Earlier in this blog (somewhere around the Revolutionary War, I believe,) I last mentioned my earlier experience as a player of Dungeons and Dragons and other role-playing games. Of course, I never just wanted to play these games. I wanted to run them. This shouldn't be too surprising to any who reads this blog (and other mythological figures.) I not only love the act of creation, I love showing it to the public. I love it when my work is evaluated and, well, recognized. Narcisistic? A little, but that's just a part of being an artist. Besides, if nobody responds to your stuff, you can't improve on it.
Not that it didn't take me a while. I'll focus on the first of my not immediately catastrophic attempt at running a D&D game. There were at least three failures before this point. The first was when I browbeated my friends into the game. Things were already looking bad when one of my friends tore up his character sheet and quit midway through the first adventure. To be fair, he's been known to be a bit overdramatic. It nonetheless lasted for about five or six adventures before the rest of my barely interested friends gave up. Round two was even worse; I got some of my friends (including the guy who quit last time) and the barely interested friends of my brother. It lasted about three or four adventures and ended with the whole party being captured, but at least I got some interesting characters out of that one. Finally, I tried running a game, which eventually became my first 3rd edition game, with the D&D group in college. It went okay for a few adventures one year, but over the summer, two players broke up, one friend quit the group out of the fallout of that, and a fourth left the school, leaving me with about 1.5 players. So it goes.
Finally, after graduating from college, I gave up on the attempt to convince my friends and just posted for ads online. That eventually got me three or four players, and so the game began! This game started with and idea I got a couple of years ago prior. The first adventure used pre-generated characters of a fairly high level and absolutely no relation or alliance. All the characters hunted the Quill of Destiny, an artifact of incredible power that let its user write the future, but only for a limited time. The characters alternated between working together to pass challenges and earn orbs that extend the time they can use the Quill, and happily stealing from each other or fighting to claim the right of the Quill. It didn't help that half the selected starting characters are evil.
And so, at the end of the adventure, three characters made it to the end with the Quill, with one character dead after the others abandoned him to a dragon and another character repeatedly shot by another character. Of those three, two were evil, and they wrote of conquered dragon armies, evil empires built out of the undead, and in one particularly clever idea, day itself would only last a quarter as long as normal. The last guy was neutral and fortunately created some vestige of civilization, albeit underground, which is actually pretty helpful what with the only three hours a day of sun and the almost lifeless surface.
Now that the players could make their own characters, they became special forces for the main underground city. This time, I went creative/weird, and I made them all partially amnesiac. They knew their history, but none of the names of their friends, family, hometowns, etc. It was only after meeting these people that they remembered these names; as if hearing it the first time triggered their memory. Oh, and they all met a strange shadowy figure the day they got the amnesia, saying that they were her children and it was their job to destroy the "usurpers."
The campaign sort of blipped over that last bit for a while, though. It initially is about the characters running a literal underground resistance against the evil orc/dragon and undead empires, but soon they discover a much worse threat. In addition to all the other changes to the standard D&D setting, I included another one; the standard gods were gone, to be replaced by own pantheon. That pantheon consisted of twelve goddesses known as the Sisters. That's right, I got them from the Valley game I mentioned ages ago. But the characters only knew about 11 goddesses. In this world like the original, Bas, the only evil goddess, fell and was forgotten. However, somebody discovered her, and she is slowly rising to power. When she does so physically, she will be a goddess manifest on the material plane, with all the unpleasantness that suggests.
The plot soon revolved on fighting Bas and her forces while simultaneously learning more about the strange world's history. The Quill, it turned out, has been around for millions of years and was created deliberately by a power higher than the gods. Ideally, it appears every time the world was building to an unstoppable climax, leading to a final victory of good or evil. The Quill let some mid-level forces take over and change the story completely, and it would be centuries or millennia before another climax would develop. As a result, there were the ruins of countless civilizations buried in the world, often with advanced technology or other forces unknown to a typical fantasy game.
This time, however, things went wrong. When Bas fell, she made a crater that penetrated many of those ruins, and as she started to recover, she gained access to powers that should have been left alone. And as the players continued their adventures, they discovered more of these ancient land, including an entire hi-tech city (with a nuclear weapon) currently inhabited by the surviving good and neutral dragons.
But all things must end, and this campaign didn't end well, though it came close, right on to the edge. My biggest problem with my longer-lasting games is consistent players. That's what comes from recruiting via online and otherwise using former strangers. Often it's just a matter of time, of course. People get busy, life happens. Occasionally it's the person, of course. In one case, which led to me taking a month off and switching to a game every two weeks instead of every week, a player cussed me out and quit the game after learning I was talking online about weakening his vastly overpowered magical armor. Other times, there were fights between players, and I am not good at conflict resolution, at least not after people are already angry.
But this game died to more traditional reasons. All of a sudden, two players, including the last one to still be there from Day 1, were moving out of state. One of said players was hosting the game for a good year by then, so we lost our regular game site. And that means losing another player who came from the other direction. Half the party gone, we had to end the regular sessions. We tried to at least finish the game by playing online, and for an adventure or two, that worked or came close to it. But in the end, people just drifted away. Everyone was epic level, half the people had barely functioning internet connections or just couldn't show up often, and combat already takes ludicrously long at that stage even before you factor in the delays from online gaming. The campaign's story ended with a few final entries into my enworld-based story hour, using a few comments from the players to modify things. At the most, we were three adventures away from ending the campaign.
That ending has haunted me ever since. What could I have done better? The easy answer, of course, would be to cut out some of the less important adventures, but how would I know when the game would suddenly end? Or I should have accepted that the online game was a half-assed fix at best and sped to the campaign's conclusion, which started with an epic war against Bas and her forces. That led to an actual final battle between Bas herself and the party, of course. But it concluded with the party getting access to the Quill of Destiny just as the two former users and current emperors attempt to use its power a second time. Both sides would attack Bas' own surviving generals, letting the future of the world be rewritten. Now, this last bit I was able to at least do with input from the players, though it resulted in the very climax the Quill was supposed to avoid. So the world of the Quill came to an end, its survivors in a state of eternal "Happily ever after."
As for the amnesia and “destroy the usurpers” thing, it came up much, much later and was promptly ignored by the players. Basically, they were all (or most, at that point) former servants of Lolth, who was pissed that the non-evil underground empire largely consisted of drow who reformed and no longer worshipped her. So Lolth revived her servants in new bodies and altered the memories of everyone on the plane to think the characters, who mostly replaced people that actually died in the real history, were there all along. They never figured that much out, so it never factored into their writings in the Quill, but I thought it was a clever idea nonetheless.
But I wasn't entirely satisfied with that ending, and I assumed neither were some of the characters who didn't write about such things. In the end, it provided me for the initial inspiration of Mesion, the campaign setting I'm currently running. How will it end? I can't say. The characters are 19th level, the world is within months of possibly ending, and in real life, I lost my job and may have to move by the end of August. This could be another heartbreak, or it could be the end I always wanted in my stories. But I'll be sure to say either way, and give a bit more detail about my storytelling method in general, when the time comes!
