The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

(Image Courtesy of UnlimitedGamer)

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess was developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Gamecube and the Wii. In this single-player adventure game, the player explores the world of Hylia in order to save his friend and prevent darkness from overtaking the world.

The game, while sharing the same elements as many other Zelda games, has a few changes. The biggest is, of course, the main character's ability to turn into a wolf. The main character, named Link by default, gains this ability when he is pulled into the land of Twilight by monsters, before being freed by one of its inhabitants, Midna. They begin to travel together, going through a process of exploring the world between each "dungeon", where they move through a maze of rooms while trying to find that dungeon's boss. After defeating a boss, they return to the story, leading them to the next dungeon. The player controls this all with the Gamecube controller or the Wiimote and Nunchuck, depending on what console they are playing it on, and movement-based controls are used on the Wii version in order to make sword-swinging more natural. Some weapons can also be aimed using the Wiimote, while others depend on using buttons, just as the Gamecube controller does. Overall, the game plays very much like the previous Zelda games for home consoles, with the art and story being slightly darker than before, as the game focuses on a man fighting against darkness corrupting the world instead of, say, a teenager having to fight an evil man just because he was tricked into helping him.

Twilight Princess started development in 2003, and originally planned to release the game in November 2005 for the Gamecube. However, the Wii was planned to be released the next year, so Nintendo wanted to create a version for their new console that could be released alongside it. Instead of releasing the Gamecube version and then later releasing an improved version for the Wii, they instead delayed both titles. While this was originally met with some backlash by fans, Nintendo spent their time wisely, improving the game and making sure the Wii controls worked well. After initially discovering that their controls were not intuitive enough, they went back and revised them, introducing motion controls as a way of making it easier for the player to attack. The game was then released as planned in November 2006. However, the Gamecube version was delayed for one month until December 2006, most likely to have the ability to play the game early as an incentive for those buying the Wii. After several years of waiting, players were finally able to play the game on the console it was originally developed for, and according to critics, it was worth the wait.

Super Crate Box

(Image courtesy of RockPaperShotgun)

Super Crate Box was developed and released by Vlambeer for the PC. A single player moves their character around the screen, collecting boxes to gain points while also avoiding enemies.

This may seem simple and easy, but it is far from it. Though enemies are constantly pouring from the same place at the top of the screen, boxes can be spawned anywhere, requiring the player to move carefully to them. But the true difficulty is only revealed when a player gets to a box: their weapon is switched to a random different one. Not knowing what weapon you'll receive next can make planning ahead difficult, because the weapons usually only work well in specific situations. For example, one weapon's bullets can bounce off walls, harming the player if they hit them on the way back (which could mean instant death if they fired while facing a wall), while another is a flamethrower that does a large amount of damage over time (which is troublesome if the player has no room to do enough damage). No two weapons are quite the same, leading to hectic gameplay that requires split-second thinking, especially since the player loses if they're hit even once! Thankfully, even though the player can choose what stage to play on, they are all more or less the same, with a hole on the top and bottom and platforms in between. These similarities provide the player with some fimilariaty when trying a new level, so they are not completely defenseless. As mentioned before, enemies spawn from the top hole, but if they reach the bottom hole (which will kill the player if they fall in), they will respawn from the top and now will be "angry", turning red and moving even faster than before! This means that the player must try to kill enemies before they reach the bottom, adding even more difficulty to the game.

Of course, one might think that with all of this, Vlambeer is a professional game studio. In reality, Vlambeer is in fact a small independent game studio based in the Netherlands. Independent game studios are run in a way that is a significant deviation from the standard studio, with their games usually being self-published and often free. Games by such studios are generally known for being innovative, unique, and sometimes "artsy". They also usually only have a few members, or in some cases, only one. In Vlambeer's case, there are two: Rami, who works as the game's developer, and business manager. His job is to code the game, and handle any issues involving money that the studio has. The other member is Jan Willem, the game's designer. He comes up with ideas for Rami to make into games, and also works with him to make sure everything turns out as planned. While they both worked together on the game's art, they worked with a 3rd party musician to make the game's music. Vlambeer is funded by the Utrecht School of Art & Technology, where both of the studio's members studied Game Design and Development. It is their hope to "bring back arcade gaming", and after Super Crate Box's success, gamers everywhere will be waiting to see what they cook up next.

