Can’t Stop The Beat

[EDIT: Big thanks to Grey for getting the Blog of the Day award for Games for August 27, 2006!

— JZ]

A number of years back there was a game that consistently drew me to arcades around the country. It was called “Punchmania”, and as you might guess it involved punching the arcade machine. It had a story and stages to it based on the anime “Fist of the North Star” (aka Hokuto no Ken) and you could play as Kenshiro, Rei, or even on the hardest difficulty Roah (where you would in the end have to beat the good guy Ken). You had to punch six pads as they emerged from the machine – the trick was to hit them at exactly the right moment when the light came on, and not to use too much force. At the end of each stage you had to perform some special Hokuto or Nanto move to finish off the opponent – usually something like punching the pads 100 times in 5 seconds. It was highly fun and very addictive, and I probably spent a lot of money on it overall. After extensive playing I began to find that I would see lit up pads when I closed my eyes, imagining the timing of when to hit them.

After 3 weeks of extensive playing of Stepmania - which has become a lot more concentrated lately as I try harder to better myself - I find that I’m suffering something similar. When I close my eyes I see arrows. Multi-coloured arrows float up through my head and I imagine the steps I would have to make to them. And it’s a lot worse than it was with Punchmania – happening much more frequently, especially first thing in the morning or going to bed at night. When half asleep is the worst time – I end up trying to do steps and waking myself up (as documented previously).

Playing Stepmania has made me realise a few things about my other gaming interests. Firstly, I don’t think I’ll ever again play a single game as much as I’m playing this right now – it’s simply unhealthy, and I’m not in any way comfortable with how my mind is becoming obsessed with the game. Secondly, the reason I liked Punchmania yet mock DDR games was mostly due to its theme – I would never have played it if it wasn’t based on Fist of the North Star. The game itself was fun, but not as fun as the anime behind it which generated a real love for the game. Thirdly, and most importantly for me, I’ve realised the reason I enjoy RPGs so much. It’s that sense of continuous progression, constantly improving your character with higher levels and new skills, stats, equipment etc, making you more able to face greater challenges. That joy I’m experiencing somewhat with Stepmania, and the character I’m improving is of course me.

But it can’t last forever. There will come a point where I can do no better, and it’s not like I can just start again from level one. This satisfaction from improvement is ultimately doomed to disappear, and without any story or entertaining theme to the game there will no longer be a reason to play. For me the game has only that one major drawing point, and it’s short-lived. Even now I find there are many songs I like that I don’t dance to any more, because they only have low level difficulty settings. Now that I’m beyond them what’s the point?

I do have a competitive streak in me, so if I had people around me who played as well then I would be tempted to keep playing in competition with them, rising myself to even greater heights. Like this guy here has, or even more impressively this other guy. Looking at those videos has made me realise just how poor a player I am in comparison with the masters.

I’ve said goodbye to 4 and 5-foot now – I only use them for warm-ups at the start of a session. I thought they were hard before, but trying out 6-foot difficulty songs has been a whole new level of intensity. As I said before, 4 and 5 foot songs use a lot more in the way of half-beat steps and diagonal jumps. 6-foot goes beyond that by making most of the steps either jumps or half-beats or some other difficult manoeuvres, all whilst vastly increasing the speed and density of arrows. This basically means you’re pretty much constantly moving both feet, as opposed to having little rests for one or more feet every so often on the easier levels. Dancing can get frantic and desperate as you try to keep twisting your body round to quickly hit the steps. There’s no more time for thought and planning – you need to react instantly to everything you see.

So how have I been doing at this new difficulty level I’m forcing myself into? Well, mixed results overall. The easier ones I can get As and Bs on, the harder ones Es and Fails. To be honest I’m simply awful at timing the half-steps, and I get the diagonal jumps wrong a lot. My proudest performance has been getting a B in “No Limit”, which is apparently from one of the actual DDR mixes. I’ve found it to be very hard, but kept pushing myself to get a good result. When I got that B I actually felt like I was dancing in the same way as the guy in the first video above, with my feet constantly flowing between the buttons at high speed.

One thing I’ve been trying to figure out is the five variables of Stream, Voltage, Air, Freeze and Chaos. Every song has different maximums for these at different difficulty levels, and your performance at the song determines how well you do in each category. Air seems to be for jumps, which I usually do well enough in, and Freeze seems to refer to holding steps, which I’m often perfect at. The other 3 I’m normally okay with, apart from Voltage which I’m sometimes awful at, but I can’t figure out what they mean. In one song on which I hit every step I got Voltage to maximum, so it could maybe have something to do with combos. What’s interesting about these ratings is that the maximum values for each seem to be determined by the game itself, so it’s a way of telling how hard the song really is, irrespective of how the step-chart maker has set the difficulty rating.

