Too many bundles

Cave Story seen by @naramura. Shared by @Nicalis.

Today, 14 Dec. 2011, a new Humble Indie Bundle has begun, barely a week after the previous Humble Introversion Bundle concluded. And with it, we've already had 6 bundles from Wolfire in a year: Frozenbyte, Indie 3, Frozen Synapse, Voxatron Debut, Introversion and Indie 4.

Add in Desura's Indie Royale bundles, with its 3 weeks cycle, UK's The Little Big Bunch, supposed to start today, and the fact that indie developers were already quite fond of selling their games in packs, and you have way too many offers like this in a considerably small territory.

Although I like the idea of selling games this way, which clearly works and benefits every participant, I'd like it to stop for a moment and take a breath. Think of the consequences this madness is bringing.
Right now, we live in an ecosystem in which players start wondering whether buying an indie game at release makes sense. If it is any good, chances are it will be sold with some other games at very low prices, even as low as 0.01€, in less than a year. Early buyers are heavily punished.
The standard price for games is also being established at a dangerously low margin of "as little as you want", potentially harming developers who prefer to set their one prices and use sales or gifts to attract new buyers as time goes by.

If anyone involved in this madness reads this, I urge you to reconsider. Keep the good work, release and promote bundles, but slow down. Don't burn the formula or your clients' pockets too fast, or the market will be saturated and possibly damaged. Now that the indie scene is starting to flourish, we must take special care that it grows strong and at a good pace. By watering it to much we risk rotting its branches and roots.

Disclaimer: I'll still acquire HIB 4, of course. It's the best bundle I've seen since Introversion's Anthology! And I love playing from Linux.

Roguelike Line of Sight by Eric Lippert

Isn't it wonderful when two passions get intertwined in ways you never expected? The passions in question are Roguelikes and the C# programming language, joined in the person of Eric Lippert.

In this week's post Eric has tackled the problem of developing a line of sight algorithm for roguelike games, which he'll apparently follow with an implementation. An interesting read for programmers and players alike, which saved me the time required to read through the forums myself =) And don't worry, the technical details are not enough to blow anyone's brains*.

For those not in the know, Roguelikes are top-down view computer role games of unusual graphical simplicity (environments, objects and characters are usually depicted using ASCII symbols) and extremely complex worlds. The genre's identifying marks are random generated dungeons, permanent character deaths (the save file is deleted if the character dies) and cumbersome controls. You should check ADOM (Ancient Domains Of Magic) or NetHack, if you haven't already.

And Eric Lippert is a respected member of the .NET community, having worked on the compilers of Visual Basic and C#, and lately leading the development of Roslyn, an on the fly VB.NET and C# compiler and analyzer.

* Disclaimer: No guarantees regarding the rest of the blog. Tread with caution.

Fragmented lives

Two days ago I watched, once again, Trois Couleurs: Bleu, the first movie in Kieslowski's Colours Trilogy. In that movie music is used to illustrate the main character's missing links with its family. And all the while I wondered: why do games so rarely use music and game elements to such effect. I've seen this done, from time to time, although not to its full potential, and usually limited to the music. Character themes and such.

But how could this be turned into something exclusive to video-games? The usual is removing characters which enable secondary actions (Beyond Good & Evil's partners, Dark Souls's Fire Keeper), or an object (Sands of Time's dagger), but I can't think of an instance in which the player's actual ability to interact with the environment was limited or bolstered by changes in the protagonist's motivation or expectations. Except, once again, Demon's Souls and Dark Souls' human/ghost/undead forms come to mind.

I'll give some thought to ways this could be accomplished, or other games I've seen something like this.

And that's it for today.

Running out of games to buy

Update (2011-12-14):  The way things are looking, STALKER 2 might finally include no "always connected" DRM protection at all. The dust is still setting, but GSC seems to have closed its offices. A sad day for Ukranian game developers and players all around, for sure. Please, guys, if you have the opportunity to finish the game, respect your clients and protect the game in a sane way.

Original post:

Today I have learnt that the next chapter in the STALKER (no more s.t.o.p.s., please) series will come with a little present: DRM requiring constant internet connection. Another thing I've learnt today is that I will not play that game. And that realization hurts, because I am a huge STALKER fan. I own the trilogy: Shadow of Chernobyl, Clear Sky and Call of Pripyat. The last two, I bought them on release date, and was proud of having supported GSC.
Why not buy STALKER 2? I will not accept been treated like a criminal by default, and I have already been bitten by this DRM stupidity. Clear Sky in Western Europe was distributed by Deep Silver, who slapped TAGES into it. TAGES, I found out, is incompatible with my DVD reader, and what did Deep Silver's support recommend? Get a new DVD. Haven't bought a Deep Silver product since, the same as I do with any company who betrays my trust.

But, sadly, during the last years my boycott list has grown non-stop. The videogame industry is becoming more and more unfriendly to its clients, constantly creating barriers between games and players: DRM, online passes, activations and even DRMed save games. The joy of playing is gone, replaced by the absurd requirement of registering, activating, checking the internet, writing codes and what not.
CEOs of the world: I am tired of all this. I don't see the point in giving money to your companies, when you only think of ways to make me pay full-price and give as little as you can in return. I refuse to ask for permission to play my games and I sure don't like having to rely on your servers, either.

