The Rumble Pack Posts

This week, the Pack explores the endless expanses of outer space in not one, but two tablet-friendly spaceship roguelikes; Kaz picks up alien pickup lines in Out There, while Neil puts out space fires in FTL. Meanwhile, Justin cobbles together a toilet gun in Mercenary Kings, Tony rekindles his Escher love in Monument Valley, and the guys debate whether or not Rusty’s Real Deal Baseball is a charming experiment or an insidious plot to nickel and dime unsuspecting sluggers.

Embarrassingly, I didn’t grab this game at launch. I wasn’t as excited for the return of golf season back in November. However, now I am.

Powerstar Golf is an amazingly competent Hot Shots Golf clone. It’s not going to set the world on fire; the character list and course selection are both a little shallow. But the experience is as calming and zen-like as any other golf game out there. Another plus for the game is the fact that you can advance through it however you want, playing the rival mode, single player events, or multiplayer as you choose. The result is a game that gives you a lot of freedom in getting all the gear, courses and characters, but it does seem a little aimless as a result.

The quest to get all the clubs and gear is a little grind-y. the setup is reminiscent of free-to-play games, and more recently, Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare. You grind matches to get credits and then spend increasing amounts of credits to unlock packs of randomized items. It feels a little weird to not purchase specific clubs and boosts, but it does feel great when you get an item from the tier above the pack you opened. The game seems set up for a store where you use real money to buy what you want, but you instead use the in-game currency to get the random packs. It’s worrisome but the in-game purchases available are more of the same crap that’s been in every Xbox One game: real money for more credits. This seems like highway robbery given how easy it is to rack up credits playing local multiplayer or rivals modes.

That reminds me that the most interesting aspect of Powerstar Golf is the way it handles multiplayer and leaderboards. The longest drives, putts and other feats of your friends appear as virtual goal lines on the course to be beaten on every shot. You get bonus XP every time you best a rival’s record. It’s tons of fun to beat everyone’s best approaches or longest drives and makes the game feel more social than it really is. The online matches are handled by downloading ghosts of other players’ best performances on a course. Golf etiquette makes the interweaving of these prerecorded shots fit into the rhythm of the game naturally.

It’s not groundbreaking in any particular way, and it’s actually not as good as the Hot Shots or Mario Golfs of the world, but I’ll keep playing Powerstar Golf every now and then until something better comes along…

I just finished the expansion’s “Act V” content. Took a couple of hours altogether, but the real meat of this expansion is the expanded levels and items. It’s hard not to wonder if the price point is fair for the average player. Certainly the hardcore will find more than their money’s worth in post-game adventure mode quests and loot. If you plan to burn through it in one sitting and be done, you’ll probably find yourself disappointed in the lack of story content. The expansion act finished rather abruptly, leaving me asking, “Is it the end already?”

The best part of the expansion was actually a patch for the PC version that was released for the base game as well; it implements a rebalanced Loot 2.0 system. This eliminates the maligned auction house and increases the drop rates. It makes the game feel a lot more like its predecessors, to the point where it makes me question how they released the base game thinking the loot system was good. It was terrible in retrospect.

I find myself wanting to go back in and finish some of the adventure mode challenges just to wring more loot out of the new system. Your mileage will hinge a lot on your stomach for loot whoring.

Facebook may be poised to bring virtual reality to the masses, but Neil and Kaz just want their current consoles to work. Despite some hardware woes, the guys pack in as many games as they can fit into this overstuffed episode: Kaz stomps around some more in Titanfall, Justin tries out Umihara Kawase‘s stateside debut in Yumi’s Odd Odyssey, Tony takes everyone to flight school in Luftrausers and Neil wields The Stick of Truth in the first decent “South Park” game. Plus, Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, The Wolf Among Us: Episode 2, Yoshi’s New Island, inFamous: Second Son, Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition, Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy, Pokemon Battle Trozei, Out There and probably more!

So I successfully feel like an emotionless monster.

After repeated warnings of how touching I would find the story and how much the charm of the game would reduce me to a squealing child, I just wasn’t moved.

