Retro City Rampage Review

Game: Retro City Rampage
System: PS Vita (also available on PS3, Windows, XBLA, and WiiWare)
Genre: Action-adventure
Developer: Vblank Entertainment
Release date: October 9, 2012


Pros: Great sense of humor, diverse missions, packed with content
Cons: Some spikes in difficulty


There has never been a greater video game parody than Retro City Rampage. The game is filled -- overflowing even -- with pop culture gags, parodies of classic video games, and subtle and not-so-subtle jabs at the video game industry. It's smart, it's satirical, and it's very, very funny. Retro City Rampage is a contender for funniest game of all time. Moreover, the game itself is designed and executed masterfully. Despite its small size, Retro City is a true open world, filled with all the nooks and crannies players have come to expect from sandbox games.

Retro City Rampage takes place in Theftropolis, where "Player" is a hired thug working for a crime syndicate. During a heist-gone-wrong, Player is thrown forward in time where he must work to repair his time machine and stop the ambitions of an evil corporation. Part of the fun of Retro City is experiencing all the sight gags, inside-jokes, cultural references, and plot twists for oneself -- so I'll close the summary here.

Police will respond to illegal actions.

Although Retro City takes aim at all manner of classic video games, it's mostly a parody of Grand Theft Auto. Player roams around a giant city taking on main story and side missions. Along the way, he can hijack cars, attract the attention of police by causing destruction, or simply wander around the city streets looking for trouble. Theftropolis isn't nearly as sprawling as Liberty City or Vice City, but it's packed with people, buildings, secrets, and sight gags. Along with the main campaign mode, players can access "Free Roaming Mode," which allows them to explore the city at their own pace and cause as much devastation as possible.

In fitting with its homage to 8-bit video games, Retro City Rampage features graphics that seem to be pulled directly from an NES. Graphics snobs might protest, but the graphics are full of charm and surprising detail. The top-down perspective might also frustrate players used to a less restrictive point-of-view, but again it fits with the source material. Retro City is packaged as a retro experience, after all, even if its gameplay is much more modern than its name and appearance suggest.

Tanks for nothing.

Retro City borrows something else from its NES forebears: a high level of difficulty. It's no secret that video games have become much easier over the past few generations, moving past the steep difficulty curves that defined the first three generations of video games. But Retro City embraces the old-school mentality of "easy to learn, impossible to master." The missions in the game are difficult, but not unfairly difficult. Only once or twice did a mission seem excessively grueling.

Overall, Retro City is a masterful game, all the more impressive because it's almost entirely the work of a single man: Brian Provinciano. The jokes are smart and funny, the missions embrace gameplay elements from many different genres and eras, and throughout the game there is a thrilling sense of discovery and adventure. It's a brilliant synthesis of old-school sensibilities and new-school technologies. It's proof that game design and creativity will always trump glossy graphics and orchestral soundtracks. It's the best game of 2012.

Top 10 Co-op Games

I'm a single-player first, co-op second, competitive multiplayer third kind of guy. I've always found deep, engaging single-player games much more immersive and much more satisfying than games that revolve around co-operation with or competition against other players. But of course there are exceptions to that rule. Some of my most memorable video game experiences involve playing cooperatively with my friends and family: beating the final boss in New Super Mario Bros. Wii with my sister; escaping from a sinking barge with my buddy Rob in Army of Two; and many others.

There are hundreds of cooperative video games out there, from all genres and on all platforms, but I've managed to cut the long list down to only ten. These ten represent the most balanced, most rewarding, and most enjoyable co-op experiences out there. Please enjoy.

10. Halo 3: ODST

Several players fight off Covenant forces in "Firefight."

One word: Firefight. Yes, this co-op mode was stolen shamelessly from "Horde Mode" in Gears of War 2, but it's still excellent and addictive. Firefight is a timed survival game where as many as four marines battle wave after wave of increasingly fearsome enemy fighters. All players share a pool of seven lives, so they must work together to protect each other and take down powerful enemies. Individual and team scores are tracked during each game, which infuses a competitive spirit into this co-op mode.

9. Resident Evil 5

Sheva stands in the foreground, Chris in the background.

