Downwards Compatible's End Of Year 2011 Game-Stravaganza

"The only End of Year Awards that wait until after the year is over."

This year was a disappointing one here at Down-C. Since we usually play in the Nintendo sandbox, there wasn't much going on. The 3DS started slowly. The Wii barely had any releases. The DS is on its last legs. Some of these games ended up as year-end greats only by default.
Still, there were some genuinely good games released this year, and it’s time to give them their due.

Most Disappointing Game:

Kirby: Return to Dreamland

Kirby games are great because they're usually pretty unpredictable. You may not always like the direction they go, but you can't fault them for trying.

Return to Dreamland, sadly, was entirely predictable and didn't feel like it was trying. The levels were bland. The new powers were dull. Heck, even the screen-filling superpowers got boring after a while. How they managed to pull that off I'll never know.

Nicest Thing Of The Year

Humble Bundles

The Humble Indie Bundle is a group of games that you can pay whatever you want for. They used to only do this every once in a great while, and this year they decided to do, like, 20 of them in a row.

If you participated in the Humble Bundles, that meant that you picked up games like Braid, Super Meat Boy, Cave Story+, NightSky, The Binding of Isaac, Shank, And Yet It Moves, Machinarium, and tons of others for a really low price. That's awesome, and I hope they do some more just like that in the new year.

Best Game I Played This Year That Wasn't Released This Year, But Whatever (Tie)

VVVVVV

Look, if you haven't played VVVVVV, I don't know what to tell you. It's cheap, only about $5. It's hard, but not unfair. It's short and the music is tremendous. Play it. I won't ask again.

Uncharted 2

Before I got a PS3, I was completely content not to play games in HD. Even after having the PS3 for a bit, I was still fine with it. It was only until after I played Uncharted 2 that I saw exactly what HD gaming could accomplish, and there's no turning back now.

It's not just the graphics, although those are nice. It's the facial expressions, the detail of the world, the way that things look lived in, everything. It also got me through a painful recovery time after having my tonsils out, so thanks, Nathan Drake! That extra horsepower that the PS3 delivers accomplishes some amazing things, and it reminds me that we're really in a Golden Age for gaming.

Worst Thing Of The Year

3DS Launch

Let's release a new handheld with a high price and no games and missing half of the promised features! Then let's drop the price by a third! Then let's give free NES and GBA games to the people who bought the system! Make sure they're our crappiest NES games, though! Let's also not tell anyone when we're going to release those GBA games until the moment they're released! Let's delay Kid Icarus, the game that we essentially announced the 3DS with, until after the holiday season!

I like the 3DS. I really do. It turned quickly from a debacle of a system into a must-have with the addition of Mario Kart 7 and Super Mario 3D Land, as well as the phenomenal eShop. But it's shocking how poorly Nintendo almost completely bungled the launch.

Announcement of the Year

Wii U

When Sony and Microsoft inevitably release their next system, we can bet that it's going to be expensive, incredibly powerful and very similar to what they've already released. And why not? While motion controls made a huge splash at the beginning of the last generation, the waves have died down somewhat, so it makes sense that the major companies provide more of the same.

Nintendo can always be counted on to do something completely out of left field. Whether it's releasing a handheld with a touchscreen, a video game system powered almost entirely by motion controls or a 3D handheld, they've never marched to the same beat as everyone else.

The Wii U looks interesting. Note that I didn't say "promising," just "interesting." I'm interested to see what they plan to do, and if it turns out all right, I'll probably pick one up. It's just cool that Nintendo tries new things when other companies don't.

3DS Game of the Year

Mario Kart 7

I liked Super Mario 3D Land. It was really, really fun. However, I'm pretty sure I'm going to get more long-term enjoyment out of Mario Kart 7, and it might turn out to be the game that's the 3DS' main system seller.

Like I mentioned in my review, it all depends on how much you like Mario Kart. If you don't like Mario Kart, Mario Kart 7 won't win you over. If you like Mario Kart, then there's far more to do than there ever was before.

