I sometimes feel that Borderlands 2 has no (or little) notion of how numbers work and how numbers effect players' motivations. It comes across as though they just assumed that badass rank is something that the player will get over time. However you can find a way to just grind one of them and the rewards are so high for a slight increase in "challenges" that it makes the payoff hugely rewarding. For example, getting "second winds" with pistols gives you BR towards the "Hard Boiled" challenge:
2 seconds winds with pistols = 1 badass rank
another 3 SWs with pistols = another 5 BR
another 10 SWs with pistols = another 10 BR
another 15 SWs with pistols = another 50 BR
another 20 SWs with pistols = another 100 BR
see how ludicrous that gets? it goes from 0.5 BR per SW to 5.
I ended up running into Boom Bewm's lair, allowing constantly respawning psychos to kill me so I could then get my second wind on them. I don't think the designers intended for people to find a spot where they could "reliably get killed" over and over for the sake of gaining massive points but that's what ended up happening.
The second wind mechanics is something that always confused me too, so you're rewarded more for dying whilst nearly having killed an enemy more so than if you fully kill it?
But really I just wanted to show that if you add "more stuff" to a game then you need to make sure it isn't so exploitative. At least if you actually want to make something exploitative, make it a challenge to figure it out. What I don't want to see is more stuff being added under the assumption that it adds depth, because it may not actually be the case.
On a side note: In the menu screen, why does the EXP to level up display the total amount of EXP in numbers yet the corresponding bar only show the EXP within the current level?
Thursday 26 December 2013
Tuesday 17 December 2013
My Reaction To The Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII Guided Tour Video
So after the first two games (even though I like the first a lot more than the second) I am looking forward to this. Even the "bad" FF games are still fantastic in my book so it's only natural. However watching this raises a slight cause for concern...
How to explain? It's not so much that anything looks "bad" so-to-speak, but it's the way the narrator describes the features. Using phrases like "more direct control that ever before in the Final Fantasy series" which insinuates that the belief that a turn-based system gives you "less control" is true... now from a complete technical standpoint that is false, and a generalisation. Any game can have more or less "control" regardless of the system they use. Although the way they describe these things doesn't actually change what is in the game, it makes me weary that they either believe the generalisations or are just going along with them for the sake of marketing, and when they market based on a common fallacy that people make, this brings their motives into question. What I really don't want is for Square Enix to actually go along with that mentality regardless of weather it is for the sake of what they truly believe or pure marketing. Marketing is understandable, they want the game to sell, but marketing based off a lie makes me sad. Can we please stop this trend of calling mechanics "outdated" when they're just different? Can we please stop making hasty generalisations about a game's system just because it does something a particular way? Also, on the subject of control, can we please stop pretending that having more control is always going to be better than having less?
Now other examples of what I'm talking about here include the colour selection for Lightning's clothes and the gross misuse of the word "exploration" which seems to have become a buzz-word during the seventh gen and really is only ever used to describe exploration of the geographic variety (not saying that Lightning Returns only has exploration of the geographical variety by the way, I'm just talking about the way the word is used). I'm also talking about the photo feature which I can't imagine being any use for other than to show off the outfit colours (by the way, the ability to take screenshots in general would be neat, like what the vita does)
Regardless, I am looking forward to this and I'm interested to see how the "time limit" thing in action. I read somewhere before that the game runs off a time limit and you can reset it with a New Game+. I imagine this fits well with a more open-word style game because it allows you to take advantage of learning different locations, the dash feature seems a bit odd but it also makes sense to have that since better equipment will let you do it for longer and this also meshes together with the time limit. This is the type of thing you get in Breath Of Fire: Dragon Quarter or Dead Rising, and I am generally a fan of the whole "start again but keep some of the stuff you got last time" idea, it allows you to adapt and (for lack of a better word) "immerse" yourself in how the world works (I hate that word).
See what I'm doing there? I'm thinking about how the mechanics work in conjunction with each other and how they facilitate each other. That's what I want to see more of instead of hasty generalisations.
Now other examples of what I'm talking about here include the colour selection for Lightning's clothes and the gross misuse of the word "exploration" which seems to have become a buzz-word during the seventh gen and really is only ever used to describe exploration of the geographic variety (not saying that Lightning Returns only has exploration of the geographical variety by the way, I'm just talking about the way the word is used). I'm also talking about the photo feature which I can't imagine being any use for other than to show off the outfit colours (by the way, the ability to take screenshots in general would be neat, like what the vita does)
Regardless, I am looking forward to this and I'm interested to see how the "time limit" thing in action. I read somewhere before that the game runs off a time limit and you can reset it with a New Game+. I imagine this fits well with a more open-word style game because it allows you to take advantage of learning different locations, the dash feature seems a bit odd but it also makes sense to have that since better equipment will let you do it for longer and this also meshes together with the time limit. This is the type of thing you get in Breath Of Fire: Dragon Quarter or Dead Rising, and I am generally a fan of the whole "start again but keep some of the stuff you got last time" idea, it allows you to adapt and (for lack of a better word) "immerse" yourself in how the world works (I hate that word).
See what I'm doing there? I'm thinking about how the mechanics work in conjunction with each other and how they facilitate each other. That's what I want to see more of instead of hasty generalisations.
Sunday 1 December 2013
Large Punishments For Failure Is A Design Choice
I was browsing Facebook and found that somebody said that in the new Kingdom Hearts HD edition there is a smaller punishment for death. He then went on to say that having large punishments for death is inherently a bad thing and "archaic"
I completely disagree, the size of the punishment for failure is not inherently a bad thing but rather a design choice that may be good or bad. It is not the equivalent of having a long load screen or glitchy graphics.
Now KH as an example I'm not sure, I couldn't say that KH is better off or worse off either way because I'd have to think about it. But the "lack of punishment for death" is absolutely an example of hand-holding (not necessarily easiness, but hand-holding). It does of course depend on the game and what you're doing in the game. If the individual events of the game are really hard then a large punishment for death only adds to that difficulty.
But let's talk about the large punishments in general: If you are sent back a long way for death then this results in the game rewarding certain types of skills that I (as a big RPG fan) find admirable. For example: planning ahead, knowing your limits, being careful. The first point I want to make is that by making checkpoints more sparse, you must therefore as a result approach the game in a completely different way that certain people (including myself) find very engaging.
Planning ahead and knowing your own limits is a big factor in this. It's about conceptualizing the situation and preparing yourself. If you see a bonus 3-hour dungeon with no save points or boss that takes 2 hours to kill, you better be damn well sure that you can do it. The game puts the whole process in your mind and makes you appreciate what your own skills and abilities are. When you finally say to yourself that you are ready, you feel really attached to who you are and what you're able to accomplish. You also get that "on-edge" feeling. I know those are extreme examples, but examples none-the-less
Large punishments by their nature also result in large rewards. If you conquered that 3-hour saveless dungeon, how badass do you feel? how epic was that victory? How proud are you? You managed to climb that mountain.
Small punishments also diminish the effects of decision making with uncertain results. For example, you find a chest, you know it will either contain a potion or it will be a poison trap. Ideally you want it to result in giving you a potion but given the possibility that it may be a poison trap, there is a reason to decide to not open it. Now if you had just passed a checkpoint, you could just open it and then reload back to the checkpoint if it turned out to be a poison. However if your checkpoint was a while back, you have to carefully consider whether or not opening the chest is worth doing given the parameters of its effects. In this scenario, the decision making process has value. It makes you appreciate the consequences of your decision and the decision making process that the game sends you through because the act of making that decision has more quantifiable results.
