David Jaffe on Digital Distribution

>Someone has positive comments about digital distribution...and for once I agree with them!

He goes on to add: "For me, digital distribution was a really big deal - just the fact that we're allowed to see games like Shadow Complex and Flower, games that would never be greenlit for $60 retail products.

"The idea of bypassing retail and speaking directly to the customer is pretty exciting," added Jaffe.

Agreed. That has been fantastic. We're seeing a larger variety of games because not every game has to be a AAA $60 game anymore. Can you imagine how outraged you would be if they tried to sell Mega Man 9 for $60? ;I mean, it's a fine game, but that would be crazy talk.

So, insofar as there's a large variety of games that don't necessarily have to sell for large amounts, digital distribution has been a boon, and it's important to realize that. There are two sides to every coin.

Criminally Overlooked Games: Dark Cloud

I'm a big believer in the holy triumvirate of game design: Controls, Achievement and Anticipation. Controls are obvious: You shouldn't have to struggle with the controller to get the game to do what you want it to do. Achievement means that goals should always be attainable yet challenging. Anticipation means that you should always wonder what's around the corner, whether it may be a new weapon, a cool cutscene, or a neat backdrop.


Dark Cloud was one of those games that sold a ton of copies and was quickly forgotten. Released around the time of the launch of the Playstation 2, Dark Cloud doesn't carry a very wide footprint in gaming now. It had its flaws as well, sometimes glaringly so. However, since it held true to the holy triumvirate of game design, it holds up really well.

Dark Cloud was made by Level-5, which has now exploded with Professor Layton, Dragon Quest 8 and 9, and Rogue Galaxy under their belts. Dark Cloud was one of their first proving grounds, where they showed they could make memorable characters with fun mechanics and memorable setpieces.

Here's the plot: You're Toan, a character who looks suspiciously like Link. The Dark Genie has destroyed all life on the planet, and you're tasked with finding pieces of the world and putting it back together. Along the way, you'll make friends with a diverse group of adventurers, like a half-cat half-human girl, a reluctant desert warrior, and a machine-gun toting flying dwarf. You'll rebuild cities, go fishing, and try and stop the Dark Genie from being created.

At it's core, Dark Cloud is a Rogue-like, with randomly generated dungeons and weapons littering the world. Instead of levelling up your character, you level up your weapons with gems you find. You snap them into the weapon, and when your weapon levels up, they become part of the stats of the weapon. After a while, you can turn that weapon into a gem which can be snapped into a new, more powerful weapon to give it improved attributes or upgrade the weapon into a new weapon.

When in the dungeons, you're able to find various globes scattered around that generally have pieces of a city in them. You're able to absorb those pieces and then bring them back in order to construct the city according to the wishes of the townspeople. Sometimes, they'll have simple requests like, "I had a ladder, please bring me one." Sometimes, they'll be more complex, like, "I need to be near water." Sometimes, like in the desert area, they'll be really outlandish, like, "Match up the face on my house with the face on this totem pole AND put me nearby water." Either way, it's immensely satisfying to place trees and ponds and houses and waterwheels and then be able to walk amongst those very same buildings that you put there. It's gives you a really cool sense of accomplishment that you don't get from anywhere else.

When talking about Dark Cloud, I find myself talking more about the mechanics of the game than the underlying plot. In that sense, it's a lot like Diablo, where the design makes the game. However, since Dark Cloud is Japanese, you have to bet there will be some lengthy (yet interesting) cutscenes and some truly strange moments. For instance, one fortune teller tells your fortune by jumping on your head, covering your face with her skirt, and wiggling back and forth. It's weird.

Speaking of the mechanics, Dark Cloud shouldn't be fun. For example, you have manage your thirst. If you get too thirsty, you'll start losing health. Therefore, you have to carry tons of bottles of water with you in especially deep dungeons. Does this make the game more fun? No, absolutely not. Also, your weapons can break. When they break, they're gone for good. All the stats and special bonuses you've implanted in them are gone as well. Does this make the game more fun? No way. I guess the core concept of Dark Cloud was so much fun that it holds up even with its flaws or weird decisions.

Level-5 went back to the well with a bigger budget for Dark Cloud 2, adding more features onto the original game including fish fighting, golfing in the dungeons, photography, and a giant robot. No more managing thirst or perma-broken weapons. You would think that these changes would have improved the game, but I still say that the original was the better game. It was design distilled down to it's purest essence, and that's why Dark Cloud is Criminally Overlooked.