Game That I'm Sure I'd Love If I Had Time To Play It

Zelda: Skyward Sword

I've played about two hours of Skyward Sword. It's good. I like it. It's just that Xenoblade Chronicles is so good that I can't put it down long enough to play Skyward Sword. My gaming time on the TV is limited since the TV is usually held captive by women. Some day I'll figure out a way around that.

In the meantime, Skyward Sword is on my to-play list, I swear.

Game of the Year That I Played and You Probably Didn't
(Ha Ha Ha)

Xenoblade Chronicles

This game is probably going on my shortlist of favorite games of all time. I've spent 60 hours in its world and I'm still not close to seeing everything it has to offer. The plot is interesting, the locale is fascinating, practically everything about this game is incredible.

Fortunately for the gaming public here in the States, it's coming out in a few months as a Gamestop exclusive. I'm almost tempted to delete my save files and just wait for the US release just so I can do this all over again.

Almost.

Nintendo's Bad Year

Nintendo released its financial results for the year. It doesn't look good. Some quick hits:

• They had a net loss of 600 million dollars.
• They had originally planned to sell 15 million 3DS units during this season. They sold 11 million.
• They expected to sell 10 million Wiis. They sold about 9 million.

The glass-half-empty people say this: This is their first loss in 30 years, and it happened after they released their crappiest handheld ever, then cut the price almost in half. The Wii is weak and no one wants to make games for it. It's time for Nintendo to go third-party.

The glass-half-full people say this: This is their first loss in 30 years, so they have a long time of being profitable behind them. The 3DS is rebounding after a sluggish start, and while the Wii has seen better days it's still sold 95 million units overall. Plus, they have a new console coming out in 2012, so Nintendo will be fine.

So what's the truth? It's a little closer to the latter than the former. Nintendo screwed up during the launch of the 3DS. No one denies this.

The Wii is also poised for an awful year. There are only two games of note that are coming out in NTSC territories: Rhythm Heaven Fever and Xenoblade Chronicles. People still buy the things, though, and new users have quite a few games to pick from.

Nintendo's outlook for fiscal year 2012 may be ugly, is what we're trying to say. Does that mean that Nintendo's screwed? Well, no. A loss is bad, but this is after the end of 30 years of profit. Nintendo's got money squirreled away in spades.

The knee-jerk reaction with news like this is always to jump to worst-case scenarios or rush to defend Nintendo. Look, Nintendo doesn't need your pity, scorn or any other emotion. They'll be fine. They've been around for about 100 years, doing their own thing. One bad year isn't going to bring the whole company down.

Review: Batman: Arkham City

Developer: Rocksteady
Publisher: Warner Bros. Interactive

Arkham Asylum was the best superhero game ever. The only other one that came close is the original Spider-Man game for the PS1. I'm pretty confident in this assessment, and a lot of other people agree with me.
What made Arkham Asylum so great was that you felt like Batman. You could take anyone on in a fight. Stealth was challenging, but if you screwed it up it was easy to escape or retreat. The story was fantastic. It had a tremendous sense of place, as Arkham Asylum felt like a fully-realized location. The Scarecrow's insanity sequences were amazing.

That's not to say there weren't a few flaws. The Killer Croc sequence was stupid. Most of the boss fights were repetitive. Still, it was a much better Batman game than we could have hoped for beyond our wildest dreams.

Now we have Arkham City, detailing another terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day in the life of the Caped Crusader. Rocksteady's taken the ideas behind Arkham Asylum and cranked them up to 11. We know the underlying game mechanics should be good because they're lifted from Arkham Asylum, but is Arkham City as a whole worth playing or just more of the same?

Arkham City is definitely not as tight as the original Arkham Asylum. While the first game was a propulsive "get from point A to point B" affair, Arkham City can be completed at your own pace. The shift to an open world means that you'll find yourself skipping along the rooftops, get distracted by a ringing telephone, blow up a canister of Titan formula, rescue a political prisoner, then remember that you have to get back to the main storyline. If you like open worlds, this is a dream come true. If you prefer a tightly-wound storyline over a large world, like myself, it's merely OK.

