On Cycles

Flower - a PS3 game that's been upgraded for PS4

I got my Playstation 4 the other day and it was just a little over seven years ago that the Playstation 3 came out. At the time I was a junior in college and had snagged a reservation by camping out in front of my local Gamestop with about 5 or 6 other people, including two of my college suitemates. It was a fun experience but definitely not something I plan on doing again, especially since I did the same for the Wii two days later. I had a lot of trouble staying awake the day after camping out for the Wii.

Thinking back on who/where I was at that time and all that's happened since then has been really interesting. It's easy for me to think of the PS3 launch as having been "not long ago" but when I think of everything that's happened it starts to seem more like "really long ago". I've graduated twice, had 5/6 different jobs, lived in 7 different places, gotten married, moved across the country, been to Blizzcon 3 times, and so much more. Seven years ago I had never played WoW, my parents were still thinking they'd retire to the retire to the country, and I'd never had a cat. And despite being "liberal", I was completely ignorant about social justice issues (which I hear is pretty typical).

This is all probably not surprising since it was over 25% of my life ago, but it's really easy to forget how much can happen in a period of time that seems so short.

It's kind of weird to only be thinking about this because a new video game console came out but I think it totally makes sense. As a gamer, these consoles and the experiences I have on them are not only significant to me but they also form the background of my life experiences. When I think about a game or a console I don't just remember the things that happened in the game but also the who and where I was and the what was happening in my life at the time I was playing. For example if I think about Kingdom Hearts or Final Fantasy X I think about talking with my friend in the high school parking lot. If I think about Metal Gear Solid 4 or Mega Man 9 I remember living in my parent's house after college and in the first couple months on grad school. Journey wan't just a fantastic gaming experience but I also remember having the front door open to the house we were renting at the time and waiting for Sarah to get home from work. With an MMO it's possible to have distinct attachments to expansions because of the real life experiences that were happening during each of them.

I think this is why we can get nostalgic for old games even if they aren't good, even if newer games in that series are "better". By starting up that game and playing it you can transport yourself back in time to when you were first playing it. Sonic games will always be tied to when my brother and I shared a room when we were very young, before he moved out into his own room and we began to drift apart. SSX reminds me of the Christmas when we had an ice storm in Arkansas and we had to stay with a family friend until the power came back.

It's said that smell is the sense that has the strongest tie to memory. Have you ever smelled a food and just been transported back to some great childhood memory of eating something tasty? Perhaps this is because smell is often used to identify things that might be poisonous or otherwise bad for us if we were to try and eat them. But wouldn't it make sense that action has a stronger tie to memory. Playing an old game can not only be fun but it has the ability to take you back in time.

This console launch has me remembering who I was in college, and thinking about everything that's happened in the interim. Much has happened and I've really grown a lot as a person in the mean time. I've met a lot of people and done a lot of great things. A console cycle can sometimes feel short, but a lot can actually happened. I can't help but wonder what's going to happen between now and the next generation of consoles.

On Platformers

More please!

I'm persnickety about platformers. It's hands-down my favorite genre of videogames. It's the one that I've grown up with and have stuck with a all of my life. This doesn't mean that I automatically love all platformers that come out, though.

I tend to be far more critical of platformers than other games. Highly regarded games like Rochard fall flat on me. There is a very particular reason for this. Many so-called platformers actually aren't good at the things that define platformers. Those things are timing and precision.

Many developers and gamers seem to think that being a platformer means having a jump button. A true platformer is one where the player is tasked with moving from one place to another with the primary difficulty coming from the precise timing and execution of their actions, mostly movement actions. There are many games out there that call themselves platformers, or some type of platformer hybrid, that really are not.

Puzzle-Platformers
The puzzle-platformer is like a platformer, but with much more critical thinking involved. My most recent experience with this genre is when I played the demo for Rochard. Don't get me wrong, I do like puzzle-platformers, but not because they're platformers. In fact, I usually dislike the platforming, because it's often terrible.

Most puzzle-platformers spend far too much time developing the puzzles and no time developing the platforming. As a result, they'll often end up with a super floaty jump and nothing else. If there was a simple heuristic to measure how good the platforming in a game is, I'd have to go with the floatiness of the jump. The floatier the jump, the worse the platforming.

Action-Platformers
On the opposite end of the puzzle-platformer is the action-platformer. You can pretty much take everything from the previous section and replace 'puzzles' with 'killing things'.

There are two ends of this spectrum. At one end are your action games that have jump button. This would be like Devil May Cry. Yes, you jump. You're even sometimes asked to jump over or across things. However, jumping and movement are not your primary obstacle to progression.

On the other end, I'd place Mega Man or Ghosts n' Goblins. In these games, the enemies serve as timing/coordination challenges. While there are tons of enemies to kill, you also don't necessarily have to kill them. Uncharted 1 starts more towards the platformer side of the spectrum and becomes more of an action game as it goes on. This was one of my main complaints about the game.

I've found that a common way to measure where a game falls on this scale is how easy the enemies are to kill. If the enemies are easily killed, it falls more to the platformer side. If the enemies are harder to kill, it falls more to the action game side.

I love action-platformers, no matter where they fall on the spectrum. I'm playing Uncharted 3 right now and it's totally awesome. And really, when you get down to it, Uncharted 3 has action, platforming, puzzles, and a great story. It's the whole package.

Conclusion
The degree to which a game is a platformer comes from the timing and precision required for your movement actions. Enemies and puzzles can be added to the game to round out the gameplay, but can sometimes pull the focus away from the platforming. I'd really like it if more games were true platformers. I think many developers are afraid to do that, however, because of the obvious Mario comparison.