Kyerannosaur Roars: Starting and Quitting Zone of the Enders

Let's roar about Zone of the Enders, a pair of games I've heard praised many times. I once saw a fellow dino playing The Second Runner and thought the action looked incredible and fun. I was excited to rent a copy of the HD Collection to finally indulge in the giant, super saiyan robot action myself.

Not much later, I spit them out angrily.

I bit into the first Zone of the Enders because I like continuity. As the first in a series, I fully expected it to be the weaker of the two -- this is typical for franchises (though not always the rule). The cut-scenes came hard and fast, featuring polygonal characters and pixelated explosions that I remember so fondly from the PlayStation 2-era of games. I was first quickly reminded that I was playing a Japanese-produced title, complete with poor voice acting, strange character names, and a plot filled to the brim with tropes. None of this hits above or below my expectations. What does hit above my expectation is how quickly I'm dropped into game play, being able to pilot my Frame (read: giant robot) and battle enemies. Then control is taken away so characters can dialogue and I remember that this game was designed by Hideo Kojima. (Don't get me wrong, I love Kojima-san, but he also loves his plot.)

So I sit in a cockpit, staring around at my environment while a monotone computer tells me how to play. Then the computer tells me what's happening. I go back to the action and fight another battle. Computer-talking-time again. Now we're watching a cut-scene. More dialogue from the computer and our underage hero. Action. Talking. Action. Talking and more talking. At this point, I'm disinterested and bored.

This is not a bash against cut-scenes or detailed stories in games. This is about keeping the player interested. During a cut-scene in Metal Gear Solid, I'm watching characters act and interact. During these listen-to-ADA-speak moments of Zone of the Enders, I'm looking at nothing, controlling a first-person cockpit view, for sometimes more than five minutes. Add to that my knowledge of anime tropes and I'm really not intrigued by what is happening or what the computer is talking about. These interruptions are quickly killing the pacing. I came looking for cool robot battles; I was shown cool robot battles; now I'm being denied cool robot battles in lieu of dull commentary about a heartless computer AI.

Not to mention moving from one sector of plot or combat to the next is slow-going as well. After a few hours, I'm hunting obscure passcodes from various towns literally labeled "Town-1," "Town-2," etc. I get confused about my goals and destinations and I quit crunching.

Let's try The Second Runner! As the sequel, it's bound to be better.

Zone of the Enders: The Second Runner is an improvement over the first game. It looks better, the dialogue is better, I get to watch people talk while I'm stuck in the cockpit view... Tastier, better prepared experience. Sadly, I lasted less time with it than the first.

The Second Runner quickly got me into combat and feeling cool. It gave me a few waves of enemies to fight, teaching me the controls and mechanics, giving me a chance to show off. All good.

The first boss fight took twice as long as it should have. Most of my attacks against her did chip damage, and even once I figured out the proper pattern and combo it was still a six minute ordeal -- six minutes of not making mistakes or I would die. I'm all for difficulty in games. More importantly, however, I want a game to feel consistent. TSR just spent the past 15 minutes showing me that I was going to be awesome. Then it set me into a fight very different, and while I was still learning game mechanics. Great games like Dark Souls and Mega Man are tough, but they're consistently tough; this is not.

I win the fight but I'm feeling a bit riled, as though the game had been attempting to insult me for not just "being good" right off the bat. A few combat scenarios later and I'm in a tight corridor surrounded by enemies, most of them gnat-like and relatively unintimidating. Then the plague of the last era of games reared its ugly head: camera control. Despite all of my attempts, I could not manage to get my avatar to lock onto the powerful opposition; no, instead I could only target the many gnats buzzing around me. So I was unable to fight back: if you can't target the adversary, you can't fight the adversary: if you can't fight, you lose. Repeatedly. I quit crunching.

I wanted to enjoy Zone of the Enders and I still want to see a successor, but somewhere between the pacing, the controls, and the difficulty spikes, I unfortunately got lost. Both games left a bitter taste in my mouth. Adjust some ingredients though, make the design feel more consistent and tightly woven together, and this can be something really great. I hope to crunch that something great one day.

