The game got recycled for me earlier this year when I realized what a great physics game with a quirky sense of humor it was for a precocious child, so my son and I played through it.

I bought Portal 2 for co-op, mainly to play with friends Kate Baker and PoorYorick, but since I’m baking cupcakes tonight (don’t ask), I decided to try out the single player game as a stop-gap.

Wow.

Valve (the developer) is brilliant. Whether you’re talking about Half-Life or Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 1/2, their management of Counter-Strike, or their entire Steam platform, they have the Midas touch. They managed to make what should have been a retread of survival horror into one of the most compelling co-op games out there (Left4Dead), and now they’ve taken platform-style puzzling by the scruff of the neck. Valve has squared off and kicked the Mario Brothers square in the nuts.

This is an adult’s platformer, filled with gallows humor, dark sarcasm, and interesting characterizations. The world is dark and foreboding, so much so that I will not play this one with the kiddo for a while. The resurrection of GLaDOS (your nemesis that you burned at the end of the first game) isn’t a surprise, but they way it happens is visceral and hysterical simultaneously.

Stop reading this review and go download Portal 2 off of Steam. You won’t be sorry.

(This isn’t a statement for or against homosexuality. If you came here seeking traction in the on-going debate, you’ve come to the wrong place. This is simply me taking the two best looking characters in the game and rubbing them together until sparks fly.)

As my character kisses her for the first time (full-on girl/girl kiss, booyah!), I see the indicator flash across the top of the screen that I earned an achievement called “Flirtatious.”

Awesome.

Nothing is more jarring, particularly in a role playing game that already makes it difficult for me to take it seriously, than seeing a bullshit message that exists firmly in the “meta” territory go across my screen. I could give two tinker’s damns about achievements in a role playing game. Most of what I want to see involves character development, choice-driven plot development, and the drive to get better equipment.

Why, Bioware? I endured it with Mass Effect 1 and 2 because I realize our less savvy console brethren need a constant reminder that they are progressing through the game; also because both of those games steered fairly close to shooter territory.  Seeing it here in Dragon Age 2 once again reminds me that I’m outgrowing the direction that the game industry is heading. Developers are spending their time on console games and giving us shitty ports on the PC.

Am I against all achievements? Actually, in shooters, I like to see them. In that case, I want to know how many times I’ve shot my best friend in the crotch, or blown up a Humvee full of terrorists with a rocket launcher. It’s useful, because the arena is competition between and among other human players.

My fear is that we’re raising a generation of gamers that expect achievements for every little thing they do. I could see a kid eating his vegetables every day for a week, then having his mom hand him a certificate that said: “ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED – VEGETASTIC!”

God save me from the idiocracy, because I think it’s coming.

WTF?

Instead of letting you assume the role, your in-game surrogate is voiced by a charming lady with British diction (like Mass Effect, only stupid). Instead of seeing your responses laid out before you (sometimes as many as five in the first game), you’re left with a radial menu that has three responses with five to seven word summaries. A cute little icon gives you a halo with wings, a theater mask, and crossed weapons, letting you know that you can be nice, snarky, or evil. What you pick isn’t always what the character says, or at best, is only an approximation.

(Yes, I typically play girl characters in video game RPGs. No, it doesn’t say anything interesting about my psychology.)

Combat uses the same basic abilities over and over again. The combat animations look more like something out of Mortal Kombat or Soul Calibur and not like the deliberate, coordinated actions of a party of medieval-technology fighters. I had to put the game on hard mode to even make it challenging, and even then, it was root, nuke, stun stragglers, tank’n'spank. I’ve gotten more challenge playing Hungry Hungry Hippos with my son.

To save money on art assets, the game keeps returning to the same places over and over again in the city of Kirkwall. I got so tired of the same locales over and over again at the halfway point in the game that I was wishing that I could get my fifty gold pieces to go on the dwarven expedition just for a change of scenery. Sure, the fiction was interesting, but if the game doesn’t support interesting world-building with great play mechanics, it’s wasted.

Speaking of saving money, the game MSRP is $59.99. Most reviews say the game clocks in between 25-30 hours, depending on how many sidequests you do and how deeply you explore the codex. I have 10 hours into it and I’m about 65% done. Really? An RPG that can be finished in a marathon weekend? And the publisher jacked the price up ten dollars? Nice.

