Warrior Within: The Prince of Persia (and his software quality assurance team) plummet to their demise

Above all things, Prince of Persia: Warrior Within is probably remembered most as a symbol of a an era of faux-grit, where even a whimsical, sophisticated, and self-assured tale like Sands of Time could be brazenly supplanted by MTV's Godsmacked in a leather bikini cutting a dog in half (with fully real-time BloodParticle (TM) effects) without any justification whatsoever. While the gameplay mechanics were well-received, sales were fine, and an important lesson was learned for the next sequel, Warrior Within still managed to tarnish the perceived integrity of what had been the crowning achievement of the sixth console generation: Halo. Or, um, Sands of Time. (which, and let's not get into this here, but which had a far greater impact on game design-to-come than did the conservative, if blockbusting, Halo). With Prince of Persia: Warrior Within Featuring Godsmacked, Ubisoft reminded everyone (who cared enough to pay attention) that games are soulless entertainment products and that artistic vision is only permitted in commercial media so long as it doesn't conflict with demographic analysis.

Ignoring the stifled critical outcry, I actually don't think there's anything wrong with the concept of Warrior Within as a downer sequel to Sands of Time. Taking a youthful chummy character who went through a seriously traumatic experience and reflecting that in his development is actually... well it's a lot more honest than having Nathan Drake or Max Payne toss off a one-liner after their 1,445th murder. The Prince, and most video game heroes along with him, should be kinda insane. You heard of this thing called PTSD? Even the Ninja Turtles got a bit shell-shocked here and there d;^) The strands of that transformation definitely lurk amidst Warrior Within's story - for instance when the Prince transforms into a wraith and murders himself. For all it's association with baby teenagers, angst can be a sophisticated narrative subject. I think it would've been a mistake to continue in an ever-darkening pattern, but it's only the aforementioned cynicism that would make us assume that would happen. 

The art design of the new Island of Time setting is pretty excellent too. More Persian sandcastles would've been really boring, especially considering sand is generally thought of as not that interesting a thing to look at. Rather than another mystically transformed period backdrop, Warrior Within offers a glance through the looking glass to the reality-defying world that spawned the fantastical Sands of Time, adorned with clockwork machinery (get it? clockwork? like time?), eternal gardens, and demonic inhabitants. The Sands were actually a pretty horrific thing in the first game - the kind of thing you don't want Saddam Hussein stocking up in a secret bunker - so it makes a lot of sense that they come from this haunting otherworldly fortress.

What I'm trying to convey is that the game shows a lot of potential and seems to come from a sensible place. There's no real need to ask "why did they go dark?". There is, however, good reason to ask "why did they go Mature?". It isn't the tone or the concept that feel wrong, it's the weird superficial trappings hinting at a lack of faith in the concept's sales potential. The nu-metal soundtrack, the salacious female foes, the sprays of blood - they're all an escape from the macabre tone of the story, a means of backing down tragic angst to something more teenager-friendly and marketably "gritty". There is nothing challenging or mature about a stripper with a knife moaning in pleasure as the Prince cuts her to pieces. That's abject sleaze. The sad thing is that all of these embarrassing elements are utterly irrelevant and surface-level, as if one of the developer's 14-year-old sons sneaked into the studio the night before release to do a little "tweaking".

And that's probably painfully close to what happened. Warrior Within came out right before God of War, but not right before the God of War two-year hype-train launched into orbit. In fact, the entire development of a Sands of Time sequel probably took place under the shadow of Sony's behemoth brainwashing campaign (iirc as launch approached G4TV was running a 24/7 picture-in-picture live feed of David Jaffe's personal bathroom). So while Ubisoft had Developer A off making his cool Labyrinth fantasy concept art, Developer B was in an isolated room studying God of War trailers and secretly developing a Teenagerizer Ray to convert the finished product into something sure to embarrass everyone.

Unfortunately (again), there never was a "finished product" with Warrior Within. This is of course pure speculation, but holy shit is this game incomplete. The rushed quality makes a lot of sense taking into consideration it was developed in a year and assuredly "guaranteed" (by someone who was not at all a developer) to make a December 2004 release - critical both in preempting God of War and in capitalizing on the final holiday season belonging to sixth gen consoles.

Perhaps the most cringe-inducing evidence of the crunch is how goddamn little sense the plot makes. Time travel logic is notoriously difficult to establish and Warrior Within's solution is not to try. At a critical moment in the game, the Prince goes back in time and kills himself to stop himself from creating the sand that allows people to travel back in time to kill themselves. So he returns to the present without the existence of the time-traveling sand and he was very clearly murdered by himself last week before he went back in time to murder himself and extinguish the time-travel-sand and that's a-okay? Is this Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah? It is so fucking lazy it begs the question why bother with the time travel in the first place. The answer is because it doubles the gameplay space (every area has a past and present version) without doubling the development time, so who cares if we can explain it.

