tempest in a teacup

I’ve more or less gotten everything I can out of the Wii version of Sonic Unleashed – I haven’t gotten all the medals, but I have pretty much S-ranked every stage (a few Werehog stages being the exception), so I think I can set it aside.

That said, the first thing I did after getting back from Singapore (literally the first thing – just a few minutes after I walked in the door) was download the demo for the PS3 version. I’ve taken it for a few spins since then (I’ve A-ranked it at least) and I have some…thoughts.

The game does look rather nice in terms of lighting, modeling and texture quality, but the PS3 version has a few hitches – for one, the framerate is rather inconsistent. Unlike the framerate-locked 360 version, the framerate on the PS3 version can go from 30 to 60 in an instant. On the one hand this is kind of annoying since it kills the sensation of speed that you get…on the other hand it means that someone at Sega has finally figured out how to program a variable framerate engine! Not that I’d want to be licensing it to anyone, given how crappily it seems to run on the PS3…

The game itself is a little uneven. The controls are somewhat floatier than the Wii version for some reason – they’re not as bad as the ‘twitch and fall off a cliff’ controls in Sonic Heroes and Sonic 2006, though. The demo only contains one level – the first level, Windmill Isle. The PS3/360 version of this stage is rather straightforward and linear compared to the Wii version, which has at least 3 alternate routes through the stage that I can think of. The stage also feels very cramped, and this affects the game to some degree, in that you can’t really see what’s coming up ahead of you. In that respect it’s somewhat disappointing.

As I already knew, the boost system in the PS3/360 version is plucked straight out of Sonic Rush, so you can hold down X as long as you like to continue speeding through the stage. There are a few obstacles placed in the stage to prevent you from doing this, like spike traps, bumps in the road that will trip you up, and, well, walls. The actual amount of platforming you have to do in the first level is rather minimal, but there is some of it.

Overall, I can’t say I was blown away, but at least it wasn’t awful like I was expecting it to be. That said, I have no idea how the later levels are (some people have told me that they’re significantly more challenging, although I have yet to verify this), and of course the demo contains none of the Werehog levels, town missions or any of that other stuff which most people regard as a drag on the whole experience. I’ll probably seek out the PS3 version when it’s down to $30 or less (right now it’s still full price at Amazon.com).

On another note, in the comments on my last entry Neochaos just pointed out something interesting to me regarding Street Fighter 4 – the game will in fact feature a full-featured training mode, and from this article it sounds like it’s very much in the vein of Virtua Fighter 4′s excellent Training Mode on PS2.

I stand by my earlier point that the game itself is not made more accessible to newbies by removing stuff like parries, but extra modes like this can help them deal with the learning curve somewhat. It won’t eliminate it, but it should at least show them what they need to master.

Sega owns the rights to the Guilty Gear franchise now

So yeah, I guess we know why they made BlazBlue and Battle Fantasia now. Considering that ArcSys’ direct involvement ended with #Reload, it’s amazing that Accent Core turned out the way it did. Then again, as long as ASW gets entrusted with any development of future Guilty Gear games I’m not too worried.

Another nice tidbit from the article that I liked:

The company’s designer for its new hi-res 2D fighting title BlazBlue, Toshimichi Mori, intriguingly discusses his views of Capcom’s Street Fighter IV and its accessibility in the interview:
"I’m not trying to pick a fight with Capcom or anything, but with Street Fighter IV, they made a big deal about how the game was designed to be accessible to people new to the genre.
I remember when I first read that in an interview, I was like, "What? How can they say that?!" I thought maybe I was seeing things. I think they need to take a second look at the list of moves for that game before they make a claim like that.
Sure, people like us who work with games, or fans of fighting games can do a hadouken or a shoryuken without thinking much about it, but for somebody just getting started? Those moves are pretty tough! You can’t expect new players to just whip those moves out every time.
To fill your game with moves like that and then emphasize how simple it was for beginners to pick up seemed irresponsible to me. Street Fighter IV is not a game geared toward people who’ve never played fighters before. If they were really interested in making a beginner-friendly game, they should’ve made included a few impressive moves a player could do with the press of a button."

Mori is pretty much saying the obvious – fighting games that use Street Fighter II as a template cannot get any more accessible than that game ever was (which is something I’ve mentioned before). If you make high-level play more accessible then you’re just dumbing the game down. To make it more accessible to newbies you pretty much have to convert the game to maybe Jump Ultimate Stars or Smash Bros type controls.

Note: before anyone crucifies me for hating on SF4 – I don’t think that the game has necessarily been ‘dumbed down’ – There’s no way that complete neophytes to fighting games are going to be able to pull off stuff like focus cancel combos or hadouken traps on the day they buy the game. And heck, I’m pretty sure at this point that I’m going to be buying the game for my PS3 and/or my PC (along with that potentially awesome Sanwa stick that MadCatz is releasing). My point here is that Yoshinori Ono claimed that SF4 was designed to be accessible to newbies, and beyond superficial appearances (lol SF2 etc) it clearly isn’t (and can’t be).

