2D Horror Review #1: The Charnel House Trilogy.

     The Charnel House Trilogy is a "horror themed" point and click game by Owl Cave Games, the developers behind Richard and Alice, I purchased this game on steam in a bundle on Steam for $7.99 that included both Richard and Alice and The Charnel House Trilogy. The name of the game is misleading it's one game, a short game at that, broken up into three easy to digest segments. If I were to sum up this review in just a handful of words, I'd say that this is the videogame equivalent of a 1-star Netflix horror movie. That said, a "1 star Netflix horror" is not always a bad thing though, my girlfriend loves binge watching them but as holds true with those types of movies, this game isn't going to be for everybody, even fans of the Point-n-Click genre. What drew me to this game was one, its horror-theme and secondly, one of my favorite games personalities on Youtube, Jim Sterling does voice-acting in this game, unfortunately its not that great, none of the voice acting really is besides Don, the Conductor voice by Jonathan Grier. The name Charnel House, refers to a home for the dead, in the game itself refers to the favorite book of the main character, I'm not sure if this is a fictional novel or a real one, side note, its also the title of a very creepy Picasso Painting.


     The story revolves mainly around the character Alex (pictured right,) a young woman who just recently broke up with her boyfriend, you will here about this so frequently in the first act that it may be a bit too "angsty" but in its defense it really does paint a picture, even though its a bit much in its delivery. The first act takes place in her apartment, and could be completed in 20-30 mins, which is a huge plus it ended before it could overstay its welcome, take that as you like I see it as a huge positive that it didn't let me get sick of it. The end of this episode has her meeting Dr. Harold Lang at a Train Station, You take control of him in the Second act, the act takes place on the train and really starts to build the creepy-vibe this game is trying to establish, another 20-30 min act, and again that helps it not over stay its welcome because every puzzle in this act is just a series of traveling back and forth over and over and would otherwise have been very irritating. The last act puts you back in control of Alex and this is the longest act of the game lasting about 3 times longer than the others and is where the real meat of the story takes place, I don't want to spoil too much for those that play it but Jim Sterling's voice though I took shots at his VO work earlier, really helps solidify the creepy-vibe of the game. I felt as though it ended abruptly and could've done more but I would argue that, that is a subjective con.

     The gameplay is almost a hybrid between a Point and Click and an Interactive Novel, I'm a huge fan of the controls you left-click to interact with an object and right-click to observe an object, it works well and is very intuitive. There are light puzzle-solving elements, inventory based puzzles, I felt as though all these puzzles were easy to solve, very self explanatory, never got stuck at any point, but its hard for me to say whether that is because of my familiarity with Point-n-Clicks and their tropes or game design geared towards a more casual player, I feel it somewhere in the middle really. The art style of this game is wonderful, the sprites have that "Yahtzee Crowshaw FreeWare Adventure Games Studio" look to them but the face-cards during conversations and the backgrounds are truely pixel-art, The musics fine, nothing I went out and downloaded but I never minded it. Despite its lackluster qualities, its at times cringe-worthy dialogue and voiceacting, I would recommend this game especially if you love Point-n-Clicks and those "1 star Netflix horrors," the game at no point scared me but it was very atmospheric. My overall score for it is a High 6 out of 10 and that said I am excited for its 2016 successor and will be buying and reviewing it, if you like what you read and you think a 3 hour experience is worth 6 dollars (8 dollars with Richard and Alice,) then this is the game for you, if you were to skip this game even though I enjoyed, I wouldn't blame you.

High 6/10

Check out or Buy the game here!

An aside regarding reviews...

Review and critique are necessary in our culture, a culture that is so saturated with media that we have a seemingly infinite amount of possibilities for experiences yet could never experience them all because of our limited amount of resources, those resources being money and time. My first review was of Shovel Knight, a game I hold near to my heart, one of the few games that in its vanilla state I would honestly rate as a "10 out of 10," I'm equally as passionate about writing as I am about videogames. I was so eager to share and spread my love of the two things coming together in the form of game review but I failed. Game review that I had eagerly hoped would convince you to give the game a chance to strike you as though it struck me and it was because I rambled on, it was "long in the tooth," I don't feel as though I properly conveyed the message. From now on I will be doing shorter reviews and I've decided to put numbers to it. Reviews will use a 1 to 10 scale, the weight of that scale will be determined by comparing the review scores that are given here amongst themselves. To calibrate the scale, a review will come out where I give a game a 10 and that will help weigh one side of the scale, the side that will determine value of your time. The other side of that is value of money, could you be spending your money wisely? Is this product worth buying when I could get more value out of another product? So price will be a factor in the equation. .Now there isn't a zero here, I was discussing with friends "what games would you give a zero?" and nothing came to mind, the only games that deserve zeros as their score are ones that simply don't work, and those are products that you go receive a refund for, products that are not worth the time of critique. I certainly don't want to have a "giving you twenty points just because you signed the test" mentality in regards to games it's just I've honestly never experienced a game that truly deserves a zero otherwise. There will certainly be times a game will score low much lower than a 7-10 score maybe a 3 or a 4 and those will be games that in my experiences interacting with them I didn't feel as though they were worth my money and time when compared to those other games. Most of the time when I'm scoping out a game I want to play or any product really, if I look at the reviews below the listing, I read the ones the stay "above the fold." I rarely will read reviews that require me to "go below fold" if i do read ones that require me click or tap again to further read them I rarely if ever finding myself reading them past the point where I would be tapping or clicking, That's what made me think my reviews have to be shorter. So yeah that's that, review coming soon, thank for reading, bye.

