Hello, all our lovely readers of United We Game. The contest is over, and the drawing has been completed. Winners will be notified soon, so keep an eye out to see if you are one of the lucky people that have procured an awesome GameStop gift card. Are you excited? Are you bursting at the seams with suspense? Considering some pretty neat things have come out recently (To name just one that blows my mind, the “Final Mix” version of “Kingdom Hearts” has finally been released in North America. About time.), you must be. Must! It’s a requirement that you be excited! But, not really.
I’ve always had an odd relationship with the Zelda series. I think they’re all great games, they all play well, are memorable, and hold my attention. However, I’ve never liked what I call the traditional Zelda games as much as the odder entries in the franchise. I like the Oracle games over Link’s Awakening, Twilight Princess is just as good to me as Windwaker, and my pick for greatest Zelda game ever made (excluding the ones I haven’t played of course) is Majora’s Mask, not Ocarina of Time. Continue reading Majora’s Mask: The Greatest of the Oddball Zeldas→
It is so strange to think that over time; nearly all innovations become commonplace fixtures. Whenever new technology comes along to shake things up for the better, the whole world marvels at the novelty, eager to own a fresh gadget (or condemn it as witchcraft). But over time, what seemed so brilliant and beneficial becomes yet another part of our everyday routine. For us gamers, the various leaps in visual technology over the last two decades are a perfect example of this sentiment. I often take for granted that the sorts of images the consoles of today can produce would blow my childhood mind to pieces. On an even more basic level, just the thought of a controller that vibrates would have been some sort of voodoo to my twelve-year old self.
In the early part of 1997, my brother and I received a promotional video from Nintendo Power. Upon this VHS tape was a laughably bad dramatization of a kidnapped Nintendo employee spilling the beans to goons from Sony and Sega about Nintendo’s next top secret project. This “classified information” was none other than Star Fox 64, the soon-to-be summer blockbuster for the Nintendo 64. After seeing plenty of screenshots for Star Fox in previous issues of Nintendo Power, my brother and I were psyched to see the game in action. The gameplay footage on the video sold us on Star Fox 64 before it was even released, but little did we know that the odd peripheral featured on the tape would change our lives far more than some vulpine pilot.
The Rumble Pack debuted alongside Star Fox 64 in this silly promo video. The captive Nintendo rep from the video bragged that the new accessory would let players “feel the game,” and the Rumble Pack would make Star Fox 64 “the coolest cinematic gaming experience out there.” He explained that if an Arwing took a hit or if you dropped a Nova Bomb on screen, the Rumble Pack would cause the controller to vibrate rapidly in the player’s hands. As we watched the Sony and Sega goons convulse in overdramatic response to the shaking controllers, my brother and I wanted so desperately to experience the Rumble Pack for ourselves. With our enthusiasm running on full steam, my brother made sure that Star Fox 64 was at the top of his birthday list.
While this all seems a bit overhyped compared to the technology of today, keep in mind, this was the first time that a player would receive force feedback through a controller. We didn’t have your fancy built-in rumble technology back in my day! At its release, Nintendo could have further drained customer pockets by selling the Rumble Pack as a separate entity, but this was new ground in the video game market, so the Big N had to tread carefully. To ensure that every player who bought Star Fox 64 would receive such an immersive experience, Nintendo bundled the little gray block in every copy of the game. This was such a smart move, since Nintendo could market the product as a sort of “two-for-one” deal, as well as a new gaming experience.
Needless to say, my brother and I were floored by the Rumble Pack. We each played through the single-player campaign of Star Fox, the two of us reacting just as foolishly as the actors from the promo video; shaking and looking at each other with slack jaws and sunned gazes. When it came time for multiplayer battles, we would flip a coin to decide who would get the Rumble Pack to start with, and each subsequent use was determined by the victor. We even set the controller down during vibration heavy cutscenes, just to watch it rumble across the ground as some enemy battle cruiser disintegrated on-screen, an entire year before Psycho Mantis was ordering players to do so in Metal Gear Solid.
Initially, this idea of shaking controllers seemed like a passing novelty; something that would only work with Star Fox 64, maybe a handful of future Nintendo 64 releases, and then we would all move on to some other hardware fad. Even with this notion, the Rumble Pack never left its controller; the first player slot had a permanent addition in our household. Other companies took notice of this technology, and sure enough, Sony was rolling out the Dual Shock controller only months later in Japan. With the debut of built-in haptic technology on the Sony Playstation, force feedback controllers were here to stay.
As someone who grew up playing video games, I often take for granted just how many tropes have become commonplace to me. Recently, I was watching my wife’s first play-through of Aladdin on the Super Nintendo. While she was playing, Laura became quite upset at the idea that enemies were respawning the moment she wandered off-screen. “It makes no sense! When I kill them, they should stay dead!”
