The Gamer’s Quagmire #61: Repeatedly Shedding Tears
Everything you wanted to know about gaming, and less.
by Jamison DeLorenzo
Every once in a while my friends over at The Guardian Games Blog manage to hit up on a topic that forces me to hunker down in my cave and take a lesson to heart about gaming. Not only does this get my creative juices flowing or allow me to have a good internal debate, which some people might think is a clear-cut sign of schizophrenia, but it also proves that there are sites out there that far more than just some reiterative drivel. Posting news about games is one thing, but getting people discussing a game or some gaming-related topic to me is a sign of a successful gaming publication.
Today’s topic in question comes from a non-archaeological dig about the most recent Devil May Cry game, a franchise that has been toiling in repetitiveness due to the overwhelming popularity of its original incarnation back in 2001. The core element of fun in this game stemmed from taking a standard hack and slash style of gameplay and throwing in the overdrive combos that propelled the 2-D fighter known as Killer Instinct back in the 90’s. Basically, if you like beating the ever living tar out of enemies and a dark story arc then the Devil May Cry games provide something you’ll enjoy. At iteration number four the core integrity of this franchise remains in tact.
Having gone through the first and third entries in the franchise, the question remains whether the fourth is going to be worth it. The game is getting fantastic reviews and people are scarfing it down, but I cannot help but wonder if this is game actually adds anything at all to the mystique of the franchise or if it is just the same old slop that gamers are expected to gobble up from the Troth of Formulaic Gaming (+1). It’s not that I don’t have an appreciation for hard work in the graphics department, but in games like this I wonder how much time can be spent admiring the architecture while a plethora of enemies rip me apart like a pack of lions. This, I would argue, is rather counter-productive when trying to complete the game.
I’d love to extol the virtues of the game to you here, but the main point I am driving at goes back to a question that was raised several days ago on the link given to you. The question in question (word games are fun) revolves around how much depth a game like this has. There are lots of combos that you can perform and a lot of enemies, but once you find a sequence of moves you like to unleash how much of the game is repetition versus new content? This hardly a new question for any game in the hack and slash genre, so in a sense it is a little asinine to bring up for this game. However, the question remains because there is this notion coming from critics that DMC4 is the best entry in the franchise because of its depth.
Assuming for a moment that people are not just fawning over the visuals, comments like these force me to ask why this game should be considered deep. For this style of game all you need are unique level design, interesting boss battles, intense battles, and good combo mechanics to make it succeed or just be a foray into mayhem and wholesome fun. I am unsure how a game of this type can be widely construed as deep. Is the battle system so flexible that you can go absolutely nuts delivering combos? Is the story RPG-level engrossing? Are there a ton of unlocks in the game that alter the gameplay drastically? Perhaps all of these are true to a point, but a counter question that is worth asking is at what point does a game cross the line from depth and become repetitive?
Puzzle Quest, as an example, is a unique game which molds a simple RPG with Bejeweled (together at last!) for a unique and compelling experience. The game is fun and interesting, but I hardly consider it to be deep. Leveling up is not quick by any stretch of the imagination, which is more than acceptable in an RPG, but the battles are beyond tedious because of their length. After 20 levels you gain abilities at such a slow rate that long-drawn out battles that tend to drag on much in the same way the movie Titanic does, only, somehow, much more painfully. I chose that image because both objects in question end in catastrophe and could have been great, but in reality lacked any meaningful depth.
At the end of the day I think gamers tend to see depth where they want to (which generally makes them lousy deep sea divers). Every genre tends to offer depth to some degree. Whether you gravitate towards RPG’s (story, abilities), MMO’s (PvP, abilities), FPS’s (PvP, weapons), fighters (combos, replay value), or any other genre you will find a certain level of depth to it. A game being particularly deep will not intrinsically interest any gamers if the genre does not line up with their interests. On top of that a game that lacks any form of depth will largely be very boring to many people because performing the same remedial task for hours on end for some unforeseen purpose suffers from what I like to call Office Space Syndrome (i.e. fun to watch, painful to endure). Games that suffer from this ailment in varying degrees include Assassin’s Creed, Halo, SimCity, Guitar Hero, and StarCraft.
