Changed Priorities Ahead

When I started this blog it was with the intention of becoming a games designer. I wanted to show that I thought about games, took them seriously and understood the reasons for the decisions taken in their construction. It was started at a strange time for me, as I had only recently moved to London and felt somewhat ambivalent about gaming in general. Put simply, I felt compelled to play games but didn't really enjoy them, hence the title.

I don't think the blog has been an unqualified success, in the sense that it didn't lead directly to good designs of my own. My writing is better, but not good: my designs improved, but still inchoate. What has changed is the strength of my opinions about games in general.

Broadly, gaming is moving into the mainstream. On one side a series of simple and accessible games, often using specific and novel peripherals, has broken new ground and made gamers of us all. It turns out the ever-evolving joypad was holding us back all along. On the other, the traditional gaming industry and press is focussed ever tighter upon a small section of games, themes and mechanics. An endless stream of space marines, grim futures and prattling weaponry has dominated the schedules.

I am bored of all this, and yet the door for creative designs and ideas is wider than ever. Xbox Marketplace, PSN Store and WiiWare; iPhone App Store and Android Market; Flash aggregate sites like Kongregate and Newgrounds; services such as Steam and sites like Manifesto games. The opportunities for indie developers are tremendous. Concepts such as artgames and the slowly-germinating concept of a "Not Fun" game offer promise of progress. The nature of discourse has moved from the purely theoretical and post-modern to the practical and applicable. Many people are taking games seriously, in a way not seen before.

I am a different person from two years ago. I will be starting a new blog soon, with a tighter focus on music, games and the areas where these two forms intersect. I'm excited again. Nobody else is really covering it, except in a vague "Oh the indie folks love that jazz but it doesn't matter": read the Destructoid review of Groov for a perfect example. We can do better than this.

There will be a few more posts from here, but I'll let you all know when the new blog goes live. In the meantime, thanks if you ever read this, or commented.

What would you do with 4K?

...probably not as much as Notch, who has made seven games for the Java 4k Programming Contest. Most impressive is Left 4k Dead, a tense top-down shooter reminiscent of Tapan Kaikki that makes good use of light to constantly scare the player witless. Play it with the lights down and The Juan Maclean in the background.

Much can be achieved with very little code: Left 4k Dead works so well because it's balanced perfectly, with your weaponry and movement just enough for the number of zombies, your range of vision just enough to evade surprise attacks. The game does not, ever, use more than is required to convey information - for movement, visibility, gunfire. Games like this are the equivalent of blueprints: the structure required the make a given type of game work and no more.

Thanks to Margaret Robertson for the link, which includes more tiny, tiny games.

Race in Resident Evil 5

I don't normally re-post stuff without adding something myself, but in this instance I feel I should. At some point I intended to write about Resident Evil 5 and how it portrays race, but the internet is faster than us mere mortals and GameSetWatch has published an article finer than I can craft on the subject.

Thanks to Sexyvideogameland, who does write slightly more on the subject.

Dave Arneson

Dave Arneson, the other creator of D&D, the one that didn't guest star in Futurama, also passed away last week. Those who knew him have praised his kindness and humility: Warren Spector called him "one of the Good Guys". Dave, and the changes he brought to gaming, will never be forgotten.

Here's an interview that Gamasutra ran after his death. Nice to see that d20s were originally chosen because Dave was bad at maths. In Dave's eyes, the most important part of game design? "Game mechanics. Making a balanced game."

Street Fighter 4

When I'm asked what my favourite game is, I have to pause a moment, searching through the usual suspects - Tetris, Zelda:ALTTP - before I remember with a comforting lurch that it's Street Fighter II. I spent pretty much every day playing it on the SNES from 11 to 18. My experience is not unique; it's common among my friends, and pretty much every boy born at the right time. SFII is our Star Wars. No little attention, then, for the first new instalment in the Street Fighter series for years in Street Fighter IV.

First impressions of SFIV are great: the feel of SFII is retained, in both aesthetic and control. A few faces look odd, but the cartoon faces shown in stills look fine at 60 fps. The new characters aren't quite right, perhaps just the wrong side of silly in two cases, but aren't far off: those characters new to returning SFII players (Sakura, Dan et al) balance it out. Things are close enough to SFII to match exactly the game through the fog of memory, without making exactly the same choices - it's certainly not SFII and a bit.

