The Impossible Game: A great try-before-you-buy experience

Simple mechanics. Shallow learning curve. Frustratingly hard challenges.

The Impossible Game (a 360 Indie Game) is not the kind of game I expected to like. At all. I do like a good challenge, but don't like frustrating/maddening difficulty -- especially when a major source of "challenge" is poor usability of controls and/or game play feedback.

The use of compelling music, simple controls and patterns, instant respawns after failure (with no penalty in terms of loading time or excessive backtracking required) and a great "quicksave" option meant that I was quickly hooked and converted.

The game inspired me to keep taking on more and more difficult challenges in a way that few other games have done. A couple of the games I reviewed for the IGF competition shared similar characteristics -- they embraced player failure and made it a feature of the game. Failure was treated as a learning and teaching opportunity, not as a punishment that left me wanting to quit.

I highly recommend checking out the trial mode for yourself.

It was the best of gaming, it was the worst of gaming...

Mild Spoiler Alert if you haven't finished Mass Effect 2.

So, I played through my favorite segment of the game so far. It felt like a send-up to Left 4 Dead in terms of both game play and use of music to heighten the suspense (especially those discordant notes used to signal the approach of big baddies).

It left me wondering whether ME3 will have co-op -- because I definitely wanted to play this mission co-op style. It also left me even more anxious to finish up the game so I can try out Borderlands (co-op shooter RPG).

It wasn't until near the end of the mission that I realized what a huge and colossal mistake I had made. I shouldn't have been there in the first place...

Let me step back. Having played many Bioware games before (and other RPGs that use the same plot progression devices) I knew that I shouldn't do one specific plot-progression mission before I had completed all of the optional side quest missions.

I thought *cough* that I was launching a side quest, but didn't realize until much later that I had erroneously selected the mission right beside the optional side quest (an issue with the Galaxy Map where the pop up text from the different worlds tend to overlap). If it had been another optional side quest it wouldn't have been that big a deal.

However, it was a big deal because it progressed me in the story before I was ready to move on. Yes, I could have reloaded an old save game once I realized the error. But what a kludge.

I also experienced a similar issue when I completed the mission and then mistakenly launched the next plot progression mission by doing something I did all the time: Access the Galaxy Map. There was no "are you SURE you want to progress? or would you rather tie up loose ends?" prompt. Just throw me into the pipeline and leave me frustrated enough to reboot the game and restart at a prior save.

The obvious fix: Don't allow the player to make a major plot-progression choice (that will shut off other interesting optional content) without specifically prompting them. Bioware games generally do a good job of this, and ME2 in specific mostly did a great job of this.

Although it's a huge shame that this kind of user experience SNAFU occurred during a major plot point in the game, I'm still quite enjoying ME2 and would probably spend even more time with it if my queue wasn't so backlogged with other titles I'm looking forward to.

Febru-what? Where did January go?

Quick post, more to follow. Just need to jot down a few thoughts so that I have a writing agenda over the next few days.

• I was accepted to speak at the Triangle Game Conference in April. I'm super excited about this, especially since I'm moving east to Baltimore. I need to get connected to the east coast game dev and publishing community. Also, the TGC has a nice mix of entertainment and serious games folks. I figure being located near DC and Virginia means that I should expand my practice accordingly.
• I wrapped up my voting for the IGF competition and look forward to seeing who wins. I believe I'm under embargo from commenting on the games I reviewed publicly, but I'll share some thoughts when the winners were announced.
• I have a pile of 2-3 articles I read recently that I'd like to comment on. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have no good way to track/remember print articles I read anymore. I figure jotting down some notes about them will help me in this regard.
• Liza is playing a really cool game called: Dr. Something or Other (she can't remember the name right now). I started playing with her and I look forward to playing more and writing about it.
• I finished the single player campaign for Dragon Age Origins and Modern Warfare 2. I thoroughly enjoyed both games for much different reasons.
• I was also checking out Match Defense: Toy Soldiers (a Facebook game developed locally) and have some thoughts on it.
• I'm about to check out Bioshock 2 in between packing boxes and doing some build reviews for clients. Of course, there's still AC2, Borderlands, God of War 3, and Mass Effect 2 waiting for me on the other end of the move. March is going to be super busy work and game-wise.

