We Are the Space Dinosaurs

A Look Back at Bioshock

2010-04-14T08:21:00.000-07:00

We take today to pause and consider the development of Bioshock and how this historic game came to be. At the developers round table:

Writer: "Okay, so we're gonna make a SOCIAL COMMENTARY. It's gonna be epic. Deep. We're taking on Ayn Rand. This is university level stuff guys! I have a degree and everything! I even read Atlas Shrugged!"

Lead designer: "Nobody's ever read that! Especially not people at college! Holy shit man!"

Writer: "I know! This is gonna be so original!"

Concept artist: "So it's underwater?"

Writer: "Yup! A decaying underwater utopia gone wrong, populated by refugees and victims of a grand social experiment."

Character artist: "Okay, so... this is an adventure game, I take it? We'll be dealing with NPCs and lots of dialog. Are we looking at an Elder Scrolls type world structure?"

Writer: "Oh no! It's a first person shooter."

Concept artist: "Really? Wow. Um, I just paint backgrounds but um, is there a lot of room for dialog in a first person shooter?"

Writer: "Ah, there lies the genius! It will play like a first person shooter, with maybe a touch of System Shock (but not too much). The social commentary will be dynamic! Your actions and the state of the environment will make a statement!"

Lead designer: "Ah, I get it now. You're gonna be rescuing people from a horrible place."

Writer: "Huh? No no... the citizens are the enemies. They're all horrible mutants now. They'll attack you on sight."

Character artist: "Did Atlas Shrugged have mutants? I never read it..."

Lead designer: "Well... sure. So you're just going to shoot everybody? I thought the idea was there are refugees."

Writer: "Yes yes, the refugees are the mutants. It's a profound statement. And because it's a first person shooter, you'll have no choice but to murder them all!"

Character artist: "Whew, well, that makes MY job easier!" *starts doodling generic video game zombiemutants on pad*

Lead designer: "Hokay, whatever you say. I never took literature. Levels of violence? If these people are victims, are there going to be mercy killings? Do we want to look into a morality system?"

Writer, spreading hands: "Oh, you can hit the mutants with a wrench too. Saves ammo. And we won't need a complex morality framework. See, this is the really clever part: there's gonna be little girls you can choose to save or to 'harvest' for their mutagenic power."

Character artist: "Why do the little girls have mutagenic power?"

Writer, jabbing finger at the 500 page story outline on the table: "It's all right here! I sent memos, did nobody read this last night?" *grumbles under his breath about the nincompoops he works with*

Lead designer: "We'll need to determine how the player's decision with the uh, little girls, affects the dynamic nature of the game world and works in to the end game."

Writer, grinning hugely: "No sweat. Don't worry about it; it doesn't change anything."

Concept artist, raising hand meekly while chewing on his digital stylus: "... what's the point of offering the player a choice then...?"

Writer, slamming fist down on the table: "For chrissake! It's all obvious! Any idiot can see it!"

*everybody looks down and feels ashamed for misunderstanding the genius of the writer, feeling gypped by never selecting Liberal Arts in college.*

The Real Final Fantasy

2010-04-09T12:45:00.000-07:00

When Eurogamer reviewed Final Fantasy XII four years ago, they said that perhaps in five years we would look back and see FFXII as a pivotal turning point in the development of video game RPGs.

This was because FFXII took a number of bold steps in the evolution of a genre that has long lagged behind developments in other genres - especially on the Japanese side. Eurogamer's prediction didn't work out so much.

FFXII sold decently, though falling short of the Playstation platform's biggest selling entries in the series. The fan backlash against the game was, however, vocal and tremendous. Final Fantasy fans, it seemed, didn't like change all that much. Over the years, the hate for FFXII subsided into a background grumbling of dissatisfaction. But it wasn't until the release of the next mainline game in the series that it becomes very clear just why the hardcore Final Fantasy fan rebelled against FFXII.

That's because they hate FFXIII even more.

Aren't I stereotypical enough?

On paper, this shouldn't be happening. Final Fantasy XIII was not developed by the core creators of FFXII. Rather, the minds behind the bigger hit, FFX, return here. And they essentially followed what seemed to be an edict inside Square Enix: "Make this game FFX on steroids. That's what the people want. So milk that cow."

FFXIII bears a striking resemblance to FFX. There is no world map, nor a 1:1 scale overworld like FFXII. It's linear; the player runs through a series of maps that are more like stages, with a boss at the end of each, then an elaborate CG cut scene, then rinse and repeat. But in the effort to make sure that Final Fantasy fans know this game is just for them, FFXIII goes far. It cuts out all pretense of doing anything other than running through a linear stage, fighting enemies, and fighting a boss. Its character growth system is like FFX's Sphere Grid, but even more restricted. For the first 10 of 13 chapters in the game, there is essentially no choice on how to grow a character.

At that point, FFXIII throws a bone to people who may want what it considers "advanced" RPG features, such as optional goals and flexibility in developing a character. The player enters Gran Pulse - a truly massive open world with dozens of hunt-the-monster sidequests to complete for gear and growth points before continuing on the linear story. The Crystarium growth system also opens up here - allowing characters to chose expensive alternate branches that force one to think and weigh the costs, and allowing secondary job-like roles to be developed.

But it's not just the game structure that tries to be FFX gone mad.

It's the story. See, FF fans didn't just dislike XII for its massive MMO-like game world, its player-programmed party scripting system ("Gambits"), or its style of ambient soundtrack. They disliked it for its story and its characters. For the average Final Fantasy fan, XII's characters "didn't change". Its story was "boring". In comparison to past games, this was technically true. The characters in XII don't suffer shocking plot twists or upsets that cause them to become different people. Most of them are older and already know who and what they are. The primary plot is mostly political, predicated on intrigue and the clash of both nations and classes of people. It's a very mature story - mature in a way not often seen in video games, where "mature" usually refers to how violent, bloody, pseudo-intellectual, or sarcastically nihilistic and perverse an M-rated game's characters or world is. The characters too, where mostly restrained. Their dress was stylish only inasmuch as it fit the baroque look of FFXII's Ivalice. But not beyond that. Most people in the game look practical. They look as if they're actually living a reasonable life in their universe. (People who fear latent homoerotic urges and claimed that the bare-chested Vaan was "Japanese bishie porn" didn't admit to the fact that he was little more than Disney's Aladdin rendered in realistic detail - the same scrappy street rat who wears an open vest because he lives in a blazing dry desert.)

The lizard guy totally wants to hit dat.

And even more, the characters in FFXII face a realistic struggle with realistic limitations on what they can do to overcome it. Batshit insane crazy plots and plans are not hatched at every turn. Circumstance and plausibility are not wrecked to force the characters into being larger than life heroes. People generally behave as if they're sane, even if part of an idealized fantasy universe.

Lots of FF fans simply didn't want this; it was a matter of taste. Many expressed that they wanted to feel as if they were saving the world single handed with a buster sword. It could have something to do with Final Fantasy VII being the point of entry for many modern fans of the franchise - a game which all but wrote the book on deux ex machina and exaggerated anime-esque tropes. Game in which the protagonist changes his entire personality and rational for living at least three times, maybe four or five if you count his back story, and the villain summons a meteor to blow up the world.

So, FFXIII clearly had to do away with all that serious business posthaste.

It's not that XIII's world is without merit. In terms of pure worldbuilding, XIII has much to recommend it. It sets up an intriguing duality in the hostile standoff between Cocoon, a Dyson-sphere-esque shell world, and Gran Pulse, a conventional planet that Cocoon resides over in low orbit. XIII blends fantasy and science fiction more expertly and subtly than any prior Final Fantasy game. Cocoon's high tech, Star Trekian super science paints a nice contrast with the crystal powered steampunk of Pulse, that steps right out of the magitek factories of Final Fantasy VI. The history and political intrigue that is woven into the conflict between the Fal'cie, biomechanical god-entities that rule both Cocoon and Pulse though on opposing sides, could make for a story of high fantasy with a sharp, cosmic, and Jack Kirby-esque sci-fi edge. And it does - in the game's data files.

Most of XIII's story unfolds in the form of library entries. Entire arcs of the plot are never seen on-screen and are only discovered by extended reading. The visible plot that is acted out has little to do with the epic backstory of the world. Largely, it is a precisely measured shonen manga formula acted out by characters who return to the comfortable familiarity of looking as if they stepped out of the pages of a Japanese teen fashion magazine. Their story is the basic one of young renegade heroes who decide - in this case quite literally gather around and decide - that they're going to take down the gods and save the word. There's no genre-aware irony here; it's all played straight, even by Sahz, the one older guy who is the odd-man out and otherwise a cynical voice of reason.

Largely, FFXIII's problem is revealed in that the men who direct and script a certain stereotypical branch of the Final Fantasy franchise are just too immature. Their characterization is nonsensical and clunky; their attempts at humor are uneven. Sometimes it works, sometimes it's horribly forced and lifeless. They are the same amateur authors who script the same amateur story-heavy videogames that just embarrass themselves. In broad strokes however, the kind of characters they create and the stories they tell are what a legion of fans were weaned upon in their teen years (and many never grew out of).

Only, it seems, FFXIII reveals the cracks in such slapdash storytelling values when applied to a glossy, contemporary production. It is a game in which tens of millions of dollars and five years of labor have created stunning visuals and animation all perverted to support a simplistic and idiotic story set in an otherwise lavishly imagined world. It's so dumb and wasteful at points, that it could make someone rethink their contempt for Michael Bay. There's bigger fish to fry. To draw a comparison, even fans who didn't like it had to admit FFXII was a legitimately epic game. It looked and played like a game that took five years to make and cost 20 million (or more) dollars. It was loaded with story, content, places, things, and people. It had huge amounts of stuff to simply /do/ and locations to explore. By comparison, FFXIII doesn't look like a game that cost 60 million bucks and took another five years to make. Other developers have, by this day and age, made far more with far less in half the time - and do it every day. (The director of FFXIII once offered up a limp-wristed excuse - that it wasn't possible to make big game worlds with lots to see and do with HD graphics. Meanwhile, Assassin's Creed II gallops off into the distance to explore yet more of its massive HD content, all created in half the time of FFXIII. As do half a dozen other vast adventure games and RPGs crafted by studios around the world in the same time FFXIII has been in development.)

And it's too much even for the fans. Perhaps the fans have grown up more than they like to think, or had considered before seeing FFX-3 with their own eyes. Maybe the lessons FFXII tried to teach really did take years to sink in.

Wada, the president of Square Enix, said in a recent interview that Final Fantasy XIII might be the last epic game of its kind that Square makes. Like many Japanese businessmen in the game industry, he was cryptic and vague in his statement, appearing to suggest that the "market" was changing to demand a different kind of game. Reading between the lines however, this statement seems more like damage control; that by the end of development, Square Enix realized how horribly wrong their attempt to reel disgruntled fans had gone. That they'd ended up with a game that, had it not been called Final Fantasy, not taken five years to make, and not cost several games' budgets, would have been considered pretty decent if a little goofy with a throwaway story. But as the flagship title that one of the world's premiere publishers had declared quite literally to be the leading entertainment phenomenon of the 21st century, ends up looking like a big joke.

The Daily Grind: Backloggery

2010-03-19T10:47:00.000-07:00

The Daily Grind: Backloggery

2010-02-01T14:20:00.000-08:00

Dude, where's my boomstick?

2010-01-31T10:13:00.000-08:00

So, Space Dinosaur Red and myself have been replaying Gears of War 2 on Insane. We'd never actually finished it fullbore, so what the heck?

One thing keeps bothering me. It is the fact that the bad guys are bullet sponges.

This seems to happen more often in fantasy based shooting games. The games that involve some gritty real-world military setting do tend to keep things "real" (whatever that means at this point) in that shooting a guy in the head will usually ruin his day with one shot. And a shotgun to the chest makes anyone a sad panda.

But why is it, in Gears of War, that my military dude who is full of steroids and encased in enough armor to drop kick a tank, goes down with three bullets while his enemies, who are about the same in size and padding, can take three point blank shotgun blasts and still melee my guy to death?

This is of course supposed to represent "challenge". But it's a very lazy, cheap, and most of all, confusing way to go about it. In such a game, a weapon like a shotgun /should/ take an enemy down at close range. Especially when visually, this appears to be the correct result. It's not like you're unloading a shotgun into a titanium plated battlemech's knee.

Game designers should realize that this just cheapens the experience. It's less exciting. It's a reason why more people don't play such games; because they don't make sense. One reason Call of Duty is so popular is because it does make sense in terms of basic gameplay, and is very exciting on those grounds. People like the action of shooting guns, especially when the behavior and effect of those guns makes sense.

The irony is that this is more important in Gears of War's campaign than it is for Call of Duty, because Gears puts more emphasis on its campaign, due to co-op replayability and Horde mode.

So, come on already. Make your guns make sense.

A whole new world.

2010-01-31T09:22:00.000-08:00

In a world where a grown man feels the need to defend a grown man playing Super Mario Bros. , the gaming industry wants you to believe that its growth is infinite because it raises the the price on games and counts ancillary products as a "revenue stream" rather than mention how many copies a game sells or how many people are actually playing it.

