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Tuesday, September 28, 2004
Tuesday, September 28, 2004
Oh dear. What happens when culture clash meets paranoid delusions. Who would have thought that the throwaway, friendly use of the word "chief" (sixteen posts down) would have such terrible, wonderful consequences (posts twenty-one and twenty-two)?
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 01:30
Thursday, September 16, 2004
Thursday, September 16, 2004
END EFFECTOR
Two warnings: not only does End Effector require a decent PC to get the most out of (although not anything major - my poor old P3 733 struggles a little with certain sections of the game, but it's always playable), it's also a much larger download than any of the other shmups we've looked at so far. At around 80MB, readers on dial-up should either forget it or be prepared for much twiddling of thumbs.
Is it worth it? Very much so. Apparently created by the Kyoto University Micro Computer Club, what you're getting for your nomoney (like all the games linked to here, End Effector is completely free) is a shmup that you could justify charging full whack for.
It looks good, for a start. Although the gameplay remains resolutely two-dimensional, everything is created from polygons (bar the bullets, which remain 2D). And, again, it sounds as good as it looks.
Okay, so the first level is disappointing. The visuals look dull - shittybrown sandscape backgrounds are never a good idea - and enemy placement and patterns are equally boring. There's little challenge there and little sign of imagination or flair. Things improve drastically with the arrival of the first boss, the warning screen accompanied by some smart camera direction. The soundtrack really kicks into gear, giving proceedings a sense of the urgent, and everything begins to sparkle.
You're equipped with both a standard shot and a cool black hole-style secondary weapon. Charge this up by holding down your secondary fire button then, with the button still held down, move your ship in the direction you want to fire it off. Let go of the button and the black hole flies off from its point of origin towards whichever direction you indicated. It's a satisfying system, allowing you to destroy enemies sneaking up behind you or those that you missed the first time around. It also allows you to get out of some of the very tight spots the designers put you in - level two sees you surrounded by two tiers of enemy ships moving in a circle around you and use of the black hole weapon here is the only way to get through unscathed. At full charge, it flies though most everything it hits (apart from bosses, natch).
One minor complaint (other than the underwhelming start) is that your ship's hit box is poorly defined, making snaking through some of the shot patterns that come your way more difficult than it needs to be. Otherwise, this is an absolutely top-notch shooter, with high production values and a good understanding of how to provide a balanced challenge (the difficulty cure is perfect, letting you get that little bit further each time you play) with an enjoyable and thrilling experience.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 20:05
CHO REN SHA
Chunky. That's the best way to describe Cho Ren Sha. Chunky graphics, chunky music, chunky sound effects, chunky gameplay. This is shmupping that comes from the 16bit era, with enemy attack waves that need to be memorised if they're to be beaten successfully (and that are actually memorable, which isn't something that you come across all that often) and a simple but smart powerup system. There's one specific enemy type that always releases powerups on defeat - the powerups appear in the form of a spinning collection of three balls, one of which will increase your shot rate and power, one of which will gift you with an extra smart bomb, and a final one which gives you a one-time shield.
And that's about it for game mechanics. The important thing to remember here is that Cho Ren Sha contains more personality and is more likable that pretty much every homebrew shmup around. It's lack of subtlety is part of its winning charm. The background shoots past at a frightening rate, enemies appear on screen with equal speed. Colours are thrown around left, right and centre. It's wonderful.
As with the visuals, so with the sound. The music is the sort of thing that probably sounds terrible out of the game, fit only for lifts and supermarkets, but is exactly right within it.
Altogether, this is the kind of thing that you thought had died along with the Megadrive - a shooter that leaves you with a huge grin on your face. Happily, you were wrong.
Get ready for sore thumbs, though. The old school sensibilities extend to a lack of autofire.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 17:17
VAX11
The first of three games today, none of which do anything particularly new, but all of which are accomplished in their own right, VAX11 is very, very (very) basic. Visually, the entire game is designed from ASCII characters. Gameplay is equally simple - shoot, don't get shot. Every now and again a powerup will scroll down either the left or right hand side of the screen - they're the things made out of an equals sign held inside a couple of square brackets. Shoot them, then grab the 'P' that emerges.