I’m now into the last week of my 30 day trial of Stepmania, and I feel I have come very far. Dancing to “No Limit” has forced me to play in a different way – something more chaotic; far faster with less time to think, and both feet constantly moving. I need to improve my timing with this style of play, but it’s putting me on the path to mastering the higher difficulty levels. I’m a completely different type of player than I was 22 days ago when I first got my feet on a dance mat. And so now I feel I’m ready to face the machine. That’s right, tomorrow I will be going to an arcade to find an actual DDR machine (or one of its clones) to test my feet and my skills against the might of the real Dance Dance Revolution.

Positives: My computer isn’t good enough to run Stepmania whilst also recording a video of it – quite a handy excuse not to put up embarrassing clips for now. Oh, you want to know something positive about the game? Well, er… let me get back to you on that one…
Negatives: The arrows, the arrows! They’re all around me, make them stop!! For the love of god please stop!!!
Overall so far: Expert DDR players are scary. But even scarier is the feeling that I don’t think it would take me that long to actually get up to that level of play. But that would involve more arrows invading my head, and they scare me even more…

J.C. it’s a Tauren! Get in the car!

Session Time: 90 minutes. Two days ago. Job hunting sucks. ahem Progressed Shalalah to level 10, cleared out a couple of quests, and managed to still have rest left over.

As stated, job hunting sucks. That’s been the key thing preventing me from playing; after eight hours searching Monster and HotJobs fending off people who think I’m perfect for this wonderful over-the-road trucking position in East Buttcramp, Wyoming, or (my personal favorite) the guy trying to get me into a check-fraud plot, saying, “C’mon, they can’t all be scams!”, I’ve very little desire to sit in front of a computer and grinding away at something even more demeaning and less rewarding. Still, in between doing loads of laundry Wednesday morning, I did manage to get an hour and a half of play in.

I will admit to one important thing, though: the game is growing on me. I’m finding it a lot easier to slip into the world as soon as I log in. Probably the most telling fact is that, after grinding out 20 kills for a quest, I actually smiled. Yes, I enjoyed it. I had fun, dammit, and that scares me.

There was a sense of satisfaction about surviving a battle with two or three wolves by the most narrow of margins. It’s a sort of a cheap thrill as I’d accidentally gimped myself (I left my Earth Totem in the bank before realizing that I need it to cast Earth Totem spells– who’da thunkit?). Still. There’s nothing that was done that couldn’t have been done in any other RPG– hell, you don’t even need an MMO to do seat-of-the-pants escapes (just play the original Final Fantasy). So what exactly is it?

I mentioned this a little while ago, but the Taurens are the ’spiritual’ members of the Horde. A Tauren takes harmony with nature seriously; the land is something to be respected, not exploited. The world is made of what is material and what is immaterial, and harmony between the two sides of the world is of the greatest importance. We have been charged by the spirits who watch over us to safeguard the land for our children and our children’s children. It’s not just our sacred duty, it’s the meaning of our existence. The Tauren is the steward of Azeroth.

And I got all of this knowledge just from playing through the quests and accomplishing the tasks. Not even paying too much attention to the in-game text. Just the general feel of the quests. That’s saying something.

It’s often been asked, “Why play through an MMO at all? It’s just grinding.” And yeah, for the most part, an MMO is based solely around killing things and optionally selling their loot. But what keeps a player interested is the story, the content, the trappings surrounding the grind. Can you get a good story from other places? Of course; they have these things called ‘books’, I don’t know if you’ve heard of them. Can you get the story of Azeroth from a book? Wait, bad example…

I’ve always held that the greatest role-playing game in the world will be the one where the players’ actions directly dictate the way the overall story plays out. No individual quests that everyone gets, no mindless grinding. Everyone has a task, and every task serves a purpose to advance a story. When the players accomplish a task or fail to do so, the development team puts out content for their next move. I want to see a ginormous, developer-DMed game of Dungeons and Dragons where nobody feels insignificant for even a single second.

