Aaron Drewniak
There are three distinct attitudes a game can have towards its player. It can coddle them, challenge them, or just be downright cruel to them. Most choose the safe route and baby the player, occasionally presenting the illusion of a challenge that doesn't require any real skill or thought to defeat. A rare few offer a true challenge. They're a bit like mothers who want their children to grow up strong and proud, so no matter how well you do, it's never quite good enough. You're pushed to improve, or die in the attempt. This should not be confused with the far too many titles that see fit to treat their player like dirt.
Games should be fun. Outside of a few decent edutainment titles, enjoyment is all they can provide. They shouldn't be fun just some of the time either, separated by gulfs of tedium, they should be fun all of the time without fail. Most games aren't, probably because if they were distilled down to only their fun bits they would be rather short, and leave the player feeling cheated, as if he hadn't earned anything from the experience.
Instead, they normally play the old trick of a carrot dangling before the horse, holding the promise of some future glory to keep you wading through the mediocrity that comprises the majority of the experience. There are few RPGs that aren't guilty of this, tossing out masses of random encounters to justify printing "Over a hundred hours of exciting gameplay!" on the back of the box, though "exciting" is a strange synonym for boring beyond belief. When they start spacing out the save points to force you to replay battles multiple times, however, you know they're just being mean.
So why do most games have at least some element of cruelty? It might be because all developers are after all only human, and after slaving away at a game through long hours with too little budget or rest it's hard to resist venting a little of their accumulated rage, not listening to the beta tester's cries of "This is boring!" "This is broken!" "This is just too cruel!"
To be honest, if I were a game developer, I wouldn't listen either.
Andrew Calvin
Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be spending every free second leveling up carrots, corn, and other assorted oddities. But I am and darn it I can't stop! Thanks to NIS America, well I am addicted to Makai Kingdom, which in turn made me addicted to Disgaea yet again. Curse you, NIS for your strange, strange games!
In between there was a bit of Street Fighter EX3, and lemme tell you, this game is evil. Evil in its crappy game engine and even eviler (that isn't a word is it?) in the way it caused me to lose complete control and destroy things. Yes I am afraid to admit that my beloved joystick fell victim to a fit of rage, causing me to once and for all hang up the torch and move on with my life. Fear not, I will probably be relighting the torch next week sometime when I get bored. But whoever decided that making Street Fighter a 3-D game was a good idea, well maybe I should send them both halves of my joystick and a bill for repairs!
Sorry this entry is so short folks, but I need to get back to leveling up so that I can take on a badguy with stats in the 12,000s. Hopefully next month I will have some time to spend on Capcom Classics and a few other non-NIS games.
James Cunningham
It's a good thing that the summer months are pretty clear of new games, because I have had almost no time to game in the last month. I haven't stopped buying stuff, and have even gotten to play some of it, but playtime has been limited.
Last month I mentioned Killer 7. I'd played it once, for a couple of hours, but a month later decided to get back into it. So the other night I tossed it in the Gamecube and really began playing. Well, as screwed as the story is, the game itself is a lot of fun. I've no idea why I'm shooting the Heaven's Smile, other than if I don't they'll blow up and take me with them, but it's the gameplay I'm enjoying.
I've come to the conclusion that I like simple gameplay. Killer 7 is simple- you hear a weird laugh, go to first-person mode, and shoot until there's nothing moving. Sure, the controls are kind of weird to start with, but a bit of practice puts everything in its place. The gameplay is fairly basic, but the game itself does a lot with it. This is the kind of thing I've been looking for lately.
A game with simple gameplay is made good by enemies and their behavior and the levels they're in. When all that's available are a few simple commands (move, fire, jump, and weapon switching are the usual) then not only is it easier to concentrate on the game, the gameplay itself can be that much faster. Doom, Serious Sam, Gridrunner++, Mutant Storm, Geometry Wars, Tempest, Robotron, Kururuin Squash, Meteos, Burnout, and any number of vertical or horizontal shooters have all benefited from this over the years. Fighters too, although I personally lack either the dexterity to play them or the patience to learn it.
Part of me misses arcades, and the vast selection of games they had. The rest of me is looking forward to Serious Sam 2, Burnout Revenge, Mutant Storm 2, Geometry Wars 2, Chaos Field (coming soon to a US Gamecube near you), Sigma Star Saga, and other things I don't know about yet. Remembering the past is all very well and good, but there's so much available now and coming soon that there's no reason to get mired down in it.
