2K Drive first impressions

2K Drive unexpectedly dropped into the app store this morning at a price of $6.99. I'm always excited when someone has a go at making an at least semi-legitimate racing sim for any platform. While iOS devices suffer from some control issues, I have greatly enjoyed the Real Racing series in the past and I recently got into Colin McRae Rally for a spell. Owing to this, I bit the bullet and paid my seven dollars. So far, I've spent roughly forty minutes with the game, not enough for a full review but certainly enough for first impressions.

I'd previously thought the game was going to be free to play, as every screenshot I'd seen up to its release indicated a two tiered money system. At a price point of seven dollars though, I was hoping they'd scrapped all of that. I personally feel that free to play models tend to break games, giving them wonky progression and generally ruining pacing.

Unfortunately, the two tiered money system is still alive and well in 2K Drive. This goes a long way towards making the game feel like a free to play experience, with pop ups constantly reminding the player that they may purchase "stars" and "coins" for real money. Thankfully it looks like some hasty last minute balancing went on to justify the price point. Coins, the premium currency have so far been handed out with relative frequency. After my forty minutes of play time, I have about fifty coins, while the most expensive cars top out at around eighty coins. Stars on the other hand, seem next to useless. No vehicles or performance modifications can be purchased with stars, and the currency is only good for buying very basic cosmetic mods and repairing cars between races.

But how is the game its self? Well, so far its a bit of a mixed bag. I've already heard people complaining about the controls and indeed, they do take some getting used to. The problem here seems to be that 2K Drive wants badly to model body roll and suspension movement. Unfortunately this adds a bit of a delay to steering reactions. The driver turns the wheel, the car leans, settles and then starts turning. It's far from immediate and when driving from the outside (default) view there's little visual indication that the car is going to turn for the first half a second or so. This leads to more steering lock. As a result, simple lane changes often turn into your car careening into the guard rail on the middle of a straightaway. In car view makes the game more playable, as the player can visually see the steering wheel move, in the drivers hand without the split second delay. It still takes the car a moment to turn, but its far less unsettling.

The physics of the game are interesting. In some ways they remind me of some of the earlier Gran Turismo games, there is a very heavy handed feeling of weight transfer. Slam on the brakes and the tail will lighten up, sometimes alarmingly, with sometimes terminal results. My Datsun 240Z wasn't willing to power oversteer, but i wouldn't be surprised if some very basic drifting were possible in this game with some of the more powerful cars. There is of course a drifting mode, that I have yet to experience, but I suspect the physics are modified in this mode to make drifting easier.

Aesthetically the game is quite nice. It looks slightly more cartoony than real racing 3, but its too close to judge weather one is truly better looking than the other. Sounds are generally alright, but nothing groundbreaking.

It appears as though there are 27 cars in the game, which is quite frankly not as much as I'd like, especially considering two of those cars are the new Dodge Dart in different trims. However contrasting this are a couple of very interesting choices, include the Local Motors Rally Fighter and the Icon FJ45. Curiously the car classes are ranked from a minimum of "I" to a maximum of...."C." Yes, that's right the highest rank is "C." Super extremely weird.

Right now I can't recommend this game to anyone who isn't desperate for a new racing sim on their iOS device. Luckily I was. If you're really into sim style racing games and you're willing to master some prickly controls, have at it. The rest of you guys should wait for the game to be patched for better balancing and a bit of sorting out regarding the controls and camera.

Dragon's Crown Review

I went hunting for Dragon's Crown a couple of days ago. I had it ordered on Amazon first, but the release date came and went without them having shipped it. So I cancelled my order and ran down to the local Gamestop, only to discover that they were out as well. Undeterred, I signed on to the Playstation Network in hopes of downloading the title. I searched for Dragon's Crown and came up with nothing. I was about to give up my search when I noticed an obscure "Dragon's Crown theme" being hawked on the PSN store. On a hunch I clicked it. It had a link to where I could finally download the game off of the store. Lord knows why it was so hard to find.

Once I downloaded the relatively small file (less than 2GB) I was off to go quest and relive my childhood of playing the Dungeons and Dragons arcade games and Golden Axe. And relive them I did. Dragon's Crown captures the essence of early beat em ups in a way that hasn't been done among big budget games in a decade. It is a resounding success for anyone who is expecting and wanting a truly old-school-style arcade game with modern depth, loot and character building. The question as to weather or not it's a fun game though, is much more complex.

The most immediately striking thing about Dragon's Crown are the graphics. Put simply, they are stunning. There are no polygons here and everything is hand drawn and two dimensional. Unlike most 2D games these days, there is no low-res retro feel, the designers instead opting for gorgeous high resolution drawings in a vaguely anime style.  The game looks and moves stunningly. This is what I imagined video games would look like in the future back when I was eleven.

Unfortunately, stylistically I have some complaints, namely the over-exaggerated breasts and butts of some of the female characters. The game is cartoony, so it doesn't exactly clash with the style, but the game also features relatively normal looking female characters, none of whome look out of place in the least. It's certainly not a deal breaker for me, but I'd like to be able to show this game to my girlfriend without feeling ashamed. I currently can't do that.

The game does its best to inject some variety into the age old hack n slash gameplay. Magic users have magic points which must be periodically charged; meaning that battles are a struggle between casting powerful spells and spending the two to three seconds it takes to recharge. Melee classes all have a variety of movies and can all temporarily lose their weapons. Several melee classes can even block, supplementing a dodge move that is available to all classes.

The right analog stick controls a pointer which can be used to direct an NPC thief that follows the party around. This thief provides access to any locked doors or chests, but will also loot any fallen objects which are left sitting for too long. He is both an integral part of the quest and a constant annoyance, creating an interesting dynamic. The pointer is also used to resurrect allies, find secrets and deprive enemies of their fallen weapons.

As a result, the game is pleasingly complex and players always feel like they have something to do, other than just jam on the square button repeatedly. Bosses are tough and require plenty of well timed dodges in order to exploit their attack patterns.

The game is not without weaknesses, my biggest complaint being the loot system. While nothing is fundamentally wrong with the in-game loot, the whole system feels just a couple of years too old. The menus and inventory management could use streamlining and the game doesn't constantly delight players with new and interesting weapons and armor in the same way as Diablo III or Borderlands II. Magnifying the problem is the need to identify all items, which is expensive enough that players will end up selling most of their loot without even knowing what it is.

Other minor niggles include the game locking its online portion until the players have completed a large portion of the single player quest. The game works great online, but don't expect to play it with friends until both parties have spent several hours with the game on their own. A curious choice for a game that is designed to be played primarily with other people.

The biggest fundamental problem facing Dragon's Crown, is convincing players to spend hours and hours on a genre of game that was originally designed to eat quarters in five minute intervals. The game does a masterful job at jazzing up the genre with a myriad of features, but it also steadfastly refuses to step too far out of the norm for what the genre offers. Being the deepest isometric beat-em-up ever made still doesn't guarantee that the game has enough depth for many modern gamers.

