written by Blain Newport on Thursday, 26 August, 2010
For no good reason, I got caught up on some "core games" on the Wii recently. Time for some mini-reviews!
No More Heroes 2
3 of 5
Let's look at my thoughts on the first game...
Hmm. No plot to speak of. Amusing mini-games that quickly become a waste of time. A fun ride, but not worth the grind.
I'd say that also pretty much sums of the sequel as well. It has a tiny bit more plot, but not so you'd notice / care. The mini-games are a bit better, but still get old, largely because the first one you open is the most effective way to get cash. Luckily you don't need to grind unless you're committed to buying every new piece of clothing available in each chapter. I actually did buy all the clothes for a few levels, trying to be true to Travis' superficial character, before I got bored.
While No More Heroes 2 improved a bit, it isn't enough. The combat is still mediocre, often ineffectively communicating what it wants from the player. The mini-games don't hold up. The story, even as a metaphor for gaming culture, made its point in the first game. It's still fun to see some of the crazy stuff, but I feel pretty done with No More Heroes as a franchise.
Mad World
4 of 5
I'd heard horrible things about Mad World being repetitive. And it can be. The game tells you up front that if you want to get the most points from killing a guy you should trap him (usually in a spare tire or garbage can), impale him with a street sign, and kill him at one of the many environmental killamajigs in the level. While all this is true, the game isn't about points per kill. It's about points within a certain amount of time, so as long as your mindful of opportunities to get more points by hurling a guy into a passing train or stuffing him into a burning barrel, you'll do fine.
The plot is a waste of time, and the mini-games / driving segments are pretty weak, but the combat was just enough to keep me entertained and punched up a notch with the occasional waggle fest. Mad World is my favorite action game on the Wii.
Red Steel 2
3 of 5
I had to buy a Wii Motion Plus for this? Even if sword strikes didn't simply fail to work occasionally, the combat would be pretty lackluster. Most fights boiled down to block, counter; finishing move. They moves feel and look okay, but outside from learning a new finisher once in a while, there wasn't enough variety to keep the game interesting. NecroVision's combo mechanic puts this game to shame.
The story and other activities in the game are so worthless that by the time this sentence is over I'll have spent too much effort talking about them.
Showing posts with label Wii. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wii. Show all posts
26 August, 2010
03 August, 2009
Review: Deadly Creatures
written by Blain Newport on Saturday, August 1, 2009
Score 3 of 5
Deadly Creatures is a game with a novel concept. You play through the game as two arachnids, a spider and a scorpion, fighting other vermin. Parallel to your wandering and fighting, two men of dubious moral fiber (voiced by Billy Bob Thornton and Dennis Hopper) are looking for buried treasure. The game tries for a creepy tone throughout and largely succeeds thanks to the music. I guess if you have an inherent fear of creepy crawlies, that would play into it as well, but I guess I don't have that.
For me, the game was a mediocre brawler with insects as the main characters. It was also hard to get around sometimes, with invisible barriers impeding progress and certain glitchy areas making it easy to fall (occasionally to my death). The cool thing about the environments was that occasionally there'd be a surprise or flash of recognition as I'd suddenly realize I'd been crawling around on a very familiar object but hadn't realized it because of how different it looked up close.
Aesthetically, the game does well, but in terms of the gameplay, it's all rough edges. Enemies attack at random, meaning sometimes they'll wallop you constantly without giving you a chance to fight back and sometimes they'll seem like they're just standing around waiting to be killed. Also there are special moves that require particular Wiimote and nunchuck movements. If I flailed, they worked. If I tried to be precise and do only the motion as pictured, they didn't.
As the score indicates, I enjoyed the experience, but it was mostly the novelty of being tiny and focused production design / direction. If the gameplay had been interesting and well implemented, Deadly Creatures could have been one of those weird gems a core gamer would own a Wii for. Oh well.
Score 3 of 5
Deadly Creatures is a game with a novel concept. You play through the game as two arachnids, a spider and a scorpion, fighting other vermin. Parallel to your wandering and fighting, two men of dubious moral fiber (voiced by Billy Bob Thornton and Dennis Hopper) are looking for buried treasure. The game tries for a creepy tone throughout and largely succeeds thanks to the music. I guess if you have an inherent fear of creepy crawlies, that would play into it as well, but I guess I don't have that.
For me, the game was a mediocre brawler with insects as the main characters. It was also hard to get around sometimes, with invisible barriers impeding progress and certain glitchy areas making it easy to fall (occasionally to my death). The cool thing about the environments was that occasionally there'd be a surprise or flash of recognition as I'd suddenly realize I'd been crawling around on a very familiar object but hadn't realized it because of how different it looked up close.
Aesthetically, the game does well, but in terms of the gameplay, it's all rough edges. Enemies attack at random, meaning sometimes they'll wallop you constantly without giving you a chance to fight back and sometimes they'll seem like they're just standing around waiting to be killed. Also there are special moves that require particular Wiimote and nunchuck movements. If I flailed, they worked. If I tried to be precise and do only the motion as pictured, they didn't.
As the score indicates, I enjoyed the experience, but it was mostly the novelty of being tiny and focused production design / direction. If the gameplay had been interesting and well implemented, Deadly Creatures could have been one of those weird gems a core gamer would own a Wii for. Oh well.
20 October, 2008
Game Journal: No More Heroes
No spoiler warning. To spoil a plot, the game would have to have one. :P
Seriously, the game is supposedly about a crazy loser becoming the world's greatest assassin so he can get in some gal's pants. It doesn't improve from there. There are false identities, a ghost, completely unexplained amnesia, back story so boring the game actually fast forwards through it... None of it has anything to do with the game. And what is the game?
It's an action game where you have to do chores to get back to the action. Seriously. To fight the next highest assassin, you have to do menial jobs like mowing lawns, pumping gas, and picking up trash. You can also do combat jobs to get more cash. Those were less terrible. But either way, you'll waste large amounts of time driving around Santa Destroy on your motorcycle.
