Fair warning: I’m about to drop a major nerd bomb up in here.  Even my cat thinks this stuff is lame.

I’m of the opinion that Magic: the Gathering is a pretty great game. Not because I’m into crazy elf ogres or wizards doing wizardly stuff, but because the mechanics are so very rich. If you’ve never played Magic before, just imagine your favorite RTS¹ played with cards. Strong focus on micromanagement, requires quick mental reflexes and it favors adaptation over long term strategy. You can control your own resources and how they work for you, but you can’t control how your opponent will respond to your actions. Which, obviously, is a staple of most competitive games. Magic makes it a bit different by adding a slight randomization aspect. Those cards, your resources? They’re shuffled.  You have no idea what your opening hand will look like, and that will affect how the game plays out.  It also gives you a go-to excuse when you lose (“I could have killed you on the first turn, but I shuffled badly and didn’t draw the card that kills you on the first turn”).

I played the game when it was first released and had a lot of fun with it.  Dragon summoning and counterspelling and all that.  Then I discovered girls and the whole thing went to hell.

Now that I’m an old man and the gentle touch of a woman is but a distant memory, I’ve gotten back into Magic.  It fills the void.  The game is a bit more balanced than it was fifteen years ago, for various reasons².  But it’s still just as fun if you have the patience for it.

When I was in college I discovered a PC game called Duels of the Planeswalkers that had been developed by Microprose. It was actually one of the last titles Sid Meier worked on at Microprose, according to internet lore.  This game was full fledged Magic, containing a deck builder and every card that had been printed at the time of the release (with thirty plus pre-configured decks built in).  It was so goddamn wonderful.  You know how some people play Minesweeper while talking on the phone?  I did that with Duels of the Planeswalkers.  Just hit the random duel button and my mouse hand would do the rest.  The game was fast, fun and simple (well, as simple as Magic can be).  I still have a copy installed on my laptop, and I play it regularly.

Last week Stainless Games and Wizards of the Coast released an Xbox Live Arcade title called Duels of the Planeswalkers.   It’s not a port of the PC game, sadly.  It’s… well, it’s Magic as a video game.  The umpteenth version, actually.

How am I supposed to Zoo Review a title like this?  Do I consider it a standalone game or take into account that it’s an adaptation of something bigger?  I mean, I don’t want to give it a lowly aardvark when it could be a cephalopod class game for those who are already fans.  Let me use the power of example:  when dissecting a digital poker game, does one consider the rules of Texas Hold ‘Em, or do they just try and figure out if the game communicates those rules properly?

Big Media would probably just have a paragraph that started with “If you’re not familiar with Magic: The Gathering…”  Screw that.  If you’re not familiar with Magic: The Gathering, you’re probably not reading any of this. Well, you’re either a fan of Magic or a fan of this blog (if it’s the latter, I want you to know that I love you very much, Mom). No one stalks out impressions on games they have never heard of before.   Case in point: the results from the E3 Game Critics Award.  It’s franchise city.  It takes a mindbogglingly original game like Scribblenauts³ to break up the sequel party, and even then it’s not nominated for Best of Show.  A developer could make a game that cures cancer and no one would touch it because it doesn’t feature Solid Snake.

I just read that last sentence back and realized that we are probably doomed.

Uh, much like my opponent in Magic: The Gathering: Duels Of The Planeswalkers was doomed when I cast my 4/4 air elemental!  Back to the review.

This XBLA game is Magic, more or less.  It’s what you’d expect Magic to be if it was a ten dollar downloadable game.  It actually provides a number of smart solutions to the issues that make the paper game frustrating.

The main concern for players is that Magic can be expensive. Four new sets are released a year, each with hundreds of new cards, and a pack of fifteen random cards will run you $3.99. By using only pre-configured decks and not allowing you to customize them (beyond adding in a few cards from your sideboard), Duels of the Planeswalkers avoids that problem. You buy the game for ten dollars and that’s it. New cards are unlocked as you play through the campaign. I’m sure there will be downloadable decks, but I like to imagine those will be bundled with challenges and other additions to the campaign, not just thrown out there as a couple of cards to add to your collection. The presentation here completely kills the collector mentality that makes paper Magic not so fun. If you’re ever in a situation where the rich kid doesn’t win, you’re probably stuck in a teen slasher flick and you should run away as quickly as possible.  More money almost always means a better deck.

One of the smartest design decisions made was the focus on planeswalkers rather than just decks. You are not playing against a mono-red aggro whozywhatsit deck, you’re playing against a wizard who casts spells, summons creatures and is actually represented by an avatar. I thought this was going to be a terrible idea when I saw the list of cringe worthy names. Liliana Vess? Ajani Goldmane? Garruk Wildspeaker?! It’s like a Canadian strip club was sprinkled with pixie dust.  But the concept of putting a face to each of these decks works well.  The single player campaign is almost like a string of boss battles.  It adds not only tension, but also a sense of accomplishment when you defeat these opponents.

