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Let’s Talk about: PAX Impressions – Super Smash Bros 3DS and RocketsRocketsRockets

Super Smash Bros

Super Smash Bros Section
Super Smash Bros Section

The Wii U version of Super Smash Bros was fine. If you’ve played any other version of Smash Bros’s Free-For-All, than you know exactly what to expect. On a side note, Wii-Fit Trainer is pretty strong.

Super Smash Bros WiiU
Super Smash Bros WiiU

The 3DS Version of the game, however, was a mixed bag. There were two kinds of stations, the Free-For-All station and the Smash-Run Station. I opted for the Smash-Run station to try my hand at something different… (SO MUCH WAITING) After each demo ran for about 6 minutes, with 3 people in line per station, and what you get is a timed labyrinth with enemies akin to those found in Subspace Emissary from Super Smash Bros Brawl where you collected stat-increases to help you fight in a Free-For-All against the CPU after the labryinth section was complete. It helped that I picked a fast character so I can at least have mobility on my side and explore the maze as much as I could in the 5 minutes alloted, but with a slow character this game mode feels opposite the pace of what Smash Bros is used to. Multiplayer smash bros is a game of high-intensity, fluid, frantic, fun but this game mode is anything but that. I don’t want to say it’s as bad as how Sonic turned itself into, because they made A LOT of strange design changes to get that to happen. But, Smash-Run is definitely not as enjoyable as the FFA modes because the mechanics of the characters aren’t designed for exploring and traversing, but for combat with a character in front of you. Guilty Gear tried designing the same explore+beat-em-up in GG:Isuka and that mode was pretty garbage as well, but they also understood that exploration was going to be slow and limited. We’ll have to see when the game gets dropped later in October 2014.

Continue reading “Let’s Talk about: PAX Impressions – Super Smash Bros 3DS and RocketsRocketsRockets” →

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Picture Time: PAX Day 1

Toad’s Treasure Tracker
Toad’s Treasure Tracker
Toad’s Treasure Tracker
Pokemon Beanbag Lounge
Jwong doing a thing with a stick on his lap
Ooo. What’s he Playing. Dreadnought, huh?
Dreadnought. Space ship combat? Multiplayer? Looks good
Dreadnought. Pew pew pew.
Dreadnought. Oh shit. Get out da way, yo.
Super Meat Boy Forever Booth.
Super Meat Boy Forever. A hardcore game with Casual controls. Sounds interesting. Too bad it was always full of people
Super Meat Boy Forever. Ya, you look happy and fanciful, meat boy. You’ll be dead again soon
Close Castles. From Sirvo, developer of Threes. Game has a small learning curve, especially when playing against 4 people (not pictured)
Deep Under the Sky. Was also full of people, but the gameplay looked like Sonic-Speed meets Pixel Junk Eden Grappling.
RocketRocketRocket.
RocketRocketRocket
RocketRocketRocket
Super Smash Bros Section
Super Smash Bros Section. Such Lines. Less Doge quotes
Super Smash Bros Section. You know you like a linecon.
Super Smash Bros 3ds.
Super Smash Bros WiiU
Heroes of the Storm Section
XBox Section
Trasistor, Early Prototype demo. More Pics tomorrow
Saint’s Row: Gat out of Hell. The parts shown look like a wierd Devil May Cry hybrid. Will try it out later
Tomb Raider: Temple of Osiris
League of Legends Tournament about to start

 

Impressions in a different post

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PAX and E3 – A difference in Atmosphere

I think it’s just a difference in who is attending, but there is a different energy around events like PAX compared to events like E3. PAX has a much larger gamer attendance than the heavy industry-centric E3 and with the lack of stability around the gaming industry lately, it has affected the mood of everyone going.

Yum yum in my thumb thumb.
Yum yum in my thumb thumb.

Everyone going still gets excited for the games that are announced and we are eagerly waiting to get our hands on the next potentially great game, but there used to be an extra energy from just being there. I’ve only been around PAX for a few hours already, but the difference in climate across attendees is much more noticeable than in years prior. Everyone isn’t just excited to playtest something that isn’t even out yet, or to just meet some of their favorite gaming personalities, but they are genuinely excited to be here in Seattle and attending PAX.

Continue reading “PAX and E3 – A difference in Atmosphere” →

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Player’s Agency and Lack of it for Suspense Games

After watching a few streamers play through Five Nights at Freddy’s it reminded me that the player’s agency, their ability to control their actions to elicit outcomes, is extremely important to create a consonance (harmony) between the player and the game. And it is when that agency is reduced or limited is when cognitive dissonance sets in. You’re playing a game and you aren’t jiving with it. The actions that you want to do and the reactions that you’re getting on screen aren’t connecting. In psychological terms, you have multiple mental beliefs that are conflicting with one another causing discomfort – cognitive dissonance. The actions that you want to do and the actions that you’re allowed to do are in conflict, causing the anxiety and discomfort. But in a game like Five Nights at Freddy’s (FNAF) or any other suspense game designed to instill paranoia and anxiety, it’s the lack of agency that helps to inspire these emotions.

We can always look back on games the past games like Resident Evil where Jill Valentine moved like a Old 70s Buick, or Panzer Artillery Tank, which actually worked as a benefit to the game. The lack of mobility took away any agility that we could have had and made even the slightest danger – zombie, hound, Lisa Trevor – much more tension-rising than normal because we knew maneuvering pass them was a chore and a half.

