Blog: Favorite YouTube Videos (Volume 7)

This week the grab bag of things that once held my attention on YouTube (known of course as Favorite YouTube Videos, volume 7) is all over the place with stuff that at one point held my attention. For what ever reason that means that this week we get a few cool stop-motion animations, some inspirational moments with a group of cellos and two very different kinds of video game covers.

• I love animated short films. The one things I'm most likely to see at the annual film fest here is the  animated shorts program. I enjoy getting my mind bent around new ways to look at what's going on in the everyday. This one, by PESfilm in a nifty take on making dinner.
• Interestingly right on the heels of that first video the second one is a commercial for RBC which we were bombarded with during some major sporting thing (I'm fairly sure it was the 2008 Olympics). I really like this for several reasons, one of which is the animation, the second is the structure of the one long pull back and the third is the architecture of the pavilion that builds up around Mr. Muffin. One of my favorite ads of all time.
• The next video is a cover of Final Countdown played on cello with orchestral backing. Need I say more?
• Brentalfloss is known for his Video Game Music ... With Lyrics series and this is one of the early entries. I like this one and will sing about taking the stuff of poor mangle monsters whenever the opportunity presents itself. I will say though that the one time I played this for my D&D group after one of their victories I was met with rather uncomprehending faces.
• Finally we have a remix of Mario music. It's missing a video (as a lot of music things do) and it's pretty housy (I think, I'm a lousy gauge of music genre), but it's fun and I think it would go well in a Mario game.

Blog: Thoughts on Pikmin

I recently finished replaying Pikmin. Pikmin is a real-time strategy game released by Nintendo for the Gamecube in 2001. Pikmin was later followed up by Pikmin 2 and now Pikmin 3 is scheduled to be a launch(ish) title for the Wii U. In it you play Captain Olimar, erstwhile space ship captain who has crashed into a terrifying planet full of giant captain eating monsters. You have to find the 30 missing parts of your ship  with the help of 3 different, colour-coded for your convenience, species of animate carrots. I rented it (and played it through) through when it first came out and recently picked it up at my local game store.

Piiiiiikmin (via GameFAQs)

You play Pikmin by raising up a swarm of these small simple creatures who's basic functions are to fight things and carry things. You get more pikmin by having them carry food back to their "onions" from which they sprout new seeds which bloom into pikmin which you then pluck and put into forced labour fighting monsters, removing bariers and carrying more food and your ship parts. Different pikmin are immune to different environmental hazards. Put together you get a game that's part puzzle game part action-strategy game.

It's a simple game and really short (I finished it in 3 light evenings, and I wasn't that good). I enjoyed enough to feel like writing a bit about it, especially because of the brightness of the game and how much fun it was it was to play.

What I Liked

The greatest part about Pikmin is the feeling of the game. It's bright and colourful and the controls are (for the most part) not frustrating. It's easy enough to see a problem, decide on a solution and implement it (whether or not it will work is another story). The controls feel good and the game doesn't fight you outside of a couple of AI elements, since the pikmin are supposed to be independent creatures you sometimes have to work with what they want. This doesn't detract from the game at all though.

It's kinda fun to hang out with these guys. (via GameFAQs)

I like the constrained nature of the game. Your ship has crashed, you have 30 days to retrieve 30 ship parts. Pikmin fight things and cary things. All you need to do is make sure the paths are open (which you do by using more pikmin to fight things. The game isn't overwhelming with complexity, either in the gameplay or the story, so it's simple to sit down and play for a few minutes when ever you feel like it. Days last 13 minutes, so it's easy to get a small snippet of Pikmin in although it sometimes takes a couple of days planning to get a task done and it's easy to forget what you were aiming to do.

What I Didn't Like

The biggest issue I had with Pikmin is the strength of the enemies. This is partly due to my having played a lot more Pikmin 2 where the a lot of the bosses from Pikmin become easier, regular field enemies and you have stronger Pikmin to fight them. Still I would describe Pikmin as an easy game, except for the combat. It's also true that most of the enemies are based on patterns and the more you play the more comfortable you get with the correct way to fight each kind of enemy.

Patience is a virtue rarely explored in video games. Watch out for the feet. (via GameFAQs)

I also found that the game is a little bit small and simple (despite my having like the constrained nature above). Again this might be my experience with Pikmin 2 peeking though, but the areas are a bit small and there aren't any extra things to do. It would be nice to find a few extra surprises here and there to expand on the game a bit.

