Casual RPGs, Part II: Kudos

Vespyr:
After playing Dream Chronicles, I was expecting Kudos to be another casual fantasy RPG. I had no idea that Kudos would be such a stark contrast in terms of its realism. This game was no fantasy, but it certainly showed reality through a filter: a person was largely judged by their social interactions.

Once again, I began to wonder how this game was judged as “casual” and if it was designed to appeal to the large audience of middle-aged women who play casual games. The game allows you start life as a young person, just beginning their career path. After hearing my parents repeatedly talk about how great it is to be at that point in your life, where you have so many choices, I can see why this would be appealing to a middle-aged audience. It gives them the opportunity to start over and choose a totally different path without worrying about making huge shifts in their own life. After all, we all fantasize about choosing different careers, and many of us are limited to one (or only a few at most). The idea of experiencing the daily life of someone in a fantasy career of your choosing is an attractive one. So how does it play in a casual RPG?

Kudos could be described as a more social version of The Game of Life (the board game). You begin by choosing a character, which involves very little customization, especially compared to RPGs like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. This simplified version gets you in the game fast, without the hassle of too many (overwhelming) choices. After that, you start your career; I began as a 20-year-old waitress. It doesn’t seem like higher education is a huge emphasis in this game. You can take classes, likely at a community college. These help to tailor your skills so you can get a job you enjoy.

The biggest factor in the game seems to be the social element. Your main screen displays all your friends. These characters invite you to events and you can invite them to events. Most events cost money, so you have to pick and choose. You also have to be selective in the friends you choose to invite; different people like different activities so you have to be careful not to annoy an intellectual with a fluffy invitation like bowling. Friends may leave if they feel snubbed. I found the whole issue of choosing who to invite to be very confusing. I could not find biographies for friends, so I had no idea who liked what except through trial and error. I was too poor to host too many social events.

Despite the seemingly simple, “casual” label of this game, there is a complex system of statistics shown on the right side of the screen. These include things like fitness and happiness. Happiness affects your social interactions, and my job put me in a bad mood most days. I had a hard time finding activities to do that would bring my mood up, so I spiraled downward into a depression where I wasn’t fun to be around and I couldn’t become more happy by going to social events (since people were put off by my bad mood).

The large social element seemed to turn me off from this game. I am not particularly interested in gaining peoples’ favor and participating in such activities to network. However, it seems like it would appeal to a certain type of person, especially those who are stuck at home and crave more activity. The game is fast-paced (days pass by very quickly) and gives people many realistic choices (watching TV, playing tennis, being diligent about going to class). I think this game would benefit a lot if the friends in the game could be real-life friends. That way, you could better predict their activity preferences and add an even more realistic social element.

Kudos seems well-constructed and certainly held my attention for the duration of the demo. I think it has its place among the casual RPG market, but it is more of a consuming experience than one might expect. I can see where it would be an addictive game for someone interested in social politics, but that person it just not me.

Jettoki:
The first thing that struck me about Kudos is just how obviously it borrows its game mechanics from Japanese dating sims. Few people will find the gameplay familiar, but everything from the statistics to the job system is a rehash of common mechanics found in pretty much every dating simulation ever made. In fact, I'd guess that the pitch for Kudos was founded on the theory that Western audiences have yet to discover this off-beat but wildly-popular genre, which has become a phenomenon in Japan, attracting millions of devoted fans and catapulting countless voice actresses into the spotlight of super-stardom. A word of warning for anyone hoping to capitalize on the success of this genre in Western markets: Kudos is the wrong way to go about it. Why, you ask?

First of all, Kudos completely strips any personality from the characters you 'network' with. Rather than introducing the player to new characters through a series of chance encounters with voiced dialogue or nuanced writing, Kudos forces the player to learn about his friends indirectly, by inviting them to a variety of different events and studying their reactions (these are explicitly stated for the player - for example, "Mike seemed bored."). There really isn't any dialogue to speak of, and if you look hard enough, you can almost see the statistics lurking behind the character portraits - Joe has 60 intelligence and likes football; Suzy has 90 intelligence and likes to study.

Second of all, Kudos borrows the routine aspects of dating simulation gameplay without also borrowing its crux - that is to say, the fun part. Players don't typically enjoy crunching numbers or plotting their virtual life twelve steps in advance unless it's in the service of some greater goal, and in a Japanese dating sim, that goal would be finding romance: the player is rewarded for his efforts when he 'gets the girl.' In Kudos, however, it seems that your only goal is to try not to be a loser. Unfortunately for you, you're playing a computer game where you do lots of math and pretend to have friends.