But that's okay. The gamers like it, because it makes them feel hip and significant; like they're on the leading wave of a cultural revolution, even though the revolution stopped some years ago when video games began turning inward upon themselves and twisted to appeal to an ever more specific category of 18 to 25 year old male.

But again, that's okay. These things are organic. Nature self-corrects more than human beings would care to imagine because the realization takes away from their sense of self importance.

(Being in Outer Space does have a tendency to help one maintain perspective. Hello down there! What is weather like, anyway? Seems weird.)

The panicked attempts to rationalize away the assault that Nintendo's Wii has been waging against the currently conventional gaming world is one sign that nature is proceeding as planned. Of course, who knows how many viral marketers were responsible for spreading the popular fallacy of the casual gamer. The conspiracy-minded among us - and yes, we do have a few conspiracy nuts in space, it is a universal phenomenon - might even suggest that third-party software publishers released shovelware on the Wii precisely so that they could say nobody buys Wii games, and proceed to circle the wagons around HD game consoles.

That's really okay.

Did you know that a lot of kids who played Mario Kart Wii now think racing games played on a game pad are boring? Food for thought.

2010 will be an interesting year for video games.

Nintendo, after stumbling for two years by not being bold and assertive with the direction of their game console, has rebounded with one of the fastest selling games of all time, and it's a 2D run n' jump platformer. (Oh, you should see how the gamers are trying to rationalize THAT one away. It's a hoot!) More game studios that came to specialize in "hardcore" games are failing than ever before, shuttering their windows, being merged or downsized, and regardless of how much "revenue" large game companies talk about, more bloated and expensive to develop games are failing at retail than are succeeding.

Now, none of this should be taken to mean that the official position of the space dinosaurs is that these "hardcore" games are just bad, and that we'd all be better off if the only games we saw released were 2D platformers. Oh no, not in the slightest.

It's more an observation that a house of cards is finally beginning to collapse, even as the game industry trots out all the expected talking heads to say how awesome everything is. Game development has become engorged with an infusion of money and prestige, and game creators are increasingly concerned more with replacing Hollywood than with making games which customers will be happy about. Games simply cost too much to make now, relative to what sales can support it. Rather than make more reasonably scaled games, the industry is trying in one last desperate panic to circle the wagons even tighter. They're simply saying they should make less games, or make all games online services with subscription fees.

But in reality, the industry needs as many games as humanly possible. A ton of games have come out over the last five years. But most of those games have been the same 3 racing games, and the same 3 first person shooters repackaged with different graphics and nominally different (but interchangeable) storylines. It's no wonder that most big-budget "hardcore" games are not selling well, when most of them are unnecessary. It's not even that they're bad games. Many of the biggest failures of recent years have been just fine. But they're all pepperoni pizzas in a world that's sick of pepperoni.

No, the only way to authentically make video games bigger and better is to make affordable games in as wide a variety as possible, and throw them out at the world. Only then will more people who've never played a game and don't want to be an American army guy shooting brown people or a cyborg motocross rider shooting purple people have a fair shot at finding a kind of game they like.

And once more, that's really okay. The problem will correct itself in time. The main reason to stop and say something about it, is not because it won't fix itself if one remains silent. It's just to offer a bit of advice, and help people get positioned to take advantage of the tidal wave of change when it comes in.

Because hey, it's better to be on top of the wave, than crushed under it.*

*this part is a metaphor, as there are no tidal waves in space.

PS3: Killzone 2 campaign post-mortem

2009-03-20T08:49:00.000-07:00

From Outer Space many things can look strange, such as the fervor over videogame hype.

Killzone 2; you know what it is, why it was hyped, why it was mocked, and why it was defended by people who make themselves fans of a video game console.

But, in the end, it is a video game, and it must be played. So last week I finished the campaign of Killzone 2 and have a few thoughts. Yes, there will be spoilers aplenty. Also I will be talking about the game experience post-patch with the fix for the dead zone in the aiming controls, which I played through the bulk of the campaign with.

My opinion: does Killzone 2 live up to the hype? For the first 1/3rd of its campaign, yes.

The idea in Killzone 2 is to vividly represent the invasion of a hostile planet, where every footstep falls on enemy soil, and the very infrastructure itself is designed to confuse, blockade, and demoralize invaders. Killzone 2's campaign opens with a very immersive and vivid staging area on one of the ISA warships invading planet Helghan. While the immediate interactive bits of getting out of your bunk and walking through the ship to the drop carriers is a first person shooter cliche (thank you Half-Life), it's brief and doesn't slow the start of the action down too much (a theme that we'll be seeing through the rest of the campaign, one of its strong points).

There's a bit of plot exposition here, hinting at the political intrigue that's thick in the backstory of the Killzone universe - but aside from the simple remark that "we're gonna capture Visari [the Helghast leader] cause he's the bad guy!" Killzone 2 dials back the plot to the point that it's basically irrelevant, up until a jarring session of exposition at the very end.

The drop ship ride of your squad is well down and echos the infamous Killzone 2 E3 teaser video, though contrary to some of the hyped up claims of fans and the gaming media, it does not look anywhere near as good and is not quite as well orchestrated as the teaser video's similar seqauence. How could it? No matter the fantasies of the apologists, the original teaser was CG carefully and painstakingly arranged and animated by hand. Even so, the opening is Killzone 2's finest moment. Touchdown on the muddy beach near the Helghan capitol city is epic; there is a genuine feeling of being thrown into a warzone where a vast conflict is just beginning. The trip through the first mission, leading up to a climactic battle against a squad of tanks, is expertly paced from beginning to end. Here the fundamental solidness of Killzone 2's play mechanics is established. The combat feels visceral and solid. One high point of Killzone 2 is the intelligence and threat of the enemy Helghast forces, which helps establish them as a credible threat and raises tension.

Here is the first mis-step though: planet Helghan is rendered with an extreme amount of detail and with great attention paid to logical, believable architecture. The Helghast themselves though, while they move well, seem oddly generic in this sequel. The trademark gas masks with orange glowing eyes are there, but in an arbitrary choice, the iconic Helghast image of the series - storm-troopers in black shrouds, with Nazi-esque helmets, giving an image of an ice-cold reaper - is rarely used. The Helghan troops look more like generic space marines with the Helghast glowy orange eyes Photoshopped in place. A lack of strong identity comes into play later.

The first 3rd of the campaign deals with the initial assault on the capitol city, with several stages involving fighting through streets and through semi-shelled out buildings. The campaign is exceedingly linear; there are no optional objectives or "skill points" besides finding a few hidden briefcases for a collect-a-thon and shooting 3 Helghast symbols in each mission. While the AI of the enemy is impressive, even epic at moments, the part where Killzone 2 is not a Halo killer is in the lack of options and "body english" in its encounters. There is rarely more than one way to handle an encounter, and the weapons system, with its default pistol that can't be dropped, allowing you to carry only one main weapon at a time, encourages finding the one gun that works for you and sticking with it the whole game (except when a scenario forces you to change.) It's GOOD linear, but linear none-the-less.

At the end of the initial city siege, we reach Plot Twist #1. Radec, the ridiculously evil military overlord of the Helghast who is also A True Warrior's Warrior, reluctantly engages a secret defense system that electrifies every street in the city, wiping out most of the invading ISA forces who were deep into the city at the time. Presumably, lots of Helghast who were still fighting were also killed, but, in Killzone 2's ham-fisted plotting, the Helghast are good Hollywood Nazis (or Hollywood Islamic Terrorists): they fling themselves lemming-like into death while screaming the name of their fearless leader.

After the invasion is ground to a halt, the player's squad is reassigned in a sudden 90 degree turn followed by a skidding stop, to escort a science team across the planet to try and figure out just what secret technologies the Helghast might have that could make things a little tricky for the invasion fleet. (Since, presumably, the ISA invaded Helghan without concern for any intelligence gathering whatsoever, or at least, based on extremely misleading or disregarded intelligence - political commentary incoming in 3... 2... 1...)

Here is where we see the start of what I call the Only the Demo Matters phenomenon: like many games, first person shooters in particular, Killzone 2 carefully constructs its opening motions - the ones most likely to be seen in demos, pre-release media, movies, and playable for special press screenings behind closed doors. Then the following 2/3rds of the game fall back on much more stereotypical tropes, and paint-by-numbers design. Following the opening missions, you:

Go to a remote location that has little to do with the primary fight and thus, is quick and easy to construct and requires little cinematics or epic scale battles. You are ambushed and cut off with no quick way back.

Spend the middle act of the game on The Long Trek Home, through an arbitrary and generic looking refinery, and even take a Gears of War train ride.

Fight random pockets of enemy troops who are guarding the middle of nowhere for, well, whatever. You need stuff to shoot, damn it man.

Make it back just in time to discover that your base has been overrun with enemy forces since, well, the player character was not there to kill them all for his incompetent AI buddies.

Fight through Friendly Territory Turned Hostile, in generic military corridors that have little to do with the much more interesting visual motifs and locations featured in the all-important opening act.

Seemingly kill off all the bad guys, but, a heroic leader dies anyway and the base is lost, so you escape in the nick of time.

Now, to be fair, one thing Killzone 2 avoids during all of this is some of the tired, generic padding that's become standard in most first and third-person shooters. Thanks to Halo, most games have the Jeep section, the Turrent section, the Air/Spacecraft flying sequence, precisely because most game developers don't comprehend Halo was built from scratch around such things and so they're actually fun and relevant in Halo. Aside from one arbitrary but very short turrent shooting sequence when your own ISA capital ship is being invaded, the only "expanded game mechanic" in Killzone 2 is a sequence during the desert trek home in which you climb into a giant ISA robot - but this sequence is actually fun, because the robot is smartly designed and plays well. The way that I determine whether or not an added-value gameplay variety sequence should have been there in a game is simple: if I had a free level select available, would I want to play through that sequence again, for its own sake? In the vast majority of modern games, that answer is "no". But, like the faithful Warthog in Halo, I'd play with Killzone 2's ISA armored suit all day. So, good job there.

There are also a few more character related scenes and plot twists on the trip: Garza, one of your primary squad members dies in a scene out of a hundred war movies, but we're presented with this as if it's fresh and shocking, and nobody had ever thought of it before. The mistake made in plotting here is that the guy who should have died was the one in the squad who made all the best jokes. ("I. Am. Cold. Next time we're invading a hotel.") Not because he's annoying, but because that's the character that the audience actually misses when he's gone. (A lesson in drama that Joss Whedon knows all too well, for better... and for worse.)

After the fall of the good guys base, the final plot twist unspools: Radec, again demonstrating why Visari doesn't really need an army and should have just sent him to kill everyone (as you will learn the hard way in a boss battle to come), detonates a nuke on the capitol, wiping out friend and foe alike and breaking the back of the ISA invasion.

Typically, the smart though to do here might be to pull back and regroup one's tattered forces, since a fleet of intersteller warships still awaits in orbit. But, this is a video game: your squad is of course, sent into the irradiated hellstorm to go get Visari by yourselves.

The final act of the game involves take-2 on the seige of what now remains of the city, which is similar to act 1, but more straightforward, a lot harder, but a lot more generic. After a brief stop to blow up a few anti-aircraft installations, it's a straight run through a gauntlet of Helghast to the imperial palace. Again, it's all a great deal of fun. The basic combat in Killzone 2 is solid as a rock and the intelligence of the Helghast troops keeps things tense.

About that boss battle?

At the doors to Leader Visari's chambers, Radec appears again for a showdown. This the game's longest and hardest "boss" sequence, involving first a major firefight with Radec's personal support troops, after which the man himself appears, complete with a cloaking device to allow hm to run around the room invisible until he attacks you.

Here we find that once again, people who design first person shooters are really not sure how to make boss-like encounters. First, while I could be wrong, Radec just plain cheats with his cloak: the character teleports around the room, appearing behind you to strike with his cheesed, one-hit-kill knife, and while he's "cloaked", spraying the empty space with bullets does not actually hit anything or do extra damage. Then there's the issue of his health: I counted about 35 point blank shotgun blasts to Radec's face before he went down. Again, why didn't Visari just ask Radec to mop up that pesky invasion while he was running out to get milk?

Still, in time - in a lot of time, and a lot of deaths, and a lot of restarts - Radec goes down, and just to prove how bad-assed he is, as he lays bleeding out, he pulls out his own pistol and shoots hmself in the head before he dies of blood loss. I have to admit - both I and Space Dinosaur Red got a great laugh out of this scene but, like so many dramtic scenes in contemporary videogames, I do not think the game creators intended us to laugh at this point. What they hoped we would do, I'm not quite sure. But I'm pretty sure it wasn't a fit of uncontrolable giggling.

And so at last, we come to the big man himself, Visari. And suddenly Killzone 2 remembers it has a plot, or at least its universe does. Visari is unafraid to see you burst in because he knows that you're not here to kill him, and he begins lecturing you, gloatingly, over the political intrigue that lowly grunts such as yourself are mere tools of. After working himself up into a particularly hefty rant, the final twist comes when Rico, the most annoying and unwelcome of your squadmates, shoots Visari because, well, Rico is annoying and unwelcome. And you, the player character of Sev - who is more of a videogame cipher than a clinically depressed Master Chief - sit down on the steps of Visari's palace to watch as the final-final plot twist unfolds: an entire fleet of Helghan warships that were, evidently, out being washed for the first 72 hours of the planetary invasion, cruise over the city and begin blowing the ISA warships to kingdom come. The end.

