Year: 2007

Quick Glance: Review Scores

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Is it me, or is the Internet all up in arms about the whole “don’t look at the scores when reading a review” situation? It seems to be the big topic of debate recently.

First, IGN had a podcast where they talked about the games that they felt they had overrated, going in-depth with the idea of the scores themselves and what it means in a review. Then, Destructoid ran a series of articles that detailed why reviews are all out of whack, solely based on the scores. And because those same articles got onto digg, the whole community has something to say, even the big sites. You can see this in the Godfather Wii review on IGN. Scroll down to Matt Casamissina’s comments and you can see the evidence.

I won’t lie though. I have been known to skim through the review and go straight to the score. I usually only do this when reading about a game I don’t plan on buying though. →  All this can be yours, if the read is right.

Review – Second Sight

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I’ve come to believe strongly in a particular rule taught to me by wiser gamers. The rule states that “if a game wants to entice me, to keep me playing, then it cannot assume I have nothing better to do than to play video games.” It’s hard phrase to describe exactly what the phrase means, but it pertains to certain bad things modern games like to do. Sometimes they’re done to artificially lengthen playtime, sometimes they’re done to help introduce new players. Sometimes it is to enhance the cinematic nature of the game, or to keep things “realistic.” Whether they are done because of a current trend, or to try to overcome a particular design hurdle, these additions hurt more than they help. They can cause repetition, make the player jump through hoops, and completely destroy any suspension of disbelief. We play so that we can get away, to do things we couldn’t do otherwise, but that doesn’t mean we want to spend that time dealing with bullshit. →  [send private information]

Review – Wario Ware Smooth Moves

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Wario Ware Smooth Moves for the Wii — In playing this game I discovered a maxim that holds true. In observing my personal failures and some of my friend’s successes in playing the Wario Ware mini games, I discovered this: The extent to which you are good at Wario Ware is the extent to which you are a bastard. This is because Wario Ware has been created to reward the wicked and punish those of us with dignity and gameplay standards like functional controls or knowing game objectives before you lose. Wario Ware apologists would have you believe that the minigames are varied, fun, and fair — but they would be lying. 80% of the games can be won only by shaking the remote, or occasionally waving it around or throwing it at your friend.

Most Wario Ware fans don’t realize that you can do this IRL, too.

Here is a list of the minigames available in Wario Ware:

Shake the remote to shuffle papers
Shake the remote to put out a fire
Shake the remote to grate cheese
Shake the remote to grind an herb
Shake the remote to open some curtains
Shake the remote to seduce an older woman
Shake the remote to hula-hoop
Shake the remote to roast some meat
Shake the remote to put-down an injured dog
Use the remote to balance a broom on screen, in the simulated gravity of Jupiter
Wave the remote around to pick up an apple
Use the remote to guide fingers into orifices
Throw the remote at the TV as hard as you can (this minigame can be improvised during any other minigame)

If the games are so simple, you might ask, then how does anyone lose? →  I only ask one thing. Don’t read in my way.

Late to the Table: Gran Turismo 4

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I originally got this game when it had reached Greatest Hits status, but only just got into it now. And I have to say that this game is extremely robust. This game would easily be lumped into my “way too long” category in my “How Long Should Games Be?” article.

But one interesting feature that I came across was the Photo Mode. Polyphony gives you the ability to take pictures of your in-game garage and save them onto a USB Memory Stick. You can then take these virtual “snapshots” and print them out at your local camera shop.

Based on the settings you use when taking the photos, the pictures can look amazingly realistic. It then turns into somewhat of an RPG, where you try to take pictures of all the cars in the game. Kind of like Pokemon, but not stupid.

Anyway, it then dawned on me that this is probably the best example of a developer using a system’s ability for “multimedia.” →  Mrs. Article, you’re trying to seduce me.

Review – Rogue Galaxy

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It’s not often you come across two games released in quick succession that sound as similar as Final Fantasy XII and Rogue Galaxy. FFXII has Sky Pirates; RG has Space Pirates. Both start off in a desert town. FFXII takes several plot points from Star Wars, RG takes several characters from Star Wars. The main characters even sound rather similar for a while.

But I digress. They are actually very different games, and although comparison would be fun, it wouldn’t do as an unbiased review.

In Rogue Galaxy, you follow the story of Jaster, a young native of the desert planet Rosa who wants to explore space. Through a few coincidences, he is mistaken for a famous mercenary and hired to work for a group of space pirates, led by the notorious Dorgengoa. Soon enough, you find out about an ancient treasure-filled planet and Dorgengoa assigns to you the task of finding the way there.

