Vessel is a Game Unfulfilled

Steam is a great service for online gaming, and Vessel is one of the many demos that is available to try before making a purchase.  I’ve played this test of a game, and though unique elements are present, they can’t make-up for the hardship I felt in the demo.

To begin this whimsical platformer, the stage is set through a slow camera pan through a lab.  The scene shows pictures of your characters research into creating “fluros”; strange, fluid-based automatons that become the workers of the steam-punk world you live in.  This gallery clearly lays-out that these laborers revolutionized society, but something went wrong, thus depicting the current situation you find yourself in.

The story is put forward in a decent manner, but this is a comment on the first time seeing it.  The second and third times are overly repetitive, and the player has no way to get past them!  This distraction detached me from the world of Vessel when I just wanted to get back into the platforming and puzzles.

So, why did I play the demo three times?  Well, the first time was that the game trapped me in one of its puzzles with no way out.  Getting stuck in a closet is not a way to encourage trial-and-error testing of the puzzles in the game.  Therefore, being left between two inoperable doors, I had to restart.

The third play through comes from something deeper in the very foundation of Vessel.  Getting to a fluid puzzle area – the one that trapped me previously – caused the game to jitter then crash.  Forcing me a third time to play the game, I nearly had the title crash again; more fluid-based areas caused the game to distort and slow to a barely bearable pace.  I made it through that sequence after a few minutes, but my confidence in the programming design of Vessel is deeply shaken.

Now, when I was actually playing the demo, I had fun solving and manipulating the fluid-based puzzles.  Hot and cold fluids have unique effects, levers and machinery fit well in the steam-punk universe, and the “fluro” workers lend a creative element to problem solving.  However, the time I had getting to these places was greatly lengthened not just by the aforementioned unskippable cut scenes, but by long, drawn-out loading scenes.  I was not expecting such a drag from a 2D platform puzzle game!

Vessel’s demo was a quick one; that must be a saving grace.  Don’t get me wrong, for I did have fun with the simplicity of the visuals and the intriguing puzzles.  The downfall comes from lengthy time delays, poor design choices that punish players, and issues at the core of the program execution.  If I have judged this game wrongly, where the demo cannot convey some majesty of the actual Vessel release, please let me know.  But, when it comes to the first impression that Vessel’s designers decided to put forward, they either made a poor choice or worse, made a faulty experience.  Either way, I’d say take care in trying other games before approaching this title.

• + Good setup of background, motivation, and story right from the beginning.
• + Creative and engaging puzzles based around fluid motion and physics.
• - Uncontrollable, unskippable cut scenes.
• A fix: Add a simple button press to take the player straight to play.
• - Puzzles that punish curious testing without redemption from each trial.
• A fix: Leave room for a player to reset to some sort of checkpoint, or create limited, foolproof level layouts.
• - The game crashes over its main mechanic of fluid use.
• A fix: Properly check the quality assurance to the title, making adequate changes in how the game relates to itself and the machine it runs on.
• - Long load times.
• A fix: Better streamline the asset reliance the program makes on itself.

Mami's Post Mortem - Mami Update

Wow.  What a year.  Mami has been through a lot these past few months.  It has seen people come and go, lore written and dismissed, art created and discarded, mechanics programmed and removed, and countless other iterations come across the project life-time.  There are some things Mami still needs, but there are so many more things that the game has accomplished.

Starting the academic year, there were a lot of decisions to be made.  What mechanics could be applied to the game?  How detailed is the story?  Levels?  Engine?  Art-sound-etc etc etc?  Some of the most important insights into what would later evolve the title came about in September, October, and November.

However, scope is the five letter word of the industry as far as I’ve experienced.  Thus, the time not spent on the programming and implementation backbone of Mami was too great when compared to what the industry uses now as a production process.  Those assets, though, do bolster an impressive library of material that clearly defines the world Team Squaybies created, and the assets are always there for future reference or use.

Referring back to implementation, that brings me to my next topic: skills that are needed in a game development team, and the life-span of those skills.  Throughout the year, we at Team Squaybies - an assemblage of technically nine individuals to six by year’s end - had a various assortment of skills to bring to the project.

What was desperately needed was more programmers.  The chief coder was a beast at AS3, but he’d been working with the language for a year previously in a professional setting; Team Squaybies’s project manager knew a little bit, but otherwise was regulated to very front-end manipulation; I myself know plenty of code, and picked-up the language of Adobe Flash quickly, but I was still not on-par with the primary programmer, mainly slowing down his progress if I tackled a problem alone.  Coding was important from start to very finish, and having more coders with a previous familiarity of the tool of choice is not a make-or-break situation for game development, but it sure darn well makes things more efficient!