Of course, that means PvP combat. Which is what I’m planning on doing very soon now…

The Good: The story is starting to pick up. I’m getting ready to leave Mulgore and head out into the Barrens for the first time. Cross-server PvP sounds interesting.
The Bad: It’s not entirely clear what was changed in the latest patch that directly affects me, but apparently it was important. I still feel extremely lonely.
Opinion Change: Improved, but this may just be a case of “absence makes the heart grow fonder”. I suppose the game could work well as a casual pursuit, but for my part I intend to go hardcore this weekend. Namely because no placement agencies work on Saturday.

New Writer, Fresh Meat

Just wanted to take this opportunity to welcome our newest writer, Mike “PsychoPez” Hasko. He’ll be covering Madden NFL ‘07 for the PC for us. And believe me when I say nobody has more hatred for John Madden than Mike Hasko. Please check out the opening shots.

We’re also nearing the end of our first projects, and we thank you for bearing with us during the slight hiccups we were dealing with. I can assure you we’re back in business. Incidentally, so is the other site I write for, Netjak. (That’s also what I’ve been busy with.) So go there, too.

Now, then, let’s get back to the invective.

Night Fever

It’s late at night and I’m lying in my bed, drifting towards the bliss of sleep. My thoughts are blurred and random, but through them comes the sound of music – a steady rhythm and the high-pitched vocals of the Gibb brothers. “Listen to the ground,” they tell me. “There is movement all around. There is something going down, and I can feel it. On the waves of the air, there is dancin’ out there. If it’s somethin’ we can share, we can steal it.” My mind floats around the tune, absorbing its funky beat, feeling every note and every lyric. I’m soaring high into the sky, twisting and turning with my arms outstretched. “Here I am, prayin’ for this moment to last, livin’ on the music so fine, borne on the wind, makin’ it mine.” The landscape flies past beneath me, a myriad of scintillating colours and flashing lights that sends my senses elevating further. I see arrows floating up from below me, marching forward in a summons to the music! Pointing in the four directions of the compass they approach in a steady line, advancing relentlessly towards my feet. I know what must be done… “^Night >Fever, ^Night >Fe>ver, <We know ^how to >do it… Gimme that ^Night <Fever, ^Night <Fe<ver, >We know vhow to <show it.” Suddenly I feel a jolt through my body, and with a gasp of breath I’m jerked from my dream. My foot had just twitched, trying to step on one of the arrows and waking me up. “Bloody Stepmania!” I mutter, before turning over and trying to get back to sleep.

Although I’ve obviously known about the DDR craze for years, I first found out about Stepmania last June from a friend online who liked to use it as a form of regular aerobic exercise. After a few weeks of intense dancing I’ve managed to drag myself up to the same level as he, so we had a little song-swap a few nights ago. Previously I wasn’t willing to accept any direct assistance with the game, but since I’m now more practised I figure there’s no harm in enhancing my experience with some extra songs from a trustworthy source. I also wanted to know what he thought of the songs I’d been trying, in case they were all easy as pie and I was a pansy for having any difficulty with them.

What he gave me was mostly a mix of anime and video game themes, and I had to swallow my pride and bias to dance to what were essentially J-pop songs. His choice of music was based on what he uses for an aerobic workout – with extra emphasis on the “aero” it seems. These songs involved a lot more jumping about than I’m familiar with, and that took some getting used to. But I did rather well overall, I’d like to think – got As and Bs on almost all 4 and 5-foot songs. I was significantly better at the Final Fantasy tunes that I recognised well (getting close to AA on some but not quite making the cut). My biggest surprise came today when I decided to try out the 6-foot difficulty on One Winged Angel. My first couple of attempts resulted in Cs, but I was determined that I could do better, and on my third go I pulled off an A. Further tries got me better and better, and I think with enough practice I can achieve an AA on this song.

My confidence was boosted by this, and so I decided I was ready to master other 6-foot songs, but my delusions were quickly shattered by pathetic fails in other tunes. Evidently this version of One Winged Angel is extremely easy for the 6-foot level. Still, I have some comfort from the fact that my friend considered the songs I found hard to be challenging too, and he thinks I have now managed to exceed him on skill at the game. I’m not sure I agree with that, but it’s nice to know that after a few weeks I can at least be on a similar level to someone who has been playing a lot longer. I should stress though that he uses the game purely as regular light exercise, with little interest in game ratings, whilst for me it’s all about challenge, and throughout I’ve been pushing myself to do better and better.

And better I shall get. I have asked around a bit and from what I can tell the level I’m at can be considered “decent”. But that’s not good enough for me. My next session will be centred around pushing myself into the 6-foot difficulties, and I’m determined not to stop there.

