videogames

Review: Uin

  • Reading time:2 mins read

by [redacted]

There was a point toward the end of Uin where I became stuck. I had navigated a water level and a forced-scrolling shooting segment, and was now faced with a sort of a boss battle. My character stood in a bubbling pool of water. To the right floated an enormous child, orbited by a handful of large five-pointed stars. Occasionally the stars would shoot out, then boomerang back, causing my character damage. For the life of me I couldn’t beat this boss, and I had started to despair of ever finishing the game.

To further my frustration, the last save point was several minutes earlier — before the water level, and before a sequence reminiscent of everyone’s least favorite part of Konami’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles NES game. You know, the bit with the coral. So each time I reached the boss, both my character’s energy and my own were fairly well drained. And each time I failed, I knew I would have to navigate that whole sequence again.

And then something happened. Well, two things happened. One, I realized that I had recently earned a new power — one that I had never used, as I had been underwater all this time. Two, I randomly hit on a new strategy that used, though did not rely on, this new power. The next time I faced the boss, the encounter was over within seconds — and I realized it wasn’t so much a boss as a random obstruction.

My fault had been in filtering the event too strictly through my own understanding of game structure. And that is the uncertain balance tread throughout this game. For all its waves to tradition, Uin is still a biggt production. It may have an inventory, and a persistent world structure, and sub-quests, and cutscenes, and a fully developed (if eccentric) control scheme, but those details are incidental to the dream logic at play.

( Continue reading at DIYGamer )

Messhof goes PVP with Raging Hadron

  • Reading time:1 mins read

Last Wednesday night, You Found the Grappling Hook! author Mark Essen unleashed the trailer for his upcoming No Quarter exhibition piece, Raging Hadron. Described as “a two player competitive game… that combines swashbuckling swordplay with 8-bit psychedelia”, the game comes off a bit like Jordan Mechner on an angry acid trip. Or to phrase it a little differently, Versus Prince of Karateka in Fractal Land.

( Continue reading at DIYGamer )

Ceramic Shooter – Electronic Poem

  • Reading time:1 mins read

The shooter is one of the most fundamental design templates, and so one of the most fruitful to dissect. On the analytical end, see Kenta Cho, Treasure, Tetsuya Mizuguchi, and the Geometry Wars games.

Theta Games’ Ceramic Shooter – Electronic Poem, released about a month ago and slowly gaining attention, similarly takes advantage of the form.

( Continue reading at DIYGamer )

The Original Game-Maker

  • Reading time:2 mins read

by [redacted]

Long before Mark Overmars’ popular design tool, Recreational Software Designs‘ Game-Maker (note the hyphen) opened the horizons of Shareware-era PC gamers, forged friendships and dial-up communities, and cluttered the upload directories of bulletin boards as far flung as Russia and South America. There were several dedicated BBSes, including the official RSD board in Kennebunkport, Maine. For those outside of calling range, there was always the USPS and 3-1/2″ floppies. And then development ceased, and slowly Game-Maker faded.

Game Maker was first released around 1992, as a set of VGA mode DOS utilities tied together with a text mode selection menu. For every game produced, the main program file, containing all of the important code, was the same. To distinguish one game from the next, the program file would call on a .gam file, in which the user would compile all of his content through a rather elegant system of brainstorming lines and form fields. The rest of the tools — tile editors, character and monster editors, a map editor, a sound editor, and so on — served to develop that content.

In retrospect it was kind of brilliant; from the program’s perspective all of the important information that made a game unique — visuals, sound, controls, rules, design, structure — was simple window dressing, to call in and process like so many documents. And design was nearly that easy.

( Continue reading at DIYGamer )

Alt-Play: Jason Rohrer Anthology announced for DSiWare

  • Reading time:1 mins read

So continues the slow drift of indie games to the mainstream download channels. Following the high-profile Wii ports of indie heavyweights such as Cave Story and La Mulana (and indeed the announcement of Diamond Trust of London for DS, several of Jason Rohrer’s early opuses will soon be bundled for play on the Nintendo DSi.

To editorialize a bit, anthology releases like this, rather like a collection of short stories or short subject films, may soon be an important consumer model for showcasing unusual design concepts. Witness the success of Valve’s Portal, a critical darling (itself based on an indie game project) that many would have overlooked if not for its inclusion in Valve’s Orange Box. With the strict pricing models and content expectations of the commercial market, it’s hard for a small, original title to hold its own. But arrange several games around a theme, or an individual voice such as Jason Rohrer, and you’ve got the basics of an intriguing package.

( Continue reading at DIYGamer )

Craft Service

  • Reading time:2 mins read

by [redacted]

Over the years, game design has calcified. If I were to pick a turning point, I might point at the SNES — a system of broadly appealing games that delivered exactly what people expected of a videogame, challenged few perceptions, and established the status quo for 2D console-style game design. Since then it’s been hard to get past the old standards — the prettied-up enhancements of Super Mario 3, The Legend of Zelda, and Metroid that added little new in terms of expression or design language, yet that refined the hell out of some proven favorites.

