13 posts tagged “rant”

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.

I've been following this issue on Kotaku.com which has been doing a marvelous job posting updates.
A brief summary of the debacle:
A Fox News story on Mass Effect was full of statements ranging from misleading at best to down right lies about the romantic subplot in the game. The "reporter" for Fox slammed the game's "nudity" and the psychologist brought on was spouting nonsense on how sexist Mass Effect is when it's clear that all she has seen is a brief video of the "sex scene." Geoff Keighley of Spike TV makes a solid attempt at delivering the actual facts but he is drowned out by the incessant yelling of the other 2 women. Neither the anchor nor the psychologist played the game. The anchor "watched trailers" to learn about the game, but

EA, which now owns Mass Effect's developer, BioWare, has released a letter pointing out each and every inaccuracy in the Fox News story. EA even signs off on its letter to Fox News "This isn't a legal threat; it's an appeal to your sense of fairness. We're asking FNC to correct the record on Mass Effect."

They're asking for an apology, not demanding it. So far, Fox News has purportedly offered EA an opportunity to get on the air and set the record straight themselves. I find it very disconcerting that Fox News won't take responsibility for errors they made by setting the record straight themselves. Now you may think I'm some "gamer" ranting about game related drivel that has no impact on the rest of the world, but I beg to differ.

Fox News' treatment of this story makes me strongly question how they deal with more serious and complex issues such as rising tensions with Iran, tribal chaos in Kenya or global economics. Or even the upcoming Presidential race here in the US.

Not that I've ever watched Fox News with the intent of being informed.

I thought about leaving the games industry, especially since I've been having a terrible time getting a permanent position. I spoke with a recruiter from NextGen Talent that gave me some advice and I hope, some job leads. I know most games people look down upon recruiters. I was approached by a shady woman who gave me no last name, no company she represented. No call back number, no email address either. I guess she got my info off Monster and who knows what. Sheesh, I'd better make sure this person isn't about to go stealing my identity or something...

I had an interview for a QA position outside of games. It pays nicely in the corporate software world. Supposedly, there is less nonsense that typically

Although there is a bit more money in it, software outside of games is still marred by the troubles I somehow thought games seemed to have the corner on:
-Horrible hours.I would have looked at some 60-70 hour weeks. Company seemed to have no interest in doing anything differently as far as releases went. Do your annual release with some minor updates.
-Documentation? Durrr...I really don't understand..Spend a bit of time to do that and you'll make things easier down the line.
-Ease of use of tools. When you sell a service to produce something digital or whatnot, why not care about ease of use? When some of my level design tools just had interface bugs and issues that made making maps highly inefficient, I brought the issue up. Having a shoddy tool can hurt your bottom line. Am I nuts for wanting to take the time to make a good, solid tool set?

Stability was one thing this company did have above game jobs. Back to looking for game design positions.

One of the toy products I worked on shipped out and can be bought in stores. I looked on the packaging and whoa. The box is littered with spelling errors and inaccuracies. I feel really insulted.

I am sure there are those who are out there that feel as though processes can be choking. For a while, I too felt unnecessarily bogged down by procedures and standards of operation that felt rigid and superfluous. Want know what can be even more suffocating?

A complete lack of processes.

Yes. You can be mired in not knowing what to do mighty easily. But when you've got a few conflicting orders, it's really irritating. It's one thing to go over and redo your work because you made a mistake. I have no qualms with that. But to redo everything because I was given the wrong orders? Today, I sat there playing Etrain Odyssey until I got a straight answer as to what I was supposed to do. ((On that tangent, I must say that the Dark Hunter has really surprised me. My female Dark Hunter with the Drain sword skill has become my new tank.)

When you work in a team, you need to be able to be spontaneous enough to be agile and adapt to new situations. On the flip side, you need enough predictability to know what to expect. Especially when it comes to procedures relating to problem resolution, bug fixes, etc.

I really don't know who to talk to any more.

