2010 in Review: Part 2

Without wasting much time with introductions, let's get into the next set of games I played in 2010.  Chronologically, this is around my summer.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Wii)

Third and final Mario game for the year, I swear.  The Mario series has gone in lots of directions, such as 2D platformers and RPGs (and sports games and party games and kart-racing...), but here is Mario's continuation of his 3D platforming legacy.  This game is a direct sequel to the often praised Super Mario Galaxy (1).  Using the same engine, can this game stand out without the novelty of its predecessor?

The perils of the sequel

For me, anyways, the answer is yes.  Indeed, the fundamentals of the game engine itself are fairly unchanged, you're still dealing a typical-controlling 3D Mario navigating a space with spherical platforms.  The formula worked great when it was created, and it continues to work great here.  Some of the wrappings have changed a bit, instead of having a central world hub on a satellite-ship...thing, you pilot your own space ship around a classic (SMB3 era) level selection screen.  And by "space ship" I mean "face ship" (don't be angry with me, the game makes the pun off the bat).

Face Ship

I really got the feeling that the development team spent most of the time between SMG and SMG2 creating and refining the levels to perfection, given that they had a core game engine and design that worked.  And indeed, the novelty isn't there, it can't be, but the levels are so spot on.  I found myself so absorbed into this game, usually hauling in 30 stars per night or so (242 stars total).  They strike a great balance of avoiding both triviality and tedium.  SMG itself didn't really suffer much of a problem in these respects, but I felt that the quality of this game, as objectively as I am able to assess, is higher.

I find often that many sequels are bashed for not living up to the standards set by the original.  It's understandably hard to avoid, the first often has novelty for the audience, and the fact is that novelty does have value.  Of course, if the sequel is too different, then there are those who complain about the changes.  I can't say whether this means there are two groups of people (those who like novelty and those who like refining a good thing) or one group of people (those who like to complain) at play here, but it does make for sequels being a tricky business.  That said, there are definitely sequels out there which would more accurately described as a "level pack" and might warrant some of the criticism, but I don't think SMG2 falls into this category.  Mine doesn't seem to be a very controversial viewpoint either, so I will harp on it no further.

Monster Hunter 3 (Wii)

Seems this is a series of games that's much more popular with the Asian market.  To be honest, I knew almost nothing about the franchise prior to purchasing this game.  I was drawn to it because Capcom usually delivers, and it seemed like a pretty solid online game for Wii.  Plus I was looking for a game that would be a decent time sink for the stretches of free time which appeared before me over the summer.

I suppose I'll start this with a note about how my character turned out.

Boring character stuff for people who play MH

That's my Chromega, right there.  Reading off the screen, got to level 68, and it only took me 237 hours!  When I said I wanted a time sink for the summer, this game delivered.

I opted to be a lancer early on in the game.  Controls felt the most natural to me, and I just find myself to be the aggressive DPS sort naturally.  I'm sporting my endgame armor in that screenshot, full Agnaktor+, carrying one of my lances, the Alatreon Gleam.  I generally played as a counter lancer, so I gemmed my skills as such, with Constitution+2, Guard+2, Flaming Aura, Razor Sharp, and Short Sprinter.  I also found myself with a great lance collection, I got every ultimate lance save one, the Millenium, whose materials are obtained for a timed event my playing didn't line up with.  Not a fantastic lance either, but it is a hole in my otherwise complete collection.

Grinding

One of the biggest complaints about this game is the grinding.  The premise of the game can be summed up pretty easily.  Kill dinosaurs and take their parts so that you can build better armor and weapons to kill bigger dinosaurs.  A lot of these parts are random drops, so you'll find yourself fighting monsters again and again.  And these aren't quick fights either.  Unless you're revisiting monsters with your shiny new weapon, your first few times against a monster will take a half hour upwards.

Something else that doesn't help the game's case is the way it eases you in.  Playing a good chunk of the first few minutes can leave you wondering where the combat you were promised is, as they'll have you gathering mushrooms and such.  The battles will come, but not right away.  If you're someone who likes to sample games to get their flavor, sampling this game will leave you unsatisfied.

Really, it all boils down to the core of the game: the combat.  If you enjoy the combat, then it doesn't feel like grinding, every battle is different.  If the combat grows stale for you, then yes, it is grinding, and this is not the game for you.  I loved it, but I can't see myself recommending the game to everyone.

