Post-punk Numbers: Drop7

Let me lay down Drop7 real quickly for you:

Pieces: Discs with numbers ranging from 1 to 7, a 7x7 grid, gray numberless discs.

Objective: To get high scores and prevent pieces from reaching the top.

Rules: To make discs disappear, they must be in a row or column that has the same number of discs that's shown on the disc. For example, a 2 on top of 5 discs won't disappear. But if it happens to be right next to a solitary 3 disc. Ka-plow, goodbye 2. Any grey discs adjacent to the 2 get chipped at. Two chips and a grey disc becomes a random number disc. Every few turns, a row of grey discs pops up from underneath the playing field.

That's it. Maybe that's too flippant. “That's it” makes it sound like I'm being dismissive, but I'm trying to crystallize the game that's had me in its thrall for that last month. I've written about the beauty of numbers and math before, but the idea of Drop7 is more than that. It has that “oh, how come somebody didn't think of this before” vibe that's associated with good design.

There's no shot clock; you place discs at your leisure. Still, the grey discs and the randomness keep the game from getting too heady. It's about numbers, but not bogged down in math, really. That's something its clones, like DropSum, don't understand. For those inclined, though, there's sequence mode where the exact same discs fall every time, inviting repeat play to optimize your game.

The game has a stark post-punk minimalism in its visuals. It's simple and clean, and maybe that's why it's so easy to read into these little numbered discs. 1 is a complete bore. If you're lucky, he shows up and leaves immediately, off to another party, but beware if he gets stuck next to somebody, because he'll talk their ear off for hours. On the other hand, 7 is a great guy to have around. Dependable, and never  outstays his welcome. The perfect guest. I'll admit, though, that I've taken a shining to 5. She's sexy, resourceful, a social butterfly. She's the one you end up talking to most of the night.

They're just coloured discs – I know that – but do you remember playing Tetris and cursing the Z block's unfortunate timing? Or breathing a sigh of relief after a long overdue I block pops up in the queue? My favourite puzzler, Tetris Attack, is so full of colour and character, that it doesn't allow that level of identification. Drop7's stripped down aesthetic makes for a more personal experience, oddly enough. If you've got an iWhatever, it's a must have.

Toronto Thumbs: Motorstorm: Arctic Edge Review

Another review over at Toronto Thumbs. This time it's Motorstorm: Arctic Edge. A quick taste:

Motorstorm: Arctic Edge starts like a Coors Light commercial: The camera follows helicopters as they weave between snow-capped mountains over a pristine white landscape. The helicopters unload their cargo and, instead of six-packs or inappropriately dressed women, its cars and ATVs. Like Coors Light, Arctic Edge is a pale imitation.

You can read the rest here. You can probably tell I didn't like it that much. There was a severe lack of fun. That's what I try to get out of action racers like this, fun. I didn't touch on this in the review, but I was severely disappointed in how underutilized the overheating/cooling down mechanic is in the game. It's a recipe for some tense risk/reward bits. Imagine: You're on the final stretch, second place, on the edge of overheating. Suddenly, you see a patch of snow. If you time it just right, you can hit the boosters, cool down in the snow, and blast into first, knowing full well that being a second off and exploding will cost you a top three ranking.  Those are the kinds of stories you tell your buddies around the campfire. Instead I get a game that doesn't seem to grasp where its challenge and tension comes from.  Arctic Edge did make me want to dust off my old copy of Burnout 3 though, so I guess it wasn't a complete loss.

Toronto Thumbs: Michael Todd Interview

When I meet up with Michael Todd, he’s quick to point out his rough, overgrown beard. “I’ve been crunch timing for two weeks,” he says. Besides working on his upcoming game, Broken Brothers Deluxe, he also recently delivered a talk at PAX about the virtues of working solo on small games. He’s been busy.

Prior to the development of Broken Brothers Deluxe, Todd realized traditional methods of game development didn’t work for smaller teams. It’s a lesson he learned while working on his game Engine of War.

