[Review] Splatoon
The common refrain of Nintendo only making games for children may irritate fans no end, but as a statement, it is hard to argue with its accuracy. The suggestion, of course, is that no-one above a certain age would want to play their games, the patently ludicrous delusion of those still clinging to the juvenile approximation of violence with adulthood. Nintendo's games are delightful no matter how old you are, and the reason is because few other companies in the business of creating entertainment are as effortlessly capable of producing experiences which instantly recall the intense, anarchic joys of childhood.
More specifically, Nintendo remembers that such pleasures never had anything to do with the saccharine ideal often portrayed by the media through bland snapshots of toddlers laughing with their parents or playing calmy in an immaculately organised nursery. The joys of childhood were in the misbehaving, the chaos and wanton disobedience of making a mess and breaking rules you didn't even know existed. This rule-breaking has been key to Nintendo's design philosophy ever since players were encouraged to discover a warp zone in the original Mario Bros by running along the level roof. The company may have become increasingly conservative in recent years, pumping out annual Mario and Zelda titles to bolster its struggling hardware, but that core design doctrine, that mischief is always more fun than obedience, has remained, even if not quite as pronounced as it used to be.
That's where Splatoon comes in.
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Splatoon
Developer: Nintendo
Console: Wii U
Release Date: May 29th, 2015
Shooters and territorial control games are often cited as two of the most 'hardcore' (cough) genres in gaming, demanding pinpoint precision and intricate mastery of an array of complex systems and controls. With Splatoon, Nintendo takes both genres and inverts them via a simple but inspired twist, whereby the goal is not to conquer the enemy but the arena, performed with a compact number of immediately accessible options with infinite variation. In Titanfall, EA attempted to make shooting games accessible to beginners by offering low-skilled AI opponents as cannon fodder to artificially inflate scores. Such a clunky and patronising solution ignored the real sources of the problem: unneccessarily complex controls, confusing gameplay mechanics, and intimidating levels of aggression, to name a few.
Nintendo solves it by turning the genres' most basic tenents on their heads. In Splatoon, the wisest tactical move is often to avoid the most heavily populated areas in favour of seeking out and reclaiming overlooked map real estate. As long as a player is able to navigate and hold the button to fire the ink whose coverage claims territory for their team and increases their personal score, they are able to make a positive contribution to the effort even if they don't see an opponent the entire match (as unlikely as that admittedly is). With a tap of the gamepad's touchscreen, you can at any point choose to jump to another location on the map provided an ally is nearby, providing an easy way out of sticky situations. Gunning down enemies with the game's impressively varied and well-balanced arsenal is not without benefits, though the most important is tactical, forcing a member of the four-strong opposing team out of action for a few seconds and giving your team a momentary but essential advantage during which game-winning pushes into enemy territory can be made.
Achieving significant ground coverage also aids navigation, with your player able to transform into a squid and swim at high speed through ink of his or her own team's colour, even up and over certain walls. Doing so robs you of all offensive capability, but adds a stealth element - using a well-placed ink trail to sneak up behind an enemy and splat them is a thrill discovered early and which never becomes any less gratifying - and a further tactical element to the gameplay, whereby choosing the moment to risk a charge down a precarious ink trail through enemy lines, using speed rather than power to survive, can lead to a potentially enormous advantage, especially with teammates able to immediately jump to your side should you make it.
For all that killing, or splatting, is de-emphasized, your choice of weapon can make a huge difference to your role in the game. Rapid-fire weapons offer little range or accuracy, but balance ground coverage with reasonable offensive power when pushing towards choke points. Rollers (literally giant paint rollers) can lay down a wide, continuous path of ink, essential for quick navigation and aggressive land-grabbing, but are immensely vulnerable to attack from above or at a distance. Chargers, the game's sniper rifles, are specialised high-power weapons with the greatest focus on taking out opponents, but can put together huge scores with thoughtful use. The many variations on these weapons offers a smorgasbord of in-between options for those whose skillset doesn't comfortably fit into one specific category. Overly efficient Aerospray aside, they all offset each other nicely.
In addition to your primary weapon are subs and specials. Subs are the equivalent of Call Of Duty's equipment, offering both explosive and tactical options. Specials are the game's version of killstreaks, unlocked once you have covered or reclaimed a certain amount of territory. These create some of the game's few balancing issues. While each has its purpose and can be an invaluable asset in the right hands, some subs and specials are noticeably more formidable than others: the Kraken, for instance, transforms the player into an invincible sea monster who can cut an ink trail through enemy territory and destroy all in its path. The Killer Wail sonic blast, with its cover-permeating range and wide radius, becomes insanely powerful in narrower maps.