Meet the Sandvich!

(No, that is not a typo)

The Heavy update has finally arrived, and I took the opportunity to put a few hours into the game to see what had changed. I’ve already seen Heavies running around with all three unlocked weapons, so the achievements are definitely quite reasonable this time around.

I haven’t tried Arena Mode yet, although I will eventually. I did get to play a few rounds on Badwater Basin, the new payload map. I like the fact that there are now several side passages and back alleys that I can rely on for my Pyro ambushing. On the other hand, it seemed like the last cap was just as entrenched as the last cap on Goldrush tends to get on full servers. Time will tell, I suppose.

I didn’t see any servers running cp_steel, which was a little surprising, given that it was a community map that was overwhelmingly recommended to Valve for inclusion in the update. I did, however, see my TF2 client either crash or boot me out of the server I was playing in for no apparent reason. Others seem to be having similar problems – a patch will be needed.

Still, the abundance of Heavies means ample opportunities to get those Medic achievements – or improve my Spy skills.

On an unrelated note, I nabbed the PC version of Bionic Commando: Rearmed off Capcom’s digital store last week, and so far I have to say it was worth the money. I never played the original NES Bionic Commando, but this seems to be a decent recreation (although by comparing footage of the NES version to the remake it looks like some of the physics might be different). On top of that, the developers have taken a page out of Portal‘s book and added challenge rooms for people to prove their mastery of the bionic arm.

Also, because I turned on my Wii for the first time in weeks and noticed that Mega Man was available on the Virtual Console, I bought it, and played it for a few minutes. First impressions: this game is just as challenging as the Internet says it is.

I just beat Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition. Yay.

I thought it was kind of funny that the post-boss jet ski escape killed me more times than the actual boss battle (4 times vs. 0 times). Still, good game overall. It is probably a bit easier than the GameCube and PS2 versions because of the Wii remote aiming, but stuff like sniping still requires you to use the stick to aim (@!@#$ Regenerators).

The writing continues to be as ridiculous as ever (midget Napoleon lol) but it doesn’t detract from the action in the slightest.

Oh well, one less game to worry about for next month’s list of doom.

I’ll probably chuck a low-priority item on the backlog to complete the Ada sidestories at some point.

I’ve mentioned before how SNKP dumping all the new things they introduced in KOF XII irritated me. Capcom has been doing something similar with Street Fighter IV, and needless to say that move has puzzled me as well. It’s not that I don’t understand the motivation behind the move – it’s that I think that it’s not going to help at all.

Ostensibly the idea behind returning these series to a time when they were less loaded with subsystems to master is fairly obvious – to make them more “accessible” to beginners. There’s nothing wrong with making games easy to learn – as long as they remain difficult to master. That is the key thing that keeps people playing these games for so long. And when you think about it, a game like Guilty Gear XX really is no more accessible than Street Fighter II, since at the lowest level, they are based off the same principles.

Anyway, back to Street Fighter IV. Capcom is trying to draw in the people who played Street Fighter II back in its heyday, yet who didn’t stick with the scene after that. I have to say, I’m highly skeptical that this will work, and the evidence on the Internet doesn’t really help to convince me otherwise.

For instance, take a look at this video on Youtube. It’s a video of a Ryu player in Street Fighter IV (the video uploader claims it’s Daigo Umehara, but that hasn’t been confirmed). Still, it’s pretty clear that the guy knows what he’s doing. However, the comments on this and other videos are rather revealing:

it’s not that hard to do fire ball over and over again then kick a few times . I hope D dark is on this game so I can show you a real beast.

How is this guy good? He constantly spams a load of Hadouken. The guy is aweful.

good?…all he does is spam hadouken.

These are the people Capcom is trying to sell this game to. Good luck with that.

If anything, they’ll think “omg, this is going to be just like Street Fighter II!”, hop on Live/PSN and get their asses kicked a bunch of times by players who stuck with the scene over the years (and have thus become really good), chalk it up to people being cheap or not “playing for fun” and quit the game for good. Which is probably why they stopped playing Street Fighter II, come to think of it. There will probably be a few who will attempt to learn the system and actually get better at the game, but I doubt they will be in the majority.

Disclaimer: I don’t claim to be an expert at fighting games (anyone who has played against me knows what a pushover I am) but I do like to think that I know why people continue to play these games, and thus why trying to attract new players with misguided attempts to rekindle nostalgia isn’t going to work.

(I’ve been writing way too many negative posts lately, haven’t I? I’ll try to think of something more positive to write about next time)

Don’t believe me? Look at this:

So far the game is rather easy compared to DMC3, though. The first boss barely put up a fight (and I even skipped “Normal” mode to go straight to “Devil Hunter”). On top of that the style meter seems to fill a lot slower, too, or maybe it’s just my being used to DMC3′s combat system.