The weird selection of voice actors also reeks of "didn't have time to get the right people". Why is the Prince played by a new actor? The Prince's character from Sands of Time was all about that external monologue performance. He doesn't feel like the same person anymore. And you know someone at Ubisoft knew that, because the original (Sands) actor returned for Two Thrones and Forgotten Sands. Possibly even worse is that new main character Kaileena is played by two different actresses! In the same game! That is some hardcore low budget shit right there. There's also not that much voice-over content. Or at least it seems that way, since...

The bugs in this game are insane. Sound effects and voice-over disappeared from my playthrough PERMANENTLY around the halfway point. Never to return. For all intents and purposes, Ubisoft may as well have saved the time and budget on audio, because I never got to hear half of it. This is a AAA holiday release Gamecube game from a major publisher! Not some bargain bin Christian Bible Big Rigs shit. I continued to follow the story thanks to cutscene subtitles, but if the Prince was externally monologuing the same way he did in Sands of Time, I missed it. I wasn't about to replay the first 8 hours and this time cross my fingers that the game didn't completely shit itself.

Perhaps in an attempt to replace the missing sound effects, the game caused my console to make all kinds of loud clicking and disc-reading noises that it has never made otherwise. I finally decided to queue up some Allman Brothers Band on the iPod and tough it out to the end. I did want to see the credits at least once, as all-told it's a fun game and the only one in the series I'd yet to complete.

Despite my best efforts, Warrior Within shall remain the only game in the series I've yet to complete. That's because the portal to the final boss fight doesn't work. At all. In this game. There is no way to get to the final boss fight and see the ending. The game ends for good at the final save point. I've read online that there is a rare bug that lets you continue through to the conclusion - it requires deleting your save file, playing all 15-20 hours a second time, and saying a prayer that the portal will work this time. If it wasn't for all the other random glitching and audio not working, maybe someday in 20 or 30 years I'd regain the enthusiasm to see through Warrior Within. Looks like it just isn't meant to be.

I'm not going to write a conclusion because it's not like I got one for this piece of shit game. I'd be genuinely pissed if I had bought it for full price in 2004. As is I'm just kinda depressed because my OCD doesn't let me take this off the "games to complete" list.

Sonic Lost World Tropical Coast Zone 2: An Essay About It

Critics and scholars alike have long debated whether Tropical Coast Zone 3 is a level in Sonic Lost World. This is an insightful debate. In this five-paragraph essay following the MLA format and citing at most least one source, one aims to convince the reader (you) that Tropical Coast Zone 3 is a level in Sonic Lost World. Tropical Coast Zone 3 is a level in Sonic Lost World because it has bottomless pits, it takes place underwater, and it has the best musical track in the game.

In an interview with Nintendo World Report, Sonic Lost World Tropical Coast Zone 3 producer Takashi Iizuka said, "It really depends on the stage so it's not that 3DS is putting more emphasis on the wall jumping. It's just that the stages we've selected for E3 happen to put more emphasis on that and the Wii U version will have stages that require wall jumping to proceed as well so they're probably about the same in the emphasis of wall jumping" (Nintendo World Report, 2013). There is no wall jumping in Tropical Coast Zone 3. In fact, the walls are made of water, to which Sonic is deathly allergic. Therefore, there is no wall jumping in Sonic Lost World Tropical Coast Zone 3.

Tropical Coast Zone 3 is also a level because it takes place underwater. You (the player and reader) may observe this because there is a lot of blue and nice little patches of coral. Because the level is shaped like a tube, one may believe that this is the one level in Sin & Punishment: Star Successor. But no, careful examination of the disc in the console yields the game's true title: Sonic Lost World, in which Tropical Coast Zone 3 is a level.

This level is a ripoff of Sin & Punishment: Star Successor.

In conclusion, Tropical Coast Zone 3 is a level in Sonic Lost World because it has bottomless pits, it takes place underwater, and it has the best musical track in the game. My side on the debate is that Tropical Coast Zone 3 is a level in Sonic Lost World, and I feel this because it has bottomless pits, it takes place underwater, and it has the best musical track in the game.

Final Fantasy XII, Dragon Age Origins, and Xenoblade Chronicles - Real-time Tactics A to Z

Since I've been enjoying Final Fantasy XII recently, I decided to give Dragon Age Origins (that's the first one, $4.49 on XBL) a try, just for point of comparison on combat systems with customizable AI. My first observation is that DAO's "tactics" are literally a carbon copy of FFXII's "gambits", and I mean literally literally. Same wording, same organization, same numbers, and the exact same goddamn menu (i.e. visual presentation and settings). It is weird to the degree that I now suspect Yasumi Matsuno sold BioWare the FFXII source code after his falling out with Square Enix.

Plagiarism aside, Dragon Age might be the first BioWare game I like without reservation. It comes from the same mold of real-time tactics RPG that spawned Final Fantasy XII and Xenoblade Chronicles, not to mention BioWare's own games since the Baldur's Gate II days. People sometimes call these kind of games single-player MMOs since they involve indirect control of party members, but that's kind of a stupid way to categorize a game. "It's just like a massively multiplayer game except that it isn't massively multiplayer". It makes sense that this style of combat is popular in MMOs for reasons so obvious I could be sued for repeating them, but hey, no reason it can't work solo.