The American Psychiatric Association debated whether or not video game addiction is really a disease. Hmm. I was driving home from work when I heard a radio talk show host dicussing the matter with the news reporter. His immidiate answer was to tell the parents to take video games away from the kids. This "addiction" was merely caused by a lack of parenting.

Children? A 28 year old South Korean man died after playing online video games for 50 hours straight. 28 years old. I've played Star Craft before but I didn't ever feel compelled to play it for more than a day straight. Alas, there are people out there who do. Something is not right with their minds and they need help.

My backlog of games I own is littered with unfinished disappointments. My Wallet's fury grows with each crap game that it's funds are wasted on. Okami and God of War II have delivered, but all the failures are starting to make me more conservative which is bad.

Here are but a few such disappointments:
-Children of Mana. You really need another person to play it with and it's local WiFi only(each player must have a cart.) No quick saves on a DS game. Long dungeons w/o any saving opportunities. Oh well, this helped me skip Dawn of Mana which I heard is absolutely terrible. Poor Mana franchise. Square-Enix has forasken thee.

-Ys Origin. I thought Nihon Falcom could do no wrong in the genre their games really helped define. Ear-grating remixes of classic Ys I-II music, being stuck in Darm Tower(a dungeon that I've put plenty of hours in via other Ys games) and having to play through the same damn thing 3 times to get the whole story makes this the biggest disappointment.

-Tenerezza. Recommended by a forum friend and while it's full of potential, its flaws cut deep into you. The save system within dungeons is the most incidious thing ever; pay hard earned money(which is excrutiatingly difficult to get in the first place) and you pay MORE every time you save! I might have been able to tolerate this grind in my younger days. Well, maybe not.

-Gurumin on PSP. It's not the game's fault the analog stick that makes it so easy to play is placed horribly on the PSP system itself. Had this game been on PS2, I would not have these gripes. If you have tolerance for the PSP's "ergonomics" then get this game. Now.

-O.Z./Sword of Etheria for the PS2. This game was originally released in Japan, but for some odd reason, it was localized to Europe and not the USA. I enjoyed playing this game off a friends' save. He went through the consternatingly difficult first series of levels which I have yet to beat. Button mashers are one thing, but mashing shoulder AND regular buttons simultaniously? That feels like a recipe for authritis.

Games I'm Curious About/Cautiously Anticipating in the Action RPG realm:
-Odin Sphere on PS2. It's supposed to come out May 17th in Japan. The graphics and music are captivating. I did enjoy Princess Crown, Vanillaware's Sega Saturn offering. Odin Sphere looks like it has quite a bit in common with Princess Crown.

-Lunar Knights on DS. This game is technically Boktai 3. Or Boktai 4. I forget. It's not a particularly positive association, but I've heard mixed things about this game.

-Phantasy Star Universe: Ambition of Illuminus. Looks like it's going to fix a lot what irritated me with Phantasy Star Universe. I'm deep into Universe; it's almost sad to say I'd get this even if it *didn't* fix a lot of what I find wrong with PSU. >_>

Recently, I've become a fan of D3 Publisher. D3 Publisher of Japan has been publishing a series of game known as the "Simple Series." They're very low budget, low priced titles priced from 1500 yen(PS1 titles) to 2800 yen(Nintendo DS titles) and Playstation2 games at 2000 yen a pop. Not bad at all when you consider that full priced games run at 6800, 5800 and 7800 yen per system respectively. Not to mention movie tickets in Japan are about 3000 yen. The Simple 2000 series for the PS2 is freakin' huge!

In a Simple Series game, you're not unmasking layers of drama as you dynamically interface in a virtual confine with storytronics. You are playing a very straightforward, simple game. A lot of these are low budget knockoffs of full priced games that offer about 5-10 hours of game play a pop. The titles of these games are as straightforward as "Snakes on a Plane." For example, Zombie vs Ambulance. And The Crime Scene Investigator. The Maid Uniform & Machineguns. The R.C. Helicopter. The Block Crushing Game.