While it's mostly alright, the AI was not all it could be. While most of the game felt like you were collaborating with helpful, mostly compliant creatures (who sometimes had their own agendas) every once in a while the covers fall off and you run into problems. One instance I had was when a bunch of blue-pikmin who are able to walk through water (they have gills) wouldn't carry a ship part back to the ship unless a bridge was repaired for them to carry it over the water. It's a case where what should be a largely emergent AI system was trumped by traditional video game design and it made the game worse for it. From what I recall they did make this much better in Pikmin 2, but as an AI researcher its frustrating to see something we could implement much better going to waste.

Things I Noticed

Pikmin was also re-released on the Wii and while I haven't played it (I have watched Chuggaconroy's Let's Play), I noticed that they signifiantly reworked the controls. This seems to have removed a lot of the issues I've had with getting the pikmin to the right places at the right time. While I don't think the Gamecube controls are terrible it does look like the Wii controls make the game a lot easier.

Things I'd Include in a Game

The bright and happy aspect of Pikmin shouldn't be underrated, even if it causes people to feel like it's a "kiddy" game. It's obviously not appropriate for every game, but sometimes its nice to be able to relax and enjoy the atmosphere ... although this possibly makes it more horrific when you get a swarm of pikmin eaten.

How can it not be charming? (via GameFAQs)

I also like the bite sized chunks attached to achievable goals. This game came out long before the "social gaming" trend started and it's a good reminder that small fun pieces of game play doesn't have to also be about microtransactions.

Final Thoughts

I enjoyed Pikmin and if you're able to get your hands on it I recommend playing it. It's a lot of fun by itself and an interesting example of where video games have been in the past. I'm really glad I picked it up and I'm pretty excited for the forthcoming Pikmin 3.

It is the fundamental nature of the Pikmin. All things must be carried. (via GameFAQs)

Blog: Favorite YouTube Videos (Volume 6)

Welcome to the sixth volume of my favorite YouTube videos. This is another grab-bag music week (this will eventually become less frequent, but it's the kind of thing I was focused on at the time, plus I didn't really use YouTube that heavily).

• First we have a nifty piece of music constructed out of the sounds of the Windows Operating System. I like the song and I think it's a cool idea. It's also good for making people wonder what the hell is wrong with their computer.
• The second video is ... faintly embarrassing. But I'll admit to having watched and enjoyed Kim Possible. I also enjoyed that after the first few seasons we started actually seeing the characters change clothes. You know, like people? Sorry about the music on this one.
• The third video is pretty much my favorite song of all time. I love Chrono Trigger. I love Robo's Theme and this song, by Star Salzman, is great. The video that goes along with it also great and has a few funny / awesome moments.
• The fourth video is another great video from CalebElijah. This time tackling the iconic "Shadow's Theme" from Final Fantasy VI.
• And the final video for this volume is the very exciting Yoshida Brothers, playing the Hockey Night in Canada Theme. Ok well not quite, but Rising certainly evokes that before transitioning into it's own version of awesome.

Blog: Thoughts on Mass Effect 3

This is another post of my thoughts on video games. As with the Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, I finished Mass Effect 3 quite a while ago. Interestingly unlike Skyward Sword, Mass Effect 3 left less of an impact on me and I find that it has largely faded from my mind (and it isn't, on it's own, a game I'm likely to return to).

Just a warning this post will contain major spoilers for all three Mass Effect games.

This is Calrin Shepard. Your only defense against the Reaper threat.

To go back a bit, I really enjoyed Mass Effect, more, I think, than a lot of other people. I enjoyed the RPG aspect of the character management and the combat (although not the inventory). I even enjoyed the Mako sections (that bouncy tank) that no one else liked. The thing I liked most about Mass Effect though was that it let me play a guy who was geuinely enthusiastic about going to space, meeting aliens and doing cool things.

Mass Effect 2 therefore was a mixed bag for me. It was easier to play, better organized and still a lot of fun. It felt a bit more closed in and I found it harder to play Shepard as the space enthusiast and as a realistic human being. Because of the way the game was structured it was necessary to get as many paragon or renegade points as possible to get powers and story points unlocked successfully. This meant that you weren't free to chose the dialogue option you wanted, but had to pick the choice that gave you the points you needed.

Enter Mass Effect 3, which felt on the one hand like an apology for how much Mass Effect 2 wandered off from the original idea of Mass Effect and on the other hand like a plea from EA for everyone on earth to start playing their games. This made the game quite mixed having some of the aspects that I really enjoyed from Mass Effect (such as the interplanetary diplomacy and your original crew), but still some of the streamlining from Mass Effect 2 that felt a bit as though the control of the game was not up to you.

Someone who sorta looked like me used to sorta work for you.

Things I Liked

As I mentioned the thing I liked best about Mass Effect was the feeling being able to run around and be excited about being in space and meeting new and crazy races (if you wanted to play that way). Mass Effect always seemed to be light hearted enough that meeting people and doing things always felt fun. Now I realize that the plot in Mass Effect 3 doesn't allow for so much light heartedness but it was nice to at least have a chance to go do some things that were more "spacey".

