Impressions: Final Fantasy VII

Sometimes, in my mind, I like to pretend that Final Fantasy VII was released in North America, everyone really enjoyed it and then that was that.  The compilation of Final Fantasy VII never happens and I don’t have to be reminded of this any time I think about the game.  It wasn’t all bad.  Advent Children was fun, and Crisis Core was one of the better Final Fantasy games to come out in a while.  But none of it captured what made VII special and only served to diffuse its impact and inflate the value of inconsequential elements of the game in the name of fan service.  Even in spite of this, playing VII is like jumping into a time machine and going back to 1997 where I can remain blissfully unaware of the nonsense that followed its release.  In any case, VII has served as my petri dish of sorts to rattle around ideas about the composition of games.  It’s still easily one of my favorite games (as well as one of the best games out there) and when I get around to debating the merits of the medium in my own mind, VII is inevitably used to help me try to figure out whether or not an argument holds water.

VII sits up there in my mind with Chrono Trigger: jRPGs set to engaging science fiction plots – my favorite film genre.  I hadn’t really appreciated the initial hours of VII until recently with how it manages to simultaneously introduce you to the world of Avalanche, Shinra, and the ancients while breaking you into the materia system, one of the series most satisfying game systems.  The way it all manages to build up to the escape from Midgar, a dark, closed, and dirty city, to a wide open and green world to pursue an enemy that makes Shinra, the world’s controlling super-power, look helpless was entertaining even today.  Perhaps the monotony and inaccessibility of Final Fantasy XIII put it into perspective in my own mind.  XIII wasn’t something more complicated or intrinsically bad, but it was not a coherent experience in the same way games like VII were.  It also doesn’t hurt that I don’t have to sit down in front of a TV and play from save point to save point when I can just suspend my PSP whenever I need to and play where ever I like.  It might be a bit difficult to justify sitting down and playing a 15-year-old game, but if you want to sink your teeth into a game that helped define an era in gaming history then it’s hard to do better than Final Fantasy VII.

Impressions: Lone Survivor

Purchased for me as a gift by @Raisins, I got started on Lone Survivor last week.  I’ve got to say, I’m really impressed with just how well Jasper Byrne captures the spirit of the survival horror genre using so little.  Right from the beginning I was reminded just how much I missed survival horror as it was presented during the PSOne’s time.  I’m certainly not the first to draw the comparison between Silent Hill and Lone Survivor, and most likely not the first to wonder how an independently developed game can be more like Silent Hill than Silent Hill is anymore.  It’s not a difficult formula, (not to detract from Byrne’s work) just add equal parts creepy sound design and “what’s going on here?” and you’ve got a recipe for soiled pants (or is that just me?)

I’m extremely happy to know that there are people out there like Byrne who have the creative range to take pixel art and avoid the aesthetic cliches of pixel art design.  Fewer pixels doesn’t mean what’s being depicted needs to be cute or simple.  It doesn’t have to be Mario.  Fewer pixels mean fewer opportunities to express an idea, but Lone Survivor nails all of them.  It succeeds in ways that games like Aliens: Infestation failed.  A large part of the reason that Lone Survivor is so creepy is because of how its combat elements are balanced on the edge of a razor.  You have the option to avoid battle, though sometimes it is the better option if for no other reason than because your flashlight will run out of juice before you have the chance to sneak by.  Where as in Infestation, combat is the only option and you are given infinite ammo for that end.  Since you can’t hardly avoid enemy attacks in that game, the only option ever is to unload clips and take blows.  Tension in survival horror comes constantly having to make difficult decisions and balancing options.  This is doubly essential in a 2D pixel art game in order to create an atmosphere where you fear for a sprite’s safety.

If you’ve ever been a fan of the earlier Silent Hill games, then you owe it to yourself to go give Jasper Byrne all your money and play Lone Survivor.

