Tag Archives: video games

Game review: Uncharted 3 (vs Uncharted 2)

Naughty Dog have always had the best game engine technology on the PlayStation. Back in the PS1 days, Crash Bandicoot used algorithmic textures to get around the console’s lack of texture memory, true 3D levels so big that they took hours to compile on the development systems, and a Lisp-based game engine. On the PlayStation 2, Jak and Daxter kept the use of Lisp, and was the first game to have one huge free-roaming world with no loading screens.

Jak and Daxter

Unfortunately, having the best technology didn’t always translate into making the best games. Insomniac used Naughty Dog’s platform to build the Ratchet and Clank games, which I found far more entertaining than Jak & Daxter; and Jak 2 was a horrible, horrible game. Infinitely spawning enemies? Missions with arbitrary time limits that require navigating through randomly generated traffic jams? Whoever came up with those ideas needs a slap. The third game in the trilogy was excellent, but I honestly felt it should have shipped with an apology for Jak 2.

Let's play with the traffic again.

Let’s play with the traffic again.

With the PlayStation 3, Naughty Dog’s first game on the new platform was Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. It again showed them to be at the forefront technologically. Just as Jak had eliminated the loading screens, Uncharted now tried to get rid of most of the cutscenes too, as well as almost all of the HUD. Characters now interacted with each other and conversed during the actual gameplay. Character animation was state of the art, and the environment had lush foliage that reacted to movement and real-time shadows. But again, the game was somewhat lacking—it was widely criticized for being short and heavy on gunfire, and the plot also left a lot to be desired.

Everything changed with Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (henceforth U2). The focus on shooting was dialed back somewhat, with protagonist Nathan Drake more interested in stealth and taking cover. The action was continuous, with some truly amazing set pieces involving combat in a collapsing building, and the first truly convincing video game take on the classic “fight on a moving train” trope. For me, U2 was probably the best PS3 game, beating even GTA IV for its wider variety of settings and higher enjoyability.

So when Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception was announced, I was excited. I thought Naughty Dog had cracked the formula, and would deliver another blockbuster. But after playing through U3 this week, I was left feeling rather disappointed. I immediately went back and played through U2 again, to see if I was misremembering something—but no, the second game really is better. And the frustrating thing is, the failures in Uncharted 3 are things which I think it would have been relatively easy to fix if they had been recognized.

First up, the graphics. More polygons means better graphics, right? Well, not so much. To my eye, the hyperreal detail of Uncharted 3 pulls it into uncanny valley. It was a relief to go back to the slightly softer Uncharted 2 Drake, and not be distracted by the facial animation the whole time. (That said, I did notice how much better the characters’ ears were in U3, and a couple of U2 characters are mysteriously fuzzy, in particular Harry Flynn.)

Uncharted 3 vs 2 face graphics

The world of Uncharted 3 also looks more detailed. Unfortunately, this had the side effect of making it harder to spot where I was supposed to go next. Levers, switches, pressure plates and treasures stand out much better when the rest of the world is slightly less detailed. At one point I even spent about 15 minutes flailing around trying to find a door that was too well hidden by the exquisite detailing of the surrounding rock walls and the ambient lighting.

There’s also less environmental variation in U3. In U2, you traverse jungles, cities, snow-covered mountains, and icy crevasses. In U3, other than a brief jaunt through London the game mostly takes place on ships or in deserts. In Uncharted 2, when the final location is revealed it is breathtakingly beautiful—huge and lush, even if you only get to explore a small part of it. In U3, the final location seems dull and lifeless, not to mention small. Part of the problem is that everything is lit in sandstorm red, but there’s also the nagging sense of having seen it all before in Prince of Persia.

The sameness of the graphics also makes the game’s pacing problems seem worse. I appreciate that Naughty Dog spent a lot of time coming up with algorithms to let Nathan Drake stagger realistically across lifelike sand dunes, but someone really needed to come up with some tasks for him to perform in the desert, rather than subjecting us to a rather tedious interlude of holding down the control stick. More villages to explore for clues? A Bedouin camp? Wreckage of another expedition? The “sand dunes, dried-up well, sand dunes, mirage, sand dunes, oh no I’ve been walking in circles” sequence is such a predictable string of clichés it would probably have been better to condense it into a montage cut scene and skip straight to the next bit of actual game.

If the desert sequence is boring, the drug sequences are worse. Drug trips are never interesting for anyone other than the person actually taking part in them, and that applies to Nathan Drake’s wobbly blurry slow motion staggering around a marketplace as well. I found myself wondering if I had missed something, as I couldn’t believe I was expected to blunder around aimlessly for over three minutes.

In fairness, there are a couple of excellent set pieces at sea. The boats are buffeted by procedurally generated ocean waves, rain lashes the decks, debris and unsecured cargo pallets slide around, and overall there’s a real sense of physical place, as long as you overlook the many mysteriously invulnerable locked doors. Unfortunately, Naughty Dog then throw in a ridiculously bulletproof and grenade-proof armor plated enemy with a machine gun, and suddenly a treacherous environment becomes a source of major frustration.

If the ridiculous shipboard ‘boss’ stretches credulity, the end sequence shatters it completely. Where is this infinite waterfall-like flow of sand coming from? Where is the entire city disappearing to? Objects don’t just vanish into sand like that, unless we’re expected to believe that the entire city was built on top of a giant hollow sinkhole. Also, why can’t I leap off of the sliding chunks of city and just wait in the desert until it’s all over? Again I found myself reminded of Prince of Persia, and not in a good way.

Another ludicrous sequence is the escape from a burning building. In the real world, burning buildings are filled with smoke, and you asphyxiate inside a minute or two. You don’t get to leap athletically between rooms that are mysteriously only burning around the edges. I don’t expect complete realism in my action games; I know that Drake regularly survives falls that would kill any real human. I’m prepared to overlook that for the sake of the action and gameplay. But there are limits to suspension of disbelief, and U3 exceeded mine.

Then there’s the plot. The flashback structure of Uncharted 2 worked so well that Naughty Dog decided to do the same thing in U3. Unfortunately, they also decided that they wanted to tell the story of how Nathan Drake met Victor Sullivan. This requires a 20 year flashback, and you get to play Drake as a weaponless teenager wandering around a small town, going to the museum, and looking at things. It’s about as exciting as it sounds. Stick with it and there’s a rooftop chase sequence at the end, and oh dear we’re doing Prince of Persia again aren’t we?

