You have [2] games remaining

(Although, 1.5 games might be more accurate, since I’m about to finished the second I’ve just finished the second - of three - worlds in FF V, and after that, FF VI - see my previous post from May)

Sorry for the lack of real updates recently! Here’s part of the reason why: I’ve spent the last couple of weeks playing through FF VIII. Final play time was just short of 70 hours. Couldn’t be bothered to level up the characters outside my main party, or track down a couple of Level 7 Boss Cards, but other than that I did everything there was to do. Except play a no-level game and maximize my base stats using Devour/Boost items, but that’s for craz… dedicated fans. Yeah.

        Anyway! I’m not 100% sure what I should say about it, seeing as the game is a dozen years old by now. I can say that I didn’t care in the slightest about Squall and Rinoa’s relationship - sorry, was there development there? Because it seemed like someone just flipped a switch, and off they went. The thing about the orphanage and the memory erosion of the GFs was pretty silly, but whatever. And what the hell is up with NORG…?

        I admit, though, I have to really look for things to dislike about the game. I definitely had a lot of fun playing it, and the section with Squall commanding Balamb Garden into battle was awesome. Even though I selected “prepare for attack” first, since the game hinted you should ambush them, and later scolded me for not attacking first. But yeah, I never really appreciated the direction of these action-movie-esque scenes (being chased by the robot in Dollet, the fight between Gardens, or the reactor sequences in FF VII) as a kid, but now I’m impressed that the game manages to create a real sense of tension in jaded ole me. Not to mention things like Quistis’s declaration that “Seifer’s sentence was carried out in Galbadia,” and following Sephiroth’s trail through Shinra - the music and everything else just come together for an intense feeling of dread and foreboding.

        I especially liked the way the game’s systems feed back into each other. If you’ve played Persona 3 and 4, much as I love the games, the social link stuff is more or less totally separated from the dungeon crawling stuff. But in FF VIII, everything has a useful purpose. I originally thought that Triple Triad would be dumb or a waste of time, but then I found out what you could get from the rare cards, and so I set out to collect them. The Cactus Thorns you collected a hundred of from hunting Cactuars turn into Hundred Thorns, which can teach some ability called “Return Damage” or be converted into other stuff. Point is, the game rewards you in a lot of ways, and that’s a smart decision. Also, super twinkable, delivering ultimate min/max joy. Final boss casts Meteor? Good thing I only take 20 damage from each hit!

        Oh, I do want to mention the weird as hell part of the ending that comes right after you beat the final boss. It goes on for way too long, and it’s just… weird. If you’re ok with spoilers, watch the first 5 minutes of this video. I think they’re trying to make you think Squall was erased from existence? Not really sure whose bright idea that was.

        To tell you the truth, I actually almost finished FF VIII when I was a kid (roughly age 7). I’d made my way to the fourth disc, and then… my dad saved over my file when he was playing later that night. HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO MEEEEEEEEEEE?! I swore revenge, and retaliated by ripping up some of his old socks with scissors. And never touched FF VIII again, until now. Do you think I secretly have bonus nostalgia for the game, even though I’d forgotten everything about the game except the section with the robot in Dollet? It was like I was playing the game for the first time, but maybe somewhere in my mind I knew I’d been there before. Liek wif Squall and da GFs amirite? But yeah, now I’ve actually finished the game, and it only took me 70 hours to undo the effects of his save file confusion.

        Thanks, Dad.

