Banditos! Banditos! Banditos!

LostWinds

Here's a review of LostWinds, a nice prize at the bottom of the WiiWare cereal box.  It's exactly what I want to see from WiiWare: small, creative games that use the Wii remote like a mouse.  In coming years, the Wii remote's ability to simulate a mouse will bring in more independent developers who don't want to make one more Asteroids clone for Xbox Live Arcade.  It's less intuitive than a mouse, but it's closer to one than any other controller.  Anyway, give the LostWinds website a look, it's a charming game.  Even though it's a bit short, it presents several fun ways of using wind to toss this cute little kid around his adowable wittle viwwage.  Er, that's "village."

Technorati Tags: LostWinds, WiiWare, Wii, GWJ

Audiosurf

Friday's Perspectives article, Audiosurf,  GWJ.  Linkety linkety link.  Audiosurf will be one of those games I can show to people who don't like games.  Wii Sports is another.  For people who like music, or jumping around getting exercise, these types of games are worth a hundred Halos or even Rock Bands.  You need to make the game not just accessible, you need to stop thinking of it as a game.  Only people who like games are willing to even pick up a game.  Let games be small, diverse, and inclusive, and the world will stop blindly hating them.  The world doesn't need a hundred Halos anyway.

Technorati Tags: Audiosurf, Gamers with Jobs, GWJ, links, brevity

Questionaut, Machinarium, Neologisms

Check out Questionaut, as reviewed here, for an easy educational quiz and a nice bite-sized bit of the old Amanita Design magic.  I've loved their stuff since Samorost, and now they're working on a full length adventure game called Machinarium.  Questionaut screen shown here, Machinarium below.  Lovely.  I can't wait.

Amanita's Jakub Dvorský discusses Machinarium a bit in this IndieGames interview.  In it he says he's "tired" of 3D realistic games, and has no plans to make a 3D adventure game.  Since his games appear to be designed with an eye towards art, then puzzles, then story, without any focus on "action," his attitude makes sense.  Adventure games don't do well with 3D realism.  At first glance, I thought that Machinarium picture was concept art, but in fact it's an actual screenshot.  The game will look just like that, like a hand-crafted work of art.  For that matter, it'll look like all the other Amanita games, because they've really nailed down a distinctive style.

Compare that to 3D worlds, which can look imaginative or naturalistic but almost never appear hand-crafted.  Most 3D games don't look like sculpture or art installations.  That would be pointless -- they would just be sub-par sculpture.  Real-life textures are always slightly better.  But a 2D game can look like and essentially be a drawing or painting, well-framed and full of subtle details.  Dvorský, animator Vaclav Blin, and the rest of Amanita Design manage to pull it off with every game they create, and as long as they're still crafting games, the 2D adventure will never die.  Also, painting and sculpture will probably limp along, too, for what it's worth.

Technorati Tags: Questionaut, Machinarium, Amanita Design, Jakub Dvorsky, Vaclav Blin, art, games, games as art, art as games

No More Heroes

So I didn't link to the No More Heroes article yet?  Better do that before it gets stale.  I'll post something else about it here, later this week.  It'll be a little less reviewy and a little more thinky, without neglecting the slashy slashy otaku sexy.  (If you say that fast, over and over, it sounds like the world's worst techno song.)

Technorati Tags: No More Heroes, Gamers with Jobs, GWJ

Grow Cube

Everyone knows the Grow series of Flash games, right?  Grow Cube is a particularly cute one, very lively.  Check it out if you haven't already.  One thought I didn't mention in the Act Casual piece is that it's an odd idea to create a little "growing garden" in a Flash game, as you can't save your progress and it all disappears, unless you leave that browser window open for your entire life.  (I don't recommend that.)  Well, real gardens don't last, either.  Every spring I go out and buy a bunch of stuff for my small garden.  I can't believe I have to go to the store to purchase dirt.  Supposedly it's better dirt.  It comes in a bag.  I can't use the dirt in the yard for my garden, oh no.  Have you seen that stuff?  It's filthy!   Screw you, dirt industry.  I'm on to your game.

 

Technorati Tags: Grow Cube, Eyezmaze, Gamers with Jobs, GWJ, dirt

Anika's Odyssey

Just a little game, with a little Act Casual review.  But, however, it's an adooooorable little game.  I liked it a lot, and I'd love to see Tricky Sheep do a sequel.  Fun, Flash, and free.  Anika's Odyssey, here.

Technorati Tags: Anika's Odyssey, Tricky Sheep, Kongregate, Gamers With Jobs

SimCity Societies Link

SimCity Societies article, at Gamers With Jobs, right here.