None is game-breaking by any stretch, but Nintendo's solution, locking weapon sets to prevent players chopping and changing to the most devastating combinations, only serves to undermine the solid balance of the primary weapons by making certain sets inviable should the supporting options not be strong enough to compete. That lack of customisation is symbolic of what holds Splatoon back from making the most of the phenomenal gameplay experience at its core. Nintendo's refusal to give players the full range of options that should be a genre standard feels very much like unneccesary caution from a company with a young audience venturing on its own for the first time into a genre traditionally reserved for more advanced players. Having to quit out of online lobbies to adjust your load-out is a ridiculous frustration, especially for such a tactical game, when most online shooters allow you to not only change in-between matches, but often during them as well.
The number of clothing options available from the Inkopolis hub in which to kit out your avatars is also undermined by the associated perks being entirely randomised bar one. This is, again, presumably to prevent players stacking themselves with a small number of powerful options, but a more balanced set would prevent that more naturally. It instead encourages players to choose aesthetic options they may not like in order to take advantage of the boosts they provide. It ceases to be about players expressing themselves and more a slightly grating push to engage in a system of cynical capitalism encouraging results and function over creativity and self-representation. Achieving a high enough level allows you to re-roll your perks, but it's a costly option that continues to put players at the mercy of a random draw.
Online multiplayer is the game's overwhelming focus and runs smoothly despite suffering the occasional connection failure which also blighted Mario Kart in its post-launch months. Fair warning, there have also been reports of a small number of players struggling to connect at all. Offline, the single player mode is short and sweet, barely five hours in length and, outside the endearingly barmy boss fights, feels more like an extended training mode than campaign in and of itself. Nevertheless, it offers impressive variety in visuals and design, combining the look and obstacle course structure of Super Mario Galaxy 2 with the spraying mechanic from Super Mario Sunshine. There's little incentive to replay levels once they've been completed, but collecting the secret scrolls hidden in each reveals an enjoyably silly and surprisingly detailed lore underpinning the game's squids vs octopodes conceit.
It's a shame there isn't an arena mode to battle AI opponents in the multiplayer maps, and the local multiplayer option, while frantic enough on the smaller maps, is so stripped down (involving popping balloons rather than territory coverage, for whatever reason) that its appeal is likely to be decidedly short-term. Restricting player numbers to two is another annoyance, especially when trawling the bigger maps becomes a drag which could have been at least partially alleviated by allowing four players to enter the fray in 2v2 competition. The local multiplayer control options are also incomprehensively narrow and counter-intuitive: the player using the gamepad can only play on the tiny gamepad screen, giving the player using a Pro or Classic controller the entire TV to themselves. The lack of a splitscreen option reeks of Nintendo trying to force usage of the gamepad's features in a way that also permeates the rest of the game. Outside local multiplayer, the gamepad is the only available control option, despite none of touchscreen features requiring functions that the Wii U's Call Of Duty titles haven't already handled quite ably for non gamepad-users by allowing players to toggle transparent on-screen maps. The inability to use the Wii remote/nunchuck combo is especially jarring given what a natural fit pointer aiming would seem to be for Splatoon's rapid-fire gameplay.
If the absence of control choices and customisation is an annoying but hardly overwhelming issue, the dearth of options even in the game's online multiplayer is far more difficult to overlook. While the limited single player and local multiplayer are forgiveable and the novelty of the bold gameplay is enough to keep things fresh (to use the game's own 90s-inflected lingo) for hour after hour of play, launching with only five maps and a single mode - with one more of each unlocking tonight - in the headline online multiplayer is entirely unacceptable. That custom matches with friends reportedly won't be unlocked until August only makes the situation all the more ridiculous.
The staggered roll-out of maps and modes in free DLC can be interpreted as Nintendo giving players time to get used to the specific demands of the game, or less optimistically as a cynical bid to make players hold onto it and reduce the second-hand market. With upcoming multiplayer maps already existing in the single player mode - levels 08 and 20, if you're after a sneak-peek - it taints what is otherwise one of Nintendo's most exciting and innovative releases in years. While the game's budget price in Europe makes it worth the plunge regardless of those early shortfalls, recommending it at the full $60 price to American buyers is considerably more difficult, at least until the full complement of 14 maps has been released in a few months' time - at which point, the game might well be cheaper anyway. Splatoon is a game that demonstrates all the subversive, groundbreaking glee that marks out the very greatest of Nintendo's work. Now they just need to finish it.
