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Sunday, Nov 22, 2009
"Star Wars: Rebel Strike: Rogue Squadron III" (LucasArts)
Tom: I've stuck with LucasArts and its "Star Wars" games for a long time now.
Jeff: I pretty much topped off at the Atari version of "The Empire Strikes Back."
Tom: You missed a lot of good stuff. You missed "Shadows of the Empire" on Nintendo 64, which was incredible, and "Rogue Squadron I," which was even better. You missed "Obi-Wan" on the X-Box, and "Bounty Hunter" on PlayStation 2. And of course you missed GameCube's "Rogue Squadron II," which was a real mind-blower.
Jeff: And now we've got "Rogue Squadron III."
Tom: I have been dying to play this. The previous "Rogue Squadrons" were all one-player games and mostly involved dog-fighting, but "Rogue Squadron III" gives you the chance to disembark and walk around. You can even ride Tauntauns against Imperial Walkers, ride your tow cable up to their bellies, toss in a grenade, and drop clear, just like in the movie. It's also cooperative, which is fantastic.
Jeff: Great.
Tom: Well, I'm excited.
Jeff: Let's go cooperative. How about the Death Star trench run?
Tom: I cannot believe this. The Death Star trench run is from "Rogue Squadron II." The cooperative mode is just a fucking rehash of "Rogue Squadron II"! This is deception of Greedo-like proportions.
Jeff: Let's just play.
Tom: I am not playing the Death Star trench run when I've already destroyed the Death Star in LucasArts games about 10 times. "Rashomon" had fewer permutations than this.
Jeff: Let's race speeder bikes on Endor, then.
Tom: Fine. But this isn't that fun, either. It's all just ... avoiding trees.
Jeff: The trees look pretty great.
Tom: The game is beautiful. I'm not slighting its graphics. But I've seen it before.
Jeff: The hell with this. I'm going solo, as Wedge Antilles. My mission: "Raid at Bakura" in a B-wing.
Tom: Good luck.
Jeff: I'm impressed by these three-dimensional space battles. I like how the Tie-Fighters catch fire from within and spin wildly and explode. All of it's well done.
Tom: Next mission: "Relics of Geonosis." This is sort of interesting. You get to find the Jedi Starfighter Obi-Wan left on Geonosis in "Attack of the Clones" and fly it out of there.
Jeff: And yet you look disappointed.
Tom: I am disappointed. I feel like a Padawan learner who just lost his master. Look at the names of these missions: "Deception at Destrillion." Followed immediately by "Guns of Debrillion." What's next? "The Ransacking of Gajillion"?
Jeff: Well, it's more fun than watching "The Phantom Menace."
"The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King" (Electronic Arts)
Jeff: This game's prequel, for a brief time, changed my life. Or at least squandered a huge amount of it.
Tom: Playing as Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli, massacring huge numbers of Orcs and Uruk-Hai, using a staggering assortment of special "killing moves" with names like "Isildur's Wrath" ... it was great fun.
Jeff: The really amazing thing was how seamlessly E.A. blended the game with footage from the first two movies. It looked great, and the levels were just open-ended enough to create the illusion of being in the movie.
Tom: And now, in this game, you can be Frodo, Sam and Gandalf as well. It's also cooperative. I'm taking Legolas.
Jeff: An interesting personality test, isn't it? To see who picks who.
Tom: You just picked Aragorn.
Jeff: You're damn right I did.
Tom: Apparently E.A. could only get Ian McKellen and Elijah Wood and Sean Astin to do voice-over for this one, whereas they had everyone for the first game. That was a huge deal, suspension-of-disbelief-wise.
Jeff: Though not even John Rhys-Davies could have pulled off lines like, "This magic mountain holds many surprises."
Tom: So the writing this time out isn't as nuanced. Look at this fighting! Listen to those swords! When you hit an Orc it sounds like a baseball bat whapping a side of beef.
Jeff: Great fighting. Incredible fighting. The moves have gotten even better. "Orc Hewer." "The Final Judgment." "Balrog's Gambit." I just cut that Orc's throat -- I think. I'm having a hard time, in the fray, figuring out who I am.
Tom: You're the guy I'm saving from Orcs by filling them with arrows. I also note that your time-tested inability to follow a goddamned map remains as indestructible as Mithril.
Jeff: I've told you before, your TV's too small.
Tom: It's not small. That's a ladder. You climb up it.
Jeff: We're now fighting Tolkien's oliphaunts on the Pelennor Fields.
Tom: This is spectacular. I may have an orgasm. I'm not kidding.
Jeff: Notice how much smoother the animation is. All I can think about is the poor guy with Ping-Pong balls all over his body running around a studio while they digitally mapped out his movements.
Tom: Which would explain my constant need to save you from Nazgul. Too bad you can't pick Merry and Pippin. You'd be perfect as them.
Jeff: I'm abandoning you at the Black Gate.
"True Crime: Streets of L.A." (Activision)
Tom: This is yet another of the rapidly multiplying "Grand Theft Auto" clones in which one cruises around a lavishly mapped city stealing cars and doing little missions, and for which name actors provide the voices. In "True Crime's" case, Christopher Walken and Gary Oldman. Now, I had a basic moral problem with "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City" -- until, that is, I finally played it. I realized how much goofy joy went into the game. The 1980s soundtrack was wonderful. It was hard to take drive-by shootings and assassinating cops too seriously when you're doing it to a Flock of Seagulls song.
Jeff: "True Crime" looks better than "Vice City," and the map of Los Angeles is huge and faithfully rendered. I just drove past my friend Annie's house in West Hollywood!
Tom: The plot follows one Nick Kang, lately of the LAPD's Elite Operation Division, now on indefinite suspension "due to repeated incidents of excessive force."
Jeff: What I like about "True Crime" is the expansiveness of the story line. Your actions drive the story. If you behave like a "bad" cop and beat up innocent people and shoot criminals rather than arrest them, the story changes. If you manage to do your missions without hurting innocent people, the story changes again. This "good cop"-"bad cop" status is monitored by a clever yin-yang meter.
Tom: You're a lot more into this game than I am.
Jeff: I am, but I have one big problem: You can't change the radio stations, like you could in "GTA," and it doesn't have any of the well-written and often really funny radio bits. But the gameplay is fantastic, and the cinematic cut-scenes look much better than those of most of these games. I also like how the action alternates between a fairly intense one-on-one fighting mode -- far better than "GTA's" -- and the more basic drive-around-solving-crimes mode. Los Angeles seems suspiciously light on traffic, however.
Tom: It still takes forever to drive anywhere. There are almost too many places to visit. The sheer number of missions is extraordinary.
Jeff: The little touches are nice. You can frisk random civilians looking for drugs, and an inordinate number of putatively law-abiding Los Angelenos seem to be packing heat. Frisk the wrong person, and you're in a gun battle. And when you gun down a criminal, "Crime Fully Resolved" appears on the screen. I seem to be having a difficult time maintaining my "good cop" status, which raises the question: Has Activision really addressed the basic moral problem of "GTA" by allowing you to be a crooked cop instead of an honest thug?
Tom: Where's Peter Singer when you need him?