Despite, or perhaps because of its simplicity, it's a highly addictive title. The time-limited gameplay brings the score challenge to the fore. Add in some more nice touches - the screen shake and sound effect on defeating a boss, the debris flying off the boss as you shoot it, the background starfield, the different properties of enemy bullets (some homing, some drifting downwards, some with delayed movement) - and the excellent sense of control over and speed of movement on your ship, and you've got a little gem of a game.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 15:59
Wednesday, September 15, 2004
Wednesday, September 15, 2004
That's a point. If I direct you to a download that has an .lzh extension, you'll need a utility called Lhasa to get it working. Basically, an .lzh file is similar to a zipped one - it's just another type of compression technique, one that seems to be used quite a lot in Japan, but not anywhere else. You should be able to find Lhasa through a Google search (it's totally free), but if not I've made it available for download here.
Very, very easy to use. Simply run that executable and Lhasa will be installed to your PC. Download your .lzh file to your desktop and, once done, simply drag and drop it over the Lhasa icon (also on your desktop). Everything will happen automatically after that. Piece of cake.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 13:58
AGATING
While it's far too easy, Agating is a nice little introduction to bullet dodging (the download link is in English, three up from the bottom of that page). Its slow enemy bullet speed and extremely small player craft hit box (which is only the size of your ship's light blue cockpit window) give you the time and freedom needed to squeeze your way through the barrage heading your way. It's got some gorgeous enemy shot patterns, too.
The health of enemies is indicated next to each of them and reduces each time you hit them. Again, it's usefulness as a trainer is highlighted by the relative strength of enemies compared to those in other shmups - even the weakest ere requires around eight hits before it's destroyed. It forces you to fight your way through the bullets by preventing you from simply destroying everything as soon as it appears on the screen, but also teaches you to focus on your aim at the same time as your avoidance technique.
The twist in Agating is the shield system on your own ship. On the right hand side of the screen are two coloured bars. Take a hit and the blue bar starts to count down to your eventual destruction. This is where the green bar underneath it comes into play. Your shield recharges by absorbing enemy bullets, the number required being indicated next to the word 'need'. Each time you take a hit, this required amount increases by ten.
It's a clever system, but one that's not balanced particularly well. If your bullet dodging skills are up to scratch, the only time you'll take hits is when there are hundreds of the things flying about the screen, which means that you've got plenty to refill the shield with. In the boss battles, it means that you simply have to keep moving over the centre of the boss - the point of origin for its bullets - whenever things get difficult. As long as you're careful and don't take any unnecessary hits, you should reach the end of the (short) game in no time at all. Removing the lives system might have made for a tighter play experience, as would powering down the shield a bit (something relatively minor, such as increasing the number of shots required each time it's hit by fifteen instead of ten).
That's not to say that it's bad - far from it. As a trainer it's excellent - not only are you asked to put bullet dodging into practice, but there are a number of occasions when you can test out your bullet hoarding skills (with those enemies that aim directly for you). The way that it subtracts points from your final score depending on how many times you had to rely on your shield also helps give it some longevity, rewarding more skillful play. Definitely worth spending some time with, especially if you want a fairly easy introduction to scrolling shooters.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 13:57
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
Incidentally, a joypad is highly recommended for all of these games. While they're all playable with a keyboard (to the best of my knowledge, anyway), a joypad is a far more sensible option. Any old piece of crap will do - I've got the most basic Microsoft Sidewinder pad available and it's just fine for shmups.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 14:46
TUMIKI FIGHTERS
As I say, Noiz2sa might not be the best place to kick off. For some reason, newcomers to games have difficulty seeing that kind of basic, pure gaming experience as anything special, especially when they perceive its visuals to be bland. Look at how Rez bombed at retail - you can put some of the blame for that on the increasing ineptitude of Sega's marketing department, of course, but a greater part of the blame has to rest with the visual design. It spoke to me as a gamer, because it harks back to the days of green-on-black wireframe games (the original Star Wars arcade cab, for example), but I can understand why it leaves some people who don't have that sense of history cold. It also worked well as an example of how videogames can push artistic boundaries, but the very fact that it was a video game meant that those who should have been interested in that aspect of it instead dismissed it out of hand.
