I beat Donkey Kong Country Returns this morning. It left me with a unique joyful feeling that I rarely encounter these days. DKCR was such a well-balanced experience, both in challenge and in creativity, that I was supremely satisfied when I saw those credits roll.  I wasn’t annoyed that there wasn’t more time to explore the game mechanic, as in Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions.  I didn’t feel that the boss battle was anti-climatic, as in Batman: Arkham Asylum. No. I was elated. I sat through the entirety of the credits and was rewarded with a new area! I had already planned on replaying some of the levels to complete the collection challenges but now I had a new goal. Man. That Donkey Kong guy is the gift that keeps on giving.

I have to admit that I haven’t returned to Dragon Age: Origins or Castlevania. I have been completely obsessed with DKCR. I am not disappointed that I didn’t finish Dragon Age. I still think I’ll go back to Castlevania one day but the game on my brain was DKCR. Why was I so enthralled? It has the great schema of nerve-wracking challenges that seem impossible and tight mechanics that ramp to a “flying by the seat of your pants” abandonment. Flat out, it was fun. I missed fun. Yes, I have fun when I play most video games but usually the world that these games operate in are less than happy. I’m fairly hesitant to hang out with Dante, Lara, Kratos or Sam Fisher. (Although, I would get a drink with Ezio or Nathan Drake any time.) DKCR gave me the chance to be child-like, very different than childish, while operating on an adult skill level.

I recently tried out Little Big Planet and Stacked!. Both games are whimsical and beautifully rendered. Both are humorous. LBP seemed to require more skill than Stacked! but I have not been inspired to continue either game. Why? Well, the LBP mechanics are kinda wishy-washy. I’m not exactly sure what type of gravity they have on their planet but it makes leaping an imprecise chore. The humor and energy is there but the game just isn’t as good as it’s concept. LBP possibly has a more interesting concept than DKCR but that doesn’t mean I want to play it.  Stacked! was plain boring. Again, great art and humor but lackluster game mechanic and puzzles. Maybe I should’ve played longer but it did not feel challenging. On the other end of the spectrum, DKCR had me at first chest thump and all I wanted to do was help my simian and ape friends reclaim their bananas. DKCR made me feel awesome for conquering an especially tricky run. I did not feel that way at all after the other two games. All three games made me giggle but I felt the Kong made me want to play.

What LBP or Stacked! does that DKCR does not do is reward the player with “stuff.” All three games have a certain amount of collecting involved. In LBP, you collect a certain amount of items to be used in the creation of levels and stickers. In Stacked! you collect different sets of dolls. In DKCR you collect letters and puzzle pieces that result in personal satisfaction and/or unlockable art. I am more interested in the self-satisfaction model of “I went the extra mile and conquered some crazy craziness” as opposed to “I need these things to fully enjoy the game” (LBP) or  “I have to search endless nooks and crannies for very little payoff” (Stacked!). I, a notorious 100% completer, am satisfied by the notion that I can have as much fun as the next person by choosing to jump the hair-raising lava pit to get the extra hidden puzzle piece or not. It was a freeing concept for me and it only added to my enjoyment.

I know that there are some secret levels left, because of the new area and some unexplored map nodes. I like achievable goals. I like that there are some things that I haven’t found yet but I like knowing that they exist and that I should be looking for special level elements. In fact, I am excited to revisit levels immediately. I would have to say that is a sign of greatness.

In celebration of a most loathed holiday, Valentine’s Day, I have compiled a list of the games I have enjoyed playing with special someones over the years. I am strictly anti-Valentine’s Day but these titles can muster up a loving feeling from this cynic’s heart. Just so you know, I am a fairly competitive player. Actually, I am more “outrageously” competitive but let’s not get distracted. These games have great mechanics and balance that, I believe, cut down on the competition and plump up the fun. For example, Gauntlet, will not be featured on this list  because I have a bit of a hoarding problem in that game which seriously displeases anyone else on the same quest.

Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles

Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles definitely comes to mind. Rail-shooters seem like a fairly safe bet for a date game. They don’t take too much skill and they’re somewhat cinematic in that there are surprises and thrills for your sweetheart to jump at and seek comfort from. Wii games are especially user friendly and the Wiimote feels natural to shoot with. It is much easier for a novice player to point and shoot rather than use two joysticks and two triggers (think Resident Evil 4).

I feel The Umbrella Chronicles is a better game than it’s successor The Darkside Chronicles, mainly because the camera gets rather shaky and nobody wants to feel pukey on a date.

Mario Tennis

The next game speaks volumes to me about sitting close to someone special in a dark basement by the soft glow of a TV. Mario Tennis for the N64 does require a bit of skill but it is so damned fun and cute, that you don’t mind losing (that much). Sports, in general have a certain amount of teasing and silly dramatics attached. If you can find a good partner and a non-threatening presentation, good times will roll.

Backgammon

Backgammon. I know it’s not a video game (although I guess it could be) but sometimes you want your hands free. Think about Backgammon as a way to drink a glass of wine and nibble on some cheese or pate to show how cultured you are. Backgammon is one of those easy to learn hard to master games that accommodate a variety of skill level. Also, if you have a loving partner that isn’t so into video games, this is a great way to prove that you don’t like games more than them. That you’re willing to share your game experience and perhaps warm them up to your side of the force. Think of it as a gateway drug to play. Some tabletop games to avoid include Chess and Scrabble. Those games will teach your partner to hate games and possibly you.

The Simpsons Arcade

Ahh, The Simpsons arcade game, how I adore thee? One, your humor and character inspire smiles. Two, you represent a familiar universe seamlessly. Three, your two button mechanic is simple but your gameplay is not. The Simpsons was one of the first brawlers that enabled players to team up and attack the same enemy. So you and your deary can alternately vacuum, jump rope, skateboard or Homerize bad guys in unison. If that ain’t romantic, I don’t know what is!

Bust A Move 4

Bust A Move 4 is my favorite of the series. I wanted to include a puzzle-type game and at first I thought that Tetris would be perfect. Then I started thinking about the amount of ladies I know that liked Tetris and the ladies I know that loved BAM 4 and, if I was being honest, I’d have to say that most of my lady friends prefer BAM 4 hands-down.

Like Tetris, anybody can play BAM 4 but unlike Tetris, BAM 4 is lushly colored and features really cute dinosaurs. Also, it does not have a “math game” or “nerd king” stigma attached to it like Tetris. As a lady, I have a certain nervousness of displaying poor math skills after years of being told that woman are poor at math and logic. Yes, this is a blanket statement and many women are great at math but it makes me work so much harder to be a better Tetris player than my date. And that can make things less than fun for all.

I have to confess that it was really difficult to not think of Nintendo games. Those guys have the date experience down. Serious. I hope all you prospective love birds make it out of Valentine’s Day alive. I know I will be hunkered down in my apartment avoiding plasticine chocolates and amorous chubby dudes with arrows with my lovey dovey and some co-op romance. Which is what we do everyday  anyway.

If you have been keeping track of my play history you would know that at last post I was immersed in Dragon Age: Origins. Wow! Now that I’m looking back, I see that I originally reviewed Dragon Age in October! This should give some clue to how entrenched I am at this point. I have 60 hours logged in a character that I have not restarted (which is a big deal for me) and will probably finish the game with. 60 hours. Dragon Age: Origins has 120 hours of gameplay. Ouch. Half way through and I started to get this tingling sensation in my pointer fingers. What could it be? Why, it was an itchy trigger finger! I was yearning for a break from managerial minutia for the streamlined simplicity of sniping some head shots. I definitely plan on returning to Ferelden and conquering evil with my Rogue but for now, I need some straight up action.

