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2 Jun 06
Did you read Penny Arcade today? Amazing. Electronics are evil. That reminds me that we were advised to keep David away from all screen media until he's two. It's as though the screens are evil. His little Fisher Price phone has a screen that's supposed to teach him letters and numbers. Oh, we don't mean that as a screen. I may be tempting fate, but I've put some music on the Xbox 360 and let David play with controller to manipulate the visualizations. It fascinates him for about 45 seconds, then he's off to something else.
I wanted to let you know I've calmed down about the Playstation 3. I still don't like the price point. I still find the claim of value insulting. However, I also know it's not the end of Sony or console competition. Some Xbox fans have already declared victory. Amusing, but irrelevant.
There are enough first adopters out there who don't worry about money enough to fret over the price of the PS3. They'll sell out the first shipments. Then the games will start to come. It's just a matter of time until a must have PS3 title is out. Then there will be another and another and then a price drop. I'm pretty sure I'll end up owning the three consoles again. It's just a matter of when and how much I pay.
I think I was kind of looking forward to catching that PS2 excitement all over again. It's not happening, but there are plenty of great games to look forward to. Heck, I like the thought of Snake in Smash Brothers. Judging from the last version, I could be playing that game for a long time. Then the 360 is looking to have bright future as well. Things will look better if the new $60 price point fails to hold.
Sony still has a lot of questions to answer. When will games start looking better than the 360? What are the details of the new online network? What games will actually need to be on a Blu Ray disk? When will developers or anyone see final hardware (including controllers)? If they have some good answers, Sony will be just fine.
Obviously Sony wasn't exciting at E3, but our game of the week was. It's Supreme Commander (official site) from Gas Powered Games. Chris Taylor goes back to RTS genre to bring us a game on a scale not yet seen. You'll be fighting over whole land masses using huge forces composed of land, sea and air units. Coincidentally, there will be three factions as well. The controls are being streamlined to let you do complex tasks easily. Some of the improvements include automated speed control for coordinated attacks, configurable base commanders, transports that automatically carry units to the front lines and movable waypoints and patrol routes. Supreme Commander is one of those games that will make it hard to wait for 2007.
Jason
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1 Jun 06
I'm sure you were all hoping I'd follow up my look at Kingdom Hearts II with something exciting. I don't mean to disappoint. Yes, I'm looking at Rockstar's new game, Table Tennis. As you might expect, this will be brief.
I don't expect too many remember my previous sports rantings, but I suggested that they should be priced lower annually or be willing to sell roster updates for previous engines. I also suggested that the yearly quest for bullet points to justify the high prices ended up making the games feel watered down and less fun to play.
Rockstar apparently agreed somewhat with my arguments. They've come out with Table Tennis at a lower price point than most new releases, and they've given you a focused core gameplay. It's clear they didn't go for feature bloat. They just created a solid ping pong engine and a few characters that can play the game. Create a player? No. Mini games? No, unless you count the training mode. It's just table tennis.
But that's the thing. It's pure ping pong. It gets the feel, pacing, sights, sounds and even emotions right. The sound of a ripped shot is completely different than the sound of someone taking spin off with a dead paddle. You never feel out of control unless your opponent puts you there. It's perhaps the best example of a sports game getting core gameplay right.
Now they have a solid foundation. If they want to make a sequel, they don't have things to fix. If they add features with the same level of polish, it could become one of premiere sports franchises out there. I don't know if Table Tennis itself will catch on, but I hope the design philosophy will.
Jason
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31 May 06
It's back up time. I spent a lot of time today working on backing up everything on the site. Next up is everything on the computers. I hate doing it, but I hate losing data even more. The worst part is that I know I should use this time to get rid of some of the junk I don't need on my hard drives, but I never do. Well, at least I back up data.
Don't forget to stop by the forum and check out Torolf's latest story Here.
Strangely I want to talk about Kingdom Hearts II today. I know it's an action RPG with a rigidly defined story. That hardly seems appropriate for this site. However, it does some very interesting things that I feel will turn into trends in the future. I also think some of its design decisions will transcend genres.
Let's look first at what KH2 sets out to do. It tries to cram a Final Fantasy style metaphysical story into a universe that encompasses the worlds of Final Fantasy and those of many Disney movies. Each world is in the middle of its own story while merging with your story as well. The gameplay includes the standard action RPG, but adds a deeply customizable battle system (and item synthesis), a panzer dragoon style shooter, rhythm games and more mini games and boss battles.
