61 Frames Per Second : prince of persia

Sauerkraut is My New Favorite Games Video Journo

Cole Stryker — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 14:00:00 GMT

He's tastier than Yahtzee, goes down smoother than the Mega 64 guys: He's Kraut! And he's the newest, most Teutonic video game pundit. Marvel as a bowl of sauerkraut takes us on a tour through video game history. Tetris, Prince of Persia, Scorched Earth, Breakout and Pacman. It's simple, it's sublime, it made me choke on my breakfast.

Video after the jump:

My favorite part:

"...many thanks to Corrado's mother for cooking Kraut."

(via Kotaku)

Related Links:

Left 4 Dead Snaps into a Slim Jim

Mega Man is a Dick

Try to Eat Eggs – But Not Bombs!

New Year's PS3 Wish List: part 1

Amber Ahlborn — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 02:00:00 GMT

I was planning on putting this up before the new year started but I had an end of the year computer melt down. Maybe I should add “get a new computer” to my resolution list. I have no idea if that'll happen but I do know what I'd like to pick up this year: a PS3. It took a long time, but Sony's expensive machine has accumulated enough of a library to interest me with quite a few more good looking titles set to come out this year. With high hopes that the PS3 will see another price drop, I present my list of PS3 gems, old and new, to snatch up in 2009.

1. Prince of Persia – I love the Sands of Time Trilogy and this sequel promises more of the same. Reviews have stated the game seems to play itself a bit too much and I got that same feeling a lot in the earlier PoP titles but the experience was still great. I'd be more than happy to go along for the ride yet again.

2. Devil May Cry 4 – This is where I'll happily turn to for a twitch challenge. There's not much to be said for the DMC games other than that they're a blast to play, just make sure you turn your narrative cheese tolerance all the way up.

3. LittleBigPlanet – While this game has caught the imagination of much of the industry and praise all around, it's not actually a title I'm super excited for. The reason being I just don't have much time to tinker around with these sorts of “build your own experience” games. I want to try it out quite badly all the same.

4. Ninja Gaiden Sigma – If there's any genre where it could be said that style may be even more important than substance, it's probably the beat-em up. I'd like to get my hands on this iteration of Ninja Gaiden for the same reason I enjoy the DMC titles.

5. Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction – One thing really bugged the hell out of me in the last Ratchet and Clank game that came out on the PS2: Ratchet didn't have a tail. In the story it was stuffed inside of his armor but still... Thank goodness he got his tail back for his big HD debut.

Related Links:

Derrick's Top 13 Games of 2008 - Part 1

My Top 10 of 2008 in No Particular Order: Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2

Joe’s Top Ten Games of 2008 – Number One

The Death of Death

Cole Stryker — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 19:00:00 GMT

While we were on break, Ludwig Kietzmann over at Joystiq raised an interesting question about the nature of games, elaborating on a point made earlier this month by Penny Arcade's Tycho here. The basic idea is that death in games is an outmoded convention that often makes games frustrating for no reason other than because that's the way it's always been done. Prince of Persia is the game that has raised these questions.

Basically, Prince of Persia provides you with a cute sidekick that rescues you when you're about to die. From what I understand, it's relatively easy to complete the game without dying. It's a seamless, spawnless jaunt through a wonderland begging to be discovered through your character's physics-defying acrobatics. So why are people complaining?

I'll start with Tycho's point, since he was first:

Prince of Persia is incredibly easy, too easy in my opinion, but I don't think it's easy for the reasons people are saying. It's true that your mysterious witch friend Elika can save you from harm, either from a platforming misstep or from poor combat performance. They're both failure states, in any event, which is to say deaths: they just decided to automate the process of loading from save. This is similar to the philosophy behind Final Fantasy XII, as expressed by our own Gabriel: if all I'm going to do is select attack from a menu, why shouldn't it handle that part? There are people this doesn't work for. For example, there are players who demand a very clear, even brutal framework to establish a metrics of reward and disaster. I'll just type the words "corpse run," and leave it at that.

For those of you who don't know, a corpse run happens when your RPG avatar dies and you spend twenty minutes running through dungeons defenseless until you can find the loot your corpse dropped. It's a really silly mechanic when you think about it, and certainly doesn't add anything to the game.

