Odama video
My GameCube has not been seeing a lot of use lately, to put it lightly. With so many great games occupying my attention on the Nintendo DS (Tetris DS, Resident Evil DS, Mario Kart DS, Metroid Pinball), PS2 (MGS3: Subsistence, Ace Combat 5, a whole bunch of RPGs), PC (Day of Defeat, Counter-Strike, Rome: Total War, Age of Empires III), and even GBA (Final Fantasy IV Advance, Tales of Phantasia), the GameCube hasn't been able to sneak much time in--especially since it hasn't had a feature attraction in months.
Zelda: Twilight Princess looms on the horizon, but in the meanwhile another game has caught my eye. It's called Odama, and it's kind of a cross between pinball and Shogun: Total War, or something. It's not the concept that sold me on the game so much as the video that I found at the following URL:
http://odama.nintendo.com/
The EB Games web site has an estimated release date for this game of April 10th, which isn't even two weeks away. There's a good chance that I'll be looking into this game further.
Also worth mentioning is the 4X game Galactic Civilizations II (GalCiv II), which has been on my radar for a while, but which I haven't made any time for. I was looking at some of the scores that it got over on MetaCritic.com and was surprised to see that several critics are calling it an exceptional game that really goes above and beyond. I'll have to re-arrange my schedule to find the time to get into it.
WoW as a Management Training Tool
Check out this article from Wired about a guy who's skill at running a guild in World of WarCraft helped to land him a management job at Yahoo:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.04/learn.html
Unlike education acquired through textbooks, lectures, and classroom instruction, what takes place in massively multiplayer online games is what we call accidental learning. It's learning to be - a natural byproduct of adjusting to a new culture - as opposed to learning about.
...
...accidental learning transcends intentional training. When role-playing gamers team up to undertake a quest, they often need to attempt particularly difficult challenges repeatedly until they find a blend of skills, talents, and actions that allows them to succeed. This process brings about a profound shift in how they perceive and react to the world around them. [...] The fact that they don't think of gameplay as training is crucial. Once the experience is explicitly educational, it becomes about developing compartmentalized skills and loses its power to permeate the player's behavior patterns and worldview.
In this way, the process of becoming an effective World of Warcraft guild master amounts to a total-immersion course in leadership. [...]
I hope that somewhere out there, right now, some teenage kid is showing this to his parents. :)
Active Gamers
I stumbled across
an article about "Active Gamers" on a blog called Pag on Games. In a nutshell, the author (Pierre-Alexandre Garneau, "Pag") introduces the idea that there is a large and neglected segment of gamers who fit uncomfortably between the widely acknowledged "casual" and "hardcore" varieties. Casual gamers want simple, PopCap.com style games that take a minimum of effort to get into. Hardcore gamers want sophisticated games that soak up oodles of time and effort to properly get into. Active gamers are looking for games that are sophisticated, but not so demanding that they can't be appreciated within the gaps of a busy schedule. In other words, active gamers want "real games" but don't have time to make a hobby out of them.
Pag identifies three primary properties of the active gamer:
- Experienced with games
- Mature adult
- Busy with family, career, other responsibilities
His profile is modelled after the typical gamer who was heavily into video games as a hobby in high school or college and therefore is already familiar with gaming conventions and knows the thrill of game mastery, but who has grown up and is too busy to properly persue games as a serious hobby anymore. Pag suggests that this segment of gamers is quite large--perhaps larger than the casual or hardcore gaming populace. He might be onto something, but then, I'm inclined towards Pag's point of view since I myself am a gaming hobbist who is frequently pulled away from gaming by the demands of my career.
