Welcome to the mythic land of Eldibrom—an enormous open fantasy world with brave warriors, enormous monsters and powerful wizards! And while they’re off questing and having glorious adventures, you’ll be skulking around in dark corners, taking their things from them!

You are Rick, an illiterate pig-farmer, and you’re sick of knights and princesses thinking they’re so big: doing heroic things, everybody loving them, strutting around like they’re so handsome and cool. Life’s so easy for them. But maybe they’ll think twice when they get home and notice all their shit’s missing, huh? (more…)

I am one of the few people that liked Super Columbine Massacre RPG. I don’t like it because I thought it was a good game (truth be told, I’ve never actually played it), but I like it for the discussion it sparked throughout the entire gaming community. Elephant came out as a movie much earlier than SCMRPG did, and yet it was much more widely accepted as a piece of art than the game was. It’s a shame, but I don’t believe that people have accepted video games as a true artform quite yet although some certainly get very close (I’m looking at you Okami and Bioshock). I think that these days a lot of the games that come out have either sequelitis or play it safe too much. I’m looking to change that as I think video games can really tell stories and interact with people in a way that no other medium can. I don’t think we’re even close to causing emotions in people like music, film, or tv is quite yet. I can’t wait for the day when we can make people cry, laugh, and feel sad all within the span of a half hour of gaming. I think we’ve just touched the edges of what we can do and we, as game developers and designers, are going to have to really push the boundaries. I also love the indie gaming scene. It tickles me to think that people make games on their own time and come up with stuff like Cave Story and Everyday Shooter. The former was made completely buy a guy in his spare time over five years. All of the art, sound, programming… everything was done by him. Not only is that an achievement, but it’s a really fun and polished game as well. (more…)

In Robotron, the player must be aware of more than 8 rapidly moving objects at a time in order to stay alive and succeed. So this seemingly contradicts the research. However, the experiment the people in the study were asked to perform was to maintain FOCUS on multiple objects at one time. If you try if for yourself, you will see a field of balls. Some of these balls flash to let you know you must focus on them, and then they move around for a period of time at some speed. Then the balls you were supposed to focus on turn red and you can see if you could track them. (more…)

So Rick wrote a very eloquent post recently on this very blog about freedom and immersion in games… or more specifically about why the hell that bloody great hulking mute in the orange suit never talks, and in fact could be accused of allowing the action to happen around him, instead of to him.

OK, I’m with him on the idea that in-game cinematics are to a degree worse than out-and-out cutscenes. In fact, one of the problems I have with our own game Suffering: Ties That Bind is that if you’re looking the wrong way at a key point, you won’t see the cutscenes. (This happens in Torque’s apartment, for example, where his kid is running down the hallway while I’m casually studying the flocked wallpaper, so not only do I miss half his dialog, but I don’t see him getting smacked around by some demon with a baseball bat with nails driven through it).

However, I’m not a huge fan of cut-scenes for one very big specific reason. (more…)

I was an incredibly huge fan of Super Mario 64, which I put up as my favorite game of all time. That game was a pioneer in so many ways, and its gameplay still holds up quite well today. It had an extremely workable camera that was tuned for each area you went through, and along with its controls, they went unmatched for many years after its release. (Maybe Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, another favorite of mine, finally matched it?)

Of course I was waiting for this game because I would love another Mario 64. Unfortunately I went through this same anticipation five years ago for Super Mario Sunshine and was gravely disappointed. I ask around a lot about what was wrong with Sunshine and I get very vague answers. It had all the trappings of Mario 64, but why did it fall flat? Thinking back I think it was an uncompelling package, another “island paradise” with arbitrary block puzzles sprinkled in. More offensive was that damn backpack/watergun thing. Mario is about motion, and that “clean up the gunk” spray nozzle thing required me to keep Mario in place. What were they thinking?!? Seeing that nobody that I know liked it (and even reviewers retroactively dis that game), but it still netted a 92% on GameRankings, I certainly have to take all the hype for Galaxy with a grain of salt.

