Up late talking games & writing? You're...

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Games: For tonight, here's the third installment of the letters between myself and @SparkyClarkson on Obsidian's underappreciated espionage RPG, Alpha Protocol. 

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Where's my funnel? This guy's thirsty for bleach!

Can I flirt with Scarlet without making Mina (or Heck) angry?

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Games: So, Mark of a Hero.

Although I haven’t talked about it in a while, I’ve still been putting time into Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate.  

With my wife into it as deeply as I am and my oldest son here for the summer, there’s been plenty of opportunity to play multiplayer locally and I’ve been happy to take advantage of it. We’ve been chipping away at it steadily, and our overall goal is to take down the Dire Miralis before my son goes back to his mom’s house…  We’ve got about three more weeks to go, and we're feeling hopeful.  

That’s a multiplayer goal, though.  As for me personally, I’ve been stuck on the mission titled Mark of a Hero. Spoiler: It's hard as hell. 

(Now I’m going to get a little ‘inside baseball’ here because I just completed it and I couldn’t be more thrilled, so pardon me as I get super specific in describing it.  Fair warning: if you’re not a MH player, the rest of this post is probably going to sound like a bunch of nonsense.)

So this mission consists of two parts.  The first is a G-rank Ivory Lagiacrus in the Arena.  After he goes down, the second section is fighting a G Brachydios and a G Azure Rathalos… at the same time… in the same Arena.  I’ve been told that the monsters actually have a High-Rank amount of life, but they certainly hit at G-Rank levels, so it’s not really that much of a break.

In any event, it took me about 10 or 12 attempts before I finally saw victory, and here’s how I did it –

First, my gear was the Azure Rathalos Z armor, DEF 650 and decorated for HG Earplugs, Critical Eye +3, Fencing and Perception. (Although ironically, I forgot to bring paintballs on my winning run, so Perception ended up going unused.) My weapon was the Demolition greatsword with 1224 raw damage and 400 Slime attack.  I drank a Mega Demondrug and a Mega Armorskin too.  

Kayamba had the Pitfall mask (max level) and Cha-Cha used the Ultimate Mask (level 0!)

I started the Ivory Lagiacrus section with a pitfall trap and let him have it, and then proceeded as normal with the battle.  This is definitely the hardest part of the quest, and I think what finally made the difference for me was bringing along a Farcaster and enough materials to make more.  I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me earlier, but taking those short breaks helped a ton – not only was I able to conserve potions by sleeping in the bed, it was nice to be able to sharpen and eat meat without worrying about getting rushed.

He went down in about 10 minutes or so, and I was a little surprised at how quickly that went once I found a good groove.  Once the Lagiacrus was gone, I made a beeline for the Brachydios and started wailing on him while he was still doing his initial look around/roaring sequence.  I knocked him down once, then drank a Mega Dash Juice to run around the arena without running out of stamina.

The common consensus on this battle is that it’s best to have the Brachy and the Rathalos pitted against each other so that the ‘friendly fire’ wears them each out while you concentrate on dodging attacks.  This works well, but my earlier mistake was to try and get the Rath to take down the Brachy by keeping him between us.  I figured it would be easier to take down the Rathalos in a 1-on-1 fight, but he just doesn’t have enough juice to win when the two of them are trading blows.  Once I resigned myself to the fact that the Brachy would be the last one standing and started keeping the Rath in the middle, it went better. 

Even so, the majority of my effort was simply dodging, and I only came in to strike when one of the beasts was visibly tired, or if one got knocked down.  The rest of the time just me running around while trying to lure the monsters into striking each other, using Kayamba’s Pitfall mask as often as I could and Farcasting out when things got too hairy, or when I needed to catch a quick breath. 

Upon returning to the arena after a ‘cast, I noticed that the Rathalos was limping (he hadn’t spotted me at this point) so I threw down a Shock trap and luck was on my side as he came straight for me and stumbled right into it.  My tranq bombs were ready, so I tossed a couple and he was gone.

Once I processed that there was only one monster left, I started mildly freaking out and tried to force myself to stay focused.  From this point on, it went like a standard Brachydios battle with the Shakalakas pitching in and I was shocked to see that the fight only lasted for another three or four minutes before the Brachy went down. 

Total completion time: 32 minutes. 

Monster Hunter is well-known as a game that can present a stiff challenge to players, and in all the time I’ve spent with the series, I can think of very few battles which were as taxing as this one (though the double Rajang mission in MHFU springs to mind.) The feeling of victory after all my previous defeats was incredibly sweet, and the sort of rush that comes when you know you’ve pushed yourself to the limit and come out on top.

I’m going to sleep well tonight, and I hope that some of the information in this narrative will be of some help to those of you who will be attempting this mission on your own later on.

Happy hunting!

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Games: Earlier this week, I finished Hotline Miami (Vita) for the first time, and after rolling credits, I’m feeling quite mixed. I already wrote about it once, but this is more of a final wrapup...

