3 Genres That Need A Comeback

Gaming has changed over the years in both many good ways and a few bad ways.  One of the things that has changed a lot since the days of old are the kind of genres prevalent and the industry right now and this is kind of to be expected.  That said, there are a few genres that were popular back then that aren't so popular right now and I feel it's a bit of a shame.  So I'm going to talk about 3 genres of games that I feel need a little bit more love.  I'm sure no one will listen but I just want to talk fondly about some types of games that I love.

1.  Point n' Clicker

Out of the 3 I'm about to talk about, I feel that this one has died the saddest of deaths.  These games are awesome because they are challenging and a lot of them had pretty good stories to boot which made solving that puzzle running on moon logic all the more sweeter.  Games such as Monkey Island, Beneath a Steel Sky and I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream are all spoken of fondly by fans but there hasn't really been any new games in the genre for a long time.  The closest we came in my recent memory was a PC game called Anna but that ran on so much moon logic that I kind of dampened the whole experience.

Unfortunately, these genre has kind of been ruined by people making games that LOOK like point and click games but actually aren't games at all.  Games such as Gone Home and The Stanley Parable are all talked about sort of in the same was as a point and click, except they have no game play to speak of and aren't really much more than that. 

It's kind of sad that the most excited anyone has been for anything in this genre is a remake of Grim Fandango.  That game is awesome but the levels of hype people have for a remake they have played a long time ago in a genre that doesn't lend itself well to re playability, speaks volumes.

2.  Side Scrolling Beat-em-up

Often mistakenly called fighting games by a few people, Beat-Em-Ups were super popular back in the day.  They were perfect for arcades and the home console ports of these games were perfect for when you had a couple of friends over and just wanted to beat the shit out of lots of dudes.

This genre didn't really die as much as it just faded out of the mainstream and replaced with bombastic combat games like Bayonetta and Devil May Cry.  The hack n slash's of the now are awesome, no doubt, but I miss the simplicity of something like Final Fight or Streets of Rage and just being able to kick back and not worry about crazy combo chains or anything like that.

There have been some attempts to keep it alive with that Scott Pilgrim game and Double Dragon Neon but these are so few and far between it's not enough to satisfy and quite frankly they don't quite stack up to the classics.

3. The Dungeon Crawler

This is another genre that isn't completely dead but is so niche that I haven't found a single other person who I can talk with at length about games in the genre.  I feel like this genre has been pushed aside in favor of a myriad of rouge like games which isn't necessarily a bad thing but I wish the classic dungeon crawl would get more love.

Back in the day, if you wanted to make any kind of progress in these games then you had to get some graph paper and get your cartographer skills on.  I can imagine people wouldn't like this because they don't want to have to play a video game with a pen and paper on hand, but for me this was part of the appeal.  It's like you're ACTUALLY on the adventure, making your own maps and making your own notes in order to survive the hardships of the dungeon.  If you get lost or forget key locations that's because YOU weren't thorough enough as an adventurer and you only really have yourself to blame.  The other thing I find appealing about these games is that they are usually fucking rock solid hard and I'm attracted to stupidly high challenge like moth to a flame.

Recent titles have included things like Etrian Odyssey, Shin Megami Tensei 4 and Legend of Grimrock but these only really serve to keep the genre afloat except the new school stuff doesn't really have the same kind of appeal as the old school.  A lot of these games have either simplified or automatic mapping and they just aren't as hard as the old stuff.  The ONLY game that gave me what I really wanted was The Dark Spire on DS but that was only 1 game released fucking ages ago, which is a damn shame.

I need these genre to bust my balls a little more, you know?

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Anyway that's all for now, three genres that I feel need a little more love.  Maybe I'm being unreasonable or weird or whatever but that's just how I feel.  Not that modern main stream genres are bad or anything like that but some of the littler guys would get a little more love.

The Hype Train is Getting Faster

Well here is where I just jump up and down in a silly fashion and gush for a while, because holy shit this looks good!

