Play Impressions (5/11/2008)
November 4th, 2008
Merry Gear Solid
Being smaller, less riskier endeavors, indie games often surprise us with humorous jabs at the medium itself, because they can. Some of these games push mild insights into the developers opinion, others base themselves solely around the art of parody. Merry Gear Solid does the latter.
Merry Gear Solid as the name suggests is a Christmas themed parody of the Metal Gear Solid franchise. Likening itself to the classic 2D Metal Gear games, Merry Gear Solid plays like a small, half hour episode from the series, wrapped in the Christmas décor. You, Solid Santa must infiltrate a house full of children to plant your presents under the Christmas tree. Along the way you will obtain a series of items, all throwbacks to the series mainstays which allow you to progress through the cleverly designed household
It’s very surprising to see just how much care has been taken in developing this title. The sprites and animations all look perfect and would fit in nicely with the Pokemon games. The writing is superb and consistently strong with clever puns and jabs at series staples as well as Christmas culture. The level designs are also excellent and utilize multiple strings of problem solving. The whole package is just top notch and it maintained my interest for the whole pay session. With this game as a template, I think that the potential of an independent installment of the series could easily be done, that I would love to see.
Magical Toy Chest (Demo)
Having developed educational software for children before I can understand the challenge involved in designing a game for this market. The trick is trying to keep the accessibility and difficulty in equilibrium so that the child can grasp the concept of the game easily and then remained engaged for the length of the experience. This means thinking hard about how to introduce the game, what language to use, how to layout the menus, when to provide tips, when to let the child explore on their own, when to throw some education at them etc. This is a tough job to keep up. Magical Toy Chest by Graduate Games in this regard fairs quite well, probably about as well as I did, although that is obviously biased.
Magic Toy Quest is another one of those popular physics based games which require you to orientate objects in a 2D environment to see what happens when you set everything off. These games make you feel like the king of your own small world, self-indulgently lining up dominos and watching them fall over.
I started off talking about educational games and indeed Magical Toy Chest is one of those. What I most like about the game is how it implements the learning elements. In order to get the toys into the chest you need to first set up a path for the target toy (the toy that you want to get into the box) to travel. This requires placing set pieces (other toys as selected from a side menu) in the environment and then using another toy (yeah it’s all toys!) to nudge the target toy into the right direction. This all amounts to a lot of problem solving and experimentation all of which become pretty engaging.
The game is intended to represent cleaning up your room but feels more like having fun considering that you need to use have to get more toys out to knock the more into the box.
In fact the idea of cleaning your room by creating more mess is contradictory. You’ll occasionally need to start by picking up the keys in the environment to open the chest, despite this you can’t just pick up the toys and put them in the box. Overall it isn’t very organic game design and I found it to form an initial hindrance.
Once you get over these things then the game starts to kick into its own and becomes really quite enjoyable. There are a few hitches like this, mainly to do with those issues of balancing to the audience but at it’s core Magic Toy Quest is fun, and has plenty to offer. It’s hard not to recommend this title as it excels in most areas.
So Far Away…
October 20th, 2008
Last week I saw the Tokyo Game Show trailer of Resident Evil 5. If you haven’t seen it then I suggest that you take a look, only for the graphical onslaught though.
In terms of graphical prowess this game looks mind blowing, a huge leap up from previous video which already looked incredible. I didn’t expect to be saying this -for maybe for another 2-3 years – but if that was all running on in game specifications then RE5 will may even have a graphic leg up over..dare I say it..Metal Gear Solid 4 which had me confusing reality and video game far too often.
The complements end there though, and they end abruptly. No doubt you’ve already looked at the trailer after the above assertion so let’s talk about those uncomfortable issues….
Marketing Stimuli, Previews and Chicken Feathers
October 18th, 2008
It’s expo-mania! In the proximity of the past two weeks there have been no less than 5 significant game expos and conventions scattered all over the world. About a week and a half ago Nintendo held a special conference showcasing several new titles and a new(er) iteration of the DS (the third pillar’s third pillar, supposively), shortled followed by a press summit in the US. Following up on some pleasent surprises from Nintendo, the Tokyo Game Show appears to have been a great success with a barrage of new annoucements. In amongst the two titans there’s also been E for All (almost invisible this year) as well as the lesser known Virtual Worlds Forum in London.
I’m sure you’ve all got your favourite picks out of what’s been on show? Punchout, Sin and Punishment 2, Halo: Recon, Resident Evil 5? Wanna know what mine is? Metal Gear Solid 3.
Metal Gear Solid 3 (Subsistence) has to be one of the most filling game experiences I’ve had the pleasure of enjoying. The game sets a remarkaby high standard for itself and consistently hits that mark without a hitch. There’s a handcrafted quality to the play, seen in the attention to detail and organic feel that the native environment brushes onto the ‘swiss army knife’ framework of the Metal Gear Series. It’s these qualities that make the game feel so complete as a product, as though anythng more would spoil the brorth. I’m just melting thinking about playing this game when I return back to Australia in a few months.
Oh wait, Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence came out not quite 2 years ago (going by PAL release), what does this have to do with anything? I’ll tell you what, it’s a ridiculously dry way of me expressing my hatred towards ‘the preview’.
The problem with this industry is that the only time we ever talk about a game is when it is out of our hands. The “professional” games media waste our time fueling “promises” and “expectations”, second guessing pre-released games with nonsense like this. They are fiddles to the marketers, if not the same. And then we do it some more, we pretend that we’re all enthusiasts and go on messages boards to masturbate over it for a while. We throwdown the money for the rare, super deluxe, pre-order only iteration and then after two days of sinking it in, we don’t care and move onto the next piece of overbloated tripe.
We, both the enthusiast and media, throw the game in the spinner for 30 seconds (reviews) and are then done with it. From there it is all mute, the four year production has had it’s 20 seconds in the sun, now it’s time for it to move aside for the next one.
And yet throughout this process, we completely discredit the games that we “cherish” so much. Once a game has been spun in the marketing mixer, served up as a preview and then scratched around for the review, we are done, there is nothing left. There are no more PR reps or PR reps in the guise of game developers there to plug the game to us, it all comes to a halt.
These problems exist for two reasons. This industry is easily vunderable to marketing and there are professionals open to exploitation. The preview, scoop, first in game screenshots, Famitsu scan, teaser trailer are all examples of that. We eat it up without a second thoght. We all buy this nonsense and submit to the marketers by making our judgements premeptiviely. Which is why people buy those ridiculous limited edition pre-order packs.
What I find to be the most disheartening result of this vicious cycle is that once we’ve discarded a game all talk about the game stops. There is frankly no more discussion to be had. Yet the game still is burried wthin it’s own merit and remains undiscovered.
This is one of the main reasons why this blog is never bleeding edge. Except for when Metal Gear Solid 4 was released, but that was a special occasion. There is so much undiscovered treasure within our past and yet we keep walking forwards, ignoring it. Someday we will retread our path and make sense of these games that we don’t yet understand, but I’m not interested in waiting around for that. Long live the “past hit”.
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