Gone, But Not Forgotten

Roughly twenty years ago, my Father came home from a sunny Saturday outing with my uncle, each of them bearing piles of old electronic treasures.  The two of them had visited the local flea market, and found plenty of movies, music, and, of course, video games to share with the entire family.  As my siblings, cousins, and I surrounded our respective fathers, eager to see what was bought, my uncle produced a Super Nintendo game with an odd title: Zombies Ate My Neighbors.  As an avid horror movie fan, my uncle was delighted to find such a game, and he was eager to see how it played.  We dropped the game into the console, fired it up, and saw a golden stick figure standing upon a purple L-shaped logo.  Being a fidgety little kid, I randomly pressed on the controller as we waited for the title screen to appear, but we all jumped when my finger grazed the L button, and a piercing scream emitted from the television.

Initially, we were all confused by this screaming logo.  My cousins and I hypothesized that I must have entered a cheat code, and the scream was acknowledging proper entry.  But as we played through the game, there was no apparent benefit to our performance.  When we started a new game later, my brother tried to hit buttons through the logo once more, and when he pressed the R button, a goofy dog bark resounded from the Lucasarts screen.  Again, we assumed some sort of code had been entered, and again we were disappointed to find no evidence to support our claims.  This anomaly was later explained to us through Nintendo Power’s “Classified Information” section, where the scream and dog bark were revealed to be a sort of joke from the Lucasarts team for players to discover.

That was my first time playing a Lucasarts game and seeing the “Gold Guy” logo flash upon a screen.  Since the closing of Lucasarts Studios last month, I have been thinking quite a bit about this experience.  It has been some time since a Lucasarts release has piqued my interest.  The last game I played through was The Force Unleashed, which I found rather bland and a bit frustrating compared to previous Star Wars titles like Jedi Knight and the Trilogy Arcade Game.  So when I read about Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm and the subsequent closing of Lucasarts, my heart did not fill with melancholy and disappointment.  Certainly, I felt bad for the 150 jobs lost due to this news, but my mind seemed to linger on the feeling that the Lucasarts I had loved ceased to be long ago.

Like my time spent playing Zombies Ate My Neighbors, most of my experiences with Lucasarts games were a mix of engrossing art styles, fun gameplay, and plenty of humor.  During my middle school years, I spent many an afternoon playing the PC sim Afterlife, where the management of Heaven and Hell was set against a cartoony style with plenty of tongue-in-cheek jokes.  Grim Fandango still stands proudly in my top ten games of all time, with an excellent film-noir inspired story and plenty of interesting and silly characters.  While I missed out on Monkey Island during its initial PC days, the Xbox Live re-release made up much of a weekend spent with my good friend Bobby, where we guffawed at the goofy pirates while trying to solve the various puzzles of Melee Island.  Each of these games hold such a strong place in my heart, and all of them were released by Lucasarts.  But as the new millennium dawned on this studio, many of the greats who made these titles left, and the company refocused its efforts on the Star Wars brand, almost exclusively.  So much of the humor and characters I had grown to love fell by the wayside, and so Lucasarts had completely fallen off of my radar.

For a while, it seemed like all of these old games would be trapped in the past; technology had moved forward too quickly, and the systems on which to play these games did not exist anymore.  Thankfully, a combination of independent patches and programming, along with great sites like Good Old Games have brought these classics out of commission to be played once more.  The talented designers who brought us games like Secret of Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle have not slowed down either.  Ron Gilbert just released The Cave earlier this year, Dave Grossman is the design director at Telltale Games, and Tim Schafer is doing just fine over at Double Fine Productions.

So while it seems that Lucasarts no longer exists, both officially and personally, the games and the designers who made it famous still live on; continuing to fill our hearts with joy through a piercing shriek and a dog’s bark.

Getting Lost on a Straight Path

Recently, Laura asked me what was the last video game in which I became completely immersed.  A game where I would lose track of time and my surroundings; only aware of the digital task before me.  The problem is that Laura presented this query while I was playing 10000000, so I completely ignored her.