Okay.

I realize that I might sound overly negative here but in point of fact, I enjoyed the campaign of Killzone 2 and will play it again on the highest difficulty to get the most out of the combat system, because it really is nice. Also, to its credit, the game does not fall into the trap of many of its contemporaries and offer a brief, shallow campaign because it expects the main draw to be multiplayer: Killzone 2's campaign is very long, and for the sake of gunplay if nothing else, is great. Still, I can't help but see it the window-dressing and level design surrounding it all as another indication of what the game industry gets desperately wrong these days. Game developers want to be movie directors, and the game industry wants to replace the Old Media that it sees as it successor. But games are not movies and they shouldn't have to be. Cramming a bunch of tired tropes into a game doesn't really make it a dramatic classic. Killzone 2 has the look of people who would like to imagine they're making gaming's Black Hawk Down, but unfortunately, they have not made Black Hawk Down or even close to it. Perhaps in part is the problem of photorealism rearing its head again from the uncanny valley; one of the few games in recent years that I've felt navigated the shoals of movie-maker aspirations was Uncharted. Uncharted wisely avoided striving for absolute photo-realism in its characters, and adopted a stylized look; therefore, most of the time, its serious and dramtic moments were not undercut by awkward polygon Supermarionettes. In the end, Killzone 2's dramatic moments fair no better than a hundred other technology filled videogames, especially since the writing and characterization is not there to compensate for the akwardness of the visuals.

The Thinkie Corner: Street Fighter IV

2009-02-26T06:08:00.000-08:00

Some thoughts on the post-release of Street Fighter IV:

You can't please everyone.

As expected, there is a backlash against SFIV in the hardcore community. The funny thing about people I have observed as a space dinosaur, is that many of them will applaud displays of contrarianism for its own sake. So there will always been plenty of support for those who criticize things even if their criticisms are silly. In the case of SFIV, the hardcore have decided that it is not Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, so it really just has to go. This is also not a surprise, as the hardcore have been saying everything that is not Super Turbo has to go for 16 years. In the case of the SFIV backlash, the bias is so strong that the hardcore fans are becoming irrational and starting to just plain make things up, hoping nobody will notice. For instance:

SFIV is too hard. Focus Attacks are confusing. It has precisely timed linked attacks. It's moves have difficult control motions.
SFIV is 3D, and all 3D games are slow and imprecise, so SFIV is far slower than any 2D Street Fighter.
SFIV is not really accessible to the casual fan like it was supposed to be, because it has advanced techniques that are hard.
SFIV is unbalanced because the Revenge Meter rewards players for losing, and how crazy is that?

The first one I find very curious because Super Turbo is not an easy game. When modern gamers play Super Turbo for the first time, they're shocked at how cheap the AI is in single player, how stiff the controls are, how unforgiving is the registration of special move inputs, and how precisely timed are the linking of combos. This is the game the hardcore have sworn by for years because they are very proud that they have put tens of thousands of hours into overcoming these obstacles. And so SFIV is too hard? SFIV is infintely more lenient than Super Turbo. It is forgiving on move inputs. Basic (non-link and non-advanced cancel system) combos are a snap to perform and even the beginner can pick them up. The Focus Attack system is inviting to everyone because it is easy and clear to see what it does: one just presses two buttons and watches the results on screen. The linking of many normal moves in advanced strings requires precision, but unlike many 3D fighting games with dangerous, one-frame link combos that leave the player open should they fail to execute, missing the timing on a link string in SFIV usually results in a block string that puts pressure on the opponent and pushes them away - which is itself a major tactic.

The hardcore have been quick to point to tales of "casual" players who pick up SFIV and gnaw on the controller for a few minutes, before throwing it away when they cannot comprehend a basic quarter circle + punch button fireball, but there will always be people who are just plain no good at videogames, or who have literally zero patience. But this relates to another point below.

About SFIV being "3D" - fighting game players have a stronger bias than many against polygon graphics, seeing them and 3D fighting games as the enemy who has stolen away their heritage of 2D games. Many of the vocal critics of SFIV have been those who sneer at anything "3D". The problem here, and where they now begin to make things up, is in saying SFIV is "slow", "floaty", "clunky", compared to 2D Street Fighter games. This simply is not true. Characters in SFIV move and react faster than original Street Fighter 2. The game is faster than the slower speed settings in most of the games bearing the Street Figher name. The characters walk, crounch, jump, just as fast as they have on 2D. They fall through the air at the comparable speeds. Hit detection is sharp and precise (didn't the hardcore complain about difficult and precise link combos?). Control input is smooth and fluid.

From this, one might conclude two possibilities: the hardcore need to hate the new thing, and because they know that saying a game sucks because it is 3D is an easy win in their community, they say SFIV has all the negative attributes that they have traditonally assigned to 3D games. Or, the hardcore have so little experience playing 3D games - because they hate them and stay away - that they literally cannot gauge the speed the game is moving at due to depth perception and the 3D nature of the on-screen movement (even thought the game plays on a 2D plane.) Because there is more movement, and infinite perspective receeding into the distance, they feel things are "slower" than a fast scrolling 2D background plane and sprite characters. People with no experience in 3D games often have serious perception issues - anyone into first person shooters knows this - so I wouldn't be surprised if the latter was the case as odd as it sounds.

But what about SFIV being non-accessible to the casual fan? Where did this idea come from in the first place? Well, from the producer of the game, Yoshinori Ono. Time and again, Ono has said that he wanted SFIV to be playable by anyone, to draw in those who had lost interest in fighters because they had become too obscure and technical. Also, to appeal to those who played classic Street Fighter 2 and have long since lapsed from fighting games. I think what may have happened here is that the hardcore fans heard the words "accessible" and "casual" and did what most hardcore gamers do these days: instantly seized upon the image of Street Fighter IV as Wii Sports. The word "casual" is the new parriah of enthusiast gamers, and to them, casual = simple and shallow. (And also "stupid".) Because Street Fighter IV has deep mechanics, such as the easy to grasp Focus Attack system having complex layers to explore, the hardcore are baffled, unable to grasp how the game could appeal to beginners or the casual. The problem here is that the hardcore don't seem to understand that accessible does not mean shallow. Being hardcore, they look at SFIV and only see the complex mechanics and immediately begin grappling with those. Then they assume the game is for experts only. But to the beginner, SFIV is much more clear and open than the technical festivals that fighting games - including 2D fighting games - have developed into. Most characters have only a few special moves, one super, and one 'revenge' (ultra) move. Each punch and kick strength is mapped to its own button. There are many combo possibilities but they are built by the player and experimentation - not hidden behind dozens of pre-programmed strings of moves that involve arbitrary command inputs and 20 button presses.

Again, some players have complained that SFIV is too hard on their first attempt at playing, but by the same token, some people cannot play Super Mario Bros. without having trouble figuring out spatial coordination for basic platforming. This is not to say they simply suck, but not everyone will figure out every kind of play mechanic easily. Of course in some cases, some gamers do suck because they are petty and demand instant gratification; any degree of difficulty is too much for their impatience. While the population density in Outer Space is low, I have nonetheless observed many people playing SFIV for the first time and being refreshed at how open it is and easy to grasp. They might not instantly be able to throw a fireball every time, but they realize that a little skill has to be earned. SFIV is nothing like the brick wall that many fighting games present to them.

Then there is what seems to be the final recourse of SFIV hatred, the Revenge meter. If you haven't played the game, this meter is a "rage guage". The more you are hit, the more it fills. When ready it allows you to execute an "ultra combo" designed to give the player a comeback. The hardcore have protested this with the basic logic that it rewards people for losing and surely this is absurd. But the pink elephant in the room is that another element in Street Fighter has rewarded people for winning for years: the Super meter. Simply put, the more you are ahead, the more Super Meter you have, and the easier it becomes for you to dominate. The Revenge meter is the counter to this; it becomes dangerous to pressure the other player and keep them in the corner. Often, a player is not being pinned down because they simply suck; even the best players become unlucky or guess wrong. While the Revenge system will be debated, it's not non-sensical. And the only way to balance the game by the standards of those complaining about it would be to remove the Super meter as well. (Ultra combos also have many limitations, such as inability to combo them from most attacks, and requiring a 100% full Revenge meter to do real damage.)

You can please everyone.

Meanwhile, back in the land where hardcore pundits are not complaining, the general reaction to SFIV has been as positive as could have been hoped. The game in its current form is not perfect, and most of all is going to need balance adjustments to certain characters to correct gross oversights in their abilities (though the balance is already much closer together than is typical for a Capcom fighting game) but it does what it set out to do: update Street Fighter and make it relevant again. One of the most common remarks I have read about SFIV is how often people laugh while playing it. It is simply energetic to the point that playing the game creates joy; the characters exaggerated facial expressions, the translation of a Capcom fighting game's over the top and fantastical attacks - these things come together in a way that one assumes had to be intentional. SFIV does not take itself seriously even as it gets down to serious business, which is an atmosphere that has been missing from most of the current day fighting games. It's true that games like Tekken, Soul Calibur, and Guilty Gear have their satirical moments and silly elements but it's not the same thing. SFIV is a well-written "dramedy" that knows precisely when to wax dramatic and when to be funny.

That and the balance of the play mechanics has hit a magical zone. As Space Dinosaur Red - who does not ordinarly play fighting games competitively - told me "I never feel as if I have no hope when playing." In my play time, I have never felt as if an Ultra combo in my (blue) face has robbed me of a victory; it reminds me that I was carried away and not paying attention to the fact that my success had put my opponent into the corner with a fully charged Revenge meter. Fights in SFIV do not feel simplistic in their flow; there are stages that unlock progressively.

Please sir, can I have some more?

The success and popularity of SFIV - and the hype surrounding it - should be taken as a very good thing even by people who do not - or will not allow themselves - to enjoy it. Little has dragged the genre back into the spotlight like SFIV in years. Its commercial success will encourage Capcom to fund fresh installments in many long-neglected franchises. It may help other games - such as the upcoming King of Fighters XII - gain a foothole in public perception.

The Thinkie Corner

2009-02-15T10:28:00.001-08:00

Street Fighter IV is coming and it's amazing that it matters.

Or at least, it seems to matter far more than anyone would have anticipated. Street Fighter is a game tied to the last great generation of video arcades. It was the game that helped launch that final generation. But it faded from popular view along with those arcades; it was a game steeped in arcade culture. After the arcades - in the west at least - went away, Street Fighter's popularity receded to the most elite of the hardcore niches; the tournament players, the professional gamer scene. They have kept the flag flying heroically for more than ten years but in a world where the mass market gamer seems eternally enthralled by sandbox gangland simulators and first person shooters, many people thought that the deceptive simplicity of the one-on-one fighting game would never find mass appeal again.

There was a bit more to the disappearance of the fighting game than that, however. Capcom waited too long to make Street Fighter III. They showed their bad side in numerous attempts to cash in on the continuing success of SF2. Other makers, including SNK, flooded the market with dozens of poorly conceived, derivative fighters attempting to milk what they must have assumed was a voracious fanbase. For every King of Fighters there were five Breakers Revenge. 3D fighters gained great popularity but were not friendly towards new players; the leading 3D series were extremely technical or stepped in dial-a-combo button pressing sequences and move lists several pages long. Finally, the increasing cost of game development stole funding from a genre that marketers assumed was on its way out. Fighting games looked simple, but making a good one wasn't cheap. (At their height, Capcom's 2D fighter teams seemed more like animation studios than traditional game developers.)

And with arcades dying out in the west, one of the footholds that fighters had in popular culture vanished. As quickly as the genre exploded, it went away; by the early 2000's fighting games were a niche genre, with only Namco continuing to invest in elaborate entries in their staple Tekken and Soul Calibur series. Newcomer Arc System Works found popularity with the 2D Guilty Gear series, but it was clear that the resources behind such games were stretched thin - they had the gameplay, but limited animation and recycled game assets harshly.

It can be foolish to ignore cycles and assume that the pendulum of popularity doesn't swing in both directions, but fighters were one genre that were thought to be effectively dead outside of limited fandom.

There should have been a few signs to the contrary but they were easy to dismiss as glitches in the system. The Xbox Live Arcade release of Turbo Street Fighter 2 Hyperfighting was very popular, and that port was a disgraceful mess with terrible net code for online play. Smash Bros. Brawl sold well - but Smash Bros. is not a real fighting game - so they say. Soul Calibur IV did well, but perhaps it was because the female characters had larger breasts. Even tiny SNK Playmore, with their budgets counted in seeming handfuls of yen, was investing in an elaborate revival of The King of Fighters (KoF XII).

And so, with fans demanding it, and game director Yoshinori Ono pushing for it, Capcom decided to take a chance on Street Fighter again. It would not be a low-budget attempt to service nostalgia, as with the terrible Capcom Fighting Jam of years earlier or a repackaging for XBLA and PSN. It would be a high tech, sophisticated game with all new assets, a large ad campaign, and specialized 3rd party controllers and joysticks. This was likely the make or break effort for a classic genre of games in the mainstream; had SFIV failed to generate much interest, the brand and the genre would probably have been buried at Capcom for another decade at least.