Originally, I popped in Mass Effect 2 but honestly, it was too Bioware, too familiar from the Dragon Age model. I wanted something entirely new. Luckily for me, it’s Christmas and that means a office nerd gifts! Nobody gets me nerd gifts like my co-workers. I was not disappointed. I unwrapped Tommy’s gift and there was Sam Fisher giving me the eyeball. I’ve never played a Splinter Cell game before. I usually don’t go for realistic war time games and assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that anything with Tom Clancy’s name on it wasn’t worth my time. Yes. I am a game and book snob. And don’t get me started on music.

Once Splinter Cell was up on screen, I was singing a different tune. First off, it is a beautiful game. The voice acting is superb and although it seems a little Jack Bauer at times, the story piques my interest. Like Jack Bauer, Sam Fisher is a complete badass in both deed and word. He employs violence as a major interrogation tool, can clear an entire hanger of thugs and stalks his prey from the shadows. What’s not to like?!?

Fisher comes across as very agile and very deadly. The cover system, while not completely flawless, is really strong. By holding the trigger and aiming at highlighted cover points, Fisher can silently move from cover to cover without getting stuck on unwanted surfaces. Sometimes, the cover area you want does not highlight but there is usually a way to find another path. I find the the aiming/sniping behaviour is very forgiving and usually fair. This did not stop me from a couple of, “Come on! I shot that guy!” moments.
I also have to give the pace a big thumbs up. This is one of those games where you look up after a particulary intense session and realize two hours have passed. The tension vs action ratio is great. Also, there aren’t any in-game loads. Splinter Cell: Conviction does most of its loading during sweet cut-scenes. This makes for a fairly seamless experience. I find that the missions are clear yet challenging. I haven’t gotten “lost” yet. This is not to say I’m just breezing through. My Sam Fisher has definitely gotten shots to the face but this just makes me replay to mess up that dude that messed up my dude. dude.

There are plenty of gadgets and weapons that can be upgraded. Weapon upgrade points are earned by executing certain challenges like pulling 5 guys out of windows or sniping a certain amount of guys from the shadows. I like this type of reward system. I feel it encourages me to try actions that I might ordinarily wouldn’t. For example, if I know this one action will work, I will do that action as much as I can. But if I can get a bigger, better gun by executing a less tested move, I will definitely try it out.

Bottom line: Get Tommy to buy you Splinter Cell: Conviction. You won’t be disappointed!

Hey all! Americans will recognize today as the biggest drinking holiday of the year. Luckily, it is followed with the best hangover cure ever invented. Turkey and cranberry sauce, how I covet you.

Anywho, in celebration of the day that the Native Americans got royally screwed, here are some games that, I feel, have screwed the general gaming populations.  Here it comes. Some nominations for the worst Game Turkeys:

I know. I know. I really shouldn’t have had so much hope for a movie tie-in but I love me some Peter Venkman. This game had all the hooks: awesome voice talent, big game house budget and time, something that more immediate tie-ins never have. What was I expecting? Humor and the chance to fire a proton pack.  What did I get? Lame jokes and lamer game mechanics. Bummer town.

Gobble Score: Sawdust turkey chewed by Aunt Edna’s toothless maw.

The Simpsons Game is a bit trickier than just a simple write-off as another jerky turkey tie-in game. I have extremely fond memories of The Simpsons Arcade Game. That game ruled! Marge’s vacuum attack? Priceless! While the art was attractive, this game played awfully. Characters could barely interact with environments due to a shoddy control scheme. So what could be a pretty and surreal experience was decimated by the frustration of pressing a button that must be pressed, but for some odd reason physically cannot be pressed. D’oh.

Gobble Score: Coagulated Cranberry Jiggle.

