21 Dec 2009
Played on Nintendo DS
The new release of Spirit Tracks reminds me that I never commented on it’s predecessor, Phantom Hourglass. It’s not that I didn’t play it - I did. But I sent it back after only a couple sittings. I know, I know - I sent back a freaking Zelda games.
I love the Zelda series. The original game totally blew my elementary school mind. A Link to the Past is definitely one of my all time favorites (I’m sure boosted a bit due to my overall SNES nostalgia). I missed Ocarina of Time on the N64, but thankfully got to play it on the GameCube. I loved what Wind Waker did with the art style and with the story. The Minish Cap was a good enough handheld throwback. Twilight Princess was appropriately epic, but I really regret playing it on the Wii instead of the GameCube (the Wii controls were terribly gimmicky). There have been some missteps in the series for sure, but in general it has continued to satisfy me throughout.
Phantom Hourglass, however, frustrated me to no end. It wasn’t the stylus controls. I was able to deal with those and appreciate that they made some things better and some things worse (I would argue a lot of those functions would work better if simply mapped to buttons). No, the thing that killed the game for me was the goddamn boat.
Instead of having an overworld to navigate through you’re given a big sea and a boat. You trace out a path and the boat will follow that to get from island to island. That doesn’t seem so bad, but then you’re supposed to pay attention to fire the ship’s cannons to avoid monsters and obstacles. The controls aren’t terribly precise, but the real problem is the pacing. Most of the time there’ll be nothing to worry about, and since you don’t have to interact much you’ll start to mentally check out. But you can’t, because if some little monster pops up and wails on you might have to start your journey over from the beginning. So you’re forced to be attentive in the face of overwhelming boredom.
The boat trips drove me absolutely nuts. I was mostly enjoying the game and then as soon as I had to use the boat I pretty much hit a brick wall. So I sent the game back to GameFly, heartbroken. It’s too bad, because there were some good ideas in there, but just too many hang-ups for me to continue. And now the sequel is out in Spirit Tracks, and I don’t know what to do. It’s a reportedly high quality Zelda game, so I should play it? It’s been described as just like Phantom Hourglass but with a train instead of a boat… should I give the formula another fair shake?
Venting on a completely different issue: please, developers, never ever use the DS microphone. A large percentage of people play handheld games in public places, and most of them are not interested in looking like an idiot in public. Phantom Hourglass had this part where I was supposed to blow out a torch using the microphone input, and rather than freak out the person next to me on the bus I closed up my DS to save that experience for later. But when I got around to it later that day it was way more annoying than I even anticipated. I blew soft, I blew hard, I blew from all different angles*, until eventually the flame went out with some random combination. It was frustrating, and I wasn’t looking forward to any more “puzzles” based on that crap.
It seems unfair of me to be so unsatisfied when a game fails to evolve, but then also be upset here when a game fails during experimentation. I recognize that it’s unfair, but that’s how I feel.
I worry about the new trend in game controls (be it the DS stylus, touch on the iPhone, the Wii remote, or even Natal). These things have huge potential to open up accessibility of gaming to more people, but used incorrectly they create an imprecise frustrating mess. It takes some restraint to temper the new shinny thing with reason and arrive at a control scheme that makes sense. Okay, I’ll say it: Japanese culture is obsessed with kitsch and gimmick. In the broad sense I think that’s fine and healthy, but I don’t know how much I can look to them to lead the charge on quality gaming. I’m worried that eastern development studios like Nintendo are losing touch with what they did to connect to me in the first place. Of course down the road something awesome will come out and temporarily restore my faith in them, but right now my optimism is low. Here’s hoping my friends working on Natal nail it.
* Yes, that is what she said
14 Dec 2009
It’s kind of ridiculous, but the premise of Idiocracy basically convinced me to have children. Yes, it’s a comedy, and one with extravagant extremes, but the core idea isn’t wrong. And I can’t really sit back and complain about that while also being part of the problem. But I’m not here to talk about Idiocracy, which has uneven quality at best. I’m here to talk about Phoebe in Wonderland, which is amazing (and is available via Netflix insta-watch, if that’s your thing). It is in fact nothing like Idiocracy (I’m already beginning to regret using that as a segue), except that both of them made me think about parenting.