You, the player, are a planeswalker as well, which I guess is someone who can’t stay seated during a commercial flight.  I honestly have no idea; the lore behind all this stuff is either not that memorable or eclipsed by the strength of the game mechanics.  The cards have all this stuff going on, and half of it is meaningless stuff meant to inject flavor into the game.  Here’s a breakdown of your average Magic card.

The only things I really care about there are how much damage it can give and receive in combat, what its abilities are and how many resources  it takes to get into play.  The rest is fluff.  I could really give a damn about how some dude wrote a book on skeletons in this fictional world.

The choice of only pre-configured decks also helps avoid the metagame problem. In Magic (as well as any customizable game with competitive focus), trends emerge based on the recently released sets and whatever card combos can be exploited. Video gamers might call such things cheap or broken. But if you want to play in any sort of sanctioned setting (e.g, not with just your friends at the kitchen table), you need to keep up with these things.  It’s disgusting.

People who care about the metagame are not the sort of people I like to play with. They are jerks who want to always win, as quickly as possible, and make millions of dollars from the comfort of their own homes using pay-per-click advertising. I want to have a good time. Get married to someone sweet. Maybe have a few kids, retire to a goat farm in Maine.  What I’m trying to say is:  the best part of Duels of the Planeswalkers is that you can play Magic without interacting with other Magic Players.  The single player game is the draw here, at least for me.

There is something else I should mention:  Magic is a very, very slow game.  Imagine playing solitaire and having to wait five seconds every time you flipped or moved a card.  The 1998 Duels of the Planeswalkers game solved this problem by letting the player choose what phases of the turn they wanted to stop at.  This new title does not.  Instead, you’ve got a limited window after every action to respond.  Play a card and a little dial counts down to when the active player can perform another action. Maybe this is good solution for the online multiplayer section of the game. I wouldn’t know; I prefer playing my nerd games without the thrilling homophobia and racism found on Xbox Live. I do know that this is not a good solution in the single player campaign.

Imagine With Me: you are playing a Japanese role playing game.  There is endless dialog that you probably don’t care about.  Would you rather have the game advance to the next line of dialog when you hit a button on the controller (regardless of if the dialog is finished), or would you prefer to have it automatically move the the next line after ten seconds (with no way to skip through it)?  I realize that your answer is probably turn the game off and play Picross instead, but I’m trying to make a point here.  Those little response windows in Duels of the Planeswalkers may only be a few seconds long, but they drastically slow down the flow of the game.  And when you’re playing what is otherwise a solid strategy game by yourself, that’s a major bonerkiller.  Nothing is worse than being dealt a terrible hand and having to sit through the longest game ever just to end up losing.  That kills the game for me.  I still love it just because it’s Magic, but I find myself getting incredibly bored halfway through longer matches.

So,  back to the original conundrum.  What if you’ve never played paper Magic before?  Will this game appeal to you?  I have no idea, because this stuff is in my blood.  But the tutorial seems very concise and well implemented (“Press B to not show this tip again”), the difficulty curve is fair, and the game itself is mostly quite fun.  Though if you’re a veteran Magic player (or someone with a lot of real time strategy experience), you’re better off tracking down the 1998 Duels of the Planeswalkers PC game.  It’s faster, more robust and you can probably find it for under ten dollars on eBay.

1. That’s “Real Time Strategy,” which is a type of game that’s similar to Magic: The Gathering, expect played without cards.
2. Every tournament legal card seems to stand on it’s own as a playable card, there a plethora of pre-configured theme decks so you don’t need to spend much money to get involved, and the upcoming core set Magic 2010 (you know, like Madden) is a “reboot” which eliminates the more confusing rules and takes the game back to a more Tolkein-esque presentation.
3. Oh man, I wonder if, in Scribblenauts, you can write “Magic The Gathering” and the onscreen characters will totally throw down.  Scribblenauts seems so awesome that such a situation is entirely possible.

Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts is the fifth game in the Banjo-Kazooie series (sixth if you count Diddy Kong Racing). The initial release in 1998 was heralded as an evolution of Super Mario 64, which is total bullshit if you’ve experienced both games. Whereas Mario 64 was about spectacular environmental design, Banjo-Kazooie focused more on throwing a bunch of meaningless crap in a level and making the player find it all. They both had similar control elements and progression methods, but that’s about it. The newest Banjo-Kazooie title is  a subpar platformer as expected with a bit of genius tacked on.