This is Bioware’s first misstep in my opinion, and the root of that misstep lies in trying too hard to appeal to the watered-down RPG mechanics that are favored by console gamers. Bioware would have done well to polish the formula that worked well in the first game, allow users to use their saved characters, and focus on deepening the connection that players had with the world and the time invested in building their parties.

I’m already about two-thirds of the way through the game, so I’ll probably finish it, but don’t expect it to show up on my best of the year lists. Right now, it’s shaping up for a solid C+.

On a side note, PC developers who have defected (or at best, diversified) into the console segment misunderstand a couple of key points. The first is that abandoning development on the PC, or porting the console bullshit to PC, doesn’t drive PC gamers to buy consoles. It drives us to give up gaming and do something more productive with our lives. Of my friends in the big LAN party scene of the 90′s, I only know one who plays console games seriously, and he has a teenage son, and does it as a bonding activity. As developers have focused their efforts on the consoletards, the market (anecdotally) has contracted, not shifted.

The other point is that those of us who are still loyal to the platform are spending less money on hardware, and going for longer cycles in between upgrades. The era of being a viable PC hardware enthusiast is over, and with it, hardware manufacturers are feeling the bite.

Grr. Rant over.

The game mechanics will be familiar to legions of Xbox 360 fans, but were somewhat new to me. This is less a free-form FPS in the tradition of Half-Life or Borderlands, and more an on-the-rails console experience. In fact, a “jump” is completely absent from the available moves, limiting your ability to move around obstacles or fall off of ledges. Waves of enemies, each with their own particular penchant for destruction, are thrown at you in increasingly difficult combinations, forcing you to use new skills on the more difficult level to survive. (Don’t play on easy or medium, the game is a complete cakewalk on it, possibly to make it playable for our less skilled console brethren.)

The number of skills shots are mind-numbing; they are also in a significant number of situations contextually dependent upon your environment. They go by such irreverent names as “Rear Entry,” “Double Penetration,” “Meat Spin,” “Ground Chuck,” and “Trap Shooting.” The names are somewhat evocative of the setup required, but each drop shop also includes a database of discovered skill shots that tells players how to accomplish them.

The campaign flows from set piece to set piece. Most of them were a combination of tedium and awesomeness that typically accompanies console “ports” to PC, but I didn’t mind these nearly as much as some of the ones I experienced in Batman: Arkham Asylum. The environments are incredibly detailed and even made my PC sidestep a bit at high resolution/high detail. (Frame rates dipped into the high 30′s.) The dialog between characters was full of vulgar witticisms that appealed to the fifteen year old in me, although the main bad guy, General Serrano (voiced by R. Lee Emery) eventually wore on my nerves.

Multiplayer is an unqualified blast. Players are required to work together in an arena to kill enemies; to advance to the next wave, the team must meet a scoring threshold. Once  you’re past the sixth wave or so, it is essential to get team-based skill shots (for two to three times their normal points) to achieve the necessary points to advance. This is cooperative mayhem in its purest form, a great way to blow off steam after a hard day of work and hang out with your friends. I fear it won’t have the longevity of something like Borderlands or Battlefield, but as a purely jump in/jump out diversion, it excels.

If you’re looking for a quick, irreverent campaign (less than ten hours), a fun, twitch based multiplayer component that doesn’t require a whole lot of thought, then this is the game for you.

_________________
Currently listening to:
“There Will Come a Day” – Letter Black

Currently sitting:
In my man cave

When you have a limited number of minutes to spend on media, you have to make some sacrifices. I’ve basically partitioned my media interests into those three categories that fall loosely into one of three moods for me: Relaxation (reading), Vegetating (television/movie), Socializing (video gaming). (I know that Mass Effect 2 and Batman: Arkham Asylum are single player games, but I’ve worked through them with companions and enjoyed comparing notes on the story lines.)

So with no further ado, the winners are:

Best novel: Changes, by Jim Butcher

This was a tough one. Brandon Sanderson continues to dominate my taste with both of his fantasy epics. Justin Cronin gave apocalyptic vampire/zombie fiction a literary, mainstream twist, and the first two-thirds of Peter Brett’s The Desert Spear were as brilliant a piece of writing as I’ve read recently.