At first I was into it. It's trying to establish a mood and a setting. Travis (the protagonist) is into anime and luchadors and super awkward around women. He's a joke. I'd go waste some time buying clothes he didn't need and doing odd jobs to pay for them. That's Travis. Of course he'd blow all his winnings on new pants then have to mow lots of lawns to get to the next fight. But it was too boring.
It's funny how feelings pivot. The open world stuff went from being charming to being a pointless grind, just like that. I guess that's partly because it was so irrelevant. A feeling is all it can give.
The combat was fine. Fighting the standard cannon fodder wasn't very involved, but if you like quick time events, you're in for a treat. I say that tongue in cheek as I know lots of gamers hate QTEs, but I don't mind them if they're done well. My favorite in NMH was running towards an opponent who was running at me and attacking just as he attacked, causing a clash event where I had to spin the Wiimote like I was turning a crank to win and behead the guy. Regardless, every finishing move in the game requires a quick flick of the control, and the wrestling moves require moving both the Wiimote and nunchuck, to vaguely approximate what Travis is doing.
And the variety in bosses was impressive. And there was only one of them that wasn't any fun to fight. This puts No More Heroes well ahead of most action games.
Overall, it was a fun experience, but I would never grind through the chores a second time.
Three out of five.
Seriously, the game is supposedly about a crazy loser becoming the world's greatest assassin so he can get in some gal's pants. It doesn't improve from there. There are false identities, a ghost, completely unexplained amnesia, back story so boring the game actually fast forwards through it... None of it has anything to do with the game. And what is the game?
It's an action game where you have to do chores to get back to the action. Seriously. To fight the next highest assassin, you have to do menial jobs like mowing lawns, pumping gas, and picking up trash. You can also do combat jobs to get more cash. Those were less terrible. But either way, you'll waste large amounts of time driving around Santa Destroy on your motorcycle.
At first I was into it. It's trying to establish a mood and a setting. Travis (the protagonist) is into anime and luchadors and super awkward around women. He's a joke. I'd go waste some time buying clothes he didn't need and doing odd jobs to pay for them. That's Travis. Of course he'd blow all his winnings on new pants then have to mow lots of lawns to get to the next fight. But it was too boring.
It's funny how feelings pivot. The open world stuff went from being charming to being a pointless grind, just like that. I guess that's partly because it was so irrelevant. A feeling is all it can give.
The combat was fine. Fighting the standard cannon fodder wasn't very involved, but if you like quick time events, you're in for a treat. I say that tongue in cheek as I know lots of gamers hate QTEs, but I don't mind them if they're done well. My favorite in NMH was running towards an opponent who was running at me and attacking just as he attacked, causing a clash event where I had to spin the Wiimote like I was turning a crank to win and behead the guy. Regardless, every finishing move in the game requires a quick flick of the control, and the wrestling moves require moving both the Wiimote and nunchuck, to vaguely approximate what Travis is doing.
And the variety in bosses was impressive. And there was only one of them that wasn't any fun to fight. This puts No More Heroes well ahead of most action games.
Overall, it was a fun experience, but I would never grind through the chores a second time.
Three out of five.
02 August, 2008
Wii Motion Plus Skepticism
There's a YouTube video of a Wii Motion Plus demo on Kotaku. I'll still reserve judgment until I get my hands on it at PAX, but I'm currently of the mindset that this peripheral will still only be for casual games.
Watch the bit where he's swinging the sword (about two minutes in). Look at the picture in picture which shows the user and the screen at the same time. Notice the lag? Sure, it's fine for swiping at slow moving beach balls, but I like my games with some actual speed. Even worse is the motion recognition segment (about four minutes in). He has to fully complete the motion before the Wii recognizes it, which means your character won't start to do the move until you've completely finished it.
I need to cut a swath as a blur of steel and fury. I need to parry madly to hold off attacks from two or three opponents at once. I need to reflect blaster fire. A good design around the lag could compensate. Maybe the player is a slightly ponderous giant. (I'm still waiting for my first person giant monster with eye lasers game.) Maybe the player's character has a heavy sword. Maybe the game takes place under water. But good design teams aren't working on the Wii, for the most part. But now I'm drifting off topic. Let's get back to the point.
In a demo with no AI and paltry amounts of sound, physics, and graphics processing to do, the controller lags. I still want to futz with it at PAX, but I'm expecting to be able to tell in the first ten seconds that it won't really change anything for the Wii.
Watch the bit where he's swinging the sword (about two minutes in). Look at the picture in picture which shows the user and the screen at the same time. Notice the lag? Sure, it's fine for swiping at slow moving beach balls, but I like my games with some actual speed. Even worse is the motion recognition segment (about four minutes in). He has to fully complete the motion before the Wii recognizes it, which means your character won't start to do the move until you've completely finished it.
I need to cut a swath as a blur of steel and fury. I need to parry madly to hold off attacks from two or three opponents at once. I need to reflect blaster fire. A good design around the lag could compensate. Maybe the player is a slightly ponderous giant. (I'm still waiting for my first person giant monster with eye lasers game.) Maybe the player's character has a heavy sword. Maybe the game takes place under water. But good design teams aren't working on the Wii, for the most part. But now I'm drifting off topic. Let's get back to the point.
In a demo with no AI and paltry amounts of sound, physics, and graphics processing to do, the controller lags. I still want to futz with it at PAX, but I'm expecting to be able to tell in the first ten seconds that it won't really change anything for the Wii.
22 March, 2008
Review: Super Paper Mario
Super Paper Mario (Intelligent Systems, 2007) is a platforming successor to the Paper Mario RPG series.
Gameplay
SPM is basically a platformer. And it's a bad one. The game's main gimmick is that Mario can switch into 3D to find new paths through the maps. The problem is that this ability is very time limited to avoid you just running past all the enemies. But in the puzzles where you need to use it, it generally runs out too quickly. I'm self declared as video game OCD, but even I was willing to take "3D damage" for leaving the game in 3D mode too long, just to keep things moving.
