Spore Creature Creator

I played around with Spore’s trial Creature Creator recently, and I’m not 100% convinced that it’s a great idea.  As fun as it is to make my own hideous monstrosities, one of the main points of the actual Spore “game” is the progressive evolution of your beast as it moves through evolutionary phases.  Handing me the keys to the kingdom so early seems like it risks eliminating one of the few real reward systems the game has.

I’m also not sure whether or not some of the game’s lack of functionality is due to the fact that it’s a demo or not… but the painting seems like it lacks some basic options around color gradation and pattern selection, and it’s surprisingly difficult to mold the basic body shape into non-traditional forms, outside of simply lengthening or shortening the spine (for that matter, what happened to invertebrates?).

Legacies

I’m previously criticized movie adaptations of games that subsequently jettisoned the games’ unique characteristics.  I view the recent announcement of Wolfenstein 3D’s spiritual successor - known simply as Wolfenstein - in something of a similar vein. 

Wolfenstein 3D was indeed an historic game, the first real FPS to hit the market; although it took Doom to really get the genre into the open, id obviously knew what it was doing.  That said, I’m really unclear on the motivation to revisit it: the game is not a remake, but instead a sequel to the multiplayer (and decidedly less silly) Return to Castle Wolfenstein.  As far as I can tell, BJ Blaskowicz is the only real component of Wolf 3D to make it intact into the new title - unless you count the vague premise of Nazi supernaturalism, which is neither unique to the game nor particularly iconic within it.  The game features a realism that was certainly not a hallmark of the over-the-top original, and the game mechanics themselves are also relatively new.

Partly this is a result of the fact that although Wolf 3D was a pioneer in its day, there is little about it that remains unique in today’s crowded FPS marketplace.  Yet as IGN notes, there is a whole host of gamers who barely (if at all) remember the original.  So presumably the hope is that Wolfenstein carries enough weight with nostalgic older gamers to motivate them to play the new game… without investigating how much of the old title yet remains.  Personally, I’d prefer a remake of a more obscure game that could do with the publicity and might feature a ton of the quirkier characteristics that made playing it worthwhile: Blake Stone 3 or ROTT 2, anyone?

Puzzling Through Puzzles

Brainy Gamer is asking a question that, as an adventure game fan, intrigued me: are puzzles dead?  BG argues that modern games have eschewed puzzles in favor of twitch-action FPS’s and combat-heavy, reflex-oriented skill requirements.  Although I wouldn’t disagree per se, I think he’s both oversimplifying the transition and perhaps understating the true magnitude of the change.

First off, I think it’s inaccurate to claim that games have become more “twitchy” with time.  Such a statement fails to account for the whole host of purely twitch titles that represented gaming historically: classic titles like Xevious, Prince of Persia, Gauntlet, Smash TV (to pick a few randomly off the top of my head) were entirely centered in this type of mechanic.  Early console games were even more guilty of this - there were few if any puzzles to be found in Super Mario Bros. or many of its ilk.  I suspect that BG is thinking of the golden age of adventure games, rather than gaming as a whole, when he makes his critique - there was a period where simulations, RPGs, and adventure titles were predominant, but let’s not assign them too much weight.

However, where I think he probalby understates his case is in the overall transition of gaming from the perspective of its goals. 

Read the rest of this entry »

Adventure Game Update: A Vampyre Story

As one of the remaining adventure game fans out there, I was excited to read an update on A Vampyre Story, one of the most promising titles coming down the pike, from Kezins.com.  AVS is being made in the tradition of the classic LucasArts titles; there’s not a ton of information on the game itself - just that it’s currently in test - but I’m guessing it will probably release by the end of the year at least.

UPDATE: By the way, Brainy Gamer has been hosting a community discussion/play-through of Grim Fandango, my favorite game of all time, and I’d invite anyone who never experienced it to join in.

And, it’s official…

Blizzard sure knows how to announce something.

After teasing us all week with strange clues,wild goose chases, and clear red herrings, Blizzard has confirmed that Diablo III is coming.

