Castlevania

Fuzzy Horribleness: Pervasive, Worrisome

  • Reading time:10 mins read

These are the edited highlights of a three-way Twitter rant, simplified for flow and structure. Note that some of the features I lament here may well be present in the remake. I don’t really remember; it has been ages since I’ve played it, and I’m speaking to my vague, blurry memory of the game. If the remake retains the exploding eyeballs, which without checking it may well do, then… okay. Good job. How astute of you to notice. Here, bring this note to the old woman and she will give you a medal for your trouble.

Freezing Inferno: The Castlevania Adventure is not very good, but parts of it have a strange charm. When you play the patched version, I mean.

Me: I don’t know what the patched version is, but where the game falls down on mechanics it truly excels in atmosphere.

I’ll never argue that it’s a good game, exactly, but I love the feel of being in the game.

It has sort of a neat silent horror, crackly expressionist tone that feels just right. That’s sort of the tone I get from the best Game Boy games. Gargoyle’s Quest, Return of Samus. Silent horror.

It’s a curiously appropriate side-step, considering the Universal monster movie tone to Castlevania NES. Instead of Bela Lugosi’s Dracula, on the Game Boy we have Nosferatu. Sort of. Maybe a blurry print of Nosferatu, lacking a few intertitles and exposition scenes, played at the wrong speed.

It’s full of neat, weird ideas, some of which are creative workarounds to limitations; others… just odd. Had the game a billion times more checkpoints, I might call it playable. Still worth experiencing, though.

The Wii remake missed the boat by ignoring everything good and distinctive about the game along with the bad. The result is just about the most generic action-style Castlevania game ever, with the odd shout-out to TCA.

At least keep the game’s basic structure! Keep the ropes and the EXPLODING EYEBALLS and bounce-spit… things. Keep the weird upgrade path. Keep the most interesting setpieces. Keep the goddamned amazing soundtrack!

Why even call it a remake or reimaging if you’re going to throw away everything that defines the original?

ReBirth is like every shitty retroactive fan bullshit scenario of ignoring or “fixing” the oddball chapter to match. See the fan remakes of Metroid II, that try to make it more like Super Metroid. Or, well, Zero Mission. Except those had much more thought put into them, as misguided as the thought processes might have been.

In this case it’s more like some asshole looked at TCA and said, “That’s not a Castlevania game. But THIS is!” Then he ripped out random hunks of a half a dozen more-popular Castlevania games, and taped them together. I mean, of everything to replace, the music? Seriously? TCA has one of the best ever Castlevania soundtracks!

I mean. ReBirth is a polished videogame, if you’re looking for one of those. There are many out there. It just doesn’t have anything to say except, DUDE! THIS IS TOTALLY A CASTLEVANIA GAME! SEE! IT’S GOT ALL YOUR FAVORITE CASTLEVANIA MOVES AND MUSIC AND STUFF! IT’S ALL IN HERE! DUDE!

Fuckin’ gamer culture bullshit, that thing is. But it is a polished videogame, correctly made.

I mean, if you want to play that game, go play one of the games it’s tearing apart instead. Castlevania: Bloodlines is a good replacement. A near-era pastiche of the NES stuff, but weird. Or just play the NES games. Or Rondo of Blood.

Or… don’t. Go, feed the cynical meta-machine.

But… anyway. Yeah, I like The Castlevania Adventure.

Freezing Inferno: I remember being wowed by ReBirth, but I agree; there’s hardly a lick of any atmosphere.

Me: Or originality. Or purpose. Everything in there is just repurposed from an earlier, better game. And unlike, say, Gradius V it doesn’t have anything new to say about the elements. They’re there solely to say, LOOK! HERE THEY ARE AGAIN! SEE! IT’S TOTALLY A CASTLEVANIA GAME!

The remake falls into the trap of thinking a game is defined by its content rather than concept. Gradius V is a game built on concept. It strips away decades of cruft to dwell on one idea. I don’t think there are even any moai in the damned thing. Just setpieces built around Options. It spends a whole game trying to break down and define the series’ defining mechanic: Options.

That’s just about the best ever reason to revisit an old concept: to better explore its purpose. The worst reason is to dwell on and fetishize past notions for their own sake. HEY REMEMBER THIS?

That latter path is the one that has dragged game design down its own anus since 1985 or so.

Freezing Inferno: [So] Rebirth is basically a piece of dread NOSTALGIA in [your] eyes. It references things and incites memories of old Castlevania things in the name of lighting up those neurons that remember Castlevania… but it lacks the atmosphere.

Me: It’s not nostalgia per se that bothers me here, though I’m certainly no big fan of nostalgia in its own right. (Nostalgia is zombie thinking, out to devour the present and the future.) It’s more the regressive mindset of objective design — the idea that there’s some perfect game out there to be made; that design is all about doing things right, putting in all of the elements that people expect from a game. That’s as opposed to having a core idea, and then doing what is appropriate to conveying that idea to the player.

I’m being reductive. There was an idea to ReBirth: to “fix” Adventure and make it match all the other games. That, though, is the other thing that bothers me. It’s not much of an idea, but it’s troublesome in itself.

It’s one thing to look at the game and say, “Okay, what was it trying to do, and how did it fail in that?” and then to adapt all that, and try to accomplish those goals from a modern perspective. That’s cool and all.

It’s another thing to say, this sucks and it was wrong, because it didn’t match all of these other things. So let’s tear pieces off every surrounding game and fill the hole left by this unmentionable piece of shit.

