It's vital that we consider community when comparing this generation of consoles. Are players permitted to record, stream, and otherwise share their gameplay? The culture built around Let's Plays and video walkthroughs on YouTube is absolutely vital in moving software.
Consider Dark Souls. Thanks to its strong cult following on YouTube and other online communities, Dark Souls developer From Software caved in and ported a special PC version just because gamers asked for it. I suspect the lion's share of Dark Souls sales were in large part thanks to YouTube. I, for one, would never have heard of the title if it had not been for the overwhelming amount of compelling Dark Souls content online. I bought the game twice: first a used copy for my Xbox 360, then a new copy from Steam with the DLC included. It's one of my favorite games of the generation, largely due to how much player-created content you can find in the community.
Community-created content, be it video walkthroughs or independent game development, is an incredibly powerful. YouTube and Twitch are going to become a major force in this generation of consoles. Additionally, consider independent game developers. Minecraft is one such obvious, phenomenal success.
The console that best fosters community support and allows for community-driven content will emerge victorious.
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
Monday, November 18, 2013
The Next Generation
There are plenty of articles out there with insider information comparing Wii U, PS4, and Xbox One, but ever since Microsoft pulled a total reversal on its DRM policies this summer, I've been wanting to make a brief comparison of my own. I'm going to try looking into the business side of the console wars, keeping in mind some tenants that make a console a success in both business and with its fans.
First let's take a look at the market for last-generation consoles. According to VGChartz in Q2 of 2013, 77,313,472 PS3s had been sold during the console's lifetime. In the same quarter, the figure for Xbox 360 consoles sold is 77,311,669. It took nearly six years but it appears the PS3 finally did overtake the Xbox 360 - just in time for the next generation to come along and bury this battle in the past.
It's worth noting the Wii is still over 22 million units ahead of even the PS3, but Nintendo is really in a rather shaky position.Wii sales dropped off a cliff (let's not even discuss the Wii U) a few years ago after a rabid selling spree during its youth. Does that strike you as a hardware prolem? I think it's an indicator of failing to deliver a steady stream of quality software, which is ultimately what continues to sell consoles (and more of said software).
This is important. Let's face it: the PS3 had a slow start. Killzone doesn't quite hold up to Gears of War. It wasn't until, probably, the Uncharted series that PS3 really began to catch up to the 360. It's not going to come down to who has flashier hardware this generation. It's going to be a software battle. Who has a better user interface? Who has better games? Who offers better independent development and fosters a stronger community?
First let's take a look at the market for last-generation consoles. According to VGChartz in Q2 of 2013, 77,313,472 PS3s had been sold during the console's lifetime. In the same quarter, the figure for Xbox 360 consoles sold is 77,311,669. It took nearly six years but it appears the PS3 finally did overtake the Xbox 360 - just in time for the next generation to come along and bury this battle in the past.
It's worth noting the Wii is still over 22 million units ahead of even the PS3, but Nintendo is really in a rather shaky position.Wii sales dropped off a cliff (let's not even discuss the Wii U) a few years ago after a rabid selling spree during its youth. Does that strike you as a hardware prolem? I think it's an indicator of failing to deliver a steady stream of quality software, which is ultimately what continues to sell consoles (and more of said software).
This is important. Let's face it: the PS3 had a slow start. Killzone doesn't quite hold up to Gears of War. It wasn't until, probably, the Uncharted series that PS3 really began to catch up to the 360. It's not going to come down to who has flashier hardware this generation. It's going to be a software battle. Who has a better user interface? Who has better games? Who offers better independent development and fosters a stronger community?
Friday, November 15, 2013
Weekly Report - 11/15/2013
Once I finally got The Last of Us working, I found it to be a truly enjoyable experience. The graphics are striking: animation is incredibly life-like and natural, textures are massively detailed and clear, and lighting effects are spot-on. The audio completes the presentation package. Every sound in the game is important to the player, from faint ambiance-building music to footsteps, this game is a superior example of how to employ audio with surround-sound technology.
