Olympics of Games

Playing a lot of games that are strange and unusual takes skill and ingenuity.  I recently competed in a ‘Video Game Olympics’ where 16 players worked together and apart to complete a number of unrelated games to find who is a champion of gaming champions.  To get to business, peruse this list of games and how I handled them in the competition!

A Nostalgic Anniversary

• + Rebooted graphics that render a stunning visual performance.
• + An epic score re-mastered into a further state of enjoyable sound.
• + Re-engineered A.I. gives a better challenge and a better help.
• - Geometry that remains in a subpar state from the original game.
• A fix: Determine the worst offenders for level instability, and edit it to solve the issue.

 

With Halo 4 coming, a lot of attention is being directed to the future.  E3 is in full swing, and all eyes are ahead.  However, let's take a look back to last year's anniversary of the Halo franchise, a nostalgic romp through a familiar but… different adventure.  Halo CEA is quite the HD remake!

A big eye-catcher is the ell executed visual improvement the game makes on the original title.  The level of detail is worthy of current-gen technology, while vibrant re-texturing makes the sights beautiful, the enemies fierce.  The quality of looks is lost, however, because of the geometry; as the modeling was at times broken in Halo CE, Halo CEA didn’t handle any of these issues.

Halo CE is a game to just plain listen to; re-mastered scores, sound effects, and dialogue in Halo CEA are even better.  Gunfire is powerful, explosions are stellar, and enemy death-screams are most satisfying.  Be sure to give some time to just listen to the ring-world of Halo CEA.

For anyone who’s played Halo CE, remember how A.I. in the game did not know how to drive?  This game fixes this!  Smarter A.I.?  The anniversary title answers the call.

The Halo saga is deep in content, with no end in sight for new adventures.  While waiting for new content to come, Halo CEA does supreme justice to revisiting a familiar journey with a lot more than mere polish put into it.  If you are itching to get a Halo fix before the next Halo game arrives, this anniversary of a gaming staple will work wonders.

Dig-N-Rig is Worth Digging Up

Me neither.  Dig-N-Rig is a game straight out of the Digipen Institute, where “resource management with creative building” are the key fundamentals.  Have you played a game like Minecraft?  This review may sound familiar.

• + Colorful and delightful 8-bit visuals.
• + Having tools for every occasion.
• + Quick reward schedule of getting minerals and items from those materials.
• + Compulsive play.
• + Space!*
  
• - Poorly executed tutorial.
• A fix: Give aesthetic care to the delivery of information, or edit the knowledge into a more efficient form.
• - Unrestrained upgrade system, upsetting game balance.
• A fix: Set scales ensuring proper capping of abilities and/or escalation of environment hazards.

Dig-N-Rig has a slippery start.  The first five to ten minutes of the game consist of paging through tutorial slide after tutorial slide.  This wouldn’t be half-bad if the information wasn’t a jumble of hard-to-read text randomly popping up everywhere on the screen.  I’m still not sure I managed to read them all, as tutorial textboxes easily blend with the pixelated background.  Don’t take from this that the visuals are unappealing; they’re not.  Very cool, in fact, for this 8-bit title!

Getting through the tutorial, the game does not try to burden the player with a convoluted narrative or crazy objective.  You are digging down to the center of the Earth for scientific study and exploration.  There.  Past that, go down, mining and building what you please with the boat-load of material you uncover behind nearly every bit of rock so those materials can be used to build even more cool stuff.  Repeat on the next play-through.

The player has a wealth of tools that aid in navigating down to the core.  Drills cut terrain like a knife through butter, but only if they are designed for a specific piece of ground (i.e. dirt drills manage dirt, rock drills blast rock, etc.).  These devices are fun to play with, but I found myself coming back to the rock drill time and again, for it doesn’t stop when it hits a barrier, only meagerly slowing down.  And bombs?  They’re good on the first play-through, but after a few upgrades to the rocket-propelled bazooka bullet, firing that beast makes all other blasting object obsolete.

Despite anything that I have said here that may be a strike against Dig-N-Rig, this game is compulsive.  You can lose hours of an evening scraping-up every last colorful jewel between your base of operations and the end.  You can finish in a fairly straight-forward fashion, and you become overpowered within a few upgrades, but again and again you’ll find yourself carving a complex path down into Earth’s depths.

Dig-N-Rig has holes (see what I did there?), needs a bit more content, and just feels like a game that almost was.  Looking at it from the point of it being a student project, however, this game is a blast.  It’s not a title to kill an entire day, but if viewed as a prototype or a proof-of-concept, Dig-N-Rig does just fine.  Now, what’s my suggestion?  Give this game a play.  Take care to checkout the gallery over at Digipen, too; you won’t be disappointed!

