Getting Copies Right: Open Source Gaming

Today, in what is a veritable legal monsoon season, a law exists regarding just about everything. People are quick to abuse the law of the land for their own purposes, suing over anything, staking claims to this and that, and doing whatever else they can to manipulate things for personal gain. In the videogame world, the focus is more on using laws to keep everyone else's hand off of intellectual property, allowing each and every scrap of content to be used in only the way its creators intended. It's mostly a "look, but don't touch" affair.

It was only a matter of time before the more, well, maybe less creative minds in the LittleBigPlanet community would dip into copyrighted material to re-create or re-imagine some of the finer experiences in gaming. They did just that, alarms rang out in the night, and the intellectual property patrol were cut loose, deleting a number of high-quality, but conceptually and thematically borrowed LBP creations swiftly and mercilessly. Many top-rated levels from the community vanished without a trace, leaving quite a sour taste in the mouths of many pleasure-seeking sackpeople.

Thus, a beautiful platform for fun and creativity was destroyed. Or was it?

According to Media Molecule Technical Director Alex Evans, this is not an entirely doom-and-gloom tale. In fact, some people want their copyrights "infringed."

"We knew that people would be creative, and that there would be references. It was hard getting the right balance on a worldwide angle. But then there's been these two mad positives; one was the high quality of the levels, including the infringing ones. The other point is the number of IP owners who came up to us and said please whitelist us – we'll never ever ask you to pull infringing stuff. I can't say who that is, but those two things really shocked me, I think it shocked [the IP holders], who were like, hang on, my IP's being represented and it's being represented really well. The IP holders have to have last say over the representation of their brand, and that's fair enough, so we've always got to have a method for people misusing a brand, but what's been really lovely is how well represented so many brands are."

It's good to know that at least some people get it. While the world of legality is all about restriction, segmentation, and general selfishness, the "internet generation" has been accepting, adopting, and applying the open-source attitude more and more with each passing day. We are migrating further away from the hindering "mine" and "yours" qualifications; everything is shared. Personal inventions are offered to the masses, allowing for parallel development in a shared problem-solving process. When it comes time for praise, this natural merit-based system rewards those who set wheels in motion, because the only prerequisite to IP access is recognition.

Until now, all we've seen and heard from the videogame industry is the former, but with the voluntary LittleBigPlanet whitelisting of these unnamed IP holders, it seems some people realize that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and that these copycat tributes actually serve to honor the source material they are based on. Maybe gaming is finally going truly "two-point-oh."

So is anyone interested in making a LittleBraidPlanet level?

Taking Risks: The Expansion Of An Artform

As the videogame industry marches eternally into the realm of increasingly sophisticated technology, creating videogames that push the envelope and take full advantage of the resources available to developers becomes ever more costly -- a fact of life that developers and publishers never hesitate to point out.

Claims that a game needs to sell at least X-hundred-thousand copies in order to simply break even are common, and complaints about unoriginal game content are often rebutted with evidence that consumers more often than not tend to play it safe and go with what they are familiar with when it comes time to cash out at the register. Whether the average game consumer is indeed the same man, woman, boy, or girl whose passion for the pursuit of gaming excellence drives them to complain about these seeing-eye sequels and copycat productions is up for debate, but in any case, the dissonance between critical and fiscal demand is quite evident. But that is for another discussion.

In 2008, we have seen a great many rehashes of old titles -- the numbers 2, 3, 4, and beyond adorned many retail packages this year -- but we have also seen games that represent great leaps of faith on the part of developers and publishers. I personally praised games like Penumbra: Black Plague, Patapon, Braid, Too Human, and Mirror's Edge for challenging traditional gaming archetypes and delivering truly innovative gameplay experiences, and sincerely hope that the positive response to these games far outweigh the negative, encouraging their creators to continue exploring ways to expand the definition of videogames. They may not please every gamer, but these games are essential to the industry's growth.

Ubisoft's Prince of Persia producer Ben Mattes seems to agree, and even cited Mirror's Edge as a big risk-taker in 2008. In a recent interview, he expressed his disappointment at the lack of recognition his studio received for the "high level risks" involved in the acrobatic platformer's development.

"In terms of us taking a shot and missing, I guess I would have to go a little higher level here and speak about risks in general.

