Curmudgeon GamerAfter the ugly Lost Planet port and no Dead Rising for the PS3, I feel a bit burned by Capcom. On the other hand, I can now kill about a dozen zombie birds with one stone:
- Resident Evil 4
- Umbrella Chronicles
- House of the Dead 2 & 3
- Dead Rising
- My older son's undying desire to play Mario Kart, Smash Bros., and/or Super Mario Galaxy.
If you ask me, gamers are a notoriously fickle bunch that hop around whatever niche fad is currently popular at any given time, flicking aimlessly around their singular objective like a moth to a flame - only this moth will threaten to kill you and make some sort of racist remark because you said whatever franchise he's currently cherishing isn't necessarily a divine blessing. This leads to some games being revered above and beyond the merit which caused their popularity in the first place. I would quite comfortably lump the original Ninja Gaiden into this category: a thumb-aching, testosterone-fuelled misogynistic charge that you'll enjoy playing but feel terribly embarrassed if a (hypothetically, as this is unlikely to happen to any of us) girl walked into the room when you were watching a cutscene.
The trouble is, Ninja Gaiden II has recently arrived and has reminded us that at the end of the day it's all just a game. People aren't happy with this.
There's lots of bandying around the word "cheap" to describe the whole affair. To some extent, this is true. Ninja Gaiden II is a victim of its own progress; in an attempt to appeal to the current trend of regenerating life bars and a greater sense of not dying every six seconds, your average encounter will end with your life bar filling up to a fair amount of its capacity. How, then, do Tecmo infuse their concoction with a sense of difficulty? By upping the amount of damage you'll be taking, and also turning the speed of the game all the way up to eleven. Things will fly at you in this game, and they'll take your life with it. But it's okay, you'll recover. Think Bruce Willis in Die Hard donning a skin-tight black ninja suit and you're in the right area. There's other things to consider, too. Money is now so easy to come by it's likely being fed intravenously into the game from the bank of Nintendo. There's also enough weaponry in the game that, come the denouement, you'll have enough stock to take on the in-game merchant at his own business.
All this adds up to create a different game from the Ninja Gaiden that came before. You can't blitz through a level without taking any damage and you can't cling onto your healing items like they're family heirlooms. You're going to be forced to use them. Maybe this takes some of the finesse away, but it creates a rougher, more brutal experience. Considering that limbs get lopped off in this game quicker I'll get killed in a game of Halo 3 online I can safety say that brutal is what the developers were aiming for. Every weapon and item in your arsenal is valuable and you're going to need to employ it all. There's also enough video evidence on the Ninja Cinema mode to prove that skill and tactics are still part of the game. The biggest flaw to Ninja Gaiden II is that, because of associations with its predecessor, it will be punished for trying out something new. That, and the Armadillo boss is a real sod.
Labels: curmudgeoning, fanboys, tecmo, xbox360
4. I've read about your interest in possibly working on an MMO. What is your next genre of game going to be? Are you going to be making a new kind of game in the future?
[Sid Meier's Answer:] I'm exploring lots of exciting ideas right now. A Civ MMO is a really intriguing idea and we're spending time thinking about how we could make it the fun addictive experience Civ players expect...
Please heavens no. I realize there are people who play Civ against each other, but it seems to me that "chess by mail" is the better metaphor for how Civ should be played than, well, Quake or an RTS game or, for the sake of picking a non-video game activity, basketball.
Perhaps there could be a Firaxis social network (though I hate the catchphrase) that encourages folks to find buddies that'll play Civ by email, but much more than that and you're creating a substantially different game. MMO does not lend itself to "the fun addictive experience Civ players expect".
And I'll not resist adding this tidbit, which anyone who wrote a post titled Civilization -- should be part of the curriculum five and a half years ago is nearly forced to share.
8. What is the most interesting 'story' you have heard from a school that is using Civ to teach students about history?
[SM's Answer:] It is pretty amazing how many teachers around the world are using Civ in the classroom to teach everything from history to communications to economics. We were hearing from so many of them that we decided to create a section on Firaxis.com called the Educator's Exchange which provides a place for teachers to share stories and ideas about using Civ in the classroom...
Quick Update: After reading through Bob's latest silent Sterno on that older post I linked to, above (even though I believe I've now managed to convince him to stop commenting on my posts), let me just clarify that the most intriguing defense for putting Civ into the classroom is that it is the perfect means of introducing the topic of circularity in the development of social mores on the grand political scale. That is, the history of *this* world is reflected in Civ's design, which then seems to "accurately" recreate that which inspired the game. Capiche? Maybe zakk was on to something when he mentioned SMAC? Nah. ;^D
Labels: Civilization, MMO, multiplayer, online
On the front of the GameCube box is a hand-made price tag. It says:
$49.99
** VINTAGE **
Labels: anecdotes, game stores, gamecube, nintendo
With Stuntman: Ignition, a sequel on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, the load times are gone. Two seconds are required to restart a stunt run, and I can indulge the game's invitation to perfectionism. It is also a lot prettier.
