21 posts tagged “gaming”
I still love my old games. Not too long ago, I hooked up my Turbo Duo to play some Rondo of Blood on my regular TV. I don't know, I have the original, never bothered to play the PSP remake, even though I picked it up. Porting older games to newer systems has been nothing new, but when I talk about a remake of a game, I'm expecting more than a mere graphic and sound update. Fill some plot holes, at least the damaging ones. There's a fine line between a plot hole and just leaving something to the player's imagination. Do a re-translation, if needed. Symphony of the Night and Final Fantasy Tactics both have lines laughable like "Life is short! Bury! STASIS SWORD!" That "campy charm" is fun to laugh at now, but at the time of release, it was horrifying. Anyway, on to the list!
Final Fantasy VII. I loved and detested this game all at once. The background images were amazing but the character models looked like a pile of Tangrams. And at the time I played it, Cloud was more of an irritation than a suitable main character. Playing a game of "Chase Sephiroth" all over the place got old. And until Advent Children, I really wanted to punch Yuffie in the face.
With Advent Children, Crisis Core, Before Crisis, etc the Final Fantasy VII canon is larger than the one Shinra built. As much as the Materia system was cool and all, there were some cheesy exploits like taking 0 damage when defending, then as you defend, block attacks to another party member. These little things didn't break the game, but I'd take an FFVII that makes the most of all the wonderful, shiny CG of Advent Children along with the meatiest character development parts of all the FF7-set games outside of...well...FF7.
Phantasy Star IV. Sega made good with some remakes of Phantasy Stars I and II for the PS2 that have a retro vibe but make the games way more accessible. The difficulty curves have been ramped down from "every moment could be your last" to "Alys is a can of whoop-ass." Boss battles were still difficult, so don't let the ease of regular fights let you completely take your guard down. Of the traditional Phantasy Star games, IV is still the best of the bunch in my book. Well done story, characters and the best turn based combat system of its kind. Seriously, I enjoyed Etrian Odyssey, Lost Odyssey, etc, and all, but none of you thought to use PSIV's macro system. Shame on you.
Remake-wise, Phantasy Star IV would highly benefit from an expansion and re-translation. When I replayed the game about half a year ago, I was disappointed how short the game felt. That's always the case with good games, isn't it? Dungeons were maybe 3 floors, tops, side quests were easy "go buy this" or "kill that" quests. These ordinarily banal quest types were at least given amusing scenarios. If PSIV was to go the longer and more route, I'd also request that I be able to save my game anywhere. Otherwise, there's very little about PSIV's core that really requires updating.
Super Off Road & Motoroader. I remember playing the SNES version of this old game and loving the heck out of it. This racer shows you the entire course on one screen with an isometric view of the track and cars. The tracks may be cramped compared to other racing games, but the density of mayhem per pixelled tile is greater than just about any other driving game I can think of.
Motoroader is a Turbo Graphix 16-based battle racing game with a nice level of customization of weapons, etc. Throw the battle mechanics of Moto into Super Offroad's viewpoint and you'd have a delicious party racer that can be enjoyed locally or networked.
This game is screaming for online multiplayer. A graphical update that preserves the viewpoint and style would be welcomed. Physics, well, adjust them for fun if realism doesn't bring any.
Guardian Heroes. I think I'm effectively getting a remake of this game when Castle Crashers comes out, but hail to the original! This mult-path hybrid between Final Fight style Beat 'Em Up and RPG is and always will be a winner. Each player character has loads of highly animated special moves bursting with personality. The style honestly stands up to the test of time, but some monsters start looking fairly nasty when scaled up or down too far.
A lot of text in this game didn't get translated for the US release, notably when Kanon tells the story of how the Sky Spirits feared him, the origin of the conflict between the worlds and so forth. Wikipedia's article on Guardian Heroes states that Valgar was supposedly going to be a player character but got turned into a boss due to time constraints. If this is actually true(as he plays a very important role in the story) it'd be interesting to see what the plot would have been like had Treasure not had time going against them.
It's out. It reminds me of a mix of Sisters Mode from Portrait of Ruin and a bit of Trigger Heart Exelica. All in a 2D side scrolling platformer.
One of my favorite doujin game circles(or indie developers) Easy Game Station seems to have every game of theirs featured in a certain column on a Japanese site called 4Gamer.net.
I took a look at some of the other games they list there and holy smokes. If people were doing stuff this nicely here, they'd most likely have various companies knocking on their doors.
Muracha's Blog also makes for delicious reading too.
