It's been awhile since I've talked about games. Part of it is that I'm not sure what I have to say it particularly interesting or new. The other part is that I haven't really been in the mood to write much of anything. The final part is that I don't think I've played anything really substantial in awhile. So here's a bit of an update.
Ms. Splosion Man
As the title would suggest with its slight reference to Ms. Pac-Man (whose only difference, as we all know, is that she has a bow on her head), Ms. Splosion Man is the sequel to developer Twisted Pixel's 2009 game, Splosion Man, which was something I loved the hell out of when it came out, playing through the single player, and getting through most of multiplayer over the course of a couple days staying with a friend in Orlando on vacation. All that said, so far, Ms. hasn't quite captured me as much. It starts off much harder than the first game, which, while not that big a deal, can be a bit frustrating at times. There's some new gameplay features that I'm not sure were really playtested particularly well, or if Twisted Pixel ever stopped and asked "Is this fun?" As an example, within the first couple levels, you're put on a sequence of jumping from flying car to flying car, with a fall being fatal. It's not terribly difficult, but Twisted Pixel put so much work into animating the backgrounds and camera changes, that it can sometimes be difficult to tell where you are and what you're able to actually jump on. Ms. Splosion Man is, essentially, a pink stick figure, and every time you explode, she gets obscured in the blast. Combine that with controls that are maybe not quite as precision as one would like (and I'll grant that blowing up maybe shouldn't be easily controllable), and there's cases where sections are a lot harder than they really ought to be. Not that I'm complaining too much. I do really like the game, but it has some flaws that were either not apparent or simply not there in its predecessor. Twisted Pixel has also included several unlockable full motion videos, as seems to be their trademark gimmick, including an intro video for their proprietary BEARD engine. I'd recommend anyone interested to check out the first game first. It should be cheaper, if nothing else. Both are available on XBox Live Arcade.
Bastion
Another downloadable title, Bastion is an action RPG with some interesting gimmicks. For one, the whole game is narrated by another character, often with a dose of humor. If you start breaking everything in sight, the narrator says something along the line of "The Kid spent some time just raging at the world," but nothing repeats as far as I can tell, thankfully. The game world sort of grows around The Kid as he walks around. A level might start on a single platform, from which you walk to a path that flies up from below (you can fall of edges pretty easily). The art is all 2D sprites, done in an anime-inspired style, but with a very attractive watercolor aesthetic. The music that plays throughout is similarly really, really nice, and the narrator's voicework is really great (which is a good thing, since bad voicework would kill this game). All that said, it's been really repetitive so far. I'm not sure how much more I'm going to stick with it.
Child of Eden
This is the Kinect game I was waiting for. Child of Eden is the "spiritual" sequel to 2001 Dreamcast game Rez, one of my all-time favorite games. I put spiritual sequel in quotes, because there's no doubt that this is a story sequel, for what little story actually meant in Rez. The gameplay is similar, but not identical. Rez only offered a single way of attacking enemies (well, okay, two if you count the special weapon thing): target them, then release to fire. You could tap to attack, but it didn't make much difference either way. Child has this method, as well as another rapid fire attack that works better on some enemies than others. As I implied above, I got a Kinect for this. Rather than use a controller to move a reticule, playing with Kinect has you move each arm for each weapon, but only one at a time. I'm not really sold on the thing just yet. It seems to have trouble discerning one hand from the other sometimes, and it doesn't seem to add a whole lot to the game. It does turn down the difficulty, I am told. I haven't actually played more than the first level, but I'm trying to take it slow, since I know it's going to be a short game. And gosh is it pretty.
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