The PSN demo that went up last year was uninviting. The full game gives a better introduction and I'm enjoying it.
On the other hand, if you haven't played the game before and it tries to download the latest update, the system registers and error and drops back to the PS3 system menu. Playing once and restarting fixes that issue.
I'm not an impartial commentator on much, and I won't hide the fact that I loathe Phil Harrison's stupid bald head more than waking up in the morning and finding out that I'm out of milk. So when I'm just casually perusing the Internet and I find out that he's declaring that the single player way of life is over, I see red. Here's what he said to Eurogamer in some recent interview:
Alone in the Dark is a beautifully crafted single-player adventure game. I don't think the industry is going to make many more of those. I just don't think consumers want to be playing games that don't have some kind of network connectivity to them, or some kind of community embedded in them, or some kind of extension available through downloadable content.
Before we all start raiding the cutlery draw in an eager dash to perform DIY lobotomies by sticking forks through our ears (it's required to seamlessly integrate with the majority of Xbox Live players) it's probably worth mulling over what exactly Harrison is banging on about. No more beautifully crafted narrative adventures that unfold at a linear pace? I like a bit of Call of Duty 4 and Halo 3 online as much as the next guy, but the idea of never seeing a "beautifully crafted single-player adventure" again absolutely terrifies me. He can't be right, can he?
I hate to say it, but on some level I think he is. With news that even Resident Evil 5 wants to tap into the co-op trend, I definitely get a feel that the days of sitting on your own and enjoying something in a similar way as you would sit and enjoy a book are over. Social gaming is reaching a new epoch, so it's only a natural extension that everything tries to get on board. But, then, I think about it a little more. Harrison is pretty much just doing what he usually does and making a grand sweeping statement that declares something that is far from the truth. I presume he's basically predicting that everything will come with stuff like online scoreboards and uploadable replays. I don't think slapping a few of those in everything heralds the end of the "beautifully crafted single-player adventure".
Lovable beady eyed Harrison is hardly a prophet here. When I predicted that eighty percent of all games in the next two years would use a cover system after playing Gears of War for the first time, I didn't think I was making a clever and astute piece of social commentary: after spending most of my life playing videogames I was fully aware what a horribly derivative and unimaginative world they usually are. The rise in online co-op is probably just another piece that your average - and let's face it, Atari are pretty much the epitome of average - developer has drained from the popularity of Gears of War and Halo 3. At least those expensive focus groups are good for something, I guess.
And, not to give away the evil ideas, but why not sell an in-game guide as DLC over Xbox Live Marketplace or the PlayStation Store? For a modest (and I mean modest) price, it might be worth it not to have to get up from my comfy chair, truck two feet to the computer, and fire up GameFAQs.
Nintendo's recent ploy, in the UK at least, is to require reviewers to visit the 'Nintendo Flat' in London, a place where one can book slots to review titles for a period of time (depending on what slots are left over from the prioritised lifestyle mags and newspapers) from the comfort of one of the company's armchairs.Of course it's not just Nintendo -- the commentary in question is really about Rockstar and GTA4 -- but this really does bring the point home. I've come to rely more and more on blogs and NeoGAF poster comments before buying a game.
There was a time when I loaded up sites like GameSpot and IGN to check the latest reviews. I can't recall the last time I did that. Instead, I rely on word of mouth. Sometimes a demo suffices (Uncharted) or reputation (my MGS4 preorder).
Think of it as Robotron: 2084 played on a sphere with continuous waves of random enemies and difficulty that ramps steeply the longer you survive. The AI is completely ruthless, and willing to drop roughly eleventy billion rocks and lightning fast enemies on you at one time if that's what it takes to kill you. Oh, you will die cheap, humiliating deaths but the game is just fair enough to leave you thinking it's your own fault for dying.
Which is to say, I love it.
I thought SSHD was pretty much distilled arcade action, but I was wrong. This is better -- a lot better. I'm not sure I'll ever play the other modes ever again, much as I can't play Twisted Metal 2 ever again without homing napalm.
If you own a PS3 and love fast arcade action games in the vein of Robotron, you owe it to yourself to buy Super Stardust HD. Buy it with the Solo Pack upgrade and get one of the very best experiences the PS3 has to offer.
Labels: online distribution, ps3, psn
Now the phrase "wii-nner, wii-nner, chicken dii-nner" won't stop repeating in my head. Argh.I think I'll be able to do without the Wii for a while longer now...
Incidentally, links to this page.
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