Pag also mentions that the Nintendo DS fits the needs of the active gamer quite well. Many of the best Nintendo DS titles are "all ages" affairs that are suitable for adults, and since it's a portable platform, games are engineered around being played during small time slices where the player could be suddenly interrupted. This is an insight that has been simmering in the back of my mind ever since my recent fondness for the Nintendo DS started, and reading Pag's bit about active gamers made me realise that I've been gaming primarily in two modes recently: hardcore games like Digital Devil Saga, Disgaea, Day of Defeat, Metal Gear Solid 3, etc. when I have the time, and active games like Resident Evil DS, Mario Kart DS, Weird Worlds, etc. when I'm particularly busy. I would consider myself to be a hardcore gamer who slips into the active gamer profile when the demands of my life get too heavy, or based simply on my mood and energy levels.
One point that occurs to me is that the segment of active gamers could stand to grow a great deal in the next decade. When you look at kids today, many more of them are hardcore gamers than there were when I was a kid. When the current set of 8-15 year olds reaches the 23-30 age bracket, one would expect a whole freaking lot of them to grow into active gamers. Young people these days are much more familiar with gaming conventions and much more accepting of gaming not only as a form of entertainment but as a genuine artistic expression than young people were ten years ago. People talk about the rise of casual gamers and jock gamers, but I really think that Pag is onto something with this active gamer idea. If active gamers aren't already the largest gaming segment, I think that they are at least the fastest growing segment.
And while Pag talks about the requirements for a video game to appeal to active gamers (sophisticated, easy to learn, not demanding on time or commitment), what he doesn't mention is that such games are perhaps the most difficult type to develop. I don't mean that games for active players will cost the most to develop, or demand the most work per artist/developer on the project, but rather that games for active players, in my mind, require a special attention to the game design--a sort of balancing act between making the game a little bit hardcore but not too hardcore.
After all, there are certain formulas for writing games for casual and hardcore gamers. For the casual player, create something colourful and cheery with few rules and barely any learning curve. Puzzle games featuring bubbles, gems, and drops are common-place. Such games are very limited in scope and can be developed by a single person creating cute little graphics, simple game logic, and a small game engine that may use a platform like Flash or Java. For the hardcore player, develop a game with the mentality of it being like a massive Hollywood production. Pour lots of money into the development of artistic resources like detailed 3-D models and animations. Develop sophisticated controls and build a complex system of rules with layers of impressive functionality. There's no pressing need to make the gameplay accessible because the intended audience will be willing to invest lots of time into mastering the controls as long as they're won over by the game's other qualities. Despite the fact that these project lie on opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of development effort and target audience, they share in common the fact that their extreme approach simplifies their development strategies. It's clear that with the casual game you want to keep things small and simple, and with the hardcore game you want to be massive and impressive.
Writing a successful game for active gamers requires a certain degree of elegance. The game needs to have complexity, but that complexity can't spill over onto the player's shoulders like it does in hardcore games. The gameplay needs to be intuitive, and the game's production values need to be impressive enough that ex-gamers will be satisified, but there can't be that sense of a massive production that requires the player to sit through a 30 minute opening cutscene or play through a 30 minute tutorial before gameplay starts. The game needs to have raw appeal--it needs to be fun, addictive, and easy to learn but tough to master. To do all of that and still keep the game from being a heavy commitment is a very difficult thing to achieve. It's far easier to limit oneself to the realm of a casual game or to shoot for the moon with an outrageously massive project than to try to ride that line down the middle where the game is simply beautiful and elegant.
Ultimately, this brings me back to a theme that I've been rambling on about for a few years now. Video games have broken into the mainstream, and players in the industry now recognize the market segments for casual and hardcore gamers quite readily. What we will see rise amidst the noise is a middle ground for "artistic" games, which I believe will largely appeal to the sophisticated yet reserved crowd of active gamers that Pag is talking about. In much the same way that Hollywood produces blockbuster action movies and cheesy dramas, both with little substance, for mainstream consumption while a smaller film industry continues to produce real movies for true movie-lovers, I believe that the video game industry is settling into a pattern of developing lots of cruddy mainstream games while a few truely great ones slip where somebody with genuine inspiration got involved.
