Supple Think

Poverty as Art

2011-09-08T12:01:00.000-07:00

Several months ago the National Endowment for the Arts announced that it would be expanding its definition of art to include video games. There was a lot of predictable confusion about what this meant, but now that the storm has subsided I'd like to take a look at some of the truly positive things we might see as a result of this.

The fact that it's now possible for authors of video games to receive federal grant money has fascinating possibilities, not least of which is the divorce of game development from the corporate bottom line. NEA grants are available only to non-profit organizations, which means more or less that money is available only to authors more interested in making games than in making money. The paradigm of the starving artist has been missing from video games, instead represented by the risk-taking entrepeneur. When you hear "video game exhibition" you think of a trade show like E3 instead of an art exhibition. And while I believe it should be possible for artists of any sort to make some proper money doing what they love, the only way to keep it from staying merely a business venture is to make it somewhat impractical.

Thus far we've seen publishers trying to fill a double role. A field like video games can only advance if boundaries get pushed, and companies need this advancement to compete. This is why Namco has anything like a Digital Hollywood Game Laboratory, and why they would give Keita Takahashi a million dollars to "proactively ignore" corporate marketing instincts and make a game like Katamari Damacy. But that story more resembles a gifted engineer producing an inventive patent from the lower levels of a company than an artist setting up a work of art within or against a particular culture. It's unheard of for the artists to not intersect with the industry, but that intersection has at least managed to change in recent years.

This change has enabled small companies to get their games released on a global scale without signing all of their intellectual property over to the publisher. This appears to be the arrangement that Jenova Chen (né Xinghan Chen) has with Sony, who have contracted him for three games to appear on the Playstation 3, two of which (Flow and Flower) have been released already. Chen has repeatedly shown a willingness and desire to give up the easy, profitable path for more artistically fulfilling work. He co-founded a company called Thatgamecompany (TGC), which he indends to keep small and personal, and he gave up a secure position at Maxis to do so. They've apparently made action games that follow traditional formulae internally, and these games were allegedly quite promising, but Chen says he decided not to spend his time on anything that wasn't pushing him creatively.

All of this is just marketing, of course, if the games don't show this personal touch. His newest project, Journey, promises to live up to this talk by alienating most core gamers. It's an online game that seeks to remove all of the convenient chatter from the online experience. No gamertags, no voice chat, no text. All the players get with which to interact are a unique identifying mark (so that you know if you've played with that person before), a shout, and one's actions within the game world. The goal of the game is to traverse a vast desert and reach a mountain on the horizon, but the reasons and the method are left unstated. The players are supposed to work toward that goal, either together or independently, and presumably the story will become more clear as they do so.

What excites me about this project is the attention to how players interpret the actions of others in a video game. Anyone who follows professional Starcraft has seen how playing a game can be a form of expression, but most online games do little more than provide a list of canned animations and phrases. Starcraft's example is that the game itself ought to be enough, and the question is whether an inteface on the PS3 can allow for expressive gameplay rather than relying on a layer of menus and XBox Live features to pretend that anything like communication is happening.

Emmanuel Levinas, a 20th-Century Jewish philosopher who worked hard to develop an ethics out of the work of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, concentrated on the "face-to-face" of human interaction. For Heidegger this meant a recognition of the other as being fundamentally the same as oneself, but Levinas went further. He said that when one encounters the other there is always already a responsibility for the other, and that this innate commandedness is fundamental to any such experience. Every human interaction, then, is already a response. Furthermore, it is this act of being "singled out" by the other that establishes one's own identity. That's right: "face-to-face" interaction with others is fundamental to our being in that the gaze of the other establishes us in our being.

I'll try to leave the explanation of Levinas to just that, but outside the context of philosophy it seems a relatively odd claim. In context it's clear just how bold a claim it is: that such relations, such responsibilities, are the primordial foundation of all human interaction. More to the point, it is the experience of being faced with another person that allows us to recognize our own personhood.

So far online gaming has built its social elements by making chat programs bleed down from above into the games, but a project like Journey promises to start from scratch, making us interact in ways that are similarly primordial for a video game. That is to say, reducing our social gaming experience to the initial revealing made possible only through gameplay itself. My hope is that this will make it possible to have an online game without a "gamer culture", letting us discover for ourselves what playing a game together really means.

Anyone who played Ico has experienced the prototype of this experience: Yorda was a character within the game world whose plight was the same as the protagonist's, and as the player one couldn't help but feel that connection by proxy. But Ico only shed light on how far video games have to go: ultimately the character players felt kinship with was a mess of pre-scripted weakness and extremely convincing animation. Once the façade breaks down, once the glass darkens and the player recognizes the experience for what it is, this interaction becomes tiresome and irritating. The great promise of a project like Journey is for us to experience Ico's fellow feeling on a truly human level, one that never reduces to rote interactions. As a commercial enterprise, the odds are against this project's success.

The core ideas behind Journey are, to me, a breath of the freshest air. The question marks that plague the game all have to do with everything we haven't heard: how the gameplay is actually going to keep people working together for an extended period, and how the game is going to make its multiplayer experience last more than a week after its release. My fear is that TGC is going to undermine itself by removing all of the traditional or comfortable elements from its game; without the hook of engaging and satisfying gameplay--elements of game design that Jenova Chen apparently considers himself to be above--to hang it on, all the audacious and brilliant social commentary in the world isn't going to make a mark on the industry. Which is probably fine, because the industry would only have learned all the wrong lessons from it anyway. But this brings me back to the point I started with: that sometimes the industry is better served by an unprofitable, audacious disaster than it is by another blockbuster hit. Maybe in the next few years some new artists can get just enough grant money to push the boundaries of what video games can and should do, and the lack of executives looking over their shoulder is going to let them do just that.

Kotaku's Gamecenter CX Localization: It's terrible and it's a crying shame

2011-09-01T14:28:00.001-07:00

Way to go, Gawker and Kotaku. Way to fuck it all up.

As you may have heard, GameCenter CX, the Japanese Video Gaming show about Section Chief Shinya Arino and his gaming escapades, was finally picked up for U.S. broadcast by the gaming blog Kotaku. The format for this release being that they would post episodes on the Kotaku website on a weekly basis.

For fans of the Japanese show, and even for those that may have only vaguely heard of it, this was a big deal. Only a handful of episodes had been fan translated prior to this announcement, and now that it would be officially available, spreading awareness of the show to gamers that wouldn't otherwise have access to the show would be much easier. And the more support the show gets, the more GCCX gets made. It was a time of great excitement!

And then the first episode was released...

...and it was terrible.

Now when I say terrible, I don't mean it in an elitist-snob "I only watch foreign movies+shows in their purest form, in the original language with subtitles" kind of way. If you've seen other Japanese shows ported to American TV like say Iron Chef or Ninja Warrior, those are perfectly watchable with dubbed-over dialog and announcers and such. In fact, you could say that it makes it even more accessible for viewers that have very little experience with watching something made in Japan. When I say the Kotaku dub is bad, I'm talking flat-out unwatchable to the point that I wouldn't want to expose new Gamecenter CX viewers to the Kotaku dub, as it might turn them away from watching the show completely.

But how terrible is it, really? Let me count the ways:

1. The English narrator is subpar, and his pronunciation is terrible.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure he's getting paid peanuts for this obviously low-budget localization job, but considering this is probably his big break into the entertainment industry, you'd think he'd do a better job. Did he even watch the original version before he did his voiceovers? I guess the main thing about his voice that bothers me is that his announcer voice isn't very compelling. If he were more natural about his delivery, which highs and lows in his level of excitement, then it would make it easier to connect with the audience. As it is, it just feels so fake and insincere.

Also, why is his pronunciation of all the Japanese names so terrible? His pronunciation is so off it makes me think that he's doing it on purpose, like he's mocking us.

2. No music.

Just watch even a little bit of the original show, and you'll see why this is so terrible, it adds so much to the show. As it stands the Kotaku dub is a guy in a quiet room playing videogames while his friends are talking.

3. A lot of the title cards and on-screen graphics are cut out.

Gamecenter CX has a lot of funny graphics that are lovingly crafted and very funny, many of them involving photoshopping Arino's face on the body of the main character of the game he's playing. Even if the main character is female. These are all cut. Boo.

Here are some of the title cards you are missing out on.

4. None of the on screen Japanese text is translated. AT ALL.

This is the deal breaker. This is ultimately is what makes the show pretty much unwatchable for most American viewers. They don't bother to translate any of the on-screen text, which makes it kind of hard to follow certain games (Clock Tower probably being the most egregious example) because Arino doesn't necessarily read all the text aloud. You also miss out on a lot of the explanation text that shows up, as well as the witty comments from the King and Queen mascot characters. The explanation text is a big deal too, because even if you are familiar with whatever game is being played, they point out some pretty obscure game information sometimes.

5. The Kotaku dub lies to you. BIG, FAT, DIRTY LIES.

At the end of the Mighty Bomb Jack episode, the announcer says something along the lines of "And that was the end of the Might Bomb Jack challenge," even though RIGHT THERE ON THE SCREEN it says that Arino will challenge the game again, live in front of a studio audience. Well okay, the on-screen text is in Japanese, but the Mighty Bomb Jack Live Challenge is one of the best episodes of the show, and the fact that the Kotaku dub deceives the viewer of this fact is a pretty big slap in the face to those unable to read Japanese.

So yeah, as a huge Gamecenter CX it pains me to say this, but the Kotaku dub is terrible and you shouldn't watch it.

However, it's not all bad news.

In a somewhat miraculous set of circumstances, there is now a team of fan-subbers that are actively translating the show, in a not terrible way. In fact, the translations are really well done, with all the Japanese cultural and video game references intact. Here is a link to point you in the right direction. Kacho, On!!!

(Images blatantly stolen from the SA GCCX thread)

P.S. - You may have noticed that I didn't point out how the Kotaku dub doesn't have a lot of the side segments that are in the show. While this does indeed suck and they should have them, it is most likely a licensing issue that is out of their control so it would not entirely be fair to put that in as a negative point for the Kotaku dub. The fansubs have it though if you know where to look, wink wink.

Spiel und Zeit

2009-11-28T14:11:00.000-08:00

A lot's already been said about Braid. Back when it was released everyone was in a froth about the limitless potential of indie gaming, or (again and again) about whether games were finally art yet, or about how it's a game for smart people and did I mention how much it appeals to me? It was an enormous flurry of New Games Journalism, one which served as a model for a lot of other releases that didn't have as much going on under the hood. I've honestly avoided writing about it, if only out of a desire to distance myself from the enormous reflex action. Call it my inauthentic moment of the day.

In case you missed it, Braid is an independent, download-only game on XBOX Live Arcade and, as of November 12, on the PlayStation Network (which serves to make this post timely on some level), made by Jonathan Blow, the guy who described World of Warcraft as "unethical" for many of the same reasons I previously complained about Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The level artwork was done by David Hellman, who did the art for a comic called A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible, (a title which is an interesting inversion of one of Braid's core themes). It was a real nut-up-or-shut-up moment for Blow, who had been talking shit about the state of game development for some time without ever releasing a game of his own. I think he succeeded, and not just because Braid has an interesting story.

Many audacious things have been tried with video games over the years. Usually the developers responsible have eyes bigger than their stomachs, and resort to things like quick-time events (Mavis Beacon for idiots, as a dude once scoffed) that result in the simulation of a video game. I love playing Typing of the Dead as much as the next guy (this isn't an oblique jab--the game is a lot of fun), but it succeeds mostly on the merits of its exquisite perversion of the rail shooter genre. You can't say that you've made a game out of an everyday task like waking up and making coffee just because you played a video of it to someone who had to play Simon Says to keep the video going. This is why I have a hard time getting excited for such supposedly iconoclastic projects as Heavy Rain.

What I've wanted to see games do ever since I decided to be pretentious about them is make a point with the game itself. Games have had stories, music, and pictures that make points before, and they have certainly been art before, but very rarely does it all come together in a way that couldn't have happened as anything but a game. Most people, when pressed, will (rightly) cite Hideo Kojima and maybe a little Shigeru Miyamoto before shrugging it off as a pseudoproblem. I guess I think too much, but I'm still waiting for the medium to come to presence and establish itself as a part of our lives rather than as an escape from them. I was delighted to find that Jonathan Blow agrees:

You can go to a movie just as escapism--and be swept up by the visions and emotions, or whatever. Or you can attend a movie with a more expansionist mindset: you want to experience those same visions and emotions, but you're doing it to connect those things to the rest of your life, to bring them back; not to escape from the rest of your life. The goal is, maybe, to expand yourself into perhaps a greater, more experienced person. Even just a little bit.
...
Games can provide this kind of mental, emotional and spiritual expansion, and they can push it in a different direction than movies, or books, or music, or whatever.

[All Jonathan Blow quotes were taken from this interview at the MTV blog.]

Braid, for all its pretense and boisterous ambition, is the perfect example of how to provide this kind of expansion in a new and fascinating way.

There was a time when, for various reasons I'll try not to enumerate, we were willing to put up with a lot of grief from games. We were so happy to just be in control of what was happening on screen that we put up with all kinds of spiteful design to make it happen. There are still some rude dudes out there keeping it real (God bless you, Treasure), but as many will lament we've moved beyond that. There are so many games, so many worthy games to play, that most aficionados are unwilling to hammer away at a game anymore. Worse, the very idea of playing through a part of a game more than once has become a deal-breaker. When a modern-day game player has the idea in his head of what he wants done, he doesn't want to fuck around figuring out how to make it happen. It has to happen, like that. This instant gratification, what Blow calls "the Skinnerian reward scheduling...in most modern game design", has been a serious problem as games have tried to establish themselves as a serious medium of expression.

The game that blew everything wide open was Prince of Persia: the Sands of Time. Not only was it an inspired revival of a celebrated and, in retrospect, probably painful franchise, but it introduced the idea that when the player had something go against his plan he could just rewind to before he screwed it up. It reminded me of cheating with save states in a Super Nintendo emulator, only it was built into the game itself and I was encouraged to go hog wild. Suddenly, we were all making tool-assisted game runs. If you've ever done anything like it, you know that the experience can be a little less than fulfilling.

What Braid does that is fairly mundane is give the player this absolute control. Every mistake, be it major or minor, can be reversed. Where Sands of Time let you cheat death by rewinding under certain conditions, Braid offers no genuine way to lose. "Rewind was going to be the basis of the game", writes Blow. "If rewind conflicted with some other element of the design, then I would throw away that other element--regardless of how traditionally necessary it was."

It iterates on this idea, presenting challenging and immensely creative puzzles around the theme of time control, but never strays from the constant of being able to undo your mistakes. What Braid does that is profound is explore the ramifications of this mode of interaction. As the game itself puts it:

Our world, with its rules of causality, has trained us to be miserly with forgiveness. By forgiving too readily, we can be badly hurt. But if we’ve learned from a mistake and become better for it, shouldn’t we be rewarded for the learning, rather than punished for the mistake?

What if our world worked differently? Suppose we could tell her: “I didn’t mean what I just said,” and she would say: “It’s okay, I understand,” and she would not turn away, and life would really proceed as though we had never said that thing? We could remove the damage but still be wiser from the experience.

Tim and the Princess lounge in the castle garden, laughing together, giving names to the colorful birds. Their mistakes are hidden from each other, tucked away between the folds of time, safe.

[Braid "Chapter 2: Time and Forgiveness" parts 4-6]

While presented in blocks of text between levels, the story of Braid is more than just a bit of writing hidden behind the façade of gameplay. The two are not only intensely related, but they rely on each other to fully realize the game's argument. In playing the game, the player is not only controlling Tim on the screen but experiencing his (quest for) perfection firsthand.

Many games present brief windows of opportunity to catch secrets. Missable items, characters, story scenes, etc. are part of the structure of video games. An unexpected consequence of this behavior is that some players obsess over getting "the perfect save file", even to the point of arbitrary self-punishment. A friend of mine, while playing Final Fantasy Tactics, would reset if an opponent stole even a cheap and replacable item from him. The game never counts or keeps track of whether you've been robbed, but he didn't want a save file that had done anything but an optimal path.

In Chapter 3 of Braid we see the consequences of this behavior:

For a long time, he thought they had been cultivating the perfect relationship. He had been fiercely protective, reversing all his mistakes so they would not touch her. Likewise, keeping a tight rein on her own mistakes, she always pleased him.

But to be fully couched within the comfort of a friend is a mode of existence with severe implications. To please you perfectly, she must understand you perfectly. Thus you cannot defy her expectations or escape her reach. Her benevolence has circumscribed you, and your life’s achievements will not reach beyond the map she has drawn.

Tim needed to be non-manipulable. He needed a hope of transcendence. He needed, sometimes, to be immune to the Princess’s caring touch.

Off in the distance, Tim saw a castle where the flags flutter even when the wind has expired, and the bread in the kitchen is always warm. A little bit of magic.

[Braid, Chapter 3: "Time and Mystery" parts 2-5]

The message, as I take it, of Braid's storyline is that a quest for perfection, for the "thought in the mind of God", the pursuit of an ideal that makes no mistakes, is fundamentally missing the point. The world and one's life are more about mistakes than successes, more about flaws than perfection. By pursuing those areas of science that "follow the rules", one is forcing science to be what one expects of it, forcing the Princess to please you "perfectly". At the same time, one is penned in by these expectations.

This has, of course, been said before. While in my opinion quite well written, the words and story of Braid are only a part of its message.

Through its time control mechanics, Braid the game has the player make the same decisions as the character in Braid the story. All the trappings of gameplay serve to reinforce the idea of escape, of trying to attain an ideal, of trying to protect everybody all the time and maximize the result of every action. Much like with Shadow of the Colossus, the player's complicity in the game's events serves a greater role than any cutscene or passage of text. The final level of Braid uses the current of its gameplay to accomplish the single most poignantly expressed storytelling I have ever experienced.

While surely unintended, a part of Braid's tale that alludes to the Manhattan Project reminded me of this bit from Simulacra and Simulation:

...the real danger nuclear power stations pose: not lack of security, pollution, explosion, but a system of maximum security that radiates around them, the protective zone of control and deterrence that extends, slowly but surely, over the territory--a technical, ecological, economic, geopolitical glacis. What does the nuclear matter? The station is a matrix in which an absolute model of security is elaborated, which will encompass the whole social field, and which is fundamentally a model of deterrence (it is the same one that controls us globally under the sign of peaceful coexistence and of the simulation of atomic danger).

[Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, "The Beaubourg Effect: Implosion and Deterrence", p. 61]

Here, too, we see a perfect system of coexistence. Here, too, we see "absolute security", an encompassing of "the whole social field". This dance of repetition until perfection is achieved, this absolute terror of impermanence, of failing to maximize on the immediate opportunity, is one of the most dangerous tendencies of our age. We have a hard time remembering that we usually don't understand an event until we reflect on it, and that our quests to save princesses may not always be advisable, or even welcome.

The risk of nuclear annihilation only serves as a pretext, through the sophistication of weapons (a sophistication that surpasses any possible objective to such an extent that it is itself a symptom of nullity), for installing a universal security system, a universal lockup and control system whose deterrent effect is not at all aimed at an atomic clash (which was never in question, except without a doubt in the very initial stages of the cold war, when one still confused the nuclear apparatus with conventional war) but, rather, at the much greater probability of any real event, of anything that would be an event in the general system and upset its balance. The balance of terror is the terror of balance.
...

There lies the true nuclear fallout: the meticulous operation of technology serves as a model for the meticulous operation of the social. Here as well, nothing will be left to chance, moreover this is the essence of socialization, which began centuries ago, but which has now entered its accelerated phase, toward a limit that one believed would be explosive (revolution), but which for the moment is translated by an inverse, implosive, irreversible process: the generalized deterrence of chance, of accident, of transversality, of finality, of contradiction, rupture, or complexity in a sociality illuminated by the norm, doomed to the descriptive transparency of mechanisms of information.

[Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, "The Precession of Simulacra", pp. 33, 34-35]

Even after the game's final moments (which I will not spoil) there are meaningful surprises to be had. Like most games nowadays, there is a post-game quest for secrets. A constellation appearing on the hub level can be fleshed out by finding hidden stars throughout the game's other levels, and completing it gets you... absolutely nothing. The requirements for getting them are unreasonable, and I'm inclined to believe Blow put them there to make a point about how much the completionist's attitude prevents us from enjoying or even experiencing games (and life) anymore. In a time when completionists are pandered to, where "Achievement Points" are sought after as ends in themselves, we see how the technological mode of being has affected us here. Tim's pursuit of the perfection of science, of "a principle of objectivity of which science is never certain, of which it secretly despairs" [Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, "The Animals: Territory and Metamorphoses", p. 129], is the same as the player's pursuit of that perfect play-through.

Braid, like any game, can't possibly be for everyone. Nevertheless, I strongly urge everyone who reads this to at least give it a go. It's a spectacular achievement, one that speaks on a personal level and has the ability to mean something to you in your life instead of just pulling you out of it for a few hours. I've thrown down some thoughts here, but there's more in the game than I could ever write technically about, more than I have any right to enumerate for you. As Blow put it, "The story of rescuing the Princess has a literal interpretation, as well as a metaphorical one; and then there are other small-scale levels of change to the interpretation, too. I don't intend for any of them to be the sole truth; the story I am trying to tell is something like the quantum superposition of all these things."

