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?
Demo Driver 8: Defender’s Quest: Valley of the Forgotten (#179)
Next time I play this game, I’m going to name you Blinky just for continuity.
I’m very fond of tower defense games as a concept, but over the years I’ve started to get just a wee bit tired of them. I mean, there are only so many ways that you can assemble a game based on enemies coming in straight lines toward a central objective before life just plain starts getting boring. And at first glance, Defender’s Quest: Valley of the Forgotten is not the game to revitalize the experience, seeing as it’s filled with Flash-level non-animations and an interface that screams indie production in all the worst ways.
Then you play it and you want to continue playing it until you forget how to play any other game ever forever. This thing is an absolute joy.
While last week’s demo barely fleshed out 15 minutes, this week’s offering was something I dove into and could happily have kept playing for another hour, both because it allowed me to do so and because the game is just plain great. I have high praise for this one, and while it has its flaws, it is a superb example of a game being well worth the asking price.
Telling Stories: Catching up mechanically
When Final Fantasy XIV releases Ninja, it’ll be a nice day for me, particularly singe I’ve been playing one for the past four years. No, not through an unholy amalgam of abilities put on my bar in service to a rather strange overall cause, but in-character. My character should, by all rights, be dual-wielding and hacking things apart, then slipping back into the shadows. That’s her entire deal. This is not a bold new direction for her, it’s more like an acknowledgement of where she’s already been.
Of course, I’m also lucky insofar as this is a game where it’s very easy – encouraged, even – to swap between classes on a regular basis. The only setback this will pose is that I’ll have to put a bit of extra effort into assembling her weapon and armor sets, something I can probably start doing with the next major patch anyway. But it still raises the question of why she hasn’t been doing this on a regular basis before now. How do you handle it when the game finally catches up mechanically to the place you’ve already been?
Challenge Accepted: Fair’s fair
It might seem fair to gang up on someone until you get ganged up on yourself.
If you think about it, the whole idea of challenge being fair is kind of strange at face value. Games build unfairness into themselves by design. If your average Mega Man game was fair, the boss would be able to pause the game and use weapons on me to target my weakness. The bosses start out by being unfair by design, at that; they can jump higher, run faster, fire more complex attacks, and so forth. That’s not fair.
Of course, if the boss fights were fair, the game would be kind of boring. Imagine a game where every boss dropped as easily as the player character. It’d be fair, but it wouldn’t be fun.
Fairness is a nebulous concept, but it’s also a really important one when you’re talking about games. We talk about the importance of it over and over, about the difference between games that are really hard to beat but fair compared to those that are just plain cheap. But how relevant is that, really? Are we looking for fairness, or are we just interested in accountability?
The Final Fantasy Project: Final Fantasy III, part 5
Artwork from a sketch by Yoshitaka Amano
My return to the Dwarven Caves saw me welcomed as a hero, which was sure nice, as was the fact that the dwarves opened up their treasure stores for me. Being a heroic sort, I naturally took this as the perfect opportunity to rob the short, hairy men of literally every valuable they had on hand. They wanted me to do it, I was just helping them along! Look, don’t judge me, I’ve got two more crystals to find, this is a difficult job.
The end of our Light Warrior Victory Tour (with special guest Rob the Dwarves) hit something of a down note, though, with some dying guy showing up and informing me that Tokkul was in trouble. Tokkul, that rings a bell… oh, right, that town full of sad people from way back when that I briefly pilfered. And it’s apparently being burned to the ground. Well, it would take a truly heartless individual to just keep plowing ahead and ignore that sort of news.
…no, turns out I’m not quite that heartless. Fine, let’s go save the stupid town.
Recent Work
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Chocobo Dash
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Eliot Lefebvre 