Left 4 Dead

(Image Courtesy of SlashGamer)

Left 4 Dead is a first-person-shooter developed by Turtle Rock Studios, and published by Valve for the PC and XBox 360. Players experience a zombie outbreak, fighting their way through a variety of levels in order to survive.

While Left 4 Dead does have a single-player mode, where the player is helped out by AI-controlled teammates, it is usually played with others. In the game's Campaign mode, up to 4 people can play together as members of a group of survivors, who are struggling to survive due to the recent outbreak of the "Green Flu". The victims of the Flu, called the Infected, are essentially zombies, and even the characters within the game note this. The survivors fight their way from safe room to safe room, while picking up a variety of weapons and helpful items (such as med packs, pain pills, and explosives). A great emphasis is placed on teamwork, with the AI in charge of spawning enemies and items rewarding the players if they act well together, and punishing them if they don't. Besides fighting off the regular Infected, the players must also face "special Infected", who have been so mutated by the Flu that they have developed special abilities, such as the ability to shoot Infected-attracting bile, to pounce from great heights onto the players, to grab and pull players away from a distance using their whip-like tongues, and more. These Special Infected can also be played as by the players: in Versus mode, 4 players play as survivors while the other 4 play as Special Infected, switching off after each portion of the level to see who can do the best and acquire the most points.

There are many ways Left 4 Dead could have been digitally prototyped. What is most likely is that the gameplay, the individual Special Infected, and the AI Director that manages enemy/item spawning were prototyped separately, before being combined later on. The gameplay prototype would not require the AI Director's features, for they'd make the game too unpredictable to test at first, and the Special Infected were probably added as they were tested and their concepts finalized. With the gameplay prototype including just enough features to represent gameplay, those coding the AI director would have more time to get a rough version of it working in order for it to be tweaked before the final version was made. Having separate, but connected, groups working on the different prototypes would have allowed the most work to be done, and it is for that reason that I believe that Turtle Rock Studios did something similar to what I have proposed.

ChuChu Rocket!

(Image courtesy of Retrothing)

ChuChu Rocket! was originally released for the Sega Dreamcast by Sega (with the game being developed by Sonic Team), and it has since been released for the Gameboy Advance and iOS as well. It is a single- and multi-player puzzle game with an unusual and unique form of gameplay, with the player placing arrows upon the playing field to direct mice to safety, while making them avoid the cats that may harm them.

Although it has a very simple idea behind it, ChuChu Rocket! is more complex than one might think. In the single-player puzzle mode, players are challenged to use a limited number of arrows (with pre-set directions) to keep the mice away from cats and lead them into the rocket ships placed on the level. Every mouse constantly walks forward, only changing direction when bumping into an object (in which case it turns around or goes around a corner, depending on the situation) or an arrow (in which case it moves in the direction the arrow points). The puzzles start out easy, but grow very difficult as more cats, walls, pits, and more are added into the mix, especially since the player cannot see how the mice will actually act till they are done placing their arrows. The multi-player mode is more hectic, with the players all placing their arrows (of which only 3 can be placed at a time, with old ones disappearing after a short time or if a 4th one is placed) during live gameplay and trying to drive the mice into their own rockets instead of their opponents. The game's online multi-player became so popular that the game was eventually given away with the Dreamcast in order to increase the console's sales.

The game's concept is, of course, very odd. However, it is also one that could have very easily been prototyped physically, at least for its single-player mode. The mice, as mentioned earlier, follow a simple set of rules and all interaction with the map happens before the mice move, so it is likely that the designers simply used a grid drawn on paper as a prototype of the map, with different paper tiles representing the mice, cats, arrows, pits, and walls. As long as the rules governing mouse and cat movement were followed correctly, they could have been manually moved through the board to see if the player had completed the puzzle correctly.

For the game's multi-player mode, a software prototype was probably required. It would have required too much work for players to manually place arrows while also moving every mouse on the board, so a software prototype could have been set up instead. It would have been focused on making sure the mechanics worked correctly, since if any of the mechanics did not work, the entire mode would be unplayable, either due to the increased difficulty that the mice moving too fast would cause, or the frustration a player would have with the mice if they didn't move as the player directed them to. Prototyping the game must have required carefully making sure everything worked as the designers needed it to, and it seems that they managed to pull it off.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

(Image courtesy of Gaming Console Network)

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is a 2D adventure game developed and published by Konami for the Playstation. The player controls the character Alucard, the song of Dracula, as he explores his father's castle in an attempt to become stronger and defeat him. The player can find a variety of items, weapons, and "relics" (which unlock new abilities) hidden throughout the castle, with the player being able to take a very non-linear path as to what order they discover things in, with the only exceptions being certain plot-related events.