That statement, like Braid itself, is for me about the nature of truth as aletheia, as a phenomenological pulling-back of the curtain on beings in the world rather than a technical attempt to freeze them in time. Please discover and let me know what they mean for you.

I Have Lived A Thousand Lives

2009-11-03T22:52:00.000-08:00

It makes sense for the Military to use video games and science fiction to try to appeal to this generation (or maybe the next generation?) to try to increase recruitment. It's not stretching to far to say that video games are an almost universal past time of our generation. So with adds like the one below

it's pretty obvious what angle they are going for.

That's not to say its a bad idea, or inherently wrong either. It's just smart advertising, and honestly, a step above their previous adds.

Sorry. Marine or not, no one is defeating a giant lava monster with a tiny sword.

My concern is whether or not enough thought was given to just what happens in games, and especially in FPS's, which is likely the demographic they are targeting. Do they have any idea how many times players repeatedly DIE unexpectedly and horribly in video games? The process of learning through trial and error from death is inherent in games now. You can hardly be expected to play almost any game where you are given control of an actual person/character and not have the game be based around preventing their death to some degree; a task which you are not expected to carry out flawlessly. To take a medium where progress is literally driven by death and use it as a means to encourage recruitment seems slightly shortsighted. The man fighting the lava monster would have died at least 8 times before getting that one critical hit. Seems like a pretty epic boss.

Monopoly

2009-11-01T14:32:00.001-08:00

If you were born in America, chances are you have played a game of Monopoly, and for a good reason. Monopoly is probably one of the most fun games to start out of any board game you can play. Every player starts out with 1,500 dollars, which is quite a lot in the city/country/world/universe of Monopoly. The board is open, every property is unowned, and you have the chance to literally own a part of the game board itself (A feature not present in almost any other board game). That reason alone may be why Monopoly is so iconic, and one of the most successful board games of all time. But despite that fact, it suffers from a glaring and fairly well known design flaw; Monopoly has no end game.

Or to be more specific, Monopoly has a terrible end game. As you reach the end of Monopoly, the game shifts from a dynamic playstyle of spending money, owning properties and building houses, to a static game of rolling dice and simply gaining or losing money. While this is could be an interesting end to the game, the shear fact of how long this process takes ensures that very few players ever choose to see a Monopoly game through. By the end of the game, the board has been set. Properties have been bought and developed. Money is no longer as much of a resource as there is nothing left to buy. Instead, it becomes more similar to Hit Points, serving only to keep alive you in the game until you are bankrupted. All that is left is watch the odds play out. It can take hours.

And that is really where the problem lies. Once all options for the game have been exhausted, the game should be finished. Monopoly lacks a simple and decisive way to determine a winner, and instead deteriorates into a game of attrition. No competive player will ever give up a property that will allow his opponent to gain a monopoly or put themself at a disadvantage. So the board and odds stay set, and you are forced to bleed your friends or competitors dry. Much like real life finances. But damn it, this is a game, and it should be enjoyable to people who aren't sadists, masochists or that have severe autism and enjoy focusing intensly on boring things.

Great games tend to give players options and remain dynamic throughout the entire course of play. Games such as Chess and Go can be decided very early on with little chance for a comeback, but players are is still responsible for maintaining their leads and countering their opponents moves. In games like Street Fighter, each player has the same amount of options, and there is constant potential for comebacks throughout the entire match; regardless of the amount of life or rounds lost. In both of these instances, players are able to earn leads over their opponents without the gameplay becoming limited or stagnant.

So what is the fix to Monopoly? Although there are a lot of options, changing to much of the game or making to complicated is pointless, so a less instrusive way is probably best. One possibility is to add a system similar to blinds in Poker, where stakes are continually raised to bring the game to a close. It would maintain Monopoly's current rule set and allow for the game to end quickly. Games could finish fast without interfering with the classic rule set, and messing with what is arguably a very successful formula.

A second option, which is a lot more interesting, would call for an ammendment or addition to the current rules, and would be the equivalent of creating an alternate version of the game. That is a topic a little to big to explore in this post, but it would definitely be a fun idea.

For people who are committed to playing Monopoly, the current rules are probably something they wouldn't change. Players who play a game competitively often understand a game on a different level and enjoy it for all its flaws. But for the rest of the world, a small change could do a lot to make Monopoly a game that doesn't take the entire night to finish.

Sins of Our Fathers

2009-10-09T00:02:00.000-07:00

As an avid reader of German philosophy, I so often find myself at the mercy of translators to properly understand the material. Even if I, like Heidegger, refuse to concern myself with fidelity to the philosopher's intent, a poor translation can obfuscate or even completely cover over useful nuances and enlightening tricks of meaning. This problem is as much present for novels and music as it is for philosophical works, and I've found it applies to video games as well. Masterpieces like 7th Saga, Final Fantasy V, Secret of Mana (Seiken Densetsu II), Chrono Trigger, and even parts of Final Fantasy VII suffered from having poor to nonexistent translations that hid their greatness from view.

Fortunately, Japanese publishers started to catch on that not everyone in the US is a drooling moron around the time the original PlayStation came out. Instead of dumbing down hard games and not even releasing games that were too complicated, Japan discovered that gamers in the US were thirsty for true works of art. For me, the turning point was a game called Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and after the opening scene I knew things would never be the same again.

What follows is an annotation, a sort of recreation of my own thoughts as I relive these precious moments today. You are encouraged to click this YouTube link first, so that you can appreciate these lines as I first did all those years ago.

Richter: "Die, monster! You don't belong in this world!"

We see here a desperate and crucial line being drawn, a dualistic boundary with foundations in Plato that has, much like Dracula himself, endured (some might say thrived upon) the millennia of strife human beings call history. The irony foreshadowed here is that not only does Dracula belong, but this world is contingent on another dualism that he represents. He cannot be banished from this world, because without him there can be no world. Koji Igarashi is arguing here that one cannot banish value, cannot operate outside of it, and cannot simply eschew the uncomfortable and macabre. This becomes important later, but for now one can simply appreciate the claim that worldliness comes after value.

Dracula: "It is not by my hand that I am once again given flesh. I was called here by... humans who wish to pay me tribute."
Richter: "'Tribute'?! You steal men's souls, and make them your slaves!"
Dracula: "Perhaps the same could be said of all religions..."

This famous exchange at first seems to contradict Dracula's opposition to the value of Goodness, but he is not trying to equivocate. He is in fact highlighting his nature as the opposite, that he behaves the same but in the other direction. There is a note of sadness to be discovered here by the perceptive: there is no hate in this exchange, as though Dracula mourns the fact that his foe, whom he respects more than he can ever let on, could just as easily have been his most trusted ally and friend. The futility and contingency of it all throws the attentive player into an authentic experience, fully appreciative of the arbitrariness of the very distinction the series represents. This irony is one of the most compelling moments in video game history, and is possibly the main reason for the fondness so many gamers have for this title.

Richter: "Your words are as empty as your soul! Mankind ill needs a savior such as you!"
Dracula: "What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets! But enough talk... have at you!"

Who knows what secrets lie hidden, deep within a man's heart? Does Dracula? Is it his lack of a soul which clouds the deepest truths of humanity from his vision? Or is it perhaps the very thing which allows him the keenest vision of all, a pure and objective view of humanity which is the source of his contempt? In this beautiful passage we see the heart of Castlevania's meaning, the foundation and culmination of all of its themes. Dracula--dangerous, powerful, timeless--displays a kind of insecurity. Unable to relate to anyone but his greatest foe, he is quick to dismiss the subject. Could he abandon his position, see if the world could survive without his chaotic influences? Best not to think about it. The last time he let himself see humans as anything more the results were too painful to bear. Best to end the discussion and do his duty. Best to go on forgetting, go on hating. It's the best for everybody.

What childhood could a man like this possibly provide? Is it even so different from the plight of any father quaking in the face of the insurmountable responsibility of parenthood? The roles of faith, love, fatherhood, and family legacy all collide here. In this brief encounter with Richter we seem to learn so little of Dracula, and yet one can see his entire person (dare one even suggest a soul?) laid bare in these few lines. It is only fitting that Richter sit the game out, having done his duty: the stage is set for Alucard (Is he his father's opposite? He goes in the other direction, but is made of the same stuff...) to discover his father, and himself. By the end of the game we see not only the purest of good, not only the most dastardly of evil, but the gentle, terrified man who sits precisely between them. And we see the horizon by which to judge him: the balance of all things.

Selective Depth

2009-09-21T01:19:00.000-07:00

Fans of 2D games put up with a lot of abuse. Often we find ourselves playing a game simply on the basis of its visual and gameplay sensibilities, while the quality of the game could be worse than quick time events. It's sort of like being a Sonic fan, or driving an American-made car. It's sort of like being a battered spouse.

Still, sometimes being 2D doesn't have to be enough; sometimes Vanillaware makes a game. Now I've only played two of their games, but both have offered a distinctive perspective on action RPGs while delivering the most astonishing visuals I've possibly ever seen in a video game. Odin Sphere was a meticulous and harsh brawler, one where each chapter of its intricate story not only provided new perspective on seemingly clear events but also presented the player with completely new play styles. There was variety to the combat, and each playable character focused on a different aspect in a way that really explored the potential of this variety.

In short, it was a masterpiece, although in some ways having a score by Hitoshi Sakimoto could be considered cheating in this regard. When a Wii successor was announced I got pretty excited, since I seem to be the only person who still wants the Wii to work as a platform for more than Gamecube ports, opportunistic shovelware, and kusoge. After playing several hours of Muramasa: the Demon Blade, the 2D gamer in me feels sated without feeling cheapened or insulted.

Like Odin Sphere, Muramasa proves that sprites are still way, way more detailed and beautiful than 3D models. 3D effects are used for complex animations, especially for some of the more enormous sprites, but always as emphasis for actual frame animation. It's a distinctive visual style, somewhat reminiscent of Flash animation, this time given the same kind of Japanese art flavor as Okami. The colors are phenomenal, the backgrounds lively and deep, and the gameplay excellent.

Vanillaware action RPGs have a flow of gameplay that simplifies or removes some of the more traditional obstacles, like platforming challenges or fetch quests, and instead offers the same variety and depth of experience in just combat and map navigation. In Odin Sphere this was accomplished with parallel systems of food and weapon experience which fed into each other, along with a ridiculously complex item crafting system that was tied into every single aspect of combat and character progression. In Muramasa the item crafting is simpler, but there are still parallel systems affecting what weapons you use. This relative simplicity is made up for by a much more flexible combat system. Instead of cautiously performing hit and run tactics on swarms of durable enemies, combat happens in quick skirmishes that coerce you into using all your abilities without ever explicitly requiring it.

Basically, the theme for these games is that nothing is wasted. Every action you perform is working double-duty, and every action you perform provides toward a goal elsewhere. This is how a game that essentially boils down to running around a simple map fighting random battles can stay fresh and interesting for so long.

To explain more about why I love the game's combat so much, especially in the face of accusations that it's too button-mashy, I'm kind of a sucker for any combat engine that emphasizes mobility. There are simple ground and air combos if you just mash the attack button, but it's usually a better idea to take advantage of the dash attacks. You hold down the attack button and just aim the control stick in the direction you want to go. Combat feels more like a flow from one enemy to another, punctuated by stationary combos, than a simple round-up followed by an attack combo. Dodging and attacking become the same, and just like everything else in a Vanillaware game no single action serves a single purpose, but everything works double duty.

Another feature of the combat, and probably the primary reason people think it's too easy, is the blocking. For the most part (things change in the game's hard mode) you block by attacking while being attacked, which makes sense as far as parries are concerned. The reason this all works is that blocking uses up sword integrity, which is necessary for performing special moves. After a sword breaks it will slowly regenerate, and you can carry up to three at a time, but for the most part you will be more worried about keeping your swords intact than actually taking any damage. Once they all break you're basically dead meat. Think of it like the recharging shields in any post-Halo shooter, only because it's Vanillaware they pull double duty and power special moves, too.

Muramasa has two difficulties, which boil down to Baby and Insane. It's probably better to acquaint yourself with it before going insane, but you can switch at any time. I've found a fair bit of challenge as a baby without wanting to pull my hair out, but I'm looking forward to replaying it on hard mode. I would probably have preferred a GOD HAND-style reactive difficulty system, but that's not Havok Physics ubiquitous yet, so I can't really complain.

The game is brilliant and the game is beautiful, but that's not even why I love it, exactly. It's the same sort of feeling I got when I played No More Heroes and felt like I really got to know Suda 51. We're all used to loading up a game and seeing corporate logos for thirty seconds, but you don't even see Vanillaware's logo until after you press Start. It's a unique touch, and it reminds me every time that the people who made the game are a part of the game experience itself. When the cover falls off of House of Leaves you're left with a book written by characters, and it's the author's hope that you forget about him entirely. If the cover fell off of Muramasa you'd still be spending time with George Kamitani, because he puts so much of himself into what he does. Please join me in loving him for it.

The New Prose

2009-08-23T17:08:00.000-07:00

Building on my previous post about game designers as the new existentialists, I found these words by Rorty rather stirring:

... deconstruction ... needs a clear distinction between philosophy and literature. For the kind of reading which has come to be called "deconstructionist" requires two different straight persons: a macho professional philosopher who is insulted by the suggestion that he has submitted to a textual exigency, and a naive producer of literature whose jaw drops when she learns that her work has been suppported by philosophical oppositions. The philosopher had thought of himself as speaking a sparse, pure, transparent language. The poetess shyly hoped that her unmediated woodnotes might please. Both reel back in horror when the deconstructionist reveals that each has been making use of complex idioms to which the other has contributed. Both go all to pieces at this news. A wild disorder overtakes their words. Their whimpers blend into interminable androgynous keening. Once again, deconstructionist intervention has produced a splendidly diffuse irresolution.

There is something suspiciously old-fashioned about this way of setting up one's subjects. It is a long time since we have had writers who considered themselves in the business of providing pleasure. ... [Essays on Heidegger and Others, p.86]

Many will tell you of the harm Derrida (inadvertently I think) caused to literary analysis, and that phenomenon is the specific target of that passage. Rorty was concerned with the assumptions Derrida's criticisms of philosophical thinking made about both fields, but this came on the heels of his own significant bias toward prose:

As a way of counteracting Heidegger and, more generally, the kind of post-Heideggerian thinking which refuses to see the West as a continuing adventure, I want to put forward Charles Dickens as a sort of anti-Heidegger. If [archaeologists of the future] were, for some reason, unable to preserve the works of both men, I should much prefer that they preserve Dickens's. For Dickens could help them grasp a complex of attitudes which was important to the West, and perhaps unique to the West, in a way that neither Heidegger nor any other philosopher could. The example of Dickens could help them think of the novel, and particularly the novel of moral protest, as the genre in which the West excelled. From this point of view, the interaction of West and East is better exemplified by the playing of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony by the students in Tienanmen Square than by the steel mills of Korea or the influence of Japanese prints on European painters of the nineteenth century. [Essays on Heidegger and Others, pp.67-68]

Heidegger famously elevated "the poetical" in his later years, and Rorty seems hellbent on elevating the morality play instead. Heidegger's distaste for Western metaphysics and its insistence on objective fact appears, to Rorty, to be a distaste for the considerable social and political strides that have been made in the West. This essay was published in 1991, and I would love for Rorty to have been able to draw on the considerable cross-pollenation of Eastern and Western game development instead of century-old paintings inspired by still older Japanese prints. That said, it makes little difference to his point: instead of trying to express some transcendent quality through poetry, one should instead concern oneself with tackling moral and social problems by connecting them with people, with characters.

Still, it's not as though there haven't been games that tried to address these issues within a narrative. Whatever you think of the results, there can be no denying that Hideo Kojima's impenetrable oeuvre makes various comments on (post-)modern lifestyles and political attitudes. I encourage anyone who plays his games to forgive the failure at achieving the impossible task of tying all his games together into a single narrative, and to those of us who started playing Metal Gear games at the outset his turn to the dissonant and absurd is jarring and sometimes revolting. In spite of all this, one can discern a few central threads that he's been struggling to follow to their conclusion, possibly without even realizing it.

You can disagree, and claim that Kojima has always been playing the philosopher/poetess game. People seem to think that he's always been courting some kind of recognition from the world of acknowledged intellectuals, or that he really still wants to be a film director. I say that he's failed spectacularly at both, to his benefit. I'm not one for Dickens, but what Rorty claims Dickens can accomplish is something that video games can accomplish tenfold. I don't think anybody can play a Kojima game without being bothered by him. Some people criticize the game, thinking they're bothered by it, but it's always Kojima. It's always Kojima making you look at what you're doing, what you're not doing, what you're ever doing. And he always considers himself to be in the business of providing pleasure.

Sometimes Kojima just seems to be a guy stuck in Metal Gear, but if you go back to his other work you'll find that Metal Gear is simply stuck in the broader narrative of Kojima himself. There's never been a better time to find this out, either: Policenauts, his legendary follow-up to Snatcher, has finally been translated by dedicated fans. I urge everyone to find out firsthand what Hideo Kojima has really been up to all these years.

Frightful Methodology

2009-07-30T18:58:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while somebody who makes games will tell a story or explain a decision in a way that is really jarring and thought-provoking. The obvious example is Miyamoto's story about the origins of The Legend of Zelda. Even more primal than Miyamoto's childhood adventuring, though, is the anecdote itself: romantic and inspirational, reminding us that there are reasons games are fun and that it might be possible to understand what they are on some level. The problem is that only rarely does this kind of personality shine through in a game on its own, and the language barrier between us and Japanese developers keeps any explanation on the side either completely opaque or vastly leveled-down.

I'm going on about this because I just read this spectacular piece on game design, and it gives a great look into the workflow of game designers. One man's brief epistle, while restrained in scope, approaches the game in its complete character in a way marketing copy and third-party features and reviews are hard-pressed to. This has been on the rise of late because smaller, independent development teams not only thirst for direct contact with players, leading to more direct essays like this, but their small size brushes away all the dirt that covers over the personality of the people making the game. This has been talked about at length over the last few years as independent games have begun to thrive, but as video games have become more personal they have also necessarily, thrillingly, become more dialectic.

It's tempting, when writing a review of a game, to enframe it in terms of "difficulty", "music", "graphics", and "gameplay" (usually meaning the interface). None of these things necessarily has much to do with playing a game. They are attempts to objectively measure its quality, not to convey the things one feels while playing it. The result is that most such reviews set out to tell you nothing at all that you need to know, and only accidentally and ambiently convey some notion of what the reviewer's experience of the game really was. Saying that GOD HAND is "too hard" is a troubling proposition. On the one hand, GOD HAND is incredibly hard. On the other hand, its difficulty is so masterfully paced that with the proper introduction it pulls you forward like a conveyor belt. Reviewers of Devil May Cry 3 were infamously humbled by the first levels of the game's original US release, to the point of dismissing the game entirely. Both of these examples show games whose reviewers are so consumed by the need to objectify the game that they have a hard time simply experiencing it.

Any game can be challenging, and this challenge can help or hinder it. Just as an older game's graphics can be technically inferior but factically far more expressive than a more recent one, a game that is easier to beat might be far more difficult to play well. Most of us have a list of things we hate to see used to add challenge, and yet we have sometimes enjoyed games despite these things. I am inclined to agree with Hiroshi Shibata that one way for a game's challenge to "work" is for it to force the player to confront and overcome fear. More than just a series of command inputs, a game takes place in terms of its presentation. A game can be challenging without making the player lose, as the fear of losing is only one kind of fear the player of a video game confronts (as anyone who's played La Mulana will attest). Shibata's essay brought to mind Heidegger's characterization of "what is encountered in fearing":

1. What is encountered has the relevant nature of harmfulness. It shows itself in a context of relevance.
2. Thus harmfulness aims at a definite range of what can be affected by it. So determined, it comes from a definite region.
3. The region itself and what comes from it is known as something which is "uncanny."
4. As something threatening, what is harmful is not yet near enough to be dealt with, but it is coming near. As it approaches, harmfulness radiates and thus has the character of threatening.
5. This approaching occurs within nearness. Something may be harmful in the highest degree and may even be constantly coming nearer but if it is still far off it remains veiled in its fearsome nature. As something approaching in nearness, however, what is harmful is threatening, it can get us, and yet perhaps not. In approaching, this "it can and yet in the end may not" gets worse. It is fearsome, we say.
6. This means that what is harmful, approaching near, bears the revealed possibility of not happening and passing us by. This does not lessen or extinguish fearing, but enhances it.
[Being and Time p.140]

There's a lot of Heidegger jargon in there, but I'm sure you can see how this list reads almost like a map of an action game's boss fight. Typically one thinks of the phases of a boss fight in terms of its attacks, patterns, and tells, but the designer must put it together in more primordial terms. What this reveals is a more existential way of looking at video games in general. Facing off against a boss for the first time is always more terrifying than when you come back to it, not simply because of its dramatic presentation but because it places the player in an environment that is unfamiliar, "uncanny". The player's own imagination of what harm this opponent can inflict is even more terrifying than the actual "damage output".

