Sonic Revisionism

The biggest mistake the Sega made in regards to Sonic 4 Episode I was in naming it.  They should have named it Sonic HD, Sonic Retro, or something like that.  The game is classic Sonic on today’s consoles, but the name doesn’t convey that.

It’s a minor mistake, but given the amount of complaining about it not being original and rehashing the levels form the Genesis games, a different name could have pre-empted some of that criticism.

And how ridiculous that kind of criticism is.  It’s pretty clear that the point of the game is to give us a modern-day version of the Sega Genesis Sonic games.  Of course there’s going to be a Green Hill Zone and other levels from the original games.  That’s what people wanted.  Sonic 3 for the Sega Genesis came out 16 years ago.  The original Sonic came out 20 years ago.  With all of the re-releases of old games, what’s wrong with giving fans a modern version of a beloved 20-year old game?

Of course, people mainly wanted Sonic to go back to his roots because they’re dissatisfied with recent 3D Sonic games.  I have to plead ignorance here, because the last Sonic game I had played prior to Sonic 4 was Sonic Adventure for the Dreamcast, which was great game.  Wikipedia says, “The reception at the time of original Dreamcast version was overwhelmingly positive.”  Sonic Adventure 2 was also well-received.  The idea that the 3D Sonic games were terrible is just mythology.  Now, I understand that some of the more recent Sonic games were not well-received.  But that doesn’t justify asserting that the last good Sonic game was Sonic CD.

So while I like Sonic 4, I’m sad that Sega is making 2D Sonic games their main focus because of the popular (but incorrect) perception that the 3D Sonic games were bad.  I’m still excited about future episodes of Sonic 4 (especially if they add more playable characters), but I would really like to see a new Sonic Adventure-type 3D game.

As to the quality of Sonic 4 itself, I think it does what it sets out to do admirably.  I think the graphics, sound, and controls are all excellent.  It’s definitely one of the best-looking 2D games that I’ve seen.  (By 2D, I’m only referring to the fact that the game takes place on a 2D plane.  The characters are rotoscoped 3D-models, of course).

Speaking of which, I was part of baffling discussion of this topic on the XBox 360 forums.  The original poster asked, “Anyone else wish Sega just went back to using good old fashioned sprites?”  I asked what that advantage of that would be.  In Sonic 4, the characters look great, their animation is smooth – so what’s the problem?  Many people wouldn’t even be able to tell that the underlying models are 3D.  The main reason I can tell is because of their fluidity.  If you read the discussion, you’ll notice that no one answered my question.  I can understand nostalgia, but if you don’t want improvements, what’s the point of remaking the game anyway?  Just play the original.  It’s even available on on XBox Live.

Another piece of backlash against the game that I don’t understand is Kotaku.com’s “Did Sonic Fans Just Release A Better Sonic the Hedgehog HD?”, which talks about the fan-made demo, Sonic Fan Remix.  While that game does look good, with its developers deserving a lot of credit, I think people are succumbing to the power of suggestion when they say things like, “Yeah, that’s so much better than Sonic 4!  Sega should hire those guys.”  If Sonic Fan Remix was the product that Sega released and some fans made Sonic 4, I think you’d have people talking about how clean, simple, and smooth Sonic 4 is in comparison.

Sonic Fan Remix:

Sonic 4:

In any case, my main point is that the backlash against Sonic 4 has gotten out-of-hand.  It’s a good game, and future episodes should make it every better.

That being said, I do have a few minor complaints about the game.  The first is that the camera is too close for my tastes  Back in March I suggested that Sega move the camera back a little when Sonic is at high speeds.  Needless to say my advice was not heeded.  There is one boss fight in the Casio Night zone where the camera does zoom out.  So we know the game engine supports it.  I would just like it to happen more often.

Secondly, there is no local multiplayer.  I would really have liked a split screen mode, or even a mode where a second controller can control Tails, even if Tails isn’t on the screen or has trouble keeping up with Sonic.  It was a fun thing that you could do in most other Sonic games, beginning with Sonic 2.  I had to explain to my son that the new Sonic game was not 2-player, even though the old ones were.  It doesn’t make sense to a 4-year-old and it doesn’t make sense to me.  Sega, please -- put Tails in Episode 2 and let him be controllable by the second player.

There is a graphical level selector, which I was worried might not be in the game.  I’m sure Sega mainly included that feature for the purposes of the leaderboards, but I’ll still take credit for it.

Bring on episode 2, Sega.

Too Much Old-School Appeal

Pac-Man Championship Edition has been praised by some as the best version of Pac-Man ever.  I played the demo and it does seems like a very good version of the game.  But, there are a couple of major sub-optimal things about it that I noticed immediately.

