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.
Showing posts with label innovation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label innovation. Show all posts
Monday, June 8, 2009
Friday, June 5, 2009
Not better than the original
A sequel should keep the good parts of the first game, throw out the bad, and add new features, making the core experience even more enjoyable. Final Fantasy IV: The After Years does not do this.
This WiiWare exclusive takes all the old graphics, charm, and mechanics, and adds MORE random battles. I spent the entire first hour of playtime on the first dungeon (which was only two floors) because I had to fight a random monster every four steps. Just to be sure that it wasn't like this before, I popped in my old copy of Final Fantasy II (the American title for IV) on SNES, my newer copy of FF4 on the PlayStation, and I even tried my copy of FF4 on Game Boy Advance, and, sure enough, there were a LOT more battles in this Wii one. Battles aren't intrinsically uninteresting, but these particular battles have been the same for fifteen years. They're stale. The one new feature in battles, Band Attacks, has already been used in numerous other games, most recently in Sonic Chronicles on the DS. Two or more characters team up for one attack, making a stronger attack, but depriving both characters of the necessary MP. Woo.
This game would be great on a cell phone, where it was originally released, as long as there was a quicksave option. As it is... The After Years takes great characters from one of history's most beloved series and gives them one more adventure. But that's all. Square is treading a long-beaten path, and their storytelling had better be nothing less than sublime for them to expect anyone to complete this game and invest in the downloadable content. There's a difference between pure, brutal nostalgia (Mega Man 9) and a shamless cash-in like this, despite Square bringing back the cast that worked on the original game to make this pseudo-sequel. Their love of the past cannot be denied. This game can be.
...Of course this is all just based on the first hour of playtime. If I ever find myself going back to it, I'll be sure to let you know if there is any change in how I feel about it.
Llama out.
This WiiWare exclusive takes all the old graphics, charm, and mechanics, and adds MORE random battles. I spent the entire first hour of playtime on the first dungeon (which was only two floors) because I had to fight a random monster every four steps. Just to be sure that it wasn't like this before, I popped in my old copy of Final Fantasy II (the American title for IV) on SNES, my newer copy of FF4 on the PlayStation, and I even tried my copy of FF4 on Game Boy Advance, and, sure enough, there were a LOT more battles in this Wii one. Battles aren't intrinsically uninteresting, but these particular battles have been the same for fifteen years. They're stale. The one new feature in battles, Band Attacks, has already been used in numerous other games, most recently in Sonic Chronicles on the DS. Two or more characters team up for one attack, making a stronger attack, but depriving both characters of the necessary MP. Woo.
This game would be great on a cell phone, where it was originally released, as long as there was a quicksave option. As it is... The After Years takes great characters from one of history's most beloved series and gives them one more adventure. But that's all. Square is treading a long-beaten path, and their storytelling had better be nothing less than sublime for them to expect anyone to complete this game and invest in the downloadable content. There's a difference between pure, brutal nostalgia (Mega Man 9) and a shamless cash-in like this, despite Square bringing back the cast that worked on the original game to make this pseudo-sequel. Their love of the past cannot be denied. This game can be.
...Of course this is all just based on the first hour of playtime. If I ever find myself going back to it, I'll be sure to let you know if there is any change in how I feel about it.
Llama out.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Riding the Zelda short bus
Third-person action/adventure games - the most derivative of all game genres. No matter how good/unique your game is, critics and the public will all declare it "like Zelda." It seems like the only way to escape the Zelda stigma is to include guns in your game (Ratchet & Clank).
Example: Okami. PS2's answer to Zelda. You got to be a wolf, there was a silent protagonist, you ran errands for villagers, you explored dungeons. Sounds like Zelda. Sure, there was a painting mechanic, and a cool art-style, but nobody cared except the critics. This game single-handedly closed Clover Studios.
Example: Beyond Good and Evil. Third-person adventure, hit bad guys with a stick, similar controls, pretty female protagonist (HA take that, Link!). The setting was unique, and the story was interesting, and the characters had... character. But the game felt like Zelda, even though there were no dungeons to explore or princesses to rescue. The photography aspect was cool too. Nobody played this game either.