This doesn't just apply to decisions though, it also applies to skill. If you have far away checkpoints then the risk-reward loop is expanded. What I mean by this is that you need to consider your skill on parts larger parts of the game before you can dismiss it. For example, if you have a platform game that is an hour long with no saving, you need to consider the game as an entire over-arching system as opposed to a series of case-by-case scenarios. Without saving, you may be able to complete level 7 fine, but you can still improve yourself and benefit from improving if you manage to do it without losing lives (for example). But if the game saved between levels, you could complete level 7 once and then erase it from your mind. By removing these save-points, you need to consider and appreciate the game as a whole system. It means that even though you can complete level 5 without issue, it still matters to you because you might slip-up one time and that adds dynamism and value to your consistent abilities (more on dynamism later).
But with larger punishments, you end up having to repeat more gameplay you've already done right? wrong! What actually results in more repeating gameplay is difficulty. If a game has closer checkpoints together then it is fundamentally easier, and that easiness needs to be balanced by making the individual events more challenging. A more challenging game results in more deaths and being sent back more frequently. What has more repetition: a game where you have to play a 30-minute segment twice, or one where you have to play a 3-minute segment 20 times? I'd probably say the playing a 3-minute section 20 times depending on the dynamism. This is one reason I got so bored with Uncharted
About dynamism, just because you are repeating a segment of the game does not mean the game will be *exactly* the same. Different things you encounter can change the tide of how that segment will go. A shorter time-frame means there is less viability for dynamism to happen. If you think of a flow chart: the bigger the flow chart, the more possibility there is for the process to go into alternate routes. When you play Super Meat Boy, a jump over a pit is always exactly the same jump every time with next to no dynamism. Also, given the pure difficulty of Super Meat Boy, you could end up making that same jump 40 or 50 times. I'm not bashing Super Meat Boy by the way, I do like that game, it just works as an example how constant checkpoints don't facilitate for as much dynamism.
The message that I really want to push is that large punishments for failure is not a bad thing by it's very nature. I am sure Super Meat Boy wouldn't be as good if you had just 3 lives and no saving. Super Meat Boy was built for the sake of testing the player to overcome a challenge in an enclosed environment and infinite lives suits that particular game. I am also sure that even big games with big-punishment segments don't need them all the time, and I know that large punishments can hinder a game if the game isn't suited or built towards it. I am not saying all games need to have big punishments for failure, I'm just saying that to erase it as a design choice stifles the ranges of fun players can have and creativity from designers is limited. As I am seeing this "anti-punishment" attitude crop up more and more often from both players and designers, it makes me sad that creativity and the range of fun is being limited like this.
I completely disagree, the size of the punishment for failure is not inherently a bad thing but rather a design choice that may be good or bad. It is not the equivalent of having a long load screen or glitchy graphics.
Now KH as an example I'm not sure, I couldn't say that KH is better off or worse off either way because I'd have to think about it. But the "lack of punishment for death" is absolutely an example of hand-holding (not necessarily easiness, but hand-holding). It does of course depend on the game and what you're doing in the game. If the individual events of the game are really hard then a large punishment for death only adds to that difficulty.
But let's talk about the large punishments in general: If you are sent back a long way for death then this results in the game rewarding certain types of skills that I (as a big RPG fan) find admirable. For example: planning ahead, knowing your limits, being careful. The first point I want to make is that by making checkpoints more sparse, you must therefore as a result approach the game in a completely different way that certain people (including myself) find very engaging.
Planning ahead and knowing your own limits is a big factor in this. It's about conceptualizing the situation and preparing yourself. If you see a bonus 3-hour dungeon with no save points or boss that takes 2 hours to kill, you better be damn well sure that you can do it. The game puts the whole process in your mind and makes you appreciate what your own skills and abilities are. When you finally say to yourself that you are ready, you feel really attached to who you are and what you're able to accomplish. You also get that "on-edge" feeling. I know those are extreme examples, but examples none-the-less
Large punishments by their nature also result in large rewards. If you conquered that 3-hour saveless dungeon, how badass do you feel? how epic was that victory? How proud are you? You managed to climb that mountain.
Small punishments also diminish the effects of decision making with uncertain results. For example, you find a chest, you know it will either contain a potion or it will be a poison trap. Ideally you want it to result in giving you a potion but given the possibility that it may be a poison trap, there is a reason to decide to not open it. Now if you had just passed a checkpoint, you could just open it and then reload back to the checkpoint if it turned out to be a poison. However if your checkpoint was a while back, you have to carefully consider whether or not opening the chest is worth doing given the parameters of its effects. In this scenario, the decision making process has value. It makes you appreciate the consequences of your decision and the decision making process that the game sends you through because the act of making that decision has more quantifiable results.
This doesn't just apply to decisions though, it also applies to skill. If you have far away checkpoints then the risk-reward loop is expanded. What I mean by this is that you need to consider your skill on parts larger parts of the game before you can dismiss it. For example, if you have a platform game that is an hour long with no saving, you need to consider the game as an entire over-arching system as opposed to a series of case-by-case scenarios. Without saving, you may be able to complete level 7 fine, but you can still improve yourself and benefit from improving if you manage to do it without losing lives (for example). But if the game saved between levels, you could complete level 7 once and then erase it from your mind. By removing these save-points, you need to consider and appreciate the game as a whole system. It means that even though you can complete level 5 without issue, it still matters to you because you might slip-up one time and that adds dynamism and value to your consistent abilities (more on dynamism later).
But with larger punishments, you end up having to repeat more gameplay you've already done right? wrong! What actually results in more repeating gameplay is difficulty. If a game has closer checkpoints together then it is fundamentally easier, and that easiness needs to be balanced by making the individual events more challenging. A more challenging game results in more deaths and being sent back more frequently. What has more repetition: a game where you have to play a 30-minute segment twice, or one where you have to play a 3-minute segment 20 times? I'd probably say the playing a 3-minute section 20 times depending on the dynamism. This is one reason I got so bored with Uncharted
About dynamism, just because you are repeating a segment of the game does not mean the game will be *exactly* the same. Different things you encounter can change the tide of how that segment will go. A shorter time-frame means there is less viability for dynamism to happen. If you think of a flow chart: the bigger the flow chart, the more possibility there is for the process to go into alternate routes. When you play Super Meat Boy, a jump over a pit is always exactly the same jump every time with next to no dynamism. Also, given the pure difficulty of Super Meat Boy, you could end up making that same jump 40 or 50 times. I'm not bashing Super Meat Boy by the way, I do like that game, it just works as an example how constant checkpoints don't facilitate for as much dynamism.
The message that I really want to push is that large punishments for failure is not a bad thing by it's very nature. I am sure Super Meat Boy wouldn't be as good if you had just 3 lives and no saving. Super Meat Boy was built for the sake of testing the player to overcome a challenge in an enclosed environment and infinite lives suits that particular game. I am also sure that even big games with big-punishment segments don't need them all the time, and I know that large punishments can hinder a game if the game isn't suited or built towards it. I am not saying all games need to have big punishments for failure, I'm just saying that to erase it as a design choice stifles the ranges of fun players can have and creativity from designers is limited. As I am seeing this "anti-punishment" attitude crop up more and more often from both players and designers, it makes me sad that creativity and the range of fun is being limited like this.
Sunday 24 November 2013
Is Ryse: Son Of Rome Even Legal?
