What I'm Playing, Majune '13 (Pt.2)

In this feature, we commemorate games I have for the first time started and finished in the last few highly variable time units.

Let's finish this, you [expletive deleted] fuckheads. Here lies the rest of what I played in the second half of May and first half of June.

But first, a little investigative journalism. Which song is better: "L Dopa" or "Precious Thing"? Ooh, that's a tough one. No right answer there.

Special Recognition for Starting and Finishing:

Wario Land II (Game Boy / 3DS VC)

Basically, this is the twist - you don't see this until the end

Wario has never reached quite the Nintendo stardom he deserves, first and foremost because his main series lived mostly on handhelds. But the same can be said for Pokemon, and Pikachu was famous enough to earn a crossover with Nobunaga's Ambition. Perhaps Wario sequels would be demanded with the same fervor as Star Fox and F-Zero if he hadn't peripherally been kept alive through the virtually unrelated WarioWare micro-game slop. Then again, I'm not sure Nintendo could sustain yet another line of 2D platformers - they're still juggling Mario, Kirby, DKC, Mega Man, Yoshi, Pokemon Snap, Gran Turismo, and Gran Turismo 2.

Wario Land II is where the fat man really hits his wobble, the previous game being more of a Mario Jr. (as suggested by its prefix, Super Mario Land 3). It's not until II that the visuals take on their trademark cartoonery (this unassuming Game Boy title has far more personality than many 16-, 32-, and cu-bit counterparts) and the design starts to rely heavily on puzzles and weird abilities. There are a lot of lessons to be learned just from the use of enemies here.

The game has a Super Mario World-esque wealth of hidden content - I imagine most players, like myself, will first reach the credits and scratch their head to find their completion rate was only 50%. At this point the game pulls back the curtain and reveals its secret stage-map, providing a much needed clue to uncovering all its content. I'll admit I have not yet delved into what is essentially a Second Quest's worth of new material, so it's a bit of a stretch to claim I'm "finished" with the game. However, I was also driven to kick someone's brain off when I witnessed (after wasting 20 minutes and a youtube search) how deviously hidden are the secret stages.

Games Started:

Ys: Oath in Felghana (PC)

This is a remake of Ys III in the style of modern PSP/Steam Yss like VI and Origins. That means it's a top-down isometric hack-and-slash with minimal RPG elements, orchestral musical arrangements, and fleshed-out story. It reminds me of the non-farming portions of the Rune Factory series. I'm working on a Let's Play of this one, so you'll have to tune into the videos for further commentary.

Prepare to be seeing a whole lot more of this.

Saints Row: The Third (Xbox 360)

I've been seeking an open-world destroy-everything game and last month made the mistake of wasting money on the stultifying Just Cause 2. Instead I should've been looking to the further works of former Red Faction developers, Volition - in particular, Saints Row: The Third. I had brushed off Row 3 when I first read about it, understanding it as yet another Grand Theft Auto 3 redux with a comedy gimmick. While Sleeping Dogs has tired me of city driving, Row 3 at least sports a world-class engine that permits and encourages the insane and reckless stunts which would have been out of place in Dogs' gritty cop-story. That's to be expected, as the Red Faction games excelled at physics. Plus it offers tanks, helicopters, jets, and VTOLs if you don't feel like driving. Row 3's shooting has the visceral, impactful, and decidedly violent feel that Volition seems to do well. I can't exactly put my finger on why, but tearing through a mob with a submachine gun is simply far more fun here than it is in Max Payne 3. Maybe it's that it's not really cover shooting, but more a firepower cock-fight.

God forbid I mention it, but the game also wields a decided sex appeal. The female character models in Row 3 look... uh... really nice. And playing dress up (or dress down, as it were) leads to some satisfying results. It's equal opportunity, too. Meaning that if you prefer to play as a shirtless, chiseled dude, there's a meter that lets you crank up the size of his junk.

Games Finished:

DmC: Devil May Cry (Xbox 360)

Hey, Dante gets white hair at the end! Why do I care about this? Spoiler warning I guess? It signifies the transformation of his character from aimless rebel protecting the human race to white-haired aimless rebel protecting the human race.

Let's talk collectibles for a second, since I've already dedicated a post to story and future-dedicated a post to combat. Wait I changed my mind, let's talk platforming. Tangentially related to collectibles, since collectibles don't work in a game without some kind of interesting navigatory mechanic. One of the sleeper hits of DmC - and I think it was a sleeper even to the devs - is the grappling hook(s)-driven platforming. Like the combat, Dante's traversal techniques are so complex and overwrought that they actually wrap back around to be interesting. He's got a double jump, three kinds of air dash, a blue grappling hook that works like the Hookshot, and a red grappling hook that works like "Get over here!". The fun of the platforming is being caught midair saying "shit shit shit which do I use?!". Failure triggers something more like familiarization that memorization - you've got enough time for each input that you just need to be vaguely aware of what is coming to be able to pull it off. The floaty leeway between each move also means there's a difference between just making it and a badass perfect run. Frankly I'd play a game that was made up solely of this stuff, as I found the late-game climactic platforming gauntlet to be more exciting than the succeeding final boss battle.

