Strange Design

Considering: TMNT

I was a big fan of the E&L TMNT comics back in the day.  They were awesome, gritty, and had a great bit of world-building.  I always felt like the Pizza-Hut turtles were an awful reflection of the "true" TMNT franchise - although obviously way more people think of Michelangelo as a surfer who wears orange than as a silent killer in red...

I never saw the TMNT film that came out a few years back, but I did manage to pick up the game for $5, and finally played it to completion (and with 1000 Achievement points) as of yesterday.

No spoiler alert: the game is terrible.

The game is clearly developed with the Jade Engine - so named for the main character (Jade) of Beyond Good & Evil - but made popular by the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time.  A version of the Jade engine powers the Assassin's Creed franchise, and I believe the LEGO franchise as well.

Off hand, some wall-running and ledge-grabbing sounds like a decent fit for a TMNT game.  But the production of this game is simply awful.  There are some good bits - the camera design is quite masterful in the face of terrible level design, and the comic cutscenes are very well presented if you overlook the horrible "words" that make up the other half of their content.

The Story.  Oh, God - The Story!

The storytelling in this game is incredibly bad.  Clearly the story was written in outline form before production, and then "told" via slapped-together pieces of cutscenes between levels.  The guys say things like "we were surprised at what we found that night" - or "that was the least of the lessons we were about to learn!" - as if they are setting up some piece of action or gameplay that is going to finish that thought.  But the thoughts are not finished - ever.  It's as if the writers assumed that the heavy lifting of the story was going to be told through the game - which I assume was exactly the case.

Raphael has a secret identity - which everyone says was really important, but clearly isn't.  The Foot Clan show up sometimes - but have no connection to anything.  After the last level the game reveals that you are now going to fight an immortal conquistador and his transformed-to-stone buddies, because they once did something bad, and there is a celestial alignment tonight that focuses planet energy on the office tower he owns in his day job as a business owner.  All of this is revealed, you then fight and defeat the five of them, and then the game is won.

Huh?  This all happens after 15 levels of "we went on patrol, and guess what we saw!" - which always ends with "we didn't see anything.  But the NEXT night..." it's the worst story I've ever played - because it's so clearly trying to do something - but instead does nothing.  And wastes a ton of time in the process.

C Team Level Design

Back when I was working on the Prince of Persia games, I worked reasonably closely with some of the Ubisoft Montreal management.  They had arranged two teams of level-designers in Jade - the A team and the B team.  They staggered PoP games, which is why every-other-one was such a mess!  TMNT was clearly made by some new "C" team, because it has absolutely no consistency or clarity.  The movement controls, though ripped right from PoP, are somehow clunky and hard to use.  There are lots of depth-blind jumping sequences that I had to fail 2-20 times to get right.  Some levels took only 8 minutes to play, and others took upwards of 40.

Playing through the game was a chore - no doubt about it.  At least I have 1000 Achievement points to sooth my wounds.

The danger of "always live" development - how Disney killed Fix-It Felix on iOS

A week or two back I grabbed "Fix-it Felix" for free on my iPad.  I know some of the folks making the official "Wreck-it Ralph" DS / console game, I'm looking forward to seeing the film, and the premise looked solid.

I loved it.

It wasn't as especially clever game, and there were some clear problems with it at times (barriers that prevented you from moving were hard to see, and there was no feedback for "you can't move there" to differentiate it from the all-too-common "you didn't hit the move button properly"...) but I had a great time with it.  I told my friends to check it out.  It kept me aware of the film - all good things.

But then today I saw there was an update for it - and now the game is ruined.  All the level layouts are different - the visual feedback system is different - the controls are different.  Some elements seem to be gone from the game - though they probably just got moved to later levels.  Disney took a really charming game and just clubbed it into mush.  Ugh.

Always Live

I'm really excited about the shift the game industry has taken the past few years - I think moving to smaller teams, niche releases, free-to-play, and always-live games is a great opportunity for those of us in the development community.  But as with all change, these new paradigms are sometimes used poorly - which can shake our faith in their validity.