The relationship between game developers and professional reviewers has been a slightly...cantankerous one. A lot of us are financially hit hard by poor reviews. Even if the sales to review ratio has very little correlation in a strong number of cases, poor reviews can hurt, especially when the reasons for the poor score feel very out of touch.
Review What is There
Case: Award-winning BioShock actually lost points from some reviewers due to a lack of multiplayer.
Multiplayer is something that has to be designed and developed for from the start. There are plenty of games that shoehorn in multiplayer to appease the "what, no multiplayer?!" score ding, but then, the poor quality of the multiplayer gets slammed. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Gotta love it!
I'm not seeing people get on Team Fortress' case for a lack of a single player story-based campaign.
Limit the Comparisons
Standing on the shoulders of giants is hardly a new thing. Humanity has been building off the achievements of others since the dawn of time; game development is certainly no different. There are those who just blatantly rip off other games pretty much lock stock and barrel, but then there are those who see that others have paved the way for their own endeavors. The much lauded Resident Evil 4 has won all sorts of praise for it's over the shoulder camera during combat, fast paced and well executed gun play.
A number of games have taken that over shoulder camera during combat and added their own twist. The size of said twist will determine if the world judges these games as RE4 knockoffs or something that just uses the popular mechanic to make a new experience fun and exciting. Since developers are thinking this way, I'm not blasting reviewers for saying "Game X uses a play mechanic popularized by Smash Hit Game Y."
The irritation starts when the comparisons get out of hand. My case for this point is Dark Sector. Yes, this game borrows a lot of tried and true mechanics from other games, but it does a lot of things differently. Or at least, it executes most of what it borrows better than those it borrowed from. Also, it did borrow from a mix of games, not just a single title.
So, after all the talk of comparisons, ultimately, is the game fun?
Franchise Correlation(Limit Comparisons, part 2)
This is a no-brainer as to why the comparisons are made, but when reviews replace describing how something works with comparing to how it was in a previous game? You're certainly shutting out anyone who might use the most current release in the franchise as a gateway.
Case in point, Mana Khemia. I haven't played a Gust RPG since PS1/Saturn. I remember the basics of the game and most of what it's about. When a review talks about how the main system has changed or not changed over all the previous games in the series that I managed to miss...Well, thankfully a friend of mine picked this up and I was able to play it and form my own darn opinion.
So What Am I After?
In closing, I should list an example of a review I found helpful...
Rock Paper Shotgun absolutely dissected a Russian made PC First Person RPG called "Pathologic."
The reviewers' opinions about what works, what doesn't, what happens in the game and lets me ultimately decide whether or not that I want to try, buy or skip this game.
I've read a few reviews and it's funny how when the number scores and the words tell different stories. At least, the sections where reviewers are actually stopping to describe what goes on rather than their opinion of it. I am well aware of the fact that a review is an evaluation, which means the content will contain an opinion and not purely descriptive.
I guess it all boils down to a dissonance between what is described and what is being felt about the games.
Oh Xbox Live Arcade. You had so much promise which is now...I wouldn't say totally gone, but unless something drastic happens, all I can say is it *had* so much promise. I am an Xbox360 owner. I have purchased about 10 games on XBLA. I've tried about a dozen beyond that at the very least. I've used the Xbox Dashboard on a near daily basis so I know what I'm talking about when it comes to what I dislike about the whole deal. Heck, my Xbox 360 is idling RIGHT NOW AS I TYPE THIS!
Irritation 1: Interface
How many menus I need to go through to get to the games I want to play will get a rant on its own, but the Marketplace for games is terrible. I mean, just freaking terrible. I love how the highlighted color of the text you've selected becomes unreadable. I selected the Spotlight in the Marketplace and "Games" is in this warm grayish white color that's barely legible on the light vermilion background. It certainly doesn't stand out compared to "Top Games" and non-selected options.
I'm looking at a list of games. Full Game - DOOM is selected now. On the right side of the screen is just the name of the game, the rating and a bunch of text scrolling by faster than I can care to read it. Yeah, that really makes me interested. No, it doesn't! What about a few screen shots? A genre? As a consumer, I'm lazy and I'd like to see cool features outlined quickly. *Online Co-op. *Competitive Death Match. *OVER 9000 LEVELS!!!!!! *Smokin' 3D Graphics. You get the idea. I figure everything has been remastered in HD and 5.1 sound so stop wasting your electrons scrolling that.
Say, some of that stupid text actually got me to hit the A button and learn more. I see a link to the demo, full game and any extra crap gamer pictures or whatever if available. At least they finally list the price of the dang thing here. Oh. Do I get any new info on the game? NO! Same lame text from above. The only new info I see is the developer or publisher. Most likely the publisher.