So let me get this straight... in Ryse: Son Of Rome, the QTEs will still be successful, even if you fail to hit the button... what!? so now "press X to not die" has become "press X to not be frozen for a second"... and this game has microtransactions too! now you know how much I hate microtransactions in general, but given that all the attacks are a few simple reactionary button presses (which are essentially QTEs) mixed with actual QTEs which you can't fail, what are they even for? All the skills are passive skills so there's no new attacks to learn. This means that either the game hits a paywall where you need the bonuses to progress or the game is so easy that you don't need them. When you make the mechanics so mind-numbing that there is so little input from them player, microtransactions are nothing but a paywall in disguise
The XBox One has just come out! $500 for the console and $60 for a shitty game isn't enough? You want people to then pay even more money to allow them to get through the game faster? THEY WANT YOU TO PAY MORE MONEY FOR LESS OF A GAME!!! And they describe the microtransactions as a "convenience" and the QTEs with not buttons but with flashy lights. That's what it's all about, deception. They think we're idiots. Microsoft! Crytek! Stop! FUCKING STOP! This is insulting at best! I literally feel queezy thinking about this.
It seems as though they want to bore us. We are approaching 2014 afterall, and we have many many examples of what makes a good game. Maybe that's the whole point. People being tricked into thinking there is a value to completing the game (through their "I've already bought it" bias and achievements) and then being threatened with more time playing the boring game if they don't pay up. Threatening to remove time from our life and turning it into unfulfilled dead-time, and doing this on such a wide-scale that its effectively distributed-murder. (By the way, I understand that the quality of a game comes down to opinion, but opinion only gets you so far)
You know what we call this kind of practice? The kind of practice where you threaten to harm somebody (with boredom in this case) if they don't pay up under the guise of "protection" (or in this case as they call it: "convenience")? EXTORTION! Last time I checked, extortion isn't legal in the US, so why are they getting away with it? Oh that's right, because they're disguising it under "gameplay" and "convenience" just as they tried to disguise their QTEs with flashing lights. I cannot believe for one second that this game was made with the intent of making money from it's quality (as all games should!). I cannot believe that at the end of 2013, they failed to understand what actually makes a game valuable to the player, they must know! they have to know! they've been in the business for so long and they have seen successful games in the past work and sell. I do not believe for a second that they made Ryse with the intention of it's gameplay being worth the purchase
This is why I don't buy into the whole "companies exist to make money" argument. Sure, they do, but that's no excuse for a company to use practices that only benefits themselves whilst also draining away from the overall global value. For example: is it ok for a company to take money from starving families so the CEO can buy his fifth car? no? exactly.
You may think I'm over-reacting but I honestly don't think I am. I hope the gameplay is just a symptom of there being a new console where they want to show off the graphics... but the microtransactions are inexcusable. I cannot see how this game is adding any value, I can only see how it is damaging. I really hope I'm wrong... at least the game's getting bad reviews.
The XBox One has just come out! $500 for the console and $60 for a shitty game isn't enough? You want people to then pay even more money to allow them to get through the game faster? THEY WANT YOU TO PAY MORE MONEY FOR LESS OF A GAME!!! And they describe the microtransactions as a "convenience" and the QTEs with not buttons but with flashy lights. That's what it's all about, deception. They think we're idiots. Microsoft! Crytek! Stop! FUCKING STOP! This is insulting at best! I literally feel queezy thinking about this.
It seems as though they want to bore us. We are approaching 2014 afterall, and we have many many examples of what makes a good game. Maybe that's the whole point. People being tricked into thinking there is a value to completing the game (through their "I've already bought it" bias and achievements) and then being threatened with more time playing the boring game if they don't pay up. Threatening to remove time from our life and turning it into unfulfilled dead-time, and doing this on such a wide-scale that its effectively distributed-murder. (By the way, I understand that the quality of a game comes down to opinion, but opinion only gets you so far)
You know what we call this kind of practice? The kind of practice where you threaten to harm somebody (with boredom in this case) if they don't pay up under the guise of "protection" (or in this case as they call it: "convenience")? EXTORTION! Last time I checked, extortion isn't legal in the US, so why are they getting away with it? Oh that's right, because they're disguising it under "gameplay" and "convenience" just as they tried to disguise their QTEs with flashing lights. I cannot believe for one second that this game was made with the intent of making money from it's quality (as all games should!). I cannot believe that at the end of 2013, they failed to understand what actually makes a game valuable to the player, they must know! they have to know! they've been in the business for so long and they have seen successful games in the past work and sell. I do not believe for a second that they made Ryse with the intention of it's gameplay being worth the purchase
This is why I don't buy into the whole "companies exist to make money" argument. Sure, they do, but that's no excuse for a company to use practices that only benefits themselves whilst also draining away from the overall global value. For example: is it ok for a company to take money from starving families so the CEO can buy his fifth car? no? exactly.
You may think I'm over-reacting but I honestly don't think I am. I hope the gameplay is just a symptom of there being a new console where they want to show off the graphics... but the microtransactions are inexcusable. I cannot see how this game is adding any value, I can only see how it is damaging. I really hope I'm wrong... at least the game's getting bad reviews.
Wednesday 23 October 2013
Genre Is Not The Goal
so after a lengthy "debate" with somebody on a facebook group, I'll just state this here:
Genre is not the goal that games must strive for, rather it is a brief and simplified way of giving single line descriptions. Every game has different levels of focus on different mechanics and therefore the level of focus on a mechanic determines the weight of how important it is for that mechanic to be good.
For example, having a glitch that makes the jump button not work is a problem, no doubt about that. But to say that it breaks Super Mario Bros. the same way it would break Tekken 2 is demonstrably wrong. In Tekken 2, you can still play the game rather easily and rather enjoyably without jumping. Super Mario Bros. on the other-hand is massively crippled by this and game becomes completely unplayable. Super Mario Bros focuses a lot more on jumping than Tekken 2 does, and therefore when judging Super Mario Bros, we need to examine the jumping much more than we do for Tekken 2. This should be really simple but some people just don't seem to get it.
If you are like the person I was *ahem* "debating" with last night, and think that a game must tick off a list of pre-set check-boxes based on the arbitrary genre we assign to it, you know who else uses this method? salesmen! At this point it's not about making a game as a form of expression or as a means to engage the player in it's mechanics, rather just you're just going through the motions. You know what we call games designed purely to sell? shovelware! "has it been a year since the last release? check! do we have the celebrity to target the teenage african-american males? check!"
If we are gamers, then judge a game on the quality of what the game IS. DO NOT use the genre labels as the be-all and end-all. To do so facilitates shovelware, to not do so facilitates creativity.
On a side note, going out of your way to try to make a game that doesn't fit neatly into a single box is the same problem. You would still be using genre as a benchmark to determine your goal. Rather just ignore the boxes entirely, just make the games that you think will be good, and if they just so happen to fit neatly into a box, then so be it.
Genre is not the goal that games must strive for, rather it is a brief and simplified way of giving single line descriptions. Every game has different levels of focus on different mechanics and therefore the level of focus on a mechanic determines the weight of how important it is for that mechanic to be good.
For example, having a glitch that makes the jump button not work is a problem, no doubt about that. But to say that it breaks Super Mario Bros. the same way it would break Tekken 2 is demonstrably wrong. In Tekken 2, you can still play the game rather easily and rather enjoyably without jumping. Super Mario Bros. on the other-hand is massively crippled by this and game becomes completely unplayable. Super Mario Bros focuses a lot more on jumping than Tekken 2 does, and therefore when judging Super Mario Bros, we need to examine the jumping much more than we do for Tekken 2. This should be really simple but some people just don't seem to get it.