After reading a recommendation from TheDelver, I set about buying 10000000 for the GIMMGP iPad (a special thanks to my father-in-law for this gift).  Initially, I let the title languish in the virtual pile of unplayed games (along with much of my Steam queue) while Laura and I plowed through Bioshock Infinite.  After a week of being both amazed and frustrated in the floating world of Columbia, I decided to take a day off from the Xbox and get some things done around the house.  Things were going rather smoothly: I had updated my Tumblr account, cleaned GIMMGP Headquarters from top-to-bottom, and gathered up all the laundry for washing.  Then I sat down and decided to try out this retro-looking puzzler called 10000000, and all productivity came screeching to a halt.

It was so simple to get into this game.  There is a little pixelated hero, he needs to escape a dungeon, and you help him by playing a match-three puzzle game.  Easy enough.  I figured I could just burn through a few rounds and get back to my chores.  But as I played, the nuances of 10000000 became clear.  This was no mere puzzle game.  Each tile represented an action or item that could aid my tiny traveler.  Clearing rows of swords and staves helped him fight the monsters blocking his path, while keys would open chests and doors barring the way.  There are the resource tiles, which would accumulate and wait for me at a home castle; to provide my hero with upgrades and tonics to aid in his journey.  All of these items work toward the ultimate goal of beating the high score of 10000000 (hence the name) in order to free the protagonist from his digital dungeon.

Failure became commonplace in this game, but with each broken escape attempt I gained better resources and experience to raise the stakes.  I started to fall into a rhythm as my score multipliers increased and the enemies grew more fearsome.  Soon, I was fighting against Tyrannosaurs and netting high scores in the millions of points.  After a particularly successful run, I glanced at the clock to check the time and found that I had been playing for over three hours without even noticing.  I had just lost a chunk of my productive day, playing what seemed like such a casual game on the surface, and I did not regret a moment of it.

An excellent mix of match-three puzzling, combined with RPG grinding, and wrapped up in delicious retro-stylings, 10000000 is a great game which I highly recommend.  It is available on both the App Store and the Android Market, so unless you own a plain Jane cellular phone (don’t worry, I do too), there is no excuse.  Give 10000000 a try; what have you got to lose?  Well, outside of loads of free time, that is.

Tomb Raider (2013)

Game: Tomb Raider
Released: Square-Enix/Crystal Dynamics/Eidos, March 5th, 2013
System: Xbox 360
Game started: March 6th, 2013
Amount completed: Finished the single-player campaign, currently trying to achieve 100% collection completion, haven’t even touched the useless multiplayer.

Chip’s Thoughts

Whenever controversy hits a video game, the quality of gameplay and story seem to take backseat to media coverage of hot-button topics.  GTA: San Andreas became, “the title with a hidden sex mini-game” after the Hot Coffee debacle, Modern Warfare 2 was touted as a civilian massacre simulator thanks to the “No Russian” stage, and here we are now with Tomb Raider’s infamous near-rape scene.  When an interview with the executive producer implied that Lara Croft is captured and nearly raped by island scavengers, the Internet was aflame with comments and condemnations on the trials the beloved heroine was forced to endure.  Later, an E3 trailer showed the world that while Miss Croft manages to defend herself from her assailant, she would still face many violent and gruesome challenges in the reboot of Tomb Raider.  The developers were forced to defend their design and narrative choices before the game had even hit store shelves.

With the tagline, “A survivor is born” at the game’s helm, Crystal Dynamics explains that the suffering Lara Croft goes through is meant to establish her evolution from a bookish archeology grad into a hardened adventurer.  Now that I have played the game, I can confirm that Lara Croft does undergo a serious change over the course of Tomb Raider, but not necessarily for the better.