The 3D segments have all the other issues that regular 3D platformers do. Difficult to gauge jumps and walls in front of the camera are par for the course. The 2D segments aren't much better. Nintendo was the king of these for a reason. They tuned everything. Intelligent Systems didn't, and it showed. None of the enemies were fun to fight. And the added element of RPG hit points made them annoying to kill.
You have multiple characters and multiple back up characters with secondary abilities. The amount of switching required to get past the game's puzzles is maddening. It feels like I spent around a third of my time with Super Paper Mario in menus to switch characters or back up characters or use items. I got the distinct feeling the game was designed for a regular controller that would have had enough buttons to keep me out of the menus. And the tiny Wiimote D-pad was less than optimal as well, as I found myself entering doors or ducking unintentionally frequently enough to be annoyed.
It completely killed the momentum of the game. Of course, with as much flipping the screen and reorienting myself I was doing, it's not like the game had much momentum to lose.
And those puzzles I kept swapping characters to get past didn't do much for me, either, as they mostly felt like game length not gameplay. There's a fair amount of backtracking and since the enemies don't respawn, the trek back through an empty level gives one plenty of time to think about little joy the gameplay is providing.
Theatrics
It's another off brand Mario game, which means quirky characters and ridiculous situations. I got a chuckle or two out of some of it, but it's attempts at emotion flopped. Maybe in a better game, I'd have become attached enough to the characters to care. Actually, there was one character I cared about. Somewhere around halfway through the game you get to control Mario's archnemesis Bowser. He breathes fire, which is helpful with a couple puzzles and a few enemies. I played through most of the latter portions of the game with him as his bad attitude mirrored my own, and his dialog was generally funnier than anyone else's.
Of course I basically had to cheat to make him a usable character since he's such a huge target, so slow, and can't breath fire and walk at the same time. One of the helpers lets you overcome some of those problems. I actually began to hate Mario because I had to switch back to him so often to solve stupid puzzles.
Aesthetics
The Paper Mario games have a simple, cartoony style. But Super Paper Mario felt sparse, like Intelligent Systems was trying to save money. And the super low poly 3D monsters were just ugly. But I've always hated super low poly stuff. Even when they were state of the art I thought the PS1 and N64 had mostly ugly games.
Final Score
2 of 5
I'll freely admit that I'm biased because of my love for the older Paper Mario games, but I stand by this score. There is no depth like the RPGs had, and the platforming and puzzle elements are distinctly sub par. (That phrase doesn't make any sense does it? You want to shoot below par. Sub par should mean good.) My main joy from the game was playing as Bowser, essentially against the designer's wishes.
Gameplay
SPM is basically a platformer. And it's a bad one. The game's main gimmick is that Mario can switch into 3D to find new paths through the maps. The problem is that this ability is very time limited to avoid you just running past all the enemies. But in the puzzles where you need to use it, it generally runs out too quickly. I'm self declared as video game OCD, but even I was willing to take "3D damage" for leaving the game in 3D mode too long, just to keep things moving.
The 3D segments have all the other issues that regular 3D platformers do. Difficult to gauge jumps and walls in front of the camera are par for the course. The 2D segments aren't much better. Nintendo was the king of these for a reason. They tuned everything. Intelligent Systems didn't, and it showed. None of the enemies were fun to fight. And the added element of RPG hit points made them annoying to kill.
You have multiple characters and multiple back up characters with secondary abilities. The amount of switching required to get past the game's puzzles is maddening. It feels like I spent around a third of my time with Super Paper Mario in menus to switch characters or back up characters or use items. I got the distinct feeling the game was designed for a regular controller that would have had enough buttons to keep me out of the menus. And the tiny Wiimote D-pad was less than optimal as well, as I found myself entering doors or ducking unintentionally frequently enough to be annoyed.
It completely killed the momentum of the game. Of course, with as much flipping the screen and reorienting myself I was doing, it's not like the game had much momentum to lose.
And those puzzles I kept swapping characters to get past didn't do much for me, either, as they mostly felt like game length not gameplay. There's a fair amount of backtracking and since the enemies don't respawn, the trek back through an empty level gives one plenty of time to think about little joy the gameplay is providing.
Theatrics
It's another off brand Mario game, which means quirky characters and ridiculous situations. I got a chuckle or two out of some of it, but it's attempts at emotion flopped. Maybe in a better game, I'd have become attached enough to the characters to care. Actually, there was one character I cared about. Somewhere around halfway through the game you get to control Mario's archnemesis Bowser. He breathes fire, which is helpful with a couple puzzles and a few enemies. I played through most of the latter portions of the game with him as his bad attitude mirrored my own, and his dialog was generally funnier than anyone else's.
Of course I basically had to cheat to make him a usable character since he's such a huge target, so slow, and can't breath fire and walk at the same time. One of the helpers lets you overcome some of those problems. I actually began to hate Mario because I had to switch back to him so often to solve stupid puzzles.
Aesthetics
The Paper Mario games have a simple, cartoony style. But Super Paper Mario felt sparse, like Intelligent Systems was trying to save money. And the super low poly 3D monsters were just ugly. But I've always hated super low poly stuff. Even when they were state of the art I thought the PS1 and N64 had mostly ugly games.
Final Score
2 of 5
I'll freely admit that I'm biased because of my love for the older Paper Mario games, but I stand by this score. There is no depth like the RPGs had, and the platforming and puzzle elements are distinctly sub par. (That phrase doesn't make any sense does it? You want to shoot below par. Sub par should mean good.) My main joy from the game was playing as Bowser, essentially against the designer's wishes.
18 December, 2007
State of the Industry
The NPD sales figures for November are out (well discussed on the 1UP Yours podcast and disected on Next Gen). Since all the big games have already been released or pushed to next year because they couldn't make the holiday window, it's a good time to talk about what happened this year.
Nintendo
Nintendo mostly rules, except where they completely fail. The DS outsold the PS3, PS2, and PSP combined in November, moving 1.53 million units. Part of that had to do with them bundling either Zelda (kind of for gamers) or a pet sim (for normal people). In fact, no DS game sold in the top ten. When you consider that the DS installed base in the US alone is probably around 18 million, over double the Xbox 360 installed base, that's an epic fail.
