Anomaly Warzone Earth (PC)
Nifty take on “tower offense.” The formula grew a bit stale for me on PC because I felt like I didn’t have enough to do while I was waiting for my troops to reach the towers, but that might feel better on the iOS version where touching and panning is a bit more action-heavy than dragging a mouse.

Atom Zombie Smasher (PC)
The first of many Humble Indie Bundle pickups on this list, Atom Zombie Smasher is a charming top-down defense game. The presentation value sells the experience, much like in Firemint’s Flight Control. It’s a fun time-waster, worth the price of admission, but it doesn’t bring anything new to the genre so I don’t think I learned much from it as a designer.

Barkley: Shut Up & Jam Gaiden (PC)
Fantastic indie RPG that took me way too long to get around to playing. It’s absolutely hilarious from start to finish and features a battle system that rivals the Paper Mario games. You don’t have to be a sports fan to appreciate an epic drama in which the events of Space Jam are considered canonical.

Batman: Arkham City (PC)
It’s like Arkham Asylum, but more Batman-ier in all the right ways. Arkham City was probably my “game of the year” in terms of moment-to-moment joy while playing it. Again, like Saboteur and Assassin’s Creed, it gave me a map with a ton of dots on it, and I couldn’t rest until I had found them all. My only recommendation is to play it on console instead of PC – it’s quite buggy and isn’t worth futzing with the broken DX11 and Games for Windows Live features.

BIT.TRIP.RUNNER (PC)
This is really a rhythm game disguised as a “run forever” game. It’s one of the most unforgiving runners out there – the levels aren’t procedurally generated,  so if you screw up, you end up replaying the same stretches over and over again. It can get frustrating, but not in a terrible way. I intend to go back to it at some point.

Cave Story+ (PC)
This very loosely fits “HD remake”  criteria, but on the flip side, it’s the first opportunity to pay money for one of the best indie games ever made. I played the original Cave Story a while back and this version feels a bit more playable. It’s up there with other classic sidescrollers like Super Metroid and Mega Man in my book. Is there enough to warrant a playthrough if you’ve already played the original? Hard to say.

Child of Eden (Xbox 360 / Kinect)
I appreciated Rez but never loved it. I can’t even appreciate Child of Eden. I thought the gameplay consisted of waving my arms against the backdrop of an acid trip in addition half of the mechanics from Rez.

Civilization V (PC)
OK, I’m embarrassed. This was my first Civilization game. It’s just one of those franchises that, for whatever reason, I never got around to playing for myself. I played this one pretty front-heavy, going about 25 hours in my first week and then never touching it again. The pacing is a bit too slow for my liking but the strategy elements of the game are fantastic. I want to play it multiplayer, but I don’t have a group of friends that will sit and play with me for 12 hours (like Risk).

Deadly Premonition (Xbox 360)
A lot of people said this game was “so bad it’s good” in a B-movie kind of way. I got the bad part, at least.

Dead Space (iOS)
Dead Space’s controls are a pretty impressive blueprint for 3^rd person shooter controls on a touch screen. I transitioned to it after completing Dead Space on the Xbox 360 and I was right at home after a few minutes of experimenting with it. The game’s design leaves a lot to be desired – it’s rather formulaic, and if Doom 3 was faulted for having a lot of monster closets, Dead Space for iOS has monster rooms connected by corridors full of monster closets. Literally every other room in the game will close up with flashing red lights and throw waves of necromorphs at you that must all be defeated before you can continue. Those segments work OK in moderation, but it doesn’t fit the survival horror theme too well.

Dead Space 2 (PlayStation 3)
Dead Space 2 is a perfectly competent sequel. It’s highly polished and upgrades enough mechanics from the original game to feel fresh. It’s not quite the kind of jump I saw between the first two Uncharted games, but that’d be a lot to expect. Visceral made a third person survival horror shooter and beat Capcom at their own game  – when I forget Resident Evil 5 happened and consider Dead Space 1 and 2 to be RE4’s proper sequels, I’m a much happier person. One thing in particular that Dead Space 2 does better than the original is crafting unique atmospheres. A children’s daycare opens up into the silence of deep space. A quiet, eerie church leads into a marketplace where humans are frantically running for their lives. The game’s action sequences and shooting mechanics are good, but they wouldn’t be anywhere near as compelling without the awesome environments to explore. I appreciate their willingness to invest in new environments over new enemy types because enemies aren’t nearly as scary after you’ve figured out how to beat them for the first time.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution (Xbox 360)
This is a case of a game catering to my preferences so well that I don’t finish it. I’m super deep in sidequests and as a completionist it’s hard to move forward when I risk failing a quest that I can’t go back and do later. I’ll have to pick it up again soon. Maybe.

Dungeon Defenders (PC)
My experience with Dungeon Defenders went something like this: a friend of mine said “GO BUY THIS” and I said “OK” and then I logged in and played a game with his team and 45 seconds later my character gained 16 levels. I had absolutely no idea what was happening. I gave it another chance and started to learn the mechanics for myself, and now I can actually have fun with it. It’s only fun if you play with friends, but if you start off playing with friends, it’s really confusing because the XP system is completely broken.

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West (Xbox 360)
A lot of people berated this game for being an Uncharted ripoff. Naughty Dog’s recent hire of Enslaved’s design director tells you all you need to know about what they thought of the game. It’s not as good as Uncharted 2 but it’s absolutely worthwhile. From a story perspective, the game is probably stronger. The combat is a lot of fun and the environments are interesting enough to keep my attention. There were a few areas where I felt stuck (puzzles, bosses, etc) and the game didn’t help me along as much as I’d like, but considering it’s for a hardcore audience to begin with, that isn’t a total deal breaker. That lack of extra polish prevents a good game from being great.

The Gunstringer (Xbox 360 / Kinect)
If anyone tells you Kinectimals is the cutest game on Kinect, they haven’t played Gunstringer. The mix of live action and animated puppeteer scenes has a really cool effect. Unfortunately, my elbows started hurting about three levels in because I guess I take the pistol shooting motion a bit too seriously. That’s certainly a disadvantage to lots of motion controls – they punish the player for getting really into the game with arthritis.

Groove Coaster (iPhone)
Finally, a rhythm game for the iPhone that doesn’t suck. The music isn’t great – it’s a lot of j-pop, electronica, and garbled remixes from various Namco and Taito games, but it’s a good deal of fun to tap, hold, and drag along with the beats. I had absolutely no idea how the different ships and power ups worked, and I feel like I missed about half the game as a result, but it’s hard to complain when I got hours of enjoyment out of 99 cents.

Hanging with Friends (iPhone)
I find that hangman has considerably less appeal than Scrabble, so I don’t play this nearly as much as Words with Friends. The in-game items feel like cheating to me, and I feel dirty when I cave in and use them. It maybe takes the F2P model a bit too far for my liking. I still played it regularly for about four months before falling off, so props to Zynga. I just haven’t come back to it like I do Words with Friends.

The Heist (iPhone)
Super polished game with very little substance. The presentation is immaculate – “mission” updates are given to you by simulated phone calls that mimic the iPhone’s normal UI. The actual gameplay is  a compilation of four different games that could probably be found in the free section of the app store, but everything else is so slick that I don’t question my purchase.

The ICO and Shadow of the Colossus Collection (PlayStation 3)
I tried starting ICO again since I never finished it on PS2, but I didn’t finish it on PS3 either. I hopped into Shadow of the Colossus to play around for five minutes and put it down a few hours later. The framerate problems of the original are gone and that’s enough to make it worth another playthrough. It’s also the single-best reason I’ve found to own a 3DTV so far: the sense of scale created by the 3D effect in the overworld is really awesome, and some of the colossi battles feel even more spectacular.

Infamous 2 (PlayStation 3)
I couldn’t get into Infamous 1. I got through about an hour and a half of Infamous 2 before putting it down. I don’t know if it’s the camera, the combat, or what in particular I dislike about the series but it just doesn’t do much for me. I should probably do a decon on it at some point to see if I can figure it out.

Infinity Blade (iPhone)
For all the hype around Infinity Blade, I found the gameplay to be really bland. Sure, it’s pretty, but amazing 3D graphics don’t make a good game. Lots of people really like it, but it seems like a game about grinding to me. I don’t like many MMOs in part of the grinding either, though.