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Thursday, April 30, 2009
My Life: Employment For a Bit (Originally to be posted on April 30th)
Well, technically I'm working again. This will be true until, at last estimate, Monday. It's a temp job I got, and it's just basic data entry, but hey, it's a start. And it's more money than I make from normal unemployment. That's the good news. The bad news? My car's engine needs repair that will cost me most of any additional money I make. Also my back decided it hated me. I've had my back go out at times, and it usually was pretty bad; I had to walk with a hunch for a few days, exercise is difficult, and whatnot. But that hasn't happened in a while, and this was different. It felt like my side was the source of the problem, specifically my lower left rib. Ironically, the exercises I used to help my other back problems might have caused this one! Sigh.
But as depressed as I was around Tuesday, I'm feeling a bit better now. My back is at least 30% better, though I'm waiting until at least Sunday to actually get some exercise. And tomorrow's a Friday! Which means something again! Meanwhile, the screenplay I mentioned earlier is finished, or at least its first draft is. Now, all I have to do is get it critiqued by friends and family. From there, I'll do a few more drafts and even try to find an agent. Meanwhile, my next task is to find school, preferably something of the design area. If I can't find a permanent on job by August, my lease runs out in August anyway, so why not? But I'll explore that in details later.
But as depressed as I was around Tuesday, I'm feeling a bit better now. My back is at least 30% better, though I'm waiting until at least Sunday to actually get some exercise. And tomorrow's a Friday! Which means something again! Meanwhile, the screenplay I mentioned earlier is finished, or at least its first draft is. Now, all I have to do is get it critiqued by friends and family. From there, I'll do a few more drafts and even try to find an agent. Meanwhile, my next task is to find school, preferably something of the design area. If I can't find a permanent on job by August, my lease runs out in August anyway, so why not? But I'll explore that in details later.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
My Ideas: This Time Lost Beat Me To It
Today, we'll focus on the second of the RPGMaker games that I actually finished. Following my relative success with Oasis, I took a little time off to think about my next idea. I wanted to do something completely different this time, especially after playing the games others created. Some were ye olde generice RPG, yes. Many were even more cliched and formulaic than Oasis. But others found much more clever ways to use the system. The most famous of these innovative games was Remote Control, a game about a guy who is trapped in a television and forced to fight their way through popular (at the time) television show parodies like Pokemon and Xena. There were almost no random encounters and some incredible mini-games, even a fairly thorough dating game.
These inspired me to do something different, but they weren't my direct inspiration. That came from...a movie I don't know the name of. It was a minor action movie a decade ago about a heist that took place during a flood. That flood was what caught my attention. There was the urgency the average grind-happy video game lost, and the ever-shifting environment that turns peaceful settings into new hazards. After working on the idea for a bit, I was ready to get started.
And that was fine at the time. But then the idea got tricky. I'll demonstrate by explaining the plot. A guy wakes up on a mysterious island (I know,) with strange monsters and effects (I KNOW,) along with many people with mysterious, sinister pasts (AARRRGH!) I love Lost, but now I have to rationalize the similarities whenever I mention it. Like I did just now!
Eh, it's different enough that I can continue, and the game play itself is closer to Chrono Cross. I did away with both random encounters and standardized experience. Standard encounters can usually be avoided, though in some areas the path is too narrow to avoid the moving, visual enemies. And while they give money and items (more on that later,) they don't increase levels. Instead, experience is only given in boss fights. The normal path through the game is set so your main character at least will gain exactly enough experience to gain a level at each boss. However, the game is extremely non-linear, and fighting bosses elsewhere can be used to gain experience that helps boost levels.
But exploring is risky in addition to rewarding. Though normal healing and magic-bumping items are available, they're extremely rare, especially in the first couple of days. Instead, health and magic (called sanity points,) are only fully filled when you rest. However, whenever you rest, the day ends. And while the characters don't notice it on the first two days, every day, the island sinks a little, raising the waters. This is most important on the third day, when the island's lone village is flooded. Without the character's help, most of the island's inhabitants will drown or be killed by the monsters that rise up from the water. From there on, the stores are gone, and you have to pick among the surviving villagers as you explore. You will often find that if you go through an easier path to a location and rest there, you can't go back the same way.
All this is tied to the game's plot, as well. After the major twist on day three, the main character (the symbolically named Avery, damn you once again Lost!) learns that every other person on the island, even his friends and ambiguous lover, are guilty of murder or at least manslaughter! This leads them to conclude that the island is a sort of prison and punishment, or perhaps a test of will to the survivors. If they can survive, they might even go free. The mystery is whether the villagers deserve it and why Avery, who is innocent, is also stuck on the island.
The story's mystery and the players' freedom to explore as they see fit also means they can take advantage of the day system as well. Notably, they can use The Machine, a giant factory that characters can use to get new equipment. This is especially helpful after the village and its stores are destroyed, but while The Machine can be used to make more powerful weapons and armor than the village ever sold, it also had its costs. In addition to the game's money system, players had to find materials used to make weapons and armor. Finally, The Machine takes a day to make its products, delaying the results and ultimately making it inaccessible at the end of the game's time limit.
The day system also affects the ending. This affects how many other villagers besides Avery survive the island; the "bad ending" occurs if you wait until the last day to beat the game and only lets Avery live, and the "good ending" lets most survivors of the village (which can't be ever character) survive if the player finishes with at least day to spare. There are also hidden options; the worst ending occurs if you finish on day 2 or if you finish without witnessing the village flood or meeting the survivors afterwards, and the best ending requires Avery to beat the game alone on Day 1, which lets all the characters live.
This is nearly impossible, however, on the first game, so I implemented a New Game+ feature that lets the player keep the level, skills, and equipment of Avery and any other surviving villager. This also grants access to other hidden secrets, especially a hidden area located on the other side of the island from the village. This marsh sinks on Day 2 (the only place to do so,) has the hardest enemies to date, and is guarded by a nearly invincible boss. But beating it grants access to enough high-level enemies to boost the entire party to triple the level available in the normal game and a boss rush feature. But this was no ordinary boss rush. Instead, I got permission to use bosses from a good dozen other RPG Maker games!
Features like this make this my proudest actual game. Its writing may be amateurish compared to my modern standards, but inserting letters one at a time via game pad is agony in any situation. And the puzzles, customization and exploration, attempts at a deeper story, believable characters, and special features are enough for me to use this game in my portfolio, on the rare occasion it matters, even today. Hell, with enough of a budget, I'd probably try to make it today!
These inspired me to do something different, but they weren't my direct inspiration. That came from...a movie I don't know the name of. It was a minor action movie a decade ago about a heist that took place during a flood. That flood was what caught my attention. There was the urgency the average grind-happy video game lost, and the ever-shifting environment that turns peaceful settings into new hazards. After working on the idea for a bit, I was ready to get started.
And that was fine at the time. But then the idea got tricky. I'll demonstrate by explaining the plot. A guy wakes up on a mysterious island (I know,) with strange monsters and effects (I KNOW,) along with many people with mysterious, sinister pasts (AARRRGH!) I love Lost, but now I have to rationalize the similarities whenever I mention it. Like I did just now!
Eh, it's different enough that I can continue, and the game play itself is closer to Chrono Cross. I did away with both random encounters and standardized experience. Standard encounters can usually be avoided, though in some areas the path is too narrow to avoid the moving, visual enemies. And while they give money and items (more on that later,) they don't increase levels. Instead, experience is only given in boss fights. The normal path through the game is set so your main character at least will gain exactly enough experience to gain a level at each boss. However, the game is extremely non-linear, and fighting bosses elsewhere can be used to gain experience that helps boost levels.