Wrapping back to collectibles - they're handled quite nicely through the use of an ambient audio cue. "Hidden" items in 3D games are a can of worms because of camera abstraction - what's hidden to the camera may not necessarily be hidden in the environment. This isn't a problem in 2D, because there's no distinction between environment and perspective (or at least it's minimal). I'm not going to get into which games do it right (Super Mario 64) and which do it wrong (ugh) right here and now, but DmC comes up with an elegant little solution to circumvent the problem entirely - overtly tell the player when a collectible is nearby. Now before we dish out too much undue credit, let's note that 3D Marios do the exact same thing (stars make a telltale tinkling sound) and at least Skies of Arcadia did too, but that doesn't make it any less welcome. These cues mean that the player can naturally explore environments without worrying that the camera is missing anything, and it means that the developers can't get away with hiding an item in plain sight - at the very least they have to use alternate paths, and in the best cases they use platforming puzzles.

As if the uniquely pleasant platforming and camera-stress-free collection weren't enough, DmC throws one more bone onto the bonus content fire: challenge rooms. As did Donkey Kong Country before it, DmC  packs each stage with one to three hidden bonus rooms, rewarding diligent exploration with a spot of fresh gameplay.  All of this bonus content is thankfully tracked by a menu screen that lets you know how much you've done and how much is left to be done in each stage. Perhaps it's all in my head, but the whole experience has a really nice, delightfully old-school feel to it. The only downside - and sadly there is a downside - is that these stages are far too long to casually jump into for completionist runs. DKC and SM64 stages took five minutes from beginning to end, so it wasn't much to ask you to play them over and over looking for that one last macguffin. While the saving grace of DmC is that levels are usually free-roam (and enemies don't respawn), said levels can take anywhere from fifteen to thirty minutes to complete. If you find yourself at the end of a half-hour-long stage, still missing one of fifteen collectibles, you're likely to give up for the night - and possibly forever. So take it with a grain of salt - the collectibles are there and well-designed for the 100%-seeking player, but you'll need to be committed to catch-'em-all.

Wario Land II: New levels of interactivity

This isn't one of those posts that has a thesis or an opinion or clever wit and finery. It's the kind where I just analyze the factors behind Wario Land II's invincibility mechanic and think to myself, in my head, if it's all really worth it.

One of the most idiosyncratic features of Wario Land II is that Wario possesses no concept of health or dying. Instead, his foes' attacks have unique results. A hammer-wielding foe may smash Wario into a bouncy spring, a flame-thrower may set him alight, or a bird-bee's sting may cause his head to balloon, carrying him off the ground. It's all rather... Looney Toons-y. In a very fun way. It gives appeal to danger: how can I hurt Wario in a useful way?

From a game design perspective, these provide a twist on a time-honored tradition: the power-up. Each of Wario's wacky new states brings a slight variation to his rules of control, opening new avenues of progress to the player. The correspondence of enemies to power-ups isn't new - Kirby uses the same dynamic. So it's the dispensary method that has to be mined for gameplay - what new interaction does it facilitate beyond what is accomplished with ?-blocks and enemy drops?

1.) It changes the way the player interacts with the power-up
Since these power-ups are enemy-triggered, it's natural that they can impede progress as easily as they can benefit it. Really power-up is a misleading label, since the changes to Wario's abilities are more a lateral move, enabling and disabling him. This encourages the player to look at why they need this new ability - what are they hoping to gain from it? In Contra, grabbing the Spread Gun is never going to hurt your progression, so it's a why not - it's not a decision at all to take the power-up, but a linear progression. The focus isn't on what you're going to do with it, rather it's on how it's different from what you already had. It's a character-centric notion of powering up. Wario Land II offers situations where a power-up may be beneficial or detrimental, so you're less concerned about nabbing the new ability, and more concerned about discerning how you might use it. If you get smashed by a hammer dude, is there somewhere you're actually going to spring up to? Or should you be moving down? This makes for a progress- or environmental-centric notion of powering up.

2.) It changes the way the player interacts with the enemy.
Tying an enhancement to an enemy behavior means that the player has to trigger that behavior to progress. They don't need to attack the enemy - rather they need the enemy to attack them. The enemy is not static like a ?-block, nor is it fully unpredictable. It conforms to movement rules defined by patterns and intelligence - movement rules that can be manipulated by the player. This is a form of indirect control, as the player is using their input to try to elicit a particular output. In Wario Land II, this tends to take the form of drawing enemies from their spawning area into a region where their power-up-attack is needed. This is more complex  than simply hitting a switch or pushing a block, as it engages the player in the activity of transference.

Wario Land II is a sophisticated game that succinctly presents much of what makes platforming enemies fun. In some sense, it is for enemy interactivity what Super Mario Bros. was for environmental interactivity fifteen years earlier. It stands as a clear testament that a platforming hero needs to do a whole lot more than go through a world to keep players engaged.