Always-Live game development means you change the game out from under people - all the time - without warning.  Farmville was the real pioneer here, with double-blind A/B testing and design-by-numbers.  It's a powerful idea, and it can really make games better.  Making games better is, by any measure, a good thing!  But this sort of unfettered access to games that are already being played can go horribly wrong - as I've just described with Fix-it Felix.  These changes weren't the result of careful testing - they are just changes made blindly.  Blind changes are a useful tool during internal development - being bold with your direction can reveal some really unexpected truths about your game.  But blind changes in a live game break the trust between developer and player.

Do developers have the right to change their game without asking permission?  Yes.  Should they be ridiculed when they make mistakes?  Yes.

Week of Gaming #109 - 11/04/12

It's been a good gaming week - I'm enjoying my new balance between console, PC, and tablet.  Now if only I had a reason to fire up my 3DS...

Games of note this week:

1 - X:Com - Enemy Unknown

2 - Rows Free

3 - Your Shape: Fitness 2012

4 - Elf Defense

5 - Polara

 

Polara

 

I quite enjoyed Polara when I first played it - but now I can say without reservation that it is destined to be a classic.  Have you ever played Temple Run or Jetpack Joyride and thought "I wish this were made like a real classic game - with increasing difficulty, curated levels, sweet hidden objects, and a story!"

Your wish has come true.

Switching from blue to red is so natural - and so awesome.  Jumping is easy, with a bit of hidden depth in exactly how high/far you'll travel.  But the combination of the two is nothing short of magical.  Jumping through spinning globes, reversing gravity, turning platforms on and off - and then doing them all together!  Plus, the boss fights are totally sweet.

 

Elf Defense

 

This was a surprising discovery - I love a good Tower Defense game, and they seem to be pretty thin on the ground for iOS.  (Note the emphasis on good TD games...)  Elf Defense might just make the cut.  The visuals are great, and the mechanics of the touchscreen are solid.  But best of all, there are some really interesting decisions to make - and a robust economy behind the game.  Stay tuned to see how long this one can hold my attention.

 

Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012

 

I'm playing a Kinect game!  This is pretty much the killer Kinect app for me - because not only does it tune a workout for me, but it's actually really helpful when I get some of the movements wrong.  Doing the Bollywood dance, it might say "straighten your left arm" - because that's exactly what I'm doing wrong!  A real person might frustrate me with their little corrections - but I'm loving the personal attention from my Kinect.  Also, my body is feeling sore in a way I haven't felt since I was on the track team.  That's good?

 

Rows Free

 

Here's a blast from 6 months back - a bare-bones puzzle game.  It's so simple that I suspect most players wouldn't give it a second look - but math-nerds like me get totally wrapped up.  You're given 4 objects, and you need to place them on a grid.  Then you're given 4 more.  If you get a line or a block which make a Set (set-style!) they disappear.  You rarely get to make an obvious set, so the game is mostly all about layout out your pieces to create as many "set opportunities" as possible.  I can easily lose myself for an hour in that process.  I think the game is actually called "Rows" - but I can't imagine what features a paid version could add to the experience, so I choose to think that you are "freeing" rows.

 

X:Com - Enemy Unknown

 

I really like X:Com, but my efforts to play the game have been thwarted one way or another for quite some time.  Recently I've been cursed in my games - dying immediately in Dredmor, or FTL.  But now in X:Com I think I've broken the curse.  I have a classic game running which looks really promising.  My biggest complaint is the fact that everything in the game revolves around hit % - but nothing reduces damage.  (There is an armor which reduces melee damage, I believe)  So in the early game even if you play well a few lucky rolls from the Thin Men can just wipe your entire squad.  Grrr...

Week of Gaming #107 - 10/21/12

Having a real TV & Console set-up in my house has totally brought me back to console gaming, which is a refreshing change after the past 9 months or so without.  I really enjoyed the time spent playing Starcraft 2, and I've certainly broken in my iPad - but I hope that more console time will broaden my playlist week to week.  It will certainly help me sift through my massive backlog!