Catherine: A mini-critique

[Continuing from yesterday’s post about Catherine, here’s the critique part. Or at least, critique-ish. It was meant to be one post originally, but it got to be really long. As in, I spent three hours writing it, so… Best to split it up. You know, this seems to happen whenever I talk about the game…]

        Up until the end, I was also going to say that Catherine is a great example of how you can make meaningful gameplay. There’s a lot of symbolism in the game, and most of the gameplay is a metaphor for one thing or another. Then they shot themselves in the foot during the ending. “Did you notice the central conflict that this game’s masterful creators placed at its core?” says the narrator. And then they tell you what that was. So… what did I say about literal references to these deeper meanings, because otherwise players won’t notice? “The stairway Vincent was forced to climb could be taken as a metaphor,” the narrator says after explaining the central conflict. And then they tell you what it was. And we were so close to a game that just hints at this stuff! You get a few hints in the game towards the end, and at the start there’s a nod towards the metaphor as well to get you thinking. So you’ll probably get a rough idea of what’s going on if you think about what’s going on as you play, and that’s great - some serious analysis would piece the full story together, even if they never explained it. And then they did! It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I kind of wish they hadn’t. Still, at least everyone will get the idea, and maybe take the time to re-evaluate the game based on the explanation.

        I’ve got a few things to mention inspired by comments on a (spoiler-filled, you’ve been warned) community blog on Destructoid called, simply enough, “Catherine Sucks”. One of the main problems the author has is that most of the game feels like the “rising action” of your typical three act structure, and Vincent really only makes up his mind in the game’s final hours, which makes the conclusion feel weak and a bit rushed. Commentor (commentator?) ‘fulldamage’ notes that the sort of long-form character development the author is looking for is the “hero’s journey” type, exactly what you got in Personas 3 and 4 - by contrast, Catherine is more like a short story, and it focuses on just one pivotal moment in time rather than an entire lifetime of the characters. The comment by 'Noir’ echoes something stated in the Art Book included in the game - the character designer, Shigenori Soejima, writes that the characters in Catherine are all fully-grown adults who don’t necessarily grow throughout the story as the teenagers in Persona games would. When you meet someone for the first time, you’re not going to get every detail about their lives or see some long struggle to overcome their problems - you just pick up bits and pieces of what’s important to them as you talk to them, and that’s more or less what happens in Catherine. 'The Silent Protagonist’ also mentions that it’s a more “adult” - dare I say “mature”? - kind of story because none of the characters are blank slates or in need of psychological profiling, but how things are said and what’s left unsaid can speak volumes.

        I didn’t mention the game’s story in my “review” up there because that would imply that you’re taking something as is, and just playing through the game to unlock the story that the developers made for you. Browsing through the GameFAQs board for Odin Sphere on the PS2, a few people said that even though the gameplay can get tedious (since you play 6 different characters, and start over each time and do the same basic stuff) it’s worth playing for “the story.” At that point, why not just look up the cutscenes on youtube or download a completed save file so you can watch the cutscenes in theater mode? That’s what we call film, where you passively watch something that’s delivered to you, as a finished product. From that point of view, the first comment by 'VenusInFurs’ on the c-blog I linked to is absolutely right - the plot and characters are “sub-par” and it’s a “typical anime,” and the last three hours truly do get “beyond silly.” “There’s nothing deep here, it’s not intellectually stimulating or mature,” says 'VenusInFurs.’ But that’s if the situations in the game mean nothing to you, and you’re just watching what the characters choose to do without thinking about it. If you empathize with the situations, and make decisions based on your honest feelings, there’s a thousand different stories to be told by this game. And like the other commentors mentioned, there’s a lot of character development for you to infer from the dialogue, in the sense of things to learn about the characters (i.e. how they develop for the player) as opposed to ways that the characters themselves change over time.

        Speaking of the plot twists towards the end of the game, they occur so quickly that it might make your head spin. I truly don’t want to spoil the game for anyone, and I don’t accept the “willing to be spoiled” idea because it will ruin the game for you should I ever bring my PS3 to your house and make you play it. Which is something I would rather do than post story spoilers! Suffice to say that the game could have ended at one point, and it would have been pretty interesting and tragic. Fifteen minutes later, a (literally) crazy ending opportunity comes up, and it would have been phenomenal. But the game continues after that, and ruins the whole thing with a really dumb explanation. The problem is that they take a game that has been totally “normal” - the Nightmares stages are weird, but they’re nightmares, right? - and throw that all out the window. Either of the two points that I mentioned - the tragic one, and the crazy one, which you’ll understand if you’ve played the game - would have been so much more fitting, and even interesting. So, yeah, from that point of view the game has a pretty bad “story.” But again, that’s only if you take it all at face value and care nothing for the situations the game puts you in.