Jetpack Joyride (iPhone)
I picked this up after it went free because the description didn’t excite me – after all, I can only play so many endless running games in a year before I get sick of the formula. Turns out I was just a bit wrong – I’ve invested more time in Jetpack Joyride than any other iOS game this year, with about 14 hours in the month of December alone. The game’s presentation couldn’t be much better and it’s super polished. The addition of temporary vehicles and power ups to the runner formula make it feel new again, almost like a Halo to the last gen’s Goldeneye. Halfbrick is the team to beat when it comes to simple, addictive mobile games, and I’m anxious to see what they do to follow this up.

Killzone 3 (PlayStation 3)
I played Killzone 3 about as long as I played Killzone 2, which is about an hour. Something about the way Guerrilla Games designs their introductions totally turns me off. I’m not terribly interested in the story, all of the characters look/sound the same to me, and the gameplay doesn’t stand out much from its competitors. I have the same problem to a lesser degree with the Resistance series. One of the problems with my experience might have been the insanity of my setup: using the PlayStation Move controller guncon with 3D glasses felt pretty ridiculous.  The production value and AAA-ness of these games can’t be denied and I probably should just accept it’s not my genre.

L.A. Noire (PlayStation 3)
Yet another game I really wanted to like but couldn’t get through. The art and facial animations are as good as everyone says, but the gameplay is nothing short of boring. The detective mode feels like a poor man’s Heavy Rain and the driving has the trademark Rockstar Games DrunkOSteering that make you feel like even the smallest compact is a motherfucking semi. The interrogation scenes are a complete joke – they make the cycles between facial animations super obvious so you can tell when someone is lying. Someone wanted to make a movie but they made a game instead, and an entire studio suffered for it.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (Wii)
This is a game I really wanted to like. Skyward Sword initially looks and feels so much better than its cousins, but it quickly devolved into repetitive fighting with bad motion controls and slow crawling text. It also seems like Nintendo took the internet’s “LOOK, LISTEN” Navi memes and thought it meant we wanted more of it…because there’s a whole lot more of it. The game makes annoying pings and alert tones until you give in and allow it tell you something painfully obvious by way of precanned animations and more slow crawling text. For example, the above moment happens after the name of the new area has been displayed onscreen for about five seconds during an unskippible intro scene. Complete disregard for the player’s intelligence and time is a massive design failure that can’t be forgiven, even if it is part of a sacred franchise. Zelda games are stuck in the past and they need to at least start trying to compete with contemporary adventure games if they want to continue to be relevant.

League of Legends (PC)
I’ve got a decon on the way for League of Legends, but in the meantime, I’ll leave a few thoughts: I had no desire to start playing a DotA game this year, and I ended up investing more time into LoL than anything else. It’s my go-to multiplayer game and I have more friends who play it than anything else. I’ve also invested money into it despite being free to play. It seems Riot accomplished most of their design objectives and I’ll keep playing into 2012.

Little King’s Story (Wii)
A charming non-RTS akin to Pikmin meets Animal Crossing. Little King’s Story offered just the right amount of micromanagement for this genre. It constantly reminds you how Japanese it is, but it never tells you why it’s on Wii – it uses all of the buttons on both the Wiimote and the Nunchuck, but it doesn’t use the cursor or any motion controls whatsoever. It would have been better with a DualShock. Hopefully this will get re-released on PSN or XBLA so it can get a proper audience.

Lost in Shadow (Wii)
Winner of my award in the competitive “most clever use of shadows in a sidescrolling platforming game on the Wii” category, Lost in Shadow is a platforming game that cleverly uses shadows and gives 2.5D some meaning beyond a graphical style. The player controls a shadow and can only walk on shadows, so moving around light sources can completely change a room’s layout even though the foreground may remain the same. The difficulty curve is questionable, but it’s one of the most original titles of 2011 and worth a look if you can come to terms with dusting off your Wii.

Kung-Fu Rider (PlayStation 3)
My experience with Kung-Fu Rider was summarized by the “results” screen after I completed the first level, where the game displays pictures taken with the PS Eye camera intended to show how much fun you’re having. What I saw was my horrified face looking back at me, wondering what the hell I was doing. It hasn’t spent much time in the disc tray since then.

The Maw (PC)
Although I’ve been a pretty big fan of Twisted Pixel’s ‘Splosion Man, I never really got around to playing The Maw until last summer. It feels a little clunky - reminiscent of the middle era N64 platformers – but the cuteness of the characters makes it interesting enough to watch. The core gameplay is derivative of a number of other titles with buddy-buddy concepts, but it’s presented so well that it feels fresh. The puzzle design could have been better and it’s awfully short, but it is just a $10 game. Biggest design takeaway from this one was making memorable characters without using any dialog.

Mafia Wars 2 (PC / Facebook)
I have a bunch of friends at Zynga, and I check out the games they work on as they’re released. Mafia Wars 2 was one of those games. Although it keeps many of the CityVille / FarmVille mechanics, it also marks a significant departure from the standard Zynga compulsion loop. Play sessions last longer before you get blocked by energy requirements, and a variety of quests offer a sense of progression that the other games don’t have. Each individual system feels rather polished, but they aren’t stitched together in an obvious way. Much of the game’s systems can be enjoyed independently – building up your own turf, fighting other players, or completing missions are all valid ways to move forward. To some extent this lets players pick their own play style, but the systems aren’t compelling enough on their own for long.

Some of my contributions to the MPG Minecraft server.

Minecraft (PC)
Minecraft is a game about building things with blocks that destroys lives and ruins relationships. Check it out.

Ms. Splosion’ Man (Xbox 360)
Ms. ‘Splosion Man had the best opening of any game in 2011. I kept playing until I quit laughing, which wasn’t until about three hours in. I found it to be a lot tougher than its male counterpart from 2009, but It’s still a blast. Oh, dammit.

Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath (PC)
I missed out on the Oddworld games when they were released, so I picked up the Oddbox on Steam to check ‘em out. Stranger’s Wrath was a pleasant surprise. I’ve seen it described as a love-it-or-hate-it kind of game, in part because it’s different from the other Oddworld games and in part because the controls are so different from any other game. It successfully employs a first AND third person camera, and requires the player to constantly switch between them. There’s a definite learning curve but it’s also proof that such a system can work. The weapons are super inventive too. Every part of this game was somewhat memorable, but perhaps that was because it was my first Oddworld experience.

Outland (Xbox 360)
I really wanted to love Outland. It’s the bastard child of Ikaruga and Prince of Persia stuffed into a Metroidvania game. The art style is absolutely beautiful, but the game stalls after the first hour and a half or so. The puzzles go from being clever to being unnecessarily difficult, and it begins to feel like the developers ran out of mechanics. I might go back and finish this one eventually, but I’m only willing to invest a certain amount of effort into difficult platforming sections when platforming isn’t your game’s primary focus.

Orcs Must Die (PC)
It’s rare to see a tower defense game with so much character in any given year, but 2011 gave us two. Orcs Must Die is essentially a single-player only Dungeon Defenders with better animations, more imaginative towers, and a lot more levels. Although it’s hard to play one without comparing it to the other, I found both games to merit a playthrough on their own.

PAYDAY: The Heist (PC)
PAYDAY felt like Left 4 Dead without a soul. Maybe I’m getting a bit soft, but replacing zombies with cops bothers me when I can recognize the formula as something that usually has zombies. Some of the levels were well-designed, but most of the mechanics they introduce to the formula are ho-hum at best. Something feels arbitrary about the design when your equipment jamming is more dangerous than a SWAT team spraying you with fire.

PlayStation Move Heroes (PlayStation 3)
Where on earth did this come from? A game featuring the protagonists from all the best Sony platformers seems like a win on paper, but Heroes is doomed from the start with an unnecessarily complicated control scheme. It’s essentially a mini-game collection with a loose story that stitches together the different events…but even as a mini game collection, it doesn’t stand up to Sports Champions on its own platform.

Portal 2 (PC)
Some people said the single player campaign was too short. I think it might’ve been a little too long. The co-op was just right. Not much to say here because if you’re taking the time to read a developer’s blog, you’ve probably already played it. If not, why are you wasting your time reading this?? Portal 2 is one of those games that everyone should play.

