Backbreaker for the PS3

This month I am reviewing the new American Football game out on the market.

Concept: 3/5

Unfortunately I can not rate the concept of this game particularly high. It was a simple concept. The people making the game wanted to make a football videogame. Unfortunately, the Madden Franchise owns exclusive rights to the NFL teams, logos, etc. So faced with the fact that they were going to have to come up with all new teams they decided to run with that aspect and make the game very customizable. They also built the engine from scratch, I believe, and wanted to show off that they have a better engine than Madden.

Graphics: 4/5

Other than two things about the visual asthetic of the game I love the visuals. One thing is the players. They all look the same. The linemen look like the guys in the backfield, the kickers look like linebackers, it's just effed up. Other than changing a guy's socks or his skin color they all look like cookie cutter copies of each other. Then there's also their pads. I understand the need to make them look different but they pads have plastic muscles chiseled into the "armor" that they wear making it feel like the whole field is filled with the left overs from an old batman movie.

Now that I've ranted a bit about the players it's time to complain about the other thing which is the stadiums. From the looks of it, unless there's hidden unlockables, there's only a handful of stadiums. Now don't think I'm complaining about the lack of diversity in stadiums. I'm fine with them all looking the same cause I don't look at the stands that much. I focus more on the field. BUT, I do have a problem with the idea of only having 6-10 stadiums when you blatently label some of them. At one point I was facing off against the Oklahoma Stampede in their hometown and the stadium clearly said "DALLAS" everywhere... If you're going to only be making a couple stadiums please don't brand them to specific locations. Unless I am mistaken and there's a Dallas, Oklahoma I didn't know about.

Sound: 1/5

The sound is probably the worst part of the game. EVERY time there's a kick off in a match, the game plays POD's "Here Comes the Boom," then every replay of the kickoff it starts with the same guitar riff and these are the only two songs you will seemingly hear until the game is over. Also since there's no famous announcer in real life associated with this made up league the developers seemed to just say "We don't need one" Which is wrong because not having an announcer, other than the one in the stadium that tells the crowd what just happened, is boring and lack luster. It makes the game devoid of character and personality. There's also a lack of booing or even silence from the crowd. I was destroying a team in THEIR stadium 45 to 10 and the crowd was still cheering as loudly as when I beat a team by a similar landslide in my stadium.

Playability: 3/5

There's a few golden nuggets in the playability of the game and then there's also a number of things that just make you do a double take. One of the nuggets is when you play the quarterback and you're looking for a receiver. The up close looking over his shoulder technique they did in Backbreaker makes me wish that they had done it this way in Madden rather than the pass cone. Then when you want to pass to a player you can either throw it like a bullet or lob it to them. I will not lie to you, even though I did the training and "succeeded" eventually at trying to lob it... I have no clue how to do it. Juking is delayed or something so that it feels like it waits for you to release the thumbstick after entering the command for it rather than doing it immediately which leads to a lot of failed jukes. I sort of figured out how to do a spin but like the lobbing don't ask me to explain how.

I did appreciate the fact that wind seemed to actually affect kicks and such where as in Madden I knew I could overcome it with a couple twitches in the aiming I really had to plan and adjust in Backbreaker which I appreciated. The passing game is also kind of rediculous. It is so easy for interceptions and fumbles, now that I think about it, in this game that it's off putting. If they didn't name the game for the tackling aspect of the new engine they could have just named it "Interception City" and told you what you were going to be getting into. Now don't think I was intercepted on a lot and am now bitter. While a good deal of my passes were intercepted my defense did it a lot too. When I was making my team, which you have to do for "Road to Backbreaker" mode, I decided to make my team Offense oriented. But for 2 or 3 games I spent the whole first half only scoring on Defense cause someone on my defense intercepted it.

