Chiming In on the Audiosurf Phenomenon

So, I tried Audiosurf the other day (I’ve been trying a lot of new games ever since I pulled my head out of Galaxy’s metaphorical ass, a few days ago . . .). I had to try it, the buzz around it was hard to ignore. It is amazing.

For those who haven’t played or heard of Audiosurf it’s a music puzzler. Players control a little ship flying over a highway; these are created based on the songs players pick (and the song options are any MP3 files, literally any MP3 file will work, even podcasts). On this highway colored ‘bricks’ appear on certain beats of a song. These ‘bricks’ are placed within three lanes and gather at in a grid the bottom of the screen. The goal is to get three or more ‘bricks’ of the same color together to score points.

It’s descriptions like what I have above that drove me away from the game. when you try to type out what the game is it just sounds complicated. It isn’t. The nature of the game is this: you pick a song, the game generates a highway, and you move your mouse to collect ‘bricks’ (trying to match three of one color to earn points).

There is no way to lose. There are ways to not earn points, but there is no way to fail. In fact there’s even an option to just cruise the highway the game creates. This might be the game’s best feature. It has so many ways to play. It’s got several modes, and varying difficulties, but you never have to adhere to any of what the game tells you. You can play the hardest difficulty, and just say, “fuck it”, and cruise and there will be no penalty besides a really low score. Players choose the amount of effort they want to put into it the game, all the time. It’s great.

Just enjoying the highway is fun too. Some songs have mind boggling bends with fast areas and slow crawl areas, over all kinds of bumpy terrain. It’s just fun to look at. This, also can be problematic. In the time I spent with As much as I loved the craziness, it was almost to much for me to handle. This is the closest I’ve gotten to getting sick from playing a game. It’s color everywhere while the highway is flipping every which way. My mother would probably die if I showed this to her (she has a hard time watching any kind of video game. She couldn’t even handle 2D Sonic games).

Even so, I wish I owned the full game this second. It’s a game that will suck you right in. I can see myself buying a new disc and wanting to load up Audiosurf to see what kind of madness will ensue. It’s a very original experience that will constantly beg a player to keep playing.

It’s a really weird experience. The game itself is totally fresh, but the soundtrack is something that will be different for everyone. On the first play through a song it’s this odd synthesis of familiar music with a radical new experience. It’s this experience that’s driving me to keep typing. I guess I just can’t capture it with words. Audiosurf is an experience, and it might be a good idea to try it out.

I know I’ll be purchasing it soon.

Journey of Dreams

Santa dropped by and left me a copy of Nights: Journey of Dreams (Wii). I was totally cool with that, since I’d asked for it. Being a fan of the Saturn original I just had to have this new game. I popped it into my Wii with an awkward anticipation. I really wanted the game to be a sweet sequel, but at the same time Sonic Team hasn’t made a decent game in nearly six years, so could they really reinvent Nights successfully?

The answer is an unfortunate ‘no’.

I’ll kick this off by speaking a bit about the good parts. The game is broken up into six main levels (and a final level which is the same for both kids). Each level is further broken down into several kinds of missions. The first mission, dubbed “Chase” missions, of every level plays out in a fashion similar to the levels found in the original Nights. The basic structure of these missions has players flying through three paths around a level and then engaging in a boss fight. These levels aren’t exactly the same as the original games levels, but there is a lot of similarity, and it’s just as fun. The rest of the missions are largely a waste of time and are obviously filler to extend the total amount of play time. A few of these are fun (the Octopaw missions are all about setting up large linking chains, and that’s pretty fun) but most of the levels end up feeling tedious because you need to play through them in order to advance to the next ‘good’ part of the game.

Most of the missions are flight based and, thankfully, they control really well. The game handles just like the old game does, except in the remote only mode. Motion controls are awfully executed, but when playing traditionally it’s wonderful. Well,until you play the on-foot sections. But I’ll talk about that a little further down.

Aside from those “Chase” and “Octopaw” missions the rest of the game is awful. The story, the cut scenes, the charatcers, the dialog, the voice acting, the non flying bits, ect, are all pretty bad. The character models are unpolished, and look like something that was done early on last generation. There’s no excuse for how bad the charatcers look close up in the cutscenes. The kids’ models are freakishly ugly and the rest of the models (Nights, Reala, other enemies and allies) aren’t pretty looking either. Take all of the horrible modeling and add in some terrible dialog, terrible story development, and so absolutely lame voice overs and you have some completely unwatchable cut scenes on your hands.

