The Lair of the Monkey

I’ve never really bought a game if I have no prior knowledge of it - and this sums up every reason why.  Pit Fighter is arguably one of the worst (and shortest) games ever.  Your chosen character (a small, medium or large man with pretty rubbish fighting skills) would fight equally sluggish and badly animated opponents in a 1v1 fighting tournament.  If you won, you could turn it off I imagine.  In some sort of perverse joke, you had infinite continues.  Who would keep playing this abberation?  A masochist and no-one else.  He might have a sadist watching him though.  Pit Fighter?  Well I think you can guess what I mean when I say $%it Fighter…

Donkey Kong has been a staple franchise for Nintendo just as long as Mario - or Jump Man.  A tradition of genuine quality games saw the release of Donkey Kong Country on the SNES - arguably the best console ever.  Now we are a few generations on (N64, GC, Wii, various handhelds) but the classic gameplay remains.  DKC had you starring as Donkey or Diddy Kong, in a lets face it, who-cares-why story.  It moved fast though, had animals/vehicles and bananas.  The graphics were also pretty damn amazing for the time.  Truly, this is a legendary platform game.

UK Resistance have a hiliarious (yet apparently true) graph of Nex-gen console sales.  Go take a look and let me know what you think.  For my money it’s a truism - pretty hilarious to boot.  Poor Sony.

How do you like your HUD in games?  By this of course I mean the information given on screen at all times - whether it relates to an ammo count, control options of enemy locations.  Generally speaking the more complex the game the larger the on-HUD information.  However, this isn’t always the case.  A classic lack of HUD can be seen in the Call of Cthulu game.  It was refreshing to have such little clutter.

Other games, such as GRAW, make sense to have a lot of information as you are, after all, a soldier in the future.  However, one thing that it can eat into is the atmosphere.  Then again, do you use it very much?  I guess the point is it really does just come down to how you like a game, and whether the information is needed.  If it is superfluous then of course it’s just blocking what would otherwise be quite a clean view.  On the other hand, I’m not sure I’ve experienced this but there must be times when you are frustrated by a lack of easily accessable information.

The one time I really remember missing out on some information/access was in Neverwinter Nights when played online.  I earned the moniker of the ‘Hotkey King’ as I was a Sorceror who had a ton of useful spells.  As such I had to use the extra keymappings of Control and Shift in order to be able to have each spell assigned a key.  This led to some tense moments when I was wondering whether I’d actually be able to manage to get a fireball off in time for instance.  Frequently I didn’t - but still the access was there - in a roundabout fashion.

So, which games do you like, and have you noticed the HUD?  I personally like the minimalist view, but I know this isn’t for everyone.  On the other hand, stuff like Metroid Prime made sport out of showing off how good a HUD can look.  What do you think?  Numbers everywhere or nothing at all?

R-Type 3 is now available for the Wii.  The game follows the usual 2-d shoot-em-up formula, scrolling from left to right predominantly.  Being an R-Type game though there are some fundaments that are slightly different.  The most obvious of these is the beam weapon which you can power up.  It’s pretty simple but a great mechanic that fits the game well.  Essentially, you can’t fire when you’re charging this beam up, but when you hit the maximum you get a huge blast (oftentimes this is the only way to damage a level boss).

Although a simple game, R-Type 3 has lost none of it’s addictiveness.  More importantly it shows just how intense games used to be.  Graphical touches such as the power ups and the brilliant scope of each level makes it well worth a play, or ten.  In fact, I’m quite jealous that this was sent over to the Wii for download rather than Xbox Live.  I’d be happy to have spent points on this gem of a game.

Destructoid has a brilliant article on an abused games tester.  Frankly I think that this story is pretty horrific.  It did make me think two things however.

a) The games industry is fairly new and so is logistical and project management.  However, there has to be a better way than this.

b) This guy has real balls to have stuck it out.  I’d not want his job for double my current salary.

Go have a read, it really is an eye-opener.

How do you feel when you complete a game?  I’ll answer that question in a bit, first let me tell you about how I feel when I finish reading a book.  A good book that’s worth a read will grip my attention.  Then, as I see the last page nearing (part of the reason why a fiction is so good in my opinion is that you can see the ending coming) I worry.  Will it be as good as I hope?  Regardless of whether the ending is good or not, I feel a pang of sadness.  Oh well, that’s it over then.

With games, the opposite is true.  I feel that I’ve conquered something.  I, by myself, have won out against not only the producers of the game but also the game itself and whatever opponents it throws my way.  It doesn’t matter whether this is an FPS or a racing game - seeing the last victory condition being met and (usually) having an ending FMV played out in front of me fills me with joy.