That’s… I mean. It doesn’t affect me personally, but conceptually I find that kind of offensive. You know?

Freezing Inferno: Nostalgia in place of innovation. That’s the killer.

Me: I don’t even really know what innovation means. It’s nostalgia in place of a distinct idea or voice or theory. It’s like people who instead of thinking problems through rely on quoting famous, semi-respectable people. No, I don’t really care all that much what E.B. White said here, cool as he is. Think it through yourself.

By the same measure, all these quotes from other games — I’m sure they were great in their original context. How, though, do they apply to the present conversation (not our conversation here; you know, the design’s)?

In a good design, every decision, every game element comes from within the basic thesis of your design. It comes pragmatically out of what you’re trying to say with the game, and what that logistically may imply.

This stuff that ReBirth is grabbing from everywhere, by nature it’s not coming from within but from without. That right there is the crux of my irritation here. It’s a prime example of contemporary design vapidity.

ReBirth is a well-made game that has nothing to say, and borrows ideas to serve little but a priori expectations. In its own right I don’t mind it. If it didn’t claim to be a remade, improved version of another game, then… okay. Whatever. It would just be another generic, low-rent Castlevania game. With a series like this you’re going to repeat yourself and borrow from the past continually.

This, though, is more than a case of a series caught up in its own increasingly rigid myth. It’s an empty-headed piece of rote repetition that holds this formula as superior precisely because of its familiarity. In the process it discounts every idea that doesn’t fit the template, precisely because it doesn’t fit the template.

This is a shitty way to think about anything creative.

It’s an attempt to make an individual game fit the series, rather than to explore what the game has to say — which is both a pointless exercise and a tremendous missed opportunity to do something genuinely cool.

Deny the outliers. Sanitize the dissodants. As opposed to helping them better achieve their ambitions. It’s a kind of intellectual fascism.

There is a fine line between this mentality and all of the shit that women put up with from Gamers. There’s this enfranchisement of extremist reactionary entitlement bubbling below the surface of Gamer culture. It shows in subtle ways, and in totally disgusting ways, but it’s all the same process in the end.

This all is a big reason why I hate Gamer culture and why I’ve backed away from game writing as of late. I realize that it probably should be a reason to write even more, and even more infuriating pieces. But. Well. I just don’t feel the responsibility anymore.

John Thyer: Yeah, when you’re approaching every game as an imperfect permutation of some non-existent ideal, of course you’ll react with hostility to experiences outside the norm, often games by marginalize authors.

Like, Gone Home really isn’t that radical all things considered! But it still falls outside the closed mindset. And it’s ultimately what leads to the creator of Depression Quest being bombarded with rape and death threats.

Me: “Yeah, when you’re approaching every [woman/person] as an imperfect permutation of some non-existent ideal,”

It’s all the more raw and disturbing with games, compare to other media, as games are bottled perspectives. They’re not just a narrative that you follow. A game is a thesis about the way the world works. “If I do this,” you say, “then this happens.” Then you hand this to people, and let them see the world by your rules.

And in response, they get fucking furious and want to kill you.

Anyway, there’s something about mainstream game design that reinforces, rewards this way of thinking. It’s a small stimulus, but it feeds into this entitlement and pettiness, normalizing it as a thought process.

It’s not even the deeply ingrained violence that I’m talking about. It’s the Pavlov factor. Keep hitting your head on that button until you get the shiny reward. No means maybe, which means yes.

I’m being simplistic here regarding cause and effect, but there’s a fuzzy horribleness to game psychology — and that it is so pervasive is worrisome, especially when you consider the number of people who obsess over videogames, who make them their lives.

Because of the way that our brains work, everything that you do becomes a part of you, just a little bit. Learning is all about reinforcing those pathways between nodes. And the pathways that videogames reinforce… well. It’s not much of a mystery why gamer culture is host to such a population of irredeemable fucking monsters.

And that concludes my review of Castlevania: The Adventure ReBirth.

Good Games, Bad Design – Episode 1: What’s at Stake

  • Reading time:4 mins read

by [name redacted]

There are two basic ways that video games communicate ideas — through the actions allowed the player, and through the environment on which the player may act. The player’s every action changes the player’s immediate relationship with the environment, which in turn shapes the player’s potential for action. Let’s say you shoot an asteroid. Although the immediate obstacle is gone, now you’ve several smaller rocks to deal with, moving faster, in different trajectories.

The more you do, and the more feedback the game gives you, the more you adapt your behavior. When an action results in success or a reward, you tend to repeat it. When you get an unpleasant result, you tend to avoid repeating yourself.

A successful game environment does four things:

  1. it teaches about the player’s relationship with the environment;
  2. in doing so, it directs and focuses the player’s behavior;
  3. generally it obscures this manipulation from the player; and so
  4. through the invoked behavior it evokes in the player a certain mood or mindset.

If the player doesn’t know why he picks the routes and actions he does, yet in picking those routes and actions he comes to adopt the intended perspective, you have successfully communicated. Think of all the moments in Half-Life 2 where you think you’re being clever under pressure, and you’re actually choosing the only possible path — or how The Legend of Zelda keeps you on-track by making the woods scary and dangerous, so that you will tend to leave them until you’re stronger and more experienced.

Is level design everything? Only if your game has something to say. If you’re retreading old ground, and you expect the audience knows the routine, then you can toss them any old nonsense. Of course then few of the player’s actions will have real consequence, so the game will feel unresponsive and dull. Still, maybe if you add some flashy features or cutscenes you can distract the player for a while. If you’re afraid of putting people off, you can patronize them with elaborate tutorials.