More examples: Malice, Haven: Call of the King, Jak and Daxter, Dark Cloud, Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee, Psychonauts, Fable. All of these games have aspects that help separate themselves from Zelda's shadow, but many feel like that's all they do. Zelda with a hammer, Zelda with psychic powers, Zelda with experience points, Zelda with farts. Zelda wasn't the first, but it did it the best. I don't know if it will ever be topped by cookie-cutter games.
One thing's for sure, however: when (if?) a unique game comes along that turns the Zelda gameplay on its ear, I'll be the first in line to pick it up. With so many "me too" games flooding the market, I could really go for a breath of fresh air.
Example: Okami. PS2's answer to Zelda. You got to be a wolf, there was a silent protagonist, you ran errands for villagers, you explored dungeons. Sounds like Zelda. Sure, there was a painting mechanic, and a cool art-style, but nobody cared except the critics. This game single-handedly closed Clover Studios.
Example: Beyond Good and Evil. Third-person adventure, hit bad guys with a stick, similar controls, pretty female protagonist (HA take that, Link!). The setting was unique, and the story was interesting, and the characters had... character. But the game felt like Zelda, even though there were no dungeons to explore or princesses to rescue. The photography aspect was cool too. Nobody played this game either.
More examples: Malice, Haven: Call of the King, Jak and Daxter, Dark Cloud, Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee, Psychonauts, Fable. All of these games have aspects that help separate themselves from Zelda's shadow, but many feel like that's all they do. Zelda with a hammer, Zelda with psychic powers, Zelda with experience points, Zelda with farts. Zelda wasn't the first, but it did it the best. I don't know if it will ever be topped by cookie-cutter games.
One thing's for sure, however: when (if?) a unique game comes along that turns the Zelda gameplay on its ear, I'll be the first in line to pick it up. With so many "me too" games flooding the market, I could really go for a breath of fresh air.
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Minimum-Wage Games = Fun?
Minimum-wage work is the bane of a teenager's existence, yet it is a necessary evil to for him to afford gas, booze, and freedom from being forced to survive under his parents' constant observation and oppression. It's not fun. It's work. How can a game company make a game out of it? They can, apparently, and they do. Here's a partial list I came up with of entirely un-fun jobs that have been converted to game form:
- Order Up! - fast food
- Diner Dash - waitressing
- Cooking Mama - cook
- Harvest Moon - farmer
- Courier Crisis - bike messenger
- Crazy Taxi - cabbie
How do game companies pick their games' subjects? "Hey, working the register at a gas station is accessible enough to be done by a trained monkey... Let's make that into a WiiWare game!" Strangely, even the games that don't over-emphasize the danger and excitement of these menial jobs (like Crazy Taxi's over-the-top presentation and gameplay) still have a large element of fun to them. Harvest Moon is a great example. In it, you are a farmer. You grow crops, trade with townspeople, till your soil... standard farm stuff. Still, thousands of gamers buy the newest installment each time it's released and sink dozens upon dozens of hours into their virtual farm. For what? They are left with no real, tangible carrots to eat, and they don't have the satisfaction of actually cleaning the horse manure out of a stall with a shovel. Is Harvest Moon better than real farming because there's no poop smell? Is it because the virtual progression of crops is so much faster than in reality? Is it because gamers don't get sweaty using a virtual hoe? Maybe.
Today's game market is so over-saturated by "me-too" titles that game developers will look to exploit any untapped subject in an effort to appear innovative. When Wii Fit was released, it was a huge success. It was the type of "game" that hadn't really been tried seriously before, and Nintendo's risky move paid off in a huge way - Wii Fit is now one of the best-selling games of all time, and it's still incredibly difficult to find the game on store shelves. Sure, Order Up is a fast food simulator, but how many times have you seen one of those before? It even embraced it's demographic by including a paper hat and a $20 price tag. It will not be a best seller, ever. But there still exist so many untapped game subjects and gameplay innovations that I, for one, would try anything once. You don't want the only new games in the future to be Madden 2021 and Tony Hawk 19, do you? You'd better not.
