Justin Baker

Brotherhood Rekindled - Revisiting Dark Souls

Growing up I spent more hours playing games at my friend’s house than I ever did at home. I would ride home with him after school and we would fire up whatever piece of garbage we had rented for the N64. Eventually my Mom would finally get off work and come pick me up, and as much as I would try, gaming just wasn’t the same by myself. I don’t think I’ve ever shared that with him.

16-Bit Perfection -

I grew up in a Nintendo house playing an NES. Even after the SNES came out, I played my NES constantly. In fact I can only remember really playing Mega Man X on my SNES, and a little bit of Super Mario World. No, I was an 8-bit kid through and through. This was mostly because I had piles of NES cartridges, and SNES cartridges were slow to trickle into our collection. My mom could grab an NES game at the pawn shop for ten bucks and keep me enthralled for weeks, as opposed to a fifty dollar SNES game at a real store. But, as things progressed into the era of early 3D I began to see the advantages of 16-bit over my beloved 8-bit. I never really appreciated the graphics on my SNES until it was too late.

Anybody that played NES games as a kid probably had the same system that me and my brother employed for more indecipherable sprites that we saw. A lot of my friends referred to the bullets in Contra as tomatoes, and the bullets in Ikari Warriors as marshmallows. My favorite were the small purple creatures from Kung Fu Heroes, which me and my brother referred to as peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Of course they look nothing like sandwiches, and really just resembled eggplants with mouths.

But with 16-bit games things became much clearer. Suddenly there was just enough clarity to recognize what every item and enemy was supposed to be, and it did kill a little bit of the magic for me. It was especially disheartening for me because I was the kid that made up his own names for every enemy in Zelda, and decided what kind of creatures they were because our copy didn’t come with a manual. As the guessing game disappeared, we grew fond of the graphical prowess of the 16-bit era. Games looked damn good, and it was nice to actually know what everything was for a change. The mystery had been replaced with solid pixel art and great animation. I remember being shocked when I picked up the SNES Spawn game and he wasn’t just a small block of pixels, but instead a full sized sprite of my favorite comic book character that swayed with animation.

Then the 3D revolution happened. The Nintendo 64 was on the horizon and the Playstation was gaining traction among gamers for its 3D graphics. Those few short years where 16-bit reigned supreme were drawing to a close, and like most other kids I was overjoyed at the prospect of seeing my favorite video games in glorious, detailed 3D. What I got was a mottled mess of blurry textures and hard to see models. Let’s be honest here, it wasn’t pretty. At the time it was the best we had, and we all oohed and aahed but early 3D games can be painful to go back replay. This was a trend that even continued through early PS2 games. It was expensive to make 3D games, and if a studio didn’t have the cash it showed. Even well-funded first party games suffered the transition to 3D. When was the last time you played the original version of Super Mario 64?

Fast forward to now. Games compete fiercely with each other over who can have the brownest, most dust covered levels. Graphical fidelity has reached a shocking high, but major studios want their games to look “real”, even though the real world looks drab and boring. Aside from some of the more majestic parts of the real world, it’s a pretty dust-filled, gray place. Now, this isn’t to put out studios that put out amazing games because there are quite a few, but the big Triple-A titles that get all the hype seem to follow this pattern. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that 16-bit style games are on the rise again even though we have the power to do so much more.

16-bit games have clarity and simplicity while still being able to look impressive. Today 16-bit graphics can be programmed by an incredibly small team, and it gives them a retro charm that gamers look at fondly. Again, I think this is because it was the perfect balance between looking like they were meant to and still being attractive.

Graphics from early video games were representative because the technology simply didn’t exist to make them look like what they were really meant to be. Looking back at any Atari game we can see this, and I’m sure the guessing games were rampant back then as well. 16-bit games, in my opinion, are the pinnacle of gaming graphics. While I have to say that I do play my fair share of 3D games, nothing grabs we and makes me feel at home quite like some well-crafted pixel art. Maybe I’m just getting old.

Title image credit: http://www.drawsgood.com/9923/235356/gallery/pixel-video-game-characters-high-score-society

Metal Gear Solid HD Collection (Vita) -

So I’ve been neglecting my blog a bit in favor of writing and (hopefully) selling some short stories, but I’ve still found time to check out Metal Gear Solid HD Collection on my Vita. I’ve been waiting quite a while for this one, and so far it’s certainly given me good reason to remain glued to my Vita for the last couple of weeks.

