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mikesuszek · 7 years

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My Magikarp brings all the boys to the pond

Before I say anything else:

Voltorb is a real bastard.

I used to like this little shitstain. Now I see it for what it is: The laziest design in the entire Pokemon universe. Out of the 802 Pokemon in existence, this little pathetic ball is #1 in the worst category you could ascribe to them. I had to Google that number, and I don’t know about half of them, but I know this to be true regardless.

Someone will say otherwise, but they’re wrong. And after playing enough Magikarp Jump on iOS, I expect zero voices of dissent that Voltorb is also a total bastard.

Voltorb doesn’t deserve its own game, and as of a week or two ago, I might’ve said the same thing about Magikarp, but boy was I wrong. I tend to think of the Pokeverse as a mirror image of real life; The Pokemon Company picks a handful of ‘mon like Pikachu and Charizard and they become the one percenters, the ones that are on all the boxes, posters, basically every piece of merchandise in existence. Would it shock any of us if photos were leaked of Pikachu doing blow off the sexy back of a Machoke in a Japanese high rise? Of course not. We all know Pikachu runs the show.

But Magikarp? Magikarp, in all its floppy, laying-on-its-side ways, is sort of the embodiment of “all of us.” We are all Magikarp. It’s the Weird Twitter of Pokemon. We adore it because we kind of pity it. We like it because we know it’s sort of useless. We collect it because, after 400 goddamn candies in Pokemon GO or a whole lot of level grinding in the main series, we’ll eventually get our hands on a badass Gyarados.

Until recently, Magikarp would never have dreamed of starring in anything. And yet here we are; Magikarp Jump is rocking the iOS and Android charts as a free download and people largely seem to love it.

I’m one of them. I love it. Mostly because its short-sighted, lackadaisical control styles match the useless nature of Magikarp itself. The game actually sort of sucks, but it doesn’t! I could quit it at any time, but I don’t want to!

The big difference now being that Magikarp is glorious. Behold:

FABIKARP.

Yes, Magikarp come in all sorts of patterns now, and among the rarest are the golden fishies, which are beautiful and take the concept of “shiny” Pokemon to the next level.

This is a good time to pause and talk broadly about mobile games. Touch games have copied one another’s general trappings for years: You have the typical match-threes, the “endless” runners, the doodle jumpers, and so on.

That last one is where you’d expect Magikarp Jump to fall, but it doesn’t. Rather, every action in the game is summed up by singular button clicks. Magikarp Jump is only a few skips away from Cow Clicker in its non-entertaining, blatant click-a-couple-times-then-wait-to-do-a-thing nature. Feeding your Magikarp by clicking on food makes sense to me. Simply tapping a button to get your Magikarp to leap in the air, albeit funny, does not. Tapping one button to see how hard your Magikarp trains by flopping against an assortment of objects extremely-does not. Where some of these events could feature some kind of quick-time event or mini-game, Magikarp Jump bypasses all that for button-clicks and hidden dice rolls.

And once you get past that shred of disappointment, it’s fine. Magikarp doesn’t give a damn. The thing jumps sideways, for fuck’s sake. Do you think it has enough of an attention span to let you tell it when to flop into a balloon pump or a tree? Of course not.

So, my relationship with this game is pretty simple: Open it up, do all the things, turn it off, then come back later to do more things, like any other free to play game. This one feels quite friendly, in that I haven’t spent a dime and have beaten three leagues and reached trainer rank 16 -- I stopped writing this for roughly two days and now I’m at 23.

By many standards, Magikarp Jump shouldn’t be considered a good mobile game: The buy-in for diamonds in the microtransaction system is way too steep relative to their usefulness, the game’s animations are supremely sub-par, the aforementioned actions are repetitive and not very entertaining, the game slams into a wall of grind come the mid-levels, and some of the more useful pieces of info and upgrade systems are buried in some not-so-intuitive menus.

Magikarp Jump is kind of a mess. And I adore it for that, because no game bearing the Poke-fish’s name should be anything more than a belly-flop that manages to get high scores from the App Store’s user review judges.