So on one hand, I did like the music, colors and slightly surreal quality permeating the first 3/4ths or so.  Although I had heard many people call the game out for an extreme level of violence, I can’t say it bothered me in the least.  The graphics are so simple that it’s hard to be shocked, and nothing happens in this game that doesn’t happen in a thousand others, so I don’t see why this one was so special in that respect.

The gameplay is quite rough, but there is definitely a certain charm to it.  When things happen the way they should, it’s a tense cat-and-mouse experience that harkens back to an age where games were more purely focused on arcade-style action.

Of course, things don’t always go the way they should.

The biggest issue was that the controls feel entirely too touchy, and death comes so swiftly (your character can only take one hit in most cases) that half of my losses felt like they were more due to the fact that it’s so hard to shoot straight than any tactical error on my part.  There’s a lock-on system, but everything is just too fidgety overall.

The behavior of the enemies is also somewhat randomized, although not in any way that I felt was especially clever or beneficial.  It’s possible to enter a room and sneak up behind a gunman with his back turned nine times in a row, and on the tenth he’ll turn around faster than the eye can see and blow you away for no discernible reason.  Sometimes enemies would hound me relentlessly, and other times they would stand dumbly as I shot them repeatedly in the back.

Despite these issues and the occasional frustration that came with them, I was having a mostly positive experience with Hotline Miami, but things took a bit of a tumble after the credits rolled.  The epilogue levels star a different character and seem like an eleventh-hour attempt to add depth to a game which does not display any hint of it in the content that precedes it.

I’ve heard many people try to explain Hotline as some sort of commentary on videogames, on violence, on violence in videogames, on a player’s relationship to videogame violence itself, and any number of permutations in between, but I’m just not buying it.

As a player, I’m approaching the game as a slightly puzzle-like, reflex-based experience.  I don’t sympathize with the character or see myself in his shoes in any way, so the comments which come at the end of the game (sorry for being vague, but I’m trying not to spoil anything for those who haven’t finished yet) struck me as nothing so much as an unearned, throwaway chuckle on the part of the devs, and any assumed depth comes strictly from the goodwill of fans and writers giving it the benefit of the doubt.

While I certainly don’t think the game is as meta-clever or as meaningful as so many people led me to believe beforehand, there’s still much to like about the kinetic bloodshed and fast action.  At this point I’d still recommend it, but with the caveat that it shines best when taken at face value.

(Side note: Good buddy @Hargrada sent me this link to a reading of the game which I don’t entirely agree with, but which makes more sense to me than anything else I've seen.  If you’ve got ten minutes or so, check it out.)

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In other games news, I sat down with my 11-year-old tonight and we downloaded some classic games onto his 3DS XL – Mega Man 2 and Super C.

These were two of my favorite titles when I was younger, and I was thrilled to be able to share a little bit of my history with him in this way.  To his credit, he was very eager and curious to check them out, not caring at all about the graphics or how technically-impressive they were.

I let him loose on Mega Man at first with just a few words of preface, and he quickly turned to me to declare “this is the hardest game I’ve ever played!!” followed by “this is impossible!!”.  I chuckled a little bit and after telling him a few stories about walking to school in the snow uphill both ways, I took over and was more than a little surprised to find that the muscle memory of making split-second jumps and dodging enemy fire was still there.  I blew through the Metal Man stage without getting touched, even though the last time I played the game was at least twenty years ago.

Seeing his eyes light up and hearing his audible exclamations of disbelief was absolutely priceless, and for those few minutes, I felt like an invulnerable hero to the little boy I brought into the world.  

As great as that feeling was, it was quickly eclipsed when I passed the 3DS back over to him and could see his skills already improving after only having seen me do the sequence once.  I cherished shining for a few moments, but it was even better to see him coming to grips with the game and watching his frustration and defeat turn into enjoyment and pride in his own accomplishment. It was truly humbling stuff.

As a father, moments like that is what life is all about.

********************PR/NEWS/INFO********************

Do you want to show off to your friends in Saints Row IV co-op mode with a shiny new superhero outfit? Running through virtual Steelport with Super Sprint or smashing cars with your Telekinesis skill is twice as fun with one of these special superhero suits. Clad yourself either as THE IRON ROGUE or put on the legendary chest plate of the warrior woman QUEEN AMAZONIA!

These bonus costumes will be available exclusively if you preorder at participating retailers, including GameStop and EBGames.

Saints Row IV launches August 20th, 2013 across North and Latin America and August 23rd worldwide for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.

Find us on the web at:

Web:  http://www.saintsrow.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/saintsrow
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/saintsrow
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/saintsrow

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XPEC Entertainment Inc., a leading game developer, is proud to announce today that it is self-publishing and releasing Do Not Fall on PlayStation®Network on Tuesday, July 23 for $9.99.  

Do Not Fall is a comical action-platform game that puts players in the role of a fearless adventurer named Pipi who lives inside a drink vending machine. Players must explore seven themed worlds to gather enough materials to make one delicious drink and will have to prove their reflexes are quick enough to avoid disappearing tiles, obstacles, and traps along the way. Players will do whatever it takes to avoid being knocked off or dropped from surfaces and find their way throughout the seven worlds and 70 different levels in order to collect the ingredients. Packaged with six entertaining multiplayer modes for up to four players, gamers will have several options to gather friends and start an awesome battle to see who will be the king on the floor.

