The Walking Dead on iPad

I recently finished playing through The Walking Dead on my iPad. The game has gotten a lot of press for being a great story, being well thought out and for offering some of the best voice acting in the business. It deserves the press. I had a ball playing the game and I found the story in particular, to be far superior to what is often available in video games.

I enjoyed it for other reasons too. First of all, I should mention that i've been reading The Walking Dead comic book series for years. I was disappointed in the AMC show and stopped watching after the first season. I pretty much expected the game to be similar. "Good, if you've never read the book" is a label that applies to plenty of TV shows and movies. I also expected this mantra to apply to a story driven game like The Walking Dead. But I was wrong. While the overall feel of the game and the art direction does depart from the comic books, I still found them enjoyable and excellent in their own right

I chose to share the experience of playing through the game with my girlfriend. The iPad offers unique opportunities for co-operative adventure gaming that aren't available on any other platform. In fact, we originally tried to play the game on PC, an idea that was eventually vetoed by her. As a non-gamer, WASD based movement with Q and E as action buttons seemed random and completely unintuitive to her. An iPad on the other hand, can be held between two people with anyone poking at the screen at the appropriate time. Time sensitive decision making sometimes exposed weaknesses in this method, but for the most part it worked really well. I now have a positive video game experience to point to and as a result she is open to playing other video games with me as well. I'd be quite thankful if that became the game's lasting legacy in my life.

I hadn't played an adventure game since I was pretty young and I was worried that The Walking Dead would feature lots of pixel hunting. Either adventure gaming has grown up since I was a kid, or The Walking Dead has an extremely slick design meant to smoothly move players along through the story. Regardless, those moments of frustration I used to feel at times while playing Full Throttle and Leisure Suit Larry were thankfully absent. The game is confident in its story taking center stage and any perceived lack of gameplay is pretty much ignored by gamers who are on the edge of their seats wondering what will happen next.

The Walking Dead really lived up to its billing for me. Not only engaging me the whole way through, but actually opening up new doors for both my girlfriend and me. I now want to rediscover point and click adventures and my girlfriend is now open to the idea that video game can be a fun, co-operative interactive experience. The Walking Dead was a blast from start to finish.

Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes for iPad

Sometimes it baffles me that it took game designers so many years to put it together. Match 3 puzzlers and RPG's have existed separately and independently for decades now. But when Puzzle Quest came out, it opened gamers eyes and made designers realize it was a match made in heaven. A couple of years later and games like Clash of Heroes and 10,000,000 have really started to refine the genre.

I bought Clash of Heroes last night and immediately proceeded to play it for two straight hours. It scratched that itch that hasn't quite been fulfilled by anything since the original Puzzle Quest. The beauty of Clash of Heroes is the abandonment of abstract crystals, coins, sculls etc.. in favor of actual soldiers, lined up for battle and placed strategically on a battle field. Who then must be matched in color coordinated groups of 3. Okay so it's still a little abstract, but it feels much less so than other games of its type while simultaneously giving a nod to classic Heroes of Might and Magic gameplay.

I'm not totally sold on the art style which seems a little to "generic anime" to me and the touch controls could really use some work. Deleting units in particular is a pain in the butt and must usually be done twice to have the intended effect. The difficulty also seems to spike a bit from time to time. Loosing battles doesn't provide XP or money so grinding isn't really the option it is in many other RPG influenced games. That may be a good thing, but there were battles I couldn't beat on my first, second or third tries.

These are minor concerns though. Might and Magic Clash of Heroes is a great game. The port to mobile devices may have beat it up a little bit, but at the same time, the price is appropriately discounted. I paid $5 for a game that's three times as expensive on PC. It was very worth it in my humble opinion.

Review: Zero Dark Thirty

Normally, I watch a movie and it fills me with very intense thoughts and opinions of said movie. Zero Dark Thirty was a bit different. On many levels, I don't quite know what to think about it. I was expecting both more and less from it. Instead I got kind of bored at times and walked away just sort of thinking "okay, thanks for that I guess."

Lets not mince words here, the entire point of Zero Dark Thirty was "America, Fuck yeah." No, i'm not talking about the actual film making its self, I'm talking about how it's a movie about killing Osama Bin Laden. I'm sorry i don't care how you do it, if it's an American movie about killing Bin Laden, the unspoken point is "America fuck yeah"

But Zero Dark Thirty was classier than I expected. You could maybe say the "fuck yeah" was whispered. But like in a classy, under your breath way, not in a cheap porno kinda way. I liked that about it. It started out with some CIA asshole torturing a (presumed terrorist) prisoner. It was there to turn audiences off, to make them realize that this is a messy business. It was effective at setting a tone of, if not quite moral ambiguity at least moral questionability. This theme of keeping the "fuck yeah" a bit toned down comes to a head in the home invasion that eventually took out Bin Laden (oops spoilers! He dies!) No rock music, just very precise work by a bunch of marines and some pretty brutal shooting of people in the head, some of whom were not fighting back and many of whom were shot in front of their children. The audience doesn't feel particularly bad about it because of all that's happened in the movie, instead we're led to feel detached, which I think was interesting and intentional.

But not everything worked in Zero Dark Thirty. My biggest complaint was the pacing and the general story telling. The main character Maya, was decent enough and we got to witness some good character growth there. All fine and dandy, but the story somehow lacked continuity and years would pass in an instant. We would know this because a new date would pop up on the screen with a black background. Ok fine, informative but somehow lacking in flavor. The story just didn't flow as well as hollywood movies are supposed to. Now this could partly be because it was based on a true story making the heroes journey pretty useless, but the director bares some blame too. It was just kind of boring for much of the middle of the movie.

A special complaint goes to the inclusion of Andy and Pete (Chris Pratt and Mark Duplass.) There is nothing wrong with either of those actors, but there is something wrong with putting Pete from "The Leage" and Andy from "Parks and Recreation" into a movie about killing Osama Bin Laden. Both actors were just playing more intelligent versions of their roles in popular sitcoms. Both seemed to be put in for humors sake and while both were kinda funny it really took me out of the viewing experience. 

Zero Dark Thirty was interesting and boring at the same time. It's interesting as a movie, but is kind of a boring movie at the same time. Still, it's probably worth checking out if you like movies and have a strong stomach for seeing people waterboarded. I'm giving it a 6/10.

Redline

I've been playing a bunch of Cubed Rally Redline on my ipad. It's pretty standard endless runner fare. Switch lanes! Avoid obstacles! Collect power ups! In fact there's nothing really there for me to recommend, other than some pretty cute art direction. Why have I been playing it then?

Well, I've pretty much been obsessed with rally cars since I was about 6 years old. "But come on!" you say, "Cubed Rally Redline has about as much in common with rally cars as pong has with tennis!" Well, you would be correct. Yet somehow that tiny bit of connection is enough to hook me. Sometimes it amazes me how much I'm willing to put up with for the barest perceived connection to something I love. We've all had those moments of "I shouldn't like it but I do, because I also like _____" It's usually fun to see those connections. Except when you're about to start your 10th game in a row of Cubed Rally Redline and have to question just what the hell you're filling your time with.