Within this particular real-time tactics portacanado, Dragon Age Origins lands closer to the MMO-standard (Xenoblade-standard to me) rhythm of "do a bunch of actions then wait out a bunch of timers", in contrast to the Final Fantasy Action Time-Battle flow where a charge period separates a command from the designated action. I'm not gonna get too deep into that distinction because it's a pretty detailed topic of its own. Xenoblade's and Dragon Age's instant feedback suggests strategy through reservation and punishes rash overaggression, while Final Fantasy XII's action delay permits adaptation through cancellation, but requires prediction for timing. The former is more accommodating to a safe, passive play style, while the latter smiles on (TM) the risk-taker, though generally they accomplish the same strategic depth.

As in Xenoblade, space is the foremost resource of the battlefield in Dragon Age. The player can influence enemy spacing with skills that cause aggro, blocking, movement penalties, and knockback, and can take advantage of position with ranged attacks, flanking bonuses, and area of effect. AI-controlled party members can even be assigned range/movement tactics (e.g. "if enemy is elite rank stay out of melee range"). Final Fantasy XII kinda doesn't give a shit about space, leading the action back to the cinematic nature of turn-based battles. It gives lip service to the concept with ranged weapons and area of effect spells, but provides only the most minimal means for the player to control allied and enemy spacing (if it uses aggro it's too subtle to notice, there's definitely no blocking, and there's only a single spell for immobilize). Though the party leader can be freely controlled with the joystick during battle, they won't execute skills while under direct player influence, and when they do return to their script they'll automatically reposition. It's a bit arbitrary - a bit Chrono Triggery, if you will - that there are means to take advantage of spacing, but very few to set it up.

Then again, Final Fantasy XII's small-scale battles (rarely more than 3v3) tend to be either far too short or far too long for dynamic spacing to play a role. The game is more a traditional dungeon-crawler, challenging the player to manage expendable resources (HP, MP, and items) over a long span of battles. Defense isn't all that important when you're not at risk of dying in a single encounter. Every fight in Dragon Age and Xenoblade is one for survival, with HP and MP refreshing after every victory (for what it's worth, Final Fantasy XIII picked up this trend). The high stakes and tactical density do make a lot of sense for standard WRPG pacing (1 battle, 8 hours of walking around talking to people, the first third of a battle, 19 hours of one character reading his Lord of the Rings fanfiction), though luckily one of Dragon Age's great advantages over most BioWare shlock is that is has actual dungeons. Like, mazes where you have to fight strings of battles! They're still pretty scripted, but there's a bit of exploration that allows the player a risk/reward balance on choice of engagement.

When it comes to actually surviving those encounters, Xenoblade offers the least combat micromanagement of the group, with no scripting of companions and only a preset subset of player character actions available for orders. FFXII and DAO sport interfaces for the issuance of any command to any allied character on any target, thus theoretically allowing the player to control every single party action that transpires. They also allow the player to swap leads at any point, with FFXII going one step further to allowing full mid-battle party reconfiguration. While combat can be approached at a fully explicit level, the control and default behavior of the player-controlled character ultimately distinguish the systems beyond their basic rules and timing mechanics.

Final Fantasy XII allows the party lead to be scripted with the same tactical gambits as companions, providing a true hands-off auto-battle experience. With gambits enabled, the only thing that distinguishes the lead is that they're the focal point of the camera. If the player disables gambits on their leader and sets the timing to "Active", they can bring up a full menu of commands as battle progresses in real time, queuing actions up to one in advance. Navigating the menus and timing orders in real-time so they queue properly can be a bit cumbersome. If the timing is set to "Wait", the game will pause any time the menu is activated, removing the challenge of timing orders... but also slowing battles drastically. Thus the player is encouraged to stick with gambits and the choice between "Active" and "Wait" is more just minor difficulty tuning.

Dragon Age Origin requires the lead character to be controlled manually. They won't act autonomously, though if the player switches to a new lead, the previous one will pick up their scripted tactics where they left off. As in Final Fantasy XII, the player can bring up a menu (that here will always pause the action) and dictate actions, though again, it's cumbersome and slows down the pace. To speed things up, the command menu is supplemented with a handful of shortcuts, just like the preset action list from Xenoblade. Since a shortcut order can be initiated in real time with a single button press, it's to the action-seeking player's advantage to organize and prioritize their skills to fit into this schema.

Prioritization as determined through experimentation provides the fundamental structure of tactics scripting as well. DAO lays out all of its tactics behaviors from the onset, but is stingy with tactics slots. Each character starts with only two tactics slots and far more individual actions than that (even ignoring items and just looking at skills). As any actions not scripted will need to be manually ordered, this provides an optimization challenge on benefit vs. practicality for tactics. The player will want to cover risky scenarios that will relieve them of distracting monitoring in battle, e.g. "if health<25% use: potion". They'll also want to structure opportunistically ("if enemy-is-stunned use: melee attack") and to eliminate redundant micromanagement ("if enemy-is-any use: raise shield"). The diversity of tactical combinations (conditions multiplied by actions) that have to be pruned down to fit a few slots offers a great deal of customization. Defining class roles in the party is more a matter of tactics assignment than skill point distribution.

