Video Games – Page 5 – Chris Koerner

Most Anticipated Games from PAX East

A few weeks ago we traveled to Boston to attend PAX (Penny Arcade Expo) East. It was awesome and I’m still reeling from all the amazing things we saw. Kari had a great time, got tons of swag, and even won some pretty cool prizes.

While there I kept a running list of some of the games that I’m most looking forward to. In no particular order here are a few worth checking out when they release in the near future.

Zombie Tycoon II (PS3 and Vita)

This is by the very talented Frima Studios, makers of the throwback bullet hell shooter “A Space Shooter for Two Bucks” that came out on the PSP a few years back. As always, the production quality is top-notch with unique designs and animation. This is a RTS where you control a horde of zombies, a mobile base and a special monster as you try to not only take over a town, but keep the opposing zombies at bay. Kari and I played a round with her on the PS3 and I on a Vita. She liked it a lot. (We also won a PS Vita in a drawing, but that only sweetened the deal.)

Mercenary Kings (PC)

Paul Robertson (NSFW) is an insanely talented artist, known primarily for his over the top pixel art. He did the sprite work for the recent Scott Pilgrim game. It’s a 2D 4 player Metal Slug-esque shoot-em-up.

A.N.N.E. (PC)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dC6Re76NriA

Reminds me of Cave Story with some heavy and deliberate Super Metroid influences. The guys manning the booth were super cool and the playable version at PAX was promising. (are you noticing a trend of awesome retro gaming?)

Tearaway (PS VIta)

Media Molecule, the genius behind Little Big Planet have a new game coming out this October that revolves around a little messenger in a land made of paper. You have to help guide him along his journey using all sorts of input methods. Not only an amazing looking game, but their booth was top-notch as well. The booth is made of paper for a game about a world made of paper where you can print out objects in the game with paper – infinity.

Super T.I.M.E Force (PC)

Yeah, nuff said.

Mighty Switch Force 2 (3DS)

I really enjoyed the first one on the 3DS. Here’s to hoping this one is bigger and badder than the first. You play as Patricia Wagon, who in this go round is now trying to save the reformed criminals from the first game with her unique powers. Wayforward, the makers of this game, are also in charge of the remaster of the SNES classic Ducktales!

Monsters Invade (iOS)
This is on the list mainly for the crazy inflatable they were handing out. LOLWUT?

http://instagram.com/p/XLRU9Wo-Sm/

This list doesn’t include tons of big triple-A titles like Hawken, Luigi’s Mansion – Dark Moon and The Last of Us. These should be at the top of everyone’s list already.

I should also mention a few games that were on display that I’ve already play and recommend as well.

Major Magnet (for iPhone)

Beautiful animation, spot-on chiptune soundtrack and the level designs take me back to Sonic and the 16 bit Sega Genesis. The devs are two young guys who were nice to talk to and I wish them all the best.

Ridiculous Fishing (also for iOS)

Imagine an arcade-y fishing simulator where you have to see how deep you can cast your line. Then imagine that you have to catch as many fish on the way back up. Then, on top of that, imagine that as you reel the fish from the water you have to shoot them as fast as you can. Oh, and all the imagery is in weird 45 degree parallelogram shapes. Did I mention that your lure has a chainsaw attached to it? It’s, well, ridiculous.

Oh, and anything by Double Fine, including the release of Brutal Legend for PC!

My First Pixel Art

My daughter and I spent Saturday editing sprites to make our own Pokemon. Her idea, I just helped her use the pencil and select tool in Photoshop.*

Above is a Pikachu with Keldeo’s tail…actually they all have Keldeo’s tail. The yellow Reshiram is our centerpiece.

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*and some Match Color for fun.

SSX Review

SSX is the most recent in the long running series of over-the-top snowboarding games from EA. I’ve been playing the SSX games since Tricky¹ and while there are some that I love more than others², I continue to be a fan of the series. The most recent incarnation is a solid attempt to reboot the series, but is not without some flaws. Flaws which if you’re just now getting into the series might put you off the series.

As someone who’s played the earlier games, the controls take some getting use to. Even the option to use ‘classic’ controls isn’t an exact 1 to 1 to the layout of Tricky or SSX 3.³ The true classic controls would let you use the digital d-pad to pre-wind your flips and spins ahead of a jump. Holding right on the d-pad would lock your character in as you approached a jump. In order to maximize the effect, you’d also hold down on the jump button (X on the PS2/3) as you approach.