The controls for the on-foot sections around can also be described as, ‘pretty bad’. I don’t know how you screw up making a character move on flat ground, but Sonic Team pulled it off. The walking animations, first off, aren’t nice to look at, and the button configuration is a little stupid. It’s a bearable set-up, but if you hit the Z button (in nun-chuck style) the camera goes insane and you have to mess around to get a decent view on things. It’s a clunky set-up that’s just not that fun to control.

Story wise Nights 2 is largely a disgrace to the Nights series. I maintain that had Sonic Team crafted six brand new levels, and didn’t add in all the filler content Nights 2 would be a much better game. As it is Sonic Team really just screwed with everything by adding in a bunch of lame crap. They killed the atmosphere the original had; it doesn’t have a dream like feel to it. The original had a bare bones story that set up any player with the knowledge that the game was set in a dream world. The story was never forced, like it is in this game. Every time players enter a mission in this game they’re “treated” to some story element, and this content really kills the feel this game should have had. The filler missions really bog everything down too. Simply put, there’s just to much filler content.

And, what really sucked about the story is that it’s kind of set it up in a way that makes it seem like there wasn’t an original game. It’s essentially the same story (just dragged out and made into something completely uninteresting) with new characters that have new, sucky, personalities. It’s a real downer.

To shorten it up, the game rules when it’s doing the things the first one did (all six first missions of the levels) and the rest is filler crap. Is it worth the money? Probably not. I had some high hopes, and I was let down (but, I kind of figured I would be). It just sucks because the game I wanted is in there, it really is, it’s just the filler makes up the majority of the game and as a whole product it’s not good.

Halo 3, Under the Red Pen of Criticism!

I’m breaking this up into two sections, campaign and multiplayer. First I’ll comment on the campaign.

As a single player game Halo 3 is a bit odd. The game has a fairly short length to it, as one play through takes less than ten hours, but never before have I seen a game like this that has such a re-playable single player mode. First of all the levels are very well designed, and that alone could bring a player back for a replay or two. Bungie went a bit farther though. They added two features that change the entire campaign.

The first feature is four player co-op play. This changes the dynamics of the campaign considerably. Most obviously it changes the single player aspect of the game into a multiplayer mode. With two player co-op the game works very closely to how it would with one person. There’s just more fire power and a chance to re-spawn with out starting over. With four people it’s almost like unleashing a small army onto Covenant forces. Four people can accomplish many tasks that one person can’t, and this makes searching for skulls easier, and finding neat tricks to do way more fun. Just exploring the levels and messing around with the environments and your team members is a really enjoyable experience that radically changes how the campaign is played.

And on that note the second big addition is the score based metagame. All kills become worth certain amounts of points, and special kills (melee, head-shots) earn the player(s) more points. Each level has a top score that will unlock an achievement, thus creating a motivation to keep on replaying stages. On a solo level that can only work for so long, again unleashing four people into the levels to compete for the highest score makes the game almost infinitely re-playable.

While it’s nice to see that Bungie made the campaign unique by adding these features to extend its replayablitily, on a narrative level the game falters quite a bit. I may be against popular opinion here, but I didn’t find story itself to be too impressive. It had some good moments, but much of the events happening went unexplained. Many scenes had the player assuming to many things. I’m not saying that the entire story should be spelled out completely, but this was to minimal. On top of that, Bungie had the chance for a real epic ending, and blew it completely. I’ll throw out the spoiler warning here: if you read the next few sentences Halo 3’sending will be ruined for you. At the end of the game, the Chief sets off the newly made ring, and you see the ships warp back to Earth, but the part the chief is on doesn’t quite make it through. Now I get that at that part you’re supposed to assume the worst, because the game picks up at a memorial honoring fallen soldiers, including the chief. What blew my mind is that this is labeled as an epic game, and through out the game there were explosions and action everywhere and the once chance they had to show some fucking destruction on a gargantuan scale, they fucking didn’t. I wanted to see that ring explode and shatter that place. I wanted it so bad. Nothing. I was heart broken. End Spoilers. I guess it’s a minor thing, but it still pissed me off. I had hoped for a better story, but all in all it was a worthy ending to the series. I just hope that it is the end.

The lack of boss fights disturbed me too. There were a lot of moments where I thought there would be some confrontation and there wasn’t any. There was one small boss fight, and it wasn’t all that thrilling. A lot of the ‘would be’ bosses appeared in the cut-scenes, and that’s all. It was disappointing on that front.

