Madden 2010 First Impressions

I played through the Madden 2010 demo tonight.

Wow.

There is a LOT to comment on.

Not all of it is good or bad, but overall I was pretty disappointed by the demo. I think of myself as the kind of person that tries to see the good side of movies I watch and games I play, so I don't make that comment absentmindedly.

I'll start with the good. One of the things that I always wished the series did a little bit better was tackling animations. If I've got a running back almost to the 1st down marker and its third down. I expect the running back to get his head down and fight for that yard. While you could always hit the button to dive, truck stick, or do some other trick, more often than not these animations would misbehave when a defender was present. When you didn't use the buttons, oftentimes you would get grabbed in a way that no player with his head in the game would allow himself to be tackled. The animations in this game are much more realistic, although I think the ball carrier does tend to roll a bit much.

The pacing of the game is also dramatically improved. I thought that Madden '09 was a little bit fast and loose, but this game feels much more under control and paced.

Another well-done aspect of the demo is that for the first half of the demo, notes roll up the bottom of the screen informing you about all the new features in the game.

But for all the good, I found a lot more not to like about the demo. For one, the game is littered with ads. I guarantee that you will see about 4 or 5 Snickers ads before the end of the first half. You'll also see Sprint, which I actually didn't mind as much because their ads are all over regular NFL broadcasts. Finally, there's in-game weather sponsored by the Weather Channel, which was really just unnecessary.

Then you have the length of the demo, which clocks in at 4 minutes for the whole game (there's only one mode, which is fine). While I don't see anything wrong with limiting the amount of time players spend playing the game, and thus encouraging them to buy the full version, the pacing of the game was so out of whack for me that it ruined my play experience. There were only three drives in the whole game; and my game went to overtime.

How is that possible, you ask? Well, on the opening kickoff I picked kickoff middle and proceeded to kick it to the end of the field. After kicking off, I let the game go on autopilot like I usually do, only stepping in to make a tackle. The problem: no tackle. The AI goes up 7-0. The remainder of the first half takes 2 minutes, entirely consumed by a six play drive that ends up out of field goal range because I didn't realize the quarters were so short.

In the second half, I returned the kick 20 yards and proceeded to grind out an 8 play drive that put me into the end zone with :00 remaining. I even had to take two timeouts. Since the score was 7-7, the game went to overtime. I received the kickoff, and couldn't get into the end zone with the ~55 seconds left in overtime.

Now, any criticism levied against me for not being able to get points out of two of my three drives is fair game, but I still thought that the whole situation could have been improved.

The most peculiar thing about the demo, however, is that neither team in the demo made it to the Superbowl last year. While the Cowboys and Giants (your only two options) are two really popular teams, I think Tiburon could have, you know, let demoers experience the Polamalu/Fitzgerald rivalry from the game's cover. I think it would have made sense. Maybe.

Maybe there's nothing wrong with the demo, and maybe I'm just a disgruntled Chargers fan who wishes his GM/coach had taken Polamalu when they had the chance. Idiots.

-Jon

Battlefield 1943 Impressions

I must confess that I have been waiting some time to comment on Battlefield 1943 because I was thinking about doing a full-fledged review for it. However, I've decided that this game, although it has and will change gaming, does not do so from a traditional gaming perspective.

Before you think that I'm down on this game, though, I would like to say that I think Battlefield 1943 is an outstanding game. Most of the time that I have spent playing games over the last few weeks (that I can talk about) has been playing this game with a few friends over Xbox Live.

Simply put, Battlefield 1943 is a well-done download-only first person shooter that brings me back to the glory days of Battlefield 1942. Available on both Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3, Battlefield 1943 is a great-looking and relatively simple first-person shooter that is tons of fun to play, especially with friends. The weapons are simple and relatively well-balanced in my opinion, though many people are quick to criticize the infantry-stopping capabilities of the semi-automatic rifle. In addition, the ability to squad spawn makes it easy for players to get back into the action quickly and team up with friends. Vehicles are fun to ride in and drive, and although the mechanics can be a little wonky (collisions seem to have pretty weird physics), this may be because the engine is borrowed/simulating the BF1942 physics engine.

The game shipped with three different maps, though a fourth map has since been unlocked on both the Xbox 360 and PS3 which features a dogfighting game mode. The original three maps are outstanding in general, and will immediately validate your $15 layout. The fourth map seems to be hit or miss with people (I wasn't a huge fan, to be honest). There is a lot of value here, and although there is certainly less content than say Castle Crashers, the replayability factor is very high. Therefore, as a game, Battlefield 1943 is a fun but not wholly revolutionary adventure that is well worth the cost of admission.

What is more interesting to me, as a game designer, about Battlefield 1943 is its download-only format. One of the best aspects of the download-only system is that it is never a pain to switch between games when a friend of mine signs on to begin playing. Several times I have been watching a Netflix movie while doing a little work on my laptop, when a friend signs online, sends me a party invite, and whisks me away to the Southeast Pacific. As a fan of the Halo series, I remember often finding myself in the middle of a Mass Effect marathon when I was interrupted by the same friends, but didn't feel like breaking out the new CD, loading it into the drive, waiting for the new game to load, etc. In Battlefield 1943, no matter what I'm doing, I'm only a party and game invite away from the action. Ultimately, this makes it much easier for me to consider dropping my campaign progress for a little down and dirty Wake Island action.

Ultimately, its clearly the distribution format that is truly revolutionary here. While I don't know what kind of cuts are taken from sales of the game, I wouldn't be terribly surprised to hear that EA and DICE make about as much money off each sale of this $15 game as they do from a $50 game purchased at retail (okay, maybe a little surprised).

