OrtizGames

I am currently writing about SPORE (I really am – I really want to) but in order to get rid of a bad writer’s block, I’ve taken a breather from it and am writing about something else first.

Today, I want to bring up Torchlight.
I’m fascinated by the outburst the game caused around the gaming culture – Steam users especially, since it seemed to be a Steam “event” and it’s been called “Valve’s latest obsession”. There’s been excitement all around about being able to deck out your character in amazing armor, being able to get all these awesome weapons with magnificent effects, how lush the textures are and how addictive and fun the game is… but the thing that bewilders me is about people being enthralled with Torchlight is that it really brings nothing new to the table.

Torchlight is Diablo. In fact, it’s so much like Diablo that I might dare suggest it’s a phenomenon similar to the Waiting-On-Warhammer syndrome for a lot of players that are Waiting-On-DiabloIII. It’s the game in between, while people anxiously await more news from Blizzard about their third installment of America’s Classic Dungeon Crawler. There is practically no difference between Diablo and Torchlight, and even the pet system is taken directly from Fate, another Diablo clone.

It’s not a flawed game by any means, but it’s a little bit like playing an enhanced version of Monopoly. It still looks and feels and plays like Monopoly, no matter how upgraded the graphics may be and how smooth the game runs and how pretty the armor is.

I’m not saying Torchlight is bad. On the contrary, it’s a pretty fun game that keeps me entertained and I was more than half tempted to buy the full version of the game for myself so I could continue playing it (Hardcore Mode allows you to play with Permadeath and Lord knows I like a good challenge) but in the end I decided to opt out merely because I realized I could get much the same experience by playing Diablo II which is a game that came out nine years ago.

The fact that people that continue carbon copying games that came out almost a decade ago really grinds my gears sometimes, especially because it happens so often and so much in today’s industry. Right now, today, seven of the top sold video games on the charts are remakes and sequels with overused, rehashed game mechanics that may essentially be the same game (including Uncharted 2 – regardless of how good the game is it is almost exactly like Uncharted and you cannot ignore that fact) and the other three games are Wii Sports, Sonic and Mario at the Olympics and Borderlands, which essentially draw their own mechanics from plenty of other games in the past like any sports games in general, Olympics simulators and… something (let’s not start on Borderlands).

How did Mario and Sonic at the Olympics hit the top 10? Is it on sale or something? An early Christmas present for the kids? Come on, people.

Coming back to reused game mechanics, however, I think Brenda Brathwaite hit just the right note when she talked about getting sick of console gaming and seeing the same game repeated over and over at GeekEnd in Savannah (earlier today at 4:00pm). We are in an age of such repetition and copying that it’s hard to really fall in love with a game anymore. There’s been so few games that have really been revolutionary in the past ten years; we can only draw a handful. It’s the stories that are capturing our interest now, the environments and universes these games provide – and yet, if film can experiment with elements of film all the time, why on earth can’t games?

Returning to Torchlight, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t play it and enjoy it, but I believe its sudden massive following is a result of people wanting to play Diablo III more than its inherent quality. It is Diablo, with a few elements of what Diablo III has been advertising. Conversely, Demon’s Souls, I’ve come to conclude, is undoubtedly a Japanese take on Diablo – a player improves stats by fighting hordes of monsters in dungeons with different levels, avoiding traps and heading deeper and deeper into more dangerous areas, having to head back home to recuperate losses and save their gains; loot-centric item system; dying means you have to start from the beginning. However, Demon’s Souls manages to provide enough of a change in the gameplay and style that most people I’ve brought this up to have scoffed and have had a hard time believing this game could be anything like Diablo. But it is! They’ve merely done a good job of re-presenting it.

This has made me appreciate Demon’s Souls slightly less, but at the same time, I can’t complain. It’s a well made game. I feel the same way about Torchlight. I do like it, but I wish we weren’t so reliant on the same formulas that we’ve relied on for since the birth of the games industry – the same conventions, the same strategies, the same A+ B + C cookie-cutter game ideas that make their way to store shelves every other week.

Let’s come up with something new, eh, industry?

tl;dr: Torchlight is a fine game, but why is it exactly like Diablo? Why are so many games identical nowadays? Why can’t we make a new kind of game?

Share on Facebook

I’m building a game. I don’t have time to document it because I am so behind in production. It will be posted here when it is released. It will be interesting. You will be able to let your kids play it. I hope you like it.

Also: http://www.mcvuk.com/news/32048/360-can-handle-MGS4-says-Microsoft

Reply:

Courtesy of: http://www.picturesforsadchildren.com/index.php?comicID=184

Share on Facebook

SPORE works. Oh, God, I was so convinced the problem was my video card, but after Googling a little, I learned about a community of people that were having the same issues, and by using a simple yet retarded fix I managed to install the game and have it work. It doesn’t run spectacularly on my PC; it’s at lowest settings, and even then it has laggy moments (so maybe I should get the XG Station anyway?) but it runs, dear God, and I’m so happy that I finally have the chance to play. I’ve been out and about all today, fretting over being able to get home and play at 8pm. I’ve only made it to the Creature Stage.