A fascinating afternoon at the museum.

A fascinating afternoon at the museum.

The 20 year flashback doesn’t work as plot either. Drake steals the McGuffin from under the nose of the master villain, she knows about it and about Drake’s involvement with Sullivan, and yet we’re supposed to believe that she just sits on her hands for 20 years before trying to recover the item? Meanwhile Drake, who has seen it trigger a piece of cryptographic hardware owned by his namesake Sir Francis Drake, is content to wait 20 years before investigating further? Really?

The final piece of processed cheese on this Subway sandwich of disappointment is the flat dialog. Uncharted 2 sparkled with witty banter between Drake and his companions. Maybe I’ve watched too many Bond movies, but I like my gun battles and tomb raiding to be enlivened by the occasional wisecrack or horndog innuendo. I liked that Drake was something of an everyman, commenting “You’ve got to be kidding me” when attacked by a helicopter. There were some genuinely funny bits of character crosstalk in Uncharted 2. Uncharted 3… not so much.

So while Uncharted 3 is definitely technically a better game than Uncharted 2, it ends up inferior, mostly because the earlier game had much better writing and game design. It’s disappointing, because writers and designers are cheap compared to 3D game engines and huge 3D models. I just hope that the forthcoming Naughty Dog game The Last of Us has been an exercise in writing and game design, and not technological development.

Finally, I feel obliged to point out that even a sub-par Naughty Dog game like “Uncharted 3″ is head and shoulders above most other games, so don’t let my criticisms keep you from playing it. But if you only play one Uncharted game, play Uncharted 2.

Semiotics of video game genres

Martin Hollis, developer of Goldeneye, recently Tweeted:

Accepted game genres are a bunch of things which don’t go together: world structure (platformer), camera angle (FPS), I don’t even (RPG)

I went to tweet a reply, but one thing led to another, and it turned into this article.

I think that the confused nature of video game genre terminology is because the genre names are largely indicative signs, not expressive signs. They are phrased in a way which seems to be denote function, structure or content, but they arise as codes to represent an artistic heritage tracing back to some original successful video game. That heritage may be expressed thematically or stylistically, not just in terms of gameplay. Hence the lack of commonality between genre terms.

Look at the earliest accepted game genre, the Adventure (as it was called for years). The original game was the Colossal Cave Adventure, which started with the words:

WELCOME TO ADVENTURE!! WOULD YOU LIKE INSTRUCTIONS?

The game was ported everywhere, sold in commercialized versions, and known simply as “Adventure”. When people began to make other games that involved typing commands and reading text responses, they became known as adventure games. This was the case even when the subject matter had nothing in common with Adventure, apart from the typing in commands and reading text bit. The game could involve controlling six robots while you sit in suspended animation, and it would still get called an ‘adventure game’. Eventually, the semantic straitjacket of the word ‘adventure’, with its association with dwarves and magic and the literary heritage of J.R.R. Tolkien, came to be seen as limiting. The company Infocom popularized ‘interactive fiction’ as a more general replacement, and it has now become the preferred term.

But before ‘interactive fiction’ became popular as a term, ‘adventures’ had spawned ‘graphic adventures’. Sierra Online was founded to develop games inspired by “Adventure”, but with a more visual interface. Before long the mouse had become popular, and ‘point-and-click adventures’ were created. “Adventure” also inspired books published under the title “Choose Your Own Adventure”, and these in turn inspired computer games, often developed by the same companies that were creating conventional “type commands and read text responses” adventures. So the term ‘interactive fiction’ went from being a broader term than ‘adventure game’ to being a narrower one.

Interactive fiction goes get used as the term for ‘choose your own adventure’ games, which nowadays involve no typing. It’s also used for games like “The Hobbit” and “Zork Zero“, which involve pictures. It even gets used for Sierra and Lucasarts games, which came to involve little or no reading. Yet it’s not a term used to describe “Myst” and “Riven”, even though those games involve puzzles, wandering around a fantasy world, and reading lots of text. I think it comes back to heritage—Myst’s ancestor isn’t “Adventure” or D&D; it’s the children’s games “The Manhole” and “Cosmic Osmo“. So Sierra games are interactive fiction, but Myst isn’t.

(Of course, ancestry isn’t everything. “Return to Zork” and “Zork Nemesis” are too Myst-like to be interactive fiction, in spite of their clear ancestry. Though if Myst had never existed, perhaps Interactive Fiction would include “Return to Zork”?)

Moving away from the adventure genre, graphical games with colorful blobs you controlled using a joystick became colloquially known as “Atari”, even though they often had nothing in common as far as gameplay. Atari’s console was a big commercial success, so ‘Atari’ briefly became the sign to denote a particular kind of play style, just as ‘adventure’ had.

Another early genre to emerge was the ‘shoot-em-up’. This began with “Space Invaders” and “Galaxian“, both of which involved literal upwards shooting at hordes of alien invaders. Dozens of successful games imitated the formula, including “Galaga”, “Gorf”, and “Xevious”. Scrolling became a standard feature, and then game creators tried turning the action sideways and ended up with sideways shoot-em-up games like “Gradius” and “R-type”.

Shoot-em-ups were so popular that home computers had development tools dedicated to building your own, such as “Shoot-em-Up Construction Kit“. But at the same time, there were games which were literally shoot-em-up games, but which were not referred to as such. Western-themed games like “Gun.Smoke” and “Sheriff” involved shooting lots of enemies, but were not shoot-em-ups. “Space Wars” involved shooting and spacecraft, but also failed to be a shoot-em-up. “Robotron 2084“, however, was considered a shoot-em-up by many. This was partly because it featured a horde of aliens and frenetic action, but partly because its lineage went back to “Defender“, a more conventional sideways-scrolling shoot-em-up.

Because of the arrangement of video memory in most computers, scrolling the screen smoothly sideways was technically a lot more difficult than scrolling it vertically. Smooth sideways scrolling was hence regarded as a selling point. This led to one rather curious genre term, ‘side-scroller’. Games as disparate as “R-type”, “Double Dragon” and “Sonic The Hedgehog” were grouped under the ‘side-scroller’ category. However, it’s a genre you almost never hear about now—not because the games have ceased to exist, but because sideways scrolling is no longer technically difficult. Nobody calls “LittleBigPlanet” a sidescroller, because it’s not a noteworthy gameplay feature, and unlike other genres ‘sidescrollers’ had no shared history or style.

