03 Fire Emblem

Let's start this review off right: Fire Emblem is one of my favorite games of all time. I have found myself over the years busting out this wonderful game to get yet another play-through done. The gameplay is rich and deep, the wonderfully-told story is meaningful and memorable, and the art is spot-on for the game. These aspects mesh so well together that getting lost in this world is guaranteed. Yet even with these aspects, this game's greatness is found in the very basics. The core mechanics of Fire Emblem are so in-tune with the rest of the design of the game that these fore-mentioned elements end up serving each other perfectly. I'm going to highlight a few parts of the game that separate Fire Emblem from other strategy games: permanent death, the emphasis on limited units and resources, and the decision to make this game turn-based.

In an effort to keep this review concise, let's look at the latter two concepts that were just presented. The combination of limited resources and the fact that the game is turn-based presents the feeling of David versus Goliath. In every single encounter, you are outnumbered by the enemy. The odds are against you, but you preserver with what you have. This feeling of being up against something bigger and stronger than you (there has to be a more concise word for that phrase) persists with you throughout the game and is a big driving force in the overall experience.

Permanent death has to be the biggest difference from other strategy games that Fire Emblem possesses. By enabling permanent death, you, as the player, are more connected to the characters. Because of this connection caused by a game mechanic, you are not only more prone to making wiser decisions but also engulfed in this struggle to combat evil in the name of these characters. Somewhat related, the characters in the game break the fourth wall and address you! The combination of the previously mentioned design decision and this form of character development make the game so much more enjoyable and realistic. All of a sudden, you are no longer just a master tactician but a member of Lyn's and Eliwood's brigade for justice. Furthermore, these fighters are not just cute, little sprites that are tools that carry out your whim (like you would find in Advanced Wars) but characters in an ever-developing plot. Because of the existence of permanent death, you care a whole lot more if, hypothetically, Matt dies (spoiler alert: he's overpowered if you train him well). If you can separate the many layers of this game, remember that a lot of its importance came from a brilliant design decision.

Is Fire Emblem a perfect game? No. Take the companion system, for example. It is poorly introduced, clunky to use, and its benefits are difficult to observe quickly. What needs to be taken away from this game is the example it set. That example is what can happen when a game is created perfectly around its core mechanics. Complete understanding of the implications of minor details in the design allowed the developers, designers, artists, and other team members to give players a simply fantastic game. 

A Review of a (poor) Karthus guide

A while back, I was on the League of Legends forum. I noticed a post asking people to look at this guy's Karthus guide. I gave it a look and replied. Here is the guide: http://www.mobafire.com/league-of-legends/build/a-million-ways-to-be-cruel-225866. Here is my response:

SUMMONER SPELLS: 

Honestly, those are based off of personal preference. Personally, I prefer flash and ignite/exhaust (ignite for champs that heal ie: fiddle/swain). Exhaust has great synergy with the wall, landing Qs, and keeping them in the E radius.

RUNES:

 I have never used Spell Vamp quints, so I am not going to comment on that part because I know some people swear by them. What I do know about spell vamp however is that it is more valuable early game and starts to show diminishing returns the longer the game goes.

I have a big problem with your CDR yellows. Karthus has an extremely short cool-down on Q, an average one on W, virtually no CD on e, and a VERY long CD on his ult. By picking CDR yellows, you are only specing into his ultimate, essentially. Health, Armor, and Mana Regen/5per lvl are all better choices.

BUILD: 

Should be Boots/3 health pots to start. The mana pot is POINTLESS because of the mana sustain from E. Tear is a good item for Karthus. Revolver is also a good item for him, but at this point you are committed to staying in your lane and farming to high hell. You won't be as beefy as a Karthus who chose to go the boots>RoA route (a route that is good for early teamfights) and you won't be doing as much damage as a Karthus who went boots>double doran>deathcap (a route that is great for lane dominance, if you managed to get ahead early).

You make the mistake of recommending the purchase of AA Staff and WoTA in early/mid game. AA Staff is not worth the money early/mid game and neither is WoTA (unless you have chosen to run a double WoTA comp).

Also, I would prioritize Zhonya's over Deathcap if you are playing suicide bomber Karthus.

Furthermore, you do not have a single defensive item in the build. Abyssal and GA are both great items on Karthus.

ABILITY SEQUENCE: 

R>Q>E>W (I typically get a 2nd point in W at lvl 10) Fix your guide for this change.