Keep in mind that I told you that the repetitive nature of a game has nothing to do with how much fun you will have playing it. Most of those games I loved playing. I picked those games not just to inflame people like a loose dragon but also to show you that if you like those games, despite their repetitive nature, then it provides some perspective on what elements of gaming really make you happy.
I don’t know how much depth Devil May Cry 4 has. I may walk the Earth until the end of time like Kwai Chang Caine and never have the urge to give it a fair shake. It could be far deeper than any of the previous entries in the franchise thusly making it a game for the ages. It could be as deep as version 1 or 3 and still be very entertaining. In either case if you like this style of game I am betting it is time well spent. Whether you might appreciate the depth of the game I will leave up to you.
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October 22, 2007
The Gamer’s Quagmire #53: Bastila Catches Kerrigan
Everything you wanted to know about gaming, and less.
by Jamison DeLorenzo
I managed to resist overreacting to the news of EA purchasing BioWare several weeks back. Part of me felt like I was betraying a long standing heritage of raising warning flags about EA, singing the praises of BioWare, and lamenting yet another game publisher being assimilated by the Borg. BioWare has brought an incredible source of joy to me and millions of other gamers. The news of them being purchased by Microsoft back in 2003 was scary enough.Looking at that last statement concerned me some. When Microsoft was looking to buy them way back the thought of the soul being drained from BioWare was enough to make me queasy. The company that churned out Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights, and Knights of the Old Republic was going to the Evil Empire? BioWare did make a lot of games that only appeared on Microsoft OS’s, so from that standpoint I managed to hold back the fear (which leads to anger, and so on).
Soon we got a taste of Jade Empire and soon we will see Mass Effect. BioWare is one of my favorite publishing houses. In fact, I have consistent weekly debates with myself over whether Square/Enix or BioWare is my favorite. I have the badge and everything ready to bestow on the eventual winner. Making the decision is a painful process. It may not become as painful as finding a Wii in a local store, but you get the idea.
Anyway, the point of this is that any gamer that holds an affection, in some cases potentially a very unhealthy one, for a game company anything can cause the person to freak out. EA soaking up BioWare was enough to cause me to consider playing DDR last week. While that may not seem traumatic to you, I once wrote a nicely worded rant about DDR which prompted in my first series of hate mail as a web author (in other words - it was a proud day). As a gamer without much of a social life, losing BioWare is like losing a best friend. It does sound very pathetic and I accept that, but it is an accurate statement.
This week another rumor has surfaced that has forced my hand. I already knew about the upcoming sequels for Mass Effect (is anyone else highly disturbed by planned sequels to an original work that has not even been completed yet?) and the upcoming Dragon Age (which is described as the sequel to the Baldur’s Gate series), but now there are talks of an MMO whose backdrop is… get ready… KOTOR.
Forgetting for now that we already had an MMO with a Star Wars universe, we have to look at this game as fans of the franchise first. We, as fans, have been pining for a KOTOR 3 for a couple years now. We, as fans, have been lusting for a completed version of KOTOR 2. While the blame with that error does lie with LucasArts for forcing the game out the door before it was finished, we can find salvation in that Team Gizka is very close to a completed mod that will sew up the game the way it should have been (and if you did not know that SHAME ON YOU).
As a fan of dreaming of having a life, the last thing I need is thoughts of getting onto another online game. What does frighten me is that the franchise has been a godsend for me because the story has been phenomenal. Yes, it also has lightsabers, but the interactive dialogue and fluent story has made the franchise a legend in my book. I have yet to see this in any online game. I have yet to think about how this can translate well into an online game. Maybe there are powers that be that need to repair the emotional damage that was done with the last Star Wars MMO (thank you very little Sony), but I do not see how EA can be the ones to do that.