However, none of them have elevated their game as much as Jim Butcher. This Dresden Files outing is superlative. It is desperate and beautiful, stripping the characters to their hidden forms (good and evil), all while maintaining a headlong pace to a finish that is little short of shocking. With this book, Butcher takes the Dresden Files out of “Urban Fantasy” and firmly into the realm of “Epic Fantasy.” Kudos, sir. I already loved Butcher’s books with an addict’s fervor. Now, I find myself with Dresden itch until the next installment arrives.

Best TV series/movie: Fringe

Inception was brilliant, Zombieland (a February 2010 release) was hysterical, Kick Ass was a clever deconstruction of the superhero mythos, and The Walking Dead brought human drama to a zombie apocalypse in a way that felt both realistic and immediate.

But nothing compares to John Noble’s performance as Dr. Walter Bishop, whether it’s in our universe or the parallel one. He consistently delivers the best performance of an actor that I’ve seen in recent memory, and he does it while immersing himself in the science fiction tropes of an X-Files style show. That’s actually not fair–Fringe blows the X-Files out of the water in every respect save one. Anna Torv is no Gillian Anderson (circa 1998). I still have very pleasant dreams about spending the night with Scully.

Best interactive entertainment: Mass Effect 2

The only true competitor for this was Borderlands, a game that has held my attention (and my friends Kate and PoorYorick!) for over a year. Bioware, though, what can you say? Whether they’re producing fantasy (Dragon Age or a Wizards of the Coast property) or Star Wars (Knights of the Old Republic), their story-telling is top-notch. They’ve taken their experience and turned it into a convincing science fiction epic with a better storyline than many movies that I could name. Add to this deep character interaction, meaningful consequences for your choices, and the requirement to make sacrifices in order to win, and this is a punch in the gut.

Anyway, give the trailer a look to see for yourself:

Yes. That’s right. I want to play more video games. I did a piss-poor job of it last year, and I missed out on some gaming goodness. Pursuant to that goal, I’ve been playing a more this year. While I’m deriving some enjoyment from my primary hobby, there are  several things that fill me with rage, decanting their liquid anger into my empty soul like the devil’s own urine. Here’s a random sample of items that get my goat:

Borderlands Expansion Pack

The first time I played it, Mad Moxxi was cute, boobalicious, and sarcastically witty. Now, every time I play the arena, her voice grates, her taunts wear on me, and the loot that she drops from her high tower makes me want to put Brick’s (the tank character, and my main toon) fist through her face. This was high concept with poor execution–the arenas provide replayability, the potential for loot is great, and you get enemies/bosses from the entire game. The bad news is that it is all recycled content, and the voice tracks are repeated way too often. Couple this to fact that this should have been patched content support and not a paid expansion pack, and my knuckles want to taste flesh. (But I still play it almost every night. Go figure.)

Battlefield Bad Company 2

If you’ve known me at all, you know that I am a Battlefield fanboy. I even played that atrocious “sequel” they called BF2142 (the fewest hours I’ve spent in any Battlefield game). Now, we get scraps from the console table (Battlefield Bad Company was never a PC game, and we only got the sequel because someone in their company decided to throw us a bone). The game officially releases on March 2nd, but you can play in a one-map beta test with a pre-order. Saddling up with the old Battlefield crew (*fist bump to TulsaLAN*), I downloaded what was supposed to be a beta game.

In reality, it is an alpha, because beta at least implies functionality out of the box. I currently cannot run the game through Steam, I cannot use Ventrilo (VoIP software) unless I key the transmit button during the load process so that my mic stays open all the time, the server browser crashes to desktop, and the friends/matchmaking system is broken. When I finally do get in the game (by finding the game executable buried in my Steam directory and right-clicking to “run as admin”), it’s pretty okay. It tries a little too hard to be Call of Duty (the damage model is terribly unforgiving, and the movement isn’t as fluid as other Battlefield games).

Sniper rifle and RPG zooms are toggles, while battle rifles and light machine guns require steady “holds” on the right mouse button to bring up iron sights. Crouching isn’t a toggle either, you must hold it down. There is no prone. That’s right, boys and girls, this is a war game, and you can’t lay down on the fucking ground and avoid enemy fire.  When I quit the game tonight (playing with the wonderful Kate) and reflected on my experience, I realized that I wanted to fly to Sweden and punch the lead developer of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 in the face. Twice.

