XBLA Fans

Samples of my video game-oriented writing can be found at XBLA Fans, a site dedicated to the indie and AAA darlings of the Xbox Live Arcade.

https://xblafans.com/author/alex-esten

EXCERPTS

Telltale President wants James Bond

In a recent interview with OXM, Telltale co-founder and president Kevin Bruner expressed his aggravation with James Bond games that misrepresented the super spy as a “mass murderer.” He is a long-time diehard fan and if Telltale were able to play in the Bond universe, it seems Bruner has quite a few ideas.

However, we would slightly disagree with some of Bruner’s take on Bond. The character, even in his quieter moments, has always been fairly ruthless. The early Fleming novels could be very, very cold and the best Bond film portrayals often walked that line between heroically sinister and emotionally empty.

Connery shoots a man multiple times in Dr. No.

Dalton was like an exposed nerve and the only on-screen interpretation to embrace just how psychologically unhinged Bond would have to be.

Daniel Craig conveyed both the rage and profound sadness that drive the character.

Bond is not a happy person and his interpersonal skills tend to reflect that.

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Best of the Rest - Perfect Dark 

When Perfect Dark was first released, console gaming was primitive. Dual analog was an option, not a standard. Multiplayer meant four friends huddled around a single 32″ TV making do with a four-way splitscreen that shrunk each view down to the size of an iPad. Perfect Dark launched on a console (the Nintendo 64) that is older than a third of today’s U.S. gamers and pushed that console to its limits, resulting in a poor framerate and requiring the N64’s 4 MB Expansion Pak to access basic features like campaign, co-op and multiplayer.

Rare’s shooter had a ton of content and options for its day, but the game’s technical shortcomings marred the whole experience. Modifying weapon lists, bot behavior and match types meant nothing to me if I constantly had to fight the controls and framerate performance — and this is coming from a guy who could ricochet a grenade round anywhere he wanted to in the game’s predecessor, GoldenEye.

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Mars: War Logs

Mars: War Logs is a sci-fi/action RPG that is unmistakably, unabashedly cut from the same basic template used for Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire, and Mass Effect. The main character is a war veteran with a dark, mysterious, or troubled past. He or she travels with a few companions who provide assistance, special abilities, additional information, and so on. The villain is either an oppressive fascist regime or someone who harbors deep personal resentment for the hero. Throughout the journey, the party is faced with moral dilemmas as they seek to resolve primary tasks and sub-quests, with decision options usually broken down into a binary GOOD or EVIL choice and little in-between.

[...]

If someone is interested in playing a sci-fi/action/open-ended WRPG, they have a ton of options available from half a dozen extremely prolific developers, some of whom started the genre. Many of those options are incredible adventures, spanning entire galaxies, with memorable characters, brilliant dialogue, breathtaking landscapes, and a few of them have dramatically pushed the genre forward in big ways. The market is immensely crowded, and Mars: War Logs is placed in a very tough spot because of that. Priced between $15 and $20, it is clearly aimed to be a mid-priced alternative to mega-funded RPGs from the likes of BioWare and Obsidian, and wants to be a Mass Effect that doesn’t cost $60 at launch.

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While the game might not do anything terribly revolutionary with its setting, and we would have preferred that it did more with the prison camp rather than stumbling through the first act, the fact is, breaking out of prison is not a premise we see very often, and it’s refreshing to see it here. It echoes Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, for better or for worse. At best, it does something very few games even attempt. At worst, it invites pacing comparisons against one of the most well-paced and creative games ever released, and Roy, the hero in War Logs, doesn’t exactly stand up to Vin Diesel’s graveled, subdued menace.

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The skill system is pretty varied, with a bunch of neat abilities spread across three trees (combat, stealth, and Technomancy), though the Technomancy tree is initially locked for plot reasons, which straight up spoils the “surprise” when Innocence discovers that Roy used to be a Technomancer. It’s a reveal that feels like it was intended to function like the Revan twist in Knights of the Old Republic 1, but it has nowhere near the impact, because the game doesn’t build up to it at all. It just happens. M:WL borrows what works in other games without realizing WHY it works, and what the other games do to make it work. As a consequence, as amusing as the Technomancy abilities can be, the Technomancer tends to come off as a poor man’s Sith Lord.

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 The game opens on a train transporting a number of characters to a prison camp. Here, we are introduced to Innocence, who laments over his treatment as a prisoner of war. He makes a few awkward observations about the nature of war, violence, and torture, then mentions having been in prison cells so long that he doesn’t know if it’s night or day…while the train is brightly lit, with a gigantic beam of sunlight right in his face.

It’s a glaring script/shot inconsistency, and this is the first scene of the game.

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While its ambition is commendable, and there is some fun to be had with the combat and upgrade systems, Mars: War Logs is ultimately done in by its lack of visual and mechanical polish, uneven writing, flat characters, and offputtingly humorless tone. Further, and probably most damning of all, it is a game of “if only it had.” If only it had been released on the original Xbox in 2004. If only it had been released on the Xbox 360 in 2008. If only it had not been released at a time when the Mass Effect trilogy could be purchased for $15.