This game is the ultimate indicator that The Pokemon Company as well as Nintendo and its affiliates could put damn near anything on the App Store and it absolutely will be a smash hit. Not only does it appear to be one of the worst mobile games I’ve ever been hopelessly enjoying on a regular basis (but not at all the worst I’ve ever played, which is an important distinction), but it stars one of the ironic-to-like afterthoughts in one of the most consistently popular brands on the planet. And the user reviews for this completely underwhelming game are equally amazing. Here are some choice quotes from a few of the 1,300+ (!) five-star reviews:

“This is an amazing piece of software. The overtones of games from Nintendos legendary past vibrate through this game providing feeling of nostalgia that have never been known to most.”

“This game is flawless.”

“This game has really opened my eyes that Magikarp is not a weak Pokemon but a strong Pokemon trying it’s best to win battles.”

“From tricky life choices to a plethora of potentially catastrophic decisions, this game has excited and entertained the karp out of me!”

Just fucking amazing, right?

Speaking of catastrophic decisions: Voltorb, and to a lesser extent Pidgeotto, are a couple of assholes. The game triggers random events, such as one where I’m positive this kid is giving my trainer weed, and evidently you sell the “nugget” he hands you for money, because you’re definitely a drug mule now.

Other events give players a choice to put Magikarp at some varying level of risk with the benefit of increased jump points, diamonds or coins on either branch of the proverbial decision tree. One such event features a tree full of delicious fruit that Magikarp might leap in the air to eat, which frequently results in a Pidgeotto swooping out of the air to steal your fish away. Another event, the one my glorious FABIKARP fell victim to, features a mysterious Pokeball fake-out in which a Voltorb zaps your Magikarp, forcing you to get a new one.

Now, let’s clarify something here: Any given Magikarp you own can be “retired,” either manually or by reaching their maximum level and losing in a league jumping battle (the max level dictated by your trainer’s level, which actually sounds unnecessarily convoluted now that I typed it out). Those “retired” Pokemon drift through your Magikarp pond like the ghosts of your fish-training past, ever-present as you move on to the next fish, and the next fish, and so on.

But those victims? You’ll never see them again, ever. The game doesn’t explicitly say it, this is a Pokemon offshoot after all, but they are most certainly dead as hell. A fucking Voltorb definitely *killed* my golden beauty. My scaly, sun-kissed child. My gorgeous, mouth-breathing, aquatic idiot, literally electrocuted to death as the result of mere curiosity. Voltorb is a dirty fuck.

In some ways, particularly after learning over time which events are more likely to result in complete and breathless fatality, Magikarp Jump rewards playing it safe a little too much, which is probably the worst thing a chance-filled video game can do. I’m able to sit back, safely raise my ‘karp, never spend a dime of this game and get by just fine. Even by free-to-play standards, there are some pretty lackluster design decisions going on here.

In truth, and this is reinforced as I read more glowing user reviews, Magikarp Jump is considered good by the grace of its own existence. It’s good because we have it. Because we are able to open it and play it, so it is a good thing. It’s enjoyable because it’s Magikarp, and kind of dang cute. By real-ass video game merits, it’s the turd in the punch bowl that we’re all happily scooping our way around. In some ways, I want to shout “no, don’t drink the Kool-aid,” but it’s equally fun to kick back and enjoy the show for a while, even embrace the chaos. I enjoy this crappy game, even though I shouldn’t.

Where do we go from here? Well shit, I think it’s been sufficiently proven that Nintendo can now effectively dump out any crummy game on iOS with a treasured brand attached and backstroke in the depths of our starving nostalgia. To kick-start this inevitable process, here’s a couple ideas:

A Metroid game, except instead you buy outfits and dress up Samus and don’t fucking play actual Metroid at all, what would you even expect.

Yoshi’s Cookie, except you’re just feeding Yoshi cookies every few hours to get it to lay and hatch eggs with the option to buy packs of cookies using in-game currency that you purchase with real money (the valuation of each being intentionally staggered to encourage you to buy more, like hot dogs and hot dog buns in Father of the Bride Part 2).

F-Zero “endless” racer where you purchase parts for your hovercraft using in-game currency that you purchase with real money (the valuation of each being intentionally staggered to encourage you to buy more blah blah blah).

Literally the exact same thing as Magikarp Jump, but with Zubat or some shit.