But exploring is risky in addition to rewarding. Though normal healing and magic-bumping items are available, they're extremely rare, especially in the first couple of days. Instead, health and magic (called sanity points,) are only fully filled when you rest. However, whenever you rest, the day ends. And while the characters don't notice it on the first two days, every day, the island sinks a little, raising the waters. This is most important on the third day, when the island's lone village is flooded. Without the character's help, most of the island's inhabitants will drown or be killed by the monsters that rise up from the water. From there on, the stores are gone, and you have to pick among the surviving villagers as you explore. You will often find that if you go through an easier path to a location and rest there, you can't go back the same way.
All this is tied to the game's plot, as well. After the major twist on day three, the main character (the symbolically named Avery, damn you once again Lost!) learns that every other person on the island, even his friends and ambiguous lover, are guilty of murder or at least manslaughter! This leads them to conclude that the island is a sort of prison and punishment, or perhaps a test of will to the survivors. If they can survive, they might even go free. The mystery is whether the villagers deserve it and why Avery, who is innocent, is also stuck on the island.
The story's mystery and the players' freedom to explore as they see fit also means they can take advantage of the day system as well. Notably, they can use The Machine, a giant factory that characters can use to get new equipment. This is especially helpful after the village and its stores are destroyed, but while The Machine can be used to make more powerful weapons and armor than the village ever sold, it also had its costs. In addition to the game's money system, players had to find materials used to make weapons and armor. Finally, The Machine takes a day to make its products, delaying the results and ultimately making it inaccessible at the end of the game's time limit.
The day system also affects the ending. This affects how many other villagers besides Avery survive the island; the "bad ending" occurs if you wait until the last day to beat the game and only lets Avery live, and the "good ending" lets most survivors of the village (which can't be ever character) survive if the player finishes with at least day to spare. There are also hidden options; the worst ending occurs if you finish on day 2 or if you finish without witnessing the village flood or meeting the survivors afterwards, and the best ending requires Avery to beat the game alone on Day 1, which lets all the characters live.
This is nearly impossible, however, on the first game, so I implemented a New Game+ feature that lets the player keep the level, skills, and equipment of Avery and any other surviving villager. This also grants access to other hidden secrets, especially a hidden area located on the other side of the island from the village. This marsh sinks on Day 2 (the only place to do so,) has the hardest enemies to date, and is guarded by a nearly invincible boss. But beating it grants access to enough high-level enemies to boost the entire party to triple the level available in the normal game and a boss rush feature. But this was no ordinary boss rush. Instead, I got permission to use bosses from a good dozen other RPG Maker games!
Features like this make this my proudest actual game. Its writing may be amateurish compared to my modern standards, but inserting letters one at a time via game pad is agony in any situation. And the puzzles, customization and exploration, attempts at a deeper story, believable characters, and special features are enough for me to use this game in my portfolio, on the rare occasion it matters, even today. Hell, with enough of a budget, I'd probably try to make it today!
Thursday, April 2, 2009
My Ideas: I'm Writing Another Screenplay! Yay!
For the second year in a row, I'm planning on doing the Script Frenzy. And for the first year in a row, I give a damn. Well, that's not fair. Last year, I wrote for the experience of writing a screenplay, and in most senses, I succeeded. Technically, I failed to submit it in time due to a misunderstanding of when it ended, but I did write 100 pages in 30 days, so in theory it worked. However, it didn't really work as a screenplay. I didn't know enough about the design of a screenplay, to start with. Oh sure, I got the right font and an approximation of the correct layout, but before long it just became another novel with the occasional stage directions. More importantly, I didn't really care. I had a very novel idea, one I wouldn't mind revisiting, but the characters, the plot itself, and every complex detail was figured out as I went, with no outline or even assumptions going in.
Part of it was the timing, though. At the time, I was early into a horrific project at work that ate up much of my free time and more importantly my creative energies. This time around, I'm able to make unemployment work FOR me.
But that's not the important difference. The main difference is the topic of the screenplay. Like most of my novels and notably not in my first screenplay, I used characters, settings, and ideas that I developed for years. But this is different, because it's not just some old concepts. This screenplay is adapted from the pilot and a few other episodes of a television series I wanted to make since approximately high school. Based on characters I made at twelve.
This is different from my novels. This isn't about myself, or because I have something to prove. I think I accomplished this over the years. This is the fulfillment of a dream. At the minimum, this is getting a story out of my head after years of contemplations, maturation, and reconsideration. And hopefully, it could be more. I see this involving agents, and friends offering rewriting suggestions, and even selling this to a publisher. And in the wackily optimistic part of my brain, it involves sharing it with the likes of Tim Burton or Neil Gaiman (yeah, it's an animated film) and having them vouch for me, or even doing the direction! Hey, you can't write fiction without having fantastic dreams.
Part of it was the timing, though. At the time, I was early into a horrific project at work that ate up much of my free time and more importantly my creative energies. This time around, I'm able to make unemployment work FOR me.
But that's not the important difference. The main difference is the topic of the screenplay. Like most of my novels and notably not in my first screenplay, I used characters, settings, and ideas that I developed for years. But this is different, because it's not just some old concepts. This screenplay is adapted from the pilot and a few other episodes of a television series I wanted to make since approximately high school. Based on characters I made at twelve.
This is different from my novels. This isn't about myself, or because I have something to prove. I think I accomplished this over the years. This is the fulfillment of a dream. At the minimum, this is getting a story out of my head after years of contemplations, maturation, and reconsideration. And hopefully, it could be more. I see this involving agents, and friends offering rewriting suggestions, and even selling this to a publisher. And in the wackily optimistic part of my brain, it involves sharing it with the likes of Tim Burton or Neil Gaiman (yeah, it's an animated film) and having them vouch for me, or even doing the direction! Hey, you can't write fiction without having fantastic dreams.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Reviews: Obsession, Country Style
Readers (if I had any many) may recall that almost exactly a year ago, I heaped nearly endless praise on a video game, a game that took me about a hundred plus hours to beat. That game, Persona 3, apparently caught the interest of more people than me, making it the first game of the series to be a nearly mainstream hit. And so the game spawned an expansion less than a year later, which I admittedly didn't play, and a full sequel also about a year later. That I played. Oh how I played it.
Nearly everything in Persona 3 is also in Persona 4, so I won't go into detail about it. Like the original, Persona 4 is a fairly traditional RPG where the party doesn't travel the world as usual in these games; they barely leave a single city, and instead it involves the passage of time in that location, as the situation gets apocalyptic. Game play is a mix of randomized dungeons that get unlocked with time, offering tougher enemies that must be matched, and social situations like a dating sim that enhances your character's abilities in combat. The full review can be found here:
http://conqueringcreativity.blogspot.com/2008/03/reviews-thanks-you-makers-of-most.html
The primary difference between the two games is the location, and as a result the entire feel of the game. Persona 3 took place in a big city, while Persona 4's setting is a small, rural town. This change could have been cosmetic, but it permeates throughout the game. You can see it as early as the game's opening menu. Persona 3 opened to a cold, static image done in frigid blues while a minimalist tune plays in the background; the same music played in the lobby of the main dungeon. Persona 4 opens to a scene in the main character's high school, as images of your friends run in and a comforting, elegant remix of the game's main theme plays, inviting the player in.