There’s no fooling the outsiders, though. If your game fails to communicate on its own merits, then no one besides the fans will bother with it. And even within that audience the conversation will narrow and turn from big, nourishing ideas to minutiae — as if the differences between one leveling system and the next really matter in themselves. This heads-down view leads us away from meaningful representation, and toward thoughtless copying and repetition, abstracted and regimented genres, fractured markets, and eventually a whole medium that is impenetrable to outside eyes.

As in any human endeavor, sloppy or thoughtless design is perhaps more the rule than the exception. And that’s fair enough, when that design is a part of a lousy game that no one is likely to take seriously. More worrisome are the otherwise good, solid games that a student of design may well look to for inspiration. Games don’t have much of a critical history; their culture treats anything “good” as model of perfection that everything new should strive to imitate down to the pixel. It’s hard to break out of that mindset, and to look at design in terms of problems and solutions.

A solution, of course, only makes sense in context. In a game, each mechanism serves to illustrate to the player some concept, or to solve a logistical problem in the game’s premise. Anything that serves neither of these purposes is extraneous — and the key to communication is if you don’t need it, cut it out. It is in this spirit that some case models may be illustrative.

( Continue reading at Game Career Guide )

Mobility (Tangent)

  • Reading time:1 mins read

The last few days I’ve been playing through old Castlevania games – first Harmony of Dissonance, then Simon’s Quest, then Castlevania. Now I’m working on Aria of Sorrow.

The structure to Simon’s Quest – I’d never noticed before, as the game is so obtuse in directing the player around; if you know what you’re doing, the game has some genius level design, both within the mansions and in the overworld. The game is always directing you where you need to go next, and unless you’re a dunderhead and fight the obvious clues the game goes by very quickly, and rather elegantly. The only catch is in how well the game obscures some of its “keys” – the crystals and Dracula’s Heart, in particular.

The elegance here shows up Dracula’s Curse all the more. I should really finish cursing that game out. So to speak. I wonder if anyone would be interested in publishing my manifesto.

The Playlist / Those Tenuous Twos

  • Reading time:23 mins read

by [name redacted]

You may have read the first part of this column in the December 2009 Play Magazine. It was intended as a single article, and the start of a whole series of such lists. In the event, I was asked (due to my incorrigible verbosity) to break the article into three pieces; only the first found its way to print. Here is the column in full.

Used to be, when a game was successful enough to demand a sequel, the design team would do its best to avoid repeating itself. Though I’m sure they mostly wanted to keep their job interesting, the practical effect was that if the games were different, they would both remain relevant. In an arcade, Donkey Kong Jr. could stand handsomely by its father, each shilling for its own share of the coin. You might call them companion pieces, rather than updates or replacements.

When home consoles hit, design teams were even more modest, and were generally left to do their own thing. So starting on the NES, you will see a certain trend: successful game spawns weird, only tenuously related sequel; fans of the original scratch their heads; a greatly expanded dev team releases a third game, which is basically just the first again, on steroids; fans think it’s the best thing ever, because it’s exactly the same, except better! And to hell with that weird second chapter.

Thing is… usually the second game is the most interesting you’ll ever see.

Portrait of Rumination

  • Reading time:2 mins read

You know, having initially dismissing Portrait of Ruin — I only played for maybe half an hour before rejecting it; hadn’t played it in a year and a half — I went back to it the other day. And… it’s actually pretty good, once you’re past some of the initial tedium. Thanks to Mr. Koshiro, the music is the best since Harmony of Dissonance. It controls really, really well. The animation is pretty good, actually. A lot of the enemies are redrawn — though there’s a big disparity in style between the new ones and the recycled ones. The new ones all look like they’re by the Circle of the Moon guys, and the old ones are so clearly Sorrow carry-overs.

There is actual, legitimate level design in places — which is novel. More of it than in Dawn of Sorrow, in fact! It’s just, 1/3 of the real level design in DoS was right at the start, whereas in PoR it doesn’t come in for a couple of hours. (Until then it’s a combination of tutorial and convoluted system introduction, against monsters-on-shelves design.)

And it does actually feel different enough as not to just feel like another GBA/DS Castlevania — which is the fate suffered by Dawn of Sorrow.

I’d say this is definitely not the worst handheld Igavania. Harmony and Aria still compete for the best; Harmony for its feeling and Aria for its reason. I’d have to play some more, but I think I’m now enjoying this about as much as Circle of the Moon…

Defining the Next Generation

  • Reading time:28 mins read

by [name redacted]

This article was originally intended as a conclusion to NextGen’s 2006 TGS coverage. Then it got held back for two months as an event piece. By the time it saw publication its window had sort of expired, so a significantly edited version went up under the title “What The New Consoles Really Mean”.

So we’re practically there. TGS is well over, the pre-orders have begun; Microsoft’s system has already been out for a year (and is now graced with a few excellent or important games). The generation is right on the verge of turning, and all those expensive electronics you’ve been monitoring for the last few years, half dreading out of thriftiness and secret knowledge that there won’t be anything good on them for a year anyway, will become the new status quo. Immediately the needle will jump and point at a new horizon, set around 2011, and everyone will start twiddling his thumbs again. By the time the drama and dreams resume, I’ll be in my early thirties, another American president will have served nearly a full term – and for the first time in my life I really can’t predict what videogames will be like.

The Crying Game

  • Reading time:14 mins read

by [name redacted]

Part six of my ongoing culture column; originally published by Next Generation under the title “Can Videogames Make You Cry?”.