After more than a decade of faithfully buying several games per month, I find my options limited, but not for lack of promising games, but for an excess of stupidity in the industry. I've gone from buying 3-4 games a month, even if I had no time to play them, to 1 or 2, with luck. And that average only holds because of independent developers and Good Old Games. For me videogame news are just a list of games I will not play, either because I am boycotting the company as a whole (Ubisoft), or because I find the security measures excesive (all the rest). And you read it right: not play. I won't even bother pirating the game, because I talk a lot about what I play to friends and acquaintances, and I will not give free advertisement to Ubisoft and company. You are not getting even an indirect sale from me.
Once DRM is removed, as happened with Mirror's Edge and Mass Effect, I'll gladly buy the game. But, most probably, by then I've already lost interest in the game and the publisher will have lost a sale.

Nowadays PC gaming is almost completely lost to me, and I fear that Valve's intentions to integrate Steamworks into PS3 releases will bring console games to the ground, too, as online passes are starting to do. If things keep going this way, I'll have to forget about playing, and bring books and movies back as my main hobbies.

And I won't feel sorry for any of the developers who forced me out of gaming.

League of Legends Dominion: impressions

For those not in the know, Riot just released a new 5v5 game mode for League of Legends. It's selling point is that it is based on control points, rather than base defense and lane control, and offers a faster paced experience.

Short introduction

In Dominion each team base starts with 500 energy points and, each second, the team controlling more towers removes as many points from the rival's energy as the difference in controlled points. In order to make things interesting faster, Heroes start at level 3 and with enough currency for a couple of items, experience and gold are much easier to obtain and almost every fight is to death, especially the first encounters. This is because the time spent dead has been drastically reduced, to ensure players are more aggresive.

Is it any good?

It is fun, that's for sure. A match consists of 20 minutes of running around, attacking, defending bases, chasing and escaping, with the tide of battle changing easily. So easily that most games are won by very close margins. I have even lost a game to a team with only 1 point remaining.
But all this tension is continuous, without a pause or moment for reflection. While dead, you barely have time to look for your next item and buy it. There's no sense of progression, narrative or strategy, because all actions are more imrpovised than thought out. In this stressful environment communication is too difficult, to the extent that almost noone speaks more than monosillables. Also, the absence of secondary objectives, like guarding Baron Nashor's lair in the classic 5v5 map, takes away from the experience.

In the end, after a battle in Dominion, little more than the result is left. Each encounter in Summoner's Rift, on the other hand, feels like a story in which you evaluated your opponents and tried to counter their strengths, coordinating with your allies*. Also, since death is a lot more relevant, you learn to fear those characters which kill you in a breeze (Annie, Kata, hello!).
Like in narrative, the ideal is to introduce rest periods after moments of great tension, so the player can take a breath before going head first into the next fray. The tension must also go in crescendo, after each pause. This way, each new peak of excitement feels more pronounced**.
On the contrary, when exposed to constant action, as in Dominion, every new encounter is treated by the brain as the same thing, eventually losing part of its interest. If Dominion matches where any longer, it would soon become tiresome. Riot did well keeping things under 25 minutes, but even at that lenght I still get tired of this game mode.

Conclusion

Maybe Riot will some day manage to add extra depth to its new child, but until then it will probably remain a distraction from repetition. Its advantadge is that rival DotAs don't have a secondary game mode to break the monotony, once the competition from Valve and Blizzard arrives.
LoL's best card, its extremely wide and varied hero roster, might not be enough to fend of the attacks by itself.

However, I am not convinced that Dominion will save LoL from Valve and Blizzard's attempts at stealing its market share. The genre has a small fan base and big companies can do a lot of damage to Riot, through advertisement and simple brand awareness.


* Of course, there is always a black sheep who only complains about the noobity of the team. Welcome to the sad reality of online societies.

** Check Schell's The Art of Game Design for more about narrative in videogames. Or any good book about narrative, actually.

Adding replay value

Today I'll explore the diverse mechanisms I've seen commercial games use to make them replayable or longer than it takes to end the main story itself. The main idea is that players are social animals, so they talk about what they play with friends, work colleagues or their families. The longer they play your game, the longer they'll talk about it and the more likely it is their acquantices, be them physical or virtual, will buy your game too. Of course, they'd better have good things to say about the time sink you've built: bad press does not beat no press at all in this kind of close relatipships.

Trick 1: Irrelevant secrets
Hide things not that relevant to the main story around, like ammo, modified weapons or photos of the development team. Players will spend a long time checking for secret walls or trying weird stuff. If their wild ideas succeed from time to time, they will keep at it. Otherwise, they'll stop trying and focus on the main game.
Pros: Easy to add.
Cons: They must be placed around evenly. Too many secrets or too few in one region of the world can create false expectations.
Examples: Any game with hidden power-ups or easter eggs.

Trick 2: Added background
Hide stuff which gives some insight into the world, the enemies or allies, which is not essential to ending the game. Jokes and logs fit well here.
Pros: Easy to add, since most of it should already be in the game reference documents. Role players love stuff like this.
Cons: Do not break the continuity. These extra dots in the drawing must be perfectly alligned with the ideas presented in the main game.
Examples: System Shock, FEAR, Baldur's Gate, Riven.

Trick 3: Super-objects
Hide game breaking equipment or abilities. Make most of them really hard to discover and even harder to obtain. If they are painfully boring to get, much better.
Pros: Bragging about the übersword feels so good.
Cons: Requires creating new items and/or puzzles. Most players are not willing to spend hours trying to achieve a secondary element.
Examples: Final Fantasy (VII, IV, V, VI, VIII, IX, X, XII...), Deus Ex.

Trick 4: Super-enemies
Add and extra challenge by including side missions with hellish fiends.
Pros: Once again, bragging rights. This comboes with Trick 3.
Cons: Make sure players understand they are not required to kill them and keep them away from the average player's path, or they will be very upset. Designing god-like monsters which can be killed requires a great understanding of your world's rules.
Examples: Final Fantasy, Castlevania.