* Hint.

The Long Life of Half Life

I’ve played Half Life 2 and its episodes, and now I know where it all comes from.  Half Life, in short, was quite engaging and a blast to play.  The fun, however, was all too familiar; familiar to even a fault.  That aside, I guess if a formula works, use it!

The game begins with a tour of Black Mesa, the research facility you, the fresh lab tech Gordon Freeman, works at.  This is a brilliant move on Valve’s part (the successful creators of Half Life).  Why?  It’s brilliant because the game lays out the premise of the entire story without so much as a word.  The tour is also great for setting-up familiar places that (surprise surprise) will become strangely perverse in short order.  This stellar level design leads the player along for the entirety of the game’s progression; needless to say, you won’t get bored.

When delving into the confines of Half Life’s world, the player is faced with both aspects of combat and puzzle solving.  The puzzles are all environmentally based, and provide a stark reminder that the facility you are in is one: falling apart; and two: Black Mesa is being invaded by freakish trans-dimensional aliens!  The thought challenges in levels are usually very straight-forward and easy to navigate by any individual, mixing up the “go here, do this” formula so apparent in modern games.  But, when issues are presented without much info to go on, some puzzles can be shear frustration, be it a timing issue, a previous action having to have been done, or falling to your death.

One thing that any player of Half Life will first notice is the uniqueness of every weapon.  Crowbars, rail guns, and nasty little critters all make an appearance, each having a specific capability unseen among other equipment.  These tools are given in a drip-bag fashion, allowing for the player to get to know each weapon well for whatever situation comes up.  The final cool thing is the way that the weapons are grouped together; pistols are together, heavy cannons stay next to each other,  deployable equipment is packed nicely away, etc.

Speaking of weapons, the things they’re used on share an amount of uniqueness.  Zombies are slow, the iconic headcrabs provide nasty ambushes, spec ops baddies are persistent, and the rest of the cast has a familiar silhouette for easy recognition of their mentality and capabilities.  That distinctive nature keeps encounters refreshing, also enabling a quick-reaction to finding the correct solution to any given engagement.

The journey to get out of Black Mesa is a grand journey, taking the player to the depths of dank tunnels, through secret labs, and past the guarded surface of the facility.  This voyage is enjoyable, don’t read me wrong, but it has been taken before.  Nearly all of the level design was carried over into Half Life 2, with barely a hair of change delivered to the player.  This lack of originality cannot be attributed to the first Half Life, but this rehash, fun as it is, cannot be forgiven of Valve.

All in all, Half Life is a fantastic experience for any lover of games.  Valve’s attention to illustrating a living, unique world with minute details and overall execution is like no other.  Puzzles and combat lend themselves to an experience you will never forget (and will see again if you care to pick-up Half Life 2, undeniably one of the best games ever made).  I can safely say that I had a great time with this title, and that if you decide to pick it up on Steam or elsewhere, it isn’t a bad decision!  Take care with your gaming until next time.

• + Brilliant level design.
• + Good introduction of a wide range of varied weapons.
• + Iconic enemies that give the player excellent company.
• + Decent puzzle application for the most part.
• - Level design that is to be rehashed later in Half Life 2.
• A fix:  Um… not really much to fix here; if it works, don’t fix it!
• - Some puzzles lack the hints needed for an ease of being figured out, developing them into unneeded hassle.
• A fix:  Add simple graphic text hints within the context of the area.

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!

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!

A Short Week and a Short Week to Come - Mami Update

Easter Break: a terrible holiday.  No, it’s not the ham, or the eggs, or the religious aspects about it; it has to be the block of time it takes from the two weeks the holiday falls between.

Thus, 4 days will be lost between this week and next as colored orbs are sought for and pigs are slaughtered.  I pause here as I look upon a wall of stories yet to be completed for Mami… Though a break is much appreciated from the grind of collegiate life, I shudder at how far back Team Squaybies’s development is likely to be.

Despite the woes to come, I must mention the success of Sunday night’s Fools Day game faire.  Both Team Squaybies and Perpetuam Memoriam had a great showing, with playable demos and a large contingent of group members able to attend.  After playing some other games at the faire, Mami received some usable quality assurance testing from an attendee, which our illustrious lead coder found and amended.

Speaking of programming fixes, remember the issue of not loading into the next level at the correct frame?  That was fixed at the faire, too.  Thus, after also garnering video recordings of the commendations put forth for the games I’m working on, our team handled some nagging issues in the various program features.

So, progress was made in this short week.  There likely will fail to be much coming up at least through the start of next week, but I know Team Squaybies can pioneer like the best of them.  Take care, and have a restful weekend!

P.S. Long title FTW.