Gluttons for Punishment

So I won’t be the first person who admits to being somewhat of a machoist when it comes to difficult games.

From Dark Souls to Survival mode in Fallout 4, people seem to love playing with the deck stacked against them.

There’s just something super satisfying about defeating really hard enemies and getting amazing gear as a reward, there’s also that

Beautiful EXP you use to increase your stats or unlock perks.

Today I’m going to talk about two fantastic Indy games that love to bust your balls, but you always come back for the thrill.

There’s Rogue Legacy, and then There’s Hell Divers! Two totally different games when it comes to genre, but they share similarities

when it comes to kicking your teeth in while you grind yourself to greatness.

Rogue Legacy.

Well the name says it all, LITERALLY!

A Roguelike Platformer Developed by Cellar Door games in 2013.

The premise of the game is that you begin as a hero and progress as far as possible into a castle defeating enemies, collecting money and

Searching for bosses.

if the player dies, rather than restarting the game entirely, or from the last point where you died; the player arrives at a character selection screen

of Hero’s three randomly generated descendants. This loop occurs every time you die for the entirety of the game.

Each descendant is born with different character traits, some are fantastic like ADHD that increases the player’s movement speed, and awful ones

Like Alzheimer’s that removes the map from the game for the duration of playing as that character. For masochists like myself this is fantastic, after a

Certain point in the game you may actually enjoy the challenge of selecting the heir that has the worst traits to choose from because, well you’re crazy.


Another way the game likes to punish you is the castle lock-down system.

Because of the RNG nature of the game, the castle becomes randomly regenerated the same way your heirs do. However, the player is given the option

To “lock down” the castle by giving an NPC (The Architect) 40% of the gold you earn within the castle for that loop.

There’s also Charon, a phantom who stands at the castles drawbridge and charges you a toll. How much you ask? ALL OF YOUR GOLD!

That’s why players want to die as rarely as possible, and spend all of their gold on weapon, or character upgrades BEFORE you re-enter the castle.

After reaching the point where levelling up costs within the thousands; players are much less likely to lock-down a castle in favour for keeping their gold.

Rogue Likes, the genre you love to hate to love.

Now most of the time people love to play co-operative games, From team based challenges in battlefield, to 1 V.S. 1 bouts in Street fighter.

But what happens when not only the onscreen enemies can kill you; but your teammates, their equipment, and you, yes even YOU can kill

the character you play as? Well you get Helldivers! the most butt clenching co-op game this side of the Galaxy!

Helldivers was developed by Arrowhead Studios of Magicka fame, and released on March 3^rd 2015 exclusively for the PlayStation 3, the PlayStation 4,

and the PlayStation Vita. The game was later released on Steam in December losing its PlayStation exclusivity. The game is an isometric, co-op,

twin stick shooter, for up to 4 players online. You take control of a Helldiver, whose sole purpose is to spread managed democracy across the galaxy

and acquire resources for “SUPER EARTH”.

The game is very satirical and draws heavy inspiration from Aliens and Starship Troopers. Both of those films featured brutal over the top gore

and this is directly reflected in the game. The game is very unforgiving when it comes to friendly fire, and calling down “stratagems”. Stratagems

Are powerful; weapons, vehicles, and tools deployed from your command ship in orbit. The only problems are; not only can the pod you deploy,

Kill you, but you need to correctly input a long sequence of directional buttons like a phone number, or deployment code. If you make a

mistake however you need to re-enter the entire sequence. This can be quite frustrating, especially when there’s 15 enemies on screen,

two of your team-mates are dead and you need to call down both of them but your stratagem is on cool down.

So if it’s so punishing why play? Because you need dat gear. Just like Rogue Legacy you can upgrade your character with new weapons, armour (and
unlike Rogue Legacy) Stratagems.

The loot and level up grind on these punishing games is probably why people like me keep coming back.

Action Heroes and Super Heroes

From Action Heroes to Super Heroes

A lot of people tend to feel that the action hero has gone the way of the dinosaur, a product of their time in the 80’s and 90’s. Guns, Bullets, explosions, and more explosions.
But have they actually been replaced by Super Heroes, or have they simply moved to an environment where they can still thrive in contemporary times. But what about super heroes?
how can they share a marketplace with the action hero and not step on each other’s toes?

In order to better understand what each genre archetype is doing to stay relevant, fresh and exciting;
we’re going to take a look at a particular year that showcased both hero types crushing it (ha see what I did there?).