As it turns out, the interest around SFIV has, evidently, been huge. Some pundits credit this to SFIV playing on nostalgia after all - the cast in the game centers around the original 12 "World Warriors" From plain vanilla Street Fighter 2. However, there is nothing wrong with some kinds of nostalgia; no matter how fans try to spin it, one major reason why Street Fighter III failed to gain traction at initial release was that it tossed out too much of the classic cast in favor of strange and unusual new character designs. That SFIII eventually gained hardcore acceptance was due to more to grudging approval and the need for a game to play than natural enthusiasm.

Another aspect, I personally believe, of Street Fighter IV's popularity is that people can have longer memories than it seems at times, and people remember why they liked Street Fighter. It wasn't just the characters; it was the way Street Fighter played. Many people have never gotten interested in 3D fighting games such as Virtua Fighter or Tekken, or even recent years 2D games such as Guilty Gear. I would posit that the problem with these games is that they lack the accessibility of core Street Fighter; at first glance this seems strange because some ways these games seem simpler; Virtua Fighter for instance uses fewer buttons. Things are not what they seem though; the magic formula that Street Fighter always had was clarity. Six buttons, but that meant the strength of the six types of strikes had a dedicated input. The joystick had to move, jump, crouch, and block, but it was done in a way that made the controller the character and it was all natural. Most of the special moves used logical inputs; charging back to gather power, rolling from down to forward to bring the character's arms up and throw a fireball. The combo system was deep but predictable and again, clear: in most cases it wasn't vague what moves would connect and one could rely on certain sequences always working without analog physics and juggles clouding the issue. There are few preset chains of attacks, hidden behind layer after layer of arbitrary command inputs that fatten a move list to make it appear there are more moves than there actually are. And finally, perhaps most important, was a particular balance of depth for any given character; while some characters were definitely more technical than others and required more time to master, for the most part, one could learn to play one character and then play any other with minimal adjustment. The strength of other games - that a single character could take a lifetime to master - was also their weakness. Street Fighter was inviting but not shallow.

Even the hardcore fans were highly skeptical about Street Fighter IV because the game used a 3D graphic engine even if the game was on a 2D plane. They rightly protested that no 3D engine game had yet captured the precise feel of a sprite based fighting game. Many argued that it was technically impossible. Half the fanbase though SFIV would be a disaster.

Then they played it.

Street Fighter IV has sold out in Japan after a few days on the street. Really sold out. Every physical copy in the country is gone.

The custom, expensive, $150 joysticks created for the game received dozens of times the pre-orders than was anticipated for such niche accessories.

Some professional reviews of the game have been so bold as to claim it defines the fighting game genre even as it gets back to basics and sets the bar for everyone high; very high.

If anything, SFIV might end up being a lesson to everyone that what people want doesn't always change; it's just easy for things to become muddled and distracted. People still want chocolate ice cream and pepperoni pizza; but when there is only poorly made pizza and cheap, tasteless ice cream, they'll move on to something else. That doesn't mean they don't still want chocolate and pizza.

This is the game that Capcom didn't want to make, and hasn't wanted to make for over a decade. Nobody wanted fighting games they thought, and it wouldn't be possible to spend any real money on making a good one. At best, you package the past for the nostalgic with inexpensive re-releases of old assets and emulated games. They made the impossible game anyway and the pre-order numbers in the west are supposedly outrageous compared to what was forecast. If this all pans out, Yoshinori Ono will be one of the most vindicated men in the game industry. (He will also have a blank check to make more fighting games.)

Tuesday Carnivore Corner

2009-02-04T13:00:00.001-08:00

It's not Tuesday.

We apologize for the lack of updates on exciting dinosaur facts. We have been attempting to dislodge the spinosaurus from the Christmas tree for five weeks. Tuesday Carnivore Corner will return as soon as technical difficulties can be addressed.

However, a dinosaur fact meanwhile: some dinosaurs were large and some were small.

The Thinkie Corner: Prince of Persia

2009-01-21T14:15:00.000-08:00

We picked up the new 2008 Prince of Persia reboot title for Xbox 360 this past Christmas. I gave the game a cursory glance, and played through its tutorial section, but with pressing issues put it into gaming backlog. A few nights ago, I pulled it out again, and began playing in earnest.

My first impression of Prince of Persia 2k8 was middling. I wasn't sure where it wanted to go; I came into the game with a prejudice gleaned from hardcore gamers: that the new Prince was trying hard to capture the currently trendy "casual" gamer audience, and while very well produced and slick, was easy and afraid to punish the player for making mistakes. In fact, the mechanic of death had been removed from the game - you literally cannot "die" in the context of Prince of Persia's game world: what happens on the screen.

Instead, you have a female companion, Elika, who magically assists you in platforming. She flies to lift you for double jumps. If you fall, Elika rescues you. In combat, a mortal blow results in Elika pushing the enemy away and allowing you to recover.

There's a lot of ways in which this could go wrong. It would have been very easy for a very stupid game to be created, especially depending on how the development team viewed the "casual" gamer, if in fact, that was their real motivation for so drastically departing from videogame convention. These days, the big game publishers read "casual" to mean "girls, parents, people who no patience to become skilled players, and the stupid".

But playing Prince of Persia now, I think something very different is going on. I don't know how much of it was intentional on the part of the development team. It may be good fortune. Or perhaps it's organic - the inevitable and natural result of re-thinking the paradigms of dificulty curve and character death in an action game.

To a large degree, the new Prince in PoP 2k8 plays with himself. (No, not that way. At least, not on-screen. He does act like a pretty randy fellow.) Controls are simplified, not in number of buttons employed, but in manual actions the player must input to achieve traditional puzzle-platforming actions. Often the Prince will automatically run up walls at the right time, grapple edges on his own, and engage in mini-scripted sequences when the game decides he needs to. The immediate impression from the hardcore gamer perspective is that the game is dumbed down; it's playing itself.

This is very similar to the hardcore reaction to Final Fantasy XII: in that game, the "Gambit" system which allowed for player scripted, automated party combat was heavily mocked because it removed traditional manual input and thus "the actual gameplay". (Even though it was still totally possible to turn off Gambits and play manually. Go figure.) Yet, many people adapted and realized what the Gambit system was doing: formalizing the role that the player had always had in a traditional Japanese RPG: that of team strategist. Manually pushing "SWORDS" ten thousand times over the course of the game was not "gameplay". It was a cumbersome menu holdover from the days before somebody thought to make a user-friendly programming language (aka, Gambits). Today, Final Fantasy XII is more favorably recieved by players, most having gotten over their issues of perception with how the game is supposed to be played.

So back to Prince of Persia: as I remarked to Space Dinosaur Red last night after a long session with the game, "I have figured out why I like this game so much. It's vastly entertaining."

See, Prince 2k8 solves a big problem with the contemporary Epic Game. Ever since game developers got the technology to (begin to) imitate Hollywood Blockbuster Action Films, they've been determined to all become DMBs. (Digital Michael Bays.) The rush to prove geek parity with everyone's prior favorite form of entertainment - the movies - has been headlong and reckless, with things such as good game design principles being trampled by the herd. Now, games are crammed with elaborate non-interactive (or minimally, Simon Says-button minigame interactive) cut scenes in which the player character(s) dance around and perform acts of destruction and Kung Fu Action that would be really helpful in the actual game. Except most of the time, when control reverts to the player, the ugly truth reasserts itself: everyone is so hot to design the bigger, badder movie scenes that nobody is rethinking the interactive scenes. The stereotype that is growing staler by the minute is one where your game hero is a slow moving, awkward manniquin who has almost none of the style and capabilities that he displays in the cut scene movies - or, at least, is far more robotic and, well, "game like", with none of the dynamic flair displayed in the movies. Well poo.

But Prince 2k8 entertains the hell out of me because my Game Guy is as cool, if not cooler, in the actual gameplay as in the cut scenes (of which there are very few non-interactive ones). And this is not achieved by making the cinematic nature toned down and more gamelike: the problem that Fable II encountered when it tried to make all story elements in-game, which resulted in badly scripted, badly animated wooden dummies all standing around calmly talking about dramatic matters of life and death, with your hero staring into space during all of it. The semi-scripted nature of all the Prince's moves allows for a great deal of personality, that is still, generally speaking, under the player's control. It's true, the player may not have nit-picky precise control over each arm and leg with ten buttons, four triggers, and fifty hotkey combinations, but all of the Fun Shit is initiated by the player - you point the Prince where he should go, initiate the gross movements, and enjoy an amazing show as he jumps, flips, grapples, and swings his way through the environment as if, well, as if you're watching a cut scene. Except you're not.

But what about the challenge? And not dying? Ever?

Well, that too, is a bit of an illusion. You fall in Prince 2k8. A lot. You get beat down by enemies too, a lot. Elika rescues you, but she doesn't win the game for you. Falling will frequently see you carried back to the beginning of a lot sequence of jumps. Failure in combat will result in the enemy being allowed to recover too, resetting his life bar. You don't die in Prince of Persia so much as you fall back, regroup, and try again. In the end, it's actually little different than dying, the screen going red, and your character enjoying a death scene, only to be teleported to a respawn point. So what's the difference? Why did they bother doing it? Because: it doesn't break the narrative. It doesn't break your concentration. It sooths frustration. There is not the same feeling of loss of progression, of time wasted; only backing up a little, and learning. Plus, it serves to indeed make the game more movie-like. Motion pictures do not involve time loops where the protagonist dies over and over. Well, outside of Groundhog Day but it was clever so may pass. Yet another problem of game makers wanting to be movie makers: nobody has been accounting for how adding conventional ideas of interactivity and fail states to a movie narrative could go wrong.

And so, in the end, Prince 2k8 feels more like an "interactive movie" than most games that make much more pretense - and have much larger budgets - have managed to achieve. Even the one-on-one duels with enemies is quite enjoyable due to the ease with which a cinematic presentation and style can be maintained. But unlike some of the professional reviewers' criticisms would suggest, I am not finding the game to be "casual friendly" in any way that is (for the most part) actually bad.

And therein lays another funny revelation: I'm halfway through the game, but can already easily imagine myself playing it again and again. Why? Because it's fun. Playing one of these movie-like games where, at last, the downsides of shoe-horning videogame conventions in have been removed, turns out to be really great, imagine that. See, another problem Epic Games have faced is an increasing tendency for bloat to overcome fun. In fact, it has become a dichotomy that people expect: "fun" games are short, arcade-style romps that can only be enjoyed in short bursts: the Geometry Wars, Wii Sports mentality. "Epic" games, well, playing an Epic Game has become a mission. One is expected to wade through hours of tutorials, complexity, and invest great amounts of time. Plus, this genre of game is becoming increasingly disposable. On a game forum recently, I saw the question asked: should you be expected to replay games? An incredible question to ask, in a way - should you expect to see any movie more than once? Listen to a song more than once?

Yet there was a valid reason to ask it: with Epic Games dominating the hardcore gamer landscape, gamers no longer have time to play them more than once (if they finish them at all) - at least, not for the sake of merely beating them on principle, since, you know, they did pay money for them and stuff. Why replay an Epic Game when there's new Epic Games waiting? Perhaps the only good reason would be if the Epic Game was just as rewarding to play again as the first time. Some gamers don't think this is possible, but, I suspect, and Prince of Persia is proving, that's a fallacy. There is a problem of padding as well, to be sure, as many long games are guilty of padding the experience up with dull tasks. Here, Prince 2k8 stumbles a little in principle, as it too involves a bit of "padding" collecting light seeds after an area of the game has been cleared. Yet, even this collectathon mechanic has been re-thought, to a degree: when a player clears an area, it changes dramatically, becoming a sunlit, idylic version of its former evil self. The light seed collection essentially invites the player on a relaxing tour of the local, with many intentionally placed vistas to stop and admire. It provides a break and sets up a rhythm that, in its own way, is still cinematic. (Many of the best filmmakers know to maintain tension by pacing their film with regular intervals of calm and panic.)

Prince of Persia 2008 is not the best game ever; its characterization is a little goofy, with bizarre anachronisms in the dialog that are a dodgy attempt to make the Prince sound hip and edgy. While it is not nearly as "easy" as many hardcore gamers (and hardcore reviewers) have felt, it still could be ramped up further. The scripted acrobatics sometimes go wrong, with the Prince buffering too many button presses and leaping off to his ~~death~~ embarassed rescue. And it doesn't provide the same kinds of thrills as more conventional games - there's still a place for in-game death, and more sharply defined danger. (Though one of the game's crowning achievements is the subtle, cunning way it often makes you feel as if you're in mortal danger even though you should know that you cannot die on-screen.) But it does solve a lot of the problems with heavily cinnematic games in terms of the naturalness of their presentation. It does strike a new balance, where playing such a game is more akin than ever before to watching a supposed ideal (which has never actually been adequately explained or understood) of an "interactive film". I obviously haven't seen the ending yet, but based on what I've heard (and more importantly, on why some people didn't like it), I have a feeling I'll be satisfied.