But I am sort of mixing up topics here. It's difficult not to with a subject this interesting. Consider a game like Metal Gear Solid, which is clearly for hardcore gamers. It has the big production values and the complex gameplay, but it also has non-mainstream appeal. The issue of mainstream versus non-mainstream is not the same as the issue of casual versus hardcore gamers. Casual games can be non-mainstream, as can hardcore games be mainstream. In the sense that Pag talks about "hardcore" games, I believe he means to include games like Black or God of War that are huge blockbuster hits, as well as games like Disgaea and Digital Devil Saga that are more underground success stories. Above I'm sort of making the case that the games to satisfy active gamers will be artsy, non-mainstream games, but that is not the case. Certainly some active gamers will be drawn to non-mainstream games and get their fix on them, but there will be mainstream games for active gamers as well. What I'm really trying to say is that I believe that it takes a fairly special kind of game to draw the attention of active games (they are busy with their lives, after all), and so in that sense perhaps the less mainstream, truly inspirational games have a better shot at appealing to them than the more formulaic, blockbuster variety.
In any case, kudoes to Pag for presenting such an interesting idea.
Tetris DS
I got some heavy gaming done today between Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence and Tetris DS. There's a common theme here in that both games prominently feature an online experience.
Playing MGS3 online is pretty cool. There's definitely something of a learning curve, especially if you've been away from MGS3 for a while, like I have. I actually found the controls to be clumsy and awkward; the L1 and R1 buttons have very different effects depending on whether you're pointing your weapon or not, and how each possible combination of L1 and/or R1 with/without weapon aiming gets to be a bit confusing. With some practice, though, it all becomes second-nature.
There's definitely a heavy stealth aspect to MGS3 online. You need to get the drop on your opponents and manage to sneak into good vantage points undetected if you want to rack up kills. The stealth aspect isn't so pronounced, however, that you won't find yourself running around a lot of the time, frantically using the L1 button to lock on opponents. Part of where the stealth element breaks down is that your opponent's names float over their heads once you've spotted them, so having seen an opponent, you can track them quite easily. I suppose this mimicks the behaviour of how the guards work in the single-player game, although human players tend to be smarter. :)
MGS3: Subsistence probably wouldn't be worth getting solely for the online play if you already have MGS3, unless you're really, really keen on the idea. Because they've tossed in emulated versions of the original Metal Gear for MSX and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake for MSX, you've got more than enough bonus material to justify the purchase.
As for Tetris DS, hell yes. I haven't actually cared about a Tetris game release in at least 16 years or so, so when I first heard that they were making a Tetris for Nintendo DS, I just sort of rolled my eyes. For me, the most cannonical Tetris games were the PC version way back when, the NES version, and the original GameBoy version. Of these three, I liked the NES version the best--I felt that it had the best "feel" and challenge factor--but they were all good. There were other versions of Tetris that I devoted a bit of attention to, including Tetris Plus, The Next Tetris, and Tetris Worlds, but I didn't like any of them as much as the PC, NES, and GBA Tetris games. In fact, The Next Tetris and Tetris Worlds down-right sucked. Tetris Plus was alright, though.
Anyway, so I start reading about Tetris DS and how it's going to have classic Nintendo themes (NES games, basically) and Nintendo WiFi, and I start thinking that this version of Tetris might be alright. As long as it's playable, they don't mess up the "classic" game mode, and the online play works, I'll happily buy it. I decided to chance that stuff and pre-order a copy. When the game finally arrives, I plug it in, and am immediately blown away.
I knew that Tetris DS was going to be stylish, but it looks even better than the screenshots I saw made it out to be. The gameplay is very slick--there isn't a single feature that I find lacking. I saw that some of the multiplayer modes have the option for Mario Kart style "items" that you unleash on your opponents, and while I was mildly skeptical at first, I've found that they work as well for Tetris as they do for Mario Kart (besides, you can play without them.) The classic mode is just what I want for when I "just want to play Tetris," and--most surprisingly of all--the other play modes are actually quite entertaining.