Existentialism in novels and films has led to a great deal of snobbery and competition over who's the biggest artist. It's comforting to see that in video games we have the possibility to employ the ideas in a way that's less referential and more applied. Video games are existential always already in that they must involve the player in an experience. A game that seeks to limit the player's experiences to a script is missing this critical point. I've talked before about how good games empower players, but that's probably the wrong way to put it. A good video game puts the player in a world in a way fundamentally different from mere storytelling. A good video game opens up a world of decision making and possibility, gives the player a chance at pursuing a project.

Sandbox games, nonlinear games, storytelling games, puzzle games, fighting games, every single genre of video game does or doesn't do this at various points, and I think it's important to change the language we're accustomed to using when talking about these successes and failures. We live in a time when game designers can perform, can put players in a world like never before. It's time to stop waiting for video games to be the same things as books and movies. We're well beyond that now, well beyond the script and the recording and the measured span of time. Video games found their way years ago, with almost nobody noticing and even fewer taking the lead.

Starcraft 2: Some Pros Like It Hard

2009-07-17T16:17:00.000-07:00

(Images blatantly stolen from the SA Forums Starcraft thread)

Starcraft 1 as a professional sport is one of those perfect storm scenarios where everything about it was just right to make it explode in popularity (in Korea). Among those factors, is how much depth the game had in extremely high level play due to quirks in the game interface. You can call them bugs, design flaws, technical limitations, whatever you want, but they gave players who could think outside the box enough of an edge to claim victory in a close match.

Also, they are awesome as hell to witness, giving SC the kind of "Greatest Plays"* clips you would see on a show like SportsCenter. It's so much almost kinda sorta like a real sport it brings a tear to my eye.
*In pro SC these are commonly referred to as Pimpest Plays, just do a search on YouTube and you can see a bunch of them.

Now Starcraft 2 is nearing release and of course Blizzard wants to retain that E-Sports craze. However, catering Starcraft 2 to the "Professional E-Sports" crowd raises many design questions, especially in regards to how if could possibly affect the mid to low skill players. Adversely affecting the casual market is more than likely a bad idea, considering how the vast majority of the game sales will be to (relatively) casual players.

The debate of Pros vs Casual has been fought over many message boards all over the internet for the past several years, the aspects of which generally fall into three design spaces:

- How much should the game play itself?
- How much information should the game tell the player? (As opposed to the player figuring it out on his own.)
- How much control does the player have over units, both individually and as groups?

I would like to explore each of these aspects of Starcrat 2's design in seperate articles, but let me just finish this article by saying this: While the sensible answer to this problem is to strike a balance between pro-centric and casual-centric design choices, what is better is to make design decisions that can benefit and encourage both types of players. It's not about being for one or the other some of the time, but both, because the game needs it if it wants to live up to its namesake. While a strong pro-gaming scene will keep the longevity of the game far past typical multiplayer vs games (just look at Starcraft 1), it doesn't matter if the game is so hard that nobody buys it in the first place. Just like baseball/soccer/basketball/football has just as much place on the playground as it does in the stadium, so does Starcraft 2 need to have the same mass appeal.

Yeah, that sounds pretty hard.

The Phantom of Akihabara - Part V

2009-07-17T14:15:00.001-07:00

"“The game industry is a master-and-slave system,” the owner said. “It’s endemic. The console makers kowtow to the government with regulations stricter than what the government would’ve forced on ‘em. The game makers kowtow to them because the distribution system gives them no other choice. And the buyers aren’t helpin’, either. Nobody ever got sued for releasing bad or buggy games. They just want the special-edition bonuses. One thing’s for sure — you ain’t gonna find a industry that’s more manipulable than this.”"

The Phantom of Akihabara - Part V

The Phantom of Akihabara

2009-07-08T21:00:00.001-07:00

Kevin Gifford (EGM alum) has been translating a serialized novel named "The Phantom of Akihabara" for two months now. Here's a taste:

"Gamers never attach themselves to creators; they follow series names, the brand of the games they play. That was one of the ironclad rules of the industry. In fact, once a company establishes a brand and makes a “promise” to their user base, it’s more secure for them to keep following that promise, releasing conservatively-designed, me-too sequels and freshening up the “promise” with whatever the latest in graphic technology allowed. It is that kind of world."

Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV

Arcade Survival

2009-02-03T14:00:00.000-08:00

Recently a few friends and I have been discussing what makes a great arcade. It's no secret that arcades are effectively dead in America, and the discussion has been done to death as to why. Consoles with superior graphics and online play are generally considered the culprit, and are the reason why they aren't likely to make comback. But was there ever something more that arcades offered, and can still offer to gamers? I believe so, but it would mean a complete shift in how arcades have traditionally operated.

I believe the only things arcade have left to offer if they are going to survive is community, and that is what they are going to have to push and promote if they are going to remain at all successful. They can't get by just offering a place to play games anymore. Everyone has that now for free.

Evo 2008

What gamers don’t have is a place to meet other gamers face to face; a home away from home for playing games and meeting with friends. Arcades have always supplied this and it’s the one thing they still have above console. But up till now, community has been a byproduct of people coming to play games. It hasn't been focused on as something that should be replenished and upgraded, the same way you would do upkeep on a cabinet or get the latest releases. I think it needs to be taken to a new level in order to be a great business model. Arcades are going to have to make community building and support the most important thing they offer, above games and cabinets.

This could mean a lot of things. Organizing and holding consistent, well advertised weekly tournaments. Maybe sponsoring a team and sending them to major comps (I know this might be expensive for start-ups), or even organizing a league for your city/region that is run through your establishment. I am not saying any of those things are easy to do, but I think they are the one thing that arcades can still supply that no other business can, and it’s something I have not seen any establishment do. Places like lan-centers seem to be attempting to be a place for gamers, but they are usually too expensive, and don’t offer anything beyond a comfortable place to play with nice chairs. I can’t go to a lan-center (at least in the Seattle area) and know for sure that I will meet the kind of people I want to meet, and compete in the games I want to compete in.

As far as cost models and how much to charge goes, that is something that would have to get worked out. I personally believe that a quality Bubble Tea shop with a 25cent Marvel cabinet would ruin me.

To sum up, it basically comes down to this. Arcades used be profitable because they supplied games to gamers; which couldn't be played anywhere else. Now, they need to supply community and purpose to gamers, because that is something they aren't getting anywhere else.

How To: Chun Li in Street Fighter 4

2009-02-01T23:06:00.001-08:00

When you play as Chun-Li, don't forget to hold your left pinkie out.

Gamecenter CX Episode #73 (Season 10): Lemmings (Super Famicom)

2008-12-29T03:36:00.000-08:00

シーズン10 #73 引率できるか？「レミングス」

(Season 10 Episode #73: Can you lead them? "Lemmings")

Full Episode: | Part 1 | Part 2 |

Episode Summary at Crunk Games

Credit goes to Crunk Games and GameCenter CX Musou

(This episode was intense. I think the episodes where you played the game as a kid are just as exciting as ones where you have no idea what's going to happen.)

Gamecenter CX Episode #72 (Season 10): "Yuyu no Quiz de GO! GO!" (Super Famicom)

2008-12-29T03:25:00.000-08:00

シーズン10 #72 課長と『ゆうゆのクイズでGO!GO!』GO!

(Season 10 Episode #72: GO! Kachou and "GO! GO! Yuyu's Quiz")

Full Episode: | Part 1 | Part 2 |

Episode Summary at Crunk Games

Credit goes to Crunk Games and Gamecenter CX Musou

Gamecenter CX Episode #71 (Season 10): ATOMIC RUNNER CHELNOV (Megadrive)

2008-12-29T02:45:00.000-08:00

(Note: Well, since all I do lately is post videos, I might as well post videos people will actually watch.) - K1

シーズン10 #71 前進あるのみ!『チェルノブ』
(Season 10 Episode #71: Nothing but running!"Chelnov")

Full Episode: | Part 1 | Part 2 |

Episode Summary at Crunk Games

Credit for this video goes to Crunk Games and This Guy's Blog

'gief's grief

2008-12-24T21:43:00.000-08:00

Time to get ra- Oh, just watch it.

2008-12-23T03:51:00.000-08:00

I HOPE YOU SEE MY POINT

Beyond the Sea

2008-12-12T00:30:00.000-08:00

Holy crap, it's a Star Ocean renaissance! I just bought Star Ocean! Not the old FF7 ripoff that turned out to be awesomer than it had any right to be, or the new one from a couple years back that dripped diaper gravy all over its legacy, but the original Super Nintendo classic that, along with Tales of Phantasia and Seiken Densetsu 3, represent the peak of the old girl's technical prowess. The SNES version of the game was so awkwardly crammed into a cartridge, with zany data compression, some voice acting(!), and a somewhat unfinished-feeling campaign. It felt a lot like a planar version of Tales of Phantasia's linear combat, but at the end of the day that's not what distinguishes it.

If you've ever played any of the fifteen brazillion versions of Final Fantasy (that's Number One I'm talking about), you may have noticed that it had a lot of unique items and side quests that did more than just add to numbers on your stats window. This is mostly due to its proximity to the old pen and paper RPGs, and even their early computerized imitators. It was trying to give a sense of complexity, maintain some pretense of roleplay even though most of it was a farce (hell, most of the spells didn't actually even do a God damned thing). Even though it wasn't doing much, this level of imagination contributed to the sense of adventure in ways rarely recaptured nowadays.

Star Ocean is mostly your typical JRPG, but it deviates from the norm in ways both good and bad. The bad first: if you don't like missing things in your RPGs, like really useful items and characters, you should either stay away from the series entirely or always use a walkthrough. Star Ocean, and in particular its sequel, are infamous for making you regret things that seemed innocuous when you did them.

The good stuff is mostly the things you can miss or not notice. Part of what makes Star Ocean games great for me is the skill system. Instead of just combat skills or thieving skills or... cliches from that one movie, it gives a list of very general and mundane skills you can develop as your characters' numbers go up. Things like "Eye for Detail" and "Sketching". Sometimes they'll have immediate reward, like stat boosts, but other times they'll unlock abilities, like making artwork to sell or publishing books that can teach skills to other characters. Some of these abilities are necessary to get the best stuff in the game. Most of this is impossible for any player to know on his or her first time through.

Even though at the end of the day you just max out the important skills for everyone, you get to have some fun working it so that each character has a specialty. Maybe JRPG Character Archetype #2 is really good at composing music, Archetype #7 is your best pickpocket, Archetype #5 is learning to paint, and the whole group together has a pretty good orchestra and is learning to cook. They have varying reward in terms of the game system, but they're a handy aid to imagination and go a long way toward breaking up the monotony of the otherwise traditional gameplay.

Everything else about the games is completely standard. Their stories work well enough, their settings are sometimes irritating and sometimes just fine, and the music is actually kind of excellent its own quirky way. They're completely unapologetic, and worth experiencing. That said, I can only recommend buying these games, and their remakes, if you're really fond of their particular eras. The first came out at the end of the SNES days, and its remake and sequel (and its remake) are classic PS1 look and feel. Just don't miss out on that Eternal Sphere or you'll be so mad you'll stop playing.

If Star Ocean were a philosopher, it would be Hegel. Both understood that things had changed and how, and in attempting to make it all work together and synthesize everything that came before they managed to achieve no small degree of halfway-impressive mediocrity. Neither really works alone, but taken in terms of their places in history either can be enjoyed on its own terms. Also, bringing up either is a great way to end a conversation.

WE ARE ALL FUCKED

2008-12-10T12:08:00.000-08:00

In case you're confused, here's the situation: Square-Enix, the most powerful Japanese software developer, have just announced that they are releasing Dragon Quests IX and X, the next two entries in the most powerful game franchise of all time, for the DS and Wii, the juggernaut Nintendo systems that just may be the most successful in the history of the medium. In the photo are, from left to right, Some Guy, Dragon Quest series producer and accomplished Elton John impersonator Yuji Horii, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, and Square-Enix president Yoichi Wada.

What is happening here is equivalent to every country in the world giving the USA all of their nuclear bombs at once. This is the kind of market domination only James Bond villains are capable of. What you should notice when you look at this picture is that Satoru Iwata, the man holding all the strings, is not into it at all.

When an event of this magnitude is treated with such ennui one can only conclude that in appointing Iwata as his successor Hiroshi Yamauchi actually breathed a part of his spirit into the young executive. I look forward to watching him grow more callous and haggard over the coming years, gaining less and less pleasure from his successes as he begins to resemble the powers that created him.

Fall Games of 2008: sequels, rehashes and some innovation.

2008-12-03T22:13:00.000-08:00

Every Fall gamers face a problem that is hardly serious but can still be a source of stress and sleepless nights. This threat to our large (and growing) group of enthusiasts can simply be described as the "holiday game-gasm."

Most Game publishers want to ship least one title between October and Christmas to capitalize on holiday shopping, this year there are more than 500 SKU's scheduled to be released. Because of this, game journalism is vital to the individual who wants to play several games and not waste his time and money on something thrown together to cash in on the seasonal shopping.

Unfortunately, game reviews can be hard to come by for games lately, either because of review embargos due to poor game quality or simple review backlog due to the sheer amount of new titles arriving this holiday season. Even if reviews are available, it's hard to discern their worth due to generally poor journalistic ethics in the field of games journalism. I'm not even going to touch on "New Games Journalism," I have enough problems with those people to write a 3 part article that must be written in phases to prevent my spite gland from going into shock.

So what is a gamer to do? Buy what the neck-beard clerk at Gamestop tells them to? Listen to some hipster web pundit's "well researched" opinion and get the "genre breaking(or defining) game of this console generation" that'll quickly be forgotten next year by the game's inevitable sequal?

No, you should do whatever the hell you want and buy the games that look interesting to you. But just in case you are bereft of an opinion or taste here are my choices for the fall.

Fallout 3: Be warned, this game is not perfect. No one is 100% happy with it and will describe their problems at great length, these probelms include: Poor voice acting, poor sound, game crashes, bad AI, graphical glitches, xbox live problems, DRM & install issues, et cetera.

None of these matter, if you ask them to describe 3 things they liked about the game and hold back no spoiler they invariably sprout a look of child-like glee and describe to you a wholly unique game experience rife with adventure, grim comedy and hyper-violence that truly lives up to the fallout brand. If you don't own this game already, you should drive to the store and buy it right now.

Valkyria Chronicles: Remember when Sega made RPGs? I don't, because I was too busy playing shooters and platformers. By the time I was into RPGs I had completely missed the boat on 8 and 16bit RPGs that were not made by Squaresoft.

This game was initially described to me as a mixture of FPS and Final Fantasy Tactics with a visual style akin to a pencil and watercolor painting. This excited me to no end, because I am pretty sick of Nomura's zippers and angst and how they've infected nearly the whole Japanese RPG genre.

I've yet to play more than a few minutes of this game due to a busy schedule, but it's going to get played next week after I finish moving.

Chrono Trigger DS: If you haven't played Chrono Trigger, you should go play it. That's all there is to say.

Persona 4: This is possibly the last good non-shovelware PS2 game that we'll see in the US. It contains all the excellent interface and localization of Last year's Persona 3, but has more than 1 song in it's dungeons (which are no longer randomized) and the plot is a murder mystery that is so engaging that you should avoid spoilers until you finish playing the game. Avoiding spoilers may be hard, as the damn game comes with an art book.

Sonic 2008

2008-11-24T00:05:00.000-08:00

It's that time again! Sonic Team has made another Sonic the Hedgehog game, and when they're not working out the appropriate anglo-saxon-derived hedgehog equivalent for "werewolf" or arguing over the continuity of the Sonic storyline, Sonic apologists are going to start coming up with arduous and ornate explanations for why this new game deserves an 8 out of 10.

Leaving aside the already-too-late aspect of lying to convince yourself the game you're playing is merely "not terrible", there's a legitimate and compelling sadness to the history of this franchise. Everyone will talk about the glory days of Sonic and you know they're talking about the Genesis games. Sonic Adventure was compelling, especially for its time, but it can hardly be recommended now. The sequels have each spread another layer of sadness on Sonic fans' hearts, culminating in the absolutely abominable 2006 game that was simply, blasphemously tarted around as some kind of replacement flagship under the title of Sonic the Hedgehog.

That Sonic Unleashed is an improvement is effectively tautological. Don't let fans' relief of this mundane fact fool you into spending dollars on this new entry. Over the years much effort has been spent getting to the bottom of A: what made the old games so great and B: what makes the new ones so execrable, and while answers vary one thing remains constant: Sonic Team is not interested in answering either question.

At first people thought they wanted a game where you go as fast as possible, since Sonic games' claim to fame was always that they were really fast-paced, but over time this has been proven completely wrong. Going as fast as possible means either barely interacting with the game as it holds your hand through automatic sections or constantly losing because you can't react to what's happening on the screen. The former is pleasant but quickly unrewarding, and the latter is absolute hell. Both issues have plagued the series in 3D for so long they can now be considered hallmarks.

Some people seem to enjoy Sonic and company as characters, and show an interest in what happens in the plotlines. I'm pretty sure this is just a byproduct of their apologism, since this world was founded on the simple lie that Sonic somehow has "attitude". It rarely occurs to people that Knuckles was added to be an edgier character, and that when that didn't work Sonic's Shadow counterpart was added to the mix. When he wasn't enough, Shadow was given a dark version as well. Now Sonic has a dark side at night. The entire setting, plot, and characters of Sonic the Hedgehog are a series of attempts to out-dark the last one. Even nostalgia for childhood cartoons can't justify staying on this sinking ship.

The truth is that, speed aside, there was never anything fundamentally different about Sonic as a game. He runs, he jumps, and sometimes he gets special abilities (most of which, you'll note, have little or nothing to do with going fast). What made the games stand out so much on the Genesis was that the levels were absolutely spectacularly designed. Sections of the game seemed to play themselves, but at any point the player could break away and use the game's physics to launch off to another path through the level. This was more than just branching or separate paths, it was a level full of ways to move forward and a player empowered to find a way among them at any time. It was fast because you were always playing, not because Sonic was moving quickly.

I'm going to go ahead say that I don't think we need Sonic the Hedgehog, even in good games. What lessons about level design we can learn from the old games should be learned and we should move on to new franchises. I don't mean Sonic Team, since they obviously don't care about anything but their own bad ideas. I mean us. Stop hoping the next Sonic game won't suck. Stop even knowing when it's going to come out! Let yourself look back on it with a smile as that awesome series on Genesis with the simple, goofy setting and great levels.

Street Fighter IV Alpha

2008-11-12T20:08:00.000-08:00

The home version of Street Fighter IV keeps getting better and better. Capcom recently announced that Rose would be in the home version. While I'm happy that we're getting such a eclectic mixture of characters in the new game I hope that some Street Fighter III characters make the cut, Q and Makoto need to be in this game.

Musical Interlude World

2008-11-06T12:27:00.000-08:00

A Man Once Dreamt that He Was a Rock

2008-10-19T19:30:00.000-07:00

I'll confess I've never been as up on the Mega Man phenomenon as I should have been. Growing up I got to play the original, but not enough to get good at it. At home the only gaming device I was allowed was my Game Boy, so I made do with a couple of the Game Boy titles until I could use an emulator.

Technically I've played through and beaten the first seven games in the series, but since I did it with an emulator I cheated like mad and never got very good at them. The first Mega Man on Game Boy, however, remains my bitch to this day; I can maul through it with my eyes closed from start to finish.

Despite my metered exposure, having played almost the entire franchise I can say with some certainly that Mega Man 9 is the best entry by far. I would not have said anything of the sort during my first few hours of gameplay, what with the constant falling and exploding and losing, but after skating through the game once on energy tanks and picking it up again something crazy happened: I declared my lordship over it.

Every obstacle in the entire game is an obstacle only until you make sense of it. There's a rhythm to every area in Mega Man 9, and once you get into it you'll find yourself stopping very rarely. Areas that seemed arduous at first become second-nature, and weapons that seemed useless become favorite tools.

That's something about Mega Man 9 that we haven't seen in a long time: useful weapons. This is the single biggest factor in Mega Man 2's greatness, where the Metal Blade achieved legendary status for its versatility, power, and forgiving use of ammunition. The unfortunate side effect in Mega Man 2 was that it was practically compulsory for you to take on Metal Man first in a game that should be all about leaving it up to the player. Mega Man 9 sidesteps this by having every weapon possess genuine utility. Even the tired rotating shield weapon doubles as Enker's Mirror Shield, and the fire weapon is more useful for its angle of attack than for any extra damage it does or the fact that you can charge it.

A fundamental fact of a good Mega Man game is that the weapons you receive don't affect how much damage you do so much as they affect how you play the game. Another one is that playing the levels in a different order should be a very different experience. Mega Man games are even more nonlinear than the old Metroid games, it's just that that nonlinearity is completely on the table from the beginning. You acquire the tools in the order you want, and rather than deciding whether you can pass through an area, acquring a new tool merely decides how you can pass through that area.