Shin Megami Tensei is a name you probably know, or have at least heard of due to the series being absolutely fucking huge.  For those that might not know SMT, you've probably heard of Persona, and that is part of the same series.

So Persona 4 is the game that most people have experience with, and that game is really good, I like it a lot but I don't regard it to be as good as a lot of people do.  You see, Shin Megami Tensei wasn't always about school kids solving scooby doo mysteries.  The best way to describe old school Shin Megami Tensei is like Pokemon and the Legend of Grimrock having a baby together.  Even that description doesn't quite fit the bill exactly but it's a good way to describe it to people who don't have a clue.

Anyway Shin Megami Tensei 4 is coming to the 3DS and from what I can tell it's about dudes with Yu-Gi-Oh duel gloves protecting a big city from demons.  This means lots of dungeon crawling, and monster "catching" and all that good stuff.  Right now, I'm pre emptively putting this down as my 2013 game of the year.  They'll have to fuck this up pretty hard, or someone will have to develop something twice as awesome to budge it from that spot.

My Personal Best Game of 2012

Well it's finally happened, we have stepped in to the new year.

I was hoping to maybe put together a list of the best 5 or so games that I played this year, but I found this to be way more hassle than I thought it would be.  Not really because I'm lazy, and not because games this year were bad or anything like that.  The problem is that everything that came out this year was just pretty forgettable. 

I was talking this over with a friend of mine and when I said "best game of 2012? GO!", it was followed by a long pause and then a "I dunno".  When we sat and thought about it for a while, we couldn't think of a game that either of us had played, released this year, that blew our minds or really stood out.

Still, that doesn't mean I don't have a pick for my personal favourite of the year, it means I just don't have a list.  So, my personal favourite game of the year is........

The Legend of Grimrock for PC!  I found it to be extremely enjoyable and got a kick out of playing an old school dungeon crawl again.  Sure, it wasn't as obnoxiously designed or as difficult as classics in the genre (stuff I like by the way), but it was still a lot of fun and probably the only game from this year that really sticks out in my head.  Also the dungeon editor was a nice feature though I haven't bothered to do anything big in it.

If I had to name a runner up it would be Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition but that technically came out 2011, so I don't really know if it counts or not.  But who cares, PC gamers got to enjoy it and the new content was just swell.

Hopefully 2013 will be a little more memorable

The Legend of Grimrock Dungeon Editor

Do you remember this game?  Fuck yeah you do!  For anyone who missed the posts I made about this one, it's an awesome dungeon crawler game that has a proper old-school vibe to it, and it's a ton of fun so go buy it right now!

What's even better though, is that the Dungeon Editor has just been released FOR FREE, and it allows us non game designers to have a crack at designing our own dungeons for people to download and have a crack at.  Here is an example of what it looks like

Unfortunately, the "Fuck Yes" dungeon will not be available for play any time soon.  That said, fucking look at this thing, it's incredibly simple to use and navigate and the developers have not really put any limitations on this tool, so you're free to come up with whatever devilish traps and designs you think are best.

On top of this, the Steam Workshop allows you to easily share you creations, and if it ends up being really fucking good, it's a good way to get your adventure noticed.  So what the fuck are you waiting for?! LETS GET CREATIVE!

Now that's some bullshit #9: Infinitely Respawning Enemies

I can't believe I've been reduced to making a post about this fucking topic, it should be obvious to developers that putting in an infinite amount of enemies in a section is bullshit, so why do they fucking do it?
So let me tell you a story, about how I became all frustrated and red faced about this topic.  I am currently playing Etrian Odyssey on the DS, a fun little dungeon crawler sort of similar to that Legend of Grimrock thing, but the combat is all turn based and encounters are random and character management is completely different....OK so it's NOTHING like Grimrock, but you have to draw your own fucking map so shut up.

Anyway, to illustrate my point, I'm going to show you a picture!

