April Cheap-Ass Games

The less I spend on new games, the more money I have for cigarettes, liquor and mean women. Since April is my wife's birthday month, I guess I'll spend less on mean women in general, and more on my special mean woman who lives in my house. That means I'm playing cheap games this month, the cheapest I can find. How about free?

This month, let's start out with the cheapest game on Xbox, the first Free With Gold selection for April: Hitman Absolution. How'd I miss this series? I'd seen Hitman games on the shelves at Gamestop, but nothing about them ever really caught my attention. I guess it's the bald guy on the front, and the name. "Hitman" makes me think of Mafia, low-life thugs in 1930's Chicago whose only salutary feature is their fashion sense (hard to argue with a man wearing a sharp fedora). But I was wrong, I tell ya, dead wrong. Hitman Absolution isn't Mafia; it's Splinter Cell wearing a sharp black suit and a red tie.
The basics: you are Agent 47, a dude with a number for a name and a bitchin' spitshine hair-do. Big plot, serious plot, betrayal, redemption, good stuff. More importantly, this game pulls off the "cinematic" aspect pretty well. The voice acting is good. The plot hangs together as well as anything in Hollywood these days. But the actual gameplay is fun. You sneak. You kill dudes in interesting ways, and then hide the bodies so nobody clues in on your presence. You wear disguises and infiltrate places and, if you have patience and skill, you kill the bad guy and nobody else, clean and cool.
These mechanics actually work pretty well. The third-person, over-the-shoulder movement reminds me of Red Dead Redemption in that you can get wonky button-mashing prompts if you move too close to a target or off to the side a little, but really it's not that big a deal. You can push guards off balconies, poison a coke-head's stash, snipe from a window...it's a rail-road mission, but a sand-box as far as how you go about it.
One serious stand-out is the Contracts mode. In Contracts, you go total sand-box on one of several maps. You wander around, doing stuff, checking out the map, and mark your targets from among the random crowd, up to a total of three. Then you kill 'em, in whatever way seems bitchin'. Then you have to escape. If it turns out cool, you can save it as a Contract scenario, and it's posted online for others to play. They have to replicate your technique, from disguises worn to weapons to if anybody gets alerted to your presence. It's damned clever, in that you create missions for other people (and can play theirs), but you can only create something if you're capable of doing it yourself. You create by playing, and that's a cool twist.

I'll kill ya with this mop. I ain't proud.

Did I mention it's free for another week? You can't beat that price. Be warned, though: it's damned near 8GB, using a proprietary engine for all those pretty graphics.

Free is awesome, but I want to mention a game near and dear to my heart, one that got not much love and is now less than sixteen bucks on Amazon. It's Fuse, and it's cool, and you should buy a copy and love it.

Rag-tag and plucky.

Story-wise, it's fairly derivative stuff: the Fedrul Gubment got it's hands on alien technology, and weaponized it (of course). Now a paramilitary group has stolen it (of course). And only our plucky band of four rag-tag agents can stop them (of course). But what stands out, at least for me, are two things: first, the game takes tired concepts and does them well. Sure, the characters are nothing particularly new, but they're presented with personality and some measure of flair. Same with the story: Fuse presents a standard story, but mixes up the tropes and throws the occasional curve-ball.
Mechanically, the game is really solid. It controls much like Gears of War, and it's basically a cover-based shooter game. But the controls are fluid, the animations smooth, and it rarely feels like you're having to thread a needle to take cover (I'm looking at you, original Mass Effect).
One nice twist that Fuse brings to the table is what they call the LEAP feature. It allows you to seamlessly swap from one character to another in-game, to take advantage of each one's special abilities. You can only swap to un-used characters, so if you have a buddy playing as Izzy the medic/hacker and you need a revive, you're stuck; but, overall, it's useful and doesn't intrude.

Surprisingly, these two hotties pass the Bechdel test with ease.