But for anyone who grew up playing and loving Final Fight, The Simpsons or X-Men, Dragon's Crown will likely delight. It pushes its old school inspiration to the technological limit without ever hinting that it's anything other than exactly what it is. It is unapologetic in its retroness while still utilizing modern game making techniques. And for anyone sure about what they're about to get into, it's a once in a decade kind of game.

BeamNG First impressions

The BeamNG tech demo was released the other day and I wasted no time in downloading it. I then said "screw it" and just bought the alpha without ever even playing the tech demo. It was a cool $15 towards something I'd love to support. There are apparently four developers, so they can probably use the cash and this is obviously a labor of love. Good on them.

Of course BeamNG is still in its alpha stages so it would be unfair to really call this a review. There is currently no AI, and much like Kerbel Space Program, for now its just a sandbox. It also crashes pretty frequently and it took me roughly a day to figure out how to get my steering wheel to work. Some of the physics are wonky and content is still somewhat sparse.

That said BeamNG is pretty impressive at its core. Obviously the way cars crumple up when they have accidents is the highlight here. Seeing it happen in real time is pretty great. The aftermath of a big wreck looks excellent, with bent body panels and missing pieces. Even more impressive, to me at least is the way cars run with minor damage. Go over a pretty big jump and its possible to bend frames leaving cars juuust a little off. A large part of BeamNG at this point is simply hitting stuff and seeing what can be driven away from.

The rest of the physics simulation is actually a lot better than I'd been led to believe. The cars definitely still need a little work in the handling department, straight line stability in particular needs to be ironed out and cars feel unnecessarily floppy. The mid engined supercar is nearly impossible to drive, due to a total lack of stability. But the actual friction physics are quite good. Weight transfer effects handling in the proper way, and the limits of adhesion are extremely "soft" meaning small angle drifts are attainable and can be controlled with the throttle. This is extremely impressive stuff for a game that is primarily focused of driving offroad.

Leave the roads and things get even more interesting. Again, things need to be ironed out. Brakes are too weak and the trucks generally feature too long of a first gear to do any serious rock crawling. But much like the on road stuff, the potential is clearly there. Tires deform nicely and suspension movement is meticulously detailed. It's not as good as Off Road Drive in this regard, but it has potential to be in the same ball park.

And of course there are mods. One of the joys of PC gaming is installing mods and BeamNG appears to already have a somewhat strong community. Days after its alpha release, I already have a couple of new cars and a new course providing a cherry on top of what has so far been a great experience.

I'd encourage anyone interested in driving games to check out BeamNG. It's showing a ton of potential.

http://www.beamng.com/content/

Download the tech demo here

http://www.gamershell.com/download_102365.shtml

ZOMG STEAM SALE! Now listen to me rant about how hard NBA 2K13 is!

One of steam's biannual, wallet eviscerating sales is going on right now and I'm trying desperately not to get sucked too far in. So far I've only bought Dragon Age Origins and NBA 2K13. I'm only a couple of hours into each game but I'm having a lot of trouble with both of them. It's not trouble related to game design as they're both excellent games, no the trouble i'm having is that I suck at both of them.

I used to have Dragon Age Origins for Xbox 360. Or a roommate did, or I rented it or borrowed it one time. The point is, that I once played about 60 percent of the way through the game before giving up. Funny how much I've obviously forgotten since then.

The first character I created since purchasing the game on Steam was a human noble warrior. I chose this because after staring at the character creation screen for several minutes, I decided that this was the least likely option I would've chosen last time around. Choosing him this time would ensure that my game play experience would be as different as possible.

It took me almost 20 minutes before I realized that the first time I played Dragon Age Origins I had also apparently chosen a human noble warrior. Oops.

I started over again, this time with a Dalish Elf rogue. This time I didn't recognize any of the introduction. I was happy until about an hour in when I started dieing repeatedly. An hour or so later and I'm still dying constantly, though now i'm pretty sure i've hit a wall. I couldn't open a single chest in the entire dungeon due to not having enough lock picking skills and the boss simply shrugs off all of my best efforts to kill him. I can't even get him down to a third life.

I know Dragon Age Origins is a good game, but it sure feels dated. Autosaves are a bit too few and far between, the camera doesn't quite work out the way i'd like it to and gameplay is a strange hybrid of "modern RPG/MMO" style controls and Baldurs Gate style "pause based strategy." None of this is awful or crippling, it just makes me realize how much our expectations have moved on in just a few years. I expected the graphics to be what bothered me most, but instead i'm annoyed at almost everything besides the graphics. Strange.

This brings me to NBA 2K13. I actually own NBA 2K11 and 2K12 as well. I'm a pretty big basketball fan and the NBA 2K games are always really highly rated. There's just one problem i have with them. Despite 40 plus hours of time spent trying to learn them, I am still AWFUL at both games.

I'm not exactly sure what it is, perhaps a lifetime of playing NBA Jam and NBA street as a kid, but I can't for the life of me perform even the most basic of moves in a serious basketball simulation, or any sports simulation for that matter.

The players almost never do what I want, beyond move a particular direction and shoot when I tell them to. In modern basketball games, much more is required if you ever want to make a shot. A big part of the problem is simply remembering the controls. There are a myriad of basketball moves that can all be performed with various button presses. Unfortunately most of the moves are modified by a somewhat imprecise (to my fingers at least) analog stick as well as by actual court position. The chances of me figuring out what to do and then actually remembering how to do it are extremely low. I'm often left wanting my basketball player to do something but not actually remembering how to do it for a few seconds. In a game that's based mostly on timing this is a crippling problem.

I think sports simulations need to take a page from the Gran Turismos and Forzas of the world and figure out some sort of "driver assistance" for people who didn't grow up playing them. Traction control and stability control were implemented into Gran Turismo 3 and Forza came up with the idea of a racing line that reacts to how fast the player is going. These are both incredibly good functions that make hard core simulation games accessible to people who otherwise wouldn't want to play a racing simulation, or perhaps who are just bad at video games.

The best thing about driving assists are that they can be turned on and off independently of AI intelligence. This is crucial as it provides a much better level of customization for players who understand the fundamentals but simply can't make their fingers do the right things.

Hopefully there will be some sort of assist in the future when I inevitably get NBA 2K14, because right now playing basketball games makes me feel like a child trying to learn to ride a bicycle without any training wheels.

Kerbel Space Program

A couple of months ago I picked up Kerbel Space Program on Steam. It's part of Steam's early access program, which lets gamers purchase a game still in development to help fund indie studios. In return, these studios give gamers access to the early alpha and beta builds of the game.

I bought Kerbel Space Program after being urged to do so by my friend. He had been playing it obsessively which led me to believe that it was more than just a half broken alpha build of something that didn't work yet. Indeed I was correct, as KSP was already remarkably polished by the time I started playing it a couple of months ago.