Final Fantasy XII's gambits are almost identical in setting and function. The biggest difference is that each gambit (i.e. tactical condition) must be acquire in the progression of the game. A few are found in chests and most are bought in shops, though they won't appear til fixed points in the story. I get the point of meting out gambits to tutorialize the player on mechanics before they start thinking too hard about strategy (learn to play the game before you let the game play the game), but the same process is accomplished more elegantly by the slot limits alone in DAO. Skill growth generally outpaces tactics slots, so if a character picks up a new skill, the player can't throw it at the AI without sacrificing something else. This will inherently trigger manual experimentation (with the new skill or the replacement of the sacrificed one), encouraging the player to learn their combat functions one at a time. Ironically, Final Fantasy XII ends up with a much harsher introduction because the player is forced to remember all of their strategies instead of saving them to a script. It is no surprise that I didn't like Final Fantasy XII at all until around the 15 hour mark where any but the most useful gambtis became available.

Overall Dragon Age does a great job of emphasizing the interplay between manual player orders and AI scripting, making the combat feel like one integrated system that requires both pieces to function. Final Fantasy XII stretches hybrid all the way to its extremes - at the starting point you've got nearly 100% orders-based combat that may as well be Final Fantasy VI, then through a really slow process of gambit introduction the game works its way all the way to full automation, with even the player character dependent on scripting. It's actually an interesting and unique scope, fittingly symbolic for the game that popularized AI-scripted auto-battling. It's just that the system without gambits (the Final Fantasy VI battle system) is kinda lame and sucky. So Dragon Age Origins feels more nuanced for trimming it down to that good middle part of the spectrum.

I realize I didn't talk a lot about Xenoblade here. My original concept was that Dragon Age Origins merges the rhythm, flow, and enemy interplay of Xenoblade's combat with the free-form tactics of Final Fantasy XII. What I came to realize is that as far as these high-level tactical structures are concerned, Xenoblade is mostly just a subset of Dragon Age. That's not to say it's redundant gameplay-wise - the absence of mid-battle pausing and character-swapping makes a pretty huge difference when it comes to conceiving strategies. Xenoblade builds on that challenge with systems for attack chaining, syncing, interrupts, and Distant Early Warning, so it's a more structured kind of depth. But let's cut this here where it's already really long. 

Platformer of the Month Dec. '14, Maximo: Ghosts to Glory Part 1

The platformer is the seminal genre of video game history. Always adapting to trends and technologies, never out of style, it provides an underpinning for the action games of era after era. Platformers are responsible for our sense of space and navigation; they form the bridge that transports reality into digital worlds. Without platformers, we'd all may as well be playing shuffleboard. Each month the Platformer of the Month Club dives into the deep well of platforming history, hoping to find forgotten treasure or even an extra life. 

Game: Maximo: Ghosts to Glory
Year: 2001 (JP), 2002 (NA)
Developer: Capcom Digital Studios
Publisher: Capcom
Platform: PS2

From the heartland of the 3D platforming era (1998-2003) comes this Capcom gem meant to bring Sir Arthur and his Ghosts 'n Goblins into a new era of 3D platforming (1998-2003). Unfortunately, Arthur fell into a wormhole somewhere during the transition and the developers were left with a new vaguely centurion-themed hero called Maximo (because the one thing we all remember about Ghosts 'n Goblins is that it was set in ancient Rome).

Perhaps more surprising for a Capcom game than for a 3D platformer, this one comes to us from the land of opportunity: Capcom's North American Digital Studios. While never finding its way to the "killer app" shelf, Maximo played an early role in distinguishing the PS2 as the console for old-school gamers - those who valued traditional challenge over wimpiness (Xbox) or not having any games to play (Gamecube).

To this day Ghosts to Glory nurtures a legacy as one of the hardest games of the sixth generation, forcing save management and limited lives on doughy soft gamers who were growing to view their $60 retail as a ticket to the end credits. But is Maximo: Ghosts to Glory really as grandma-rapingly brutal as legends hold? And if so, is it actually worth finishing? Hopefully you've got enough lives to reach the end of this feature and the answers you seek.

[Note: because this is a multi-hour, multi-session game, we've divided coverage into two parts, the first of which will be dedicated to mechanics and the contents of worlds 1 and 2.]

How is the game's aesthetic appeal?
Yourself: With character designs from the legendary guy who did character designs for Adventure Island, Maximo flaunts a googly-eyed cartoon look. This lighthearted approach works great for a mascot platformer, carrying through exaggeratedly warped landscapes. Matched with the game's would-be grisly subject matter - skeletons, swamp monsters, and grim reapers - the style takes on a Halloweeny sense of humor. It's more spooky than scary, if you will. The wackily chattering military skeletons can't help but remind me of Army of Darkness.