There are a *lot* of new systems in SFIV. The revenge mater and its ultra attacks, focus attacks, dashes and their mutant offspring the FADC are all new, and if you're just tuning in from SFII, you've also got super attacks, EX specials and overhead attacks to deal with, not to mention brand-new plain-old specials. When you consider that a game like Tekken doesn't even distinguish between "normal" and "special" attacks any more, having four distinct levels of special move that draw from two different bars that must be charged is a lot to take in. Trying to explain it all to a beginner is too much, and you really do need most of it to stand a chance. With, say, Soul Calibur, you can show the basic controls - pointing out "block" three times - and someone can work it out from there: the attack strings are fairly arbitrary anyway. With Street Fighter - this is not new to SFIV - not knowing how to throw a fireball is a crippling disadvantage, and you can't really work it out. Having so many new systems makes this problem large. The upshot is that SFIV is easy to get good at if you're trying, but very difficult if you aren't.

Is this a bad thing? Probably not: SF is not for casual players. It's based on a set of interacting systems, and learning the systems is necessary to a reasonable level of competition. It's no different from learning to dribble in basketball, or serve and return in tennis: certain skills are required in order to play the game at all. SF sets its bar a little higher than other games: SFIV sets it higher than in the earlier games. It is an intentional point of this game to emphasise the skill involved in playing a fighting game well.

SFIV has made an energetic and slightly tumultuous start with the hardcore fighting games community. Given the level of hype it was always due for prominence as long as it was a good game: early play shows some surprises in weak and strong characters, and some scary combos. David Sirlin has already pointed out the number of link combos, high-difficulty sequences that lead to massive damage off quick attacks. That suggests a fast and lethal game for the highly-skilled, and a high barrier for the not-so-highly skilled. Again, this is not unlike other contests of skill: Roger Federer may be a top 10 tennis player because of his ability to read, react to and control the movement of his opponent, but he's a top 100 player because he can smack a forehand onto a 3" square spot really hard without trying. Mental ability separates the best, but physical excellence is the invitation to compete.

There are a couple of clunking errors of execution. Capcom seem obsessed with a terrible system of button selection, in which you cycle through which button does what. It's a bad error to lock certain characters, especially for a versus competitive game: hiding Gouken was a lovely surprise in the arcade (and what a lovely surprise Gouken is), but a chore in the home version. Finally, Seth's a mistake. Too powerful to allow, he will be the cause of arguments in the house of every version in which he is unlocked. As Dan proves, an underpowered option does not wreck a strategic decision, but an overpowered one does. Besides, a pick-and-choose superhuman clone weapons programme is just *lazy*. Previous SF bosses were Sagat, Bison and Urien, all amazing and unique character designs. Seth is a feeble addition to SF canon and won't be missed.

It says something however, that locking 9 of 25 characters from the first play, and making a character far too good to be allowed by anybody reasonable, are mistakes I'm willing to forgive (though not forget). SFIV has three main aims: to please the old SFII fans led away by Tekken and Soul Calibur from SFIII and the terrible EX series; to give the hard-core community a substantial new series to master, and also to draw more intermediate players into serious play. The first two points I have already addressed, but perhaps the success on the third point can be measured by the demand for not just arcade sticks, but even Sanwa and Seimitsu buttons and parts.

Fallout 3

As we wander the shanty-style town of Megaton, we find a mutated cow, a two-headed Brahmin tethered to a post. Pet, beast of burden, livestock? Jon chips in with his fateful suggestion. “Punch that cow.” Pandemonium ensues. Those Megaton folk love their Brahmin. We were just trying to make some Wagyu beef: in the future, that’s a capital offence. We practically had to run away, kill the pursuing sheriff, and steal all his stuff. Welcome to Fallout 3, the grim future vision where is the only thing that’s sacred is the cows.

I feel I should add that I'm not playing much Fallout 3 myself, just watching my housemate play it. He's enjoying it, because he likes to explore and look under rocks for bugs: Zelda: ALTTP is his favourite game, and Fallout 3 lets him indulge that taste in a big way. Bethesda promised us something other than a post-nuclear Elder Scrolls, but I'm not convinced that's what we've got.

First off, since this a game design blog: VATS. It's a good gimmick but sits awkwardly with the normal combat, which resembles an FPS. Reviews suggest that people play it largely with, or without, VATS but with radically different results. Taking a few free shots before running away to charge APs (VATS fuel) isn't the thrilling combat experience I expected. In fact it becomes too much the RPG, with monsters steaming toward you and exchanging shots until someone (them) dies.