The result, in Mega Man 9, is a playground. You are given obstacles, and you are given a bunch of tools. Anything will work, so it's just up to you to figure out what you want to use. It gets written up in my book along with Final Fantasy Tactics, Super Metroid, and Mario Sunshine as a shining example of nonlinear game and level design. If I could, I would make out with it every day.

Who might I pay for a video game?

2008-10-11T20:39:00.001-07:00

Half year ago I was bugged to write something about folks out there that I would like to give money to. You know for making games or something.

I figure there are plenty of game makers out there that are creative, and I am pretty sure my contemporaries here at supple think have named plenty of them.

I will take a different tack. Here are three “fine” artists that I think make some pretty neat stuff. I would really just like to see what these folk would do with a medium such as electronic entertainment. With a video game how do you integrate meaning without subjecting your audience to a movie? Will their creativity and training cross over? Google any of these names to find their websites and look at more of their work.

Michael A. Salter

Banksy
If you don’t know google him, he is incredibly popular. He has his faults, but if you can get by the clichés in his beliefs then you can enjoy his work for what it is. I really wonder if he could maintain his sensibilities about the world if he was challenged with making a game with market appeal.

Kris Kuksi
Kuksi’s latest work is incredible, called “the grotesque.” Imagine navigating an environment styled in such a way, with game play and story driven by such a mind.

That is about it for now. I have listed three artists; there are however hundreds if not thousands of established “fine” artists that would make excellent additions to development teams.

I have qualified “fine” in this article because art and artist are perhaps two of the most meaningless terms in the English language.

I just hope writing on this blog I can expose at least a few of my friends to some art they will enjoy.

Trapped in a Video Game Factory Please Send Help

2008-10-08T18:08:00.000-07:00

I have a problem, and it is a mental one. No, a different one. This is the one where I suddenly decide, "Hey, I like computer games and talking about them, why don't I make one?" I just had another attack recently.

I have chosen to take on this latest relapse of mental colic in a different way. Instead of outlining an exhaustive design document this time around, I've chosen to start implementing what strikes my fancy at the time. This of course, has lead to a Montana Free Militia-worthy arsenal of guns, grenades, laser drones, and little bobbing things that spray bullets everywhere. I have yet to decide what this says about my state of mind.

When I started tooling around with it, I loved Game Maker. Between the drag-and-drop and scripting aspects of the programming, it was basically instant gratification. I could get a game up and running without having to fiddle with bedrock stuff like sprite management, collision detection, update cycles, instance tracking, etc. All that was taken care of by Game Maker. I could just get down to the business of designing.

But then the cracks started appearing. I began to realize that while I didn't have to worry about the basic machinery, it also meant that I didn't have a say in how things were done. It was like the death of a thousand cuts. Oh, the color of the bottom-left pixel always determines the transparency color for sprites? I need to make an entirely new object to create multiple hit-boxes? I have to do WHAT to get a 2D traceline working?

I was getting antsy to say the least. So I started messing around with the XNA framework. I found the additional muscle and flexibility liberating, but starting with Game Maker did have some benefits. Mainly that the additional flexibility that I found with XNA would have paralyzed me with indecision. Without the basic understanding of game program flow that I gained from using Game Maker, I would not have known where to start. So ultimately, starting with Game Maker isn't a bad idea at all. Just don't be upset when you start hitting Game Maker's limitations. All that means is that you're ready to move on, so why not do so?

Seeing things like the XNA framework, Popcap's Sexy framework, the improvements in PyGame and more recenly WiiWare, are very heartening to me. Making games is a process that has become ludicrously more laborious and costly as time goes on. That there are measures being taken to mitigate this for the little guy can only be a good thing. I say this with the full knowledge that we'll have to endure a tsunami of garbage before getting the good stuff. But we're all jaded enough here that I think this goes without saying.

Basically this has just been a rambling post on my shallow forays into game making and you probably shouldn't take too much stock in it (if anyone is even reading this fucking thing in the first place, that is). For all my talk about XNA, I'm probably going to stick with Game Maker for a little while longer, mainly because I'm so lazy. That, and I have yet to be even in the same ZIP code occupied by people who are serious about making games. My vain hope is that one day I'll get out of my "Me too!" amateur rut and produce something serviceable.

A guy can dream, right?

This Game has a Japanese Title

2008-10-08T01:50:00.000-07:00

Hey, is it cool if I shit all over this thing you love? Okay, thanks.

Ever since I played them back in college, I've wondered how anybody could possibly hold Suikoden I and/or II in such high regard. Like Final Fantasy V before them, the games are clearly beloved only because they feel so secret and valuable to US gamers. Saying Suikoden is your favorite game will make everyone stroke their beards and grunt appreciatively in your Philosophy East/West class. Suikoden II is an especially safe bet, since anybody who played the first game is unlikely to have stuck around for the sequel, so if they're not quite sure what you're on about they'll probably keep it to themselves.

It's pretty hard to objectively demonstrate that a game is garbage, but it's easy enough to argue against what people love about it. I think Suikoden is a lot like Xenogears in how much its ambition is completely wasted by sloppy, hamfisted execution, and the fans of both series are always so impressed by the former that they completely ignore the latter. Sooner or later, though, the fans start to wake up a little bit. For Xenogears fans it was Xenosaga that started them thinking, and Suikoden fans have Suikoden III and IV.

Suikoden III and IV are exactly like Suikoden I and II. I haven't played them, so I'm basing this purely on what I've read about them on the Internet: that their characters' interactions are contrived and nonsensical, that the story is shallow and undeveloped, that the villains are set up as pure world-destroying evil in a series that's supposed to be all about moral grey areas, that the gameplay and pacing are clunky and time-consuming, that the 108-character feature doesn't mesh with the combat system, and that the strategy game-like tactical battles are a completely worthless afterthought.

It's unfair for me to prejudge Suikoden III and IV based on Internet forums, but the point I'm trying to make is that the problems Suikoden fans have with the third and fourth games in the series are the exact same problems I had with the first two. Maybe they really are inferior games, but it looks to me like all they did was force series fans to confront the flaws in a deeply flawed series of games.

Suikoden hasn't just aged badly--there is actually no reason whatsoever to play the games today. A lot of games that aren't much fun anymore are at least historically interesting, doing something to advance the medium or offering a take on a genre not seen before or since. Suikoden's legacy is the mechanic that ruined Chrono Cross and a bunch of SaGa mechanics that never worked. For every character making a decision in a world there were five stupid anime characters doing everything for no reason. For every time the game reminded you that there was no right side or wrong side in the story there were five scenes demonizing the villain. For every attempt at moral inquiry the game decided to remind you five times that racism is bad.

Suikoden is not profound, influential, or even very much fun to play. Its importance in the medium is only to shine a light on those who value games first and foremost by their rarity. Leave it be and move along.

If that's not pretentious enough for you, try this out: if Suikoden were a philosopher, it would be John Locke. Both are trite codifications of the shallow biases and habits of their ages with nothing novel or penetrating to contribute. Congratulations, Suikoden! You are the ass pit 'twixt the cheeks of Descartes and Berkeley!

time sink gaming

2008-10-06T00:01:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately I haven't been able to participate in this practice much anymore. I used to all the time though. Here are some of my previous favorite time sinks, with a brief summary.

Sim City -- floods suck
Sim City 2000 -- space arcologies -> people suffocated to death
Final Fantasy VII -- standard crap everyone did
Final Fantasy Tactics -- chess, but your knight can jump up cliffs and it grants you two moves at once
Total Annihilation -- Just how many Big Berthas can you build? What happens when you decide the walls to your base should be nothing but missile turrets? These questions and more tonight at nine.
Diablo II -- also known as advanced solitaire
Pokemon Red/Blue -- dragonite ruled that shit, but the game boy color's IR port did not
Counter-Strike -- oh dear, headed up a clan, played thousands of hours, literally, also fag/gay
Morrowind -- I never beat the game, but I damn near stole everything or at least almost everything
Disgaea -- beating ______ is annoying and time consuming
Oblivion -- all but 4 quests completed, and those 4 glitched so I couldn't finish them, guild master of all guilds, dragonknight of the fancy parlor tradesmith quest was the best

Trust me, I am not proud.

My current behavior involves buying a game, beating it in a day. Then never speaking of it again. Which is sad, but it is the only way I can keep reasonably up to date with new games. CoD 4, Braid, Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect, Rock Band, and others all fell to this impersonal method. I suppose I should be happy that I still get the opportunity to finish the games.

The game that will take me to the brink will be Fallout 3. I simply can not wait to pack rat live explosives on other people.

My Tanks Are Fight

2008-10-01T17:54:00.000-07:00

alzabo asked me if there were any time-sink games of note that have held me in a productivity-sapping grip. Now, I could write pages about the months that X-COM: UFO Defense has stolen from me, or my utterly demented completionist approach to RPGs, or my weakness for strategy games.

But I'm not going to do that. Instead, let me tell you about these tanks. These. Fucking. Tanks.

Metal Max Returns is Super Nintendo remake of Metal Max for the NES, both of which were Japan-only releases. So I have game translation group Aeon Genesis to thank for all my lost time, not that I'm complaining or anything.

Metal Max Returns is a fascinating game to me because it is a Super Nintendo game that is both refreshingly advanced and frustratingly primitive. For starters, the game plays like a free-roaming RPG. There are precious few plot-related bottlenecks to block your exploration of the huge world map. If you wanted to you can, with a little care, explore and uncover nearly three fourths of the world without bothering with what constitutes the main plot. You can collect bounties on boss monsters whenever you want. Actually, you can pretty must just do whatever the hell you want within the bounds of the game, which is light-years ahead of the usual console RPG of that time.

And that's not mentioning the other useful features. Your personal computer, the BSCon, is essentially an online help file, a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Wasteland. It contains information about every town you've been to, including what shops/facilities are available and their inventories, and also whether or not a sale is going on. You can set a chime to let you know when you've accumulated a certain amount of money.

I'm not saying the game is all roses, though. The encounter rate is a relic from the NES days, in the sense that it is utterly infuriating. You cannot go five steps without some biomechanical horror trying to kill you. To compound the frustration, the interface is very clunky and makes inventory organization a chore that you will dread.

That about sums up the pros and cons I see in the game. This is all really great material for discussing game design and perhaps the history of the Super Famicom, but let's cut the bullshit for a second here.

The real reason Metal Max Returns fascinates me is these goddamn tanks. The ability to customize your tank to an almost psychotic degree is hypnotic. Not only can you modify the tank chassis, but you can also tune the individual parts up or down. This in turn changes the overall weight of your tank, which you must carefully balance with your engine's load capacity. When I'm adjusting these tanks into unstoppable engines of destruction, I'm entranced like a goddamn stoner staring into a kaleidoscope.

My best tank is a refurbished ambulance. It is equipped with twin 22mm Vulcan machineguns, a 195mm main cannon, autonomous guidance system, air-conditioning, and leather upholstery (no, seriously).

Pictured here is the female soldier popping up from her armored dune buggy and using her hand-held minigun to shoot a cybernetic hippopotamus, which has a cannon in its mouth.

Why are you not playing this goddamn game along with me?

Where did the time go

2008-09-28T23:30:00.000-07:00

What are some of your favorite time-sink games? Do you have a save file in Chrono Trigger where everyone is level 99? Have you collected all the dress spheres in FFX-2? Have you played so much SkiFree that you have mastered avoiding that damned Yeti?

Tell us about it in the comments!

shouting at the void

2008-09-24T18:02:00.001-07:00

I really dislike sending email to PR talking heads, the responses you get are almost always vapid and clearly c&p'ed from a giant text file they use to store all their canned responses. I do sympathize with their situation, I know first-hand what it's like to deal with whiney fanboys who think they know more than you day in and day out; it's a rough job.

But sometimes, your ire is so great you simply have to share it with someone who might be able to do something about it instead of just bitching about it on the internet like some whiney little fanboy.

I sent the following letter to Microsoft's PR Guy Larry "Major Nelson" Hyrb about the disturbing lack of SHMUPS in the xbox 360's forseeable future.

Larry,

I honestly didn't know where to turn with this question, so I hope that you can help me get this into the right hands if you are unable to give me an answer.

Background on me, I'm 25 and I've been into video games since childhood. I recently purchased an xbox360 (gamertag: [redacted]) in August because of a Elite for $349.00 deal and the fact that a whole mess of overhead scrolling arcade shooters have become available or are coming soon for the Xbox360. However, I must admit that peer pressure had something to do with it, all my co-workers at have them as well.

After buying my 360, I've noticed that all these Shooters (aka "SHMUPs") that I was so looking forward to are NTSC-J only. Here's a list:

Title (English): Raiden IV
Publisher: Taito
Website: http://raiden.mossjp.co.jp/

Title (English): Raiden Fighting Aces
Publisher: Success Corporation
Website: http://www.success-corp.co.jp/software/xbox360/rf_aces/index.html

Title (English): Otomedius Gorgeous
Publisher: Konami
Website: http://www.konami.jp/products/otome_g/index.html

Title (English): Death Smiles
Publisher: Cave
Website: http://www.cave.co.jp/gameonline/Xbox360/deathsmiles/index.html

Title: Dodonpachi Dai Ou Jou
Publisher: Cave
Website: http://www.cave.co.jp/

I want to make it perfectly clear to you that I bought a 360 just to play games from the SHMUP Genre. The SHMUPs currently available on XBLA were a great teaser, but reading rumors that Microsoft has decided not to pursue further arcade SHUMPs saying "We are going to cut down faithful arcade ports" makes me upset that I bought an xbox360 in the first place.

I understand that games like these need a domestic publisher to be released in our region, but why are the discs being region coded in the first place, is it purely a publisher decision? This is really breaking my heart Larry, I love this genre so much, I have an arcade cab dedicated to SHMUPs in my house for goodness sake!

Thanks for your time and attention,

Alzabo

Happy Birthday Dreamcast!

2008-09-07T23:36:00.001-07:00

The Dreamcast came out on 09/09/1999 and barely lasted 2 years in the retail channel.

If you somehow missed the train on the Dreamcast and want to find out what all the hubub is about you can buy one for the same price as a pair of flip-flops. No need to worry about throwing your money down a sink-hole by buying rare games for a dead system because the Dreamcast was cracked so hard you can just burn CDroms and they play.

This week's ultra-long Retronauts does a good job recapping the short (and some would say depressing) history of the Dreamcast.

Here are two reasons why the Dreamcast was awesome:

Sega was humble.
Or maybe just desperate. Does groveling actually work in a TV ad?

Jesus Christ, that cat just ate all those mice!
This is the best video game commercial ever.

Peripheral Promises Unfulfilled

2008-08-18T19:11:00.000-07:00

Most gamers inadvertently collect lots of peripheral devices that are used with just a few games. The best examples of this are DDR pads, Pop'n controllers, Guncons & Beatmania keyboards. Another class of peripherals are data transfer devices like the PocketStation, GBA->GC cable, e-Reader and the Playstation Eye. It's always vexing when the consumer buys a peripheral believing that it'll be well supported and then it is quickly forgotten and only used for one or a handful of games. It's easy to look upon a collection of console peripherals and see nothing but a pile of broken promises.

However, one must also mention the all-rounder of console peripherals, the arcade stick, unlike the previously mentioned devices they are almost never game specific and can be used for fighting games, SHMUPs and classic games like Pac-Man, Robotron 2084.

The topic of non-specific controllers & peripherals brings me to my most fondly remembered console accessory, the Sony Dual Analog.

Check out that beige carpet.

The Dual Analog predates the Dual Shock in the American retail channel by roughly a year, and other than it's lack of rumble it is noticeably larger than any other 1st Party Playstation gamepad. I personally find it to be the most comfortable Playstation gamepad ever produced, the rubber nub-less concave analog sticks and beefy grips are extremely comfortable for marathon gaming sessions. I bought mine in 1997 because of early analog support Playstation games like Colony Wars and Bushido Blade.

Grips so substantial even a ham beast would find it comfortable

When the Dual Shock was released in 1998 I was very disappointed that it was not the same size as the Dual Analog, so I continued to use my Dual Analog well into the PS2 era. I finally retired the Dual Analog in late 2001, figuring that the Dual Shock 2 was better suited for most PS2 titles.

While the Dual Analog is a fairly rare Playstation accessory today, it isn't worth that much even with the original box. I think one of the reasons that such an excellent controller isn't more fondly remembered or desired is because the Dual Analog was only useful for a handful of games before it was supplanted by the Dual Shock and a flood of analog+rumble supported games.

Unlike the initial American Xbox controller, the Dual Analog is light and comfortable.

Oh well, I still enjoy using mine ever once in a while. The controller's "beefiness" just seems right when I'm playing Godhand.

Do you fondly remember a specific peripheral? Let us know in the comments.

The Most Sincere Form of Flattery

2008-08-11T13:31:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, my friends and I filmed a test episode for an American version of GameCenter CX.

While it's still in being edited (I believe we shot over 14 hours of footage), I do have some photos that were taken during filming to share.

Our brave Hero, Tweak. He'll be the host/victim of Gamecenter US. You can almost see the gears turning inside his head as he attempts to solve one of the game's many illogical puzzles.

While it could be considered cruel to lock Tweak in a room for as long as it takes to beat a game we (the producers) were not completely without compassion. Snacks that Tweak requested were provided.

This is the ideal set design for our show, a snack table, original game w/ package and a very uncomfortable chair without optimum viewing height for the CRT TV to exacerbate any frustration Tweak may experience while challenging the game.

After 6+ hours of filming I was quite tired, but unlike Tweak I had a comfortable chair to relax in when not working.

Victory at last, but at what cost?

Playing Games the Wrong Way.

2008-08-06T22:56:00.000-07:00

"Sometimes you have to make your own fun" is a phrase I heard often as a child. I can't claim to have had a especially active imagination, but I did run around in the woods with my friends making stuff up.

When I got older my friends and I would try to best each other's accomplishments on NES. Many of the games had built in "yard sticks" for player skill, Metroid rewarded speedy play with bonus ending content and Super Mario Brothers 2 had hidden levels for expert players. Recent games are no different, with Xbox Live Achievement Points and PSN Trophies.

I don't have any complaints about these modern revisions of classic game extending modes and competitions. I just hope that the artificial creation of extended game play goals doesn't end up killing the idea of "screwing around" in a game just because.

When a player has extracted all the achievement points he can from a game, do they never return to it? I've started to notice this happening lately to games that should have absurd levels of replay value. I wonder if the current generation of games will have speed run communities build up around them?

What happened to the player "making their own fun?" What do you think?

This was all just an excuse for me to post this comic.

Summer DS Grab Bag.

2008-07-29T01:10:00.000-07:00

Final Fantasy IV just dropped for DS and it's been well received.

I bear FFIV no ill will, it was an excellent SNES/SuFami game. While I don't think people who played it in 1991 need to rush out and pick up a copy, if a FFIV veteran does pick up the game they will not experience the nostalgia death marchs that FF IV, FFV & FFVI were on GBA. The game presentation and difficulty level are so different that it honestly feels like a different game, even if the primitive 3D models do feel inappropriate for some of the emotionally heavy situations (kind of like FFVII). If you're interested in playing something a little different this summer you could always import a DS game.

As a child I felt Japan got all the best games, reading gaming mags that endlessly previewed what was hot in Japan every month. Importing games used to give me a giddy little thrill, I felt I was performing an end-run around the domestic companies who usually dictate what the American public can play. How I viewed Japanese games has been summed up neatly by Percy Bysshe Shelly:

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
'Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' "

There are 3 games that come out within a month of one another in Japan this summer that I'd love to get my hands on. While the majority of DS owners around the world will never play these games, they'll at least have a chance to own one of them this fall. Provided Nintendo doesn't fuck up the localization. Moving on, here's a list of DS games you can import this summer.

1) KORG DS-10 Synthesizer

It's a KORG synth, IN YOUR DS. If you are not immediately rushing out the buy this after reading that you should probably skip ahead to the next section of this article. The Synth is supposedly a super accurate recreation of the real KORG synth and has features such as a touch screen patch panel & a built-in save memory big enough for large drum loops and crap like this:

Sorry 'bout the rickroll. I applaud the concept and exicution of the KORG DS10 Synthesizer software/tool. However, I must admit that I have no desire to fool around partially because it is yet another DS game that requires the use of headphones and mainly because drum loops are about as interesting to me as running a mixing board at a raga concert.

2) Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni Kizuna: Dai-Ichi-Kan Tatari

If the Phoenix Wright games and Hotel Dusk are the decendents of the old LucasArts adventure games like Day of the Tentacle and Full Throttle, the Higurashi games are the crossbred decendents ofthe most brutal Sierra and Infocom games you ever played.

The basic premise of the Higurashi adventure games is that you fail over and over again. With each failure you crawl towards the ultimate "good ending." The "bad ends" (NWS) are honestly quite disturbing (yet strangely enjoyable) and are as satisfying as the "good endings" that lead to the ultimate solution to the game. I also love the game play element where the perspective of the player changes from one cast member to another as they play through the various scenarios. While a comparison of the Higurashi Games and Sound Novels to the Bill Murry's film Groundhog's Day would be apt, I feel it has just as much in common with the Harlan Ellison's I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.