But not only have they confirmed it, they’ve provided a wealth of information, including not only a cinematic teaser trailer, but a LONG gameplay video with commentary AND a beautifully designed website with even more information to host it all (I played both the cinematic and gameplay trailers this morning with only 1 slight hitch during the gameplay trailer… since it was early, perhaps it will get worse through the day, but I highly recommend you check it out).

In any case, the game already looks amazing, seemingly retaining that classic Diablo feel with significantly updated graphics and, what appears to be, far more interesting looking environments.  Something not completely clear to me right now is whether the game will retain the random levels, but the FAQ on the website hints at it right now as it says random scripted events “build” on the random level generation of the originals.  The game even already has a fantastic soundtrack to accompany it, something that I mentioned in an earlier comment was a key aspect of drawing you into the worlds of the original games. The other thing you can notice from the gameplay video is that it appears, as in the originals, there appears to be very little cooldown time for skills, another aspect that contributed to the lightning-fast gameplay of the originals that has often been lost in many “clones”.

One minor area of early concern for me is whether the controls will also retain the right-button-mouse reassign hotkeys that added to some of the franticness of the originals.  The gameplay video mentions a “swap” hotkey as well as mousewheel support, which is definitely helpful, but hopefully they did not also remove the individual keyboard hotkeys.  I doubt they did, and I think the commentary was just stressing that, as in the originals, Diablo III can be played entirely with a mouse again.

So far, I’m very impressed.  Unlike some companies that just release a crappy, brief, cinematic teaser with nothing else, Blizzard launches a full-out explosion of information for what is probably one of the most requested sequels ever. Call me a hopeless Diablo fiend, but this game immediately jumps to the top of my most anticipated games.  The only question now is whether I’ll be able to play it before the decade is out.  If I had to wager a guess, I’d say that they’re shooting for the 2009 holiday season… which probably means we won’t see it until summer 2010 (or beyond).  But, the game does already look pretty damn good, so here’s hoping that it makes it out sooner than later.

Minor Update:  Shacknews has larger and faster loading movies here.  You can also view a couple shorter movies that focus on some of the attacks of the two classes that have been announced so far (Barbarian and Witch Doctor), as well as an “Artwork Trailer” which is actually kind of cool.  There are even some HD versions of some of the movies, but you’ll have to register (for free) to download them.

Oh yeah, and if anyone from Blizzard is reading this, I’ll just let you know right now that I’m available for a beta… or alpha… or whatever. =)

Diablo III or Bust *UPDATED*

I just thought I’d put up my 2 cents that if Blizzard’s newest teaser is for the WoW expansion Wrath of the Lich King, something we already know about and have plenty of information available on already, and which is only aimed at people who have level 70 characters (or close), then that would be a massive disappointment.

For all the Diablo clones out there, for some reason, nothing has been able to match up to the original (and especially its sequel).  Perhaps nothing ever will, but that doesn’t mean that a sequel to the 2000-released Diablo II (and 2001 expansion) isn’t extremely anticipated.  A WoW expansion means nothing to me and only something to a (smallish?) subset of the 10 million WoW subscribers who have or are close to level 70.  But a Diablo sequel… that’s something that I, and probably a hell of a lot more people than the mentioned WoW subset, can firmly get behind.

*UPDATE*

Well, more teasers today from Blizzard but Diabloii.net supposedly has confirmation from “inside sources” that Diablo III WILL be announced this weekend at the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational (WWI for short).  Here’s hoping their sources are right (and that the game doesn’t take another several years to make it out).

Ni Hao Ma, Zon?

This seems like an interesting idea: use a game to teach languages and culture.  I’m currently taking Chinese classes, and it would be nice to see an easier way to learn the language, which is quite difficult - in 9 months, I barely have the vocabulary required to ask for the time, directions, or to order food (comparatively, it’s taken me about 2 days to learn how to read Korean).  And I’m one of the better students in the class.