A few weeks ago, Bowen Research published the results of a survey, on the role of emotion in videogames. Hugh Bowen polled 535 gamers on their own views and history, with the end goal to rough some kind of an objective analysis out of their subjective experiences, and thereby maybe to shed some light on what emotional effect videogames have had in the past. The paper is well, and humbly, written; its conclusions, though, are less than revelatory: the only genre that tends to elicit reasonably complex emotion is RPGs (presumably Japanese ones), while other genres all inspire at least some basic kind of motivational urge in the player – be it rage or fear or what have you. Meanwhile, the paper is full of comments about Aeris, and the profound affect of her death on people who had never played Phantasy Star II.

The problem, I suppose, is in the question being asked: “Can videogames make you cry?”. It’s a binary question about a complex issue, much like asking whether Americans are happy and then concluding “sometimes!” And indeed, Bowen’s answer seems to be “well, yes… probably. In theory.” A second issue is the way Bowen approached the issue as a matter of statistics – and then based his analysis on the subjective responses of a skewed sample. “Gamers”, as with any obsessives, have by nature a peculiar perspective of their medium – a medium which, furthermore, is not yet refined as an expressive platform.

The question should not be whether videogames are capable of eliciting complex emotion – as, given the complex analog weave of our brains, anything can result in an emotional response of any depth and sophistication. Rather, what Bowen might have asked is how innately bound any emotion is to the current fabric of videogames (that is, whether it has anything to do with what the medium is trying to accomplish), how much emotional potential videogames might ideally hold, and – assuming some degree of innate potential – how best to insinuate emotion into the framework or theory of a videogame. Or rather perhaps, how best to cull emotion from that same framework.

NextGen’s Top Ten Years In Gaming History

  • Reading time:30 mins read

by [name redacted]

Originally published in some form by Next Generation. I was asked not to include 1999 or 2000, because the Dreamcast was perceived as a low mark in the industry rather than a high one. I was also asked to include the previous year, to suggest that we were in the middle of an upswing. So… that explains some of the selections.

In videogames, as in life, we tend to get things right about a third of the time. There’s one decent Sonic game for every two disasters; one out of every three consoles can be considered an unqualified success; the Game Boy remake of Mother 1 + 2 was released in one out of three major territories. With the same level of scientific accuracy, one can easily say that, out of the thirty years that videogames have acted as a consumer product, there are maybe ten really excellent milestones, spaced out by your 1984s and your 1994s – years maybe we were all better off doing something out-of-doors.

It kind of makes sense, intuitively: you’ve got the new-hardware years and the innovative-software years, spaced out by years of futzing around with the new hardware introduced a few months back, or copying that amazing new game that was released last summer. We grow enthusiastic, we get bored. Just as we’re about to write off videogames forever, we get slapped in the face with a Wii, or a Sega Genesis – and then the magic starts up all over again, allowing us to coast until the next checkpoint.

Buttoning Down

  • Reading time:8 mins read

What if the GBA had had two more buttons, as people kept asking for at the time? What difference would that have made?

You know, aside from fighting games, I don’t see what use the extra two buttons would be. Few games really use more than that for anything significant, and if they do they’re often rather clumsily designed. The GBA has two shoulder buttons that rarely get used for anything much.

Even now, how many DS games use the extra buttons to any particular effect?

As much as I enjoy certain fighting games, I find it kind of stupid that they’re always used as an excuse for a million buttons and a standard layout for controllers. If people want to play fighting games, they can go buy a fighting pad — which most people who are serious about the genre, which includes most people who bother with it, do anyway.

Of course, you can’t easily do that with a handheld. Still, what are fighting games on a handheld besides a novelty? NeoGeo Pocket aside. Which has… two buttons.

But the shoulder buttons are awkward to use, so perhaps that’s why. Anyway, games don’t have to use every button on a controller. Don’t more buttons just increase the available options?

Shoulder buttons aren’t really meant to be action buttons. They’re basically useful for state issues. For changing the nuance of the face buttons — much as with holding up to use the secondary items in Castlevania, versus simply mapping it to a third button.

The more you can abstract the actions, the better. If you’ve got an attack button, try to put all direct attacks on that button. If you’ve got a jump/propel bodily button, try to put everything jumping or flying or swimming or whatever-related on that button. Context (including the context of state-shifting buttons like triggers) narrows down the verb, so the player doesn’t have to think about it.

That’s kind of the idea behind Ocarina, with its context-sensitive jumping and junk. It just wasn’t implemented too well there. RE4 does basically the same thing, except it gets it basically right. In that case, “A” is basically the “DO SOMETHING” button — and what you do is determined entirely by circumstance and what other buttons you’re holding down.

In this light, the point about few GBA games using the shoulder buttons still holds. Between the two shoulder buttons, that basically gives you six face button functions — and yet how many games take advantage of this?

But using the shoulder buttons for state shifting isn’t practical. And besides, a diamond layout lets you pretend the buttons are a second D-pad, for all that implies. And again, isn’t it simply better to have more available options, even if those options are rarely used? Having fewer buttons limits the types of games you can create.

Let’s not be silly. State-shifting is not only practical; it’s one of the only significant concepts in control design to be introduced in the last fifteen years. I’d love to hear what makes it impractical.

Though I guess it’s nice, using the face buttons as a second D-pad is an incredibly specific and imperfect use, that is almost never implemented. Though I might adore Bangai-O, this argument is just as silly as saying every system needs six face buttons so people can play Street Fighter properly.