Now I love me some Dante. What breathing lady wouldn’t? I was super excited to load this game up. I was super excited for a little Nero love. I was ready and receptive for all of it. That is until I realized that DMC 4 was the exact same game as DMC1-3. And Nero was a frustrating combatant. I was starting to get down on this series when the powers that be decided that it would be a good idea to re-fight all of the bosses you just fought and defeated again. But the fact that DMC was so locked into its formula just completely turned me off. As an aside, I loved Bayonetta. It had a vibrancy that DMC has lost.

Gobble Score: Uncle Jimmy passed out in the potatoes.

It is not a secret that I’m not so into Final Fantasy. I’m not so keen on turn-based strategy games. But I really, really want to be on the Final Fantasy train. The mythos seems so rich and artsy! I thought that this shooter would be a nice way for me to ease into the FF universe without submitting myself to the torture of turn-based malarkey. Good idea. Instead of torturing myself with epically slow “battles” I now get to deal with sloppy aiming, boring weapons and one of the most frustrating cameras I have ever dealt with. Needless to say, I still am on the outside of the FF party looking in.

Gobble Score: Fluffy puppy jello salad barf.

Lost Planet: Extreme Conditions might be the winner of the award for quickest hateful reaction. Honestly, I don’t think I clocked more than 30 minutes before I deemed this game unplayable. Perhaps I came to the series too late? Perhaps I should check out Lost Planet 2? I don’t know if I’m even interested….

Gobble Score: Trypto Coma

Happy Thanksgiving!

Or….not.

OK, so I guess it’s my turn to talk about Metroid.  Unlike Jess and Tommy, I don’t get a whole lot of time to myself with the TV which means I spend a lot of time on my DS and PSP.  The Metroid series has always been one of my favorite Nintendo properties. I consider the sidescrollers like Super Metroid and Fusion to be incredibly expressive and fluid.  I was not a fan of the Prime series, feeling that turning Metroid into a first person shooter was an error.  That said, when I saw the preview of Other M I knew I had to play it. I was excited that Yoshio Sakamoto was returning as creative director and my hope was that it was a return to classic Metroid with a twist. I bought the game soon after release but about 2 hours into gameplay my Wii started making some pretty horrible whirring noises.  It was as if the condition of my little white box declined along with my hopeful optimism.  Despite constant complaining from my wife and my own ears, I’ve gotten about 3/4 through the game but tomorrow I’m sending the old Wii back to nintendo for repairs  I’ll probably finish it when it comes back but I feel I’ve played enough to talk about the game.  The unbearable whirring had left me wanting more Metroid than what I had gotten.  It was time to break out Metroid Fusion on the old trusty GBA.

I’m not going to talk about Samus’s chattiness since Jess has thoroughly discussed this aspect of the game.  Suffice it to say I pretty much agree with her.  Avatars should be silent enough to allow players to fill them with their own essence.

What I am going to talk about is expressiveness in gameplay.  While playing both games at the same time, it struck me how much more expressive Fusion was than Other M.  So in thinking about this blog post I thought it might be interesting to explore what it means to be expressive in gameplay.  At its core, expressiveness in action games is about “proprioception”, the ability  to “feel” the edges of our body and also the ability to extend this “feeling” beyond our body.  Without this skill humans wouldn’t be able to learn how to drive cars or even walk without looking at our feet.  What’s the difference between a great sports car – let’s say a Lamborghini Gallardo and my dad’s 1976 Chevy Nova? it’s a collection of design details, superior engineering and craftsmanship that allow the driver to “feel” the boundaries of the car. Because of this, the driver knows how the car will react to every action as if the driver were controlling his or her own body.  The more of this “feel” that a driver has, the more expressive  he or she can be, and the same is true of a game.  So how does Metroid Fusion achieve this while Other M fails?

Controls

Game design is all about understanding the relationships that create systems within a game.  Those relationships exist not only within the ruleset that governs events on the screen but also between the player’s real world environment and the inner world of the game.  The same piece of hardware can either deliver incredibly expressive control or flatfooted clumsiness depending on the relationship between hardware and gameplay.