Trick 5: Challenges
Add challenge rooms independent from the game whose only purpose is testing the player's ability. Time attacks or score rankings can hook players for a long time.
Pros: These are relatively easy to implement. Discarded levels, as well as parts of game sections can be reused.
Cons: It relies completely on your game being absolutely fun to play.
Examples: Batman: Arkham Asylum, Braid, Lara Croft and the Temple of Light.

Trick 6: Completion marks
Fill the world with riddles or puzzles which are there just to be solved. Nothing is earned from solving them, save reaching the desirable 100% completion.
Pros: They can be easily added to almost any kind of game.
Cons: If they don't integrate well with the world, the suspension of disbelief is at risk.
Examples: Batman: Arkcham Asylum, Castlevania (map completion).
 
Trick 7: On-line
Story be damned. Let's shoot at other players in the same maps until the end of times.
Pros: It works, often.
Cons: Competence is legion. Creating this along a single player experience is like building two different games with shared assets.
Examples: Call of Duty, Metal Gear Solid 4.

That's for no replayability at all. Now, how about starting the game again...

Virtual economies

When facing a rough problem it is common to study similar environments, looking for potential solutions. Virtual worlds, being all the rage, should have been the first place academics turned to, looking for advice, but they didn't, so I have the honour to publish my findings first. What can we learn from videogame worlds that would help us get out of this supposed crisis? After carefull study I've found that, apart from "beating the bad guys with the biggest sword you can find", there's nothing for us in here.

Really, videogame worlds have it much worse than us. Capitalism's main flaw is in its reliance and dependence on inflation to prosper, but worlds like Hyrule, Hillys or Final Fantasy Land are burdened with the much, much worse phantom of hyperinflation, and each tries to decrease its effect the best they can.

Origins of the inflation

One common issue in RPG worlds is the recurrent monster invasion, which brings chaos and suffering. It happened in each of the Phantasy Star games, in Hyrule, the Mana world... everywhere. But its direct effects are not that bad. I can't remember many towns destroyed by the monsters in any of those games, but what I remember is that all monsters, from cacti to dragons, drop legal tender, be it Gil, Rupees or Meseta, in generous quantities.
The direct impact of this simple fact is staggering: in whole worlds, when travelling from empire to empire, or even between planets of the Algo System, you'll use the same currency everywhere. Monsters provide the common ground for a planetary economic system that the UN can only dream of, with almost free manufacturing costs and little rewards for forgers.
The catch is that there is always new currency being coined, at an uncontroleed rate. If you want to eat roast vegetables, you just need to go out, kill a Giant Onion or Carrot, pick the loot and use it to buy the roasted version of whatever you killed. And the same happens every morning, in every house, in every town. And the amount of coins in circulation increases constantly, maybe not too fast, but in a year you might find that it takes killing two Giant Onions to buy one roast onion. And in a hundred years, when the next monster invasion starts, the value of the currency will drop so fast that it won't be even funny.

So how do you control inflation in a chaotic system like this?

Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes (HD) (Capybara, 2011)

Platform: PSN, XBLA, (DS)

The high definition craze is hitting with force this year and Ubisoft is making sure it is at the front line of this new fashion. In its zeal to outnumber anyone's HD rehashes it is now releasing re-skinned versions of one year old DS games. Well, at least they've had the decency to spearhead this new idea with a decent game, which did not get the attention it deserved. Unfortunately, the port didn't get the love it deserved, either, and it is just a port, with small fixes and brand new outstanding problems.

I will not go in depth into Clash of Heroes' mechanics and merits. To cut a long story short, it is an interesting and entertaining mix of your average tactics RPG with Magical Drop and Magic: the Gathering. Or something like that. It is quite unique. For more info, internet is full of reviewes of the DS original, and the modifications made to the new version do not invalidate them.
Regarding the common ground between both versions, I'll say that my favourite part remains intact: the puzzles, in which you are given one turn to prepare a number of attacks. They serve as tutorials for advanced configurations and how to best take advantadge of the rules. The bad is mostly the same, too: the last chapter is too simple and uninspired, consisting of, basically, going forward to advance, backwards to grind, fight the two final battles and that's it. Balance could also be improved, with random battles sometimes featuring too strong enemies for the current level of the player, or the level of bounties being inconsistent. Also unfixed is the possibility of losing bounty hunts without being warned, if the player decides to try a different one.

About the HD remake, I will say that the new art is, in most cases, great and very well designed. The only problem here is that some generic portraits are direct high resolution exports of the DS's vector graphics, looking like crude drafts in comparison with the rest. Also updated were several powers, units and objects, which were greatly needed. Things seem a bit more balanced now in multiplayer, which was absolutely vital for it to have a change to succeed. Also, the story mode difficulty has been reduced, but you'll still want to throw the controller a couple of times, specially during the last chapter.

Multiplayer is almost the only ocassion when the game's heroes actually clash

Review: Mass Effect 2 (BioWare, 2010)

Platform: PC, X360, PS3

Mass Effect, the first game in BioWare's intergalactic saga, turned out to be one of the best RPG blenders of the past decade. Despite some flaws, it might even be one of the best in video game history. It is up there with System Shock and Deus Ex, becoming part of a trinity of very different games with very similar concerns, each of them a testimony of how far available technology could go to create believable environments, characters and plot, and how to take advantadge of constraints.

