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First Impressions: PS4 + Three Launch Titles

by Tim Morris

Copyright Sony Computer Entertainment Source: Geeks of Doom
Copyright Sony Computer Entertainment
Source: Geeks of Doom

PS4… worth the wait?

Ever since E3, there has been a lot to like about Sony’s new toy. Amid much fanfare, the Playstation 4 released this past Friday, and after spending some time with it today I must say I’m impressed. Sony’s user-friendly approach to this generation of consoles can be seen in just about every aspect of the new interface, with easy-to-find features and neatly organized menus. You can even go back to the system’s home menus without having to fully quit the game you’re playing, and can pick it back up whenever you choose. Streaming gameplay is nearly seamless and is always available with only a few button presses once you link your Twitch or Ustream account. It’s certainly a step up from the previous generation of consoles, and thus far I feel that I’ve received a great deal for my $400 purchase.

Perhaps the most attractive qualities of the PS4 when compared to Microsoft’s XBOX One are the financial ones: it’s $100 cheaper, its online service is $10 cheaper per year, and there are a good amount of free and discounted games available for download on the PSN Store. Aside from the launch title I pre-ordered, Knack, I also picked up and played a couple of the downloadable titles off the PSN Store, Warframe and Flower.

Copyright Sony Computer Entertainment Source: VGU
Copyright Sony Computer Entertainment
Source: VGU

I’m going to start my quick reviews with Knack. If you’ve ever played the old school Crash Bandicoot games or the Jak & Daxter series, you should have at least some idea of what to expect here. The gameplay of Knack is sort of a hybrid of those two entities. You play as Knack, a being made up of relics. You guide Knack through mostly linear levels, defeating enemies using either hand-to-hand combat or super moves, which must be charged by collecting sunstone. Knack’s maximum health is tied to his size, and at certain points you pick up enough relics to make him grow bigger and stronger. The graphics are very sharp, with cutscenes that look like they’re straight out of a Pixar movie. It’s clear that the in-house developers at Sony wanted this game to show off the capabilities of the Playstation 4, and they’ve accomplished that. However, not all is well here.

I’ve been a gamer for over 20 years now, and I have to admit the following: I find Knack to be a frustratingly hard game on its normal difficulty setting (there are easy and hard settings as well). Sadly, it isn’t difficult because of mechanics that the game teaches you along the way, or even a fulfilling battle system that rewards skilled play. No, Knack is rage-inducing because no matter how large your health bar is, you die in two to three hits. Damage appears to be percentage-based in this game, and so what the game’s battle system really rewards is patience, avoidance, and timing. This, combined with checkpoints and health-replenishing relic boxes that are oddly spaced make some levels drag on. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind difficulty in games – I come from the Sega Genesis generation where some games were nigh-impossible (Ecco the Dolphin anyone?)… but when you have a game that is clearly geared towards children, scaling the difficulty so that they have to play on the Easy setting is not the way to go. Had the enemy damage been constant instead of percentage-based, the experience would be far better. As it stands, Knack is a stunning piece of visual artwork laid on top of an average platformer/beat ’em up.
Grade: C

Copyright Digital Extremes Source: USZRT
Copyright Digital Extremes
Source: USZRT

Digital Extremes’ Warframe is a free-to-play shooter available for download on the PSN Store. In terms of comparable titles, Warframe combines the gunplay of the Gears of War series, the special ability mechanics of the Mass Effect franchise, and the customization options of the Borderlands titles and even reaches into MMO territory. Needless to say, that’s a lot of content for a free game. You play as a race of creatures called Tenno, using the Warframes (each with their own stats and abilities) to fight the hostile Grineer, Corpus, and Infested factions. Missions come in a variety of flavors, including Sabotage, Survival, Assassination, Rescue, and many more. The game takes place in the solar system, with each planet or moon representing a recommended level range for players. There are currently 14 planets and moons to choose from, with 239 missions to play, all of which are named after real places and objects in the solar system.

The game itself is very complex. In fact, I’m still trying to wrap my head around some of the features here. You visit the Arsenal menu to change or upgrade equipment with mods. Mods have different polarities, and warframes have upgrade slots that can only be filled by mods of certain polarities, whereas weapons can be upgraded by any mods as long as they are specific to that weapon type. You can also “supercharge” your warframes, sentinels, and weapons by using certain items, which will double the amount of points you can spend on mods for that object. You can even upgrade mods by using fusion cores or consuming other mods to power them up.

New items can be purchased from the in-game market, using either the credits accrued from normal gameplay or with platinum, which is a currency bought with real money. You can buy finished weapons, warframes, equipment, gear, packs of colors to customize your appearance, and blueprints to create many of these items in the game’s Foundry menu. Items crafted in the Foundry require some time to complete, or you can “rush build” them by spending platinum, which creates the item immediately for your use.

