A slightly modified version of this review was originally posted here ( http://wegotthiscovered.com/2010/10/28/super-meat-boy-review/ ) on 10/28/2010.
Super Meat Boy is remake/pseudo-sequel to Meat Boy, an indie-game that was featured on Newgrounds and gained enough of a following to get the XBLA and WiiWare game. And it’s one hell of a game.
Super Meat Boy is the story of Meat Boy, Bandage Girl, and Doctor Fetus. Bandage Girl loves Meat Boy, he and her. But Doctor Fetus, know one likes him, and he hates you. Not just you as Meat Boy, but you, the player. And so beats Meat Boy up and steals Bandage Girl, so its up to Meat Boy, and you controlling him, to save her from Doctor Fetus’ clutches, and remember that Doctor Fetus hates you. That’s the story in a nutshell, it doesn’t get anymore complicated because it doesn’t need to.
To put it simply, Super Meat Boy is a 2d side-scrolling platformer. But that’s selling the game short. Super Meat Boy isn’t simply a platformer, rather, it’s a throwback to the old days of hardcore, hard as balls NES platforming games of the ‘80s. This is game that is pure platforming at its core, and nothing gets in the way of it.
So what does a platformer need to be successful? Controls and level design. Controls are the most important part of games of this type. If it doesn’t control well, the entire thing falls apart. If the levels are dull, then it doesn’t matter how well it controls, since the game wouldn’t be making good use of them. Well SMB has them both in spades. Meat Boy controls perfectly, running, jumping, wall-jumping. He can run, stop on a dime, and bounce back and forth between walls with absolute precision. That’s where the stages come in. After a few stages to help the player learn the controls, the difficultly starts ramping up, each stage giving the player a new challenge with which to test their skills. From buzz saws to moving grinders and beds of spikes. And that’s just the first world, the second brings in cascades of spikes, allowing them the developers to put them anywhere, and the third world has missile launchers. And that is just the kinds of things in the stages, not how the stages are actually set up to challenge you.
What makes it interesting is how those things are used. I know its hard to imagine with just words (indeed, it might be better to watch a youtube video of SMB in action), but imagine a stage where you have to run to the edge of a platform and long jump onto a wall, wall-jump between two walls several times, followed by a jump between two close set saw blades onto another wall and time your wall-jumps so as to not hit the saw blade that’s moving along the now opposite wall. And consider that all of that will probably happen over the course of maybe 5 seconds, and that is, within this game, a very simple challenge. The controls let you get through this, and many harder challenges with precision. To put it simply, this game is pure skill, and if you fail (and you will), then it’s entirely your fault (or maybe the sweaty controller), and the game gets you back in the action very quickly, usually within one or two seconds. One of the fun little features at the end of each stage is that it shows a replay of the stage with every single life you used up on it, all playing at once, and is pretty wild. Each world also has a “boss” stage, which typically presents a unique challenge in itself.
Stylistically, keeping true to the 8-bit and 16-bit inspiration, SMB was definitely made in very clean, very simple style that almost looks like it could be played on an NES or SNES. Meat Boy himself is a simple red block with eyes and a mouth, kicking up meaty blood as he runs, and leaving trails of meaty blood on on any surfaces he touches. All the stages seem to have a bit of a tile-set set look, but again, its in service to the throwback style. As well, each world has its own visual style, from earthy in the first world, to industrial in the third. Some of the persistant obstacles (the ones that aren’t world specific) have world specific visual styles. The basic spike trap looks like saws, hypodermic needles, salt, and actual spikes, depending on the world. As well, some stages change the style and present them in monochrome, its very striking.
Music is good. Each world has its own general theme, with variations of volume and tempo to keep it from getting too repetitive. Sound effects, well, Meat Boy is made of meat, and he’s pretty squishy, and it sounds like it when he runs and jumps.
One of the big things about Super Meat Boy though, is the non required, and bonus content. Each of the seven worlds has 20 stages plus a boss stage, which must be played to complete the main game. But each world has more than that, if you look for them. Complete any stage under the target time earns the A+ rank, and opens up a “Dark World” version of the stage, which is harder. Each world also has several warp zones that lead to sets of stages that are supposedly easier than the main stages, but you only have 3 lives to complete each of the three stages in the set. All of these special stages has their own style as well, going further into homage territory by going complete 16-bit SNES, 8-bit NES, or even full on monochrome Gameboy style with the visuals and sound.
Some of these warps take you to a special set of stages where completion unlocks a new character. Each world (spread between all Light, Dark, and Warp stages) contains 20 bandages, which are collected to also unlock bonus characters. That’s the big thing, all of the unlockable characters are from other indie-games out there, including, but not limited to, Commander Video (of bit.trip series), Tim (of Braid), and The Guy (of I Wanna Be The Guy), each with their own speed and jump power, as well as special ability. And they need to be used for any of those people going for 100% completion. Meat Boy can complete every stage in the game, but he can’t obtain every bandage or make it to every warp by himself.
Final recommendation, buy it, with a caveat. Super Meat Boy is not for everyone. Not everyone can handle the difficulty of a game like this, which I’ve heard described as “masocore” (combination of masochist and hardcore). So try the demo before buying. If you don’t like it, don’t buy. If you do, then Super Meat Boy is a hardcore platformer that will make you throw a fit, shout expletives, and make you want to throw your controller, and then you successfully complete a stage and will be thanking god for it. Then you will move onto the next stage and the challenge it offers, and happily start the cycle again.
Pros:
-I LOVE THIS GAME!
-Great level design
-Solid controls
-Lot of game for the price
Cons:
-I HATE THIS GAME!
-Painful level design (not really con so much as just what SMB is supposed to be)
-Not for everyone
Random Thoughts:
-Doctor Fetus is a dick.
-The world 4 boss is made of your death, you’ll know what I mean when you see it.
-Poor squirrel…
Final Score: 9/10
Monday, November 1, 2010
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Front Mission Online review
Extra Disclosure: A slightly modified version of this review (which I did write) was posted here on 10/23. This is the original, unmodified text. Enjoy. :)
Full disclosure: This review is based on the Xbox 360 version of the game, played on a 720p LCD television (component video) and 5.1 stereo (optical audio). The reviewer’s Xbox 360 is a launch Elite unit that has RRODed once.
Front Mission Evolved was released in September for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and PC. It was developed by Double Helix (known primarily for licensed titles), and published by Square-Enix. The most recent addition in the Front Mission series, and breaks the series tradition as a tactical strategy RPG, instead coming out as a third-person shooter.
Story:
Front Mission Evolved is set in a future Earth that is divided by politics and warfare. Taking place decades after other entries in the series, the nations have expanded into space using orbital elevators and networks of satellites, an uneasy truce stands between the nations until an unknown group attacks New York city and destroys the orbital elevator. The story follows Dylan Ramsey, an engineer and wanzer test-pilot, during the attack as he tries to find his father, a scientist who disappeared in the attack. Shortly after he is drafted into the military and joins in the battle against a terrorist force bent on making peace in the world, preferably by force.
To be completely honest, the story, while smarter and more mature than average, is still every kind of sci-fi fluff gamers and otaku have come to expect from Japanese writing. Though it is nice that they tried to put in a Kojima-esque plot twist near the end, it really doesn’t seem to be much more than a justification for a piece of plot that is preposterous within the context of the story. Front Mission has always been about the politics, and this story forgets about it halfway through.
Gameplay:
Front Mission’s combat takes place primarily with mechs called Wanzers (from the German “Wanderpanzer”, meaning “walking tank”), with a few short sections taking place on foot. This action takes places as a third-person shooter, skewing the standard over-the-shoulder perspective for over-the-head, switching to over-the-shoulder during the on-foot missions.
What sets the gameplay apart from other shooters is the wanzers. While the idea of giant mechs are generally unrealistic, the wanzers themselves are more realistically built than most other mechs found in anime and games. Rather than being fast and fragile, the wanzers, true to their name, are big lumbering machines that won’t go down fast or easily. Wanzers can “skate” around areas quickly. The wanzers are customizable with modular parts, body, arms, and legs that can be switched out between missions into almost any configuration. This allows players many options for how they outfit their wanzer. Each part has its own health, and destroying each does something different: legs lower movement speed and restrict boost time, while arms lower accuracy.
