After the near fatal incident with my iPod last week I’ve realized that I now have full access to all my music since my HDD mirrors it (previously it was all managed from my iPod like an external HDD). In effect I am taking full advantage of music programs and have rekindled my relationship with Audiosurf.

Music is one of our societies greatest arts, and it’s so easily and widely shared that most of the time I take it for granted. While playing Interstate 8 by Modest Mouse on Audiosurf I thought about just how accurately the song was being visually represented. Audiosurf is far more than either a game or a visualizer. Most of the time neither is rooted to music in so many primal ways. In most games music will set the mood in the background, much like with film. With visualizers there’s no interaction and no scope.

Audiosurf combines those things and adds more. The key to it all is the course that is generated from the music. The track created from the digital wavelengths inside your music are the focus of the player throughout most of the play time, and even outside of it. The first time you play a track the program creates a map at which point the player is shown where to expect the most traffic, and also it shows the flow of the song.

Before the player can begin playing the song an overview of the course is given by rotating around the zoomed out arena. Upwards slopes are slower and the colors are in the cold range. Downward slopes warm up in color and contain more architecture. The color and shape now has a form which is displayed like a captured snake before the buyer.

While riding the serpentine path small nuances of the music are shown through color, accolade, and speed. Moving through the notes inside the track the color shifts from shades of color by melding perfectly from one to the next in a natural and beautiful display. When notes are passed a small light glistens off the corners enhancing the beat. Particularly intense moments involve traveling through a tunnel of arches or exploding particles in the air the same color of the track.

The whole time the eye must travel to the upper left in order to track progress represented not on a straight line, but a crooked bent one. A digital map of the music.

Speed is the second key to connection between the art, the player and the game. Upon reaching the peak of a slope the player will speed down the other side like a sledder on a hill of snow. Smaller formations and dips will garnish less speed, while mountainous heights result in velocity drops that nearly take your breath away. As the beat slows down the camera slowly pulls away from the avatar of the player while speeding up pulls the camera in. This keeps the flow of the music controlled by perspective. The theory is that when you see notes your brain will attempt to process them all. Pulling into the player’s ship limits far ahead you can see and makes processing the notes simpler. You’re not overwhelmed. When things slow down the camera pulls out so that the brain doesn’t become bored as there’s now a longer amount of track’s worth of information to process.

The course creation and speed management combine to turn music from an audio experience to a visual and tactile treat. Simple controls result in low learning curves. The wall of dissonance between the input device and player is broken down so that the emergent result can be reached by users of any experience level. The connection I had with the song Interstate 8 made me remember a scene from Mr. Holland’s Opus, which now has me contemplating other applications for Audiosurf.

Mr Holland’s Opus is a 1995 film about Glen Holland, a high school band conductor played by Richard Dreyfus. The film chronicles Mr. Holland’s life from when he begrudgingly starts teaching through his retirement. The most important thing to Glen is music and his dream is to write music and conduct a real orchestra: he pursues them above all else. When him and his wife have a baby boy who’s deaf Glen has no idea how this could have happen, and feels that his son can’t understand music nor his love of it. So, rather than learning sign language and being an understanding father, he distances himself from the child. During a dramatic Hollywood-esque he finally comes to know that his son can understand music and its significance by the way that the recent news of John Lennon’s death effects them both.

In an attempt to redeem himself in his son’s eyes Glen Holland builds a sound visualizer. In it’s design there is a special platform which amplifies the vibration of sound via a speaker directly attached, and flashing colored light to representation the music. Not only does Glen invite his son, but many other hearing impaired students from the special school he attends to seat on the vibration amplifying platform. After the initial concert Mr. Holland stands up in front of the crowd and sings a Lennon song to his son, during which he signs all of the lyrics showing that he has finally learned his son’s language.

It’s not the best written movie, nor the greatest directing, but it does have it’s moments. Seeing what is taken away from the deaf by removing music in its base form of sound makes me a little sad. Even with the device that Glen created it’s still barely half of what makes up music: the rhythm. It misses much of the melody. There are so many nuances that basic colored lights can’t show, no matter how lavishly they’re displayed. By adding a third dimension and weaving it with color and movement Audiosurf creates something completely different. While deaf persons still wouldn’t be able to hear the music, I do imagine that this game could have logopedic benefits and further the understanding of music with the hearing impaired.

I won.

Yes I finally crawled out from underneath the gigantic task of restoring a 40gb iPod that was pretty much wiped clean.

See, some people reading this may not know that I’ve had this 40gb iPod Photo for about 3 and a half years now. The only real panic I’ve ever had with it was when I leaned over into a ice cooler to grab a soda and it slid out of my pocket and into the ice water. It didn’t work for about 48 hours, but then it worked no problem. I’ve had some slowdown with the device before and always knew it needed to be formated, but by that time I realized it was such a gigantic task I always put it off.