Some EEDAR Analysis:

From EEDAR:

Core Games on Wii Continue To Struggle

No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle has scored top reviews averaging a 90 (out of 100) since its release. However, sales came less than 30,000 units for its first week (January 26, 2010 release). Given that the game is more targeted to the traditional core gamers (who tend to be more attached to the Xbox 360 and PS3) this is yet another sign that the Wii is a difficult device for third party publishers to succeed on with M Rated titles. Other titles that have failed to perform despite strong review scores on the Wii include Dead Space: Extraction (ERTS) and MadWorld (Sega). Of course, all three titles did have low marketing budgets, which is likely the wrong strategy to use when attempting to target the Wii consumer, even if you are targeting the “core” market. (Italics ours.)

This is what I've been hammering on. It's like publishers are just expecting that core games will sell on the Wii without any promotion. Here's the thing: They'll promote the crap out of Modern Warfare 2 and Dante's Inferno, ensuring huge sales. Then they say, "See?  Games sell on the 360 and PS3." Then they don't promote Wii games, and then they say, "See?  Games don't sell on the Wii."

OF COURSE THEY DON'T SELL IF YOU DON'T PROMOTE THEM!

Even for traditionally "core" games, they promote them like crazy! How large is the Madden marketing budget? How large was the marketing for Halo 3? It just baffles me, it really does.

January 2010 NPD Results

Via Kotaku and GoNintendo:

01. New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Wii) - 656,700
02. Mass Effect 2 (Xbox 360) - 572,100
03. Wii Fit Plus (Wii) - 555,700
04. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Xbox 360) - 326,700
05. Mario Kart Wii (Wii) - 310,900
06. Wii Sports Resort (Wii) - 297,600
07. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (PS3) - 259,000
08. Army of Two: The 40th Day (Xbox 360) - 246,500
09. Just Dance (Wii) - 191,900
10. Darksiders (Xbox 360) - 171,200

U.S. consumers dropped $597.9 million on video games during the month of January, down 12 percent from January 2009, when software sales reached $682.6 million.


Jan 09 to Jan 2010 just for comparison’s sake…

Wii: 679,200 / 465,800
NDS: 510,800 / 422,200
X360: 309,000 / 332,800
PS3: 203,200 / 276,900
PSP: 172,300 / 100,100
PS2: 101,200 / 41,600

So what do we learn?  The Wii is still ahead, but demand has slowed considerably.  360 and PS3 demand is up though, so that can't be blamed on a slow economy.  PS2 demand is waaaaay down.  I think last year was the PS2's last gasp, and we'll see new systems off the shelf shortly.

Also, people, I'm begging you: Stop buying Just Dance.  Please.

Review: Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes

Everyone is falling over themselves to talk up Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes. Here are a few choice quotes:

Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes comes highly recommended, whether or not you've played any other games in the M&M franchise. This is not a bastardization of the series. If anything, Clash of Heroes may become the catalyst to resurrect a franchise that was once on its last legs. - RPGFan

If you’re looking for a good challenge for your strategic muscles, Clash of Heroes is the game for you. - NSider2

During the course of writing this, Eurogamer MMO editor Oli Welsh popped up on my MSN to ask me if I thought it was a puzzle, RPG or strategy game. It has enough elements of each that I honestly couldn't say. What I did do was recommend it to him wholeheartedly, because, whatever it is, Clash of Heroes is a very good game indeed. - Eurogamer

Clash of Heroes can be summed up very easily. This is one of the best games of 2009. - Kombo

In other words, there is a lot of praise for this game. Is it really such a great game? Yes and no. Yes because it resurrects and restarts a moribund franchise and adds some fantastic ideas to it, and no because it's so poorly balanced and laid out.

Clash has a neat concept at its core that's getting a lot of play lately: The puzzle/strategy/RPG with a story. Puzzle Quest started it, Puzzle Kingdoms made it boring, Henry Hatsworth threw in platforming, and Clash of Heroes brings it back to puzzle/strategy. The concept, in a nutshell is this: Match three or more units together. They'll march forward in a straight line after a set amount of turns and do damage to whatever is in front of them. Your opponent on the upper screen will do the same thing to you. Use this method to defeat a variety of other heroes and bosses with some variations. In some cases, the enemy moves around the field of play, meaning you have to figure out where they're going before you can stop them. In some cases, your units have different powers, like consuming unmatched units in order to boost attack power or leaving a trail of poison in their attack's wake. When you win a battle, you and your units gain experience points.

