61 Frames Per Second : john constantine

Welcome to the New 61 Frames Per Second

John Constantine — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 16:00:00 GMT

Hello there, old friend. You are looking at what was once 61 Frames Per Second. BEHOLD! Click right here to see new 61 Frames Per Second in all of its furious grandeur.

The blog has had some cosmetic surgery in the past twenty-four hours and while it still mostly looks like the same old 61FPS you know and love, it’s a little bit different. Up to today, the site was built on Telligent’s CommunityServer blog software. It was bad. Well, weapon get, yo. 61FPS is now powered by the blast processing of Wordpress. That’s good!

It isn’t all peaches and cream. We’re still working on converting the last twelve months of my 61FPS over to the new format and it’s proving to be a tricky process. In the meantime, please follow the month by month links on the right hand of the page for classic 61FPS posts or click and bookmark right here.

If you have any suggestions, desires, desperate needs from us, let us know in the brand new comments section. We’ll do our best to meet those demands with gusto.

The Villains of Batman: Arkham Asylum Should Really Visit a Medical Professional

John Constantine — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Let’s take a moment, shall we? We spend so much time reflecting on the influence of the 1980s on contemporary game design, we sometimes forget the looming retro reach of the 1990s. Not even 90s games, per se. Just the nerd zeitgeist. For example, at one point in time, people thought Todd McFarlane was a talented comic book artist. He drew things like this:

Look at that guy! How does he walk through doors? You’d think we, as a society, would have gladly left this sort of anatomical chicanery in the past. But no. No it lives on in our games. For example:

How do they walk through doors?!

Batman: Arkham Asylum, despite the fact that it’s shaping up to possibly be the best Batman game ever made, features character art that’s an unsavory confluence of McFarlane and Cliffy B’s legacy. A little bit of 1993 and a little bit of 2006, if you will. Take a look at these videos of Arkham Asylum’s Bane and Harley Quinn to get a look at what I’m talking about.

In fairness, Bane looks no more ridiculous than he ever has. He was born in 1993, so it’s appropriate for his modern videogame incarnation to have all those bulging veins. Harley, on the other hand, is kind of ridiculous. As I said in my preview, she fits the game’s vision of the Batman universe, but seriously. That’s some silly, silly character art right there.

That’s Arleen Sorkin’s voice coming out of Harley though. That is all that matters.

Related links:

Anything Less Than the Best is a Felony: Arkham Asylum Might Be the Best Batman Game Yet
A Silver Lining to The Dark Knight
Batman Can't Even Land a Punch on Superman in a Video Game
At Least Batman: Arkham Asylum's Story Will Be Good

The Hardcore Gothic Romance of Judith

John Constantine — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 20:00:00 GMT

It was probably rash of me to accuse the new gaming romantics of pulling a beauty-for-beauty’s-sake routine. Jenova Chen, Jon Blow, and their contemporaries are the stars of the indie movement after all. Not everyone can get their game distributed on Xbox Live and Playstation Network. There are creators out there making romantic games that aren’t just pretty flowers and lost love. A perfect example is Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn’s The Path, a game that uses gorgeous color and freeform play to inform its frightening exploration of growing up.

Stephen Lavelle, aka increpare, and Terry Cavanagh of distractionware have also made their names on exploring the darker side of romanticism in games. Their latest collaboration, Judith, doesn’t fall within a classically romantic literary mode, but more to the side. Look past the game’s blocky Wolfenstein 3D-ish impressionism, and you’ll find that this ain’t romantic. It’s Gothic!

Stop rolling your eyes, I’m not talking about those kids in the black tights reading Twilight. I’m talking old school Daphne Du Maurier style business right here, a tale of forbidden love reflected in the secrets and murder of the past! Judith starts you off as a man meeting his mistress at a long abandoned castle, far from their mutual spouses. The game’s minimalist presentation is almost comical at first, but by the time you enter the castle, it’s too sinister to laugh at. After your lady love Emily disappears, the game shifts your perspective to that of the castle’s ancient resident Judith, a trophy wife who dreams of these adulterers and uncovers her husband’s dark side in the bowels of the castle. Cavanagh and Lavelle’s design sense, beyond the simplistic visuals, shares much of the tone in Chen and Blow’s most recent games. At its core, Judith is about the perils of infidelity, how secrets between lovers will ultimately destroy them. It isn’t subtle – Gothic media rarely is – but it’s impressively affecting for a game that’s barely twenty minutes long. Its most powerful moments come when it wrests control away from you; pick up an item, like a shovel to bury a dead body, and the game takes over. You’re in control of your decisions, but you can’t control their results.

Expect great things from these fellas. You can play Judith right here, fo’ free.

Related links:

Rite of Spring: Flower and What’s Lacking in the Romantic Games Movement
The Path is Real, Not A Fever Dream
Indie Dev Moment: i made this. you play this. we are enemies.
Breaking Out of Your Gaming Comfort Zone

Happy Endings With House of the Dead: Overkill

John Constantine — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 19:00:00 GMT

Happy Endings is a new, semi-regular feature on 61FPS that highlights some of gaming’s most memorable climaxes. Most games end badly. These games sum it all up in style. It goes without saying that Happy Endings is spoiler heavy so beware before you proceed.

House of the Dead: Overkill could have been an astounding failure. Headstrong Games had a decent pedigree, and there was little doubt that they could make a solid, entertaining rail shooter that stood next to the very best in Sega’s franchise, but humor is hard to implement in any game. Styling Overkill as a 1970s grindhouse feature was a brilliant move in theory, but making something that looks and sounds cool is a far cry from making something smart and legitimately funny. Headstrong pulled it off though. From the guffaw-worthy banter between Detective Washington and Agent G, to the waving American flag that adorns your health bar after stringing together thirty consecutive kills (yes, that combo is called a “Goregasm”), Overkill pulled off the impossible: it was a good game that was also funny.

But none of its cheese, ultra violence, or winking nods to classic exploitation prepared me for this dialog at the end.

As G and Washington fly off into the sunset on a helicopter, having killed the villain’s towering mother-turned-zombie-monster, they have this exchange:

“Frankly, Casanova, I’d be more worried about reading the past twelve hours as a fucking indictment of contemporary feminism!”

“Beg pardon?”

“I just think two dick wielding cop clichés taking down a one-hundred foot birthing mother is a statement limited in its interpretations.”

“I’m not sure you can read too much into that.”

“Not to mention the strongest female role model in this entire affair ain’t much more than a girkin in a pickle jar!” (Female lead Varla Guns is just a jar-bound brain at this point.)

I didn’t even know what to say when I saw this. Can anyone out there show me a single other game that actually ends on a self-analyzing punchline? No. Because it doesn’t happen. The princess is in another castle, tee-hee, does not count.

Related links:

Ode to the Light Gun or The Only Peripheral You’ll Ever Need
WTFriday: Goldman's Drama Academy
Trailer Review: House of the Dead – Overkill
Will Games Ever Be Funny?

The Final Fantasy Rule: Why the New Final Fantasy XIII Demo Matters, Even if You Hate the Series

John Constantine — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 23:00:00 GMT

I’ve had to stop myself from doing something stupid many, many times in the past few weeks. Late at night, typically before bed while I’m enjoying that just-brushed-just-flossed feel of my teeth and that last drink of water, I’ve opened my laptop and gone to Play Asia, added an item to my cart, and made it all the way to the check out before stopping myself. What am I, an idiot? What kind of person would do this? I’ve slapped my own wrist, both literally and metaphorically, closed the computer, and waited for morning, when the sobering light of day inevitable reintroduces logic to my shoddy impulse control.