[Trailer] Pixels
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It's been awhile since an Adam Sandler film intrigued me, let alone an Adam Sandler comedy. Yet, here comes Pixels. Directed by Chris Columbus (Home Alone, The Goonies), Pixels looks like it has the right mix of family-friendly appeal with content that will tap into adults' sense of nostalgia.
In the world of Pixels, NASA sent out a time capsule in 1982 to find alien life. However, once they made contact, the act was misinterpreted by the aliens as a threat, resulting in a wide-scale attack. The irony is the alien utilized imagery from the video games NASA sent to represent their attacks, leading '80s video game icons like Pac-Man and Donkey Kong to wreak havoc on the world. Of course, the only way the world can fight back is by reaching out to various '80s gaming champions to utilize their strategies to defeat the aliens. Sam Brenner (Adam Sandler) heads up a team of former gaming champions (Peter Dinklage and Josh Gad) to fight back.
What separates Pixels from the typical Happy Madison production is Columbus's involvement. While his films have been a bit stale in recent years, he understands the dynamics of a kid-friendly film mixed with enough excitement and nostalgia to attract older audiences. What's more, video game characters are front-and-center. There'll probably some lame jokes that don't hit and the typical brand of Sandler-style comedy. However, I'm willing to stand it just to see if Columbus still has it in him.
Pixels will be in theaters on July 24th.
Nintendo Attractions to Appear at Universal Theme Parks
Nintendo is notorious for not sharing their IP efficiently and responsibly. Sure, there have been attempts over the years to expand their properties beyond video games, but each venture has been questionable at best (re: the John Leguizamo and Bob Hoskins-led Super Mario Bros. film, 1989's disastrous The Legend of Zelda cartoon (and CD-i games), The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! cartoon, to name a few). However, after years of stubbornness and not wanting to share their toys, Nintendo has relented a bit in order to find new streams of revenue to the one-time all-powerful video game company with their expansion into mobile devices, the success of Amiibos, and now, the expansion into an immersive, real world theme park.
Today, Nintendo and Universal Parks & Resorts announced their partnership "to bring the world of Nintendo to life at Universal theme parks – creating spectacular, dedicated experiences based on Nintendo’s wildly popular games, characters and worlds." Universal Parks & Resorts (sometimes known as Universal Studios Theme Parks or Universal Theme Parks) have had major success recently with licensed attractions, with The Wizarding World of Harry Potter and The Simpsons-themed Springfield being the most recent success stories.
There's no information as to which Universal Theme Parks will receive Nintendo attractions or whether the partnership will result in simply a ride or a fully-themed area like the aforementioned Harry Potter and The Simpsons attractions. However, both Nintendo and Universal are committed to creating a wholly-immersive experience unlike any other. Here's hoping they create a dedicated Pokemon area, complete with catchable Pokemon.
[Business Wire via Destructoid]
How Mobile Gaming Could Save Nintendo's Next Console
Nintendo confirmed at a press conference this week that their next console, codenamed the 'NX', was on the way, with more details set to be revealed in 2016. That the company is working on the Wii U's successor is hardly a surprise, having been hinted at much several times over, though the fact this news attracted so much attention despite only being revealed as a way of quashing any speculation of Nintendo quitting the dedicated hardware market - having been announced at the same time as the company's plan to licence its characters out for mobile game development - shows how important a place the company occupies in gaming culture even with the abject failure of their most recent home console.
The Wii U has yet to cross the 10 million global sales mark, having been available to buy since Christmas 2012. By contrast, the company's previous low watermark for home console sales, the GameCube, sold 22 million units between 2001 and its discontinuation in 2007, while the Xbox One and Playstation 4 have already outsold the U despite launching a year later. Sales of the 3DS have been more stable, shifting a creditable 50m units as of December last year. This pales in comparison to its predecessor, the DS, however, which sold just over 150m across its lifespan and is the top-selling handheld of all time.