Games of note this week:

1 - FTL

2 - 10,000,000 (ten million)

3 - Polara

4 - TMNT

5 - Borderlands 2

Borderlands 2

We've been playing this one for about two weeks on Monday nights - playing as a group of 3.  I'm playing the Siren, alongside a soldier and gunzerker.  After a few weeks I'm ready to report - I'm not enjoying the game.  There are no difficulty levels, but somehow the game is incredibly difficult.  I feel ineffectual all the time, and can barely kill even one enemy without dying myself.  I keep thinking that I'm in some weird experience hole - or that I'm at the inflection point of weapon power - but that clearly isn't the case.  The game is just too hard to be fun.

I started a game to play solo - playing as the Zero this time - and the experience was significantly different.  I was taking out enemies in just a few hits, my skills felt interesting and useful - so maybe it was just the Siren class which wasn't to my tastes?  Unfortunately no - I switched to a multiplayer Zero, and I was right back where I starter.  I'd unload a full SMG clip into an enemy and barely see their HP move.

So I'm thinking one of two things must be true:  Either the difficulty scaling for 3 players is horrible, or something about the networked (as opposed to offline) environment is preventing me from hitting enemies properly.

TMNT

This is an old game from my backlog - I'd heard it wasn't very good, but it's a Jade Engine game (used in Prince of Persia, Beyond Good & Evil, Assassin's Creed, etc) which is always nice to check out.

Unfortunately right off the bat I can see a control problem - your character only enters the running animation when L-Stick = 1.  In my games I always use L-Stick > 0.8, to make certain that a fully depressed stick will always trigger the run animation.  Requiring L-Stick = 1 means that on most controllers there will be directions in which it is impossible to run (because the octagon has a shorter radius in the center of each face than it does at each vertex.)  So certain jumping sequences are very frustrating, because I can't run (to do the running jump) the way I want to.

This is a great example of how intimate knowledge of controllers can make me a bit over sensitive to very specific problems - Conan (which I loved for the most part) had a similar issue which nearly caused me to quit the game.  I'm only 20% through TMNT, so hopefully there won't be more sections like this last one.

I suppose I should also mention that the combat is terrible?  Because it is.

Polara

Here's a nice new addition - Polara, from Hope This Works Games - the folks who brought us the very pretty (but not totally satisfying) Kunundrum on iOS.  Polara is an "endless runner" game like Temple Run or Jetpack Joyride - but it has a few nice twists.  First off, each level is "curated" - which means configured by hand.  This was amazing in Don't Run with a Plasma Sword- and less so in Zombie Runner.  In this case it's great, because some of the "random" levels can feel really punishing.

Polara also has some great secrets and bonus objectives - which I really like & respect a bunch.  One minor issue is the fact that the platforms you jump on blend into the background a bunch, which can make it really hard to see what I am expected to do.  The game revolves around a red/blue color mechanic, so I understand that everything else in the world needs to be muted... but I think this could be improved.

My one big complaint about the game is that it doesn't support multiple profiles... I'd love to see that added in an update.  Until then, you'll have to check this game out for yourself - on your own device.

10,000,000 (ten million)

A bunch of rave reviews led me to this iOS oddity - a time-based puzzle matcher with light RPG elements.  Unfortunately, it turned out to be not so much my my of tea.  The premise seems promising - you match things down below, which give you resources (wood, gold, stone) or help you progress (damage, keys, items).  Initially you can't progress well, but the resources you gather help you to buy better equipment, which allows you to deal more damage and thus progress further in the game.

Unfortunately, the whole thing scales like a JRPG - you gain the ability to deal double damage, and then enemies get double HP... so while your scores go up, you're not really playing more, or doing anything different at the higher levels.  Eventually I "won" the game - but it didn't really give me much of a sense of accomplishment.  The game certainly has nothing on Puzzle Quest (1), or Clash of Heroes.  Heck, I'd still suggest people play Slydris over this.

FTL

I'm still grinding away through FTL - haven't managed to beat the game yet on normal difficulty, and still have several ships & variations to unlock.  Most of my focus has been on the Rock Cruiser recently, which really needs hive evasion % to survive early encounters.  The biggest pain about the Rock Cruiser though is the all-rock crew.  They are expensive, move slowly, and since you want to move them to offensive / defensive roles all their early nav / weapon / shield experience goes to waste.  Absolutely the hardest ship to play well.

