Pint-Sized Playability

OK, one more brief thought on Shadow Complex while I’m on the subject: one of the most common recurring themes in game reviews for the title is that SC represents a “great value” because it includes a full-sized game in an Xbox Live release.  The thought occurs to me, however, that this might not be a good thing for developers.

The basic problem, as I see it, is that if Xbox Live simply becomes an arena for discounted AAA titles, it hurts everybody.  Developers will be forced into an arms race to produce cheaper but high-quality games, essentially lowering the starting price point for new games and squeezing their profitability.  Gamers who, like Michael Abbott, are drawn to “bursts of [streamlined] fun,” will have a harder time finding the more casual titles they treasure, because they’ll be sandwiched in between more premium titles.  And hardware manufacturers, who responded to this issue first with the Wii and Live/PSN, will find themselves in much the same predicament as they did before the current generation.

I’m hardly one to bemoan getting more for less.  But I do become concerned that the more we blur the lines between the delivery of AAA or hardcore games and casual titles, the more we actually end up hurting ourselves.  Definitely think of this more as a thought experiment if this trend were carried to an extreme, rather than a complaint about Shadow Complex, which I like quite a bit: is it possible that segregating our games by type and channel is actually beneficial?

Self-Fulfilling Prophecies, Violence Edition

Insult Swordfighting notes that Sega is one of the few publishers willing to take a risk on violent, edgy material for the Wii - which isn’t selling very well.  Unfortunately, I don’t think much of Sega’s strategy at this point, because the basic rationale underlying it isn’t holding up at this point… a function of timing as much as fundamentals.

Point 1: The Wii has sold a lot of consoles.  This is indubitably true, but often stated with the same misguided authority as some CPG marketing executive noting that China has a lot of people, and if you could each sell just one of them a single Coke, you’d be a billionaire!  This sort of reductionist nonsense manages to elide the risks, challenges, and costs of such a venture with the precision of a back-of-the-envelope calculation made on a Chili’s tablecloth at lunch.  As Nintendo has so often pointed out, they’ve expanded the gaming pie; but the pie is clearly no longer the same as it once was.  The market for outre, artistically violent conceptual shooters isn’t much larger than it ever was, and that’s what Sega is targeting - not some nebulous conception of “gamers.”

Point 2: Substitution is no longer the challenge it once was.  Back when the consoles first started emerging, I was rooting hard for the Wii to emerge as a dominant platform - and it did.  Unfortunately, my vision of the Wii as a dominant platform was different from the reality; I had imagined a single monolith producing hardcore games and Wii Fits with equal savoir faire.  What I got was a highly-targeted console with little, if any, interest in scratching the hardcore itch with regularity.  The difference here is that I, like many gamers, adjusted.  We bought a 360 (and potentially a PS3) as well, many of us years ago.  As a result, there’s no real need for developers to move through the Wii to reach a desired audience that is almost always on multiple consoles.  And although I might consider taking a chance on a new Wii game that I thought was in my demographic, it’s hard enough to follow 3-6 consoles that it’s equally likely that it will fall through the cracks.  Especially given the plethora of multiplatform alternatives.

So while I agree that it’s nice to see someone taking a chance, I am less optimistic about its chances for success.  It seems to me like Capcom is pursuing an early-generation strategy in a mid-generation timeframe.

Can You Blame Them?

It’s quite possible the Wii momentum is starting to slow, but it seems a little weird to blame Nintendo for this.  The console’s been out for a while, and it’s been selling ridiculous amounts ever since launch - obviously, at some point, people are going to stop buying them.  But that’s because everyone owns one.

Strangely, analysts seem to be in the position of criticizing Nintendo for being way too successful.  I’ve previously hammered the point that Nintendo can’t possibly sustain these expectations forever, and this seems to be bearing that notion out.  But the criticism is misdirected - had the firm been only half as successful, it would still have beaten previous expectations.  A better concern would be how the Wii’s success can be kept up, if indeed it can; yet let’s not lose track of the fact that we’ve moved the goalposts in the middle of the game.