And if there's one title that Noiz2sa shares a design aesthetic with, it's Rez.
Which is why I point you now to another of Kenta Cho's little pieces of genius, TUMIKI Fighters.
The world of TF is one made up of a child's bulding bricks. Your 'plane, enemy fighters, the backgrounds, all share this in common. It's more than just a visual thing, though, and provides the twist that makes the game unique.
Shoot the first enemy. It's front half drops off. Nothing particularly strange there, apart from the words "Catch me!" that suddenly appear. Sure enough, move your 'plane into the part as it falls and they become joined. Destroy the aft-scection of the enemy and that, too, can be added to your own 'plane. This can be done with every single enemy you see, eventually providing you with an avatar that can, providing you make it through unharmed, fill the entire screen.
The point of all this? Well, first of all every captured enemy part adds its firepower to your own. Secondly, for every second or so that you manage to keep hold of an enemy part (they disappear when shot) you receive bonus points, the number of points dependant on the size of the part.
The bigger your 'plane, the easier it is for the enemies to hit. Pressing and holding a second button will hide all the additional parts you've gained, preventing them from being damaged, but at a cost. Firstly, the amount of bonus points you gain from extra parts is reduced when they're hidden. Secondly, your movement is slightly restricted (something which, after a little bit of play, you can use to your advantage, as it allows you to attack enemies from above or below). Thirdly, while extra parts act as a shield around your plane (the hit box of which is the one orange square in the centre), when they're hidden they no longer do this. Fourthly, while this button is held you cannot add any other parts to your 'plane, meaning that you have to risk getting some of them shot off if you want to catch a new piece.
It's a very clever mechanic, constantly tempting you with larger and more powerful pieces. The fact that extra bits mean not just more power, but also more points, is the killer.
If Noiz2sa didn't grab you, give this a whirl instead. It's a horizontal scroller, demonstrates an appealing sense of humour (while a lot of shmups give the player of an impending boss encounter with sirens and a large red flashing "WARNING! WARNING! HUGE ENEMY ON RADAR!" notice, TF's bouncy building blocks form the words "WARNING! A HUGE TOY IS APPROACHING!") and just feels altogether more open to knockabout play. The music and sound effects, as in all of Kenta Cho's titles, fit the action perfectly.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 13:22
NOIZ2SA
First up, then, is the completely abstract and utterly beautiful Noiz2sa. Kenta Cho is increasingly recognised as a godlike figure in the homebrew scene, purely because of the games he's produced up until now. Noiz2sa forms part of a trilogy of releases, the other two parts being the equally impressive Parsec47 and rRootage (both of which we'll return to at a later date).
For me, though, this is the best of the three. Where the other two follow a traditional shmup structure of leading the player through a number of levels in order, each of the ten on offer exists independantly of the others - you just pick the one you want to score attack. The game's visual beauty is in it's simplicity. Enemies are all made up of basic squares. You're a red dot in the middle of a spinning cage of green lines. The backgrounds (such as they are) are abstract, repetitive wireframes. It's purposefully clinical, the lack of pointless extraneous detail allowing you to put all of your focus where it's required.
Gameplay is also basic. Shoot. Don't get shot. No smart bombs, no alternate modes of fire, nothing. Just fire and move, fire and move. A second button allows you to slow your ship's movement to a crawl, making for more precise movement. Newcomers to the genre might see it as a strange addition - surely in a screen that full of bullets you at least want speed on your side? - but there are moments where that increased level of precision is essential.
Your ship's hit box is only as large as the red square inside the spinning green lattice. Even when an enemy shot passes over the hit box, you may still be saved from death - if one of the green lines is over the hit box to any degree, the shot will pass through without causing you damage. Only when the hit box is completely out in the open is it in danger.
And what danger. While all the other visual elements that go together to make the game are simple and austere, the enemy shot patterns that come your way are anything but. The secret to 'bullet curtain' games is to keep moving. Never stay in one place for too long unless you're bullet hoarding (one which I forgot to define the other day: bullet hoarding is the practice of staying in a certain section of the screen in order to lure enemy shots towards you, creating a clear space elsewhere, then moving into that clear space and taking advantage of the few moments respite it gives you). Never panic - if you see a gap that you think you might just about be able to get through, any gap at all, go for it. You'll often surprise yourself.