Rayman Origins (Xbox 360)
This game could also be sold as “joy on a disc.” In fact, it might have sold better that way. It’s a quirky niche title – like most Michel Ancel games – and it’s an absolute blast for anyone who isn’t scared about the prospect of a 2D platformer being released as a full price retail game. The inventive level design is surpassed only by the hand-drawn art style. I wish it had online co-op so I could actually finish a co-op session of the main game, but that isn’t a reason to skip out on one of 2011′s best titles. I’m thrilled to see Ubisoft taking risks like this as a developer and publisher, and I’m deeply saddened it wasn’t financially successful.

Revenge of the Titans (PC)
Cute tower defense game with a pseudo retro style. Another Humble Bundle pickup, another game devoid of innovation but full of polish and hours of fun that justify owning it.

The Sly Collection (PlayStation 3)
I missed out on the Sly Cooper games back on the PS2, but as a fan of platformers and stealth games, I picked up the collection shortly after it came out. I was surprised that the game is rather unforgiving in earlier levels, given its kid-friendly appearance. But as someone who develops kid-friendly games, I appreciated the amount of depth in the gameplay. It’s every bit as good as the Jak and Daxter games, but perhaps not as good as Ratchet & Clank.

Sonic CD (iPhone / Xbox 360)
As a longtime Sonic fan, I picked up this “port” on both platforms. I hesitate to call it a port since it was a complete rewrite with a new engine, but hey – the backstory behind its development is almost as enjoyable as the game itself. It controls surprisingly well on a touchscreen, but when I played to get all the achievements and a full completion I used my Xbox controller. I’d love to see more classic games revitalized in this style.

Sonic Colors (Wii)
For those not in the know, I used to be a huge Sonic fan. I ran a pretty big Sonic website back when I was in middle school but couldn’t stay interested after Sega released a series of absolutely terrible games after the turn of the millennium. Every time the media says “this game is a return to Sonic’s roots,” I’m tempted to check it out, and Sonic Colors eventually became too tempting to pass up. It’s not bad. It’s better than any other 3D Sonic game before it, but it’s not without its annoyances. The 2D sections are well thought out and the new power ups actually add something to the experience. The 3D behind-the-back sections are still problematic thanks to the use of the Wii Remote’s d-pad, but it works a bit better with a retro controller. Games should not use digital input for 3D movement. It doesn’t work – I thought we figured this out back on the PS1, but apparently some people at Sonic Team have forgotten. Still, I think most games would be entertained enough by Colors to make it worth grabbing from a bargain bin.

Sonic Generations (PlayStation 3)
If Sonic Colors is “OK,” then Sonic Generations is “good.” It still has some flaws with “death by camera” and other silly issues that have plagued the series for years, but Sega essentially made two good games here instead of one great one. Parts of the game’s design seems kind of dangerous on paper – it alternates levels that use two different control schemes with the same character – but the presentation is slick enough to make it flow somewhat seamlessly. I picked it up and launch and have no regrets – it’s probably not as enjoyable if you don’t have the nostalgia factor for all the old levels, but it’s still a very solid effort and I’d be perfectly happy to buy more Sonic games with these controls.

Sports Champions (PlayStation 3)
Sports Champions might’ve been a good game if it was possible to play it without comparing it to Kinect Sports. As it stands, it feels rushed and kind of empty. Only a handful of the games are worth playing more than once. Bocce ball is fantastic, frisbee golf is pretty good, and I could see myself maybe playing ping pong again, but aside from that, it seems more focused on showing how the Move controller is different from the Wii Remote than it does being a good game. Whereas you have stadiums full of colorful characters cheering for you in Wii Sports and Kinect Sports, Sports Champions’ levels take place in empty outdoors environments where you hear nothing but birds chirping and the occasional wind gust. Could be great for an exercise game, but for a party game, I tend to want a little more excitement.

Terraria (PC)
It’s 2D Minecraft! It’s 2D Minecra–oh, wait, it’s actually more than that. Terraria is like Minecraft meets Castlevania, with a bigger focus on exploration and combat than building. In fact, I almost completely ignored the building in Terraria despite exclusively building in Minecraft. Shows what just a few design differences can do to differentiate a game from the ones that inspire it.

Tiny Tower (iPhone)
This was the only social game I played for more than a few days this year. I kept up with Tiny Tower for about a month. The visual assertion of growth found in building a vertical tower  was highly satisfying – I always felt like I knew exactly what my goal was and how I could achieve it – and the micromanagement of each resident was also a welcome change from other games that replace that kind of depth with an opportunity to make you invite real world friends. Tiny Tower stands a strong iPhone title regardless of whether or not you put money into it and doesn’t feel like a cash grab nearly as much as some of its competitors.

Tiny Wings (iPhone)
This game was my go-to time waster on iOS for the first half of the year. It’s also a really cool indie success story – one guy makes a game alone and it skyrockets to the top of the appstore, making him set for life. The art is nauseatingly cute, the music is catchy, and the gameplay is tight. You can’t ask for much more in a 99 cent game.

Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception (PS3)
Since moving to LA, I’ve made a bunch of friends at Naughty Dog and I saw firsthand the sweat and tears that went into making Uncharted 3. It’s an absolutely beautiful game and offers thrills from start to finish. I think they went overboard in a few areas – I often feel like Drake is drunk when controlling him in crowded areas, where he puts his hands on everything in sight – but if you’re looking for an immersive, cinematic experience, you can’t do better than Uncharted. It’s much more of a playable movie than something like Heavy Rain and has amazing technical merits to go along with it.  The gunplay is fun, the puzzles are well-designed, and, as with its predecessor, the multiplayer is surprisingly deep. Like the summer blockbusters it mimics, it lags a little bit towards the end, but finishes with a bang and leaves you with a smile on your face.

Vanquish (Xbox 360)
I played about three hours into Vanquish on its “hard” difficulty and had little trouble until hitting a particularly tricky boss. After about 20 tries, I reluctantly lowered my difficulty level to “medium” – forfeiting my achievements for the playthrough – and tried again. It didn’t seem any easier. I lowered to “easy” and still couldn’t beat it. Hitting a brick wall like that is just about the worst thing I can experience in a game, which is a shame because Vanquish was a lot of fun up until that point. The game is super polished but it’s hard to go back to when I put it down at such a low point.

VVVVVV (PC)
This indie darling was clever, and had some tough-as-nails puzzles, but like Super Meat Boy I fail to see the appeal for more than a few minutes. Maybe that’s why it’s $5? I have a lot of respect for the dev, but I’m not terribly excited about these kind of games because they pass “crazy difficulty” off as “good design.” Yes, the game is designed reasonably well, but the best design is found in games that take complicated puzzles and make them accessible (read: Portal, World of Goo).

World of Goo (iPhone)
Like Plants vs. Zombies, I find new ways to buy World of Goo every time it comes out on a different platform. I’ve actually bought this one twice – the SD version on my 3GS and the HD version on my new 4S. It’s already a classic as far as I’m concerned, and I go back to it whenever I want to relive a lesson in the joy of simplicity. And it’s only $0.99!

]]> http://holdenlink.com/2012/01/what-i-played-2011-edition/feed/ 1 http://holdenlink.com/2011/12/why-i-cant-finish-skyward-sword/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=why-i-cant-finish-skyward-sword http://holdenlink.com/2011/12/why-i-cant-finish-skyward-sword/#comments Thu, 22 Dec 2011 04:51:29 +0000 Holden http://holdenlink.com/?p=966 Skyward Sword’s biggest fans and many members of the press believe that the motion controls make the game what it is – you have to put extra thought into every sword swipe and the 1:1 connection makes it feel more personal than any Zelda game before it. I have a very different opinion. I really wanted to like it, but Skyward Sword will be the first Zelda game I don’t finish. Here’s my attempt to articulate my problems with the game.

Good implementations of motion controls make you feel more connected to the activity you’re doing through a series of smoke and mirrors. Dance Central, for instance, is really just a game of Simon Says that makes you feel awesome. You see the dancers on stage doing crazy routines, and when the game says you did well, you think you look as cool as the dancers. In reality, the game was just looking at an approximation of your movements, and if you were close, it’ll give you positive feedback. Anyone who has played Dance Central in a party setting knows that the game usually tells people they look better than they actually do. That’s part of the fun, though, and it isn’t a bad design. It is distinctly different from other dancing games before it and shows the promise of its platform.

