GreenDream

Demo vs Demo

2011-02-19T05:20:00.000-08:00

Remember when I was almost posting regularly for a semi-lengthy period of time? My engine was revving up and a soft purr of posts were whirring out on the production line at what, for me, was a respectable pace. Then winter happened. Winter kills my motivation as surely as the cold will siphon the life out a lost chickadee, left behind by its flock.

Ahem.

So I played a few demos recently. Demos are something that I can't come to a decision about. Are they a good tool that allows us budget-wary gamers to test a game before we spring for the $69.99 price tag, or are they a lie, just like watching a 3-minute action packed trailer about a movie that ends up having that 3 minutes of action spread thin across 2 hours of badly acted drama?

The two demos that I played recently were the ones for the upcoming over-the-top shooter Bulletstorm and the anticipated sequel to the PS3 sci-fi shooter, Killzone 3. One of these demos won my money and its full-version will be purchased as soon as I can afford to do so. The other demo took the fledgling hope I had for the game and smashed its supple skull against the side of a moving vehicle. Then it urinated on it.

One thing that excited me about Killzone 3 was that it might be the first game to make proper use of my dust-collecting set of Move controllers and accompanying navigation units. I made sure the controllers hadn't lost their charge in their 2 months of disuse and started up the demo. After a quick calibration for the Move controller, the game started. My initial reaction was one of happiness that my crosshairs were moving about on the screen pretty accurately. My first attempt at a shooter with the Move controller was the Time Crisis demo, which yielded disastrous results that made me delete the game in a huff. Gladly, this seems to have been the fault of the game developers and not the technology itself. The initial happiness that surged in me quickly petered out as I realized that the demo was starting as a rail shooter. As my flying-ship-thing dragged me around a confusing display of explosions and ice, I shook my head several times at the numbingly bland military speak that spewed from the character's mouths. Alpha delta to foxtrot whiskey tangos cracked out of character's mouths and into my unwilling ears as I quickly became bored of my point-and-shoot start to the demo.

I never played a Killzone game before, so I wasn't sure If I was supposed to recognize and instantly feel attached to these characters or not, but the weak crutch of confusing military-speak writing and the somewhat off face designs of the characters already biased me fairly heavily towards any interest I might have in the story that the full-game might promise. Oh well, demos aren't about story, I told myself. They're about gameplay. My ship crashes and my character stands up, the camera simultaneously swinging inside his head in a familiar first-person shooter manner. I take a step forward and pick up a gun, then run towards where the action seems to be. Then I fall down a hole, instant death, game over. Ok, so that was my fault, I reason. Let's go again. This time I walk strategically around the hole and begin to shoot at some enemy soldiers. I ran up to some debris from my crashed ship to take cover and expected the game to prompt me on how to duck. No such prompt appeared, so I awkwardly mashed at the unfamiliar button layout of the Move controller and Nav unit. I changed weapons, reloaded, zoomed my screen in and threw a grenade, but failed to take cover and got shot to death. Ok, start over. I wasn't familiar enough with the Move controller yet, so my fault again. Unfortunately, my false starts were similar to how the demo proceeded. My unfamiliarity with the Move controller, paired with the game's refusal to give me some sort of tutorial on which button does what, resulted in death after frustrating death. The only prompt that I can remember getting was a Move controller with an arrow spinning around it to show me how to reload. This usually resulted in my gun bouncing about, taking the camera along with it and resulting in yet another fun-killing death.

Finally, I got to the part of the demo that featured the jetpack, a feature that the developers were excited to show off. It was the least disastrous part of my experience with the game, but I still managed to jet myself into a wall, groups of enemies or icey-watery death a handful more times. It was around this time that I decided that I was wasting my time and thanked the demo kindly for saving me $69.99. I will not be buying Killzone 3.

Like I said, the other demo I played was for Bulletstorm. The demo opens with a little story context and has the main character of the game narrating what the world is about, along with what the gameplay's goal is, which is to "kill with skill". An entertaining video quickly demonstrates what the game means by this as it shows the main character killing an enemy, rewinding, killing him differently, rewinding, killing him differently and so on. The objective of the game is instantly clear and the player is allowed to take control. Kill the enemies as creatively as you can manage. Go. A clear goal, free of boring, meaningless conversation between characters. Perfect for a demo. I hop into the game and kill the first few enemies as creatively as I can and in the process of getting caught up in how to kill the next few, I die. No problem, the demo restarts quickly and I get another chance to kill the first few enemies, which I do in a different way, giving me a chance to experiment with what might give me more points. It's just as fun as doing it the first time, since I still had various ways of experimenting with killing these enemies. The rest of the demo proceeded similarly, with me gallivanting through groups of enemies, killing them in fun and colorful variations. The demo wrapped up quickly and left me wanting more. Good job Bulletstorm demo, you just sold me a game.

So here's my dilemna when it comes to demos. What if I got it wrong? What if Bulletstorm shined as a demo since it gave me a confined arena to practice a few different ways of killing enemies, but then the full game ends up being a huge world with just as few ways of killing enemies. I hope, and certainly suspect, that the full game has many new ways to kill enemies, but what if that wasn't the case?

What about Killzone 3? Killzone 2 was favorably reviewed with a 91 on Metacritic and Killzone 3 thus far has an 85 on the same site. Perhaps the demo was a section of the game that was cut and pasted and is actually a lot more fun once in context of the full game. Maybe once I go through some beginning levels and get used to the controls then the part of the game I just played through would be much easier and more enjoyable.

The fact is that I have no way of knowing if the demo was an accurate snapshot of the full game that it is demoing. It's a view of the game that is extremely cut down and tailored by the developers and could very easily be painting a beautiful picture of a bad game, or a sloppy version of a pretty solid game. However, they are a bit of a necessary evil. Gamers need all of the tools they can get when investing in such an expensive hobby. Even if sites like Metacritic can include biased and purchased reviews and demos can be skewed versions of the full version, they are angles that help gamers take a look at a game and decide if it is worth spending their hard-earned money.

From what I've seen, game trials provide a more accurate image of a game than demos. Give the player a 1-hour romp through the full game. If a game takes more than an hour to get a player hooked, then there's a good chance there's something wrong with the game, and that it isn't worth your time and cash. There are no modified versions of the game and no potential for sloppy cut and pasted demos. I'd really like to see more games, particularly downloadable games that allow you to easily pay to unlock the full game and continue your save file, take this approach to demos rather than the movie-trailer lie that we often see now.

Bad Gameplay

2011-01-14T10:38:00.000-08:00

We often look forward to specific parts of games when we replay them. Parts of the game that were particularly well designed or implemented that are just a joy to play. World 4 in Super Mario Bros 3 was such a moment for me. The novelty of the giant goombas, pipes and blocks and the ability to switch between tiny and large enemies in one particular stage was too much fun to play with. There is something more satisfying about jumping on a Koopa's head when he's 5 times your size. For a more recent example, Old Haven in Borderlands is another such delightful area for me. Every time I replay that game, I look forward to battling through the streets of Old Haven. It's a well designed stage and the first time you encounter the sinister Lance soldiers. Covering yourself from fire seems to work better here, with plenty of buildings and rubble to hide behind, but the challenge is also greater since the Lance have shields and turets they can employ, forcing you to take full advantage of your contours.