The combat is where Front Mission Evolved shines. As stated earlier, these are not the standard anime mechs. They look and control like big, heavy machines. The steps are small and slow while the skate lets the wanzer move around quickly while the energy gauge has energy, allowing the player to be more mobile by moving into melee position, or dodging incoming attacks. Up to four weapons of various types can be equipped, from machine guns to missiles and (brass) knuckles, and all of them are at their fingertips, with hand weapons on the shoulder triggers, shoulder weapons on the bumpers. While movement speed can be slow, turning and aiming is fast and responsive, with a limited amount of aim-assist, and all weapons except melee can be fired independently and simultaneously with the other weapons.
Encounters are designed around enclosed areas with many obstacles to dodge around. The only real issue is there are very few types of enemies, which are upgraded as the game progresses to match the improved weaponry and parts the player receives. The AI, while smart enough to dodge behind obstacles themselves, are not that intelligent, having only really one AI script based on their type. Brawlers melee, Snipers snipe, Assaults shoot from ranges based on their weight class. Just like your wanzer, enemy units can have their arms and legs damaged, while destroying the body destroys them mech. Despite the limited enemy types and AI, all the fun is in the large scale battles with loads of bullets and missiles coming at you and your AI teammates.
One downfall is the handful of boss encounters. While the normal encounters take place in varied environments against large groups of enemies, the boss encounters take place in open, static arenas against single enemies. With two exceptions, these battles are against other wanzers that completely break the rules the game sets for the construction of wanzers. The use parts that are unavailable to the player, loadouts that are too heavy for all but the heaviest unit the player could build, the parts can’t be destroyed, and their armor is absurdly high. The bosses have no AI, instead being pattern based. The fights devolve into battles of attrition, the player moving between armor and ammo pickups in order to survive. Only the mid and end boss try something different, with encounters against large machines that don‘t need to meet the rules. They provide situations that the other bosses can’t hope to provide, and the game would have been better with more encounters like these.
The other downfall is the on foot missions. They work, but they’re not good. They’re meant to tell portions of the story where the characters can’t use their wanzers. The game changes to a simple Gears of War wannabe that gets the basic functions right, but provides none of speed, excitement, or variety of the games it tries to be, or even the wanzer portions of the game. The areas are not interesting to fight in, and there are only 3 enemies and weapons. It’s fuctional and nothing more. Thankfully they’re only three of these sections, and they’re short.
Sound:
There really isn’t much to say here. Either there’s something wrong with my sound system (not likely, movies always play properly), but it has long been my belief that most developers are terrible at implementing 5.1 audio mixes into their games. Directional sound effects are good, but any music and voice-over work that does not come from a definite source are typically drowned out. The music is not always much of a loss, but developers need to learn to play directionless voice-over through the center channel. Thankfully, Double Helix has managed to learn that. Now if only the writing was better, because the actual voice-overs range in quality from relatively good, to pretty cheesy. At least none of them are flat.
But the explosions, oh boy. They look big on the screen, and they sound big on the speakers While not always original, the sound effects are loud and appropriate for the weapons. The wanzers seem to have stolen all of their movements sounds from the live-action Transformers movies, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing, though you’d think big machines would be louder.
Online:
Front Mission features online play in the form competitive multiplayer. The modes are Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Conquest, and King of the Hill modes. The customization aspect is brought in, allowing for a wide range of potential wanzers.
This is where my primary beef with the game lies. Multiplayer represents the game’s best aspects combined with technical issues that left this reviewer in a controller chucking mood. The available modes aren’t that interesting, but integrating the wanzer customization turn it into something else entirely. Playing against the AI is nothing compared to playing against other people. Matches can be fast and furious.
Provided you can actually get a game. There’s already an issue that this is a rather niche title, so not all that many people will be playing it online, but that’s not the problem. The problems lie in the backend. With such a small player base, matchmaking is practically non-existent. With all the high ranking players always on the same team against lower ranking players, games that should be evenly matched end up becoming complete bloodbaths. The unlocks are based on player rank, and are not balanced at all. Higher ranks have a definite advantage regardless of skill, unlike other games where high rankers have more options but skilled low rankers can still be competitive. Here, low ranked players might be able to occasionally leech a kill or some assist points, but its several ranks before players have access to equipment that is even remotely competitive. As well, certain weapon combinations and strategies are overpowered, and can’t be easily countered. Loadouts, whether prebuilt or custom, can’t be changed in match, making it hard to counter some of those unbalanced loadouts.
There is no apparent host priority, no host migration, players can’t join matches in progress, and dropouts can happen quite easily. But this reviewers most often seen problem is the game’s propensity to freeze. It happened occasionally during single-player, but not often enough to be anything more than system hiccups. But something noticed every freeze during multiplayer came when transitioning from game lobby to game, or game to lobby, usually the latter. Backing up save files is almost needed as the transition loads happen at the same time as the autosave, and can corrupt them.
Conclusion:
I’ll switch to first person here. Simply put I like this game, but I want to love it. A lot people like third person shooters, but not everyone likes mech combat games, regardless of form, so this game isn’t for everyone. But, it has it where it counts, the gameplay, and that’s the part I love. Guns firing, missiles exploding, wanzers going every which way, and it gets better in multiplayer. But the technical issues with the multiplayer soured my opinions. I’ve seen single players dominate entire matches, and even concerted efforts have trouble taking them down. I personally, am an average player but have ended up the fodder for guys with a shield (shields are overpowered) and rockets multiple times. The most egregious though was the freezing. Having to back up save files for any reason other than transporting them shouldn’t be necessary with how ubiquitous autosaving has become, but the autosave also occurs during loading, any loading is where all my freezes have occurred. I twice lost my single player save file, as well as several ranks worth of XP to freezes when loading into the postgame lobby.
So if you like mech combat games, you can’t really go wrong, because the gameplay itself it absolutely solid. But with the issues I had, I can’t really recommend it, at least not at full price anyways. If the online was fixed, or at least less prone to freezing, then I would call this a buy, but I can’t. Rent it, or buy after discounted, but don’t expect any except the hardcore players to still be playing online at that point.
Full disclosure: This review is based on the Xbox 360 version of the game, played on a 720p LCD television (component video) and 5.1 stereo (optical audio). The reviewer’s Xbox 360 is a launch Elite unit that has RRODed once.
Front Mission Evolved was released in September for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and PC. It was developed by Double Helix (known primarily for licensed titles), and published by Square-Enix. The most recent addition in the Front Mission series, and breaks the series tradition as a tactical strategy RPG, instead coming out as a third-person shooter.
Story:
Front Mission Evolved is set in a future Earth that is divided by politics and warfare. Taking place decades after other entries in the series, the nations have expanded into space using orbital elevators and networks of satellites, an uneasy truce stands between the nations until an unknown group attacks New York city and destroys the orbital elevator. The story follows Dylan Ramsey, an engineer and wanzer test-pilot, during the attack as he tries to find his father, a scientist who disappeared in the attack. Shortly after he is drafted into the military and joins in the battle against a terrorist force bent on making peace in the world, preferably by force.
To be completely honest, the story, while smarter and more mature than average, is still every kind of sci-fi fluff gamers and otaku have come to expect from Japanese writing. Though it is nice that they tried to put in a Kojima-esque plot twist near the end, it really doesn’t seem to be much more than a justification for a piece of plot that is preposterous within the context of the story. Front Mission has always been about the politics, and this story forgets about it halfway through.
Gameplay:
Front Mission’s combat takes place primarily with mechs called Wanzers (from the German “Wanderpanzer”, meaning “walking tank”), with a few short sections taking place on foot. This action takes places as a third-person shooter, skewing the standard over-the-shoulder perspective for over-the-head, switching to over-the-shoulder during the on-foot missions.