This is not to say that I didn’t get it. I see the charm of the world-built-as-paper, and the emotion and charm others see in the game is totally justified. Something about how the game’s mechanics end up in a weird middle ground turned me off. It probably comes down to how slowly all of the standard platforming abilities are doled out to the player. How long was it until I could jump? By the end of the game I was having fun with the crazy level design and challenging, yet enjoyable gameplay. I just kept asking myself why the game wasn’t this fun earlier, back when seeing my face in the sun stopped being cute and entertaining.

I suppose pacing is a concern, but the way the fun of the game is back-loaded leaves the people not charmed by the art and design twiddling our thumbs for a little too long.

I immediately regretted my purchase of Luftrausers, at first. It seems like a somewhat limited phone game in scope and features. The unlocks didn’t seem varied enough and the rounds are so “rinse-and-repeat” that they blended together the same way that time-killers and endless runners on your phone do. It doesn’t help that the mobile marketplace bottomed out so hard that I can’t rightly value these experiences anymore. If I play it short bursts and it’s mobile – I’m playing Luftrausers on my Vita – I end up feeling it’s worth  maybe $1.99, tops.

Eventually the fact that I paid more than $1.99 pushed me to keep playing, and the genius of Luftrausers‘ movement revealed itself. What felt like limiting controls start to let you perform amazing stunts – midair flips, stalls and trick-180-killshots – that will keep you coming back for more. Even though the mechanics grew on me and the challenges keep me coming back, the lingering feeling that I’ve just barely gotten my money’s worth keeps my from falling in love with the game.

I’ll keep plugging away at it until I kill that damned blimp. Maybe things get better after that…

It’s been a nice long time since I’ve been willing to love a Call of Duty-style multiplayer game. My last fling was with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. (Yes, the “original” one.) I enjoyed Modern Warfare 2 for a while but it was still the first installment that got its hooks in me with progression and constant evening sessions of multiplayer shooting. Titanfall is the new champion, and given a couple more play sessions and a few more levels, it will be the multiplayer shooter I’ve played the most, short of CounterStrike: Source. (Ask Tom about the narration that haunted his sleep for 9 months.)

I love this game, despite the missing single player campaign. This absence is a shame because I’m a huge sucker for sci-fi universes and the levels in this game seem like they’d be fantastic worlds to explore. (Except for Training Grounds – there’s nothing interesting about that map.) The movement is so refreshing that it sits with the greats of interesting mobility – Tribes, CS surf maps and Unreal Tournament 2003. The weapons aren’t awe-inspiring but there are great options available from level 1; no worries about the level 40 juggernauts just having better tech. The matchmaking isn’t perfect but I’ve had some fantastic matches that finally made me put “Xbox, record that!” to good use.

That’s what Titanfall is right now: a sick-moment-generator of the highest order. You can find plenty to complain about, but it’s hard to care because the next match starts in 90 seconds. I see no signs of stopping.

Everything that I liked about Episode 1 returns for a pretty strong second episode. I still like how well the engine Telltale uses compliments the art style in the game. I still like how effectively the scenes evoke a comic book look and feel. There’s some concern with the main twist at the end of Episode 1 being unceremoniously reverted seconds into the episode, but the overall direction of the series is up.

I love how adult the content and tone is. It doesn’t seem as sophomoric as most games are when adult subjects are presented. Even though we take our obligatory trip to a strip club – this is 1980s New York, right? -  it’s not nearly as cringe inducing as I would expect to be. Even though the game bumps up against the capabilities of the animation and the voice acting, it’s a pleasure through the whole episode to see where this tale is going.

I played the episode in one sitting which is a good sign. When I have to stop in the middle of a Telltale game, it’s usually a death knell for me ever finishing the series. (See Back to the Future…)

No need to despair – this week’s Titans don’t completely overshadow beloved gems like Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc and The Yawhg. And even though Kaz understandably loves Titanfall, he and Tony manage squeeze in some lawn care through Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare. Plus, Grand Theft Auto V revisited, that blue light on the Dualshock 4, the colorful jungles of Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, a shout-out for Professor Layton‘s “last” hurrah, and Disco Zoo doesn’t advertise. Read more on waisttrainingcenter.com