Honestly. Spending eighty dollars on a demo of Final Fantasy XIII, a demo in a language I don’t even understand, is stupid. Very, very stupid. Yes, it comes with a nice new version of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, but even that little perk isn’t worth blowing two weeks worth of grocery money on an hour long sampling of a game that will be out before too long.

The impulse is detestable. It is, however, an inevitable impulse, one that isn’t rooted in fanaticism. The allure of a new Final Fantasy, even just a taste of it, has less to do with fetishism and everything to do with wanting to see just what any given game console can do. For almost twenty years at this point, Square’s Final Fantasy games have represented technological and artistic benchmarks for the entire medium. Like the games or not, they are always exquisitely made interactive structures. Final Fantasy IV, VII, and X may have their flaws as games, but they all demonstrated the raw potential of the technology that birthed them.

Thankfully, we don’t need a copy of the demo to get a look at it in action. This playthrough I found over at Siliconera proves a few things about the game. Yes, it looks as good in action as that debut trailer from 2006 promised. Yes, the battle system looks like a fine mixture of new and old ideas. Yes, given the pop soundtrack and Nomura character design, Final Fantasy XIII promises to be the true sequel to X that people have been lusting after for eight years.

Most importantly, though, is that it shows just how much technological juice is still untapped in the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. Whether or not it’s a good game, I can’t wait to play Final Fantasy XIII. Just to see what it is.

Related links:

GDC News: Final Fantasy to Hit Virtual Console
Every Day is Better With Two Scoops of Final Fantasy XIII
Trailer Review: Final Fantasy XIII Looks Disturbingly Interesting

Up All Night: Dino Crisis

John Constantine — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 16:00:00 GMT

When a refined sort decides that it is time to once again stay up all night, they must make certain preparations to ensure that their endeavor goes smoothly and that they will arrive at the dawn richer having survived their trials. They must ensure the room is properly lit, that they have sustenance to last the long hours, and they must make sure that they have chosen a game that is either appropriately terrible or admirably trashy in its content. They must also make sure to say a quiet prayer to the reining deity of trashy videogames: Shinji Mikami.

Shinji Mikami’s reputation is impeccable, no doubt. The man created Resident Evil. Remember though, that even though the original Resident Evil was a genre warping success and Resident Evil 4 was one of the best games ever created, they’re also prime candidates for Up All Night. I mean, hell, the plot and dialogue alone are enough to qualify them. The rest of his resume is an even better fit; Mikami’s Gamecube debut, P.N.03, was Up All Night’s very first subject.

After finishing Resident Evil 5 last month, I found myself hankering for Shinji’s distinct flare for the absurd premise and awkward control scheme. Lucky for me, there was an enormous Mikami-shaped hole in my gaming history: I had never played Dino Crisis. So, I journeyed to eBay, walked away with a shiny black Playstation disc and prepared to stay up all night.

Man, did I stay up all night. To say that Dino Crisis is just Resident Evil with dinosaurs is a disservice to Resident Evil. For all of its talk about masters of unlocking, at least Resident Evil had a coherent plot. At no point during my four hour playthrough of Dino Crisis was I clear on what was actually happening. Here’s what I got out of it: this chick named Regina, who has red hair and wears a one piece bathing suit over dancer’s tights, goes to this island with two dudes to find some other dude who may or may not be a scientist. When they get there, there’s a base on the island that was at one time filled with scientists. Now it is filled with velociraptors and giant-headed purple velociraptors. Three pterodactyls and a tyrannosaurus rex hang out outside the base and occasionally break some windows. Your goal is to walk Regina through the base. That’s pretty much it. Some doors are locked and you need to find keys to unlock them. Sometimes Regina talks to the two dudes, but I really couldn’t figure out what they were saying. It is a piece of trash.

Not all Up All Night games are bad games. Just because they’re trashy doesn’t mean they don’t have redeemable qualities. Dino Crisis is not one of those games. And now, having said that, Shinji Mikami is going to strike me down.

Previously on Up All Night:

X-Blades and the D-List Preservation Society
Up All Night With Jaleco: Never the Best, But Never Forgotten
Blackthorne
Doritos Dash of Destruction
Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe
Power Blade
Cannon Spike
Parasite Eve

Scarygirl is Out!

John Constantine — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 15:00:00 GMT

Consider, for a moment, a world in which there were no consoles, no portable gaming devices, no games built specifically for the iPhone or your cell phone or your Trapper Keeper, no Steam, no games made specifically to harness a personal computer’s full power. Imagine a world where the only videogames in existence were Flash games. The genres would be familiar. You’d have platformers and shooters, puzzlers and adventures, sure. You’d never want for something new to play either. If you’ve opened a web browser in the past decade, you know as well as I do that there are thousands upon thousands of the blighters. And though there would be many things to play, there wouldn’t be much of it that was any good or artful.

In a world where all games were Flash games, Scarygirl would be a god.

In our world, Scarygirl is just exceptional. I stumbled upon Touch My Pixel’s videogame imagining of Nathan Jureviciu’s character last summer and fully expected it to be yet another promising unfinished project. Damn my cynical side! I am happy to be wrong though, since Scarygirl is now available to play right here.

It doesn’t run too well on my work computer, sadly, but it’s charming nonetheless. Great art, slick music, and a nice adventure platformer structure (think Tomba, not Super Metroid.) Check it out and marvel at what a Flash game can be.

Related links:

Donkey Kong II’s Revisionist History Rights Old Wrongs
Watcha Playing?: Spelunky
Indie Dev Moment: Blush
Indie Dev Moment: Jumpman
Indie Dev Moment: Dyson
Indie Dev Moment: Scarygirl

Soon. So Soon: Bionic Commando Looks Even Better, Has Worrisome Dialog

John Constantine — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 14:00:00 GMT

We’ve had quite a year, haven’t we Bionic Commando? Treasured stolen moments last summer, when I first saw you soar in a full three dimensions, climbing to pristinely rendered heights never seen before. A rekindling of our youthful flirtations with Rearmed, a reminder that true love is timeless. You are so close now, Bionic Commando. I can hear your steel hand clanking against some ruined skyscraper like a whisper on the breeze, calling me to your summer embrace.

Yes, GRIN’s Bionic Commando sequel is going to be out in just one month, right as 61 Frames Per Second is celebrating its first birthday. In these new clips, you can see just how much its creators have polished the game in the past twelve months. It is gorgeous.

The last time I got my hands on Bionic Commando, it played well, but its levels plain didn’t shine like they do here. I am, however, concerned by some of the incidental background dialog in the first video. I try not to be a purist when it comes to sequels but a soldier saying, “I’m going to fuck you up!” doesn’t really jive with the tone set by Bionic Commando: Rearmed or even this game’s prologue comic book. I’ll reserve judgment until the game is in my arms.

Soon, my love. So, so soon.

Related links:

Bionic Commando Rearmed Fan Trailer
Nobody Puts Bionic Commando in A Corner
Design Resurrection: How Capcom Finally Proved That It’s Game and Not Graphics That Matters
Bionic Commando is Love: Bionic Commando Rearmed is Out. It Matters.
Gone Vertical: Hands-on Bionic Commando

Trailer Review: Bayonetta

John Constantine — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 21:00:00 GMT

You’d think that with time and experience and the accumulation of knowledge, a man would move past certain things. He’d start to develop more refined tastes that reflect a growing passion for life’s finer stuff. You’d think he’d exhibit a predilection for more metered explorations of the human experience, subtle meditations on adult relationships and history. You’d think that witches who have guns built into their shoes, who get naked while attacking monsters with their hair wouldn’t be the sort of thing that would interest him.

