hi-def support were the first big additions after the initial Guitar Hero, and then there are later innovations like three-note chords and “slide” notes that support the GHWT guitar’s touch strip. While developer Beenox has maintained the general feel of the original charts, the switch to masters means the charts aren’t quite identical, and so most of the pack feels somewhat fresh: it’s only on the GH3 and Aerosmith tracks that the experience feels like a rehash.

And, since the entire concept behind this feature being “the first 360 minutes,” that’s about as far as I’ve gotten: completing all 48 songs on Expert, with the final Career song predictably being Dragonforce’s “Through the Fire and Flames.” (It’s the only song I didn’t 5-star.) Drums and vocals will have to come later this week, as will head-to-head multiplayer or band play, with Xbox Live being down for maintenance today. So while 48 songs might seem a little skimpy considering we’ve played them all before, there’s still tons of gameplay in Smash Hits, which I’m looking forward to digging into further.

This is the first of what I’m planning as a regular feature here: not quite a review, but impressions based off my first few hours with a game. As a reviewer, there was always a balancing act where you wanted to review a game thoroughly but you didn’t want to wait a week to post impressions, hence the title: “360 minutes.”

A lot of the time, 80% of what you need to know about a game comes in the first few hours of gameplay, so while these aren’t official “reviews,” so to speak, I’m looking at this as a way to present fairly in-depth impressions of games without having to wait a week … or pretend that I’ve actually finished the game and tested every last feature (which, sadly, most publications do). You can see the first one, for Guitar Hero: Smash Hits, above this post.

For the last few months, I’ve played a LOT of Tiger Woods 09, as I’ve been engaged in a rigorous exercise/training program where I do a lot of stationary biking, and a non-twitchy game like Tiger Woods is a great way to kill that time. So the release of Tiger Woods 10  this week was just what I needed, as I was rapidly approaching my third full season in the previous game.

One of my small gripes with Tiger 09 was the fact that the camera that follows each shot would occasionally show some lame side angle where you couldn’t even see the ball. It happened maybe 1 out of 20 times, so it wasn’t a big deal. But for my first six hours with Tiger 10, the game has taken this to an absurd degree, where almost EVERY shot is followed from some bizarre side angle. Not only is this not a terrible way to show the game from a presentation standpoint, but it also makes it impossible to judge what kind of spin you should put on a shot to keep it from rolling into a sand trap. The camera angles effectively render an entire feature of the game unusable.

So I’d like to congratulate the makers of Tiger Woods 10. For years, you’ve had a great game, but in your ever-continuing struggle to make the game look different from last year’s version, you’ve taken a part of your game that worked perfectly and broken it. Way to go!

Otherwise, Tiger 10 isn’t that different from earlier games. There’s still a PGA tour, the Tiger Challenge has been replaced with “Tournament Challenges,” and there’s a new putting system which takes a little figuring out but actually makes putting easier. More thoughts on the new Tiger later in the week as I whip through the game.

As mentioned in yesterday’s update, I rounded up a few buddies from ScoreHero to play through the Rock Band Iron Maiden “Flight 666″ DLC and record some l33t videos. It was ridiculous fun: even though we were playing most of the songs cold, we gold-starred every single song, often before we even reached the main solo.

I’ve started posting videos from these runs to my YouTube account, which you can see below. More coming later this week!

Since the release of the first Guitar Hero, both hardcore players and metal fans have pleaded for the release of classic Iron Maiden songs. We got a few scattered covers like “The Trooper” in the Xbox 360 version of Guitar Hero II, or “Run to the Hills” in Rock Band, but what we really wanted was a serious album-like release: give us all of “Peace of Mind” or “Powerslave,” etc.

What we got today was way better: a 12-song greatest-hits compilation based on the just-released “Flight 666″ documentary / DVD / live CD release, in stores today. (I guess 06/09/09 was as close as they could get to the Number of the Beast). As mentioned in my previous blog post, it’s got 8 studio tracks from various albums and a few live cuts, and it was party time in ScoreHero IRC last night as people stayed up late waiting for the Marketplace to go live with the release, with players posting their DL%’s in chat, eager to start playing through the DLC.

As expected, the DLC is HARD. Like, Megadeth “Peace Sells…” hard. On Expert guitar, the rhythm sections have the expected chugging, but the solos zigzag all over the place and there are a few parts that will undoubtedly have players scrambling to survive the song. The charting seems a little haphazard in places, but nothing worth a serious complaint.

My only disappointment, if I have one, is that two of my favorite songs, “Aces High” and “Hallowed By Thy Name,” are live tracks instead of studio versions. While I’m amazed at how good Bruce Dickinson still sounds, he (and pretty much everyone else on the planet) can’t help but strain to hit the high notes on “Aces High,” and while the live “Hallowed” is a solid version, it also has that loose, live feel that lacks some of the orignal’s magic. But even with that small caveat, it’s an absolutely fantastic DLC release that I know I’m still going to be playing years from now.

At the moment, I’m getting a feel for the guitar and vocal parts (I’ve gold starred 7/12 guitar tracks), in preparation for recording some all-star full-bad videos tonight and tomorrow. It’s going to be EPIC.

In previous years, the latest Guitar Hero game would at the top of my list of must-see games. But this year, a new GH game doesn’t really hold that same allure, because… what else can they do? In previous years, they added co-op, online play, switched from covers to master tracks, and then expanded to a full band. But now, there’s not much else to do but roll out new songs. So while Guitar Hero 5 will be a first-day purchase for me, I wasn’t expecting a whole lot of my E3 demo.

