Finally we do a Skype call for a change on this episode of HeroCast. With Andy being intoxicated, Kimerex and Harlock have to endure the slow speech and blabbering to talk about SOPA/PIPA and the media blackout day, Resident Evil Revelations 3DS demo limit, Resident Evil 6 announced and a good amount of random for you to enjoy.

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Closing music – Martyrial Girl$ by Gym Class Heroes

KITTAH’S IN SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!

Seriously, that’s all you need to know…well that and it comes out sometime in the Spring. No other info is available right now but keep an eye on their Facebook and Twitter page as well as the official page for updates.

Coming back after 2 months, the Heroes don’t miss a beat. We play catch up with what we have been doing and what’s new since we last talked.

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Don’t forget to rate and review us on iTunes!

Closing music – You See Me by Childish Gambino

Before I dive into this, let me quickly put on my flak jacket.

Ok. As the story goes, by some cosmic joke I was still on the list at Eidos to receive updates and future releases for Deus Ex: HR, a game that I have openly and actively determined to be a disappointment of grand scale unlike anything else I’ve seen. Watching as the the company struggled with excuses for why the gameplay lacked real punch was fun for me over time until I became so bored with all of it that I walked away, secure in the knowledge that Deus Ex : HR has more of a chance at being nominated for PC GotY than the far superior Witcher 2 title. Hooray American culture. So why did they give me the DLC? Was it some attempt to sway my view of the rebirth of the IP as a whole? Have they changed enough to really make Deus Ex the astounding “anything goes” game that they claimed it could be? Short answer is…no. Long answer, of course, would have to be noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

For More Information…

If you need more information than what a clear and concise “no” can achieve, I guess I can rationalize my disappointment again. Not like it matters. I’m merely setting myself up for the oncoming tide of fan-gasms as they scurry to defend their monolith of grand epic-ness.

Issue one. We’ve brought this up in a few Herocast episodes so far, but the fact that this DLC is of grand importance to the overall story really puts another bad mark against Eidos as a brand. Though this wouldn’t have helped the gameplay, it would have put a better ground on what the hell I was looking at in the final boss room of the game. I wouldn’t have had such a grand disconnect with all of it.

Issue two.  Did you really think you could get away with triple layered back tracking Eidos? On several occasions during the mission, Jensen would come to an impasse that required him to go a ways back through the level to either retrieve something that was already there or talk to someone. Of course, if you killed everyone already this was a boring task that meant nothing on a grand scale. Thankfully, due to my ingenuity of holding skill points until needing them, I was able to maximize my movement abilities to overcome the boring pilgrimage to places I’ve already been. I found that I didn’t need to use the points for anything else anyway. Early on I found a silencer for my pistol, so I just let the extremely stupid AI herd itself into my bullets for instant kill head-shots. The stealthiest of stealth. Use corpses as distractions, then kill the people looking at them.

Issue three.Way to boil my choices down into seemingly meaningless events Eidos. Do I want to save a cryo-pod person or not? What do I get if I do? A discount at the shop. Cool. Do I kill the scientist or a room full of civilians? Barring the insanely unbelievable premise of why this is even a choice, why does it matter? This is a prequel, meaning the follow up parts of the game already happened. The story is already set in stone, unless you plan on rewriting it all. Same issue I had with the games ending. It didn’t matter what I picked, the outcome already occurred.

Positive one. Running the game in DX11 didn’t have severe memory leaks like the build I played, so good job on getting your programming together I guess. Now if only the game was worth all that effort.

Overall, I still understand that what I have to say on this will only matter in a small scale. For the most part people already seem to have made up their minds on the quality of Deus Ex : HR. I don’t see this swaying any of those opinions. But maybe if I can save the one or two people from wasting any money at all on this grand atrocity against the integrity of gaming, I’d be ok with that.

This flak jacket feels comfy. Think I’ll wear it for a little bit.