Scoping with Play-Doh

I've been doing a lot of pitch work recently - giving big ideas and high-level overviews of proposed new projects.  It's a fun time in a project because it's incredibly easy in some respects - since the project does not yet exist, it's trivial to make adjustments.

Cutting Features, Adding Features, Feature Creep

Lots of my colleagues speak in terms of "features" for each new game.  Each new feature is geven a cost (in time, effort, and money) and groups of features are added, removed, and traded in these early meetings.  But something about this language hasn't been sitting well with me - because I know from being on the production end that "features" are not modular elements we can manipulate individually - no more than you can simply remove a wall from the side of your house or cut out a middle floor from an office tower.

Instead, I like to think of my project proposals as being built out of Playh-Doh.  The question is "how much do we have?"  And then we simply allocate to fit our requirements.  You can make nearly identical things out of differetn amounts of Play-Doh - the only difference is their scale.  If you can make a castle out of X amount, you can make a smaller castle out of Y.  You don't build half a castle - you build a whole castle which is smaller.

Ruled by Constraints

Of course there are limits to how small you can make things - we call these constraints.  If you have some doll furniture which needs to fit inside your castle, that provides a constraint.  If you need to be able to stand inside it - that's a constraint.  So it's not the case that projects made with less material are identical scaled-down models of larger proposals - but they are still whole-unto-themselves entities.

Considering: FTL

FTL has been in the gaming press the past few weeks, and for good reason - it is excellent. At the core, FTL is a really tight ship simulator. On that framework there is combat, economy, and a few canned events. It's a very limited package, but the laser-like focus and the wonderful interaction between the game's systems make it much more compelling than most spaceship games.

If there are any shortcomings, they have to do with the economic model. The game requires you to buy items / crew / repairs from "stores" scattered throughout the systems. But these stores have only a limited inventory - and therein lies the problem. If you are depending on a particular resource - more missiles, for example, or more drones, or more crew - you can get totally screwed by a poor store selection. This is exacerbated because each store carries only one kind of resource - so if you want drones the drone-store is a goldmine for you, but useless to most other ships. Eventually, most ships have an interest in most items. But initially the scatter of the items for purchase is too wide.

Integrated design elements

The ship simulation is accomplished through tight-knit simulation of seven systems:

• Ships are modeled as a series of rooms connected by doors.
• Crew occupy one space in a room, move at some set speed, and their actions are determined by the room they occupy.  (A crew member in the cockpit is a pilot, etc.)
• Some rooms have a "system" within them, and some do not.
• Each room has an Oxygen level, displayed visually by the color of the room.
• Weapon hits affect a single room - dividing their damage between the hull, systems, and crew.
• Each ship has some number of "power" cells, which may be allocated between systems.
• Some systems (shields, weapons, drones) have sub-elements which divide up the power provided to their parent system.

When you fight another ship (fighting other ships is about 90% of what you'll do in the game) they fire weapons at you - these weapons might hit your shields, or they might hit a room in your ship.  If they hit a room they damage your hull, systems in that room, and any folks in that room.  Some weapons can even cause a breach - creating a hole in the room which quickly sucks out all the oxygen.

If you have a breach it is important to close all the doors around that room, so that most of your ship still has oxygen.  Then again, if a fire is started on your ship you might find that venting all the oxygen out of the room is the fastest & easiest way to put it out.  Now imagine what happens if your "Door" system is damaged such that you can no longer remotely open & close doors - you might be in a situation where you are frantically trying to repair the door system as the oxygen drains out of the room.

And all the meanwhile that enemy ship continues to fire on you, and you continue to fire on it.  If your oxygen system breaks it's not too bad - assuming that you aren't fighting breaches or fires!

The best defense

Initially players of FTL will focus on keeping their own ship alive.  But eventually you realize that you can use your knowledge of the simulation elements to defeat your enemies more rapidly.  You can upgrade your surveillance systems (or use psychic crew members) to see where the crew is working on your opponent's ship - a few firebombs in those systems might send them scrambling, unable to man the weapons.  Boarding actions are very exciting - you can send a crack team into the enemy ship to wreak havoc on their systems even without punching through their shields.  But do they have upgraded security doors that will slow down your assault?

