Game reviews
Metroid Prime 2
MP2 is to the original Metroid Prime what the Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2 is to the original Super Mario Bros. (as opposed to the Super Mario Bros. 2 released in the United States). It's the same engine, I mean. It uses the same mechanics and similar models, and it even uses a lot of the same special effects: the Echo Visor is little more than a palette-swapped X-Ray Visor, for example, and the Luminoth look like feathery Chozo. The "vaporization" animation for Ing Warriors killed by the Light Beam uncannily resembles the way Pirates char and disappear when you whack 'em with the Plasma Beam.
The whole game, in fact, seems designed to reuse as many ideas and assets from the original Prime as possible, and the "dual world" conceit (at least at first glance) makes the game seem even stingier on original content-twice the geography at no extra cost! It's like the original Metroid Prime was a cake that Retro baked, but they had ingredients left over. So they were like, "What are we going to do with these ingredients? I dunno, I guess we better bake another cake. Kind of like the first cake."
Metroid Cake 2 does, however, manage to distinguish itself when it comes to environments. The original Prime staked out a claim on the obvious tropes (desert world, fire world, ice world), and Prime 2 does a good job of pushing past that a little, even veering into the abstract on occasion. Although there's nothing in Prime 2 that quite parallels the chill of walking out into the Phendrana Drifts, sublime moments of beauty await you nearly everywhere (the Sanctuary/Hive is particularly rewarding). At the end of the game I had a bit of a lump in my throat, knowing that I'd brought an end to Dark Aether-a world that, despite being the locus of all that is evil, is often breathtaking.
The art, however, isn't enough to carry the game, and there are enough missteps in the plot (why do I give a shit about these mothmen again?) to make anyone throw down the controller. casey said he stopped playing after the first conversation with U-Mos, and I don't blame him. But the game does improve from there, and I ended up having a lot of fun (31 hours total, 97% completion; I missed like two scans and a power bomb expansion). I think it's a testament to the design of the original Metroid Prime that a sequel that is little more than an elaborate expansion pack is still so compelling.
Ico
This is the perfect game: I knew this to be true moments after the game began. There were a few moments that lead me to doubt this assertion, sure. Two or three times a puzzle required Ico or Yorda to use a physical ability that I didn't know they possessed (I had to hit the walkthroughs); and when I reached what appeared to be the end of the game, I thought to myself, "Wow, this game is way too short." I felt ripped off!
But then the endgame began, and it was vast (in scale, if not in time) and mysterious and challenging and beautiful. The deal was sealed. That last room before the final boss, where the nature and history of the castle slowly dawn on you? I got goosebumps. Never has a story so laconically told affected me so much. (Not even in books or movies.)
The game is short, but when it's over, you realize that nothing could have been taken away or added. I guess that's what I mean by perfect: it's complete.
Riven
Okay, the plot, story and writing are all ass. I regret having to say that, but it's true. The acting is also ass; I constantly dreaded seeing a person in the game, because every line of dialogue, every human gesture snipped the slender threads that suspended my disbelief. (The encounter with Gehn is an exception to this: the charisma that the actor manages to put into this character is almost enough to throw your in-game motivations into question. So I'll give them that, at least.)
But as a game, and as a place, Riven is brilliant. The pacing is such that, for the first few hours of the game, nearly every click reveals a new wonder: new locations, new vantage points, new creatures, new bizarre machines. Careful observation is rewarded by puzzles that seem to fall like dominoes before your own astounding intuition. (Although there were a few puzzles, e.g., the wooden sphere/animal thing on Jungle Island, that stumped me and required outside help.)
If ever there were a game that deserves to be updated for modern hardware, this is it. This probably wouldn't be profitable, of course, since I imagine the game saturated its own market when it came out ten years ago. In any case, porting the whole thing to realtime 3D engine would take a good chunk of labor-and if they didn't do that, if they just rerendered the whole thing at a higher resolution, they'd still probably have to reshoot all the video (and who buys point-and-click adventure games nowadays anyway?). Still, a rerelease needs to happen. The game is too good to force future game anthropologists to play through the whole thing in a 640x480 window.
