Hell, Amnesia and Cubes

What do those three things have in common? Well as far as I know, nothing. But nonetheless, I have been playing three games since I last posted on here, and those were the first things that popped into my head when thinking about each game. As a forewarning, this could be a lengthy post.

The first game up, being the least recent, is Darksiders. I held off from posting about this game, because my views on it kept changing, and really didn't know what to make of it. When the game started out, for the first few hours I felt like it was my favorite game for the 360. But as time passed by, that feeling was waning, even though I was still enjoying the game. It's just way too similar to other games that have done the same thing, only better.

The two games that Darksiders takes almost all of its elements from is God of War and The Legend of Zelda, mainly Ocarina of Time. All the reviewers and critics said that the game is a mash of these two games together but, being reviewers, I didn't always agree with them. Near the beginning of the game, I felt as though the game was 90% GoW and 10% OoT. An hour or two later, I changed that feeling to 80% GoW and 20% OoT. A few hours later, 65% GoW, 35% OoT. Near the end of the game, I felt as though it was a 50/50 blend of the two games together, with random scenes making one game stand out more than the other.

I suppose I should explain what Darksiders takes from these games. The combat is ripped straight out of GoW. The chain-combo fighting made me feel as though I was playing as Kratos, right down to certain button presses to finish off enemies. Luckily this is just one button, and no QTE's exist in the game. And then you can upgrade each weapon, just like in GoW. Or how about the story based around the concept of revenge, playing with the theme of gods, mortals and other entities? Just like GoW.

The Zelda themes don't come into play as quickly as the GoW ones, but these smack you in the face just as hard. There are dungeons in Darksiders (only 5, not 9 like in almost every Zelda game, counting the boss's), and in each one the player can collect a compass, dungeon map, and one special item to help them through said dungeon. Wow, that sounds familiar. But THQ wouldn't go as far as to steal the exact same items, right? Like a boomerang item, a hookshot, a lens of truth, or a slingshot, and just disguise it as a different item? The worst part is that none of the items play a very big role in the game, which was a big letdown. The final item, not listed here, is not found in any Zelda game, and even though it's a ripoff from another game, is still a cool mechanic which could have been a lot more fun, and could have made for some crushingly difficult puzzles.

You can start to see how as the game progressed, the more I felt as though they were taking more and more from OoT. Not that this is a bad thing, however. I mean, both God of War and Ocarina of Time were fantastic games. And later in the game you meet up with Ruin, the main character's horse. Basically it's Epona from Hell. That sounds cool whenever I say it. Ruin controls slightly better than any Epona version, and the mounted combat is much better than Twilight Princess, in my opinion.

To finish my discussion about Darksiders, I believe that the developers at THQ should be slapped in the face for a scene near the end of the game. It's one thing to borrow elements from Ocarina of Time, but seriously?! The items were one thing, but a whole scene from Ocarina of Time that was totally unnecessary to the game and story? There comes a point where you need to just come up with some of your own ideas, because that was just pathetic.

On to my next game, Phantasy Star 0. A friend of mine a couple of weeks ago found a way to play Phantasy Star Online well, online, and so we both sort of got in the mood to play the game. Unfortunately, we never got the online components figured out (til now), and so we didn't play PSO. However, he picked up Phantasy Star 0 for the DS and told me it's just like PSO (O = Online, 0 = zero), and since it has wi-fi multiplayer, I should definitely pick it up. After finding it on sale at a Toys 'R Us, I gave in and said what the hell, it's probably pretty good.

And after putting about 11 hours into it, I agree, it is pretty good, and it's basically PSO for the DS. The graphics are pretty much the same, and the player levels up slowly (well, more quickly in this version so far) and continues to play the game for better and cooler weapons. And this time around the story is pretty good. In PSO, you arrive at a new planet soon after the research team did, although they're all missing, and you go find who or what killed them. In PS0, the story is more about long lost ruins, ancient technology, and a blank period in time in which war occurred between the three races, and most people disappeared. Okay, so it sounds extremely similar to Mass Effect, and while it's not nearly as good as Mass Effect's story, nor as fleshed out, it's still pretty interesting. I play as a Newman, which is basically a person who looks just like a human, but isn't, and while low on health and defense, has strong magical abilities. My character awoke at the beginning of the game with amnesia, and has no idea who he is or why he's on Earth. I can't say more about the story, because Sega had some fun and changed the story depending on which race you play as, or at least it seems as though so far.

