Why should WiiCare?

WiiWare - a land of opportunity, where small indie developers can stand toe-to-toe with the big boys like Square Enix and EA. This is where weird, interesting games should go to live. The Wii has a controller unlike any other in the industry, and games like Lost Winds and World of Goo show how to utilize it very well. Unfortunately, there are a few things holding WiiWare (and the Virtual Console, as well) back from competing with the "real" next-gen systems:

- No demos
- No standard pricing structure on WiiWare
- Lack of consistent release schedule

First, no demos. Now that Nintendo (finally) did something about the Wii's lack of storage (Yay for SD!), there is room on gamers' consoles for game demos. On 360, the demo is the same size as the full game, but purchasing the whole game "unlocks" the rest of the content. Wii doesn't need to do it that way. A shorter download time for a first level would be fine for A.D.D. types that still play Wii. If I want the full game, yes, I would wait to download again. It's not a big deal.

Without free trial demos, countless interesting games are getting lost in the shuffle while people buy tripe like Major League Eating: The Game. A demo will allow gamers to try something they normally wouldn't, because there's no risk. "Want to try Swords & Soldiers for ten minutes before you buy it? That'll be ten dollars. Hope you like it. No refunds."

The pricing on WiiWare is also all over the place, ranging from $5 (Texas hold'em Tournament), to $6 (Bubble Bobble Plus), to $8 (Final Fantasy IV: The After Years), to $10 (Let's Catch - What the crap?), to $15 (World of Goo). The prices don't seem to be based on anything besides what the developers hope people will pay. That, and probably development costs. But gamers don't care about that. They just want a good deal for their dollar.

Lastly, the release schedule. New XBLA games come out every Tuesday. New WiiWare games come out... whenever. There are new games released every week, but there is no guarantees that they are WiiWare games. It could be DSiWare, or a Virtual Console title, or WiiWare, or maybe, if you're lucky, a good WiiWare game. It's probably just another calculator or clock for your DSi, and no matter how cool it may be, it is not delivering on the potential of the technology. Pick up the slack, Nintendo! If Sony can do it with the slumping PS3, you can do it too. You have enough money. Use it for something that doesn't suck, for once!

Braid.

I was three puzzle pieces short before I hung it up for the night, frustrated as all get out. So I exited the game to the Xbox Arcade menu and powered off for the evening. Came back the next day, all the pieces were gone. Apparently, when I clicked on "Play game" my Xbox decided to boot up my Braid demo version, ignoring all the progress from before. Even when I select "Download again" I can only start from the beginning. AHHHHH!

Since I sent in my 360 to get it repaired, they sent me a new one, ensuring that my old downloaded games can never be played on my new system without being signed onto Xbox Live. I was. It didn't matter.

Maybe I'll never beat it... Until a few more months from now when I'll have another Braid marathon and get just a little bit closer. I don't care about the save file. I just want the story's ending and the achievement points. Why must you be such a harsh mistress, Tim? Why?

I'm a sad panda. Going to go play Feeding Frenzy now. Delete my save, will you?! I'll teach you.

Remembering the past

On a whim, I fired up Braid today for the first time in many months. I had never been able to beat the game, and I am trying by bestest to never have to resort to YouTube to find solutions to the puzzles. Unfortuately, there was no save file left on my Xbox (weak) so I got to experience the whole game for the first time all over again.

Braid is beautiful.

It is a masterpiece of aesthetics, and music, and interesting, simple, clever gameplay. The story is told in snippets of books between levels, and the wording is such that it evokes an incredible emotional response in just a few lines of text. You connect with the hero, Tim, even though he doesn't say a single word. The game is only a few hours long, but there are so many "A-ha!" moments when you solve a puzzle all by yourself after 30 minutes of struggling. You actually feel proud of yourself for outsmarting this simple, sophisticated game - no - this experience.

On my first playthrough, there were always a few puzzle pieces I could never seem to reach. This second time, I felt much more self-assured. I already understood the mechanics of the game; I just needed to master it, to complete it. This time, I got closer. I completed level 4 and earned a nice, shiny, new achievement. But there are still a few puzzle pieces left... I am still stumped. I can't earn the beautiful Ico-esque ending I've read about in so many magazines, and heard about all over the Internet. I want so badly to know what happens myself, without reading spoilers, and without having to resort to finding solutions to the game on the Internet. Will this be another of life's great mysteries? Or will my searching mind stumble upon a solution in my sleep? I hope the latter. Maybe I just need to take a break from it for a few months again... but I can't. I'm hooked in its beautiful claws, and I don't want to be free again until I learn the truth.

Do games NEED multiplayer?

If you want to be able to play one game and one game only for the next year of two of your life, then yes, multiplayer is a necessity. Sure, there are single-person experiences that seem limitless (Spore, The Sims, Tetris) but eventually you need something more. Why do you think the Sims have had expansion after expansion after expansion? In today's A.D.D. world of YouTube and an MTV that has lost it's "M," people need constant, updated stimulation. Online multiplayer is one easy way to accomplish this.

