61 Frames Per Second : god of war

In Defense of the QTE: Ninja Blade

John Constantine — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 23:00:00 GMT

Now that the man’s winding down his career, let us honor Yu Suzuki for his most important contribution to game design: the QTE. Hey now. I can hear you rolling your eyes. We might be sick of pressing the X button every single time Crystal Dynamics wants Lara Croft to kick a tiger with style, but the quick time event provides us with some of videogames’ most satisfying thrills. They aren’t inherently bad. They’re just implemented very, very poorly. This week, you’ll be able to walk out into the world and pick up a copy of From Software’s Ninja Blade. Hell, you can go home right now and download a demo of Ninja Blade just to have a taste. One level is all you need to exemplify just how good quick time events can be in a game.

Here’s why.

First, a definition. In God of War’s wake, “quick time event” has transformed from a noun into a sort of critics’ short hand. It’s a blanket term to describe when, in a game where you have direct control of a character, the normal control is taken away and you watch a unique or atypical animation. While the animation plays, you must press a specific button as prompted on the screen. If you don’t, you’ll have to replay the sequence. Now, there are many parts of modern games that can be described this way and not all of them are quick time events. For example, in action games like MadWorld and Yakuza 2, you’re prompted with special inputs — press X next to a car, swing the Wiimote down — to finish off enemies. The most colorful finishing moves have you stringing these inputs together. These are not quick time events. They’re contextual actions. A quick time event is a choreographed, dramatic sequence where prompts imitate an action that you do not have direct control over. Resident Evil 4 has some classic examples. You, the player, steer Leon to the top of a hill and move forward. The game then shifts the camera to a group of enemies on a cliff above you. They push a boulder off said cliff that chases you and to escape you repeatedly press a button, which keeps Leon running. That button has nothing to do with movement during regular play. If you don’t press it here, the game ends. That’s a quick time event. They can, and have, enrich games with emotionally charged moments the game wouldn’t have otherwise.

The chief argument against quick time events is that they pull you out of a game by stripping away control, if only partially. They’re gaudy cheats to mask the passive storytelling devices of film instead of relying on a game’s interactivity to inform its drama and incident. It’s a valid argument against bad quick time events. The most recent games starring the aforementioned Lara Croft, particularly Tomb Raider Legend, have terrible quick time events made up of sixty second cinematics halved by a single, easy to miss button press. When implemented well, though, a quick time event is anything but a mask for inactive game sequences, as in Quantic Dream’s Indigo Prophecy. The game allows you limited sequences of full character control, relying on quick time events with inputs that imply the action to make up most of the play. Lucas Kane is running from police officers and needs to dodge left so you’re prompted to press both analog sticks in that direction. You aren’t moving Lucas, but the movement of both sticks translates as urgency, and agency, for you. These QTEs are fast to match the pace of the game and end up making for affecting play because of their speed and mimicry of the action. That’s the key to QTE success; tying your input as close to possible to dramatic actions that are impossible to depict, or make interactive, in the game itself.

Ninja Blade’s first level is about half quick time events and they are incredible spectacles. The level ends with a fight against a giant, grotesque spider on top of a skyscraper. The first part of the fight is familiar three-dimensional action; you move around with the level analog stick and press X, Y, and B buttons on the Xbox 360 controller to slice and stab with a sword. The second part, after whittling down the spider’s defenses, has you riding the spider up a skyscraper before riding a wrecking ball across the night sky, and then crushing the spider with it. There isn’t a way in games to make this one-hundred percent interactive and retain its presentation. Not yet at least. So sequence is a quick time event, and through a mixture of rumble in the control, speed of button prompts, and inputs that approximate other actions in the normal game, it’s completely engaging.

Like I said, QTEs don’t damn a game. They’re just another tool. Quality depends on the craftsmen.

Related links:

Love-Hate: In Defense of the Cutscene
Overpowering the Flavor: Cooking Mama World Kitchen and Cutscene Clutter
Whatcha Playing: Weight of the Stone
Sonic Unleased: Worse Than Syphilis
Sega's Yu Suzuki Steps Down
Where is Yu Suzuki?