Here's Ludwig:

The truth is, Toad doesn't lay down a wreath in front of that bottomless pit that swallowed Mario and forever concealed his body. Rather weirdly, nobody in the world seems to remember nor acknowledge when the main character meets his demise. To them, it never happened. Thanks to the omnipotent, extra-dimensional save and checkpoint gods, the hero's demise is erased from the timeline, his body safely deposited out of harm's way.

And the money quote:

When examined in this way, Prince of Persia's life-saving companion character isn't particularly innovative -- she's a glorified checkpoint with a plunging neckline.

Bingo. I agree completely. Game death, as it's usually handled, should have died along with coin-ops. Death was a way to make the player put more money into the machine. So why are games still operating on this premise, decades later? Ubisoft found a clever way to avoid hours of annoying repetition. Let the curmudgeonly oldies complain about Prince of Persia's ease of use. This is the future, and we're better off for it.

The 61FPS Review: Prince of Persia

John Constantine — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 19:30:00 GMT

Guest reviewer Adam Rosenberg resides in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, where he slaves away daily as a contributing editor for UGO’s Gamesblog as his dog Loki looks on in bewilderment. In addition to the noble pursuit of video games, Adam enjoys spending time with fine film, finer food and his fine fiancée Bekah.

I’m not really sure the title “Prince of Persia” is relevant anymore. After all, in Ubisoft’s latest – a reboot of the trilogy started with Sands of Time – you play a wandering scoundrel: two parts Han Solo, two parts le Parkour founder David Belle and one part Indiana Jones. You could argue that the open-world, Middle Eastern-flavored surroundings might be situated in an ancient, fantasy-world version of Persia, but it just as easily might not be. But hey, that’s brand recognition for you.

Prince of Persia is a streamlined spectacle, lighter on challenge than previous series entries but also more visually appealing by several orders of magnitude, thanks to the face-lifted, cel-shaded art design. Meanwhile, the gameplay remains fundamentally unchanged; as the titular (not-)Prince, you’ll still be wall-running, column-groping and bar-swinging, all of it supplemented by increasingly frequent dalliances with magic.

But to be honest, there’s not much in the way of "game" in Prince of Persia. It is essentially a massive, player-guided Quick Time Event broken up by occasional displays of QTE-fueled swordplay.

Traversing the game’s environments is surprisingly fulfilling, the Prince’s fluid grace keeping your eyes glued to the screen. The platforming is successful because it hides its QTE-nature behind a series of environmental signifiers. Outside of combat, the game never explicitly tells you which button to press after the tutorial ends. If you come across a brass ring affixed to the wall or ceiling, press B when the Prince reaches it and he’ll automatically use it to maintain his momentum. At other times, the screen will start to grey out during a longer-than-usual jump; quickly press Y in these situations to call in Elika for an aided double jump.

Elika, the Prince’s constant AI companion, is Persia's two-birds-one-stone solution to the recent trilogy's tropes: a love interest and a way to cheat death. But where last generation's Princes demanded skillfull use of those games' time-warping to fix mistakes, Prince of Persia’s play is entirely risk-free: Elika simply won’t let the Prince die. Ever. Fall off a ledge or land in a pool of deadly Corruption and her glowing hand will appear to catch you and drag you back to the last bit of solid ground you stood on. “Die” in combat and she’ll resurrect you instantly with the only penalty being a slight health boost for you opponent.

The words “Game Over” never appear on the screen for Prince of Persia’s duration. It’s a ballsy move for Ubisoft, and I’m not so sure it pays off in this outing. The problem with Prince of Persia is that it leaves most of the work in the hands of AI, whether it's the Prince's pathfinding or Elika's helping hands. That’s why the platforming compares so easily with your average QTE; all the player ever has to worry about is running in the right direction and pressing the jump, grab or Elika buttons at the proper moments. The no-fail, low-risk arrangement fosters experimentation, but the paths in Prince of Persia’s are far too linear to make such experimentation feel worthwhile.