The Wii's kind of the same story except they can't even put the hardware out there. GameSpot is selling IOUs (for the full price of the system, no less) to give desperate parents something to put under the tree. I heard a gal in the cafeteria at work talking about the supplies the big box retailers hoarded for sales last Sunday lasting for two whole hours. Again, these are stories of epic fail. But Nintendo's a conservative Japanese company, and there are Wii's sitting on store shelves in Japan, so they may have a fear that they're on the brink of bursting the bubble and having the Wii market implode. I really don't know. The truth is that gamers only have Wii's because of Zelda, Metroid, and Mario. Now that those games are out, Nintendo has one more game (Smash Brothers) the gamers are looking forward to.
Once there's nothing left but the alpha moms and mini-game lovers buying these things, who's to say whether they'll move on to some talking stuffed animal next year, forgetting all about the Wii? I thought the people calling the Wii a fad were idiots. Well, in fairness to myself, many of them aboslutely were idiots. But maybe a couple of them were ahead of me on this. Maybe they realized that the people Nintendo's marketing to now are fickle. Last year the novelty of the system and the family fun of Wii Sports sold it. This year Mario sold it. Wii Fit (a game which lets you stand on a fancy scale to control exercise games by shifting your weight) is out in Japan this holiday season. Are they going to hold it all year in the states so that they have something to generate holiday buzz next season?
Microsoft
Technically the 360 still has the installed base over the Wii, I think. But the truth is, they're not really in the same markets... at all. The 360 lovers are basically crack whores. They will let you do anything to them as long as they can see their next fix on the horizon. The thing still eats disks. The optical drives still fail. There are still folks waiting many weeks to get their refurbished, fail prone replacement in the mail. And it's kinda sorta working for them. By taking the repair bill as a huge hit in one quarter and releasing Halo 3 the next, they showed their first profitable quarter ever. They say they expect to be profitable in 2008 as a year overall. Doesn't sound like winning, does it?
Then you look at software. Four of the top ten games for November are on 360. Two of them are on PS3, but they're just PS3 versions of the far better selling 360 games. Call of Duty 360 outsold Call of Duty PS3 3.5 to 1. Assassin's Creed 360 outsold Assassin's Creed PS3 2.6 to 1. I'm guessing that's partly because Call of Duty is online, and the 360 is where gamers know their friends are, so they're less likely to want the PS3 version. Beyond that, the numbers seem to reflect the installed base, which is around 3 to 1.
Sony
As has been mentioned before, Sony's losing money like crazy. Any time one of their executives opens their mouth, only the most ignorant doublespeak falls out of their mouths (which I assume are surrounded by clown make-up). If gamers aren't so awestricken by Metal Gear Solid 4 that they're willing to drop $400 on a non-backwards compatible PS3 to play it, what has Sony got? Seriously, the best games on the system aren't selling for crap. Uncharted and Rachet aren't in the top ten at all. Next Gen said Rachet sold less than 150k copies. That's A) criminal and B) freaking bleak.
As the latest example of ignorant doublespeak, a Sony exec said they felt Sony was on a good course for their projected ten year life cycle. Do you think you can lose the better part of a billion dollars a quarter and have a ten year life cycle?
The Rest of the World
Shane Bettenhausen brought up something scary on the last 1UP Yours. These figures we look at are for North America, mostly. In Japan, it's very different. Japan's moving away from consoles to mobile platforms. There are Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy games you'll probably never see because they run only on Japanese phones (which blow ours away). And in Europe, apparently the PS3 is actually doing well enough that it might be the winner there. When a hit driven market becomes that fragmented, what does that mean? Even more first person shooters for the 360? Even more soccer and rally racing games for the PS3? Even more crap I don't care about for Nintendo systems? Blegh.
Nintendo
Nintendo mostly rules, except where they completely fail. The DS outsold the PS3, PS2, and PSP combined in November, moving 1.53 million units. Part of that had to do with them bundling either Zelda (kind of for gamers) or a pet sim (for normal people). In fact, no DS game sold in the top ten. When you consider that the DS installed base in the US alone is probably around 18 million, over double the Xbox 360 installed base, that's an epic fail.
The Wii's kind of the same story except they can't even put the hardware out there. GameSpot is selling IOUs (for the full price of the system, no less) to give desperate parents something to put under the tree. I heard a gal in the cafeteria at work talking about the supplies the big box retailers hoarded for sales last Sunday lasting for two whole hours. Again, these are stories of epic fail. But Nintendo's a conservative Japanese company, and there are Wii's sitting on store shelves in Japan, so they may have a fear that they're on the brink of bursting the bubble and having the Wii market implode. I really don't know. The truth is that gamers only have Wii's because of Zelda, Metroid, and Mario. Now that those games are out, Nintendo has one more game (Smash Brothers) the gamers are looking forward to.
Once there's nothing left but the alpha moms and mini-game lovers buying these things, who's to say whether they'll move on to some talking stuffed animal next year, forgetting all about the Wii? I thought the people calling the Wii a fad were idiots. Well, in fairness to myself, many of them aboslutely were idiots. But maybe a couple of them were ahead of me on this. Maybe they realized that the people Nintendo's marketing to now are fickle. Last year the novelty of the system and the family fun of Wii Sports sold it. This year Mario sold it. Wii Fit (a game which lets you stand on a fancy scale to control exercise games by shifting your weight) is out in Japan this holiday season. Are they going to hold it all year in the states so that they have something to generate holiday buzz next season?
Microsoft
Technically the 360 still has the installed base over the Wii, I think. But the truth is, they're not really in the same markets... at all. The 360 lovers are basically crack whores. They will let you do anything to them as long as they can see their next fix on the horizon. The thing still eats disks. The optical drives still fail. There are still folks waiting many weeks to get their refurbished, fail prone replacement in the mail. And it's kinda sorta working for them. By taking the repair bill as a huge hit in one quarter and releasing Halo 3 the next, they showed their first profitable quarter ever. They say they expect to be profitable in 2008 as a year overall. Doesn't sound like winning, does it?