But learning all about the issues and bugs in SPORE and the features that have been lacking in the final version, I’ve become thoughtful as to what problems must have arisen in its development, and where focus has been placed in the game design in order to refine particular aspects of the game that were considered core to its experience. Why is it plagued with so many glitches, errors and difficulties? Why is the DRM so broken?

I’ll be sure to write up a SPORE critique for you all sometime very soon. For now, I’m going to go into hiding for a few days while I play it.

Share on Facebook

I had a strange and horrible nightmare last night that revealed several things about myself.

In the dream, I was playing a portable game. It could have been any console. Something like an action RPG with 2D graphics and puzzle elements. I ended up beating the game after what felt like an eternity of seeking treasure and fighting giant tortoises with cannons on their backs (I’m already considering the game possibilities of this) only to be taken back to my village and being offered a magnificent reward: a weapon I could later use by continuing the completed game, so essentially I could keep my prior equipment and do more long quests. In spirit, it sounds like a strange hybrid between Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles and Monster Hunter Freedom 2.

Anyway, the nightmare happened when I was trying to choose which of the legendary weapons of the village I wanted to have. As I was scrolling through them, I got a preview of that the weapon looked like, but nothing on its stats! Its attack power, special abilities and buffs were nowhere on the screen! And I looked around for some button that would give me the info of the weapon before I chose it, but I couldn’t spot any info on the screen, and was terrified to press any button out of fear that I would accidentally select the weapon when I wasn’t ready.

Then I accidentally pressed the back/cancel button, and suddenly the gifting ceremony was over! I was outside, and I didn’t have any of the weapons! I ran around the village trying to find where the ancient weapons were stored and see if I could still have one, but to no avail. Panicked, I tried to remember where I had last saved my game and whether it would be feasable to simply restart my console and try working back up to that point.

In my desperation, I woke myself up and lay there in stupor, thinking that timeless phrase again: “Oh my god, I’m so glad that was just a dream.”

And then I had to think to myself, “Only a game designer would have a nightmare about bad design choices in a screen for selecting a weapon.”

I must be insane.

Share on Facebook

I somehow bumped into a video (aha, it was Kotaku) that detailed the many issues and Hell-like practices of our friendly neighborhood Gamestop on Youtube, to the style of Zero Punctuation.

Watch it here. Do it. it’s important. It’s also NSFW because of language (and the mutilation of stick figures, if anyone around you is offended by that), so get some headphones.

It’s a 9-part video series that goes on and on about Gamestop and how evil it is in everything it does. It even has a very thoughtful, well-thought-out conclusion.

I’ve hated Gamestop for a while now, but it’s usually been from the developer standpoint (which he mentions), where game creators actually get marginal money from sold games by Gamestop because the store relies so heavily on their pawnshop philosophy of buying and selling used games and that money never actually makes it back to the developer. Game devs only make money off the first “new” sale–not only that, but we make the tiniest revenue, with store fees, packing and shipping fees and publisher fees subtracted. In the end, game devs might make something like (this is not a fact) maybe five dollars off every new game sold. Imagine that when facts and figures are reported, we get numbers like “one million copies sold”. Most titles don’t ever get up to one million, and who knows how many of those millions are returns and sales of used copies, which means that in our model that that’s not actually five million dollars of revenue. And then subtract the cost of making the game.

Gamestop sucks on many, many levels, and I plan on probably never shopping there again if I can. I have SPORE reserved at an EB Games so when I get back to the States in a week, I may be making my final purchase. But then again, because Gamestop only holds on to your game for forty eight hours, and sometimes not even that long, my copy of SPORE might be gone already. In which case I will cancel my reservation and get my five bloody dollars back. I hope.

Watch the videos. Watch them. You, as a game consumer (because you are playing games if you are reading my blog, even if you’re a developer) need to be aware of how much money you are spending and saving off your purchases, especially when gas gets this high and every penny saved is earned. I know you’re going to keep buying games, even used games, so watching this video is an incredibly informative experience that teaches you what to do, what not to do, and where you should buy depending on what kind of game consumer you are. Whatever you do, do not shop at Gamestop anymore. And keep informed. Unless, of course, you enjoy being ripped off.

(I have to add: He makes a point about direct download and how it ideally will gradually take down Gamestop and how foolish it is to wait until then, to which I wanted to add as well: you also can’t forget the fact that people enjoy having hard, physical copies of their software, the same way they like getting sculpted World of Warcraft figurines of their level 70s. This means that there will probably always be a physical market for Gamestop to exist in. So it’s up to US, the consumers, to bring it down. Food for thought.)