        If it weren’t for the part where they explain it all to you, there’d be a lot of analysis to make about Catherine. And there’s stuff I could analyze about it anyway, but that would require spoilers, and I wanted to avoid those in this particular post. Mainly, the purpose of this post was to say how much I love the game and convince people to buy it. Then a little bit of critique, just the amount I can do without really mentioning anything specific. Kudos to you if you made it to the end of this post, and I hope you give the game a shot if you haven’t already. If you already have, have an internet high-five.

Catherine, Katherine, and Catherine (the game)

First, some good news: Catherine sold really, really well. It’s the highest selling game at launch that Atlus USA has ever published, so advertising, word of mouth, and good reviews all clearly paid off. To whoever failed to advertise Shadows of the Damned and Child of Eden: you’re doing it wrong, but it sucks that your games sold so badly.

        Anyway, here’s the “review” part of this post. The English voice actors are absolutely fantastic. I mean, these are award-winning performances. When they give the award for best voice acting to some other game at the Spike TV Awards and whatever other award shows games have, it’ll be an absolute sin. As for the music, Shoji Meguro’s score is fantastic as always - the game features a lot of remixes of classical music, but mostly avoids the really iconic stuff so you don’t find it overly familiar. So, the audio: terrific.

        In terms of the visuals, the game has a great aesthetic. The character models in particular deserve special recognition, because they look “better” than anything I saw in Heavy Rain, or that I’ve seen from LA Noire. It’s probably got something to do with the light anime vibe and the fact that they weren’t going for photo-realism, but Catherine dodges the uncanny valley completely. I mean, the thing about the former two games is that they tried to portray completely realistic people, and it was weird to see because it was done imperfectly - you can’t necessarily render every little wrinkle on someone’s face, much less animate and shade it perfectly. But I actually think I like the in-game parts of Catherine more than the anime parts, because it looks that good. In sum, the visuals are just as good as the audio.

        The gameplay has two different parts: the puzzles, and everything else. I’ll start with the puzzles, set in the main character’s nightmares. I found them tough, even on Easy difficulty, and I wouldn’t recommend even playing on Normal your first time through the game. In Easy mode, you have the option to undo 9 (?) of your most recent moves, so you don’t have to restart the level if you push a block the wrong way. Which happens, even when you’ve been playing the game for hours. I don’t play a lot of puzzle games, really, and I didn’t know if I’d like the Nightmare stages at first. But the action is really quick, and when you complete a difficult boss stage it’s a whole lot more satisfying than some jRPG boss fight.

        Aside from the regular stages in the story, there are 128 (!!) stages in an arcade cabinet in-game, and a whole bunch more stages in the Babel mode that you unlock by getting gold medals on Normal difficulty. I don’t really want to tell you what the puzzles are like, or how they introduce different types of blocks, because none of that matters. The puzzle stages are intense, and you’d be hard-pressed not to enjoy them once you give it a shot. I had to look up walkthrough videos to get past a few mind-bending stages, because sometimes you just wont get what they want you to do. Even so, I finished the game and found myself wanting more puzzles, which - as much as I like the game - is more than I can say about the battle system in Persona 4.

