I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that I'm going to talk about two of the biggest recent "things" in gaming right now; Square Enix's money problems or the statement by Irrational Game's Ken Levine that having female characters on the front of a game's boxart doesn't sell after a female central character in Bioshock Infinite was relegated back of the box. Jim Sterling's weekly video show The Jimquisition covered the latter more eloquently than I could hope to, and just did a bit on the instability of the game industry as it is, so what I'm going to talk about this week is Ducktales.
Ducktales was an early example of how to license an existing property and make it into a great game. Capcom was the go-to company for adapting Disney licenses into games, and pretty much all of them are bang-up jobs. In particular, Goof Troop for the SNES was the first game designed by Shinji Mikami, the big brain behind Resident Evil; one can even see the parallels between the game's single-item inventory slot and the limited carrying capacity in RE.
Speaking of Resident Evil, the Gamecube Remake of Resident Evil is - in my opinion - the golden standard for game remakes. Released in 2002, it was the start of an exclusivity agreement between Capcom and Nintendo to give the Gamecube a line of games to appeal to mature gamers. Given Nintendo's traditional "family friendly" background, Capcom pulled out all the stops, giving the games tons of new content, like new areas, new mechanics that change how the game is played, redone music and sound effects, an attempt to make the storyline more coherent, and gave it graphics that for their time were incredible. Nintendo had a modest hit that secured future releases like Resident Evil 4 and other games that weren't Resident Evil 4.
It's generally agreed that RE4 is the magnum opus of the series.
Since then, Capcom has rereleased several of their older titles, and long-running series like Mega Man were compiled onto one game disc and sold as collections. While it's cool that they're releasing all of these classics for future generations to enjoy, I'm concerned that not enough of these future remakes will have new content. The Ducktales remake promises to have voices provided by Disney's cast (I found a particularly heartwarming article about how the 94-year old voice actor for Scrooge McDuck breezed through the recording session), a more-fleshed out story and updated graphics. However, arcade games like Final Fight see ports onto newer consoles with little to no new content.
Here's the kicker; this is a safe trend for the industry. Capcom has seen botched launches of big-name titles such as DmC and Street Fighter X Tekken; the former was a reboot of a franchise that had run low on ideas and the latter a team up from two well-known names in fighting games. Both of these games failed to live up to sale expectations, so I feel that Capcom is "retreating" into safe territory with remakes of older titles after being scared away by trying something new with their reliable franchises. What this means is that it will be difficult to see fresh new content from Capcom in the near future.
I understand the need to play it safe after lackluster sales, but Capcom has made this a running trend. If Ducktales Remastered sells well (which I really don't doubt) then it will encourage more HD remasters of other titles. I'm fine with that, but the industry has had one fiasco after the other, and I want something that will give me confidence that the industry is headed in a bright new direction rather than wallowing its past successes.
Interestingly, I've been mulling over which direction to take this week's blog post; my first idea was to recant a statement I made last week about adventure games needing to appeal to a wider audience. Game initially started as a niche appeal, and by attempting to broaden the appeal of a particular genre too much will spread that genre's appeal too thin to for any audience to enjoy. Then information about the new XBox and the resignation of Electronic Art's CEO came to light, so I figured why not talk about the state of the industry? Perhaps my previous idea will come to fruition in the near future.
This information about the XBox came from an article on media news site The Escapist. Previous articles about the XBox detailed that it would be available in different versions to suit the tastes of "casual" and "hardcore" audiences, and hints have been dropped on multiple occasions that Microsoft's new console would implement features to prevent used games from being played. A recent article makes no mention of this, but it does detail how the new XBox (named "Durango") will not support play from game discs; instead, games must be installed to the hard drive before they can be played.
Putting aside the installation issue - for which there will be fixes, reportedly - the leak mentions that the console always has to be online. Putting aside for a moment the issue of not everybody has internet, there's the issue of the recent SimCity debacle on the side of EA. For those not familiar, Electronic Art's recent game SimCity forced the player to always be connected to the internet, even for single-player games. Why this is bad is because you are always at the mercy of the company whose servers your game runs on; if the company's servers go down, you can't play your game. The big problem with SimCity was that EA's servers couldn't handle the sheer volume of players logging on to play on the first day, resulting in people being unable to play because of EA's problem.