Destroy an enemy and it'll leave behind a group of smaller green squares. These are bonus points - move your avatar over them and your score will increase. A nice little touch here is that your avatar acts as a point of gravity for these green squares, meaning that you can try and keep them on screen if you can't quite get to pick them up yet.
Noiz2sa's intentions are clear. 'Endless' modes of differing difficulty reinforce the message that this is a game all about the score. Each of the ten levels is broken down into sub-stages, and while you're playing your previous best score for that sub-stage is diplayed on the right of the screen, with the difference between that and your current run shown next to it. It's also a brilliant way of training yourself up in the most basic discipline needed to tackle the best of today's commercially-available console and arcade shooters: bullet dodging.
The music is excellent and entirely fitting for the game. A bit of a shame that there are only the five tracks (level six having the same music as level one, and so on), but that's a very, *very* minor complaint. Not even a complaint, really. Turn it up loud - it's yet another addition to the game that pulls you even further into the screen, hypnotising you into the near-mythical gaming 'zone'.
If you're having trouble, keep at it. You *will* be overwhelmed at first. I was slightly iffy about making this the first game I pointed people towards, as it throws you in at the deep end (even though control of your avatar is stripped right back to the bare bones), so the next post will look at something slightly less hardcore.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 13:05
Sunday, September 12, 2004
Sunday, September 12, 2004
Ah. Before we do that, I just realised that there was something else I forgot to do: justify my love.
Who's the real enemy in a shmup? The waves of ships hurtling towards you, all guns firing? The colossal guardians barring your progress to the next level? The intricate firework patterns formed by curtains of bullets, demanding that you find a path through? The programmers and designers behind it all?
Nup. None of the above. The enemy is you. Your shit reactions, stopping you from moving out of the way in time. Your crappy memory, making you forget that the next wave that comes from the right hand side of the screen fires a spiral of shots at you, not a straight line of them.
This is what shmups do that other genres (possibly bar 2D platform games) don't: they make you want to hone your skills in order to beat your previous best. And that's partly because of something that's been with us since Space Invaders - the High Score table. Back in the days when arcades in the UK were places you could actually have a laugh in, rather than the grotty, shit-stained holes they've become, there was a thrill to be had from seeing your initials flashing up in the list of Today's Best or All Time Greatest. It's a thrill that Internet rankings and unofficial high score tables are now replicating, which is undeniably A Good Thing. It's not just about competition, either - beating other peoples' scores is definitely a part of it, but the main draw is the knowledge that you can do better (something which becomes obvious after glancing at the high score threads on some Internet fora - NTSC-uk being a case in point - and witnessing complete strangers urging each other to improve, posting their own strategies for others to make use of).
It's a specific type of gameplay called score challenge and is something that, done right, can give a game a massively extended lifespan. Sega's NiGHTS wouldn't have been half the game it is without it.
But this score challenge isn't the only thing. Shmup gaming is also about achieving that high score in style. Clearing a game in one credit or, for the truly obsessive, one life. Making it through without using any smart bombs. Staying in the path of a curtain of bullets until the very last moment in order to maximise your score, then *just* squeezing through a space a couple of pixels wide and making it out the other side.
Shmups ask you to put skills into practice which you forgot long ago. More than that, they're absolute tests of those skills.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 23:53
Saturday, September 11, 2004
Saturday, September 11, 2004
First up, let's get some basic terms defined to prevent having to go off on a tangent at any point in the future.
A shmup is a shoot 'em up. Nearly always restricted to a two-dimensional plane. Sometimes fixed on a single screen, with your movement limited to left/right - think Space Invaders. Sometimes placed on a single screen with your avatar capable of moving in four or eight directions - think Robotron. Sometimes vertically scrolling, normally at a forced speed (think 1942), but occasionally under the player's control (think Commando), with your avatar placed at the bottom of a screen longer than it is wide. Sometimes horizontally scrolling, again forced more often than not, with your avatar placed on the left hand side of the screen and moving to the right - think R-Type. Horizontal scrollers can also, very rarely, place the player in a wrap-around setting - move far enough in one direction and you'll end up back where you started - and allow the player to decide which direction they'll move in. Defender being the obvious example here.
