Perfection
I’ve noticed a worrying trend with somes games reviews of late. There’s an increasing tendency for high-profile games to get perfect scores. I’ve seen ten-out-of-ten and 100% “Perfect!” reviews and it doesn’t make me happy.
This is not to say the games being reviewed aren’t great. Just that they’re not perfect. No such thing exists. And to give a score that represents “free of flaws” or “couldn’t be improved” that a 10/10 suggests is simply wrong. No game is perfect. Every game can be improved. Every game has flaws.
Now, in part, this is as much a criticism for using a two or three digit number to distill one person’s lengthy opinion of one game into a piece of meta-data that the typical A.D.D. style gamer can grasp as much as it is a critcism of misrepresenting “good” as “perfect”.
I know what you’re thinking – and you’d be wrong. I’ve been against ‘perfect’ scores since the first time I saw Xenon 2 get 10/10 in Amiga Power. This isn’t an issue about games appearing on certain formats. Save that for the shallower arguments please. Although, I must say, in the two most recent examples of perfection that spring to mind, both are by western media, for western games, produced by western developers, parented by one of the largest and richest companies in the west. I’m not saying it’s a conspiracy but sometimes, when something sounds too good to be true it’s because the truth has been compromised.
I know reviewers are human beings. They have feelings like you and I. They have bias like you and I, and they can get caught up with the excitment of the moment like you and I. The difference between us and them, however, is that most of us don’t use our opinion as the basis for our profession. So there is an expectation and a responsibility by reviewers to rise above bias, excitement and goodie-bag and remain objective. Anyone willing to review a product and declare it as perfect, in my mind, has compromised objectivity somewhere down the line.
In fact, when I think about it, I dont think I agree with any game review that’s given a perfect score to it’s subject. I’d have considerable more respect for a review that stops at 99% than goes to 100.
The last game I played to the end of was Bioshock. A game that got more than one perfect review. Ignoring hype and agenda-fuelled fanboys and, generally speaking, everything that wasn’t talking about the game itself, I wasn’t really too fussed about Bioshock. Once the reviews came through and the demo was played I had something meaningful to work with. As you may have read, I’ve bought the game, played through it and found it definitely less than perfect.
This only serves to reinforce my attitude towards games with perfect scores.
Of course, game scores carry a lot of the blame. At the end of the day they become numbers for warring fanboys to volley at one another to prove that something as unquantifiable as a player’s experience with a game can be represented by a number between 1 and 10 and, based on that number, serve as undeniable proof of the worth of a piece of silicon. Such a flawed mentality! I mean, if you truly gave a damn about whatever it was you were arguing about you’d manage to make the effort to say a little more about it than “average of 98%!!” to prove your point. But then, people are lazy and numbers, like stats and specs, are always manipulated to present a one-sided story.
So, here’s hoping that games journalism can hold onto some shred of dignity by avoiding the easy, please-the-reader-at-the-expense-of-quality route and we can look forward to reading opinions worth something.
In summary: if you think a game is perfect, or if you believe it should be graded with a perfect score then you’re happy to cheapen perfection when it suits you.
Shame on you!
Bioshocked
I finished Bioshock last week. I have to say, it was a pretty good game. I certainly don’t regard it as a 10/10 perfect game. But then, I don’t think any game will ever be perfect.I was pretty aware but resistant to the mass of Biohype that preceded the game’s launch. I’d heard plenty of talk about how the game offered unheard of levels of freedom. That challenges in the game could be overcome in a variety of different ways. That no two player would play the game the same. Pretty lofty claims! Lofty, assuming you’ve never played a sports game or something as revolutionary as chess, perhaps.
I’d considered these claims and wondered what variety of dilemas that game was going to present to the player that would necessitate such an array of abilities and behaviours. After downloading the impressive demo on my 360 I decided to buy a copy of the game and find out for myself.
Now that I’ve played through the game and have been listening to the excited comments from people who claim the game cured their blindness just from coming withing ten yards of the box, I have to say that it doesn’t meet any of the lofty claims that its developers, publishers, reviewers and fans have breathlessly foisted upon it.
Oh, that’s not good is it? I’ve started to criticise Bioshock. Obviously, I must be wrong. You might as well stop reading now. The last thing you need is to carry on reading the rantings of some hate-fuelled killjoy that doesn’t appreciate why Bioshock is perfect.
For those of you that haven’t stropped off in disgust at the first sentence that didn’t match your own opinion, I’ll now elaborate why the game isn’t perfect.
Firstly, let’s get the necessary out of the way – from this point forward there may be SPOILERS of the game in this text. Frankly, I’m not fussed about learning spoilers in a game and I’ve little time for crybabies that act like you’ve just bitten off their leg who ARE bothered about such revelations. But there you go, I’ve warned you. Now, would you kindly show some backbone and not complain about reading stuff you didn’t have to read. Thanks!
My biggest issue with the game is the claim of unrivaled freedom in the genre. Now, cynic that I am, I was wary of this before I played the game. The cynic in me thought it was quite a major claim to make and, considering the restrictions of the first-person genre, would truly be revolutionary if it turned out to be true.
When push comes to shove, Bioshock isn’t really doing a great deal of interaction. The core game follows standard FPS template (walk, run, jump, aim, shoot, reload). The major embellishment to this is that the game allows you to pick up loads of stuff. Well, that in itself isn’t very special. I mean, most FPSs see you picking up health and ammo. So, there’s MORE stuff to pickup. But, regardless of the variety of stuff you’re picking up, you’ve not expanded your level of interaction with the world. Picking stuff up is picking stuff up – regardless of what that stuff may be.
Different types of interaction beyond picking things up would be flicking swtiches/pulling levers. There’s a few instances in the game when your character does that. Once again, we’re not quite entering pioneering ground here.
And there’s lots of objects to open and search inside. And when I say lots, I mean fucking LOADS. Seriously. But do you interact with them? Not especially. You can’t move them to allow access to different areas by making makeshift stairs. You can’t push them or pull them. You can’t use them to wedge doors open. You can’t place them on pressure-sensitive switches (because there aren’t any). So they act as set-dressing and as an extra step to picking stuff up. Instead of picking stuff up directly, you ‘search’ by pressing a button to reveal a list of stuff you can pick up. Then you pick it up.