Then you look at software. Four of the top ten games for November are on 360. Two of them are on PS3, but they're just PS3 versions of the far better selling 360 games. Call of Duty 360 outsold Call of Duty PS3 3.5 to 1. Assassin's Creed 360 outsold Assassin's Creed PS3 2.6 to 1. I'm guessing that's partly because Call of Duty is online, and the 360 is where gamers know their friends are, so they're less likely to want the PS3 version. Beyond that, the numbers seem to reflect the installed base, which is around 3 to 1.
Sony
As has been mentioned before, Sony's losing money like crazy. Any time one of their executives opens their mouth, only the most ignorant doublespeak falls out of their mouths (which I assume are surrounded by clown make-up). If gamers aren't so awestricken by Metal Gear Solid 4 that they're willing to drop $400 on a non-backwards compatible PS3 to play it, what has Sony got? Seriously, the best games on the system aren't selling for crap. Uncharted and Rachet aren't in the top ten at all. Next Gen said Rachet sold less than 150k copies. That's A) criminal and B) freaking bleak.
As the latest example of ignorant doublespeak, a Sony exec said they felt Sony was on a good course for their projected ten year life cycle. Do you think you can lose the better part of a billion dollars a quarter and have a ten year life cycle?
The Rest of the World
Shane Bettenhausen brought up something scary on the last 1UP Yours. These figures we look at are for North America, mostly. In Japan, it's very different. Japan's moving away from consoles to mobile platforms. There are Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy games you'll probably never see because they run only on Japanese phones (which blow ours away). And in Europe, apparently the PS3 is actually doing well enough that it might be the winner there. When a hit driven market becomes that fragmented, what does that mean? Even more first person shooters for the 360? Even more soccer and rally racing games for the PS3? Even more crap I don't care about for Nintendo systems? Blegh.
15 December, 2007
Review: Super Mario Galaxy
Hmm. Writing an introduction for a flagship Mario game. Hmm. For those who might not be aware, Miyamoto dosen't design them anymore. Yoshiaki Koizumi was the director on Galaxy. But I haven't memorized that name yet, so I certainly don't expect you to. :) Back to business.
Gameplay
At it's core, it's still Mario 64 for the N64, which is a good thing. There are platformers I enjoy more than Mario (Rachet & Clank), but nothing exceeds Mario at actual platforming. This was why people didn't like Mario Sunshine, as the game was largely about shooting water, not pure acrobatics. Galaxy also has some gimmicks (collecting star bits, playing with gravity, various special suits) but the game is always about the movement, reaching your goal while avoiding harm.
There are still problems with the game. Even Nintendo still can't get the camera right. It occasionally gets stuck behind the scenery and there are jumps where the camera changes angle just as you approach them. But then, there apparently isn't anyone smart enough in this entire industry to make a camera that doesn't kill you sometimes. :P I sometimes wonder if stereoscopic 3D will ever become economically viable, and whether that won't alleviate some of these problems... probably not in my lifetime. And even if it did, neither of the problems I just mentioned would be fixed by it. :P
The bonus levels that open up after you beat the game are more tedious than fun. Well, the ones I played were. Then I got bored and decided to write this review. Still, this is the Mario game I've come closest to 100%ing. Sunshine's sliding levels where awful, and Mario 64 had many challenges that were more frustrating (read cheap).
Theatrics
Bowser kidnaps the princess. Mario goes on a quest to rescue her. Next.
Aesthetics
Galaxy is a poster child for smart design and coding over raw processing power as the graphics look great on what is essentially six year old hardware. In some cases that's because it uses an overhead perspective, rendering far less than an over the shoulder view. Sometimes that's because the view is mostly skybox, which doesn't take much power to render at all. There's also some LoD stuff being done (with just enough pop in that I could tell it was happening, but most people probably won't notice).
The sound is true to the Mario formula. I enjoyed the references to music from the older games, and some of the newer orchestral stuff really sold the majesty of the setting. Also the sounds coming out of the Wiimote were kinda cool, too.
Final Score
4 of 5
Yeah. I know. Scandal. But I'm just not sad it's over or eager to play through it again. Blame the crappy bonus levels for souring the aftertaste. Say I'm an American violence junkie who doesn't like any game I don't get to cause harm in. Argue I'm too jaded to appreciate simple pleasures. Discuss how I also gave Portal a 4 and don't properly value "mindbendingness". At the end of the day, I find Galaxy solid fun, but not amazing.
Gameplay
At it's core, it's still Mario 64 for the N64, which is a good thing. There are platformers I enjoy more than Mario (Rachet & Clank), but nothing exceeds Mario at actual platforming. This was why people didn't like Mario Sunshine, as the game was largely about shooting water, not pure acrobatics. Galaxy also has some gimmicks (collecting star bits, playing with gravity, various special suits) but the game is always about the movement, reaching your goal while avoiding harm.
There are still problems with the game. Even Nintendo still can't get the camera right. It occasionally gets stuck behind the scenery and there are jumps where the camera changes angle just as you approach them. But then, there apparently isn't anyone smart enough in this entire industry to make a camera that doesn't kill you sometimes. :P I sometimes wonder if stereoscopic 3D will ever become economically viable, and whether that won't alleviate some of these problems... probably not in my lifetime. And even if it did, neither of the problems I just mentioned would be fixed by it. :P
The bonus levels that open up after you beat the game are more tedious than fun. Well, the ones I played were. Then I got bored and decided to write this review. Still, this is the Mario game I've come closest to 100%ing. Sunshine's sliding levels where awful, and Mario 64 had many challenges that were more frustrating (read cheap).
Theatrics
Bowser kidnaps the princess. Mario goes on a quest to rescue her. Next.
