The Gunstringer: Proving Kinect May Not Be Useless After All

Crossposted and commissioned by Gaming Blend

Earlier this week marked the release of The Gunstringer, the first Kinect title from studio Twisted Pixel. The Austin-based company was looking to create a game that went past the casual nature of most Kinect titles and appeal more to the core players. As someone who has generally been unimpressed with how games have been using this motion technology, I was curious to see if one could actually break out of the box and hold my interest longer than five minutes. So did it? Let's break it down.

The basic concept of The Gunstringer is that we are participating in a puppet show starring the titular marionette with no name. The game opens following a woman into Austin's Paramount Theater as she takes her seat in a packed audience. The camera takes us back stage, where we see the actual, wooden puppet and follow it and its puppeteer through the hustle and bustle of opening night, and up on to the stage for the start of the game. From then on, there are occasional cuts to reaction shots of the audience to remind us where we are and provide a bit of comedy. Some have complained that this reminder completely takes them out of the game, but it didn't bother me in the slightest.

This charming concept lends itself extremely well to the Kinect because of how it figures in to gameplay. You use your left hand as if you were holding a marionette, lifting it to make the Gunstringer jump and moving it from side to side to make the Gunstringer, well, move from side to side. You use your right hand to engage in combat, whether it be with a gun, sword, flame thrower or fist. Knowing that you are "controlling a puppet" makes the idea of holding your hands out for 4 hours much more tolerable. The mere fact that logic is backing up the gameplay goes a loooong way.

Full review after the jump



The tale being played out in this puppet show you are controlling is one of the classic Western variety. The Gunstringer used to be a part of a posse. The posse betrayed him. Now he is taking his revenge, going after them one by one. This is divided into a prologue, four "plays", each with four "acts" and a boss battle, and an epilogue. Each "play" has a different theme - the Old West (posse villain = big oil baron), the New Orleans Bayou (posse villain = brothel madam), the East (posse villain = elderly ninja), and the Land of the Dead (posse villain = voodoo priestess). Each section takes roughly 45 minutes, but be warned, 45 minutes is a long time to continuously move your right arm in what can only be referred to as a "shooting motion". I had Gunstringer elbow after a mere hour. To continue, I had to both enlist the help of someone else for co-op play *and* throw an ice pack on my elbow. Note: I'm a healthy, fit 25 year old. Effing Kinect.

Even though the mimed act of shooting a gun can get painful, it was my favorite mechanic of the game. You move your hand over a total of six targets at a time, then pull your arm back, as if to fire, then you watch all six targets go down in one fell swoop. You really feel the force behind the shots you take. Which is why it was a damn shame when the physical act of doing it began to hurt too much to go on. I highly recommend taking your time with this game, as with *any* Kinect title. Elbow fatigue is infinitely more unpleasant than thumb fatigue.

Luckily, a Player Two came to the rescue. The co-op in this game is an interesting cat, equal parts necessary and pointless, exciting and boring. This is because the only function player two can serve is to assist in shooting. This is great on the one hand, because shooting is hands down the most fun aspect of the game, and not having to worry about moving around and dodging boulders, trees, bombs, sheep, walls, spikes, death (seriously, why the hell is there so much crap to dodge constantly), all you have to focus on is aiming and shooting. But this is simultaneously bad because it means when *anything* else is going on, such as punching (the focus of a few "acts") or the endless levels that involve nothing but jumping and dodging, player two just stands around, bored. But, as I said earlier, my elbow simply said no at a certain point, so having someone to focus on the shooting while I just worried about the Gunstringer's movement was essential to my enjoyment of the game. And as long as your player one stays the same, you can switch different friends in and out as player two.

Normally, one of my main frustrations with Kinect games is how inaccurate they can be, being either way too sensitive to movement, or not able to pick up on movement nearly fast enough. But the game engine for The Gunstringer all but eliminated that concern. Sure, once or twice the undead cowboy didn't jump when I lifted my hand, but for the most part, he did exactly what I wanted him to. Pro tip: When dodging things aiming to kill you, keep an eye on the wooden control handle where the Gunstringer's strings come from, as opposed to keeping an eye on the Gunstringer himself. Focusing on the location of the handle will help you navigate more smoothly.