You could say that the SNES was the epitome of Miyamoto-styled design (even in games by other developers), and you’d have a reason for saying that. Namely, it was the Miyamoto Box: Nintendo’s reward to Miyamoto for the broad appeal of his NES catalog. Meanwhile Miyamoto’s opposing force, in Gunpei Yokoi, was rewarded for his invention of the Game Boy by having his studio removed from mainstream console development to support his brainchild. The message was clear: Miyamoto’s way was the successful one, so he would be in charge of everything important from here on.

The thing is, Miyamoto is just one voice. He had a few brilliant ideas in the mid-1980s, all born out of a particular context and in response to particular problems. And then by the turn of the ’90s he was pretty much dry. All that was left was to codify his ideas, turn them into a near law of proper design — regardless of context — and then sit back to admire his work, while new generations carefully followed his example as if manufacturing chairs or earthenware pots. A videogame was a videogame, much as a chair was a chair. It was a thing, an object, with particular qualities and laws.

Thing is, videogames aren’t things; they’re ideas.

( Continue reading at DIYGamer )

Small Worlds, by David Shute

  • Reading time:1 mins read

I’d missed this the first time around; it’s a contemplative exploration-based game where the avatar is a mere three pixels high, and the rather gorgeous levels are built pixel by pixel, with every dot significant from a design standpoint — and then when the map pulls out, you appreciate the beauty of the big picture formed from all these individually important dots. Combined with a lovely “lonely game” score, which brings to mind that old Timeless demo/screensaver from the early 1990s, or maybe some old Future Crew demos, it’s a pretty rewarding ten or fifteen minutes. No real challenge; just wandering and pondering.

Matt Aldridge’s Uin Released

  • Reading time:1 mins read

Having gained some renown, or perhaps infamy, with his dadaist La La Land series, Matt Aldridge (aka biggt) has unleashed a significantly more ambitious follow-up.

Compared to the La La Land series, Uin is rather more conventionally structured, if no less evocative. There is an inventory, and exploration, and in place of the sheer dream dump of La La Land, play involves a certain amount of skill or problem solving. There are even a couple of forced-scrolling shooter stages. Yet Aldridge still wraps it up in his typically baffling logic and atmosphere.

( Continue reading at DIYGamer )

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.

R9

  • Reading time:1 mins read

There’s a bonkersly thoroughly contemplated recombobulation of R-Type on Xbox Live. It’s two-player co-op; it’s got an instant-respawn option, and a million redone graphics options. Hitting the “Y” button flicks between original 2D and remade 3D (with various graphics filters) at will. It’s an instant fade. Crazy!

This game seriously has some of the best music ever. Hearing that theme reappear and develop as the game progresses is weirdly poignant — I get a chill in the back of my neck, as I do whenever some permutation of “Esaka Forever” pops up. It’s just one of those soundtracks.

And the game is now more playable than ever! You can do the proper survival horror experience, or you can just have fun with it in full Life Force mode.

The Exposition Tyrant

  • Reading time:2 mins read

That tutorial in Mirror’s Edge… good grief. After a month with the game, I figured out something that is absolutely basic, yet I never clicked on before.

It’s the leg-tuck maneuver, which I knew was there, but I was led to think its use was limited to getting over really close call leaps, for instance if you’re jumping over barbed wire. It turns out it’s useful for everything. It lets you jump onto platforms more easily: lift up your legs to get more clearance. Places where I kept getting randomly snagged when clamboring around, now I can get past without slowing down.

The tutorial, again, made no effort to explain why this move is important or how it works. It just went, PRESS THIS NOW. NO! DO IT AGAIN! (But first watch this cutscene.) NO, DO IT AGAIN! (But first watch this cutscene.) It was like playing Call of Duty 4.

Ideally you’d be following that girl without any real break in the flow, and you’d have Valve-like “Press LT to tuck your legs” prompts passively pop up in the corner. Then you’d get subtly graded. If you did it wrong, it would say “You’re doing it wrong,” and the girl would explain the theory. “Lift your legs, girl! You gonna get tripped up!” Then she’d keep going. If you felt you needed more practice, you could just replay the tutorial. They could give the option at the end.

If you executed it very well, you’d get some kind of affirmation. Maybe just a “hell yeah!” from the girl. If you did all right, it would be something less exuberent. Or just nothing.

And heck, maybe they could string safety nets between the buildings, for the tutorial? Again, just to keep the flow?

New cafe

  • Reading time:2 mins read

the hardest part of writing isn’t finding what to say, or working out how to say it. Once you’re on that level, unless you’ve already written your thing and you’re just going back through with an editor’s hand, you’re stuck.

