Cities: Skylines Review
Now this is more like it. Even though my real-world occupation as the mayor of a Canadian town means that I try to escape such things as budget meetings and zoning hearings when I play games, Cities: Skylines still managed to hook me due to its authenticity. Unlike the latest SimCity, which was far too fantastical to let me build cities that resembled those in the real world (size limitations and not being able to establish proper zoning districts drove me crazy), this Colossal Order production nails just enough of what is fun about running a municipality in the real world. Proper zoning, room to grow, and the addition of policies and districts that let you plan out sensible city development make for a (mostly) bona fide experience in the virtual mayor's chair.
Making comparisons between games is not always helpful, but in this case, it's difficult to ignore the tight relationship between Cities: Skylines and its SimCity inspiration. Colossal Order delves deep into what Maxis and EA once made so popular with a traditional city-building approach. Few surprises or even significant innovations can be found here: There is just a standard single-player mode of play in which you choose from a handful of maps representing territory types ranging from flat plains to tropical beaches. You may also play the game with standard conditions, dial up the difficulty, and/or turn on sandbox and unlimited-money mods. No tutorial is included, either, which makes for a learning curve at the beginning. At least tips are provided on a continual basis during regular play.
Multiplayer is totally absent, as are frilly options like disasters and giant monster attacks. There are no multiple-city games, either. You have one city to deal with, along with a mostly invisible outside world that allows you to buy and sell goods on a common market. The game has been developed with modding in mind, however, and it ships with a full editor. Therefore, you can expect a lot of user-made add-ons to hit the net shortly. Nonetheless, at the present time, this "just the facts" focus makes for an initially bland experience. The plainness is exacerbated by stark menu screens and dated visuals that are attractive enough to get by, while at the same time cutting corners by cloning buildings and signs, as well as lacking amenities like a day-night cycle and weather patterns.
If you have been jonesing to be a virtual mayor, though, Cities: Skylines gets nearly everything else just right. First off is zoning. You have full control over zoning neighborhoods as low or high (medium is absent, although I didn't miss it) residential, commercial, and industrial. These basic mechanics provide thorough control over laying out cities, which gives you a real sense of being in charge. Second up is map size, which allows for a lot of stretching out. The initial size is restrictive at 2km by 2km, but you can access more plots of land to eventually expand to a metropolis spanning a whopping 36 square km. That allows for expansive burgs, and an incredible sense of freedom. You always have room to correct mistakes and grow out of early problems, making you feel more like the super-mayor that you should feel like, and not the goofball constantly demolishing whole neighborhoods to fix problems you couldn't have foreseen three hours ago.
Two other great features involve establishing districts and policies. This allows for the creation of boroughs with separate identities (policies can be set to take in entire cities, as well) by drawing them out with the Paint District tool. If you want your very own Brooklyn hipsters or a hardhat neighborhood for factory Joes, you can paint out city blocks and then tweak localized settings. This allows you to offer free public transit, boost education, give away smoke detectors, get into high-tech homes, ban high rises, and even alter tax rates for different zones. You can also set up specific industrial areas to focus efforts there. So if you want a green city, allow only farming use in industrial zones. If you want to go in the other direction with the sort of hardcore factories that killed grandpa, you can set up oil or ore districts and watch the smokestacks pump out poison.
Policies are on the fanciful side, and establishing wildly different rules on social activities and even tax rates between neighborhoods in the same city will not go over well on election day. But I still love the ability to fine-tune cities without delving too deeply into micromanagement. The district and policy features combine to let me sketch out what I want in each part of my city--yes, this will be my gentrified borough for snotty white-collar professionals, complete with a smoking ban, no pets, no high rises, recycling, allowance for the use of certain controlled recreational substances, high-tech homes, and, of course, stupid high taxes--and then sit back and watch neighborhoods evolve.
Basic mechanics provide thorough control over laying out cities.
The challenge is not pronounced, especially if you have city-building experience. You needn't worry about random sparks somehow taking down whole blocks, or other acts of God obliterating all of your hard work. This gives Cities: Skylines a relaxed character, instead of coming across like a rigorous game loaded with set objectives and problems to be solved. It's an old approach, but a great one, as it allows you to concentrate on the abstractions of building, instead of mindlessly racing around meeting random goals related to citizen happiness or residency numbers.
The only aspect of the game that becomes annoying to handle is transit. Given the same developer's Cities in Motion series, you might expect roads, buses, and the like to take on a vital role. Ultimately, however, transportation systems are overly Byzantine and convoluted, particularly when it comes to bus routes. It's difficult to tell if transportation woes are your own wrongdoing, or if there are problems with vehicle pathfinding in the game itself. You can muddle through, although you never exert the same level of control with transit as with everything else.