Sometimes these moments are in RPGs when a certain song is played, or a line is delivered just right (Celes trying to commit suicide in Final Fantasy 6 chokes me up every time, or when Crono sacrifices himself to defend his friends in Chrono Trigger). Playing through the game, these moments, stages and areas are in the back of our heads as we excitedly edge near them.

There are also moments in games that elicit the complete opposite response. The dreaded water temples, sewers, dark caves, areas with high encounter rates, or the place with the annoying bird enemy that is impossible to hit. They are a counterbalance to the excitement we have at the golden areas that excite us so. My question is, why are these areas here at all?

(The following paragraph has some very mild spoiler-y information about Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. Read at your own risk!)

I can forgive older games since budgets weren't quite as high as they are now and mechanics and genres had not been standardized yet. Video games were still new and developers didn't have a full understanding of what exactly "fun" meant. But within newer games I am often baffled as I frustratingly struggle through an area that forces me to move more slowly than the rest of the game (underwater in Zelda games or Metroid games), or when the game forces me to walk slowly (slow walking bothers me, can you tell?) because I have to transport heavy or wiggling objects (Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood has one situation where Ezio has to carry a wriggling woman to a jail cell. It's an area that causes much a lot of grief, to say the least. The desire to slip her a taste of the hidden blade was tantalizing). Do developers and game testers not play their own games and encounter these frustrating areas of their games? I very much doubt that whoever is responsible for the hostage situation in AC:B played through that part all the while patting himself on the back for such a brilliantly built area and mechanic. Why not remove it? Or fine tune it to make it at least bearable, if not the best part of the game?

I sometimes write fiction in my free time and have encountered similar problems. Parts of the stories that I'm telling that are excruciating to read, either because of bad language or a boring situation that I've placed my characters in. When I read over a finished text and see these parts, I know that they must go. They have to die so that the rest of the text may live on and be something half-decent. But it's hard. You wrote it there for a reason and it either serves as a transitional part of your story or reveals something you believe to be terrifically important to the rest of the story.

"Even if it's boring," I reason with myself, "it's crucial for readers to get through so that the rest of the story works as a whole." But no. No matter how convinced you are of the importance of this passage, it absolutely has to be deleted or drastically rewritten to be made interesting. Perhaps game developers experience something along these lines when they create a part of their game that is significantly worse than the whole. But, maybe it is also significantly more difficult to press the delete key on an entire section of a video game than it is for a sentence or two in a word processor. The work that went into that scene was not only the writing, but the design of the area, the voice acting, the graphics, the way objects interact with one another and so on. Because the work that went into this part of the game was several-fold more than the work it takes to write one sentence, maybe that justifying voice in their heads is similarly amplified.

"No, we can't take this part out. It moves the story forward and we've already put a lot of money and man power into it. Players will just have to understand its importance and force their way through to reap the rewards at the end."

I want to make one distinction between frustrating gameplay elements and just plain bad ones. The water areas in Metroid games are very frustrating since you move slow, jump slow and are just a big glob of slow. But, once you get the gravity suit, suddenly all of these water areas are just lovely, since now you can leap about freely no longer hindered by the sludgey under-water game mechanic. This, to be contrasted with the end all of bad water areas, The Water Temple from Ocarina of Time. Even if they eventually give you the long shot to float about a little easier, it's still a supremely frustrating area that is confusing and hard to navigate. Sometimes an annoying area is presented for contrast to a better area to come soon, but sometimes it's just plain bad.

If there is one important lesson that I've been taught as a writer, it's that if you are bored while you are creating your piece, how can you expect your audience to be intrigued or suffer through that boredom? They owe you nothing. It is you who owes them for purchasing your future product, so the least you could do is take out the god forsaken Water Temple, couldn't you?

What I've learned and my Game of the Year

2010-12-29T14:37:00.000-08:00

So I learned something with my last post. Not the one about the Wii. The other one that was up for about 15 minutes and that I then deleted.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post promising a retrospective on the Wii, PS3 and the DS. I had something to say about the Wii, so I thought to myself "I may as well do a year-in-review of the console, and while I'm at it, do one for the PS3 and the DS." The problem here? I assumed I'd have something interesting to say about the PS3 and the DS. Turns out I did not. My lesson learned? Don't promise readers future content when you don't already have ideas for those posts. If I actually had a decent readership, that could easily end with a lot of fans walking out the door, any credibility I may have built along with them.

So my apologies. I will not be writing a PS3 and DS year-in-review. Instead, I will be talking about my Game of the Year.

I thought carefully about what my Game of the Year was. I considered thinking about which game was most finely crafted, or the game with the most influence of the year. Then I read The Brainy Gamer's post about The most important game of 2010. It is, as always, an excellent post and one that I recommend you read.

So since The Brainy Gamer already covered the most important game of 2010 I decided I'd just go with my personal favorite. It was an easy choice, since there was really only one game this year that I fell in love with. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed many other games in 2010, but none of them really grabbed me as strongly as this one did. Most of the games I played this year were also 2009 games, so not legitimate candidates.

So with enough pussy footing around, here we go!

Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies for the Nintendo DS. When this game was being advertised, it was made clear that Square Enix wanted to make the Dragon Quest series as popular in North America as it is in Japan. DQIX was the result of that desire. They did not do a drastic overhaul of the series to make North American consumers interested. They included one very North American gaming mechanic to draw some sales, which is to allow the player to create their own main characters in a character creation process at the beginning of the game. Other than that, the game is Dragon Quest through and through.

No one thing made me fall in love with Dragon Quest IX, but rather an accumulation of tiny details. This game was crafted with love. A fine balance of nostalgia from previous Dragon Quest games along with its own style, DQIX screams with personality from start to finish. The battle system is proof that turn-based RPG battles can still be fun amongst the onslaught of new battle systems in most new RPGs. It forces you to make use of your full range of spells and abilities, particularly during the challenging boss fights. One of the most charming things about DQIX is the humor. Almost relentlessly, the text in the game is full of puns and word play. Equipment names, character names and most of all, monster names, this game is full of some of the best wordplay that I've seen in a game. Names like Cruelcumber (cucumber monster), Zummeanie (zuchini), Wight Knight, Knocktopus, Stenchurion, Bad Karmour (a living armour enemy) and so on.

This game is also pack full of content. Hundreds of different pieces of equipment, 12 different classes and a post-game that is even larger than the main game. You will almost never run out of things to do in this game. And just to make things even better, there are dozens of quests available as downloadable content that are still being pushed out once a week, a service that only ends in January 2011. Oh, and the whole game can be played with up to 3 other friends via local wifi.

Square Enix did not hold back for Dragon Quest IX. Oddly enough, it was a much better game than Final Fantasy XIII, which was actually kind of awful, even though FFXIII had an absolutely massive budget in comparison to DQIX. They created one of the best (if not the best) Dragon Quest games to date and one of my favorite games of all time, much less of 2010.