It is part of the appeal of traditional / fantasy RPGs that combat resembles a pillow fight with huge swords and fireballs. It doesn't work for a 21st-century / near-future game where most of the weapons are firearms and many of the enemies are humanoid. Perhaps I wanted something more tactical, with more interesting terrain positions to take up than visible / not visible, and with movement as well as firing measured in APs. That could be considered too complex for a big release: there is plenty going on under the hood of Fallout 3 as is, compared with the Halo, Killzone and Gears-type shooters that the adverts conveyed.

I assume the purpose of the slo-mo animations is to make you feel powerful, magnify your actions: there is, however, something about watching a man take a round in the face, nonchalantly expel some blood, then run up and hit you with a baseball bat that really pricks your balloon. It looks great when it shows a cool kill - perhaps the slo-mo would be best saved for deaths. It's ultimately over-used to add false weight to the combat, but it does throw up the occasional spectacular moment. You'd best not be bored of guns tearing heads off at the neck, though. There's also not much point in aiming for any location other than the head (for damage) or chest (for accuracy). Crippling the leg of people with powerful melee weapons, or shooting the arm of the guy with the biggest gun are ineffectual tactics. A missed opportunity.

The world looks great, absolutely amazing, except it's all brown, as is the fashion of the day, but startling nonetheless. I'm not convinced by a post-apocalyptic world with no working cars but a egregious surplus of robot servants, but that's an objection to the peculiar Fallout setting rather than this specific instalment. There isn't much point to a post-apocalypse world if it wasn't, pre-apocalypse, much like ours. Building a town right next to an unexploded nuclear bomb with no explanation? None at all? It feels like an aggregation of a thousand images, atomic weapon test sites and scrapyards and broken bridges and insect close-ups and the fifties - all the fifties clichés at once. No, not sold, but it certainly looks great and they've filled it with things to make and do. Hats off.

My problem, I think, is that the world feels like an installation for my amusement. I don't believe that the world exists when I'm not looking. For example, there are two ridiculous superhero-styled combatants in one town, duelling unsuccessfully for control. You are encouraged to side with one or the other, or to destroy both. I do not feel, however (and this is about the feel of the thing) that the battle would ever be resolved without my intervention. In fact it doesn't appear that they actually, you know, fight. If I gave one a rocket launcher, it wouldn't tip the balance - there isn't a balance to tip. There are just two characters, issuing mutually-exclusive kill quests.

This is Bethesda's style, mastery and yoke. To use an analogy, their games resemble paintings of machines that, if real, could not work or do not move. Though filled with interesting elements and characters, they don't move in interesting ways. It's not a real machine: it's just a painting, a fake. While I accept that all games that depict worlds are in essence fakes, the game can go some way to suspending disbelief, to resembling a real machine, a genuine system. Fallout 3 never looks like a real post-aftermath world: just a matte painting in the background of a film of one.

Bioshock

My house played through Bioshock last year, but I didn’t post about it here because I played very little of it myself. However I did watch a lot of it and play just enough to get a feel for it. Lots of nice things have been written about Bioshock, most of which it deserves. It's a handsome and sumptuous FPS with a distinct style, a real sense of intent behind its visual design (which could have lapsed into generic steampunk), and a strong sense of horror borne of its unsettling enemies. While its success in exploring the philosophy of Ayn Rand is open to question, the verve of its attempt is not, and we must applaud all attempts by a game to tackle something substantial. In particular, my housemates were impressed by the tension, suspense and raw fear this game generated in them as they played – the equal of any classic horror film.

However, from the perspective of game design, there is a single error that undermines most of the good work: the Vita-Chambers. Player death leads to resurrection at the last Vita-Chamber activated, but all damage done to enemies remains, so that by persistence all obstacles may be overcome. All sense of peril was extinguished for me within an hour, after my first player death. What's the point of a difficulty level? What’s the point of any difficulty or peril at all? Why control my access to ammunition when the Vita-Chamber can fire an endless stream of clones armed with wrenches?

The failing, then, is this: games should always present some method of last resort to progress, and it should be the worst choice available, such that the player never wants to take it. It should guarantee success in some manner, so the player can always advance. Unfortunately, the method of last resort in Bioshock is tedious, and undermines any suspense the game can generate. If you can disregard it, you will enjoy Bioshock: if you can’t, you can’t.