Of course having fewer buttons limits the possible variety of games. Which is why the PS2 has so many more kinds of games on it than the NES does.

…

As for the “more choice = inherently good” argument: not really. Arguably so at best. See older relatives, who get confused when there’s more than one button on a controller. See the Brain Training game for the DS, that asks people to ignore all of those strange, extra buttons on the system. The most important element in any videogame is an intuitive interface — something that anyone can pick up and quickly understand. An ideal default interface will also offer flexibility on a game-to-game basis, meaning it can’t be too specialized.

The other benefit here is that the fewer input options there are, and the more intuitively they are designed, the more care and consideration developers have to put into control design. Sure, some people will always screw up their work no matter what help they’re given. Might as well rein in the margin for confusion as well as practicable, however — if just for the sake of the end user.

Of course, the question is one of balance. How little functionality is too little to be functional, and how much functionality can you include before you generate clutter — therefore distraction and confusion — in the name of very specific implementations?

State-shifting address this issue elegantly by providing few options then tiering them to accomodate extra depth, for those circumstances where it is desired or required. Think of it in terms of a reference tool. Is it more ideal to have every possible item you might want to read about all on one page, or do you want to break it down into categories, then subcategories? The more you want to know, the more specific the knowledge you desire, the deeper you delve. No clutter. No noise. No distraction. Or a significant reduction in all of this, anyway.

Here are a bunch of games that (arguably) require two joysticks, so ha! And see, I didn’t even mention a FPS yet! And I’ll pretend not to mention fighting games either because you clearly hate them so much!

Yes, exactly. So what?

Mind that I like just about every game you’ve mentioned. Almost.

But you said there were barely any games like that! So there’s a bunch, and I can keep on going! What else are you going to dismiss just because it doesn’t fit into your ideal scheme, huh?!

Look, it’s the same fighting game argument again: Street Fighter uses six buttons, so every controller must have six buttons or else you can’t play street fighter! Except weaker. I’m not dismissing the existence of fighting games or first-person shooters or these random and rare double-joystick games you seem so fixated on; I’m dismissing their import in dictating an idealized default input method, specifically because of their specialized nature.

Again, if you want to play fighting games it’s easy to buy a fighting game controller that’s more suited to the genre than a standard pad ever could be. If you want to play FPS games, a standard pad will never be ideal for them anyway, conceived as they are for a completely different control scheme, so there might as well be a specialized controller to better facilitate them.

I mean, hell. Ikari Warriors wasn’t even designed with two joysticks in mind; it had a rotary stick, the purpose of which was to allow strafing. A more accurate compromise there is using a shoulder button for strafe-lock. Chu-Chu Rocket’s control scheme was a compromise to start with; the game would be better suited to something like a stylus or a mouse interface.

Beyond the stylus, the DS also has the internet thing going — making for an even more ideal Chu-Chu platform.

Which kind of illustrates the point that not every game is suitable for every platform, and no single input device can account for every special demand. There will always be a compromise, and the question is as to where to draw that line.

What you’re asking for is an all-in-one device that accounts poorly for every possible variable, and not only will that never be entirely satisfactory on its own right; it’s also the wrong approach to a deeper problem. By this logic, what else should the average controller include? Should it rattle when you shake it, to make Samba De Amigo more feasible? I’m sure if the feature were included, Kojima would find something to do with it. And then of course it would have to be included in every future controller, or else if Kojima’s game were ported to that system it wouldn’t play exactly right!

Just, come on already.

The question is perhaps both easier and more difficult for handhelds. It’s easier if other platforms are available, that offer different potential. It’s harder in that you can’t just switch controllers so easily. Although, actually, I can think of some ways around that as well.

In the case of the GBA, the question is whether two or four buttons are more ideal. In the long run, given how few games even used the triggers for anything of note, having only two face buttons certainly didn’t seem to hurt it too much, or to constrain too many developers. Would the extra two buttons have done any harm? Well, from what we’ve seen it doesn’t look like they’d have done much good. And, you know, omit needless buttons. Complication for the sake of complication does little save muddy the water.

The four buttons work as a concession on the DS because the main focus is on the touchscreen. The oversupply of buttons helps to balance that off and encourage pedantic gamer-types just as the touchscreen draws in non-gamers. The GBA doesn’t have a mitigating factor, so there the buttons would just be buttons.

Right, like anyone would get confused or put off by two extra buttons.

See, the problem here is that you’re a gamer.

Touch Survival Kids

  • Reading time:3 mins read

Lost in Blue feels a lot like Zelda 1. Same sense of constant danger, being stranded somewhere to fend for yourself. In Zelda the danger is mostly from monsters and things. Can’t explore too far or they’ll kill you. Have to work your way up. In Lost in Blue, the dangers are hunger, thirst, and exhaustion. I’m just gradually building myself up to explore further and further inland. I keep finding miraculous things like an empty glass bottle, washed up on shore, that lets me carry water with me. And long sticks, that I can fashion into spears. And logs, that I might be able to build something with eventually.

It’s a lot like the treasures in Zelda, which you just sort of find, and which mostly seem special because they’re something you found, that might help you, rather than because they’re the key that unlocks the next door that lets you go forward (as in the later games). Though they might have that effect, It’s not that direct.

I’m surprised the game doesn’t make more use of the touchscreen — even in the menus. Strange to have to actually press the start button when it says “PRESS START”. And it’s weird that you can’t just dump stuff on the floor of your cave. It’s not like the twigs would go anywhere. I can see a certain limit, like after a certain point the girl complaining that, what with her unable to see (you step on her glasses near the beginning), she’s liable to trip if you clutter the place any more.

