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This is the worst. No matter how involving a story, no matter how great the cutscene graphics I never want to be forced to watch them. There are times when I don't really care how the story unfolds, there are times when I really need to save my game as fast as possible, and there are times - get this - when I am replaying the game. The last thing I want to do on the second playing of a game is sit through a 20 minute cutscene. Extra evil points go to unskippable cutscenes that require the user to click a button after each chunk of text. 2) Cheating AI Fun fact: This is the reason I initially got interested in game programming. Ever since I was a kid I was convinced that video games cheated. The computer players seemed to defy the established physics of the game! And ever since I was a child, smug adults would say, "Computers can't cheat." So I grew up and learned how to program games. Lo and behold, virtually all computer game AIs cheat! When I sat down to write the Cylindrix AI, my first goal was to constrain the AI's control interface to that of the player. i.e. the computer played the game using the same input interface as a player. The computer couldn't move just by modifying its own x,y,z coordinates, but rather had to press the down key just like the player. In addition, I implemented things like aiming "fuzziness" when shooting. It's really easy for a computer to be a perfect shot when it can triangulate the perfect angle between your x,y,z and his! If more game programmers would make even the slightest effort on this front, multiplayer mode would not be an absolute necessity to enjoy modern shooters. 3) No automap combined with convoluted level design. Luckily, the former is no longer so common. Most modern games have some form of automap. Back in the old days you had to crawl through the game world and painstakingly plot out your course on grid paper. I never - ever - did this properly. When I played the Bard's Tale games, My more patient friends mapped out all of the dungeons on graph paper and I photocopied these. This is back before the Internet, so maps of this sort were like gold. The first game I can remember with a good automap is Ultima Underworld. After that, I never wanted to see another piece of grid paper. Anyway, like I said, automaps are pretty standard in modern games. However...level design is fucking out of control. I will be the first to admit that I have a mental shortcoming: I cannot visualize large areas in three dimensions. I'm sure if they did some sort of super CAT Scan they'd figure out that there was an undeveloped section of my brain. Because of this, I absolutely, positively, cannot navigate in these modern 3D sprawling maps. Sure, it's cool that your 3D world is as large as Virginia. Sure, it's cool that there are 590 distinct locations and vegetation types. But remember that we're supposed to be having fun here AND BEING LOST IS NOT FUN. If you are a game designer and are reading this, this is the most important section in this post. Everyone is trying to figure out how to woo more female gamers, older gamers, in other words people who are normally not gamers. Guess what? Most women have the same 3D spacial problem that I do. I have never met a woman that can navigate a large 3D map. And most normal people who weren't raised on 3D shooters cannot either. When a person picks up a game for the first time, they do not want to be hopelessly lost. Remember this if you have any desire to woo the non-hardcore to your game. 4) Getting "stuck" in objects or walls. Getting physically stuck in things has been a problem in video games for a long time. There are many technical reasons that this happens, but it is actually more of an issue now with the prevalence of 3D graphics. Keeping this from happening in three dimensions when you have temporal aliasing etc. etc. is a very technically difficult problem, but I don't care. It's such a show stopper that you can't let it happen. Pick up the collision detection papers and fix it, lazy ass. 5) "Breaking" the state machine by doing something out of order. This means things like "If you bring the book to the old man before getting the crystal sword, you can never open the Hellgate to Hellsville, therefore making it impossible to beat the game." Once again, as games get more complex this becomes more likely. Luckily, however, with modern games' bigger budgets, there is much more play testing than there used to be, so even though the chances for it happening have increased, it seems to me to be less common than it used to be. (Plus, they can be patched after the fact - see below) At any rate, play testing is the only real way to avoid this problem. 6) Intentionally obscure puzzles which require me to buy a book. While it had some of the best art direction in game history, Grim Fandango comes to mind. The puzzles in that game utilized some of the most obscure retardo-logic that I have ever seen. It was simply not possible to beat that game without looking up the puzzles. And even though I enjoyed it, the Gamecube Resident Evil falls into this category. I could not have enjoyed this game without the walkthrough by my side. The puzzles were way, way, way too obscure. Banging your head against a wall is not fun. A cakewalk is also not fun. It is a challenge as a game designer to design puzzles that are challenging, yet not so difficult that you spend 7 hours of un-fun time trying to move to the next stage. 