The Great Melting Pot is Back

By Carlos Macias

Rockstar Games dropped the finale to the GTA IV saga with The Ballad of Gay Tony a few weeks ago and, amongst plenty of competition, concluded with a mere whimper.

It’s not a bad expansion pack. On the contrary, it’s actually rather good and one deserving the Rockstar insignia stamped on it, but compared to GTA IV proper and The Lost and Damned expansion it can only ever hope to hold up as third place.

Things you can expect are: high-strung action sequences, Buzzard military grade helicopters, bus stop line dancing, waking up from hangovers in middle park, explosive new weapons, organized fight clubs, drug wars with the homies, casual sex in the club, and parachuting off skyscrapers.

Ridiculous missions, such as one involving the hijacking of a RAILROAD TRAIN, are abundant in Liberty City. And it’s clear that Rockstar went the GTA: Chinatown Wars route with TBoGT by making the objectives you take on as colorful as possible — fitting into the overarching replay system.

What you shouldn’t expect, and personally most important, is the lack of charm personified by all the previous GTAs. The characters are as vibrant as ever — especially Yusuf and Brucie’s brother — but none of them seem to fit well with each other. More than anything, all the characters seem to be have been thrown together from leftover story threads at Rockstar HQ and appear simply to move the story along.

GTA IV, while flawed, brought you into the mindset of an immigrant from overseas and his attempts at escaping his former self. The Lost and Damned intrigued players with a modern gang story of loyalty and betrayal in a tightly-knit story. The Ballad of Gay Tony showed promise with the atypical homosexual portrayal of Gay Tony and Luis and his mother’s troubled family bond quickly devolved into showing you more bang and less development.

Online play doesn’t fare much better. You can take the single-player additions — i.e. nitro boost in cars, souped up weapons, and attack helicopters — to free mode with friends or competitively with foes. But the problem is finding anyone to play with. The matchmaking system carried over from GTA IV continues to be borked and without a proper interface overhaul the grand hysteria of GTA multiplayer is doomed to be forever overlooked.

Final Thought: The Ballad of Gay Tony gives you more than your $20 worth of extra content — putting to shame other game’s DLC — but mostly as an “action” bonus missions package. It’s not as flashy as it comes off being and the story dissolves almost immediately. Even so, TBoGT adds enough drugs, sex, and violence to satiate the thirst of fans missing the wackiness of GTA: San Andreas when it all went to the Saints Row series. Now, you can get your precious parachute back.

8/10

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Things to look up while in Gay Tony’s neighborhood:

* Club Management – This series of side missions are what you do if you want to see the grimy side of downtown Algoquin. Help celebrities avoid the paparazzi and get their favorite takeout to them on time. Really, what the main story should have expanded on.

* Drug Wars – Help your friends sell, steal, and chase down “la merca” in this mode that has you running around town staring up their own drug trade. There’s only 4 different variations on the missions you go on, but if you liked the police missions in GTA IV these will be right up your alley.

* Parachuting – Cause mass hysteria downtown as you freefall around the sky line landing on random checkpoints. Some can be challening, but always fun — see the city as it was meant to be seen.

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“So Insomniac is doing me like this with their latest, huh?”

That’s the first thing that came to my mind when I started playing Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time. The thought that the great marsupial-robot duo would be split apart for the title brought me great concern. Fortunately, those worries were quickly dissuaded as I stepped into the roles of hero Ratchet and — no longer just a backpack — Clank.

Yes, A Crack in Time is the same game you’ve been playing for the last seven years but with a slight wrench thrown into the equation via Clank’s own call to adventure. It’s still a fun platformer, of which is seen so little of nowadays, that has you shooting, jumping, and upgrading your weapons to save the day.

This time around, the story revolves around Ratchet going to look after his robot buddy who’s been called on to make sure the “very fabric of time is not ripped.” It’s not the most original story, necessarily, but it comes across with great characterization and animations that pop out of the screen with humor and charm rarely seen in games.

As with the previous R&C games, the progress you make in the titles are multi-tiered where one is going through the motions of the story and — all the while — upgrading Ratchet’s attributes, weapon efficiency, and ship attachments.

New to the series are three base “Constructo” weapons that you can fully customize through your adventure along with the crazy assortment of guns that litter the typical R&C game. In reality, though, you can make it through the entire game with only the occasional upgrade and come out on top. But the customization is there for those who want to wholly up their arsenal.

The greatest change is the inclusion of time-bending puzzles when you’re in the role of Clank. At first an annoyance, Clank’s puzzles become a welcome change of pace from the frenzied action of his counterpart. It’s like managing several ghost runs that eventually unfold as you fumble about and make you feel smarter when you come out the other end. Don’t be dismayed in thinking that that’s all you do with Clank; even he needs a break from repairing fried wires to do some old-fashioned platforming.

What should be frowned-upon are the numerous fetch quests that you come across. THIS needs three energy cores to turn THAT on. The ship needs THIS many Zonis to make it through THAT barrier.

Rinse. Repeat. Spit up.

Initially, they aren’t so bad and serve as a nice motivator to explore the worlds you traverse but when it seriously hinders your ability to continue the story? Unnecessary filler. The “optional” spherical levels — reminiscent of Super Mario Galaxy’s — suddenly become mandatory and a chore when you don’t have enough points to get to the end boss.

Final Thought: A few niggling issues aside, R&CF: A Crack in Time provides a solid, almost-Pixar quality platformer out of the norm in the current gaming climate. It doesn’t cut too far from its series’ roots, but a few puzzles here and a leaderboard there gives you a lengthy palette cleanser to tide you over well before your next time sink hits.

8.5/10

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In Canabalt, there is a “jump button.” A jump button to jump over obstacles, across ledges, and for breaking through windows. And…that’s about it for a game that has you making a daring escape away from unknown danger and traversing over randomly-generated building tops.

The jump, much like Mario’s, is pitch perfect and makes each one feel as rewarding and responsive as the first time you smash out to prolong your survival.

The game’s monochromatic art style and simple animations work well enough to make it re-playable as a high-scores arcade experience. Your character runs, rolls, and jumps to his untimely death when he hits something however many meters out you can take him.

There’s no hit points or power-ups. Besides jumping, you manage your avatar’s velocity by avoiding/crashing into boxes strewn about the environments. And most importantly — Canabalt’s creators kindly nudge you towards this as the game loads — make sure to wear headphones to listen in on and ward off incoming missiles.

Canabalt started out as an exciting, free web application, but the fact that you can now take this tiny glory on the road makes it even better. There’s no weakly implemented motion gimmicks or shake functions; just a pure, addictive platformer taken off your computer monitor and made portable.

The few faults are its lacking pause button, no way to navigate back to main screen from in-game, and the absence of online leaderboards. Albeit for that last one, there’s a fan-made leaderboard to use if you’re hooked on to the Twitter-nation. No need to wait for the, as all iPhone apps do, inevitable price drop. Canabalt is worth the full price of admission — $3 last time I checked.

I ran 12,084 meters before turning into a fine mist…how far can you go?

9/10

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