Ready Player Book Report

What if the real world sucked? Sucked so hard that no one lived in it. Everyone dons a visor and special gloves and is whisked away into an OASIS that started as the most elaborate MMO ever made and became some sort of super realistic version of Second Life. When we’re not the only ones fighting we fight to get there first.

Wade Watts is your typical unpopular, overweight, and poor protagonist with a wonderfully alliterative name. Wade’s character is pretty two dimensional, he’s obsessed with a game wide contest that mostly resembles Willy Wonka’s (I see what you did there) search for an heir and escaping whatever analog life he has. We learn through his routine that the world is in disarray; there are mobile homes stacked on top of each other in future slums, everything worthwhile seems to be done in an online environment, and he’s stupidly obsessed with the 80’s.

The universe setup in this novel is extremely well done and thought out. The actions of the few real world characters convey the dire state of the economy and values of the common man. Almost half of the story is world crafting and Wade’s quest through the first stage of the contest, and I was satisfied with where everything is going. At one point I was pretty convinced this will be a movie. Then the second half of the book happened. Deus Ex Machina is a literary term you remember from High School English class that involves the writer using some sort of divine intervention to explain themselves out of a corner, it translates to “God from machine” for crying out loud. This is Deus Ex Machina the book. Almost every problem presented is explained away within a few pages of its introduction, aside from some clever foreshadowing that involves arcades and quarters that made me grin when I figured it out before the resolution.

I mentioned the 80’s earlier. I was born in the 80’s and remember a bunch of these references, but there is a line. It’s obvious that there was a mountain of research done to cross check facts and relevancies but all of that knowledge is presented in lists. The references were fun at first; the first page of the story quotes Bill Murray in Ghostbusters! There are several witty “stealth” references that escape over exposition (the Bill and Ted phone booth) but they’re few and far between. So what started as cheeky Psych-like jabs turned into chunks of text you could probably skip and miss nothing. George R. R. Martin loves lemon cakes and capons; Ernest Cline loves the 80’s. This is overkill in the highest order.

I hate to see a promising story turn so hard downhill at the midpoint. The only reason I kept reading was from the interest in the world that took place outside of OASIS, and seemingly like its inhabitants we leave it behind once the video game truly begins. The central ideas are solid, and I wanted to like it; but in the end I can’t really recommend Ready Player One to anyone.

Goddesses Are Greedy

It’s been a couple of weeks since I said anything about one game in particular. You could say that maybe I’ve developed a mildish case of Attention Deficit Disorder in my later years and some generous soul created a handheld game that even I can play! Today we fight for about 30 seconds!

Half Minute Hero’s Hero 30 starts out pretty standardly: you are a youth with spikey blonde hair who might have to save the world…until a 30 second timer appears on the top of the screen, runs out and the world ends. Out of nowhere the Time Goddess shows up and tells you that she can reset time with little effort and will help you in your quest, as long as you pay her increasing rates she’ll refrain from letting the universe collapse on itself. Evil Lord 30 has you taking the role of one of the many stage bosses from Hero 30 who’s searching to turn is beautiful (she’s the only creation more attractive than he) girlfriend back into a human from a curse that made her a bat. Princess 30 has a young girl leave her castle while being carried by soldiers to collect something and return before her 30 curfew is up. Finally, Knight 30 involves a valiant soldier protecting a sage in 30 second escort missions. There are plenty of different game modes to mess around with while the meat of game in Hero 30, which is the most realized of the lot.  I’d recommend skipping around rather than binging each mode to keep it fresh.

Hero 30 is a total blast to experience with a copious amount of self aware dialog, secrets, titles, and hidden paths throughout the campaign. The graphics are some kind of pixelated awesome from a time before we were over saturated with them in indies. There’s the option to go back and play previous missions (but you can’t bring equipment from later, cause you know…logical time lines in video games) and roll through the random battle that play out like early Y’s bumper car matches. Time stops when you enter a village to let you purchase life restoring items, equipment, and time extensions. This portion of the game knows exactly what it is and does what it needs to do, you couldn’t ask any more from it.

Evil Lord 30 is an interesting rock/paper/scissors RTS styled attempt. You summon monsters to do your bidding which usually consists of defeat all enemies or destroy statues. The minions you summon come in three varieties of strong, fast, and ranged mapped to a different button: strong beats fast, fast beats ranged, and ranged beats strong. The Time Goddess is back, she’ll take all of the money you’ve picked on the current level to return the clock to 30 seconds. There are no experience levels, titles to collect, or alternate paths and it really hurts the replay value in and otherwise fun to play mode.

