crouton days

Just 1 push-up

Maybe I have really low expectations for anything LucasArts publishes, but Fracture isn’t bad. Terrain deformation turns out to be a fun gimmick. Of course everything else about it is highly derivative; the visual style reminds me of the Tribes series, UI is like Gears and the now ubiquitous regenerating health bar is present. But Fracture nails the basics; it has a solid framerate, tons of physics and a nice level of polish. I did notice one big sticking point, (at least on the PS3 version) they forgot to implement rumble. No rumble in a game where you can erect a column of earth with a grenade?

I hope this game turns out to have at least a few fatal flaws, that way Fracture won’t have to survive the injustice of being good and ignored while Force Unleashed sells a million.

In theory, the thought of weilding the force is is every nerds wet dream. In practice however, the force unleashed (demo) is a mix of boredem and compromise. The biggest disappointment has to be the compromises that took place in the game’s big selling feature, the technology. The combination of Havok, Euphoria and DMM that earned the game some buzz last year just doesn’t add anything to the gameplay. Yeah, it’s pretty sad when a game’s selling point is tech but Star Wars the Force Unleashed gets worse.

if only it were 10% that cool

Of course, it’s been close to a decade since a Star Wars game had really compelling gameplay (the Jedi Knight games being a possible exception). Force Unleashed’s gameplay is a combination of poorly immitated God of War combat, force powers lifted from the JK games and god awful quick time events. That in itself isn’t a problem because I will excuse a game for not having awe inspiring gameplay when it offers me god-like superpowers. No, it’s the fact that not a single feature has been giving any attention to detail that disappoints above all. Everything about it feels last minute and underdeveloped. The Force Unleashed might make an action packed movie, (the story sucks too) but as a game it fails to engage on even the most basic level. I suggest anyone looking for a good Star Wars game play Rebel Assault 2.

Reminder to self: remove all instances of (demo) next week.

Updated: The Force Unleashed is so bad I can’t continue. Even if I wanted to keep playing it there are two things preventing me: the refresh rate/frame rate is so broken it makes my eyes vomit and the audio levels peak so often that my receiver might be dead. Man I feel awful for the talent that spent years bringing someone’s over ambitious abortion to life only to get canned. Hey LucasArts staff, was there a guy in your meetings who made dissenting remarks like “we don’t have space for 200 more staff.. ..wait a minute!” or “2010 has a nice ring to it” or “can we really get this done in time?”. Remember that guy? He was a good guy, wasn’t he. The Force Unleashed’s painfully ugly achievement icons now serve as a permanent reminder (jerks scarred my gamertag) that LucasArts is going right back to Game Jail. Though I can’t erase the embarrassing proof that I actually played it, I certainly won’t spend another minute with Star Wars the Force Unleashed.

Remember a good star wars game? [youtube]

How bout that, Mercenaries 2 is out! In its opening week gamasutra reported that it was on top of sales for both PS3/360 in the UK and third/second in the US. I didn’t see the PC/PS2 versions in the top 5 listings but I’m not sure if those games are out yet. It’ll be interesting to see how the sales numbers progress into a month with some potential heavy hitters. Attentions are likely to be focused on Star Wars: The Force Unleashed but I see Spore, Brothers in Arms and Rock Band 2 as potential distractions. As of today, the game has a metacritic weighted score of 74 with 37 reviews listed. The TV ad seems to have created the biggest impact for the game’s marketing. The youtube version of the Ad has spawned about 3 million views including re-posts, remixes and making-of’s. 

3 player co-op?

As for the game itself, the consensus seems to be “fun but greatly lacking in polish”. In Tuesdays gamers with jobs podcast, Ken Levine (Bioshock director) emphasized Mercs2’s need for a few more months in the oven. Then, Geoff and I found some hidden fun while playing co-op. The “unintended feature” we stumbled upon manifests itself when you have Ewan deliver a helicopter to your location and you destroy the helicopter at just the right time, instead of fading into the distance, Ewan becomes your AI buddy. Ewan looks hilarious when he runs and responds to honking vehicle horns. Ewan requires a lot of babysitting for someone in godmode. Eventually we stopped caring about our mission at all and spent our time collecting Ewans. 

My thoughts. To be added at a later date.

Related Links:

Mercenaries 2 Tops UK Charts [gamasutra]

Mercenaries 2 Reviews [metacritic]

Gamers With Jobs Podcast #100

Castle crashers is out and I can finally talk about it in great detail without the guilt of spoiling behemoths muffins. Not that it matters, since apparently CC is off to a great start on live. So what could I possibly have to say about Castle Crashers that is negative? It was nice of behemoth to add an XboxLive item to their menu, but I don’t know how I feel about developers showing unimplemented features to the player, that might upset some folks. Maybe behemoth should have tested their game on partnerNet for more than a few hours.

The other feature I would have loved to see is drop-in/drop-out multiplayer. Now I think there are some technical restrictions with signing on/off xbox profiles. But crashers is one of the biggest XBLA games. Behemoth and microsoft should have worked something out. These issues aside, I’m not the only one that still loves the game and I can prove it:

I snapped this photo of two dudes playing the castle crashers in a coffee bean in westwood..

Castle Crashers is Racist [youtube]

Behemoth Announces Castle Crashers Kinda Numbers

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=Q_-JC7JSlLo
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