·:[ Smiling Politely ]:·
• • • • •

When I first acquired my 360, I quickly hopped onto the Xbox Live Arcade train and snapped up a handful of titles, all of which have treated me well more or less. I probably would have traded Puzzle Quest for something different as it wore out its welcome after some time, but the killer duo of Pac-man CE and Space Giraffe has had serious staying power, and Castlevania: SOTN is a classic I wouldn’t be playing if it weren’t for XBLA.

In recent months, however, I’d mostly been kind of curtailing the XBLA spending despite a few notable temptations like Rez HD and Ikaruga. This summer though, I think I’m going to have a hard time because there appears to be a ton of good stuff on the way.

Of course, the one game I absolutely must get as soon as it is released is Braid. I’ve mentioned my excitement for this game before, and it has been kind of a long time coming. I suspect this game, being a puzzle game on a non-portable system, is going to tank. This prediction would have been a no-brainer a year ago, but the surprising success of Portal makes it a bit less of a forgone conclusion these.

My charitable, polite explanation as to why I think Braid will fail where Portal succeeded is: “I dunno, just a gut feeling.” My less charitable, contrarian explanation relates to my beliefs that Portal is an overrated game. I think Portal succeeded despite being a puzzle game because: a) people were all buying Orange Box anyway, b) it was an easy puzzle game, c) it was funny, and d) it had a ton of good press because it fit into a very pleasant media narrative that was repeated on every gaming site in existance and probably took up 25% of every single review text out there. (The narrative being: college kids make cool school project, get bought by Valve, steal the Orange Box show.)

Now I’m not quite sure yet if Braid is going to be easy or not, but it doesn’t look to be particularly funny, seems to be trying to appeal to the games-as-art crowd rather than the “hurr hurr the cake is a lie!” internet meme crowd, and the developer basically alienates every game designer and journalist out there every time he gives a talk. If the game does turn out to be challenging at all, it’s gonna get a bunch of middling reviews with the executive summary “innovative, but too challenging for all but the most hardcore players, 7/10.”

Oh well, it’s coming out and I’ll be buying it so what do I care how well it does? It does have a pile of competition this summer though. Castle Crashers looks pretty fun, Geometry Wars 2 is tempting (less so since learning the co-op mode is local only), the Bionic Commando remake I didn’t initially care about has been gathering good buzz. Oh, and Galaga Legions I would normally not be overly excited about, only it’s by the Pac-man: CE team apparently, and as I mentioned above that game is definitely one of the best ones I’ve seen on the service. Oh oh, and Mega Man 9, of course.

And on top of all of that, soon the fruits of the XNA community are going to start appearing! Man, I should get in on that. Who wants to help me develop my sidescrolling Metroidvania roguelike?

This is rather old news now, but some time ago Valve finally got around to releasing the latest “episode” of Half-Life. Bundled along with it was Portal, the little game that could. The entire internet has fallen in love with it. You get a gun that can shoot teleportation portals onto arbitrary surfaces. You use this gun to find your way to the exit of various lab-rat style mazes. A friendly and helpful computer guides you on your journey. It is not hard to see why everyone loves this game. It is innovative, witty, sharply written, and it has a portal gun in it.

I was initially cautious about the title in the past, before pricing details were revealed. Much like its Orange Box peer, Team Fortress 2, I was interested, but not necessarily interested in dropping another $30 above and beyond HL2:E2 for it. Luckily, Orange Box turned out to be somewhat of a bargain, although not so much that I don’t regret the canceled “Black Box” that omitted the original HL2 and the first episode and would have been cheaper, presumably. In any case, once the TF2 beta for pre-orders was announced, I signed on for the whole package.

(Team Fortress 2, incidentally, was delightful, although I essentially stopped playing it by the time that it was actually officially released.)

Now, since I am working what could be described as “flextime”, I cracked into Portal basically the day it came out. I wanted to hold off on Episode 2, maddeningly extending my book/movie habits and replaying its predecessors first. TF2 I had already played plenty of. So that morning I woke up, showered, ate some cereal, made some coffee, and started Portal. I was done by my second coffee.

To be fair I should point out two things: First, I tend to nurse my coffee slowly. Second, in principle I am OK with the length of the game. What disappoints me is that the game does not really feel like it actually begins until 3/4 of the way through. There are something like 17 different “tests”, more or less, and the first dozen or so felt very much like tutorial levels to me.

Lesson one: Sometimes you need to move yourself or objects to an inaccessible location. But you have a portal gun, so that’s easy. Lesson two: Sometimes you need to reroute glowy energy balls into devices to open doors. But you have a portal gun, so that’s easy. Lesson three: Sometimes you need to make long or tall jumps to destinations you cannot merely portal to. But you have a portal gun, so that’s… well it can still be a bit tricky but you eventually get the hang of it.

In any case, the first dozen tests basically beat those same three lessons into your head over and over again. I had more fun “playing” with the portal gun than I did actually solving the puzzles. I also greatly enjoyed the presentation, the voice work and the writing. The actual “puzzles” however, were pretty straightforward.

The later levels mix things up a bit, and stop holding your hand, but the game never at any point stumped me. Well, OK, there was one point where I kind of got stuck for a few minutes, but that was because I didn’t notice a switch in a corner somewhere, and once I saw it everything worked out.

So to summarize my opinion, which frankly makes me feel like a cad when I compare it to the rest of the internet: Good writing. Fun toy. Boring puzzles for babies. OK, I’m kidding about the last one, mostly. A better way of phrasing it would be: Puzzles not puzzle-y enough. It’s kind of like when you hear people cry and moan about how, say, first person shooters are too easy now what with just quicksaving at every point and blah blah blah. I’m being that crybaby, only for puzzle games.

The puzzles in Portal feel like the fights in Half-Life 2: not intended to prevent you from getting to the end of the game. For some reason I am totally OK with this for HL:2, but for a purported “puzzle” game it left me a little unsatisfied.

There are advanced versions of the last few levels (and only the last few levels, I note, which ties in with my earlier point of the majority of the game feeling like a tutorial) and things like speed challenges and whatnot. I can’t really motivate myself to go through them. Maybe later.

Oh, and I burned that silly companion cube without a second thought. I mean, it’s only with you for like 10-15 minutes or something. Honestly, the internet is weird sometimes. It’s a really funny joke, and it makes sense for merchandising, but perfectly respectable websites sometimes start to sound like Gamefaqs weirdos talking about Aeris or something.