Goombd Played! - The Walking Dead Episode 1: A New Day

 

The Walking Dead is a phenomenon and it's easy to see why. It incorporates the best parts of the classic zombie genre movies as well as introducing even more human drama than we're used to seeing in just about any medium. We got a very successful comic for years, a new TV show going to its third season and now an episodic game series coming in from Telltale Games. Does it capture the dread and hopelessness of the original source material?

That's a resounding yes. The first episode of the 'The Walking Dead' game, A New Day, starts off and ends with a bang, with many, many exciting and terrific moments thrown in between. If you were disappointed with the Jurassic Park series, Telltale's earlier release, you should look into The Walking Dead, since it takes the best parts of that game's mechanics and mixes them up with a bunch of little elements from other series, like Sam & Max's direct control and conversation wheels, as well as adding a timer to make decisions ever more important.

 

It all starts as Lee, the handsome guy who's in most of the promotional screenshots for the game, is being driven to a prison in the Atlanta, Georgia area by a very talkative police officer. During their conversation, the guy can't help but notice a strange commotion going on - police cars zipping by on the opposite highway lane, the patrol car radio going berserk and oh, the wandering zombie just hanging around in the middle of the road. After a violent crash, he's left to his wits to survive the zombie apocalypse, at least until he meets up with Clementine, a smart little girl who had managed to live by her own up 'til that point.

If you've seen any of the trailers, you know the story goes well beyond that, and if you haven't, you're not reading this searching for info if you can't just play the damn thing, so the spoilers will be minimal, in fact, non-existent for now on. Safe to say, chaos ensues, pressing decisions are made, which carry over throughout the entire game (and possibly the series) and it's all extremely well made.

Telltale teased repercussions for your moral decisions when I interviewed them at last year's E3. According to them, your actions would influence who lived and died, how others react to Lee and even if your companion, Clementine, liked you or not. That holds true and is taken even further right from the start. You can be honest and lay the entire truth to just about anyone you meet, or hold info back and gain their distrust. Decisions like that carry more water than you think, to the point of there being a comparison board at the end of the game, showing the percentages of other players who agreed with you. The Walking Dead is all about decisions having an effect on the overall experience, and thanks to that, you might just get an entirely different game than your friends', and part ways right from the first episode, depending on the choices you make.

Frankly, I was already expecting to get a great game when I heard that the series' original writer, Robert Kirkman would be involved, as well as The Book of Eli's Gary Whitta, so it came as no surprise how well the dread of the comics was translated in game form. You're never sure who is going to make it through and there's never a safe moment throughout your first playthrough of this episode. Fans of the (now huge) franchise can appreciate how well the source material is treated, not just in story form, but in the presentation as well.

 

The comics' look made the transition quite well to polygonal look featured in the game. While still sporting relatively simpler character models, the texture work was made to resemble a comic book, with thick black lines thrown in, as well as a very well directed color palette. Granted, the 'The Walking Dead' comics are black and white and at a point in its development, the game was thought of having that art style as well, I have to say, I'm glad they went with the colored look. None of the characters look absurdly cartoony, in the "Telltale style" seen in previous games. We're given some great performances from the voice actors too, that are tied to very expressive animation.

Don't worry, you'll get plenty of zombies too. The ghouls look pretty good too and die just as gruesomely as you'd hope. Telltale is not pulling any punches. Deaths are bloody and gory, and characters throw expletives left and right, like anybody would in the situations they're put in. Conversations carry out in fluid manner, and diffusing potentially violent situations is not as easy as just agreeing with one side of the argument. 

This feels like Telltale's most mature title yet and it's great to see how well the series is starting out. If you're anywhere near a console or computer, you absolutely have to give 'The Walking Dead' a go. Not only is it a great piece of lore for the series as a whole, it's an exciting and tense experience in the form of a game. I'm definitely excited to see where things will go from here, something I haven't felt about an adventure game in years. |9

Goombd Played! - RAGE

id knows how to make a shooter. That's the thing everyone has known for years. Since the olden days of Wolfenstein 3-D, the name id has been synonymous with first person shooters. Even though the company's been through a lot of changes since then, they have managed to come up with a great shooter in RAGE.

RAGE has been talked about for years as the next huge thing to come out of id, a benchmark to today's games in a similar way Doom was back in the mid 1990s. Now that it's out, does it deliver? As a first person shooter, definitely. As it seems at first glance, as an open world experience, not so much.