Combat

The core of the game is combat.  You have a lot of control over the movements and attacks of your character, and you will need to become fluent in this control mechanism to be able to play this game.  This isn't the sort of game where you can take a swipe at the enemy, and it takes damage if it falls inside the attack's oversided hitbox.  Your attack hits if it hits.  And where it hits matters, all of the monsters take different amounts of damage in different parts of their bodies.  You can even break or damage parts of their bodies; one of the most frequent things you'll find yourself doing is trying to 'cut the tail' - the first time I did this is scared me, I thrust with my lance (which does do cut damage), and a giant sea serpent lept away from me, shocked, leaving behind a dead tail.  

The weapons in this game do behave very differently and serve different functions.  To give a sampling, lances are great for DPS, but are fairly immoble.  Bowguns are great for ranged combat, but have poor defenses.  Sword and shield has poor raw damage throughput, but is great at inflicting status or elemental damage.  This leads to very exciting team dynamics in online play.

Multiplayer

I played through this game first in single player, and then later entered the online world.  I'm glad I did single player first so that I wasn't useless online (and there is exclusive single player content), but playing online is so much better.  Battles go faster, and it's simply the type of game where it's a lot of fun to cooperate with others.  The weapon distribution was fairly balanced, so everyone had a role, and, maybe I had good luck, but I found people generally adhered to their roles well and we had great runs with the monsters.  I only wish I had gotten a USB keyboard sooner, the alternative typing interface is very clunky.

Final Fantasy XIII (360)

You may not be surprised by the fact that I've got some Final Fantasy under my belt.  Not a whole lot, mind you, but enough to get the gist of the series (1, 6, 7).  You might observe that there are a lot of numbers between 7 and 13.  I haven't been observing the evolution of the series, so I was excited to see what they came up with.  I wish I could say I was more impressed, but fortunately there are older classic formula Final Fantasy games still left for me to play, maybe those will satisfy me more.  I'm all for experimentation, but sometimes experiments don't work out, and I hope the developers can learn from the game's drawbacks.

Linearity

You all saw this one coming, so I won't harp on it too much.  But really, this marches you down a line nearly the entire game.  They don't hide it either, the linear hallways are visually all too plain.  If you ever see a fork in the road, spoilers, one is a short dead end with an item at the end, then you can turn around and get back on the main path.  Linearity's not always a bad thing, but, perhaps it's my mindset, I like to explore in RPGs.  Indeed, my favorite part of the game is when the linearity is removed for a while.  I've heard people assert that "it was just a tutorial before that, this is the real game now! (30 hours or so in)" or "the linearity exists to form a constrast with the open world of Pulse and exists to make a statement."  I don't know whether either of these is true, but it wore on me.

Combat

This game was a first for me.  The first time I've ever fallen asleep actively playing a game.  I fell asleep mid battle.  Rather than focusing on the "micro" like most FF games where you hand pick each attack, the focus of battle is more "macro" where you assign roles to your team, such as healer or black mage (or rather, medic or ravager).  The default command for attacking is "auto battle", where your characters will fight in accordance with the paradigms you have set for them.  Granted, the option is there to select your own attacks, but the pacing of the battles doesn't really lend itself to that, and I didn't really feel like extending the game much longer than it already was.

Not all is lost

The game did have its redeeming qualities, though.  I can't say I'm usually a harsh critic in this regard, but I enjoyed the story.  There were plenty of memorable cutscenes.  On a related note, the graphics for this game were absolutely stunning, but in those cutscenes and during normal game play.  But these redeeming qualities basically have nothing to do with the game itself.  And indeed, the game was really a pretty movie with some game-ness in between cutscenes.  Anecdote, I put the game into the 360, about to play.  My 360 misread the disk and brought me to the "Play DVD Movie" menu.  I felt very proud of the fact that I have a witty console.

Metroid: Other M (Wii)

Metroid.  When you put that in your title, you've got a lot to live up to.  I'm sure I'll do a post about why Metroid Prime is amazing at some point in the future.  But for now, suffice to say, I love Metroid, and was thrilled when this game was announced, and I was very curious to see what Team Ninja would do to the series.  And when I saw initial screens and saw it was in 3rd person, I was reminded immediately of what I thought the original Metroid Prime would be based off of the original E3 2001 trailer (relevant footage near the end of the video):

Ninja Samus

One thing this game nails is the feeling of an acrobatic Samus.  It's hard to get that with 1st person controls, so that element of older Metroid games wasn't really captured in the Primes, but this game hits it dead on.  This existed in both navigation and combat.  The perspective also naturally makes the game more amenable to classic upgrades such as the screw attack and speed booster/shinespark.  (Yes, screw attack was in Prime 2, maybe 3, I forget, but your mobility was far more restricted than here).