If you are like the person I was *ahem* "debating" with last night, and think that a game must tick off a list of pre-set check-boxes based on the arbitrary genre we assign to it, you know who else uses this method? salesmen! At this point it's not about making a game as a form of expression or as a means to engage the player in it's mechanics, rather just you're just going through the motions. You know what we call games designed purely to sell? shovelware! "has it been a year since the last release? check! do we have the celebrity to target the teenage african-american males? check!"
If we are gamers, then judge a game on the quality of what the game IS. DO NOT use the genre labels as the be-all and end-all. To do so facilitates shovelware, to not do so facilitates creativity.
On a side note, going out of your way to try to make a game that doesn't fit neatly into a single box is the same problem. You would still be using genre as a benchmark to determine your goal. Rather just ignore the boxes entirely, just make the games that you think will be good, and if they just so happen to fit neatly into a box, then so be it.
Tuesday 17 September 2013
My Crash Bandicoot Soundtrack Ritual
Since the early days of 2013 I've found myself listening to the Crash Bandicoot soundtrack a lot, and I mean a lot. Looking at my last.fm page (http://last.fm/user/velocity_eleven) it is my most listened to album of the past 12 months. It's not that this is my favourite album, not by any means so why have I listened to it so much?
Well to start with I suppose we could ask the question of why we listen to game soundtracks in the first place. Is it purely on the quality of the music? Well I would say not purely, they allow us to "reconnect with the game world" pardon my artsy-speak. Crash Bandicoot was the first PSX game I got and I have strong memories of it. One memory in particular (which you may not consider a nice one) was one night when I had a watch with an alarm on it, it had the snooze option enabled and it would keep going off throughout the night. I couldn't turn it off because the buttons were very hard to press and they hurt given how small they were. I was kept awake all night to the point where I eventually stopped trying and just kept myself awake. I spent the whole night playing Crash Bandicoot and I specifically remember playing on Toxic Waste (perhaps my least favourite level). I was young and I hadn't stayed up so late before so being awake when the sun was rising was a completely new experience for me. This was in my old bedroom that faced east, so the sun actually appeared through my window as it rose. Given this, it was probably around summer when it happened. Despite not having sleep and having my annoying watch bleep every so often, it was quite relaxing. I was in bed playing Crash Bandicoot and the sun was rising. It was like a kind of meditation, in a way.
Now Crash Bandicoot's soundtrack itself is rather tribal and minimalistic, which itself fits into this memory. I guess I associate it with relaxation along with the game world itself. The music is catchy but never over-bearing and to be honest, I can't think of any other game soundtrack that meets all these characteristics. Crash 2 and 3 surely have good soundtracks but they are much more lively and far less tribal. I listen to the album when I'm relaxing. Relaxing "in the background" so to speak, as I'm often doing other things, such as writing this right now I'm listening to The High Road. I listen to it when I'm working on something or generally lazing around on Facebook. There are other albums that are good for this sure but Crash is always the one I come back to probably due to the memories associated with the game. I have also done the same with other game soundtracks such as Rayman and Streets Of Rage. I do love game soundtracks in general for the musical quality and the memories of the games associated with them. Game soundtracks are like a way to bring back the "feeling" of the game without the time needed to be used actually playing it. I do love other game soundtracks too, just yesterday I was listening through Final Fantasy VIII and I have had a phase where I listened to Final Fantasy Origins a lot as well as Super Hang-On, but Crash Bandicoot is always the one I come back to.
I suppose Crash Bandicoot is the only album that truly fills this need I have. The need for a tribal, natural, minimalistic album whilst also holding the benefits of being a game soundtrack. It has become some sort of ritual now, I listen to it before going to bed and I use it to time how long I am going to spend before doing something else (it's 69 minutes). Even the tracks that don't fit this description like Heavy Machinery or Cortex Power, I still do enjoy them in the same way. As for my favourite tracks, I'm not sure, they're all great pretty much. Some that stand out to me though are The Great Gate, Sunset Vista, Temple Ruins, The High Road and Koala Kong. My only real down points of the album is this game's version of Cortex's theme and how the first few tracks are all essentially the same tune along with the intro sequence.
Overall I do love the album though and I imagine I will listen to it every day for a long time. It has so much ambiance in it along with nice tunes, and you don't really get soundtracks like this. Most game soundtracks have a lot going on in them, not many focus on simply creating an atmosphere. Well some do, to an extent, but still Crash Bandicoot's soundtrack is what I'm loving right now.
Well to start with I suppose we could ask the question of why we listen to game soundtracks in the first place. Is it purely on the quality of the music? Well I would say not purely, they allow us to "reconnect with the game world" pardon my artsy-speak. Crash Bandicoot was the first PSX game I got and I have strong memories of it. One memory in particular (which you may not consider a nice one) was one night when I had a watch with an alarm on it, it had the snooze option enabled and it would keep going off throughout the night. I couldn't turn it off because the buttons were very hard to press and they hurt given how small they were. I was kept awake all night to the point where I eventually stopped trying and just kept myself awake. I spent the whole night playing Crash Bandicoot and I specifically remember playing on Toxic Waste (perhaps my least favourite level). I was young and I hadn't stayed up so late before so being awake when the sun was rising was a completely new experience for me. This was in my old bedroom that faced east, so the sun actually appeared through my window as it rose. Given this, it was probably around summer when it happened. Despite not having sleep and having my annoying watch bleep every so often, it was quite relaxing. I was in bed playing Crash Bandicoot and the sun was rising. It was like a kind of meditation, in a way.
Now Crash Bandicoot's soundtrack itself is rather tribal and minimalistic, which itself fits into this memory. I guess I associate it with relaxation along with the game world itself. The music is catchy but never over-bearing and to be honest, I can't think of any other game soundtrack that meets all these characteristics. Crash 2 and 3 surely have good soundtracks but they are much more lively and far less tribal. I listen to the album when I'm relaxing. Relaxing "in the background" so to speak, as I'm often doing other things, such as writing this right now I'm listening to The High Road. I listen to it when I'm working on something or generally lazing around on Facebook. There are other albums that are good for this sure but Crash is always the one I come back to probably due to the memories associated with the game. I have also done the same with other game soundtracks such as Rayman and Streets Of Rage. I do love game soundtracks in general for the musical quality and the memories of the games associated with them. Game soundtracks are like a way to bring back the "feeling" of the game without the time needed to be used actually playing it. I do love other game soundtracks too, just yesterday I was listening through Final Fantasy VIII and I have had a phase where I listened to Final Fantasy Origins a lot as well as Super Hang-On, but Crash Bandicoot is always the one I come back to.
I suppose Crash Bandicoot is the only album that truly fills this need I have. The need for a tribal, natural, minimalistic album whilst also holding the benefits of being a game soundtrack. It has become some sort of ritual now, I listen to it before going to bed and I use it to time how long I am going to spend before doing something else (it's 69 minutes). Even the tracks that don't fit this description like Heavy Machinery or Cortex Power, I still do enjoy them in the same way. As for my favourite tracks, I'm not sure, they're all great pretty much. Some that stand out to me though are The Great Gate, Sunset Vista, Temple Ruins, The High Road and Koala Kong. My only real down points of the album is this game's version of Cortex's theme and how the first few tracks are all essentially the same tune along with the intro sequence.
Overall I do love the album though and I imagine I will listen to it every day for a long time. It has so much ambiance in it along with nice tunes, and you don't really get soundtracks like this. Most game soundtracks have a lot going on in them, not many focus on simply creating an atmosphere. Well some do, to an extent, but still Crash Bandicoot's soundtrack is what I'm loving right now.