I've been down on alternate Tetris play modes ever since I started to really like Tetris. It doesn't help that most Tetris games have either mildly dull alternative ways to play Tetris, or downright awful alternative ways to play Tetris (Tetris Worlds is such a case.) If I wanted to make changes to the gameplay formula for Tetris, they'd likely be minor things--perhaps even things that make the game more standard, rather than less standard. With Tetris DS, however, Nintendo has actually discovered some variations on Tetris that I can really get into, especially since I feel that they could help me to become a better Tetris player.
Of course, I mainly got Tetris DS for the online play. Satisfyingly enough, the online play is very competitive; and now that I'm signed up, it's even more competitive. See you suckers online. >:)
PS3 Launch Delay
This is not meant to be a news post about the
breaking story that the launch of the PS3 console has been significantly delayed. Rather, I intend to rant a little about whether or not this is truly a bad thing.
The story that I read about the matter over on 1up.com had a pretty obvious slant:
Today, Sony officially conceded defeat to the recent flurry of rumors and speculation [...]
As the news is coming out of Japan, that creates a worrisome scenario for America and Europe. There were already rumblings Sony wouldn't be able to launch in all territories before the end of the year, but missing out on the Christmas season over here could prove a deadly blow to Sony's next-generation plans.
Somewhere in Microsoft's offices, Bill Gates just opened a bottle of champagne. [...]
That one article aside, I find that people have been worked up into quite the frenzy over this whole affair. There is talk about
broken promises and whatnot circulating. People are talking about the XBox 360's growing market share and how this is such a massive setback for Sony.
As far as I see it, this is all fallout from a mistake that Sony made back at E3 last year: they let the pressure of the upcoming console war bait them into promising too much. Sony said that the PS3 would kick the crap out of the XBox 360 in terms of power, that it would be affordable(?), and that it would be out this spring. Anyone taking a hard, long look at the situation back then had to realise that at least one, if not two of these promises would turn out to be false. Personally, I'm relieved that the bit about the release date was one of the things that fell through, because it's the promise that matters the least to me.
Microsoft made an even bigger blunder with the XBox 360 than Sony is making with the PS3. They've released an expensive, under-powered console with no good launch titles and nothing stellar on the horizon even a few months later. I'm far more interested in upcoming releases like Final Fantasy XII and Zelda: Twilight Princess than anything that the XBox 360 has under way, and that is a damning, damning thing for the current leader of the pack hardware-wise.
Saying that Sony is doomed because Microsoft has such a massive head-start at this point is like saying that the Super Nintendo was doomed back in 1992 because the Sega Genesis (1989) had such a massive head-start. The parallel is better than you may first realise because a) the XBox 360's appeal is primarily mainstream, and b) the PS3 is likely going to trounce the XBox 360's hardware. Similarly, the Sega Genesis had a lot of early sports games and other mainstream games, whereas the Super Nintendo launched with hardcore "gamer's games" like Super Mario World, F-Zero, and Pilotwings, and even though the SNES was launching against the Sega Genesis's firmly installed userbase, everyone could plainly see that the SNES graphics were flat-out better.
Apparently, Sony is claiming that they're having issues with their Blu-Ray copy protection scheme and that's why the console has been delayed. I don't really buy that; there's probably some truth to it, but I bet that the bigger picture is simply that Sony needs more time for the kind of hardware power that they want to deliver to become practical and affordable for the consumer electronics market. I desparately hope that even if the price-point is as high as the full XBox 360 (and we all know deep down that it will be), and the release date is many months off yet, at least all of the promises about the truely next-gen hardware will turn out to be legit, because in my mind that's all that Sony really needs to succeed.