System Shock, Deus Ex and Mass Effect have something else in common: their sequels departed considerably from the original. In System Shock and Deus Ex it was, mostly, a matter of technology and standard shifts. System Shock was released when the FPS genre was still crystalizing and its, admittedly overcomplicated, control and inventory schemes failed to become the rule. Deus Ex 2, on the other hand, changed the reference platform from PC to the booming console market. In both cases, the result was a considerably simplified version of the first game. However, Looking Glass used the opportunity to create a completely new kind of game, while Deus Ex: Invisible War remained a dumbed down version of its predecessor.

System Shock 2 is nowadays a classic, while Invisible War is just not.

Between Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 no such technology or standard shift happened. All the modifications to the formula were the result of fans feedback, internal development and, I guess, some pressure from EA. And those changes left a mark even bigger and scarier than anything done in Deus Ex: Invisible War.

What happened?

Sequels of the world be aware of the tale of Mass Effect. Quite a start for a saga, raised from illusion, care and depth, by many loved, despite its flaws, into change it was compelled by EA's suits and internet boards.
Not too good a shooter nor much of an RPG, that was its cross, but the way of the bender was never meant to be easyly walked. Still it sold in the millions and, once DRM was gone, I bought it and rejoiced.

Things looked bright for BioWare and its new step-father, dollars in the pocket and still two sequels short, there was much to win, while little could be lost. Yet, greed took its toll, Mass Effect 2 was rushed to market, changed for the sake of change, dumbed down to please the masses of FPS, TPS players who about Mass Effect complained.

"The Mako is plainly a bore, with little to do in outer worlds, the arsenal too ample, the stats a ton, too much to watch and learn, overheating weapons are plain odd, and why is not Tali in my bed?"
"Just let us run and gun, the next gun better than the rest, picking weapons' not that great. I play to have some fun. Oh, and could you add some mini-games?"

Someone compiled all these requests, wrote them in a chart and forced them into the game. They might not fit well, or needed more thought to blend, but the release date must be met. "Just work less on the PC port. Like anyone will care."

And Mass Effect 2, my friends, is what we have left. By the way, this is the farthest I could take all this prosaic verse.

Review: Shadow Complex (Chair Entertainmente w/ Epic Games, 2009)

 
Platform: XBLA

Shadow Complex is the first serious and successful attempt at recreating the feeling of oldschool 2D exploration shooters inside a 3D canvas. It's plain to see they focused on recovering everything good from Metroidvanias, while removing the design flaws and problems arisen by hardware limitations. A new aiming system, leveling bonuses or an attempt at story-telling are some of the additions they made to the Metroid formula.

A bit of history

Since the introduction of the third dimension in videogames many attempts have been made to recreate the classics in the new environments. Most of the time, however, the results have been underwhelming. The fast action available in simple 2D worlds proved constantly too much for the more complex settings required for believable 3D scenarios, unless action was limited to only two axes (Robotron X, Einhander).
Until Zelda 64's lock on was introduced, few had managed to get things slightly right. And even after that, failure has been pretty common. Proof of this is the respected Castlevania series, which, after four 3D iterations, found commercial success only when Mercury Steam decided to break with the old game style completely.
The Metroid series did better, with the Prime saga achieving almost unanimous praise, thanks to its merge of FPS mechanics with a lock on system, plus subtle story-telling. It did, however, rely on completely different gameplay and narrative styles than its precursors.

There is, as can be seen, a common thread going on, which is not even considering a return to the 2D. That approach has been left for handheld consoles, with the Metroid and Castlevania series for Nintendo systems, or remakes of old classics and shoot'm ups, like Ghosts'n Goblins for the PSP.
Of course, there have been constant homages, with 3D games re-creating 2D gameplay in small sections. The one I remember most vividly is Nier, which achieved levels of meta-gaming off the charts. Castlevania: Lament of Innocence and Metroid: Other M also played with pseudo 2D, although not too succesfully.

Chair Entertainment played it safe, making Shadow Complex a 2D game inside a 3D world. Movement is limited to the x/y plane, while enemies are free to move all around. As a result, Jason, the main character, is allowed to shoot in any direction too. The game automatically chooses how deep you are aiming, and it seldom does wrong.

Metroidvania at heart

Shadow Complex is probably the highest profile metroidvania ever done: edge technology, a big studio devoted completely to it, an expensive marketing campaign and the push from Microsoft. The studio dedicated apparently several months redrawing levels in paper form, calculating possible advance routes, secrets placement and planning all kinds of distractions to get the player off the track.
Also, the Metroid games were studied to he deepest detail, until their inner workings were grokked by the team at large.

Review: Mass Effect (BioWare, 2007), Part 2

In my previous post I got into the shooter genes in Mass Effect, explaining what it did well, what did not and what compromises were made to please a bigger market. This time, I'll review the RPG in it, plus the setting and story.

Looking through the RPG lenses

Role-playing games are built on three main aspects: story, character stats and world interaction. The tighter they all feel, the better the final experience should be. Or, in other words, no matter how good your game is implemented and thought out, if those three pillars do not support steadily the game as a whole, the RPG player will notice.

BioWare were greatly experienced in managing all three elements, and it really shows in Mass Effect. The story starts well and ends better, with enough stops along the way; the world is complex and astonishingly detailed; the main character can be differentiated beyond genre, clothing and faces; and there are plenty of NPCs, secrets and things to pick up.
Let's talk about each of them with a little more detail.