In fact it became a joke between my friends and I that my Offense would collapse under the redzone pressure so much that my game strategy was to have my offense get the ball into the redzone lose it to the other team and then score via an interception on defense. Also the playbook is the same for every team and the game will only show you a couple at a time if you're playing in Arcade mode. So if you do get this game do yourself a favor and play in Pro mode. You won't miss anything and it'll be an experience you can control more.

Ending on a positive note. I did like the fact that in interceptions and such it wouldn't autoswitch me to the ball carrier. Strangely enough I liked the ability to be the guy next to the one with the ball and blocking for him so he made it to the endzone and scored. It was strangely gratifying.

Entertainment: 3/5

You can see in some of the team logos that some teams have been around forever, some are fresh new teams, and some have possibly been having bad press so they reinvented their logo and such. All good and cool but other than some hints from how the logos have been designed you get no real understanding of the backstory of the league. I know in sports games stories are usually frowned upon and I'm not saying to include one, all thought it would have been cool in "Road to Backbreaker" mode to have included one since you're forced to be a new team. I would have loved a story about your team being a young upstart team that rises up through the minor leagues to eventually take on the champions in the Backbreaker Bowl. They could have perhaps included some short little history quips about the league in loading screens or something. I get the sense that there was a story behind the league and it's not shared.

It is fun watching the tackles seeing as no two seem to be the same thanks to the game engine. But the Instant Replay of the game was kind of terrible since it only allows you to see what your camera was looking at while you were playing the game. Which is HORRIBLE considering the fun of HAVING an Instant Replay ability is to zoom in and out and rotate the camera to see all those really cool plays that make you want to use the Instant Replay in cool angles. This is especially bad when something happens off camera so you want to use the Instant Replay to see what happened and you can't!

Also even though you can customize your logo and jersey for your team to an exponential degree, I was unable to find a create a player feature, which was again like the lack of an announcer, it made the game feel characterless and without personality. In this case without my own personality and characters as opposed to the lack of an announcer being a lack of the game's own character and personality.

X-Factor: 0/5

Unfortunately there's no X-Factor to this game. After playing it enough for a review I returned the game to get my money back. I can tell that they started with a cool idea and a good engine but it's not polished and defined in the direction they want to go enough. It's like Saint's Row vs. Saint's Row 2. The first one was just a GTA clone that kinda flopped. It wasn't all that great commercially or necessarily even as its own game. However, when Saint's Row 2 came out the hype was extraordinarily great for a bleh original game. But the hype was worth it as the second game turned out to be an awesome game.

I can easily see this happening for Backbreaker. They have the ground work for the game. It's an all right football game right now. But if they make a sequel I can easily see them focusing their work on what people say is a problem with this game and making an amazing sequeal. I can see this so easily in fact that I actually hope they make a sequel so I can get that better version of the game.

Total: 14/30

Well there you have it folks. That's my review of Backbreaker. It's an ok game. If you absolutely adore all forms of football games you should enjoy this one. But for the average Football Video Gamer... You can pass on this one and just wait for the sequel which should be better. I got this one thinking the areas they focused on would make up for the areas they didn't as I cared more about the areas they did focus on. But the truth is it wasn't enough. They need to strengthen their lack luster sections to make the game worth playing. Let's hope Backbreaker 2 comes out and it's good.

The Job Hunt

Well, it's begun. I've graduated from college and now the job hunt begins. I find myself oddly prepared and seemingly under-prepared for my future career.

I and some of my friends find ourselves in a predicament. Some companies feel we're over qualified for QA work and other places feel we're under-qualified for Design work. Leaving us in a little middle limbo. I mean granted not all of us have had this problem. I know a couple people have gotten jobs at Disney and Vicarious Visions as designers and testers. I know that some of my fellow graduates have gotten jobs elsewhere as well, I'm just unsure of where entirely.

I myself am pursuing both QA and Design positions. Over my four years at Champlain College I discovered that my two greatest enjoyments in the field of Game Development have been Level Design and QA testing. Which I believe, I could be wrong about the level design but I know I'm not about QA testing, are both entry level jobs so I could easily and quite happily make a career of these jobs.