Spore

Spore is a good game. It consumed my attention for a whole weekend that I very much enjoyed, until I felt I'd exhausted the game's possibilities. It troubles me, therefore, that I'm having trouble expanding on calling it "good". It's reminds me of that type of film which is hugely entertaining for its duration, and utterly forgettable outside it.

You control and develop a creature from its first appearance in the oceans to its dominance over the entire galaxy. The game is split into five stages, each representing a different level of development, and the first four stages are tutorials. Apparently the goal was to make each stage ten times as complex as the last - an arbitrary measure but the notion holds - so that casual game-players could get up to speed. The corollary is that final stage will be greater in scale and complexity than the sum of all that precedes it - and that's the case. The Space stage is almost a different game, and will be the subject of a later post.

This isn't a weakness. The early stages teach you everything you need to play Space. I've talked about good tutorials elsewhere but this is something very different. Where Advance Wars teaches specific mechanics in each lesson and uses these to deliver more abstract concepts, Spore teaches you how to play a complex PC game, that can be compared to Elite, even if you have no knowledge of playing such a game before. Everything, from selecting units by clicking on them, to concentrating on one target at a time, to controlling the map with keyboard controls, is introduced at the right time. I fancy that a player could go from Solitaire through the University of Spore and emerge able to play Starcraft.

The creators are incredible too - but they're creators. You can construct esoteric and individual animals just by dragging, scaling and tweaking parts. Hands clip to arms, that attach in neat mirrored pairs to bodies, that twist and distort manipulating the vertebrae. Entertaining and ridiculous creations sprout forth without effort. This is all a diversion from the game. The creature creator is a toy, but not a game. I suspect that Spore, the game, exists to serve Creature Creator, the toy.

There are equivalent tools for the buildings, vehicles and spaceships you build later in the game but these are less enthralling. It’s less impressive to create and control, say, your own airplane. It’s also unimpressive for the game to animate it: rolling is easy, walking is hard. Asking you to design custom factories is almost a joke – and in Space you’ll be asked to design a new set on every planet you colonise. (There are plenty of default choices, which spare you time if you wish and demonstrate the power of the tools.) It’s a perversity that creating inanimate objects comes later, after you’ve developed an amazing creature.

The stages can be quick, if you know what you’re doing (I completed them in a couple of hours, minus time in the creator), or milked for a very long time (my housemate spent weeks at Creature stage, interacting with every other creature and killing one of the giant creatures that stalks the map). There isn’t much to any of the stages except Space, and there is little consequence from one stage on your abilities on the next. It’s a deceptive game, with each stage an imitation of something else: the creature stage, for example, is like World of Warcraft shorn of everything but kill quests. At times, it almost feels like the game is telling you lies as to the importance of your actions. If the game is committed to the vision it presents, then my decisions as a tribe should affect more than what bonus I receive for my spaceship.

Impressive but empty, Spore feels unfinished and founded on an uncertain idea – one of those “Would This Be Cool” ideas that does not stand up to the scrutiny of execution. It is a flawed effort, but still an achievement I respect.

Red Cross - The Game

No, really: Emergency Response Unit is a Flash game intended to promote the Red Cross (and Red Crescent) and educate people on what they do. A tutorial and two levels are available free, with the full game $19.95. I played another Red Cross game a couple of years ago (think it was called Response Force) but that was more a collection of minigames. This is designed like an RTS, only saving refugees and distributing medical supplies.

In practice, the interface is so streamlined that it plays like Diner Dash: tasks appear at the bottom, and it's easy to move from alert to site to response by pressing the right buttons. Also, it presents the work of the Red Cross as a series of tasks to be done. It doesn't present any dilemmas that must be faced in the field - the answer is always clear. I suspect that in a real earthquake, the response to a group of wounded civilians is not as simple as 4x4 + Medical Team + Medical Supplies.

Still, this is a sophisticated offering, it shows what the Red Cross do in the field and it is a diverting game. I hope it's a success.