To stay updated on the latest game announcements check out Do Not Fall’s Facebook page or the official Website.

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Head for www.remembermeremix.com and become part of the Remember Me Music Remix Contest which launches across Europe and North America today. Based on the internationally acclaimed soundtrack for Remember Me by Olivier Deriviere, participants can download the track “Fragments” and all of its musical stems for free then remix it to create a brand new musical memory.

By entering a uniquely remixed tune contestants could be in the running to win a one of a kind vinyl LP featuring their winning track in a custom made sleeve with exclusive artwork from videogame developer DONTNOD Entertainment’s Art Director– Aleksi Briclot. Winners will also receive a copy of the Remember Me videogame and gaming console of their choice, the official Remember Me artbook and assorted merchandise. There are two chances to win so contestants should get their entries in now! Entries will be freely available to download from the music remix site and contestants can vote on their favorite, helping to crown the winner.

Remember Me is available now for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC across Europe and North America. The Music Remix Contest will be held from July 1st to July 31st. The full terms and conditions can be found on the Remix site.

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Games: As promised , here's the second installment of the letters between myself and @SparkyClarkson on Obsidian's underappreciated espionage RPG, Alpha Protocol. 

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Hey Brad,

I don’t know how swank the Rome apartment is, but I have to say the Moscow flat is pretty classy. I’m not sure I’m a huge fan of decorating the dining room with Nasri’s glass eye, but I guess when you shoot a guy in the face you want to keep a part of that face around as a memento. Or something.

Thorton’s mission here seems pretty straightforward -- find out who trafficked those missiles through the city -- but the characters he encounters are a bizarre mix. On the one hand, we have Grigori, Albatross, and Surkov, who could fit easily into almost any serious spy drama ever made. On the other hand, we have Sis, SIE, and Brayko, who are absurd. SIE is the least ridiculous, even though she’s a Bond-style vamp in the mold of Xenia Onatopp. I’ve been playing Mike using aggressive answers leavened with professional ones, which seemed to appeal to her.

Sis and Brayko are bigger problems, because they show off the worst aspects of Alpha Protocol’s incongruous boss fights. Sis shows up with a bunch of hi-tech operatives, but instead of advanced rifles and night-vision goggles she’s equipped with two revolvers and a hoodie. At least the hoodie is made of kevlar, if her resistance to being shot in the face is any indication. The awful fight with Brayko is even more bizarre - perhaps all that cocaine has formed a protective shield? And no matter how many bullets you sink into their faces, afterwards these bosses are still ready for a conversation! “Ah, you beat me! Now I shall converse with you and possibly escape!”- it feels very JRPG-ish (and not in a good way).

Alpha Protocol feels like it’s making more sense when it provides confrontations like the fight against Championchik (Surkov’s bodyguard). He’s a boxer, and he wants to fight hand-to-hand. A Bond would take up the challenge and end up mauled but victorious. A Bauer would just shoot him in the face, which Alpha Protocol lets you do.

This seems really simple, but I’m fond of it because for the most part Alpha Protocol separates characterization from the combat mechanics, so that you have long stealth/combat sequences punctuated by short character moments. Mass Effect gave me a similar feeling, and in both cases the character stuff is so much better than the combat gameplay (I love that some of these missions are just talking) that the shooty bits can feel like a chore.

That’s such a missed opportunity, because action, at its best, is characterization. Consider what Jason Bourne’s elegant, brutal takedown of the cops in the park in The Bourne Identity reveals about him, or taking the nearest parallel to this scene, what Indy shooting the swordsman in Raiders of the Lost Ark says about him. The fight against Championchik turns a combat moment into a character moment, which makes this one of the best encounters in the game. That’s missing from most of Alpha Protocol’s boss encounters, to its detriment.

Well, I’m going to clear out of town and leave Brayko to his fun. Won’t you join me in Taipei?

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Hey Sparky,

I’m not going to lie, the Rome safehouse is fabulous. 

Being something of a foodie myself, I love the kitchen. Then toss in a hot tub and a rooftop balcony for sipping espresso?  Heavenly.  I also thought that some of the small details were nice touches – I assume the messages of encouragement from Mina and Darcy were there as a consequence of cultivating a positive relationship with them both.  I would be curious to see if these touches change if they disliked me, or if they would be different had I chosen Rome later in the game…

But we’re not here to talk about quality time on Mediterranean getaways, are we?

Out of the three mission clusters Mike Thorton can choose immediately after completing Saudi Arabia, I’ve got to say that Rome just might be my favorite.  It starts out with our intrepid hero not having much of a plan, and I can’t recall many games that routinely send their protagonists out on fishing trips for information.  It seems like a very logical, believable first step after being burned by his own agency, and I appreciate that.