I could bang on about good adventure games like this on the DS for quite a while I must draw a clear line in the sand and say I won't be playing this game because it'll never receive an English localization. Oh well, at least Konami is US localizing their weird time-travel DS adventure game Time Hollow.

3) Rhythm Tengoku Gold

The first Rhythm Tengoku game was a pretty big hit at a time when the GBA was near the end of its production life cycle in Japan. It's simple controls, addictive game play and off-beat sense of humor made it THE GBA game to import for people everywhere.

The sequel will be more of the same, and I can't wait. Nintendo has stated that they're considering bringing the game to North America and maybe Europe. Call me obtuse if you must but I can't bring myself to trust Nintendo to localize the game properly. If I choose to buy Rhythm Tengoku Gold, I'll be importing the Japanese version.

I don't have a good closer for this article. I could write something snide about Nintendo or how "America misses out on the good stuff again." I could write something redundant about how Nintendo's gutsy little platform is home to more than mere children's games. Honestly, this is a wish list that belongs to a person who has become so jaded with mainstream games that he only wants to play with synthesizer simulators, horror novel games with 50+ gory endings and off-beat 1 button rhythm that are difficult to the point of being inaccessible to mainstream gamers.

PICTURE UNRELATED

2008-07-15T17:39:00.000-07:00

I just got back from a relaxing vacation where I did nothing besides drink beer, drink beer during visits to breweries and play Space Invaders Extreme & Etrian Odyssey II on my DS.

It was a very good vacation, and I enjoyed Space Invaders Extreme so much that I am seriously considering buying the spinner controller.

Enix's atrophied appendage twitchs once more

2008-07-01T23:03:00.000-07:00

Chrono Trigger for Nintendo DS. I guess this is the sign we've been waiting for.

Back when Enix and Square merged many invisioned a future where both RPG power-houses would colaborate and create a slave army of basement dwelling teenagers that would be wholely incapable of doing anything more menacing than making people around them feel uncomfortable any time they open their maws to emit a horrible mixture of internet memes and feminine Japanese.

While the above nightmare has come to pass, it is not by Enix's hand. They actually merged with Square to endlessly rehash all of Square's old properties until they are completely unprofitable. While Enix's wish to grind Square into dust may seem cruel, at least they have found a way to keep Tetsuya Nomura's emaciated, zipper clad, emo charecter designs from infecting other games.

With Chrono Trigger on the horizon I suppose a wireless multiplayer version of Secret of Mana isn't far behind.

The only reasons I would consider replaying Chrono Trigger again is to name everyone in my party Lavos.

Why are Marvel players so angry all the time?

2008-07-01T15:22:00.000-07:00

Musical Interlude

2008-07-01T15:21:00.000-07:00

METAL GEAR?!

2008-06-13T00:12:00.001-07:00

I Have Metal Geat Solid 4, but the PS3 I was hoping to use to play it is 500 miles away.

Until I can play the game I'm trying to avoid spoilers by playing Persona 3: FES. I must admit I bought the game on a lark, using a gift card that had been languishing for 3+ months in my gift card pile. However, it's turned out to be the best RPG I've played in a decade.

Yes, this is the best RPG I've played since Final Fantasy Tactics. Having never played a Persona game before, I find the battle system and dynamic rogue-like dungeons entertaining and surprisingly grind free. The non-dungeon portion of the game plays like a dating game without being lame. However I must admit that I would be embarrassed to play this game in front of other people while walking around the in-game high school flirting with animu women.

The game's art direction and music are excellent, the art direction in Persona 3 is distinct and in-game environments are vibrant; the game's menus themselves are quite a sight to behold, I spent 15 minutes in the menus during the first 90 minutes of the game simply using them to watch them unfold and explode with color and art. The music is a Japanese ambient hip-hop blend that never overpowers the player, accentuating the action in dungeons and adding a sorely needed rhythm to the school life sections of the game.

While I am obviously gushing and have not completed the game yet, I do feel that Persona 3 is worth a look if you've got the time. I suppose my temporary lack of PS3 is a blessing in disguise, it's allowed me to give my undivided attention to a game that had previously been assigned to my disturbingly large "unplayed games" pile.

Transparency

2008-06-12T15:44:00.000-07:00

Man, you know what hasn't been run the fuck into the ground? Katamari Damacy! Wouldn't it be great if someone could come out with one of those for the PC? Oh! How about we make you play as a bad guy! And he's all dirty and smelly! LOL, let's put flies around his butt!

I wish I were kidding. I thought everyone got sick of American McGee back in the 90s.

You heard it here first.

2008-05-31T07:39:00.000-07:00

We've only seen Snake tooling around the Middle East because that's the game's prologue. The rest of the game you play as Johnny Sasaki while Otacon tries to make love bloom with Big Mama.

To Begin Your Adventure, Turn to Paragraph 1

2008-05-19T20:11:00.000-07:00

Have you ever heard of Choose Your Own Adventure books? Those stories that were cut up into sections that you could navigate through, resulting in a story that had multiple endings, mostly involving horrible deaths? Sometime in the early 80's, several publishers got the notion to merge that concept with light RPG elements, like an inventory, simple combat system and player statistics.

There were a lot of these 'gamebooks' as they were called, with many series. One of the more successful series were the Fighting Fantasy and Lone Wolf series, both of which got started in the UK. But then computer and video games went on the up-and-up, Nintendo resurrected the home console market, and gamebooks were slowly but surely edged out of the limelight, dying a quiet death in the mid-90s. Some do live on, like the Lone Wolf series, now available for free on Project Aon, but most are only dimly remembered.

After reading through many gamebooks, I started to wonder if maybe they were one of the many precursors to video games. Not a direct ancestor like pinball tables and slot machines, but more a distant ancestor, like pen-and-paper RPGs. They started out as interactive novels, and then gradually evolved into what amounted to be solo role-playing game modules. Consider, you have a self-contained story with a concrete beginning and end, and a few differing paths that lead you to the end. Each adventure follows a core set of rules, but individual adventures may have additional, unique rules of their own.

What we're talking about here is some basic video game anatomy, I'd say. Only, instead of graphics, sound, and a computer processor, it's the prose and the player's imagination that help generate the game world. Additionally, writing a gamebook also requires design considerations that are similar to those of a video game. It demands efficiency, balance, and flow.

Because of these reasons, I think writing a gamebook would make for an interesting exercise in game design. In order to make it halfway decent, you're going to need a compelling plot. The plot needs to be alterable based on the player's choices, but it should also loosely follow a set path. Combat and other hazards need to be spaced out and balanced so as to not frustrate the player. And then you will need various 'error checking' devices, to check the state of the game and the player. Oh, and you have 350 to 400 'nodes' to use in order to accomplish this. The folks at the Fighting Fantasy Project also think that making a gamebook is an interesting notion, and have several home-brew Fighting Fantasy gamebooks up for your perusal.

While gamebooks are pretty much a forgotten medium, I find the 'what-if' scenarios amusing to think about. Would gamebooks have survived if computer and video games had not taken off like they did? I think they would have. I imagine various publishing companies competing with various rule systems. Pen-and-paper RPG companies getting in on the game with solo campaigns in gamebook form. Bootleg books made by home-brew writers, hastily xeroxed and stapled together. Open Gaming License analogues allowing independent writers to create, publish, and sell their own books that use existing rule sets.

But inevitably someone would figure out that you can add video and audio to electronic gamebooks, and then we'd be back on the path to video games again. This outcome is not too far off from what happened in reality, actually. Not that gamebooks birthed video games, but rather that gamebooks evolved and merged with video games, living on in spirit in text adventures, visual novels, and other forms of interactive fiction. Seems inevitable, I guess, that the limitations of a medium would force the craft to either evolve or stagnate.

Hopefully I've at least piqued your curiosity regarding this near-forgotten type of interactive fiction. You can find a positively encyclopedic listing of gamebooks at Demian's Gamebook Web Page if you've exhausted the other links I've provided.

This is really happening.

2008-05-16T13:59:00.000-07:00

Right as I start to get really excited about Clover Studios and their new incarnation, Platinum Games, this announcement turns up. Four games! Here's my take:

Bayonetta: Hey, we're innovating on the Devil May Cry formula! Finally! I love all three Devil May Cry games, a lot, but hopefully this will finally make my dream of Viewtiful Joe-style time control combined with Devil May Cry action a reality. Interestingly enough, this is exactly the team that could do it and do it right.

Infinite Line: I never played Steel Battalion and we really have no info on this other than that it's a DS RPG, but there are no pieces of this puzzle so far that do not sex me up.

MadWorld: I love Nintendo consoles because I don't think videos games need to be violent to be fun, significant, or even awesome. That said, I like violent video games and think Nintendo needs more of them. Maybe one of these days I'll gush about No More Heroes, but for now it's enough to say that it tickled me in very private, very splendid ways. It was like an easygoing GOD HAND on the Wii, with absolutely sociopathic amounts of blood and arbitrary violence. MadWorld looks like it's going even further, as instead of making all the blood grey or whatever in Japan they are simply not going to release it there at all. This game will be indulgent, offensive, bloody, and on a Nintendo console. Make it happen.

Shinji Mikami: Yeah, he's working on a game. There are rumors that Suda 51 (the guy who made Killer 7 and No More Heroes) is involved. That's all we know, but I'm going to go ahead and pretend they're making GOD FOOT together.

Nothing can spoil this day.

2400 N81

2008-05-05T23:46:00.000-07:00

For some time now I've been puzzling over just what the hell is so fun about the channels on the Wii. Everybody Votes is kind of neat, but only gives me anything to do every other day, and Check Mii Out is a great concept spoiled by the fact that everyone just votes for Harry Potter all the time. So why am I having so much fun with this stuff?

Back before Internet access was readily available, accessible, or affordable, I spent a lot of time as a kid dialing up local bulletin boards. There were lots of little cultures that developed around these, and the communities were tight-knit and usually really friendly. Since most boards had only one phone line, you'd log in, check all the messages, and get off the line to let other people come in and post. It was a simpler time, and the slower pace and local vibe held surprisingly little resemblance to the rapid-fire idle chatter of web-based boards today.

Sometimes, when a board got really fancy and someone was willing to shell out a few bucks or knew someone who had, it would have "door games". These were programs the board would drop you into that were usually pretty simple, but sometimes grew spectacularly complicated. All of this, with one notable exception, was done without much in the way of graphics or sound. Almost every one of these games rendered what visuals they had with the ANSI extended character set, making use of colors and symbols to draw pictures. These usually fell somewhere between ASCII art and MS Paint, but it wasn't uncommon to see fully animated scenes rendered this way. It's really amazing, looking back on it, how much people were able to squeeze out of the medium.

What got me thinking about all this again was the previews for Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King on WiiWare. So far the game sounds exactly like the empire-management sims I used to play on local BBSes. Solar Realms Elite, Barren Realms Elite, and Falcon's Eye were an awesome way to log in and spend ten minutes, making treaties with other players and waging war with your turns. There were trade agreements, different systems of government, and different ways to allocate your resources. My Life as a King similarly has you in the role of a monarch organizing his country to better encourage his subjects to spread his domain. It's all a bit like a cross between Falcon's Eye and Majesty, and it's too bad I can't see Squenix making the decision to give you ten in-game days each real day and letting you duke it out with people on your friends list, just like the BBS door games of the 90s.

As I get around to it, I'll maybe showcase a few of the standout games I used to play back in the day. It's a kind of video game that I simply never see anymore, and it's a shame since it's not one without merit. Some tried surviving the transition to real-time multiplayer, but it rarely worked. My great hope is that these kinds of games will find a place again on the Wii, alongside a program that lets you vote on something stupid every two days and decide whose Darth Vader is the best spaceship captain.

I get disappointed a lot.

Keep fighting, make the future brighter.

2008-05-05T11:11:00.000-07:00

Street Fighter IV is going to land in our sticky little hands eventually and Capcom hopes that people who don't worshop at the alter of Street Fighter will buy it. Capcom's promotion of the title with slick screen caps and exclusive previews in the likes of EGM appease the core audience and make the game seem quite attractive to non-expert players.

I recently read that the game was not being developed internally at Capcom as I'd been lead to believe and that it had been farmed out to Dimps, the shovelware and anime game company made up of ex-SNK employees who've brought us such memorable titles as Inuyasha: A feudal Fairy Tale, Digimon Battle Spirit 2 and the failed Atomiswave/PS2 vs. Fighter The Rumble Fish.

Great.

While I will reserve judgment until I've had some hands-on time I must admit that I am no longer anticipating Street Fighter IV. The game still has potential to be great, but I am curious as to why Capcom would farm out such an important nostalgic title to Dimps. Maybe it doesn't make financial sense to put your good staff on a niche genre title like Street Fighter.

A glimmer of hope.

2008-05-02T14:52:00.000-07:00

Earthbound for the wii given a rating by the ESRB

Discuss.

Oh Nintendo,

2008-04-17T00:21:00.000-07:00

GOD HAND

2008-04-06T18:05:00.000-07:00

So it turns out that the lead guys from Clover Studios are still out there, and with the Wii port of Okami anyone who hasn't felt the love yet should get started. The game rains down style on you for like forty hours, and shows Nintendo that if they're not going to take Zelda anywhere then other people are certainly up for the job. Once you're done getting a furry handjob from Okami, though, I've got something you need to try:

Where Okami makes love to you, GOD HAND rapes you into tiny pieces without even noticing you're there. Remember when games weren't just hard? Remember when you needed not just the skills but the right constitution to finish a beat-'em-up? Besting GOD HAND is a triumph of will, a demonstration of one's ability to go beyond playing the game and take up the reins of one's own destiny. To complete GOD HAND is to face one's ownmost, inevitable, yet indefinite potentiality-of-being. As born, the player undertakes the journey. Dying, the player discovers the resoluteness to complete it.

GOD HAND gets a lot of gruff for being "too hard". I'm here to tell you that that is an ignorant thing to say. Despite its difficulty, GOD HAND is one of the most fair games I've ever played, and while it is extremely difficult, it has a scaling difficulty system that lets you and the game reach a natural equilibrium while still rewarding skillful play. There are two different kinds of super-powerful attacks that you can use strategically, and every time you die in the game you not only learn a ton from your mistakes, but also get to keep any moves and cash you picked up. This is an example of one of GOD HAND's most brilliant accomplishments: the complete abandonment of archaic and irritating game behavior.

Every single power-up item an enemy drops or you find in a crate will stay on the level indefinitely. This means you don't have to waste a healing item when you don't need it, you don't have to break your combo to go pick stuff up, and you can plan your use of powerful moves based on what items appear. Not only that, but if you do pick up an item that you don't need, you get money for it instead.

There's a lot of other surprising little touches that show the game's fairness. When you use a weapon on enemies, it'll break after a certain number of hits, but you can use it to break open all the boxes you like. Punching exploding barrels doesn't blow them up, and there are unlimited continues with frequent checkpoints. GOD HAND is not difficult because the game environment is arranged to be stingy, irritating, or punishing. GOD HAND is difficult because you don't know how to play it yet.

To get good at the game, you'll have very little tutorial to rely on. Practicing with every move, studying enemy behavior, mastering the subtly versatile dodging system, and managing your tension meter are all genuine skills you develop as you make your way through GOD HAND. You can actually learn a lot by watching other people, as I did with this thread.

Besides the fact that the gameplay is super rewarding, though, why should you play GOD HAND? Because it's hilarious. Anyone who's played a Resident Evil game knows Shinji Mikami's knack for B-movie kitsch, but the celebrated campiness in this game has been turned all the way up. Dialogue between the protagonists is awkward and nonsensical, charmingly childish, and never tries to be genuinely moving. All the characters have literally the most awesome names possible, and the animations and subtle gags are better than I can possibly describe. Every single note is hit perfectly.

In the end, the experience of playing GOD HAND is put best in the words of a scantily-clad woman you rescue from a pair of dominatrices:

I can't believe this is happening! They smacked my ass so many times... But in the end, I started to like it!

null field

2008-04-01T21:01:00.000-07:00

Bros. before hoes

2008-03-18T22:26:00.000-07:00

I have a copy of smash 3, and it really embarrasses me. Not only do I feel that I’ve betrayed some sacred trust by buying it I can feel it’s horrible nostalgia beam slicing to my core and waking the animalistic consumer beast lying dormant in the recesses of my brain. The lumbering beast speaks in a guttural tone not unlike the mingled mumblings of a thousand neckbeards; urging me to spend absurd amounts of money on hard-to-find games that feature the participants of the incestuous pantheon known as Super Smash Brothers: Brawl.

One side effect of acquiring SMABURA is a renewed use of my Wavebird, which has not seen regular use since the summer of ’05 when Nanohana and I helped Leon S. Kennedy rescue a girl with huge monkey ears.

While looking at my rarely used Gamecube I looked back at my meager collection of games and spent some time ruminating about why this was such a neglected console in my house. The final game I bought for it was Odama, and in all I only purchased seven games. I won’t waste space detailing the short-comings of the ‘cube, instead I’ll simply say some positive things about it.

In hindsight, these are some of the things that stand out to me. The controller design is a welcome departure that I still appreciate today, I love it’s funky look and how it comfortably fits in my hands. The large central green “A” button flanked by a smaller red “B” button and two grey “X” & “Y” buttons makes more sense than most people are willing to admit for several genres of games. Some of the games that I found to be an absolute joy and never stopped being fun were: Resident Evil 4, Viewtiful Joe, Odama, Metroid Prime and Zelda: The Wind Waker.

While using my old Wavebird for the newest Nintendo party game on Wii, I chuckle slightly as I remember all the good times I’ve had with it fucking with my co-players in Super Monkey Ball by switching comm. channels to control my opponents characters. Using the Wavebird also makes me feel slightly hollow inside, almost like I’ve betrayed someone.

Then I remember that Nintendo hates me and will never give me Earthbound. If I ever want to play some weird rare Nintendo game they’re as close as the nearest computer with a internet connection.

Super Smash Bros.: Rawls

2008-03-16T02:42:00.000-07:00

So I know a lot of people are criticizing Nintendo for some of the directions they took with the latest Smash Bruthas game. When a beloved game franchise goes in new places in ways that change its fundaments, the results can be disappointing. One needn't look beyond the recent Burnout Paradise to see this writ large, but it's been happening increasingly often of late as the old giants of the industry start to feel the need for the ol' Harrison Ford earring.

One thing that makes this version of Smash Brothers so jarring is the steeper learning curve. Traditionally an approachable party game, Smash Brothers: Rawls challenges players more on every level. Most people will probably be able to get through the game right away, but to really get it takes an understanding of the principles of justice set forth by Aristotle, Rousseau, Mill, and even a little Nozick in the later levels. Nintendo helpfully included unlockable excerpts from these thinkers to aid new players, but the effectiveness of 60 seconds of Anarchy, the State, and Utopia is hard to measure. Additionally, the perplexing and somewhat offensive decision to make the Sandel excerpts Japan-only makes the package somewhat less appealing to American players.

While I found the new character select screen innovative and fun (players now select a character without knowing which one they will control once the game starts), I was less impressed with the new "Veil of Ignorance" power up. HAL Laboratories was obviously trying to encourage verbal interaction and shouting matches between players, but having it just turn three quarters of the screen black seems like a lazy implementation of an idea with great potential. Having it occult the damage/lives indicator would have made more sense, especially considering the overall brokenness of the new "fairness meter".

All that said, SSB:R is a splendid fighting game, well balanced and thoroughly considered. Every time I lost a match or died in the single-player mode I knew it was just, and the controls are responsive and intuitive.

This game is recommended for anyone who likes the point to be made early on and then repeated for 300 pages.

Dudes Who I Want To Pay But Can't

2008-03-11T20:24:00.000-07:00

All right, so K1 has convinced me to plunk down a list of my own. Apparently it is a compilation of game-making dudes I want to pay, but cannot, for one reason or the other. Both he and Durfy have already mentioned some of the guys I was going to mention, so this list is regrettably short, like three entries worth.

What, you'd rather read ten fucking paragraphs of "Yeah, what he said."? Here's your list.

Neil Manke
Some of you might have heard of They Hunger, a zombie outbreak themed single player mod for Half-Life 1. They Hunger was essentially a series of episodes, before the industry latched onto the term. It was very polished work that rightfully earned Neil and his collaborators positive press. Well, it turns out Neil has a game studio, Black Widow Games. And they are perilously close to releasing They Hunger: Lost Souls, which will be a purchasable, stand alone game based on the Source engine. The trouble is, they've been 'almost done' since last year. I hope this thing isn't stuck in QA limbo, because I'm really interested in checking out the final result.

Konjak
This guy isn't just a great artist. He also makes games that are both fun to play and look at, like Chalk and Noitu Love. Also, Noitu Love 2 is coming out soon, and it's looking really rad. He has worked on commercial games before I believe, doing sprite work for Contra 4 and such. But the fact remains that his work is definitely worth your time and money.

Nifflas
This is the guy that gave us mellow, exploration-themed platformers like Knytt and Within a Deep Forest. I find these games relaxing and laid back, and Knytt has the added bonus of odd looking critters and people(?) going about their business in the foreground and background. I'm a sucker for that kind of thing. It's like having an aquarium, but without the mysterious green scum that kills all your fish and makes you cry. Oh, that's right, he has a Donate link on his homepage. Does this still count? Oh who cares, I still think I should give him money in an official capacity, like a retail/online purchase of some kind.