Trailer Review: Dante’s Inferno is Looking Even More… Something

John Constantine — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 01:00:00 GMT

I just don’t know about you, Dante’s Inferno. You sort of have a God of War thing going on. Even more than you did back in December. That’s a cool scythe with its blade on a chain you get there. Looks like the sorta thing you can have a good action-y time with. That giant monster boss covered with barnacles? I don’t remember any God of War bosses having barnacles. Yours are hell barnacles, too!

I don’t want to pry, Dante’s Inferno. You’ve clearly got some things you’re working through. But I wouldn’t be your friend if I didn’t ask what was up with the pink monsters with tube socks full of teeth for heads.

You’ve got a few of them in here and it’s concerning. Are those tooth-tubesock dudes on loan from Brutal Legend until you get something else? The guy I’m talking about is in the picture up there. It’s cool, you can tell me.

That’s enough glibness for today, I think. I’m really not sure what to make of Dante’s Inferno. Is it just going to be a giant brawler? An adventure game? Castlevania 3D before Iga tries it again? Who knows. Dead Space just looked like a Resident Evil 4 clone, and EA Redwood Shores proved just how awesome that could be. Time will tell.

Previous Trailer Reviews:

Machinarium
Mightier
Demon’s Souls
Final Fantasy XIII Looks Disturbingly Interesting
Priston Tale II: The 2nd Enigma
King of the Fighters XII
Edge
Dante's Inferno
Star Wars: The Old Republic
Resident Evil 5

Brawler Theory

Cole Stryker — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 22:00:00 GMT

We've come a long way since TMNT II, folks. You might not think that brawlers are the most cerebral of genres, but there's a surprising amount of theory that goes into the creation of games that allow players to do little more than smack NPC's around.

Gamasutra has posted an interview with Creative Director Tom Smith from THQ, who discusses different beat-em-ups, and how they managed to occupy specific niches within the genre. Here he talks about attack groups:

Prince of Persia and Ninja Gaiden both keep enemies in a single group, with one enemy breaking from the group to make a single attack. This works well with smaller groups, but for our game, we want over a dozen enemies at once, so we need to spread them out more if we're going to fit everyone.
Mark of Kri and Genji felt a bit artificial, because one enemy from the group would call the player character out for multiple attacks while the others watched. Genji could at least argue that the pattern fit the dueling style of the game. I did like the surprise attacks that Mark of Kri added from the far group-it made those distant enemies much more meaningful. The player has to keep half an eye on the outer ring at all times.
But overall, God of War and Heavenly Sword had the best feel. Having multiple enemies near you keeps things on edge and makes it harder for the player to tell what to expect next-which was reassuring, since that was the basic direction we were already considering.

I never really gave it any thought! He also throws in a nugget of weird human psychology:

God of War: Enemies in the far group just stand around and look relatively uninvolved. But they're zombies, so it looks OK. (Personally, I believe the popularity of zombie-killing games is partially fuelled by the lower AI expectations-they're supposed to be mindless, so game development is easier. That, and zombies are the only thing as fun to kill as Nazis.)

So, zombies are an easy way for developers to slack off a bit when it comes to programming peripheral enemies. Sneaky.

There are six more pages of crunchy design theory. Go read it!

Related Links:

Trailer Review: Golden Axe

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Trailer Review: Golden Axe

John Constantine — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 21:00:00 GMT

In the grand pantheon of beat-em-ups, brawlers, hack-and-slashers, kiss-your-mother-with-that-mouth-ya-jerk, dick-punching games, Golden Axe is a middleweight. Hell, it started as a welterweight in 1989. The fantasy setting, magic powers, and ride-able dragons and chicken-salamanders were novel, certainly, but how could it compete with Final Fight, a game that let you be a pro-wrestling mayor who compulsively took off his clothing? How could its triumphant trio of sword-guy-in-underpants, little person, and Red Sonja-cosplayer compete with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Golden Axe was plain outclassed for its first couple of games. That is, until arcade-only sequel Death Adder’s Revenge came out, a game so gorgeous, strange, and playable that it stands as the best beat ‘em up ever made outside of Capcom and Konami (yeah, that’s right. It’s better than Streets of Rage. All of them.) Right when the series started showing its mettle, it all but disappeared. Death Adder’s Revenge’s legacy lived on in a cruddy Genesis sequel, a Saturn fighting game, and a bizarro PS2 remake of the series debut. Until now! Yes, the new Golden Axe that Sega first showed way back at E3 2006 is finally coming out and, as you can see from this trailer, it’s got a case of the browns. Golden Axe: Beast Rider looks competent for a modern beat ‘em up; not quite a God of War or Devil May Cry, but at least on par with Conan or Heavenly Sword (though more brazenly cheesecake than either.) Returning Red Sonja-cosplayer-protagonist Tyris Flare actually appears to be wearing more clothing than she used to, but not much, and her vocabulary has been greatly expanded. The biggest problem here? No multiplayer. Golden Axe’s best selling point, stripped right out.