I perused the video interface. Wow. The preview text is a lot shorter. Like, 1, or maybe 2 sentences! Plus I can see a 30 second video preview. I'd like to see a game trailer like that, rather than go to a separate trailers category. Videos get a "Top Videos" list but do games? NO! The games page gets advertisements for TV shows. I guess I see where the money is being made...Quality certify video: make a tester watch it once. Certify a game? You have to pour over the interface, check it for general stability bugs, etc. It's not nearly as easy. You need a tester that really knows what he or she is doing.
Irritation #2! COMMUNITY!
I have an inane confession to make. When cellular phone plans cost $50/month and you had 10 minutes of non-peak time, I used Xbox Live to voice chat with my best friend who was 500 miles away. It was win. People on XBL build clans, teams, you name it for the games they play.
Integrating the community into the marketplace was a revolution that Amazon.com gets a lot of credit for. They introduced a system where you could see the sales ranking, but the biggest boon was you saw what else purchasers of the book you were currently looking at also bought. Free advertising at its finest.
Here's another thing that bugs me. Release slots. Xbox Live Arcade only releases 2 new games a week. I understand this. They want these 2 games to have a full week of being in the spot light and have a chance to sell. Yeah, I know. It doesn't end up working that way due to the clunky interface burying the game. So there's 52 weeks in a year, 104 XBLA games released a year. A lot of developers are upset over how hard it is for them to get their game out.
What better way to get people involved and democratize some of these release lists! Every month, we players pick from a pool of whatever XBLA game has passed certification and is ready for release. Honestly, I'd like to vote for green lighting games too. Let's see here, a port of another game I don't care about or a cute happy co-op dungeon crawling RPG that has a good camera! *Votes* Heck, I'd vote several times a day and try to stuff the ballot box if I really saw a game concept that appealed to me.
I almost missed Omega Five because I saw it, I got excited about it, and then weeks passed before I came out and I forgot about it. Maybe a release reminder would have helped me there. Notify RandomEncounters whenever a game that's cool gets released. Or a 2D shooter. Or some other genre alert.
Irritation 3: Separate the Retro Stuff
They do this with Xbox Originals already. Most developers of original games don't want their products lumped next to buggy ports of 10+ year old console or arcade games.
Countless people I've spoken to want to see this happen. I understand that porting a console game to XBLA is a much bigger endeavor than barfing it up on Wii Virtual Console. Xbox ports get network play functionality, leader boards, achievements, tutorials, demos, etc. Still. Separate please. Thanks!
Irritation 4: Game Rep & User Reviews
I know this should have been in Irritation 2, but it's important enough to get its own section. I really think they're necessary. I don't know of any major American games website that doesn't let the users post their own reviews alongside their staff reviews. If storage and bandwidth is too much of a problem, let us give a game reputation like players get it. I can prefer or avoid a player. When I avoid the player, I can list a reason from obnoxious behavior to leaving early, etc. So let us rank games.
Conclusion
These are all changes I'd want to see just as a gamer. I'd heard about a vicious restructuring of royalties from some very irate XBLA developers, but I personally don't know and can't comment on that.
Job? Still looking. I did manage to score a few good leads at GDC, lost another lead(things seemed promising then I just stopped hearing from this one company.) I'm getting some game development out of my system. HUGE thanks to my friend Kyle for engineering and support. The game isn't quite playable yet but at least there's a source control system in place now.
Playing? The Japanese import of Etrian Odyssey 2(whether the game gets that name for a US release is beyond me.) I do love this quirky series of DS RPGs. They're markedly old school, but what intrigues me the most is how utterly well balanced they are. At one point or another, you are very likely to need just about every skill that the game boasts. In the first game, I actually had to stop and power level a new band of characters just to get past a very long series of battles. I had a party built to destroy opponents in a few turns but they completely lacked the ability to survive long fights. EO2 gets rid of a lot of the abilities that were "cheap" in the first game, makes a number of very useful abilities a lot easier to access. Players have a lot more freedom to tweak stats. I can now pile a bunch of points into agility for a typically slow character, allowing them to act first, etc.
Also playing through Lost Odyssey. What's with all these "Odyssey" games lately? It's...typical of a JRPG. Unfortunately, I think I've got a great big sign on my back that says "SUCKER" that only Japanese RPG companies can see. Not that I disdain Western ones(I am very impressed with Mass Effect, I might add.) I guess JRPGs are my equivalent of reading celebrity tabloid magazines. At least, very typical games like LO feel that way. There's plenty of JRPG gold that shouldn't ever be lumped with anything lesser. Or I'm just playing through it to pass the time until Tales of Vesperia or something really good comes my way.
