Enjoyable for all Audiences: Klonoa and House of the Dead: Overkill

April 29th, 2010

house-of-the-dead-overkill

This is something of a special take on my regular ‘Play Impressions‘ feature. Klonoa and House of the Dead: Overkill, despite their differences in content, are great examples of games which channel the ethos that the Wii was founded on: accessible gameplay that breaks down the barriers between beginner and seasoned players. Both of these titles are of genres of relatively low complexity which further adds to their expansive appeal. I will focus on how their designs are logical to players and ultimately very successful games.

Klonoa

Klonoa is a remake of the 2.5D PSone platformer Klonoa: Door to Phantomile for Wii. The platforming borrows mechanics from Yoshi’s Island and Wario Land, but alters and combines them in a refreshing way. Like Yoshi, Klonoa has a flutter move where he can temporarily keep himself afloat in mid-air and like Wario, Klonoa can pick up enemies and launch off them to gain extra height. When these mechanics are combined in succession, Klonoa comes into its own, offering an emergent technique for more capable players which allows Klonoa to travel great horizontal and vertical distances without touching the ground.

Klonoa can also toss enemies in front of him or at objects in the back and fore grounds, allowing for some nifty puzzles. In fact, I’ve never played a game which has so dynamically implemented 3D environments on a 2D plane. It’s all quite impressive the way paths spiral around and Klonoa shifts to layers which were previously a part of the back/fore ground. As with the combination of jumping mechanics, it’s when the backgrounds and foregrounds interconnect and loop around to create multilayered puzzles where Klonoa excels.

It’s the bridging of separate, easy-to-understand constituents which make Klonoa a joy to play for experienced and inexperienced players. In fact, Klonoa is an ideal game for children; I would have loved to play his game growing up. The story in particular deserves special mention in this regard. Unlike Jak and Daxter or Rachet and Clank who play on youthful, adventure-seeking archetypes, Klonoa and his blue-ball sidekick Huepo are adventurous but reserved, displaying a natural pure-heartedness rarely seen in video games. The sense of friendship shared between the two is heartfelt and the conclusion to their tale is one of the most touching I’ve experienced a video game—less we forget this is a production made for children. Playing Klonoa had reminded me of the importance of developing games for a young audience. However, even if you’ve long since past primary school, as a fan of 2D platformers, I can’t recommend this under-appreciated gem enough. The best platformer on the Wii bar Mario.

House of the Dead: Overkill

There is surprisingly very little to say about House of the Head: Overkill from a mechanical standpoint. As I mentioned in my rail shooter guide on Racketboy, Overkill employs a simple combo system where flawless, no-miss kills tally a tiered combo system with each multiplier assigned to over-the-top names like like ‘psychotic’ and ‘goregasm’. Shots are divided into head shots and body shots.

Players can now choose a two weapon loadout prior to each mission, supported by a shop system where players can tweak and add weapons to their arsenal. In many respects, the two weapon loadout—arguably the only “new” addition to this installment, if you’re into series progression and all—injects a strategic dynamic into the core gameplay since players can switch weapons to conserve ammo or for tactical efficiency. There’s a degree of strategy in pairing up clunky, rapid-fire or standard weapons depending on your strengths. It quickly becomes apparent though that the shotgun, with its wider target area—as represented by the large reticle—awesome power and lack of ineffectiveness when shot into the distance, is the most efficient weapon for high score chasing, and once you’ve maxed it out, you’ll almost never use the other weapons. Personally, I’m hardly a high score chaser, but the scoring system in Overkill, due to it’s simplicity and prevelance in the UI, is more apparent than in prior games, which piqued my interest. High scores are rewarded with cash, so it all ties back to the upgrades system which is scrimpy at best, ensuring that you’ll need to play every level at least 3 times before you earn enough dough to max out all the weapons.