It's good to have the old gang back together.

I also liked the way the combat was designed. Mass Effect was clunky at best (even though I enjoyed it) and while Mass Effect 2 was much slicker it also limited the options available to you (playing as an engineer I felt like my hands were tied for much of the game). Mass Effect 3 seems to have found a balance point between the two, where you get to play the way you want to play but the game is still streamlined and organized. That being said though the very best part of the combat (at least as an engineer) is the joy of setting the bad guys on fire.

Surprisingly I also really enjoyed the multi-player. I hadn't expected to enjoy it, in fact I hadn't even really expected to play it. I don't usually go for multi-player games, I tend to play games for a break for interacting with people.  The fact that multi-player was somewhat necessary to get the best ending for the game (and we'll get to the ending in a bit) drew me in especially since I didn't want to spend too much time grinding on the single player elements to get my "readiness" up to the top level.

It turned out however that the multi-player was maybe the most fun part of the game (even if I was the weakest link on several occasions). Especially once I got used to the maps and the style of play (and it was kinda tough as an engineer) I had a lot of fun and I think if I were to fire up Mass Effect 3 again in the near future it would be to play multi-player (especially if I could do it with people I know.)

Things I Didn't Like

Unfortunately Mass Effect 3 has a number of aspects that I just didn't enjoy. The first of which the story. Actually it's not the story itself that was my problem so much as all the side-stories you needed to do to get on with the main story. This is one of the parts where my memory is fading a bit, but the number of times you had to do the traditional RPG thing of helping one person to get the thing to help another person to get the thing to help the first person to get the thing you needed to do the first part of your quest seems very high.

In particular I feel like Tuchanka was both the best and worst part of the game. On the one hand you had incredible character moments and scenes that changed the shape of the galaxy, but at the same time you're dicking around on a planet doing things that had do nothing to stop the invading fleet of giant sentient space robot lobsters.

I think the solution to this would have been to make the game much more open (I recognize there are some options, but they're less even than in the previous two games). You have 7 days and all of space open to you. Go see who you can convince to save earth and the rest of the galaxy. You can keep most of the set pieces and scenes of the game the same, but you give the player a lot more flexibility to cut and run when the time invested is out weighing the benefit collected.

Another thing that bothered me about the game is the amount of time taken for Shepard to get anything done. Even if we exclude the length of time it takes for interstellar travel (which they don't really talk about in game, is it seconds or is it days) there's still the fact that the game takes a lot of time. Enough time that the onboard reporter to have several reports that it seems would take place days or even weeks apart and for that mater there's enough time for people to build a giant super weapon. It speaks to the weird construction of the threat in this game. Giant sentient space robot lobsters that are explicitly designed to absorb and destroy all life in the galaxy have to conduct month's long ground wars?

And I'm fighting you by hand ... why?

This is one of the more common problems in video games (and a lot of creative works), the relative power of the bad guys is set way to high for the good guys to ever combat. We want a strong enemy so we can feel great having over come them and been victorious, but if the creators have to invent reasons why the bad guys don't auto-win over the good guys the story telling is going to be slightly hollow.  It's difficult to take a defeatable video game enemy as a real threat to the entirety of life in the galaxy.

This feeds into my last major issue and it shouldn't be any surprise to hear that it's the ending. I'm less bothered than a lot of people because I'm in the camp of believers that most of the game was "the ending" and as such the results of the decisions you made and the actions you took are played out long before you start shambling around the citadel with a small child (the spoilers will really take effect now, also context is everything).

The thing I was most upset about with regards to this was the resolution between the Quarians and the Geth. Now I may in fact be wrong, but as far as I can tell, regardless of the actions you take in Mass Effect 3, if you took particular actions in Mass Effect 2 there is no way for you to get the "best result" and save both races. I suppose you can call this the natural outcome of the choices I made thoughout the first two games (although I'll counter by telling you that it would have forced me to make only the paragon choices through out the game regardless of how I wanted to play it and that in Mass Effect 2 this means siding against the optimism I was playing for with my Shepard), but it is extremely frustrating that there was no option in the game that let you do anything about this.

This may prove to be wrong, as I mentioned, but I did extensive research online at the time, knowing the outcome I wanted. I think this is another thing that game designers should strive to avoid. If someone wants something to happen in the game they shouldn't need to play with the walkthrough open on the side.

The second point where this becomes a problem is in the final ending. You're given a large ending-o-tron which can make one of three endings happen. You "win" by giving up, you "win" by annihilating the reapers and all other forms of artificial life (including the Geth you might have just saved and your teammate/ your own ship's AI) or you "win" by smushing everything together into a big circuty mess and all you have to do is kill yourself first.

