Retrofest Continues November 25, 2008

I finally finished Drakkhen, and I must admit I’m a bit relieved, though also proud of myself for sticking with it until the end this time. I feel accomplished. The best part of the game was being amused by the incoherent text, which actually was pretty good entertainment. The music wasn’t bad, and there were times when I thought the game could have been poignant if the designers had put a little more work into drawing players in, making it personal, and making us care about the world. I wonder if Drakkhen II/Dragon View is any good.

I also finished Super Ghouls ‘n’ Ghosts properly. It’s worth a mention that this game seems to have been made by sexist developers. There’s a status ailment that turns your character into a girl, rendering him almost helpless– much in the vein of Bunny Link from Zelda 3, but misogynistic. The princess is also even more objectified than usual; beating the game gets you her measurements; and this in an age when there were plenty of female video game characters out there who could do as much as the male ones, like Samus and SMB2’s Princess Toadstool. I’m put in mind of all the media hype of game companies trying to make games for girls– those games usually suck, and any serious female gamer is more likely actually playing “boys’ games”, but developers seem to overlook this fact. Instead of assuming girls want to play a special different kind of game designed just for them, perhaps developers could try assuming that girls are playing the default games as well as boys, and not put in sexist things. I bet that would go further to address the gender imbalance in gaming than any amount of pink consoles or Barbie’s Little Mermaid Horse Race Babiez games. I know quite a few female gamers, and they all choose their games by whether they’re fun, not by whether the box is pink.

Am now playing Flashback: The Quest For Identity. I remember getting this game pretty late in the SNES era, when I already had a PSX and everything, and I think I wandered off to play something else as soon as I got stuck, which was within the first ten minutes. I think my attention span for video games was at an all-time low in that era; with Sony on the map, suddenly there were many more games available than I could ever keep up with, I could afford to buy more of them, and I couldn’t play them as fast as they were accumulating on my shelf. I wasn’t used to budgeting my time with only the games I really liked, and I was a bit overwhelmed.

Holiday weekend coming up. Anyone playing anything big over the weekend? (Or am I the only one who schedules the perfect time to immerse myself in certain games weeks in advance?)

I Left My Magical Item In Playthrough Two November 20, 2008

I’ve continued my run of playing through old SNES games as ROMs, because it’s nice to revisit nostalgia for both the individual games and the feel of the whole system, and also because I feel a sense of accomplishment finishing something that I never previously stuck with. I am using save states and walkthroughs, so it’s no great accomplishment of skill, but I like to feel that I’ve explored the whole game and not left it hanging halfway through. To me, that’s more important than proving my skill, at least for most games. The theme of today’s post, however, is endings that are far inferior to the rest of the game.

So I finally finished Jurassic Park, which I’d previously mostly rented but had nostalgia for. It’s comprised of two distinct parts: indoors, where the camera is 3-D, and outdoors, where it’s top down. The indoor part is rather easy since you can take out most threats before they react to you, and healing items and ammo respawn whereas enemies don’t. So the only part that’s physically difficult, reflex-wise, about the game is the outdoor segments, where you are at a huge disadvantage because the dinos all move faster than you do and many of the most deadly ones run out of hiding when you get close.

The reason why this game can take a long time to complete if you don’t know it well is the complexity of the maps. It’s the sort of game where you can easily get lost, especially indoors, but there is no map– you have to map it yourself, or hold it all in your head. I’m pretty good at these things if I take them out methodically, but I did get lost a few times; I didn’t use the walkthroughs for maps, but rather just to tell me where to go next. I did feel accomplished when I eventually finished the game– no thanks to the ending, which consisted of a bad zoom out of a map that’s more poorly-rendered than anything else in the whole game, and a message saying, “Congratulations you have escaped Jurassic Park.” Woo hoo.

After that– because I only want to devote so much time per day slugging through Drakkhen– I started up Super Ghouls ‘n’ Ghosts. I had thought I’d never played it on the pak, even though I had it, because I couldn’t remember it at all; but once I started playing I realised I had most definitely played it a little. There were things I don’t remember and think I probably would have recalled had I seen them, but I also do distinctly remember some other things. Perhaps some of them are similar to other games?

