Flower and the STG
From Comments of DGR: 02.27.2009
Your comments on Flower are pretty interesting, John, in light of the podcast I heard right before this week’s episode. I was listening to a recent episode of The Geekbox in which Ryan Scott was discussing R-Type Dimensions. His take on the game was essentially this:
“It’s good, it’s really hard… Thank God they put in Infinite Mode because it’s too hard for me to get through otherwise. But the game’s really short– I mean, you can blow through it in 45 minutes.”
While this is technically true, as shmup fans, we get a [i]lot[/i] more out of the R-Type experience than this guy did. Perhaps the same is true for Flower. Obviously, you can’t directly compare Flower with a shmup– DJ Incompetent is likely to vomit upon reading this, in fact– but for many folks, the experience that they get from playing through Flower is good enough that the length isn’t a concern.
- M.C.
I hear what you’re saying. Flower is a “flight-ish” game for certain, reminding me almost of Nights.
I have no problem with short games. Hell, I wish a lot of games were much shorter than they are. I just don’t have time for it anymore. But it wasn’t just the length of Flower that gave me pause. It was just the feeling of, “They could have done so much more with this” that I had when it was done. But like I said, I sort of go back and forth with it. The experience I had playing it was mostly great and often unlike any other game I’ve played. That itself is worth the price. But when I finished it I just had this sort of unfulfilled feeling.
- John
As far as I’m concerned, short games are fine, but I put a lot of value in games that offer options and alternate ways to play through the content. That is what earns the timeless replayable triple-A award for me. Did you know one of the bigger complaints expert players have on Gradius V is that it’s too long? This game clocks in at about an hour, but the ideal time STG players (myself included) want to spend on a one-credit session is roughly 30-something minutes. This is a large complaint for many Compile games as well (Aleste series, Zanac series, etc.), being long stages are a fault and not a feature, especially when they have dead zones of no on-screen enemies for several seconds. An ideal way to maximize content of a single shmup title is to have several different ‘courses’ of 5 stages instead of one massive 8-stage trek. Developers have not thought to include this option besides the compilation multi-game packages. Raycrisis explored this by allowing users to plot a course of five stages out of a selectable eight.
But what’s the issue here with the semi-controversial Flower and FlOw?
They’re great stand-alone games, but players complain not enough is done with it.
Without compromising the developer’s original vision, could the team have easily added a game mechanic to make these games a more whole and fulfilling experience?
Yes.
How?
Postgame content.
In a developer’s vision, it’s perfectly reasonable to steer the player toward few, simple objectives and a limited viewpoint; a single set of rules and circumstances the developer sees as the best way to experience the world or challenge constructed by the team and set upon the player. But what happens when the player has done everything the developer intended? What happens when the player overcame the game’s challenges or made it to the end? Why wouldn’t the developer now unlock the world for the player to go fucking nuts? Vice versa, I flew through your open world exploring and experimenting with your brand new never-before-seen play mechanics. I got to the end, so why not give me the option to challenge myself. Test me on how well I’ve mastered the game, or give me a harder version of everything I experienced?
Back in the day, it was almost standard practice to allow selectable difficulties in the options menu. Nowadays this practice has dwindled down to a coin toss among worthy game titles. But the difficulty adjustment debate is a longstanding argument and not what I’m getting at. The new objections to specific high-profile games are coming from people who want to use this open world and new experience to have a demanding task set inside it, while the players who are stuck in these games with locked boundaries or impossible difficulty want to be granted the freedom to look around or play freely in the world created by the developer, but otherwise restricted because the player is always forced to abide by the challenging game rules, getting in the way of what the player really wants to do. I’ve observed and participated in these requests back and forth enough to realize one theory developers must attend to:
Every title deserves a “free” mode and a “challenge” mode.
After the developer team completes their vision and the player abides by their settings, give the player the developer’s toolbox to the world, cheats to bastardize or remix the player’s set rules, and turn every open world into a Rush 2049 course with player abilities ripped from Crackdown. But alternately, if the developer’s vision was the open world and the player explored the art to completion, lay some rules down and challenge the player to how well s/he’s mastered control of the environment the team has created.
