Journalism
Bytes And Pages: Low Quality Games Becoming Common
Originally appeared in the Ball State Daily News
Shovelware is a term gaining some prominence in the gaming industry, particularly with the dearth of Wii games being released upon a willing public. Literally, it means games that are simply shoveled out of development houses at a remarkable rate, forgoing fancy concepts such as quality assurance and creativity to put a game on the shelf.
In case it isn’t obvious, Game Party 2 is shovelware. And it’s not even a full shovel.
Game Party 2 consists of 11 minigames ranging from skee ball (inexplicably retitled “Skill Ball”) to Trivia to something called Ping Cup, which is essentially one player beer pong except without, you know, the actual drinking.
Each of the games features a uniquely bland environment to play in: You’ll play Darts in a bland pub, you’ll play Shuffleboard in a bland arcade, you’ll play Trivia against a gradient background that took someone all of three seconds to produce in Photoshop. Each environment will do wonders to quell the effects of insomnia. In fact, the $30 purchase price of Game Party 2 is worlds cheaper than a prescription of Ambien, so maybe this should be looked at as an investment.
But, the environments shouldn’t be what matters in a game, the actual gameplay should be the focus. Hate to let you down on this, but the games don’t fare a lot better than the environments. Each of the games features Wii motion control, but every game relies on essentially two motions: swinging your arm up or swinging your arm down. Yeah. That’s it. Skill Ball is played with the same motion as Shuffleboard, which is played with the same motion as Horseshoes, and so on.
The physics in the game are also all wrong. Every object in the game feels like you’re playing with a stone other than the Ping Cup ball, which actually behaves somewhat realistically. In a game that relies entirely on throwing objects at other things, physics are integrally important, but obviously not that important to the developers of Game Party 2. The end product is inaccurate control and wholly unsatisfying, like trying to throw a leaden football to a 2-inch wide target while your hands are covered in automotive grease.
Also, something that should be called into question about Game Party 2 is whether or not is should actually exist, since it is essentially Game Party 1.
There’s really only one difference between Game Party and Game Party 2: 4 new games. Game Party 2 has 11 games to Game Party’s 7. The new games are Horseshoes, Bean Bags and Lawn Darts … oh boy, I’m falling asleep just thinking about them.
New games
Game Party 2 has 11 games. The new games are Horseshoes, Bean Bags and Lawn Darts.
End product
The end product is inaccurate control and wholly unsatisfying, like trying to throw a leaden football to a 2-inch wide target while your hands are covered in automotive grease.
Advice
My advice: Take your $30 and go to a real arcade with your friends. You’ll have a much better time, and you won’t have to pay for that graphic designer’s salary.
BYTES AND PAGES: Player sings praises to Rock Band 2
Originally appeared in The Ball State Daily News
Only 10 months after the release of Rock Band, developer Harmonix has returned for an encore with Rock Band 2, a game that improves on almost everything the previous game did, and that’s saying a lot considering the original Rock Band was met with near universal praise by critics and gaming enthusiasts alike.
The main feature of Rock Band 2 is, of course, the music. The set-list is the most diverse selection in a music game to date.
The 84 on-disc songs would be incredible on their own, but Harmonix has more than a couple things up its sleeve to keep players rocking for a very long time. Almost all songs from the original Rock Band disc can be exported for use in the game for just $5. In addition to the Rock Band songs, any song downloaded from the music store in Rock Band is instantly added to the playlist for Rock Band 2.
Then, there’s the slightly hidden secret printed on the back cover of Rock Band 2’s instruction manual: Some time before the end of the year, anyone who has bought the game will be treated to 20 extra songs, completely free.
Developers have focused on refining the Rock Band formula, improving it and removing some of the flaws from the previous game.
A couple of welcome changes have been made in this incarnation. Bands have no leader anymore, giving players the opportunity to guide their band through the World Tour, whether they are jamming with three of their friends or just pulling a David Lee Roth and deciding to go solo. The difficulty impedance has also been removed for the most part, although players rocking out on easy or medium difficulties will see diminishing returns in terms of fans and cash as they rise through the tiers.
The biggest new feature in the game is the online Battle of the Bands. This mode pits players against their friends in themed competitions. Harmonix has promised at least one new challenge every day, giving considerable replay value to the game for months to come.
The game isn’t without faults though. Some of the songs that are great outside of the game just aren’t suited for the game-play style, leading to snoozers like Bob Dylan’s “Tangled Up In Blue.” The game could have also used more options for character customization.
Rock Band 2 isn’t a groundbreaking sequel, but it is a brilliant extension of the brand, and at $60 it’s worth the cash to live out your rock dreams.
Two Frightful Comics for Halloween Chills
Originally appeared in The Ball State Daily News
Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on a Serious Earth
Arkham Asylum has been a mainstay in the Batman myths for more than thirty years, but it has never been explored so deeply until modern master Grant Morrison gets his hands on the asylum that has housed almost all of Batman’s villains over the years. Arkham Asylum explores the dirty depths of the institution, showcasing the darkest side of Batman’s rogues gallery such as The Joker, Two-Face, Killer Croc and Clayface just to name a few.
Morrison is able to make very sympathetic figures out of the incarcerated villains and subsequently reveals that Batman is just as disturbed and insane as the inmates of Arkham that he fights to keep in the institution.
Dave McKean’s art in this book is simply incredible. McKean eschews the typical style of the comics and explores mixed media such as painting, found objects, photography and even computer graphics to compose a brilliantly twisted vision of Batman and his sworn enemies.
The combination of Morrison’s surrealist leanings and McKean’s wildly experimental style create a book that is completely distinct from anything else out on the shelf as well as a deep and thoughtful consideration of what insanity really means and why society is so willing to accept insanity if it’s for “the greater good.”
Comic info
* Author: Grant Morrison
* Artist: Dave McKean
* Brand:DC Comics
* Price: $17.99
From Hell
The sprawling epic From Hell (which inspired, but bears little resemblance to the 2001 Johnny Depp film) tells the story surrounding the murders committed by Jack The Ripper and the investigation that followed. At 560 pages, the book has plenty of opportunities to delve deeply into the panic surrounding the murders as well as the various conspiracy theories that proliferated.
Alan Moore is a top-tier master of comics, and From Hell proves this as Moore weaves an intellectually stimulating, dense, and at all times suspenseful tale of one of the most notorious serial killers of the western world. Eddie Campbell provides a distinctly sketchy black and white style for the book, and it works well, with the illustrations evoking a good sense of dread and terror as Moore guides the reader into the underworld of 1880s England.
Another interesting thing about From Hell that sets it apart from other mysteries and other tales of Jack The Ripper is the fact that Moore presents the reader with the killer in the very beginning, an English nobleman named William Gull, a man who has been a prime suspect in various revisionist explorations of the murders.
Even though the true, irrefutable identity of the killer has been likely lost in the annals of history, Moore is convincing as he presents the evidence and shows the reader how and why Gull did those terrible deeds on the streets.
Comic info
* Author: Alan Moore
* Artist: Eddie Campbell
* Brand:Top Shelf Productions
* Price: $35