Fritzkrieg Games Week
The theme this week is going to be "Fritzkrieg Games": a combination of Castlevania, Devil May Cry, Ace Combat 5, and Xenogears. I'm not sure when Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence will be released (EB Games site says mid-March), but that's about the only major title that comes to mind which would make this Frizkrieg Games week just about perfect.
The release of the Castlevania: Double Pack for GBA was the catalyst for a recent Castlevania splurge. I've gotten through much of Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonence, having technically finished the game but still needing to collect some more items to get the "good" ending. Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow and Dawn of Sorrow will be close to follow. At one point I was almost caught up enough in Castlevania fever to pick up Castlevania: Curse of Darkness, but sanity took hold and reminded me that if the GBA and DS Castlevania titles aren't enough to satisfy my hunger, I can always pick up Curse of Darkness later, and probably cheaper. Besides, although it's said to be the best 3-D Castlevania adaptation yet made, it's also said to be a fairly unexciting game that's somewhat behind the times.
Does any Castlevania fan truly understand why they keep making 3-D Castlevania games at all? Castlevania: Symphony of the Night was the best thing that ever happened to the Castlevania series (although there are perhaps a few others that come close), and although there have been several good Castlevania games since then, I haven't seen anything that pushes the envelope in the way that SotN did. Ah well, this probably isn't the best time to rant about that--not that I have much more to say on the subject.
Devil May Cry 3 was a no-brainer when I heard that not only was it coming out as a Greatest Hits title, but also that said Greatest Hits title was also a "Special Edition" with additional content. I picked that up along with the now very affordable Ace Combat 5; both games combined cost less than a copy of Castlevania: Curse of Darkness (or most other new PS2 games) would have been. As of yet, I've been too distracted with Ace Combat and other games to play Devil May Cry 3 at all.
Ace Combat 5 has been excellent so far. The play-time on my saved game data says that I've been playing for just over an hour, but I've finished eight missions or so and they seemed to take quite a bit longer than that. Maybe the missions just feel longer than they really are. In any case, fantasy dogfight-sims were one of my favourite game genres back in the days of Wing Commander and X-Wing/TIE Figher. It's been a while, but the thrill of the airbourne combat remains as appealing as ever, and Ace Combat 5 does a superb job of mixing action and drama. I've only just started the game, and Fritzkrieg assures me that it gets better as it goes on.
One small shame about Ace Combat 5: I would love to have kept the Japanese voiced turned on, but in the heat of battle I find that it's too difficult to read subtitles, especially with the sheer volume of chatter involved in many of the missions. Mind you, the fact that there is so much in-flight radio chatter is part of what makes the game so much fun, and I certainly wouldn't have wanted to see that changed.
As for Xenogears, I've really been shirking my duty there. If I'd stuck to my original schedule, I'd be finished by now--instead, I'm less than a third of the way through this epic RPG experience, and just on the cusp of where Fritzkrieg assures me "it gets crazy-good." It was a mistake for me to try and juggle Xenogears, Disgaea, Digital Devil Saga, Dragon Quest VIII, and Final Fantasy IV Advance all at once, among other games. For all of my talk about video games, though, I really haven't been getting a lot of nose-to-the-grindstone
playing done lately. I'll blame that on my day job. :)
Back to the grind tomorrow. Best of luck to all you jobbers out there.
Rainbow Six: Lockdown - Demo
Now that the computer is freed up (Sunny's heavy WoW stint having been finished for the time being), I've been playing some Counter-Strike: Source. I also tried to purchase Day of Defeat: Source a while back, but there was some confusion over my credit card (I think I gave them the wrong expiry date or some such thing) and after a while the charges were rejected and they revoked my access to it. Now you'd think that I would have just ran the purchase through again, but there were lots of other games demanding my attention at the time, and Sunny was starting to use the computer quite heavily, so I never got around to it. At one point I'd cited the original Day of Defeat as being one of my all-time favourite FPSes, and it's likely that I'll get sucked back into DoD: Source someday, but in the meantime I've been occupied plenty with other games.
And speaking of FPSes, I took the time last night to play a bit of the recent demo for Rainbow Six: Lockdown on PC. I'm a long-standing R6 fan, but only of the PC games--not the console versions which, while respectable after their own fashion, are an entirely different type of game. The thing about the original, PC-based R6 series that has always set it apart from other FPSes is that it has an obvious strategy simulator bent to it. There's always been that optional "planning phase" portion of each level where you draw up a detailed plan of the path that your team will follow through the level, and most R6 games have even had the option for you to participate as only a planner and observer, and to not actually go into the game yourself as an operative.
Of course, it's also always been fun to load up the "terrorist hunt" mode and go through the level lone wolf style, using stealth and accuracy to clean house, but even then R6 has always retained it's unmistakably simulator-based feel. Part of that definitely has to do with the way in which movement works in R6--characters move slowly and cautiously, only running in short controlled bursts when it's really necessary. R6 is also well known for it's uncompromisingly high lethality level: it has always been extremely unforgiving with regards to the effects of being shot, and because it treats the matter so seriously, it's one of the few FPS games where I've actually felt really bad when my character or another character on my team got injured or killed. The serious atmosphere of R6 has traditionally been completely different from the likes of Quake, Unreal Tournament, Max Payne, F.E.A.R., or even Counter-Strike.
As for the console editions of Rainbow Six, while they are extremely popular, they are more of a scripted walk-through kind of FPS, not unlike Medal of Honor and the like. You don't get the same kind of open-endedness to the levels, the detailed strategic planning, or the brutal lethality levels. I don't think these changes are so much due to technical reasons as it's just the simple fact of the matter that R6 was "dumbed down" (like almost any PC FPS that makes the transition to console, such as Ghost Recon, Unreal Tournament, or Quake) for the console audience. That's not to say that the R6 console games are less fun; indeed, for many players, the console versions would be more fun. But the console versions are certainly less serious, less strategic, and less deeply engrossing experiences. In the PC version of R6, a serious player might spend a full hour on a single level, only 10 minutes of which consists of actual "in the game" action. In the console version, you're pretty much always moving and shooting--it's not really a thinking man's game.
