5/24/05

I'm hoping Charter will come through for me and that my cable internet service will be installed by tomorrow, giving me just enough time to publish this update before I head out to Texas to attend a friend's wedding.  If so, you'll have a new review to read while I'm on vacation.  If not, you're probably not going to see this until June.  Considering how Charter has acted for the past two weeks, I'm leaning toward the latter possibility.

5/20/05

(I know, this update is miserably outdated.  You can thank Charter for that)

Well, I'm settled into my new apartment, and I've gotta say that I'm pretty fond of the place.  It's four times larger and ten times better than my old digs.  To top it all off, I'm within walking distance of a variety of video game and computer stores.  When I first discovered there was a GameStop in the area, I had an urge to splurge like you wouldn't believe!  I've picked up a dozen games since my arrival last week, with titles ranging from essentials such as Burnout 3 to silly impulse buys, like Stretch Panic and the XBox version of Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2.  Why would I need this when I've already got the exceptional Dreamcast game?  Well, I don't, really.  I just wanted to try all the XBox exclusive stages, along with the rounds from the first Tony Hawk release.  I suspect they'll be a lot more fun in the sequel, which tightened up the clumsy control in the original and gave players far more combo opportunities.

So let's see... what's happened since I've been gone?  Well, I was suckered into a twelve month subscription to Game Informer while I was browsing the wares at GameStop.  Now I know what you're thinking, but the magazine has greatly improved since its early days, when it was an underachieving propaganda rag published by the dreaded FuncoLand.  Now, the magazine is much thicker, and its articles and reviews are both informative and intelligently written.  There's a few too many office in-jokes (aka GameFan syndrome), and the editors are a bit too eager to chase the latest industry trends, but on the whole, the magazine is still worth reading. 

Game Informer is certainly a lot less grating than Electronic Gaming Monthly, a publication which has lost a lot of its credibility thanks to the desperate posturing of its writers.  Yes, yes, guys, we know you're extreme.  You've got Seanbaby, and sketchy underground comics (which are almost as fun to read as the back of a milk carton), and a review crew that labels anything with a color palette that extends beyond brown and grey as a "baby game".  You think maybe you could take a break from convincing us of your total awesomeness and just do your jobs?  I swear, if EGM became any more obnoxious and self-absorbed, Ziff-Davis would be required by law to sell it back to Steve Harris.

Well, enough of that.  I've been looking at some preliminary E3 coverage and was intrigued by Sony's promotional banners, both inside and outside the convention center where the expo is taking place.  The banners show the familiar triangle, square, circle, and X on the buttons of the Playstation controller slowly fading away.  Beneath the dissolving icons is a slogan which encourages players to embrace change.  Does this mean that Sony will finally abandon these confounding heiroglyphics and use more sensible designations for the controller buttons on the upcoming Playstation 3?  Or will the controller itself be such a radical departure from the Dual Shock pads that there will no longer be a place for button labels of any kind?  Your guess is as good as mine.

The Nintendo Revolution is an even more shocking departure from the norm... rumor has it that it will use a DS-style touchscreen in place of a standard controller.  The good news is that this opens up endless possibilities for game developers, who are no longer confined to a single controller design... they can create an infinite number of their own.  The bad news?  Well, there's a lot of it.  This arrangement will also put more work on the shoulders of game companies, which were already pretty unenthused about publishing software for Nintendo's game systems.  The LCD screen in the controller will make it  twice as expensive and as fragile as the more traditional joypads included with the XBox 360 and Playstation 3.  On top of all that, we all know from playing Super Mario 64 DS how well a touchscreen works as a substitute for a real analog stick.  I hope Nintendo rethinks this... it's an innovative concept, but not an especially practical one.

Finally, there's Gunstar Super Heroes on the Game Boy Advance.  I never thought I'd see an honest-to-goodness sequel to one of my favorite Genesis games, but here it is, and judging from the footage I've seen on 1UP, it looks like it'll be even more incredible than the original.  The only downside I can see is the retirement of Gunstar Heroes' mix and match weapons... they're being replaced with a triple weapon system similar to what was used in the last two Contra games.  This means that you'll have access to every weapon right out of the starting gate, but you won't be able to experiment with them like you could in the original.  It seems like a big deal at first, but really stop and think about how you played Gunstar Heroes for a minute... once you picked up two Force orbs, or combined Force with Lightning, did you ever want to use anything else?  The new design may actually encourage players to frequently switch weapons even after they've boosted them to full power.

5/7/05

I just finished playing Def Jam: Fight For New York... and screaming death threats at my XBox.  Since the programmers at Electronic Arts and Aki Corporation obviously fell asleep during this part of their game design class, I'm going to give them a refresher course on the subject of logical difficulty progression in video games.

First, you'll need to understand the definitions of two words, and the differences between the two of them.  Here is the first word, one you apparently have yet to grasp.

Easy (adj., 'E-zE):  The description of a task or goal which requires little effort to complete.  For instance, "It was easy to clean the head of this pin."

Now, here's the second word... a word which is likely to be far more familiar to you.

Hard (adj., härd):  The description of a task or goal which requires a great deal of skill, determination, and effort to complete.  For example, "It was hard to plant the flag on the spire of the Empire State Building without using the stairs or elevators."

Now, when you create a game with multiple difficulty settings, it's important to keep the definitions of these two terms in mind.  When a game is set to Hard, it's acceptable for the computer opponents to beat players into cottage cheese in a matter of seconds.  When a game is set on Easy, however, the difficulty level of that game should be adjusted accordingly, and the computer should NOT be able to pound your face through the back of your head by the time you reach the second fight.

If you're still not grasping the concept, allow me to provide you with a series of pictures which better illustrate the difference between "easy" and "hard".  Ready?

That ends our lesson for today.

5/5/05