I’ll get this out of the way; Princess 30 is the worst of the bunch. The story is cute; she’s trying to help her kingdom by retrieving essential items that seem to be only a short trip outside the castle while wielding her magical cross bow that changes her personality. It plays like a shmup, and I’m a huge scrolling shooter fan; it’s just a not a very compelling design. There seems to be more of an emphasis on moving into time extending zones and dodging trees than shooting things. 30 soldiers carry our princess on a litter and fall out when you take damage affecting her traveling speed; naturally you have 30 seconds to complete your task so each servant is crucial. Once again, there are no bonuses or reason to replay any of these stages at all; this may be a blessing in this case.

You must protect the Sage in Knight 30 while he casts a 30 second spell. It’s pretty much a glorified (30) escort quests. Pick the Sage up and move him around, set traps to thwart enemies, and body slam your way to saving the world one chanted spell at a time. This set of levels in the game is fairly forgettable compared to the greatness of Hero 30, the difference of Evil Lord 30, and the offensiveness of Princess 30; as expected by now there’s no need to try and remember by playing it later.

I loved the time I spent with Hero 30 (and later Hero 300 and Hero 3). The entire experience is crafted in self aware humor that takes jabs at convention. It was obvious that a ton of time went into the planning and production (the concept art alone is awesome to see before the bosses were pixelized) to make the game wonderful. I just wish the same care could have been put into the other modes, or they should have been cut entirely to flesh out the Hero campaign even further. The game has had two re-releases on Xbox Live Arcade and Steam that I've never played that have needlessly updated the graphics and focus primarily on the main Hero levels. A sequel was released in Japan in 2011, but it never left the country; I know PSP games aren't region locked, but it’s a franchise that definitely benefits from the witty Western localization. I encourage anyone to pick some form of this title up, you won’t be disappointed with most of it!

It Hurts Your Wallet

There have been too many complaints lately about the cost of gaming. It’s understandable that someone would have reservations any time the numerical price of their hobby goes up, but after so many years at a fixed price it’s kind of hard to argue in favor of the consumer. The days where a new AAA Playstation title was $40 are well behind us, although the costs of developing a game have skyrocketed while buying the damn things has never been cheaper. Today we fight the economy.

As a gamer I can understand how shelling out a higher number of Dollars every year for a new game can seem like you’re getting a raw deal, but you have to consider cost. This is a world where a game (Homefront by THQ) can sell over a million copies and be deemed a failure that almost bankrupts a company. In some cases maybe the game is just bad or the amount of money spent on it was too much to recover. When Tomb Raider was released earlier this year it sold over 3.4 million copies, was the second best selling game in the month of March, and was loved by critics; it was deemed a commercial failure. No wonder Square-Enix keeps rehashing Final Fantasy titles, they seem to make money no matter what. The accountants at these companies need to get their act together with better projections or at least more realistic sales figures. The end user isn’t to blame for poor money handling, but in the end it will affect the price we pay to cover previous losses.

Another argument can be made about the devaluation of the games market in general. We have Steam sales and used game stores all across the country that tends to coax the mental aspect of game purchasing. Every season Steam has huge multi week sales where they sell off digital versions of well known games at “so crazy you have to buy!” prices, we’re talking up to 90% off in some cases. In the world of PC games this is a godsend to the gamers who would rather wait a few months to nab a $60 at $30 instead. Going back to the second paragraph, hopefully those company accountants projected higher volume to make up for a lower price. While physical games are your property to with what you please, used game sales do hurt the industry. None of the money you spend goes back to the machine of publisher and developers that created it. GameStop pushes trade ins and pre owned sales as they are almost completely profit on their end, any situation where you can purchase new stock at a reduced price with your current stock is a total win…it’s like trading someone a quarter for a dollar. In the end the consumer pays a slightly lower price (did you notice that gap has gotten smaller too?), but all of the profits are kept in house. Some of that Xbox ONE DRM is starting to make a little more sense, although they went about the wrong way in every aspect.

Lastly, let’s talk inflation. Everyone should know that money from years ago is worth more than it is today. Costs of living have gone up, the dollar has gone down, and Congress can’t really figure out what to do with itself. The NES came out in 1985 and a new game cart was (for simplicity’s sake) $50, that’s $108.51 in today’s money. Yeah, that’s your wireless bill. The $40 Playstation games mentioned earlier in 1999 would equal $56.06 today at a much lower cost of creation. Cartridge games with a save function are the biggest shocks with Chrono Trigger (SNES) and Phantasy Star IV (GEN) released at $80+ in 1995 which is $122.57 today! With the price of software being so static over the last decade there’s no wonder the psychological conditioning has people complaining about $60 games today. Inflation seems to be increasing at an exponential rate and that’s bad for everybody.

