Sep 6, 2010

NHL 2K11 Review: The Second Shift Takes The Ice

Kotaku

2K Sports made one of the more intriguing - and gutsy - calls in sports publishing when it shelved NHL 2K on the PS3 and Xbox 360 for a year, going Wii-only for NHL 2K11.

The business story makes sense: At the time, 2K was unchallenged in Wii hockey (EA Sports has since announced a competitor, due out tomorrow). And while its core console offering had lagged in both quality and sales, NHL 2K on the Wii had a well regarded second offering last year, and enjoyed decent sales, especially in Canada.

So NHL 2K11 only on the Wii makes sense for business, but does it for the consumer? Did 2K Sports plow everything into its Wii version? Or is this a tide-me-over until the studio gets back on its feet with the 360 and PS3?

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Presenting the NHL: Wii games get graded on a curve, so here's the obligatory blah blah blah about it being last-generation graphics. OK, done. That said, NHL 2K11 is a finely rendered game for the hardware, and it gotten some TLC with new lighting, arena interiors, and more recognizable player modeling - and in more than just the faces. Big goons handle differently than nimble snipers, for example. The commentary by Randy Hahn and Drew Remenda is still strong and breezy in appropriate spots. It may not draw raves, but you won't be conspicuously reminded you're on a Wii unless you're playing one of the Mii mini-games.

NHL 2K11 Review: The Second Shift Takes The Ice Lots Of Value: Hand it to 2K Sports, there is a ton of variety on the disc. One-off game modes include mini-rink 2-on-2, pond hockey (four offensive players to a side), and the outdoors Winter Classic, which is hardwired to last year's setting and participants (Fenway Park, Bruins and Flyers) but still a gas. Traditional 5-on-5 hockey has the franchise mode, and it's the only Wii hockey title with online multiplayer, which includes both leagues and a cooperative team-up mode. It does not have a singleplayer career mode, and I would think a mode controlling one guy, especially a goalie, would be optimal for motion control. But 2K10 did not have it in any version, so Visual Concepts would have had to build it specifically for Wii first. Finally, "Road to the Cup" replaces last year's Mii Super Skills challenges. The minigames are a bit quirkier, but a lot of fun among friends and kids, and the progression (winning games wins you fans, fans win you the whole shebang) is more purpose-driven.

Classic Controller Support: This is not the kind of compliment 2K Sports set out to receive, but the game is one of only a few team sports titles that support the Wii Classic Controller and it's much more accessible as a fully featured sports simulation with one. Three control sets serve your tastes, whether you want to shoot with face buttons, shoulder buttons or the analog stick. It's the only hockey game on the Wii that can be played with a traditional controller, and it's a comfortable fallback for those who find the motion control too byzantine and just want to play by more familiar means.

NHL 2K11 Review: The Second Shift Takes The Ice

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Limp wristers: Slap shots on motion control are no problem and feel great. Wristers and putbacks nearly always have some sort of hitch in the swing animation and one-timers didn't normally fire off as intended. Shots are activated by pulling on the B trigger and flicking directly left for a fast shot, but the game seems to detect even the minutest draw right and cycles the slapshot animation. It takes a good deal of touch to smoothly execute the bang-bangiest of shots on goal. You'll frequently see your player get into a slap animation with a brief pause and finally the wrist shot, and when you're operating close to the goal this is long enough to allow the goalie to get into position, or for the defenseman to swing over and clean you out. You can stuff rebounds with a quick pull of the B trigger, but it's insufficiently accurate from anything but point blank.

Infor-motion Overload: I'm admittedly not the best at hockey, but this sport is just too fast-paced, with too much continually contested or in motion, to be played with so many gestures that barely feel connected to the action. There are six contexts with many discrete commands to remember - for example, you can sweep your stick, hold it to the ground to block a pass, or raise it in the air. After the tutorials, my mental RAM had filled up too fast to access how to do this and many other highly specific tasks in the heat of the moment. Among friends with two Wiimotes and Nunchuks I could easily see many games being played only with slapshots, body checks and basic passing, and no user goalie control, because everyone understands a slapshot motion, a shove (with the Wiimote and nunchuk) and a button press to pass. After that, it's a tangle of modifiers and subtleties, and remembering to reach for the minus button to get on your netminder. If you're dying to play hockey with motion control, go into pond hockey or the mini-rink and have a blast. Otherwise, be prepared to put in a lot of time getting to the point where these gestures are second nature.