If there are any faults with the game I'd say that so far it's pretty easy, which is much different from PSO, which started out extremely hard, especially for magic users. Maybe it's just me, but the camera seems a lot closer to the character than in PSO, and I feel like I can't see what's going on around me. Three teammates constantly surrounding me does not help the issue either. Another complaint I have is with the AI. Ugh I cannot stand my teammates! First of all, get out of my way, that's my kill, go kill one of the other 5 enemies in the room that are attacking us from behind. I know you can change the tactics of the AI, but it doesn't really seem to help, they're still idiots. And for the sidequests, I wish I could always choose to go alone, because they usually stick me with Sarisa, a fellow Newman who does no damage at all, and usually dies during the boss battles. I mean 11 damage a hit Sarisa?! I do around 50 damage a hit...with a blunt rod...with the weakest attack. You're doing 11 damage a hit at the highest, with magic, whereas I do around 75 damage a hit with magic. So let's say there's an enemy with 150 health. It takes me two hits to kill it. Put five of them in a room, I'll kill the first four while she focuses on one, and then I'll go over to her and kill off that one...which still takes two hits for me, since she didn't even do 75 worth of damage during my four kills. Pit her and I up against a boss and she dies? Honestly there's no point in reviving her. I really wish there was a good/evil portion to the game, because I'd be such a dick to her after each mission, when she starts touting how it was great teamwork that killed off the boss. No Sarisa, you laid dead in the corner after just the first 10 seconds of battle, while I killed the boss myself. Please Sega, let me turn friendly fire on. I can't wait to play the game online with a competent teammate, who understands the mechanics of the game and battles.

Finally the cubes. This is referring to Minecraft. Oh yes, I finally gave in to the temptation and tried the game out. After months of seeing articles and videos of the game online, and also seeing that it's not a passing fad, it was about time to give it a go. I suppose the reason I never did is because supposedly for being such an "ugly" game as far as textures go, it takes quite a bit of horsepower to run the game. There was no way I'd be able to run the game on this laptop, and my computer's HD is still shot. But yesterday I noticed an article taking about how you can play the game in a browser, which led me to believe that that version must be much less demanding. This is the game that made me want to write a new blog, and honestly if I ever bought the retail beta of the game, I'd probably use this blog solely to write about my exploits. And that's what I plan to do here.

My first foray into the world of Minecraft was just as fun as I thought it'd be. I was thrown onto a large island, and after seeing a handful of videos online, I knew that the first goal was to build a house or lock myself up in a cave. Once night falls, the enemies and creepers come out. No, not the creepers that look into your windows, the creepers that are green and blow the hell out of your walls. The first thing I noticed was that I didn't have any tools, nor did I have an inventory screen. That was disappointing, because I wanted to feel the real game, where you must forge your own weapons and tools, mine, chop and collect your materials, and learn to survive. That's okay I decided, I was given an unlimited amount of blocks of all different sorts, so I'd be good to build a small house.

So after about 20 minutes I had completed my small house, 3 x 3 blocks inside with a nice roof, and glass blocks for my door since I can't construct a door in this version. After a few more minutes I noticed it wasn't getting dark out, and I knew from those videos how long until it got dark. So I ventured out, wondering if maybe this version didn't have any enemies, and was just for dicking around. Obviously the question was what's next? I chopped down a tree and its branches for fun, and liked how you can chop out the trunk, but the leaf blocks remain suspended in the air. I looked around, noticed that I had built my house on top of one of the hills (on purpose by the way, to avoid the monsters) and thought, wouldn't it be cool to have a secret passage from the beach all the way up into my house?

