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2008-08-15T16:25:05Z

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Interesting Times

2008-08-12T01:07:11Z

Dread news, friends. Pixelsocks.livejournal.com may be drawing to a close in the near future. Click the link above to discover why.

Miyamoto Becomes Leonard of Quirm

2008-08-11T15:32:59Z

Nintendo is evidently keeping closer wraps on Miyamoto than they used to. It turns out that, when the game designer worries about his weight, he develops Wii Fit, and when he collects bugs, we get Pokémon. In an effort to keep the competition from committing casual conversation espionage against the legendary game designer, Nintendo has evidently discouraged Miyamoto from discussing his hobbies in the public arena. The sources for this revelation are unidentified and therefore of arguable credibility, but if it almost sounds like ol' Hiroshi "draconian" Yamauchi is in charge again.

Blizzard Further Incentivizes Warcraft Evangilism

2008-08-08T17:05:10Z

Coming hot on the heels of an update that reduced the levelling time between levels 30-60, warcraft has made a play to further compress the grind. By signing up a friend, you can reap 90 days of: tripled experience gain, an hourly ability to summon your friend to you, a free level for every two levels your friend gains, and a shiny new Zhevra mount. All that comes on top of the free month you used to get for doing Blizzard's marketing for them. While this will no doubt engender fanboy rage at being cheated out of a portion of their lives, it should help ease the pain of helping a new friend to the level cap.

Games as Communication and Teachers

2008-08-07T20:41:48Z

Gamasutra has posted a thoughtful editorial from Duncan Fyfe about the role of video games in education. This warrants more attention than, say, Mario's Time Machine, because the article treats education not so much as formal schooling, but as the transmission of important ideas and inspiration from person to person.

The main thrust is that video games are in a unique position spark an interest in knowledge, without necessarily cramming the information down our throats with a test at the end. You see this frequently from gamers--claims that they learned words from formative games (how many of you knew the word "spoony" before Final Fantasy hit the SNES?), or discovered new bands through Guitar Hero--so there's something of substance about the claim. Check it out, and feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments section.

PSA: XBox Live phishing scam

2008-08-04T19:35:10Z

1up is reporting that phishing messages are being propagated around XBox Live that appear to come from members of your friends list. The message offers 1600 free MS points for logging into a New Zeland domain website with your Live account. Naturally, once you've done this, your user name is hijacked to send the same message to everyone on your friend list and (surprise) no points are awarded. So, if you have an XBox Live account, keep your eyes peeled.

That said, it's heartening in its sinister little way to see thieves exploiting Live like this. It means there's something worth stealing on there in large enough volumes to justify the risk. When unscrupulous people take an interest in your financial enterprise, you know you've arrived. Congratulations all around.

Gaming Culture: Gaming Fashion

2008-08-02T03:04:18Z

In case you've ever wondered if you're wearing too many belts (or not wearing enough), 1up has provided a top five worst-dressed video game characters list. If you can look past the banality of the top 5 format, it's funny how easy it is to take ridiculous video game fashion for granted. Even ignoring the legions of nearly nude femme fatales, character design has become so focused on making something striking and memorable that it plummets headlong into the absurd.

Just a little something to remind you how jaded you are.

News: After Market DRM

2008-07-31T01:47:46Z

It's no secret that the aftermarket trade of video games is a thriving business, and that developers and publishers never see a penny of it. David Braben (developer, Frontier Games) has finally voiced the fear. Citing the short shelf life of new games and the small footprint that new games are given in retail Braben has discovered a solution: ban used games.

The nuts and bolts of the ban boils down to copy protection--some sort of code on the disc or package from the developer--but it's not difficult to imagine a server activation more along the lines of modern DRM. In fact, games like Mario Kart DS already match a console to a cartridge to create a unique identifier for the player's online presence. So, even if these program features haven't been applied to copy protection, the technology is already in place.

It gets trickier and trickier to play the games you buy every year.

Gaming Culture: Bushido and simple design

2008-07-28T14:58:46Z

Gamasutra has posted an editorial analyzing Bushido Blade (PS1) and how it communicates designer morality and cleaves to its title. The article meanders a bit into the philosophy near the late middle section, but also contains some interesting thoughts on the difference between simple and complex game rules:

Traditional fighting games are like college courses, and versus matches like exams . . . In Bushido Blade, none of the answers matter; only your quick, correct reaction determines your future.