I want to thank the few readers that I have for returning to my blog with its sporadic updates. I appreciate the traffic no matter how much or how little there is. When I have an idea about about video games, it's nice to know there's somewhere I can go to write that idea down and have you few people read about it. I look forward to what 2011 brings for gaming and I will hopefully be able to provide some interesting perspective on whatever happens.

Have an excellent New Year!

The Wii 2010

2010-12-17T15:11:00.000-08:00

This year Nintendo decided to flex its history muscle. In seeming response to the so called "hardcore" crowd hating on the Wii in all of its waggling glory, Nintendo hauled out the big guns and released a new main-series title for pretty much every single one of its franchises. Mario Galaxy 2, Metroid: Other M, Kirby's Epic Yarn, Donkey Kong Country Returns and an announcement of a new Zelda game for 2011.

There is a thin line between being desperate and giving the fans what they want, and I'm not sure which side of that line Nintendo landed on this year. On one hand, they don't need money. The problem here is that the company knows that anytime they slap one of these big names on the front of a box that it will sell like hot cakes. The big N relies on these franchises like a BLT relies on bacon. There isn't a lot of room for interesting new franchises on the Wii since its constantly hit with wave after wave of shovelware and half-assed ports. The Wii's popularity is part of its problem when it comes to accruing favor in the eyes of critics and gamers. Thus, the Marios, the Metroids and the Zeldas. If Nintendo can pump out quality titles in these franchises fast enough, critics will turn a blind eye to the absolute lack of anything interesting happening on the console that was once named the Revolution.

Nintendo might have released very good quality games such as Mario Galaxy 2, Donkey Kong Country Returns and Kirby's Epic Yarn in 2010, but I feel that they've given up on part of their mission statement with the Wii. They have stopped trying to revolutionize the gaming world. They haven't even made a serious effort to make the Wii Motion Plus work particularly well yet, although that's presumably what the new Zelda game is going to be doing. As for 2010, Nintendo has mostly reached back into their past to find their acknowledgment from fans. It's not a bad thing. I enjoy the few first party Nintendo games that are released. I just don't think that they've done anything terribly important for the gaming industry this year.

Year in Review - 2010 pt. 1

2010-12-11T09:22:00.000-08:00

The year is coming to a close and gaming sites, magazines and shows are getting riled up with game of the year awards. I'll be doing my own post on my pick for favorite game of the year, but I also want to do separate posts on the consoles that I played and what I think they have achieved.

I'll be talking about the Wii, the Nintendo DS and the PS3, but nothing Xbox 360 related , since I haven't laid so much as a finger on a 360 controller this year and nothing PSP related, since I only played 2 games on the PSP this year and they were both 2009 titles.

Since we're about to start the second full week of December, I'm going to do about 1 post a week, starting with the Wii.

I'll mention games I'm considering for my pick of the year as I go along and I'll wrap it up with one final post about that game and why I chose it among everything else I played.

I'd also love my very few readers to offer their thoughts on favorite games of each console as I make the posts. Feel free to talk about PC, 360 and PSP games as well and maybe if enough of a discussion starts up I'll try to work some of those thoughts into my last post of the year.

The Supernatural

2010-12-07T11:56:00.000-08:00

I am having a stupendously difficult time getting into Red Dead Redemption. I played the game for a good 3 hours. About one hour in I was looking forward to turning the game off, but I continued since I read so many phenomenal things about the game. I tried a second time and didn't get much farther. Every now and then I'll read something else about how fantastic the story or the music is in the game, pop it back into the PS3 and have a serious go at immersing myself in the apparently deep and rich narrative aaaaaand, fail to care once again and turn it off.

Why can't I enjoy a game that sits amongst the very highest scores on metacritic.com? And it certainly isn't the first time that this has happened to me either.

Any release of Grand Theft Auto is met with critical acclaim and after reading about the game (let's use 4 as an example), I get excited that I might finally understand why people love these games so much. Then, sure enough, a couple of hours into the game I turn it off and put it in its case, never to be taken out again. Call of Duty games illicit a similar response as well, although I enjoy the Zombie maps in Call of Duty 5 and Black Ops.

What is the one things that all of these games have in common? They're normal. I don't mean normal in the sense that they are every-day, boring or lackluster. I mean that they lack supernatural elements. Even if the stories get a bit carried away, all of these games feature completely normal people without any super powers other than excellent aim and, occasionally, a super-powered attitude. All of the guns in these games are based on guns that actually exist or existed and so are the vehicles, scenarios and characters. It's not the "normal" narrative that I have a gripe with, though. It's the gameplay.

Somehow, the fact that it's technically possible for me to acquire one of these guns in real life and go out and shoot it (at a firing range, of course) diminishes how much I will enjoy the game. But throw in some super powers like in Borderlands and give me guns that defy logic and have fire, acid and lightning flowing out of their barrels, and suddenly I'm interested. Each time a new GTA game is released I can't help but find myself wishing that the main character had super powers. The idea of such an open and free world appeals to me, and I've heard that the stories get better and better as the series advances. Grand Theft Auto 4 is probably a much better game than Infamous or Spider-man Shattered Dimensions (two more open-concept sandbox games), yet GTA4 hardly gets 3 hours of my time, whereas I play these other games to completion.

Now, I'm not saying that Infamous isn't deserving of the title "great game". I feel that it is. The way the developers made it fun to just move around the city as Cole, grinding on rails and floating through the air with lightning-powered hand-thrusters is wonderfully done. Just moving in this game feels great. But, it doesn't have a strong story or very deep characters. Because of this, games like Infamous fall of the grid for the most part when it comes to discussing great design, advances in gaming narrative or game of the year topics, whereas a game like Grand Theft Auto 4 is still talked about several years later.

As much as I crave a good story in a video game, maybe gameplay is still more important to me. Something that my partner has made fun of me often for is my urge to feel "cool" in a video game. Because of this, games like Ninja Gaiden, Devil May Cry or Bayonetta (all games with famously terrible stories) are big winners in my book. I derive a huge amount of satisfaction from dodging, attacking and comboing to destroy enemies and looking awesome while doing it. When I'm playing a game as a cowboy with a pistol and a horse, I don't get that feeling. Because of this, the gameplay doesn't make me want to continue the game. I don't look forward to the next big shoot-out if I can't launch some lightning bolts or fireballs over there alongside my bullets. I can't look forward to the next part of the story if I can't even look forward to the next battle or other gameplay element.

I have the same reaction to sports games. I cannot play the newest iteration of FIFA, NHL, NFL or whatever. I do, however, play and thoroughly enjoy every single Mario sports game that is released.

I know that I'm amongst the few who do not play Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty, but I'd be extremely interested in hearing if anyone else agrees with me. Do you have difficulty getting into these games? Is it for the same reason? If there are different ones, what are they?

Lara Croft: Team Player

2010-11-28T11:07:00.000-08:00

I just finished playing one of my favorite co-op experiences of the year: Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light. This entry in the long Lara Croft series of games is a complete reset. Gone is the behind-the-back 3rd person view to an overhead isometric view. It's a welcome refresh for the series that many players were starting to bore of.