Impressions: Trials Evolution

There’s only so much that one can say about the Trials series.  You jump dirt bikes in levels of increasing difficulty with semi-realistic physics.  It’s easy to stand back and say “that sounds stupid” if you’ve never tried it before.  But once you’ve gotten past the initial stages you will feel confident about your Trials skills, only to find that one obstacle that you’re sure you can conquer only to be thwarted.  You can’t let it beat you though, because you’re better than it.  Then you sit there and think about how you will balance the rider just right so that you gain traction at just the right moment.  At this point, you lean back and think to yourself “I’m sitting here contemplating the finer points of jumping dirt bikes for more than three seconds, and I’m actually enjoying it.”  After this there’s no turning back, no matter which entry in the trials series you’re digging in to.  (Go ahead and even try the old flash versions of the Trials games.)  Trials Evolution only feeds that need to jump dirt bikes in ever more impressive ways.  Not only are you going to get new and expanded tracks, you’re going to get all of the online competition features to go along with it, and a map editor to boot.  Mastering the game won’t be enough, dominating your friends will become the challenge that never ends.  It’s hard to go wrong with Trials Evolution whether you’re new to the games or a long time fan.

New Review: SSX

I’ve finished off the single player campaign and I’ve put in a good bit of time into the game’s explore mode.  If you’ve followed my previous posts on the game, it should come as a surprise that I’ve really enjoyed my time playing it and I think it’s a very well crafted game.  It’s a layered experience that I found to be satisfying at all levels, so it’s earned a final score of 3/3.

Continue to the full review.

New Review: Dark Souls

Oh Dark Souls.  Dark Souls, Dark Souls, Dark Souls.  It’s been a long road, but I finally finished you.  Sure I’ve been yelling at the TV when you throw me off of cliffs and spam uninterruptable attacks.  You made me run a countless number of times between bonfires and boss battles.  And you also introduced me to the capra demon, the manifestation of all things terrible.  But you know what, you were a pretty good game in spite of all this and you get a final score of 3/3.

Continue to the full review.

Narrative Texture and Modern Warfare

I know we all hate Call of Duty (or are we too busy hating Mass Effect now?) and that it’s going to ruin games for us all with its un-gameness (un-gaminess? un-gamification?) but let’s set that aside for a moment and look at something it does pretty well.  Each of the Modern Warfare titles is structured as a series of levels all around the world.  They follow two parallel series of events: a macro-plot as well as a micro-plot.  On the small scale the player will follow Soap and Captain Price on missions both personal and professional in nature and on the larger scale the player jumps from the perspective of any number of people that are caught up in the series’ fictional war.  On its face it can seem like those larger scale missions are thinly veiled excuses to blow stuff up around the world and partake in digital war tourism.   However, it’s a structure worth emulating in other titles though as it plays to the strength of the medium in a way that movies cannot.  While a movie-goer’s experience is almost inexorably tied to the character arc of the protagonist(s) and the plot, games like Modern Warfare can have the player stop and take detours to absorb the surrounding texture of the world and story.  Modern Warfare’s micro and macro plots will occasionally cross paths but Soap and Price’s objectives are clearly separated from the broader conflict by the series finale.

With a series such as Gears of War, the player is locked into the plot of Marcus and Dom in a manner that’s more consistent with film, but requiring a couple dozen hours to complete.  (As a note, I have only played through Gears 3, and have otherwise read up on and spoiled Gear 1 and 2 for myself.)  All of the broader events are filtered through their perspective and only made meaningful where they acknowledge meaning.  There’s plenty of spectacle to see in the world of Gears but by the end of the series it’s exhausting and narrow.  What Modern Warfare does is have you follow along with the protagonists for periods of time and then turns  around and tells you to “go over here and do this for a while.”  What this accomplishes is it allows the player to better absorb the context of the scenario.  Rather than relying on flashbacks to fill the player in on the protagonist’s motivations, the game exposes the player to experiences that are similar in nature to what the protagonist(s) has/have experienced.  So when the player ultimately returns to the protagonist’s perspective, what unfolds in the micro-plot becomes something that’s not only meaningful through the eyes of the protagonist but in regards to the player’s own experience as well.