Aesthetics
Galaxy is a poster child for smart design and coding over raw processing power as the graphics look great on what is essentially six year old hardware. In some cases that's because it uses an overhead perspective, rendering far less than an over the shoulder view. Sometimes that's because the view is mostly skybox, which doesn't take much power to render at all. There's also some LoD stuff being done (with just enough pop in that I could tell it was happening, but most people probably won't notice).
The sound is true to the Mario formula. I enjoyed the references to music from the older games, and some of the newer orchestral stuff really sold the majesty of the setting. Also the sounds coming out of the Wiimote were kinda cool, too.
Final Score
4 of 5
Yeah. I know. Scandal. But I'm just not sad it's over or eager to play through it again. Blame the crappy bonus levels for souring the aftertaste. Say I'm an American violence junkie who doesn't like any game I don't get to cause harm in. Argue I'm too jaded to appreciate simple pleasures. Discuss how I also gave Portal a 4 and don't properly value "mindbendingness". At the end of the day, I find Galaxy solid fun, but not amazing.
25 October, 2007
State of the Consoles
All facts courtesy of Next Gen. All lies and baseless speculation courtesy of me.
Sony
Sony lost $847 million on the games unit last quarter. (I believe both italics and bold were necessary for that word. :) I've often thought that Sony simply needed to suck up the financial losses and lower the price on the hardware enough to move units. Looking at numbers like these... They lose this much at their current, outrageously high price ($500 and $600). If they sold more units and lose more money on each unit, they would easily be losing more than a billion dollars a quarter. Combine this with the fact that the Unreal engine still isn't up to speed on the PS3 (Epic is being sued by licensees over this issue, and even Epic's own UT3, which was supposed to be the PS3's FPS savior this holiday season, was delayed until next year.) and you've got real trouble. There are rumors that Sony is going to developers to ask them to please not cancel the PS3 versions of their games. Who knows? Maybe a bigger portion than we think of those losses are the cost of paid exclusives. In the meantime they're releasing a cheaper ($400) PS3 with no backwards compatibility. Morons. Who do you think cares the most about backwards compatibility? That's right! Cheap asses! Never mind that Sony lied to our faces, making commitments to back compat and chiding Microsoft for going with software emulation. They deserve what they're getting.
Nintendo
The house that Donkey Kong built is still going great guns. The problem (and it's always been on Nintendo systems) is that it's mostly just Nintendo profiting. No titles from other publishers made the top ten this week. Admittedly the publishers don't seem to put their best teams on the Wii, so it's partly their own fault. You'd think with an example like Resident Evil 4 out there, they'd have learned that quality games (even ones that kids can't play) sell, regardless of platform.
Microsoft
Halo 3 destroys all. 3.3 million copies sold in the last eleven days of September. Just barely more 360s than Wiis were sold in September, as well. Third party publishers still see the 360 as the place to make money. Live Arcade and downloadable content is apparently raking it in. The funny part is that Microsoft, uncharacteristically, doesn't seem to have any further plans. They're not relaunching Viva Piñata or otherwise pushing any kid friendly brands to try and take some of Nintendo's demographic. They're not dropping the price enough to make the 360 the one true set top box. Don't tell me Microsoft is just going to improve their efficiency at wringing money out of young males when there are still worlds out there to conquer. Not my Microsoft!
Sony
Sony lost $847 million on the games unit last quarter. (I believe both italics and bold were necessary for that word. :) I've often thought that Sony simply needed to suck up the financial losses and lower the price on the hardware enough to move units. Looking at numbers like these... They lose this much at their current, outrageously high price ($500 and $600). If they sold more units and lose more money on each unit, they would easily be losing more than a billion dollars a quarter. Combine this with the fact that the Unreal engine still isn't up to speed on the PS3 (Epic is being sued by licensees over this issue, and even Epic's own UT3, which was supposed to be the PS3's FPS savior this holiday season, was delayed until next year.) and you've got real trouble. There are rumors that Sony is going to developers to ask them to please not cancel the PS3 versions of their games. Who knows? Maybe a bigger portion than we think of those losses are the cost of paid exclusives. In the meantime they're releasing a cheaper ($400) PS3 with no backwards compatibility. Morons. Who do you think cares the most about backwards compatibility? That's right! Cheap asses! Never mind that Sony lied to our faces, making commitments to back compat and chiding Microsoft for going with software emulation. They deserve what they're getting.
Nintendo
The house that Donkey Kong built is still going great guns. The problem (and it's always been on Nintendo systems) is that it's mostly just Nintendo profiting. No titles from other publishers made the top ten this week. Admittedly the publishers don't seem to put their best teams on the Wii, so it's partly their own fault. You'd think with an example like Resident Evil 4 out there, they'd have learned that quality games (even ones that kids can't play) sell, regardless of platform.
Microsoft
Halo 3 destroys all. 3.3 million copies sold in the last eleven days of September. Just barely more 360s than Wiis were sold in September, as well. Third party publishers still see the 360 as the place to make money. Live Arcade and downloadable content is apparently raking it in. The funny part is that Microsoft, uncharacteristically, doesn't seem to have any further plans. They're not relaunching Viva Piñata or otherwise pushing any kid friendly brands to try and take some of Nintendo's demographic. They're not dropping the price enough to make the 360 the one true set top box. Don't tell me Microsoft is just going to improve their efficiency at wringing money out of young males when there are still worlds out there to conquer. Not my Microsoft!
12 April, 2007
Because I Felt Like Being Snarky
I read too much gaming news, and there was a lot of it today. I guess the fiscal quarter transition brings it out. I'll never write for Kotaku or Joystiq, but for some reason I felt like writing for myself today. This post is simultaneously quite informative (if you don't read as much gaming news as me) and pointlessly snarky. If you enjoy that sort of thing, read on.
- Sony is halting 20GB PS3 production after less than six months on the market. I guess even pretending they had a low low entry point of half a grand was too much effort.
- Nobody is excited about the 1337 edition of the 360. (Maybe if it doesn't eat disks, charge for multiplayer and cheat codes, and break down in under year like many of the regular 360s seem to...)