Oh, I’ll add that *some* objects in the game world can be moved using the power of telekenesis – although these tend not to be BIG objects. Moving objects serves little purpose other than to pull a distant goodie closer to you (so you can pick it up, yay!) or to fling at an enemy in order to hurt or kill them – which isn’t a particularly uncommon goal in first-person games.
Some objects in the world are locked – such as safes. You can ‘hack’ these to open them. Essentially what we’ve done is add another step to the ‘picking stuff up’ formula. Now you have to hack, then open and then pick stuff up.
Doors open automatically (apart from special doors that don’t – such as little hatchways for you to crawl into – such areas typically hold.. wait for it.. items that you can pick up)
What’s left? Vending machines. You can buy stuff from a very pretty menu. There’s a few flavours of vending machine/menus around. Fortunately, one of them allows you to combine your stash of stuff magically carried about your person (the game doesn’t bother with an inventory to display the results of your obsessive scavenging). The pretty menu allows you to combine your petty stuff into more significant stuff. But it’s still all stuff, y’know?
So, we’ve not really broken any moulds with it comes to the passive interaction. What’s next?
Well, unsurprisingly, you’re not alone. There’s automated turrets that will shoot you. You can shoot them back if you like. Or you can hack them so that instead of them shooting at you, they’ll shoot at your enemies. How do they know who your enemies are? I don’t know. You must have hacked it into them or something. What else can you do with them? What unparallelled level of interaction does the game offer? None, it would seem. You can’t push them around or relocate them. They either shoot you or they don’t.
Cameras cast their beady gaze in many places too. Stay out of their view lest sirens go off and heli-bots go at you (which you can shoot or hack). You can hack cameras too so that they like you but don’t like your enemies. How do they determine the difference? Erm.. dunno. So I guess the camera thing is cute but it’s not radically changing the way the game is played. Stuff still gets shot at, it’s just other stuff instead of you.
So, that leaves the other people in Rapture. The other people have a wealth of ways of interacting with you. Some will shoot you. Some will attack you. Others will try to cause you harm. Their buddies might try to kill you. Your wealth of options with dealing with these startling AI entities involve shooting a variety of steampunk weapons at them or using your plasmids. These typically see you emitting different pretty ways of doing harm to others. Fire and lightening are common. Bees and tornados are somewhat different. Oh, but tornados don’t work on objects such as gun turrets. Odd that. The “turn the enemy into your friend” mechanic is can be employed here also and is available to you in a variety of guises with plasmids. You can make folk angry so they try to kill anything near them. You can tag folk so that they are the target for all the AI attacks instead of you. I’m sure you get the picture.
These are all means to an end. The player is still not interacting with the characters or the world in any new and fascinating way. In essence, the player is still using weapons to deal with enemies. You can’t talk your way out of a situation. You can’t jump on their heads and squash them. You CAN ignore them. You can’t trade your items with them. You can kill or you can be killed. That’s it. Bioshock’s achievement is that it’s come up with some very evocative ways of achieving this age-old goal. It hasn’t actually changed the goal.
BUT WAIT!
What about the characters that speak to you and push the story along! You don’t kill them, do you! HA!
Well, actually, you kill all the principle characters the game lets you get close to. All the other characters are forcibly seperated from the player using the revolutionary mechanic of placing the player behind a big sheet of glass. So, no, you don’t kill them – but then you don’t actually do anything with them at all. You just sit and watch. In one instance you actually sit and watch as the game forces you to a kill a character. Riiiiight..
So, beyond a very typical set of on/off rules this wonderful game doesn’t actually break any new ground in terms of gameplay. This binary ruleset even applies to the game’s big hope for emotional connection when it comes to encounters with Little Sisters. Do you save them (good ending) or harvest them (bad ending)? You don’t talk to them. You can’t kill them either. And considering the amount of effort gone into forcing emotion and backstory rather bluntly into the game, the payoff isn’t half as rewarding as something like Ico – which has about 10 lines of text in the whole damn game.
And this promise of unprecedented freedom ain’t all that. You have freedom to do what you like in a variety of ways – so long as what you want to do is kill things. Rather bizarrely, you are not free to hold more than $500 in the game. Even though you can hold hundreds of assorted items. Even more oddly, your finances are reported in four figures (as in $0500) which reinforces this abitrary limit on the player’s supposed freedom. Other inventory contradictions show that you can only hold 9 heath pickups and 9 plasmid pickups, no more. But bits of rubber tubing and metal cases? You can hold as many as you like! Odd.
Sometimes these non-violent NPCs want you to do things. However these things tend to break down to either picking stuff up or shooting things (with a camera – that uses film as it’s ammo mechanic). So, once again, we’re doing the same thing but just giving it a different label.
As such, in terms of gameplay, I found Bioshock pretty unremarkable. It is, by no means, this champion of gaming that a perfect score would suggest.
There’s arguments against this, of course. But, to it’s credit, Bioshock covers up it’s unremarkable gameplay with very pretty graphics and some of the best sound design I’ve ever encountered in a game.
One area that I particularly admire the game for is in it’s use of the audio diaries that are littered about the game world. Now, I’m not particularly amazed at how these diaries give the player episodes of back story and motive to what went on before he arrived. That’s just narrative. It’s not particularly carefully handled, it’s not startlingly intelligent, it’s certainly not especially clever writing (everything is spelled out to the player in the end – really spelled out so that even simple gamers can understand what’s going on.) In fact, the implementation could have been a bit better – the varying volume levels were annoying. In terms of context, some of the things mentioned in the audio diaries (such as passwords and top-level secrets and unethical musings) are about as absurd as a Bond villain always telling Bond his master plans and then walking away believing the sharks will eat him. Contextually, it’s rather broken.
No, what I love about the audio diaries is that it was a fantastically economic and smart move to do. You get loads of exposition and you don’t have to animate anyone – just record script. Big pat on the back for whoever came up with that solution for the narrative and character development. Top marks!
Credit where it’s due, Bioshock is a lovely game to look at. But like other astoundingly pretty games like Gears of War or Resident Evil 4, this lavish set dressing succeeds in fooling a lot of people into thinking the gameplay is more than it is. Many people claim that “games are more than just graphics” and then tend to adore games with very pretty graphics but gameplay that doesn’t compare. Like Resident Evil 4, Bioshock does this very well. When you purposefully seperate the game’s aesthetics from the actual player gameplay you’re left with a huge amount of garnish for a rather small meal.