MASTERY PAGE:

Yikes. 9-0-21 is NOT GOOD on Karthus. You need to be dealing damage to high hell. 21-0-9 or 21-9-0 would both be better options for you.

Like I said earlier, Karthus doesn't scale off of CDR well. I don't think anybody uses Good Hands, honestly. Awareness is pointless because you are in a solo lane. At best, you're going to beat the other mid champion to lvl 6 and get a kill faster than him. Then what? Nothing.

MATCH-UPS:
Impossible matchups: I agree with all of them except Vlad. Vlad shouldn't really be a problem.
Yellow range: Ahri should be moved up, Veigar should be moved up.
Easy: Annie should be yellow (avoid harass and her combo is a win for Karthus, but he will lose if he tries to fight her), Ryze has to go to impossible (See Annie... but Ryze is scarier), Swain to yellow.

SUMMONER SPELL SECTION:
Ghost is odd to me. Anything ghost can do, flash can do better (unless you are olaf or vlad).
Heal is a preference, not mine though. I don't recommend it though because most AP mids run ignite. Ignite > Heal.

TP is great for ganks.

You recommend Revive? NO! I repeat: NO!

FINAL THOUGHTS:
You're missing the point of Karthus. Spell vamp is fine and dandy in lane for farming/sustain but once you get out of lane where the teamfights happen in seconds, you will not be able to sustain the damage being done to you for the amount of damage you are putting out (because your build/mastery combo is bad).

Great Big War Game Review

Let's start with the basics

"Great Big War Game" is a turn-based strategy game that pits the player against other people or the computer, depending on game mode. The player versus player is pretty standard and the campaign is challenging. Not only is it challenging, but the game guides you along the learning curve of the game. More specifically, units are introduced logically, the missions increase in difficulty, and the A.I. behaves well.

The actual gameplay is designed and implemented seamlessly. As one would expect, there is a variety units each with strengths and weaknesses. Because each unit is balanced around the fact that another will better it in combat, intelligent unit purchasing and movement (as opposed to a war of attrition style game) is the key to this game. In the end, "Great Big War Game" is a technically sound turn-based strategy game; I just have nothing bad to say about the gameplay.



So what could have been done better?


As a sort of warning, I cannot help but compare and contrast this game to "Advanced Wars;" both games come from the same genre and have a militaristic theme. Both games are great in their own right, but in order to get a clearer picture of "Great Big War Game" some comparison is necessary.

In "Great Big War Game," the units are individuals as opposed to the five-man squad in "Advanced Wars." I bring this point up for two reasons: design logic and game feel. Like in some turn-based strategy games, a unit does less damage when the unit itself is damaged. "Great Big War Game" sticks to this mechanic, but it does not make sense, at least not as much sense as the same mechanic in "Advanced Wars." Because a unit in "Advanced Wars" was a five-man squad, it made sense that the unit dealt less damage when the unit was injured because there was less man-power in that specific unit.

This mechanic not only affects design logic but also the overall feel of the game. Simply put, "Great Big War Game" feels small in scale because each unit is an individual. Not only this, but the overall feel of the game is purposefully silly. In this way, the tone of "Great Big War Game" disengages the player from a war experience. By making the voice-overs silly, the briefing comical, and art style goofy, I did not feel like I was playing a war game.

In essence, do not play this game if you're expecting an epic war waged by geniuses of battle. Play this game knowing you will be entertained for a long while, get a handful of giggles, and be ready for a challenge. This game is not easy, but that makes it enjoyable. If you are like me and not a fan of the feel, try to step away from it (muting the music did the trick for me) and play it while only focusing on the mechanics.

I won!

For those very, very few that follow my progress on this blog, you'll know that I submitted into a design competition a week or so back.

Well, I won!

Check it out here with the other two winners: http://www.gamecareerguide.com/features/1117/results_from_game_design_.php?page=1

What does this mean for me? Well I would love to keep putting in submissions for these competitions to work on my critical thinking skills. If you somehow come across any challenges or competitions of this sorts, please let me know!

Look for my review on "Great Big War Game" soon and more progress on the David Perry Challenge.

Design Challenge: The Next Step For Team Fortress 2 Submission

I recently submitted into a game design challenge over on gamecareerguide.com. Here's my submission! Feel free to leave feedback and critiques.

The Basics

Team Fortress 2 Tower Defense will take the classic tower defense genre and turn it into a fast-faced, multiplayer experience. Teams will be broken up into two teams: "Runners" and "Defenders." Like their titles suggest, Defenders will attempt to prevent the Runners from reaching their goal. Runners will be restricted to scouts and Defenders will be restricted to engineers.

