Hero Academy is one of the "it" games for iOS right now. Doug happens to be really bad at it.

I suck at Hero Academy.

I’ve played a half-dozen games against site contributor Tyler and lost each of them. I’ve started playing another friend, too, and have summarily lost to him as well. As I write this I’m in the process of starting another game, surely to be lost. Hero Academy isn’t a simple game — it’s a turn-based strategy-ish game that uses asynchronous multiplayer and the shuffling of your deck to keep you on your toes. I’m consistently over-aggressive and trying to rein that in is proving difficult. Plus every game is against a human, making things even trickier. The turn-based nature of combat allows you to plot out what to do next — and to contemplate how it all went wrong.

Why do I keep coming back, though? Well, it’s fun. But what does that mean? Many people smarter than me have done studies and a conclusion to draw is that playing games we enjoy taps into pleasure centers in our brains. Do something right in a game, get a little squirt of happiness into your nervous system (or, suggested in the above article, get MORE than on average from other activities). This, writ large, is gaming.

So playing games feeds into a chemical dependency. But what I like and what you like are very different things – taste is, of course, relative – and how we define fun is what drives variety. I’m loving trying to solve the riddle of Hero Academy, especially as unwrapping Tyler’s strategy makes learning almost double the work compared with a single-player game. AI routines aren’t quite good enough yet to change strategies completely or also mess around with your head. I may not be successful right now, but I’m enjoying the process and hopefully will be successful sooner than later. My brain likes what it gets from this game; it clicks. It’s why I like the Kairosoft games on iPhone, it’s why I like Tiny Tower, and it’s why I put endless hours into soccer and racing games on consoles.

Perfect like the 2008 Detroit Lions.

Sometimes, however, my synapses don’t click with games, and that can be frustrating. Even more so, it’s frustrating when they’re games that so many people love. It’s really sad to admit as a hardcore gamer, but I haven’t played all the way through a Zelda game ever; I’ve only finished one JRPG, and only ever started one Final Fantasy game. Ditto with Starcraft, Pokemon, Half-Life, and Call of Duty. It’s not that these are bad games or not games I could like; they just don’t grab me. Other games lock me in a vice and suck the life out of me. There’s a reason why I put hundreds of hours into Konami’s Pro Evo Soccer games.

Does this make me a bad gamer? I’m conflicted. Is it enough to give something a chance? Does it mean I’m inherently broken if I don’t get sucked in by games that are universally praised as great?

It’s an interesting and difficult question to ponder. But in the meantime, I’ll continue playing Hero Academy and (most likely) losing.

2011 has been a strange gaming year for me. I’ve been able to follow the industry as much (or more) than ever before thanks to some fantastic web sites and podcasts, but for much of the year I couldn’t (and didn’t) buy a new console game. I’ve made up for lost time since October, but much of my attention has also gone to older titles. I almost excused myself from Game of the Year discussions by default.

But there are many games that I have played which deserve recognition. So kick back and read on!

Assassin’s Creed II and AC: Brotherhood

I may not have played this year’s offering, Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, but this has still been a very Assasin’s Creed year for me. I flashed through the two AC2 games in the early part of this year and enjoyed every bit of my brief Italian Renaissance vacation. As much as I saw the promise in the first game, it had incredibly stilted pacing and relied on the same three tricks to progress the story. However, from the moment you take control of Ezio Auditore da Firenze, the series comes into its own and flourishes. Revelations may have eaten away at some of the goodwill the series developed, but these two games were amazing.

Shadows of the Damned

Proof that Japanese developers can still produce quality games. It’s far from perfect – some sections pass over from difficulty to frustration, and the “Big Boner” section is a joke that goes on far too long – but Shadows of the Damned is an engaging road trip. The gun-play and combat is well balanced, and all of the story beats are funny and well written. In the year when Duke Nukem finally returned, Garcia F*cking Hotspur slapped him in the face and stole his crown. Props to 8-4, Ltd., for the excellent writing in the game – hardcore gamers may know their other work, including previous lives at Electronic Gaming Monthly. This game is now just $30 on Amazon new; please go pick it up.

The iOS Section: Tiny Tower, Tiny Wings, Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP, Ticket to Ride Pocket and GP Story

In the year of me not buying any new games, I have to add a condition: I didn’t buy any new console games. However, a fleet of iOS games – Tiny Tower, Tiny Wings, Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP, Ticket to Ride Pocket, and Grand Prix Story – have kept me occupied for a very long time this year. Others may write about Tiny Tower, but it’s the perfect check-in game, requiring just a few minutes every day to keep progress moving. Beyond that, it’s got a fantastic art style and sense of humor. Tiny Wings continues the strong history of bird games on iOS, and with simple but genius gameplay. Ticket to Ride Pocket is a great translation of the board game. Grand Prix Story is the newest in a long line of Kairosoft management games, but this time in the realm of auto racing – perfect for me. And Sword and Sworcery is easily the best iOS single-player experience on iOS yet. A stellar year for gaming in your pocket.

NBA 2K12

And here’s where I’m sure some of our readers will roll their eyes. I know Spencer already has! It’s hard to top the highs of NBA 2K11 last year, but somehow NBA 2K12 has managed to grab me even more. If 2K11 was the great leap forward, 2K12 is a great evolution from its predecessor. The gameplay remains fantastic and the two ancillary modes – MyPlayer and Legends mode – have been improved to be a lot more fun. MyPlayer no longer requires you to start as a nothing player, and the Legends mode has expanded beyond just Michael Jordan to encompass almost 20 of the NBA’s greatest players from throughout the league’s history. It still looks and feels like an NBA broadcast (I’ve actually fooled a friend into thinking this) and makes me fall in love with basketball even more. I’m not sure if I burned myself out on EA Sports’ football titles or if they have stayed stagnant, but 2K12 manages to feel fresh despite being iterative. I will be playing this for a while.

Within ten minutes of beginning Shadows of the Damned, you’ve been subjected to a litany of dick jokes, seen a woman burst at the seams (literally), and have been introduced to a protagonist who’s chosen middle name is “Fucking.” Before bringing in the late title card, the main character and his gun/sidekick have a quick discussion about this trip into the underworld is going to be “our own road movie,” setting the scene for what follows.