What sets the gameplay apart from other shooters is the wanzers. While the idea of giant mechs are generally unrealistic, the wanzers themselves are more realistically built than most other mechs found in anime and games. Rather than being fast and fragile, the wanzers, true to their name, are big lumbering machines that won’t go down fast or easily. Wanzers can “skate” around areas quickly. The wanzers are customizable with modular parts, body, arms, and legs that can be switched out between missions into almost any configuration. This allows players many options for how they outfit their wanzer. Each part has its own health, and destroying each does something different: legs lower movement speed and restrict boost time, while arms lower accuracy.
The combat is where Front Mission Evolved shines. As stated earlier, these are not the standard anime mechs. They look and control like big, heavy machines. The steps are small and slow while the skate lets the wanzer move around quickly while the energy gauge has energy, allowing the player to be more mobile by moving into melee position, or dodging incoming attacks. Up to four weapons of various types can be equipped, from machine guns to missiles and (brass) knuckles, and all of them are at their fingertips, with hand weapons on the shoulder triggers, shoulder weapons on the bumpers. While movement speed can be slow, turning and aiming is fast and responsive, with a limited amount of aim-assist, and all weapons except melee can be fired independently and simultaneously with the other weapons.
Encounters are designed around enclosed areas with many obstacles to dodge around. The only real issue is there are very few types of enemies, which are upgraded as the game progresses to match the improved weaponry and parts the player receives. The AI, while smart enough to dodge behind obstacles themselves, are not that intelligent, having only really one AI script based on their type. Brawlers melee, Snipers snipe, Assaults shoot from ranges based on their weight class. Just like your wanzer, enemy units can have their arms and legs damaged, while destroying the body destroys them mech. Despite the limited enemy types and AI, all the fun is in the large scale battles with loads of bullets and missiles coming at you and your AI teammates.
One downfall is the handful of boss encounters. While the normal encounters take place in varied environments against large groups of enemies, the boss encounters take place in open, static arenas against single enemies. With two exceptions, these battles are against other wanzers that completely break the rules the game sets for the construction of wanzers. The use parts that are unavailable to the player, loadouts that are too heavy for all but the heaviest unit the player could build, the parts can’t be destroyed, and their armor is absurdly high. The bosses have no AI, instead being pattern based. The fights devolve into battles of attrition, the player moving between armor and ammo pickups in order to survive. Only the mid and end boss try something different, with encounters against large machines that don‘t need to meet the rules. They provide situations that the other bosses can’t hope to provide, and the game would have been better with more encounters like these.
The other downfall is the on foot missions. They work, but they’re not good. They’re meant to tell portions of the story where the characters can’t use their wanzers. The game changes to a simple Gears of War wannabe that gets the basic functions right, but provides none of speed, excitement, or variety of the games it tries to be, or even the wanzer portions of the game. The areas are not interesting to fight in, and there are only 3 enemies and weapons. It’s fuctional and nothing more. Thankfully they’re only three of these sections, and they’re short.
Sound:
There really isn’t much to say here. Either there’s something wrong with my sound system (not likely, movies always play properly), but it has long been my belief that most developers are terrible at implementing 5.1 audio mixes into their games. Directional sound effects are good, but any music and voice-over work that does not come from a definite source are typically drowned out. The music is not always much of a loss, but developers need to learn to play directionless voice-over through the center channel. Thankfully, Double Helix has managed to learn that. Now if only the writing was better, because the actual voice-overs range in quality from relatively good, to pretty cheesy. At least none of them are flat.
But the explosions, oh boy. They look big on the screen, and they sound big on the speakers While not always original, the sound effects are loud and appropriate for the weapons. The wanzers seem to have stolen all of their movements sounds from the live-action Transformers movies, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing, though you’d think big machines would be louder.
Online:
Front Mission features online play in the form competitive multiplayer. The modes are Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Conquest, and King of the Hill modes. The customization aspect is brought in, allowing for a wide range of potential wanzers.
This is where my primary beef with the game lies. Multiplayer represents the game’s best aspects combined with technical issues that left this reviewer in a controller chucking mood. The available modes aren’t that interesting, but integrating the wanzer customization turn it into something else entirely. Playing against the AI is nothing compared to playing against other people. Matches can be fast and furious.
Provided you can actually get a game. There’s already an issue that this is a rather niche title, so not all that many people will be playing it online, but that’s not the problem. The problems lie in the backend. With such a small player base, matchmaking is practically non-existent. With all the high ranking players always on the same team against lower ranking players, games that should be evenly matched end up becoming complete bloodbaths. The unlocks are based on player rank, and are not balanced at all. Higher ranks have a definite advantage regardless of skill, unlike other games where high rankers have more options but skilled low rankers can still be competitive. Here, low ranked players might be able to occasionally leech a kill or some assist points, but its several ranks before players have access to equipment that is even remotely competitive. As well, certain weapon combinations and strategies are overpowered, and can’t be easily countered. Loadouts, whether prebuilt or custom, can’t be changed in match, making it hard to counter some of those unbalanced loadouts.
There is no apparent host priority, no host migration, players can’t join matches in progress, and dropouts can happen quite easily. But this reviewers most often seen problem is the game’s propensity to freeze. It happened occasionally during single-player, but not often enough to be anything more than system hiccups. But something noticed every freeze during multiplayer came when transitioning from game lobby to game, or game to lobby, usually the latter. Backing up save files is almost needed as the transition loads happen at the same time as the autosave, and can corrupt them.
Conclusion:
I’ll switch to first person here. Simply put I like this game, but I want to love it. A lot people like third person shooters, but not everyone likes mech combat games, regardless of form, so this game isn’t for everyone. But, it has it where it counts, the gameplay, and that’s the part I love. Guns firing, missiles exploding, wanzers going every which way, and it gets better in multiplayer. But the technical issues with the multiplayer soured my opinions. I’ve seen single players dominate entire matches, and even concerted efforts have trouble taking them down. I personally, am an average player but have ended up the fodder for guys with a shield (shields are overpowered) and rockets multiple times. The most egregious though was the freezing. Having to back up save files for any reason other than transporting them shouldn’t be necessary with how ubiquitous autosaving has become, but the autosave also occurs during loading, any loading is where all my freezes have occurred. I twice lost my single player save file, as well as several ranks worth of XP to freezes when loading into the postgame lobby.
So if you like mech combat games, you can’t really go wrong, because the gameplay itself it absolutely solid. But with the issues I had, I can’t really recommend it, at least not at full price anyways. If the online was fixed, or at least less prone to freezing, then I would call this a buy, but I can’t. Rent it, or buy after discounted, but don’t expect any except the hardcore players to still be playing online at that point.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Thoughts on MMOs
I had originally wanted to talk about the MMORPGs that I saw at PAX and the various means that the games press was using to cover them, and the lack thereof. I ended up not being able to write that. The way it was going, I was writing more of a rant than a critique or editorial, which is what I was attempting to write. The primary problem I had with the coverage of the games media was how they many times stated that MMOs could not hope to beat WoW by being just like WoW, yet most of the MMOs were getting considerable coverage, while at the same time trying to be just like WoW, and the one game that is attempting to buck the trend was not only being ignored, but was apparently being completely written off by said media. So rather than outright rant, maybe I should just talk about why MMOs need to change, and why the media is not helping.
A few years ago, there were several MMORPGs were on the market. They were all mildly successful. Each contained its own unique world, style, and play mechanics, and each catered to a very small portion of what was a niche part of the PC market. Everquest catered to the hardcore roleplayers, Dark Age of Camelot to the PvP players, Final Fantasy XI catered players looking for story (and some rather hard core play mechanics too). There were other MMOs, and they all found their places in the grand scheme of the genre.
And then World of Warcraft came out. WoW’s developer, Blizzard, took what they believed were the best elements from all the MMOs on the market, mixed in their own unique visual style, and created something that is considered to be a watershed moment for MMORPGs. Well, the best elements from every game except FFXI. Quick combat, large groups of enemies, PvP (both small and large scale), large amounts varied gear to outfit the player characters, and User Interface concessions made for usability. The general mantra of Blizzard was to make it simple, easy, and accessible. They succeeded in making (arguably) the best, but definitely the most successful MMO.
And that was it. WoW is the most successful MMO on the market, beyond anyone’s expectations. Many developers have dreams of making an MMO, while many publishers have visions of stealing Blizzard’s business and its massive revenue production. And that is where we have our problem: everyone wants to be WoW.
