Difficulty is a tricky design aspect to broach because, like humor, it can be entirely subjective: There are players that are on a whole different skill level to the masses most games are targeted towards (the dreaded "casuals") who derive their enjoyment by performing gaming feats others simply are not capable of, especially online. Others simply like being challenged to the point where it becomes this adamant, borderline-masochistic drive to defeat the undefeatable. But plenty more still get easily frustrated with their inability to handle the challenge set out before them, to have so much of the game's content (that they paid for) to be forever closed off due to their lack of finesse.
Generally, though, I believe games like Donkey Kong Country Returns (which I recently completed, sort of the impetus for this blog) and Super Meat Boy more or less find the right balance between making the game difficult for difficulty's sake while throwing their players enough of a bone to keep them coming back. I believe this has to do with the balance of fun, "good" difficulty vs. dissatisfying, controller-throwing "bad" difficulty.
So how to distinguish between the two? It seems like a balance as tricky as many of the other balance issues that designers and testers will spend many weeks of their development cycle tweaking and correcting. Here's my personal thoughts, based on the games I hated or abandoned for their difficulty and the ones I kept coming back to in spite of it.
GOOD
Surprises - Sometimes a game is difficult because it's almost next-to-impossible to predict what happens next. However, if these sequences are static the player will learn from them and factor the new information into their next attempt. So while a hidden blade trap might randomly kill you, and frustrate you for a few seconds because of how cheap it seemed, nothing will beat the satisfaction of coming back around and handily dodging it with the hard-earned wisdom, nor will anything beat the admiration of anyone watching you play the game (provided they had arrived just after the previous embarrassment). At least until you fall into a concealed pit immediately after the blade trap.
The Impossible Becoming Possible - Another neat device is to present what appears to be an unbeatable obstacle and then allowing the player to figure out what makes it tick after a (hopefully short, but it's impossible for designers to predict this) amount of trial-and-error. That they are then able to pass it using a simple learned trick or a memorized sequence of actions provides no end of triumphant joy. This assumes that, of course, the impossible really is possible and the solution isn't so nebulous that a quick trip to GameFAQs is warranted.
Timely Reprieves - The biggest difficulty balance issue is the meting out of checkpoints, (auto-)save opportunities and/or extra lives, depending on the game's genre. Obviously, too many makes the game too easy and too few make it too hard. Ideally, a difficult game should reward the passing of a tricky series of events with a reaffirming "hey, don't worry, you won't have to do THAT again."
BAD
Repetition - Building on the reprieve aspect, having too few points to mark your progress and start over in a spot further along than you were originally means having to repeat a lot of the game. After a player has "solved" the timing on a series of jumps, the correct method to systematically break down and defeat a boss or the order in which to build units, gather resources and build up tech trees or what have you, it's boring for them to have to do it all over. Most of the elation came from the realization that you had beaten something that had caused you so much trouble, so the duplication thereof becomes a series of diminishing returns. It also doesn't help to have to constantly repeat an earlier part of a level to get to the part you're currently trying to figure out, as nothing beats the frustration of almost getting the method down pat than having to trek all the way back over to where the action is, possibly messing up on tiny errors because your mind is still on the present predicament.
Length - This is more or less the companion piece of the above item, with regards to checkpoint allocation and the like. The longer you force the player to go without a reprieve, the easier mistakes will come and the more frustrating a level becomes when a player is still dying trying to get to the point where they died the last time. When you need to make four or five jumps to reach the end of a level or a checkpoint, it becomes a rhythm to get it right, a few seconds of sublime perfection before moving onto the next series of obstacles and all their tricks to figure out. It doesn't matter if those jumps are near impossible to land, because you'll eventually nail it with such a small amount before the next save. Stretching that out into a much longer sequence just causes frustration, because the player will more likely than not just keep making unforced errors.
Glitches - Obviously, a game can be made a lot harder to beat with the appearance of glitches, running the gamut to minor, amusing glitches (like RDR's cougarmen) that could increase the difficulty to the major game-breaking annoyances which makes further progress unattainable. Though hardly the intention of the designers, they are very much at fault if their game is literally impossible.
AMBIGUOUS
Sheer Assholery - This item basically represents every time the game gypped you on one aspect or another, usually things you've taken for granted up until now. Sometimes depriving the player can make for a fascinating new challenge, as you're suddenly faced with a new challenge to deal with alongside everything else. Making the screen pitch black except for a small spotlight around the character, for instance, brings something new rather than detracting from what might've been an otherwise unremarkable level. But then there are times when the game simply won't adhere to the rules it itself established earlier in the game, suddenly removing opportunities to regain health or imposing a time limit or a great many other highly objectionable features. It largely depends on the temperament of the player, but will invariably elicit an "Oh, you assholes" response, either with a chuckle or an AVGN-esque controller-smashing freak-out.
Wow, this whole blog post makes me seem butthurt about getting my ass kicked by the aforementioned two games. Definitely not the case. For all you know. Though I should play some of these notoriously difficult games simply to gather more data and clarify these differences. If we can expunge bad difficulty from gaming forever that would be a major coup, maybe losing quick time events and unskippable cutscenes along with it. 4 Comments
Of all the games I played last year, these two sci-fi planetary exploration types were amazingly similar considering the 18 year gap between them. While the tone, humor and actual gameplay were completely different, Star Control II often felt like the precursor (excuse the pun, sort of) in many ways to Mass Effect 2. What follows is a compare/contrast I felt like doing for fun.