It’s really easy to discredit Shadows of the Damned as potty humor, old gameplay mechanics, and JAPAN. I know, because for a while this summer, I did. However, after playing Grasshopper’s latest, I’m convinced that not only is this bound to be a cult classic of a video game, but could be a model for the Japanese developer community going forward.

In the opening credits sequence for Shadows of the Damned, there are two things that immediately grabbed my attention. First was the list of high-profile names involved with the game as part of Grasshopper Manufacture: Goichi Suda (better known as Suda51), Shinji Mikami (of Resident Evil fame) and Akira Yamaoka (composer for the Silent Hill series). Ever since the game was announced, that heavyweight lineup has been on board, so it was not surprising, but it’s still reinvigorating to see when you begin your journey.

Shadows of the Damned may not be a masterpiece but it’s certainly a damned fun game. Partnered with satisfying shooting and responsive controls, Grasshopper has crafted a crazy-cool grindhouse-horror world, and the writing (hat tip to 8-4) is sensational. It’s often juvenile but somehow never demeaning to your sensibilities — Duke Nukem could take notes. Even shooting giant demons in the eye with your Big Boner (technical term!) never feels too crass. Importantly, the dialogue is smart and witty as much as it is juvenile. As for the game itself, all the shooting and control mechanics, enemies, weak points and bosses come together in all the right ways. Garcia Fucking Hotspur takes you along on a road movie to hell, and while I’m not quite finished yet, I’ve enjoyed the ride so far.

Of course Garcia is targeting a demon's nuts.

The other piece in the introduction to the game was a bit surprising: Unreal Technology. Shadows of the Damned runs on Unreal Engine 3, which makes it both like many other contemporary games and completely different from many of its peers.

Let me explain that a little bit more. Though middleware game engines have entered common use in American and European game development, that has been far from the case in Japan. Lower priority is placed on software in general in this country — and on the value of creating software. Japan has a tradition of crafting quality goods, and the art of making things is celebrated. However, the business landscape of technology has changed — computers as devices now have razor-thin profit margins (unless you’re Apple), while software and support is where money can be made. This isn’t just a problem facing the game industry, either; it’s been mentioned in The Economist recently as a cultural shift facing Japan’s tech industry. Samurai don’t code software; they make things you can hold and use.

Think about some of the AAA games that have come out recently. The percentage of big-budget games using middleware game engines is much higher in the West than in Japan, and I think that has hurt Japanese developers this generation. Take a look at the Wikipedia list of Unreal Engine 3 games: everything from 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand and licensed junk to Batman: Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, the Mass Effect series, the Gears of War series, and more. The games listed there from Japanese publishers were all developed outside of Japan, with two exceptions: Square Enix’s The Last Remnant (which was an RPG aimed at Western audiences) and upcoming Capcom action game Asura’s Wrath (also aimed at the West).

While you could create a game engine from scratch for an 8-, 16-, or even 32-bit game, it’s not possible to do that with a contemporary AAA game. It might be possible in some instances, but it’s not practical for many other console developers, and it hurts productivity, profitability and creativity. I’m convinced it’s holding back talented developers and wasting their time, and Shadows of the Damned is evidence.

It is in this light that I think Shadows of the Damned should set an example for the Japanese industry. Not because of what it is — a third-person shooter with M-rated dick and poop jokes — but by using a middleware game engine. It allows creative people to not worry about making both the canvas and decide on the painting and instead lets them focus on drawing a masterpiece. That both Square Enix and Konami’s Kojima Productions are creating flexible game engines for their studios is a good sign, even if it is a baby step and may be too little, too late. There is still a great deal of creativity in Japan — it just needs the chance to be seen.

Welcome to the Japanese countryside! There are video games here, you just have to squint really hard to find them.

Whenever I’ve moved, one of the last things to get packed up has been my gaming console. Of course, my console has also often been the first thing unpacked once I’ve gotten moved in. Funny how that works. But this time, after moving to Japan in early August, all I’ve played since are iPhone games – until last weekend, I hadn’t picked up a real controller since arriving in the land of Nintendo and Sony.

What the hell happened? Well, a perfect storm of things for me, at least.

First: I didn’t want to bring my Xbox 360 with me to Japan. It’s old, is bound to break (again), and is region-locked. Most importantly, though, I would either have to pack it into my slim luggage allowance or ship it over separately, and neither are worth the trouble. Sometimes you have to be an adult and bring clothing, especially when there’s little chance to buy new threads. Okay, I did bring my Nintendo DS, but it’s now gathering Japanese dust instead of gathering American dust. I’ve got the itch to play games; what to do?

But I can wait. Maybe. I’ve gone two months without playing a game – and longer without playing anything new, frankly – and can afford to wait because real life and the gaming release schedule have allowed me to. I’m too busy getting out of the house and visiting my new friends to spend too much time playing games at the moment, which is good, because there haven’t been a ton of AAA titles coming out this summer. I bemoaned the lack of a year-round release schedule earlier in the year, but I’m quite glad for the break at the moment.

Soon the weather will turn nasty and, as a friend here in Japan said, people will begin to “hide under their kotatsu.” Unlike the U.S., most places in Japan aren’t centrally heated and have very poor insulation, which means you wear lots of sweaters indoors and a kotatsu, a table with a heated blanket. In short, people don’t want to head out and be social; perfect time to catch up on video games, then!

Postscript to the story? Last weekend was my birthday. With enough money and free time on the weekend to go buy a PS3, I broke down and picked one up — a 320 gb model, which now sits happily next to my TV and wireless router. It’s now set up to stream media from my computer, access my U.S. Netflix account, and make use of the Silicon Sasquatch staff PSN share. And I bought a pretty kick-ass game to go along with the system, too, one that I’m excited to write about soon.

After the long break, it’s good to be back.

Once again, we have returned from a brief hiatus to discuss what in the world of video games has been on our mind and taking up our time. It’s been a little while so we’ve had plenty of time to get some games in during the early summer — Nick and Tyler both have thoughts on InFamous, Aaron’s now one of us, and Doug’s catching up with two of 2010′s best action games. Nick also weighs in with what is easily one of the most bizarre recommendations we’ve ever made.

Anyways, without further ado (do do), TO THE BACKLOOOOOOG!

Nick

Oh, that wacky Conquistador.

