Epic and Legendary Dynamic Controllers for Disabled Gamers

Confused by the title? Then I suggest checking out PressHeartToContinue on YouTube. Thanks, Dodger, for the titling scheme. It's fun. (I hope she doesn't think I'm ripping her off...)

Anywhoooooooo...

Lots of stuff going on. First and foremost, I hope everyone enjoyed by AC:R review. I'm playing through a lot of my older games that I haven't finished yet, and I hope to be reviewing more of them soon! I will probably be doing Dragon Age: Origins next, but keep your eyes peeled. I've also started playing SWTOR again. If you've played and dropped it, I suggest picking it back up. There have been a lot of improvements since launch, and I've found it fun again after my hiatus. You can go F2P with it, but I really recommend picking up a game time card, because F2P is nerfed pretty bad.

Let's break down some gaming news!

New Xbox Inbound!

Microsoft is going to be announcing their next console on May 21! Set your calendars, kiddos.
So, what can we expect from PS4's main rival (so far)? No one really knows, of course, but there are plenty of rumors: more Kinect, probably same controller, some sort of second screen (adding on to SmartGlass), blocking used games, and (now infamously) always-on internet connection. We'll just have to wait a few weeks to see how much of those rumors come to fruition. I, for one, was pleasantly surprised by the PS4...and might be leaning that way. Personally, I don't care too much about an always-on internet connection, but I do understand why some people are upset about it. My more pressing concerns are the continuation of a subscription model for XBL and the use of Microsoft Points. My god...make it stop. People spell it "Micro$oft" for a reason, guys.

The event starts on 5/21 at 10am PST, and can be streamed at xbox.com, on Xbox Live, and at spiketv.com.

Speaking of the PS4...

Sony released a developer video highlighting some features of the new controller. I thought it was kind of neat. Check it out!

And Speaking of Contollers...

A little-known or publicized issue in video games is accessibility for disabled persons. However, Josh Straub, a former GameInformer intern, is currently leading the fight to increase awareness of this issue. He's recently entered his organization, DAGERS, into a competition in order to win some funding. Though I am not disabled, I think this is a really important issue. To me, it feels like something that would be really easily addressed by developers and hardware manufacturers, but it just doesn't happen. Please vote for DAGERS and help further Josh's noble cause, or visit the DAGERS site to donate directly.

Flying Fluid Dynamics, Batman!

I know pretty much nothing about programming or physics. But, I do recognize when these things come together and make sweet, sweet technological love. Case in point: a couple of really smart people at Nvidia have found another way to simulate water. And it's a beautiful thing.

Skyrim goes LEGEN-wait for it-DARY.

The inevitable GOTY of Skyrim is on it's way. I haven't touched any of the DLC yet, so I'm thinking I want to trade up. Seems worth it.

PHAT LEWTZ, BRO!

There's a new PC title in the works at Ubisoft that has kind of piqued my interest. This little gem is called The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot. Check out the trailer. Just do it. I actually laughed out loud. I'm seeing a neat mix of humor, Diablo-style combat, and dungeon building with a social twist. And it's F2P, so you might as well try it. I'm guessing there will be micro-transactions, but the game's only in Alpha right now and such details haven't been released yet. Do you even dungeon crawl, bro?

That's all for now. Gnome, out.

Assassin's Creed: Revelations Review - Ezio Shows His Age

I'm a long time fan of Assassin's Creed. I didn't have a 360 or PS3 when the original game released, but by the time the game became an Platinum Hit, I was able to pick it up.

I fell in love.

I now fully understand the that it's was a flawed glory. However, my first play sessions with AC1 were amazing. I literally stopped and just looked. It was one of the most beautifully rendered games I had seen.

This took my breath away in 2008.

This franchise is now four installments older and (generally) wiser. In fact, I recently completed my time with the fourth major installment, Assassin's Creed: Revelations. While I found the experience to be fun and fulfilled my AC itch, I came away with mixed feelings.

AC2 and AC:B focused on Ezio's vendetta with the Borgia family. That was a great story line filled with intrigue, betrayal, and other duplicity (not to mention incest!). AC:R fast-forwards to Ezio's later years, after spending decades as the Mentor of the Assassin Brotherhood. He has found himself deeply interested in Altaïr's connection to the Pieces of Eden. As someone who has played all the console entries of the series, this was interesting for me. Though the Altaïr segments seem fragmented with little to connect them, it was great to see the ways that he had influenced the order for the centuries to come. Additionally, the story concludes in a way that aligns both Altaïr and Ezio as peers and precursors who know they are ultimately meant to deliver a message to a man they know nothing about.