I’m actually kind of excited about this game. It looks like readymade Up All Night fare.

Related links:

A Perfectly Cromulent Beat-Em-Up

Previous Trailer Reviews:

House of the Dead: Overkill
Riz-Zoawd
Idolm@ster PSP
The Last Guy
Tecmo Bowl: Kickoff
Captain Rainbow
The Past and Future With Mega Man 9 and Chrono Trigger DS
Densetsu no Stafi 5
Sonic Unleashed
Infinite Undiscovery
Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood
Street Fighter 4
The Conduit
Mirror’s Edge

LittleBigPre-Order Confusion

Derrick Sanskrit — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 18:00:00 GMT

It's almost hard to believe that after all we've seen of Media Molecule's LittleBigPlanet in the past seventeen months, the game still isn't out yet. Sony saw fit to make these last two months of waiting even more difficult last week when they unveiled a number of incentive goodies for LBP pre-orders: a guide to the game's massive creation tools, a book of stickers from the game, a Sackboy burlap pouch to hold your game case (shown at right), and downloadable costumes to transform your Sackboy into either of Sony's favorite scantily clad barbarians, Nariko from Heavenly Sword and Kratos from God of War. The fan community's reaction was expectedly positive to the power of outrageous. What most didn't realize, however, was that each pre-order would only receive one of these gifts, and which one depends on where they place their order.

As explained on the official LBP blog this week, those who preorder from Amazon will receive the creation guide and those who preorder from Gamestop will receive the exclusive downloadable Kratos costume. Though many fans have requested a "special edition" of the game that includes all of the bonuses, reps from Media Molecule have said there are no such plans. Still no word on where one would need to pre-order to receive the sticker book, burlap pouch, or Nariko costume, nor if any of these will be made available seperately after the game's release, but producing this many store exclusives is bound to only upset fans, much like the recent Smashing Pumpkins album "Zeitgeist" (which featured a different bonus track for each Best Buy, Target, and iTunes and then another bonus track for the Best Buy reissue). Also like "Zeitgeist," this move reeks of desperation to attract buyers to a third-place console.

Worse still, recent reports have indicated that LBP will not support music or graphics from the PS3 hard drive, requiring instead that all user-generated graphics be captured with the PSEye peripheral. Though this is as yet unconfirmed by Media Molecule or Sony, such a decision would cripple the creative element of the game that seems to be its entire focus. Say goodbye to those gorgeous stickers of zombie Schwarzenegger you Photoshopped last night and your Pink Floyd collection, say hello to poorly lit webcam photos of your cat and the same Go! Team song over and over again. I'm still looking forward to this game, but I really hope this last part about user-generated content on the hard drive is wrong. I gots to have my zombie Ahnolds.

Related articles:
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Alternate Soundtrack: The Go! Team vs. Super Street Fighter 2

E3 Day One: Microsoft, Sony, Final Fantasy, and For Whom the Bell Tolls

John Constantine — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 23:00:00 GMT

There was a very brief period of crossover time, between 2002 and 2006, when E3 was still a gargantuan, money-wasting event and high-speed internet access was ubiquitous. During these years, gamers across the English speaking world regularly crashed websites following videocasts and liveblogs of press conferences as the biggest game announcements of the year hit the public. In the wake of the old E3’s dissolution and 2007’s lackluster event, the press cycle for the games industry seemingly changed forever; game announcements, platform holder initiatives, and publisher events have been spread out over the last eighteen months, no longer restricted to only a handful of days in the summer leading up to the usual holiday deluge of high-profile releases. The days of “breaking the internet” appeared to be over.

