Monday

Pixelosophy Ep. 90-Let there be light

Wednesday

How many pesos will it take to get Aaron out of jail?

Friday

Somebody call the embassy

Disclaimer: This episode was filmed before the announcement that the Vita won’t be coming to the U.S. in time for the holidays. So when Aaron and Alex mention “this holiday season,” just pretend they said “this spring” or something like that.

Picks of the Week

• Love in the Wild (Reality Show/ NBC)
• BioShock: Rapture by John Shirley (Novel)

Monday

Pixelosophy Ep. 88-Life’s a Beach

Wednesday

Forecast for Chicago-Rainy

Friday

Forecast for Mexico-Probably Nice

Picks of the Week

Buried (movie)

Source Code (movie)

Articles

Top 5 Favorite Environments (Alex)

Top 5 Favorite Environments (Aaron)

5. Heavy Metal World (Brutal Legend)

A game like this is exactly why we use the term “favorite” instead of “best” when compiling these lists. Because from a game design or technical standpoint, Brutal Legend’s heavy metal landscapes don’t really stand up. However, for fans of all things metal, this world is filled with all kinds of rock and roll imagery. Gaming legend Tim Schafer has combined all of the iconic imagery from every heavy metal album cover ever, pixilated them and turned them into a sprawling alternate dimension for players to explore. A place that has the likes of Ozzy, Rob Halford and Lemmy hanging out has to be pretty freakin’ awesome, right? If you’ve ever found yourself banging your head at one time or another, you’ll feel right at home here.

4. Aperture Science (Portal 2)

If you listened to the Reviewcast we did for Portal 2, you’ve already heard me gush about how impressed I was with Valve’s ability to tell such a vivid story through the use of environment alone. If you didn’t, let me tell you now; it’s incredible. Portal 2 takes you through a history lesson of Aperture Science. Getting to see the different areas, older test chambers and deserted offices of a scientific company lost to time was a treat. Using an aesthetic that looked like everyone just suddenly got up and left their desks, as though something eerie or horrendous had happened, just added to the imposing and intimidating vibe the game already has in spades. Set dressing is something that most games take for granted, occasionally placing the random computer or stack of papers here or there, but Aperture Science is meticulously littered with artifacts that share a simultaneously complete yet mysterious picture of this place that you are trapped in.

3. Limbo (Limbo)

Limbo is another game that was lathered with praise in a Reviewcast. So why not lather it up some more? This is a game that shows seemingly very little, in terms of environment, but just enough to give the player a sense that there is so much more to this place. During the game’s brief play time, we see a scary forest, some sort of industrial, mechanical area, a dilapidated cityscape and even a few other inhabitants of this mysterious place. Of course we see all of this in shadow and silhouette, and our imaginations are given the opportunity to fill in the rest. It’s a game that manages to use its environment to give the player a sense of claustrophobia while, at the same time, giving the impression that there is much more to see here. The game looks mostly flat, but also has a feeling that the world itself goes for miles into the foggy background. Limbo’s environment reflects many of the game’s themes to perfection, creating as many questions as it answers. It is gorgeous, frightening and one of the best places to find yourself in, in a game.

2. Rapture (BioShock 1 & 2)

I don’t think I’ve ever been truly irritated by how little of an environment a game has let me explore than with the original BioShock. Don’t get me wrong, getting to wander around the eerily beautiful halls of Rapture and visiting some truly unique locations is some of the best time I’ve spent playing a game. However, that’s also the reason why I absolutely wanted more. Even though the game shows you a variety of the underwater dystopia, looking out through the glass and into the ocean, it was apparent just how expansive Rapture is, and I wanted to see it all. This is a gaming environment that did as much to tell the story of BioShock as any of the dialogue or exposition in the game. Signs of distress, struggle and a society that was once built on hope and now ruined altruistic ideas are everywhere. BioShock Infinite’s floating city, Columbia, has a lot to live up to if it wants to fill Rapture’s soggy shoes.