NHL 2K11 isn't going to make hockey fans get out of bed and buy a Wii. If they have one, however, it's worth a good look, especially for those who didn't catch NHL 2K10. Those who bought 2K10 on the Wii won't see too much different in this year's game. And everyone should fetch the immediate online roster update because the one on the disc is a bit outdated.

Its motion control has its moments, especially with MotionPlus. The 1:1 stickhandling is finely tuned. I just rarely transitioned from it into the shot I wanted. Puck juggling is a neat curiosity but its usefulness just wasn't that apparent to me. In sum, the motion control set is better suited to lower-stakes affairs like mini-games and multiplayer with friends in the room. So this is neither a step forward in the argument for motion in the core sports simulations, nor a game that truly wins on the features that set apart this platform.

But the core product is still a serious treatment of hockey, and with a Classic Controller, NHL 2K11 is one of the few full-featured, traditional sports sims on the Wii. It's an unusual stronghold for a sports developer to seek while it retrenches on the 360 and PS3. If NHL 2K11 doesn't completely fulfill the discriminating sports gamer, it still offers plenty to a broader spectrum of skills, ages and expectations.

NHL 2K11 was developed by Visual Concepts and published by 2K Sports for the Wii on Aug. 24. Retails for $49.99 USD. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played all game types in both single and multiplayer modes.

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Sep 6, 2010

A Tantalizing Session With The Witness, The Next Game From The Creator Of Braid

Braid

Unattended, unlabeled, unmarked... the new game from the small team led by Braid creator Jonathon Blow was stealthily present at the Penny Arcade Expo this weekend. The adventurous — and those who recognized Blow standing off in the shadows — got a delightful surprise.

All I knew of The Witness before spotting it in the same booth that housed Spy Party and Monaco was that it was being made by Blow and a handful of other game creators, that it involves an island — it's "an exploration-puzzle game on an uninhabited island" — and has gorgeous lighting.

In other words, I knew just about nothing about The Witness. I didn't need to in order to want to play it. Blow and David Hellman's subtle, time-bending Braid was the kind of scrupulously-designed video game that earns its creators a player's long-term trust.

The version of The Witness at PAX is far from finished. The game will be complete a year from now, at earliest, Blow told me once I got done playing and found him so we could discuss. He cautioned me that I was seeing a lot of "programmer art." This was the game's first showing in public, its puzzles still far from complete and refined. It was being presented in a manner intentionally detached from any references that might hype the Braid connection and bias its players. Blow wanted to see, from afar, what people made of their first touch of this game.

What I could make of The Witness is about as much as you can, watching it here in this two-part video I shot at PAX. The Witness seems to be a quiet game set on a lovely landscape landmarked with puzzles. I played it with an Xbox 360 controller, witnessing the island in first-person. Many of the puzzles I found involved using the controller to draw routes on blue squares that were set vertically on posts at the level of museum paintings, trying to inscribe the proper pattern that would solve the challenge and possibly lead to a new one. The puzzles were not just in the posted squares but in the more natural environment. One of the earliest challenges, seen partially in the video here, involves figuring out how three wires or tubes, all connected to a locked gate, can be electrified in order to progress. Trying to solve this, you wind up looking behind trees and bushes and over a roof. You find clues that lead to new mysteries that lead to solutions of their own. Early, it is clear that this is a game for the patient, the un-flustered and the observant.

From my brief conversation with Blow about the game, I heard a confirmation of my own sensation that this is a game about discovery. The pace of the game seems to be that of a gradual dawning. You stroll in first-person view. You look at beautiful or intriguing things — a windmill in the distance, a figure that is either a man or a statue — and you approach. There appears, in so many places, puzzling things. You ponder them. You try to solve them. You're given no instruction and no order, not in the PAX version, what to do next. You try to make sense of it. You play.

Blow didn't bristle when I told him that the game made me think of Myst. But I suspect that if The Witness is as much Myst as Braid was Super Mario Bros., then it can still be something very special

UPDATE: This wasn't planned, but it looks like Blow posted about his game's quiet PAX appearance at the same time that this post went live.

Sep 6, 2010

Kung Fu Live Is The Best Kinect Game On PlayStation 3

Kotaku

When you play Kung Fu Live, a game not for the Xbox 360, your body is the controller. This is a game for PlayStation 3, not for Microsoft's controller-free Xbox Kinect. Yet the effect is impressive, similar and enjoyably ridiculous.

