Masem’s Gaming Blog

Played through a campaign up through the Space stage yesterday and I’m very impressed - though still disappointed about what was once in the game that has been removed.

Cell Stage - Less esotertic version of flOw, works well but goes by quickly.

Tribe Stage - A bit repetitive but instant gratification with the evolution of your species via its rewards.

City Stage - Not thrilled with this, I suck as RTSs and had troubles getting through it the first time until I figured that the best time to attack a village is after they sent all their forces to raid yours and you’ve defeated them sounding (as I could still pump out new units as others died right there.)

Civilization Stage - Maybe a bit too easy; I did find that they didn’t mention that your city gets stuck with whatever branch (economic, military, or religious) once you set it, and wondered why I had no military units.  This felt like the stage with the least helpful hints on what to do, despite how close to any Civilization game ever was.

Space Stage - Have to agree with most everyone else, this is where the game really pays off - it feels open and expansive yet not too open (ala the Oblivion problem) as the missions help guide you with what to do.

The user content and sharing aspects are of course awesome.

My primary disappointment with the game is the loss of how the game was to determine what abilities and skills your creatures, buildings, and vehicles would have based on how you designed it.  There’s still a taste of this; most parts you install (up to a limited number, of course) give certain benefits, but there was supposed to be something more organic and less exacting about the way it is currently.  For example, adding any pair of legs gets you a speed boost, regardless of how “functional” the being may end up being; original demos for this showed that the game would have adjusted the speed bonus for strategically placed legs over useless ones, and other aspects of the design.  Similar for all other design elements.  It’s still the same user-created aspects which makes the game extremely fresh, but the lack of significant impact of how well the design aspects are put together is disappointing to see.

The other disappointment is the minimal (to some extent) impact of previous phases on successive ones.  Certainly your route through one phase sets what you are in the next, but this seems to be a choice out of three options.  Physical appearance and other aspects set in the Tribe phase don’t mean anything in the City stage, for example.  Basically, each phase is almost a unique phase with minimal bearing beyond appearance that what you created before carries forward.

This is not to say Spore is bad; it is still impressive.  It is just lacking elements that were shown originally to be in the game that are no longer present that had piqued my interest much more in this game.   Still, the Space stage alone is worth the cost of the game.

Sam and Max Season Two is a continuation of the episodic series from Telltale Games with assistance from GameTap, bringing the misadventures of the detective canine and his hyperkinetic rabbity-thing partner as they work their way through five new cases.  While the series continues to deliver the humor and intelligent puzzle solving that Season One had, there’s not the same feel of overall connectiveness that was in the first game, and the three-act approach to each episode does start to get a bit tedious.

Review Helpfulness: (1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
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For purposes of last season, I will hold off on a full review until the entire season is released; particularly since most of the general presentation elements are the same and will carry over.

So far, the second “season” of Sam and Max is looking pretty good. “Ice Station Santa” continues where the first season left off (and while its not required to have played through Season 1, you will miss a lot of the characters and setup if you don’t), this time having the duo facing against an evil-turned Santa. The game still has the same usual gameplay structure: in this case, an intro, two “acts” (a singular puzzle that requires solving several other puzzles before continuing), and an ending puzzle, but it works for the material. The puzzles themselves are not too hard, but nothing too sinister either, though some of the puzzles require multiple traversing of the the game’s sets to collect all the items as needed. The gaming introduces a hint system option that you can adjust, from having absolutely no hints to being close to hand-held through the game, which can be a nice option if you’re more interested in the clever writing and situations than the puzzles themselves. Characters include all the favorites from the last series and a few new ones that are bound to make reappearances in future episodes.

Probably the only other most notable change to date is the addition of widescreen support which is really nice.

The Orange Box has be stated to be one of the best values in gaming, containing 5 complete games from Valve: Half-Life 2, Episodes 1 and 2, Portal, and Team Fortress 2. The advertising of this is definitely not misleading - there’s at least 30 hours of high quality single player gaming and the countless hours of Team Fortress 2 really make this a great package. Mind you, there are some issues with the 360 version compared to the PC mostly in the control schemes for a few games.

