Retro review: 3 in Three

Ah, now THIS is the reason I'll never be sorry I was a Mac Gamer.

3 in Three was developed by Cliff Johnson and published by Inline Design about 15 years ago. It deals with the trials and tribulations of "3", a number cruely forced out of a spreadsheet during a power surge and lost in the land of the letters. The game consists of 90 or so puzzles, arranged in chains. About 20 are open to you at first, and as you complete those, more open up.

The graphics and storyline are top-notch - Johnson imbues every character and scene with an electric, surreal sort of personality that looks perfectly fine even in this day and age. The writing is honestly funny, although people who hate puns will probably groan a few times.

The puzzles themselves are great. They range from sliding block puzzles to timed "Memory" style while about half of them can't be put into any category at all. They're extremely well designed - in fact, I'll go into one of them for a sec:


In the puzzle "This That and the Other", you're presented with the following letters:




If you click on any of the letters in the top row, they, along with the leftmost letter in the middle row, move left to right. So if you clicked it once, the E would move down to where the A is, the A back to where the other A is, and so on. The middle row, when clicked merely moves from left to right, while the bottom row along with the last letter in the middle row cycles from left to right. Your task is to figure out what three words these letters make up, and maneuver them into the correct positions. (if you want the answer, highlight the next sentence) The answer is ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, and MINERAL.
The game ends with a GIGANTIC meta-puzzle, which requires you to go back to all the previous puzzles and comb them for clues. It's a gigantic tour-de-force of a puzzle that will entail an entire ream of scratch paper to solve.

This game seriously is almost perfect - the puzzles are well-designed, the humor shines through everything, and it's just damned good fun. I extremely urge everyone to play this game as soon as possible. And thankfully, you can! Legally! Download the client here from the author's website, and a System 7 emulator here (It doesn't require a ROM, so it's %100 legal).

Cliff Johnson is also about to release his next game, A Fool and His Money (sequel to his earlier, also excellent game A Fool's Errand) sometime soon. I know I'm going to order it.

5 Great Boss Battles

Today we'll take a look at 5 fun boss battles. When selecting these, I purposefully didn't go for difficulty or personality of the character. There are way too many interchangable boss battles that boil down to "find his weak spot and hit it" or "do mor damage than they do." No, for this I selected 5 boss fights that are unique, interesting, or just plain fun.



Raphael the Raven from Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island

This is one of the few boss battles that I actively look forward to when I play Yoshi's Island. The battle takes place on a small moon that turns under you as you run - in effect, the screen rotates while you remain the same. It's a great sensation, and they way you damage Raphael is quite innovative as well.



Hydra from God of War

This boss fight technically lasts the entire level, and it deserves the word epic. It's you versus 3 giant heads that you have to slam into walls, bash into the deck, and eventually drive the mast of your ship through. It's challenging, fun, and it feels like a Hollywood movie. The designers, by making sure this was the last part of the game they worked on, ensured that players instantly fell in love with the game.



Psycho Mantis from Metal Gear Solid

This one's in here just because it's the best example of the utter mindbendingness that Kojima puts into the MGS series. He's literally unbeatable because he can read your mind, unless you plug the controller into the second port. While I have no idea how someone is supposed to figure that out normally, it's that sort of meta thinking that really impresses me.


The Tentacles from Half-Life

These things almost gave me a nervous breakdown. The constant stress of sneaking around, knowing that the the slightest sound would give me away, then doing one tiny thing wrong and watching that huge tentacle go WHACK . . .

*shudder*

Very effective, relying on brains much more than reflexes.


Ugh-Zan III from Serious Sam
Most end-game bosses are big, but this guy is BIG. The game states he's 330 feet tall, and I'm certainly willing to believe it. He towers over everything, and your most powerful weapon barely scratches him. Obviously there has to be a trick to beating him, but it's still quite probably the biggest boss ever in a video game.

Where are all the run-n-gun shooters?