Sorry for the garbage screenshots. I can't find decent ones and have no way of capturing PS2 images.

The graphics hang onto the classic N64-era look, skimping on textures and favoring clean, well-defined polygonal surfaces. This accentuates the surreal impression of the shifting, sometimes floating architecture, allowing the game to look good even on a big-screen HDTV. Oh, also, everything is shot at a dutch angle. Just because.

Golem: The cartoon horror approach goes past Ghosts 'n Goblins and brings to mind something more like Decap Attack, where each enemy and setpiece has its own exaggerated, comic appeal. The way skeletons' skulls whirl in circles after being struck, or heck, just watching them shuffle around is worth a chuckle.

As for the soundtrack (by television's own Tommy Tallarico), it's sadly short on melodies; while fitting in tone, they aren't half as memorable and catchy as the visual presentation is. Ah well.

How does the player character and camera control?
Golem: Maximo walks at a decent pace, with just a tiny bit of momentum applied. The PS2's standard issue analog stick grants responsive 360 degree control. He can double jump in mid-air, which is useful for reaching higher, going farther, or reorienting his trajectory partway. There's more air control than in Ghosts 'n Goblins as well, allowing refinement of jumps in midair. Finally, Maximo knows a few sword swings (lateral, overhead, and air-to-ground stab) which are then complemented by new moves granted by pickups.

Yourself: Sword attacks are speedy and short range, but there's no one-two-three combo here. Maximo pauses after every swipe - a vulnerability more reminiscent of Castlevania than Mario 64. To his advantage, the horizontal swing covers an almost 270-degree arc. I find the double-jump to be more useful for re-steering than for heightening and lengthening leaps - it gives me an extra moment to consider my landing.

Maximo also wields a shield that can be held up to block attacks from directly in front. One of the most fundamental power-ups (which I only mention here cuz it gets its own button) is a Captain America shield toss.

The camera sits just above an over-the-shoulder angle, giving a long forward view with a relatively limited horizontal and vertical FOV. If we're comparing to the Super Mario 64 gold standard, it's similar to what Golem calls "The Close-up to Mario". There's no free analog control, but one shoulder button provides first-person free-look and another auto-center.

How are character-specific mechanics varied?
Yourself: In layman's terms, Maximo is a jack of all power-ups. His gear can be divided into two simple classes: sword magic and ability tokens. Sword magic is straightforward enough: depending on the element, the sword increases a degree in power and gains a special side effect - the ice sword freezes, the light sword is strong against undead, etc. Each sword power-up fills Maximo's magic meter, which then depletes anytime he lands a swing. When magic runs out, the element disappears.

Ability tokens are more varied. Some grant new attacks: the shield toss, a follow-up sword swipe, or a sword thrust that carries Maximo a bit forward. Others modify standard abilities, like a longer sword and a wider spike shockwave. A few are special moves that enhance the elemental swords, like a projectile and a magical shockwave. Then there are shield elements which can make blocking reflect damage, inflict knockback, or vacuum up coins.

Overall there are about a dozen different ability tokens. Abilities always stack (with a single exception: shield elements overwrite), though Maximo will lose most of them if he dies. From the start of the game he has three "lock-spots" - the first three tokens gathered fill these lock-spots and stick around even after death. With each world conquered, Maximo gains a new lock-spot, such that in the final world he can have seven abilities that carry on after death.

Power-ups have fixed natural habitats, meaning that early in the game you're likely to come across the basic abilities and later you'll find more powerful ones. Because of this, your locked abilities won't change much between playthroughs. The first three slots are almost guaranteed to be shield toss, thrust, and follow-up - that's pretty much all you encounter in World 1. Each sword element is generally associated with a certain world, though every once in a while you'll see one out of place (fire in particular shows up throughout).

Golem: Discovering the powerups of each world lends a sense of fun to the game. With the heritage that Maximo has, you might expect a harsh, punishing game where each powerup should be approached with cynicism--but instead, I always found myself excited to learn what new abilities Maximo would find. It was gratifying to learn that his sword could extend its reach or that he could freeze enemies. Plenty of powerups are throwaways, too, but a number of them are real boons.

What kind of items are present and how are they distributed?
Golem: Some items power Maximo up, like health potions for restoring health and extra armor for extending the health bar. Others grant new attributes or abilities, like the electric shield or the forward sword stab. Aside from those, you've got coins for buying items from shops as well as keys for opening chests and gates. All of those can be dropped by enemies, collected from chests, or found just laying around the world.

Each world in the game also has a particular container for storing fairies, which grant continues. For instance, in the first world, glowing headstones will cough up fairies if Maximo attacks them.

In short, there's quite a variety of items.

Yourself: The game has one of those classic platformer pause menus with six bobbing icons in the top right corner indicating how many glowing jubles you've collected, but in actuality collection is practically driven. Because lives are limited over the course of the game, continue-granting fairies are must-grabs. Coins too are doled out at a pace such that a player grabbing everything in sight will have access to many more life and armor power-ups than one rushing through.