In the time since WoW came onto the market and proved its popularity, nearly every MMO that has come into development and release has tried to be like it. While each has had its own unique visual style and take, the basics have generally remained the same. Move with these keys, fight with those keys, kill X number of enemies to complete ill-defined objectives, and acquire lots of loot and gear. Rinse and repeat, do it until you’re blue in the face, then do it all over again when the next update it released. It works for WoW, so it must work for everyone else, shouldn’t it?
And there we have our problem. Its nothing new. Sure, they have their own spins on the formula, but they have the same basic mechanics, basic play style as the game they’re trying to usurp. Any player of one of these MMOs will play it exactly the same way that they would play WoW. It should work, but it does not, not when these MMOs are coming out after a game that has already had a significant amount of time to build up bug fixes and additional content in the intervening time. This is a genre where being second to the party does not end up paying off.
There is really only one MMO that has mimicked the WoW experience and managed to not fail, to put it diplomatically. That would be Lord of the Rings Online. By all accounts, it is a WoW clone, it controls the same and has the same play mechanics. And yet is has managed to survive and become successful, even if it is not to the same extent. How did it happen? Simple, it is entirely due to its developer, Turbine. A developer known for other MMOs, including the pre-WoW Asherson’s Call, Turbine spent a lot of time making sure that it was a well made game. LotRO does nearly everything WoW does, and it does them well, and in some cases better that WoW. That’s right, Turbine may have made a game that is derivative of WoW, but they did a good job of it. Most developers do not, and they fail, sometimes after release, sometimes by failing to release at all.
But then there are the MMOs that try to do something different. Originally, difference was the order of the day among MMOs. They had to be different to get any notice in the relatively small market. Every one had its own style that made it unique, while remaining a massively multiplayer game. As it stands, WoW seems to have ended that. Make no mistake, WoW did nothing new, it simply took elements from the major releases before it, and streamlined them, made them user friendly. This combined with Blizzard’s pre-existing fan base from the previous games in the Warcraft series made it a success well beyond expectations, as has been chronicled in the news for quite awhile now.
Anyways, in the wake of WoW, anything new was effectively shunned in favor of copying the formula that WoW made work. All the news outlets flocked to cover these new games and how great they were while at the same time railing against the publishers and developers for trying to recreate WoW’s success. Games that attempted to do new things were largely ignored. Regardless of quality, many games are not able to gain positive hype and sales, outside of die-hard fans and curiosity seekers, when these outlets fail to give the different games anything more than cursory coverage. Several games were simply lost in the shuffle until the day they were released and the outlets reviewed them. And the reviews were inevitably bad, ignored by the potential mainstream audience, and left to comments about how the game failed to live up to unrealistic and nonexistent hype. I will not name names, but there were more than enough in the past few years.
But in the grand scheme of things, if the MMO genre wants to continue to expand, let alone remain relevant, it needs these games that try new things. I realize that I am a bit biased in this remark, but the genre needs games like Final Fantasy XIV. It wants to do something different with the MMO, without making something so out of line that new and migrating will not feel out of sorts with the gameplay.
WoW’s system is pretty simple, each character is one class and you kill stuff, specialize in a talent tree (where the community long ago decided that the tree you want to follow is the wrong one, but that is something else entirely), and then pretty much just upgrade your gear as you level. In the end, in the system Blizzard created, all characters want/need to be nothing more than a cosmetically differentiated version of the optimal build of the chosen class.
With FFXIV, Square Enix is trying to bring a version of its long standing class system to the MMO. Its predecessor, FFXI, did the same thing but in a different way. Players can play all classes on the same character, and a sub job system allowed the character to share some of the abilities outside of the ones specific to their current primary class. FFFXIV is taking that a little further, by not only allowing characters to be every job, but to let them switch out at will outside of combat, and let the character share all abilities of every leveled class. The game is still too new (as of this writing) to get a handle on it, and preferred builds are almost a certainty in the future, but the simple fact that a character has that much overall customization is something that most MMOs don’t even attempt to do. Most MMOs that deal with class changing usually handle them in the manner of a progression based class upgrade, where a character is forced, usually by the game mechanics, to change to a new class once a certain character or skill level is achieved. Never has it been handled as a function of equipment. I will not say that FFXIV is a perfect game, but a system like this has so much potential if SE handles it properly through the life of the game. And this is the kind of innovative thinking that I want to continue seeing in MMOs.
A few years ago, there were several MMORPGs were on the market. They were all mildly successful. Each contained its own unique world, style, and play mechanics, and each catered to a very small portion of what was a niche part of the PC market. Everquest catered to the hardcore roleplayers, Dark Age of Camelot to the PvP players, Final Fantasy XI catered players looking for story (and some rather hard core play mechanics too). There were other MMOs, and they all found their places in the grand scheme of the genre.
And then World of Warcraft came out. WoW’s developer, Blizzard, took what they believed were the best elements from all the MMOs on the market, mixed in their own unique visual style, and created something that is considered to be a watershed moment for MMORPGs. Well, the best elements from every game except FFXI. Quick combat, large groups of enemies, PvP (both small and large scale), large amounts varied gear to outfit the player characters, and User Interface concessions made for usability. The general mantra of Blizzard was to make it simple, easy, and accessible. They succeeded in making (arguably) the best, but definitely the most successful MMO.
And that was it. WoW is the most successful MMO on the market, beyond anyone’s expectations. Many developers have dreams of making an MMO, while many publishers have visions of stealing Blizzard’s business and its massive revenue production. And that is where we have our problem: everyone wants to be WoW.
In the time since WoW came onto the market and proved its popularity, nearly every MMO that has come into development and release has tried to be like it. While each has had its own unique visual style and take, the basics have generally remained the same. Move with these keys, fight with those keys, kill X number of enemies to complete ill-defined objectives, and acquire lots of loot and gear. Rinse and repeat, do it until you’re blue in the face, then do it all over again when the next update it released. It works for WoW, so it must work for everyone else, shouldn’t it?
And there we have our problem. Its nothing new. Sure, they have their own spins on the formula, but they have the same basic mechanics, basic play style as the game they’re trying to usurp. Any player of one of these MMOs will play it exactly the same way that they would play WoW. It should work, but it does not, not when these MMOs are coming out after a game that has already had a significant amount of time to build up bug fixes and additional content in the intervening time. This is a genre where being second to the party does not end up paying off.
There is really only one MMO that has mimicked the WoW experience and managed to not fail, to put it diplomatically. That would be Lord of the Rings Online. By all accounts, it is a WoW clone, it controls the same and has the same play mechanics. And yet is has managed to survive and become successful, even if it is not to the same extent. How did it happen? Simple, it is entirely due to its developer, Turbine. A developer known for other MMOs, including the pre-WoW Asherson’s Call, Turbine spent a lot of time making sure that it was a well made game. LotRO does nearly everything WoW does, and it does them well, and in some cases better that WoW. That’s right, Turbine may have made a game that is derivative of WoW, but they did a good job of it. Most developers do not, and they fail, sometimes after release, sometimes by failing to release at all.
But then there are the MMOs that try to do something different. Originally, difference was the order of the day among MMOs. They had to be different to get any notice in the relatively small market. Every one had its own style that made it unique, while remaining a massively multiplayer game. As it stands, WoW seems to have ended that. Make no mistake, WoW did nothing new, it simply took elements from the major releases before it, and streamlined them, made them user friendly. This combined with Blizzard’s pre-existing fan base from the previous games in the Warcraft series made it a success well beyond expectations, as has been chronicled in the news for quite awhile now.
Anyways, in the wake of WoW, anything new was effectively shunned in favor of copying the formula that WoW made work. All the news outlets flocked to cover these new games and how great they were while at the same time railing against the publishers and developers for trying to recreate WoW’s success. Games that attempted to do new things were largely ignored. Regardless of quality, many games are not able to gain positive hype and sales, outside of die-hard fans and curiosity seekers, when these outlets fail to give the different games anything more than cursory coverage. Several games were simply lost in the shuffle until the day they were released and the outlets reviewed them. And the reviews were inevitably bad, ignored by the potential mainstream audience, and left to comments about how the game failed to live up to unrealistic and nonexistent hype. I will not name names, but there were more than enough in the past few years.