So Sunday I cracked Galaxy open and was drawn in. In a couple of good sessions I went through two full galaxies and probably about 25 stars. I’m a completionist so I went for all the secondary objectives first before moving to the next area.

Here are a pile of impressions:

• The Wii control scheme, for maybe the first time in my experience, isn’t annoying at all. You move Mario with the stick like you always did, but somehow the disconnected nunchuck feels better than a gamepad stick might, because it isn’t a big slab and can be tilted to help orient you to the action.
• Thank fucking god they ditched the “flip the wiimote to jump” thing that they toyed with a couple years ago. You just press the A button as you’d expect, which doesn’t give you the 1/4 second delay you get with gestural motion in most Wii games. That would have killed Mario.
  • This is hopefully a very good sign for Wii. It seems like when it was introduced, everyone out there was trying to use fancy whirls and flips to do mundane things. Tilt the wiimote to steer? Wow, dude, you just invented the joystick. Shake the wiimote to make Link attack? You just invented the button, asshole.

  (more…)

  ]]> http://www.gamesgoneferal.com/2007/11/20/mario-galaxy-shine-get/feed/ http://www.gamesgoneferal.com/2007/11/19/kill-the-silent-protagonist/ http://www.gamesgoneferal.com/2007/11/19/kill-the-silent-protagonist/#comments Mon, 19 Nov 2007 17:38:34 +0000 Rick http://www.gamesgoneferal.com/?p=248 This is, in many ways, a follow up to my last post. I can honestly say it’s great to see the blog begin to turn towards real discussion here. This is awesome. Thus for today’s topic I will forgo my intended topic and instead present the idea that refuses to die! The zombie of game design! Silent Protagonist I’m calling you out! Be prepared to receive a shovel to the head and a fistful of boomstick!

  Kill the Silent Protagonist!

  I am serious when I say that this is the worst idea that infects video games right now. It’s even worse than the plethora of half-hearted button combo cutscenes that have infected games since Resident Evil 4 and God of War. This evil, this disease, is the idea of a Silent Protagonist. Its symptoms are easy to diagnose: the protagonist never speaks and as seemingly important events fly by he/she says nothing further all the NPCs go to great lengths to talk around the player and advance the story almost inspite of him while he stands mute. It appears as a terrible, horrific, mark upon otherwise good or even great games. Half-Life 2 and Dragon Quest 8 are perfect high profile examples in people’s recent memories.

  I understand the rationale: Because the Protagonist never speaks the player‘s immersion is never broken. The player can believe that they really are the protagonist!

  I just can’t buy that… it destroys storytelling. Imagine a movie where the main character never talks? Frankly if it was actually a compelling idea Hollywood would be using it. They may recycle a lot but they’re not stupid. It is the realm of perhaps one great art movie and nothing more. Or ask yourself, were the Choose Your Own Adventure books the height of good writing? (more…)

  ]]> http://www.gamesgoneferal.com/2007/11/19/kill-the-silent-protagonist/feed/ http://www.gamesgoneferal.com/2007/11/17/click-here-for-tastefully-nude-pictures-of-jessica-alba-classy-ones/ http://www.gamesgoneferal.com/2007/11/17/click-here-for-tastefully-nude-pictures-of-jessica-alba-classy-ones/#comments Sun, 18 Nov 2007 05:44:14 +0000 Jay http://www.gamesgoneferal.com/?p=245 We need to get more hits to Surreal Game Design,” site editor Patrick Lipo told the room. I looked around at the various other contributors seated around an enormous hewn stone conference table, and at the armed sentry posted by the door. Damn it, I thought. Somebody’s going to get dragged out of here and shot again. I hated it when the sentry attended.

  “All we ever talk about is video games and design theory,” Pat continued, pacing the room. “People don’t want that. It’s not…” he looked up, searching for the right word. “It’s not sexy.”