7) Bad Balance (in multiplayer games) Hoo boy. This is a big one. I probably get into more fights about this than any single subject in video games. Unless all characters (or "races" or "classes" etc.) are exactly the same, there is no such thing as a perfectly balanced game. At the same time, however, there is a big difference in the balance difference between Ken and Ryu, and the balance difference between Ken and Dhalsim. From Street Fighter 2, to Champion Edition, to Turbo, to Super Street Fighter, to Super Champ, to Super Champ Turbo, to Alpha, to Alpha 2, to Alpha 3, Dhalsim has SUCKED, while Ken and Ryu have always rocked. Given that the fundamental nature of Street Fighter is player Vs. player combat, why in the hell is Dhalsim even in the game? Just so a better player can handicap himself? Just so I can say, "Dude, I beat you with Dhalsim!!!!" Don't even get me started on Dan in Alpha 2 and 3...The only reason I ever saw anyone pick that guy is so they could gloat when they won using that gimp... I remember when Street Fighter 2 Champion Edition came out. At every arcade you ever went to, there was some vietnamese guy playing M. Bison and doing the same thing. Torpedo, you'd block, tick tick tick - THROW. Torpedo, you'd block, tick tick tick - THROW. Over and over. This guy would never get off of Bison, and pretty soon the game was nothing but a bunch of M. Bison players throwing each other. Eventually there was an honor code and no one picked Bison - except for that vietnamese guy. That guy should get "Bison4Life" tattood on his ass. Similarly, you have the Zerg situation in Starcraft. It was no accident that the Zerg were consistently at the top of Battle.Net. They were simply the best race in virtually any situation. In early game on a small map you had the 6 zergling rush, in mid game on a medium map you had the hydralisk rush, in early-late game you had the mutalisk swarm, and in late game you had the guardians. They were just the best race no matter how you looked at it. Blizzard has a pretty bad track record with balance, IMHO. Anyone remember the corpse explode debacle in Diablo 2? From what I hear about World of Warcraft, they were just as careful when designing the Rogue class :P 8) Nerfing (in MMORPGs) Nerfing sort of goes hand in hand with the balance problem. Acceptable balance can be achieved with good playtesting. But when you roll out too soon (especially in a complex combat system) you will often discover that you have created a horrible imbalance in the game. When you create an imbalance like this, players will flock to this imbalance, just like the M. Bison guys I mentioned earlier. The more players your game has, the less likely that an honor system will keep them away from imbalanced features. Pretty soon your game will be dominated by everyone exploiting this imbalance. Enter the nerf. This term comes from the idea that your once uber-powerful sword was turned into a Nerf Sword, hence being useless. When you nerf an overpowered feature, you have to be very careful. Invariably, a huge percentage of your player base will have structured their play style around this feature. When you nerf it, you have to be careful not to nerf it into uselessness, because all of these players will be very unhappy. You very well may make their character hopelessly useless, and they may have to start over from scratch. I hate to pick on Blizzard (not really), but just as they have a bad track record with balance, they also have a bad track record with nerfing things. The Necromancer class in Diablo 2 is almost a textbook case of what NOT to do regarding balance and nerf. 9) Bad 3D interface. Early in the history of 3D games, this was a real problem. Implementing a "smart" camera that follows the player is a VERY hard problem, and there are far fewer papers written about this than other tried-and-true issues like collision detection and pathfinding. A bad camera is almost a guarantee that your 3D interface will suck. Luckily, most game programmers now realize this, and a lot of effort is put into camera programming in modern 3D games. Because screens, keyboards, control pads, mice, and other standard input devices are essentially 2D, it is difficult to implement a smooth way to control character in a 3D environment. Because it is by nature difficult, it is up to the game programmer to make it as smooth as possible. I don't have a whole lot to say about this one...this depends heavily on the type of game, and the sorts of things you will be doing in the game. It's pretty obvious when a 3D interface sucks. 10) Shipping incomplete: The bane of PC gaming. While many of the problems on my list are actually less prevalent now than in the old days, this one is far far worse. Before the internet, it was generally very difficult to download "fixes" for games, and so when a game was shipped, it had to be bug free. On consoles, in particular, you simply couldn't ship a game with bugs. If your shipped game crashed at particular point every time, you simply couldn't release it. Console games were always on ROMs, and had no local storage to speak of, so you simply couldn't patch the game. Modern gamers almost invariably have broadband internet connections and even the smallest hard drive is more than enough to store tons of patches. Because of this, modern PC games are almost always knowingly shipped with bugs - banking on the fact that gamers will download patches after they buy it. While it's great that I can get updates to graphics, patches etc., it makes the game programmers lazy. The trend in PC gaming is clear. Virtually every modern PC game ships as a broken turd, prone to crashes, rife with problems of every sort. Rather than spending tons of money in play testing, they can just release the game and rely on the player base to report bugs. Then they can roll out a patch and they saved tons of money. Now consoles are starting to ship with hard drives. I am very concerned about the future of console gaming. I actually believe that, historically, it is the limitations of the consoles that have made the games of better quality. Because they had to be perfect, they were as close as possible. Now that game developers have a hard drive safety net on consoles, I fear that we will be subjected to buggy shit on our consoles too. Permalink to this post. |