The trick is getting someone to hire me. I'm not only applying to places in the industry but also around town to try and help me get an apartment so I can sustain myself while I hunt for a job. But even though people are hiring all over town and in the area... I find myself unable to acquire a job on the local or career levels. I think I'm driving all my friends crazy talking about how hard it is to find a job.

If I can't find a career and can find a local job I think I'm going to try and go indie. It's not the worst thing that can happen. I have some, what I think are, pretty good ideas for some games and if I can get some artists and a couple other designers/programmers together we could make some pretty sweet games. I just need to get a career, a job, or start up my own little company. It's completely simple...

Well the job hunt continues. If anyone who reads this knows of a position that needs filling at their game company or at a game company they have friends at let me know. I'll gladly apply there.

Heavy Rain for the PS3

Sorry for the tardiness everyone. Graduating has a tendency to distract a person I suppose.

Concept: 5/5

The concept of Heavy Rain is a genius one. I do not wish to toot the game's horn too much but they really tried to push the idea of an Interactive Drama. You play through the game as four characters and if at any time one of these characters die than you don't lose the game you just lose their part of the story. That coupled with the fact that they were talking of pushing the uncanny valley? It was a game just waiting to be played.

Graphics: 4/5

The graphics of the game are quite good. The lighting was a bit touchy during the opening scene which was in broad morning light. But the lighting in the rest of the game, aka the lighting when there was a lot of cloud cover, was awesome. I admit I am not much of an artist but other than the lighting issue at the beginning and the fact that video games in general, not just this one, haven't figured out how to make human skin not look like plastic. Which this game still suffers the curse of. So unfortunately while the game does look amazing I can't give it perfection on account of the two faults I find in it.

Sound: 3/5

The sound... Now that I think about it for I played the game a few weeks ago... I can't really remember. Other than the whole annoyance of running through a mall and calling out "Jason!" constantly and being annoyed by that. But you know what? I can't fault the game for that. Because it was ME who was choosing push the button to have the character call out the word again and again. So getting mad about that would really be like getting mad at myself. So overall I have to give the sound an average score because nothing about it really screamed at me.

Playability: 3/5

The game plays rather well in all aspects except for one. Movement. I enjoyed the interacting with people, interacting with the environment, interacting with your own thoughts. The problem I had was movement. You see you could move your head with the left thumb stick, and to move around you had to hold a button and move the left thumb stick. Which normally isn't a horrible system but there was something about this game that when trying to walk around in the world you were fighting against the game to go where you wanted as opposed to working with the game. I even had the opportunity to watch other people playing the game and hearing them curse and yell at it simply for being unable to walk where they wanted not for anything particularly difficult in the game. Because WALKING was so hard to do in this game I can't give it a great playability score. The walking really hurt this game THAT much.

Entertainment: 5/5

The game was incredibly entertaining I must say. I was hooked and didn't want to stop playing it. I just kept playing it every time I sat down at my TV. My friends, those that didn't want the game spoiled for them, sat down and watched with bated breath. We were captivated by the story of this game. As the story progressed we were picking out our favorite characters, discussing who we thought the origami killer was, talking about how much we hated certain characters. If the definition of a good story requires you to talk about it and discuss it. Than this story definitely has it.

X-Factor: 4/5

Like I said I was hooked and didn't want to stop playing. This game has an incredible X-Factor for your first play through. You want to know what happens and fight for it and struggle for it and see these characters come through to the end. Unfortunately the game has no real replay value I found. After I beat it once I was done as was everyone else I know who played it. We had sated our curiosity and our drive after the first playing.

Overall: 24/30 Very Good

This game is an exceptional piece of work. Unfortunately there are a few glaring issues that keep me from screaming from the rafters that it is the game the industry has been waiting for to vindicate us to the rest of the world. It is a wonderful technical achievement and a wonderful game for those willing to give it a try. But it is still a fair distance away from the perfection that we all crave.

