Bayonetta 2: Saving Me a Trip to Wikipedia

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Bayonetta pointing a large gun very close to the camera with the caption "Let's Dance, Boys"For most games, as soon as I see the credits roll, I immediately grab my phone and go to Wikipedia to read the summary of the game’s plot. I’ve got to be honest here, I’m always somewhere on the confusion spectrum. Occasionally I have no idea what happened – I’m looking at you Final Fantasy XV – but usually it’s a point or two that I may have missed.

I just wrapped up Bayonetta 2, and I was pleasantly surprised to see they at least tried to save me the trip. In Bayonetta 2 you gather up lore books as you progress through the levels, written from the POV of a journalist. Upon completing the story, you get one more entry automatically added for you that contains a recap of the game’s plot.

Partial journal entry in Bayonetta 2 displaying a summary of the game's plotOf course, I didn’t notice this until after I returned from Wikipedia, but in any case I appreciate the developers being realistic about gamers like myself who may have lost track of what’s going on in the story along the way!

Elite: Dangerous: Can I Change My Name?

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I picked up Elite: Dangerous recently in a Steam sale, as it’s a game I’ve threatened to get excited about for a while now. Upon booting it up the first time, I found one of the most difficult decisions facing me: what to name my character. And Elite: Dangerous leaves out some pertinent information that would help inform that decision.

Commander Tad Cooper, I believe in you.

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WWE SuperCard: Onboarding

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wwe supercard logoWhen I heard there was a digital CCG coming out in the WWE universe…I was confused more than anything. After hearing that WWE SuperCard (iTunes, Play) was downloaded 1.5 million times in the first week and a half of being available, I knew I had to give it a shot (for science!). After two days and some sore thumbs, I can see why it’s so popular.

But before a CCG can start hooking players into that sweet, sweet drip of new cards, it has to get players in the game first. Lets take a look at what all of those 1.5 million players had to get through before their first match in WWE SuperCard!

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Hearthstone: That New Card Smell

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Hearthstone_LogoBlizzard’s Hearthstone (full name, Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft) is a digital collectible card game that’s currently out on Mac, PC, and iPad. The obvious comparison is to the biggest CCG around, Magic: The Gathering. While MTG is a physical game that also has a digital component, Hearthstone is a purely digital game, designed to be purely digital. That poses both interesting challenges and opportunities.

Being a collectible card game, a huge hook of both of these game is of course, getting new cards. A recovering former MTG player myself, there is nothing quite like the experience of opening a new booster pack of cards. And while Hearthstone doesn’t reproduce that new card smell, it does go out of its way to try and evoke the same feelings as the real thing. Continue reading →

MLB 14 The Show: Menu Usability Misses

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Console baseball games are few and far between these days. MLB 14: The Show is the latest entry in the Sony-produced series, and basically the only option for fans of baseball sims. It’s one of the first sports games to come out on the next-gen console generation (the PS4 in this case), and accordingly, it’s graphically quite sexy. If you’ve ever paid attention, crowds in sports games have been laughably terrible for a long time, so I’m excited to see some much-needed diversity in crowd animations.

Anyway, being a sim-style sports game, there are a ton of modes to choose from, and of course, an equal number number of menus to go through. I started playing through the Road to the Show mode, which has me creating and controlling a lowly minor league ballplayer. Playing through games earns experience, allowing me to build up my minor leaguer’s stats, and waiting for that call-up to the majors.

Along the way, MLB 14 has some difficulties in the way of usability. I almost expect it at this point – that these big sim-style sports games have terrible menus – but that doesn’t make it any better.

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