Now, I didn’t finish either MGS 2 or MGS 3 during their original runs so I was super excited to have an excuse to go through both of them. The exclusion of the first MGS was a little upsetting, especially considering that the Vita still can’t play PS1 games, but with the original two MSX Metal Gear games still included it remains a very full package.

There seems to be some confusion in the gaming world over what exactly an “HD Collection” really is. It is not a remake. It is the original assets displayed in higher resolution. What this means is that the games aren’t going to look much better than in their original forms; they’re going to look sharper, but textures that were originally badly done will still look bad.

MGS 2 was quite an experience to say the least. In traditional Metal Gear fashion, the story crumbled into a mess of philosophy, crazy monologues, and lengthy boss battles. It was memorable, but got a little crazy. The controls were insufferable to say the least, and the shoehorned back touch controls made things even more frustrating. Although the game itself is well worth putting up with the control scheme, it made me put it down several times.

The inventory management was also revamped to be controlled with the front touch screen. To do this they grouped similar items into a sub-menu which tends to bury items that you don’t use all the time, and caused me to forget about many of them when the time to use them rolled around. Obviously the age old complaint that you play as Raiden for most of the game is still there, and it really wouldn’t be as frustrating if Raiden wasn’t voice acted so badly. If you’ve never played either game be sure to play this one first, because while it’s a fun experience, MGS 3 is the real gem in this package.

Now I’m still not quite done with MGS 3, but so far it’s been one hell of a ride. The music, the much improved voice acting, and most of all the controls all make it a shining example in the series. The villains are a little less intriguing than in the previous title, but they do provide some excellent battles. Naked Snake himself (Big Boss if you prefer) feels like a much more relatable version of Solid Snake. The entire game has a much more gung-ho guns blazing feel to it, and I’ve found myself shooting my way through some sections just because it was more fun. I wouldn’t say that you can play either way, but stealth isn’t as necessary as in previous games. That flexibility combined with the survival mechanics really come together to make something special.

Overall, even without the addition of Peace Walker, which the PS3 version had, it’s still quite a package. If you’re looking for something to kill a good thirty hours (or many many more if you play all the bonus content) then this is the title to get. The games themselves look damn good on the Vita’s screen, and being able to take what many consider the best entry in the entire Metal Gear series with me wherever I go feels great.

Video games are hard. At least, they used to be. The end screen on a game was a hard fought battle, you against the toughest, most unfair creatures and puzzles the designer could think to throw at you. You had to buy books, read magazines, and scour the playground for tips to beat many of them and even then that wasn’t always enough. In addition to those resources you needed an iron thumb and the reflexes to match.

A couple of floppy disks or a gray cartridge were all you needed for an entire weekend, and by the time it was over you either stood triumphant over the final boss or you watched your parents slip the game back into the return slot at your local video store along with your hopes and dreams. Times were hard, but gamers were harder, and they fought on through glitches and esoteric quest dialog. Maps were hand drawn on graph paper and taped on walls over computer monitors. And most of all, if there was an easy mode, you never used it.

Easy mode. That’s what you put on when your kid brother wants to play, but not you, you’re a real gamer. Yeah, it might make the game easier, but it takes out all the integrity. Does beating the game on easy mode even count? Well, unfortunately, it often does not. Don’t think for a second that shelling out over fifty dollars for a game means that you’re entitled to beat it, quite the contrary.

All facetiousness aside, gaming was a hard earned right in its formative years. Now I’m getting older and easy mode is probably one of the biggest reasons that I’ve been able to continue gaming throughout adulthood. I have a job and school to contend with, so honing my lightning reflexes or memorizing patterns just to beat a game I’m playing aren’t things I generally have a lot of time for. I want to get through the narrative and have a fun time doing it, and grinding levels it not something that I find incredibly fun anymore. The taboo surrounding easy modes still goes on in gaming culture, and it’s something saturated in male bravado and hypermsaculinity.

It seems to me that a lot of people are more concerned with how “hardcore” they look when playing a game than they are with having a good time and enjoying the experience. Granted, there isn’t anything wrong with someone who wants to practice the same stage in a game for hundreds of hours and upload perfect speed runs. It’s precisely this kind of dedication that makes gaming great. No, I’m talking about the guy that spends his days playing a single game and trolling the forums looking to belittle anyone who hasn’t spent thousands of hours developing the same mastery of the game that he has.