Last of all, Kudos is sorely lacking in the presentation department. Despite a total absence of any compelling visuals, the game runs in full-screen mode, and it has an interface that's about as exciting as Microsoft Excel. At the very least, they should have replaced the ugly, pre-rendered 3D character portraits with professional-grade photographs of attractive young men and women. If nothing else, that would make the whole affair a bit more pleasant to look at.

I really can't recommend Kudos to anyone near my age, but as Vespyr suggested, it might appeal to an older demographic. The only way I can see this game reaching a younger audience would be if it were to include some online component, so that the 'friends' with whom you network were real people rather than statistics. Call it Sim MySpace and write me a check.

Casual RPGs, Part I: Dream Chronicles

Vespyr:
I’ve been disappointed by a lot of my console game experiences lately, so when I heard about some casual RPG games, I was curious. What exactly does it mean for an RPG to be “casual”? Would these games have adaptations designed for the largest demographic in the casual game market, mainly middle-aged females? It was certainly worth investigating.

The first casual RPG I played was Dream Chronicles, a Myst-inspired game in a self-proclaimed art nouveau style. It opens outside the browser, filling the screen. It opened with a simple cutscene that panned over fantasy illustrations in the style of history movies I watched in school, with a more whimsical approach. The cutscene introduced the main story, about a deep sleep settling over the land. It hinted toward the theme of magic and fantasy in a lovely world.

When you gain control, you can click on many areas of the lovely background. Clicking is the basic interface. You play as a woman whose husband has gone missing, while your daughter and the whole town in under a sleeping spell. Most main characters in games are not middle-aged women, so the simple character choice strongly implies that this game was designed to appeal to women with husbands and younger children.

I clicked and clicked, as each room was a little puzzle to solve. Many were in the style of I Spy, where you would be searching for things that were somewhat camouflaged. I often wouldn’t know what I was looking for; it knew it was a key but I had no idea what it looked like or what color it would be. This type of puzzle led me to do a lot of random clicking, as it was often faster than searching. This type of mechanic did make the RPG a lot easier, especially since the puzzles were often contained on one screen, unlike the frustrating Myst. However, each screen would give a new task that felt more like an errand, making the game seem somewhat repetitive.

For a casual game, I was surprised by the amount of attention this game required. While there was no timer or real sense of urgency, so the game could be left sitting for long periods of time, it was still a full-screen game. The “casual” label for this game was probably due to the fact that it is more simple and easy to pick up. It also does strongly seem to be tailored to the middle-age women audience, from the choice of the mother as a protagonist to the fantasy music reminiscent of a Disney score.

As a hard-core RPG player, I can’t say that I would pick up an RPG like this for fun. I realize that it was not made gamers like me who crave complex, customizable RPGs with epic stories. For those not familiar with RPGs, this game would be a great introduction to the genre. It has a lovely art style and simple gameplay that may be fun for those who would not otherwise consider themselves “gamers.” I can see how Dream Chronicles may be just the escape some mothers would be looking for from their daily routine.

Jettoki:
I was a huge fan of Myst, back when I was eleven years old and adventure games still dominated the PC market. I preyed on LucasArts masterpieces like Secret of Monkey Island and Loom, and I even put together my own click-interface adventure game using PowerPoint. The idea of exploring a realistic virtual world and solving puzzles got me drooling. "This is the future of games," I thought, "and in just ten years, they'll be rendered in full 3D!"

As it turns out, adventure games were being developed with 3D engines just four years later (i.e., realMyst), but they received little attention or fanfare. This is because the majority of adventure gamers understandably moved online when games like EverQuest appeared, offering not only immersive 3D worlds but also endless hours of gameplay and quests that could be shared with thousands of other players. By the time World of Warcraft ascended to Myst-like levels of popular awareness, the older game had long been considered a relic.

Dream Chronicles doesn't change much, and in fact, it feels like a watered-down version of Myst, albeit with some pretty decent artwork. I understand that this is a casual game and that the puzzles are therefore simpler than what you would normally expect from the adventure genre, but for heaven's sake - I completed a dozen adventure games before I graduated elementary school. Puzzles don't need to be simplified this much. As Vespyr described it, the gameplay feels very much like I Spy, and I'm curious how many people will find it invigorating or entertaining.