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My introduction to boxing was actually through video games. I remember my Uncle Lloyd bringing me to Winn Dixie to play the original arcade Punch Out, the one with the green mesh guy. I can remember getting so worked up that I wanted to fight for real. Because I could beat Bald Bull I believed I beat anyone in real life. Then came the watershed moment for video game boxing: Mike Tyson's Punch Out, which was not only an incredible game, but was so popular that it became the only topic of conversation among my friends for months. Last Friday I bought Fight Night Round 2. Since then, I have done almost nothing but play that game, and when I'm not playing it, thinking about playing it. Tracey has already threatened to break the CD in half. Like all EA sports games, it not only incorporates the obvious aspects of the sport such as jabs, hooks, and uppercuts, but also aspects of the sport that die-hard fans will appreciate such as cutmen, training, and weight class shifting to win multiple belts. Right away I chose to play career mode where you can either play a pre-created champion such as Muhammad Ali or Chris Byrd, or create your own boxer. I chose to make my own. The boxer customization screen was awesome. You actually get to use the analog controller to morph the different sections of the mesh which composes the boxer's head, enabling you to customize the actual 3D face of the boxer to look exactly the way you want it to look. Once you have modified the mesh, you can change the hair style, facial hair, and skin color etc. as in most games. I chose to make my character look as much like myself as I could, and gave him my relatively skinny build and chose to make him a light heavyweight. You also put in your first and last name and choose from a list of pre-existing nicknames. In career mode, you start off unranked with a list of possible bouts. Each bout has a certain number of weeks you must wait to fight. If you choose too many far-off fights, your character will age too fast (relative to his number of fights). This is bad because once you hit your mid 30s your stats start to decline. Once you pick your bout you get a training session, in which you choose one of three minigames. There is a combo dummy minigame similar to Simon Says for your speed related stats, a heavy bag "punch rhythm" minigame for your strength and stamina, and a weight training minigame for strength also. The minigames are pretty fun, and your performance in them greatly affects your character's development. A cool little detail of this training is that the appearance of your boxer's body is modified by his training, and it shows you a before and after photo after each training session. When I started this game, my boxer's build was very similar to my real life build. By the time I became light heavyweight champion, he looked like a damn steroid freak. Aside from training, you are also able to allocate your funds to trainers, cutmen, intro music, intro effects, and an entourage. Each of these things gives you different stat boosts during the fight. One odd thing is that pretty quickly in my career I had enough money to max out everything for every fight. I'm not sure if there's something I haven't unlocked, or maybe I'm not seeing something, but from what I can tell I have reached the max on everything I can choose here. The control scheme for the boxing is a bit unusual, but after a little while I found it very comfortable. One of the analog sticks controls your boxer's foot movement, and the other is used for punching. To do a left jab, you simply move the right analog controller up and to the right. Left jab is up and to the left. Hooks are a quarter circle motion similar to a Ken/Ryu fireball in Street fighter. The left shoulder button causes any punch motion to be aimed low instead of high, and doubles as a bob and weave toggle. When it's pressed, any movement of the left controller becomes a leaning bobbing and weaving motion rather than foot movement. When you hold the right shoulder button, all right analog control movements become blocks or parries rather than punches. There is a button which allows you to commit a foul, a button for a signature punch, a button to clinch your opponent when you're hurt, and finally a taunt button. Also, you can do "haymaker" hooks and uppercuts if you wind up your punch on the analog controller before doing your punch motion (somewhat similar to a Ken/Ryu uppercut in Street Fighter). All of this is fairly complex, but it doesn't really take too long to get the hang of it. There is also a spar training mode which walks you through everything described in the previous paragraph. The fights themselves are what you'd expect...good old fashioned boxing. This game is remarkably realistic. In real life I used to box, and as a southpaw (left hander) had a very distinct style. I made my boxer in this game a southpaw, and found that all of my old tricks worked very well in this game. Just like in real life, my bread and butter is a persistent triple jab, often followed by a left cross to the body, and if that landed finishing with a right hook or uppercut. Just like in real life, righties are wide open for that left cross to the body. There are commentators for the fight, and the programming of context-sensitive narration is