Zone of the Enders was developed and published by Konami; High Voltage collaborated for the development of the HD Collection. For this post, I played Zone of the Enders for about two hours and The Second Runner for about one and a half hours on the PlayStation 3. I rented a copy of the game.

Kyerannosaur Crunches ZombiU

Tastes like TENSION!

You watch carefully as the radar pulse reveals two red dots not far from your position. That's two life forms between you and your goal. You check your ammo: only two bullets left. That doesn't leave much room for error. You decide it's best to save the bullets for later and withdraw your cricket bat. You take in a deep breath, ready your weapon, and jump around the corner. Squeek! Squeek! Rats! It was only rats. You lower your bat and check your radar again. No dots this time. Good. You scan the area for any useful loot. Nothing. You decide to move onward, passing through the room, and exiting the building.  Rain is pouring down. Your flashlight does little for visibility in these conditions. You step outside cautiously. Then you see her. It's just one woman, standing placidly. She hasn't seen you. You tap your radar but proceed forward, not wanting to miss this chance to sneak up on her. You raise your bat and strike once, twice, three times. You strike once more to finish the job. Then you hear them. More grunts. You jump just fast enough to see the other two zombies approaching. One grabs you and you're down in an instant. It's over. You know you should have been more careful.

Then you wake up, another person, another survivor, ready to give it another try....

That's how a round of ZombiU plays out, with an ever-present feeling of tension around you. Zombies are everywhere, one bite does a lot of damage, and there is little around for you to defend yourself with. You have to be resourceful and careful and plan your actions wisely. One false move and you will very likely regret it. This is the survival-horror genre many of us remember from 10 years ago.

The team at Ubisoft has done an excellent job bringing the survival-horror genre back with this title, and used the Wii U GamePad very creatively to do so. Resource and inventory management is a very big deal since tools are so sparse and zombies are so common. If you want to use a gun to mow down the enemy it's going to cost you a lot of bullets and bullets are very hard to come by; and, as stated above, if a zombie grabs you that's all she wrote--you're down and out, your inventory is lost to the zombie horde, and your next survivor will have to reclaim it. There's plenty going on here to create that sense of tension and anxiety that I believe is worthy of the zombie apocalypse.

Few resources. The first is obvious: there's not a lot to work with here. Ammunition and guns are quite hard to come by. Beyond that, the mechanics are built to be a first-person shooter--you don't have cover control or tight aiming. You have a gun which you can point and pull the trigger. Health is even less frequent. Even tools for barricading doors are few and far between, forcing you to use those at only crucial moments. Add to this the fact that if you die these items are lost (until you track down your old now-zombied self and reclaim your backpack) and you have good reason to be worried when you find a horde coming after you.

Swapping takes time.  You only have six slots for keeping tools within quick access and most of these are occupied pretty quickly by your flashlight, cricket bat, and handgun. Don't have something on hand? You'll have to retrieve it from your backpack, which literally means you will have to remove your pack, place it in front of you, and rummage inside for whatever you need. Meanwhile the world keeps spinning and the zombies continue shuffling. Obviously, this is ill-advise except in safe rooms, and it can very quickly increase the risk and punishment of being in an ill-prepared situation.

Use your radar but trust your eyes. The radar on the GamePad is incredibly useful, if not flat-out necessary for survival. Of course, watching the map on your controller means you're not watching the road in front of you. And pinging for life in the area is not instantaneous. You have to be careful and know when it's good to check your surroundings and when you just need to keep watching the path ahead. The same goes when scanning for items--this takes time and the local predators will not wait for you.

The atmosphere is thick. The world of ZombiU is dark, quiet, somber, and more than a little foreboding. Footsteps echo in close corridors. The beam from your flashlight only covers so much of the land before your eyes. Rain, dust, and fog make visibility even worse. Like in a good horror flick, you're always expecting something to pop out from behind the next corner you come to. Add this to the fact you can't pause and must look away in order to do your inventory business and you've got a recipe for nervousness.