My first move was to tap a local CIA listening post in order to scan transmissions and keep an ear out for anything that pertains to Mike’s situation.  Mina, my handler, expressed concern for the American citizens staffing the place.  I complied, and went non-lethal.  This little twist reinforced the feeling of Mike being on the run, but not abandoning his ideals and his devotion to his country.

In a more concrete sense, I appreciated that the design of the house I was infiltrating felt fairly realistic – there weren’t any excessively long, empty hallways and the overall space was quite small compared to most levels in games.  Appropriately, there were only a small handful of people to be dealt with in the building, and it was easy to subdue them and go about my business undetected.

Speaking of the undetected, this was the first point in Alpha Protocol when I got to use the mid-level stealth power that turns Thorton invisible.  Literally invisible.

As we mentioned earlier, playing stealth is really the best way to get through the game, but there’s no question that the developers went in some strange directions with it.  I mean, Mike is able to utterly vanish from sight for no discernible reason.  Although I’m not the kind of person who demands realism in all my games, this ability pushes suspension of disbelief to the breaking point.  I mean, what, he disappears through sheer force of will?  There’s no question that it’s an incredibly useful skill, but come on… throw me a bone here, Obsidian.

In any event, Mike gets in and out with a minimum of fuss.  Although there are a couple of guards to be dealt with, I liked how the game veered sharply away from large amounts of combat for combat’s sake, like so many other games would do.  Although this type of design is quite unusual, it makes a lot of sense and I respect the developers for not cramming gunplay in where it doesn’t belong.  This same restraint is only reinforced in the next few sections.

For example, my next objective was to tap into an NSA listening post.  The mission is to get in and out without raising any suspicion, and it’s over in just a minute or two.  The entire scene consists only of dialog choices, and I love that one of the very first options is to eliminate the guard on duty before he’s able to say a word, if that’s what’s desired. 

Since I’m playing as White Hat Super Nice Guy Thorton, my intent was to play things cool, but I had a slip-up.  Things didn’t go as planned and I couldn’t have my cover blown under any circumstances, so I had to put a bullet into the guy asking questions.  However, I can’t take full responsibility.  The game was a little unclear as to whether I had accomplished my mission or not, and I didn’t want to leave if my goals were not met.  It turns out that all I had to do was walk out the door, but the lack of clarity tripped me up.

Oh well, collateral damage is unavoidable, I guess.  I’ll track down that guy’s family after my mission is over and send some flowers.

The next section was all about conducting surveillance at a party, and again, it’s a time when Alpha Protocol shows itself as unafraid to break from the expected norm. 

Rather than making my way through the level as I’ve been doing up until this point, Mike is ghosting around in the bushes outside and identifying targets from a distance with a special sniper scope.  It’s a short section, but it’s all about simply observing and getting info from Mike’s handler.  At the end I was faced with the choice to pull the trigger on someone who may or may not be related to the people I’m tracking down, but I decided to let my target go, and the entire mission was violence-free.  Pretty refreshing. Also, verrrrry espionagey.

While many game directors might be feeling pressured to get the player “back into the action” at this point, Alpha Protocol keeps its trigger finger at rest and continues along with two more dialogue-only scenes, one with the vaguely super-villain-like Marburg and then one with his personal assistant who’s blowing the whistle on his shady deeds in Rome.  If you’ve taken the time to find and read the dossiers on these people, it’s possible to gain both of their confidences…  It’s not too surprising in the latter, but it certainly is in the former.  It’s clear that Marburg is not your friend, but it is possible to establish professional respect.  It’s not incredibly deep, but it is a solid piece of character writing and another way the game reinforces the idea that Thorton’s best weapons are his Super Spy Brain and his way with people.

At this point Mike dusts off his pistol in preparation for some action, and much like the rest of Rome, it’s not the standard thing you'd expect.  When investigating a suspicious warehouse, I stumbled into the middle of a confrontation between two rival groups.  Bullets were flying everywhere, but I had the choice to either engage and take them all out while they were busy with each other, or simply keep my head down and go about my business.  I'm probably sounding like a broken record, but I just adore the way that Alpha Protocol manages to put an interesting spin on so many parts that could have easily been cookie-cutter productions.

I’ve blathered on for far too long already, but I couldn’t sign off without saying a quick word of reverence for Madison, the first “love interest” whose relationship can be consummated.  After a rocky start things seemed to be on the upswing, but let’s just say that it didn’t end well… The developers have a habit of putting Mike in between a rock and a hard place, and it’s tough for love to bloom in such circumstances. That said, I did get the Rome-Mance achievement, though…

See you in Taipei! 

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Look for the next installment of this series coming soon. And by the way, if you'd like to play along with us through this second look, copies are averaging about $4 the last time I checked... That's a pretty superb value for an interesting, informative experience, if you ask me! Hop aboard and share your comments with us!

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Games: Thanks so much to everyone for the strong interest in the letters series on Alpha Protocol.  It was really heartening to see how many fans the game has out there, and how many of you were expressing interest in checking it out.  Sparky and I are both currently playing the second sections of the game, so look for the next installment of our discussion sometime this weekend.