If you read this blog at all, then you should know by now that I love console gaming more than any other variety of gaming, and I certainly don't mean this bit about PC FPSes versus console FPSes as a burn on the power of consoles. But you have to admit that FPS games on console are simply not the same breed at all as those on PC. That's not to say that console FPSes like Halo, SOCOM, Medal of Honor, and the like aren't still awesome games, but it's generally true that you cannot turn as quickly on a console with a gamepad as you can on a PC with a mouse. The concept of a "flick-rail" (reflexively turning--usually a large distance like 45 degrees or more--and marking an opponent with near-instant speed and uncanny accuracy), which has been around in the PC gaming world for years and years, is more-or-less foreign to the console FPS genre, although I don't doubt that there's a reasonable facimile of this phenominon on consoles. What I'm trying to say is simply that the reaction times of enemies is necessarily slower (typically much slower) in console FPSes because the game simply wouldn't be playable if the enemies were as quick as they often are in PC games.
If you're a hardcore console gamer who disagrees that PC FPS games have faster enemies because the UI is superior enough to allow them, I will simply say this: find somebody who plays Counter-Strike on PC and is a reasonably competitive opponent, and find a way to hook it up so that you can play Quake, Unreal Tournament, Ghost Recon, or some such FPS on PC with an XBox 360 controller but your opponent can use a mouse and keyboard. See if you can beat the Counter-Strike guy when using a gamepad yourself while he is allowed the mouse/keyboard interface. I tell you, in any fair match-up, it is impossible, because while the gamepad player's rate of turn is strongly limited by the maximum pitch-rate allowed by the gamepad/joystick interface, a sensitive mouse only needs to budge an inch or less to execute a 180 degree turn. I know that that isn't solid proof of my argument--these are all just "facts" that I'm pulling out of my ass here, but it's all based on years of experience with these kinds of games. You don't have to take my word for it if you don't want to; I'm just trying to explain my position here so the next part of my rant about R6 makes some sense.
The point of all this rambling is simply that R6: Lockdown is the first Rainbow Six game ever that was a console game first and then a PC game, which naturally had me worried about where the series is headed. The console version of Rainbow Six: Raven Shield came out months after the PC version, and it was a very different game--one that was highly tuned to be a console experience first rather than a retro-fitted PC game experience, and that was a big part of its success story. I haven't played R6: Lockdown for console, so I can't comment on how different the PC version is, but I definitely felt the influence of the console roots of R6: Lockdown in a big way, and to be conscious of the fact that I'm playing a console game that was ported to PC was exactly what I didn't want to have happen.
For starters, the planning phase is entirely gone in R6: Lockdown. The single player demo level is also not open-ended at all--it is entirely linear, although it is quite large in scope; it struck me as being more on the scope of a typical Ghost Recon level than a standard Rainbow Six level, but with only one path forward. Of course, there have to be non-linear levels included, such as the multiplayer maps, but the single player level did have a highly scripted "point A to point B" feel to it, which reminded me of games like Medal of Honor or even Full Spectrum Warrior for some reason. The enemies were sluggish (slow to react, terrible aim), the lethality rate of the game was much lower than I expected (you need to be shot four or five times to die), and the entire production had a much more "bang-bang" action-movie shoot-em-up feel to it than any other Rainbow Six PC game that I've ever played. This is certainly not a traditional Rainbow Six game, and I'm very disappointed to see that.
The graphics are good, the controls seemed fine (they take a bit of getting used to after playing Counter-Strike and Unreal Tournament 2004 regularly and not having played R6: Raven Shield in a long while, but that's not the fault of R6), and if I can cite any beef with the overall look and feel of the game at all, it's only perhaps that it has a bit of that "adrenaline jock" feel to it rather than the classic Tom Clancy look and feel of earlier R6 games. At many points it was obvious to me that the single player level had been designed to stage epic firefights in a certain area, not unlike how Half-Life, Max Payne, and F.E.A.R. all pulled the same stunt. Overall, as a production, R6: Lockdown looks solid to me. But that's not what I'm concerned about here.
There is a theme that keeps repeating over and over wherever I look at what's being done differently with R6 this time around: before it was primarily a simulator for strategy nuts and Tom Clancy geeks, and now the game has gone mainstream as a sort of generic S.W.A.T./Army Hollywood shoot-em-up experience. When R6 made the leap from the PC world to the console world, it reinvented itself for a wider audience. Now it seems that the original flavour of R6, which was last represented nearly three years ago now with the release of R6: Raven Shield for PC (there was also the Athena Sword expansion pack a while later), has been largely--if not entirely--abandoned. I would have preferred to see the PC version of R6 and the console version continue down two separate streams, rather than for the console version to become the PC version. As a hardcore Rainbow Six fan who was playing it back in the days of Rogue Spear, I've been completely left out in the cold with this latest iteration of a once beloved FPS series. Fortunately, I have many other games to fill the gap left by R6's demise.
In other news, I nearly scored 7 million in Metroid Pinball--my score was just over the 6.8 million mark. I also reached the Artifact Temple level, and although I failed to beat it, at least it is unlocked so I can practice it. There seems to be quite a lot left to Metroid Pinball that I have yet to see. I'm also getting close to the end with Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance, and Electroplankton continues to be an amusing diversion when I don't actually have enough energy left to play a "real" game.
Epic Mount
A hearty 'grats to Sunny, the love of my life, who finally brought her WoW character to Commander rank this week and has a new mount to show for it:
The following is what her old mount looked like:
And the following is what her new mount looks like:
Making it to Commander rank was the cummulation of literally months of hard work, and there were many points at which Sunny questioned whether or not she should even keep trying for it, but in the end she made it and I am very proud of her.
GBA vs. DS
Whew, I played a good three hours of Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance this afternoon, and needless to say, it's awesome. The only GBA Castlevania game that I'd played before was Circle of the Moon, which I'd gotten reasonably far in before giving up out of boredom. That was a long time ago, so I can't say for certain exactly why I stopped playing it. I remember feeling that Circle of the Moon was good, but certainly not great--which is also how I felt about Golden Sun at around the same time. Sometime I'd like to revisit those games. I would definitely have felt different about the GameBoy Advance back then if they'd had stuff like the GBA SP, WarioWare Inc., and Zelda: Minish Cap. Anyway, seeing as how Circle of the Moon was the only Castlevania for GBA that I had, when the Castlevania "Double Pack" for GBA came out, I was first in line to snag a copy. Between that and Final Fantasy VI Advance, my GBA is seeing a lot of action these days. And I still haven't even cracked open my copy of Riviera.