Panzer Dragoon Orta

I would like to write something about Panzer Dragoon Orta but I can't. I'm having a little difficulty. As though games with mechanics from a time when game design criticism ended like this:

GRAPHICS 88%
SOUND 76%
PLAYABILITY 82%
LASTABILITY 71%
OVERALL 81%

...can't really be described with any greater sophistication. This was a time when the main criticism of a game review, apart from simple disagreement, was "...but the sub-scores don't average the overall score!"

Panzer Dragoon Orta is from the Xbox era, and is part of a sequence born on the Saturn, but its roots are back with early Sega arcade classics, and it proudly continues that trend. It's an on-rails shooter where you lock on targets and dispatch them in salvoes while dodging or shooting down counter-fire – like After Burner, but on dragons.

I've talked about judging visuals according to more interesting criteria that simply "quality" before. Orta's detailed, lots going on, no slowdown - good for its time, but all this is just not fucking up in a representational game. (Representational of dragons: what that word means in terms of game art is another matter.) The imagery is stunning: all steampunk air-warships and bio-engineered snakes bursting through waterfalls.

Although the gameplay lifts from After Burner, the look is pure Space Harrier. Part of the drive to progress lies in wanting to see something amazing and novel. (Level 6, "Forbidden Memories", is a highlight: an archive and its security systems, depicted as hallucinated tunnels and spectral guardians.) Most games don't reward you in this way - modern games are notoriously grey- or brown-tinted - and it wouldn't necessarily be improved by HD. You're being dazzled by a different sort of spectacle, more Pan's Labyrinth than Spider-Man. Instead of impressing us with scale, like the promise of a thousand elephants, we are slowly inching towards being impressed with inventiveness.

High Definition

My housemate bought a big TV a couple of weeks ago - a 50" LCD rear-projection. It is, by the tenets of conventional interior design, too big for the room. However, it with an HDMI feed from an Xbox 360, it resembles a portal into another world. I was a bit cynical about HD, but the improvement over a normal widescreen CRT is huge. Everything's sharper, brighter, more real. Graphics are a dazzling sensory experience again.

The effect on my housemates has been especially interesting. They've gone from occasional dabblers to fanatics. Games have been bought, battle stratagies refined, cars compared. Some aliens abducted my housemates and replaced them with gaming doppelgangers.

The new TV has changed the games that get played. Forza 2 has become a staple, with much track study and pimping of rides. GTA4, which was a previous favorite, has been ignored. Bioshock is a new and popular purchase, as is DOA4. Table Tennis is gathering dust. Lego Star Wars has only seen the light once.

It's not yet obvious which games are most improved by HD, but I guess it's those that depend on sensory output to impress the player. GTA4 is a funny game whether explosions are crisp or not. Funny is funny: you only need to see what's going on. With Forza, the pleasure of driving fast is proportional to the fidelity of the image presented. Ninja Gaiden 2 is surprisingly underwhelming - DOA4 in comparison is stunning.

That's not to say the HD approach is wrong - in fact, I'm glad there is a school of "gorgeous" visual design in games. It doesn't even require the creation of vast textures and meshes, as Geometry Wars shows. It will be necessary for some games to develop a more informative style in contrast. The only surprise has been the games that seem to need it most.

Half-Life 2: Episode One

I'm a pauper, which means I can only play games, in most cases, a while after they come out. It's a pain trying to stay current on modern gaming trends but I do what I can. It does mean I avoid the hype-cycle of the gaming press. It means I'm waiting to play some absolute gems: Bioshock for example, and Portal.

I also get motion sickness from playing first-person shooters. An hour is the most I can stand, before I feel sick. It's worse with more modern games. It pushes the FPS way down the list, and I pick and choose the ones I play carefully because I don't get to play many. As a consequence, Portal will squeeze my head like a lemon.

Still, I'm excited to play it, and the rest of the Orange Box, as soon as I finish HL2: Episode One.

Alyx is the big addition: she follows you, generally pouring lead into everything you see. (An amazing section in darkness gives you responsibility for what she sees, using your flashlight.) With her unlimited ammo, apparently recharging health and zombie-stopping melee attacks, she can look after herself. (It is possible for her to die, but not easily.)

It's good to have an escort that doesn't blunder about like an escort, but she's so powerful that you're better off luring enemies to her. It's an interesting change, but too often you don't fire at enemies because she can deal with them without an ammo cost. Balancing your use of different weapons so you don't run out of anything critical was a good feature of the series, and this undercuts it. Also, later in the game she picks up a shotgun. Why doesn't she take any of the extra weapons you find before then?