Universe and story in Mass Effect

There are a lot of things to learn in this new Universe humanity has recently (35 years ago) discovered. Lots of worlds, life forms, political bodies, rebels... Almost anything. Many of them are presented as the plot or secondary quests advance and other times it is just in the form of codex entries. It is true that, pretty often, Shepard's ignorance of the most basic information of important issues is startling, making the exposition a little too evident.
But, most of the time, the player is simply provided some new info, readable on the menu, which add a lot of flesh to the limited bits of info the story forces on you. And, believe me, there is a lot of info in those codex. Every extraterrestrial race, coalition, political group or history event is explained in there. Quite a lot of the many hours I spent on my first play-through were spent reading every little bit.
And if that is detailed, wait for the moment you reach another planets. Each planet, no matter how irrelevant or small, has a description of formation, nature or civilization. And, what's even better, many of them are homages to sci-fi classics. Trantor and Dune are among the most recognizable, but there is space for many other plays on the genre. Quite a delightful time waster.

And the story does not lag around. I'll avoid the details, but the events progress smoothly, even when the player is allowed to play the middle section in whichever order she decides. There is a lot of conversation involved, but most are so well integrated with the events at hand that they come naturally.
The beginning is epic, and leaves many doubts about what is really happening, and as it all plays out, you start filling holes, discovering new, bigger ones and spending all the time intrigued about the possibilities. And when the final revelations come, they do with a vengeance. Lots of loose threads are tied, and even stuff you thought was only there for the looks is revealed to play major roles.
The last great conversation, right before the final assault, is delivered in such a high note that I was simply unable to pay attention to all the action coming after it for a while. It is one of the best moments I've experienced in a sci-fi work.

Review: Mass Effect (Bioware, 2007), Part 1

Platform: PC, Xbox 360

It's hard to talk about Mass Effect without getting myself into a full-blown article on BioWare. A long loved company focused in a long lived genre, maintaining it while it slowly loses ground to the new guys in the party. In my mind I used to paint them as fairy tales knights, with shiny armour, declaring eternal love and care for the target of their affections.
And still, I cannot be considered a great fan on this company. Simply put, I haven't played that many of their games. I loved Baldur's Gate, but never played its expansion nor its sequel. Years later I tried Neverwinter Nights but found it too dissapointing, so I left it after 2 hours or so. Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire went by and I haven't played them yet, although I really want to.
And then, Mass Effect and Dragon Age came, which would be the last independently developed games before EA acquired the studio.
Yet, until very recently, I still respected the BioWare logo. It is possible that the cause was mainly my associating them with Planescape: Torment (Black Isle Studios), plus many friends of mine love their games and are constantly relating how they abused Baldur's Gate 2's magic and critical systems to destroy dragons in less than a D&D combat turn.
It's funny: most good memories I have of BioWare are actually not mine.

Mass Effect is, in few words, the evolution of BioWare from the complexities of its original Baldur's Gate and the D&D ruleset into a simpler experience, intertwined with shooter elements. It is, as well, a branching point in character complexity and plot scripting, providing a lot more depth, at the cost of some diversity.

There is so much I want to say of Mass Effect, and so little time to put it into words, that I'll post two separate articles. The first one, this, will focus on the shooter aspects, while the second one will look into the RPG segments and story.

Mass Effect

So, Mass Effect. A shooter developed by a renouned RPG developer constantly trying to make its games more immediate and accessible. Neverwinter Nights felt like a complex Diablo, while Jade Empire was a beat'm up with lots of abilities, few stats and no classes, but still many points to assign. Knights of the Old Republic, however, remained more faithful to their origins, for what I know, in spite of being an action game.
Mass Effect plays a similar trick, becoming a shooter while keeping a lot of its RPG origins: multiple missions, lots of dialog and weapons and a big stats/abilities system. It even goes further than BioWare's previous efforts in world and character design, producing a unique, rich universe with personality. It also gives the player more options than usual in how to play the main story or interact with partners.

If it has so many stats, it has to be an RPG

Review: Beyond Good & Evil (Ubisoft, 2003)

Platform: PC, GameCube, PS2, Xbox, X360 (XBLA), PS3 (PSN, pending release)
Website: Wikipedia

With the re-release of Beyond Good & Evil on current gen consoles (Xbox 360 and PS3), reviewes of this modern classic have appeared everywhere. Apparently the new version features increased resolution (1080p), improved textures, the dreaded achievements/trophies and, most notably, a revamped soundtrack with some new tracks and better audio quality. The original music was great, but word is the updated version kicks even more ass.
Otherwise, the game remains the same. Same mechanics, art direction, level design and sense of humour. And that's good, because I don't care much about graphics and can review the original while saving the money.

There is no point in repeating what every other site out there has already posted, so I'll focus on what sites have not mentioned so much and, in a form of meta-review, about the reviewes themselves.

About reviewes

Before jumping into the game, I'll make a reference to the reviewes I've read lately about this game. All praise Beyond Good & Evil, of course, being one of the points usually featured its originality: in an industry dominated by copy-cats and sequels, it was an inspiring change, innovating old formulas and exploring new areas, unconstrained by the weight of an intellectual property (partly).
Everyone agrees that re-releasing this game was a no brainier. A great experience, beloved by all the critic, which sold poorly, but can easily pay for itself now. Also, any chance it gets to gather attention is welcome.

However, the very same people that admire its uniqueness always end asking everyone to buy the remake, so a sequel is finally released. What? What about that anti-sequels, pro-originality speech? Forgotten in two paragraphs?
Well, I don't want a sequel to Jade's adventures and I didn't like the cliffhanger ending. I'd love to see Ancel direct new games, not rehashes of old ones, because he's shown he can do great things. Rayman was really good, but by the second installment I was already sick of it. I don't want Jade to suffer at the hands of her very own Raving Rabbids.

Review: Samorost 2 (Amanita Design, 2005)

Platform: Linux, Windows, Mac (digital distribution), Flash (web browser) 

Website: http://amanita-design.net/samorost-2/

Not long ago, and guided by general consensus among friends and critics, I decided to acquire Machinarium, the then recent work by Amanita Design. To my surprise, when buying the game I was given their previous one, Samorost 2 (its first part is free), and both game's soundtracks. Shortly after I refused to keep playing Machinarium (another story) and mostly forgot about Amanita.

