Brother is excited about Wii U. I am more cautious.

The main problem that I foresee is this. The gimmick selling point of the Wii U is its controller. Building on the success of the original Wii Remote, they went and shoved a touchscreen in there. Like the Wii before it, it’s the unique controller, packing prolific technology into an Applesque user-friendly device, that makes the Wii U stand out from its competitors. However! Although the Wii U will, of course, support multiplayer, the controller will only be sold with the console. Yes, it’s an expensive device in its own right and the name Wii U implies a greater focus on single-player experiences, but I foresee a future in which prospective buyers ask their local games shop for extra controllers and, when told that they have to buy a whole other console, believe that they’re being ripped off and refuse to buy one.

But my predictions aren’t as dire as some other commentators, making scaremongering claims that Nintendo is dying and that the Wii U will be its final gasp. What nonsense. Yes, Nintendo is going through a rough patch at the moment (along with other Japanese companies due to the current value of the yen), but it’s been through worse – the never-released-in-the-UK Virtual Boy is remembered as a disaster, and the Nintendo 64 and Gamecube consoles were overshadowed by Sony’s PlayStations. They’ve seen it all before and they’ve always come through. For better or for worse, Nintendo is as proud company and it’s not going to listen to the media to decide what it does next. One article, “Never Count Nintendo Out” by Kotaku’s Chris Pruett, says that Nintendo succeeds because they’re willing to take risks. They don’t always pay off in the short term, but occasionally, as with the Wii and DS Lite, they strike gold. They don’t follow trends; they make trends.

But there’s one particular line in that article that caught my attention. “The key difference between Nintendo and Sony or Microsoft is that they build their hardware around their games, rather than the other way around.” See, when the Wii U was announced, I was reminded of a specific game that, today, has almost been forgotten…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L4RCbRQxyI

This is Pac-Man Vs., a multiplayer remaining of the original Pac-Man game. It works like this: There are four players. Three of the players each control one of the ghosts and one player controls Pac-Man himself. As in the original game, Pac-Man has to eat all of the dots in the maze while avoiding the ghosts. This game, however, is played using the Gamecube’s Game Boy Advance connectivity functionality; while the ghosts use standard Gamecube controllers, they are only given a small window on the TV screen to find their way around. On the other hand, Pac-Man can see the whole maze on the GBA screen. The ghosts cannot be defeated (without a power pellet), but with the handicap of not knowing where Pac-Man actually is, it becomes a game of hide-and-seek. It’s designed as a party game; when a ghost catches Pac-Man, that player gets to switch controllers and have a go. I, personally, never got a chance to play it – it was only available with a couple of obscure Namco games in the UK – but if you can get four players in a room together, it sounds like great fun.

Nintendo seemed very proud of this game when they announced it, pointing out that the idea came from none other than legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. But, aside from a DS re-release, it never gained the popularity they were hoping for. The GC-GBA connectivity was used in a few additional games (I had great fun annoying Brother with the Tingle Tuner in The Wind Waker), but it still required one to own a Gamecube, Game Boy Advance AND a connection cable. The Wii and DS shared some wireless connectivity, but, again, few games bothered.

So it strikes me, if we accept that Nintendo designs their machines around their games, that the Wii U is a console designed primarily to play Pac-Man Vs.. Think about it. One touchscreen controller per console with others relegated to Wii Remotes? Sounds like it’d be perfect! With the amount of Wii Remotes already sold, expense will not be a barrier to entry. So why hasn’t Pac-Man Vs. been announced for the Wii U yet?

Actually, it was one of the very first games we saw being played on Wii U. It just wasn’t called Pac-Man Vs..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUvdP2TNBHE

Chase Mii. Same game, different branding.

And Nintendo’s been working like this for years. Just look at the Nintendo 64. They wanted to give fine control over Mario’s movement, so they put an analogue stick on every controller. They wanted a controllable camera angle, so they added the C buttons, which would later evolve into a second analogue stick. They wanted to give greater immersion and feedback, so they made a force-feedback “Rumble Pak”, later built-into the Gamecube controller and Wii Remote. Nintendo pioneered all of these features primarily because these were the gaming experiences that they wanted to share. And, sure enough, its competitors followed suit – Sony’s DualShock controller, released some time after the PlayStation’s debut, added all of these features more than a year after the release of the Nintendo 64.