My Last In College Post...

... I don't think I want to admit that this is it for College. I've enjoyed my time here and learned so much that I don't want to leave... but this is the way of things. In a few weeks time I will have graduated and begun the incredible journey known as adult life... Are we sure there's no dwarves, elves, or dragons to send me on an epic quest?

Requiem has gone smoothly. I'm in the process of submitting it to Valve to see if they would like to put it up on steam. I'm just waiting for the right build to be hosted on one of our sites so I can send Valve an email and say that the game can be downloaded from there. I would host it myself but....

I'm busy finishing the last two projects I have for college... oh god really? I didn't realize what I was typing until I finished that sentence... Oh well they're good projects. One is a demo reel for my site/the Senior show we're having. There's going to be people, rumor has it, from 38 Studios, Vicarious Visions, Bugtracker, and a few others that escape me at the moment, up here to see us at that time. Which will be awesome! Potential employers are more than welcome to talk to me!

My other project is my level for Advanced Seminar. It's come out ok. I'll need to make it pretty a little more before I can put it up to share but the base mechanics are all there so that should be sweet. I just need to tweak and polish the mechanic a little more is all.

So yeah... My three projects are done/wrapping up, as is my collegiate career. I specifically say collegiate because if I stopped learning I would stop growing and as the name of this blog suggests I am all about growing as an individual.

Also, fate is kinda funny. I started my college production cycle working on a project with Taylor Bjorndahl and Auston Montville, along with a few others, and now I'm working on my last group project in college with Taylor Bjorndahl and Auston Montville, along with a few others. I find that amusing.

Well enjoy your time till my next post!

Pokémon SoulSilver

This month I take a look at one of the latest games in the Pokémon franchise. I believe the only differences between SoulSilver and HeartGold to be what pokémon are available to you and nothing drastically different in terms of gameplay so I guess this review can work for both.

Concept: 1/5

Continue the remaking of old Pokémon games with updating Gold and Silver to HeartGold and SoulSilver. Overall, knowing how much money Pokémon games make there really wasn't a lot of new thinking put into these games. They just took a couple ideas from other games and put it into this remake. Most noticeably being having a pokémon follow you around from Pokémon Yellow. Nothing else really felt new.

Graphics: 2/5

The graphics are good for the Nintendo DS. Not amazing but it's still nice too look at. I especially liked the pictures they showed when you enter a new area, like the Ilex Forest, or the Ice Path. I feel like they set the world a little better and I'm more immersed. But that's about it. Otherwise it's just the DS pokémon engine... nothing really awesome.

Sound: 4/5

The sound is average. Does what it needs to do, the sound effects and songs are the same ones we've known since the beginning. So that's average, they are updated however from the original midi files to newer better sounding audio. But after you beat the game you can unlock the ability to play the original sound clips which is amusing and gives a good sense of nostalgia that I enjoyed.

Playability: 2/5

The playability is to be expected. It's another pokémon game. You have to wander from town to town beating gym leaders gaining Hidden Moves and the ability to use them outside of battle to unlock new areas of the map. You can still only carry 6 pokémon and they can only know 4 moves. Really a case of same old same old. This formula has not changed since the original. Which is the thing that really ticks me off. They've released more than a dozen games by now, and the formula is still exactly the same? Can we not get any innovation on this section of the game? Are the developers so unwilling to try something new? Or have they been trying things behind closed doors and discovering it doesn't work? I don't know but I can tell you this style of gameplay is getting really old really fast.

They did add a new gameplay element with the pokéwalker. But is a tamagotchi minigame with the element of you need to walk to gain things really new? I feel like they just took some other people's ideas and tried to fit them into the pokémon universe. Again where's the innovation? Where's the newness to the game? Why do I continue to feel like I'm playing the same thing over and over again and again?