I am very pleased with how the physical world is built into the mechanics and atmosphere for this title: that actual requirement that you must look at one screen or the other, limiting your reaction abilities. And again, the tension is thick. ZombiU is cleverly crafted to deliver a very specific kind of experience, and, refreshingly, it's a bit different than those experiences offered elsewhere on consoles recently. Moreover, as they've shown previously, Ubisoft is very good at building atmosphere and play mechanics that blend perfectly.

ZombiU was developed and published by Ubisoft. For this post, I played the game for about 3 hours on the Wii U. I played a borrowed copy.

Kyerannosaur Crunches Gravity Rush

Tastes like MANGA!

Gravity Rush is one of the few launch titles for the PlayStation Vita that manage to garner any interest for me and is the first game I've played on the system. Mostly, it feels like a third-person action game with an interesting new mechanic: the protagonist can realign gravity to any direction of her choosing. That's what had me intrigued from the get-go and that's certainly where the title's "fun factor" is found. Then it runs into another problem.

The game feels like an anime or manga. The presentation is cel-shaded and the character designs match those you would find coming from Japanese media. Many story elements are told through comic book panels and the plot is broken up into episodes. All of these things are good. In fact, the comic book panels were something that really impressed me: they were crisp and clean, flowed smoothly, fit in very well with the aesthetic, and responded to gyroscopic movements (tilting the system would change the perspective and gave each of the panels a sense of depth--a very cool touch). The problem here is pacing.

Most anime is segmented into two seasons or 24 episodes. Rather than keeping the action going non-stop for all 24 episodes, many will dawdle in building character relationships, showing off the world, and walking the audience through some of the day-to-day minutia of the lead character. These, of course, are split up into 20-minute chunks that typically sprinkle in some mysteries pointing at the larger plot here and there. Characters are introduced one by one and slowly but surely we get ready for action to commence. When it does, the audience is dropped in and things have to be resolved that episode, or at least wrapped up enough to give a proper cliffhanger. I'm not a writer by any means but this is my experience.

Now let's talking about pacing in games. The player is here to be entertained but, more so, the player wants to be involved and feel like her time is being used in a meaningful well: the game play needs to be interesting and needs to make sense. As a player, I want to go from one action point or challenge to the next, just like advancing through levels in Super Mario Bros. This action-driven pacing is done incredibly well in games like Uncharted or Portal: the player isn't left out, isn't bored, and isn't caught asking "why am I doing this?" And as the player is moved from one challenge point to the next, difficulty should be increased. The difficulty increase is needed to keep the player engaged. Changing up the presentation is also nice to keep things from feeling like a mundane loop.

Back to Gravity Rush and its anime-esque pacing. It feels slow. Challenges feel mundane. I played for nearly an hour doing nothing but fetch quests -- required, story-driven fetch quests. First I had to fix a water fountain, then I had to find a home, then I need to find furnishings for my home, then I was gathering balloons, and so on. When an "action episode" (challenge action-oriented game play) appeared, it was followed about another "character episode" (fetch quest), or sometimes two. This broke the flow. As a girl with gravity-bending powers I did not want to be hunting down balloons that were floating off toward the atmosphere -- that's not cool or interesting (at least not as presented). It was mundane.

I appreciate the game being inspired by anime or manga and being designed to appear as one. However, that structure does not translate well into game design without making some concessions for the sake of the game. Granted, this could pass as the most impressive one-to-one translation of an anime series into a video game, but, since it's not coming from an anime, is that really a goal to be striking for? Game play as comes first; player experience is always more important that plot or story or characters or aesthetic -- more important than any other one ingredient you may bake into it to create that experience. This is something like trying to take a cake mix and using it to bake a pie.

The mechanics in Gravity Rush are fun and the characters and world are passable. However, after an hour of playtime, I shouldn't be wondering when the game starts. (Square-Enix, take note.) Show me what's cool right up front and then keep wowing me with it.

Gravity Rush was developed by SCE Japan Studio and published by Sony Computer Entertainment. For this post, I played for about 3 hours on the PlayStation Vita. I played a rented copy.