In Persona 3, everything is mechanical and hurried, matching the frenzy of a city. Almost throughout the entire game, a countdown ominously warns how much time the characters have before another inevitable conflict or narrative event. A calendar is available at all times, letting you schedule nearly everything in advance (except when the unexpected occurs to wreck everything.) Every day is meticulously divided into three parts. You spend after school periods building social links, evenings dungeon crawling or boosting your stats, and late nights studying. In Persona 4, you couldn't access the calendar if you wanted, and the only thing warning you of future deadlines is the weather report. You have two times to freely explore, after-school and night. And night is...limited. Nothing says "you're in the country" like trying to go out in the evening and the game telling you, basically, "where would you go?" And at least at first, the answer is nowhere.
The lack of structure, however, offers the characters a needed independence. In Persona 3, within the first hour or so, the hero moves into town and learns that all his dorm-mates are part of a secret society that fights demons, and he gets press ganged into saving the world. In Persona 4, the characters have to learn themselves that there is another threat from another world, and it is tied to the murder mystery that already claimed two lives. Characters can't even enter the new dungeon until investigating the lives of the victims, and they won't even know how long they have until they learn when the next foggy day will occur, which occurs after multiple days of rain in a row.
Speaking of weather, one should comment on this change as well. The weather on any given day can be sunny, cloudy, rainy, or foggy. This changes the availability of social links (sports and most school friends are unavailable when it rains,) what you can catch when fishing, what restaurants are available to eat, and even the music. It quickly becomes as integral to the settings as the town itself, and even a character in its own right.
But enough about how this game is different, the important question is if it's better. The game's first improvement is that frankly, the characters are much better. Most of Persona 3's party members are interesting, but they tend towards obnoxiousness and many are not all that believable. The Persona 4 party conversely felt like a real group of friends. The biggest star in my eyes is Chie, a short-haired, kung-fu loving tomboy who likes to sing songs about steak. Yosuke, the party's best male friend, has a tendency to act like a jerk at times (though who doesn't,) but at his best, he has a self-deprecating charm reminiscent of Xander from Buffy at his best. And the regular S.Links are much better, with none of the uncomfortably creepy friends that want to date teachers, form cults, destroy their legs for high school sports, or develop creepy fetishes for Japan.
The game play also corrects for much of the original game's gaps in believability. Gone are the need to receive cell phone calls at random days of the week to even do a thing on Sundays or an entire empty summer that prevent you from seeing your friends, even the ones you live with. Now, Sundays and school vacations at least let you see your party member friends and the invitation calls are rarer and more superfluous, indicating special events instead. And your freedom to do new events is much more varied and free. You can do more social links at night, or you can make lunches and share them with friends, boosting your links that way. And without karaoke clubs and whatnot, the main characters can spend time and gain abilities and social links through doing simple part time jobs, reading books, and going out to jobs to meet people there. Consequences link everywhere. Your right response can raise an ability mid-conversation at any point, going to school events raise abilities and related social links, giving answers to your friends in class raise these relationships, and even minor social links are interrelated, with one social link giving bonuses to another as they reveal crushes and friendships between them. It's telling that, despite giving the player an entire month less of time (two months for the better endings,) and moving dungeon explorations to the daytime, it's possible to maximize all social links with a month and a half to spare, while in Persona 3 you had to do everything perfect to the day to maximize them at the last possible moment.
Now, there are still some downsides, including new ones. The worst is a side effect of moving the dungeons to the daytime. The game removed the status effects that come from fighting in the dungeon so long that you get tired. As a result, you could theoretically stay in the dungeon indefinitely. Now, your health and magic never automatically regenerate anymore, so that creates a new limitation, but as you get higher level, new options become available and this becomes less of an issue. But that means that to optimize the game's limited days, you're expected to defeat entire sections of dungeons in a single day, and often you have to then go through the entire dungeon a second time just to beat a bonus boss. Instead of the sprints through the dungeons in Persona 3, which rarely took longer than half an hour or an hour at the most, you could be stuck spending several hours trapped in a single dungeon. The balance between social and dungeon elements gets thrown off, which is the entire point. You don't have to play it this way, mind, but every time you don't, the odds of you getting all the social links get less and less. I don't want to be guilted into tedium. Speaking of tedium, the game's introduction is the longest this side of Dragon Warrior/Quest 7. It takes a good three hours to even see your first fight, and even longer before you can explore the city and dungeons freely. Some of this time sink is a necessary evil when you expect the characters to learn about the story themselves, but some editing would have made it a bit more bearable.
In conclusion, the best way of describing the game is by the mental fugue state it eventually causes. The lulling, ever-changing music, the way that days just pass as friendships are made and developed, the strange sidequests that involve finding stickers for children or building toy models to satisfy the magical fox...at times, it practically feels like a fever dream. But a good fever dream. It takes the revealing, sometimes sad ideal of childhood love and friendship that the last game fulfilled and made it less like a chore and more like an experience. And you can't expect more than that from a game about social life.
Oh, yes, one more thing. For another, far less serious look at this game, check out the endurance run that Giant Bomb is doing. Thrill as they verrrrry slowly play a 90 hour game in half an hour segments a day, most likely for the rest of their lives. You can check out the first one here, and the rest can be found quite easily on the endurance run button, at least for now.
http://www.giantbomb.com/endurance-run-persona-4-part-01/17-219/
Nearly everything in Persona 3 is also in Persona 4, so I won't go into detail about it. Like the original, Persona 4 is a fairly traditional RPG where the party doesn't travel the world as usual in these games; they barely leave a single city, and instead it involves the passage of time in that location, as the situation gets apocalyptic. Game play is a mix of randomized dungeons that get unlocked with time, offering tougher enemies that must be matched, and social situations like a dating sim that enhances your character's abilities in combat. The full review can be found here:
http://conqueringcreativity.blogspot.com/2008/03/reviews-thanks-you-makers-of-most.html
The primary difference between the two games is the location, and as a result the entire feel of the game. Persona 3 took place in a big city, while Persona 4's setting is a small, rural town. This change could have been cosmetic, but it permeates throughout the game. You can see it as early as the game's opening menu. Persona 3 opened to a cold, static image done in frigid blues while a minimalist tune plays in the background; the same music played in the lobby of the main dungeon. Persona 4 opens to a scene in the main character's high school, as images of your friends run in and a comforting, elegant remix of the game's main theme plays, inviting the player in.
In Persona 3, everything is mechanical and hurried, matching the frenzy of a city. Almost throughout the entire game, a countdown ominously warns how much time the characters have before another inevitable conflict or narrative event. A calendar is available at all times, letting you schedule nearly everything in advance (except when the unexpected occurs to wreck everything.) Every day is meticulously divided into three parts. You spend after school periods building social links, evenings dungeon crawling or boosting your stats, and late nights studying. In Persona 4, you couldn't access the calendar if you wanted, and the only thing warning you of future deadlines is the weather report. You have two times to freely explore, after-school and night. And night is...limited. Nothing says "you're in the country" like trying to go out in the evening and the game telling you, basically, "where would you go?" And at least at first, the answer is nowhere.