Nope. Bayonetta is about as cultured as I’m likely to get.

There’s a lot more of the game to chew on in this latest trailer. It’s the first decent look at the sort of play I got to see demoed back in January. I’ll say, though, it still doesn’t give a full impression of just how varied and fast combat in Bayonetta really is. There’s also a heaping spoonful of story, with two new characters spouting dialog that strongly recalls director Hideki Kamiya’s old cheese from Devil May Cry and Resident Evil 2. Also, Bayonetta can turn into a cougar. I guess that explains why she’s chasing after that young, good looking fella driving the car in front of her! You know. Because… she’s a cougar… um…

That is the worst joke I have ever made.

Previous Trailer Reviews:

Fez
Katamari Damacy Tribute
Behemoth’s Game #3
Muramasa – The Demon Blade
InFamous
Watchmen: The End is Nigh
Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure
Dante’s Inferno is Looking Even More… Something
Machinarium
Mightier
Demon’s Souls
Final Fantasy XIII Looks Disturbingly Interesting
Priston Tale II: The 2nd Enigma
King of the Fighters XII
Edge
Dante's Inferno
Star Wars: The Old Republic
Resident Evil 5

Your April Mission, If You Choose to Accept It

John Constantine — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 20:00:00 GMT

I am going to use a few phrases right now that I find unsavory. It’s best to take the band-aid approach in these situations, get it all that pain out of the way in one quick, nasty motion. *Breath*. Gamer community. Blogosphere. Trend. *GASP* Ow. That sucked.

Anyway, the point. April hasn’t been short of news or goings on in the gaming world – the DSi came out last Sunday, there a new Jak and Daxter coming, lots of savory news to satisfy the fanatic soul – but there’s a strong air of discontent across the gaming community blogosphere this week. April is a dead zone for new games this year. Not a whole lot coming out. Starbreeze’s Chronicles of Riddick came out a couple of days ago, and that’s pretty much it for even cult favorites until May. So fans, bloggers, enthusiasts, the whole sordid scene is grumbling.

Today, I ask everyone reading, everyone out there who likes videogames just a bit too much and follows the industry just a bit too closely, to do one simple thing: go play something old. There are hundreds of great games out there, far more than any one person will ever have time to play. It’s spring time. Go outside, enjoy the air, have sex, drink an iced tea, and when you do sit down to play some games, tackle that backlog. Revisit an old favorite. Take a recommendation from a friend.

Just because nothing new is coming out, that don’t mean there’s not stuff to play. Love the one you’re with, dear reader!

Related links:

Chiptune Friday: Spring Into Spring With Sonic
Spring Cleaning: Dusting Off Your Old Games
Chiptune Friday: Spring Is In the Air With Okami

Dragon Quest X and the Wii Lifetime Equation

John Constantine — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 21:00:00 GMT

It didn’t hit me until today just how long the Wii is going to stick around. Forget the fact that Nintendo have sold millions upon millions of consoles in record time or that the box continues to sell in vast quantities on a monthly basis. The real metric is Dragon Quest.

Consider this: there have been just three new Dragon Quest games released in the last seventeen years. The shortest gap between games was the three years between Dragon Quest V and Dragon Quest VI, the longest the five years before VII was released. Square-Enix plans to release Dragon Quest IX in July, a full five years after Dragon Quest VIII. This averages out to a new Dragon Quest every 4.25 years.

Dragon Quest X was announced for the Wii last December. It’s reasonable then to assume we won’t see DQX until early 2013. That’ll be the Wii’s seventh year and Dragon Quest X’s release will guarantee the system at least one million more consoles sold that year.

Dragon Quest X + Wii = Potentially the longest shelf life for a Nintendo home console.

Math is fun!

Related links:

The 61FPS Review: Dragon Quest IV – Chapters of the Chosen
The 61FPS Review: Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride
Dragon Quest III Remake Translation Patch Released
The 'Bout Time Report: Dragon Quest IX Gets a Release Date

The Four Greatest Videogame/Drug Combinations of All Time (Speaking From Personal Experience)

John Constantine — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 20:00:00 GMT

The world’s worst fears are true: you need to take drugs to play Grand Theft Auto. The only way to get the most out of your time in Liberty City is to eat ecstasy, let the chemical take hold, and swim in an ocean of thick joy as you wreak impossible acts of havoc on the digital world’s citizens. I’m sorry I’m stealing your car, I need it right now, but I looooove you, man. Just the way it is, I guess. Bold choice, Rockstar! I kid. It was no doubt an unpleasant surprise for Richard Thornhill, a father of two, to open his recently purchased copy of GTA and find four mysterious pills sitting in the game’s case. I can’t imagine the confusion and fear. My god, what have I touched? Is this poison?

There’s nothing more noisome than someone telling you that drugs of any stripe enhance an experience. Oh man, you can’t listen to Dark Side of the Moon if you aren’t stoned, man. Shut up. You’re a moron. I would, however, be a liar if I said that I haven’t had a marvelous time playing videogames while using illicit substances. Yes, like President Obama, I too inhaled during the heady days of my youth. Amongst other things. Let us take a brief stroll down memory lane. I will be your pharmacological guide across the gaming landscape.

For the record, you don’t need to eat ecstasy to play Grand Theft Auto. That is, unless you’re British.

Marijuana and Resident Evil 4

I don’t like pot anymore. I find it to be, as Warren Ellis described LSD, abrasively psychological. It makes me feel stupid and completely out of control of my own brain. Back when, though, I found THC’s sloppy haze of goodwill and creativity very pleasant. It was never conducive to anything that requires paying attention, though. With one exception. A few puffs of Maple Leaf Indica before I fired up Resident Evil 4 for the very first time made a memorable game beginning an unforgettable claustrophobic terror. The first time I took control of Leon Kennedy, the camera was so uncomfortably close to him that it felt like I was there peeking over his shoulder. No, Leon don’t go in there! Let’s get the hell out of this forest! There are demon Spaniards everywhere!

Alcohol and Burnout Paradise

Drunk driving is one of the stupidest, most detestable things a human being can do. If you’ve had a drink, don’t even get into the driver seat of a car. You can’t operate it. You will hurt someone. If you want a quick lesson in what will happen, fire up Burnout Paradise next time one drink’s turned into three. The game’s already about terrifying reckless vehicular feats, but the shock of colliding with a wall while intoxicated is outrageous. You can’t help but laugh as your cheeks flush. That was freaking TERRIFYING!

Ecstasy and Duck Tales
MDMA is dangerous stuff. It leaves you exhausted. Even more dangerous because everything you’ve ever heard about its effects are true. It feels very good. The flood of serotonin into your system fills you up with a powerful and irresistible feeling of intimacy with everything and lends even the most mundane experience a nigh on spiritual level of profundity. Much as playing Capcom’s Duck Tales does. Sensing a good thing, I mixed the two. Scrooge McDuck’s happy greed became a desperate struggle to hold on to everything in the world because it just meant so much. You think the Moon theme was bittersweet before? Whew. Yeah, ecstasy made Duck Tales a moving spiritual journey. That’s why I don’t do ecstasy anymore.

Nutmeg and The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time

I like to think of myself as the kind of guy who will try anything twice. Life’s meant for living, right? That’s what Chicken Soup for the Disaffected Urbanite says at least. Truth is I’m pretty meek, afraid of new experiences and change. Sometimes, you just have to roll with it. Like when I found out that nutmeg — you know, the spice — can be used as a psychotropic. Uh huh. There’s a reason you don’t put more than a sprinkle of the stuff on your eggnog. Not because it induces a hallucinatory state for close to twelve hours, and not because it’ll make you incapable of pooping for a day, but because it tastes like god damn turpentine. Eaten in large quantities though it can and will make you feel like you are TRAVELLING THROUGH TIME. There’s only one thing for it under those conditions. You must become the Hero of Time. Obviously.