Cactus
This guy. This guy is a machine. He cranks out all these bizarre little games with alarming frequency. Please, go poke around his site and give one of the many little doodads he has made a try. Cactus himself admits that they are more like experiments dressed up as games. And like most experiments, not all of them are successful. Still, his enthusiasm for trying new and strange things is certainly noteworthy. I would be really interested to see what he would turn out were he paid for his time.

New Xbox & PS3 Game

2008-03-11T14:33:00.001-07:00

Bionic Commando: Rearmed is going to be awesome.

IT'S MAHVEL BAYBEE

2008-03-09T20:38:00.000-07:00

If you've ever been to a vs fighting game tournaments, the above video may be familiar and quite funny. Or it may remind you why you stopped going to play in arcades.

I recently re-visited a site that was a popular spot for X-Men vs. Street Fighter tournaments 10 years ago. The vs. fighting games are all alone in a infrequently visited part of the arcade, two new VF5 cabs are there along with the old and battle scarred cabinets that in my youth housed Vampire Saviour, Street Fighter Alpha 3, Street Fighter 2 Turbo and many others. These cabs now hold the final games from that long gone era, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Street Fighter 3: Third Strike and the previously mentioned SF2T. I'm impressed at the staying power these games have, with dust on their controls it's obvious that they rarely see more than 1 play per day. I like to think that the operator keeps them out as a reminder of happier times, like a widow keeping her husband's ashes on the mantle.

As I ran my hands over the scarred and new dusty plexiglas of the control panel I fondly remembered all the time I spent standing in front of these cabs a decade ago. I gave the stick a twirl and the buttons a quick press to see if it was maintained, to my surprise it was in perfect condition!

In my mind, these games are not a effigy to old arcade games. They are a promise and a hope. With Street Fighter IV and King of Fighters XII on the way, maybe cabinets like these will see action again by a new generation of competitors. Eager to slam the control panel in the heat of the moment and add their own marks to the plexiglas.

It'd be poetic if it wasn't so silly.

Revenge of "Developers I want to give money to"

2008-03-08T13:49:00.000-08:00

Since K1’s list included two individuals that I would have included in my top five (Shigesato Itoi & Daisuke Amaya) my list is a shorter. My criteria for selecting these are a little different from K1’s, but this is all about personal taste anyway.

What I’m trying to say is, “up yours kid.”

#4 - Fasa (Shadowrun for SNES, Genesis, SegaCD & Xbox360/PC):

Before the Xbox 360 launched, one of the titles that was announced but not shown was Shadowrun. I am absolutely in love with the previous three games for three separate reasons. The promise of a new Shadowrun was quite exciting, the after the three previous games had all taken very different approaches to creating their games and I believed that Microsoft Game Studios would do this as well. Their different approach was to throw away all the interesting story elements of the Shadowrun universe and create a FPS. A FPS with magical trees, teleportation and gameplay that was absolutely forgettable. I’d like to give a developer money for a new Shadowrun RPG, but after the horrible sales of the FPS, I think developers believe the Shadowrun License has AIDS.

#3 – Vivarium (Seaman, Odama):

“Yoot” Saito was both the key designer and "face" of Seaman, most people who owned a Dreamcast or at least have a passing interest in games recognize his face and maybe even attempted to have a “conversation” with him. His unforgettable Dreamcast title Seaman is one of the creepiest and most interesting video game I’ve ever witnessed. He also was the creative force behind the innovative Gamecube pinball title, Odama. Both games share the innovative idea of changing the way players interact with games; forcing the player to speak into a microphone to control the game just as often as they use a controller. I’d love to play more games by Yoot Saito that have innovative strange controls like this, but Seaman 2 was not released in the US and the DS’s microphone is almost never used for the sort of detailed open ended interactions that players can experience in a Yoot Saito game.

#2 - The Behemoth (Alien Hominid, Castle Crashers):

Alien Hominid was an excellent first title that started out as a flash game and made the jump to consoles, the game play is very similar to SNK’s Metal Slug series and is not only fun to play but quite difficult. Their second title is the 4 player action platformer / RPG Castle Crashers has been endlessly delayed. I’m practically salivating at the idea of playing a “new” guardian heroes style game with my friends. I’d be willing to pay way more than 800 Rape Bucks (a.k.a. Microsoft points) for this title. Too bad it seems to be stuck in development hell.

#1 – Cave (DoDonPachi, Mushihime-sama):

Cave has been providing 2 new SHUMPs a year for several years. Their games are simultaneously frustrating and beautiful, the intricate bullet patterns and artwork of the game impress players as much as they distract them to their doom. I’d love to give Cave my money, but I don’t want to spend $500~$1200 USD on a JAMMA board or import a PS2 port that can be generously described as less than arcade perfect.

Five developers that I want to give money to

2008-02-28T16:30:00.000-08:00

As much as I loathe when a gaming site does the list thing, this topic came up in conversation and I felt that it was something worth writing about. I do want to avoid crap like "Top 100 games with hats in them and if you disagree then screw you" though, so I just want to express that this list is, like, my opinion man, so just chill if you think I am in the wrong.

Five Developers I want to give money to (but I can't, within reason):

#5 - Shigesato Itoi (Earthbound / Mother series):
This one is the biggest stretch since technically I can import Japanese versions of Mother 3 and Mother 1+2, but his games are ones I want to play in English to get the maximum amount of enjoyment out of them. Unfortunately, Nintendo seems to have a secret agenda to keep the Mother series from ever returning to the states. They have even gone so far as to remove the Earthbound Virtual Console demo from the U.S. version of Smash Bros. Brawl (or so I hear). At least Ness is still in Smah Bros., so they can't deny the existence of Mother completely. Sad.

#4 - Clover Studio (Okami, God Hand, Viewtiful Joe):
While it's true that the talent and management behind Clover Studio are still around and making games inside and out of Capcom, what's nice about buying games from a particular studio is how you can vote with your gaming dollar on what developers you want to see games from again. The biggest slap in the face with this one is how Okami is getting ported to the Wii, but in buying it none of the money or credit is really going to Clover Studio proper. Again, cry.

#3 - Ben Croshaw / Yahtzee ( 5 Days a Stranger, 7 Days a Skeptic, 1213):
Why yes, I am referring to that Yahtzee, the one that talks really fast about games and it's funny. As it turns out, he can make a mean game as well as he can bitch about them. Ben's adventure games are some of the most well-written adventure games I've had the pleasure of playing. So much in fact, that I feel he deserves money for a game that he offers for free. If his games were offered on say Steam or Xbox Live Arcade I would pony up the cash for 'em on the spot. Better yet, if I could get a hard copy on disc that would be quite nice.
(Note: As I was typing this and linking to his games, I noticed that he has a donation page set up for each game, and if you donate 5 bucks you get a special edition version. I think I might just take him up on that.)

#2 - Garry Newman / Facepunch Studios (Garry's Mod, Facewound):
Now before someone gets fresh and says something like "well just buy Garry's Mod off of Steam, you mingebag," I just want to point out that I HAVE purchased Garry's Mod, and in fact I even paid for Gold Membership at the gmod forums to get early access to beta versions of Garry's Mod. I'm that hardcore, alright? It's just that I want to give him more money. I *heart* Garry.

#1 - Daisuke Amaya / Pixel (Doukutsu Monogatari / Cave Story)
Man, this guy. How is it one of the best games I've played in the past couple years is a freeware game made by one person? This guy deserves my money so much it's a crime. I want to pay to own a copy of this game. I want to own it on multiple consoles, including at least one handheld. I want to buy all kinds of crazy Cave Story merchandise, like t-shirts, plushes, and action figures. I want there to be a sequel, I would wait in line until midnight to buy it.

But I can't.

The cat came back...

2008-02-21T00:25:00.000-08:00

I recently found out about Hello Kitty Online from the website kotaku.com. Now I'm not the type to play a mass multiplayer online game. I like my games to end and I like playing a lot of different games instead of just one game. After seeing the screenshots though and reading the description I immediately signed up for the closed beta!!! Apparently 40,000+ people have signed up so I hope I make it in. Is this what we call taking one for the team? Also the game will be free, here is the website complete with happy music...http://www.hellokittyonline.com/us/

Here is an excerpt from a conversation I had with J. Durfy regarding this:

J. Durfy: I thought you were over hello kitty, is it like some sort of addiction where you can fall back into your old ways?

Me: Hrrm, the game looks awesome though. Just tired of getting the merchandise 50 million times a year.

I already have like 6 notepads that are shaped like her head.

Rise from your grave

2008-02-11T09:38:00.000-08:00

A decade ago,
Adventure Games died.

A good place to look for examples of the genre's death this is LucasArts. After Grim Fandango performed poorly in 1998, the lackluster sales of Escape from Monkey Island caused LucasArts to abandon every project that didn’t have “Star Wars” in the title. Other companies were having the similar problems, Westwood Studio’s Blade Runner did poorly the previous year and Sierra Entertainment had stopped producing adventure games. In a round of layoffs Sierra fired a quarter of their workforce; including Al Lowe and Scott Murphy, who created Leisure Suit Larry and Space Quest respectively. It was a sad time to be a PC adventure game enthusiast, some say 3D games in general and the proliferation of First Person Shooters specifically killed the adventure game genre. There are other theories about what killed the genre, but I’m not writing this to mark the 10^th anniversary of Adventure Gaming’s death, I’m celebrating its return.

The Nintendo DS has become the new home for this timeless Genre. The first time I realized this was when I picked up Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney in the Fall of 2005, the game is a classic point & click adventure that gained popularity via word of mouth and has had multiple repressing by Capcom. Phoenix Wright’s two sequels in 2006 and 2007 did equally well and I can say that the ending of the 3^rd game ties all three together into a fun and memorable trilogy that I enjoyed more than most adventure games I played on PC. Even though Phoenix Wright is an adventure game with some mature themes (almost all the cases revolve around murders that are somewhat grisly), the game has an “animu” flavor that is impossible to ignore. Luckly, there are alternatives made by the developer Cing.

After Cing’s first forgettable DS adventure game Trace Memory they developed the mesmerizing Hotel Dusk: Room 215. Hotel Dusk has the gameplay of a adventure game, a classic point & click interface with a FPS navigation twist, visuals that are mature and seem fitting (I love the whole “Take On Me” look) and a story that is right up there with the best PC games of yester-year. When I started playing, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was playing Icom’s Déjà Vu. The atmosphere of Hotel Dusk is so spectacular that I want to go back and play it for the first time all over again. I cannot stress the following enough: If you love adventure games you need to play Hotel Dusk.

Most people probably never expected Adventure games to make a comeback, the best part of all of this is that most of the people picking up these new games have never played a Adventure game before. It’s unlikely that they’ll go dig up old PC games to play on their PC, but the classics are available to them via another channel. One of the programs available to people who choose to hack their Nintendo DS handheld is ScummVM, a emulator designed to play adventure games by LucasArts, Sierra and other developers.

The reason I’m writing this today is because I finished Phoenix Wright 3 last night to clear up some of my game back-log to make room for both Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney (a.k.a. Phoenix Wright 4) and Professor Layton and the Mysterious Village. While I know exactly what PW4 is going to be, I approach Prof. Layton with high expectations, the game is very popular in Japan and spawned two sequels. The visuals of Prof. Layton reminds me of the excellent 2003 French animated film The Triplets of Belleville. I’m quite excited about these new Adventure games, their arrival is another sign of the Adventure genre’s return to popularity.

Yup Yup Yup

2008-02-08T15:52:00.000-08:00

Now it's my turn, beat this!

2008-02-03T01:44:00.000-08:00

I take no credit for these works of genius:

Smaaaaaaaaaash the Virtual Console

2008-01-31T11:24:00.000-08:00

Super Smash Brosef X: Eternal Neckbeard Masters of Cadash drops today in Japan. “New Games Journalism” sites and fans have been posting their impressions, discussions about the game are moving so fast that I witnessed several message boards red shifting last night.

It’s not exactly edgy or unexpected if I say, “I don’t care about the new Smash game.” It’s always been hip and cool to dislike popular stuff so I’ll distill my hate for Smash Bros into one simple statement:

“I want to drag whoever came up with Smash Bros. into the street and shit into their heart.”

One positive thing that has come out of the game’s release is the virtual console demos that are included with the game. A thread on Gamespite indicated that Earthbound was one of the demos. This is reflected on the Japanese Smash Bros. site, but if you visit the equivilant english page Earthbound is missing. Good job denying the fans a niche title and the possibility of easy money from releasing the game as a tie-in with Smash Bros.

I've become so disallusioned with Nintendo's Virtual Console service that I've been digging around for other classic game collections on recient consoles. I highly reccomend the Taito Legends Collections on PS2 they contain an absurd amount of excellent gameplay from all genres for low price. How can you say no to classic arcade SHMUPS, action games and puzzlers with perfect emulation for 15-20 bucks?

The yearly slump

2008-01-16T21:31:00.000-08:00

The winter lapse in game releases is here. Both Hollywood and the Games industry launch their AAA products in the fall and winter, giving us a fall and holiday season with so much new media to devour that we can’t possibly enjoy it.

People who are really concerned about missing out on something “important” spend January and February playing catch-up with the releases of the Fall. Of course the machines never stop, and games keep coming out after the holiday season, it is during the cold month’s of winter that game releases slow to a trickle of what could be kindly referred to as shit. This year is no different with lots of forgettable titles and a few dark horses that are either flawed (Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law) or so niche that they’ll be glossed over and forgotten by almost everyone (No More Heroes).

It was my hope that into this dark place, a savior would come in the form of Downloadable Games. We’ve been promised Rez and Ikaruga by Microsoft, but Nintendo has been playing their cards so close to their vest I fear that their asshole is going to get a paper cut. So far this year, Nintendo’s Virtual Console releases have been limited to two games per week instead of the usual three. Their offerings have been pretty crummy as well, the best games we’ve received were StarTropics and The King of Fighters ’94.

StarTropics is an ok game, but it’s not enough. I received $40 worth of VC point this year from various people as gifts and there are no interesting games to buy. Where the hell is Earthbound? Where is Metal Storm? Fuck you Nintendo, between this and the quickly evaporating 3rd party support this system is turning out exactly like the Gamecube. Everyone is all pumped up for Smash Bros, but that’s just MvC2 for people in diapers who can’t understand the concepts more complicated than “UP+C."

At least I have the new Phoenix Wright game and Professor Layton to look forward to in February on my DS. I think those’ll be the last Nintendo games I buy for a very long time.

Confession Time

2008-01-16T00:29:00.000-08:00

I still get Guitar Hero and Gitaroo Man mixed up all the time.

Oh god, my wrist.

2008-01-06T00:39:00.000-08:00

Vertical Scrolling shooters are good fun, however some individuals would use the descriptors “stale” or “dead.” Despite these nay-sayers, classics such as Xevious still are still available in the retail channel thanks to Xbox Live Arcade and Virtual Console.

The Vertical Shooter genre and”SHMUPs” in general have evolved over the years in a way that is similar to evolution of vs. fighting games. Early games in the genre are simple and complexity grows over time as those who enjoyed the games as players become developers and build complexity into new games that requires players to have a deep comprehension of the game morphology relating to that specific genre. In both vs. fighting and SHMUPs this has led to an incredible level of specialization.

When it comes to vs. fighters there are many dedicated developers still at work: ARC System Works (Guilty Gear), Examu (Arcana Heart & Samurai Shodown V) and SNK (The King of Fighters, Last Blade). They produce fighting games that appeal mainly to long time genre fans of vs games. There are fewer developers dedicated to SHMUPs: Alfa Systems (Shikigami no Shiro II & III), G.rev (Border Down & Under Defeat) and Cave (Ketsui & Mushihime-Sama).

I consider myself an avid gamer, but I’ve always been quite poor at SHMUPs, but playing the intricately crafted games produced by Cave turned me on the SHMUPs in a big way. Cave’s shooters are a masterwork of 2D animation, A ballet of bullets fills the screen, blotting out all the terrain scrolling beneath the play area. Cave’s games require so much precision that they have created a new sub-genre within SHMUPS, the “bullet hell” shooter. Over the summer, I became obsessed with Cave’s games and resolved to own one for home play. Being a (somewhat) sensible man, I promised myself that I would not buy one of these games unless I was properly committed to the genre. To prove to myself that I would be able enjoy a Cave game PCB I would not buy one until I 1 credit completed the Neo Geo scrolling shooter Blazing Star.

The rules for beating the game were simple, Beat the game on one credit. I believe that whoever said “The devil is in the details” was actually talking about 1 crediting SHMUPs, the level of commitment and repetition is mind-numbing for all but the most obsessive players. To make a long story short, I managed to 1 credit complete the game after roughly 12 hours of practice on arcade difficulty (MVS difficulty) and I hurt my wrist because the game lacks auto-fire. While I am proud of my accomplishment, I know that Blazing Star is not that difficult and I have resigned myself to merely viewing videos of expert players 1 credit completing Cave games. I can afford the steep price of entry required to buy a Cave game and have immense interest, respect and enthusiasm for the SHMUP genre. However, I am simply not dedicated (or crazy enough) to play them correctly, so I’ll just stick to console ports and emulators.

A Glimpse of Orange Box in its Earliest Stages of Development

2007-12-29T11:33:00.000-08:00

So I was looking through some photos from my trip to Japan in January 2004 and found this. This picture was not edited in any way, shape, or form:

The End of Time

2007-12-20T20:00:00.000-08:00

So while I'm getting all excited over the speed run possibilities in SMG, K1 was asking me to put together a bunch of my favorite speed runs as something he could put on display in the store. Putting it together was a happy trip down memory lane and whatnot, so I figured I'd share my opinions on some of the finest examples of the art.

Bear in mind that I chose these to be approachable and watchable as much as impressive or interesting. There are some really fine runs out there of RPGs and such that I didn't list, but watching an hour of leveling up kind of offsets however interesting the planning is.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night in 43:51, Single-Segment
A game as winding and nonlinear as SotN has obvious potential for sequence breaking, but it took many a year before the glitches in this video were properly exploited. This run isn't the most spectacular, but the game gets dissected in some very cool ways.

Chrono Trigger in 3:34, 33 segments
The first run I saw of this game was around five and a half hours long, and very impressive. This beastly run on the Japanese version clocks in about two hours faster, and actually fights Lavos with the bucket way earlier than anyone thought possible.

Contra III Hard Mode in 17:00, Single-Segment
Maybe not the most interesting run, but in terms of sheer execution this is one of the most impressive.

Devil May Cry Dante Must Die! mode 100% in 1:35:34, 15 segments
The Devil May Cry games have been the subjects of some very fine speed runs, but this one is probably my favorite. Not only is it on the highest difficulty setting getting the highest rankings, but it was all done from a scratch save file and got enough orbs to get 100% along the way. This really wasn't intended by the developers, and if you check the comments you'll find out just how tight the timing was to accomplish it.

Mega Man X low% in 34:09, Single-Segment
Some speed runs are the clear product of a youth spent obsessing over a game, and in a way there could be no more poignant love letter to Mega Man X than this run. When I saw the first published run by Mike Uyama, I felt like the routes through the levels were so precise and practiced that you could almost picture him as a child playing through it over and over again. Subsequent competition and some cross-pollination with the TAS community has resulted in a much lower time and an extremely good run.

Mega Man X 100% in 39:41, Single-Segment
Not necessarily more impressive than the above run, but if you ever tried to get the Hadouken in this game it's wild and crazy to see it done in the context of a speed run, and the results are fun to watch, if a tad anticlimactic.

Metroid Prime any% in 1:03, 16 segments
SDA started out as a Quake speed run site way back in the day, and was somehow affiliated with PlanetQuake in ways I don't completely recall. The guy who ran the site was a Metroid buff, and decided to show his appreciation for the series by posting his speed run of Metroid Prime. I think the time was 1:37, and it went up with insanely detailed comments that clearly demonstrated the eye for lost seconds and possible improvements a good speed runner needs to have. That run was the seed for the entire site as it exists today, and this run is 34 minutes faster and impressive as fuck.

Metroid Prime 100% in 1:28, 21 segments
Was the any% run over too quick? Well, that's what 100% runs are for. Now you get to see how much of the game you can skip while still getting everything.

Metroid Prime low% in 1:18, 18 segments
And if you want to see the most insane sequence breaking there is, low% runs are your thing. If you've watched all these and you still aren't satisfied, I recommend watching their PAL equivalents. Several of the speed tricks used in these runs were made impossible in the PAL and Players' Choice versions of the game, but the low% is just as low and all the runs are almost as fast thanks to the ingenuity of everyone involved. This means completely new and more audacious tricks for us to watch.

Pikmin 9 days/50 pikmin, 8 segments
Some people liked to run Pikmin with the fewest Pikmin possible. Some people liked to finish it in as few in-game days as possible. It turned out that it was possible to do both in the same run. If you think that sounds like this speed run is carefully planned, tightly executed, and thoroughly refined, then you're absolutely correct.