Engine upgrades, pilot skill, and engineering skill all contribute to your ship's evasion chance - by focusing on engine power you can dodge a lot of attacks!  But without a pilot your evasion drops to 0.  This makes attacks on the enemy pilot quite attractive, especially against faster ships.

Power Overwhelming

The final piece of the sim is your power allocation.  This is pretty much the same allocation problem we used in Tie Fighter (or Cybercon III!).  Put all your power into the engines to boost your evasion rate.  Power up shields to prevent damage.  Allocate more power to weapons to keep more turrets firing.  Don't forget to keep power running to your oxygen and med bay!

The really interesting, sensible twist here is that you cannot simply put an arbitrary amount of power into any system - each system is limited by a power cell ranking, which you have to increase as an upgrade.  So you purchase increases to each system's power limit separately from simply increasing the maximum number of power cells you can deploy.  The pricing scheme really encourages you to purchase increased limits before purchasing more power - which ensures that you always have interesting decisions to make regarding power allocation.

These power cell units are ALSO your systems HP - so adding more power capacity to weapon means it is harder for opponents to take out your weapon systems.  It is a wonderfully elegant system.  This also means that when a system is temporarily damaged, you gain unallocated power which can be put elsewhere.  I'll often increase my engine power when my shields or weapons are down.

All in All

Is FTL a great game?  Maybe not.  It has a pretty limited scope, which gives it a very niche appeal.  But it fills that niche very well.  It's a great example of making a compelling game for a limited audience, and not charging an arm and a leg for it.  I think that's exactly the direction developers should be moving in, especially for premium games.

Good breaks, Bad breaks, Bathroom breaks

Good Breaks

Ten years ago "mini-games" was an inescapable term in the industry.  Every major proposal had to include some number of non-standard gameplay elements sprinkled throughout your AAA game design.  Training mini-games in Fight Night, rail-shooter levels in Turok, gambling in Shenmue - mini-games were everywhere.

This always seemed like a poor mandate to me - as if we developers needed to pace out the main game experience because our players were too single-minded to vary their experience on their own.  When playing a game I prefer to set my own pace - and switch to other activities periodically if my attention wanes.  Pausing my latest exploration in FTL to peruse new messages on some forums lets me return to my experience refreshed.

But forcing breaks within the game means that the experience almost always suffers.  If the mandatory break comes when I'm ready for a break then the game has effectively done nothing.  If the mandatory break comes when I still want to focus on the primary activity - then I feel frustration.  This can be mitigated somewhat by ensuring that the breaks are as "good" as possible - that they make sense within the context of the game, that I have some control (or at least warning) about when they will come up (and end!) and that they reinforce the main game rather than detract from it.

Bad Breaks

"Bad" breaks, on the other hand, are always failures regardless of when they come into view.  A bad break makes it difficult for me to return to the main game, because it broke my interest.  Network television commercials are often bad breaks - watching the same shows via internet streaming services has demonstrated that the shows work better without those breaks.  Saturday Night Live was an early innovator in reducing the negative impact of commercial breaks - because some of the commercials were actually just pre-recorded segments of the show.  That keeps the regular commercials more in tune with the show - turns some of the bad breaks into good breaks.

But there is another type of break - it is possible to provide players with a break when they wouldn't take one on their own, but after taking the break they appreciate the respite.  These are very hard to gauge because they often focus on physical factors like fatigue or eye-strain, which don't reliably occur at specific points in the game experience.  But when done well, these breaks provide the "bathroom break effect."

Bathroom Breaks

The great thing about a "bathroom break" is that it is all about removing you from your primary context, and providing you with a secondary, temporary context.  You're not just avoiding one activity - you are actively focused on another, essential, activity.

The trick here is the word "essential".  Inventory tetris isn't essential - neither are Diablo town-trips.  (As evidenced by the amazing "dog" mechanic in Torchlight!)  Perhaps the best example I've seen of a consistently essential activity was in the brutally hard DS game Henry Hatsworth in the puzzling adventure.  This comes close to the dreaded "pat your head & rub your tummy" problem evident in games like The World Ends with You, but it manages to just barely skirt by on charm and integration.

The concept of breaks has faded in the past 3 years, largely because the market has become more focused on bite-sized games instead of huge epic time-sinks.  But I think the lessons of good break design still hold - let your players manage their breaks as much as possible, by providing them with a variety of meaningful break options.