The term ‘sidescroller’ illustrates something else, too: as awareness of video games became more widespread, people learned from the early confusing mistakes and tried to coin terms which were more general. Hence the family of games derived from “Donkey Kong“, “Donkey Kong Junior” and clones such as “Crazy Kong” became known as ‘platformers’ rather than ‘Kong games’, even though I recall hearing the latter used on occasion.

The ingredients for a platformer were a (usually humanoid) protagonist, a two-dimensional world, floating platforms, jumping, and the collection of tokens for points or power-ups. Yet Donkey Kong itself doesn’t really feature platforms in the first two levels—the first level is made of long slanted girders, and doesn’t require any jumping from platform to platform, and the second level is mostly conveyor belts. The term came later, and is more descriptive of the derivatives which appeared on every video game system—games like “Chuckie Egg”, “Super Mario Bros”, or “Manic Miner”. It’s that chain of influence which links “Ratchet and Clank” to “Donkey Kong” and makes both of them platformers, rather than the gameplay or setting.

Similarly, the term ‘First Person Shooter’ is not used to literally denote all games which involve shooting at things and have a first person viewpoint; rather, it connotes a lineage of game style tracing back to “Wolfenstein 3D” and “Doom”. “Descent” was first person and shooty, but it wasn’t an FPS. I’ve had people tell me that “Team Fortress 2″ isn’t really an FPS either, because even though it fits the term semantically, it is outside the FPS genre in terms of style: it’s too comedic, it requires team play, it has no boss fights, and so on.

All of which brings me to the following maxim:

If a game can be adequately described by an accepted genre term, it is probably not worth playing.

I’ve come to realize that because genre terms denote artistic derivation, a game which is adequately described by applying a genre is inherently going to be a retread of something you’ve already played. The Call of Duty games aren’t as dull as ditchwater to me because they’re FPSs; they’re dull as ditchwater because they are merely FPSs. “Bioshock” was interesting because although it was mechanically an FPS and built with an FPS engine, it had enough that was different that if you were describing it to someone, you couldn’t just say “It’s an FPS” and let them fill in the blanks themselves.

It’s “survival horror”? It’ll be badly lit, there will be blood everywhere, you won’t have enough ammo, and things will jump out at you. The few games in the genre worth playing are the ones that venture outside the template, like “Silent Hill” (fog rather than darkness), “Fatal Frame” (photographing ghosts rather than beating zombies away with sticks), and “Parasite Eve” (third person, pausable combat).

Likewise, it’s not hard to think of families of games which are becoming stale, but for which we don’t yet have a convenient genre term. The “urban crime sandbox” needs a catchy label, if only to shame developers into some innovation again.

Steam in a box?

As you’ve noticed from my postings about Apple, I don’t believe in locked-down hardware. People have asked me what I do about video game consoles. My answer is that I buy them, even though they are locked down, because there’s no good alternative. Yes, there’s PC gaming, but then you’re financially supporting the Microsoft empire, and that’s even worse. Plus there are the endless DRM and driver problems, the software updates, the periodic reinstalls, and all the other things that make Windows miserable.

So I have a Wii and a PS3, until such time as someone makes a decent open console.

Now a new report claims that VALVe is planning an open console. This makes me very excited. Team Fortress 2, Portal and Portal 2 are some of my favorite games. (The original Half-Life was good too.)

There have been leaks suggesting Steam for Linux. I’m thinking those leaks are related to this Steam Box project. It wouldn’t make sense to require a full Windows license for every console and introduce DLL hell into console gaming; game programmers don’t want most of Windows anyway, they want access to the bare metal. It would make sense to have a standard Linux or BSD image to support Steam, and then provide direct access to a standard set of hardware components for the games themselves.

Anyhow, if VALVe does release a Windows-free open gaming console, I will definitely buy one. Even if it doesn’t come with a copy of Half-Life 3.

LA Noire review

It was just another treacherous night in the big city when I opened the “LA Noire” case. You doubtless saw the headlines—big name publisher picks up well reviewed game from independent studio. There was another story I was interested in, though. According to the police files, there had been accusations of appalling working conditions, and the whole shebang had been deep sixed a few months later in mysterious circumstances. That left me with a few loose ends to tie up.

I sat back and pondered the cocktail I had been handed. A fifth of hidden object puzzle, a generous dash of choose-your-own-adventure, a touch of cover-based shootout, and I could definitely detect a hint of sandbox. It added up to something, but what? There was only one way to find out. I slipped the disc into my PS3.

The graphics hit me first, a one-two combo punch of lush environments mixed with uncanny valley facial animation. The story moved like molasses on a winter’s morning. Yet it wasn’t long before I was hooked, as hooked as the morphine addicts who were turning up dead on the streets of the city of angels. I wandered the lovingly rendered streets from crime scene to crime scene, chasing down perps who were seedier than a parakeet’s breakfast.

It takes a strong stomach to be a detective. When there’s a serial killer beating and slashing his female victims, someone has to kneel over the desecrated corpse and turn it over for clues. I won’t even go into my time working the arson desk; suffice it to say I’ll never look at a rack of ribs the same way again.

Maybe that was the hook, the unflinching attempt at realism. Maybe we all want to be heroes, or maybe I was won over by the delight of there being something different in the world of console adventures. Whatever it was, I’m glad I was there. The story may be more of an interactive movie than is good for it, but entertainment is entertainment as long as your expectations aren’t out of whack.

Would I recommend that you follow in my footsteps? Well, if you’ve got patience and determination, and pay attention to detail, you could do worse. Sure, the path’s as linear as the proverbial straight and narrow, and if you wander off track the illusion of freedom in a living city falls apart faster than a shanty town being hit by a tornado. But hey, those are the breaks. Me, I think it’s worth it for the chance to take part in a car chase in a Tucker Torpedo and a shoot out around the Spruce Goose.

Video game fight: inFAMOUS vs [Prototype]

Every now and again, two video games come out at about the same time that tackle pretty much the same subject matter. (Actually, this happens all the time in first person shooters, but by and large I don’t play those.) Such was the case with [Prototype] and inFAMOUS.