Multiplayer is nice. Again, like Gears of War, Fuse goes for the Horde-mode co-op, fighting waves of bad guys. Unlike Gears, each wave has a semi-random objective that complicates matters. Boss waves come at random with a single High Value Target that has to be taken down quickly to max out bonuses. One particular objective requires you to lug a Fuse container from one end of the map to another, under heavy opposition. It's hard, and damned near suicidal unless you have friends playing with you. The AI team-mates are pretty good, overall, but not up for anything quite that demanding. Sadly, this game is old enough that the public servers are a wasteland of nobody and nothin', but you can always enlist some sucker for split-screen co-op story mode or multiplayer mode.
Sixteen bucks on Amazon, probably considerably less if you find it used at Gamestop.

That's it for now. Go play some cheap-ass games, and help show EA and Activision that we aren't slavishly running out to buy the new AAA titles the minute they're released. There's good stuff out there, underappreciated and rotting in the bins at Gamestop, just looking for a happy home.
And did I mention, cheap?

Can't We All Get Along in 2013? (Don't taze me, bro...I'm just the messenger.)

I like RPG's. I like both CRUNCH and fluff and I like graph paper and pencils. I like goblins, and I like Wayne Reynolds. I won't go so far as to say that RPG's are my only diversion (there's always Xbox, and...did I mention Xbox?), but it's what I enjoy doing most.  There's only one small hangup with this otherwise blissful situation: I don't always like RPG people. And...it pains me to admit, I don't always like Xbox people, either. Or cosplayers.
Okay, I'll admit it: I'm a geek who often doesn't like other geeks. I get hives thinking about interacting with them, with people I should adore as my own chosen ones, people who are definitely US rather than THEM.
I'm not talking about the stereotype of Gamer Guy:


Credit: G4TV (for giving me oddly arousing nightmares)

Yeah, his type is present in both video gaming and tabletop gaming. Yes, we do have our share of obnoxious people in gaming: but take your ass out to a sports bar on Monday night to watch a ball game...the NFL fanbase has waaaaay more obnoxious, socially inept people than the RPG community could ever be blamed for. No, I'm not talking about just obnoxiosity quotient...I'm talking about what it means to be a geek.
To me, when you are a geek, you are totally into something; thus the verb geekin'. It's a state where you want to know details. Everybody knows Imperial Stormtroopers wear white armor; but the true geek knows why they don't wear standard Republic Commando armor, and why they aren't all clones of Jango Fett. The true geek can name you every Doctor Who, and when they played the iconic Doctor. The true geek not only likes Half Life 2, but she can rattle off Gabe Newell's curricula vitae. To me, being a geek is about a willingness to immerse yourself.
That's what I love about being a geek. That's what marks me as a proud member of the clan. But that's also what annoys me about my brethren and sistren:

Geek Rule #1

No detail is so small, nor any point so trivial, that we're not willing to form a seemingly random opinion about it...and argue that position for-fucking-ever.

 

I get it. I swear, I get it, I understand passion, and loving what you love so much that you're willing to defend it. Being a geek, by my above definition, puts you outside the mainstream: you are willing to delve into some subject way beyond the 'norm'. I get the defensiveness that comes with putting yourself out there on the lunatic fringe. But for Chrissakes, let's quit arguing about stupid stuff:

• D&D is stupid, and anyone who plays it sucks.
• 4th edition D&D is stupid (and evil), and anyone who plays it sucks (and is evil).
• Xbox rules, PS3 sucks, and Wii is retarded.
• PS3 rules, Xbox is full of rabid douchebags.
• Star Wars is awesome, but Star Trek is a bunch of idiots.
• Fantasy RPG's are all a bunch of LARPers, running around in the woods.
 

Please, for the sweet baby Jesus' sake: we're all in this together. Star Wars, Star Trek, Xbox, PS3, D&D and Savage Worlds and Doctor Who and BSG and Pathfinder.

 

We all share some mania for things that most of the world considers trivial.

 

While most of the people I know are out in the woods, hunting deer (and duck, and turkey, and anything else that moves), I'm upstairs playing Halo until 3AM. Hey, guess what? That PS3 guy is playing The Last of Us while his friends are out at Buffalo Wild Wings watching the Cowboys get pummeled (again). And that makes us brothers and sisters. That means we're kin. He's not some enemy.