NB: Please note that I am no way insinuating anything on Bioware's part. This blog sounds kind of accusatory, but it's totally not the case. These are both great games and I recommend that any fans of one should play the other if they haven't already. With the impending GOTY-Edition-esque PS3 copy, the original 360 version is pretty darn cheap at the moment. And, of course, Star Control II is free in the form of this awesome fan-made version: http://sc2.sourceforge.net/downloads.php
The Setting
Uh, the Milky Way Galaxy? Sorry, this was a bad one to start on.
The Plot
Ah, this is more like it. The plot of both games is to fly around space recruiting people to fight the big assholes that are currently killing everyone. While this actually sounds closer to what Mass Effect 3 may well end up being (free peoples of the alliance vs the giant laser crayfishes of death), it's not too dissimilar from ME2's recruiting-heavy multi-branching meat. In both games, Humans are in dire straits (though not as badly as some of the other races as it turns out) and you're pretty much the only savior the human race has. It also helps that you have the best ship in the human star army fleet forces (or, indeed, most other star navies. Are they navies?). Finally, your adventures have you bump into plenty of eccentric characters from many different races, and a chance to bone a blue chick. More on that later on.
Impetus
The impetus, which is a nice way of saying a fucking time limit, is evident in both games, but not very evident IN-game. ME2 drops theirs in at a late stage in the game, whereas it is there from the start in SC2 but completely unknown (and unknowable). Both have an interesting similarity in that when the time limit is up, people start dying, but not all at once. In ME2's, you can [SPOILER] until only [SPOILER] and although it doesn't lead to a game over, it's still pretty [SPOILER][SPOILER] and baseball bats [SPOILER]. SC2's, on the other hand, will eventually (and rather rapidly) lead to the vaporization of the Earth and the entire human race, which is apparently enough of a bad thing to cause an early game over. Another interesting coincidence: The first victim of either game happens to be the cutest and most likable one ( Kelly / Zoq-Fot-Pik), as if to really rub it in.
The Aliens
Going by trope: Space Jews - The Space Jew is kind of a disturbing trope - is the trope invoker the anti-Semite or is it the writers behind the race in question? SC2 has the Melnorme, which aren't to be confused with Mel Tormé, even though the Jazz singer was apparently the obvious inspiration for these acquisitive space starfishes. ME has the Volus, which were all but absent in ME2 excepting a few that were chillin'(ium) on Illium. Misunderstood Warrior Race - SC2 has loads of these, due to the main enemy forces' habit of offering the chance to become "battle thralls" to any race they conquer, effectively enslaving them to fight their battles. Obviously, any particularly aggressive race went for this option. A short list includes psychotic spider-people the Ilwrathi, thuggish rhino-people the Thraddash and on the alliance's side the suicidal dodgy-Japanese-accented koala-people the Shofixti. ME2 has, of course, the Krogans, a race used as the Council's Rottweilers, with a complementary spaying and neutering. Green Skinned Space Babe - This trope is absent in both games, since the obvious reference to Star Trek is obvious. So in both games the sexy alien chick is blue skinned. The Syreen and the Asari, respectively. Both are depicted as kind of promiscuous as A) The Syreen are almost wiped out, have hardly any men left and are actually compatible with the humans and B) The Asari apparently go through a "phase" where they'll do anything that moves and C) Sci-Fi is written by misogynists. Okay, that isn't fair, it may well be the case that they're pitched to misogynists. Wait, that also isn't- The Greys - Or "grays", or whatever your dictionary spells it as. The weird little guys with the giant almond eyes. SC2 has the Arilou, an entirely way-too-creepy race of extra-dimensional beings that have been either improving or protecting the human race, or possibly neither. They think we're cute. Like puppies. ME2 has.. well, it's not clear. The Protheans? They've been messing around with us since the stupid ages according to that one side-mission in the first game. Insectoid Aliens - Again, the Ilwrathi of SC2 and ME2's Rachni fill the usual mold of dickish monster insect people, though the Rachni were kind of coerced by the Reapers. Tell it to the gas nozzle, Clicky, Shepard's too busy kicking ass to care. Also ME's Keepers kind of look like SC2's Supox, even though the latter are a plant-based species. Mechanical Aliens - The awesomely-named Mmrnmhrm, who clearly need to speak up when talking to other races, are SC2's resident silicon-based lifeform. They merge with the crystalline Chenjesu to form a symbiotic entity of pointy glass metal things. ME2 has their various "synthetics", most of which are blown up on sight presumably because someone back in the Citadel's vast history was a sore loser at chess. Most notable are the Geth, who again are a hive-minded species taken for a ride by the mean old Reapers and their ability to indoctrinate whole swaths of them at once, Borg-style. Geth are also serious gamers. Believe it. Space Jerks - The Space Jerks of ME2 are the Reapers, a race constantly on the look out for organic species with superior genetic diversity to transform into Lil Lisa's Patented Animal Slurry for a new Reaper to be built out of. The Jello molds they use are enormous. By "genetically diverse" they apparently mean "crayfish, crayfish, crayfish, squid, crayfish, goofy Terminator". SC2's Space Jerks are the eponymous Ur-Quan, who want to enslave everyone else as either a gladiator or one of those strippers in a glass box at those fancy elite clubs (I'm so sorry, I think my analogy generator's busted). Their current rivals are the Kohr-Ar who, for a refreshing change, just want to kill everyone and use the skulls to fill their giant skull buckets. Apparently they like their Chuck E. Cheese ball-pits hardcore on the Kohr-Ar homeworld.
