Beaten: Rayman Origins — ★★★★☆

Charming. That's the best word to describe this game. Oh, and amazingly good! This has to be one of the most pleasant surprises I've had with a game in a long time. I came to this game with low expectations after grabbing it during a sale from the Xbox Live Store. It actually sat on my backlog for a long time, until I needed something to play with my kids, and there it was this charming-looking platformer just waiting. The moment I started playing I was hooked: a charismatic cast of funny characters, tight platformer mechanics, amazingly good-looking art style and graphics, all accompanied by a marvelous sound track, there's really not much to complain about in this game — if anything.

OK, so this is a platformer, which means this is not usually the kind of gaming you go to looking for plot or story (but hey, there are always the Braids of the world). As most cartoonish platformers, there's not much of a story here. Quite frankly, even among platformers, the story here is more non-sensical than usual. You know, in Mario games at least you know your goal is to save the princess, or defeat Bowser... over here, I had absolutely no idea what was going on, and I didn't care. There was something about Rayman ticking some lady off, some monsters were unleashed, and you have to fix everything — I think. I really have no idea. But you know what, it doesn't matter, because this game is not about the story. In fact, there's close to no dialog, except for a few lines from some of the characters you rescue and other NPCs here and there.

Whatever energy was saved on the story part of this game (for which the minimum amount of effort possible was invested), you can tell was diverted in making the platforming in this game close to perfect. The standard platforming mechanics are here: running, and jumping. You can also sprint by holding the right trigger. Aside from those, other mechanics are introduced as you make progress: wall-running, gliding, diving. There's also an attack move that can be used to knock out enemies. Of course, what makes core mechanics shine is level design. It is in the interaction between moves and environment where the magic is, or the frustration surges. And in this game that symbiosis is perfect. Every platform, every gap, every enemy placement... every level is designed so that it flows like a symphony, making playing this game a blissful experience, all of this while still maintaining a decent amount of challenge, which is progressively increased, without making it frustrating. Level design is where a platformer lives or die, and this game completely nails it!

The graphics and art style in this game are terrific. Bright, diverse colors, with each world highlighting a particular theme. The character models look hand-drawn, with stupendous animations. This is one of those games that is such a delight to just look at. Add to all this a magnificent sound track, and the overall presentation in this game is outstanding. With so many dark, brown-red games out there, having a game that makes you feel good just by looking at it is amazing.

I know that's been a lot of praise, but aside for being rather short on the story side, which isn't really something you can hold against this game, this is as good as it gets when it comes to platformers. Anyone who likes platformers, and/or wants something family oriented that is also extremely fun, must play this game. Must go out right now and get it, because this is one of the best games I've played in a long while. I can't wait to take a look at the sequel!

Rocking The Xbox One

So I got an Xbox One. For me, this was going to be the first next-gen console I'd get, if anything, because of Halo (and yeah, sure, Titanfall). My first impressions? I love it, absolutely love it! First of all, talking to your console doesn't get old. Voice commands are more responsive now (though they were pretty good on the 360), but mostly it is the greater variety and versatility of commands available. The multitasking is also a welcome feature since now it is so seamless to transition from application to the next. One can be playing a game, pause, bring up Netflix to watch something for a while, and later return to the game and pick up where one left off.

The UI is completely tiled and feels way more streamlined than its predecessor on the 360. That being said, it can still feel like some things are just one too many button presses away, but... voice commands to the rescue. Everything can be brought up with a voice command, and this makes navigating the interface a pleasure.

The one thing that's a bit snaggy is the hand gestures. Like with the previous Kinect, the UI can be traversed using hand gestures: you lift your hand, palm facing the screen (no need to wave this time) and a little hand appears on-screen that can be used to interact. Except this time, to activate a tile, instead of just placing the hand on the tile and leaving it there for a second or so, you move your hand towards the screen, as if pushing or 'tapping' the screen. It works well most times, but it feels sluggish compared to voice commands.

I've only really played a couple of games and a handful of demos. As you'd expect, the graphics are better than the previous generation, but the truly next-gen games, in my opinion, are still to come out. The other aspect about playing games, of course, is the new controller. It's very similar to its predecessor on the 360, but admittedly better in certain respects. The two things that will stand out with respect to the 360 controller are the bumpers, and the way rumble is implemented. The bumpers are snappier now, with more resistance to pressure, which makes for a stronger 'click', and better feedback. I like them a lot. Then there's the rumble. Vibration was something that was hyped a lot about this controller: how there were more buzzers, so now the vibration is more subtle and fine-grained. To tell you the truth though, I haven't really felt any difference. OK, maybe I should rephrase that: I have felt the difference, it just hasn't made any difference for me when it comes to the games.

There's another cool feature in the controller that's actually quite interesting. At the front of the controller there's an IR emitter that's caught by the Kinect camera, which allows the console to tell who is holding the controller. I haven't seen this information used to much effect in any game/app on the console yet, but I'm sure something that will be handily used in the future.

