What I Played Today: February 4

LEGO Batman, Dungeon Lords

I played a little bit more LEGO Batman today. One thing that the LEGO games do that I’ve never understood is throw the end credits at you at the end of every chapter, so you’re subjected to them after about two and a half hours, and about 3 to 6 times per game. It gets to the point where you’re not paying any attention to them. Not that you pay any attention to credits anyway, but having to see them so often, seems like they’re shoving them down our throats. There was also some unintuitive nonsense involving a small car and a crusher to get one of the collectibles, cute, but how on earth would I have known to do that if I hadn’t checked the FAQ?

On a note, I’ve got no issue with checking GameFAQs. Intuition is an important part of the gameplaying process; you need to be able to figure out if and why a thing would work. If it doesn’t make any sense to me what I need to do next, and I’ve exhausted the options that make sense to me (running around the available area, hitting all the buttons, checking my inventory items), and if I’m still stumped after 15 minutes (10 minutes if I’m in a hurry), I’ll look it up online. I also have no sympathy of looking it up when it comes to collectibles, because I’ve yet to meet a designer who creates those properly. Assassin’s Creed II got close, but no cigar.

I also sat and played Dungeon Lords with a couple of friends after eating some awesome sushi. This is a complex Euro with a lot of flavor, in which you take a role as an evil entity in a fantasy world who opens a dungeon. You have to balance food, gold, and your workforce to be able to increase the strength of your dungeon and withstand the assault of the adventurers who inevitably show up. There’s a lot of crunchy bits, and it was tough going trying to slag through the rules. I forgot a few of them, in fact, which made things worse.

The game features an action selection mechanic that is a little ingenious. You get to pick three actions a turn out of eight, but the order you select them matters. If you are the first player to select the action, you get the least benefit...but if you don’t select it soon enough and everyone else does, you don’t get any benefit at all. You also can’t select the same actions every turn, as previous actions get locked after you use them.

The adventurers invading adds a bit of fun (or frustration) at the end of each of the two “years,” having to balance your monsters and traps to take them out. If you’re too evil (i.e., take the best monsters and actions), the strongest adventurers decide to come after you, making it harder to keep your dungeon running as they stomp through your business.

I like it, but then again I’ve like everything the designer's done, so it was a good bet. I’ll need another play to learn how to play it properly, but the tone is appropriately funny and the system appropriately crunchy, so I’m looking forward to playing it when everyone knows all the rules. It seems like a subtle mix between Vlaada’s early brainburners, like Through the Ages, and his goofy later additions, like Galaxy Trucker. Looking forward to trying it again.

What I Played Today: February 3

LEGO Batman, Record Tripping

Didn’t get to playing anything until late tonight, and the games weren’t able to hold my interest for long, so let’s jump in it.

I played LEGO: Batman, one of my current GameFly rentals, for a little bit. I’ve played almost all the LEGO games for some reason, partly because it’s a completionist’s dream, with its easily found objects but so many to collect, and partly because it’s a bit of stupid fun, with wanton destruction throughout and a lot of cute schticks. I rented this one because it wasn’t a LucasArts affair, and also, because it’s Batman. Tiny Lego Batman fighting tiny Lego Joker. Adorable.

I had made it through the Batman-centric chapters over the past few days, fighting all the villains and gaining new abilities through the use of changing suits...a bit silly, but it works, ultimately. Each round has a boss fight, which is nice, fighting one of the Rogues Gallery. It still has the same problem as other with puzzles that are nonsensical at best, asking you to do things without any indication of what it is or any precedent to think that’s how it works, but once you realize the rules is basically destroy everything and look for sparkling stuff, it’s easy to pick up.

Tonight I got through about three levels of the Riddler’s chapter, and got to play with the supervillains, which are a lot better than previous installments. Because they have superpowers, they get neat abilities, like the ability to freeze people (Mr. Freeze, of course), superstrength (the decidedly thuggish Clayface, who get’s a poor treatment here by being the comic relief villain), and mind control (the Riddler...apparently). Ok, so some powers don’t quite match up, but having such a variety of options really ups the variety of the puzzles.

The villain chapters showcase what the villains were up to before the Dark Knight wrecked their plans, a bit of the behind the scenes treatment. Watching the set pieces get in the condition they’re in when Batman arrives is kinda nice, although the details are so small that it’s tough to catch the similarities. I stopped playing after a nastily stupid puzzle that required me to jump on a switch three times, something I’ve never had to do before in any LEGO game, without being hit...in a room with constantly respawning enemies. Frustrating enough for me to call it.

I also played a flash game on Kongregate, my preferred flash gaming site. Record Tripping, a Bell Brothers game (whoever they are), which is either trying too hard to be artsy or just hard enough, I can’t tell. It’s a stunning little production, which involves five minigames centered around spinning your scroll button. One involves a barrel maze and trying to get a ball out of it, one planting some seeds, one involves a conveyor belt, but all rendered well, with some artistic quality. Throughout a woman reads from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland with some back-up beats. When you spin the scroll button, the reading skips appropriately, backwards or forwards, which can be disconcerting if you’re actually paying attention to the lady.

In all, it takes no more than 10 minutes to play, and qualifies as an experience. What it’s trying to say besides, “Please give us an award,” I can’t tell you, but the Bell Brothers sure put together a pretty project.