Starting back at the beginning: last night. I don’t know what happen, but I connected my iPod to my PC to get some music off it and every program I used said the iPod was empty. Nothing. I even restarted my PC to try to get it to work. I ended up extracting all the audio I could off of it, but out of the 35GBs that use to be on it I only managed to get off about 70% of it at 22GB.

I don’t know what happen to the rest of the music, but it was eaten. It was really weird to start relabeling and organizing all this music only to slowly learn what was missing by only finding one track of a whole album that use to be on there.

I didn’t really do the math or look at the numbers until I noticed quite a few of my most listened to artists suddenly missing more than half their songs. That’s when I realized that somewhere I lost 13GB of music.

Most of it was stuff that was just taking up space. Others are things that are going to be impossible to remember the name of, let alone find them.

I did make a backup a while ago of some of my music on an external hdd, but that ended up only being about 3GB worth of it. I thought I had a lot on my laptop too, but it turns out that none of the stuff on there disappeared.

So, at about 6 am this morning–after staring at my pillow for about an hour–I decided to start this whole mess. As of right now I basically have my new program (seriously, screw anaPod, That program messed up my iPod more than it helped it), MediaMonkey, set up with my whole track list. I have exported it to html in case this ever happens again. I’m going to run the library program one more time to get the couple of albums that I stuck in there last minute registered, then I’m going to connect my freshly formated iPod to it like a virgin. If you’re interested I put the list up here.

So, 15 hours of this and I’m nearly done. I’ve trimmed a lot of fat off my track list, and I have a few things downloading right now that I need to add and don’t have the originals any more (or don’t feel like ripping). The things that have come out of this whole mess for the good:

-Finally found a better mp3 program that interacts with my iPod.
-Got a spare 160gb HDD installed on my PC.
-Connected up my external HDD
-…

Yeah.

Trackmania United Forever has one of the more unique attraction I find in games. In Doom I use to use the walk through walls code just to see what kind of messed up graphics I could make. After hearing about the negative world in Metroid I attempted to get there as well. Things like the highest point in Bubsy 3D interest me. I love to break games and go where I shouldn’t.

The most memorable moment I had in Oblivion was when I found a seam in the wall of a city and broke into the area before it properly loaded. In order to cut down on the resources for a PC/Console to display an entire world Oblivion’s towns were loaded only when you entered them through designated areas. In order to give the player a sense of scale the size of the city is represented in the overworld, just less detailed in case you peek over the walls. When I was inside the town it was deserted of everything. When I threw or dropped any items they would slide on the ground as if it was ice until arriving at a seam in the polygons, in which case it would disappear.

Sometimes there are small things that let you into these backstage worlds in games. Other times you just have to think a little outside of the box. In Shadowrun (2007) the player is given an option of having glider wings bolted to their back which allows a small degree of flight. The player also has the ability to learn the magic spell gust which can push enemies back with a gust of wind, or can allow the player to break their fall with a cushion of air. A smart player thinking outside the box can combine these tools to get places the developers didn’t intend you to go. Besides just breaking the game and gliding around outside the limits of the planned arena there were also some partially built levels revealed by skilled players who explored in the right areas.

Aiming for self set goals is one of my favorite things to do in games, and when the opportunity presents itself even in the least expected places I take it.

While playing a particularly challenging desert track on Trackmania United Forever I happen to launch right off the track and into the landscape. At first I thought it fun just to see how far out things went.

Notice the awesome custom sheriff’s car with the welded-on spikes at the front. So I continued to drive off through the sunset where the atmosphere ends.

From there I was curious to see where things went. I cautiously crept up to the edge of what looked like all land.

Looking back on it I probably should have tried to drive off the edge and seen what awaited me. Instead I chickened out and turned around back towards the track.

While not the most interesting adventure off the beaten path I’d ever had, it did at least let me know that it was possible to break the limits of the game and explore secret worlds.

On my fifteenth million attempt at bay course C3 for the damn silver metal to move on, I happen upon a far more interesting situation than being in the desert. Shortly after a very sharp turn there is a speed boost right in front of a ramp which will launch the SUV (or in my case a Monster Truck) quite the distance in the air towards a small tunnel entrance. In my case the wheel wasn’t straightened out well enough before the speed boost which launched me diagonally into the ocean.

I noticed that my truck had somehow landed upright and was capable of driving underwater. Since the camera was forcing me to look at a small dot at the bottom of the ocean I aimed for land as best I could and hoped that I’d eventually come up for air.

I was greeted on the beach by a small group of apartments–or perhaps condos–in a state of seeming disrepair. At the bottom of the buildings it looked as though overgrowth had taken the first two floors. Upon examination the growth wasn’t vines that climb three stories of the building and cover all the windows, it was actually the trees that would look like they’re in front of the building from a long distance away in case you happen to look.

I found a misshapen and discolored road out front of the condos leading to the city which made up much of the backdrop throughout the race.

It looks like not just the outskirts have been taken over by the shrubbery.

On the way out of the city buildings are far more grim–the takeover becoming more hostile.

With the city far off in the distance fleeing the infested place, I feel a bit better and head for the hills.