Technorati Tags: SimCity Societies, Gamers With Jobs, GWJ, hyperlinks

Alpha Prime - Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Czech Republic

If you like games, or conceivably, if you hate games and want them all to suck, you may want to read the new Alpha Prime review up at Gamers With Jobs.  Oh, what a shoddy piece of work.  The game, not the review.  Alpha Prime is another one of those Eastern European imports that have been making it into North America lately.  S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl is the only example of a good one that comes to mind.  All the rest have been junk.  I'd like to check out the Night Watch game someday, if only because Night Watch is such a fun movie.  Sometimes the movie's luster can carry me through the rough spots in a game.  Hell, I'd play an adventure game based on Russian Ark if they made one.  It'd make a good roguelike.  The movie is one long take, so the game only allows you one life.  Hardcore.  Like me.  I am hardcore, too.

Anyway, the most outstanding bits of awfulness in Alpha Prime are the cutscenes, which aren't fully translated from Czech.  One of the characters is a cowardly Italian stereotype, and he speaks in half Italian, half badly translated English, and it's clear the voice actor is in way over his head.  They're all bad, though.  I put a couple of examples of awkward dialogue in the review, but here are a few I had left over.  Imagine all of these being read in an overly dramatic space soldier voice:

"They'll surely prize us out of this ship like an oyster from its shell.  And eat us with some lemon!"

"How could they hire such a worthless sack for a prospector?"

"By pressing (Default T) you turn on flashlight to help you in the dark corners."

When you walk over some bullets or health, the text on the screen says, "You Picked Pistol," or "You Picked Medikit."

"I'll get you Glomar . . . I'll pull you out of the fucking wall."

(That's another thing, pointless swearing.  I left all those quotes out of the review because someone might be reading it from work.  Also, I wanted to get away with using "dick" somewhere else.)

"Don't be such an asshole!  Do you think I've just been sitting on my ass here?"

Sometimes I'd sit around in a firefight and let everyone shoot at each other a while.  This is an actual transcript of the taunts and exclamations these soldiers tossed around while I waited for them to die:

"Fuck!"  "Shit!"  "Fuck!"  "Shit!"  "Take him out!"  "Shit - fuck!"  "Jesus!"  "Somebody take him out!"

Admittedly, it's fun to think of the voice actors having to record a hundred versions of "Oh shit!"  That's an apt way to describe Alpha Prime, too.  A hundred shits in a firefight.  Ew.

[I'd like to create a little archive of my GWJ contributions, so here's a link to my FreeRice writeup and also the 2007 Gaming Reference Guide to which I added a few mini-reviews.  After the winter break I'll make a little sidebar list for these links and start turning this joint into a proper website.  For now, think of it as low-fi DIY rustic charm.  Think of it that way.]

Technorati Tags: Alpha Prime, Gamers With Jobs, GWJ

Phoenix, We Have A Problem

New article up at Gamers With Jobs about Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Trials and Tribulations.  Read it here.  It'll take less time to read than it took me to type out that long ass title.  It's the conclusion to the Phoenix Wright trilogy, but there's a new Ace Attorney game coming out with a new protagonist, Apollo Justice.  Apollo has an uphill battle because he'll never be my beloved Phoenix Wright, with his retinue of wonderful characters like Maya, Mia, Pearls, Gumshoe, and of course Edgeworth.  (I also enjoy Godot's antics, and Franciska has a certain crazy appeal.)  This last game is bittersweet because the better the story gets, the more I'm reminded that this is the end.  Well, that's how stories work, and Phoenix Wright is very much a story-based game.  Most games nowadays don't tell a story very well at all, and I'm still surprised when I find one that has a coherent narrative structure, with character arcs, heightened stakes, imaginative details, etc.  Usually I ignore a game's clumsy attempts at storytelling unless it really interferes with my playing.  I've played many games which would have been more fun if they'd just dropped the plot altogether.

Phoenix Wright, however, lives and dies on its characters and plot, although once in a while it throws in a clever puzzle to solve.  As such, it's a tough game to review because I can't just tick off the little boxes (graphics, controls, multiplayer, length, replayability) and tally up its score.   One funny thing about games is that because they cost so much, we keep looking for ways to quantify the experience.  I never see book reviews that say it's a great story, but not worth the cost of the book, and you wouldn't want to re-read it.  Gamers With Jobs is pretty damn obsessed with scores, or with not having them, so I actively avoid trying to tick the boxes in my articles.  Unfortunately, it's a deeply ingrained part of every gamer's mind.  (Adult gamers, anyway.  Kids who don't pay for their own games have different priorities.  They'll play anything, which is kind of sweet, isn't it?) 