The news of Nintendo finally, some would say inevitably, caving into the pressure to move into the mobile arena sent the price of their stock soaring by 29%, yet this represents something of a dilemma for its traditional audience. If the company's mobile ventures prove successful, as seems likely to be the case - their partners, DeNA, are hugely experienced and successful in the mobile gaming field, while Nintendo's catalogue of mascots have the kind of global recognition and appreciation which should guarantee a high level of trust and curiosity out of the gate -and they continue to struggle to assert themselves in a dedicate games hardware market where Sony and Microsoft are seen as more contemporary and exciting options by most so-called 'core' gamers, what reason is there for Nintendo to continue resisting the urge to dedicate most or all of its resources to mobile game development?
The fact is that, regardless of its recent difficulties, the gaming hardware market would be a very different and less exciting place without Nintendo. After the video game crash in 1983, the company almost single-handedly revived the market with the Nintendo Entertainment System with a business model which, through licencing, guaranteed customers a certain level of build quality in their games. Its successor, the SNES, solidified Nintendo's place as the dominant force in the market, despite growing competition from SEGA. Their next console, the N64, would lose considerable ground to Sony's newcomer, the PlayStation, yet despite sticking with outdated cartridge technology, the controller's use of an analogue stick revolutionised the way games controlled in a three-dimensional space. The Gamecube saw Nintendo's stock fall yet further, with Microsoft entering the market with the original XBox, but the system's Wavebird controller revision was the first to offer a wireless connection to its console.
Little was expected of Nintendo's follow-up system, yet the Wii's unusual name and innovative yet simple motion controller caught the public imagination and quickly became a bonefide phenomenon. Unfortunately, the console's unreliable motion-sensing technology, combined with outdated hardware (offering only standard definition output against the XBox 360 and PS3's HD) and a combination of third parties flooding the market with low-quality games to get in on the rush while Nintendo struggling to fill gaps in their release schedule, meant the brand quickly soured for much of the company's long-term fanbase.
This led to the Wii U, a console mired in confusion and compromise from its unveiling, at once offering more traditional controls to appease disgruntled fans while continuing to confusingly utilise the Wii name, require a bafflingly large number of controller types (gamepad, wii remode, classic controller, etc) and centre around a touchscreen which was often inconvenient to use and has offered little in gameplay terms beyond an always-on map or inventory screen, plus the limited appeal of being able to continue to play even while not using the television.
The PS4's outstanding sales, undeterred even by a widely acknowledged dearth of worthwhile games in its catalogue, shows how important strong marketing is to a console's success. Despite its past innovations and the consistently high quality of its games, Nintendo is perceived by much of the gaming market as staid, childish and outdated, heavily reliant on gimmicks where Sony and Microsoft have pushed state-of-the-art (for consoles, anyway) technology and online infrastructure. They are seen to have little to offer anyone without an existing appreciation for a small number of popular franchises, a number increasingly limited to spin-offs of the Mario and Zelda games. Major third-party series such as Call Of Duty, FIFA and Assassin's Creed have all floundered on the Wii U, with recent iterations missing from the console altogether. The Grand Theft Auto series, meanwhile, has never graced a Nintendo home console.
If Nintendo are to succeed, it would seem they need to stumble upon another zeitgeist-defining innovation in the same vein as the Wii's motion controls while simultaneously offering a level of technological power at least in the same ballpark as its competitors. That need to find the next big innovation is itself somewhat problematic, though, not least because of the unlikelihood of even a company as inventive as Nintendo making the proverbial lightning strike twice, but also because the company's current association with gimmickery means offering anything but a standard dual-analogue controller is likely to be greeted with immediate suspicion.
TIME Photographer Ashley Gilbertson Experimented with The Last of Us: Remastered's Photo Mode
Photos by Ashley Gilbertson.
The Last of Us was one of last generation's greatest video games and one of Sony's most successful and critically-acclaimed PlayStation 3 games, so it only made sense for Naughty Dog to develop an HD Remaster of the game for the PlayStation 4, right? Released earlier this summer, the game featured updated graphics, new modes and maps for the game's multiplayer section, and an amazing Photo Mode. When turned on, gamers can easily pause the game and adjust aperture, framing, composition, filters, and more to create some awe-inspiring "photos" of Joel and Ellie within the game's universe. Naughty Dog even held a photo contest that recently ended that saw gamers share their photos with the rest of the community. Nevertheless, would an actual photographer feel the same taking screen shots in a video game's photo mode the same way they would in the field?