For years we've all been reading complaints about sequels and companies churning out carbon copies of proven formulas without focusing on innovation or taking risks. Fans, developers and critics alike seemed ravenous for new ideas -- new IPs; major innovations -- advances in this art-tertainment (I'm trying to coin a new term here ;)) form we all love.

We tried to really embrace this challenge on PoP. We set out to keep a few core fundamentals but to re-imagine everything else, discarding some very well entrenched ideas not only about the brand but also about videogames in general (and we weren't alone. EA took some major risks this year with new IP and innovations - Mirror's Edge and Dead Space, for example).

What surprises me is how little these high level risks seem to be noticed and appreciated as attempts to shake up the industry and push things forward. Perhaps I'm an idealist, but I think perhaps I was expecting a few more virtual pats-on-the-back for our attempts to do something new.

Whether this means we didn't totally succeed in our risk taking or whether our industry in fact has a stronger appetite for the familiar then it wants to admit remains to be seen. Honestly I hope it is the former."

Yes, studios should be recognized for their efforts to elevate the medium to new plateaus, but what exactly constitutes a thorough attempt to achieve this sort of groundbreaking development? What determines whether a specific design decision is merely a change from the established formula, or if it is indeed a "major risk" in the creative process? How do we define the term "risk" as it relates to videogame development?

Blurring the lines between genres, infusing topics typically reserved for purely academic discourse and analysis, introducing previously unimagined and untested gameplay mechanics, presenting a product whose meaning is entirely subject to audience interpretation; these are risks -- design elements that take gamers out of their comfort zone and reach into unexplored territory.

Did Prince of Persia ever really push the envelope in such a way? Eliminating consequences for gamers' mistakes was a bold move, but it never felt like a monumental change; the game did not represent a paradigm shift, and it certainly didn't fundamentally alter the way people think of videogames. I do applaud Ubisoft for their efforts with Prince of Persia, but Elika was not revolutionary.

If anything, she took the "risk" right out of the game. :-p

Leave Well Enough Alone -- Syberia Review

Sometimes it's just better to leave well enough alone. In the videogame world, this philosophy can be aptly applied to publishers' tendencies to create sub-par ports of solid titles, oftentimes trading game quality for platform viability. Such is the case with Syberia from Dreamcatcher interactive.

The original PC version of Syberia was released in 2002 to predominantly favorable reviews that applauded the game's top-notch graphics, imaginative world, and interesting plot. This year's DS remake maintains that world and accompanying storyline, but clearly fails to deliver the beautiful aesthetic quality of the original, and brings along with the new hardware a few semi-game-breaking issues.

Syberia is a point-and-click adventure that takes New York attorney Kate Walker on a strange journey through Europe, seeking out the eccentric last heir to the Voralberg Toy Company to seal the deal on a corporate acquisition of the odd French automaton manufacturer. It is a unique and interesting tale, and the classic genre seems a perfect fit for Nintendo's touchscreen-based handheld, but gameplay stumbling blocks -- finicky stylus controls and meager system performance -- prevent players from enjoying it to its full potential.

Players guide Kate through the strange world of Syberia by tapping the desired location on the DS's tiny screen. Unfortunately, this is not the most precise of commands, and Kate does not always go exactly where players would like her to. There are many occasions when an ill-aimed stylus tap sends our heroine off of the screen and into the next area, and anything more than a single touch confuses the game, sending Kate back in the direction she came from. Manipulating the game world objects can also be frustrating at times, due to similar control issues.

Many of the game's puzzles require quite a bit of thought, and successfully solving them can be very satisfying. Unfortunately, much of the difficulty stems from the player's inability to discern interactive parts of the environment from the background visuals, and missing the items necessary to advance as a result. In this way simple solutions can become impossible. This design choice originally intended to showcase the PC game's high-quality graphics, but is completely unsuitable for the DS iteration. The solution -- dragging an inspection icon over the screen's every pixel -- hardly makes up for that. Then there is the matter of simply forgetting where things are and what Kate has seen prior to encountering each puzzle. I'd swear the game lied to me about her background, because NO New Yorker walks at the snail's pace that Kate does. Traveling from screen to screen is such a painstakingly slow process that it literally makes the game more difficult to play, besides wearing away at one's patience.

