nerdflood

I mentioned a couple of posts back that I started a new gaming blog. Well, sometime soon after I started the blog, I decided to give it a more permanent home. It’s not that I don’t like Posterous, it’s just that I felt it needed something more. So now, the blog is housed at WordPress (alongside this one) and is called It’s Dangerous to Go Alone. The name is based on this seminal moment from the very beginning of the Legend of Zelda:

See? It’s not only a Nintendo reference, it’s also a co-op gaming reference. Here’s a quick round-up of some of the posts I’ve already hastily pounded out over there:

• Square Enix: sequels and remakes
• Crystal Bearers makes an odd (but welcome) appearance
• It’s like Guitar Hero if it was made in 1981
• My kids are co-op gamers already

Obviously stuff you won’t care about unless you’re remotely interested in gaming. And even then, you have to care about gaming on Nintendo platforms, which I know is a stretch for a lot of people. But it’s fun to write, and it gives me an outlet for talking about games that doesn’t take up space here. There’s also a post there about my boys, along with a picture. Get your kid fix there, I suppose. It also talks a bit about what gaming what like for me when I was a wee little one, cautiously tapping at the tiny, clicking buttons of my NES controller so very many years ago.

I might pop in one of these “what’s going on at my OTHER blog” sort of posts every now and again, just to remind those of you that still read this tripe here that there’s another place where I yammer away nonsensically about things that interest me. You know. If you’re into that sort of thing.

I know, why do I need another blog? Well, it’s simple. Every now and then I like to talk about video games. And even though this blog is appropriately called “Nerdflood”, I don’t necessarily want it to become a games-centric blog. I want it to be about me and my penchant for nerdiness.

Henceforth, all gaming topics will be posted at my new Posterous blog: the Nintendo Gamer. I’ve considered even inviting some Colonists to join and group blog our Nintendo fandom for all to witness.

Why Posterous? It’s a dead simple blogging platform. I don’t want to fuss with template designs or widgets. With Posterous, I can email posts to the blog quickly and easily and not worry about anything else. It’s also really simple to do group blogging there. Just add another email address in the admin area, and have them email in posts just as easily as I do.

So, I don’t plan on blogging anywhere more often than I already do. I’m just shifting certain content away from here. Which would probably make more sense if I blogged more often.

So, now that I have a DS Lite, what’s next beyond just playing some great games? Homebrew.

I’ve already ordered a new microSD card and, based on suggestions and pointers from a known homebrewer on the Colony, I also ordered the R4DS cart from System Gears. Both shipped within the past couple of days, and I should be able to get started early next week.

The first thing I plan to download and get into (and a majority of the reason I wanted to get into homebrew in the first place) is Colors DS. It’s a fantastic little app that uses the touch sensitive screen of the DS to allow you to create wonderful tiny pieces of artwork.

In addition to this, the R4DS firmware contains an app called Moonshell that plays music and can display images. Although, I also plan to download DSOrganize, which can do all of that, plus has PDA functionality, a web browser, an IRC client, and more.

Beyond that, I plan to check out some homebrew games, including the DSCrawl rogue-like game, DSChess (which should be obvious), and LemmingsDS. According to this page on Wikipedia, there is an absolute metric ton of classic PC games that have been ported to the DS as homebrew titles. Some of them look like a lot of fun.

However, one thing that I do NOT intend to do is participate in any emulation. That’s one thing that I am adamant against. I don’t approve of ROMs and emulation, and I won’t support those efforts.

Any other homebrew projects out there that you feel are worth checking out? Let me know! I’m open to the possibilities.

So, 2008 wasn’t really the year of the Wii RPG that I had hoped it would be. 2008, as a matter of fact, wasn’t really the year for a whole lot on the Wii of any real substance. I’m not trying to discount everything that showed up on the Little Console that Could™. There were a handful of games here and there: Mario Kart Wii, No More Heroes, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and Tales of Symphonia come to mind, and those games were fantastic. But the games I was truly expecting to see in 2008 simply never appeared. That’s probably why I ended up with a DS this Christmas. The Wii just hasn’t been giving me my fill.