The funny thing about it, though, is that although the GBA is certainly a solid hand-held platform, the Nintendo DS surely kicks the crap out of it. I am entirely serious when I say that this is not something which I had suspected at all. Back when I first caught news of the Nintendo DS, I was immediately put off by the idea of the dual-screens and the touch screen, and I stand by my words when I say that these doubts were well founded. It didn't seem like anybody could convincingly explain what would actually make the dual screens a good idea, nor could anybody offer up a really sound explanation of how a touch screen was going to be a useful gaming interface. I had written the whole production off as a novelty act, and died a little inside to realise that Nintendo was high off of the success of the GBA and were out to make asses of themselves. The GBA was such a simple idea: a SNES in your pocket (although minus two controller buttons, for reasons that I still can't fathom.) You can't go wrong with an idea like that. The Nintendo DS seemed nothing but wrong.
As it turns out, the Nintendo DS has three killer features that I didn't expect:
- It's capable of playing Nintendo 64 generation games, so in the same sense that a GBA is a SNES in your pocket, a DS is a N64 in your pocket.
- It's much more affordable than a PSP.
- It seems to have stolen development attention away from the GameCube.
Now when the DS first came out with its snazzy remake of Mario 64, I had doubts about the playability of Mario 64 without a better analog input than the touch screen. I still feel that these doubts are quite reasonable--that the touch screen is not a proper replacement for an analog joystick--but I'd sort of missed the larger picture that even though Mario 64 might not be as great on the DS as it was on the N64, other games that don't rely so much on analog input (Mario Kart, Resident Evil) could be ported very successfully to the DS, and original titles (Nintendogs, Electroplankton, Metroid Pinball) would still have hot N64 quality graphics in a handheld. Sure, it's not a perfect replica of a N64, but it's close enough.
I'm getting distracted here with hardware-centric talk, which is just plain wrong when one is talking about the success of a console platform. The simple fact is that the hardware has very little to do with it--it's that games like Mario Kart DS, Nintendogs, and Metroid Pinball are available at all that astounds me. Sure, the DS has much better graphics than the GBA, and worse graphics than the PSP, but all that really matters is that Nintendo DS has some totally killer games. The GBA has many more original titles available for it than the SNES ever had. I'm not as certain on how the numbers on the Nintendo DS stack up against the Nintendo 64, but I can already say this: there nearly as many Nintendo DS games that I badly want to play than there ever were N64 games of as much appeal, and the number is closing fast. The N64 had Mario 64, Wave Race 64, Mario Kart 64, Star Fox 64, Goldeneye, and Zelda 64. The Nintendo DS has Mario Kart DS, Metroid Pinball, Advance Wars DS, Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, and new potential hits arriving every month. The DS also has backwards compatibility with GBA games; if only the N64 had been able to accept SNES carts.
I was really pissed off when Lunar: Dragon Song and Advance Wars: Dual Strike were announced, because I felt that these were games that belonged on the GBA. And I dare say that I was right; I didn't find that either game did much on the DS that couldn't have been done effectively on the GBA other than soak up the extra screen real estate, which I have to admit isn't a bad thing at all. What is bad, of course, is that Lunar: Dragon Song ended up sucking so badly for no good reason, but at least the Advance Wars legacy was carried forward respectably. As a fan of the Lunar series and Advance Wars series, I felt like I was being bullied into buying into the DS platform just to keep up on games that had no business being there. And I will say that if the story had ended there, I would have hated the DS more than ever.
Thankfully, the DS isn't about exclusive games that are on the DS for the sole sake of suckering gamers into buying one. The DS actually has original games that are very DS-like in nature, which is to say that they just wouldn't be the same on any other system: Nintendogs, Kirby Canvas Curse, Metroid Pinball, and Electroplankton are ideal examples of this. And Mario Kart DS--oh Mario Kart DS, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways... The point is, and always has been, that Nintendo DS has awesome games. So awesome. I could not have predicted that. And I haven't even got my grubby little mitts on Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow yet. Actually, the point is that the Nintendo DS has a lot of character, and only the best of consoles ever develop a lot of character.
Say, did I say something about the Nintendo DS stealing developer attention away from the GameCube? I did! Wait a sec while I grab the link for the press release from Nintendo... ha ha, I'm just yanking your chain: there's no such press release, so far as I know. But that doesn't mean that what I'm saying isn't happening. I hadn't noticed it outright until recently, but the GameCube has been conspicuously quiet lately. What new GameCube games have been out lately? Fire Emblem? Super Mario Strikers? I took a pass on both of those. For some reason, the lineup of exciting new releases for GameCube seems to have ground to a shrieking halt. I haven't "needed" a GameCube game since the likes of Pikmin 2 and Resident Evil 4, and the next huge thing on the horizon is, of course, Zelda: Twilight Princess. I realised this at the same time as it dawned on me that all of the gaming budget that I used to spend on GameCube games has been going towards DS games instead. In fact, not only am I spending the money on DS games instead of GameCube games, but I'm spending my play time there as well. So while it's not an official thing--to the best of my knowledge--that Nintendo has ditched the GameCube to focus on the DS, it certainly seems that way to me.
The overall effect that the success of the DS has had on me is profound. For one thing, I've never done as much hand-held gaming as I do now. In fact, I've never before had such a deep feeling of hand-held gaming being as worthwhile as console or PC gaming. Secondly, my love and respect for Nintendo is definitely the highest that it has been since the N64 flopped almost a decade ago. I don't know if I will ever again love Nintendo as much as I did back in the NES and SNES days when they were pushing the envelope of the console gaming industry light-years ahead (and, I might add, in a way that the PlayStation, XBox, and Nintendo fans of today simply cannot understand), but at least I have some confidence now that Nintendo does have enough creative juice to do something worthwhile with the Revolution. The glory days of the 8-bit and 16-bit generations may be long gone, but this is still a good time to be a Nintendo fan, and I'm finally getting that.
