It's Dai Time

Katie & Scott & Simon & Cecily.

Tag: video games (Page 13 of 16)

Day 92: gametap, or how to ruin a good thing

May 14, 2009 / / 0 Comments

I used to love GameTap.  A few months ago, I would have heartily recommended it to friends and family.  Shelling out a mere $60 a year in order to play a huge assortment of retro games, along with a growing library of modern PC games?  A single entry fee in order to try out games I’m interested in but might never actually buy (e.g. Far Cry, the new Tomb Raiders, Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened)?  Count me in!

Then, the incident happened.

Metaboli acquired GameTap.  That, in and of itself, was not a bad thing.  Metaboli had infrastructure in Europe and with the acquisition came the possibility of an even greater games library with the two services merging.

But a mistake was made – a big mistake.  Prior to approximately a month and a half ago, GameTap had a desktop client.  You downloaded and launched games from within the client, which (for me) always worked flawlessly.  The client also allowed for the setting of such things as subaccounts, where games were stored, and the setting of a variety of playlists (favorites, RTSs I like, etc).

When Metaboli took over GameTap, they forced the desktop client out of existence and instituted a web-based plugin instead.  My guess is that this was to streamline operations; Metaboli’s European market was already using a browser plugin and supporting the old GameTap client must have seemed like a waste of money.

But the first few months of the web-based plugin have been disastrous.  GameTap’s forum have been blazing since the transition and, a little insultingly, the GameTap site now has “BETA” emblazoned on the front of it.  It feels a bit like subscribers got the shaft.  Sure, people who just want to play games for free have a slightly easier initial experience, with no client to download.  But those of us that pay money to access the entire catalog?  We have to deal with a buggy web plugin that deleted our old save games, refuses to download new games half the time, and sometimes (for seemingly no reproducible reason) will refuse to load.  Additionally, the browser plugin has lost several features that the desktop client had, including fullscreen play of old console games, which are now forced into a tiny flash window in your browser.

I still like the games that GameTap offers.  I still like the intention behind the service.  But the transition from desktop client to browser-based plugin has been infuriating.  For a good several weeks of my paid subscription, I was unable to reliably play games.  I am still wary about accessing the website; every day is a coin flip on whether or not I’ll be able to access my old saves or download new games.

I mentioned to Katie yesterday that I might cancel my subscription.  But because I have the yearly package, that doesn’t expire until March of next year.  Maybe, by then, GameTap will have finally sorted through this debacle.

Currently, though, I could not honestly recommend the service to anyone, which is a shame.

Day 90: games i like vs games i’m supposed to like

May 12, 2009 / / 0 Comments

There’s a certain type of video game that you’re supposed to like.  It’s the game that has a big marketing budget, gets great preview articles, and scores above 90 on Metacritic with dozens of reviews.

It’s the game that wins Game of the Year awards from a variety of websites and magazines.  It’s the rare game that people you know actually preorder.  You know the type: games like GTA IV, Fallout 3, LittleBigPlanet, Bioshock, Super Mario Galaxy.  The games that mainstream press fawn over.

But…do I actually like those games?  I’ve played all of the games on the list above, and I wouldn’t necessarily list any of them as my favorite games.  Is it because they have so much expectation baggaged with them?  Is it because games that fall into this paradigm end up being somewhat formulaic?  In other words, do only certain types of games become media darlings?

Then, there are the games that I actually really like.  I’m pretty that list is different for every person.  Those games rely so much on the circumstances of discovery and the experience you had the first time you played them that it’s hard to imagine one conclusive list.  Factor in people’s individual tastes and the spread of possible favorite games grows larger.

Of course, most games that I like are on certain lists of games that I’m supposed to like.  Portal, Ico, Meteos – they all got decent reviews and a good amount of press.  It’s less confusing to understand that games I thoroughly enjoy are also well-reviewed critical successes.

But why are certain really well-reviewed blockbuster games so disappointing?  How can I dislike a game that has a 98 Metacritic?  This is where game reviewing fails, in my eyes.  What reviewers are collectively telling me with a 98 Metacritic game is this: if you don’t enjoy this game, there’s something wrong with your tastes.