Related links:

GWI: Gaming While Intoxicated
Boy Addicted to Call of Duty 4 Found Dead
The Duck Tales Moon Theme--With Lyrics
OST: DuckTales

Question of the Day: Why Can’t I Play Online?

John Constantine — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 01:00:00 GMT

It’s getting bad. Ugly even. A friend walks up to me and asks the simple question, “Hey, John, what are you playing right now?” Then I think of the backlog. It’s a pile of games sitting by the consoles, a gargantuan mass of briefly played games, none of them seen to completion. I started Persona 4 in December! MadWorld? Yeah that first stage was a hell of a good time, for sure. My plan to beat Vagrant Story by March? Didn’t work out so much. What’s worse than the line up of single player games sitting by the boxes is the pile of those other games. Some of them I’ve even “finished”. You know the ones I’m talking about. The games that you’re supposed to play with other real live human beings over the internet. Resident Evil 5 without pushing around an artificial intelligence. Left4Dead with more than two people in split-screen. Racing in Burnout Paradise against, you know, drivers. Those games. The ones that keep slipping to the bottom of the backlog.

As playing online has gone from niche to ubiquity over the past decade, I’ve found myself completely unable to jump on the bandwagon. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a good multiplayer session. I can sit down with a group of like-minded folks and play Street Fighter (any of them really) for as long as everyone’s willing. I adore a good splits-screen session, co-operative or competitive, racing, shooting, puzzling, or, hell, Jenga-ing in Boom Blox. I’m all for it. When it comes to playing with people online, though, I just can’t muster the enthusiasm. I’ve had just as many positive experiences playing with complete strangers as I have miserable ones. Like everyone else, I’ve had some intellectual cripple call me every racial/misogynistic epithet, real and made up on the spot, during a simple game of Halo 3. That’s not what keeps me away. Even playing with friends, people I know, doesn’t appeal to me in the same way playing with them in the room does, not to mention playing solo. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why.

My question for you is how do I break out of the cycle and learn to embrace anytime-anywhere multiplayer? What is it about playing together in a room that just can’t be replicated by playing across broadband? What am I missing here?

Related links:

Question of the Day: Valkyrie Profile and the Need for Voiced Dialogue
Question of the Day: Ogre Battle and How Much Tutorial is Too Much?
Question of the Day: Your Ideal Controller?
Question of the Day: Yu-Gi-Oh! And Card-Based Videogames?

A Day in the Life: iD Before Doom

John Constantine — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMT

iD have always been more interesting than their games. That’s not to take away from Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, or Quake. The technology that John Carmack created for those games and their mutual successors redefined the shape of a videogame, the type of interactive space a person could create. His partner, the ever-lovin’ John Romero himself, was no slouch either. Of course, John’s legacy lies not in the realm of groundbreaking design tools but in aesthetics (read: the preponderance of games about shooting things directly in the face.) I can’t disrespect those games, nor the creativity behind them. After reading David Kushner’s Masters of Doom, though, it’s impossible not to think of those personalities before anything about the games themselves. The story of Carmack, Romero, Tom Hall and the rest of their team is almost operatic. There’s betrayal, sex, fame, money, broken dreams. The history of iD is the nerd version of Carmen.

It would be pretty interesting to be a fly on the wall of their cluttered office before it all went wrong, a look at young people at their creative peak creating something brand new for the world to play.

It’d probably look like this.

This video comes to us from Romero himself via Joe Siegel. November 1993, just before Doom was about to come out and make them all scary, scary rich. Ah for the innocent days before Daikatana, before newspapers blamed school shootings on these goons. Fascinating.

Plus, they’re playing Aladdin on Genesis! Just like REAL people in 1993!

(Link: GameLife)

Related links:

Returning to the Return of the Castle Wolfenstein Returned: This Time It’s Just Plain Ol’ Wolfenstein
Bringing Sexy Back: John Carmack
The Art of Gore in Project Origin
Industry Predictions for 2009: Doom and Gloom Edition

Silent Hill, Killer 7 and Not Having Fun With Great Games

John Constantine — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 02:00:00 GMT

I am less than taken with Bit.Trip Beat. Subsequent playings have not improved my opinion of the game. As I’ve gotten further into it, the fundamental flaws in its design I spotted at the beginning have been born out later in the game. Some people love it. I don’t. They think it’s fun. I don’t. C’est la vie.

As I mentioned in my article about Bit.Trip, though, I don’t think that games need to be fun in order for them to be good. I was pretty vague in making my point though. 61FPS reader Kit wrote me an email last week to ask just what the hell I was talking about. How can a game be good if it isn’t fun to play? Isn’t fun implicit in the very act of playing?

When’s a game good but not much fun?

Some games aren't fun in a traditional, visceral sense but are still substantive, engaging, and well designed. The two best examples of this are Silent Hill and Suda 51's Killer 7. Silent Hill games, particularly 1 and 2, are frustrating as hell. It's hard to see where you're going and your character is difficult to control even by survival horror standards. Beyond your basic interaction though, the games fill you with dread; they are never pleasant to play. The story, world, and actual play (moving your character, fighting enemies) are designed to make you feel uncomfortable. It doesn't matter. Silent Hill 2 is a good game because it taps primal emotions, like fear, at the same time as deeper, social emotions like guilt in the player. (David Cage from Quantic Dream actually gave a talk on the difference between social and primitive emotion in games last summer, and I haven't been able to get it out of my head since. If you're curious, check it out.)

Suda's Killer 7 is a little different, less about emotion than it is about dispassionately confusing the player. It discomfits with a dense narrative that is confusing and full of emotionally distant characters, strange noises, and weird camera angles. It also intentionally limits your range of movement and your perspective; you have to explore to succeed, but the game is constantly forcing you down rigidly defined paths. You cannot freely move through the environment. You have to stay on set path. Killer 7 isn't fun. It is artful. It's about challenging its player's perception. (What does it mean, does it mean anything at all, etc.) It's rare for a game to ask its player to think beyond solving a puzzle.

Neither game is what I'd consider fun in the way that say Super Mario Bros. 3 is fun, but they are nonetheless great.

What do you say, reader? Am I nuts? Or does a game have to be fun in order to be good?

Thanks again, Kit!

Related links:

The New Graphics Whores: Bit.Trip Beat is Gorgeous, But Retro Style Does Not Equate Quality
Interview Round Up: Suda 51, Shinji Mikami, and Mikami’s Replacements on Resident Evil
Ceci N'Est Pas Une 1-Up: The Surrealist Future of Postpunk Gaming
10 Years Ago This Week: Silent Hill

Namco, Your Klonoa Commercial is Dangerously Misleading

John Constantine — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 01:00:00 GMT

Spoiler Warning. Giant, story-ruining, spoiler warning. Knock, knock. Who’s there? Spoiler Warning.

You know what, Namco, I’m getting a little tired of having to have these talks with you. I know you’re tired of it too. If you paid attention, this wouldn’t be happening. You’ve been doing a lot of good lately, and I want you to know I’m proud of you for it. Not only did you decide to remake Klonoa: Door to Phantomile on the game’s tenth anniversary, you brought back much of the Klonoa Works team to make it. Director Hideo Yoshizawa, artist Yoshihiko Arai, and composer Kanako Kakino. Wise, Namco, wise. You even decided against that atrocious redesign of Klonoa you were batting around last year.

This commercial, though, Namco. I don’t know if this is a very smart choice. It’s a little… misleading.