Gameplay involves third-person shooting combined with dodge rolling, sliding, sprinting, crouching, running up walls, ziplines, and climbing walls with up to three other players during a mission. You can revive teammates who are in the downed state, but dead players are given a choice to revive (an allotment of four per 24 hours is given, more can be bought with platinum) or forfeit the mission. It’s a lot to think about and the varied enemies and powers greatly make up for the repetitive level design, which right now is the only real qualm I have with this game. Warframe is a solid shooter with a lot of depth, and it comes with the best pricetag of all: free!
Grade: A-

Copyright ThatGameCompany Source: PixelEnemy
Copyright ThatGameCompany
Source: PixelEnemy

If you like games that are therapeutic, then ThatGameCompany’s Flower is perfect for you. Originally a PS3 title, Flower has no forced objective to it. You can simply fly around the fields and take in the soothing background music. However, if you wish to complete an area, all you have to do is touch each of the closed flowers strewn about, which both add to the music and turn the field a lush green color. At a cost of $6.99, it’s fairly priced and surprisingly fun, even without the concepts of score and winning. The Playstation 4 version really shows off the platform’s graphical capabilities. Blades of grass have never looked better. The skylines are so well-done that they’re almost distracting while playing the game. Unfortunately I don’t have much more to say about this title, but I think it’s best left there because there isn’t a lot to it… it’s a delightfully simple game. You’re either going to dig Flower or you won’t, because it’s one of those games that doesn’t really have flaws; its reviews will be largely based on personal preference. I couldn’t see myself playing this game for hours on end, but for what it is, I can definitely jump into Flower to de-stress for a little while.
Grade: B+

You can watch me stream Playstation 4 gameplay at various times by visiting http://www.twitch.tv/eirewolf10 

Filed Under: ENTERTAINMENT, OPINION, REVIEWS, TECHNOLOGY Tagged With: downloadable, flower, free to play, gaming, knack, launch, playstation 4, sony, technology, video games, warframe

NHL 14 Review

by Tim Morris

Having played EA Sports’s NHL franchise for many years, I’ve seen the greatness that was NHL ’94, the complete overhauls over the next few years that continued the tradition of excellence, the lean years of the early to mid 2000s, and the return of to glory that started with NHL 09. The newest version, NHL 14, released on September 10th. It’s likely the swan song for the current generation of consoles, with the PlayStation 4 and XBOX One releasing this November. This is not to say that EA will stop making the NHL games for the PS3 and X360, but the focus will clearly be on the newer platforms.

EA hyped this game by advertising a new fighting engine and enforcer mechanics, as well as better goalie, shooting, deflection, and defensive AI. The new fighting/enforcer engine is very well done. Fights are now triggered by big hits on star players, or illegal hits on most anyone. Players still have the option to decline fights in multiplayer, so there’s no risk of losing a top skater for five minutes because you crushed some poor soul along the boards. As for the remainder of the AI changes, they’re a mixed bag. Defenders are much better at positioning, which was the biggest problem in NHL 13‘s on ice play. It was too easy to blow by a defenseman who wasn’t perfectly placed, and the changes made for this year have mostly remedied that. Shooting and deflections are better as you can now shoot the puck flush to the ice, as opposed to always having at least a little elevation. AI teammates now actively try to redirect the puck on net, as opposed to it randomly flying off in any direction. However, the goalies are awful. For all the changes made since NHL 13, somehow the goaltenders came out far worse than they were before. Previously, goalies were able to make crazy, unrealistic saves on some shots, but were embarrassingly bad at covering high to the stick side and the five-hole. Now, it’s an absolute free-for-all. Goalies are better positioned and have a harder time reacting to screens, which is good, but in NHL 14 it seems that the average goalie couldn’t stop a child from scoring on him. It is now far too easy to score goals, and many games I play end with scores like 6-5 as opposed to the more realistic 2-1’s and 3-2’s that NHL 13 produced. The new one-touch deke system also falls a bit short. Maybe it’s just me, but I find that it can be a fairly awkward system to use. I liked being able to toe drag people into submission and pop the puck over a defender while avoiding a hit. This system is more focused on cutbacks and while it works, it isn’t as fun as the old system to me.