With that said, Revelations felt extremely short. It took me little over 20 hours to complete 1000G gamerscore worth of achievements, including multiplayer and excluding any DLC. Much of this time was spent achieving 100% sync within all missions, collecting MacGuffins (memoir pages, data fragments, treasures, etc), and managing my Assassin empire. Personally, I focused on the story missions up through Sequence 4, at which point I stopped to do all of my collecting and such. Once I decided to return to the main story, I completed the remaining sequences in about 2-3 hours. Stripping away all of the side missions and objectives, one could conceivably complete the main story in 5-7 hours. While I am not one to criticize the length of a game's main storyline, the length of this entry did not seem proportionate to those that came before. There are a few great twists involving Subject 16 and a wrongful death, but these come and go so quickly.

Bombs are an interesting addition to Ezio's arsenal, but really do very little to change his effectiveness.  Distracting guards is all well and good, but Splinter Cell this is not.

Despite the brevity of the main quest, Revelations is packed full of so much optional content that you will not be without something to do. Assassin missions and city district control metagames are expanded greatly, including the ability to install assassins in foreign cities, assign your more advanced recruits as den masters in Constantinople, and even defend your dens against Templar assaults. As fun as these are, I did run into some control issues. Many times, I found it difficult to know exactly which assassin I was installing in which place. The den defense minigame was also not without it's faults. Units did not feel very different from each other, and the difficulty spiked rather quickly, though it was not insurmountable.

Though the shock has worn off and I have acclimated to the current generation's graphical fidelity and capability, Revelations is still generally a good-looking game. From a distance, that is. When you get close to character models, such as Sulieman's hands when he is playing chess with his uncle, things get awfully...well...lumpy. It's the only word I can come up with. Facial animations are definitely not the best of the Ezio trilogy, either. Part of the issue is also the locations themselves. During the game, you spend time in Constantinople, Masyaf, and Cappadocia. All three of these places are generally monochromatic. There is so much brown in Constantinople, you'll think you're playing Borderlands 1.

Never thought I'd say this, but I miss the purple and green of Florence.

The voicework on display here is on par with the rest of the Ezio games. Ezio's grizzled and gravelly voice does much to show his age. Also, the inclusion of John de Lancie as Desmond's father was a great addition.

Desmond's dad, everyone. *brohoof*

Multiplayer went through some changes, as well. The biggest change is that there is a story to multiplayer. You take the role of an Abstergo agent using the Animus to train your combat skills in order to hunt down assassins. Messages from Vidic are unlocked along the way, giving you more insight into the minds at Abstergo.

Instead of unlocking abilities as you level up, there is now a currency system in place and new unlocks have to be purchased using this new currency. I have mixed feelings on this system, but it does allow you to have more control over what you get and what you don't. You can relegate less desirable abilities for later and focus on the more useful ones that fit your playstyle. Character personalization is back with some added features, such as taunts. There are a few new game modes, but they don't evolve the existing formula much beyond what it already was.

Overall, Revelations continues the tradition of each AC game creating it's own voice. That voice may be well worn with the ravages of time, but it is still unique. Though the setting harkens back to AC1 while the story and features feel more like AC2 and AC:B, Revelations uses this juxtaposition to bring Altaïr, Ezio and Desmond together in a more cohesive manner than has been done previously. The lauded "answers" that were promised in the AC:R marketing seem to be relatively minor, to be honest. More of my questions have been answered in the first hours of AC3 than they were in Revelations. I had a good time with this game, but I would not say it's a must play for all. If you're a big fan of the series, I'd say play it. But, it's not entirely necessary.

Final Score: 8/10

Logo!

Booyakasha!

Thanks to the wonderful talents of my good friend Anissa Bryant...I have a logo!

Please take the time to visit her art page to see her other work.
https://www.facebook.com/AnissaBryantArt

She's currently attempting to do one sketch or drawing every day. As far as I know, she's not missed a single one. If she did, she made up for it later.
http://anissabryant.tumblr.com/

She has some pieces available for sale as well! Check out her Etsy page here:
http://www.etsy.com/shop/AnissaBryant

Gnome, out.

Farewell and Thanks For All The Games

In case you've been in an ice cave with your feet frozen to the ceiling (watch out for the Wampa!), the gaming world experienced a great loss last week. Disney, who purchased LucasFilm in Oct. 2012, has decided to close LucasArts. Gamers my age and older fondly remember LucasArts for many things, especially point-and-click adventure games like Maniac Mansion, Monkey Island, and Grim Fandango. Aside from this, many other gamers will be more familiar with the myriad Star Wars games the studio developed and distributed: KOTOR, the Battlefront series, Rogue Squadron, Jedi Knight/Academy and many others.