Entertainment: 3/5

The game is entertaining. It's a pokémon adventure. It makes you feel like you're a kid again and that you can actually do some of these epic events and journey with friends on a wonderful adventure without fear of death like a normal rpg/quest with monsters/goblins/demons/etc. There is still a bit of fun to have in this game because of it.

X-Factor: 1/5

There's no new X-Factor to this game. It's a pokémon game and it'll be enjoyable on that basis. There's nothing that grabs you. Nothing that makes you think, "Oooh, this is surprisingly fun." There is no soul to this game. Just another game off the pokémon game factory line. Which makes good pokémon games. But it is again just another of the same.

Overall: 13/30 It's Ok...

This game is actually a bit of a weird overall rating. Because when I announced I was going to review games and explained my rating system I said that the rating this game received would make it best received by fans of the series. But as a fan of the series I felt like this was sort of just the same old same old. It's got differences from the others but I felt like I had played this before, just like the latest Zelda games. I felt like it was just another one in the series... nothing to write home about.

We Made Alpha Now on to Beta

Well congratulations should be expressed to everyone involved in my Senior Team Project. We made our Alpha milestone and the game is a lot of fun. Now we need to buckle down and really see if we can tighten up the (graphics on level 3. Just kidding couldn't resist joking about that silly comercial) game. We still need to balance the game out a bit and make sure that we include the necessity for the player to strategize. But I have a good feeling about it, I definitely think it will all work out.

I offered my Lead Designer and Producer to get in touch with the Vice President of Steam and see if they would be interested in putting our game on their service and they said yes but they wanted to talk to the rest of the team/not in it's current state. So I'll let that sort itself out some more.

I'm still working on my portfolio site. Tomorrow I'm required to have my second piece included for my Portfolio class. I hired a Graphic Designer to help me and he made a wicked sweet logo. He also gave me a business card layout and a gave me a suggestion for what I should try to make my website look like. So right now I'm going to try and get all of my content up there that I want up there, finish my resumé because I need to have it all on one page but looking good, and make my business cards. Then I will try to make a version of my website that looks like what he suggested from scratch. Because I like his layout better I just don't have the time for it at the moment so I need to prioritize getting a website up that looks at least presentable before trying to get it all up perfectly.

As for my Advanced Seminar class. It's going. I'm definitely going to have something done by the end of the semester that I can put in my portfolio but right now Unreal is being a little sassy so I have to make a lamp post from scratch on my own and import it into Unreal. Then I need to make sure that the light mechanic of my level works perfectly with it and then it's just a matter of making it look pretty. So that shouldn't really be a problem.

My C++ class is moving along just fine too. We've started discussing and using classes and pointers. I think after I graduate I might take some online courses to keep learning C++. The reason I'm thinking about this is because I'm in the IGDA QA SIG mailing list, that's actually a bit of a mouth full, but a common thing said in the mailing list is that if you're in QA, or Design I'm inferring, you should know code. So that you can understand and talk to the programmers a bit better as well as point out problems because of how something was coded.

How Champlain College teaches us designers requires us to learn some 3D art skills as well as programming. But I'm startting to think of taking it to the next level. Who knows maybe I'll find myself not getting a job in the industry when I graduate and will have to do the part time job thing while I continue to learn programming and maybe even getting a certificate in it.

Mass Effect 2 for the Xbox 360

I have been looking forward to this game almost as much as I was looking forward to the original. When they announced the original game I knew I would be owning a 360 at some point in the future. So when I had a chance to play the original I knew that my original assumption was right and I have to say the sequel doesn't disappoint either.

Concept: 5/5

Continue the story of Commander Shepard and his crew in an attempt to defeat the reapers. A species of Giant Alien Robots that want to erase all organic life from the galaxy. Pretty simple and everyone that loved the first game will love the second. Plus the second might draw some people in that the first missed.

