Happy Valentine’s Day Everybody! Who’s up for a double whammy of love'em and hate'em articles?
Chibi Robo III
Well, the event horizon is crossed. I’m officially unwillingly to soldier
on. Chibi Robo: Photo Finder ties all of
its progression to its camera mechanic, which is outright torture. Strictly speaking, matching the outline to
the object in the lens up to 70% is a pass, while the game teases and
challenges players to reach for 100%.
The trouble is that it is February; I’m stuck indoors while
it is quite cold out. Bothering with the
3DS during the cold is counterintuitive, and the camera is pretty low quality
anyway. Far too many of the pictures
become NostalJunk puzzle pieces, for reasons that elude me (probably camera
failure, since Telly conjectures that lighting is the problem). Replacing the spent frames is painful, and
consequently the amount of grinding needed to advance is off-balance and very
intimidating.
But let’s not pretend that all of the problems can be laid
at the feet of Old Man Winter. I
confess, I feel kind of fish-out-of-water over here. Chibi-Robo’s claim to fame, making monumental
adventures out of mundane domestic scenery, is strongly compromised by the
world inside the game. Having “unlocked”
the next gallery, I’ve found the world expand in frustratingly small ways. New toys introduce themselves to Chibi,
complete with more chores to do, that are truly mundane and boring chores, and no new vistas to explore.
I mean to say that Chibi-Robo:
Photo Finder is everything that
I feared a game about being a domestic robot would be about, boring and
cramped. I say this with a voice filled
with dread. It feels like work, boring,
thankless, unpaid work! The balance in Chibi Robo: Park Patrol was dead on
perfect. Sure that game made you work,
but it promised you a chance to rebuild the whole park however you wanted,
offered vehicles to drive, enemies to fight off, and friends whose stories you
could advance. There was good stuff in Park Patrol, but I can’t find it in Photo Finder.
Add to this statement that Photo Finder ties what advancement there is to the camera, and
well, I’m not sure I can interest myself in going on!
Eh. Too bad, they can’t
all be brilliant games. And I’m out $10,
but it could easily be worse. I still
remember when I bought that awful Dokupon
Kingdom for $40! Ew!
Since the following article is pretty summarily finished, and
finished short, I thought that I would collect a few rambling thoughts from of
late.
…
As of the Nintendo Direct recently (Feb 13th),
Steel Diver Sub Wars has been available as one of Nintendo’s first experiments
with “free to play.” No sooner did the
game go live that comments sections across the Internet lit up with memes, such
as “I wish I could purchase the Blue Marine…” or “I wish I could do a barrel
roll…” One may mistake this to mean that
Steel Diver is a new Star Fox, and I couldn’t really fault them for the idea.
Steel Diver inhabits something of its own universe, and
welcome cameo appearances aside, seems to have its own cast. Where the submarine simulator really feels
like Star Fox is the, well, feel of it.
It is fully natural to put the Sub into full ahead, and proper voice
acting tells you now in Full Ahead, reinforcing the idea that you are actually
in a submarine movie rather than a space fighter. There are no faces, except for a handful,
such as the tutorial leader, who leads you through the paces of learning to
navigate the sub. It is tempting to
forget that you have other speeds, including dead stop, which is critical to
remaining hidden. Piloting in Steel
Diver is its own challenge, with its own needs and skill requirements.
Weapons in Steel Diver are much more limited fare. The A button controls the full ahead torpedo,
complete with zoom lens to aside targeting.
The X button fires homing torpedoes, but I haven’t yet figured its
function… there is no lock on cursor, so… not like Star Fox I guess.
Navigation is strongly linked to the stereoscopic 3D; I bet
you could figure it out with the slider turned to the off position, but you would
miss out on critical information.
Similarly, if players are wondering about their position relative to
themselves, they can get a still 3D object view of the submarine by pressing
Start. This pauses the game and allows
the player to spin the sub around on the display, revealing critical data like
proximity to the water line and sea floor.
It is very much like Star Fox, in that collisions are common. Sub crew voices from unseen sub crewmen
report whenever the player blunders into collisions, reinforcing the submarine
movie feel strongly, and there are no collisions where players could go through
objects like in Star Fox.
As I said above, the stereoscopy greatly enhances the
experience. Pressing Y will ping the
radar, lighting up both on the radar and on the main screen targets,
objectives, rings to navigate through, box pickups, and many other Starfox-like
objects. I only found the stereoscopy
become a problem once, when I passed through a speed ring. The periphery of the screen blurred greatly,
adding a sense of speed, though naturally enough the center of the forward display
was clear, and thus it drew the eye comfortably enough.
Steel Diver’s main act is submarine combat, which is slow
and plodding. Subs are expected to
slowly advance toward each other, using tools like the periscope or “mask” to
hide their approach. Frequent use of
radar is also a necessity, but can give away the player sub’s position in a
critical second!
Sub combat has enormous nuance, and it is so much the focus
that Steel Diver lists multiplayer online above single player! Nintendo wants you to know that this is meant
to be played with friends, and they’ve removed just about every objection one
could have. Chatting with friends has
been stylized into its own setting-appropriate work out by the use of Morse
code. Players communicate with friends
by means of only one button, and the software is very good at distinguishing
dots and dashes. Well, okay, two buttons
if you need to put spaces between words.
Whoneedsdat? At the time of this
writing, the biggest mystery is cryptography, as I haven’t found any options to
prevent codes from being intercepted; there is a real potential for such code
transmissions to become part of the fun, as players device their own codes to
try and communicate with local friends against online enemies. My one fear then becomes – can modern gamers
used to having everything done for us see the value in simple Morse code
transmissions specially coded by friends?
Only time can tell that answer.
The greatest thing missing is the capacity for memes. Don’t get me wrong, “Dive!”, “Surface!”, and “Up
Periscope!” are all memes I remember from times long, long ago myself. But Nintendo has set its sights on creating a
fun game, rather than a string of Internet chatter that recalls a fun
game. Steel Diver reflects this in its
slow pacing very well; the game is methodical and pedantic until players reach
a moment of elation in victory, or self cursing in the knowledge they’ve been
made!
Also at the time of this writing, Steel Diver: Sub Wars does
not have a Miiverse community (nor any means by players to make their own,
Nintendo! L) I expect this to be changed shortly, because
the game is great silly fun that can be more fun socially. If any of you out there are wondering about
Steel Diver: SW, give it a look see, as it’s free. Purchasing the full version requires $10 on
the eShop. I don’t think this qualifies
as a “free to play” game, but it certainly is much more respectful of gamers,
and much more deserving of being loved in its own right.
Some final house keeping. NintendoLife reports that Steel Diver's team includes Giles Goddard, a Briton and one of the first western coders to break into Nintendo's halls. This includes being involved in development of the Super FX chip, making his involvement with Star Fox pretty solidly fundamental. As for whether or not Steel Diver is Star Fox, well, I'm out of money after that Chibi-Robo thing. Sorry, I won't be able to continue digging! It undeniably feels like Star Fox, and one should "Be careful! It's a trap!" Yeah, General Ahkbar says it better...
I don't mind calling Steel Diver a "StarFox-like" game, in the same way we already talk about "Rogue-likes" and "Metroidvanias." Nintendo has its own classification for Steel Driver, calling it a "contemplative FPS." This description is accurate, and is sure to lead to recess bullyings with the cool kids. But there is something I like in the juxtiposition of such ideas. Slow paced, reflexive, high tension, high risk-reward, and so on. I can't hide how thoroughly I'm contemplating this...
No comments:
Post a Comment