FSGReview: Steve (FSGR staff)
•AudioSurf is newcomer to the booming market of really clever, small scale independent games and, well, it's difficult to summarize. My best attempt pegs it as a combination of Wipeout, Bejeweled, and a 3D music visualizer.
You begin by feeding the game any MP3; this generates a "race" course based on the beats and tempo of the provided music file. Apart from the stylized spaceship you pilot along the track, the only other inhabitants are various colored blocks and the odd powerup. Run into a block and it'll slide it into a grid under your ship. Line up three or more blocks of the same color, they disappear, and you score. All the while your ship is bouncing, the blocks are flying in, and the course is shifting, each happening synchronously with the music. Different colored blocks are worth different amounts, powerups and different ships with different abilities shake things up a bit, and you suffer a penalty for overflowing columns in your grid, but that's pretty much all there is to it. The only goal is to get as high a score as possible.
A video will give you a better idea of how it's played:
•To hear the game described, it sounds boring and trivial — and if it weren't for the musical aspect, it would be; even after watching videos of the game I wasn't impressed. However, when I finally decided to try the game myself, it turned out to be one of the most unexpectedly fun and addictive games I've ever played.
The game's music interpreter is superb and because it does such a good job, in a sense, it does make your music come alive; corny as that sounds, that's the best way I can describe it. You feel like you're racing through your music. It's an amazing symbiotic relationship: the game is entertaining because of your music, and listening to your music is more fun because of the game.
Like most music visualizers, the game will provide the best feedback with a thumping techno track, but even when given a mild classical song it does well enough — not that it'd be particularly exciting though, as the speed and intensity of the song directly correlate to the difficulty of the tracks they create.
The scoring aspect provides opportunities for strategy and motivates you to best not only your own score but the score of others: AudioSurf has an online ranking system that will allow you to compare and compete with other people who have played the same song.
•Downsides? Well, as entertaining as the game is, it is ultimately still simplistic and the concept will wear thin with extended playtime. This is a game best appreciated in occasional 5-20 minute bouts between other tasks and is thankfully well suited to such play. Unsurprisingly, the amount of entertainment value you can extract from the game is largely dependent on the breadth and quality of your music collection.
Additionally, while competing with scores online does provide motivation, it can be difficult to get a sense of progression from the game since there are no specific means of winning or losing and you provide the music being played (the game does include some built in tracks, but not a large amount). E.g. you don't quite get the same sense of accomplishment that you get from unlocking and "beating" the increasingly difficult songs in Guitar Hero or similar rhythm games.
•Ultimately, a very fun little "puzzle" game that I'd highly recommend to anyone with a good music library and those that don't mind taking a break from more traditional gaming for a little bit of synesthesia.
FSGRating:
FSGReviewer: Robert (FSGR staff)
I’ve never heard of developer Realtime Worlds before. A quick search later and I realize why; they’ve only completed two games. Needless to say I was rather surprised with the amount of enjoyment I had with Crackdown.
That’s not to say that Crackdown is a great game. The main complaint I have is that the game has a ton of bugs that will on occasion cause you to shout out an expletive or two. I played the majority of the game through co-op, so I’m not sure if these glitches are as prevalent in the single player campaign. The main issue is that enemies will disappear from the screen entirely, only to reappear a second later to shoot you in the back once you’ve just jump kicked the air. The announcer is another problem altogether. Not only is he annoying, but 80% of the time he’s just plain wrong. I don’t know how many times I heard that I achieved heights no other person can ever dream of, only to be standing at sea level.
Another issue is the story. There is none. You pick your crime fighter, spawn at the Agency, and run off to take down the first of your 21 bosses. The problem with this is you can’t fight more than one boss at any given time. If your friend is taking on a member of the Volk, don’t even bother trying to fight a leader of the Shai-Gen. The enemies won’t even appear even if it claims that there is a gang leader present. Not sure so much if that’s a glitch as much as it is a design flaw. Jumping can also be a lot more detrimental than expected when ascending large buildings, e.g. the Agency tower. The first time you try to scale that beast only to fall all the way down to your demise because you didn’t land on a platform the way you intended, or you hit your head on something you didn’t expect, will cause a bit of a whimper. A lot of those problems can be solved once you hit 4 stars in agility.
Speaking of stars, once you build up your character to 4 stars in all of your abilities (agility, explosives, driving, strength, firearms), you’re going to be having a lot of fun. The sheer enjoyment of picking up a car and tossing it at a gang of 5 people is not only fun, but also pretty damn funny. The first time you get a rocket launcher is another experience altogether. The path of destruction left behind as you make your way from one area to another is unparalleled. Getting your friend to toss a car in the air, only for you and him to blast it 100 feet into the air is a lot more amusing than it should be. As entertaining as the explosions are, I think the main selling point is the agility ability. Once you hit 4 stars and start scaling some of the Shai-Gen buildings, you’ll have your fair share of Keanu Reeve “whoa” moments. You gain stars in agility by collecting orbs, 500 to be exact, spread out across the city. While I don’t have any desire to collect all 500, I did do my fair of searching in order to max that ability as quickly as possible.
