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Guardians of Middle-Earth in Review

December 11, 2012August 24, 2022 Michael Barnes 6 Comments

Being a relative newbie to the world of MOBAs (Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas), one of the most interesting thing about this kind of grassroots genre is that it really is an evolution of the hero-based real-time strategy game that Warcraft III represented. But the surprising thing is that these games- at least as evidenced by the two I’ve played- more or less do away with all of the boring, tedious, and repetitive clutter of the RTS, automatically cranking out cannon fodder along just a couple of set paths while you and a couple of teammates do the heavy lifting. Awesomenauts was the first game of this type I’ve played but Guardians of Middle Earth is the best that I’ve played. And from what I’ve gathered from other players and writers is that it’s a more accessible, more streamlined, and more refined, version of games like Defense of the Ancients and League of Legends. Oh, and it’s on consoles instead of PCs.

I tried the 60 minute trial first to see if I’d even like it but I put down my $15 about 30 minutes into it. At first, the game is overwhelming in a way that console games rarely are. There are 22 characters- each with four unique cooldown abilities and classes, each ranked along a couple of parameters including their relative difficulty to play. There are commands, consumable potions, gems, and a belt to hold stat- and ability- boosting relics. Each structure that you’re in charge of guardian-ing has four different upgrades available and your barracks can be tooled to make different kinds of generic soldiers. Then there’s an actual glossary of terms that you’ve really got to look over to understand the paragraph-length descriptions of everything. The tutorial helps with questions like “how do I move my character?” and “what does this button do”, but that’s about it.

Learn by doing is the best way to get into GOME. There’s a lot of content to digest, and fortunately all of that material translates into appreciable depth- it’s not just empty “lore” or fluff text on the cards. And I do mean cards. Monolith (yes, that Monolith that gave us Shogo, No One Lives Forever, and last year’s Gotham City Imposters) made the fun choice of presenting everything on cards and giving an almost board game-like theme to the game. It’s also definitely a strategy game, where loadouts pair up with playstyles and communicative (or at least observant) players will coordinate assaults, defenses, and counterattacks with the goal of wiping out the opposing team’s main tower.

The game makes me think of a soccer match as much as it does an RTS. Both teams sort of jostle back and forth with lots of mid-field action. You wait for an opportunity while the defenders or tied up or waiting for an opening. You let your peon soldiers run up, and then you strike. If you get killed by an enemy Guardian or a tower, it’s like the ball’s kicked back downfield. It’s not at all unpleasant, and I really like that each 20 minute game has its own development curve. Upgrading your character on the fly and even grinding a bit makes each game feel like a complete arc, despite the inherent back-and-forth repetition.

It doesn’t really make a lot of license sense that you can have Sauron and Gandalf fighting shoulder-to-shoulder, but then again Gotham City Imposters didn’t make a lot of license sense either. So if you’re a Tolkien purist demanding fidelity to canon, this game is going to piss you off. But the Lord of the Rings theme and imagery works well, and it helps ease new players into the game. You can probably sort out without much research what kind of gameplay Legolas or Gandalf offer. It is kind of odd that there is only one map- available in three lane and one lane versions- but are you really playing this kind of game to admire the scenery?

I’m finding Guardians of Middle-Earth terribly addictive, even though I’ve not been too thrilled at some of the wait times to get into laggy matches- and you get “punished” for leaving early, a temporary ban from matchmaking. But once in an online game- or even with and against the crummy AI- I love the sense of momentum and coordination. I’m enjoying the progression, earning XP to purchase new characters, gems, potions, and commands. I love all of the loadout options, and the big character roster ensures plenty of variety- and there are more on the way. One thing that I absolutely love about the game is that there are NO IAPs other than a season pass, and there are no cash-for-scrip currencies, XP accelerators, or any other kind of scam marketing. At least not yet. I hope they stay the course and keep that garbage out of this fine game.

Mark of the Ninja in Review

September 18, 2012July 21, 2022 Michael Barnes 5 Comments

I absolutely hated Klei’s 2011 digital release Shank. I think it is a disgrace, an embarrassment to the video games medium that wallows in joyless, cynical immaturity and dully moronic violence. Its humor and tone are straight out of one of those mid-1990s post-Pulp Fiction “indie” crime or action films and the look was a cheapjack imitation of pretty much any “edgy” adult cartoon you’ve ever seen. The gameplay was stultifyingly stupid, rife with button-mashing and little to offer but mindless and unappealing lowest common denominator bloodshed. I gave it the lowest score possible at Gameshark, and I stand by that. I ignore the fact that a sequel exists.

So it’s a big surprise that Mark of the Ninja, their latest now on XBLA, isn’t just good- it’s one of the best games of the year. It’s a brilliantly conceived and executed stealth action game that makes the daring assumption that the genre doesn’t have to be relegated to a third- or first- person presentation. It’s a 2D platformer that feels like a classic of the form overlain with an index of the best sneaker mechanics. It’s not hard to go through and sort out the bits came from Metal Gear Solid and which from Thief or Splinter Cell. It also borrows liberally from Rocksteady’s masterful Batman titles- not the least of which is that incredible feeling of bad ass empowerment that comes from scaring your enemies, hiding in the rafters, and stringing them up. They even borrowed a couple of riffs from Elevator Action. Shoot out the lights so they can’t see you. Or just drop the lights on ‘em.

As much as has been appropriated from previous sources, Mark of the Ninja is one of those studied, academic games where it’s more innovative than imitative. Working out how to put stealth gameplay in a 2D platformer is a compelling design goal as it is and many indie developers would have called it a day there. But Klei brings in multiple gadgets including distraction devices, upgradeable techniques in both lethal and nonlethal varieties, and a plethora of visual cues and signifiers to enable players to play strategically. Light, sound, color, and iconography are surrogates for your own lacking ninja skills and intuition. As in the best stealth games, a little risk-taking is often necessary and that thrill of hiding behind a door while a patrolling guard walks by is a source of nail-biting tension. Foul up, set off the alarms, and either try to mitigate the breach of stealth or start again at one of the generous checkpoints.

