Hard Project: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
I am relatively certain that having this picture on my site will put me on some sort of watchlist, because… well, see the first entry past the cut.
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is… well, it’s a cautionary tale about how a bunch of disgusting fans can completely ruin a series by wildly misunderstanding a show’s appeal by trying to deny it to its target audience. But it’s also a charming, sweet, and fun show with a spectacular cast and a lot of wonderful writing. It’s the sort of thing that’s tailor-made for producing a whole lot of great video games, with some episodes seemingly demonstrating exactly what you could do with such a game (there’s a race episode that practically begs for a kart racer).
What we’ve gotten has been… well, a mobile game that does all the things you’d expect a mobile game to do. A CCG that’s pretty fun, but that’s not a video game. Here’s a show fit to burst with all sorts of great characters, tons of opportunities for a game, and yet it sits there without even a simple run-and-bop platformer made. What the heck is holding it back?
Hard Project: Pacific Rim
You see that chassis and your brain immediately starts playing the theme song. Mine does anyway.
The main reason that I can’t say Pacific Rim was my absolute favorite movie of 2013 is simply because Frozen also came out last year. It was an absolute treat just the same, a summer action film that understood that it didn’t have to be dumb and didn’t have to assume you were stupid. There were giant robots, there were giant monsters, there were references to Mighty Morphin Power Rangers in the midst of it. Great stuff. I have seen it at least half a dozen times now.
Of course, the fact that we’re supposedly getting an animated series gives rise to the hope that we’ll get more toys and licensed products, but even from the film alone it seems incomprehensible that we didn’t get a great game. And we didn’t, of course – it was a weak game saved only by its connection to a film in which you punch the hell out of kaiju in a giant robot. But why is that? What makes the game so hard to develop in the first place? Is it possible that even with a sequel and a cartoon it’s still not going to lend itself nicely to a game?
Hard Project: Magic: the Gathering
Some splices are doomed to die on the operating table.
I’ve had Magic: the Gathering in my life in one form or another since I was eleven. The Revised edition came out in 1994, and that’s when I started playing, scrounging up enough spare cash to pick up a couple of booster packs by mowing lawns (and occasionally bugging my parents for an allowance). It wasn’t the most efficient way to assemble a deck, and in fact was downright bad for making something functional, but the point is that I did it and I somehow even managed to win on occasion. To this day, I have no idea how.
Of course, for a game that’s survived this long it’s had a few video games, but for years there was nothing except a PlayStation game that was widely reviled as a biotoxin. Now we’ve got the annual Duels of the Planeswalkers games – which are just limited versions of the card game – and Magic Online, which is exactly like the card game right down to you spending money to buy virtual booster packs that include no actual cards. Why are we here with a game that’s been out for years with no games based upon the worlds and art and characters, just a series of digital recreations of tabletop games?
Hard Project: Silent Hill
The hills are alive with mist monsters and nurses.
I have a deep love of Silent Hill. Part of this is due to being from New England; sleepy little resort towns being drowned by mists are less “unexpected horror” and more “standard window dressing” around here. I am fairly certain I’ve driven through towns that could fit the description of the eponymous town with one or two details changed.
But that’s not the heart of the reasons, obviously; what I really love about the series is its slow, grinding, oppressive psychological horror. It’s that sense of wrenching and grinding awfulness, the idea that you’re trapped in a town that is actively malevolent, wearing down your defenses and your sense of boundaries until you no longer know what you’re trying to do. The whole thing just wears at you, player and character alike, leaving you with the slow rolling burn that’s so valuable in horror.
Unfortunately, the series has been faltering in recent years. Silent Hill 4 started a downward trend, and of the four subsequent installments the only one that’s received fairly strong praise is the remake of the first Silent Hill. So why is this horror franchise so difficult to keep alive, especially when it’s got some of the strongest horror games ever as a foundation?
Hard Project: World of Darkness
Screw horses; my kingdom for a company who will actually develop this line properly.
For the handful of people who haven’t heard yet, CCP Games killed World of Darkness, because apparently a better use of the company’s funding was delivering a PC version of their failed console shooter? I don’t follow CCP’s business procedures too closely, I just know that they’re awful. Yes, part of the reason I’m saying that is because I knew people directly affected by this loss, but this is also the company responsible for the deep dark pit that is EVE Online, and it’s also a company that apparently doesn’t realize what it has.
Not that a lot of other companies seem to know, either. The World of Darkness setting is tailor-made for games, honestly; the fact that we haven’t had a Grand Theft Auto clone wherein everyone’s a supernatural creature is a crime. The only games we have gotten are a trio of Gautlet clones based on the one line that everyone tries to forget and two Vampire RPGs, both of which had major issues with bugs and a lack of polish. Without falling back on the obvious fact that the rights are owned by a company more concerned with promoting jerks with spreadsheets than any other game, why are games so difficult to develop for this property?
Recent Work
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Chocobo Dash
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Eliot Lefebvre 