That can’t be true.  Certain games are just not for certain people, but it’s hard to make that judgment when something receives such widespread praise.  People who don’t enjoy urban open world violent games aren’t going to be converted by GTA IV.  Dislike large-scale RPGs with lots of resource management?  The thematic pull of Fallout 3 isn’t going to change your mind.

And it makes it even harder to disagree publicly.  I can state that I didn’t really get into GTA IV (that it felt like every other GTA game I’d ever played, to be perfectly frank) and that I find the amount of world in Fallout 3 overwhelming but the actual gameplay underwhelming.  But the reviews aren’t there to back me up, and that’s a scary place to be.  I must the outlier, right?  The one person in a thousand that would think such garbage.

Maybe.  But I don’t think that’s true.  I think there’s more of us out here for each well-reviewed game than you might think.  Maybe it’s the way that certain games get reviewed that’s actually broken, and not us.

Day 87: there’s a zombie on my lawn

May 9, 2009 / / 0 Comments

How does PopCap do it?  Like the Pixar of casual gaming, they manage to churn out hit after hit, even when expectations are unbelievably high.  I managed to score a free copy of Plants vs. Zombies (thanks, Jay is Games twitter account!) and have played through about the first three chapters or so.

The gameplay in PvZ isn’t revolutionary or ground-breaking.  If you’ve played flash tower defense games, the main idea is similar.  But damn if PopCap didn’t polish it until it shined.  The art is the usual whimsical PopCap style and the entire thing is highly addictive.  The game has an unlock/reward structure that drives the player to want to play just one more level, with new items being revealed at the end of the previous level.

What’s more, the marketing campaign, from a consumer point of view, was executed perfectly.  A terrific and funny music video was my first contact with the game and I saw it after I had finished playing a Bejeweled Facebook game.  And…it worked.  It made me interested in the game before it came out.  I even considered preordering it on Steam – something I’m not sure I’ve ever considered for a casual game before.

Even with the higher expectations that all this marketing gave me, I was not disappointed.  The Internet seems to agree: Metacritic currently has it at 89.

So, how does PopCap do it?  Simple: they create fun, polished games and come up with creative and interesting marketing.  Plus, they’ve created enough good casual games that they’ve become the brand to beat when it comes to satisfying downloadable casual game experiences.

Maybe not that simple then.  Or quite simple, but just very difficult to pull off.

Day 83: taking turns

May 5, 2009 / / 0 Comments

At Hunter’s birthday two days ago, I played a partial game of Agricola, which is a rousing game of agriculture. You’re a farmer who expands your hut, has kids, grows plants, and stables animals. Fictionally.

We didn’t finish the game because we went and watched Wolverine instead and then it got late and I was tired. Besides, Ira was quite clearly ahead. But I enjoyed it, perhaps most because of the very complexity that overwhelmed me at first.

Each turn has a wide array of choices and the additional improvement/occupation cards only serve to add a nice luck factor at the start of the game that forces an actual strategic plan being formed at the start of every game.

The best board games are like that. Or, I should say, my favorite kinds of board games, as I’m not sure that everyone considers those games I like best as their favorites. I like games that are hugely strategic (a lot of open knowledge, the ability to affect other player’s decisions indirectly, and late-game play that is affected strongly by early-game play), but I also enjoy having a luck factor that makes each game different.

Most games tend to fall slightly on one side or the other; it’s hard to find that perfect balance, but a lot of my favorite games tend to find enough of a balance. Puerto Rico is a bit too deterministic, Catan a bit too luck based. Still, both are fun games.

That’s not something you find with most video games. It’s hard to find a game where you’ll match minds with other humans in such a strategic way, because most popular multiplayer video games are based on reaction time and fast fingers. Even some of the better puzzle games are still fast-moving games that aren’t turn-based. Video game developers are scared of making turn-based games that aren’t single player because, well, they’re kind of boring.

Having to wait an entire turn for someone else to think and move and do all the complex things a normal strategy game requires. But where are the turn-based games where turns are quick little affairs? Why are the only turn-based multiplayer video games those that require moving armies and troops and setting up resource and research points?

There is the small collection of video games based on board games, like Catan on XBLA and some card game variations, but there are very few video games built on taking turns from the ground up.

Perhaps it’s too hard a sell for a game like that. Or maybe it just hasn’t been done well yet.

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