There’s often more information than is actually necessary and it can be a little gamey. I’m not sure that even the best ninjas- even Sho Kusogi or Stephen Hayes- can see a dog’s sniffing radius. And the AI can be pretty easy to fool, but that’s not uncommon in the genre. Some of the puzzles, particularly deeper into the game can be tiresome. But these are small complaints in a game that is otherwise outstanding in every way.

Except for the story. It’s stupid, and to be honest I lost interest in it during the first cutscene. The animation style is back, but it looks more refined and confident. It’s typically lame Z-grade piffle about Ninjas, clans, honor, magic tattoos and whatnot punctuated by completely unnecessary violence that makes the game feel far more teenage Xtreme in your face than it needs to be. But you’re not going to play this game for a great story. You’re going to play it to find all of the hidden scrolls, secret puzzle levels, multiple pathways, and to complete objectives that essentially let you organically select how hard you want the game to be. And of course, you’re always going to want to replay a level you hacked and slashed your way through to get the no-kill bonus. High score leaderboards add to the fun, I’m not sure how in the world one guy on mine consistently scores so high on every level. Maybe he’s really a ninja, I don’t know.

Every year for the past several years there have been two or three XBLA games that have really exceeded expectations and blown past their AAA retail peers in terms of presenting us with interesting concepts and new ways of enjoying classic gameplay models. Last year it was Bastion and Outland. This year it’s Sine Mora and Mark of the Ninja. Another game this good and Klei will be well along the road to redeeming their earlier transgressions.

Four stupid things I learned from owning an Xbox 360

May 8, 2012October 15, 2020 Matt Thrower 38 Comments

Over the weekend, I became the proud owner of an aged but functional Xbox 360 Arcade with an attached 20GB hard drive. It didn’t come with any games though, and it being a bank holiday weekend here in the UK all the used games shops were closed, so I had to resort to XBLA to get my first taste of gaming goodness. Going to hit the charity shops with a vengeance this lunchtime though. But here’s a short list of unexpected things that I discovered as a used console owner.

1. GamerTag profiles are stupid

Being enthusiastic, I made the gross error of setting up my XBLA account *before* I set up the console. It then took me half an hour to actually sign on to Xbox live, because every time I tried to enter my email and password, the machine told me those details were already matched to an existing GamerTag. I tried changing my profile name, deleting the old profiles on the machine, searching the online help and menus, each and every time having to tediously re-enter my long email address and password without a keyboard all to no avail until I discovered, quite by chance, that if you already have a profile you have to download it first. Am I the only person who found this “feature” to be idiotically well-hidden?

2. Microsoft Points are stupid

As I said I had to get my first games from XBLA. There were three that interested me: Braid, Limbo and Trials Evolution which would come to a grand total of 3200 “points” if I wanted them all. Can I buy 3200 point? Not if I want to get a discount on RRP and buy them in blocks from cards, no. This is so screamingly, obviously a ploy to force people to overspend and then use the excess to engage with other parts of the Microsoft shop to buy mp3’s and such that I’m amazed there hasn’t been more of an outcry about it. I think it’s absolutely disgusting and I’ll be doing my damnedest to try and make up round numbers from promotions and freebies where I can find them. Although I note that the Bing Rewards scheme is arbitrarily only available in the US and therefore closed to me, so way to go to alienate a substantial chunk of your user base, Microsoft. Also, I found it extraordinary that the critically acclaimed Braid, an XBLA game from 2008 will cost me approximately £8 in points, whereas the copy of the critically acclaimed Fallout 3 from 2008 that I secured on Ebay cost me £4 including P&P. No bloody wonder manufacturers are keen to squash the second hand games market: this isn’t just about stopping used sales, it’s about encouraging downloads and locking down the means of distribution at which point you have an effective monopoly and can charge what the hell you like.

3. My TV is stupid

I still have an old cathode ray set. I have never seen the point of HDTV: I have friends that have it, and I’ve seen it demoed in shops and it really hasn’t looked all that much better than SDTV to me, especially when you factor in that the vast majority of broadcasts in the UK are still in SD and that they look marginally inferior when viewed on an HD set due to having to be processed through scaling software. As far as consoles go I stupidly thought the same would apply, especially since I’ve seen adverts for games on the TV that looked okay. But the minute I loaded up a game to play, I could see what the problem was: horrible fuzzy edges everywhere. I’m perplexed as to why I perceive this problem so much more in computer graphics than actual TV transmissions but for now I’m just encouraging my kids to throw heavy objects at the screen in the hope the insurance will cover a new one.

4. Consoles are stupidly effective money sinks

I picked this console up because it was a bargain. And then promptly spent £30 on XBLA points and used games from Ebay, and that barely scratches the surface of what I want to play. Now I’m thinking I need a new memory stick and a bigger hard drive. And I’m tempted to buy The Witcher 2 even though it’s new and can only be had for near full price because it sounds awesome. My six-year old daughter would absolutely love Kinect. Oh, and Brandon told me about this handy-sounding recharge kit for the controllers. And at some point someone is going to challenge me to some online gaming and then I’ll need to upgrade to Gold. So I’ve gone from from trying to economise to spending tons of money, all because I managed to pick up a bargain. How the hell does that work?

So that’s my weekend in a nutshell. The first game I spent those points on is Trials Evolution – might post a review next week as it hasn’t had much coverage round here, and it’s totally not what I was expecting when I downloaded it.