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In other games news, I finally got around to playing Hotline Miami yesterday.  I’ve had my eye on it for a while, but I knew it was coming to the Vita, so I held out.  I'm glad I waited, but to be honest, it’s been a very hot/cold experience. 

I don’t know how it handles on PC, but on the Vita it controls like a greased-up squirrel tweaking on meth. The unit’s sticks have never been my favorite, and those combined with the general control layout, the super sensitive/specific shooting mechanics and the lightning-fast reaction of the enemies make for a fairly high level of frustration.  It’s great that the developers allow retries almost instantaneously, but I’d rather see some polish applied to making it handle just a little more calmly.

The AI can also be fairly maddening – the game randomizes certain things including weapon drops and enemy behavior, so just when you start to get into a good pattern for clearing out the floor, things change up and your best-laid plans go out the window.  I guess it makes sense in a way since it can be seen as a vaguely equivalent to the random behavior of the people that would ostensibly be hunted, but it drives me crazy to see stuff like an enemy acting totally oblivious in one run, only to have super-sharp hearing in the next.

I have to say that I really didn’t care for the game very much in the first few levels, but I’ve heard so many people praise it that I was compelled to push on.  Now that I’m much further in, I can see the appeal – there’s definitely something about the way the various elements of the experience come together and like I said earlier, when things come together it really pops.  A slightly lower level of aggravation would be appreciated, but I’m hanging in there.

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Just a random tidbit here, but I’ve heard a few developers lately talking about why they are in favor of DRM and getting rid of used games.  I know this is a huge discussion and I don’t really want to get into every aspect of it right here, but there are few things I need to get off my chest:

1> If there are no used games, then sales of new games are going to go down, period. 

I don’t have hard numbers, but my gut feeling is that the very large percentage of the game-playing audience won’t be able to drop $60 as often as the industry thinks they will, and when they do, it will likely only be for titles that they see as “can’t miss” projects.  For those developers who are taking risks or who are an unknown quantity, don’t expect to sell a million at full price.

2> If there are no ways to buy and sell used games, developers are going to go out of business even faster than they are now. 

Why do I say this?  It’s simple – if I buy Gears of War digitally, then Epic made their money.  Hurray for them.  The buck stops there. 

However, if I had bought it on a disk (or resellable digital) then I could trade that in and kick in a few bucks to buy Batman.  I wouldn’t have been able to buy it outright, but with my used game defraying the cost, I can.  Oh look, Rocksteady just got paid.  And if I can trade that in after I’m done, I can knock down the price of my next new game, and pick up The Last of Us.  Hey, check it out… Naughty Dog just got paid. 

By my count, that’s three developers who got paid with a consumer like me taking part in a used game ecosystem. 

In a scenario where used games don’t exist and all sales are final, Epic would’ve been the only one to make a buck and those other two studios would be left with a big fat zero.

3> I’ve heard some developers say that used games need to go away so that the increasingly-large budgets needed to create games can be sustained.

As we are currently seeing (and have been seeing for a while now) there are very few blockbuster-sized games that are able to make a return on the investment needed to craft them.  I’m not sure what kind of business thinking has led to this “go big or go home” mentality, but it’s incredibly poor business practice to put so many eggs into so few baskets and then hope and pray that an unreal number of copies will be sold in order to turn a profit.

I’m not a developer but I do know about business, and the way I see it, if there’s no realistic way to make a profit on a huge game, then you need to make a smaller game. Additionally, I eagerly look forward to the day when this fallacious stigma about releasing games for less than $60 at retail will go away.  

I don’t know about you, but I’m way more inclined to pick up three games for $20 or two games for $30 than I am to pick up just one for $60.  And I’m not sure where this idea that anything less than full price is guaranteed to be a crappy game, but it’s ridiculous and I believe there are lessons to be learned from other media – in most other businesses, lower price leads to selling higher volumes, and when managed properly, higher volumes equal higher profits.

I’ve got a lot more to say on these topics, but that’ll do me for now.

********************PR/NEWS/INFO********************

The Guacamelee! Costume Pack is available now in North America for $1.99 and will be available in Europe and the rest of the world tomorrow for €1.59/£1.25.

Character skins:

POLLO LUCHADOR: Players will love the soothing caress of an always-regenerating health meter just as much as the soothing caress of their full-body chicken suit. Is that velvet? Just try to ignore the fact that stamina doesn’t regenerate as quickly.

SKELETON: Undead luchador not undead enough for combatants? Become even MORE undead! Gamers can tear through enemies with the implacable stamina of an angry, brittle bone-person, but don’t expect much help from health pickups.

IDENTITY SWAP: Cats are barking and dogs meowing! Tostada is dressed as a brawny wrestler! Juan is spooky and bandage-wrapped! These alternate forms of the main characters have tougher punches, but can’t throw for beans.

Trophies:

The Costume Pack offers luchadores new challenges and trophies that make getting platinum look like child’s play. Put on the Skeleton-suit in the terrifying Caverna del Pollo, explore the countryside looking for the Chicken brothers or showdown against Calaca while wearing only bandages to earn even more trophies.