My instincts were right, as Neversoft has added a few cool features to the game but nothing earth-shattering. The big bullet-point is “party mode,” where people can drop in and out of songs on the fly — the screen condenses and expands to accommodate up to four instrument tracks (and the vocal line up top). Band play has been tweaked so each player has their own Star Power (instead of the entire group sharing one pool), and a little meter has been added to the vocal area so you can see exactly where you’re hitting and missing within each measure. (It also looks like the god-awful song selection list from GHWT and GHM has been overhauled, and it’s about time).

On the multiplayer side, there are a whole bunch of new modes: along with Pro Face-Off, there’s a mode that rewards players by maintaining streaks, one where players start at a medium difficulty and shifts up and down according to how well you play, and several other modifiers. In some ways, it feels like Neversoft is taking the multiplayer in the same direction as games like Unreal Tournament or Halo: there will always be pure deathmatch, but they’ll keep adding simple twists which can be toggled on or off, and maybe a few will catch on.

But what I’m most excited about is the set list, with songs like Tom Petty’s “Running Down a Dream” and Elton John’s “Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting” on it. Activision has already announced the entire artist list (Muse! Dire Straits!), and while the actual songs will come later, I feel pretty confident that, after GHWT’s lackluster setlist, Neversoft is making things lean and mean and all parties involved are looking are focused on getting the best songs. It doesn’t seem like there’s much innovation left on the game side, so maybe what we’ll see now is a year or two of the big music game makers focusing on refining their games, and hopefully GH5 will be the first step in that direction.

I’ve been a fan of the Infinity Ward team for a long time, starting with their work on Medal of Honor: Allied Assault when they were part of 2015, through the first Call of Duty and right up to 2007’s Modern Warfare. Just about every game they’re released placed high in our old GameSpy Game of the Year awards, and Modern Warfare 2 looks just as awesome.

The awesomeness came in the form of a behind-closed-doors E3 demo at the Activision booth, where they were showing a ice-covered level called “Cliffhanger.” Your character, “Roach,” is part of a special ops team grouped with a Captain MacTavish; the two of you start the level doing some ice climbing up the side of a mountain, and stealthily making your way around an enemy camp.

There are the expected scripted events, such as when you almost slip off the mountain and MacTavish grabs your hand at the last second, and a small bit of tutorial, such as MacTavish showing you how the heartbeat sensor on your rifle works. With all the wind and snow swirling around, you’re essentially invisible, and so the first section is loaded with lots of sneak-attack knife kills, as well as what I thought was a humorous moment when MacTavish tackles an enemy against a locker. Hey, nothing like slamming a guy against a metal locker to stay quiet.

Of course, things go to hell at some point, and you end up fighting your way across a large airfield, which also provides a convenient excuse for big stuff to blow up — something Infinity Ward has always been good at. The large -scale firefight leads up to the third section of the level: a roller-coaster snowmobile escape down the side of the mountain, complete with near-collisions, falling trees and impossible jumps.

While IW wasn’t answering questions about multiplayer, they did mention that there would be special co-op missions that unlock as you progress through the game. If you remember the airplane mission at the end of Modern Warfare, then you know what to expect: special one-off missions that sit outside the main storyline that you can play both cooperatively and competitively… which I just love.

You might be wondering, “well, how is this any different from other Call of Duty games?” In reality, other than the usual graphical improvements (which look impressive), it’s really not … and that’s just fine. In a way, Infinity Ward’s games show how pointless a show like E3 is: any developer could make a shooter and follow the CoD formula, just as Treyarch did last year with World at War, but there’s just some level of pacing, balance and polish that IW seems to get right — when you see their games, you want to play them, and once you stop playing, you don’t want to stop.

And as usual, Infinity Ward doesn’t show off these games years in advance; every single Call of Duty title shows up at E3 exactly once, a few months before a holiday release, and Modern Warfare 2 will be no different, coming on 11.10.09. In the words of Liz Lemon: I Want To Go To There.

A lot of people seemed kinda excited about Brutal Legend after seeing it at this year’s E3, but I’m having a hard time understanding why.

The demo that was running at both the EA and Microsoft booths showed what looked like a pretty basic action-adventure game, one in need of both polish and sizzle. One level had you driving a car racing towards… well, I’m not sure, because I never saw anyone finish the level. People kept driving off the side of a cliff, into the lava, or simply ending up lost without any kind of waypoint arrow or compass to show the way.

The other level was a pretty straightforward third-person button-masher, with the lead character grabbing his guitar for special attacks and beating up enemies. After just 30 seconds, it already seemed repetitive, and everyone I watched play the demo just gave up after a few minutes and walked off.

Maybe I just watched the wrong people playing, but if Brutal Legend’s main draw is a humorous story with Jack Black voicing the lead character, then the gameplay either needs to be more engrossing or lead you by the nose so you can experience the comedy. Of course, this requires that the game doesn’t get blocked by a current Activision lawsuit (which I can only assume is just ATVI lawyers looking to squeeze a few $$$ out of EA and nothing more). I think Tim Schafer is one of the most talented and certainly funny people making games, so I’d like to hope my impressions are way off, but what I saw at E3 seemed more brutal than legend.