As I look at the modern game industry, there's a genre of game that used to be huge that seems to have died out almost completely. I'm not talking about adventure games (although that's true as well) but fast paced shooters.

Starting with wolfenstein 3d and Doom, fast paced shooters (or FPFPS's) emphasized reaction time and good aim over caution and stealth. Good FPFPS's though nothing of dropping you into a room surrounded by 20 enemies along with a rocket launcher, and letting you sort it out. Storylines were mostly tossed out the window in favor of better explosions, bigger weapons, and a cheerful over-the-top sense of humor. The pinnacle of the genre (in my opinion) was Serious Sam: The Second Encounter which delivered a pitch-perfect blend of carnage, adrenaline and humor. Duke3d, Quake, and even Painkiller are all notable examples of this.

But it seems like most FPS's nowadays don't come anywhere near this formula - Rainbow Six and GRAW are too focused on tactics and realism, Gears of War is too concerned with cover, and even Halo and Half Life 2 have way too many story bits that interfere with all the action. The last one I can remember would be Serious Sam 2, and the last good one I can remember is Painkiller.

Which is a shame. Not that I don't like the more slow-paced FPS's, but the sheer adrenaline rush of a good FPFPS is a rare thing indeed. It becomes much less story that you have to set blocks of time aside to experience, but literally something you can hop onto for 5 minutes, get a quick fix, and quit right back out. I still keep SS:the Second Encounter on my hard drive for when I've had a bad day and want to blow stuff up for a few minutes. Plus you can't beat the sheer thrill of standing atop a veritable mountain of defeated opponents.

So why the drought? I suspect it's because of 2 things: consoles and Half Life. Half Life really melded story to gameplay such that most games intersperse firefights with story sequences, thereby changing the flavor. I also believe that console FPS's require a slower paced game due to the inherant limitations of the controllers - you cant suddenly turn 130 degrees to the right to catch an enemy sneaking up on you, for instance.

Is there any luck on the horizon? Maybe Crysis, but I feel that's going to be story oriented. I'd wish for Croteam to do another one, but they screwed up Serious Sam 2 pretty bad, so I don't know. We'll see if anyone manages to bring back this fondly-remembered subgenre.

Comic reviews for 11/29

Batman 658: Uh, what? I have no idea what happened there at the end. Andy Kubert's art is nice and all, but the whole problem with Morrison writing (that I alluded to in my New X-Men review) is that when Batman speaks, I don't hear Batman. I hear Morrison riffing on whatever he wants. **

Blade 03: God help me, I'm liking this title. Not a fan at all of Chaykin's art, but Guggenheim is just going so completely over the top with this series it can't help but raise a smile on my face. ***

Captain America 24: Meh. The Hydra stuff was sort of interesting, but I don't care about Sharon Carter at all. I don't know if it's a good or a bad thing that I was able to predict the final reveal about 5 pages before the end. **1/2

52 Week 30: OK. Whoever came up with the revamp of the 10-Eyed Man (Morrison, I'm looking at you) deserves to be either shot or rewarded, I can't decide which. I don't really like any issue with Batwoman in it, and if they're going down the path of Nightwing wooing her, I can only forsee bad things. **

Eternals 05: How long has it been since issue 4? I had to really struggle to remember what the hell happened - there's a serious disconnect between where I remember Sprite being at the end of 4, and what happens in 5. JRJr is lovely as ever, but this whole series is mostly just confusing. **1/2

Fantastic Four: The End 02. Dammit people. The best "The End" stories (Hulk, Punisher) are one shots that show the endpoint of the character in a nice simple short story. The worst (Wolverine, X-Men) take way too long and throw in a bunch of unimportant elements to tell some sort of story that doesn't matter. Alan Davis is going the latter route, and he pays more attention to the Avengers than the FF. The art is great, but the story is really lacking. *1/2

Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man 14: The Ben Reily idea is somewhat cute, but why do people keep trying to tell us that the Vulture is a credible threat? He flies. And is old. That's about it. *1/2

