Bogged Down, Quick Rant

This past week I've gotten bogged down again. A combination of being busier than usual and hitting a patch of uninspiring games, I guess.

Something that is readily apparent in these games I've been playing is how amazingly interconnected they are. That is, a lot of these tiny games have multiple options for subscription to social networks of various kinds. It's an interesting element of these games.

The significance, I think, is that it's another demarcation of a split in video games as a medium. We're starting to see a clearer distinction between games that are deep, refulgent, genuinely meaningful works of art and simpler games that are meant to be simply thoughtless entertainment, throwaway fluff for quick consumption.

That sounds like I'm being severely critical of one category in this split, and I fully admit to having a favorite here, but the difference really is the point -- there are people who want simple, mindless video games that they can play without thinking or being challenged in pretty much any way. This type of video game isn't always short, even if they generally are on the iOS platform, and there are plenty of examples of longer video games that are linear and simplistic (the God of War and Uncharted series are very strong examples).

The networking options in these little iOS games is a striking element of this type of simplistic entertainment sort of video game. For games where the result isn't much more complicated than the outcome of a coin toss, the technology involved in reporting the results is far and away more advanced and complex than the games themselves! That is, the actual game here seems to be the networking of the results rather than the generation of the results.

All of this leads me to think that I'm not doing a great job of playing and criticizing these games. I would rather play games on the other prong of the fork, as it were, and I'm not really accessing the extended, networked nature of these little bits of fluff. So, with all that in mind, I guess everyone should take my opinions here with a grain of salt.

Basically, I'm just visiting.

Angry Birds

Angry Birds is like Scorched Earth meets ragdoll physics. (Younger players might go with Worms instead of Scorched Earth, but I say get off my lawn, dammit!)

That simile should be the other way around, really. It's pretty clear that the focus here was on the physics simulation for the stacked objects (bricks and pigs) and how they fall over when other objects (birds) impact them. There's a crucial bit missing, though, in my opinion -- there's basically zero specificity in the launching of the birds.

This is a big deal (or seems like a big deal to me, anyway). Once you have an idea about where you want to hit the structure, the angle and velocity at which you want to launch your bird, you have pretty close to zero chance of reproducing that result. Sure, the game gives you a marker for the trajectory of your previous bird, but it keeps the specific settings that produced that trajectory hidden from the player. All we get as interface is a touchscreen flick-and-release mechanic that winds up being basically random.

Which is goddamn frustrating!

The level I stopped playing on (shown in the screenshot above) was simply impossible for me. I don't know why, either. I even went to the extent of watching a video walkthrough on YouTube in order to find out how to beat this particular level. I hate, hate, hate video walkthroughs, so you can be sure that I really, really, really tried to get past this level. Nonetheless, even knowing exactly what I needed to do in this case, I was unable to ever get the damn thing to work. I made shots that looked to me exactly like what I saw in the walkthrough, but it never worked out exactly the same way. Pretty close, pretty damn close, but never close enough for this piece of shit fucking game.

How can the game designers here have set the bar for success so high for the player and then given them such fucking crappy goddamn controls in order to meet those requirements?! The choices made in this game's development blow my mind.

All this game needs in order to get over this ridiculous hump is to give the player some persistent settings for the launching of the birds. Just numbers, for crying out loud! The game obviously uses math to calculate these trajectories and the results of the impacts, so share that information with the player. Give them control over it! How do we know the game uses math for these calculations? It's software! It can't not be math!!

So this is why I put Scorched Earth first in my simile to describe this game. Scorched Earth was all about player control over carefully calculated trajectories and impacts. I see no reason why this game couldn't be as tightly controlled. I can only assume that the developers started with the knocking down blocks physics idea and then saddled this piece of shit (or really excellent) game with really shitty touchscreen controls. Way to fucking go.

There's a lot of cursing in this critique. I think that's because, other than being a goddamn unplayable pile of fucking shit, Angry Birds is a really great game. Yeah, that's right -- I feel like this would be one of my favorite games so far except for a single element that ruins the whole experience entirely. That makes me angry, thus the swearing. Fuck!

Other niggles about this game might include the fact that it's annoying how the game doesn't want to show you the entire level at once (it is possible, of course) and the long delay after one completes a level. The sounds are okay, I guess, although I think they'd get repetitive and annoying before too long. The different types of birds are really brilliant... and I don't want to think about it because I'll get all angry again about not being able to enjoy such a nifty idea. Fuck! All of these observations are pointless, of course, in the face of the fact that the game is fundamentally screwed.

So sad.

Doodle Jump

Doodle Jump is like Super Mario Bros. meets Galaga. (Think about it.)

This game sucks.

Well, okay. This is a really well made game. The art is cute (even if it's not exactly to my tastes), the controls work really well (unless you're riding on the subway), and the level of polish displayed here is impressive (although what's with all the social networking hooks?! ...I'll be getting back to this complaint later). On a fundamental level, this is clearly a very successful iOS video game.

So, clearly, I hate it.

Don't get me wrong! I don't hate this thing just because it's successful, I hate it because this game is nothing but non-stop instant death from beginning to end. No matter how well you're doing, you're one event away from the entire game coming to an end.