Along the same lines, what is essentially a lovely piece of background music is looped so incessantly that it could drive a person insane. After an hour of play, muting the DS was the only option.

A once-great point-and-click adventure has suffered a sad fate via this shoddy port of Syberia on the Nintendo DS. With poor presentation, faulty controls, and pacing that all but removes players from the experience, the story of the original game may have survived the transition, but its spirit remains on the PC.

I Vant To Shut You Up -- A Vampyre Story Review

When a person sits down with an adventure game, the most important tasks that the game has to accomplish are to a) be entertaining, and b) not be broken. A Vampyre Story from Autumn Moon Entertainment and The Adventure Company satisfies both of those requirements, but does little to excel beyond simple "worth playing" status.

The game puts the player in control of Mona De Lafitte, an opera singer-turned-vampiress being held against her will in an isolated castle in Draxsylvania. With her best bat-friend, Froderick, she tries to escape and return to Paris on a night when her captor, Baron Shrowdy von Kiefer, has an unfortunate (or fortunate) run-in with the hands of fate. This is where the action begins.

The game operates in much the same manner as any other point-and-click adventure title, but with a few notable unique features. Players click on paths, doorways, stairs, and the like to move Mona and Froderick around the game world, and can interact with objects by clicking and holding down the mouse button on them, then selecting actions from a selection wheel resembling a compass rose. In this way, the dynamic duo can, among other things, examine, talk to, pick up, take, and move these items using the context-sensitive commands that appear on the cross-like interface. Mona can also "remember" the things she sees so that she and Froderick can use them later on. When this happens, an ethereal version of the item -- its memory -- is placed in the player's inventory, becoming usable just like the real thing, but also answering the ever-bewildering question, "how does she carry all that stuff?" When a remembered item is used correctly, Mona simply turns into a bat and flies off to get it before performing the desired action. And speaking of bats, Mona's unfortunate "disease" (which she constantly denies) allows her to learn new vampiric abilities as the story progresses, and then use them to help her advance.

In general, the game's puzzles are thoughtful enough to not be boring, but also not so ridiculously off-the-wall that normal logic fails to solve them. Often during the trickier portions, Froderick or Mona will give an auditory clue in the form of some key word or phrase, thus helping to prod the player -- and the plot -- along. There are a few times when necessary items are difficult to spot, leading to temporary hang-ups, but overall, these problems are few and far-between.

A Vampyre Story's greatest shortcoming is its plot and storytelling, which is not to say that the narrative is horrible, because it is the best aspect of the game, as well. Many of the characters in Draxsylvania are genuinely likable (or despicable), and much of the dialog in the game is witty and amusing. On the other hand, the writing tries so hard to be funny that it takes the corny jokes and puns just a step too far on multiple occasions. The story isn't all too deep, nor is it so amazing that gamers will be talking about it for years to come, but it is interesting and enjoyable enough to keep players happily involved until the end (so long as Mona's grating voice doesn't annoy you to the point of abandoning the game completely).

The cartoon-style graphics fit the light-hearted nature of the story and are generally very appealing, save for a few minor clipping and frame rate hiccups. The hand-drawn backgrounds outshine the character models, but the two work well together to create a nice, unified aesthetic that seems perfect for this game. The background music, too, fits the story, and while it is nothing too grandiose, it is varied and effective.

At a bargain price of $29.99, A Vampyre Story is great for players seeking a low-intensity and entertaining adventure. The characters and dialog will keep you smiling (at both the legitimately funny lines as well as the laughably corny ones), the simple, effective controls and sensible puzzles will keep you playing, and the mute button will keep you from throttling Mona. Okay, maybe she's not THAT horrible.

Such Great Heights -- Prince Of Persia Review

To take an already critically acclaimed videogame franchise and entirely re-envision it for a new generation is some feat. What's an even greater achievement is to stray from the original formula and still come away with something spectacular. While Ubisoft Montreal's Prince of Persia for the Xbox 360 and PS3 may not definitively improve upon, nor fall drastically short of the older entries in the franchise, the game is a solid, enjoyable experience that, despite design flaws, is indeed spectacular.