Kerbel Space Program pulls of an interesting trick, it reminds me of some of the best physics based games of my childhood, while remaining completely original. In it's current form, KSP is essentially a sandbox, allowing players to design and build multistage rockets which can then be fired towards the moon, or other celestial bodies.

KSP is both accessible and rigorously a simulation. The tone is generally light and cutesy. There are no humans, the player instead taking control of little green men (Kerbels) who wish to fly to the "mun."

The rocket designer takes a cue from Spore's Creature Creator. Pieces are picked out with the mouse and simply dragged into place. Everything is laid out nicely and intuitively and there are lots and lots of pieces available with which to create rockets (and more available with mods.)

Once a rocket is completed, players are invited out to the launch pad to try and send their rocket up into space. This is where the game starts to really bear its simulation teeth. There is an immediate sense of heft and players are given an idea of just how much fuel it takes to escape into orbit. Too heavy a craft will have trouble lifting off without more rockets, but more rockets means more fuel, ballooning weight out to the point where structural integrity begins to become a problem. Players must find the sweet spot between these factors if they want to have any hope of making it into orbit.

Once airborne, players must compete with the atmosphere for a while where winglets and aerodynamic aids are essential. Once in space, the player is invited to open up their map screen where they can zoom in and out and have a better view of the solar system. The map screen is both incredibly helpful and essential to gameplay. It gives players a perfect view of their current trajectory while simultaneously allowing them to control their craft, initiate burns and speed up or slow down time. A smart player can use the map to manipulate orbits and eventually end up where they want to go.

I put twenty plus hours into KSP and never managed to land anything. It was not the main focus of my sandboxing, but I know it is possible to do so, as my friend gloated to me by sending a screenshot over of his landed space craft on Mun. The few times I did try landing reminded me of the old 2D game Lunar Lander of which there have been many variations. Of course the Kerbel version is in 3D and is thus much much more difficult.

As often happens with this game, I was reminded of my childhood glory days while playing KSP. At different times KSP has evoked everything from Microsoft Flight Simulator, to X-Plane, to even the old Glider series. At every turn, I feel like KSP is taking its cues from the classics of the genre.

The fact that I played twenty plus hours of an unfinished game should be indicative of the hard work that went into and continues to go into Kerbel Space Program. The truth is that there's even more to the game that I haven't gone into. There's an entire space plane builder separate from the rockets and orbital navigation is practically its own highly complex but ultimately intuitive mini game. I'm excited for the eventual full release of KSP, but highly encourage anyone who is interested in physics, rocketry or astronomy to pick up the early access version of the game. It's shaping up really nicely.

Bridgy Jones Review

Bridgy Jones makes a good argument that the iPad is not ruining gaming. While the App Store may be filled to the brim with the worst kind of free to play, pay to win "video games," there is another side to it as well. Innovative, polished, cheap and fun games are released nearly every day to a wider audience than ever before. And while many of them aren't amazingly compelling or life changing, they do represent a great value per dollar argument when it comes to fun.

Bridgy Jones is not the best game on the app store. Far from it. But it represents to me the best thing about the app store. This game is one dollar. Despite it's price, it is polished, well presented, thought provoking and above all fun. In short, it does its job better than it has any right to.

The game its self is pretty simple and honestly, not terribly original. It's a physics based bridge building game where players are tasked with...well building bridges. After designing a bridge or two, players are given control of a train which must then be driven across various bridged chasms. Simple, but effective!

The game is effective for two reasons. The first is that bridge building is and always has been fun to me. The second is that Bridgy Jones is ridiculously well polished. The sound effects, the music, the menus and the graphics are all indicative of a game that should cost far more than one dollar. Everything moves around smoothly, with beams shifting into place with a satisfying pop. Touches like a dotted line circle to show players maximum beam length help make gameplay easier, lessening sources of unintentional frustration.

It's not perfect, a couple of the puzzles required some slightly hokey gaming of the physics in order to complete, but I'm not convinced I couldn't have beaten the level a more natural way.

Bridgy Jones is a solid little title and I'd recommend it to anyone who is interested in physics puzzlers. Cheap, disposable but not low quality, are attributes I can live with.

Bridgy Jones is $0.99 and can be found here on the App Store.

Magic 2014: Duels of the Planeswalkers review on iPad

I was pretty into Magic cards as a sixth grader. I remember losing a lot. I remember games being fun but mostly I remember thinking "man this hobby is expensive!" It was the last thought that ultimately stuck with me and led me to abandon the hobby after about a year. I didn't think about Magic much for the next ten plus years, until i discovered Duels of the Planeswalkers on Xbox Live.

Duels of the Planeswalkers was an excellent, if somewhat simplified version of Magic. Crucially all of the systems are still intact and the game managed to digitize the over all feel of playing a game of Magic. Equally crucially for a nerd like myself, was the ability to play against a computer, dropping the "friends needed to enjoy this game" count from one to zero.

The original Duels of the Planeswalkers, was  a huge success, and Wizards of the Coast has followed it up every year with a new version, generally featuring more and different combinations of Magic cards, along with new play modes. However since Wizards of the Coast is still in the business of selling real ACTUAL Magic cards, they have limited the Duels of the Planeswalkers experience, never allowing players to build their own decks. This is a major part of what makes Magic fun. Unfortunately it was also a big part of reason why the Duels of the Planeswalkers games quickly started to get stale. While I played countless hours of the first two Duels of the Planeswalkers games, I just couldn't get into the 2013 version.

Never the less, a new version is out for 2014, and I thought to myself "this time it'll be different." And by golly for once I was right. Magic 2014 is interesting because in many ways it simplifies things, offering fewer play modes than in the last couple of versions. For instance, four player skirmishes and multiplayer games are still available in Magic 2014, but there is no longer a single player campaign built around it. Personally, I find this to be a good thing. While the four player battles of the past looked good on paper, the reality was that I didn't have the patience for it. Late game situations in particular saw AI taking what seemed like decades to make a decision as simple as "play a land card."

The trade off however is that Duels of the Planeswakers is finally FINALLY offering some sort of digital deck building. It's not an enormous part of the game however, and it's still pretty obvious that Wizards of the Coast is being very conservative in order to avoid cannibalizing actual card sales. But deck building has finally arrived and it's actually pretty good fun while it lasts.

The deck building portion of Magic 2014 takes place in it's own little single player campaign and in online play. Dubbed "sealed play" mode, players initially start out with six "booster packs" which are virtually opened and spread out on the table for examination. It's nicely done and does a passable job of capturing that "what'd I get?" moment fairly credibly. The game makes sure players all get the same number of "rare" and "uncommon" cards, but the actual cards themselves appear to be random.

Once players have opened all six booster packs they are presented with an excellent deck building interface, which allows sorting by color, rarity, type and casting cost. Any amount of land can be added for free and the game will tell players just how strong their deck is. Several other useful statistics are visible at a glance, the interface driving home just what a great game Magic 2014 could be if Wizards of the Coast would allow it.