Nintendo is constantly seeking out new ideas, new designs and new experiences. They may sound crazy at first, but you can be sure that they’re here to stay. Even if, sometimes, it takes a couple of attempts to get them just right. ㋼

There are now two reasons to own a PlayStation 3: Noby Noby Boy and Heavy Rain.

Seeing as I’ve already spent half a post talking about the latter, it’s time to examine The Young Man of the Twin Nobs.

But first, a little personal history. It’s been about 10 years since I was given a Christmas gift of a Nintendo 64 console and a handful of games (Banjo-Kazooie, GoldenEye 007 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time). Now, when I was a child, I was, like many children, stupid. Although I had figured out by this point that consoles needed to plug into a television to work and didn’t communicate via power sockets,¹ my grasp on reality and its associated concepts was tenuous at best. So, when I fired up what critics had called The Best Game Ever, I was content to roam the Kokiri Forest, talking to the various inhabitants, walking, jumping, collecting rupees, picking up rocks, throwing rocks, more jumping, listening to Navi and so on without continuing to the rest of the game. I was vaguely aware that there was more to explore — I had, after all, read the manual which talked about all kinds of items that I didn’t have, like, for example, a sword — but that didn’t bother me. Besides, there was this one location that had a frightening boulder scaring me off.

I should probably point out that I have a terrible fear of things in video games. Like monsters. And insects. And glitches. And polygons. To this day, I won’t go near games like Half-Life or Bioshock. I’d always disable items in Super Smash Bros. Melee in fear of getting an appearance from a Like Like or Redead. And Banjo-Kazooie is still the scariest video game that I’ve ever played. Scarred me for life, it did; after one particularly shocking scene (played by Brother whilst I watched) I was reduced to rolling on the corridor floor, trembling, whimpering “they’re crawling on me”. True story. But, as usual, I digress.

The point that I’m making is that when one plays a video game for the first time, be it as a child, a curious parent or a technophobic senior, one doesn’t care about advancing to the next level, unlocking any of the achievements or upgrading one’s character. One cares only about having fun. And this, I believe, is the essence of what a video game should be. The moment that one is forced to do something in a video game, it stops being fun. When it stops being fun, it stops being a video game. It becomes a job.

In my mind, a true video game does not force the end user to do anything. It may gently guide the player to the next destination or give the player some ideas on what to do next, but my favourite games are the ones that offer freedom. Burnout Paradise is one of my most favourite games of recent years, and it’s not hard to see why: The player is given a car and placed in a city. And that’s it. Of course, there are objectives; you can unlock different cars, you can compete in races, you can discover hidden locations, you can perform stunts — and, in my personal favourite mode, you can slam into other cars, shutting them down and sending them to the junk yard. But it’s all optional. There aren’t any menu screens between you and the city. You can start the game and just drive. No obligations. No messages telling you off for going the wrong way. No game has better captured the pure joy of driving since the original OutRun.

It’s important to note that a game like this can only work properly if it’s coded properly. For me, a game needs to feel good to play, to experience. Sloppy programming and poor execution have ruined too many exciting game concepts. Staring at the word “Loading…” on an otherwise blank screen is not fun.

So what of Noby Noby Boy, then? A software toy criticised for its lack of focus? A game that many would describe as an “ungame”?

Noby Noby Boy has been misunderstood. So-called “hardcore” gamers have looked at it, maybe tried it for a while, before moaning that there’s no point to the game and going back to playing Call of Duty or something. But they’re missing the point. The fact that there is no point is the point. Wait… No, let me rephrase that.

Designer Keita Takahashi (also the man behind the Katamari franchise) has stated that when he’s done designing video games he would like to design playgrounds. And that’s exactly what he’s done with Noby Noby Boy. Although he’s stated that he’s not entirely happy with the finished product due to lack of budget, the game nonetheless is a well-produced physics-based playground. The player is given control of BOY, briefed on the controls and left to explore the rest of the game for themselves. The graphics are beautiful in their simplicity. The soundtrack is diverse, consisting of a range of pieces played by a single instrument, further pushing the simplicity idea. The control experience is great (Noby Noby Boy being the first time that I’ve ever used a PlayStation controller for more than a few seconds); barring some problems with the L3 and R3 buttons (which may or may not be the fault of the controller) it really adds to the experience, really giving one the sensation of space and free movement. And although there are Trophies² to earn and an overarching long-term worldwide goal of stretching enough for GIRL to reach other planets, that’s not what makes the game engaging.