Now, what about the art direction?  To start, we lost our audio skill at the turn of the calendar year, though he did do excellent work prior to his leaving.  Would more work have been required of him the second semester?  I can’t say.  I also can’t say if it was overly detrimental to the outcome of Mami, but it just shows that the pool of audio talent that the game projects groups have access to is quite slim.

Moving the art focus forward to what is more traditionally considered art, the visual concepting phase of the project was by far too long.  Some persons were doing over an hour to turn out one half-finished piece of concept – when put into the context of working being done in only two-hour working blocks three to four times a week, that is ridiculous.  I have good faith that anyone in a design studio would happen to agree.

Now, try combining the visual arts, level design, narrative brainstorming, and other miscellaneous fields outside of the implementation track (e.g. programming).  These fields far outweigh the number of people capable of bringing about a game, and within the game projects course here, last on the employ of a team for the entire year.  I may be horribly biased, but a great number of non-implementation individuals are needed at the start of game development; halfway through the development cycle, I could only see maybe one, two, or at most three persons of strong artistic intent.  Everyone else should have multiple skills, transferable between development teams!

Well, I’ve ranted enough.  Team Squaybies really pulled a good project together this year in the form of Mami.  The team was fairly solid.  It was a great time, I learned a lot, and will be taking the best of my new knowledge to help create a game I designed for next year.  But now, here’s to creating great gaming experiences, and taking care while doing it!  

Stay tuned for a possible update to my Mami adventures, where I go into the details of what I learned, what I did horribly, and what I believe to be good work on my part.  See you then.

P.S.  Please comment on my thoughts of the past year, the issues raised, your own experiences in teamwork and project development, or ask any questions you may have.  If I missed anything, let me know!

The Broadness of Dragon's Dogma

It seems to be the only thing I finish these days, but here is another demo analysis.  This time I spent not more than 45 minutes in Dragon's Dogma, but found a lot interesting about it; the game has a very familiar feel, but changes the formula to offer a new breadth of experience.

That familiar feeling I reference is that of a widely popular title, Dark Souls, only without the hair-pulling difficulty.  Anyone who has picked-up Dark Souls will find the presentation very similar, and makes for a quick transition into the world of Dragon's Dogma.

Speaking of difficulty, the demo was not tough in any way, shape, or form; a bit too easy, in fact.  With epic monsters of scale and ferocity, battles felt hollow, as all conflicts devolved into rabid button-smashing party.   And with the allies (known as “pawns”) the game gives the player on their journey, those NPC’s do their job well, making any fight very one-sided.

Movement is quick and fluid in this world.  I felt, while dashing from halls to vast chambers, climbing cliffs of rubble to new areas, ect. was well executed.  While running around, I can’t help but mention that the graphics are top-notch.  Fur and flesh, cloth and steel, rock and brick all are rendered in eye-pleasing fashion.

Now, if only sound followed the route the visuals took.  Physical actions taken leave nothing in the ears of the player, making it seem that the virtual warrior-avatar is more flying ghost than human.  NPC’s are also a very talkative bunch; they give you hints and notice of their actions towards you (healing, fighting, etc.) but talk over each other in such mass, that, especially when engaging an enemy, speech just becomes a mass of neglected gibberish.

I have to admit that I enjoyed the combat system the most, despite button mashing.  Quick attacks flayed my opponents with due haste.  If an ally grabs an enemy in a brawl, the game gives a bullet-time effect letting you know to skewer the poor sap in the clutches of your buddy.  Some of the bigger monsters require you to jump on them, crawling up to slay their menacing hides up-close-and-personal.

Overall, I had fun with Dragon's Dogma’s demo.  It could have been longer, and is in need of a tweak here and there, but this is a demo, and even the issues I had didn’t ruin the experience for me.   This game drops in May, and from what I can tell, it will be one worth picking-up.

This week is finals here at school, so I may not be around for a time.  Don’t worry – I’m nearing completion of the original Half Life, have some news about Activision, and will be needing your insight on a game being constructed in a few months.  Take care until that content comes rolling out.