Yeah those kids sure are having fun. That announcer’s letting us know it too. Awesome. Some parent is going to buy Klonoa for their kid because it's about a fluffy bunny-cat man and his smiley face friend after watching this, for sure. Tell me this though?

How’s that happy kid going to feel when they get to the end of the eighth level and Klonoa's screaming, holding the corpse of his murdered grandfather?

How about when he beats it and he's told that Klonoa’s entire life was a lie and then the fluffy bunny-cat is forcefully torn out of reality, clutching onto the hands of the best friend that betrayed him?

Yeah. Way to think it through, Namco.

Editor’s Note: I wrote an article some months back identifying Shuichi Sakurazaki as the creator and director of Klonoa: Door to Phantomile. Seems that the credit should go to Hideo Yoshizawa. That said, as far as I can tell, these two men might be the same person. Anyone out there know what the deal is? The internet is less than forthcoming with the appropriate facts.

(Link: Kotaku)

Related links:

Klonoa: Careful, Namco. You Tread On My Dreams.
Klonoa's Truimphant(?) Return
Underrated: Klonoa Series
Where is Shuichi Sakurazaki, Creator of Ninja Gaiden?

The Art of Heavy Rain

John Constantine — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMT

We have absolutely no clue what Heavy Rain is going to be. Well, we have some idea, sure. We know that Quantic Dream’s unsettling detailed three-dimensional characters and environments recall the world on its most, dreary rain-soaked day, shades of grey and brown and green. We know that the character’s have facial expressions that dip so low into the Uncanny Valley that they stop being repellant and become entrancing. We know that the game will be played predominantly through quick time events. We know that, if Indigo Prophecy and Omikron are anything to go by, Heavy Rain’s going to be, if not good, one hell of an interesting game. Truth is, we know so little because Quantic Dream hasn’t shown the actual game to anyone besides a small handful of journalists and employees of Sony Computer Entertainment. They’ve shown two demos as examples of the technology and style that will make up Heavy Rain. That’s it. No actual game. Quantic Dream are mysterious Frenchmen, so they are.

Today, we can add some new pieces to the Heavy Rain puzzle. This concept art may not tell us a whole lot about the game’s story or what it will actually be like to play, but they speak volumes about its tone. This game is going to be unsettling.

The three color environments are spooky enough. They’re dark, lonely places. Even the hotel room is ominous, inviting at first until you spot the cracks in its ceiling. The black and white drawings are flat out disturbing in their depictions of violence. Weary policemen standing around a rainy murder scene aren’t uncommon in games. Mid-coital stabbings, and possible rapes, however, are.

Sony’s classified Heavy Rain as a “Psychological Mystery/Dark Thriller”. Seems that’s an apt description.

Much love to NeoGAFfer Cyberia for finding these.

Related links:

Feeling It: Social Versus Primitive Emotion in Videogames
In Defense of the QTE: Ninja Blade
Less Than Perfect: Jak and Daxter and The Flawed Character
Crossing the Uncanny Valley

In Defense of the QTE: Ninja Blade

John Constantine — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 23:00:00 GMT

Now that the man’s winding down his career, let us honor Yu Suzuki for his most important contribution to game design: the QTE. Hey now. I can hear you rolling your eyes. We might be sick of pressing the X button every single time Crystal Dynamics wants Lara Croft to kick a tiger with style, but the quick time event provides us with some of videogames’ most satisfying thrills. They aren’t inherently bad. They’re just implemented very, very poorly. This week, you’ll be able to walk out into the world and pick up a copy of From Software’s Ninja Blade. Hell, you can go home right now and download a demo of Ninja Blade just to have a taste. One level is all you need to exemplify just how good quick time events can be in a game.

Here’s why.

First, a definition. In God of War’s wake, “quick time event” has transformed from a noun into a sort of critics’ short hand. It’s a blanket term to describe when, in a game where you have direct control of a character, the normal control is taken away and you watch a unique or atypical animation. While the animation plays, you must press a specific button as prompted on the screen. If you don’t, you’ll have to replay the sequence. Now, there are many parts of modern games that can be described this way and not all of them are quick time events. For example, in action games like MadWorld and Yakuza 2, you’re prompted with special inputs — press X next to a car, swing the Wiimote down — to finish off enemies. The most colorful finishing moves have you stringing these inputs together. These are not quick time events. They’re contextual actions. A quick time event is a choreographed, dramatic sequence where prompts imitate an action that you do not have direct control over. Resident Evil 4 has some classic examples. You, the player, steer Leon to the top of a hill and move forward. The game then shifts the camera to a group of enemies on a cliff above you. They push a boulder off said cliff that chases you and to escape you repeatedly press a button, which keeps Leon running. That button has nothing to do with movement during regular play. If you don’t press it here, the game ends. That’s a quick time event. They can, and have, enrich games with emotionally charged moments the game wouldn’t have otherwise.

The chief argument against quick time events is that they pull you out of a game by stripping away control, if only partially. They’re gaudy cheats to mask the passive storytelling devices of film instead of relying on a game’s interactivity to inform its drama and incident. It’s a valid argument against bad quick time events. The most recent games starring the aforementioned Lara Croft, particularly Tomb Raider Legend, have terrible quick time events made up of sixty second cinematics halved by a single, easy to miss button press. When implemented well, though, a quick time event is anything but a mask for inactive game sequences, as in Quantic Dream’s Indigo Prophecy. The game allows you limited sequences of full character control, relying on quick time events with inputs that imply the action to make up most of the play. Lucas Kane is running from police officers and needs to dodge left so you’re prompted to press both analog sticks in that direction. You aren’t moving Lucas, but the movement of both sticks translates as urgency, and agency, for you. These QTEs are fast to match the pace of the game and end up making for affecting play because of their speed and mimicry of the action. That’s the key to QTE success; tying your input as close to possible to dramatic actions that are impossible to depict, or make interactive, in the game itself.

Ninja Blade’s first level is about half quick time events and they are incredible spectacles. The level ends with a fight against a giant, grotesque spider on top of a skyscraper. The first part of the fight is familiar three-dimensional action; you move around with the level analog stick and press X, Y, and B buttons on the Xbox 360 controller to slice and stab with a sword. The second part, after whittling down the spider’s defenses, has you riding the spider up a skyscraper before riding a wrecking ball across the night sky, and then crushing the spider with it. There isn’t a way in games to make this one-hundred percent interactive and retain its presentation. Not yet at least. So sequence is a quick time event, and through a mixture of rumble in the control, speed of button prompts, and inputs that approximate other actions in the normal game, it’s completely engaging.

Like I said, QTEs don’t damn a game. They’re just another tool. Quality depends on the craftsmen.

Related links:

Love-Hate: In Defense of the Cutscene
Overpowering the Flavor: Cooking Mama World Kitchen and Cutscene Clutter
Whatcha Playing: Weight of the Stone
Sonic Unleased: Worse Than Syphilis
Sega's Yu Suzuki Steps Down
Where is Yu Suzuki?

Jet Grind Television: WiiSpray

John Constantine — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 23:30:00 GMT

Last summer, Martin Lihs finished his thesis project at Bauhaus-University. Amidst the ocean of Wii remote mods created in the past three years, Lihs’ is especially cool. The WiiSpray is a plastic spray paint can with the motion sensing guts of your average Wiimote. Today, the WiiSpray has its own functioning interface and it lives up the homebrew peripheral’s promise. Utilizing the Wii’s internal tech and flash, Lihs has created a marvelous slick interface that recreates the look of Earth’s best urban vandalism. There are even stencils!