The mountain bluffs surrounding the bay range in size. Some are much smaller than they appear because they are closer. When you finally drive for five minutes only to see that the taller peak is in a different direction. Why are you looking for the tallest peak? no particular reason honestly.

On the way up a mountain all the way at the back of the bay I found a wrinkle in space.

Following it I found the rift opening into a similar black space that was beneath the desert. I decided to give it a try and see what happens. When I drove over the edge I took many pictures which I will refrain from posting to save the weak at heart.

Strangely enough I happen to graze something with my back tire on the fall into blackness. It righted me in mid air and I safely landed on an absent ground.

The way that the geometry of the landscape worked under everything was wondrous. It was like ribbons of earth suspended in time over me.

Approaching the city buildings hover eerily in the air over me with their infected green bases all the more macabre in appearance.

Condos hover over me like cavity infected dentures.

Off in the distance is the racetrack where I started.

Unfortunately my subterranean expedition was ended early. I didn’t realize that I would be able to slide out from under these buildings into the water.

I’m honestly a bit sad that I got to explore so little of it all. I wanted to go check out the area that had even more growth infested buildings than the part I did get a shot of from underneath.

My instinctive curiosity prods me compelled me to keep going on, to look over the edge while still being a cautious enough to hold on to ground firmly. It’s a great feeling. Most games now have either unbreakable walls, or artificial ones which keep the player restricted from seeing the man behind the curtain. It keeps the games focused and the fourth wall erect, and for all intents and purposes it’s how you want the game to be. That’s why when I can I look behind the curtain I do.

I just realized that I had completely stopped caring about Little Big Planet. When it was first shown a little over a year ago it seemed like just the thing to pull people towards the PS3, a task similar in difficulty to pulling teeth.* It was cute, little burlap sac men/ladies running around attempting to conquer physics with their box of toys. You could even make your own levels and share them with your friends.

When the game was shown it was not only playable, but it also had the world creator already done. I’m not really all that sure what the wait is for. I mean, perhaps the game was far less along than it looked at GDC ‘07, but then I have to say: Bad Sony. You blew your marketing load on interest too early in the game’s launch schedule to keep things alive. The PR is falling in on itself like a deflating balloon. When the game is finally released, who knows, the PS3 may be in the lead of the “console warz,” or something.

Sorry, I’m not trying to sound like a hardened jaded punk who’s just too cool for burlap sac men inside a physics playground. It’s just that I don’t have the same drive or desire to play the game like I use to. There’s been so much footage of gameplay shown that I kind of feel like this is a game that my friends have had for months and I just haven’t gotten around to picking it up yet. When it finally is released what difference does it make if I wait a couple weeks or months before I finally get around to it.

*Unless you also wanted a blu-ray player, in which case it’s not that hard.

After some prodding from a friend I finally got of my ass and decided to track down a copy of the pre-order bonus for Metal Gear Solid 4: Metal Gear Saga Vol. 2. Now, I looked and it doesn’t seem like I chronicled my experiences with obtaining Vol. 1 of the Saga, so I’ll give a brief story on how it came about.

About six months after New Orleans was ravaged by hurricane Katrina I was back in the city living in a hotel room paid for by my job. This hotel room was about a 30 min walk from a GameStop in a mall. The next closest GameStop was over an hour drive, and most others had been shutdown. When I found out that MGS3: Subsistance was being released I knew I had to get a copy. The thing of it was that you had to be one of the few early pre-orders not only to get the collectors edition of the game (with the MSX ports of the very first non-Solid MG games), but you also had to be there on like day-1 when the Metal Gear Saga Vol. 1 discs were handed out. Now for myself this wasn’t much of an issue, but it did involve a lot of constant tracking and calling to make sure I didn’t miss this.

Shortly after I had figured out my plan on obtaining these my friend Andrew Toups (living not to far away in Lafayette) called and said that he needed help because he couldn’t get a copy of either the special edition or MG Saga Vol. 1 in his town. So I now had to figure out how to do this for two copies of the game and the bonus. It was quite a bit of work, but I managed to get both of them in perfect condition and was quite pleased with the quality and frank nature of Kojima in Saga Vol. 1.

So, of course, I’m not online as much when the plans are all laid out for Vol. 2, and MG-Online Beta codes are anounced. Luckily I have friends looking out for me and constantly text messaging me about this information, so I was only about a week behind. After the fiasco last time, I figured that being informed a week late meant that I was shit outta luck on this, but I drove out into my new town and spat in the face of bad odds.

After getting to two stores and being told that they’d basically gone through 50+ copies of the pre-order bonus each I didn’t feel like I had good luck on my last hope. When I got there I asked “If I preorder MGS4 do you have any copies of the Metal Gear Saga Vol. 2 discs left.” It felt futile but I had to try. I must have looked desperate–or defeated–because the clerk said “Yes” and asked if it was hard to find or something. I told him about the previous two stores and saw him slyly grab a few copies from behind the counter and put them under it.