The lack of structure, however, offers the characters a needed independence. In Persona 3, within the first hour or so, the hero moves into town and learns that all his dorm-mates are part of a secret society that fights demons, and he gets press ganged into saving the world. In Persona 4, the characters have to learn themselves that there is another threat from another world, and it is tied to the murder mystery that already claimed two lives. Characters can't even enter the new dungeon until investigating the lives of the victims, and they won't even know how long they have until they learn when the next foggy day will occur, which occurs after multiple days of rain in a row.
Speaking of weather, one should comment on this change as well. The weather on any given day can be sunny, cloudy, rainy, or foggy. This changes the availability of social links (sports and most school friends are unavailable when it rains,) what you can catch when fishing, what restaurants are available to eat, and even the music. It quickly becomes as integral to the settings as the town itself, and even a character in its own right.
But enough about how this game is different, the important question is if it's better. The game's first improvement is that frankly, the characters are much better. Most of Persona 3's party members are interesting, but they tend towards obnoxiousness and many are not all that believable. The Persona 4 party conversely felt like a real group of friends. The biggest star in my eyes is Chie, a short-haired, kung-fu loving tomboy who likes to sing songs about steak. Yosuke, the party's best male friend, has a tendency to act like a jerk at times (though who doesn't,) but at his best, he has a self-deprecating charm reminiscent of Xander from Buffy at his best. And the regular S.Links are much better, with none of the uncomfortably creepy friends that want to date teachers, form cults, destroy their legs for high school sports, or develop creepy fetishes for Japan.
The game play also corrects for much of the original game's gaps in believability. Gone are the need to receive cell phone calls at random days of the week to even do a thing on Sundays or an entire empty summer that prevent you from seeing your friends, even the ones you live with. Now, Sundays and school vacations at least let you see your party member friends and the invitation calls are rarer and more superfluous, indicating special events instead. And your freedom to do new events is much more varied and free. You can do more social links at night, or you can make lunches and share them with friends, boosting your links that way. And without karaoke clubs and whatnot, the main characters can spend time and gain abilities and social links through doing simple part time jobs, reading books, and going out to jobs to meet people there. Consequences link everywhere. Your right response can raise an ability mid-conversation at any point, going to school events raise abilities and related social links, giving answers to your friends in class raise these relationships, and even minor social links are interrelated, with one social link giving bonuses to another as they reveal crushes and friendships between them. It's telling that, despite giving the player an entire month less of time (two months for the better endings,) and moving dungeon explorations to the daytime, it's possible to maximize all social links with a month and a half to spare, while in Persona 3 you had to do everything perfect to the day to maximize them at the last possible moment.
Now, there are still some downsides, including new ones. The worst is a side effect of moving the dungeons to the daytime. The game removed the status effects that come from fighting in the dungeon so long that you get tired. As a result, you could theoretically stay in the dungeon indefinitely. Now, your health and magic never automatically regenerate anymore, so that creates a new limitation, but as you get higher level, new options become available and this becomes less of an issue. But that means that to optimize the game's limited days, you're expected to defeat entire sections of dungeons in a single day, and often you have to then go through the entire dungeon a second time just to beat a bonus boss. Instead of the sprints through the dungeons in Persona 3, which rarely took longer than half an hour or an hour at the most, you could be stuck spending several hours trapped in a single dungeon. The balance between social and dungeon elements gets thrown off, which is the entire point. You don't have to play it this way, mind, but every time you don't, the odds of you getting all the social links get less and less. I don't want to be guilted into tedium. Speaking of tedium, the game's introduction is the longest this side of Dragon Warrior/Quest 7. It takes a good three hours to even see your first fight, and even longer before you can explore the city and dungeons freely. Some of this time sink is a necessary evil when you expect the characters to learn about the story themselves, but some editing would have made it a bit more bearable.
In conclusion, the best way of describing the game is by the mental fugue state it eventually causes. The lulling, ever-changing music, the way that days just pass as friendships are made and developed, the strange sidequests that involve finding stickers for children or building toy models to satisfy the magical fox...at times, it practically feels like a fever dream. But a good fever dream. It takes the revealing, sometimes sad ideal of childhood love and friendship that the last game fulfilled and made it less like a chore and more like an experience. And you can't expect more than that from a game about social life.
Oh, yes, one more thing. For another, far less serious look at this game, check out the endurance run that Giant Bomb is doing. Thrill as they verrrrry slowly play a 90 hour game in half an hour segments a day, most likely for the rest of their lives. You can check out the first one here, and the rest can be found quite easily on the endurance run button, at least for now.
http://www.giantbomb.com/endurance-run-persona-4-part-01/17-219/
Thursday, March 5, 2009
My Ideas: Let's do someone else's idea this time.
The last post has inspired me to post something new for my ideas. As proud as I am of my original ideals, I also enjoy contemplating other game series and considering the paths they would take. Specifically, I consider how I would make the games if I had incredible power of the game industry. Would my version be better? How would my voice influence the game?
I already did this since I was eight or so with my Megaman ideas. But let's face it, a new Megaman isn't much for innovation. Toss in eight bosses with adjective names, design some levels, figure out the skeletal plot tying it together, and new game! Mind you, even here, I tended to go epic a few games in, but it never really became too complex, especially since I last made one in high school.
But I think Nintendo inspires me to try this again lately. Partially it comes from the long history of the games, with characters still going strong from my childhood and strong archetypal conflicts. At the same time, the games haven't changed much, encouraging brainstorming. What if the Zelda games had slightly different settings?
Even less story-driven series, like Mario Kart, can be innovated through some sort of plot. Smash Brothers Brawl inspired me on this case. They could have just as easily made another chaotic fighting game with slightly better graphics. Instead, they created an entire adventure mode featuring a unique foe that forced all the Nintendo characters (and some Konami and Sega characters,) to unite for their mutual survival.
And since the new Mario Kart caused so many...issues in me, I thought that was another series that deserved a more mature treatment, inspiring new levels as a result. In my version, I'll take advantage of the more serious plot of Mario Galaxy. Based on that game's ending, where the entire Mario universe was basically reset, Mario Kart Me (get it?) focuses on how the universe is changing. The story revolves around a new villain (working name Tinker) who exists outside of all universes and seeks out universes with new potential power and alters them to make them into factories that serve only him. Rosalina learned of this power and seeks out Mario and his friends (and inexplicably friendly enemies,) to harness the power of the reborn universe and return it to normal before Tinker could use that power for himself. The problem is the temptation to control the universe is too great for all but the purest of heart. As a result, when the racers get near that power, the universe starts to alter itself around the desires of the racers as they briefly gain the power for...about the length of a race around a track.
The first half of the new racers revolves around getting to that power via the obligatory tracks. With only two series of tracks, we'd have to cut out several of the usual tracks? The Luigi Track? Gone. The Peach/Daisy courses suffer the same fate, turning the Mario Circuit into the de facto first track. The first set also tosses in your typical beach tack (with a vague Koopa Troopa theme,) a standard ice track (with no character theme, because there is still not one ice-themed character in the whole damn series,) and conclude with a DK mountain track. I wanted to actually use the Donkey Kong games as a reference, after they were ignored, and base the level on the Kremling Island from Donkey Kong Country 2. The music consists of remixed music of various levels from that game, and the stage itself includes bramble jungles near the top before passing through amusement parks, swamps, and lava caverns near the bottom. The next series opens with the usual Wario/Waluigi muddy track reminiscent of BMX or monster truck courses, and continues with a Toad-themed highway level, a ghost house (after missing that stage for several generations now,) and Bowser's Castle to conclude that half.