Being the consumer whore I am, I immediately starting thinking about WiiSpray’s potential franchise use. Jet Grind Radio is an obvious first choice. Imagine modifying the original’s analog skating with a smooth point and click interface that has you zipping about the city, choosing your tag spot and then filling the screen with your brick-and-mortar canvass. Then DJ Professor K could judge your style, spitting anarchist drivel out of the WiiSpray’s speaker.

The other might seem like a fanboy’s wishful thinking, but Mario Paint Wii would be another great fit for Lihs’ creation. The original Mario Paint is a technological anachronism in this day and age, considering how its core tools come built into damn near every operating system in existence. A new Mario Paint, however, packed with unique plug-in peripherals like WiiSpray, could modernize that classic in fine form. I could finally finish that cartoon I started in 1995 and I wouldn’t have to use that ridiculous mouse!

Check out the WiiSpray here.

(Link: Boing Boing)

Related links:

WTFriday: The Mario Paint Music Showcase
Handjobs for Homebrew: Mario Paint Composer DS
Have You Seen This XBox Game?
Sega, Show Some Decency

Donkey Kong II’s Revisionist History Rights Old Wrongs

John Constantine — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 21:00:00 GMT

Am I the only person on the internet who didn’t know this existed? Jeff Kulczycki, proprietor of Jeff’s Romhack, made a full on sequel to Donkey Kong entitled Donkey Kong II: Jumpman Returns. The game has a little something for everybody. For the folks out there who just love the original Donkey Kong and don’t love Donkey Kong ’94, Jeff’s made four brand new levels for you to play. For the people who still consider Donkey Kong Jr’s vilification of Mario to be a grave injustice, here’s your chance to engage in soothing revisionist history. If you want to get try out Donkey Kong II, you can head over to the infamous Funspot Arcade in New Hampshire to try and earn a killscreen of your very own. If you actually happen to own a Donkey Kong cabinet, you can actually purchase a ROM upgrade and soup that baby up. If you’re merely curious, here’s a full playthrough.

Kulczycki’s original levels are well made, blending with the original four while providing pleasant upgrades. The orange-yellow color scheme is especially nice. Falling pies don’t strike me as the sort of thing you’d find a giant ape hurling off a construction site, but hey, fireballs aren’t typically sentient.

Hit up Jeff’s Romhack here.

(Link: NeoGAF)

Related links:

Licensing Tragedies: The Donkey Kong Country Cartoon
Alternate Soundtrack - Donkey Kong '94 vs. Les Savy Fav
No Alternate Soundtrack: Donkey Kong Jungle Beat
Fandom Unplugged: '80s Arcades and Hero Worship

Less Than Perfect: Jak and Daxter and The Flawed Character

John Constantine — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 22:00:00 GMT

On last week’s GDC ListenUp special, the three amigos John Davison, Garnett Lee, David Ellis, chatted with God Of War creator David Jaffe about the dominance of empowered supermen/women as protagonists in videogames. Their discussion started around the difference between Western and Eastern tastes in protagonists. The American palette leans towards the militaristic hero archetype, the one man, muscle bound army who, plagued by existential angst or not, can solve every problem with brawn. The Japanese audience prefers youthful androgyny, characters either brimming with naïve confidence or crushed under the weight of responsibility for civilization. The ListenUP crew went on to lament that there is seemingly no place in either culture for the Peter Parker/Spider-man archetype, characters who are empowered, but deeply flawed, whether by insecurity or another humanizing debility.

They’re right of course. I can point to a selection of flawed, humanized characters in games; Oddworld’s Munch and Abe are iconic inhuman outsiders made relatable through fragility and Ico’s horned protagonist is so memorable because of his incompetence and weakness. Gaming’s more literary canon, the adventure genre, is also populated by relatable humanized leads like Farenheit’s Carla Valenti and Lucas Kane or Dreamfall’s Zoe. But these icons make up a significant minority in the world of character-based and narrative-driven videogames. If Peter Parker and his alter-ego are the most profitable fictional characters in contemporary media, why are characters like him so under-represented in videogames? Why are our game protagonists so rigidly defined by complete empowerment? Where are our emotional, and our actual, cripples?

Amidst the game industry April Fool’s detritus, Sony quietly announced their first Jak and Daxter game in some years. Only a handful of screens were released, but they indicate a blend of aesthetics from the franchise’s history; the verdant greens of The Precursor Legacy coupled with the wizened, gun-toting hero of that game’s sequels. Chances are Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier on PSP won’t explore this emotional territory, but I’m fascinated by the potential of Jak as a character. Jak originated as a plucky silent protagonist, wide-eyed and young, looking for adventure and finding the opportunity to save the world. He was a distinctly Eastern sort of hero in a Western game. Jak 2 transformed him into an angry, violent anti-hero, given greater power through weaponry and a corrupting inner force to go along with a newfound voice. With his return on the PSP, developer High Impact Games has the opportunity to take the road less travelled. An older, wiser Jak, maybe even a weakened one, who has come to terms with a violent past catching up to him. They could inject what would otherwise be a typical flight of character fancy with true emotional heft. Let Jak understand weakness in addition to pain, and make the game something wholly original.

That won’t happen of course. There’s no profit in it. But the example should hold true for other game makers out there. The road to making affecting game characters and stories doesn’t end with making them look real. It ends with making them feel real.

Related links:

Character Case Study: When Good Characters Get Bad Attitudes
The Ten Most Adventurous Sequels in Gaming History
Linearity is Not a Dirty Word
Finally, Some Info On Dreamfall Chapters

The Problem With Episodes: Where is LostWinds Chapter 2?

John Constantine — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 21:00:00 GMT

Looking at the game design zeitgeist through the lens of GDC, you can start to get a clearer image of what videogames are going to be like in the next decade. More small games, more downloadable games, more mobile/iPhone games, more user generated content. This is the way of the future. It isn’t a future unique to GDC 2009, though. These have been the trends dominating futurist industry discussion for five years running. We know it’s the future, dag nab it! Enough. Let us talk of the past.

One design trend that everyone and their Commodore 64-programming uncle was talking about just three years ago was episodic content. Episodes! This is how big games will be delivered from here on out! Wave of the future, by gum. Gabe Newell and Valve were the poster children of the episodic games movement. They’re also the poster children of how well that movement has worked out. Almost two full years on from Half-Life 2 Episode 2’s release and Episode 3 is nowhere insight, and this trend has been emblematic of episodic gaming as a strategy across the industry. Telltale Games have managed to create multiple episodic series, namely Sam & Max and Strong Bad’s Cool Game For Attractive People, but they’re the sole developer to deliver true episodic content and not larger games supported with smaller downloadable appendixes.

David Braben’s Frontier Developments never billed LostWinds, WiiWare’s finest offering to date, as an episodic franchise, but they may as well have. The game, for all its quality, is very brief and can be finished in three hours or less if the player doesn’t get lost in its maze of a world. It also ends with an explicit “To Be Continued” screen promising that a second chapter in Toku’s adventure soon. Eleven months after LostWinds release, Frontier hasn’t even mentioned its continuation. Whether its because of business concerns or some other reason, it’s very strange that there hasn’t been so much as a peep out of Frontier concerning its development. What gives? I thought the idea of bite-sized, downloadable, sequential-narrative based games was that they came out quickly!

I admit it. I’m just impatient.