Call of Duty 4, Halo 3, and Call of Duty: World at War - the top three online games on 360. They will remain this way for the forseeable future. CoD 4's single player was great - the scripted action was intense, the characters were believable, and the sense of immersion in the battles was unparalleled. Yet, there is no reason to play it more than once. The experience will always be the same, no matter the difficulty level you select. But online, you can meet new people, and shoot new people. The experience will never be scripted; the experience will never be the same. Online multiplayer has helped WoW become a pop culture phenomenon, and one that's doesn't show any sign of letting up. A game can be fun, but without online multiplayer, there is no reason to keep getting better and better indefinitely. If you invested 200 hours into Final Fantasy XII to get yourself the sweetest, toughest party in RPG history, who will know? Who will care? I sunk 120 hours into Oblivion, and now it just sits on the shelf, collecting dust. At least I got all 1,250 achievement points!

A distant cousin to online multiplayer is the increasing availability of online leaderboards. Rock Band, Mirror's Edge, Mega Man 9, N+, basically every other XBLA game... by getting people to compete with each other to shave half a second off a speed run, single player games are given incredible long term vitality. Mega Man 9 came out months ago, and people are still competing for the top spot on the leaderboards. How many full-budget games can make that claim? Not as many as would like to, that's for sure.

Puzzle Quest - The Hidden Addiction

When Puzzle Quest came out on DS, PSP, PC, Wii, PS2, PSN, and XBLA, I picked it up for $20. Yeah, it looked to be basically a Bejeweled clone, but it was a Bejeweled clone in which you could level up and cast spells and slay goblins! Awesome. I would play it on the toilet, where nobody would bother me, and I would often sit there until my legs fell asleep. "Just one more game," I would say to myself, "I wouldn't be able to stand up right now anyway, my feet are numb." Within days, I had already reached the last boss. It is not a short game. I was addicted. To a puzzle game. To a DS game! No way! But when I completed it, I put it away. Because it had an end point to the storyline, there was a time when it was eventually over. This is unlike other Tetris, or Lumines, or other puzzlers you can play ad nauseum. Does that hurt it as a brilliant game? I don't know...

When the year was up and I was looking over various Game of the Year awards in magazines and on the Internet, Puzzle Quest kept popping up as a final contender. I had played it (a lot) and yet had never considered it one of the greatest games of the year. This was pretty weird, because I don't want to play a bad game, no one does. Yet even though I sunk more time into it than just about any other game that year besides Oblivion, I discounted it subconsciously because of its simplicity and "casual" nature. A simple puzzle game can't be Game of the Year! But what makes Game of the Year? Is it addictiveness, a willingness to play it over all other games of its time? Because Puzzle Quest ensnared me completely, even with a simple, cliched fantasy plot and colorful yet unimpressive graphics that did their job and little else. Also, the music was just awful, and the loop was far too short for the amount of time an average person could sink into it. But I loved it. And I am hereby declaring it one of my favorite games of all time. Maybe Puzzle Kingdoms is good too...?

R.I.P. 3D Realms

3D Realms is gone... and Duke Nukem Forever may actually never be released now instead of just probably never being released. 3D Realms, along with iD Software (John Carmack and the other guys who made DOOM) invented shareware and pretty much single-handedly crafted the PC game market as we know it. Also, they made Commander Keen, Duke Nukem, Prey, and one of my personal favorites as a kid, Blake Stone, a.k.a. Wolfenstein in space. Is this another case of the "recession-proof" video game industry being impacted by the recession? Or was 3d Realms merely demolished by its own practical joke-like existence? "When's this new game coming out, it seems like it's been delayed for years." "Probably right after Duke Nukem Forever HAHAHAHA!" Jerks.

The sad part is that 3D Realms was still planning on bringing DNF out... If you got all 200 achievement points in the recently revitalized Duke Nukem 3D game that was released on XBLA, you unlocked two screenshots for the game, proving that it was still in production after first being announced about 12 years ago. DNF is going to be the coolest vaporware since that hamster game that was announced for the Sega 32X. Remember that? No? Do you even remember the system? It had DOOM and Virtua Fighter on it, and it was cool. So was Duke Nukem. Sigh...

Watchmen - book/movie/game loved/liked/hated

The Watchmen graphic novel is a beautiful piece of American literature, loved universally for its dark, parallel reality of what could have been. The movie has scores ranging from 20 out of 100 to 100 out of 100 on MetaCritic. Critics loved the atmosphere, and the story wasn't completely butchered in the medium transition, but they didn't like that it was an action film with slow motion figth scenes and whatnot. The comic was not an action comic; it was a philosophy comic. The movie's praise was not nearly as universal as the comic, but at least it was still loved by some people. The Watchmen game on XBLA takes the lore and universe of Watchmen and simplifies it into a very beautiful (by Live Arcade standards) but shallow brawler. What's worse, it's episodic, so you don't even feel like you get a whole game. What's even worse, it's $20. The same price as the sublime GTA IV DLC, which is about 6 times the length and 10 times the value and fun.

Of course they were going to release a Watchmen game to go along with the movie. And I for one am glad that they made it a prequel instead of trying to craft something playable out of the ridiculously layered and complex narrative of the graphic novel. Still, what could they do with it instead of making it a pretty, graphic brawler? I don't know. Maybe tried to make it into a pretty, graphic, fun brawler? A hard concept to swallow, I know. But the Watchmen deserve some respect.