All in all, Bioshock is a superb game but it’s another example (like RE4 and Gears of War) where prettiness is being confused with substance. That the gaming community adopted this game (in part, thanks to some very community-friendly marketing) also meant that it was going to be championed and any argument would be shot down with the usual mob-rule mentality that game nazis love to excersize.
Bioshock is just about more than the sum of it’s parts. It has a lot of unrealised potential (the compelling “underwater city” setting is criminally underused). It does many things well, but, for it’s claims and for the amount of time it has had to learn from masters of the trade, it is no where nearly as good as it should have been.
It’s rather odd really. Bioshock suggests a rich open gameplay nirvana and then brings in lots of invisible gameplay walls but uses great audio and pretty images to distract you. Space Giraffe is the opposite – suggesting a very limited and narrow gameplay experience and dispensing with aesthetic pleasantries and then turns out to offer a whole lot more game that it’s author let on.
I know which game I’ll be playing for longer!
Wii are not amused
So, I bought myself a Wii.
It was all a bit of a mistake really. You see, I pretty much bought myself a Gamecube in order to play Metroid Prime. Back then I was a Metroid fan and concerned with how this traditionally two dimensonal game would handle in 3D. I was very pleased with the results and enjoyed the game all the way up to the bastard that was Meta Ridley. The cheeky blighter got the better of me and torments me to this day. Anyway, by that time I’d watched a speedrun of the entire game, realised just how poor I was at it but decided that I’d seen the good ending and played 95% of the core game and got my money’s worth. For christmas one year, I got Prime 2 but wouldn’t allow myself to start it until I’d beaten it’s prequel.
Things change. The Wii is out and Prime 3 has launched in the US with a PAL version due in late October. I could feel my resolve buckling as I considered investing in the hardware in order to play the third 3D installment of the only Nintendo franchise I didn’t regard as being horribly overrated.
I decided the best way to combat this would be to get my fill of Metroid by finally plonking Prime 2 into my Gamecube and work my way through it. I was certain that once I’d got through the game (if you hadn’t noticed, I’ve been trying to stick to a one-game-at-a-time-until-I-beat-it rule this year) I would have had my fill of Metroid and wouldn’t be hungry for any more for quite some time.
Well, with the combined enjoyment of getting the better of Dark Samus and solid reviews (all of which mentioning a greatly worrying aspect of Prime 3 in that it had been made noticeably easier than it’s predecessors) I realised that my plan had backfired and I was just as keen, if not keener, to play Prime 3 than ever.
Knowing that the game comes out next month I thought I’d bite the bullet and buy the hardware this month. Despite Nintendo’s inanely smug apologies and promises of the hardware being out of stock I had no problem picking up the oversize iPod wannabe in the first vendor I went to. After a smattering of online research it appears that any of my usual digital haunts would have been able to sell me a Gamecube 1.5 too. Out of stock, my ass.
So last week I got the hardware and opened the packaging. Yeah, cables, connections, usual gubbins. Get the thing set up. Answer some questions, get the box onto my router so far so good.
I’ve now had enough time with the darling of this digital age and, frankly, I’m finding that all my perceptions of it are true and that the notion of motion control is one of the worst, most unnecessarily gimmicky conceits that ever hit our industry and, by God, I certainly don’t want a single game developed around such a broken idea let alone an entire console.
I don’t believe I’ve ever used a less accurate way of controlling a game than with the wonder that is the Wii controller – with the possible exception of those VR headsets that were around in some larger arcades in the 90′s.
Now, first things first – as a pointing device, it’s superb. Especially when combined with nice big fat on-screen buttons that are a quarter of the screen in size. Games that involve pointing at stuff such as a shooting gallery are instinctive and feel pretty accurate. Although, as Wii Play’s shooting game demonstrates – not accurate enough to have the confidence to remove an on-screen cursor to indicate where you’re firing – but still pretty accurate. When moving in the X or Y direction it’s nearly as good as a five dollar mouse. Outstanding!
Playing through the Wii Sports collection of games it’s abundantly apparent that the Wii is incapable of understanding where it is in realspace with any accuracy or, more importantly, incapable of quickly tracking itself in realspace.
Take baseball. It’s all very nice as your bat wobbles about on your shoulder. You swing and, about a third of your way into the swing, your whimsical Wii character goes into a pre-canned baseball-bat-swinging animation. At which point precise control is lost. Try it for yourself. Start a swing and stop it about halfway through. Your onscreen character will continue to swing.
Inaccuracies of the same nature are present in Tennis, Bowling and Golf. I’ve not bothered with Boxing a great deal but I’ll say that I have my suspicions.
Now, this all flies in the face of what I want from a videogame controller and what many would have me believe a Wii offers.
What I want from a controller is control. I don’t want to suggest an action and have some vague facsimile of that movement played out on screen. I don’t want to be told that a game will pay attention to every motion I make and then learn that it ignores most of that information because it’s going through a predetermined animation.
Furthermore, I play games to do things digitally that I can’t do in real life. I can’t throw fireballs. I can’t drive competently at 250kmh. I doubt I’m any good with an AK47. Obviously I’m must be so insecure that I don’t get entertainment in being shown my real life inadequacies replicated by a small box that looks like it wishes Steve Jobs was it’s daddy.
I was ready to give a degree of credit to the controller when playing the Wii Sports bowling. It felt pretty accurate. When bowling in real life I bowl with my right arm and the ball tends to travel with left spin. I get much the same performance in the game. Eyebrows got raised. Cynicism was challenged. Then, when I noticed that the game doesn’t care about your large bowling arm arc, just the orientation of the controller (try holding it in place, pointing it to the ceiling and then swivelling it so it points down. Your on screen character will move their entire arm) I got suspicious. I decided the cheat the controller. I told the game I was using my left arm (the on screen character’s stance changed to reflect this) but kept playing with my right. My cynicism was rewarded – the ball now had a tendency to spin to the right. In other words, these nuances were nothing to do with my bowling characteristics but were built into the game to suggest the controller was doing far more than it actually was. In fact, just like mind-readers and those that claim they can talk to the dead, the Wii succeeds based more on the power of suggestion that is programmed into the software than on any genuine cleverness in the control.