This is not to say that the game doesn't have its market; the story seems pleasant enough and will probably appeal to the intended demographic. But in that case, it's hard to justify making this game a full-screen experience. This game does nothing that couldn't be accomplished within a browser using Flash. Doing so would make it all the more accessible to the crowd it targets; busy mothers and working women. There are some missed opportunities here - were the game browser-based, one could add new content monthly and charge a subscription fee.

Finally, it's impossible for me to assess any new adventure game without some comparison to the highly-successful and well-written Sam & Max series now being distributed through Steam. (Take a look here.) Telltale Games decided to develop the series using a low-risk episodic model, releasing one title about every two months and offering discount bundles for older episodes. The short length of each episode, together with the attractive pricing and passing difficulty, make the Sam & Max series appealing to a casual crowd without turning off core gamers looking for a satisfying experience. This, to me, seems like the smartest direction for modern adventure games.

Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon

Vespyr:
At first glance, Rune Factory looks like a happy little children’s game. It seems to revolve around harvesting and teenage romance. The game is full of character, but this fantasy/simulation seems a little slow.

Rune Factory is different from most of the other games I’ve played. It lies somewhere in the middle of Sim City and Final Fantasy, so it was hard to know what to expect. I am much more of a city girl than a country girl, and the idea of farming for fun seemed a bit foreign to me. However, I wanted to give it a fair chance.

One of my first assignments in the game was to clear a field, pulling weeds and moving natural debris. I had no problem clearing the field, but I could only clear one object at a time. After a few minutes, I figured out that I could store endless debris in my backpack, either for later use or to throw out en masse. I kept moving along the field, hoping to find a more efficient way to clear the field. I was disappointed to discover the large size of my field, and the entire field-clearing process took a whopping 12 minutes. The next day, I came back to review my progress and found that a scattering of weeds and debris has appeared overnight. After all that effort, my job was not over, and weeding would have to be a daily chore.

Perhaps my intense hatred of weeding from childhood influenced me, but I felt that it was time to get off my field and explore. My friend had sent me a hint on where to get an axe, so I went looking for the mansion in which it could be obtained. The tiny in-game map was little help, and I found myself frustrated by the lack of direction. There was no obvious linear path in this story and no townspeople politely hinting over and over again about a certain thing you “might want to do”. Instead, I found many townspeople with advice as diverse as their personalities, from the arrogant to the indifferent.

I ran around the town and eventually found my axe, but obtaining it from a woman in a mansion, which seemed counterintuitive. Why would a woman in such a fine place have such a brutal, basic tool? It didn’t make a lot of sense, and I started to get the feeling that this game was more about exploring more than achieving. It leaves so much up to the player that it begs to be explored, asking for hours of your time to wander and chat at your leisure. This structure doesn't really cater to my personality, as I often play games for measurable achievements and rewards, like an unraveling story.

I found myself continuing to be confused in this game. I played as a character that was an outsider with amnesia, and I began to feel that I was increasingly becoming a foreigner in this world. Skill levels were increasing, but it hardly had any meaning since I had no idea how I even obtained those skill points. Random pieces of dialogue were voiced, and often they didn’t match the text on the screen. The combat system was difficult to use, as I was fighting with a spade and had to be incredibly close to the enemy to even hit them. I couldn’t use the grid on the ground as a guide, as the monster could stand out of reach within a grid box.

Rune Factory is definitely a cute game and allows for an incredible amount of exploration. Aside from the oddly placed bits of audible dialogue, it seemed pretty cohesive. I feel that I have not given it enough time to explore the combat aspect, but the slow progression already took most of my patience. While Rune Factory seems like it may be a strong game, it is simply too open-ended for a goal-oriented player like myself.

Jettoki:
I picked up Rune Factory a couple weeks ago, unaware of what I was getting into. I’ve listened to enthusiastic praise for Harvest Moon’s accessible garden-simulation gameplay, nuanced crafting system, and endless sea of content – but most of this is from the mouth of my younger cousin, who expressed his excitement in the form of farm animal noises. It’s true – the game is marketed to children, and the too-charming presentation is clearly pasteurized for consumption by a very young demographic. But I would never let that stand in the way of my assessment of the game’s design, which is, for the most part, excellent.

I should start by pointing out that the story is unremarkable – perhaps purposefully so, because the game seems intent on pushing the player out the door into an open-ended narrative as quickly as possible. You play as Raguna, a boy who wandered into town with amnesia, only to be tasked with managing a farm for a woman named Mist. There are plenty of colorful characters to meet and converse with around town, and they not only have diverse personalities but also birthdays, pet peeves, and favorite foods, which you are encouraged to learn for the sake of earning friendships.