Both Other M and Fusion use the D-Pad to control Samus’ horizontal movement. Unfortunately, in Other M the D-Pad is also used to control Samus not only in the X direction but also in the Z direction.  This has the unfortunate consequence of confining Samus to a strange trajectory when hitting any of the diagonal directions (NE,SE,SW,NW) which usually results in an awkward stairstepping movement that is both annoying and ambiguous.  Ambiguity is the enemy of proprioception, because it blocks the player from predicting the movement of their avatar by feel alone.  If the player needs to do a little jig to get to where they want to go in the z dimension maybe it’s just not that important.  The other adverse and equally damaging side effect of  using the D-Pad to control Samus in the Z-direction is that you now lose the ability to squat or even aim your gun.  So since you can’t aim, the designers made the only compromise they could make which is auto-aiming.  This is important because it determines not only how levels will be laid out, but how boss battles will be structured and the quality of those interactions.

I’m not always adverse to auto-aiming.  I’m neither a masochist or a catholic so if I have to aim with an analog stick in 3D, I’d much rather the game put me out of my misery and use auto-aim.  An analog stick (like the one on the gamecube controller shown below) is a terrible way to aim.  Is it because analog sticks are a bad piece of hardware? Of course not, it’s simply the wrong relationship or mapping from hardware to gameplay.

The mouse or wiimote wand is much better suited to the task. Unlike the stick, there is a better relationship between the gesture of the player and the action in the gameplay because the resolution of the input device (mouse or wiimote) maps almost directly to the output device (the screen).  It’s the reason why Resident Evil 4 is far superior on Wii than it is on GameCube.

Which leads me to the next problem with Other M, which is the aiming view for shooting missiles.  The transition is jarring, though the developers do alleviate the transition by slowing time when going into this view, allowing the player to adjust to the new view.  Sadly, despite this technique I found my view spinning out of control half the time during the transition leading me to getting shot consistently in the first 10 seconds of every boss battle.  It confuses me because I’ve seen games go effortlessly from a 3rd person view to a first person view without it feeling so weird and jarring.  Whatever “feel” is accomplished in the 2D mode is completely lost when this disorienting transition happens.  Aside from the jarring transition, the actual act of aiming is incredibly disappointing.   As described above, consoles finally have a great way to aim on the screen in the way of wand devices like the wiimote, but why bother if the developers  take control away from the player by using auto-aim? There were actual instances in the game where I was trying to shoot something behind the auto-aim object in the foreground but couldn’t.  This lack of control in aiming both in 2D and 3D mode creates a disconnect between the player and the game, I literally could not “express” my intention of shooting an object that was clearly in my line of sight.  This is something that literally could not happen in Metroid Fusion.

Level Design

Level design can be used to create expressive gameplay or it can work to make the player feel frustrated.  Although the levels in Metroid Other M are quite beautiful, it seems like there are many areas in the game where there is a clear disconnect between what the graphics are communicating to the player and the underlying geometry that controls gameplay.  Note the image below.

Samus is in metaball state and just gone through a tunnel which leads here.  My eyes are telling me that Samus should be able to transform and stand up, but the hidden geometry of the level is a closed tunnel.  There are many situations of graphical ambiguity like this in the game, where the lack of consistency between visuals and gameplay serve to confuse the player.  Compare this to Metroid Fusion,where meaning is derived from the tiles that make up the graphics and there’s not a pixel out of place.

In conclusion, I did enjoy Other M, it’s a fun little title.  Unfortunately, it’s not a great game, but it could have been with two simple modifications .  First, by taking more care in mapping the controls more accurately to the gameplay  the player can be more expressive through the controls.  Second, by including more consistent if more minimalist graphics in the level design, the world would feel more “solid”.  The player would feel more free to express themselves in a less haphazard model of the world.  BTW, my Wii came back from Nintendo today.

If you are interested in learning more about game controls check out Steve Swink’s excellent book.