Category: games

I want to see more games like TWEWY

Silly name, good game

I finished The World Ends With You (TWEWY) last Friday. The game was an enjoyable romp. The story didn’t make a lot of sense and the character (and costume) design was atrocious but the gameplay was solid and more important scalable. Why is scalable bolded like that? Because it is the single greatest thing it has going for it and the single greatest thing I wish started showing up in more games!

TWEWY doesn’t punish a player for not learning the minutiae of its various game play mechanics. It doesn’t penalize you for not being able to sink in the hours and hours to master controlling characters on two screens simultaneously, or learning the intricacies of its mini games (like tin pin slammer and fashions.) TWEWY is only as difficult as you want it to be. You can set the difficulty level at any time, you can set how your secondary characters works at any time and you can safely ignore all the mini-games, sub-plots, and interesting game design elements if you want, and still see the ending of the game.

More difficult than it looks.

Why is this so important? Well, I’m not six or sixteen anymore. I have a fucking life now and I no longer have the luxury of six or seven spare hours in a day to immerse myself in my favorite pastime. If I did I’m sure I could master all the nuances of tin pin slammer, or figure out just what types of experience go into making my pins evolve. Seven-year-old-me loved that shit and ate it up. Seven-year-old-me had the free time to memorize enemy stats and talk endlessly about the differences in the magic systems in various JRPG gaming franchises and how that compared with said systems in western game franchises (oh, the misspent hours of my youth…) I do not.

I don’t want to hear anyone down in the comments say something like “Maybe you just suck at gaming,” or “If you can’t commit to a game don’t play it.” The answer to my lack of time isn’t to give up my most cherished pastime. And you should slam your head against a wall for thinking I, or anyone else, should. The average age of a gamer today is 34. In general 34 year-olds have full-time jobs, family commitments, social commitments, community commitments, etc. What they don’t have is a lot of free time to sink into games that demand they ‘master’ them in order to enjoy them.

God, these kids look stupid.

I just wish more designers did things like this. The difficulty in video games has been declining for years, but as implemented in TWEWY it allows the player to decide, on the fly, how difficult they want things to be. So, when the player is looking for something more challenging or has the time to sink into it they are rewarded for it. At the same time I can play and enjoy the game as well.

Here is a case where gamers can have their cake and eat it too. So why aren’t designers catching on?

Things I found at my parents house: Sega Dreamcast!

 

It's still thinking?

 

 

Ninja Turtles, computer game manuals, and books aren’t the only things I found boxed up in the spare room at my parent’s house. I also found video games! My original PSX which I decided not to keep (PS2s do a fine job at that) and my trusty ol’ used Sega Dreamcast.

I only have one controller but, I have this nifty adaptor that lets me use PS2 controllers on the console!  I also have one of those generic mega saved game cards, which still has my saves on it after eight or nine odd years! Everyone knows the tragic story of the Dreamcast and how its failure ended Sega’s console making days. The system is sturdy and the games for it are a blast. This almost went up for sale a few weeks back but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I haven’t played it yet since bringing it up but I need to because I have some pretty good games for it:

 

Web browser, PSO, Powerstone, Rayman 2, Soul Caliber, Skies of Arcadia, Starlancer, and Virtua Tennis

I could have sworn I had crazy taxi or the Simpson’s variant. I can’t find it anywhere though so I guess not.  I wonder if I can get it cheap? Out of all of those games I enjoy Powerstone and Virtua Tennis the most.  Powerstone is simply mindless fun and Virtua Tennis is the best sequel to Pong I’ve ever seen!

 

Things I found at my parent’s house: TMNT part 1

I spent the winter holidays at my parent’s house.  This is the house I grew up in and it still has quite a few of my things lying around; stowed away in boxes piled up in closets and the garage.

Every time I visit I go through a little more of it.  In 2009 I went through about ten boxes of books and ended up giving away more than half of them.  Last year I finished going through the books and “culled the herd” down to about a box of them.  (Which will be highlighted in future post, maybe?)  I also went through some of the toys from my youth that had managed to stick around this long and I found quite a few Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

I believe all of these are first runs of the toys, though I’m not sure.  I never was too concerned about the collectibility or resale value of my toys.  I got them to play with them!  Beyond these figures I’m pretty sure there is still a box or so out in my parents garage that has the Blimp and the Party wagon in it.

Wow, you can really notice the dust with the flash on.  These things have been in boxes for over 15 years or so, I think.  They’re all in remarkably good condition though!  All the limbs are movable and the accessories still seem to be in good condition.  I thought with the heat int he desert they would have dried out and crumbled a little more.  Strangest thing I’ve noticed so far?  Several of the toys have a sticky residue from when they were covered in ooze?!

Next time:  Vidja Games!

Contra Vs. Probotector Part 3

 

Hard Corps. Edition

 

Comparing the two NES games to each other was an easy task.  The Contra game released on the Sega Genesis/Megadrive is a much more difficult task.  Called Contra Hard Corps. here in the States it was simple referred to as Probotector on the Megadrive in Europe.  What makes comparing these two games more difficult than the last two is the fact that the Megadrive version is relatively rare, making getting a hold of a manual difficult.  Second, the game has four different playable characters ans seven different endings!  Ending in which the character your playing as has a prominent place.  In order to get screenshots of each ending with each character in both version of the game I’d have to play through it 56 times!  That is not going to be happening anytime soon.

I heartily recommend playing Hard Corps. though!  The game has an excellent soundtrack, a branching storyline, and furiously, difficult gameplay.  The western versions are exceptionally difficult as the health system that was put in the Japanese version of the game has been removed.

Covering Hard Corps is going to take more than one post.  In this one I’m just going to compare the various playable characters:

 

Hard Corps on the left, Probotector on the right

 

These are the mug shots you see at the character select screen, except for the last one.  That guy down at the bottom is the military officer/robot who gives the orders at the beginning of each level.  There is another playable character not included in the comparison, it’s the little robot that looks identical in both games. In-game the characters look  like this:

So far there doesn’t seem to be any difference in the enemies you are facing.  But, I haven’t played through the all seven routes in both of the games.  The next post, will reveal changes in enemies and will compare at least two of the endings from the game!

 

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