The “space pirate” part is where the story unfortunately breaks down somewhat. →  Sounds amazing, I must read it now!

Review – Sonic and the Secret Rings

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Here is perhaps my most controversial review ever. Not because of what I have to say about Sonic and the Secret Rings, but because of the context in which I say it. I was unable to finish Sonic, not because of time constraints (it was a rental), but because I gave up on an increasingly frustrating game and control scheme. I have much to talk about, but the question is whether it means anything at all.

Secret Rings attempts to redo Sonic in 3d by limiting your movement capabilities in order to emulate, ironically, the 2d Sonics of yore. Sonic always moves forward (he can move backwards, but its only meant for backing up a few paces to retry something). All you have to do is jump and steer left and right. The game plays like the levels of Sonic Adventure 1, complete with blistering speed and “on rails” segments where Sonic just runs loops and hoops without your input. It is fast and visceral, emulating the feel of the 2d games in the complexity of 3d space. →  In the beginning games created the heavens and the earth.

A sense of accomplishment in video games

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What is it that makes a game particularly memorable?

When you finish a game, you want to feel as if you’ve accomplished something. By the time you beat some games, you want to really feel you’ve made the game world a better place through your actions (or, perhaps, you have intentionally left a horrifying wake of devastation). You’ve solved all major problems, and probably a lot of minor ones as well. Maybe you’ve beaten a particularly tough platformer or shooter and you feel like you’ve done a superhuman feat or twelve. The important part is you feel like you’ve done something significant or participated in a memorable story. The main pieces used to bring about this feeling are plot and challenge.

Unfortunately, this sense of accomplishment can be out of reach when playing a game. Sometimes, this is because the game simply doesn’t establish a concrete goal or follow through on it, but other times there are a variety of details that might do away with this idea. →  Jet fuel can’t melt videolamer.

Review – Hotel Dusk

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Before I jump into this review, I would like to offer some insights into my reviewing habits. When I play games to review them, I try to see if the development team was successful in whatever they were trying to do with the game. For example: have they made an exciting action/adventure game or a plausible horror game? I basically become a high school English teacher and grade a student’s essay. Did they prove their point with supporting examples? It does not matter if I disagree with what they are saying. Unless they screw up with their grammar or examples, can I blatantly say they are wrong?

Why am I telling you this, you ask? I’m just trying to give you a little background info on how I’m going to review Hotel Dusk: Room 215, for the DS. This game may not be for everyone, but that’s the point. Cing had one goal in mind, and approached it without fear of what the players would say. →  Read, you fools!

GDC: D is for Developer

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Wooh boy, it’s been one hell of a week. GDC was filled with some crazy announcements. We had Sony’s “Home” thing, LittleBigWorld, and Peter Molyneux’s “dog” in Fable 2. It started to look like GDC was turning into E3’s successor in some respects. That is, until the Miyamoto conference.

Basically, Shigeru Miyamoto, the one person everyone was looking to for some steamy Nintendo megaton, denied the raving rabbid press and talked about, you guessed it, developing games. No big game announcement or anything of the sort. Just tips on how to make good games.

Apparently the press (or at least Game|Life) wasn’t too keen on how the big show turned out, almost calling it a complete waste of time.

Funny thing is, the damn show is called the Game Developers Conference, and is meant to help developers with their unreleased wares and brewing ideas. It’s not the Game Press Conference, so no one should have expected to hear anything as big as an E3 announcement. →  Illiterates hate her! Click to read this one weird trick.

Two Gamecubes duct taped together

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Chris Hecker angered a lot of people by calling the Wii a piece of shit at this years Game Developer’s Conference. The thrust of his “argument” seems to be that games are art and Nintendo is focusing solely on making entertainment, not art, and therefore Nintendo is bad. It’s worth noting that on his website Chris says he is the Editor at large of Game Developer magazine, yet their website and the february issue I hold in my hands neglect to mention he holds any position there. But back to the issue at hand – some of the videolamer staff have been kind enough to tell us their thoughts on the situation.

Pat says:
This speech took place during a “rant” session, which seems to encourage hyperbolic, polarizing comments. So while my first reaction was “Who cares?” my second reaction was about his argument that the Wii does not have the processing power for complicated AI. I know nothing about hardware specs, but that does seem like a potential problem. →  Final Fantasy Mystic Post