Mining
So, in order to upgrade pretty much anything, you need to go out and mine some planets. In SC2, you do this by launching a lander towards the planet to sweep up a bunch of dots (but no Cherries or Power Pills) of varying value while avoiding the geological dangers and alien races (but no Ghosts). Filling up the storage bays and dropping the phat lewt off at the nearest (only) friendly starbase allows you to then upgrade your flagship as well as purchase fuel, extra crew and extra fighter ships. These little sweeper mini-games are just fun enough to not get too repetitive on resource-runs. ME2's mining game is far more clinical, a sort of hot-or-cold game where you look for radar spikes and send probes down planetside to dig them out automatically. It's actually more boring than it sounds. It's basically the video game equivalent of checking your testicles for lumps. Plus it's always the same four elements you keep finding that seemingly power everything, whereas in SC2 there's dozens (handily sorted into seven different tiers based on value).
Ship Combat
ME2 doesn't have any. That you control, at least.
On-Foot Combat
SC2 doesn't have any. I'm doing this bit ass-backwards, hang on...
Combat
Okay, here we are. So combat is the most different aspect of the two games: In SC2 it's done with fighter ships (and occasionally the flagship, if you want to risk it) and the player fights in one-on-one duels (other ships get tag-teamed in as their allies blow up) with the opposing forces. ME2 has you and a small team running around smashing skulls and breaking hearts. To be fair, both systems are so different that it's not easy or indeed relevant to compare the two. Wait, does that even count as "contrasting"? I think I should prob-
Diplomacy
Now this is where things get interesting. In both games, you can end conversations one of two ways: Finding a mutually beneficial solution to both sides, ushering a lasting friendship and allegiance against a common foe, or telling the other guy to go fuck himself and then opening fire on his privates. In both cases, the latter is more fun, though more trouble than it's worth in the long run. In both games, the interaction with other people from other races is often the best part, as they're well-written, interesting, branching conversations which on occasion can be quite hilarious.
So that's a pretty exhaustive list, right? If I remember anything else they have in common I'll add it.
Incidentally, does anyone else know of any more games like these? They were pretty much my two favorite games in 2010 (alongside Little King's Story). Preferably with more of the chilled out planet-studying/resource-gathering stuff and less "getting my head blown off because I called some space lizard guy a dickwad" (which I could just not do in the future, I suppose, but ehh). 6 Comments
Those wacky Giant Bomb guys and their opinions. I already made a GOTY blog post but I think I'll make another one to respond to the super-great quadrumvirate and their podcast deliberations. Man, this got way too big. I'm not posting it on the forums, they don't deserve that. Here's to 2011 having less awards (but more games that deserve them).
Best 2009 Game in 2010: Borderlands (Noms: Forza 3, Dragon Age Origins)
(Mine: Uncharted 2) I concede their point. Borderlands was a lot of fun, even if it wore out its welcome before it ended, but they're completely correct about the DLC throughout 2010 improving the game in many aspects, making it almost a valid entry as a 2010 game. Forza 3 I didn't play, because racing games. Dragon Age Origins was my runner-up for best 2009 game I played this year, so I'd have been happy with them choosing that too.
Best New Character: Bayonetta/Mordin (Nom: Francis York Morgan)
(Mine: Mordin) Man, I love Mordin. He's a great, troubled character that perfectly represents the intellectual yet short-lived Salarian race - he cannot dwell on the past because he has so little future left: he needs to stay focused on new inventions and discoveries to get the most out of his remaining time, conveniently ignoring the mistakes when they would haunt anyone else. Bayonetta is basically Jessica Rabbit if she was a magic-using high-ranking member of COBRA. I didn't get the chance to play Deadly Premonition, and am in no hurry after the Endurance Run (if that game has anything good about it, it's the presentation of its craziness. Which I've already seen.)
Best Original Song: Pac-Man CE DX Intro Song (Noms: Betus Blues - Super Meat Boy, Life is Beautiful - Deadly Premonition)
(Mine: Potential For Anything - VVVVVV) This is always a tricky category. Video game music does one of two things when its good: It will either blend effortlessly into the background, enhancing the atmosphere without sticking out (and thus make it hard to qualify for this award), or make you nod your head and tap your feet in rhythm as you negotiate one pitfall or another for the dozenth time. Obviously, VVVVVV and Super Meat Boy do the latter spectacularly well. I'll give it to the GB crew that the Pac-Man menu song is catchy as hell though.
Best Debut: Bayonetta (Noms: Super Meat Boy, Limbo)
(Mine: Vanquish) Because they snubbed Vanquish entirely in their best debut discussions, while putting Bayonetta on top, I'll do the opposite. Vanquish was the better game, not because it played things safe and had a more "traditional" "invaders take over curiously ring-shaped world and a semi-robotic super-soldier takes them out" angle, but because it was the better game. It took the TPS cover-based template of "dat Gears" et al and threw it the ol' double deuce, demonstrating time and time again that launching yourself towards enemies with rocket boots and ripping the diodes out of them trumps taking pot shots behind some nondescript cybercrates every time. Super Meat Boy felt like a love-letter (and the zenith-reaching capstone) to a whole genre rather than its own unique thing, and Limbo was just 1998's Heart of Darkness in silhouette.
