Looking back, I can safely say Bioshock is one of the best games I’ve played in recent memory. I could discuss the various aspects it gets right for days, but instead, I’m going to be a bit grumpier and talk about what it could have done better. For today, let’s focus on what it does with emergent gameplay.

Bioshock provides the player with a complex simulation to play around with. The opening act does a fantastic job of introducing you to Rapture as a living world which you can influence. The player is even rewarded for “thinking outside the box”, which is something a worrying number of sandbox games fail to do at all. But where Bioshock falls short is encouraging the player to think outside these bounds.

Some may argue that the reward is the encouragement. To an extent, it is. At the start of the game, players experiment to familiarize themselves with its mechanics. But once the player gets better, they get into a routine, and the encouragement is lost. This isn’t a gamer thing so much as it is a human nature thing. Once you figure out an effective way to kill Splicers, or a sure-fire way to take down Big Daddies, the rewards are irrelevant. The rewards only worked when the player needed them. Now that they don’t, the experimental aspect of Bioshock gives way to the repetitiveness of your standard-fare first person shooter. It’s a shame, and I’ll admit that I’m as guilty as the next person in this regard, but it’s to be expected.

How do we fix this?

(read on…)

Rapture is an incredibly unpredictable world. The simplest task, one that I’ve done dozens of times during the course of playing Bioshock (and games in general) can change dramatically given the slightest complication. The task at hand was securing a room. The complication? A security camera looking me square in the eyes.

The alarms sound, and within seconds security bots are swarming around me. I quickly survey the room. Two security bots, and two Splicers (the thugs of Rapture). I electrocute a security bot and stumble towards it. If I hack it, I might be able to turn this battle around. In my frazzled state I manage to botch up that routine job and I’m left in deeper trouble that I was already in. I’m losing health fast. I retreat, heal myself, and get back into the fray.

I’m still being attacked from all angles, but I hear something. A familiar, haunting moan. Slow, echoing footsteps. It could only be one thing: a Big Daddy. Normally it’s a sound that sends chills up my spine. But this time, I hear opportunity. A new plan is hatched. With a wry grin on my face, I select the “Hypnotize Big Daddy” plasmid and toss it at him. Now he’s on my side. I have half a mind to stay and watch the action unfold, but I’m shaken up and very low on health, so I dash out of the room. I don’t know exactly what happened, but when I re-entered moments later everything that moved was lying on the floor, charred or broken. Only the Big Daddy remained standing.

I’m tempted to kill him and steal his loot, but I can’t bring myself to do it. How am I suppose to kill the creature that just saved my life?

It might look utterly meaningless, but Rhythm Tengoku’s name highlights the best aspects of the game. “Rhythm” indicates that the game will be focused on music in some way. “Tengoku”? It means something in Japanese, and because nobody bothered to translate it, this obviously means the game is a bit insane.

What its name doesn’t tell you is that Rhythm Tengoku is a mini-game collection released for the Game Boy Advance, and as alluded to in the intro, in Japan only. Given the rather strange premise of the game, I imagine you are either scrambling to import it as we speak, or think the game is a complete waste of time.

(read on…)

I made a trip to Toronto yesterday to meet up with a friend. Hopped on a bus which reached Union Station at 5pm. On a weekday. This meant that hundreds of people were marching off the subway towards the bus/train station. My destination was the subway station, against the flow of the masses. And quick! as I was already a bit late.

I ran, trying my best to dodge the never-ending stream of people. This required me to have a razor-sharp focus on my immediate surroundings, to make quick decisions and even quicker movements, all the while anticipating the movement patterns of the people in the distance. Eventually their seemingly chaotic movements became logical in my mind, and dodging people became second nature.

I was in the zone.

That’s when I realized that running through Union Station at rush hour was the closest I would ever get to achieving a perfect run in a hardcore bullet hell shmup.

Arrived along with them: $17.48 worth of “Taxes and handling”.

Still, as my first set of Japanese import games EVER!, I was too excited to be pissed when I picked them up on Friday. I bought Rhythm Tengoku, and bit Generation games Coloris and dotstream.

I’ve only played the first two briefly (haven’t touched dotstream yet) but as expected, my thoughts on them are as follows: bonkers.

Introversion have posted their first in-game video of Multiwinia, the multiplayer-focused sequel to the rather excellent Darwinia. My verdict? I’m well impressed.

This is the RTS I’ve been dying to play for years. Hell, this is the RTS I’ve been dying to make for years. Judging by the five minute video, I’d describe Multiwinia as “the love-child of Command & Conquer and Quake III Arena.” Similar to it’s predecessor, Multiwinia seem more like a fast-paced action game with strategy elements bolted on as opposed to the other way around. This, I wholeheartedly approve of.

Apart from Darwinia, I haven’t enjoyed an RTS in a long time. Shogun: Total War was the last one that managed to be tactically complex without being overwhelming. After that the genre spiralled into an overcomplicated mess, where you were either a hardcore fan who relished the ever-increasing complexities of the genre, or you weren’t and just stopped enjoying RTS games. I, like a lot of people, fell into the latter group.

Introversion are picking up from where “real” developers lost the plot. They are creating a game which will (hopefully) be complex enough to allow for a wealth of different tactics, but without throwing a ridiculous amount of information at the player. I can’t wait to get my hands on it!

I can’t think of a better way to get this brand new blog rolling than by using some old, recycled material! I wrote this postmortem in December, soon after putting the final touches on Smiley and his Shooty Adventure for the Nintendo DS. I figured it would be worth re-working the whole thing and posting here.

When I started writing Smiley, I had three clear objectives:

The first, and the reason this project even started, was to write a game for the Nintendo DS. A friend at work bought a supercard, a magical homebrew enabling device, for his DS. I’ve always loved coding for embedded devices, and this was the perfect excuse to write something for the DS!

The second was to write a shoot-em-up. This one was a long time coming. Ever since I was re-introduced to this wonderful genre through GridRunner++ and DUO I knew I had to write some sort of shmup, but the opportunity never presented itself.

The third, and perhaps the most important objective, was to throw alot of fancy FX across the screen.

(read on…)