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?

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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.

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I’ve started doing my Game of the Week Reviews, like I should be doing.

This week, Star Fox: Command.

I haven’t done the ones for all the old ones. If I get a chance, I’ll get around to them. If not, well… they’re still there so you can see what I’ve played.

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I came across an odd little contraption in the Wal-Mart toys aisle the other day, and I simply couldn’t get my mind off it. It was called Tilt Baseball, and the reason it had me so fascinated was that it was modeled exactly after the Wiimote. The buttons were all in the same place. The control pad, the B button, the A button, the Plus, Minus and Home buttons–it was all exactly the same! And you played it by swinging the damn thing–that’s why it was called “Tilt” Baseball. The only visible difference (other than function, I suppose, and a few minor aesthetic principles) was that the Tilt Baseball device had a small screen at the very end where the tiny bit-graphics display was transmitted.

Finding this similarity somewhat unusual, I continued to browse through the toy aisles in Wal-Mart, Target, JC Penney and other such stores in order to see what they had in stock. I came across a treasure trove of designs that I captured with my tiny cellphone camera, only to find that my cellphone is not newfangled enough to get images onto my computer and that these same products are not actually found on the Wal-Mart and Toys ‘R’ Us sites. This is unlucky for anyone reading because they don’t get to see. This is unlucky for me because now I don’t have visible proof.

However, I uncovered everything from Xbox controllers you plug directly into the television to Guitar Hero-style toy guitars that generate more of a racket than harmony if you ask me. There’s hundreds of tiny little electronic toys and devices that step the line of something I like to call “Design Infringement”.

Here’s my theory as to why these little electronic games actually exist–which, I might add, I’m not entirely sure why game companies haven’t done anything about: Toy companies have identified and jumped into a market made up of mostly small children who watch their elder siblings/cousins/siblings’ friends/television actors playing popular console video games. Parents either A) see their children as too young to comprehend the console or see the games available on it as far too unhealthy/unproductive/violent, and so they get their children something that looks and plays almost exactly like what they’ve seen in order to placate them, or B) decide the console is much too expensive to purchase and, coming across an inexpensive duplicate, decide to try to compromise with their kids in this manner.

While I’m not exactly condemning this idea, because we all know the annoying little design mantra “Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal,” I have to stop and question the difference between stealing a technique and a gimmick and stealing a design. Games copy off each other all the time–we’re still doing the Shenmue Simon Says Action-Button Time Pressing Thing, but you don’t see a game called Shen-moo about a Japanese dude whose father is killed.

It’s a risky business, but it seems to be a growing trend. Understandably, too, because God knows electronic handheld games number so many because nobody can corner the market anymore; it seems to have disappeared for them, stolen by the portable consoles.

I may be entirely mistaken and console companies could be receiving hefty royalties for the handhelds produced that take on the Wiimote look and feel. If they’re not, though, I wonder what their strategy behind ignoring this rising tide. Do they think it will drain off by itself? Or is it part of a kind of guerrilla ideal, that the more their design is incorporated into the market, the more their brand will grow in fame and desirability?

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