Duke Nukem Forever is out, and I’ve played the demo. After more than a decade of waiting uneasily, its release is not unlike the removal of a benign tumor. Good riddance.

InFamous 2 is also out. Based on the demo, Sucker Punch has delivered some impressively animated and ultimately soulless action-platforming, just like the first one. I can’t help but feel like some of that blame can be placed on them for not sticking with their initial, more humanizing redesign of Cole, the protagonist from the first game. Fans were outraged for reasons I can’t even begin to understand, and Sucker Punch acquiesced by returning to the shaved-head, gruff-talking hero from the first game. Just like every other blockbuster game in the last five years. Way to go out on a limb, guys. Let me know when Sly 4 is out.

Look, I realize this is getting a little pessimistic, but I wanted to point out that there is still some originality to be found and joy to be experienced in gaming. I’ve got two examples: something old and something new.

The old game is The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening DX. I never realized just how strange this game was until I revisited it over the last couple weeks on my 3DS. There’s something wonderful about the peculiar diction used by Koholint’s inhabitants and the Mario-universe enemies that populate the game’s side-scrolling sequences. It’s also a true classic, sporting some seriously compelling dungeon design, excellent music and goofy humor. While I could go on, I’ll save the rest for another day — and possibly another medium.

Don’t read too much into that. Unless that’s your kind of thing.

The new game is an absolutely outstanding tribute to Cave’s shoot-’em-up bullet-hell games. It’s called Jamestown, and it’s ten dollars on Steam. Buy this game.

Go ahead, buy it. Seriously.

I’m not going to beat around the bush. This game is amazing. The core game is supremely tight and refined, combining gorgeous sprites running at a high frame rate and several distinct, easy-to-learn but hard-to-master ships to play as. It’s also got a lot of extra content to keep you occupied, including challenge missions and an alternate, unlockable campaign.

The plot is compelling and epic in scale. You’re a British colonist in the year 1619 in the settlement of Jamestown, struggling against the hazardous native populations and the campaign of destruction being waged by the Spanish Conquistador.

Also, Jamestown is on Mars, and there are squid-like aliens.

Still with me? This is the game for you. I recommend it without reservation.

Tyler

The cast of "X-men: First Class" is bored of this InFamous talk. Go see their movie instead.

One of the most unique aspects of video games as a medium is that, as a direct result of their inherent activity you can, to some extent, influence the outcome of every situation. In some ways this is more significant than others. In Super Mario Bros. you will always complete the game by saving the princess; however, the means with which Mario deals with enemy encounters and the order in which he progresses through the levels is left entirely to the judgment of the player. As narrative has begun to play a stronger role in contemporary titles, the amount of agency a player has has likewise shifted. A game in the Call of Duty series will allow players to deal with enemies how they see fit but only with the tools the designers provide in a very careful constructed environment. For all intents and purposes, these type of games are a slightly more interactive blockbuster movie.

On the complete opposite end of the spectrum you have titles like Nick Cummings’ 2010 favorite, Minecraft. This is a title almost completely devoid of any narrative other than what one makes of it, and whatever happens in the world is almost certainly the result of direct action by the player. I can, to some extent, respect either extreme; both present unique cases for the potential of games. What I have a difficult time appreciating is when a developer will try to have their cake and eat it too by creating a tight, forward-moving narrative and provide some sort of illusion that the player has any real agency in this world or story.

Sony recently made their “Welcome Back” PlayStation Network promotion available to users and I took the opportunity to replay Sucker Punch’s 2009 open-world superhero title InFamous. I enjoyed the game for what it was two years ago and it worked well as an early summer release, but after two years much of the veneer has worn off for me. The gameplay is there, protagonist Cole McGrath has electricity/lightning-based powers (ala Marvel’s Electro and DC’s Livewire) that upgrade in interesting ways over the course of the campaign. What is most frustrating about the title is the aforementioned illusion of player agency. Open-world titles such as Just Cause 2, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and FarCry 2 provide strong reasons to break away from the level-act structure most narrative based games employ by crafting an interesting world with a variety of ways to influence it. InFamous’ Empire City is neither interesting as a setting nor is there any meaningful reason to interact with it beyond story missions. It is itself yet another New York City analogue, minus any of the personality (granted, part of the game’s narrative is that the locale is recovering from a severe explosion and is under quarantine), with plenty of other titles that have explored similar ideas with superior results. InFamous actually drew many comparisons to a similar title released in 2009, Prototype, which actually took place in a quarantined Manhattan with a super-powered protagonist.  Though Prototype was much less polished than Sony’s exclusive, the traversal and interactions with the world it constructed are significantly more entertaining.

The second egregious offense of dangling player agency as this carrot to the stick is InFamous’ morality system. I can accept that the decisions player makes in missions are obnoxiously binary (i.e. save this orphan or kick this puppy), many other modern releases have similarly employed such concepts to much more successful results. The first time I played InFamous I chose the evil path; this time I took the other route and was good. The powers are different, but evil’s are much more useful, which certainly put a damper on the more recent play-through. This is a trivial complaint compared to the fact that Cole does not feel any different as a character as a result of choosing alternate decisions at these key moments. The immediate result changes but his reaction to the circumstances of the world is uniform to each side of the story.

My opinion of InFamous has changed because everything it does that is intended to make the game unique and stand out are aspects I have seen done better one way or another in other media very recently. Mass Effect 2 has a better personality system, giving the player much more simulated control over their protagonist, even in an extremely linear space; Fallout: New Vegas provides a far more compelling destroyed open-world and a more diverse toolset with which to effect it. And ‘X-Men First Class’ (a truly fantastic film, by the way) shows that there are far subtler ways to show moral relativism with regard to super-powered beings in a comparatively realistic setting.

It is unfortunate that the reason I chose InFamous as one of the two free titles Sony made available in their Welcome Back promotion is that I sincerely wanted to get excited for the just-released sequel. Playing through InFamous did anything but, and unfortunately reviews seems to indicate most of these issues were not fixed for InFamous 2. Three Sly games gave me faith that Sucker Punch can deliver an entertaining title and I truly want to seem them do more with their next release than what InFamous delivers.

Aaron

Proof that Aaron is now one of us!

There’s been a significant development since our last Backlog.

I’m an iPhone owner.

