Demo Assessment: Castlevania Harmony of Despair

Castlevania Harmony of Despair sounds like it would be right up my alley.  In an earlier post I said, “Konami and everyone else -- we will gladly pay $15+ for classic games on our modern consoles if you put some effort into optimizing them. Widescreen and high definition are the main things I want. Achievements, enhancements, different modes of play are also nice.”  CHoD has all of those things going for it.  Its price is exactly $15.  But...

The graphics are attractive.  They’re widescreen.  They’re HD.  By today’s standards though, I’m afraid they just don’t cut it.  They’re too pixel-y.  They’re too 16-bit.  I would point to Braid as an example of a sprite-based game on a modern console with excellent graphics:

 

Braid’s sprite’s don’t have jagged edges.  The game looks like a painting in motion.  It’s an independent game, released two years ago.  You’re telling me that a game released by Konami today can’t look nearly as good as that?

Visuals aren’t the only problem for CHoD.  The controls are stiff, and the pace of the game is slow.  This is typical of Castlevania games, but I think Konami could have retained the basics and still have made the controls feel more fluid and responsive.  I keep mentioning Bionic Commando:Rearmed, but it is the standard for games of its type (as far as I’m concerned), and it has great controls that are faithful to the original.  When you consider that just about any random platformer on the XBox 360 – Rocket Knight, for example (another Konami game) – has better controls, it’s hard to make the case for playing Castlevania.

The lack of local multiplayer is disappointing.  Hydro Thunder Hurricane, last week’s XBox Live Arcade release, has to render complex 3D environments and water effects.  That game has a 4-player split screen mode.  All that CHoD has to render is 2D sprites.  Given the zoom out / zoom in feature of the game (which is very cool), you’d think that a multi-player split screen mode would be easy.

Castlevania has a lot of good qualities and I’m pretty sure it’ll be a hit.  The effort that went into it is clearly about 2000% greater than the effort that went into the terrible emulated Contra releases for XBox Live Arcade.  I’m sure I could have a lot of fun playing it online with 5 other players.  But given the other great games to choose from, I can’t justify buying this one.

I still have high hopes for Konami’s upcoming Hard Corps: Uprising (a Contra modernization) and Rush’n Attack Ex-Patriot.

Demo Assessment: Limbo

Limbo has the most distinctive graphics I’ve seen in a game.  It’s a beautiful, amazing game to look at.  As you can see from the screen shot, it’s incredibly minimalistic.  The puzzles (in the demo, at least) are similarly reductionist.  At most of the obstacles in the demo, my first thought was usually, “how in the world am I going to get past this?”  There is seemingly so little to work with, with the only buttons being jump and interact.  The boy that you control can’t jump very high or run very fast, so he he seems vulnerable and relatively helpless.

I enjoyed the demo and figuring out the puzzles in it.  As I mentioned, the game is very impressive and unique visually.  However, I don’t plan on buying it anytime soon.  Puzzle games are not my favorite, and the game’s pace much slower than what I want right now.  My tastes change all of the time, but I’m currently playing Transformers: War for Cybertron, and I can’t pull myself away from the game to place Limbo at this point.  But I can definitely see myself playing through it at some point in the future.

Konami is Learning

First they announced Rush'N Attack: Ex-Patriot, now a new Contra game called Hard Corps: Uprising.  Konami seems to be following my advice.  Here’s a quick review:

The Wrong Way to Bring a Classic Game to a Modern Console:

Example 1 (Super Contra for XBox Live Arcade)

Example 2 (Contra:Rebirth For Nintendo Wii)

(If you look at the screen shot above and think, “those graphics aren’t too bad”, you need to realize that those are 16-bit caliber graphics.  The 16-bit era end 15 years ago).

The Right Way:

Example 1

Example 2

Keep it up, Konami!