That would be in an ideal request.
But think about it. How hard would it really be to at least cater to both types of players with the most minimal amount of development time available?
It’s as easy as toggling a timer.
Any challenging game that has a timer attached to it, include the option to remove it. Any game set in 3D worlds where stages are set boundaries to that world, add the option to remove all of them. Any free-roaming game set in an open world, include the option to add a speedrun timer.
There’s plenty of simple game concepts developers can steal from titles of yesteryear, indie titles, or even Mario Party & Warioware that when implemented as postgame content, could have turned Flower [and Fl0w] into a massively repayable pretty playground of possibilities I imagine couldn’t take more than a few days to add. For example, people recently found the cool thing to do is fire up Mario 64 and activate a glitch 1up mushroom that endlessly chases Mario directly through the map itself, but the made-up objective is you’re supposed to collect all 8 red coins before the 1up reaches the player. It’s a lot of fun to do, and pretty hard to pull off. There’s plenty of customization options I could think of to add in R-Type that allow players to experience all the content, but reinforce the purpose is to master the challenge the developer intended instead of the player writing the game off in reviews just because the guy found a way to essentially cheat. One idea is to include training modes as deep as Raiden III or Shikigami no Shiro III, but lock away continues in the standard game like in Gradius III Arcade. Infinite lives and infinite continues in shooting games are great ways for players to take control of their purchased content, but they are widely misused in game journalism and typically lead to blanket statements urging players to avoid the videogame altogether. In that case, a feature that is helping the player is ultimately used as a negative. On the flipside, if the game is too hard for a reviewer to see all the main content without the prerequisite of being “good enough to get there”, the reviewer again generally writes in to say avoid the game entirely. A free reign mode similar to Travelling in Rez and separate from the regular game with appropriate in-game documentation and explanation could serve as a better way for players to understand what they can do with their game, versus what the developer says they’re supposed to do in the game. No developer of a shooting game has truly tried to communicate to the player what their game objective is, including a tutorial on how to get there even half as extensive as all the crazy tutorials found in most decent 3D titles. The battle cry of “kill the bad guy!” is understood, but never truly what the spirit of a shmup was about in the eye of experienced players.
A finished game to a developer is like a blank canvas to many gamers. This could be the reason it always seems no matter how good a game is, people always seem to be complaining about it. This is also why mod communities continue to run wild.
So I add the following statements:
Games where challenge is the focus, create and allow open freedom modes immediately.
Games where freedom and artistic narrative is the focus and failure is almost non-existent, create and allow the more challenging gameplay options to be available after the game is finished or unlockable by code.
It’s not too difficult to find games that cater to the “challenging” crowd of players along with the “free” exploration desires of other players. Here’s examples of games that get it:
Rez – Traveling Mode – challenge catering to the free
The challenge of Rez is to get to the end without dying. But one of the greatest features is chillaxing and coasting through the stages, enjoying the pounding-pounding techno music. The solution for the free-reign desires of other players is to include this Travelling section where players could not take damage. It was perfect.
Braid – Time Attack – free catering to a challenge
Here’s an example of the other way around. Braid is a primarily free-roaming in that you could never lose while solving these puzzles, and you could walk through a stage with relatively no worries. There was nowhere to go but win. This is great to get all players to taste the game as the puzzle solutions are magnificently designed, but there were players that needed one step harder. That solution was an unlockable mode for speedrunners. This added challenge taunted players to remember all 60 solutions and master the time controls enough to collect them all in the shortest possible time. Brilliant! They even included some near impossible extra stars to collect, great for anybody seeking extra credit and that extra ending content.