Predictions for the Future of Dead Consoles

I've discussed consoles from time to time - back in April I wrote a post explaining that consoles were well and truly dead as the vanguard of gaming.  Today, anticipating the launch of the WiiU, I thought I'd explain again exactly how consoles died, what it means to be "dead" if there are still lots of console games available, and where we're going in the game industry.

Let's start with a historical recap - game consoles in the 80s and 90s made some money, but not a ton.  There were a few consoles out at any given time, but they didn't compete with one another very much for market share - games tended to succeed or fail based on their own merit.  The investment to make a game was modest, and the possible returns were significant - but not ridiculous.

As console games became more mainstream, the money increased - to the point where Sony and Microsoft decided to get into the console business.  This signaled a major influx of money - and led to a MASSIVE increase in the number of consoles sold worldwide.  Consoles became a really big business, and started butting up against one another for market share.

Then the insanity which was the PS2 happened (Hey, I wrote about that before, too!) and we had a "big winner" scenario, where 70% of the market was dominated by a single console, and a single company.  Big money + big market share = INCREDIBLE amounts of money on the table.  This was really the highlight of the entire console history.

To follow up the PS2, Sony and Microsoft both went huge.  They created machines which were much more powerful, much more expensive, and which required much, much more investment to develop for.  They increased the "standard" price of games from $50 to $60, backed a huge network infrastructure, and created strategic partnerships with other media.  (Blu-Ray vs HD DVD).  Everyone was expecting another big winner, and an ever-increasing revenue model.

But that didn't happen.  Not by a long shot.  Games became so expensive to produce, and required so much investment up front, that many fewer games were released to market.  The average quality didn't really go up, so overall there was LESS money to be made of the games that survived.  Both Microsoft and Sony over-valued their consoles, so sales were sluggish.  Only the Wii, with their disruptive attitude towards technology, made any money.  (And they made a ton!)  Eventually Sony and Microsoft were able to turn things around - through cost reductions, better game support agreements, more open submissions, more digital distribution, and so forth.  But it was hardly the money bonanza investors were anticipating back in the PS2 days.

Into this sluggish console space a new player appeared - smartphones and facebook.  With the iPhone especially, a huge amount of leisure and gaming money started going to iPhone Apps.  99% of game development investments started going towards these new models.  Only 1% has been invested in future console development.  Consumers have not seen the effects of this yet, because games often take a few years to make.  But game development for next-gen consoles is 10% of what it was during a comparable period in the last cycle.  Investors are simply not interested in placing ever-increasing bets on styles of play which are already barely profitable.

We'll still see new consoles, but they can't remain profitable under their old revenue model.  We will see an inexorable move to free-to-play, freemium, streaming, and other alternative models.  It's not clear what advantage consoles have over PCs, tablets, and smartphones when selling to those models - that's very much a wait-and-see scenario.  But I think it's safe to assume that at least 1 or 2 of the new consoles will embrace those models.

More than ever before, I'm glad that my new projects are all outside the console space.  I'll still buy and play console games - but I'm not going to be looking to console development as a way to pay my mortgage for at least a year or two.

Week of Gaming #102 - 9/16/12

My Xbox is still attached to my PC monitor, which has re-enabled console gaming for me after a modest dry spell.  Unfortunately mo work load has been relatively high this week, so it hasn't seen the time investment I would prefer.

Games of note this week:

1 - Transformers: Fall of Cybertron

2 - Dungeons of Dredmor

3 - Marvel Vs. Capcom 2

4 - Slydris

5 - .Slide

.Slide

This little puzzle gem was something I found via reddit - the author was looking for feedback on his first published game, so I checked it out.  For a first effort it has a really clean visual aesthetic, and the puzzles are decent.  There isn't a lot of replay opportunity, but the potential for expansion is present, so we'll see if anything more comes of the game.

Slydris

An unexpected find when I was looking for .Slide (and didn't type in the leading period).  This is a fresh, exciting take on Tetris-style line clearing.  No, really.  It has great achievements, a few nice game modes, and just the right number of special elements (blocks you can't slide, magnets).  I think hard-core action puzzle fans will love chewing through this one - and anyone will at least enjoy playing it.  It has a very "Lumens" style to the gameplay, especially the survival mode.  I always appreciate a game that helps organize my thinking into new patterns, and Slydris absolutely delivers on that.