In this day of dynamic difficulties, increasingly impressive AI, and radically diverse play styles, you should be allowed to play easy mode without feeling like you’re doing it wrong. There is a certain amount of accomplishment that comes from completing a challenging task, but at a certain point it just feels like bashing your head against a brick wall. Difficulty is a hard thing to nail down. Developers and testers spend months, even years with some games, so it’s hard for them to tell what level of difficulty would be appropriate for a new player.

My girlfriend of four years recently started getting into playing games a bit, and simple things like moving in a 3D space and shoulder buttons still give her trouble. This keeps her from playing the bulk of major games on her Vita that she recently purchased. She seeks out games that are easy enough, and that don’t punish gamers who complete the game on normal. On that same note I always hesitate when purchasing something that is considered difficult. The more recent example is Dark Souls, a game that I adore.

Dark Souls is one of those games that comes along once a generation, and despite the fact that it ignores many years of gameplay innovations, it becomes a hit. The atmosphere and esoteric storyline drew then, as expected, spit and me in me back out. The difficulty was part of the appeal, but in the end it prevented me from finishing the game. After about sixty hours I moved on to other titles that were piling up, and I still look back on Dark Souls wishing I had the time and manual dexterity to go back and finish it. My point here is that I loved the game, and if there was an easy mode then I might have been able to finish it instead of just giving up. No, it might not have been as satisfying as defeating the game’s challenge, but I would have felt better having had a more complete experience.

So to anyone out there that still hesitates on the difficulty selection screen: take the leap, no one’s watching. Bump it down a notch, sit back, and have a good time. It’s easy to forget that games should be enjoyed, and they aren’t always tweaked perfectly to your particular skill level. It’s time that the easy mode taboo is broken, and we all move on to greener pastures.

Mortal Kombat Vita Impressions -

I’ve had the pleasure of playing the new Mortal Kombat game on my Vita, and it sure is a breath of fresh air. I’ve always loved fighting games, but only in the privacy of my own room. I wasn’t fortunate enough to have been into fighting games during their popularity surge of the Nineties as I was kind of busy being a little kid.

I grew to love Street Fighter II on my SNES, and watched my brother play Mortal Kombat. He was always the better player, and as little brothers the world over can attest to: it’s not fun getting constantly trampled by your older brother in fighting games.

So I played them on my own in secret. I’m decent at them, but not decent enough to compete online. They’re a fascination, but I’m not one to count frames of animation or cancel out of hyper combos. With that in mind, it’s easy to see why I end up disappointed in so many fighters. Aside from the arcade mode, there is usually very little single-player content to speak of. This is, I feel, Mortal Kombat’s greatest triumph.

The story mode is lengthy, fully animated, and voice acted. It gives me the fleshed out stories and character motivations that I’ve always wanted from the genre. Now, granted, it’s still Mortal Kombat. That means that the story is a silly gore-filled soap opera about sorcerers, super-ninjas and lightning gods literally ripping each other’s throats out. The story is very unapologetic about what it is, and makes no concessions in that regard. This is MK at its goriest, and finest.

The actual combat within the game runs at a solid 60 FPS, and has a very nice flow. The models themselves are a little jaggy, but the framerate makes up for it by never dipping and never slowing down. The cutscenes themselves also have been compressed to the point that it’s visible, but it isn’t bad enough to ruin anything.

I was never a big MK player, but the slower, more calculating flow of battle leads to satisfying battles. Some matches can be several seconds of whiffing and dancing around one another until the first punch finally lands, and leads with ease into a blood-spurting combo.

Luckily, the Vita version includes all the DLC, so the forty dollar price tag feels a little more reasonable for a game that is a year old. It also includes a few touch-based mini games that are part of the new challenge tower, and while they’re really just cell phone games done with MK characters, they work well and are a fun addition to the overall package.

The re-telling of the first three games that takes place in the story has lead me to actually become attached to some of the characters, and as someone not familiar with the lore, I find myself genuinely interested and engaged with the storyline. Again, it’s about as deep as a daytime soap opera, but it’s still a fun romp through Outworld.

Skyward Sword -

I’ve just recently picked up Xenoblade Chronicles after a short argument with the clerk at Gamestop about whether or not I needed a PowerUp card. When I went to pop it in the old Wii I had to remove Skyward Sword, a game I haven’t touched in a few months. As I held the disc in my hand I realized that I was just going to add it to my growing pile of unfinished games. In a moment of determination I set Xenoblade Chronicles aside and decided I would give Skyward Sword one more try. I was already around twenty hours into it, and I thought I could power through the rest. That lasted about eighteen minutes.