Initially, much of the gameplay in Tomb Raider revolves around the premise that this is Lara’s first adventure.  She does not have the experience of a battle-weary warrior, and the player’s limitations express this notion quite well.  For the first few hours of the game, Lara must rely on stealth and simple weapons to defend herself.  The player does not have an option of hand-to-hand combat or a melee weapon for quite a while; a crude bow and arrows are the only weapons provided.  Fortunately, the bow combat and mechanics are some of the best in gaming, so the gameplay is fun and engaging.  During this first half of Tomb Raider, the player is treated to gorgeous views and immersive environments where they must climb, sneak, and solve their way through this treacherous paradise.  But over time, Lara acquires the usual trifecta of guns (pistol, shotgun, rifle) and cover-based combat starts to creep into the game.

After a denouement where Lara and her crew discover there is a supernatural element keeping them on the island, Tomb Raider quickly devolves into a series of uninspired and increasingly crowded gunfights.  The young woman who used her survival skills and intelligence to save her friends has transformed into a vengeful bad-ass who mows down anyone who stands in her way.  Even the final moments of the game become nothing more than walking in a circle, slaying wave after wave of enemies, culminating in a bull-fight with a “big guy” enemy, and quick-time events with double pistols.

Overall, Tomb Raider is a beautiful game with responsive controls and plenty of interesting ideas.  It is a shame that what starts off as a product that stands out from its action-adventure brethren comes to rely on tired gunfights to get the player through the story.  How strange that after all of the trials Lara Croft has experienced, the survivor that was born turned out to be just another action hero cliché.

Laura’s Thoughts

It is not hard to see that Crystal Dynamics wanted to make Tomb Raider as good as it could possibly be, in order to appeal to a broad audience. It’s obvious that they tried really, really hard to make something that would appeal to the modern gaming community while not outright offending its female audience. For the most part, it does really well. I do love playing this game. Once they gave me the bow, I was in love. The bow is so much fun to play with and it is by far and wide the only weapon I use if I can help it. The environments are breathtaking. The cinematics are intense. This is undoubtedly a great game.

However, as I played through the story it was made abundantly clear that I was not the target audience for this game.

At the beginning of the campaign I was given a bow and I loved it. I should have given it a name, I loved it so much. And all I wanted to do was make my bow as big and shiny as possible and shoot bad guys with it. And then huzzah! I got a stick! And oh, what a stick it was. I could climb with it and open heavy chests with it, and surely I would be given some sort of melee attack. But no. I don’t know if it was because of my frail woman-ness or general ineptitude but I was not really allowed to hit bad guys with it. This was a skill I needed to cultivate.

…ok fine.

Then we come to the infamous scene where the player must help Lara fend off the unwanted sexual advances of a crazy island dweller… with quick-time events…  but don’t worry, if you don’t manage to “push x to not be molested” in time, you get to watch Lara get strangled to death. Every. Single. Time. Until you get the sequence and timing perfectly. About the third time this happens, it’s not fun anymore. By the seventh, it’s obnoxious and the gravity has long since dissipated. And by the twelfth, I want to strangle Lara myself for being so dependant and incompetent that she needs me to walk her through all of this again.

She then proceeds to have a rather noisy breakdown in the middle of an open field, where the guys she just snuck past, not 20 seconds prior, could easily hear her. Maybe after 20 minutes of watching Lara get murdered again and again, they got bored and went home. Otherwise, this part is a very good example of “things that are fun to do as a writer” and not “things that are fun to do as an audience”.

So now I have a gun. And this is when the game and I begin to disagree with each other. I was perfectly happy with my bow and was prepared to stealth-kill my way through this game because, quite frankly, I’m a coward. But now that I had a gun, the game seemed to think that I wanted to use it. Frequently.

So often it would try to tell me “Look! We gave you this noisier, less effective weapon. Isn’t that great?”

To which I reply “No thanks. I’ve got my bow. I’m good.”

“See!” The game retorts, not listening “You’re going to have so much fun with this” As waves of much better armed bad guys show up with assault rifles and flaming arrows and machetes.

To this I ask, “Can I just have flaming arrows instead? Those guys have them.”

“What? No, you can’t have flaming arrows. You haven’t even used that perfectly good pistol we gave you.”

“But I don’t like it”

“Well, too bad. You can’t have flaming arrows until after you learn how to hit people with that stick you’ve been carrying around the whole game.”