The second half of the game moves from "the world that is" to "the world that will be," or "will bes" for short. The first set are mostly humorous. Luigi's track imagines him as a hero out of sentai series like the Voltron and Power Rangers that we're familiar with. His subordinates are all toads, save for love interest Daisy, and Mario works as a janitor. Like all these levels, it tries to tell a story as well. In this case, Luigi and his team serve as obstacles to fight the racers on the assumption that they're dimensional invaders, and by the final lap, the heroes merge to form a giant robot that serves as both a threat and an alternate path along the track at points.
The set continues with Yoshi tapping into an ancestral memory of when dinosaurs ruled the world, creating stampedes and flying reptiles as obstacles. Of course, they're all ancestors of Yoshi, so they all have goofy cartoon faces and saddles, which mean they can be ridden. Peach and Daisy end up sharing a level, so the level is divided perfectly to the beautiful, pink, and dainty Peach ideal, and a rougher Daisy version with a sports theme. The path often branches, so characters can choose the less risky Peach side or the short but dangerous Daisy half. Oh, and the theme music for the level has lyrics. And is a duet. Finally, Donkey Kong imagines a jungle-based city, much like those seen in fantasy. As the characters cross through the elevated bridges, ramps, and treetop huts, legions of apes will perform the Donkey Kong Country theme song, with the playable characters performing on the main instruments. That's more a musical tour de force, plus a way to apologize for all the crappy Donkey Kong levels.
The last track set, though, is more serious. The first is also the one I detailed the most. The racers arrive on Bowsapolis, a world were, simply put, Bowser won. The entire Mushroom Kingdom is a dark city, the toads are put into slave labor and attacked with hammers if they fail, and Mario is pilloried. I admit that this level could be a hard sell, for the record, as it significantly darkens the image of many popular characters in the series. For example, Peach is married to Bowser, and quite happily, what with it being his fantasy. There are even blond half-reptile children running around in the opening. The level also features the Koopalings after a long hiatus, who play the level's military-heavy theme song, imagining the Koopa nation as a fascist police state (hey, if the Lion King could get away with it...) Threats include sky-darkening rains of hammers, attacks by both Ludwig Von Koopa and Bowser Junior (though the two start to compete in later laps and eventually collide in their respective vehicles,) and even evil Peach attacks near the end.
The other three levels start with a Rosalina level, which starts out on her space ship/comet, but it soon takes a somber turn into her past, as she imagines the mother that died in her back story has been brought back to life. This moment of weakness to temptation lets Tinker take control, so the penultimate level starts as his fantasy; an endless series of churning machinery and smoke-belching factories. The first lap is a gloomy and dangerous run through here, but by the second lap, Mario's fantasy starts to take control as his pure heart gains control of the universe's potential power. The level becomes a story of triumph as Tinker lays defeated and the universe is restored to normal. This last step occurs as the characters ride the prismatic energy of the universe back home. In other words, we end with Rainbow Road as usual, but here it ties into the story of the game much more clearly.
Ideally, the game can be an easy source of downloadable content as well. Each could contain new characters and willbes for these and old characters, like Wario, who didn't make the cut the first time around. More importantly, the game would give a touch of class and just a new sheen to the new series. As the Mario series goes into its fifth console generation, it needs to make us care not just about the games, but also the characters themselves, and games like this give meaning and remind us and new generations why Nintendo is the master of the archetypal video game character.
I already did this since I was eight or so with my Megaman ideas. But let's face it, a new Megaman isn't much for innovation. Toss in eight bosses with adjective names, design some levels, figure out the skeletal plot tying it together, and new game! Mind you, even here, I tended to go epic a few games in, but it never really became too complex, especially since I last made one in high school.
But I think Nintendo inspires me to try this again lately. Partially it comes from the long history of the games, with characters still going strong from my childhood and strong archetypal conflicts. At the same time, the games haven't changed much, encouraging brainstorming. What if the Zelda games had slightly different settings?
Even less story-driven series, like Mario Kart, can be innovated through some sort of plot. Smash Brothers Brawl inspired me on this case. They could have just as easily made another chaotic fighting game with slightly better graphics. Instead, they created an entire adventure mode featuring a unique foe that forced all the Nintendo characters (and some Konami and Sega characters,) to unite for their mutual survival.
And since the new Mario Kart caused so many...issues in me, I thought that was another series that deserved a more mature treatment, inspiring new levels as a result. In my version, I'll take advantage of the more serious plot of Mario Galaxy. Based on that game's ending, where the entire Mario universe was basically reset, Mario Kart Me (get it?) focuses on how the universe is changing. The story revolves around a new villain (working name Tinker) who exists outside of all universes and seeks out universes with new potential power and alters them to make them into factories that serve only him. Rosalina learned of this power and seeks out Mario and his friends (and inexplicably friendly enemies,) to harness the power of the reborn universe and return it to normal before Tinker could use that power for himself. The problem is the temptation to control the universe is too great for all but the purest of heart. As a result, when the racers get near that power, the universe starts to alter itself around the desires of the racers as they briefly gain the power for...about the length of a race around a track.
The first half of the new racers revolves around getting to that power via the obligatory tracks. With only two series of tracks, we'd have to cut out several of the usual tracks? The Luigi Track? Gone. The Peach/Daisy courses suffer the same fate, turning the Mario Circuit into the de facto first track. The first set also tosses in your typical beach tack (with a vague Koopa Troopa theme,) a standard ice track (with no character theme, because there is still not one ice-themed character in the whole damn series,) and conclude with a DK mountain track. I wanted to actually use the Donkey Kong games as a reference, after they were ignored, and base the level on the Kremling Island from Donkey Kong Country 2. The music consists of remixed music of various levels from that game, and the stage itself includes bramble jungles near the top before passing through amusement parks, swamps, and lava caverns near the bottom. The next series opens with the usual Wario/Waluigi muddy track reminiscent of BMX or monster truck courses, and continues with a Toad-themed highway level, a ghost house (after missing that stage for several generations now,) and Bowser's Castle to conclude that half.
The second half of the game moves from "the world that is" to "the world that will be," or "will bes" for short. The first set are mostly humorous. Luigi's track imagines him as a hero out of sentai series like the Voltron and Power Rangers that we're familiar with. His subordinates are all toads, save for love interest Daisy, and Mario works as a janitor. Like all these levels, it tries to tell a story as well. In this case, Luigi and his team serve as obstacles to fight the racers on the assumption that they're dimensional invaders, and by the final lap, the heroes merge to form a giant robot that serves as both a threat and an alternate path along the track at points.