So, overall, for the campaign I was impressed by the replayablity it has to offer through great level design, four player co-op, and the score based meta game. I was let down by the story not being as fleshed out as it could be and the lack of bosses. Halo’s accomplishments in the campaign mode outshine it’s flaws though, and I’d say the campaign alone is well worth the purchase.

As for multiplayer, well that’s a bit easier to comment on. A lot of the mechanics are the same as the Halo 2. The entire control scheme for the game shifts a few buttons around, but playing the campaign first allows for easy adjustment. The addition of equipment adds an extra layer of depth, but like the weapons only a select few will be constantly used. As for the weapons a few guns revived a boost in power, while a few were actually downgraded. The Brute Shot, for example, is noticeably less powerful, while the Needler is the opposite. The new weapon balance will take some effort to get used to, but it ends up being similar to the other games. Bungie also added a few more weapons to the already lengthy list of guns, like the Spartan Laser, a flame thrower and and the mauler guns (which are essentially dual-wieldable shotguns). In addition to that, turrets of all kinds can be broken off and carried around the maps. All in all the basic multiplayer feels a lot like it did before, but in reality the new content like the extra weapons and equipment add enough new depth to make it fresh.

Forge also helps multiplayer get a fresh feel. I had once heard the comparison that forge was basically a console version of the infamous Half Life 2 mod: Gary’s Mod. Essentially it is. Forge lets one to eight players edit any of the maps in the game. Players can drop in guns, objects, vehicles, and even spawn points. Every bit of all that is customizable, including setting the time limit on weapon respawns. While it’s not a full fledged map editor, it’s still a nice editing tool that can be used to edit maps or to just have once hell of a death match. It’s a sound addition to the Halo series.

with all of that said Bungie did an excellent job on both the multiplayer and campaign modes. Halo 3 adds a lot of content to the Halo series and the game should be praised for that.

Metroid Prime 3 Scribbled on with the Red Ink of Criticism

My personal history with the Metroid series goes back to 2005. In a summer filled with Halo 2 somehow I was turned on to Metroid Prime for the Gamecube. After completely falling head over heels for Prime I went on to play many other Metroid games. Every Metroid has been a wonderful experience for me(well, Hunters and Prime 2 had their moments at least) and to date I have only not played the Prime Pinball spin off and Metroid II: Return of Samus. I consider myself to be a pretty big fan of the series, and I can say I was highly anticipating Prime 3. Now, after going through the game for the first time I feel I can give it a solid critique and offer my thoughts on what worked and what didn’t.

I went into Metroid with very mixed feelings. E3 2007 brought some weird news, such as: less emphasis on back tracking (meaning more linear level design), voice acting with a more narrative focus, and beginning the game with a fairly large arsenal. All of these things were eye brow raisers. Linear level design? Metroid has always been about gaining abilities and traversing several areas over and over, always opening up new passage ways and secret tunnels through each traversing. Hearing that there would be less emphasis on that was extremely disheartening. The same applied for the narrative focus. Game narratives can be awesome, but Metroid has always been just about Samus and her exploits. Metroid games are based on exploration, and that even went for the narrative in past games. As you explore you begin to piece together what’s happening. Only Fusion had gone against this, but that narrative barely broke the traditional flow series veterans have come to love. Only the large beginning arsenal could be forgiven, because, realistically, is it feasible that Samus always encounters some disaster that renders her suit unusable? No. So as long as more power-ups keep coming that could work out. It was the narrative and linearity that was scary.

Along with that the controls were a major concern. Before the Wii’s launch it was being touted as the perfect console for FPS gaming. Red Steel launched along side of the Wii and was hyped to be a solid piece of software that could demonstrate how great Wii FPS games could control. Instead of doing that it was a broken mess of a game. Ever since then I have been weary of any first person Wii games, and was skeptical of how Prime would play.