Nevertheless, Cities: Skylines is the best city-builder on the market right now. The game's presentation is stodgy, but it is all but guaranteed to provide you many hours of carefully crafting cities, laying out zoning, and establishing districts for specifics residential and industrial uses…all free from real-world mayoral headaches like 6 a.m. phone calls griping about snowplowing. Right now, there is no better way to take a peek at life as a mayor without filing your papers to run for office in the real world.
Nintendo 3DS Sales Were Up Over 90 Percent in February
Thanks to the sales of the New 3DS and The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 3D, Nintendo celebrated a particularly successful month in February 2015.
Nearly 395,000 units of the Nintendo 3DS were sold in the United States, making it the top selling console last month. Nintendo claims the "great majority" of these sales were for the New 3DS XL, which reportedly sold 130 percent more units in its first frame than the original Nintendo 3DS back in 2012. In total, the sales of Nintendo 3DS hardware are up over 90 percent since the same period in 2014.
Majora’s Mask Tops US Sales Charts in February
The NPD group has revealed the top-ten selling games for the month of February 2015. Topped by Nintendo's recent release of The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, the list includes several recently-released games.
- 1.) The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 3D (3DS)
- 2.) Evolve (PS4, XBO)
- 3.) Dying Light (PS4, XBO)
- 4.) Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (PS3, PS4, X360, XBO)
- 5.) Grand Theft Auto V (PS3, PS4, X360, XBO)
- 6.) NBA 2K15 (PS3, PS4, X360, XBO)
- 7.) Dragon Ball: Xenoverse (PS3, PS4, X360, XBO)
Nintendo’s 3DS Family was Best Selling Hardware in February
Sony's PlayStation 4 beat out Xbox One, but Nintendo's 3DS family was actually the best selling hardware overall.
With 20.2 million PS4 consoles sold over the course of the PS4's life, Sony said the number represents the "fastest growth in PlayStation hardware history."
While the Xbox One failed to top the charts, the console is still growing well for Microsoft. According to a statement from the company, the Xbox One had record February sales in the U.S., with 84% more consoles sold compared to January. It also said that Xbox One fans spent an average of 74 hours on Xbox Live during the month.
The Mad Men Spin-offs That Never Were
AMC is certainly embracing spinoffs these days – with Better Call Saul breaking ratings and a two-season order for a Walking Dead companion show -- but did the revered cable channel ever consider a Mad Men spinoff? It turns out they did, once upon a time...
In The Hollywood Reporter’s profile on Mad Men (via /Film), Lionsgate TV exec Sandra Stern revealed AMC had asked the writing staff to brainstorm ideas for a spinoff during the break between Seasons 4 and 5, when Showrunner Matthew Weiner’s contract had expired.
RDJ Gives Child Iron Man Prosthetic Limb
A seven-year old boy who was born with a partially developed arm has been given an Iron Man-themed prosthetic limb – bestowed upon him by Tony Stark himself, Robert Downey, Jr.
Posted on RDJ’s Twitter account, the following video -- produced by Microsoft OneNote's Collective Project -- chronicles the meeting of young superhero fan Alex Pring and the actor. Ready your hankies:
Honored to present a bionic #IronMan arm to Alex through @MSOneNote’s #CollectiveProject. Check the bowtie. #dapper https://t.co/lhLG5g1RP8
DC’s Injustice: Year Four Comic Draws Near
DC's Injustice: Gods Among Us comic book prequel is still going strong after all this time. Year Three not only saw Batman turn to John Constantine and the world of magic in his ongoing war against Superman, it also saw regular writer Tom Taylor step down and new writer Brian Buccellato take his place. Buccellato guided Year Three to a big supernatural climax, with the final digital chapter being released this week.
DC Announces Injustice: Gods Among Us - Year Four Prequel Comic
Andy Samberg to Host Emmy Awards
Emmy Award-winning writer, actor and comedian Andy Samberg will host the 67th Primetime Emmy Awards - airing Sunday, September 20th on FOX.
“It’s wonderfully fitting that we have Andy Samberg, an Emmy Award winner himself, as our host for this year's Primetime Emmy Awards,” said Bruce Rosenblum, chairman and CEO of the Television Academy. “Andy has excelled in all aspects of the television universe, both from behind and in front of the camera. His humor, insights and charisma will be an exciting addition to our annual celebration of television’s best and brightest.”
“The moment the Emmy Awards’ host was brought up, we said it had to be Andy,” said Gary Newman and Dana Walden, Chairmen and CEOs, Fox Television Group. “He is fearless, hilarious, an award-winning comedian, singer, writer and actor with incredible live TV experience. We know he’ll deliver the laughs and give viewers an incredible night they will enjoy.”