Spoilers ensue: This is what made the series finale so dramatic.  After spending hours and hours in the macro-plot evaluating the battle field and gauging when to charge or hold back (or being caught off guard by an enemy that you missed) Yuri and Price don bomb suits and take on an army of Makarov’s body guards.  After the broader war has subsided the player is forced to take on one of the most intense missions of the series against an enemy whose wrath you’ve been able to witness up close (No Russian) and from far away (the invasion of the United States.)  It would not have been the same if, as a game, Modern Warfare didn’t have the liberty to send the player to participate in events unrelated to the main plot.  And games can afford to do this since the audience is a participant rather than just a consumer of the story, even if only following other character’s AI.  An audience only has so much patience to have a story told to them, but if they are occupied with game play that’s consistent between multiple plots then there is a great deal more leeway to explore the world surrounding the story and that colors the character’s personalities and motivations.  It doesn’t have involve war, guns, and explosions, it’s just a different approach to storytelling that lives well in games and that Modern Warfare executed very well.

Impressions: SSX

Having played the demo extensively by the time the full game launched, I was expecting SSX to be a sleeker, shinier version of earlier games in the series that includes more internet-enabled features.  And I’ve been very happy with the game in that regard.  What I wasn’t expecting  was a snowboarding game with RPG elements subtly permeating all aspects of the experience.  Characters level up, purchase equipment, and can equip abilities based on how well you’re doing in the game’s campaign.  What’s interesting about all of this though is that SSX doesn’t include this gameplay mechanic as a requirement for being able to complete the campaign, but as the means by which you compete with others online.  I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this from a critical standpoint: RPG gameplay mechanics can artificially extend gameplay and reduce competition to simply min/maxing stats.  However, despite my own reservations about this strategy I have only enjoyed the time I’ve spent playing the game.

Another interesting aspect about SSX is what it has taken away non-core games in the mobile and Facebook spaces.  The friend/rival-centric design of the game’s “explore” mode can be very motivating in getting you to play the game.  Each time you login to the game’s explore mode, you will see a timeline of events that have occurred, letting you know who’s been playing, what they’ve been doing, and which of your scores they’ve taken down.  Perpetually trying to get to and stay at the top of the leader boards is a very effective way to ensuring that you get the most out of the game’s core mechanics: understanding how to best execute tricks, chain them together, building your trick meter, and tearing down the mountainside as quickly as possible.  SSX also brings micro-payments into the experience.  I’m not sure why anyone would use them to unlock equipment and abilities when it can just as easily be done by playing the game.  It’s not an intrusive aspect of the game though.  EA has already made $60 with your purchase of the game, it’s fortunate that it’s not made to feel like freemium games.  These might not be features that are entirely unique for core console and PC games but SSX implements them quite effectively.

Some thoughts on Mass Effect from Someone Who’s Never Played it

I haven’t played any of the games in the Mass Effect series (though I do own the first and second entries for PC now) but that doesn’t mean I haven’t felt the effect of the hype for the series (as well as some of the recent hate for the third entry.)  The universe of Mass Effect is enormous, so it’s been very difficult to stop myself from spoiling some of the series key highlights and plot twists.  I’ve even gone ahead and watched each of the endings to Mass Effect 3 since there’s been so much controversy.  The way I’m looking at it, it’s going to take me a good long time before I can legitimately complete these games and that if simply viewing the game’s story spoils the experience of playing it then I’ll be glad I didn’t invest myself in it too heavily.

In any case, my initial reaction to the game’s endings were “What’s the big deal?”  It’s hard to understand why there would be so much outrage at what seems to be a very thoughtful conclusion to the series.  But then again, I didn’t invest hundreds of hours and make dozens of decisions to try and shape the game’s outcome.  The game’s director makes no apology for it, and explicitly states that it was supposed to be memorable (implicitly saying that it’s irrelevant whether you feel good about it or not.)  It’s been roundly agreed upon that it satisfies this goal, and I concur with the sentiment.  It is a memorable story, but is that beside the point?  Stories can be told any number of ways, most of which don’t require hours and hours of work on the audience’s part to consume.  No matter how satisfying the story may be, if I can enjoy it just as well by watching it on Youtube and the work to complete the trilogy does nothing more that a book or movie could do better then it hasn’t met its potential as a game.