This is perhaps what long, Epic Games with a cinematic storytelling flair could continue evolving into: what formerly counted as watching a serialized television show where the "viewer" is a partner every step of the way in making the action unfold, and thus feels more involved in it (and more rewarded). It might not work for every kind of story, either. But I do have the funny feeling in the back of my dinosaur-shaped skull that when it comes to big, saucy summer popcorn flicks, I'd rather be playing (or participating) in something like Prince of Persia rather than just sitting through a non-interactive version on the screen. Even with Baysplosions.

The Thinkie Corner

2008-12-29T11:48:00.000-08:00

There is an oddity in the way human beings think. Being a Space Dinosaur, this sometimes stands out to me. People have a habit of trying to justify a situation with only the present context about themselves. If a fellow is drinking a bit much today, it's because he merely had a hard day at work; not because he has a pattern of drinking too much.

Something in video games that seems to entrap even the more clever analysts is judging the success or failure of a game or platform or gadget based on its current popularity; it's the old trap of "if that game was any good, it would have sold better".

People especially like to apply this to a long running series.

For instance, a number of people keep insisting that newer entries in the Super Mario and Legend of Zelda series are not as good as their predecessors because they haven't sold as many X as previous version's X. Based on sales figures alone, there is an assertion of absolute quality - if Super Mario Galaxy was as good as Super Mario Bros. 3 or Mario 64, it would have sold as many units.

Usually, these assertions seem tinted with nostalgia, one suspicious detail. (We all know that whatever game wowed you first as a kid may forever remain "special" feeling in some way you can never explain.)

However, being more objective about it, it's not that simple.

For instance, Super Mario Bros. 3 sold something like 17 million copies worldwide. That's an impressive number. By comparison, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, sold 4 million or so copies back in the day. The sales figures would tell us that Yoshi's Island is far inferior.

But ask most any hardened gamer, veteran of the 8- and 16-bit wars. While they'll enthuse about amazing Super Mario Bros. 3 was, most will likely tell you that hands down, Yoshi's Island is categorically the best platform game Nintendo has ever created. What gives? Any number of possible factors. Mario 3 was released on the Nintendo Entertainment System, the phenomenon of the 80's; Mario 3 was incredibly hyped with a brilliant marketing campaign. And the NES had little true competition for games at the time - including little competition for similar platformers on the NES itself. It was Mario or nothing.

Yoshi came out at the end of the Super Nintendo's life cycle. It was released with, comparatively, little hyperbole or mainstream attention. Videogames had become fragmented, with the Sega Genesis stealing a real portion of Nintendo's thunder. Sonic the Hedgehog was cooler with the kids for a while. The fact that Yoshi was the better game probably meant little; it likely was impressive that it sold 4 million copies in the first place.

Fast forward to today, and the same hardcore gamers (and game pundits) who would be quick to explain the sales figures of Mario 3 vs Yoshi's Island fall into the trap of disparaging Nintendo's new games by comparing sales numbers. Zelda: Twilight Princess is inferior to the Nintendo 64's Ocarina of Time, obviously, because it has sold less than half the same number of units. Excuses are made, such as Twilight Princess being a rehash of Ocarina, etc, and the game is criticized for many attributes which are effectively identical to Ocarina of Time (a slow, boring introduction, lifeless overworld, cumbersome management system, no new, creative items - even though TP technically has as much new content and ideas as OoT relative to the prior Zelda game.)

But then, Ocarina of Time was one of the few games available on its platform of any real quality at the time, after the platform had already been established with a growing userbase; it had little competition in terms of mindspace on the list of hot, must-play games, and it had a groundswell of incredible hype behind it. Twilight Princess, among many factors, suffered from Nintendo's countless release delays as they hedged their bets, waiting as long as they could to decide whether they wanted to move the game to the Wii as a launch title.

Not necessarily a defense of any flaws that Twilight Princess does have, mind you, as it has them. Though in my opinion, with nostalgia filtered out, it's still objectively a superior game to Ocarina of Time - just as, nostalgia deleted, A Link to the Past on the Super Nintendo is probably a better total package than either of them.

[The Thinkie Corner]

2008-12-29T07:45:00.000-08:00

On the Sean Malstrom blog, this entry talks about how games focused on user-generated content are failing. So the argument goes (in broad strokes), users don't want user-generated content for its own sake - at least most of them - but when it prolongs a game experience they already want more of.

I do not always agree with Malstrom; I believe he is too easily dismissive of factors that do not fit his favorite models. For example, here, he tries to correlate LittleBigPlanet's focus on user generated content with its slow sales out of the gate but I think here Malstrom is grasping for another big-name title to support his argument. LittleBigPlanet doesn't share, I would argue, the fatal flaws inherent in the other examples he cites. LBP is a "warm" game that has plenty of charm and personality of its own, and its default content - the developer-made story campaign levels - are addictive and brilliant. While not everyone has liked the game, the majority of those who have played it seem to have come away charmed and wanting more of it. Also, the user community is gaining steam with each passing week, and there is great enthusiasm over the release of new stages. Some users are even beginning to design entire campaigns of linked levels, complete with characters and storyline.

I suspect the slow sales of LBP have little to do with a focus on user generated content. Sony's ad campaign for LBP did not appear to focus very much on the game being a tool kit to build your own stages, though stage sharing was mentioned. For the most part, LBP was sold on the notion of "fun" - joyous scenes of four players romping through a fantastical cooperative world. And I believe it was doomed to relative failure (at the beginning - wait one) on the Playstation 3 because of that. Much has been made about the PS3's slow sales and small userbase relative to the XBox 360 and Planet Wii. But I wonder if the hidden shank in the PS3's userbase is that due to the relative lack of must-have software (though this is changing) and its high price, the majority of people who have bought a PS3 to date are not the sort who would rush out to buy a cute and charming game like LittleBigPlanet on day one. Some stereotypes do have a basis in reality: so far, the PS3 may have been most attractive to:

A. Videophiles seeking a package deal on a Blu-Ray player. And,

B. Hardcore Sony Lifestyle fans with lots of disposable cash.

In the case of A, these folks may not be buying any games but the most mainstream to begin with. In the case of B, these guys may likely be those who are only interested in traditionally (and stereotypically) "Playstation" games: Racers, 3rd-person hack and slash, first person shooters, Grand Theft Auto, Metal Gear Solid, and sports. I wonder if to the majority of the current PS3 users, LittleBigPlanet looks like an offensively candy-coated attempt by Sony to attract some of the Wii's customer base, this notion predicated on the assumption that almost everyone who owns a Wii is a child or a soccer mom who mainly buy brightly colored Mario games.

However, I don't think the initial (relatively) poor sales of LittleBigPlanet mean the game is a "bomb".

This leads into recent talk about a category of games called "evergreen". What is an evergreen title? As the reasoning goes, it is a game that sells a consistent, healthy number of units over a long period of time. The game industry has become locked into a "launch rush" cycle of game releases where the majority of a game's sales happen within the first few weeks of release. If a game doesn't sell well immediately, it usually drops off the radar and sales gradually trickle down to nothing. Evergreen titles go against this trend. They may or may not sell big at first, but they do keep on selling across a platform's lifespan. One classic example of this was Super Smash Bros. Melee on the Nintendo Gamecube. Melee was a big hit inititally, but after its release in 2001, it went on to move significant units every week for six years. Most stores still kept copies of Melee in stock after they had closed down their Gamecube section. (Since the Nintendo Wii plays Gamecube games.)

However, what makes an evergreen title evergreen? In this day and age, software publishers have become addicted to the idea of the yearly refresh, with big franchises having a new entry like clockwork each season. Planned obsolescence appears to be a check box on the typical videogame's design document these days. Sometimes, a game might continue to sell well for a while without having the qualities of an evergreen title - this could be due to trends and popularity of a brand name too. A real evergreen game however, I would argue, is one that is designed without a single demographic or marketing buzzword in mind. It's easy to engineer a mega-hit that takes advantage of seasonal fashion: if urban crime is the hot theme this year, release the next Saint's Row. If World War II shooters are in demand, shove out another classic-era Call of Duty.

Real evergreen titles have themes and content that go beyond trends; they need some form of universal appeal, even if they have a particular theme or setting, such as the inner city or the second World War. Traditonally, Nintendo has a knack of making such games because they have crafted their own idiosyncratic universe and thematic language. Super Mario, Zelda, and Metroid exist within their own realms that may share some recognizable themes - cartoon worlds, high fantasy, and science fiction - but by and large are "their own things". Some other developers such as Valve and Blizzard achieve the same thing; even when their game uses the tropes of a certain genre, they take it and make it their own, giving the game a timeless quality.

I do believe that LittleBigPlanet, to use it as the current example, generally fits the bill for an evergreen game. Its handicraft world is as idiosyncratic as they come, and there is nothing to pin the game down to any one era or gaming trend. Plus it's charming in its own right. But its world is not something in vogue with the majority of hardcore gamers right now; so it's something they were always going to pass up initially.

The thing is, making an evergreen title is the more difficult route to take, I'd wager. Seasonal titles can be phoned in - the trends of the market and the hot talk around the gamer's watercooler (or pizza box and beer chest) all but design the game for you. Trying to move to a different level and design a game that transcends fads, well, that's the tough part. In a sense, the game industry as it stands now may be partially inimicable to evergreen game development. An evergreen title has to be a certain sort of risk - just look at LBP. Sony spend a great deal of money and time attempting to craft a mega-hit. Plenty of pundits - who I think are being quite short-sighted - are cawing at the perceived failure of the game, and saying what a mistake it was for Sony to pin so much on it. Investing in a game that may not directly take advantage of this year's favorite trends to increase its chances of an initial sales windfall could seem an unwise move to the mentality of many contemporary publishers. On the other hand, as publishers like Nintendo have shown, it can really pay off in the long run.

Review: LittleBigPlanet (Playstation 3)

2008-11-26T08:57:00.000-08:00

If you follow videogames, you may have heard of this thing called LittleBigPlanet by Media Molecule. A game ostensibly about a small brown sack, it was destined to become Game 2.0; flowers would grow in its footsteps and children would merrily dance around them. A curious assertion, but LittleBigPlanet had a few things going for it.

It was supposed to be an entirely physics based platform game, where the entire game world would respond logically to the properties of every object. This was to enable the creation of innovative levels and play mechanics like nothing yet seen.
It would bring the powerful authoring tools common in the PC game world to consoles in full force. Everything in the game's default levels would be created with the tools the player was furnished with. In theory, nothing was beyond the player's ability to create.
Finally, player creations would populate their own "little big planet", uploaded to servers and selectable just like the default levels. In fact, players would be able to create contests in their levels, use leaderboards, and even create real in-game prizes for those who played their level to win and use in making their own stages.

So, okay, here it is. In the gaming world, it is very common for big projects to fall onto the rocky shoals of hyperbole and betray their promises. Gamers are very familiar with "betrayalton". The remarkable thing is that LittleBigPlanet is nearly everything it was promised to be, with few compromises, and though it might not quite be Game 2.0 just yet, for once it can truly be said there is nothing like it.

First, let us get the bad parts out of the way.

LittleBigPlanet is about simple platforming. Sackboy, the small canvas sack puppet who is the player avatar, is limited to running, jumping, and grabbing on to anything made of rope or canvas in the game world. The only meta game concept in use is a multiplying score system which rewards consecutive pick-up of score globes placed around a level. The real fun in LittleBigPlanet is supposed to come from the stages themselves; the physics engine supports a stunning array of possible gadgets, puzzles, and mechanics.

But the problem is that the platforming in LittleBigPlanet is, purely on its own merits, not so good.

There are three planes for Sackboy to move between in the two-dimensional space. This plane shifting is intended to make for more complex level designs without the confusion of full three-dee navigation. But Sackboy is mushy when switching planes. Sometimes, the game automatically tries to switch for you, predicting which plane you need to be on in order to finish a jump between platforms that are on different planes. This takes control away from the player at sometimes the worst moment. Sometimes the game doesn't make the right decision on which plane to switch to. Other times, Sackboy is mysteriously unable to switch planes even though visually, it seems there is no obstacle preventing this.

In addition, the problem raised by a platformer controlled purely by an automatic physics system is that in order to allow for the leeway to make various jumps between unpredictable objects that may be moving in ways that are never the same twice, the actual jumping of your character must be forgiving and floaty. This makes LittleBigPlanet seem a bit slow and imprecise much of the time.

So, here is the good part.

In any ordinary platform game, these problems would be the kiss of death. But, LittleBigPlanet's saving grace is that its physics based world is incredibly fun. The standard levels created by Media Molecule are a showcase for creativity, and arguably, among the elite game mechanic concepts in the history of two-dee platformers. It is difficult to describe how unique many things are - ropes, boxes, wheels, gears, pullies, and tilting platforms are all arranged in an intricate harmony of balance. The physics engine allows for remarkably simple ideas that result in complex nuance. For example, in one stage, the classic movie Ninja gimmick of running across an obstacle course of precariously balanced logs is replicated by simply standing up a closely spaced row of vertical boards attached at the base to the ground, but allowed to flex and wiggle slightly. The result is a clever toy the player must run across as the boards wobble and flip out from under Sackboy's feet the moment after he passes.