excellent. I chose "Freak" as my nickname, and when I'm fighting I frequently hear, "The freak continues to be effective with that triple jab!" This is a subtle detail, but it's things like this which really increase immersion in the game. In between rounds you control your cutman while hearing your coach's opinion of your performance. The coach isn't really that helpful, but the cutman is cool as hell. You have meters on the upper right, upper left, lower right, and lower left of your face which indicate their swelling level. With the left analog controller you choose which part of the face you want the cutman to fix, and with the right analog controller you follow a slowly moving onscreen arc to rub the area and decrease its damage. If you are cut, you switch from the swelling tool to the cut tool, and the interface for fixing cuts is identical. If you don't pay attention to your cuts and swelling, the referee may stop the fight, so this is actually a very important part of the game. As you progress in your career you unlock different trunks, shoes, mouthpieces, and gloves which give you bonuses to different stats, and you also unlock different venues to hold fights. A cool little detail of the game is that you begin your career fighting in dingy little clubs, progress to town fairs and the like, and by the time you're a champion you're fighting at ritzy casinos and hotels. My only gripe so far about this game is that the initial game menus are confusing as hell. I have found this to be a common problem with EA Sports games, it's almost as if they try to make the menu unintuitive. This however, is my only minor gripe about an otherwise awesome game. I have already written a whole lot, and there are a lot more little details to write about. Save us both the time and just buy it. This one is worth it. I am hopelessly addicted. I am already looking forward to Fight Night Round 3. So far, the only announcement I've heard on Fight Night Round 3 is for the Playstation 3. Since I'm a Nintento fanboy I desperately hope they release it for the Nintendo Revolution. If not, I may have to buy a whole console for one game. Postscriptum: I almost forgot, as a bonus, the full Super Nintendo Game Super Punch Out is included with Fight Night Round 2, playable right from the start. Being a retro-gamer geek, this is one hell of a bonus. Permalink to this post. |
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The back story behind this game is a bit weird. Apparently a prison warden's family was killed by vampires, and he was bitten by one, turning him into a vampire. He then experiments on prisoners in his prison and does really messed up stuff which rips a hole into hell...or something. This hole that lets demons into our world also turns four prisoners into "Hunters," which are basically badass people who are able to see the evil monsters. (Normal people apparently can't see them) The four hunters kick ass, take names, and shove all of the demons back in the portal. Fast forward a few years and you have the beginning of this game. Apparently a bunch of teenagers broke into the prison and threw a rave, which of course re-opened the portal to hell...or whatever. The bottom line is that you're back at the prison and have to kill a bunch of zombies. In fact, scratch all of that back story. The back story is that you're a badass who has to kill lots of zombies. Case closed. Each of the four characters has different strengths and weaknesses, and you have your typical breakdown: A tank, a ranged fighter, a zippy Speedy Gonzales, and a mage-like character. Each character is roughly capable of any type of attack, but their strengths and weaknesses naturally relegate you to a particular style. Each character has a melee attack, a ranged attack with infinite ammo, three "edges" (spells), and an assortment of ranged weapons with limited ammo that can be found throughout the game. These different attacks are part of the fun of the game. For each character, you find yourself switching between the different types of attack depending on the situation. Sometimes it's best to fight hand to hand, sometimes it's best to stay far back and take potshots, and sometimes it's best to grab a flamethrower and unload on everything in sight. The mechanics of the game take a bit of acclimation, but once you've got it they're pretty smooth. The melee attack is standard button smashing beat-em-up combo fare. The ranged weapons auto-aim in the general direction you are pointing, which allows you to use one analog pad to run in a direction, and the other to control your facing. This enables you to perform the much-loved circle-strafe maneuver on a console control pad, which really made me happy. The missions have just enough depth to keep the game from being a totally mindless hack-n-slash, but don't get complex enough to become tiresome. The character development is extremely simple, incorporating experience points that slowly raise your stats, but it is enough to keep the progression compelling. As the game progresses you are introduced to new monster types, and this also helps keep the game from being monotonous. The game is relatively short, taking me about 8 hours to beat, but it has decent replay value due to the different strategies necessary when playing as the different character classes. Finally, the game is really fun in co-op mode. I actually find the game harder in co-op mode because you cannot simply run offscreen wherever you want, and all players share a limited number of continues. You really have to play strategically when there is another player on the screen. The bottom line: This game is worth it. It's a great game to plug in and jump right into playing without boring unskippable cutscenes, obscure puzzles, or an unweildy 3D interface. Mindless fun for all. Permalink to this post. |