Shovel Knight Review!!!! (My First)

So, I’ve been putting off this review for a while because I want to treat it with care, it’s not just my first review but also it’s a review of what I feel to be a very important game and I’ve got a lot to say about it. Shovel Knight is an 8-bit styled, 2D side scrolling platformer set in a fantasy setting, but there is so much more to it than that. I want to start by saying that it may seem like I’m a little late to getting around to this review but my intention here at Tasting Gaming is not necessarily to jump on the newest thing but rather talk about what I like or things I find important, or just simply the most recent game I played, despite that this times out well with the upcoming physical release of Shovel Knight coming out on October 13^th as well as the first content update that Shovel Knight has received dubbed “Shovel Knight: Plague of Shadows,” We’ll get into that more later on.

Shovel Knight was developed and is published by Yacht Club Games, who I’ve never heard of prior to this game but I can guarantee we’ll be hearing a lot more about them as the game world continues to age, if they go onto make hundreds of more games the game community will be that much luckier for it and if somehow they crash and burn it’ll be one of the most giant upsets in our community. After a successful Kickstarter campaign Shovel Knight went on to be release on PC and Nintendo Systems in June of 2014, various ports were release on multiple consoles in multiple countries since then due to its well-deserved critical success.

                Upon launching this game you’re introduced to an 8-bit Yacht Club logo, extremely briefly and then brought to the main screen which is just “Shovel Knight” in some fancy font and your options written in white against a black screen. Very retro feel though somehow doesn’t feel or seem cheap at all, I mention the briefness of booting it up because something about having to see a disclaimer, a developer logo, a publisher logo, skip a cut scene, press start then be able to play just really grinds my gears and this game addresses that well, whether or not that’s because of the size of the team doesn’t matter to me, it’s very well done and I’d like to see this more in games. There was something so reminiscent about the Shovel Knight logo and I couldn’t lay my finger on it, until a close friend of mine pointed out its extremely similar to the “Conan the Barbarian” logo whether or not that was intentional who knows, could be a subtle nod to the series though. I’ve never watched or played anything in the Conan universe so I don’t think that’s the bell it rings in my head every time I see it but this is getting way off topic so back to the review.

                The game starts off with some gorgeous still-picture cutscenes, giving you enough of the narrative to paint a picture of the world you’re stepping into without overloading you with flavor text and spoon feeding you things, it gives you your motivation and leaves the right amount of work to your imagination and flushing out through NPC interaction throughout the game. You’re Shovel Knight, a knight who uses a shovel instead of a sword and you go on wondrous adventures with your partner-in-crime Shield Knight until one day you guys go into a Tower-of-Darkness kind of thing, shit goes down and Shield Knight remains trapped inside the tower, Shovel Knight slips into a downward spiral becomes a recluse and without his influence, without his presence the land falls under the rule of the Enchantress and her minions, “The Order of No Quarter,” I just love that name. One day word gets out that the Tower is now accessible again and Shovel Knight sets out his adventure to rescue Shield Knight and that’s where you take control.

                You’re dropped into a pretty standard first level, you know green, hilly, blue skies that kind of thing, it does a great job of introducing mechanics like, the downward shovel attack which is extremely throughout the entire game, there’s a part where you have to use this attack to bounce off three objects consecutively or otherwise fall into a pit which really trains you for a lot of the future levels, it also introduces mini-boss styled encounters and a boss at the end that is an Evil Shovel Knight, which seems cliché , but there’s something about it I really like, he’s black and red as opposed to your initial cerulean colored armor with gold trim and uses a lot of the same techniques as you, he acts as a reoccurring encounter like Nemesis in Resident Evil 3 or Gary (Blue,) in the Pokémon series. After you’re done with your first encounter you’re introduced to the first Dream sequence which without going into too much detail really helps establish Shovel Knight’s relationship with and feelings towards Shield Knight, there’s little to no text in these sequence and they’re brief and interactive, you awake at the campfire, and exit to be introduced to world map. The World Map is gorgeous, Super Mario Bros. 3-esque, with this cloud of darkness looming over the inaccessible part of the map to imply which direction the bad guys are, the Pixel art of the individual castles you visit is just stunning if you’re anything like me it’ll take your breath away the first time you see it, the first time I saw it shiver of nostalgia goodness flowed down my spine.

 I won’t do a full run down of this game step by step if that’s what you want let me know in the comments, but you could just watch a “Let’s Play” for that kind of spoiler filled run down, I’d rather touch base with the feel of the game, key features and go down the bullet points of what I liked and disliked about it and how it made me feel.