What can I say other than 2009 had some amazing games; two of which came from some of my favorite franchises. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and Batman: Arkham Asylum.
One critically acclaimed for being the first game to actually do a “Liscenced property right” becoming the king of super hero games, and the other praised for its never before seen:
elaborate set pieces, gameplay, storytelling, graphics, and technical innovation.

Batman: Arkham Asylum is a third person action adventure “metroidvania” game. It came to fruition through a collaborative effort between several parties that actually cared about the I.P. The game was first revealed to the public in 2008. After Edios Interactive obtained the license for a Batman Game in 2007. Edios approached little know British developer Rock-Steady to create the game after seeing their prototype. Once full production finally began, DC comics approached Emmy award winning writer Paul Dini (Batman: The Animated Series, Detective Comics) to create
An original story for a Batman Game due to his
amazing track record (have you seen BTAS!?).

Stories written by some of the most revered comic book authors(who wrote Batman Comics Specifically) such as Neal Adams, Frank Miller and Grant Morrison were influential to the games overall design. The most important factor that contributed
to the immersion of the game was the design team’s commitment to make the player feel like Batman.  They isolated each component that makes Batman BATMAN and exaggerated them until it felt just right. The game also heavily enforced Batman’s no kill
rule but provided a multitude of ways to incapacitate enemies.

Due to the fact that the developers really cared about the IP, and wanted to include the most iconic aspects of the Batman Mythos; Rocksteady ended up casting two most iconic voices for Batman and The Joker ever. Kevin Conroy and Mark Hammil (Batman: The Animated Series, The New Adventures of Batman and Robin, Justice League, Justice League Unlimited). This alone was able to give any 90’s/00’s kid nostalgia fever to the point that the hype train left the station as soon as it was announced.
 

The linchpin to this masterpiece however was the combat. Rocksteady developed the free flow combat system. Flashy, full of gadget abilities (that can be used to chain combos), and the acrobatic grace of a master ninja were all key components in making you feel like the real Batman (you know the one from the comics and animated films/series, not that silly movie one “where’s the trigger?” please.)  

What I’m really getting at is that Rocksteady did EVERYTHING right, and doing everything right lead to 3 additional sequels and more critical acclaim than you can shake a stick at.
For the kid in all of us who always wanted to be THE BATMAN, Rocksteady gave us the ultimate Saturday morning cartoon fantasy on steroids.

So... with all of this: swinging in the night, taking out baddies by bursting through the floor grates, and fighting 12 enemies at once; surely there couldn’t be any room left for globetrotting and gunfights right? WRONG!

Uncharted 2: Among Theives; the smash follow up to 2007’s Uncharted Drake’s Fortune released only a few months after of Batman: Arkham Asylum, to just as much critical and commercial success. Arkham Asylum put you in the
shoes of an established character, and made you feel like them. Uncharted on the other hand puts you in control of a much less established character and presents them more like an archetype; The Indiana Jones everyman who’ll
break your neck without even thinking twice about it.

Where Arkham Asylum strictly enforced Batman’s no killing policy, Uncharted encourages you to leave a sea of bodies in your wake. If Uncharted Drake’s Deception was an 8 on the intensity level and wow factor, Among Thieves cranks it up to 11
from the moment you press start. I mean come on, you start by waking up in a destroyed train car, hanging off the side of a cliff, in the Himalayas.

Upon Uncharted 2’s release, the game was revered for its highly elaborate set pieces, character design, storytelling, graphics, technical innovation and gameplay mechanics (try saying that on one breath). Clearly Naughty Dog cracked the formula with
Among Thieves and turned us into the murderous treasure hunter we never knew we wanted to be.

Here’s hoping Uncharted 4 A Thief’s End will be the Swansong Nate deserves.

Remember when Konami was Cool?

When Konami was cool

Unlike today where Konami is recognized as the foil to Hideo Kojima’s “Folk Hero”. There was once a time where Konami was considered cool and innovative,

And part of that time, was in the good old 90’s.

Today I’m going to be taking a look back at 1991 specifically for two very different games, on two very different platforms.

Sunset Riders for the Arcade, and Super Castlevania for the Super Fiacom/Nintendo.

Now in order for me to explain what makes Sunset Riders so great; we need to go back one year, to 1990.