What kind of navigable elements define the landscape?
Yourself: The first couple worlds tend to alternate between flat corridors adorned with dangerous terrain and small floating platforms that may or may not move. Note that when I say "floating" I don't necessarily mean "suspended in midair" - I just mean that they're islands surrounded on all sides by a hazard or drop.

The popular dangerous terrains for world 1 are some kind of purple grave moss from which erupt damaging skeletal hands and instant-killing hot lava. World 2 uses two similar equivalents: water to drag the player's speed down (which occasionally contains alligators who burst up for a quick hit) or water too deep for Maximo to tread (death). The placement is a bit different - the purple moss tends to be along paths or on small platforms, inflicting danger if the player dodges the not-accidentally-placed enemies in the safe zone. World 2's swamp water usually is the main path, with platforms along the side solely to provide a respite from the danger. World 2 also has an in between hazard in one particular level: tar. The player can walk through a tar pit for ten or so seconds before sinking down to a permanent grave.

Patterned moving platforms are fairly rare - in the first two worlds they only appear in a single stage. Traditional falling platforms also make an appearance in World 1's "Coffin Canyon". Jumps are more often made difficult by enemy occupation of the landing (and launching) area.

Flat, open spaces are very uncommon, so the player is rarely forced into arena combat. The choice is usually whether to jump past or linearly eliminate threats. Since the game is mostly made up of floating platforms, enemies won't chase you too far.

Golem: Maximo loves small platforms and thin corridors, so combat is often in tight quarters. This keeps the combat/platforming pace at a nice clip, making sure you rarely face more than a few enemies without an interesting jump.

What kind of enemies impede progress?

Golem: Enemies take a few hits to fell, but they're aggressive enough that each encounter demands focus. Each one has a distinct attack pattern, whether it's the shield-bearing skeleton that loves to block hits or the bomb-spitting flower that's vulnerable in close quarters. Their tactics never grow very complicated, and the game instead focuses on squads of enemies. Your standard skeleton may not seem like a big deal until he's got a flower backing him up from far off.

Yourself: Many enemies only spawn when the player approaches. Thus the first element of defense is simply awareness, the ability to grasp what kind of enemies might be spawning (each level has a fixed set), where they could spawn, and how to react at that time. A skeleton slowly pulling himself out of the earth is vulnerable to a quick aerial attack, while a coffin shooting up can bump the player away - or, at the correct distance, permit a preemptive strike. Later on metal coffins will do damage and bounce back sword swipes. Within the same realm, treasure chests occasionally turn out to be mimics, requiring the player to clear the area and take their time when collecting bounty. Just the spawning behavior here requires a lot of skill to manage.

Enemies tend to work within defined territories, from patrolling halberdiers to sentinel crows to river alligators. A key element to progression is learning to identify an enemy's threat zone in order to either isolate it or avoid it altogether. Crowds are dangerous, as Maximo's shield only faces one direction and a blocked attack causes a lengthy recoil; equally dangerous are the precarious ledges that border battlegrounds.

How are individual levels built from these elements? Does this facilitate exploration?
Yourself: Levels are pretty linear across the first couple worlds, sequencing together platforming corridors and usually more enemy-heavy rooms. A corridor might task the player with running across a series of cliffs that fall out from under their feet or jumping along moving platforms floating down a river. Typically projectile and patrolling enemies are laid out at fixed points that may make them easier to dodge then fighting, like an axe guy on an island near the floating debris or a halberdier guarding the far end of a plummeting bridge. Melee enemies tend to spawn where you least want them to, like on an open-edged platform that provides a resting point between tighter jumps.

World 2 seems to prefer this type of design, with "'Dem Bones" dedicated almost exclusively to long stretches of bone platforms over tar pits, "The Quick and the Dead" to the aforementioned debris sailing down a river, and "The Village Level" to high moving platforms and tree-branches. The aforementioned alligator-infested water propels the player forward without allowing them time to wander.

What I call "rooms" are areas where linear progression is halted by a locked door, large numbers of enemies, or a non-obvious path. The world 1 stage "Dead Heat" sees the player enter a courtyard containing six sarcophagi and three sepulchers. The only way to get through is by passing a locked gate guarded by a halberdier. To find the key, the player needs to open each thing that houses dead people. Enemies spawn once the player enters each sepulcher and a few spawn points lurk around the sarcophagi too. The door can't safely be unlocked without first killing the guard.

These are a bit more common in World 1. There's the thing I just said from "Dead Heat", and "Coffin Canyon" ends with a similar series of rooms, the first a graveyard with a locked door and the second another sepulcherville with a hidden switch. The opening stage, "Grave Danger", uses mostly wide graveyards with hidden paths and spawning enemies along either side.

Golem: Within each room, the path to the next room is typically laid before the player. For instance, in the "Dead Heat" sepulcher example, one road leads between a series of tombs and up to the locked gate. Meanwhile, each sepulcher is locked and coffins lie ready for ransacking. The thing is, once you open a lock or open a coffin, you're liable to trigger an enemy spawning. A quick playthrough will stick to the road, while a full clear will open up each sepulcher.