Monday 19 August 2013
What I Want To See In The Next Generation Of Games (But Don't Expect)
I'm going to make a list of things I would like to see in the next generation of games. Note that these are not things that I expect to see (far from it), just things I'd like to see:
1. Work on a lower budget, if you need to make millions of sales in the first day to make a penny of profit then there's a problem, aim to make money but don't overload yourself.
2. Fewer celebrity endorsements. I don't care if David Beckham likes Fifa or if Tony Hawk likes skateboarding games for the same reason that I don't care if Queen Elizabeth likes King's Quest.
3. lower prices for games with so many iterations. Now if a series has significant differences every time then it's not so bad, but 45 pounds for a new Dynasty Warriors game? fuck off.
4. None of this "if you pay us, we will help you win" bullshit, of course its bound to happen though.
5. Make DLC worth it. I don't mind paying some more money for more content but the price has to be reasonable, 4 pounds may sound cheap but if you get 30 minutes of playtime for it then it most likely isn't.
6. Different business models. I'm fine with a range of business models as long as they're not exploitative. I am honestly interested to see what different ideas there are. Something like episodic games or even the "season pass" idea where new content is released over time. It's a way to keep people interested and even hyped over a longer period of time. Of course this doesn't work for everything and in some cases it would be horrible, and as mentioned in number 5, it would have to be worth the cost.
7. Games with RISK! Like you know, not healing by standing behind a wall or going back 1 minute if you get killed. Also, to note, there is a difference between difficulty and risk. I want more games where I can't save everywhere. Games where I need to consider stuff outside of the 10-seconds that I'm currently playing in.
8. Fewer FPSs, speaks for itself.
9. Less masculinity. Now I'm not asking for Barbie or dress-up games (that would be even worse). Rather I'm looking for a reduction in the amount of burly men with guns in grey/brown areas and "fuck" or "shit" being used more commonly than the word "the". Some manliness is fine, love myself some Motorstorm, but c'mon! enough's enough.
10. Less concentrated focus on single games. What I mean is that is that I want to see more focus on a wider variety of games, rather than having 7 minutes of E3 dedicated to showing the first level of the next God Of War game, use that time to show a bit of a few separate more diverse games.
11. During E3, here are a couple words I want to hear spoken a lot less: "immersive" and "experience". Not every game have to be "immersive" in the sense of "feeling you are there". I want to play a game, not act out a play. Also, "experience" isn't a fancy way of saying "game".
12. Less realism. Don't be afraid to display a health bar, damage numbers, visual checkpoints and such. I love that stuff.
13. More balanced trophies and achievements. Now this is tricky cause you couldn't really balance across all developers, but getting 100% on Hannah Montana should not hold the same value as getting 100% on Star Ocean: The Last Hope.
14. More focus on indies. Sure they may work with fewer resources but creativity can strive, not that it means they're amazing of course.
15. Less open-world games, because i's better to have places that you want to go to than it is to have a ton of places to go to.
16. On the other-hand, less linear games. Remember when platform games became less linear in the PS1 days? before then you simply completed the levels as you got the them, and then you had games like Spyro and Mario 64 where you collected items to open up new areas. What happened to that?
17. More "small" games. I don't mean "short" because that's not what we need. But games that are cheap and quick to make but still enjoyable. Maybe something between the scale of an indie game and a AAA game.
18. More turn-based random-battled japanese RPGs. Just because I love them, and how many are there these days? exactly.
19. Less gimped trophies/achievements for retro games. I enjoy Sonic on PSN sure, but 12 trophies that can all be gotten so easily? Also, what with these games allowing you to save state? the game never used to let you do that. Instead why not take out the save stating and offer more trophies/achievements for things like "collect 200 rings in a level" or "complete Green Hill act 1 without collecting a ring"? That would add such much more life and interest to these games. Plus savestating is lame as hell.
20. More focus on gameplay at E3, I want to know how the game is played and not how pretty it looks.
21. Probably one of the biggest ones so I'm leaving this till last, but I want to see games with a longer life-span and I don't mean a long game particularly. Not saying all games need to last forever but I do not want a game to be "outdated" because it relies so heavily on online multiplayer or simply an "update sequel" that is designed just to be "the same but better". A good game can in most cases still be enjoyable several years after it's release. People can still play and enjoy many games from the early 90s or even the 80s (the Atari is my limit). So rather than having "the next Call Of Duty game which nobody will care about in a couple years", why can't we have instead a game that we will still cherish even after it's sequels? The fact is that the nature of games like Call Of Duty and such is that they depend on people coming back to buy the newer one and abandoning the older one every time. I don't like how in many cases, what is most popular is popular because it's "trendy" and "it's what the cool kids are playing". Not meaning to sound artsy-fartsy but I really hate how a lot of people just consume games rather than appreciate them for what they are. But business and profit is formed from the consumers and not the quality of the games themselves. What's worse I think is that there are companies that try so hard to feed off the "consumers" and regardless of actual profit, they still prefer to do it that way. (by the way, I use the word "consumer" for the type of people who play a game until it's done with and then they erase it from their mind because it's not "relevant anymore") That is one thing I would love to change, but of course it won't.
1. Work on a lower budget, if you need to make millions of sales in the first day to make a penny of profit then there's a problem, aim to make money but don't overload yourself.
2. Fewer celebrity endorsements. I don't care if David Beckham likes Fifa or if Tony Hawk likes skateboarding games for the same reason that I don't care if Queen Elizabeth likes King's Quest.
3. lower prices for games with so many iterations. Now if a series has significant differences every time then it's not so bad, but 45 pounds for a new Dynasty Warriors game? fuck off.
4. None of this "if you pay us, we will help you win" bullshit, of course its bound to happen though.
5. Make DLC worth it. I don't mind paying some more money for more content but the price has to be reasonable, 4 pounds may sound cheap but if you get 30 minutes of playtime for it then it most likely isn't.
6. Different business models. I'm fine with a range of business models as long as they're not exploitative. I am honestly interested to see what different ideas there are. Something like episodic games or even the "season pass" idea where new content is released over time. It's a way to keep people interested and even hyped over a longer period of time. Of course this doesn't work for everything and in some cases it would be horrible, and as mentioned in number 5, it would have to be worth the cost.
7. Games with RISK! Like you know, not healing by standing behind a wall or going back 1 minute if you get killed. Also, to note, there is a difference between difficulty and risk. I want more games where I can't save everywhere. Games where I need to consider stuff outside of the 10-seconds that I'm currently playing in.
8. Fewer FPSs, speaks for itself.
9. Less masculinity. Now I'm not asking for Barbie or dress-up games (that would be even worse). Rather I'm looking for a reduction in the amount of burly men with guns in grey/brown areas and "fuck" or "shit" being used more commonly than the word "the". Some manliness is fine, love myself some Motorstorm, but c'mon! enough's enough.
10. Less concentrated focus on single games. What I mean is that is that I want to see more focus on a wider variety of games, rather than having 7 minutes of E3 dedicated to showing the first level of the next God Of War game, use that time to show a bit of a few separate more diverse games.
11. During E3, here are a couple words I want to hear spoken a lot less: "immersive" and "experience". Not every game have to be "immersive" in the sense of "feeling you are there". I want to play a game, not act out a play. Also, "experience" isn't a fancy way of saying "game".
12. Less realism. Don't be afraid to display a health bar, damage numbers, visual checkpoints and such. I love that stuff.