NHL 14 features a revamped version of the old Be A Pro mode, dubbed Live The Life in this title. In it, the old standby features of Be A Pro are complemented by added statistics regarding your likability to fans, management, teammates, and families. To affect these attributes, different multiple-choice events will pop up sporadically as you progress. These can be interviews, your teammates daring you to do something, nutrition choices, and more. The same expectation system and coach’s grades from previous years persist in this game, largely unchanged. They remain based around the player type you select for your pro. Snipers will be asked to score goals, playmakers are told to tally assists, two-way forwards have to do a little bit of everything, and so on. While the mode is more fun than in years’ past, some of the same problems are still present. Teammate AI, though better, is still subpar. They will still make bad passes, get caught out of position, and take bad shots. The goalies are worse than before, allowing soft goals left and right. The worst part about this mode from back then is the line change AI, and that still hasn’t been fixed. Oftentimes I start a shift with the puck either deep in my zone or the other team rushing in during a 2 on 1, and we get scored on. This craters my plus-minus rating, which is one of the requirements to unlock items and progress your player.

Live The Life Screenshot Source - Web Guy Unlimited
Live The Life Screenshot
Source – Web Guy Unlimited

GM Connected returns with a faster user interface and less delay in the menus. For those who are unaware, GM Connected allows you and up to 749 (you read that right, 749) others compete online in an NHL season. You can take control of a team as the general manager, be a player on the team, or coach a team. It’s a great concept for a game mode, but it still isn’t quite right. Weird things like trade exploits and sloppy menus keep the mode from being truly great. I personally am hoping for a fix in next year’s game on the new consoles. I think another great feature that is missing from this mode is the option to have a live fantasy draft for your league. The fantasy draft option is in the game for season and Be A GM modes, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to implement here.

Hockey Ultimate Team also returns with minimal improvements. In this mode, you buy packs of cards containing players, jerseys, contracts, attribute boosts, and arenas, which all go towards constructing your very own hockey team. Packs are bought with either EA Pucks, which are earned in the various game modes (you earn the most at a time by playing HUT though) or by paying real money. Once you’re ready to play, you can take your team into tournaments against the AI or online to battle other players’ teams. It’s an interesting way for people to build a team from scratch, but it takes a long time to save up for any of the good packs (gold and up, and even then you won’t get many top-tier players) and people who aren’t willing to go through the grind are going to get bored quickly.

Now, to the part of the review that I was really hoping that I wouldn’t have to write. Seemingly every EA Sports title that comes out has freezing/glitching issues. In NHL, said problems are often centered around the Custom Music feature. I love the idea of it, since EA’s musical selection for its games is normally terrible and I’d rather not hear the same ten songs repeatedly while playing. For last year’s NHL 13, I went all out with it and made a separate playlist for each team. In NHL 14, I brought the old playlists over and added three more songs per team. Even after installing the game to my hard drive and taking great care of the disc, in ’13 I still had freezes occurring sometimes due to the music not being loaded properly by the game. In ’14, half the time I play the game it freezes at some point, most often right after the final buzzer and the home team’s win song gets played (goal horn + whatever playlist you pick). As far as glitches go, the same glitch goals from the previous games exist, and a handful of new ones have already been discovered. This coupled with the community make online play an absolute mess. I usually refuse to touch online play in sports games, because people are too lazy and immature to actually learn how to play the game and instead resort to these exploits, and this game is no different.

Gameplay screenshot of NHL 14. Source - Operation Sports
Gameplay screenshot of NHL 14.
Source – Operation Sports

When the game runs properly, NHL 14 is a solid hockey title that delivers fluid skating, hellaciously fun fighting, an immersive mode in Live The Life, and an overall more realistic hockey sim than NHL 12 and NHL 13 when it comes to everything but scoring. However, as it stands right now the game is a glitch and bug-filled mess. EA is supposedly working on patches and ways to fix the issues, but these are things that should have been addressed in production and not post-release. The sooner they fix the freezes and exploits, the sooner we can all get to enjoying the game, but until then I’m giving NHL 14 a grade of Incomplete on the grounds that due to some bugged features it can be unplayable for some. Once fixed, I’d say this is a B+ title.

System: XBOX 360, Playstation 3
Genre: Sports/Hockey
Players: 1-4 offline, 2-12 online (simultaneous)
Price: $59.99

Filed Under: ENTERTAINMENT, OPINION, REVIEWS, SPORTS, TECHNOLOGY Tagged With: EA Sports, gaming, hockey, NHL, NHL 14, opinions, Playstation 3, reviews, sony, video games, X360, xbox

Game Boy for the iPhone: Without Jailbreaking

by Alex David Jimenez

Remember the Game Boy? It was Nintendo’s crowning handheld achievement in the days when video games were a new and exciting medium. The Game Boy allowed us to take our video games out of our living rooms and play them on the go – wherever we went. It was the first of its kind.