Mischief Night 01: It's from Avatar, so you know what that means. Two outcasts come back from the dead to kill the popular people who made fun of them, while an earlier survivor can't get anyone to believe her. Sex and violence ensues. It's decent for what it is: a splatter movie in comic form. **

Nextwave 10: WTF? That was a random 12 page interlude (although the Machine Man one was quite funny). The "solution" was obvious and sort of dumb, but the rest of the issue is crazy, weird, and so very much fun. I'm so very very pissed off that this is ending. ***

Onslaught Reborn 01: The project that absolutely no-one asked for. Is it as bad as you'd think? Not quite. Loeb's writing is okay from moment to moment, other than the fact that his Onslaught and his actions make absolutely no sense at all. Liefeld's art still isn't going to win any awards (other than from Wizard, maybe) but it's not his worst by a long shot. Readable, but don't seek it out. *

Sensational Spider-Man 32: Focuses on Mary Jane and her Civil War travails. It tries to show Mary Jane's resiliance and devotion to Peter, but doesn't quite pull it off. The dream sequence especially was jarring, and the meeting with Sue was problematic, considering what happens at the end of Civil War 04 (especially considering Mary Jane could reach her by cell). *1/2

Stan lee meets Dr. Doom: Quite probably the weakest of these - Lee writes Dr Doom like a jokester, which is inconsistant with everything (even Lee's creation of him). Loeb and Guinisses' backup is pretty weak as well, offering nothing new. Art is nice though. **

Teen Titans 41: They made him an entirely new body, and he still doesn't have his voice back?! A mostly confusing mess of an issue, it relies too much on tropes (will she kill) and dredging up things we all want to forget (Cassie and Robin's kiss, the "let's clone Con-El again" thing). *1/2

What if? Wolverine: Enemy of the State: Wolverine killing everyone and everything. Some moments are nicely shocking (Cap, for instance) and it plays out decently like a horror movie, but I think the ending isn't a plausible resolution. **

X-Men 193. Man, I'm starting to really turn around on Chris Bachalo's art - it's still way too confusing half the time, but the other half can be really pretty. We get a (sort of) resolution to the Children plot, and it's first revealed (as far as I know) that they aren't evolved - they just use advanced tech. I'd really like it if that had been pointed out earlier. This arc was sort of meh, but I hold high hopes for future ones. **1/2

Hopefully I'll have another video-game post later on.

Graphics and the importance of lasting design

So we're officially in the middle of the next-gen wars, and one of the battlefronts is the realm of graphics. The transition to HD is in full swing, and the A/V lingo is flying like watermelons at a trebuchet conference. HDMI. 1020p. 480i. Composite vs component. Upscaling, downscaling and resampling. Sony fans smugly say that they're the only ones with true HD, and then find out the PS3 does a shitty automatic upscaling job. Wii fans angrily defend the top resolution of 480i, but don't even get that when Nintendo doesn't include component cables.

Why does it matter?

I mean, I don't want this to turn into another "gameplay is all that matters" argument, but I honestly don't understand the total reliance on graphics. I've seen multiple people say that not using component cables "makes everything look like shit," and a recent episode of the 1up show had the statement "Zelda makes me hate the Wii for not being able to have better graphics." I'm playing Zelda with composite cables fed into an RF adapter into a 12 inch Quasar TV, and I think the graphics are fine. So long as the gameplay is great, the graphics don't matter.

Except that the last statement isn't true. Graphics do matter, but I believe it's not exactly a general "older they are, the more the game suffers" way. Go back and play some PS1 games. This was back when 3d models could actually be modelled in real time (even if they did consist of 20 polygons). For the most part, these games look AWFUL now. Look at Vagrant Story, or Tekken 3. Yeesh, even FF7 looks really really bad. According to Gamerankings, these rank in the top 10 PS games ever. They were considered amazing games, but now they're barely playable.