The story opens up with the apocalypse of Earth. An asteroid wipes most of the life on the planet and everything turns into a desert. Luckily for humankind, the planet's government had a plan, to save the last bits of humanity in the form of arks, which held the best specimens our race had to offer: grunts. Fast forward a few hundred years, your ark opens and you're pushed out to the real world. You're the last of these survivors left intact and you're about to find out you are not the only person alive on the planet. Gangs and mutants have taken over and it's up to you to help out the last pockets of humanity if they ever hope to survive for long.

Frankly, that's not the most original of stories but it serves as a nice excuse to shoot the crap out of things. In that regard, RAGE excels. id's engineering for first person shooter is at its finest, from the quantity and variety of weapons, that range from the trusty shotgun to a point-to-point precision crossbow, to how enemies behave and attack. Weapons can be upgraded and there's also a crafting system that makes use of some of the junk you find lying around the desert. If you don't feel like tinkering, though, you can buy everything in the convenient general store out in the desert. On top of a pretty fun on foot shooting system, you also get to drive and equip your own set of wheels for races and destruction.


Sadly, it's the bit with the driving that might bog down your experience with RAGE. The open world feeling that is passed through cutscenes and visuals when you start the game doesn't really carry through to the end. Missions are very straightforward and there really isn't a whole lot to do in between the pockets of quest givers you drive to and back. Sidequests make repeat use of the same areas you 'instance' into for the main story and don't vary a whole lot from the same "shoot all that moves and pick up this bottle for me" mold you've come to expect. Even though the driving itself is a lot of fun, it doesn't really amount into much at the end.

Speaking of the end, the ending section to RAGE is also extremely disappointing. Without going into spoilers, you're given an incredible weapon and basically rats to shoot at with it. It's a frustrating conclusion to an otherwise exciting set of missions that could have been probably arranged at an alternate order and have resulted in a more satisfying experience.

Once you're done with the single played campaign, there's an entire separate section of the game devoted to multiplayer. If you can find people to play it with, the multiplayer portion of RAGE is varied and rewarding, even if it's somewhat under-populated at the moment. Instead of taking the easy way and throwing out a simple deathmatch mode, id decided to take the co-op approach and designed a set of cooperative missions set in the main game's levels. They're presented in the form of legends of the wasteland, side stories that involve the cast of RAGE and how they happened to have two very willing individuals who took down a lot of enemies.

Your other online option is a handful of racing tracks where you put your pedal to the medal, racing and fighting with other players. You can count on a similar leveling system you've seen in other online shooters, which rewards you with better weapons as you gain experience. While not the most original set of options around, RAGE tries to set itself apart, with relative success.


Whether you're tearing through the desert or just playing cards at the local bar, there's no denying RAGE is one of the best looking games in this generation. id's new graphics tech is easily one of the prettiest so far. That's especially true in outside environments, where the sky is visible and it just blows you away with how everything is so well lit and drawn. id's touting a new 'mega-texture' technology in RAGE, which is basically a fancy way of saying that all the textures are painted in a single, huge file that's supposed to help loading textures be much faster. In RAGE's case, that works most of the time, even though there are still some instances of draw in, even more when you're turning around all the time. That's when the illusion pops out and you can see behind the curtain of how it all works. That only happens once or twice, though, mostly when you're on foot outside.

Characters also look really charismatic and act cartoony. We're treated to John Goodman as a voice actor early on in the game too, which only ups the presentation. He's not on for too long but the rest of the cast manages to keep the bar high once he's gone. The cities you visit each have a distinct feel and definitely looked lived in and put together differently. Levels are relatively large too and aren't exactly a set of tunnels duct-taped together, although they don't escape the curse of being fairly straightforward.

As a shooter, RAGE is an excellent game. In comparison to other game's that claim to be open world experiences, like Borderlands, it doesn't really deliver. While not the most unique FPS around, it does what id's been known for years and looks stunning in doing so. The multiplayer component also helps, keeping you busy for a while longer. If you don't mind the cookie cutter story and lack of mission variety, you'll dig living through yet another post-apocalyptic journey RAGE's serving. |8

Goombd Played! - Sine Mora

They say that time is money. In Sine Mora's case, Grasshopper Manufacturer's newest game, time is life and money... well, money is just a way of keeping score. This time bending bullet hell shooter is a gorgeous example of how an old school game concept can evolve to the current generation of games, not only visually but in terms of gameplay.