Kung Fu Live uses the PlayStation 3's camera, the PlayStation Eye, to turn a gamer's real-life kicks, punches and jumps into fighting moves in your TV. This isn't just another PlayStation-2-style EyeToy game that lets players wave their arms to wash virtual windows or paw at the air so that they can swat virtual flies. The capture for this game is more advanced.

The Eye camera pulls in a video feed of the player, making them a character in the game's brawling action. You see yourself as the action hero on the screen, and all your moves are shown on-screen as the feed of you is integrated into the game's graphics. On the TV, it is you who is beating up the video game bad guys. And you're beating them up with the moves you are doing in front of the camera.

The Kung Fu Live camera system, which comes from development studio Virtual Air Guitar, creates the optical illusion that this game is pulling a Kinect. But while Microsoft's sensors wind up tracking about 20 joints in a person's body, interpreting the player as an advanced stick figure that becomes the skeleton for an in-game character, Kung Fu Live is still simply watching its player's silhouette. This is not a bad shortcoming, because Kung Fu Live is fun enough. The game does make it look like you are the real you in a video game world. And it doesn't relegate your movement to canned animations, a la Nintendo's Photo Dojo.

Caption: The things I do to bring you people the news.

At the Penny Arcade Expo 2010, I watched a developer on the game beat up a mid-boss; then I tried a multiplayer sessions. During both of these sessions we supplemented our punches and kicks with a few special moves triggered by poses. Doing a YMCA-style Y, for example, causes time to slow down. Jumping in the air and punching the ground causes the terrain to rumble. Yanking your arms back, overhead, starts an exaggerated backflip. You can only have one person perform this Kung Fu in front of the camera, but up to four players can control enemy fighters using standard PS3 controllers. In my multiplayer session, I competed in front of the camera against a developer on a DualShock.

The biggest question that lingers about Kung Fu Live is whether it will, like so many PlayStation camera games before it, fail to work in the light of my living room or yours. Camera games of this type are notorious for working well only in the lighting conditions under which they are demonstrated at trade shows. A representative for the game said that Kung Fu Live wouldn't be bedeviled by the light in our rooms at home. We'll need to test that.

Until then, let's check out a boss battle:

Sep 6, 2010

What Defines the Player-Character?

Kotaku

What Defines the Player-Character? "The world lies on the brink of destruction. Only a select few may be able to save it."

This is the actual description on the back of the box for a well-known video game. But do you know which one? How many different games could this apply to?

Whether you're about to wage war against the darkspawn in Ferelden, survive a zombie-filled apocalypse in Raccoon City, or restore wishing power and stop Smithy from achieving world domination in Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, all stories share a certain formula and similar types of events between them.

At least that's the monomyth theory posed by Joseph Campbell, an American mythologist. His ideas surrounding the fundamentals of a hero's journey are what served as inspiration to George Lucas when he was creating the classic Star Wars trilogy. Campbell's theory outlines several events that are used universally in story telling, including the hero's call to adventure, their road of trials and tribulations, achieving their ultimate goal and becoming free from the binds that tied them.

Does this sequence sound familiar?

Also familiar are the character archetypes that are used in each game. The bare-bones character traits that indicate who is the hero, the villain and the side kick have reoccurred throughout history in folktales, literature, film and video games.

We've all seen child saviors like Ness (Earthbound/Mother 2) and Link (Legend of Zelda), anti-heroes like Kratos (God of War) and Claude (GTA 3), and veterans like Master Chief (Halo) and Marcus Fenix (Gears of War) repeatedly in our gaming ventures.

The heroes are often reluctant, upstanding folks. The villains tend to be power-hungry and narcissistic. Supporting characters, regardless of whether they support the hero or villain, are either their biggest fans, or have a hidden agenda that goes against what their leader stands for. For all characters who share an archetype, their motives are similar in nature, in addition to their appearance and over all personality in some cases. Take for example Tidus from Final Fantasy X, and Vaan from Final Fantasy XII. Both of them are main characters, outspoken, cocky, young, blonde and relatively shirtless. There were times where I would be playing the game and could easily picture Tidus saying some of Vaan's lines.

How is it that game developers can avoid making their games feel like a rehash of something that we've played before? The characters above share similar motives, so then what is it that really separates them? I'm reminded of what Rachel Dawes tells Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins: "…it's not who you are underneath, it's what you do that defines you." What defines a character the most is their actions during the course of the story.

Dr. Clara Fernandez-Vara, who teaches a "Writing for Video Games" course at MIT, and is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab, relates this concept to one of her recent gaming experiences.

