Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Nyx
Monday, November 16th, 2009
On a whim, I downloaded a demo (free!) for a WiiWare title called Nyx - it’s a basic platformer starring a winged goddess from a world out of Greek mythology. You fly with her by pushing the jump button repeatedly (to a limit of 5 jumps), and use the “hand of Zeus” (the Wiimote pointer) to drag objects around to solve puzzles. I played it for a bit - the graphics were pretty, and the music was evocative and beautiful (if not especially memorable, tuneful, or energetic) and then became overwhelmed with boredom. I remember having felt this way with another WiiWare title whose name I can’t remember - a platformer where you had to use the Wiimote pointer to generate wind to blow your character around and solve puzzles.
The game is clearly high quality, but it wasn’t… any fun. I’m trying to figure out why. After all, I still enjoy side scrolling platform games from the NES, even games I haven’t played before - so the “seen it before” aspect isn’t really at fault. There was a bit of a “storyline” introduction at the beginning of the game, but it wasn’t as bad as, say, Okami or Paper Mario. You got to the game itself pretty quickly. It introduced itself and its mechanics gradually, bit by bit - it felt rather like a neverending tutorial, but it didn’t say “tutorial,” so I had no expectation that I was about to get to the “real game.”
I think the real problem is the fact that your character, Nyx, has no weapon, and there are only a few little bad guys every so often - and the only thing you can do about them is to avoid them. I’m beginning to think that’s why the game was no fun. Mario, Mega Man, Simon Belmont, and Link all have ways of exerting power over their environment in a crisp and immediate fashion. Gracefully flying and laboriously dragging blocks around with your Wiimote are not crisp exertions of power. Tearing through limitless alien soldiers with an endless stream of bullets (Contra) is a crisp exertion of power - and therefore fun.
Now, perhaps this is a male thing - I couldn’t say. But the more I think about it, the more I think that a game has to have a real understanding of what its appeal is and make that available from the get-go. They say that a musical has to establish all its themes, its tone, and the fact that its a musical within 10 minutes or the audience zones out or gets confused. I think video games ought to be treated the same way. If the appeal of a game is exploration, then you better give the player freedom to explore within minutes of sticking that game in the machine and pushing Start. If the appeal of a game involves exerting power over enemies or objects, then give the player that power as quickly as you possibly can and get out of the way. If the appeal is solving puzzles, then don’t wait 10 levels in to add challenge and the need for thought - make the first puzzle interesting. Make it require as much thought as you can get away with, and don’t hold the player’s hand. If the appeal is the ability to collect things or customize a world, then give them that capability early without forcing them to go through a lengthy “tutorial land” or what not. Let your RPG hero buy whatever weapons or armor he/she wants in the very first town, at the very first available time - and give the player a choice. Figure out why people would ever want to play your game, and then focus on that.
A Willy Wonka Opera? Really?
Sunday, November 1st, 2009
Is this cool? Or just really really strange? I can’t tell.
I Can Has Cheezburger: the MusicLOL?
Thursday, July 30th, 2009
http://icanhascheezburgerthemusiclol.wordpress.com/
Now here’s an idea for a musical I didn’t have - a musical based on a goofy website full of captioned photos of cats.
Final Fantasy IV: the After Years
Wednesday, July 8th, 2009
Final Fantasy IV (2 in the United States) was an awesome game and a pivotal experience for a 2nd grade kid who had never experienced narrative-driven gaming before. Unfortunately, it hasn’t held up as well as the games that followed - the storyline devolves quickly into a boring scavenger hunt, and the dungeons become overly tedious quickly. Nevertheless, based on nothing but pure nostalgia, I gave “The After Years” a download - for a mere 8 bucks, you can play a sequel of sorts on WiiWare. Unfortunately, after completing the first portion of the story, I have decided that continuing may not be worth it.
By “it,” of course, I mean $20.00 or so total. You see, they make you pay $3 for each installment of the game as you come to it. I knew this going in, but figured it might be worth it if the story was really compelling. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. You spend most of your time as Ceodore, son of the main hero and his love interest from the last game, who is joined by a mysterious masked stranger, who can only be one person, as far as I could tell. I played the game, hoping beyond hope that there would be some kind of twist ending or dramatic reveal, but the truly predictable happened.
What a let down.
I don’t know, though. I might buy one of the add-on stories just to see.
Or maybe I won’t.
Now There’s a Stupid Idea
Wednesday, May 27th, 2009
“Reboot” Buffy the Vampire Slayer without Joss Whedon. Say what now?
The Long Fall Back to Earth
Saturday, May 16th, 2009
Jars of Clay’s latest album is “The Long Fall Back to Earth” - and so far, it’s not really my favorite effort of theirs. With every album they release they give themselves a new “sound,” but the melodic quality is usually pretty good throughout - up until the self-consciously folksy “Who We Are Instead,” and declining ever since. There are still a few good songs in each album, though.
Mostly, “The Long Fall” sounds like a mellow mush (even more than “Much Afraid”, which is saying something) - you eventually learn to distinguish the songs (some of them) after listening several times, but the first time through it all sounds pretty much the same. This album also breaks new ground for Jars in presenting the first songs I find aggressively bad - and these are ostensible the album’s “singles:” “Closer” and “Two Hands.” The melodies are oversimplistic and highly repetitive, the lyrics ride the melody awkwardly, and there’s nothing really interesting going on in the chord department either.
