Month: December 2011

Categories
Endured

Games of 2011: Deus Ex: Human Revolution

I’ve spent a lot of time in 2011 playing games, but not a lot of time writing about them. Instead of my usual end-of-year game recommendations, I’d like to tell some stories or share some thoughts about the ones that meant the most to me this year. I’ll be posting one a day until Christmas. See all Games of 2011 posts.

The original Deus Ex hit the market in 2000, and it was a revolution unto itself. It combined the first person shooter with role playing elements and strong writing. It offered the player real choice and branching story lines. Adversity could be worked around, fights could be diffused peacefully. The game brought with it an implied promise: first person games didn’t need to adhere to a formula.

Sadly, that promise wasn’t met. The 2003 sequel Invisible War was garbage, the franchise was shelved, and few developers wanted to try and replicate the Deus Ex experience.

But like other historic franchises, this was finally the year that Deus Ex was booted back up. After four years in development, Deus Ex: Human Revolution was released in August. From the moment I touched the game, I felt that familiar rush again. The stealth, the conversations, the gunplay, the lock picking, it was all just so brilliant. I started to mentally mark it down as a clear frontrunner for the best game I played that year.

Then I hit a boss battle, and those thoughts evaporated.

Much has been said by press and players alike about how out of place the boss battles felt. This is a game where you can specialize in stealth and subterfuge, building your character so that you can slink through each level without killing a single enemy guard. And yet this same game forces you into a guns-blazing do-or-die battle with an overpowered enemy. Players who went in with stealth-heavy builds were severely disadvantaged in these fights.

Player choice is a dangerous tool to wield. For every dimension of character construction you allow, you open yourself up to players working themselves into a position where it is difficult to advance. Regular adversity isn’t a problem – players need a challenge, and there shouldn’t be a build you can just blow through the game with. But games should never make it practically impossible for standard builds to advance, and sadly, that’s what the boss fights in DX:HR did.

Eidos admitted a month after release that they had outsourced the boss battles to another company, one that “didn’t know much about the Deus Ex world before the project began.” What a statement that is: to not only add gameplay that people generally disliked, but to farm it outside of the core team working on the game, to people who didn’t understand the history or vision for the game.

Developers, remember this: make the best games you can. Don’t compromise. And don’t add boss battles if they don’t fit into your game.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is available for Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and PC.

Categories
Enjoyed

Games of 2011: Pushmo

I’ve spent a lot of time in 2011 playing games, but not a lot of time writing about them. Instead of my usual end-of-year game recommendations, I’d like to tell some stories or share some thoughts about the ones that meant the most to me this year. I’ll be posting one a day until Christmas. See all Games of 2011 posts.

Nintendo has had a tough year. The Wii U debacle at E3, the “Miyamoto might be retiring” interview, their market share and profits being eroded by smartphones – they come across as a company who’s at their peak and the only way to go is down. One might even say their position looks a lot like Sony did in 2006.

2011 Nintendo is perhaps best encapsulated in the Nintendo 3DS – a new handheld that looks and functions remarkably like their last four (DS, DS Lite, DSi, DSi XL) handhelds. It launched at $250 with no compelling launch titles. It posted decent first days sales before swan diving off a high cliff. A $70 price cut came just four months after launch, which solved one problem – but the software problem lingered until the holiday season.

I picked up a 3DS right after launch despite my hatred of 3D entertainment – practically always gimmicky and an excuse to add cost – and despite knowing there wasn’t really anything at launch worth picking up. I subjected myself to it mainly because my DS Lite was getting run down, and it was the prime time to trade it in. Even with the lowest of expectations, I found myself disappointed, as the features I was looking forward to – the eShow, StreetPass, the camera – all had notable flaws.

And so, I joined the hordes waiting and hoping for that One Game, the one that can justify the cost of the device. And last week, I discovered it – and it wasn’t the anticipated Super Mario 3D Land or Mario Kart 7, but instead a title in a genre Nintendo executes better than practically anyone else: spatial puzzles.