My years of protesting aside, it’s only taken a few weeks of acclimation to my newly connected lifestyle to make me appreciate the special nook a smartphone has in day-to-day wanderings. I’ve got my apps set up, I’ve purchased a few games (Sword & Sworcery EP, Infinity Blade, Puzzle Agent, Army of Darkness Defense, Words With Friends and Gears) and I spent a large portion of my recent vacation to Bend, Oregon tweeting, posting to Instagram and following up on my Facebook news feed. I don’t think the folks at Verizon realized they were creating a monster.

But I haven’t always embraced the best parts of Web 2.0, 3G and app-fever. The people closest to me can attest to my notoriously bad social habits when it comes to phone calls, text messages and emails. Now with an iPhone always within reach, I have no excuse. And I’m preserving the lifespan of my ancient desktop by doing the majority of my Internets on the ol’ Jesus Phone (named so for its magical powers, which are beyond those of normal phones). Shit, I’m even digesting more media content than before thanks to apps like Pulse news — in many ways I’m becoming a better, smarter and more handsome human. Who doesn’t look cool holding an iPhone?

Most of you have suffered and recovered from this type of new-phone fever by now, but this is a pretty big development for me. I apologize for any curmudgeon-y attitude I may have demonstrated in the past when discussing the iPhone. Everyone but me was right, for once.

Now regarding “traditional” videogames, I have little to say. I’ve begun an attempt to 100% L.A. Noire, and I even purchased the Rockstar Pass because I just can’t get enough of Phelps and Co. And last week I polished off The Witcher 2, which should be remembered as the most-improved sequel in the last 10 years.

Honestly? I’m not jazzed about much else right now. I can definitely feel my mind focusing its entertainment needs on my iPhone and its seemingly endless vault of treasures. Couple that distraction with a general lack of any major games releasing in the next month that I care about (InFamous 2 is…”a’ight,” I suppose), and I’m starting to get restless. I need Deus Ex: Human Revolution to come out, and be amazing too, or I need to give up and buy a 3DS and Ocarina because I’m simply outta-my-fucking-gourd.

Doug

Doug is glad Ubisoft gave Ezio more ways to kick ass in combat in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood; it got a bit stale in AC2.

Since we last spoke, my most significant achievement has been winning my second World Drivers Championship in F1 2010. Okay, so in the grand scheme of things it isn’t that important — packing and preparing to move to Japan in August is probably the most important thing I’m doing now. But, as somebody who loves F1 racing, loves playing racing games, and was hopeful last fall that the first F1 console game in five years would be as good as advertised, I’m happy to see it’s a little more Ferrari than Minardi, if you follow the F1 allusion. I’m now on my fourth season in the game and will probably keep with it until F1 2011, which should be out this fall, and if previews are to be believed, should be much improved.

On a related note, if Kairosoft ever releases Grand Prix Story for iPhone, my life will be over. It’s out on Android, and if the name sounds like Game Dev Story, that’s because it’s that game. But with auto racing. So, yeah.

However! In an unexpected turn, I’ve been playing games with single-player storylines and third-person cameras! No, I promise, I’ve broken the fever of sports games for the time in order to finish a couple of last year’s best before I bid my Xbox 360 adieu. First up is Bayonetta, which I never put enough time into when I borrowed it from Nick last year but have grown to really appreciate and love since buying it on Xbox Live.

It’s a very different game from what I’ve grown accustomed to with modern action games, where you unlock all the moves and weapons you need through the course of play. Sure, this also happens in Bayonetta, but a lot of the good stuff is stocked in the Gates of Hell store. Combine that with no suggestion as to which upgrades to pursue and ignore, and you’ve got the recipe for a very old-school, trial-and-error experience. Adding to that is the control and gameplay, which can be overbearing and difficult, but rarely in a way the player can’t understand or learn from.

As an action game, though, it’s a very different animal from the other title I’ve just picked up, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. After such a rocky start with the first Assassin’s Creed, the gameplay and storytelling have taken massive steps in the Assassin’s Creed II games. I only got through AC2 earlier this year (which is my fault) and when I saw that Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood was available for $40 on Xbox Live, I knew I had to have that, too.

I was a little disappointed with the very beginning of the game. It’s a necessary contrivance, and actually pulled off halfway decently, but damn am I tired of games Metroid-ing you right at the beginning. I know it’s necessary in order to have a “difficulty ramp” and to re-acquire goods so that the player isn’t overpowered at the beginning of the game, but I think it would be a neat change of pace for a developer to roll with once. Maybe Ezio won’t lose all his mojo at the beginning of Revelations this year?

To focus so much on other aspects should tell you two things: First, that I’m not terribly far into the game. Give me a week or so and Rome will bend to my will. Secondly, that the game is still so good. I was a little worried about stepping back into the fray and picking the controls and systems back up, but damn, Ubisoft has refined them in such a way as to make the game feel incredibly natural. Climbing buildings for viewpoints is such a cool experience, and I think one of the defying gameplay experiences in this generation.

Iron Man 2 was one of the top-grossing movies of the 2010 summer blockbuster season. If it's good for movies, why can't it work for games?

It’s just past Memorial Day weekend in the United States, the traditional harbinger of summertime. In recent years, it’s also brought in the beginning of the summer movie season, where studios push their big-budget releases and all sorts of associated goods and tie-ins. You can’t swing a major tent-pole movie without hitting Movie:  The Action Figure, Movie: The Fast-Food Deal, Movie: The Sports Advertising Tie-In, and, yes, Movie: The Video Game. It’s marketing gone mad, sure, but it creates a ton of money for all involved.

However, it begs the question: where’s the summer blockbuster period for gaming? If it’s proved such a big hit with movie crowds, why not with gamers?

It’s an interesting thought.

Game companies have spread releases out more evenly throughout the calendar in recent years. Just last year, Mass Effect 2 and Red Dead Redemption proved that a hit can come at any time of the year, and they’re hardly the only examples. Microsoft has run a Summer of Arcade program publicizing Xbox Live Arcade for the last few years. And in the United States, there have regularly been a pair of major summertime releases in the form of EA Sports’ two football games, NCAA Football and Madden NFL, which come out in July and August, respectively.

There may not be an actual NFL season this fall, but EA Sports' annual Madden NFL series always sells well in August.