Initially, I tried to explain to Laura that traditionally, enemies respawn once out-of-sight; that’s just how things work. I gave her examples of older games and how often this system of enemy placement occurred. But the longer I tried to justify this idea, the more I realized that my better half was right. It does not make any sort of sense that an obstacle, once removed, would immediately return upon looking away from it. Respawning enemies may provide the player with a greater challenge, but this dated idea can break the game narrative and frustrate a newcomer away from gaming completely.
For so many years, I had grown to accept that enemies would reappear the moment I moved backward or forward in a game. This is not surprising, since most of my earliest experiences with video games were the side-scrolling titles on the Nintendo Entertainment System. When Mario tottered too far left or right in his flagship adventure, a fresh Goomba or Koopa Troopa would appear where he had previously defeated one. Somewhere in my young mind, I must have rationalized that since Bowser did have an entire horde of minions at his disposal, it only makes sense that new enemies would appear where old foes had fallen.
An interesting side-effect of these respawning enemies was the player often had the option to avoid combat completely as he/she journeyed across the screen. In Mega Man 2, my brother and I would use the temporary invincibility of taking damage (another odd gaming trope) to bypass whole swaths of obstacles. Part of learning these older games was figuring out when discretion was the better part of valor. Once you determined that enemies were going to keep on reappearing no matter how often you defeated them, the new goal of a game became passing through an area as quickly as possible.
As time passed, and games required more time, staff, and piles of money to produce, the idea that a player would avoid battles to progress in a game became an issue to the industry. Additionally, worlds were being built in glorious three-dimensions, so the player had even more space to avoid combat and race to the finish. When so much effort had been put into the character models and combat systems of a game, developers needed a new method to keep players engaged for longer periods of time. Then, an idea struck: what if players had to defeat all enemies in an area to move forward? From this notion, a strong fork appeared in action/adventure games. One path led to titles such as Super Mario 64 and Spyro the Dragon, where the focus was on collecting items in an open world and combat was only obligatory when facing a boss. The other path led to games like Devil May Cry and God of War, where elaborate combat and cinematic battles were kings of design.
The idea was simple: action games would provide players with a story, which would be doled out in-between grand battles that could not be avoided. A hero on a quest would logically encounter obstacles in the form of enemies, but to ensure that a player would take care of these foes, magical or environmental barriers would be placed and only removed once threats were eliminated. When Dante is faced with a gaggle of evil puppet demons, a magic seal is placed over the exits until all of the marionettes are defeated. This system of forced battles and enemy placement became the new norm, and a slew of series adopted the trope. But this seemingly novel approach actually made its debut in the arcades many years earlier.
For a time before Street Fighter II overtook the arcades and turned them into virtual dojos, the side-scrolling brawler ruled the screens. Games like Double Dragon and Final Fight gated player progress with obligatory battles long before modern action titles. When a street-brawling hero wandered into a new location, the screen would stop, a group of enemies would gang up on the protagonist, and a player could not move forward until the area was cleared. At the time, the point of these gated battles would be to drain a player’s health and lives, which would force a player to drop more quarters to continue, thus a profit is made. Now that this trope has become mainstream once again, we are left to wonder the reasoning behind these design choices, particularly since most console games are a one-time purchase.
One common argument revolves around the idea that the value of a game is the length of time needed to complete the main storyline. When a new game costs over 60 dollars, it is understandable that a consumer would want to get their money’s worth in gameplay duration. It is for this reason why many developers will pad a game’s length with forced battles. For example, it took Laura and I roughly a week to complete Bioshock Infinite. Much of our time spent playing was fighting off wave after wave of enemies in gated battles that barred our progression of the story. If it were not for these battles (or Eilzabeth’s sub-par lock-picking skills), Laura and I would have breezed through the game in a much shorter amount of time. Conversely, my playthrough of Dishonored took less than two days to complete, and I spent most of my time Blinking away from combat, focused on the narrative goals in Dunwall. Both of these games cost $59.99 at time of release, but logic dictates that the longer game is of greater value, right?
Actually, I found that being forced into battle over and over with no option to move forward until all enemies are dealt with detracted from Bioshock Infinite’s greater narrative. I was often frustrated that my exploration of the gorgeous and detailed land of Columbia was being interrupted by some guy shooting at me. The trope of forced battles did not strengthen the game, but weakened my engagement and enjoyment of the title. Additionally, by forcing the same scripted battles on the player with every single playthrough, there is little reason to replay a game more than once, save for the meager variety in weapon options. On the other hand, giving a player the option to avoid combat provides a greater variety of play styles, which will (hopefully) lead to more replays. After beating Dishonored on a non-lethal playthrough, I still had the opportunity to play the game with reckless abandon, fighting every citizen who dared to look my way.
I guess Laura was right: it is silly that an enemy would respawn the moment you look away. The notion that a game’s challenge comes from a constant barrage of reappearing baddies has become rather dated. But the supposed alternative is not much better. Gated battles and forced skirmishes do not always lend to a game’s worth. There needs to be a middle ground, a place where these tropes do not exist and more choice is put in the player’s hands. After all, some people want to experience endless battles that could never happen in real life, while others want the freedom to become fully immersed in a story that is not their own.