Popular casual games like Bejeweled have much this same core, where intuitive control means there's as little barrier as possible between the player and his manifest will. When that happens, gameplay is less about testing a player's knowledge about an arcane and draconian rules, and more about the intrinsic joy of changing the (virtual) world around you. Of course, there's room for both kinds of gameplay, but if you've ever wondered why your mom hates video games, it may be because the Tao of gaming has been buried under all the rules.

Casual Game Announced for Handheld. Surprise.

2008-07-26T02:05:59Z

From the "it's about time" files, PopCap Games has announced that it will be porting Peggle to the DS. They'll be doing this with Q Entertainment (Lumines, Meteos), a development house already experienced with the unique demands of handheld gaming devices. Touch interactivity seems well suited to PopCap's precision aiming game, and Peggle's short play sessions seem like a good fit for portable gaming. That in addition to Peggle's uncommon appeal to both casual and hardcore gamers makes this a game to keep an eye on.

News: Benevolent Despot Assassinated

2008-07-23T15:41:12Z

Ok, maybe not that bad, but Nintendo has just lost a patent suit against Anascape over their gamecube and Wii Classic controllers. The inevitable order to halt production has been put on hold while Nintendo appeals, but the console giant will be expected to put sales royalties in escrow (or post bond) while the appeal proceeds. Unlike Sony's recent infringement loss, the Wii is still fairly early in its life-cycle, making it more difficult for Nintendo to simply stall the trial until the next console generation and abandon production of an obsolete product.

News: E3 Roundup

2008-07-22T15:21:42Z

That's right, the industry trade show is not dead! Major publishers still make interesting announcements in the summer months, even if the event isn't quite the fracas it once was, in no small part because people like the Pixelsocks staff aren't allowed inside. Nevertheless, Gamasutra has delivered a nice summary of all the news of consequence. Go check it out. There'll be Pikmin, I promise.

News: Wii takes over world, made benevolent despot

2008-07-18T20:55:48Z

Actually, Gamasutra reports that the Wii has become the top-selling console in the US. While its lifetime sales totals don't rival those of the PS2 or the DS, Wii Fit and other parts of Nintendo's policy of expanding the gaming user base appear to be paying off. Since each console is sold at a profit, even the low casual gamer attach rate shouldn't impair Nintendo's revenue flow.

If the long tail operates as advertised and casual gamers keep buying occasional games over the console's lifetime, Nintendo may be in for a sustainable firehose that sprays cash.

News: PAX 10 Announced

2008-07-17T15:10:43Z

With the Penny Arcade Expo fast approaching, the two creators have announced the roster for the PAX 10.

The PAX 10 is a list of independent games noteworthy for overall quality. The announcement includes links to the internet presence for all those games, so click a few and try them out.

News: The Cake is Announced

2008-07-14T23:43:19Z

It appears that critically-acclaimed (and local favorite) first person puzzle game Portal will see an expansion before the upcoming sequel. Interestingly, the expansion will be initially available as downloadable content for Microsoft's Xbox Live. The rumor mongers are muttering about eventual release for PC and other platforms, but nothing has been confirmed as yet. In the meantime, PC gamers will have to console themselves with custom portal maps.

News: iPhone Apps to Debut With Sizable Game Library

2008-07-11T15:10:17Z

The new iPhone application store will launch with well over 100 games, according to Steve Jobs. The device's considerable screen resolution, sophisticated touchscreen technology, and developer-friendly profit sharing position the iPhone to take a bite out of Nintendo's DS. While games have never been breakout successes on phones, the technology may finally be converging.

News: Wee 1st announcement

2008-07-09T15:15:05Z

Activision has announced Wee 1st, a new brand intended for its Wii-targeted development.

Nintendo has historically had difficulty forming reliable relationships with third-party developers due to unfamiliar hardware and draconian business policies. However, the new brand's starting lineup clearly isn't targeted at core gamers, a sign that third parties may be growing more comfortable with the Wii's target demographic and design sensibilities. Whether or not this will lead to the software explosion the DS enjoyed about a year after its launch remains to be seen, however. Place your bets for what will happen for the fourth quarter of 2008.