Take a look at this screen from the game:

The graphics are like the original Pac-Man with lightning effects.  Namco obviously did this to appeal to the nostalgia of gamers who played the original.  I can appreciate that, but I think what gamers are nostalgic for is the mechanics of the original. 

The graphics in Pac-Man CE are intentionally blocky and retro-looking.  I like old school games more than most people, but blocky sprites are not what I like about them.

You can create a version of the game with the feel of the original, that looks modern visually, but still looks like Pac-Man.

Namco did exactly that with 1996’s Pac-Man Arrangement, part of Namco Arcade Classics Volume 2 machines in arcades.

Pac-Man Arrangement had colorful graphics that were attractive.  They weren’t state-of-the-art for 1996, but they were acceptable for that time. That game plays very much like the original Pac-Man, but with some additional power-ups for both Pac-Man and the ghosts.  For the purists, there was a version without that stuff that could be selected when starting the game.

One of the best things about Pac-Man Arrangement was that it supported 2 players simultaneously, something that Pac-Man Championship Edition does not.

When Namco decided to make Pac-Man CE, did they look at the other versions of Pac-Man they’ve released in that past?  If so, why didn’t they incorporate the good ideas from those versions? 

Another example of this is the just-released Space Invaders Infinity.

Like Pac-Man CE, this Space Invaders has blocky sprites and no multiplayer support.  There have been versions of Space Invaders with nice-looking graphics and simultaneous 2 player support, such as Majestic Twelve - The Space Invaders Part IV.  A new version of Space Invaders or Pac-Man could easily have simultaneous 4-player support.  1 player only?  I don’t understand.

Developers – when bringing out new versions of old-school games, preserve the good things about them.  Preserve the atmosphere of the original.  Preserve the overall look at feel.  Don’t preserve the limitations.  Don’t neglect to incorporate improvements made by remakes that came out earlier.

When deciding to buy a game on XBox Live Arcade, gamers like me look at these qualities and features.  I’d love to buy a definitive version of Pac-Man or Space Invaders for $10.  Unfortunately the remakes of these games released in the 90’s are more definitive the ones just released.

The Failure that was Zelda II

I enjoyed the Angry Video Game Nerd’s recent review of the NES game, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (a warning to those not familiar with James – his reviews are full of extremely salty language).  However, I can’t agree with his assessment that it’s a great game despite its flaws.

The problem is not that it’s mostly a side-scroller, with the other Zelda games being from and overhead perspective.  I’m not a Zelda enthusiast so that makes no difference to me.  There’s an NES game similar to Zelda II named Faxanadu (buy my used copy here).  It involves swords, magic, jumping, monsters, and labyrinths.  It too is a side-scroller, and far superior to Zelda II.  If Zelda II was of the level of quality of Faxanadu, it wouldn’t be considered a disappointment.

No, the main problem is that the overworld view is visually horrendous, tedious, and an embarrassment.

No, those graphics were not good or even acceptable by 8-bit standards.  Here’s how an overworld should look in an 8-bit game, roughly:

That picture if from Phantasy Star, a game that puts Zelda II to utter shame.  Notice how the water near the coasts has some subtle surf effects (the water line moved in and out to simulate waves), the sand features cactuses and dunes, there are some shadows around the town.  Zelda II has none of that.  It’s like they didn’t try.  Is that a characteristic of a great game?

Zelda II’s dungeons are bland and repetitive.  There’s very little variation in appearance, with the color of the bricks being the main thing that changes from one dungeon to the next.  The environmental obstacles don’t go much beyond pits to jump over, blocks, and elevators.

It’s true that that complaint could be leveled against the first Legend of Zelda, but for whatever reason the labyrinths in the game were fun most of the time and rarely tedious.  Faxanadu is a good example of variety and creativity in 2D dungeons.

 

James’ review covers the game’s difficulty and frustration level, so I won’t go into that aspect of it.

So, this was basically just a rant about a game that I think is overrated.  Yes, it’s part of a beloved franchise, but even fans of that franchise should be honest and admit the Zelda II is a total lemon of a game.

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.

A Retrospective on RTS Games

Kotaku’s Visual Guide to RTS games makes me feel like a wise video game sage, since I played so many of the formative RTS games.  (Click here for a Seadragon version of the image to the right).

Let me first talk about Herzog Zwei, considered by some to be the first RTS game. It’s the first one I played, at least.

My friend Scott was given it as a gift.  We were expecting to to be a shooter like Thunderforce II (from the same company, Technosoft).  It clearly was a completely different type of game, leaving us confused.  We initially concluded that it was a terrible game and would joke about its funny name (seriously, did they clear that with the marketing department?  Did they have a marketing department?  Command & Conquer – now there’s a good name for an RTS game).