• + Familiar style for players of Dark Souls.
• + Smart and effective NPC allies/pawns.
• + Smooth controls, whether travelling in the world or battling its denizens.
• + High-quality graphics.
• + Ease of getting into the game.
• - It is easy to delve into button-mashing, leaving no room for skills.
• A fix: Make for more aggressive enemies that will adapt to melee patterns.
• - Dialogue is all over itself.
• A fix: Include a code check to limit the chattiness of NPC’s if others are speaking.

Beta Weekend - A Hell of a Good Time

Guess what happened this weekend!  Diablo 3’s Beta servers where opened to everyone on Friday, and boy-oh-boy, did the public participate.  Though I don’t have any official figures, I’ll give you my impressions of all the classes and the new Diablo game in the context of the beta’s presentation.

First off, the Diablo game as a whole feels a lot like the Diablo 2 that I remember; loot is plentiful, gold drops like candy, dungeons are random yet familiar in reruns, and enemies explode in the beautiful explosions that upgraded graphics allow for.  If the production-build of Diablo 3 merely keeps these feelings of nostalgia that the beta offers, Blizzard will have a smashing hit (though I’m not saying that it won’t be anything but).

The 2 qualms I could find with the beta’s setup is that during play, the “normal” difficulty – the only challenge level offered – was by far too easy, and that the dialogue was shameful.  Nearly every character class burned, beat, and blasted through undead hoards like a hot knife and unholy butter.  It was nice for getting through the entire content of the beta on my first play-through, but it left me wanting more.  The dialogue was not something a company like Blizzard should be giving – cliché statements, bare-bones explanations, and the most dry feeling behind the lines delivered gave the sense that this was a student project that did all the voice acting with the programming team.  A man needs to kill his wife because she’s going to turn into an undead?  I’ve heard better emotion from someone killing an insect.

But how did the classes handle?  I beat the beta with the witch doctor, playing for about 3 hours to reach level 10.  After that, I played every other class for roughly a half-hour, each one conveniently reaching level 6, and stopping before entering the crypt to find a crown.  With that in mind, my review:

Witch Doctor – My first pick was chosen because it could summon.  With spiders and demon hounds, no-one could touch my character, since the mobs agro-ed the spawns.  The downside is that the summons don’t do a lot of damage, but they make that up in the number of creatures you can create, along with the area denial effects the witch doctor brings to the game.

Barbarian – The only “hardcore” character I created (if I die, I die permanently), this is definitely a damage class.  Though the first few levels leave the barbarian soft to blows, after getting some armor, the damage that the class deals-out more than makes up that bad feeling.  However, there was an imbalance between the solo damage abilities and the crowd control attacks; it just felt off.

Demon Hunter – The best thing I can say about the demon hunter is that the range on this class is quite superb.  This leads to superb crowd control, as the traps and devices that go along with the special attacks really keep all mobs under lock-and-key.  The regular “click” attacks are a bit mediocre, but I must mention that this is the only level 6 class that I wanted to continue on with to get more abilities.

Monk – Now let me introduce damage, I mean the monk.  If you can’t guess, the monk is quick to hurt others in a brutal fashion.  I can’t tell if the monk is susceptible to taking a lot of harm itself, but I was burning through enemies so fast they couldn’t land a blow.  Despite the lack of any sort of ranged attack or ability, I did seem to destroy enemies faster than any other class.

Wizard – One thing I noticed about this class is the number of critical hits delivered.  That was handy with all the ranged abilities, but the wizard is the only class I found that had a semi-ranged attack: a lightning bolt that only reached a few yards.  The attacks were very slow, and not that powerful.  Poor damage per second is not a good compliment to a soft character; my least preferable class.

So, with the Diablo 3 beta now closed to the public, and the game set for launch May 15^th, I can say that I had an enjoyable time.  The classes are varied and distinct, with all the great characteristics that made D3’s predecessor one of the best games of all time.  Given the good qualities of the beta, the nagging let-downs of dialogue and lack of challenge in the design this late in production is disappointing, especially with a title coming from a company like Blizzard.  All-in-all, I had a good time with Diablo 3 and I look forward to the launch mid-May.

Take care, and I’ll see you in Hell!

• + Distinct and varied classes.
• + Random dungeons.
• + Plenty of loot and mobs to drop it.
• - Poor writing of dialogue with sub-par delivery. 
•  A fix: Blizzard has the assets to invest more in script writers and voice actors.
• - Dumbed-down difficulty.
• A fix: Respect the skill of the player and give more imposing enemies; it’s Hell on Earth!