Some have said that my pad may not be good enough for the higher difficulty levels, but for now it’s holding up. However, once I showed someone a picture of my mat they came to the conclusion that it was potentially the source of all my hatred for the genre and my inability to fully enjoy the game. Not for any technical aspect to it, but due to its atrocious colour scheme – what I have previously described as “clown vomit” and “the results of a paint factory explosion”. You may find here a picture of its full glory:

http://www.geocities.com/darrenjohngrey/dancemat.jpg

For those interested in the DIY amendments I have made to improve the pad, you may observe the base of the pad thus:

http://www.geocities.com/darrenjohngrey/dancemat2.jpg

The polystyrene squares under the left and right arrows are taped on, and have worn down quite a bit through heavy usage. On the top and bottom are an old art pad and some physics magazines, giving firm support to the ever treacherous up and down arrows. Lately I’ve been doing without the latter since I find I can play well enough au natural, and my padding on the top and bottom tends to slip a bit at times.

This pad cost me £5 (roughly $8), and for that price I think it’s done pretty darn well. However, those interested in serious long-term play are probably much better off investing in a foam-filled pad that won’t slip as much, whilst also being considerably less unsightly.

Positives: I’m not crap! Well, not too crap at least. I have more songs I like now, for which the step-charts are well-timed to the music and at a nice level of challenge. Having fresh songs helps take away the tedium, though obviously that only works in the short-term.
Negatives: Disturbing my sleep has got to be one of the worst things a game can do to me (asides from having a bulky cartridge stuck up an uncomfortable area – or even worse, a Superscope). Basically I went to bed thinking about how I’d like a step pattern to go to the classic Bee Gees song, and as I was drifting off my feet twitched to the steps I was imagining, waking myself up. This is simply infuriating!
Overall so far: Meh. Can’t say I’m hating it, can’t say I’m loving it. The challenge is still the only real motivation to keep playing. I’m perhaps not as negative about the genre as a whole now, and not as biased against the players either, but I do still find the concept worthy of ridicule, especially the idea of playing alone. I’d perhaps be tempted to keep playing if I knew others who played and could compete directly with them – I can certainly see an attraction there. That’s notably more of an attraction than I had 3 weeks ago.

See, if you want to pass, you need to throw the ball, ya see…

Game: Madden 07
Genre: Sports Simulation
Platform: Windows
Trial Period: Wednesday August 30 until I want to whack Madden in the cankle with a Turducken

I’m a football fan. I grew up in Buffalo, NY during the anti-climatic (for us anyways) Super Bowl runs of the Buffalo Bills. I currently live in Pittsburgh, PA, which is a football town through and through. I’m only involved in two Fantasy Leagues this year; I’ve cut down my number to ‘really focus on the game play’.

On the other hand, while I’m not by any stretch of the imagination a hard core gamer, I’m not a noob either. My video game tastes swing towards the RPG and rhythm genres on the consoles, with City of Heroes and a small MUD to fill my MMO tastes and UT2k4 for when I have a long day at work and I just feel like blowing small fury creatures up.

Yet I’ve never been able to get the two loves together. The last football video game I enjoyed was Mutant League Football, and that was more for the option to kill the ref then the actual game play. Before that, Tecmo Super Bowl was the game of choice, only cause Jim Kelley could throw from the back of his end zone, a touchdown pass to Andre Reed, who was in the other end zone. (Even though every Bills fan worth their chicken wings knew Frank Reich, the back up to Kelley, was the superior quarterback. Norwood didn’t lose the Super Bowl by kicking wide right, Kelley did by making time wasting calls as the Bills drove down the field to get into field goal range in Super Bowl XXV. But I digress…)

Heck, the last sports game I played was an EA Hockey game for the Genesis in the mid 90s. I remember the large learning curve for the controls to the game. Most other video games I’ve played had really intuitive controls. It made sense not only how the buttons were laid out, but what actions were given to the player to do. The NHL game I played it took me a weeks worth of playing time to understand the controls, a long time since I would only rent the game and not own it.

Which brings me to Madden. Over the summer I had mastered the controls for the EA hockey game, surely this EA football game would be no challenge? A friend invited me over to play it on his Genesis (He also had the Sega Channel back then. Remember the Sega Channel? This is here for time frame references only…). The controls for the Madden game that I played were unintuitive. I pressed the pass button, but it would always float, no matter if I held the button down or I just tapped it. I would run and was disoriented by the over the shoulder type of camera.

In general, I felt lost while playing this realistic football game, and swore off Madden ever since.