The set continues with Yoshi tapping into an ancestral memory of when dinosaurs ruled the world, creating stampedes and flying reptiles as obstacles. Of course, they're all ancestors of Yoshi, so they all have goofy cartoon faces and saddles, which mean they can be ridden. Peach and Daisy end up sharing a level, so the level is divided perfectly to the beautiful, pink, and dainty Peach ideal, and a rougher Daisy version with a sports theme. The path often branches, so characters can choose the less risky Peach side or the short but dangerous Daisy half. Oh, and the theme music for the level has lyrics. And is a duet. Finally, Donkey Kong imagines a jungle-based city, much like those seen in fantasy. As the characters cross through the elevated bridges, ramps, and treetop huts, legions of apes will perform the Donkey Kong Country theme song, with the playable characters performing on the main instruments. That's more a musical tour de force, plus a way to apologize for all the crappy Donkey Kong levels.
The last track set, though, is more serious. The first is also the one I detailed the most. The racers arrive on Bowsapolis, a world were, simply put, Bowser won. The entire Mushroom Kingdom is a dark city, the toads are put into slave labor and attacked with hammers if they fail, and Mario is pilloried. I admit that this level could be a hard sell, for the record, as it significantly darkens the image of many popular characters in the series. For example, Peach is married to Bowser, and quite happily, what with it being his fantasy. There are even blond half-reptile children running around in the opening. The level also features the Koopalings after a long hiatus, who play the level's military-heavy theme song, imagining the Koopa nation as a fascist police state (hey, if the Lion King could get away with it...) Threats include sky-darkening rains of hammers, attacks by both Ludwig Von Koopa and Bowser Junior (though the two start to compete in later laps and eventually collide in their respective vehicles,) and even evil Peach attacks near the end.
The other three levels start with a Rosalina level, which starts out on her space ship/comet, but it soon takes a somber turn into her past, as she imagines the mother that died in her back story has been brought back to life. This moment of weakness to temptation lets Tinker take control, so the penultimate level starts as his fantasy; an endless series of churning machinery and smoke-belching factories. The first lap is a gloomy and dangerous run through here, but by the second lap, Mario's fantasy starts to take control as his pure heart gains control of the universe's potential power. The level becomes a story of triumph as Tinker lays defeated and the universe is restored to normal. This last step occurs as the characters ride the prismatic energy of the universe back home. In other words, we end with Rainbow Road as usual, but here it ties into the story of the game much more clearly.
Ideally, the game can be an easy source of downloadable content as well. Each could contain new characters and willbes for these and old characters, like Wario, who didn't make the cut the first time around. More importantly, the game would give a touch of class and just a new sheen to the new series. As the Mario series goes into its fifth console generation, it needs to make us care not just about the games, but also the characters themselves, and games like this give meaning and remind us and new generations why Nintendo is the master of the archetypal video game character.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
[Review] And a reminder I'm not dead
So, want to know what ruins your motivation to write? Sudden unemployment? Want to know what helps? All those unbeaten video games still left over from Christmas, which a responsible and busy adult would have beaten over the course of several months. This makes it hard to focus on making blog posts, especially when nobody seems to read or comment on the blog. Though obviously updating more than once a month will also help.
Fortunately, while I'm still light on new ideas, all these video games mean that I have a lot more semi-recent reviews. I say semi-recent because it was only in last December that I became the semi-reluctant owner of a shiny new 360, and my entire collection consists of games a year or two old as I play catchup and avoid new game prices. The latter is subject to change if and if I get a new and decently paying job, and probably not before. They were certainly quality games, though. In the last two months, I finished Bioshock, Mass Effect, and Persona 4, some of the best games I've played in years. And there was Mario Kart: Wii.
This is the subject of today's post, and admittedly much was already written about this topic. In short, the game has...issues. At times it felt like one of my biggest gaming disappointments, and other times if felt like pure, untainted childhood, or at least the rare good parts. Either way, I played it far more and for longer than I intended, either out of enjoyment or out of vengeance.
To be kind, the game is one of the most schizophrenic titles out there. A lot of gamers use it as a scapegoat for Nintendo's "casual" direction, but that's not quite right. This game's biggest mistake isn't catering to the casual or the hardcore, but trying to appease both, and in doing so, failing miserably.
Most reviewers seem to focus on the "casual" side, so let's start with that. The Mario Kart franchise has had a single rule since at least the N64 title; if you're in first, you won't stay in first, at least not easily. Part of that's just programming the AI to be slower if the player is behind and insanely fast when the player is in front, and ensuring that the assigned "good" computer finish near the front every lap to say in point competition.
But in the Mario Kart games, balance usually comes from items. When you're in first, you won't get anything more useful than a banana peel. Meanwhile, characters in the back can turn invincible, blast the entire battlefield with lightning, or launch an attack that soon hits the race leader with near-certain accuracy. Mario Kart Wii continues this philosophy and makes it much, much worse. The normal race now consists of twelve racers, not eight, and there are even more ways to attack the entire battlefield, like the POW Block, or go from last to first in seconds, like the Bullet Bill. At times, it seems impossible to even RACE in a racing game with all the instant hit effects going off. I believe my record is getting hit with a half-dozen instant doom attacks on a single track.
But that's only half of the game's issue. Yes, the normal race is now a casual free-for-all that can reward luck as often as skill. But Nintendo also included a tradition of unlocking features in the game: new characters, new karts and bikes, even entirely new track sets and difficulty levels. Barely an eighth of the entire game is available from the start. Most of these features are unlocked by playing in "grand prix" mode, a single-player competition across four tracks. To unlock many of these features, one must get the highest score on these four tracks, which usually means coming in first for at least most of those tracks.
Now you can see the problem. Casual players want to play this game with their friends in as relaxed a manner as possible; this is a party game. But to even see half the game, one player has to work, alone, for hours! And that frantic play becomes far less fun when you absolutely MUST come in first regularly to not waste your time. And your only choice if something goes wrong is to quite the entire grand prix. Nothing is more frustrating than racing well enough on three tracks only to fall apart on the fourth, except for maybe racing well on all four tracks, and then getting hit by an automatic attack seconds away from the finish line, watching three or four racers pass you by, and realizing those last twenty minutes were just flushed down the drain.
And then it gets worse. Even if you get gold trophies on all eight tracks for all four difficulties, you learn that there STILL are things to unlock. This is the first console game to rank your performance beyond just the points. Getting enough points for a gold trophy can still easily earn you a "C" or "D" grade. Even getting first on all tracks is not a guarantee. You'll likely get at least an "A" in this case, but to unlock more features, you need to get BETTER than "A" by getting a one, two, or three "star" grade. That's pretty counter-intuitive already if you didn't play the DS game that apparently introduced this feature, like I didn't. And does the game or instructions actually list how you get these rankings? It does not. And to unlock all the cars and characters, you need to get one star or better on EVERY track, on EVERY difficulty (except the mirror tracks that are technically as hard as the normal highest difficulty.) This casual party game requires you to get first on nearly every one of the hardest tracks of the hardest difficulty in a game that explicitly punishes you for being in first. The auto-hit items won't cost you points, not that you'd know that without gamefaqs' help, but it will still drop you to the back of the pack and penalize you in the rankings for your presence there.
Oh, and that's still not all. Even more can be unlocked in the time trials for each of the 32 tracks. Some just require you to race once and set a time. No problem. But each track also has a "staff ghost" to race against it. To unlock additional stuff, you must beat the "staff ghost" and unlock an "expert staff ghost." But do you unlock the expert by beating the staff ghost? Nope! You have to beat the normal ghost by SEVERAL SECONDS to unlock the expert? How many? The game doesn't say, and it varies for every track. Does the game even indicate these second ghosts exist? Not that I can tell, until you unlock one, and then it doesn't say what unlocking these ghosts does.