Despite that, I like her a lot. Her AI is good. She doesn't get stuck in doorways, nor does she get left behind, and she gets involved where she can without doing anything stupid. You never have to hold her hand, nor let her hold yours. She doesn't steal ammo and health pick-ups (The "Chaos Engine" maneuvre). She doesn't grate, even when she makes a wisecrack or too.

Other than that, it's a largely competent extension of HL2, and doesn't do anything radical. It feels like an expansion pack, which it is I suppose. There are several good set-pieces, although nothing quite matching HL2, and it delivers peril and plot points at a fair old clip. It shows a need to break out of City 17 (which Episode Two does).

I'm perhaps three-quarters of the way through it, and I've enjoyed it almost as much as HL2, which was the best thing I'd played in years. Once Episode One finished I'll buy the Orange Box and crack on with Episode Two. Portal can wait a little longer, for my brain's sake.

Forza Motorsport 2

After getting stuck on Ninja Gaiden II, I switched to the other game I bought the same day, Forza Motorsport 2. I thought it would make a good weekend game with housemates, generally passing the pad and aruging about which car to buy next. It didn't turn out that way - I played it for three weeks straight.

In my eyes, FM is at least the equal of Gran Turismo now. The improvements in this version (and this is less a sequel and more a v2.0) can be split into three types: cosmetic upgrades; small sensible corrections, and attempts to find the killer bullet point that will nudge it ahead of GT in the minds of the public. I think we can score it for the first two, but not the third.

First, it looks beautiful. The game benefits from the spit and polish given to the graphics. Racing is an aesthetic experience, and attention lavished here is well spent. (I haven't yet played this on an HD TV, but it will be the first game tested when it arrives, no doubt.) The user interface and music is tweaked - the animation for a new car is a highlight - and the experience is generally more pleasing. Cars have been updated but the roster is not radically altered, and nor is the track selection. However, the point-to-point races have gone, which I miss, but the game is more focused on track racing.

Second, the difficulty is slightly higher. The game offers you much flexibility in terms of driving aids, but now the "normal" difficulty has stability management (STM) turned off, which affects the lighter cars severely, and a driving line is only given when braking is required, helping you through corners but not holding your hand too much. Full telemetry is now available at any time.

Finally, the game tries to offer a few killer touches, but they feel slightly gimmicky. A detailed photo and decal mode have seen some attractive results, but they sit outside the core of the game and don't stand up well to more specialist tools. However, I appreciate they may appeal to the dedicated racing fan. I've always been more excited by engines and drivetrains than by outer decoration and rims, but my tastes are also catered for.

The greatest failing of Forza is that it assumes you're using a wheel. You can't take certain turns with sufficient precision using an analogue stick, nor can you control your speed accurately with the triggers, both of which will always cost you time. The game does not handicap for this, which it could, either by improving your car, or assisting your steering, or best of all reducing the aggression of the AI - particularly at corners.

Forza probably shouldn't adjust for your control method: it is a racing simulation game. No other racing simulation game has solved the problem, and perhaps it isn't possible to do so. The car is as fast as it is, and turns as it does, and if you direct it with a tiny stick instead of a wheel, that's your loss and not the car's. Forza probably has the best solution, in that you can apply the aids you feel will give you help in the right area. If the AI keeps turning you on corners, turn it down. If you keep turning yourself at corners, turn the STM on. Use a full line, no damage, whatever suits.

I have hit my limit, either due to skill or using a pad, but I've enjoyed Forza greatly and like the first game, I expect it will be re-visited often. Especially when the big TV arrives.

Ninja Gaiden II

I played Ninja Gaiden II recently, and enjoyed it very much. Not a huge leap forward but decent steps, definitely.

The box claims it's suitable for "casual players to the most hardcore", which is half a lie. No game suitable for casual players throws you up against four ninjas in your first fight on the easiest setting (they have ranged attacks and guard-breakers too). That's at first control - the first game let you run about and practise the gymnastics to get a feel for Ryu, but not here. There's an assumption that you've played the first game.

It plays like the first game, but rationalised. Switching weapons and magic can be accessed quickly from the d-pad, a good choice. It looks like there won't be an obvious best weapon for each situation. The moveset has better balance too. You can save at statues with a button press, and they recharge health the first time you find them. There's a neat system in fights where some damage is temporary and some permanent: you don't have to nurse your health between fights, or milk weak enemies for health drops.

