Posted by ASandoval on June 14, 2009 under Fail, Features, Games | 
We’re doing something a bit differently this week, namely because I can’t really think of a pro for this game. Instead, we’re going to just explore this particular game’s failings. It should be fun!
Whenever anyone busts out a Super Nintendo at a gamer party, you can be sure that at least one person there will ask, “Do you have Zombies Ate My Neighbors?” Seriously, test that one out. ZAMN has become some kind of hallmark in the party game genre, which is impressive because back in 1993, I didn’t think anyone but I knew the game existed.
No, that honor goes to Ghoul Patrol.
I’m not entirely sure how true this is, but the story goes that LucasArts was developing a game that wasn’t panning out so well. So instead, they turned this failure into a sequel to ZAMN by making the characters Zeke and Julie (the protagonist of the former) and BAM! An instant seller. There plans must have backfired though; I only knew of this game from a random mention in Gameplayers Magazine in 1995, about a year after the game came out.
The reason I have my doubts to this story is because Ghoul Patrol pretty much plays exactly like ZAMN. At the start of the level, there are a prerequisite number of survivors that the player must rescue before a monster takes them out. To find these survivors, players must collect keys to open doors, use a variety of weapons to take out certain threats and drink random potions to turn into a weapon of invincible destruction. Really, the game feels more like an expansion pack to ZAMN rather than a full on sequel, which would have been fine. Who wouldn’t want more Zombies Ate My Neighbor? A lot of people, apparently! So what went wrong? I believe that the game’s problems began with the title.
Ghoul Patrol doesn’t exactly have the same pull as something like Zombies Ate My Neighbors, does it? And this was back in 1993; most gamers back then were too young to know anything of movies like Night of the Living Dead, and this was two years before Resident Evil would make the zombie genre relevant to the culture.
It wasn’t just a unique title either, as it clued you into the aesthetic of the game. ZAMN has you fighting all varieties of pulp horror movie tropes, from mummies, werewolves, vampires, axe-wielding dolls, slime, living plants, mad scientists, aliens, mermen, giant babies and Jason Voorhees wielding Leatherface’s chainsaw. Similarly, Ghoul Patrol’s name pretty much clues you in to what you’ll be fighting: ghosts and demons. A lot of ghosts and demons. And while four levels across different themes such as metropolis and oriental have their own enemies, it never compensates for the lack of originality.
Even the weapons have no flavor. Your initial weapon in ZAMN is a water gun. Yeah, you get to fight zombies off with water guns. There were also popsicles, six packs of soda, silverware, footballs and other assortment of just plain weird objects to use against the monsters. Again, Ghoul Patrol substitutes creative ingenuity with blandness; you start off with a crossbow, and upgrade to machine guns, ray guns… pretty much other assortments of guns. And ZAMN also brought a little bit of strategy with its odd weapons by making certain enemies weak to corresponding weapons, because we all know werewolves don’t like silver, so why should they like silverware? I haven’t noticed any such attention to detail in Ghoul Patrol, but then your weapons are all just different types of guns anyway.
Ghoul Patrol represents the worst kind of quick cash-in, one that failed to achieve its goal. There’s absolutely no originality in either the design or the aesthetic. It was the kind of sin normally reserved for the vapid sidescroller, the early 90s version of the stock third person shooters we have today. If LucasArts learned anything from it, it must have been that yes, creativity does go a long way in the business world. It’s why we can all remember a game like Zombies Ate My Neighbors – and why most people will then ask “Man, why didn’t they make a sequel to that game?”
Next week: I had part of a slinky, but I straightened it. So I played Ghostbusters on Genesis instead. Screens courtesy VGMuseum.com.
Posted by ASandoval on May 25, 2009 under Fail, Features, Games |
You may have noticed there’s no Weekly Relay here, nor was there yesterday. Have I already abandoned my ambitions? And so soon?
Fear not, it has just been delayed due to extenuating circumstances such as health concerns (Nothing serious, just annoying) and the like. It will be up either today or tomorrow, and will not interupt plans for the next installment this coming Sunday. In the meantime, you can check out my Punch-Out!! review over at GameFAQs.
Posted by ASandoval on April 5, 2009 under Fail, Games |
So the GDC Travelouge, what happened? Well, the week turned out to be about as hectic as I imagined, so keeping a journal of the event became pretty much impossible. Hell, I haven’t even had time to really write that down until just now. Something I’ve learned about vacations: You have to take however long your away and pack that much missed time of work into about a fraction of a day when you get back. Makes me wonder if it’s actually worth it sometimes.
So I got an email from Robert Pelloni, the developer of “Bob’s Game” the other day (If you don’t know what that is, Joystiq just recently did a quick write up about it to explain a response about it from Nintendo’s own Reggie Fils-Amie). Apparently I was placed on some mailing list, presumably with anyone else who had some… choice words about his professionalism in trying to get his game published via Nintendo. So Bob took the time out to let us all know our efforts were futile, because apparently he never meant for it to be published at all.
Ok, He didn’t actually say he wasn’t trying to be published, but the plot of “Bob’s Game” indicates his true intentions: an independant developer goes megalomaniacal after “Gantendo”, the world’s biggest and most loved publisher/developer of games all over the world refuse to publish his game. He realizes that said company has been taken over, it’s top brass infected by casual and shovelware games making them think more about the almighty dollar than actually promoting innovation in games. So he tries to take over them, and the protagonist of the game (Aptly named “Yuu”) must stop him while possibly learning the dark truth of his favorite game company. In short, the protest to get his game published was a viral marketing campeign, bringing the plot of the game to life in that very meta sense.