But in the grand scheme of things, if the MMO genre wants to continue to expand, let alone remain relevant, it needs these games that try new things. I realize that I am a bit biased in this remark, but the genre needs games like Final Fantasy XIV. It wants to do something different with the MMO, without making something so out of line that new and migrating will not feel out of sorts with the gameplay.
WoW’s system is pretty simple, each character is one class and you kill stuff, specialize in a talent tree (where the community long ago decided that the tree you want to follow is the wrong one, but that is something else entirely), and then pretty much just upgrade your gear as you level. In the end, in the system Blizzard created, all characters want/need to be nothing more than a cosmetically differentiated version of the optimal build of the chosen class.
With FFXIV, Square Enix is trying to bring a version of its long standing class system to the MMO. Its predecessor, FFXI, did the same thing but in a different way. Players can play all classes on the same character, and a sub job system allowed the character to share some of the abilities outside of the ones specific to their current primary class. FFFXIV is taking that a little further, by not only allowing characters to be every job, but to let them switch out at will outside of combat, and let the character share all abilities of every leveled class. The game is still too new (as of this writing) to get a handle on it, and preferred builds are almost a certainty in the future, but the simple fact that a character has that much overall customization is something that most MMOs don’t even attempt to do. Most MMOs that deal with class changing usually handle them in the manner of a progression based class upgrade, where a character is forced, usually by the game mechanics, to change to a new class once a certain character or skill level is achieved. Never has it been handled as a function of equipment. I will not say that FFXIV is a perfect game, but a system like this has so much potential if SE handles it properly through the life of the game. And this is the kind of innovative thinking that I want to continue seeing in MMOs.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Thoughts on Metroid: Other M
I must say that Metroid: Other M has me very confused. On some levels, its very good, on others, not so much. I’m torn because while the flaws are more than a little glaring, I don’t think that they entirely detract from what the developers did get right, and thus the product as a whole.
I guess I’ll start from the top. Metroid: Other M, was co developed between Nintendo and TECMO/Team Ninja (of Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive fame), and released right before PAX10 (those bastards :p). With story by series creator Yoshio Sakamoto, it bridges a minor story gap between Super Metroid (SNES) and Metroid Fusion (GBA). Now that is an interesting point, in and of itself. While some of them may contain stories, many Nintendo franchises, the most obvious being the Legend of Zelda series, do not actually contain any real continuity between each entry into the franchise. Metroid has been the only outlier, and proof that it can be both a blessing and a curse, as it were.
I’ll be straight up here. There is a story, and its good, but its badly executed. In this game, we learn about Samus Aran’s backstory, specifically the time she spent in the military, before leaving to become an independent bounty hunter. This information is told to the player as flashbacks during the current mission: the investigation of the Bottle Ship, a seemingly abandoned research station. Big hint, metroids are involved, though as always it isn’t readily apparent until well into the game, and even then there aren’t that many…
Anyways, the story is good, but its presented badly, and depending on your point of view, potentially hurts the Samus character. When Samus gets to the Bottle Ship, she meets up with a squad of marines lead by her former commander and surrogate father, as it were. Most of the flashbacks seem to be about their surrogate father/daughter relationship, despite the fact that is her commanding officer, and Samus is the rookie in the unit. In fact, despite the Federation being composed of many worlds and races, the military is shown as being primarily human, and male, like the Empire in Star Wars (realistically because Lucas didn’t have the budget, which in canon became Palpatine being a bigot). Due to Samus being female, it seems, in the cut scenes and her own inner monologue at least, that she is treated differently because of it, and she acts out in a typically (teenager-like) rebellious way.
Why would it matter? Presumably, that far into the future, gender in the military shouldn’t mean anything at all. In fact, much of science fiction deals with this exact thing. As bad of a movie as it was, Starship Troopers displayed it perfectly, a co-ed military where no one bats an eye at the female troops, and everyone is expected to pull their own weight, or risk injury and death. There is no “just one of the guys” or “girls club”, everyone is just a trooper.
I realize that Japan is still a little wonky when it comes to gender politics, but this is science-fiction/fantasy. It is a work of fiction where any world the creator wants can come alive. There are no constraints. There are no rules except the ones the creator decides to impose on the creation. There is no need to be burdened with real world expectations when the creation isn’t the real world.
One of the biggest strengths of the genre/style is, since the world isn’t real, the ability for it to deal with real world issues without actually talking about them. Religion, human/alien rights, foreign affairs, torture, anything can be talked about. Anything can be made relevant, because just about everything can be relevant. Yet here in Metroid: Other M the creator is regressing back to gender politics, possibly without even realizing it. Why? This is a game made by the Japanese for the Japanese and, especially, the American market. And in the US, gender is practically a non-issue, at least in fiction. It may work in Japan, but we Americans, while still a little iffy on the subject of women in the military, are more than happy with women as protagonists, antagonists, action heroes, and even in the military (in fiction anyways).
Now that isn’t to say we don’t have our issues with female characters in leading roles, but science fiction seems to be one of the few places where we Americans can seem to drop many of those pretensions. The love interest? No longer required. Emotional instability? Guys hagve I too. Being saved by a man? She’s got a gun and martial arts. Subserviant to someone or something? She commands an entire fleet of armed-to-the-teeth battleships.
In the previous Metroid games, Samus Aran has always been displayed as the strong and silent type. Now, the fact that all but one of those games had zero dialogue to begin with helped maintain that appearance. Samus Aran is a bounty hunter, she goes into hostile environments, alone, with nothing except her power suit and her training as a former military trooper in order to survive. And she succeeds time and again. And the plot of Metroid: Other M effectively turns her into someone who emotionally stunted, distant, and has “daddy issues”. Now admittedly, Samus’ backstory is tragic, with being orphaned by a pirate attack. But her early life after that was spent training to take revenge on the pirates, which any term of military service would only reinforce. Yet, as I stated earlier, during the flashbacks to her time of military service she is shown acting like a petulant teenager opposite squad mates and a commander who treat her differently because of her gender. During the game itself, she is shown being indecisive, and even freezes when faced with threats that she’s already faced before. This is not the character we’ve seen over the series, and is quite possibly a step back for her as well.
I understand Sakamoto has a story to tell, but in the end he just seems to have failed because he fell back on using gender politics in a genre and universe that, generally speaking, had seemingly not even included them in the first place. The only thing that can really save it, story wise, is that we’re really only seeing a microcosm of the universe. We deal with only a small handful of characters, but at the same time we see a lot of the universe in other ways. Things end up muddied, and in the end we are left with a story with a strong primary plot thread, but the peripheral things like this end up being unneeded, negatively impact the character, make the plot unnecessarily melodramatic, and paints the author as potentially chauvinistic and/or mysoginist, more out of cultural naiveté than actual intention.
I guess I’ll start from the top. Metroid: Other M, was co developed between Nintendo and TECMO/Team Ninja (of Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive fame), and released right before PAX10 (those bastards :p). With story by series creator Yoshio Sakamoto, it bridges a minor story gap between Super Metroid (SNES) and Metroid Fusion (GBA). Now that is an interesting point, in and of itself. While some of them may contain stories, many Nintendo franchises, the most obvious being the Legend of Zelda series, do not actually contain any real continuity between each entry into the franchise. Metroid has been the only outlier, and proof that it can be both a blessing and a curse, as it were.
I’ll be straight up here. There is a story, and its good, but its badly executed. In this game, we learn about Samus Aran’s backstory, specifically the time she spent in the military, before leaving to become an independent bounty hunter. This information is told to the player as flashbacks during the current mission: the investigation of the Bottle Ship, a seemingly abandoned research station. Big hint, metroids are involved, though as always it isn’t readily apparent until well into the game, and even then there aren’t that many…
Anyways, the story is good, but its presented badly, and depending on your point of view, potentially hurts the Samus character. When Samus gets to the Bottle Ship, she meets up with a squad of marines lead by her former commander and surrogate father, as it were. Most of the flashbacks seem to be about their surrogate father/daughter relationship, despite the fact that is her commanding officer, and Samus is the rookie in the unit. In fact, despite the Federation being composed of many worlds and races, the military is shown as being primarily human, and male, like the Empire in Star Wars (realistically because Lucas didn’t have the budget, which in canon became Palpatine being a bigot). Due to Samus being female, it seems, in the cut scenes and her own inner monologue at least, that she is treated differently because of it, and she acts out in a typically (teenager-like) rebellious way.