Best PC Only Game: Starcraft II (Noms: Civ V, VVVVVV)
(Mine: Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale) Normally I don't play enough (or any, really) PC games in one year to have an opinion, but these past couple of months had two of Steam's biggest sales and has given me ample ammunition for a best of category. I can't stand RTS games, so Starcraft II is out, but that's more from a personal failing than anything objective. Civ V could well be fantastic, but no Civilization game is ever going to top Master of Magic, so I'm not sure why they keep trying. VVVVVV was wonderful, but I'm going to give my recommendation to Recettear, which currently has the highest "what I paid" to "how much I've played it" ratio than any other game in recent memory. It's that kind of niche, innovative (well, outside of a single chapter of Dragon Quest IV) JRPG that suits me just fine.
Best Downloadable Add-On: Project Minerva - Bioshock 2
(Mine: N/A) I, uh, didn't download any DLC this year. For anything. So I'll go with whatever they went with. Why not.
Best Co-Op: Halo: Reach
(Mine: Lara Croft & the Guardian of Light) Their pick doesn't surprise me. Everyone loves dat Halo. I personally thought the Lara Croft game had a completely badass co-op, though considering it's the game's main focus (rather than some hastily added "and a second guy can play too" feature) it's bound to come ahead. The puzzles just get so much more devious when you need to use both sets of talents in tandem.
Best Download-Only Game: Pac-Man CE DX
(Mine: Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale) I already had Recettear on my original GOTY list and nothing's changing my mind about that. I've finally got around to many of the downloadable-only games of the past thanks to the Steam sales and an additional Humble Bundle. It's definitely not the disposable genre I thought it was (though I still submit that the Indie market is just as imaginatively-bankrupt as retail).
Best Looking Game: Kirby's Epic Yarn
(Mine: Assassin's Creed Brotherhood) I contemplated choosing something aesthetically unique like the crew did, but decided to stick with something just conventionally breathtaking. Rome is just amazing, and climbing each viewpoint and being hit with those vistas never really got old. I could go for Vanquish too, it had some insane visuals.
Best 360-Only Game: Halo: Reach
(Mine: ...Crackdown 2) I just realized the only game that counts for this category that I've played this year is Crackdown 2. That's a little distressing, because it probably shouldn't be featured on any "best of" list. As much as I tend to consider Halo overrated and "done", it was almost certainly better than Crackdown 2's reheated leftovers.
Most Ridiculous Use of FMV: Comic Jumper
(Mine: Comic Jumper) Well, since it was a joke category for a game I never played, I'll go with the GB crew. I like how they actually had to debate it in the podcast, despite FMV being sort of ridiculous in general in this day and age.
Most Improved Franchise: Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit (Noms: Red Steel, Just Cause)
(Mine: Nier) For me, Just Cause (and Mass Effect & Assassin's Creed Brotherhood for that matter) were improvements to games that were already good. Likewise, but on a smaller scale, Red Steel went from mediocre to average. I didn't play NFS (because racing games) but with that genre it never really seem like there's a lot going on between increments besides shinier cars and backgrounds. It's all the control precision and feel of the driving, I guess, which you don't get unless you play them yourself. Benefit of the doubt for the team on that one, but I'm still going to go with Nier since its incredibly loose connection to Drakengard makes it part of that franchise, sort of. I hated the latter but enjoyed the former for what it was, so to me that seems like the biggest improvement.
Most Egregious Use Of Product Placement/In-Game Advertising: Shaun White Skateboarding
(Mine: Shaun White Skateboarding) Again, this felt like a simple joke category for the rather contemptible in-game advertising that has the added audacity to masquerade as some kind of anti-establishment freedom of speech, which was so patently ridiculous it needed its own category to highlight it. Which it has. So I'm done here.
Worst Accent: Heavy Rain (Noms: COD:BLOPS, Dead Rising 2)
(Mine: ???) Man, I really don't notice accents. It's like, who cares? When it's someone like Sam Worthington, who is apparently a real actor according to Hollywood (they made a similarly confusing claim about Shia LeBeouf), it's a little more grievous, but it really doesn't matter too much. Then again, I'm dismissing all those great voice actors who make their living with these games with perfectly fine voice work, so well done to them for not being nominated.
Best Wii-Only Game: Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Noms: Goldeneye 007, Kirby's Epic Yarn)
(Mine: Super Mario Galaxy 2) I already said as much in my original GOTY blog post. The only other Wii game I played from this year was Crystal Bearers (though I have No More Heroes 2 on the backlog), so it's no contest. I really want to play their other two noms (and DKCR) at some point too.
Character We'd Most Like to Party With: The Illusive Man - Mass Effect 2
(Mine: The Crew of the D.S.S. Souleye - VVVVVV) Those adorable bald-headed goons would be fun to hang out with, plus you'd have that onboard jukebox with all the banging tunes from the game to rock out to. Failing that, you could always put on Lionel Richie's "Dancing On The Ceiling" and have at it. Let's hope no-one accidentally spills a beer on the teleporter...
Dave's Eastern Bloc Game of the Year: STALKER: Call of Pripyat
(Mine: N/A) Well, it's got his name on it. I'll go with whatever the Snider thinks. Plus I don't think I played an Eastern Bloc game this year (does Singularity count?).
