Will's Top Seven Reasons Why You Should Play: Super Crate Box

A little bit of a different one this time, instead of a rant about recent treats in gaming or trying to get sued by Sony for defamation, I've decided to write a review (cue dramatic music). However, this isn't your normal review, instead of talking about the pros and cons in a logical manor, I've just done this list of seven reasons why you should play this game. Why you may ask? Well its because I feel its more to the point (and also I'm lazy, but enjoy writing). Oh, and why seven? Actually, that's just because i like the number seven. I mean, ten's alright, but its no seven.

1. Its free. OK, should have mentioned that I'm talking about a game called Super Crate Box, that you can 'buy' on steam for $0.00, which as most things go, is a pretty good price. After all, free is the magic number. And hey, if you don't like it, you haven't spent any money so, eh, whatever man.

2. It's fun as balls. OK, probably not a point, but you get the idea. Basically the game is rather simple, you run around levels that are somewhat reminiscent of the levels in Mario Bros (not to be confused with Super Mario Bros.) in which enemies spawn at the top of the screen and run down a series of ledges until the get to a pit at the bottom, which causes them to agro and respawn at the top, now with a faster speed. Your job as player is to collected randomly spawning crates around the map to get points. Each time you grab a crate, you are equipt with a different weapon in which to kill the monsters to get to the next crate. Sounds easy yeah?

3. DON'T USE THE FLAMETHROWER! Right, not so much a selling point as a tip form a guy who spent all day playing this game. While the flamethrower is a fucking awesome weapon in game, using it would always cause my client to crash and me to loose all my recent progress, but im also using a rather shitty laptop, so use with caution.

4. Them Graphics. So I'm realizing as I write this how childish this 'review' has gotten, but hear me out. The game actually uses a rather simple arcade graphical style, again like Mario Bros, which gives the game a particular charm. If this was made in the '80s, I have no doubt that this game would have stolen all of my coins. The game is simplistic in design as well as gameplay, and thus the pixel art aesthetic really compliments the game design.

5. So if you've read this blog (I prefer to call it a column actually, but whatever), than you may have realised I have an affinity to Dark Souls. In fact, at time of writing, the background image is a Capra Demon from the first game. So it should come as no surprise that I like a good challenge in my games, and boy, does Super Crate Box have that in spades. I mentioned it was a simple game, but it's also very difficult. The game requires you to be constantly vigilant of fast moving enemies and to manage crowd control while going after your coveted crates. This level of enemy management and map control mixed with the desire to collect crates and the random nature of the new weapon you'll receive makes this game devilishly hard to the uninitiated.

6. Right, so this would all be well and good, with one exception. While the game is difficult, that's really the only reason why the game doesn't take about 3 minutes to compete. Unfortunately, Super Crate Box is pretty short, with only 3 levels in the game (but a bunch of unlocks which will keep you busy for a while), and only three enemy types, five if you count agro-ed versions. In fact for me, on of the main reasons it took me so long to finish this game was the aforementioned crashing, which lost me quite a lot of progress many times.

7. OK, but whatever Will, this game is FREE! that's like, the exact amount of money I have because no one reads this gaming column (except for you dear reader). Actually, that is a good point. Basically, SCB is a pretty small game, there isn't all that much to say about it. However, if you have an evening to kill, or are just bored and what to try a new game, or as i did, race a friend to see who can complete is first, you'll be hard pressed to find anything as good as Super Crate Box.

So as a final statement I give this game a 'Great to play by yourself or with a friend for a couple hours' out of 'But seriously, don't give it to someone for Christmas because, geez man, I don't even know if Steam lets you gift free games. And also, you don't have like, a fiver you can spend on a game that actually costs money?'

Bioshock Infinite: Retrospective Review

Bioshock Infinite was a game that had a lot going for it, as well as high expectations. So it came as no surprise that last year when the game was released it reached critical praise. Critics praised the game for its deep story and innovative gameplay, believing it to be the new savior of the games industry, showing that story telling and innovative design are the way of the future, but does it deserve this praise?

Right, so straight off the bat I should say that on my first playthough of Infinite I too thought it was an amazing game, capable of showing the ability to transcend a medium that all art should be able to reach. However, on subsequent playthroughs I began to realize something, Bioshock Infinite is a little bit, well, shit.