Super Mario 64 70-star in 1:01:32, Single-Segment
I can remember the anticipation for this run approaching insanity. People love their Mario 64, and it happens to be a brilliant game to speed run. If you dig around you'll notice three different categories for the game, one of them being a much faster 16-star run. That run is mostly just about executing a particular glitch to cheat through the game, which is impressive in its own right but not nearly as entertaining as this stunningly-executed run on the game's intended path. This run's route planning, speed tricks, and sheer reckless abandon displayed in the final moments are the stuff of legend, and many people on the SDA forums consider this their favorite speed run ever.

Super Mario World 100% in 1:31:45, Single-Segment
SDA has very strict submission rules and a thorough verification process performed by some extremely talented people, so you can rest assured that any runs on the site were performed on a console without cheating. Even so, after watching this video people will head to the forums and insist that this run is a tool-assisted video that slipped through the cracks. This means you need to watch it.

Yoshi's Island 100% individual level runs see table
The first speed runs I saw of this game were fairly by-the-numbers, and I despaired at ever seeing truly clever runs full of speed tricks and daring maneuvers. Fortunately, trihex went absolutely fucking loco on this game's ass one level at a time, and then did it again. I hope he's not done, but there haven't been any new ones up in some time so it's safe to say the definitive runs are up right now. Downloading them all from the table is a bit unwieldy, but absolutely recommended. This is one of the absolute best experiences on SDA right now, in my opinion.

Super Metroid in 0:32, Single-Segment
Despite Super Metroid's primacy in the speed run field, its page was stagnant for a long time. Smokey had a run up that was I think around five segments, and clocked in somewhere around 35 or 36 minutes (depending on whether he used the then-controversial Murder Beam). Not too long ago this fine Japanese fellow completely ravaged that time, and in one segment. A lot of people say this run's overhyped, since it just applied modern speed run standards to an obsolete record, but any world-record run of this game deserves your attention.

Super Metroid 100% in 0:55, 7 segments
This is it: my favorite speed run of all time. It showcases numerous glitches in the game in ways that are intuitive and attractive, it bypasses major areas (and even one boss) while still getting 100%, and careful planning went into the navigation of each room. I own this on DVD. It may be one of the oldest runs on the site, but it's an absolute work of art.

Zelda in 33:34, Single-Segment
A runner goes by the name TSA (The Silent Assassin) fancied himself God's gift to Zelda speed runs a while back and vowed to take every single Zelda record on the site. His credential was that he had the then-world record for Ocarina of Time, which I'll go into more below. He was basically well meaning, but his hubris was gargantuan and it started to spill over into some genuine lack of respect for existing runs. He was convinced he could take this record easily, but it ended up being a big project. To his enormous credit, he stuck with it and produced a very fine, very precise single-segment run. This is a really difficult game to run, but the results are great to watch.

Zelda: a Link to the Past in 1:39:47, Single-Segment
Back when most games were getting pretty straightforward treatments on SDA I remember being shocked to see a damage boost to bypass a small part of one of the dungeons in this game. By now things have progressed to full-on sequence breaks, and this remarkably... perfect game gets the thorough and loving thrashing it deserves.

Zelda: Ocarina of Time in 2:26:56, 25 segments
So the aforementioned TSA was the cock of the walk with his five-and-a-half-hour single-segment run of this game, and then he managed to break five hours. It was long the irritating banner raised by single-segment zealots who thought breaking a run up into segments was categorically and incontrovertibly inferior to the purity and intensity of the single-segment experience. The only pieces of evidence you need against this idiocy are the single-segment no-death 100% run of Super Mario Sunshine, which is totally impressive in theory but an absolute chore to watch, and this run which basically cuts TSA's record the fuck in half, bitch. It uses some save-warping, but the main time-saver is all the really precise tricks that no human being can perform when doing the whole game in one go. It's way, way, way more interesting to watch than any of TSA's runs of the game, and a must for anyone who wants to see the fruits of the most rabid persistence and ingenuity the speed running community has to offer.

Sea fish are fat in the belly; river fish are fat in the back.

2007-12-14T18:15:00.000-08:00

I’ve got a surprise for you. You’ll never guess what’s getting ported to the PSP. . . Umihara Kawase!

Hey, why are you walking away! This is really cool! I know it’s anime, but it’s not crap. . . I promise.

Gamecenter CX has been discussed previously on this blog, but the article failed to mention how the show can raise a persons interest in titles that they may never have heard of before. This happened to me with Umihara Kawase.

Umihara Kawase shares game mechanics with Solomon’s Key and Bionic Commando. The player must navigate a series of enemy filled puzzles to reach the goal by using a bungie cord to fling themselves across gaps and defeat enemies. The game is quite impressive to watch and play, with branching paths that increase replay value and level design that may cause you to have an embolism.

The setting of the game is truly strange, a small, cute Japanese school girl must face hoards of sea creatures that have mutated (and grown human legs in some cases). The game’s artwork is detailed but the sprites have only have a handful of different animations, the backgrounds consist of low resolution photographs that’ve had their color palate reduced to make them look even more grainy. When looked at as a cohesive whole, the graphics of Umihara Kawase are not impressive, and screen grabs make the game look like countless other platformers of the era.

What makes the game incredible and fun is the bungie physics and puzzle game play. Seeing the game in motion makes its appeal instantly obvious; Leaping from ledge to ledge as quickly as possible to not only avoid running out the clock must be balanced with level exploration to make sure that you’re not missing an alternate exit. The game's good points far outweigh it's bad points.

I recently discussed this game with fellow supple thinker Zen and he alerted me to the huge speed running community surrounding this game. Apparently the tool assisted runs are mind blowing.

Unfortunately Umihara Kawase was never released outside Japan, so most people have been forced to play it on an emulator. Piracy issues aside, it feels awkward because the imperfect nature of emulation screws up the timing for some of the jumps and makes the bungie cord physics faster and less smooth than they are on a real Super Famicom.

Lucky for us, there is no region hardware lockout on PSP games, so we’ll be able to play the PSP version that comes out in 2008. It’s not a port of the Super Famicom game, but rather the Playstation sequel Umihara Kawase Shun (example). The games are essentially the same, the Playstation version has less bungie slowdown and a vastly improved color palette. While I am excited about finally being able to play this game properly, I am worried that this game will not be brought out in the US. Puzzle/Exploration games are popular in the US, games like Exit and Loco Roco sold well. I feel that the weirdness of the game and entirely 2d nature of the game may kill the games chances. Let’s cross our fingers for a 2008 US release of this, along with Yuusha no Kuse ni Namaikida.

I Like My Sugar With Coffee and Cream

2007-12-03T04:34:00.000-08:00

I know, I know. Super ~~Mario~~ Luigi Galaxy has been out for like four months already or whatever, but I've been too busy star getting to write anything about it. Also, now that I've got all 120 I feel like I'm more qualified to detail the game's triumphs and its colossal, abject failures.

I'm joking about the failures. Some kids are going to complain that it has colors and big noses and shit, but honestly the only problems I can pick out about this game are very personal quibbles, and everything else about it makes me want to shout its praises to the world from my window. I get sort of used to thinking of Miyamoto as a kind of gaming artisan, a genius of concept, design, and execution. Miyamoto makes a bunch of Citizen Kanes or whatever. The idea is by this point so oversaid and underrepresented that it feels totally bogus. After enough of this you start to forget something important: Shigeru Miyamoto is a fucking visionary.

Every single aspect of Super Mario Galaxy is absolutely refulgent with polish, insight, care, and grace. The learning curve is so natural you can't even tell that it's happening, and every challenge the game presents feels difficult without punishing the player. This balance has not been seen since Yoshi's Island, where the game challenges you to explore its depth rather than its continue system. The most difficult stars to get in the entire game, the ones I look back on with any kind of frustration, took me about five to ten tries to nail down, and I got them the same day I started trying. This isn't bragging--it's a learning curve that applies to each level, each ability, each challenge you're presented with. It's absolutely stunning.

The controls are almost exactly perfect. I feel strange saying this, since I never hear anybody else say it ever, but I love Super Mario Sunshine with a sort of passion. The "secret" levels were an aggravating mess, but the water pack and smooth jump controls made everything else a joy. My initial feeling when I started playing Galaxy was that it was pretending Sunshine never happened, but if you look closely it's all in there. Sure, the camera controls may have taken a step back to the N64 days (an unfortunately common problem among Wii games), but the hover nozzle is still there in spirit with the massive air control you get with a spin jump, and the rest of the controls aren't back to the stiff garbage that plagued Mario 64 (yeah, I said it). Simply put, it's almost as much fun to just hop around and see what you can climb as it was in Sunshine, and with the added bonus that making (and pulling off) enormously long leaps of faith is a total blast.

A lot of Galaxy's success is that it is exquisitely paced. There's nowhere near as much exploration as there was in Sunshine, but the game has plenty of it for those of us who want it. There are speed challenges, no-hit challenges, puzzles, platforming, races, and bosses, all in perfect quantities. Even the gimmicky Wiimote levels are a blast, with the most polished control I've seen of its kind and tough but reasonable expectations of the player. The levels are even completely optional, tucked away beyond the realm of casual play.

All of this contributes to a sense of momentum, the feeling that the game can't wait for you to see what's next. Most importantly, even after getting all 120 stars I sometimes fire it up just to play around and see what I can skip past, jump on, or fly to. Super Mario Galaxy may be one of the best examples yet of a "sandbox" game: there are many solutions to problems, the levels are fun to explore and push to their limits, and you can play it as deep or as shallow as you like.

Most important of all, though, is how Galaxy evolves beyond all previous 3D platformers. A habit of mine while playing a brand new game is to think about the reactions it would get from someone who had only ever seen an NES. If you took Mario 64 or Sunshine back in time twenty years you'd get lots of oohs and ahhs, a few moments of confusion at playing a game in 3D, and then pure satisfaction. If you think about it, these are the exact reactions we all had when Mario 64 first came out. If you were to take Galaxy back with you, though, people would be simply unprepared for it. The game builds on the last ten years of 3D gaming, Z-jumping forward into brand new territory from the outset. It constitutes the next great leap forward in the platforming genre, and while it's not as eye-popping as the move to 3D was it's still every bit as significant.

Super Mario Galaxy may just be one of the most important games ever made. Play it, or else you may not be prepared for what's coming next.

Why Rock Band Rocks (And Guitar Hero 3 Sucks)

2007-11-30T09:39:00.000-08:00

(disclaimer: when I say Guitar Hero 3 sucks I say this in relation to Guitar Hero 1 and 2 and Rock Band. The core Guitar Hero gameplay is there, but Neversoft dropped the ball in regards to what makes a must-own guitar hero game, making GH3 just an okay one.)

Things I like about Rock Band:

Note charts that don't destroy your hands with CONSTANT 3-button chords
Seriously, GH3 has this strange idea that lots of 3-button chords are a good thing. Fuck that shit. Once in a while is fine, but that shit will destroy your hands way more than crazy solos.

Strict (but fair) note timing and a HO/PO system like GH2
For those of you that don't know this, the hammer-on/pull-off timing in Guitar Hero 3 is way more forgiving than GH2 and Rock Band. I don't quite understand the point of making the timing less strict then adding incredibly complicated note charts. Maybe it's some kind of high end difficulty inflation going on, but it sure makes it hard to go back to GH2 or Rock Band where the timing is more strict.

Extensive character customization and band customization
Once you fully explore the depths of the Rock Band character editor do you see how much you can do. I'm sure people have messed with the tattoo/face paint maker and the band logo maker, but did you know you can edit instruments and clothing the same way? Plus the fact that you can layer, move, rotate, stretch, and change the colors of the extensive library of stickers means there's some crazy customizing that you can do.

All that little touches that make playing with a group fun
Harmonix put a lot of love into this title, and you can tell. The loading screen faux band covers that are generated for your band? Awesome. The myriad of animations and camera effects that play in the background are awesome. The freeze-frame "Yay!" look each band member gets when you save someone who failed? hilarious. They way the lead singer crowd surfs and the way the audience sings along with the lyrics when the band is doing particularly well just adds to the flavor that you are playing as a band. Animations that actually match what you are doing (the singer's lip syncing in particular)? this shouldn't be amazing, but compared to how other games do it, it is.

That little meter that shows you how many stars you have and how close you are to the next one
It really encourages teamwork and putting that effort in to reach that next star.

The guitar solo system
It's just the right touch to add a new wrinkle to how the guitar is played, and adds flavor to the instrument that people might be tired of playing since it's been around more than the others. Plus, it lets people know when to pay attention to the guitar instead of the vocals :V

Drums are fucking hard
All the more satisfying it will make it when I finish Expert Drums Solo Career.

Being able to buy and download new songs one at a time
It would be really nice to be able to preview songs before you download, but I guess that's what Youtube is for. At least they don't force you to download song packs with songs you don't want, and when they do have a pack it's optional and at a discount compared to just getting the individual songs. Approximately $1.50 a song is fair price and since I've played the stock songs extensively already, so it's great how fresh it keeps the game.

Things I hate about Guitar Hero 3:

3-button chords can go to hell
See above.

All the extra crap they added for singleplayer
The ONE thing everyone hates about Guitar Hero is having to play the singleplayer game to unlock all the songs, and AGAIN at each difficulty to unlock the secret guitars. Aside from practice mode to get to hard parts down, the real appeal of Guitar Hero is the social experience of two player versus/co-op or playing with others to show of your skills (tournaments, parties, whatever).

Boss battles are stupid and pointless
Again, it's more pointless single player crap that gets played once, then the rest of the game's life is spent in quickplay or multiplayer. There isn't even much strategy to it: save up a bunch of powers then unleash them all in a row to make the other person fail during a part with a lot of notes. At least they released the songs as a free download pack, I guess if you want to play a song that's all solos there you go.

They replaced Pandora with Midori
Midori is a stupid character that has no place in a Guitar Hero game. In addition, they removed a character I actually liked. Why? They also made Judy Nails look like she's been taking steroids (or was previously a man). Admittedly, the quirky art style of the Guitar Hero games was one of its weak points, but at least it didn't detract from the game. They've somehow made it worse, which amazes me, really.

I could easily go into detail about the song choices and such, but there are plenty of reviews out there, and this is more of a hands-on report of details reviews might not emphasize. In conclusion, I feel that Guitar Hero 3 is an okay purchase for Guitar Hero fans, and Rock Band is a must-buy for anyone who likes music games and likes having/making friends.

PS3 Progress Report

2007-11-21T13:00:00.000-08:00

Dear Mr./Ms. Sony,

This letter is regarding the progress of your youngest progeny the Playstation 3. While little “triple” is doing well, he not showing the progress that is expected of him to meet our 7th grade's graduation requirements.

Triple started out slowly last fall, the work he was producing was not up to par. While his work looked as good as his classmates upon initial inspection we found problems within. Triple would often submit reports with elaborate title pages, binding and color photos; however the writing quality was quite poor and consisted of the same typo filled paragraph repeated six to ten times. We were concerned that he should have been held back for a year.

Maybe a Parent/Teacher Conference is the wrong metaphor, perhaps I should frame it as a drug/alcohol intervention. “Your actions are hurting the ones you love.” Everyone sits in a circle around bad lil’ Triple and tells him that his actions are alienating those who love him. His father Double ashamed of what he’s become and his mother Single is sad that he’s not respecting his elders.

Moving on. . . Recently there have been some games on the PS3 that made it quite popular in my house. Everyday Shooter is amazing, it’s a blend of Geometry Wars and Rez. The game’s control and look bear more than a passing resemblance to Geometry Wars. The synesthesia of the music being paired with the on screen visuals is very similar to Rez, The background music and visual track/enemy pattern can be accentuated with player actions to create a visual and sound experience that is different every time. I hope that the game eventually has a release on physical media, it costs $10 to download on the PS3 but I’d be willing to part with far more money if I could have a disc.

The other games that are getting a lot of play are Assassin’s Creed and Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. While Assassin’s Creed has some warts and a HORRIBLE ending, I think the game’s control (especially the parkour elements) are excellent, context sensitive actions are a breeze and the fluidity of game play is rarely broken. I anticipated that the controls would be like Metal Gear Solid and that I would become frustrated by them after several hours and write Assassin’s Creed off. Thankfully I’ve been proven wrong. My main complaint is the ending, I’m tired of developers creating a New IP and explicitly creating a ending that will lead into a sequel. Developing a new IP is expensive, and cranking out another game with a revised engine makes sense. However, more effort needs to be put into crafting their endings, cliffhangers suck.

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune is better than I anticipated. After complaining to my brother about the controls, he played the demo and showed me that the gunplay mechanics are built around the player aiming mainly with the Y-axis and controlling his X-axis aiming by strafing. Too bad the game never explains this to you in the tutorial. Uncharted is a love letter to all the Indiana Jones fans out there, the sometimes cheesy dialogue is refreshing compared to action games with hardcore asshole heroes who’s dialogue is about as much fun to listen to as a drunk talking about how he scored 4 touchdowns in one game during high school.

Don’t buy a PS3, keep waiting. Buy a 60gb for the full Backwards Compatibility used when they get cheaper and pick up Uncharted next Christmas when it’s $20. Go play Assassin’s Creed on 360, it looks slightly better and has achievement points or something.

Dear Naughty Dog,

2007-11-12T22:57:00.000-08:00

I sent the following to Naughty Dog after playing a demo of their first Non-Furry video game, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune.

I just finished playing the “Uncharted: Drakes Fortune” demo on my PS3, and I’d like to give you some feedback.

I love the art direction, music and tongue-in-cheek voice acting. The game has the look and feel of a Indiana Jones film or Phantom comic without pandering to the fans of these works too much. The control and player animation are wonderful, I was surprised that I could use the L3 button to change which hand I held my firearm in!

I have one major complaint, the firearm control is very poor. There is no auto aim and I felt that it really took me out of the experience. I understand that the combat is structured around using cover and taking aimed shots, but I found aiming so tedious that I will not be buying this game. I am not interested in running from point to point trying to maneuver a tiny set of crosshairs over a target 10 pixels on a side that blends into the surrounding environment.. I had to strain my eyes to see my targets even with a 36 inch HDtv w/ HDMI.

However, I’d be sure to give this game another look if at some point you released a patch that added auto-aiming.

Good luck with your future games,

J. Durfy

This is the first time I've been compelled to send a developer any feedback about their game. I suppose it's because I feel that a little push could make the game playable and very enjoyable.

It's always painful when something you've been looking forward to turns out badly. While this 3d platforming experience may have turned out poorly, Super Mario Galaxy tomorrow will surely deliver all the platforming fun I've been craving since Shadow of the Colossus ended.

Bad End

2007-10-25T01:42:00.000-07:00

Lately, I've been thinking of games that end on a downer. Half-Life 2: Episode 2 was what really got the ball rolling, leading me to another replay of The Dark Eye. This is an adventure game from the perspective of a man slowly losing his sanity. Each nightmare scenario that plays out is based on certain Edgar Allan Poe stories, seen once through the eyes of the victim, and again through the eyes of the victimizer. Which means that in one go through you'll be Montresor, walling in Fortunato as he begs for mercy, and again as Fortunato, whimpering as you helplessly watch your tomb being sealed.

And that jolly romp lead to I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream, featuring a cast of characters with deep psychological flaws being tormented by malevolent supercomputer with a burning hatred for humanity. The object of each scenario is to confront the fact that your character is a horrible person and attempt to redeem them. But thanks to the supercomputer's machinations, the closest thing to winning is to 'lose well,' to die at the exact moment you reclaim your humanity.

So you could say I rode the express train to Bleaksville by the end. Pretty invigorating, really. Encountering a game that isn't obligated to make you feel comfortable or shower you with praise is a breath of fresh air. Granted, there is a whiff of grave dirt and misery, but the change is welcome. I mean, since day one games have operated on stringing the player along with treats like high scores, plot exposition, and the venerable bright lights and loud noises. This usually makes the player feel like they're King Bigdick the Badass.

"Well of course, you gin-soaked cretin," you would say. "That's the point of a game: rewards and escapism! No one wants to play a game that punishes and upsets them! They'd rather hammer nails into their urethra!" And you'd be right. Hell, some of my favorite games involve the screen exploding into multi-colored eye-rape (i.e., shoot-'em ups and modern puzzle games).

Goodness knows it's a scheme has worked for years. But there seem to be signs that game makers are starting to chafe at the idea that games necessarily have to be a series of pats on the back. They've all heard that horrible 'A' word and want to make 'interactive experiences' now, and they're wising up to how limited the "Great job for intersecting your vectors with that polygonal solid!" setup is.

I think horror games set off in the right direction, in the sense that they delight in messing with the player's emotions. Good horror games don't have any qualms about fucking with your head. Those good old fashioned gut reactions make for great gaming experiences. However, you'll notice that all the manipulation and mind games are still reined in by the classic setup. You complete a goal, you get a treat, in this case the treat is usually a carefully rationed bit of exposition.

But what element is being reined in, exactly? Shit, I don't know. A wave of games like I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream. Downer games. Anti-rewards. Games that are less concerned with giving you an audio-visual hand job, and more concerned with getting a response out of you, good or bad. I've seen the good side of it a lot, but where the hell has the bad gone? A downer ending doesn't always have to mean that the player failed. Look at the proper endings for Shadow Hearts and Shadow Hearts: Covenant.