Gameplay

Defenders place turrets to prevent the Runners from scoring. Like in regular Team Fortress 2 play, the turrets require metal to build and upgrade. Defenders will not be able to place supply stations, so the supply stations will be provided already on the map. Turrets are Team Fortress classes and are restricted by the level upon which they are placed on (see below). The Upper Level can only be accessed by the Defender team. The Lower Level can be accessed by both teams.

Upon starting a match, the Defenders will be allowed to set up appropriately. After a short period of time, the Runners will be set loose. The goal for the Runners is to reach specially marked areas that will reward them with points. The further the distance, the greater the risk but the Runner will earn more points for his team for reaching this further destination. Once a runner reaches a goal or is killed, he will be teleported back to the spawn for another attempt to score.

The match will consist of 2 rounds. After the first round is completed, the Runners will become Defenders and the Defenders will become Runners. Scoring can only take place when a team is playing as the Runners. Firing will be enabled for both teams. Turrets can be destroyed. Engineers can kill Runners and Runners can kill Engineers. Ammo will not be limited for either team.

With smart, tactical placement of the turrets, the Defenders have the potential to shut out the Runners completely. However, a complete shut-out will not happen often because the Runners have access to multiple ways of countering any turret combination through precise shooting, smart movements, and even an all-out group rush.

Turret Behavior

Upper Level:

            Soldier: Quick Fire Rate, small Area of Effect Damage, smaller knockback
            Sniper: High damage, low rate of fire, Piercing Bullets
            Medic: Slows a single target, chance for temporary freeze
            Demo: Mediocre Fire Rate, Large Area of Effect Damage

Lower Level:

            Heavy: High health, low damage.

            Pyro: Low Health, High Damage in a cone in front of the turret.

            Spy: Invisible to Runners, kills any Runner that passes through this turret.

Video Games, Difficulty, and Children

Background

I was tasked recently with watching two young boys, ages eight and six, to essentially ensure they don't kill each other while their parents were at work. The boys and I have known each other as long as they have been alive, so the babysitting was more fun than it was work. As we were sitting around playing some games, I began to observe something interesting in their behavior.

The Observations

In addition to observing the six-year-old play the original Sonic the Hedgehog, I watched the boys play Super Smash Brothers: Melee on the Gamecube (a game and a system that are both older than the boys themselves). Starting with the latter game, the experience went as follows. Initially, the three of us played free-for-all. After complaining from the boys that life wasn't fair, I put them on a team against me. A couple close games followed, but the boys still cried foul. This was fascinating to me because they killed themselves more than I had killed them, but they did not recognize the difference. So I used the fourth spot in the game to give them a level 9 bot. Soon after my rapid destruction, which happened solely based on the efforts of this bot, the boys became elated. They appeared to enjoy watching a computer-run character beat the life out of me more than they enjoyed the challenge of playing against me.

After observing such a peculiarity , I set the game aside and changed my slot to a bot slot. I started to set this bot's level to nine, but the older boy complained and set the bot level back to level 1. I let them play in this way (the two boys and a level 9 bot were matched against a level 1 bot) and noticed that their overall joy had increased even though this level one bot was far worse than I was.

At this point, I was naturally confused and decided to do a little experiment. In an attempt to get the boys to challenge themselves, I changed the levels for both of the bots to be 5. This way, the fight was more fair. It was not completely fair, but the level of difficulty had gone up relatively significantly and I expected the boys to appreciate this challenge. This was not the case. The boys simply refused to play the game in this manner.

What's Interesting About This?

I personally find this observation fascinating. Though far from purely scientific, the boys' actions in relation to Super Smash Brother: Melee threw me into a storm of thought; I could not help but wonder why these young boys refused to challenge themselves with this game! So here are some thoughts: Does enjoying challenge comes with maturity? And if this is the case, how can video games better challenge children yet still allow them to win?

I am not a psychologist in any regard, so I will not attempt to answer my first thought. In regards to the second question, however, I have a solution. Games accessible to children absolutely need to reward challenge. Once the children understand the reward in challenging themselves, the in-game reward should be slowly taken away in an effort to help the children recognize the worth in challenging themselves. In Super Smash Brothers: Melee, winning was winning no matter how the boys came across it, the boys were not enjoying the game unless they were winning, and the boys soon learned the fastest way to win and stuck to that because that was the most fun for them. In no way did the game reward the boys for challenging themselves, so when it took longer for the boys to win they had less fun.