One of the main focuses of this game is the co-op experience. Even though it is possible to play the game on single player, it's clear that it was meant for two people, which is made even more obvious when you get a silver trophy on the PS3 just for starting the game on multiplayer mode, and when several other trophies can only be achieved with a partner.

This is one of the few games I have seen in a long time that really tries to emphasize the co-op part of a 2 player adventure mode. In many games, it's more like you're playing in the same field, side by side, rather than working together, which is something I've talked about before. After the incredibly uncreative story opening (as much as I enjoyed the game, the story was atrocious. Clearly not a focus for the developers), the game starts up with the tutorials. Lara and Totec, her stereotypical guardian of an ancient evil that has been awoken partner, are shown to have different abilities. If Totec holds R1 he holds his shield above his head, or L1 to hold it in front of him. If Lara hits L1 or R1 she shoots a grappling hook. Totec has a spear that he can throw and stick into walls. Lara, being light and nimble, can use these spears as platforms to reach higher ledges. She can also stand on Totec's shield when he holds it above his head. If Totec attempts to stand on one of his own spears, it will break. These mechanics are crucial to the entire co-op experience. Totec can throw a spear that Lara uses to get to a higher ledge. From here, she can throw Totec her grappling hook and act as an anchor as he climbs up to the same ledge. If Lara shoots her grappling hook to a golden hook, Totec can use the rope as a bridge. How Totec can use a flimsy grappling hook as a bridge, but not stand on his own spears without breaking them is beyond me, but I accept it because it creates a relationship between player 1 and 2. It makes them need one another, most of the puzzles being impossible without cooperation.

Because of the interdependence that Crystal Dynamics created, each player can enjoy themselves in different ways. Some moments are clearly meant for Totec to lead the way, blocking arrows with his shield while Lara tampers away at a puzzle while under his guard. In other moments, Lara takes the lead, climbing and leaping along some cliffs, then shooting Totec her grappling hook at the end to help him up. Rarely does it feel like the other player is in your way, which is often a problem with co-op gaming. Sometimes a tug-of-war over the camera and which direction to go next happens, but it never lasts long and is hardly a hamper on the momentum of the game.

As admirable as Crystal Dynamics' co-op gaming mission statement is, they seem to forget themselves shortly into the game. In the second stage, a new weapon is acquired. Much to my disappointment, it is the exact same weapon for both of the characters: an assault rifle. Sure enough, as the game progresses, Totec continues to amass more and more guns of all types. It isn't until towards the end that you start seeing more "ancient" type weapons, but they are all variations on the spear he already has. As both players collect a similar artillery, the combat aspects of the game become just like any other in a multiplayer experience; Who can shoot the most baddies with your bigass guns? Gone is the cooperative aspect of the game and the unique qualities of both characters that force the players to work together. I would have loved to see Totec learn some magic while Lara collected bigger and better guns, and to have Totec's magic affect Lara's weapons in various ways. Just as an example. It's an area where the game is weak in its goal of being a fully cooperative experience.

Despite its shortcomings, Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light is still an excellent experience. I don't recommend playing it on single player. I tried it, and although it's still a great game, it really shines with a friend at your side.

A Messy Weave

2010-11-25T10:25:00.000-08:00

I just finished playing my very first Ratchet and Clank game, Tools of Destruction. Yeah, I know, I'm late on the Ratchet and Clank train, but hey, I still caught it and enjoyed the ride while it lasted. It's a game that mixes action platforming with some fun RPG elements and does it very well. Paired with characters that remind of Pixar movies, it's a fun experience. But as much as I enjoyed the game, something that always bothers me in games really stood out in this one.

It sends me to the brink of frustration when I just finished slaughtering hundreds of badass robots with my impressive arsenal of sci-fi weapons, then a cut-scene has 3 of said robots soundly whoop me soundly and make off with my hard-earned treasure. One scene in particular has an antagonist holding Clank, the quirky robot side-kick, captive with a blade to his throat, threatening to kill him if Ratchet doesn't give up the treasure from the level. The entire time the hostage situation was taking place I kept urging Ratchet to haul out his Predator Missiles, lock onto the pirate's big ugly face and blow him to bits, or maybe use the shock ravager to trip the baddy off his feet. But no. Instead, Ratchet whimpers in fear and hands over the treasure, because apparently in cinematic mode his only weapon is his supremely useless wrench. Way to go Ratchet. Way to make the game last 5 levels longer than it had to.

Although these moments didn't detract from the game enough to hurt my overall enjoyment, it certainly didn't help when I was trying to believe the world that I was playing in. Game developers spend a lot of time creating a world that they can fit their characters into and make us as players dive in and understand its rules and logic. But when a game starts off with a free-fall from hundreds of feet in the air to a safe landing, and then I fall to my death down a pit 3 seconds later (this actually happened), I can't help but think, "didn't I just..." while blinking heavily. It makes me that much more aware that I am just playing a game with the occasional movie-like scenes interspersed, rather than a coherent experience that melts from cinematic to gameplay seamlessly.

The opposite is also sometimes true, where the characters in cinematic mode are wildly powerful in comparison to their in-game selves. I'm currently playing Vanquish and am constantly presented with these types of cut-scenes. Your character, Sam, has your typical japanese super-soldier sci-fi suit and can move at blurring speeds while slowing down time and shelling out some major damage to enemy robots. But that's nothing in comparison to his cinematic-self. In cinematics Sam often propels himself into the sky, deliver lightning fast punches Dragonball Z style and spins at mach-speeds to drill holes into giant robot enemy heads. After getting destroyed about 15 times by one of these giant robots, I have to say that I would love to be able to drill holes into their gigantic heads instead of shooting them with my puny guns.

Tom Bissell, in his book Extra Lives, talks about Narrative Dissonance in video games, which is when the narrative of the gameplay doesn't match up with the overall story. The morals of the characters can be aimed towards a virtuous end in the narrative of the story, but then during the gameplay you are disemboweling random creatures and enemies mercilessly. Cinematic/gameplay dissonance is another type of dissonance that I feel is present in games. It's something that has been present in games for at least as long as RPGs have existed and cut-scenes with them. How many times have you urged your character to cast Fire 3 on a whimpy cut-scene enemy, or to use their mighty Jump ability to get over a ridiculously low wooden bench blocking their path? Occasionally, a game will try to make their character's aware of their abilities outside of battle. In Tales of Symphonia, for example, the magic user Genis will often cast his level-1 spells to solve puzzles or scare away enemies. Of course, he never casts anything past a level-1 spell, but at least it was an attempt to make the character's aware of their own power outside of a battle sequence.

This messy weave of gameplay abilities as opposed to cinematic abilities is something that only video games as a medium encounters as a problem. Any other form of story telling is one-way, where the user is being told or shown events as told by the author or director. I believe it to be an enormous obstacle. These types of games are essentially telling two different stories, one that you have direct control over and one where you are nothing but an observer. For me, this disconnect creates an apathy in the player that makes them want to get the cinematic over with so they can get back to their story, rather than the story of the game developers.

Playing Together

2010-11-17T13:54:00.000-08:00

I think I finally understood Nintendo's current generation mission objective this past weekend.