So you see those two purple arrow things?  They are called FOEs, and they are basically big nasty monsters that you can kill for better rewards and shit.  However in this case, the monsters are just ants, ants with high defence and the ability to call for help.  Now that doesn't sound so bad, it's not exactly uncommon to have enemies in RPGs that do this kind of thing, BUT, when you kill one of these FOEs, another one will take it's place straight away.  It's fucking arse because the ants in this particular corridor have something like 3 different respawn points, so it's almost impossible to make any fucking progress.  On top of that, if you manage to be unlucky enough to fight them on one of the respawning squares, you're just fucked, the fight will never end and you should just run.

But you know what?  As I'm sat here venting about this particular corridor, which I'll get through by the time the next subway trip is over, I can't actually think of another game that has this, apart from fucking Doom, and even then it's only on the highest difficulty. 

I know they exist, I've seen it, experienced it, raged at it before but I can't bring another title to mind right now.  But the point still fucking stands, don't have your enemies respawn till the end of time, it brings everything to a fucking standstill and does nothing but piss off and bore the player as he or she kills the same fucking enemies a million times over.

So if you are a game developer, and you put this kind of thing in the game, go and fuck yourself with a burning cattle prod.

Those "Oh crap..." moments

Occasionally when you're playing a game, something will happen where you have to stop, take a minute and get slightly worried as to what is coming ahead.  These moments aren't brought about by the game being bad.  It's not "oh crap things are about to get worse", it's more "oh crap shits about to go DOWN!"

For the example I'm providing today, we return to the dungeons of Grimrock

Everything up to this point has been made of stone, then you hop down some stairs and BAM! oppressive metal prison walls everywhere.  The corridors seem darker, there isn't a natural light source in sight and as soon as you step through that door, all you can see are pits and ominous shadows.  On top of that, you get a quite worrying little message from your telepathic friend (not spoiling anything)

I stopped just past that door, so I don't know whats coming next, but it ain't gonna be pretty.

Legend of Dance Dance Revolution

So this morning I'm playing through some Legend of Grimrock to pass the time before work when I come across a very strange room.

First of all, I have to take a little moment to explain what I was even doing in this room at all.

These big iron doors are found in every level of the Grimrock dungeon.  You are not required to go through them in order to beat a floor, but behind them is usually some kind of item that will be extremely helpful later on, so it's a good idea to go out of your way to get them open.  Every door has a different opening method, usually some kind of puzzle, but the solution to this particular door is not exactly what I would call conventional.

As soon as you step into the first tile of the room, the middle face statue shoots a magic bolt at you.   The bolts do no damage to the player, so it's OK to get hit by them and if they hit the wall behind you, they activate teleporters that take you back to the entrance of the room.  So the solution is pretty obvious, don't let the magic bolts hit the teleport switches, but holy shit, I didn't expect them to flow as fast as they did.  It's times like this I really wish I was recording because the speed at which the bolts were coming down was like something straight out of a rhythm game.  Luckily I'm pretty darn good at Rhythm games so I beat it pretty quickly.  When you do beat it you get an achievement in Steam

So obviously this was a reference to the widely popular rhythm genre (even more obviously Guitar Hero).  A fun little distraction and an unexpected little event in my dungeon crawler.  Just felt like sharing.

The Legend of Grimrock

This is a post I've been saving for a while, because I'm going to flat out gush about this game, holy shit is it good.

So, to give a little background on what Grimrock is exactly, first of all you have to understand the roots of this genre.  A long long time ago, on the old computer systems that most of today's gamers have probably never even heard of, there were games such as The Bards Tale and Wizardry.  Wizardry is the example I will focus on here because this is what's most similar to Grimrock.  Basically, in Wizardy you had a party of dudes, and you had to fight your way through a maze like dungeon to complete whatever the objective was for the scenario you were playing.

Like a well aged cask of wine

These games were really quite difficult and lacked an auto mapping feature, so you had to sit there with a stack of paper and draw the maps yourself, or be doomed to getting lost in the dungeon forever.  Then the genre just kind of died off for a long time, or at least for a significant portion of my life I didn't encounter any of these kind of games.