MP2 is to the original Metroid Prime what the Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2 is to the original Super Mario Bros. (as opposed to the Super Mario Bros. 2 released in the United States). It's the same engine, I mean. It uses the same mechanics and similar models, and it even uses a lot of the same special effects: the Echo Visor is little more than a palette-swapped X-Ray Visor, for example, and the Luminoth look like feathery Chozo. The "vaporization" animation for Ing Warriors killed by the Light Beam uncannily resembles the way Pirates char and disappear when you whack 'em with the Plasma Beam.
The whole game, in fact, seems designed to reuse as many ideas and assets from the original Prime as possible, and the "dual world" conceit (at least at first glance) makes the game seem even stingier on original content-twice the geography at no extra cost! It's like the original Metroid Prime was a cake that Retro baked, but they had ingredients left over. So they were like, "What are we going to do with these ingredients? I dunno, I guess we better bake another cake. Kind of like the first cake."
Metroid Cake 2 does, however, manage to distinguish itself when it comes to environments. The original Prime staked out a claim on the obvious tropes (desert world, fire world, ice world), and Prime 2 does a good job of pushing past that a little, even veering into the abstract on occasion. Although there's nothing in Prime 2 that quite parallels the chill of walking out into the Phendrana Drifts, sublime moments of beauty await you nearly everywhere (the Sanctuary/Hive is particularly rewarding). At the end of the game I had a bit of a lump in my throat, knowing that I'd brought an end to Dark Aether-a world that, despite being the locus of all that is evil, is often breathtaking.
The art, however, isn't enough to carry the game, and there are enough missteps in the plot (why do I give a shit about these mothmen again?) to make anyone throw down the controller. casey said he stopped playing after the first conversation with U-Mos, and I don't blame him. But the game does improve from there, and I ended up having a lot of fun (31 hours total, 97% completion; I missed like two scans and a power bomb expansion). I think it's a testament to the design of the original Metroid Prime that a sequel that is little more than an elaborate expansion pack is still so compelling.
Ico
This is the perfect game: I knew this to be true moments after the game began. There were a few moments that lead me to doubt this assertion, sure. Two or three times a puzzle required Ico or Yorda to use a physical ability that I didn't know they possessed (I had to hit the walkthroughs); and when I reached what appeared to be the end of the game, I thought to myself, "Wow, this game is way too short." I felt ripped off!
But then the endgame began, and it was vast (in scale, if not in time) and mysterious and challenging and beautiful. The deal was sealed. That last room before the final boss, where the nature and history of the castle slowly dawn on you? I got goosebumps. Never has a story so laconically told affected me so much. (Not even in books or movies.)
The game is short, but when it's over, you realize that nothing could have been taken away or added. I guess that's what I mean by perfect: it's complete.
Riven
Okay, the plot, story and writing are all ass. I regret having to say that, but it's true. The acting is also ass; I constantly dreaded seeing a person in the game, because every line of dialogue, every human gesture snipped the slender threads that suspended my disbelief. (The encounter with Gehn is an exception to this: the charisma that the actor manages to put into this character is almost enough to throw your in-game motivations into question. So I'll give them that, at least.)
But as a game, and as a place, Riven is brilliant. The pacing is such that, for the first few hours of the game, nearly every click reveals a new wonder: new locations, new vantage points, new creatures, new bizarre machines. Careful observation is rewarded by puzzles that seem to fall like dominoes before your own astounding intuition. (Although there were a few puzzles, e.g., the wooden sphere/animal thing on Jungle Island, that stumped me and required outside help.)
If ever there were a game that deserves to be updated for modern hardware, this is it. This probably wouldn't be profitable, of course, since I imagine the game saturated its own market when it came out ten years ago. In any case, porting the whole thing to realtime 3D engine would take a good chunk of labor-and if they didn't do that, if they just rerendered the whole thing at a higher resolution, they'd still probably have to reshoot all the video (and who buys point-and-click adventure games nowadays anyway?). Still, a rerelease needs to happen. The game is too good to force future game anthropologists to play through the whole thing in a 640x480 window.