Archive for January, 2012
I’ve saved the most unique for last. I have a love-hate relationship with Square Enix’s games. I’m not a huge fan of their bread and butter Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy series, which fall into the category of typical JRPGs. I enjoy when they do something different, such as Chrono Trigger or Kingdom Hearts. In fact, the only reason I tried Final Fantasy 12 was because I read that all the hardcore fans hated it. Turned out it was one of my favorite games that year.
After the jump, Square Enix gets trippy Continue reading →
One of the most valuable lessons for videogames to learn is that they aren’t movies. I love this Gamasutra interview with Ken Levine about working with actors for Bioshock Infinite, partly because it digs deep into a process that eludes too many videogames: how to effectively use actors to capture the human element. But I really like the following anecdote, which gets to the heart of the matter that videogames can’t just do things the way movies, comic books, or TV shows do them. Understanding the limitations of a videogame is a fundamental part of the design process.
You gotta work with the tools that you have. You also have to make sure you’re not trying to do things that you can’t support. I think one of the first lessons I learned in the game industry, in my first few weeks, I was working on a Star Trek Voyager game that never shipped, and I wrote an opening cutscene for the game. I was a writer on it.
The last part of the opening cutscene I wrote in the stage directions, “The camera pulls in on Janeway’s face, and we see her eyes widen in terror.” Now this is 1995. Janeway’s face was a bitmap that was approximately maybe 32 by 32 pixels.
And my lead programmer said to me, “Dude. You’re not pulling in on Janeway’s face, and her eyes are not widening on terror. She’s sitting there, 32 by 32 pixels, you know, doing nothing.” And I was like “Ohhhh. Okay. I need to figure out different ways to get these emotions across.” That was a very valuable lesson.
Too many videogames are still trying to “pull in on Janeway’s face” in some manner or another. As Levine puts it at the end of the interview, “Whenever you find yourself fighting against your toolset, you’re not going to win that fight”. And now I will resist the temptation to reel off a list of recent videogames that should have known better and still lost that particular fight.
Each day I wake up, put on my Sith dress and get ready for the party I’m about to crash. After scratching, yawning, and using the bathroom, it’s time to jump in the pilot’s seat and wreak some havoc. Space havoc. But first, I do my “I’m about to murder” dance (pictured above).
After the jump: space Continue reading →
What the heck kind of MMO doesn’t have crafting? DC Universe Online. Until today, that is. The latest update added “Research & Development”.
…decide what kind of item you wish to create. Equipment Mods can be socketed into gear for powerful benefits, and various Consumables will lend you bonuses for short durations of time. Plans for the creation of either can be found throughout the world or purchased at new Research and Development vendors.
Once you have learned the appropriate plan, collect the necessary components, including Exobytes, and assemble the new item at a Research and Development station. Equipment Mods come in various colors which, when matched with similarly colored sockets on your gear, can provide even further bonuses and power.
As a fan of DC Universe Online, I think this is a great idea. One of the strengths and weaknesses of this game is that you can get to the level cap pretty quickly. This means it’s relatively easy to get to the endgame content. But it also means that satisfying sense of advancement comes to a halt and you’re left grinding instances for bits and pieces of raid gear. A good crafting system, especially when it relates directly to the player’s equipment, is a great alternate track of advancement once character leveling slows or stops. See, for instance, the legendary items in Lord of the Rings Online or the modular weapon system in Star Wars: Old Republic.
The new R&D system is part of Update 8, which went live today.
Every game of Jetpack Joyride opens in a room with a gramophone playing a languid holiday ditty. A jetpack sits on a table with a sign next to it that reads “DO NOT STEAL”. Some scientists shuffle around. At the other end of the room, another sign notes your high score as a measure of your best distance.
After the jump, all this changes when you touch anywhere to start Continue reading →
Recognizing a revolution is a lot easier than starting one. In 1994, Avalon Hill published Mark Herman’s design We the People about the American Revolutionary War, and the term “card-driven gameplay” started its lexical journey to ubiquitous descriptor of pretty much any game currently in print. Instead of moving all your little cardboard squares from hex to hex each turn, you moved a few of them from box to box using a deck of cards with numbers and events. You heard that right: you didn’t always play games with cards.
After the jump, it’s all in the cards Continue reading →
Demon’s Souls has had one hell of a story. The game was originally set to be published by Sony who dropped it because they felt it wasn’t going to sell. It turned into one of the must-have games for the Playstation 3. In fact, Demon’s Souls was the first game I bought for the Playstation 3 from word of mouth alone. And I bought it three months before I actually owned the system.