I do think that we're getting closer to that point where we can start dealing with uncomfortable subjects with some subtlety. Right now the craft is still a bumbling infant, a toddler at best. There's ham fisted gore, pseudo-intellectualism, 'freedom of choice' that is anything but, puerile attitudes to women and sex, it's a laundry list of failures big and small. The thing is though, is that they're getting better with each experiment. A few more cycles, and they'll get the hang of it, at least I hope.

I liken it to a new technology, as bad of a simile that is. Every time a new technology is introduced to gaming, it's used with shameless abandon, with no regard to subtlety. It's only a cycle or two in that developers really get the hang of things and start to make decent, if not good content. And as the audience grows, so will its capacity to digest this content.

But why has writing in particular been such a miserable bitch to master for video game makers? Mainly because writing is a miserable bitch to master in general. But then you've got additional obstacles. The tradition of showering the player with rewards, the player's ability to murder your narrative in cold blood, gamers being fickle douches--

It's like crawling on broken glass, writing for an audience that's been conditioned to expect happy endings that tie up the loose ends. But again, that's okay. Habits can be broken. Think of it as learning to finish all your vegetables. I look forward to the day when it finally clicks for game makers out there. It'll be like that joyful day when I first saw colored lighting that didn't make me gouge out my eyes.

Why I Love Zelda

2007-10-23T07:38:00.000-07:00

Seriously, who's taking these masterpieces?

NEW EF PEE ESSS.

2007-10-17T22:55:00.000-07:00

I’m not going to make some lame opening statement about Portal, you need to play it. It’s absolutely without peer, it blends together everything that is good and right into what is the video game equivalent of an orgasm.

Portal blends FPS aesthetics, unique puzzles and NEW game play concepts with a sense of humor that is as black as a python funeral. Christ, just buy it already!

The game also caters to speed runners, as each puzzle can be solved in several "incorrect" ways. Youtube is already rife with videos of people completing puzzles in confusing and stomach churning ways (watching & playing this game can cause motion sickness). The game has built in optional features designed for ‘running, a clock to keep track of how fast you are and a “portal” counter to keep track of how many portals you’ve used (for “minimum complete” ‘runners”). Why aren’t you playing this right now!

What the internet thinks of Portal*:

"I would set up a portal to Taco Bell inside my living room so when I get drunk I can just stumble in, get a chalupa, and leave"
"one portal at hone one at gamestop so i could play the motorstorm demo all night when they closed"
"ohm y fucking god i just came everyuwhere"
"i would put one end in front of my fist and the other in front of nintendo so I COULD PUNCH THEM IN THE FACE FOR DELAYING MY SMASH BROSEH"

You need this game. Don’t forget, thecakeisalie.
thecakeisalie thecakeisalie thecakeisalie thecakeisalie thecakeisalie thecakeisalie thecakeisalie thecakeisalie thecakeisalie thecakeisalie thecakeisalie thecakeisalie thecakeisalie

*stolen shamelessly from SA

The Speed Runner's School of Game Design -- The Circumspect, Heedful Everydayness of Metroid

2007-10-16T15:05:00.000-07:00

In the previous entry on this subject I mentioned playing fair as a quality common to all games that are speed-run-friendly, and this refers to possibly the most important aspect of game design: heedful circumspection (you must have seen this coming). This bombastic philosophical term refers to the way a person uses the tools and abilities available to pursue a goal. A game that is conducive to speed runs, a game like Super Metroid, is designed as possibilities; a player will at any given time be expected to have certain tools or abilities, and the levels will be designed according to what abilities the developers intend for them to have. This is "playing fair" because a deal exists between player and game: the player has abilities, and the game provides obstacles with these in mind. If the player somehow "outwits" the intended path and uses his or her abilities in a new or inventive way, a game that plays fair does not invoke some deus ex machina to prevent this unintended progress.

Obviously this design philosophy has to be used carefully. If the game is not well crafted, game-breaking exploits may emerge, a terrifying possibility that has led many a developer to carefully wrap each layer of a game in layers of safe, reliable limitation. The more this is done, the more the game environment and abilities reveal themselves to the player as obstacles rather than useful things at hand. This notion is by no means unique to speed running, but it's never been more apparent than in the actions of a skilled player running an artfully made game.

Another scourge of speed runs that hurts everyone is the forced delay. The freakish impulse to speed run every game ever made was savagely put down by the realization that a run of Xenogears would have seven hours of dialogue alone. I'm not making fun of the game for being wordy here (I'm in no position to, frankly), but rather for being unstoppably wordy. Four-thousand pages of shallow symbolism and mind-grindingly inane plot twists (spoiler alert: soylent green is people) are no problem as long as the text moves by at a good clip, but as in many games there is no control given to the player as the exposition grinds its way across the screen. I'm not just going out of my way to bash Xenogears here, either, since some of my favorite games ever are guilty of this--any Zelda game ever made has been full of slow text you can do nothing about, and I can't even count how many RPGs have had sluggish menus that make you wait for every input to register. A lot of thought goes into game flow, but at no point can I understand why it would be necessary to display text letter by letter rather than all at once, and when the majority of the notes on a speed run are there to describe the finely-tuned method of skipping text you know there's something very, very wrong. Voice acting has only aggravated this problem, as there are usually three second pauses between each line that make things take even longer than ever. Once again, an obstacle to speed running presents itself as an obstacle to casual, everyday play of the game.

The last aspect of a good speed run game is a touchy one--randomization. It's the hallmark of every RPG, and to a certain extent is necessary to keep a game experience fresh. It's also a case where speed runs can highlight problems with a game, but aren't necessarily the guide for how things ought to flow. Grand Theft Auto 3 is a perfect example of this: often, some random and inescapable event complicates the mission you're currently playing. This can be game-breakingly frustrating when a random event simply makes you lose the mission outright, but when these complications force you to adapt to emerging situations, letting you discover the power you have to make things work out in your favor, the game shines gloriously. Neither case is particularly good for a speed run, but the lesson they can teach us is there in the former.

A great example is Yakuza in Metroid Fusion. This boss fight is the bane of every speed runner's existence, and anyone who plays the game will feel their pain: Yakuza jumps around the room randomly until chance works in your favor and the game deigns to present his sole weak point. Most boss fights work on the mechanic of revealing a weak point, but ideally it is up to the player to coax it out, not the game. The beauty of fighting Kraid in Super Metroid is washed away when suddenly instead of forcing his mouth open you're waiting for it to open. These moments pull the player out of the situation, replacing challenge with frustration.

Ultimately, the lesson to be learned from speed running is that the video game should be placed in the hands of the person playing it. For a medium whose defining aspect is interactivity, an alarming amount of game design these days seems to be carefully and meticulously obtuse, restrictive, or downright punitive. Games work best when they reward experimentation, and there are few better places to see the best and worst of this the medium has to offer than in the ultimate forum for experimentation: speed runs.

Attention, all Supple Think Contributing Authors!

2007-10-08T15:37:00.000-07:00

i.e. all you people on the right sidebar.

This is an open declaration of warning to all authors (including me): Post content to Supple Think within the next week or be subject to the Super-Mega-Supple-Quote-A-Thon, which incidentally, starts next week.

And don't worry, I've got dirt on all of you :V

Get postin'.

Modern arcade vaporware: The Act

2007-09-27T17:03:00.001-07:00

Full motion video games get a bad rap and I think it’s mostly undeserved. When the subject comes up and people start throwing about terms like “Interactive Fiction” and “Digital movie” the conversation starts down a path that eventually leads to Dragon’s Lair, Night Trap and maybe even The Daedalus Encounter.

Most gamers would agree that Full Motion Video games are a dead genre, and that they should stay that way. Based upon the games that have come before, I mostly agree. Well, I agreed until recently. I’ve noticed that game play elements from full motion video games are starting to make a comeback in modern video games, and they mostly go unrecognized.

Arcade classics like Dragon’s Lair and Space ace had full motion video game play that required the player to press specific buttons in sequence to advance in the game. That was the whole of the game play, and I admit that it was quite limited; but you have to admit that it was a huge leap forward in interactive entertainment in 1983. Even today, when I come across a working Dragon’s Lair cabinet I can’t help but drop some coins in and enjoy the lavish Don Bluth animation. Dragon’s Lair is very similar to several sequences in Sony’s God of War, Ninja Theory’s Heavenly Sword and Capcom’s Resident Evil 4. All three games have playable sequences that are almost exactly like Dragon’s Lair, requiring quick input of specific commands in rapid succession to get past obstacles.

Old full motion video games are usually dismissed as not being video games, some claim that they are trying to imitating movies. I could easily counter that almost all video games contain cut scenes and that that game “feature” grew directly out of full motion video games. Even today some games are mocked for imitating films, the Metal Gear Solid series and Final Fantasy VII (VIII, IX, X and XII) come to mind. Full motion video games are not dead; they live on in games of all genres. All this discussion brings me to a game that currently languishes in Production hell and will probably never be released because it is dismissed as a “Full Motion video game.”

The Act, by Cecropia blends high quality animation by Disney animators, an innovative simple control scheme and an endearing plot to make a game that I find absolutely tantalizing. While the premise of the game should be obvious from the attached photo, the way you win her heart isn’t by pressing A and going right, then left then jumping. The game’s only control is a potentiometer, you control the protagonist’s reactions, demeanor and actions; by twisting the knob to the left he is calmer, more shy and quiet, turning to the right makes the hero quicker, more boisterous and outgoing. That the inputs are highly variable is a huge step up in game play interactivity when it comes to full motion video games and interactive cut scenes. While this control scheme may seem odd, it makes perfect sense when you consider how the player clears the challenges. You don’t force your way thru by jumping and interacting with objects, you use the knob to control your characters emotions and reactions to the events around him, too much twist in either direction for too long beyond the correct emotion on the knob results in failure. Wow, a game where victory depends on feeling, emotion, and tricking people. I can’t wait to play it. . .

Oh.

Why I Love Treasure

2007-09-18T17:52:00.000-07:00

There are tons of reasons, but these are the only two you'll ever need:

Nintendo’s New Holiday

2007-09-15T22:58:00.000-07:00

Until now I had no real reason to talk about the Nintendo’s Virtual Console service for the Wii, but their recent announcements for the European and Australian VC have forced my hand. This month is the “Hanabi Festival.”

The Hanabi Festival is a chance for Nintendo to release a smattering of games that previously had not been available to EU and AU customers through normal channels. The games offered initally are Super Mario Bros. 2 (Famicom), Mario’s Super Picross (Super Famicom), with other unreleased games like the incredible N64 title Sin & Punishment becoming available for download at later this month.

While I applaud Nintendo’s decision to release some Japan only titles in the west, I must admit that I’m kind of upset with the way in which they’re releasing them. Nintendo is brazen enough to ask for an extra $1 for the games offered during the “Hanabi Festival.” Oh, and games like Mario 2 will only be offered during the festival. Yeah, not only do you have to pony up more for the game, you have to buy it before the end of September (I guess that’s one way to insure strong VC sales).

In addition to the insult of having to pay more for these games, Nintendo is even cutting back on localization for these special limited time VC releases. Mario’s Super Picross doesn’t even have a English title screen. I guess that’s what Nintendo meant when they called it a “Hanabi Festival,” Hanabi must be some 27+ stroke kanji that roughly translates to: “pay extra for a game that isn’t localized.” I guess this is all just a test by Nintendo to see just how deeply they can stick their thumb in our eye before we collectively close our wallets.

I'll be the first to admit...

2007-09-15T03:12:00.000-07:00

Durfy was right.

Games that I've acquired in the past 72 hours that I have no time to play:
- Gyakuten Saiban 3
- Final Fantasy VII Crisis Core
- Heroes of Mana
- Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
- Super Metroid
- Paper Mario
- Mario Strikers Charged

Games that I am playing for 10 minutes at a time in between bouts of coding:
- Geometry Wars

712,000 is my high score so far, my personal goal is 1,000,000, this game is hard.

I think I had something profound to say about Magic Cards and/or Achievement Points, but that'll have to wait until I'm done with work stuffs, sigh...

Retro Games

2007-09-06T22:51:00.000-07:00

They are endlessly fellated in print and frantic sweaty conversations between retro gamers and spastics in t-shirts with Nintendo and Atari joy pads on them that say things like “roots” and “Wizard Needs Food Badly.”

MOST OLD VIDEO GAMES SUCK.

Scads of old games are fun, but then as now only a select few games are destined for greatness. Why are some titles held up as shining examples of game creation if they’re no fun to play. Mouth breathers will cry out: “Dragon Mother 2: Eternal Rapture is important! It shows the evolution of the genre!” That’s wonderful, but it doesn’t mean I want to replay a RPG from 10 years ago that has a poorly designed battle system just because it spawned 6 other similarly titled games that were more fun to play and don’t have onerous controls that makes me wish I could smash my hand with a hammer in lieu of continuing to play.

Despite the negative opinion of retro games expressed above I should point out that there are many worth playing, which brings me to Game Center CX.

Game Center CX is a late night Japanese TV show staring Shinya Arino, it chronicles his attempts to beat retro video games on the original consoles; no emulation, no save states, no refuge.

Game Center CX show should be viewed by all who claim retro gamer "cred," it will hopefully remind them of that some games are best left as memories. Most episodes start with Arino describing the game that is to be attempted in the episode, his whimsical & nostalgic descriptions often shift quickly to very real frustration as he proceeds to spend literally hours attempting to beat the classic game (in Ghosts 'n Goblins first level, he is killed countless times by the Red Arremer). While I can sympathize with Arino’s situation as he is forced to plow through over 60 "classic" games (including the Japanese JJ & FJeff [カトちゃんケンちゃん] and Takeshi’s Challenge [たけしの挑戦状] ), I must admit to enjoying his suffering as he plows through one game after another. I can’t help but think that most of these games are better left in the past.

Next time you have to suffer through some neck-beard telling you “retro games are the best. . . Mappy is the best game ever!” You can suggest they watch this show, maybe if they’re smart enough they’ll understand that Game Center CX is as much an indictment as it is a acclamation of “retro games”

To learn more about Game Center CX you can visit Wikipedia, or watch some of the episodes here.

Coin-op@home: My flawed logic

2007-08-27T23:43:00.000-07:00

When I was younger I had an almost infinite amount of free time, I spent absurd amounts of free time playing RPGs in High School. While I do look back fondly on playing long involved console games, I no longer have the free time or patience necessary to fully enjoy them. I discovered this once I graduated from High School and entered college, I still had a strong desire to play games but found it very difficult to enjoy most console games. This was the because of several factors:

Console games are generally getting more complicated. Resulting not in thick instruction manual, but instead spawning internal game training tutorials that ease you into the game. Tutorials are fine, but when you have to walk away from a game for weeks at a time to focus on school or work the important nuances of a game’s controls can slip your mind, making further progress frustrating or even impossible. Without experiencing the tutorial and the gradual increase in difficulty over many hours the prospect of resuming play of an abandoned quest can be extremely daunting, most console RPG enthusiasts have experienced this . . . “Where was I going, what skills was I trying to level, who has X piece of equipment?”

Second, the price of console games. While I appreciate the price point console games are sold at, it presents a problem for many adult gamers. Children and teens can afford them, but generally cannot afford every game they desire. By and large, they play one game at a time because that is all they can afford. Adults on the other hand can usually afford every game that catches their eye, often resulting in a large stack of unfinished and even still shrink-wrapped games. I am guilty of this, I have a large collection of games that I desperately want to play yet never got around to.

Third, a lack of large blocks of time necessary to properly play console games. While many children and people can single mindedly dedicate themselves to games, I can’t let my real world obligations slide. The fact that console games dole out the “fun” in small chunks all throughout the game makes them feel intolerably long. While I do have “free time” I like to divide it between other activities as well; friends, family & beer come to mind immediately.

After being pushed away from console games, I gradually came to understand and enjoy arcade games in a new light. They are the antithesis of everything I dislike about console games:

Arcade games are simple to play yet hard to master. Their controls are usually limited to a 8-way joystick and one to six buttons. The cab itself usually has play instructions described in pictograms or a simple instruction demo that pops up before the game starts.

Arcade games are inexpensive to play in the arcade, but generally expensive to own at home. This relegates most sane adults who choose to collect them to a childlike position, they can only afford to own those they truly enjoy.

Arcade games rarely demand more than 30 minutes of time. While they can be beat in 30 minutes on free play, a real enthusiast will attempt to beat them on one credit, ensuring good value for money via replay. They are designed to be as fun as possible from the moment you drop your coin in the slot to the second your last life ends.

"NAOMI: the gordian knot of non-standard JAMMA PCBs."

The whole situation is comically ironic to me. As a child, I would save my pocket money for months and months, avoiding arcades at times in order to buy a console game. I would insist to myself that I’d get more fun out of the console game. Now I find myself saving my money, avoiding buying console games to purchase arcade PCBs. I firmly believe that I’ll have more fun replaying game designed to be as enjoyable as possible for the entire duration of play, no matter how short it is.

More like "Puns of the Gaytriots"!

2007-08-24T00:18:00.001-07:00

It's like Megaman bosses, but they're... ladies.

Harvest: It's like Tower Defense but it's not a mod for anything

2007-08-17T11:39:00.000-07:00

I should be writing Starcraft Vs Street Fighter: Part 2 but instead I am playing Harvest:

http://www.oxeyegames.com/harvest/

(Note that I do know what I want to say about fighting games, I got a nice bulleted list here, but I'm not feeling the write-a-lot vibes right now.)

Anyways, Harvest is like tower defense except I don't have to wait for Warcraft 3 to load, then log into battle.net, then wait for people to join my game, then lose instantly when they quit or time out. You build solar power stations to power mining facilities to mine more resources to build more power stations and mining facilites (which run out of nearby minerals so you have to expand). Then the aliens come and you need to build defense lasers and upgradeable missile turrets. Missiles are okay (actually they suck considering how much minerals + power they take for how much they kill) but the awesome thing is that the laser turrets can link together to become more powerful (intelligent) lasers. If you link enough lasers to one laser you get a Death Star level laser of doom that can cover the entire map. That seems to be the best strategy so far, as building three of these super laser arrays has gotten me to about level 90 before I finally get overrun. It is also important to specify the attack priorities of the various defense buildings that way they don't attack the wrong thing and you die. Here's a protip, make it a priority to attack the spawner enemy above the stuff that it spawns, otherwise you are just making more work for yourself.

The game is in beta, so I'm sure they have much balancing tweaks that have left to be made, but it's free for now, which is a damn good price for the amount of amusement I'm getting out of it.

In other news, my brother got an Xbox360 but he refuses to put it in the living room, so I can't exactly go and play it any time I want, sad. I refuse to go through the effort to join the Call of Duty 4 beta if that's the case.

Is a relapse imminent? Halo 3 Game Fuel, already fueling the start of an addiction?

2007-08-15T08:45:00.000-07:00

Reflecting back on the time period when I became the type of person that I hate. That is the person who owns an XBox and only 1 game and only plays one game exclusively. The game being Halo 2. I can't claim to hate these individuals anymore as I really REALLY enjoyed my time as one of them. (Also it would be absolutely ridiculous to actually hate someone for this reason.) I was playing an average of 12 hours a night, while working full time and also going to a couple concerts a week. This was barely possible and only possible with the help of Rock Star Energy drink. Of course at the end of a Halo 2 stint I would be left with a 3 week long cold/sickness due to barely sleeping and having a weakened immune system. My problem was so serious an intervention had to be formed.

I made a special trip to the store last night to pick up some Halo 3 Mountain Dew Game Fuel. With 30% more caffeine! I was so happy to see Master Chief and the Halo 3 logo there on the Mountain Dew packaging in front of me. Yesterday was it's release day, since when does Soda have a release day? What possessed me to go to the store and purchase this and drink it?!?! I drink an average of less than a soda a week so this is unlike me. Also I generally hate Burger King's food, I heard that they are going to have some exclusive Halo 3 xbox live codes for content. I hate to say it but if this is true it will convince me to choke down some of their food. So please don't let this be true! After all I did when Sneak King came out. Also the Halo themed packaging seems to only be on the "King" sized meal cup and fries. King sized whatever that is,it involves a 42 ounce soda apparently, sounds absolutely disgusting.

I played a few times in the Halo 3 beta when it was open through Crackdown. The first time I saw all the stats tracking which made Halo 2 so addictive for me, I thought maybe I should quit this game right now. I foresee many great long and wonderful nights of Halo 3 parties in the near future though. With 4 player online co-op I know I'm going to be spending a lot of time on this one. It has yet to be seen if my game addiction will play out with this version like it did the last, I'm not very good anymore since I've been rehabbed. But does that make it less fun? There are too many other games on the horizon and I have to enjoy them all. In the 6 weeks before Halo 3 is released I will be acquiring and playing Bioshock, Blue Dragon, and Eternal Sonata. How is this ever going to work? I have no idea...does it make having a game addiction ok if I play different games or just spend all my free time on one particular one. Not sure if I even have any free time...