Fun Friday: 2D Bionic Commando Looks Hot

All remakes for the future will have to live up to standards that the Bionic Commando remake has set. Not only have they updated the graphics, but they've updated the music, added weapons and bosses, and co-op. Not much else we could ask for. Unfortunately for the developers, I'm more excited for this than the full, 3D version they have in production.

Gamestop, For Better or Worse

Gamestop is evil. At least that is the premise of a recent article on Next-Gen by Colin Campbell. While I don't agree with everything he has to say on the subject, I have been more than frustrated with the franchise in the recent past, leading me to personally boycott the retailer. From becoming the last , "lucky" person to get a copy of Halo 3 on day one without a pre-order and not being able to get Guitar Hero III, only to walk into Best Buy and see palettes of them throughout the store, I couldn't understand why people still shop there. Apparently, many people still do if their holiday season is anything to go by.

As someone who works at a publisher, it is very easy to get riled up by their practices. We get the short end of the stick when they base their entire model after the used games market. This allows them to keep their initial orders low while reaping the profits off of every resale and no incentive to place future orders once the initial rush for a game dies down. Since they do place such small orders, consumers have been trained to ensure that they've given them their five bucks months in advance in order to reserve their own copy. This all but kills niche and risky titles as they stick to the safe bets of franchises and licensed games.

My coworkers aren't making things any better. In QA we get all of the games we work on. Usually, these copies are instantly traded in for credit or a new game. For the local Gamestop, there is probably little to no incentive to place orders for our games if they know that they are going to get numerous "new" copies that they can sell as used. We are hurting our own company. Although there is probably nothing that will change in the near future to alleviate this problem, I have taken it upon myself to only buy new and from big box retailers who have a tendency to keep things in stock and have sales that make new games cheaper. And I call for others in the industry to do the same.

On the other hand, while at lunch with some friends the other day, one of them was complaining that Gamestop essentially lost one of his five dollar pre-orders. As it is, there is no way to manage your pre-orders unless you go into the store and have the clerk print out a list of your pre-orders. I thought, that in this era of MySpace and FaceBook, that Gamestop should have some kind of social network where you could create wish list, manage your pre-orders and share those lists with friends. Seems like it would be fairly easy to implement and would be kind of cool. But I still won't shop there.

Gamestop seems to be a necessary evil in the industry as the continue to garner more strength and clout in the industry, even if it is only in their best interest. The only thing that we, the content creators can do is go on the offensive. We can shift our buying habits and encourage others to do the same. All the while looking for alternate means of getting our games into the hands of gamers, either through digital downloads or demos that they can try before forking out for a game that he or she may want to quickly return, which is the subject of my next rant.

Autosaving for Peace of Mind

With all of the current generation of hardware supporting built in hard drives, the use of autosave is proliferating. From a developer’s perspective, this should be considered highly sought after functionality as a means of creating a save system that the player can forget about and get lost in your game.

In Oblivion, for example, once autosave is turned on, the game practically saves every time the player passes through a door or when traveling from one area to another. Many hours can quickly pass without the player giving a thought to the last time he saved (unless a lot of time is spent roaming the countryside, then you are on your own). Similarly, in Gears of War and Halo 3, there are several checkpoints throughout each level that keeps lost progress due to death at a minimum.

On the other hand, in Mass Effect, autosave occurs only after key events in the game. Since much can happen between these story events due to the sheer size of the universe to explore and accomplish, a player who has not saved in a while can be frustrated by an unexpected death and a loss of progress. This forces the player to consciously stop what they are doing and remember to save on their own in order to minimize the amount of progress that is lost. Bioshock also implements an autosave feature that only saves at the beginning of each area but is far less intrusive due to the Vita-Chambers which bring the character back to life with no loss of progress.

While these examples only cover a few games and genres, it can be applied to nearly all games. Platformers and puzzle games can save after each level is completed, such as in Zach and Wiki. First person shooters and adventure game should drop the random save points in lieu of the autosave at these checkpoints. Role-playing games should follow Oblivion’s example and save very often. Finally, since loading screens will not be going away anytime soon, it is always good to autosave at this point as well.

Text vs. Voice

I started playing Zach and Wiki which I received for Christmas. So far it is a great game with challenging level design and a whimsical cast of characters. I also noticed that it has a vibrant and distinctive art style and animations which go almost unseen as I spend most of my time with my eyes diverted towards dialog boxes.

I had the same problem with Okami and Twilight Princess. Instead of being drawn into the game world, I’m constantly pulled out to read what the characters could just have easily told me, especially in these text heavy games. In what I can only imagine to be budget issues with hiring a voice over cast, games seem to fail a little bit for me when one is not included. I happy with a silent protagonist like in Grand Theft Auto III, but there is really no excuse for voicing the rest of the characters while providing subtitles for those who need them.

Fun Friday: Portait Edition

Forge is an awesome addition to the Halo 3 package. I haven't spent a lot of time with it, but it gives very creative people an outlet to express them self through the game. One such player and Flickr user, Rit Dye, has used Forge to astonishing effect. It is sort of an optical illusion and plays on the 3D space but the end result is nothing short of amazing.