Unfortunately, no amount of precise movement could help the "jump and dodge" levels from feeling repetitive and shoehorned in to an otherwise fluidly fun game. These frustrating levels seem like they only exist because they feature something the Kinect can do, as opposed to providing a fresh new angle to the story or gameplay. The variations I *did* enjoy were when the act of "pulling the trigger" was eliminated and you simply held your hand over what you wanted to shoot while the Gunstringer fired madly away, and the more classic arcade style of play, where you didn't have to worry about movement at all, as the screen moved for you, and you only had to wait for enemies to pop up so you could shoot them down.

But aside from certain frustrating elements (And to be honest, the "jump and dodge" element to video games always bothers me. Let me shoot something, come on.) and my Gunstringer elbow, the gameplay was a huge step up for Kinect. I felt in control, I felt powerful, and I felt the need to keep coming back, to see if I could do better.

One of my favorite elements to the game was the ever important (especially for any game that bridges on the redundant) death-not-meaning-you-must-replay. If you die, you simply select continue and pick up right where you left off. You lose all your points from that level as punishment, but that is a punishment I would GLADLY take over having to replay a level I didn't get through the first time. I have mentioned how much I hate jumping and dodging, right? I was very grateful for this element - many points to the game developers for knowing not to push their luck. They also get points for allowing the shooting of civilians to be counted toward your score, not against it. Just a side note.

The story and elements were surprisingly strong as well. Narrated by voice actor R. Bruce Elliot in an exaggerated Western style, The Gunstringer struck me as the perfect gaming companion piece to the surreal animated film Rango, another subversive 2011 spin on Western tropes. The humor in The Gunstringer is exceedingly bizarre, some of it way off the mark, some of it chuckle-worthy (at one point a bilboard within the game reads "All your land are belong to us"), all of it in weirdo territory. Some of this is explained when all of a sudden quotes from Troma's Lloyd Kaufman start popping up. Soon thereafter, it becomes very clear that these game developers have a soft spot for Troma (an entire subplot of the Bayou level involves a lumberjack-alligator love child), but just how much of an influence Troma had on this project would give away something I'd like you to discover for yourselves.

The design too, is top notch. Since this world is one of a puppet on stage, the other characters and items are created to look handmade as well, with stuffed enemies, cattle made of beer cans, push pins, paper dolls, card board cut outs and more. And every so often a hand comes down from the sky to manipulate something on the screen, either helping or hurting the Gunstringer in his journey. He becomes increasingly aware of this mysterious hand, which leads to a fantastically meta ending that must be seen to be believed. It had our whole participating group laughing out loud. The ending alone is almost worth the entire price of the game.

Additionally, The Gunstringer is rather fleshed out for a Kinect title. I'm not used to multiple menus and options, 50 potential achievements, DLC, "Hardcore Mode" and more. There are even optional commentary tracks you can unlock if you play enough of the game, that you can choose to listen to as you replay levels.

Overall, The Gunstringer is easily one of the most original, seamless and entertaining uses of the Kinect technology to date. The whole thing only took a few hours to play, in which 34 achievements were unlocked fairly naturally (leaving 16 slightly more challenging ones to go back and conquer if I ever felt the need) and I had a pretty damn good time doing it. Throw in the free DLC and code for Fruit Ninja, and it's not a bad buy. If you own a Kinect, here's your chance to own a game you may actually play. Fingers crossed other studios developing games for Kinect step it up the way Twisted Pixel has. Lionhead and Fable: The Journey, I'm looking at you. Don't let me down.

Players: 1-2
Platform(s): Xbox 360
Developer: Twisted Pixel Games
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
ESRB: Teen
Rating: B+

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Dragon Age 2: The Mass Effectening

AKA Dragon Age 2: The Consolizationing. Or Dragon Age 2: The Not Quite As Engrossing As Dragon Age: Origins And Not Quite As Cinematic As Mass Effect 2 But Still Quite A Fun Gamening. It has, as you can plainly see, many titles. My personal favorite is Dragon Age 2: Templar Boogaloo.


