Thinking About Playinghttps://fediverse.blog/~/ThinkingAboutPlaying/atom.xml2019-12-31T18:35:24.543845+00:00<![CDATA[Review: Morphite for Nintendo Switch (2017)]]>https://fediverse.blog/~/ThinkingAboutPlaying/morphite-for-nintendo-switch-2017/2019-12-31T18:35:24.543845+00:00Robbie Antenessehttps://fediverse.blog/@/Alamantus/2019-12-31T18:35:24.543845+00:00<![CDATA[<h2>Review</h2>
<p>This game was practically made just for me. It's a first-person shooter that prominently features scanning creatures for their biological information as you explore a sprawling galaxy in your starship.</p>
<p>Morphite takes cues from games like Metroid Prime where in addition to exploring and getting power-ups, you can also scan various creatures and things to get little tidbits of information about the world. The difference is that this scanning feature takes the stage as one of the primary ways to advance in the game! In addition to exploring planets, you also need to travel to different solar systems in your ship, which uses fuel that costs money! When you scan flora and fauna in the game with your scanner, it is stored in a list, which can then be sold at various space stations for a profit!</p>
<p>I'm only a couple hours into the game, most of which is has been spent over-exploring the starting areas, so I've only scratched the surface on the plot, but what I've seen of the gameplay is what I would call "<em>adequate</em> but not great." The controls are fairly basic first-person fare: run, jump, shoot, and while I appreciate the motion control option for fine-tuning your aiming in the Switch version, the process of aiming feels just a bit finicky. Combine this with the fact that scanning animals requires that you be spot on their center of mass, and you've got a recipe for frustration! Fortunately, most of the animals I've encountered so far are fairly basic (and get stuck on geometry a lot), so it doesn't take too long before you can finally keep the scanner targeted in the right spot for long enough.</p>
<p>This game screams "indie," and it's very much like something I would have loved to make in a very similar way to how I would have made it! I wish it would have been possible to give it a bunch of polish and get it up to the standard of Metroid Prime, but I've really been enjoying it for what it is! It feels like the developers put a lot of heart and effort into making Morphite something special, and I'm excited to see what other secrets the game holds as I advance further in the plot!</p>
<h2>Rating</h2>
<p><strong>76/100</strong> <em>It's enjoyable and you should check it out when it's on sale!</em></p>
]]><![CDATA[Physical vs. Digital Games]]>https://fediverse.blog/~/ThinkingAboutPlaying/physical-vs-digital-games/2018-12-26T17:37:57.012724+00:00Robbie Antenessehttps://fediverse.blog/@/Alamantus/2018-12-26T17:37:57.012724+00:00<![CDATA[<p>This post comes as a result of me struggling to decide whether to buy the physical card or the digital download for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate for the Nintendo Switch. I don't know why I never struggled with this dichotomy when thinking about games for my Nintendo 3DS, but the Switch has awakened this paralyzing fear of buying the "right" version. Why? What's so good about physical or digital that would make this more than "just do what's most convenient"?</p>
<h2>Digital Downloads</h2>
<h3>The Good</h3>
<p>Digital downloads are the ultimate in convenience—without leaving your home/WiFi hotspot, you just buy the game, download it, and then you can play it any time you have your console with you. I love this model for multi-player games, because if you have the console with you and a group of people come along, you can just turn it on and get right to it without fiddling with anything. Plus with multi-player games, you don't have the problem of having a completed game lying inert in your account because there's a chance you'll go back and play it with other people later!</p>
<h3>The Problem</h3>
<p>But over time, this model reveals the problem of hard drive space, and you need to make sure that you have enough to fit all the games you want to keep on your system. If you don't have enough space, you need to delete the game files for another game and re-download it later, meaning you need to plan ahead if you're leaving WiFi for any length of time.</p>
<p>Then there's the paranoia problem: what if Nintendo suddenly goes under and shuts down all their servers? What if there's no way to re-download your games. This one makes much less sense, especially given how well Steam and Itch.io have been handling their download services over the years, but the reality is that it's a <em>possibility</em>—unlikely, but possible. If you're in the situation where you've deleted some games to make room for others and this happens, you're <a href="#postcontent-" title="Shit Out of Luck" rel="noopener noreferrer">SOL</a>; your game's save data is sitting worthlessly on your system, unable to be played.</p>
<h2>Physical Permanence</h2>
<h3>The Good</h3>
<p>Buying the physical copy of the game ensures that you have the thing. You can hold it in your hand and know "this little piece of plastic contains the game I purchased". When you put it in the console, it reads straight from the card, and all is well. With the exception of some games that initiate a console update, no download is required, and you can play right away.</p>
<p>The thing that appeals to me most about physical versions of games is that if your console is still in working condition years later, you can plug that old game into it and still play it, even if the company shuts down. My Nintendo 64 games and even my Super Nintendo games and other peoples' NES games still work and can be played years after the console stopped being supported. Theoretically, the same thing applies to the Switch. Even if the world ends, so long as you survived and have access to electricity to keep the thing charged, you can keep playing your games!</p>