But now, in 2012, the old school maze dungeon crawl game is making a comeback!  I can't really explain why but Japan seems to have a huge love for this genre of game.  Huge numbers of Wizardry remakes have been released over the years as Japan exclusive games and on top of that we've had some really good ones come out for portable systems over the recent years, most notably Etrian Odyssey and The Dark Spire (which even had a setting to make it look like a Wizardry game)

Then in April of this year, we were given The Legend of Grimrock, and good lord Jesus Christ on a stick is it really fucking good.

Holy shit even the menu screen makes me wet my pants with excitement.  Where it says Dungeon, you can only select Grimrock right now, but in the future there is plans to release a map editor so people can create their own scenarios, which sounds fucking amazing, something I'm going to drop on ASAP.  The difficulty setting we'll come back to later.  Then there is the obvious option to make your own party, and then the really cool feature, to turn off the auto map!  That's right folks, if you're a die hard pen and paper dungeon crawl kinda guy, break out those old maths workbooks and get doodling because you're gonna have a crap ton of fun plotting the dungeon here.

So the game itself follows your party of 4 prisoners as they get thrown inside the mega jail known as Grimrock.  It is then up to you to guide your 4 characters to the bottom of the dungeon and escape from the damn place, a feat easier said than done.  The one thing I really love about this game is the atmosphere, the tower of Grimrock is actually a really intimidating place to be, and when you start out basically naked and with no knowledge of whats ahead, every step feels dangerous as fuck.

Of course, there isn't much plot aside from "get to the bottom" but it still manages to throw in a bit of mystery in the form of strange text based dream sequences that pop up occasionally when you sleep.

I still don't know who or what it is, I have an idea but I really won't know until I get to the bottom.  Is it a trap? is it salvation?! Holy shit it's so fucking exciting!

Despite what I'm going to say in a later paragraph, the games design is really good too.  Grimrock feels alive, it feels like it's swallowed countless people before you and the horrible creatures that lurk the corridors can't wait to get hold of their next meal.  The game is also filled with puzzles that really make you feel like whoever built Grimrock, really didn't want anyone to get out.  The whole journey feels futile, but you MUST press on, you MUST not be another namless victim who just rolled over and died and the prospect of an seemingly unescapable dungeon.  Basically what I'm trying to say is the game does a really good job of immersing the player, and everyone fucking loves immersion, it's all you ever fucking hear about nowadays.

Wall face demands you solve his easy puzzle!

That is not to say the game is flawless, there are some glaring issues here.  First of all the way the game looks can sometimes be a bit dull.  Sure the dungeon changes wall texture the further down you get, but it just copy-pastes the same wall textures over and over and over and over and it can get a bit tiring to look at sometimes.  Sure, I mean you're making a game in a genre where the graphics used to be wire frame, but c'mon, in this day an age you can do a little more. 

What most of the game has looked like so far for me

 The puzzles are also an issue with this game with none of them being really that challenging at all.  Sure, a room with a maze of teleporters may look daunting when you first come across it, but the solution ends up being a cakewalk.  Hopefully this will be remedied with people designing some really fiendish dungeons in the map editor.  My final issue with this game is the enemy design.  You will fight the same snails, skeletons and crabs so often that it begins to lose all meaning after a while, the same strategy will work every time so combat becomes just a little bit of a bore in prolonged play sessions.

Which leads me to say, if you are new to this genre and are interested in Grimrock, avoid talking to die hard dungeon crawlers like the plague.  The game is really, REALLY good, but you're hardcore player will scream "casual" at Grimrock and may do everything within his power to have to play other, more skin rippingly difficult games in the genre.  I agree that they've made it a lot easier and more accessible, but that isn't a bad thing really.  The more people playing this great genre the better, and the casuals of today will be designing your super fiendish dungeons tomorrow, so deal with it.

So with the steam sales in full force, pick it up and give it a go, it's well worth the $15 you pay for it, and even more so if you manage to get money off during the summer.  If you're looking for a modern take on an old school gaming experience, you can't go wrong with Grimrock.

Below is a load of screenshots I took that I didn't use in my gushing session.  Will post updates as I play more