The disparity between the platforming and the combat is sizable. The combat is schizophrenic, vacillating in the space of a single encounter between absurdly easy and unforgivingly difficult without ever really striking the proper balance. Each fight is a one-on-one encounter in a closed, arena-like space. Combos are performed by alternating between sword, acrobatic, gauntlet and Elika attacks, each of which is mapped to its own face button. Enemies frequently break up combos by performing special attacks which trigger proper, on-screen-button-prompt QTEs. A single-button QTE also appears when the Prince is nearing death, as a sort of restorative last-minute save which puts you back in the fight without the enemy gaining any health back. Unfortunately, there's no solid rhythm to these battles. You're given an unforgivingly short window to pull off special attack QTEs, to the point that you need to recognize the attack animation and respond with a button press before the actual prompt appears. Conversely, the last-minute save QTEs are next-to-impossible to fail. As such, basically every combat encounter features the same pattern of attack combo, failed QTE, successful QTE, repeat.

The overarching narrative: a formerly imprisoned, recently freed malevolent god has corrupted the land. There are four main “zones,” each one broken up into six unique areas: an entry point, a boss tower, and four discrete spaces lying between the entry and end points. The goal in each of the twenty-four areas is to reach its Fertile Ground, which Elika can use to wipe away the surrounding Corruption. Persia's story is secondary, but unsuccessfully so. Exposition in Prince of Persia is a momentum-killer. Dialogues with Elika, the game's chief source of story, requires coming to a complete stop and triggering a string of non-interactive cutscenes. It's comforting that most of these expository moments are optional, but it's a less-than-ideal way to relate the story.

What’s amazing about Prince of Persia is that, in spite of all its shortfalls, it’s actually a blast to play. The combat never manages to hit its stride and the optional expository moments quickly become more of a chore than anything else, but the simple beauty of moving from A to B keeps the proceedings entertaining throughout. I’m not sure Prince of Persia’s challenge-free dynamic will appeal to every gamer, but it succeeds brilliantly as interactive spectacle and provides a great entry point for inexperienced gamers who’d like to tunnel into the Core.

Grade: B

61FPS Reviews:

LittleBigPlanet part 1, Part 2
Dead Space
LOL
Dragon Quest IV
Ninja Gaidan 2 part 1 & part 2
Metal Gear Solid 4 part 1 & part 2
Wii Fit
Grand Theft Auto IV part 1, part 2 & part 3

Video Game Addicts Dropping out of School

Cole Stryker — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 23:00:00 GMT

Game Politics reports that FCC Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate has declared the following:

You might find it alarming that one of the top reasons for college drop-outs in the U.S. is online gaming addiction - such as World of Warcraft - which is played by 11 million individuals worldwide.

Taylor provides no hard data to back up this claim, but it got me thinking about some of the casualties I knew, not necessarily from online gaming, but gaming in general.

During my freshman year in college, there was a guy who literally punched a hole through his laptop monitor after repeated losses in Counterstrike. He didn't drop out, but he had to shell out for a new monitor. I don't think nerd rage was covered by the university insurance policy.

One of my R.A.'s had a then-new Xbox. He was a friendly dude, and invited anyone on the hall to come play it any time. Well, there was this one really smelly, socially awkward kid who spent nearly every waking moment playing the R.A.'s Xbox. They had to kick him out at night. On one occasion he was found playing their Xbox, dripping wet, with nothing on but a towel, after a rushed shower. He couldn't be away from Halo for even ten minutes. He dropped out after a semester.

Another guy on my freshman hall dropped out on account of Battlefield 1942. Another from Super Smash Bros. Melee. Another missed a final because he had spent the night speedrunning through Prince of Persia.

Do you know anyone who failed epically because he couldn't pull himself away from video games? Let us know in the comments.

The New Prince of Persia Will Let Me Right a Terrible Wrong

Nadia Oxford — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 03:20:00 GMT

Ladies and Gentlemen, I come before you to admit that I have never felt the embrace of a lover. I have never breathed deep of masculinity, reveled in the wrap of sun-bronzed arms oiled lightly by sweet perspiration. I have never had the words "I love you" spoken gently in my ear, giving me cause to shiver as if...um...some spider metaphor...

Ha ha, okay. I am loved. But I have never played a Prince of Persia game. Not one. I am the 28-year-old Prince of Persia virgin.

I know this is shocking and I'll understand if you don't want to be my friend anymore. Please believe me when I say that I intend to make things right, though. There are certain things in this life that no one should die without experiencing. "Play Prince of Persia" has always been in the back of my head-queue, though admittedly I've become doubly curious since I learned it's one of a precious few franchises that game critic Yahtzee loves. Every games writer wants to grow up to be Yahtzee. I personally dig the hat.