I found raspberries!

Castlevania is… there. It is what it is. It’s another Castlevania. A pretty good one. I think my save file getting corrupted just soured me on everything. It was my own fault. I think I turned the system off while it was saving.

The first part of the game is wonderful. Then it gets boring. Then more boring. Then more boring. Then it gets better, then better, then more boring, then a little better. You actually aren’t ever in The Castle, as such. Though when you’re on the fringes of this mess of a hideout, things are much more well-defined. The level design is just really good in the first two sections of the game. And it looks interesting and has great music. The two towers are great. The best clocktower ever. And there are some great touches. In between, though…

The whole middle section is just monsters on shelves, that you cut through to get to the next room. It’s weird, because there are such good parts on either end. It’s like the level designers fell asleep for half the game. Maybe they just left the whole middle section open, figuring “we’ve got the outlines; we’ll fill the rest in later.” Then deadline approached, and they just went and scribbled in every middle square as quickly as they could. That the map is so well-conceived overall seems to support this impression.

I got disenchanted somewhere around the ballroom, and I don’t think I ever quite recovered. A shame, considering how much good there is here.

Detailing Simply

  • Reading time:1 mins read
  • Meteos: Columns channeled through Rez and Super Smash Bros. Melee. Good self-image. Lots of heart. Lots of modes. Lots of fun. A very giving game, and doesn’t ever treat you like an idiot. Great store.
  • Touch Kirby: Decent idea, conceived and executed as well as it might be. Spread too thin. Cloying. Beginning to bore me, after two worlds. Too Nintendoey. Don’t like the store.
  • Trace Memory: Some interface and design issues; linear; very, very short. Beautiful game, refreshing character design. Often clever. Greatly underestimates its welcome. My favorite of the batch.
  • Lost in Blue: Doesn’t even pretend to hold your hand. You will die. Terrifying. Also seems good so far. Scared to go back to it.
  • Trauma Center: Under the Knife: Basically a dating sim where you cut people up. Tense and exhilirating, even though there’s not much to do in it. Scary too, kind of.
  • Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow: Very pretty. Best main theme since Circle of the Moon. The rest of the music’s well-done, too. Kind of hard. Level design only interesting in the first part. IGA’s random use of monsters is starting to annoy me.

I want Goonies III for this system.

This Week’s Releases (Aug 22-26, 2005)

  • Reading time:21 mins read

by [name redacted]

Week seven of my ongoing, irreverent news column; originally posted at Next Generation

Today (Monday, August 22nd)

Advance Wars: Dual Strike (DS)
Intelligent Systems/Nintendo

Now, there’s nothing wrong with the Wars series. This is, what, the fourth Wars game announced in the West, after the two GBA iterations and the endlessly-delayed and frequently-renamed GameCube iteration. And it looks every bit as good as previous games. I understand it’s to make some decent use of the touchscreen with a real-time mode where you move things around with the stylus. Good and well; this is something the DS should excel at. I’m surprised we haven’t seen more strategy games and RPGs for the system.

The name, though – why is it still Advance Wars? The answer is the same as why Retro’s second Metroid game is called Metroid Prime 2, instead of just “Metroid: Echoes” and why Metal Gear Ghost Babel became simply “Metal Gear Solid”; it’s an issue of branding. The assumption, from a Western marketing perspective, is that you need “brand unity”. If you’ve got a successful product, you need to cash in on its name as far as you can. So if you’ve got a new cereal, you’re better off introducing it as, say, Cinna-Crunch Pebbles and putting Fred Flintsone in it, rather then letting it fend for itself, on its own merits.

The thing about the Wars series – well. It’s been around for a long time. Going on twenty years, actually. It began on the Famicom as Famicom Wars, then moved to the Super Famicom and Gameboy as Super Famicom Wars and Gameboy Wars. Thus we have Advance Wars. And since the GBA games were the first we were introduced to over here, every future game in the series must have the word “Advance” in it.

Well, to be fair, we’re to receive the GameCube one (called, inexplicably, “Famicom Wars”) as (even more inexplicably) “Battalion Wars”. I guess that complicates the theory right there. And the Western title for the DS game is no less arbitrary than the Japanese one (again, simply “Famicom Wars DS”). That doesn’t make this trend any less irritating.

More on experience

  • Reading time:3 mins read

If EXP and other RPG elements are so horrible, why do they get implemented in just about every other type of game? From platformers to GTA to fighters to shooters to sports games, there’s no other genre that hasn’t been infected by the RPG virus at least a little, and often a lot. RPGs don’t seem to be dying, as much as growing, in both audience and into other genres. So they must be doing something right, right?

Not necessarily something right, in that it’s ideal for its own sake. It’s simply an easy solution for just about any context. Design problem? Balance issue? Afraid the game will alienate people if it’s too hard? Throw in an experience system, and let the player work it out.

For a topical example, see the discussion on Sigma Star Whatever in the other thread, and the people pissed off that its shooting segments depend on levelling-up rather than on skill. From some accounts, it’s to the point where skill doesn’t really matter, as the game will just throw things at you that you can’t deal with through any means other than leveling up.

Another high-profile example. The only reason there’s an experience system in the Metroidvania games is that Igarashi wants everyone to be able to finish the games, and doesn’t want people put off by the difficulty. This is a design problem with many elegant solutions (see Metal Gear Solid — or hell, Metroid). Experience is the easiest, though. You don’t have to think about it.