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Hotline Miami, the award winning, brutal, top down indie action game from Dennaton Games and Devolver Digital is available today on the PlayStation®3 (PS3®) computer entertainment system and the PlayStation®Vita (PS Vita) portable entertainment system for $9.99.

Hotline Miami is a high-octane action game demanding sharp reactions and a creative approach to navigate a gauntlet of 20 multi-screen missions. Players can wield any of the 35 different weapons or slip on one of the dozens of unlockable animal masks to conceal their identity and tweak the gameplay in their favor. A punishing—yet addictive—experience, the game features a gritty, retro visual style, a driving soundtrack, and a surreal chain of events that will have players questioning their thirst for blood.

Hotline Miami for PS3 and PS Vita introduces trophies and leaderboards for each level, ranking friends and players worldwide based on score, with a note on which mask was used to achieve it. Exclusive to PS3 and PS Vita, the new Russell Mask gives the game a whole new flavor as it changes the visuals to black and white with only the red from the blood and the neon from the UI coloring the screen. The PlayStation Vita version also features touch lock-on aiming; players can tap the screen to lock-on to a target as they stalk enemies from room to room.

Hotline Miami is available today on PS3 and PS Vita, and now available on PC, Mac, and Linux from Dennaton Games and Devolver Digital for $9.99. Hotline Miami is rated M for Mature. Please visit the ESRB website for more information about ratings: http://www.esrb.org. For more information, please visit www.devolverdigital.com or follow @HotlineMiami on Twitter.

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Following on from the recent release of Remember Me, Capcom has teamed up with British author Scott Harrison and Orb Entertainment to bring a brand new eBook adventure to market. Remember Me: The Pandora Archive is available to purchase across a range of vendors, including Kindle, Kobo and Google Play.

Set several months before the events of the game, this eBook story takes readers on an action packed adventure with Nilin, a former elite memory hunter who has the unique ability to break into people’s minds and memories.

The Remember Me: The Pandora Archive eBook is available to download now across Europe and North America. Remember Me is available to purchase now on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. For more information on the game please visit the Capcom Press Siteand for additional information on the eBook contact info@orb-entertainment.com.

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Esteemed indie developer NeocoreGames today announced that The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing’s second DLC, Blue Blood, is now available worldwide for $1.99 on Windows® PC via Steam. 

Blue Blood enables players to turn their female ghost companion Lady Katarina into a more efficient monster hunter by introducing a new accessory that opens up a new skill tree. Eight brand new skills are now available to Katarina including Wraith Frenzy that boosts her attack rate and Chillwave, which creates an aura that will decrease enemy movement, attack, and casting speeds. She also has new abilities such as summoning two ghost mirages of herself to fight alongside Van Helsing and the chance for Katarina to earn hit points for each Rage point spent. Please note that Blue Blood requires a Steam version of The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing.

In the meantime, the development team rolled out new expansions to Scenario Mode as well, including a new system of rewards for killing monsters and two new scenarios within the Croakwood and The Rookery. The new reward system allows players to gain Glory points for killing monsters, which then can be spent on bonuses in several areas among all in-game characters a player has created.

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The revolution has begun! Sanctum 2: Road to Elysion, the first of four DLC expansion packs for the tower-defense/FPS hybrid Sanctum 2, launches today on Steam. From Swedish indie developers Coffee Stain Studios, Road to Elysion is centered around a new shadowy playable character, TSYGAN, as she reveals the sinister origins of the conflict on LOEK III.  Delivering intricate maps, advanced new weapons, uniquely cool perks and sadistically enhanced enemies, Road To Elysion delivers a thrilling, intense chapter to theSanctum universe.

Watch the new live-action launch trailer HERE 

Sanctum 2: Road To Elysion Expansion Pack Key Features:
• New Playable Character - TSYGAN, the “Rogue Insurgent”, reveals the sinister origins to the colonization of LOEK III.
• Diverse Maps – Four new maps with exciting gameplay elements adding refreshing new tactics and replayability.
• Two Mega Powered Weapons – Take hold of the Rapid-firing Gatling Laser & TSYGAN’s own handheld Ballista!
• Two Distinct Towers – The Range Spire dramatically increases the reach of nearby offensive towers and the Slow Field Dispenser dramatically hinders the speed of enemies to make choke points more effective.
• Enhanced Enemies - With new support monsters that heal and mutate the attacking horde and a vicious new aerial enemy boss, players must be prepared for this heightened challenge.
• Additional Perks – Customize your character even more with six new perks, including a perk that gives you an in-game pet robot that will fight for you.

Combining key gameplay elements of both tower-defense and first-person shooter genres, Sanctum 2 players take on the role of an elite soldier whose mission is to protect the oxygen-producing Cores from hordes of deadly aliens who are threatened by their very existence.  The new Road to Elysion expansion pack delves deeper into the main storyline revealing a sinister secret behind the colonization of Loek III.  Players set up defensive towers to take out the waves of attacking enemies and then jump head-on into the fray, either alone or as part of a squad in four-player co-op multiplayer.

