Tag Archives: game experience

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!

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 →

Hotline Miami: Meaningful Backtracking

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Cover of Hotline MiamiGiant Bomb defines “backtracking”, in part, as the following:

“Backtracking is often a derogatory term used to describe a situation in a game where the player must return to previously encountered locations in order to continue advancing the game”

Most of the time, backtracking is annoying, even when realism-wise it’s a little dubious how the game’s hero is able to make it all the way out of perilous situation X while off camera. But as is usually the case, the real answer on backtracking is “it depends”. Sometimes, in small doses, it can be very effective.

Hotline Miami (Steam link) is a super-violent action game that has earned a lot of attention as an indie PC title released in October 2012. It uses backtracking in a brilliant fashion – to really hammer home the game’s own meta-commentary on violence in games.

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Madden NFL 13 Social: A Terrible First Impression

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Logo for Madden NFL 13 SocialMadden NFL 13 Social is a freemium title for iOS and Facebook that is some combination of the offensive side of the Madden NFL series and a collectible card game. But to be honest, I never really got far enough into the game to find out because of how ridiculous it begins.

Being a Madden game from EA that is free, there’s a certain expectation that advertisements and in-app-purchases will be plentiful, which is definitely true. True story, here’s the first thing that greeted me when I opened Madden NFL 13 Social for the very first time:

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Super Stickman Golf: Accidentally Quitting Mid-Round

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Main menu of Super Stickman Golf 2The original Super Stickman Golf by Noodlecake Studios is one of my favorite mobile games (links to stores available here). It’s a simple yet challenging way to pass a few minutes of time. Everybody likes mini-golf, right? Super Stickman Golf 2 picks up right where the first left off, adding a few new features and a bunch of new in-app purchase options.

Merits of the upgrade aside, there’s one particular issue with the game that hasn’t changed between the two versions, and it has caused me a tiny amount of grief a few times now. When playing a single player round, backing out to the main menu doesn’t save the player’s progress, and the game doesn’t do anything to warn them of this either. Just like Microsoft Word prompts users before leaving changes unsaved, games always should tell the player before they lose progress.

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