Upon getting home I couldn’t hold back and had to watch Saga Vol. 2. I loved the first one with the bold Kojima talking about many of the behind the scenes and early development details I hadn’t heard before. Vol. 2 is not quite the same. It’s more of a re-cap of all of the MGS games focusing on the Snake lineage. Most of the information is told in a very bland and detail-less way by a third party that we haven’t been introduced to. He has a British accent and meets snake for the first time during the events of MGS4. Due to this the whole thing kind of feels watered down in comparison to the first Saga.

Like the first Saga, this comes with all the currently released MGS4 trailers included (Documents of MGS2 has all the trailers for MGS2, and Metal Gear Saga Vol. 1 has all of them for MGS3). I remember when I was at E3 2006 and was completely blown away by the graphics presented to me in that trailer. There were facts like Old Snake’s mustache has more polygons than the PS1 could display at once tossed around that made it seem even less improbable. I kept thinking that when the game was released it wouldn’t look anything like what we were watching in the convention center in LA.

Not too long ago I was going through my Documents of MGS2 disc and noticed that the very early trailers for MGS2 actually looked worse than the final product did, and I remember thinking that those looked gorgeous coming from the PS1 era of games. So I started to think, perhaps that MGS4 trailer isn’t all bullshit after all. Now, watching it again almost two years since I saw it last I realize that not only are those graphics going to be what we see in game, they’re not as impressive as they were before. Watching what I see now I relize that a lot has changed in the face of gaming. Being bombarded with fantastic looking visuals from games like Gears of War, Bioshock, and Uncharted leave me feeling a bit more complacent about how MGS4 is going to look, and that’s a good thing.

Getting a bit more back on track, I just wanted to comment that the Metal Gear Saga Vol. 2 disc is no where near as good or interesting as the first one. If it weren’t for the Metal Gear Online Beta code I got with it I probably would have felt like I had wasted some time.

Though, I wouldn’t have you know. Because it would have bugged me forever that I didn’t end up picking it up.

So, I’m not dead, vanished or anything. I’m just in a bit of a game slump and I’m still moving into my new house. There’s going to be a large announcement about The Gamer’s Quarter very soon, so keep your eyes open for that.

The new house is really fantastic, and part of what it’s allowed me is access to all of my videogame items. Since mid-November last year I’ve only had access to some of my videogame consoles which I brought with me while staying with my parents for a while. I also didn’t have nearly full access to a television* which hindered not only my game time in general, but also majorly effected the flow of my gameplay so I found many things not as enjoyable as normal. I did fall back in love with PC gaming since that time and greatly explored its realms.

With the access (and organization) to all of my retro gaming items, I was dearly looking over my PS1 collection with shockingly loving memories. The irony in this is that the early years of CD-ROM based 32bit gaming is a pretty bad memory for me. During that time I thought an awful trend was started that has unfortunately continued: putting graphics over games. Some really awful tripe was concocted during those years in the early nineties, and even as a kid I could tell that it was tarnishing what I considered games. But when I picked up my copy of Mega Man Legends I saw that it was just a rough spot that I’d despised for so long and shouldn’t effect the actual gems of the bunch.

It seems as though I’m not alone in my fond nature of the good items in that early 3D history, everyone else is too. After reading an article at I looked at some of my favorite games being up there with top sellers. I know there are many others that didn’t make that list and are still worth much more than the $10 copies I was finding in used game stores no less than two years ago. It seems that the first generation of Sony’s consoles games is ripe for harvesting. Not that I say this in a greedy way, in fact I’m a bit sad that I didn’t finish up my collection sooner.

This same price hike happen with the Dreamcast before I finished my collection, and it’s been slow work since games like Bangaioh moving from commonly seen at $10 new to over $50 in disc only condition. I feel stupid for missing on this and it just means harder work for me in the future. Part of me wants to say “who cares” in a much more digital age where these things are a mouse click away. The other half misses opening a package with a game and a loving manual in it.

These are strange times in gaming for me, and I think that the pricing of the PS1 is one of the signs. So in these moments of slight grief I turn something I never in my wildest dreams imagined I’d say, World of Warcraft with friends now distant from me. I leave you with the best picture in my collection of my wife and I playing together:

* which didn’t suck

I was very recently turned onto the upcoming Xbox 360 and PS3 game Rainy Woods (trailers here). Otherwise a fairly corny looking game that was debuted at TGS ‘07, the game has more than a couple striking similarities to David Lynch’s work (most notably Twin Peaks, with a bit of bit of Mullholand Dr./Blue Velvet in the mix). Other similarities seem to be heavily rooted in Silent Hill (particularly SH4) and otherwise unmentionable b-games in the survival horror genre. Games like this tend to pique my interest in sick ways so I started to poke around in the credits for RW and came across something interesting.