As for the GBA, as much as Nintendo insisted that the DS was not meant as a replacement for it, we all knew that was just a pipe dream if not an outright lie. The way I see it, either the DS was going to flop, or the GBA was going to be rendered obsolete (or, I was afraid, something inbetween would happen and both platforms would be crippled.) The Nintendo DS is a huge hit, and although I'm still interested in GBA games, I don't get half as hyped up about an awesome GBA game as I do about a good DS game: I'm still looking forward to Final Fantasy V and VI Advance, but I'm way more excited about Resident Evil DS and
Final Fantasy III DS.
Looking back, I can scarcely believe that things turned out this way.
Electroplankton
Electroplankton is definitely a great experience in interactive media. It really does play a bit like a music disc--er, cart--that you direct and control rather than simply listening to. I strongly recommend playing with headphones to get maximum auditory pleasure out of it (and also avoid inconveniencing anybody who happens to be within earshot), since so much of the beauty of this game/sim is in the sounds that it makes.
My biggest fear with Electroplankton was that the appeal of it would be too short lived. I imagined it being somewhat like those Flash movies that have a musical bent and accept user input (
here is a link to one of my favourites), and those tend to have a life span of no more from five to ten minutes of entertainment value. Electroplankton has ten distinct levels, so my fear was that the entertainment value would be roughly 10 * avg(5, 10) = 75 minutes before I shelved it never to be seen or heard from again. As I've already played more than two hours of Electroplankton, however, and am still eager to play more, I can say with confidence that my doubt was misplaced.
A lot of the reviews that I read for Electroplankton complained about the lack of a save feature. I agree that it's sort of a let-down; the ability to save an input stream for a particular level would definitely add to the game. However, as a musical composition device, I don't think that Electroplankton is such that one would really feel the strong need to save anything. Each level is intentionally chaotic, and although you could learn to play a coherent piece of music on it (with much practice and patience), the general experience is that you aren't fully in control of what you're doing. You aren't composing music with it so much as you are jamming.
This is definitely the true beauty of Electroplankton: it dumbs the experience of musical jamming down to the level where somebody without any training in it (such as myself) can sit down, mess around with it, and produce accidental beats and melodies that are actually quite appealing. I'm just not convinced that anybody except that most hardcore Electroplankton fanatics would ever produce something that one would want to capture for replay later. I wouldn't be surprised if some of those Electroplankton fanatics did end up plugging their DS into their computer (headphones out -> microphone in) and making fun mp3s that way--in fact, I look forward to that. For my own part, what I do with Electroplankton is entertaining only to me, and only in the heat of the moment. If I captured an hour's worth of my musical musings and burnt them to a CD, nobody would really want to listen to it--not even myself. It's far more fun to be continually engaged in the interactive experience with the live game than to just get a static copy of the output.
I really have to commend Toshio Iwai for creating such a diverse selection of levels. Electroplankton is difficult to put down because you always want to play "just one more" round of it, and by the time you've tired of the level that you were playing last, you'll be craving another level that you played a while ago. There's enough variety and depth to these levels that, as you play around with them, you discover more and more little tricks to mix things up. The printed manual, which is something that I almost never consult where video games are concerned, actually contains a lot of useful advice, such as how Nanocarp respond to sound (you can get them to assume specific formations with the right input), and what the select and/or directional buttons do for some of the levels. Being able to employ the select button to change up the audio samples available is absolutely essential to get full enjoyment out of Lumiloop, Marine-Snow, and Beatnes, for instance, and the directional keys are very useful in Tracy and Sun-Animalcule.
Of course, if you're looking for a proper "game" experience, you're likely to be let down. Electroplankton is devoid of goals to accomplish, except for perhaps the obvious goal of entertaining yourself. There's also something of a mini-game to the levels Hanenbow and Nanocarp. Hanenbow challenges you to make a series of leaves all turn deep red through interaction with the Electroplankton, and through practice with the Nanocarp, you can make them assume formations on command--not entirely unlike teaching your dogs tricks in Nintendogs, except that the Nanocarp don't actually learn over time (so far as I know.) In any case, Electroplankton is one of the most pure kind of sims, and it's not as easy to consider it as a "game" in the conventional sense as it is for The Sims, SimCity, or a traditional flight simulator.
As for multiplayer options, I haven't had the chance to try it out, but according to the manual you can link two DSes and jam together with friend with the Beatnes level. While that might be fun for a few minutes, I don't imagine it to be much more exciting than playing alone. Still, it's something.
Overall, I give Electroplankton a hearty endorsement. It's perfect if you're looking for a more passive, low-key form of interactive entertainment to veg-out to, and I think that it has a lot of lasting appeal, although you'll probably burn out on it if you play too much of it all at once. In my opinion, it's a mistake for Nintendo to not have brought this title to store shelves; I think that people would have bought it, enjoyed it, and not felt ripped off for not having got a proper "game." There are much less worthwhile ways to use a Nintendo DS than those that Electroplankton provides.
Time to Relax
I'm having a somewhat bad day today, although in all fairness, I think I've earned it. I think you know the kind of day I'm talking about; it's been an unreasonably busy week and I've been working my ass off right up until about an hour ago. Then I went out for lunch and kinda sauntered around the mall, not really looking for or at anything in particular. I just need to freakin'
relax.
Normally when I get into this sort of a rut, I have a tendancy to medicate myself by buying something, which I think is really unhealthy (not to mention, sort of a waste of money.) Thankfully, this time of the year is generally a pretty slow time where video game releases are concerned, and the temptation to generate a little "pick-me-up" through frivilously spending was easily resisted. I could have picked up Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, but I'm already quite busy with DS games and I think that one can afford to wait a little longer. I also saw a used copy of Musashi Samurai Legend for cheap, but honestly it doesn't look like a game that I'd actually play. Still, there was some temptation there. I was also happy to note that there were new copies of Disgaea: Hour of Darkness in stock; of course, I already have that one.
I guess what really helps is that I knew that I had Electroplankton on order. It's easy to tell yourself that you don't need to buy a new game when you know that one is already on the way. Mind you, I'd checked Nintendo's online store a couple of days ago and was sad to note that my copy of Electroplankton had not shipped yet, and also, it was listed as being out of stock (ditto on EB Games's site.) Amusingly enough, when I got back to the office where I work, I found that my copy of Electroplankton had actually arrived, so I ended up getting my little consumeristic fix in the end anyway.