“Why do I need a gun before I learn to hit people with a stic–”

“STOP ASKING QUESTIONS!”

So I left it at that and continued with the story, which first seemed so engaging, then degraded into a series of WTF moments, including the three or four occasions where Lara could have simply shot the lead bad guy in the face (with my bow and arrows of course), but didn’t (particularly when she would just shoot the guy next to him instead).

After that, I really stopped caring about the story, and tried to trudge through it so I could actually have fun with the game. I made Chip play most of the frustrating bits since I continued to use my bow and arrow when it was not appropriate to do so.  After all, Chip is a boy, so certainly he loves shooting guys and blowing stuff up, right?

Let’s Dance Boys

Laura – Bayonetta is not a game I should like for so many reasons: the story (which is as generic as it is incomprehensible), the excessive gore, the obscenely oversexualized heroine. Plus, I never finished it the first time because the angels were starting to show up in my nightmares.

But I just love this game so much.

I wanted Chip to play this game because he needed to understand why Bayonetta holds such a tender place in my heart. And because we have two copies of Okami and nothing to play them on, so this was the next best thing.

Chip – Among the list of video game series that never really held my attention, God of War is the most surprising of the bunch.  It has everything that I should enjoy: the entire pantheon of Greek mythology, over-the-top action, and a heavy metal-inspired soundtrack that gets the blood boiling (and dripping as well).  But try as I might, I simply could not warm to the series protagonist, Kratos, mainly due to his permanently dower demeanor.  He just never, ever seems to be having a good time.  Granted, the entire plot of God of War revolves around Kratos avenging the death of his wife and child, which hardly makes for a light-hearted tale.  But one would think that a man who once reveled in battle and the slaughter of his enemies would at least wear a smirk while performing the brutal (albeit elegant) killing of dozens upon dozens of monsters.  Instead, Kratos just grimaces and grunts an always-angry path of revenge towards Mount Olympus.

For some time now, I have longed for an action hero who actually takes pleasure in dispatching their foes.  A character who relishes each moment of combat, turning every battle into another chance to show off and have fun.  Maybe an anti-hero who brandishes inventive weapons and a devil-may-care attitude.  Someone like… (pause for dramatic effect and glasses flourish) Bayonetta.

Developed by Platinum Games and released in 2010, Bayonetta could be considered a spiritual successor to Devil May Cry.  The director, Hideki Kamiya, certainly said as much in a Gamespot interview: “… it’s been eight years since [the first Devil May Cry (DMC)], so of course I wouldn’t create a game that hadn’t progressed from those days! Of course, if there hadn’t have been DMC, there wouldn’t be Bayonetta, which has evolved from DMC.”  Thankfully, Kamiya did not just settle into making yet another Devil May Cry sequel starring a white-haired, half-demon, twenty-something slacker.  Instead, the director gave his character designer three simple rules for creating the titular Bayonetta.  First, the game must feature a female lead, which was already a huge departure from most action titles of the age.  Keeping with anti-hero fashions of the day, Kamiya insisted that the main character be a sort of modern witch.  It was the final caveat that helped to establish the gameplay that would set Bayonetta apart from the archaic light-medium-heavy weapon conventions of action games: the heroine must use four guns.

Take a moment to consider the sort of character you would personally design from these restrictions.  Oh sure, the first two are rather simple to implement, but what about the four guns rule?  Where would you put the other two guns?  Would the character use all four firearms at once, or only two at a time?  Lead character designer, Mari Shimazaki, had her own vision for this quad-weapon style: Bayonetta would use the other two guns as the heels of her boots.  This design choice was nothing short of brilliance, as Bayonetta could now break-dance fight her way to victory.  Every battle in Bayonetta is so entertaining and full of delightful flourishes that I never felt like I had to slog through the combat to find the fun in this game.

Much of the joy in combat also comes from a wide array of weapon types.  Over the course of the game, I fought with shotgun-endowed high heels, a cursed katana, a demonic cobra-whip, and even a pair of magical ice skates, which deliver frosty spin kicks as Bayonetta glides around her foes.  Platinum Games ensures that each weapon gets its time in the spotlight, as there is no sort of level-up system for weapons.  Since the player does not have to choose one weapon to strengthen over the course of the game, he/she has the option to utilize any tool of destruction during each moment of play.

