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VC Tuesday: Whack an Ogre
The biggest news for Japan's downloadable Wii games this week is the debut of an excellent Square Enix series on the Virtual Console. While it's awesome that the VC will be graced with the first Ogre Battle game from genius creator and Queen fanboy Yasumi Matsuno, it's basically confirmation that Square Enix doesn't care about the series -- like ActRaiser and King's Knight. And Mana. This is no surprise, really, since Matsuno all but disappeared during the development of Final Fantasy XII and isn't at Square Enix to work on more Ogre Battle. The other VC game, Cadash, is a pretty good side-scrolling action RPG type thing from Taito. It's a fantasy game that's got a ninja in it! Densetsu no Ogre Battle (Super Famicom, 1 player, 800 Wii Points) Cadash (PC Engine, 1-2 players, 600 Wii Points) On WiiWare: a Boom Blox-esque puzzler, and the cutest Whack-a-Mole game ever. Bakutan (1 player, 500 Wii Points) Tataite! Mogupon (1-4 players, 500 Wii Points)
Gamasutra dissects open world games
Following up on his recent look at difficulty in game design, Gamasutra's John Harris is at it again, this time offering an ample look at what he calls 'open world games' -- titles, according to Harris, where a player is dropped into a larger world and left to figure things out on his or her own. Like his difficult games feature, the lion's share of the article is spent looking at specific examples of games he feels fit this mold, from arcade and 8-bit classics to more contemporary examples like the Grand Theft Auto series.Interestingly, despite GTA's inclusion in the list, Harris concedes that most of the article is spent talking about older games, an observation for which he makes no apology. According to Harris, older games feature "more elemental designs," meaning they don't get all caught up in trying to be more than just a game. Even so, the list is pretty random, with nods to titles such as Cadash, Crazy Taxi, and even Warren Robinett's Atari 2600 classic Adventure, while MMOs go strangely ignored. This last bit seems more peculiar given that that author himself spends time writing scripts for Second Life, but it is an interesting read nonetheless.[Disclaimer: I wrote for Gamasutra from March 2006 to August 2007.]