The game in question is Pushmo (or Pullblox if you’re in Europe), a $7 downloadable title. A pushmo is a giant pixelart installation in a park (Pushmo Park, naturally), and children appear to keep getting stuck in them. To climb the pushmo and save the kids, you need to grab, push, and pull the blocks to build ledges and stairs that you can scale.

The gameplay resembles Atlus’ Catherine, which was also released this year and is targetted solely at adults. While Catherine challenges players as both an arcade game and a puzzler, Pushmo is more of a pure puzzler. As such, the game is able to focus more on the challenge of the level rather than you racing against a clock.

If the roughly 250 core levels aren’t enough, Pushmo also features a level builder, and levels can be shared via QR Code. Communities have start sprouting up to share puzzles, like this NeoGAF thread.

I hope that Nintendo can keep focusing on these smaller, well polished titles. If that Miyamoto interview is any indication, my hopes may come true.

Pushmo is available for the 3DS, via the eShop.

Categories
Enjoyed

Games of 2011: Jamestown

I’ve spent a lot of time in 2011 playing games, but not a lot of time writing about them. Instead of my usual end-of-year game recommendations, I’d like to tell some stories or share some thoughts about the ones that meant the most to me this year. I’ll be posting one a day until Christmas. See all Games of 2011 posts.

Think of the music industry for a moment, and consider the transformation from 1995 to 2010. Distribution transformed from mostly retail to mostly digital. Indie labels became stronger and able to compete better in the new landscape than the big labels. Bands started self-publishing and crowd-sourcing funding. Audio software became prevalent, meaning anyone could produce an album where they separate their laundry. Media outlets like Pitchfork and The Silent Ballet appeared that we’re entirely devoted to independent music. Music festivals like ATP and SXSW blew up with people hunting for new sounds. Genres were invented, mutated, and redefined. And all the while, the old guard screamed bloody murder.

That 15 year trajectory have put us in a world where the music world of today only slightly resembles the one of old. The gaming world is in the middle of this same path, and 2011 has really felt like the tipping point, where the independent game world steps out of the shadows.

There are so many success stories this year – Minecraft, Super Meat Boy, Limbo, the Humble Indie Bundles – that this post series could’ve been entirely indie titles. But the one I wanted to highlight in the context of this shift is Jamestown.

Just consider the concept: it’s a vertical scrolling bullet hell shmup set on 17th-century British Colonial Mars. Just roll that around your tongue for a moment. What major publisher would fund this, let alone market it properly? I can’t think of a single one.

Instead, this game was self published, priced reasonably, and got prominently featured on Steam. People who bought it tended to love it, and told friends. Gaming media reviewed it seriously, as though it were a boxed title in a store. I can’t speak to the sales figures, but the remarkable thing was that it exists no differently than any other major game released this year.

And the thing is, none of this was unusual – at least, not this year. The giant changes that made this story possibly – the ascension of Steam, gaming communities that can generate hype, a pricing model other than “everything is expensive” – these are all second nature now for a lot of gamers and developers.

There’s still more work to be done, undoubtedly. While Steam and Apple are at the forefront of this movement, the major console makers are still fumbling around, much as the major music labels did with online music sales. Microsoft, who had repeated critical hits pass through XBLA early this generation, is now focused on the big publishers. Nintendo has publicly disparaged “garage developers”. Sony continues to find and work with small studios, but the PSN hack this year damaged the trust in their store immeasurably. Until the big three get their act together, a huge swath of gamers will be out of reach for independents.

I’m looking forward to a world where games like Jamestown are just as familiar to the average gamer as Gears of War. And I don’t think it’s far off.

As for Jamestown itself – it’s everything I want in a shmup. It can scale down to easy for people new to the genre, or up to ridiculous pixel-perfect bullet dodging for the hardcore. Going along with it’s “neoclassical” setting, it has a certain retro charm to the graphics – a game that wouldn’t look out of place in an arcade of the mid-90s. Like many modern shmups, there’s a unique mechanic to exploit and learn to maximize your score (in this case, the “vaunt” system). There’s unlocks and special challenges to keep people coming back. It walks the line between nostalgia and new incredibly well. It’s a great game in it’s own right, without question.

Jamestown is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. It is also available as part of the Humble Indie Bundle 4, which you should buy now because every game in it is wonderful.