Last weekend some friends came to visit for a couple of days. On the second night of their visit I stepped out to grab some pizza, and when I got back two of the ladies had found and turned on Kirby's Epic Yarn on my Wii. After scrounging for a second wii remote and making sure it was charged, I set them up with two players and they instantly squealed with how adorable Prince Fluff was with his big eyebrows and little crown (which they both thought put Fluff at a disadvantage since they thought the crown counted as a hit-area. They didn't understand the concept of hit-boxes). Being an avid gamer, I had an initial instinct to start helping them out with treasures I saw they were missing and difficulties they were having with controls. As I opened my mouth to let them know where a hidden chest was, they laughed in unison as one of them hauled a string on a fabric castle and it tugged aside. I then decided to keep my mouth shut. They were already having fun, why should I interrupt?

As I watched them play I saw a noticeable difference in play-style from my own. Not only because they were non-gamers who were being enchanted by Epic Yarn's charming graphics, but because of what their goals for fun were. I am personally not that far into Epic Yarn (part way through world 3) and I was not exactly enjoying myself to date. My co-op partner and I were playing the game like we do any other game, as serious gamers. We experimented with controls and how they interacted with the environment every couple of steps, we obsessively searched for hidden treasures and gems and we criticized the game and it's design choices as we went on. Most of all though, we got in one anothers way and got frustrated while it happened. The term co-op should mean that we are doing just that. Co-operating. In Epic Yarn it's a bit closer to contra-operating. One of us would swing out our piece of yarn to unravel an enemy and instead grab the other player,or we would both dash into our car form, which let us move faster, but often resulted in slower overall movement since we'd bump one another into holes or into enemies more often than smoothly coasting ahead. We had similar problems with New Super Mario Bros Wii. We were constantly in each others way, using one anothers heads as stepping stones and making the screen jerk back and forth while both of us tried to act independently. My criticism of NSBM Wii was harsh and I never beat the game, leaving Mario and Luigi stranded somewhere in World 5. It's the first main-title Mario game I've never completed and never plan on completing. I've now realized that it's not because it's a bad game, it's because I was playing it wrong.

Rewind back to my friends playing Epic Yarn. As they played they rarely got frustrated with one another, even though I saw them get in eachothers way twice as often as my partner or I ever did. They would coast through levels enjoying the cute details and giggling almost constantly, especially when they got a piece of magic yarn after defeating a boss. I can't say I was quite as excited at receiving something that was the equivalent of dozens of other games end-of-world-item-get. For them it was a real achievement

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that the key difference in the way that they were enjoying this game is that they were playing together, not working together. They were enjoying what the game offered rather than trying to defeat the game and dissect its inner workings like experienced gamers often do. There is nothing wrong with playing either way, but with this game and some of Nintendo's other offerings, it's clear that some games are meant for one, and some for the other.

Humming a Tune

2010-09-30T13:24:00.000-07:00

There's nothing like humming the first 6 or 7 notes of the Super Mario Bros theme and having a room full of people follow it up to its completion a Capella style. It's a song that nary a man or woman under 30 doesn't recognize. The Zelda theme has a similar effect, if for a bit of a smaller audience. Music from the era where we could still see the bits in our 8-bit games had truly memorable, catchy music that we won't soon forget short of a case of early onset Alzheimer's.

As games moved forward visually, so did the music. Super Nintendo got rid of the bleepy chiptunes of the previous generation for mock-instruments that mimicked many different styles from symphonic to rock (See Chrono Trigger and Megaman X), and best of all, it was still just as great and as memorable, if not more so, than ever. The Super Nintendo era of games introduced a complexity of music that easily rivaled other musical genres. Video game music was evolving into a genre of its own and had its own varied styles and sounds that other music couldn't offer. The sheer number of bands that cover music from this era of gaming (The Advantage, Powerglove and the NESkimos, to name a few) is tantamount to its quality. This tradition is held strong in the next era of gaming as well with the Nintendo 64 and Playstation. The Final Fantasy games alone from this generation give us an admirable library of beautiful music.

However, it seems that the longer games are around, the less memorable the music is. Can anyone name more than 5 games of the current gen with good AND memorable music? (If you're reading, this is a real challenge. Please list current gen games that, in your opinion, have great music). There are certainly lots of games with "good" music, but I can't hum a single one of them. They don't stick in my head. I couldn't hum you the first note of a large collection of some of the highest ranked games that have come out in the last 3 years. The only games that come to mind with, what I consider to be, excellent music are Megaman 9 and 10 and they are mimicking the 80s in graphics, gameplay and music. Video game music has lost its video game-ness. In an attempt to keep up with graphics attempting to be realistic, music has done the same thing and a demand for orchestrated music with real instruments is on the rise. Heck, it's taking over. The problem here? I can't freaking hum a symphonic score.

Ok, so whether or not I can hum a tune doesn't make it good or bad. The problem is that the composers for a lot of these games (Red Dead Redemption, Uncharted 1 and 2, any FPS, just for some examples) are trying to make hollywood style music for these games, rather than video game music. This is a seriously major distinction and something that has been bothering me about video games a lot lately. Their attempt to be like a Hollywood movie. As much as I thought Uncharted 2 was a great game, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was playing through a Hollywood treasure-hunter movie (see Lara Croft or National Treasure). But that's another topic. Video game music is something special that is recognizable even if you haven't played that game. You will instantly know that a song that is properly video-gamey is from a video game and not a movie. I actually tried to sneak in some orchestrated Chrono Trigger music to a party play-list once to fool my friends into liking video game music, but one of them commented, "this sounds like video game music, what is this?"

Even apart from games that try to be hollywood movies, video game music has been degrading. I can't remember any new Mario music from New Super Mario Bros, NSMB Wii, Mario Galaxy or Mario Galaxy 2. I remember at several points in Twilight Princess thinking, "this is a pretty song," but I can't remember what they sound like at all anymore. That was not the case with Link to the Past or Ocarina of Time. Music from those games stuck after one or maybe two playthroughs. Followers might remember my lament (part of it, at least) about there being hardly a trace of Metroid-type music in Other M. Guess what it was replaced by? Yeah, you guessed it.

Megaman 9 and 10 are a glimmer of hope in the sea of symphonic crap that plagues games today. The Scott Pilgrim vs The World game that Anamanaguchi created the music for is also a great throwback to the excellence of 8-bit music.

I invite people to give examples of excellent modern-day video game music to prove me wrong. Maybe I'm just missing something.

Parallel Motivations

2010-09-12T06:40:00.000-07:00

So my partner and I were discussing motivation to complete video games last night. He says that he often has trouble to finish a game since his main motivation is often stuff like treasure hunting and exploring, so when it comes time to go deal the big baddie the final blow, he finds he has absolutely no motivation to do so since beating the final boss does nothing but show you the end scene of the game and then you're done. I've personally watched him play through entire games like FFXIII, Xenogears, Cave Story (the wii release) and many more, spending countless hours finding every single treasure in the game and uncovering every secret of every map, save before the final area (or right before the final room) and then never touch the game again.