Arkham City is also a bit more gruesome than the first game. There's murder, double-crossings and more than a few opponents impaled on swords, though, of course, not by Batman. If that's not your thing, consider yourself warned. I liked the darkness of this game, as it felt like the stakes were much higher that the original.

Rocksteady also deserves extra credit for throwing in so many different villains and not making the game feel overstuffed or stupid. All of the characters have their place, not just being there for the sake of being there. There's even a surprise encounter that I won't spoil that's one of the most impressive things I've ever seen in a game.

With all that said, Arkham City struggles a bit in comparison to the original, precisely because of expectations. We didn't expect Asylum to be great, and it was. Therefore, City has big shoes to fill, and it mostly does. It excises some questionable moments that were in the first game and replaces them with better ones. It manages to mostly meet its lofty expectations.

You'll note that I say "mostly." Those who've played Asylum remember that the Scarecrow sequences were absolute standouts, reminding everyone about Batman's tragic past while deepening the character and putting some real narrative heft into the proceedings. There's nothing quite so amazing in this title. Sure, there are some sequences that are pretty cool, but nothing as emotionally affecting as the original.

The sense of place that was so firmly fixed in the original also isn't quite as present in Arkham City. While I can vividly tell you about the grounds of Arkham Asylum, I can't give you specifics about City. There was a steel mill? I think I saw a Ferris wheel at one point. A big tower, which was cool. Don't get me wrong, the city is impressive, but not quite as detailed as Arkham Asylum's world.

It also begs the question, "Where do they go from here?" We've done Arkham Asylum, now Arkham City. Arkham State? Arkham Country? The mind boggles.

Either way, if you liked Arkham Asylum and want more hot, hot Batman action, Arkham City is great. It combines the best of Asylum and the best of open-world gaming, and despite a few minor missteps, is well worth your time.

Final Grade: B+

Prince Fielder to the Tigers

So Prince Fielder is a Tiger now. Surprising, but not completely out-of-left-field.

First, Detroit is pretty close to the Milwaukee area. By all accounts, Prince loves the Midwest, so that's a good fit. Second, the Tigers are a pretty decent team already. He's not going to have to sit through another long rebuilding process like he would in Toronto, Baltimore or other possible destinations. Third, he'll have plenty of protection in the lineup with Cabrera batting nearby him. If he's having an off day, he knows he's not the only one who has to score.

All in all, all of us Brewers knew Prince was leaving and hoped he wouldn't be going to an NL team, or even worse, the Cubs. This is about the best possible arrangement for everyone involved.

Good luck, Prince!

GOG.com Replay: Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

Each month, we'll review a game from GOG.com's copious collection of games and provide you with a rundown of how good it is. At the end, we'll tell you to "Buy It," "Ignore It," or "Think About It." This month's entry is Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, developed by Firaxis and released by Electronic Arts.
What Is It?

A turn-based strategy game released in 1999, in the style of Civilization set on a hostile alien planet, made by the masters of turn-based strategy, Brian Reynolds and Sid Meier. You play as one of seven unique factions wrestling for control of the planet, each attempting to dominate using their own methods.

The Context:

As strange as it seems, Sid Meier lost the Civilization brand name for a while. After he left Microprose to form his own company, Firaxis, the Civilization name stayed behind at Microprose. Microprose exploited it (in every sense of the world) for the lackluster Civilization: Call To Power, a game where lawyers were the most powerful units in the game. I wish I were kidding about that.

The Civ team instead took the Civilization concept to the next level, placing it on a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri. The series went full sci-fi, with mindworms and monopole magnets sitting alongside citizen recycling vats and Colony Pods.

A lot of the amazing innovations that made their way into later Civilization games, like separate worker and settler units and social engineering, found their start in Alpha Centauri. Considering that the previous Civilization game was Civilization II (a great, if extremely dated game), these were leaps forward for the 4x genre.

Alpha Centauri is very hard sci-fi, if that’s your thing. It’s all about futurism and asks what possible technologies could humanity develop. It goes to some strange places, but it’s a really fascinating look at a potential future.