- Order Up! - fast food
- Diner Dash - waitressing
- Cooking Mama - cook
- Harvest Moon - farmer
- Courier Crisis - bike messenger
- Crazy Taxi - cabbie
How do game companies pick their games' subjects? "Hey, working the register at a gas station is accessible enough to be done by a trained monkey... Let's make that into a WiiWare game!" Strangely, even the games that don't over-emphasize the danger and excitement of these menial jobs (like Crazy Taxi's over-the-top presentation and gameplay) still have a large element of fun to them. Harvest Moon is a great example. In it, you are a farmer. You grow crops, trade with townspeople, till your soil... standard farm stuff. Still, thousands of gamers buy the newest installment each time it's released and sink dozens upon dozens of hours into their virtual farm. For what? They are left with no real, tangible carrots to eat, and they don't have the satisfaction of actually cleaning the horse manure out of a stall with a shovel. Is Harvest Moon better than real farming because there's no poop smell? Is it because the virtual progression of crops is so much faster than in reality? Is it because gamers don't get sweaty using a virtual hoe? Maybe.
Today's game market is so over-saturated by "me-too" titles that game developers will look to exploit any untapped subject in an effort to appear innovative. When Wii Fit was released, it was a huge success. It was the type of "game" that hadn't really been tried seriously before, and Nintendo's risky move paid off in a huge way - Wii Fit is now one of the best-selling games of all time, and it's still incredibly difficult to find the game on store shelves. Sure, Order Up is a fast food simulator, but how many times have you seen one of those before? It even embraced it's demographic by including a paper hat and a $20 price tag. It will not be a best seller, ever. But there still exist so many untapped game subjects and gameplay innovations that I, for one, would try anything once. You don't want the only new games in the future to be Madden 2021 and Tony Hawk 19, do you? You'd better not.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Things that make you go vroom
Game engines are a necessary evil. Still, they're a lot like the Associated Press. When all papers have the same news stories, every newspaper is the same and it doesn't matter where you live. The journalistic integrity is unanimous. When all first-person-shooters share the Unreal engine, all first-person-shooters feel the same. No game company, not even EA, can afford to create every single new game entirely from scratch. The development tools are the same. The graphics are all created from the same basic polygons. Physics are physics. Game conventions exist and become cliche because people in general are afraid to try something new, something unique. Mirror's Edge bombed. Okami single-handedly destroyed Clover Studios. Every Tim Schafer game is critical gold and commercial dookie. RPG's still employ the same S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system (strength, perception, endurance, intellect, agaility, luck) 20 years after it was created, with relatively few tweaks. People still play RPG's. They cry for a new, original game (Viewtiful Joe) but then nobody buys it when it's released. Consumers are destroying video game ideas like they destroyed American pop music. Thanks, movie licenses.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Wii-makes
Instead of creating new IP's, Nintendo has decided to remake old games. Yay. Pikmin, Mario Tennis, and (soon) Metroid Prime - three GameCube classics - are being remade using Wii's motion controls for $30 each. Apparently, the games control really well using the new controllers, but the qestion is, will anyone care? With so many new and exciting games in the market today, will people really want to play ten-year-old games on the least next-gen system of all next-gen systems? There're a lot of Wiis out there... I'm sure someone will buy them. And good games are good no matter how old they are. Also, the potential of the Wii's controls is still mostly unrealized by almost every game on the system; maybe gamers will take whatever neat games they can find?
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Right on Target, but not always in Target
Target sells video games. No way! That's where I used to buy my games before I found out that Wal-Mart is open 24 hours. Now, I buy my games at Best Buy because I get Reward Zone points, but that's not my point. Target is no longer a viable avenue for purchasing games! And that's sad, because we need all the options we can get (like 7-Eleven). Target's always out of stock of the good games, and there are 3 times as many Wii games as there are anything and everything else. Not good Wii games. Target is triple-stocked on Wii Music and the latest Animal Crossing remake, and the "$20 Wii Crap" section is bigger than the entire PSP area. I don't think this is because there's more Wii Crap than PSP games (even though there is). I think this is because people are dumb and will buy anything on Wii that has a colorful box, and Target's top men know this. "$20 for a next-gen game? No way! I'll take three!" PSP is a good system, but it's its own system, and it's not being utilized to its potential. Wii is also a good system, and its gimmicky potential is being fully realized. As a gimmick. There are interesting ways to utilize the Wii controls, or don't! Make a good game that just happens to be on the Wii, even if it doesn't fully utilize the motion controls (Geometry Wars: Galaxies, Guitar Hero/Rock Band). The best DS game of last year, Chrono Trigger, barely used the touch screen, but it's a classic. A pure pedigree shows even if the controls are "traditional." Traditional means functional. And what are the first three letters of functional?