They’ve taken my beloved franchise, dumbed it down for the console retards, and then castrated what they didn’t break. I can only hope that someone in the mod community can fix these issues about four to six months down the line, or maybe even give the game something like Desert Combat was to the Battlefield 1942 series. If not, it may top Battlefield 2142 for fewest hours played in a Battlefield game.

Steam

Steam is the elephant in the room when it comes to digital distribution. I’ve been a retail box kind of guy, but recently I’m transitioning to steam. For example, I bought Borderlands and Dragon Age retail, but I’ve gotten Mass Effect (the first one), Torchlight, and now Battlefield: Bad Company 2 through Steam. It’s nice that my games and profile reside in the “cloud.” It’s a pity, though, that Steam still forces SecuROM copy protection/DRM on me when technically I don’t even own the content. I have to be connected to their authentication servers to even play the damned game, and they still saddle me with copy protection.

Are you kidding me?

Really?

I’m not going to pirate games; as a content creator myself, I fully believe that artists should be compensated for their time. Supporting a platform like Steam implicitly recognizes that I’m willing to put up with managing still another on-line account in exchange for content security and file management. That copy protection is a by-product of this should be a win for everyone. Instead, game companies have taken the opportunity to ram their DRM phallus into my mouth in an attempt to make me swallow their load of resource-hogging superfluous garbage. It’s like people are trying to kill PC gaming. I’ve refused to go the console route on general principles (no mouse and keyboard, auto-aim in first person shooters is lame beyond belief), but if I continue to have to wear an “Exit Only” sign on my ass when I buy and play PC Games, then I’ll be forced to turn my back on the platform. That sucks for everyone.

Reponse to Infinity Ward Petition

Infinity Ward is the maker of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. I’ve boycotted the game (and encouraged others to do so, as well) due to the lack of dedicated server support, the ten dollar price tag increase over standard PC Games, the lack of mod/community support. After signing the petition, I received a mass email from a community manager that was basically a big “Dear Pete and everyone who signed this petition: Fuck you.”  They detailed their sales of the PC version, the number of players playing during peak times (via Xfire statistics), and the fact that they’re “on the cutting edge” and they’re “changing the way PC Gamers interact with online content.” If by cutting edge they mean “Xbox 360″ and they want to strip features that PC Gamers demand in their games by taking an intentional step backwards, then sure, I guess it’s a success. I felt more like they were rubbing the noses of the 125,694 signers of the petition in the fact that their opinions and money didn’t matter. (It would be interesting to know how many signers actually bought the game despite their “commitment” not to.) That alone earns the responsible cretin of this organization a punch in the nose.

Let’s play Infinity Ward’s game and do a little math here. Let’s assume that 20% of the signers followed through on their promise to not buy the game (Is that optimistic? Look at the Amazon review for it.) That’s 25, 140 people.

Multiply that by the $59.99 ($60 for convenience’s sake) premium for the game: $1,508,077 sales dollars are now left on the table. If you assume a 10% profit margin, they’re leaving about $150,000 of pure, bottom line, dividend-producing money untapped. That alone is more than enough for a business unit to spend the month that it would take a couple of programmers and a user interface specialist to put in those items.

Oh, and did I mention that it uses SecuROM, too?

Since they want to play the math game, I’ll chortle to myself every time I leave the game alone in Best Buy or the Steam store and say: “1.5 million dollars, haha!”

Television Nominees

Battlestar Galactica, Season 4.5

Season 4.5 of BSG wrapped up earlier this year with an ending that was…something. I’m not exactly sure what it was, but I think Starbuck was an angel, God wanted Cylons and humans to interbreed, and somehow, a star-faring culture gave up their technology to live in peace with nature. The only way this ending could have been less satisfying is if Ron Moore drove to my house and personally kicked me in the nuts. Yet, for all of it’s dark meanderings, it did wrap up the best science fiction series ever to appear on network television. And that has to count for something, friends.

Torchwood: Children of Earth

I guess the Torchwood production team found themselves a real writing staff. After two seasons of very hit or miss episodes, they managed to wrap up the story of Jack Harkness and his (remaining) crew with an emotional, tension-filled roller coaster ride that kept me on the edge of my seat until the very end. I was amazed, nauseated, and elated throughout the production. Bravo to our friends across the pond.