Other Games Released in 1999:

Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun
Final Fantasy VIII
Homeworld

What Holds Up:

Firaxis made sure that every faction in the game was worth playing and could win. If you like to win games a certain way, chances are there’s a faction in the game that corresponds to that play style. You have the warlike Spartans, the faith-based Believers, the economy-based Morganites, the tree-hugging Gaia’s Stepdaughters, the academic University, the diplomatic Peacekeepers, and the Borg-like Human Hive. Each has their own strengths and weaknesses, so there’s no one “right” faction.

While many of the units are already fairly sufficient on their own, you’re also able to develop your own new units. For example, with every new battle technology you learn, the game will automatically create a defensive unit for garrisons or an offensive unit for attacking. What if you would like to combine both and make a more expensive offensive/defensive combo? In previous Civ games, you had to sit around and wait until you could research a viable unit.

However, in Alpha Centauri, you don’t have to: Just spend some energy credits to prototype the unit, and then you’re able to put it into production. That flexibility makes quite a difference in game balance. Instead of a pure technological race like previous games, you can make up the difference in technology with ingenuity and money.

Unless you set your difficulty level very, very low, you’ll probably not be able to see everything Alpha Centauri offers on your first playthrough. There’s a bit of a learning curve while you understand what each technology does and why it’s important, but after the initial shock wears off, you’ll find that Alpha Centauri hums along nicely. It’s deeper than Civilization II, far better than Civilization III, and was only recently eclipsed in quality and depth by Civilization IV.

What Doesn’t Hold Up:

Honestly? Not much. Maybe I could whine a little about the graphics, but there’s not much to complain about. If you’re playing a game from 1999, you can expect the graphics to be a little clumsy at times, but even with that caveat they still look totally fine for a turn-based strategy game. Maybe the only thing that’s a little clumsy is multiplayer, but even still, I’m really reaching for a complaint.

Some people complained about “Blind Research” in the game. Instead of picking which technology you would like to learn and then learning it, you pick what type of research you would like to do, after which you receive the technology. I love the system, but there are other people who hated it. You can always turn it off in the options field, so it’s a moot point.

Final Verdict:

Play It

Note: As an astute commenter below has noted, the great Brian Reynolds designed most of Alpha Centauri. He also did most of the work on Civilization II and the fantastic Rise of Nations series. Good catch. He's now at Zynga, wasting his talents on Facebook games. Ah well.

Review: Mario Kart 7

Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo

You probably already know whether or not you want Mario Kart 7. Mario Kart, as a series, is still about the same as it was when it launched back in 1993. You pick a Mario character, race around a track, and get occasionally raped by the computer players. It's an enduring template.

Mario Kart 7 is a refinement of the principles set down by Mario Kart Wii. While the marketing copy may tout things like racing underwater, the major refinements have really been placed in online multiplayer, where Mario Kart 7 really shines.


However, there really isn't a way to review this game aside from "it's Mario Kart, but on the 3DS." You either know if you want it or not, like we said before. Therefore, the best way to review it is by saying how it stacks up against other Mario Kart games. Here's how the games prior to Mario Kart 7 rank:

6) Mario Kart: Super Circuit (GBA): The absolute worst of Mario Kart games. I have no idea how this game got out the door. It's ugly, the tracks are boring, the controls are awful, and it's the only Mario Kart game that can be legitimately called bad. Anyone who disagrees is wrong.

5) Double Dash!! (Gamecube): Rule of thumb: The more exclamation points you see, the less sincere they are. Double Dash is exact opposite of exciting. The character-switching mechanic was odd, multiplayer required you to link up several systems and TVs at a time when XBox Live was taking off, and the tracks, once again, are dull.

4) Super Mario Kart (SNES): Not bad, per se, just primitive compared to some of the other great entries in the series.

3) Mario Kart DS (DS): Had a lot of the great features of the better entries, like drifting, drafting, deep courses, and lots of unlockables. Gets demerits for lackluster multiplayer, especially online.