Marvel vs Capcom 2

There is a new arcade in town, which offers free to play games and monthly membership rates.  The have a dedicated Marvel vs Capcom 2 machine - so I've been making a point of stopping through once a week or so to play.  It's taken a few sessions for the old reflexes to come back, but now I'm crushing the story mode in about 20 minutes.  This is the real arcade machine - so the game needs to be played and finished a few hundred times for all the characters and options to unlock.  I'm very much enjoying my role in that process!  I was disappointed that UMvC3 didn't have any sort of unlock progression, though at the same time I appreciated it.

Dungeons of Dredmor

After months of planning (and a little lucky help from my son) I finally got one of the most elusive achievements in DoD - the "Double Rainbow" which requires that you hit a monster with 14 damage types simultaneously!  The most challenging types to locate are Existential and Asphyxiative damage, two words which have now entered my 9-year-olds lexicon.  (Video games are educational!)  I have more achievements to earn still, but most of them have straight-forward requirements.

Transformers: Fall of Cybertron

My Monday-night co-op group played through all of Transformers: War for Cybertron, and we had a blast doing it.  So it was a natural fit for us to check out the sequel.  The gameplay in FoC is nicely refined and improved overall - the story is still excellent, the fan-service is lavish, but neither gets in the way of the action.  Unfortunately there is no co-op story this time around.  :(

I totally understand why - a co-op story requires that you have 3 or 4 allied characters battling through the story at all time - which means any given player could be missing a lot, and your success or failure will often hinge on things you don't even see.  Without those constraints, the developers can deliver a much more personal action story - covering many more characters.  So I think it was a good decision, and improves the single-player game.

But will I take the time to play through the single-player game? ... I might skip it.

Week of Gaming #99 - 08/26/12

Oh Dungeons of Dredmor... how could I ever have let you go?...

Games of note this week:

1 - Conquest of the Wizardlands

2 - Dungeon Raid

3 - Hero Academy

4 - Marvel vs. Capcom 2

5 - New Super Mario Bros Wii

New Super Mario Bros Wii

We're currently without a TV which accepts HDMI input, so I've been looking to finish off some of my Wii game backlog - NSMBW is one of the obvious places to go.  I don't really enjoy playing it multiplayer, and as a single-player game it really pales in comparison to gems like Super Mario Galaxy 2, or Super Mario 3D Land.  I especially find the toad-rescuing frustrating.  It doesn't seem to stick...

Marvel vs. Capcom 2

I've been spending a few afternoons down at Shoryuken Lounge, and every time I go MvC2 gets a 20-minute workout, at least.  Good, good times...

Hero Academy

The Steam-powered version with the TF2 crew is out - I see some folks playing it online.  I haven't been able to justify the cost yet, but if the paid version proves to have legs I'll seriously consider it.  I love seeing games make the transition between free mobile and premium PC games!

Dungeon Raid

I'm loving the achievements in this game - I am just about to build my favorite character - essentially a Halfling Raider WITHOUT the awful, awful penalty of getting nothing when you match only 3 tiles.  I've had a level 60 character with nearly 100 armor and the "exploding armor" ability... it was glorious.  I'm fascinated by the fact that "spikes" continue to seem like a completely useless upgrade...

Conquest of the Wizardlands (Dungeons of Dredmor)

Oh, DoD... I have more than 600 hours logged in your depths, and you just get better and better.  I've been working to finish the new skill trees in anticipation of expanding my strategy guide.  Vampire Tourists eating wooded crossbow bolts?  Vegan Bankers profiting off the death of animals?  A fedora covered in cheese?  Many things are possible these days...

I watched a video recently of a talk given by DoD's lead engineer - he said that DoD was a product started by another team, and then inherited by Gaslamp.  Gaslamp is about to announce their second project, and I honestly have no idea whether it will be any good or not - was the magic in DoD something they added to a discarded skeleton?  Or did the magic lie in the original team?  I'm so anxious to find out...