Enough with the sequels already.

You can't have a franchise game unless you have a series.

Halo 4 is coming out relatively soon, no doubt it'll break all records and make gobs of money, ensuring that there's a Halo 5 (or 4.2 or DLC or whatever). Halo 4 really isn't the fourth game in the series though, it's really, what, the sixth or seventh? It all depends on how you count.

Video games and movies are quite different in this respect - movies that launch into their 6th or 7th title run into the trouble of alienating their audience. Games like Halo, Call of Duty or Assassin's Creed defy this trend, and seem only to improve as the years go on. Maybe it's because games are less prone to the whims of a single director (Lucas, for instance). There's something more democratic about gaming - if the fans are outraged and concerted enough in their efforts, they can enact (some) change. This is especially true of PC gaming. Modders have become so good at making their own games, they often eclipse the initial product.

It'd be a mistake to think that just because a series has been successful doesn't mean it will continue to bring in the big bucks. If a director makes a bad movie, usually they get called out on it. Games, on the other hand, are gradually replaced (Medal of Honor was gradually swept aside by Call of Duty, eventually some military shooter will probably usurp Call of Duty's multi-billion dollar throne).

But are gaming developers just the games they produce, or are they something else? Let me put it another way. If you were a developer, would you want to be known as "We're the group that brings you X game", or would you want to say, "We offer a variety of quality games set to our standard of excellence".

There are a few groups who fit that business model, I think. Rockstar games, Nintendo. Back in the day Rare games were quite good. Anyone remember Jet Force Gemini? Sega games used to be reliably good. Sega was really on a roll for a while: Jet Grind Radio, Shenmue, Phantasy Star Online, The 2K sports series, etc.

Again though, the onus is on gamers. Stop wanting to play the same game over and over, instead demand more variety, more ingenuity from your games. Either that, or we become a gullible herd, playing the same shitty FPS as last year.

K

Defining 'Sandbox'

Sandbox games are more or less a new thing. Sure, a lot of games in the past have had sandbox features (like create your own character, create a level or whatever), but games which are entirely sandbox are relatively new. It might be useful to try and define what makes a game sandbox, and which games seem sandbox but really aren't.

Minecraft immediately comes to mind. Some other sandbox games come to mind, though. Does anyone remember RPG Maker?

I remember playing RPG Maker with my friend Travis. The game had a dizzying level of complexity (which wasn't really interfaced that well, making it pretty difficult to actually do anything). We had a lot of fun with the game (despite the fact that we never actually made anything close to an RPG [The only thing we made was a spell called the WrathOMoses because the game had inexplicably  provided a clip art of a burning star of David]). I remember really wanting to make a whole game from the ground up to give to my friends to play, only I just never got around to it. That, and I hated the Sony PlayStation.

Certainly there have been plenty of games with sandbox features. Let's be clear about what really makes a game sandbox by defining what sandbox isn't: changing your character's features like they were a Barbie doll doesn't make it sanbox. I remember the game Re-Volt had a pretty awesome track editor option, maybe one of the first games to do so with sufficient depth to make it actually usable.

I frequently hear Skyrim described as being a sandbox game. It isn't really, Skyrim is really just a massive theme park with sandbox elements. You may have a hundred choices as to what you want to do in Skyrim, but the bulk of the game lies in completing quests, killing enemies and levelling up. You can't, say, decide to build a castle somewhere, or explore beyond the limits of Skyrim - the game doesn't allow that. Fences define a theme park. Skyrim has fences all over the gaffe. I can't kill such-and-such a Jarl and usurp his throne because if I do I'll lose the ability to do this key quest at some point later in the game. Don't get me wrong, I love Skyrim. But is it sandbox? Not entirely.

Racing games by their nature offer a pretty limited scope of what you can do: with that said, Trials Evolution is probably about as sandbox as racing games will ever get. It's probably one of the most sandbox games of all time, when you look at it. But then to really embrace the game as sandbox, you need to spend hours on the track editor, which isn't the easiest thing to navigate (or I'm just a bit dense with editors).

So what's the point of all this? Clearly there's still a place for character driven games (i.e. Red Dead Redemption, or what have you), yet it seems to me we're entering into an age of complete customization. I find myself yearning for both - truly novelistic video games with fully developed characters, and sandbox games where I can do whatever the fuck I want.

