Play Impressions (And the Rest #4)

May 14th, 2009

wonderboy-header

I don’t have terribly much to conclude on these last two titles, but they’re commentaries that I feel need to be said;

WonderBoy in Monster World

Any game with chunky sprites and googly eyes is a winner in my book, now add some rose tinted nostalgia and you’ve made yourself fine cocktail of retro loveliness. Beyond the sappy cuteness, WonderBoy walks a fine line, mastery of allurement. The slow walking speed, mostly barren landscape, and vanilla combat makes for a rather weary Metroidvania (lite) adventure – it’s almost monotonous – but it’s not and that’s the magic. The trick is a little spice through means of environment. The preset template for WonderBoy is adequate; it’s a 2D, open world platformer with combat elements and an overlayed equipment system. The environments act as both visual distraction as well as steering the game’s momentum. Each environment has some form of gimmick, whether it be swimming underwater, shrinking into a pint-size version of yourself or the series of side-kicks that the small townships hand to you. Each mechanic introduced per stage keeps you on the chain a little longer. The puzzles can be random, and at times too few cues are given to the player, resulting in blind guess work for progression. The platforming and combat is definitely on the lite side, and lacks a succulence to it, but that is after all the game’s motif; from the big sprites, to the simple design, the game is rather primary – it’s Wonderboy. I see this now as an ideal introduction for younger children into more esteemed platformer titles.

PixelJunk Eden

..the commenters were right. I’m still crawling my way through PixelJunk Eden and it’s become painfully obvious on the upwards climb through the later levels just how deceitful this game becomes. Eden for me, is now a continuum of awkwardly-placed, just-out-of-reach fodder designed to tease your patience. Particularly in the stage with the changing gravity (Garden 6?), Eden throws you around the place with no regard to any progress made. The earlier stages do this through height, this stage does it through random gravity switches. Instead of falling to your doom, you veer out of place…to your doom. All progress towards that elusive spectra is lost, and the tag-teaming grimp pair need to begin another journey to some upwards, downwards, eastwards or westwards direction, following the next pulsating, coloured light. There is little discretion for the player, it’s simply maddening the lack of consideration doled out. Jumps from one land form to another, on first glance appear possible, but (with the inclusion of swaying) becomes a dastardly difficult task. It’s a devious dance of clipping and swinging off masses to other, far away masses, failing, being heavily penalized and then forced to repeat. Playing in co-op makes the circus difficult to decipher still, I can never figure out which player the camera is panning too, and which one of us it will follow when the other falls out of frame. Argh, show some restraint please! There’s no way I’m buying encore.

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PixelJunk Eden: More So Facebook Than Ninja Roping

March 4th, 2009

Time to come down to earth a little bit and talk about Eden as a bunch of technical mechanics in relation to the feelings it encapsulates. You know, the way I usually swing. If you haven’t played Eden then this article should probably work favourably for you.

Above I have included a gameplay video of Eden, if you haven’t ever seen (much) of Eden then take a quick look, you only need to watch it for a minute to pick up the jist. Even if you have seen some before, just take a quick look for context. Work with me here.

Now, when I originally downloaded video for this game, one of the first things that jumped to mind was the apt ninja rope mechanic from the Worms series. It’s simply so much fun to play around with, like a two dimensional Spiderman. Here’s some more video to jog your memory:

Eden doesn’t really play the same way as Worms does, so it doesn’t necessarily feel the same way either. Eden‘s world is full of smaller goals which ensure that you can’t get too far ahead of yourself. As the video depicts, your little grimp needs to collect pollen from floating containers in the air, obtaining pollen sends them in the direction of the nearest bud which with enough pollen will grow upwards opening more of the level. With the constraint of grip spots (that is, the player has to make the environment grow before they have surfaces to twee from) and a less sporadic and agile rope to content with, Eden is very much different from Worms’ ninja rope experience. They are similar, and definitely appear more similar than they really are, but in reality the games have very different directions and intents from the swinging mechanics.

I’ve been playing Eden entirely in co-operative with my brother and I think that a better analogy for the way Eden plays is to liken it to social networking; either Twitter or Facebook. The vibe imposed on the player is very relaxing – as the last article pointed out. The mood set by the game doesn’t pressure you for result, if anything it pushes you to freestyle it more. You have two players in an environment, working together to build up the world around them. They can work together or just swing around wherever their senses lead them, looking for the next bud to blossom.

Whatever the players do, their worlds are kept together within the scope of the screen. Leaving the screen results in a direction pointer and a short three second timer warning to player to climb back up before a respawn and mild punishment. The two players therefore have to be in the some vicinity of each other. This is similar to setting up your networks in Facebook. Selecting which institutions you attending and becoming part of that game space.

Whatever they do is universally shaping what is happening around them. Creating bursts of pollen, swaying the grip area – the plants around them, pollinating new buds and growing new plants. In a way this is very much like an offline world, with each person doing their own thing, but subtly connected online through the affects their actions are having on the environment.

This is the same way Twitter or Facebook operates. Unless I chat with someone through the service, my actions aren’t imposing but still affecting the people around me. I upload a photo from some event on the weekend, a friend sees this and comments on this. This then ripples onto the profile of that friend’s friend who can see the album as part of an extended network through the updates feed. Although I’m basically going about my business, doing my own thing effectively, it is the flow off effect that make a network like Facebook or Twitter alive, much like the breathing world of Eden. One cannot exist without the other.

As you can see by the two examples, both Eden and Facebook share similarities in the way in which they operate, seemingly likening the networking experiences to one another.

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Downloadable Drug

March 2nd, 2009

Pixel Junk Eden‘s most poignant quality is the way it slips you into a mental slumber with its hypnotic chimes, weightless gameplay and pulsating visual charisma. It’s perhaps the best sort of game to play before you go to bed, simply because its natural ambiance, as well as the player created ambiance send your body into peaceful hibernation. It’s an incredible trance like state, similar to the way Ikaruga‘s concentration overload sends your mind through channels of mental breakdown. The main difference being that the come down from Ikaruga almost shatters your brain, as you recover back into a less intensive, less destructive state of mind. One that isn’t demanding twitch from the streams of pattern identification.

Eden is unbound from strain, and hence you relapse slower. During play it gently burrows into your self awareness, before manifesting and shutting off everything bar the plugs that allow your brain remains to become encapsulated with the on screen tight rope act performed by those strange bits of characterized shape. The gameplay demands are minimal, with most of your little effort concentrated on staying afloat rather than any objective goals, like completing the level. The lack of interference allows the visual and aural scapes to stimulate and massage you into this zen state.

The higher you climb, the deeper the hooks sink into you. The superbly instrumental sounds bend back and forth to the on-screen acrobatics of these tiny characters. Music becomes the element in which you flow, you orchestrate on screen with synchronocity to the tunes you are influencing. The visual platform becomes just that; a platform to throw yourself at, a tool to proceed with. It’s an incredible unity of presentation with gameplay that all interweaves with such fidelity. Detached, as something so far from real, so much more than cases with price tags on. Pixel Junk Eden deserves not to sit in the space of “real” games on the shelf of game stores but rather, allow itself to be found, discovered, in a place without physicality.

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