A World In Flux

The thing is, I think that id is planning to put more in. Not in a way I’d like though. I feel we’d be looking at a slew of DLC over time to fill in the gaps. The problem I have with this isn’t completely in the vein of “incomplete product.” Part of it came as I explored the world at hand on my own. I stumbled into what looked like entrance-ways to dungeons that didn’t actually let me in. Giant doorways that looked like they could have a great vehicle-based arena hidden behind them. The more I explored the more I found myself wondering if there was something to do in each and every nook and cranny of this vast emptiness id had presented to me. No dice. But all these things were placed so meticulously that, from my experience, they should have served some purpose. Something that would have given a greater purpose to the time and effort taken by so many at the company. Something to give an exploration-minded player a grander reward for their efforts. To truly protrude the feeling of an “open-world” game. I stand by my belief that id will be releasing these gap fillers in the future, but I dislike the idea that these extremely necessary items will attempt to bleed my wallet more and more for things that would have made my entire first play-through experience that much greater. But hey, maybe I’m proved blissfully wrong.

The Grand Cycle

I find myself still looking at games for what sets them apart and what nestled them comfortably against the bland and basic. Though the guns and characters all feel like that familiar level of fps, I will give it to id for moving the bar on enemy AI. Within minutes of pointing a pistol at the head of a bandit, Rage showed me that until this point in my life I have not fought anything nearly as organized, chaotic, blissful, stressful, and overall epic as the enemies it had for me. For that I thank you id, and I know that all other companies coming up in your wake will have their work cut out for them to even think of equaling out with everything you have shown me. Watching as bandits actively and properly covered each others’ advances. Changing the pace of combat enough to have me constantly recalculating my response tactics. Having the wilder characters utilize every inch of the surround terrain to stay out of sight and approach me from all angles. Working against the heavily armored soldiers, who had no fear of bullets or death, constantly marching towards my position. All these things were so fantastic. Truly experiences that will be with me for a while. But for my memory of what was pushed by PR and developers during Rage’s birthing phase, the AI almost took a side seat. The focus was drawn to the vehicle based portions of the game, as well as the tech behind what mega-textures are.

Who Put Cars In My FPS?

I do understand the need of such things in an open world game. Faster transportation that fits into the genre. Awesome. But to put such an emphasis on it to even make the competitive multiplayer mode based entirely around the cars… Not so sure about them being that completely amazing. At times the driving portions of the game weren’t anything more than some boring downtime between some really fun gun fights. Beyond that, I had a lot of hope that the drives would take me to new and foreign places, but it kept turning out that I had to use the car to go to places I’ve already been and do that again.  “Dungeon” repetition isn’t exactly a good thing when a game is trying to avoid the “lack of content” talk. But I found myself running most of the major ones twice.  To fill that gap with something as unimportant feeling as a car ride with some Mad Max sprinkled in, it left me feeling like I’d been jipped out of the possibility of a greater experience. This feeling was pushed after the story just kinda…stopped.

I Barely Knew You

Most of the game is spent in one major town. The jewel of a desert sitting just outside a massive ruined city. I got to know this place well. I interacted with its citizens. I had a conversation with almost everyone I could find. Learned a little about the cities history and its day to day life. Raced its drivers. Defended its caravans. When I left it behind for new pastures I found myself on the edge of my seat. If I got the same level of connection out of this next city I would be so happy. Sadly no. After a seemingly short stay in Subway Town the credits rolled and I was preparing to try out the co-op. My problem with this is that I saw great possibilities out of the townsfolk. Great back-stories. interesting characters. Fantastic visual style. But as quickly as I was introduced to all of this I was rushed away to the closing cinematic in what came together as a really disappointing ending in a game.

So Much Wind-Up For Such Little Payoff

I have to give it to id again. I was never bored from the scenery presented to me throughout my stay in ruined Earth. Such drastic visual styles all leading up to what felt like something out of a massive-alien-future-sci-fi game. From the dirt encrusted old world to the angled and lit inner workings of a technological marvel. Everything was breath-taking. The benefit of mega-textures were seen in every detail of the levels. The winding pipes of a refinery. The towering buildings of a cannibalistic tribe’s village. Such great effort was put in to all of it. To have the ending be tarnished by a wave based survival game that only really worked against my patience left me dumbfounded. Where was my epic world collapsing moment. Where was the feeling of being part of something greater. Not just a one man show doing everything for the world with very little in return for my actions. Kill some dudes. Press some buttons. Read a list of people who thought that was a good enough ending for its customers. Move on. So saddening. The problem for me is that the pros and cons balance out. So I took to some co-op to see if it changed my mind a little.