But this doesn't hold true for many games that are even older. 3 in Three was made over 15 years ago, and it still looks great. Super Mario World was an SNES launch game, and you barely notice the sprite graphics. Why the difference?

I think that the answer is the same thing that happened to the movie industry. Special effects are at such a high point right now, that anything that hasn't taken 100 hours on a render farm seems dated and laughable. Monty Python used to use a blue screen for some of their skits, back in the late 60's. I bet at the time it seemed incredible - "wow, it's like they're in Gilliam's drawings!" But now, all you see is the thick blue line surrounding them, and it seems amaturish. I could probably do a better job with a digital camera, a sheet and 2 hours in Premeire. But if you watch the Jungle Book (which came out around the same time) again, it's still a great movie, even if technically it can't compare at all to Cars or Shrek. The medium of production changes its accessibility.

Scott McCloud touches on this in Understanding Comics (I'm referencing movies, games and comics - a geek trifecta!) Art in general can span from iconic (or cartoony) to photorealistic (he also adds another vertex of abstraction to make it a triangle, but I'm only focusing on this axis). As an example, Peanuts is drawn in a very iconic style, while Mary Worth is much more realistic. McCloud postulates that one of the interesting effects of the position on the line is how much the reader gets drawn into the work - more iconic faces (like a simple smiley face) are much easier to identify with, and thus more accessible. But more realistic drawings start triggering the uncanny valley effect, and you notice the differences more than the similarities.

You can see where I'm going with this. Cartoony, 2D games have a much longer lifetime than the "realistic" 3D games that came out for the PS1. I say one of the main reasons for this is the iconicness of the design. Luke Smith on 1Up said he thought that Wind Waker would actually last longer than Twilight Princess since it had cartoony cel shading instead of detailed 3d models. I think he actually might be right.

To tie this back into the beginning, I understand the point that realistic games need to constantly push better and better graphics, otherwise they'll be left behind. But I think that there's another branch of design entirely that can remain timeless, no matter what resolution you view it in.

Zelda: Twilight Princess - first impressions/review

Gah. I didn't want to write this review until more time had passed, but it's what i've been thinking about, so here we go:


First off, a small disclaimer: I've only played Zelda for about 10 hours, and I literally just finished the second dungeon. Since there are 9 dungeons and by most accounts 60-70 hours worth of gameplay, I'm really not that far along. So take this as a review of the first quarter or so of the game (which by itself is a lot longer than a lot of games out now).

Zelda: Twilight Princess, the latest game in the Zelda saga, returns to the realistic 3-D look first seen in Ocarina of Time. Link, a young man who's grown up in a small village on the outskirts of Hyrule, gets sucked into a mysterious "twilight realm" after attempting to save some village children from goblins. He finds that, unlike most people, he has the ability to move freely about this realm as a wolf. He meets an inscruitable companion Midna, who decides to help him so long as it fits her own purposes. Together they set out to rescue the light spirits and drive the twilight from Hyrule.

If I was to sum up Twilight Princess in a sentence, it would be "(Ocarina of Time)²." This is less due to similarities in play than the general feel: you still have that sublime sense of
exploration and accomplishment as you gradually aquire more and more tools with which to selve puzzles. The first hour or so of the game is rather slow (the game really doesn't give you enough instruction as to what to do in the first village), but after you get your sword it picks up dramatically.

The controls certainly help the immersiveness. Anyone who is holding out for the Gamecube version is doing themselves a grave disservice - within 5 minutes you'll be enveloped in the world, doing spin attacks and pinpoint arrow shots much more naturally than you ever did with a gamepad. Sure, you look a little silly doing it, but it's a small price to pay for the responsive controls.

The design and pacing in this game are absolutely amazing - every puzzle you find can be solved with proper reflection on how to use your items, and the room design is extremely varied - ranging from simple mass enemy attacks to huge rooms with 4-5 different ways across and back. The miniboss/main boss fights are also expertly made - hard until you figure out the trick, and then merely challenging.