Time is of the essence, especially when it involves saving someone you care about. In case of our main hero, he wants to save his son from dying. Sine Mora starts at a botched air strike attempt and only gets crazier from there. It's tough to follow the story considering how it's delivered, through loading screens in a wall of text, read in Russian. In fact, unless you speak the language, you won't understand a lick of any of the voice acting delivered in the game.


Thankfully, you don't need to learn any new languages in order to play this game and story aside, we have to admit we're here to shoot a lot of big things and avoid getting killed by a million of onscreen bullets. In that regard, Sine Mora is awesome. If you've played a bullet hell shooter in the past, you know what to expect here. Knowing when to attack and when to dodge is the key to success.

Mastering time, though, is another facet of Sine Mora. For some miracle of technology (or is it magic? who knows?) you're able to control time for a short spurt of seconds. With this gizmo, you can slow down everything around you when things get hairy. This mechanic is particularly useful during boss encounters, when the screen is literally baked with dots trying to kill you. Keep in mind, this power runs out and very few pick ups refill it, but it's a nice trick regardless.


Even though you have the power to control time, you're still a very vulnerable little ship fighting giant fortresses, monsters and the such. As you take hits, the on screen clock loses time and when that runs out, you're dead. In order to keep it up top, you need to destroy enemies, plain and simple. Levels are somewhat lenient with the clock, too. At every checkpoint, Sine Mora throws in a few extra seconds.

And delivering to expectations, you'll need all the seconds you can get. Sine Mora is relentless. Even if you decide to tackle the game's "easier mode", skill is still needed if you wish to reach the end. The best part about the game, though, you working towards perfecting your runs through the levels in order to get promoted. Promotions work like an in-game achievement system where certain tasks like finding a certain boss' weakpoint and killing X number of ships are rewarded with new ranks. The bigger the rank, the harder the requirements, naturally.

While the more demanding might condemn Sine Mora for being too short of an experience, there's a lot of depth to dig through if you so desire. Granted, you can finish the game in about one hour and a half, there aforementioned reasons should be more than enough to multiply that by ten or more. If you're looking for new levels and a lasting story experience, you'll be sorely disappointed, so keep that in mind if you decide to give Sine Mora a try.

Frankly, there's very little else to write about this game that could help you make up your mind. Sine Mora is the sort of shooter that demands your dedication and rewards you for the time you spend with it, not only with a very stylish presentation that makes it one of the prettiest Xbox Live Arcade downloads out there but with a steady degree of difficulty that keeps you on your toe level to level. If challenge is your goal when playing games, then this is one of the best ones to pick up. |9

Goombd Was There! - Yoshitaka Amano at Gameworld 2012

When you stop to think about artists that helped define videogames, the name Yoshitaka Amano probably pops in your mind, right? Or at least his works if you don't know the name right away. His contributions to the Final Fantasy series dates back to 1985 and ever since then, Amano's paintings have been synonymous with then Square and now SquareEnix's flagship franchise.

Goombd had the chance to meet the master last weekend, when Amano-san touched down in São Paulo in order to show a few pieces of his portfolio during the Gameworld 2012 expo. The shy artist doesn't usually have direct contact with the public, so his press conference event was a rare chance for the local press and videogame enthusiasts to pick his brains a bit on a variety of subjects.

While it's difficult to credit an entire game concept to just one person, in many people's minds, Final Fantasy was pretty much a child of Amano-san's creativity, in the form of his drawings. According to him, though, its creation was far from being that. His collaboration with the team at the time was only as successful as it was due to the combining of creative forces and not just his drawings.

Not only that, but his art was frowned upon at the time due to how conservative the general public used to be back in the 80s in regards to videogames. Amano-san reminded everyone of how shy the overall population is and that games were a closed off hobby at the time, something that has completely changed since then. From his early days as an animator over at the famous Tatsunoko Productions on to his work at SquareEnix, formerly Squaresoft, Amano has seen the growth of videogame popularity in its entirety, from a shied away hobby to the common place "play anywhere" fever that the Japanese are obsessed with nowadays.

When asked about how his work is usually received in different cultures outside of Japan, he was sure to mention that very little of that actually influences how the public sees his art - in fact, different cultures are even more in love with it, which he has come to admire and appreciate over the years. According to Amano-san, the fans' support is more valuable than anything and in that regard, he considers himself a very rich man.