News: Journalist Promotes Retro Design

2008-07-07T23:06:41Z

Jeremy Parish (1up, Gamespite) has posted an editorial exploring the possible positive impact of Wiiware title Mega Man 9. The upcoming title will adopt the same graphical and design sensibilities that drove the NES era Mega Man games, a multi-generation step backwards for the franchise. While this kind of regression isn't unheard of (SquareEnix has been mining their retro properties for years), the meeting of new content with old design is a bold step in the often stagnant medium.

News: Petition Displays Alternate Vision for Diablo 3

2008-07-04T17:56:28Z

Some 20000 gamers have negatively responded to the art direction in the upcoming Diablo III. More than the typical message board complaining, the movement founders have created a series of image mock-ups to communicate what they'd like to see.

While gamers disagreeing with developer design decisions is nothing new (please see the rest of this site --ed), the mock-ups demonstrate that media manipulation tools are common enough in gaming culture to be useful communication tools.

News: Diablo 2 Sees Sales Spike

2008-07-02T22:14:47Z

After Blizzard's earlier announcement of Diablo III, Diablo II and its expansion Lord of Destruction jumped into Amazon.com's top ten sales rankings.

Blizzard's games are unique for exceeding the typical three month shelf-life of retail video games by about ten years. Evidently, the mere mention of their franchises (regardless of release dates or specs) is enough to generate consumer frenzy. Though, perhaps gamers are just looking for a little cooperative gaming love to while away the time until the next game comes out.

Good hunting, all.

News: Diablo 3

2008-06-30T15:59:53Z

If you haven't heard, it's probably because you've been asleep. In a cave. On the moon. For a week. Just in case, though: Blizzard announced Diablo III, latest in the long-running series of action-based dungeon crawlers. Diablo is notable as father of instanced content and the [Item type] of the [animal type] + color approach to generating random loot and addicting players to the ensuing random reinforcement schedules.

Diablo has always been a sort of deeper successor to Gauntlet, and its roots show in the gameplay video. From the exaggerated 3d character models to the management of enemy swarms, it all feels very familiar.

Nevertheless, we're still a long way off from seeing the game (there isn't even a release year posted yet). So sit back, the marketing campaign is sure to be a bumpy ride.

Editorial: Multiplayer Unlockables

2008-06-24T00:57:53Z

Multiplayer gaming is the way of the future, or at least it ought to be. People are social animals: we like playing together. From mancala to tabletop roleplaying, players have gathered together for centuries to cooperate and compete for leisure. While many games can be played solo (solitaire, mahjong, etc) as many and more take two to tango.

That's why it should be such a surprise that it took 30 years of video games before multiplayer started really catching on, especially among consoles. For decades, consoles shipped with only two controller ports, with expensive and underutilized peripherals the only possible expansion. However, while the default number of ports has grown and wireless technology makes it still easier to gather friends around the TV's loving glow, design standards still conspire to keep gamers locked safely in their basements, alone.

That Guy Syndrome
Probably the worst fate that can befall a multiplayer game is that guy syndrome. If you're already a multiplayer gamer, there's a good chance that you already know what I'm talking about. Once you've gained enough expertise to consistently crush your fellow players, you've become that guy (or girl), and nobody is likely to want to play with you any more. So suddenly you find yourself back in the basement, cuddling the latest iteration of Final Fantasy, because at least it will never hate you.

It turns out that it matters how often you win or lose when you're trying to have fun (thanks science), so if you've become the undying master of the secret ninja trick, the game gets boring for you and frustrating to everyone else. Did you set out to upset this balance? Probably not, but the game probably strongly encouraged you to do so.

To see what I mean, let's take a recent gaming example: Super Mario Kart Wii. While you can pick up and play this game with friends straight out of the box, only about half of the playable characters and usable vehicles are unlocked from the outset. About a quarter of the game's courses are locked as well. This isn’t really a problem in itself, but if you picked up the game to play with friends, you'll probably be progressively annoyed that it doesn't seem to matter how many multiplayer games you play, those rewards remain locked. In fact the only way to get at those courses, karts, and characters is to sit down in single-player mode and keep playing until you've completed a series of increasingly difficult tasks (think Xbox Live Achievements). By the time you've finished unlocking everything in the game, you've outraced the hardest time trials on every course and beaten every grand prix with a high ranking.