K

We seriously can't figure out first-person sword fighting?

I'm writing this after spending the day hacking wave after wave of Falmer in Skyrim (just bought Dawnguard today). As much as I like Oblivion and Skyrim, the combat still leaves me dry.

Bladed combat in Skyrim goes something like this: attack, power attack, block, parry. Add some briefly amusing kill animations that add nothing to the gameplay and a slew of mostly useless melee abilities and you have a pretty bland, repetitive mix. Skyrim (Oblivion too) have a massive pile of other stuff to do, so that a moderately dull combat system doesn't matter so much. It's a pretty dull Elder Scrolls player who does nothing but hacks and slashes their way through the quests. Magic, stealth, archery, quests, exploration and all the other features easily paint over that gap to make highly enjoyable games.

I can't be the only person who remembers Call of Duty 2 for the 360. Shit, I reviewed even older Call of Duty and Medal of Honor games for the St. Augustine Record back in the day. First person shooters, in comparison, have become dizzyingly complex since those days. Observe.

This post isn't about the evils of the Call of Duty franchise, so much as I'm using it to make a point. The Call of Duty games have gotten increasingly complex over time (perhaps too much so). First person sword fighting games, though, have a long way to go before they hit the sweet spot between blessed simplicity and byzantine complexity. 

What is it about sword fighting anyway? I can think of so many games that fail when it comes to producing a compelling, bladed combat system: Assassin's Creed, The Elder Scrolls, any Lord of the Rings game you care to name, and on and on. Has any game ever really done it right? I don't think so.

I constantly fantasize that someday, someone will make an online FPS in an ancient or medieval world setting, complete with castles, sieges, spears, bows, swords and axes. Could you even imagine the satisfaction of smashing your enemy's skull in with a warhammer over the web? I'm fully convinced it's coming, eventually. But first things first, let's try and establish a baseline for sword fighting in gaming, one that can translate sufficiently cleanly to multiplayer.

K

Movie Games

Just how many video game/movie tie-ins have gamers suffered through?

An innumerable number, to be sure. So many of them have been utterly terrible games, too, which is the real tragedy. In some ways, movie games are probably one of the major obstacles to the whole "Video Games are Art Too" movement (akin to the comic books are art too movement). Movie games can, at times, be utterly reprehensible cash grabs, meant to suck the blood from eager fans (I'm looking at you, slew of terrible Lord of the Rings games).

Not all movie-games have been completely terrible. In fact, there have been a number of really great movie games. Star Wars Battlefront was a great game, probably one of the best Star Wars games ever. Battle for Middle Earth II was also quite good. All agree that Goldeneye 64 is a classic. You could list plenty of other decent, good and great movie games.

I don't necessarily have a problem with movie games. My beef is with shitty games period, and movie games are some of the worst offenders. What typically holds these games back is the utter lack of creativity that usually goes into them. Finding a movie game that doesn't follow the plot of the film word for word, letter for letter is something of a challenge. Ignoring plot (as gamers tend to do) most movie games offer repetitive, ho-hum action (come to think, I wonder what percentage of them are beat-em ups). The graphics tend to be lazily slapped together.

Here's my point in all of this - why do movie games have to come from current movies?

I can't be the only one who wants to see a Seven Samurai video game. The awesomeness of such a thing  cannot be understated (as long as it isn't a beat 'em up). If the game replicated the movie's most dramatic moments, supplemented them at times, brought in the soundtrack, kept that iconic black-and-white look, it might redefine what makes a movie game. The problem with all this is that there's not as much name recognition of the Seven Samurai as there is with Pixar's Brave or Star Wars or whatever. But if the gaming industry is out to make good games and not just capitalize on the flavor of the month, why not? The possibilities could be endless.

Philip Marlowe, Fistful of Dollars, Tora! Tora! Tora!, George Romero's Dawn of the Dead (!), and on and on and on. The pool is endless. Unfortunately the burden is on the players, and not the industry, to demand change from the status quo. As long as we keep forking over 60$ for the latest Transformers nightmare, the industry will keep shilling the shit and rolling in the dough.

K

I miss: Phantasy Star Online

I miss Phantasy Star Online. 