Phoebe in Wonderland is a story that represents everything I fear and everything that excites me about the possibility of being a parent. You have this brilliant vibrant child who is everything you could want: imaginative, creative, and smart as can be. But then you also have the sort of thing that every parent fears: that their child is broken. And that situation threatens to tear the parents apart (both from each other and from themselves). It’s a story of the best and the worst. It’s a story that forces me to confront the question “even if it’s hard, is it still worth it?”
I feel compelled to write about this movie, but I’m having a hard time deciding what to say. It’s not quite true that if I told you more it would spoil the experience, but I do feel like it would lessen it. This is a story in which uncertainty made the journey stronger for me. So here’s what you need to know: It’s a beautiful film, it’s well crafted, and for me it was extremely impactful. I often judge a movie by the conversation it spawns afterwards, but in the silence after this one there was absolutely no discussion as I grabbed for the remote and immediately rated it five stars. If you at all consider yourself to be in a similar place in life as me then I highly recommend you watch Phoebe in Wonderland.
11 Dec 2009
Played on Xbox360
I’m not as much of a slave to my Gamefly queue as I am to my Netflix queue. Given the various platforms and their different economic models it’s hard for rentals to be a large percentage. At any point I’ll generally have a disc out from Gamefly, an MMO I’m poking around in, a handheld game for the bus, some slow burner on the console that would take too long to rent, and some downloadable game. But I’m always trying to push as much of my gaming to rental as possible, which is the smartest option for my rate of play. It has the side effect of encouraging me to try games I would never risk real permanent money on. Which means I throw stuff into my queue that is sometimes pretty borderline.
Oh, hello Rise of the Argonauts, I’m talking about you now. Not long into the first sitting I found myself wondering why the hell I threw this game into my queue. Ancient Greek mythology is up my alley, so that had to been a factor. But this game has a huge identity complex. The core gameplay mechanic is a third person action game. You know, a God of War knockoff. But Argonauts isn’t nearly as good, even compared to other knockoffs. You aren’t actually provided enough opportunities to swing your aggression around to succeed at being that type of game. Early on I was given an upgrade to a weapon before I had been given an opportunity to use the one before it. Instead of fighting there’s lots and lots of dialogue.
For a game with so much talking the dialogue animations are awkward. Wait, they’re not awkward - they’re absent. Jason stands there in the same pose for every single conversation. And there’s some serious recycling of the voice talent for bit parts. I think I had only talked to my fourth NPC before I hit a repeat.
I finished my first sitting and seriously considered putting the game back in the envelope right then and there. But something compelled me to stick with it. I definitely wanted to solve the mystery of why I chose to play the game in the first place. I knew where the answer was - in the GameTrailers video review. Most stuff in my queue first goes through a video review check (games are such a long time commitment that I like to see them first). But I knew that if I went back to the review at this point it’d bias my experience, so I held back and instead just flat out avoided the game for a week.
Eventually I came back, with revised expectations. This is clearly not an action game. It’s something… else. I started looking for the positives. Jason may just stand there stiffly as he talks to people, but statically he looks pretty good. And his voice acting is quality. The interpretation of Greek mythology is a bit off canon, but at least they commit to their variations. I found myself honestly invested in what was going to happen next.
And then I remembered why I rented the game in the first place. It was precisely for that mix of compelling story but crappy gameplay. It’s the flip of the video game cliché. I had left a little test for myself in my queue: I wanted to know if a game that failed at being a game but still had a decent story behind it could satisfy me. I’ve played a ton of games that strike the opposite balance and walked away content. Could I do the reverse?
The verdict? Well, I played the game to completion, but all that really means is that I’m willing to ride out a train wreck. I certainly wouldn’t recommend it to anyone else. I did continue to care about what was going to happen all the way until the end, but I was also pretty desperate to put that game controller to good use the whole time. Any time I play a game I could have easily reached for the remote instead of the controller, but there’s something about my mood that decided on the interactive option.
Yes, Rise of the Argonauts has a story, but it’s far from cinema quality. Nor does it muster enough quality interactivity to elevate the story to be more than it is. I’m left dreaming about how much better it would be if it had excelled more at either end. But it didn’t, so I guess it’s a failure. Oh well, back it goes in the envelope. We’ll see what present I left for myself next.