Geoff’s Games Of The Year 2008

I’m going to be in Steamboat Springs and Australia starting at the end of the week, so I’m getting all of the game of the year nonsense out of the way before I go.  I’ve always found the idea of anointing one game “the best” of its peers to be subjectively absurd at best and downright flamebait at worst.  So why am I doing it?  It’s entertaining and I think it’s worthy of debate, if not resolution.

So herewith, my games of the year, for each console which I own.

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A Defense Of Sonic 3D Games

Everyone seems to hate 3D Sonic game, and honestly, I’m not really sure why.  I loved Sonic Adventure for the Dreamcast - although it seems like I’m the only one who did.

Honestly, the 2D games have been an extremely mixed bag for me.  The problem with them is that they trade speed for control; as a result, you fly past meticulously created levels so quickly that you have no idea what’s going on, and are challenged mainly to hit buttons reflexively in time to avoid hitting spikes/animals/miscellaneous obstacles.  This is the worst sort of Panzer Dragoon-ism, and it surprises me that so many people are so nostalgic for it.  Should you dare to slow down enough to locate hidden secrets or examine the landscape, you’ve often inadvertently killed yourself, because speed is so essential to survival.  I often felt cheated by the original games for this reason - they were playing me instead of the reverse.

The 3D games dealt with this by making the fastest parts of the game as stylish as possible: Sonic Adventure kept the on-rails theme but focused on making them highly cinematic (think the Whale sequence on the boardwalk at the beginning of the game).  Sure, you might not have as much control as in a platformer, but at least you were getting a great experience out of it.

It seems likely that people don’t like the new games because they’re not like the old games, and I think Fallout 3 has shown that that’s simply not a fair criticism.  Modifications on a theme are just as valid as slavish recreations.

Money can be exchanged for goods and services

Attention game industry, we already have a standard for which we can purchase items: money.  Let’s use it, shall we?

Obviously, we all know about Xbox Live Points, which inexplicably have a conversion rate of 80 points to every $1.  There’s just no reason to have such a stupid conversion rate except to slightly obscure the true price of downloadable items.

Nintendo/Wii Points are slightly better, but only because they have a sensible conversion rate of 100 points to every $1.  At least when you buy something there’s not a weird conversion that you have to pull off in your head to figure out how much it is.  Now we learn, however, that instead of just using the same pool of Nintendo points for DSi downloads, you will have to keep completely separate accounts for both.

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Mega Man 9 - Thoughts On Difficulty And Irony

So far, I’m very much enjoying Mega Man 9, but whether or not you will is dependent very much on two related but ultimately different things: how much you liked the original NES Mega Man games, how you feel about the NES aesthetic itself.

Let me elaborate.  With respect to the original MM series, it probably goes without saying that if you really hated the originals, you’re not going to like #9…  it imitates the originals almost to a fault.  You have essentially the same basic puzzle themes - disappearing or moving blocks, instant-kill spikes, hard-hat enemies, middle-stage mini-bosses, and so on.  The game does manage to come up with some unique uses for these building blocks but since the point is to reflect the earlier titles it doesn’t make the differences too obvious.  And you can’t really fault it for that.

It’s on the second point that I think you need to draw some careful distinctions.  In an earlier comment, Rob remarks that “we started doing much better once we started assuming that, at any given moment, the worst possible thing that could happen was going to happen.”  This is a very on-target comment.  A lot of people have discussed the game’s difficulty - in many respects, I don’t think that it’s actually as hard as they imply if you’re familiar with older NES games.  But the game doesn’t simply attempt to replicate that aesthetic - it tries to pay tribute to it.  The practical implication is that what was tough in Mega Man 1 or 2 is fetishized in Mega Man 9. 