5. The Jungles of Uncharted: Drake’s Deception

It’s no secret that the first Uncharted is one of my favorite games of all time. A big part of that was the setting that the game chose. Stepping foot in the jungles of South America for the first time is an experience that has stuck with me. It felt so lush, so expansive, so real, and so different. Sure, I had seen tropical settings in a few games before, but in my opinion, they had never been as well done as in Uncharted. It felt like I could actually explore in this environment, and that the ruins that were hidden away had been there for years, waiting for somebody to uncover them. When you add in the random submarine that had been stranded there, it only adds to the intrigue and allure of the world. It’s definitely a place that I wouldn’t mind going back to time and time again.

4. Gaia (Final Fantasy IX)

Full disclosure here, I didn’t finish Final Fantasy IX. However, the hours upon hours that I spent within its world of Gaia were fantastic. I’m usually not a big fan of fantasy settings, but this game went back to an earlier Final Fantasy feel with the time and place that it chose. It had the feel of a contemporary medieval place. Sure there were castles and small villages, but people also got around by airships. In a way, it’s the same reason that I love Batman: The Animated Series so much. It blends classic and contemporary aesthetics with a bit of fantasy that doesn’t feel out of place. Exploring all of the smaller parts of this expansive world was always fun and exciting because I always knew that I wouldn’t be bored and would see something completely new and different each time.

3. Rapture (BioShock 1& 2)

A big part of the reason that I pushed through and kept playing BioShock was Rapture. I had never been in a setting like that, ever. Not in a movie, not in a book, and certainly not in a game. It created so many questions in my mind about what had happened before I got to this place, that again mixed old with new. And when I got there, it didn’t feel like a generic place that had been created but rather an actual world that had been lived in before I arrived. Writing on the walls and ransacked offices all contributed to this feeling that I was not alone. Something had happened here, and is still happening, and I am merely another person in this place. To me, the reason to ever play BioShock is to spend time exploring Rapture.

2. St. Mystere (Professor Layton and the Curious Village)

I really could have picked any of the places from the Professor Layton series because they are all so fantastic, but I figured I’d start at the beginning. A lot of what gives this first game its charm is the village it takes place in, along with the art style that is used to create it. Everything looks real enough but just slightly off. St. Mystere looks like any small European village, with its stone roads and small buildings that line the streets, but all of those things have a slight twist to them. Buildings have funny angles and look like they’ve been pulled out of a storybook. The places around the outside of town are eerie enough to keep you away from them while still making you want to explore. All of this creates a town that, like I said, makes it feel like you’ve jumped into a children’s storybook. And who doesn’t want to do that? It’s your imagination from when you were a kid fully realized. Thankfully, we see this same style used in subsequent Layton games, which keeps me going back for more every time.

Monday

Pixelosophy Ep. 88-Baby Tears

Wednesday

Best Video Places To Live as Rated By Alex

Friday

Spoilers, Aaron’s Probably Going To Pick Tim Schafer games

Picks of the Week

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (Book)

Batman: The Widening Gyre by Kevin Smith (Comic)

Articles

DIY Gaming (Alex)

License to Learn (Aaron)

Now, if you’d told me years ago that I would one day be championing licensed games as shining examples of how to do things right, I would have stopped you mid-sentence, built a time machine and travelled into the future to punch future-me in the face before he could finish writing this article. Well, past-me has yet to materialize, so it could be that I actually have some solid reasoning here. Finding out whether or not that’s true is going to take looking over three different games to find out what exactly it is they are doing so right.

Before getting to the specific games in question, note that I’m using the broad term of “licensed IP” rather than the narrower, and more likely to be the first thing that pops into everyone’s head, “movie tie-in” label.  In fact, only one of the examples that I’m going to use is an actual movie tie-in. The other two games are just based on existing characters and properties. The three games are James Bond 007: Blood Stone, X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Batman: Arkham Asylum. All three of these titles deliver an extremely fun experience, and all three do so by approaching the game’s mechanics in a similar fashion. It’s this specific approach that I believe yields the great time a player will have with these games.