Now, this hasn’t put me off Metroid. Why? Because Metroid aiming is with the Wii remote and if the remote is good at one thing it’s at point on the screen. Samus’s movement, fortunately, is controlled using, of all things, a control stick. Well bugger me! Traditionalism for the win and all that gamer slang.I’ve got the Wii’s number and I’ll be able to tell what games control well and what games give, at best, a vague facsimilie of interpreting motion into game control. Here’s the deal:
Games where the remote is used as a pointing or aiming device will feel pretty good.
Games that expect the user to survive by precise control performed with the remote will crash and burn.
Some of these other games will consist of making a gesture and if that gesture approximates what the game is expecting you will trigger the predetermined outcome. Big whoop (that’s sarcasm, kids). That’s not all though. Did you know that a simple bit of misdirection is all that it takes to fool most gamers? Here’s something you can try at home with your Wii. Find a game that asks you to point the Wii at the TV and move it in a circular direction – not just the pointer end, but the entire remote. Perhaps this is a Wario minigame or some part of a game that sees you rotating a wheel to secure a lock (I dunno, work with me on this ok?). Now, because an on-screen prompt is directing you, you’re compelled to follow it to the letter. Why not try just waggling the controller in a steady motion from side to side. You’ll find it just as effective.
The Wii, from what I’ve now experienced of it, is a charlatan. The controller isn’t doing half as many things as it is claimed but with smoke, mirrors, suggestion and misdirection and a marketing campaign full of safe colours and pictures of old people enjoying themselves Nintendo have succeeded in fooling a lot of people that they really do have that miracle cure to save ‘all that is wrong with gaming’. Nothing is wrong with gaming – nothing apart from companies abusing their position in the industry and smiling their way through some pretty blatant lies that a load of gullible folk want to believe without questioning.
It’s all really quite hilariously, tragically ironic when you think about it.
Still, Metroid should be fun.
Giraffes in spaaaace!
First things first, I love this game and put it up on the same pedestal as Tetris and DRoD. If I could only ever play 3 games, those would be the three.
For some reason, I’ve always been fond of Jeff Minter games. Before I could appreciate why I was shooting cigarettes at rizlas in a stage in Ancipital I was liking the game. I was rubbish at Mutant Camels but I delighted in the oddness of it. That was over two decades ago.
Like many, I really liked Tempest 2000 but found it hamstrung by the awful Jaguar. Fortunately, a superb PC version can be found and plays very very well indeed. More recently Gridrunner++ was my favourite Minter shooter. Wonderfully hectic but filled with strategy and depth and, like the very best twitch games, able to take you to that place where you and the game match wavelengths and you end up playing in some zen-like state.
I’ve learned that you can’t really judge a Minter game until you’ve played it. The totally indecipherable videos of Space Giraffe (SG) that appeared some months back on YouTube gave a flicker of concern but didn’t really put me off as I felt confident the underlying game would become apparent when I was at the controls.
As I’ve mentioned before, when you’ve played games for over two decades, there’s little you’ve not seen in one form or another already. As such, any game that can surprise you or second guess your expectations makes quite an impact. Conversely, any game that ends up being precisely what you expected it to be feels disappointing (unless, it’s God of War 2, naturally).
It should be apparent by now that I had a positive approach to Space Giraffe and was willing to give it more than just the benefit of the doubt. I grabbed the game and played through the tutorial and read through the text instructions which go as far as to tell you how to unlock your first achievement. I started playing the game properly and instantly didn’t get what made it any different to Tempest.
I went back and re-read the instructions and re-played the tutorial. A couple of things clicked into place and I did better. About an hour later I was bulling, jumping and cranking up my score multiplier like billy-o.
People are going to find there’s three goals in Space Giraffe. One is to earn the highest score you can. One is to beat the final level (level 100) the other is to unlock the achievements. But, at it’s core, Space Giraffe is simply about score and how to maximise it. Remember games with that goal? Playing for points? Takes you back, doesn’t it?
Some have criticised the game as being too random. Not true. The game is very structured and the attack waves follow a recogniseable sequence. If in doubt, replay level one a few times and you’ll see what I mean. There’s deliberate design in the action on the screen.
Of course, another criticism is that you can’t actually see the action on the screen due to the psychedelic noise. Whilst this is true to some extent, this is more than compensated by the information delivered by the audio. Trust me, you’ll do so much better in Space Giraffe once you learn to digest the wealth of information it gives your eyes and ears.
Now, admittedly, just what this information represents isn’t immediately apparent. The strange bleats, telephone bleeps, chimes, bovine whining, flashes, psychedelia, cries of “muu muu” and dozens of other cues seem like disorganised abstract overkill. Except they’re not.
If you’re used to games that present you with a blue door and a blue key and leave you to work out what to do next then Space Giraffe is going to make you question a lot of how it goes about doing things. Once again, it’s not that the way this stuff has been put together doesn’t make sense or is too abstract – once you make the connections in your head it all makes perfect sense – in the context of a game that calls itself “Space Giraffe”. I mean, look at the title of the game. That’s a clue as to the sort of logic you’re going to find in it’s mechanics right there. At no point does it ever promise to leave the gamer in their cosy little comfort zone of standard conventions.
So, once you loosen up and are prepared to go with the game’s flow you’ll realise that it has a hell of a lot of sctructure and good sense. For example, if I were to be blindfolded and listen to the game being played I could tell what score multiplier had been reached, how many enemy bullets were shot down, how many enemy bullets were left on the playfield at the end of the stage, if the player had earned the stage-transition bonus and if they had any jump-pods left over. By contrast, if I did the same with, say, Street Fighter 2 I wouldn’t be able to tell you whether player 1 or player 2 won the round!
Some people ask “why can’t he just do things this way or that way”. Well, perhaps he could. But it’s not Minter’s style (if there’s one thing you can say about Minter, it’s that his work has a pretty distinctive style to it) and, more importantly, the game doesn’t suffer as a result. In fact, Minter’s shooters consistently concentrate on expanding core shooting mechanics at the expense niceties like pretty graphics or the multi-limbed bosses and other established gaming conventions. And if you’re going to dismiss a game purely because it’s not got the set-dressing you need then Minter games aren’t for you and probably never will be.
A way Minter has been particularly smart in Space Giraffe is to second guess pretty much all the gamers that believe they’ve got him sussed.