The non-spoilery rundown is as follows: You play Hawke, the young refugee from Lothering, who travels from Ferelden to the Free Marches city of Kirkwall in search of an ancestral home to reclaim. You play through the next decade of Hawke's life as he or she rises from impoverished nothing to become hailed as the Champion of Kirkwall. You make friends, you make enemies, you make money, you make corpses- typical fair for any adventurer, and in the end, you make some very big choices that have huge ramifications on the lives of the people of the Free Marches and, potentially, the world.

The game bears a passing familiarity if the only Bioware title you've played is Dragon Age: Origins. It kind of looks the same, sort of. It's much prettier- the characters are rendered in better detail and are largely more attractive (Highlite the text for a spoiler: Until you see Alistair in one of his cameos and go WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?! NOT THE FACE. NOT HIS BEAUTIFUL FACE. The same goes for Zevran. Somehow, the characters from DA:O are not nearly as good looking as they were. It positively boggles the mind.) Their hair sways almost naturally as they talk or fight. It's quite charming. The environments bear a lot of the same structuring as DA:O, but are more lush, are fuller and more detailed, particularly the coasts and mountains. There are far, far fewer locals to visit, however, and this is disappointing. We finally see the world outside Ferelden (not counting the locations visited in the expansions for Origins), and find ourselves contained to one very small part of it. We have only one city to explore, one and sort of a half mountains, and one seaside. When new quests arrive, they only occur in the same recycled hotspots of each map. In terms of scale, DA2 is dwarfed by DA:O.


Despite it's uncanny, permeating and intentional resemblance to Bioware's other franchise, DA2 is similarly anemic in scope when compared to Mass Effect 2, the game on which DA2's conversation and decision-making mechanisms are based. The combat is pulled back enough to allow you to manage your entire group, not as much as in DA:O and is actually much more fun to play on a console than the first installment. In appearance and gameplay, DA2 is a very solid bastardization, taking what ostensibly should have been the best parts of Origins and ME2 and then fundamentally missing the point.

There are many places in which Dragon Age 2 succeeds. The characters are colorful and interesting, the combat is fluid, the decisions are hard, it's just that none of them reach the standard set in the two games that influenced DA2 the most. The character voicing is wonderful: Jo Wyatt moves seamlessly but distinctively through the noble, sarcastic and hard ass options, always managing to sound like the same character despite the extremes in the choices of response. Nicholas Boulton, for all that I'm only four hours into my dude!Hawke playthrough, seems so far similarly adept at managing this balance in the character. He has a nice voice, and unlike ME2, I don't feel obligated to make him a douche bag. Side note: If you haven't played ME2, do so, and play as dude!Shep, and make him as mean as possible, because nothing but hilarity will ensue. Howden, Roth, Emery, Kruger, Newman and Myles all deliver well nuanced performances as your hero's traveling ensemble, and their banter is interesting and human, but the truly stand-out performance of DA2- as Steve Valentine (Alistair) was of DA:O and Michael Beattie (Mordin Solus) was of ME2,  is Brian Bloom as Varric Tethras. Regardless of who you decide to romance in the game, Varric will probably be the one relationship you care about the most. Roguish, charming, mercenary, laconic, sharp- Varric not only has one of the coolest weapons of the game, but is by far the best developed of the companions. He is also your questionably-reliable narrator.


Dragon Age 2 is a story being told. Varric, being interrogated by an operative of the Chantry, is recounting the tale of the Champion's involvement in the plot's main event. This leads to some truly wonderful moments, particularly when Varric lies. It's a device that works tremendously well for the story, and a unique take on linear gameplay, especially when massive time-jumps are involved, that I quite liked and that Bioware really has a knack for (see also: the opening act of ME2).



