The Smash Bros. Brawl Dojo updated recently with a guide to the All-Star Mode you unlock by getting all of the characters. Stephen Totilo at MTV Multiplayer noticed something rather strange about a few paragraphs toward the end of the page, presumably written by Masahiro Sakurai.
When theyre all lined up like this, it becomes obvious that there is roughly 6-year blank before and after Pikmin. While there have been big series since then like "Animal Crossing," "Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day," and "Wii Sports" it does seem that coming up with a completely new character-driven series has gotten more difficult recently.
Is it really difficulty cutting back on the number of major new characters, though? While it is certainly difficult to come up with a truly memorable face given how saturated gaming is with nostalgic icons, is it more likely that people aren't doing this because there's just not money in it anymore?
Super Smash Bros. Brawl
It's a slow news day, so it's time for another essay. This time I want to address some of the absolutely shocked reactions I got in public and in private when people found out about the utterly cavalier way I was using my Gold Hammers in Brawl.
See, you get a total of five Gold Hammers in Brawl. If you want to unlock everything, some of the later challenge requests are brutally difficult, or simply require you to do things you'd probably never want to do in the course of just playing through what the game has to offer. People who were really serious about doing all of the unlocks would never, ever use the Gold Hammers the way I have.
Of course, I keep stating "I don't really want to unlock everything, I just want all the stuff that makes Brawls more fun." Characters, stages, Assist Trophies, that's pretty much it. Somehow this doesn't sink in, and I keep getting advice on unlocking things I don't actually want.
At what point did it become an obligation for gamers to complete every optional goal in a game?
Super Smash Bros. Brawl
I'm sure for some of you this is like asking "Are awesome things awesome?" but bear with me. See, Kotaku dug up something else interesting in the giant blat of EA presentation images that yielded up the Nerf Blaster Controller pic: a chart of comparative 2007 average review scores by publisher, as tabulated by EA from Metacritic scores.
Obviously EA is mostly interested in their own score, but there's all kinds of interesting conclusions to draw from this thing. What draws my interest is how high Nintendo's average review score is, even given that 2007 was the year of such first-party disasters as Mario Party 8.
I wonder: is this score deserved, or is it the result of selection bias among reviewers? If you're in this business you were probably a kid during the NES or SNES revolutions, and Nintendo has probably more brand-oriented fansites publisher reviews than anyone else. Are Nintendo's games really the best, or are we as life-long gamers inclined to believe they are?
Few people would argue that the Nintendo DS is the best portable on the market now, and the people who would are basically insane. Now, would you argue that the Nintendo DS is the best portable ever? How about that it's the only system called a portable that's really fit the name? That's a bigger argument, but mighty guest blogger and web comic guy John Hurst has decided to make it. Check behind the cut to get readin'.
It's hard to say Masaya Matsuura doesn't know what he's doing when it comes to music games. So when he criticizes music gameplay driven by hits like Guitar Hero and Rock Band, it's time to listen. At a Friday morning speech at last week's DICE summit in Las Vegas, he did exactly that.
"The recent success of music games in the US has been based on licensed music," he said. "It is necessary to move beyond this."
"We're wasting our use of music," he said.
"The contents of a game are passion and energy," said Matsuura. "If they become subordinate to other factors, it is game over."
He also denounced all uses of violence as a gameplay mechanic, claiming that violent games hurt and embarrass the industry.
"It may be one of the most straightforward ways to design a game, but I don't think the future is bright for our industry if we have games that motivate the player to use physical attacks as a way of establishing superiority," he said.
He told a room full of people to stop making almost all of the games they were working on because they were intrinsically terrible. Hardcore.
Beats Bioshock at its own game? Not so sure about that, but Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn has some quality scenario design. Stephen Totilo at MTV's Multiplayer blog has a long and insightful post about just how gut-wrenching some of the choices Radiant Dawn asks players to make can be. If this doesn't convince you that some time with Radiant Dawn and its prequel, Path of Radiance, would be well-spent, then I'm not sure anything can. Beware spoilers if you read the full article.
I had made quite a judgment of gameplay-based morality. I had decided that some characters, some who were with me and some who were against me, deserved to live. Id judged that others, some with me and some against me, were better off dead. Id chosen favorites. Essentially, the characters with names, the ones I had trained they deserved life. The unnamed grunts both helping and harming me? Expendable. Id cheered for the deaths of supposed friends and allies and was relieved when they failed to kill enemies I had once trained. I refused to assist some allies in need. Id transgressed traditional battle lines.
Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn
Honestly, this isn't directly related to Nintendo, but I found the concept pretty fascinating. Basically, CVG broke down most general playing habits into twelve general types, based on how you interact with a game. They are a little fuzzy but, I think, pretty accurate.
For instance, the Explorer description is exactly how I like to play my games, down to spending approximately four million years per title while trying to ferret out all the little secrets and see everything worth seeing. I'm not a completionist, though, and have no problems skipping goals I find stupid or just repetitive. I do experience crippling option blur in long games with lots of decision-making, though, but enjoy games that let me run through on different paths.
So I'm wondering two things right now: what type of gamer are you, reader? And what types of gamers are most likely to be drawn to Nintendo stuff? Right now I think there's a sharp bias on the Wii away from basically all of the competitive types and any sort of difficulty-fiending. The DS has all kinds of games for all kinds of people, though.
Even if you haven't played a whole of Super Mario Galaxy by now, I suspect everyone on the internet knows how it works, and that means it's just about time for some fun game analysis. There's discussion of the game's different types of fun, but I'm more interested in the discussion of craftsmanship that starts up on page three. For instance, how often do you think about this when you play a game?
When you jump straight up while riding a train in real life, you do not slam into the back of the train; you land on the same spot as you jumped from. Physicists say that you are in the same inertial frame as the train, meaning that you're moving with it and your walking or jumping is relative to it.
You all know this instinctively and yet almost no platform games know this. ... At long last, Mario Galaxy knows about them too. You can finally jump straight up while riding a moving platform and land on the platform without worrying about it moving out from under your feet.
Super Mario Galaxy
You want a game to reward you for advancing, of course, but is it possible for games to offer a sense of accomplishment that's actually empty? You know, the Lay's potato chip of gameplay goals. Brandon Erickson at GameCritics.org certainly thinks so...
The real meat of No More Heroes consists of a series of one-on-one battles between the protagonist, Travis Touchdown, and ten bizarre and colorful assassins. For the most part, I've found the stylishly violent boss battles and their associated comic-book style cutscenes to be quite fascinating. Unfortunately, getting to these various boss encounters requires that the player earn money by running around the city performing repetitive side jobs. In addition to finding this rather boring, I also find it somewhat insulting. It's as though the game is telling me, "Your time isn't that important, so I'm just gonna force you to mindlessly jump through a bunch of pointless hoops."
Personally, I've always hated this kind of stuff in games (it is in fact the one thing I truly hate about No More Heroes), so I'm glad to see I'm not a lone voice in the wilderness. What do you think?
No More Heroes
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