Sony, you won't get my money this time

You've probably heard about Playstation Plus. For 50€/50$ a year, you get very big demos (or "full game trials", but they are still demos, right?) and lots of games:

As a member you can expect to get your hands on at least four games a month at no extra charge. Each month there will be a selection of one PSN game, two minis and one PS one classics available on PlayStation Store for you to download. You also get premium avatars and dynamic themes each month, many of which are exclusive to members.

Whaaat??? I'm sold! No, but wait, because there's a catch... You only have access to all those games as long as you subscribe. The day you stop paying the service, you lose them all (except for special offers like the downloadable version of Little Big Planet)

So your they are not really "free" games, and you are paying to keep them for a limited time. They don't use that word, but you will be renting those games. (So, if during your Playstation Plus subscription there's a special offer to buy them cheap, can you still buy them or you are stuck with this rental?) That is one of the things I hate about this current generation of digital downloads: you don't want to think about it too much, but you know that sooner or later the service will be discontinued and you won't be able to download the stuff you paid good money for anymore. So my beautiful list of games from Steam will be gone, just like that... But at least you accept that as something that will happen in the distant future. In this case, "your" games are like hostages being held by Sony, and if you ever get tired of this service, Sony will say to you "if you ever want to see your loved games alive, you have to pay the ransom!". Are you prepared to give up all the games you've collected during your time as a Playstation Plus subscriber?

I was prepared to be a day-one customer because I thought I would keep all those games. But now I'm not going to join in, even if they promise me a downloadable version of Uncharted 2 with a personalized welcome message from Nolan North... unless they change their mind so I get to keep the games. Maybe if we all rejected this system, Sony would get the message. Otherwise, they will understand that most customers see this rental as an acceptable service, and others will copy it in the same way many publishers are already copying EA's nasty Project $10, including (naturally!) giants like the evil Ubisoft, THQ, and even Sony itself!

Playstation Plus is not that great. The only "big thing" about it would be cross-game chat, and that's not even a launch-day feature (I'm sure they will offer it in the future, though). So my advice is, buy the games you want from the Playstation Store, and forget about paying to have a taste of games you'll still have to buy. Otherwise, you'll be helping to move the games industry in the wrong direction.

Splinter Cell - Destruction

Splinter Cell: Conviction feels wrong. It's one of those games that (if you care about Splinter Cell, anyway) makes you think "this is not going the way it should", like Deus Ex: Invisible War, which wasn't a bad game, but it also deviated too much from what a Deus Ex game should be.

Conviction is a mess in many ways. First, Sam Fisher doesn't feel like the same character. He's old and battered, as he should be, but now he looks ape-like, and his eyes have pretty much disappeared. Even if the graphics are really detailed, he looks less human than ever. He's now an unstoppable killing machine.

The story is as subtle as a jackhammer. Somebody killed his daughter, so he wants revenge. This is the excuse to present him as somebody who doesn't care about anything, and who just kills everyone in his path with no remorse, unlike all the previous games which were about surgical strikes and careful stealth. Very early in the story (like, in the second level or so) you discover that she's not dead after all (spoiler!!), but does that change anything? No, not really: Fisher continues on a rampage, and the game keeps beating you on the head with images and dialogues about your daughter, over and over, after we just don't care because we know that she's still alive, though Fisher doesn't seem to care about anything else, even about Irving Lambert. Oh, the game tells you with a throwaway line that you killed your best friend (a very optional choice from the previous game) but Fisher never shows any pain or guilt about that whatsoever. So no "Oh, I thought my daughter was dead, so I didn't mind killing my best friend. I'm an idiot!". There's a scene that tries to suggest that by projecting words like "guilt", "lies" and such on the walls in giant letters (again, sublety!), but when Fisher finally catches up to what was obvious for the player a few hours earlier, he doesn't show regret, but anger. At this point, I guess we are supposed to feel sorry for Fisher, but he just looks stupid. Yes, the game is full of bad writing, and that's just a sample of it.

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SC: Conviction also seems to believe, like Batman: Arkham Asylum, that showing a lot of people dying is cool. The "climax" of the story takes you through a virtual tour of empty, boring White House hallways and rooms with lots of dead people around you. Family entertainment! (Modern Warfare 2 did something similar with the Washington setting in smaller doses, and it worked considerably better). Also, there's a lot of torture (inflicted by the protagonist!) that seems ripped straight from THQ's The Punisher.

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So there's a lot of bad shooting? What else? Well, everything is streamlined for the dumb, assuming players will be overwhelmed unless the game holds your hand all the time (the stylish messages telling you what to do and where to go get old very soon). You don't even have to hit a crouch button: if there's a big pipe in your way or you have to enter an air duct, Fisher ducks automatically. Also, you are really fast, and you can climb a very tall building in 30 seconds. Altair and Ezio never were so quick. It feels almost like a parody.