I'll post about Electroplankton after I've had a chance to try it out (no, I don't actually take my DS to work with me, unfortunately), but for now I'm very happy to note three cool things about the packaging:
1. It's shiny; ie. it uses foil.
2. It has "Created by Toshio Iwai" right on the front cover, which is excellent because game creators so often do not get a proportional amount of credit or recognition for the work that they do. There's also a blurb about Toshio Iwai on the back.
3. The back has a musical track listing, as if Electroplankton were more of a music album than a game.
I won't really know whether or not buying Electroplankton was the right thing to do until I get home from work and am able to give it a whirl, but it sure is exciting to actually have the game in my hands. Ah, to be a consumer in love.
Seriously, though--I need to spend less time shopping and more time gaming. I miss that feeling that I get when I shoot a zombie in the knee and then blow off his head while he's stunned in Resident Evil 4. I miss the groovy jazz tunes of Katamari Damacy. I miss watching Laharl commit acts of violence on cutesy anime villains. I miss the spectacular crashes of Burnout: Revenge. I've even been craving that feeling of being "in the zone" with Counter-Strike, and perhaps building up some skill at Age of Empires III. In other words, I just gotta make some time for gaming soon.
Oh yeah, I did finish Mega Man X last week and start on X2. Good times.
Birthday Party
I'm one year older, and none the wiser. I did get a few pics from my birthday that weren't blurry, but for a lot of them my camera was on the wrong setting. Whoops! Anyway, here are a couple of blurry shots that serve to illustrate just how much of a freaking geek I am, because this is the sort of thing that happens at one of my "parties," whoooo...
Pac-Man Vs.
I've been doing a bit of hosting lately--friends and gamers who are one and the same, mostly. We have our usual party games: Super Smash Bros. Melee, Mario Kart: Double Dash, and occasionally Zelda: Four Swords. (I'd like to see more Chu-Chu Rocket happening, but it doesn't frequently happen, perhaps because it's such a frantic game.) One of the most popular 4-player games by far is a little-known gem that goes by the name of Pac-Man Vs.
The concept behind Pac-Man Vs. is simple. Have you ever played Pac-Man and imagined how awesome it would be if your friends could play as the ghosts? That's basically what Pac-Man Vs. is. Now the first hang-up you'll encounter when you consider how multi-player Pac-Man would work is that if everybody sees the entire level, it's far too easy for a few ghosts to cooperate and pin Pac-Man in a corner. What you really need to make this game work is for the ghosts to have limited information about their surroundings. Of course, Pac-Man himself needs to be able to see the entire maze, which makes it difficult for him to share the screen with the ghost players.
In the PC gaming world, you'd just require that the player hosting the game plays as Pac-Man, and the other players client programs only recieve information about their immediate surroundings. This makes the problem all too simple, but it only works for PC games--what about the hot-seat console scenerio? Pac-Man Vs. uses the GameCube connectivity with GameBoy Advance to create a setup where the player playing as Pac-Man uses the GBA and each other player gets a normal controller. The ghost players get limited windows into the world on the TV screen while the Pac-Man player plays a deceptively normal-looking game of Pac-Man on the GBA. Ingenious.
Of course, what makes this game special are the little tweaks that really make it work--the design details that elevate it from a fun demo to a full-fledged game. In the ghost view screens, Pac-Man leaves a short-lived trail behind him. The ghosts can't see very far, but it's easy for them to pick up Pac-Man's trail; the net effect is that ghosts will often chase Pac-Man in much the same way that the ghosts in a classic game of Pac-Man would. Unlike a regular game of Pac-Man, the ghosts can pick up the fruit. In addition to getting points, the ghost that eats the fruit has their field of view temporarily widened, which makes the fruit far more valuable to ghosts than to Pac-Man himself.
To make the game truly interesting, the players ought to be in direct competition. You may have noticed in the last paragraph that I said the ghosts can get points--actually, what happens is that each of the four players takes turns being Pac-Man, and points are traded around. The first player to be Pac-Man is decided at random; after that, whichever ghost player catches Pac-Man gets to be Pac-Man for the next round. Pac-Man acquires points as per usual: he picks up pellets and fruit, catches ghosts after getting a power pellet, and gets a nice bonus if he managed to clear the map. Ghosts also get points for picking up the fruit, but their main source of points is that they pick up 1600 points that are subtracted from the Pac-Man player's score when they manage to catch him. The first player to accumulate a specified point total (I commonly play on 15,000) wins the game.
The ghost behaviour in Pac-Man Vs. is far more interesting than in any other Pac-Man game imaginable, both because the ghosts are human players and because it's not always in their best interests for the ghosts to cooperate. If one of the ghost players has a massive point lead, for instance, it's in Pac-Man's best interests to assure that if he gets caught he is caught by one of the other ghosts, because the player with the huge lead will further that lead even more if they get to play as Pac-Man. Ghosts will often employ cheap tactics such as camping a power pellet (which works well if there is only one left, although it makes it easy for Pac-Man to clear the rest of the board for easy points), camping the fruit, or camping the last few remaining pellets on the board. To help curb this last tendency, when there are only 10 pellets left, the game hides the location of the remaining ones from the ghosts--and if Pac-Man is clever, he will clear the map in such a way as to make it confusing where the final remaining pellets are. Strategic behaviour such as this simply is not as much of a factor in a standard game of Pac-Man with A.I. controlled ghosts.
And what really makes Pac-Man satisfying is that when you're hot-doggin' it as Pac-Man, you know that the ghosts eating your dust are actually your friends. Years ago there was this bar that my buddies and I used to go hang out at, and it had one of those cocktail-style arcade machines of Ms. Pac-Man. I used to get a few pints of ale in me to work up a nice buzz, and then totally rip-through Ms. Pac-Man; I wasn't much of a wizard at it, but I was good enough that my buddies (none of them really the arcade gamer variety) would watch and get a kick out of the close calls, near misses, and psyche-outs that I pulled off against the A.I. ghosts. Those were good times. But it's far better these days when I can hook up with my friends for Pac-Man Vs., because I'm still the same slippery-assed Pac-Man, and now the frustrated ghosts are my friends. I still manage to squeeze in the near misses and psyche-outs, but now instead of watching as passive observers, my friends are right in on the action.