I am personally devastated by this news. Granted, LucasArts has been struggling for years. Lagging game sales, mediocre reviews, and revolving leadership have been telltale signs that something has been amiss for some time. It seems that many of the people involved had a feeling something like this was coming, and were not terribly surprised. Regardless, gamers are generally quite upset about this course of action -- including myself.

Let's pause for a second.

I completely understand that Disney is a for-profit business. In fact, they are a business that has not had a good track record with video games. This business obtained a video game publisher. Publisher has not been performing well for a while and was not showing any signs that this was going to change. The business had to make a choice. Should they keep a failing developer/publisher open and risk hemorrhaging money, or close it and cut it's losses? The "business" decision is clear.

Am I upset? You bet you shiny metal ass.

Did Disney make a good, sound business decision? Sure.

Here's the official statement made by Disney about their decision:

"After evaluating our position in the games market, we've decided to shift LucasArts from an internal development to a licensing model, minimizing the company's risk while achieving a broader portfolio of quality Star Wars games. As a result of this change, we've had layoffs across the organization. We are incredibly appreciative and proud of the talented teams who have been developing our new titles."

Basically, LucasArts is dead and Disney is planning to licence third parties to make games for franchises that LucasArts had previously owned. The question now is: what's going to happen to all of these beloved franchises?

At first thought, and going by the fact that Disney has officially stated that the two current Star Wars games that were in development have been cancelled, things don't look good. It appears that many of the franchises which made LucasArts a gaming staple will be lost. Personally, I didn't grow up with most of the LucasArts adventure games. I played a revamped Monkey Island back on my PS2, but that was about it. Largely speaking, I was exposed to most of their later Star Wars games. Even at that, I'm incredibly sad about losing much of the studio's legacy.

Disney's track record with video games also fills me with dread. Even after two moderately successful Mickey Mouse games, they still closed Junction Point. Warren Spector be damned, apparently. Add in the reports that Disney never completed setting up LucasArts employees with benefits, it feels like Disney is dead set against in-house game development and publishing.

(See what I did there?)

...then I think about it more. And maybe this isn't the worst thing ever. Licensing old LucasArts franchises instead of in-house development might work out better in the long run. If you look at the history of the Star Wars franchise, at least, the best games were NOT developed by LucasArts; only published by them. Jedi Knight II was developed by Raven, Battlefront by Pandemic, KOTOR by BioWare, and X-Wing by Totally Games. These are arguably some of the best Star Wars games ever made. On the other hand, Force Unleashed was made in-house by LucasArts and got very mixed reviews. Star Wars Kinect was also developed in-house by LucasArts...and we all know how that turned out.

Though the official statement is that the current in-development games Star Wars 1313 and Star Wars: Frontal Assault are canceled, perhaps there is a chance that someone else will pick them up. There certainly seem to be some conflicting reports about this. After all, it's not completely unheard of. Sleeping Dogs began development as True Crime: Hong Kong. At some point, Activision decided to cancel the game, but Square Enix picked up the rights to it and saw it through to completion and publication. The end product received generally positive reviews, but it was not exactly a stand-out. While this precedent is not exactly promising, it does point to a possible path for these canceled Star Wars games that were generating quite a bit of buzz.

As for the old-school LucasArts adventure game IPs, the road might be a bit rougher. As pointed out by some of the editors at GameInformer, the financial returns on the adventure game franchises like Monkey Island are not huge. So, the chances of these game seeing the light of day again are questionable. Maybe Disney will refuse to sell these or license them out to avoid losing money; but at the same time, Disney could sell them if they see no long-term value in them. We can hope for the latter.

...I'm so...nervous...
(and maybe a little constipated)

One way or another, the reality is that LucasArts is now only a legacy of the video game industry. Some people are now starting to guess (read: dream) what developers may try to license and develop some of the previous LucasArts properties. As far as Star Wars games go, I think this list is pretty well thought out. I love the idea of DICE taking on the Battlefront formula, but I think RockSteady would be a great fit for both Jedi Knight and Star Wars 1313. Since they are not doing the new Batman game...well, my mind wanders. As far as the adventure games go, I think Tell Tale and Double Fine are obvious choices for most of these. Perhaps Ron Gilbert will try to reclaim some of his babies, someday. Let's not forget that Kickstarter may turn out being an unexpected wrinkle in all of this, too.

Gnome, out.