They also sometimes take place in a three-dimensional world, with the camera laced behind your avatar and moving into the screen - think Space Harrier. Can also sometimes provide the player with the full 360 degrees of movement within an arena - think certain areas in Starfox 64/Lylat Wars.
That's a shmup. The core principles are limited interaction with the world - move, shoot - and, more often than not, forced scrolling at a consistent speed.
Enemies come in waves, generally apearing in fixed patterns. It makes scrolling shmups into something of a memory test - memorise the attack patterns, move to pre-empt them. Despite this, you'll still be relying on your reactions most of the time.
You'll often face end of level bosses at, er, the end of each level. Massive, hulking behemoths with ridiculous levels of firepower available to them. Sometimes you'll face mid level bosses, too, which may take the form of smaller, less intimidating versions of the end of level monsters.
Along with your standard fire button, a lot of shmups kit you out with smart bombs: screen-clearing weapons of mass destruction. You'll maybe have a total of three at your disposal when you start out, with more available through clearing levels, meeting specific score targets (you'll also often be gifted an extra life [or 1Up] for this) or collecting power ups.
Power ups are 'dropped' by certain enemies or appear after clearing a specific wave of enemies. In 1942, for example, waves of red enemies pop up every now and again; destroy the entire wave and the last one to go will leave a power up behind. The nature of power ups changes from game to game, too.
Slowdown can be the shmupper's friend. It occurs when there's too much happening on screen for either the game engine or the hardware to cope with properly. The frame rate (the rate at which the image on your screen refreshes) drops and everything slows to a crawl, with the movement of the player's avatar going syrupy. Friendly, because when the screen is that packed that slowdown kicks in, chances are that you'll need the extra time to be able to find a path through the hail of bullets causing the technical problems.
Collision detection does exactly what it says on the tin. It's how the game knows that a collision has taken place, be it between the player avatar and an enemy bullet, the player avatar and an enemy, the player avatar and the scenery, an enemy ship and the player's bullets, and so on.
And that's about it for the basics. One final thing worth mentioning is the changing nature of collision detection over the years. Up until relatively recently, most shmups saw you lose a life (or shield energy, if that's the way the game played it) if any part of your avatar was hit. Not so any more. Certain of the newer shmups - Psyvariar included - twist things around slightly by making the majority of your avatar invincible, save for a region a few pixels large in the centre known as the hit box. Hit boxes have always been around, it's just that previously they covered the entire avatar.
So why the change? Tow reasons, really. Firstly, in order to keep an increasingly niche audience interested, shmups have become more and more difficult, to the point where most of the screen is taken up with enemy bullets. Beautiful, intense patterns of enemy bullets. The reduction in hit box size accommodates this change, allowing the player to weave in and out of the patterns and showboat their mad skillz. This brought about another evolution in shmups, which provides the second reason for the shrinking hit box: bullet grazing.
Psyvariar again. Your ship has a hit box of something like a 2x2 pixel square in its centre, the rest of it being impervious to enemy fire. Rather than just providing a means to more easily avoid enemy fire, though, Psyvariar asks you to use the invincible parts of your ship to graze (or buzz) the bullets, your score increasing with each bullet you rub. It changes the nature of the game from being one in which you avoid enemy fire to one where you actively seek it out.
Definitions end.
Now, the point of all this. Until very recently, the shmup was an endangered species. Publishers weren't interested. 2D? Fuck that noise. We want huge, sprawling, real life environments. No story? Who the hell's going to buy a game with no story? We want to be Hollywood, dude. We've got no time for games that don't come with a two-hundred page background document, thirty speaking parts and a budget that rivals anything Peter Jackson can rustle up.
That state of affairs seems to be changing slighty, with some relatively big name games out there or due for release soon, but it may be that what we're seeing are the last grasping breaths of a commercially-dead genre. Commercially-dead in terms of traditional publishing methods and sales outlets, that is, because there's a huge, thriving community of homebrew shmup creators right here on the Interweb. And it's with that in mind that I've written and you've been reading this post. I'm going to try and point out some good places to go for shmupping of the highest quality, starting with my very next post.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 13:14
Friday, September 10, 2004
Friday, September 10, 2004
There's a fairly decent piece in this month's issue of Edge that looks at homebrew shmups. It's woefully limited in the number of creators it interviews, but it makes some smart (albeit throwaway) observations about current design trends - the blinkered overemphasis on the importance of narrative being one - and highlights some of the bigger titles in the field.