So now when I think about the ending to Mass Effect 3, I wonder “Why should I play that when I could watch Star Trek instead?” and I start to understand why people are upset with it.  They are still games that I want to play but I’ve adjusted my expectations.

Gaming Links Roundup for March 2nd

Why I’m Not Okay With Sony Ditching PSP Discs
For a device that’s supposed to do so much, the Vita not being able to play UMD based games seems like a pretty big caveat when you’re marketing it toward core PSP gamers.

Square Enix announces remix album dedicated to beer
Haha.  Wait, what?

XSEED Will Do What Nintenwon’t, Agrees to Localize ‘The Last Story’ for North America
I’m thrilled to hear that we’ll get a chance to play this.

Tim Schafer Says Publishers Aren’t Worried About Kickstarter
It’s not surprising that publishers wouldn’t be impressed by $2 million.  But if they feel an existential threat posed by used games and $0.99 mobile games then I’m sure that the Double Fine Adventure Kickstarter is causing them some degree of distress.  Publishers only survive with developers on their side, and there are more and more ways for developers to escape that relationship every day.

Are 100-Hour Games Just A Waste Of Our Time?
People who spend 100 hours playing games would disagree (as I am one.)  Articulating why it’s worth the time and pointing to it is challenging though I’m sure if we tallied up the amount of time that people spend on other activities then this wouldn’t sound as dramatic as it does.  See also: Hell Yes, 100-Hour Video Games Are Worthwhile and Sunbro.

Jet Grind Radio HD Re-release Confirmed
I used to think HD re-releases were shameless cash-ins, but then I tried playing SD games on an HD TV.

Silent Hell: the rage-fueled tale of Book of Memories
I don’t know what happened with Silent Hill but whatever enthusiasm I had for the series has evaporated.  I’ll still pick up the Silent Hill Collection later this month though (even if it’s not much of a collection.)

Over the top

I’m always going to have a soft spot for snowboarding games.  Cool Boarders was my first game on the PSOne which I had picked up in anticipation to start snowboarding in reality.  I love both activities even when one only involves sitting in front of the TV and the other is not nearly as audacious as depicted in games.  That’s because even if you’re not snowboarding through an old plane crash site on the side of a mountain, you are still on top of a waxed piece of fiberglass that’s going to move more quickly than your self-preservation instincts would prefer.  Adrenaline makes up for whatever lack of spectacle there is, and spectacle is precisely the reason why snowboarding games are entertaining while you sit on the couch.

So it should go without saying that I’m excited for the release of SSX this week.  It’s been a while since I played any snowboarding games, but after spending some time with the SSX demo it looks like a great return to form that brings the genre to a new gaming environment.  Games like SSX play to the strengths of the medium by acting to convince players they are doing something that they couldn’t do in reality (even if they were professional snowboarders.)  In this regard there is a similarity between SSX and Call of Duty.  Both will nudge you in certain ways as to ensure you will see the game from the most dramatic perspective while also trying to maintain an atmosphere of spontaneity and illusion of player control.  SSX does this by making the game more forgiving when it comes to player precision when moving in the environment.  If you don’t have a rail lined up 100% correctly for a grind then the game literally does nudge you into alignment.  Or if you release the analog stick to stop flipping in the air but you are actually going to belly-flop onto the ground, then the game makes sure to finish turning the character for you if it thinks you were close enough to getting it right.  These were things that would have surely wrecked runs in earlier snowboarding games, but instead of making the game artificially easier these “nudges” will keep the player from being distracted from the real goal of the game which is to perform inordinately complex tricks and chain them together in ways that take advantage of the level.  There are a great number of subtle details that come together so quickly that each time the tricky meter completely fills up you’ll want to cheer out loud.

I’m not sure how many people will care to look at games like SSX with a critical eye for the medium.  There are some interesting perspectives to glean from it that aren’t quite as overt as its sense of spectacle.  I’m eager to pick it and pick it apart though.