SSX series - Open Mountain – challenge catering to the free
After completing the racing and stunt challenges of SSX1, you get one final mountain. No timer, no competitors, no HUD. It’s just you, the mountain visuals, and do whatever the fuck you wanted to do. An added free mode for sure. Outstanding work. When they got up to SSX3, they took it a step further. Because the game was set on three mountains meshed together, not only were all the challenges on one location, but the player had total control to just free-cruise the mountain from start to finish without any modes or interruptions getting in the way. Shredding the whole thing took about 15+ minutes with alternate paths. Deep stuff.
Sandbox games – Freedom until you choose a mission – open choice
There’s a reason they keep pumping out the Saints Rows and the Grand Theft Autos. The formula works. The free players can hang out and piss off the cops. The challenge players can take a mission and tackle some set objectives or enjoy the metagames with the ambulance, taxi, firetruck, etc. All right out of the box.
Shadow of the Colossus – Time Trials & Items – open choice
This game is so classic it blurs the lines if the original intent was designed as a free-landscape game or a game about 16 challenges. The free-roaming and exploration exists not only in the massive cursed landscape, but the colossi themselves. Difficulty in the actual fight was drastically reduced probably to appeal to everybody. But fear not. Not only did they cater to the challenge-seeking players with an added Hard Mode and Time Trials with set goals, but free-mode players were rewarded for completing the time trials with new ways to explore the landscape, from maps that turn the landscape into one giant treasure hunt, to giving your guy a parachute to hover into new areas. This game almost fully embodies exploring the game content in an enticing number of ways, while not appearing to come at the price of an extensive effort to the developer at all.
Flower gets this message partially right with the hidden green flowers in exchange for Trophies [,yo]. It’s not the same, but something extra to do I suppose. FlOw also attempts some replayability with different (unlockable) creatures. I didn’t get to play as those, but the consensus I’ve read is they don’t make the game any harder than its, “so easy this game has to be a tech demo” original settings. Like I said earlier, R-Type almost gets it right with Infinite mode, but like almost all STGs ever, the developers still have no clue how to connect the vision and spirit of the genre to the main audience, and then for a missed example in the other direction, let’s talk about Katamari Damacy. I like the series because I want to just roll a ball around and see how big it could get. I was stuck with a timer in the original, and now I got a hold of the HD one and nothing’s changed. The game’s focus is not about the ball, but battling some arbitrary clock. How I would love to sever that clock for just one game and play with the ball till I get bored with it. I started to hit a wall with not being able to beat the timed challenge as early as the second stage and just quit. That’s not my style since I preach challenge-based gaming all the time. But even in a developer interview they said hell they keep making new katamari games because people love rolling a ball around. Well fuck, gimmie that then. I didn’t want to spend $30 on a rainbow clock. There’s your example of a challenge-game stumbling with good times because players desire a free mode.
Let’s go back to game length.
Does Flower need an artificial extension of stages? I don’t think so. Should it get a patch about new ways to use the current stages? Definitely. They spent all this time creating these awesome game mechanics with a feel of Sonic the Hedgehog on air (because I haven’t played Nights) without the voice acting and embarrassment, add a some games to your videogame.
Does R-Type need an artificial extension of stages? I think two different courses are good enough. Could the game use a patch for say, training modes, checkpoint selection, stage selection, ghosting players, a dedicated in-game message to game reviewers that credit feeding doesn’t mean you won asshole, and even an endless survival mode of continuous waves of enemies? Definitely. They spent all this time breaking apart the ROM just to recreate the original experience. Why not make some new ideas with it besides R-Type Command? Use what they’ve developed to remake R-Type Leo. Nobody will release that game for some reason.
Replayability > Length
At the end of the day, is a brand new gaming experience with zero difficulty worth $10? Yeah I think it is.
Should a developer, after spending nonstop months creating the basics for a glorious videogame, allow a few extra days to add some postgame content to cater to players who see their product as a great way to attempt something different than the developer has otherwise intended? Absolutely.
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Tags: 360, challenge, debate, discussion, flower, Free, ps3, psn, r-type, replay, stg, xbla
March 6th, 2009 at 12:23 am
Good musings. I’m sure I’ll have a real post later…