Both are M-rated games about becoming a superhero (or supervillain). Both have a protagonist whose origin is initially obscure and whose morality is questionable. Both have a conspiracy theory storyline. Both are third person action-adventure games. And yet, having played inFAMOUS and being more than half way through completing [Prototype], I’m impressed with how different the two games are.

The most noticeable difference is in the first five minutes. InFAMOUS takes a traditional approach, starting things off with a cutscene of a mysterious explosion and some voice-over, then having the protagonist wake up and begin a series of tutorial tasks to introduce the controls.

[Prototype] has no such reserve. Its opening cutscene has the ruined world already in place, relying on the narration to provide a little backstory. Some combat is shown in cutscene, before the player is thrown into the middle of an epic firefight with no real preparation. Panic, mash bGuttons, see what happens. Strange powers make a bloody mess of people and vehicles, as the game leads you through the major combat modes as quickly as possible. Just as you’re starting to think “Hang on, am I not going to find out how this stuff works?” you get another cutscene, and you’re jumped back 18 days of game time to before you had all the powers you were just using. The game then proceeds to tell its story by having you play a series of flashbacks, interspersed by cutscenes set in its present.

I think I can see what the developers of [Prototype] were trying to do. They wanted to see if they could grab players with an action sequence right at the start, give them a preview of what’s to come and a reason to play through the early stages of getting those awesome powers. It’s the same idea Gerry Anderson used at the start of TV shows like Thunderbirds and Space:1999. The problem is that when you’re expected to control the action in preview scenes, you’re less likely to sit back and enjoy them, and more likely to flail around in confusion and near-panic.

The differences continue once the main gameplay has started. In inFAMOUS, movement is based around grinding on electrical cables and metal rails, and jumping from roof to roof. (Developers Sucker Punch were responsible for the PS2 Sly Cooper games, and obviously decided to stick with what they knew.) Motion is largely realistic, if you accept the notion that your character is fueled by electricity rather than killed by it.

[Prototype], on the other hand, goes for ludicrous over-the-top cartoon motion, where the laws of physics aren’t even treated as suggestions. Everything seems unnaturally fast, including the movement of pedestrian bystanders. Eventually you get to scoot to the top of skyscrapers in a few seconds by simply repeatedly jumping upwards, with the vertical walls as purchase.

The differences in combat are also quite extreme. In inFAMOUS you slowly develop your super-powers; they are relatively small in number, and gradually power up. In [Prototype] you quickly get a bewildering array of different attacks, each with its own combination or sequence of buttons. I generally found myself sticking to one of three or so attacks that actually worked reliably and weren’t too fiddly to trigger. It just wasn’t worth remembering all the others.

I found inFAMOUS annoying on rare occasions, mostly when I had to dashacross the map in a short space of time. [Prototype] induced rage far more consistently. Enemy nests and larger enemies require that you pick up large objects like cars, target the enemy with L2, hold down circle to charge your throw, then release circle to actually complete the throw. There are a number of issues with the game that make this frustrating, however:

  • You have to be right on top of something and motionless in order to pick it up. There’s an attack power you eventually get which has the side effect of letting you lasso things while moving, or at some distance–but then you’re stuck with that relatively weak power for combat.
  • If an enemy attacks you while you’re charging your throw, you drop the object and have to start over.
  • The L2 trigger focuses on the closest visible enemy of any kind. In battles where there are huge mutants attacking you, but also random human troops, this is a major annoyance.
  • Monsters generally run straight for you, ignoring minor distractions like tanks.

So in practice, you run across the map to grab the nearest object, and end up facing away from whatever massive mutant you’re trying to kill. You spin around 180 degrees, and half the time discover that the mutant is right there and will leap over and smack you before you can ready a throw, causing you to drop whatever you picked up so you have to start your attack sequence again. On occasions when the mutant is far enough away that it can’t ruin your attack, you hit F2 and the cursor focuses on something entirely harmless that happens to be closer. It’s incredibly frustrating, particularly in the final “boss” battle–which has the added irritation of an arbitrary time limit.

Helicopter combat is frustrating too, because the right stick not only turns your helicopter, it also refocuses the L2 targeting on other objects. So if an enemy copter isn’t quite close enough to your sights for a missile to hit, you start turning, only to find that your missiles are suddenly targeting a different copter that they’re even less likely to hit.

So while inFAMOUS lacks vehicle combat and the range of weapons of [Prototype], it’s a far better game as a result of the added focus and polish. While I finished both games, I completed the last 25% or so of [Prototype] out of sheer bloodymindedness, rather than because I was actually enjoying it.

Both games got sequels. inFAMOUS 2 is already out; [Prototype 2] is due soon, but barring stellar reviews I think I’ll give it a miss.

Nintendo announces major losses

The news for Nintendo is bleak. Sales are down 50% year-to-year. They posted a first quarter loss of $327 million. They’ve dropped their profit forecast by 82%. And they’ve slashed the price of the 3DS 32% in dollars (even more in yen).

As a gamer with a DSi XL and a Wii, none of this particularly surprises me. Nintendo have made a series of disastrous mis-steps.

Problem #1 is that they gave up on serious gamers. In fact, it seems like they’ve given up on the Wii entirely. Looking at Metacritic’s game releases by score, broken down by year, is instructive.

In 2007, the Wii’s first full year, there were 19 “green zone” games (those with aggregate scores of 75 and above). The list included some killer games including Metroid Prime 3, Super Mario Galaxy and Super Paper Mario. I had a lot of Wii-related fun.

In 2008, 42 “green zone” games. In 2009, 64. But then in 2010, we were back down to 44; and at least half a dozen of those were WiiWare mini-games. Take out the sports game annual re-releases and suddenly the catalog was looking pretty thin; the Wii had already peaked. Now we’re in 2011, and there have been just 6 “green zone” games in the first half of the year. And none of them have been by Nintendo. (Nintendo in the USA has so little interest in the Wii that they haven’t even bothered to ship the much-loved Pikmin 2, even though it was localized into English for the UK. Forget about unlocalized games, they’ll never ship.)

Problem #2 is that the few decent games being released on the Wii are being buried under mountains of shovelware. Try walking into Gamestop and finding a copy of “de Blob 2″, for example.