Wii Sports before it was even a well-designed game. Even if it was mostly waggle, it enabled players to mimic real bowling or boxing motions and get better results than they would in real life. They weren’t accurate, but they offered a very different experience compared to everything in the genre before it.

Guitar Hero didn’t make its name with motion controllers, but still achieved success by offering a new way to play music games that allowed players to feel like they were living out a fantasy.

All of these games had their critics. Some professional musicians hated Guitar Hero. I recall Pearl Jam’s singer performing one of his songs in Rock Band on a talk show and getting a failing grade. Some people felt like it trivialized learning an actual instrument, while others embraced it as a fun alternative. Wii Sports is slammed by people who really do play tennis, golf, and baseball all the time as being a completely inaccurate simulation. Even Dance Central is criticized by really good dancers – it requires you to follow a really rigid set of movements if you’re going to get the best scores on harder difficulties, but being rigid makes you look like an idiot if you’re actually dancing. People who have precedents for an experience judge motion controls that attempt to recreate those experiences by those precedents.

Skyward Sword has a precedent – every Zelda game before it – so when motion controls make it harder for me to kill enemies that I’ve encountered throughout Zelda games my entire life, I’m going to react negatively. I’ve heard that “every enemy is like a puzzle” – well, yes, it certainly is. It’s a puzzle to figure out how to make the controller do what you want it to do so that you can get on to the actual puzzles in the dungeons. I’ve managed to beat two of the dungeons and a couple sidequests, and the hardest enemy I’ve faced so far is the Skulltula – the spiders that I’ve been fighting with lock-on controls since Ocarina of Time. In Skyward Sword, you have to perform a stabbing motion to damage them after performing a side-to-side slash to flip them around. The chances of getting two actions with the motion controls correct in sequence are slim to none for me, and I’ve invested 5-6 hours in the game.

Skyward Sword isn’t the first game on the Wii to feature these controls. Red Steel 2 used Wii MotionPlus to track 1:1 sword motions, and while it was praised as being kind of cool, it was frustrating after ten minutes there too.

But perhaps the bigger failure is what they sacrificed to bring us these broken controls – in a game that rewards precise aim over all else, your control over the camera is limited to centering it behind your character. Lining up certain shots takes three or four tries. When using something like the bomb flowers – which have been around forever – you’re given a time penalty on top of horrible aim. This wouldn’t be anywhere near as much of a problem if the Wii Remote wasn’t always reserved for the sword’s alignment – it’s a reasonably precise aiming tool and can certainly compensate for another analog stick if it needs to.

The big praise for Skyward Sword’s motion controls is that they “aren’t waggle” and add a lot of depth to the game. I’d argue that they are waggle. They don’t let me do anything I haven’t already done in other Zelda games, and they make it more complicated. Enemies that require you to hit them in certain ways are nothing new – Zelda’s been doing it for years. This is just a poorly designed way of interacting with those enemies. Plenty of good designs for these systems exist: Dead Space did it for survival horror with the dismemberment system, for example. The Zelda DS game introduced stylus control which drastically changed the way you played the game, but played to the strengths of the platform and made interacting with enemies feel intuitive. Skyward Sword’s controls, in contrast, highlight all of the problems with motion controls. They don’t always do what you expect because you have less tangible control with motion than you do digital button presses – particularly with 1:1 motion, where it’s harder for the game to “help” you get the result you want. Games that succeed with motion controls do not penalize you for that disconnect, and Skyward Sword does.

I haven’t been away from the game long enough to write a formal deconstruction, but I’ve been talking to a lot of friends about Playdead’s Limbo recently. My opinion differs from the majority (not to say I’m on my own), and I think writing it in the blog is the best way to articulate the angle I’m coming from. In doing so, I hope I’ll be able to get some feedback on why the things that bothered me made the game better for everyone else.

Art Style

The first thing everyone talks about when they see Limbo is the unique minimalist art style. It’s looks absolutely beautiful in motion, and it creates an incredible mood for the game’s world. It evokes all sorts of emotions without the use of language, and it undeniably leaves an impression with the player.

Unfortunately, I found a huge drawback to this art style in the context of Limbo‘s gameplay. It’s not always clear what the player can and can’t interact with in each area, and the VFX often work against it. The majority of the times I got stuck in the game were because I didn’t know what I was supposed to be interacting with (i.e. pushing buttons on signs that change the direction of gravity). I’m all for a cool look, but it’s a design failure when it interferes with the player’s ability to understand their environments. It’s not “clever” or “innovative” to confuse the player about what they can and can’t interact with in the game world, and a few too many puzzles fell into that category for my taste.

Death

Like Another World before it, Limbo has an obscene number of graphic death scenes. It’s no secret that, no matter how attached to their characters, players love seeing them get mangled in creative and unexpected ways – take a look at Dead Space or Resident Evil, for example. There are “all the ways to die” videos on YouTube with millions of hits, and artists clearly put a lot of effort into making sure players are satisfied.

The difference between deaths in Dead Space and Limbo is that the player doesn’t always have control in Limbo. In fact, death is treated not as a punishment for failure but as a way of showing the player the solution to a scripted event puzzle. One section in particular highlights this, where the player approaches a switch surrounded by two small crevices on either side. Stepping on the switch causes a piston to come down and smash the player into the ground. A few steps further down the hallway lies an identical looking switch, but stepping on this switch is actually the only way to prevent the piston from falling. There are no visual cues to solving this puzzle before you get to it – the player must learn entirely from trial and error.

It’s harmless enough because the game respawns the player right in front of the switch hallway, but why is it necessary? Are players supposed to think the developer is clever for misleading them? Is it just a general “screw you” to the audience? Here’s a game that is advertised for its artistic value and innovation, and puzzles like this are simply time wasters that artificially extend an already short gameplay experience.

Death animations are only entertaining to a point. Limbo’s shining moments are its clever puzzles, and these death scenes are the complete opposite. Roughly 10% of the events in the game are nearly impossible to avoid on the first attempt, 60% are trial and error, and the remaining 30% are actually clever puzzles that award the player with a sense of accomplishment.

Takeaways

Much like the world of the game itself, Limbo’s moments of brilliance are shrouded in darkness. This is a game I really wanted to like – I bought it before trying the demo and talked about it with friends before its release – but I found it to be a huge disappointment. It’s not a bad game by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s not worth fifteen dollars and I’m baffled as to how it’s maintained over a 90 on Metacritic. It’s easily trumped by Xbox Live companions ’Splosion Man and Braid. Maybe today’s gamers really do appreciate those crazy death animations more than actual game design.

]]> http://holdenlink.com/2010/07/thoughts-on-limbo/feed/ 3 http://holdenlink.com/2010/01/what-i-played-2009-edition/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=what-i-played-2009-edition http://holdenlink.com/2010/01/what-i-played-2009-edition/#comments Wed, 13 Jan 2010 23:29:53 +0000 Holden http://holdenlink.com/?p=538 For all the time I spent working, I still managed to play a lot of games in 2009. I’m late on the decons, but in the meantime I’ve put together a list of (almost) every game I played this year with a couple thoughts on things that stuck out to me about each of them.

Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney – Capcom, Nintendo DS
I was hesitant about the series ditching Phoenix, but in the end, I still got to yell “OBJECTION” at my handheld and that makes everything in the world OK. The updated investigation phase mechanics weren’t all that compelling even though they made good use of the DS. Maybe I was burnt out from the previous three games, but this one couldn’t keep my attention long enough to make it past the third case. Finished: NO

Auditorium – EA, iPhone
I played it first on PC, so buying the iPhone version was a no-brainer for me. It’s a great mobile game. The puzzles lend themselves well to the touchscreen, and levels can played in two or three minutes while waiting for a bus. I found the gameplay to be addicting enough that I finished it before I had the opportunity to play while waiting for a bus, opting to play it over Thanksgiving when I should have been socializing with family. EA offers more levels, but you have to feed the microtransaction monster to get to them. Finished: YES

Batman: Arkham Asylum – Rocksteady, PS3
As most of the mainstream reviews have already noted, this one was a pleasant surprise. It’s one of the best stealth action games out there, even if the AI is fairly predictable. The combat system was intuitive and fun despite being so repetitive. None of the mechanics would have meant  anything if Rocksteady hadn’t done such an amazing job with the game’s presentation. It truly makes the player feel like Batman, and even the collect-a-thon elements (Riddler trophies) were rewarding with Bioshock-esque tape recordings and backstory that went far beyond the genre’s usual offering. It’s a licensed game, but it’s also fun and innovative. What a concept! Finished: YES

Boom Blox Bash Party – EA, Wii
I’m clearly not biased at all when I say that every Wii owner should drop everything and buy this game right now. It’s a great puzzle game, and even now that I’m home without any obligation to play it daily, I occasionally find myself breaking it out to play around in the level editor or see what other users have created online. Finished: YES

Borderlands - Gearbox Software, PC
I was never much of a Diablo fan, but I loved the mission system in Borderlands. You can take on multiple missions at once and work on them in whatever order you choose, even stopping mid-mission to complete objectives from other ones. It’s one of the few open-world games that truly feels free. It’s also remarkably huge. I mostly played it alone, but my bad experience with multiplayer (on public servers) seems to have been one of the few bad ones. I’m looking forward to giving it a try with some friends. Still playing it now.  Finished: NO

Brutal Legend - Double Fine, Xbox 360
I thought this would be one of the year’s best releases, and it let me down. It’s still a great experience. The first third of the game is a blast, filled with excellent writing and creative gameplay with lots of variation. The rest of it, though, falls short of the quality I expected from Tim Schafer and Double Fine. The RTS segments (“stage battles”) are extremely lengthy, and they happen in rapid succession. It also didn’t seem to scale well in terms of difficulty – there was precisely one strategy for beating each of the stage battles, and although I was laughing throughout, it was more fun to watch than to play. The side quests were extremely repetitive as well. I understand it was originally designed as a multiplayer-only game, but the single-player experience is what was talked up during development, and it didn’t deliver. Finished: YES

Burnout Paradise – Criterion/EA, PS3
I’m late to the party on this one. I downloaded the game when it was released over PlayStation Network, and then slowly played through all the events over the course of a few months. At first I didn’t like the series’ change to open-world gameplay, but  now I can’t go back. Even though all of the events took place in the same world, it didn’t feel repetitive. I actually enjoyed learning the map and remembering landmarks to find shortcuts in each race. Speeding through the streets or across a narrow mountain path is exhilarating, but the crashes are absolutely beautiful too. It’s one of the few games I’ve played where failure is equally as rewarding as success – it’s just fun all around. My biggest complaint would have to be the lack of customization on the vehicles – there’s little reason to return to old cars once you unlock new ones, so the garage gets unnecessarily cluttered by the end.  Finished: YES

Chrono Trigger DS - SquareEnix, Nintendo DS
I own this game on Super Nintendo and PS1. It’s my favorite game of all time. I picked up the DS version after seeing one of my friends play it (on my recommendation). I couldn’t resist giving it another go and I have no regrets. There aren’t any graphical upgrades, but it’s a very sleek port. The new translation bothered me a bit, and then I was more upset that I’m enough of a nerd to notice the differences. The stylus controls leave a lot to be desired, but they didn’t mess up the standard controls. Can you ask for much more on a game that’s already great? Finished: YES

Command & Conquer Red Alert 3 – EA, PC
My roommates and I played some skirmishes this summer and it played just like I would expect an RTS to play. The single player campaigns weren’t particularly fun in terms of gameplay – for me, at least, removing the social element of online play kills the genre – but I loved the cutscenes in all their cheesy glory. You can’t go wrong with Tim Curry. It’s a fun game, but every RTS is doomed to being released in the shadow of StarCraft 2. Finished: NO

Critter Crunch – Capybara Games, iPhone
If Katamari was crazy for instructing players to roll up the world with a giant snowball, then Critter Crunch deserves equal recognition for featuring a mechanic that equates to eating and vomiting cute little creatures. Feeding little critters to bigger ones is such a simple concept, but the addition of chaining (or “food chaining”) adds a level of strategy just thick enough to make it interesting without overcomplicating the brilliance of its simplicity. The presentation is top-notch, both of the gameplay modes are fun, and there’s enough content to last a good while. Finished: NO

DJ Hero – Neversoft/Activision, Xbox 360
At the very least, Neversoft deserves credit for not making this as a complete Guitar Hero clone. The controller is well-made and there isn’t as much carry-over from the guitar as you’d expect. My biggest criticism is the design of the note charts. Whereas Guitar Hero‘s notes are placed on a vertical fret board that moves towards the player, DJ Hero uses a circular turntable. The notes come in from the side and curve down to eventually straighten out. Unfortunately, this makes it very difficult to play the game with muscle memory because it means the horizontal positions of the notes are changing as they get closer to the target zone. The game also doesn’t provide enough feedback when the player misses a note – I was often left wondering why my combo broke, and when you don’t know what you did wrong, it’s easy to blame the game and get frustrated. Design issues aside, only a few of the mixes are worth listening to more than once and many of them reuse the same songs. If you can get past that, it’s the most original music game in quite some time and it’s every bit as innovative as the original Guitar Hero. Finished: NO

FarmVille – Zynga, Facebook
Check out my decon if you haven’t already. Millions and millions of users can’t be wrong, right? Finished: N/A

Flight Control – Firemint, iPhone
Another great example of a simple concept made into a fantastic product thanks to high production value. The basic concept is to use your finger to draw paths guiding planes to landing strips without letting them crash into each other. It’s surprisingly difficult, but the player can’t blame the game because it provides such excellent feedback. That makes it challenging and addictive rather than frustrating and passable. Flight Control is the new Snake. Finished: N/A

Flower - ThatGameCompany, PS3
I generally aligned with the critics on this one too. It’s the best implementation of motion controls I’ve experienced thus far on any console. When I say “experienced,” I also intend to imply that Flower is more of an “experience” than it is a “game.”  Rather than putting you in the role of a character or the pedals that you ultimately move around, the game puts you in the role of the wind. It’s oddly empowering and creates a sensation of flying unmatched by any other game. I don’t think I can categorize it as “casual” or “hardcore.” That said, it’s not for everyone – there isn’t much in the way of difficulty, and it’s very short-lived. Finished: YES

Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2 - Bizarre Creations, Xbox 360
As much as I like Everyday Shooter, I could never get into Geometry Wars. My roommates bought this through my Xbox Live account and it became their nightly addiction for a good while. We have a 60″ DLP 1080p HDTV, a 7.1 surround sound system, and somehow game gets more play time than anything else. I think I enjoy watching people play it more than playing it myself. I’m not particularly bad at it or anything, it’s just that I find playing it to be frustrating in the wrong ways. Losing in the game is an even split between knowing exactly what I did wrong and blaming the game for being cheap with its enemy spawn locations. Finished: N/A

Ghostbusters: The Videogame - Terminal Reality, Xbox 360
I found Ghostbusters to be an enjoyable one-time-playthrough sort of game despite its repetitive gameplay mechanics because it does such a good job of making you feel like you’re in one of the movies – sort of like Arkham Asylum. Without the nostalgia, it might have seemed like a rather mediocre Gears of War clone. I got very far in the game but didn’t have the desire to finish after I got distracted by work and other new releases. Terminal Reality shows a lot of promise with this game’s polish and presentation, though – much more than in their previous titles – so I’m actually hoping for a proper sequel. Finished: NO

Henry Hatsworth and the Puzzling Adventure – EA, Nintendo DS
On paper, Hatsworth shouldn’t work. It asks you to constantly switch screens between a platformer and a puzzle game – neither of which are remarkably innovative or compelling – but somehow, the combination of the two makes it seem like a fresh experience. I had a blast in the game’s first set of levels, but then the difficulty curve went out of control. It was frustrating because it would take 10 or 15 minutes to play through a level and reach a boss, but after running out of lives at the boss, you have to repeat the entire level again. Sometimes that can be a good punishment – take a look at Mega Man for example. But the puzzle aspect of Hatsworth makes it unreasonable because it’s nearly impossible to get the Mega Man focus of precision platforming when your attention is split between two screens. Finished: NO