As is the trend with Edge features, though, it doesn't go into anything like the depth that it could and probably should have. Limited amount of pages blah, too many bases to cover blah.
On the plus side, it's reminded me of something that I meant to do a while back, and that's use this here blog to try and catalogue the more interesting examples of the form. Ever since losing myself to Psyvariar Revision earlier on in the year, I've been reawakened to the simple, heartstopping pleasures they provide. It's a hit that's peculiar to shmups; while they appear fundamentally basic in terms of design - scroll around 2D plane, shoot things, make sure things don't shoot you - the best of them add layers and layers of complexity just underneath the surface for you to discover as you will. I'd like to try and get some sort of buzz going about them from quarters that wouldn't usually give a stuff, and maybe help, in my own little way, to move them back onto the mainstream menu.
Those of you unsympathetic to the ways of the video gamer may want to look away now, although I'd much rather rather you stuck around. You never know, you might just find something you like.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 23:55
Tuesday, September 07, 2004
Tuesday, September 07, 2004
So, we're still left with the problem of the joypad presenting itself as a barrier to new gamers. This was hammered home to me on two seperate occasions recently.
The first was when I had to babysit a six year old girl for a couple of hours and decided to plonk her down in front of Animal Crossing for a bit. It's not like she's a newcomer to games - she owns a GBA SP and a couple of titles (one of the Harry Potters and something else along those lines), so I figured she'd at least be able to use the GameCube joypad. But no - attempts to move her avatar from left to right saw her twisting in her seat, trying to get the character to different places by holding the pad at different angles. There is, I think, a possibility that the problem there was with the analogue stick. Rather than the relatively simple eight directions and on/off of the GBA's traditional digital cross (think SNES and Megadrive controllers), the analogue stick recognises degrees of pressure and any alteration of direction in a 360 degree rotation.
It can cause problems. Left, right, up and down are simple to gauge, even if you've never used a pad before. Despite what I said in the previous post, pressing and holding a specific button down in order to change from a walk to a run can be intuitive once explained. The analogue stick seems to throw people, even though it's theoretically a more natural way of controlling movement.
Second example: I was having a crack on some of the Edinburgh tracks on Project Gotham Racing 2 when my brother's SO came into the room. We'd been to Edinburgh the previous day and, as a result, she took up the offer of a few two player races (PGR2's big selling point is that it accurately models cities down to their doorknobs). Again, the cue for much twisting of the pad in an attempt to get the car to turn around corners. And, again, I think the analogue stick is to blame.
Newcomers to games don't have the luxury of a game that introduces the concept of analogue control in a gradual, playful way. They have no Super Mario 64, no NiGHTS, no Ape Escape. These were games that introduced the idea to the wider console audience and they taught their lessons well. Remember when you first tried to control 64bit Mario? It was a struggle to get him to move in a straight line, let alone collect stars, but within a short amount of time it became second nature. Why? Because Nintendo not only allowed you to take the game at your own pace, but actively wanted you to do so. The very first thing you're encouraged to do when you fire the cart up is experiment, play around.
That happens in remarkably few games and never - never - in racing games. It's also something that PC games suffer from. Think about when you first tried to use mouselook in a PC first-person game. How much time did you spend pushing the mouse up in order to try and get your character to move forwards, only to find hir looking at the floor? I know people who, despite years of practice, *still* have trouble with that.
This is without the additional problem that is dual analogue control. If you're trying to get somebody into gaming and they're struggling with the analogue stick, how the hell are they expected to get along using two of the fuckers simultaneously?
It's presumably something to do with the need for each hand to be working independantly of the other - rather than old-style home computer joysticks, where your one hand controlled all movement and your other simply hit the 'fire' button, you're now required to use both hands to control movement, whilst also keeping a couple of fingers free on each for performing other actions. How many people can type with both hands? Not a huge number. So why do we expect people who haven't had years of training to be able to pick up something much more confusing at the drop of a hat? Unlike the single-analogue issue, this is a problem specific to games that allow the player to move within a third dimension and one that I don't have any ready answers for.