In SSX, the default controls heavily leverage the analog sticks, which I’m sure seemed like a good idea on paper. Left for spin/flips when in the air, left and right movement on the ground. In practice, it becomes rather frustrating. For movement you’d want to have the gradient of control analog gives you, but for precise input, such as tricks, it seems a little too loose and muted.

Another small change that is related is the pre-wind for jumps, spins and flips. In the previous games you’d have to line-up ahead of a approaching jump many seconds before you actually reached the apex of the ramp. In SSX the pre wind is not as necessary and if you try to pre-wind too soon your character will veer off course 9 times out of 10.

For an old-timer to the series I would love to just have my digital d-pad, face and shoulder buttons for tricks, spins, boost and jumps. Let me use the left analog for steering and leave the right analog out of it.

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My second biggest beef beyond the controls (which I hope I can adapt to over time) would be the addition of the Deadly Descents.

From what I understand, during development the title was “SSX: Deadly Descents” and the element of ‘deadly’ was to be a prime focus for the game. There were to be these super harsh tracks with all sorts of obstacles. They changed the title during development and the ‘deadly descents’ became 8 boss peaks, each with a kind of hokey and unnecessary gimmick along with taxing and honestly un-fun tracks. These 8 peeks, all required to enjoy the single-player ‘story’⁴ detract what the game is about. Undoubtably EA spend lots of money on these tracks and as they progressed away from “Deadly Descents” to just SSX they couldn’t just cut them. I wish they would have.

One deadly descent has you press an additional button every few seconds in order to keep oxygen flowing to your player. Doing this on some of the more tame tracks would prove an additional challenge. Doing it on the unforgiving and frustrating “Deadly Descents” proves to be maddening. These tracks are not SSX tracks. It’s not easy to create a solid line downhill during a race, or to create a series of never-ending tricks in trick events. It’s sadistic when you add in the super dark tracks that need headlamps or wingsuits to glide like a flying squirrel.

To compound things, instead of having a reset button to reorient your character in the occurrence of falling off the track (which you will do often as these tracks have more blind spots than an 18 wheeler) you have the ability to rewind time. This time rewind feature has multiple penalties rendering it totally useless and just as frustrating as crashing. First you rewind time, but your opponents continue on unabated. Second, you can rewind, but will break whatever combo you had going. Third, the severity of the slope in most tracks will have you rewinding numerous times, compounding the existing two penalties. In most cases it’s better/easier to just restart the race from the beginning.

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Another design decision is the absence of synchronous or traditional multiplayer. No jumping on Xbox Live to play head-to-head against your friends – much less any form of local multiplayer.⁵ All multiplayer features amount to racing ghosts and best times of other people. It’s not all doom and gloom with the multiplier. There’s a very primal competitiveness to besting your friends times and scores, but in 2012 I would think generic old multiplayer would be a given. Like windshield wipers.

The other hokey aspect of multi-player (and single player as well, the line is blurred as far as levels and unlocks are concerned) is the progression mechanism for unlocking new equipment. New boards and suits appear randomly in the store upon each visit, and even with minor loading times, it becomes tedious to determine if what you’re buying is any better than what you have. To add the illusion of customization, outfits for your characters offer nothing more than palette swaps. None of which appear that appealing and none that impact gameplay.

The unlocks are a little Zyngafied as well. You unlock stuff by earning gold and the crap you unlock is random, so you can’t save up to buy cool gear, you just have to get lucky in the store with random stock.

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That said, I do like it. It’s not as good as 3, most of the tracks are either too frustrating to be enjoyable or to bland to be memorable as in Tricky and SSX 3. As a long-time fan it’s a solid game and so close to it’s predecessors that I can taste it.

It’s apparent that there’s an influence from the Call of Duty generation to make games more gritty, dark or realistic, but SSX is the last game where this makes any sense. This is a series that has been all about being over the top with crazy characters, crazy tricks and crazy tracks. None of which exist in this game. Well maybe the tricks. Barely.⁶

It’s SSX in HD, it could be better, and I hope they make another with some lessons learned.

http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/ssx

The Speed of Things

First, a prediction. This generation of hand-held consoles will be the last.⁷

How can the multi-year spans between console releases compare to the yearly improvements of devices like the iPhone and iPad? Apple claims that the iPad 2 is 9x more powerful than it’s predecessor. In benchmark testing Anandtech confirms – yeah pretty much.

