Tag: game

#oneaday Day 864: Spore-adic

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On a whim, I started playing Spore again recently, this time with the Galactic Adventures expansion installed, which I never got around to trying previously. I still haven’t got far enough in my new game to come across any of the aforementioned Galactic Adventures, but I thought I’d revisit my thoughts on the original game, as I last contemplated it way back in 2008.

Spore caught some flak on its original release for a number of reasons — mainly dodgy DRM with very strict activation limits and early online connectivity issues (some things never change, huh?) — but also attracted criticism for not living up to its hype. Originally dubbed SimEverything, the game was supposed to be Will “SimCity” Wright’s last great masterpiece, simulating the entirety of life right from single-celled primordial soup up to space exploration. A lofty goal, for sure. But how well did it manage, really?

Beginning as a single-celled organism that is either carnivorous or herbivorous, you’re thrown into the primordial soup and tasked with surviving. Carnivores must eat little red chunks, herbivores must eat little green chunks. Both can be found just floating in the water, but carnivores can help the process along by killing other organisms. Herbivores, conversely, spend a lot of time running away to begin with.

As you eat, you gain DNA points which can be spent on improving your creature with various parts. In order to evolve your creature, you must mate with another of your kind, which pops up the creature editor and allows said parts to be bolted on. These range from various fins and tentacles that improve speed and agility, to spiky things, poison-spitters and other defensive measures. It’s even possible, with enough available points, to replace the creature’s mouth to turn it from a herbivore into a carnivore — or even to give it two mouths, allowing it to eat everything.

This process continues for a while, with your creature regularly expanding in size until once screen-filling enemies become tiny little minnows in the background, until you eventually fill the progress bar at the bottom of the screen and evolve a brain. At this point, it’s possible to continue swimming around in the soup to gain further points and collect any parts you missed, but the game nudges you in the direction of the next stage, which focuses on your creature’s life.

After climbing out of the ocean and evolving legs (which you attach yourself as you see fit), you then get to explore the surface of the randomly-generated world your game takes place on. At this point, progress mostly comes about through either befriending or destroying other species. New creature parts can be found on long-dead skeletons on the planet, and the player’s creature evolved with these parts, each of which offer various bonuses to either social or combat abilities.

Upon confronting another creature and choosing whether to befriend or kill it, a little minigame occurs. Combat is rather MMO-ish, with a small hotbar of up to four different abilities available. Socialisation, meanwhile, involves watching what the rival creatures do and copying their moves. As this phase progresses, the player’s creature gains the ability to bring along a “pack” of other creatures — either of their own species or allied organisms — which makes both socialisation and combat easier.

To make life a bit more interesting, certain species are naturally aggressive and will attack anything on sight, and there are a few “epic” creatures wandering around who are considerably larger than everything else on the planet. These can be defeated in combat with a bit of care, but for the most part they’re something to avoid and admire from afar.

Once the Creature phase is over, the Tribe phase begins. Here, the player is no longer in control of a single member of their species, but instead takes on a more “overseer” role, controlling their tribe like an RTS. Progression through this phase is determined by either befriending or destroying rival tribes.

You begin this stage with a small, simple village and the ability to construct a few “tools”. Food must be gathered to feed the tribe and is also used as currency to purchase tools and create new tribe members. Tools fall into two main categories, as with creature parts: social and combat. Social tools take the form of musical instruments, while combat tools are weapons and a healing ability.

Upon meeting another tribe, like in the Creature phase, players must choose what stance to approach them in. If approaching in social stance, both tribes will line up in front of each other and one will “perform” for the other. The “audience” tribe will call out different instruments that they want to hear, and the player must quickly activate their instruments to please them before the audience gets bored. Combat is simple point-and-click RTS-style, though there is also a hotbar of special abilities according to what weapons the tribe has equipped at the time.

Following this point, the game enters the Civilization stage, where the player must conquer the planet they are on by taking over, buying or destroying all the rival cities. The game becomes more complex at this point, with a lot more building, trading and military conquest — though as with the previous components of the game, this phase can be passed through peacefully with a bit of effort.