But there is hope! All of that could potentially change in 2009. So, as we gaze somberly towards our future here in 2009, here’s a concentrated dose of what I’m looking forward to, both Wii and DS. Now, I don’t intend to pick up every game on this list, obviously. But it’s what is on my radar for the year. Only time will tell if any of it is worth acquiring.

Wii games

The Conduit
Genre: FPS
Dev: High Voltage / Pub: Sega
This one is kind of a no-brainer. A high-quality, cutting-edge, NON-WORLD WAR II first-person shooter on the Wii. I can get into this. Some preliminary videos have shown the enemies to be just a tad bit brain-dead, so I’m hopeful that the AI won’t be taking a hit just because the game is appearing on the Wii. If they can give me a stellar FPS experience with a quality AI, I’m sold.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: the Crystal Bearers
Genre: RPG
Dev/Pub: Square Enix
Now that Square Enix has confirmed that this game actually exists, I’m once again looking forward to it. Though there hasn’t been much in-game footage or screenshots released, they had me at “action-RPG set in the Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles world with a heavy emphasis on single-player progression”.

Arc Rise Fantasia
Genre: RPG
Dev: Image Epoch / Pub: Marvelous Entertainment
There has been a significant amount of footage of this game in action, and it looks spectacular. It has all the markings of a quality RPG game, with an immense amount of effort devoted to making it a tried-and-true fantasy epic adventure. I trust Marvelous to bring the quality, and they have already confirmed a stateside release. I’ll look to the Japanese review scores in late January / early February to be the signal of whether or not this game meets its own hype.

Sin & Punishment 2
Genre: Action
Dev/Pub: Nintendo
The minute the Wii was first announced, my first thought was that Nintendo HAD to be hard at work on a sequel to the N64 Sin & Punishment that would make use of the pointer controls. While I half-expected the game to appear closer to the system’s launch, I’m nonetheless overjoyed just to see it coming out at all. Initial screens make me hopeful, and you can’t really go wrong with Nintendo’s tireless devotion to quality.

Muramasa: the Demon Blade
Genre: Platformer
Dev: Vanillaware / Pub: Marvelous Entertainment
Fans of Odin Sphere should look no further than Muramasa for their Vanillaware fix. Once again, Marvelous is setting the bar for guiding quality content on the Wii. Muramasa has the action and style to be a game of the year contender should it make its expected fall 2009 release.

Wii Sports Resort
Genre: Sports
Dev/Pub: Nintendo
Yes, I’m looking forward to Wii Sports Resort. Wii Sports is still played in our house (though, honestly, not by me), and the sequel offers more games with better control through the Wii MotionPlus attachment. Plus, it will be one of the few ways to obtain the Wii MotionPlus attachment, so it will be a nearly essential title. Plus, sword-fighting! I mean, c’mon!

Kizuna
Genre: RPG
Dev/Pub: Jaleco
Kizuna has a lot of potential: both good and bad. In screenshots, it looks like a gorgeous action-RPG with elements reminiscent of Shadow of the Colossus. It has a great style that includes some kind of grainy, pencil-y sketching effect in the front texture layer that makes me really want to know more about the story behind the game that requires that effect. But I remain cautiously optimistic, as I’ve seen no actual gameplay of the title, and it has the potential to play horribly. Use the Wii remote to find the big bad boss’ weakness and then attack that spot? Could be setting itself up for failure.

Ghostbusters
Genre: Action
Dev: Red Fly Studios / Pub: Atari
It’s Ghostbusters! Do I really have to explain why I’m excited for a new Ghostbusters game?