Review Helpfulness: (2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
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When LucasArts canned Sam and Max Freelance Police back in March 2004 (as well as a sequel to Full Throttle) despite the team making good progress on the game, many fans feared that killed off any hopes for the adventure game genre. However, as word got around that Telltale Games had acquired the rights for the Sam and Max franchise and were working on a new game, joy spread out across the land. Telltale Games, working along with Steve Purcell, creator of the dog/lagomorph duo, has created a 6 part, episodic approach to adventure game, which was released roughly monthly over an 8 month period through several channels, including through GameTap as well as downloadable versions direct from Telltale. Sam and Max Season 1 is definitely a return to classic form for the adventure game as well as appealing to Sam and Max fans everywhere, though the episodic nature of the game does limit the difficulty of puzzles that can be put in while keeping each episode playable without having completed the rest.

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“Reality 2.0″ was definitely a different step compared to the previous games, as both the formula was different in the game structure, but also had several nice nods to the geek culture (including a Mario and a Dragon Quest/Final Fantasy and a old Zork text adventure one).

It’s still as short as the others, but now with the end of the series in sight, it’s definitely looking like a good overall experience.

I promise a full review of the ’season’ once all 6 are out, but I will say that Episode 4 “Abe Lincoln Must Die!” felt a lot meatier than the previous installments, though there are still some issues with it’s episodic nature that can get in the way (which is why I plan to replay all 6 and review at length when available).

There’s a few more twisted puzzles in this game than the previous ones with a bit more reliance on lateral thinking problems.  This one had a couple that I was stumped on for a bit more, and it took me a bit more than 2 hours to complete, so the challenge, one could say, is building.  I also liked the fact that this game felt closer in concept to Hit the Road because of the involvement of Americana within the game (though you don’t travel far at all).  Add in a killer musical number, and I was laughing all the way through this one.

Beyond the length and some of the easiness of the puzzles, I am finding that these episodes are falling into a familiar pattern.  You have basically a 2.5 act show: one set of puzzles leading to a critical event, another set of puzzles leading to a second critical event, and then a final puzzle or handful to resolve the case.  Certainly, knowing how old LucasArts games worked and playing with Inform 7 for text adventures, the separate “act” approach to adventure games is relatively easy to do and can help to box the player in from doing other things you don’t want him to do yet, but I’d like to see a bit more mix-up in that for these episodes.

Still, however, in the barren land of adventure games, this series is still a gem.

Pretty much like the last episode, there’s really nothing wrong with the game from all the usual standpoints, but it’s not very long - it just takes less than 2 hours to complete.

I think I figured out the key problem with the game - it’s the fact that by dividing up a game the length of the original Sam and Max Hit the Road into 6 parts, you still get the same amount of gameplay, but because you have to limit a puzzle’s span to within 1/6th of the game, you don’t get any really long puzzles that would exist in a full game. While I could see them putting puzzles that span episodes, the game would be a bit harder given the release schedule (you may likely have to go back to play previous episodes if you forget the details of them in order to solve the puzzle).

The linking aspect of the episodes are pretty good, and while having more Sam and Max (even any adventure game) is good, I’m wondering how appropriate the episodic nature really is.

Was able to download the next episode of Sam and Max off of Gametap, and, unfortunately, was able to finish it in one sitting today.  While most of the technical and creative factors of the game are just as good as the first game, the biggest problem I found was that it was too easy.  Normally Sam and Max has worked off some lateral thinking problems (like taking a word for it’s literal meaning, or using a tool in an unexpected, but somehow logical fashion), but none of the puzzles in Ep2 had that - they were all straight forward, and relatively simple to solve.  It only took me about 1.5hr to complete, which is unfortunate.

I’m hoping for a more challenging puzle in the remaining episodes.