I also have to admit I'm impressed by the trailer for the new-gen Prince of Persia, so I guess I'll excuse myself and go apply some perfume and check my dowry.

Related Links:

Trailer Review: Prince of Persia
Portait of the Prince of Pre-Persia
Character Case Study: When Good Characters Get Bad Attitudes

Running for Your Life!

Amber Ahlborn — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Happy Halloween everyone! This is my favorite holiday. Every year I dress up in costume and hit the streets. No, I'm too old for Trick or Treating but you're never too old to make small children scream. Halloween is the perfect time of the year to focus on things that get our pulses pounding. On television, you don't have to flip through too many channels before you find a horror flick and on game sites you don't have to browse far before you find a post highlighting scary video games.

Personally, I'm not a fan of horror but I do love it when a game tosses in a little something special designed to make you break out into a nervous sweat. So, for this holiday occasion I present three games that force you to deal with an unstoppable, “indestructible” enemy determined to hunt you down. There's only one thing you can do. Run!

Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus – A game featuring funny animal characters is probably not the first place you'd look for thrills and chills, at least not until you hit the Vicious Voodoo chapter. This part of Sly's adventure is loaded with ghosts, zombies, and assorted beasties and the cartoon aesthetics don't dim the creepiness at all. One stage in particular is sure to set your heart racing as you guide Sly on a desperate scramble through the swamp while being pursued by a monstrous snake.

Watch your step! Of course, if I were in that situation, I'd probably be more worried about malaria.

Prince of Persia: Warrior Within – The second game in the Sands of Time trilogy may have made a few aesthetic and characterization missteps but it was still a fun mix of action and acrobatics. It also brought us the Dahaka, a relentless time guardian monstrosity that can't be fought (without the right weapon). Its very presence drains the world of color and the only thing you can do when it finds you is run like mad. No other part of the game puts the Prince's physics defying acrobatics to the test like the Dahaka chases, where a pause in the dash for safety can spell certain doom.

If you think that's frightful, you should see the glitches that can occur when you try to rewind time if it catches you. Not even magical time sand can fend off buggy programming.

Metroid Fusion – If Space Pirates dream, then they must surely have nightmares about Samus Aran. Few things could possibly be as terrifying as facing what amounts to a walking tank with a limitless arsenal. Indeed, Samus is so badass that the biggest threat to her is an evil twin. In Metroid Fusion, an injured and subsequently weakened Samus must face off with an alien mimicking her at her full power. Metroid games have always made superb use of music and sound to create a tense atmosphere, but surely no sound is as likely to invoke a cold sweat on a gamer than the echoing footfalls of the SA-X.

Luckily for Samus, the SA-X has a very short attention span. Out of sight, out of mind.

And there you have it, three of my favorite unstoppable beasties from three of my favorite games. Now if you'll excuse me I must don my dragon costume. Trick or Treaters are in season so let the hunt begin!

Related Links:

Overworld: Friday the 13th

Silent Hill: Homecoming is, Thankfully, Both Silent and Hilly

Resident Evil 5: Continuing on the Transformation Trail From Horror to Suspense

Portrait of the Prince Pre-Persia

John Constantine — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 17:00:00 GMT

There’s something about seeing the physical inspiration for a fictional character that is both deeply exciting and unsettling. The pizza missing a lone slice, covered in tomato sauce and bubbling cheese, is downright creepy when you think about it as a basis for Toru Iwatani’s Pac-Man. Seriously think about it. That’s what Pac-man would look like if he was skinned! What does that say about Iwatani, or even me for thinking about it? Take good ol’ Mario Segali as another example. You can practically see the ghost of a red hat perched atop his mustachioed dome. Now picture him breaking bricks with his scalp and jumping on turtles. Sickly fascinating, no?

I’m told this footage of Jordan Mechner’s kid brother has been floating around the net for quite some time, but today’s the first time I’ve ever laid eyes on it. Some twenty years ago, Mechner dressed the lad up in whites and then set him off running, climbing, and falling as a model for his seminal masterwork, Prince of Persia. Thing is, the boy looks exactly like the Prince in motion.