Hook Champ - RocketCat, iPhone
I fell in love with Hook Champ after grabbing it on sale shortly after its launch thanks to a nod from users over at CheapAssGamer. It’s a swinging-adventure game where the goal is to use a grappling hook to swing through underground caves as quickly as possible. The controls are masterfully executed for the touch screen – touching on either side next to the  character makes him move in that direction, and touching on either side above the character makes him fire his hook towards your finger. The developers add a couple twists to the formula like one-time-use rockets that give you an extra boost if you miss a swing and need to try again. There’s a lot of content for the asking price, and everything is extremely polished. It’s everything a good indie game should be. Finished: YES

I Love Katamari – Namco, iPhone
The reviews said this was a decent port, but it had a really sluggish framerate on the iPhone 3G that ruined the experience. I have a 3GS, so I thought I’d give it a try because it’s supposed to be a lot faster. It was still  far too slow to be enjoyable after playing through the PS2 and Xbox 360 incarnations of the series once you get past the first level. The tilt controls are a bit awkward as well, making it the only time I’ve found myself cursing while listening to the game’s trademark happy music. Finished: NO

iBlast Moki - Godzilab, iPhone
I picked this up when it was free during the Appvent Calendar promotion, and it ended up being one of the better puzzle games I’ve played for the iPhone. The core mechanic consists of setting time bombs around a level to propel the cute, round little Rolandos Mokis from the start to the goal. The formula gets interesting in each new set of levels where new features are introduced. One world’s levels take place underwater, so bombs also be set to prevent the Mokis from rising to the surface. There isn’t a lot of replay value aside from a basic gold/silver/bronze medal system, but it’s fun while it lasts. Finished: YES

Left 4 Dead 2 - Valve, PC
Although it’s not typical for Valve to release a quick sequel, you’d think they do it all the time by looking at Left 4 Dead 2. It’s an improvement over the first game in every way, and there’s more than enough content to warrant the price tag. Scavenge mode has all the fun of the original game’s Versus mode without asking for the huge investment of time to play through a whole campaign. Valve is just one of those companies that doesn’t make bad games even when they set themselves up for high expectations. Finished: N/A

Madden 10 – EA, Xbox 360
The last Madden game I purchased was Madden 93 for the Sega Genesis. I’ve stuck to the NCAA series since then, but my EA employee discount over the summer tempted me to pick this one up. I ended up playing it a lot more than NCAA 10. It’s extremely polished, the graphics and animations are stunning, and the presentation is unmatched. But that’s why the annual entries of Madden always sell so well, right? Finished: N/A

MadWorld - Platinum Games, Wii
It’s really gory, it’s really stylized, and it’s really repetitive. Most of the time, it fires infinite waves of enemies at  you and lets you kill them with standard attacks or quicktime-event based special attacks. Fun for a few hours, but I lost interest fast. For what it’s worth, it is one of the most graphically impressive games on the Wii. Finished: NO

Mercenaries 2: World in Flames - Pandemic/EA , Xbox 360
Mercenaries 2 is one of the few games that delivers on the promise of destructible environments, and it does destruction very well. The first two hours are a blast because the game gives you all the toys at the beginning, but then it gets stuck in the fetch or kill quests that most mission-based games succumb to. Blowing stuff up is so awesome that it makes everything else less interesting in context. Finished: NO

NCAA 10 – EA, Xbox 360
It’s always fun to create a player and rise to lead my own school’s team to a national championship, but after playing Madden 10 it’s hard to go back. I can understand that the presentation can’t be as sleek when there are hundreds of teams to worry about as opposed to the 32 NFL franchises, but it’s one of the few games where graphics make a huge difference in the gameplay. Madden‘s animation engine is better too – it’s almost as if the NCAA series’ tech is a year behind. Despite my insane levels of school spirit, I see little reason to own both games. Finished: N/A

Need for Speed Underground – EA, iPhone
When I got my iPhone, I heard that this was the best racing game on the platform. It sports great graphics, fully rendered cutscenes, and intuitive controls. In terms of gameplay, it feels stripped down from what I’ve come to expect out of the Need for Speed name, likely due to the smaller screen. It’s still a competent racer, but it lacks all the adrenaline of its console counterpart – and that’s a huge part of the genre for me. Finished: NO

Noby Noby Boy – Namco, PS3
It’s even stranger than Katamari, which I suppose is an achievement. There isn’t really any “game” here, it’s just a playground. I ended up wasting enough time with it to justify the $5 price tag. Finished: N/A

PixelJunk Eden – Q Games, PS3
I became bored with this game because I didn’t really understand how to play it. One of my roommates fooled around with it, and after hours of watching him play through it I wanted to pick it up and try again. It has a great visual style and the sound design is absolutely fantastic. I don’t like how the game makes you re-play each level multiple times without changing the scenarios – imagine being forced to re-earn each star in Super Mario 64 before getting the next – but it’s a great overall experience that’s worth checking out. Finished: NO

Plants vs. Zombies - PopCap Games, PC
My first day at EA, my co-workers told me to go home and buy this game. I obliged, and I wasn’t disappointed. It’s a great spin on the tower defense formula with tons of character. The Zen Garden was an awesome idea that encouraged me to finish the extra challenges after completing the adventure mode. Once I finally finished everything the game had to offer, I cleared my profile and started all over again to see if I could do it faster. I’ll probably do it again when it comes out for iPhone later this month. Finished: YES

Prince of Persia – Ubisoft, Xbox 360
I was a fan of the last generation’s Prince of Persia games, but this entry was a massive disappointment. The art style and presentation were great, but taking away the ability to die totally ruins the series’ formula of adventure. There’s never any danger or sense of urgency because you can die as many times as necessary to complete an area. There’s no reward for doing something correctly on the first try. For me, this meant progressing in the game wasn’t rewarding either, which translated to it not being fun. Finished: NO

Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time – Insomniac, PS3
I’ve been loyal to the Ratchet series since the second game hit the PS2. Tools of Destruction was its enjoyable next-gen debut, and Quest for Booty was a decent downloadable distraction. A Crack in Time is a fairly standard sequel. The best thing it brings to the series is the moon exploration system. I went through the entire game and found every last collectible item because I actually enjoyed doing it – each sidequest is on a different moon, so it always feels fresh. Aside from that, I actually missed not having Clank for the majority of the game. The constant banter between the two protagonists gives the series a lot of character, and this game felt a little empty without it. Finished: YES

Rhythm Heaven – Nintendo, Nintendo DS
Everyone who attended Iwata’s keynote at GDC 2009 received a copy of this game for free. I played it on the trip home and long after. Unlike Rock Band which tests muscle memory, Rhythm Heaven actually challenges players with real rhythm puzzles. The controls are limited to tapping or swiping the stylus across the screen. It’s frustrating at times because it seems like it should be simple, but it’s quite difficult and the game isn’t very kind with its feedback – about as different as you can get from other recent Nintendo games – but it’s designed in a way that makes it hard to “blame the game.” It does allow the player to skip levels and come back later after failing three or four times. The amount of content they packed into the cartridge was a lot more than standard Nintendo fare as well. I still haven’t unlocked a handful of the mini games because I’m trying to get perfect scores on some of the other ones first. Finished: NO

Scramble 2 – Zynga, iPhone
Scramble is available for just about every social networking platform, and the free iPhone version is everything it should be. Online multiplayer, easy touch screen controls, accelerometer support, and slick Facebook integration make it a no-brainer for the low, low price of free. It might not have the fancy 3D graphics of EA’s Boggle, but the gameplay is identical between the two. Finished: N/A

Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood – Bioware/Sega, Nintendo DS
At a recruiting event, I joked with a Bioware rep that this could be the worst game they ever made but it would still be the best Sonic game in at least a decade. It’s not terrible, but it’s a letdown for anyone who expected a Paper Mario quality adventure. The plot is weak, the graphics look rushed (it sparingly uses 3D models on a pre-rendered 2D environment, Final Fantasy VII style), and the gameplay is extremely repetitive. The Elite Beat Agents-inspired battle system is decent, but it takes too long to get through each fight. That problem is maximized by the game’s affinity for backtracking. Every part of the game shows promise, but no single piece is polished enough to warrant a recommendation. I invested about 7 hours into it before getting out the old Mario & Luigi game for GBA for a second playthrough instead. Finished: NO