The icing on the cake is when modders removed two lines of code and could play the game perfectly fine offline, despite being told over and over that being online was a necessity because of the sheer enormity of SimCity's worlds. It's damning evidence that EA just wanted the game to always be online so they could enforce their Digital Rights Management policies.
I know I just got done talking about Valve and their digital distribution platform Steam a few posts ago, but I really cannot emphasize how well they know both their customers and those who pirate. Rather than tightening the leash by imposing a laundry list of DRM, Valve opened its doors to pirates and made buying games a quick procedure that ends when you download the game. They won't stick around with fingers in your wallet, and you don't have to worry about them looming over you deprive you of time spent playing a game because their servers are down.
There's an incredibly sharp contrast between EA and Valve in the aspect of respect. Valve respects its potential pirates' methods, and as a result attempts to make a system to better accommodate them. EA's handling of SimCity and Microsoft's always online/rumored anti-used game policy won't make the customer want to buy their products because of how manipulative the whole process feels. Given the current economy, these models simply are not sustainable for the game industry. Industry commentators are predicting the console gaming market to crash, and honestly, I can see it happening given Microsoft's and EA's flagrant disrespect for their consumers.
The bottom line is that considering the enormous amounts of money that EA and Microsoft put into their franchises - Halo 4 is the most expensive video game made to date, weighing in with a budget of over $100 billion - One has to imagine what Microsoft and EA will do when their practices alienate faithful and potential customers alike in the future. Consistently working making games with these prices on a foundation of shaky business tactics simply won't pan out in the future, and the weight is on the developers' shoulders to make things work out.
I consider myself a fan of the Zelda franchise. I'd consider myself a bigger fan of the Metroid franchise, but why limit myself to just taking about intellectual property? I'll say that I'm a fan of the adventure genre of game. Adventure is sometimes used as a Swiss Army knife of genre definitions, being used to apply to lots of games even if they don't really capture the feel of an adventure. When I think of an adventure game, I think of exploring an unusual world, surprised at the unique and sometimes bizarre creatures and tools that I find, and overall having this sense of discovery of something new and grand beyond this world.
However, all is not well on adventure island, the land of the new and unknown. While games like Super Metroid and may have been a new and breathtaking experience at the time, the most recent poster boy for the Adventure genre, Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword was received only lukewarmly by critics. What I'd like to talk about this week is Nintendo's recently stated objective for the the next Zelda game being to bring back the feeling of adventure from the early entries in the series. However, the real problem is that whenever the player is struggling, they can always jump on the internet and sort out problems by looking up an FAQ. If I compare it to spoilers for a book or movie, then one can see how it drains away the defining aspects of the medium.
Before I ask "How can game designers reincorporate a sense of adventure into a culture that can easily find out how to solve their problems with no effort?" it may help to look back on how games accomplished this in the past: the original Legend of Zelda left a handful of clues lying around on how to find otherwise ridiculously well-hidden secrets, such as taking a certain path in a looping section of the map, or blowing up normal-looking walls. Castlevania II: Simon's Quest gave even fewer clues and had non-player characters (NPC's) give cryptic hints or even outright lie to the player. The problem with these games was that their tactics worked a little TOO well; if you've never played Simon's Quest before, I dare you to finish it without an FAQ or hints.
You probably won't beat Simon's Quest, but you'll remember this phrase for the rest of your life!
What's interesting is after the release of Skyward Sword, an essay called Saving Zelda became fairly widespread, explaining the fundamental differences between the fun in Zelda games of the past and today. While I don't agree with everything (such as the suggestion that adding cracks to walls to make it more apparent what is and isn't a waste of time and energy attempting to break) but it raises some very good points, especially on the idea that newer Zelda games are too easy. The N64 Zelda games, Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, eased back on being so vague and toned down the difficulty as well. What resulted were battles and puzzles that - in my opinion - were too easy to accomplish and lots of your adventure being laid out for you. How can you discover new and unusual things if you're being carted around like you're on a train track?