Unfortunately, two decks, a short single player campaign and multiplayer are all that's allowed in sealed play mode. Additional deck slots can be purchased for real money. For some, this amount of content will be enough. The inclusion of multiplayer is particularly important, given Wizards of the Coast stand offishness regarding deck building. Indeed, sealed play is pretty good. It's just visibly and very obviously not as good as it could be.

Regular non-sealed play is, of course back and better than ever. The campaign feels a little bit shorter this time, but it flows nicely, alternating between serious battles and smaller puzzle like encounters. While previous versions of  Duels of the Planeswalkers have featured these before, 2014's encounters feel much more fleshed out and are generally "themed" better, being tied in with a loose narrative that passes for a plot.

The game is otherwise much as its always been, though the default decks are a little more interesting to me than the last couple of times around. This could just be a personal preference, but i'm defintely enjoying the regular single player campaign much more than I did with last years version.

It should also be noted that for the first time, I'm playing this game on an iPad, rather than on an Xbox or a PC. I bought the game within hours of its release and have thus far encountered ZERO bugs. The interface is excellent, the controls, smooth and intuitive. It just works really well on iPad and I strongly encourage owners of multiple platforms to spring for this version if they can.

Magic 2014 is on sale now in the app store, on Xbox Live and on Steam. It's ten dollars and worth every penny to any casual Magic fan. Pick it up right now if this describes you, its a glorious return to form after last years somewhat disappointing version. Yes, its not perfect, being visibly and obviously not as good as it could be. However forgive it for its deliberate hamstringing and there's still an excellent game to be found at an unbeatable price.

Magic can be found on the App store here, and on steam here.

Trackmania 2: Stadium Review

I've been vaguely aware of the Trackmania series since it's introduction ten plus years ago. However for some reason I've never actually owned any of the games, often dismissing them as being just a touch too arcadey or simply choosing to spend my money on something I wanted just a tiny bit more. This time though, the latest game is only ten dollars. I figured I'd give it a try and if I liked what I saw, I'd pick up other games in the series at a later date.

After spending a day playing Trackmania 2: Stadium I still don't know weather or not I like it enough to recommend it and to continue with the series. It's honestly one of the simplest games i've played in recent memory, putting a huge emphasis on the fundamentals. And while those fundamentals are reasonably sound, I just don't know if there's enough complexity to keep me entertained in the long run.

While i've never played a Trackmania game, I'm not entirely new to the car platforming genre. I played Hard Drivin and Race Drivin as a kid and eventually spent many hours playing San Fransico Rush. I even have Jet Car Stunts on my phone (it's great, check it out.) Trackmania: Stadium is a solid update to those titles which is good, but it manages to add surprisingly little to the genre which is much less good.

As the title would suggest, Trackmania is about tracks, not about cars. There is only one car, it handles how it handles and is capable and fast enough to complete any track set forth by the game. This keeps things simple, it makes track editing and creation much easier and makes the game incredibly fair and balanced with regards to multiplayer. However, it also makes the game infinitely more boring to a car fanatic like myself.

Such a blatant disregard for the automobile really bugs me. I originally played this game with a wheel and pedals, but found that it controlled much better with an xbox 360 controller. I do not doubt that some of the best Trackmania players out there simply use a keyboard to control their cars. This is awesome for all of those who view the car a means to an end. Much less so for those of us who view the car as an end in its self.

The handling model in particular, is boring enough that I have trouble playing the game for long periods of time. It works flawlessly, but there is little to no joy to be found in the actual movement and physics of the car on the road. The challenge comes from picking the correct line, not from making the car actually stick to its line at the highest possible speed.

The tradeoff of course, is that there's really very little for me to complain about with regards to the tracks. They are awesome. And while I wish they weren't constrained by the stadium setting, the ten dollar price of admission and the fact that there are other Trackmanian games without such constraints leaves this argument without a leg to stand on. The variety within the stadium environment is staggering and the environment its self is actually plenty big enough to keep things interesting. The track editor is fantastic, easy to use and allows for endless possibilities.

As a budget game, Trackmania is light on single player content. There aren't a whole ton of predefined levels, and the difficulty curve leaves plenty to be desired. Unlocking new tracks goes from "incredibly easy" to "nearly impossible" in an extremely short amount of time. I could also have dealt with a bit less of an emphasis on time when it comes to unlocking levels. Some of the harder levels are challenging enough to simply complete, having to do them extremely quickly as well, just makes for repetition ad nauseum. I appreciate wanting to master a level, but some people simply want to explore.

Multiplayer on the other hand, is pretty brilliant. If you hate waiting in lobbies, Trackmania might just be the multiplayer game for you. Generally, about fifty cars are out on the track at one time. There is a time limit to finish the race and whoever gets the best time on one single pass through the course, wins. There is no clipping between players, so everyone else is essentially a harmless ghost. The beauty of it is twofold: one, it allows for immediate restarts if you mess up and two, it gives you a ton of other players to follow if you get lost. Multiplayer also makes use of user created levels, which can often be even more fun than what comes with the game.

Overall, Trackmania 2: Stadium is a solid little title for ten dollars. Many of my complaints are a function of genre, rather than the game its self. It is light on bells and whistles, but it never pretends to be anything it isn't. Trackmania 2: Stadium is a perfectly serviceable little driving platformer with loads of replay value and a great multilayer experience.

Trackmania 2: Stadium can be found on steam here.

Gunpoint

With so many indie games available these days, it's sometimes hard to know what to get excited for. However Gunpoint managed to build a fair amount of hype for its innovative and simplified take on stealth action gameplay. After watching a little bit of the gameplay on a youtube feed, I decided to get the game when it was released, which happened to be the other day.

After playing the game for a few hours I can definitively say two things about gunpoint: It's really good and it's really short. According to Steam, I got through gunpoint in a grand total of 2.8 hours. Was that 2.8 hours worth the nine dollars i paid for it? Absolutely. Gunpoint impresses with it's slick and simplistic controls, it's great writing and it's stealth puzzler gameplay. The only low point comes at the end when you realize the game is over.

I knew I was going to like gunpoint within the first five minutes of the game. The plot is explained via phone calls between the protagonist, Richard Conway and various characters that hire him as a "freelance spy." Conway is caught in a sticky situation and is implicated in a murder. In the best noir tradition, he ends up working on both sides of the eventual conflict, with plenty of deceit and back room deals to go around. During these portions, players are given limited control over what Conway can say, playing him as either a straight shooter, or as a hilariously sarcastic pessimist. Regardless, the writing in Gunpoint great, especially for such a short indie game with so much else going for it.