Suddenly, whether you meant to or not, you've become that guy, and your multiplayer game might as well not be.

Unlockables
It's not like Mario Kart Wii is some kind of abberation from a neophyte developer; it's a venerable franchise from the company that resurrected video gaming in the 1980s. The problem actually seems to be more closely linked to unlockables and the single-player mentality that goes along with them.

Ever since someone decided that games have to be long to be good, developers have been padding to reach the golden forty-hour mark. While this sometimes amounts to changing the walking speed or irritating minigames, you can also offer concept art and intergalactic bounty hunters in bikinis to encourage gamers to replay for mastery. These bite-size rewards are sometimes charming, especially for fans just looking for an excuse to keep playing, but as soon as the unlockables start horning in on gameplay, there's a risk they'll compromise the game.

Nowhere is this more apparent in Super Smash Bros.: Brawl. It's been said elsewhere that the game plays like a love letter to Nintendo fans, however what may surprise you is that half of the interesting new characters aren't playable right out of the box. Players who heard that they'd be able to settle old playground Mario vs. Sonic feuds were disappointed until they had more or less completed the game's story mode.

Well, that's not entirely true, and it shows a place where Brawl does multiplayer right, and in a way that ought to be emulated by other multiplayer games. In addition to the story mode, Sonic can be unlocked by playing 10 multiplayer hours, 300 multiplayer matches, or by clearing classic mode with 10 characters. None of these is exactly trivial, so that childhood grudge will still have to wait, but at least it lets different players with different gameplay objectives get at the gameplay unlockables. It's a rare treat to see a multiplayer unlockable that can be obtained in . . . multiplayer mode.

However, even though Brawl nearly gets it right, the unlocking process is still pretty ill considered. One of the charms of Smash Bros.: Brawl is that you can sit down and play a quick game whenever you want. So it begs the question why the designers of bite-sized gameplay thought it'd be a good idea to make potentially casual gamers wait so long to get the game they bought. If you sit down for an eigty hour RPG, you're basically making a tacit agreement to spend a while getting at all the content. However it seems like no one who bought Brawl for a two minute game really signed up to spend ten hours getting it. Multiplayer unlockables need to consider their context before just picking big numbers out of a hat. You just spent seven hours of minimum wage labor buying the game. Is there any justifiable reason that you should pay another ten?

In fairness, teaching players to play the game takes time. Portal spends nearly half its total length just getting the player acquainted with the finer workings of its mind-bending gamepay. However, it doesn't really seem like you need to play 300 games before you can beat the snot out of an Italian plumber.

That said, this time-guzzling design paradigm would be a lot more reasonable if designers would just let uninterested players opt out of the grind. Guitar Hero, for example, is designed to repeatedly drag the player through increasingly difficult versions of songs they've already learned to prepare them for the next grueling set. However, if you'd just like to play the harder songs on lower difficulty settings without ever really learning them on expert difficulty, you can just tap an unlock code on the main menu to get at every track in the game. It's a little kludgey to enter the code every time you want to play, but at least it gives the player the opportunity to ignore the designers and play the game as they like.

One Of Us!
These annoyances haven't kept the World of Warcraft from accumulating ten million players (many of whom are that guy), and they haven't put Nintendo out of business. However, they are playing a role in any trouble you've had getting a few friends together to play video games for an hour or two. Designers and marketers should take note of this problem, because if core gamers aren't drawing people to multiplayer games, word of mouth isn't selling games like it should be. All that really needs to be done is to keep an eye to the fact that multiplayer doesn't have to be the icing on the game design cake. It can be the throbbing heart that makes gamers keep coming back to see one another and the world they're exploring together. Stop trying so hard to keep players out, and maybe they'll come in.

Flash Roundup: Platformers

2008-06-17T02:21:36Z

Flash Roundup: Platformers (PC/Mac/Etc)

As a medium, video games are aging. Since their humble beginnings, games have moved away from pure simulation into a storytelling medium, creating and merging conceits along the way. Genres have formed, blurred, and disappeared as bigger, longer, and more sophisticated design standards emerge. In fact, you can hardly play a driving sim any more without dabbling in violent crime, interpersonal relationships, and RPG-esque stat building.