Saturday, January 31, 2009
New old games
Sometimes, game companies create new IPs. See: Mirror's Edge, Mass Effect, any Tim Schafer game. Usually, though, they realize, "Hey, we're a game company." Then they let the purpose of a company (to make money) get in the way of the creative part of game creation. They see that Madden consistently sells millions upon millions of copies each year despite the fact that changes to the game from one season to the next are mostly superficial. They see that Psychonauts and Okami do not sell despite near-universal critical acclaim. Maybe it's the funny names. Maybe consumers just don't have as much money as they used to. Maybe Average Joe fears change. Barack is president now; maybe his inauguration can be the turning point for the game industry as well as the economy. Maybe people will start trying new things because the old things are boring. The old things don't work anymore. Change, as they say, is good.
Then why do game companies continue mining the past for ideas instead of looking to the future?
Space Invaders Extreme. Galaga Legions. Geometry Wars. (It's Asteroids in Technicolor. Zip it.) Halo Wars/Recon/ODST/4/5/6. DDR Super Max Ultimate Extreme Hyper Fighting II: The World War Road Warriors. Once-fresh ideas are now being re-hashed so continually and consistently that whole generations are now being robbed of the initial "wow" factor of a new game or a new technology. When GTA III was released and instantly popularized the sandbox world genre, people were amazed. They said things like, "Now I expect so much more from my games." Flash forward through Vice City and San Andreas and you have GTA IV - more polished, but basically the same game. Is it still fun? Most definitely, but not as exciting, fresh, or new.
Which brings me to my question: is the amount of fun you have with a game related to the amount of innovation in it? Are remakes (Prince of Persia, Bionic Commando, Ninja Gaiden) fun because the source was so pure and undiluted? How long can you milk a concept or franchise before it becomes obsolete and unplayable? Square Enix has made each new Final Fantasy game a fresh take on the classic RPG formula to varying levels of success, while the Tony Hawk games started to stink so bad that they finally took a year off to regroup.
Madden will always be fun despite the lack of substantial updates. Mario will continue to charm gamers the world over with each new adventure. Game developers will continue mining the past as long as there's money to be made (*cough*Sega*cough*). Still, as long as there are people that are not content to merely rest on their grandad's NES laurels, the future still has a future. And maybe it all doesn't have to be in the past.
Then why do game companies continue mining the past for ideas instead of looking to the future?
Space Invaders Extreme. Galaga Legions. Geometry Wars. (It's Asteroids in Technicolor. Zip it.) Halo Wars/Recon/ODST/4/5/6. DDR Super Max Ultimate Extreme Hyper Fighting II: The World War Road Warriors. Once-fresh ideas are now being re-hashed so continually and consistently that whole generations are now being robbed of the initial "wow" factor of a new game or a new technology. When GTA III was released and instantly popularized the sandbox world genre, people were amazed. They said things like, "Now I expect so much more from my games." Flash forward through Vice City and San Andreas and you have GTA IV - more polished, but basically the same game. Is it still fun? Most definitely, but not as exciting, fresh, or new.
Which brings me to my question: is the amount of fun you have with a game related to the amount of innovation in it? Are remakes (Prince of Persia, Bionic Commando, Ninja Gaiden) fun because the source was so pure and undiluted? How long can you milk a concept or franchise before it becomes obsolete and unplayable? Square Enix has made each new Final Fantasy game a fresh take on the classic RPG formula to varying levels of success, while the Tony Hawk games started to stink so bad that they finally took a year off to regroup.
Madden will always be fun despite the lack of substantial updates. Mario will continue to charm gamers the world over with each new adventure. Game developers will continue mining the past as long as there's money to be made (*cough*Sega*cough*). Still, as long as there are people that are not content to merely rest on their grandad's NES laurels, the future still has a future. And maybe it all doesn't have to be in the past.
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