Fast forward to a boring evening, when I discovered Samorost 2's installer in my PC. "Let's try this," I told myself (metaphorically; I don't usually talk to myself), "a free game can't be worst than most you pay for."

Amanita Design is a studio specialized, judging by their main games, in Flash development and extremely detailed graphics. Gray, complex landscapes play an important part in their games, as do their beautiful musical scores. These two elements have earned the studio repetead and completely deserved awards.
Amanita's designs are, in essence, point and click graphic adventures with a very simple inventory system, if any, minimal stories, pretty backgrounds and limited interaction.

In Samorost 2, the main character -let's call him/her Pyjama- wakes up to find a couple of space thieves stealing fruits from the garden's tree, and taking the guardian dog as a bonus. As a result, Pyjama embarks on an mission to rescue Dog and return to the home asteroid safe. And the player, not to be confused with the star, goes along for the ride.
Pyjama's adventure is a nice one, full of funny moments, detailed drawings, charming characters and some curious puzzles. So there are good things regarding this game. From time to time my efforts were rewarded with something more than "you managed to cross the door", which felt good, but not good enough. I always had this sour taste of frustration reminding me that I wasn't that much enjoyed.
But critics and players loved this game, so I am outnumbered. Am I wrong or do I have the right to call my Graphic Adventure Demise Culprit #3 to scene?

On OnLive

By now, every person even slightly interestedn in video-games should know about OnLive. Those who don't, would do well to read a bit on it and its competitors. Those in Nort America might even try it out, if their internet connection allows it.

In brief: OnLive is a remote gaming system. A player can start a game from the service in a not too powerful machine, and play, ideally, as if the computer was a modern monster. The game itself is executed on OnLive's computer cluster, in one of their machines. The player receives a video stream of the screen, and the input is sent back to OnLive to process inside the game. If the internet connection holds up, the experience should remain a close match to playing on your own PC.
The limitations this system imposes are in resolution (the stream is limited to 1280x720), the artifacts caused by the video compression and the time passed since the player sees an image (or hears a sound) and the game receives the player's response.

Then, what is so important about OnLive? It is, obvlously, an industry changing concept. The PC and console markets have been led by power hungry machines, paid for by the players. Now, costs can be sustained by an external party, theoretically reducing the cost of playing the latest and biggest games.
It is also relevant as an innovative distribution method: there is just no distribution. A client pays for the right to play a game. No installation files, disc, activation any more. And no more patching on the player's side. And you can play anywhere, on any PC.
Unfortunately, the games are associated to a single account, so you can no longer share a game with your brother, friend, partner... without sharing the whole account. Unless multi-person accounts are offered, obviously.

For developers, on the other hand, OnLive could imply a console like environment for PC games. OnLives machines can be tested, avoiding the hell of multi-configuration set-ups. And, at the same time, can always aim for the best possible graphics, without taking into account the number of high-end computers in the market. Of course, these points are irrelevant as of now, given the low penetration of OnLive in comparison to world wide PC games sales.

But what are the potential effects of such an environment on the whole industry? In the coming years, as internet connections improve, hardware gets more robust and OnLive and similar companies finetune their core systems, things will start changing. It might not be OnLive, but it is undeniable that someone, some day, will  triumph with a similar scheme*.

Trying to predict future market movements is considered by many a great exercise, even if you get everything wrong. So, what are my predictions for gaming, in the light of this technology?

Review: The Legend of Zelda series

Link: one of the longest lasting and most beloved icons in the interactive media world. An almost eternal boy, constantly saving the world at the last moment from Ganondorf's evil schemes, in which Princess Zelda is always involved, to a varying extent. Most often, she is the recipient of some form of legendary power and the key to controlling the TriState Area Triforce.

We've heard this story six times already (counting only Nintendo home console versions), with different variations. However, in terms of gameplay, evolution was limited to the first four games. Zelda II was a significant departure from the original, Super Zelda improved Zelda's top-down exploration almost to perfection, and Zelda 64 changed the way 3D adventure games were built. However, from Zelda 64 on, little has changed. Each game in the series would get its defining characteristic/mechanic, but general story, controls, menus or items remained pretty much the same.

Late Beginnings

I love A Link to the Past as much as anyone, even though I never finished it. It had good puzzles, tricky dungeons and awesome dungeon bosses. What made boss fights so good was the fact that they were difficult, until you learnt the method. After attacking the enemy three or four times, each with a little higher difficulty, the game acknowledged you as the winner. No five minutes battles, no constant die and retry, no rinse and repeat. This, for me, is the defining mark in the Zelda genre, and its greatest gift to computer game design. It is recognizable in every Zelda game afterwards, but also in the Metroid saga, Soul Reaver or Beyond Good & Evil.

The Light World

In other aspects, the game always felt quick, even when you were stuck. The moment you entered a room you easily identified every relevant item in seconds. Killed some minions, activated a switch and moved to the next area. Opened a chest, saw a 2 seconds description and moved on. Killed a boss, collected a heart and an object, got out of the dungeon in seconds and moved on. Every action was snappy and the game was constantly pushing you forward, with short conversations and a very streamlined interface.

Basically, Super Zelda kept the obstacles between the player and the actual Hyrulean struggle to a minimum.

Global Game Jamming!

This weekend (28-30 January) I've participated in the Global Game Jam, the largest 48 hours game dev jam so far. It's been awesome, frustrating, funny, tiresome, stressing and a bit unhealthy. But I survived the ordeal and came out with a finished game, which I still find amazing.