Honestly, it's a good thing in its way. Games have become richer experiences that capture more than one narrow idea. Human experience doesn't happen in a vacuum, so context and connections make games more immersive, more compelling, and more real.

However, when you buy scope you pay in depth. It's getting harder and harder to find a game that recaptures that spirit of the eighties: take an idea (run and gun, falling blocks, murder by vegetable) and realize it simply and fully (Contra, Tetris, Super Mario Bros. 2). This shallow breadth probably contributes to the banal gaming tropes that stifle innovation. If you task a design team with managing combat, a world economy, social NPCs, traffic flow, and more, you shouldn't be surprised when they do the exact same thing with those mechanics as every other game on the market.

Design complexity also drives control complexity, and many games make use of a depressingly large portion of a computer keyboard. Even console games have ballooned from a modest handful of buttons to sixteen or more. Is it any wonder that you have such a hard time conning your mother into trying your favorite video game?

It turns out that simple, deep, and clever games still exist, however. They've just moved to the internet. Flash games in the same vein as Popcap Games are the new stronghold for simple innovation, and they've charmed hardcore and casual gamers alike. The flash roundup is dedicated to these unsung and sometimes unpublished games. Each installment will pick out a handful of notable examples of genre flash games based on innovation, accessibility, and outright fun. This week: Platformers.

Shift
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Genre: Platformer
Players: 1
Online: Flash Game
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Developer: Armor Games
Publisher: Armor Games
ESRB Rating: Unrated
Release Date: 2008
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Shift is a black-and-white game of edges. It's game is a platformer in the purest sense: your only task is to guide your silhouetted avatar to a door in each room by running and jumping.

Shift departs from the standard formula in that you can tap the eponymous shift key to flip the stage upside down, pivoting your character around his feet and flipping his polarity between black and white silhouettes. So if you start out as a black silhouette standing on a black block against a white background, tapping the shift key will make you a white silhouette standing inside the inverted black block.

So Shift doesn't have floors and ceilings per se, but instead has positive and negative space. The walls are real and solid, though, so much of the game consists of bending your brain around the black and white space to circumvent the walls.

The game has a timer for the hardcore perfectionist crowd. On the writing front, it sports a Portal-inspired sense of humor that will amuse the hardcore, though it may also alienate casual gamers. However, the timer and story are largely irrelevant to the gameplay, so casual gamers are still recommended to check it out.

Shift is a short game, clocking in at about five minutes once you've figured it out, but hungry gamers can check out the level editor(!) in the sequel for unending fun.

Chronotron
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Genre: Platformer
Players: 1
Online: Flash Game
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Developer: Scarybug Games
Publisher: Kongregate
ESRB Rating: Unrated
Release Date: 2008
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Chronotron is about time in much the same way that Shift is about space. You control a time-traveling robot that needs to collect a piece of his broken time machine from each of forty stages. The machine isn't completely disabled, however, and will let you travel a few seconds back in time every time you enter it.

Since there are no silly rules about seeing yourself (seeing yourself seeing yourself), this means that your brief backwards jaunt spawns recorded copies of whatever you were doing before you entered the time machine. So, if you need to hold down a switch to open a door, you can just stand patiently on the switch, hop in your time machine, and then pass through the door as your previous incarnation graciously and unseeingly opens the door for you. Paradoxes are a problem though, and if you carelessly trap a past self, you doom all existence. Oops.

At its heart, Chronotron is about nothing so much as management and delegation. Most of the fun in the game comes from breaking the navigation of a room into little steps that a single duplicate can perform. However, putting the plan into action calls for pure platforming grace.

As you go along, the game adds layers of complexity--stopping time, time bombs, and so on--but all the gameplay elements center around a deep exploration of manipulating time, and the stage structure builds the difficulty curve evenly.

Gamers without time to sit down and puzzle through all forty stages can rest soundly with the knowledge that Chronotron actually tracks your progress and you don't have to retread old territory go get some quality playtime in. So, even if it seems monumental, it's still worth checking out.