I'm super looking forward to our move next week. The house we put an offer in on goes to inspection on Friday and if that goes well then we should be in a new place the first week of March.

EDIT: We're in Maryland now. I've got a bunch of client work scheduled for the month and I'm falling ever further behind in my queue.

• Darksiders
• Demon's Souls
• Heavy Rain

New Year: New Update. Shadow Complex, Wagons East, Dog-eared Magazine Pages, To Do List

No excuses, just no posts in the past month. I'll just jump right in and get going.

Games on my "need to play" list right now:

• Mass Effect 2
• Assassin's Creed 2
• Borderlands

Of course, while I was lamenting the fact that I'll have little time for serious gaming over the next few weeks (details below) I decided to procrastinate by picking up Shadow Complex on XBLA. It turned out to be a great choice for a variety of reasons:

• The demo was great, if a little short. It quickly got me engaged in the game and sucked me into the story. 
• I found the controls to be pretty intuitive and really only had problems when I had multiple special items (grenades, foam, rockets, hook) to choose from. Thankfully the game seemed calibrated for this fact (suboptimal equipment switch) and really only required quick switching during one boss encounter.
• I loved how the game approached "learn to play" tutorials. First, for the "must play all tutorials player" you could optionally choose to do some reasonably engaging tutorials. Each tutorial unit was short and units built on top of one another. You could quit at any point and start the campaign. Second, each time you got introduced to a new piece of equipment you were given the *option* of hitting the back button to read more about the equipment specs. The option text persisted on-screen (noticeable, but unobtrusive) so you could play around with the equipment first and even skip the "read the billboard" part if you wanted to. Third, tutorials were followed by challenges (completing tutorials unlocked the challenges). Challenges ramped up in difficulty and were tied into achievements in a sensible way. Finally, each time you started the game (after leaving) you were given the option to go to the "proving grounds" (tutorial) as a secondary option to continuing your campaign. The game recognized that some (many?) people tend to play in bite-sized chunks and this is a great way to offer a non-compulsory reminder to players who may have been away from the game for a while.
• I also loved how the game incentivized hard core players by allowing them to stack the deck against themselves (go for a speed run; try to finish the game without completely powering up your character) but remained reasonably accessible to less hardcore players by letting you power up your character through additional exploration. I wasn't as interested in trying to play "tactical combat" against enemies and was glad that I got to level up my weapons to the extent that I could blow them all away with one shot. Moreover, the one shot deaths were supremely entertaining in terms of visceral feel and comedic value.
• There was a nice incorporation of "social" beyond simple leaderboards. Kind of like Trials HD, this game showed you how you compared against your friends on various achievement-based stats. Bubble up stats would display when you increased a few key stat counters that would show how your stats compared against your friends'. Pretty cool.
• The level of polish was quite high in terms of game play and cinematics. I actually quite enjoyed the short cut-scenes (they looked great and I'm a sucker for Nolan North after the Uncharted games). But what really caught my attention was how good it felt to engage in melee combat and how fun the final rifle upgrade felt. The team clearly worked hard on combining sound, rumble, and visuals to make combat viscerally satisfying. Melee takedowns were fun to execute and over-the-top. Ranged kills were entertaining in various ways (people screaming and falling off of things). And, as your powers increased, the physics were hammed up to comic (but immensely satisfying) levels. My wife and I shared many laughs as I mowed through my helpless enemies.
• The game embraced humor through both story and game play. The writing and voice acting was entertaining (especially some of the main character's grunts and shouts -- it actually reduced the pain and frustration of getting foamed to hear him say "what the Fuh?"; and the NPC chatter was also quite good). More importantly, moment-to-moment game play supported the game's humor (e.g., the over-the-top violence and humorous death squeals and animations; the "whoah I'm out of control" exit from speed-dash).

Were there issues? Of course. But they ended up being fairly minor for the most part.