Why would it matter? Presumably, that far into the future, gender in the military shouldn’t mean anything at all. In fact, much of science fiction deals with this exact thing. As bad of a movie as it was, Starship Troopers displayed it perfectly, a co-ed military where no one bats an eye at the female troops, and everyone is expected to pull their own weight, or risk injury and death. There is no “just one of the guys” or “girls club”, everyone is just a trooper.
I realize that Japan is still a little wonky when it comes to gender politics, but this is science-fiction/fantasy. It is a work of fiction where any world the creator wants can come alive. There are no constraints. There are no rules except the ones the creator decides to impose on the creation. There is no need to be burdened with real world expectations when the creation isn’t the real world.
One of the biggest strengths of the genre/style is, since the world isn’t real, the ability for it to deal with real world issues without actually talking about them. Religion, human/alien rights, foreign affairs, torture, anything can be talked about. Anything can be made relevant, because just about everything can be relevant. Yet here in Metroid: Other M the creator is regressing back to gender politics, possibly without even realizing it. Why? This is a game made by the Japanese for the Japanese and, especially, the American market. And in the US, gender is practically a non-issue, at least in fiction. It may work in Japan, but we Americans, while still a little iffy on the subject of women in the military, are more than happy with women as protagonists, antagonists, action heroes, and even in the military (in fiction anyways).
Now that isn’t to say we don’t have our issues with female characters in leading roles, but science fiction seems to be one of the few places where we Americans can seem to drop many of those pretensions. The love interest? No longer required. Emotional instability? Guys hagve I too. Being saved by a man? She’s got a gun and martial arts. Subserviant to someone or something? She commands an entire fleet of armed-to-the-teeth battleships.
In the previous Metroid games, Samus Aran has always been displayed as the strong and silent type. Now, the fact that all but one of those games had zero dialogue to begin with helped maintain that appearance. Samus Aran is a bounty hunter, she goes into hostile environments, alone, with nothing except her power suit and her training as a former military trooper in order to survive. And she succeeds time and again. And the plot of Metroid: Other M effectively turns her into someone who emotionally stunted, distant, and has “daddy issues”. Now admittedly, Samus’ backstory is tragic, with being orphaned by a pirate attack. But her early life after that was spent training to take revenge on the pirates, which any term of military service would only reinforce. Yet, as I stated earlier, during the flashbacks to her time of military service she is shown acting like a petulant teenager opposite squad mates and a commander who treat her differently because of her gender. During the game itself, she is shown being indecisive, and even freezes when faced with threats that she’s already faced before. This is not the character we’ve seen over the series, and is quite possibly a step back for her as well.
I understand Sakamoto has a story to tell, but in the end he just seems to have failed because he fell back on using gender politics in a genre and universe that, generally speaking, had seemingly not even included them in the first place. The only thing that can really save it, story wise, is that we’re really only seeing a microcosm of the universe. We deal with only a small handful of characters, but at the same time we see a lot of the universe in other ways. Things end up muddied, and in the end we are left with a story with a strong primary plot thread, but the peripheral things like this end up being unneeded, negatively impact the character, make the plot unnecessarily melodramatic, and paints the author as potentially chauvinistic and/or mysoginist, more out of cultural naiveté than actual intention.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
PAX Impressions
Note: I'm posting this now, Wednesday morning, but it was written Sunday night.
So tonight, as I write this, my trip to PAX has ended. I have only six to seven hours on a plane left to go in the trip itself. I saw a lot of new things, a lot of cool things, and a lot of things that I would have liked to have seen if I had been willing to spend the time in lines.
Its such a shame that Portal 2, Dragon Age II, and the now mythical Duke Nukem Forever were all effectively behind doors with constant long lines. Brink and Deadspace 2 had long lines the entire time as well, but other people could see them being played. Brink, I can’t speak on, because I didn’t watch any play. Deadspace 2, I wanted to play, but I didn’t want to stand in line, and if I couldn’t play, then I didn’t want to see it, because I will definitely be getting Deadspace 2 when it comes out.
I was able to watch people playing Marvel vs. Capcom 3, its awesome that Deadpool is in the game, but either no one has figured out how to use him yet, or his move list isn’t that great, as I didn’t see any moves that used his swords, just martial arts and guns. Christ Redfield seemed to be favorite, with multiple special attacks that used his guns, as well as a grenade launcher as his super. The other major characters I saw played were the expected: Ryu, Iron Man, Captain America, and Wolverine, with movesets similar to how they appeared in Marvel vs. Capcom 2. I didn’t see enough players using Trish or Dante to really tell how they played. One thing I did notice though, is that there were only two or three stages being played on, and all of them seemed to include Servbots hanging around in the background, I wonder if Servbot will be a hidden “for fun” character again, like he and so many others were in Marvel vs. Capcom 2 were. Though my limited time at the Capcom booth did see me buying a Servbot bobblehead, because Servbot is awesome.
I passed by the console freeplay area and managed to see real Steel Battalion controllers and games, though I wasn’t able to play, and later had a 4 player game of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World going, playing as Stills, and Stills ranked highest after each of the three stages we played, even if I did end up also being the most revived character as well…
A few times throughout the convention, I also stopped and played a few games of Monday Night Combat(!). I made a good showing of myself as an assassin, though I didn’t play in any of the tournaments. At the very end of the convention, I did get to play two games against the developers, and our team managed to get its ass handed to it both times.
I also spent way too much time sitting at the MSI booth in hopes of winning high end PC components, and came away empty handed. What really added insult to the injury was that there were a few people that won things multiple times. MULTIPLE TIMES. It was most displeasing. But the guys at the booth were cool, and MSI itself hasn’t done me wrong yet, not with the motherboard on my old desktop, or the netbook that I’m typing this one. If I decide to build a new desktop, they’re not that far down on my list.
I spent a bit of time at the Squard Enix booth. They were showing some new game called Wakfu, which didn’t know what to make of. Some kind of isometric, grid turned-based strategy game with a rather colorful art style. There was also Front Mission Evolved, which trades the turn-based strategy gameplay for third-person action, involving mechs. They were only letting it be played as Free-For-All Deathmatch, so there was no indication of what the single player portion of the game will be like. It played pretty well, but the graphics didn’t look bad, but it could look better. I’m sure the Xbox can output better.
Last at the Square Enix booth was what is probably the first public showing of Final Fantasy XIV, unless you count the opening of Open Beta, which began just before two or three days before the show. I played during the last phase of closed beta, and managed to get into the open beta beta before having to catch my flight to come to PAX. They were allowing people to play through any of the three opening tutorial sections, and gave them FFXIV branded flashdrvies containing the character they created. I will say that I care about the game, and I plan on buying and playing it, but straight up, no one seems to care about it. Which leads me to my next point.
There were several MMOs that either premiered, or had their first major public showing at PAX, but I will get to that later. I have a bit of a bone to pick with the subject of MMOs, especially in conjunction with the games media. I will discuss this at length in another post.
Anyways, I also attended several podcast panels: the Giantbombcast, Rebel FM and Geekbox, as well as the Gamespy Debriefings. All of them are super super guys. I managed to get pictures with everyone from the Bombcast except for Brad Shoemaker, as well as Rebel FM’s Arthur Gies and Anthony Gallegos (sp?). As well, since the Bombcast was the last major event of the first night, I , along with several others, followed them out afterwords. Vinny Caravela was cool, and I can sort of see why some people (on a handful of podcasts I’ve listened too) seem to have man-crushes on Jeff Gerstmann. Anyways, closed down two bars, and I only actually had one beer. Not even a buzz, and beer still tastes like crap, which is probably part of why I don’t drink. Well, that and having friends that aren’t bar hoppers. It was an experience. As a side note, other people I saw at these panels were Scott Bromley, Ryan Scott, Jeff Green, and the great Michael Pachter, who seems to actually be a nice guy.