As he was telling me this, I was thinking about my motivations for beating a game and instantly thought about Metroid: Fusion. If you read my last post, I talked about how in one of the final scenes, when the computer reveals itself to be Adam and asks, "any Objections, Lady?" before sending you off to the final scene, it fills me with a sense of objective. I find myself, the player, actually wanting to go do the computer's bidding. However, after thinking about it for awhile, I've realized that there's more to it. The SA-X. The SA-X is the X-virus clone of Samus in her fully-powered form from Super Metroid. Throughout the game, Samus periodically encounters the SA-X. Each time you meet it, you are not powerful enough to defeat it, so you can only hide and hope it doesn't see you. In these scenes, an excellent, chilling effect is achieved by cutting the music and replacing it with ambient, sounds and making the footsteps of the SA-X extremely audible (view this short video to see what I mean). Because of this, a reaction of real fear is instilled in the player as they watch Samus hiding just out of sight of the echoing footsteps of the unstoppable SA-X.

The SA-X is a constant object of fear throughout the game and Samus' fear is shared by the player. Because of this, when it comes time to destroy the SA-X, the player has the same feelings as Samus herself must feel and destroying the SA-X is one part revenge for all those times it scared us and one part mission objective to push the game forward. This sharing of emotions is something rare in video games that we don't often feel. When faced with the final boss in countless games, I'm only doing it because I've come so far that I might as well finish it.

Another game that has a similar effect as the SA-X is Nemesis from Resident Evil 3. This is both a frustrating feeling and a fear effect that makes the point where you finally kill him doubley satisfying. Another is the Dahaka from Prince of Persia: Warrior Within. It chases the prince throughout the whole game. If you collect every health-upgrade in the game, you are rewarded with a water sword and get to fight the Dahaka and kill it; another extremely satisfying battle after being chased by the creature throughout the entire game.

An RPG that comes to mind that achieves a parallel motivation effect that is not as much fear-induced as Fusion, RE3 and PoP: WW is Final Fantasy VII. Sephiroth is certainly a character to be feared as you walk through the gutted halls of the Shinra building, blood and sword marks decorating every corner. But the main motivation that players are imbued with is one of revenge when Sephiroth kills Aeris in the legendary cut-scene (particularly if it's your first time playing the game and you were actually investing time in powering Aeris up for your party). From this point onwards Sephiroth is known as the king of jerks who killed one of your party members beyond the capabilities of a Phoenix Down, and you are pissed off.

The ability to appeal to the player's sense of motivation to work through a game and not just the character's story-driven motivations is something that I feel is not considered on a emotional level often enough. When a game developer is creating a game they think about what the player will be able to do: Level up, collect new weapons, collect treasure, develop strategies, learn battle systems and hone their reflexes to master it. But how often does a developer actually instill the player with a sense of mystery of what will happen next, or make the player feel as angry as the character's might feel at the death of a character or the destruction of a city. It's a difficult task, no doubt, but an extremely valuable aspect to consider.

Any other moments in games that readers can think of where they felt emotionally motivated to accomplish a certain task in a game?

One more that comes to mind is resurrecting Crono in Chrono Trigger. He is your typical silent protagonist throughout the entire game, but he still feels very much like the leader. When he shockingly gets destroyed by Lavos at a pivotal point in the game, you are left in as much disbelief as Marle must be in. How the hell did my main character just die? Because of this, when you find out that there is a way to revive Crono, you want to jump on the task immediately.

I'd love to hear of more situations like this if you can think of any.

Metroid: Other M review

2010-09-02T07:50:00.000-07:00

Here is another of my bi-yearly posts. Thank you to those who actually follow me. I just finished playing through Metroid: Other M, Nintendo and Team Ninja's story-intensive foray into the Metroid universe.

Warning! This post is going to be spoiler intensive, so if you give a hoot then stop reading right now.

Other M gives us a close look into the character and history of our favorite planet-destroying, genocidal space heroine, Samus Aran. The game is closely related in both style and story to Metroid Fusion, Nintendo's last side-scrolling Metroid game released in 2002. Like Fusion, Other M is very linear, which is a break from the mold from most other Metroid games, which are open and emphasize exploration rather than mission objectives. In fact, most Metroid games have vague mission objectives, usually starting the game off with a paragraph or two of Samus receiving a distress call or something similar, seeing the bounty hunter land, then having essentially zero story until after the final battle has been fought. The Metroid Prime series managed to maintain the mostly silent heroine while still providing a narative through space-pirate logs, chozo and luminoth lore. The logs and lore were entirely optional, but helped flesh out the world and the goals of your opponents.

Other M is different. This game explores Samus' relationship with her former CO, Adam Malkovich, who we initially learn about in Metroid Fusion. Although some complained that Metroid Fusion was too linear, I've always considered it as my favorite entry in the series. It still has an atmospheric feel to it, and the orders from the computer are contrasted with Samus' thoughts that we are provided with a few times throughout the game while she is riding an elevator to a new sector. Through these inner-thoughts, we learn that Samus respected Adam as a CO and that she is pretending that the computer is him, since it reminds her of him. In a chilling moment at the end of the game, Samus accidentally calls the computer Adam. At the end of the briefing, the computer asks Samus, "Any Objections, Lady?" a trademark line from Adam that identifies the computer as an AI of the former CO that we learn was copied into the computer.

We learn almost nothing about Adam during Fusion, but this moment is powerful regardless and always fills me with a sense of purpose as I march on to the final chamber to take down the SA-X (the sinister copy of Samus) and destroy the ship, foiling the Galactic Federation's plots once again.

Other M drops us into a similar ship, which was built to house creatures from planet Zebes, much like the ship from Fusion. This time, Samus is working alongside Adam and a troop of Galactic Federation soldiers. The narrative at the beginning of the game is promising. We receive some decent back story showing Samus as a young soldier under Malkovich's command. Thankfully, the game separates Samus from the rest of the soldiers quickly and exploration of the BOTTLE SHIP commences. Regardless of its linearity, I was hopeful in my first impressions of the game. The combat felt solid, and I still felt like I was playing a Metroid game. It felt like a refreshing reboot of the game and something closer to what fans have been craving since the start of the Prime series. This was a 3D third person version of Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion.

But the game isn't without problems.

My first issue: The weapon and suit upgrades. Almost every new Metroid game begins with an explanation of why Samus doesn't have her devastating arsenal of weapons from the came that chronologically preceded it. In Fusion the X virus infected her suit, so it was surgically removed from her, depowering her completely. In Metroid Prime 1, Samus is struck with a surge of energy that takes her suits abilities offline. In Metroid Prime 2, the Ing swarm over her early in the game, stealing most of her suit's powers. In Other M, the reason is the worst of them all. It doesn't take long to meet up with Adam and his troup, and once you do, Samus decides to take orders from Adam, which includes requiring authorization for use of weapons and suit abilities. Periodically throughout the game, you are faced with a puzzle or fight that you cannot win, and Adam will chime into the radio saying "Samus, use of (freeze beam, missiles, varia suit, grapple beam, etc) is a authorized." I can almost understand why she would wait for authorization of weapons, since they can be dangerous while working with others, but is there really a reason why she needs to wait for authorization for the grapple beam? The varia suit? The gravity suit? These are tools that provide Samus with defensive capabilities, not offensive, yet Adam does not allow them right away as a weak gameplay reason not to start off super-powered. Also, when you do receive authorization to use these weapons and abilities, it doesn't feel as satisfying as collecting a power-up from every other entry. Usually a power-up followed a tough boss battle and the upgrade was found once Samus destroyed her opponent, making it feel like a great reward. When Adam authorizes use of the wave beam because Samus is stuck in a glass cell and needs a weapon to penetrate walls, it doesn't feel satisfying at all. I got more of a "it's about time" feeling from each power received in this way.