Everything good about the first game is still there - the combat is as supple as ever, enhanced by injured enemies making suicide attacks. This gives the game a new texture, as you're not just judging the position and action of enemies but also their status in order to predict what they could do next. You have new "Obliteration Attacks" that dispatch the wounded, so your moveset also changes.

The bosses are still rubbish. They look great and make a good spectacle but I don't think I can call them fun to fight. There's little to them except pattern recognition. In some cases the pattern is pretty obtuse, and sometimes only one attack leaves them vulnerable to a counter. One boss has stopped my play altogether, which is disappointing. I want to return but even FAQs aren't helping me with it.

If a film was otherwise good but had inaudible dialogue, you'd put it down to a technical problem. It would be a barrier between you and the good content of the film. Why not the same for a game-blocking boss? Just a thought. I'm sure it's turn will come soon, but until then it loses big marks for the bosses.

Audiosurf

I bought Audiosurf last weekend. I resisted buying it for this long on the grounds that when I got it, I wouldn't get anything else done for while. That turned out not to be true - it favours short bursts of play rather than extended sessions.

Some games draw you in for long periods. They tend to be either long games with a lot of story (for a game) and exploration - lots of new content per hour. I call these games "story-form", because even when they don't tell much of a story, they still follow a story arc. The story may be roughly "shoot this monster, flick this switch, another level done" but it's still a story, making sense to videogame aesthetic. There are save points and not too much backtracking - the player expects a reward of content for invested time. I'll talk more about these in later articles.

There are also well-constructed non-linear games. A good example is Football Manager - many otherwise non-gamers will lose about a month of their lives to the hypnotic exchange of matches and subtle tactical and squad alterations available. Yet it's not a story-form game - all the content is available at the beginning, and each player's story is unique.

There is another type of game that is deeply compelling for long periods, but not continuously. The classic arcade game is usually not fun for a very long time - try playing scrolling beat-'em-ups on MAME for hours straight - but sticks in the players mind. After a couple of games the player is satisfied, but wants to play again soon. (The similarity between this and the addiction pattern of narcotics is best left to other writers, I feel). Crazy Taxi is a great example: more than a few minutes of its hyper-bright and furious dashing leaves you sick and exhausted, but a break from the game leaves you wanting to play again.

Audiosurf has this magic property. After half a dozen games I'm pretty tired of playing, but I soon think of other songs I want to put through it. Perhaps the design of the game as a score attack sits badly with the curiosity of turning your music collection into a set of levels. With the choice of every mp3 in existence, why play any of them more than once? Surely exploring the results from different songs is more exciting?

There are other criticisms that can be levelled: the algorithm puts too much emphasis on sharp drums, meaning that snares can dominate the rest of the song. Sometimes this leads to a jerky effect for dance tunes that are supposed to be more sinuous than stop-start. A few more looks and colour schemes would be appreciated too, rather than general filters.

Still, I love it. I'm always tempted to fill five minutes with a quick go, and it always turns into half an hour. I hope that its novelty doesn't put other people off the idea: it looks like a bold development and further work on the song conversion algorithms could lead to even more exciting possibilities.

Advance Wars

Started playing Advance Wars a few days ago. I played it a little a few years ago, but I'd forgotten everything so I started afresh. The tutorial was impressive, introducing new units and aspects of the game with each training level. It reminded me of the "programmed" rules from the original Squad Leader. This approach suits wargames very well, but it's applied to most games in one way or another.

Programmed rules were about the only hope for Squad Leader to be comprehensible. It was a brilliant but demented squad-level WWII wargame . The scenarios introduced new concepts in stages. The first just had infantry, leaders and machine guns, that formed the core of the game. Each following mission introduced a few new counters and a fresh concept (say, radios, and calling in artillery strikes). By the end of the game, there was quite a party happening on the board, but you could understand it because everything was introduced sequentially, in digestible chunks.

Advance Wars demonstrates perfect programmed tuition. Each training mission has you defeating a powerful new enemy unit with specific counter-tactics: usually the starting unit locations give you the edge. The first mission, with just two infantry apiece in the open, works because the computer has one unit lagging so you can double-team each one with your two infantry. The positions also ensure you will get to strike first: guided by your assistant, you cannot lose.