Ok, so before we get into all that, its important we get into some history. See, the Bioshock series is actually the spiritual successor to the System Shock series, specifically System Shock 2, a game that by all rights was pretty amazing. As an early FPS RPG, it definitely had its problems; the shooting wasn't so good and it was unforgiving as all hell, causing you to even restart the game in its late stages if you didn't spec your character properly. But the great thing about SS2 is its ability to transcend those barriers. The game's setting and story seemed to exist to compliment the gameplay. For example, because the shooting was a bit, eh, the game set itself in a horror scenario which used this limitation to build a scene of tension in each of the fights in the game. This use of limitations is something we also see quite well in Bioshock, which also crafted it's whole story around this ideas.

Bio and System Shock also weren't afraid to do the whole RPG thing and let you play as you wanted too, and had ways of challenging the player by raising the tension of a scene rather that making it actually difficult. One of my fondest memories of Bioshock was when I was on my way to Point Prometheus after killing Andrew Ryan, only to realize that all I had was a fully loaded flamethrower, some hacking Plasmids and nine Eve hypos. Having to fight my way through a train station with nothing but fire and hacked drones is perhaps one of the best things I've done in a game, and the reason is because in my mind, I feel like the developers had a very different idea in there heads about how this encounter would go down, and my manipulation of the scenario allowed the moment to become mine.

Bioshock Infinite on the other had, doesn't really give this feel; the whole game feels like it's been made to play through a certain way. So I'll admit that the shooting in Infinite was a hell of a lot better that its predecessor, but that was never really the point. Every encounter in Infinite feels like its all been put together rather lazily, with the main variation being new enemy types or just more bad guys. This isn't much of a problem, but when every section in the city of Columbia feels like a shooting gallery rather than a city, it takes away from the immersion and the sense of reality that the previous games had. Rapture felt real, and your conflicts in it seemed real, in Infinite they do not. Every fight seems to break down into 'get to the other side of the room' or 'kill all the dudes'. In Bioshock and System Shock you didnt need to do this, you could get through a section however you wanted,and that helped make the experience more real.

To me, Infinite feels as like meeting a friend, only to realize half way through a conversation that its someone who looks a lot like your friend pretending to be them. They are alright at acting kind of the same, and the aren't such a dick to you, but something about it just feels really off.

For example, the plot of Bioshock Infinite doesn't seem to make a lick of sense. The games main focus is on a combination of both slavery and the multiverse theorem, which are two ideas that don't really mesh. In fact, for most of the game I felt as though these two ideas where with conflict with each other, as well as with the gameplay in general. I'm quite aware that I keep bringing up the previous Shock games, but its important to get a perspective on this. See, in the first game, the story and the violence of an FPS really existed to serve the story. It goes back to the aforementioned realism of the world. You really believed that the enemies you where fighting where insane splicers who where out to kill you. It was kill or be killed. In Infinite however, Booker's story about wounded knee is in complete opposition to the things he does in the game. As a main story element, a character feeling guild for killing hundreds of innocents doesn't work so well in a game where you spend most, if not all of your time, killing innocent civilians who are trying to protect there city against someone who is completely destroying it and trying to destroy there way of life. To me this use of soldiers as enemies is exactly the same as all the killing of Muslims in modern war shoots; they only exists as a challenge to delay the story and not to provide any depth to the world or game.

Speaking of depth, I mentioned the story before, and in case you didn't realise, a game in which you spend most of your time shooting dudes in the head doesn't work so well in a a game trying to make you think about quantum mechanics. See, in Bioshock the twist that occurred actually had merit, because not only did it apply to the character of jack,but it applied to the player, but more importantly, it worked in regards to the system of the game. The 'Would You Kindly' twist served to make you question all of your actions so far in the game, mainly because they where your own. It took advantage of the medium it was based in, I doubt such a twist would work nearly as well in film. The golf club scene and the fact that it is one of the only cutscenes in Bioshock and the loss of power it conveyed did a similar thing. In comparison, Infinite's 'twist' seems to only exist for there to be a twist, and the whole ending and reveil may as well have only been a cutscene, as the level of player involvement is highly lacking. In my opinion, I think that Infinite would have worked just as well if it was a film, and from a Shock game, that concerns me.