        The “everything else” gameplay is all of the social simulation stuff, but some of that occurs at the “landings” in between Nightmare stages. The game’s story mode is referred to as “Golden Playhouse,” and a narrator introduces you to the game by saying that your role as a “viewer” is to help guide the main character, Vincent, and that his fate depends on you. You aren’t supposed to be Vincent, or agree with the way he deals with situations, but instead make honest choices when talking to people and answering questions. Your choices influence Vincent’s inner thoughts, and at different points in the game a meter will come up and you’ll see the results of your “guiding.” For example, what you do before Vincent first cheats on his girlfriend decides how he reacts to waking up with a strange woman in his bed - you don’t get to literally choose whether he thinks “oh shit, what have I done” or “SCORE!”. So when you’re playing, be honest and just go with what you’d do IF you got into a similar situation - even if you wouldn’t do the kinds of things Vincent does.

        Anyway, I found a lot of meaning in this part of the gameplay, and it’s pretty good mechanically as well. You’re in the bar, and you spend your time talking to people, drinking, and answering text messages (which is great, by the way, and much more interesting than the e-mail mechanic in .hack or Xenosaga), and as time passes people will enter and leave the bar. Who you talk to, and what you say, influences their lives… although if you don’t talk to them, or care about their problems, then what happens to them probably doesn’t matter to you. There’s a theme of selfishness and selflessness to this part of the game, especially in the Nightmare stages, where most of the people you meet think that helping others will only give them more competition for survival. You can play the game as a selfish person who only cares about himself, or a kind, compassionate person who realizes that it doesn’t cost anything to give people a few kind words and helps others to help themselves. Although, because of the way the game plays, you don’t really get to know the characters well - it’s just a brief snapshot of their lives. More on that in a bit.

        So with all of that said, it gets high scores in every category and I really do think it’s worth $60. It’ll probably take you 12-15 hours to finish the story for the first time, which is a pretty good length because it doesn’t overstay its welcome but gives you enough to feel like you got what you paid for. After you’ve finished the game, if you replay on the same difficulty level, you can actually skip the puzzle stages and just play for the story if you want to try for different endings - you could probably blaze through in a few hours that way. If you hate the game after playing the demo, you probably won’t like the full game, but do give it a shot if you own a PS3 or 360. If you have both, I’d recommend the PS3 version, because I’ve heard the 360 version may not play as smoothly, and I hear the d-pad on the 360 controller sucks? But then, as someone who only owns a PS3, of course I would say that. Still, consider giving it a rental, and at least download the demo if you have a decent internet connection.

[This will continue tomorrow, it was really long so I split it up]

Loose Ends, etc.

Tying up some loose ends here with a lot of small things that don’t quite deserve entire posts of their own. This is all the miscellaneous stuff I’ve been doing in recent weeks, but haven’t really gotten around to posting about. So, without further ado…

Anime:

• Deadman Wonderland was alright, nothing spectacular though. The fights weren’t mindblowingly amazing, and the characters were pretty meh, so all in all it was your usual shonen stuff.
• Blue Exorcist lost my interest about halfway through, and I didn’t watch the rest. More averagey shonen stuff than Deadman Wonderland.
• The World God Only Knows season 2 kept the same level of quality as the first season - it was the kind of show that I’d start watching, and my brother would come over to watch it without knowing why. If you get the humour, you’ll really enjoy it.
• Steins;Gate is still running, and it’s some pretty sweet time-travel stuff. I recommended Chaos;Head last summer (that’s a really long post, I’m just reminding you it exists), and Steins;Gate is better overall, I think. Okabe, the mad scientist, is hilarious at all times (I AM MAD SCIENTIST, IS SO COOL. SUNUVABITCH.). There’s some heart-string-tugging, too. Definitely worth checking out.

        I also watched Summer Wars last week while waiting for EBGames to open and give me my copy of Catherine. It was kind of the anime equivalent of a Hollywood summer blockbuster - in other words, take the forgettable cash-grab junk and replace it with beautiful art and a fun little scrappy-kid-saves-the-world story that doesn’t overstay its welcome. Also, they do some neat future-esque computer stuff that is actually possible, which makes it more awesome somehow. I was really happy when the gamer kid lends his laptop to a guy and switches to a different virtual desktop on his desktop-cube.