Needless to say, the whole point of this little rant is that Pac-Man Vs. is pretty much the most fun four-player console game that I have, and yet a lot of people don't even know about it. The best part is that you don't even need to have four controllers or four GBA units (as is required by games like Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles and Zelda: Four Swords) to play--you only need three controllers and one GBA with a link cable. Part of the reason that Pac-Man Vs. is not more widely known is that it comes bundled with Pac-Man World 2 for GameCube, which is not a particularly worthwhile game; but it is worth picking up solely for Pac-Man Vs. If you have a group of friends who commonly get together for Mario Kart: Double Dash, Mario Party, or some other such GameCube game, and at least one of our friends has a GBA, you should give Pac-Man Vs. a try.
Mega Man X Collection
As to the issue of what game is likely to draw me in next, the recently released Mega Man X Collection has stepped up to become a forerunner. It's been a long time since I did a proper playthrough of Mega Man X, one of my all-time favourite SNES games; so long, in fact, that when I reached Sigma's fortress, I hardly recognized the place. I remembered where all of X's upgrades were (the X-Buster upgrade, jump boots, armor, and helmet) although I couldn't remember how to activate the easter egg to get Ryu's hadouken, and I only found two energy tanks and five life containers. I'm sure there's more than that--I'll have to do some more digging around and see if I can't find those elusive nooks containing more precious power-ups.
I did take a serious run at Sigma's fortress, though. The first level initially smacked me down hard, but after a bit of practice, I regained some more of my Mega Man groove and was able to topple it. The other two levels of Sigma's fortress are not as difficult as the first, and I was able to beat them without much fuss. Sigma himself was a different story.
Now I probably could have beaten Sigma with a couple more tries, but after so much Mega Man X action in one evening, I was simply worn out. Even knowing that I would have to start Sigma's fortress over from scratch, I decided that it would be best to sleep on the matter and make a fresh run later (tonight, I hope). I have every intention of finishing Mega Man X and moving on to the sequel. It'll be mildly interesting to see how far I make it before stalling out; for instance, when I got the original Mega Man Collection, I managed to play through some of the original Mega Man (not enough to finish it--it's pretty tough!), and finish Mega Man 2 and Mega Man 3. I started on Mega Man 4 but didn't make it very far before giving up--in retrospect, maybe I should have just skipped on to 5... but I do still feel that I should go back, put my nose to the grindstone, and finish Mega Man 4. It would be sweet to work through the entire series once and for all.
I did take a little bit of time to play the first little bit of Mega Man X-3 before going to bed, though. The only other Mega Man X game for PlayStation that I'd played any of before was X-6, and I had to satisfy my curiosity a bit. I'm impressed with what I saw, and I can imagine that if nothing else, I'll manage to get through Mega Man X-2 and X-3 before tiring of the series. As with the original Mega Man Collection, it would be nice to get through all of Mega Man X. It's a worthwhile endeavour.
Then again, I could be spending my time on Castlevania series games instead. Hmm... that's a tempting thought. :)
I've always kind of wondered what the real story behind the creation of Mega Man X is, anyway. It's impressive that the developers decided to make a spin-off "alternate universe" of Mega Man, that they actually went through with it, and most of all that they made it work so well. I wonder if there was ever a feeling of stagnantion surrounding the original Mega Man series that made some of the creative minds behind it feel like they needed to explore something new. I wonder what kind of influences lead to the different style of Mega Man X--if there was any particular manga or anime that it is based off of.
Whatever the real story is, I'm definitely happy with the Mega Man X Collection. Mega Man X always has, and always will kick a lot of ass. The original Mega Man 3 remains my favourite Mega Man game of all, though.
Ico
I finally finished Ico, not more than two minutes ago. The ending for that game is amazing--it really adds a lot to the whole experience, and reminds me of what it used to feel like to work really hard to finish a game and be rewarded with an epic, story-driven conclusion. For the record, I'd say it took me about 9 hours to finish the game: 4.5 hours to reach the final save point, about 2.5 hours that weren't recorded by the game clock on my memory card saves (time that I spent stuck on a puzzle without saving), and 2 hours from the last save point to finish the final set of challenges and watch the credits. (I shouldn't have to tell you this, but make sure you sit through all of the credits right until the very end. You wouldn't want to miss anything.)
As much as I enjoyed Ico on its own, I have to admit that it looked a lot better given that I've seen so much of Shadow of the Colossus; it's just that the visuals in Ico, while artistically stunning, were hampered a bit by the low resolution--both of the screen and of the textures. As much as it was a flaw for Shadow of the Colossus to be so choppy, I think that the low res graphics of Ico are decisively worse. But when you have Shadow of the Colossus burned into your brain, you can subcontiously extrapolate how great Ico would look if it was in hi-res; after all, the art style for both games is the same, and it is a gorgeous art style. The artistic direction of Ico is by far its strongest point (ditto on Shadow of the Colossus.) It's hard to say exactly what comes in second in terms of the game's strongest points, but it's probably either the puzzle-solving aspect or the intriguing story and setting. The gameplay gets passing grades, but it's nothing to write home about.
I'm really happy to have finally polished that one title off, at any rate, although I'm eager to see another game by the same developers. I'm procrastinating badly at finishing Digital Devil Saga (yes, the first one--the second one is still waiting), and I haven't played Dragon Quest VIII in weeks. I have been messing around with Metroid Pinball, which has displaced Mario Kart DS a good deal (but not completely), and I recently rolled a katamari just over 1800m on As Large As Possible 5 in We Love Katamari. That was fun. I still haven't managed to roll up the sun, which is interesting because some friends of mine who also have the game say that they did that quite handily. There's probably a whole bunch of levels that I still need to complete. Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space is still seeing some play, as is Soul Calibur III. Am I forgetting anything?