Sanctum 2: Road To Elysion DLC expansion pack is now available on Steam for $3.99.  With more massive DLC updates coming in the near future, fans should take advantage of the Sanctum 2 Season Pass which includes all four planned expansion packs for $11.99.

Sanctum 2 is now available for $14.99 on PC and the suggested price point of 1200 Microsoft Points on Xbox Live. For the latest news and updates on Sanctum 2, please visit http://www.coffeestainstudios.com, ‘Like’ the game on Facebook and follow the development team @Coffee_Stain.

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Games: Way, way, waaaay back in... 2010, both @SparkyClarkson and I reviewed Obsidian's espionage-based action RPG, Alpha Protocol. 

(For reference, this is what he said, and this is what I said.)

Despite getting a fairly savage reception at the time (and that's putting it mildly) it's gone on to become something of a cult favorite to those willing to look past its many mechanical failings thanks to some brilliant things going on in its conceptual side. 

Sparky was kind enough to invite me to participate in a letters series focusing on this under-appreciated title, and here's our opening salvo.

Glad you decided to join me for a playthrough of Alpha Protocol - the game where your weapon is choice, so long as that choice doesn't involve your gender, race, sexual orientation, or actual weapons.

That came out a little harsher than I intended. But it’s confusing to be handed a game that advertises choice and then mandates that you wake up as Grumpy McWhitebro, the hero of a thousand more or less identical faces. You never know where these choices come from, though. Did Sega’s reps thump the desk and insist we get Mr. McWhitebro, or did Obsidian positively make that choice to cut down on the magnitude of their task?

They’ve set themselves a pretty stiff challenge, after all. Come into a world of tactical espionage and play as the kind of spy you want to be. The touchstones here are the James Bond suave type, hyper-competent Jason Bourne professional, and the Jack Bauer mad dog. And, with some limited exceptions, the conversation system seems to be very well realized. I got a few unpleasant surprises in Mike Thorton’s dialogues, but nothing so awful as to stand out.

Of course, the game was also supposed to offer some variety when it came to tactical approach, but that didn’t really work out. The stealth tree skills are so useful that it’s madness to focus on anything else, and the only weapon that really works with stealth is the pistols, not to mention that the chain-shot is the best attack ability in the game. So really, you’re stuck with only one build.

Similarly, there aren’t actually a lot of different paths through the encounters, at least not yet. I mean, the graybox is just a tutorial level, but most of the Saudi areas admit of only one route through major areas. And that path is enforced in aggressively silly ways, blocked off by low boxes Thorton should easily be able to clamber over, “rough” terrain that wouldn’t stop me, and the total absence of a disguise system (C’mon Mike, these guys are all wearing balaclavas! Take the hint!). The choice to rely on action-button athleticism rather than a truly traversable world is the one that sits worst with me, and dealing with these low barriers that you just can’t vault over because nobody planned it is a constant frustration for my stealth-oriented play.

But, it’s incredibly difficult to design levels that are rewarding for many different playstyles, which is part of why the Deus Ex lineage is so revered. Perhaps less well-recognized is that it’s incredibly difficult to create a story that fits all playstyles. The three touchstone spies I discussed may all have the initials J.B., but that’s about where the similarity between the worlds they inhabit and the dangers they confront ends. A confrontation between, say, Bauer and Auric Goldfinger would be a dramatic disaster (also a bloodbath). Bond would be totally nonplussed by Bourne’s CIA - a whole agency full of people he can’t have sex with. Bourne might get on reasonably well in Bauer’s world, except that he appears to be pathologically incapable of working in a team.

Stories have to fit their central characters, and when a player gets to choose what kind of character the protagonist is, the whole constellation of secondary characters and plots has to go along and somehow fit in.

The advantage that the Bond-style character (for certain values of “James Bond”) has is that he can grease the wheels by playing off ill-fitting parts of the story as a laugh. That’s important, because spy-operative fiction is, for the most part, completely ridiculous. Consider the opening of The Spy Who Loved Me, a fusion of downhill skiing and a gunfight that ends with a fantastic BASE jump. The action is exhilarating; it’s still the best pre-credits teaser in the series, and possibly ever. It’s also totally goofy and absurd, and for proof of this one need look no further than later in the movie where merely describing what went down completely detonates a should-be-serious scene where Bond justifies killing the lover of Russian agent Triple-X (groan).

But Bond movies, at least until they reached Daniel Craig’s amoral psychopath Bond, have tended to understand and accept their absurdity in a way that the po-faced Bourne and Bauer adventures never do. The squinty-eyed masculinity of those characters would fall apart in the face of a Bond-style semi-farce.

So, it’s interesting how buttoned-down this introductory segment is. Nasri's a bit crazy-looking, and there's a little bit of weird humor courtesy of Darcy, but for the most part the plot and characters all feel like they belong in a serious-minded spy story of the Bourne-Bauer ilk. There's no hint at this point of how wacky things are going to get.

The storytelling here feels fairly by-the-numbers, too. The act of betrayal that ends the chapter felt kind of tired and expected, even on my first time through. There's just not enough of a relationship between Mike and the Alpha Protocol team to make that twist really sting. It was a pretty brave choice to lay out all these characters and then chop them out of the story, but ultimately it took so much time to introduce everyone that I didn't really get attached to anyone.