                                I’d like to mention this game has some RPG elements to it that an RPG nerd myself really appreciated though it didn’t bog down the game at all, there’s no leveling up system it would kind of break the continuity of Shovel Knight being a “renowned knight” if you had to work your way up from level one but rather it has a couple very interesting systems in place. There’s two towns you can visit in the game one immediately after the first level one and one that becomes accessible later on, these act as your hubs, your shops and whatnot are found here.

 The first town contains shops for your health and magic upgrades, as well a shop for goblets and a shop for relics. The first town also has a bard who buys music sheets off of you, music sheets are hidden collectibles each level contains each one and not only do you get handsomely rewarded for them you can also access the songs and have the bard play them for you whenever you want which is a nice little touch. As you progress through the game each main level will have a relic shop hidden within it with a relic that’s seemingly imperative to the level but if you somehow beat the level and miss the relic shop you can always return to the first town and buy the relics which is again  just a nice touch. The relics are abilities that use magic points and only one can be equipped one at a time though you can change what relic you currently have equipped on the fly as long as you own it. The Goblets will allow you to visit Trouple Pond and carry up to two potions, which they refer to as “ichors,” at any given time which is extremely handy later on in the game. The second town contains your weapon and armor upgrades. Weapon upgrades are cumulative so as you buy them they’re just equipped to you, they’re all useful and the best part is you don’t have to choose between them. The Armor is a different case you can buy as many as you want but you can only have one equipped at a time and can only change what one you have equipped by visiting the shop.

I know it sounds like I’m nothing but an advocate for this game which isn’t a lie I would recommend this game to anybody, young or old doesn’t matter but that doesn’t mean there isn’t stuff I disliked about the game and that’s what this little sections going to be for. My first gripe with the game, which is subjective and can vary from player to player depending on your skill and playstyle but that’s what this is all about, is that after the first level the map is blocked off until you complete two castle in no particular order but you must complete them both to progress further. That’s not my concern, I actually like how they let you play in whatever order you want but add these blocked off sections to maintain a little bit of linearity for linearity’s sake, but rather my problem is the difficulty of Specter Knight’s castle, it was personally one of the most difficult levels for me in the whole game and you can’t progress to the fourth level or the next town without beating it. I can already hear the future comments of “OMG that level was soooo easy git gud n00b,” and that’s fine I’m glad it as easy for you but I can’t be alone in thinking it was a little much for being one of three of the opening levels, and in recommending this game to everybody I feel like this just makes it less accessible newcomers especially if they’re not seasoned vets of platformers, I don’t think the level should be taken out or even edited just maybe placed later on, though it does prepare you well for what is to come like I said it was one of the hardest levels for me. It’s not necessarily the level layout I mean parts are a little difficult but it’s actually pretty straight forward if you’re the type to experiment but half way through the level the lights go out, it’s only brief and it comes back on and goes back out and comes back on, you get the idea. But this isn’t difficult through complexity it literally goes black and you’re forced to stand still or take leaps of faith whilst threats pursue you and you have to get past puzzles and then the level has again for me what was one of the most difficult boss battles in the game and half way through its lifebar it pulls this same thing with the lights going out. This only bothers me so much because to me this feels like one of the only few oversights this game has and it truly is a game that deserves to be played by everybody so I’d just hate to see this difficulty curve make it that much less accessible and they just seems so out of place in a game that is otherwise very fair and brilliantly balanced.

My other three gripes are much simpler and will probably be way less of an unpopular opinion than my last one. Ones pretty straight forward and it’s that most of the armor upgrades feel so unnecessary which feels so out of place which I’ll explain later. Secondly, that later on in the game there’s segments where you’re taking leaps of faith just jumping into the darkness which again feels so out of place especially in a game where you feel like every death is your own fault. Lastly, there’s no upward attack which doesn’t make or break anything I just would’ve liked to see it and now for the much longer section where I talked about what it is I love about Shovel Knight.

THE ART!!! I can go on and on about how well done the sprite work and the scenery are so well crafted it really puts itself on the art side of the pixel graphics vs. pixel art debate which I mentioned in my last Tasting Gaming articley thing. Two odd note-worthy things for me are: 1.) that every time you encounter a knight its substantial and I don’t just mean the bosses (The Order of no Quarter members,) but just the normal everyday knights that are scattered throughout most levels, each encounter carries weight they’re difficult, they take thought to beat and this isn’t just fun for me it also helped make me believe that I was in a world where knights were revered, ruled the land and were taken very seriously, and this is without any text going “hey, these are difficult because they’re knights” and in most cases you can just run right past them which is your best bet until you obtain some relics and upgrades. 2.) This one’s not so critical might just be me but I love that one member of the Order of No Quarter is what looks like a Viking holding an over-sized Snow Shovel as opposed to Shovel Knight’s digging shovel which made me go “okay, these guys were once friends or at least have something to do with each other” and sure enough they were, it was flushed out a little more from some pre and post battle banter I just love how this game uses these visual and mechanical cues to tell so much of a story, create so much of an atmosphere without words, it truly is impressive.