"Art is a broad subject and I try to treat it as such. I cannot cut corners and make generalizations in my work." - Amano-san added as one of the journalists commented on how Japanese art had influence Amano's work. He was quick to add that local art has certainly played a part in his development as an artist, but he didn't stop there. There's something of everything in his work and according to him, that's much needed and is probably why people from all over the world have claimed to be able to identify themselves with some of Amano's characters. By looking outside for inspiration, Amano ended up coming back to the East, due to how some of his own influences were once inspired by Eastern culture. In a way, Amano considers himself influenced by Japanese art but from the outside set of mind, diluted and focused by previous artists from the West.

His family played a part in his art development, from the earliest memories, Amano-san shared that his father was a lacque artist and his work always fascinated him, its use of black and gold paint, the strokes of his father's brush is something he keeps in mind every time he starts a new painting. Colors are another reason behind his visit to Brazil, so he can absorb some of the local culture and possibly apply it to future projects. According to him, Brazil's fauna and flora are incredibly inspiring, not to mention uniquely colorful. At the time of the press conference, Amano-san had been in town for only a day and was already enamored with São Paulo's sprawling architecture and graffiti art.

Amano's work extended to other mediums outside of games. His most notable non-gaming work was probably his collaboration with Neil Gaiman in the book Sandman: The Dream Hunters, where he contributed with most of the art. He mentioned that the creative process was a conjunction of Gaiman's script and his own drawings, a mutual brain storm of ideas that resulted in a lot of unused art which Amano-san laughed off. Not all of his ideas were that good, according to him. "We beg to disagree, Amano-san", the audience clearly cried.

Amano's shyness quickly gave away to his humor. Quick to break out in laughter, when asked about the difference in his work over the years, about the creative process changing from 1985 to now, he simply said "I forgot!" and laughed it away. In all seriousness, he responded that in his mind, art is a tool to disseminate culture and to help show how rich a world can be to those outside of it.

The base of his early work is still seen these days in games like Final Fantasy XIII, where core characters that make repeat appearances throughout the series are still modeled in designs from back then, even though their looks might be slightly or even radically different. "The more modern the technology", Amano-san said, "the closer the fidelity with my original work". The pixel art of early Final Fantasy games could only bring out the unique visuals of his paintings so far.

"I hate cell phones..." Amano-san drops in between questions about fan feedback. "I have very little interest in keeping up with social media". Very little of the fan reactions actually makes it into his ears and even less actually influences his work, Amano admits. That's the main reason he likes to keep it to himself and not give many interviews.


Music plays a huge part in Amano's work. Much of his work, according to him, is also influenced of the pop art record covers of the 70s and 80s. Also worth mentioning is his involvement in a partnership with a music magazine, where he would publish a couple of paintings every month. That went on for a few years. Since then, however, he was forced to stop due to the amount of work needed, in order to focus on his main line of designs. While disappointed about having to stop working on that magazine, he still keeps very active just listening to music, he laughed.

Whether they are monsters, heroes or even beautiful princesses, Aman-san can't identify himself in any of his creations nor really admit to having a real person as a mold to any of his designs. Again, the master kids around and mentions how he wouldn't want to identify himself with any of his monsters, they are too ugly!


As for more recent work, Amano-san mentioned his current work in Devasan, an animation that combines traditional Japanese folklore, like samurai and demons, with some more Western stories. Due to last year's earthquake catastrophe, Amano's contributions had to be halted and were only picked back up recently, with some of the production having been shifted to offshore in order to see conclusion anywhere near their estimated 2013 release for this series. He hopes to put together a collection of his art from Devasan soon in the form of a book too.

In regards to the recent controversy about the lack of creativity of Japanese games, Amano-san didn't mince words. They are indeed lacking, but due to many reasons, not only creativity-wise. In earlier days, sales were much stronger and he also pushes some of the blame to weaker profits in this generation and the overall lack of investment in the development of games. He pinned some of the blame to less than enthusiast developers too, which according to him have been on the rise recently.


When asked about keeping in touch with former company mates Hironobu Sakaguchi and Nobuo Uematsu, Amano said that he is in constant contact with both and pointed out that he is indeed working with Uematsu on an unannounced game which he shrugged it off as something he forgot the name too. Fellow attendees to the conference whispered "Final Fantasy VII remake!!!". I kept my mouth shut.

It was surprising to see such a candid figure in Yoshitaka Amano. Not only in his sincere answers, but in his humor and presence. I also had the chance to meet him in person during his sit down at the space where his works were on display. Shaking the man's hand was the least I could do as a fan and for that I'm thankful for his visit.

Photo credits: Fabricio Vianna, Tambor Digital