Despite the issues with control and plane shifting, LittleBigPlanet largely succeeds in creating an environment of pure fun. The standard campaign is decently long, comprising eight themed worlds with three main stages and multiple challenge levels in each. Playing the campaign should take the average person perhaps six hours, to reach the final boss. However, besides leaderboard scores, replayability is added by the fact that there are a very large number of prize balls to collect in each stage that unlock prefabricated objects for use in level creation. These are very desirable prizes, both to aid in construction, and because they teach important techniques in assembling gadgets. The sheer number of prefabs is staggering; and still more bonus objects are awarded for completing a stage with one hundred percent collection rate. Co-op play is also a big part of the game; combinations of local and online players can group in up to four Sack People parties to attack a stage. In the standard stages, many specific challenges are designed for two to four players to complete them and collect rare items.

LittleBigPlanet also looks and sounds amazing. This is very impressive considering that the game must contend with a large amount of physical calculations for every object and bulding block in it stages. The aesthetic of the game's art direction is that of hand crafts; things are made to look cut out of cardboard, sewn by hand from fabrics, molded out of clay, or carved out of wood. The game world of LBP is cohesive for all its apparent chaos, and from a purely technical standpoint, achieves much: obviously many shaders must be used to simulate the wood, fabric, and metal materials being simualted but there is also good use of lighting, great animation, and impressive (and unique) effects for fog, smoke, fire, and more. It all runs at a virtually rock solid thirty frames per-second.

Second only to this is the sound. The music in LittleBigPlanet is a genuinely eclectic mix of world music, salsa, electronic, and in-house melodies that are intended to evoke the Saturday morning childrens' cartoons of decades past, but with adult sophistication and sensibility. The music for each world fits the game perfectly, and is more than generic muzak that can be quickly forgotten; the songs stand on their own and are listenable outside the game, and there is not a weak selection in the entire soundtrack.

The last important piece to LittleBigPlanet is the authoring tools. Here, there is no way around the fact that great complexity will be a barrier to many people getting the most out of it. The fact that Media Molecule supplied the player with the same tools used to create the "professional" stages should say something. The level creation mode is as streamlined and user friendly as it probably can be, with intelligent decisions in how to edit objects and materials. A vast amount of flexibility is possible. But, being optimized for interaction with strictly a Playstation 3 game pad it is inevitable that the controls are hidden behind a dizzying array of shortcuts and context sensitive actions. This does slow down level creation compared to what would be possible with a more direct PC-centric keyboard-and-mouse interface, and considering the ease of plugging USB devices into the PS3, one must wonder if Media Molecule ever considered offering support for such devices if only to aid in level editing.

Past this hurdle however, the level creation is rewarding. It was a very wise decision to allow users to create their own score goals, races, and even prize globes for custom stages. If you create an object, you may offer it as a bounty to other players to collect. This creates quite an incentive for playing user-created stages.

To be honest, there is not much out there yet in the way of user levels that can compete with the best of the in-house Media Molecule stages. Making a great level in LBP requires the same experience and talent as working in professional game creation. But the potential for LittleBigPlanet to train grass roots user up to this level is immense. Already, many user created stages are showing sophistication in their design. A review metric system is set into place that tracks the number of votes a user stage has recieved as a favorite stage, and it is possible to assign tags to a stage as part of a review process. How well this system manages to separate the good stages from the crud remains to be seen.

It is kind of hard to encapsulate LittleBigPlanet. Despite its issues, it does so much that the gestalt becomes greater than its parts. There is nothing out there like it. If you come into it looking only for a standard, official campaign to play and then shelve, it may not have that much to offer. It is a community game first and formost; in a sense, nearly the world's first fully functional massively multiplayer platforming creation game. It could be called a system seller (something that the Playstation Three does just kind of need a few more of, as many people might be aware), but its odd quirks and surprisingly hardcore focus might sabotage that.

LittleBigPlanet is a game to recommend if you intend to get as much out of your gaming as you possibly can. It is a crime to not do everything you can with the game but then, it is so inviting that you might not be able to resist fiddling with everything it has to offer.

The Thinkie Corner

2008-11-13T07:43:00.000-08:00

In Outer Space, there is plenty of time to think, at least, when you are not playing video games.

I wonder if the first mission of a game designer is to convince the player that the designer's way of playing the game is the most enjoyable way. People talk about "playing the game your way" but it seems that most of the time, your way is a variation of a successful way to play the game.

From there then, it also seems that three things generally happen when a player faces what the designer has put in front of them.

1. The designer fails to make a clear case that educates the player on the merits of the designer's intended play style, or the player is so determined to play it a particular way - possibly due to strong pre-conceived notions - that the player fights against the way the game is designed. The player concludes that the designer is an idiot for not making the game "the right way".

2. The designer fails to understand his own self the optimum way to build on his play mechanics and becomes obsessed with an artistic vision to the point he simply misses the obvious. Even if the designer does a good job of explaining his vision to the player, the player may (and probably will) see what the designer missed, and find himself unhappy that the game is designed to funnel the player away from the better or more enjoyable way to play it.

3. The designer both succeeds in selling his ideas to the player and did in fact create an objectively superior design with play mechanics that work with the strength of the basic concept. The player gets it, and in the most rare cases, the player then takes over where the designer left off - finding new ways to play the game that are extensions of what the designer began, rather than struggling against the designer's vision.

It seems obvious that design is tricky as different players will always see your game from a variety of viewpoints, and attack it in many ways. Even if you try to tightly herd them along a particular path, they will find ways to break free of it unless your game design is so tight that it becomes a form of shallowness. A practical example that has appeared recently is Mirror's Edge; A game played in the first person perspective and based around Parkour. Unlike most first-person games, the emphasis is almost entirely on running, jumping, climbing, and catching hold of grips in midair. Combat is possible, but your character is weak, ordinary, and not effective in running and gunning. The control scheme is laid out so that what combat there is, is best worked into a sequence of Parkour moves, before rushing past the stunned adversary.

Mirror's Edge does a good job of explaining to the player how to play, and makes a good case that it is more fun when played the right way; learning how to clear a scenario in one fluid sequence, including evading, disarming, and disabling enemies, is an art, and addictive to practice. But, because the ways of first-person shooters are deeply ingrained in gamers, many people complain that Mirror's Edge is poorly designed. They are determined to fight against the game design; they wish to pick up guns and have firefights as fluid and exciting as games designed for the purpose of a firefight. In truth, by doing this, they are missing the majority of the play mechanics and the fun of Mirror's Edge. If they are not interested in running and jumping, and mainly wish to have combat, the game may simply not be for them. But it is an example of a time when a designer can succeed and still be perceived as failing by the player.

Thus, the designer is faced with the problem that even when they succeed on all counts, they may fail to win the player over, due to the human factor. I find this curious, but being a Space Dinosaur, it is little wonder that the human factor tends to elude me.

The Thinkie Corner

2008-10-29T12:58:00.000-07:00

In space, there is plenty of time to think.

I once knew a man who thought that he could know nothing, so felt that he had no reason to think.

I once saw a man claim that he knew everything, so knew that he had no need to learn.

I once heard a man say that trying to decide what he could know was useless, so he busied himself with other things in the mean time. He was productive, but not, I found, particularly interesting to talk with.

Being a dinosaur from Outer Space, I may or may not perceive things as do these men of Earth. But, I can say that my only God is what I do not know.

At least, that is what Machine Men think, and they're cool.

Review: Fable II (Xbox 360)

2008-10-28T08:29:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, an erratic prophet by the name of Peter Molyneux told a fine story about a videogame named Fable. It was a magical tale in which Videogame 2.0 would be created. In Fable, so the story went, you would be an adventurer in the land of Albion, able to be good, evil, or grey. Trees would grow when you planted them, you would have children that would grow up, and something called a Sandgoose would actually exist and not frustrate players by trying to figure out what it was.

When this amazing game was released on the Xbox 1, many people were upset with the strange storytelling man. For, as it so happened, Fable had almost none of the things Mr. Molyneux claimed it would have, including things he talked about just before the game's release. It was promsing, with a lush and pretty world, but was short and full of bugs and glitches.

Later, it was released again as The Lost Chapters, and things were better, with much missing content added in. But it would have to wait until Fable II for resolution on at least some of what the storytelling man promised.

That brings us to Fable II, by Lionhead on the Xbox 360.

Here's the good news: Fable II is much more of a game than Fable and makes the first game seem like something of a rough beta.

Here's the bad news: Fable II is still pretty short, but it is very broad, and for the time being at least, it suffers under a crushing number of small, but collectively frustrating glitches and bugs. In fact, it may be the most buggy game I have personally seen on the Xbox 360, outside of Oblivion. Spoiler space will be provided at the end of the review. Rawr.

Fable II begins five hundred years after Fable. Shortly after the hero of Fable would be presumed to have died of old age, the world of Albion was wrecked by a magical tower called the Spire. Albion rebuilt, but the Albion of Fable II sees many areas from the original game drastically changed, for better and worse. You begin Fable II as a child once again, but I enjoyed that the childhood segment of the game was shorter. Things happen quickly as tragedy befalls you and your sister. The game leaps forward ten years when your hero is a young adult, and you begin to adventure in the world. The fateful Spire of five hundred years ago factors in to the plot, in that usual way that epic RPGs are epic, if somewhat predictable.

Fable II plays like an action RPG in the Zelda vein. It's just that it goes a lot deeper in some ways. There are NPC people all over, and they react to exactly what you do, whether friendly or threatening. Your standing in Albion is affected by almost everything, and in time, this affects your appearance. Your character - which can be female as well as male in Fable II - morphs gradually to appear more good or evil. This morphing while interesting, could be more pronounced. Sometimes, it doesn't fully make sense why some things do or do not change your body.

As an RPG, Fable II attempts many things to break molds or at least play about with them. For example, when you lose all HP and collapse, you do not die. You lose some experience, and get back up. However, besides the loss of precious XP, you become permanently scarred, and this affects how you are able to interact with people. Only by having a special potion on hand, can you be resurrected without a scar. There is also a simplified combat system, with one button mapped to three areas: melee, ranged weapons, and magical magics. In combat, these buttons can be combined to form complex combos, or held down for special moves or alternate effects.

All this sounds good on paper, but, in practice, things vary. Combat for instance, is a highlight. I can say with dinosaurian honesty that I enjoy the combat in Fable II more than any other action RPG in recent memory. Its system seems simple, but that is deceptive. It is extremely well thought out, and importantly, works well with the designed behavior of the enemies and their own intelligence scripting. More, as in Fable I, you gain different kinds of experience depending on what type of attack is used on a given enemy.

Other elements in the game, such as the expression system used to interact with NPCs, are broad, but shallow. There really isn't a lot you can do with most NPCs aside from repeating a few actions in various combinations to either make them like or dislike you. Expressions are sometimes used cleverly in conversations with more important people. You can get married, have sex, and so forth, but none of it goes anywhere really. On the whole, the social system comes across as an atmospheric toy that does not go very far.

More interesting is the economic system in Fable II. You can buy most properties in the game, and earn income from them. This is important, as Fable II does not usually reward you with funds from merely playing quests. Getting significant money involves taking jobs or playing the real estate market. This is actually a lot of fun. The jobs, such as forging swords, involve simple but charming button press mini-games with combo multipliers that net more gold per action. The real estate is well-thought out. You continue to earn money on your property between game sessions, when the console is off. The performance of your shops depends on what the shop keeper thinks of you, their boss. And you get discounts at shops you own. Overall, this aspect is much more relevant to the game than in Fable I.

Then there is the dog.

Much was said about having a dog as a companion over the course of Fable II. This AI hound would play with you, find treasure, and help attack enemies. As it turns out, the dog is a success. He is very active, and relatively smart. He does indeed help you time and again, and makes exploring Albion a lot more fun.

Which, brings us to the issue of length. Fable II is longer than plain vanilla Fable I, but only about as long as Fable: The Lost Chapters in terms of the primary story quest. Overall, the average person would finish the primary quest in 10 hours. The problem with Fable remains that for such a broad world with so much to do, it feels as if the main purpose for your adventure in Albion should be more epic. Unlike Fable I however, Fable II is designed for you to do more post-game.

SPOILERS

The endgame of Fable II involves the Spire being rebuilt and charged with magical energy for a "wish" to be made that will change the face of Albion. Here, the end-game is anticlimactic, no two ways about it! The villain, Lucien, is dispatched with more of an interactive cut scene than a final battle. Then you are asked by your mentor Theresa to make one of three choices, which will result in a wish that changes Albion. Essentially, they are terribly good, middling neutral, and selfish evil. What happens next is both disappointing and intriguing. You are dumped back into Albion with the Spire still there, closed off to you, but looming over the land, and Theresa having taken control of it for a mysterious purpose. Albion itself is adjusted by the nature of your wish - you may have a lot of money but be hated, be loved by having lost your faithful dog, or have your dog but be considered selfish. You can still perform side quests and play with the social and economic system.

The problem here is that Fable II feels like an MMORPG at this point with nowhere to go. One would suspect that this is all a set-up for expansions that continue an epic story with Albion tinted by your choice at the end of the Spire story arc. I wish this would be the case in fact. The world of Albion is so realized and detailed, and despite the shallowness of some sub-systems the game is so enjoyable to play, that it deserves to be continued.