My 2nd issue: Although I did not have as much of a problem with Samus' past and her new-found emotions as some reviewers did, some instances felt extremely unrealistic. When first confronted with Ridley, Samus is surprised to see that he is alive. Understandable, since the planet Zebes exploded and should have taken any remains of Ridley with it. What wasn't realistic was the way that Samus was completely frozen with fear as Ridley slowly approached her. Remind me again when Samus hesitated for even a moment in every other game when faced with Ridley? Even when she was plummeting down a long shaft in Metroid Prime 3, Ridley close by, scratching, clawing and breathing fire the entire way down, she didn't stop to worry for her life. She just threw her entire arsenal at him until he stopped. I understand that this entry was meant to be different, "other", than the other games, and that we are meant to see a side of Samus that we never saw before. But I feel that the team forgot to take into consideration that Samus is a battle hardened war-queen and has fought Ridley at least 4 or 5 times in the story up until now. Why the sudden fear? As a convenient element to make Anthony, one of the soldiers, come to Samus' rescue.

Third issue: Music. Where is the music? Almost every area has some background noise and some simple, generic background music, but nary a trace of one of the game series with some of the best music. The choice not to implement some old Metroid music may have been made to separate the game from the others, but not trying to create some new, memorable metroid-esque music was lazy, not a risky design choice. It deals a major blow to the game. The music in a Metroid game usually helps make the areas memorable as you remember the ambient tunes thrumming in the background while you destroyed countless aliens. I can easily say I have no fond memory of a single area of Other M, and I feel that lack of music is to blame.

Isssue #4: Short. So short. Before I knew it I had all of my upgrades and was fighting the final battle. Took me maybe 10-12 hours? Older Metroid games were about this length, with games such as Fusion and Super Metroid being as short as 2 hours if you were doing a speed-run, but it feels somewhat unforgiveable in a 3D Metroid entry. The Metroid Prime games are generally around 20+ hours.

The game feels that it doesn't know its own heroine, being borderline sexist in her portrayal at times, particularly when she is getting all "daddy issues" over Adam. Samus was a great feminist icon in gaming since its original release, since it played with our assumptions. The entire time you play the original Metroid, you assume that your protagonist is a male. Every other game hero has been male until now, and besides, what respectable lady would put on a space suit and go thrashing about a planet destroying all known life? When Samus' helmet comes off at the end of the game to reveal long flowing hair and a noticeably, if rather rough, female face, it's a shock and makes you see the character entirely differently. Her mystery was part of her appeal. Even in Fusion, when we are given elements of Samus' past, they are such rudimentary, vague details that we can still keep our image of the bounty hunter and impose our own imagination onto her.

Other M removes the element of mystery from Samus and replaces it with someone with relationships, emotion turmoil and regrets, not at all the Samus that we've grown to know.

An unconvincing clone

2010-04-30T08:51:00.001-07:00

I was recently playing Final Fantasy XIII. Well, I should say that I recently stopped playing Final Fantasy XIII. It lost me about 35 hours in. Everything that was holding on to my strings of interest for the game were let go far too early. There was tension between characters, mystery in the world and ambiguous morality driving everything into confusion, and that was a good thing. So why did they let it all go so early and turn it into a hallway dungeon crawler? But that's not the topic I want to talk about today.

A lot of people have complained about how FFXIII robs the player of more control over the game than almost any other RPG to date. The dungeons rarely have alternate paths or hidden rooms, there are no towns to explore and side quests are only introduced much later in the game and are rather linear when they are. Even the battle system, which I'm actually a fan of, can get extremely tedious and boring. If what they were trying to achieve was epic cinematic battles, then making the player fight the same combination of enemies 8-10 times per area is just a bad an idea as asking someone to watch the same episode of some HBO show before asking them what they thought. The beginning of the game introduced new battle mechanics often enough to keep it interesting, but that quickly disappeared. Final Fantasy XIII is a very very long animated movie with a lot of repetition. The particularly surprising thing about this is that the previous entries in the series were more open than any before them. FFXII featured vast areas to explore and find secrets in, large intricate towns and the battle system balanced player control and customizable AI brilliantly. FFXI is an MMO, so its open-ended gameplay goes without saying.

What made Square-Enix decide to go in such a drastically different direction? It's my opinion that it's the current generation sin of gaming: trying to be a movie. More and more games are trying to imitate movies. Is it because movies are a recognized form of art and game designers are trying to validate their own medium? Or is it because the FPS and western developers have become so popular, attracting a large crowd of lovers of action movies. I think that this is a more likely culprit.

Uncharted and Uncharted 2 are the culmination of the type of game that tries to imitate a movie. The plot of the second one in particular is so dangerously close to the Tomb Raider movie that I was embarrassed for the similarities at times. Not to mention the cast of action movie characters complete with snappy female supports and sarcastic, yet charming male leads. Many gamers raved about the story of Uncharted 2 and the character interactions, but the only thing I kept thinking while playing the game was "how would this do as a movie...?". The answer is not very good. But, it was one of the highest ranking games of 2009 with an aggregated score of 96 on metacritic. If you look at the reviews, it's not only the game play that is raved about, although it is indeed good gameplay, people actually boost the score significantly for the story.

The problem here is the phrase "it's good for a video game". Since video game stories are generally something thrown together to allow the gameplay to take place, it's rarely taken seriously. So, when a game that has a story that actually tries, people notice, and are apparently easily pleased.

Kellee Santiago Responds

2010-04-20T05:56:00.000-07:00

Kellee Santiago responds to Roger Ebert's criticism of her claim of Games as Art.

http://kotaku.com/5520437/my-response-to-roger-ebert-video-game-skeptic

and so does Brian Ashcraft!

http://kotaku.com/5520087/an-open-letter-to-roger-ebert

Sorry Roger, doesn't look like the gaming world is swallowing your criticism very easily.

You're still very good at criticizing movies though, so thanks for that.

Roger Ebert: Video games cannot be art

2010-04-18T07:12:00.000-07:00

Roger Ebert recently posted an article here http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/04/video_games_can_never_be_art.html about how video games "can never be art".

To defend his point, he uses Kellee Santiago's TED talk where she argues that video games are art and argues against her. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9y6MYDSAww&feature=player_embedded

You don't have to read or watch those links if you're pressed for time, I take up their arguments in what I'm going to say. Although I recommend you do take the time to read Ebert's article and watch Santiago's presentation.