Gameplay at first appears to be a standard side scrolling stealth action affair. However there are several notable differences between Gunpoint and say Mark of the Ninja. In most stealth games, being seen involves running around until guards forget you're there. In Gunpoint getting seen pretty much means getting shot and loading a saved game. It's much more "stealth" than it is "action"

The other big gameplay piece is the ability to rewire electronics. With a swipe of the mouse wheel, the view changes to highlight all the electronic devices in the building. This means everything from doors, to motion detectors to cameras to trap doors. This can all be messed with and connected to one another. For instance, players can rewire a camera, so that when it detects them, instead of setting off an alarm it opens a door. Or a trap door, above which a guard is standing. The possibilities are endless, really bringing a strong puzzle element into the game.

The catalyst for all of this is a set of simple, usable and intuitive controls. WASD move around and activate switches, press and hold the mouse button for jumping (this works really well, just trust me) and a swipe of the mouse wheel puts everything in electronics mode. The mouse pointer also turns red it is in an area that guards can see. Everything about controlling and interacting with the game makes sense and is intuitive.

Gunpoint impressed me. I wish it was longer, but my understanding is that it was made pretty much entirely by one guy. I'm not going to hold its short length against it considering it was only nine dollars. Anyone on the fence about this game should go pick it up. It's well worth your time. 

Combo Crew

I normally try to avoid budget titles from the app store. From time to time there will be a diamond in the rough, but I mostly avoid anything under three dollars. I like games with a decent amount of production value. I also find that cheaper games often try to make up the difference with lots of in-app-purchases, which pisses me off to no end.

I was wary of Combo Crew for these reasons. I'd seen it around for a few days and though it looked interesting, I was extremely worried it was just a Trojan Horse for in-app-purchases. Eventually a review by toucharcade.com convinced me that I should check it out. Against my better judgement, I decided to plunk down two dollars and see what the fuss was about.

As it turns out I was very wrong about Combo Crew. In fact, I have yet to find ANY in-app-purchases in the game. This tickles me silly, because on the surface of it, the game is begging for them. The entire premise revolves around a fairly simplistic combat system, that would quickly get boring if not for the massive number of unlockable moves. The game even has a standard and premium currency system, but again there is no option to use real money to buy more of it.

This fact alone is enough to convince me to sing Combo Crew's praises, but the game its self isn't half bad. It is still a budget title, offering comparatively little to do other than beat up an endless string of bad guys, broken up into waves. However what it does do, it does well.

The first thing people will notice about Combo Crew are its simplistic yet totally functional controls. Virtual D-pads on touch devices almost never work in a satisfying way. I feel like they always detract from the experience, rendering a great game merely good and an okay game nearly unplayable. Combo Crew smartly avoids them, using a series of swipes and two finger swipes to choose attacks and combos. It works really well and is a good example of the type of innovation I like seeing in touch devices, marrying old school gameplay with a creative and new way of doing things. The only time it falls down are during the "super moves" which task the player with swiping as quickly as possible for a short period of time. Thankfully these super moves do not constitute the vast majority of the gameplay.

The graphics are also nice, though to be brutally honest i'm not a fan of the art style. Still, there is a clear artistic direction present, the color palette is nice and varied and the animations are top notch.

The sounds are even better and really add to the game. Sound effects match the cartoony graphics perfectly, with perfect punching and kicking sounds that feel forceful yet not over the top. A good punch sound can go a long way when it comes to player satisfaction. The music is also good, catchy and upbeat, with an increasing tempo as things get more hectic.

Combo Crew's weaknesses stem from a lack of verity. Level backgrounds are static, breaking the illusion that I'm playing an old school brawler like Final Fight. Only four combos can be selected at any one time as well, making for gameplay that isn't particularly varied at any given moment. Often times i'll end up repeatedly spamming one or two slightly overpowered combos. 

However for two dollars, these transgressions can be forgiven. Combo Crew solidly exceeded my expectations and has earned a place on my iPad. It's a silly mindless beat em up that never tries to be anything else. Despite this it still manages to innovate while pulling the whole thing off with style. Not bad for a budget game.

Combo Crew for iPad and for iPhone

Warhammer Quest on iPad

I have a few friends who play Warhammer, and despite liking the general premise of the tabletop game, I just can't get into it. At its most fundamental level, it requires gobs and gobs of patience. Patience has never been my strong suit. So when I heard that there was a new IOS game coming out loosely based around the Warhammer table top game, I decided that I needed to give it a try. iPads can do math, measure distances and uhm...paint figurines a hell of a lot faster than me, after all.

What I ended up getting for $5 was not quite what I was expecting. Warhammer Quest is pretty far removed from the table top game, playing much more like a classic turn based strategy game such as X-com or Final Fantasy Tactics. While it's not nearly as complex as either of those titles it still has decent amounts of charm and polish along with a well thought out rule set.

After completing the tutorial, players are given four characters and tasked with exploring dungeons to gain loot. It's not a complex plot, by any means, but at least it's honest. What does your group want? Uh...some like...gold and stuff. Maybe some swords. Armor! definitely shiny new armor! It's not really important. What is important, is that players are tasked with killing lots of green skinned orks in order to level up and eventually reach the state of badassitude that all self respecting adventurers aspire to achieve.

Strangely, while an overarching plot is essentially missing, the writing is generally very high quality, particularly for a five dollar iPad game. Many of the quests are accompanied by a nice little story about a stolen lute or a missing child. Normally I dont go for reading RPG lore, I am after all, too impatient for table top games and therefore can't be bothered much with reading either. However in the absence of a singular plot line, these little flourishes really add to the atmosphere and the over all immersion.

The presentation of the game is excellent. Yes I know, I said that about Grid 2 and Call of Juarez as well, but this time I really, really mean it. First of all, it looks great on the retna display of newer generation devices. It's honestly the only iPad game i've ever played where I immediately noticed that the game was running in a very high resolution. The lighting and the atmosphere are also spot on. The tone of the game is fairly dark and it doesn't pull any punches with regards to violence. However dungeons are never dreary, they never grated or tired me out with overly dull color schemes. Character portraits are beautifully rendered and the world map somehow hits all the right aesthetic marks, taking just a couple of hints from old pirate treasure maps. Enter a town, and players are treated to a nice little CG movie where the town literally rises out of an open book, looking a bit like the game of thrones intro. .

Gameplay could be described as solid but not out of this world. The systems in place work well enough, and the game is challenging without feeling too unfair, but the actual mechanics of the combat feel somewhat dated. Things are done on a square grid instead of a hex, which in it's self is no big deal, but it further simplifies what is already a fairly simplistic game. As a delivery method for an immersive fantasy, the gameplay does its job just fine, but it's not particularly innovative.

Unfortunately there appears to be quite a few in app purchases available in Warhammer Quest for iPad. I'm not against IAP when they're done right and unobtrusively, but Warhammer Quest at times feels like an incomplete game. Three character classes are unlockable at three dollars a piece, while a substantial portion of the map costs another five dollars. This leaves players in the awkward position of frequently earning items that are only usable by pay to play characters. Coins are also purchasable, but seeing as how there are random, totally unavoidable events that leave the player much lighter in the wallet, I wouldn't suggest buying them.