Problem #3 is the 3DS. It’s a gimmick. I tried it, and I was unimpressed. Poor battery life, the 3D quickly fails if you play a fast-paced game and hence don’t keep the console in exactly the right position relative to your head, and it isn’t all that impressive when it works. The 3DS was also way too expensive, and had no good games that weren’t ports of games everyone interested in Nintendo has played to death before. (Yes, I liked Ocarina of Time. No, I wasn’t interested in paying $300 to play it again.)

Problem #4 is competition from mobile phones. The DS had made some inroads into the casual gaming space; even my mother has one. But that space is rapidly being taken over by smartphones.

Now, I happen to think that Nintendo could have competed in this area. What killed them was a combination of their utter inability to make the DSiware experience tolerable, and their inability to engage with independent developers and make it easy to develop for Nintendo platforms.

I’ve bought some DSiware games. Since most DSi owners probably haven’t, let me describe the experience.

First you have to find out which games are good. Forget about using DSiware’s own browser to do so, that just gives you a scrolling list of games in no useful order, with minimal information about them. The official web-based catalog is pretty much the same thing with screenshots; no reviews, no user ratings, so you’re on your own.

So you head off to Metacritic or read reviews. Suppose that you decide, as I did, that you want to buy the Jason Rohrer game compilation. Well, now you discover that it’s 200 points. So you go to buy 200 points of credit.

And then you find out that you can’t. Nintendo won’t simply sell you the game you want. You have to buy at least 1000 points of credit, which will cost you $10. Games cost anything from 200 to 1200 points, but 200 and 500 seem typical. So it was that I found myself sitting down with a notepad, making a list of games that I was interested and how many points they were going to cost, and then shuffling my selection until I had 1000 points’ worth.

Then you need to enter your credit card details on the DSi. No buying from the web using a computer with a keyboard, no keeping the credit card on file. Then your account gets credited with the points, and you can actually buy the games—which of course means that you have to use the horrible DSiware scrolling list interface to find them.

Overall, the process is painful when compared to Android or iOS. So much so that if you’re a casual gamer, you’d be mad to use DSiware unless there was a platform exclusive that you absolutely had to play.

Problem #5 is online gaming. I tried it on both the Wii and the DSi. It was a horrible experience on both. “Friend codes” are a usability disaster, there’s no web integration, and most games lack the ability to just go find someone to play online with. And I’m comparing it to PSN and Steam; not to Xbox Live, which I’m told is even slicker than the networks I’m used to. So Nintendo completely missed the Internet and online gaming trend.

So in summary: Wii hardware sales are dead, there are no good Wii games selling in big numbers, the DS has been announced to be obsolete, there’s competition from smartphones, and nobody is buying the 3DS. The only thing keeping Nintendo afloat is DS software sales, and since big N themselves have lost interest in the DS and are trying to move everyone to the 3DS, that won’t last for much longer either. I’m betting Nintendo’s executives are pretty nervous right now.

What’s on the horizon? Well, the one big Wii release planned for this year is Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Assuming it ships, and assuming it sells as well as Twilight Princess, 10 million copies at 45% profit on a $50 game won’t even be as much revenue as Nintendo bled in losses in Q1. And those are some pretty damn optimistic assumptions.

Will the 3DS suddenly sell now that it’s $170? Hard to say, but my gut reaction is no, based on the fact that the design issues remain, and there’s still no must-have software. If sales do ramp up, it probably won’t be until Christmas, and that’s if Nintendo can deliver a dozen or so really good games by then—and I don’t mean shipping Mario Kart and Star Fox again.

Finally, there’s the Wii U. That won’t ship until 2012, and even when it does, Nintendo have lost the goodwill of serious gamers at this point. I predict that people will take a wait-and-see attitude like they have with the 3DS.

With all that in mind, I’m actually surprised that Nintendo are predicting any profits at all this year. I’m no professional pundit, but I expect them to make an overall loss this year.

Metroid Prime Trilogy (includes fanboyism)

I was at Staple!: The Independent Media Expo at the weekend. As I browsed the stalls, I wandered into range of a conversation between (I think) a guy from Dreampunk Productions, and someone who mentioned that he was a video game developer. Nothing unusual so far, there are a lot of video game developers around Austin. They were talking about a comic strip I hadn’t heard of, and the artists’ interest in making a video game about it–also not unusual. Then, the man with his back to me mentioned which company he worked for: Retro Studios.

The comic book guy hadn’t heard of them. But I had, and couldn’t help myself. “You made Metroid Prime. The best first person action-adventure game ever.” And so it was that I found myself talking to Mike Wikan, senior game designer for the Metroid Prime series.

Returning home and searching my web site, I found that I had written very little about the Metroid series–surprising, given how impressed I was with the games.

Let’s get the obvious statements out of the way first: If you have a Nintendo Wii, you should go buy the Metroid Prime Trilogy Collector’s Edition. You should probably hurry to do so, as Mr Wikan tells me that it’s out of print, and no more will be produced; prices are already starting to climb.

If you have an old GameCube sitting around somewhere, you should go buy at least the first Metroid Prime, which is the all-time highest rated GameCube game on Metacritic. Yes, better than Legend of Zelda. Better than Resident Evil 4.

If you don’t think first person shooters can work on a console, then you particularly ought to at least buy Metroid Prime 3: Corruption for the Wii and try it out, for reasons I’ll get to later.

First, let’s go back to the mid 80s. Having achieved commercial success with classic arcade games like Donkey Kong and Super Mario Brothers, Nintendo wanted to branch out and prove that their NES console could do more. So 1986 saw two groundbreaking games: the original Legend of Zelda, and the original Metroid.

Metroid was designed to be approachable to players expecting arcade action. At first, it seems like a scrolling platform game with a heavily armed protagonist. As you continue to play, however, it emerges that there’s a more complex story going on, and that exploration and mapping are an important part of the game.

There were many details of the game which were brand new at the time: The player was given freedom to explore in any direction. The soundtrack was moody and ambient, giving a feeling of loneliness. Completing the game required revisiting already-explored areas. Power-ups were permanent, rather than timed. Most famously of all, the protagonist was revealed at the end of the game to be female.

Metroid II continued the franchise on the Game Boy, before Super Metroid moved it to the SNES and added an inventory and save points. Super Metroid was universally acclaimed, and amongst SNES games is perhaps second only to Super Mario World.