At any rate, I know I didn’t complete it. I would have remembered THAT ending, such as it were– the ending where the princess says that to beat the final boss you need to replay the entire game. At a higher difficulty level. What? Okay, it’s a short game, and the first time through it isn’t terribly hard, but talk about a cheap trick. She seems to have dropped her magical bracelet in hundreds of places throughout the second playthrough of the game, not just in level 1; couldn’t we just backtrack a little to get it? Sigh.

Rusty, Dusty Swords November 10, 2008

I’ve been home sick, so I loaded up some old ROMs of SNES games that I hadn’t played since childhood.

Dragon’s Lair is a game I once rented and couldn’t remember the title of; I knew it was something that sounded generic, but that didn’t help me. I had really thought the title had “hero” or “knight” or something in it, because it was far more about the knight than it ever was about the dragon, whom I never got far enough in the game to see. In retrospect, it isn’t quite as fun as I’d thought it was, but it isn’t terrible either. The fact that the hero is a comically dorky knight with a grating high-pitched scream was lost on me when I was young, along with the bizarre fact that on the overworld map he is basically a head on a walking pair of shoulders; I did not remember these things standing out in my mind, oddly enough.

I hear that the NES version is terrible, but the SNES version seems to have fixed many of the flaws, so it is just moderately okay. I think that my prior attachment to and interest in this game must have been based largely on the fact that it was a somewhat fun platformer that had a medieval theme. And also that it existed, because as a kid in the SNES days, that was often enough.

Drakkhen is a game for which that wasn’t enough. I remember buying it only to be very disappointed that it wasn’t the type of JRPG I was used to; we took it back to the store the next day and exchanged it for something else. It’s actually slightly better than I remember, though; in my memory all I did was wander around lost and drown a whole bunch of times, but it’s not quite that bad; it just requires patience and frequent checking of the map/compass. There is a dull sort of disconnect between myself as a player and my generic party members, who have no personality and no interactions. Not only do they not talk to each other, they don’t even talk to the plot characters; they’re just a band of silent heroes being driven from one very simple plot point to another. Add to that the fact that you don’t fight battles, but simply sit back and let the AI do its thing with whatever equipment and commands you’ve set, and I can see why it was a huge disappointment when I was a kid and a video game purchase was a big deal.

Still, the music is good, and there is a stark epicness to it as well as a feeling that this would more closely resemble a real adventure in a medieval land than the usual game. I may never get to feeling like my party members are real characters, but I could imagine developing an interest in the world and its legends and scenario.

I can’t say that either of these games are really gems, but I’m glad to be able to pull up something I have only dim memories of and take another look at it. I’m so grateful that emulators and ROMs make it possible for me to load them up on a whim, when otherwise I might never have had the resources to pursue something like this just out of curiosity when I don’t own the pak or a working system. I love technology.

Failcat Causes Fail November 6, 2008

The world keeps turning. I’ve started practicing for Super Mario World speed runs. After completing a few runs with abysmal times, I began to understand that I was wasting a lot of time being cautious. If I play recklessly I might screw up, but if I don’t then my time will be better; on the other hand, if I screw up even once then I’ll have to start over from the beginning.

So I have a lot of practice ahead of me. Last night I nearly completed a decent run, but I died near the end of Bowser’s castle because my cat decided to come over and headbutt my hands while I was playing. She didn’t mean any harm by it, of course, but it was rather frustrating. Back to the start screen for me…

Incidentally, The Backloggery is a site that may be of interest. Although ostensibly for cataloguing one’s game collection for one’s own benefit, I wonder if it will become the seed of a social networking site for gamers. I wouldn’t mind that.

Can We Ease The Pain Of Those Who Lost? November 5, 2008

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to bring you a non-game-related post, because I have something important to say.

Yesterday, California voted to outlaw gay marriage, even though gay people were already legally getting married and everyone could see they weren’t hurting anyone. It’s really sad: all those people going around congratulating themselves on breaking thousands of people’s hearts. And because it’s a minority group, they think it’s okay.

If you’re one of those people who just lost your rights, you’re probably hurt– not just because you lost them, but because 5.2 million people apparently don’t think you deserve them. If you have a partner, you’re probably hurt that more than half the people in your state don’t think your relationship is worth respecting. And if you’re not hurt about those things, I’m surprised, because a whole lot of people just did a really nasty, hurtful thing to you.