 

Warhammer quest is a good game. It marries reasonably fun gameplay with a fantastic sense of style and immersion. It is probably not going to be my new addiction however. There are still just a few too many holes in the over all experience. For my five dollars I suppose I shouldn't expect much, but I just keep yearning for a slightly more complete game, especially considering the immense attention to detail. Still, it's hard not to recommend the Warhammer Quest, for all its faults and foibles it at least doesn't force you into hours of painting dainty little figurines.

Warhammer Quest, $4.99 in the app store.

History of Byzantium Podcast

A year or so ago I discovered the History of Rome podcast by Mike Duncan. It was pretty dang amazing. It starts at the beginning and goes chronologically through history eventually ending at the fall of Roman empire. What made it so compelling was the way it was presented, feeling almost more like a story than a bunch of boring old history. It was also well researched and clearly a work of love, so that helped as well.

However history doesn't end with the fall of the Roman empire, and thankfully Robin Pierson has taken up the story where Mike Duncan left off, continuing the history of the Roman empire after it split. It is great fun for anyone who is a casual history buff like myself. Here's a link where you can find more information.

http://thehistoryofbyzantium.com/

And of course a link to the History of Rome podcast' webpage.

http://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/

Grid 2 Review

I purchased a copy of Grid 2 last night and spent a couple of hours with the game. I'm a pretty big fan of console racing sims such as Gran Turismo and Forza. At the same time I can get into and enjoy more casual racing games such as the Need for Speed series or Burnout. Grid 2 nicely intersects these two genres feeling at times both simmy and arcadey.

The second installment of the Grid series takes players on a tour of various racing series' with a slick interface and lots of hand holding. This is both good and bad. It feels very polished with a strange disembodied ghost-voice telling the player where to go and what to do. At the same time, it feels awfully restricting. The game will let you stray from it's chosen path but it sure wont be happy about it. A good example of this was my total inability to find a simple practice mode available for all of the tracks. I had to settle for a 1 on 1 race with an opponent set on "very easy" in order to practice on certain courses.

The game runs beautifully on my PC making me realize just how old my PS3 and Xbox 360 are. Graphical effects are pretty and crash the cars enough and they begin to disintegrate in interesting ways. Entire front fenders can be dislodged. Of particular note, are the absolutely gorgeous sound effects in this game which rival anything I've ever heard coming from a racing game. Various pops and backfires sound great, the rev-limiter sounds perfect and driving next to a cliff or a wall produces an appropriate echo. The game just has extremely high levels of fit and finish in the graphics and sound departments.

The physics are more of a mixed bag. This game is NOT a simulation, cars take corners much faster than they have any right to. Setting up a good clean line with a minimum of tire scrub will not net the fastest lap times, a much better strategy is to attack every corner like a hero with lots of tire smoke while avoiding understeer like the plague. Slide that rear end out, because it'll only make you go faster. Until you spin of course. Balancing this arcadeyness is a surprisingly complex physics engine. There is a very real feeling of weight transfer that really effects the way the game is played. The handling model is nice and consistent and once you learn the rules, there's a lot of fun to be had experimenting and playing within them. The game feels like it's exaggerating real life physics, rather than throwing them out the window entirely.

And Grid 2 is challenging. I originally set the difficulty up to maximum and was immediately destroyed. I turned it down to "hard" which worked well for a while until I hit a certain type of race, at which point I was once again utterly destroyed. Now i'm playing the game on "normal." Who knows, maybe i'll eventually end up switching to easy just to complete my steady march of shame.  It's generally the good type of difficulty though, I always feel like I could go faster or do better after every race.

The races feature a huge amount of variety, rarely are they a straight up race. This is another one of those things that can either be annoying or a boon. It's harder to get bored but there are a couple of modes that are frustrating. There are also a couple of modes that feature about 30 seconds of driving, not in it's self a bad thing, but somewhat annoying when you have to stare at 30 seconds of loading screen on either side of the race.

Grid 2 also earns a special gold star in my heart for it's track design. There are some standard real world race courses, but much of the game takes place in cities or in the countryside. These tracks would more accurately be described as maps, as they each feature multiple layouts that only sometimes repeat each other. The four countryside maps each feature at least one six plus mile point to point race, which is very cool in my opinion. The city maps also feature a cool trick: there is a game mode where the course actually changes it's layout every lap, a very cool innovation to keep players on their toes.

Grid 2 is a good game. It's not without it's frustrations, but on a very fundamental level it's evident that a lot of hard work and love went into it's creation. If you're into cars but dont care about absolute realism, the game is a blast. If you just want to go fast, the game caters to that as well. It will really only disappoint those who must have realism at all costs or those who want to play in a sandbox. Otherwise the polish and the grins are just too hard to ignore.

Call of Juarez: Gunslinger

I picked up Call of Juarez: Gunslinger the other day on a whim. It was recently released on Steam and has been out for Xbox Live long enough that I was able to find a few reviews. I've played the game for a few hours and I'm happy to say that I've been pleasantly surprised by the experience.

Gunslinger should not be confused with a AAA first person shooter. At full MSRP, Gunslinger cost a cool $15 (er...plus tax) making it a budget game. However the graphics and presentation are both ultra-slick displaying a surprising amount of polish. The aesthetics are cohesive and the over all look and art direction are both top notch.

However as I said earlier, Gunslinger is not a AAA first person action title. It's short, for one and the gameplay never really tries to compete with the Call of Duty games. Call of Juarez: Gunslinger is at it's heart an arcade game. In fact it reminds me more of Virtua Cop or Time Crisis than it does any modern shooter. Rather than emphasize tactical action, the game put's a premium on lining up shots and accurately picking off enemies one at a time.

The game is set up to feel like an old timey shooting gallery, with bad guys in bandannas popping up from behind cover to take a few shots and then retreating back to reload. Enemies will never try to flank you and rarely move around, once they've found cover. There will, however be a ton of them, making the game far from a walk in the park.

All this effort would be wasted if the game didn't have solid mechanics. Luckily Gunslinger features some of the best shooting around. Guns feel like actual guns, weighty, mechanical and appropriate for the late 1800's. There's lots of kick and one bullet is often enough to finish off a bad guy. Head shots pretty much always equal a one-hit-kill and the rifle can one hit enemies from much further than most games. The trade off is that there are virtually no automatic, or even semi automatic weapons. The pistols are all revolvers, the rifle is lever action and the shotgun is double barreled.

This means that accuracy is the name of the game. Line a shot up before taking it, because missing costs precious time. Gunslinger further encourages accuracy with a combo system that builds bullet time and experience points. Kill enemies within 5 seconds of each other to start a combo, the bigger the combo the better the price.

XP isn't meaningless either. There is a fairly simple skill tree with three different classes encouraging different types of combat. The level up system isn't quite as deep as something like Farcry 3, but it's enough to allow for some interesting options (akimbo sawed off shotguns anyone?)