OK, so I've talked about the interface and how streamlined it is, and how easy it is to navigate — it doesn't mean that it's all great though. There's is something about the way the UI is implemented that, in a certain way, limits its usability, at least in its current incarnation. The main thing is that the Xbox-OS is basically a platform for apps, and so everything that runs on the Xbox One is an app, even the settings menu runs as an app. And this is great for implementing multi-tasking and snapping the way they've done it, the problem is that it removed flexibility from some features we were grown fond of on the 360. For example, the party system is no longer integrated into the system, it's an app! And so now, if you are in the middle of a game and want to create a party, you have get out of the game (or rather push it to the background), pull the app for parties, create the party, and the swap back to the game. You can't just bring up the guide to create the app.

Oh yeah, the guide... there's no guide anymore! When you push the Xbox button in your controller it simply takes you to the Xbox home menu, pushing whatever app is running into the background so that you can start any other app. Want to quickly check your achievements from the game? Sorry, no can't do, you have to run the Achievements app. And so the main point is that guide, probably the best feature of the previous Xbox-OS is gone! And I have to say, I don't like it. It can get a bit annoying having to switch from one app to another just to check your achievements or how many of your friends are online. You know, the 360 interface got a lot of flack from people, but I thought it was actually pretty good. And yes, one of its best features was the guide...

Well, there you have it, those are my impressions on the Xbox One. I absolutely recommend this system. And I'm sure those issues I have with the interface will be addressed in some form in the future (Microsoft has already stated that the party system will be revamped before the Titanfall release, hopefully addressing some of the issues above). It's a great machine, and so far, at least for me, it's worked as advertised!

Playing Now: Mafia II - Boring Start

Started playing this recently, and so far I'm about 4 hours in. I got it for free on a sale with Borderlands 2. I have to say I don't exactly like what I've seen so far. The way I see it, you can break down a game into three aspects when considering its merits: Story (plot, dialog, lore), Gameplay (core/secondary mechanics, level design, difficulty), and Presentation (graphics, visual art, music). Now, I don't think it's crazy to require for a game to stand out in at least one of these three facets to be considered 'Good'. Of course, some people might give more importance to one over the others, for example, I tend to put more weight on the first two over the last one (though I still think Presentation is very important, and some games live alone on this, like Journey).

The thing about this game is that, so far, it's not standing out on any of these three components. When it comes to the story, well, plot is basically non-existent. Italian guy gets involved with the Italian mob — that's it. Dialog is made out to make characters extremely boring. Heck, I would like to say that Vito, the main character, is one-dimensional, but the truth is that he's more like zero-dimensional. The guy is kind of an asshole, and there's is no attempt to give any motivation for him to do what he does, whether being bad or good reasons. You could try to argue that he's doing it for the money, but no attempt is made to show that he has any ambition — he's just going along. He just doesn't work well as a character. Moving on to gameplay, well, the main mechanics are shooting, driving, and fighting. The shooting is not bad, but is not good either — very run-of-the-mill stuff, in fact, it can be a bit loose at times. The driving is boring, and can feel more like a chore since missions always have you driving from one end of the map to the other. The cars are good looking, but they don't handle well, which can make the driving frustrating at times. The fighting is just too easy, in other words, uninteresting.

All of this leaves us with only one possible redeeming point: the Presentation. And yeah, the game does redeem itself here. The character models look great (though it is kind of awkward that the character model for Vito's sister looks exactly the same, sans hair color, as a girl that tries to hook up with him later), and the city (Empire bay) is beautifully rendered, though I didn't find it particularly interesting. What I do love is the car models, of which there's enough variety, and they all look great! The music is another story. Maybe it's just the music from the period (1940's), but I didn't like it that much. You can listen to the radio as you drive (as far as I can remember, you can't change the station), and in fact I liked better when the news came on, as they kept giving updates of the current events on the war.

So there you have it, that's my initial impression for this game. But if I've learned something over time, is that first impressions are just that, so I'm reserving the right to radically change my opinion as I keep playing. And I will keep playing!

Origins

So I've started this blog as an outlet for writing about my main hobby (video games). Figure I start by talking about the latest game I played, Batman: Arkham Origins. This is a game that, in my opinion has been extremely unappreciated. It holds a Metacritic score of 74, which is extremely low compared to the previous two entries in the franchise, which hold scores in the 90s. Now, a score is just a score, and frankly to me they don't mean much. In this context, however, I'm using them only as a point of comparison between the three games in the franchise, which would seem to suggest that Origins just plain bad compared to the first two games, or at least, of much lower quality, which in my opinion is just not true. I loved this game!

I'm not going to say this game doesn't have problems, because it does. For example, the plot has a weak start, but it certainly picks up a third of the way in, and turns into quite an interesting story, with quite an engrossing exposition of the relationship between Batman and The Joker. There's also a bit off with the combat, which in some instances doesn't quite 'flow' like in the previous two games. It took me quite a while to put my finger on it, but I finally realized it has to do with enemy AI and how some fights are set up in such a way that break the perfect balance that was ubiquitous in the previous two games. This problem is not pervasive, and one gets used to it after a while, but that's the thing, they changed the dance, and at times it just doesn't feel quite right. Other than that, the combat system is just as engaging as it was in the previous games.

So maybe this game places below the previous Batman games, but not to the extent it was made out to be.