But we eventually revisited the game and discovered what a unique, deep game it was.  Another friend of ours, Jeremy -- who was not a video gamer, but liked strategy-based board games like Axis and Allies -- really took to it, and became better at it than either me or Scott.

I had one strategy in the game -- build a tank and drop it off right behind the enemy base.  The character you controlled could not attack the enemy base directly, but could attack enemy units.  So I would let my tank attack the base, and I would defend the tank from enemy units.  That always worked against the computer.  Human opponents, of course, would figure that strategy out and defend against it.

The main defense against was to build anti-aircraft turrets, which would only attack the enemy commander using guided missiles.  We would build so many of these units around our bases that the screen would immediately fill up with missiles as soon as either command flew anywhere near the enemy base.  The game did not limit the number of units you created, so the only limit was the Sega Genesis’ hardware, which would struggle to keep up after a certain point.

As Kotaku’s guide points out, the real prototype RTS game was the PC game Dune II.  Like with Herzog, I did not know what to expect out of it.  My first thought was, “Ah, this is kind of like Sim City.”  But when I started creating soldiers and tanks and attacking and getting attacked by the enemy, I realized it was something special.  I’ve since enjoyed many RTS games over the years, particularly Warcraft II, Starcraft, Red Alert 1 and 2, Command & Conquer III, and The Lord of the Rings:The Battle for Middle Earth I and II.  The conventions invented for Dune II were used in all of them, and are still being used in the RTS games coming out today.

Unfortunately, the RTS experience on home consoles isn’t that great due to the lack of a keyboard and mouse, and the fact that PC monitors have a higher resolution than HD TVs, which makes them better for displaying large numbers of relatively small units.  I know that they’ve made improvements for playing those games with a controller, but that’s going to be a hard sell for me.  I’ve played so many of these games with a keyboard and mouse over the years, playing them with a controller feels very limiting.

On a side note, my copy of Herzog Zwei is for sale on Amazon.

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.

Thoughts on Video Game Movies

A movie based on a video game should only be made if the game has a good story that stands on its own.  To think that a movie should be made out of a game because the game is fun and popular is so absurd it’s hard to understand how anyone could believe it.  Cashing in on name recognition is the motivation of Hollywood, but there’s no reason to think a good movie will result.

Of course, when the movie fails commercially and critically, fans of the game blame that failure on the movie’s lack of fidelity to the game.  That is about the most idiotic thing imaginable.  Super Mario Bros was a great game.  To be faithful to the game, the movie could have been a 90 minute sequence of Mario and Luigi stomping on mushrooms and turtles, jumping on bricks and clouds, sliding down flagpoles, and shooting fireballs.  There would be very little dialog.  That would be a great movie – right, video game fans?  (I ask that rhetorically, but the scary thing is that there are probably people who would think that would be great as long as the movie had great special effects and Megan Fox playing the princess.)

Someone could say, “okay, Super Mario Bros wouldn’t work, but something like Street Fighter would.  That game had a great premise and would have made an awesome movie if they would have stuck to it.”  Of course, even fans of SF2 games admit the game’s story is nonexistent and the endings for each of the characters are pointless wastes of time – even the endings of the latest game, Super Street Fighter 3.

Here’s what I think goes through the mind of some video game fans. “Video game have great stories, but non-gamers don’t appreciate them because they think video games are childish or something.  If a movie was made of out game x, people would see how profound its story is and maybe even change their attitudes about video games.”  It’s hard to articulate just how wrong that kind of thinking is.  Every video game movie so far has had the opposite effect – instead of changing anyone’s mind about video games, they’ve cemented people’s beliefs that games have juvenile, hackneyed stories.

The answer to why video game movies are bad is obvious – games are good for reasons other than their stories.  Games don’t necessarily have bad stories, but the bar is so low that a mediocre story in a video game can seem a lot better to the gamer than it actually is.  A good game can make a bad story tolerable.  But if a game is bad, even a great story won’t save it from being bad.

Ironically, for all the complaining about video game-based movies not being faithful to their source material, people are praising the recently-released Mortal Kombat short (“Mortal Kombat: Rebirth”), which is completely unfaithful to any Mortal Kombat game I’ve ever played.  I don’t recommend watching the video since it’s a tasteless, pretentious piece of drivel, but if you must watch if you can find it here.  Why are they praising it?  Because it’s full of the pseudo-dark elements that the juvenile-minded think make a movie serious and profound.  But as I’ve mentioned before, fans of this type of stuff aren’t interested in exploring real evil, only a fantasy world where serial killers are interested in competing in martial arts tournaments.

In any case, if a game has a great story (i.e. a story that would be great in another context), I’m open to the possibility of a good movie being made based on it.  But people need to discard the idea that a movie can be good if it’s just faithful to the game.