Somehow even though there was the generic run down of a Green foresty opening level, castles, an underwater level, a snow level and a lava level, Each one of these levels is very unique, the layout and level design are top notch and really exist in a league of their own, each one is relatively long and they will test your peak platforming abilities and force you to use abilities and knowledge you’ve obtained from previous level. I absolutely love love love the world map one of my favorite things is there are boss-like and bonus level-like encounters that will periodically appear on the map and really add some more substance to the game, they are way more welcomed than they are at all intrusive. Everything feels so “right where it belongs” all the relics and upgrades are useful except I only found one armor upgrade to be useful which for how expensive they are and how otherwise balanced and well placed everything is just really seems out of place. Every death feels like it’s your fault, every encounter with a knight, a mini-boss or a member of the Order of No Quarter holds water, it carries weight, it has substance and very few if any experiences in this game are forgettable. The physics and the controls are just perfect, honestly it’ll spoil playing other platformers for you if you go in expecting their controls to have the same buttery fluidity that Shovel Knight has and I don’t know how else to explain this other than the weight of Shovel knight and the gravity of the world are very believable, substantial and not at all “floaty.”

 I would say one of my favorite thing about this game, well its actually two things that go hand-in-hand, one is that money is realistic, you work for it, it doesn’t ever accumulate to an excessive amount, at least not in one play through, and the price of the things reflects how substantial they are to the game (sans armor,) two is that that you have theoretically an infinite amount of continues, no arbitrary life system, this is one of the most interesting things about this game because I’ve heard for a while now that the use of life-based systems say like Mario or Sonic are outdated and I’ve often wonder what a better alternative is and Yacht Club Games approached this brilliantly, when you die you lose a fraction of your money which oddly is so much more punishing, is so much more valuable than losing a life, and my favorite part is you’ll almost always want to plow back to where you died to collect your money and they let you do this it’s just so brilliant and so satisfying.

There’s some “shoutouts” and some “fan service,” that are very noteworthy one because the game was “kick started” there is a more casual level called “the Hall of Champions” where contributors of a certain tier’s portraits are proudly displayed in beautiful pixel art hanging throughout the level. A bit of fan service I really enjoyed is additional encounters on the world map exclusive to Xbox One and PS4, Xbox got a Battletoads encounter and PS4 got a Kratos Cameo, from the God of War series. I’m assuming this is because these version were released almost a year after the Nintendo and Windows release of the game and the additions don’t just add value to first time players but also to people who are re-buying it now for their preferred consoles. I personally played the game on Steam, but then helped my friend beat it on his Xbox One, sadly I haven’t tried the Kratos encounter but I did get a chance to sink my teeth into the Battletoads one. First off, how you activate the encounter and where you do it is fantastic, secondly it was hard like really really hard I’ve never died so many times in a row trying to accomplish one task but luckily they foresaw this and you don’t lose money in this encounter, without going into too much detail it really stays true to the Battletoads franchise and beating it is extremely rewarding not just because of its difficulty but literally the reward you get for completing it is frikkin’ sweet, I’ve heard this is true of the reward for the Kratos encounter too.

Now this game does that thing where you think it’s over already but then there’s more and its very well done and again welcomed, without getting into spoiler territory the end is very satisfying and very difficult, the “surprise element” revealed towards the end was predictable to me right from the get go, this didn’t hinder the game at all for me it was still amazing and really it wasn’t very story focused anyways besides giving your hero motivation to move forward, I’ll go as far to say as this “surprise element” reminded me of a bit from the latter part of Final Fantasy VIII’s story. After you beat the game there is a New Game Plus mode which approaches the New Game Plus formula very uniquely in increasing the difficulty, there’s less checkpoints, the food you normally would find throughout levels to heal yourself is for the most part replaced with bombs, the potions you’d find to heal your magic heal it less, you take significantly more damage from enemy’s blows and oddly enough you get more money I think this is so you can go through and buy things you missed the first time and to help with money based achievements.

Lastly I’d like to address that this game is often referred to as “mimicking” or “mirroring” older style games, which is true to some extent but I feel it holds up very well on its own merits and is flat out in my opinion better than a lot if not most of its predecessors. Now I grew up playing a lot of Donkey Kong and Mario but other than that my childhood was mostly Final Fantasy, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and Grand Theft Auto so I can’t really account for how much of Shovel Knight is cashing in on nostalgia other than aesthetics which Yacht Club pulled off painfully well, I found the experience to be very uniquely varied from the Marios, Sonics and Donkey Kongs that came before it other than in the sense that you move to the right, there’s usually secrets hidden to the left and you jump over instant death pits sometimes. I often hear the comparison to Mega Man, I never played Mega Man as a child and rather than it making me want to play Shovel Knight, Shovel Knight has made me want to go back experience what the Mega Man catalog has to offer though I do definitely see where some people draw parallels with the open boss fight system, and how each boss has a theme that is readily apparent in the aesthetic of the same level as them and the equipment you obtain but I don’t think it is a 1:1 clone of it at all it definitely stands out on its own and new gamers and retro gamers alike are lucky to experience Shovel Knight.