I grew up in what could only be described as a Zelda home. My brother played every console entry in the series several times over while I played every handheld one. It was always a constant, one of us playing the newest Zelda game and talking about it. I’ve come to love the Metroid series much more, but Zelda still holds a place in my heart. So when Skyward Sword came out, I ordered off Amazon and waited patiently.

But, my patience ended in disappointment as I spent what felt like hours in the tutorial. It’s rare that a game with such a unique setting is able to create such a mundane and boring introduction. But, we’ve all been there, some games in the Zelda series just start slow. I pressed on, and into the belly of the beast.

I just don’t get it, Nintendo. This had the potential to be the most unique Zelda game since Link’s Awakening, and look what you did.

The controls are terrible, but not in an outright way. When you get to play around with them at first they show a glimmer of hope, and you can easily see how this could work well. Then you get into an actual combat scenario, which requires quick thinking and fast reflexes to hit the enemy with the right directional slash. It’s inaccurate, which is the word thing combat can be. If a game does nothing else well, but has tight, fun to play combat, it can still stand a chance with me, but this just feels sloppy.

It picks up about nine out of ten swings properly, which sounds much better than most motion controlled swings. Most of the time it works acceptably well, but the one time out of ten that it doesn’t is infuriating. If I mess up in a game because I pressed the wrong button, then it’s my fault, but if I mess up because I was a few degrees off on the angle of my swing or because the game recognized something badly, then something is very wrong. When I can’t beat a boss it needs to be because I’m not quick enough, or because I don’t recognize the pattern, never because the game is just sloppily put together.

Of course this kind of complaint is always countered with the obvious “Well, I never had any problems with the controls, must be something you’re doing!”

This argument is still neutralized in the face of the obvious response: the fact that I can “do it wrong” means that something is wrong with the control scheme. If I had to press the A button to attack, and I pressed B instead, then yes, I did it wrong. Unfortunately with motions controls there is no exact right way to perform the actions, and that is the problem: innacuracy.

Unfortunately the controls aren’t the only thing wrong here. Nintendo seems to have taken a solid twenty hour Zelda game and shoved twenty hours of fluff into it. Why do I have to find three pieces of a key to open a door, is just finding the key not enough? A more specific example is the propeller. I had to find a propeller to move a windmill to activate a hidden platform to play a song to point to where I needed to go to learn a song to enter the next dungeon. There were no new areas, no bosses, no puzzles, just me finding things laying about. Why was this even included in the game? It is quite literally the definition of fluff: a meaningless character needs a meaningless item to give me a meaningless ability to open a door.

The worst part is that the game is colorful, full of neat characters, and adds a lot to the history of Hyrule. It could have been such a fantastic entry, even with the inaccurate controls. There’s so much potential here buried under the fluff and artificial barriers. To those of you that were able to stick Skyward Sword out, I salute you. At least I still have Xenoblade Chronicles, and so far it’s one hell of a game.

Final Fantasy VII -

Whew! Just finished some work on a critical analysis of Mad Men for my English class. Of course, it was just the preliminary essay, I still have the ten page paper to write. So, in light of that, I thought I would come here and talk about some stuff more fun and mind-numbing: Video Games!

I’ve recently picked up Final Fantasy VII again. Originally I owned the game on PC because I didn’t have a Playstation. I remember seeing it in Target and going nuts over it because I had a PC, I could finally play the game that everyone is talking about! I convinced my mother to buy it, rushed home, installed it, played for about an hour, and then watched my computer chug and wheeze as I confronted Sephiroth at the top of a tower in Midgar. Then it crashed, deleted my save, and corrupted the install. The seven disc install that took hours. What’s a gamer to do?

Well, like any sufficiently addicted gaming child, I reinstalled and started over. I think it was about the tenth time that I went through this cycle of installing, playing, and crashing that the game finally got past that first part. I was finally able to play! Oddly enough I developed very good ten key skills from playing because it used the numpad for everything. That’s right, I played FFVII on a an eMachine with a numpad.

Of course I played a large portion of the first disc and the game crashed again. This time I was done; I resigned myself to simply watching my friend Chad play the game on his Playstation after school. Things went on this way for a couple of years, and everyone kept talking about the game; it was that huge. Chad probably played it a dozen times, with me watching from behind my Game Boy after school still. This was satisfactory for a while, but eventually I grew tired of it and moved on to Final Fantasy IX, which had just come out. It quickly became one of my favorite games of all time, and further cemented my odd quirk preferring the lesser known entries in any given series. Maybe that stems from being a little brother and perpetual second player, either way I always tend to gravitate towards oddball entries like Luigi’s Mansion, Metroid Fusion, and Link’s Awakening.