You Have To Burn The Rope
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Genre: Platformer
Players: 1
Online: Flash Game
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Developer: marzipan.se
Publisher: marzipan.se
ESRB Rating: Unrated
Release Date: 2008
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The last game of this Flash Roundup is for hardcore gamers only. It's not that You Have to Burn the Rope is unreasonably demanding or excessively complex, but the game is best savored after suffering through at least five years of content bloat like minigames and fetch quests.

Without spoiling too much of the game's succinct brilliance, it's safe to say that You Have to Burn the Rope is a nicely absurd cure for 120 hours of Xenosaga or trying to control your server economy in World of Warcraft. That said, if the game is too mystifying for even veteran gamers, walkthroughs and a manual are available for support. Expect a Prima guide in the future.

Review: Metroid Prime 3: Corruption

2008-06-10T02:10:27Z

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (Wii)

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Genre: First Person Shooter
Players: 1
Online: None
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Developer: Retro Studios
Publisher: Nintendo
ESRB Rating: T
Release Date: 8/27/07
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The third Metroid Prime game falls off the ledge into cheesy drama where the second teetered on the edge. Fortunately, the mass of the game delivers the same mix of guided exploration and challenging combat that was so endearing about the first game.

The Galaxy is at Peace
Farmed out to a second party studio after its creator died, the Metroid series seemed adrift when the first of the Prime games was announced.

However, despite the enormous shift from platformer to first person shooter and despite the decade gap between games, Metroid Prime emerged to critical acclaim as modernizing the franchise without sacrificing the series feel. Subsequent games have strayed systematically farther from its core, gilding the lily with uninteresting plot elements, NPCs, and ad hoc backtracking, but they haven't yet eclipsed the core gameplay that makes Metroid games fun.

Alone in the Dark
The Metroid Prime games fall into the FPS genre, with a little more emphasis on the first person than on the shooting. Samus Aran, bounty hunter and part-time Metroid exterminator, is typically deployed after a planet-scale disaster to investigate, find the problem, and kill it. For gameplay, this usually entails winding your way through silent civilizations, solving their puzzles and finding their secrets, some light combat with local fauna, and the occasional boss battle.

The series hallmark is exploration bottlenecked by the discovery of new abilities. That is, bombs remove barriers, protective gear lets you pass through dangerous areas, and so on. It's not so different from lock-and-key gameplay, but it trades the rote memorization of location for something more rewarding. For example, if you see a stunning vista with a ledge hanging just out of reach, you'll likely remember it when you gain the ability to jump higher (without any of that pesky green key/door nonsense).

Metroid Prime 3 takes this gameplay and moves it to the Wii, adding the obligatory gestural controls along the way. The game uses a Wii Remote + Nunchuck control scheme, with the Nunchuck for strafing and the remote for free aiming and turning. It doesn't do much to remedy the complex control schemes from earlier games (there's even still a lock-on mechanic), but it works pretty seamlessly. It's unfortunate, though, that aiming the remote at the edge of the screen makes Samus turn. So you either keep the aiming reticle near the center of the screen, or the big mean bounty hunter does a little pirouette. It's not really a problem per se, but it means that you have to make a choice between breaking the mood and muscle cramps.

Speaking of muscle cramps, the game's bosses are bigger and meaner than ever. This makes for some truly epic conflicts, but it also means that these climactic battles stretch out for quite a long time. Since the camera and aiming reticle always decouple during boss battles (the camera locks on, the low-contrast reticle does not), this means that you'll be carefully aiming the Wii Remote at smallish targets for long stretches. Anyone who's ever been in marching band knows just how obnoxious it is to hold anything if you hold it long enough, and anyone who plays Metroid Prime 3 will learn.

That said, the gestural controls do have an upside. Operating switches and widgets in the game requires twisting, pulling, and swinging the Nunchuck and Remote in ways that mimic the onscreen action. Unlocking and retrieving a high-tech battery, for instance, involves rotating it like a doorknob and then pulling the remote to remove the object. It's gimmicky, but once you have the hang of it, you'll automatically perform the motions as easily as turning a doorknob. The consistency and ease of the interface ultimately makes the game more immersive.