It is interesting to note that Symphony of the Night is almost nothing like the games that came before it. Earlier Castlevania games took place on long levels that had several alternate paths which eventually lead back to the same main path, or opened up an alternate stage that then lead back to the same stage the player would have normally played. Symphony of the Night changes this entirely by introducing the concepts of an inventory, character stats, spells, health and magic upgrades, and more, as well as only having one "level"- the castle in its entirety. As mentioned earlier, Alucard can explore the castle's rooms in any order, bound only by his strength and the abilities the player has acquired. This new formula, alongside with the Metroid series, birthed an entire genre of games known as "Metroidvanias".

For such a radical departure from the main series of games, Symphony of the Night's designers must have thought very hard about what new ideas they wanted to add. They most likely wanted to place a focus on "exploration" and "freedom", if only because they can be said to be the core of the game. The player's ability to explore in the order they choose was an almost unthought of idea at the time, so the designers took a big risk in using it. Other big ideas the designers probably focused on are "allowing the player to use items whenever they want" and "giving the player the ability to change how they attack", as well as the idea of assigning each monster a certain amount of HP and having each weapon due a different amount of damage. These changes made the game more like an RPG than previous games, with killing monsters to level up and improve Alucard's stats becoming very important.

The thought that the designers of one game taking a risk led to the development of many other games is both strange and humbling. The importance of introducing new ideas into gaming is best shown through examples like Symphony of the Night: even the widest departures from what players consider normal can be great as long as they are implemented well.

Project Diva

(Image Courtesy of IGN)

Project Diva is a rhythm game developed and published by Sega for the PSP. A single player uses the PSP's buttons at the right times in order to "hit notes" and sing one of over 30 songs.

Feedback in the game is shown in several ways. The first, of course, is the player's score. It goes up for each note the player hits, with the amount increasing varying based on the player's timing and how many notes that had hit in a row before that note. This score determines whether the player passes or fails the song, and what grade the player gets at the end, which is perhaps the most important form of feedback a new player can receive, along with the other information that is given to the player at the end of a song.

The player's success also depends on a meter at the bottom left corner of the screen. This meter, which goes up or down based on how well the player is doing, will end the game if it reaches the bottom. In order to continue to do well, the player must hit many notes in a row and build a combo. The number of notes in the player's current combo is shown after each note the player hits, and building a large one is especially important during certain sections of each song that can guarantee victory or failure depending on how the player does. During these portions, the player must do very well, because the score given to the player is given according to the formula "score=100*x", where x is the size of the combo the player currently has, with 50 being the highest it can go.

Finally, the player's progress is shown in the amount of items they unlock. Reaching certain goals (varying from getting a certain combo to reaching a certain score) for each song unlocks new costumes, songs, and pictures to look at. Some of these goals are very hard to reach, making beating them a clear sign of progress. If the player does well enough, they can even play as other characters, and equip costumes based on outfits from other games, something that fans of those games will find a true indicator of success.

Cave Story

(Image courtesy of Aeon Genesis)

Cave Story is a single-player platformer game developed by Studio Pixel and translated by Aeon Genesis, which was originally released for the PC, with Wii and DSi ports created and retranslated by Nicalis.

Cave Story follows the actions of a robot named Quote who, after being awoken in what appears to be an underground cave, sets out an adventure. While the game starts with this as its relatively simple premise, its story is more complex than one would think, as it fits the dramatic arc of traditional storytelling.

The exposition of the story begins when Quote discovers a village filled with strange, bunny-like humanoid creatures called Mimigas. It is explained to him that a human girl named Sue who was turned into a Mimiga is being pursued by an evil man known only as the Doctor. His minions kidnap another Mimiga by accident, and when Sue is found, she is imprisoned as punishment for the trouble she caused the village. Quote decides to help her by finding and rescuing her brother, who is somewhere nearby the village.