Graphics: 4/5

The graphics are definitely improved over the original. I love everything about the graphics except for a couple things. The faces. I don't know maybe it's just me but I felt like everyone's faces were kind of static throughout the whole game. To explain, if their character's default face is smiling than I felt that whenever they showed any emotion it wasn't a case of taking a passive version of the face and making it angry, sad, etc. It was taking that smiling face and then trying to make it angry, sad, etc. It just felt off. But who knows maybe this is just a quirk I have and no one else has or had a problem with it.

I also noticed the texture popping come back. For those who don't know what this is: When you're far away from a character or person, in real life or in a game, you can't make out all the little individual patches on a person's suit. So the engine is set up in a way to pretty much say "why bother" with all that detail if no one can see it. So when at long distances it loads a fuzzier version of the suit so there aren't all those patches and it doesn't take up processing power to render something you can't see. But the "popping" issue is when you're standing next to a character and the character has a low quality texture on because the game hasn't caught on that you're standing next to them yet, then it does and you notice the texture visually "pop" into a higher quality.

But by far the greatest visual complaint I have of the new game is that it will fail to position people properly during conversations. The first time I spoke to the character Jacob I was somehow standing next to him not across from him so whenever the game would go to show me a reaction shot of my character there was no one there. It was really weird. Then another time I was talking to another person and someone from my team was standing INSIDE the character I was talking to. This issue was very experience breaking.

Sound: 4/5

Overall the sound of the game in terms of music and sound effects is average. There is no real particular effect or song that I found really amazing. However, this game does have amazing background conversations and advertisements. Walking around an interstellar market place and hearing an advertisement for the latest show of Hamlet staring all aliens, this particular species can't share emotion like we do so they say how they feel, was hilarious. Or hearing about the latest future video game and what the fans are grumbling about. All the weapons sound like weapons and the atmosphere of the galaxy is amazing.

Playability: 4/5

The game plays amazingly well, it plays even better than the first game. The inclusion of heavy weapons really makes the game a whole lot better. Especially since the heavy weapons replace grenades. Because in the first game you seemed to be the only person in the galaxy that could use grenades. Honestly I never once came across another person that used grenades. But in this game every now and then someone else will have a heavy weapon so it doesn't feel like you've randomly developed this skill that no one else has.

Personally I did not like the fact that this game gives you a lot less information than the first game did. You have to kind of guess what everyone's class is based on how they talk to you and what they reveal about themselves. Which is ok I was able to piece together who I wanted in my squad this way but I think it would be nice if they just told you their classes. Also all of the weapons seem to be the same? There's no statistics so I can't tell if one shotgun does more damage than another or if they just reload differently.

Also the whole finding resources on planets, scanning thing? Horrible. It wasn't fun the first time I did it, I don't know if it will ever be fun. But doing it vs. not doing it has gameplay repercussions so I have to tell you to do it.

Entertainment: 4/5

The entertainment is great. I played this game with a friend watching that had never played the first one and she was getting as excited as I was whenever things went down. People that hadn't met Shepard before would be trying to act tough in front of him and my friend would yell "Don't you KNOW?! That's SHEPARD!" it definitely helped the amusement of the game.

No spoilers, but during the last couple hours of the game, this one particular location, I was on the edge of my seat the whole time. I was so nervous, excited, and energized all at the same time. It was capable of making me that emotionally charged.

X-Factor: 5/5

The X-factor to this game is pretty great. After I played the first game, as a good guy, I wanted to play through again as a badass. But I didn't feel like a badass I felt like an asshole. So I stopped playing. I have tried to play through the renegade side of the first game at least 5 times and I hardly make it past the first mission each time.

This time when playing I was still a bit of a goody two shoes, but I felt my character had evolved a little bit so I allowed him to do some renegade options every now and then and they were so amazing that I plan on playing through the renegade side. Once I catch a break from playing all the other games I need to review for you all.

Overall: 26/30