Still, the game still forces you to be more or less stealthy, not only in those annoying "if an alarm sounds, you are instantly dead" stages but also during the rest of the game, because if the enemies discover you, it's pretty much impossible to line up a shot with a keyboard and mouse. I didn't have any trouble at all playing the unfairly maligned Alpha Protocol, but shooting in the PC version of Splinter Cell: Conviction is just a pain. And that is too bad, as Sam Fisher is no longer a spy: he's now a soldier. We even get a contrived Modern Warfare-like flashback to the first Iraq war which soon becomes a below-average cover shooter that feels jarringly out of place and stupid (you are wounded and can't take too many hits, so why don't you just stay of the road to avoid the enemy soldiers? But there's an invisible wall...). This is not Splinter Cell! What is this, Soldier of Fortune Payback?

Ubisoft seems to be doing everything wrong lately. Now I see it's not by chance that the Splinter Cell series director called it quits a few weeks ago. And just now, the guy behind the Assassin's Creed series has also left the building after completing the new, unnecessary "Assassin's Creed 2.5" sequel. Ubisoft Montreal, one of the best game studios in the world, seems to be in trouble. And we all just believed the rumours when somebody said that Michel Ancel had left Ubisoft too. Hmm... Something has changed. Ubisoft is no longer a company where creativity is respected and high quality is always to be expected. I hate what they are becoming now.

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One more thing: I finished the game in one day. But, unlike all the previous Splinter Cell games, I don't think I will be playing this one ever again.

Scary new games

There are lots of new games at this time of the year. It's E3 again! Well, Los Angeles is too far and I couldn't afford the journey anyway. I could afford a trip to this year's Gamescom in Cologne, but it's still too early to know if I will be able to go. Well, what about all the new games? There are just too many, so let me talk about just a few of them.

The Guitar Hero games were getting stale, so Neversoft's main competitor Harmonix has decided to present the new, innovative Rock Band 3. Now there's a keyboard, and there will even be MIDI guitars and the possibility to connect your real MIDI instruments (like my really nice Roland drum set) to the game. The good thing about this is probably that these games are slowly leading advanced players to real musicianship, as the advanced difficulty is almost like playing a real instrument. The bad thing is that, well, you are still playing along other people's music. What I like about playing (about real playing, not the make-believe variety that these games brought to the table) is that you can change the solos, improvise, try a new rhythm to make things more interesting. Because I'm a musician myself, I feel there's still a limit to what these games can offer me. I don't want to play along a song: I'd rather just play a song, because I can, because I have the chops for it.

Let me give you an example: it's cool to follow Pink Floyd's "Another Brick on the Wall", but what happens if you just want to jam for a while and just keep playing? Here's a video of my old band doing just that. But with Rock Band you just mimic the song, and that's the end of it. Will Rock Band titles give you that opportunity in the future? That would be really cool. But would regular players even want that? I'm not the best person to answer that.

Super Scribblenauts promises adjectives that offer a lot more options than before. But are these new options any fun? Because the problem with the first game was not the lack of options, but their faulty implementation. Guys, we don't want more options, we want better options. This time you are not fooling anyone with the "hey, you can do anything!" hype. Just give us a good game, OK?

Homefront is... well, just a stupid far right wet dream turned into a videogame. Inspired by one of the most absurdly paranoid movies ever, Red Dawn. It's usually easy to present the Russians as the bad guys, but in this case the developers try to sell the idea of a Communist invasion making it look as real as possible, if real means "Korea is just like Nazi Germany". You know, Modern Warfare 2 wasn't just a good example of great storytelling, but at least they bothered to create an acceptable -even if flawed- excuse for the main conflict (you know, that level). Now it's just "Koreans are crazy and want to kill us all!"). I'm curious about the game, but I can tell you now that I'm not going to pay a cent to fuel paranoid fantasies, even if it turns out to be really good.

There are just too many new games to comment about all of them, so I just won't. Oh, but there's another thing... Today Super Mario Galaxy 2 has been released in Europe. You should definitely check out that game. It's awesome.

Alpha Protocol's rift - A mystery

A few days after Alpha Protocol's release, a lot of us are still shocked about all the bad reviews it got in the good old USA, which forced people like me or these other Spanish guys to hastily defend the game even before we were done with it. The game has been received warmly elsewhere and players all over the world love it, as I showed at the end of my full review, so why all that hate?