13. More balanced trophies and achievements. Now this is tricky cause you couldn't really balance across all developers, but getting 100% on Hannah Montana should not hold the same value as getting 100% on Star Ocean: The Last Hope.
14. More focus on indies. Sure they may work with fewer resources but creativity can strive, not that it means they're amazing of course.
15. Less open-world games, because i's better to have places that you want to go to than it is to have a ton of places to go to.
16. On the other-hand, less linear games. Remember when platform games became less linear in the PS1 days? before then you simply completed the levels as you got the them, and then you had games like Spyro and Mario 64 where you collected items to open up new areas. What happened to that?
17. More "small" games. I don't mean "short" because that's not what we need. But games that are cheap and quick to make but still enjoyable. Maybe something between the scale of an indie game and a AAA game.
18. More turn-based random-battled japanese RPGs. Just because I love them, and how many are there these days? exactly.
19. Less gimped trophies/achievements for retro games. I enjoy Sonic on PSN sure, but 12 trophies that can all be gotten so easily? Also, what with these games allowing you to save state? the game never used to let you do that. Instead why not take out the save stating and offer more trophies/achievements for things like "collect 200 rings in a level" or "complete Green Hill act 1 without collecting a ring"? That would add such much more life and interest to these games. Plus savestating is lame as hell.
20. More focus on gameplay at E3, I want to know how the game is played and not how pretty it looks.
21. Probably one of the biggest ones so I'm leaving this till last, but I want to see games with a longer life-span and I don't mean a long game particularly. Not saying all games need to last forever but I do not want a game to be "outdated" because it relies so heavily on online multiplayer or simply an "update sequel" that is designed just to be "the same but better". A good game can in most cases still be enjoyable several years after it's release. People can still play and enjoy many games from the early 90s or even the 80s (the Atari is my limit). So rather than having "the next Call Of Duty game which nobody will care about in a couple years", why can't we have instead a game that we will still cherish even after it's sequels? The fact is that the nature of games like Call Of Duty and such is that they depend on people coming back to buy the newer one and abandoning the older one every time. I don't like how in many cases, what is most popular is popular because it's "trendy" and "it's what the cool kids are playing". Not meaning to sound artsy-fartsy but I really hate how a lot of people just consume games rather than appreciate them for what they are. But business and profit is formed from the consumers and not the quality of the games themselves. What's worse I think is that there are companies that try so hard to feed off the "consumers" and regardless of actual profit, they still prefer to do it that way. (by the way, I use the word "consumer" for the type of people who play a game until it's done with and then they erase it from their mind because it's not "relevant anymore") That is one thing I would love to change, but of course it won't.
Thursday 18 July 2013
Good And Bad Difficulty Settings
I don't like difficulty settings, they feel too fake to me. I'd rather have a game with one difficulty setting whereby the mechanics allow me to choose between "hard but rewarding" options and "easy but unrewarding" options. That way also you can constantly choose the difficulty and have the game adjust accordingly.
Odin Sphere I think does difficulty badly, you can choose a setting and switch it at any time and you aren't rewarded for playing on hard in the long run. So there's really no incentive to use the harder settings, because there is no defined state of "completed on hard mode".
Although I don't like difficulty selection, Ys Origin does it right, the game is all about doing multiple playthroughs. On most difficulties you get SP from enemies in order to learn abilities, and the further through the game you get the more SP they give you. On nightmare mode, enemies give only a couple SP no matter where you are in the game, so getting enough SP to get the mid-to-higher skills is insane. However if you complete the game once on any setting with all 3 characters, for every character you complete if with on each setting you complete it with, you start off with a bonus 10,000 SP. The idea is to build up on those easier difficulties so that when you start nightmare mode you have a chunk of SP that you can spend. This also changes how you play the game, because usually you'd choose what order to get the abilities to get as you play through the game, but with the bonus SP feature on nightmare mode, what you are choosing is not the order of abilities over time, but rather a defined set of abilities that you will keep throughout the entire playthrough. Ys Origin takes difficulty selections and integrates that into the game.
I also quite like how Kingdom Hearts does the EXP growth thing, where you can choose between either leveling up fast early and then super slow, or leveling up slightly above average the whole way through (or in between). That way it's as if the game is making you choose between that which is better for simple game completion or that which is better for post-game content (though I wish the game was more clear in this). When I get the PS3 version, I'm going to choose the "level fast early" option for my speedrun playthrough (since there's a trophy for it).
Odin Sphere I think does difficulty badly, you can choose a setting and switch it at any time and you aren't rewarded for playing on hard in the long run. So there's really no incentive to use the harder settings, because there is no defined state of "completed on hard mode".
Although I don't like difficulty selection, Ys Origin does it right, the game is all about doing multiple playthroughs. On most difficulties you get SP from enemies in order to learn abilities, and the further through the game you get the more SP they give you. On nightmare mode, enemies give only a couple SP no matter where you are in the game, so getting enough SP to get the mid-to-higher skills is insane. However if you complete the game once on any setting with all 3 characters, for every character you complete if with on each setting you complete it with, you start off with a bonus 10,000 SP. The idea is to build up on those easier difficulties so that when you start nightmare mode you have a chunk of SP that you can spend. This also changes how you play the game, because usually you'd choose what order to get the abilities to get as you play through the game, but with the bonus SP feature on nightmare mode, what you are choosing is not the order of abilities over time, but rather a defined set of abilities that you will keep throughout the entire playthrough. Ys Origin takes difficulty selections and integrates that into the game.
I also quite like how Kingdom Hearts does the EXP growth thing, where you can choose between either leveling up fast early and then super slow, or leveling up slightly above average the whole way through (or in between). That way it's as if the game is making you choose between that which is better for simple game completion or that which is better for post-game content (though I wish the game was more clear in this). When I get the PS3 version, I'm going to choose the "level fast early" option for my speedrun playthrough (since there's a trophy for it).
Tuesday 11 June 2013
Analysing The Final Fantasy XV Battle Footage From E3 2013
So Final Fantasy XV has been announced at E3 and I am psyched. There has been the original announcement trailer and a battle gameplay first look video:
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3xKbPooKAo
Battle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBilT83Uq4A
ok, so going to try analyse this....
first of all its extremely cinematic, hopefully there's not too much scripting in when and where battles will take place. Since there's a scene where the characters are falling does that mean it would be on a time limit? I know they did it with Baren Falls on FF6 but that was just via background animation. The scene where 2 of the characters grab the Iron Giant's sword just makes me think of the trigger commands from FF10.
It looks like there's a lot of physical attacks going on, and the menu in the bottom left corner is very small and only has 3 options, none of which are "Magic" or "Abilities". They are "Warp", "Attack" and "Link-Form"... strangely, "Attack" isn't at the top of the list as it always has been (other than FF13 where it was "Auto-____"). There is no cursor but things do flash up, so I'm guessing they're maybe assigned to buttons? There isnt any sub-menus opening up so is it seriously just those 3 options? Also, what could "Warp" and "Linkform" actually mean? To the right of the menu there's a bunch of icons of weapons. Maybe it means that the game focuses a lot on changing weapons during battle to switch between different fighting styles like Dress-spheres (FF10-2) or Paradigms (FF13). Since there is a lot going on with what appear to be little choice or actions taken during batle, it could possibly mean that this game focuses a lot more on the importance of customising (like FF7, 8, 12) more than in the moment quick-thinking on-the-spot (like FF4, 13). If the action itself truely is simple, then I hope it is more customisation based. However the weapon icons hint that the fast-paced stuff could also be interesting enough
Let's talk about number of characters, this clip shows 3 characters in a party, even though this doesn't necessarily mean it's the party-limit, a limit of 3 has been standard since FF7 (exception being FF9) so it's most likely 3. The trailer at E3 showed 12 character portraits at the end. If there are 12 playable characters then that is a lot for a modern day FF game. considering:
(biggest party size/all playable characters)
FF1: 4/4
FF2: 4/10
FF3: 4/4
FF4: 5/12
FF5: 4/4 or 5 (depending on how you look at it)
FF6: 4/14
FF7: 3/9
FF8: 3/6
FF9: 4/8
FF10: 3/7
FF12: 3/6
FF13: 3/6
FF15: 3/12?