Red Steel 2
Genre: FPS
Dev/Pub: Ubisoft
Another game where I feel cautiously optimistic. Red Steel was a good first attempt at putting an FPS game on the Wii. Adding the sword controls was too much, and felt unnecessary to the overall game. Had they simply focused on making a quality FPS game, it probably could have done a better job of setting the stage for later FPS successes on the Wii. As it was, it was passable, and largely forgettable. I’m hoping they fix everything in the sequel that they broke in the first game. They accomplish that, and I’m there the first day.

DS games
I may not comment as much about the DS games as I have about the Wii games mainly due to the fact that I just started tracking DS games. Like, last week.

Dragon Quest IX
Genre: RPG
Dev/Pub: Square Enix
I’ve only played the old, old, OLD Dragon Quest games. Old, as in, back when it was on the NES and still called Dragon Warrior. I played the first, and the two corresponding sequels, and then nothing after that. I’m looking forward to IX purely because I hear it’s supposed to be one heck of a game. Plus, Dragonball art style.

Elebits: the Adventures of Kai and Zero
Genre: Adventure
Dev/Pub: Konami
I downloaded the demo to this game from the Nintendo Channel last week and played around with it for a while. I wasn’t interested in it at first because I loved the original Wii game. When I heard the DS game wasn’t going to be the same concept (adventure instead of crazy gravity-gun FPS), I was a bit disappointed. The demo turned me around, though, and I suppose that’s what demos are designed to do.

Moon
Genre: FPS
Dev: Renegade Kid / Pub: Mastiff Games
They say FPS games can’t be done on the DS. Moon is an attempt to prove that idea wrong. I’m hopeful. Initial screens and videos look promising.

Phantasy Star Zero
Genre: RPG
Dev: Sonic Team / Pub: Sega
Like the Dragon Warrior/Quest games, I’m an old-school Phantasy Star gamer. I’ve heard tell that Phantasy Star Online was a pretty good game, so this one is on my radar. I’m not so sure it will end up being acquired.

Tales of Hearts
Genre: RPG
Dev/Pub: Namco Bandai
I don’t allow myself to miss Tales games that appear on consoles I own. It’s quite simply a rule to live by.

Winds of Nostalgio
Genre: RPG
Dev: Red Entertainment / Pub: Tecmo
Get a load of this description from Wikipedia: “Taking place in an alternate reality steampunk version of the 19th Century, the game follows Eddie, a London boy and son of a great adventurer as he and his friends travel the world in an airship in search of his missing father. The game will feature both standard turn-based combat and aerial battles between the player’s customizable airship, the Maverick, and enemy airships.” Yep! ON THE LIST.

Shining Force Feather
Genre: RPG
Dev/Pub: Sega
Once again, old-school Shining Force fan (I believe that Shining Force, Phantasy Star, and Sonic were the only Genesis games I ever played). This one looks to be cut of the same cloth, and that’s enough to merit a radar watch from me.

So, it’s quite the monstrous list when laid out in such a fashion, but even so, I’m sure there are games I’m still missing. What are you watching out for in 2009? Anything I’ve not listed that I need to keep my eyes on?

I spent a far larger portion of my lazy Sunday afternoon than I intended to with a little online game called Auditorium. It’s such a wonderful example of definitive, practical game design, that I felt it worthy to dissect. The game is challenging, but not frustrating. Detailed, but not overwhelming. I can’t really describe the experience in words and do its concept justice, so I suggest that you start by playing the game for yourself for a few minutes. Don’t worry, this post will still be here when you return (about an hour later). I’ll wait.

……

Are you back? Great. Let’s continue.

Now, I’m no David Rosen, but I thought it would be nice to take such a fantastic indie game and point out everything it gets right about designing a fun, addictive gaming experience. So, here’s a bullet point list of how Auditorium succeeds where many games before it have failed.

1. Keep it simple. The challenge of a game should not be contained within complicated rules and severe punishments. In Auditorium, you move some easily recognizable elements around and see how they affect the light patterns. If you aren’t getting the desired affect, alter the arrangement until you do. It’s absolutely brilliant in its simplicity, and that is key to getting people addicted to the experience.