There is no good reason for you to download Magikarp Jump, but here’s a link to its listing on iTunes so you can do exactly that. You can get Gyarados in this game after “cracking” your karp’s Everstone by tapping on it repeatedly:

Some folks are already waxing poetic about that, but ultimately Gyarados’ appearance isn’t very special and is more of a missed opportunity than anything else. Let’s not shit ourselves, this isn’t a good game. It’s just not! But it actually super is, and everyone should download it to push one stupid button and catch a Magikarp themselves.

If I were forced to grade this game, fuck it, I’d give it five stars. Let’s lean in to this madness.

#pokemon #Magikarp #magikarp jump #ios #review #iphone #ipad #iphone games #games #videogames #video games #gaming #gyarados #voltorb #Nintendo

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mikesuszek · 8 years

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Top Ten Names in Video Games

1. N’Gai Croal - N’Gai gets that sweet apostrophe while also having a last name that’s really similar to a natural resource. That’s a double-win.

2. Rami Ismail - Rami’s first name sounds like it’s short for something, but maybe it’s not!

3. Samit Sarkar - This talented and kind-hearted friend of mine has an amazing name that’s an anagram of both “Karma Stairs” and “Tiara Smarks.”

4. Ludwig Kietzmann - I owe Luddy, so he’s on this list. But really, he does have a great name.

5. Tina Amini - It’s the last name here that does it for me. Tina is great, so is her name!

6. Luke Smith - What a unique and perplexing combination of letters!

7. Mike Suszek - ONLY SEVENTH? COME ON.

8. Dalibor Dimovski - This wonderful man prefers to be called “Dali D,” his hip-hop alter ego. I’m into it.

9. Rowan Kaiser - In German, Rowan’s last name means “Emperor.” That’s pretty cool!

10. Ian Bogost - Is it “BO-ghost?” BO-gAHst?” I hope Ian keeps up his decades-long commitment to never speak his last name publicly. It’s part of the allure, really.

#name reviews #reviews #video names #videonaming #naming rights #naming writes #names press

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mikesuszek · 9 years

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7 Things to make or break the Final Fantasy 7 remake

Yes, it’s happening. Plenty of good can come from Final Fantasy 7-R, the game-that’s-new-but-really-not, whose lifestream flowed from decade-old forum thread to probably-a-month-ago forum thread, dwelling deep in the pages of Final Fantasy fansites you visited only when you were trying to remember minor details in RPG combat systems.

First: Things, with a capital “T,” if only to differentiate from lesser, lowercase items of note. These Things are absolutely the most important parts of Final Fantasy 7. Forget about Matt Peckham’s well-reasoned article on Wired; fucking these 7 Things up means FF7R was a waste of everyone’s time and money.

Second: You’re free to adopt my trademark-pending “FF7R” abbreviation, so long as you appropriately credit myself with a link to my Twitter account. If you’ve made it this far and didn’t figure it out, the “R” stands for “remake,” which isn’t capitalized because it doesn’t need to be.

1. The Midgar Zolom

This is, in fact, the most important boss in the game. The Midgar Zolom is a terrifyingly large serpent that swims around the lake near the chocobo farm on the first continent, darting toward your party the second it smells the wet leather of your Birkenstocks in its waters. It’ll freak the shit out of you on your first playthrough, maybe even your second, but the borderline-phallic beast is Final Fantasy 7’s greatest measuring stick.

Difficult to bring down with your party of three at this point in the game, your team’s best bet is to catch a chocobo to outpace the snake on your way to the Mythril Mine. It’s a tough sonofabitch, but wouldn’t you know it, the game’s great baddie Sephiroth skewered the Midgar Zolom on a conveniently-placed spike (to think, the people of Kalm thought the Great Toothpick Monument wasn’t worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in public funding). If you took a moment to face down the anaconda even once prior to this, the impact of that scene does a lot to establish Sephiroth as a serious threat. With the power of modern technology, every aspect of the armless reptile’s hand in the story will sparkle in a way it never could before.