But let’s turn the question on its head. Gaming has its own blockbuster period: the holiday season. Much how film producers try to crowd big summertime weekends with blockbuster flicks, so do game companies center around the “Black Friday” day-after-Thanksgiving shop-a-palooza. And just as some companies have bent the definition of “summer blockbuster” to include movies released in mid April (Iron Man 2 itself, our cover image, was released in early May 2010), so does the holiday gaming crunch now spread from mid-September until the so-called “Second Christmas” in early January.

If gaming does have its own blockbuster period, why does it need the summertime? The easiest arguments involve free time: beyond kids, teens and college-aged adults being out of school, it’s also a time when adults traditionally take more time off (presumably to spend time with their children). God abhors a vacuum, as the turn of phrase goes, so naturally gaming should play a part. And as the games industry grows year on year that should be reflected by more of the marquee games coming out during the summertime. Right?

Well, again, some are. Plus, the way the industry’s hype-cycle works, there needs to be some buffer time between gaming’s biggest annual show (E3) and when those games are advertised and go on sale (the fall and early winter). Unlike when, say, Apple announces something new and it hits stores a week later, gaming doesn’t work that way; game companies don’t control the entire retail channel, for one (Apple does with its stores for the hardware and its App Stores for software), and the last time somebody tried to launch a surprise like that right at E3 it became the Sega Saturn. So, in many ways, the status quo works.

BioShock was definitely a great game, but would it have captured gamers' attention as well had it launched in the late-fall games blitz?

That doesn’t mean the present model is perfect, though. Many games would be well-served to delay their release until the following spring or to push up a release to the summer to avoid getting lost in the holiday trample. Games like GTA IV, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Gran Turismo, BioShock and more have proved you can be successful avoiding the holiday period. But the mindset of gaming — that it’s an industry equitable to toys and board games, only able to be pushed and sold as presents for the month of December — needs to change, and soon. Moving away from the “TOO MANY GAMES” holiday crush gives gamers a choice, and helps otherwise ordinary games some breathing room away from the AAA games that dominate. Would BioShock have gotten as much press if it had been released the same week as Call of Duty and Halo? Maybe; it’s a great game. But it damn well dominated August, when it had none of the competition. Gamers get time to play these games, and the games get more of the spotlight.

Gaming might not need its own summer blockbuster period, but it can certainly stand for more summer releases.

Doug has hit the track again, Tyler has wound through the Mass Effect 2 DLC, and Nick has finally settled down in the great state of Texas and has time to play lots of games again. So without further ado, on to the Backlog!

Nick

This illustration is pulled straight out of Gray's Anatomy. Side note: This is also how I feel after watching Grey's Anatomy.

After what has seemed like a vast expanse of time without digital entertainment, I’m finally back in the saddle. I re-upped on my Xbox Live gold subscription and started digging into the Gears of War 3 multiplayer beta test, which I’d sincerely forgotten was even underway. I bought Bulletstorm based on its own merits, after all, and given how totally disappointing Gears of War 2 was both online and off I really wasn’t all that interested in being chainsawed repeatedly by stoned twentysomethings online yet again. But I’m a man who writes about the video games, and I don’t want to shirk my responsibility. So after a quick patch download, I was running around as Marcus Fenix and digging the familiar thrill of roadie running from cement barricade to cement barricade.

Ten minutes later, I’d been slaughtered a half-dozen times and had failed to kill even a single opponent. I’m officially done with Gears of War 3′s multiplayer.

I’m not surprised, though; Gears’ multiplayer offerings have never done it for me. As a co-op shooter, though, the original Gears is largely unsurpassed even today, and I’ve got high hopes for Epic’s conclusion to the trilogy on that front.

In other news, I finally got to partake in an honest-to-goodness Rock Band night last night — the first since I moved to Austin. I can’t begin to describe how awesome an experience Rock Band is when you’ve got a few friends, a good speaker setup and plenty of beer. Absolutely unparalleled multiplayer fun. I just hope Harmonix manages to keep innovating for its next release; clearly the now-traditional formula isn’t a commercial magic bullet anymore, and frankly, I feel like Rock Band has pretty much hit its apex. Unless the next entry goes full-bore into teaching real instruments and allowing for recording, mixing and distribution of music, I’m not sure there’s a whole lot of room left for development within the traditional Rock Band formula.

I’ve been flying, gliding and jet-packing my way through Pilotwings Resort‘s brief but altogether enjoyable series of challenges. At forty bucks, it’s sure not the best value out there, but it excels as a pick-up-and-play experience. I’m finding that the real meat of the game is in its free-roaming exploration mode, which has plenty of objects to track down and secrets to discover. If nothing else, it’s a very relaxing way to unwind after a long day, and the 3D effect really makes for an engrossing experience. It gives me hope for the long-term potential of the 3DS platform.

Now that PSN is back up, I’m hoping to finally purchase a few great downloadable games that I’d been holding out on, like the surprisingly excellent Might & Magic Clash of Heroes. But even without a functioning online infrastructure, I’ve still managed to have a great time playing through God of War III and engaging in a few rounds of the thoroughly brutal and incredibly satisfying Mortal Kombat.

Let’s start with God of War III. I’m nearing the end of the game, or at least I’m pretty sure I’m close to the end, because there really aren’t that many gods left to kill. I’m racking my brain and seeking out the most obscure reaches of Greek mythology, and nope — Kratos has pretty much concluded his deicidal rampage. I’m having a whole lot more fun with that game than I ever imagined possible, especially considering how lukewarm I always was on the combat in the first two. But God of War III is so smartly designed and finely tuned that I have to admit that it’s truly an excellent game. (Somewhere in Japan, Tyler just fist-pumped – Ed.) I’m glad to see such an important series go out on a high note.

As for Mortal Kombat, let’s just say that I never liked the games all that much in the first place. Sure, it was a huge deal when it first came out — everyone remembers the nudality and playable Goro rumors — but I never thought it had the polish or the replayability that made Street Fighter II so great. The violence was kinda cool, I guess, but really, Mortal Kombat was and always has been kind of a one-trick pony.

But the new Mortal Kombat? It’s actually pretty fucking fantastic.

I haven’t dug into the single-player story mode, which I hear is shockingly robust, but the pure one-on-one and tag-team versus combat is seriously top-notch stuff. Characters feel distinct and balanced, and the visuals and sound work are unparalleled in any fighting game to date. I can’t wait to pick up my own copy in the near future.