So what is that approach? What is it that they all have in common, aside from having a colon in the title? They all approach the game by boiling down the essence of what makes each character who they are and developing the core gameplay mechanics around those defining characteristics. This creates the feeling of a character simulator and delivers unto the player a level of immersion that many games fall far short of. By letting the play mechanics mirror the traits of what makes these characters tick, the game lets players jump directly into the shoes of these fictional beings rather than just control them at a distance. Using things that people know about the characters and turning them into simulated actions that the player gets to participate in works so well for enhancing fun and immersion that many of the other technical aspects simply fall to the wayside. Let’s take a look at what I mean.

As I said before, each one of these games examines the essence of each of these characters and defines the play experience around those ideas. For example, all three of the main characters in these games, Batman, Bond and Wolverine, are all highly skilled combatants. Batman is one of the best hand-to-hand fighters in the world. James Bond is well trained with both firearms and his actual arms. And Wolverine is simply the best at what he does, which is to quickly turn a room full of enemies into ground and shredded beef. All of these games have a fighting mechanic that reflect their abilities, more specifically, the systems reflect the ease at which the characters are able to do these things.

Arkham Asylum’s combat system requires the use of only a of couple buttons to pull off gorgeous combos. Blood Stone features an aim-assist function that makes quickly dispatching a room full of goons silently and precisely a breeze. Wolverine’s game puts his rage on display with every lightning quick slash of his claws. These are what makes these characters who they are, and the player is allowed to easily make them happen. Batman doesn’t look like a bumbling fool because the player can’t figure out some arbitrarily difficult button-press sequence, and Bond isn’t shaking his gun all over the place trying to get a sight on an enemy that’s across a room. Instead the ease of these actions allows players to get a feel for the character on a grander scale. By focusing on these little things, the larger actions of taking down a room full of thugs or ripping some evil mutants to shreds create experiences that truly feel like we imagine the real thing would. Difficulty becomes less important because the huge fun factor overshadows a perceived lack of challenge.

What this approach also does is force developers to look to implement challenge elsewhere. I’ve previously written that Arkham Asylum’s challenge lies in managing the situation as a whole rather than in the fighting itself. Wolverine’s gameplay offers something similar. Blood Stone presents challenge by letting players decide how to find a flow and rhythm between gunplay and melee combat in order to clear a room.

So what can other developers learn from this and implement into their original IPs? The main thing to take away from these games is to define the character. Know the character, and convey the character well to the player. It’s not enough to just say the main character is a “space marine.” That’s too generic, too broad. Going with this type of definition creates a wide variety of expectations in different players, and when the gameplay doesn’t match what each one of those players is thinking, it creates frustration while playing. So then what are the character’s skill-sets? What abilities do they posess that sets them apart from all the other space marines out there? If you can define the character and build an expectation for the player through those character traits, then you can build mechanics that will sync up with those expectations and deliver a frustration-free, fun experience.

Just as a quick example of a game that gets it completely wrong, we can look at Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions. Despite the inclusion of the ever important colon, the mechanics do not match Spidey’s core ability, web-swinging. Rather than give us a highly mobile, swing anywhere play experience, the game puts Spider-Man in situations that needlessly take away his use of web-swinging. It’s frustrating because it simply doesn’t make any sense, not to mention removes the thing that makes the character unique. On the other hand, we can look at a game like Vanquish as an example of an original game that gets it right. The game sets up exactly what the special capabilities of the suit are and defines it for the player. After that it drops the player in situations that allow them to feel like the enhanced super-soldier that the character portrays.

Giving characters a unique set of characteristics that translate into fun gaming mechanics is something that this new breed of licensed games is beginning to nail. This approach can be translated to original characters as long as developers are willing to flesh them out. While this is not the only answer to creating the ultimate gaming experience, it is what seems to be working. Perhaps giving this a try instead of being so focused on the technological aspects would breathe some new life into games that would otherwise turn out to be just another shooter, or just another beat’em up. Go ahead developers; give your games a little character.