Sigh. So, in other words, to unlock everything, you have to spend more time than it takes to usually save the world in an epic RPG. All so your friends won't ask what the deal is with the three question marks in the character select screen. This is BAD GAME DESIGN, Nintendo! Casuals don't care about getting one-star rankings or expert ghosts; they just want to have fun racing with their favorite cartoon plumber's friends. And hard-core players aren't interested in unlocking Bowser Jr. unless he offers a significant game play advantage or change. This really wouldn't have been hard. Super Smash Brothers Brawl had at least three methods of unlocking all of its features; the one player game, through some unusual game play event, or just by playing the game's multi-player features enough. How hard is that? Play online or versus enough, and you can drive as Daisy or whatnot! Or offer an in-game store, letting players cash in their "winnings" for new characters. This current method offers nothing but aggravation.
Despite all this, and believe me it drove me insane for weeks now, the game itself is fun. The new levels are unique enough, and it also offers many old tracks from all five earlier Mario Kart games. Best of all is the new online mode. Now if you're sick of the Grand Prix death march, you can inflict misery on strangers from all over the country. If enough are in a single match, it could be just as frustrating, but at least you're not being graded for it.
Fortunately, while I'm still light on new ideas, all these video games mean that I have a lot more semi-recent reviews. I say semi-recent because it was only in last December that I became the semi-reluctant owner of a shiny new 360, and my entire collection consists of games a year or two old as I play catchup and avoid new game prices. The latter is subject to change if and if I get a new and decently paying job, and probably not before. They were certainly quality games, though. In the last two months, I finished Bioshock, Mass Effect, and Persona 4, some of the best games I've played in years. And there was Mario Kart: Wii.
This is the subject of today's post, and admittedly much was already written about this topic. In short, the game has...issues. At times it felt like one of my biggest gaming disappointments, and other times if felt like pure, untainted childhood, or at least the rare good parts. Either way, I played it far more and for longer than I intended, either out of enjoyment or out of vengeance.
To be kind, the game is one of the most schizophrenic titles out there. A lot of gamers use it as a scapegoat for Nintendo's "casual" direction, but that's not quite right. This game's biggest mistake isn't catering to the casual or the hardcore, but trying to appease both, and in doing so, failing miserably.
Most reviewers seem to focus on the "casual" side, so let's start with that. The Mario Kart franchise has had a single rule since at least the N64 title; if you're in first, you won't stay in first, at least not easily. Part of that's just programming the AI to be slower if the player is behind and insanely fast when the player is in front, and ensuring that the assigned "good" computer finish near the front every lap to say in point competition.
But in the Mario Kart games, balance usually comes from items. When you're in first, you won't get anything more useful than a banana peel. Meanwhile, characters in the back can turn invincible, blast the entire battlefield with lightning, or launch an attack that soon hits the race leader with near-certain accuracy. Mario Kart Wii continues this philosophy and makes it much, much worse. The normal race now consists of twelve racers, not eight, and there are even more ways to attack the entire battlefield, like the POW Block, or go from last to first in seconds, like the Bullet Bill. At times, it seems impossible to even RACE in a racing game with all the instant hit effects going off. I believe my record is getting hit with a half-dozen instant doom attacks on a single track.
But that's only half of the game's issue. Yes, the normal race is now a casual free-for-all that can reward luck as often as skill. But Nintendo also included a tradition of unlocking features in the game: new characters, new karts and bikes, even entirely new track sets and difficulty levels. Barely an eighth of the entire game is available from the start. Most of these features are unlocked by playing in "grand prix" mode, a single-player competition across four tracks. To unlock many of these features, one must get the highest score on these four tracks, which usually means coming in first for at least most of those tracks.
Now you can see the problem. Casual players want to play this game with their friends in as relaxed a manner as possible; this is a party game. But to even see half the game, one player has to work, alone, for hours! And that frantic play becomes far less fun when you absolutely MUST come in first regularly to not waste your time. And your only choice if something goes wrong is to quite the entire grand prix. Nothing is more frustrating than racing well enough on three tracks only to fall apart on the fourth, except for maybe racing well on all four tracks, and then getting hit by an automatic attack seconds away from the finish line, watching three or four racers pass you by, and realizing those last twenty minutes were just flushed down the drain.
And then it gets worse. Even if you get gold trophies on all eight tracks for all four difficulties, you learn that there STILL are things to unlock. This is the first console game to rank your performance beyond just the points. Getting enough points for a gold trophy can still easily earn you a "C" or "D" grade. Even getting first on all tracks is not a guarantee. You'll likely get at least an "A" in this case, but to unlock more features, you need to get BETTER than "A" by getting a one, two, or three "star" grade. That's pretty counter-intuitive already if you didn't play the DS game that apparently introduced this feature, like I didn't. And does the game or instructions actually list how you get these rankings? It does not. And to unlock all the cars and characters, you need to get one star or better on EVERY track, on EVERY difficulty (except the mirror tracks that are technically as hard as the normal highest difficulty.) This casual party game requires you to get first on nearly every one of the hardest tracks of the hardest difficulty in a game that explicitly punishes you for being in first. The auto-hit items won't cost you points, not that you'd know that without gamefaqs' help, but it will still drop you to the back of the pack and penalize you in the rankings for your presence there.
Oh, and that's still not all. Even more can be unlocked in the time trials for each of the 32 tracks. Some just require you to race once and set a time. No problem. But each track also has a "staff ghost" to race against it. To unlock additional stuff, you must beat the "staff ghost" and unlock an "expert staff ghost." But do you unlock the expert by beating the staff ghost? Nope! You have to beat the normal ghost by SEVERAL SECONDS to unlock the expert? How many? The game doesn't say, and it varies for every track. Does the game even indicate these second ghosts exist? Not that I can tell, until you unlock one, and then it doesn't say what unlocking these ghosts does.
Sigh. So, in other words, to unlock everything, you have to spend more time than it takes to usually save the world in an epic RPG. All so your friends won't ask what the deal is with the three question marks in the character select screen. This is BAD GAME DESIGN, Nintendo! Casuals don't care about getting one-star rankings or expert ghosts; they just want to have fun racing with their favorite cartoon plumber's friends. And hard-core players aren't interested in unlocking Bowser Jr. unless he offers a significant game play advantage or change. This really wouldn't have been hard. Super Smash Brothers Brawl had at least three methods of unlocking all of its features; the one player game, through some unusual game play event, or just by playing the game's multi-player features enough. How hard is that? Play online or versus enough, and you can drive as Daisy or whatnot! Or offer an in-game store, letting players cash in their "winnings" for new characters. This current method offers nothing but aggravation.
Despite all this, and believe me it drove me insane for weeks now, the game itself is fun. The new levels are unique enough, and it also offers many old tracks from all five earlier Mario Kart games. Best of all is the new online mode. Now if you're sick of the Grand Prix death march, you can inflict misery on strangers from all over the country. If enough are in a single match, it could be just as frustrating, but at least you're not being graded for it.
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