Ever since then, Madden has become a phenomenon. My roommates in college would spend hours playing it, making up personalized teams, running up the score, going 16-0 during their regular seasons. The game has become more than just a football game; I’ve listed it as a football simulator rather than a football game because of this. There are modes in the current ‘07 version where you start off as a college pre-draftee. You have mini games where you go through the NFL combine, get drafted, haggle over your contract, get sneaker endorsement deals, and I hear if you’re a wide receiver, you get to bitch loudly to the press and brand yourself an arrogant asshole. Just like in real life.

Part of me is impressed with this, it is emersion into the NFL world a fan like me can, before this, only dream of. Or watch the NFL Network, but who does that, honestly? This is the part of me that enjoys role playing my characters in MMOs, to surrender myself into the illusionary world 100%, to act as if I were a member of the universe. Another part of me finds all of this boring. Do I really want to have to run drills so my in game football avatar can shave a fraction of a second of his 40 yard time? Do I really want to sit down for hours at a time to figure out how best to alter my fake contract for fake millions of dollars that I can’t even buy anything with? As much as I love the NFL, I hate a lot of the admittedly necessary behind the scenes bullshit that goes on. I don’t want my escape, my fantasy, my idealized NFL version of me to be dragged into this. I just want my NFL avatar to have a good season, end up with a rushing title or defensive player of the year award.

One last thing before I get to my nice and shiny bullet points. (Oh yes, there will be bullet points. Hell, if my NFL character gets drafted by the Baltimore Ravens, there’ll even be real bullets, this is the realism Madden 07 has promised to me). I hate Madden, the personality. Now, I’m sure Coach Madden is a nice guy off camera, a smart one too. He did win a Super Bowl with the Raiders, that’s something not even my beloved Bills can claim. As an announcer, I loath his voice and his commentary. I hate turducken. I hate cankles. I hate ‘Boom’. I hate his tautological ‘commentary’. (”Now, to win the game, you have to score points, while keeping the other team from doing the same.” In the immortal words of my sister circa 10th grade, “No shit, Sherlock.”) When watching roommates play Madden, his repetitive comments would grate on me faster than Chad Johnson can make himself look like an ass after the cameras are on. (Another aside: Did anyone see his new hair do during the preseason games? Me thinks he auditioned for the role of Angel for an off Broadway production of Rent, but was rejected because he was ‘too flamboyant’ to play the drag queen role)

So, what do I expect going into Turducken ‘07?

* The controls will be impossible for me to pick up on. The game tries to be as realistic as possible at the sacrifice of too many controls. I’ll be playing on my PC (PS2 is busted), but using a PS2-like controller. I expect a step learning curve which will frustrate me to no end.

* Sound. I enjoy the sound of everything in the game non-Madden, but even the repetitive cheers, boos, and such can get old after a while. I’ll not turn off my sound, and force myself to all of this audio horror football show has to offer. (”Let’s do a fly route again! Let’s do a fly route again! It’s just a pump to the left, the a bomb to the ri-i-i-i-i-ght”)

* Simulation overload. As I don’t have the game in hand yet, I do not know the correct name, Franchise Mode or Player Mode or what. I’m not just going to submit myself to the game, but the meta-game in the background. Control the price of tickets, training camp and workouts during the week. My fear is while this will be fun, it will become mandatory to increase my character’s stats, and thus my enjoyment of the game, after a while, and turn the fun into work. Games shouldn’t be work.

* Difficulty. Something I’ve noted from others playing the game is games are either too easy (leading to not that satisfying 16-0 seasons) or too hard (leading to 0-16). I will start off on easy mode, but if my games are won by too large of a margin for 4 or more games in a row, I’ll up the difficulty. Win or lose, I’ll keep my season. (Won’t be one of those, “Restart the game if I’m losing” types).

* Cheating. Madden games come with the option to buy Madden cards, which you can use to ‘cheat’ in games. Cause fumbles more often, throw longer, narrow the uprights when the opposition is kicking a field goal. I will play PokeMadden, trying to collect them all, but I won’t use those cards. If I’m going to mimic myself in a video game being hit by or hitting other large, grown men while wearing molded plastic protection while running around on virtual artificial turf, I want things to be as realistic as possible.

Other things are bound to come up as I play, but there’s the rough sketch. Now, back to my Fantasy drafts…hmm, J.P. Losman’s still gonna be QB, poor QB, no above average receivers to pass to, means Willis Mcgahee’s gonna be the only source of offense for the Bills…do I pick him over Shaun Alexander?