Enemies spawn only when Maximo gets close enough, so exploration comes with the risk of damage. Maximo rarely obscures the main path, making such excursions a choice rather than the result of haphazard trial-and-error.

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Clearly Maximo: Ghosts to Glory has a lot going on. We'll be back with part 2 to fill you in on the back half of the game, the bosses, and our final impressions!

What I'm Playing, December '14

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

December just goes to show that two weeks off is a lot of time to work on video games. People always act like it's weird or bad to take off work to do the thing I enjoy most in life: stay at home, sleep in, relax, play video games, and watch movies. Like somehow it's lazy of me to want to do those things, but going to the beach to get drunk for a week is this grand achievement. Sorry I enjoy things that you don't, other people. Sorry! Bye bye!

Special Recognition for Starting and Finishing

Mighty Final Fight (NES / 3DS VC)

This kind of dumb game brings Final Fight to your NES in a package that is admittedly more complete than the SNES port (it has all 3 characters but still no 2-player). There are also some Final Fight 3-ish special moves that I actually barely figured out and definitely didn't need to easily beat the game. My opinion on Final Fight and Capcom beat-em-ups has always been that they're overly simple and boring. Mighty Final Fight fits that generalization, but being a more condensed game at least presents a clear vision of you know what I'm just going to do a Weekly Beat-Em-Up on this. I like doing those.

Ultimate NES Remix (3DS VC)

Probably definitely shouldn't have bought this one. The premise of challenges built into NES games I've already played isn't that enticing. Then again, I loved indiezero's Retro Game Challenge and people on the Internet said "this is RGC but for real!" Also, the idea of remix stages which trade elements between games - like playing as Link in Donkey Kong! - seemed pretty neat.

While the game is addictive enough to beat, the content isn't nearly as complete as a comparison to Retro Game Challenge suggests. Where Challenge presented eight complete games and open-solution challenges within them ("beat Stage 1 without dying", "collect 1000 gold pieces"), Remix is more like WarioWare, where you are dropped arbitrarily into a situation and given an immediate goal ("kill all three Goombas on screen", "grab the 1UP before it falls"). In both cases the challenges are used to teach the player about the game, but RGC teaches the player goals and lets them learn the means, while Remix explicitly explains mechanics and tasks. This is what makes it a minigame collection while RGC was an anthology.

The game works with that premise, but is ultimately diminished by the lack of originality in the remix stages. While a few transplant elements from one game to another (play as SMB2 Peach in Lost Levels or play stage 1-1 of SMB in SMB3), most just add arbitrary restrictions that don't qualify as remixing so much as adding difficulty. For instance, decreasing the sight radius in SMB3 or giving Glass Joe a one-hit-KO punch in Punch-Out!!. There is way too much repetition in the remixes - considering there are only 50 such stages (75 if you count the bonus stages) and 16 games to work with, you'd expect each to be represented a couple times. Yet the vast majority of the remixes concentrate on the Mario games, with almost no creative takes on Kid Icarus, Excitebike, Kirby's Adventure, or half the other included titles. I realize Mario is the fan-favorite, but what's the point of reviving all these other games if you aren't going to give them any attention? The Mario games are the ones everyone's already played a million times (and that stand alone best) - Kid Icarus and Metroid for instance benefit much more from remixing.

Games Finished

Maximo: Ghosts to Glory (PS2)

The PS2 era sorta-Ghosts 'n Goblins game that was handled by Capcom's Western division. Check out the Platformer of the Month feature for more coverage.

Secret of Mana (SNES / Wii VC)

Secret of Mana belongs to an elite club of games that I've done a complete 180 on, from unmitigated dismissal to unmitigated fandom (Wonder Boy 3 and Max Payne 3 are two others I can think of right now). Mana is a weird game, built around a mixed real-time/turn-based combat system, AI companions, and usage-based leveling. The trick, as I've written before, is taking it in context of WRPGs rather than JRPGs. This isn't a slow-paced action game. It's a turn-based game with real-time positioning.

Getting the dragon and free open-world travel makes a big difference too. The game starts off with a weirdly cumbersome map - it's mostly linear, but there are islands you need to jump between, which requires finding the right cannon to take you where you need to go. Not a huge deal until you set the game aside for five months and come back without any idea how to get around or sane world structure to help. The dragon opens things up, making it easier to revisit areas and allowing quite a bit of non-linear exploration.

Maybe I fixate more on how I've come to like Mana than why I like it because the latter answer is simple. 1.) It has an incredible soundtrack. 2.) Character-building is entirely player-determined - you not only pick your fights, but pick which weapons/magic to use and in turn upgrade. 3.) Real-time combat provides strategic non-deterministic positioning - i.e. you can change the way a fight goes just by standing in a different place. 4.) Good boss fights that require unique puzzle-solving (e.g. the wall that heals itself and closes in on you). 5.) Minimal story.