So when Nintendo decided to revive the Metroid franchise for the GameCube, there was some major skepticism expressed by fans. The announcement that the new Metroid would be in first-person 3D convinced many that it would be another dumb FPS, especially since a US development team was building the game.

Retro Studios defied expectations, however.

Metroid Prime started me off in a wrecked spaceship, where I quickly discovered I would have to scan objects for information if I was going to get very far. The screen used translucent graphics to provide a heads-up display with radar and rotating 3D short-range map, and I learned that I could switch visors to go into thermal imaging mode–a trick I often used to get the jump on enemies lurking in the darkness. Before long, I was following a trail of clues to the planet Tallon IV.

As I left my ship, I discovered that it was raining. Water droplets speckled the view through my visor. As I scouted further into the wet vegetation of this new alien world, I noticed condensation forming. Seconds later in a nearby cave, I fired my blaster at a threatening creature and caught a glimpse of my face reflected from the inside of the visor. That was it–I was captivated. Mimesis achieved.

This was also the moment I referred to back in 2006, when I said that I really didn’t need video game graphics to get any better. Metroid Prime is beautiful. Compare it to the other big console games from that year, like Grand Theft Auto: Vice City on the PS2, and it blows them away. Not only that, but the game runs at a rock solid 60 frames per second throughout, no matter how complicated the action on screen, and the controls feel responsive at all times.

By the time I acquired the ability to switch into the morph ball, I was so engrossed in exploring ancient alien ruins that I didn’t stop to worry about the physics of the transformation. Instead, I delighted as the Tron-like neon glow from the ball left subtle tracer effects.

More beautiful still was the scene that greeted me once I managed to make my way through the old transport tunnels to the snow-covered Phendrana Drifts. That was where I learned that different alien creatures would require different tactics to defeat them, with my scanner providing hints.

Yes, there were boss fights–something I personally dislike–but they were mostly fair, and required some intelligence to get past rather than simple twitch reflexes. When the game was finally over, I was genuinely sad that it had to end.

I wasn’t as happy with Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. The first and most obvious annoyance was that I suddenly had to worry about ammunition. Coming to the new episode straight from the freedom of the first game, this was an unwelcome development.

The second annoyance was that Prime 2 had me travel to a dark energy world where the atmosphere continuously ate away at my suit’s shielding. This effectively introduced an arbitrary time limit to exploration, and I hate arbitrary time limits almost as much as I hate random mazes.

The third annoyance was the level design. I’m not a big fan of bottomless pits, and I started falling into them with annoying frequency towards the end of the game. So overall, a disappointing outing compared to the first Metroid Prime, but still worth playing.

Third time was the charm, though. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption made the jump to the Wii, and that allowed a whole new control scheme. Now I could move around in any direction at any speed using the analog control stick on the nunchuk, while simultaneously aiming and firing at any part of the screen using the Wii remote. (This is called “expert mode”, and isn’t on by default.)

As IGN put it, this new control scheme “simulates the accuracy of PC first-person shooters almost perfectly”. In fact, I’d go further–when I try playing games with keyboard and mouse, I find the lack of precision achievable with WASD movement keys extremely frustrating.

The nunchuck was also used for the grapple hook and for ripping armor off of enemies, giving battles a very visceral and physical feeling. The switch to 16:9 format for the graphics also helped improve my feeling of immersion in the game.

The annoyances from the previous game were mostly gone. I fell into infinity a few times in the cloud city, but it never felt as frustrating as leaping over chasms in the dark in Prime 2. Also gone was most of the annoying backtracking, as I could now call up my spaceship to travel between distant parts of the world, an innovation so welcome that I remember saying “Aww, yeah” when it was revealed to me.

I don’t really understand some of the negative reviews the final installment received. Perhaps those reviewers didn’t find Expert Mode, or were expecting an FPS? I had a wonderful time, and resolved to replay the entire game some day.

So with that in mind, I’ve ordered a copy of the now-discontinued <a href=”http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002ATY7JE?ie=UTF8&tag=a0ef8-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B002ATY7JE”>Metroid Prime Trilogy</a> for the Wii. If you are any kind of video game fan, I strongly suggest that you do likewise. If nothing else, you’ll get the chance to play the greatest GameCube game ever, with the added bonus of precision aiming via Wii controls and widescreen graphics.

Progressive video games, part 2: E-rated PS3 games

LittleBigPlanet

(PS3 only)

If you’re looking for a kid-friendly game for the PS3, this should be top of your list. Rated E, it provides classic 2D platform game action rendered with state-of-the-art 3D graphics. The ragdoll physics and ability to grab objects are interesting game tweaks, though the automatic switching between layers on the Z axis can be a little frustrating at times. Mostly it’s not a problem with the story levels, because of careful level design.

The plot is like a fairy tale, and unfolds gradually. You catch glimpses of what’s going on while playing the levels, and then when it’s revealed that someone is abducting characters and imprisoning them, it’s up to you to free them. Even the bad guy turns out just to have been lonely and desperate for friends.

One great thing about LittleBigPlanet is that it has a full level editor, capable of building levels as good as the ones in the game. The artwork is fabulous, a real visual feast with levels inspired by (amongst other things) Day of the Dead, Indian art, and African crafts. Levels can be shared online with friends, or publically; there are over 1,000,000 user-created levels out there. Sony and MediaMolecule seem to be doing a pretty good job of making sure they’re kid-safe.

Burnout Paradise

(PS3, Xbox 360, Windows)

My experience is that all young boys love cars. The only thing better than playing at racing cars, is playing at crashing cars. The Burnout games understand this–unlike serious racing simulations like Gran Turismo, Burnout rewards you for dangerous driving, and rewards you with detailed action replays of your crashes. Glass smashes, sparks fly, bodywork crumples.

The open world design lets you drive around and explore the city; each intersection of streets has some kind of challenge you can choose to start by pulling up and hitting a button. There are straight races, stunt jump challenges, stock car style survival modes, and contests where you have to cause as much vehicular carnage as possible in the time limit.

The online mode allows for contests between players, but also has social modes where you join up with friends to compete challenges together, or just hang out driving around and chatting and doing whatever you want.

Rated E, as there’s no blood–it’s all A-Team crashes. Obviously, online modes may expose your offspring to rude words spoken by other players, if you allow play with unknown strangers.