SPOILERS END

Then of course, there are the glitches. Fable II is one buggy mess. As of this date, game-ending bugs exist that require you to start from a fresh save file, such as on-screen menus becoming permanently stuck leaving you unable to do anything quest-releated. Characters float in the air, get stuck in solid objects, and things just misbehave all the time. It is a testament to how cohesive the art direction is, and how appealing Albion is to romp about in that the glitches do not bring down the experience too much. But it's disconcerting to see Fable II released in such a rough state. Excuses have been made to the effect that such a large, open ended game is difficult to test. But it is what it is, and Fable II is buggy.

But the biggest issue is not a bug per-se. One of Fable II's biggest features was touted to be full co-op play, in which two players could complete the entire game. This was even possible on one console. As it turns out, Fable II does not use a split screen. Both players are confined to one screen; as expected, and unavoidably, this makes single-console co-op difficult as the camera has trouble adjusting itself to display both players. More troubling is that the second player cannot load the appearance of their own character. While a Fable II save file can be loaded in order for another player to earn experience and money, they are forced to use a pre-set "henchman" model.

But that's on one console; local co-op always has limitations. The big shocker is that the Xbox Live co-op works exactly the same! But not only must a second player use a generic character model, they are confined to a "virtual screen" in which each must stay on one another's screen at the same time. Worse, each player cannot rotate their camera independently - the same jarring, claustrophibic auto camera is used for each person's point of view. This is confusing and bizarre, and strongly suggests that Fable II's online co-op is essentially a dirty hack that tunnels the local co-op system over the Internet. As of now, Lionhead appears to claim that there will be no updates to overhaul the online co-op. That is a shame, as Fable II is precisely the kind of game that begs for cooperative play that is, well, remotely sane.

So what is the deal with this game in the end? Like many big releases these days, Fable II was given a first class seat on the hype plane. Like the rest of them, it has been touted to cure cancer and make the small human egglings smile. (At least from a distance, as the game is rated M for Manically Mature.) In truth, Fable is brilliant in many concepts and in some execution, but on the whole, is merely a great game, not a transcendent one. To its credit, most of its core qualities are addictive. Its world is appealing, and while simple, its story is well told with dialog that is more natural and witty than we have come to expect in games that take themselves too seriously. Its key weakness outside of its buggy state, is its short main quest and abrupt ending. Still, expansions could breath new life into the game. I think Fable II is a game that many people will enjoy, and you will get more out of if you can resist going into it expecting a messianic experience. It is also the sort of game that those who are bored by traditional RPGs are likely to find attractive.

I would, however, advise watching out for the lady with the chair stuck in her head. In Outer Space, we don't have those, and I found it rather creepy.

Tuesday Carnivore Corner

2008-10-23T07:40:00.000-07:00

It's not Tuesday.

So, at last the carnivore corner was found and funny enough it had gotted lost because it was so small.

In fact, it was a mini dinosaur.

In nineteen hundred and ninety ate, very tiny bones were found in Germany, in the Harz mountains, not far from where the sausage is kept. While at first it was suspected that a baby dinosaur had passed out and become stuck trying to get to the sausage, it was quickly determined that the bones belonged to a surprisingly small dinosaur: Europasaurus.

This was a curious thing according to Small Dinosaurologist Martin Sander. Being a cousin to the mighty Brachiosaurus, Europasaurus was theorized to have gotten very small when it rained a lot and the dinosaur had to huddle upon a small rock for a few thousand years.

Fortunately, this also had the benefit of protecting Europasaurus from the Nazi regime's Pterodactyl flying squadron. As is commonly known, german Pterodactyls are - much like evil spirits and politicians - incapable of crossing running water, even when in the air.

Thus the Nazis were unable to kidnap Europasaurus to use in experients to breed donkey-sized supply carriers for use in their wars, which they are apt to start in Poland.

It was also brought to the attention of the International Society of Bone Digging Men that Europasaurus was not actually a carnivore. However, they elected to not tell Europasaurus this, as being a small dinosaur, it was gentle and they felt bad about upsetting it.

The last question remaining however was most curious: how was it discovered that Europasaurus was so small? As it turns out, growth marks on dinosaur bones are similar to growth rings on trees. The rings are far apart while the animal is young and growing quickly. They form closer together as growth slows. That's cool.

At the Movies: Max Payne

2008-10-19T09:48:00.000-07:00

"The truth was a burning green crack through my brain. Pre-planned situations to give my actions purpose. Endless repetition of drama, time slowing down to show off my payne. The paranoid feeling of someone watching my every move. I was in a film. Funny as Hell, it was the most horrible thing I could think of".

Max Payne, the videogame, was not a serious game. Well, it was, and it wasn't. One moment you're being treated to film noir style dialogue so cheesy even the lactose intolerant could stomach a line as trite as "Gognitti bailed. I made like Chow Yun-Fat", the next moment lead protagonist and all-round shit-eating grin guy Max Payne is having a self-referential drug-induced fourth-wall-breaking moment of clarity regarding his place in the digital universe.

Amidst all the cheddar and videogame-centric moments, an undercurrent of actual plot snuck its way through the guns, bullet-time and trippy nightmare scenes where Max follows a trail of blood through an endless black that leads him right up to the door where his wife and child were brutally murdered by drug-addled junkies. It put meat on what might have been an otherwise tasteless carcass of ain't-that-cool effects and gameplay during an era of videogames where all that mattered was ain't-that-cool effects and gameplay.

The movie of the game takes its best shot at trying to take all this and turn it into an actual plausible world where people can ask for 'Detective Max Payne' without giggling a little. For the most part the movie does an amiable job of taking the original videogame plot and changing it a little to keep it fresh, expanding it to include characters from the second videogame as well as give Mark Walberg's Payne some scenes where the CG designers can go apeshit. If nothing else, Payne's penultimate angst scene is something truely incredible to behold as Noir York burns in apocalyptic hell as the backdrop to his power-up scream.

Now it may just be a side-effect of trying to remain PG-13: M. Payne comes up oddly short in the action department. Almost afraid to tread ground already covered by the videogame, Max has his few run-and-gun moments (albeit oddly subdued) and the obligatory bullet-time jumping-backwards shotgun is there as one of many nods the movie takes to the source material... yet the whole thing remains overly serious.

Now it's unclear to me how people who have never played the videogames will receive the movie, but if you've played the games you can't help wishing the movie was a little more like Shoot 'Em Up and less like a Marvel superhero popcornmuncher. Or that could just be me, longing for the tongue-in-cheek noirness of the game's graphic-novel cutscenes and utterly over-the-top dialogue. It does make me wonder how things would have turned out, had the movie been done by the Sin City team, who seem to have a penchant for exactly this kind of thing.

Walberg pulls off a good Max Payne, if only for that brooding 'don't touch me I'm upset' aura (possibly a result of having to endure one-too-many flashbacks reminding him why he's so upset in the first place).

Would the movie have been better had they tried to mimic the source material more closely? It certainly worked in the favour of Sin City and 300, trusting the original author's presentation to do what needs to be done. Perhaps this is the true Curse of the Videogame Movie: that Hollywood seems reluctant to treat the original material as anything more than a name to reproduce on a movie poster, ignoring the creative input of the original content creators.

If anything, a little more Constantine wouldn't have hurt Payne either, considering the quasi-religious themes Max gets treated to in an odd burst of creativity on behalf of the plot translation from the game.

Examinations aside, I'm not sure if Max Payne will finally be "the one" to upswing the game-to-movie bandwagon we're currently forced to ride. By the admittance of the movie's actors themselves, Max Payne is "not a videogame movie".

Ludacris, who plays Det. Ventura, boasts, "We take it to a whole other theatrical level".

What level that is, partially eludes me, but it's always nice to see a man take revenge for the brutal murder of his wife and "seed", as Luda put it, no matter how it's presented.

At the end of the day, while Max Payne sure isn't all that and a bag of chips, it remains an utterly watchable experience, probably moreso if you don't bring any preconceptions to the theater from having played the videogames.

At the Movies: Quarantine

2008-10-15T15:35:00.001-07:00

First, I must apologize for the lack of an update for this week's Tuesday Carnivore Corner. Spinosaurus ated the file. I will post the update later in the week after it is extracted from the Spinosaurus poop.

Now, at the movies. A note upon movie reviews by Dinosaurs. We are extremely curious creatures and care not for spoilers. So, we shall be speaking frankly about the contents of the movies. But out of compassion for the spoiler-impaired, we shall insert a measure of space between the body of the review and any mission critical plot information.

This week, we saw Quarantine. This is the latest in the long line of films that make a particular artistic statement. "Reality is ugly, unpolished, confusing, harsh, and ends very abruptly when everyone dies and the world goes dark, with no definitive exposition or sense of closure, resulting in a pit in the stomach and a distinct sense of nihilistic horror. Also, real life is seen entirely through a consumer grade portable video recorder with poor lighting."

In Quarantine, the point is that the modern Hyper Zombie Virus breaks out in an apartment complex in Los Angeles, California. When fire and rescue teams arrive for a seemingly common emergency, they become trapped in the building when it is sealed off by a government agency. And trapped inside as well - the camera man and hostess of a nightly reality show.

For those who are uninitiated, the Hyper Zombie Virus is a relatively recent innovation in Zombie Propogation Sciences. The Hyper Zombie is not actually a paying member of the Internatonal Society of the Undead. Rather, they are merely the living who have contracted a mysterious form of super rabies, and have become easily excitable, very fast, and very strong, and for reasons not adequately explored, still crave the same human flesh as their undead neighbors.

Quarantine is not a bad movie, we thought. It opens cold, without titles, as the television reporter lady begins the night on-camera at a fire department station. The film sticks totally to the genre convention: everything is strictly from the perspective of the portable hand camera. The beginning of the film, before the emergency call comes in, is quirky and authentic, establishing the characters as people that we care about because we are genuinely charmed by them. In this, many if not most modern horror films engender fail. Their stereotypical and two dimensional characters are mostly annoying.

Once the action moves to the apartment, things quickly go awry and a kindly old lady who appeared to be having a difficulty does instead go about biting neck blood out of a nice policeman. She is quickly put down (or so it appears) and everyone begins to wonder what is really going on.

Spoilers come next.

From here, Quarantine follows the spirit of the zombie festival precisely, though it is edgy and innovative in how it arrives at the inevitable destination. The residents of the building, trapped by the government and military forces outside, become batty and angry and the virus spreads quickly. Hyper Zombie kills happen at moments that are largely un-choreographed. The survivors dwindle until only the ubiquitous camera man and the reporter lady remain. From here, at the height of desperation, they make their way to the attic of the building only to find an apparently secret lab where a supposed infrequent tennant has set up to create the virus which infected the premises. Posters and news clippings suggest a doomsday cult. But, the last surprise is that the creator is still there, having been infected by his own creation. First, he defeats and eats the camera man, in a genuinely tense and dreadful sequence using night vision, in which it is clear to the viewer that the victims cannot see what the audience sees.

Then the final, high king of the Hyper Zombies drags the hostess away and the movie ends.

Here we reach the critical failure roll upon which Quarantine stumbles. This sort of ending is a very trendy one because it, it seems, many directors and writers believe it is a trump card. But nearly every movie within the harsh, Mystery Science Survival Camcorder Horror genre (and a few tangentially attached to it, such as the contemporary The Mist) ends with the same ethoes: real life is brutal and ends abruptly with futility and the frustration of never knowing anything. By this point, it is the ultimate non-twist twist ending, due to its pretentious simplicity: everyone knows already that life can end suddenly without closure.

The challenge of this filmmaking style is in finding a way to transcend its inherent limitation: how to say something more meaningful than "everyone dies, life is suck".

In spite of all this, Quarantine is a good film for what it sets out to do. It is worth seeing for fans of the genre for its technical merits - the entire film was shot in a real apartment building, with no computer-assisted trickery edited in layer, including for injuries and deaths, including a sudden, shocking fall out of nowhere. But, like so many movies, it finds itself confusing style with actually having something to say, or to reveal about it subject matter. Even many summer popcorn films manage to achieve this. You could do far worse however, for a good Halloween movie. I suspect Quarantine will be a favorite at October parties and scary film fests.

PLEASE STAND BY

2008-10-11T09:44:00.001-07:00

The space dinosaurs are currently researching several new games. Also, they are preparing adorable cartoon art for new game platform categories. Updates follow soon.

-- Space Dinosaur Blue, out

It's Wii: Samba De Amigo

2008-10-07T19:49:00.000-07:00

So here are quick impressions of Samba De Amigo for the Wii.

I think it is fair to say that Sega has a bad reputation these days. In fact, dinosaurs seem less fossilized than Sega. (Ha ha. I'm a dinosaur, not a comedian.)

But, Samba De Amigo is a game dug up from that time called Dreamcast Age in which Sega fans were happy and could imagine the end was not near. It was never a perfect music game, but it was a pioneer. It had a pair of jolly red maraca shaker control wand thingies that were expensive and hard to find, however. Most Dreamcast owners, most likely, never got to play Samba with the proper controller.