I am an overly cynical person. The trick is to convince myself that this current rumor will turn fact and BioWare will continue its amazing string of superb games like how Blizzard kept its string going with World of Warcraft. Maybe EA will be hands off like they have been with Will Wright’s studios and everything will work out. As a service to fans of BioWare, heed my advice when I tell you that you should pocket this rumor now and wait at least another year before considering the possibility that this could happen and that it might be good. If you don’t do this it will absolutely drive you insane. If you do not believe me consult your nearest StarCraft fan and ask them about their emotional rollercoaster ride over the last six years with that franchise.
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May 29, 2007
The Gamer’s Quagmire #46: Pauly Shore and EA
Everything you wanted to know about gaming, and less.
by Jamison DeLorenzo
Who doesn’t enjoy bashing companies like EA? Memorial day weekends bring that type of thinking to my mind. Anyway, judging by sales figures over the past couple of years it seems lots of people not only have been annoyed by a lack of good games from EA but many people have been also quite annoyed by many of their acts (overworking employees, buying out competition, destroying good gaming franchises, and creating monopolies with exclusive gaming licenses to name a few). As someone who has been steadfastly against anything EA has done for the past 3 years, I believe it is time to, at the very least, look at the cesspool that is their company and see if there is anything worth being salvaged.
It is true that avoiding their games has only been exacerbated by an unhealthy addiction to World of Warcraft. It is easy to avoid games when you only have interest in playing one. I am a much happier gamer now that I have moved on from that addiction. I still refuse to buy any new games with the EA logo on them, but enough time has passed where I can at least examine their current franchises to try and find something that may make me say that they are not operating at a 100% evil capacity anymore. They did pull the plug on their James Bond games finally, so they are starting to figure something out.
I will not make it a secret that the impending release of Spore next year is part of my motivation. I won’t even try to deny that Warhammer Online has piqued my interest. There have been a couple games that I would have given a chance recently had it not been my credo to avoid any of their products. I have not gone as far as convincing myself that what they spit out is covered in e-coli (yet) because most of their games have been garbage. Madden and NBA Live have been their most shining examples of trash games for three years running. This has made their exclusive license push all the more aggravating. It’s like the old saying goes- you cannot force feed your customers garbage. As they were topping the garbage with sewage I have not been hungry for any of their services.
Let us look at their main franchises to get an idea of what they can do to turn their name around (in terms of quality games).
Madden- Their most popular series in terms of units sold, this franchise has been dead to me since 2002 and many joined my way of thinking once the Sega 2K series started taking off and surpassed Madden in overall game quality and presentation. For many this series became dead once the exclusive license hammer dropped. I published a list of fundamental problems with the gameplay within the past year that I have had since 1999. The way I see it, until these problems are resolved and the exclusive license expires the franchise will stay dead.
NBA Live - If you are a sports junky like me you have been pained by this series for a good chunk of time. NBA2K has been the better franchise for 3 years (despite Shaq being on the cover), and really the problem is that Live dropped the ball after 2004. The 2003/2004 timeframe for Live presented great gameplay for basketball, only the franchise has regressed since then. The franchise mode does not feel as complete anymore, the constant changing of the jump step is annoying (first it was overpowered, and then it never resulted in anything but a charge or travel- make up your friggin’ mind people!), and the AI is terrible. I’m happy with 2K and have no intentions of going back. The Live games need to be completely revamped before I can consider giving them a chance again.
SimCity - To be fair this game was so good I didn’t even know that EA owned Maxis until SimCity 3000. I didn’t know Maxis made it until deep into my SimCity 2000 phase. I didn’t care. While there have been a plethora of Sim titles over the past 10 years SimCity is the flagship and the best of any of the other Sim games. That is, until SimCity 4 came out. By the grace of God I managed to borrow the game from someone before simply buying it. 3000 is my favorite of all the iterations in the SimCity franchise, so seeing 4 fall flat on its face was, in fact, heartbreaking. The economy in the game was completely broken- the fact that you needed to build a city whose sole purpose was to take in garbage and power from the city you wanted to build was very annoying. I was in the group of people who never had a problem making money in any of the City games in any of the first 3 titles, but somehow in 4 generating revenue became impossible. Sure, the integration with Sims to get people to give you feedback on neighborhoods was quite cool, but when you can’t have fun building a city you know the game is broken. Maybe the next title in the series will be fine, but until then nostalgia will win out on this series.