South Park Let’s Go Tower Defense Play! – Microsoft, Xbox 360
2009 was the year of the tower defense game. While Plants vs Zombies dominated the PC, South Park dominated Xbox Live. I bought it and played through the entire campaign with my roommates in a single night. Without the multiplayer component, it probably wouldn’t have been anywhere near as much fun. It features everything you’d expect from an honest tower defense game – mazing, upgrading, selling, etc. The South Park franchise adds a layer of charm to the formula, but it doesn’t really bring anything new to the genre. It simply does everything well. Finished: YES

‘Splosion Man – Twisted Pixel, Xbox 360
Check out my decon for a detailed breakdown of the game. Easily one of my favorite games from 2009. Finished: YES

Sudoku – EA, iPhone
Sudoku puzzles are a great way to pass the time while waiting for the bus or sitting in an office. EA’s offering can be as simple or fancy as you want it to be. It can fill in all the possible numbers for each square, highlight specific numbers on the board to make it easier to find sequences, or pull in puzzles from the newspaper and solve them instantly. My complaint is that the options to get help – hints or fill ins – are on the main game screen. This means it’s really easy to accidentally hit them from time to time, and there is no “undo” button. I don’t regret picking it up, but it could be better. Finished: N/A

Tales of Vesperia - Namco, Xbox 360
It’s doesn’t say much to call it the definitive JRPG for the Xbox 360, but Vesperia is my personal favorite of the Tales series. The characters are likable, the plot is decent, the graphics are beautiful, and the battle system is fantastic. The main story is also remarkably long with numerous sidequests to spare. I’ve invested about 35 hours into Vesperia, and I still don’t think I’m near the end. I typically can’t sit and play it for long periods of time, but it offers a detailed summary of the plot so far from the pause menu to refresh my memory when I need it. Hopefully I’ll get around to finishing it soon. Finished: NO

The Beatles: Rock Band - Harmonix, Xbox 360
It’s an understatement to say that The Beatles: Rock Band is the best version of Rock Band available anywhere. In addition to all the features of Rock Band 2, it offers harmonization support for three vocalists, unique dreamscapes (trippy backgrounds and venues) for most of the 40+ songs, and truly meaningful unlockables. It won’t make anyone like The Beatles’ music, but it’s gaming nirvana for anyone who does. Finished: YES

The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition – LucasArts, PC
Apart from graphical upgrades and a new hint system, there isn’t anything Monkey Island fans haven’t seen before. I was disappointed that the “HD upgrade” simply replaced art assets. It looks great in screenshots, but the animations are still just as choppy as in the original. This made sense for something like Street Fighter 2‘s HD version, where framecounts matter to players for strategical purposes, but it seemed sloppy in Monkey Island. Still, I can’t complain too much because it gave me an excuse to revisit an excellent game. Finished: YES

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves – Naughty Dog, PS3
The first Uncharted was a mystery – it was Prince of Persia with gunplay and a decent plot until the last hour or so, when it became Gears of War with zombies and monsters. The sequel outdoes the original in every way. It’s like a Michael Bay movie, except it’s enjoyable. The combat hasn’t changed much, but there’s a bigger emphasis on mixing combat with parkour and acrobatics. Between a lengthy single player campaign and a thriving online multiplayer mode, there isn’t any reason to pass it up if you have a PS3. As a designer, I found myself creating save checkpoints so I could go back and try to figure out how they made certain areas of the levels. For example, one fight takes place in a building that is literally falling over while you’re still inside it. Everything is sliding towards one side of the room, and the outside world is visible through the windows. It turns out they built a physics engine that allows them to do it without any tricks. Hats off, Naughty Dog. Finished: YES

Valkyria Chronicles – Sega, PS3
Another game I’m late to the party on, Valkyria Chronicles is an innovative strategy RPG that turned heads last summer. I was addicted to the game for the first seven or eight battles, but when they take over an hour each, it starts to feel more like work than play. It has a great cast of characters, but the developers seem to think the numerous cutscenes are a lot better than they actually are. There are at least six or seven of them between every battle. The difficulty curve is all over the place – each battle is harder than the last, and the game suggests that you re-play older battles to level up. The problem is that replaying the older battles are extremely easy because of the amount of experience you gain for completing them the first time. The battle system doesn’t lend itself well to grinding, and the game wants way too much of it. Finished: NO

…

That’s it! Keep in mind that these are merely my opinions, and I’m not claiming to be any sort of an expert critic. Looking back is a useful exercise for me to identify trends and mechanics that are working across the entire industry, and hopefully I’ll be able to implement some of them in my own projects.

When I decided I was going to do these deconstructions, Facebook games were the last thing on my mind. This time last month, I had never even played a Facebook game. I thought the very concept of Facebook games was backwards – I have Steam to play games on my computer, after all. Facebook should be strictly for staying in touch with friends. But after hearing that FarmVille has over 11 million active users on a daily basis – even more than World of Warcraft - I figured that there must be something about the game that the average Facebook user finds attractive. And in always trying to expand my knowledge of games, I finally gave in and started playing.

FarmVille

Developer: Zynga
Genre: Simulation
Metacritic: N/A
Price: Free / Optional Microtransactions
Length: Indeterminate

Background
FarmVille is Zynga’s answer to Farmtown, another popular farm simulator for social networks.

Gameplay
FarmVille is designed to be played in short segments of five to ten minutes every day. It’s a never-ending cycle of planting crops, waiting for crops to grow in real-time overnight or throughout the day, and then harvesting the crops before they whither. The objective of the game is highly open-ended, but players can progress by gaining experience points and “leveling up.” Each level unlocks a new set of crops for players to plant worth more than the previous ones.

The game uses two types of currency: “coins” and “farm cash.” Players earn coins by planting and harvesting crops, but farm cash is much harder to come by. To get more than one farm dollar per day, a player has to spend real money through Zynga’s payment system. In the in-game marketplace, some things can only be bought with coins, some things can only be bought with farm cash, and others can be bought with either.

Players can also earn “ribbons” (achievements) that reward them with coins, experience points, and gifts. There are four tiers for each ribbon, each more demanding than the previous. For example, the criteria for one ribbon might be “earn 10,000 coins.” The next tier for that ribbon could be “earn 100,000 coins.” The game keeps track of the player’s progress by offering helpful counters such as “only 2,460 coins to go.”

Being on Facebook, FarmVille taps into the social networking bug and lets players send gifts to each other for free and “help” each others’ farms by visiting and clicking a button to scare away crows or rake up leaves that litter the fields. The game tries to make players invite more friends to join at every turn, whether it’s through publishing updates to the Facebook news feed or sending explicit invites through Facebook’s notification system. As players make “neighbors” (or FarmVille friends) with their Facebook friends, they are able to build bigger farms. It’s worth noting that players cannot see anyone on FarmVille who isn’t already one of their Facebook friends, so it does not act as a tool to meet new people like many other online games.

Where’s the fun?
There is nothing particularly innovative about FarmVille‘s gameplay, but it still manages to attract millions of players. Obviously, then,  there has to be something more going on here than just a stripped-down copy of Harvest Moon. What keeps players coming back? I think we can learn the most from FarmVille from breaking down how users interact with the game.

I can think of a couple possible answers. For me, a competitive Counter-Strike, Starcraft, and Rock Band player, I felt the need to level up faster than my friends to illustrate my farm’s superiority. I also fell into the achievement-whore mentality, playing just one more day to earn the next ribbon and see what I would unlock. I consider this to be the traditional or “hardcore” gamer’s approach to FarmVille.

The other answer, which I witnessed on some of my friends’ farms, is to play the game more like the decoration-centric approach to The Sims. Whereas my farm was almost entirely filled with plowed land and rows of trees, some farms I viewed were full of animals, ponds, houses, and haystacks.

Example of what I call a "casual" farm

Example of what I call a "hardcore" farm.