Linearity

While this game destroys the Primes when it comes to capturing Samus's acrobatics, it's a far cry away from capturing the exploration prominent in classic Metroid.  Prime 1 captured this perfectly.  A more linear Metroid game isn't unheard of, this game is really the sequel to Metroid Fusion, a great and similarly linear game.  Fusion and Other M are also more story driven than most Metroids.  Perhaps some types of storytelling are most easily executed when there is a linear story presented to the player, who knows.  It's not quite on the level as FF13, there still is the hunt for powerups throughout the game.  But despite some hunting for powerups, I didn't really feel the spirit of exploration which drew me to other Metroid titles.

Story

This is a big point of attack for this game.  And I'm not putting this section here to join in on the attack, I'm saying it didn't really bother me.  Sure, Team Ninja took some liberties and gave Samus some flaws (and incorporated "weapons authorization" as a very weak gameplay device).  I don't think humanizing Samus during by giving her flaws was necessarily a bad idea, perfect, flawless characters had been done.  Perhaps it's because so many players identify themselves with Samus since they had the opportunity to do so before, and now there is this needy, scarred-from-childhood girl forcing them out of the armor and taking their place. I can't say for sure.  As I said, I can see how it would bother some people, but I wasn't horribly taken aback. Besides, how can you hate a game with such lovable characters as below?  If you've played the game, you might be able to guess my favorite Metroid enemy.

Little Birdie

Post Game Content

I don't want to spoil much here, but this game has a kick ass post game.  You might see an old friend from Super Metroid.  But yes, the game's not over after the credits run.  Also, I did get in a second run through the game on hard mode.  No health upgrades.  I thought the game was on the easy end on my first playthough, so I definitely enjoyed it more on my second playthrough.  Most of the later bosses can one-shot you, it's intense.

End of Part 2

We're entering the school year now, fall semester.  For part 3/4, you can expect:

-Shadow of the Colossus

-Metal Gear Solid 3

-Minecraft

-Rock Band 3

2010 in Review: Part 1

After putting it off for months, I've finally cracked and started a blog.  I had wanted to do so for a while and, after having recently received a few requests to talk about games in this format, that's what I'm going to do.  To be clear, I'm not writing reviews.  What will follow will mostly be musings, where I'll talk about what made particular games salient or interesting to me.  Don't expect coherence or some unified message.  These are my thoughts and I'd love to hear anyone's supporting or opposing ones in the comments.

Unsure of how exactly to start my blog, I took a cue from Matt Weiss's blog, Outside Your Heaven, and I'll start by looking at the games I played in 2010.  I'm planning on going through in chronological order of my playthroughs, so this will start with my Christmas spoils and move on from there.  Enough introductions, let's see the games.

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks (DS)

As I plan to make absolutely clear in later posts, I'm a huge fan of the Zelda franchise.  Majora's Mask is easily one of my favorite games of all time, and I'd rank the Oracles similarly among portable games.  Spirit Tracks is the second DS Zelda title, building upon the engine of the first, Phantom Hourglass.  Consequently, the games are quite similar, so many of the remarks I will make apply to both.

Stylus Controls
Upon picking up the game, you will soon discover the game's inventive control scheme.  Rather than using the directional pad to move your avatar, Link, you use the stylus to indicate on the touch screen where you want him to move.  Despite being fairly new to me the first time I picked the game up, I admit to finding it fairly intuitive.   When you want to interact with objects, the stylus functions very much like a mouse cursor in point and click adventure games, you can tap items on screen to interact with them.  I definitely thought this was a pretty cool way to make use of the touch screen as an analog interface when all other inputs are digital.  I wasn't sure whether I would have preferred a standard control scheme when I played these games, as they didn't give you an option.  However, when I played Golden Sun: Dark Dawn later, it DOES give you an option between standard D-pad movement and analog touch screen movement, and I found myself sticking with the D-pad movement and not turning back.  Still, while I don't see it replacing D-pad movement, it was nice to see that one of the most fundamental actions in a game, moving, is still having its interface innovated, which is pretty cool.  Just a couple more thoughts about the movement.  Yes, your fingers so sometimes get in the way of the action.  It seems Sony picked up on that when they started the design of the PSP2 (I can't bear to call it the NGP).  In addition to movement and basic interaction, you can also use items with the stylus.  One of the iconic items in the game is the boomerang.  When throwing, you can trace out the path the boomerang will follow.  No complaints about that, that controls really well, and using the stylus based movement leaves your stylus-carrying hand poised to use such items.