I get that the idea here is quick pick-up and put-down gameplay, but... seriously? I'm surprised, honestly, that people are satisfied with this. A full minute of gameplay would be an epic session of Doodle Jump. There's no development or change or progress or anything. It's just:

Boing, boing, boing, dead.

Boing, boing, boing, dead.

Boing, boing, boing, next game!

Passage

Passage is like The Sims ported to the 2600. (It's probably better than the actual results of a project like that, though.)

This is another game that isn't really an iOS game. It's hardly even a game at all. A pretty brilliant work of art? As an object it's very impressive, but I hesitate to really call it a game because the gameplay is so limited. There's pretty close to zero replay value and it's incredibly unclear what choices the player might make (beyond having your character hook up with the woman at the beginning).

Why does the guy always die first? That seems statistically unlikely. I question the accuracy of this simulation!

The controls work well on the touchscreen, but that probably has more to do with how incredibly limited they are and how the game allows for the vast majority of the screen to be devoted to the controls. I don't think this title has much to say about how games might function on a touchscreen beyond "keep it incredibly simple."

Spider

Spider is like Qix meets In The Night Kitchen but with spiders instead of prepubescent wieners. ...That simile was pretty disturbing. Sorry about that.

This is the first iOS game I've played on the Touch that I really like. It's got some problems, like the spider's transition from walking on a web to walking on the floor/walls/ceiling/etc., but I feel like I'd actually put up with the annoyances in order to play this game more. In fact, this is one I will probably play quite a bit more even after writing this post.

The level design and the feeling of exploring the environment is really great! Not only do I really want to look around, but it's generally pretty fun just moving around (flinging the spider is quite satisfying) and the ability to interact with the environment by creating webs and eating insects actually starts to feel immersive.

As usual, there are issues related to using the touch screen. Overlapping, context-sensitive controls related to touching the screen to move around and zoom in or out suck ass, as usual. As I mentioned above, the game is a bit schizophrenic about transitioning from moving on a web to moving on the walls/etc. It's also annoying when the portal to exit the level happens to appear where the spider is standing, randomly ending the level. Slightly less annoying is when I accidentally jump into the portal because it materialized off screen. "Oh, there's the portal. Great."

Finally, I wish the game would let me look around even more. The strongest point here, in my opinion, is the levels themselves. As each level starts you get a good, fully zoomed out view of the level, a perspective that doesn't seem to ever really return. That's a shame!

Generally, though, this is my favorite so far.

---

Update after staying up all day playing Spider:

I've thought of a better simile for this game -- it's like Glider Pro meets Silent Hill.

All of my complaints about this game seem to be invalid! The thing about accidentally going through the exit portal? There's an option to return to the level when this happens. Going through the portal lets you see the entire level, so this is actually a gameplay strategy (eat enough insects to open the portal and then go through to check out the level to find hidden stuff and whatnot). The zooming still doesn't seem to work wonderfully, but I did get a little better at it and it's probably safe to say that I'm just messing something up there.

Moving from a web to a wall/floor/etc. is still a little finicky, but I'm pretty happy to let that issue slide at this point, in part because I finally noticed that this game has no instant death at all. In fact, no death whatsoever! That's probably one of the reasons I like the game so much.

Oh, I should say that there's no player death in the game. Having finished the adventure mode now, I have to say that the story in this game is awesome. Super well handled and very creepy. I haven't solved whatever the puzzle is relating to the hearth (a multi-level puzzle, I think) so there's still that to go.

All-in-all, I think this is a really excellent game.

I'd like more! ...Hm, I think I'm going to wind up writing a post about length of gameplay now.

Pocket God

Whoops, I skipped over Pocket God!



Pocket God is like the world's most pointless machine meets Grow Cube.

This game is almost interesting, even if the interface sucks (I'm looking at my goddamn finger, for crying out loud!), but it seems really shallow. I poked around at it for a while, sort of trying to get into the idea of figuring out what the different objects did and stuff, but then I stumbled across the instructions that explain what the different objects do and stuff... so I stopped playing with Pocket God.

Clearly, I don't like Pocket God. I feel similarly ambivalent about Grow Cube, although I think it's much more clever. I do, however, love the heck out of the world's most pointless machine, it makes me squeal and I want to hug it! So I can't really hold it against anyone who like Pocket God, I guess, I'm just not joining that club.

Shift

Shift is like the shadow world from Super Mario Bros. 2 (that's the North American one) meets Portal. ...Well, maybe it meets Portal halfway.

(Hey, I'm over my Rolando-instilled enthusiasm block -- yay! ...Right? Yay?)

So this is a great game. It isn't, of course, an iOS game, exactly. This is a port of a game that's quite good where it started into this buttonless touchscreen environment. How does it hold up?

Fairly well, I think. I mean, if this was the only way you could play Shift, you wouldn't be doing too bad. I feel like the context sensitive stuff wasn't a great idea (you can only really go left or right and when you do the unused direction becomes the jump button) but that's a bit of a niggle. I also didn't have a very good time using the controls, but I can see how one would get used to them. Having to devote screen real estate to onscreen controls seems like a bummer, but this game was originally in a different aspect ratio so it's sort of a lucky coincidence that they needed to account for the extra space anyway. Luck developers!

Basically, I wouldn't play Shift on this platform, but this game fundamentally works. Hooray!