Unsettling: I watch this terrified of long falls and hidden spikes. Exciting: Mechner didn’t have motion capture technology, just a primitive scanner and animation skills that resulted in a sprite every bit as fluid and human as the real deal.

The Prince certainly doesn’t look like Mechner’s brother any longer, having transformed into a goateed swashbuckler five years back, then into a scowling cosplayer/GWAR-fan, then into a sort of starry eyed dude covered in scarves who looks like he escaped from a Yoshitaka Amano print.

Know what’s creepier than seeing the real life basis for a game character? Seeing the character re-translated into reality. Behold your bother’s legacy, Mechner!

Editor's Note: That is not Mario Segali at all, merely a cruel hoax.

(Link: 1UP)

Related links:

Trailer Review: Prince of Persia
Character Case Study: When Good Characters Get Bad Attitudes
The Ten Greatest Opening Levels in Gaming History
Yeah, But Is It Art?: Pac-Man Championship Edition
Burn Your Skin for Pac-Man
Ms. Pac-Man: Feminist Champion

Linearity is Not a Dirty Word

Amber Ahlborn — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 14:00:00 GMT

With the dawn of 3-D games on home consoles, new buzz words and selling points like draw distance, open worlds, and free roaming worlds were birthed. Games grew in size and linearity become a negative point on many reviews. Bigger, however, is not always better, and great games should never be docked points because they proceed in a linear fashion. Content is king!

It has always been an enigma to me why linearity has developed this stigma. Why it should ever be considered a negative while wide open, sandbox, free roaming aspects are typically considered a good thing. Let's ignore the entire history of gaming greatness that existed in the linear majority of 2-D games and just look at some samples from my 3-D library. Some of the most enjoyable games I've ever played have been knocked in reviews for their linearity, while other games have actually used their wide open dead space as a selling point.

I've picked on the Zelda series before by calling out the vast emptiness of Twilight Princess' Hyrule Field, but the first 3-D Zelda to offend here was the first 3-D Zelda. Hyrule Field from Ocarina of Time was huge for its day and a technical feat. How long it took to cross on foot was talked up as a selling point but the field was basically bare, offering no real reason for its existence other than “Hey, look what we can do!”. Super Mario Sunshine also suffered from the vastness of its game worlds. Unlike Zelda's field, the areas in Sunshine were loaded with stuff and felt terribly cluttered and chaotic. I found them too large and disorganized with too much going on to be as inviting as the comparatively simple, but focused worlds of Super Mario 64. Finally, one of the most gratuitous examples of a game world that was too big for its own good was the city hub world found in Jak 2. This maze-like metropolis was filled with mindless pedestrians and crawling traffic. Once the gee-whiz factor wore off, I filled with frustration and despair as I was forced to criss-cross this giant pacing tar pit to get to the points of interest. Don't even get me started on Star Fox Adventures. That game deserves a post all to itself.

Okay, so we know big, wide open, free roaming game worlds can be mishandled and drag down an otherwise good experience, but what are the advantages of a linear design? Games that force a generally straight path to the goal corral the player. From a design perspective, you always know where the player will be at because the player can only move forward or back. This makes it easy for the designer to set up game events like dominoes for the players to knock down. It can help to keep the pacing fast and ensure a constant stream of content for the player to experience and always provide a definite goal: reach the level end. These sorts of achievements act as consistent milestones and encourage players to keep going.

The Ratchet and Clank series arranged most of its localities into corridors that the player must fight through. This set up lended itself to a constant pressure of enemy ambushes and firefights. Every step landed the player into the next piece of action. The first Sly Cooper game also followed a corridor format to handily set up acrobatic platforming elements as Sly raced from goal to goal with nary a dull moment as he scrambled up pipes, bounded over rooftops, and leaped through forests of laser arrays. Prince of Persia: Sands of Time was mostly paced more slowly, using a linear game world to present clever environmental challenges to the player. Each area of the game had one exit, and figuring out what combination of the Prince's acrobatic repertoire would get him to the end was nothing short of a joy to play.

The wide open sandbox may be the hot trend in many games today, and that this wide open style can lead to a fantastic experience when built with purpose is undeniable, but equally undeniable are the merits of more enclosed, linear designs. To those who have ever sneered at a game because it was “too linear”, you might be seeing a negative where there isn't one. If the experience works, if it's enjoyable, what's the problem?