• Aiming at Z axis enemies. I never quite got this right, but the game was balanced such that I didn't really have to care. I got so powerful that even if I was only half as accurate when I aimed at Z axis enemies, I survived just fine and didn't feel all that frustrated. The designers recognized that this game was a platformer and not a shooter at heart, so instead of over-solving the aiming issue they decided to de-emphasize accuracy as an important component to success in combat situations.
• They encourage me to be completionist without giving me a chance to do so without going to GameFaqs.com. This complaint is similar to the issue I raised with Batman: Arkham Asylum. I loved how the game had maps that showed me explored vs. unexplored areas and included "?" icons for areas that contained secrets. However, some of the secrets have been impossible to find -- and I'm not blocked by game play (I've obtained all gear) but by a poorly executed section of the map that I've scoured for long periods of time without having any idea where the secret item can be found. It's frustrating because it makes the game feel broken -- especially when the "completionist" achievement only rewards 100% completion without smaller rewards along the way for folks who want to get "most" but can't quite get all of them.

OK. Quick change of gears. After several months of thinking about it, my wife and I are packing up and moving east. To Baltimore. I've lived there before and it's MUCH closer to our families that Seattle. My hope is to start carving out a niche for myself on the east coast and midwest and reduce the amount of coast-to-coast travel that I do. We're super excited -- and I'll try not to use the whole "we're busy packing, moving, trying to buy a house, etc" wag of excuses for not keeping current with my blog.

And another thing... As part of the cleaning up and packing I managed to discover several Game Developer and Casual Connect magazines that I had dog-eared pages on. I have no good solution for archiving information that I find interesting at time A in a way that I can browse, search, or otherwise discover at Time B. This goes for both digital and non-digital content. The digital part is more embarrassing (I stopped trying to solve this thing by being thwarted by every bookmarking applet/browser function I've ever tried) than the analog part, but I still do consume analog information and would like to keep a record of findings somehow or other.

My less than ideal solution (for now): Adding some comments about what I read in a blog post. It sucks that I can't link to the original (Game Developer does have an online version, but it's a paid subscription; Casual Connect does not have an online version) but I guess folks can dig these articles up if they want to read the source material.

That's all for now (comments re: dog-eared articles will follow in a later post).

Oh: I also cast my AIAS ballot for the various "GOTY" categories and need to schedule some play time with the finalists for the IGF competition (I'm one of the many judges).

It feels good to write again.

Sometimes geolocation can suck

So normally I love the way that software applications incorporate geolocating tech. Google Maps seem to work better when they know where I am, the iPhone has several apps that provide great experiences because take into account my location (well, my wife’s location).

However, there are some edge case scenarios when geolocation can be a pain in the ass. I’m in Canada this weekend visiting family and I’ve been hosed twice because of the fact that my computer is hooked up to a Canadian run internet service provider.

Case #1: Trying to purchase a game on Steam. I tried to purchase the full version of Everyday Genius: SquareLogic after playing through the demo. Nope. Steam provided me with an error message “credit card holder address not the same country as current location”. I then had a typical Steam user experience when trying to trouble shoot: Figure out where to go on the web, create a new account for customer service purposes (no, my Steam login wasn’t enough – I needed to create a completely new account), be solicited through this account for my credit card information, and then finally 2 days later sent a new link to try in order to complete the purchase. I almost backed out and purchased the game off of the Mumbo Jumbo site using Paypal but decided to hold off as I really didn’t want to sign up for yet another ecommerce site.

I get that software developers and publishers have complex relationships with digital content providers like Steam. But this doesn’t have to translate into a frustrating user experience. There have to be more graceful ways to handle the purchase request of a loyal customer than “find forums, create new account, wait for email response”.

Case #2: Google search. My wife and I are currently researching home ownership and I had a few questions about closing costs that I wanted to research. Of course, all of my search results for “closing costs” were links to Canadian content sites. Close, but no cigar.

I’m sure if I did more research and futzed with my settings I could have tricked Google into giving me the standard search I wanted. But, again, why make it so hard for me? I am constantly logged into Google (gmail, blogger) and it should recognize that I’m traveling and might need access to my default Google experience, not the Canadian version.

Truth be told, Google’s contextualization of my search based on geolocation was a plus and minus this trip. It was very nice to use Google Maps on the wi-fi enabled MegaBus (Buffalo to Toronto) to help me triangulate my location by typing in the names of the various landmarks we passed.