Noby Noby Boy takes one back to a very primal stage of their gaming life. Much like the fun I had exploring Kokiri Forest in Ocarina of Time, Noby Noby Boy presents players with an infinite number of randomly generated worlds to play with. This is a game that perfectly embodies the spirit of a child given their first video game. This is a game that shuns obligation; a game that gives the player complete freedom to play and have fun. Let me emphasize that. Play and have fun. How many games today allow one the pure, unadulterated joy of playing and having fun? Sure, you have open-world sandbox-type games like the annoyingly prolific Grand Theft Auto series, but few of them — perhaps none of them — are as much of a joy to experience as Noby Noby Boy. In this sense, Noby Noby Boy’s focus on fun pushes it much closer to my definition of a pure video game than any other.

So, if you, like me, are tired, disgusted or put off by the complex, miserable, unrewarding nature of hardcore gaming, or just looking for something a little different, Noby Noby Boy may just prove to be one of the most happy, fun and joyous experiences of your life.

If you will let it. ㋼

Ooh, one more thing. There’s an iPhone version of Noby Noby Boy coming out really, really soon (assuming that Apple’ll allow it on their App Store). Judging by the incredible preview videos that they’ve placed on YouTube, it’s shaping up to be the best iPhone and iPod touch application ever made. So now you’ve got a reason to get yourself one of those devices.

Most — all, actually — of the images in this post were taken from Eurogamer.

1. Coincidentally, the potential of home power sockets to transmit data was realised a few years later with the HomePlug standard. My mind was ahead of its time.
2. The PlayStation equivalent of Achievements.

This year, the city of Leeds was lucky enough to host the Northern arm of the Eurogamer Expo 2009. As Leeds is conveniently located inside the jurisdiction of the provider of my bus pass, attendance was a no-brainer. I’m not what you would call a hardcore gamer, but my interests in video game theory and technology more than qualify me to leave the house for this.

Now, I’m particularly interested in the idea of the video game as a storytelling medium. (Which explains why I spend so much time and money on visual novels. The attractive female characters are just a bonus.) At the expo, I got the opportunity to play a wide variety of games, two of which caught my fancy in regards to the use of story.

One game that I was lucky enough to have a go on was the upcoming Heavy Rain on the PlayStation 3, a cinematic “game noir” (if you don’t mind me coining a phrase). Many attempts have been made in the past to give one the experience of playing through a motion picture, and, by watching the following videos, it would seem like Heavy Rain, with its high-definition film-grain effect and meticulously motion-captured cast fresh from the uncanny valley, is the closest we’ve ever seen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4C4GK91nr0

Unfortunately, Heavy Rain works much better when someone else is playing it than it does when one plays it for onesself. The control scheme, in particular, is a large point of contention. The character is controlled by the right trigger; pulling the trigger makes him walk/run/tiptoe, and steering is accomplished via the left thumbstick. As you can see in the above video, this takes quite a bit of getting used to.

Sometimes, little icons appear on screen, corresponding to the PlayStation controller’s bizarre, unintuitive circle, square, ecks and triangle buttons or gestures to be performed by the right thumbstick. In itself, this isn’t particularly innovative: these little actions have become known as “Quick Time Events” (no relation to Apple’s QuickTime technology), and they formed the basis of early “interactive movies” such as Dragon’s Lair (a game which Heavy Rain director David Cage has downplayed similarities to). Perhaps a more apt comparison would be the Shenmue series; heavily story-driven games with a plot that develops through both interactive cutscenes and event flags scattered throughout the world. Of course, Heavy Rain’s “sets” (read: levels) are on a much smaller scale than Shenmue’s wide, open explorable environments, but that’s entirely the point: the intent is to give the player the full movie experience but still be in control.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJ_A2Tpz2UM

But what really impressed me about this game was the potential for plot branches. These two videos show only one direction for the story to take. As I watched others experience the demo, I saw many other possibilities. And these are more than just changes in dialogue; in this one scene, the developers programmed many different possible ways to distract the robber, calm him down and reach the scene’s conclusion. In my playthrough, I accidentally knocked a bottle off of a nearby shelf. According to another report that I read after the event, it’s possible to pick up this bottle and knock the robber out.