The characters are not only realistic-looking and realistic-sounding, but they act like real people. These aren't your standard WWII shooter cardboard cutout soldiers. Joel's tragic backstory has real depth, and the mystery of Ellie's mission is compelling. It doesn't stop there. Side characters such as Bill of Bill's Town, offer a wider view of the emotional fallout present in this post-apocalyptic world.
It's a fun game, too. While the story and characters are compelling, the game is truly at its best when the player is forced to struggle. Scrounging for randomly-spawned weapons (Joel rarely has more than a dozen bullets in his inventory at any given time), supplies, and other gear is where the player spends the most time. On the harder difficulties the game really begins to shine: equipment is extremely scarce, and Joel has few options to defend himself. Every piece of gear must be used as efficiently as possible in order to survive. I'm reminded of how much fun I had on expert difficulty in Left 4 Dead 2 - some of my favorite video game memories.
The fact that deaths are nigh meaningless (Joel is merely returned to the last checkpoint) is a blemish on this system. In order to keep the player immersed and tense, death should have some serious consequence. This is partly why Dark Souls and EVE have been so successful at building rabidly dedicated fans: what you do has real meaning, and if you die, you pay for it.
The characters are not only realistic-looking and realistic-sounding, but they act like real people. These aren't your standard WWII shooter cardboard cutout soldiers. Joel's tragic backstory has real depth, and the mystery of Ellie's mission is compelling. It doesn't stop there. Side characters such as Bill of Bill's Town, offer a wider view of the emotional fallout present in this post-apocalyptic world.
It's a fun game, too. While the story and characters are compelling, the game is truly at its best when the player is forced to struggle. Scrounging for randomly-spawned weapons (Joel rarely has more than a dozen bullets in his inventory at any given time), supplies, and other gear is where the player spends the most time. On the harder difficulties the game really begins to shine: equipment is extremely scarce, and Joel has few options to defend himself. Every piece of gear must be used as efficiently as possible in order to survive. I'm reminded of how much fun I had on expert difficulty in Left 4 Dead 2 - some of my favorite video game memories.
The fact that deaths are nigh meaningless (Joel is merely returned to the last checkpoint) is a blemish on this system. In order to keep the player immersed and tense, death should have some serious consequence. This is partly why Dark Souls and EVE have been so successful at building rabidly dedicated fans: what you do has real meaning, and if you die, you pay for it.
Monday, November 11, 2013
Phoning Home
Upon acquiring a copy of Naughty Dog's The Last of Us this weekend, I promptly realized two things: it's impressively well-presented and almost totally unplayable.
Say what? First, the game takes about 10 minutes to load the main menu (no exaggeration). Aggravating, but not ruinous. Finally, I got three minutes into the prologue before encountering the first game-breaking bug. As soon as I guided Joel out of the wrecked car and through a chain link gate, the game's geometry stopped loading and Joel was stuck falling interminably into oblivion. Great! I rebooted my PS3 and tried again. Same result. I tried a third time. Same result. Okay, let's clean the disc. Scratchless and spotless. Try again. The floor actually loaded this time and I made it through a door with a horde of infected just behind me.
It is at this point I believe a cutscene tried to play, but it's hard to say for sure. Three or four infected humans were right behind Joel, but now they are cardboard-cutout caricatures with no volume and no animation. They are literally two-dimensional sprites shuffling around on the screen, frozen in some state of half-animation. Most of the sound engine cuts out and all I hear are soft footsteps chasing Joel. The screen goes black for nearly five whole minutes, then suddenly the game returns to life. The aforementioned door appears to have lead to the other side of an exterior wall rather than into any kind of building. The game crashes after taking a few steps on the other side of the door. The pause menu says "Autosave still in progress." It never seems to finish, so I don't get any checkpoints and have to start the prologue over every time.
Fortunately I'm not the first person to experience any of these issues:
Say what? First, the game takes about 10 minutes to load the main menu (no exaggeration). Aggravating, but not ruinous. Finally, I got three minutes into the prologue before encountering the first game-breaking bug. As soon as I guided Joel out of the wrecked car and through a chain link gate, the game's geometry stopped loading and Joel was stuck falling interminably into oblivion. Great! I rebooted my PS3 and tried again. Same result. I tried a third time. Same result. Okay, let's clean the disc. Scratchless and spotless. Try again. The floor actually loaded this time and I made it through a door with a horde of infected just behind me.