The rising action starts soon after, when Quote finds Sue's brother Kazuma and their friend, Professor Booster. Through them, Quote is sent on missions in nearby areas, and the background of the story is slowly revealed to him. Quote is revealed to be a combat robot that was sent to these caves, which are in reality within a floating island, to fight the Mimigas. This is because the Mimigas become incredibly aggressive if they ingest a certain red flower, which the Doctor is trying to find in order to create a Mimiga army. Quote confronts the Doctor, but is sent to a maze deep within the island after he defeats the Doctor's minions.

After this point, Quote mainly tries to escape to the higher areas of the island, and this makes up the falling action of the game's story. Eventually, Quote and his allies make their way to the top of the island, where Quote finally gets a chance to battle the Doctor.

The resolution of the game's story can be slightly changed by how the player played the game, with picking certain options and performing certain difficult tasks giving the player a better ending. The player can also chose to leave the island, giving them a bad ending where the Doctor wins. If this is not chosen, Quote defeats the Doctor, and then fights the corrupted core of the island itself, before escaping with his allies. While not as extremely long or twisted as the stories of some games, Cave Story's story is certainly not as basic as its title would suggest.

Warcraft III

(Image courtesy of Ugo.com)

Warcraft III is an RTS videogame that was developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment, and as its title shows, it is the third game in the famous Warcraft series. It has the option of either playing the single-player campaign, or playing multiplayer locally or online.

-Objectives-

Warcraft III has some big differences when compared to the first two games, especially when it comes to the campaign's storyline. There are now four playable races (Human, Orc, Undead, and Elf), compared to only Human and Orc in the first two games, and each race has their own story. Within each level, the objective is usually to destroy the enemy's base, although numerous (sometimes optional) sub-objectives may be given as well. These can range from making specific units to destroying certain enemies. The overall objective of each race's story is generally to reach a certain point, and then survive an intense battle in order to perform an action, whether it is defeating the enemy army, acquiring a powerful weapon, or simply waiting for reinforcements to arrive.

-Conflict-

The conflict within each story is that of the battle between the player and the opposing forces. Generally, the opposing forces are also a playable race (for instance, the Humans fight the Undead for most of their story), but it may also be a computer-only one (such as the demon characters which show up in several of the stories). The conflict each race faces is as different as the races themselves are, with the Humans trying to prevent the Undead plague, the Orcs trying to make a new home for themselves, and the Elves trying to protect the world from the trouble the Undead create within their story. The conflict is usually resolved by the end of each story, but the end of the stories usually sets up the conflict that arises in the next story that is unlocked for the player.

-Resources-

Of course, one cannot talk about an RTS game without discussing resources. There are two main resources in Warcraft III: gold and wood. Gold can be obtained by sending units to mines, while wood is gained by sending units to nearby trees. Gold and wood are used to buy buildings and upgrades. Buildings can then be used to create specific units, which usually have a gold cost and a food cost. Food is another resource, and it serves as a limit on the number of units a player can have. The amount of food one has can be increased to certain point by building certain buildings, and when a unit dies the food it cost is given back to the player.

The units each player controls also count as resources in a way. Each race has their own unique resources, though they may fill general roles (a gold gatherer, a basic attacking unit, a basic ranged unit, etc.), though in each race, certain roles overlap in different ways. For example, the Undead's basic attacking unit can also collect wood, but the Undead have a weaker gold gathering unit than the other races. Some units are more powerful than all the others, but the player can only one or two of them at max. These are called "Heroes", and they are generally story-related characters. Each race plays differently due to their units, both Hero and normal, as well as other quirks- the Undead, for example, can only build on "infected" land, which expands when they build on the border of what is currently infected.

-Players-

As mentioned earlier, Warcraft III can either be played alone, or with other players. Up to 16 players can be in a multiplayer match, with the type of gameplay being decided by the map chosen. While some maps feature the normal Warcraft III gameplay (where a player loses when all their buildings and units are completely destroyed), with all the players working against each other (or working against the other teams of players, if there are any), there are many custom maps that change the gameplay entirely. Some of these maps feature free-for-all games, like basic multiplayer, but others may have players teaming up on one specific player, or even all the players working together to beat an AI-controlled enemy. The appeal of different gametypes is why many players continue to play games in the Warcraft series, as well as Blizzard's other popular RTS series, Starcraft.

Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep

(Image Courtesy of GamerSushi.com)

Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep is the newest videogame in the Kingdom Hearts series of action-adventure games. It was developed and published by Square-Enix, and was released for the PSP. It is primarily a single-player game, though it does have a limited multi-player mode.