Konami’s Teenage Mutant Ninjas Turtles beat ‘em up was enjoying overwhelming success. The staff at Konami soon discovered

That: it was not only the fact that the game was from one of the most popular IP at the time, keeping their machines fat with quarters

But, also the simultaneous gameplay for to 4 players. This being the 90’s, everyone knew the only place to get really good multiplayer was the arcade, and Konami saw this as

An opportunity to start making more multiplayer/co-op arcade games. 

Fast forward back to 1991 and Sunset Riders is released. Directed by Hideyuki Tsujimoto and published by Konami.

Set in the Wild West as a “Run n Gun” (not to be confused with shoot em up. Think Contra, not Galaga.), Sunset Riders features 4 playable bounty hunters: Steve, Billy, Bob, and Cormano. Each of the 4 characters is assigned to one of the control spots at the arcade machine and feature slightly different weapons.

Steve and Billy use revolvers, Bob a rifle, and Cormano a shotgun.

Characters are controlled with 8 way joysticks, a shoot button, and a jump button. Basic, but hey it worked for Contra.

Unlike contra the game featured a slide dodge mechanic rather than laying prone to avoid enemy gunfire.

At the beginning of each stage the players are shown a wanted poster of the stage’s boss showing their bounty value.

The players move through the multi-tiered, side scrolling levels making their way to the boss. The player who deals the most damage against the boss receives bonus points.

There’s plenty of cool power ups like a sheriff star that gives you full auto, or one that grants you a second gun allowing for multi directional fire. There’s even two stages on horseback.

Although the game didn't do anything revolutionary for the genre it was still fun and brings back great memories.

Super Castlevania IV

Unlike Sunset Riders, Castlevania is a series with a storied past and a fantastic legacy. One of the fan favorites of that legacy is Super Castlevania IV.

Directed by Masahiro Ueno, Produced by Kazumi Kitaue, and developed by Konami for the Super Nintendo/Fiacom video game system.

Masahiro Ueno who was the lead programmer was making his first ever 16 bit game. He loved the pure action of the original Castlevania  and wanted to make something similar to it.

This resulted in what was actually a soft remake of the original for NES.

The game puts you back in the boots of Simon in 1691 Transylvania, on his quest to slay Dracula. A lot has changed this time around though especially when it comes to Simon’s arsenal. Among many of the improvements to the actual gameplay:

·     The ability to swing the whip in all 8 directions of the d pad

·     Holding the attack button results in a multi-hit spin attack that also block enemy projectiles. (a staple in the future games.

·     Simon’s whip can also latch on to grappling points to swing across large gaps too wide to jump.

·     Simon can move while crouching

·     The length and attack power of the whip can be increased twice by finding two different upgrades.
          

All of these improvements came to fruition during the development process. Its thanks Masahiro Ueno commitment to making the game less frustrating for players when compared to its 1987 original.

Because the team was so small during the development process; there was a lot of cross pollination that happened between artists and programmers when it came to creating the maps.

Early bosses in the game were also designed to be more user friendly by being easier, and having discoverable weak points that could be exploited with the secondary weapons. Further more difficult bosses were made with detailed attack patterns. Neither of these were possible on the NES original either.

Since its initial release, to this day, Super Castlevania IV is still praised for perfecting the classic formula; and that’s a very good thing.

If it wasn't for Super Castlevania IV, the BEST Castlevania game ever would probably would have never been made.

But that’s a story for a different time.

Image Credits

www.vizzed.com

www.chapleofresonance.com

en.wikipedia.org

http://www.telebunny.net/toastywiki/index.php/Games/G10-SuperCastlevaniaIV

1987, the greatest year of video game franchises.

Now of course this opinion is a little biased; being born in 1987 myself, however some of the world’s most iconic and contemporary franchises did in fact make their first appearance in 1987.

Some of the franchises you may be familiar with are as follows.

·         Metal Gear

·         Street Fighter

·         Mega Man

·         Final Fantasy

·         Double Dragon

Some of these franchises were very revolutionary in inventing entirely new genres out of necessity.

Metal Gear 

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (the 11^th Title in the franchise) released recently to commercial and critical success, but perfection needs to start somewhere; and that place is 1987.

Hideo Kojima; one of the greatest game designers in the world, created Metal Gear for the MSX2 home computer in Japan while working at Konami. Although Metal Gear was originally intended to be

A modern military action game, the hardware limitations of the MSX2 only allowed to process a limited number of bullets and enemies on screen at a time. Kojima felt that this impeded

The combat and flow of action.