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Before I begin let me give you my background so I don't seem like some random fanboy pulling predictions out of his backside. I began writing software about 10 years ago, my first large project being Cylindrix, which was a 3D DOS game written roughly around the time of DOOM 2. After that, I moved into business software, but continued contracting in my spare time and worked on Dead Reckoning, which was a sequel to Cylindrix. My partner and I later formed our own company using our game engine to write simulators etc. Eventually, my partner moved to San Francisco to pursue full time game development and I shifted gears into business software again. Over the years I have kept one foot in the game programming world, keeping up with current APIs, console development etc. Console programming is a unique beast. The rules of console development are drastically different than PC programming. You can't just assume everyone is going to have more RAM next year, or buy a faster processor, or dump $500 into a new video card. If you develop for a console, people next year will be running the exact same hardware they are this year. The problem is that console gamers next year expect flashier games than they saw this year - even though they are running the exact same hardware. How is this possible? How is it possible for the same programmers to produce a piece of software next year that renders 50% more polygons than their software this year? The answer is that console developers gain an intimate knowledge of their hardware that is virtually absent in the PC world. When a console is released, it is usually released with many titles. Obviously, these titles had to be in development long before the specs for the console were set in stone. The developers are provided with special developer kits which include a sample console (or emulator), API (Application Programming Interface), and documentation. Because the hardware is not stabilized, the programmers must be very conservative. The underlying hardware can change at any time, so they must be careful to follow guidelines and to adhere closely to the structure imposed by the provided API. This API is the rub. It is Microsoft's expectation of programmer's aherence to the API that I believe is the reason they will not be able to obtain backwards compatibility in the XBox 360. When the second generation of games for a console is in development, programmers know that gamers expect more. How do they deliver more? As I mentioned before, they accomplish this with intimate knowledge of the hardware. Programmers have more freedom with the second generation because the console is now stabilized. If they get their software running on their test console, they can be pretty sure that it will run on all consoles. What this means is that they can begin bypassing slow parts of the API. The API is a layer between the game and the hardware, and it is the nature of any API to be slower than directly programming the hardware. In the second generation programmers begin to write their own more efficient routines for polygon rendering, pixel blitting, sound playing, etc. They write highly customized functions that do exactly what they need - and nothing more. They "write directly to the metal," as the hardcore like to say. By the third generation things get a bit crazy. Programmers know exactly how the hardware works, and they come up with the craziest optimizations you can imagine. I spent hours one day talking to Tony (my former partner, who has now worked on Soul Reaver and the upcoming Tomb Raider title, among others) about the optimizations they use on their third generation titles. Suffice to say, by the third generation, programmers almost completely bypass the API and utilize every conceivable hack to squeeze every ounce of performance out of the console. If even one piece of hardware on that thing changed, their third generation titles would likely crash, or at least have very visible errors in rendering. This is a far cry from PC development. PC programmers cannot rely on one static machine. Their gamers may have an ATI or NVidia chip, not to mention the myriad board manufacturers. They may have any one of hundreds of sound cards, on-board peripherals, etc. Programming "to the metal" on a PC is not really an option. For this reason, PC programmers invariably program to an API such as DirectX, Direct3D, OpenGL etc. Other than OpenGL, Microsoft pretty much runs the PC API game, and they are used to dictating how developers write software. In my conversation with Tony I was stunned to discover that the Playstation 2 does not emulate the Playstation 1. In fact, the Playstation 2 contains a chip that is an entire Playstation 1. When you play PS1 games on the PS2, you're actually playing a PS1. The console shifts control over to the PS1 chip. When I asked him why Sony does this, he explained that since everyone programs directly to the metal, it's virtually impossible to write an effective emulator. Everyone uses so many hacks that your emulator would have to be amazingly complex to properly run all of the games. For you Linux geeks, look at how much trouble Codeweavers and the WINE team go through to deal with all the hacks used by PC game programmers (and that's not even "to the metal" programming). So this morning I woke up and read that Microsoft was "still working on" backwards compatibility for the XBox 360. And the console is due out in November. That's not a lot of time. It leads me to wonder how they're attempting to implement this backwards compatibility. Are they trying