I’m not millions of people all by myself, but if it helps even a little, I care. I respect your relationships just as much as I respect any straight relationship– maybe more, since your relationship is obviously worth enough to you that you’ll put up with being disrespected for its sake, which you can’t say of many straight relationships. I wish you could get happily married if you want to. I’m just one person, but if I met you and heard about your situation, I’d tell you how much I want the best for you and really hope that everything works out for you even though you were just dealt a nasty blow yesterday.

If you’re in a loving relationship of any kind, I love that you love each other, because that’s a really good and important thing. If one person’s caring can alleviate the hatred of millions, even a little, then I want you to have mine.

The Price Of Keeping Up October 22, 2008

Comments on my prior blog entry about the price of games have me thinking. There are at least two upcoming PS3 games that I would love to purchase (The Last Remnant and Heavy Rain), and various others that I’d love to give a spin. It’s gotten to the point where, if the PS3 were the price of the average console, I would say it’s time to buy one. But– ouch. The price difference takes it from a range where I’d easily choose to purchase it, into a range where it’s not as easy of a decision for me. If Sony didn’t charge an exorbitant price for their console, I would shell out for it right now. Would they rather risk that I not do so? This is the direct impact of their decision, which they may have thought wouldn’t matter that much. Right here, right now, it is mattering: I definitely want one, but I won’t just run out and buy one now.

I suspect that because the Playstation caters more towards the older sector of the gaming crowd than the kids, Sony thought they could set a high price since it is a “mature” console. A high price for a working adult is more than a high price for a child, it’s true– but what they may have overlooked is that the price is simply a lot. Even without the downturn in today’s economy, the average American would have to be serious about gaming to buy a PS3.

Would Super Mario Bros. 3 alone be worth $100? I believe so, given what it delivers– but perhaps not to someone, even a serious gamer, who hasn’t played it. When buying a new console, gamers take the risk that there might not be any games on the console that captivate them enough to make it worth the price; perhaps they’ll neglect it and play mostly on some other console. It’s a lot of money down, betting that the reward will be worth the price. Even though there’s a good chance that the bet will pay off, how much money does the average gamer want to stake on that risk? There’s a certain price that gamers are used to staking; when that abruptly rises with no more guarantee of payoff than their usual price, it asks them to put more down for the same quality difference as they always get.

Maybe I’m biased because I’m so used to handheld games right now, so I’ve been buying less expensive games, but I feel like I’m getting just as much bang for fewer bucks that way. On the other hand, I’m going through DS games so much because it’s my only current-generation console, and it’s getting more releases than my old systems right now. The galling thing is that I don’t care a whit about graphical superiority– I just want to be able to play lots of fun new games, and it won’t be long before my TV consoles are obsolete.

The Worst of All Good Things October 19, 2008

Occasionally, when I blog about games such as Hotel Dusk or MillionHeir that I find to be not particularly great, I find myself thinking, This game isn’t so bad. After all, I did want to finish it. And yet when it doesn’t win a place in my heart, my primary focus is on my frustrations and its flaws, perhaps because the gaming experience is inherently designed to make an enemy of the player. Getting stuck, getting frustrated, wandering around lost looking in all the wrong places: these are all part of gaming, and something would be missing without them. But players learn to think of these parts of the game as obstacles that get in their way, rather than as a cherished part of gameplay– it’s part of the attitude of tackling an enemy, and tearing the obstacles down is part of the triumph of success.

Sometimes I enjoy a game that is mediocre for the heck of it, for the satisfaction of finishing it and exploring all of it, even if it isn’t the greatest hit since Super Mario Bros 3. But often there isn’t much to say in its favour because the good part was very simply that it was a playable game, whereas there are plenty of things to criticise because games inherently throw negative things at players so that there’s something to overcome.

Perhaps I should give the games I play a rating, or at least a “recommended/not recommended” status. The trouble with that is that it’s usually far more complex. Recommended for who? Rated with what baseline? I’ve tried to stick to descriptions, but that still leaves me feeling that I’ve only conveyed part of the picture. Gaming is a holistic experience that’s very hard to break down. In the end, I think gamers just have to see for themselves.