2. Give me achievable goals. This is the other key point. Give me a point A from which I start, and a point B for completion. Don’t change the rules on me midway through a level. I want to be able to clearly see what I have to accomplish, and I shouldn’t need a three-page instruction manual to attain the goal.

3. Show me that I’m making progress on those goals. This is something that Auditorium does really well. If your light pattern is hitting the marker, you can see the meter increase, and–this is important–you can hear the music swell to a crescendo. The visual indicator by itself is not necessarily enough. But hearing the aural indicator alongside the visual display spells out very clearly that I am accomplishing something significant. If you’re going to be able to achieve those goals of the gameplay, you need to first know that you’re playing the game correctly. A little bit of positive reinforcement does wonders for the pleasure centers of the brain that keep you locked into a focused activity.

4. Slowly ramp up the difficulty. The key word here is not “difficulty” but the word “slowly”. Move me up in baby steps at first. If I can get through the first 6 or so stages with little difficulty, then obviously I’m getting the hang of the game. You can begin to ramp it up at the point and tack on some serious gameplay challenges. But make sure we’re not moving from one simple element to five brand new elements in a single step.

5. Give me a break. Even a short break is enough. Give me enough time to catch a breath, but not enough of a break that I might shut the game off and find something else to do.

Those are the points about this game in particular that struck me as essential elements to any game with excellent design. A little craftsmanship goes a long way in an indie title. You can easily get people sucked into your world if you understand these simple concepts. They will allow you to create an experience that will capture peoples’ attention, just like Auditorium has done to me.

One of my early favorite indie games on the WiiWare channel was Lostwinds, by Frontier. It was a simple concept, with gorgeous artwork, and fluid controls. But the problem was, it was a short adventure. A fleeting experience with very little replayability. World of Goo by 2D Boy has solved that problem, to a certain extent, and created my NEW favorite indie game in the process. World of Goo is a brilliant puzzle game, merging phenomenal gameplay elements with a beautiful, completely interactive world, and excellent storytelling.

David Rosen from Wolfire deconstructs the World of Goo Corporation from the inside out, analyzing aspects of the game that I had completely overlooked. He has an excellent 8-minute video on Vimeo on the topic, the first of hopefully many videos David produces that delve deep into the mysteries of good game design.

I adore discussions on the core intricacies of game design. I could read numerous disertations from Raph Koster on virtual economy, and Lost Garden is one of my favorite sites. David Rosen seems particularly well-suited to the task of dissecting game design, and look forward to more videos in this vein.

The Colony of Gamers has started its first annual Child’s Play Charity Drive. Less then 24 hours hours after it started, it is already up to $2,584 — a little more than halfway to the established goal of $5,000.

The Child’s Play charity was started by Mike and Jerry at Penny Arcade as a way for gamers to collectively counter the media mythos that we are nothing more than lazy, selfish losers. With Child’s Play, we demonstrate to the world that we are compassionate human beings, who can give money and gifts to hospitals to use on entertainment for sick children.

In the past, this has been a largely invisible outreach. Hospitals report that they have all the funding and support they require to tackle medical needs, research, and specialized care for children. But no one had ever given a thought to taking care of kids’ non-medical needs.

Child’s Play aims to do just that, by teaming up with 45 children’s hospitals around the world. The workers at the hospital make an Amazon wish list of toys, games, movies, and books, and post them online. You can choose a hospital (University of Iowa Children’s Hospital is on there!) and buy them a few things they need. Or, you can just donate directly, via PayPal, (preferably through our Child’s Play Charity Drive at Colony of Gamers, though you obviously don’t have to).

The gifts purchased are used in the hospitals in two ways. Most of the video games and movies are collected and then distributed via a “check-out” system to kids that are staying at the hospitals. The books and games are available in community activity centers. Some gifts are set aside to be given to kids that are staying at the hospitals during the holidays.

