crouton days

It’s finally real: a box, a manual, xbox live, tv commercials, in game ads, a players guide, posters and a gas station.. rad. Playing online last night, I got a little insight from looking at our leader boards: roughly 2000 scores had been uploaded by 9pm and 3 users had already uploaded billionare scores, holy crap! And three days before the game is even out, that’s diehard. I imagine the smaller retailers regularly try to gain an edge by breaking their street dates. Though, I wonder what people think about the game’s releases being on a Sunday before Labor day.

For anyone planning on picking up Mercs (officially available Aug 31st), I may have a present for you. Xbox Live is holding a special ‘play with developers’ session where a dozen or so Mercs developers will be playing co-op with joe public. Anyone lucky enough to play with us will be among the first to add our viral achievements to their gamercard and can subsequently spread that achievement to their friends. The play session will be going on between 9/5/08 – 9/13/08. As we get closer to that time, I’ll post up some more information.

The time is here, but my Xbox Live friends list is full! If anyone reads this and wants to snag some achievement points and/or talk to a mercs2 developer just leave a comment with your gamertag and I’ll add you.

Links:

Mercs2 Gas Giveaway [1up]

Mercs 2 Commercial [and youtube remixes]

I’ts all been said so I’ll be brief. I want a console action RPG as much as the next guy. I wish this game didn’t suck. Even though Too Human is really quite awful, I played it for 8 hours. Now will someone come along and make a good action RPG for a console?

are you still there?

The only thing awkward about playing Portal on the 360 is that my muscle memory is convinced I can rewind time by pressing (X), bad thumb! Last week I started playing some of Portal: Still Alive, a standalone version of the game headed for Xbox Live Arcade. For the most part, it’s still the same great Portal but they’ve added a little something extra this time around: Challenge Maps. The Challenge Maps are a set of user generated maps that started life as 2D maps from the Flash version of Portal and were later ported to the PC game. These new maps add some gameplay (thought?) mechanics and are definitely challenging but, they lack the same refinement as the original maps. It seems clear to me that the makers of this additional content do not hold the same tenets of design that Valve and the Portal team used for the original game. But, no one is buying Still Alive for the bonus content, right?

Slightly more specific criticism: The new maps do not have the same intuitive design that Valve implemented in the normal portal maps. The process of iteration and play-testing was crucial to portal’s success and absent from the new maps.

Chris Remo Blog [a website similar to mine by a real writer (but I'm better at websites)]

Braid is something greater than the sum of it’s parts. And to think I dismissed it when I first played it, my standards have sunk so low.

Related Links:

In which I compare Space Giraffe to Ulysses. [Understanding a game is not universal]

Braid @ WSJ

Jon Blow Interview

RE: Mercs 2 TV ad is out

From: Chu, Courtney

AHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!PEOPLE ARE SINGING IT UP HERE!!!

Hey guess what Court, this video is about to eclipse 200,000 views. Oh no I didn’t!. Yeah, I’ll admit laughing at this ad when I saw it in animatic form but, as soon I saw it in it’s fully rendered glory I knew we had a spicy meatball. And now look, the most annoying feature of the video now has become so requested they made a special MP3 for it. Brilliant. Kudos to the agency and the name of the production house whose name escapes me.

Another song by the Wojahn Brothers [creators of the 'oh no you didn't song']

Mercenaries Ad Production Company

The YouTube remixes are pouring in:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3K8Cqkf-gyU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=us4vOdTvoxY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CS-bD6jddw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcVEugAvS14
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1NwHYf7fUM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1rxvkcsOqk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dImgzKXHdA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xidGNs3SWg

I’ve always wanted to kill that poodle.

This month, Namco will release a  makeover of the classic game Galaga, called Galaga Legions. And what was never really an amazing concept in the original, fails to push the bar in any meaningful direction in Legions. Some stupid things that bothered me right away:

• A mandatory tutorial – seriously?
• Inconsistent and ineffective visual style
• Clunky/cheesy interface

put your right foot in, take your right foot out

After this initial setback, I did enjoy some of the new features. In Legions you now carry two turrets which you lay down with the right analog stick either parallel or perpendicular to your ship and which will fire whenever your ship does. The other big gameplay addition is a ‘preview’ of your enemies trajectory which is rendered with a simple path. This simple addition, combined with the satellites actually gives the player good opportunities to develop a strategy. As the waves get more difficult, your satellite placement becomes more and more important to survival.

Despite some these new features, Galaga Legions is just mediocre. The game lacks any enticing rewards or challenge, the result? Boredom. I think Namco’s biggest mistake with Legions was not studying the strengths and weaknesses of Geometry Wars. At least Bizarre Creations was taking notes and we can all play Geometry Wars 2 instead.

Related Links:

Galaga, Levels 1-9 [YouTube]

Geoff has posted his take on labor practices in the games industry in response to a Gamasutra article from last month. Geoff is a vet from two company’s mentioned in the article, so it might be worth a look. An exceprt:

employee of the week

Obtaining accurate values for how much work remains and how long it takes do not spawn from “tribal experience” or “years in the industry.” They are generated by spending a considerable amount of time and effort evaluating the skills and work styles of your employees, looking at process, identifying bottlenecks, and reigning in and anticipating “customer fastidiousness.”
 
I feel that a big reason that progress towards elimination of crunch is spotty at best has to do with the fact that many mistake it for hard work. If I put in my time down in the trenches I can wear it like a badge of courage then expect the same later in my career from those that I manage.