The underlying mechanics are great fun. Learning the intricacies and timing of this system is fantastic, and the variety of units makes it a pleasure to play. In fact, that's what makes the entire game so frustrating. Here's the problem with Clash of Heroes: It's horribly, horribly unbalanced. It succumbs to what I call Brick Wall Difficulty.

Brick Wall Difficulty can be described like this: You're tooling along, everything's great, the game's been challenging but not overly so. All of a sudden WHAM you hit a wall. You try every skill you have developed in the game to pass it, and you simply can't. It takes an inordinate amount of time to get over the hump, and in some cases it doesn't matter what you do. You will still always hit that wall.

Clash has several such walls. The difficulty spikes almost at random. They don't point you in the way of a solution, they don't help you get over the hump, but they just stare at you and say "Deal." While some may say that this shows trust in the gamer and appreciation for tradition, it really doesn't. It just shows that there were a few too many rough edges in the game and no one involved in the making of it cared. That's a real problem, since the underlying mechanics make you want to play more. You'd like to continue onward, but the game keeps getting in the way.

A few things that contribute to the Brick Wall Difficulty spikes: You're constantly changing characters and starting over from scratch with new ones. Any skills, items, or experience gained from the previous encounters is lost. How could this have been remedied? Allow us to carry over the characters, skills, or items. It's that simple. Even allowing the items to be carried over would be excellent. Instead, you're left running around to do sidequests in an attempt to gain some items that might help you later on knowing full well that as soon as you beat the level's boss you'll lose them all over again.

It leads me to believe that the makers of the game weren't really sure of what the focus of Clash should be. Is it a multiplayer game where the single-player is just to train you on the different factions? If so, then why did they spend so much time crafting a story for it? Is it a single-player game where the multiplayer is there to extend your experience? Then why did they not smooth out the rough edges in the single-player game?

All told, Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes had potential. However, in order to see this potential, we'll probably have to wait for the inevitable sequel. Let's hope they learned the right lessons.

Final Rating: C-

The Third Party Conundrum: Is Nintendo In Trouble?

We're not so naive to believe that there are no problems with the Nintendo Wii. Online play is a mess. WiiWare is undersupported and underutilized. The system itself isn't as powerful as its current counterparts. However, another problem comes up among many people: The lack of third-party support. Is it a big deal for Nintendo? Does it really sound the death knell for their far-reaching empire? In order to answer these questions, we have to ask: What's the point of a third-party developer?

During the NES, Genesis and Super NES days, a third-party publisher's role was simple: Make decent games, keep the wheels greased so that there was always something coming down the turnpike for the system's users, and keep people in the habit of buying games until we (either Nintendo or Sega) release a big release. Sometimes, those third-party developers would strike gold and make a AAA title, but they would mostly stick to the background and play a supporting role.

This system worked out great for the console makers. They would have a steady stream of games, keep buzz alive for their system, and get some hefty licensing fees out of the game makers. It didn't work out so well for the developers, since they had to actually pay those licensing fees and deal with the demands and whims of companies far more powerful than their own. For instance, if Nintendo wanted Mortal Kombat censored, then censored it must be. In order to keep making money, those companies had to bow to the whims of their console overlords. Nintendo and Sega could do it, because they were both hardware and software companies. To put it another way: Nintendo and Sega were both equally good at making hardware and software.

Sony decided to change the game with the launch of the Playstation. First, they made the cost of making a game much cheaper buy using disc-based media rather than the old fuddy-duddy cartridge media, but they also loosened the restrictions on making games. They built mutually beneficial relationships with a variety of third-parties and started including them in the process, treating them almost as equals.

Thus emboldened, third parties have stretched their influence far and wide in gaming. Activision and EA are heavy hitters now, and are able to dictate to some of the other companies. Just look at how bold Bobby Kotick was in talking about console price cuts this past year. They now feel that they're an equal part of the video game process, just as important as Microsoft or Sony. They worked long and hard to exert such a powerful influence over the industry and are now multi-billion dollar companies. They're not going to bow to anybody.

In fact, it's gotten to the point that Microsoft and Sony (but mostly Microsoft) are leaning almost exclusively on other companies to make games for their system. If all the third parties walked away from the 360, it would collapse. Sounds a little harsh? Just a review of Metacritic will show the truth.

