It took me by surprise when I found out that the first Wednesday after the summer of XBLA would have three releases instead of one. I was only surprised until I played them; only one of the three is worth looking at. In the never ending quest to charge money for things that are free (and possibly better) elsewhere comes Gin Rummy.
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On the wrong console.
The video game industry, she’s a-changing. Peggle sold better than Halo 3 last year and Nintendogs owners are eighteen million strong. So-called “casual games” are bigger than anything now, and nobody’s doing better with (or more for) the trend than Nintendo, who have led the way with everything from the aforementioned pet simulator to Wii Sports to the Brain Age series, each of which having convinced legions of people to buy a game system who never would have done so before. Near countless clones of these hits have been made by third parties for Nintendo systems, and have all been terrible, generally speaking, so when Nintendo develops or publishes one these games is when I usually start to pay attention. Unfortunately, their logo on the box of Arika-developed Endless Ocean means nothing.
There’s a right way and a wrong way to make these titles. Nintendo’s casual titles assume that their players don’t have a grasp on video game customs most of us take for granted - stuff like how menus work and saving/loading - but do not assume that they are blathering idiots. My mom enjoys Flash Focus, not just because she’s convinced it is helping her eyesight and because she can easily navigate its menus, but because it’s challenging. Endless Ocean isn’t just easy, it’s literally impossible to fail at unless you consider not having fun failing. I have no problem with games dropping conventions like enemies or dying (Electroplankton was one of my favorite games of 2006), but Endless Ocean fails here because it has a structure similar to most open world games, in that you can just mess around and explore, plus there are missions you can complete at your leisure, but you simply cannot win or lose.
It lacks any sort of thrill, and there’s nothing compelling about it. That is, unless you’re part of what I can only assume is a fairly small percentage of the population that is very interested in underwater life. Endless Ocean is packed to the gills (sorry) with fish and mollusks and whales, and if you want to look at them and read some factual and sometimes interesting pieces of trivia about them, it’s the game for you! If you bought No More Heroes last month, it probably isn’t. And even for those people who want to learn about sea creatures, Endless Ocean is probably on the wrong console. Motion and pointer controls add nothing to the game, and most of the audience that has bought the Wii for Wii Sports, Play, and Fit wont enjoy it. All you do in it is swim around and look at fish, so it would be better off on the more powerful systems, where the visual and audio components of the game could be more convincing, and thus immersive.
“Steps Toward an Elitist Critic Future” at Rock Paper Shotgun
I went into this article expecting the “elitist critic future” to be presented as a negative thing, but no. Kieron Gillen is openly admitting here that he likes it. I think he’s buying into the idea that games need what you could call “indie cred” (not his words) to be worthwhile. I love Earth Defense Force 2017, but no, Kieron, it’s not better than Gears of War.
Lower the price of the hard drive, Microsoft. I want to give you more money, all you have to do is let me.
“EA Partners Is A Murderers’ Row - Who’s NOT On This List?” at MTV Multiplayer
This is a good bit of investigative reporting from Stephen Totilo. With last Thursday’s announcements by Electronic Arts of deals with Grasshopper Manufacture and Epic Games, they now have at least half a dozen major partners, and that’s not counting the smaller companies they have outright purchased over the last couple years.
I have become amazed at what XBLA has done in the past few weeks. It started with Geometry Wars 2, a game Jim Canapa described perfectly in the previous column (he should know, since his high scores are far better than mine). Bionic Commando, another great game I will go into detail about later, was the most recent addition. But in the middle was Braid, the first game to ever cause an internal conflict for me.