<p>The last big thing is that you can actually sell physical copies of games. I don't care about this at all, but it's what I've seen everywhere online as the biggest "pro" for physical games.</p>
<h3>The Problem</h3>
<p>It's less convenient, I guess? You have to go out to the store or wait for the physical card to get shipped to you? The least convenient thing about the physical form of the game is that you have to actually get up and swap the cards if you're playing on a TV, but even then, that's a non-issue for most people who can walk (<em>obviously</em> people with various disabilities will see this whole issue differently; don't <a href="/@//" rel="noopener noreferrer">@</a> me). If you don't have a way to carry all your games with you or if you forget a card at home, you can't play that game, but if you get the right carry case for your switch, you can just bring everything with you with no problem!</p>
<h2>The Outliers</h2>
<p>This isn't really a problem when looking at the (over)abundance of digital-only games. <em>Except when it is!</em> If a game gets popular enough, services like <a href="https://limitedrungames.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer">Limited Run Games</a> will sometimes work with developers and publishers to get small batches of physical copies made so people can have collectible physical releases! So if you prefer physical copies of games, the question becomes whether to buy the game when it comes out so you can play it or wait and see if it's popular enough to get a special physical release.</p>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>Note that this is only a discussion for modern Nintendo games; some physical releases for XBox One have a weird disk+download situation that just doesn't make any sense at all, but the Switch doesn't have that model (yet—hopefully never). This also doesn't cover the case of you being super rich and able to just buy every possible version so you have both the convenience <em>and</em> the permanence.</p>
<p>What are your thoughts on this dichotomy? Which do (or would) you prefer to buy? And which version of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate should I get?</p>
]]><![CDATA[Random vs. Field Encounters]]>https://fediverse.blog/~/ThinkingAboutPlaying/random-vs-field-encounters/2018-12-11T18:53:52.465211+00:00Robbie Antenessehttps://fediverse.blog/@/Alamantus/2018-12-11T18:53:52.465211+00:00<![CDATA[<p>My wife has been playing Pokémon: Let's Go Eevee since it came out, and I've been watching and helping her through it because it's the first Pokémon RPG that she's ever played. The biggest improvement that this game has made over all previous games is the fact that the Pokémon appear on the overworld screen and you can choose whether to encounter them or not. In case you don't already know, all previous Pokémon RPGs have the catchable creatures appear entirely randomly while moving through different areas of the map, making it impossible to know what you might encounter. This got me thinking about these two different approaches to encounters in RPGs, and I wanted to explore the differences and their pros and cons when it comes to game development, design, and play.</p>
<p>Most RPGs (well, JRPGs, to be honest—I haven't played many other kinds) that I know of use the basic random encounter system, but a few standout titles use field encounters where the player must come in contact with the enemy before triggering a battle. Random encounters are when your avatar character walks around and after a number of steps, an encounter simply happens and you are often transitioned to a battle screen; there is no prior indication that a battle may happen and you can't know what you might be fighting. Field encounters are when you can see representations of what you will encounter while your avatar is walking around; in many cases, you are able to choose what you encounter and when.</p>
<h3>Examples From What I've played</h3>
<p>When I first started writing this, I didn't think that I had played many games with the latter, but after thinking about it, there are a lot more than I initially thought!</p>
<table><thead><tr><th> Random </th><th> Field </th></tr></thead><tbody>
<tr><td> Dragon Quest series </td><td> Chrono Trigger </td></tr>
<tr><td> Final Fantasy series </td><td> Earthbound </td></tr>
<tr><td> Pokemon series </td><td> Tales series </td></tr>
<tr><td> </td><td> Xenoblade </td></tr>
<tr><td> </td><td> Super Mario RPGs </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<p><em>Notice how the Random column contains "series" in each entry—that's a lot of games!</em></p>
<h2>Random Encounters</h2>
<p>Each type of encounter creates a different set of challenges, both for the player and the developer. While there may be a few cases where random encounters are used to create tension and a sense of the unknown for players, I believe the most likely reason they are so prevalent, especially in early RPGs is that they are much less resource-intensive: you can use much fewer system resources if you don't have to display encounters on the screen until they happen randomly! When working with hardware like the NES and Game Boy, developers had to add some kind of encounter system, but they had to do it as efficiently as possible, and it's hard to get more efficient than just doing a random number calculation. Plus you don't need to have additional graphics made for each encounter, reducing the amount of work needed plus the amount of space the game takes up on the disk/cartridge.</p>