So, I went into Prime expecting that the narrative and possibly linear gameplay, along with potentially sloppy controls would ruin one of favorite gaming series. Thankfully, none of those things happened. Prime 3 opened up, and for the first hour there is a lot of narrative and even some extremely linear levels, but get out past those tutorial-ish levels and it went to something a bit more like what Prime vets are used to. Still, there were a few things to get used to. The level structure was not like previous Primes or Metroid games for that matter. Prime 3 actually shares a planet system, seen before only in Prime Hunters. What this means is that Prime 3’s level layout expands several different planets versus one planet with several different areas. To travel between these planets Samus must use her ship. And for some that may sound like a hassle, and believe me it really can be. However, the game is mostly set up for the player to explore one area at a time. For example the opening area is a Galactic Federation cruiser, and accomplishing all of your goals there will open up the first plant of Norion (which, is basically the tutorial part two). Completing the Norion goals will open up Bryyo, and upon landing on that planet the game starts to feel like a real Metroid title. It’s there that players can begin to gain more abilities, explore several regions and defeat bosses. Accomplishing those goals opens up another planet and so on. As the game progresses players will need to travel back to the planets for a few upgrades and near the end of the game a small collection quest (if you played Prime or especially Prime 2 you know about artifact collection, and the quest in Prime 3 is much, much, easier and bearable). From a game progression prospective Prime 3 actually functions very much like it’s predecessors.

A few problems I had with the game flow was using the ship as both a travel agent and an item. It’s fun to hop in and travel a few times, but once a player reaches that inevitable spot where they don’t know what the fuck to do or where the fuck to go, getting into the ship and suffering through the load times gets frustrating really fast. And as an item it’s basically useless. There are only a few times it’s necessary to use the ship, and sure it’s a neat idea but it hardly comes into play. I would have liked to see less planet hopping and more “ship as an item” use.

The actual control method for the game really worked too. It puts a lot of Wii control methods to shame, not just FPS controls. This isn’t a game with a few motions tacked on, this is a built from the ground up for Wii game that actually makes full use of the remote. The game makes you choose a sensitivity. I actually forget the names for the sensitivities, but it basically boils down to easy, standard, and advanced. Easy mode functions like the past Prime games. The lock on feature is the same, and movement with the remote is slower. Standard is a step up from there. It functions more like how the game was described. You use the Wii remote to look around, and it works really well. A Lock on feature is present, but it’s not like previous Prime’s. It’s looks your focus, not your gun. So you can move around, but to hit an enemy or object you have to carefully aim. Advanced mode is Standard on steroids. The remote responds to your every movement, and that can make the game really frustrating to play. My recommendation is standard.

I had a few problems with the button lay out. Most of the gadgets you use are mapped to good spots. A and B are interchangeable as eiter jump or shoot. Personally B felt way more natural as the shoot button, it is a trigger after all. + and – were a little awkward. they both do very different things and mixed them up rather often. – is the visor change button. Pressing – and pointing the remote at the icon will change the visor. That worked well, but pressing + activates hyper mode, which constantly drains energy. Prssing + expecting to see the visor menu and using hyper mode is always unwelcome. Aside from that no other button was hard to reach or use. The control scheme made sense and worked very well.

As for the narrative, I said before the introduction is narrative heavy, but that then the game really backs off after that. There are scattered cut scenes here and there, but nothing like a half an hour long Metal Gear cut scene. Sadly I felt that Retro and Nintendo’s story was actually too skimpy. It tried to flesh out the story but never really came close to succeeding. That’s my problem with a lot of Nintendo games actually. Even the Zelda games fail at truly delivering on a great narrative. Nintendo has always been a company that has made their focus: gameplay over story. Now that philosophy is weakening their games. Prime 3 is a strong title, and if Retro and Nintendo decided to really make a story it would have been a welcome addition. They clearly know when to add the scenes, but they haven’t done enough to really make something that fleshes out the story. It’s like they went half into it. Perhaps it was to make sure no one was alienated; no one could be totally upset. They added a little more than usual but kept it recognizable. To me that doesn’t cut it. For a company who has taken serious hardware risks I just don’t see it coming through in the software. Game play is one thing, but game design has to evolve too. A competent, well added story isn’t something that should be hard to make. Retro Studios really put together an amazing game here, and I know they all have this grand idea of what the true narrative is. That’s evident in the beautiful art direction. It;s very clear that the team had some serious direction and there is a full vision here. Why it didn’t come out through a more competent story I’ll never know.

Overall I found the game to be very enjoyable. The environments were really neat, and very detailed. And since getting to know your environment is key to Metroid games, having great environments is something that’s essential to the game. The controls were great, and the progression turned out to be very enjoyable. If you have a Wii this is something you should have in your library. If you don’t have a Wii this could easily be a reason to get one, especially with some other major titles down the line.

Quick Pros and Cons

+ detailed, beautiful environments

+ amazing gameplay

+ solid game progression

- narrative could have been much better

- the ship as an essential part of gameplay didn’t work as well as it could have

- there are a few not very enjoyable linear parts