Ah yes, I was recently re-bitten by the Disgaea bug and put a couple more hours into it. I'm at about the 38 hour mark now, I believe, and Laharl has hit level 50 (although he's 10 levels ahead of my next highest level character--a Ronin whom I named Kasumi after Akane's eldest sister in Ranma 1/2, and whom I'm hoping to transmigrate into a more powerful character soon. Too much information?) Disgaea really seems to plod along, but it sure has lasting appeal. It happened a few times where I got so caught up in power levelling that I played for roughly four hours mining experience and tweaking equipment before remembering that there are actual story missions to complete, and then over the course of a half-hour I finished an entire chapter of the game. Usually after that I hit upon a story mission that I'm not strong enough to beat, and the cycle begins again.
As soon as I finish Disgaea, I intend to start on Phantom Brave. I'm not going to start on Digital Devil Saga 2 right away, though--I'm hoping to leave a bit of room to continue my in-progress playthrough of Xenogears, not to mention Dragon Quest VIII. I'm not sure what's going to take Ico's spot on my schedule yet, if anything. Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones? Zelda: Wind Waker? The Mark of Kri? Perhaps I should focus on getting further in Burnout: Revenge, take up Gran Turismo 4 again, or hell, even crack out my old copy of Ridge Racer Type 4. There are also Resident Evil games for me to play and replay. Oh, and having just said all of that, I am reminded that there is an unopened, recently purchased copy of Riviera: The Promised Land sitting next to me while I type this. Whew, so many possibilities.
Have I ever mentioned that I need to take a week, month, or even a whole year off from work just to play video games? Ah, but then how would I pay for them? Yes, I'm pretty sure that dilemma has come up before.
On a different note, I've been sucked in by the "rebel sell" (that's intended to be a Naomi Klein quote from No Logo--check out what a fucking smartie I am) of a couple of odd game titles. The first is Nintendo's Electroplankton which sounds like a really interesting sort of "game," if it can be called a game--it's really more of a simulation from the sounds of it. There's a pretty good chance that I would have bought it if it had been available at EB Games, but I have to admit that the fact that it can only be purchased online from
Nintendo's web store made it seem that much more exotic and pretty much clinched the deal. I hope the game doesn't take too long to ship. On some small level, this is helping to make up for the fact that I couldn't buy one of those rare Star Fox Weekend Competition SNES carts that Nintendo auctioned way back when. Or that I didn't buy that copy of Castlevania: Bloodlines that I saw in the bargain bin once. Or that I didn't snag that last copy of the John Woo "The Killer" and "Hard Boiled" DVD double-pack when I had the chance, naively thinking to myself "they'll still have some in stock in a couple of weeks." (Sniffle.)
The second such odd title to have captured my attention is
Beggar Prince, the Sega Genesis game being published for the first time this year having only just been developed. I mean, how hilariously cool is that? I still have a working Genesis, and I badly want to support the people responsible for bringing that game out, even if perhaps it is just a bit of a publicity stunt. The game is an RPG, though, and that adds a great deal to the appeal. I would likely have talked myself into pre-ordering it already if it wasn't for the fact that they require payment through either PayPal (ugh) or money order (double ugh.) Why can't I just phone the bastards and give them my credit card information over an insecure line? I'd feel much better about that, honestly.
Well, that's about enough gamer-ramble for you to shake a stick at. I gotta get that good stuff out while I can. Whoops, I neglected to mention Final Fantasy IV Advance, which I'm still actively playing, although I'm at a mildly frustrating part at the moment (the magnetic dungeon where you can't equip anything made of metal.) Anyway, take it easy until next time!
WoW: The Board Game
I don't know about you, but I sure had fun today.
Emergent Behaviour
So I did a little bit more thinking on Gridgame and Nanaca Crash (only a little more, mind you), and I remembered something fairly obvious that I feel is worth mentioning. One of my favourite books is Kevin Kelly's
Out of Control (you can read it for free online) which deals extensively with the subject of emergent behaviour--or, simply put, the idea that a small system of hard and fast rules can lead to wildly unpredictable results, a.k.a. chaos. In a nutshell, that's what games like Gridgame and Nanaca Crash are about: you know the rules, and yet every time you throw the switch to start the game, you see something different. Now, I'm not saying that these games are endlessly entertaining, but you have to admit that they are surprisingly entertaining for such small productions. It's amusing to contemplate just how simple these games really are, and yet they still manage to generate unpredictablity--behaviour that "emerges" from rules that are each rigid and predictable. In Gridgame, you can work out what will happen to each tile as it is rotated (which neighbours will be triggered), but the resulting chain reactions are fascinating and constitute new rules of play unto themselves.
This is a topic that affects games in general on a large scale. Computer games by definition are systems of hard-and-fast rules, because they are written as computer programs. Perhaps a game could be written where the player can change the rules as the game goes along, but even then there would have to be absolute rules that dictate the ways in which the rules can be changed. The only way to generate chaos in such a restrictive system is to cultivate unpredictability through interacting rules, which is exactly what many video games do. Gridgame and Nanaca Crash (along with countless other little Flash games) demonstrate this concept clearly because they are so narrow and focused in scope. Larger productions tend to deal with much larger sets of rules, but they still try to create interactions between the rules such that larger trends in the game emerge.
Another way to think about emergent behaviour is in terms of fighting game combos. These days, modern fighting games build a system of combos right into the game; the game designers are aware of possible combos and design the game accordingly. Back when Street Fighter II was first released, however, the notion of a fighting game "combo" had not been coined yet. The game was so wildly popular and ferociously played that players started to discover sequences of moves that could be chained together very quickly, and those became the first combos. Combos in Street Fighter II are a property of the game that the designers may not have originally predicted, but the rules of Street Fighter II had enough interplay that something as sophisticated as a combo became possible.
Or, to take a more clear-cut example, the game Magic the Gathering (okay, not a video game, but bear with me) is all about combos. Each card has well defined abilities (at least, the designers try to define those abilities well) that on the surface do not appear to leave much to the imagination. When you probe deeper, however, you discover that the interactions between the cards can become quite sophisticated, and a particular card might end up being far more powerful than anyone intially predicted. Veteran Magic players understand that this is the core property of the game that makes it so interesting and addictive.
So the next time you're really hooked on a game and feel like philosophising a bit, consider the role that emergent behaviour plays in adding to that game's mechanics. Once you start looking for it, you'll see it everywhere.