If you're looking for the next Metro, Bioshock or Call of Duty, stay away from Call of Juarez: Gunslinger. It will disappoint with its simplicity and lack of multiplayer. However if you're looking for a nostalgic arcade shooter romp that requires plenty of skill, Gunslinger might just scratch your itch.

Geoguessr

Well, hooray for the internet. I found one of the best time wasters ever, in the very awesome GeoGuessr. The premise is simple, it opens a random Google street view map, which can then be navigated and traversed like normal. The one rule is no zooming out. You must then mark on a small map where you think the camera is. Points are awarded based on distance. That's all there is too it. But it's addictive, ohhhh soo addictive. Unfortunately my one complaint is that the game seems to have a large, but none the less finite number of start locations, so replay value isn't endless. Still it's a whole bunch of fun.

http://geoguessr.com/

Star Command for iPad

I'm not the only one who's been looking forward to Star Command for a long time now. The game has been teased on numerous occasions for what seems like forever. I've waited and waited and the game finally came out the other day. I immediately downloaded it for the princely sum of three dollars and have since then spent several hours playing it.

Star Command hasn't been everything I'd hoped it would be, but it's still been a pretty fun experience. I think most of the disappointment comes from having it built up in my mind for so long. I've been stoked about this game for well over a year. Some of my disappointment also stems from having played a whole ton of FTL. Star Command is not the somewhat deep roguelike experience that FTL is. At the same time, I never expect Star Command to be so incredibly cheap. There's no way I can't recommend the game at a sub five dollar price. It's not perfect, but it's much better than it's price would imply.

Star Command places the player on a very Star Trek like space ship, charged with protecting humanity, exploring new worlds and generally kicking ass for Jesus, or in this case earth. The first thing that struck me about the game is that it's not a roguelike, which is to say it's not all about getting as far as possible, dying and then restarting. It plays much more like a strategy RPG. If the player dies, he or she can just re-load their saved game. This will happen pretty often because Star Command isn't easy.

As captain of a starship, the player is charged with building various rooms on their starship, hiring crew members, choosing where those crew members will be placed and generally blowing stuff up. This last part is the main focus of Star Command. Players will not be able to talk their way out of fights. They will be attacked constantly, and though the script is clever and often makes me laugh, the plot its self is extremely linear.

The meat of the gameplay then, involves battling other space ships. Battling space ships is done by firing weapons while simultaneously killing the numerous boarding parties that inevitably beam aboard in the heat of battle. Ship to ship weapons are on a timer, when the timer fills up, the player can push a button to activate a mini game. These mini games determine the effectiveness of the weapon and are actually one of the strong points of the game. After several hours of play i'm still only able to reach maximum efficiency about one in every three tries. Stopping boarding parties is much more difficult. Boarders can only beam aboard when the player's shields are down, but this usually happens within the first ten seconds of a battle. They then beam aboard in an infinite number of waves, separated by a timer, until shield power is restored. In order to repel boarders, the player must send their own crew down to fight them in phaser to phaser combat.

This battle system effectively means that there is always too much going on at any one time. This is a good thing and by design. However, touch screen controls can sometimes get in the way. AI pathfinding is OK at best and moronic at worst. Maddeningly, once an AI crew member is selected it must then be deselected or moved before anything else can happen. This doesn't seem like a big deal, but when I click on a crew member to move them, and then quickly change my mind (remember there's always too much going on at any one time) I must then take the extra step of deselecting the original crew member before anything else can happen. This leaves me often selecting a crew member, immediately realizing i want a different crew member and then clicking on said other crew member. Instead of selecting this second crew member, I end up accidentally moving the first crew member over to where the second one is standing. Very frustrating. Multiple crew members can not be selected at the same time, so it can take a few extra precious seconds to move a large group of crew members someplace else in the ship. Orders can not be given while the game is paused. Things end up being about 80 percent difficult by design and 20 percent difficult by...er...lack of design.

This would make Star Command a pretty average game if it weren't for the aesthetics. I love the graphics, the character design is great and the animations are top notch. The sound effects when clicking through menus are just perfect. Even just saving a game is somehow incredibly satisfying.

The designers have promised future updates including the ability to send away parties to planets. That sounds just dandy. If they can improve some of the more awkward elements in the UI while they're at it, Star Command might just become one of my favorite mobile game experiences. As it is, it's merely recommendable. Far from perfect but at a price that's too good to be passed up.

Euro Truck Simulator 2

Well, this is a bit embarrassing, I've recently gotten really into Euro Truck Simulator 2. Judging on name alone, Euro Truck Simulator 2 sounds like the least interesting video game since Dataeast's little known 1992 Gameboy title Go! Go! Paint Dry!* But concept aside, ETS2 has turned out to be a fantastic little business management and driving game.

Before I talk this game up too much more, I should clear up a few things. First of all, I love racing games. Forza 4 might be my all time favorite game. Secondly, as a 3 year old, I really wanted to be a truck driver when I grew up. By the time I was 4, I'd moved on to wanting to be a race car driver, but there never the less was a brief period in my life when I was fascinated with big rigs.

Those two facts however, would not be enough to get me into ETS2 if it were a boring or bad game. It's neither of these things. Boring happens because things are too easy. Rarely are things too easy in ETS2. First of all, there are twelve gears on these trucks, use the semi-auto or manual gearbox option and expect to pay constant attention to the gearbox. One gear too high or low and the whole thing can grind to a halt on the shallowest of inclines. It's not just the gearbox that's challenging either, though the physics in the game aren't too over the top sim-like, the trucks do require a light touch and plenty of precision when cornering at speed. I have jacknifed on the highway many many times and very nearly rolled over a few times as well. It's worth noting that crashing has pretty dire financial consequences in this game successful drivers are constantly alert to potential danger. And don't even get me started on learning to reverse with a trailer. I'd always thought reversing a trailer looked hard and confusing. Yup. I was right.

But ETS2 isn't just challenging. It's actually good too. Maybe even really good. The graphics are decent, probably a little below average for this day and age, but they manage to be aesthetically pleasing. The game does a fantastic job of invoking long distance road travel, even though the distances driven are substantially scaled down from real life. The sound effects are likewise simple but kind of perfect. The game does immersion well.

The game has two basic elements, driving and business management. At the start of the game the player is plunked into whatever hometown they choose with a garage capable of storing one truck only. The game does not initially give the player a truck. This means that initially hiring ones services out to other companies. The truck and the gas would be included in each contract and players simply have to get it from point A to point B. The game cleverly allows players to skip this portion of the game, but not without consequence. Within a mission or two, a bank appears offering the player a loan of up to $100K, just enough money to buy their own truck. But of course loan payments will then factor into daily expenses.

Owning a truck means much more lucrative contracts, however it also comes with increased responsibility. The new contracts simply list an item and a start and finish location. It's up to the player to get to the start, hook up the trailer and finally deliver it to it's end destination. Crucially, the player is then stuck at the finish location with their unattached semi-truck meaning that their next job better originate from their new location if they want to avoid a long drive with no profit to show for it.