In so far as Romancing goes, your options are automatically doubled as most of your companions swing both ways. Very cool. I found the lack of interaction opportunities a little vexing, though. There was always something both fun and reassuring in the fact that at any point during our travels, my Grey Warden could turn to any companion and have a conversation. In fact, the player feels encouraged to do so throughout the course of Origins, because initiating random conversations, particularly in conjunction with gift giving, frequently led to fantastically written exchanges that you had no prompting at all to experience. It felt very organic, and was extremely cool. Being instructed by the game to talk to your fellows makes it feel like a mission, and this is mostly because one is usually attached to any chat you may have. I also miss being approached out of the blue by a companion with an issue or a question. Sometimes they'll show up at your house to give you a quest- your home and theirs having replaced a 'camp' where everyone congregates- but not often. The crew in ME2 felt more disparate, and each individual crew member was not so predictable or one-note as the DA2 companions are. This is not a comment on the performances, bear in mind, but the way the characters are written. They are cool and they are interesting, but not as cool or interesting as those in ME2. They are idiosyncratic and they are human, but not half so much as the characters in DA:O.  This seems to be the ultimate trend of Dragon Age 2- the whole is not necessarily greater than the sum of its parts, but every component is somehow lacking when held up against its predecessors.



In ME2, I didn't mourn the random conversations that made DA:O so real and so engrossing. The game works seamlessly, and I didn't find any one part lacking, although during a second playthrough the planet probing aspect was tedious; In DA:O, I didn't mind not having a voiced main character, because the dialogue trees were so extensive and the performances by the companions so complete; and in both games, the mission was so grand, the tasks so epic, the world so vast that at times I felt overwhelmed by possibility, but never impatient- except in combat. Difficult fights in DA:O were messy and repetitive, and this has been vastly improved for console users in DA2, though I hear the PC gamers' experience has been less thrilling. As for everything else, DA2 just doesn't quite hit the mark.


Now, it can be argued that DA2 is a much more personal game. You're following one person's rise and possible fall in one city. Much like I think the Iron Man movies showed, a hero's journey can be personal and the stakes don't have to be world endingly high for the story to be grand and feel important. DA2's sort of doesn't, though, and at the end of the game I was left with the feeling that the choices I had made didn't really affect the outcome that much- everything is very binary in DA2. You are for the mages, or you are for the templars, there is no middle ground. At every major plot point, all the little things you thought you were doing, all the times you tried to be fair and balanced, go out the window and you're left with a black or white decision to make. So what's the point of all the little decisions in between? The overall experience just wasn't as fulfilling. This has nothing to do with any attempt on my part to replace human relationships or success in my career with video games. Shut up.

Overall, the game is very pretty and very fun, but fails to surpass what came before.


Now for the spoilertastic fangirly bits. You can stop reading now, I'll just be over here freaking out.

(More after the jump)





The fanservice in act three of this game is absolutely ridiculous. Out of the woodwork comes Leliana, Zevran, and Alistair. Oddly, they are not as attractive as they were in the first game. Alistair looks bland and puffy, and HIS HAIR ISN'T THE SAME WHY. WHY IS THE HAIR NOT EXACTLY THE SAME IT JUST LOOKS DIFFERENT WHY. DO NOT WANT. Zevran's lovely, fine boned features do not mesh well with the new Elf design, which features the nose so Roman it's practically an aqueduct. Leliana looks okay, but her lips aren't as pouty and her eyes aren't as bright. It's just sort of strange. Smaller characters from Origins reappear, also, like Cullen. Last seen being outraged at my Grey Warden's decision to spare the Ferelden Circle of Magi, he is now the right-hand templar of Knight-Commander Meredith, who is an unadulterated bitch. Still, Cullen is sort of a long-suffering puppy, and it was nice to see the ginger bastard again. The characters I missed the most, of course, were Oghren (who would not approve in the slightest of slick surface-dwarf Varric, and also- HOW did Bioware manage to make a game without Steve Blum in it? I'm baffled.), Shale and Sten. Sten, the Qunari with a heart of gold. Or something. Mark Hildreth's performance of Sten was more moving than any of the Qunari voices in DA2, but I think that has more to do with the race's activities and relationship to the Champion. If you ever read this, I love you, Mark, and whatever the whining otaku said, I thought your Heero Yuy was excellent. Man, I'm a dork.