Following this, the Space phase begins, and some would argue this is where the game begins proper — indeed, this is the phase that the Galactic Adventures expansion concentrates entirely on. Players must explore the galaxy in their custom-designed ship, fly down to planets, collect items, terraform, secure “spice” mines, trade with other species, complete missions, defeat enemies and, eventually, if you want to “finish” the game, build yourself up enough to take a lengthy expedition to the centre of the galaxy — a risky prospect, since this is where the Borg-like Grox, the main antagonists of the game, live.

So Spore certainly does follow life from its humble beginnings up to the space age, and it’s very satisfying to look at the comprehensive “history” screen in the game and see how your creature has evolved over time. The main criticisms that were levelled at the game on its original release, however, were more to do with the fact that none of the game’s phases had a lot of depth to them — it wanted to be “five games in one” but didn’t really pull it off as well as some people wanted.

It doesn’t really matter, though. Revisiting it now has reminded me that Spore is a very entertaining game — sure, it’s pretty lightweight compared to some heavy hitters in the strategy and god game genres, but that only serves to make the game accessible to all. I’m actually rather glad about this, since I find a lot of strategy games rather heavy going and consequently find myself trounced by computer or human players on a regular basis. I can succeed in Spore while still feeling like I’ve been challenged somewhat, and simply enjoy the sense of progression, discovery and ever-expanding scale that the game offers — not to mention its wry sense of humour and wonderfully self-referential nature. The game even plays music from M.U.L.E. at certain points, for pity’s sake.

And I haven’t even mentioned what was one of the main draws of the game on its original release: its focus on user-generated content. All through the game, your galaxy is populated by creations from other players. With the Galactic Adventures expansion, this user-generated content goes far beyond player-made creatures, buildings and vehicles — there are full missions designed by players. It’s impressive that it all works as well as it does — content simply “invades” your game seamlessly, and built-in community features allow you to rate, comment on or, if necessary, ban content without leaving the game.

I haven’t yet touched the Galactic Adventures content since my current save has only just advanced to the Civilization stage, but I’m looking forward to investigating it. Further thoughts will follow when I’ve had time to check it out. In the meantime, if you get the chance to grab a cheap copy of Spore, it’s well worth a shot.

#oneaday Day 827: You Should Back Republique on Kickstarter if You’re an iOS Gamer — And Perhaps Even if You’re Not

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I backed the highly promising-looking project Republique on Kickstarter recently. Despite it looking like a high-quality endeavour from a reputable team (including former Halo 4 creative director Ryan Payton, no less) it’s struggling to reach its goal of $500,000 — as of the time of writing, it’s sitting at $86,477 with 16 days left to go.

For the unfamiliar, Republique is a bold attempt to create a “triple-A” game experience on iOS. The goals that the team hopes to achieve include designing a game specifically for touch-based devices; creating an intense action game without a focus on killing; creating a game with a believable, non-sexualized female lead; exploring “heavy” topics and saying something “meaningful”; and pushing cutting-edge graphics on mobile devices.

All reasonable ambitions, you might think. The thinking behind the game’s design is that “gamers will embrace iOS when more games are made for them.”

That, unfortunately, is where the problem lies — a lot of people are still resistant to the idea that a mobile device can play host to a “proper” game — i.e. one that you play for more than five minutes at a time, that doesn’t feature a three-star rating system on every level and doesn’t offer the possibility of purchasing in-game currency for faster progress. (That said, the ever-greedy EA has been sneaking the latter mechanic into some of its recent games, much to the chagrin of people who hate that sort of thing, particularly when they’ve already spent $60 on the game itself, but that’s beside the point.)

To look at the popular titles on the App Store, you’d be forgiven for thinking that these naysayers had a point. Of the top free iPhone games at the time of writing, pretty much all of them are either casual or social fare, riddled with microtransactions and designed more as a moneymaking “service” than anything with meaningful gameplay. (Yes, even the ridiculously popular Draw Something falls into this category.) Paid apps don’t fare much better, either, with the super-casual (and a bit rubbish) Angry Birds Space topping the charts, closely followed by numerous other lightweight titles.

This isn’t to say there are no “core” titles on iOS. Far from it, in fact — Square Enix, for example, has put out some excellent role-playing titles including Final Fantasy I, II and III, Chrono Trigger, Chaos Rings and Final Fantasy Tactics. Sega has rereleased a number of its old Genesis titles including strategy RPG classic Shining Force. EA has put out mobile adaptations of its popular franchises such as Dead Space, Mass Effect and numerous others. But why do these titles flounder — relatively speaking, anyway — when compared to more casual fare?