When Bioshock was released in 2008, Irrational games didn't expect it to become a colossal hit, and so the game they made was made for a more specific audience. It was not made for the COD fans or the shooter frat boys.The main problem with Infinite is that it trys to have the same core as Bioshock, as well as being as appealing to everyone in the market. Because of this, the shooting elements have taken a forefront, and are still lacking, and the story elements have suffered for it. It seems like they made the game and the story seperatly and tried to mesh them together, and it just doesn't feel at all coherent.

All in all, I think Bioshock Infinite is 'fine'. Its not a horrible game at all, but as a game that people are praising for being the next Bioshock, and showing how games can be more than art it strongly fails. I haven't even mentioned all the problems that Elizabeth brings to the gameplay and the fact that the ending is full of paradoxes, I strongly recommend a video by Matthewmitosis on YouTube for that. These are just my views on a gamethat could have just been so much more, but in the end just seems like its being pretentious,and doesn't seem to understand what made the Shock series so appealing. It's not the story or the gameplay or the classic 'twist', its the fact that they leave you with something to think about after the credits roll, in Bioshocks case being 'How much am I really in control of my actions?'. Infinite leaves me with no such feeling. But hey, it's your choice, after all, 'A man chooses, a Slave obeys'.

Old Games: Why do we forget the past?

So it's been a few weeks/months since my last post, mainly because I've had a bit much on my mind to get me too riled up about games, but something struck me today which is an important issue in the gaming community, and to a greater extend our history.

To start with a shitty anecdote, today I decided to play a game of 2048, which for the three of you who don't know (hi dad!) is a game all about sliding number tiles with numbers on them to increase the number on the tile until you reach the converted title '2048'. You can play it for free and I personally think its one of the best games from this year, and Dark Souls 2 came out this year! Anyway, while playing my game, a friend of mine said off handly "Oh, still playing 2048 Will?".

OK, so a lot of you may not see what my apparent problem is, but what that rather boring story was trying to get at is: Why do games have a lifespan?

Lately I've been finding it rather strange that people consider playing an old game a rather odd habit, as if I should always be playing the best and most talked about game at the time. I'm not saying new games are bad, I just bought a copy of Destiny which I'll explain my thoughts on at a later date, probably, but why do people consider it so strange to play and old game?

This problem doesn't even occur in other media. No one would judge you for watching an old film, like Jurassic Park, or even Metropolis, but with games it seems as though most of them have this public interest life span that causes people to forget about them as soon as something new comes along. I mean hell, 2048 was released THIS YEAR! Why is it so odd for me to be playing it?

It really gets on me that, with a few exceptions, people only seem to care about whats new and on the market. As soon as something drops from its day one release price, it drops from the public eye. One major example for all of you it Titanfall. You guys remember Titanfall, that game everyone said would kill Call of Duty and received near perfect review scores? Nope, neither do I. Hell, I'm pretty sure the Halo 3 servers are more busy than the Titanfall ones!

I think this basically comes down to two major problems. Firstly, is reviews. Reveiws are a natural part of any art that gets released, and games are no exception. People want to know if what is new is any good, because new games cost a shit load of money, especially if you live in Australia. New things also excite people. I think that this leads to the second problem, which is that in games, we don't really have a 'Nostalgia Critic' and most old games die with systems. Its a lot harder to have a conversation about the original Legend of Zelda with someone who doesn't own a NES, than someone who hasn't seen Die Hard. If you want someone to see Die Hard, I'm sure netflix or Hulu has it for you: Playing a NES or finding a digital copy on the Wii store is a lot harder. Because of this, the general lifespan of a game is limited by the system. In fact, thats probably why Microsoft is going about re-releasing all the number Halo games this year: So that people new to the series can catch up. As well as making Microsoft an extra buck or two, it allows a series to remain in the public sphere longer.

However, neither of these explain why something released this year, like 2048 or Titanfall is so easily forgotten. I've heard that Titanfall has mainly been forgotten because it really didn't have that much replayability, and most people wouldn't pay that much for only multiplayer (that's the reason I didn't get it).

Well that's my two cents on the issue. Personally I think this is a bigger issue then the fact that it looks like COD 11 (or whatever) is going to just be the same thing all over again, and that the industry is getting stale. There are hundreds of great games out there that people just forget about. If you're sick of current FPS, go play System Shock 2, hell, if you are sick of current games just play Star Wars Battlefront, and remember how good a lot of the things we already have are.