So yeah that was my first review, a little wordy, long in the tooth but I like being able to let everything out here so definitely let me know what you guys think positive or negative all feedback is welcomed, I’d to close this by plugging the Physical Release of Shovel Knight coming out October 13^th , 2015 I absolutely can’t wait to hold a copy of this game in my hands it’s one of those games that truly deserves a physical release and they’re adding sooooooo much content to it with trial modes, new story campaigns, new characters to play as and some customization options. My favorite part is they’re doing all this and keeping the price of the physical release at $20.00 (in the US at least,) and not only that any future updates are free to owners of this game, so obviously I highly recommend this game to freaking everybody, if you haven’t played it yet you my friend are in for a treat. One of the trickier Bosses from the campaign, Plague Knight will have his own campaign right from the get go and I plan on reviewing that campaign and the physical copy in a much briefer, future review. If you cant wait til October there's a link to it below on Steam for the low low price of $15 USD.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/250760/

 Leave a comment below, be sure to follow my blog if you want to get updates on the Tasting Gaming series, I’d love to hear any feedback positive or negative, keep it decent and feel free to follow and Tweeter me @Playanexus, and remember folk, keep on gaming.

Tasting Gaming Day Five: Indie Games

I’ve been wanting to do this article for a while and I’ve been taking my sweet time deciding what topics and aspects to address or not address. I’d like to start off by Quoting David D’Angelo, A programmer at Yacht Club Games who said in an Interview with Kinda Funny’s Colin Moriarty that “We don’t make indie games, we just make games.” This blew me back for a moment, I never considered the term “indie game” negative and I still don’t. This brings up a good point, how is it that Shovel Knight, a game that came out last year and is arguably the best game of 2014, only cost $15 USD? Axiom Verge came out this year and is $20 USD and without doubt there are games with much less substance that cost $40+ USD. There’s simple answers to this like the use of 8-bit graphics over modern photo-realistic or cell-shaded graphics or the lack of a physical release and not so simple answers such as some consumers may just refuse to pay more than that.

               

  Let’s first address that the term “Indie Game” doesn’t imply lesser quality, Wikipedia defines Indie game as “video games created by individuals or small teams generally without video game publisher financial support. Indie games often focus on innovation and rely on digital distribution,” and that’s just it, it just implies that the games were independently made. In regards to big publishers Jonathan Blow (Braid’s designer,) said “what those game companies do is create highly polished things that serve as large of an audience as possible,” and I agree with this and personally feel as though indie games are important because they drive innovation, they almost depend on it because you can only cash in on nostalgia for so long. I personally feel in a time where people are becoming more conscious, more aware of bad business practices and are growing tired of mass produced annualized sequels that make little to no improvement on their predecessors, that it is important to have this to distinguish these games from the rest. Should “indie game” be used as a genre, it’s hard to say, genres mean different things to different people so this term may feel appropriate for you and inappropriate to others.

            These terms “indie” and “triple A” may be good from a consumer’s standpoint, where to set our expectations, we expect a certain level of quality and consistency from a big publisher like Nintendo, we’d like to think that if we spend the $60 USD on a “Triple A” title that we’ll receive a game that is not broken. Unfortunately this isn’t always the case, we’ve seen even large publishers distribute games that force you to be online but their servers don’t work until days or even weeks after a game’s release, we see the same breed of publishers having to instate day 1 patches to games that have been in development for years. (Patches that are bigger than most indie game might I add.) In the same vein not all big publishers make these mistakes or practice these bad business habits and not all independent developers provide high-quality, worthwhile games, so like anything else it’s hard to generalize or lump a multitude of groups into a single group and still be 100% correct. We see YouTubers like Jim Sterling make a living exposing the con-artists that exist in both the “Triple A” and “indie” scene, proving that this trust or distrust needs to be situational and not applied to all members of these over generalized groups, and with that rant out of the way time to get to the actual point of this article, are indie games too cheap? Should indie games cost more?

            Let’s start with, why are “indie” games cheap? Simply put, these game are generally created by smaller teams, fewer people and less equipment results in less overhead, leaving more room for profitability. As Wikipedia’s definition suggest these independent titles “rely on digital distribution,” which implies the lack of a physical release but also allows these games to be more accessible on multiple platforms. Without a physical release, developers can distribute their games without the aid of a publisher and allows for more creative liberty. We take our plastic game cases, shiny disc and game manuals for granted but these are expensive to produce in mass quantities and add a lot of cost to the production of games, even “Triple A” publishers has opted for a single sheet of glossy paper referring you to a website version in place an actual game manual. Developers are dependent on publishers to get their games in the hands of the people who put code onto disc and, print flyers and produce game cases, I wouldn’t know but I assume this would be a hard operation to organize for a team of dozen or so people.

