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?
Demo Driver 8: Magical Drop V (#218)
This isn’t how I remember it, but I’m not sure whose fault that is.
I’m going to be totally honest with you, folks; when I saw the title of this demo come up, I was excited. Magical Drop and I have some history.
When I was a younger man going through a rather dark time in my life which I like to refer to as “the end of college,” I was first exposed to Magical Drop, specifically the second game in the franchise and specifically its Super Famicom release. Was it the most original title? of course not. But it was large, colorful, and very Japanese in the way that a puzzle game featuring anime drawings of the various tarot cards can be. It was a charming experience.
So I was sincerely bolstered by the thought of playing the game again in a new incarnation, because who wouldn’t be? Like any franchise, it’s nice to see the original developers still making new versions of…
Oh. Oh, it’s a new developer. Oh dear. Oh dear.
Challenge Accepted: Easy keeps you going
First time, yes, full challenge. Subsequent times? Thanks, I’ll just faceroll it on easy.
There are some people who are just not going to have fun with a game if it’s not a challenge. That’s a given, and it’s not a bad thing. It’s part of how games work, and it’s an important element to keep in mind. Games cannot be designed to be all easy, all of the time, or the developers would be saying that they didn’t want the money of a sizable chunk of audience members. And that would just be silly. We need to have challenges in games, things that are difficult to overcome, stuff that can’t be cleared in one or two quick moments of play.
But in the long run, it’s going to be the easy stuff that’s more beneficial for any game.
This sounds contradictory. After all, the people playing a game for the long haul, whether it’s single-player or multiplayer, are going to be the people with more practice. These are the people best suited to facing challenges, and more to the point these are the people who most likely want more challenge. How can easy content be more useful to a game on a whole than difficult things?
The Final Fantasy Project: Final Fantasy III, part 3
Artwork from a sketch by Yoshitaka Amano
Let’s recap, shall we? When I left off, I was in a cave full of friendly vikings. My options at this point seemed fairly simple:
- Remain forever in this happy place full of vikings, which presumably would mean plenty of mead, lots of singing, fun times in general, and maybe the occasional raiding party against coastal villagers unable to put up an adequate defense. Eventually we might even reach North America!
- Go back to the whole “saving the world” bit based on some vague thread of fulminating darkness overtaking the world.
The correct option seems clear, and yet for some reason I still wound up heading back to that Light Warrior thing. What can I say? I love hanging out with vikings, sure, but I am a sucker for fulminating darkness.
There’s not a whole lot to do in the cave other than pilfer every available bit of treasure, possibly taking a slight detour back to the gnomish village to get another copy of Aero. While there’s not much else of interest here, though, the vikings do agree to give you a ship if you can quell the super-angry dragon off in the sea right now. Seems like a lark; we’ll do it.
Demo Driver 8: Rochard (#379)
I played Portal and you didn’t, you miserable hacks! Have fun shooting an invulnerable box!
Sometimes this feature can make me feel just a wee bit cynical. By its very nature, I wind up playing a lot of little indie games, and a lot of these little or single-A titles turn out to be obscure for good reason. My overall desire for games remains the same as it has ever been. Which makes me wonder if the problem is just me, or if maybe the whole indie development switch doesn’t have the legs that I want it to have, or any number of other things.
Then I play a game like Rochard and it reminds me of the best part of trying on random demos – finding a gem you never even would have looked at otherwise.
Rochard is very much in the puzzle-platformer vein, a former PSN title that migrated to Steam as well a little while back. It is also very, very charming, marrying a strong visual sense and a simple-but-enjoyable story to solid mechanics. It’s fun, and it’s the first game that I’ve had where I immediately tossed it onto my wishlist once I was done with the demo. Then, of course, I sat down to write this article. It’s what I do, after all.
Recent Work
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Chocobo Dash
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Eliot Lefebvre 