Backtracking Through Molasses. Alien Molasses.
Nothing breaks immersion like gameplay kludge, though, and there's a light sprinkling of it that hampers the otherwise excellent exploration gameplay. Principal among the offenders are the long load times between rooms. Blast doors (doors that must be blasted open, what did you think that meant?) separate most of the rooms in Metroid games. The trouble is that the time between the shot that signals the door to open and the blessed (and sometimes long anticipated) event of opening is spent loading the adjacent room. In cases of particularly large and detailed rooms, this process can take more than twenty seconds. So if you're backtracking across old territory at a fair turn of speed, you can suddenly find yourself stuck between a petulant door and the murderous hordes you bypassed in a rush of misplaced mercy and laziness. The game is balanced enough that this rarely results in death, but the interruption of flow and the unexpected and sometimes crippling battles can take away from the fun.

Annoying as the unexpected layovers are, though, they probably wouldn't happen without the game's excellent map and well-placed directions. The map remains unchanged from previous games, but bears recognition as one of the best map systems outside the Nintendo DS (where you can actually write on them). Metroid's maps rotate, scale, and zoom with a combination of precision control and flexibility that make for a powerful navigation tool. It's an essential tool as well, since the game's five worlds are filled with multiple exits and misleading paths. Game objectives are marked on this map, which manages to keep the game's pace up without stifling the exploration that made the series successful. There's no waypoint, but gamers looking for a lightning dash from A to B with frenetic action and lesser puzzle emphasis should probably be playing Halo.

Galactic Federation Imperialism
Actually, Bungee's hugely successful FPS seems to have had some impact on Metrod Prime 3, because the series has become increasingly plot-heavy over time. While the first game only really allowed you to get a peripheral look at the worlds and their inhabitants by hacking computer terminals, the second introduced a handful of chatty NPCs and tacked a good vs. evil element onto the series radioactive MacGuffin: Phazon.

Now, finally at the end of the trilogy, the series is suffering from severe inflammation of the Halo. From a constipated Captain-Keyes-wannabe admiral to derivative defend-the-squad objectives, you can almost see the marketers leaning on the producer to ape the successful franchise. Unfortunately, Metroid makes a poor clone, and the lily has been gilded with fashionable gameplay elements and talky cinematics that add very little substance to the experience.

The story they deliver isn't particularly good either. What used to be a reasonably sly homage to the Alien movies has been puffed up with evil twins, sentient goop, and planet-eating forces that would make The Spirits Within blush. It adds little and was largely unnecessary.

If you can power your way past the cut scenes, though, the game is lovely to look at and nicely scored. Metroid Prime 3 delivers a colorful, if familiar, selection of worlds that are delivered smoothly and crisply. About half the music is sampled from previous games, but the balance consists of new music that preserves the atmosphere and themes. The otherworldly mix of electronic noise and space orchestra is as good here as ever. However, it is marred a bit by some pitch-modulated vocal samples that fall somewhere in the aural equivalent of the uncanny valley (would it really have cost so much to hire someone to sing more than one note?).

Ridley is Dead. Long Live Ridley.
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption is hard to recommend to casual gamers. The combination of complex controls and a reasonably steep difficulty curve aren't sufficiently rewarded by the lackluster plot. However, hardcore gamers and genre fans will enjoy it for many of the same reasons, and the gestural controls do a good job of exploiting Wii hardware to make an old game seem new.

What It Costs: $50

What It’s Worth:
•To The Hardcore: $40 (buy)
•To The Genre Fan: $40 (buy)
•To The Casual: $10 (skip)

Review: Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness

2008-06-02T16:32:41Z

Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness (PC, Mac, Linux, XBLA)

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Genre: RPG
Players: 1
Online: None
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Developer: Hothead Games
Publisher: Hothead Games
ESRB Rating: M
Release Date: 5/21/08
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Episodic Gaming hasn't really ever seen a breakout hit before and it'll have to wait a bit longer. While Penny Arcade Adventures offers a pleasantly active take on the Role Playing genre, its presentation and sense of humor will be most enjoyed by those who are already fans of the comic.

Link-o-Rama-Vision
It's hard to think of a bigger gaming cultural icon than Penny Arcade without resorting to the games and developers themselves. Ten years of comic satire and parody have built a nationwide charitable organization, an annual convention, and now a video game.

Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness (henceforth RSPoD because, well, jeez) is the first in a series of episodic RPGs. Set in a steampunk version of the 20's, a custom-built avatar (you) sets out for revenge against the titanic fruit fucker who squashed your house. Along the way, you'll encounter period-appropriate versions of Tycho and Gabe, and battle evil with tommy guns and fisticuffs, and whatever comes to hand, really.

The Tube is Civilization
The game's combat plays like a strange hybrid between Mario & Luigi and the Final Fantasy active time battle system. Each player has a distinct initiative accumulator that fills over time. Since your item use, basic attacks, and special attacks all have separate and serially filled initiative. This means that, depending on which character does what, you'll be tracking up to nine (three accumulators across three characters) initiatives in real time. It takes a bit of getting used to, but keeps the combat pace frenetic--something uncommon among RPGs.

But wait, there's more! The Mario & Luigi comes in with timed action commands. Whenever enemies rush in to attack, you can hit an action button to mitigate some damage. Since this is essential to your survival, you'll have to be on the lookout for impending attacks while you're tracking all that initiative. Throw in initiative for a few support characters and timed minigames that determine the effectiveness of special attacks, and the game can be a bit overwhelming at times. However, if you can power past that initial learning curve, RSPoD offers some of the most compelling and immersive RPG combat in years.

Character advancement happens via a standard level structure, though don't expect much in the way of customization. Weapons have a small selection of upgrades, and that's about it. Winning in RSPoD is much more about making the best of what you have than it is about being loaded for bear.

Not Exactly an Adventure Game
Outside combat, exploration of the game's four areas takes place via point and click. There's actually not a huge amount to do outside combat; the game has been so thoroughly streamlined that you mostly just walk, talk, and examine objects.

This ends up being fine, though, since most of the game is designed to deliver humor. Without giving any of it away, it's fair to say that 75% of the objects in RSPoD have one or more jokes secreted away in them. The fact that you don't have to find a lion key and then solve a series of increasingly devious puzzles to get the funny isn't really a mark against the game.

Some of the game's jokes are hit-or-miss. In fact, RSPoD turns the volume down on the Penny Arcade franchise, and players hoping for cardboard tubes and radioactive scorpions will come away disappointed. That said, RSPoD isn't the love letter to Penny Arcade fans that Smash Bros is to Nintendo fans. It's only subtly self-referential (when it is at all), and it doesn't just farm old content for warm fuzzies. Penny Arcade fans can expect eight hours of stuff they haven't seen before, even if it doesn't directly link to the comic.

That's not to say that it doesn't feel like Penny Arcade. The game captures the deft writing style--precariously balancing excessive verbosity against comedic punch--and the art is spot on. Fans of the series will like what they get, but neophytes will be taking something of a gamble.

Sweet Flare!
The plot uses the same old end-of-the-world MacGuffin that drives so many RPGs, albeit a rather funnier version (mimes and hoboes may be involved). It's mostly delivered through conversation trees with NPCs, though the game's cinematics are presented as a charmingly animated comic book that jumps from panel to panel as events unfold.

The story primarily serves to point your tommy gun in the right direction. While it may not be a literary masterpiece, the plot keeps your goals well-defined and provides an easily accessed reminder if you have to pick the game up after a long absence.

The game's graphics are mostly smooth. There occasionally minor tearing artifacts, but it otherwise clips along at an even framerate with no glitches. There are some interface problems relating to the camera, however. The game has some difficulty handling occlusion (that is, it's tricky to talk to Gabe when Tycho is standing in front of him), and having no ability to control the camera can become annoying.

The music is a charming combination of doomsday orchestra with occasional period-appropriate tracks that help set the scene. There's not an overabundance--many sections of the game aren't scored at all--but what's there enhances the mood and never takes away from the immersion.

In Sum
Penny Arcade Adventures: RSPoD is a strange mix of casual and hardcore play. The combat is demanding enough that it may well intimidate inexperienced players, but everything else is so streamlined that it may not feel deep to hardcore players. Nevertheless, the package of humor-driven simple gameplay is compelling enough to warrant a playthrough.

What It Costs: $20

What It’s Worth:
•To The Hardcore: $20 (buy)
•To The Genre Fan: $20 (buy)
•To The Casual: $0 (play the demo)