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.