All in all, it was a good trip, and I’m sad its just about over. If I come back again, I definitely need to drag my friends with me, as well as bring a larger amount of available cash for souvenirs. But this also means that they didn’t get any free swag off me, unless they want the freebie Fallout: New Vegas T-shirts I got. More time to see more of the city would have been nice too. I probably would have made the trek to get a picture of the Space Needle if I knew where it was in relation to the convention center.
All in all, I would like to come back, and will try to, should the opportunity arise. And if I do, I should definitely have a smartphone that isn't on AT&T.
So tonight, as I write this, my trip to PAX has ended. I have only six to seven hours on a plane left to go in the trip itself. I saw a lot of new things, a lot of cool things, and a lot of things that I would have liked to have seen if I had been willing to spend the time in lines.
Its such a shame that Portal 2, Dragon Age II, and the now mythical Duke Nukem Forever were all effectively behind doors with constant long lines. Brink and Deadspace 2 had long lines the entire time as well, but other people could see them being played. Brink, I can’t speak on, because I didn’t watch any play. Deadspace 2, I wanted to play, but I didn’t want to stand in line, and if I couldn’t play, then I didn’t want to see it, because I will definitely be getting Deadspace 2 when it comes out.
I was able to watch people playing Marvel vs. Capcom 3, its awesome that Deadpool is in the game, but either no one has figured out how to use him yet, or his move list isn’t that great, as I didn’t see any moves that used his swords, just martial arts and guns. Christ Redfield seemed to be favorite, with multiple special attacks that used his guns, as well as a grenade launcher as his super. The other major characters I saw played were the expected: Ryu, Iron Man, Captain America, and Wolverine, with movesets similar to how they appeared in Marvel vs. Capcom 2. I didn’t see enough players using Trish or Dante to really tell how they played. One thing I did notice though, is that there were only two or three stages being played on, and all of them seemed to include Servbots hanging around in the background, I wonder if Servbot will be a hidden “for fun” character again, like he and so many others were in Marvel vs. Capcom 2 were. Though my limited time at the Capcom booth did see me buying a Servbot bobblehead, because Servbot is awesome.
I passed by the console freeplay area and managed to see real Steel Battalion controllers and games, though I wasn’t able to play, and later had a 4 player game of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World going, playing as Stills, and Stills ranked highest after each of the three stages we played, even if I did end up also being the most revived character as well…
A few times throughout the convention, I also stopped and played a few games of Monday Night Combat(!). I made a good showing of myself as an assassin, though I didn’t play in any of the tournaments. At the very end of the convention, I did get to play two games against the developers, and our team managed to get its ass handed to it both times.
I also spent way too much time sitting at the MSI booth in hopes of winning high end PC components, and came away empty handed. What really added insult to the injury was that there were a few people that won things multiple times. MULTIPLE TIMES. It was most displeasing. But the guys at the booth were cool, and MSI itself hasn’t done me wrong yet, not with the motherboard on my old desktop, or the netbook that I’m typing this one. If I decide to build a new desktop, they’re not that far down on my list.
I spent a bit of time at the Squard Enix booth. They were showing some new game called Wakfu, which didn’t know what to make of. Some kind of isometric, grid turned-based strategy game with a rather colorful art style. There was also Front Mission Evolved, which trades the turn-based strategy gameplay for third-person action, involving mechs. They were only letting it be played as Free-For-All Deathmatch, so there was no indication of what the single player portion of the game will be like. It played pretty well, but the graphics didn’t look bad, but it could look better. I’m sure the Xbox can output better.
Last at the Square Enix booth was what is probably the first public showing of Final Fantasy XIV, unless you count the opening of Open Beta, which began just before two or three days before the show. I played during the last phase of closed beta, and managed to get into the open beta beta before having to catch my flight to come to PAX. They were allowing people to play through any of the three opening tutorial sections, and gave them FFXIV branded flashdrvies containing the character they created. I will say that I care about the game, and I plan on buying and playing it, but straight up, no one seems to care about it. Which leads me to my next point.
There were several MMOs that either premiered, or had their first major public showing at PAX, but I will get to that later. I have a bit of a bone to pick with the subject of MMOs, especially in conjunction with the games media. I will discuss this at length in another post.
Anyways, I also attended several podcast panels: the Giantbombcast, Rebel FM and Geekbox, as well as the Gamespy Debriefings. All of them are super super guys. I managed to get pictures with everyone from the Bombcast except for Brad Shoemaker, as well as Rebel FM’s Arthur Gies and Anthony Gallegos (sp?). As well, since the Bombcast was the last major event of the first night, I , along with several others, followed them out afterwords. Vinny Caravela was cool, and I can sort of see why some people (on a handful of podcasts I’ve listened too) seem to have man-crushes on Jeff Gerstmann. Anyways, closed down two bars, and I only actually had one beer. Not even a buzz, and beer still tastes like crap, which is probably part of why I don’t drink. Well, that and having friends that aren’t bar hoppers. It was an experience. As a side note, other people I saw at these panels were Scott Bromley, Ryan Scott, Jeff Green, and the great Michael Pachter, who seems to actually be a nice guy.
All in all, it was a good trip, and I’m sad its just about over. If I come back again, I definitely need to drag my friends with me, as well as bring a larger amount of available cash for souvenirs. But this also means that they didn’t get any free swag off me, unless they want the freebie Fallout: New Vegas T-shirts I got. More time to see more of the city would have been nice too. I probably would have made the trek to get a picture of the Space Needle if I knew where it was in relation to the convention center.
All in all, I would like to come back, and will try to, should the opportunity arise. And if I do, I should definitely have a smartphone that isn't on AT&T.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Metro 2033 as art?
I wrote and posted this at the youthrights blog (http://blog.youthrights.org/2010/08/11/schwarzenegger_v_gamers_help_us_fight_back) and am reposting it here. Add your voice and defend all of our rights of free speech.
The topic here is proving that videogames, violent videogames included, have any intrinsic value, artistically and/or culturally. It suprises me that during this conversation, as well as the earlier conflict involving Roger Ebert, everyone has failed to metion Metro 2033.
I will no debate the merit or quality of it as a game, but it definitely has merit as a work of modern interactive art. The style of the visual and sound design is realistic, with the setting being as realistic a representation of post-nuclear war city (in this case Moscow). There is an air of oppressiveness and claustrophobia that the fidelity of the setting manages to hammer home to the player. Sure, there are times when the player is able to go out into the city, but it ends up both eerily beautiful and totally scary at the same time. You realize that the claustrophobic underground is dangerous, but its safe compared to the outside. The first time playing through the game, before the player realizes the amount of scripted events in the game, the feeling of loneliness, claustrophobia, and danger created by the setting, lighting, and sound is ever present.
Evocative of a feeling, visually artistic, those are two things that, when applied to other mediums, make a work artistic. So why not here?
Now here's the real reason this game can be considered art. It is an adaptation of a book. Now I realize the term "adaptation" is a bit loaded, as most adaptations of written work are less than the work it came from. Many times written adaptations of visual art, such as movies and television, end up being superior as the the written work can commonly do more with the work than the visual medium. But Metro 2033 is a rare case in that is was made as an interactive adaptation of a book, as opposed to a videogame adaptation of a movie based on a book. Also, the developers, many of whom are refugees from the studio that produced S.T.A.L.K.E.R., are proficient developers, but it was obvious that many gameplay concessions, mainly in terms of scripted events, were made in service of telling a story. That's right, the primary purpose of the game is tell its story in an interactive way, as opposed to making a more proficient game and simply telling the story along the way.
And that is one of the truest, yet most subjective, part of the test of artistic merit: intent. The intention was not to build a game, and then place the story within it, as many people seem to forget (and is the problem with Bioshock, despite how many people use it as the test of art). In this case the story came first, and someone decided that they wanted to use the interactive medium, videogame, to tell the story to a greater audience, and as I stated earlier, this adaptation was made in service to the story being adapted as opposed to being in the service of the game. That was the intent, and the intent makes this videogame art.