Gridgame.swf
I often check
Reddit for cool links, and it's courtesy of them that I pass on today's Flash game du jour:
GridgameI've got a score of 1245 so far.
Whoop... I just obliterated that score. 1503 is the one to beat now. :)
Anyway, this kind of game raises an interesting question for me. While I imagine it to be possible to play this game skillfully, the easiest way to plug through it is just to try your luck and if it doesn't work out, hit the "reset" button. Once the thing starts running, there's nothing else you can do anyway; and the more you play on a single instance, the less reactive it becomes since the individual tiles tend to align themselves in matching blocks where turning one tile doesn't set off any of its neighbours. When I play, I generally just look for a tile somewhere in the middle of the screen that will set off two neighbours at once and blindly let the thing run.
So my question is this: since Gridgame is really only a game of chance that doesn't actually test my skill, why is it so much fun? I linked to
Nanaca Crach a while back, and it's pretty much the same deal--mostly a test of luck rather than skill. Perhaps the fact that the game requires so little effort is part of the appeal?
I have no answers here, really. I just wanted to ask the question.
Top Games of 2005
Happy new year, everyone. I'd like to kick off 2006 by listing what I figure are the top games of 2005. The top games of 2004 were World of WarCraft and Half-Life 2, which are some truly incredible games. Did 2005 stack up?
Parappa's Top Games of 200510. Zelda: Minish Cap (GameBoy Advance)
I thoroughly enjoyed this worthy addition to the Zelda series. It was not entirely new feeling, since it is essentially the same kind of Zelda game that A Link to the Past was, but it still managed to be fresh and exciting. It was a pleasure to see such a steadfast game recipie rebourne.
9. Gran Turismo 4 (PlayStation 2)
GT4 is a solid continuation of the Gran Turismo series, and continues to push the borders of excellence in racing games. It's hard to imagine that this game could have been any better without being made for a more high-performance platform.
8. Guild Wars (Windows)
This is the so-called MMORPG without a monthly subscription fee. While it is not a true MMORPG in many senses of the term, it is an engrossing RPG experience nevertheless. In my opinion, this the best value-priced alternative to World of WarCraft available so far.
7. We Love Katamari (PlayStation 2)
We Love Katamari is certainly a worthy successor to Katamari Damacy. It expands on the scope of the game while refining the gameplay slightly, and although the core game is basically identical, We Love Katamari is a better title to invest in. It also deserves credit for widening the audience for Katamari Damacy and bringing the game to new heights of popularity.
6. F.E.A.R. (Windows)
F.E.A.R. is perhaps the most technologically impressive game of the year, featuring stunning visuals that have drawn rave critical acclaim. It's a quality production that is worth visiting and revisiting, and it has given FPS fans the adrenaline-charged single-player experience that Quake 4 so obviously failed to deliver.
5. Shadow of the Colossus (PlayStation 2)
In some ways, Shadow of the Colossus succeeded more than any other game this year (well, almost any other game) in invoking in me the same sense of wonder about video games that I used to have as a kid. Technically, SoTC is a flawed game that runs choppily on the PlayStation 2 and provides a compromised experience as a result, although it may have inadvertantly appealed to my retro gaming sensibilities by reminding me of what it was like to play cutting edge games on inferior hardware "back in the day." Artistically, on the other hand, SoTC truly deserves to be hailed as one of the top games of the year. I hope to see more games with the same standards of quality and originality as this one in future years.
4. Mario Kart DS (Nintendo DS)
I've been really blown away by this ingenius hand-held racer, which manages to not only be excellent by hand-held gaming standard, but in fact to be a better racing game than other Mario Kart titles--even Mario Kart: Double Dash for GameCube. The finely tuned gameplay, heightened difficulty level, and impressive bouqet of race tracks provided by Mario Kart DS have blown me head-over-heels. Mario Kart DS has even ushered in the new Nintendo WiFi technology to provide multiplayer play over the internet. This really is an amazing game.
3. Battlefield 2 (Windows)
I loved the original Battlefield 1942 back in 2002 (has it been so long already?) and through 2003, but I was ultimately let down when Battlefield: Vietnam lacked the same degree of long-term staying power (that's what you get when the development studio changes, I guess.) With Battlefield 2, the series is back with a vengeance, and it truly is a worthwhile multiplayer experience. I used to dream about a multiplayer FPS that subtly blended RTS elements to make for a larger-scale strategic experience, and wondered how such a game could possibly be made to work online, given what a chaotic and uncooperative bunch of jerks random gamers on the internet can be. Battlefield 2 has taken large strides towards making that dream a reality, and I really have to commend not only the superbly immersive experience that it provides, but the clever social engineering that it employs to coerce players into working together more often than not.
2. Metal Gear Solid 3 (PlayStation 2)
The original MGS perfected the elements of setting and story-telling, while MGS2 introduced stunning gameplay and technological achievement. MGS3 combines the best of both worlds, with a plot and setting worthy of the original MGS (although, honestly, I will always prefer the original), and graphics and gameplay up to the standards of MGS2. The overall effect is mad genius, and MGS3 is a must have title for all MGS fans. Of course, I'm biased to have put the game up so high on my list, but it's a worthwhile bias to be a big MGS fan.
1. Resident Evil 4 (GameCube)
I don't really follow gaming news all that closely for the most part, so I didn't see RE4 coming. As a matter of fact, I pretty much went out on my birthday day thinking "I should treat myself to a new game" and bought RE4 primarily because it was the latest, greatest thing at the time. Imagine my surprise when RE4 dominated my life for the next two weeks as I voraciously poured 26 hours into finishing it. I've been ranting and raving about what a brilliant game it is ever since, and I've even managed to make partial converts out of a few of my friends. Most impressively, though, nearly a year later I still pop RE4 into my GameCube once in a while for some quick action, and I still contemplate playing through it again. I can easily imagine that even years from now I will enjoy the odd game of RE4 and speak well of it, because RE4 isn't just a technological marvel--it is a true masterpiece of a game.
Honorable Mentions:
Soul Calibur III
Burnout: Revenge
Dragon Quest VIII
Digital Devil Saga 2
Nintendogs
Intentionally Omitted (because I haven't had the chance to play them):
Psychonauts
Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow
Ace Combat 5
Devil May Cry 3
Tekken 5