For someone playing the unwinnable game to win, wasting space like this is absurd. To gain the most experience points and the most coins, the farm should be full of top-grossing crops, save for a little bit of room for trees and animals to work towards the ribbons you can earn for harvesting them. For someone who isn’t a traditional or hardcore gamer, though, the game takes on a different goal where experience points are merely a byproduct of enjoying the game at a slower pace. This is a “casual” approach to FarmVille, where players have fun by exploring what the game has to offer – as a sandbox of sorts, not by working towards arbitrary goals in hopes of being rewarded.

Lasting Appeal
I played FarmVille for almost four weeks before quitting. I am a level 23 farmer with just over 100,000 coins in the bank. I can buy just about anything in the game’s virtual store. But I noticed that most of my friends’ stopped playing after a while, and as a result, the challenge of leveling up the fastest sort of fell apart. The game caps at level 70, but I don’t have any desire to go any further.

12 million players does not make a game an MMO, yet many of FarmVille‘s hardcore players seem to treat it as such. Leveling up in an MMO is fun because of the social interaction with other players. That social aspect is so limited in FarmVille that it cannot sustain gameplay, so while MMO players can look back on their hours of gaming with fond memories, FarmVille players are left with a bad aftertaste. The variation of gameplay is somewhat greater than FarmVille‘s offerings in even the most vanilla of MMOs. As farms get larger, the game degrades to clicking every single patch of land on the screen three times: once to harvest a crop, once to plow the fallow land the crop leaves behind, and once to plant the seeds of a new crop in its place. When I quit playing, my farm was 18×18 tiles large, meaning I found myself clicking around the screen a total of 972 times in a period of 10 minutes to complete a day’s worth of farming – not including time spent to collect eggs from chickens or fruit from trees, or to re-arrange animals and fences to get ribbons. It’s not fun, but it’s the fastest way to level up.

Is this really fun?

In the Gamasutra article I linked to at the top of this post, one of the commenters quipped “It seems you win Zynga games when you realize they aren’t really games and quit. the lower level you are, the better you did.” I think this was true for me, and possibly for many hardcore or traditional gamers, but it’s wrong to assume it’s always the case:  some of my friends who I grouped into the “casual” category are still playing almost daily. They aren’t leveling up as quickly, but they seem to be re-arranging their farms a few times per week, exchanging gifts with friends, and rescuing lost sheep to their hearts’ content. If these types of players are still farming, then the game is a success for them.

Building a Better Farm
Being a “free Facebook app” is an excuse to some extent, but if a game that relies on a “five minutes per day” play attraction fails to keep a significant part of its audience interested after a few weeks of play, there’s a design failure happening somewhere. FarmVille is still in beta, and towards the end of my time playing the game, Zynga added a new RPG-element in allowing each individual crop to “level up” in terms of proficiency. I think this seems like a move geared towards the hardcore audience, but I’m not convinced it addresses the issue. FarmVille could benefit from more social elements, such as cooperative farming or teams working towards a goal. Players should be able to buy and sell crops from each other to earn high-grossing crops before their levels unlock them.

These types social elements in browser-based games are already a proven success. Cybernations, for example, has minimal graphical elements and shares FarmVille’s philosophy of gaming in five-minutes-a-day. Some people play it as such. The game’s “hardcore” audience, however, spends hours a week in the game’s forums engaged in foreign relations issues with other teams or alliances. Cybernations‘ ultimate failure is in allowing this battle of alliances take over the game – unaligned players are always at risk being attacked because no one will step up to defend them, and being a member of an alliance is demanding of much more time than many players are willing to invest. In terms of FarmVille, the game needs to offer hardcore gamers a way of playing for more than five minutes a day while still giving them a purpose. The most compelling reason to play these games, at least as far as I have seen, is to be a part of a team working towards a goal that players cannot attain by themselves.

Finding an Audience
Facebook has over 300 million users worldwide. 12 million of those users are playing FarmVille. It’s a big number, but it’s only 4%. By contrast, there have been about 32 million Xbox 360s sold worldwide. 8 million of those Xbox 360 owners, or about 25%, own Call of Duty 4. It’s clear that Facebook games have a long way to go before they reach the relative appeal of the most popular console games.  Not everyone on Facebook plays games, but not everyone who plays FarmVille is a gamer. Many gamers on Facebook won’t play games on Facebook. Why?

I realize that Facebook and the Xbox 360 don’t exactly have the same target audience, and Xbox 360 owners are more likely to play games even though they have to pay money for them. But look at the iPhone – a device for a broad audience where games have consistently topped the list of most-downloaded applications. There’s something that FarmVille or Facebook itself is doing wrong where a barrier to entry is being created.

For me, the barrier was installing the app to my profile. When apps were first introduced, they were intrusive and annoying. I hate having my news feed overwhelmed by silly apps my friends are using that I don’t care about. As a result, I always deny apps access to my profile when they ask. My decision to start playing FarmVille changed that habbit a bit, but I’m still more hesitant about installing an app to Facebook than I am to installing an app to my iPhone, despite the former being a much easier process overall.

Summary
The Good: Extremely easy to learn, fully playable with minimal time investment, free.

The Bad: Sometimes too simplistic for hardcore audiences, limited social interaction.

I realize this decon was probably a lot longer than it needed to be. Hopefully you can learn from it. I would advise any developers out there who haven’t tried FarmVille to give it a shot – everything points to these types of games playing a bigger role in the future of our medium. If you’ve already played it, please share your thoughts with me in the comments below – there’s only so much I can deconstruct on my own!

]]> http://holdenlink.com/2009/10/game-deconstruction-farmville/feed/ 8 http://holdenlink.com/2008/12/games-of-2008-wrap-up/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=games-of-2008-wrap-up http://holdenlink.com/2008/12/games-of-2008-wrap-up/#comments Mon, 29 Dec 2008 04:36:29 +0000 Holden http://holdenlink.com/?p=175 Since Audiball finished development, I’ve had a lot more time to play the games I’ve been buying over the past few months. Hit the jump for some quick impressions.
Fallout 3 – Didn’t care for Oblivion so I came into this game not expecting much. The “VATS” battle system makes it a completely different gameplay experience even though it’s the Elder Scrolls engine. Tons of character, tons of stuff to do, but I was disappointed with the rather limited scope of the endings.

Dead Space - Excellent game. As others have said, “Resident Evil 4 in Space,” and that can only be meant as a compliment to EA Redwood Shores. The focus on dismemberment is unique and somewhat refreshing in a genre that has always been about headshots.

Left4Dead – Speaking of zombies, this is the multiplayer game of the year. Versus mode is a wonderful change of pace from deathmatch and CTF.

Lips – Disappointing to say the least. The microphones are of awesome quality, but despite the addition of gesture controls, I’d pick Singstar or Karaoke Revolution over this any day. Of course, Rock Band still tops them all.

Biology Battle – A fellow Xbox Live Community Game, and easily the best one on the service. Although it’s $10, it’s a Geometry Wars clone that manages to be better than Geometry Wars in every way.

Mother 3 – Finally got around to playing the fan translation. I last played through Earthbound about a year ago, and I’m enjoying this just as much. Still clueless as to why it’s not being released on the other side of the pond.

Tales of Vesperia – At least as good as Tales of Symphonia so far, which was previously my favorite game in the series. The voice acting doesn’t make me want to shove forks in my ears, so that’s better than most JRPGs right off the bat.

Penny Arcade Adventures Episode 2 – Better than Episode 1, at least. This is turning into a better-than-average RPG, so anyone who had any interest in the first one owes it to themselves to check this out. If you like Penny Arcade and you like RPGs, you’ll love this game.

Mirror’s Edge – I can understand the negative reviews: the combat sucks, especially in areas where it’s forced. But when everything else is so good, it’s hard to withhold a recommendation. It’s somewhat anticlimactic, but it’s an amazing start. I just hope it does well enough to warrant a sequel.

Banjo Kazooie (XBLA) - I can’t believe how much this game has aged. Was I really this obsessive about collect-a-thons back in the day?

Gears of War 2 – Not a fan of the control system. Presentation is top-notch, but when every other time I die is a result of a faulty control scheme instead of a smart AI, it gets annoying. Whose idea was it to make “climb” and “roll” the same button with an unforgiving margin of error?

That’s it for now. Happy new year!

So basically, it’s still Rock Band. And I couldn’t recommend it more for rhythm game fans.