The Executive Producer of Rainy Woods is Yasuhiro Wada–the man behind Harvest Moon–which makes sense since the game’s being published by Marvelous Entertainment. The director/lead designer is SWERY who also directed Spy Fiction and Extermination (PS2). I then made the connection that Extermination was developed by Deep Space which was part of the team that broke up from Whoopee Camp. Diving a bit deeper into the staff list it turns out that Hidetaka Suehiro, one of the writers for the game, also worked with Swery on Spy Fiction. The other writer, Kenji Goda is responsible for the Parasite Eve II story (unfortunately). The character designer, level artist, level designer, writer, art director, and a few other carry over from Deep Space and most worked together on Extermination. The only person who’s a mystery is the art director, Hitoshi Okamoto. He could be the guy who I’ve found with the same name that previously worked on sound and audio for games like Riviera, Summon Night: Swordcraft Story, and (of all things) Dragon Ball Z: Budokai.

In the special thanks appears Yoshihisa Ohbuchi who was the producer of King of Fighters EX2: Howling Blood, and also appeared on the special thanks of Valhalla Knights (an XSEED published game). The other person in the special thanks is Eishin Sasaki, who I believe to be in Killer 7’s special thanks as well.

At the very bottom of the credits–where I should have looked first–I find that the developer for RW is Access Games, the combined staffing remains of Deep Space and Whoopee Camp. There is a long and interesting history behind the creation of Whoopee Camp which starts with Tokuro Fujiwara. Ghosts ‘n Goblins was his first major undertaking, and as stated by Play Magazine, the greatest 8-bit platforming game ever (though I disagree with them). After GnG he went on to create another Capcom legacy game, Mega Man (aka Rockman in Japan).

After being the creative force for the first two games in the Mega Man series, Fujiwara took the producers seat in which he sat through the Super Nintendo. Credited on all regular MM games, and Mega Man X games through X3 (as well as the oddball Mega Man Soccer) the series stayed quite faithful to its roots, and the worst you would hear about any of them is that they are “more of the same.”

During his time as the caretaker of Mega Man he was also involved in the creation of Street Fighter (1), Breath of Fire, Strider, and Resident Evil (Biohazard in Japan). Strider turned into a fan and cult favorite receiving many ports (some more faithful than others) which also continues to be ported as recently as 2006. Resident Evil is the last game that Fujiwara worked on before he left Capcom. We all know what ended up happening with Resident Evil: many sequels, multiple re-releases and re-prints, and has spawned three films (so far). While only the producer his creative hand could be felt in the game all over from the unique control scheme to the level of difficulty.

In 1996 Fujiwara and Yoshiki Okamoto (Creator of the 194X series, Time Pilot, Street Fighter II, and also worked with Fujiwara on Biohazard) created Whoopee Camp. While Fujiwara left Capcom, Okamoto stayed around and even picked up where Fujiwara left off on a few projects (Mega Man, Mega Man X, Breath of Fire, Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts GBA, Biohazard, and went as far as to produce the Resident Evil films). Whoopee Camp was started with “the mission to create high quality games based on creative sense, experience and close calculation.”

Aside from Fujiwara and Okamoto, Kenji Kaido has been associated with the forming of Whoopee Camp. He went on to be the production manager for Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. Kaido started his career at Taito arcade games and was project leader and lead game designer for Cameltry and a few other games. Though, this information only comes from an IGN article, and I can’t seem to find their source of information.

The first game to be released by this new venture was Tomba! which Fujiwara himself explains best in his own words: “I have designed a lot of different games in my career, and while Tomba! may have been my biggest challenge, it is certainly my greatest personal achievement as I believe the character and the gameplay have the ability to attract and challenge gamers of every age and skill level. […] Nothing satisfies me more than imagining parents playing with their children as well as challenging those hard-core gamers who want to experience a whimsical fantasy world with extraordinary gameplay. Tomba! will capture the hearts of everyone.”

After Tomba! 2 Whoopee Camp seems to have fallen off of the face of the earth. At one point in mid-2001 Tomba! 3 was announced for the PS2 only to disappear along with the company. Backing up a bit, in 1998 Fujiwara was appointed to the Executive Producer spot of the Deep Space joint venture company between WC and Sony Computer Entertainment International with games published by SCEI. Deep Space created Hungry Ghosts and Extermination (which listed Whoopee Camp in the Special Thanks section of the credits). In early 2002 the remains of Whoopee Camp and Deep Space created Access Games (which has only really released one game, Spy Fiction), while the original companies disappeared. According to Archive.org, the last time that WC’s website was updated was on August 8th 2003. The website has also since disappeared.

But Tomba! 2 was released in 2000, and Extermination was released in 2001, what happen to the rest of the team? Mega Man Powered Up, the re-envisioning and re-creation of Mega Man 1, was absent of Fujiwara’s name. Then, in late August of 2005, Ultimate Ghosts ‘n Goblins is announced (then titled Extreme GnG which is closer to the Japanese name) and Fujiwara is back in his old seat for the series, and completely removed from what’s left of Whoopee Camp. The rest of Access Games has been in a state of limbo as well since 2001 and it’s interesting to see that so may players have come back to work together with Rainy Woods.