<p>In my opinion, there is little reason beyond limiting system resources to ever use random encounters. I understand the benefits, and perhaps you can use it in choice situations to create a mood—maybe there's a horde of ghosts and you need to try to make it through the invisible army, or maybe it's a pitch black tunnel that you need to navigate through and avoid hidden monster—but I think it's much better to have field encounters because it not only gives the player agency but also helps with immersion.</p>
<h2>Field Encounters</h2>
<p>Seeing the encounters on the screen before they appear makes for better strategy, better immersion into the game world, and better overall experience, but it takes more system resources and more work for the developers. For strategy, it allows you to prepare for encounters in different ways; for immersion, it gives the impression that the monsters are actually in the world; and for an overall better experience, both of the previous points combined create that!</p>
<p><img src="http://media.earthboundcentral.com/2011/05/earthbounds-copy-protection/index_files/enemies05.png" alt="Screenshot of the desert from Earthbound. The character avatar in the center of the screen is standing in front of a ziggurat-style pyramid, and there are palm trees scattered around. Surrounding the character are many UFOs with shadows below them"></p>
<blockquote>
<p>The monsters are a part of the world, and you have a chance to avoid them if you don't want to engage!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Having field encounters doesn't necessarily mean you can't have any randomness, however. Tales of Symphonia, specifically, has monsters that appear as abstract shapes in the overworld so you don't know what you'll specifically be encountering when you run into them, but you still have the choice and it still expresses the idea that monsters are actively roaming the wilderness in the game world!</p>
<p><img src="https://i759.photobucket.com/albums/xx234/Gentlegamerde/xftsaAs_zps9731a0b6.jpg" alt="Overworld of Tales of Symphonia with abstract monsters surrounding the player avatar. A compass with North facing down is in the top left corner and a small map with the words "World Map" is in the bottom right corner"></p>
<blockquote>
<p>Monsters in the game world displayed abstractly</p>
</blockquote>
<p><img src="http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/7kUblwtzmoI/maxresdefault.jpg" alt="Battle screen of Tales of Symphonia with human characters on the left and monsters on the right. Text on the top says "Wolf 2" and "Hawk". The top right side contains a logo that reads "GGnSW""></p>
<blockquote>
<p>The result of running into an abstract monster</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That said, my favorite type of encounter is the one where you know exactly what you're getting into. To me, this is the most immersive kind, and therefore the most enjoyable kind. I get to play as the character, seeing what they would see and choosing whether to engage or not.</p>
<p>The drawback of this kind of encounter system is that you need to use more system resources to display multiple creatures on the screen at once and also have additional art assets that are most likely separate from what the encounter scenario is. An interesting solution to this is to have a smooth transition into the encounter the way Xenoblade and Chrono Trigger handle it. Rather than being taken to a separate encounter screen, you engage with the creatures on the same world map when you run into them! The game assets are the same as the ones on the field, and it creates even further immersion because there is no perceived break in the gameplay beyond a change of music or character animations. If more RPGs implemented this type of system, then I would be a happy camper.</p>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>This post is ultimately pointless. I mainly wanted to praise the field encounter system and point out how much better I think Pokémon Let's Go's wild Pokémon system is than previous systems. In the end, I love RPGs where you see what you're getting into, and I think that random encounters are dumb.</p>
]]><![CDATA[Introduction]]>https://fediverse.blog/~/ThinkingAboutPlaying/introduction/2018-12-11T02:54:47.998634+00:00Robbie Antenessehttps://fediverse.blog/@/Alamantus/2018-12-11T02:54:47.998634+00:00<![CDATA[<p>This blog is the space I am designating as my personal musing ground for game design, development, and play. If past blogs are any indicator, I don't expect to be particularly active in this space, but I like having such a space available to me when I get the urge to write more long form ideas and thoughts. What I particularly like about this space specifically is that I can easily spread my writing around <a href="https://cybre.space/@Alamantus" rel="noopener noreferrer">my</a> <a href="https://tabletop.social/@Alamantus" rel="noopener noreferrer">assorted</a> <a href="https://polyglot.city/@Alamantus" rel="noopener noreferrer">homes</a> in the Fediverse!</p>
<p>I expect I will write thoughts about gameplay occasionally, but this will probably turn into something of an expansion / generalization of the <a href="https://gutsplus.tk" rel="noopener noreferrer">GUTS+</a> updates blog. I have an <a href="http://alamantus.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">all-but-defunct Tumblr blog</a> about game development, so maybe any thoughts that would have gone there will come here instead? There may even be the rare game review of games from anywhere in the timeline of video games!</p>
<p>Who knows!</p>
<p>If you want a blog about games both physical and video, this is certainly intended to be one!</p>
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