“I worked as a team of two for three years before I really got into game design,” He reveals. “The problem was you had to verbalize everything and arguments do exist, and all the penalties of having a team. But then again you only get the benefit of two people. Where [with] ten people you get the same penalties, but, you know, five times the labour.”

Read the rest at Toronto Thumbs over here.

Metroid Prime: Impressions (10 hours)

Things are pretty hectic on my end of things, but a lot of new stuff will be forthcoming. For the time being here are some quick impressions of Metroid Prime. I'm playing the remake on the new Wii Metroid Prime Trilogy release. Things that stood out (slight spoilers):

- This has to be one of the best uses of the silent protagonist. Samus's silence just makes the whole game seem so damn lonely. Gordon Freeman, while mute, is surrounded by vivid NPCs. Likewise, Master Chief is pretty laconic, bolstering his Bad Ass Hero image, but even the haunting vistas on Halo are filled with chatter from squadmates or Cortana. Those character, and the player, have a link to something human.

Prime doesn't. At the point I'm at, I haven't heard a single human voice. It lends to the feeling that Samus is a much more competent hero. Gordon Freeman's silence just makes him out to be a pawn of the other NPCs in the world, and he never really emerges as a real character with his own motivations. Samus' silence has the complete opposite effect. She does what she wants, when she wants. And unlike certain other chatty heroes she doesn't need to make wise-ass cracks to relief her nerves.

- Level design. So many interesting little touches: The thrill of realizing where a new ability can be used. There were a few times where I ventured to a point with a new ability, only to find out it wasn't what I needed to proceed. Still, the game usually had something on the way that rewarded me for the trip and didn't make me feel like I'd wasted my time. Good design.

The only downside is the reliance on the clichéd “ice world” and “lava land” area aesthetics. The game makes more use of the environmental stuff than the previous games in the series, but, so far, it hasn't done enough with the setting to justify the cliche.

Also: some of the best 3D platforming this side of Half-Life.

- The story, as it is, is disappointing. I'm more disappointed that a story is in there, even if it's in the form of mostly optional text dumps. It's unnatural. I'd much rather have this experience flow out, as opposed to being shoehorned in. It's all the more a shame because the point where the pirates are reintroduced is so organic, as is the set-up and introduction of the Metroids. Again, you're exploring and a new threat appears, and you react to it, furthering the need to explore and figure out the implications. 

- The scanning feature is lovely. I know I just complained about the text, but I'm a sucker for this sort of mechanic.

I'm clearly playing something with a lot of thought and polish put into it. Gameplay is easy to replicate, but I'm impressed that Retro Studios was able to capture the atmosphere and loneliness of the original Metroid games. 

Toronto Thumbs: Scribblenauts

I wrote a review on Scribblenauts for Toronto Thumbs. Here's a taste:

Scribblenauts’ concept is revolutionary. No longer are we as players shackled down by how the developers want us to play. No, now we’re allowed to call the shots. By simply writing down a word, we conjure that thing into existence. A gun is a way to solve a problem, but not just the only way. The promise behind Scribblenauts is that our only limit is our imaginations. At its best Scribblenauts backs up this idealism, but all too often it’s unable to fulfill it.

You can read the rest of the review over here. My heart just wasn't into tearing this cute little game apart. It needed to be said though. I was writing about it to somebody, and realized my problem is how interchangeable words become, especially when you get into the patterns I describe in the review. Language is an intricate construction, but Scribblenauts strips words of their nuance; A jetpack and a Pegasus amount to the same thing. While it's a failure on other levels too, I think that's what really left me feeling hollow after playing. Stripped of meaning, words are useless. 

Toronto Thumbs: King of Fighters '98: Ultimate Match

King of Fighters ‘98: Ultimate Match puts up a strong front. By being a loving remake of a niche title in a niche series, it’s hard to feel welcome as a newcomer. Everything, from the unlockable art to the bonus disc with wallpapers and trailers, is a shrine to the original King of Fighters ‘98. This is a title you go into the EB looking for, not one you casually come across, read the back of, and bring home with you. Odds are, you know right now if this game is for you.

You can read the rest of the review at Toronto Thumbs here.