There is some seriously dark stuff in DA2. In Origins, I was not infrequently taken aback by the choices presented me: killing a small child, manipulating my fiance into sleeping with a witch so she would conceive a demon baby, aiding and abetting despots. Whatevs. By far the most unnerving creature in Origins was, of course, the Brood Mother. The Brood Mother is what the darkspawn turn women into. They taint the women with their blood, then force feed her people until she becomes a giant grotesque darkspawn breeding creature. It is Nightmare Fuel of the very Highest Octane. Similarly, the characters have dark pasts that involve serious emotional abuse, physical abuse, enslavement, etcetera, but everything is couched in terms vague enough to be merely unsettling and not necessarily evocative of a visceral response. In DA2, when Anders just comes right on out with the information that templars raping circle mages is not uncommon, or when Fenris talks about his past as a slave and life under the magisters, it's a bit shocking.  There is a lot of very disturbing sexual content that you never see, but is most certainly there. The violence level is extremely high, not just because the blood spatter is as unlikely as ever, but because terrible things are done to people who do not deserve them and cannot defend themselves, and the repercussions are dire. Kirkwall is not a nice place, and the people in it are not, for the most part, lawful good. If they think they are, watch out, because they might be a serial killer.


No, actually.


Let's talk about the Qunari mage. In a truly grotesque moment, the player is shown what the Qunari does to their magi: they bind and shackle them, weld iron masks to their heads, and sew their mouths shut. Magic is chaos and at odds with the Qun. They are leashed like dogs and used like tools, but then, all Qunari at tools of the Qun. They may choose to be, which is obedience to the Qun, or they may choose NOT to be, which means they will be exterminated. After quite the ordeal to get a Qun mage safely out of Kirkwall, he chooses- instead of living a life as an exile of the Qun- to obey the will of the Qun and immolate himself. Not particularly quickly. It is horrific. And amazing.


Talking about horrific and amazing, let's talk about the end of the game. THE VERY END OF THE GAME. THE LAST THING THAT HAPPENS IN IT. PLEASE STOP READING IF YOU HAVEN'T PLAYED IT YET.

So, having quite liked Anders in Awakening and finding his newly tortured and Justified soul (haha) to be rather endearing, my Champion chose Anders to become romantically involved in. We were all kinds of in love, everything was going swell- until he started acting like a sketchy bitch, asking me to distract high ranking members of the church while he went a-skulking about, donning black robes and being suddenly distant and not at all affectionate. What the hell is this?


Oh, it's him bombing a church like a damn terrorist. Fantastic.  The magnitude of what Anders does is huge, and automatically belittles everything that happened in the game before it, because nothing you do can prevent it from happening. Now, this makes sense from the point of view of the narration: these events have already happened, they are simply being told and you are, essentially, acting out the telling. But nothing else you do in the game feels as though it has any real significance in the face of this event. The Arashok must be defeated, the elves are going to get wiped out, your sibling is going to either confiscated by the Chantry or sentenced to death by the Dark Spawn. There's no feeling of possibility spiraling outward from your character like in DA:O and ME2. I just wish the game had felt like more. All this said, I really, really enjoyed my time with it. I got invested and had emotional responses, I admired the turns that companions' stories took and the glimpses of the Chantry and the Qunari we were offered. The overall plot was interesting, but it accelerated too quickly into something so huge at the end, I honestly didn't know what I'd been spending my time doing for the last forty hours.


Will play again, and enjoy again. but definitely not as many times as I did Origins. I desperately hope that the next installment of Dragon Age is followed by a colon and a word instead of a number, and that they apply a lot of the ME2 mechanisms that did work to the scope and character depth of DA:O to put the player back in Ferelden, continuing on their Grey Warden's path (if they're not dead, I mean.). Fingers crossed for a trip to Weisshaupt and a final showdown with one or more witch and her demon spawn. And some freaking Griffins.


Dragon Age: The Griffoning. I'm in.