Regardless, the proof is in the pudding and Battlefield 1943 has proven to me that a company can release an outstanding AAA title as a download-only purchase on consoles. While I would hope that everyone and their grandmothers don't immediately abandon traditional distribution methods for their games (my 360's hard drive only has 20 GB of space, dagnabbit!), I am keen to see what other offerings lie on this road in the future, and if these offerings can be supplemented by additional downloadable content packs.

Hopefully.

-Jon

Race for the Galaxy Review

Race for the Galaxy - Player of Game Review
Innovation: 9/10
Mastery: 9/10
Overall 9/10

I was up at a friend's house for the 4th and we played one of my favorite games, Race for the Galaxy, which reminded me that I haven't written a review for this game yet for this blog. As you can tell by the above scores, I think of this game quite highly.

Race for the Galaxy, or "Race" as we call it, is an outstanding economic development game which is dripping with complex mechanics and heavily codified. There are few to no words on most cards besides the title. Yet all of them are fairly easy to parse once you begin to understand the symbols used on the cards. This is one thing that I really like (although when I played this game with my parents, they couldn't understand anything).

The game mechanics are fairly complex, but the simple overarching theme is that the cards in your hand are game resources in two senses of the word: they can be played from your hand to the table but they can also be used to pay the costs of playing other cards which are more relevant to your current strategy.

The other key mechanic is the turn structure system. Turns in Race are shared, meaning that no one person is the "active" player at any one time. I strongly prefer these sorts of games as it means that everyone is pretty much in the action at all times unless the group is waiting for one or two people to make their decisions for the turn. What occurs in the turn, however, is not always (and actually is quite rarely) the same. At the beginning of each turn, all players may select one phase that they wish to occur in the turn. There are five phases, with one additional subphase which occurs only for the players that take the particular subphase, meaning that in a standard three or four player game, not all of the phases will occur. Even in five player games, usually only three or four occur, and I've played quite a few games where all players take the same phase.

In addition, players who take each phase receive an advantage when that phase occurs, which incentivizes the players to think about what bonuses they need the most and not always care about the actions other players will take. Still, there are plenty of opportunities for gamesmanship, as I often rely on another player to take the settle action so I can settle a windfall world and trade away the free good.

In addition, the game is reasonably well balanced; although not every strategy is as powerful as every other, all of them are good enough to win with if you draw enough of the cards that you need to pull it off.

Race is definitely a game that makes you think on your feet. While you may have one plan at the beginning of the game, all too often you don't draw the cards you need and need to modify or even completely scrap your old strategy. While I think some people find this annoying, and think of it as being too luck based, to me it is a point of excitement.

Race for the Galaxy, in my opinion, is one of the most unique and interesting boardgames (can I call it that) out on the market today. It is a must-own for anyone that is interested in trying many different types of games, as there is very little on the market like it.

----End of Review---

One of the interesting things that has come out of my games of Race for the Galaxy with my friends is that there are some people who can't stand this game because it is entirely too luck-based. While I see some merit in their arguments, I can't help but wonder if they are simply approaching the problem in the wrong way. In my opinion, to win Race, you need to constantly re-evaluate your strategy whenever you draw new cards, as they often don't quite mesh with the plan that you had before.

One of the things that I've noticed about a few of these players is that they are for the most part Magic: the Gathering and Poker players, two games with an "out" as a central concept. In Poker or Magic, an "out" is a card that wins you the game if you can draw it, or at least keeps you in. Given their background, and although I will be the first to admit I've never actually watched them play a hand, I think that they may be overcommitting to a strategy, and not realizing opportunities which arise in the first few trades or explores in the game.

Of course, I could be totally wrong about this. Since they didn't really like the game, my experiences of playing the game with them are rather limited. Still, it is an interesting theory, and something to keep in mind in the future.

-Jon

Kodu Game Lab Impressions

So, word on the street is that Best Buy is going to be selling PS3s with Metal Gear Solid 4 and Killzone 2 for $400 tomorrow, and I'm thinking mightily about buying them. But in the mean time I have been playing a little more of the 1vs100 beta, Europa Universalis II (one of my favorite games of all time) and an XBLA Community Game called Kodu Game Lab which is the topic of today's post.

Kodu Game Lab is basically a simplified gaming editor for the Xbox 360. It is available in the community games section of Xbox Live for $5, and to keep my thesis succinct, it generally kicks ass and is absolutely worth your $5.

I've fooled around with other game creators from time to time, authored a Warcraft III map and Starcraft map (and I once joined someone else's game who was hosting a game of my map, spike!), and of course do game design for a living, so I was pretty excited to try the game out.

The game creator is a little tough to work with, but it does a good job of easing you into all of the options by having you program AI, place objects and more in a few sample missions which resemble a bit of a campaign of sorts. After that, there are a few simple finished and unfinished games for players to play around with and mod, but the meat of this whole proposition is the ability to make your own game from scratch. The assets in the game are a bit limited (and by that I mean that there are only a few different objects that you can use for the main character or enemies) but that doesn't detract from the game too much.

So far, I've spent a bit of time modding one of the included Galaga-esque games to make it a little more exciting and challenging, but haven't come up with anything really interesting or creative. I should have more time to mess around with the game in the coming weeks though, so hopefully I will think of something exciting.

I really recommend that you give the game a try. There are very few games on the market which offer so much value for such little money. The included games are nothing really special, but they're probably worth the $5 if you don't have anything better to do. Still, if you would like to play around with a pretty simple level and game creator, Kodu Game Lab might just be an Xbox Live offering that fits the bill.

-Jon