TIME tasked one of its war photographers, Ashley Gilbertson, to create some photos from The Last of Us: Remastered's Photo Mode and write about his experience. From Gilbertson himself:
I initially played the game at home. But after a short time playing it, I noticed I was having very strong reactions in regards to my role as the protagonist: I hated it. When I covered real war, I did so with a camera, not a gun. At home, I’d play for 30 minutes before noticing I had knots in my stomach, that my vision blurred, and then eventually, that I had simply crashed out. I felt like this could well be my last assignment for TIME. [...] So, I moved to the TIME offices where Josh Raab, a contributing photo editor at Time.com and a former gamer, could take the controls and fight his way through the different stages for me. Josh developed a particular style of clearing levels – sneaking up on infected people, strangling them for a while and then stabbing them in the neck. I’d then retake the controls, letting me act more like a photographer. That’s when I started to make better images – the whole experience resembled an actual embed, with someone doing the fighting and me taking photographs.
It's interesting to read about Gilbertson's experience with the game, one in which I absolute adore and would be playing right now if Destiny hadn't just come out last week. You can find more of Gilbertson's The Last of Us: Remastered photos and his full experience on TIME's website.
[via TIME LightBox]
Amazon Acquires Video Game Streaming Service, Twitch, for Almost $1 Billion
Back in May, Google engaged in talks with Twitch to acquire the video game streaming site for over $1 billion. Over the past three months, however, those talks died down enough to where Amazon was able to swoop in and purchase the site themselves for an all-cash buyout of $970 million. For those unfamiliar with Twitch, the website offers video game streaming service in which gamers can stream their gameplay to a live audience while offering commentary, insight, jokes, etc.
With the native implementation of Twitch to the PlayStation 4, the service experienced a huge boost in traffic and new members as PS4 fans wanted to share their gaming videos with their friends and the world. As of January 2014, PS4 users made up 20% of Twitch's channels alone, which is a stunning number considering how many pre-established channels had been created since the site's launch back in 2011.
Twitch CEO Emmett Shear had this to say about the Amazon acquisition:
Today, I’m pleased to announce we’ve been acquired by Amazon. We chose Amazon because they believe in our community, they share our values and long-term vision, and they want to help us get there faster. We’re keeping most everything the same: our office, our employees, our brand, and most importantly our independence. But with Amazon’s support we’ll have the resources to bring you an even better Twitch.
The future's looking bright for Twitch, especially with last week's news that Sony has sold more than 10 million PlayStation 4s since last November, the install base of Twitch users is only going to continue to grow. Side note: Twitch is also available on the Xbox One, but who really cares about that?
[via Destructoid]
Javier Laspiur's Controllers Photo Series Focuses on Video Game Controllers
Photos by Javier Laspiur
Gamers know how important controllers are. After all, they're our entry into these beautiful, inspiring worlds that we have devoted a large part of our lives to. For better or worse, the wrong controller or controller input can ruin someone's experience with a game; just ask people who've thrown controllers at walls in a fit of anger. Javier Laspiur, a photographer from Madrid, Spain, has decided to pay homage to video game controllers in a new photo series entitled Controllers.
Controllers is a first-person styled photo series of presumably Laspiur's hands on various types of video game controllers (and handheld systems) with the date he first used them, which should not be confused with when each respective video game system was launched. Below, you can find a few of my favorite photos from the Controllers photo series featuring the Atari 2600 joystick, NES controller, Sega Genesis (Mega Drive in foreign markets) controller, Sega Game Gear, PlayStation controller, and PlayStation 2 controller.
You can find more from Laspiur's Controllers series on his Behance page.
[Trailer] Video Games: The Movie
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It's hard to argue the fact that video games have permeated most walks of culture since they found popularity in the '80s. Following the video game crash of 1983 when it seemed like the entire industry was going to tank, it wasn't until the Nintendo Entertainment System's (NES) launch in the United States during the late '80s when the video game industry was able to rebound, and hasn't really faltered since. Over the almost 30 years since, the entire industry has grown exponentially, where the once niche market grew into a multi-billion dollar industry on par with the film and music industry (some might even argue it has surpassed the music business thanks to the latter's sharp decline in sales over the past decade).
A new documentary executive-produced by Zach Braff (Wish I Was Here) and directed by Jeremy Snead analyzes the history of the gaming industry and what the future may hold for the realm of video games. The documentary touts narration from Sean Astin (The Goonies) and in-depth interviews both within the gaming industry and those affected by it, including the aforementioned Braff, Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, Chris Hardwick, Donald Faison, and many more.
Video Games: The Movie will be available on iTunes and other VOD services on July 15th followed by a theatrical release on July 18th.