Technology and engines have advanced so much and become so cheap (free as in "free beer"?) in the later years that it is possible to do quite a lot in very little time. This has increased the number of people willing to take part in such events, as well as the average know-how. The most beloved dev platforms seem to be Unity 3D and XNA. I was expecting some Unreal Engine projects, but none surfaced at my location. There were also no iPhone, Windows Phone 7 or Android, so Flash, Java and self-developed engines filled the minority ranks.

The game I worked in is No Ground Left, developed by a small team of two programmers and an artist. Since it was created in Unity, we have Windows and MacOS binaries (tested in Windows 7 and MacOS X). The complete package, including sources, is available from the previous link.
We also have a browser version of the game hosted on GGJ's servers. It has not been extensively tested and content streaming seems to cause some troubles, so you might prefer to try the full application. Also, Unity's Web Player is not as stable as I'd desire.
However, the web version, which was uploaded some hours later, includes an important bugfix and some menu improvements, so it is closer to a good version of the game.

Everything developed during the Global Game Jam 2011 is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license, so everyone is free to pick our game sources, change them significatively and distribute the results (for non-commercial purposes), as long as we are credited as the original authors.
I took advantadge of this license to include some professional music in the game. Especifically, I used three slightly and quickly modified cuts of Nine Inch Nail's The four of us are dying for the ambient music. Trent Reznor released that track's album, The Slip, with the exact same license GGJ required us to use, so everything fit perfectly.

Game Design Challenge: Time for Change (part 2)

And this was my second proposal for the gender altering challenge. It was just an idea I found funny, so don't take it too seriously.
I would have loved to send another one, this time changing Gabriel Knight's assistant Grace Nakimura into a sophisticated adult man. He would have served as a balance for Gabriel's untidiness, and I was considering whether to present him as a sexual rival or partner. Or both. But alas! I didn't have the time to think it properly and compose the text. A shame.

But here you have Canabalte!

Canabalte

The moment you heard of the robot invasion in the Capital, you knew your little Canabalt would leave his apartment with the first clothes he found and without brushing his teeth. That's not the way men should run around, even when the world as we know it is collapsing. So, you have taken your car and driven as fast as possible from the suburbs to the outer limits of the Capital. From here on, you'll have to run and jump to reach Canabalr's apartment before he leaves.

Game Design Challenge: Time for Change (part 1)

I loved the concept of changing a game by shifting the main character gender, so for this particular challenge I sent a couple of ideas; one serious, the other not so much.
The first of them, Princess of Persia made it to the second place, in a draw with another Prince of Persia re-imagining. Although I don't like Shin's display of the female character, I have to admit that his/her game is quite a funny take on Ubisoft's 2008 reboot of the franchise.

Some time after the results were published, I found a forum of female gamers/game designers in which they discussed the finalists*. I would have loved to get something from there, mainly because they criticized my Princess. Unfortunately, I got the impression that most of the critics barely read the first two paragraphs.
However, their point that women are not that much interested in the archetype hero journey made me wonder. In the end, and judging from best-selling books, movies and classics, I think women do connect with the archetype about as much as men, but from a different perspective. But this is another story which shall be told in another moment.

* Being the pile of shit google search is starting to be, I am unable to find it again. If someone stumbles upon it, notify me in the comments and I'll gladly update the post.

Princess of Persia

After 30 minutes, only two choices remain: marry the Vizier to save your lover's life or after his execution. Your last hope for rescue dead, you call the Vizier to submit, but suddenly realize it is up to you to save yourself. The Vizier grinning in front of you, you slowly manipulate your braid, look him in the eyes and smile when your small dagger rips the vermin's chest. After seething it back in your braid, you leave your royal chambers, with one half of the sand silently waiting to reach the bottom of the clock.

"Marry me... or he will die within the hour."

Graphic adventures demise rant

Before I start posting reviewes of graphic adventures, I find myself forced to write a state of the art, plus my opinion on the genre's slow death. Please, indulge me.

As you should know, in the 80s and early 90s, adventure games reigned supreme in the world of videogames. Their narrative had no equal, as did their ability to treat serious subjects and make people ponder about them. But, as the century approached its end, the genre lost its following and energy.
It is a recognized sport among adventure fans to look for culprits of this decline, and everyone has their favourite. I like to blame:

1. The lack of evolution in the genre.
2. The inability to properly embrace the new technologies and platforms (partially related to #1).
3. The resignation of players and critics, who in the end welcomed almost any new graphic adventure, without regards to actual quality, sinking the standard for the genre and scaring new players away.

Graphic adventures were built from three basic tasks: pick object (or person), use object (or person) and talk to person (or object), all of them poorly executed for decades. Pixel hunting, objects indistinguisible from the scenary, endless conversations of no interest to game progression, cumbersome inventory systems and outdated movement mechanisms were the rule.
From time to time, a developer would discover a way to improve one of these (Alone in the Dark hybridation, Myst's lack of inventory, Gabriel Knight 3's navigation), and implement it in a succesful game. But other designers would rarely include other's ideas into their new game. Copying was not well regarded and, if it were, modifying the engine a studio had used for several titles was not that easy and/or economically viable.

But this blaming is of little relevance in the real world. What is important is not answering "why did graphic adventures dissappear", but "why did most gamers not care at all". You see, people still bought games, even bad ones, by the millions, but adventures only got a waning portion of that cake, no matter how good or praised they were. How can you explain that?
What had made graphic adventures shine over other genres was a mix of their depth in story, characters and humour. Another feature was their relative simplicity, when compared to space shooters, platformers, etc. Anyone with minimum computer expertise could pick up a graphic adventure and click around the screen, select verbs, objects, people and laugh for a while. Puzzles also were part of the magic formula: solving them felt great, and telling your friends when they were stuck was even better.