Finally beat Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition today. Great game overall, with a few things that could be improved (like the repeated boss fight issue I mentioned a while back). It’s off the backlog for now, but I’m definitely going to re-play it with Vergil and on harder difficulties when I get the chance. I stuck mainly to Swordmaster and Gunslinger, too, so I’d like to try out some of the other styles (and weapons) as well.

And at some point I’ll get off my ass and beat the original game as well. For some reason that final Nightmare fight kept kicking my ass.

And of course, I beat the game just in time for my copy of the PC version of Devil May Cry 4 to arrive tomorrow. Woo.

On an unrelated note, I was having some connectivity issues with my desktop last night when I got home from work. I could ping websites just fine, but all other outgoing requests were being blocked. I knew it wasn’t my modem or my router because my laptop (which runs Kubuntu) was able to connect without any problems.

I eventually found out that ZoneAlarm Firewall was blocking all outgoing packets. I shrugged, chalked it up to lousy developers and uninstalled it, restoring connectivity. Nod32 comes with a firewall too, after all.

And then today I read about this, and the fact that I had installed some Microsoft security updates right before leaving for work came to mind.

This line in particular made me laugh:

Mr Rogers said installing it and re-booting his machines fixed all the problems.

He said he could understand Microsoft being reticent with details about the patch given its sensitivity.

“But,” he added “it would seem reasonable for [Microsoft] to test their patch against what is probably the most popular software firewall.”

Of course it’s reasonable. Which is why they probably didn’t do it. :P

I’ve been putting time into Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition as part of my attempt to clear my backlog (so I can get some new games). I’m near the end of the game on Normal mode, and one thing has cropped up that has me a little confused. Namely, why the developer is making me re-fight old boss battles.

Mission 18 has you wander through a maze worthy of Escher, fighting bosses that you fought previously in the game. You don’t have to fight all of them (although you do get a blue orb fragment if you do). However all of these bosses aren’t any more challenging than the first time you fought them, and indeed don’t exhibit any new attack patterns or moves that you need to deal with.

It’s far from the only game that does this, though – the original Devil May Cry does this as well, in spite of already making you fight the Phantom, the Griffon and Nero Angelo multiple times each (although to be fair, they do have new attacks with every successive encounter). Okami does this too, making you fight all the major bosses before you can proceed to the endgame (and since your character has obviously gotten a lot stronger since you last fought them, they roll over and die pretty easily). And of course, one of the main complaints about Devil May Cry 4 is how it makes you backtrack as Dante to fight the same bosses again, and then has you fight them all again as Nero at the end of the game.

If anything this smacks of laziness in game development. It’s not a Capcom-exclusive thing, either – Dimps made you fight every single boss again at the end of Sonic Advance 2. Are game developers just too lazy to think of new ways to challenge the player near the end of the game?

Capcom and Konami appear to think that it is.

First off, Megaman 9. Let’s start off with a disclaimer – I’m not a Mega Man fan. My experience with the franchise is limited to a few minutes with Megaman X and Megaman Zero 2. That said, MM9 has me somewhat dumbstruck. It’s not that it’s a 2D sidescroller (that isn’t an issue at all, and in fact is probably a good move to appeal to Megaman fans). What I take issue with is this:

Mega Man 9 eschews the style of the more recent PlayStation-era Mega Man 8 or even the SNES Mega Man 7, instead going all the way back to 8-bit visuals, imitating the style of the NES games. Series creator Keiji Inafune commented that old-school Mega Man games don’t “fit into the grandiose and expansive world that the consumer gaming industry has become, and so you have to make games that match the current expectations.” This helped determine the game’s direction as a retro-style downloadable title for the WiiWare service.

2D is one thing, but the last thing I expected Capcom to do was take a leaf out of SNK’s book and completely recycle old assets. Actually, even that comparision isn’t appropriate any more, seeing what SNK is doing with King of Fighters XII. Yes, the old Megaman games are revered as classics, but if anything they are loved because they were good games, not because they used art from the 8-bit era! All this seems to be is another cheap attempt to cash in on fan nostalgia (see Street Fighter IV) by completely missing the point of why people love these games in the first place.

If they’re going to put it on a modern console, why not go all out and make a game with state-of-the-art 2D graphics that still stays true to the Megaman legacy? Heaven knows.

On top of that, it looks like Konami saw the announcement and decided to one-up them with their announcement of Castlevania Judgement for the Wii. The game is (of all things) a 3D fighter with motion controls.

I don’t know why Konami thought that Castlevania was great fodder for a fighting game. The system snippets in the article suggest that the game will play exactly like the main games, with heart meters and sub-weapons, but in a 1-on-1 format, which sounds strange. Still, it may be doable. The main reason I’m panning this announcement is the fact that the game uses motion controls.