It might not be the best Resident Evil game, but Resident Evil 5 shines as a cooperative experience. Two players (either online or in local splitscreen) control agents Chris Redfield and Sheva Alomar as they work together to solve a zombie outbreak in a fictional region of Africa. Cooperative play is integrated smoothly into the narrative and pacing of the game: co-op actions like assisted jumps are sprinkled organically into the game, and boss battles lend themselves especially well to cooperative strategies.

8. Rock Band 2

Turn it up to 11.

In Rock Band 2, up to four players can team up to form a rock band, each with his or her own role. The game supports four controller types: lead guitar, bass guitar, drums, and vocals. During cooperative play, all players earn points toward a common score, although some score multipliers and "overdrive" are tracked separately for each band member. When players score perfectly on certain sections of a song, they earn "overdrive," which can be deployed to pass difficult sections of the song or even rescue a band member who failed his section of the song. Nothing matches the intensity and hilarity of four people rocking out in a living room on plastic instruments, while a crowd of friends cheers them on.

7. Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles

Four players, each with his own Game Boy, fight off a boss monster.

Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles requires a serious time and financial investment, but the payoff is well worth it. In order to play the cooperative mode of Crystal Chronicles, each player must own and use a Game Boy Advance and a Game Boy Advance Cable. Using the cable, each player can connect the Gamecube to his Game Boy, which functions as a personal screen. In that way, players can manipulate their characters and manage inventories without disrupting the action on the main television screen. Combat in Crystal Chronicles requires good communication and timing from teammates. Players can unleash powerful magical attacks by "stacking" spells on top of one another and casting them simultaneously.

6. Left 4 Dead

The survivors pass through a hospital on the way to a safe room.

Leave it to Valve to create a game no one asked for but everyone secretly wanted: a four-player co-op post-apocalyptic zombie game. In Left 4 Dead, players control four survivors as they fight their way through hordes of undead monsters. Cooperation is a must. Players can become separated from the group easily and then overwhelmed. The game allows teammates to heal each other with med packs and rescue each other once incapacitated. There are several games modes, including a main campaign mode, a timed survival mode, and a competitive mode where players take turns playing as survivors and infected.

5. Contra III: The Alien Wars

Contra III could certainly be played (and enjoyed) alone, but for pure gaming bliss one needs a partner. Two players team up as Jimbo and Sully, two musclebound commandos defending the Earth from an alien invasion. Contra III is really just a run-and-gun game, very similar to its predecessors Contra and Super C, but it looks and plays much better. And, because of its insane level of difficulty, a teammate is welcome relief. One of the very best two-player co-op games ever made.

4. Gears of War 2

Players prepare for a new "wave" of enemies.

Double your pleasure with Gears of War 2, the sequel that allows players to experience two forms of gaming togetherness: the main campaign, for two players, and "Horde mode," an addictive co-op mode that allows up to five players to fight off wave after wave of Locust enemies. Horde mode is a true test of players' cooperative and strategic skills. Enemies become more powerful and fearsome with each wave, and resources must be managed and shared wisely. As in the main campaign, incapacitated players can be rescued by teammates.

3. NBA Hangtime

That's some vertical leap.

Of all the games on this list, NBA Hangtime is the most unlikely one. Destined forever to be overshadowed by its spiritual predecessor NBA Jam, Hangtime is actually a superior cooperative experience. This is due to a few innovations, including alley oops, "double dunks," and especially the game's "create player" feature, which allows players to create a custom basketball player with specific statistics on height, weight, and offensive and defensive skills. Players can upgrade their custom characters by earning attribute points by winning games.

2. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time

Leo gets his sea legs.

The Super Nintendo hosted many outstanding two-player co-op games, including the very best: Turtles in Time. Although the SNES version of Turtles in Time removed the four-player co-op option featured in arcades, it added several features that make up for the omission. A total of five new boss characters were added, along with a SNES-exclusive Technodrome level. The game also features a time trial mode and a two-player versus mode.

1. Left 4 Dead 2

Left 4 Dead features five new campaigns.

In every way better than its predecessor, Left 4 Dead 2 is the best co-op game ever made. With new guns, new characters, new enemies, and a longer campaign, Left 4 Dead provides a superior package of co-op mayhem. Players once again take control of a ragtag group of survivors making their way in the end-of-the-world today. But Left 4 Dead 2 provides much more diversity and even greater replay value. In addition to all the modes from the original game, Left 4 Dead 2 features a brand new "Scavenge" mode, a four versus four mode where survivors try to fill up a generator with gas tanks scattered around each map, while a team of infected tries to stop them.