~ Having some larger financial backing on your side like the support of a large publisher or console exclusivity does give developers more advertising power so this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. ~

           

Graphics seem to be a consistent factor in both sides of the market while large developers strive for more photorealistic graphics and maxing out the HD capability of modern tech, and a lot of independent developers tend to utilize pixel graphics, whether it be 8-bit, 16-bit or 32-bit. Bear in mind, like all generalizations, no statement holds true for everybody in every situation. This goes back to what I was saying that good “indie” games thrive off of innovation because you can only cash in on nostalgia for so long, like all markets you have to differentiate yourself in the market to stand out and as a market becomes more saturated with similar games, buyers demand more bang for their buck out of a product and higher expectations cultivate an environment of competition which benefits consumers in the end. So generally producing a game with pixel graphics is cheaper than realistic graphic, there’s a very apparent difference between pixel graphics and pixel art, pixel graphics can range anywhere from an original Atari or arcade style to straight up art, images and graphics that invoke emotions and intrigue instead of just existing for utility. This isn’t a shot being fired at games that use super simple graphics, games like Thomas Was Alone utilize minimalism to its fullest to not only be visibly appealing but create an atmospheric experience that shine bright alongside any other well-crafted games. On the other end of the spectrum some developers use the simplicity of pixel graphics to cash in on nostalgia and pump out subpar games, like any art you need creative minds behind your project, passionate people with a vision and the dedication and resources to spend hours on a project and be open minded enough to go through and continually improve their art, it’s not easy for just anybody and everybody to standout, it is especially hard to withstand the tests of time, relevance, desire and playability.

         

   When I think of examples of pixel art I think of the Boss sprites from Final Fantasy 6, The Goddess boss battle in particular comes to mind, where the polygon graphics like the DS port of Final Fantasy 3 and popular titles of the N64 and PS1 era don’t hold up today and can really be visual unappealing, these boss sprites will be beautiful generation after generation, even as standalone still images you can see the labor of love that went into them. Though people may disagree but the world of FEZ holds a special place in my heart I’ve spent hours exploring, admiring the environment and it just invokes these childlike emotions in me that is just a hard thing to recreate. Where this little waffle has been ultimately heading is that even though the use of older graphic techniques can be less cost and time intensive than modern graphics, the titles that exist in the realm of pixel art are just that, art and can be very time consuming and can produce amazing results and people who specialize in this field, these artist are becoming a rare commodity, even developers like Inti Creates have opted for 3D graphics with 2D movement (“2.5D,”) in Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night over sprite graphics, according to Koji Igarashi, the producer of this title, this decision was made because it’s not only hard to find the talent but it’s simply too expensive and time consuming to produce a massive sized game with pixel graphics. So as a consumer I wouldn’t be too dismissive of games using pixel graphics and how hard producing these titles can be and realistic graphics or the lack thereof don’t add or take away any value to or from a game, at the end of the day the value lies in the end user’s overall experience.

          

  So maybe people just don’t want to spend the money on an “indie” game, I’m sure you’ve had the moment, you’re at the store and you see something that you just have to have from a distance, you pick it up you hold it then you turn it over to see it’s price tag and you wind up not going home with it, as a person who works for their money you and everybody else are entitled to spend that money however they please. Saying that there is always going to be people who are willing to support art to the fullest and there is also always going to be people who opt out for a more budget friendly title or will just wait until the game goes on sale, and there is nothing wrong with that. I’ve been hearing a lot more people subscribe to school of thought that believes that specials like the Steam Summer Sale and that free-to-play games have diminished the value of digital games, and I’m not going to touch on the issue of emulation and piracy much more than this, it’s hard to say it doesn’t affect the market at all because it has to be but, I don’t personally believe it’s a very destructive or disruptive force if anything these were people that weren’t going to buy it in the first place and would be hard to consider that money out of the developers pocket, and in a lot of cases I’ve witnessed these things act as though free advertising that lead to future purchases of merchandise that otherwise wouldn’t have happened, say you emulated a game that wasn’t released in your region and this lead to you buying its sequel that did come your way or even lead you to buy official game merchandise giving that game’s brand that much more value.

         

   As far as Steam Sales go, I believe these can open up your games to audiences that otherwise wouldn’t have played them or get an excited customer to finally check your title off their wish list, either way these are capturing sales that I believe for the most part wouldn’t have been there and they should be and are used strategically to reach a wider audience, an audience that if satisfied will spend the money on your future titles. For the Free-to-play model I think looking at its impact on consumer’s willingness to spend money on games is a little too complex to just make assumptions on but despite that I do believe to some extent that they can have a negative effect on the market I believe as this branch of games becomes more and more profitable that publishers will start to focus their efforts there and tie up precious IPs and talent that could otherwise be used on the core gaming market, and I’d really like to talk more about this topic in a future installment. Any way you slice it the customer has the right to spend their money however they desire and there’s no denying that in my book.