Outside of battle, Bayonetta is as strong and stylish as each of her weapons.  She is not the sort of woman to be relegated to the role of sidekick or kidnapped-love-interest.  While some of her personality and character can be described as blatant fan-service, her flirtatious nature and over-the-top sexuality are never displayed as weakness, rather as a source of empowerment against those who would bring her harm.  Bayonetta has a coy grin on her face through most of the game, and this delight in her actions translates so well to keeping a player engaged and happy right along with her.

Alongside all of these features are plenty of inside jokes and references at which we game connoisseurs may have a boisterous laugh.  The currency of Bayonetta is angel halos, but these golden rings look suspiciously familiar to anyone who played Sonic the Hedgehog.  There are levels in the game which are throwbacks to the Sega classics Super Hang-On, Fantasy Zone, and Space Harrier (each of which feature retro tunes as the soundtrack).  And there are plenty of references to the games previously developed by Hideki Kamiya, which include Resident Evil, Viewtiful Joe, and Okami.  So whether you are relatively new to gaming, or an old soul such as myself, Bayonetta has got you covered.

I could go on and on about the things I loved about Bayonetta, but in the end, all of my enjoyment of this game comes down to the sheer fun I had while playing.  While so many other action games seem to have some section where I say, “Well, here is the crappy part of the game, time to get a sandwich” I never had to say that about Bayonetta.  Just like its heroine, I kept a smile on my face, kicked some ass, and just danced to the music.

Liebster Blog Award!

Reblogged from CheeeseToastieandVideoGames:

Yesterday I found out that the awesome Cary of Recollections of Play nominated me for the Liebster Blog Award! Yaaaayyy! Which I accept! Yaaaaayyy! Thanks very much Cary, I really appreciate it! Also, as you can tell, this is one of those posts that's going to have way too many exclamation marks to be healthy, so proceed with caution!

Anyways, I've done some research and apparently this is an informal award for up and coming bloggers with less than 200 followers who the nominee thinks deserves more exposure.

Read more… 113 more words

Many thanks to Sam at CheeeseToastieandVideoGames for the recommendation. Please be sure to check out her ever-evolving blog for some fantastic content!

Playing Like A Girl

Lately,  I have read several disparaging articles about the lack of female protagonists in video games.  The release of Tomb Raider seems to have re-ignited the call for major publishers to let girls into the mostly-boys’ club that is triple-A gaming.  Some of the more popular gaming sites have even called out the lack of marketing funds behind titles with female leads.  Amidst all of the banter about “target markets” and “historically male consumers,” there is a bold truth that many in the gaming industry seem to be overlooking: for most titles, the gender of the lead character has no bearing on the fundamentals of gameplay.

Before tempers flare and comments are hastily typed, let’s take a step back to 1986, shall we?  The Nintendo Entertainment System was taking off in the US.  Several prominent game characters were making their debut, one of whom was none other than the Intergalactic Bounty Hunter, Samus Aran.  At the time, this video game heroine was eliminating space pirates in the first installment of the Metroid series.  The gameplay and atmosphere of Metroid was rather revolutionary, and this template set the standard for sci-fi adventure games (along with most of the Castlevania series) for many years to come.  Today, most gamers use Samus as the sort of poster child for the existence/endorsement of female leads in video games, but when Metroid first came out, Samus’s gender was not touted as a revolution in the medium, but used in an M. Night Shyamalan-esque twist ending.

Originally, Samus was meant to be a male character underneath that bulky power suit.  But somewhere during development, the design team decided it would be interesting if the protagonist turned out to be a woman; a secret only revealed if the player beats the game within a certain time limit (or to anyone who read Nintendo Power).  Just in case this seems like an urban legend, take a look back at the instruction booklet for Metroid, where all of the pronouns are decidedly masculine.  In this case, the fact that Samus is a woman has no bearing on the actual gameplay of Metroid; it is just a neat fact that affects each player’s perception of the story between the pixels.