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Thoughts From a Girl Gamer - Prototype [By Konoko Bailey]

Not going to lie. At first I was NOT a fan! The dialogue seemed sub par, the cut scenes made me feel like I was being brain washed, the lighting is often too dark ,making you miss out on seeing some great kills. But a co-worker of mine insisted that I continue…so I did. Turns out the game isn’t half bad. Once your earn enough points to fully upgrade Alex’s abilities, the game takes on a new face. But let’s just start at the beginning…

Prototype is an action adventure game developed by Radical Entertainment and published by Activision. Rated M17+ for it blood/gore, foul language, and inappropriate conduct. ;)

The game starts off with a cut scene of NY (Canal and Broadway to be specific). We quickly learn that 3 weeks ago a virus was let loose in Pen Station. Your character, Alex Mercer, woke up in a morgue with super human strength and abilities of unknown origins. There is a rapid spreading virus genetically altering humans into mega beast of all sorts. The military is trying to contain it the problem. And by “contain” of course I mean shooting to kill. Alex is caught somewhere in the middle, and often fights on both sides of this war. As NY descends in to chaos Alex searches for the truth...

Manhattan as we learned from “I am Legion” is a great place for an outbreak to occur. When all hell breaks loose just blow up the bridges and tunnel and it can all be contain! Presuming the infected don’t know how to use a boat of course. And if push comes to shove blow up the whole island….or want did I give away the ending of the game? Not quite, but you get my point. The game is hella predictable. Spoiler alert - The good guys are the bad guys, and the bad guys are the good guys. You of course find all this out through the progression of the game.

The dialogue gets a gentlemen’s “C”. I wanted it to be so much better, but it often fell short, and honestly could have just replaced words with grunting and inappropriate hand jesters.

More reviewing after the jump

As is the case with most games the animated cut scenes look pretty great, but when it comes to game play it never balances out. Oddly enough there were plenty of live action cut scenes thrown in the mix. Not sure what the artistic intent was there. Maybe to make the possibility of such a super human viral out break seem just a smidgen closer to realty? Who knows, I just found it odd. (Though the editing was done quite well).

There were several moments (usually after learning a new move) that I had to give Radical Entertainment their just due. Once sup-ed up, the kills are pretty great! Particularly because whenever you execute an ultimate move the camera pulls back for a swinging wide angle shot of you and the damage you create. :)

The controls vary from super simply, to just plain annoying. It all depends on what you're particular upgrades you're interested in. What I did enjoy is, is the fact that you don't have to master every move to beat the game. You can choose only to up grade the ones you enjoy the most. And there are so many options, you are bound to find at least a hand full of moves you'll find useful.

Top 3 annoying things:

-The 2nd to last boss is harder to beat than the final one. This disappointed me.

-Finding the orbs is ridiculous b/c they don't show up on your Heads Up Display (HUD), so unless you're up close on one, you have no clue in all of NY where they are.

-This game fell short of satisfying the visual expectation of NY's geography. Yes the streets and avenues were accurate, central park, the yellow taxi cabs, and massive traffic jams screamed New York City...but not much else. Where are the hot dog/ falafel carts...the store fronts...all the things that help make NY a living breathing city? Instead we were provided with stocky, boxy landscape, and over duplicated civilians.

Top 3 awesome things:

-Vertical surfing!!

-Jacking helicopters.

-Cannonballing off tall buildings. I swear the first few times you jump, you get that vertigo/motion sickness/ queezy feeling. A-MAZING

Things to know:

-The web of intrigue has nothing to do with your ability to beat the game. It was a cool idea, but isn't necessary. There are times when you're in the middle of a battle and a person of interest pops up. There were even a few times when the person I needed to absorb, got caught in the cross fire and died before I could get my tentacles on them.

-Apparently tanks can’t go into water.

-The flying kick is the best move when you’re low on health.

-Always make sure you start a new mission with full health. Some of them don’t have you hit the ground running. There are always New Yorkers around, so it shouldn't be a problem.

Over all I'd give this game a 6.5 out of 10. This is a game you buy used from Game Stop, beat it in 3 to 4 days (or less depending on how much time you've got on your hands) and then return it so you can get something you really want.

PLEASE BE AWARE: There are some graphic scenes in this clip. Viewer discretion is advised.

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