I bought PSO back in the halcyon days of the Sega Dreamcast. At that time, the DC was the only console capable of connecting to the internet. This was before high speed internet, so the only way to play was via dial-up connection. As such, I couldn't play the game online (and never gained the capabality, coincidentally) so I mostly played solo.

The story of PSO doesn't really matter that much. You're part of an intergalactic seed ship trying to discover the fate of a previous ship. More specifically, you're supposed to be tracking down Red Ring Rico, sort of. What PSO lacked in story it made up for with slick graphics, a high degree of customization and excellent multiplayer. 

It's hard to remember, but I think I convinced my friend Travis (who was my great friend and literally the only other person I knew who owned a Dreamcast) to get PSO. Playing PSO at Travis's house opened up new possibilities: I could finally play online. The dial-up cable was like some kind of genie's lamp - free items, free weapons, quick levelling, rare weapons, powerful MAGs. Online play was treacherous, though. You could join a bad room and get all of your stuff stolen by douchebag players - or they could kill you for no discernible purpose.

Eventually I moved on from PSO (as gamers do). Even then I remembered it fondly as a really cool game with almost endless replayability. The Dreamcast dwindled into obscurity, breaking my gaming heart. And then...

The Gamecube version of PSO contained both the original and the inferior but fun sequel. The graphics had improved slightly, the gameplay was a bit smoother, and (as the picture indicates) you could now play with up to 4 people. I distinctly recall playing PSO with my friends Travis, Tom and Kyle on four player splitscreen on my then 14 inch television (giving us all frequent headaches). Still, it was a total blast. While Episode II of PSO still wasn't as good, the game gave you the option to play 1 OR 2 with the same character, the kind of option you just don't get very often from most games these days. Imagine if Halo 4 let you go back and play the previous campaigns (!).

We played PSO to death in those days. The PVP was wildly unbalanced (if you play an android, you've basically got no chance against someone who can cast electricity spells at you), but was also a nice feature.

Needless to say, I was insanely excited for Phantasy Star Universe for the 360.

PSU seemed to promise everything that PSO had brought to the table and more. And yet the game was an unmitigated failure (the game itself was, whether or not it was profitable I have no clue). The story still sucked, but that wasn't the problem. Ultimately PSU suffered from over-complication and sheer cluster-fuck syndrome. The streamlined setting of PSO was scrapped in favor of massive cities (which I thought resembled the giant settlements in Star Wars Galaxies) that were bizarre and confusing. Playing online didn't seem to help matters, as the moment you arrived in a city, you were bombarded by hundreds of players shouting that they're selling this or that.

The actual combat in the game had become much more complex and confusing than the streamlined system in the earlier PSO. I'm not sure I ever got a handle on it. You could wield multiple weapons at the same time, which profoundly confused a PSO veteran like myself. Even the graphics (I thought) looked less stylized than in the DC version.

Ultimately, the worst part about PSU was the ridiculous "Hunter's License" fee you had to fork over just to play the game. That ensured I wouldn't stick with PSU. Single-player had become a total bore as well. That, and the simple fact that PSU wasn't PSO probably doomed the 360 rendition.

What kind of future does PSO have? Undoubtedly you can find some server somewhere to play the original online. With all of the Dreamcast games being (at times unnecessarily) ported to the 360 these days, maybe someone will have the sense to port PSO to Xbox Live Arcade. Hell, I'd pay 20$ to kick Dark Falz's ass again.

-K

Byzantine Fighting Games

Think of some of the oldest, most venerated gaming franchises. What comes to mind?

Street Fighter pops into my mind. I spent countless hours playing it as a kid. I fought my sister, dad, mom, friends. I got really cheap with E. Honda and still, to this day, can't beat Blanka to save my life. The M. Bison theme still gives me a sort of panic attack.

So today I went to go pick up Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade for the 360. I liked Street Fighter 4 (even though in a rage I had hurled it against the wall like a discus and shattered it), and I knew I would enjoy the game. Problem is that the person behind the counter got it mixed up with Street Fighter X Tekken.

I'm the adventurous type, so I figured I'd try it. The game held absolutely no appeal to me, mostly because I've never liked Tekken at all. But whatever, let's play. There's an achievement in the game for completing the tutorials, so I figured hey, what better way to acquaint myself with the game?