To get around this, Kojima; inspired by the World War II film “The Great Escape”, altered the game to be based around evading enemy capture. And thus, the stealth action genre is born.

The player controls Solid Snake, a rookie in the Foxhound Special Forces unit. He is sent to the eastern pacific fortress called Outer Heaven to rescue his missing squad mate and investigate a weapon Called Metal Gear.

When a player enters a room it is comprised of a single screen, being patrolled by several guards. The player must use the environment and patrol patterns of the guards to sneak past them. If a player is spotted by a guard in the Screen they currently occupy, one exclamation appears over their head. The player must now fight them or escape to one of the other screens. If two exclamation points appear (either by not using a suppressor while killing someone,

or being spotted on camera/via infra-red sensors), the enemy solider has set off an alarm, and all the in the stage are on alert. Snake must now defeat all the enemy soldiers, or escape through an elevator.  

Regular Grunts weren't the only type of enemy the player encounters, there are also several boss enemies peppered throughout the game. 

Although a trend setter in many ways, multiple bosses and an inventory system were a popular staple in games of that era, and are still used today.

We can only be certain that the next game Kojima creates will also be a trendsetter.

Street Fighter

Street Fighter V is only 6 days away!  This legendary fighting game franchise is finally getting its “come upins” as an e-sport. However, the first game is a far cry from what is about to be released next week on the PlayStation 4 and PC.

Produced and directed by Takashi Nishiyama, and planned by Hiroshi Matsudo. Both would leave Capcom after the initial release of the First Street Fighter to go work for SNK, where they created some of the other popular fighting game franchises

Such as Fatal-Fury and Art of Fighting.

The player begins the game as Ryu; A Japanese martial artist, he’s competing in an international martial arts to prove his strength. Player 2 takes control of Ryu’s Training partner Ken. The Characters are only pallet swap,

Everything else about them is the same.

 

In single player mode, the player must defeat 10 different opponents from 5 different countries in 1 v.s. 1 matches. When starting, the player can choose which country they begin in. You must now use Ryu to defeat two fighters from that country

Before being able to move on to the next country in the tournament. After defeating the first 8 opponents, the player heads to Thailand where the final 2 opponents wait.

The player uses an 8 way directional joystick, and 6 attack type buttons to fight: 3 punching buttons Light, Medium, Hard, and 3 kicking buttons Light, Medium and Hard. 

The player was able to move forward, back, jump and crouch during combat,

And was even able to execute special attacks when entering a specific sequence of directional queues and attack button inputs. 

Street Fighter was a trend setter when it came to not only special moves, but the ability to block, and jump in a fighting game. Street fighter was also the fighting game to set the

Standard 6 button layout, however this was only after Capcom decided to do away with their pressure sensitive attack button lay out (also a first).

The arcade game initially released in two different versions:

·         The Regular Version: table top in Japan, Upright in America, 6 button.

·         The Deluxe Cabinet: two pressure sensitive pads that measure the speed and strength input for light medium and hard.

Design is king when it comes to the success of a franchise and the 6 button layout is not only the standard for Street Fighter (even 5 coming out next week) but all fighting games. The 6 button layout also led to the development of the Home “Fight Stick” and “Fight Pad”.

I can’t wait to get mine next week.

 Image Credits
www.hardcoregaming101.net

www.metalgearinformer.com

http://store.madcatz.com/categories/fightsticks-category/Street-Fighter-5-FightPad-PRO-for-PS4-PS3.html

www.pixlbit.com 

Prepare to Die Again, For a third time.....No really.

“Now Only Embers Remain.”

 

Gamers everywhere are DYING in anticipation for the next instalment in the Souls series simply titled Dark Souls 3.

For those unfamiliar with the (as fans dub it) “Souls” series, it is a collection of Action-Role playing games created and developed by the Talented team at FromSoftware.

The series is played in third person perspective with a difficult yet satisfying melee and magic real time combat system that keeps your glutes clenched one hundred percent of the time.

Travelling through desolate lands, castles, forests, mountains, swamps, and just about any other type of terrain you can think, players simply explore and play until you find the last boss.

The majority of enemies you face are disfigured undead people and creatures. Some enemies use physical attacks and others use magic. Then you also get to fight huge unique boss enemies like a Flying suit of armor, or a giant spider that shoots a laser.

Amazing enemies and character builds aside, one of the biggest draws for people to the series is the lack of “hand holding” the game provides and encourages exploration.