However, as far as other titles go, I'm tempted by the idea that motion sensor controllers might be the - or, at least, a - solution. If I stick a non-gamer down in front of Daytona USA and let them play it with a steering wheel, there's not any problem. It's simple logic - if you want something that you're in control of to move to the right, you move your right hand. If you want to make it go to the left, you move your left. I know I'm stating the bleeding obvious here, but that's where the twisting and turning comes from.
Ideally, it'll happen with a new console. PS2's GameTrak looks interesting, but, at this late stage in the machine's life, is unlikely to make a significant dent in public awareness or garner a huge amount of support from the development community. Much has been made of the fact that Nintendo are known to have been researching motion sensor tech and, as it hasn't popped up in the DS hardware, I'm holding out hope that it's scheduled to appear with the GameCube's successor (or, failing that, GBA2). They've recently shown that they're still capable of bold, shocking innovation with the DS's touch screen, even if they have yet to prove that they're capable of using that innovation as anything more than a gimmick.
Of course, I could be completely wrong and GameTrak will be a resounding success. Somehow, though, I doubt it.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 22:24
Monday, September 06, 2004
Monday, September 06, 2004
Been thinking various thoughts about game controls and controller types recently, and figured I'd stick some of them up here. One per day, maybe.
So then, thought #1. Sony's EyeToy. It's a red herring, isn't it?
I know, I know. I bigged it up on release. A digital camera that sits on top of your TV and, theoretically, does away with the need for a hand-held controller device. I think I said something along the lines of "if developers with vision and imagination can come up with innovative ways to use it, it could be the invention that brings more new people into video games than anything else". Maybe I was right, and it's just that developers - the ones with the money and resources, at least - don't possess the necessary level of imagination. I think it's more likely, though, that I got it wrong and the device itself is fundamentally flawed.
The big noise about EyeToy was that it supposedly removed the one huge barrier between the player and the game world - the joypad (or keyboard, mouse, joystick, etc.). The need for the player to interact with the game world through pressing buttons on a peripheral device presents an immediate seperation from that world - it's false, indirect control. Games which present the world in a first-person view suffer the most - you're seeing your surroundings (or those of your avatar) through your own eyes, and it takes some serious suspension of disbelief to allow yourself to be taken into that world when you're having to press B to run, or struggling to look up and down properly because the game doesn't allow you to invert the pad's vertical axis.
EyeToy doesn't present this type of problem, said the hype. Okay, maybe not, but it breaks the sense of 'being there' in a much more serious and damaging way: the player sees hirself on the television. Ze's transported into the game world visually, but that's all. Beat the ninja hordes by ACTUALLY PUNCHING THEM! Only not - what's really happening is that you're beating the ninja hordes by making your unensouled virtual double punch them. It's like watching a video of yourself - you've got a vague sensation of doing the things that you're shown to be doing, but the very fact that you can see yourself increases the feeling of dislocation.
It doesn't have to be this way. If developers can start making games that require the player to use the EyeToy to control their on-screen charge without superimposing the player onto the image, it could still all work out fine. It maybe won't be the revolution I was hoping for, but it might at least be a step in the right direction. There are two main obstacles to the gaming camera becoming anything other than a funky little gimmick. The first is that the player would need to have some idea of the physical confines of the screen. How far does ze need to stretch to perform Action X? It's hard to see a way around this other than the placement of a cursor on the screen, which itself introduces a barrier of artificiality between the player and the on-screen action. The second problem is one of ideology. Developers can't get past the idea that EyeToy-enabled games have to show the player on the television. They're looking at it as a traditional camera, using it to do things that cameras traditionally do, and blinding themselves to any new possibilities.
Doomed to be a party game gadget, then? It looks likely. Taken out of the box at birthdays and Christmas, but otherwise left to gather dust. Not quite up there with spectacular failures like the Famicom Power Glove or the Virtual Boy - EyeToy is a commercial success, after all - but not something that's going to feature heavily in the future of games either. A shame.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 19:32
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Losing the fight against mediocrity for the last few years. Fire a volley |