Buddy System

Co-op was actually really fun. At first I thought it was all just going to be a horde mode type of survival, but the quest based story-lines really put the co-op in a sort of league on its own. The difficulty was fairly well scaled, too. Not to say that game was all that truly hard. I only died a small number of times through campaign on nightmare setting, and the same could have been said about co-op, but I did occasionally find myself down on a knee clinging to life. And it was fun in a way, wondering if Andyb0y needed me to stand back up to keep him alive, or letting him handle the work to save on a defibrillator charge. After going through a handful of chapters and seeing several of the maps I played on through the eyes of a two man team, I found so much to love about the co-op function that Rage had to offer. Enough to let me not even touch the Twisted Metal multiplayer it brought up as its big thing. Probably dodged a review breaking bullet there. Good deal.

The Hype And The Reality

I find it hard to place Rage on the scale of gaming. On one hand we have the incredible AI. On the other a major function of the game was very boring and almost needless. On one hand the co-op was fairly innovative. On the other the competitive multiplayer was disappointing to simply think about. Great character interaction. Empty world. This is why I expect DLC to happen. That is the biggest part for me that I see as an issue. It makes me want to offer a suggestion to anyone thinking about buying Rage. Don’t. Not yet at least. See if chunks of DLC are announced for it. See where that goes. New dungeons? Expanded story? Cool. Then wait more. Wait to see how much more of the game fills in the blanks. Then, when the complete edition is released with all DLC in it for the normal price anyway, buy it. For the same price any of us are playing Rage for right now you will get Rage in a more complete state. An experience I can never truly have seeing as how it would force me to play through my tracks again just to see what I missed the first time. That is the best advice I can offer. Take it or leave it.

It’s easy to become blinded by pink and bright pastels when booting up this deliciously girly table. Ms. ‘Splosion Man gets her groove on at the bottom right corner of the table, right next to the plunger, spouting some of the same one-liners you might have heard in the original game. Sometimes you might catch her doing the Macarena, and sometimes she ‘splodes. Hey, that’s what she’s famous for!

Amidst some familiar Ms. ‘Splosion Man setpieces are plenty of enticing bumpers, a flipper to the top right, and several ramps that can be accessed easily with just the right amount of finesse (waiting until the ball rests on the edge of the flipper). Some equally interesting scenery dots the sides and the congested middle of the table. There are plenty of sights to see dotted amongst the sugary pink landscape, ‘Splosion Man included, and…hey, is that Mr. Destructoid?

Scoring modes quickly progress higher and higher, eventually culminating in “boss fights” with the familiar Mighty Eternal. It’s exhilarating hitting ramp after ramp and racking up as many points as possible. Shooting for the quickfire launcher, ball locks, and activating multiball were some of the high points as well. While the bubblegum pop “la la las” warble on in the background and you’re wrangling two or more balls, things can get pretty hectic. And I was loving it. As a new adopter of Pinball FX 2 and after muddling through the Street Fighter II downloadable table and the originals included with the purchase of the game, I found myself coming back to this table time and time again. I’m not even a big Ms. ‘Splosion Man fan.

But I do know fun when I see it, and this downloadable add-on brings it in droves. It’s fast, fun, and suitably girly for that explosive femme fatale. Check it out if you’re hankering for some more pinball action.

Since I have a small team and all of them but me work a full-time job, putting news on the site has become an issue. Yes, we did have a news writer but he got an opportunity that he couldn’t pass up. Daniel will be back after his 3 month stint at that opportunity so don’t worry about that. What I want to know is, how important is it for a site to have all the latest news? Does it lessen your interests if a site doesn’t really have news at all? Will you still visit for the other content the site has?

So many of the giants in gaming press has news covered very well. Helps that they can pay people to do this. Not saying that there are dedicated people not getting paid at all on other sites that do a great job at posting news. I just think that we at Handheld Heroes can do without posting news all the time. If it is something that we find interesting, then we will post it if we can put our own spin on it.