There are no maps, no way points and only simple cryptic instructions provided by the very few friendly NPCs you find throughout the game. This refreshing design is all thanks to current president of FromSoftware and father of the Soul’s series, Heditaka Miyazaki.

Miyazaki San, began working at FromSoftware in the heyday of the PlayStation 2. During this time, he worked as a programmer on the Armored Core series.

Just 5 years after starting at FromSoftware Miyazaki San went from programmer to Creator/Director/Producer on the first game in the Souls series “Demon’s Souls”.

Released in 2009 exclusively for the PlayStation 3, this was the game that laid the groundwork for what would become one of the most popular contemporary video game franchises.

Many of the features that appeared in Demon’s Souls would carry over into the other iterations of the series. Some of the most notable features would be:

·    Fully Customizable Character Creator
·       Melee combat that allows control of many weapons in various stances.
·       A weight system that affects the player’s movement speed both in and out of combat.
·       Magic attacks
·       The ability to summon other players into your game for co-op help.

The biggest difference between Demon’s Souls and the rest of the series however, is Demon’s Souls “Hub” world.

This is the only game in the series to feature a separate area from any field of combat with different portals used to travel to different lands where progression takes place.

Dark Souls, the spiritual successor to Demon’s Souls released to much hype in fall 2011. This follow up took everything from the original, improved it one hundredfold. Although originally only released for the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360, the game hit such a critical mass, that it even received a PC port the following year.

One of the biggest changes made in Dark Souls from Demon’s Souls, was the removal of the Hub world, in exchange for a giant seamless open world. The most fascinating part is that many of the different gruelling paths you travel eventually lead you back to the start of the game: “The Firelink Shrine.”

More Bosses, more lore, Dark Souls got so popular it even received DLC. Once people beat that, everyone started clamoring for another entry, and boy did they get one.  

Image Credit to:

www.nredist.com

demonssouls.wikia.com

This is the place where I will pierce the video game industry.

Hi my name is Justin Rycaj (Ritz-eye) yes that's how you pronounce it. I should probably consider getting it phonetically printed on my business cards once I get them made. But that's neither here nor there.

So I guess I should preface by stating the two reasons why I came to the Art Institute of Vancouver for Video Game Design after hearing how highly it ranked:

1. To make my dreams come true.

2. To achieve Greatness!  

It all started back on my fourth birthday, my first real memory of video games. I received a Nintendo entertainment system with Super Mario World 3 and Final Fantasy (oooo ahhhhh). Although most kids at that age would have probably drawn to Super Mario, The Box art for Final Fantasy probably imprinted on to me much more, and invoked what could quite possibly be my first ever desire for Adventure.

Sure I didn’t really understand the combat mechanics, nor did I get very far, but if you had lined up the entire Mario Cast and Final Fantasy side by side; I’d always pick the Final Fantasy characters are being cooler and more interesting. That original box art from Final Fantasy still flickers in my mind any time I feel like playing Dark Souls or Bloodborne.

Oddly enough I didn’t get another home console until the PlayStation One. Sure I had a Game Boy, Game Gear, and a home computer, it’s just up until the time the PS1 came out, nothing really lit that fire of adventure like Metal Gear Solid (Been a PlayStation fanboy ever since).

Metal Gear was the first time where I felt like “video games are growing up with me.” If you look over the course of the Past 28 years, the Metal Gear franchise has shown the most evolution out of any other series which is why I respect Hideo Kojima so much. This is also probably one of the reasons why I don’t like Nintendo games anymore, they stay the same and their mascots seem more like crutches than anything these days. But I’m not here to slander.

Getting back on topic. It’s very hard to argue that Hideo Kojima isn’t one of the hardest working, and best creators/producers we have in the industry. It’s a shame that Konami’s Gag order prevented him for accepting his award at the 2015 VGAs. It was a really dumb move by Konami and has pretty much painted him as a folk hero now. 

This is also evident by all the love he’s been getting since it happened, and the recently announced partnership with Sony to Open the New Kojima Productions.

If you had to ask me who my favorite producers were based on their bodies of work would have to be (in no particular order):

Hideo Kojima – Metal Gear Series

Neil Druckman – The Last of Us, Uncharted Series

Hidetaka Miyazaki – The Dark Souls Series

Ultimately my goal would to be a Creative Director/ Producer half as good as them. Hopefully my diploma will give me a jump start to reaching that goal.