It’s also available as a downloadable from PlayStation Network.

Katamari Forever

(PS3 only, but earlier Katamari games are available for Xbox 360 and PS2)

When the original Katamari Damacy was launched on the PS2, the game mechanic was something completely new to video games–roll a ball of stuff (the “katamari”) using tank-like controls, making it larger and larger as more and more stuff sticks to it. As the katamari grows, it can roll over larger objects–but it also has more momentum, and becomes harder to maneuver.

The game consists of variations on that basic theme. The King of the Cosmos tasks you with making a nice big katamari, sets you a time limit before he’ll lose patience, places you somewhere on earth, and off you go. Sometimes the challenge is a little different–for example, maybe the katamari is on fire, and you need to roll up hot and burning stuff, and avoid cold or wet things.

It’s all very cute. If your katamari is big enough, you can roll over people–but although they scream, they just stick into the katamari, they’re not killed. The game therefore gets an E rating.

Katamari Forever basically gives you all the levels from all the previous Katamari games. Graphically, it’s not a whole lot better than the PS2 versions, but it’s such a charming game that the graphics don’t really matter. However, the lack of anything really new meant that it suffered in review scores.

Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction

(PS3 only)

If you don’t mind guns and epic battles of cartoon violence, the Ratchet and Clank series offers E10-rated action adventure platformers that I personally think are the best around. In Tools of Destruction, it’s insectoid monsters who are on the receiving end of the violence this time: they’re an invading army ruled by a crazy emperor who has ordered them to lay seige to the galaxy. It might not be the most socially conscious message, but at least it’s anti-imperialist, right?

The genius of the Ratchet and Clank games is that their difficulty level is self-adjusting. Smashing enemies and scenery releases metal in the form of bolts, which are apparently the currency of engineers. You can spend the bolts to get ever more powerful (and ridiculous and fun) weapon upgrades. Hence, if a particular part of the game keeps defeating you, each time you try you gain more bolts. Before long you can afford a better weapon that’ll give you the edge against the enemy and let you succeed.

The weapons are varied, and allow for different styles of game play. You can stand back and pick off roachlike enemies from a safe distance, or you can (say) launch the Groovitron to make them all break out in disco dancing, and then whack them with a wrench while they’re occupied.

This long-running game series had numerous outings on the PS2 as well. My personal favorite was Ratchet & Clank Going Commando.

Progressive video games, part 1

A friend recently commented on the imperialist narrative of most video games: travel to exotic places, meet interesting people, kill them, and exploit their resources.

Well, yes, there are a lot of video games like that, ranging from the hundreds of first-person shooters that only an enthusiast could tell apart, to the cerebrally imperialist Civilization series. However, there are also video games which manage to have a more progressive message. I thought I’d write about a few of them.

(Note that there are a few mild spoilers below; this is a guide for parents, rather than necessarily for players. If you’re a video game enthusiast you should have played these all by now…)

Beyond Good and Evil

(PS2, Xbox, Gamecube (or Wii), Windows)

This game is something of a cult classic, though it sold badly on initial release. Designed by French software house Ubisoft, it’s a 3D third-person action-adventure in a mostly open world, with some puzzle solving. The protagonist, Jade, is a female journalist investigating the activities of a military dictatorship which has emerged to defend the planet Hillys from an apparent alien invasion. Jade mostly relies on sneaking around and collecting photographic evidence, though she does resort to martial arts when necessary.

I have the PS2 version, and I strongly recommend the game, even though the PS2 version was the most criticized. For what it’s worth, I didn’t have any problems with the frame rate or other alleged shortcomings. Metacritic scores are 83% or higher for all platforms.

Like most cult games, BG&E commands a hefty price for a new copy, but used copies in good condition can be tracked down. You can also rent the Windows version on Steam or GameTap. Rated T for Teen.

Psychonauts

(PS2, Xbox, Windows)

Another cult game, this time from Tim Schaffer. Also another 3D third-person action adventure with puzzle solving. The protagonist this time is a psychically gifted kid named Raz, who runs away from the circus to sneak into a summer camp and try to become a Psychonaut. Before long, he must psychically journey into the minds of various disturbed individuals in order to heal their minds. Each person’s insanity manifests as a different surreal world with its own logic and graphical style.

Again, I played the PS2 version. I found it worthy of the praise it has been given (Metacritic scores in the high 80s on all platforms), though the final circus/tightrope world was infuriatingly difficult and spoiled an otherwise delightful experience. Unlike BG&E, I didn’t keep my copy.

Commands an even higher price than BG&E, and you’ll pay like-new prices for a good used copy. Rated T for Teen.

Ico

(PS2 only)

Third person action-adventure, again, but with a more distant look that often resembles classic isometric games. The most graphically beautiful game on the PS2, in my view, and one of the most sadly overlooked when it was new. Now commands premium pricing even for a used copy. (No, I’m not selling mine.)

The young boy Ico, apparently born with horns, wakes up in a mysterious ancient fortress. He is forced to go on a perilous quest to save himself and a young girl who is apparently some sort of princess. On the way, he learns about the mystery of what the fortress is for, and why he was placed there.

The game is mostly environmental puzzles. Monsters are the spirits of the dead manifesting as black smoke, and they are driven away with a simple wooden stick or torch. Rated T for Teen, because although it’s less violent than the above games, it’s creepier.

Okami

(PS2, Wii)

Another video game which was unfairly overlooked by players on initial release, in spite of winning numerous awards, this one has the advantage that you can buy it new for a reasonable price. A 3D third-person action-adventure steeped heavily in Japanese mythology.

The graphics are unlike any other game, with cel-shaded animation and textures inspired by Japanese ink and wash painting. The protagonist is Amaterasu, the Shinto sun goddess, who manifests as a wolf and attempts to lift a curse that has fallen on her native land. Combat is carried out, and puzzles solved, by painting mystical brush strokes on canvas using the celestial brush. This game mechanic makes the game a natural for the Wii’s remote, and I kinda wish I hadn’t played the PS2 version so I could play the Wii one fresh.