This Prince of Persia is the tale of a new "prince" -- a vagrant tomb raider who loses his latest bounty, stumbles into a sandstorm, and finds himself mixed up with a beautiful woman in the middle of a battle between gods. The story seems heavy, albeit a bit standard, but the narrative is actually light, and the focus is squarely on gameplay. The problem with this, however, is that the gameplay itself also happens to be surprisingly dainty.

On their quest to seal away the evil god Ahriman forever, the Prince and companion Elika must locate and restore a number of formerly pristine "fertile grounds" that have been corrupted by the dark deity. Much of the storytelling comes in the form of optional dialog between the two protagonists. Unfortunately, the way these segments are delivered to the audience involve a break in the action, when they just as easily could have been voiced over the platforming gameplay. Tapping L to make the two chat does little more than take the controller out of the player's hands in favor of a perspective shift, and make the somewhat interesting, yet visually unimportant conversations a chore to sit through, thus encouraging players to skip them altogether. Only at a few key junctures in the adventure does the game really work to advance the plot. Combined with an inevitably monotonous my-first-platformer control setup, this offers little motivation for players to press forward.

The platforming action is not immediately intuitive, as there is a delay between controller input and on-screen action. The idea seems to be to allow players to string together lengthy acrobatic combinations across long stretches of obstacles with relative ease, and for the most part it is effective. The slight delay between controller command and equivalent on-screen action is somewhat jolting at first, and fluid traverses across the many platforms, columns, rings, bars, walls, fissures, and more that fill the environments take some time to realize, but once the control style is practiced for but a short while, it does become second nature. Players will find themselves skating through the Prince's world more fantastically than in any other Prince of Persia game to date. This isn't to say that the acrobatic gameplay is superior to prior games, but that the moves available are simply more wildly unrealistic. The fact of the matter is that as complex and incredible as the Prince's moves may be, the corresponding player input boils down to very simple and borderline leisurely button taps that require little skill to accurately perform. At times, "second nature" can end up meaning "mildly boring," as if the game is playing itself, but newcomers to the hobby, genre, or franchise may just find the pace to be ideal.

Being set in such an expansive (and visually stunning) world, there are certain areas in the game that are far more satisfying to play through than others. The locales appearing to pay homage to the older, arguably more engrossing Sands of Time trilogy are in fact some of the most bland parts of the game, but navigating the complex architecture constructed by Ahriman's Alchemist (one of the four sub-bosses) allows players to partake in simultaneously beautiful and practical level design on a truly grand scale. The game is at its best when whisking the player quickly from one obstacle to the next through this sort of environment, the Prince avoiding corruption and performing long and varied sequences of jumps, swings, slides, wall-runs, etc. Action such as this takes up about a third of the game, the rest being divided among travel, combat, and...orb-collecting.

Light orbs are the keys to the city, so to speak. Collecting these liberally sprinkled balls of joy opens up four types of Prince-flinging, glyphic plates placed on walls throughout the game world that must be utilized in order to move forward. Herein lies another problem. Despite the lack of challenging gameplay, running through the game world can still be very enjoyable as long as the player is actively progressing toward the goal of the moment. After purifying each of the 20 fertile grounds, however, extensive orb-collection adversely affects forward momentum, backing the game up into N64-era platforming a la Banjo-Kazooie and Donkey Kong 64. Either game type, on its own, is perfectly fine, but in Prince of Persia, the reliance on orb collection to advance feels like fly-in-my-soup syndrome. Ideally, players would be able to ignore the orbs altogether, but still pick up enough of them via normal exploration to unlock subsequent areas and advance through the game. This is not quite the case; players can almost get away with that strategy, but dedicated orb-hunting is unavoidable.

Players are granted plenty of freedom in the path they take to the game's conclusion, however. Like those platformers of the 90s, Prince of Persia is characterized by a type of non-linear, hub- and sub-world design, wherein the players, rather than the designers, determine the order in which they visit and complete the game's many areas. Because there are no boundaries between these places, it is possible to easily jump (run, swing, climb) from one to the next, all the while observing magnificent watercolor vistas that illustrate the immense scope of the land.

