This is an overview of Mothership Zeta, the final downloadable add-on for Fallout 3, which has been released for Xbox 360 and PC (PS3 users have to wait a while longer). I also have an overview of the four previous Fallout 3 DLC add-ons.
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There’s an unsettling trend in the world of music/rhythm games: recycling. OK, that’s actually a pretty vague statement considering the word can be used to point out several problems in the music/rhythm genre, so allow me to explain. There are presumably hundreds of millions, if not billions, of rock songs that have been created in the last five decades alone, and a healthy portion of those songs are actually good. So why are we seeing the same songs repeated in various Guitar Hero or Rock Band release? Alright, that’s not a particularly fair thing to say. We are seeing many songs we’ve never had in these games before. We’re getting AC/DC. We’re getting Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. We’re getting Green Day. We’re getting just a bunch of smaller-name bands through DLC that would have never made it onto the on-disk setlist. So, yes, we are seeing new artists and new songs that have not appeared in these two franchises. We’re even getting The Beatles. I mean, how huge it that? So to say that all or even a majority of the music is recycled doesn’t exactly fly.
Then I see Rock Band Unplugged and Guitar Hero: Smash Hits.
Now, to be fair, I’m not saying these are bad games. Unplugged is a very solid game, actually. Smash Hits…? Well, I didn’t play my rented copy enough to form a solid opinion. So it’s not the quality of the games, but the fact that almost all of the songs (Unplugged) or all of the songs (Smash Hits) are taken from past games in their respective franchises, with the former grabbing from Rock Band 2 and downloadable songs and the latter picking from the first three Guitar Hero games, along with spin-offs Encore: Rock the 80s and Aerosmith. Even worse, the downloadable content for Unplugged is composed of songs already released on Rock Band as DLC, forcing users to once again purchase the same song if they want to play it.
Of course, these games come along with catches that people (and the developers and publishers) can use to justify the reuse of old songs. Guitar Hero: Smash Hits is composed entirely of master tracks as opposed to covers and allows users to play instruments other than guitar, all of which wasn’t possible in the titles these songs originally appeared in. Rock Band Unplugged, on the other hand, plays less like a regular Rock Band game and apparently more like Harmonix’s previous efforts, Frequency and Amplitude. So even if these are the same songs, they don’t actually play the same.
But when so much of the experience with these games is playing along to the music, hearing the same tune can become tiring regardless of how you’re playing. I can only hear “Everlong” for so long regardless of whether the game itself looks or plays differently. But more importantly, these games feel like a wasted opportunity.
I imagine Guitar Hero faithfuls cheered when it was announced that Guitar Hero 5 would use all of Guitar Hero: World Tour’s existing downloadable songs. So the question remains (the question I bet some of you were expecting), why couldn’t we have the songs in Smash Hits be released as downloadable content instead? Many have (correctly) pointed out that buying Smash Hits is actually cheaper than buying all the songs as DLC, but who says we have to buy all the songs, anyway? There are only about six songs I would be interesting in buying that haven’t appeared on Rock Band in some form, which is only about twelve bucks. And Activision still refuses to let owners transfer songs to their hard drives to be used in future Guitar Hero games.
Rock Band Unplugged’s wasted opportunity has less to do with being able to play the songs on Rock Band 2 (most of the songs can already be played on Rock Band 2, while the others will be eventually released as DLC for RB2) and more to do with simply not having enough new songs to play. Of the 41 songs available to play, approximately only nine of them new? Couldn’t this have been an excellent platform to introduce more songs that have yet to appear on Rock Band and get existing fans excited about playing them with peripherals on Rock Band 2? I’m not saying Unplugged shouldn’t have been devoid of songs we already know and love, but more new stuff would have been great.
And, as I wrote above, owners of Rock Band on the consoles and Rock Band Unplugged may be faced with potentially buying the same song twice for both platform. At this point, I would love to see Harmonix introduce a master account for DLC across all Rock Band games, meaning that if I bought “Under the Bridge” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers on Rock Band 2 (which I did), I could then buy the same song on Unplugged for free. The likelihood of this happening is obviously quite slim not only because some sort of setup like this may not be worth the trouble to them, but Harmonix, as pro-consumer as they may seem to loyal fans, is still a business with the objective of earning money. Financially, it just doesn’t make as much sense.
Honestly, I have nothing against releasing songs that have been used in earlier games. In fact, I’m somewhat championing it. How else am I going to play drums to “Sweet Child O’ Mine” and “Welcome to the Jungle” (both conspicuously absent from Smash Hits)? But releasing it on a full-priced disk instead of letting me pick and choose my favorite songs? And skipping the chance at teasing music that will eventually be released on Rock Band 2 by filling Unplugged with songs I’ve been able to play since the former was released? Of course, these are just my thoughts regarding this topic. It should go without saying, but feel free to post your own comments regarding the recycling of songs.