It wasn’t so much the story that made me like Guerrilla so much. Rather, it was the fun I had in its open world environment. Driving around in different vehicles, destroying huge structures, and just exploring Mars was enough for me. Although I didn’t get into the multiplayer aspect of Guerrilla, Kimerex did and he loved it immensely. Jet packs with a sledge hammer? Yes, please. So with all that fun I had with Guerrilla, I was hoping for more of that in Armageddon. What I got was the case of the itis.

Red Faction Armageddon’s story is very loosely tied to Guerrilla so no need to worry about plot points from the previous title. Then again, no need to worry about the story at all. I couldn’t help but get extremely bored with the storytelling Armageddon was trying to sell me on. All I know is that I had to kill someone and restore a Terraformer to save Mars. I liked that story better when it had Arnold in it. I figured that Armageddon’s saving grace would be its weapons and destruction. Negative on that as well. The weapons at first seem like you could have a lot of fun using them. Wait about 5 minutes after using them and you will see the magic fade as you use what you thought were powerful weapons and unload massive amounts of ammunition to kill a bug. Don’t give me a gun that can disintegrate any object it touches but when it comes to weak foot soldiers it takes too long to kill them. There is also the Nano Forge which this time is a device on your forearm that is used to repair destroyed objects that are needed to complete a section of a game. It can also be used as a weapon by either throwing down a shield that attacks enemies inside it, a blast of energy knocking back nearby objects and enemies and throwing nano grenades to repair objects just out of your reach.

There is an upgrade system in place that can help you become more powerful and add new abilities but it never made me feel like it made a difference. Maybe the health upgrade but that is about it. Vehicles are still in the game in the form of mech suits, a fighter jet and a huge spider mech. The mech suits are the only time I felt like the weapons actually worked the way I would want them to. Climbing into one of them was probably the only fun I had in the game. I wanted more vehicle sections since they are the points in Armageddon when my synapses in my brain lit up and I began to pay attention.

Multiplayer is here as well in the form of a survival mode and a points mode called Ruin. In Ruin, you have a time limit to see how much damage you can rack up with all the weapons at your disposal in sections from the single player campaign. Even though I had fun, it was very brief and not enough to keep me interested in coming back to play more.

It’s a shame my thoughts are thin on Red Faction: Armageddon. I wish I could tell you more about the game but it just left me feeling like I was going through the motions of a generic 3rd person shooter. I hope that Volition learns from this and goes back to what made Guerrilla an enjoyable next time around.

This is the D&D game I’ve been waiting for a while. Hell, this is the game I thought Daggerdale was going to be: a PC game that brought the table-top D&D experience into the virtual space. The ability to experience an amazing story with other people is the main draw of gaming. If you don’t believe that, go run an end-game raid in WoW on a Vent server with a bunch of your buddies. It’s an amazing time.

And with this release, D&D’s two weaknesses: cost of entry and finding other people to play with, are gone in an instant.

A lot of people will look at this and ask how this is different from WoW and Atari has one big answer for them: The Foundry. Atari is bringing the very successful content creation system from the Neverwinter Nights (and other) games with them. This allows creative DMs to create adventures for players to run. And as anyone who’s played Little Big Planet can tell you, user-created content can be amazing.

From the official website, playneverwinter.com:

“The Foundry gives you the tools to build dungeons, castles, cities, foreboding woods and everything in-between. Build NPCs the way you see them in your mind’s eye and populate your world with tavern keepers and soldiers, Queens and scullions. Lay the groundwork for an epic adventure that takes players into the depths of the earth in search of dwarven treasure, or pits them against near impossible odds to save the city of Neverwinter.

Easy to use, The Foundry also features a dynamic rating system that allows players to rate and highlight the best player-designed adventures.”

For those unfamiliar with Neverwinter, it’s a major city in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. It’s basically the D&D equivilent of New York.

For a little background, Neverwinter takes place in the D&D 4th Edition lore. That means, to those of you not keeping track, that Neverwinter was destroyed by an event called the Spellplague. It’s also placed 100 years after Neverwinter Nights 2, so don’t except too many familiar faces.

They haven’t announced a release date or a price, but I’m for sure going to watching this one closely.

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Closing music – Beggin’ by Madcon