  “But the site’s called Surreal Game Design,” Rick Luebbers said, confused. “Talking about games and design is all we—” Pat gave a signal to one of Surreal’s security guards and Rick was quietly escorted out of the room. A gunshot reported, muffled, in the distance. Birds perched on the window sill took sudden flight. I knew it! I thought. I hate meetings like this!

  “We need to get more hits to Surreal Game Design,” Pat told the room, opening up the floor with a nod.

  “Cats saying adorable misspelled things are big right now,” Simon Cooke said. This was very true. We all nodded. Pat jotted down some notes. “Jay? What have you got?” he said, turning to me.

  “What, like right now?” Panic-urine flooded my pants. (This is something I’ve been trying to correct for a while now.)

  “No, you could always wait ‘til later, when you’re fired.” (more…)

  ]]> http://www.gamesgoneferal.com/2007/11/17/click-here-for-tastefully-nude-pictures-of-jessica-alba-classy-ones/feed/ http://www.gamesgoneferal.com/2007/11/16/finished-over-the-weekend/ http://www.gamesgoneferal.com/2007/11/16/finished-over-the-weekend/#comments Fri, 16 Nov 2007 17:57:24 +0000 DaveW http://www.gamesgoneferal.com/?p=236 Quick recap of what I played through this weekend.

  Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction

  The Good:

  • Great level design that effectively ramps the challenge throughout the game without becoming frustrating.
  • Rewarding firefights that give you the immediate gratification of bolts and bits flying out everywhere, then the deferred gratification of weapon upgrades.
  • Satisfying story that reveals a nice bit of back-story that none of the other Ratchet and Clank games have revealed.

  The Bad:

  • I ran in to two irritating bugs. If you go about halfway through the arena rounds and then decide to leave and go to a different planet, well, the game doesn’t much like that and asserts out in a non-graceful way. The second one isn’t as easy to find, but with my luck, I found it right as I finished a difficult fight. Jumping in to corners in some geometry seems to throw you in to a hole that you can’t get out of and stops the game world from rendering anything but the skybox.
  • The weapon levels didn’t seem to have as much interesting variation as in older versions. By that I mean (and this could just be bad memory), it seemed like every few levels in Deadlocked or Up Your Arsenal, you’d get a bigger spray effect, or ricocheting bullets, without having to do anything special, I didn’t notice the bigger effects until reaching max level with the weapons. (more…)
    ]]> http://www.gamesgoneferal.com/2007/11/16/finished-over-the-weekend/feed/ http://www.gamesgoneferal.com/2007/11/15/attack-of-the-killer-programmer-from-mars-2/ http://www.gamesgoneferal.com/2007/11/15/attack-of-the-killer-programmer-from-mars-2/#comments Thu, 15 Nov 2007 17:49:15 +0000 Simon http://www.gamesgoneferal.com/?p=230 Hi there! Glad you could make it! Take your shoes off, grab yourself a nice drink of something comfortable and here, let me light that cigar for you. No, the other end… Oh wow, is that Cuban? Very nice!

    I’m Simon Cooke, and I’m a Principle Technology Engineer at Surreal. (I bounce around a lot; I’ve also been Lead Gameplay Programmer on our currently unannounced super-secret-squirrel title, and before that I was Lead Tools Programmer on Suffering: Ties That Bind).

    I got my start in this industry at the tender age of 15, working on ports of Prince of Persia, Lemmings, Populous and Zub (if you know that last one, you’re probably British) for the SAM Coupé home computer (and if you know what that is, you’re either British, Czech or from New Zealand). And then for a while I threw it all away and became a journalist (I used to write the Spec Tec Jr column in Your Sinclair magazine in the UK, as well as a number of other not so gamey magazines).

    These days, I’ve left the green rolling pastures of industrial inner-city-center Manchester and moved to the much greener, lakier and mountainier fjords and volcanoscapes of Seattle. And I’m loving it. Where else in the world can you commute by driving over a bridge that’s floating on a lake? (more…)

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