More to the point, I’m amazed it’s taken this long to try something like this.  An MMO is a social, interactive experience that can do a great job of mimicking real-life situations.  I’ll report back once I’ve had the chance to try the game out.

Plagiarists do Oblivion

Allanon just sent along this story where Game Plasma’s eagle-eyed PC reviewer noticed some striking similarities between Oblivion and a new game from a smaller PC studio titled “Limbo of the Lost.” Well, maybe not so much “striking similarities” as entire environments, lighting, and furniture placement in the exact same place as in Oblivion.

When this was first pointed out to me, I wondered whether these were just temporary placeholders for a game as of yet unreleased. Given the fact that he is reviewing the game, and a quick scan of Amazon suggests that this is not the case. I have a feeling we’re about to see some legal action here, as, unlike the S.T.A.L.K.E.R/Doom 3 fiasco, it’s hard to imagine that these entire environments are part of a 3rd party package.

You know what they say… imitation is the sincerest form of… ah, never mind. This is ridiculous. Sample pictures after the jump:

Read the rest of this entry »

More Nazis! I Mean, Japanese.

Call of Duty 5 details have come out, and it looks like we’re returning to World War II.  This has of course prompted a whole host of complaints from sites like Destructoid, who argue that WW2 is played out and that we should be looking at other conflicts for inspiration.  I’d agree that there are plenty of games like this out there, but this complaint strikes me as largely unfounded.

First off, why are there so many WW2 games?  For one, it’s because the war was one of the few with undeniably, unambiguously ”good” and “bad” guys.  You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone - Pat Buchanan aside - willing to argue that this wasn’t a “good war.”  As a result, you can mow down hordes of other human beings without feeling too terrible about yourself.  And you get a nice warm glow inside when you accomplish your objectives.  Second, it’s epic: there just aren’t any other wars out there in the modern era with the same kind of epic scope and scale that World War 2 has… even WW1 was relatively uninteresting trench warfare for a significant portion of its duration.  As a result, there is a lot of ground to mine.  Third, it’s got neat gadgets.  WW2 was where many of the tools of modern warfare, like the tank and air combat, first came into their own.  Therefore, designers can make a fairly diverse and interesting experience out of combat.  And finally, it’s got a happy ending: the right people won.  Good gameplay scenarios in an epic battle between good and evil: sounds like it should get a lot of attention.

Additionally, there just aren’t that many other attractive scenarios.  The most obvious US battles of the last 150 years or so would probably include the US Civil War, World War I, Korea, and Vietnam.  Yet the first has quite a few games of its own.  And the latter three just aren’t very inspiring: Korea had an ambiguous outcome, and it’s not nearly as widely known as most other fights.  And Vietnam is such a cultural touchstone, with so many political connotations, that it’s tough to come up with a real game that isn’t also a political statement. 

Also consider the fact that even now, companies are able to advance the WW2 game in any number of ways - from CoD’s original European-focused titles, to RTS’s like Close Combat and Company of Heroes, there are plenty of recent games that do more than simply parrot their forebearers.  If the genre is stagnant, let’s hear complaints.  But “no more WW2″ is reflexively negative without due reason.

And lastly, it would be remiss to note that the Pacific theater is one that hasn’t been touched on in nearly the same detail as Europe.  The fact that CoD 5 is targeting this area seems like a great reason to consider it optimistically.  The CoD series hasn’t let us down yet.

PC Death Wish

Quick!  What’s the newest nvidia video card model?  I have no idea either. 

So I was in a Best Buy yesterday and took a peek at the weekly ads.  While most of the advertised products were pretty typical, my eye caught on the video cards section.  New low price!  Build a better rig!  The only problem was that I had no idea what I wanted, and I would guess that most other people don’t, either.  In fact, the entire PC video card industry seems premised on the argument that the less transparent their product line, the more they will sell.  Cards are an incomprehensible mixture of acronyms, arcane numerical systems, and gibberish.

(I’ll be picking on nvidia here, but ATI is just as guilty.)

Read the rest of this entry »