And so taking another 20 or so minutes, I did just that. It was quite difficult honestly, trying to figure out where and when to dig up to get into my house, and I missed my target a few times. Along the way I found giant caverns that I would mine into, which really made me smile, knowing that the caverns really expand upon the game. Anyways, once I created the passage into my house, and made sure that the entrance was pretty well hidden (even though I'm the only one playing this single-player world), I became...anxious. I wouldn't say bored, because that was not even close to settling in yet. But I wasn't sure what to do yet. So I looked down at the ground, and even started jumping around. That's when a thought came to my mind. My character can jump about the height of one block, so is it possible to create a block underneath me when I jump? It worked, and this opened up many possibilities. First, how high can I get in the world? Up and up I went, til I finally reached the roof of the world, which was pretty high, even if not as high as the newer versions. The next project was obvious, to build another house, bigger, and suspended in the sky.

This project took me about two hours honestly, and if I knew some of the tricks that I know now, I could have halved or maybe quartered the time it took me. Either way, it was a neat brick house, 6 x 6 blocks inside, with a glass roof for light, and a glass floor to see what is way below me. But the house was enclosed, so I decided to make a 2 x 2 block door, facing the water for a nice view. Unfortunately, my house was suspended in the sky besides the one last column I used to get up here the last time, and I needed a grand entrance. I finally decided that the coolest thing I could do would be to build a staircase from the entrance of my first house all the way up to the entrance of the new one.

This turned out to be quite a pain, as the bricks I used were unique, being only half the size of every other brick, and were much more difficult to build with. Using some ingenuity, I turned what looked like a path I needed to hop up to get to the new house, into a well-designed staircase, which did not need any jumping to get up. So I ran out to the beach, took the secret path through the mountain, up into my old house, out the front door, up the winding staircase and into my new house. I was already having quite a bit of fun when I peered down through my glass floor and thought, wow, wouldn't it be cool to have a drop from the floor of this house all the way down into the ground, to the lowest level possible?!

And so I got to work, digging a 2 x 2 block hole directly below the 2 x 2 hole in the glass floor, all the way down to the "core" of the world. Oh, I should probably mention that if you dig deep enough, you come across lava. At this point I was having fun, but what's the point of wasting a couple hours on something that I can't come back to? So I opened the menu, and clicked save. Unfortunately a sign came up saying that you can only save in the retail version. However, behind it lie the save button, and I figured I'd try anyways. It brought me to my C: drive, so it worked and I saved the game. Now I didn't know if I could load the game again, being in a browser, but I was still having fun so who cares. Back to the hole, it went pretty deep. When I got to the bottom, I put glass blocks directly on top of the lava, so when you drop you look like you're going to fall straight into the lava, but stop just before it. You can't die or get hurt in this version, but it still looked cool.

But then the question arose, how do I get out without just building blocks beneath me? That's kind of tacky and boring, so I started to mine my way through the ground, to make a path that would eventually lead to the surface. After a few minutes of mining, an idea came to me. What if I were to encase the whole path through the ground with glass cubes all the way to the surface exit, and then went out to the ocean and mined my way into the caverns around my glass path, flooding it, so I could walk through the dry path with water around me. I should mention I learned I could do this a little earlier, when I was digging through the ground and mined into the ocean, completely flooding the caverns I was in with water.

I spent a good deal of time having fun twisting and turning the path and surrounding it with glass cubes, and it looked pretty neat. I even went back to the surface and encased the entire drop from my house to the ground in glass cubes. That way, when I drop to the ground, I can't move in midair to miss the hole. I went back to the path and continued to mine and put glass up. Eventually I got tired and just wanted to get out, and couldn't for the life of me hit the surface. I was much deeper that I had thought. Up I went, right towards the surface when GLUB GLUB GLUB... I hit the ocean. Oh I was so frustrated, because I had formed the direct opposite of what I wanted. I flooded my glass tube with water, and the outside was dry. I went back down to look around, and noticed I missed putting up just one glass block on my path, so all the water was outside the tube as well. Fail. I went back up to check where I came out in the water, which was just a clear ocean view, and turned around to find an island directly behind me. I counted the blocks behind and around me, and realized that if I just started heading upwards 4 blocks earlier, I would have came out on the tiny island, and not the ocean. Epic Fail.

