Random Encounters in Imaginary Realms

The Bulletproof Got Shot; Boom Blox's Market Failure

nobody@vox.com(Random Encounters) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 15:15:02 -0700

With the 10 million Nintendo Wii systems out there, I was incredibly shocked when Boom Blox only moved 60,000 units since release. It looks like it's doing better internationally, but even then, it isn't the big smash hit that I'm sure a lot of people were expecting it to be.

Boom Blox has some things going for it that would help it sell in the casual market:

It's a fun game! I tried it briefly and it is very friendly. The time from putting the disk in to having fun is almost instantaneous!
Steven Spielberg branding.

Well, I hate to say it, but that's about it. And the list of what I think went wrong is pretty long.

The packaging design is a disaster. For starters, Steven Spielberg's name is barely legible.
The image on the package itself looks cheap, it doesn't really tell anything about the game. I'm going to blow up boxy animals? Cruelty to boxy animals?
Where were they advertising? Brain Age advertised in Time Magazine. I heard a Brain Age ad on KGO Radio when it was released ages go. Had I been in charge of where advertising dollars go, I certainly would have put some money aside for radio and national newspaper ads.
Name of the Game? Blocks are a kid's toy, and the packaging doesn't help.
Price Point is a possibility; $50 is hardly an "impulse buy" compared to other games.

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What's changed?

nobody@vox.com(Random Encounters) — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 15:57:11 -0700

So, a friend of mine messages me that May NPD numbers are out. I do a web search and the top result ends up being May 2007. Oops...Well, compare that to May 2008 and it's easy to be confused.

Pokemon Diamond—DS—Nintendo
Mario Party 8—Wii—Nintendo
Spider-Man 3—PS2—Activision
Pokemon Pearl—DS—Nintendo
Wii Play w/remote—Wii—Nintendo
Forza Motorsport 2—Xbox 360—Microsoft
Guitar Hero II w/guitar—Xbox 360—Activision
Spider-Man 3—Xbox 360—Activision
Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars—Xbox 360—Electronic Arts
Guitar Hero II w/guitar—PS2—Activision

360 GRAND THEFT AUTO IV TAKE 2 INTERACTIVE (CORP) APR 2008 1 871.3K
WII MARIO KART W/ WHEEL NINTENDO OF AMERICA APR 2008 2 787.4K
WII FIT W/ BALANCE BOARD NINTENDO OF AMERICA MAY 2008 3 687.7K
PS3 GRAND THEFT AUTO IV TAKE 2 INTERACTIVE (CORP) APR 2008 4 442.9K
WII PLAY W/ REMOTE NINTENDO OF AMERICA FEB 2007 5 294.6K
WII SUPER SMASH BROS: BRAWL NINTENDO OF AMERICA MAR 2008 6 171.1K
PS2 IRON MAN SEGA OF AMERICA APR 2008 7 130.6K
WII GUITAR HERO III: LEGENDS OF ROCK W/ WIREACTIVISION (CORP) OCT 2007 8 116.8K
NDS POKEMON MYSTERY DUNGEON: EXPLORERS OF DARKNESS NOA APR 2008 9 107K
NDS POKEMON MYSTERY DUNGEON: EXPLORERS OF TIME NOA APR 2008 10 102K

Guess which is which....

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Results of a Doujin Game Crawl, etc.

nobody@vox.com(Random Encounters) — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 18:19:46 -0700

Been futzing around with some doujin game demos lately.

Tearkiss -Princess Shade- is a hybrid action RPG with a few Shmup elements thrown in. It's shareware and I'm hoping that one of many doujin game dealers that ships to the US will have it.

The Ruins Of The Lost Kingdom is a freeware 3D action RPG that looks really well done. There's an offline version full of storyline sequences and an online version that lets you run around and whack enemies with a friend. Seriously, it's amazing that it's absolutely free of charge.

Future Pinball. Pinball video games can never quite capture all the clacks and physical entertainment that a real table has, but for those who can't afford the 3000 dollars for the real thing.

I've been using Sketch Up to help redecorate. I scanned an architectural layout of my room but didn't quite get it scaled properly according to Sketch Up's dimensions. Now I'm working with a version of my room that has 45' walls. WAY beyond what I actually have! Not being able to just drag and drop my furniture pieces around is a bit annoying too. A friend of mine gave me Unreal Tournament 2004 special edition with a bunch of tutorials on creating levels with Unreal. The nice thing about Unreal is I can make a version of my room with physics! EARTH QUAKE!!! *Imagines everything falling all over the place.*

Time to redo this in Unreal!

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Ramblings for Summer 08

nobody@vox.com(Random Encounters) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 10:53:32 -0700

And now for a random post!

Nepotism and Shoddy Voiceovers go Hand & Hand. I understand cost cutting needs. You could probably get some insane anime fans at a community college who dream of being voice actors to do the job for a beer or something.

Game Stop has been liquidating some of their floor sample copies of games for 50% off or so. These games were opened and placed on shelves for players to peruse.

Given the success of Age of Conan, I'm curious to see if Capcom will localize Monster Hunter Frontier to English. It simplifies the number of attacks you can use which I like. The use of timing, positioning and attack choice looks rich, which I also like. Oh MAN it's bloody too! Blood isn't a huge turn off to me, but I don't seem to go seeking out the bloodiest games I can find anymore.

I'm being cautiously optimistic about a job I recently interviewed for. I had 2 good prospects; one was a long shot for a senior position. The company liked my potential, but in the end they really did want someone with at least twice my experience. I knew it was a long shot, I'm glad that I made it as far as I did. So I'm down to 1 really super prospect that fits my experience and will help me overcome a lot of my present shortcomings. I so don't want to jinx myself for this position.

It's a week until Etrian Odyssey 2 comes out, I entered a contest for it. If by some random chance, I both win and have to buy a copy, no worries, Etrian 1 is fetching prices over MSRP on the gray market. Atlus has conservative print runs; buy early.

I'm enjoying Kotaku's review of Ninja Gaiden II. This is really what I'd like to see. No numeric score or letter grade, since they really don't make sense to me. How is a 98 game better than a 97, especially when they're usually entirely different kinds of games. Tell us what's going on, what works and why(yes, that is an opinion...) and make the reader feel ready to decide for themselves whether or not they want to buy, rent or skip the game.

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Games Worth Remaking

nobody@vox.com(Random Encounters) — Fri, 02 May 2008 16:02:50 -0700

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.

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Noitu Love 2

nobody@vox.com(Random Encounters) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 19:59:29 -0700

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.

GO!

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Holy Freakazoids, 4Gamer's "Indies Room"

nobody@vox.com(Random Encounters) — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 13:12:11 -0700

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.

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Rev-you...Why Game Reviews Drive One Developer Nuts

nobody@vox.com(Random Encounters) — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 14:46:39 -0700

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.

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Fix XBLA!!!

nobody@vox.com(Random Encounters) — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 15:09:24 -0700

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.

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Still strumming along...

nobody@vox.com(Random Encounters) — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 12:50:16 -0700

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.

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