The topic here is proving that videogames, violent videogames included, have any intrinsic value, artistically and/or culturally. It suprises me that during this conversation, as well as the earlier conflict involving Roger Ebert, everyone has failed to metion Metro 2033.
I will no debate the merit or quality of it as a game, but it definitely has merit as a work of modern interactive art. The style of the visual and sound design is realistic, with the setting being as realistic a representation of post-nuclear war city (in this case Moscow). There is an air of oppressiveness and claustrophobia that the fidelity of the setting manages to hammer home to the player. Sure, there are times when the player is able to go out into the city, but it ends up both eerily beautiful and totally scary at the same time. You realize that the claustrophobic underground is dangerous, but its safe compared to the outside. The first time playing through the game, before the player realizes the amount of scripted events in the game, the feeling of loneliness, claustrophobia, and danger created by the setting, lighting, and sound is ever present.
Evocative of a feeling, visually artistic, those are two things that, when applied to other mediums, make a work artistic. So why not here?
Now here's the real reason this game can be considered art. It is an adaptation of a book. Now I realize the term "adaptation" is a bit loaded, as most adaptations of written work are less than the work it came from. Many times written adaptations of visual art, such as movies and television, end up being superior as the the written work can commonly do more with the work than the visual medium. But Metro 2033 is a rare case in that is was made as an interactive adaptation of a book, as opposed to a videogame adaptation of a movie based on a book. Also, the developers, many of whom are refugees from the studio that produced S.T.A.L.K.E.R., are proficient developers, but it was obvious that many gameplay concessions, mainly in terms of scripted events, were made in service of telling a story. That's right, the primary purpose of the game is tell its story in an interactive way, as opposed to making a more proficient game and simply telling the story along the way.
And that is one of the truest, yet most subjective, part of the test of artistic merit: intent. The intention was not to build a game, and then place the story within it, as many people seem to forget (and is the problem with Bioshock, despite how many people use it as the test of art). In this case the story came first, and someone decided that they wanted to use the interactive medium, videogame, to tell the story to a greater audience, and as I stated earlier, this adaptation was made in service to the story being adapted as opposed to being in the service of the game. That was the intent, and the intent makes this videogame art.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Innocent Aces quickie
Okay, its been months since I've posted anything here, even though I fully intended to do so sooner anyways. So what is there to say? I don't know. I played and saw alot of things, but really ran out of any desire to write about any of those things since I didn't get around to talking about them sooner. Go me! And go procrastination! But since I'm here, I should probably talk about something...
The Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces
This game came out for the Nintendo Wii in the US earlier this year. It was a small time release, and the cover art was pretty bad (the promotional cover art was better), and I don't believe it sold that well. Innocent Aces is a tie-in game to Mamoru Oshii's animated film from 2008, The Sky Crawlers. The game does not follow the plot of the film, and even appears unconnected if not for the presence of Kildren and WWII style planes. It is, however, a prequel, with the actual connection to the film not being made until the game's ending, and even then it is only noticeable if the player has also seen the movie.
Anyways, the game was produced by Project Aces, the team behind the Ace Combat series, and could best be described as "Ace Combat Light". It looks like an up-rezzed PS2 game, despite the Wii being more powerful than it. Overall, its rather easy, with only the two or three ace battles providing any kind of real challenge.
That brings us to the controls. While the game has Classic Controller support (which, in my opinion, is preferable to the default), the default control scheme is Wii-mote and Nunchuk motion control, using the Nunchuk as an aircraft yolk with Wii-mote controlling throttle. It works on an immersion level, but since the Nunchuk only has an accelerometer and no sensor, it ends up not being responsive enough. As well, the yaw controls (for fine left/right turning movements) is mapped to the Wii-mote's d-pad instead of the Nunchuk's analog stick. The analog stick instead maps several combat maneuvers that are difficult to pull off with such imprecise controls, namely barrel rolls and various types Immulman turns. These maneuvers are possible with the Classic Controller, but the use of these maneuvers is faster than doing them yourself.
More of the gameplay, however, hinges on the use of more specialized "Tactical Maneuvers". In most cases, they are effectively kill-commands, with the exceptions being the ace battles. These maneuvers are crucial to success since you are relying on unguided weapons to take out (usually) fast moving targets. Whenever you are within attack range of anenemy that you're locked onto, a gauge onscreen fills up to up to 3 levels. As soon as one level is filled, and you remain within range, you can use it to pull off a Tactical Maneuver, which is represented by the game temporarily taking control from you and pulling off a series of impossible maneuvers in orderto put you directly behind the enemy so that you can shoot them. Harder enemies, including the aces, require higher level maneuvers to get behind, though you'll never be close enough long enough to get past a level one fill. This whole sysetem is generally what makes the game easy, since so many concessions had to be made for the default control scheme, while if makes the ace battles (especially the final battle) much harder, since the maneuvers will get you near the ace, but not behind them.
Music is pretty good, with a sort of Celtic beat to it. It does not include any music from the film, but all of it seems like it could easily have come from it. The music for several of the major battles (including the final battle) is definitely one of the best of the game. Kinda wish there was a soundtrack available somewhere.
Well, I was originally hoping to do some short paragraphs on multiple games. Guess that didn't work out though. But maybe doing some short ones now and them will help me get stuff on here more often.
The Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces
This game came out for the Nintendo Wii in the US earlier this year. It was a small time release, and the cover art was pretty bad (the promotional cover art was better), and I don't believe it sold that well. Innocent Aces is a tie-in game to Mamoru Oshii's animated film from 2008, The Sky Crawlers. The game does not follow the plot of the film, and even appears unconnected if not for the presence of Kildren and WWII style planes. It is, however, a prequel, with the actual connection to the film not being made until the game's ending, and even then it is only noticeable if the player has also seen the movie.
Anyways, the game was produced by Project Aces, the team behind the Ace Combat series, and could best be described as "Ace Combat Light". It looks like an up-rezzed PS2 game, despite the Wii being more powerful than it. Overall, its rather easy, with only the two or three ace battles providing any kind of real challenge.
That brings us to the controls. While the game has Classic Controller support (which, in my opinion, is preferable to the default), the default control scheme is Wii-mote and Nunchuk motion control, using the Nunchuk as an aircraft yolk with Wii-mote controlling throttle. It works on an immersion level, but since the Nunchuk only has an accelerometer and no sensor, it ends up not being responsive enough. As well, the yaw controls (for fine left/right turning movements) is mapped to the Wii-mote's d-pad instead of the Nunchuk's analog stick. The analog stick instead maps several combat maneuvers that are difficult to pull off with such imprecise controls, namely barrel rolls and various types Immulman turns. These maneuvers are possible with the Classic Controller, but the use of these maneuvers is faster than doing them yourself.
More of the gameplay, however, hinges on the use of more specialized "Tactical Maneuvers". In most cases, they are effectively kill-commands, with the exceptions being the ace battles. These maneuvers are crucial to success since you are relying on unguided weapons to take out (usually) fast moving targets. Whenever you are within attack range of anenemy that you're locked onto, a gauge onscreen fills up to up to 3 levels. As soon as one level is filled, and you remain within range, you can use it to pull off a Tactical Maneuver, which is represented by the game temporarily taking control from you and pulling off a series of impossible maneuvers in orderto put you directly behind the enemy so that you can shoot them. Harder enemies, including the aces, require higher level maneuvers to get behind, though you'll never be close enough long enough to get past a level one fill. This whole sysetem is generally what makes the game easy, since so many concessions had to be made for the default control scheme, while if makes the ace battles (especially the final battle) much harder, since the maneuvers will get you near the ace, but not behind them.
Music is pretty good, with a sort of Celtic beat to it. It does not include any music from the film, but all of it seems like it could easily have come from it. The music for several of the major battles (including the final battle) is definitely one of the best of the game. Kinda wish there was a soundtrack available somewhere.
Well, I was originally hoping to do some short paragraphs on multiple games. Guess that didn't work out though. But maybe doing some short ones now and them will help me get stuff on here more often.
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