We're Doing Smoething Right

Next Generation beat me to it with an expose on whether or not this has been the greatest year ever for games released. They have fancy charts and graphs and came up with the hard fact that, overall, this is the second worst year since 2001 in terms of actual reviewed games. They go on to point out that while this seems to contradict the feeling that we have had a great year, we have other cause to celebrate. The industry has been able to sustain a four console race, bigger games and sales, and the presence of online across most platforms is all quite admirable.

The only thing I would add to their in depth report is what I noticed as a trend on Metacritic. On all current generation consoles, their top ten list has been dominated by new releases in the last four months. With the exception of Gears of War and Oblivion, the Xbox 360 has eight new titles in the top ten since August. The PS3 top ten list includes five games from the last few months. Super Mario Galaxy is the second highest rated game of all time.

Next Generation speculates that the last generation had a similar spike about a year after their release only to peak three or four years into the life cycle. If in two years, we have another peak in game quality and the top ten lists are all replaced with new games, gamers have very bright future. It also means that someone is probably working on possibly the greatest game of all time right now.

Fun Friday: The No Video Edition

This week's Fun Friday does not include a video. To change things up, I'm quoting an article that I found on Digg earlier this week that actually had me rolling. In an article that cited the top ten hot computer driven careers, they included video game developer. So far so good, I wholly agree with that. Even though times are tough, the industry as a whole is having tremendous success. However, there was a link to becoming a tester that was full of wisdom such as,

Is your Play Station controller soldered to your hand? Did you buy a Wii before anyone else? Do you like nothing better than spending hours in front of the TV playing Halo? Instead of playing those games for fun, why not play them for a paycheck? Get paid to pay video games!

Thanks for perpetuating the stereotype! One of the hardest things for gamers who become tester to learn is to stop "playing" the game and actually test it. But the article is not done yet. Since the job is mostly fun and games, how much could this unbelievable job pay?

Because video game testers are considered entry-level positions in the gaming industry, they are often offered jobs on an as-needed basis rather than a regular nine-to-five position. But this doesn’t mean the job doesn’t pay well, because it can—anything from $10 to over $100 an hour. Pretty good for a video game job!

The emphasis is mine, but wow. I must be working at the wrong company if other testers are making nearly ten times what I make.

I Comment on What Other People Think

I came across two posts today that peaked my interest and required me to throw in my own two cents. Firstly, GameSetWatch pits Guitar Hero against Rock Band and begs the question of which one makes you rock out and how the public will respond? While many of the comments picked Rock Band to come out on top due to Neversoft's infatuation with nipples and boss battles, I took a more visceral outlook on Guitar Hero,

I used to come home after school to an empty house. I'd strap on my garage sale guitar and crank up my second hand amp. For the next couple of hours I was a rock legend, attempting to bang out a my favorite punk and grunge songs of the day. I never got particularly good but it was awesome and I appreciated music and those who could play well a whole lot more. Guitar Hero captures those old feelings of rocking out for me, allowing me to relive those afternoons. I have yet to play Rock Band but I am curious to see if the same feelings I had living out my garage band fantasies with my friends can also be recreated.

The other post came from game designer Steve Gaynor who posits that games are too long, suggesting that people don't often walk out of movies but if they would if they were as long as games. While I agreed that too many games run with a game mechanic and stretch a game out far too long, I offered a second analogy,

Many great novels can be quickly read, even serialized. On the other hand, there are those that can't be quickly read, such classics as David Copperfield or War and Peace, which many people start but don't finish. Length becomes an issue in the same way for games because the player or reader doesn't have the patience, the time, or maybe even the desire.

Fun Friday: Mr. T Edition

I don't play World of Warcraft, but this is the funniest add I have ever seen for a game. Mr T makes everything better. There's also a William Shatner commercial which is mildly amusing as well, especially when he says, "dog."

Achievements: Good vs. Bad

Achievements are my favorite feature of this generation. From a design perspective, they present a significant challenge though. They can encourage a player to experience the game in a way he might not of thought to try. They can be a deciding factor in a purchase decision. Unfortunately they can also divulge a lack of creativity, budget or foresight.

The Orange Box did something with achievements that seems so simple and yet makes games that don't do it seem incomplete. There is an Achievements option in the menus throughout the game that, while most games bring up the guide to view the achievements and their descriptions, shows the player's actual progress towards each achievement. So instead of guessing how many kills you have accumulated towards one achievement or another, it actually keeps track of the actual number for you. Many games, like Gears of War, have achievements that require X number of something to unlock. I lost count of my Boomshot, Pistol and Execution kills after the first several matches. I would have needed a spread sheet near by to keep track of my progress with any certainty, especially when going for the 10,000 kill "Seriously?" achievement. Many games may not need this because the player's progress is self explanatory if, for example, he needs to get to level fifty and he's currently at level thirty-two. Still, after playing through Portal and Half-Life 2, I absolutely believe that Microsoft should add this functionality to the TRC's so that every game includes this feature.

On the other side of the coin, there are games that seem to forget that achievements can enhance a game, not just lift its rental status due to it's insanely easy achievements. EA used to hold the crown as the producer of games that usually handed out achievements like candy, but their title has been usurped by none other than my own company, THQ. The release of Avatar: The Burning Earth was probably going to go mostly unnoticed this holiday season. That is until everyone learned how criminally easy it is to acquire all 1000 gamerpoints in less than two minutes and thirty seconds. Enjoy the following video!