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The recent release of Point Lookout for Fallout 3 will undoubtably send many Vault Dwellers back into the Capital Wasteland for more exploration and shooting and taking of items. And with PlayStation 3 owners finally being given the chance to play these DLC packs, what better time to look back at the downloadable content released for Fallout 3?
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It’s hard for me to not start this off by gushing about how awesome Valkyria Chronicles is, so I'm not even going to try. I absolutely fell in love with this game, calling it my second favorite game from last year, and will probably be calling it one of my favorite games ever. At one point I even called it what Fire Emblem could have been had Intelligent Systems actually cared about moving that franchise foreword. 
Fire Emblem definitely seems like an obvious influence to Valkyria Chronicles’ team at Sega. The characters of Squad 7 are not nameless, faceless drones you gladly sacrifice, but unique individuals with their own personalities and histories. In fact, Valkyria Chronicles devotes an entire section to displaying all the information about not only Squad 7, but all characters who play a significant role in the story. And when one of my solder is accidentally shot to death after walking in front of a tank, for example, they stay dead (except for characters important to the plot, who merely retreat). Characters with personalities/histories and permanents deaths are both things Fire Emblem has, for better or worse, been known for.
The unfortunate reality with even the latest console Fire Emblem (Radiant Dawn for Wii) is that the production values are clearly low. Not only are CG cut scenes rarely used, but any sort of cutscene that isn’t static images of characters placed over a static background are nearly nonexistent. Whatever reasons the developers has to not move away from this boring style of character interaction does not excuse it from being pretty outdated. For the handheld Fire Emblem games, I can understand why this style of cutscene is used, but for a console game, the developer’s reasons aren’t quite as clear.
And while I hope Intelligent Systems takes note of the wonderfully produced cutscenes shown in Valkyria Chronicles (if often feels like I’m watching scenes from an actual anime redone in 3D), I have the gut feeling that Fire Emblem’s developers are either not looking at what Sega has done with this genre of game or simply won’t decide to take a cue from this wonderful game. You hear that, Intelligent Systems? Fully-voiced, fully-animated cutscenes. A small chance of reviving a downed character before they die forever and I’m forced to reload the game. Of course, voices and cutscenes are most likely not what people buy games for, but for the part where the actual strategizing happens. I had already started feeling bothered that my involvement during the fight between two units was limited to watching the actions take place quite a while before Valkyria Chronicles was announced. Why couldn’t I play some small role in the fighting outside of making sure my unit was holding the right weapon before a battle? Perhaps Intelligent Systems should have taken a page from their own playbook and implemented some of the mechanics from Paper Mario into Fire Emblem. As simple and easy pressing a button to block an attack for reduced damage would be, I would still feel more involved. Then here came Valkyria Chronicles, melding the turn-based gameplay of Fire Emblem with a more real-time approach. My characters could run wherever they wanted in the battlefield as long as they had enough energy, and shoot at any portion of the enemy solder’s body. But, like Fire Emblem, the enemy would return fire, making the approach still a risk even if I could use the character’s remaining energy to retreat. And before I forget, I loved how Valkyria Chronicles handled leveling characters. Instead of raising the levels of individual units, which usually meant that only a handful of oft-used characters would be strong enough for the later levels, entire classes are leveled at a time. This is a small thing, but it’s really nice knowing that, as long as I kept leveling the classes, I could take out a rarely used character without worry that the enemies would destroy him or her in a single attack.
But where was I? Oh, turn-based/real-time combat. The beauty of this is that moving a character costs a medal, and as long as you have medals, you can move characters multiple times if needed. What this means is a perched sniper can use three or four medals to kill three or four enemies far from danger as opposed to one shot per turn. Or instead of fearing repercussions from a tank because my lone Lancer was unable to destroy a tank in one blast, I can simply reselect him and, assuming he has enough ammo, finish the job and quickly run him behind cover. Selecting a tank, issuing orders, and requesting reinforcements also require medals, and not only one.