But all was not lost. I figured that if my cavern was filled with water, what if I plugged up the exit to the ocean, went back down, and mined deeper in parts to find more caverns, therefore flooding the water from my caverns and path to those caverns. I saw this done in videos, so I figured it had to be possible. After many attempts, it wasn't working, and resolved to having failed. Luckily, I learned what I did wrong, and how to prevent this from happening again. I really wanted to continue playing, but it was really late and I needed sleep before work. So I turned off the game, and to no surprise, I had one last idea. I got back into the game, and right from the start it created a completely new world, which is what it's supposed to do. But I went into the menu screen, to load, and tried to load my game. I mean it was worth a shot. After a few seconds, I was back in my flooded tube. Awesome. This meant I could spend quite a bit of time on the free game on giant creations, if I so choose.

I know what you're thinking, "Oh geez, here comes the Lord of the Rings creations." Sorry, but that's already been done with Isengard. "Well here comes Zelda creations." You mean something like the world of A Link to the Past? Well maybe I'll focus on other fantasies, and actual objects rather than places. How about a Star Destroyer...or the ship from Serenity...or the whole Earth! Oh c'mon, is there anything I like that hasn't been created in Minecraft yet?! Anyways, I think I may have thought of one thing, so at least I'll have something to focus on if I play the game. Now if only I had the minecart like in the newer version, and I could build a roller coaster.

Game Dev Story

You know, it's been quite a long time since a game as cheap as Game Dev Story, costing me only $4 (I would have gotten it for $1, had I bought it a few days earlier, darn), had hooked me as much as it has. When I'm not playing it, I really don't have any urges to turn on my iPod Touch and play it. But when I finally do start playing it, I just can't put it down. It's not like there aren't any downtime parts of the game where it would be easy to turn it off. Those come every time a game is done being made and has shipped, where my workers literally start saying "I'm bored." But, there are reasons why I don't start one game right after I finish another, money being a big portion of that. Before I started raking in the big bucks (well, in my view I would still consider myself to be a small company without much capital, can't even afford to make games for the biggest systems), I'd be down to barely enough cash to afford my workers. One year I was squirming in my seat, nervous that I wouldn't have enough money to pay all my employees. I was watching the game progress percentage go up as the days and weeks went by, payday slowly getting closer and closer. Luckily my timing paid off perfectly, with the game releasing the week before I had to pay everyone, meaning I had no trouble coming up with the money. But anyways, that's not the point. The point of this post was how funny the names in the game can be. Every time the game says that a company is releasing a new system, I get a little excited, knowing that it will be a ripoff of a real-life counterpart. So far the game has done a tremendous job keeping up with the systems, in the order they were released, and even including some obscure ones. In that case they even mention something along the lines of, "This console seems a bit strange and might not sell well, so we should see how it does before applying for a license."

For the first few games released, I didn't worry about the names of my games, and just let Game Dev Story take care of the work, naming them Game #1 and so on. Well after the first game awards, I saw how funny some of the names could be, all very similar to the real companies' names and games. So from then on, I decided to do the same with my games. Unfortunately, the game only keeps the past 32 products in the history, and since I'm in year 14, I have definitely made more than 32 games (probably around 35-40). So without further ado, I thought it would be fun to make another list of games, this time of the ones I have made in Game Dev Story, starting with the oldest (that is still recorded). I shall include the game name, system type, genre and type of game, how many copies sold and any awards it received, but will keep the system name out. Learning the names of the systems as the game progresses is part of the fun of the game, and makes the player want to keep playing to see what else is out there. As an important note, I do not have all the possible genre and types unlocked, and am sure there are many out there I'm missing.