Audio Surf. That Romanian disco track that we all know as the Numa Numa song is one heck of a stage! I've been sticking to Mono Pro(occasionally Ninja) and I still need to futz aroudn with the other play modes.
When I get money again, I'm picking up Bully for 360. And Echochrome for PSP.
I also have a strange bout of guilt. I know a game reviewer. Said reviewer had a game that wasn't their cup of tea. However, it was mine. After much frustration of being unable to pass this one mission, I was given the controls. The mission was hard, and I failed quite a few times. Later, I checked the game's official site. It touted some game mechanics that would make the player's characters more powerful. Possibly enough so to pass the mission. If this feature is so widely touted, why wasn't the reviewer able to pull it off? They sounded like they'd never heard of the mechanic.
To be fair, I wonder how this game taught the reviewer to use this powerful mechanic. If the game did at all. Then again, I skipped the Ring tutorial in Lost Odyssey. BIG mistake, given how integral they are to game play and doing well in battles.
This game is a blast! It's a fun, musical twitch game. It's really surprising to see who else plays through the music I have as well. And I mean, I've got some obscure stuff:
Hito Ookami's Hyper Eurobeat Arrangement of Battle 2 from Romancing Saga.
Running Hell from Cave Story.
Final Fantasy VII Boss Theme.
Opus Xero's remix of The Mighty Obstacle from Ys VI: Ark of Napishtim.
Big congratulations to the fine trio at Easy Game Station on their newest release. Recettear was released at Comic Market for those lucky enough to go to the event but today they released it at a number of well known doujin shops for those of us who couldn't get to Tokyo on Christmas weekend to brave the massive waves of nerdy-types. I've been to a Comic Market and it was so crowded, I got crowd surfed just trying to get to some stairs on the way from the West Halls to the East. Tokyo Big Site has to be one of the largest convention areas I've ever seen and Comic Market makes TBS burst at the seams. I know I could have gotten this game via torrent months ago, but I look forward to some of my favorite retailers hooking me up with a legitimate copy. Seriously, EGS. Look into selling your games on Steam. You guys could even make Valve quake in it's boots for a bit, no pun intended.
Yeah, I know, Super Smash Brothers Brawl is also out, but seeing how I doubt I'd have people over to enjoy local multiplayer which has always been SSB's strong point, I'm paying visits to friends who are raving mad for this game. Especially since they've got bigger entertainment rooms and nicer TVs. The single player game doesn't come close to teaching you how to be really good at that game. You can button mash your way through story but if you even think about trying that "tactic" against a seasoned pro, don't count on landing a single hit. Almost all of the friends I'd go play the game with are the "seasoned pro" type, not looking for the equivalent of Mario Party, The Fighting Game.
The iPhone/iPod Touch SDK is out! I'm still looking for info on touch sensitivity and tilt accuracy that could help me come up with a design for a platform specific game. Hardware horsepower-wise, the platform veers on the PSP's specs. One fellow on a forum said:
"Think of a Dreamcast with 8X the RAM, 2X the CPU, and a generation newer graphics chip pushing 1/4 the pixels."
Dreamcast. That console has some games with absolutely stunning graphics(Soul Calibur, Grandia 2) and now that power is in a wee little device along with a trio of accelerometers that work like Sony's SIXAXIS controller.
Oh, the possibilities....
To Do: Brush up resume, register for Game Developers Conference and so forth.
I was recently contracted to play through a game. I am under an NDA so no, I won't divulge any identifiable details about the game in question whatsoever.
I wanted to get through the game as quickly as possible. I wasn't there for the game itself, I had ulterior motives. The game did feature leveling up your character. I found myself running through levels, not fighting too terribly often then occasionally getting into trouble when going up against the boss. I'd go back to older areas where enemies were easier to kill to grind and build up my persona.
Then, I started to wonder. Why am I doing this? Why am I avoiding encounters that would give me a chance at much needed experience during the actual levels, only to begrudgingly grind elsewhere? In the case of this particular game, it doesn't abide by standard RPG rules of letting you enjoy your level ups as soon as you get them. You only enjoyed the fruits of your labor after successfully completing an area. So of course I go back to easy areas, unless I do something really foolish, I'm absolutely positive I will win and gain the ability to power up my character.