To this statement, many in the pro-boys camp may be rattling their sabers and heartily concurring that there is no need for leading ladies if there is no impact on gameplay.  But watch what happens if we extrapolate the Metroid example to another popular science fiction franchise.  What if after fighting countless waves of Covenant battalions, turning the tide against the Flood, and preventing the destruction of organic life in the galaxy, Master Chief removed his helmet not to a cinematic cut-away, but to reveal a woman underneath all that power armor?  As a trained and quite cybernetically augmented soldier, gender would have no sway on Master Chief’s performance.  Hell, even the character model could stay the same (although a name change may be in order).  Once more, all that changes is the individual perception of the story between the polygons.

There is one glaring issue that I have avoided so far: when the perception of the player or the overall narrative is altered, the entire tone and style of a game can shift drastically.  However, changes in story and tone do not necessarily take away from the entertainment value of a game.  Exploring tombs and ancient civilizations with Lara Croft is no less engaging than doing so with Nathan Drake, performing ridiculous combos and killing of piles of enemies is just as fun with Bayonetta as it is with Dante, and silence still speaks volumes whether you take control of Chell or Gordon Freeman.  There are even stories of programmers hacking roms of old video games and swapping the traditionally male protagonists with female secondary characters.  These differences do not detract from the gaming market at large; they add to it with variety and a rich amount of options from which consumers may choose.

As I grow older, and my schedule seems to have less and less time for gaming, I want my time spent in front of a screen to be worthwhile.  Playing bland re-hashes of the usual crew-cut white dude trudging through a dirt-brown and gun-metal gray environment with an assault rifle just seems like a waste of time.  When you take all aspects of a video game into consideration, the key thing to bring to the table is an engaging and innovative product that stands out from the crowd.  Whether that means more female protagonists, a wider variety of tools and items, or just putting more dinosaurs behind the steering wheel, I hope to see game publishers encourage more variety in their triple-A titles.

Mischief Makers

As Laura and I have been trudging through the rain-soaked jungles of the new Tomb Raider, one issue continues to pop up during gameplay: useless checklists.  It seems like every time we guide Miss Croft into a new area, there is some sort of collectible item or little sub-quest that tries to distract us from the main storyline.  Being asked to burn enemy propaganda or collect rare mushrooms from the forest floor is hardly the most direct route for Lara to save her friends and escape this treacherous island.  These little tasks seem like nothing more than a means to extend the game’s time spent in the disk tray.

I would not mind so much if the item collection had any real bearing on the story, or provided us with more character development or plot depth.  Better yet, what if these little tasks lead the player to extra gameplay sequences, or a special ending?  Back in 1997, the famed action-game developers at Treasure included such a mechanic in Mischief Makers.

An odd Nintendo 64 game that features a mechanical girl who shakes little robot people for crystals, Mischief Makers is my favorite game from Treasure (right after Gunstar Heroes, that is).  The story revolves around the android Marina Lightyears, who is on a quest to save her creator, Professor Theo, from his evil twin brother.  Much of the title features traditional side-scrolling action gameplay, where Marina must use her grabbing and throwing skills to make her way across the planet Clancer.  In each level there are different colored gems to collect, which mostly serve as health-restoratives.  Red, blue, and green gems are in abundance throughout the game, but there was only one gold gem per stage, for good reason.

Often hidden within the level (or earned by defeating a boss character without getting hit once), the golden gems were the only collectible item within Mischief Makers.  Initially, the gold tokens just seem like a challenge for advanced players to collect, but once the final stage is completed, their true purpose is revealed: the gems directly affect the ending of the game.  As the finale begins to play, the gems act as grains of sand for an hourglass.  Depending on how many gems are found, the duration of the ending would increase, revealing more backstory and character development.

So as games continue to add more and more tidbits to collect and checklists to be completed, I hope developers take a look back at Mischief Makers for inspiration.  After all, aren’t video games supposed to be a distraction from lists of chores?