Then Microsoft announced that Final Fantasy XIII would be coming out for the Xbox 360 and it was the good ol’ days all over again.

Today’s big reveal has not only overshadowed all other big E3 news so far, including all of MS’ other announcements, it’s emblematic of a genuinely important shift in the way we as players are going to consume games going forward. As development costs have risen, third-party game exclusivity has been declining. Square-Enix’s commitment to multi-platform releases is one more nail in its coffin, if not the final one. What this is ultimately going to mean is that videogame consoles are going to further diversify beyond the current generation. It means that consoles are going to stop trying to compete solely on the software front and move into the realm of unique experiences, a la Nintendo’s Wii.

What the announcement means for the current console cycle, where software exclusivity is still the central competition between Microsoft and Sony, is that Sony is in a legitimately dire situation. Disregarding the hyperbole getting tossed about that Final Fantasy XIII was literally all the company had left to hook a mass audience, it was the last of Sony’s third-party exclusive stable. They have now lost Final Fantasy, Monster Hunter, and Dragon Quest, the three most-important non-Nintendo franchises in Japan. Their remaining first-party exclusive franchises with a serious global audience are God of War and Gran Turismo, games that simply do not have the appeal of a Halo or a Wii Play.

Tomorrow is going to be a very, very interesting day.

The Ten Greatest Opening Levels in Gaming History, Part 3

John Constantine — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 01:45:00 GMT

Sonic the Hedgehog - Green Hill Zone

By the time the original Sonic the Hedgehog came out, Super Mario World had been out for six months in Japan. In almost every way, Mario had the edge on Sonic — more levels, more power-ups, more variety, more gaming. But there was one thing you couldn't take away from Sonic, and that was the sheer dazzle of starting up the game and entering Green Hill Zone. To this day, Green Hill Zone looks spectacular, with its sparkling ocean, lush vegetation and abstract geometry — not to mention Masato Nakamura's unforgettable music. Mario had a lot to offer, but in terms of pure physicality, most of Dinosaur Land seems awfully drab next to Green Hill Zone. (Plus, it was 1991 — "zones" were just cooler than "lands", for Chrissakes.) — PS

Shadow of the Colossus - Valus

Shadow of the Colossus’s opening moments are less mysterious, and therefore less grand, than the opening moments of Ico. As players, we are given exposition and context through narration (however vague it may be) and the game’s protagonist Wander states a clear goal while an evil god tells him how to achieve it. This is a far cry from the confounding and almost entirely silent internment of a horned boy in a decaying castle. But Shadow of the Colossus’ first level, toppling the colossus Valus, is a singular moment in gaming history. Valus stands at one end of an enclosed valley opposite you and, at first, it doesn’t seem that big. Then you run towards it, feeling the ground shake through your controller, the music swells, and you jump on its enormous leg, searching for a handhold. It is, in the truest sense of the word, epic. Even God of War 1 and 2’s opening battles against the hydra and the Colossus of Rhodes seem miniscule in comparison. — JC

Metroid Prime - Space Pirate Frigate

To fully appreciate the beginning of Metroid Prime, play through the beginning of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Both openings teach you how to play the game, but Twilight Princess teaches you like you're in the remedial class, instead of someone who (knowing Nintendo's fan base) probably has a doctorate in Zelda. It takes hours of cat-placating, monkey-placating and goat-herding to even get a sword. Prime takes it easy on you, but you never feel condescended to. Its tutorials are thoroughly skippable; expert players can finish the Space Pirate Frigate in five minutes flat. But beyond that, it's a beautiful, self-contained introduction to the game's spooky atmosphere. Every console Zelda after A Link to the Past has started you out in a village full of whiners you have to coddle before you get to adventure. Prime throws you into a dark, eerie spacecraft where something horrible has happened. Get in and get out before its orbit decays and you die. Chills. — PS