"I replayed Monkey Island 2: Lechuck's Revenge recently, and I realized that one of the fun things of the game is that Guybrush is defined by what he does," she said. "He's a pirate (and not a very brave one), so a lot of what he does is finding different ways to cheat and do rather awful things to people.

"In videogame design, the "verbs" of the game tell you what the core mechanics of a game are; those can also be the actions that define your player character. That's one of the reasons I like adventure games and RPGs: the range of verbs is usually larger, dialogue is essential to gameplay (most times), by having more actions the characters have more nuance."

Part of what makes video games so much fun is that you get to do things that you can't or shouldn't do in real life, so it makes sense that the more options we're offered to control our character's actions, the more likely we are to become immersed in the game, and see it as a unique experience.

At a simple level, think about how fun Super Mario Bros. would be if you couldn't launch fireballs, become invincible, or even kill enemies by jumping on them? How much fun would that be? Would you want to play it? Would the experience get old quickly?

Having different actions makes a game fun and can set characters apart from each other. Take the platformer characters Kirby, Mega Man and Super Mario. Mega Man wields a blaster, Super Mario has many different power up options, and Kirby can suck his enemies up like a vacuum to gain their powers for crying out loud! Each of their abilities contributes something to their overall personality in addition to making the game more fun. Kirby's especially, merely because he looks so darn cute and harmless.

In more complex games, there are generally more opportunities for the player character to shine, sometimes with help from the player themselves.

"In the case of the player character, writers must leave room for the player," says Fernandez-Vara. "Letting the player choose what to say is giving her the opportunity to fill out the player character."

Some of the most well-received games are those in which the player character is required to make certain decisions that will further impact the story.

Take for example Dragon Age: Origins and Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3. Both games allow the player to alter the course of their player character's journey by way of letting the player put words into their characters mouths. You're also able to fully control your relationships with non-player characters, which can lead to either costs or benefits depending on which types of dialogue options and in-game decisions you have your player character make.

In Persona 3, strengthening "social-links" enables you to create new personas to use in battle. In Dragon Age: Origins, status enhancements and side quests become available to certain party members based on how much they "approve" of the player character's attitude and actions. If a character doesn't like you, they may leave the party or even engage you in combat depending on the scenario. Dragon Age's specific dialogue options allow you to choose your player character's personality, making them a loyal do-gooder, seedy low-life, or anything in between.

On the other side of the coin, you have many games with absolutely no dialogue in any form coming from the player character. With this missing element, you would think the player character would be unlikable and make for an unmemorable experience.

On the contrary, Dr. Fernandez-Vara can explain how silent characters can offer a great contribution to the player's experience.

"The player completes the character," she said. "That's why Gordon Freeman is silent: it doesn't remind the player that she's controlling someone different."

The same is true for games like F.E.A.R and Fallout 3, where you rarely, if ever, see your character on screen from the third-person perspective, and your character does not possess a voice. In cases like that, character definition is more or less in the hands of the player. Developers provide the scenario, and a rough outline of the player character, but it's the player who fleshes the character out, and makes it their own.

However, even with some of these strategies in place, character design is still, by all means, a challenge.

"The process of character creation is something that we're figuring out in games," said Fernandez-Vara. "By thinking about character in terms of what they do, it is easier to make them part of the game design. There seems to be a disconnect between what the player character does (which is defined mostly by game design) and who (s)he is (which is defined a lot by the visual designer, and rather less by the writing).

"Part of the problem is that game writers, who define character not only through the story but mostly through what they say, come late in the design process, and have to 'slap on' an interesting character on top of mechanics which are usually conventional or do not lend themselves to much interesting character development. Part of the problem here is bringing together game design, visual design and writing to create compelling characters, beyond their 'looking cool'; the other main problem is how much room the player character has to appropriate and define the player she controls. There are no solutions yet, just different ways to approach them."

As game design progresses, the storytelling quality and the dynamic range of characters can only improve. As some games become huge successes and others fail, developers and gamers alike will be able to see what works and what doesn't work.

What makes the most sense to me is having the game written out first and everything else comes later rather than having the writers get pulled in later. It would be kind of like hiring someone to do the illustrations for your book once it's written instead. But, that's just me talking from a writer/television production student's perspective. Nonetheless, the problem still remains that it can be difficult to translate the ideas buzzing around in one person's imagination to work well with ideas from the rest of the creative team.

Oh, and that back-of-the-box quote from the beginning? That's from Final Fantasy X.

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