Worst Trend: Retailer-Specific Pre-Order Bonuses
(Mine: DCSNCUTS"BGSABWGIS"MoC) Ehhh, I see their point about the pre-order bonuses ruining things for people who want everything the game has to offer to be available to them, but if you're buying every piece of DLC (that doesn't add major content) you've got problems. It feels like a necessary evil that isn't such a big deal, like in-game advertising. I'd say Multiplayer-only achievements, but that wasn't new in 2010. I'll go with "Digital Content Stores Not Catching Up To Steam's 'Basically Giving Shit Away Because We Got Infinite Stock' Model of Commerce". Catchy.
Best Story: Red Dead Redemption
(Mine: Mass Effect 2) Granted, Red Dead has a kickass western narrative in the "tired ol' gunslinger" Unforgiven/True Grit mold. However, it feels more like a three part trilogy, like the Dollars/Man With No Name series, except the middle part just happens to suck. Langston Rickets aside, the whole "comedy douchebag revolutionary" Mexican sojourn was as painful as the game's constant cougar encounters. Mass Effect 2 was episodic too, but the deep characterization from some of those loyalty quests made me want to seek every single one out and learn more about my ragtag crew. ME2, for better or worse, kind of streamlined everything that didn't involve the storyline or the characters, so it deserves this award more than any other.
Best DS-Only Game: Picross 3D
(Mine: Picross 3D) Conveniently, the only DS game I played from this year (besides Ace Attorney Investigations, which WOULD NOT END) happened to be the best one according to the GB crew. I wish I had played more of my little dualscreen, but current touchscreen issues have sidelined it for the time being. I'm thinking that'll change in 2011 with the 3DS and its amazing speculative library, though.
Best Performance By Nolan North: Mafia II
(Mine: Mafia II) Nothing tops Nolan North talking to Nolan North in the spirit of a "does Nolan North get too much exposure?" category.
Best Competitive Multiplayer: Starcraft II
(Mine: Starcraft II) I hate competitive multiplayer. At least the online kind, and there doesn't seem to be much left of the offline kind. Goldeneye 007 perhaps but I didn't play that. I think I'll go with Brad, Giant Bomb and the nation of South Korea in lieu of anything I could put forward.
Best Ending: Red Dead Redemption (Noms: Bayonetta, Starcraft II)
(Mine: Nier) Ughhhh. Red Dead had the absolute worst ending. The only good part (Marston's "Bolivian Army" last stand) was sandwiched between a completely inexcusable series of boring homestead missions and the least charismatic cowboy Jack on his fifteen-stop tour of revenge (oh, he's over here? oh, he's over here?). Then title card, which was cool, but then it keeps going. You know, if you want to finish off a few side-missions with knock-off Marston. Deplorable. Bayonetta's ending is completely badass, when you're fighting down the side of that giant statue in space, but the game's plot is like that all the time. If it was just the story, it'd be a great game (well, movie), but everything else kind of ruins it. Plus "Fly Me To The Moon" has earwormed its way onto the iPod Shuffle I'll be assigned with in Hell. Starcraft II's ending, from what I can tell, is very important to Starcraft, which makes it very unimportant to me.
Good endings? Well, Assassin's Creed Brotherhood had an interesting one, but I don't think any cliffhangers should make this list because the story has yet to conclude. Which also disqualifies Darksiders, Mass Effect 2 and Vanquish. Fallout New Vegas would be a good choice, with those four great faction endings and how they effect all the little character/town epilogues that go with them, but it almost feels like cheating since that's always been a Fallout staple. Might as well give them "best Ron Perlman narration". I'm going to go with Nier, making the point once again that it wasn't a fantastic game, but that final ending (which I won't spoil) is pretty much the anti-cliffhanger. There is NO coming back from that ending. Plus the meta-game element to it raises the bar, making it the most striking ending of any game this year by a wide margin.
"Take A Break" Award: Final Fantasy (Noms: Guitar Hero, WWE Smackdown)
(Mine: Prince of Persia) In the podcast, the crew make a lot of good points about other series needing to take a hiatus (especially Fable), so there's plenty (unfortunately) to choose from. I haven't played Final Fantasy XIII yet (it's on the backlog for 2011), but even if this one blows, the last one was so different from the one before, and similarly each game kind of responds to the fan reaction from the last. No-one wants yet another MMO, as XIV seems to be, but XV might go in a whole different direction once again because the series is so important to Squeenix to get right. Similarly, Guitar Hero has such a basic model that it can keep on going forever until all every guitar-featured track in the world has been covered. WWE Smackdown can always bounce back, because again wrestling is something that rarely changes. Unless every wrestling fan suddenly went off their pseudo-sport, WWE Smackdown can find its feet again. I should vote for a franchise I actually played this year, so my vote is for Prince of Persia. It's a fantastic series and Forgotten Sands wasn't a bad game by any stretch, but they're not doing anything new with them any more, and too many games have borrowed that time-manipulation stuff that there's nothing left in the venerable Arabian franchise. With Uncharted 3 taking up sand-in-the-vagina duties for 2011, I'd be content to bury the Prince of Persia franchise in the litterbox for a while.
Best PS3-Only Game: God of War III
(Mine: ModNation Racers) This year was very much the year of the PS3 for me. Most of the games I played in 2010 were PS3 versions of 2010 multi-platform titles alongside many fine exclusives of yesteryear, such as Uncharted 2 and inFamous. However, I only played two new exclusives for the system this year: UFG's ModNation Racers and Level-5's White Knight Chronicles. Neither of those deserve to win anything, but if I had to pick one it'd be ModNation Racers, because at least I managed to get an interesting anagram out of it. Yeah, I almost certainly would've picked God of War III or 3D Dot Game Heroes if I had remembered to play them. Dammit.