Actually, strike that last bit. All that the PS3--or any other console--needs to succeed are games that appeal to real gamers. Kameo, Full Spectrum Warrior, and Elder Scrolls IV are all nice games to have, but what any console really needs are games to die for, like Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil, and other such things that a real gamer can scarcely live without. All this talk about console hardware and console release dates doesn't get my blood pumping. It takes
games to make that happen. I don't care if the PS3 gets pushed back to 2008 as long as when it finally arrives it brings some epic titles with it.
Metal Gear Saga Vol 1.
Yes, I got the Metal Gear Saga Vol. 1 DVD that comes as a bonus with MGS3: Subsistence when you pre-order. It's quite the epic piece of work; basically, it's a documentary of the history of the Metal Gear Series to date, with lots of interview material with Hideo Kojima and some story summary stuff that talks about the themes driving each Metal Gear game. Any serious console gaming fan should want to watch this. I personally found it to be quite inspiring and educational.
On a completely unrelated note, a buddy lent me his old copy of Sega Smash Pack Vol 1. for Dreamcast, and I was amused to find that Shining Force is included on it. I'd never actually played this 1993 tactical RPG before, and I was actually quite impressed with the graphics, artwork, and storyline, although I've only played the first 30 mins or so. If I'd had this game back in '93, it would have blown my mind.
Plodding Away
I'm definitely in a bit of a gaming slump lately, having not put nearly as many hours into gaming as usual, and having not even opened several recent purchases including Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, Riviera, and Tales of Phantasia (GBA). I have been making some progress in Xenogears, though, which is pretty exciting--I'm about 20 hours in, just having reached the orphanage (look it up in a walkthrough if you care to), which is much futher than I've made it in any previous attempt that I've made at a play-through. I'm thoroughly enjoying this classic RPG, but I can definitely find things to complain about.
These are mostly the sorts of complaints that I could make about the vast majority of all RPG of the same era as Xenogears, or of any previous era for that matter. Xenogears pushed the state of the art forward back in 1998 with its artwork and storytelling, and it certainly has one of the most compelling fantasy settings of any RPG that I've ever played. That having been said, I find that the plot is far too drawn out--that major developments are far between, and the story seems to center around a lot of action that occurs almost without purpose. The main characters are thrown about from nation to nation and battle to battle without a strong connecting plot to bring these turbulant events together. I'm not saying that the events don't make any sense at all, but certainly it is easy to forget why you've arrived at any given destination, and villains have a tendancy to jump out of the woodwork without provocation. This portion of the game, at least, seems scripted as a whirlwind tour of the world of Xenogears, with strong connections into a deep plot that, at roughly the 1/3rd mark of the game, is still unknown to me.
It's been a slog-fest at times to get this far simply because after 20 hours of gameplay I'm tired of the game always dallying too long at each locale and only dropping hints at the "real" storyline. This sort of thing would be tolerable in a gameplay-driven RPG, where the combat system is the focus. Disgaea is an example of an RPG (a tactical one, though) where the light storyline is not a bother because the game holds its own storytelling aside. Xenogears does not have a good combat system though; there is some intrigue to be had in boss battles and dungeon exploration, but I don't find these elements of the game to be up to snuff. When I realise that the game is going to make me plod through another dungeon, I dread that it might be a long one, and I'm relieved when it's over.
What Xenogears has lots of is town exploration. This would be as dull as the dungeons except that the town areas are very colourful and wonderfully scripted. The game's dialogue isn't the greatest (blame the localization, perhaps), but it still has a certain charm, and for the most part I thoroughly enjoy exploring the Xenogears universe. What gets annoying is when the game occasionally forces me to play the "hunt the magic button" game where there is some scripted event that must be triggered by talking to a particular character or some similar action before the game can progress. This annoying RPG convention is precisely what kept me from finishing Kingdom Hearts, and to keep things moving in Xenogears I've frequently resorted to GameFAQs.com, since there is rarely any good reason to insist on figuring these sorts of things out on one's own.
