Logitech G5, Super Paper Mario, Izuna
I was pretty excited when I picked up a
Creative Fatal1ty 1010 gaming mouse on sale roughly one year ago. The form factor was comfortable and it had some flashy features like the Jonathan Fatal1ty Wendel logo lit up by an LED on the side, but unfortunately this mouse was not meant to last: the right mouse button developed a quirk where a single click would spam multiple click messages app-side, thereby rendering the mouse useless for serious gaming (I can't afford to be dropping right-clicks in World of WarCraft or Company of Heroes.)
I've generally been a fan of Logitech's products, so I chose the
Logitech G5 laser mouse to replace my crippled Fatal1ty 1010, and so far I've been happy with it. It has a nifty feature that's new to me in a mouse: you can actually choose between three different mouse sensitivity settings right _on_ the mouse. I'm not sure how practical this feature is because the three settings that you toggle between are quite far apart in sensitivity, and once you've found the right mouse sensitivity setting, how often do you really change it? (My favourite interface for setting sensitivity is typically to hit ~ to open a console and type /sensitivity 20 or some such thing.) Still, it's a nice thought. The stylishly airbrushed impression of caked-on geek hand oil, skin, and sweat is amusing as well.
I'm on Chapter 3 of Super Paper Mario and the game is surprisingly good. It's very much a quest game, with the focus being on squarely on exploration and puzzle solving, although there is some action gameplay to be had as well. The game comes together as a sort of mish-mash of impressive graphic design tricks and clever takes on old gaming conventions, which isn't enough to make this title a true classic, but it certainly is a fun ride. Sometimes the pace slows down significantly, especially during those sequences when the kiddie storyline is center stage, but generally speaking I've had a hard time putting the game down. I do often find myself wishing that Super Paper Mario was a "proper" Mario game with action-oriented gameplay, however. Speaking of which, I have been playing through Super Mario Land 3: Wario Land, as I threatened to do in a previous post, and it really is an incredible game.
I've also acquired Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja for Nintendo DS, which is--of all things--a Japanese
Rogue-alike with a shamelessly anime style. I've only played about an hour of this game so far, but what I've seen so far has absolutely blown me away. However, if I hadn't already been familiar with the gameplay mechanics of Rogue (in terms of how movement, combat, and item management generally works), I would have been very frustrated: Izuna, like Rogue, has a steep learning curve (but nowhere near as bad as the one that Nethack has.) As a dungeon-grinder kind of game, Izuna seems to be exactly what I want: something that I can play in short bursts and gradually improve at--a perfect formula for a portable title. One important detail about Izuna is that you don't lose XP when you die (just your items and money), so although it seems like you're stuck at the start of the game, you really aren't. Another important aspect of Izuna is that the game always saves as soon as you enter a dungeon and as soon as you die, so--like Rogue--you can't use saved games to guarantee victory. The strange paradox about Izuna is that it is not a very accessible game (Rogue-alikes are pretty much inaccessible by definition), but it's strangely accessible and addictive in exactly the same way that Rogue is (with anime characters and a persistent plot.) At least, I find it accessible as somebody who has played (and enjoyed) Rogue before. Overall, I'm thoroughly happy with Izuna.
Later today I'm going to be picking up Etrian Odyssey for Nintendo DS. I don't know where I'm going to find the time to play it, but having watched trailers and read reviews online, I know that I must have it. :)
DOA2: Hardcore won't load!
I recently acquired a used copy of Dead or Alive 2: Hardcore for PS2 (a game which I've played with Matt many times), and I've noticed an odd quirk: my newer style PS2 (the small form-factor one) won't play it. In fact, the PS2 has obvious difficulty reading the disc (which is in good condition) as the audio skips and jumps and the menus struggle to load. Getting into an actual game seems to be impossible.
The same disc
will load on an older model PS2, however. I guess this early generation title simply wasn't tested when they rolled out the new PS2. I wonder how the PS3 will deal with it.
In other news, X-Com: Terror from the Deep is selling on Steam for $2.50! This sequel to X-Com (which feels more like a stand-alone expansion) is an old DOS classic, not to mention a critically acclaimed turn-based tactical combat game. This sort of stuff is exactly what makes digital distribution worthwhile, in my opinion.
Say What?