D3 Publisher has released Earth Defence Force for the Xbox360. The MSRP is only $40. The graphics aren't much better than a PS2 game, there are framerate/performance issues and there isn't a tremendous amount of variety to the gameplay. There's no online features. On the other hand, you do get 200 weapon types(only 5 of which I really find myself using) EVERY building can be destroyed, you can duck for cover, strafe around and the action is very accessible. Best of all, you can do 2-player same-console co-op. Oh no, co-op where you have to sit next to the other player! GADS! Sure, this is no Gears of War or Crackdown. You get what you pay for, you don't get what you don't pay for.

This interview with D3 USA is kind of sad. If you can't view Gamasutra's articles, Kotaku has a quick & dirty summary. No Zombie vs Ambulance for America. And Sony Approvals seems to be filibustering D3 USA's attempts at bringing the Simple Series to America in general. This is really sad. Why is a simple, value priced line of games so darn intimidating? Scared that your every day consumer doesn't care about all those budget busting features that you blew millions of dollars to implement? The Simple Series would most likely perish if it was subject to the same horrible retail distribution treatment that all games suffer from in the US. I've spent a ton of my money and I can't really justify buying Gears of War when I can borrow it from a buddy. Crackdown, while vastly technically superior to Earth Defense Force...Hmm, I'm just not interested in the extra sophistication the $20+tax brings. Besides, it's going through a patch to theoretically fix its horrible, Dead Rising-like save system that keeps you from getting all your achievements in one play. And heck, D3 could really use my support.

Dear D3. Bring Zombie vs Ambulance to Xbox360.

An open letter to all the Half Life, Counter Strike and Halo players:
It has come to my attention that the word "Shooter" has been hijacked by you people.

The word "shooter" once referred to thumb blistering, wrist breaking games where you maneuvered around an environment shooting everything that moves. At first, these games scrolled vertically or horizontally through said environments, although plenty noteworthy shooters took place on a single screen. Geometry Wars and Space Invaders come to mind for good, single screen shooters.

Shooters hit the 3D world, and I'm not just talking about using 3D graphics for presentation purposes. Arguably, shooters have been 3D since Tempest(1980.) There are some great 3D shooters that don't have any rails or tubes like Tempest, Star Fox, Panzer Dragoon, Ace Combat or a lot of other great 3D shooters.

The term that these great games have been reduced to is "Shmup." Some poor truncation of "Shoot 'em  up." Come on, FPS people. Get your own darn term for your game. What the heck is wrong with "FPS" in the first place? Let us poor beleaguered shooter fans at least keep our term. Peace, through options, lasers and ripple shot.

New to the games that were once called shooters? Read Roger Post's articles up on Shoot the Core.

Grabber: It's easy to generate and share your drinkingg ames

Platform: Nintendo PC+DVD-ROM, 1500ml of Tequila

Selling Points: Who doesn't like making up their own little games, especially with alcohol involved?

Game Play: Pop your favorite DVD into the drive and Drinking Game Maker will analyze the closed caption titles for words or phrases of the drinking game designer's choosing. The designer must also allocate how many drinks one must take when each event occurs.

For ease of drinking game design, Drinking Game Maker will automatically parse through the movie's script for 2 and 3 word combinations that occur the most frequently.

After selecting phrases and how many drinks, play the DVD. When the phrases set to trigger drinks come on screen, bright floating text appears over the movie prompting everyone to consume.

Fun Factor: Booze and friends over make everything better.

Yeah, I know this idea totally licks earwigs. I've been rediculously depressed lately, neglecting friends, family, pets, self, you name it except my MMORPG crack of choice. As terrible as I've been feeling, this idea was conceived without the use of alcohol. Yes. I was completely sober when I thought of this. Sad huh?
It's hard not to establish emotional attachments to a project, especially when you start working on it from pre-production. As a tester, watching bugs slide through was a bane but didn't bring about any emotional hurt.I'll get over this. I really have no choice.