I've mentioned to Fritzkrieg that I'm forcing myself to play through Xenogears in order to start on Xenosaga, and for the most part this is still true. Fritzkrieg mentioned (and I may have written this before on this blog) that forcing oneself through Xenogears to get to Xenosaga is like forcing oneself to watch the original Star Wars trilogy (eps IV, V, and VI) in order to see the new Star Wars movies (eps I, II, and III.) I'm not really sure what to make of that. Xenogears has some excellent qualities--including the aforementioned artwork, storytelling, and the fantastic muscial score--but the gameplay and the pace of the game has been downright frustrating. While I've had the same experience with modern RPGs, I still want to believe that something with as much of a fan following as Xenosaga has would somehow manage to be more playable than Xenogears, even if the story isn't as great.
Generally speaking, I think that the hallmark of a bad RPG (which is something that Xenogears is NOT) is that it feels like work to play. A dedicated fan will still force themselves through an RPG that feels like work and relish the aspects of the experience that were enjoyable, but there is a world of difference between playing an RPG with that sense of duty and playing an RPG that genuinely sweeps you away. Xenogears is supposed to be one of those highly addictive RPGs that takes over one's life and is simply amazing all-round, but I haven't really gotten as much out of it as that--at least, not yet. I am definitely enjoying the game, and it does seem to be picking up in pace, but it I have to admit that making it this far has not been easy. Here's hoping that the next 20 hours of Xenogears are all that they're cracked up to be.
Rome: Total War
I've been on an unexpected RTS kick this week. First I've been playing a fair bit of Age of Empires III (which I suck at), and then last night I finally got my first taste of Rome: Total War. I've had some fun with the Total War series before--I have both Shogun: Total War and Medieval: Total War, although I never got to play either of them as much as I would have liked.
Age of Empires III reminds me a lot of Rise of Nations, although I guess that RoN would probably remind me of AoE II if I'd ever bothered to play AoE II. I'm really looking forward to Rise of Legends, by the way, and it's not often that I look forward to any kind of RTS game. In any case, the obvious common thread here is that AoE III and RoN are both Microsoft Studioes games, and although the themes of these games differ a bit (RoN covers the whole of human history--like Civilization--whereas AoE III centers around the colonization of the new world), the gameplay has a lot in common. I'm hard-pressed to say which of the two games is better, though; my taste in RTS games simply isn't sophisticated enough to have a trustworthy opinion.
As for Rome: Total War, I can scarcely believe that I waited roughly a year to finally break down and get it. The Total War series has a funny history in that the first one, Shogun: Total War, was published by EA Games, the second one, Medieval: Total War, was published by Activision, and now Rome: Total War is published by Sega. Each iteration of the series has been met with critical acclaim and increasing levels of public attention, and for good reason. While Shogun: TW was mostly a concept game--a brilliant idea with a functional but not technically impressive implementation--the follow-up, Medieval: TW, was significantly refined to both look and play better. Rome: TW continues this trend of incremental improvement to the point where it actually looks very good, and gameplay enhancements have made it the most user-friendly Total War game yet.
The only thing perhaps questionable about Rome: Total War is the value of the conquest strategy mode where you maneuver your armies to capture Roman provinces and build an empire with which to conquer the world. I've only just started playing the game, and the conquest mode seems alright, but the true forte of the Total War series are those gorgeous real-time battles. It seems to me that managing city-states and construction queues is just sort of a distraction from the real point of the game, although I might end up feeling differently after playing the game for a while.
I'm still making steady progress in Resident Evil DS. Every review I've seen on it either praises it for reviving such a classic gaming experience or pans it for being a plain rehash of an old game that doesn't hold up to modern gaming standards. Both sentiments are fairly accurate; if you love Resident Evil and want to be able to play the original RE game on Nintendo DS, then RE:DS will give you that ability. If you're expecting something more than what the original PlayStation Resident Evil game was, though, you're not going to find it--all of the DS-specific additions to the game, while amusing, are not a compelling reason to play the game.