Previously on Where Is?:

Shadow Hearts
SSX
The PSP
Hydrophobia
Prototype
Shuichi Sakurazaki, Creator of Ninja Gaiden
Yasunori Mitsuda

Trailer Review: Fez

John Constantine — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 20:00:00 GMT

Fez? Come here a second. Let’s talk, you and I, of the way the world is. The world is a cruel and indifferent monstrosity, full of danger, heartbreak, joy, and satisfaction. The sun rises and sets on the just and unjust alike. We wake, every morning, guaranteed of but one thing: there will be a new Madden game this year. Chances are it will be good and people will buy it. Other things are not guaranteed but are most likely going to happen. Someone will make a game with a gun in it and you will shoot things with that gun. Some kids will trade Pokemon and they will laugh together about it. And, I hope, and I pray, that you will come out and we can finally, after so long, be together. Fez, the world can be a lonely place. Come away with me, Fez.

Anyways. Yeah. Fez came out of its hibernation den at GDC last week. It looks fan-flippin-tastic. Delight in its wares!

What looks good? The new interior environments, dope night and day settings, and the delectable new logo. What sounds good? The new song. What makes me believe in the promise of all reality? The release date. Woo.

Previous Trailer Reviews:

Katamari Damacy Tribute
Behemoth’s Game #3
Muramasa – The Demon Blade
InFamous
Watchmen: The End is Nigh
Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure
Dante’s Inferno is Looking Even More… Something
Machinarium
Mightier
Demon’s Souls
Final Fantasy XIII Looks Disturbingly Interesting
Priston Tale II: The 2nd Enigma
King of the Fighters XII
Edge
Dante's Inferno
Star Wars: The Old Republic
Resident Evil 5

The All New Retro: Bust-a-Groove and Low-Poly Love

John Constantine — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMT

I won’t deny it. My gaming tastes are a little unusual. Take my emulation aversion. Does a normal person spend months and months tracking down a rare and expensive cheat device so they can play an imported SNES game when they could download a ROM and SNES emulator in about ten seconds? No. This is not how a normal person behaves. As I slowly morph into something approximating an adult, I’ve been noticing another strange predilection in my gaming brain: a love of low-polygon graphics.

Some games do not age with grace. Their mechanics, and especially their graphics, develop the distinct taste of vinegar when they used to be wine just five years before. Yet the games of the 32- and 64-bit era, games that I thought were repulsive even at the time, are starting to take on a strange allure. Take a look at this screenshot from Tomb Raider 3 as a prime example:

It’s a relic, no pun intended. The cliff face is made of perfect right angles, covered in muddy textures doing their best to look like rock. Lara herself looks like a drawing dummy. This screenshot should be a text book example of why early polygonal graphics are best-forgotten growing pains from the medium’s adolescence. Given, low-poly graphics like these have survived. Most 3D Nintendo DS games are comparable to this screen, though they can be much better. Square-Enix’s Final Fantasy IV is not unlike graphics seen in the best the Playstation and Nintendo 64 had to offer ten years ago. DS games of its ilk though feature graphics of necessity, not of stylistic choice. Style is where I see the potential beauty of low-poly graphics. Ugly as they are, they could make for a whole new style of retro game design.

In the same way that Retro Game Challenge and Mega Man 9 have leveraged NES-level visual limitations to inform and color compelling game designs, I can see a designer intentionally choosing a low-poly presentation to inform their game. Instead of the game looking antiquated and ugly, you have a ready made cubist style that can make for extremely expressive games. Just look at Katamari Damacy.

Bust-a-Groove, Enix’s long forgotten rhythm game pictured at the top of this post, is what got me thinking about the potential of low-polygon design. Its models are primitive, but appealing in their simplicity and expressive thanks to the game’s excellent motion captured dances. Imagine if that game hadn’t come out in 1998. Say it came out in 2016. Would we say it’s ugly? Or would we say approvingly, “That’s old school.”? Retro even.

Mark my words, dear reader. It’ll happen. And it will be, if nothing else, interesting when it does.

Related links:

Not All Games Age Well
Question of the Day: Why Can’t I Emulate?
The 61FPS Review: Retro Game Challenge
Continuing the Old-School Conversation
Don’t Call It Retro: Mega Man 9 and Design Resurrection

Getting Medieval (and Evil) on PSP: Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman!

John Constantine — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 23:00:00 GMT

Well, Sony, it’s about time. You publish two versions of Yuusha no Kuse Ni Namaikida for PSP in as many years and you don’t release either outside Japan? Come on, man! What could it hurt? Patapon and LocoRoco are weird, original PSP games and they’ve done okay. American nerds love RPGs and retro style. Where’s the love? WHERE IS IT?!

Ah, there it is.

It’s understandable if you missed Yuusha no Kuse Ni Namaikida (You’re Pretty Cheeky For a Hero, if you prefer) when it came out back in 2007. Even amongst import gamers, it was still pretty obscure. Here’s the score: you play as the evil, world-menacing bad-guy-demon-lord from Ye Olde JRPG. You build a large maze-dungeon on a 2D plain, fill it with monsters, and then hide in it. Eventually a hero will show up to try and kill you. You, naturally, aim to avoid him. Think Tecmo’s Deception meets Dragon Quest. Here’s a trailer to get your mind rolling.

Neat, no? SCEA has ignored its existence so far, but a new Sony trademark filing has the internet rumor mill thinking a Western release is on the way. The trademark in question is Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman!. Who doesn’t love Adam West-related puns? Pretty cute, I must admit. This is a rumor at the moment, so the five of us getting excited should probably chill out.

(Link: Kotaku)

Related links:

Yuusha 30 and Wario’s Micro Game Legacy
Roundtable Discussion: The Relevance of Japanese RPGs
Let's Hitchike! - Another Weird Downloadable Game I Desire

Trailer Review: Katamari Damacy Tribute

John Constantine — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 22:00:00 GMT

Keita Takahashi made the right move in separating himself from Katamari Damacy. More of a good thing isn’t always what the world needs. Game sequels are, in principle, about improving on a solid foundation, molding an imperfect idea into something that is greater than its predecessor. Katamari Damacy was pretty much perfect on the first try and Takahashi knew that trying to bottle that lightning in a follow-up would end in failure. He did end up working on the first sequel, We Love Katamari, but he did it for the fans, not because he thought he could make a better game. Namco went ahead and made two more Takahashi-less Katamari games. They were not what you’d call great. Katamari Damacy Tribute, however, looks very promising.

Colorful cel-shading in place of Damacy’s usual subdued pastels is a nice start. Remixed classic Katamari tunes is even better. Most exciting though is the premise of this entry being a tribute to the original, and not an attempt to reinvent the wheel. When you have a game that’s more or less perfect as is, and you want to keep making money off it, the best thing you can do is just remake it with a nice graphical overhaul and some decent extra content. This is what is known as “The Nintendo Strategy”. Even without Takahashi on board, I have a good feeling about this one.

Related links:

Katamari in the Classroom
The 61FPS Review: Noby Noby Boy
Katamari Christmas - Rediscovering the Cosmos... Twice
Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 and the Second Chance

Henry Hatsworth Prototype Not as Awesome as Final Game, Still Awesome

John Constantine — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 23:30:00 GMT

A few weeks ago, I saw a trailer for Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure. Then I freaked out. Because it looked fantastic. Last week, Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure came out. Turns out it isn’t fantastic. It is totally fantastic in every possible way there is to be fantastic and sweet.

Okay, in fairness, I’ve only played the first few levels, so I’m not sure how deep it is or how good it is overall. (Derrick tells me it gets hard near the middle. We’ll see.) From the start, though, the platforming’s methodical and silky smooth, the puzzling simple but oh so satisfying. You already know the music’s great. Its sense of humor is everything the trailer promised as well. Hatsworth is a funny, funny game. I want to tell you about Tea Time in the game, but I also don’t want to ruin it for you. Tea Time made me laugh out loud on a crowded subway. I can, however, show you what the prototype of Tea Time looks like without ruining anything!