Best Game Room Release: Food Fight (Arcade)
(Mine: Asteroids) Since I'm not going to go through the whole Game Room palaver, I'll just check the list on Wikipedia and go for whichever one I liked playing the most back in the day. *Checks list*. Aw, jeez. Asteroids? I remember Asteroids. Go with Asteroids.
Best Motion-Controlled Game: Dance Central (Kinect - XB360)
(Mine: Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Crystal Bearers) Uh, Super Mario Galaxy 2? You point at the screen for those star things... yeah, maybe not. Fine, I'll give it to Final Fantasy Crystal blah blah blah because it at least had plenty of variety and neat things you could do throwing shit around and manipulating things with the Wiimote. Still a boring mess, though.
Worst Game of the Year: PowerGig: Rise of the Six String
Most Disappointing Game: Fable III
(Mine: White Knight Chronicles) Well, the benefit of the "Most Disappointing Game" for me is that I don't play stuff that's obviously detritus, but I would play a game that looked good or was from a franchise I enjoyed in the past, which is where "Most Disappointing Game" comes in. So this is basically the same category, only the former's for people who have to review games for a living (like the GB guys) and were exposed to plenty of crappy games they would never touch with a ten foot pole normally. From my original list, White Knight Chronicles. It's a lazy Monster Hunter MMO knock-off, far removed from Level-5's usual enthusiasm for pushing the envelope, and I hope they don't dwell in the dark murky realm of MMOs like Final Fantasy instead of continuing to innovate the JRPG genre like they were doing with Dark Chronicle and Rogue Galaxy. But we all know White Knight Chronicles 2 is already on its way so who even cares any more. Mucho disappoint.
Best Multiplatform Game of the Year (& Best Game of the Year): Mass Effect 2
(Mine: Mass Effect 2) No arguments here. 1 Comments
Since I managed to write down everything I played this year for who knows what reason, and also because I'm partial to bandwagons, I figured I should make one of these. Well, not "should" per se. Maybe possibly get around to perhaps writing something about it, maybe. So with that level of commitment in mind, here are some vidya I thought were pretty okay.
Best Game Played in 2010 Actually Released in 2009 Which I Waited to Buy Because I'm Cheap
Nominees: Assassin's Creed 2, Uncharted 2, Borderlands, InFamous, Dragon Age: Origins Winner: Uncharted 2 Pretty much the biggest gaming-related event of the year for me technically happened a few days before 2010 actually started: Buying a PS3. The first several months of 2010 were spent playing catch-up, starting with what's often touted as the best PS3 game yet (followed eventually by the second best, InFamous). I'm certainly not disagreeing with the vox populi on this one.
Best Game Played in 2010 Actually Released Long Before 2009 Which I Waited to Play Because Backlogs, Dammit
Nominees: Folklore, Paper Mario, Yakuza, Blood Will Tell, Condemned 2 Winner: Paper Mario The Backlog pick of this year was undoubtedly the original Paper Mario for N64. Having played its sequel and its semi-sequel, I really wasn't expecting anything beyond simply a less polished version of either, but the sheer depth (in a world defined by its lack of depth) pleasantly surprised me. This shit was released in 2001, people, and it still stands up. I mean, so do a lot of SNES games too but you get my belaboured point. Damn kids today and their Spirograph and Chachi.
Weirdest F-ing Game Played This Year
Nominees: Drakengard, Nier, Bayonetta, Blood Will Tell, Little King's Story Winner: Drakengard Goddammit, what was wrong with the people behind this game? Giant demon babies? A cannibal who only eats children? A blind pedophile? The love interest being your sister? This game has five endings, and the world is destroyed by a thousand hideous mutated monsters in the second ending. The next three get progressively worse. Japan apparently still has capital punishment (hopefully involving katanas), so I guess they have no lack of Death Row inmates to write this shit. NB: THIS AWARD IS NOT A RECOMMENDATION. GOOD GRAVY, NO.
"Game, I Am Disappoint" Award For Most Disappointing Game
Nominees: Bioshock 2, Crackdown 2, White Knight Chronicles, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Crystal Bearers, Hexyz Force Winner: White Knight Chronicles Slightly unfair, probably, but White Knight Chronicles stands out as the game I was most disappointed with, simply because I expect so much from Level-5 at this point. Both Dark Cloud 2 and Rogue Galaxy were huge, sweeping games with oodles of options and side-games backing up what was, admittedly, a slight dungeon crawling experience. Not only does WKC lack any kind of secondary objectives (unless farming for rare items is somehow captivating for you), but it hides the grand majority of what's available behind its MMORPG mode, which was clearly intended to be the focus all along. Stealth MMORPGs in general annoy me. But this one carried the extra stingray barb of fanboy betrayal and man, is it ever insensitive that I used "stingray barb" in that metaphor. I mean... it's painful, that's what I mean.