So I moved on and forgot about FFVII, and it faded into my past. A few years ago I sought to find a copy and play it, but it was a hard find in good shape for less than fifty dollars. But, technology came to the rescue and it was released on the PSN. So not only could I play it for ten dollars, but I could even play it on the go on my PSP.

So I set out on my adventure, and realized something very quickly: these graphics have aged terribly. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love old games, but the disparity between the backgrounds and the characters is quite jarring. Not to mention the fact that it feels like they have four different graphics engines trading off depending on the kind of cutscene you’re in. For the most part characters are represented in what could best be described as lego figures. No fingers, blocky hair, and chunky legs. But, let us not forget, this was the first foray into the realm of polygons for SquareSoft so this kind of thing is to be expected.

The combat, however, is still phenomenal. I’ve always preferred the Final Fantasy games that use the job system (FF, FFIII, FFV), and the materia system is a natural progression of that. You can completely customize each character to any play style you want, giving you a chance for true hybrid classes. This is “simple to use but hard to master” gameplay at its best, giving me a deep level of control of each character and their role in combat.

Like many - some would say most - FF titles, I do find myself wandering around the overworld quite a bit trying to figure out exactly where to go. I’ve had to look up a guide more than once, but I know that this is part of the fun. Wandering around the world, fighting monsters, discovering new Materia, it’s all part of the allure.

I’ve yet to actually finish the game - In fact, I think I’m still pretty early on - but the story is full of humor, depth, and genuinely heartbreaking moments other than just Aeris getting a heaping helping of Masmune. Every character has a tragic past that gets explored in detail, and it never feels forced or unnatural. For anyone else that missed this watershed moment in gaming, give it a chance. Although it’s very lengthy and involved, I’m still finding plenty of emotional reward in slowly picking my way through this masterpiece.

Find Mii II-

Find Mii is one of those games that a lot of people look at, play for a few minutes, then turn off and forget about it. My brother, for instance, hasn’t opened Find Mii once since getting his 3DS. I was the same way until I started getting multiple StreetPass hits a day while on campus, and I figured I would give it a shot. Hell, it’s long enough between good 3DS releases, I might as well find some way to entertain myself with the damn thing.

The premise is simple, use the Mii of people you tag on StreetPass to traverse a very simple dungeon and save your own Mii from  a big baddie. You can spend coins that you get from walking on “wandering adventurers” to help out when you’re not hitting out and about enough to get tags. Each time you tag someone they level up, so it leads to a fun game of trying to go the same spots in your daily routine to get the same people. So, I played through it, a few minutes a day, and beat it. I got some useless hats for my Mii and moved on with my life.

A few weeks later I picked it up again, and found that it’s the exact same game. Same dungeon, same monsters, but some different hats. Hooray, Nintendo, you really outdid yourselves here. Apathy took over and I would go a couple of days in between clearing out my Spotpass gate, so I slowly whittled my way through the game. Finally, again, I beat it, but this time something different happened. The credits rolled and I unlocked Find Mii II.

Suddenly I found myself immersed in what was an RPG that required actual tactics and thought. You can combine adventurers for multiple attacks, buy special potions, and rehire old adventurers that you’ve met. This makes a big difference, because high level adventurers can traverse several rooms before running off, unlike the low-level wandering adventurers that are the grunts of Find Mii. Divergent paths bring make it feel a little more like an adventure, and even the enemies are much more menacing and powerful.

Nintendo really hid this gem deep in the system, and I’m sure many people are unaware of it. I’ve heard mention of Find Mii II before, but I always dismissed it as more of the same. It almost feels like it could have been a full eShop release, so the fact that Nintendo just decided to include it in the system for free is fantastic. The cost of everything rises in Find Mii II, giving me something to finally spend all those saved up coins on. The only reason I can find that the Big N decided not to charge for it is that to play it you have to have coins, which you can only accrue in increments of ten a day. This restricts how much you can play the game, and keeps you from playing marathon sessions. Not that I’m complaining that Find Mii II is free, I’m just unaccustomed to this kind of quality software coming from a company at no cost.

So, in short, if you have a 3DS and haven’t bothered with Find Mii, then give it a whirl. The biggest barrier to entry is the time it takes to complete Find Mii two times. After that, you’re in for a goofy romp through the kid-friendly countryside.