What I'm Playing, March '13 (Pt.1)

Not to turn this into a blog or something, but I'm gonna take a minute to list games I've recently started (for the first time) and finished (for the 1st time). To keep the info flowing fun fast and free, I'll give you first impressions of the games I started, and final impressions of those I completed. There are quite a few, so this is gonna be divided into a few editions. Maybe it'll become a running weekly feature - it'll make a nice addition to the pool of abandoned ideas we've had for those. Before I get ahead of myself, let me catch up on the last month.

Special Recognition for Starting and Finishing:

Gunman Clive (3DS eShop)

Is Gunman Clive worth a look? Well, it only costs $2, though I imagine you'll spend more time feeling good about supporting an indie developer than you will playing through this forty-minute story. It feels like a Mega Man fangame, deriving all its ideas from that classic series, yet not delivering enough individuality or scope to stick with you or warrant a replay. For those that can't get enough Mega Man, it won't be a waste of time, just a fun little shooter/platformer with a neat (if rudimentary) visual presentation. It's hard to separate my first from final impressions of this game, as I beat it in one sitting.

Games Started:

Darksiders 2 (Xbox 360)

A severe change of pace from the first game, not for its tacked on RPG features (everyone loves floating DMG numbers!), but for providing a real organic world and a distinct avatar to control. The combat's got a smoother feel; Death feels swift and precise, in contrast to the brutally unwieldy War (the first game's protagonist). Likewise, Death climbs and scrambles like the Prince of Persia (Sands of Time), while War bounced and hovered like Ratchet (Ratchet & Clank). This isn't so much a strict improvement as it is a fitting change of pace; Death's skillset is appropriate for Death, as War's was for War. They're different characters and should handle differently. A lot of action games get this wrong, simply tweaking speed and strength parameters rather than the entire engine. Is it a coincidence that Darksiders II has a new engine to go with the new hero? Maybe, but it works perfectly.

Crashmo (3DS eShop)

This is a puzzle game. Not even puzzle action. Just static, stare you in the face puzzles. Don't let the reviews (and Intelligent Design's pedigree) fool you; the game is an exact clone of Tetris puzzles. You have to jump to the top of structures you make, but since there's no punishment for failing jumps, it's not a platformer, as some have erroneously claimed. After finishing eight of ten main worlds (ten puzzles each), I'm not sure I'm going to finish it. Puzzles just reach that word scramble point where it's like, yeah, I can probably solve this, but it's gonna take a long time and leave me so frustrated that I won't be satisfied in the end. It has a decent amount of content (150+ puzzles for $10), but as someone who doesn't really like puzzle games at all, I can't tell you why you should spend the money instead of just grabbing a newspaper and flipping to the word games. Do they make newspapers anymore? I don't know. Probably not.

Games Finished:

Darksiders (Xbox 360)

For some reason this game felt the need to go out on a terrible note with an interminable final dungeon and a laughably easy final boss. I also got real distracted because I wanted to start Darksiders II, which I had already bought (hey, it was on sale for $15!). Anyway, nice artwork, nice setting and a great combination of styles. There's not a ton to go back to, as such simple puzzles lose their fun with repetition and combat is done better elsewhere, but a game worth playing once.

Strania - The Stellar Machina (XBLA)

This is kind of a lie, because I only beat it on Normal difficulty, which truncates the final boss battle. A tribute to Contra III? (see later). Strania is a fantastic G.Rev shmup for XBLA that I don't think anyone played or heard of. Even shmup fans were oblivious, too concerned about what the next Treasure re-release would be. G.Rev is one of the more renowned latter-day shmup-developers (as renowned as you can get from making shmups), particularly noted for their late Dreamcast releases Under Defeat and Border Down. While I haven't played those, Strania satiates the craving for 2.5D shmuppage reminiscent of the PlayStation era (R-Type Delta, Einhaender, G-Darius). The gameplay provides a unique dichotomy of aggressive close-ranged combat and defensive sniping, boss battle gauntlets, and a relief from the bullet hell that now dominates the genre (Ikaruga, Touhou, Cave games).

SML3: Warioland (GB / 3DS VC)

Wario's very first starring role! I'm a passing Wario fan (_NOT_ Wariofan), favoring him in most Mario spinoffs (Party, Kart, etc.) for his mean and obnoxious personality and inclination toward raw power. Raw power is a guaranteed OD, etc. I even had a stint maining him in Brawl. Wario himself really is what makes this game - he's a delight to control, making Mario seem like a halfy (handicapped individual) by comparison. The platforming may be woefully static and undercooked, but Wario makes it all work. I'll write a post later about the character and the game's inheritance from Super Mario World and Donkey Kong Country.

Donkey Kong Country 2 (SNES / Wii VC)

I think I covered this pretty well earlier in the week. Took me a long time to beat (though the game clock only records ~5 hours), but I'll be playing it again, possibly even seeking out that 102%. I'll probably spend more time on it than planned now that Nintendo took down DKC1 and DKC3, leaving no reasonable way to play them aside from ILLEGAL emulation.