Sacred Gold Review

Game: Sacred Gold
System: PC
Genre: RPG
Developer: Ascaron
Release date: August, 2005


Pros: Good sense of humor, dozens of hours of gameplay, good variety of quests
Cons: Buggy, repetitive at times, bad voice acting


Note: Sacred Gold included the original Sacred, the Sacred Plus expansion, and the Sacred Underworld expansion pack.

"Diablo for masochists." This is how gaming website 1UP described Sacred, an action role-playing game in the mold of Diablo and Baldur's Gate. It's a little sensational but it's more or less accurate. There is a lot to like in Sacred -- several playable characters, dozens of interesting quests, a huge world to explore -- but often it feels as if playing through the game is self-punishment. The side-quests, however interesting, are overlong; the main storyline is vague and uninteresting; and the enemies are repetitive, annoying, and abundant -- they respawn with alarming frequency.

There are eight playable character in Sacred Gold.

Sacred takes place in the fantasy world of Ancaria. There, an evil necromancer named Shaddar summons a powerful demon. The hero of the game -- there are six available characters in the original Sacred (eight in Sacred Gold) -- must travel the lands of Ancaria to defeat the demon and many other enemies: bandits, mercenaries, undead monsters, etc. The story is told mostly through dialogue and through cinematic scenes that appear at the beginning of the game and at the end of each chapter.

Although the story is somewhat convoluted and unsatisfying, the main story quests are engaging and challenging. Also, if players choose, they can postpone the main storyline to take on dozens of side-quests, which range from simple fetch quests to rescue missions. The diversity of quests is a bonus for players, but as the game moves forward the diversionary side-quests become tedious and burdensome; they become, in other words, a chore.

Point and click. Swing and strike.

Still, paradoxically, they are addictive. In fact, the entire game is addictive, despite its flaws, which include the aforementioned monotony along with glitchy gameplay and bad voice acting. It makes scoring Sacred a difficult endeavor. The game might be unfocused, unfinished, and anticlimactic, but it's still fun to play. There are many different ways to customize and improve one's character, the graphics are sharp and detailed (if sometimes muddy), and the control interface is simple and intuitive (the mouse does all the work). So, to make a long story short (too late): fans of the genre and masochists will enjoy the depth and challenge of the game; those with short attention spans and high blood pressure should look elsewhere.

Video Games and Feminism

Because my previous post was so negative, so accusatory, I decided to write about some of the positive things game makers are doing for women in video games, in a virtual space and in the real world.

For the longest time, video games were perceived as a domain for men -- pale, greasy men that subsisted on stale Cheetos in basements around the globe (just kidding). But it's no longer the case. A report from the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) in 2011 revealed some new numbers about female gamers, most notably their growing presence in the gaming community. As of 2011, 47 percent of the gaming audience is female, up from 42 percent in 2010 and 40 percent in 2009. Another interesting statistic: women age 18 and older represent a larger segment of the community than men 17 and younger. So much for prepubescent boys dominating the video game community.

Furthermore, women make up 48 percent of the people who actually buy video games, although this number could be skewed by the number of steely-eyed, slightly frazzled women waiting patiently for their hyperactive, grubby children to pick out a game in the local GameStop (as someone who dragged his own mother forty minutes away from home to pick out the latest N64 game in Toys "R" Us, I know the truth of this scenario). But what's this! The ESA report goes on to say that 59 percent of parents play video games with their kids for a variety of reasons. So if mothers are indeed buying all these games, they are also sharing the experience with their children (as someone who brought his own mother to the edge of a video game-induced seizure, I know the truth of this scenario).

Unfortunately this increase in women playing games has not translated to women making games; fewer than one in ten game writers and developers are women. But there are notable success stories. Two of them are Bonnie Ross, head of 343 Industries, and Kiki Wolfkill, executive producer of Halo 4. In October both denounced sexist behavior on Xbox Live. They said that developers have a responsibility to erase such offensive behavior by creating software that defies gender stereotypes. "As developers, we have a personal responsibility to think about how our games come across," Ross said. "With Halo 4, we were very deliberate in thinking about who should be female and who should be male in the game, and if we came off stereotypical, we went back to question what we were doing and why."

Kiki Wolfkill is the Executive Producer of Halo 4.