The problem is, even though you can't really quantify a story, we try to do it anyway.  This twist was good, this character is bad, they left this thread hanging.  I don't have a solution for this mind set.  I think time tends to smooth the rough edges of a game and after a few years I look back on it with pure nostalgia.  I've even gotten to the point where I can be playing a great game and feel a kind of pre-nostalgia: "I'm definitely going to remember that moment."  Later, I find myself listing the reasons why that moment works so well, and it kills the magic a little, like explaining a joke.  Well, there are worse problems to have.  Enjoy a game, analyze it later, and come back much later to enjoy it again.  I've gotten more than my share of enjoyment from the Phoenix Wright series, and even if Phoenix isn't in it, I'm doggedly optimistic about the new story on its way.

Technorati Tags: Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney, Trials and Tribulations, Apollo Justice, Gamers With Jobs, over-analyzing analysis itself

Zack and Wiki and Gobliiins

My new article on Zack and Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure is up on Gamers with Jobs, right here.  The short version is that it's delicious.  The game, I mean.  In the review (which is tangy and robust), I mention Gobliiins and The Lost Vikings, two old adventure games, which prompted Rabbit to suggest that I throw some Wikipedia links in there, because they're a bit obscure nowadays.  I wasn't sure whether to feel old or hopelessly out of touch, but then I thought, why not both?  Let's rattle on about the Gobliiins series.

Gobliiins was a 1991 puzzle game by the French studio Coktel Vision which was translated into English and distributed by Sierra.  There wasn't any dialogue to translate, but they changed the names of the characters from Oups, Ignatus and Asgard to Dwayne, Hooter and BoBo.  It's just a cultural thing; English speakers like their goblins named Dwayne.  Each goblin has one ability -- BoBo punches stuff, Hooter casts spells, and Dwayne can pick up and use items -- and you control all three together to solve puzzles.  LOTS of puzzles.  Lots of HARD puzzles.  Each level is only one screen, but that screen is packed with items and creatures and stuff, all of which needs to be manipulated in just the right way to achieve the main goal, which is usually just to exit the room.  Let's say twenty objects times three goblins, and everything needs to be done in a certain order, some actions are time dependent, and some actions kill you.  It's frustrating and unfair, but it's fun.  It's like life itself, but with three goblins.

(By the way, Zack and Wiki has a similar structure, but is much easier.  It's challenging, but never truly frustrating.  It's a very fair game.)

So how do you ramp up the challenge for a sequel?  Interestingly, Gobliins 2 dropped a goblin (and an "i") but gave them personalities which affect their actions, rather than an arbitrary task that only one goblin can perform.  The new goblins, Fingus and Winkle, can pick up objects and perform actions, but they choose different actions because one is smart but afraid of everything, and the other is a courageous moron.  It's even more difficult than the original, despite the streamlined goblin count.  I don't want to get all combinatorics on your ass, but there are more possible actions now, and the goblins are all like, "I'm too smart to listen to you," or, "Hurrrrr."  Again, like life itself, specifically high school.

Goblins Quest 3 (Quest?  Don't ask.) has only one goblin, Blount, but he's a werewolf.  Switch between goblin and wolf, wolf has his own personality, goblin can deputize other animals and make them sort of mini-characters, blah blah blah, puzzle induced migraine.  This game's so frustrating I have to wonder if opening the package was a test that I failed.  I honestly don't remember if I ever finished it.  I think I paused, left the computer, and moved to another town.  Looking back, though, the Gobliiins series always made me feel really good when I finally stumbled upon a solution.  Sadly, there's not much of a market for "impossible" games anymore.  It's 2007.  I should stop living in the past . . .

What's that?  Off in the distance?  Could it be?

Gobliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiins!

Technorati Tags: Goblins, Gobliiins, Coktel Vision, Sierra, Zack & Wiki, puzzles, puzzle games, love begins anew

Extracurricular Activities

For today's video game post, click over to my new article at Gamers With Jobs.  It's an excellent site for folks who play games but don't go all crazy about it.  Well, sometimes they go crazy, but not the way twelve year olds do.  For example, they do "perspectives" rather than "reviews," which means they don't just slap an arbitrary score on a game and then kill time for two pages.  Scores sell games, but for reviewers they're a way to hide behind a number and feign objectivity.  Painkiller: Overdose, the game I'm discussing, is horrendously bad, even worse than you would expect from the title, but the lowest score it would ever get on any review-based site would be maybe 5 out of 10, and that's if the disc didn't fit in the drive properly.  Reviewers tend to default to "it's good for what it is" when a game lacks ambition.  Maybe there should be a scoring system that starts at zero and has no upper bound.  Does that make any sense?  Read the article instead -- I may have used up my coherence for the day.

Technorati Tags: Painkiller, Overdose, Gamers With Jobs, GWJ