But before that happens, I’ve got a date with L.A. Noire. And of course, I’d be making a terrible mistake if I didn’t remind everyone that Chrono Trigger is coming out for the Wii’s Virtual Console today. If you’ve never played it — and really, why haven’t you? — it truly is the best 16-bit roleplaying game, and it’s perhaps my absolute favorite game ever. Trust me: If you have a Wii and eight dollars, you can’t go wrong with Chrono Trigger.

Tyler

Tyler's advice for Mass Effect 3 DLC: Attractive Aliens = Good; Autistic Cyborgs = Bad.

I’ve had a relatively busy week here and was left with very little free time. The few moments I managed to squeak in to my hectic schedule were spent putting the finishing touches on my PS3 play-through of one of this generations finest gaming experiences, Mass Effect 2. I also apologize for being late to the party, I’m usually a very punctual person, but I have finally completed the Overlord and Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC packs.

The former left me rather unsatisfied. It reminded me of a more polished version of the Bring Down the Sky DLC for the first Mass Effect. I say more polished because at least with Overlord, there is some variety in the environments, but both epitomize the kind of DLC that doesn’t work in this series. They are side missions with little to no bearing on the overall stories or characters and leave little lasting impact on the narrative the player is weaving with their Commander Shepard. Also, both are chock full of vehicular combat and traversal…a style of gameplay Bioware has yet to really grasp. It’s not to say the Hammerhead hover-tank isn’t an improvement on the Mako from ME1, but it’s still not something I have any desire to spend any amount of time with.

On the other hand, Lair of the Shadow Broker might be the finest piece of new content BioWare has ever constructed for one of their games. The gameplay mirrors the multitude of recruitment and loyalty missions in the standard campaign — combat from cover, use powers, shoot bad guys — however, the story has Shepard working directly with a Liara T’soni, a teammate and potential ex-love interest from the first game. I wish we had more missions directly tying events in Mass Effect 2 to it’s predecessor because the franchise excels when there is that sense of narrative cohesion. Lair of the Shadow Broker is rewarding, not only in the context of Mass Effect 1 and 2, but because it has implications that will play a pivotal role in the final act, now due early next year.

Video games, for better or for worse, are more than something myself and the other editors and contributors of Sasquatch do in our free time. Even when we’re not playing games, we’re thinking about them, we’re reading about them and of course, writing about them. The past week-plus has been especially newsworthy, with cover stories from several different publications focused on Mass Effect 3. Ordinarily, news of a delay of the release of a highly anticipated title would perturb me, but I could not be happier about the game’s move to early 2012. There are plenty of games I’m looking forward in 2011 and besides, a Q1 release worked out rather well for Mass Effect 2. Plus, I selfishly  want BioWare to spend as much time as is economically feasible to make the end of the trilogy the satisfying conclusion it needs to be.

Doug

Doug's still digging F1 2010, despite its most famous race leaving him absolutely befuddled.

I have admit something to you guys: I feel like I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel here. I’m still on the mother of all new-game fasts (save sipping from the iOS games trough) but L.A. Noire is about to test my patience in a major way. I’ve been a sucker for Rockstar’s games on the current gen, and the thought that it leans more toward “adventure” instead of “go fuck around in a city” is peeeeeeeeerfectly fine with me. Being a noir detective and combining GTA with Phoenix Wright sounds like exactly what I want from a game right now.

But that’s a purchase away. What I’ve been digging into, though, is returning to Formula 1 2010. One of my friends started digging in to the game and it gave me the bug to head back out to the track and work on securing my second championship. I’d been dreading heading back into the single-player career, though, because it meant facing my F1 arch-nemesis: the streets of Monte Carlo. If you’ve never seen a lap at Monaco, go take a peek at a lap from last year — a former F1 driver described racing on those narrow, twisting streets as trying to ride a bicycle in a living room.

Now I’m hardly trying to run from a challenge (I do have the difficulty cranked up pretty high) and I do think I’m pretty good at this game and racers in general (I can and will beat the AI most of the time), but damned if I just can’t get up to speed at Monaco. It’s a classic downward spiral: the narrow confines mean there’s little room for error to learn the track, so I get frustrated and can’t get faster. And because I get frustrated, I don’t even want to bother.

I contend that, in games, there’s a difference between challenge and frustration. Just at this point, Monaco tips it from one to the other. Annoying.

Also I just remembered that, even though I don’t have a ton new to play still at the moment, I still have a lot left to do in Dragon Quest IX. I think that’s going to keep me busy for a while. And while Nick is digging through God of War III, I think I might have to get back into the original. Decisions, decisions.

But one question that has never faced gamers before will be an issue when looking at upgrading from one console to the next this go-around: What is going to happen to all the content I have on my current system?

This is the digital era. I have 85 gb of content stored to my Xbox 360′s hard drive and, while much of that is game installs, the rest is made up of the “arcade” games available on Xbox Live Arcade and PSN, downloadable add-on content for games, and digital downloads of full retail games. Some of the downloaded games also have their own DLC, which strikes me as a real through-the-looking-glass sort of moment.

Full copies of games you'd otherwise purchase at retail are available both on Xbox Live and PlayStation Network. What happens with the next generation of systems, though?

These are games I’ve bought and, in the case of the digital versions of games also sold at retail, are indistinguishable from hard copies. Yet I’m worried. I’m worried that these games could be completely worthless or, at the least, feature-handicapped in the future should Microsoft (or Sony for PSN) decide to flip a switch and shut off some servers. In the case of the Xbox 360, though the detachable hard drive means it’s possible to take your content on the go, you can only make use of DLC and full versions of games if they’re authenticated by Xbox Live; if I want to take my hard drive to a friend’s and make use of my Rock Band library, their 360 must be plugged in.

The authentication and access to games isn’t just a worry in cases like that, but for more practical reasons as well. The 360 has proven itself to be a bit fragile; my current 360 is my fifth, and I’m hardly an edge case. If you suffer a Red Ring of Death or any other kind of 360-killing malady, you have to migrate your account from the old console to the new one’s serial number. While it’s an annoyance during the 360′s life span, what happens in another five years? If your old NES or Genesis or even PlayStation 2 died, you just buy a new one; the games were kept within a physical medium and plug right in without a problem. But what happens in five or 10 years when my 360 inevitably dies again and I have to track down a replacement? Will Xbox Live still allow me to do what it does now in 2011?