Trash TV Review
Trash TV? When you first hear the title, you might expect a game that sends you off to battle the forces of network evil with the likes of Snooki and Kim Kardashian, but this 2D sidescroller and puzzler takes its title far more literally than that. You are, after all, a TV, and you're in the trash. You follow the tubular guy as he bounds from platform to platform in a grim recycling plant in search of his remote, all while using everything from uzis to shotguns to battle his way to destiny. Like so much trashy TV, the game is not particularly memorable, but neither is it entirely without appeal.
Its heart is certainly in the right place. The artistry that characterizes games from the current 2D revival shows up in the very first seconds, as you guide a single pixel to merge with others in order to bring life to the dead box. Personality oozes from the presentation, particularly in the way that the display defaults to a curved 4:3 aspect ratio that recalls old Magnavoxes and Zeniths, or in the way the IBA-style cue dots march across the upper right of the screen as you near the end of a level. At some points, the screen crackles and fuzzes up and vaguely Pip-Boy-esque cartoons pop up to display hints. When you die, it cuts to the colored rectangular bars familiar from the days when networks actually went offline.
The 2D, slightly pixelated style perfectly fits the subject matter. It's a style that belongs to the era of its antenna-capped protagonist, and not so much to today's world of curved Samsungs and 4K resolutions. It's a style that promises the magic some of us experienced on the NES on similar screens in the 1980s, and the general fluidity of the controls as the TV flits across molten steel and lasers suggests that developer Lawrence Russell has the chops to pull it off. I found it especially fun with an Xbox 360 controller.
Too bad the end experience comes off as merely passable. Part of the reason why Trash TV shares the same running time as late-night network movies is that it rarely presents a challenge, so thoroughly does it cling to the most basic conventions of the current crop of platforms. Our TV bounds from platform to platform, sometimes while lava fills gaps behind him or massive platforms threaten to crush him, but Trash TV never achieves a tenth of the tension of games like Super Meat Boy. Even death is forgivable, essentially resulting in a quick respawn to the point at which you fouled up. Much of the progression centers on placing crates on the right buttons at the right time (and, pleasingly, some of the crates affectionately recall Portal's Companion Cube), but never once did I find myself stumped for more than ten seconds. Get into the rhythm, and the whole thing flies by in a blur, which eventually caused me to slip into same type of slack-jawed hypnotism I might experience while watching My Strange Addiction or Buckwild.
That's not to say that I didn't enjoy my time with Trash TV; far from it. It's just that, as with so much trashy TV, getting the most out of it usually involves forgetting that I could be doing something better. And to its credit, Trash TV does a good job of keeping the experience from slipping into a repetitive slog. Indeed, my chief enjoyment from the game sprang not from the actual platforming but rather from each weapon that TV Guy finds inexplicably strewn around the facility, whether it's a simple handgun or shotgun or, later, twin uzis and C4 explosives that he uses to blast crates and vindictive vending machines. The timing is great--new weapons usually appear just as the previous one is wearing out its welcome. (Alas, that's also a problem, as it's almost never necessary to use a particular weapon again once you've moved past its specialized zone.)
And so it goes for two hours, to the tune of a catchy but similarly passable soundtrack. The entire experience would have been better if Russell had managed to work some boss battles into the mix, but all that usually heralds the end of the stage are the cue dots mentioned above. On at least one occasion, I failed to even notice I'd completed a level. At times, the hint of something better presents itself, such as when you have to to fend off a swarm of other appliances while you wait for an elevator to descend, but then the end comes (along with the promise of a new "season") and you realize that was as good as it gets.
It shouldn't have been. The potential for greatness broadcasts from every corner of Trash TV, but it comes off as guilty-pleasure television programming that was rushed out by studio executives intent on meeting a deadline. And perhaps there's some truth to that. Trash TV seems to have started life as a co-op game, and even now, that legacy shows up in the hand-drawn artwork that's used to promote the game, in which two CRT television sets face off against a clothes dryer and a slot machine atop a garbage heap. Russell's blog claims it could still make an appearance as a "post-launch free update," but that was almost a year ago.
Even so, I had fun. Trash TV's puzzles and platforming might bear the heavy stamp of other games that came before it, but its endearing use of the conventions of CRT television paired with weapon-toting boob tubes does much to make up for such misgivings. As with a decent trashy TV show, I probably won't experience it again, but I can't say I didn't enjoy my brief time with it.
Bloodborne Will Punish You with a New Game Plus Mode
Those hoping for multiple levels of challenge in Bloodborne have reason to celebrate.
Speaking with MCV, From Software's Hidetaka Miyazaki confirmed the upcoming action RPG would have a New Game Plus mode.
"Yes, there will be a New Game Plus mode," he said, then jokingly added "we’re having trouble beating it, though.”
New Game Plus is a mode generally unlocked after a game's first completed playthrough. In these modes, typically the difficulty is heightened and some element from the first play through is carried over and affects the harder mode. Exactly how this mode will work in Bloodborne remains unclear.