- Sony is increasing production, which I guess is to reflect that they're now selling units in Europe, since they seem to have more than they need in the US.
- Microsoft is getting called out on horrendous channel stuffing. They put so many units in the channel last Q4 (4.4 million) that they're estimating only moving 1.6 million for the entire first half of this year.
- There are rumors that with the fiscal quarter sewn up, Nintendo may decide to unleash some secret stash of Wiis into the marketplace. On some level it seems reasonable since the Wii should be the easiest of all the systems to build, but it seems like Nintendo has been doing their manufacturing on the cheap to wring out every last penny.
- EA, and I think a few others, basically admitted they screwed up by not putting enough resources into Wii dev. The PS3 (which they put full resources behind) had production problems with blu-ray and slow adoption at a $600 price point. What $16 billion dollar company could have afforded the analyst coverage to have foreseen that?
In the interest of fairness, I've never made a game console. I'm guessing it's really, really hard. But even with that, I can see one simple thing, all three console makers got greedy, and it's probably costing them millions. In fact, I'd almost say game consoles are over. Sony and Microsoft are selling home media centers and Nintendo is selling to grandmas.
See if you can enjoy this analogy. We're gaming city. We're not the envy of the living room entertainment nation, but we've got a respectable economy. Our little city is just fine. Oh shit.
Everybody is screaming. Stuff is blowing up left and right. The news is going apeshit. Godzilla and Mechagodzilla (after all, they're largely interchangeable) are fighting for control of the nation. They're throwing DVR lightning bolts and myspace missiles at each other. Downloadable content is raining down like a friggin' meteor swarm. Although in this already laughably broken analogy, their real effect seems to be driving up real estate prices so that no one can afford to live here anymore. :) In the meantime, the army is trying to herd us (and everyone in the rest of the nation) into trucks to take us to some ghetto ass voting channel minigame refugee tent city.
So what do you do? Where are you going to be when the dust settles? Where do gamers really end up in the battle for the consolidated living room?
First to go. Last to know, eh?
23 May, 2006
Wii Wish List
Type of Game: Swordplay
Examples: Jedi Knight, Pirates!, playing Zorro with a yardstick
Why Wii: Umm. If you need this explained to you, you are dumb. IGN editor dumb. Please kill yourself and any poor genetic horrors of children you may have perpetrated upon the earth as you are a giant floating turd in the gene pool. Either that or you've never played Zorro with a yardstick, in which case, I pity you.
Type of Game: Swinging Soldier
Examples: Bionic Commando
Why Wii: In Metroid 3, you can flick the nunchuck to fire Samus' grapple beam. You can use the grapple to pull doors off their hinges, rip shields away from enemies, and I assume, swing through the air and pull yourself up to high places. If Capcom doesn't take advantage of this kind of control scheme to do a Bionic Commando sequel, they should (in a fair world) be forced to hand over the license to someone who will.
Type of Game: Magic Soldier
Examples: Psi-Ops; Star Wars; Fable; Oblivion
Why Wii: Doing silly gestures to cast spells, telekinetically throw stuff (and people) around, and just generally feeling like a god among men has an undeniable appeal.
Type of Game: God Games
Examples: Black and White; Populous
Why Wii: See above, but scratch the "among men" part. Just imagine raising and lowering terrain by making gestures like Mickey Mouse in The Sorceror's Apprentice. Part the Red Sea with your hands mutha#&*$a! :O
Type of Game: Rythm Games
Examples: Samba de Amigo
Why Wii: It's got two motion sensitive controllers built in. Admittedly, they're connected by a pretty short cord, but they'll do. And if you enable the option of simply using two Wiimotes at a time, it's perfect. There was a drum kit demo at E3 that could easily be made into a game. Heck, with the nunchuck in your right hand and the wiimote in your left, you might even be able to pull off something like Guitar Hero.
Type of Game: Boxing
Examples: Fight Night, Punchout
Why Wii: Two motion sensors. Two fists. Let's get it on.
Type of Game: Robot Monster Rampage
Examples: Rampage, King Kong
Why Wii: The second I heard Super Monkey Ball for the Wii had whack-a-mole as a mini game, I had fantasies of smushing little screaming people with my giant ape feet and swinging at biplanes with my giant ape fists. I don't really know what this game would look like, but I still want to squish people, dammit! And Eye Lasers! I must use the wiimote to control my eye lasers!
Heheh. Okay, enough rambling and ranting. If you have any brilliant use of the Wii controller that you want to see, please post it.
Examples: Jedi Knight, Pirates!, playing Zorro with a yardstick
Why Wii: Umm. If you need this explained to you, you are dumb. IGN editor dumb. Please kill yourself and any poor genetic horrors of children you may have perpetrated upon the earth as you are a giant floating turd in the gene pool. Either that or you've never played Zorro with a yardstick, in which case, I pity you.
Type of Game: Swinging Soldier
Examples: Bionic Commando
Why Wii: In Metroid 3, you can flick the nunchuck to fire Samus' grapple beam. You can use the grapple to pull doors off their hinges, rip shields away from enemies, and I assume, swing through the air and pull yourself up to high places. If Capcom doesn't take advantage of this kind of control scheme to do a Bionic Commando sequel, they should (in a fair world) be forced to hand over the license to someone who will.
Type of Game: Magic Soldier
Examples: Psi-Ops; Star Wars; Fable; Oblivion
Why Wii: Doing silly gestures to cast spells, telekinetically throw stuff (and people) around, and just generally feeling like a god among men has an undeniable appeal.
Type of Game: God Games
Examples: Black and White; Populous
Why Wii: See above, but scratch the "among men" part. Just imagine raising and lowering terrain by making gestures like Mickey Mouse in The Sorceror's Apprentice. Part the Red Sea with your hands mutha#&*$a! :O
Type of Game: Rythm Games
Examples: Samba de Amigo
Why Wii: It's got two motion sensitive controllers built in. Admittedly, they're connected by a pretty short cord, but they'll do. And if you enable the option of simply using two Wiimotes at a time, it's perfect. There was a drum kit demo at E3 that could easily be made into a game. Heck, with the nunchuck in your right hand and the wiimote in your left, you might even be able to pull off something like Guitar Hero.
