Slow As Sunday: Ultimate Mario

Nintendo's official mascot is a multi-talented mustachioed Italian gentleman with a thirst for adventure and a penchant for sports. So I ask the question: Why hasn't there been a Mario game that showcases all of Mario's talents? Imagine, if you will, a video game that is the ultimate tribute to Mario's past and present, mixing game elements that include puzzle solving, platform navigation, cart racing, golf, tennis, baseball, soccer and everything that the little plumber that could can take on. The game would take place in an open world where the player chooses what objectives to tackle, without any strict story progression to hinder exploration. Sure the Mario Party games showcased many of Mario's unique talents but players were stuck traversing a wacky "life sized" board game. Let's take a romp through this imaginary land and see where we end up.

Starting at Princess Peach's castle, Mario heads to the garage attached at the west end to borrow a motorcycle. Proceeding down a path he comes to a broken bridge on a cliff with platforms in the sky in sight. Revving the engine, Mario leaps off the bike and equips his flying cap in mid air, taking to the skies and the nearest platform. From the floating disk he can see the mighty expanse of the kingdom below and notices he is not alone on his perch. Two flying Koopas are arguing who can fly the fastest, Mario stumbles into the conversation and instead of pouncing on the Koopas right there and then, accepts their challenge to a race. The next thing he knows Mario is waiting for the timer to count down while he and the koopas line up to jump off the platform and race around an obstical course of flying rings. Finishing the race in first, and collecting his winnings in gold coins, Mario looks for his next challenge, and notices far below a tennis court...

This Ultimate Mario game should be made, as it has been a good long deal since I've tramped about the Mushroom Kingdom with a sense of freedom and a lust for exploration. More importantly I think a game like this needs to be made for all the other Mario games to make sense. Mario's list of skills and abilities have increased dramatically since his days as a plumber and I don't think it is necessary for a princess to be kidnapped in order to enjoy deploying them. Call me looney or a mad genius, I just think it would be a good time.

Side Note update

An interesting turn of events did occur. When I took that step, as described in my side note, of offering something meaningful to say in response to a "u suck" comment, I opened up a line of communication. When I treated that player with respect I received respect in turn and now we have a meaningful, yet stunted conversation going on Xbox Live. The negative image giving to Live by its overzealous and immature users has twisted other users' expectations. Instead of treating everyone we meet online as a prepubescent slavering X-bot, we should treat each other with respect. Matching any hostile, vulgar, and crude comment with a response that is respectful, or offering up no response at all. I'm not saying take out all the trash talk and competition. We can still taunt, one-up, and goad each other to distraction with respect.

Case in point. A day after my exchange with this individual we played another match, afterwards I received this message

"teams grew uneven towards the end,but pretty fair at 1st.well played."

If that isn't a major improvement over "u suck" I don't know what is.

Side note

I just got done playing a rather unbalanced match of Battlefield 1943 on Xbox Live. I played my best, as I always do, but my team struggled in the first 3-4 minutes as the teams were at a 5/7 split with mine being the former. Perseverance prevailed and as is want from competitive online games with open teams, the balance of the match quickly swung in our favor as more players joined. In the end I was the top scorer for my team on account of staying in the match for the duration and my humble (read:top notch) sniping skills.
I just got done with the match and was about to shut off for the night and get some sleep when a the top scorer from the other team sent me a message. I expected a congratulations or a like minded gripe about the unevenness of the teams but that was foolish of me.
The message was simply "u suck".

I understood the player's frustration all too well and I know why he might have thought it was I who somehow managed to snag the win out of nothing. While I confess to being good at the game, I'm not that good. So I sent a message back which read "it was a good match. the tides of war change swiftly. i look forward to playing you in a match where the teams are even for the duration."
I suspect the response will not be as kind.

Getting hammered and waxing philosophical

My weekend was full of surprises, dissapontments, and some startling realizations. On Saturday I went with my younger sister to the Haunted Trail of Horror in Kenton, OH as part of her senior project for high school. The experience was, different. I was used to her clinging on to my arm for dear life and jumping at shadows while I laughed all the while. This time her friend Elizabeth had joined us, who I suspect is secretly a world renowned track star, and she dragged my sister from haunted horror to frightful obstacle with my large frame following close behind the man chasing them with a chain saw. The video that was recorded is dark, with mostly screams and curses in the audio, none of which were mine.

Later that evening after a long car ride home, my buddy Sean and I took to the road once again in search of an elusive party which I had been invited. It ended up being a dud. I got a call from Bobby, the guy who invited me, explaining that the party had died down and there was no reason to come out anymore. So I wandered the streets of downtown trying to get back to the freeway to go home, meanwhile Sean was proclaiming our inevitable death around every street corner saying "Man, were going to get shot!"