See, gamers are such assholes. They spend their time destroying things IN games or using destructive criticism on fucking messageboards to sound off about game development. Except, hang about, what do they know about game development? Where’s the game they’ve made? What actual well of experience are they drawing from? Or are they assuming playing a game is the same as making a game? That reading a book is the same as writing a book? Sure, you can have an opinion, but it’s not the same as having an informed opinion. Do you sit on a plane and slag off the pilot even though you can’t fly a plane yourself? I believe many gamers use fractured logic along the lines of “Well, I’m better than people who make games because I’ve NEVER made a game. That means I’ve never made a bad game and never made a bad game design decision. I have an umblemished record and therefore am in a better position to criticise game development than anyone that ever developed a game”. Or, just possibly, your ego is running your mouth again.
I always challenge people with such attitudes to make a game of battleships or Tetris or something relatively straightforward using some free tools – like Flash. The moment they stop talking and start walking their view would alter dramatically. Of course, that takes more effort and time than bitching on the internet so there’s no chance they’re going to do that when they can sit on their ironic asses and brand developers as being lazy.
“If I don’t try, I can’t fail.” Better not try then eh? Sure. That’s an attitude we can all respect.
I digress.
Anyway, these folk that never make games but only criticise about how poor someone else’s craftsmanship is have gleefully decided the game is “Just another version of Tempest” or that “Minter can barely string two lines of code together”. The latter is funny because, assuming it’s accurate that would still be two lines of code more than his accusers are capable of – and, even if they could, the second line would probably read GOTO 10.
See, a lot of the game’s charm, for me, is that it doesn’t spoonfed mongrel gamers and pat them on the back for having the ability to read or press a button marked “A” with a showering of praise or a cut-scene. In fact, Space Giraffe is brilliantly stubborn. It insists you play it like Space Giraffe. If you’re too lazy or too blinkered and keep playing it like Tempest, it’ll laugh at you for it. Sure, you’ll make your way through a bunch of levels, then it’ll show you your score on a graph against the potential performance you could have acheived to show you just how bad you are at playing the game. The game, quite deliberately doesn’t give the gamer what they expect or play into their hands. It wants them to unlearn some of their traditions and to do things a little differently. It’s not a particularly harsh master but it will reward the gamer with a higher score and a good deal of gameplay satisfaction and enjoyment.
Now, I hear a lot about how graphics don’t matter and how gameplay is king. I hear a lot about thank God some people are shaking things up a bit and doing something different and confronting people’s perceptions about game traditions. Yeah. I hear a lot of that.
Talk is cheap.
Space Giraffe is brilliant at demonstrating those ideals and just how much gamers who constantly preach them happen to be full of shit. Because, unlike slapping the very pretty Resident Evil 4 on a Wii and calling it a new innovation in gaming, we have a game that eschews much of what is expected by gamers who claim to be bored with the colour brown or with ‘yet another’ this or that. It concentrates on the core gameplay and sticks two fingers up at today’s expectations of digital bling and the two-faced gamers that claim they can live without it but won’t go near a game that doesn’t have graphics by Gucci. Let’s be honest folks, if Gears of War had the same aesthetic as Space Giraffe then few would have touched it.
So, Space Giraffe not only represents great gameplay and incredible bravura but represents a lesson that gamers should pay attention to. For what it is and for what it represents, Space Giraffe is, quite simply, the best commercial game I’ve seen in years.
Thanks Jeff. Don’t ever change!
Catching up
Aw heck. You know how it is. Feast or famine.
Yes, it’s been quiet on the koffdrop.com front recently. The main reason is because I’ve been enjoying playing videogames. See, shortly after getting a 360 (it’s still working folks!) I purposefully switched it off and attacked some older, previous gen games, that had been on my to-do list for a while. Having been through most console generations I know how older, unplayed games get totally forgotten. Heck, I’ve still got SNES games I want to complete.
So, having my interest piqued by media buzz, I’ve recently sliced and diced my way through Manhunt and Killzone. Before that I worked through Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. More recently, Kameo and Marvel Ultimate Alliance have fallen at my gamesplaying might. Somewhere amongst that lot I beat Kirby Squeak Squad (all treasures found) on DS too. So that’s six games since the last BEATEN post. Not too shabby.
I’ve managed to get through the games by simply refusing to play anything else other than the current game of the moment. Cutting down on internet activities such as updating koffdrop.com is another ingredient of my games-beating recipe. I’ve been enjoying the games and pleased as punch to get the extra mileage out of systems that could have been left switched off forever.
The other thing that’s been competing for my time is the insane number of movies I’ve been seeing. I think we’re through the summer blockbuster season – just a Pixar flick and The Bourne Ultimatum to go. I think I’ve seen every summer movie going and a lot of them haven’t lived up to their status. For what it’s worth, the ones I enjoyed or had the most surprisingly fun time at were Die Hard 4.0, Hairspray and the superb Zodiac. I’m serious about Hairspray, by the way.
And that’s all for now. Other than to say, Games Radar has an article stating Miyamoto’s displeasure at Haze’s focus on drugs.
I have one word for you Miyamoto: mushrooms
Beaten: Metal Arms – Glitch In The System
A game I’d been told repeatedly was ‘an overlooked gem’ for years.
I played it. I beat it. It was ok. The game had it’s moments but frankly, after 42 very angular and poorly signposted levels I’m glad it’s over. Ratchet & Clank or the Jak & Daxter games trounce this easily.
If anybody insists the game has some mystical charm or cunning, overlooked depth to it then they’ve clearly not played many (if any) good modern platformers or are a complete numpty. Or both.
Still, another game down! How many games have you beaten this year?
Lies, Damn Lies and The Games Media
Sitting where I do, it’s very easy for me to see the machinations and spin that feed the fanboy bias, selective memory and downright stupidity of ‘intellgent’ gamers around the world. Or “the gaming intelligensia” as they prefer to call themselves.
Proving to these people that the world is, in fact, round and not flat is another matter. After all, their belief is so strong and their willingness to ignore any information that contradicts their viewpoint is practically unshakeable it’s always a case of my word against theirs. And, after all, they’re the mighty gaming intelligensia, I’m just a game developer. What the fuck would I know? Where do I get my news from? And what does it matter – it can’t possibly compare to such unbiased sources as NeoGAF, Kotaku or Joystiq. Right?
Well, as some of you may have read, Ubisoft have announced a slew of dates for their games due to hit the second half of this year. One of these games, Haze, is a title I particularly familiar with. Far more so than any of the gaming intelligensia even.