After the jump, the wonderful world of constant death Continue reading →
As much as I’d love to revisit Lord of the Rings Online, a writer who goes by the name of Revious at Kill Ten Rats details exactly what I know will happen:
When I logged back in I was beset on all sides by system mailings, announcements of new achievements I had somehow started, resets to all my legendary weapons, and a new trait / stat regime. It was bad enough that I was in the middle of a book, with tons of other quests already started, in the beginning of a region I didn’t remember while staring at a virtual cockpit of skills. Like a strange, albino gangle creature emerging into sunlight, I just blindly stumbled around for awhile until I found something to kill. It took me way too long to kill the enemy (as I, in the madness of things, had forgotten to up my legendary weapon’s DPS because it had been reset), and frustrated I logged off.
I don’t mean to engage in duelling MMOs, but this is exactly why I instead jumped back into Rift, which is atypical among MMOs for how it’s generous with respecs. One of Rift’s unique selling points is that every character class is, at any time, eight different character classes. Actually, that’s not quite true. A character is technically a mix of skills and abilities from any three classes at once. That’s not even quite true. A character can have several of these set up at once, and can furthermore toggle among them at any point. This lends Rift a lot of variety in terms of how it plays, but it also makes for a relatively painless re-entry. Don’t understand your character build? No sweat. Tear it down and build a new one from the ground up. Build a few. That’s how Rift works.
But I recommend Ravious story, because it actually has a happy ending. Spoiler: you can get by with a little help from your friends. In the end, the main draw of an MMO is the social element.
In The Old Republic, there aren’t any big spooky caves full of monsters. Or hell, maybe there are and I haven’t seen them yet. I’m cave-free at the moment. Instead, in this game, there are flashpoints. Which sound suspiciously like flash mobs, but with less dancing. Note that I said “less”.
After the jump: the neutron dance Continue reading →
Etrian Odyssey 3 is really the cop-out on my list. It is the most classic RPG design. When the series was first announced, the lead designer said in an interview that he wanted to bring back classic design, and that he looked at the Wizardry series for inspiration. However, while the game’s design came from the past, it featured several major renovations to the formula that make it stand out.
After the jump, a retro role playing game revival Continue reading →
Unfortunately, this week’s movie is horror director Ti West’s The Innkeepers. Fortunately, it gives us a chance to talk about West’s other movie, House of the Devil. If you don’t want The Innkeeper spoiled, you can fast forward to the 3×3 at the 42-minute mark, where we talk about our favorite door scenes.
Next week: The Divide
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My first paid videogame review was in 1994 for c|net’s Gamecenter. I’ve been writing reviews as a freelancer ever since then. By my math — hold on, gimme a second… — that’s either 16 or 27 years of experience as a freelancer. Today, it comes to a close.
After the jump, why you won’t be seeing my byline out there anymore Continue reading →
Yes, that’s a scene from an RPG.
A typical role playing game asks the player to stare at a list of commands, deciding which one he wants, followed by the same animation playing out each time. Resonance of Fate asks the player to run straight at an enemy, shooting it so he goes flying into the air, then jumping after it shooting it some more so that he slams into the ground doing additional damage, and, yes, this is still an RPG.
After the jump, turn-based bullet-time Continue reading →
The first group of levels in the Old Republic is what you’d expect from an MMO: familiarization and training. To that end, instead of discussing the academy in depth, I’m going to show you a letter my character wrote to his parents towards the end of his stay on Korriban.
After the jump, the epistle Continue reading →
Simple and beautiful. FreeFallin’ [3D Skydiving], our first community level of 2012, does come with a warning–or should I say warnin’–about motion sickness. If you’re prone to it, beware. When I first started playing shooters many years ago I would get queasy. Now, not so much, but I found I had to be careful with this level and play it only a few times a session. It’s worth trying, just beware.
Speaking of motion, I’m seeing an increasing number of community levels that require Move. Will this continue to be a trend in 2012? While I hope not as Move is not something I own and I’m not sure I have the space for it, I’m guessing the answer to that question will be yes. We already have to deal with a Move warning screen every time we boot up the game, so that’s probably the direction we’re headed. It will be interesting, at the very least, to watch how the LBP community deals with it going forward.
In the meantime, welcome to 2012! What say we go jump out of a plane?
Click here for the previous Weekly Little Big Planet: top levels of 2011