Related Links:

End Game: The Necessary Evil of Boss Fights

Gimmick: not a dirty word

Philosophy? In my Zelda?

Trailer Review: Prince of Persia

Cole Stryker — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 00:00:00 GMT

There are a lot of things to like about the new Prince of Persia trailer. But I'm sad to see that our boy has been given a ghostly sidekick. She looks like equal parts Midna and Yorda, which means she'll probably save your butt and get in the way a lot. This was a slight problem in The Sands of Time, in which Princess Farah would accidently shoot arrows at the Prince. The red orbs that fling the Prince around are a little Metroid Prime-y, and the supplemental swinging granted by the sidekick seems to draw from Spidey.

I've always felt that the Prince of Persia series justified its high sales figures more than most games, largely because the game had excellent pacing and a singular sense of purpose - get from here to there. Linearity shoudn't be necessarily negative! All the puzzles were just tricky enough, and the time-reversal mechanic avoided a lot of death cinematics and load times. For the most part, each game was a steady stream of excellent, clever exploration and puzzle solving. It looks like that's been retained, but the inclusion of this chick seems a little superfluous. It's as if developrs of sequels have a checklist that must be completed during brainstorming sessions. They must do everything the old games did, but more. Adding a girl that enables you to jump just a little bit further? Check.

Who am I kidding. I'm going to love this game. Just look at him flipping out all over the place. Awesome!

Karateka Remake in the Works

Cole Stryker — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 20:00:00 GMT

File this one under "unexpected". Gamasutra reports that Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner is planning to bring back the lesser known 1984 proto-brawler Karateka, though "not in the way we'd expect." During the interview, Mechner related this amazing easter egg from the original Apple II version of the game:

The programmer doing copy protection for the game figured out that by messing with the bit table, the whole game could be played upside down, which is really hard to do. We thought it would be hilarious if we burned the flipped version of the game to the other side of the disk.

We figured of all the people who buy the game, a couple of them would accidentally put the floppy in upside down. That way, when that person calls tech support, that tech support rep would once in blue moon have the sublime joy of saying, 'Well sir, you put the disk in upside down,' and that person would think for the rest of their life that's how software works.

WIN. Check out the gripping final boss fight:

I remember playing Karateka on floppy disc at a friend's house, but only for a few minutes. We used it, and scores of other floppy discs my rich neighbor (didn't we all have one of these?) owned, when we got stuck in King's Quest. I don't understand why anyone would be interested in reviving the game. It doesn't have much brand equity and the story, environment and characters were not memorable. I had totally forgotten about this game until now.

Related Links:

The Ten Greatest Opening Levels in Gaming History, Part 1

For Love of the Game: Street Fighter One
Character Case Study: When Good Characters Get Bad Attitudes

Trailer Review: Tecmo Bowl – Kickoff

John Constantine — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 17:00:00 GMT

E3 2008’s been running for just under forty-eight hours at this point, if you count yesterday’s early festivities with Microsoft and EA, and the internet is awash with flashy exciting trailers. The first gameplay footage from Ubisoft’s Prince of Persia proves that the new adventure is even more deliciously gorgeous and detailed than its already beautiful screenshots, the Mirror’s Edge gameplay demonstration delivers on the promise of that game’s unique take on first-person gaming, and iD’s Rage is exhibiting all the gloss and zombie-ness of a classic John-Carmack-Tech-Showcase. But who cares about those?

Every trailer, every look at fresh gameplay from cutting edge titles, every CGI tease pales in comparison to these sixty seconds of Tecmo Bowl: Kickoff. Just watch this:

Did you see how hard that rocked! Not only was the game rockin’, not only did the hometown hero make the touchdown, not only did that cheerleader totally wink right at me, but then some rockers come in, totally unprompted, and start rocking.

Game. Of. Show.

Previous Trailer Reviews:

Captain Rainbow
The Past and Future With Mega Man 9 and Chrono Trigger
Densetsu no Stafi
Sonic Unleashed
Infinite Undiscovery
Sonic Chronicles
Street Fighter 4
The Conduit
Mirror’s Edge

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

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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

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Character Case Study: When Good Characters Get Bad Attitudes

John Constantine — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Written by Amber Ahlborn

Outside of puzzle and simulation genres, games tend to be very character-centric. As such, character development can be important to games with some detail to their stories. Alas, games are still typically lightweights as literary pieces and cliches abound. Currently the antihero is popular; a cheap way to add depth to a character is slapping on a tragic back story and injecting them with a bad attitude. Sometimes this works out and sometimes it simply ruins a good thing. Two characters who beautifully illustrate these extremes are Jak and the Prince.