Surprisingly, finding romance is one of the primary goals in the game; players will court one of several girls in the village, and ultimately complete a series of crafting tasks which will result in marriage. While I’m not certain that this is the best message to send our children, the design is solidly founded on the legacy of Japanese dating sims, though obviously watered down and G-rated for the younger audience.

Core gameplay in Rune Factory mostly revolves around managing your farm; plowing fields, tending crops, and building additions onto your house. This may sound rather dull – Vespyr certainly thought so – but there is an inescapably addictive quality about a system that rewards the player for completing routine tasks. More importantly, after a few hours, the core gameplay takes a backseat to the numerous and more diverse tertiary goals, such as collecting resources for crafting and interacting with the virtual community.

The key to the simulation formula is the freedom and creativity it affords the player. In this category, Rune Factory succeeds remarkably – the player chooses which crops to grow, which crafting arts to pursue, and how best to turn a profit. Furthermore, the player can take up fun activities like fishing and mining early on, and the game encourages the player to make trips into the numerous local caves in order to find hidden spots where special crafting resources may be harvested.

There are some serious lessons here for MMO trade-systems designers – harvesting is so well integrated into the exploration aspect of the game that it never feels like a chore, and players are always rewarded for taking a few risks or putting in a little extra time. Crafting is similarly structured, and although it may lack the diversity of more adult-oriented roleplaying games, the system ensures that every crafted item has enough of a purpose to see some useage, as well as rewarding more attentive players who wish to craft products of the highest grade.

On a less favorable note, Rune Factory refuses to provide the player with much in the way of hints or tutorials, preferring instead to let him feel around for a few hours until things make sense. Several common tools cannot be obtained except by speaking with seemingly random people in town or reaching unwritten benchmarks. For example, the player won’t receive a hammer until he has plowed fifty tiles in the first cave and then spoken with the blacksmith, but this requirement is never mentioned until after the task has been completed. The ‘slow crawl to success’ model is reminiscent of older MMOs – pacing is mostly dependent upon the player’s foreknowledge of the genre.

Vespyr’s frustrations with Rune Factory demonstrate just how quickly its difficulty will alienate a large segment of the game’s potential market. The developers were probably hoping to reward exploration, and this would be fine, except the game commits the all-too-common sin of punishing players who choose not to explore. By punishing the player for opting out of some facet of gameplay, you are in effect making that facet mandatory – so why allow him to opt out in the first place?

Competitive-minded genre gamers may find the game’s difficulty appealing, but I don’t think this excuses the problem. However much Rune Factory may succeed as a sim, it fails to meet its potential simply by refusing to lend new players a helping hand. Even so, I’m perfectly willing to suffer the game’s shortcomings if it means gleaning so many valuable lessons in how to construct addictive, routine-based gameplay.

Stuntman: Ignition

Jettoki:
I have to admit, I've never been much a fan of games about cars. The last serious car racing game I played on a console was Top Gear 2 for the SNES, and as far as I'm concerned, the genre climaxed in 1992. Don't get me wrong - I've played more Mario Kart DS than I care to admit. But ever since the end of the 16-bit era, I've sneered at titles like Need for Speed and Driver. They remind me of flashy, testosterone-laden Hollywood blockbusters; no substance or character to speak of. So much the worse if they aren't even racing games.

So when I first heard of Stuntman: Ignition, I was imagining something along the lines of Twisted Metal. Snarky announcers, gratuitous explosions, ridiculously over-the-top specular reflections - like professional wrestling, but with cars instead of spandex. The kind of game I would never go near except by some glancing coincidence. But Vespyr happened to be a QA Tester for the game, and she encouraged me to give it a try. So I did - grudgingly.

As it turns out, my imagination wasn't far off the mark. Explosions and lens flare abound. Unfortunately, much to my (chagrined) surprise, I not only enjoyed the game, but I became semi-obsessed with it, playing levels over and over in the pursuit of more points and a 5-star rating. How could this happen to me?

For starters, it's hard not to be immediately smitten by Stuntman's fantastic production values. The visuals are stunning, and the environments are curiously immersive, with lots of attention to detail. But the real draw here is the copious amount of action. From the moment each level begins to its spectacular finale, you will be dodging bullets, explosions, gun trucks, falling structures, and a plethora of other obstacles you would expect to encounter in any brainless action film. The missions vary from disaster sequences to car chases inspired by spy movies, and each is even more bombastic than the last.