However! Majora's Mask is easily my favorite Zelda game because the bulk of the adventure was focused on in the sidequests, most of which revolved around ordinary people. The main strength of Majora's Mask was its unusual world and surreal, downbeat atmosphere. If you're not familiar with the plot, it centers around Link's adventures in an parallel world called Termina that will be destroyed within three days by the falling moon. This atmosphere of inevitable doom that hung over the entire game - literally, as the moon can be seen inching closer as the game's plot progresses - made even the mundane more interesting and exciting while simultaneously building a world with its own cultures. Atmosphere can really make or break a game; look no further than survival-horror siblings Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill: Downpour respectively.
This harbinger of the apocalypse can be seen from any outdoor location in Majora's Mask.
Incidentally, I consider survival-horror games to be an adventure in and of themselves. Even if I know what to do in a game like Resident Evil, it's overcoming the fear what lies beyond that feels truly rewarding to the player. From my own personal experience I can say that one level in the Gamecube remake of Resident Evil (known affectionately as REmake) had such a depressing and sinister atmosphere that I had to retreat to the save room just to keep calm. Rewarding a player by playing by the rules of the game is how an adventure game should work.
More recently, the emergence of "hardcore" role-playing games such as Demon's Souls and Dark Souls have emerged, whose mystery and adventure is shown through the difficulty. The real challenge isn't finding clues and studying maps, it's in beating powerful monsters to be able to advance to the next area, which diminishes the effectiveness of an FAQ somewhat. The difficulty makes it so getting to future areas may take a while, which allows tension for what the player may face in the future build. Youtube content creator The Gaming Brit sums it up in a brilliant video where - not directly, I merely interpreted it this way - he compares the difficulty of a game to being a metaphor for the sense of discovery necessary in an adventure.
Neither of these takes on re-establishing adventure into our games are without their flaws, though. With Majora's Mask the game is still too easy - again, in my opinion - and merciless difficulty in a game like Dark Souls will turn off all but the most dedicated and hardcore of players. If one wants to win over a large playerbase, then soul-crushing difficulty is a less than savory option.
The adventure genre was one of the go-to genres before the rising popularity of shooters. While it's by no means a dead genre, adventuring is in a tedious state. What's important from here on is focusing on making the mechanics simple yet deep without holding onto the player's hand too much, like in Skyward Sword. Straying too deep into the waters of high difficulty will alienate players. It's a matter of balance.
I'm on Spring Break at the time of writing this. While that means that I don't need to make a blog post for a grade, I figure it's good to stay in the habit of posting regularly. I originally planned to not bother posting, but I came up with a decent topic so I'm going to roll with it. I was originally going to talk about computer-controlled allies in games, citing reviews by Yahtzee where he complains about hyper-competent computer-controlled partners playing the game for him, as well as talking about my own experiences with a particularly frustrating section of Fire Emblem: Awakening where I had to protect a computer controlled NPC with no self-preservation instincts. I was even going to bring up the upcoming The Last of Us for showing off the next step in AI partners.
But then a tiny spark of doubt ignite in my mind. What if all the trailers and promotional demonstrations of The Last of Us were set up to look nicer than the final product? What if all of the interviews and design logs and all those things that make me want to give Naughty Dog my money were engineered to wring as much money out of the consumer? Some of you might be asking yourself why I'm being so paranoid over something I've been excited for, while others might know the phrase "Aliens: Colonial Marines" and thus be more familiar with where I'm coming from.
This boxart is a visage of dread.
For those not familiar with it, Aliens: Colonial Marines is a first-person shooter game set in the universe of Ridley Scott's successful Alien franchise developed by Gearbox Software, probably best known for Borderlands. What happened was the demo and PR ended up being significantly stronger than the actual game was, which caused outrage when it finally reached the hands of consumers. Game journalist and reviewer Jim Sterling broke his regular schedule to point out the differences between the game and the demo on his weekly video feature, The Jimquisition.
What I am not trying to do with this post is incriminate Naughty Dog for something that they very very very likely haven't done. The Last of Us has received lots of attention outside of a controlled environment and has had a lot of gameplay videos and interviews and articles that assure it to be the genuine article and not a company's fabrication. The point I am trying to make by pondering over the legitimacy of a product whose quality seems high if paranoia.