2) Mario Kart 64 (N64): Multiplayer made Mario Kart 64 one of the better entries. To this day, it remains the gold standard for Mario Kart multiplayer.

1) Mario Kart Wii (Wii): Great multiplayer, awesome online multiplayer, fantastic courses, easier drifting, and the computer violates you less than some of the other previous entries.

So where does Mario Kart 7 rank? Somewhere between Super Mario Kart and Mario Kart Wii, in that squishy area. I'd probably put it right below Mario Kart 64, to be honest. Multiplayer is better than Mario Kart 64, with lots of options and the ability to turn off things like shells if you race against your friends. The new courses aren't amazing, but still pretty decent.

I haven't touched single-player in weeks, oddly enough. I have no desire to race against a computer player who's going to resort to trickery or cheating in order to win, and Mario Kart 7 carries on the series' proud tradition of bending the rules for computer opponents.

However, in an online multiplayer match, it's a lot more fair. You can usually aim for 3rd place and still gain points toward your reputation, and if you manage to get 1st place, so much the better! It's not an all-or-nothing proposition like the single-player game is.

So Mario Kart 7 is pretty decent. The new tracks are good, the new tweaks to the formula are good without being super-intrusive and the multiplayer is excellent.

You know, it's Mario Kart.

Final Grade: B

Six Reasons Steam Works

According to this article from Kotaku, the amount of users on Steam has more than doubled for the 7th straight year. At one point this year, Steam had 5 million users actively playing at ONE TIME. Surely, that means that digital distribution is the way to go, right? I mean, if Steam can pull it off, anyone can, right?

Not so fast. It's true that Steam is doing an admirable job. I love Steam. I use it all the time and buy games from it frequently. It's not perfect, but Valve seems to understand what people want and provides it to them. But it's important to note that there are a few reasons that Steam works, and any digital distributor would be wise to pick up on them.

1) Steam sales are frequent and substantial. For example, during the last holiday sale, Skyrim and Arkham City were sold for half off. I want you to think about that. If you go to any store right now and buy Arkham City or Skyrim off the shelf, it will cost you $50-60. That's true whether or not you buy used as well.

So, during a time where a AAA, brand-new game is still being sold for $50-60, you could buy it on Steam for $25-30. That's amazing, and definitely good for the consumer. That's just a small taste of why Steam works well. They're willing to take risks with pricing that brick-and-mortar retailers just simply aren't.

2) Unified PC multiplayer. PC users have always had a better multiplayer experience than console gamers, going back to the days of LAN parties. That advantage has slowly eroded as multiplayer gaming moves to consoles. It's easy to see why: XBox Live provides a united place where everyone can get together and meet up with their friends, see what they're playing, and join in. Ditto with the PSN.

Steam has provided that home that PC users were craving. Now I know when my friends are playing Frozen Synapse. If I want to join in, I can. If I want to keep playing Bastion, I can do that too, but at least I know that other people are out there.

3) You can give away extra games. If I have Half-Life 2: Episode 1 and receive an extra copy through a giveaway, I'm allowed to re-gift it to someone who doesn't have it (although, to be fair, everyone has Episode 1 at this point). That flies in the face of what most proponents of digital distribution would like. Most proponents would like to get rid of the idea of giving games to other people entirely.

4) I can install Steam on any computer I want. If I buy a new computer, I can install Steam immediately and start downloading my games with very little fuss. As long as Steam exists, I will have my games on that new computer. If I have multiple computers, I can install Steam on each computer. I can only have one active session at a time, true, but I can switch between them easily with little fuss.

5) There's an offline mode. Am I not connected to the internet at the moment but still would like to play my games? No big deal. I can do that and I'm not treated like a criminal.

6) Steam has refocused publisher attention on PC gaming. PC gaming was legitimately dying for a while. The only new games coming to the platform were MMOs and lazy PC ports. Now, publishers can see that there are five million people at any given time who are willing to play single-player and multiplayer PC games as long as they have a nice place to play and a good game. PCs are again a viable home for gaming.