Happy Jak, meet Angry Jak

The original Jak and Daxter was rather like Crash Bandicoot meets Mario Sunshine, a nice looking me-too platformer with some fun hop-and-bop mechanics but lacking a stand-out personality.

The titular Jak started off as a silent, happy-go-lucky kid partnered with a wisecracking friend named Daxter. They lived in an idyllic village and roamed around the land spin-kicking bad guys and collecting MacGuffins. Jak was cute. Then along came Jak 2 and this sleepy little series was slapped wide awake.

Between the first and second games, Jak put on a growth spurt, hit puberty, and started to speak, articulating a lot of anger. His new personality was not fresh or original, but it was engaging all the same, a vast improvement over the blank slate he'd sported previously. His harsh outlook on life made sense in the context of the evolving story and his attitude reflected the hostility of the strange, post-apocalyptic world he found himself in. Best of all, Jak continued to subtly evolve. By the time Jak 3 concluded, his character had gracefully arced from a simple angry youth into an adult matured by experiences hard, sorrowful, and joyous.

Prince Charming Smolders with Generic Rage

The nameless Prince from the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time trilogy also made a personality jump between game one and game two. Unfortunately, his transformation was not quite as graceful as Jak's. In Sands of Time, the Prince was revealed to be a charming if snarky fellow. He was noble, brave, and willing to put everything on the line to correct a terrible mistake and save the lives of the people he'd accidentally doomed. Through clever in-game narration, we came to know Prince reasonably well and even like him. All of that character building got flushed down the crusty toilet of grit-and-dirt “maturity” with the sequel, Warrior Within.

Haggard and hard-bitten, this Prince bared little resemblance to the refined nobleman of the original. Hunted by an immortal foe, he was willing to commit murder to save his own neck. He came off as harsh, selfish and crude; utterly at odds with his prior personality. This transition had no authenticity and the new Prince was unlikable hard to sympathize with. Thankfully, the third game fixed this character misstep with aplomb.

As games delve deeper into plot and narrative, developing good characters gets harder. It can be difficult to create a personality that's genuinely engaging and the temptation to go with whatever is popular is strong. Antiheroes can be powerful archetypes or weak stereotypes and need to be handled with care. Ultimately, if you already have a solid and interesting character, it's probably best to not fix what isn't broken.

Top Ten Most Terrifying Enemies and Then Five More

John Constantine — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:00:00 GMT

I’ve got to hand it to Cracked, this is an almost perfect list of pants-wetting aggressors from videogames across the ages. Wallmasters, poison head crabs, Baron von Blubba, and Sinistar have all caused seriously tense moments for me in addition to all sounding like euphemisms for incurable STDs. That said, there are a handful of noticeable omissions from this list. 61 Frames Per Second, being the civil minded outlet it is, brings you five other baddies.

#1. Tonberries – Final Fantasy Series

They are vicious, unstoppable green midgets. No matter how many times you bludgeon them with a gigantic sword, they just continue to shuffle forward waving a lantern in the air and brandishing a knife at you. Then they stab you and actually say, “Doink.” Gives me the willies just thinking about the little bastards.

#2. Empty Rooms in Silent Hill – Silent Hill Series

It doesn’t matter that there’s nothing in there. You think there is.

#3. Marshmallows – A Boy and His Blob

I want you to picture a world in which walking down a city street or forest path is an activity that brings with it jumping marshmallows. These marshmallows make no sound and often travel in packs. They jump in unison. And when they fall on you, YOU DIE.

#4. Medusa Heads – Prince of Persia 2

Bet you thought we were going to say Castlevania, huh? Those annoying little blighters have nothing on these cagey disembodied heads. Just listen to its blood curdling howl at the thirty second mark.

#5. Metroids

Regular jellyfish live in the ocean and sting you. Space jellyfish can fly, live anywhere, and will eat you. They. Will. Eat. You.