Sega Gets It Right With After Burner:Climax

After Burner was a staple in arcades in the late 80’s and early 90’s.  It was almost impossible to go to an arcade and not see an After Burner machine.  In Terminator 2, John Conner plays After Burner in the mall arcade.  It’s an iconic game from that era.

Part of its draw was its attractive cabinet.  You wanted to play this game for the experience.  This was not something that could be replicated on home consoles.  You also wanted to play the game for its exciting visuals.  The screen was always full of enemy planes, explosions, and machine gun fire.  When you flew low the ground, you could see individual trees and hills.  When planes flew near you, you could see their camouflage paint jobs. The movie Top Gun, which came out around the same time, made jet fighter games particularly popular at that time.  But for kids who only owned an NES, the main option was the atrocious officially-licensed Top Gun game.

<Nelson Voice>Ha ha.</Nelson Voice>  If you were one of the minority of kids who owned a Sega Master System and could play After Burner at home rather than Top Gun, that was one of the few times when you’d be the envy of NES-owners, regardless of the quality of the SMS version (it was eventually released on the NES, but it was was a late, bad, low-profile release).

I bring this up because After Burner:Climax was just released for XBox Live Arcade, and it’s a great example of releasing a classic game the right way.  They didn’t just give us an emulated version of the original arcade game, or the Sega Genesis sequel, or the Playstation 2 sequel.  They gave us the most recent version of the game and enhanced it for our modern consoles, and it’s great:

After Burner:Climax is ideal for anyone who wants to play an After Burner game on a modern console.  HD, widescreen, achievements, and downloadable for $10.  That’s how it’s done.  I have a long list of Sega arcade classics that should get the same treatment.

Just Give Us the Best Version You Have

The Sega Genesis had many games that were ported from the arcade, most of which ran on the System 16 board.  The Genesis was pretty powerful for its time and its games were close to their arcade counterparts as a whole.  But, it wasn't quite as powerful as the System 16, so Sega couldn't just run the exact arcade games on the Genesis that ran on System 16.  When you compare them, it seems like Sega copied the sound and graphics from the arcade versions as closely as possible, but didn't and/or couldn't use any of the source files/code from the arcade versions, resulting in the Genesis versions looking and sounding slightly worse. Here's a comparison between the arcade and Genesis versions of Golden Axe:

Arcade	Genesis

Now, kids who spent years playing NES and SMS games, were quite happy with the arcade adaptions on the Genesis.  We were used to game companies taking the names of arcade games and giving us completely different, usually bad versions of those games on the 8-bit consoles.  Here are some examples:

Double Dragon:

Arcade	NES

Ninja Gaiden:

Arcade	NES

Shinobi:

Arcade	SMS

Given the fact that cells phones -- let along modern gaming console -- are powerful enough to run the arcade versions these games, if they're going to release them on XBox Live Arcade or the Playstation Network, there's no reason to not release the better, arcade versions, right?  That is what they did, thankfully, with Shinobi.  I'm sure they didn't even consider releasing the Sega Master system version.

For some reason, however, for the Sega 16-bit classics like Altered Beast and Golden Axe, they chose the Genesis versions over the arcade versions.  Now, even if they did release the arcade versions I wouldn't buy them (they're good games that are still fun to play, but I'd like more enhancements to make them worth re-purchasing), but still, why not use the best versions available?

The story with Phantasy Star 2 is slightly different.   That game, being an RPG, never came out in the arcade and was a Genesis original.  That is the version on XBox live arcade.  However, an enhanced remake was released for the Playstation 2 in 2005 called Phantasy Star Generation 2.  It looks like it was only released in Japan.  Now that would be something I'd be willing to buy for XBox Live Arcade.  I have very fond memories of playing the original on the Genesis.  I'm not interested in playing that version today, but a version with enhanced graphics and sound would be quite attractive.  Give us that version!

Original	Generation 2

This should be obvious, but people interested in buying remakes/re-releases of games on XBox Live want the best version of the games to date.  Anything less = guaranteed no sale (from me, at least).