It is at this point I believe a cutscene tried to play, but it's hard to say for sure. Three or four infected humans were right behind Joel, but now they are cardboard-cutout caricatures with no volume and no animation. They are literally two-dimensional sprites shuffling around on the screen, frozen in some state of half-animation. Most of the sound engine cuts out and all I hear are soft footsteps chasing Joel. The screen goes black for nearly five whole minutes, then suddenly the game returns to life. The aforementioned door appears to have lead to the other side of an exterior wall rather than into any kind of building. The game crashes after taking a few steps on the other side of the door. The pause menu says "Autosave still in progress." It never seems to finish, so I don't get any checkpoints and have to start the prologue over every time.
Fortunately I'm not the first person to experience any of these issues:
- Audio drops out
- Geometry fails to load
- Textures fail to resolve (surfaces appear "muddy")
- Absurd load times
- Cannot save game
- Animations fail to load, leaving two-dimensional sprites floating on the screen
- Cannot quit game without crashing the PS3, forcing me to physically unplug the power cable
Unfortunately no one on the Internets offers any resolution to these issues. Naughty Dog claimed to have fixed the "Autosave" bug a few weeks after the game was released - sometime in June or so - which was caused by "an issue with their servers", but people seem to have outright stopped talking about the game altogether as of mid-July. Wait - why is my game saving to Naughty Dog's servers? Does that mean I cannot play offline? What happens when Naughty Dog decides to stop running said servers? Apparently they are somehow vital to the game. What happens if I try to play offline?
This is the path of logic I took in troubleshooting the game. After three hours of troubleshooting, it dawned on me to unplug the ethernet cable to my PS3, knocking it off the Internet. Outrageously, The Last of Us works flawlessly offline. Clearly, when an Internet connection is present, it attempts to phone home to Naughty Dog for reasons unknown (presumably saving to their cloud or some nonsense). For whatever reason, this wasn't working and it caused my PS3 to thrash horribly: it was so overwhelmed it couldn't even run the game's geometry, textures, animation, or sound.
It's difficult to express my frustration with this situation, so I'll just leave it at this. For shame, Naughty Dog. I won't be buying another of your titles. Ever.
Friday, November 8, 2013
Weekly Report - 11/08/2013
Yeah, yeah, I missed four months. It's ridiculous. Actually, I haven't really been spending much time playing games. Ridiculous, and sad.
Cold weather is rapidly approaching again, though, so it's time to dig back in! I started gaming again a few weeks ago. I never finished Dead Island: Riptide when I bought it earlier this year, so I started where I left off, about two chapters into the main story.
Riptide is hardly different from its predecessor, except it seems enemies and items respawn every time the player turns around. It's much more difficult to play solo than the original title, but that's how I decided to roll through it. It's not that the co-op isn't fun - it most certainly is the best way to experience the game - I've just been feeling rather antisocial lately and wanted to experience the game on my own. Regardless, the game is absolutely best enjoyed with friends.
Maybe I'm just thin-skinned but the game sort of frightens me. Perhaps it's the up-close, personal, intimate nature of the gameplay. Encounters are far too invasive for my comfort. I'm used to shooting threats down before the enemy gets close enough to claw me with its diseased fingernails.
Is Riptide any good? It's fun, but the story is trite, predictable, and cheap. The "base defense" sections were my favorite: you set up defenses such as electric fences, mines, and the like and fire up some noise generator (e.g. an outrageously loud water pump) which attracts a large horde of infected. Fend them off, and you can move on to the next line of story missions that lead to the next base defense mission. You get the gist.
What's next? I'm pretty well out of titles. I finally found the DLC content in Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition, so I'm playing through that but at a pretty slow pace. I'd like to pick up a few more current-gen titles before diving into the next-generation consoles (more on the PS4/XBone to come). The Last of Us, Batman: Arkham Origins, XCOM: Enemy Unknown and GTA5 are all on my list.