It’s kind of a lazy out. Which would be, I’m guessing, the best reason why it’s used so much, in so many games. It’s almost a get-out-of-jail-free card if you don’t know what you’re doing as a designer.

On that note: experience is often used as a way to make the player feel like he’s actually doing something in a framework where he’s not really doing much of anything else. When you win a battle, you feel like you’ve accomplished something because, hey, you just collected 156XP! It’s materialistic in a monetary way, in a system where there is no real ceiling to inflation, therefore no implicit value.

This is even more obvious when you consider that as you progress, the difficulty generally scales to match whatever experience you collect. Some games even cause monsters to level up at the same rate as your characters, meaning there is effectively no point to this game system at all.

And that’s what I think annoys most of us, and sends us looking for alternatives.

Then again: although obsessive-compulsive game design is a plague in a general sense, and you honestly can’t make me care about those last few emblems in Sonic Adventure, not every widget hunt is unfulfilling. It’s all about context.

Similarly, if experience points aren’t an annoying mechanism in, say, Dragon Quest, then maybe that has to do with what they mean both in the context of the game’s objective design and in the psychology of the playing experience.

The question, therefore, is: what’s the difference? Is it in how the EXP are gained? How they’re used? What they represent? What’s the context?

I venture a big factor in Dragon Quest has to do with expanding horizons (on the player’s end), and the part EXP play in the facilitation and regulation thereof.

That is, they are the key objective metric. They therefore have purpose, value, and weight. They have practical representative meaning, even if they remain mere representation.

Devils in the Details

  • Reading time:3 mins read

by [name redacted]

Originally published by Next Generation.

All right, so Lament of Innocence wasn’t so hot; the next game would be the real clincher. Lament did have a good engine. And Leon controlled just right. There just wasn’t much to do with him, was all.

So what does Igarashi have to show this time? As it turns out, not much — yet. As of E3, Curse of Darkness strongly resembles its predecessor: another 3D Castlevania that feels nice to play, but has the level structure of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. That in itself would be fine; Castlevania began as an action game, and it worked then. What is worrisome is that Igarashi wants to make this game nonlinear.

Juste “Like Alucard” Belmont, indeed.

  • Reading time:9 mins read

Hell. I’m going to do a track-by-track commentary on the Harmony of Dissonance score. I’m going through the sound test here (which doesn’t always have the actual title of the piece — though I’ve mostly got them, too).

title screen – “title screen”

Adequate. Tense, symphonic. It sets the right tone, ending on something of an uncertain chord. Higher-quality samples than used in most of the score. This is part of what clued me into thinking the samples used in most of the in-game music were chosen intentionally. A couple of later pieces are of even a higher quality; they sound like they might even be digital recordings. That seems unlikely, considering how much space that would waste. Either way, it seems odd these high-res samples (or the space for them) were just sitting around, and not used.

name entry – “name entry 2k2”

Yes, this is a piece of weird genius. It’s a heavy reimaging of the name entry theme from the FDS version of Akumajou Dracula, put through a Willy Wonka hallucination. Notice the warbling instruments and strange intervals used in the intro. Add to those the flitting, spinning, up-and-down flute noise and the pedal tone in the background. Bring in the stumbling, crunchy drums, and the jagged, clashing organ chords. Leave the bass to mumble underneath, while the parts on top start to scream, whine, and argue with each other. The tension builds. What really strikes me here, and in future pieces, is how much the individual parts actually talk to each other. They’re speaking, responding, building on what came before. Sometimes misunderstanding, causing even more friction. It’s really organic stuff. Unpleasant in a sense because it brings to mind all of the really bad arguments we’ve had. All of the misunderstandings, all of the nightmares where everything seems completely out of our control. And we’re just left spinning, trying to get through it all.

Then it all drops out, and we’re back to the bass intro. We’ve made a cycle. The tension drops away. We feel relieved. Vivified. And we’re ready to go for another spin.

intro – “prologue (theme of maxim kischine)”

This is, for me, the least interesting piece in the game. And it shows up thrice in this sound test alone, with different titles. With its monotonous, off-kilter Victorian formality, it works all right in Juste’s “decorating room”. As a character theme, though? It feels out-of-place. The thing which I find most interesting about “prologue” is how stuffy it is. Musty. It makes me think of the wallpaper in an old, creepy house.

entrance – “successor of fate (theme of juste)”

One of the major centerpieces of the score. In some ways, it’s the most traditional Castlevania piece in the game. It can sit along other major game and character themes, and not seem too out of place. It’s got more going on, though. I hardly know where to begin.

The first thing I note about it is the detached introduction. After the ornamental organ intro, we get an almost proud, formal strike with those reedy chords. The entire piece is a little more aloof than usual. A little more classical. A little more structured. A little more noble-sounding, while still accessible. In other words, it’s Juste right.

After the main theme repeats a couple of times, there’s a bridge where the uncertain qualities present in most of the music here build up a little. Questions. Anxietes. Before they can get too far, though, the main theme comes back in and stomps them down with a firm, yet gentle thud. And as if to say, hey, don’t worry, Juste really knows what he’s doing, and it’ll be okay, the rest of the notes of that phrase are synchopated a bit, and a warm bass begins to bubble underneath. The corners of the tune’s mouth turn up just a little. That’s my favorite part.

marble corridor – “offense and defense”

Here’s the meat. I’ve written about this before. This is the one piece which would make the score for me, even if everything else stank. I’m not going into detail. It’s too complex. Just listen to how the parts speak to each other, particularly the highs and the lows. Listen to how they spiral. How the tensions get woven and unwoven and lead to new anxieties. This piece is pure paranoia. It’s relentless. Ruthless. It makes me shiver, it makes my eyes water, it makes me clamp my jaw, it makes me very uncomfortable. It’s possibly the most moving piece of chip music I’ve heard.