Half-Life 2 – City 17

“Wake up, Mr. Freeman. Wake up, and smell the ashes.” As Gordon Freeman, your journey through the bleak streets of City 17 begins a mere sixty seconds after the game’s title has faded to black. The mundane environment tells you everything you need to know about how life works in a world where civilization has crumbled; tired and scared citizens mutter in the corners of a train terminal, Combine soldiers threaten and abuse, and rare familiar faces urge you to escape immediately. Half-Life’s greatest success has always been keeping the player in constant control of the action while still herding them along a set path. Half-Life 2’s opening level, Freeman’s arrival in City 17 and his flight from the Combine across the city’s rooftops, engages and informs in equal measure while providing an immediate thrill through play. It’s remarkable that a first-person shooter’s most memorable level is its first, a level where not a single shot is fired. — JC

Click here for Part 1
Click here for Part 2

Previous Top Tens:
The Ten Most Adventurous Sequels
The Ten Greatest Fire Levels

The Ten Greatest Opening Levels in Gaming History, Part 2

John Constantine — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 01:30:00 GMT

Metal Gear Solid 2 – The U.S.S. Discovery

The opening level of Metal Gear Solid 2 is the finest Metal Gear game ever made in-and-of itself. Forget Hideo Kojima’s cinematic pretensions for just a moment and think about the raw play available in this self-contained prologue scenario. The tools of MGS’ trade may not be available to Snake in their totality here, but every inch of the tanker acts as a playground for the series' most fundamental mechanics. You can sneak through without ever being seen or you can kill every Russian soldier you come across. There is an expertly paced boss fight. There is skin-mag related humor. It’s all here. Now layer Kojima’s cinematic pretensions back on top of all that considering they are at their best (read: most restrained) here and you have a beginning that is, arguably, superior to anything the follows or precedes it in the entire series. — JC

Mega Man X - Awakening Road

This is not your father's Mega Man, says the opening stage of Mega Man X. Or it would, if it had a voice — but instead, it's got a brutal snare roll leading into a heavy rock instrumental. It's got a crumbling highway, complete with fleeing commuters (the latter of which ground the action in a more inhabited world than the NES Mega Man games ever featured.) And it ends with X almost getting scrapped by a mech-riding Boba Fett ripoff. Whatever our love for the classic Mega Man series, it never had this kind of drama. — PS

Einhander – Imperial Capital

Shoot ‘em ups, both vertical and horizontal, are usually gradual experiences. Gradius set the standard: an opening level that acclimates you to both the game’s challenge and its setting, you are the aggressor, going into a place to reach its center where defenses will be strongest. Also, excluding rare exceptions like 1942, shmups are fairly fanciful in scenario. More often than not, you’re fighting aliens, robots, monsters, etc. Einhander doesn’t start slow. Your ship flies into the middle of a bustling metropolis, literally crashing through neon billboards before racing through its ruined foundation. It is a human place and you are fleeing it, your first enemies police in pursuit. There’s a lot about Einhander that’s memorable, from Kenichiro Fukui’s techno soundtrack to its genius weapons system. But nothing sticks with you like the Imperial Capital. — JC

Click here for Part 1
Click here for Part 3

The Ten Greatest Opening Levels in Gaming History, Part 1

John Constantine — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 01:15:00 GMT

First impressions are important, in videogames as they are in life. The first moments you spend with any art can define your experience of it. They compel you to dig deeper, to more carefully consider the work or the hand that crafted it. Other times, they can be so startling that everything that follows is diminished. This week, 61 Frames Per Second looks at the ten greatest opening levels in gaming history. Stick with us past the first one though. They’re all great. — John Constantine

Prince of Persia 2 - Rooftop Chase

The original Prince of Persia was a unique and wonderful game, but it wasn't much for setting. Half the game takes place in a monochromatic dungeon, and the other in a monochromatic palace. 2 quickly makes up for it; about to be executed by the Vizier's goons, the Prince leaps through a window, and from there it's up to you to guide him across the palace rooftops, into the marketplace below, down a long pier, finally leaping into the hold of a departing merchant ship — all with those guards on your tail. The stage is a real nail-biter, and all the more memorable because the rest of the game is comparatively subdued. — Peter Smith