Games weren’t always like this though.  Look at Space Invaders.  Did anyone play that to get to the end?  No.  Probably because it didn’t really have one.  It was about the high score.  Wasn’t it?  Nope, it was about the gaming experience.  Why do you think games are addictive?  They have that ‘one last time’ element that will bring you back for more.

Nonetheless, that doesn’t mean that all games are good.  Far from it in fact.  It means that there is however a wealth of experiences to be had out there though.  And that is what drives gamers to have a ‘happy’ ending and move on to the next product.  I’d like to believe that we’re smarter than “oh I’ve seen it on TV so I must have it“.  Besides, we live in the post-TV age anyway.  So go on, go win the best ending, be happy, then buy something else.

The BBC has been ‘told’ that we’re only 2 years away from developing real game characters.  In 2 years, we’ll see characters that look so good we’ll consider them real.  Personally I doubt it, unless it’s a tech demo.  We can see pretty realistic stuff now, but even still… I’m thinking maybe in ten years we’ll see damn good graphics.  Does that mean then that we’ll have ‘better’ games?

According to David Kunkler (producer over at Obsidian Entertainment) the answer is yes.  Because we’ll have emotion in games.  Well forgive me for being pig-headed but art is about emotion.  So does that mean games will then be art?  Following up on this, I have another question, and it’s pretty straight to the point.  If art is about “skill in conducting any human activity” (www.dictionary.com definition) then games are already art, as it sure takes some skill, even to make a bad game.

More to the point, if you think of art in the classical sense then just looking at painting it evidently does not have to be realistic.  Sure, games devs are straining toward realism as some sort of magic tipping point at the moment, but will it be, given that it certainly doesn’t have to be?  I ask this as lets face it, games these days look pretty good, but more to the point they are stylised, just like art in other areas of life, whether that is painting or written.

Going full circle here, in my opinion art is meant to make you think and/or feel.  Well, games do that to me now whether it’s Okami or Red Steel.  That being the case, I’d guess they are art already.  Congratulations games, you have made it.  I’ll give you some idea of personal moments of ‘feeling’ in games a little later this week.

Head on over to Destructoid.com as they have two awesome videos on the new Star Wars game that will be released either late this year or early next.  Some new physics heading our way, ya’ll…

No, seriously.  They give you freedom.  Let’s think about Crackdown for a second.  This is a slightly off-the-wall, humorous game that puts the player in control of a suped-up future police officer, with the ability to smash almost anything, snipe, attack and blow things up.  There are several crime lords you can take down or you can just have a laugh at destroying parts of the city.  This freedom is similar to the go-anywhere feeling of having a car.

Oblivion for me took freedom to the next level.  Although I probably barely touched the surface, this game has so much freedom (as well as so much going on), that it is hard at first just to choose where to go.  I wanted and still want to go to all the extremes on the map in The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion.  Truly, it is an awesome game.

Moving away from that idea, some games are much more like a roller coaster or thrill ride.  They offer lots of excitement but are apparently pretty solidly on rails.  There aren’t many games any more that are literally on rails (Killer 7 was kind of the last one I know of) but still like F.E.A.R. is very linear, but an incredibly paced, rather spooky experience.  If you don’t believe me go check out the latest Mack and Mesh video.

A game like F.E.A.R. must be very well executed these days to stand a chance amongst the more free form offerings, if just because as the player can do almost anything then they will tend to do the thing that offers them the most out of the gaming experience.  However, I will cite you an example now where that went wrong.

A friend of mine did not like Oblivion(!) as he said that as he levelled, he found that even the rats were tougher etc.  I said that the game has an active difficulty, whereby as you level, the monsters go up to a level behind yours.  Nonetheless, this still didn’t impress him.  When I took a look at his character, I found out why.

Rather than playing the game properly, he’d simply raced through to try and be as high a level as possible.  I’m sure most of you know that Oblivion isn’t really built for doing that.  Suffice to say, he pretty much killed the gaming experience for himself by being a ‘power-leveller’ in a game that isn’t necessarily designed for it.

It is ironic that whilst the games offering freedom have become more expansive, the ‘on-rails’ type stuff has become more focussed.  The reason it has become that way is that rather than thinking of new gameplay, graphics have developed (and sound to a degree) which has resulted in much better atmosphere.  Would F.E.A.R. have been anywhere near as good if it had looked like Doom?  Well no, and that should shut up those of you who don’t think graphics are important.  The name of the game with regard to that aspect of gaming is immersion.

Anyway, this leads us to the fact that we almost have two different branches of emerging entertainment here from games.  Things like Alan Wake and Bioshock are going to push things even further, while we await The Shivering Isles for Oblivion with baited breath.  Things are going to get even more interesting…