Most of the worlds have two episodes in them as well. The worlds are the first trend I see. What gaming so often fails at is creating the sense of a living breathing world. By this I don't mean simply that there are lots of things going on. Lots of games have done that. No, it's more that the world existed before you arrived, will continue after you leave and characters act appropriately. Just think about all the great Oblivion stories. We're still impressed that characters get into fights without you being involved. Kingdom Hearts II ups this farther. Characters already have their motivations and planned actions. It's up to the character to fit into those expectations. Essentially the main quest for you is a short side quest for the characters you meet. Yes, you're out to save the universe again, but Pooh just wants some honey and Jack Sparrow just wants his ship back. Somehow all that works without feeling disjointed.
If Oblivion is the first trend, the second is Space Rangers 2. It's variety in gameplay to break up the action. Admittedly, not everyone wants to play Pooh minigames or have a shooter section. There's a corollary to this that states variety works because of the open ended gameplay. By not forcing you to do things in a certain order, you can customize your play session to match your mood. If you don't feel like doing a shooter section, you can go try a new episode in a previously visited world. By giving you options in order and gameplay, the play feels both in control and entertained. There's another key to that working though.
It's our last trend, variable depth. Think Civilization IV here. You can successfully play the game at various levels. You can play casually, dig into some of your favorite features, or power game everything. I think this is the sign of good design, but some reviewers seem to disagree. In fact, I think this is part of the reason for the mixed reviews of KH2. So many games force players to power game to survive the story, that some reviewers do it without thinking. That leads to the charge of the game being easy. Well, yes, if the game can be beaten by someone who never synthesizes an item or over levels or gets the best drive abilities, it will get easy for someone who does all of those and more.
Take the shooter sections for instance. To get through the game, you merely have to survive to the end of the level on the easy difficulty. Once you do you unlock harder difficulties. You can come back and try these with higher level ships or even customized or custom built ships to try to get every unlock and high score. None of that is require, but it's there if you want it. It's the same with combat, combination moves, drive forms, limits, equipment, synthesis and magic. There are deeper layers if you want to dig for them or you can ignore any or all of them. The game experience will change as you dig, but only gets unbalanced at the extremes.
So while there isn't a whole lot that is truly original in Kingdom Hearts II, they do some of the best borrowing and combining around. If they're cherry picking the best ideas in storytelling and gaming, maybe we should pay attention.
Jason
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30 May 06
I have one little Sword of the Stars blurb for you today. Martin asked me to pass on (his kind way of educating me) the size scale for SotS. How the game plays out tends to scale with the number of stars per player. I had four sides in my game and will probably continue to since it seems so natural. So 10 stars per player yields a tight, fast game. 15-20 will give a fairly normal game. Over 25 gives an epic struggle and over 40 will give you a very long game. As you can see my 150 star game was pushing that 40 limit. I think I'll be trying the other end of the scale next time.
I was asked why I do these little monologues and industry analysis when I could just be writing gaming stories. Well, it's simple. Small websites like this one tend to die when they stop being fun. So I write about things that interest me. I think the industry is in an amazing period of flux and creativity. That means near endless possibilities. Trying to weave through that is fun. But mainly, gaming is still a fun escape for me. I don't want to lose that. That's why I'm not good at grinding out reviews. I'd rather capture the full flavor of a game than worry about how close I am to the first on the net. It's the same with stories. If every gaming experience has to be written up and analyzed, it turns into a grind.
That's why I continue to work to build a community. If people set up online matches here, they might write up a particularly good game. Perhaps both sides will. If there are enough people writing here, no one is under pressure to come up with a great story. The best experiences will be the ones you write up. While you're waiting for those to come up, you can read what others are doing. You might even be inspired to try a new game.
So, in short, this place is about sharing what gaming means personally. For me, that's lots of different things. They all get reflected here. Hopefully, I occasionally make people laugh, think, smile or try something. Ideally, I'll even get some to write stories. If not, I'll continue to write when the muse hits or the readers demand (politely, of course). Feedback's always welcome.
Jason
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29 May 06
Memorial day is always a strange mix in America. The excitement of the start of summer is tempered by remembering our war dead. It's even more disturbing now when both sides of the current war are tempted to use the fallen as political weapons against their opponents. They deserve better than that. May God grant them peace and watch over their souls. I always get choked up hearing echo Taps. Good luck to all my friends still serving, especially those in harm's way.
I'm going to try to get the site back to normal this week. I'll have some E3 thoughts. I'll have my reconsidered Sony position. I'll probably talk a bit about Kingdom Hearts II, Table Tennis and Rise of Legends. I think we'll even have a game of the week again.
Thanks to everyone who's voted in the current poll. You've been quite kind. The forum is open if you have anything you'd like to discuss about the story or the poll.
I did get the Sword of the Stars screenshots up. They were awfully dark. I did my best to fix that, but I'm still not pleased with all of them. Don't mention the movies to me.
Jason
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