FF15 having 3/12 would be the biggest "amount of patry-sized groups" (which would be 4) than FF6 (which has 3.5). Despite not having more total unique combinations since 12c3 < 14c4 (maths stuff), this still leads to a lot of potential for an interesting party formation system like how FF6 does. This is where the customisation options come heavily from forming the teams rather than the individuals. Also this could lead to some pretty interesting customised party-splitting. Of course it's too early to call, there might be little option in that regards but the potential is there.
Last thing I want to comment on for now is the stats in the lower-right corner. You have your 4-digit numbers, which will be the health, pretty standard. The white lines most likely represent health too in percentage form, since there is no "/xxxx" written next to the health it makes sense that it would be. The main character has another bar even though the other 2 dont. This could be because the other characters dont use that stat, but most likely its a feature used for the "Leader" of the battle. Its blue so it could be MP, but why would only one character have MP? Of course this really is just speculation, FF6 started out with only a few characters having MP. I do suspect however it is there because it is the "Leader", the character you control and since the game looks pretty fast, I'm guessing that like FF13, you have more control over one character compared to the other 2. This is interesting, in that in adds another layer of depth in a sense by, having you assign a leader that would indicate more party set-ups. What's also interesting though is how the bar uses dots. Could this mean that whatever this bit of data is, is more discrete and less continuous?
Overall my biggest concern really is just how cinematic it all looks. I know games are more cinematic these days but back when your characters would stand in a line taking turns with menus, it really made you feel that YOU were in control. I'm perfectly fine with having less control if the system does follow the "think quick!" style. I'd really need to see the menu screen to have more of an idea. But anyway, these are just some thoughts I had from this little info we have so far. Regardless, I am psyched.
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3xKbPooKAo
Battle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBilT83Uq4A
ok, so going to try analyse this....
first of all its extremely cinematic, hopefully there's not too much scripting in when and where battles will take place. Since there's a scene where the characters are falling does that mean it would be on a time limit? I know they did it with Baren Falls on FF6 but that was just via background animation. The scene where 2 of the characters grab the Iron Giant's sword just makes me think of the trigger commands from FF10.
It looks like there's a lot of physical attacks going on, and the menu in the bottom left corner is very small and only has 3 options, none of which are "Magic" or "Abilities". They are "Warp", "Attack" and "Link-Form"... strangely, "Attack" isn't at the top of the list as it always has been (other than FF13 where it was "Auto-____"). There is no cursor but things do flash up, so I'm guessing they're maybe assigned to buttons? There isnt any sub-menus opening up so is it seriously just those 3 options? Also, what could "Warp" and "Linkform" actually mean? To the right of the menu there's a bunch of icons of weapons. Maybe it means that the game focuses a lot on changing weapons during battle to switch between different fighting styles like Dress-spheres (FF10-2) or Paradigms (FF13). Since there is a lot going on with what appear to be little choice or actions taken during batle, it could possibly mean that this game focuses a lot more on the importance of customising (like FF7, 8, 12) more than in the moment quick-thinking on-the-spot (like FF4, 13). If the action itself truely is simple, then I hope it is more customisation based. However the weapon icons hint that the fast-paced stuff could also be interesting enough
Let's talk about number of characters, this clip shows 3 characters in a party, even though this doesn't necessarily mean it's the party-limit, a limit of 3 has been standard since FF7 (exception being FF9) so it's most likely 3. The trailer at E3 showed 12 character portraits at the end. If there are 12 playable characters then that is a lot for a modern day FF game. considering:
(biggest party size/all playable characters)
FF1: 4/4
FF2: 4/10
FF3: 4/4
FF4: 5/12
FF5: 4/4 or 5 (depending on how you look at it)
FF6: 4/14
FF7: 3/9
FF8: 3/6
FF9: 4/8
FF10: 3/7
FF12: 3/6
FF13: 3/6
FF15: 3/12?
FF15 having 3/12 would be the biggest "amount of patry-sized groups" (which would be 4) than FF6 (which has 3.5). Despite not having more total unique combinations since 12c3 < 14c4 (maths stuff), this still leads to a lot of potential for an interesting party formation system like how FF6 does. This is where the customisation options come heavily from forming the teams rather than the individuals. Also this could lead to some pretty interesting customised party-splitting. Of course it's too early to call, there might be little option in that regards but the potential is there.
Last thing I want to comment on for now is the stats in the lower-right corner. You have your 4-digit numbers, which will be the health, pretty standard. The white lines most likely represent health too in percentage form, since there is no "/xxxx" written next to the health it makes sense that it would be. The main character has another bar even though the other 2 dont. This could be because the other characters dont use that stat, but most likely its a feature used for the "Leader" of the battle. Its blue so it could be MP, but why would only one character have MP? Of course this really is just speculation, FF6 started out with only a few characters having MP. I do suspect however it is there because it is the "Leader", the character you control and since the game looks pretty fast, I'm guessing that like FF13, you have more control over one character compared to the other 2. This is interesting, in that in adds another layer of depth in a sense by, having you assign a leader that would indicate more party set-ups. What's also interesting though is how the bar uses dots. Could this mean that whatever this bit of data is, is more discrete and less continuous?
Overall my biggest concern really is just how cinematic it all looks. I know games are more cinematic these days but back when your characters would stand in a line taking turns with menus, it really made you feel that YOU were in control. I'm perfectly fine with having less control if the system does follow the "think quick!" style. I'd really need to see the menu screen to have more of an idea. But anyway, these are just some thoughts I had from this little info we have so far. Regardless, I am psyched.
Thursday 7 March 2013
Targeting Our Nostalgia
I think Sonic 4 Episode 1 is a good example of a bad way to try to target people's nostalgia. Since with nostalgia the aim is to try to get you to feel that "when you were younger" feeling, but if you do that by trying to copy exactly what you had before, it doesn't work. Using the sonic example, first of all, Sonic is everywhere, the early Sonic games have been re-released everywhere. As much as Sonic 1 plays a significant part in my childhood, I've played it so much since then that its not as easy to associate the game with that time frame.
Something like Gex 3D, that's more specific to the time that I did play it because I haven't played it loads since then. Also with Sonic, a lot of the excitement I got as a kid was wondering what the next Robotnik battle was going to be like. In S4E1 they pretty much just copied across the ones that I already knew about. This means that I in fact did not relive the "what is the next boss?" experience that I cherished.
The point is that if the purpose of something is to make us feel nostalgic, it should do so by emulating the emotions we had at the time, and not copy/pasting the content. Besides, nostalgia is a very personal thing anyway and hard to capture. I doubt Capcom would ever try to capture my own personal nostalgia of "eating white chocolate whilst listening to Mega Man 10 midis whilst working on my university project".