While the company’s track record hardly instills confidence (nor does the trailer) I’m still looking forward to Rainy Woods‘ release as a curiosity of whether it will be a loving homage to auteur director David Lynch, or just an aping of his aesthetics.

A while back I bought a game on faith of the company alone, PixelJunk Racers. The company is Q-Games and the slogan for the PixelJunk games are “High Quality Casual Game (1080p Play Style)”. Cute, catchy and full of Engrish, who wouldn’t bite. The main reason I have faith in the company is more to do with the founder Dylan Cuthbert. He’s probably best known for the work he did for the Super Nintendo with Star Fox, but that’s not really why I like the guy. When the bit Generations games came out for the GBA back in 2006 all but one game was developed by Skip ltd.: Digidrive. Most of the other titles followed a similar design aesthetic, but few followed through with gameplay beyond the initial level of being just a puzzle. The style and complexity of Digidrive stood out as unique, modern, and multidimensional.

With the dearth of games on the PS3, I was happy to give a new (downloadable) game a shot with a company I mostly liked. (Honestly, my wife wanted that LocoRoco game and since I hate navigating the PSN store I kind of need more than one reason to go there in the first place so Racers would have to do.) Now my definition of casual games usually entails both simple and easy to pick up. This usually turns into monotonous and/or gameplay that’s too easy. Not all of them mind you, but a good amount. Either way, Racers is neither easy or simple. The only thing similar from race to race is the slot-car-esque aesthetic. In one race you could have to hit every car to gain speed, and in the exact next you have to avoid every car to keep your speed. This isn’t even including the multitude of wacky requirements. It’s a hodge podge of ideas that can be done within the confines of simple mechanics, and after finishing most of the events in the game I still never felt like I knew what was going on. So, when Q-Games’ second project came around (PixelJunk Monsters) I assumed it was going to be a similar mess and ignored it.

I actually had no idea it came out so recently, but I was talking with a friend of mine who was telling me how much fun PixelJunk Monsters was. I retorted that I really disliked Racers, so I didn’t really care about it. The game is nothing like the other though, and I was informed that it’s more like Tower Defense games. Now that’s more a concept I can get behind, similar mechanics and character design throughout. Tower Defense is one of those games that’s been around for a long time with a lot of different versions created by everyone and their brother. Most are fairly simple and, honestly, a bit boring at times. TD is just the kind of game I’d play to kill some time at work.

Monsters takes the TD design ethos and expands on it by both making it more personal and cohesive than other versions I’ve played. The player is some sort of tribal chief who must defend the young tribe members. To do so he can (somehow) turn trees into towers which will attack the oncoming enemies. There are both ground and air enemies and towers that can attack both or either type. The interesting additions are more than just aesthetic though. Each new level allows for unique and varied goals and formations. A personal favorite of mine is where the enemies don’t give you any coins and you have to defend the children with only your starting money plus what you earn in bonus.

What really makes Monsters a much better game than their first outing, Racers, is that once you’ve figured out the first level you know just what to do for the rest of the game. While the obstacles may change from level to level, what you learned and know will keep you going from the outset. There is also another kind of spin on the “casual game” that gives me hope for the genre’s future: the game is challenging. After a few levels the kid-gloves come off and the game really puts you in your place. Most casual games don’t do this until quite late, if at all, and it’s a nice enough change in pace that the game no longer feels casual at all. The level designs become more intimate after a few tries and the strategy of the game type really shines for all the levels. Once you get just about tired of similar looking landscapes the tilesets change up to a snow covered land or a field in the middle of a downpour.

The visual design is something that Q-Games should be proud of as well. A quick visit to the PixelJunk site will show the developers intention and roots in classic pixelated games and style. By following what made the original pixel graphics iconic in spirit Cuthbert and his team have recreated and kept true to the iconic spirit of those days.

“By using a ton of meticulously hand-drawn 2D art instead of 3D modeled graphics, we have tried to re-create the feel of some of those older classics”
-Dylan Cuthbert

Personally I don’t know what to think about the future of the PixelJunk line of games. Right now it’s a severely mixed bag and the next title is as much a toss up as is its identity. The thing is, I probably won’t have anything else to play on my giant black shiny monolith, so I’ll pick the game up anyways.

So the time has been spent and all the games have been played. I got a little distracted in the middle, but I have finished them all and have everything ready to bear out for the reader. This is exciting, I know. Anyways, in case you forgot, I only played each game for 30 minutes max, and then had to come to a conclusion and now must rank them. For links to sites and download, check out the announcement page for the challenge.

Honestly, it’s really arbitrary and most of these games are worth checking out if you’re interested. It’s an exercise in stupidity and boredom, I know. But, it was fun, so who cares. I’ll be finishing or spending more time with many of these games, and that’s what counts most. And, for the most part you all get to look at pretty custom screen shots! For reference purposes, these games were played in alphabetical order.