Still, clearing the slate this way makes the rest of the game feel more like an undiscovered country. By the time you reach your next destination, the major tropes (the double-cross, the femme fatale) have all been put into play, with only about a fifth of the game done. That gives Obsidian a lot of elbow room.

Speaking of the next destination, the heat in Saudi Arabia has gotten to me, so I'm sending Mike off to chill in Moscow.

P.S. A warning for readers who are now interested in giving Alpha Protocol a whirl: It is super-janky. Textures poptart (that is, they pop in after two minutes), the AI is stupid and also possesses pinpoint aim with grenades, and action points sometimes fail to show up, so you have to reload a checkpoint (or even soft-boot). Make peace with that before you begin, and you’ll be much more likely to enjoy the experience.

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Hey Sparky,

Thanks much for inviting me on this return journey into the life and times of Mike Thorton.

Between my work at Gamecritics and the stuff I play for fun, there’s no end of things to keep up with, and I’m not sure I would have ever given AP another spin. There’s just so little free time. Your request gave me a good reason to replay it, though, and I’m glad for that. While I originally reviewed Alpha Protocol back in 2010 and largely enjoyed it, my appreciation for the game has only grown since then.

Since we’re starting this dialogue at the beginning (and really, what better place to start?) you’re entirely right about the player not having much choice in crafting their very own Thorton.

Other games manage to tell a specific story while leaving things a little more open for protagonists of varying sorts, but in this specific case, I don’t mind too much. Although the dialogue and writing are well in hand, it’s clear that the dev team had certain… challenges with the action side. I mean, huge red flags are raised when you first see Thorton’s corncob-hiding crouch-walk, and it only gets sketchier from there, amirite?

It’s just a fact that AP’s action barely hangs together when played with the optimal stealth & pistols build (AKA the only serviceable build?) so I’m not going to be too bothered that they didn’t rewrite and re-record as much of the game as they would have had to in order to allow for something as divergent as a female lead – although I would have been thrilled with a FemThorton, trying to cover all those bases probably would have taken away so many resources that the action side would have received even less attention than it did.

Apart from Thorton himself, it would have been nice to see combat be more flexible to at least allow for a more rewarding tactical experience, as you suggested. It’s certainly tough to feel like an international superagent when Mike can’t drop down a small ledge or hop over a cinderblock. However, there are so many games that do deliver solid action and little else that in light of what AP does get right, I can let it go. Granted, the pistols’ ability to deliver multiple headshots in slow-mo bullet time goes a long way towards making that allowance possible, but still. 

In any event, within the first hour of play it’s quite clear that Obsidian is crafting an espionage experience unlike any other I’ve played – rather than giving the concept lip service with some kill-heavy stuff like laser-watches and cars hiding missiles behind their headlights, AP carves its own territory by frequently giving the player lengthy discussion scenes and quite a bit of info to read. I’m not ordinarily keen on such stuff since it’s often misused as a poor substitute for actual development (hello, Skyrim!) but given that the game wants you to truly be a spy, it makes a lot of sense to do some actual intelligence work before hitting the field. Reading dossiers, figuring out how to get desired responses out of people based on their personalities, and gathering intel before each mission here feels appropriate and engaging.

I was especially pleased to find multiple levels of complexity happening in nearly every scene of the game, including the tutorial. AP wastes no time in embracing the espionage motif, since great performances in the Gadgets, Combat and Stealth trainings right at the beginning each lead to optional events… what better way to illustrate that there’s more underneath the surface than to have your instructor pull you aside after your evaluation and ask you to retrieve some files, hush-hush and off-the-record?

(BTW, trust no one.)

Unfortunately, AP puts its worst foot forward by starting with the Saudi Arabia missions. 

Although I didn’t find them too bad this second time around (probably because I now know how the game works and also because I know what’s coming) I’ve spoken to plenty of people who quit AP before getting through this section. It’s a shame, because things genuinely do get better afterwards, but you’re right --  this opening misses obvious things like the lack of disguise options, the artificiality of traversing the areas, and an obvious linearity that undercuts the sort of choices that are the focus of the game’s larger premise. It’s strange to see that there’s so much going on at a higher level, only to have these base issues ignored right out of the gate – if players use Saudi Arabia to gauge how the rest of the game will play out, I can hardly blame them for bailing.

While that section is probably the worst of the entire adventure in terms of level design and combat, now that we’ve both wrapped it up, there’s loads of interesting situations, double-crossing and intrigue to come. It only gets better from here.

You go ahead and check out Moscow. I think I’m going to head to Rome… I remember the safehouse there being pretty posh, and I’m thinking Mike’s in the mood for some Mediterranean food.

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Look for the next installment of this series coming soon. And by the way, if you'd like to play along with us through this second look, copies are averaging about $4 the last time I checked... That's a pretty superb value for an interesting, informative experience, if you ask me! Hop aboard and share your comments with us!

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