The player also has a substantial health bar which on depletion offers the option of sacrificing half your score to continue. Branching paths have been removed entirely which give more focus to the narrative—and with plenty of health packs, slow motion prompts, grenades and ‘save the civilian’ moments, Overkill is quick to orientate the players concentration towards accurate shooting and the rewards subsequently accumulated from the combo system. The novel grindhouse presentation may appear to distract from possible lacking amenities, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. All components of House of the Dead: Overkill: the linear progression, health bar, cash system, in-game trinkets, UI, all work to consolidate accurate shooting: the game’s core gameplay premise. In addition to the excellent production values and comedy-driven narrative (the latter of which, I think anyone could enjoy), Overkill, just like Klonoa, is a fantastic game for both seasoned and new players alike. I think that it’d also be a good introductory game for players wanting to further explore the rail shooter genre as it focuses so heavily on accurate shooting: an integral skill required in these games.

Overkill also provides incentive for players to keep working on their accuracy with a standard story mode, the option to add more mutants and a final “director’s cut” version which adds a significant amount of content per level. The final pay off is the ability to dual wield with too Wiimotes which is a rather handsome reward. Again, this plugs into the accuracy element of the game.

Additional Readings

The Making of the House of the Dead – British Gaming

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Tags: House of the Dead, klonoa

Play Impressions (14/4/10)

April 14th, 2010

meteos-flowers

Meteos

Meteos is a neat match-three puzzle game for the DS which involves dragging blocks vertically to match with same coloured blocks, either horizontally or vertically, which sends them flying past the top of the screen to a neighbouring planet. A stream of blocks continuously rain over you (hence the name Meteos, ie meteors) until you’ve lodged enough blocks into outter space to blow up the respective planet. There’s a bizarro narrative linking all this craziness together, but don’t dare ask me about it.

Meteos‘ simple match-three mechanics is lengthened out into a full game with stages that vary up the gravity of the skywards-moving blocks and, as referred to in the Lumines series, skins for the various stages. These alterations have no bearing on the core mechanic, and, as such, Meteos‘ sole asset feels stretched beyond its scope. Sora Ltd attempts to flesh Meteos out with a ridiculous story and locked bonus content, however, these additions, much like the changing skins and minor physics changes are artificial at best. New stages, bonuses and other extras are just distractions which impede the experience more than enhance, particularly when the block designs animate and become incongruous with each other.

I got many good hours of gameplay out of Meteos‘ enjoyable match-three mechanic alone, which suggests that the self-sufficient gameplay is better suited to a downloadable format with an infinite mode and clear block designs. This is an awesome game with frivolous additions to meet the retail release.

Donkey Kong Jungle Beat

How can one not enjoy the unashamedly bombastic nature of Donkey Kong Jungle Beat? It’s a game that I haven’t the energy to finish over a regular duration, so I’ve decidedly been hitting the bongos every couple of months for the past few years now. Not quite a ritual, just something worth pulling out on occasion.

Donkey Kong Jungle Beat is one of those games where the visual presentation matches the gameplay really well. Gameplay is a patchwork quilt of set piece 2D platforming concepts (riding animals, using the parachute and fans, the boss battles) stitched together around the surprisingly excellent bongo-based platforming. The standard platforming constitutes the majority of gameplay, as does the environmental/elemental-based theme within the visual presentation. As frequently as DK switches to a new mode of play, does the visual style pertain some sort of individualistic flair (which may not adhere to the rest of the style guide). Detailed textures and neat technical effects are mashed in amongst plain textures and simple modeling. The gameplay is as diverse as the visual showcase, consolidating the game’s irreverent style.

As a brief conclusion, the fact that Nintendo can create a supremely enjoyable platformer with two buttons and a clap technique is a testament to their ingenuity.

Final Fantasy: Rings of Fate

In contrast to how I usually comment on games, I haven’t didn’t play Rings of Fate for very long and am already writing about it. After an hour or so of playing (and confirming impressions with my brother who completed this game years ago) I decided that it wasn’t worth my time to play Rings of Fate. It’s simply hack and slash filler, that’s all. From the onset, Rings of Fate seems like a great kids game, but the story is so condescending and the voice acting so ear piercingly awful that I was forced to preemptively give up. Players loathe games which make them feel stupid and adore games which make them feel intelligent, and this was a game that looked down on me, so I have no sympathy for it and neither should the children.

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Tags: donkey kong, final fantasy, meteos

Play Impressions (25/2/10)

February 25th, 2010

katamari

Geeze, it’s been roughly 6 months since the last Play Impressions article. You can hardly call it a regular feature anymore, can you?

