Game reviews

BioShock

Title BioShock
Developer 2K Boston / 2K Australia
Type First Person Action RPG
Platform(s) XBox 360, Windows
Kelly Score ™ 95 / 100

It was a great relief on a lot of levels to play BioShock after my rant about checkpoint saves the other day. In addition to being an XBox 360 game (also available on the PC) with unlimited saves, it is probably one of the best computer games I’ve played in a long while.

BioShock has it all: a fantastic and original story, brilliantly realized game mechanics, and stunning use of visuals and audio. The story is set during the post WWII era: your passenger plane plane crashes and you, the only apparent survivor, discover the entrance to a secret oasis…or what might have once been one. Rapture, an entire underwater city founded by a wealthy man with a passing resemblance to Howard Hughes, was founded on principles of moral and scientific freedom. Unfortunately, it seems as if something has gone terribly wrong…

Grumpy gamer rants

Checkpoint saves suck

From time to time I feel compelled to preface a posting here by a reminder of what sort of person I am.  I’ve been playing computer and console games for over a quarter of a century, heavily biased towards the computer “role playing” game, fantasy, and first person shooter genres.  I’m more prone to like something like Deus Ex or Oblivion than Doom 3, although I enjoy both types of games.  And Mario Kart or Katamari Damacy are right out. 

In a nutshell, I like games with a strong narrative: something that could make a decent fantasy or science fiction book.  Although I enjoy some twitch/combat games, that isn’t my forte.  “Childlike” games with bubblegum graphics and mostly mindless plots do not amuse me very much.

Now I’ve set the stage for my rant, the basic thesis of which is: Checkpoint saves and their cousins, single copy saves, are evil.  They suck.  They drain all of the joy out of otherwise good games.

This requires a bit of explaining if you aren’t a computer gamer…

Game reviews

Playing Fable…

Title Fable
Developer Lionhead
Type Role playing game
Platform(s) XBox, XBox 360 (emulation mode)
Kelly Score ™ 90 / 100

Lionhead games released a game called “Fable” (note: site uses Flash plugin) a few years ago. I dismissed it because a few folks who liked “goofy/cartoonish” style games thought it was a great thing.

I picked up a discounted XBox version of Fable over the weekend. Not XBox 360, but XBox- it runs under emulation mode in my XBox 360, though. This means that the graphics aren’t great. But after playing the game for (according to it’s in-game stats) a bit over 7 hours, I can say I truly regret not trying it sooner.

Gaming miscellany

XBox 360, XBox Live, Gamer tags, and the future…

I’ve been playing with my XBox 360 quite a bit lately.  One of the features I enjoy is it’s online match up, content, and “game tracking” service, XBox Live. 

I originally signed up with XBox Live when I bought my original XBox (I.E.: before I bought the 360).  It was really a poor investment- I played the old-style XBox for about three weeks, and bought (and renewed!) a full year subscription to XBox Live.  That’s two years of XBox Live, and I’m really only starting to use it now.  You  might be asking…what is XBox Live?  And why would I care unless I have an Xbox? 

Grumpy gamer rants

I’m a bad, baaad gamer…

I decided to play a little bit of Lego Star Wars II tonight.   It’s a cute game, essentially a “platformer” with very prettily rendered 2.5d graphics.  That one sentence summary is doing the game a disservice- it’s quite large and reasonably faithfully reproduces the stories from the original three Star Wars movies, albeit with a humourous/comical twist. 

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