to emulate an original XBox? If so, I'm really not too optimistic about their chances of success. There are a lot of XBox games, and debugging an emulator to function properly with all of those is a massive task. When a game is first released, it is the onus of the developer to ensure it works with the console. But at this point, the developers have made their money. It is now Microsoft's problem to make sure that the XBox 360 can play all of those old games as a selling point. So can Microsoft shrink down the elephantine XBox to fit inside of the XBox 360? Are they trying to emulate their old console? Given my experience with Microsoft, I'd guess the latter, and that doesn't bode well for their odds of success. Finally, given their current track record of completing software on time, (*cough* Longhorn *cough*) I don't see them finishing by November if they're still working on it. Permalink to this post. |
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There are a lot of ways to make money in the game. You can collect bugs, fish, sell seashells, sell fruit, and go on errands for the animals in the game. As you play the animals give you little hints about many different little Easter Eggs that will get you more money. Finally, you can play the "stalk market," which is buying turnips and hopefully selling them when the market goes up. Animal Crossing is a unique little game. It manages to capture a lot of the coolness of a MMORPG without actually playing online. Normally in a MMORPG, the game server stays on 24/7 and the world changes and events occur whether you are playing or not. This gives the game more of a "real world" feeling. Animal Crossing accomplishes this without running all of the time. When you log into the game it checks your Nintendo's internal clock and evolves the game world appropriately depending on how much time has elapsed. To my knowledge, Animal Crossing is the first game to do this. The result is a very interesting experience. When you plant a tree in the game, it takes actual real-world time to grow. A few days, actually. Depending on the time of day, you are able to catch certain fish and bugs. Some places close at night. If you don't play for a few days, weeds crop up in your town. The in-game mail service actually takes a real world day to process a message. Last Saturday I found myself saying, "Damn! I missed K.K. Slider again! I guess I'll have to wait 'till next week." And the next morning I actually got up early to make sure I didn't miss this week's batch of turnips. This morning before work I played to check turnip prices, "Shit," I thought, "I forgot that Tom Nook's doesn't open until 9:00!" Of all of the activities, I enjoy fishing the most. The fishing interface in this game is extremely simple, but very fun. I can just sit and fish in Animal Crossing for hours. There are many different types of fish you can catch, some of which only appear certain times of the day, or different times of the year. It's a huge rush when I pull out a fish I have never seen before, which brings me to another feature of the game. There is a museum in the town, and whenever you find a new insect, fish, fossil, or painting, you can bring it in for display. Anyone who plays the game on the same memory card shares the town, and it is fun to compete to see who can get the most new things in the museum. Also, you can mail each other items and visit each other's houses, adding to the MMORPG feel. As you play, the seemingly simple game becomes more complex. There are some things that can only be done on certain days of the week at certain times. You discover that there are benefits to decorating your house a certain way. That having proper placement of trees in town also brings benefits. There are special items and events that occur coinciding with real-world holidays. Randomly, you will get visitors to your town who bring with them extra goodies. As cool as this real-time behavior is, sometimes it can be a detriment. There are times that I log into the game and realize that there really isn't much point in playing right now. The fish aren't biting, the bugs aren't out, and I'm waiting for my new trees to grow and don't want to disturb them. Also, due to work and exercise I rarely play before 7PM, and bugs aren't out at night, so I rarely see new bugs. Nintendo also shamelessly leverages Easter Eggs in the game to get you to buy more of their products. If you do not have your Game Boy Advance hooked up to your Gamecube, you cannot go to the Island - the only place you can get coconuts and certain other special items (not to mention listen to Capp'n sing his songs of love and loss as he ferries you to the island). You can also hook up to the Nintendo E-Reader to get bonus songs and items, but since I don't have an E-Reader I really can't tell you too much about that. What I like most about this game is that it is 100% fun. I am going to be 30 in a few months, and I think my desire for a challenging, hard-core game is gone. When I am repeatedly beaten by the same boss, or get lost in some convoluted 3D maze, or fall off a fucking cliff, I just want to throw the controller across the room. I like sitting down at a game where my character cannot die, I cannot get lost, and there is no pressure. I just sit down and have fun. Seriously, at this point in my life I have fallen into lava or green radioactive goo enough times to last me the rest of my years. In closing, I'd have to mention that an online version of Animal Crossing is coming out for the Nintendo DS when they release the networking component for the DS. I may just have to give up my boycott of MMORPGs... Permalink to this post. |
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