Yeah, I know. We’re not curing AIDS or cancer, or any of the thousands of debilitating diseases that exist. But these are kids. Kids that have terminal diseases, or painful illnesses, and have to spend far too much time away from their families while they heal and recover. They get poked, prodded, tested, injected, medicated, sedated, checked, re-tested. All day long, every day. Child’s Play is a way to give them the essentials of life. Laughter. Sunshine. Happiness. Hope. It may not be a cure, but it’s a great drug.

So, please, support the Child’s Play charity, in any way you can. Part of me does this every year because I have two young boys of my own, and the thought of them possibly spending weeks in a hospital desperately fighting some illness tears my heart out. I like to think that someone has given of themselves at some point in time so that one of them could have a few moments of happiness while suffering through the experience of being in a hospital.

We’re up to $2,632 now. Up $50 in just the ten minutes it took to write this post. Keep it up, gamers. Keep it up.

Yeah, I know, blogging moratorium, interrupting my writing flow, yadda yadda — but this is important.

I fled the Evil Avatar community a long time ago. Quietly, and under my own terms. There were a few reasons for this, not the least of which was the venom and disgust with which some members regarded any Nintendo fan, rational or otherwise. Other reasons include the more marketable answer of “the site is blocked at work”, which it IS, but is a minuscule fact that sidesteps the more anti-Nintendo community sentiment issue with a gait that is every bit as troubling as it is WIDE.

The other problem was the fact that visiting the site sank me into a deep timehole from which minutes and hours would never be regained, regardless of the amount of quantum math tossed at the equation. I couldn’t function. Hitting refresh was just too accessible a drug.

I was happy I left, but I missed some of the community terribly.

Then, sometime this summer, there was a strange bit of drama on the boards that I caught wind of through various channels. Evil Avatar (I’m referring to Philip Hansen, the site owner here, not the site itself) began a rampage of bans and thread deletions, all surrounding something to do with “magic PCs”. You can read a bit about it on PlayItReviewIt. I don’t fully understand all the details, but from what I DO understand, the fallout from that caused a few people to leave and take up permanent residence at any number of sites started by previous Evil Avatar members: PlayItReviewIt, Immortal Machines, and Co-optimus. Not a huge deal, but some feelings were hurt, some relationships changed, and I had reasoned that things might never fully recover from that ordeal.

Turns out I might have been right. I received a message this morning from the Evil Avatar Facebook group with a link to a website, saying that this was where everyone I know and love ended up. The link went to a new site called Colony of Gamers.

I would come to discover pretty quickly why Colony of Gamers was created. In essence, everyone was sick of Philip’s idea of what a “community” was. For Philip, it was his way, or the highway. And truly, since it WAS his site (as he was wont to remind everyone, many, many times), this much was technically true. But an authoritarian dictatorship does not a thriving community make. People understood this, and began to reject his governance on principle.

The “magic PCs” incident was apparently just a starting point (or, for many, and ending point). A more recent situation occured that I have exactly zero details on that culminated in long-time Evil Avatar editors Nick Puleo (bapenguin) and James Young (fitbabits) to tender resignations and permanently leave the site, helping to start up Colony of Gamers.

These are intelligent, level-headed people that have been deeply involved with day-to-day operations within Evil Avatar for years. Their departure was not only surprising, it was substantial.

Not only that, but Scott Benton (Psykoboy2)–the power and voice behind the excellent Evil Avatar Radio podcast–also left the site, taking his program with him, and dropping it down at Colony of Gamers as the newly-christened In-Game Chat. Also substantial.

And most of that just happened yesterday.

So, today, things aren’t terribly different from yesterday, as far as my perspective, except that a lot of the people from Evil Avatar that I enjoyed conversing with are now over at Colony of Gamers, which is a site that is not (yet) blocked by my work. I obediently setup my account, though I don’t expect I’ll be spending an extraordinary amount of time there. The timehole issue still manifests itself menacingly. I just don’t need the added pressure of maintaining an online presence on a gaming forum. It’s there, for the times when I see a conversation that looks interesting, and I find I can add some small morsel of value. The site and community there, I can already tell, will be fantastic. I can practically guarantee that. But essentially, things will be mostly unchanged for me.