While content on the current console is a question, what about taking content on to the next generation? Though few games had DLC on the original Xbox, you could previously download it on the 360; now, though, since the original Xbox’s Xbox Live servers have gone offline, it’s left you high and dry. While I doubt people will want to buy new content, even for Xbox 360 games in the far-flung future, what about retrieving what you’ve already purchased? Plus, as established, content delivery digitally is a much bigger deal this generation; that will be important to keep in mind, but it’s still Microsoft or Sony’s ball to take and go home with.

I’ll admit it’s all speculation and worry at this point, but admit it: a best-case scenario where everything still works, like in PC gaming, is probably a pipe dream. This is the point where I shake my fists at PC gamers sitting up in the cloud on Steam at this moment. But this is an issue that will be wider than gaming within the next 10 years; seeing the gaming industry’s reaction is going to be fascinating and, potentially, vital to digital rights beyond our favorite little corner of the entertainment world.

The Backlog is, of course, for the games we’ve been playing as of late and, ideally, games that are brand new. The cutting edge!

That’s how it turns into our Backlog being full of brand-new bangers like…um…Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Quest IX? Riiiiiiiiiight. Well. At least we’ve got things to say about these games, plus honest-to-god newer wares, too.

Anyway. To the Backlog!

Nick

Nick thinks the co-op play in Portal 2 is as revolutionary as the first game was. Science!

When you finish Portal 2, you unlock an achievement whose description is simply “That just happened.” Truer words have never been written.

The single-player portion of Portal 2 was satisfying, cleverly told and just the right length. Smartly broken up into three acts, it logically extends the formula of the first game with some clever but not altogether earth-shattering additions.

Cooperative play is where things get downright revolutionary. Introducing two players and four portals is as mind-bending as the original Portal experience was, and the way GLaDOS taunts you and your partner’s friendship is wonderfully evil. I have yet to finish it, but it’s not for lack of wanting to. I’m just afraid of spoiling such a rare and inspired experience by rushing through it.

I’m on a short trip out to California this weekend so I won’t be playing many games, but I am planning on wrapping up both Puzzle Agent and Sword and Sworcery while airborne. To look back at the iPhone just three years ago and realize just how far it’s come in terms of hardware capability and ingenuity of software design — hell, there wasn’t even an App Store three years ago! — puts in perspective just how incredible a market mobile gaming has become.

Tyler

Fortunately, the PS3 version of Mass Effect 2 comes with the DLC, so Tyler wasn't left out in the cold with PSN down.

I’ve been playing video games for nearly twenty years now. It’s been longer if you count the times when my babysitter brought over her Sega Master System or when I visited my cousins with their NES. I’ve owned more than a dozen consoles, and I don’t even want to consider how many titles I’ve played. I’ve long since understood that as far as entertainment goes, games are an imperfect medium. At a young age, especially when we were playing on cartridges, it was easy to think of games less as software and more as toys. However, these days when games are burned on to discs or downloaded and when your console’s value can be determined in gigabytes of storage and is expected to connect to the internet, the lines between a computer and a game console have blurred. And of course, where you have software, you’re bound to have bugs, glitches and other such impediments.

In the previous Backlog I mentioned years ago I built my own PC and played many a PC game. Two of my favorites were the much-revered Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic games by BioWare and Obsidian Entertainment. I loved those games, and they were likely the first western-style role-playing games I truly adored. But oh, did I ever have problems with them. In addition to difficulties that came with my Frankenstein machine, both titles were just generally broken games that, while fun, had problems. These ranged from the minor (such as textures failing to appear and party members clipping through environments) to the major (the entire game crashing, corrupted save files). When I think back on those games, though, it’s not frustration but nostalgia.

This week’s PSN-is-down coping mechanism is another BioWare game, the PS3 version of Mass Effect 2. It’s still my favorite game of 2010, repackaged with a little extra polish and most of the DLC I missed out on. The port is not without its downsides, however. The motion comic Mass Effect: Genesis that comes with the PSN variant of the Cerberus Network is a less-than-adequate substitute for actually playing the first Mass Effect and transferring your save. The decisions are extremely limited, but the larger issue is that the few that existed were borked in my play-through. The way NPCs referenced my actions in the previous act in the series made it sound like an episode of TV’s Fringe with my Shepard moving between two parallel universes with completely different choices. Sometimes Kaiden would be alive, sometimes Ashley; maybe I saved the council, maybe I didn’t. It was frustrating in a game I love so greatly for the ability to craft your own personal continuity.

The worst part was that I wasn’t fully aware how serious the issue was until roughly twelve hours into the game. Luckily, despite PSN being down, game updates can still be issued if your PS3 has a network connection; the recent patch ended the parallel universes and brought my Shepard back to normalcy in a right-thinking universe where Kaiden is very much dead.

With the complexity of games, size of development teams and expectations of consumers rising each year, the issue of bugs or glitches in games is likely only going to get worse. And I hate to be the cynic, but I think it may be poor judgment to assume that PSN’s recent woes will be the last time one of the major online infrastructures goes down. Might this be the longest and most severe? Possibly, lord knows I hope so, but it would be foolish to say this is the end of outages for these services. The number of people playing games online globally is only going to rise, as will the bandwidth demands on games and networks, and of course there will always be hackers. I wouldn’t ask anyone to forgive Sony but this is, has been and always will be a medium with flaws.

And I love it, warts and all.

Doug

Doug's gone back to the world of Dragon Quest IX, and wonders why he ever left.

A funny thing happened to me this week: I ran my DS Lite’s battery almost all the way down. At the very least, I ran it down to the point where the light went from green to red and I had to madly scramble and remember where the charger wound up. For one reason or another, I’ve always liked the idea of handheld gaming much more than the actual execution; the time I used my DS the most was in college, where it pulled double-duty as a Japanese-English dictionary. When you have a couple of consoles sitting there hooked up to the TV, why bother with the little Nintendo handheld? I guess it’s the same reason why we bother with any of these consoles — because it has some damn good games.