2. The trail of blood in Shinra HQ

We wouldn’t need current or next-generation consoles if the depiction of blood couldn’t be improved in video games. Cloud and Co. infiltrate Shinra’s headquarters and are captured relatively early in FF7, stashed away on the 67th floor until the stupid-haired hero wakes to his cell door being wide open. While common sense dictates that players should dip the fuck out of there, the wide path of either transmission fluid or maple syrup mixed with red dye powers your instincts to investigate whatever horrifying tragedy awaits. Luckily, it’s just the shitty Shinra president hanging out on a sword, leading to a battle with the Mako baron’s son.

It’s an understated scene that will almost certainly cause FF7R players to smile when they recall the first time they saw such PSOne-era gore. The remake could, at its best, result in this scene looking like something straight out of a horror movie if Square Enix so chooses; I just want enough reflection in the first pool of blood for Cloud to comb his hair without missing for once.

This scene actually inspired the name of Columbus, OH’s chiptune Trail of Dead cover band, And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Blood in Shinra HQ.

3. That weird Vincent sub-plot

The party member that got his own PS2 game is known for having a perfect shot and a really cool cape, but Vincent has a heart too, and it belonged to (SPOILERS!) Sephiroth’s mother, Lucrecia. It’s so odd that some of the most enlightening pieces of information on the villain that regularly appears in top ten lists start with a guy you find sleeping in a coffin in the basement of an abandoned, haunted mansion. It turns out that the former Turk’s backstory is one worth paying attention to, even if parts of it take place in a cave only accessible by riding a special chocobo. The experiments performed on Vincent leave him with the ability to turn into terrifying monsters, all of which could be magnificent interpretations of the original beasts in the remake.

Also, Vincent’s appearance and demeanor were so iconic that legendary WWE superstar Edge noted in his Hall of Fame induction speech that his 1998 stable with Christian and Gangriel named “The Brood” was based on the Final Fantasy character. Cool!

4. The start menu

So elegant! So sleek! Could the black start/continue screen with the buster sword be any better? This is going to be the very first clue you’ll have after installing the 4 GB day-one update as to whether Square Enix completely botched the remake. If the start menu doesn’t immediately trace players back to the first moment they saw the words “new game” and instead features some bullshit picture of Cloud and Sephiroth like the Advent Children cover, you’ll know that the publisher totally whiffed on the tiny nuances of what made players love Final Fantasy 7 in the first place.

It’s so incredibly easy to capitalize on a player’s sense of nostalgia. It’s a drug that sells itself. Think about it: The understated, perfectly iconic start screen is painfully easy to replicate, and an updated version with a modern, spotlighted buster sword would absolutely send a chill up at least 99% of the audience’s spines.

5. Chocobo sex

There’s no greater thrill in Final Fantasy 7 than breeding the bird-like fantasy version of American Pharoah. By rounding up a collection of chocobo nuts as well as chocobos with and without nuts, players acquire a pleasant variety of birds that cross the visual spectrum, each giving riders access to new areas of the map, because a regular chocobo isn’t capable of running in water or on mountains.

Chocobo breeding and racing don’t need a lot of significant changes, but the former lacks the kind of umph possible in the sex-driven world into which FF7R will be birthed. Pushing the ESRB to its limits with the “M for Mature” rating, your chocobos can and should have *implied* intercourse, if only to now assist 30-something players in having the gloriously awkward birds-and-the-bees talk with their children.

The vast majority of FF7’s original audience were without children in 1997. Now, literally all of us have kids somewhere in this world, but we were too busy drawing Barrett shooting dicks out of his gun-arm on the back of our notebooks in health class to develop a proper way to pass that knowledge on to our youth. Let Square Enix tell your children about reproduction via our fictitious feathered friends.

6. The sick man in the Sector 5 slums

Spoilers for those looking to experience FF7 for the first time through FF7R: Cloud is basically a failed clone of Sephiroth, dosed with some whack-ass Jenova cells by the evil Professor Hojo, who experimented on a bunch of other bros. Unlike Cloud, those dudes got sweet tattoos of numbers like they were badass lab rats, and one of them showed signs of the chemical’s effects at this point in the game.