Sadly, Haze’s recent publicity has been more to do with the fact it was stated as ‘leading on PS3′ than anything to do with the game itself. After all, ‘true gamers’ are so hardcore the game doesn’t matter. True gamers only seem to give a shit about what machine it’s on. After all, everyone knows that if a game is on BoxA it is good and if it is on BoxB it is bad. And if a BoxB game comes to BoxA then it becomes better but if a BoxA game comes to BoxB then it’ll be worse. The game, it seems, is irrelevent. The box is all important. That’s why 99% of the talk of Haze is all about which box it comes out on and not the game itself. That ‘true gamers’ see this as the focal point of pretty much every game release shows just how fucked up their perception of the situation is. But, of course, you can’t tell them that because not only are they TRUE GAMERS they are the GAMING INTELLIGENSIA. They know all. They absolutely will not tolerate criticism of their views or sources.
Anyway, Haze was reported by the media as being exclusive to PS3. Neither Ubisoft or Free Radical stated this – the media spun it that way. The ever-so-easily led gaming intelligensia decided this was an important point and the spin was regarded as fact and that was that.
Now, Ubisoft’s dates suggest that there is a week’s difference between PS3 Haze and Haze on other formats. The media is now reporting, in mocking fashion of course, that “LOL EXCLUSIVE FOR ONE WEEK!!1″ is a joke. The gaming intelligensia who focus so hard on reading between the lines excel at missing what is actually written have now decided that a PS3 exclusive has been lost. Oh the hilarity!
But what’s this? Allow me to throw some very clear, very trustworthy facts your way:
- Haze has NEVER been announced as an exclusive of any sort. The only people spinning it that way is the media and the fanboys.
- If an exclusive never existed it cannot be lost.
Those are the facts. Unfortunately it means all the immature crowing of the self-obsessed Gaming Inteligensia is for naught as, by sticking to the facts, it shows just how clueless such agenda led ‘clued up’ people are. If you go back and check the way the media reported this news about Haze you’ll see just how far the spin goes..
..and if the media spin things about one game then what about all the others games. Are they free of spin?
Who watches the watchmen?
Like I said, from where I sit it’s abundantly clear how much bullshit is spun and accepted as truth. How easily the urban myth is adopted as fact and how people who claim impartiality are anything but.
You know the funniest thing?
Those Ubisoft dates – you’ll be seeing some changes to them in the near future, they were never intended to be released.
Still, from one perspective it’s nice to know that gamers – especially the ones that take themselves so very seriously – are so easily led. I mean, when it’s so obvious how to push their buttons.. ..well, it just sets them up for manipulation and exploitation doesn’t it?
Can’t See The Wood For The Trees
By SledgeHAMMER
In a brief lateral move, I thought I’d talk about another subject close to my heart.. tech stuff. As I said previously, I like to consider myself an avid consumer not just in the software sense but of all of that lovely hardware too.
What I’ve noticed over the years is that as well as all of the advances in computing and consumer electronics, there’s been a corresponding increase in the rate at which we understand and adopt it all. Unless you’ve been living in Stevenage for the last 30 years its hard to avoid advances like mobile telephony, broadband and wireless connectivity, digital photography and other digital media like compressed audio and High-Definition video. The speed at which the internet has established itself is pretty astounding (some would say scary). It’s been the driving force behind numerous, significant cultural changes; in the way we live our very lives, from shopping to education, communication to recreation.
However, I’m not really writing about how wonderful it all is – when it works well, its fantastic. What amazes me (and therefore worthy of a few words of rant I feel) is how in this information saturated age, it’s still really really hard for people to have quick and easy access to any kind of reliable information resource to help demystify it all, and ultimately help them make the right choices.
Ok, I’m not talking about this readership specifically. But the majority. The general, tech-aware but not tech-savvy, consumer base. The vast people on whom the commercial success of such technologies lives or dies.
The reason for this article was chiefly down to a recent, sustained bout of what could best be described as (to put a fancy-shmancy title on it) A/V Lifestyle Consulting. Yes I know that sounds stupid but I guess its not too far off the mark and I’ll tell you why. I like to try and keep current with what’s out there and as a result found myself to be bit of a black hole, drawing every scrap of information into my dark heart 
As such, over the last few years I’ve been asked by countless people to put that info to use and help them with their A/V, gadget and computing purchases. Lately, my efforts have been focussed in helping Koff and Lady Koff drag themselves kicking and screaming into this brave new HD, Digital Media-Centric world. I say that but actually its been quite painless. What’s helped me help them is a clear idea of what they want to do..
..You’d be surprised though, at how many blank looks I get during the start of the whole advice giving process (and not because we’re dealing with tech-stuff here). You see over and above any direct advice I may give, my first response is to challenge the person asking to actually think a bit more about what it is they want to achieve, what restrictions they have and how much they want to pay. Its not unreasonable to say that these are pretty straightforward questions, but the failure of most people to define clearer requirements does make wading through all of the many possible solutions considerably harder. The usual outcome being, that people begin to perceive the whole purchasing process as far too complicated; further perpetuating the myth that its only for geeks 
When we do get past that hurdle however, we’re still not out of the woods. You see we then hit the great brick wall of information ambiguity..
“..I want to buy something, I want to know what it does, what it can’t do and what alternative options I have available..”
It would be great if this kind of information existed in any kind of consistent abundance but no, life just isn’t that simple.
Lets start with the manufacturers themselves. As consumers we can’t rely on them. Period. They’re in the business of selling us product, but in their eyes the focus is squarely on marketing, NOT informing their customer base. They want to achieve sales through media saturation and brand awareness. Informing you about their products and what they do in any depth comes a dim, distant second.. Of course there’s also the very real possibility that reliable product information is deliberately obfuscated in a bid to hide shortcomings of the products themselves. Lets just assume however that “Product A” can adequately perform its intended function – but I need to know more about it. I’ve got a specific requirement and can’t say with any confidence that “Product A” ticks all of the boxes; certainly not when I’ve also got the choice of “Products B – Z” as well.
You know what I’m talking about, getting the skinny on basic details like say..
..Accurate and current specifications? Meaningful model numbers? Clearly delineated product-lines?