Sound and Fury Signifying Nothing: Kingdom Hearts

Kingdom Hearts has the boardroom stamp of approval behind it. It's picture perfect in my head. There's a meek market analyst and he's facing a troika of fat, cigar-biting CEOs.  

“Well, we know they like Final Fantasy, and market testing shows that they like Disney. What I'm proposing, sir, is that we make a game that combines the two.” 

There's a moment of silence. Finally one of the CEOs gets up, takes the cigar out of his mouth, and gravely nods. Boom! Right there: Kingdom Hearts is born. That analyst? Drinking mojitos on a yacht right now.

As a game, Kingdom Hearts is excellent. Each system given the spit polish that comes with experience and money. Square knows what they're doing, they're old hands at this sort of thing. The final product is confident, because it has every right to be confident. The control system is simple: it could easily have turned into a nightmare control scheme, but instead it's possible to play the entire game using just the analogs. Then there's the charge system. There's a magic gauge. The more physical attacks you dole out, the more your charge bar fills, which in turn gives you more magic. So you have to physically fight to regain magic. This system ensures that it's in the player's best interest to vary their style. The mechanics balances gameplay. But gameplay isn't the problem.

It's the very idea behind the game. It's not that I don't see the appeal. I do, of course I do, it's hard to miss. It doesn't get any more high concept then “Disney meets Final Fantasy.” What I have trouble with is how naked that appeal is and how easy it is to be suckered in. It's not a foreign con. If I stripped Lego Star Wars of its nostalgia-coated aesthetic and world I'd probably wince at the gameplay, but because it combined two properties that bring back potent childhood memories, I turn a blind eye to the faults.

Even in that case, the game was still a platform for the Star Wars story. It's not great literature, but it's an exciting swashbuckling tale. The merging of those two properties don't clash–Lego is just the aesthetic and doesn't factor into the plot of the game. Kingdom Hearts' blend of Final Fantasy and Disney happens on the narrative level, but they couldn't be more different. Disney movies impart morality tales through colourful cartoons while Final Fantasy tries to tackle more adult themes, like war and the environment. The Final Fantasy part of the recipe is there to convince you that this isn't strictly meant for kids. What you end up with are scenes like Donald Duck telling the protagonist, Sora, there will be no frowning on their adventure just after Sora's world, along with his family and friends, is destroyed. 

This incompatibility extends to the Disney parts of the game too. The characters travel between different worlds, each a different Disney movie. It resulting in a mish-mash of styles and aesthetics from colourful and surreal (Alice in Wonderland), to expressionist claymation (Nightmare Before Christmas), among others. There's no stylistic anchor. Even the plot doesn't hold these elements together, because some of these worlds feature side-stories that are just sightseeing tours into Disney movies.

The Disney and Final Fantasy characters act as storytelling short-cuts, a quick way to tell the player how to feel without exerting effort. Seeing Merlin, I knew he was going to fulfill a tutoring role, and when Cloud was introduced as a pawn for Hades, I knew that he'd be revealed as a good guy. Kingdom Hearts seems content to use this vast stable of characters in unimaginative ways.

And why? What does it all culminate to? I don't know. The story uses heavy words like “darkness” and “light” in the hope of sounding like a parable about universal truths, but its vagueness reduces the material to nothingness. Still, cutscene after cutscene these words get tossed around with such weight. Disney movies are simple morality tales, illustrating (pun!) their point in a clear and entertaining fashion. Final Fantasy games (mainly the later entries) tend to go the opposite approach and bludgeon their audience with the point. Kingdom Hearts manages to say nothing in an overbearing fashion.

That I slogged through it is a testament to the gameplay. Even then, I groaned and whined whenever I came across an unskippable cutscene for a third time. It's not all bad. Oddly enough, it's the parts that don't involve Disney and Final Fantasy, the parts that the writing is allowed to breath a bit, that are successful. It's here where genuine surprises can happen. It's a shame that from the beginning Kingdom Hearts was straitjacketed into the tight constraints of Disney's and Final Fantasy's franchises. By trying to tap the magic of both, they ended up with the magic of neither.