#10: Cottage of Doom

I could only take 2 games of Cottage of Doom totaling about 12 minutes play time. I understand that it was made for the TIGSource B-Game Competition, but this game has shown up on other lists as an actual good game. I mean, it’s silly-fun and it is very steeped in B-level voice acting and writing (the female “lead” character is played by Microsoft’s Text-to-Speech program), but I can’t drag myself into playing this again. It’s really clunky to control, isn’t very accurate, and just plain not-fun. There’s too much going on and I don’t really feel like I have enough control over any of it. Piles of zombies are always something I love, and the concept is actually not too overplayed, to top this all off I actually really enjoy survival modes on games, but Cottage of Doom is just Bad.

#9: Poesysteme

Imagine if you will a world in where your cheap holiday gift of magnetic poetry came alive on your refrigerator and began to eat all your food and cannibalize itself while creating nonsensical words. Well, that’s Poesysteme. I don’t know what else to say. Little emoticons move around on a screen. You give them “names” or something which have breaks in them when entering (like, this.is.an.example) and then the “game” takes these words and breeds them and mixes them up. You need to keep these little things fed too. And… that’s it. I guess that this may be cute or funny (I tried it with better words than the one in the screenshots and even started to use sentences for names), but ultimately I just think that this is an interactive screensaver and a boring one to boot.

#8: Sauerbrauten

Ok, so perhaps this wasn’t a fantastic choice for the competition. This is less of a “game” and more a tech demo. The levels—if we can call them that—are barely strung together with some sort of “kill-em-all” story attached. I can’t really tell though, because it’s obvious that these levels only exist to get you to look around in the engine. Someone could honestly make a really fantastic game with the Cube 2 engine and there’s some real potential with what’s included in the game. But! It’s still not really a game proper.

There is one really awesome thing about this tech demo: the menu system. As you can see in the screen shot, when you open the menu it’s a free floating 3D object that works really well (most of the time). It’s one of those things that as soon as you see it you wonder why its never been done before. Anyways, this is worth a look, and if someone had some real initiative they could build a great game inside the engine, but what’s there can hardly be considered a “game”. Were this just an engine/technical item then the Cube 2 engine would have ranked higher than the game itself.

#7: Flipside

Flipside is a Half-Life 2/Source Engine modification, and a student project. It is perhaps the most impressive looking overhaul of the engine that I’ve seen, especially for non-commercial uses. Now, for as technically impressive and imaginative as this title is, it’s really poor in just about every other area. After thirty minutes with the game I was still constantly struggling with the controls. I knew what I should be doing and how to do it, but the avatar was not reacting properly to the input I was giving with my controller. On top of that, the hit detection is really awful making even a single enemy a most deadly encounter because you’re playing essentially playing Russian roulette with the AI.

The concept is very original and the design is really great. Everything in the game is drawn and pasted together perhaps by a child or an insane person. Clippings of arms and torsos are held together with brads that you can see the prong ends of when you flip over to the dark-side of the world. The bright-side of things doesn’t allow for combat but really bouncy jumping over clouds and bright suns. The dark-side seems to be where the dirty work goes on and enemies can be removed forcefully. It’s a strong aesthetic and a shame that it’s not stronger in other areas. The group that made this game needs to team up with someone, or some group, that really knows how to fine tune a game and make it much more playable than it currently is. Some non-frustrating level design would go a long way as well.

#6: Iwanaga

This game is interesting. Iwanaga unquestionably needs to be played with a controller and the JoyToKey program. Also, for whatever reason I could not get the fullscreen version of the game to work, so I had to find and download the windowed version (which is a shame because the window is so-o damn tiny).

My first play through was on the easy setting. It is honestly easy on this setting and leaves out a couple of the gameplay mechanics which gave me a poor impression. On easy the gameplay feels quite similar to Alien Soldier mixed with Sin & Punishment. It’s pretty obvious that the was inspired by Treasure as Iwanaga is laid out as a boss rush with small amounts of enemy killing to power-up in between. The visuals and a few of the score mechanics seem more to be borrowed more from Cave STGs though. All of this leads to the game ultimately feeling a bit uninspired (or perhaps too inspired) and a little overcomplicated. As a non-Japanese speaker/reader there’s also some mechanics which don’t make a lick of sense to me (there’s a number on the screen that, when empty, my life bar begins to drain and I don’t know exactly why). It was fun to play through on easy but quite short, and I don’t think that it’s as good as others have made it out to be. I plan to stick to the sources of influence rather than this one.

#5: La Mulana

Perhaps someone who said that I couldn’t get a good impression of this game w/in 30 minutes was correct. This is mainly because I got a bad impression of the game in that time. Well, OK, honestly my impressions are a bit mixed. This game carries over all the really awesome things about 8-bit platforming games, as well as many of the things that make it hard for me to pick these games up anymore. Like Faxanadu. I can’t really play that game for that long anymore because the combat and hit detection are so stiff and unforgiving. In La Mulana, things aren’t much different.