Kyerannosaur Crunches Dishonored

Tastes like CHOICE!

Dishonored has been getting a lot of well-earned praise of late. Arkane Studios have successfully crafted a unique, deep, atmospheric experience. But beyond the wonderful, captivating atmosphere (which I really did love), I must praise the game's brilliantly constructed, and purposefully contained, player-choice driven levels.

Take note that this is not a massive RPG along the lines of Dragon Age or Mass Effect where every little action impacts the world and drives you further to your own, player-constructed conclusion. Dishonored is much more controlled than that: you will always go to the same locales to assault the same group of people. However, you do have an effect, and I like how it's written and handled almost better than the big sweeping diversities you see being attempted elsewhere.

Dishonored deals a lot in political intrigue, full of attempted coup d'etats, double-crossing, personal honor, and the ever-appealing and justifiable vengeance. You've been framed for murdering the impress, have been rescued from your execution, and have the opportunity to set things straight. In the process, you will seek to put the rightful heir, the young Emily Kaldwin, on the throne. It is up to you how to do this. Here, I feel, is Dishonored's strongest selling point. You really do have a lot of options, all exposed organically. Decisions are made almost implicitly.

The game is separated into discrete pieces, or chapters, determined by missions. Each mission has a set, determined objective -- usually to eliminate a certain political member. The rest relies on you: how to approach the target (do I need a key? is there a security system to watch for?), how to get inside (ventilation? possess a rat? fight my way in?) , who to interact with along the way (avoid or help citizens?), how to deal with conflict (fight or flight?), and whether or not to kill the target (do you show mercy?). And these decisions are made strictly based on action, not by selecting from a menu.

Here are a some things I really like about this system:

• The concept of choice is prominent throughout every encounter. Characters constantly repeat that how you deal with a situation is strictly up to you -- they just want results. This keeps it fresh in the player's mind that there are multiple routes, many options, and everything is at his discretion.
• The rat plague is a clever "paragon" gauge. The more killing you do, the greater the presence of rats is; the less bodies found, the plague stays a bit tamer. This is much better for the world, and even for game play, than some growing bar on the menu screen.
• With most changes occurring from mission to mission, difficulty changes are easier to maintain. This is big, since playing non-aggressively (trying to keep people alive) is generally much harder than reacting violently. If you play more aggressively, each mission will be filled with more guards, your actions will be more well known. If you play "nicer," you'll have more friends to help you out moving forward.
• Since the game is smaller, more contained, every encounter and decision has more weight and the effects are more apparent. With larger games, not only can it be harder for players to detect how all of their choices mattered, but it's harder for developers to take everything into account. With Dishonored spanning just about 8 hours, every step, every chapter, is refined and polished in such a way that nothing feels overlooked. With the plot being shorter and smaller in scale, any one decision means more, especially when dealing with taking the lives of political figures.
• Any route makes sense for Corvo, the protagonist. He is the trusted bodyguard of the empress and a very skilled man, who just got betrayed and branded a murderer: he has every right to react with anger, seeking vengeance. However, he is working for peace, working to restore what has been lost, and sparing lives could easily be his style. Choices don't feel out of place or out of character for the lore.
• You are only one person in the plot. Admiral, regents, religious leaders, and the empress's daughter -- the heir to the throne -- are all involved. You have an effect on things, of course, but you aren't the sole driver of how things turn out in the end. I personally really, really like this.

I could go on and on about how tasty this game is and how wonderfully crafted the blending of choice, game play, and plot is. I would love to see more games focus on the smaller scale and really polish up their worlds as opposed to trying to make me the super epic hero who decides the fate of the universe. I like being the epic hero but only if the developer has the time to pull it off (Dragon Age II, I'm looking at you). That said, Dishonored is delicious.

Dishonored was developed by Arkane Studios and published by Bethesda. For this post, I played about 10 hours, enough to complete the game once and play the first two missions again. I purchased a copy of this game for myself on the PlayStation 3.