Something like Gex 3D, that's more specific to the time that I did play it because I haven't played it loads since then. Also with Sonic, a lot of the excitement I got as a kid was wondering what the next Robotnik battle was going to be like. In S4E1 they pretty much just copied across the ones that I already knew about. This means that I in fact did not relive the "what is the next boss?" experience that I cherished.
The point is that if the purpose of something is to make us feel nostalgic, it should do so by emulating the emotions we had at the time, and not copy/pasting the content. Besides, nostalgia is a very personal thing anyway and hard to capture. I doubt Capcom would ever try to capture my own personal nostalgia of "eating white chocolate whilst listening to Mega Man 10 midis whilst working on my university project".
Thursday 14 February 2013
A Character's Departure Is Neither Unfair Nor Disruptive
So I was shown an article on Kotaku about an article that Masahiro Sakurai make in Famitsu (http://kotaku.com/5984189/kirbys-creator-shares-his-thoughts-on-game-writing). There is one part of that article specifically I wish to address:
"Take when a character you have spent time building up dies or leaves your party: for someone playing the game, it feels unfair." Sakurai explains. "The departure of a companion. In a standard story, this is a very basic plot point. But in games, it leads to a disruption."
So having characters leave your party is "unfair" and "leads to disruption"?
First of all I would like to point out that it is by definition impossible for a single-player game to be "unfair". Sure games can be dissatisfying at some points, but "fairness" is about how all the participants are given an equal opportunity. Since single-player games consist of one player, then it must follow that all the players get equal opportunity, it's not like a computer can be prejudice towards certain players. But by "unfair" it seems he doesn't mean that, rather he means that the players suffer a great loss from something outside of their own control. So from now on, I'll use the word "unfair" to mean that.
The "disruption" he mentions is really nothing more than an alteration presented by the game. I find it strange how RPGs can be blamed for being too repetitive and yet here they are being blamed for being "disruptive" (and we can see he is talking about RPGs here since he mentioned "spending time building up characters").
So let's think about these two complaints.
When characters leave or enter the party its to set the game up as to present the player with a new scenario. Sure there's great games where you pretty much stick to one party the whole way through (like Final Fantasy V and Dragon Quest VIII) but we don't need to have that in every game.
Indeed, if the game gives us new party set-ups, it is up to us and our strategy to figure out how to effectively use that party. Equally the case, if the game gives us the choice of what characters to use then it is up to us to make strategic decisions on what party we should form.
Even if we do get to the case where you need a certain character that you have not leveled up. That does not mean you should fret from not having that character a certain level. As much as it means you do have to train that character you still have to figure out the best way of doing that. And besides, this also means you get some extra EXP that will help you later on.
There are all sorts of different examples of how you can mix up the party set up
and still have it a fun game. Let's think of some possible examples:
1. Games where you have set characters that never change:
if your characters never change then that means you will always have your own custom set-up with you
2. Games where you can change to any characters at any time and it is advantageous to focus on a few:
here the strategy is trying to figure out which team is the best team in the long run whilst also taking into account what characters are worth taking in a certain situation. Is it worth holding back your final team back temporarily in order to make this section of the game easier? that's something you need to be strategic over.
3. Games where you can change to any characters at any time and it is advantageous to focus on a many:
In this case the strategy lies in not how unevenly to distribute the EXP, but rather when and where to distribute it with each character.
4. Games where you can change to any characters at any time and it is not strictly advantageous to focus on a many or focus on a few:
Well in this case what you have to consider is how you want to distribute the EXP, as well as who works well at what points in the game. It may not be clear as to what the best thing to do is, but this means that the player has to figure it out.
5. Games where you can't change any characters at any time and the game keeps switching between them:
In this case the strategy lies in how you approach the individual parts of the game. How can you deal with what you are presented with.
These are just a few examples, and there are a lot more that can be explored (such as if the EXP is distributed in certain ways, if you have points where you create multiple parties, if certain characters grow at different rates, etc.). The point here is that all of these require the player to be strategic in some shape or form. These examples do not inherently result in the player having "wasted time" and the results do depend on the player using skill. Even if we try to think of extreme examples, they end up not being all that extreme. One reason is that we can't judge the loss of the purely on the loss of the characters. Let's use the most common example that everybody knows about: Aerith's death in Final Fantasy VII. Yes, she dies, and yes, you lose all the levels you built up for her. However:
1. In FF7, EXP is distributed 100% to all the alive party members and 50% to all the inactive ones. If what we are saying is that Aerith's death makes her EXP worthless, then lets consider how much EXP you get total depending on wheteher or not she is in your party. There are 9 characters overall, if an enemy gives 1000 EXP, thats 1000EXP to all alive party members and 500EXP to all out of party. That would be a total of 6000EXP (assuming all party members are alive). Running off the assumption that all Aerith's EXP is "worthless" and can be ruled out, then having her in your party nets you 5000EXP total and 5500EXP total if she is out. That difference is not so extreme. And yes I know you would also have to take into account all the stuff you would have to do for her such as buying weapons and building up limit breaks but I'm addressing just the leveling here for the sake of simplicity.
2. Secondly, it still would not be fair to claim all the EXP she does gain as "worthless". This is because you have to use her in the Temple Of The Ancients where the EXP she has accumulated helps you to get through. So even though it will be lost it does help.
So that is an example of where a character's death (or departure) does not result in a great loss for the player. The reason for this is because we are given context and the game is set up to fit the context. The second disc onwards was designed and released with the full knowlegde that Aerith would not be playable anymore. It is not reasonable to believe that the loss will make the game a lot harder because of this. A huge difficulty spike may be disruptive,
. A game that completely changes the gameplay at one point in time may be disruptive. Aerith's death is neither disruptive or unfair (regardless of what definition of "unfair" you want to use).
I suppose it is possible for the departure of a character or the introduction of new characters to be "unfair" or "disruptive". But they would be rarer and more specific cases and not simply "the departure of a character".
Thursday 7 February 2013
"Worse" Does Not Mean "Bad"
I don't really understand the idea that if you make something new, the whole purpose is for it to be better than the last. That makes sense in terms of functionality (a TV in 2013 should be better than a TV in 1995), but when it comes to creative pieces I'm not so sure. Sure you should always make something as good as you can, but should the creation of something new be dependent on it's quality compared to the previous?
Last September I released my album "The Eclectic Duck" and I believe it was an improvement over my previous album "Another Acidic Album". I have started (though not done much) of my next album (which I'm not revealing the title of yet :P ). To me, this album (so far) isn't as good as TED, and I don't suspect it will be (just being honest). Sure, I will try to make it as good as I can, but I really feel TED was a high-point for me. Even if I do complete the new album and still feel that TED is better than it, does that mean the new album is not good enough for release? I don't think so.
Even if the new album is (to me) worse than TED, somebody else who hates TED might like the new album. Likewise, it's possible for somebody to love AAA but to hate TED. I'm not trying to say that you shouldn't put effort into making things as good as you can, I'm not saying that at all. Even if (hypothetically) I release this new album and nobody prefers it to TED, that's still fine. You don't have to spend your life enjoying just your favourites. How many people (in all seriousness) would be happy enough listening to just their favourite album or playing just their favourite game? Sure I'd love to play Azure Dreams whilst listening to Rancid 2000, but to be limited to that?
All in all, I think its fine to indulge in that which is "above average" or "quite good". We should look forward to improvements but not demand it. We should try to improve our works but not be limited by them. When a series "isn't as good as it used to be", my question to you is: "well is it bad?". Should they end the series just because it's getting worse? Well, what good would it do if they did stop? Has the series become so bad that its continuation is a hindrance? If not, I don't see what the problem is.
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