I guess this is part of its charm that seems to have captured so many people’s attention. To me it’s just mildly annoying. Like, when for unknown reasons I whipped a block and it made lightening strike me. Or when I just entered a new area and an enemy will instantly knock me back into the previous screen. Or when I fall into some water and my life drains so quickly that I don’t get more than a single attempt to get out of it. I could go on, but something makes me want to keep playing the game just a little while longer to see if it balances out and starts to become more enjoyable and less frustrating. I don’t really understand a few things though (like how to read a map and how to save) which would probably be cleared up with just a little research or a manual, but whatever. It’s not horrible, but I expect that rose-colored glasses are what’s drawing so many people’s attention to this game.

#4: Dive

Dive was designed and submitted for the Gamma 256 … uh, party-project-thing. The concept and design are both simple and elegant. The task of the player is to dive. Due possibly to some freak aquatic accident this diver has sonar and can contact the friendly animals to give him more oxygen. The pink/red sea life is harmful, and they’re best avoided. The tone and atmosphere are both very strong and exceptionally subdued. The graphics are very iconic and the sound is simple with a throw back to 8-bit sound effects. The music is perhaps the most subtle and alluring part of the game: while at first the oceanic sound is quite at its regular interval the volume slowly grows louder until you feel it in your head. The weight of it all is very well placed and the game is well thought out for as simple as it is. Unfortunately there’s not much to it and it maintains a place as the first game I’ve actually completed in the 30 min time I’ve given myself for this competition (though, to it’s credit, this is part of the design. That’s not to say I wouldn’t love to see this concept taken further with perhaps different verbs for different levels).

#3: Sam & Max Episode 4: Abe Lincoln Must Die!

Well, a half hour probably wasn’t enough time for this one either. By the time that was up I’d heard some pretty decent voice-acting, some humorous lines, and gotten stuck on old adventure-game cliches. I’m not someone who detests adventure games or anything, it’s just that sometimes they have these really horrible habits of not pointing the player anywhere near the correct direction and force them to create some kind of telepathic link with the developers to figure out where to go next. Or, exhaust every possible combination of items and interaction, and if that fails searching everything for something missed via random pointing and clicking.

But, Sam and Max has more character and humor than many of those really bad games tend to have so I’d be willing to keep going on this one with some more time. Graphically the game is clean and accomplishes setting up a very cartoon-esque landscape and world. The interface is very simple  executed solely by point and click operation. I liked what I played, but wish that it had moved on from what I feel held back the genre in the first place.

#2: Akuchizoku

This game was developed by Cactus who is currently most famous for their game Clean Asia (which I happen to like a lot). Apparently they’ve made like five million games in two weeks or something: it’s a bit insane honestly. This one happens to be a horizontal shooter which starts the player out in some kind of option-ala-Gradius-ed-out Helicopter. There’s a story mode, but I didn’t get very far into it within the first half hour. The story that they do introduce you to is very bizarre and takes place in the future, in the past… kinda thing. It’s humorous and no less ridiculous than the kind of crap that use to go into games in the eras that the aesthetics of Akuchizoku are paying homage to.

So, shoot stuff through three levels and attempt to stop the Akuchizoku, some sort of Japanese terrorist outfit. This unit has some batshit insane engineers working for them because they have somehow melded organics and machines in an bass ackward kind of way. The opponent in the screen shot above isn’t even the most bizarre. The game also offers a free play mode which lets the player practice any of the three main levels. Not only are the levels challenging, and loaded with bosses, but they are fair and have a gradual learning curve. I can only piece together that the game allows you to loop it thrice with a different character each time: when in free play mode there’s an option for which character to select. Outside of Simpson-Yellow man, there’s a Skeletor looking thing, and a lady pilot. Each play quite uniquely and together make for a good game, honestly. I wanted to spend more than the initial half hour with it, but rules are rules. I will be going back and playing more of this.

#1: Dwarf Fortress (the graphical version thing was an excuse)

Ok, I think that I actually learned how to play the game this time. This was the game I picked to “feed my own indulgences and curiosities” and honestly it did. First off it should be mentioned that this game is stupidly ridiculous in its depth and scope. Second: I broke my rules here and spent more than a half hour on the game, but I have my excuses (mainly that I had to follow a tutorial for a while). Lastly, this is my third attempt at playing this game. But even so, I’ve barely seen the tip of the tip of the iceburg. Reading stories about this game, both from people playing it and about the development quirks, constantly piques my curiosities, but every other time I played this game I just felt like it hates me after about fifteen minutes of dicking around.

This game needs one of two things to be amazing and a bit more friendly. A) It needs a tutorial mode. Saying “hey here’s five million things to do and an honestly crappy starting build” is about the biggest turn off for me. And B) this game needs to have a few presets for starting Dwarf parties. I mean, seriously, the game practically wants you to fail. My experiences still lead me to believe that this game is created by someone who never ever wants anyone outside of those with a lot of free time to play it. But, I guess that the third time’s a charm, and I fell in love with it this time. I’ll be picking this back up later and perhaps with the non-graphical version. To attempt to capture what this game is about in just a few sentences or paragraph would be a fools errand, so take my word for it and give the game a fair shot if you have a good chunk of spare time to learn the basics in.