Perhaps I am just biased towards challenging oneself. This observation might just be an outlying case and I am making a big deal out of nothing, but my thoughts still stand. I might just be an older generation of gamer crying foul over the newer way of playing the games.

002 Grand Theft Auto IV

As I have been writing these first couple reviews and have been playing the first handful games, I've noticed that the reviews for these first few games are going to be relatively short and sweet. Just like in the previous review of Portal, this review of Grand Theft Auto is going to highlight a fantastic game and aim to point to the inner-workings that make this game successful.

For starters, we have the basic movement and driving mechanics. They're responsive and well made, but that is to be expected from a AAA title like this. My only complaint is rather minor, but I would much rather prefer that the character run or jog automatically. Perhaps the designers wanted people to seek out cars or other forms of transportation with this peculiar mechanic; that is the only justification I can think of currently.

When you are walking around, however, chances are you'll be shooting something or somebody. The shooting mechanics serve the game well. Believe it not, senseless violence is not the only way to play this game. Though the design of the weapons and their use caters well to this kind of play, the shooting mechanics better serve the progression of the overall story. Because the focus of this game is on the character development of Niko, the ever-present violence must be both responsive and simple. Rockstar did just this and managed to produce the best game of their flagship series.

Something new spawned out of this game: Multiplayer. The multiplayer manifests itself in two versions essentially, competitive and casual. The former version is something like out of a Call of Duty  game; the player is matched with other players and the objective of the particular mode is defined. The latter, casual, is virtually identical to single player with a handful of smart differences. First off, and very obviously, you'll be with other people. Secondly, because you do not have access to cheat codes in this game mode, weapons are scattered around the world with greater frequency. And lastly, the spawn point is the same for everybody regardless of where they died. This last feature is particularly nice because it does not lead to players trekking through the massive world of Liberty City to find each other.

 

As some closing comments, some things that could have done better need to be brought up. Firstly, the friend side quests should just be done away with. As intriguing characters within the plot, they are fine but if you are roaming around the world shooting pedestrians and avoiding the police, those calls and texts from these otherwise good characters are annoying. On a somewhat of a similar note, the story can be completely forgotten as soon as the entirety of Liberty City is unlocked. Without a real solution to this problem, it is hard to criticize much, but this aspect had to be pointed out. Perhaps the reason behind the annoying NPCs was to remind the player that the story still has not been completed, but one can only speculate.

All in all, Grand Theft Auto IV is the best game in the series. The mechanics serve each other well and the variety of game modes allows for any gamer to enjoy this game.

001 Portal

It is pretty safe to say that the majority of gamers are aware, on some level or another, of Portal. Immediately, an aware gamer will start thinking of GLaDOS, the portal gun, a series of puzzling platformer levels, and even the song in the ending credits, "Still Alive." Yet with all of these memorable bits and pieces, a casual player will not dig deeper into what makes this particular game memorable and successful. In an attempt to guide some further thinking, I argue that the success of this game stems from the basics.

At its core, Portal is a platformer game but shines differently from a Mario or Sonic game because of its star mechanic, the Portal Gun. This unique and well designed tool defines the way a player solves the problems presented to them. As a player, you are told that everything can be solved (with the exception of one puzzle, but GLaDOS is lying, I swear) with this gun. Creative and liberal use of it will lead to your success, but you are not quite sure how to use it yet.

Now because the designers of Portal engineered their game to revolve around this solitary tool, the depth of the game had to be found elsewhere. That depth is found in the creative level design, the well-presented learning curve, and the overall theme of the game. The levels are fantastically designed. With a difficulty curve that makes sense, the designers deliberately progressed the player through levels that were fun, challenging, and instructive. In fact, almost the entire game is instructive; the player does not stop learning new tricks or mechanics until the final boss is nearly reached. And throughout this deliberate journey, the player is fully immersed in the overall presentation of the game. The sleek visual design, the intriguing voice over the intercom, the challenging levels, the futuristic feel, and even the enemy turrets all captivate the player. Because of this captivation, Portal is arguably one of the best examples of video game design.

The Very Beginnings

So how about a quick introduction?

My name is Michael and I am an aspiring video game designer. Recently, I came across "The David Perry Challenge." Here's a link with the details:

https://www.design3.com/industry-insight/david-perry/item/2537-the-david-perry-challenge

Read it? No? Good. 

Long story short, I will be reviewing 100 games that rank among the best video games ever made. I made this blog to track my progress and to share how I will be tackling this challenge.