Unfortunately, I don't find Santiago's argument particularly compelling either, so it's no surprise that Ebert manages to trump her so soundly. She cites wikipedia for a definition on art where it says "Art is the process of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions." Ebert then argues against that definition since he says that as a Chess player, he believes his game fits that definition and seems to imply that his game is not art. But isn't it? A carefully designed game with intricate rules that forces the player to look past the obvious. Build the desire to win while inspiring emotions of nervousness, trepidation, excitement, loss and glory. If something that can do all of that isn't art, then what is?

Ebert offers Plato's definition that "art should be defined as the imitation of nature," and later offers his own notion that "it grows better the more it improves or alters nature through an passage through what we might call the artist's soul, or vision." But what Ebert doesn't take into consideration is the danger of taking anything Plato says at face value and taking a single point of view from one text. Yes, Plato says that "art should be defined as the imitation of nature," in one text, but then in The Ion, Socrates warns the Rhapsode Ion of taking such a simplistic view on art. Ion has only one point of view of the poet Homer and knows of no other poets. Socrates argues that Ion could not have a mastery of that knowledge without knowing several other perspectives and understanding the other poets as well. Ebert, and even Santiago, are both making the same mistake where they try to define art from a narrow perspective.

I propose that art is anything that allows us to see a new angle on a subject (or object) that we never saw before. It inspires us through our emotions and then forces us to contemplate why we were so moved by it to learn new perspectives.

Maybe I'm making the same mistake as Ion, Ebert and Santiago, but I feel that my definition offers a little more leeway in terms of the medium to allow almost anything to become art.

One limitation that video games have as art is their tendency to appeal to their rather short history. Games like "Passage" or other pieces by Jason Rohrer have charming 8-bit graphics that resound nostalgically with gamers from the 80s, but for most gamers, those who started playing with either the last 2 generations, the Playstation and Playstation 2 generations, or even the newest gamers of the Wii, 360 and PS3 generations, this style has no appeal. As one of my professors once said "which is the better form of art: The ultra-artistic super introspective indie film in theater 1 with an audience of 3, or the kind of shallow movie with an obvious message and an audience of 500 in theater 2." How great is a piece of art if it has a limited audience? It's certainly one hurdle that games have to overcome.

To avoid this post becoming any longer, I'll stop for now, although I still have lots to say against Mr. Ebert. I promise that games as art is something that will come up again.

The Pokéwalker

2010-04-13T07:34:00.000-07:00

So I recently picked up Pokémon SoulSilver for the DS. The original Gold and Silver have always been my favorite of all of the iterations of the pokémon games, but I still wasn't instantly convinced to buy the remakes. I had just finished playing Diamond not long ago and as we all know, Pokémon games tend to be rather similar.

What did spark my interest though, was the pokéwalker. Of course, I was reminded of the Pokémon Pikachu from years ago that was included with the Yellow version of the first generation games. Memories of sitting in my bedroom shaking that little yellow rat to death to collect watts flooded back with oddly fond memories. Now that I was older though, I thought to myself, maybe I could actually go out and do my daily chores with a monster in my pocket instead of just shaking it silly.

After I got one of the creatures into the device (my level 6 Totodile), I went for a walk around the block. When I got home, I transferred him back to the game cartridge was pleasantly informed that my Totodile had grown by one level. I was later disappointed to discover that my pokémon could only grow one level at a time using the device, but I quickly got over it and have now grown several levels for my party pokémon by walking, biking and doing various chores.

Then I was reminded of the "Design Outside of the Box" presentation at DICE 2010 by Jesse Schell. In the presentation, he builds up to where he thinks games are going, which is a real life reward system for doing various chores, eating properly, etc.

The pokéwalker is doing doing exactly that. Instead of shifting your thumb left and right walking through tall grass to power-level your creatures, it encouraged you to go for a real walk or get something done to get the grinding done. I was instantly excited that I wouldn't have to grind in the later part of the game to prepare my party for the elite four. Instead I could go see some friends, go for a bike ride, or do some groceries, all the while leveling up in my pocket. A device like this was the solution to an RPG gamer's nightmare: level grinding. With home consoles becoming more and more complex in their capability to connect to various devices, it's entirely possible that we'll someday see some sort of universal pedometer device that game developers can choose to implement into their game to encourage gamers to go outside to walk instead of stay in their game, walking back and forth waiting for the next random encounter.

I admit that I'm mostly anti-wii at the moment, but this kind of thing is right up Nintendo's alley. They already created the pokéwalker, so I'm hoping to see something like this encourage us to do real life activities to benefit in our games rather than reward us for killing the same enemy 37 times to get that 1 rare drop.

Gamer's Logic [that tree looks funny]

2009-02-03T15:34:00.000-08:00

Often, when developing a game, the creators have to take into mind what I like to call “Unnecessary Realism”. There are moments inside games that would, quite simply, be annoying if they were to follow the rules of the real world. To a gamer, reloading your gun in an FPS is perfectly acceptable and, indeed, considered a good move if you get a free chance regardless of how much ammo is left in your gun. However, it might seem to an inexperienced on-looker that the player is removing the clip with their remaining bullets and refreshing with a new one. Of course, we know that we are only reloading the missing bullets and that the animation of changing clips is for flavor.

I was watching my roommate play through The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess on the Wii. She completed a puzzle that was necessary to advance and she was high up in a room and then began to walk back down to the bottom to continue her task. “Why didn’t she just jump down?” I thought to myself. It was clearly much faster. She seemed absolutely shocked that I had considered throwing poor Link off the 30 foot cliff. Again, real-world logic is interfering with efficient game-playing here. On the one, realistic hand, yes… throwing Link off the cliff is quite cruel. On the other hand, you’re only going to lose 1 of what was currently 7 hearts because of this. When you have to play through what will end up being a 40+ hour adventure, cutting corners like this becomes second nature.

Inexperienced gamers also seem to be under the impression that anything “secret” should be a secret to everyone—without any hint at all. But once again, that would be quite simply frustrating and so developers give us helpful hints. Again, while watching my room mate play Zelda, I voiced my concern when she ran right past a secret area. She backed up and looked around but was confused. All she could find was rocks. Ah, but the rocks were formed in a circle, I pointed out. Still confused, she didn’t seem to understand that this wasn’t a natural formation. “Go back and spin in a circle counterclockwise with your red clothes on! It’s so obvious!” I exclaim.
Finally, she performs the spin and, sure enough, a secret room lay hidden. (note: there is, of course, no secret in Twilight Princess where you have to spin counter-clockwise with red clothes on. You can’t spin counter-clockwise and there are no red clothes to be worn! I take the liberty of invention in my blog!)

We, as gamers, can notice when something is out of place. We recognize that the world we are playing in is programmed and that if there is something that doesn’t fit the formula, it’s either a glitch or a deliberate change. We have developed a fine tuned ability to recognize what is deliberate and what isn’t. If we come across a slightly discolored or rounded rock, our instant reaction is to blow it up with whatever means necessary. Our eyes are constantly scanning trees, bushes, houses and the like for the slightest irregularity so we can unleash our full arsenal until a satisfying chime indicates that we’ve discovered a secret.

If anyone actually comes across this blog, please post your own observations on gaming logic. What sort of skills and logic have you developed from your gaming experience? There are certainly logics out there that I’m not privy to from not having played a certain genre enough.