Maybe Jill can finally be the "Master of Lockpicking"
This isn’t entirely accurate. The character in the image can probably control better than Jill.

Continue reading “Player’s Agency and Lack of it for Suspense Games” →

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Growing Up with Gaming (short essay)

It occurred to me just before I sat down to write that people in my generation are the first to grow up not knowing what life was like before gaming (as we know it) was a thing. Being born between 1984 and 1990 when the NES reigned supreme over the gaming masses, those of us born in this era grew up with names like Mario, Link and Megaman as a constant throughout our lives. Just like us from the past, those born around the 2001 will never know of an age without the name Master Chief in their gaming vernacular. Or kids the were born in the mid-90s never knowing a time before the Internet in every household, or  2007-ish without a smartphone or tablet in your household.

What’s important to remember is that while many game designers were around and developing games while we were growing up, there is a fresh generation of minds that have been exposed to a rich history of game design, good and bad. This might be an incestuous relationship because our ideas tend to be anchored to past experiences so our inspirations are “borrowed” from ideas that we’ve played in the past instead of coming up with something completely original. Regardless, our game-design parents and mentors helped to foster our experiences, our morals, our social dilemmas, our peaks and pits through our gaming experiences. Our games were growing up while we were growing up.

Every one should check out Zac Gormon at http://magicalgametime.com/ His work hits so many feels buttons, it's not even fair
Every one should check out Zac Gormon at http://magicalgametime.com/ His work hits so many feels buttons, it’s not even fair

Continue reading “Growing Up with Gaming (short essay)” →

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Are Current Movies and Games Going to Feel Dated Soon?

You turn on Netflix. You see the opening scenes. There’s a hustle-and-bustle going on with the crowd but not a main character to be identifiable yet. The shooting feels clunky. The music has a heavy synth sound in its tones. There’s not a black person in sight, unless it’s the main character or a homeless person in the movie. You have the suspicion that you’re watching an 80s movie or an early 90s movie.

We can pull what movies feel like a period-movie with only a few moments of watching a scene. For the current generation of young adults, it’s almost instinctual to know when many movies were created because of the tropes that these movies execute. Group of misfits learns to come together? Is it in a high school or outside of it? Is the hair outrageous? What about the Clothing? If you answer yes to all but the clothing, then the movie is probably a John Hughes movie and you’re probably watching the Breakfast Club, let’s be honest. The point is that what are the tropes that will define the movies that we watch today?

The_Breakfast_Club

Continue reading “Are Current Movies and Games Going to Feel Dated Soon?” →

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Game Idea: Draw your enemies away – RTS (Controller: Wii U Pad)

Game Idea: Draw your enemies away – RTS (Wii U Pad)

The Game:

The idea is this: you’re doing the standard “make + build + kill” deployable units thing that Real-Time-Strategy games do (RTS) or even TTS (Turn-based Strategy games. To make things interesting you have a “draw”-ability that is limited use per game, but it allows you to set the stage in your favor when you’re on the offense or defense.

Continue reading “Game Idea: Draw your enemies away – RTS (Controller: Wii U Pad)” →

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Let’s Talk about: Crypt of the Necrodancer

The game came out about a month ago on Early Access Steam (7/30) and I didn’t know how I wanted to approach the game at first. The game is fun, the music is addicting but I found myself turning away from playing it from time to time. For a rogue-like, it does its job of creating a high-replayability by having generated dungeons for all stages, daily challenges, and different playthrough experiences because of the randomized weapons, power-ups and enemies.

Good music, hard learning experience.
Good music, hard learning experience.

What I was shying away from was the other part of rogue-like games, the “keep you on your toes” part. The game’s mechanics are simple. You move to the beat. You attack to the beat. You create paths through walls to the beat. But this also means that you learn about your enemies to the beat. Once you get past the first few enemies learned through the tutorial, you quickly find enemies where you don’t know their attack patterns and movements. Normally, when you come across something that you’ve not experienced prior, you can take your time to figure out how to approach these kinds of enemies, but with the restrictions of actions per beat, timed length of the song/stages and other enemies trying to eat your face by throwing their heads in your direction, it makes it difficult to learn and understand an enemy. It makes it even more frustrating when you die to that enemy and you haven’t learned a gosh-dern thing about how or why you died.

Continue reading “Let’s Talk about: Crypt of the Necrodancer” →

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PAX Prime 2014 Goal – Story

The theme of this year’s PAX for me is…Story.

Creating a well crafted story and conveying differences in perspectives across your audience, or across a mass audience. As much as I want to join in on the more technical Game Development panels, or the Data Analytics panels like “Games User Research” or “Awesome Video Game Data”, I want there to be a growth in my abilities at this years PAX. There are plenty of great panels to go to, plenty of amazing games to try ( Indie and Triple-A), plenty of cool people to meet and greet, but there needs to be some cohesion in the experience.

Yum yum in my thumb thumb.
Yum yum in my thumb thumb.

You go to these trade-shows, tech conferences and celebratory events and you need to come out of it with something that wasn’t in your arsenal beforehand. Knowledge, skill, a developed social circle. There should be growth somewhere to make these things worthwhile. Else-wise, you’re just blowing a few hundred dollars to go up to Seattle for a few days. This isn’t a bad plan, but there’s plenty else to do in Seattle than be in a mass of sweat and vested fedoras (sorry Yahtzee, don’t hate me) overflowing through a few thousand square feet of convention room hallway.

Continue reading “PAX Prime 2014 Goal – Story” →

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