Sunday was stress and more stress as I dealt with issues at home while trying to get some play time in with a preview copy of SmackDown vs Raw 2010, which was buggy as hell. Thankfully a form of salvation came when a recent acquaintance, waxing on friend, named Collin invited me out for a smoke at the Shi Sha lounge downtown. After a hookah of melon and mango we sauntered on down to Hound dogs to grab a pie and some beer. I thought we were done after that but Collin had other plans. He took me to one of his favorite haunts. A place that I had passed up once in search of a Guinness because of the loud Eminem song playing on the juke box. I have nothing personal against Eminem, but that is not the type of music I expect when I enter a pub.

Ah, so to make a long story short and to get to the culmination of the weekend, I had some fun. I met Collin's pub friends and then he took me home but beer brings out the philosopher in all of us, it should be said. We had a smoke and I prompted a discussion of the possibilities of human memories being mapped and stored. A honest and deep conversation began that I had no intention of starting, but which seems to be fueled by alcohol like gasoline to a fire. Many revelations and reflections took place and I walked away feeling quite refreshed and hopeful. It may sound strange, but discussions of death help me to find hope in life.

Slow As Sunday: World of Warcraft, Evony, Bruce and lawsuits

World of Warcraft has set the industry standards for MMOs, not for being the first, rather they are the biggest, and arguably the best, at running/maintaining/building/rebuilding an online virtual world and even spying on their customers. A stink was raised by a hacker years ago on how the WoW servers run a program while WoW is running known as the “warden client”. Essentially the warden watches what programs are running at the same time as WoW in order to detect any programs with names that match a program that is considered in line with end user license agreement’s definition of an “unauthorized third party program”. Not such a big deal really. Keeping track of what programs are running at the same time as WoW is an effective way of keeping track of cheaters or hackers. Millions of players trust Blizzard with their personal data and I haven’t been given any reason to mistrust Blizzard to a point where I refuse to allow them access to my computer.

This practice of “spying” is not limited to WoW. As I said, they have become the standard to which all MMOs are judged and that includes how they go about detecting “unauthorized third party programs”. The free-to-play game Evony, yes the one that has lingerie models seemingly ripped from catalogs advertising all over other websites, has a cloud of controversy surrounding it. To make a long story short, a blogger by the name Bruce Everriss is being sued by Evony, LLC for posting defamatory and false statements online. So how are the two connected? In the Evony's terms of use agreement they include two agreements as follows:

You hereby acknowledge and agree that:
WHEN RUNNING, THE GAME MAY MONITOR YOUR COMPUTER'S RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY (RAM) AND/OR CPU PROCESSES FOR UNAUTHORIZED THIRD PARTY PROGRAMS RUNNING CONCURRENTLY WITH EVONY. AN "UNAUTHORIZED THIRD PARTY PROGRAM" AS USED HEREIN SHALL BE DEFINED AS ANY THIRD PARTY SOFTWARE THAT, WHEN USED SIMULTANEOUSLY OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE GAME, WOULD CONSTITUTE A VIOLATION OF SECTIONS 1, 2 OR 9.
…
WHEN THE GAME IS RUNNING, REGAN MERCANTILE US, LLC MAY OBTAIN CERTAIN IDENTIFICATION INFORMATION ABOUT YOUR COMPUTER AND ITS OPERATING SYSTEM, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION YOUR HARD DRIVES, CENTRAL PROCESSING UNIT, IP ADDRESS(ES) AND OPERATING SYSTEM(S), FOR PURPOSES OF IMPROVING THE GAME AND/OR THE SERVICE, AND TO POLICE AND ENFORCE THE PROVISIONS OF THIS AGREEMENT AND THE EULA.

Before we go any further I would like to point out that the suit against Mr. Everiss is still pending and the “truthiness” (to borrow Stephen Colbert’s word) of his claims about the alleged goings on in real life and the game world of Evony have not being revealed by the courts, yet. Mr. Everiss, as far as I know, does not site the monitoring of third party software as a reason not to play Evony. I refuse to play Evony, and have Evony played on my computer, because their might be some truth in Mr. Everiss’ claims and I do not want any software, browser based or no, running on my computer while the integrity of the company who runs it, and has such access to information on my computer, is in question. The language of Evony's terms of use agreement are similar to World of Warcraft's in regards to monitoring what programs are running while the game is, leading me to believe that Evony has the same or similar access to my computer as the WoW warden.