Sly Ninja - console - Action & Ninja - 103,978 units
Bio is Life - console - Life & Animal - 176,301 units
Dungeon - portable - Shooter & Dungeon - 188,540 units
AlphaPirates - console - Educational & Pirate - 87,515 units
Knight's Night - portable - Sim RPG & Historical - 362,578 units
High Seas - console - Action RPG & Pirate - 188,478 units - Best Design
Living Animals - portable - Simulation & Animal - 227,417 units
Let's Golf! - portable - Simulation & Golf - 99,408 units
A Pirate Story - portable - Audio Novel & Pirate - 202,605 units - Worst Game of the Year
Cartoon Clash - portable - Racing & Cartoon - 195,756 units
Wanna Date? - portable - Simulation & Dating - 244,265 units
ARR! Pirates - portable - Life & Pirate - 282,805 units
Calm Breeze - portable - Action RPG & Ninja - 542,687 units
Animal N' Cars - portable - Racing & Animal - 433,668 units
Dungeon Xplorr - console - RPG & Dungeon - 500,134 units
Running?! - console - Simulation & Marathon - 318,164 units
Oblivian - console - Action RPG & Dungeon - 544,056 units
Hell..o Robots - console - Shooter & Robot - 370,698 units
Xs Eight - console - RPG & Historical - 431,517 units
Robot Bomb - console - Action RPG & Robot - 881,808 units
Cameo - console - Action RPG & Animal - 418,148 units
Choo Choo! - portable - Simulation & Train - 769,515 units
Cumbrero! - portable - Simulation & Dating - 553,276 units
Look, Robots! - console - RPG & Robots - 809,960 units - Best Design
Spirit Trains - console - Simulation & Train - 1,826,994 units
Spirit Racks - console - Simulation & Dating - 1,179,864 units
Wall of Duty - console - Shooter & Historical - 923,771 units
Chromo Time - console - RPG & Time Travel - 2,107,826 units - Best Design
Tome Portal - console - Action RPG & Time Travel - 2,807,295 units - Best Design
Sim Bird - console - Simulation & Airplane - 1,449,284 units - Best Music
X Signs? - console - Simulation & Train - 440,801 units
Sprinter Cell - console - Action RPG & Spy - 1,483,088 units

So as you can see, my numbers went way up over the course of time. It's funny too, because there are some excellent genre and type match-ups in this list, but there are also some horrible ones as well, and the game will point them out when you find them. Unfortunately, it's all trial and error, and it's not always fair. For example, some games that we know of and have sold extremely well have exact genre and type match-ups in this game, but don't show up as good pairs. So what is a good match-up in real life cannot be dependent on one game or franchise, but rather on what commonly makes a great match-up. Also, don't just take away information on this list as proof as to what is a great match. Just because I have high sales for a game doesn't just mean the genre and type are a great match. For most of the games on the second half of the list, I put much thought and effort into creating the game, including who of my employees did what parts of the game, and which employees did extra parts on their own. There are also different strategies to use throughout game development as well, which drastically affect sales and scores from critics (which I did not include in here, but do have that information as well, and also what ranking it received after one week of sales).

Take for example two games on my list, Spirit Trains and X Signs?. They came out on the same system, had the exact same genre and game type, and were only released 26 months apart. Spirit Trains sold much better than X Signs? did, even though Spirit Trains had 4 more reviewer points (out of 40). To make matters even more interesting, let's throw Choo Choo! into the equation. It was released 13 months before Spirit Trains (39 before X Signs?) for a portable system, and received 3 less points than X Signs? did from the reviewers, and yet it basically doubled X Signs? sales. So what I'm showing is just because one game sells really well, doesn't mean that it's a great combination. The game may seem straightforward, but there is quite a bit of thought and strategy that play into developing the games. It really is a game dev story. Now I want to really be like a giant company, and release a hall of fame game. And then I want to do the other things which aren't even possible with my staff and history of games yet...