Nuts & Bolts is still a collect-a-thon like the previous Banjo-Kazooie releases, although there are a few additional layers. There are now various methods of transportation that can be fully tweaked and customized. There’s some sort of magic wrench that exists only to remove the player from the action by another step.  There is also a narrative that I was not quite clear on, mostly because the dialogue is written out with exaggerated accents (phonetic spellings of mispronounced words and hyphens everywhere).  If this bothers you, you can do what I did and imagine that every character is a stroke victim. It gives the cut-scenes a somewhat tragic vibe.

The structure of the game centers around various missions that reward the player with “jiggies.”  The progression goes something like this:  Finish an activity and get a jiggy. Walk back to the level entrance. In the overworld, locate the jiggy dispenser. Interact with the jiggy dispenser until the jiggy you were just awarded pops out. Carry that jiggy to the jiggy assimilator, then put it down to have your jiggy total updated.  I’m still not terribly certain as to what a jiggy actually is. This seems a bit convoluted, no?  Please consider the following embedded video.

See that number in the upper left hand corner?  Notice how it increases when stuff happens?  Very novel for 1979.  I imagine a version of Space Invaders developed by Rare would involve the player shooting a ship, taking the points that are awarded and  spending eight minutes carrying those points over to the score board.

This is not the worst of it, though.  The platforming becomes an unbearable experience due to the inclusion of additional game play components. Each level is massive and barren, with points of interest as far apart as possible. It takes a very long time to walk your avatar from point A to point B. This is because the developer wants to enforce a reliance on vehicles. The player is supposed to think “hey, I need to hop in my golf cart thing if I want to get to that destination before the Xbox overheats.” It makes me wonder why there is any platforming element at all; if ninety percent of the game involves vehicular tasks, why not ditch the ten percent that doesn’t and refine the focus?  There is nothing wrong with trimming out what doesn’t work and making a simple and polished experience.

It may seem like I’m being a bit hard on this game.  I am, mostly because it’s not very good.  There is however, one redeeming factor, and the reason why I’m bothering to write about it at all:  vehicular creation.

I am normally not a fan of games that hinge on the creative abilities of the player, but Nuts & Bolts has a nice balance to it. The game world is already set in stone and the expressive element comes from designing ways to traverse that world.  I greatly enjoyed piecing together vehicles in the workshop and seeing how the physics engine would react. Making a long vehicle with two springs on the back and trying to do somersaults was wonderful. This element made me wonder: why does the game need all that other stuff? Why can’t it just be an open world Pimp My Ride?

You don’t need jiggies or notes or any of that other stuff; the sole collectible element should be more vehicle components. Scatter them around levels and have them only be accessible by using certain vehicle configurations. Lose the avatar and put the player directly in control of an automobile that can be adjusted on the fly.  This could be Burnout Paradise with the option of modifying your transport when you want to explore.  This could be beautiful!

Let’s look at some supplemental materials.  This is a Venn diagram illustrating the relationship between various game play elements that are really awesome.

Notice how there’s no circle for “BABY TALK” or “UNNECESSARY COLLECTIBLES” or even “ANTHROPOMORPHIC BEARS THAT YOU WANT TO PUNCH IN THE FACE?”  That’s because they’re not required to have a really awesome game.  You can do this, developers.  Make this game and I promise you will get sixty dollars from me.

Summing it up:  playing Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts has now sparked the fantasy of a Lego Burnout title, so I guess it can’t be all bad.

PixelJunk Eden has made one thing quite obvious: I love to jump.

When my little brother and I first got a PS1 (almost thirteen years ago now) we only had one game and some demo disc that I think came with the system. The game, Battle Arena Toshinden, was terrible… but we played the shit out of that demo disc, if only for one reason: Jumping Flash. Damn, that title was solid. Or at least the demo was, we never bothered with the full game (something like a milk-for-free scenario). The player controlled some sort of rabbit thing that leaps around a 3D environment. The entire game is from a first person perspective, with the camera pivoting downward in mid-air to allow for precise landings. Various ledges and platforms were littered throughout the environment and provided the incentive to explore, while trying to use double- and triple-jumps to collect power-ups and chain jumps off of enemies provided the difficulty. The entire thing had this draw–how high can I get?–which, I’ll admit, may have had a lot to do with the time limit on the demo. The game has recently surfaced on the Playstation Network as a downloadable title, but I don’t think it’d be worth trading my fond memories for an objective viewpoint.

I guess it’s not that I love to jump as much as I love to climb. It’s a combination of my passion for unguided exploration, something like Metroid, and the tight platforming of a game like Super Mario Bros. Combine the two and you get… er, Super Metroid or Super Mario World. But also things like Crackdown and PixelJunk Eden.

