A Green Mushroom

I've really been working through my backlog this year and I've finally made it to a few visual novels that I've been meaning to play.  Namely: Phoenix Wright Dual Destinies Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright Danganronpa I utterly failed to get into Dual Destinies.  The pacing was so unbelievably slow.  I was led to believe that these games had a lot of gameplay mixed into their narratives, but it turns out that Dual Destinies is mostly narrative.  It's much more like reading a book than playing a game. I moved on to Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright.  I've enjoyed a bunch of the Layton game in the past.  Typically they have a bit of narrative followed by a puzzle followed by a bit of narrative.  And this one is structured similarly.  When I'm in the Layton sections of the game I have a lot of fun and make a lot of progress.  Unfortunately, the Phoenix Wright sections suffer from the same slow pacing as Dual Destinie...

I've been playing Destiny some more.  It's my current exercise-bike game.  I'll play it for an hour or two at a time while I'm doing my exercise for the day. The gameplay still hold up really well.  The core of the game is just superb.  The gunplay, melee, grenade, and super power balance is spot on.  It's amazing how great they made it. Now that I'm almost done leveling up my second character through the story I'm noticing some of the same issues creeping up. My main problem with the game is that after you hit level 20 there is no clear progression track if you're a solo player like me.  I don't have time to organize groups of people to do the hard mode strikes or the endgame raids in Destiny.  The matchmaking works just fine for normal strike missions, but it falls apart after that.  And there is no matchmaking at all for raids. I currently have a level 26 Warlock and an almost level 20 hunter. Tons of information about the new exp...

After months of chipping away at it, I've completed Final Fantasy I.  It had it's ups and downs but I must say it has provided me with hours of entertainment.  You have to admit, months of entertainment for $9 is a steal.  My completion time was right around 18 hours, but it was broken up into chunks of 5-10 minutes which is why it lasted so long.  I think the longest play session I did was around 30 minutes and that only happened once.  As always, my initial impressions still stand but I had a few other thoughts along the way too. The main thing I liked about this game was the chance to look back at the foundation of modern RPGs.  Final Fantasy basically defined the shape of the JRPG genre and many of the conventions set forth in this game can still be seen in RPGs today. The whole game was fun back-to-back dungeon romps.  If you're in the mood for that type of gameplay then Final Fantasy I still measures up. Where it ...

While I don't quite feel like this , I am never the less done with World of Warcraft.  At least until the next expansion. I had fun working through all the new content with my main.  I did every Cataclysm quest except for Uldum (I thought the desert was boring).  I beat every Cataclysm dungeon on normal mode and almost every one on heroic mode .  I didn't do any raiding, because at this point in my life I just don't care about raiding in the least. I made some alts and experienced the shattering of the old world.  I took them through questlines and through low level dungeons , some of which were nicely re-done.  My Paladin alt leveled solely via the dungeon finder after level 15 which was a new phenomenon for me.  My Priest ran a lot of the new quest content to see how much had changed.  It made me appreciate the tighter quest chains in the shattering.  I had a good alt experience overall. Despite the fun and the criticisms that I had...

  She just lost a game of StarCraft 2. Lately I've been playing StarCraft 2, League of Legends, Minecraft, and Fable 3.  I've noticed that the game I play is dependent on the feeling I get while playing the game.  Let me try to explain. I was playing a lot of League of Legends last week and I took a break to play some SC2.  When I jumped into the 1v1 ladder I felt an enormous amount of stress while playing.  Because of the ladder system I constantly know that I'm being judged and only I can do anything about it.  In a 1v1 I have no back up, no help, no one else to blame my flaws on.  On top of that, in SC2 I have to manage my base, my resources, build my army, control my army, and execute a strategy all at the same time.  It's extremely hard to do, which is why the game is interesting, but it's also stressful to juggle all those tasks simultaneously. Stressful but interesting to play. I switched back to League of Legends and instantly my str...

I've been slowly playing through Red Dead Redemption lately and having a great time.  It's essentially Grand Theft Auto in the wild west.  The funny thing is I haven't enjoyed GTA since Vice City was released in 2002.  Each new iteration is basically the same as the last.  They haven't been breaking new ground at all.  Red Dead Redemption doesn't offer all that much more, but it's setting is in the wild west instead of a modern day city and that's making all the difference. It's strange that the gameplay can be so similar but a change of setting completely shifts my perspective on the game.  I've been on a huge StarCraft 2 kick lately, but in all honesty how different is it from WarCraft 3?  I know there are some differences, but they're both Blizzard RTS games that play in the same fashion.  Apparently setting makes a lot of difference because while I always liked the WarCraft series I absolutely love the StarCraft series. It really makes ...