Gearbox' shenanigans have done more than make a lot of people very mad at them, they've spread paranoia in an environment where consumers are already angry at sleazy business practices like locking content on the game until additional money is paid. Gearbox not only made themselves look bad, but also made consumers paranoid about being lied to. Gearbox' actions put consumers in a position where they may second-guess themselves out of buying a legitimate product, not just from Gearbox, but any game currently on the market. If you can't trust gameplay videos and game demos, then what should the consumer trust? Post-release reviews that have likely come out after the game has been sold? Pre-release reviewers who take paychecks from developers to falsely promote their games?
It's good to be wary of a product. If its creators make it out to be the second coming of whichever deity you worship, then chances are it might be overblown. It pays to be patient and listen to unbiased opinions of games without being swayed by what you've heard about them. And as time passes, hopefully more companies will learn from the mistakes of Gearbox and not flat out lie about their product. "Buyer beware" is a popular enough phrase, but I'd like to think that companies won't take try to make a trend out of tricking consumers, no matter how much they want your money.
In my effort to nip an issue of mine in the bud, I kicked off this
blog's school debut with talk about Blazblue, but failed to take into
account that news moves at the speed of light, and have since been
woefully behind on "current" news. Yesterday Sony revealed more
information about their recently unveiled Playstation 4, so I figure
that there's no better time than the present to put a well-developed
post on the back burner so I can make an up to date point in an attempt
to bait and switch readers into reading about the state of the adventure
genre next week instead of my opinion on how David Cage made more of a
fool of himself than he did the week before.
Actual footage from David Cage's Fahrenheit.
What I'd
like to talk about is Sony's stance on digital distribution. Sony
announced on February 26th that every game released for the upcoming PS4
would be available for digital download. I think this is great
especially considering how much Sony emphasized that the Playstation 4
would streamline game downloads, allowing customers to play games as
they download without having to wait or download in the background.
However, Sony announced alongside this that they would also release some
games in physical copies. As a person who prefers physical copies of
thing - as I mentioned in my very first post, I own the soundtrack for
Machinaruim on vinyl, and much prefer it to MP3 files - what would you
think if games that you wanted weren't available in physical form?
Additionally, lending and borrowing between close friends would become convoluted and
inconvenient, assuming there wouldn't be some way to share non-physical
copies between games.
Speaking of physical, do you know
what else is a physical thing that can be held in one's hand? Money.
It seems monetarily inefficient for the industry to release physical
copies at greater cost alongside non-physical copies that don't need to
be boxed, print an instruction manual, and a disc. How would this impact the
consumer in an environment that is already rife with outrageous
downloadable content practices?
Additionally, think about how this would impact game retailers. Used games are already under fire from the industry, with rumors that games for the new XBox will come with a one-time use code that must be entered to play that game to prevent used games from being played. On one hand you've got the dilemma of fewer used games making their way to retailers such as Gamestop, and on the other hand Gamestop is losing customers because people who want niche games on the cheap won't get them because high-profile games or ones guaranteed to sell will probably be the only games to get physical copies.
Finally, I'd like to draw a direct comparison to Steam, Valve's digital distribution platform. Steam is incredibly convenient and streamlined, and even has sales on a regular basis, with special sales that users can vote on in summer and winter. Sure, you might not have physical copies, but with the implementation of a Cloud system, you can download the game on a different computer and then sync the cloud files to pick up where you left off on a different machine. Even if it's not the Playstation 4's super-swift downloads, it's fairly convenient to be able to pick up and play when you're not on your PC of choice.
And now as a counter-balance here is a strange image and the phrase "Half-Life 3."
Carrying over from the last point, Sony has already announced that downloaded Playstation 3 titles won't carry over to the Playstation 4, AND it's not backwards compatible, essentially meaning that you should hold onto your cash on PSN games if you want to save up for a PS4 (no price has been announced at this time). I've found hints about a system called "Gaikai" which will apparently stream information from other PS3 consoles to let you play those games on your PS4. As of no it sounds pretty vague, so I have no clue what to make of it. Additionally, saved games won't carry over onto other Playstation 4 consoles, assuming that you want to buy more than one, or use your account on a friend's console. It's the inverse of Steam's slow but steady Cloud supplemented distribution platform.
What are the opinions of the readers? Do you prefer physical copies of games or digital copies? Do you think the PS4's download benefits outweigh the negatives? Or do you think there's not enough information yet?
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