Hell, I just noticed the piece’s title. That pretty much sums it up, compositionally.

shrine of the apostates – “approach of deplore”

A nice little piece. It doesn’t stand out much, at first. It does grow on a person, though. I like its start-and-stop nature, as if it’s constantly pausing to collect its thoughts. Some interesting chords here. Some nice things going on in the background if you listen closely. One of the lighter, least offensive pieces in the game. And as with many pieces in this score, the bass work is worth noting.

luminous cavern – “luminous caverns”

This seems like an experiment in ominous chords. It’s got some potential, especially after the drums come in. It sounds like it’s building to something rather grand. Unfortunately, it never really evolves. More and more things just get layered on top, making the piece kind of monotonous in the end. That in itself is kind of effective, though, when you add in the throbbing drums. It eats away at the mind. I think I’d trade this specific flavor of torment for something a little more interesting to listen to for its own sake, though. This is maybe a bit too expressionist for me, even.

aqueduct of dragons – “aqueduct of dragons”

Almost a relief after “Luminous Caverns”. As with “Approach of Deplore”, this strikes me as more of an album track than a single. It carries on the tone well, and explores its own slight variations. The best part here is the rhythm. I kind of want it to evolve more, though. I feel like it has more to say that it never quite gets around to, leaving me with a nice little sketch.

chapel in the sky – “chapel of dissonance”

Another standout track, though not quite as multifaceted as the earlier ones. This one’s a crowd-pleaser. It kind of covers the same ground as “offense and defense”, though on less disturbing and difficult a level. It strikes me as maybe a little too obvious how the light, untroubled intro gets contrasted wth the angsty latter half.

clock tower – “clock tower”

Yet another major piece. Up until the tension takes over, the thing which most strikes me is the drum and bass work, and the way everything else feeds off that, rhythmically. Again, I wish it had more space to work with its ideas.

skeleton cave – “skeleton den”

Pure atmosphere. This is filler, really. Doesn’t even attempt to be melodic. It tries a few tonal and rhythmic experiments, particularly toward the end. Nothing exceptional, though. Strikes me as a scratch track that someone shrugged and threw into the game because it held up well enough.

castle – “to the center of the demoniac castle”

This must play more than any piece in the game. It’s the main roaming music, so it has to hold up and be kind of middle-of-the-road, while maintaining a certain tension. And that’s what it does. It’s anxious. It wants to get moving and find what it’s there for, so it can get out of this foul place. It really does help in keeping up the sensation that something is happening, or is about to happen, until you actually get where you’re going.

theme of death – “dark covenant”

I don’t know what’s up with these brooding, unmelodic themes. I don’t understand it in film scores, either. You’d think if you were to assign a theme to a character, you would want something more than just a sprawling mood piece. Something like this just doesn’t strike me as a theme, as such. It is adequate background music for slogging through text boxes, though.

boss (loop patterns a-c) – “Archenemy” (?), “Dark Door” (?), “Knight Head” (?)

I’m not sure if these titles actually goes to these pieces. These are all variants of an okay boss theme. Pretty traditional. Lets you know something is actually happening, for once. I think a boss battle is a pretty good time to kick the player in the face and wake him up. This does it, while still fitting into the general theme of the score.

epilogue 1 – “epilogue 1”

Reminds me of “Prologue”. Funny, that. Puts my mind in a fog.

game over – “game over”

I just about fell over when I heard this the first time. “HAR, HAR”, I said. And meant it. I then added a “Ho Ho!” It still makes me giggle a little, even though I know it’s there. I just forget.

theme of dracula – “incarnation of darkness”

See above comments about Death’s theme.

last battle – “last battle”

Appropriate. Reminds me a little of Phantasy Star series final boss music. There is a certain grandness to it, melodically. A feeling of earnest struggle against something way too strong. It wants to be victorious. It just can’t… quite… reach… the knife. It’s in a bad spot. And this is do or die. Etcetera. It’s satisfying.

epilogue 2 – “beloved person (variation)”

Reminds me of the opening sequence to Castle of Illusion.

credits – “successor of fate (variation)”

JESUS CHRIST HOW WHAT WHY? So, yeah. I guess the soundtrack COULD have been like this. I’m glad it’s not, though.

extra stage music 1 & 2

Boss rush music. What do you want? It’s not written like the rest of the score. That’s because Michiru Yamane did it. Or so I recall.

extra stage music 3 – “vk2k2 (vampire killer 2002)”

One of the only versions of Vampire Killer since the original that I actually like. I enjoy how it gets transposed up a notch after the first repeat. And I like how the “DUNDUNDUNDUN!” bit is handled, with everything dropping out of the background. Sort of weird how it transitions into Clockwork. It works all right, I guess — though it makes looping harder than it should be.

extra stage music 4

Cute. This didn’t surprise me as much as the Dracula Denetsu game over music, though.

theme of merchant – “seller of fine goods”

Fun! I love how low-res it is. Gives it character.

theme of maxim kischine – “prologue”

Argh!

theme of lydie elranger – “beloved person”

It’s back again.

item collection room – “prologue”

Argh!