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!

Fun Friday: Failing at "Life"

Video games never really get a chance when it comes to popular media. New show, Life, manages to incorporate a plethora of stereotypes and inaccuracies in just under three minutes. Ignorance of technologies: check. Gamer stereotypes: check. Picking a game loosely based on the antagonists ethnicity: check. Phantom controllers: check. Girl gamer shows up male gamer: check. Obligatory game montage with vaguely connected music: check. "You win!" text: check. Beating the game unlocks Excel documents on the Xbox: ch... wait, what? You got to be kidding me! Try not to let your eyes roll out of your head as you watch the following video.

'Amping Up the Difficulty

Guitar Hero III and Rock Band are two juggernauts that will be duking it out for this holiday's undisputed rock champ. Since Rock Band is the spiritual successor of Guitar Hero, one might wonder how the difficulty stacks up against each other. Games Radar did the leg work for us and put together some side-by-side comparisons of the songs that the two games share in common. Check out the first video below or here for a second video.

The overall conclusion is that Guitar Hero III is much more difficult than Rock Band. I think this is too be expected and a excellent design decision. While many of Guitar Hero's gamers will be well versed in the ways of the guitar and ready for challenge that expands on the last iteration, many of Rock Band's gamers may not. There's a good chance that when getting people together to play as a "band" there will be a couple of non-gamers, or at least some who have never played a rhythm game before. By keeping the difficulty level toned down a bit, it's more accessible. This allows for less frustration and more time dedicated to rocking out.

On a side note, I'm a bit bemused by the art direction for the actual game play in Rock Band. I much prefer the aesthetic in Guitar Hero, especially when they're placed side by side. The flat note indicators remind me of Beatmania and evokes an electronica feel, not rock 'n roll.

When Did Sports Games Forget to Add the Fun?

I used to play a lot of sports game back in the day: Tecmo Bowl, Double Dribble, Blades of Glory, Genesis versions of NHL, Joe Montana Football, International Superstar Soccer on the Nintendo64. But for my taste, the genre has gone down hill. In an effort to make the most realistic simulation of sport gaming, developers has consistently piled more and more features and controls on the player. They also seem to build off of each other forcing a player to master last years iteration before he can move on to the newest game.

Luke Plunkett at kotaku made this observation while playing NBA 2k8 a while back and then Zack Hiwiller expanded on the idea by pointing out the ridiculousness of the compounded complexity of sports games.

Your friend tells you about this movie he is really excited about and he convinces you to buy a ticket and see it with him. The theater is mostly empty when you sit down, except for a few kids in the front row holding those big foam #1 fingers. Before the previews start, your friend tells you it his ninth time seeing the movie. It starts and immediately you find it incomprehensible. There are dozens of characters whose origins and motives aren’t explained, you have a rough understanding of the plot, but the movie seems distracted with minor plot points and half the movie seems to be overwrought establishing shots.

When the credits roll, your friend applauds but you sit there confused. He nudges you and tells you, “Don’t worry. I didn’t start really “getting it” until the fifth time I saw it. Hang in there!” You are a bit dumbstruck: “Five times? I’m not wasting my time and paying to see that mess again!”. Your friend then gets angry with you: “Whatever. You just don’t want to put in the time to struggle for something sophisticated.”

That’s basically the game industry’s sports genre.

He goes on to say that there is "a push each year to add new features" which really just translates to "complicate this for the reason of depth." FIFA has done the same thing as the Madden franchise in an effort to catch up to Pro Evolution Soccer, which has been held in higher esteem for its "realism."

The developers may have eliminated aspects that took away from the purity of the game, adding layer after layer of complexity to create the most realistic sports sim ever, but the sacrifice has been too great. Gone is the debauchery of high-scoring, rowdy gaming encounters with friends and family. I still play competitive soccer when I need my fix of "realism" and I watch Manchester United with fanaticism. In much the same way the racing genre lost me when RC ProAm and Out Run gave way to Gran Turismo, the sports genre lost me when they cut the most appealing feature of all: fun.

Fun Friday: "Still Alive" by GLaDOS Edition

I borrowed a copy of the Orange Box this week and booted up Portal straight away. Although it's short, it was a great from beginning to end. Thinking about how my actions will be effected by the actual physics of jumping through rips in the space/time continuum was a lot of fun. I didn't get as attached to the Companion Cube as some people, but I really felt for the lonely (and hilarious) computer in the end. When the credits role, they are accompanied by a very catchy and brilliantly awesome song. Some spoilers are contained in the lyrics but they aren't too bad. This game is a highly recommended diversion.