I realize, though, this is by far not the only game I've avoided encounters like mad. I'm an RPG enthusiast, Unless I've got some insatiable urge to utterly dominate the ins and outs of a certain game, I have a tendency to go through under-leveled. This is true for games whose combat I've enjoyed. If a player hates the game, then
What is with under-leveling and why should it matter? Under-leveling is a balance issue. A very important balance issue, especially for RPGs. Chances are, if a gamer goes to an encounter and gets horribly beaten down multiple times, their reaction may not be to go level up and try again but to curse the programmers for making a game too hard. Yes, I know, it's not the programmers fault, but I've seen a lot of rants and vitriol directed at programmers.
Towards the end of the game I was playing-as well as some other RPGs- I've hit a lot of "forced encounters." Sub-bosses/Mini-bosses you have to beat in order to keep going through the final dungeon. These can be particularly devastating for the under-leveling gamer. I never finished Final Fantasy IX off my own personal save file because of this. I didn't run away from any enounters, but I didn't do a lot of the "extra curricular leveling" activities. I did a few side quests that were readily accessible to me but I didn't seek out certain high powered items that would have both leveled my characters on top of giving me a special move with astonishing power. Power that usually breaks the balance, but you spent all that time chasing the item instead of leveling up so it's essentially the same result. Only, with brighter, bigger fireworks.
Well...I'm still not sure why I do the whole under leveling thing...I'll have to give it a bit more contemplation.
I do love my friends who can buy just about every new game as it comes out. They're rockin' people, have fuzzy cats and the most amazing gaming rig ever. Complete with +10 Couch of Comfinesses.
At their place, I was able to try some games I'd been curious about as a designer as well as games that piqued my crazy gaming intrigue.
-Zack and Wiki(Wii)
This looked like it made very good use of the Wii Remote and had interesting puzzles to solve.
In concept, anyways. Said friend of mine I visited has been a programmer on a Wii game. There's a lot of perception about what the Wii Remote is capable of doing that his experience suggests otherwise.
We went through the first area most of the first area, without even stopping to look anything up on GameFaqs, as tempting as it got at times. Wiki the flying monkey has some neat abilities that make for interesting situations. He can turn enemies into items!
You really do have to think about a lot of aspects of what goes on in the game world to solve puzzles, and the game makes you think outside of boxes it has you thinking inside in the first place. This isn't completely a brain game, as there are portions when reflexes really do matter. You have an extremely short amount of time to react in a few situations which will no doubt, anger players.
This game also loves to throw brutal, wretched curve balls at you that you have absolutely no way of anticipating. After getting one of these sucker punches to the gut when almost beating the first boss, Zack and Wiki's quest ended forever.
Wii Remote Use:
The game tells you how you should hold and move the remote. Even then, it's so insanely sensitive that you could hold the remote perfectly still when the game says STOP and it twitches anyway. There is a horrific bell ringing mini game that is immensely finicky about timing but doesn't account for any sort of delay and...ugh.
Pushing the remote forward and turning it as if it was a key in my hand was a nice touch on multiple occasions, I needed to turn the remote more than my arm was realistically capable of turning. I just roll it along the table whenever I need to open a key now.
The remote's censors are very crude. I think the engineering team of Zack and WIki understood this, hence the game SHOWS you how they want you to hold the remote. Even then, this is just...nonsense.
-Mass Effect(360)
This was the game I was interested as a gamer. Oh Bioware, you have made up for the sin that was Jade Empire. What a brilliantly crafted world and they build it, your character's story and other NPCs' personalities in so many angles it amazes.
The controls are a bit complex in a sense that every single button does something different. Once I got the buttons down, it wasn't so hard to get into. Having played RE4 and a number of other 3rd person shooters plus Phantasy Star Online, a shooting oriented sci-fi RPG with good cover integration was easy to catch onto.
The dialog so far has all been well worth paying attention to, something I've rarely done in other RPGs.
This game makes me happy!
-Super Mario Galaxy(Wii)
Which way is up? Seriously! This game is a 2D platformer on a Mobius strip! The control is responsive and doesn't feel sensitive to stupid levels like Zack and Wiki did. It helps that Super Mario Galaxy doesn't try to do as much with the Wii Remote either. Furthermore, if you are supposed to do something a little unusual, the game doesn't tell you that by killing you in some out of the blue event Deux Ex Machina-ing your doom.
You've got to roam around and talk to these Luma critters and this Rosalinde gal. Um, this is not Mass Effect. I just need to know where to go next to jump around, collect star bits and spin attack stuff. I know what the story of Mario is: go rescue Princess Peach. Super Mario 3 did a fine job of letting me hop from world to world with a minimum of text to eye-roll over.