It’s a simple numbers game. Not everyone who owns an iOS device is a “core” gamer. Angry Birds et al have their place among those of us who don’t know what RPG, HP, MP or FPS stand for, or who think “bullet hell” refers to driving through a particularly unpleasant part of Manchester in the middle of the night. As it happens, these more casual players probably outnumber the more dedicated “core” types to whom “triple-A” titles such as Republique might be marketed to. As such, they appear to dominate the charts on a regular basis.

Does that mean that “core” developers should give up and not even bother trying to put together something impressive on mobile platforms? Absolutely not, though they should be aware of what they’re getting into and the problems they will have to overcome in the process.

Firstly, one of these “core” titles probably isn’t going to top the charts. The Angry Birds series, for example, has enjoyed well over half a billion downloads in its lifetime and made developer Rovio a worldwide phenomenon in the process. Its simple gameplay and premise mean that anyone can pick it up, play and have fun. (Unless you’re me. I hate that stupid game.) Conversely, a “core” title likely has a barrier of entry — “you must be this familiar with video games to ride”, if you will. Not only that, but its audience must be people willing to sit down with a game for more than a few minutes at a time while they’re waiting for a bus, waiting for the kettle to boil or waiting for their bowels to evacuate.

Secondly, iOS players are curiously resistant to what they see as “high” prices. Square Enix’s titles, for example, have caught frequent flak for being anywhere between $8.99 and $17.99. Compared to a new release on PC, console, Vita or 3DS, however, these prices are still eminently reasonable — but they’re expensive compared to the $.99 you pay for Angry Birds, and the fact that they’re deeper, more impressive, bigger-budget experiences than Rovio’s avian-flinging nonsense isn’t often taken into account.

The problem here is that in order for a “triple-A” iOS title with high production values to be successful, it will need to overcome that particular resistance that players feel to paying more than, say, $5 for a game. The Kickstarter for Republique will provide those who pledge $10 or more with a copy of the full game when it’s released — and going by the pattern of other successful video game Kickstarters, the full version will likely cost more than this “backer’s rate”. We’re likely looking at $15-20 at least, and that’s a price point that takes the game well and truly out of “impulse purchase” territory.

Or does it? Consider Thatgamecompany’s recent PS3 release Journey. This game costs $15 and lasts approximately two hours. People have been willing to part with this much money for what they already know is a two-hour experience simply because other people have said it is good. In many cases, people have done this without a second thought — going into the game with “beginner’s mind” is regarded as an important part of the experience. Does the virtue of the fact that Journey is a game presented on a large television screen make it inherently more valuable than a portable title for a multipurpose mobile device? It’s certainly perceived that way, but why on Earth should that be so?

As the Camouflaj team say on their Kickstarter page for Republique, though, developers need to take more risks if “triple-A” gaming on iOS is to be taken seriously. Lengthy, deep games can and do work on the platform, even if they don’t chart very highly compared to casual and social juggernauts. The most important considerations for any developer thinking about doing this, however, should be designing it specifically for the device. That means building a game around a touch-based interface, not putting in crappy virtual joypads with no tactile feedback. A game with touch controls needn’t be shallow — games such as Undercroft that recreate what would have been the mouse-driven interface of old PC games work well, for example, so there’s plenty of scope there.

From what I know of the team behind Republique, I believe that they have a good idea of what they’re doing. I believe that their game could prove to be an excellent example of what mobile platforms is capable of for “core” gamers. And I simply believe that the project should be supported, not because I want to see an end to the casual titles on mobile — they have their place — but because as a format, mobile devices’ capabilities are more than broad enough to cater to more than a “lowest common denominator” audience. It should be supported because it’s a worthwhile project that, if successful, will benefit mobile gaming in general in the long run — not just iOS. That means you embittered Android types upset that this title doesn’t mention your chosen platform at all should consider throwing a few quid their way, too. Vote with your wallet, as they say.

Check out the Republique Kickstarter and pledge a donation here.

#oneaday, Day 43: Got any ID?