One of my pet peeves is when an otherwise intelligent geek decides to showboat a little by undertaking to pontificate on a subject for which said geek has clearly overestimated his own level of familiarity. I was witness to such a train-wreck recently when conversing with a recently hired video game developer who made the following observation with a rather scholarly air:
(loosely paraphrased) "With the latest interface technology provided by the Wii (the motion-sensitive Wiimote), video games have come much closer to the level of simulating real-life activities such as sports. I believe that the next trend in video game design will focus on creating experiences which are not possible or not practical in real life."
As much as I can appreciate this guy's sentiment (that is, wanting to remark about the amazing properties of modern video game technology and the exciting potential for future advances), I've found that there are layers upon layers of ignorance driving his little rant (I didn't tell him so, of course, as I didn't want to find myself involved in a lively "debate.") I'll point out what I believe are the most obvious failings in the above statement.
Wiimotes are
not particularly good VR gloves, and any truly experienced gamer who has spent much time with the Wii knows this to be true. What the Wiimote has done is enabled loose gestures to replace the role that button presses served in pre-Wii games, which is a far cry from translating a user's 3-D actions into a game world verbatim.
For example, consider a game such as Soul Calibur. Let's suppose there is a Soul Calibur game for Wii in development. What this game will
not be able to do is have an interface where a user's swings are literally translated into Soul Calibur as accurate sword slashes. In a nutshell, this is because the Wiimotes simply aren't that accurate, from what I can tell, although it's possible that this situation will change as the software techniques driving Wii games improve (still, I am cautiously skeptical that the accuracy of Wiimotes will ever improve to the point of enabling a full-on sword fighting game.) What this hypothetical Soul Calibur Wii game
will be able to do is to remap the controls of the old Soul Calibur series games (pad button Square for horizontal slash, pad button Triangle for vertical slash, pad button X for block, and pad button Circle for kick on the PlayStation control scheme) so that they are instead represented by hand gestures--horizontal swing for a horizontal slash, vertical swing for a vertical slash, A button for kick, and B button for block, for instance. The key point to note here is that variations in the user's horizontal swing, for example, would translate into the same horizontal swing in-game every time; each horizontal hand gesture is simply the equivalent of a pad button press. This is essentially how Zelda: Twilight Princess's control scheme works. Of course Nintendo enjoys creating the perception that swinging a Wiimote while playing Zelda is just like believable sword fighting, but the reality of the situation is that you can play the game just as effectively with a GameCube gamepad and not loose any functionality.
It's also important to note that while the Wii interface is certainly novel, it has a lot of disadvantages too. For a game like Soul Calibur, the extra time required to perform hand gestures (versus merely tapping a button) would cripple the game's interface--one which is particularly fast paced and sensitive to timing. A Wiimote-based interface has the potential to feel more realistic in spite of its arbitrary nature (many Wii Sports activities feel a little bit authentic, for instance), but such an interface is not necessarily more fun than a traditional game control interface. Any game producer who does not understand this is certainly vulnerable to making a crappy Wii game.
Okay, so maybe this geek guy is just optimistic about the future applications of Wii-like technology, which is entirely reasonable. What I find much more offensive is the notion that games can now turn to the realm of fantasy having sufficiently mastered simulating reality. Are you fucking kidding me? Not only has the idea of using software to construct impossible fantasy worlds, as opposed to merely emulating reality, both old and widespread, but in fact there are many, many more games that construct impossible fantasy realms than there are games that try to be truly realistic. Look at www.ebgames.com right now and see how many games on the front page are serious simulations versus how many are essentially make-believe worlds; there's a good chance that
all of them are shameless fantasies. That would have been the case five years ago, and it very likely will be the case in another five years. Pong may have been a realistic simulation of sorts (or not--you could argue that the game intentionally creates an abstraction of table hockey that differs from the real life activity in important ways), but it was quickly overwhelmed by a history of blatantly surreal creations such as Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, and so forth. To think that the cumulation of video game technology over the past thirty years or more has been to arrive at the point of being able to accurately simulate reality is utterly ignorant of what video games are all about.
Are there other, more subtle levels of ignorance behind this guy's statement? One of the things that rubbed me the wrong way was his implicit assertion that, as a game developer (albeit one new to the job), he was automatically an authority on video games, even though it was fairly obvious to me that he had little personal (as opposed to professional) interest in the subject. But I guess what I find so noteworthy about what he said is that it isn't a simple matter of him having said one thing while meaning another; the deeper you dig into what he probably meant to say, the more you find yourself mired in bogus assumptions and outright false impressions about video games. He truly and simply didn't know what he was talking about.
