NLU Weekly #51 (October, 20, 2007) - The Yearly Disappointment |
 I'll write a bit about what I going to do about my situation later on so keep reading. As for the title of this blog post read the first section today to find out why it is named so. Now for the agenda: The Yearly Disappointment, The Halo 3 Impasse and Addiction, Games I'm Supposed to Like, Mission: Too Many Games and Closing Out. I have a feeling that this is going to be a long one so let's get started. The Yearly Disappointment Every year I say it... I always damn well say it... "This is the last Tony Hawk game I'm going to buy!" and every year I find myself buying the latest game in the franchise. Keep in mind it wasn't always like this, but ever since probably the amazing Tony Hawk's Underground 2 (THUG 2) I have been disappointed with the Hawk series. If you didn't know Proving Ground in the 9th game in the series, personally I think it should of stopped after 4 (though, I do love THUG 2 the 6th game). The series has gone all over in the last few years, from shiny new series, to just a rehashed sequel, to best in series in awhile, to what the hell where they thinking. This time around the series has got it's lowest score ever from GameSpot... Just for fun let's look at the scores: 9.3 (Game 1, Pro Skater 1, PS1) 9.9 (Game 2, Pro Skater 2, PS1) 10 (Game 3, Pro Skater 3, PS2) 9.5 (Game 4, Pro Skater 4, PS2) 8.9 (Game 5, Underground 1, PS2) 8.3 (Game 6, Underground 2, PS2) 7.5 (Game 7, American Wasteland, PS2) 7.9 (Game 8, Project 8, X360) 6.5 (Game 9, Proving Ground, X360) As you can see it has been downhill since Pro Skater 3 on the PS2 (though I do question that perfect 10 score) and now we have Lowest scoring Hawk game of all time here on GameSpot. Last year I did a week of coverage on the Tony Hawk series and covered my thoughts and facts about each game, if you want my opinion on the best games in the series, I would have to say it goes: 2, 6, 3, 5, 8, 7, 4... I guess you want to know why 6 is second best, I'm not totally sure, but I just love that game, one of the reason is the goals actually make some contextual sense. As for game 4, some people really love 4 and think it is the best, but personally I find that game to be far too long and goals to be mediocre at best and even though 7 is the "true" worst game in the series, I have to give it precedence over 4 because of the half decent story that game has. I could talk about this series a lot, in fact I did, be sure to check out the links to 2006's Tony Hawk Week at the end of this article. One of the reasons I keep buying the games is because I have an odd attachment to it and do enjoy the gameplay even after all these years, but the problem isn't the gameplay it's the GAMES that are built around the gameplay that have been slowly going down the drain. So with all the pretext out of the way let me actually discuss 2007's Tony Hawk's Proving Ground. Really disappointing is all I can say. The more I saw about the game the more psyched I was that it might just be the best Tony Hawk game in a long while, but after playing through the hardcore skater path, I just lost all interest. The game just seems like a mish-mash. The three storylines are separate from each other, they never cross, so essentially you could have finished the Pro skater storyline and become a Pro, but in the Hardcore story line everyone will again treat you like a newbie. In all honesty the story just seems like a waste of time, I think they should just drop it. The next thing that kills the game is the level... er... world design these cities suck, the open city thing worked in Skate because of the realism of skating around keeping an eye out for something you might like to session. But in Proving Ground you wish that they would have just made singular levels like before and focus on making each one as good as possible. But these cramped city blocks don't work for the speed at which the Hawk games play at. This is one series where "open world" just doesn't work in my opinion. Probably the only good new stuff is from the Hardcore section of the game, the Aggro Kick and Skate Checking are awesome additions, Nail the Grab is cool too but doesn't really have the same impact on the game. The Aggro Kick allows you to manually time your pushes to get to breakneck speeds so you can get massive air. Skate Checking is real fun, you can target any person on the street hit the LT and watch them go flying, it's just funny to watch them rag doll through the air. Nail the Grab just allows you to do grabs in Nail the Trick mode. What really breaks the game for me is the Goal Structure of the game, first off there are far too many, second, this Am, Pro and Sick tiered structure doesn't make me feel encouraged to play the game, I want to do the best I can at a goal, but most of the Sick goals are so stupid hard that you won't even want to bother with them, I hate having to settle for Pro, but like I said most of the Sick rules for the goals are far out of my league. I thought it was a cool idea last year, but this time around, most of them don't even seem