__________

Those are the precise conditions in which digital distribution worked on the PC. Steam wasn't an overnight success, either. It took about 7+ years to get Steam to this point, which meant that Valve worked hard to build up a trust level, not only with publishers, but also with consumers. We mostly trust them at this point, and if something goes wrong, we can expect them to fix it. That's why we allow them to handle our game collection.

In short, Steam succeeds because it mostly serves the interests of the consumer. Every single one of those above points is great for consumers while happening to be good for developers too. When you put your customers first, things work out.

Compare that to some of the other backwards methods of digital intrusion offered by companies, like the PSPGo or Ubisoft's always-on DRM. Since neither of them works in the interests of the customer, they're villified and eventually ignored.

The question is this: Do you trust (there's that word again) another company to provide that experience? When Microsoft or Sony or Nintendo has an iron grip over the content they provide as well as the price they're willing to sell it for, do you believe, deep down, that they'll be willing to offer it at a fair price?

I say no.

And as long as it stays that way, digital distribution will stay the exception, rather than the rule.

Criminally Overlooked Games: The World Ends With You

JRPGs are funny things. Copy the same swords-and-sorcery template laid down by Final Fantasy, and you risk having your game completely mocked by critics and ignored by gamers. Stray too far from the template, and you risk critical adulation but a tepid response from gamers. JRPG designers almost can't win.

So what's a dev to do? Jupiter, the designers of The World Ends With You, decided to just blow away the whole Dragon Quest / Final Fantasy template completely and make something completely out of the ordinary.

How did it turn out? In a word, amazing.

The World Ends With You ditches a typical fantasy-land RPG setting for modern day Tokyo, specifically the Shibuya shopping district. This gives it an incredibly unique sense of place that's completely different from any other RPGs. When I first played it, I was shocked by how real Shibuya felt, not knowing that it was a real place. Once I found out that it really existed with some of the same landmarks as used in the game, it all made perfect sense.

However, a lot of games use real-world locales for their game. None of them end up feeling as real as Shibuya feels in The World Ends With You. When most designers set their game in a place like Paris, they play up the Paris-ness of the city, exaggerating character accents and giving you constant views of the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower, as if to scream, "YES THIS IS PARIS! LOOK LOOK LOOK!"

Shibuya, on the other hand, is a backdrop with some interesting characteristics, but The World Ends With You doesn't constantly remind you that you're in Shibuya. It's definitely a game rooted in Japanese culture and the culture of Shibuya, but it's not screaming at you constantly to focus on that.

The protagonist is a lone-wolf youth named Neku. Neku is a withdrawn jerk who prefers listening to music instead of having anything approaching human interaction. He's suddenly dragged into a bizarre game where he's invisible to everyone and must fight for his existence, his newfound friends, and Shibuya itself.

The characters are extremely well-done. A lesser JRPG would have tried to make Neku's transformation from jerk to nice guy a little more dramatic, or handled it a little less artfully. As it is, Neku feels pretty organic. Even if he becomes a better person by the end, he still doesn't entirely trust people, he's still cynical, and he's still flawed enough to feel real.

The other characters are all exceptional as well. You'll partner up with a few different ones, and all of them have their own motivations and interests. One of the signs of a good character is if you could that person out of the story and still have them be interesting in their own adventure. You could make that argument for everyone in The World Ends With You.

Where The World Ends With You really starts to diverge from the standard JRPG format is in its battles. Gone are turn-based battles, replaced instead with a system based on stylus gestures and passing a light puck back and forth between you and the other character. I could try and explain it, but it's a little complicated. Therein lies its only real flaw. I played through the entire game and never felt like I had mastered the battle system.

Fortunately, if you want to see how the story concludes but can't beat an encounter, you can always retry the encounter at a lower difficulty level. You won't get as many experience points or currency, but at least you can continue to play through the intriguing story.

The World Ends With You did moderately well at retail, but certainly not enough to merit a sequel. That's a shame, since I would have loved to revisit Neku and his friends down the line. A great game, ignored at retail and largely forgotten about today? It sounds to me like The World Ends With You fits the bill of a Criminally Overlooked Game.