We're not necessarily judging these lists on the quality and depth of the library, but rather how many games are made by the console manufacturers themselves. First, here are the top ten games for the 360 according to Metacritic:

1 Grand Theft Auto IV
2 BioShock
3 Orange Box, The
4 Mass Effect 2
5 Gears of War
6 Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, The
7 Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
8 Halo 3
9 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
10 Braid

We'll note that only two of these games are made by Microsoft. Here's the Nintendo list:

1 Super Mario Galaxy
2 Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, The
3 World of Goo
4 Super Smash Bros. Brawl
5 Rock Band 2
6 Metroid Prime Trilogy
7 Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition
8 Okami
9 Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
10 No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle

On this list, five games are made by Nintendo. If we go even deeper, we'll find out some more interesting stuff. Let's find the top ten games made by Microsoft on the 360.

5 Gears of War
8 Halo 3
13 Gears of War 2
16 Forza Motorsport 3
27 Forza Motorsport 2
33 Fable II
49 Project Gotham Racing 3
66 Project Gotham Racing 4
85 Viva Pinata
106 Crackdown

You have to go through 106 games on the system (out of a total of 812) before you find 10 quality releases by Microsoft. Of those, four are shooters and four are racing games. Let's contrast this with Nintendo:

1 Super Mario Galaxy
2 Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, The
4 Super Smash Bros. Brawl
6 Metroid Prime Trilogy
9 Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
15 New Super Mario Bros. Wii
21 Punch-Out!!
27 Super Paper Mario
32 New Play Control! Pikmin 2
37 WarioWare: Smooth Moves

We go through 37 (out of a possible 540) before we get 10 quality releases from Nintendo. Out of these games, two are platformers, two are RPG-ish, two are fighting games, and two are shooters.

In other words, Nintendo is still treating third parties the way that they used to: Using them to fill in the gaps between major releases while not depending on them. The major players in the industry don't like that. Activision and EA don't want to be relegated to a role of subservience. They're multibillion dollar companies and don't want to beg like Oliver Twist. With Microsoft and Sony, they have all the power. Once again, if all the third parties quit on Microsoft today, the 360 would die. There would be no games for the system. If Nintendo's third parties ceased to exist, it would still get along reasonably well. Third parties exert far fewer control over Nintendo than they would like.

So, if you're a third party and you want to keep your position as a power broker in the industry, would you put copious amounts of money into your Nintendo software? No, not really. With Microsoft and Sony, you have the power. With Nintendo, they have the power, and multi-billion dollar companies don't like groveling to anyone.

The easy solution would be for Nintendo to cede power to the major third parties, but why would they? Nintendo's empire is booming. They're raking in money hand over fist. Nintendo went begging, hat in hand, for third-party support during the lean N64 and Gamecube years because they were in trouble. Now, they have their hat back on their head and have no need to dump their hard-earned money in someone else's lap. Plus, giving the third parties that much control means that they can complain and ask for new features that Nintendo is not willing to provide. Nintendo wants to move at their own pace with things like online gaming and storage. They're not willing to devote a huge chunk of money policing an online gaming system like Microsoft does. They're not willing to put a hard drive in a system if it's going to drive the price up. Those are the sort of demands a third party will make, and Nintendo doesn't want anyone telling them what to do.

It could be argued that it's in Nintendo's best interests to loosen up. In fact, I'll argue that right now. It's in Nintendo's best interests to do so. Nintendo has always had a prickly relationship with third parties going back to the NES/SNES days. Remember how upset Midway was that Nintendo wanted Mortal Kombat censored? Remember the stringent restrictions on how many games a company could make a year? As soon as those publishers could find the open arms of a different company, they went running.

As soon as Sony started creating a more open, less restrictive environment for third parties, countless companies jumped ship. By the end of the N64 years, Nintendo's stable of third parties was a barren wasteland. They made overtures to third parties during the Gamecube years, but they did very little to overcome the frustration of developers in the long run. Now, of course, they don't need the third parties so they're ignoring them again.

Here's the problem: Lean times will come again. They're bound to. Forging good relationships with other companies will help immensely. Look at Sony. They were deferential and accommodating to other companies while they were on top, and now that they're struggling the third parties are still working with them, giving them exclusive content and trying to bolster their market position. However, for Nintendo to accomplish this means they would have to change their entire corporate culture AND drop the protective Japanese mindset that makes them so hyper-independent. It opens them up to more leaks and rumors, which Nintendo can't stand. If you were Nintendo, would you risk it?

There are notable gaps in the Wii's library. 2008 was a vast wasteland, as party games stunk up the system. I even contemplated buying Carnival Games at one point. That's how low things got. If there was more third-party support, those gaps would never appear. There would always be something on the horizon, meaning that people would always have the pump primed to buy more Wii games. That could only help Wii system and game sales.

