It took me by surprise when I found out that the first Wednesday after the summer of XBLA would have three releases instead of one. I was only surprised until I played them; only one of the three is worth looking at. In the never ending quest to charge money for things that are free (and possibly better) elsewhere comes Gin Rummy.
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COLUMNS
Repetitive, boring, and full of stalemates.
Advance Wars: Days of Ruin does a lot of things right: presentation, sound, unit balancing, and controls all work fine, and suit the DS perfectly. Yet, what’s underneath the hood of this sleek ’67 Shelby is a core engine that, while balanced, gets repetitive, boring, and full of stalemates.
As with previous titles in the series, Days of Ruin gives the player control of multiple units on a turn-based battlefield, with each having its own strengths and weaknesses. Strategy games in general can be a little overwhelming to new comers, but the game does a good job of getting the player accustomed to all of the different unit classes. This isn’t Sins of a Solar Empire or Company of Heroes, but the number of units it gives you is still pretty decent.
The problem arises when you realize how little impact these units actually have. When playing the game, you’ll recognize the perfect unit to counter your enemy’s unit, and your enemy will recognize the perfect unit to counter yours. This quickly turns into an almost never ending game of rock-paper-scissors, since, on most of the game’s rather large maps, the time it takes for your unit to attack an enemy is more than enough for him to create multiple counters.
At first I thought that maybe I was just playing the game wrong, so I went to some online FAQs and, sure enough, the writers even admit, it is almost impossible to avoid “the eventual stalemate.” There are good strategies to get through most campaign missions quickly, but none of them are alarmingly obvious, and unless you figure out what will probably happen in the battle during the first or second move, prepare to be jostling back and forth with the AI for (literally) hours on end.
This is a real shame, too, because Days of Ruin gets a lot of the superfluous stuff right. It has bonus missions, it has a per-mission ranking system (although, no online leaderboard), it has controls that use the stylus and the buttons of the DS very well—even it’s laughable story would get a pass, were it not for the game’s horrendously boring underbelly.
Days of Ruin is like that super-hot shopaholic girl back in high school. She does a lot of things right, a lot of things that you wish more girls did, but by the time you’ve heard her talk about the same, boring thing for the nth time, you’d much rather spend time with some more interesting company.
“Steps Toward an Elitist Critic Future” at Rock Paper Shotgun
I went into this article expecting the “elitist critic future” to be presented as a negative thing, but no. Kieron Gillen is openly admitting here that he likes it. I think he’s buying into the idea that games need what you could call “indie cred” (not his words) to be worthwhile. I love Earth Defense Force 2017, but no, Kieron, it’s not better than Gears of War.
Lower the price of the hard drive, Microsoft. I want to give you more money, all you have to do is let me.
“EA Partners Is A Murderers’ Row - Who’s NOT On This List?” at MTV Multiplayer
This is a good bit of investigative reporting from Stephen Totilo. With last Thursday’s announcements by Electronic Arts of deals with Grasshopper Manufacture and Epic Games, they now have at least half a dozen major partners, and that’s not counting the smaller companies they have outright purchased over the last couple years.
I have become amazed at what XBLA has done in the past few weeks. It started with Geometry Wars 2, a game Jim Canapa described perfectly in the previous column (he should know, since his high scores are far better than mine). Bionic Commando, another great game I will go into detail about later, was the most recent addition. But in the middle was Braid, the first game to ever cause an internal conflict for me.