There has never been a better time to be gamer. There are so many options when it comes to purchasing what is wanted at a reasonable rate compared to yesteryear. Support the studios you want to keep in business, but still only pay what you think is the right price for what you want. Capitalism, your money is your vote. 

(All inflation data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.)

Nostalgia Bombs

Why is it that developers seem to be trying to cash in on my love for the games of my childhood? Is it easier to make a game like this? Is this because development teams are getting smaller? Why do I keep giving them money? Tonight we fight our memories.

If you look through game online game catalogs nowadays, you see a ton of games that invoke the style of yesteryear. It’s cool to see pixels around still as they definitely age better than three dimensional graphics from the same period; you show someone Super Metroid next to Star Fox and Samus will win every time. What makes this even better is when someone takes dead mainstream genres and modernizes them like Super Meatboy with precision platforming or Jamestown with old shumps. Each release potentially exposes someone to what gaming used to be, keeping in mind 12 year olds are younger than the Playstation 2 at this point.

So nostalgia can be great! But what about when keeping it old school goes wrong? Rabid fanboys (and girls) hurt the community. We've all been annoyed by them, Sega vs. Nintendo and Crash Bandicoot vs. Kameo; the majority of us could care less. It’s interesting how these scenarios mirror real life, I like to imagine a Sonic vs. Mario filibuster on Capitol Hill.

On another hand, how many times have you gone back to a game that just wasn't as good as you remember it? Sometimes it’s as simple as the version you know and love was terribly localized (Barf!) or poorly ported (anything Neo Geo) from another source. Seriously, go back and play an RPG (Legend of Dragoon) from the PSone era and try to follow every facet of the story while reading the wiki afterward. I guarantee you missed a few things. Badly designed games that got popular are a reality as well; everybody has a bad game (heh…Boogerman) they played the hell out of without knowing better.

I’m getting old. In gamer years I’m practically ancient. It’s probably due to the fact that these “retro” gaming developers are my age and played the same games I did. In the next few years we’ll see independent projects that resemble later systems; A Hat in Time is already happening for 3D platforming…I wonder when we’ll see “Harkens back to the days of Call of Duty!”

We should tread carefully when it comes to our pasts. Do yourself a favor and don’t download Final Fantasy 7 from Steam (keep the memory pristine), install Rogue Legacy instead. Make some new memories with retro inspired games!

A Six Hour History Lesson

If you have an evening or two to kill and have a history of playing various Role Playing Games, you should probably give Evoland a shot. It’s a simple concept that started as a flash game that ended up being green lit for mass consumption of its target audience. You begin with the ability to walk to the right and build an entire adventure from there. Let’s fight through the ages.

In the beginning there was green scale. And only green scale. The lucky were able to walk in only the cardinal directions of up, down, left, and right. Inventions aren’t dreamt up by the gifted, they are found in treasure chests left by the programmer gods. The world changes upon opening these boxes. Sound came into being followed shortly by color.

In the first area you are fighting simple monsters in the old school Zelda style, and until you unlock the privilege of having heart containers don’t get hit or you’ll have to start over. It’s really not an issue because you unlock things so quickly you may not even be used to the last change. After you leave the forest you go to the world map and fight in SNES Final Fantasy style (complete with obnoxious encounter rate), and later unlock experience points. After the creation of forced dialog options and finding the companion character, you quickly run through a dungeon for each play style that’s been introduced so far.

This is where the game introduces the third dimension and turns into a love letter to Final Fantasy 7. Sometime when I run out of ideas I’ll post what I think of that game. The pre rendered backgrounds, airship, and main plot points mirror FF7. Final Fantasy worship aside, there are a couple of areas where you have to switch between 2D and 3D to solve puzzles. These puzzles are easily the best part of the game. Hitting crystals swaps between dimensions to let you bypass certain areas and change the environment to progress. 

Then there’s a tacked on Diablo dungeon thrown in there, it’s not terribly realized.

In the endgame you’re given an airship (that looks a lot like the Highwind) and the world is opened up. There are even a couple optional dungeons and side quests. If you like collecting things there are treasure chests littered throughout the game filled with stars that have no use and character cards used in the Double Twin (Triple Triad…get it?!) to artificially pad out the already short game time. When you’re ready to face the final boss it’s done like an action game, kind of a departure from the RPG theme throughout the rest of the game.

This is one of those indie titles that you have a good time for the duration, but afterwards you have the “Yep, that was a game.” feeling. I’d recommend people play it they have some extra time and maybe find the game at a discount. It would really be something to see some sort of epic told in this fashion to create a complete product instead of being just a novelty.