I realized that I don't strictly "play" games, a lot of the time I'm just testing them.  That's why I can rent a game from gamefly, play it for 5 minutes, and be done with it for good.  I have enough experience with gaming that I can predict how much fun I'll have with the game - in total - after only a few minutes. I've been going through games in this way for quite a while but I only realized it a few days ago while I was catching up on watching the first season of Penny-Arcade TV .  They post a show every Friday which range from about 7 to 10 minutes.  Each episode is based around a topic or event.  If you like Penny-Arcade at all it's worth watching.  It's probably the best "reality" TV show that I've ever seen.  Anyway, their episode on videogames is what started making me think about how fast I can wade through new software, because the PA guys do the same thing. I try almost every game I can get my hands on, but only a fe...

Usually I think gameplay is more important than the quality of graphics in a game.  Solid gameplay will hold up over time but the graphical envelope is constantly being pushed forward.  Good gameplay lays the groundwork for a game with long lasting appeal.  Great gameplay can be fun years down the line even when the graphics are totally outdated. With that said, properly implemented graphics can make a game entirely unique.  I'm not talking about a higher polygon count or making a game that looks photo-realistic, I'm talking about style .  Graphical style can completely define a game. Take the recently release Limbo as an example.  The game creates a haunting atmosphere by being entirely black and white.  The hand drawn style lends itself to a foreboding landscape with an oppressive feel.  The sense of isolation is palpable while playing. The whole feel of the game is achieved through its graphics.  If Limbo had been created with bri...

Yesterday, I tried to play Singularity.  I gave it my best attempt but I just couldn't do it.  The game is supposedly about getting a glove that can manipulate time but I wouldn't know, because I never made it that far.  I was looking forward to making new things old and old things new, turning enemies into babies, restoring structures to their former glory, and making people crumble to ash before my eyes.  Unfortunately, the first 20 minutes of the game were so bad that I waved the white flag and gave up.  The game played like the world's most generic shooter and a lot of the design decisions (like not being able to open doors on my own) pissed me off.  I dropped Singularity in the mailbox and it's headed back to Gamefly as we speak. I've talked before about jumping into the action of a game but it's also important for the game to throw the player into the fun right from the start.  If your game happens to be about an awesome time manipulation de...

I just realized how often a game drags me through a long and boring tutorial before getting into the action.  After renting so many Gamefly games lately and playing through at least their first hour I've determined that I hate introductions and tutorials in most games.  Developers, you need to get better at showing the player why we should love your game within the first few minutes. This is something that AAA developers can learn from flash and indie games .  You only have a few minutes to grab my attention.  After that I'm not going to play your game if I'm bored.  Don't waste time setting up an epic story.  Don't save interesting gameplay until later.  Don't limit me to an extremely linear tutorial.  Give me the game and let me test out the fun in it. In flash games I'm immediately thrown into the action.  I can figure out if I like a game within seconds.  With many console games I have to sit through the opening credits, openi...

  Beta Testing Frustration Beta testing isn't what it used to be.  A beta test used to be the second formal round of testing (after the alpha) and it was used to test all the ins and outs of the game.  Players find thousands of ways to break a game that developers would never think of.  Bugs pop up when your testing base goes from a few hundred to thousands.  Betas were used to solve these problems. Some companies still use betas this way, but more often than not beta tests are glorified demos that are released to the public for a limited time.  Look at the giant media push for the Halo Reach beta.  They were trying to give everyone a small taste of the game in the hope of getting them to buy it in the fall.  They aren't the only culprit. MMOs are among the worst offenders.  "It's still in beta" isn't an excuse that MMO beta testers accept anymore.  They expect the game to be content complete with all the features in place.  ...

This makes the game look way more exciting than it actually is. The Forgotten Sands is a lesson in being underwhelmed.  I wanted to love it, I really truly did.  I loved The Sands of Time, The Two Thrones, and the re-imagined "Prince of Persia" but I just couldn't make myself enjoy Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands. It's all been done before by other games in the Prince of Persia series.  The Forgotten Sands has the same old platforming without any new or interesting mechanics.  I got the same feeling I did when comparing Bayonetta to the Devil May Cry series.  It's the same gameplay mechanics with a new coat of paint. The combat feels extremely out of place.  It amounts to a generic hack and slash.  Most of the time the combat flow goes like this: hold x for 2 seconds, release, hold x for 2 seconds, release.  It got in the way of the platforming and probably should have been left out altogether. The platforming isn't anything new....

Most of the games that hit the market today are not new.  They may look new or sell themselves as new, but the majority of the time they use old gameplay mechanics.  Developers constantly take each other's ideas and recreate the same type of game. Think of all the shovelware out there.  So many games aren't even worth five minutes of your time.  It is really sad. Playing Bayonetta is like playing Devil May Cry 3, which is like playing Devil May Cry 2, which is like playing Devil May Cry.  That's really the spark that got me thinking about rehashing gameplay mechanics.  Bayonetta has a crazy story and different visuals, but it is essentially an old game with a new layer of paint. When developers have really high production values they can get away with remaking the same game.  The Halo series comes to mind.  Between Halo, Halo 2, Halo 3, and Halo: ODST not a lot has changed.  All the games basically play the same.  If you didn't like...