Simulation: Bored and Unhappy October 17, 2008

Hotel Dusk is the closest thing to an old point-and-click adventure game that I’ve seen on a console. It’s certainly atmospheric, but the atmosphere doesn’t work well for a slow-moving game like this one.

When the gameplay isn’t fast-moving or exciting, such as a point-and-click where one has to take time to investigate everything, there has to be something engaging about it to keep the player interested anyway. It could engage the player emotionally, or by being very unusual, or by being stunningly beautiful, or via humour and delight, or any number of other ways; but it does vitally need something to keep the player from wandering off, to incite them to pick the game back up later on, to wade through slow-scrolling dialogue boxes or accidental repeated messages, and to keep playing even when they’re stuck because they want badly enough to succeed. And Hotel Dusk fails at this.

In keeping with the crime game genre that’s been so popular lately, it’s got a film noir atmosphere and involves a lot of searching for clues. The problem is that the film noir atmosphere may be romantic, but it’s laid-back and slow-paced, which can be problematic for a game that already plays slowly. Film noir also tends to be emotionally detached, with protagonists who ignore or dislike their own emotions, and a supporting cast that we only get to see from the outside, usually in an off-putting and harsh light that tends to focus on their flaws. The world is rarely beautiful; instead it focuses on unpleasant realities and the ordinariness of even the most dramatic events. Translate this into a game, and you get a boring world full of unsympathetic people, in which your ultimate goal is to solve a mystery that no one wants you to care about. Film noir detectives aren’t fun to roleplay because it isn’t actually fun to be one.

Now, I like point-and-click adventures, I like exploring game worlds in detail, and slow-moving gameplay usually isn’t a problem for me. But when the game isn’t a place that’s fun to putter around in, I just don’t have enough incentive to keep sinking more time into the game, or to persist when I’m stuck. The sum of all this is that Hotel Dusk is an impressive simulation of being bored in a hotel, and that is not something I want to experience in a game.

Sweet Mother of Eagleland! October 15, 2008

Holy moly. I’d heard rumours of a Mother 3 translation patch, but I never got my hopes up because things like this so often fizzle out and don’t come to fruitition. And suddenly, the next thing I hear about it, it’s done! I simultaneously can’t wait, and yet want to queue it until I can give it my full attention. Such a dilemma.

In other news, I’ve had a busy weekend, but I’ve been poking at an assortment of things: a second playthrough of the latter two-thirds of Ar tonelico to follow a different plot fork, an ambivalent affair with Hotel Dusk, and Final Fantasy IV DS. I’ll probably have something to say about Hotel Dusk soon, but I’m carefully saving up my thoughts on Final Fantasy IV until I’ve finished it– that game has been close to my heart for nigh on sixteen years now, and my reaction to this release won’t be certain till the ending credits play.

No Word In Hymmnos For “Wait” October 2, 2008

I want to clarify some of what I said about Professor Layton and the Curious Village. I said that the plot was “kid-simple”, but in retrospect I feel I may have given the wrong impression. It’s not that it’s dull or a bad plot, but rather that it’s easy enough for a child to understand, and some of the characters’ motives are the sort of motives you get in children’s cartoons; one of your first tasks is to find someone’s missing pet cat, Layton often reminds his young apprentice to be a gentleman, and there’s a bad guy whose entire motive seems to consist of being The Villain in a “Curses! Foiled again!” sort of way. Having finished the game, though, I certainly found the story satisfying for what it was. It doesn’t matter that it wasn’t a realistic adult story because it certainly wasn’t trying to be, and the plot resolution was just creative enough to feel like a fitting end. I hope I did not give an unduly negative impression of it in my earlier post by skimming over this detail. In contrast to MillionHeir, or, say, Kurupoto Cool Cool Stars, it certainly delivered plenty.

On another note, I seem to have gotten another of my friends hooked on Ar tonelico, simply by showing him the beginning. Again I say that it is a shame that no one has heard of it, because it really is a quite excellent RPG. It started out mildly surpassing my expectations and ended up far surpassing them. If only Atlus would promote their games a little more, this could have been a major hit instead of a very niche cult classic. Ar tonelico 2 is apparently coming out in the US in December, and I’ve already pre-ordered from the company’s website. Get it while it’s so hot it’s still in the oven. After all, there’s no word in the game’s conlang for “wait” (a fact that really amuses me, since it’s also a dating sim.)