Were these scenarios meant to be taken seriously, the game would probably draw a lot of derision, but because it's all taking place on a movie set, it's easy to overlook the glaring impossibility of the mission designs. The director's sarcastic commentary ensures that it all feels very tongue-in-cheek, but at the same time, the game does a great job of making you feel like you're working in Hollywood.

The biggest nitpick I have with Stuntman is the difficulty of certain parts of the missions. Some sequences of tricks require unnatural timing, and making the slightest mistake can completely derail your chances of finishing the mission. As it is, the game will let you miss about five tricks before you fail the mission, but too often if you miss one trick, you'll be so disoriented that you have to start over. It would be nice if some of the tricks were optional, so players could bypass the more extreme sections in exchange for a lower score. Then again, the game has a high replay value, so maybe there's something to be said for the sense of accomplishment you get from perfectly executing every trick in a mission.

In the end, I don't think Stuntman is quite compelling enough to topple my phobia of the genre, but it certainly is a refreshing change from all the bland street racing games that have taken over in the last five years. "Innovation" is a word that gets tossed around far too much nowadays, but I've got to hand it to THQ/Paradigm - this game really took me by surprise.

Vespyr:
When I was hired at THQ as a tester, I had no idea what type of game I would be testing. I had hoped that I would have the chance to play some games that were outside of my favorite genres (RPGs, adventure, and rhythm games). While the game I tested from 9 to 5 was a kid’s adventure game, I was fortunate enough to test two other games in overtime, one of which was Stuntman: Ignition.

I was assigned to play Stuntman near the end of the testing cycle, so I got to see a near-complete version of the game. I tested both PS2 and 360 versions. I have to admit that there was a remarkable improvement in 360 quality; the difference in processing power was part of what sold me on the 360.

Before testing, I had little experience with driving games. I had thought that they were mainly something for guys who liked to drive fast. As I dislike driving in real life, I had no real motivation to play most driving games. The only exception was Crash Team Racing, a game that I actually finished. I really enjoyed the cute style and the forgiving nature of the game. There were no harsh penalties for losing and the game was relatively easy.

I had no idea what I was getting into with Stuntman. When I discovered that it was a driving game, I was disappointed, knowing that the hours may quickly feel long. Fortunately, I was wrong. Stuntman turned out to be a fun experience, even if I never mastered it.

One of the best features of Stuntman is how the goals are different from other driving games. Instead of focusing on a straight, boring track, the track is full of obstacles to hit, fire to ignite your car, and cars to drive over, run into, or narrowly miss. A good stunt driver would execute all the stunts. While time was an important factor, the focus was shifted from the overall time of the race to the timing of the stunts. This got my adrenaline pumping – I was hoping I’d make the narrow gap between two cars and hit the spot just as the explosions went off. This shift in focus from two minutes to two seconds in the future gives the game a unique sense of urgency that makes it more exciting than most of the games that I’ve played.

When you test a game, it’s no surprise that you often play the same parts over and over. The nature of Stuntman was perfect for this type of gameplay, where you play over and over to memorize the course and truly master each level. I didn’t improve as much as I’d have hoped after hours of playing this game, but many of my experiences were in the multiplayer levels. Multiplayer driving was a fantastic way to end a long day of testing. I got to play with some of my coworkers from the children’s game team and we had a blast stealing each other’s points. The time flew by when we got to talk and laugh and fight for the top scores.

The biggest drawback to Stuntman was probably the repetition. Some scenes can be incredibly frustrating. For example, missing one stunt can turn your car around and make you lose due to the lead car racing on without you. The five or so missed stunts allowed seems generous to the experienced player, but it really helped me get past some moves I just couldn't do, like the reverse 180. However, it won’t help much when you’re near an area with several triggered events that can give you three red strikes in a row if you get slowed down by missing one stunt. Just like Jettoki, I found that this is probably the biggest point of aggravation.

In the end, Stuntman has the potential to make you feel like a star. Yes, it can be repetitive, but like any movie, you have to do several takes, and when you do something well, it can be really rewarding.

Launch Day

After months of writing two separate blogs critiquing games, Jettoki and I finally decided to join forces and create He Games, She Games. We play the same game each week and write about our views. Whether we agree or disagree, our goal is to continue to continue thinking about games in new ways.

Welcome and please enjoy the site!