I cannot think of a single fighting game on the Wii that has benefited from motion controls. Bleach: Shattered Blade is a shallow waggle-fest. Guilty Gear XX Accent Core has motion controls but no-one with any sense will use them. And the flagship fighting game on the Wii, Super Smash Brothers Brawl, eschews them entirely. The precision and timing that such games demand from their players means that control is of paramount importance (which is why any fighting game player will always insist on using an arcade stick). After about 9 months of using the Wii, I can safely say that the Wii remote does not have the necessary control. Games like Sonic and the Secret Rings suffer because of this, particularly on the later levels where it demands split-second reaction from the player.

If Konami knows what they’re doing, they will provide a classic controller option.

There was also that Ubisoft announcement of that new Prince of Persia platformer for the DS which inexplicably uses a chibi art style, but I don’t really consider that to be on the same level as these two dumbfounding announcements (although I think it’s probably just as unimpressive at this point).

In this case, the PC version of Devil May Cry 4. Capcom has bestowed upon us a demo and a benchmark test, so I took it upon myself to download them and give them a shot.

This isn’t Devil May Cry‘s first outing on the PC, although arguably the PC version of Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition is best left forgotten. So how does this new instalment fare on the PC? Actually, it’s looking a lot better than I had hoped.

My first excursion into the game was the benchmark tool, which does a real-time render test of one of the game’s areas. The first thing I noticed was that like Lost Planet, the range of resolutions the game supports is thankfully wide, with a healthy variety of 4:3, 16:9 and 16:10 aspect ratio resolutions available. MSAA is also supported, which is nice if you want to boost your framerate by running in a lower resolution yet dislike the jagged edges this causes.

I opted for 1280×800 with 2x MSAA, and managed to get a fairly smooth framerate in the demo level (for some context, I have a Core 2 Duo E6750 clocked at 2.66Ghz, 2GB of RAM and a 256MB nVidia GeForce 7900GS). The framerate never quite hit 60 fps, but it never really got choppy either, and was more than adequate, hovering in the 40-50 fps range. One oddity is that after you exit the in-game options screen, the game enters a prolonged loading phase for about 30 seconds. I have absolutely no clue what it’s loading – it does this even when you don’t change anything in the options. The strange part is that the actual level loading is really snappy (as one would expect, given that it’s not reading off a slow optical drive).

The demo itself features a time-limited run-through of one of the early levels, as well as a boss fight against Berial, the flame demon featured in the Xbox Live/PSN demo that was released earlier this year. I haven’t tried the boss fight yet, but I gave the other mode a shot.

Control-wise, the game wisely lets you use a gamepad. However, when it comes to configuring these controls, it opts to fall in line with other Japanese PC ports like Guilty Gear XX #Reload by having you map your gamepad controls to an intermediate mapping, which you can then customize from within the game. In GGXX‘ case it had you map your controls to PS2 buttons; in DMC4‘s case it’s the Xbox 360 controller. The additional layer of indirection is irritating and unnecessary, but I suppose that’s what you get when a company that normally deals in console games starts doing PC releases.

That said, there isn’t really anything wrong with the gamepad controls. I plugged in my PS2 pad using a USB adapter, and it controls just fine. There are keyboard controls too, but I was able to tolerate them for all of 5 seconds before giving up and going back to my pad. The mapping is something like WSAD for movement, I to attack, K to jump/dodge, J to shoot, L for Devil Bringer, Space for targeting mode, N for Devil Trigger, M for taunt, and the arrow keys to control the camera. You can give it a try if you have some irrational phobia for gamepads, or are a raging masochist, but count me out.

As for the game itself? It’s Devil May Cry. You should know what to expect. I don’t think commenting on the game mechanics from a demo is going to help anyone, although I will say that the Devil Bringer technique is pretty cool and satisfying to pull off. There’s nothing quite like grabbing your foe out of the air, slamming him on the ground and watching him explode into a shower of red orbs. At the same time timing seems to play a significant role in how effective your Devil Bringer attacks will be, which has me salivating at the juggle possibilities.

Configuration quirks notwithstanding, the PC port of Devil May Cry 4 looks to outdo the port of its predecessor by a significant margin. It’s probably not going to be the version of choice for most people, but for those who game primarily on their PCs and haven’t invested in either an Xbox 360 or a PlayStation 3 yet, it should be worth picking up.

On a side note, I hear that Capcom may be planning to release Resident Evil 5 on the PC as well. It goes without saying that this interests me a good deal (particularly if they actually add mouse aiming unlike the lousy PC port of Resident Evil 4). With that new Bionic Commando, Street Fighter 4 and now possibly Resident Evil 5 all heading to my platform of choice, it looks like Capcom is really trying to get my attention…