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.
Latest Feature: Impulse Buyer
Can Stardock break into the marketplace, and will it help reduce piracy?
COLUMNS
Can a game with so much focus on an unoriginal idea still come off as fresh and enjoyable?
Jade Empire makes the third BioWare game I’ve written an article about for this column, so after my next one (on Morrowind and Oblivion), I’m going to pick some crazy shit and stay away from BioWare games for a while. My apologies to anyone getting fed up with my shit, but I’m still just getting used to writing these editorials, and I’m in my comfort zone right now. Maybe I’ll get a little zany later and write about Halo or something. Probably not, though. If you have any requests, definitely send me an email, message me on the forums, anything you can do to get me to write about your obscure choice, and I’ll assess it briefly before writing about something else entirely, coming back to it months later for reconsideration.
Anyway, Jade Empire is what I feel like writing about this time. I wanted to pick a game that, for a change of pace, had a truly awful storyline. It’s something that, when reduced down to its basic premise, is so stereotypical and unsurprising that one of my ambitions when writing for a development team is never to have my plots compared to Jade Empire’s. Here goes nothing.
You play some guy or girl who is so unique, they’re the last of their kind, and you are the only remaining person in ancient China with the ability to perform the secret power of whatever. When you were a baby, the black and red-armored agent of doom himself came to your tiny peaceful place of birth and burned the mother down, to the surprise of none. He busted everyone up, and some old monk escaped with you in his clutches, bringing you to the safety of his martial arts school. Uh oh. There, you developed a close friendship with and, if you were playing as a boy, a crush on your fellow classmate, girl number one. Long story short, some douche kidnaps her or something, you run to fetch her from the cave of scary, and your school burns down as the bad guys bust in and tear ass. From here, lots of stuff goes down, but it basically boils down to ‘we tried to get to the bad guys for like ever but we kept getting detoured and shit happened in every place we visited.’ Eventually, it turns out your schoolteacher is actually the main bad guy himself, and was betrayed by bad guy number two way back when, which is why, when you defeat bad guy number two, your old prof. runs in and wrecks your shit, requiring your use of that sacred ability, allowing you to return to life and totally dominate him in the throne room.
The girl ninja is the princess, sneaking off to perform sweet aerial flips, the big hulk fighter man has a sad story in his past, and just about every other RPG cliché that ever existed comes to be in the story of Jade Empire. Fortunately for us, going by the formula is not always a bad thing to do. In this instance, the main storyline is as generic as it can possibly get, but this allowed the writers to focus on different areas. From my perspective, it’s almost as if someone at BioWare convinced everyone to take part in a very expensive experiment in order to answer a question of theirs; if we write a half-assed main story, but write everything else fantastically, will it still be a good game?
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“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.