It’s the ability to conserve and manage these medals that opens up quite a bit of strategic options. Move all units foreword or move a few units foreword several times? Didn’t quite finish off that enemy? Do you use another medal to attack and retreat or pray he or she isn’t shot down and use the medal on another unit? Spend two medals to remove a patch of mines in one turn or use a single medal for the same task in two turns? This not only creates more strategic opportunities, but actually makes the game more forgiving, which is never a bad thing since, like Fire Emblem, the game does become rather challenging. In fact, finishing the battles swiftly for an A ranking sometimes requires an almost puzzle-like solution. Interestingly, both games seems to share a similar degree of success. Valkyria Chronicles apparently did quite well in Japan, even spawning both an anime and manga based on the game’s story. Fire Emblem games also seems to do well, and also released an anime based on the original game’s story. Not only was the anime given an English dub years before any Fire Emblem game would be released in the States, but it lasted only a few episodes and was terrible. In comparison, Valkyria Chronicles didn’t do particularly well when it was released Stateside, while Fire Emblem games never burn up the charts (although they apparently do well enough for Nintendo to keep translation and releasing them). There is more about Valkyria Chronicles that I wanted to write about, including the game’s story itself. Perhaps that will wait for another post, but I’m sure this will not be the last time I think about this title. Given its success in Japan, I imagine we’ll eventually see a sequel. After all, there is a whole other nation (The Federation) to fight, even if Valkyria’s ending didn’t exactly hint at continuing the story.
Oh, and Valkyria Chronicles gets credit for having Aika from Skies of Arcadia (along with Vyse and Fina). She was an awesome unit throughout the game.
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Utter boredom late at night created these stupid MMO classes that will (hopefully) never make it into an actual MMO. Pray they won't. Advertiser
Pro - Do you like suggesting purchases for your family? Do you experience glee when forcing your opinion on the latest games or movies down the throats of your friends? Do you enjoy blabbing endlessly about the newest, shiniest gadget Steve Jobs takes out of his pocket? Then maybe you’ll like the wonderful class of Public Relations!
Create advertisements explaining why your client’s Battle Axe is better than their competitors’ completely identical Battle Axes! Enjoy the joys of describing why a bikini is better protection than full-body metal armor! And if you’re lucky, you won’t look like a cheap hack who’ll do anything to sell a +5 Devil Horns, including staging fake anti-Devil Horns campaigns for publicity!
Con - Lets face it, that advertisement with “Any Way You Want It” blaring in the background wasn’t exactly original, and your inability to make your client’s product stand out from the other identical rival products isn’t exactly winning you any favors either. But it could be worse. At least you didn’t make a blog pretending to be two teenagers desperately yearning for said product. King/Queen
Pro - Hey, you’re at the top! You command huge armies capable of slaying the dragon that has been terrorizing your pitiful peasants far below your magnificent castle. And you have more riches than you could ever hope to spend. Even invite a jester for entertainment, then quickly have him beheaded for your own amusement.
Con - Too bad that your character is completely unable to get off that blasted golden throne. And those huge armies? They’re other players who are having the fun, not you. And all that loot? Kind of hard to spend it when all the shops are far below your magnificent castle. But beheading jesters doesn’t get old, right? Yeah… until the jesters refuse to accept your invitation. Jester
Pro - You command something greater than water, electricity, and even the eternally damning fires of Hell. You can make little (computer-controlled) children laugh. Instead of forcing your character dance in Home for absolutely no benefit, why not force your character to dance in our game for the possibility of maybe gaining a gold coin. If you’re lucky. And if you’re really good, you may receive an invitation to perform for the King or Queen. Additional dignity-destroying hilariously stupid dance animations cost $9.99 each.
Con - Just read the King/Queen’s Pros and Cons. Samurai
Pro - Live like a samurai from feudal Japan, bound by nothing but your sword and your strict sense of honor. But don’t worry that most enemies use guns now. Just train for seventy-nine levels until you gain the ability to deflect a bullet with your blade. Sure, most guns shoot more than a bullet, and your sword does shatter immediately after, but for that brief split-second before you die from the second bullet, your character will be awesome.
Con - At level 5, you’re given the ability to commit suicide by stabbing yourself in the stomach with your sword. Cool, right? Except that your character is automatically deleted upon using this move, although your monthly payment for creating and using him remains. That’s the price you pay for trying to die an honorable death. Singer
Pro - Singstar? Rock Band? Why actually sing when you can type out lyrics to the bleep-bloops of NES-era music! And just wait until someone mods in actual microphone support. Because everyone obviously hasn’t lived until they’ve heard your rendition of “You Give Love A Bad Name” sung entirely like C-3PO.
Con - Sing any copywriter material and the AARP is going to take you for every cent and gold coin you own. Better start writing your own version of “Oops!… I Did It Again,” kiddo. Replacing a deceased band mate with a completely identical looking band mate and pretending that it’s the same person is alright, though. Nobody will ever notice.
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