            Price, obviously, is a huge factor in our spending habits, we perceive expensive commodities as luxuries, and associate them with higher quality and sometimes we associate a low price tag with inferior quality or a less substantial product. You may see a game for 3 dollars and assume it’d play more like an app or mobile game and would rather just play a cheaper or even free game if that’s the case and like I said earlier you’d like to assume a certain level of consistency, substance and quality when paying 60 dollars for a game There are even products called “Veblen Goods,” like Luxury cars and purses where the high demand for them actually comes from their high asking price. So if indie developers want to be taken more seriously, should they charge more for their games? I hate to say this but yes and no. I recently bought, played and beat Yacht Club’s Shovel Knight (review coming soon!!!) I paid $15 USD for it, after constant recommendations from my friends,  now I’m a Final Fantasy Fanatic, if Shovel Knight were $60 USD, I would’ve never played it at least not until it had a significant price drop, it’d be a risk where I know I’d personally be very happy with Final Fantasy: Type-O Negative and I would’ve bought that over this new title but because of Shovel Knight’s price-point I happily bought it, now do I believe this is an incredible piece of art and the developers deserve whatever money they can get off of it?, absolutely but I wouldn’t know that if it wasn’t for its low cost of admission, I wouldn’t have be able to recommend it to my friends, family, loved ones and colleagues and most importantly, I’m going to definitely buy future Yacht Club Titles and I already can’t wait to get my hands a T-shirt and poster. This accessibility is important to the “indie” market, it is how new IPs and growing developers become household names. When we love something, we like to show it off and here’s where these developers can charge us the big bucks. Now that these new games have our attention, our trust and our money what I’d like to see is games like Shovel Knight and Axiom Verge come out with physical releases, go ahead and charge full price for their product, just add more value to them, full-fledged game manuals, beautiful cover art, maybe a poster and some exclusive in-game content to incentive us to buy them I know I’m not alone in saying that my fellow gamers and I would happily support these artist if/when they decide to go down that route.

      

      Ultimately I’d like to think that Independent games benefit from their lower asking price and that by making a game worth its salt they can eventually really cash in with merchandise, physical collector’s editions and sequels, that these low prices play a large part in their success and why they now exist as such a readily apparent entity in the gaming market and community and by no means should be people assume that they’re of a lesser quality or in the reverse that because a game cost half your paycheck that it is of higher quality and thinking like that can make you overlook some real gems, all of this can be very subjective and I’d like to know what you guys think. Leave a comment below! Be sure to follow my blog if you want to get updates on the Tasting Gaming Series, We'll be introducing game reviews and more article soon, I'd love to hear any feedback positive or negative, keep it decent and feel free to follow and Tweeter at me @Playanexus and remember folks, keep on gaming.

Tasting Gaming: Day Four (IPs)

IPs or intellectual Properties for long, are intangible objects, brands, logos, characters, film, music and much more, basically a blanket term for the fruits of the human mind, and usually are the property in question in cases of copyright infringement. Star Wars and the characters throughout the Star Wars universe are all Intellectual Property, property that can change hands, change ownership and franchises can be built around. In the gaming universe this translates to the beloved mascots from our childhood, the Marios, Sonics, Megamans and the worlds they belong to. Although these IPs are originally owned by the artist who crafted them, the rights to them are usually given up to a large studio or publisher in exchange for the funding to make their project come to life. When a game studio is bought out by a publisher or group of investors or whatever not only do they consume the brand and their employees but also the IPs that belong to that studio, which sometime leads to these properties being abandoned and unable to be continued because of copyright laws, but that’s a topic for another day.  (*cough* Metal Arms *cough* *cough*)

So, why bring this up? We all know what IPs are, I bring this up because there’s a lot of talk of big publishers and developers leaving games behind to explore other markets, particularly mobile games. Mobile games are very attractive, a console doesn’t have to be made for them there will always be cellphones and they’ll only get better with time and more importantly the product that is videogames is far more profitable then the hardware they are played on or played with. Also Mobile games tend to be less complex, easier to make and easy to integrate micro-transaction into. In a world where investors are more important than consumers anywhere where profitability can be increased, it will be, we will continue to see this trend of companies being attracted to this market. You can make as many mobile Mario games or Final Fantasy games as you want, they’ll never be able to fill the shoes of their predecessors and they won’t be able to satisfy the gamers who gave that IP any value in the first place as much as their console counterparts.

What I see happening or rather what I hope will happen is that we will see less abandoned properties and instead companies start licensing the rights out to make games with these IPs to other studios. Nintendo could stop making Pokémon and Mario games right now and just licenses rights out to these games to the highest bidders, make this an annual thing and they’d never go poor. When it was rumored that Konami was stepping out of the videogame market to dedicate themselves to mobile gaming this is what I was hoping would happen to the Metal Gear and Castlevania franchises. Imagine the amazing games that could come out of this, a lot of developers especially the younger people on their staff grew up playing these games and would understand the caliber of excellence that the community is expecting from them. These IPs are an extremely profitable product to offer and the companies with these under their belts could not produce anything with them and still make sh*t tons of money.

Admittedly there are a couple problems with this idea, just as everything else has. A couple that come to mind one first and foremost is quality control, even if Konami wasn’t working on a Castlevania Project it can and does reflect badly upon them if the game comes out subpar. We saw these with the Zelda and Mario games that came out on the Phillips CD-I. Another issue I’m sure is splitting up profits, would the original property holder make more money as the game makes more sales or will they only get that one-time payment, I simply don’t know enough on this topic to speak on it but don’t doubt for a second that these companies will milk every penny they can out of these IPs.