While I’m not about to laud Bob as a genius (very far from it, honestly), and while I haven’t had a chance to actually play the demo that was forwarded along with his revealing email (I will do so soon), I feel as though I must at least commend him for using game development, as well as a semi-elaborate alternate reality game, to push a message. We can go back and forth all day about whether or not the ruse was clever or not, but what’s important to realize that it actually worked and now has people actually thinking about Nintendo’s business practices. After all, Reggie had to respond to MTV’s Stephen Tolito about the ramifications of Bob’s Game and whether or not an independent developer stands a chance getting published if their game isn’t casual. However (And you’d know I’d have a however), despite the new found public awareness and discussion that Bob has generated, it doesn’t mean that his message is not fundamentally flawed.
It’s true that the DS and Wii libraries are heavily saturated with casual or licensed games, though most notably by third party publishers such as Ubisoft (While I’m on the subject, Seriously Ubi? “Imagine Doctor” AND “Imagine Family Doctor”?). While Nintendo certainly has plenty of games for non-gamers myself, I can only say really one of them (Clubhouse Games, two if you count Hotel Dusk, which is more of an interactive novel) isn’t innovative. Brain Age might not be your kind of game, but did you ever really see a compilation like it before? Didn’t it really inspire the other copies that came after it, all not developed by Nintendo themselves?
It’s also important to remember that these games make publishers money as well. Going back to the Ubisoft analogy, Assassin’s Creed did, you know, OK, not enough to really justify a multi-million dollar franchise. And yet, the sequel’s been one of the worst kept secrets in gaming. What about Beyond Good & Evil 2? It also did ok, but most of us only played it because we heard it was amazing after it was considered a flop. How’s Ubisoft doing it? I’m assuming that it has something to do with Ubisoft’s profits being raised 37% off of DS sales with titles like “Imagine Teacher” and “PlayZone: Sports Party”. When you’re making millions largely off of an installed base, it suddenly makes risky projects much less so, an important, if not necessary, asset when one big name title can make or break a company.
So is Nintendo specifically funneling only these kinds of games on their consoles? Are they really holding back fun, ‘innovative’ titles in lieu of money makers for screaming Hannah Montana fans and old people? I’m sure if we asked Kyle Gabler and Ron Carmel of 2D Boy, who got their 2-man physics based puzzle game “World of Goo” published as a downloadable title for the Wii, they’d say no. And what about Studio Pixel, who made a 2D platformer called Cave Story for free on the internet, and Nintendo gave them money to publish and sell their game. Finally, Lost Winds, a game about controlling and manipulating the wind to solve puzzles and fight enemies in a platformer environment from Fontier Development, which uses the wii controller in a unique in fascinating way. And this is only the best examples of Nintendo pushing innovation and supporting the little guy at the same time.
My question to Bob then, is this: If you want to attack figures in the game industry for starving innovation, why Nintendo? Why not the marketing exec who looked at Fallout 3, an engaging action RPG about frontier life in the wake of a nuclear holocaust with a unique retro-future feel, and decided the best way to market the game was with a heavily armored and masked soldier against a gun-metal greay background? Or how about why nearly all the big action game starts all sport a generic face with a buzz cut head, including a massive Star Wars title with a story enthralling enough to win it the Writer’s Guild of America game writing award? Bob, my point is simply this: It’s awesome that you have a message and found an effective way to spread it, but Nintendo is not your enemy.
Coming Next – Actual demo impressions of Bob’s Game. Hopefully less than a month from now. If we’re lucky.
Posted by ASandoval on March 30, 2008 under Fail, Misc. |
Woah, I’m still logged in? Sweet.
So I had my first real post planned out, but it got diverted by the common cold, effectively sapping any chance I had at being somewhat productive on the one week where I had anything resembling free time. So instead I played video games and continued to let my life fall into a shallow crapper rather than do my usual routine of making it rise out of that. On the plus side though, I beat my first RPG in like, 2 years. That’s a stunning accomplishment given that my attention span is far less than what it once was.
I think my blog is going to become kind of a less focused aspect of this site, at least for now. I wanted it to be the highlight, and I still kind of do, but without the necessary features, such as my portfolio, it doesn’t really have much sustenance or really any kind of point. So I’m sorry to say you (Whoever you might be) will be stuck with short, pointless posts like this one while I concentrate more on aesthetics for the time being.
In fact, let’s have some fun with this. My deadline for a fully finished website is the end of May. Let’s see if stating that publicly will change anything.
Posted by ASandoval on March 2, 2008 under Fail, Games, Misc. |
So I don’t think I’ll be getting around to my project I mentioned earlier, not until it’s too late for anyone to care. For the curious, it was going to be a video/audio slide of some of the events at GDC. One day, there will be something more stimulating than text here, but I just don’t have the time for it now.
And yet, I still want to set time aside for building an arcade cabinet.
Yeah, it’s true. For those who don’t know, I live on the fourth floor of an apartment… Not the easiest place to get an arcade machine in. My theory is that an empty cabinet, or a cabinet in pieces, should actually come up the stairs quite nicely, so I’d like to get a MAME Cabinet set up in the dining room that no one uses. I’ve looked into it; it’s a time and money consuming project, but I’d love to do it. For the record, you know it’s costly when one of the cheapest items is the computer needed to run the software.
I’ll keep a log of that project up here, complete with pictures, as things get rolling on that, but I don’t know when I’ll start. After all, I got a whole back log of video games I want to keep up with on top of that. Decisions, Decisions, Decisions…