The game is also secretly showing you something else: concentration of force. Bring two units to bear on the enemy's one, while denying him the same chance, and you will win. It's a principle of military strategy, one of the most basic.

At the end of the tutorial, you'll know how every unit works - which you'll need, because knowledge of the unit relationships and hierarchy are essential to success. Not knowing whether a "B Copter" can attack a "Medium Tank", or the potency of that attack, will hamper your success. With about twenty different units available, it's testament to the tutorial that it successfully teaches you all the information you require.

Metroid Prime (and Meta Ridley)

I've been meaning to record what I'm playing in this blog, including when I start and stop playing long story-form games. I've just finished Metroid Prime, but I nearly gave up before the end due to Meta Ridley. That stopped me on my last play-through.

All Metroid games follow an amazing design: near the end of a game you feel like you know the game-world inside out. (My friend used to think of the map like the London Underground - "Take the Overworld line, change at Chozo Ruins West"). I love it, but I've never finished a game because somewhere there is a boss so infuriating that it makes me quit. Meta Ridley is that boss in Prime.

From the nearest save-point, it's two minutes before I can fight him. The fight always takes at least ten minutes, usually longer. (When I first beat him, the second part of the fight took nine minutes alone.) He is a classic multi-attack boss: a big metal dragon with an area-effect smash, a sweeping laser, a bombing run. There's a counter-move to each, and as long as you spot the cue it isn't difficult, just laborious. With perhaps a quarter of his energy left he switches to his ground stage, introducing his special pause-and-charge - my big gripe with this boss.

There is a signature movement that warns you that a charge is coming - a bull-like duck with his head. Early on, it's best to move soon: the quicker you dodge, the more likely you'll escape. Later, the tactic changes: you must move at the last second. Moving early won't help because he aims at you later. His head movement doesn’t change.

Let's get this straight: all bosses are about learning cues and reading them to land counter-blows against their massive attacks. Meta Ridley throws out the cardinal rule: he gives the same clue, but the trick you've practised, optimised against him, because ineffective. The better you got at it, the less effective it becomes! Brilliant.

There are other niggles - the many attacks that can only be dodged with no opening (the bombing swoop is a particular offender, taking an age), the inconsistent escapes from other attacks, and the lack of a save point immediately following (Yes! I beat him once but didn't survive to a save point. Thanks for that) amongst them. I don't understand why people rave about it. It reminds of people's tendency to over-rate very long books because they've managed to finish them. I think people rate Meta Ridley because it puts them through the emotional wringer, for all the wrong reasons.

I am particularly angry because I expect this bullshit from bad games, or arcade games designed to prise coins from your pocket (hello, Time Crisis). I have loved playing through Prime, and not only were many problems suggested by the switch to 3D (how will jumping work? The Morph Ball?) answered comfortably, but several innovations were introduced by this game (The HUD, the visors, scanning for story details). One horrific design mis-step near the end of the game almost denied me the chance to finish it.

Hey! Presto!

I saw Wall-E last night (amazing), but the short beforehand reminded me of something. In Presto, a magician has two hats, and what goes into one exits the other. In attempting to entice his resistant rabbit on-stage with the hats, physics-bending hilarity ensues.

They've played Portal. It's not really that much like Portal: more of a Looney Tunes cartoon using the same idea. I'm more impressed with how Pixar have taken a cue from a game. It's promising that such a high-profile animation syudio draws on a game for inspiration - on a game mechanic for inspiration.

Mirror's Edge (and a note on aesthetic)

Mirror's Edge looks amazing because it doesn't resemble anything else. Its visual aesthetic is different from any other game I can think of, let alone the major titles currently in development. At a glance, I find it hard to tell Dark Void, Dead Space and Gears of War 2 apart. I always recognise Mirror's Edge.

We should be exploring more interesting looks for our games. This point was made when Jet Set Radio was released and nothing changed. Let's learn something from this one, eh?

No Links Must Read 30 June 2008

Inspiring, interesting, useful this week:

Crystal Castles repond to accusations of sample theft
Torontoist contribute a counter-point
I do like Crystal Castles, but they should just admit they like videogames.

BBC: How gaming is running with sport
More thoughts on using games as motivation to train a real ability.

Brave N00b World: The Geology of World of Warcraft
Not that big, Azeroth, is it?

Gamasuton: Opinion - Touch Generations? Con Generations!
Not wrong, and a counter-point to the BBC article above.