Sims - If you want to talk about addictions, this is a great place to start. The appeal of playing a game where you simulate someone’s life is difficult to explain. In college I coined the Point Blank Theory, which states that some games look less appealing than a Pauly Shore movie until you sit down to play them. The overall definition of the theory is still in flux because those movies are still highly unappealing when you sit down to watch them, which blows apart the gaming theory as a whole. Anyway, people went from openly mocking the game to refusing to give up the controller after 30 minutes. I mention this because the game didn’t look fun until I sat down and gave it a whirl. After years of playing the original I came up with a list of changes that I thought would be good shifts in game’s fundamentals. Three of them made it into Sims 2, which, to me, proved that my advanced degree in computer science paid off (nevermind the whole job thing). The downside is that the number of expansion packs for these games is a running joke in the gaming community, despite their high sales numbers. Reducing the number of expansion packs by making the packs larger would go a long way to rebuilding the character issues people have with the company.
Command & Conquer - One of the staples of the RWS (Real-time War Simulation) genre (a.k.a. RTS, but as I’ve said in the past real-time strategy is a horrid genre name because that name applies just as well to Tetris as this franchise). Quite honestly I was never as big of a fan of this franchise as WarCraft (before WarCraft 3), but these games have been genuinely solid. There has not been a lot of fresh ideas in the genre as a whole in a while, let alone this franchise, but if they did make the next game as fresh as the first and second games were people would eat it up. People are dying for a great new RWS- evidenced by the fervor surrounding the announcement of StarCraft 2.
Battlefield - Not being much of a war game fan it is hard to really get behind them and defend them as a good potential cornerstone for EA, but Battlefield 2 was a fantastic game at its core. There were some issues with multiplayer that hurt its reputation before some early patches, but this game was very well done as a FPS. Commandeering vehicles was fantastic, but the coolest part of the game for me was the ability to play the role of a general and drop in supplies and reinforcements. It isn’t that hard to bring in fresh ideas into such a young genre, but when you throw down the improvements that Battlefield 2 did you a great franchise starting to catch steam. War games are not my thing, but I can tell you that the reception the gaming community gave the last installment in the franchise will only serve as a launching point for fans and production budget for Battlefield 3.
Need for Speed - If you like driving games at one point you had to have given one of the Need for Speed games a shot. If you are like me you waited until Underground 2 in 2004 before you bothered looking at it. Right now I am knee deep in my used copy of Carbon and am loving every second of it. I used to think that GTA and Carmageddon were the only games where you just drive around and cause vehicular mayhem. Within the past two years I discovered this game and one other. The car customization combined with the street racing is entertaining. I don’t know how much fresh air can be breathed into this series considering the numerous iterations to date, but if EA keeps this franchise breathing then they can start to win people over again.
Burnout - This is the other game that involves vehicular destruction. This game is so similar to Need for Speed I wonder why EA continues to make it- other than to milk money off of a franchise name. This game doesn’t have a career where you build up a car like Need for Speed, but you do have several challenges for races and destruction. This franchise made sense to me when Akklaim held it, but right now it feels like the only thing this game has going for it is the destruction challenges. The game felt old to me after one iteration, and in my opinion this franchise should be buried and forgotten.
If you include the upcoming Spore release, the only positive things I can see coming down the pike from EA revolve around simulations, probably Need for Speed, and maybe Command & Conquer. Nothing else under the EA franchise name holds any appeal for me at all. Really the message I want to send here is that I want to lighten up on EA and give them a shot, but their lineup is not helping me get there. So while my earlier movie analogy failed, right now I honestly can state that this sentiment makes think of EA as the gaming version of the Wachowski Brothers.
No… that wasn’t a compliment.