The philosophy behind the business decisions of executives like Ross and Wolfkill -- that women should be able to play games without fear of harassment and that game characters should be set free from stereotypical gender roles -- has not yet taken hold in the industry. There are still very few games that allow female protagonists, and even fewer games with an exclusively female protagonist. According to data gathered by Electronic Entertainment Design and Research (EEDAR) in 2012, only 24 (4%) of surveyed games featured an exclusively female protagonist, and 300 (45%) provided the option of selecting one.* EEDAR found that games that included an option to play as a female protagonist scored better, but games with a male-only protagonist sold better. However, games with exclusively female protagonists had only 50 percent of the marketing budget of female-optional games, and 40 percent of the marketing budget of games with exclusively male protagonists. So it's difficult to tell whether games that revolve around female protagonists are relatively unpopular because of their content or because publishers are reluctant to advertise them. Perhaps it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Many modern RPGs allow players to select gender.

But, as was the case with Ross and Wolfkill, there are success stories. One has only to look at Tomb Raider, which launched one week ago today. The latest game in the long-running franchise, Tomb Raider is a reboot that provides a back story for the series' heroine Lara Croft. Less than 48 hours after its release, the game had more than one million players. In the United Kingdom, Tomb Raider debuted at number one in the charts. There are other examples as well, although many fail to reach the level of popularity that games like Tomb Raider and Metroid enjoy. Last year, Gravity Rush and Resident Evil: Revelations arrived on Vita and 3DS, respectively. In Gravity Rush, players act as Kat, a brand new, endearing heroine; in Revelations, players control Jill Valentine, a Resident Evil favorite.

Lara appears as a young woman in the 2013 reboot.

So things are getting better for women in video games -- both in the industry and in the virtual space. But there is still much room for improvement, in corporate lobbies and in multiplayer lobbies. It's up to us, as consumers, to vote with our wallets and to take responsibility for our actions and words when playing with others.

I want to end this post with another quote from Bonnie Ross, the head of the studio that will be bringing Halo to the world for the foreseeable future.

"Most people look at a franchise like Halo, and automatically assume it's run by a guy. People are surprised to learn that it's a woman who's running the Halo 4 show. When Microsoft created 343 Industries to take over Halo, I was given first choice to run the studio because I had proven myself. My gender played no part in it."


* 669 games from the action, shooter, and RPG genres were selected.

Women, Video Games, and Violence

WARNING: this post contains graphic images and nudity.

"The story of women's struggle for equality belongs to no single feminist nor to any one organization but to the collective efforts of all who care about human rights."

--Gloria Steinem 

Today marks International Women's Day. It's a day to pay tribute to the accomplishments of women -- past, present, and future -- and to draw attention to oppression and inequality that continues to affect women in the work place, in the public sphere, and in domestic life.

Today is as good a day as any to comment on something that's been bothering me for some time: the objectification of women and the fetishization of violence against women in video games. Let me be clear right away: this is in no way a problem unique to video games. It's present in many forms of media, including television, movies, magazines, graphic novels, etc. But this is a blog dedicated to video games, and this is a problem that haunts the industry.

Anyone who reads this blog with any regularity knows how I feel about video games belonging to the world of art. As such, I maintain a hostile attitude toward censorship. Nevertheless, I think it's important to comment on the ways in which video games contribute to a culture of violence against women and the ways in which video games fetishize that violence.

This is an issue that began long before the controversy of Grand Theft Auto -- in which players can engage in sexual activity with a prostitute and afterwards kill her -- and has endured long after. The examples below are from the past two years.

The first and most revolting example of normalized and sexualized violence against women in video games is the E3 trailer for Hitman: Absolution.

The issue here is with promotional material not with game design. But if a company markets its game by combining gratuitous violence with sexualized imagery, then who is the intended audience and what is the intended effect? This trailer is insidious because it casually mixes images that are meant to sexually excite -- lingerie, high heels, makeup -- with violent and bloody images. Even the opening seconds are symbolic: Agent 47 puts on his clothes as the female assassins strip off their own. There was a good amount of controversy that hung around this trailer, but many video game journalists seemed reluctant to engage with it, to deconstruct it. Apart from a few brave writers, notably Keza Macdonald of IGN, most ignored the problem. Some were outright dismissive of the backlash.