Vlad Andrici tries to study this phenomenon in this article, trying to check all the facts and find an explanation, but it still doesn't make any sense. What is going on? Now, I hate to turn too paranoid, but I've come to think that there are some reasons that don't have anything to do with the quality of the game. First, as Andrice points out,


I've noticed for a long time that many magazines/review sites tend to overlook some pretty noticeable problems that certain games coming from big-ass publishers and developers have, while the "not so hyped" games tend to be hammered for the same issues.


That is so true! If a GTA or a Metal Gear Solid game is released, it automatically gets top marks. Yes, it's a completely populist attitude but it's not going to go away soon (most players actually go crazy if they don't get those unrealistic reviews, anyway). But some game must be seen in a negative light so it doesn't look like reviewers love just everything. And it looks like it's Alpha Protocol's turn.


Also, I hate to turn to ideological explanations, which always look crazy no matter how you present them, but I'm really starting to think that American reviewers are not OK with having a company called "Halbach" (a dead ringer for Halliburton) as the bad guys in Alpha Protocol's story, while the head of the effing islamic terrorists is depicted as a man of his word. Blasphemy!

But I don't know what to think. Thankfully, this game was released a bit earlier in Europe, so when bad reviews started to drip from the US, a lot of people already knew that the game was much better than what they were being told. And you can influence someone to not buy a game, as in this case, but it's different if you are already playing the game... and enjoying it.

I hope this whole thing is not disastrous for Obsidian. As far as I'm concerned, they have delivered the goods with their latest game. If my review didn't convince you yet, I'm telling you again: Alpha Protocol has great writing, and decent gameplay, so if you love RPGs, you should definitely try it.

And speaking of good writing, I really enjoyed this in-depth article by Chris Breault about how important writing is, and about the way careless scripting can ruin the whole experience, using Splinter Cell: Conviction as an example of how bad a game can be because of that. You should read it!

BONUS: Someone sent me this article which says that core gamers are male and casual gamers are female. Well, SuperViv, JR and I are both things at once, and we are not hermaphrodites! Or, at least, I wasn't the last time I checked. Let me have a look again...

Alpha Protocol - A review (kind of)

WHAT I THINK (This review has two parts. Go to the end of this entry to jump straight to what players think)

This is not just a review. This is a defense.



Alpha Protocol is a great game. Professional troll Jim Sterling from Destructoid has decided to wage a war against it to see if the internet follows his lead. But he is wrong.

Let's be serious for a minute. Sterling claims that AP is a 2/10 game. Really?

If you read from an alleged former Obsidian worker that the game was mismanaged by Chris Parker, even if that happened to be true, it wouldn't mean that AP is a waste of your time. It may be just the opposite, depending on your tastes. This is not an AAA game that you have to like. This is a game that may interest you if your favourite games are Deus Ex and Vampire: Bloodlines.

What is wrong with this game, then? A lot of people say that AP doesn't offer great shooting and a great cover system. But, you know, GTA IV didn't either. It didn't matter because the game was cool. AP is not a shooting game. It's an RPG game with shooting.

Other people say that it's crippled with bugs (if "I don't like what they did here" or "sometimes the menu takes too long to appear" can be considered game-killing bugs). Well, in my two playthroughs I didn't find a single bug. My game never crashed, and I didn't find any weird stuff like the things that players around the world are finding in Red Dead Redemption (I'm sorry if I'm picking too much on Rockstar's stuff). I think they are prejudiced against Obsidian because of their previous games, and now "Obsidian = buggy games" is another internet meme.

About the mini-games? During the first hacking mini-game I was completely lost. But it was my fault. After that, the mini-games were fair enough. But, of course, you need to spend some points in your tech skill so they don't become a nightmare later. Same with the shooting: some reviewers/players automatically assumed the shooting was abysmal because it felt so imprecise at first. (Have you played Deus Ex lately? You couldn't hit anyone at first)

Maybe my positive opinion comes from the fact that I chose to play first the game without shooting anyone. Yes, it's possible to play this in that way. If you do that, it plays basically like Splinter Cell (why nobody hasn't declared this game a "Splinter Cell rip-off" yet?), . A couple of weeks ago I decided to try the "big" version of Splinter Cell: Double Agent (I had played the alternate "small" version using my Wii), and the whole thing is almost unplayable, either on PC or on PS3 (I own both versions). This isn't mentioned in most reviews (maybe because they played it on Xbox 360 and it didn't suck there?), but that was a mess. AP is alright.

(A brief aside (mild spoilers): It's possible to finish the game without killing anyone, with two exceptions: you throw somebody off a bridge in a cutscene and he's ran over -this is listed as "death by collateral damage" in your statistics-, and there's a boss battle against a main character who is placed in a tower that you can't reach to subdue him with martial arts. This is intended by design, because if you follow the story closely you will hear about his father, a senator, who is probably intended as a future villain if a sequel is made.)