Type of Game: Boxing
Examples: Fight Night, Punchout
Why Wii: Two motion sensors. Two fists. Let's get it on.
Type of Game: Robot Monster Rampage
Examples: Rampage, King Kong
Why Wii: The second I heard Super Monkey Ball for the Wii had whack-a-mole as a mini game, I had fantasies of smushing little screaming people with my giant ape feet and swinging at biplanes with my giant ape fists. I don't really know what this game would look like, but I still want to squish people, dammit! And Eye Lasers! I must use the wiimote to control my eye lasers!
Heheh. Okay, enough rambling and ranting. If you have any brilliant use of the Wii controller that you want to see, please post it.
Wii Problems
Last time I talked about what a big deal I think the motion sensor in the Wii controller is. Now it's time to talk about obstacles.
- The tech: Some folks at E3 said the Wii controller lost its cursor or seemed to stop responding intermittently. Whether this is because there were dozens of them all competing for the same bandwidth or not is unknown, but if the tech isn't spot on, the controller will never feel right to demanding gamers such as myself.
- Gesture based control: Thus far, most Wii games are gesture based. This sucks. Flick this way to shoot a grapple beam. Flick this way to cock your shotgun. These all sound good on paper, but if I don't get that "analog feel", the feeling that I can touch what my avatar is touching, the controller will be nothing but a gimmick.
- Driving games: I gotta give it up to the Dreamcast team, they were the first to put triggers on a controller that could act as proper throttles for driving games. The Wii controller looks fine for fairly simplistic driving games, but I just don't see how you'd do a proper throttle for something like Project Gotham.
- Gun games: The light gun is built in. Everyone and their mother will do a crappy light gun game, largely squandering the Wii's potential. Please, let Duck Hunt and Resident Evil 5 handle that. They'll do it better than you could anyway. Sega's House of the Dead compilation is probably clawing through the lid of its coffin even as I write this. :P
All that said, the second I can feel like I'm cocking a shotgun and kicking in doors, the second I feel like I'm really blocking blaster fire with my light saber while force pushing a guy through a window with my free hand, the days of the dual analog are over. Come on game devs. Make us proud. :)
Wii
I mean, what else is there to talk about, really?
You want to talk about PS3? Why? It's the same games with prettier graphics.
You want to talk about the 360? Ditto.
The Wii is just the same games with different controls?
Hmmm.
You've got a point, but you're missing the bigger one.
No matter what the hardware is you'll end up with the same games. There'll still be shooters, fighting games, sports games, driving games, etc. Going fast, kicking ass, and blowing stuff up are far more American than mom and apple pie. :)
I hate to say it because the word is so completely overused in the gaming press, but what motion sensitive control gives you is immersion. The feeling you are actually touching the game world, even if it can't really touch you back, is huge.
The example I always give for this is a really terrible game, so humor me here. I occasionally like to play games that have been universally panned to see if they could possibly be as bad as everyone said. One of those games was Jurassic Park: Trespasser. It was $2, so how bad could it be? It lived up to the hype. The pop-in on the terrain was attrocious. The AI was a joke. And the amazing sound engine meant that if you smacked a board with another board, you got to hear three different samples instead of one. w00t.
What Trespasser did have was physics, and a hand. The physics were pretty unstable, but a good enough aproximation. And the you had the hand. It was a pain to control, with separate keys needing to be pressed to wave the arm and rotate and bend the wrist. But the feeling that you could pick up, throw about, and drop objects in the game world was primal. Just being able to pick something up and turn it over in your hand using the mouse added a whole other level of reality to the game.
It was a pain in the ass, of course. Aiming a gun was a huge chore, and the 2D plane of mouse control made throwing stuff with any precision an exercise in frustration. But the hand stuck with me. Every shooter I picked up for months afterward felt terrible. "That isn't my hand! That's just an icon representing a gun! I can't touch anything!" I got over it. They were much better games, after all. But Trespasser taught me the power of touch, and if developers do right by the Wii controller, everyone will know, and they won't want to go back.
You want to talk about PS3? Why? It's the same games with prettier graphics.
You want to talk about the 360? Ditto.
The Wii is just the same games with different controls?
Hmmm.
You've got a point, but you're missing the bigger one.
No matter what the hardware is you'll end up with the same games. There'll still be shooters, fighting games, sports games, driving games, etc. Going fast, kicking ass, and blowing stuff up are far more American than mom and apple pie. :)
I hate to say it because the word is so completely overused in the gaming press, but what motion sensitive control gives you is immersion. The feeling you are actually touching the game world, even if it can't really touch you back, is huge.
The example I always give for this is a really terrible game, so humor me here. I occasionally like to play games that have been universally panned to see if they could possibly be as bad as everyone said. One of those games was Jurassic Park: Trespasser. It was $2, so how bad could it be? It lived up to the hype. The pop-in on the terrain was attrocious. The AI was a joke. And the amazing sound engine meant that if you smacked a board with another board, you got to hear three different samples instead of one. w00t.
What Trespasser did have was physics, and a hand. The physics were pretty unstable, but a good enough aproximation. And the you had the hand. It was a pain to control, with separate keys needing to be pressed to wave the arm and rotate and bend the wrist. But the feeling that you could pick up, throw about, and drop objects in the game world was primal. Just being able to pick something up and turn it over in your hand using the mouse added a whole other level of reality to the game.
It was a pain in the ass, of course. Aiming a gun was a huge chore, and the 2D plane of mouse control made throwing stuff with any precision an exercise in frustration. But the hand stuck with me. Every shooter I picked up for months afterward felt terrible. "That isn't my hand! That's just an icon representing a gun! I can't touch anything!" I got over it. They were much better games, after all. But Trespasser taught me the power of touch, and if developers do right by the Wii controller, everyone will know, and they won't want to go back.
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