Also, we talk about the importance of player mastery versus game completion. Do players still want to master the mechanics of a game to achieve some “no-death” goal? Or are gamers satisfied with completion of a game? Or are they both the same thing?

Finally, Stephen joins us as we talk about why we play games.

Games: Dark Souls!

Then we pick out fragments of information coming out of Tokyo Game Show.

And we end with Gears of War 3.

Enjoy!

PS. yes, this is a week late. Been afk from technology for a while now.

You play as Travis Touchdown, and your goal is to be ranked number 1 on the assassins’ association list. The reasons are vague at best (something about buying a girl a drink so he ran out of money for video games), but really, what’s the point of having motivation in this endeavor at all? The point is that you want to be the best, and stripping all of the superfluous nonsense of other narrative-driven titles, most games are goal-centric designed with the motivation set aside as an irrelevant factor. Most games are created to reach an end game, but very few games ever gave any reason to attempt that end game in the first place. Ash wants to catch them all, but why?

Who cares? And that’s the attitude that No More Heroes satirizes. The game hyperbolizes in order to highlight the superfluous features of modern games just in order to create lengthier ad campaigns. Open world driving becomes a pointless tedium to challenge the idea that free roaming is a better alternative to simply teleporting via simple menu selection. Side quests are useless gatekeepers that restricts progression with irrelevant time grinders, which begs the questions: why are they even there and what does this say about MMORPGs that are primarily a collection of side quests loosely strung together with an overall background?

And since the narrative is almost completely disconnected to the actual game as if overlaid on top of mechanics, the pacing is absolutely dictated by the gameplay. NMH has a very simple and traditional pacing–grind, dungeon, boss, repeat. And because of this strict pacing style, characters are jarringly introduced according to the position of the game. During the side quest grind, Travis will only and suddenly be introduced to side quest characters, using simple dialog or expository monolog. Similarly, boss characters can only be introduced in the opening cinematics to the boss fight, which is also done using simple dialog or expository monolog. And as a self-aware game, Travis actually does point out the problem with this pacing design when he blatantly complains that the game is introducing new and essential characters near the very end of the game.

So what’s the point of it all? What’s the point of customizing Travis’s clothes or having characters be introduced and die in the same sequence? Fortunately, Suda seems to be saying that there probably is no point to any of this, but No More Heroes is a game, does it need to have a point at all? Simple and responsive mechanics coupled by eccentric cast of characters and story, and the final work can be enjoyable. It may not be intellectual, but that’s not the point. The point is to be entertained, and No More Heroes entertains in every parts of its detail, except of course for all the bugs and glitches that makes the game almost unplayable.

Casters: Brian Washington, Robert Chang, (later) Stephen Keating

Music by 8Bit Weapons

The developers at Sucker Punch has taken the good controls and parkour in the first game and replaced it with an over-sensitive awful parkour system. There are no distinctive features graphically when climbing buildings.  You just sort of push buttons and Cole magically scale skyscrapers with little care about the strategic and contextual elements of parkour. This is disappointing because games like Assassins Creed and Uncharted 2 have mastered these game engines. See a ledge, push a button, climb a ledge, figure out how to move up from there, pretty simple. Unfortunately, Infamous 2 parkour is a throwback to late 90’s early 2000 technology where the player just push some buttons, and some magic happens, and Cole ends up on top. It’s unsatisfying and repetitive.

In the first two hours of the game I thought the control system was going to blow the game for me–between the awful parkour, and never really knowing where Cole is going to jump because of the over-sensitive control system. As it turns out Sucker Punch had actually made a really fun game.  Flawed yes, but ultimately fun.

The story is filled with bad dialogue and awful voice acting, but you really don’t care about it because it is not the engaging storyline which matters to the game.  The simple of it is that you play Cole again.  You need to save the city and humanity from ultimate destruction from the boss known as the Beast.  As in the growing tread in games you can choose to play as good or evil.  The more good missions you choose, the more evil story line missions are locked out.

Now to this point I have not made this game sound fun, but here comes the good stuff.  The mini-boss battles are epic.  Now I realized that the word epic is overused today when talking about games, but just the scale of the bosses alone make it epic.  You have the whole city to go around in the mini-boss battles.  I found myself having to run seven or eight city blocks fighting these bosses, and they just keep coming.  All the while you are destroying the city by trying to take down theses bosses.  The presentation of Infamous 2 is visually appealing even though the game was made for 720p (not sure why they would make any game not capable for 1080p, but that is a discussion for another day).  With your powers you’re able to pick up and throw cars, destroy buildings with grenades, and take down power lines.  The physics engine makes this extremely rewarding, and it does not get old.  Ultimately that is one of the reasons the game stays engaging and is fun.  They filter enough of these mini-boss battles, which turn out to be just eye candy as the destruction mounts.

Infamous 1 was crippled by bad pacing. You couldn’t round the corner without running into battles which made the parkour and exploration aspect of the game hard to enjoy.  Infamous 2 gets the pacing perfect.  You can explore the city to your heart’s content without being bombarded with enemies when you just trying to get down the block.  When playing some games you feel the need to do all the side missions, in Infamous 2 you can do them or advance the main story without feeling like you miss part of the game.

I would highly suggest Infamous 2 to anyone who has a weekend to blow.  Its campaign is about 8-12 hours long without doing all of the side missions.  If you are like me, and were terribly disappointed in the first Infamous, definitely try out this second installment.  Sucker Punch doesn’t get everything right that it should in today’s video game market, but what the game does well, is really impressive and fun to play.

I just finished playing The Arrival, the final DLC (unfortunately) for Mass Effect 2.  I held out on playing the DLC for one reason, I don’t want the saga to end.  The Arrival sets the stage for what is going to be the final chapter in the series. The basic story behind The Arrival is Sheppard is sent to get Dr. Kenson out of prison; Sheppard finds out that the good doctor has an artifact which turns out to be the proof for the upcoming Reaper invasion. Not wanting to give too much about the story away, I will say that this installment brings together the story of the Mass Effect series thus far.

The downside of the DLC is that the battles which you engage in are not epic. Either BioWare didn’t take into account the ability level of Sheppard, or they just didn’t’ care. I found the battle sequences to drag on for too long.  Every time the game should have ended you found yourself in another pointless battle.  The entire DLC clocks out at about 2 hours, but they could have just made it 1 hour and it still would have been worth it.  If you haven’t picked The Arrival up already do so, and if you haven’t played Mass Effect SHAME ON YOU.

Give it a listen and leave us a comment or suggestion.

And music, as always, by 8 Bit Weapons

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