Rated T for Teen. There were a couple of instances of smutty innuendo that made me raise an eyebrow, but I suspect a kid would have missed them. There’s also some cleavage and a little partial nudity. Not a game for Christian conservatives, but then again they probably wouldn’t like all the Japanese gods either. Somewhat slow to start, and probably not a good game for anyone who lacks patience.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (PS3)

Naughty Dog have quite a history on the PlayStation family of consoles. They started out as developers of the first three Crash Bandicoot 3D platform games on the original PlayStation, as well as a Crash-themed cart racer.

With the introduction of the PS2, Naughty Dog showed that their developers could implement the best game engines in the business. Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy was built using a variant of Lisp, and featured dynamic multithreaded loading of game data and textures. This made it almost unique among PS2 games in having no loading screens–the entire world appeared seamless. By the time of Jak 3, the engine supported progressive scan and widescreen. It had multithreaded rendering as well, which kept the frame rate consistent at the expense of some tearing.

Unfortunately, the best technology doesn’t always mean the best games. Naughty Dog’s technology found its way into Insomniac’s Ratchet and Clank games and Sucker Punch’s Sly Cooper games, and I’d rate both series as generally superior to Jak and Daxter. In particular, Jak II was a low point for Naughty Dog: they tried to take the series in a more gritty and urban direction, and it didn’t really work. The infinitely respawning enemies were annoying and broke my suspended disbelief. Worse, someone on the design team decided that it would be fun to make players avoid randomly generated traffic while trying to travel around completing missions within tight arbitrary time limits. Sorry, but traffic jams are not a fun gameplay mechanic.

Naughty Dog’s first PS3 game was Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. They stuck to their 3D platformer roots, expanding out in the direction of third person shooters, and the result was another technical tour de force. Once again, the game engine used background threads to suck in data on the fly and provide the illusion of a seamless world with no loading screens; and for the first time, a Naughty Dog game featured realistic human characters.

Uncharted was like a Hollywood action adventure. It featured a lot of running around, ducking and diving for cover, grabbing guns and shooting on the move. The combat was interspersed with climbing and jumping, and some light puzzles. The game was well reviewed, though many felt it was somewhat short. It was also disappointingly linear, and only really supported a single play style–leap in, grab the guns conveniently scattered around, and run around causing mayhem.

And so to the inevitable sequel. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves keeps what was good about the first game, fixes what was wrong, and outdoes every other similar game in numerous areas. It fully deserves all the awards and rave reviews it has been receiving.

Like the first Uncharted, Uncharted 2 has no load screens; but this time, some of the environments are huge in scope, occasionally jaw-droppingly so. The draw distance is so large you’re never aware that it isn’t infinite, and only twice did I see any sign of popup or texture loading. (And one of those occasions was during multiplayer when switching cameras, so I’d argue that it doesn’t count.) Even though the plot is basically linear, the game feels open because of the excellent design; the only time I felt boxed in was when I had a traversal puzzle I couldn’t solve.

The graphics are amazing. There are no photographic textures; everything was drawn by artists, but in photorealistic style. Dynamic lighting is used so that game objects can cast shadows. Plants are apparently modeled using a physics engine which allows them to be blown about by ambient weather or passing helicopters.

By offloading most of the graphics pipeline onto the Cell processor SPEs, Naughty Dog freed up the graphics chip to handle dynamic depth of field, generally focused around either key action events (during cut scenes) or whatever your reticule is aimed at (during combat). Depth of field helps to focus your attention on what’s important, getting around the problem of visual clutter that plagues games like Killzone 2. (For an alternate approach, see Team Fortress 2 (part of The Orange Box), where the entire art style is focused on reducing visual clutter.)

The rendering pipeline uses HDR. The game simulates dark adaptation of the human eye–when you walk from a light area into a dark one, it takes a while before your vision adjusts. Fire and water are modeled well, and there is judicious use of motion blur and bloom. The end result of all these technical details is particularly impressive during a sequence that takes place on a moving train–I won’t say any more, in order to avoid spoilers.

The set pieces in Uncharted 2 are integrated into the plot much more cohesively than in the previous game. This is possible because the game engine uses Havok physics for both characters and destructible cover. You can literally aim and fire at enemies while sliding down the sloping floor of a building that’s collapsing into rubble, ducking behind tables for cover and grabbing pieces of wall to slow your fall. While Nathan Drake has many combat moves, the controls are kept simple enough that there’s no frustrating button-sequence-mashing.

While there are a few cut scenes (rendered with the same engine, of course), most of the combat sequences that would be handled as cut scenes in something like Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots are instead scripted battles you control. The end result is like a good Indiana Jones movie–except you’re controlling the protagonist. I didn’t want to stop playing.

Another welcome improvement is that the game allows for multiple strategies. You can run in with guns blazing and hope you can dodge, like the first game; but you can also hang back and be cautious and try to pick enemies off from a distance, or sneak up to them and dispatch them quietly as Solid Snake might. I frequently started out by trying to be stealthy, then switched to diving for cover and shooting once I slipped up. Often things would escalate smoothly into one of the aforementioned set pieces, gradually ramping up the adrenaline rush.

Voice acting is uniformly excellent. Naughty Dog record the voice tracks from the actors while they are taking part in the motion capture process, so the speech fits the action in a way it often doesn’t in other games. The story is less of a cliché than the first game, too, which helped to draw me in.

Overall, I’d say that this is the best action game I’ve ever seen. I hereby forgive Naughty Dog for the controller-throwing frustration of Jak II. Uncharted 2 is a game that ought to sell more than a few PS3s.

Of course, no game is perfect. There were three things that bothered me. The first was the Elena character; she was far too much of a Lara Croft caricature, complete with tiny waist, big breasts and tight clothing. Perhaps it was intended as satire, but it felt like pandering.

The second issue is the believability of Drake’s death-defying antics. In the first game, he actually felt like an everyman, but in the sequel it gets a bit unbelievable at times. I can overlook the magical regeneration of bullet wounds as a necessary game mechanic, but there were at least a couple of moments where he took a scripted fall that would leave any human with a shattered ribcage.

The third issue was specific to Chapter 20 of the story. [Minor spoiler, skip to next paragraph to avoid.] At one point I was trapped in an alleyway by the tank, and from the only places where I could get cover, I couldn’t see the alleyway that I was supposed to run to in order to continue the story. I ended up spending a lot of time looking for ways to climb around or over, getting frustrated. I suspect that adjusting the angle of the alleyways slightly would have avoided the problem.