Strider – Saint Petersburg

I won’t lie. There was a time that I watched that glider fly low over terrible Slavic church spires to a brief fanfare of synthetic horns and I believed, for a moment, that I would never leave Eurasia alive. Then I realized that Strider Hiryu’s sword was practically the length of the screen and it could literally make people explode. Strider, as a game, has not aged well in the past twenty years; the control is wonky, you can’t really tell when you’re even hitting something, and there are times when stuff in its stages blows up for seemingly no reason. But that first level remains an incredible spectacle, coated in color and character, a place where robot tigers will scale towers and entire Russian parliaments will turn into hammer-and-sickle wielding robot dragons. Fighting robot apes and hordes of half-naked amazons a few levels later just seems pedestrian after that. — John Constantine

Final Fantasy VII - Assault on Mako Reactor #1

Presumably your retinas have just detached as a result of your vigorous eye-rolling. Re-attach those suckers and hear me out here: no matter how bloated, overrated and over-fanboyed Final Fantasy VII might be in retrospect, its opening is masterful. Up until that game, RPGs never started fast. You loaded up your neophyte warriors with whatever cloth armor and rusty dinner knives you could afford on your starting wage of ten gold pieces, and then you sent them out to the local forest to get their asses handed to them by killer squirrels until they could upgrade to some new silverware. Final Fantasy VI was a step in the right direction, with its haunting approach to a frozen, gloomy northern town. But VII's opening is still a dramatic highlight of the series, segueing from a lyrical vision of a flower girl in the streets, to a full view of a vast futuristic city, to a tense assault on a huge power reactor, all to the strains of the Blade Runner-esque suite that is Nobuo Uematsu's immortal "Opening/Bombing Mission." Put that jackass with the Sephiroth tattoo out of your mind, and take a minute to appreciate the scope and excitement of this sequence. — PS

Click here for Part 2
Click here for Part 3

The 61FPS Review: Ninja Gaiden 2 Part 1

John Constantine — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 18:00:00 GMT

When Team Ninja’s Ninja Gaiden finally released, it was mind-altering. No three-dimensional action game played as well, looked as good, or had its raw scope, and no one in the world was expecting it to deliver as it did. After all, the game had been vaporware for half a decade. Remember when Tecmo announced it as a game for Sega’s Project Katana (the development codename for Dreamcast)? How about when it was supposed to be a Playstation 2 launch title? By the time Team Ninja announced that they’d be releasing it as an Xbox title, I was starting to wonder if the game existed at all. When no screens or video of the game materialized for another three years, it was fair to assume that Gaiden was destined to be little more than trivia fodder. But then February 2004 rolled around and there it was. That month will, in my mind, always be a benchmark in the history of action games. Ninja Gaiden has aged well in four years, its multiple revisions and expansions right through the Playstation 3 remake Ninja Gaiden Sigma proving its foundation to be sturdy and engaging. 3D action games broadly, however, have surpassed it. God of War brought bigger, more exciting environments and enemy confrontations while improving accessibility and even Ninja Gaiden’s immediate forebear Devil May Cry added more depth in its third and fourth entries. Even the lackluster Heavenly Sword took away Ninja Gaiden’s crown as the genre’s most visceral visual spectacle.

I’ve been lukewarm on Ninja Gaiden II since it was announced last year. I couldn’t tell what was wrong. Something about it just seemed so sterile, so rote in comparison to everything else hitting the new wave of consoles. Dynamic limb removal is the big innovation? Really? This is Ninja Gaiden II! Time to redefine 3D action a second time! I realize that’s an unfair expectation to put on a game but it isn’t unfair to expect a modicum of refinement, some change to the established formula that utilizes both hindsight and the power of new technology.

That’s why Ninja Gaiden II is, initially, so disappointing. Everything seems far too familiar. The environments are little more than pretty, simplistic window dressing, corridors to run down but never to interact with. The combat and opponent AI is as fine as ever but outside of having to contend with legless suicide bombers, little has changed. Even the camera that follows the character, too low on the screen and obscuring the action right when a hoard of enemies attack, is seemingly identical to the one in Ninja Gaiden 1. Where have you gone Ninja Gaiden? Is the king dead? I’ve played one-fifth of the full game, leaving eleven full levels of punishing difficulty to work through and a plethora of weapons to discover. But I’m wondering if more combat is all I have to expect. More importantly, should I even expect more than that?