The hardest thing is finding the mood. In preparing yourself to pour into the template that you’ve built for yourself. Actual writing — actual expression — can’t be constructed, intellectually. It’s a flow of the unconscious — of all one’s training, working out of instinct. And either it happens or it doesn’t.

In a sense, every creative process is a performance. The play is perhaps the most fundamental expressive form. Every other medium is just some sort of an adaptation. Prose is effectively a depersonalized script. Film, a cemented performance. Music, an abstracted performance. Videogames — well, they’re just theater again.

In their particapatory qualities, they are — ironically considering the gestalt nature of their literal makeup — one of the more primal, more basic forms. Or, no. I suppose that reversal — the improvisational, active interpretation element being the audience’s purview — is what makes the form postmodern.

Which is interesting. If play is the most basic form, then videogames are post-play, or play 2.0. They’re the post-structuralist theater — which may explain some of the difficulty in illustrating with them. It’s the difference between following a car from the front, as compared to the back.

I am not a natural performer. My skills of improvisation are weak, unpracticed. Yet as uncomfortable as I am, going off-script, I have very little patience for scripts. I recall in my few acting lessons, every performance became an impromptu improvisation, if for noting more than boredom. What’s been written has already been done, and probably done poorly. It”s more interesting to take the script as a thematic starting place and whittle out my own story. In retrospect, considering how hard I find it just to talk to people on the phone, I don’t know where I found that energy.

I need to get over this intellectualism.

Free fall freefall

  • Reading time:4 mins read

Going by the demo, which may be a dangerous thing to go by, Mirror’s Edge is pretty good. Not perfect; the tutorial segment leads you by the nose, without telling you how to do what it wants you to do, or what you did wrong when you don’t, then screams at you and forces you to start all over. As if the game weren’t hard enough.

Beyond that, I can see the difficulty they had in winnowing down the controls and clarifying what the player is able to do. The business with marking everything important in red is hackneyed, but clever in a desperate sort of way. It is intuitive, especially in how the color mirrors Faith’s gloves, and I suppose that’s all that matters in the short term. You can feel the band aids bulging, though. And it does make it just a touch more gamey. Still, I know how hard it is to illustrate these things, and how late the solutions tend to come.

I’m also impressed how they manage to continue the recent trend of strong woman protagonists without radiating that creepy Josh Lesnick aura or feeling like they’re pandering. Faith is a pretty good, no-nonsense lead, not unlike Alyx in Half-Life 2 or a Chell with a smidge of personality. Actually, now that I’m on the subject — I seem to say this about any comptently-designed Western game, and I’m not sure how I feel about that — it feels pretty Valveish. So does Bad Company, the other DICE game I’ve been playing, so maybe it’s just them. Those Swedes do tend to know what they’re doing.

…

And, yeah. Okay. I’m sold on this. The slight Gibson storyline is okay. Not sure they need the enemies; more videogame nonsense, and I don’t see what they have to do with the game’s themes. I wonder if those were at EA’s suggestion. Combined with the stunts, they give it a bit of a Jet Set Radio vibe. Except with free vertigo.

I had been noticing how, in other first-person games — like Bad Company, for instance — whenever I fall off a high ledge, my stomach quickly rises to my throat, the way it does when you watch a projection of a roller coaster. Except in this case, I feel like I’m legitimately about to die. So… I’ve been having an experience here.

EDIT:

Amandeep: the thing with the enemies in mirror’s edge –
i think up until pretty recently the game wasn’t going to have a gun or anything.
now i think there…is one, right?
and you do have to shoot shit.
i’m pretty much dead convinced that that came as some kind of order from on high at ea.
Me: Yeah, you have to shoot things.
It doesn’t fit at all.
Being able to punch guys and run away from them… okay, that… sort of makes sense, I guess.
Though it’s stll a bit awkward.
I mean, I don’t see the point of enemies. Your enemy (and friend) is the environment.
Amandeep: yeah, as recently as a couple months ago they were saying: no enemies, it’s going to be basically like portal.
Me: But if you’re going to have random bad guys after you, then a passive solution feels most natural.
Yes!
It feels like Portal.
Well. Jet Set Portal.
The Legend of Jet Set Portal.
Amandeep: the red stuff is fairly new too, i think.
before they were going on about how there’d be no hud elements whatsoever except a tiny little reticule pointing up in the center of the screen to keep you from getting dizzy.
Me: Oh. Well.
I guess I’m pretty observant, then.
These are the only things about it that I don’t like.
The red stuff… okay. It feels a bit Ubisoft, you know?
It’s not offensive. It’s just… a bit… duh.

Criticism by numbers

  • Reading time:1 mins read

Three things to consider, when regarding an expressive work:

1) How well it says what it’s trying to say
2) Whether what it’s trying to say is worth hearing
3) Whether there’s worth to what it actually does say

When you’ve found all your answers, the order in which to weight them is: 3, 1, 2.