Stargate: Universe

I find this series to be strangely watchable, despite the missed opportunities on characterization. Friend and former writing instructor John Scalzi saves the show from being a disaster on the technical end (although if I see those damned blue “trading places” stones in one more episode, my reality motivator will blow a gasket). If the producers listen to their fanbase and amp the character interactions, put a leash on the (epic fail) Chloe/Lt. Matthew Scott romance (I want to see Eli knock that booty out the park), and provide  a little more adventure to the story arc, this could be a strong second season winner. After all, other great science fiction shows are full of awkwardness in the first season–Babylon 5 or Star Trek: Next Generation ring a bell for anyone?

The Tudors

Sex, elaborate period costumes, and sex makes this an interesting study in intrigue, revisionist history, and drama. Jonathan Rhys Meyers is brilliant as Henry, and his rapid succession of wives and advisors provides fodder for a soap opera written in the blood of the beheaded and anti-Catholic rhetoric. This entire series is magnetic.

Honorable mention: Fringe
Biggest missed opportunity: Dollhouse

Video Game Nominees

Dragon Age Origins

This is the best RPG I’ve ever played. Period. This beats the greats of the past–both Neverwinter Nights, Oblivion, Fallout (although I haven’t played Fallout 3), World of Warcraft, Dungeon Siege, Titan Quest, Diablo, etc. Never has a game grabbed me by the heart and led me on a tale that had me emotionally invested in characters within the world. For the first time outside of a tabletop experience, I played a role in the game world, and I played it consistently and with trepidation at the consequences.

Borderlands

I’ve beaten this game with friends Kate and PoorYorick not once, but twice, looking for elusive loot and tough enemies. It is the definitive coop experience on the PC, ranking, in my estimation, even above our last nominee on this front.  What is particularly striking is the cel-shaded graphics, which provide an excellent style for the mood of the story. While the game does have flaws (the last boss battle is the very definition of anti-climatic), and the humor and sarcasm that made the game so endearing early fades in the last parts, this is definitely a strong contender for game of the year, if only because of the sheer enjoyment I derive from playing it.

Left 4 Dead 2

This is supposed to be the penultimate coop experience, but it feels a little too much like “been there, done that” for it to work in the same space. This feeling is salvaged somewhat by the awesome “scavenge” mode, new infected boss types, and a new characters to play, but at the end, you’re still killing lots of zombies.

Honorable mention: Plants vs. Zombies
Most frustrating game ever: Demigod

Film

Avatar

What can I say that hasn’t already been said? Is the story designed to make white people feel guilty for their ascendancy? Yes. Is it a retread of the classic “someone from advance culture goes native” idea? Yes. Where it differs are the sounds, the emotional impact of the actors (both real and motion-captured), and the visual effects. I could watch this movie again and again.

District 9

Low budget, unknown director, and set in South Africa–those three things make it sound like a trifecta that would lead this movie to the bargain bin. Instead, we have an intelligent thriller, shot documentary-fashion, that serves as a modern day tale on the dangers of apartheid. The special effects (performed by WETA, Peter Jackson’s effects house) rival any big-budget movie, and are all the more powerful for their judicious use in the story.

Inglorious Basterds

This one gets the nod in the science fiction/fantasy category only because it is alternate history. I’ve long been a Tarantino fan, but he takes the cake here with his easy-going, cold-blooded villain Hans Landa, his psychotic American platoon leader Brad Pitt, and brilliant cameos by several actors throughout the course of the movie. The dialog is amazing, mixing the mundane with the important, but the real scene stealing happens whenever Brad Pitt is on the screen.  This is Tarantino at his finest–an anti-Nazi revenge fantasy that re-writes the end of World War II.

Honorable mention: Watchmen, Zombieland
Epic Fail: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Funny People

The new Star Wars MMO looks absolutely fantastic.

Squee!

Bioware proved itself worthy after the excellent RPGs they made in the Star Wars universe. Their dedication to a true choice-driven narrative and their attention to detail elevates them above George Lucas in terms of story and character. I can’t imagine a studio better suited to develop the franchise in this direction.

Judge for yourself below: