Thrillville: Off the Rails
Tycoon games are tough. Too complex and you drive off everyone who isn't a CPA; too simple and you make it boring for anyone with half a brain. Thrillville errs on the "too simple" side, making you the teenage grandchild of a scatterbrained theme park owner, tasked with bringing the many parks back up to code, building and researching new rides, and helping other hormonal kids hook up while they're at the park. The last part is just as creepy as it sounds.
Colorful graphics and a very nifty no-load-screen cheat bring a lot of charm to the game, and dozens of intricate animations are running at any time, while every single guest in your park can be interacted with, using fairly unique dialog trees. While cartoonish, the graphics are bright and fun, with a lot of diversity in the fifteen "worlds" spread across five parks to enjoy. The two dozen or so minigames feature PS2 launch-title graphics, but being minigames, you aren't forced to suffer through them more than once if you don't want to.
The music is atrocious- there are 3 three-minute long pop songs, and they unfortunately all have insipid lyrics, playing in a loop in every part of the game down to the starting menu. Reach for the iPod or streaming music from moment one, or these bubblegum songs will stick with you forever. On the plus side, every conversation and dialog tree is voiced by a convincingly different assortment of voice actors, keeping it from feeling like you're talking to the same voice actor with a different accent all game.
The many Financial screens are laid out in a decently user-friendly intuitive format for a console game, and engaging in most actions is straightforward; sadly the game (barely more than a port of the PS2 title from a year before) does not capitalize on the greatest controller ever created, and this 360 title's unchangable button-maps at times feel like they've been shoehorned instead of assigned more natural.
The game's breezy challenge level is clearly tied into it's target audience of tweens, and nowhere is that more obvious than the puppy-loving "dating sim" portions of the game, where you have to learn from previous responses what sort of things a particular teenager likes and dislikes before you run out of conversation options to get them to be a "Love Interest." If you succeed, a hug from the date is the reward. Since the game keeps firm to its "E" rating, you won't find any creepy lines, but the innocence is sickly in its own saccharine way.
Graphics: It's a PS2 port, with very little work done to hide that. 2.
Sound: Full voice-over work is fine, but the soundtrack is dreadful and mercifully short. 1.
Controls: Intuitive menu navigation, but the minigame controls are a mixed bag. 3.
Tilt: Absent of any challenge, but also lacking the charm of a true "chillaxin' and playin' games" game like Uno or A Kingdom for Keflings. 3.
Overall (not an average): 2.
Friday, April 9, 2010
Thursday, April 8, 2010
skate.
skate.
skate. (yes, with the illogical period) is a breath of fresh air coming from the old, "press A to crank a 900°" school of skateboarding, and it represents a change in the very ethics of how skating games will be made from here on out. Tony Hawk already cancelled their 2008 offering, ostensibly to "retool" their scheme, but really it's because skate. so soundly kicked their ass that they are scrambling for some kind of answer, and it isn't coming from their dev team.
The central, defining point of skate. is its unique, analog "flickit" controls, 100% analog representations of your on-screen activities. Gone are ridiculous fetch-quests, 1000 foot grinds or "big air" measured in football fields. It's just street skating along the fictional roads of San Vanelona (San Francisco, Vancouver and Barcelona mixed together), with the occasional challenge thrown in as you take your created skater through the ranks to achieve super-stardom (and a cover shot on Thrasher magazine, natch).
While the graphics are perfectly servicable, with a full, real world to explore with no loading times, and the music and sound effects perfectly adequate (even through the stilted deliveries of pro skaters liberally littered across the landscape), it's the control sceme that will keep you coming back. Literally every move in the game is available from the moment you start the tutorial, and the only limit is your own ability to hit the exact placement on the right stick for any particular move.
With a beautiful online integration, and the ability to seamlessly share videos and pics (a personal favorite of mine being Clang Clang), skate. offers a full plate of interactivity and community to go along with the single-player mode. The challenge ramps up just gradually enough, and button-mashing will get you nowhere in the frenzied calm of a high-score trick contest. I literally cannot go on enough about the tactile sensation that comes from trying a trick twenty times in a row (easy as pie thanks to a genius checkpoint-maker that can reset you to the top of a hill to try that gnarly transfer one more time) only to finally nail it after a long string of bone-breaking crashes.
Graphics: The entire city is explorable with no loading times whatsoever, and even though the hats all look slightly 'off,' everything about the city itself looks great. 4.
Sound: Nothing fancy, and the soundtrack has too much of a mish-mash feel. You'll be plugging in your iPod very soon. 2.
Controls: The star of the show. It's never felt so good to try something twenty times in a row. 5.
Tilt: You can't get closer to skateboarding without grip tape and a truck key. 5.
Overall (not an average): 5.
skate. (yes, with the illogical period) is a breath of fresh air coming from the old, "press A to crank a 900°" school of skateboarding, and it represents a change in the very ethics of how skating games will be made from here on out. Tony Hawk already cancelled their 2008 offering, ostensibly to "retool" their scheme, but really it's because skate. so soundly kicked their ass that they are scrambling for some kind of answer, and it isn't coming from their dev team.
The central, defining point of skate. is its unique, analog "flickit" controls, 100% analog representations of your on-screen activities. Gone are ridiculous fetch-quests, 1000 foot grinds or "big air" measured in football fields. It's just street skating along the fictional roads of San Vanelona (San Francisco, Vancouver and Barcelona mixed together), with the occasional challenge thrown in as you take your created skater through the ranks to achieve super-stardom (and a cover shot on Thrasher magazine, natch).
While the graphics are perfectly servicable, with a full, real world to explore with no loading times, and the music and sound effects perfectly adequate (even through the stilted deliveries of pro skaters liberally littered across the landscape), it's the control sceme that will keep you coming back. Literally every move in the game is available from the moment you start the tutorial, and the only limit is your own ability to hit the exact placement on the right stick for any particular move.
With a beautiful online integration, and the ability to seamlessly share videos and pics (a personal favorite of mine being Clang Clang), skate. offers a full plate of interactivity and community to go along with the single-player mode. The challenge ramps up just gradually enough, and button-mashing will get you nowhere in the frenzied calm of a high-score trick contest. I literally cannot go on enough about the tactile sensation that comes from trying a trick twenty times in a row (easy as pie thanks to a genius checkpoint-maker that can reset you to the top of a hill to try that gnarly transfer one more time) only to finally nail it after a long string of bone-breaking crashes.
Graphics: The entire city is explorable with no loading times whatsoever, and even though the hats all look slightly 'off,' everything about the city itself looks great. 4.
Sound: Nothing fancy, and the soundtrack has too much of a mish-mash feel. You'll be plugging in your iPod very soon. 2.
Controls: The star of the show. It's never felt so good to try something twenty times in a row. 5.
Tilt: You can't get closer to skateboarding without grip tape and a truck key. 5.
Overall (not an average): 5.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
NBA Street Homecourt
NBA Street: Homecourt
Every sport it seems has a "street" variant released for it, which adds a hip, pick-up-and-play variant - usually spawned from a quarter-pounding arcade cabinet - that works to varying degrees. The NBA Street franchise has a solid pedigree, and EA Big went all out on their first next generation Street offering, NBA Street Homecourt. The results are nothing short of fantastic.
Rendered in full 1080i, Homecourt was one of the first true HD titles, and the extra work spent on character models shows through. With a game like basketball, where the players always play in full view of the crowds, with no headgear at all, minute details are immediately discernable if they are missing. Homecourt doesn't miss, though - every aspect of each NBA and WNBA star, as well as the unique local characters, hit every note, sport every tattoo and braid every hair just right.
The Create-a-Player story mode features the classic "pick up a player from the losing team" that we all remember from street ball, as well as hilarious RPG-like addition of "team discord," if you feed 'Melo the rock too much, eventually Rip Hamilton will complain and if you don't address his wants, quit the team! The sound effects and voices are breezy and forgettable, but the soundtrack is great. '80s breakbeats will have you busting out the refridgerator boxes, and entering the Gamebreaker mode triggers Herbie Hancock's seminal "Rockin' It."
The create-a-trick mode is perhaps ill-named, but you do use the face buttons in combination with the four shoulder buttons to individually direct your jukes and fakeouts, as well as (during Gamebreaker mode, filled up when you do enough tricks and reversals) breakdancing moves like up-rocks and UFO's. And of course, the jams. Oh dear, the double (and triple) jams, slam dunks that laugh at things like physics and world records for high jumps. The game playfull ignores all that nasty 'reality' stuff and offers over-the-top gaiden dunks if you've got the gamebreaker for it.
There is a very exploitable strategy when playing online, which only supports 1v1, that basically boils down to "camp Shaq under the hoop and goaltend like a motherfucker," and while doing so makes you win, it absolutely killed the online community for this game, and so unless you have a local buddy to co-op or VS with, the game's 8-hour long single-player career won't hold your interest as well as a fully-realized multiplayer like NHL 2k9's vaunted 5v5 season mode. Still, the beautiful character models, fluid animations and throwback soundtrack will make any time you spend on the blacktop with Homecourt worthwhile.
Graphics: Stellar character models in beautiful 1080i. 4.
Sound: Nothing crazy in the sound design, but the soundtrack is a fantastic throwback. 4.
Controls: The create-a-combo system is fun and rarely gets old. Context-sensitive AI directions mapped to the D-Pad are a welcome addition. 5.
Tilt: In co-op or VS this game is great; solo play is fun but limited with no online community. 3.
Overall: (not an average) 4.
Every sport it seems has a "street" variant released for it, which adds a hip, pick-up-and-play variant - usually spawned from a quarter-pounding arcade cabinet - that works to varying degrees. The NBA Street franchise has a solid pedigree, and EA Big went all out on their first next generation Street offering, NBA Street Homecourt. The results are nothing short of fantastic.
Rendered in full 1080i, Homecourt was one of the first true HD titles, and the extra work spent on character models shows through. With a game like basketball, where the players always play in full view of the crowds, with no headgear at all, minute details are immediately discernable if they are missing. Homecourt doesn't miss, though - every aspect of each NBA and WNBA star, as well as the unique local characters, hit every note, sport every tattoo and braid every hair just right.
The Create-a-Player story mode features the classic "pick up a player from the losing team" that we all remember from street ball, as well as hilarious RPG-like addition of "team discord," if you feed 'Melo the rock too much, eventually Rip Hamilton will complain and if you don't address his wants, quit the team! The sound effects and voices are breezy and forgettable, but the soundtrack is great. '80s breakbeats will have you busting out the refridgerator boxes, and entering the Gamebreaker mode triggers Herbie Hancock's seminal "Rockin' It."
The create-a-trick mode is perhaps ill-named, but you do use the face buttons in combination with the four shoulder buttons to individually direct your jukes and fakeouts, as well as (during Gamebreaker mode, filled up when you do enough tricks and reversals) breakdancing moves like up-rocks and UFO's. And of course, the jams. Oh dear, the double (and triple) jams, slam dunks that laugh at things like physics and world records for high jumps. The game playfull ignores all that nasty 'reality' stuff and offers over-the-top gaiden dunks if you've got the gamebreaker for it.
There is a very exploitable strategy when playing online, which only supports 1v1, that basically boils down to "camp Shaq under the hoop and goaltend like a motherfucker," and while doing so makes you win, it absolutely killed the online community for this game, and so unless you have a local buddy to co-op or VS with, the game's 8-hour long single-player career won't hold your interest as well as a fully-realized multiplayer like NHL 2k9's vaunted 5v5 season mode. Still, the beautiful character models, fluid animations and throwback soundtrack will make any time you spend on the blacktop with Homecourt worthwhile.
Graphics: Stellar character models in beautiful 1080i. 4.
Sound: Nothing crazy in the sound design, but the soundtrack is a fantastic throwback. 4.
Controls: The create-a-combo system is fun and rarely gets old. Context-sensitive AI directions mapped to the D-Pad are a welcome addition. 5.
Tilt: In co-op or VS this game is great; solo play is fun but limited with no online community. 3.
Overall: (not an average) 4.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
NFL Head Coach 09
NFL Head Coach 09
While Madden's gameplay has been increasing in quality only incrementally over the years, their front-office options have been exploding. Finally, in 2006 NFL Head Coach was released, and was a steaming pile. While it's unfair to boost a game's score based on previous iterations, NFL Head Coach 09 is pretty great if the following phrase describes a game you'd like: "It's like D&D for the jocks who beat up the kids who played D&D back in high school."
While graphics aren't at the heart of this strategy game, they are entirely servicable. The create-a-coach feature, however, is awful. Instead of perhaps 4 sliders for hair, eyes, skin and beard, instead you are forced to cycle through all 130+ configurations, each taking over a second to load. Once you select your team (a clever way to disguise selecting the difficulty level), you're off to the races, training players, scouting collegians, and occasionally playing a game of football.
I hate to keep bringing up Head Coach, but this game really is so far beyond it in pretty much every aspect. The game goes through real time, without artificial restrictions on when you can do specific activities like hiring and firing, but allows you to advance to the next "forced" event (like training day) on the fly. Quests are handed down, and you have to manage your support with the quest-givers (Owners, Fans, Players, and Media being the concerns you need to juggle) without weighing any one too heavily.
The actual on-field elements are competently handled, with an interesting "Emotion Selector" allowing you to respond either with passion or logic. The personnel you have on the field determines which choice was correct, whether players need an even keel or a warrior on their side. Playcalling itself is identical to the more-interactive Madden companion game.
While it isn't really a football game, I can't recommend this strategy game to a non-football fan; there is just too much that is predicated on an intricate familiarity with football knowledge and front-office machinations, but if you're the kind of person who simmed whole seasons of Madden just to get to the meat-and-potatoes of the offseason, Head Coach 09 is pretty much exactly what the box describes, no more, no less.
Graphics: Nothing outstanding, but then, there isn't much asked of it. 3.
Sound: You'll need your iPod for this game, as most of the time you're listening to a short looped clip of the same music. 2.
Controls: Most of the clickthroughs are fairly intuitive and consistant within each menu's context, but the game doesn't take any chances. 2.
Tilt: For a fantasy football nerd, this game is Nirvana. 3.
Overall (not an average): 2.
While Madden's gameplay has been increasing in quality only incrementally over the years, their front-office options have been exploding. Finally, in 2006 NFL Head Coach was released, and was a steaming pile. While it's unfair to boost a game's score based on previous iterations, NFL Head Coach 09 is pretty great if the following phrase describes a game you'd like: "It's like D&D for the jocks who beat up the kids who played D&D back in high school."
While graphics aren't at the heart of this strategy game, they are entirely servicable. The create-a-coach feature, however, is awful. Instead of perhaps 4 sliders for hair, eyes, skin and beard, instead you are forced to cycle through all 130+ configurations, each taking over a second to load. Once you select your team (a clever way to disguise selecting the difficulty level), you're off to the races, training players, scouting collegians, and occasionally playing a game of football.
I hate to keep bringing up Head Coach, but this game really is so far beyond it in pretty much every aspect. The game goes through real time, without artificial restrictions on when you can do specific activities like hiring and firing, but allows you to advance to the next "forced" event (like training day) on the fly. Quests are handed down, and you have to manage your support with the quest-givers (Owners, Fans, Players, and Media being the concerns you need to juggle) without weighing any one too heavily.
The actual on-field elements are competently handled, with an interesting "Emotion Selector" allowing you to respond either with passion or logic. The personnel you have on the field determines which choice was correct, whether players need an even keel or a warrior on their side. Playcalling itself is identical to the more-interactive Madden companion game.
While it isn't really a football game, I can't recommend this strategy game to a non-football fan; there is just too much that is predicated on an intricate familiarity with football knowledge and front-office machinations, but if you're the kind of person who simmed whole seasons of Madden just to get to the meat-and-potatoes of the offseason, Head Coach 09 is pretty much exactly what the box describes, no more, no less.
Graphics: Nothing outstanding, but then, there isn't much asked of it. 3.
Sound: You'll need your iPod for this game, as most of the time you're listening to a short looped clip of the same music. 2.
Controls: Most of the clickthroughs are fairly intuitive and consistant within each menu's context, but the game doesn't take any chances. 2.
Tilt: For a fantasy football nerd, this game is Nirvana. 3.
Overall (not an average): 2.
Monday, April 5, 2010
NFL Tour
NFL Tour
At some point, you have to just roll up a newspaper, smack every game on the nose and yell "No! Bad Video Game! We do not do that in the living room!" With NFL Tour, that moment happens about six minutes into the game. It's just terrible in every way, an attempt at a street-ball style that fails on every level, despite having its puppy heart in the right place.
NFL Tour starts out hopefully enough, with slick graphics and character models- the face models look great and even zoomed out to field view you can easily recognize the faces of the NFL's biggest stars. But then you realize the backgrounds and repetitive fields have the confetti-crowd repetition of, at best, an end-of-generation Playstation 1 game. The fireworks shows are canned and superimposed, lacking any of the dynamism of next-gen physics-based effects that are the hallmark of high-quality games.