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May 21, 2007
The Gamer’s Quagmire #45: Nuclear Launch Detected
Everything you wanted to know about gaming, and less.
by Jamison DeLorenzo
With all of the interesting things developing in the gaming world over the past month you would think I would have made the time to write about some of them. Instead, thanks to the purchasing of the Civilization IV expansion my time has mostly centered around wreaking havoc on the Spanish (someone care to explain how they became the Zulus for IV?). Sad to say, I have been struggling playing on the mediocre levels of the game. You would think playing these games for over 15 years would hold some value, but the game has changed enough where you do need to learn some new tricks to right the ship.Anyway, the big bombshell that has been looming over the Internet finally crash landed over the weekend. Blizzard has been holding an announcement over our heads for a while with a ton of speculation. It could have been anything from the Warcraft, Starcraft, or Diablo universe from a sequel to another online game. Reading all of the speculation was quite entertaining itself as thousands of people online suddenly became expert industry analysts or were insiders with reliable information. This happens almost all of the time, but it has yet to be anything other than entertaining.
Anyway, I usually do not hold my breath waiting for an announcement from a developer but Blizzard is one of the 3 or 4 exceptions that I have in place because they routinely churn out something that I enjoy. One could argue that after being hopelessly addicted to World of Warcraft for two years and having it nearly completely consume my life that it would be wise to enjoy titles from other developers in the meantime. Considering that the game is probably not going to be ready until at least late 2008 there is plenty of time for other titles. Hellgate, Ratchet & Clank, Metal Gear, Last Remnant, Spore, Ninja Gaiden, GTA, and Forza all have compelling new releases within the year. If all of that doesn’t keep me busy then my bank account is almost guaranteed to be void of money.
When Blizzard announced that their next big project is Starcraft II there were millions rejoicing. International Starcraft tournaments are still going on, which is very impressive for a title as old as Starcraft. Plenty of people have been patiently waiting for what many consider to be the best of the three major Blizzard universes to finally have a sequel. Whatever the wait is going to be, fans can begin to breathe a little more easily knowing that the franchise is not dead. They have only patiently been waiting for over 10 years for it, and now the countdown to the next addiction can begin… only it can’t, because right now there is no release date set anywhere. After waiting for the initially cataclysmic wave of internet traffic barreling its way towards the streamed movies subsided I began to look at them myself. I apologize for any horrific flashbacks to the Day After Tomorrow that may have brought.
An opening cinematic along with some gameplay footage is not nearly enough for me to crow about how exciting this game may be, but if you had any fun with this game before looking at the new screenshots online must whet your whistle. Hours upon hours of fighting people on Battlenet and toying with the campaign editor await once more. I remember the years I spent playing the first game and have nothing but positive memories all around. My VHS tapes of all the battles I recorded are long gone (in case there was any question on my geek factor), but new cinematics can always be had.
There is, as always, a big stumbling block. A lot of the units are still there and mostly the game may not change at all. As such, the question a lot of people ask is why tinker with a formula that works? This is one of the funniest questions as it does touch on the central part of the war between all the current consoles. The fact of the matter is that every console relies on formulae from franchises still working to sell games. Microsoft needs Halo to give itself a big market share. Nintendo needs Zelda, Mario, and Melee to sell big. Sony needs Gran Turismo to succeed. As far as exclusive titles go those are the big ones. With all of the rumors on Metal Gear and Final Fantasy no longer being Sony exclusives it is hard to state with any certainty how Sony can dominate this round of consoles.
Putting the console spin on this issue aside for now, we have to look at Starcraft. What is it about the sequel that is worthy of a ton of attention? Based on the fact that the game has not seen a new release in a long time and it still being very popular is enough to get millions of copies sold. For people who have not seen the game before, or those that enjoy seeing franchises evolve, what is this sequel going to provide to make it worthwhile? Not only that, but what can the game provide the genre? The war simulations have felt relatively stale to me for a while, and, like any other genre, new ideas to maintain freshness are always important in making a game the best it can be.
It’s strange- I really know nothing about the game other than “new units” and “updated graphics.” The critic inside me says I definitely need to know more. The gamer is dying to see more footage. It sickens me that I’ve been pulled in with just a video and some screenshots, but I know I must have it.
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