Share on Facebook

I just spent like seven nine hours yesterday playing World of Warcraft. I’m in Mexico with nothing to do for two weeks. I might as well play games. But World of Warcraft the whole day? I really need to play something else. Or do something productive. I guess I’ll go fix Mom’s computer, or something.

Wait, or Monster Hunter. (*finds PSP*)

Someone who is not successful said something that is completely a lie and irrelevant. If exclusives didn’t exist, practically nothing would turn games to one title or the other. It’s getting to the point where everything has the same features and abilities. If exclusives didn’t exist, people would have no reason to buy one console over another, and they’d all end up buying the cheapest one.

They’d buy the Wii. Can you imagine the horror?

Share on Facebook

Last post, 2 days ago, I mentioned Play This Thing and Fantastic Contraption in the same breath. Well, Play This Thing went ahead and reviewed Fantastic Contraption, and instead of giving you a link and telling you to go ahead and play it, they wrote up a nice summary and analysis of the game.

Happy coincidence.

Share on Facebook

My friend Carlos (a brilliant person I will never be able to follow in conversation because he thinks and talks too fast and knows too much for me to understand entirely) pointed me to Bob’s Game a few days ago, before Bob became famous. Bob is otherwise known as Robert Pelloni, a 25-year-old self-taught game designer who created an entire Nintendo DS game himself.

Recently, he got an interview up on France 24, which I read and replied to. In the interview, he talks about his process and the amount of work he put into the game (5 years!).

He also was replied to by a Ubisoft representative, who said, and I quote, ”I don’t think it’s possible for a single person to create a game. Today, designing a videogame is a collective enterprise, putting together a team of about 30 people. Furthermore, publishers need to privilege their own creators, while taking into account trends in the sector.”

Regardless of the context that statement is made in, it is what it is.

You are free to reply to that how you like. My opinion is written up on the interview page, and my rage is just a shade under poignant.

Share on Facebook

David Cage Should be working with these people.

Also, here’s a link to the new Heavy Rain trailer in Hi-Def. It comes out in 2009. I’ll talk about that later.

Nothing else for today. After that rant yesterday I’m tired out, and I need to work.

Share on Facebook

So, Soul Calibur IV comes out this Tuesday. So today. I will be buying it. It’s a little-known secret that I love fighting games–particularly Soul Calibur. At first, I wasn’t too thrilled by the screens I saw of Soul Calibur. The same old, same old–just more glitzy graphics and some finishing moves that looked like they might break the game. But as time has gone by and the release date come closer, I popped in Soul Calibur 3 just for kicks and messed around for a while.

I missed Soul Calibur 3.

And to be honest, I wouldn’t mind getting a little shot at Darth Vader. No, he shouldn’t be in the game. No, I’m not going to buy the game just for him. But really, playing as Darth Vader and maybe even Yoda is admittedly pretty cool.

So I’ve had a bit of Change of Heart, and my opponent has stolen me for a turn and put me on their side of the field (curse you, Yu-Gi-Oh!).

The problem is, it seems like they’re looking to sacrifice me. And all of us.

From this nice analysis put up by “Mike Masashi Murakami III“, seems like Yoda will be unlockable on the PS3 version and Darth Vader on the 360 version–but only if you scrape up the cash as downloadable content. In other words, you have to go on the PlayStation Store or onto the Xbox Live Marketplace and buy something that’s already technically on your disk.

Now, I have absolutely no qualms with forking out money for stuff I don’t have. That’s the point of buying. But when I need to pay money to get stuff I already own, I get a little pissed off. Example: iPhone. I want to use my songs as ringtones. You’d think if I can put them on my phone and listen to them, I should be able to use them as a ringtone. Wrong.

Instead, I have to actually go onto the iTunes Store and buy them again. Not only that, but I think I need to pay a $1 fee to turn them into ringtones. That’s two dollars–for a sound your phone makes when it rings. You may think it’s not a lot, but two dollars is the price of a quarter gallon of milk. Two dollars is enough to buy some stuff on the PlayStation Store that I don’t own. Whereas these songs? I already freaking have them on my phone. Why can’t I use them?

That’s much the same situation we’re finding in Soul Calibur IV right now. I could pay money in order to be able to unlock Yoda on my game. It’s tempting. But at the same time, why should I have to? He’s already on my disk! Can’t I just, I don’t know, beat the game on Very Hard Mode without dying? What happened to unlocking content based on skill?

Mike Masashi Murakami III is calling for people to boycott the downloadable content for Soul Calibur IV. Maybe they’ll make it free if they see how few people are accessing it. Then again, why would they make it free? It won’t benefit them in the slightest.

So I guess we’re just royally screwed. If you 360 fans want Darth Vader, or if us PS3 owners want Yoda… we’re going to have to deal out the Washingtons. Or maybe even the Lincolns.

Or yen and Euros, if you’re that person.

Share on Facebook