As for the Evil Avatar “community” that once existed, I don’t think it will ever be the same again. And I don’t know that that’s necessarily a bad thing.

Evidently the fine people at Wizards of the Coast (WotC) saw fit to create a Dungeons & Dragons Facebook application called D&D Tiny Adventures (not to be confused with Tiny TOON Adventures). In this app, you can select from a significantly narrow list of adventurers and begin your own solo campaign, where all of the interaction, storytelling, dice rolling, and camaraderie that make a D&D event fun are completely removed.

To be honest, it’s actually a very well-designed app. Unfortunately, it appears as though WotC didn’t have any clue just how popular the app would be, and it has been functioning poorly since launch. Currently, as I type this, it is simply unavailable. In a thread on the app forums, WotC admits to both broadband issues as well as server errors; both of which they are attempting to resolve so that the app can run smoothly.

In the meantime, I’ve been able to run one complete adventure, and half of another. The way it works is once you’ve defined your character and named him (or her, though the female options are few), you select an adventure from the list of available scenarios. Once launched, you are given a small introduction to the adventure that establishes the setting. And then, you wait. Ten minutes to be precise. You see, every adventure is split up into several encounters, which can consist of either a battle with a monster, brigand, or an attempt to locate a secret entrance or avoid a trap. Once you have launched one encounter, you have to wait ten minutes for the next encounter to become available. This is actually a good idea, because it means you can launch an adventure when you have a free moment, and then you can come back at your own convenience and look back at what you have “accomplished”. This concept has gone far, far beyond the concept of “casual gamer” and into the realm of “utterly uninvolved gamer”. But for a Facebook app, it works.

Each encounter will consist of you “encountering” something, and then the system will give you a skill with a target die roll that you have to hit in order to be successful at whatever task the encounter is asking you to perform. For example, you may encounter an old man that asks you to correctly answer a riddle in order to proceed. As such, you perform an Intelligence check d20 die roll against 14. The system rolls for you; with your roll combined with any Intelligence modifiers, you either succeed or fail. Success gains you movement towards your desination, a sizable amount of experience points, and potentially items or gold. Failure usually also gains you movement towards your destination, but at the loss of some amount of your health.

The dice rolls are really sketchy. In my current adventure, I had three successive encounters where EVERY roll ended up as a 4. I was down to just 10 hit points, and luckily had a Potion of Healing on hand in case of just such a situation. At any point you can enter your adventure and administer a potion to yourself, to either regain health or increase your skill statistics. Between adventures, you can buy and sell weapons and armor, potions, and other items. Also, if you have any friends playing the game, you can help them out by healing them or assisting in their battles.

All in all, it’s a pretty good system for a Facebook app. I wish they had built in a bit more interactivity, but for what it is designed to accomplish, it does it well.

I just wish it were actually, you know, UP right now. I have a Drow stronghold to clean out.

So, I guess I complained too quickly. I sent this follow-up message to Steam just before posting my blog post earlier today:

Steam won’t offer a refund even when the software in question doesn’t work properly? I’m sorry, but that isn’t how it works “with most software products.” You can usually obtain a refund if the software doesn’t function as intended, as is the case here.

I guess if this is the way Steam is going to operate, I’ll just be purchasing my games from somewhere else from now on.

Not much of a threat considering how much business Steam probably does on a daily basis. However, less than an hour later, I receive a follow-up message from Steam. Much to my surprise, a full refund was currently processing, accompanied by a reminder that this was a one-time customer service gesture, and that future purchases would have to adhere to the outlined agreement.

Which is perfectly fine, I say. Unless I buy something else from them that doesn’t work. Until then, however, they’ve just managed to retain a customer by breaking their own rules and making me happy. Good for them! Guess I’ll call off the dogs.