Pixeljunk Eden is somewhere between Jumping Flash and Bionic Commando (another game I spent quite a bit of time with in my youth). I’m not sure how to describe it in a narrative sense. Something about ‘Spectras’ lost in gardens that this spider-fairy called a ‘Grimp’ has to locate. It’s got the typical bullshit filler story that I’ve come to expect from timeless games. Basically… there are things to find, they are somewhere in these environments, and the player has to jump and swing around until they’re uncovered.

Add in three player local co-op and I’m in love.

If my description doesn’t make you want to run out (er, run in) and buy it, that’s because it isn’t the type of experience that caters to summary. The only thing I knew about it before downloading the demo was that it was pretty. It utilizes the graphical organic flourishes which have become so passé recently (check your local Target’s t-shirt designs for more info) but they still impress when in motion. I imagine a game being pretty may often be someone’s only criteria for purchasing it (how else can you justify all those Final Fantasy games?), but most people need a little more than that. So: it’s addictive, it’s fun, it controls wonderfully, and it’s an all around enlightening experience. It’s also quite pretty. Beyond that… I don’t know. It’s a complete package.

That’s not to say that it’s a perfect title. It’s not for everyone. If you hate games that require skill, concentration and determination then you should not download this. The co-op play can get very difficult if you absolutely suck at the game. If the first few challenges prove too difficult for you, you will not enjoy the full game. The complete package is not easy, but that’s kind of what I like about it.

Mostly, this seems to be what happens when you get an artist together with a competent dev team.

The mechanics are rock solid and the aesthetic is binding and cohesive without getting in the way of the game itself.. It feels very similar to those Bit Generation titles I love so, so much.

Nintendo’s WiiWare distribution service launched this week, completing the trifecta of digital distribution on home consoles. The lineup includes A Square Enix game that’s not an RPG (although it is Final Fantasy branded), a quiz game, virtual blackjack, some sort of bubble wrap simulator aptly titled Pop, a spruced up flash game, and a rather odd platformer known as LostWinds. Forgive me for telling you this, dear reader, as you’ve probably heard it several times before if you’ve been following the WiiWare launch, but: you simply must download LostWinds.

LostWinds was crafted by Frontier Developments (who also developed, uh, Frontier, the sequel to the old PC game Elite) and follows the story of some midget thing and a lost wind spirit or something. I don’t know. None of that matters. It’s a ten dollar game with an amazing control scheme, inspired music and fantastic gameplay.

I try to stay away from mashup equations when describing games, but LostWinds is probably best understood when considered to be the Wii’s version of Kirby Canvas Curse with a touch of Zelda. Canvas Curse was the first game that really showed the potential of the DS’s stylus being used in a side scroller. While Mario Galaxy made fantastic use of the Wii’s remote, you could play through the entire thing without using any of the wiimote functionality (aside from the spin attack, but that could have easily been mapped to a button press so I wouldn’t exactly say it’s taking advantage of the technology). LostWinds, while presented in a similar manner, absolutely requires the remote to play. The nunchuk analog stick moves the on screen character while the remote pointer moves a little cursor representing the wind god. Holding down the A button on the remote slows time to a halt and allows you to trace paths across the screen. Release the A button and a gust of wind follows the path. I can’t possibly put into words how satisfying this is. An upward gust makes the character jump. Do it again in midair and he’ll fly even higher. NPCs and background object subtly react to the wind, and later on it’s used to route water and fire in some interesting puzzles. The whole thing is wrapped in this non-linear world. There’s a lot of backtracking, but the good kind of backtracking (think Super Metroid rather than Metroid Prime).

If you need any more convincing, just take a look at what the big boys have to say about it…

Fucking douchebags.

See, when I first played through the introductory puzzles I was overwhelmed with the sense of “Hey! This is just like all those indie PC games I play! But on a console!” You know, like Cave Story or Knytt or You Have To Burn The Rope… games that are inspired with a unique feeling or risk and experimentation. This is what Xbox Live Arcade was supposed to be. Instead Microsoft choked developers with their ridiculous approval process and restricted hobbyists to the XNA Creator’s Club (which doesn’t allow games to be sold for profit). It seems like Nintendo is actually going to make this work… from what I understand their only approval process is making sure the submitted game actually runs (and they probably check to make sure there’s not, like, virtual orgasmic rape hidden in the code). And the developer gets to set the price and see some return. Awesome.

Granted, XBLA has a few indie titles once in a while such as Eets, but it’s mostly overrun with old game rehashes (fuck Frogger) and stuff from the big publishers (oh, Capcom gets excluded from the file size restrictions? How nice of you, Microsoft). Maybe WiiWare will end up like that too. We’ll see. Either way, buy LostWinds. And play it. It’s tight.