The players chatter and trash-talk with appropriate voice work, and Trey Wingo snarks through the play-by-play, but unfortunately there's not a whole lot to hear. After one game, you'll have heard everything the announcer has to offer - twice. It's just depressing because Trey Wingo's lines are actually funny, but unfortunately there are so few of them that the laughs stop about halfway into the second quarter. Scott Van Pelt's work on Zombie Ninja Pro-Am is much better, and both are eclipsed by Frank Caliendo's absent-minded Madden impersonation in Blitz II, which is leaps and bounds better than Tour as a street-ball game.
The controls and playbook both take a massive step back in the name of "simple, arcadey play," nailing the simplism and completely forgetting to offer any arcadey action. Running is worthless and passing is mindless. The 'one-touch passing' feature is the worst possible scheme, where you key in on a receiver before the play, and have to manually cycle if he can't get open. To make the game tolerable, you'll have to switch to classic, Madden-style controls before starting. Once you have control of the ball, absent the truck stick you'll be forced to mash on the A button to bust through tackles. Of course, in the time you aren't running, another tackler will appear to knock you down anyway, so it's a moot quick-time event.
When there's only 9 total plays to pick from, though, you don't have to worry too much about picking the wrong play. They're all the wrong play, except "All Go." Just live by "All Go," and score on every posession. The game has a few extra atrocious minigames you will play once for the Gamerscore and then never look at again. It's just depressing because EA has the exclusive NFL license, yet because of that feels the need to innovate is completely absent. Hopefully Blitz II will put up the sales on the scoreboard to make EA come out with a true streetball game, but NFL Tour is definitely not that game.
Graphics: The characters look great, but the backgrounds and crowds are atrocious. 2.
Sound: Genuinely funny commentary - for about six minutes. Then, it's just grating. 1.
Controls: Weak, and the default setting is unplayable out of the box. 0.
Tilt: For about ten minutes, it's kinda fun, but you very soon regret the purchase. 1.
Overall (not an average): 1.
At some point, you have to just roll up a newspaper, smack every game on the nose and yell "No! Bad Video Game! We do not do that in the living room!" With NFL Tour, that moment happens about six minutes into the game. It's just terrible in every way, an attempt at a street-ball style that fails on every level, despite having its puppy heart in the right place.
NFL Tour starts out hopefully enough, with slick graphics and character models- the face models look great and even zoomed out to field view you can easily recognize the faces of the NFL's biggest stars. But then you realize the backgrounds and repetitive fields have the confetti-crowd repetition of, at best, an end-of-generation Playstation 1 game. The fireworks shows are canned and superimposed, lacking any of the dynamism of next-gen physics-based effects that are the hallmark of high-quality games.
The players chatter and trash-talk with appropriate voice work, and Trey Wingo snarks through the play-by-play, but unfortunately there's not a whole lot to hear. After one game, you'll have heard everything the announcer has to offer - twice. It's just depressing because Trey Wingo's lines are actually funny, but unfortunately there are so few of them that the laughs stop about halfway into the second quarter. Scott Van Pelt's work on Zombie Ninja Pro-Am is much better, and both are eclipsed by Frank Caliendo's absent-minded Madden impersonation in Blitz II, which is leaps and bounds better than Tour as a street-ball game.
The controls and playbook both take a massive step back in the name of "simple, arcadey play," nailing the simplism and completely forgetting to offer any arcadey action. Running is worthless and passing is mindless. The 'one-touch passing' feature is the worst possible scheme, where you key in on a receiver before the play, and have to manually cycle if he can't get open. To make the game tolerable, you'll have to switch to classic, Madden-style controls before starting. Once you have control of the ball, absent the truck stick you'll be forced to mash on the A button to bust through tackles. Of course, in the time you aren't running, another tackler will appear to knock you down anyway, so it's a moot quick-time event.
When there's only 9 total plays to pick from, though, you don't have to worry too much about picking the wrong play. They're all the wrong play, except "All Go." Just live by "All Go," and score on every posession. The game has a few extra atrocious minigames you will play once for the Gamerscore and then never look at again. It's just depressing because EA has the exclusive NFL license, yet because of that feels the need to innovate is completely absent. Hopefully Blitz II will put up the sales on the scoreboard to make EA come out with a true streetball game, but NFL Tour is definitely not that game.
Graphics: The characters look great, but the backgrounds and crowds are atrocious. 2.
Sound: Genuinely funny commentary - for about six minutes. Then, it's just grating. 1.
Controls: Weak, and the default setting is unplayable out of the box. 0.
Tilt: For about ten minutes, it's kinda fun, but you very soon regret the purchase. 1.
Overall (not an average): 1.
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