Transportation
A key element of each of the games can be seen on the boxart

Phantom Hourglass has boats, and Spirit Tracks has trains!  World navigation is a huge part of each game.  They followed the mold set by Wind Waker on this one.  Some people found the navigation tedious.  I didn't mind them too much.  They're both very pretty games, and I enjoyed the chance to admire the scenery.  I'm not sure which mode of transportation I preferred.  In Phantom Hourglass, you control a boat on open water.  This means that you have continuous motion available to you...however, since you're in a body of water sparsely populated by islands, there's not always a whole lot of scenery.  Still though, when you do find a coast, you've got full control to circle the island and take it all in.  In Spirit Tracks, you're on rails, so you can't move wherever you want, you need to stay on the train tracks.  Sure, there are plenty of junctions, but it's a different feeling than exploring a more continuous space.  However, since you're (generally) on land, there's a lot more to see.

Continuous/Discrete Exploration
Part of me thinks it's great that 3D games like this are readily available on handhelds.  However, part of me also kind of misses the 2D Zeldas.  With technology moving forward as it is, I have my doubts about the number of games like the Oracles that will come out in the future.  Maybe on a watch or calculator or something, phones are already too advanced, too.  I can appreciate good looking games, but sometimes simple looking games have some appeal to them.  My eyes like seeing a grid like world and simple sprites with black borders.  I mentioned before that there is a difference between continuous and discrete exploration, and the discrete exploration of the Oracles has some charm for me.  Perhaps it was done for technical reasons, I can't say, but, in general, each 'screen' of the game is static until you reach the edge, after which it scrolls.  There's something satisfying about trying to explore the whole map, trying to find a way into that mysterious gray square with no apparent entry.  Dungeons are laid out similarly.  Ask any mathematician, problem solving for a discrete system is very different than problem solving for a continuous system.  It's a totally different experience.  I just hope that this type of design isn't dismissed as an artifact of old technology, and some modern games incorporate something similar as a conscious design choice.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Wii)

I hope the previous paragraph didn't convince anyone that I'm wearing rose tinted nostalgia glasses lamenting for the simple days of old.  While it true that I do have a sweet spot for simple or 'retro' games, I hadn't many of the 'old classics' until I was older, so I hope that dismisses that notion a little, at least.  New Super Mario Bros. Wii builds on the good reception of New Super Mario Bros. for DS.  A "2.5D" (3D graphics, 2D gameplay) attempt at recreating the classic Mario formula, what does this game bring to the table?

Multiplayer
This is the core of what makes this game memorable.  It's extremely conducive to fun, frustrating, and intense multiplayer sessions.  Up to four players can play through the levels at a time.  An element of the in game physics which seems so simple has such a dramatic effect on the game - collision detection.  Cooperating players can collide with one another.  This means that if two players go for a jump at the same time, they may collide in the air and both die, or perhaps one makes it, inadvertently blocking the other player's access to the platform.  While it may sound like I'm criticizing the mechanic, that's not the case at all.  If such a scenario happens where a partner inadvertently kills you, neither I nor anyone I play with has accused the game of having an unfair set of rules.  Rather, all of the blame, for better or for worse, is placed on the other players.  The emotions I've seen this game bring out of people have been nothing short of incredible.  The emotion is usually anger and often physical violence is involved, but hey, if the game can cause that sort of chaos in the real world, then it's doing something right.

Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story (DS)

I've had a lot of fun with the Mario & Luigi series.  For those unfamiliar, these games are the spiritual successors to Super Mario RPG for the SNES.  (Tangent: Speaking of Mario RPGs, I've never tried any of the Paper Mario games, perhaps I'll have to sample those at some point).  This was my "vacation game" over spring break, nothing like killing odd hours on a cruise with a DS.  Besides, what was I going to do when my friends were reading, read??