When enough money is saved up, the player can expand his or her original garage and/or buy a new one. Or eventually several new ones. These can be expanded and upgraded as well. However things quickly get expensive as it's the players responsibility to populate these garages with trucks and to hire drivers.

The whole thing is wrapped up in a bit of old school RPG goodness. There is an underlying XP system which allows players to spend skill points as well as unlock new trucks and truck parts, of which there are many. The great part is that this level up system extends to employee's as well with the player taking the role of choosing what area that employee should specialize in.

Against all odds then, this game just isn't boring. There's so much to do and those things all provide plenty of challenge as well as as a sense of accomplishment. ETS2 can be a major time sink for anyone who ever wanted to be a truck driver, even a little bit.

*not a real game

Review: Real Racing 3

Real Racing 3 is one of the best games to ever be almost ruined by a terrible free to play model. I love and hate this game to death and it's hard to write a review of it because I'm so internally conflicted. It sucks me in in a way that few non-console games manage to do and it really scratches that itch for a realistic racing game playable on a mobile device. At the same time not only does it utilize a free to play structure, it manages to embrace some of the worst aspects of free to play games. Somehow though, it manages to lay off on this structure just enough to allow the game to remain enjoyable without having to spending a boatload of money.

The physics in Real Racing 3 are top notch for a mobile device. Playing on an iPad, I'm able to actually feel when the cars are nearing the limit and about to let go. The game simulates that feeling of being just below the limits of grip better than any racing game I've ever played bar none. I'm not entirely sure how they've managed to simulate that feeling quite so effectively but it's there. Through some techno wizardry, the combination of sound effects, camera effects and control feel, players can actually feel, as if through some bizarre sixth sense when their car is nearing the limits of grip. It's exhilarating and keeps me coming back for more again and again. That said, while the physics leading up to the limits is great, the physics beyond the limit of grip leave plenty to be desired. Put simply, pretty much all of the cars in Real Racing 3 are going to snap oversteer (quickly want to spin) as soon as the limit is reached. These oversteer physics are hokey at best. I've managed to reel my car back in multiple times by simply stomping the brakes, a move that would cause an immediate spin in a real car.

 When I heard that Real Racing 3 would be free to play, I crossed my fingers and hoped there would be some "buy all" package for $20 that would unlock the full game. I was wrong. The game instead works with the old "standard currency" "premium currency" model. That means that standard currency is awarded relatively freely while premium currency is handed out much more sparingly. While standard currency is used for things like buying cars and parts upgrades, premium currency is used mostly for minimizing wait times. Both currencies can be bought for exorbitant prices with in-app-purchases.

And that's the big dumb blemish with Real Racing 3. Artificially imposed wait times. Buying a car? Wait for it to be delivered. Fixing your car? Wait for it to be fixed. Modifying your car? Wait for the parts to be installed. And players will be fixing their cars often. Even driving a perfect race will result in normal ware and tear. That means spending 5 minutes to get an oil change every three races. Engine services come less often but take much longer. In total there are several different categories of parts that need regular service. Thankfully this can all be circumnavigated by owning multiple cars. In fact Real Racing 3 is actually quite playable without players having to spend a dime, it just requires lots and lots of arduous though somewhat pleasurable grinding.

Even setting aside the wait times, the standard currency payout for winning races is paltry by modern standards. Once players have collected a few cars it plays similarly to Forza or Gran Turismo except that the payout for winning is about a third of what one would expect from a console game. The free to play structure has completely obliterated normal concepts of game pacing, forcing people to pay money to get a game that feels well planned out.

There are other issues with Real Racing 3 as well. The big one is AI, or lack thereof. Real Racing 3 advertises "Time Shifted Multiplayer" claiming that the AI cars you're facing are actually somehow created using data from other people playing the game. That might be kind of a cool idea if they were ghosts, but they're not, they're physically there and they have no regard for the player's car one way or another. I've been sandwiched between a car and a wall many many times by an AI driver on a straightaway with plenty of space on the other side of his car. This might not be so bad in an arcade racing game where passes happen in a split second, but in a simulation style game, passes have to be set up meticulously and with momentum to squeak by on a straightaway. All this goes out the window when an AI car decides to run me off the road as soon as I get beside him. Again, this wouldn't be a huge deal, except that the player ALWAYS starts the race in last place and is expected to pass up to 22 cars on the way to the win, in a 3 lap race.

Really the more thought I put into the idea of time shifted multiplayer the less it makes sense to me and the more obvious it is that these opponents are other people in name only. If someone were to make an AI car out of any race I've done they'd see me weaving around wildly to avoid AI cars that are present in my game, but are obviously different in theirs. They'd see me cutting corners and taking certain turns flat out. And they'd see me starting from the back of the grid, every single race. None of this is present amongst the time shifted opponents I've played against. They all follow the same line, they all brake at the same points and they never NEVER cut the track. The only way to tell they're not completely AI controlled is by the one jerk who spent a bunch of money modifying his car and manages to leave the entire field in his dust by miles and miles.

Somehow though, I keep coming back for more. I've spent hours on Real Racing 3 without spending a dime. It's very very good and the free to play structure gives it a limp rather than crippling it outright. But it's a very nasty limp for which there is no quick fix. I highly suggest downloading the game and giving it a try, particularly for anyone who loves simulation style racing games. The price is right after all, even if it's also all wrong.

Little Inferno

"That's it? That's all you do?" The first time I ever saw Little Inferno I was at a friend's house. I had heard of the game and knew it was receiving a fair amount of hype. When I finally saw it in action though, my heart sank. The art direction was interesting, but not really my thing and the game just seemed really shallow. All the player really does is burn things. The "puzzle" elements turned out to just be burning multiple things at the same time. Not particularly sophisticated stuff.

A month or two later I ended up buying it on iPad. I had read some other reviews and decided that $5 wasn't too much to pay. After spending a day playing the game feverishly I can honestly say that I now understand the pull. It's fun and weirdly satisfying. At the same time, it was a pretty short game that didn't leave me particularly wowed. 

The gameplay consists of ordering toys, throwing those toys into the fireplace and watching them burn. In order to unlock new toy catalogs, the player must burn certain combinations of toys at the same time. Each combination has a clever title that is displayed in an easily accessible list, it is up to the player to extrapolate the actual combination of toys which must be burnt from this title. Figuring out these combinations is the only challenge present in Little Inferno.

Weirdly, after playing for a couple of minutes I was compelled to play more, and more until about two and a half hours later when I realized I needed to be somewhere. Little Inferno pulls the oldest entertainment trick in the book. Before we played video games, before we watched movies, even before we read books, we had fire. There is something about the look and sound of a small blaze that is comforting and fun to watch. How else do we explain the Yule Log channel? Little Inferno has excellent fire effects and excellent sound effects and somehow that was enough to keep me interested. I can't say it's a good game, but it is a compelling one.