Best Appearance in a 2010 Video Game By an Actor Moonlighting From NBC's Chuck (But Not ABC's Moonlighting)
Nominees: Yvonne Strahovski (Mass Effect 2), Adam Baldwin (Mass Effect 2), Zachary Levi (Fallout: New Vegas) Winner: Yvonne Strahovski ("Miranda Lawson") Chuck is ten minutes of amusing nerd references and slapstick wrapped in 30 minutes of dull spy plots and slushy indie song montages, so if anything I'm just a casual watcher. However, two remarkable things about this show - very nerd fandom-friendly and that it's always on the brink of cancellation - meant several sightings of its core actors supplementing their income in a couple of the biggest RPGs of the year. With Ms Strahovski playing asskicking eyecandy, Mr Baldwin as a sardonic marine and Mr Levi as a sarcastic nerd with limited martial ability, they were clearly trying out new things. Miranda Lawson (Strahovski's Mass Effect 2 character) was by far the best developed though, and since I'm a big ol' chauvinist and she's hot, she gets the award. This year anyway. Joshua Gomez is totally winning next year if they make Wendy's Ranch Tooth an IP.
Nominees: Ryan and Vinny vs. Ragdoll Physics (Wipeout: The Game), Frakes Face (Multimedia Celebrity Poker), Any All-Intellivision Game Room (Game Room), "RIDER MEET HORSE, HORSE MEET RIDER" (Motion Sports), "Oh you know what? I did name our guy 'Pig Sticker'..." (Farming Simulator 2011) Winner: Frakes Face (Multimedia Celebrity Poker) I was worried I wouldn't be able to remember at least five awesome QL moments that didn't happen in the last couple of months. Then Frakes Face happened and that neatly wrapped that problem up. I don't think poor Vinny will ever be the same again. Always Be Raising Video Quality.
Best Babby Game on a Babby Console For Babbies
Nominees: Super Mario Galaxy 2, Picross 3D, FFCC: Crystal Bearers, No More Heroes 2, Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth Winner: Super Mario Galaxy 2 I.e. Best game on a Nintendo console. I paid my dues to the Big N this year with several Wii and DS titles, not all of which were particularly awesome and the actual best (Little King's Story) actually a 2009 release. But there was still plenty on offer and the Wii gets a reprieve for another year before it meets with a cupboard drawer and/or a classified on Craigslist. Super Mario Galaxy 2 loses points for being a cookie-cutter sequel, which it then immediately makes up for by being a cookie-cutter sequel to Super Mario Galaxy. Funny how that works.
Best Downloadable Game of 2010
Nominees: VVVVVV, Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale, Costume Quest, Lara Croft: Guardian of Light, Beat Hazard Winner: Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale Generally I don't hang around the downloadable stables, since most of my gametime is spent on retail games I rent for free due to a envy-inspired secret arrangement (basically, Tesco sends me free rental vouchers occasionally). It's no GameFly, but then there is no GameFly over here. However, because of the Black Friday Steam sales and a way-more-aggressive-in-my-head "get this before Halloween" ad campaign for Double Fine's otherwise excellent Costume Quest, I found myself with an abundance of these miniature beauties. The winner is Recettear, which turned out to be far larger than I expected for 1/5 of a £4 Steam game pack. It's also in my favorite genre ever: the Dungeon-Crawler Hybrid. So yeah, accolades aplenty for it and the other four nominations.
Best Overall Game of 2010
Nominees: Super Mario Galaxy 2, Mass Effect 2, Red Dead Redemption, Vanquish, Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, Fallout: New Vegas Winner: Mass Effect 2 Vastly improving on your original in almost every possible way (what I call the Pikmin effect) is easy when the original sucked. Mass Effect did not suck. Unless you really hate elevators or batshit tank physics, Mass Effect was the new gold standard when it came to Sci-Fi RPGs and had the monumental task of being even better next time around. Thankfully, that happened, and we were given 2010's game of the year. Don't let it go to your heads, Bioware (though do feel free to make Mass Effect 3 even better).
Man, I should totally add an Elcor to that "Poker Night at the Inventory" list I made. Talk about a poker face. Assuming they don't go "(Surreptitiously Bluffing) I am going to raise." Because they totally might do that if they were completely stupid. Only I guess poker in the Mass Effect universe is called Pazaak-Jot or something and requires holograms and a neural implant. I'm rambling now. See you next year.
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This is a sort of a companion piece to the "Games I've Beaten" list, to create the full picture of what I've played this year. I share Vinny's unfortunate condition of needing to 100% each game I start, which usually means I'll stick with an otherwise sub-par game just to see it through to the end (hence the many clunkers on the "Games I've Beaten" list). Of course, there are games that are either so terrible, so long or so not my bag that I can't even bring myself to play them beyond a certain point. This is their story.
This is clearly Squeenix's attempt to get in the nostalgia-based brawler market that Nintendo have managed to corner with their Smash Bros franchise. While it doesn't spare on the fanservice, with full micromanagement of equipment, signature moves and bonus material in an RPG-esque XP system, the actual combat is so dull and unappealing it kind of renders the whole ordeal moot. It's like those Nickelodeon Guts! challenges where they rummaged around a big vat of slime for the occasional shiny object.
A little unfair, since I decided halfway through that I wasn't really into another 100+ hour dungeon-crawler. Even so, it's a little insipid. I wasn't really familiar with the Sacred franchise, but it always strikes me as a little trite when you add sci-fi elements like cyborgs and laser guns to fantasy RPG settings. It feels like you're disappointing two entire nerd factions at once.
Didn't have anything to offer in the 5 hours or so I played it. Just generic-as-hell turn-based RPGing, but with horrible design decisions like degradable weapons and consecutive maze-based dungeons. It really felt like a 20 year old game. I don't object to mazes so much, since the linear approach is often even less interesting, but having a constant stream of them just starts to grate after a while. Best to have a mix, or a better map system, or to just blow your entire puzzle/maze dungeon wad on one huge bonus dungeon at the end.