Nevertheless, “Safe to Land” is an excellent song, and “Weapons,” “Heaven,” “Headphones,” and some of the other tracks are all right. The sound for this album is a dreary 80’s sound, heavy on the electronic mellowness and piano wash. I tend to like minor-key 80s music, of course, but it has its limits. If you can stand that for a whole album with no variation, then the album might be worth it. Otherwise, I recommend getting “Safe to Land” from iTunes and being done with it.
The weird thing to me is how so many of the Internet reviews seem to rate each successive Jars of Clay album as superlatively awesome and groundbreaking. There seems to be no connection whatsoever to the reviews Google calls up and the actual quality of the songs as I perceive them. Maybe music criticism is too subjective? Or maybe these music reviews are designed to sell albums more than gauge quality? I don’t read pop music criticism very often, so I just don’t know. But it is frustrating.
Prodigal God
Tuesday, April 21st, 2009
Someone I took a musical writing class with last year has just released a 5-song demo for a new musical called “Prodigal God,” along with a snazzy website.
There are several encouraging elements to this show. (1) The music is actually enjoyable. It feels a lot like evangelical worship music, but well… I like that kind of music pretty well (within limits). (2) One of the collaborators is evidently a pastor. Exactly what kind of theological perspective this play has is not entirely clear to me, granted, but it’s dealing with Christian subject matter one way or another, and that’s encouraging.
My only real concern is that this demo sounds fairly album-y to me - I really don’t understand how it plays as a theater piece. It might work as sort of a narrative concert, a la Jesus Christ Superstar. But the production values don’t seem easily translatable to, say, an off-Broadway production with 5 instrumentalists. Not to say that it can’t be. The mental image just isn’t forthcoming.
Next to Normal Creative Team
Tuesday, March 24th, 2009
Over on Broadway.com, you can watch a fascinating video interview with the composer and lyricist of an upcoming Broadway musical called Next to Normal, about a woman with various psychological issues undergoing increasingly extreme forms of therapy.
I always find it interesting to get an insight into the creation of things like this, but primarily what fascinates me is how, in this case, they occasionally write lyrics first, and occasionally music first - and either way, it all comes out sounding pretty much the same - a style I’m not a fan of at all. It feels bland and predictable to me. I’m not sure what it is about this kind of music that leads people to either write it or listen to it. I honestly don’t understand.
But whatever it is, it’s not the fault of a songwriting team putting too much emphasis on lyrics, since those songs written music-first sound the same. So, I’m left with the unsettling conclusion that there must be lots of people out there who like this kind of music. The composers themselves must like it. It weirds me out.
That’s fine, I guess. I’ve long accepted that I have strange tastes in entertainment (not sophisticated, necessarily, just weird). I hope that it doesn’t mean that the music I create isn’t appealing to people in the way that it’s appealing to me.
Mortal Kombat vs Tekken
Sunday, December 14th, 2008
On the off chance that some video game developer is browsing the web for clues as to how to make the next great game series, I’ve got a helpful idea.
Back in the 90s, fighting games were big in the arcade. Street Fighter II made the first big splash, followed by the Mortal Kombat series, and then eventually moving into 3D fighters like Virtua Fighter and Tekken. Personally, I greatly enjoyed Street Fighter II, and fell in love with Mortal Kombat - but for some reason I found myself frustrated and uninterested in the 3D fighters. Sure, graphically they were a step forward - 3D models, lots of realistic-looking fighting styles, numerous characters. But they were missing something.
I think most importantly what they were missing was crisp play control. I like the word “crisp” in describing games with excellent play control - what you want is a game that is immediately responsive to your button presses, logical and intuitive. Think about satisfying user interfaces on your PC. When you push a button, it should go “click” and look like it’s being pressed. When you’re waiting for something to happen, you want a little hourglass or watch to show up and indicate that the computer is “thinking” so you don’t sit around wondering what’s going on.
Tekken felt like the opposite of crisp. Pushing buttons either executed a move or didn’t. A move either actually struck your opponent or it didn’t, and there was not an immediately accessible logic about it. If an opponent was reeling or falling down from your last attack, then your fists might just sail through the opponent’s body without doing anything. You successfully execute a combo but your opponent moves, so you’re left flailing into an empty corner while you wait for the move to complete. It was not terribly satisfying.
Mortal Kombat on the other hand, had a complete logic to it. If you hit an opponent, even if that opponent was falling, you scored a blow. You never missed for no reason, or found yourself frustrated in your inability to make your character do what you want. Crouching always went under projectiles, jumping always took you over them. Basic punches and kicks were more rapid fire.
This is maybe why Star Wars: Force Unleashed for the Wii was ultimately not satisfying for me. You spent a lot of time flailing your lightsaber and throwing people around, but often too many things were happening at once, and it was sometimes unclear that your powers actually did anything, and getting your character to do what you want was not always easy or intuitive.
So something to think about while making RiftMaker I guess.
Broadway Abridged
Saturday, December 13th, 2008
Is hilarious. Check out this awesome parody script of Les Miserables.