Cold weather is rapidly approaching again, though, so it's time to dig back in! I started gaming again a few weeks ago. I never finished Dead Island: Riptide when I bought it earlier this year, so I started where I left off, about two chapters into the main story.
Riptide is hardly different from its predecessor, except it seems enemies and items respawn every time the player turns around. It's much more difficult to play solo than the original title, but that's how I decided to roll through it. It's not that the co-op isn't fun - it most certainly is the best way to experience the game - I've just been feeling rather antisocial lately and wanted to experience the game on my own. Regardless, the game is absolutely best enjoyed with friends.
Maybe I'm just thin-skinned but the game sort of frightens me. Perhaps it's the up-close, personal, intimate nature of the gameplay. Encounters are far too invasive for my comfort. I'm used to shooting threats down before the enemy gets close enough to claw me with its diseased fingernails.
Is Riptide any good? It's fun, but the story is trite, predictable, and cheap. The "base defense" sections were my favorite: you set up defenses such as electric fences, mines, and the like and fire up some noise generator (e.g. an outrageously loud water pump) which attracts a large horde of infected. Fend them off, and you can move on to the next line of story missions that lead to the next base defense mission. You get the gist.
What's next? I'm pretty well out of titles. I finally found the DLC content in Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition, so I'm playing through that but at a pretty slow pace. I'd like to pick up a few more current-gen titles before diving into the next-generation consoles (more on the PS4/XBone to come). The Last of Us, Batman: Arkham Origins, XCOM: Enemy Unknown and GTA5 are all on my list.
Some Favorite HD Collections, Remakes, and Re-releases
The other day I started thinking about some of my favorite HD collections, remakes, and re-releases. Although it's sad that it seems we've totally run out of original ideas these days, there's something to be said for nostalgia.
- Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary Edition
Halo is a legendary franchise: it arguably made the Xbox platform a success single-handedly and continues to command millions in sales annually. Every new title released prompts rabid gamers to camp out in front of Best Buy stores nationwide, anxiously awaiting the store opening. People take vacation days from work for this.
Anniversary Edition is literally the original Halo game with modern-day graphics. It's beautiful when compared with contemporary titles and outright breathtaking compared to the original Xbox version. The gameplay is absolutely unchanged, the graphics can be switched between new and original at the press of a button during gameplay, and the game features a host of fun achievements. Except the Library ones. - Final Fantasy Chronicles and Chrono Trigger DS
Anyone who knows me understands that Chrono Trigger is the single greatest game of all time. This is absolute and utterly inarguable to me.
Chronicles is a late-era Playstation release containing not only an excellent port of Final Fantasy IV, but, more to the point, a verbatim port of Chrono Trigger. The only changes made by Square Enix for this release (and that of the DS) are a collection of amazing anime cutscenes in addition to existing in-game visuals during important events (e.g. Frog splitting the mountain in two). The artwork, sound, and direction are simply sublime. The only drawback of the Chronicles release is its slowness: the menus are dog-slow, taking several seconds to simply view a character's stats. Get the DS copy instead, unless you're a serious FFIV fan. - Metal Gear Solid HD Collection
There isn't much to say here but the MGS games are all excellent games. HD Collection retains the originals' gameplay with clearer textures and smoother animations. Metal Gear Solid 2 in particular is an absolute masterpiece; the collection is worth picking up for this game alone. If you haven't played an MGS title before, start here. - Turtles in Time Re-Shelled
This HD remake of SNES classing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time is worth every bit of its $15 price tag. Note this is a remake, not just a facelift. The gameplay is largely the same, though modernized controls change the feel of things. The new graphics and sound are delectable, but some of the old quotable sound bites are sadly missing (Shredder's "ho ho ho" comes to mind). It's also significantly shorter than the original game; the Technodrome level was removed for whatever reason. Still, it's a great title to pick up; it hearkens back to the old days of TMNT. - Megaman Collection and Megaman X Collection
No remakes or facelifts here: these collections are straight re-releases of Megaman and X all in one place. Seeing as how it's difficult to find these Megaman originals and prohibitively expensive to purchase the entire X series on SNES, these collections are about as good as it gets for Megaman fans.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)