While it’s early in the life of both the iPhone and iPad, it’s hard to imagine that future incarnations would not continue this increase in graphical prowess.⁸

Year after year the iOS devices continue to improve while companies like Sony and Nintendo are in a cycle of releasing a device and then supporting it for a few years. The DS was released in 2004 and just this month is being replaced by its successor, the 3DS. The PSP has also been around a while with an original release in 2005. Its successor, the Next Generation Portable or NGP, is planned for a late 2011 release.⁹

According to this article from Business Insider the iPad 2 is “equal to NGP in terms of raw graphical horsepower”. Wait, that can’t be right. Sony’s much heralded next-generation portable that won’t be released until November is only equal to a device that is in consumer’s hands right now?

I’m not trying to over-emphasize graphics, there are many other factors when it comes to an enjoyable gaming experience. You can ding the iPad for lack of physical controls or the DS for not having many mature games. While smart intelligent readers such as yourself realize this, there are tons of consoles bought due to graphical fidelity over gameplay or library selection.

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The genesis of this post came to me while laying in bed this evening. I was playing Real Racing 2 on my iPhone 3GS and was struck by a few things. 1) How well this game looked on a 2-year-old phone. 2) How smoothly it ran – no stuttering and load times were all but nonexistent. 3) How well the controls worked on a device without buttons.¹⁰

Next to me were a Nintendo DS and a Sony PSP, both loaded with a few top-notch games. Yet, here I was playing a racing game on my cell phone – a game that was about $25 cheaper than similar titles on its console brethren.

So the iPad 2 is as fast as the NGP, which won’t ship for another 9 months and the old cycle of developing a console and waiting a few years to improve is dead. Or dying. Develop, a website about game development noted that next-gen handheld console budgets have tripled. How much are the games going to cost? $50!?

I’ve been able to play the same games over the last 4 generations of iOS devices with out a hitch. In some cases the games are even improved on newer hardware. Meanwhile DS games are fuzzy on the new 3DS and all of my UMD games for the PSP will have to be re-purchased when the NGP is released. :-/

From one perspective, not only are the graphics a huge win, but also the financial and vitality aspects of this new breed of gaming devices.

Photo by sneeu – Licensed under Creative Commons

My Life in Gameboy Time

A few years back I upgraded to my Nintendo DS Lite and sold my silver Gameboy Advance SP. I wanted to keep my SP and it was a great piece of hardware, but alas I had to figure out a way to cover some of the cost of the new DS. Off to eBay it went and I kept all 50 of my old Advance games. (I was able to justify keeping them due to the DSes’ backwards compatibility – even if I never played them that much.)

Recently I found my old Gameboy Color (Check out that radical Kiwi color!) and started playing the new DS Pokemon games with my 7-year-old niece. By finding my old Color I could play that generation of games natively on the original(ish) hardware. I noticed that I could not do this for my Gameboy Advance titles. This got me thinking about my SP and how it was such a great little handheld.*

Jackie and I did some searching on craigslist and eBay and found a SP for cheap. Since then, I’ve been looking through all my old games and showing them to my daughter. I came across a copy of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and noticed my old save game stated that over sixty-five hours where logged.

Wow! I don’t remember playing that much of this one game, but this had me thinking. Imagine if I added up all the saved play-time from each of the 50 games. What would I end up with?

This:

That’s right, I’ve clocked in over 318 hours into my Gameboy Advance. Other interesting stats:

I only completed 17 games out of 50.
A substantial majority of my games don’t track the time played – 28 to be exact.
Looking at the year of release – 2002 is the most popular.
Role-Playing games make up the majority of the games that do track time.

I can’t believe I soaked so much time into this generation of handheld games. To make it even more mind-blowing here’s a few additional things to remember. This was just my handheld console. I also had my PS2 and Gamecube during this time as well. Additionally a large percentage of my GBA games don’t have time tracking. Big games like Zelda and the Mario titles don’t show you how long you’ve played. Imagine if I were to add those in. Lastly, this doesn’t track all the times I’ve saved before a challenging part of the game then died!

So in closing I’d have to say this is a great example of how this was such a great generation of games and I encourage you all to dust off those old consoles and give em’ another spin.

*And a great generation of games. Both Metroid titles, the 3 Castlevanias, Golden Sun Megaman Zero, I could go on.