But is Nintendo to blame for the third-partypocalypse that everyone seems to be predicting these days? Not exactly. There are fatal flaws in a lot of the third-party games that have flopped at retail. Let's take a look:

MadWorld: Repetitive gameplay, so-so reviews.
Dead Space: Extraction: Rail shooter, awful box art, not a widely known series.
House of the Dead Overkill: Rail shooter, poorly promoted.
Little King's Story: Awful box art, poorly promoted.
Muramasa: Confusing box art, 2-D, poorly promoted, needs a bit of familiarity with Japanese mythology.
The Conduit: Awful box art.

You see the problems? Most of the time, we're dealing with messed-up box art or a lack of promotion. Both of those can be laid at the feet of the 3rd party developers. Now, you may think that box art doesn't matter, but it really does. Good-selling games have good box art. Poor-selling games do not. Find me a game that has bad box art but sold a mint. Phalanx for the Super Nintendo doesn't count.

Plus, just because a game is well-known among "gamers" doesn't mean that it will be well-known among game buyers. Those are a completely different animal, and those people depend on things like marketing, brand recognition, and other factors that affect people every day in their purchases.

Nintendo can't help with the box art problem. They can help with the promotion, but some companies don't need the help. For instance, Sega, Activision, and EA have oodles of dollars to spend on this stuff. If they want to spend the money, they'll spend it. Other companies, like Atlus or Marvelous, aren't so lucky. Those are the perfect publishers for Nintendo to cozy up with. They're in a weak position, so they're willing to accept certain demands from Nintendo. They're also purveyors of high-quality content, which is exactly what Nintendo needs.

So Nintendo doesn't necessarily want or need the interference of major third parties like Activision. They want to be left alone to make what they want to make, but having third parties who are willing to work with you is still a nice thing to have. Nintendo shouldn't put their focus on companies that are unwilling to spend the money to make their games successful, but they could and should help support smaller companies that could use the boost. It'll forge a good relationship for the present, will most definitely help smooth out the rough patches in the Wii's release schedule, and will help position them for future success.

Review: The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks

I didn't beat Spirit Tracks. I came close, but quit near the end. There were a few problems with it. First, there are only four major dungeons. Second, there are only about four special weapons and then the songs for the Spirit Pipes. Third, getting anywhere is a bit of a pain in the butt.


First, let's examine the dungeon problem. If you add in the four trips to the Tower of Spirits (which I don't), you find yourself doing about eight dungeon-ish activities. That's nice, but it just seemed like Nintendo skimped. For instance, you used to receive Heart Pieces for various activities. Now you receive whole Heart Containers for seemingly mundane tasks. That sounds great, but it means that there's less to do. Consider: In Link's Awakening (for the Game Boy!) there were eight dungeons with heart containers and weapons in each. There were 12 Heart Pieces, 25 Secret Seashells, a trading game, and all sorts of other goodies. You could spend hours just looking for secrets.

Now, in Spirit Tracks, they have the Bunny Rescue and you can shuttle people around in order to open up more tracks in the world. It's nice, but completely unnecessary. You find enough stuff just lying around that you don't need to go out of your way to find more secrets. Other games it was darn near essential. Is that a good thing? Depends. I think it is.

Second, the limited amount of special weapons helps and hurts. It means that no weapon is wasted. You're not going to get a weapon that will help you in one dungeon and then become useless from there on out. You'll find puzzles throughout that use the weapons you acquired at the very beginning. That's nice, and I'm not complaining about that. I AM complaining about how few there are. Sure, you can say that using Zelda in some of the Tower dungeons constitutes a weapon, but it really doesn't. She's just someone who helps you, not necessarily a weapon. If that's something that bothers you like it bothers me, there you go.

Third, I like the train. I like it a lot. However, I don't like that it's maximum speed is "grandma on barbiturates after a hip replacement." It can take five minutes to get from one side of the map to the other, and along the way you have to fight the SAME enemies, take the SAME turns, and do the SAME stuff to get there. Plus, the DS really shows off the lack of graphical prowess by the repeated textures in the trees and some of the dull-looking sprites. I think the train is a fine idea that would have been better suited to a system that could make it look a lot prettier.

Is Spirit Tracks bad? No, not at all. It's a fine game. Maybe we demand too much out of Zelda games, but when every game in the Zelda series is so good, getting a game that's a "B" feels like a "C," especially in comparison to some of the dizzying heights this series is prone to.

Final Rating: B