The graphics are perfectly fine - I'm playing it through an RF adaptor into a 12 inch Quasar, and it looks good to me. People who proclaim that composite cable input "looks like shit" are really focusing on the wrong thing here - the gameplays' the thing, and Zelda absolutely nails it.


Overall, this game is an instant classic. It's just as good as Ocarina of Time, if not better. If you need a reason to buy a Wii, this will more than fit the bill.

This doesn't count as an actual post

So Acclaim for some reason decided to email me and let me know that they're making a DDR MMO.

Let me repeat that: They're making an MMO that depends on your l33t dance skills.

Wow.

What's even better is they somehow got Dave Perry to be lead designer on it.

I've signed up for the beta test - if i get in I'll let you all know exactly how stupid it is.

On Family and Gaming

Sorry about the delay in posting - I can't really get onto Blogger from my parents computer, so I've been forced to travel from coffee shop to coffee shop in search of free wifi.


My family has never really understood my love of gaming.

I mean sure, they tolerated it, but the whole concept always seemed sort of foreign to them. My mom used to play a game or two of Sim City and my dad played an old Mac flight sim whose name escapes me for a week, but there's never been a game that captivated them, that got them excited in the same way I was to play the new Mario game or to beat my friends online in C&C.

The past two nights I've been getting a bit of a surprise though.

I brought my Wii home for Thanksgiving - I've only had it for a few days, and I thought the vacation would be a great time to work on Zelda. Also, I sort of hoped that Nintendo wasn't just blowing smoke when they were talking about the accessibility of the Wii - that it really would appeal to non-gamers.

Wednesday night I hooked up the system, inserted Wii Sports, and invited my family to gather round. My sister was the one who took to it first - she had a great time creating her Mii avatar and playing around with the various options. This was to be expected - of anyone in the family, she was closest to me in terms of gaming, having been sucked into Ocarina of Time all those years ago. The rest of the family seemed sort of interested, but there was still an air of humoring me with my "weird hobbies." But when I booted up Wii sports, everything started to change. They started cheering when someone got a strike in bowling. They debated over what effect the speed of swinging remote had on hitting a baseball. They were having fun. Playing games. The highlight of the night was my 55 year old father and my 59 year old uncle facing off against each other in baseball, swinging the controllers around like madmen. If you had told me that I would ever see them so into playing a video game, I wouldn't have believed you. But there they were, swinging up a storm. Inconcievable.

But it didn't end there.

I assumed that everyone had enjoyed it, but they considered it passing diversion. The next night, however, my mom said "Matt, why don't you show everyone your games?" *???* My MOTHER was asking me to show off my games? What weird alternate dimension was this? I dutifully booted up the system, and immediately my uncle wanted to make a Mii. Then my sister's friend. Then my other uncle. We spent almost half an hour with everyone commenting, offering direction, and generally having a fun time over the character creation system. Insane. Then we booted up Wii Sports, and the real fun began. Other than my grandfather, everyone played that night. Bowling, golf, tennis - we played them all, and cheered and booed everything that happened. My mom and dad faced off in bowling, and we swiftly took sides, encouraging and trash talking every event on screen.

Nintendo succeeded. That's it. They hit the ball out of the park - over the past two nights, I've witnessed a group of people who never understood video games or the people who played them having a ball in front of the TV. I don't doubt that every single person there last night would love to play again. Nintendo has created a product that has knocked down the conceptual barrier between the controller and the screen, and as a result have created a real system for non-gamers. This obviously doesn't spell success for them long term, but if they can get audiences who ordinarily would never touch a 360 to try this out along with creating enough accessible games to get them hooked, they're going to tap into a market that Microsoft and Sony could only dream of.

As a final note, when I woke up this morning, I could dimly hear noises from the TV downstairs. When I walked into the family room, i witnessed my Dad, the epitome of non-gamer, practicing his bowling.