Links:

Not Everyone Feels the Crunch [Gamasutra Article]

Gamers Crunch Because They are Scared, the Zone is a Lie! [Geoff's response]

colossus is mine bitch

Castle Crashers is the evolution of one of my favorite types of games growing up – the 4 person isometric brawler. Those old games, which were popular in 90’s arcades, came in several skins: the Simpsons, X-Men and TMNT. With these awesome licenses and lots of button mashing it was hard to beat their collaborative action. But playing any of those games today reveals some big issues:

They were really hard. This is readily illustrated by all the cheats people use to beat these games on youtube and meant plenty of frustration for players when they inevitably ran out of quarters.

Lack of depth. Both in terms of the actual 3-button gameplay and the length of the games. With a steady stream of credits, the games only took 20-25 minutes to complete.

The big killer – The licenses they used were a huge draw but the games lacked any flavor besides the marquee above the cabinet.

Castle Crashers gameplay screenshot

Behemoth has updated the brawler recipe by adding their own brand of charm, humor and basic rpg elements. Crashers’ gameplay is marinated in the instant-gratification -action-style of the earlier brawlers and solves the three big issues that those games had.

Difficulty. Overall, crashers is not a quarter sucking endeavor and the addition of character stats helps players keep up with increasingly difficult enemies. By earning XP you can upgrade your 4 stats: armor, agility, strength and magic.

Depth. The basic 3-button gameplay has been upgraded to 4-buttons plus a magic modifier. This configuration allows for a slew of melee combos and magic attacks that give slaughter plenty of variety. For what could be a very repetitive game, crashers multi-hour campaign never feels like a rehash. Dozens of unlockable weapons, pets and eventually characters give this game plenty to stay addicted to.

owl poo

Flavor. Crashers has been so endowed with video game flavor that I can’t help but think of games like No More Heroes or the old Lucas Arts properties. This is where castle crashers truly shines. Every detail seems lovingly intentional. In so much of the game, you feel completely in tune with the developers, whether they are fucking with you or making you laugh. Ridiculous bosses, catchy sound effects, hilarious moments, the perfect implementation of art and animation. It all amounts to one of the most cathartic and subsequently addictive video game experiences of this generation.

Castle Crashers hits Xbox Live August 27th @ 1200 MS Points.

Related Links:

Behemoth Store

Behemoth DevBlog

The cutest castle crashers pet? [you bet you'll need it]

Last week, Geoff came over to play PS3. PS3 laughed at Geoff. So, we played Pixeljunk Monsters. This got Geoff thinking, this got me thinking.

What is it about a game that defines it as a casual game? Price? Distribution platform? Graphics? Budget? It seems like the current trend is to use a combination of these metrics to brand a games “casual”.

• Geometry Wars 2 – $10 – CASUAL!
• Lost Winds – Wii Ware – CASUAL!
• Castle Crashers – Flash Graphics – CASUAL!
• PixelJunk Monsters – Small Budget – CASUAL!

These methods of determining a games casual appeal are all bullshit. In actuality, none of these games are casual:

• Geometry Wars 2 – Only twitch shooters need apply.
• Lost Winds – Puzzle solvers and platforming gurus only.
• Castle Crashers – Serious brawlers w/RPG love required.
• PixelJunk Monsters – Intense strategy dancers wanted.

I’m proposing a new test for measuring a game’s casual appeal. It’s the readily available non-gamer girlfriend/fiance/wife test. After you’ve convinced said female to touch the controller you’ll know within five minutes whether your game is casual or not.

• Geometry Wars 2 – Fuck no.
• Lost Winds – Um, bwah?.
• Castle Crashers – What? Where? When? Why? Bye.
• PixelJunk Monsters – What’s on TV?

Geometry Wars 2 - It's like solitaire

Related Links:

Castle Crashers and Pixel Junk Monsters: The Future of Gaming Oh and Geometry Wars

Having access to PartnerNet (Xbox’s practice Xbox Live for developers) has its perks. Actually, it has only one perk — occasional access to full XBL Arcade games before they are released. Age of Booty is part of that perk. It’s a fun, simple game that puts you in control of a pirate ship and dares you to pillage towns, merchants and friends.

It looks a lot like that but instead of being on your computer, it’s on your TV. Pretty cool right? I think so. The gameplay is incredibly easy to get into but perfecting your strategy is challenging. Capturing islands and towns increases the players three resources (barrels, trees and gold) which in turn allow you to upgrade your ship or towns. There is a challenge mode which pits you against AI opponents and requires the player to really fine tune their strategy. Personally, I think the core of the game is multiplayer where it looks like up to 8 players can battle each other online. Age of Booty is great fun headed to PSN and XBLA.

Related Links:

Age of Booty: Halo Meets DOTA? 

Video game piracy was a staple of my younger gaming days. I’m not sure if it started because of the IRC channels I spent my summers on (in?) or if it was just because I thought free shit was cool but I was a kid-pirate in the 90’s. Back then, piracy wasn’t easy; 56k, ftp, irc, newsgroups were the methods. It was a much different environment from today’s 500k/s torrents. And yet, for a young person, I think the reasons are still mostly the same: cash money. I was too young to have a job and parents couldn’t keep up with all the awesome games coming out. Piracy was always the third parent you could coax into getting you Tribes or whatever.

I miss tribes. I have guilt.

Even until recently, I thought of piracy as a reasonable way of getting the new hotness. Today though, things are the polar opposite; I actually go out of my way to help support the games I enjoy. Finding out how to buy direct from the developer, buying developer paraphernalia and evangelizing the games that I love. This change may stem from multiple areas; I’m becoming a more responsible adult, I work in the games business feel some moral obligation or a simple realization that most games are crap and I need to help the amazing, creative developers. Whatever the reason, the result is that I now go above and beyond to show (my friends and the developers) my appreciation for the games that I love. Does this in anyway absolve me of my past sins? Does this give and take have any merit?

Related Links:

Genuine call for emails from pirates

Talking To ‘Pirates’