Found in a hole in the slum’s wall, the sick guy in Sector 5 had a tattoo of the number 2 and came off as much like an Easter egg as he was a piece of the game’s story. It was a neat little discovery that could be that much more memorable and important in the remake, whether it’s depicted in an obvious or an even more subtle way. It’s also essential that Square Enix retains the botched translated line from Aeris: “this guy are sick.”

7. Snowboarding

You’d think the snowy trek to the Northern Crater would make for an awe-inspiring visual treat on newer systems, but one chunk of the journey involves some serious X-Games action. Possibly the most out of place addition to an RPG of all time, post-tragedy snowboarding could be SSX-levels of amazing in FF7R. No, I’m not expecting anything that matches the glory of the world’s greatest snowboarding game, Cool Boarders 2, but Cloud should be capable of providing an impressive approximation of Shaun White. Who doesn’t love shooting down a slope while popping 99 red balloons (the Goldfinger cover, not the Nena original)?

You know snowboarding is an important part of Final Fantasy lore when the mini-game gets a stand-alone mobile version a decade before the Triple Triad card game from Final Fantasy 8 does.

So, there you have it. Don’t screw it up, Square Enix.

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mikesuszek · 10 years

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I'm closing up the Bookie

Note: Wrote this a few nights ago, but publishing now that the final Bookie is out there.

As I'm pulling data I gathered week after week over a whole year together and typing up a column... I'm kind of sad. I'm planning on today's Crowdfund Bookie on being my last one.

This crowdfunding data experiment was just that, an attempt to synthesize a bunch of numbers (which both Kickstarter and Indiegogo failed to properly offer to anyone) for a space that I felt was potentially misunderstood. Over one year ago, I set out to give both project backers and developers more context than they typically had access to. 37 articles and 87 spreadsheets of numbers later, I know of a few creators who found the Bookie helpful enough that it had a small hand in their own success on Kickstarter, as well as a few readers that found the thick chunks of numbers even somewhat interesting.

That's pretty cool, but the Crowdfund Bookie, to me, was never about pulling big numbers or heavily impacting the landscape of any space, let alone posing as a "game-changer" in video game journalism at all. I saw it as a complimentary piece of context for a really big, new and unknown part of the games industry.

The numbers involved said as much; regardless of the misgivings players seemed to have for Kickstarter, really noteworthy and fascinating projects are now possible because of it (and as a side note: I continually found the rapmant attitude against it absolutely ridiculous and, I guess, "impatient," but that's a different topic entirely). In fact, I started playing a game tonight on my iPad that found its footing on Kickstarter. While the numbers show that it's a space currently undergoing change, crowdfunding isn't dying, which could continue being a great thing for independent developers, even if many of them find the process of running a Kickstarter/Indiegogo campaign to be a living nightmare (common theme from every creator I talk to: it's stressful as hell).

To be clear, ending the Bookie is entirely my choice; I think it's run its course. I'm eternally grateful to Alexander Sliwinski and Susan Arendt for giving me the guidance and encouragement to pursue this weird idea. Not many folks get that kind of room to experiment, and that opportunity is not lost on me. Hopefully those of you that checked out the mess of data or glanced at the pretty charts found something informative in them.

There's plenty I've been proud of in my brief time at Joystiq since I wrapped up j-school years ago, but the Bookie will be a tough one to beat. It's bittersweet. While I won't miss compiling stupid amounts of data, sometimes twice over after finding errors, I spent so much time on this series of articles that I'm bummed to put it down. This isn't the last time I'll cover a gaming Kickstarter or talk with their creators of course, in fact I'm confident that this data-driven work will only continue to give great context to future articles. The sheer fact that I decided to type out my thoughts on this should indicate how much of a toll it's taken on me, however. I'll miss you, Crowdfund Bookie.

#kickstarter #videogames #video games #journalism #data #video game journalism #crowdfunding

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mikesuszek · 10 years

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I want Space John Marston in Mass Effect 4

Those that have played through the three games in the Mass Effect trilogy know the story of Commander Shepard is pretty much closed up. And it should be. It was a great tale, but I think it's time we moved on.

I also think the beauty of the trilogy is how it did a magnificent job of cracking open a very interesting and thorough universe (literally), filled with exotic species and locales (except for all those carbon-copy planets you had to drive the Mako on in the first game. Yuck!). In reality, a new game in the series should be incredibly easy to pull off, because there's a potential for many fantastic tales that exist outside Shepard's story.

