The opening cutscene for SOCOM 4, Sony’s upcoming military shooter, introduces you to Lead Character McMainDude on his way to get a briefing from the commander. He waits outside the commander’s tent while an argument plays out inside. A feisty Korean woman is upset that her recon team isn’t being sent into the action. She’s furious. She’s seething. She mouths off to the commander, like you do in videogames. They exchange words over a map table and then the commander dismisses her. As she leaves the tent, she passes by Lead Character McMainDude and presses a pen into his hand.
“This is his pen,” she hisses. “Make sure you stab him with it.”
Then you get your briefing. Some stuff about Korea and a terrorist group. It’s mercifully brief, since everyone knows you want to get into the game proper. Naturally, you don’t stab the commander with a pen. Instead, as the scene winds down, the commander absently pats his pockets, looking for his pen. Nothing more is said about the pen, because nothing more needs to be said about the pen.
It’s a sad state of affairs in videogaming that I noticed this detail, not necessarily because it was memorable — the Korean woman is actually pretty cool, and she’ll figure prominently in the story — but because it meant the writers and animators collaborated on a gag. The writers wrote the pen gag, and the animators animated it. Normally, writers just write dialog and animators make characters that gesticulate generically. Then someone sticks them together and, voila!, cutscene.
I recently saw a demo of Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One, the upcoming co-op action game. Composer Michael Bross, known for the Oddworld games, was announced during the demo. At the end of the level, the players kill a big sort of squid/crayfish. As the creature chokes and coughs its last, Bross’ playful score slows and halts in tempo with the creature’s dying gasps. Here was an example of the animators and the score interacting specifically.
We can start talking about how games have reached the level of other entertainment when I stop noticing this sort of thing and I start taking it for granted.
I remember getting these little brain-teaser booklets as a kid, usually as a stocking stuffer. Flimsy books that felt like they were printed on something akin to newspaper paper. They had all kinds of little puzzles inside and were perfect for long trips in the car with the family.
Today’s level, Lights Part 2, brought that to mind, and it made me think that these community levels are kind of like one of those brain-teaser books. Only you can’t take LBP2 into the bathroom. Or at least I can’t. YMMV.
I couldn’t quite decide whether Skulls of the Shogun was a good title. Now that I’ve played it, I’m pretty sure it is a good title, because it’s actually an important part of the game. As you kill enemy undead samurais, your dudes can chow down on their skulls. Each one makes your dude more powerful, and the third one turns him into a demon (pictured!). Which is a pretty cool thing to be.
For what looks like a cute and simple strategy game, Skulls of the Shogun has some nifty ideas. You can read my 1up preview here.
Today’s level, World War 2, has a disclaimer in its description.
This level has been made to entertain NOT OFFEND.
I can’t say it offends me, but I find it unsettling. I’m fine playing the CoD Nazi Zombies mode, but this skeeves me out. Why? I’m okay with Steven Spielberg exploiting World War II for film material, but when Michael Bay does it my panties get all in a bunch. Why?
Maybe I need a new prescription for my monocle.
In the press release for this spring’s upcoming Sims 3 expansion pack, general manager of EA’s Sims studio Scott Evans proclaims:
The Sims 3 Generations includes new gameplay experiences and content that our community has been requesting for years including bunk beds, expansive weddings, midlife crises and more. Imagine booby trapping a friend’s toilet or turning your imaginary friend into a real person, throwing bachelor or bachelorette parties, all to spend your elder Sims years reminiscing about the past.
Yes, imagine all that great stuff which doesn’t at all sound like stuff you can kind of already do in the game. The press release also darkly hints at some sort of Facebook integration. Looks like I fell in love with Sims Medieval* at just the right time.
* No joke. You can hear me burbling enthusiastically on this week’s Jumping the Shark podcast. I’ll have a review posted at Gameshark in the near future.
Seriously. Don’t.
You can’t trust people who play videogames. They see things that aren’t there. Cheating AI, rigged die rolls, stacked decks. Or, worse, smart AI where there is no such thing. Piecemeal attacks are the AI probing your defenses! Bad pathfinding is actually a feint, or maybe even an attempt to flank you! Then they post these things on the internet. Then it’s true, because the bar for something being true on the internet is pretty low.
So when I heard in a few places that the AI in Shogun 2 spawns free armies in the fog of war, I didn’t really pay it much attention. I’ve played a fair bit and I’ve never gotten the impression that was happening. But more to the point, I couldn’t care less, because the AI provides exactly as much of a challenge as I want. If that means spawning free armies in the fog of war, spawn away, Shogun 2.
But it turns out no such thing is happening. An unidentified developer from Creative Assembly explains that the AI plays by the same basic rules as the player. But you can hardly blame people for being so flummoxed that Creative Assembly has made such a great game with a formidable AI. I know how they feel.