Today of course the modern smart-phone has far outweighed the need for an individual portable gaming console. There are thousands upon thousands of games available for play on the iPhone alone. While this certainly suffices as means for adequate mobile gaming, there is always a certain joy to playing the games of old in their original form. Who doesn’t enjoy a round of Game Boy’s original Super Mario Land, or Mega Man? Nintendo still produces Game Boys, now in color, technologically advanced 3D graphics, and dual screens. Yet one thing Nintendo never did was strike any sort of deal with Apple, or any other platform, to sell their trademarked games as applications. Who hasn’t looked for  Mario Bros. or Castle Quest as games in Apple’s App Store? For those who have the latest iPhone, is it really worth spending the money on a Game Boy just to play vintage Kirby’s Dream Land?

I have seen several examples of iPhones which are jailbroken uploaded with vintage Nintendo games. However many people (myself included) have no interest in having their phones jailbroken. Certainly not for a game.

Enter: A nifty new platform, designed for the iPhone 5. Game Play by InSeven Limited has developed the loophole that my geeky Mario-loving self has been looking for. Interested? Well, the details are very specific. But if you have what’s needed to set it up, why not give it a try?

You need:

An iPhone 5

The company has developed this program specifically for the latest version of the iPhone (iPhone only). At least for now…

A Google Drive account & iPhone App

If you have a Gmail account, you have access to Google Drive, used to save and store files online. The App (which is free) is available at the App Store.

 

  • Step 1: Add the Program Link to your Home Page

The link must be visited on the phone so the website can be bookmarked to your phone’s home screen directly. The link is http://inseven.co.uk/apps/gameplay/app/
Press ADD button on your screen to open the options.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Add the page to your Home Screen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 2: If you don’t already have it, download the Google Drive App

Google Drive is free in the App Store.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • Step 3: Find and Download Game Boy ROM files

This step tends to be the trickiest one. The Game Play website cannot directly offer the ROM files for download. Instead, it is suggested that you search for the files yourself. Game Play does provide a list of games which currently will work for the application:

Adventure Island, Adventure Island 2,Bionic Commando, Bomberman, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Castle Quest, Castlevania 2 – Belmont’s Revenge, Double Dragon, Dr. Mario, Duck Tales 1, Duck Tales 2, Fist of the North Star, Kirby’s Dream Land, Mega Man 1, Mega Man 2, Mega Man 3, Mystical Ninja, Ninja Boy 1, Ninja Boy 2, Ninja Gaiden Shadow, Othello, Ren & Stimpy Space Cadet Advenutres, Super Mario Land, Tale Spin, Tecmo Bowl, The Castlevania Adventure (’86), The Flash, The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, The Pagemaster, The Real Ghostbusters, Tiny Toon Adventures – Montana’s Movie Madness, Tiny Toon Advenutres – Bab’s Big Break, TMNT – Fall of the Foot Clan, TMNT II – Back from the Swewers, TMNT III – Radical Rescue, Yoshi’s Cookie.

There are several different websites which can be used to find and to download game ROMS. The one I personally utilized most was one called DopeRoms.com. Specifically, if you search for game boy games, this page lists the games used for the original Game Boy, which are the only ones that currently work for the iPhone application:

http://www.doperoms.com/roms/Gameboy_And_Gbc.html

*Note: The game ROMs will be labeled as GB, GBC, or both. (Game Boy and/or Game Boy Color) – If the file is only listed as GBC, it will not work.

 

  • Step 4: Save the downloaded Roms to a folder in Google Drive. 

On your computer, the saved files can be dragged or loaded into your google drive account.
Create a folder in your Drive specifically for the games.

 

 

 

The folder and files will sync with your iPhone 5.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • Step 5: Add artwork

The photos for the games must be downloaded and added as well. To find the artwork,
search for it. For example, for the game Super Mario Land, I Googled Super Mario Land under images and found several shots of the original cartridge artwork:

Once downloaded, add the artwork file to the same google drive folder as its game.

You then must rename the artwork file to exactly match that of the game, only changing the file type from gb to jpg.

For example:

Once again, the folder and contained files on your Google Drive will sync with those on your iPhone 5 app.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • Step 6: Open the App!

You’re finished! Open the Game Play app on your iPhone Home Screen. The Google Drive app automatically syncs with the app and the games will appear within the app itself.

Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*Notes on the application

– There is no sound on any of the games for Game Play. Do not be concerned when there is no sound for the games. It is not yet available. The application creators are working to add this feature soon.

– The games cannot be saved.  If the application is closed, the game will be lost and can only be started from the beginning the next time the application is opened. If the iPhone itself is turned off while Game Play is running, the game will continue where you left off.

InSeven Limited, the company behind Game Play, has stated that they are continuously working to improve the program. They hope to bring Game Play to other platforms soon, and are seeking to expand to include Game Boy Color games in the near future.

Filed Under: TECHNOLOGY Tagged With: Game Boy, games, gaming, geek, google drive, iphone, nintendo, tech, technology, vintage

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