Combat
I love the combat system for these games.  Yes, it does have a pretty standard turn-based battle system where you and your opponents decide your attacks for the next round.  What makes it interesting is that the player still intervenes during attack sequences (both yours and your opponents).  When you're attacking, you may have to make Mario and Luigi jump at certain times to maximize your jump height.  When the enemy is attacking, you might be able to attempt to block them with a well timed swing of your hammer.  While the enemies may have several different attacks, they often have small animation quirks which signal the attack they're about to do, giving this a Punch-Out!! sort of flare.  This is not the type of RPG where you can fall asleep mid combat (don't worry, I'll get to FFXIII later).

Humor
Also following in the SMRPG tradition, these games incorporate a great sense of humor.  In particular, with this entry, you control Bowser for a large part of the game.  Big, brash, and brutish, his personality as characterized by his interactions with NPCs or the Mario Bros. is matched by your primary verbs, punch and breathe fire.  I don't expect anyone to experience any of the humor from my description, but if you play the game, you'll see that it is a salient part of the play experience.  Other times, the characters poke fun at Internet culture.  Notable are characters are a pair of hammer bros. who speak in 1337, and a villain who speaks in Engrish ("I have fury!").

Mega Man 10 (Wii)

I mentioned retro rebirth a bit with New Super Mario Bros. Wii.  New Super Mario Bros. (DS) was definitely a big catalyst in what's been a recent revival of classic 2D platforming, but Mega Man 9 and 10 decided to go big or go home, and imitated NES era hardware as much as reasonably possible, down to (optional) sprite flicker and cheesy, irrelevant box art.

Challenge
I will readily confess that I'm a sucker for difficulty in games.  I won't even claim that I'll be particularly good at any game when I first pick it up, I'm not some godlike player.  But I'm extremely persistent, and am driven forward by apparently unattainable goals.  I enjoy the feeling of improving, and I feel kind of let down if I beat a game without failing, that's an important part of the experience for me.  In so many ways, it feels like Capcom made Mega Man 9 and 10 for me.  The first time through each of them (particularly 9, I had refined my Mega Man skills enough after that to be a bit more ready to go for 10), I died lots on the stages.  And very few of the deaths are cheap shots either, the games just present challenges to assess your skill level, and you will only move forward if you are skilled enough.  Despite sticking to the typical NES Mega Man formula (and totally nailing the level and boss design), each of these adds 'challenges.'  These are sort of like 360 achievements (and many of them would be if I played that version, but I prefer the NESesque Wii controller for this).  I can see why "beat the game using the minimum amount of weapon energy" might not be appealing for everyone, but, when you can playthrough the game in about a half hour, I found it to be a very fun challenge.  The ultimate entry on the list is particularly daunting, "Mr. Perfect: Clear the game without taking damage."  If you've sampled either game, this seems insane.  However, I pulled it off in 9 on playthrough #29, but pretty quickly in 10 (yeah I did easy mode, you can save between the Wily stages).  Made the difference between the first being a 100 hour game and the second being a 50.  (Don't check the Nintendo channel for game play time, it's terrifying.  300+ in guitar hero 3??).  The best challenges in the second game though, were to beat each boss on hard mode (they get extra attacks and speed) using mega buster only (they all take 28 hits) without taking damage.  I'm sure these don't sound fun for everyone, but if you love platformers and you're a bit of a gaming masochist, play to your heart's content.

I made a spreadsheet in MM9 detailing everywhere where I would get hit.  Here is a graph of my number of hits against trial number.  Run #28 where I got hit once was heartbreaking.

Retro
I mentioned when I was talking about Spirit Tracks my laments about technological advances removing the quantity of games out there that leverage simplicity to their advantage, since technology isn't nearly as restrictive as it used to be.  Sure, skinning your game like an NES game helps, maybe it got the development team in the right mindset helps as well, but they really did a great job crafting a game where you can just blissfully jump and shoot, the player having a complete understanding of the simple and clear world around them.  With my own attempts to further physics in 3D worlds I might seem almost hypocritical, but I don't want to suggest that realism is a bad thing.  I just want to make my stance clear that having a simple and visually clear world can give a unique play experience, and it should not be abandoned, so I wholeheartedly support Capcom in their production of these games.

End of Part 1
Well it felt good to rant for a bit about those games.  If anyone else has played any of those, I'd love to know what you think as well.  I've got 16 games from last year I wanted to talk about, so let's try 4/4/4/4.  Next time, we relive my summer:

-Super Mario Galaxy 2
-Monster Hunter 3
-Final Fantasy 13
-Metroid: Other M