Sonic Rush

The quality of a 2D Sonic game hinges largely on the level design. Controllability and presentation tend not to really matter since the games follow an established template. Level design, on the other hand, is a huge point of contention. The main reason why we still crawl back to our Megadrives (/console of choice) to play the original Sonic the Hedgehog is because the levels are so richly layered with branching paths. Each level was seemingly intended to be enjoyed multiple times over, offering players a great deal of replayability. Furthermore, Sega motivated players to explore by 1) distinguishing alternative paths from the main route and providing a fair window of opportunity/sufficient scaffolding to reach them 2) occasionally slowing down the pace (in cramped areas, for example), giving players room to mine for secrets. Exploration gave Sonic shape and dimension, and is ultimately what propelled him up with the likes of the Mario series.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeyK4M_vFlY

Sonic Rush is perhaps closer to a series reboot than anything else, since it largely forgoes the exploration elements in replace of high speed spills and thrills. Alright, alright, I lied. Exploration is still present, however it plays the role of rewarding macho, elite players who enjoy rote learning the stages, more than anything else. Sonic Rush is a much faster game than the original Sonic, and unfortunately the means to exploration haven’t been adjusted to match. There are fewer slower-paced exploratory moments in Sonic Rush and the prompts to branching paths (springs boards, jumps, and the race track construction as a whole) zoom by before you even notice them, offering minimal opportunity to diverge. On top of this, the number of huge leaps and dual-screen drops rule out any possibility of backtracking, and the number of branching paths have decreased too. Overall, the frequency and means to exploration are made so narrow, that the point is almost moot and, as a result, Sonic’s original sophistication has been cut to a single dimension (the run fast and be cool one). You see, this Sonic Rush is exclusively about speed, which means that most levels play out like roller coasters, where the best method to success is to hold right on the d-pad and watch the fireworks go off. There are some new moves adapted from the 3D titles as well as mid-air tricks, however, for most holding right and jumping occasionally will prove suffice.

When it’s all done and dusted, this new Sonic is fine, it’s just kinda shallow, I guess. Fans could rightly argue that the new move set replaces the exploration elements and rightly sustains the sophistication, and maybe they’re right. However, there’s only one instance in the game where the new moves are mandatory (World 2, Stage 2) and not enough leg room elsewhere for them to be all that useful, honestly. Actually, I didn’t even realise that these moves existed on my first play through and had no problems, so the mechanics are superfluous in my mind. In anycase, Sonic Rush only validates my comparison to Unirally, by heading further in that direction, and that ain’t half bad.

We Love Katamari

Rolling up a snowball of commodity items to wacky Japanese music certainly has its charm, yet I wonder, how long it’d take before the magic runs dry? Fortunately, we don’t ever get to find out in We Love Katamari as it’s surprisingly varied throughout. This variety in the mission-per-mission gameplay and the overworld of quirky characters wrapping it all together keeps the concept feeling suitably fresh. It’s ironic then that such a repetitive game can feel so new and exciting. I mean, every level requires the player to partake in what is fundamentally the same activity (push giant sticky ball to roll up random objects), yet there’s enough spin on the parameters and gameworld itself that each level, mission, you might say, is prevented from feeling overly familiar. In this regard, Katamari reminds me of Burnout Revenge, where each track/level is re-used multiple times over, sometimes reversed, sometimes with different parameters or objectives, and sometimes you’ll just venture down one of the track’s different routes/shortcuts. The same content is repeatedly farmed for gameplay and you’re primarily doing the same thing, it’s just that the individual approach of each “mission” gives the game a continually new angle.

katamari-screenshot

What bugs me about Katamari is the king and his delusional legion of fans. After almost every level, the king and whoever he has on his shoulder will complain that you didn’t roll a larger katamari. I could deal with this criticism, if not for the fact that it doesn’t necessarily require more skill to roll up more items, just the luck of being in the right place at the right time. Most “skill”, the kind the game is dissing me over, one would think, would come from rote memorisation of the areas most densely populated with roll-upable (?!) goods. In which case, it feels like Katamari is taking cheap shots, which works against the relaxed nature of the game.

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Irrelevant question on stylisation: if I shorted a title (ie. the original Sonic, Katamari), do I still italise it? :$

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Tags: sonic. katamari

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