Having access to this kind of information isn’t too much to ask. Its the kind of data that anyone with an ounce of common sense would find useful in helping them make more informed decisions about their purchasing. Yet trying to extract details of this type from a CE manufacturer is almost as hard as getting Paris Hilton to say something intelligent. If you don’t know what I mean, try this as an exercise.. Go forth and find out about 40″ LCD televisions. Using our good old friend Google and a fairly common search term like 40″ LCD television brings back a whole bunch of links as you’d expect. First off, you get sponsored one for two manufacturers; both of them lead to flashy, but ultimately hollow marketing dross. Next, you get all the usual Google suspects like Kelkoo, Pricegrabber and Dealtime to name but a few. Amongst all of this only a single link on the first page of results takes you to an actual product information page; Sony UK in this case and amazingly enough it actually contains the kind of comparison information that I’ve been whinging about previously!! Score one point to Sony as this in itself is great, until you realise that in order to make the most informed purchasing decision possible, you really need to consider product lines from other vendors too. Of course, that’s not easy because no other manufacturers sites are listed until a full four pages later. Even then, its only one other company (Samsung) and their product page is a pale shadow of Sony’s.
“Ah ha!” You may say.. “That’s Google’s fault. Not the vendors’” and you’d be at least partially right. Without going into the fine mechanics of search engine logic – which is clearly being exploited to the advantage of sites as like Dealtime/Pricegrabber etc – its safe to say that despite the above issues, there are ways to improve the visibility of your product information if you want to. I reckon its quite telling, that when using the world’s première search engine to find details on a mainstream product like a 40″ LCD Television, only one vendor has made any kind of attempt to do such a thing. Disseminating useful product information to potential customers is clearly NOT a priority here..
Lets move on to the printed media next. To begin with, you can forget about 90% of the magazines on the shelves of your local WHSmith. Its fair comment to say that With the growth of the internet has come a decline in the perceived worth of information contained within printed periodicals. And with good reason too. Taking Consumer Electronics and gadgets for example, “market leading” publications such as T3 and Stuff are nothing more than glorified advertising pamphlets. They have to be to stay alive these days but that isn’t to say its a good thing. Its a world where advertisers and flashy Front! Cover! Exclusive! Headlines! are king, with journalistic accuracy and testing rigour as nothing more than the poor village idiots trapped in the stocks. Of course, due to the fast moving nature of information and in this example, the Consumer Electronics industry, print-based media is never going to be able to compete in terms of throughput. However, a well-researched informative reference piece is the same whether its delivered by browser, podcast or glossy magazine.
Ok, so this was always likely to be a lengthy article, but even I don’t have the patience or the fingers to begin de constructing just how poor both T3 and Stuff are at reliably informing the general public about products in such a complex and evolving market. I will say however, that whilst the publishers of those magazines would have you believe that flashy presentation and snappy info-nuggets are all you need to get by, information on A/V gear/gadgets/CE is not something you can neatly compress in such a way – not if its to have any intrinsic value to the end user. Add to that the fact that a LOT of their material is just plain inaccurate and you can see the scope of the problem..
..and there’s the rub..
Still, all is not quite lost in the paper and ink world yet. Thankfully there are some alternatives. We have magazines from the “Which..” and “What..” stable. These guys do a better job, occasionally approaching the kind of accessible relevant information today’s consumer needs. But, even these publications have succumbed to the limitations of the medium; supplementing their bread-and-butter printed articles with subscription-only (certainly in the case of Which) websites. Having seen the quality of these articles and in this age of Google and Wikipedia, I find it hard to accept any justification for the price they’re charging.
So what do we have left? Well not a lot in terms of reliable stock resources as a few searches on the net will show you. There are forums and enthusiast websites in addition to the web presence of some of the review magazines. Using a combination of these, the more persistent among you should be able to dig up reviews plus the odd comparative shoot-out with occasional success; but there’s a lot of product to cover, and clearly not enough resource to cover it all. You’d think that with the vast depth of knowledge the Internet contains, it would be a damn sight easier to find stuff out but frustratingly that isn’t the case (the 40″ LCD TV example above, is typical of the frustrating experience an end consumer would face when trying to do some basic digging around)
On the positive side, things are a damn sight better these days than it used to be. But it could be better still. I mean, its not like there aren’t ample opportunities these days. Websites are easier to manage than ever before. Thanks to all those content management tools, reviewers and product specialists should be free to lavish time and effort on creating good information. Manufacturers have the opportunity to re-inforce their marketing strategies through effective use of accurate product literature. Print based media should be using the net to enhance the quality and depth of their coverage, not as a substitute for it.
In this day and age, with the vast choice of products available, its even more crucial that us consumers are given every opportunity to buy the right products to fulfil our needs. The information should be coming to us, not the other way round. Good consumer technology shouldn’t be complicated. Its ironic that finding out about it is.
p.s As a side nugget.. Regarding all this HDTV hoo-hah; here’s something you may or may not have considered. The current consensus finally garnering more and more support is don’t bother with 1080p if you’re going to be viewing it on less than a 60″ screen. An insanely high percentage of people simply don’t have the vision to perceive any discernable difference so save yourself the cash; 720p is more than good enough.
Game music for the masses
Just a quick note to let you know of a significant site update.
If you click on the FILES part of the horizontal menu bar at the top of the page you’ll now be whisked to a rather large stash of videogame music in MP3 format. These are hosted on the RadioSega.net servers – all thanks go to SegaMark for his generosity.
More music will be uploaded over time – the collection should exceed 20gb when all is done. Simply click a column head to sort by that type. So click the DATE heading to organise the files in date order – which will allow easy identification of the newest content.
Enjoy.
Beaten: Tomb Raider Anniversary
I really enjoy agile platformers. By that I mean platform games where the player is particularly skilled and agile. Prince of Persia and Tomb Raider are the the titles that immediately spring to mind in this genre. I enjoy these games enough to dash out and buy them and, at the time of writing am very much looking forward to the XBLA Prince of Persia remake due later today.
Lara fell from grace over the last few years with Core and Eidos driving the licence into the ground. I optimistically purchased Core’s Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness and, by god, it was a chore. Very stiff and unhelpful controls. Undeterred, I looked forward to Crystal Dynamics’ Tomb Raider Legend which was bags of fun but far shorter than it should have been – I was just getting into my stride with the credits rolled by!
Tomb Raider Anniversary is the Tomb Raider game I’ve been waiting for.