Despite a lot of the games faults, it comes through where it matters most, enjoyment. The main problem is that the enjoyment won’t last very long. You can work your way through all 21 bosses and build up a lot of your abilities in around 15 to 20 hours. Considering there aren’t really any reasons to go back, you probably won’t be laying the crackdown for very long. There is some additional downloadable content that can give you a few more hours, but I think having a GTA style game, without a lot of the GTA style side missions hurts the longevity of the game.
FSGRating:
While we have serious pretenses about FSGR, the purpose of this blog is ultimately for some friends to write about games and have some fun. So we're going to mix in reviews of some older games that we want to gripe about (like the review below) as well as the new games we play.
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FSGReviewer: Steve (FSGR staff)
•I'm going to skip the history lesson about Final Fantasy XII is a relatively radical departure from it’s predecessors and Japanese RPGs in general because none of that has any bearing on whether or not the game is fun.
So too will I forego the story summary because the specifics of the story are similarly unimportant. What is important is how the well the story is delivered, and in Final Fantasy XII this is accomplished brilliantly.
I’m not going to say the plot itself is flawless, it does delve oh so slightly into your typical overly complex Final Fantasy metaphysical craziness near the end, but not enough to overshadow the fact that the story is otherwise one of the more mature and well presented tales the industry has seen. Things ultimately do resolve into taking out the one evil guy that wants to rule the world, but somehow it never seems as contrived as it should. There’s a rich back-story here with political intrigue and interesting characters.
Speaking of the characters, while not superbly deep, they are well written, each with their own charm and believability. It also helps immensely that, for the most part, they are all very well acted (relative to games at least). Well acted not only in terms of voice but in the terms of the animation in cut scenes as well. The framing, positioning, and movement of characters in cut scenes are near perfect. The way a character casually leans against a table or the subtle use of hand gestures while speaking is a long way from talking heads on statues that we've become used to in other games. It’s one of those things where if it’s done well you don’t even notice because it simply looks real.
•Moving on to more technical elements, the graphics look fantastic for a PlayStation 2 game and the art design is suitably unique and interesting most of the time, and downright awe-inspiring at others. The music is not quite as standout, but it complements the game suitably.
•In general, the game’s presentation is remarkably well done...which makes it all the more tragic that the game is saddled by some of the most obnoxiously tedious gameplay I’ve ever encountered.
Final Fantasy XII, somewhat unusually for a single player JRPG, takes many of its gameplay elements from MMORPGs, but the problem is what makes a successful MMO doesn’t necessarily make a good single player RPG
•In a particularly egregious example of this, treasure chests yield a random reward. I’m not a big fan of random rewards in general, but they work well enough in the western hack 'n slash RPGs where they’re most prevalent. In those games the general quality of the reward is typically tied to the player level; the specific power of the item may vary according to a randomizer, but more often than not you’ll get something useful. The chests in Final Fantasy XII, however, have a set list of rewards with a random chance of getting one of the particular items on the list. The problem is that most chests have only one useful item, one which you have a low chance of receiving. The umpteenth time you open a chest only to receive a lowly potion, it’s tough to actually get a sense of reward from the rewards anymore.
Additionally, with few exceptions, the good reward is culled from a list of common weapons and armor. In the forementioned hack n’ slash RPGs, where the quality of the same item may vary by the enchantments or stats applied to it, random rewards work because of the feeling of winning a prize that you get when you luck out and receive a piece of equipment with excellent stats that could not be otherwise acquired. However, in Final Fantasy XII one “Platinum Sword” is identical to every other; at best, the only bonus is that you may receive it a few hours of game time earlier than you can purchase it. The fact that it’s common is not necessarily bad; previous Final Fantasy games and JRPGs in general often have common weapons or armor as rewards, but these are guaranteed rewards, well placed and well planned in the overall flow of the game. When you slog through dozens of useless chests to get an item that you’ll be able to buy in a few hours, it doesn’t seem worth the trouble.
Chests do respawn, MMO style, and there are a scant few chest that provide rare and powerful items, but they too are subject to the randomizer. How would a player not using a guide ever know that a chest may contain one of these items, if upon opening it the first time they received a useless item (which is likely given the low drop rates for the rare item); why would they bother trying for the respawns? In an MMO the existence of a rare reward is spread by the game’s built in populace and a low drop rate gives the "haves" players a sense of superiority and uniqueness while keeping the have-nots sending in piles of money each month, trying to acquire the item. In a single player game like Final Fantasy XII, at best, it’s poorly implement reward than many players may never know about, and at worst it exists to sell guides and artificially extend playtime.
•So I’ve complained quite a lot about the chest system, an excessive amount for something that’s a moderately small element in the game overall, but it’s indicative the type of problems with the gameplay – problems that suggest a developer more intent on implementing onerous, guide selling, MMO-alike systems rather than concentrating on making things fun for the player.