do able even by someone who has played the series for the last 8 years. I could just ramble on about the game, but I just think I'd be wasting your time. True story, I'm out getting the game, come back home, plop the game down on my bed and check GameSpot, my purchase was awarded a "nice" 6.5, what a bummer. And after what I have played I have to agree with everything that Jeff Gerstmann said within. The game is just sloppy. It always sucks to see a great series overstay it's welcome... oh god.. I'm about to say it again... Screw it, I'm not even going to say it... I'm going to try to avoid The Yearly Disappointment. Tony Hawk Week: Day 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, Cutting Room Floor. Halo 3 Impasse and Addiction Wow, that was a long post, but I have a passion for that series and I hate to see it continue to falter every year... But now for a new thing that I have passion for and that is Halo 3's Multiplayer mode. I have played 452 games (both ranked and social) over the last couple of weeks and am a Lieutenant Grade 3 (Skill Level 10 and 200 EXP). The only problem I have so far is I think my skill has peaked. I am currently skill 16 in Team Slayer; I got to skill level 17 for a couple of games but quickly went back down to 16. It's an odd feeling, I want to get better, but I just can't. I'm sure that some of it is the randomness of the Team Slayer factor, but I usually average around 8-12 kills for my team, but I the problem is my K/D ratio is nearly or less than 1:1. Occasionally I will get on a role and get the MVP (at level 16 that means getting about 15 - 18 kills) and end up +5 or 6, but usually it's 1:1. I'm sure it's fixable, but with the random teams, you never know when your teammate (and I am guilty of this as well) is just going to wander off by himself and leave you hanging. Or the amount of times I have ran into the entire other team alone, in those cases all you can say is: "Oh, Crap!" and try to take out one of them if you can. The players in ranked matches are serious, in Social Slayer matches it's not uncommon for me to get the MVP nearly every match because I take out noobs with headshots with my battle rifle, but you get a dose of reality when you face the skilled players, it's harsh, but kind of neat to see that there is an actual difference between skill levels. Of course I'm going to keep plugging, I personally enjoy Team Slayer more because there is more slayer and less oddball and crap like that (though, I freaking hate shotty/snipers, mostly because I couldn't hit the broadside of a barn). I'm sure I will talk more about my Halo 3 sessions in the future. Next Topic. Games I am Supposed to Like I just finished watching this video blog on TheWesker's profile and it got me thinking about games that I have bought for frivolous reasons, like word of mouth, cheap prices or just because I could. I luckily don't do that too often anymore, but I am guilty of it, just look at The Yearly Disappointment article. But let's look at some of the worst offenders and why I should have just controlled myself. Strategy Games like Age of Empires II, Advanced Wars, Final Fantasy Tactics (PS1) and to a lesser extent StarFox Command. I have never enjoyed the strategy genre, I am no good at planning my attack (hence, the 1:1 K/D ratio in Halo 3) and just don't play them well or have the patients to deal with the stuff that is required to win. Word of mouth games include, Eternal Darkness which I found boring and repetitive, though the insanity effects where cool; Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, I loved the acrobatics, but hated the brain-dead fighting engine; The king of them all Psychonauts, all I need to say is here. Spluge buy games include: MegaMan Battle Network 5, I wanted an unnecessary new game for a trip and I picked this one; Enchanted Arms, I read the review, 7.1 it said, still bought it, just because I thought I wanted it; Worst of them all, picked up a copy of the 360 version of Tony Hawk's American Wasteland for 30 bucks even though I already have it on PS2. So there you have it, as hard as one might try, sometimes a regrettable purchase is made. You just have to try to get as much out of one of those as you can. Mission: Too Many Games Thanks to a busy September and October my backlog of games grew by probably close to 8 games, then thanks to my addiction to Halo 3's multiplayer I haven't made any progress on any of them. Here is how I plan to remedy that, I'm going to pick a game and take a few days off from Halo 3. I'm thinking Eternal Sonata will be the first game that I will scratch off my list then I will announce a follow up game in the finished article. At least it's a plan, hopefully it will work out. Closing Out Finally closing out this epic post, there isn't really much left to say. So I won't bother dragging this one any longer, I have already spent nearly an hour and a half writing it. I'm shooting to have a couple of posts next week, so look forward to those. Later. Double Kill, Triple Kill, Overkill! Loading Complete! |
POSTED ON OCTOBER 20, 2007 |