Before you say "oh, but I want to shoot people!" I'll say that after finishing the game I started another playthrough allowing myself to shoot just everybody, and it still feels OK. The shooting in all the Splinter Cell games previous to SC Conviction was worse! I can only assume that in 2010 players are now expecting Call of Duty production values in every single game.

The music is OK but nothing special. The main theme is a blatant "James Bond Theme" rip-off, so bad that it makes you wonder how it got approved (maybe Chris Parker really liked it). Shockingly enough, there are no themes by Alexander Brandon (main composer from Deus Ex) listed in the credits, though he allegedly contributed music and audio. He left Obsidian after working in this project, like Allen Kerry, the lead character artist. (Was Parker as unreasonable as that anonymous guy said?).

Now, for the good stuff. Despite all the criticism directed at the graphics because they could look much better, the character design is actually great (every main character is instantly identifiable), and unusually for a game made with the Unreal Engine, here people don't look like action figures.

And then, the story. Well, even Jeff Gertsmann, not a forgiving reviewer, admits that the story is so good that it makes up for the less-than-stellar shooting: "There are parts of Alpha Protocol that I feel are totally amazing and absolutely worth seeing, but you'll have to trudge through a lot of very disappointing stuff just to see it."

While it's true that Mike Thorton is a bit on the bland side and not a classic character (even the name -or alias- doesn't have a ring to it), other characters are. Mina Tang is very likeable as your main 'handler', and Nolan North, usually overused as a Nathan Drake sound-alike, breathes life in the likeably psycho Steven "Don't call me Steve" Heck.

And the freedom. Oh, the freedom. There's no other game like this. When you play it a second game, you see how every decision changes everything. Other games make the script ambiguous to avoid facing the consequences of what you did, but here it's taken to its full extent, with voice over recorded for any possibility. And the game is not linear! You can visit any of the three main locations in any order, so if you go to China after you go to the two previous locations your character complains because the two previous safehouses were really nice and now you are supposed to live in a dirty apartment. In my second playthrough, I went to China first, so he just said "This place is a dump!".

You really feel like you can shape what happens around you. It will not be the same at all if you try to say something flirty to a girl when she likes you and when she hates you. Your reputation is not just a statistic: it really changes how other people treat you. This is just amazing, and you wonder why other games don't do it.

And then you realize why: because people will tear you apart if you use up your resources trying to let you be free instead of having great shooting.


If what I said make it sound at least interesting, go play this game. If you still aren't convinced, keep reading and listen to what other players thought.


WHAT PLAYERS THINK


I recommend to go to this post in Rock, Paper, Shotgun and read the comments left by users. Many of them acknowledge that the game grows on you and that it's a great experience. Here's a sample of what some players think:


"The Sombrero Kid": "if this had come out before Dragon Age and Heavy Rain it'd've been universally praised and a masterpiece of non-linearity despite it's lack of polish."

"Ihzr": "Alpha Protocol is amazing. If you'd put it next to Mass Effect, it would be the same sort of comparison like between Stalker and Crysis: big budget polished shiny sparkly mainstream mediocrity versus... something else. A pretty amazing something else."

"Mitza": "It's a strange game, but it's really enjoyable. All the extremely negative reviews I've read are an absolute shame. This is the kind of game that deserves a sequel, because they could fix the major flaws and refine&improve the rest of the game."


"jaheira": "Just played AP for another three hours and it's getting better and better. Stealth works great. Amazing silenced pistol action. Some of the best dialogues I've experienced. Might be game of the year so far for me."

"Javier-de-Ass": "loved this game. (...) I've read some impressions from across the net, especially Americans seem to despise this game, and I simply can't relate to any of the criticisms. Not to the shotting [sic] complaints, not to AI complaints, not to general jank complaints (...). I didn't come across any big bugs in the game."

"Mercurial": "By modern standards to a modern audience this game is flawed.

However, look past all that and it's a real gem. The comparisons to Deus Ex and Bloodlines (sans bugs for me at least) aren't blowing smoke, the more I play it the more I see the similarities."

"BL": "Probably the best in any action-RPG ever made, in the history of videogames, so that should get some recognition I think. But as a shooter, it's below average."


About bugs and control:

"jaheira" again: "It's not buggy. One incident of getting stuck on the scenery is the only problem I've had in 11 hours."





"jti": "I'm playing the game with keyboard+mouse and am having no trouble at all. Nothing to complane [sic] about them."


And as a summary, a guy called Wulf summarizes my opinion about the general reception for this game. Just go and read it.