It starts off simple enough. Kick, punch, special move, super art. Familiar enough stuff. Then there's cross hits, tag switches, gem powers, ex power ups, assist gems, bonus gems, quick combos, Pandora mode. Holy fucking shit, when did fighting games become so damned convoluted? Street Fighter X Tekken is Byzantine with its myriad of special features, none of which really add much to the basic formula of the game (punch, kick, special move). The possibility of tagging up with your friends is nice. But if you're anything like me, you have no friends (at least none who are half as into games as you are), or you just don't care to wait around for them to sign in.

My brief and mostly unpleasant encounter with Street Fighter X Tekken reminds me of an even worse foray with Soul Calibur 5, a game with which the developers must have sought to inflict as much pain as possible on players.

It's amazing how little sword fighting there is in Soul Calibur these days. SC 4 annoyed the shit out of me with its new special moves, super-art esque moves and seemingly unending combos which made online multiplayer an exercise in aggravation and misanthropy. SC 5 ratchets up the pain on all levels - and the bizarre thing is, the basic movepool for characters seems to be shrinking! The Mitsurugi sword-sheathing moves seemed to have been completely removed, probably in favor of some stupidly complex combos (or for that idiotic costume creation mode, which legions of fans haven't quite yet realized is nothing more than digital Barbie mode).

So, are these games fun? Sure, for a little while. But they're so complex, so mired in years and years of bullshit from endless sequels and spinoffs, that the original winning formula which propelled them to such heights has been completely buried. I reflected on this as some god-like character repeatedly dropped a granite throne on me in the Soul Calibur 5 multiplayer - the series has completely lost its way. SC is one of the worst offenders (Street Fighter is bad too, but not quite as bad). Mortal Kombat is pretty bad as well.

Is it too much to ask that Capcom or Midway or other studios try something like creating a new franchise? Think about it - imagine the hype if Capcom decided to make a whole new fighting game from the ground up. Of course it would sell, but then it would require a lot of time and preparation, not like simply repackaging the same fighting game over and over, this time with a slightly sluttier Chun Li on the cover.

K

The Best Kept Secret in the Video Gaming World

Graphics aren't as important as they used to be.

I heard recently that Minecraft recently became the second-most played game on Xbox live, which is an incredible achievement. Minecraft's simplistic graphics and sandbox gameplay have proven to be a winning formula. Minecraft is a sort of antithesis to the Michael Bay school of video gaming (see Black Ops or the Modern Warfare series for  reference). I suspect that the success of Minecraft is due at least in part to the slew of repetitive FPS action games we've had for the past few years. With the promise of more miserable COD games on the horizon, Minecraft is quite like a splash of cold water to me.

Will the gaming industry take note? We can pray, anyway. The lesson to be learned from Minecraft is that one can eschew state of the art graphics and still make an extremely fun, addictive video game. My question is this - can developers apply that logic to other genres?

When's the last time you've played a good turn-based rpg? Wouldn't it be reasonably simple to make a turn-based, massive MMO rpg with simple graphics on a console like the 360? Of course it would. At least part of the problem is that it would be a significant risk for a company to invest so much into what amounts to a risky venture. It's simply safer for the big game companies to continue releasing the same video game over and over. Why tinker with a proven seller? Simply make minor tweaks to play, repackage, resell and repeat. Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty come to mind (I'm beginning to think they're my whipping boys). Let's not forget the absolute worst offenders: sports games. At this point, I'm quite convinced that Electronic Arts no longer employs human beings to make their video games and rather employs a complex algorithm that computes player stats and adjusts their game stats accordingly.

We gamers need to demand more from our video games. That means publicly calling out games that fail to meet expectations. But then again, Black Ops 2 will undoubtedly sell four hundred trillion copies, and then Activision and Treyarch or Infinity Ward will get busy repackaging the same shit sandwich they've been selling and go laughing all the way to the bank.

In the end, though, every series lives on borrowed time. Few have proven capable of lasting for time immemorial (curiously, most of them are Nintendo products). My point is that there's a lot of money to be made in anticipating the winds of change. The 360 brings a huge level of exposure to a game like Minecraft (and other arcade titles like Trials Evo, etc.)

K