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        I watched American Beauty a few weeks ago, and I’d definitely recommend watching it. I’m not sure what to say about it, really, because it doesn’t have any one core thesis, but it’s got a ton of little ideas worth thinking about and it’s open to a lot of interpretation. I don’t know a whole lot about any of the parts of film, but I can tell there’s a lot of artistry in it. If you’re going to watch a movie, you may as well watch this one instead of some dumb romantic comedy or popcorn-munching action movie.

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        I’ve started and nearly finished Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter for the PS2, and I think it’s fantastic. I really think it’s one of the better jRPGs I’ve played in recent memory, though my backlog for those has tons of quality stuff waiting to be played. It takes a lot from roguelikes - you can restart the game and keep the equipment, money, and some of the experience you’ve gained, and the more restarts you’ve done, the more you unlock of the story. It’s a very quick, focused version of a jRPG - I’ll probably be pushing 30-40 hours by the time I finish my first time, but the game rates a “perfect” playthrough as 8 hours or less. It’s just really solid mechanics, all the time. There are a few little town areas, with basic utility NPCs, and one relatively short sidequest. Well, plus the Antz Colony passive sidequest.

        Now, allegedly FF XIII was an attempt to streamline the jRPG and cut out all the fat, but it felt very lacking. It felt empty, dull, pretty and flashy but with no substance. Dragon Quarter, on the other hand, is streamlined and constantly satisfying. To me, FF XIII felt like it gave me no reason to enjoy what I was doing - it never seemed like I was making any progress, or accomplishing anything useful. Dragon Quarter doesn’t have that problem, and for one reason or another it’s just an inherently more satisfying experience. It’s probably just a great combination of all the things it does well, against the things FF XIII did not. Anyway, I super enjoyed it.

        Also, I’m going to talk more about Catherine soon, but it’s going to get its own post. So wait for that.

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        I read Neil Gaiman’s American Gods during my vacation to PEI, Robert Sawyer’s Wonder, and Patrick Rothfuss’s Name of the Wind. All were excellent, and I recommend them wholeheartedly. I’m working on finishing Steven Erikson’s The Crippled God, and I started George R. R. Martin’s A Dance With Dragons and Frank Herbert’s Dune. I know I should finish one book before starting two new ones (at the same time!) but when I’ve got two houses and a car (where I’ve spent a lot of time lately) I need to have something to read all the time. Erikson is doing his thing, and I happen to love it. The HBO adaptation of Game of Thrones - which I haven’t mentioned yet, so know this: I love it, go watch it! - has changed my view of Martin’s work, and it’s better for it. Peter Dinklage’s voice behind Tyrion’s lines is just great. As for Dune, I’m enjoying it so far, but I’ll get back to you when I finish it.

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        I’m probably forgetting plenty of stuff, but I can’t really call to mind everything I’ve done recently. Maybe I’ve already posted about the books I read, too? I didn’t think I said much about my vacation because it would be boring to tell you about how I hung out with my friends. I’ve been catching up on things in my bookmarks and Read It Later lists, which is nice, but many of them weren’t quite worth posting about. I haven’t been working on my Grand Quest To Finish All The Final Fantasies, but whatever. Although, I did read The Final Fantasy VII Letters and alongside the Final Fantasy Things tumblr, it’s got me feeling better about the vast amounts of time I’ve spent on this. There’s a certain sense of beautiful community behind these jokes, and I kind of don’t regret spending 50-100 hours on each of these games. Maybe it isn’t time perfectly spent, but spent well enough. I can live with that.

#AltDev Design links

Just a couple of links to share today as I try to clean out my bookmarks a bit. They’re #AltDevBlog posts about the practical parts of actually being a game designer, and not just a programmer who kind of designs or a designer who just throws things together. They also have a number of great comments by industry folk; Mike Birkhead in particular has some great comments, so at least read his if you choose to ignore the rest of the comments.