For example, if you recall the original Ice Man stage in #1, you may recall how irritating the disappearing ice blocks could be; it was simply tough to get your character to make the leaps as carefully as you desired to avoid a bottomless pit of death.  The Gravity Man stage has similar pits, but puts an enemy in front of them that launches you inexorably into the pits - or in some places, spiked walls.  There’s no way to know the enemies are there unless you inch forward, bit by bit (or die repeatedly), any time you come close to a pit or spike series, as Rob implies.  This is a perfect example of what I think ultimately will divide the Mega Man 9 haters from the fans.  If you liked Mega Man because it was hard… you will love this game.  If you like it because you really love the aesthetic (art, level design, conventions) of the original NES titles, you will still like the game quite a bit.  (I fall into the last category.)  That’s because it takes what was difficult about the original Mega Man, puts it on a billboard, and strings it with neon so you don’t miss it; it’s retro for retro’s sake, an ironic take on all that was good and bad about NES games. 

That’s why liking Mega Man itself is only partially relevant.  The critical second hurdle is your feelings about that kind of take on gaming.  If you like the sense of irony being displayed, that’s a good sign.  If you don’t, you probably won’t play too long.

Disaster Lives!

Destructoid has the new Japanese trailer for Disaster: Day of Crisis (Wii), which apparently comes out September 25 (!) in Japan.  I have heard next to nothing about this game for months, and figured it was going to be either quietly canceled or pushed to next year.

Considering the English voice acting, I have to imagine that a US release can’t be too far behind, right?  Of course, the bigger question is, of course, is it any good?  Since it was first announced, it seemed like an intriguing title, but basically nothing had come out about it.  Hopefully that doesn’t portend poorly for the game.

On a completely unrelated side note, I’ll be posting part 1 of my PAX impressions tonight.  I realize it’s basically ancient history now, but I only just got back to work this week.

Bionic Idiocy

With Bionic Commando: Rearmed’s release imminent this week, there was bound to be some interest in the original game.  You would think that the Nintendo Wii’s virtual console would be the perfect place for it, and considering that Rearmed isn’t making it to the Wii, the original Bionic Commando would be the perfect release this week to go along with the 360/PS3/PC release of Rearmed.  Apparently, you’d be wrong.  For some strange reason that Capcom doesn’t go into, Nintendo blocked the release of Bionic Commando on the Virtual Console.  Kotaku speculates that it could be the “Nazi thing” or the “exploding head”, but honestly… those couldn’t really be the reasons, could they?  Nintendo has had far worse on their systems in a far more realistic fashion than what the old 8-bit system could offer (the Resident Evil’s and Call of Duty games spring immediately to mind).  So what in the world is Nintendo’s problem here?

You’ll love it, we swear

Note to Nintendo: when you show a new peripheral, in this case the WiiMotionPlus, make sure we understand what it’s good for and why we need it.  It looks like they demoed just Wii Sports Resort with it, but no other announcements with it or what it really allows developers to do with it.

Incidentally, Wii Sports Resort would be even better if they put the original Wii Sports on the disc as well, sort of creating a “platform” as Rock Band is doing.  They could even add in support for the “WiiMotionPlus” to make the original games even better (if it actually does anything, since they didn’t really make the advantages very clear).

As for Nintendo’s conference overall… it was a bit of a bore.  I didn’t expect it to compete with Microsoft’s because Nintendo and Microsoft are quite honestly playing different games at this point. But I was hoping to at least see an interesting new franchise (for the “core” gamers they supposedly still care about) or at least an update to one of their popular franchises (and Wii Music and Animal Crossing don’t really count).  I really thought we’d at least see a teaser for a new Zelda, or didn’t they announce or strongly hint at a new Kid Icarus game at some point? Instead it seemed to be mostly numbers with a few games that I didn’t really care for, and then telling me that I should “disrupt my thinking” and escape the Matrix so that I care.  As with seemingly everything they produce, though, I’m sure they’ll sell a trillion copies.