Ninja Gaiden (NES / Wii VC)

Part of the Immaculate Conception of NES platformers, Ninja Gaiden alongside Super Mario Bros. 3, Mega Man 2, Castlevania, and Super C defined what it meant to be an action game in the late 1980s. Though they're all challenging in their own right, Ninja Gaiden is the one best known for insane difficulty. So perhaps it's fitting that it took me longer to beat than any other game I've ever played - yes, I've been working on Ninja Gaiden for approximately 20 years now, since I first got it on NES around age 6.

That being the case, I was kinda surprised that I knocked it out in a single sitting in just a couple hours. If ever I was led to suspect my new ADD meds are making me better at video games, this seems like proof.

Anyway, this is one of my higher ranked NES games, though I've never pretended to like NES games all that much. This is just one game that has satisfying action AND cool art AND great music.

Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos (NES / Wii VC)

This one increases the complexity of the level design with gimmicks, and of enemies with tracking behaviors, making for a more refined, but perhaps less distinguished version of its predecessor. It was actually the first one I beat - I picked it up as a reprieve from Ninja Gaiden II '08 and before I knew it was facing off against the final boss. Maybe it's familiarity, but this one also feels like it has the smoothest difficulty curve in the series. And the best music. But that ninja shadow gimmick is lame.

Actually against bosses the shadows are pretty cool to manipulate tactically. It's just in levels that they're pointless.

Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom (NES / Wii VC)

The least popular of the original trilogy, this one was hurt mostly by history. After the departure of the creative lead on the previous two games, the former art director took over. I don't know what that means, but what resulted was a game that is thematically the tightest but poorly balanced. It also feels a lot more flat and linear than the previous two, even if it makes solid use of unique level elements. The enemy design feels like a step down from 2, heavily featuring stationary turrets that slow the game's pace.

Worst of all Ninja Gaiden III had a rough localization process. See, as originally developed, the game is clearly the easiest of the three. It is much more linear and has a password system, lots of 1-ups, and gracious power-ups placement. This original Japanese version is what I played. The localization unit felt the game was too easy for a series known for sadistic difficulty - honestly, I agree - but they went too far in ramping up the challenge. Limited continues is an obnoxious twist that Ninja Gaiden had never needed before. Piled on top of way more enemies and double damage rates, they ensure the North American edition is a serious chore.

Ninja Gaiden II (Xbox 360)

What a delight this was. I genuinely do not understand why this game was ill-received or how reviewers had the audacity to call it redundant. Where Ninja Gaiden '04 is an action adventure that mixes Prince of Persia platforming with Zelda mazes and Devil May Cry beating them up, Ninja Gaiden II is pure murder action. It's more intense for it, and certainly harder to take in long sessions, but if it's fast-paced combat you like, this is the one to go for. Haven't put much time into hard (Mentor) mode yet, but if this isn't a new classic, I'm not Sammy Davis Jr., and I don't even know who that is.

I have more to say about Ninja Gaiden II, but I'll save it for the game of the year awards....

Ninja Gaiden Black (Xbox / Xbox Originals)

Alright truth time. I beat this one many years back, but I got so caught up in Ninja Gaiden Christmas Fever that I felt like I had to blow through it again. So, while technically this does not belong on this list, I just wanted to see a fifth Ninja Gaiden. It's an addiction, you know?

Black remains it's totally own awesome thing. It's slow and methodical, simple with inputs and weapons, and ultimately a game that is all about the enemies. NGII gets so bogus fast that it's hard to keep track of individuals so much as group tendencies, and the game's preference for large homogeneous groups emphasizes that. Black, by comparison, is nearly a fighting game. You need to know every move from every enemy and how to respond accordingly. Flying Swallow the military guy when he reloads? Always counter claw fiends as soon as they materialize? Izuna Drop, Izuna Drop, Izuna Drop? It seems a bit rigid, but enemy movement is so dynamic and the environments so varied that learning techniques gives way to adapting them to spacing.

It's also extremely cool that the game introduces new enemies for higher difficulties and Mission Mode - and I don't just mean more powerful palette swaps, I mean entirely new enemies. The speed also picks up as things get harder - I think I'd say the first stage of Hard mode is paced comparably to the first stage of NGII normal (Warrior) mode.

Games Started

Superhero League of Hoboken (MSDOS)

This is sort of a point-and-click-adventure-meets-RPG, but really it's just an RPG with a point-and-click interface. It's interesting to see a game with finite random battles (win enough and they go away), and I definitely like that there are no healing spells or items. I could really get into this game... if it wasn't called Superhero League of Hoboken. Unfortunately the 90s comic book humor really doesn't work for me here any better than in Comix Zone. It's occasionally funny, but generally just plain ugly.

If you think this image is funny, you will love this game.

One and Done

Bonk 3: Bonk's Big Adventure (Turbografx-16 / Wii VC)

Was doing a Let's Play of this, probably should save my commentary for the video. It's alright, not the worst Bonk I've played and not the best. Bonk just isn't that great a series. It seems pretty decent when it's been half a decade since I seriously played a Mario game, but then I play Super Mario Bros. 2 or New Super Mario Bros. Wii for 20 minutes and realize it's not. I did beat it, though not very impressively.