Here's the number of ways I see this playing out for the game we'll refer to as Mass Effect 4 (ME4):

1) ME4 exists within the Shepard timeline.

This is the one we're all pretty hung up on. It's really, really difficult to fathom a game within the Mass Effect universe that doesn't in some way acknowledge all the broad-reaching implications of Shepard's actions as well. We tend to expect that the universe is either left the way it is after Mass Effect 3 (I can hear my Joystiq ally Alexander Sliwinski screaming at the thought), or that we begin somewhere within the timeline of the three games, and witness it grow with the story we already experienced.

And that would suck, wouldn't it? I'm sure after spending three games watching your personal actions change the hell out of the universe, feeling as if you're no longer the decision-making, world-breaking protagonist that Shepard was would be a bit of a drag for some. We'll touch on that later.

2) ME4 is a prequel/sequel to the Shepard timeline.

Similar to point #1, though I'm sure it's also a popular thought: What if ME4 explores Captain Anderson's role in the story, as covered in the books? Or that of Saren? Or better yet, the First Contact War that saw the Turians and Humans kick off their long-lasting beef with one another (Turians always be beefin')? What if the writers attempt to patch up a few plot holes and attempt to carry the same universe that Shepard existed in forward? I can hear Alexander screaming again at the thought.

3) ME4 doesn't exist in the Shepard timeline.

This seems to be the one people will have the toughest time with, and was the root of the thought I've had recently when I think about the series (I'm contemplating reading the books again, which is probably a bad idea given my backlog of books, films and games to get through). Here's the gist of it, though:

Shit, it works pretty well for comics. You can take a superhero and rewrite their origin stories, or their entire universes as you see fit. It seems like a brand has a few universal truths, but there's room to play around. To an extent, this already exists in games. We attempt to put together a timeline for the Zelda series, for instance, but series like that and Mario (which, yes, doesn't rely much on narrative) can take a new spin on things and come away pretty clean.

There are probably other examples of this in games, but I tend to think Mass Effect could write the book on it, so to speak. We know the rules of the universe and how species operate; why not tell a new story in the universe that sort of ignores the Shepard story? Hell, if we need it to tie together, we could explore the ultra-messy "parallel universe" sci-fi cliche if we want, but that just seems like an unnecessary reach to satiate our desire to keep things organized and tidy. Which in itself seems a little senseless at times.

So, here's what I'd love to see in ME4:

Regardless if it relates to the Shepard timeline or not, I'd like to see a scrappy, anti-hero protagonist off the bat. Not a macho commander that has an amazing ship, plenty of opportunities/funds to increase his gear and weaponry and an army ready to take orders. Now that we've seen this amazing, huge universe and all it entails, I'd like to see it shrunk down to more personal stories with a character that's more, well, "real" and vulnerable. Maybe they're a space pirate that got screwed over and left for dead (I'm ultimately thinking Mass Effect's version of John Marston from Red Dead Redemption here), and they are out for revenge, slowly traveling the galaxy to find leads on their dickhead enemy's whereabouts so they can fire lasers at them. Bonus points if they have a pet Varren named Spike. Maybe there's potential for interaction with Cerberus or Aria T'Loak, too, given the whole "anti-hero" thing.

The beauty of the idea is that the timeline of events for this Space John Marston character could stretch through what amounts to a small part of the Shepard timeline, leaving the story generally unaffected by the events that we already know happened in the universe. Or, we could pretend the Shepard timeline doesn't exist. It works either way. The more I think of it, the "BioWare" thing to do here would be to drop little story tidbits that references Shepard, though our new hero would never cross paths with him. Even better, the story could just occasionally tie together, enough to entice players into speculating on where in the timeline they are (here's a thought: Our hero has to contact the Shadow Broker, but the only way players can tell which Shadow Broker it is is based on a few small hints in their dialog).

Space John Marston. Let's do it. Can this game come out right now? I need it.

#Mass Effect #mass effect 2 #mass effect 3 #mass effect 4 #commander shepard #john marston #red dead redemption #BioWare #ea #electronic arts #video games #plot #story #narrative #timeline

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