The issue with older games is if they had nothing original to offer, or if that originality did not remain intact over the years, they've been done better since. This isn't always true of course: The Metroidvania system is always being exploited yet hasn't really been bettered since Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night. Usually though, the persistent evolution of games - and I mean design-wise, not just graphical superficiality - renders many older games almost unbearable to play, like using a 28.8k dial-up connection in the world of super-fast broadband speeds. Breath of Fire is unfortunately no exception, having several annoying features that would be removed from future sequels for convenience's sake or because they were unpopular with the fans. It's sad that either I or the world of gaming has outgrown BoF's original entry (I'd like to think I was a fan of this series, having beaten 3 and 5), but sometimes it's best to look forward rather than back, especially when games are constantly improving.
Though to counter the point made in the previous blurb, often games take a giant step backwards when attempting to improve on a successful franchise. The Pro Skater series, the origin point for many of today's extreme sports games, were often frustrating but ultimately fast-paced, arcade-styled skateboarders with oodles of charm and a knack for coaxing extra game time out of you by setting up opportunities for fantastic chains of tricks, or the thrill of discovering and landing a new "gap" in the varied and imaginative worlds that comprised the game. Skate 2 feels so much like a giant step backwards, with one rather dull sandbox city and the abilities of your chosen skater regressing to an unfortunately "realistic" degree - they rarely "snap" to verts and rails and seem to fall over at the slightest provocation. Moves are no longer set to specific buttons, which allowed your Pro Skater chap to easily switch between grabs, flips and manuals on the fly, now resorting to finnicky and imprecise snaps of the R-stick, making it close to impossible to recreate the mindblowing chains of tricks that were the norm in the Pro Skater games. Add to that a difficulty curve that goes straight from simple "jump over three staircases with flip tricks" to a horrible assault course of verts and pipes that you need to score some impossibly high number of flawless tricks on to beat a local pro's score and the game just becomes a nightmare to play. I hadn't played a new skateboard game since THPS4, but if this is what they're all like these days I don't think I'll bother. I probably still have that copy of THPS4 around, actually...
After a few neat sequences, the game kind of opened up into a linear crawl where you slowly meander from one area to the next, all the while opening chests and defeating monsters which would all be back the moment you left (and occasionally while you were still there). There was a whole pervasive atmosphere of pointlessness, and I got so bored from running on the spot I couldn't even be bothered to see the slight story through to its end. I bet it was thrilling though!
Nothing against the game, it just keeps going and going and it's starting to lose any charm or novel appeal it once had. Sort of similar to my experience with Scribblenauts, though that had the added detriment of each mission eventually becoming an identical "get item A to location B" set-up, which quickly got repetitive and tiresome. This game is the only item on this list that I might eventually beat, should I have 300 hours spare to tell a tiny blond hero, a tiny beautiful undead guy and a tiny bossy princess how to save the world a bajillion times over.
Nothing against this game either, I was just playing it up until New Year's hit. It's not something I can blitz all the way to end in one go. My thumbs would never forgive me. Maybe it'll be my first "beaten" game of 2011 (though I doubt it). 1 Comments
This is essentially what Nier is like, narratively:
"I have to save my daughter or she's going to die! Of a disease/curse! I'm not sure which yet!" (sad violin) (moments later) "Dude, isn't it weird how fetch quests are everywhere? Especially early on?" "I know rite?" (moments later) "MY WHOLE FAMILY WAS KILL BY DEMONS. AVENGE THEM WHILE I KILL MYSELF." (sad violin) (moments later) "Hey, that kid gave us the same sword as a reward again." "Oh you did not just break the 4th wall about this second playthrough you rapscallion hahaha!" (moments later) [Harrowing text description of little boy dying in a hospital as part of a puzzle] (moments later) "Hey man, text adventures are old and kind of suck, am I right?" "Yep." (moments later) [Equally harrowing account of Kaine getting killed by a giant monster and then getting possessed by someone who can only be kindly referred to as a fucking psychopath] (moments later) "Hey, the chick in the gothic lolita set-up is swearing again." "She's such a card, ho ho."
And it just goes on like that. I played Drakengard and was thoroughly uneasy throughout, so either Cavia are just geniuses at how to make games for serial killers to enjoy, or they're fucking around with my head for no discernible reason. If anything, Nier is making fun of the heaps of melodrama proffered by Drakengard's story about love, loss and omnivorous giant demon babies, and then in the next breath following its example with some of the darkest and weirdest storytelling told straight that I've seen this side of a survival horror.
Basically, if you like guilt/sadness porn (and provided Lost Odyssey isn't available), you'd do well to get Nier. And make sure you stick around for the second playthrough, where you find out all the bosses you're fated to murder horribly all have beautiful, touching backstories that rub in how much more lovable and peaceful they are compared to the main characters. Because Cavia hates you.
If anyone cares (no-one [hell, I shouldn't]), the games I got are over on Backloggery. I got the same name over there so use your internets, people.
This is largely due to the fact that I don't feel like transferring the 1000+ names over to this here website. Besides, the fine owners of this internet site needs that room to point out whenever a dog appears in a video game. So I'm exercising some brevity for all our sakes.
I may be posting a list of PS2 games I have sitting around to beat, because there's that Martin Luther quest after all.
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