Tag: games2011

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Games of 2011: Terraria

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 2011 posts.

One of the great gaming stories over the last few years has been the rise of Mojang’s extraordinary world builder Minecraft. The game has exploded in popularity, bringing with it a form of creativity and community that most commercial titles would be proud to have.

Without question, Minecraft should be tried by everyone who has an interest in what gaming can do, as it’s a landmark experience. But Minecraft lovers should also experience Re-Logic’s Terraria, as it is a better game.

This may be controversial, so an explanation is in order. At first glance, both titles may appear similar:

  • Both take place in a randomly generated world with multiple zones or biomes.
  • Both allow the player to destroy blocks of terrain using crafted tools, and use those blocks to either rebuild structures or craft new objects. Elaborate structures can be built.
  • Both have day/night cycles, with friendly creatures inhabiting the world during the day and hostile enemies putting the player under siege after dark.
  • Both games can be played solo or with friends.

The differences become apparent as players begin to literally dig into the world. Minecraft has always featured a somewhat cryptic crafting system; placing materials into a 3×3 grid in the right pattern creates new objects. While this eventually becomes intuitive, there’s little chance you will figure this out solely from the game – I have to keep the Minecraft wiki Crafting page open in the background.

Terraria spares players this pain by showing a simple list of all objects that can be crafted based on your current inventory and nearby tools. (For the curious, the first NPC you meet can show you all recipes that involve a given item.)

After you get the hang of crafting in Minecraft and build your first pick, you’ll quickly realize that the tool has finite uses. And so you will generally explore Minecraft’s natural caves and underground rivers in the hopes of finding resources to rebuild your existing tools, or make them better if you can. This endless cycle of equipment management is not particularly fun, especially when you are forced to trudge back to your base after your last pickaxe breaks as you cannot press on.

Terraria’s designers opted to not include a wear-and-tear system for equipment, which allows you to focus on spelunking to find new items, rather than carrying a stack of shovels. Underground, you’ll still find resources for building better tools, but also a range of breakable pots, treasure chests, and strange areas to grow your inventory with.

When it comes to combat and fending off enemies, the games feel on different planes. Terraria offers players a huge array of weapons and tools, allowing different combat strategies and styles. Minecraft’s combat tends to come down to swinging a tool, firing a bow, or setting up an elaborate pre-meditated trap.

Which both games being under active development, features are starting to bleed both ways, but it’s apparent that Minecraft was thought of as a world builder first, while Terraria was thought of as a game first:

  • Terraria has featured NPCs that run stores, provide services, and inhabit your world since the first release; Minecraft recently added humanoid NPCs but they are currently passive.
  • Terraria launched with three boss monsters, and now features seven bosses and two mini-bosses. Minecraft recently added a first boss monster.
  • Terraria has allowed players to increase their life and magic capacities through exploration since the very beginning. Minecraft added an experience system a few updates ago, but leveling up currently gives the player no advantages.
  • Terraria’s environments vary the risks and the rewards as a player finds new ones. Minecraft’s biomes mostly just change the view and materials present.

I’m not pointing out these differences to imply Minecraft’s design decisions are flawed. They are not flawed, merely different. I purchased Minecraft while in alpha status in 2010, and I have happily followed the development and eagerly dug back in when the major updates come out. With two friends, we have constructed giant sand pyramids, obsidian monoliths, scale-model football fields, and elaborate castles hidden in the sides of mountains.

When Terraria was released, I begged those same two friends to join me. At first, there was little difference in our approach to the new game – our base complex was built elaborately, our “hellevators” dug quickly, and excursions taken to find the major areas. But soon we were beating down bosses, raiding treasure chests, sharing loot, and defending our base from goblin invasions and blood moons. And that’s a more lasting memory than painstakingly laying out blocks and digging out caverns.

My rule of thumb: if I want to build a new world, I launch Minecraft. But if I want to play in one, I fire up Terraria.

Terraria is available for the PC. Jealous Mac users should know the game runs flawlessly under VMWare Fusion.

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Enjoyed

Games of 2011: Yakuza 4

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 2011 posts.

I broke out of an island prison for a crime I both did and did not commit, only to wash up ashore at the door of an orphanage run by a retired yakuza chairman.

I honed my fighting style on the roof of a building with a crazed military vet, who shot at me with a machine gun loaded with blanks.

I cared for two kittens that some homeless guys had found, which eventually lead me to find riches in a locker in an underground mall, left to take care of the cats after their caretaker passed away.

I played crane games to win prizes for my girlfriends, warbled karaoke, swung for the fences in batting cages, and played a *lot* of pachinko.

I loaned money to people in need, but rather than charge them interest, I made them demonstrate they were good people. And if they weren’t, I made them pay.

I helped magazine writers find the best restaurants, helped a ramen chef develop a new recipe, and helped an enthusastic foreigner enjoy the local social scene.

I served as a bodyguard, a bouncer, a hostess club promoter, a fill-in for a triple date, and a crime fighting sidekick.

I uncovered a massive web of deceit, brought down corrupt cops, cleared my name, and avenged the deaths of countless friends and family members.

There are plenty of great story driven games in the world, but I can’t think of many that can claim the depth of story, experience, and emotion that Yakuza 4 can.

The plot rotates between four characters – eccentric loan shark Shun Akiyama, gruff convict Taiga Saejima, dirty cop Masayoshi Tanimura, and long standing series hero Kazuma Kiryu. Their plot lines overlap and eventually converge in the final chapter, but for much of the game you’ll just be focused on their own particular domains and relationships across the sprawling city that is Kamurocho.