Ever get frustrated because you couldn’t quite figure out how to make a jump? That was driving me crazy a couple of days ago. I spent about twenty-four hours believing the jump was impossible. It had to be a glitch. It wasn’t. I was just doing it wrong. But I spent an awful amount of time trying to will that ledge a little lower, a little closer, so I could make the jump.
Forget that frustration. In today’s level, The Mind Factory, the platforms obey you.
I almost gave up on this level, The Red Sky Evening. It was close. It’s a beautiful level, with some cool features, but I got to one section that I just couldn’t figure out. Thankfully the designer hadn’t put in a life limit so I could keep trying. Unfortunately said designer chose a music shift just before this juncture to some kind of shoo-bee-doo crap that was nails-on-a-blackboard to me. This did not help my frustration.
I left it last night and came back to give it another whack today. What a difference a day makes. Still took me way longer than it should have, but it was just so satisfying to slip past that wall of frustration. No matter how long it took me. Or how annoying the music.
One final note. The picture for this level is hard to make out. If you look carefully you can see my sackboy half in view, and half in negative view as the designer has a couple of moments where you have to duck into this cool negative land. Like a mountain x-ray. I love little touches like this. Especially when the designer has the good sense not to overdo it and make the level about the effect.
Today was a day full of weird contrasts. Mediocre levels that bored me to tears mixed with cool levels that were just too hard for me to complete. I think I’ll mix some of the latter in later so you folks can take a whack at them and brag about how much better you are at this than I am. For today I’ll submit a level that was just frustrating enough, Wicked Woodworks. I’m not going to say I didn’t yell at this level a couple of times. I love the way it sounds. I like the weird desk dynamic I get. But I have to admit…harsh language happened.
My previous favorite “games are too art!” videogame was Waiting for Godot: the Video Game, based on the play by Samuel Beckett (pictured). However, it turns out Beckett’s estate consists of humorless killjoys. Mike Rosenthal, who made the videogame, reveals in an interview that he was legally bullied into changing the name:
To quote one of the several cease and desist letters I received from the French lawyers representing the Beckett estate, “Unfortunately we do not share your sense of humor.” They asked me to change the name “Waiting for Godot,” because they held the rights to it. Under American law, my game is considered parody and is protected under fair use, but I complied since I’m just a college kid who can’t really afford a lawyer. So I changed the name to “Samuel Becketttt’s Lawyers Present: Waiting for Grodoudou.” I even explicitly stated on my website that my game is now referring to the Australian Samuel Becketttt, not to be confused with the Irish Samuel Beckett. They didn’t appreciate that. So now it’s just called “Game.”
By the way, it’s worth reading the interview, which has a remarkable mystery and resolution in the first paragraph. Go here.
As for “Game”, you can play it here, or watch the YouTube video of its original incarnation here.
(Thanks to Dingus and The Daily Dish!)
That’s from an actual game called Dino D-Day, an upcoming multiplayer shooter that pits American soliders against Nazis with dinosaurs. I can’t imagine the game is any good and I couldn’t care less. Because whatever that thing up there is, its awesomeness will haunt my dreams.
This week’s wallet threat level is three, in honor of The 3rd Birthday, yet another distinctive title for the PSP, published by Square Enix. Considering they’ve just published the hours-devouring Tactics Ogre and Dissidia 2, I’m eager to see what the deal is with this story-driven shooter based on the Parasite Eve games.
The bigger news this week is Need for Speed: Shift 2. The original Shift was, for me, hands-down the best “serious” racing game I’ve ever played. And given that every time I boot up the frivolous and frothy Test Drive Unlimited 2 it finds some new way to break my heart, I’m ready to get serious.
Oh, there’s also some sort of 3D doo-dad out from Nintendo. Which, admittedly, looks pretty cool, but I’m not convinced it looks $300 cool. Please let me know if I’m wrong.
I present to you today’s level, Jet Storm: Customize your own Top-down Jet! And really, with a name like that, what more is there for me to say? I’m highlighting this level because I think it is the perfect companion piece to Hawkeye Fierce’s excellent Game Diary of A-10C Warthog. If you play that game and this level, I think you’ll see what I’m talking about.
In the context of talking about a demo of Battlefield 3 at a Chicago comics convention, this blog mentions that the console version will support 24 players, whereas the PC version will support 64 players and larger maps. Which is fine and all. Some very good games support only 24 players. Killzone 3 is just fine with 24 players, although it doesn’t have tanks, helicopters, and planes zipping around. Homefront seems to get along just fine when the vehicles roll in, and it’s only got 32 players and pretty expansive maps.
But I do have to wonder what a tricky act it is to balance gameplay when the console version will have such a markedly different player density. I guess the bottom line is that one of the reasons MAG and Killzone 3 are so good — one with 256 players, the other with 24, and both exclusive to the Playstation 3 — is that they only have to make and tune one version of the game.