In the video you see above, our hero talks to the robber, eventually convincing him to leave (I love how the shakiness of the options represents the character’s inner nervousness), but this was not one of the outcomes I saw at Eurogamer. If you can’t get him to calm down, the player must attempt to wrestle the gun from him. I managed to get shot in the shoulder, but my character seemed fine and the outcome was the same in the above video (only with a slightly broken shoulder). But if the shopkeeper is shot, a similar but significantly different scene plays out as Scott is given the vital clues with the shopkeeper’s final breath. Same outcome, but more dramatic. And though I may complain about the controls, one can’t argue that they don’t feature some interesting idiosyncrasies; in the above scene, the player must continuously hold down both shoulder buttons to keep their hands up. (If you don’t manage to keep them up, you still get the “shot in the shoulder” ending.)

It’s plain to see that an enourmous amount of work has gone into Heavy Rain. I just wonder if it’s all really worth it. Yes, it just may be a true interactive movie, with engaging characters and a plot (based on what little we know of it) that seems decent enough. But the demo that I played had significant problems that may not be fixed by release date. I speak, of course, of the controls. Even if you have full control over your character, there’s not much point if you’re going to be limited by control scheme and set (again, level) design. From a gameplay perspective, it may as well be a string of choices and dexterity tests for all the difference it makes. I’m hoping that I’ll be proved wrong, but it seems like Heavy Rain will soon join the ranks of Fable Ⅱ, Shenmue Ⅱ and every Telltale Game ever made as an experience that sacrifices gameplay in favour of its story.

Which brings me to an example on the other side of the technological scale — and, unlike Heavy Rain (with its tentative February 2010 release date and PS3 exclusivity), one that you can play right now. You see, in the building opposite the show floor, they had set up a nice little indie section, featuring developer talks, 3D gaming demos and a selection of expensive-looking computers running Flash games.

One such Flash game was Ergon Logos.

An extreme counterpoint to Heavy Rain’s high-definition three-dimensional graphics, Ergon Logos is entirely text based. (And no, it’s not what you think.) Reading through its first act, Ergon Logos clearly sets out to be a Braid-esque deconstruction of the classic Super Mario story (princess kidnapped, hero saves her) told through the medium of interactive kinetic prose, but, as creator Paolo Pedercini says, ”it fails miserably and becomes a piece of non-linear kinetic visual poetry written by a teenager obsessed with post-structuralist French philosophy. I don’t,” Pedercini adds, “know exactly what I was thinking.”

Regardless of original intent, what has been created here is, accidentally or not, a deconstruction — an interactive critique, if you like — of the visual novel medium. Let’s put aside the story and look at the delivery. The narrative is presented in a line. The line has various twists, turns, right-angles and about-faces and, every so often, the player is given a choice between two or three directions in which the story can take. All the while, the story is moving at a constant, linear pace, unbroken by pauses or mini-games of any kind. Remind you of anything?

This, I argue, is a novel game in its purest form. Along the way, the player (reader?) is given glimpses of other possibilities for the story, whether the option has already passed or has yet to be. I am reminded of Ever17 (which I admit I have yet to reach the true ending of) and its tendency to show the player shadows of the results of other plot choices within its narrative. In some cases, it is possible to get stuck in an infinite loop, and, while none of its eventualities can be considered a “true ending”, one may feel as if one has hit a dead end at times. At one point early on in the second act, you are given the same option twice at once, going in opposite directions. Just what is one to do? Only through replaying the experience can one see all that there is to see, but Ergon Logos is not designed to be “completed”. It is designed to be read, experienced and to challenge your idea of what makes a game. Even if it ends up doing something completely different.

Anyway, I highly recommend that you play it for yourself a few times. Ergon Logos is free, Flash-based and should work in most major web browsers. I recommend, however, that you close everything else and start a new browser session, if for no other reason than [SPOILERS AHEAD] one of the game’s many endings will deliberately make it (and possibly your computer) crash. But it’s art. So that’s okay. ㋼