Let me not underplay the Yakuza world: after four main games and three spinoffs, the [character list](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characters_of_the_Yakuza_series) is simply massive. The game world is so rich, the game offers players a “Reminisce Mode”, with ten-minute videos that encapsulate the previous games. Spending thirty minutes catching up isn’t necessary, but it certainly helps fill in the gaps.

The series is also notorious for the side activities, both in the form of side missions and just places of business you can frequent. After Yakuza 3 was released in the US with significant missing content, Yakuza 4 was released pretty much complete, and it contains an overwhelming assortment of things to do. The variety of side activities is so great, the main plot often faded into the background for me. Who cares that I can go confront the men who trashed my club? I’d rather help this woman who thinks I’m her fiancee.

Perhaps it comes without surprise that some of the joy of this game gave me came out of my desire to get back to Japan. The city of Kamurocho is somewhat accurately modeled on Shinjuku’s red light district, and feels authentic. The main streets feel busy and vibrant, while the back alleys and underground concourses can have tiny tucked away bars with a few people in them. It’s not without some gaming-induced liberties – there’s almost always someone trying to pick a fight with you – but it operates much you like would expect a real city to.

In that way, it felt like a real solution to my gripes about Saints Row: The Third yesterday. The Yakuza series comes across as unconcerned in appealing to the chaos and carnage crowd. (The breadth of the dialog might cause someone with ADD to give up before the game even starts.) Instead, it is a smart, neatly packaged, intoxicating world, ready to reward those who have the patience and discipline to help right the wrongs that occur there.

Yakuza 4 is available for the PS3.

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Endured

Games of 2011: Saints Row The Third

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 2011 posts.

Saints Row 2 was one of my favorite sleeper hits of 2008 – an energetic blast of a sandbox game. When I first caught wind that a sequel would be emerging this year, I celebrated quietly, knowing that I would be raising hell again soon. When the game appeared on Steam, I preordered it without hesitation, even though that is taboo among those who believe in finding the best deal or waiting until there’s a pre-order incentive. When the game came out, I pulled it open, crafted a blue-haired asian business woman with a male cockney voice, and began tearing through the game without hesitation.

Twenty hours of play over a week later, I found myself on the other side:

All missions completed. All activities completed. All neighborhoods taken over. All 80 collectables found. Maximum respect level. It was the first game I could recall 100%ing in years, and the first crime sandbox game I ever believe I have completed to that degree.

Yet, I felt unsatisfied, even a little empty. Why? (And no, it wasn’t the endless levels of violence.) I think it comes down to three things that worked against the game.

The first is that the land of Steelport doesn’t become a character the way Stillwater did. This isn’t to say there aren’t pedestrians everywhere waiting for your abuse, but more that the neighborhoods of town feels less distinct than they did in the previous game. So much of the town feels run down, you don’t get a sense of location. For most of the islands of the game, I didn’t get a sense for which gang was where until I started scouring the map during my quest to complete every last thing.

It’s not just the decor, though. SR3 feature the ability to buy stores or properties, which help generates a revenue which goes directly into your pocket. (This isn’t a new concept, but I appreciated that SR3 didn’t force you back into your hideout to collect – it’s just a button on the game’s cellphone menu.) But the locations you could buy were underwhelming. There’s functional stores – weapon stores and car modification garages. There’s decorative stores – plastic surgery to change your appearance, tattoo parlors for ink, and about five different clothing store chains to play dress-up with. But that is shockingly it when it comes to interactive locations – no restaurants, no music stores, no arcades full of mini-games. And the “properties” you can buy aren’t interactive, save for a small handful of cribs. They sit on the map, reminding you that they’re there but providing you no function.

Without that ephemera to connect you to a city, a sandbox can become just a place where carnage happens, rather than a city you want to take over.

The second issue is that THQ made a point of pre-announcing that the game will have a tremendous amount of downloadable content. Now, don’t get me wrong – I am a fan of DLC. I appreciate that games can be enhanced and continue to provide gameplay long after release. But pre-announcing it – and selling it at a discount if you buy it all early – triggers the thought that there could have been more in the core game. There have been whispers that THQ is putting so much effort into this Saints Row release because if it tanks, there’s a strong chance they may go bankrupt. So it’s doubly sad that it has come to this – damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.

The final issue I had is that when you sell a game on a campaign of insanity, the game better be insane. There’s a risk versus reward as you edge your ad campaigns out farther, and I feel like there are some areas of the game that are actually playing it safe.

Take for example, the in-game concept of Professor Genki’s Super Ethical Reality Climax. The base concept seemed ripe enough: there’s some guy in an odd cat-suit and he has some sort of bizarre, deadly game show. But then, the game’s marketing team hired much beloved comedians Tim & Eric to produce a 12 minute episode of PGSERC, and it gave us a glimpse of truly insane possibilities:

When I first saw a Genki icon appear on my map, I raced to it, ready to have my mind blown. But what I got inside was a pretty standard arena setting. I had to shoot mascots, avoid fire traps, and occasionally shoot signs that popped up to get bonuses. There was some amusing commentary, but I strolled calmly through the level picking off people shooting at me. I waited for something bizarre to happen, but instead I entered a room full of prizes, the audience shouted something, and I got the ACTIVITY COMPLETE screen. For something that could have been completely insane, it felt surprisingly safe, and not dissimilar from Sega’s The Club from a few years back. (Some of the pre-announced DLC deals with Professor Genki, so perhaps the insanity is forthcoming.)

None of this is to say that Saints Row: The Third is a bad game. It’s quite good. I had fun playing it, I enjoyed many of the jokes, and it was a tremendous way to blow off steam. I will probably jump back into it as my friends pick it up and want to co-op through the storyline.

But for a game that could’ve easily blown me away and become an instant classic, I feel only slightly blasted.

Saints Row: The Third is available for PS3, Xbox 360, and PC.