D&D vs. Pathfinder people...people are still arguing this on message boards across the interwebs. Guess what, kids? To most of the world, both sides of this argument are stupid. Both groups are wasting their time playing trivial imaginary games, while they could be sitting on the couch watching Here Comes Honey Booboo like the rest of America. So quit arguing. The girl who really likes D&D 4th edition? Yeah, I hope one day she'll see the light and move on to Savage Worlds. But, until then? Welcome to the family, sister.

 

We're making progress, people. I promise. I'm 43 years old...I remember when science fiction, video games and Dungeons & Dragons got you beat up on a regular basis, when the opposite sex treated a d20 like it was an open, oozing leprosy sore. Thank you, Bill Gates, Wil Wheaton and The Big Bang Theory for making our passions at least a little more palatable to the rest of the world. And one day, I just know it, one day...we will overcome. The day will come when everyone in the world will know the name Malcom Reynolds, and nobody will remember what a Honey BooBoo even is.

But until then, quit arguing about stupid shit, and make 2013 a banner year for all of us.



Back to the Table Top, Fools.

Alright, I've been on an Xbox binge. Like I said previously, I loaded up on cheap games, and I spend all my free time playing these awesome cheap games. But all the Xboxery has been at the expense of my true love, and that's making up shit for table-top RPG games. And 2012 has seen my RPG relationships rocked to their very foundations by some serious adultery.

First some groundwork:
Back in the day, I dated a girl for many months, and she was a mixed bag. She was great when she was okay, but she was a righteous pain in the ass when she wasn't. In hindsight, her main problem is that she was All About Herself.  Then one day, I met another girl, and she was everything the other girl wasn't: she wasn't complicated, she didn't punish me for not reading her mind, and she went out of her way to make me happy. Once I got to know her, I couldn't ever (ever, ever, NEVER) go back to the first girl, even though all my friends assured me that Girl #1 was 'way hotter'. 

Here's where I tie the analogy together in a flash of brilliance:

Old and Ugly

Here's my  Bad Old Girlfriend, the standard of the industry, Dungeons & Dragons (tm). She's hot, sure, and she meets with the approval of the world at large. I can go anywhere, and somebody in the crowd at least has heard of good old D&D. That's been my go-to since 1980...love some Pathfinder, liked some Tunnels & Trolls back in the day, old school GDW Traveler was a junior high obsession...as far as I was concernced, D&D was the apotheosis of gaming.

New and Sweeeeet
 

But then I met my new honey: Savage Worlds. Better yet, let's call it SAVAGE WORLDS. It's the Linux of gaming, it's my kind and sweet new girlfriend of gaming, it's the be-all and end-all as far as I'm concerned. It's open-sourcey, in that the basic core rules are generalized. I don't mean 'generalized' like d20 was, where you had to buy a half-dozen setting specific books to play anything. I'm talking no-joke general, as in "if you have an idea, here is the basic rules framework to help you make a game of it". No joke.
I started reading it. I started buying some of the products (none of which are strictly necessary). And now I'm hooked. Hooked, I tell ya. Like Rush Limbaugh on Oxycontin, there's no looking back.

I ran an on again / off again 4th edition D&D campaign for the wife and kids. Mainly just a test bed for ideas and working out mechanics, but it was fun. Let me restate that: IT WAS FUN. But now I've gotten Savage Worlds stuck in my brain, and I can't go back to D&D. It feels restrictive. It feels burdensome. It feels like I'm wearing women's underwear, with no room for my junk.
It's a bad feeling.

Savage Worlds doesn't demand that I spend $300 bucks with every new edition. Savage Worlds doesn't tell what I can't do. Best of all, Savage Worlds doesn't tell me that she doesn't know if she really loves me, and then leaves me dangling for months, unable to committ but unable to move on with my life.

Sorry, that's called over-extending the analogy. Got stuck in the wheel-ruts of memory lane.

Upshot: Savage Worlds is cheaper than what you're playing now. Savage Worlds likes you for who you are. And Savage Worlds has an active, supportive community that really enjoys sharing ideas and news. Check Google+ for Savage Worlds, or go to Pinnacle's site. Hell, just Google it and be amazed at the love you'll receive from people who love gaming more than they love bitching about which edition is best.

Don't stay in a bitter, codependent relationship with your game. Move on, already. Savage Worlds is waiting for you, with open arms and a big plate of brownies. And beer.