 Games take a long time to make when you back a kickstarter project you’re probably going to wait a year if not easily 2-3 years before that product is in your hands. Especially with new IPs which a lot of these project tend to be, because you’re creating a universe from scratch. “But Ta we see sequels for games every year, year after year” good point reader, and this is because once the property exist assets can be reused and carried over from one project to the next cutting development time significantly. On this subject Koji Igarashi, the mind behind the kickstarted BloodStained: ritual of the Night and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night said that the first Castlevania game he worked out took over 2 years and from their they reduced time and cost by reusing these assets to make yearly releases. I bring this up because if you spend all this money on getting the rights to continue a franchise you’re in love with how can the original license holders protect you during that development time from maybe larger companies pumping out a game before you or undermining your release with better marketing. Lastly, I’m not saying these are the only problems, just ones that come to mind, what about just sheer pride? What if you don’t just want whoever gets the highest bid to make your game, well these property holders are well within their rights to pick and choose only the most passionate studios to continue their franchises.

What do you guys think? Leave a comment below, be sure to follow my blog if you want to get updates on the Tasting Gaming series, I’d love to hear any feedback positive or negative, keep it decent and feel free to follow and Tweeter me @Playanexus, and remember folk, keep on gaming.

Tasting Gaming: Day Three

                Last time on Tasting Gaming, we talked a little about the negative points of larger developers (and publishers,) being in direct competition with younger companies and younger IPs, but there’s a lot of good that could come from this. With the popularity of the kickstarted platformer projects (Yooka Laylee, Mighty No. 9 and BloodStained: Ritual of the Night,) the industry is starting to understand these may not be games for everybody, they may not appeal to casuals and may not create the “whale” customers that they desire but a large portion of the market desires these games and wants to see them do well. (A “whale” is a marketing term that describes a consumer who spends a metric shit-ton of money on micro-transactions and DLC.)

One hopeful thought that keeps floating around in my mind, banging around my skull, waiting, yearning to be let out, is that if these kickstarted projects do well and are relatively commercially successful then the “Triple A” publishers and developers will begin to take the platforming genre seriously and invest the time, money, effort and marketing into making them relevant again. If the demand becomes apparent, if the moneys there then a product or service will be made by someone, and you have to make sure you’re that someone, look at the void left by the popularity of adventure games that TellTale Games continues to cash in on over and over just by placing relevant skins over the same engine, its remarkable. My vision of the future is Nintendo seeing the current success of games like Axiom Verge cashing in on the void left by the lack of traditional Metroid games and going “okay, we have to take this IP seriously once again.” Look at the barrage of retro games flooding Steam in the wake Yacht Club’s Shovel Knight.

                It’s not at all that I don’t want to see these new fresh IPs do well, they may possibly differentiate themselves enough to coexist alongside their predecessors, it’s just the idea of these kickstarted projects bringing back childhood classic like Crash Bandicoot or Castlevania excites me so much. I’m just as much ready to see them thrive on their own and dominate the market at the cost of Big Business’s ignorance and dependence on sample groups, it’s just in a world dominated by money it’d be dumb of these companies to not take this seriously or at least give other companies the opportunity to fill the crater left by the meteor that is ignored gaming mascots and genres.

                 I’d love to hear your guys thoughts maybe leave a comment below or send your emails to: Taplaysanexus@gmail.com or Tweeter at me @Playanexus yo.

Tasting Gaming: Day Two

With the success of KickStarted projects like Mighty No. 9 and the recent success of the kickstarted BloodStained: Ritual of the Night and Yooka-Layley, there has been an awful lot of talk about the direction the gaming industry is going in, and I’m absolutely loving it. I have a couple thoughts on the topic. One question that came to mind recently is, what affect will these kickstarted Intellectual Properties (IPs,) have on the original IPs they were based off of, or whose fan-base funded these games in the first place?

 So I’m super excited about Mighty No. 9’s Fall release, and to prepare myself I ran right to my xbox360 to download Megaman 9 and When BloodStained was announced I did the same thing rushed to my 360 to download Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. The Banjo-Kazooie Series is also on the Xbox Live Arcade, even though I will get around to buying these games for review, I personally wasn’t so excited to do so as I am more just excited for Yooka-Layley as an original IP and that’s because my connection to Rare stems more from Donkey Kong and my love of 3D platformers stems from Crash Bandicoot. I can’t be alone on this I can almost guarantee if the sales of Megaman, Banjo-Kazooie and Castlevania and their respective ports haven’t increased already they will as we near the release dates of these projects.

 With the resurgence of the Platformer (whether it be 2D, 2.5D or 3D) will the larger Publishers like Microsoft, like Capcom, like Konami, wind up cashing in on the success of these fresh IPs and start releasing new titles in the series that they’re based off of? For example if Konami saw BloodStained do well after its release, and responds with a “Symphony of the Night 2” then not only will Igarashi’s new IP be in direct competition with its predecessor but also will act like advertisement for Konami’s Project if it doesn’t differentiate itself enough. Additionally if the larger publishers do decide to go in this direction will their sheer popularity and monetary strength be enough to bully the little guy off of the market, I guess that’s up to the gaming community to decide.

I’m going to keep this one short today, For day 3 of Tasting Gaming I want to touch a little more on this subject and additionally talk about the future direction of gaming. I’d love to hear your guys thoughts maybe leave a comment below or send your emails to: Taplaysanexus@gmail.com or Tweeter at me @Playanexus yo.