So, now Sega has resurrected it on the Wii, with Gearbox software handling the duty of both porting it and upgrading bits here and there. You know what? It's a good game even today, though it does feel a little dated compared to the Rock Bands of the world. The big twist is that the Wiimote can now be used (two in fact, one in each handclaw) to play the game.

Basically, crazy tropical monkies and suchlike bounce around the screen in the background, and you have to shake a pair of virtual maracas about to hit high, medium, and low shakes all set to salsa and samba-style music. I see not a lot of people have been enjoying this because they feel the Wiimote control is picky and imprecise. Truth is, the Dreamcast maracas were finicky too, just in different ways.

At first I was a bit confused, as my dinosaur arms are not that long. I was making mistakes, or seeing the Wiimotes misfire for me, and fail to see various poses. There's no way around it. As it stands now, the Wiimote cannot quite sense enough data to make this sort of game mechanic work flawlessly.

Still, I hung in there, and got the hang of it. Once you figure out just what the Wiimote is expecting you to do, you can hit the shaker-note thingies consistently. It's not as intuitive as the theme of the game would like to be, or as freewheeling and party-ready. That's a shame. But it's still a good game.

I'm going through it now; it appears the set list of music is actually generous, nearly 50 songs. About half appear to be new, the other half, returning from the Dreamcast original.

I hope that I'll grow to like it enough to play it long-term. Gearbox did a good job of fleshing out the package, even with online leaderboards that are set up nicely.

Samba?

Tuesday Carnivore Corner

2008-10-07T06:44:00.000-07:00

It's bigger, it's badder, it's back!

Well, sort of. It did not actually leave.

Well, it sort of did. Then it was found again. Nazis were involved.

Okay, it was Spinosaurus.

Spinosaurus was first discovered in nineteen hundred and fifteen when a fossil was molested by Ernst Stromer, who was a German. (He was not the Nazi however.) Spinosaurus would have been recognized as the largest theropod carnivore, but the fossil was destroyed in 1944 when Americans bombed Germany in an effort to see if there might be any Nazis around. They were also clearly mistaken on the issue of whether or not dinosaurs supported the Nazi regime. (Dinosaurs do, in fact, follow a trans-anarchic system of psuedo-government which largely relies on good manners in a post-scarcity society. Also it is in Outer Space.)

For the longest time, poor Spinosaurus was forgotten about, and even the reprehensible Gigantosaurus rushed in later to claim it was the largest two-legged carnivore.

Fortunately, the hero of all dinosaurs, Cristiano Dal Sasso, arrived at last to knock people around with a new Spinosaurus bone and explain that they were being very very silly.

FACTS:

Tyrannosaurus Rex was around fourty feets long and weighed six tonnes.

Gigantosaurus ws around fourty-five feets long and weighed seven to eight tonnes.

Spinosaurus was fifty-five feets long and weighed nine tonnes. Maybe more!

Spinosaurus also has big, crocodile-like jaws, and a giant fin upon its back. That's cool.

Notes: sadly, German propoganda posters dating from World War Two in which Spinosaurus was depicted as the model pilot for the Luftwaffe have been lost. While Spinosaurus might have held a politically independent position, it was renowned as an excellent airman.

It's Wii: The Mega Man 9 Effect

2008-10-03T10:18:00.000-07:00

Here I sit watching Space Dinosaur Red play Mega Man 9 upon the Wii Ware. This game is the darling of the hard core gamers because of its aura of purity and goodness (it is two-dee, 8-bit Nintendo sprites, and beepy 8-bit music). Normally, I am not a dinosaur to be affected too much by nostalgia - I haven't cared for most modern remakes of old games merely because they're awful remakes, not because I believe the old games should not be replaced.

Mega Man 9 is charming, though. It's not as hard as the classic games, in truth but by modern standards, it's still very hard. I attribute this in part to the way modern games are seen as hand-holding by people who like knutt-busting challenges. Truth is, modern games are bigger than older games. If they were as difficult as Mega Man 2 it would be uncomfortable to play them for long. Japanese game designers have yet to learn all of this, as they frequently still use old school save systems in games that are sprawling in size, and sometimes very difficult. It's amazing how many Japanese RPGs today still have unskippable story scenes before a multi-stage boss battle with no chance to save between fights. Things like this remind me of my suspicion that a lot of game designers never play their own games.

But, watching the new Mega Man, I also think about what SD Red just told me: that he no longer is frustrated by dying and starting a whole stage over. He's become reacclimated to the "old school" from when he was a small dinosaur. I wonder though if the cold splash of water to the face that happens when you play such an old, demanding, hard game isn't simply due to being an adult and removed from youthful obsessions. For those who have played games a while, we have slowly become conditioned by longer, more complex games, with a broader curve in difficulty. We're not always softer, just less used to byte-sized gaming. I've noticed that many of the hard core who still enjoy tough 8-bit games also play intense puzzle games, a genre that has remained largely unchanged in its underlying design ethics since the days of Tetris. A corrolation? I am a Space Dinosaur, not a scientificothority. You'll have to ask someone else.

It's Wii: Hey, look, content.

2008-10-02T13:08:00.000-07:00

Wow. I have beated the final boss (Shake King) in Wario Land, and was gratified to see it opened missions for replaying the bosses. Originally, I was a tad disappointed that the bosses were disconnected from the rest of the game's style. They had no timers, no missions.

Also, there are more secret levels than it first appeared; I gave the first one a shot and there's quite a difference in length and challenge. Now I see where the meaty play mechanics are hiding in the game. After the final boss, it appears you're given hints on where to find the other levels.

This was a thing that has always bothered me about most games, aside from a general lack of dinosaurs in most cases, that there was so little consideration for end game content. Or post game content. Perhaps some genres invite it, like the sandbox affairs. But most of the time, it seems the designers believe their job is done when the credits roll. Honestly, I do not think that is the case. A good game should be replayable, even a story driven game. It doesn't take that much thought to add after-credits content to let people continue to enjoy the experience.

From what I've heard, finding all the treasures, beating all missions, and finding the secret levels doesn't unlock something such as an alternate boss finale; that would have been ideal, but even so.

Next up: Tales of Vesperia on the 360. Rawr.

Tuesday Carnivore Corner

2008-09-30T09:24:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the Tuesday Carnivore Corner. Here, each week, we will discuss important facts about carnivores you need to know.

Albertosaurus periculosus

This carnivorous dinosaur was first described by Anatoly Nikolaevich Riabinin in terrestrial year Nineteen Hundred and Thirty. Anatoly found the bones of this dinosaur in Heilongjiang, China. Historically speaking, it is unclear exactly how he found it, but it has long been suspected the dinosaur was found in a hole. A broken pick axe was found nearby, but a connection could not be established by authorities - DNA was not properly understood (on Earth) at that time, therefore it was impossible to verify the axe as belonging to Mr. Riabinin.

The official classification of this dinosaur is: Saurischia Theropoda Tyrannosauria Tyrannosauridae. As a member of an iconic family of dinosaurs, Albertosaurus is made distinctive by its large jaws, small forelimbs, and powerful hind legs.

Did you know: the first digit on the toes of dinosaurs in the tyrannosaurid family is called the hallux. Only the other three toes on their feet touched the ground. That's cool.

Once, a group of twenty-two Albertosaur fossils were discovered by Barnum Brown in the Dry Island bonebed. That was the largest group of any Cretaceous theropod ever discovered by a man with a alliterated name. The near-absence of herbivore remains and the similar state of preservation between the many individuals at the Albertosaurus bonebed quarry led Phil Currie (note the critical lack of alliteration in the name) to conclude that the locality was not a predator trap like the La Brea Tar Pits in California, and that all of the preserved animals died at the same time. Alternatively, they might have been gravely mistaken about the location of Eee Three.

Important note: Wikipedia does not in fact list a date of death for Mr. Riabinin. Therefore, he could still be alive, and intending to ambush more dinosaurs in holes with his pickaxe. Caution is advised during visits to mainland China.

It's Wii: Wario Land - Shake it!

2008-09-29T12:22:00.000-07:00

Hello. I'm Space Dinosaur Blue. These are my first impressions of Wario Land: Shake It! for the Nintendo Wii.

You know, there are some games that ought not to exist, as general expectations lead us to believe. One of those games has got to be the big-budget hand-drawn 2D console platformer. Nobody spends money to make those anymore. They go on the Nintendo DS where it's safe.

I was very happy and a little perplexed to see Wario Land: Shake It! for the Wii appear and challenge reality to slap it down.

I am currently on world five of five. I'm enjoying the experience immensely, although I did have to throttle my keen dinosaur senses down a few notches. Too many first person shooters, the last decade, I suspect. Shake It! was very slow at first, and I wasn't sure if it was going to become exciting. The game you see, is not a direct and linear platform jumping affair as it first appears. Beating a stage inside a world is very simple. First you run to the cage containing the tiny sprite man, then you are caught by an alarm. After that, a countdown begins and you must race to the exit before a large man improbably called the Shake King appears and shakes all your money out of your pockets. (On second thought, maybe the king's title makes sense.) If you're familiar with Wario, you know he's a very greedy person and not at all nice like Mario. He doesn't like losing his coins. He worked very hard to steal them.

It's very possible a lot of people shall play this game and not appreciate how you're supposed to play it.

Each stage has three treasures to find, and a list of achievements. Well. They're called missions, but anyone who knows about this Xbox 360 thing will see they're achievements. There is even a little pop-up that slides into the screen when you achieve one of them to let you know what it was. While each stage in the game appears simplistic at a glance, the astute will spy many odd blocks and tunnels that you can't easily get into. Some of them are quite confounding. The challenge ramps up considerably when you play a stage to acquire everything that you can.

So, by now I'm really getting into it. I see that in order to really enjoy this game, you have to get in to beating the achi-- missions, and finding all the treasures. I'm not sure if this will unlock anything at the end game yet, but I'm quite used to working hard for achievements on my Xbox that don't do a lot for me in practical terms, either. But gamerscore is delectable.

I'm gratified that there's a lot to Shake It! as well. Each of the five worlds has 3 to 4 stages before a boss, plus, I appear to have found a little treasure map that lets me enter a hidden stage in world 1. It is much longer and harder than the regular stages. I wonder if there are more. I bet there are!

I mentioned that this is a two-dimensional game. That's the flat things. They don't have polygons much. A lot of people thing flat things are old and boring, like toys for babies. If they know what shaders are they say flat things are low-tech. (They say this as if they believe low-tech is dreadful. I am not sure I agree, as being a dinosaur, I do like eating with my claws. It saves on buying flatware.)

But I think Wario Land demonstrates the flaw in thinking that two-dee is old and boring. There has not been much elaborate two-dee over since the Playstation came to game town. Most of it has remained limited (the hard core like to say "classic") in quality and assets. Much of it is still very low color depth, pixelated, that sort of thing. Lots of good art, some of it looks very nice, but still. They are not making two-dee games with the money used on Gears of War, you know. And so, Wario Land is beautiful. It should be. The animation and art were created by Production I.G., the Japanese animation studio famous for Ghost in the Shell. And the game has a wonderfully lavish feel to it. This is not like most modern niche games which are forced to ride thin assets into oblivion. Almost every stage I have played has its own set of background art. There are five or six layers of parallax most of the time. There are new animations and enemies all over the place with each world. Wario himself is a gorgeous rude slob.

Dinosaurs love music, to be clear about that. My favorite part of Shake It! might be the music, in point of fact. I have not heard the like of it since the roaring 90's and the heyday of jazzy fusion in the eurogame and mod tracker scene. As I remarked to Space Dinosaur Red, "now I get it. This is just the kind of lounge jazz that you heard in the old Saturday morning cartoons that this game looks like." The music is fabulous really. And there's even lots of it; every stage has its own theme, and its own escape theme.

Is this is a great game? I think so. It's not Super Mario Galaxy. For a two-dee game, it's not Yoshi's Island either. But the Wario games have had their own path to follow. They have been a warm compliment to the Really Huge platformers that Nintendo makes. This one is the same, I believe. I'll know more after I see the end; I do hope that there is more unlocked for completing the achievements and such.

If you are not looking for such an experience in particular, I'm not sure if you'd be satisfied exchanging bio-survival tickets for this disc, even if it is extremely pretty. It is definitely speaking to those who know its native language first. I'm always up for a good jumping-around-things-in-the-flat-place session, however. I'm happy with it.

Those are my impressions. I'm going to go play it more now. Plus, I have Samba De Amigo and De Blob (Hmm. De's for all.) for the Wii to get into as well. Yes, I know the controls in Samba are supposed to be iffy. It's a very, very happy game though.

In Outer Space, only dinosaurs play video games.

2008-09-29T09:42:00.000-07:00

This is the blog of the Space Dinosaurs.

We may or we may not come in peace.

More pertinent, is that we play video games.

Now, we have a blog. We are aware that there are those upon the Earth who would protest the notion that dinosaurs can blog.

It's two-thousand and ate, by the terrestrial calendar. Everyone has a blog. Besides; we're from Outer Space. Special circumstances.

So, now. We game. We write. We tap the keys carefully with our big dinosaur claws as we wag our big dinosaur tails.

These are our adventures.

-- Space Dinosaur Blue, out

p.s. Rawr.