That was last May. This January another controversy popped up: the special edition of Dead Island Riptide. Along with a steelbook case, downloadable content, and collectible artwork, the special edition came with a hand-painted figurine of a decapitated big-breasted woman in a bikini. Forget the tackiness of the figurine for a moment and linger on its imagery. Again, it combines something highly sexualized with something very violent.

In what living room in Hell would this be a conversation starter?

Some of you might argue that marketing is very different from the actual product, but in 2013 the line between the two is virtually invisible. Marketing embodies all the sensations one hopes to experience by buying a product, whether it's an SUV rolling adventurously over rugged terrain or a party of good-looking friends drinking beer together. In a way, marketing IS the product.

Turning from marketing to in-game experiences, we have Duke Nukem Forever, one of the most misogynistic video games ever made. The entire game is littered with weird, hateful jabs at women, but the biggest offender is "The Hive," a level in which Duke stumbles across the abducted women of Earth, naked and bound to alien organisms. The implication is that the women have been forcibly impregnated by alien invaders. It's a deeply troubling episode that's played entirely for laughs.

I think the image here speaks for itself.

I want to reiterate that I consider video games to be art, and would fight back passionately against any legislation meant to censor them. But that same freedom of speech that should be applied to games also allows me to voice my personal discomfort with imagery that fuses the super violent and the hyper sexualized. Such imagery contributes in a negative way to a culture of violence against women in media and in the real world.

Video games have every right to be offensive, disgusting, and morally ambiguous. But they should not aggravate a very real and pervasive attitude that sanitizes -- even glamorizes -- brutality against women and sexual violence against women.

It goes without saying that the great majority of video games, advertisements, and fans aren't misogynistic, aren't inclined toward violence, aren't confused about how to treat fellow human beings with dignity and respect. I do not mean to use these examples to indict the medium or to insult fans of Hitman, Dead Island, or Duke Nukem. I only mean to use this tiny platform to draw attention to a few disturbing episodes that should be discussed and not swept under the rug.

Chronovolt Review

Game: Chronovolt
System: PS Vita
Genre: Platform/Puzzle
Developer: Playerthree
Release date: December 31, 2012


Pros: Interesting and challenging puzzles
Cons: Intrusive story, buggy, too short, broken camera


It probably won't come as a surprise to you that cameras are kind of important in 3D platform games. Maneuvering across chasms, around pillars, and away from enemies is difficult to do in three dimensions without a camera that moves, either automatically or by player manipulation, to determine distance and depth. So it also probably won't come as a surprise that in a game where players are asked to move a giant ball across narrow, crumbling, and otherwise unstable platforms a broken camera will turn even the most steady player into a frothing and raving madman. Such is the folly of Chronovolt, an interesting puzzle-platform game damaged by an unneeded and intrusive story, buggy gameplay, and, worst of all, a laughably broken camera.

Jessica rolls through ancient Maya.

In Chronovolt, players assume to role of Jessica Chase, a young, fiery woman sent back in time to stop a mad scientist. She rolls around in a "Chronosphere" collecting "Chronovolts," which are time-manipulating tokens. The characters are all uninspired. Jessica's uncle, the discoverer of Chronovolts, is the traditional absent-minded professor, forgetful but fatherly. The antagonist seems to channel Snidley Whiplash at every turn -- one is surprised he never traveled to the golden age of American railroads in an attempt to tie Jessica to the tracks. In the end, the story is unnecessary and obtrusive. It pushes itself on the game instead of evolving organically from it.

In terms of gameplay, Chronovolt plays much like Marble Madness of Super Monkey Ball. Players guide Jessica, inside her chrome time-traveling ball, through ancient civilizations, around obstacles, over bottomless pits, and against the minions of her target. Players can manipulate the Chronosphere either by analog stick or by using the Vita's tilt-sensitive motion controls. With enough Chronovolt energy, players can zap away enemy Chronospheres, freeze platforms, and even rewind time to erase mistakes.

Players can "freeze" platforms using Chronovolt energy.

The puzzles and platform challenges are not bad at all, but they are often spoiled by bugs, by frame-rate slow-down, and by that pesky camera. The camera is especially bad. It's twitchy, it's unpredictable, and it's frequently lodged behind some piece of the environment. It's a mess.

In the end, there are some nice and clever puzzles and mechanics at work in Chronovolt, but not enough to obscure the technical limitations of the game. The camera is broken, the bugs are plentiful, and the frame rate drops to a crawl, especially during the final level. The entire game just feels unfinished.