Little Johnny wants to buy a copy of acclaimed and excessively popular (some might say cultish) Lovecraftian multiplayer FPS Call of Cthuty: Black Arts and heads down to his local GAME. There, he attempts to procure a copy of said game—which has a big shiny red BBFC “18” certificate on it—with the pocket money he’s saved up. Little Johnny is eleven years old and doesn’t have any ID, fake or otherwise. The cashier at GAME refuses to serve him. Little Johnny goes home and cries, and Xbox LIVE is safe from another squeaky-voiced pipsqueak for another day.

Well done, GAME, correct response.

Little Johnny returns to GAME with his mother, who doesn’t know much about video games. He has convinced her that he “needs” this game in order to fit in with all the cool kids, who are all playing it for 37 hours a day, some of whom have already Ascended and are going around the levelling system again, only this time with brand new Elder Powers to choose from. His mother picks up the game, barely gives it a second glance, asks the cashier for it with Little Johnny standing right there, and the cashier doesn’t question this at all. Little Johnny’s mother hands him his shiny new game, he shouts “FUCK YEAH!” and runs out of the shop giggling.

No, GAME. Bad GAME. Incorrect response.

Bigger Johnny (no relation) wants to buy a copy of acclaimed and excessively popular (some might say cultish) Lovecraftian multiplayer FPS Call of Cthuty: Black Arts and heads down to his local GAME. There, he attempts to procure a copy of said game—which has a big shiny red BBFC 18 certificate on it—with his credit card. He is 19, after all. He gives the “If you’re lucky enough to look under 21…” sign on the counter a brief glance but decides that the bum-fluff he’s managed to grow on his chin will ensure he won’t have to worry about ID—which is good, because he’s forgotten to bring it. He is incorrect in his assumption, as the cashier asks him for ID and he is unable to provide it. He leaves the shop empty-handed, but with his bank account forty quid better off than it would have been.

Well done, GAME, correct response.

Bigger Johnny’s mum just happens to be Mary “Queen of Shops” Porta, supposed shopping “guru” who is on the tellybox frequently whingeing at shop-owners about how rubbish they are. She is outraged at the way GAME have treated her darling son and tells him all sorts of things about how he should have demanded to see the manager, then promptly gets on the phone, shouts at them, gets hung up on and then demands to speak to the CEO of the entire company. In public. On Twitter. CEO promptly deflects her with his PR human shield… and the matter is still ongoing at the time of writing.

This latter part actually happened today, albeit with a 15-rated game and a 17-year old son who attempted to use his 16+ Oyster Card as valid ID for GAME staff to check his age. They refused—and good on them, frankly, for upholding a law which is all too often flouted by retailers more concerned with making a quick buck than actually ensuring inappropriate content doesn’t get into the hands of kids. Mary Queen of Shops, however, was furious, though it’s not entirely clear what grounds she has to complain. Here are some of her tweets on the subject:

You’ll notice her casual dismissal of the ratings system as “we are not talking drink”. Apparently some retail laws really are worth more than others to our Mary. She is also heavily focused on the ID issue, though implies that there was some non-specific “rotten attitude” from the store in question. When asked about this by one Twitter user, however, her only response was this:

No mention of what the “more to it than that” was. She hasn’t said anything since, at the time of writing.

Now, I’ve talked about this topic a number of times. Censorship is a bad thing; but the refusal to sell age-restricted products to minors is not censorship. It’s ensuring that people have access to age-appropriate material—a law which would mostly work were it not for the stupid loophole most retailers use to avoid difficult conversations where they’ll happily sell the game to a parent even if it is very, very obviously on behalf of a child who is standing right there.

I don’t for a second believe Fox News’ nonsense that games cause rape, violence and AIDS. But I do believe that “mature” content should be kept out of the hands of minors until they’re old enough to deal with it appropriately and not run around shouting “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” in the middle of the street. (Which they genuinely used to do in sunny Southampton.) Foot-stamping and attitude from people like Mary here doesn’t achieve anything except devalue the law every time it’s circumvented. If her son wanted to buy the game—which he was quite entitled to do if he had one of the forms of ID that everywhere else in the world accepts and not an Oyster card which no-one has ever* accepted as valid ID—then he should have gone prepared. And when he got turned away, his initial reaction should not be to speak to the manager as Mary seems to think it should be. It should be to shrug, accept the fact that he done messed up, like, go home, get his ID and then try again.

But no; the customer is always right, after all. Even when they’re clearly wrong. You have my sympathies, retail types. I remember all too well what it was like.

* And if they did, they shouldn’t have. FACT.