The problem comes here though, if your "readiness" score is high enough and you choose to destroy all artificial life then you get a scene which suggests that either Shepard survived or, at least, Shepard's corpse was recovered. No mater how high your score is if you make the other two choices then this hint isn't given at all.

So for me, the choice came down this, kill my ship/shipmate EDI or kill myself. I had my score up high enough (thanks to all the multi-player I played) and arrived at the final choice with enough war resources to "win" the game. In and of itself this isn't a bad choice. You or your friend. Selfishness or Selflessness. Simple dramatic choice. My Shepard chose selflessness, of course, because that's the way he is.

My problem is that I could have made that choice without doing all the extra work. I could have skipped all the optional missions and all the multi-player. None of it mattered. I gave up all the work because of a plot related choice. So in effect the game didn't reward me for my work and actually punished me for trying to live up to an ideal.

I haven't played the "extended ending" so I don't know exactly how it affects what we know about the world at the end of the game. From what I've read it doesn't bring Shepard back to life, nor make clear if EDI survives if you chose to destroy the Reapers. It adds a do nothing option, but I don't know what the result of that is either.

I would have really liked to see a result that allowed you to explore the consequences of your decisions without relying solely on which button you chose at the end and what your "score" was thought the game. To stick within the framework they've chosen it the ending should reflect at a minimum how well you've played and what you've decided. So if you want endings for people over a line in the score and under it then make six endings, good merging, good surrendering and good destroying and then bad / mediocre merging, surrendering and destroying. Don't tie the quality of the outcome to the choices made by the player.

However the other way to do it would be to remove the score and make the result of the game much more dependent on the choices the player has made throughout the game (and in fact all three games, as long as there's a chance for the player to try to get the result they want for the major decisions). This allows for players to see the ending that's tailored to the way they played the game (and saves you from needing to incorporate a weird ghost-space-child to give you a sudden victory at the end of the game).

The final thing I'd like to gripe about, is the Citadel. In the first game it was a wide open space (if not as large as you might like) where you could chose several different ways to get around. In the second game it was a 3 story office building with nothing interesting in it at all. Mass Effect 3 does a better job of making it an interesting place to visit, but it still feels small and chopped up. I wish there had been more space, more options and more things to do even if it meant spending more time in elevators.

Things I Noticed

When I wrote up my thoughts on Skyward Sword, I found there were a bunch things which I didn't feel that strongly about, one way or the other. For Mass Effect 3 I don't have anything I feel that neutral about. If this continues in future thoughts on games, I may remove this section all together, but for now I'll leave it at my unneutral feelings.

Things I'd Include in a Game

By far the best part of Mass Effect 3, and the whole Mass Effect series is the relationships between you and your team mates. Characterization is important to making you feel connected and making you care about what's going on in the game. If you had never spoken to Mordan would you care when he sacrifices himself? You might, because some of the characterization is done through the main plot, but there's so much more when you've had those long weird chats with him every time you've run past.

Sometimes you just want to hang out with your buddy. 

When developing my own game, I want to make sure that the way you interact with your team mates and the choices you make and the actions you take are well reflected. I want to make sure that you feel like you're working with real people who care and are interested in what's going on around them. This can be complex, but it's also as simple as Shepard's relationship with Wrex: "Wrex." "Shepard."

I'd also keep the number of team mates down. By the end of Mass Effect 3 you have two and a half crews whom you've adventured with and whom you care for. When wrapping up the story a lot of these angles are going to have to be cut short or else the game will last forever. To combat this keeping a small handful of people to really care about is important and helps make the game feel more meaningful.

Final Thoughts

Despite what EA would like you to believe, there's no real reason to play Mass Effect 3 if you aren't a long term player of the series. I really enjoyed a lot of my time playing the game and if I'd stopped halfway through I'd have had a much more positive outlook on the game. I know that endings aren't easy, but unfortunately Mass Effect 3's really hurts it. Not so much for its content alone but for highlighting all the weakness of the series all at one time.

At some point, I may play these all again. I've partially played through Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 to see what the renegade side is like but never to completion. I'd like to revisit them, but I'm still disappointed that to get some of the outcomes I want I have to auto play the paragon route.

I really liked Mass Effect and I liked Mass Effect 2 even though I disagree with a lot of the decisions BioWare made about that game. For Mass Effect 3, I enjoyed the gameplay, but feel left short by it. I enjoyed the story, but felt it didn't fill in all the gaps I wanted to know about. At the end of the day, I was left liking Mass Effect 3, but not loving it.

Yeah, I had a few graphical problems. It may be time for a new PC.