As another example, the side quests in the game are all of the monster killing variety and a majority of these have a difficulty that go well above beyond that encountered in the main quest – and I wonder why. An entertaining main quest should be the focus of a single player RPG. Side quests should supplement the main story, providing rewards to assist the player to that end and some interesting distraction along the way. In FFXII you’ve got the main question and then a series of rote tests. I suppose some players may draw some sense of accomplishment from the challenge these battles present, but success is almost wholly a matter of grinding enough levels. I find it difficult take pleasure in a victory that is determined largely how many hours I spent doing menial, unentertaining tasks. Again it seems like these battles are there merely to emulate a feature from MMOs with no thought given to whether they were entertaining, whether they fit in the flow of a single player game.
•I could go on, but really, tedious is all you need to know. The fighting system, by which you automate your characters by a series of IF...THEN commands, is tedious. The monster loot and bazaar system, through which you gain money and unlock items for purchase by selling certain combinations of random drops from monsters, is tedious. The character ability learning system (“the license board”), while not tedious at first glance, is ultimately an unnecessary step for the player because you’ll never have a low enough number of skill points to actually make choosing one specific ability over another meaningful, e.g. you can safely just choose all skills for all characters because of the abundance of skill points you get from the over-abundance of fighting in the game. None of this is fun, it’s just work.
•Yet, despite my significant gripes with the game I still finished it. Why? Well at some point I forgot about trying to do the monster hunts, I stopped worrying about whether I was going to get that 10% drop of some weapon from a chest, I didn’t spent hours in shops wondering if one type of weapon would give me higher average damage over time than another and I just played through the main quest. In this manner, with a significant amount of the game’s content tossed overboard, I was able to enjoy the story and even the odd battle here and there when they had some context. However, there are many, many more entertaining ways to spend 60+ hours of your time.
FSGRating:
At FSGR we prioritize fun factor above all else; after all, the point of a game is to be entertaining.
We encourage all reviewers to finish the games they are reviewing, but we don't require it — some games just aren't worth finishing. However, when a game has not been completed this will be so noted in the review.
Our games are rated on a four star system of course, we award whole stars only and zero stars is a possible score. Here's a rundown of what each score means:
A game that, with few exceptions, would be enjoyed by any gamer. A four star game is not necessarily perfect, but the entertainment value of the game far outweighs any flaws it may have. This is a game we'd recommend to anyone.
A solid game that is generally entertaining, but may have a few minor issues that prevent the title from being uniformly enjoyable. Alternatively, this may be an otherwise excellent game that for some reason we feel is not quite worth the asking price; for example, it's too short or doesn't include multiplayer when it would be well suited to it.
This game may have several minor or a few significant flaws that have a pronounced effect on its fun factor. A two star game may also be good game that is lacking the necessary originality or variation to hold the player's interest. An ok game, but one we might only recommend to fans of the game's genre or its particular theme (e.g. Star Wars fans only).
A one star game provides only minor entertainment value. This game may have several signifant technical or design flaws or it may simply be devoid of any engaging gameplay. We would recommend this game only to die hard fan of its genre or if it's available at a heavily discounted price.
A game with no redeeming value whatsoever. This is a game we would not recommend to anyone at any price.
Four Star Game Reviews grew out of a discussion between gamer friends on the problems with the professional game review industry, namely:
Poor use of review scales
The general concensus among gamers seems to be that any game that scores below 6/10 (or its equivalent) is crap. Why then do we have review scales where more than half of the of the score range means the same thing?
Scoring systems too granular
Several popular review sites use a 10 point system, even further breaking scores down into tenths. This is ridiculous; what's difference between an 8.2 and an 8.3 game? If the entire review scale was actually meaningful, and 5/10 truly meant an average game, what then is difference between an 8 and a 9 for that matter?
Lack of integrity
There have been several recently reported incidents of advertiser pressure alledgedly influencing the editorial process at commercial review sites. This seems an inevitability; when the vast majority of your income is provided by the products you review, how can you realistically claim the wishes of your advertisers are a complete non-factor?
Even if we assume reviewers are shielded from advertiser pressure, they are not shielded from the various methods in which publishers and developers try to gain favor with them: lavish (relatively speaking) press parties, free gifts (tchotchkes are nerd kryptonite), even something as simple as hosting reviews/previews on the developer's premesis. It's one thing to give a game a bad review when the closest connection you have to the developers are the names in the manual, but it's a completely different matter when you know them personally.
Lack of consumer perspective
Professional review sites are sent beta copies of games for review in order to have the reviews out on day of release. As a result, reviewers can not comment on technical issues that may or may not be fixed in the final version. Even when provided final versions, it's still an issue that the reviewers aren't buying the games themselves and thus have only a tenuous connection of the worth of a game versus a person who's shelling out their own cash for it.
Additionally, in order to meet deadlines, professional reviewers may rush through a game or fail to finish it at all. Pacing is very important in modern games and rushing through a title to meet a deadling can ruin the experience. A consumer, playing the game to enjoy it and not as a requirement of their job may experience a game in a completely different manner.
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