I’m not positive where or when this footage was shown — the YouTube video is dated February 24th, 2008 — but, as you can see, the game was very, very different early on. The trademark humor is there but the visual style is much more spare, recalling Craig McCracken Powerpuff Girls and Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends cartoons. Very, very cool. I wonder what else changed between this early prototype and the final game?

More on Hatsworth as I get deeper in.

Related links:

OST: Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure
Trailer Review: Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure
Portrait of the Prince Pre-Persia

The New Graphics Whores: Bit.Trip Beat is Gorgeous, But Retro Style Does Not Equate Quality

John Constantine — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 22:30:00 GMT

A strange thing happened to me between downloading Bit.Trip Beat and beating its first boss. While delighting in its vivid color, laughing at its signature character leaving rainbows in his wake across digital space, and letting its infectious chiptune beats colonize my brain, I realized that I wasn’t having any fun. That’s fine — I’m a firm believer in the fact that a game doesn’t need to be fun to be good — but I was expecting to have fun. I wanted to have fun. I was engaged by it, but not in a good way. I found the game to be overbearing and stressful. Then it hit me: Bit.Trip Beat is a bad game.

Its presentation is immaculate and the idea behind its play is sound; a horizontal shooter that has you deflecting objects instead of projecting them, making ammunition and enemy one and the same — Pong + Arkanoid + Gradius = Bit.Trip Beat — is a great foundation. The game is broken though. The motion controls are adequate but far too sensitive, and the game doesn’t allow you to adjust the sensitivity. It also doesn’t offer d-pad control, so you’re stuck. As you chain together hits in rhythm to the music, your combo meter rises and the visual effects start to intensify. They intensify so much that the color and flashes of light make it impossible to follow the action. It should be challenging to play at a high level, of course, but it should come from the speed and layout of the game’s obstacles, not because it’s hard to see. Most problematic though is that there is no respite throughout Bit.Trip’s long levels. Scrolling shooters necessitate moments of peace that allow you to refocus and rest before the next series of challenges. You need chances to blink. Without them, the game becomes exhausting. Bit.Trip is oppressive, necessitating that you pay attention constantly, or fail as a result. In spite of these game breaking problems, Bit.Trip’s scoring very well in reviews. Why?

I worry that Bit.Trip Beat’s critical success is a case of the Emperor getting a new wardrobe. Game critics, fans, and casual players are all enamored with the retro-styled games trend. Games with chic visual and aural designs that recall gaming’s NES, Atari, and early-arcade heyday are in high demand right now and I think that some people might be willing to praise a game based solely on its aesthetics. They're new graphics whores for a nostalgia-obsessed age, drunk on the promise of limited technology instead of high-end graphical feats. I’m one of them. I laud Mega Man 9, Space Invaders Extreme, and Edge for their old school looks and sounds. Those are three very well made games underneath their attractive façades though. I expect great things out of Bit.Trip Beat's creators, Gaijin. They’re clearly a very talented team of developers. Before they make Bit.Trip Volume 2, I hope they learn from their first game’s mistakes, no matter how well their first game was received.

Related links:

BIT.TRIP BEAT is Hella Sweet
Chiptune Friday: Trip to the Beat
Design Resurrection: How Capcom Finally Proved That It’s Game and Not Graphics That Matters
The Commander's Out Of The Bag, And I Couldn't Be More Excited

WTFriday: Silent Hill. Star Wars. No. Words.

John Constantine — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 21:00:00 GMT

Note to readers: WTFriday is a weekly feature where we find something stupid about video games and get you to laugh until it goes away. Please try to forget this is what we normally do every day of the week.

So. Fanart. Like cosplay, fan fiction, and an unwholesome love of tie-in knick knacks, fanart is a common pastime for media fanatics. Often times, as our own Nadia Oxford has noted recently, videogame fanart can be quite good. Talented artists love games too, dontcha know.

Like koala bears, who appear to be adorable little ragamuffins until they reveal themselves to be heartless, savage killers of the most deranged kind, fanart has a hidden and terrible dark side. One most only type a scant few words into Google’s image search to discover it.

This, though. This goes beyond anything else I’ve seen.

No. Words.

This image appeared in a swell fanart thread over on NeoGAF. This is as horrifying as it gets though. Enjoy.

Related links:

WTFriday: Don't S*** Your Pants Teaches Valuable Life Lessons
WTFriday: GameStop's Guide to Women
Freaktastic Fanart: The Momachu
Freaktastic Fanart: Mega Man Zero Fanservice
Sailing the Internet Seas, Historical Preservation, and The Great Rumble Roses vs. Silent Hill vs. Metroid Dance Party Throwdown

Of Previews and Other Demons: God of War III is Not God of War III Yet

John Constantine — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 23:00:00 GMT

I may write them, I may read them, but this does not mean I like previews. They are an inherently flawed cog in the grand videogame business machine and they’ll never go away. Previews, any early criticism of a game not done by the developer, publisher, or their QA teams really, is essential. Any creator needs to get a little distance from their creation to gain perspective, to consider it in a new way before it’s finished. Novelists, essayists, filmmakers, musicians, and academics work in concert with editors, engineers, producers, and any number of other peers on the path to birthing their work. Given, games are unique. Authors don’t typically have journalists reading sample chapters of a book two years before it comes out, judging what sentences work, which don’t, and predicting, for thousands of readers, whether or not the book will suck as a whole. "Well, Rushdie seems to be up to his old tricks. We got eyes on with chapters 3 through 6, and his circuitous sentence structure is in place, but we can't tell if his classic characterization is there to be complimented by it. Here's hoping it's a torrid family history worthy of the Fatwaed-One's legacy when it releases this fall."

Just not how it works.

The problem is that videogame previews shape public perception, and sometimes success, of an unfinished game based on what’s almost always a trifling sample of the overall experience. Sometimes, especially early in development, the previewer doesn’t even play the game. Eyes-on, hands-on, final impressions, review is the simple version of the cycle, but sometimes a game’s reputation can be irreparably tainted by the hands-on stage. Most previews lean positive – because the writer wants to believe in the game/stay in the publisher’s good graces – so when a preview is negative, especially if it’s of a marquee game, it stands out. The best case scenario is that this negativity comes from an honest place and it helps the developer make a better game. Worst case scenario, the writer just doesn’t like the game, and dumps on it because they’re filling a word count. Maybe Dennis Dyack’s been right all along. Maybe games shouldn’t be previewed at all. Maybe people would have like Too Human more if it hadn’t been for its tumultuous development and terrible, terrible preview reputation.

Probably not. Too Human wasn’t a very good game.

This leaked footage of God of War III from GDC that’s been making the internet rounds today is what got my brain cooking on previews.

Comments sections and forum threads have been pretty uniform in their vitriol: the game looks like crap, looks like a PS2 game, no it doesn’t, shut up, PS3 am fail, this is what happens without David Jaffe/Cory Barlog, etc. It’s the sort of thing that people always say when they get their first look at a game. But what hit me was this: this is the type of game footage people will basis full previews on. They might account for the game’s earliness, make mention of its incomplete animations, environmental assests, etc. And they have. Others might have the exact same reaction as an angry commenter. God of War III won’t be damaged by that sort of press, but a game without a multi-million person audience would be.

Maybe games shouldn’t be shown, to press or public, until they’re finished.

Related links:

Too Human Getting Owned
Serious Business: Dennis Dyack Blames the Internet
R.I.P. Xbox 720 and Playstation 4: The Future of Gaming
God of War III Does Not Need Another Sex Mini-Game