2010 Game Recap

So just a few minutes ago, I came across an interesting article on Kotaku, about one editor's past year of games played, and which he had beaten. I found it to be pretty interesting, even for having barely any body of text, in which most non-gamers would find it very boring. So I decided that since I haven't really kept track of what games I've played and completed during last year, this would be the perfect time to form a recap of the same sort for myself.

He did a great job of setting down some information before continuing, and I want to follow the same sort of "rules." Basically, all games listed were playing during 2010, and all the bold games are the games that I have finished. They were all played for at least an hour, which means I'm not counting all the games I bought, tested out, but didn't play for more than a few minutes. Now obviously, some games do not have a set "end," but nonetheless they deserve to be on the list. Also, just because I beat a game does not mean I 100% completed it. I will, however, put an asterisk next to a game that I have either deemed 100% complete (that can be beaten without 100% completing it) or have collected all the achievements in, being Xbox 360 game. A note: many games on this list have been played/beaten in years prior. Hence, this is not a list of just new games played and beaten, but rather a comprehensive list of what I've played all throughout last year. To be fair, I will also put a ^ symbol next to games that I have beaten some year before 2010. Finally, there is no particular order to which I've put the systems in, and all games will be listed alphabetically.

SNES: Played 3 - Beaten 1
Chrono Trigger^
F-Zero
Illusion of Gaia

Nintendo DS: Played 7 - Beaten 1
100 Classic Books (maybe reading counts as beating it?)
Contact
Disgaea DS
The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks
Picross 3D
Picross DS^ (I erased all save data and started again)
Etrian Odyssey III (got to the very last boss)

GameBoy/GameBoy Color/GameBoy Advance: Played 8 - Beaten 3
Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge
Golden Sun^
Golden Sun: The Lost Age^
The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages^
The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons^
MegaMan Battle Network
Metroid II: Return of Samus
Metroid Zero Mission^

Nintendo 64: Played 1 - Beaten 1
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time^ (in 14 hours)

PlayStation 2: Played 7 - Beaten 1
Final Fantasy XII
Frequency
Futurama
Kingdom Hearts^
Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories
Persona 3 FES

GameCube: Played 4 - Beaten 1
Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX 2
The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker^
Metroid Prime^ (surprisingly not 100% complete this time)
Metroid Prime 2: Echoes^

ipod Touch: Played 3 - Beaten 0
Crosslogic Unlimited (over 1700 puzzles!)
Game Dev Story
Peggle^

Wii: Played 8 - Beaten 2
Animal Crossing: City Folk
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider Anniversary
Metroid: Other M
Metroid Prime (on the Trilogy)
New Super Mario Bros. Wii
Resident Evil 4
Super Mario Galaxy 2
Wii Sports Resort

Xbox 360: Played 27 - Beaten 11
Assassin's Creed*
Assassin's Creed II
Bioshock^
Bioshock 2
Borderlands
Breath of Death VII
Castlevania: Harmony of Despair
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Darksiders
Doritos Crash Course
Fable II* (not including DLC)
Fallout 3 (including all DLC)
Guitar Hero 3
Guitar Hero: World Tour
Harm's Way
Just Cause 2
Left 4 Dead 2
Lego Batman
Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures*
MegaMan Anniversary Collection
NCAA Football '08
Perfect Dark
Psychonauts
Pure
Shadow Complex*
Super Meat Boy
Turtles in Time: Re-Shelled

Total: Played 68 - Beaten 21

So there you have it. I have played a total of 68 games this year, each for at least an hour. I'm probably close to the end of two or three of these games, and well into a handful of others. You can see that many of the titles on this list I have beaten before, which is a good thing, seeing that I can still go back an enjoy older games. Hell, three of the games on this list have probably been beaten a total of 15 times combined, and I'm sure I'll beat each one at least twice more before I quit playing games. And that's not even counting the three times in a row I beat Shadow Complex. Still, a ratio of beating less than a third of the games I've played last year? That's not very good, and if I'm going to spend time playing games, maybe I should consider playing each one to its end before starting another. Speaking of which, I should return to playing Darksiders. The next post will most likely be about said game, and my thoughts about how reviewers were right and wrong.