Without much left uncovered on the 360, I started playing a couple of my DS games again. I’ve been intending to get back into Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past for ages, and that’s definitely been fun. The gameplay is incredibly well-balanced and fun, but man, it’s kind of frustrating dying at the boss and having to go through the entire dungeon all over again. And since I’ve never gotten past that first dungeon, it feels like Groundhog Day in the worst possible way.

So I jumped back over to Dragon Quest IX, a game that…yes, kicked me back to town if I lost against the boss. Funny, that. I raved about this game last summer when I bought it and dumped some time into it, but after getting stuck and needing to level up, down it went and it became forgotten. I gave it another shot after seeing it still in my DS when I loaded up Zelda, and also listening to a recent 8-4 Play podcast where the discussion of Dragon Quest’s English translation re-sparked my interest.

Regardless, I’ve probably played it ten hours this week, gotten through three or four dungeons and bosses, and unraveled the story even moreso. I know the story isn’t exactly the point of DQIX, but I’m enjoying it, despite the awkwardly silent protagonist (and that giving him my name makes him stand out in the Celestrian world). However, the combat system has started to open up, even as I realize that it’s going to keep going forever. My characters are right around level 20, and that’s on their first jobs, too, so I’m going to be involved with this for a while.

Between the simple yet fun combat system, the charming Dragon Quest aesthetic and the surprisingly touching story, I’m hooked. I’m even thinking about taking the dive and picking up Dragon Quest VIII soon, though I think I should finish one before starting another up.

Aaron

Aaron's not sure if Metro 2033 is going to be any good, but it was on sale so he didn't think to hard about it.

All I had time for this week was a few minutes, maybe a brief hour, of Portal 2. And no: I still haven’t finished it.

But the following three days will be productive. I plan to spend those precious hours of not-work going through my ever-increasing tower of videogames. Be it Portal 2, Dragon Age II, Metro 2033, Crysis 2, DJ Hero 2 or the handful of smaller add-ons and expanded content I’ve purchased on a whim over the last month, I’m going to get shit done. I want my plate to be cleared and squeaky clean by the time L.A Noire launches in a little over a week.

Now if someone could stop making me purchase things on Steam, I’d be in your debt. Sometimes having a little extra spending money is a total drag. And man do I ever look American/white/middle class for writing that.

When I started the Retrospective Overdrive program, it was to break up tedium and see how things have changed. I wanted to go a good period of time without just doing what I’ve done the past few years — nothing but playing Pro Evo Soccer.

But, why? It’s just a game; hell, it’s just a sports game, and I’m sure many who read the site look down on us who kick and throw balls virtually as if we’re some sort of cro-magnon anomaly, cavemen who have miraculously found fire and Xbox Live. It keeps coming back to style, though, for me. Very few other games have allowed me to express creativity as well as Konami’s Pro Evo/Winning Eleven series and, in particular, Pro Evo Soccer 2010.

Freshman year of college I picked up a PlayStation 2 after seeing how white-hot Gran Turismo 4 looked. Of course, I’d also heard about how good Konami’s soccer games were and since that wasn’t great on the Xbox, I bought it. I wasn’t a newcomer to soccer games — strong addictions to FIFA 2004 and 2005 prove otherwise — but Winning Eleven 8 was a good replacement, if a bit ugly at times.

This is where the addiction started in earnest: Winning Eleven 9 ('05-'06 season).

Winning Eleven 9, though, damn near killed me. I had to put my PS2 in the closet during finals because of that nonsense. And a couple years later, well after its sell-by date, WE9 kept me company when my first Xbox 360 succumbed to the inevitable, shuffled off this mortal coil and was sent to Texas to get fixed. WE9 doesn’t have a time-played tracker but I’d guess I put at least 150 hours into that damn thing, probably more. A few up-and-down years later, PES 2010 promised to be good, and FIFA was underwhelming, so the decision was simple. I’ve since put over 200 hours into PES 2010 in 15 months.

This again begs the question, “Why?”

The ball is round, the game is simple, but provides a clean canvas for you to express yourself — so long as you don’t use your hands. What both WE9 and PES 2010 allowed me to do is play a sport with the sort of creativity you see in real life but that is not found in any other sports video games. Basketball and soccer are a bit unique in that creativity, freedom and expression are viable offensive strategies. Football is all about execution, baseball is just one gigantic fucking spreadsheet by now, and hockey is too chaotic and compact with few moments of zen. But basketball and soccer both can be moments of sports art — and its particularly effective in the latter. Soccer inspires effusiveness and poetry, as seen both in the brilliant blog The Run of Play and even in match recaps. American sports are often quantitative, discussing who did how much of what; soccer is entirely qualitative.

Until I became a PES junkie, what I didn’t realize is that FIFA lacked that spark. Playing FIFA is like playing foosball, there’s one good route to take and you can spin the handles around to good effect. PES is more like chess. Attacking and creating a goal in PES is a multiple-choice question with no wrong answer, so long as the ball goes in the back of the net; the “right” way may vary by situation, but it’s in your hands. Want to fire in crosses from the wing? Go ahead. Want to have intricate passing through the middle, leading to a shot? Have at it. Fast or slow, wide or narrow, the choice is yours. The biggest cliche in sports gaming is that “it looks like the real thing,” and while FIFA may look like it in still screenshots, it’s a different story in motion.

This is all the biggest factor behind why I keep playing the game: most every match feels like a new challenge, and when you’re playing other teams that are good, you really have to account for the opponent’s strengths and weaknesses to capitalize on your own. For me, it’s methodical yet utterly addictive. I think I have about 20 goal highlights from PES 2010 saved, and no two are alike. It’s the journey, not the destination, that matters.

Add in other sports game and video game tropes, like players waxing and waning in skills as the years go on and new stars rising, and the variables multiply. As those factors change, so too does your lineup; as somebody who follows soccer I can attest that, in this way, art imitates life. Now that I’ve put so much time into this series of games, I’m not worried about the physics or controls; I understand those implicitly. When I play sports with my friends, I learn what they like to do and where they like to go; in the same way that playing sports with friends presents certain stable factors, playing PES for me is comfort and freedom within a ruleset. I know how the ball bounces, but it’s up to me to capitalize.

In that way, PES is like playing sports in real life — rewarding practice, persistence, and presenting subtle twists with every game.