Respecting Design tackles the issue of everyone thinking they know how to design a game. You don’t know how to design a game just because you’ve played a few games. “No one in their right mind opens up the code depot, alters files at random, and then, when rightfully questioned on their sanity, say in defense, "Hey, everyone’s code is valid man”. So why is it ok for game design?“ Reading this made me realize that, yeah, I don’t know shit about being a game designer. I can read all the blog posts I want, but that doesn’t mean I know anything useful. Not that I thought I was a game designer, mind you, just that I thought I was learning about it. It would probably be more accurate to say that I was learning around it, if that makes any sense. Circling the perimeter without ever entering it.

Design Docs Debate is less of a debate and more a collection of interesting links in the comment thread and a few good comments - specifically, Slone’s and Mike Birkhead’s. It sounds to me like the original poster is in a program where they got really anal about the requirements - but then I remember hating essay outlines in tenth grade, too. From the sounds of things, it seems like a good design document is pretty similar to a good outline (for an essay, or a short story, or even a novel) - you can go without to a certain degree, if you’re ok ending up with a lesser result because of it. Being able to create a good one is one of the things you just end up doing when you want to produce better results, because if you sit down without a plan, your final product will be nothing like what you envisioned.

Random thought - ever notice how the "blog post” has supplanted the essay? Two hundred years ago you could be an “essayist,” someone who writes essays. Now you’re just a blogger, and your wonderful essays are just “posts” like any other. I’m going to use the term essay, so there. Lead by example, right?

Further thoughts about game reviews

A while back I posted about game review scores, and in the mean time, Extra Credits has done an episode about game reviews and one of Metacritic’s co-founders had stuff to say. Then I wrote a lengthy post that was mainly about how I rented inFamous 2 and was disappointed enough in its sameness to stop playing after only a few hours and never want to touch it again. I knew it was terrible and chose not to post it, and then the article about Metacritic was posted, so now I’m starting over and actually being relevant.

        While it makes sense that most of the games we play are pretty damn awesome and could rightfully be given an 8 or 9 out of 10, I almost think it’s unfair to compare them to games nobody in their right mind will review. Compared to Carnival Extravangaza Mini-Game-Collection-for-the-Wii DX, inFamous 2 is probably the greatest game ever created. So, fine, there are games that are absolutely terrible and deserve low scores and others that are “average”, somewhere in between shit and gold, that deserve middle scores. But why shouldn’t games be reviewed in relation to each other? Why shouldn’t you give an 8/10 game like inFamous 2 a score of 6/10 as an action-adventure title (or whatever you want to call it)? Why does Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood - which I’ll admit I enjoyed the tiniest bit more than AC II, and it does have the benefit of its actually worthwhile multiplayer mode - get a high score despite being almost the same as last year’s game?

        I know that people’s jobs depend on review scores, and I know that tons of people (hopefully) worked really hard on these games. But a reviewer has every right to say that it’s nothing you haven’t seen before, and you may as well go pick up last year’s Game X for half the price because it was marginally better. That’s something I’ve seen before in film and novel reviews, though it’s not like I read a huge amount of them. It makes more sense for more knowledgeable readers, who will know exactly what you mean if you say “it’s like X, if they took out the interesting characters” because they’ve played/watched/read X already. Meanwhile, less knowledgeable readers get a good recommendation and a better idea of what they’re getting into.

        I know it’s uncouth to compare games to… well, anything else, because we’re all tired of being in the shadow of other mediums. But criticism for other mediums is very well established, and most game reviewers don’t deserve the title of “game critic.” They can be useful in their own ways, but I feel that reviews (with an occasional splash of critique) are naturally inferior to critiques (with an occasional splash of review). How many war films have been released recently that have nothing new or interesting to offer? Not many, because there’s more to film making than making an easy profit.

        And how many military shooters have been released that have nothing new or interesting to offer? Too many, because there’s little more influential in mainstream game development than the need to make a profit.