Firstly, the length – it’s about three times as long as Tomb Raider Legends and feels just about right. I clocked in at about 13 hours which is probably a bit on the slow side. The control of Lara is as good as it was in Legends (which means it’s a hundred times better than any of Core’s efforts). One analogue stick for character control, one for camera, buttons for functions like jumping, rolling, aiming and firing. I recall playing the original Tomb Raider and realise today that I would have gone through that game on the original PS1 controller with just a d-pad and no analogues. Doesn’t really bear thinking about these days!
The controls are detailed to the player as you make your way up a mountain to the entrance of your first tomb. By the time you’ve got the doors open you’ll have familiarised yourself with the basics. If I recall correctly, it’s at this open door that the original game began so it’s clear to see that Crystal Dynamics have taken a bit of creative licence with the original game to make things a more satisfying and sensible experience for today’s gamers. In fact, this re-imagining of Tomb Raider is present throughout the entire game and qualifies as one of the best remakes I’ve played in recent years.
Visually the game stands up very well. I played it on the PS2 but also have the PC demo (higher res, more bloom, depth-of-field effects) and I think the animation, environments and lighting effects are pretty damn good. It’s no Gears of War but Tomb Raider doesn’t need that. Whilst GOW may have set a new standard for all games to be compared against it’s worth appreciating that ultra-hi-fidelity visuals are not entirely necessary (nor appropriate) for all of today’s games. Tomb Raider Anniversary has great lighting effects (a flame-spewing puzzle room is a particular highlight) and the visuals convey a sense of age, scale, action and organic decay more than adequately. The different locales appear distinctive and the game strikes a great balance between eye-pleasing fidelity in everything but holding back enough detail for the crucial gameplay sign-posted areas to stand out. By this I mean special surfaces that Lara can grip, visual clues, floor switches and the like. See – that’s the thing with games – everything has to look high quality but you also need to separate general background visuals from the details that give the player information that’ll help them proceed in the game. Tomb Raider does this well enough to make everything look like it belongs without the sign-posting details getting lost or the typical background visuals looking like they’ve been deliberately toned down. Everything hangs together very well and there’s some superb effects including HDR-like lighting (on a PS2!), great water, waterfall and lava effects – not to mention some suitably archaic aging and dusty effects as ancient temple doors creak open for the first time in centuries.
Lara takes a moment to meditate on her quest to find which lost civilisation left the tap running..
Tomb Raider Anniversary, as it’s name suggests, is a remake of the original Tomb Raider game. We’re not talking like-for-like remake here. Certainly all the key settings and scenarios (as well as characters and plot) match the original game as do some of the puzzle concepts and ‘feel’ of the rooms and levels. However, Lara is a more capable performer than she was a decade ago with a broader and more diverse skillset which means, for this new game to exploit all Lara has to offer, the challenges that Lara faces in the game and the route she’ll travel to navigate the treacherous tombs is mostly new.
Lara can, for example, leap onto the tops of upright poles, wall-swing and perform some interesting combat moves. The combat has been fleshed out a little more than the original (and recent Legend) game. Lara has a signature combat feature whereby constantly attacking an enemeny will enrage it. You can keep plugging away at it (and possibly beat it) before it rampages towards you or you can make a special ‘adrenaline’ evasive move which triggers a bullet-time effect. As you’re evading in slow-mo two crosshairs converge over your enemy. Pull the trigger at the right moment and you fire the killer shot that will almost certainly take out that foe. Some boss battles use this (or a variation of this) the first being the legendary T-Rex battle. The T-Rex looks great and, like the previous Legends game, also features some simple quick-time-event moments to create exciting and interactive cut-scenes. These QTEs are sprinkled lightly through the game but are rarely all that challenging.
Checkpoints. Checkpoints and savepoints in the original games were an absolute bitch. This was, I’m sure, dictated by the architecture of the orginal console and I distinctly recall Tomb Raider being a pretty tense affair with countless reloads. By contrast, Tomb Raider Anniversary has plentiful checkpoints (which also serve as save markers should you wish to save your game). In fact, it seems that every room, corridor or switch is tagged as a checkpoint in TR:A and threatens the make the game a little too lenient on the player. All in all, I’d say it just about gets away with it. The payoff is that you rarely re-tread too much of the same ground if you screw up and the game has enough challenges to mean you won’t dash through it in a few hours.
All in all, the game is pretty lenient though. Although a variety of weapons become available to you through the course of the game – offering greater firepower for a swifter kill – I managed just fine plugging away using the default twin-pistols and limitless ammo. Ammo appears to be plentiful and can be found easily throughout the game. Large and small health-packs are also dotted the environments and I had no problem beating the game with a stash of unused health and ammo. The game makes it very easy for you to save health – if your health is 50% full and you’re holding 2 health packs and you fall to your death then you’ll start from the last (and, most likely, very close-by) checkpoint with full health and the same number of health packs.
To be honest, I find the contrasting difficulties of the early and later Tomb Raider games to be the most jarring thing about them and it makes me wonder if, with the new games, that this easier setting wasn’t an attempt to make the challenging Tomb Raider games more accessible to a wider audience in an effort to help re-invigorate the franchise. Everything’s a conspiracy!
Audio in itself isn’t anything particularly stunning. Lara huffs and grunts endearingly and many of her actions are accompanied by the sounds of cables and bits of metal jingle-jangling from her belt convincingly. One point worth noting is the music tha plays during enemy encounters – it’s very well implemented and, the moment an encounter is over the music doesn’t fade out or just cut it melodically concludes and, in doing so, sounds perfectly scripted to the particular scene. It’s something that you shouldn’t notice simply because it works really well – rat encounters are definitely elavated thanks to this techinque. Another point worth noting is that much of the music is directly taken from the themes of the original game.
Croft Manor appears as a side-game to the main meat of the game. Other challenges involve acquiring all the relics and artefacts secreted around a level. Spotting them is one thing, getting to where they can be collected is quite a different story. You can track your stats (time, kills, pickups) in an area by pausing and hunting relics will unlock bonus features such as new outfits for Lara, in-game design commentaries and other goodies.
A lot of care and thought has been put into this game and I believe it pays off in abundance. The game is true to it’s source whilst being updated in terms of challenge, aesthetics and accessibility. Overall, Tomb Raider: Anniversary succeeds in reminding gamers, like me, that had forgotten what a great game the original was and how chock-full of inventiveness and memorable moments it was.
Lara, it’s great to have you back.