Each of the fertile grounds is protected by a single enemy. It may seem odd that players fight these foes prior to exploring the area they guard, but in a way, the setup makes far more sense than the more common boss-at-the-end style that most games employ. Instead of basically having their way with an area before seeing any real opposition, Prince of Persia makes players earn the right to explore each one. The Prince and Elika battle each of the guardians in rhythmic combo- and counter-based two-on-one combat that combines real-time control with quick time events (QTE). These sequences are easily the most intense and adrenaline-pumping portions of the game, but because there are only so many possible combinations of sword, gauntlet, and Elika attacks available, these fights can turn into cases of deja vu as players advance further into the game.

As a work of art, Prince of Persia is a nearly unmitigated success. The unique graphical style is crisp, colorful, and beautiful, especially as applied to the epic landscapes and structural design within the game world. The score is a bit more subtle and less impressive, but the compositions definitely contribute to each area's overall mood and serve to better the gameplay experience.

Prince of Persia may not be the absolute pinnacle in princely acrobatic gaming, but it is certainly an enjoyable game. Marred by some inconsistent pacing and less-than-engaging action, it still manages to deliver a wondrous and open world through which players fight and fly to the game's exciting conclusion.

Mobile Mayhem -- Metal Slug 7 Review

Anyone who has played a Metal Slug game in the past knows what, generally, to expect from any new entry into the series, as the core gameplay has seen little alteration over the course of its 12-year history. The fast, frenetic, and fun run-and-gun shooting action once again makes a return in Metal Slug 7 for the Nintendo DS, the first original entry to go portable since 2004's Metal Slug Advance.

The appeal of the Metal Slug series has always been the intense and hazardous Contra-style action, combined with a light and humorous visual style and overall tone. Metal Slug 7 delivers on both fronts, managing to contain the classic Metal Slug feeling on the small DS screen. Although everything is scaled down to fit the DS, there is little loss of visual quality; the colorful sprites are slightly less detailed, but retain the clarity and artistic stylings of higher-resolution versions.

Metal Slug 7's gameplay also remains intact on the handheld, as the DS's d-pad and face buttons are precise and responsive throughout the game. There are no tricks here; players run, jump, shoot, bomb, and slice their way through the waves of enemies while rescuing grateful prisoners of war. The story is as thick as the plastic wrap that the game ships in, but like the good old days of the 8-bit and arcade eras, that doesn't really matter, as the focus is squarely on gameplay.

As in Metal Slug 6, there are six characters to choose from in Metal Slug 7, each with unique talents. For example, Marco deals increased damage and can fire more rapidly than the others with his pistol, and Eri starts off with extra grenades and the ability to aim her explosive tosses. This mixes things up a bit, and allows players to adopt different strategies on subsequent play-throughs, or even after continuing a game.

Metal Slug 7, while still very challenging (I'm not going to even tell you how many times I bit the bullet), is slightly more forgiving than past Metal Slug games. In addition to a beginner mode that doubles the number of available continues, the game saves players' overall progress, allowing them to start new play sessions from the most recently accessed mission. No longer are players restricted from later levels due to their inability to survive, and highly skilled veterans still have the option of starting from the beginning with each go-'round.

There is no shortage of weaponry in this game; heavy machine guns, shotguns, rocket launchers, lasers, and a number of other cartoon boomsticks are scattered liberally throughout each level, usually in the hands of POWs. (Does that even make sense?) The game also adds three new Slugs, the heavily-armored and high-firepower vehicles used to obliterate the opposition, to the already sizable stable.

Metal Slug 7 is clearly an enjoyable shooting experience...for one. That's right, portability comes at a price, as there is no multiplayer option in this game--something that has been a mainstay in the series from the beginning. Players who live and breathe co-op play will most certainly be better off waiting until this timed DS exclusive hits Xbox Live Arcade. For the soloist, however, Combat School mode offers a number of challenges (eliminate all targets, collect all items, rescue all hostages, etc.) to be completed for points and self-satisfaction. It doesn't quite stack up next to a cooperative play option, but the goals do keep things interesting.

Metal Slug 7 makes for a grand old on-the-go gaming experience. It captures the essence and retains the integrity of the franchise for the tiniest of handheld console screens (although the touch screen is essentially ignored), and even though cooperative multiplayer has been omitted--a significant blow--the game is still very much worth playing for the solo enthusiast.