Make sure you skim through the end user license agreement and any other legal documentation pertaining to a piece of software before you commit to an installation. Strange and dark secrets can be found hidden behind legal jargon and in the 1s and 0s of your favorite game. Take comfort in the knowledge that most companies don’t wish or have the good sense not to invade your privacy more than they have too and that there are individuals like Bruce Everiss who are plugged into the video game industry and are willing to call companies out and make the public aware of any risky practices, rumored or true. Awareness and alertness is one of the best tools in fighting against fraud and other criminal activity and we should all be a little more aware of what goes down in our digital neighborhood.

Slow as Sunday: Fable Axe

In episode 47 of Epic Battle Cry, my personal guilty listening pleasure, Tony Grice, Daniel Kaiser, and Brent Adams discussed the recently released Fable II episode 1. During their discussion they decided that they like the idea of consumers being able to try a game before investing all of their money into the final product, claiming that most gamers don’t finish games and therefore don’t get their full money’s worth. I think that thriftiness is not the only thing at stake when a full game is broken down and sold like a stripped out car.

Episodic games have had a recent reemergence with games like Sam and Max and Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People by Telltale Games. These titles are meant to be small, easy to digest, and played in one or two sittings while offering a near full game experience in less time than a huge AAA title. The tactic that Lionhead Studios is taking is different from other episodic games. Essentially Fable II has different chapters, stages in the main character’s life where there is a transition from one phase to another. Chapters allow the important events to be experienced in game without having to explain all the details of the characters life or having to come up with some wacky reason why they’ve grown up (Link in The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time). This structure of chapters works well with an episodic format however there are some things about the character that never change. The inventory for instance, or stat points a player has earned and invested would need to be consistent from chapter to chapter and episode to episode. Transferring the data is easy to do when one is breaking down and playing bits of a complete game. Consistency is not something episodic games embrace readily.

The problem with releasing a full game in smaller chunks is in the implementation and timing. If a development team is under pressure from the publisher, or in Blizzard’s case with Star Craft II and its fans, then releasing an episode of a full game could satiate them long enough for the team to continue work. Releasing a game that wasn’t meant to be episodic can break up an otherwise coherent and epic story, bring unfair criticism from reviewers (wasn’t long enough, should have more features etc.), and worst of all cement features/characters/plot that could have been changed or adapted as the game’s development progressed. Sure it may be convenient for gamers to purchase a game in small doses, adding revenue to complete a project. If the first two episodes don’t have players hooked and sales for the third or fourth episode aren’t very successful then a publisher might drop the title leaving both a development team, and players who were deeply interested, an unfinished game.

My advice for anyone looking to take a full game and break it into episodes is know your game and know yourself. If you have made sequels and know how to continue a story and improve upon the ideas of the original then you already have a good sense of how an episodic game is made. Some genres are better for playing in smaller chunks and are more easily adapted to the episodic format. If you want to tell a grand epic story that’s non-stop action and suspense then episodes should not be your first choice.

Slow As Sunday: I Did Not Get the Freebie

I have been interested in Halo 3: ODST not because of the single player, but the separate Halo 3 multi-player disc. My plan was to install the game disc for the multiplayer from a borrowed copy of ODST in order to obtain the extra map packs that I have yet to download myself. After minutes of installing the disc and swapping out my own copy of Halo 3 with the ODST multiplayer disc, I was disappointed that I couldn't play Halo 3 "from the hard drive" in the game library on the 360's dashboard. When I fired up the game I was equally bummed to find that my scheme didn't work at all. The conclusion of my little experiment was that installing a disc does not allow that data to be read by a "different disc".

Since the Halo 3 ODST and the Halo 3 we're the same game, but not the same kind of game disc, thier data cannot be read by each other. This is why Bungie put all the downloadable content onto the multiplayer disc for ODST; because existing content for Halo 3 could not be read by the ODST disc. There is an exception, but not in this case, of discs able to be read by different copies of the same game. My copy of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion which is a game of the year edition, has a separate disc that, when installed following the prompts given when the disc inserted the content, is available for any copy of Oblivion that is placed in that 360. Notice that I said 'follow the prompts'. The process of installing the Oblivion disc is different than what I tried to do with the borrowed copy of ODST.

Now we run into a situation that few videogame publishers have developed a solution for. How do you give players without internet access to downloadable content the ability to play the DLC for their single player games? Earlier solutions we're to resell the same game with the added content i.e. Super Street Fighter II. Another attempt was to sell the DLC as a separate disc, either by itself or with original copy of the game, and is installed and played with an original copy. Rock Star's solution for the Grand Theft Auto IV DLC was to sell it on a separate disc that could be played by itself, but it only has the extra content and not the original game content. Fortunately not every gamer has to worry about where there extra content is coming from. Most home video game consoles are hooked up to the internet and receive constant updates and purchased content just fine.