Game Design Challenge: iPad

Coinciding with the launch of Apple's gadget, and much like with the 3DS right now (January 2011), GameCareerGuide requested ideas for iPad games.
Some time ago I had quite a laugh watching youtube videos of finger skaters in toilets, desks or cardboard parks. Given that my favourite winter sports are curling and figure skating, I decided to adapt that finger experience to the iPad.
I didn't make it into the honorable mentions with Fingur Skating, which really made me wish there was some kind of feedback to the proposals. Is it the name? I knew I should have gone for Fingure Skating! Or the idea could be clearer? I know some of the mechanics are not that fleshed out, but that's not a problem usually. Mmmh.

Fingur Skating

Youtube's major impact in society has been the revelation that supposedly niche hobbies were not at all. People started timidly uploading their videos, just to find they were not the first to [weird things here]. One of the most endearing trends I found were the finger skaters, with their absurd tricks. I don't enjoy skate boarding that much, but I love figure skating and abdsurd games. Fingur Skating is the perfect blend of both.

The idea is simple: move your fingers on the iPad screen simulating the movement, spins and, to a certain point, jumps of a professional figure skater. Thanks to the size of the screen, you have the freedom to move graciously around and even play with a partner, with little scrolling. The ice rink would fit in 4 screens. The action will be followed from a cenital camera, with the player synchronizing the fingers to the skater's limbs, usually the feet, with both fingers while skating and only one when doing spins, following the curves traced by the feet or arms.
In the normal playing mode, the skater will perform a preconfigured series of figures and acrobatics, with the player going along. There will be visual cues signalling future movements, unfolding as subtle lines, in the manner of minimalist vines, and fading behind the skater, leaving small trails on the ice. Failure to properly execute the movements will result in drops and desynchronizations, which would show in the final punctuation.

Review: The Path (Tale of Tales, 2009)

Platform: PC (digital distribution)
Website: http://tale-of-tales.com/ThePath

I have a problem with this game, being that I don't know if it is one at all. Much like with Noby Noby Boy, most times I start talking or writing about it, I end questioning the nature of games, their purpose and means. Where does the game end and the art begin? Is it even a game? It is only fitting that The Path is the first review I upload, as the questions it raises regarding the whole industry are the reason why this blog is called GameNotGame.

What is The Path?

The Path is not funny, but intriguing, not pretty, while attractive, nor familiar, yet easy to relate to. It has a message, but not a speech, a challenge, but no difficulty.
The Path, as a product, is defined by how few of the definitions of videogame it matches, yet it could still be one. It is labelled an "art game", and done with, or a non game, by its very creators, and thrown in a completely different basket. In my opinion, it is simply the wording that is wrong. Twilight and A Widow for one Year are both novels, but their artistic merits are separated by eons.
Sincerely, I don't care that much if it is a game or not. I loved the time I spent with the girls and their lifes, trying to figure out what the designers were telling me through them, reflecting on what I could learn from their fragmented tales.

The Path, as a game, is defined by its shortcomings. The controls are not the best possible, the mechanics fuzzy at times, the objective misguiding. However, Tale of Tales has built the game on these issues, making them a part of the experience, part of the metaphore. Life as a teenager is not clear, the faster you run through it, the less you know where you'll end, the slower, the less you'll achieve.

Meet our red riding hoods: Ginger, Rose, Scarlet, Ruby, Robin and Carmen.

The Path is to games what growing up is to becoming 18. Reflection is so integral to the process that there is not a stop once you beat it, but keeps going on until you stop learning from it. And what you learn is not that you may now drink alcohol, or drive, but that those activities require a level of responsibility and many possible consequences, even some of the less desirable being worth the risk.

Game comparison chart

As I explained in a previous post, once I start uploading reviewes, I'll refrain from scoring them. Instead, I'll publish a chart with similar games, showing their quality difference with the reviwee.
The last two nights I've been awake for much longer that it is healthy, programming the tool to automatically generate the game charts, based on simple better/worse pairs. Once the ideas were established, it was only a matter of coding, learning how SVG works, remembering how to generate XMLs with Linq's XDocument -never again without it-, and using some advanced XML features.
So, I'll explain in a few words what I have done.

First of all, is the data I work with. I keep a simple XML document with games and comparisons. Games are specified as:

    <games>
        <game id="Dragon Age" year="2009" url="http://social.bioware.com">
            <names>
                <name value="Dragon Age: Origins"/>
            </names>
        </game>
        <game id="Mass Effect 2" year="2010"/>
        <game id="Mass Effect" year="2008"/>
        <game id="Baldur's Gate" year="1996" url="http://www.gog.com"/>
        <game id="Baldur's Gate 2" year="1997">
            <names>
                <name value="Baldur's Gate II"/>
                <name value="Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn"/>
            </names>
        </game>
        <game id="Neverwinter Nights" year="2000"/>
        <game id="Icewind Dale" year="1997"/>
        <game id="KotOR" year="1999">
            <names>
                <name value="Knights of the Old Republic"/>
            </names>
        </game>
        <game id="Oblivion" year="2006">
            <names>
                <name value="The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion"/>
            </names>
        </game>
        <game id="Gothic" year="2001"/>
        <game id="Fallout" year="1997"/>
        <game id="Planescape: Torment" year="2000"/>
    </games>

The ID is the name the game is usually known for, the URL would point to that game's review, if I have one up, and the year... I have not verified them for this test file, so they are most probably not the year the game was released.