Birth by Sleep is unusual in that it does not play exactly like any of the other games in the series that came before it, while still keeping the same basics behind its combat system. Instead of using menus navigated during battle to choose items, spells, and attacks like the original games in the series, or using "cards" that must be reloaded after they are used up like in the spin-off games, Birth by Sleep uses a mix of the two. Players always have the option to attack normally, but they have a limited number (that increases as the story progresses) of "commands" that can be equipped. These commands can be items, spells, attacks, or even combinations of several other moves, and the player must be careful to pick ones that will be useful for the situation they are in, because they cannot be changed when enemies are nearby. The player can select them using a single menu that is always open during play, but each individual command has a short period of time where they can't be used after each use. Items are the exception to this, for although they have no reload time, they are found in limited quantities and are permanently used up after each use. This system allows players to hunt for the commands they want to use without extensively limiting what they are able to do, making the game less frustrating for the player.

Birth by Sleep, like the other Kingdom Hearts games, features a long story. However, instead of having one story with only one main character, Birth by Sleep has 3 main characters whose paths intersect at various points. The player can play their stories in any order, but the final portion of the game will only become unlocked after all 3 are completed. The story is slightly simpler than the other Kingdom Hearts games, with only one group of monstrous enemies, the Unversed, being fought against with no true explanation of their motives, but the ways the 3 stories interconnect allows the players to see how each character impacts certain area after they leave them, for the characters do not always proceed through the areas in the same order. This is not the same as the "dynamic outcome" that some games feature, for what the player does is set by the game's story, but it is interesting to see nonetheless. The three characters, friends tasked with fighting the Unversed, each have their own strengths and weaknesses (something that is reflected in their play-styles as well), and therefore it is likely that a player will have at least one character that they connect with, even if they dislike the others.

When one considers what came before it, Birth by Sleep is a truly interesting game to play. When one considers how the series will continue after it, it can only be hoped that its developers continue to try new ideas to make the games more enjoyable for the players.

BlazBlue: Continuum Shift

(image courtesy of 1UP.com)

BlazBlue: Continuum Shift is a videogame based around fights between multiple characters. It was developed by Arc System Works, and published in North America by Aksys Games. It was released for the XBox 360 and the Playstation 3.

BlazBlue, like most fighting games, has a variety of attacks that the characters can perform. Unlike many other games though, it does not distinguish betwene punches and kicks depending on which button you press. Instead, there are 3 different basic attack labeled A (light), B (medium), and C (strong), which will change entirely based on what direction (or lack thereof) is pressed in combination with the button. A combination of movements followed by a button press will activate special moves, and pressing the right combination of buttons together can provide a better defense, blow the enemy away from you, or even allow you to add additional moves to a combo. What really sets BlazBlue apart from other fighters though, is the fourth button: D. D moves, or drive moves, as the game refers to them, are very different depending on which of the game's twelve characters you're playing as. Their drive moves range from basic things like sapping health when attacks hit or shooting projectiles all the way to stranger things like controlling the wind or even moving a secondary character. Drive moves make playing each character unique, although that also means it's harder to learn how to use certain characters without doing some research.

As the second game in the BlazBlue series, Continuum Shift also fixes some of the balancing issues that were present the first game, BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger. The goal of any fighting game is to have a cast of characters that can face off against any other character without seeming under- or over-powered, and while Calamity Trigger was balanced relatively well, there were still a few characters who were obviously much better choices than the others. Continuum Shift's changes fixed many of those problems by lowering or boosting the powers of moves, and taking away, altering, or even adding others. While it's still not perfect, Continuum Shift's characters are certainly not as unbalanced as Calamity Trigger's were.

This balance is even more important than one might think, because Continuum Shift is doing something that many other fighting games have not dared to do: providing new characters, created after the game's initial developement ended, to be purchased by the players of the game. Without the existing sense of balance, it would be a foolish idea to try to introduce even more characters into the game, and Arc System Works is aware of that, to the point where they plan to release a patch after the final character is released that will balance the game even further. This is something that no other fighting game has done before, but other companies will certainly begin to do so in the future, as it's a great way to get players back into the game months after they've stopped playing. Whether it will actually succeed is something that will likely affect the future of fighting games, and if all goes well, it'll be for the better.