TV Shows I Grew Up On: The Cosby Show

One of the absolute best television shows I grew up on was The Cosby Show.  For those who haven't ever seen the show, it revolves around the Huxtable family dealing with the situations common to family sitcoms.  What makes the show so awesome is how creative the parents, Heathcliff and Clair, are when dealing with the situations.  For example, when Theo as a teenager says he's going to move out because it'll be easier to live on his own than with his parents, Heathcliff and Clair setup the entire house to simulate the real world - they take out all his stuff from his room and make him pay rent to stay in it and buy back his own furniture and go through a job interview to earn that money in the first place.  There is also one episode where Heathcliff eats right before going to bed and the entire episode is Heathcliff's dream that involved Muppets and a lot of nonsense.  Another dream episode (caused by the same thing), puts Heathcliff in a world where men start becoming pregnant including all the men of the Heathcliff family.  Unfortunately, I can't explain the best part without spoiling the ending, but suffice it to say it is utterly ridiculous.

Other awesome things in this show involve Heathcliff's grandfather, played by the actor who voices Panthro in the Thundercats, an episode where all the set pieces look like real life versions of a five year old's drawings, Heathcliff loves jazz and plays the trombone, and the fact that Heathcliff always reminded me of my dad.  I'm pretty sure my dad knew that all us kids thought he was like Heathcliff and so I'm convinced that part of the reason my dad hates The Simpsons is because it came on at the same time as The Cosby Show and we started watching The Simpsons instead of The Cosby Show.  Looking back at this show and the first few seasons of The Simpsons, though, I don't really blame him.  This was a far superior show (at least until a couple seasons in to The Simpsons when the writing got a lot better).

Suspicion Art In Progress

So my friend came up with a great idea for the art for Suspicion.  Since I cannot draw worth beans and I have a lot of friends who like to dress up and enjoy costume parties, why not combine those things and (with my friends' permission) use some pictures of them in costume with some image filters applied as the game art?  It seems to work for Flying Frog Games (albeit slightly more professional than I can pull off at this point).  So without further adieu, here is a sneak peak of the box art with potential filters applied:

Top left: Sepia + Drawing filters, Top right: Black and White + Drawing filters
Bottom left: Black and White + Aged filters, Bottom right: Sepia filter

Review: Ni No Kuni

Ever since I heard Level 5 and Studio Ghibli were teaming up to make a game, Ni no Kuni, I got ready to dust off my PS3 and spend a good 60-80 hours in an incredibly beautiful world with plenty of quests, monsters, and adventure.  I even got the Wizard's Edition that came with (among other things) a physical version of the Wizard's Companion found in the game and a Wizard's coin.  The game certainly did not disappoint.  As expected, the art of the game is beautiful - some cutscenes are hand drawn like any other Studio Ghibli movie, while most of them are in the cel shaded style of the gameplay.  I will admit it would have been nice to have more hand drawn cutscenes, but that's probably because I want to watch another Miyazaki movie.

Gameplay-wise, there is plenty to do just like every other Level 5 game.  If you focus on just the story, you may be introduced to all the types of optional aspects of the game after 5-10 hours.  Between helping people on random errands, hunting bounties, capturing, training, and metamorphing familiars, crafting items with alchemy, finding hidden treasure chests, and competing in a tournament, there is certainly a lot to keep you occupied.  Fortunately, the game does a good job of helping you keep track of these things.  People with errands or things to offer you highlight on the map.  Your journal is very clear about where to go next for every side quest.  Your Creature Compendium lets you know what familiars are in what habitat (once you've fought them there), so it's easy to tell if you've caught all the familiars in a given place.  There is also a progress report on most tasks to tell you how far through you are.

The game is not without its flaws, though.  During your adventure, you will find other companions to travel and fight with you.  Each person has three familiars to choose from at any time, but for some reason the other AI players never use all of their familiars.  They also have a tendency to charge enemies with the familiars that are weak but strong with magic and use up all their mana by obliterating weak enemies with their most powerful spells.  Sometimes I just could not understand why my teammates were as stupid as they were.  Also, anytime anyone casts a spell that affects multiple targets (or a lot of times when I told my familiar to cast anything), it interrupts every spell your team is casting.  So if you're trying to heal your nearly dead teammate and they decide to cast a mass target spell, chances are good they're going to die by the time you manage to pull that heal spell off.  Also, my previous post about Instant Death was caused mostly due to this game.  Not only do random normal enemies have instant death abilities (a lot of them in the last few areas of the game), but apparently some of them have that ability in a tournament where you're not allowed to use items.  Since items are the only way to bring people back from the dead, that means there's a chance that you could instantly get killed in a tournament with no way to defend yourself.   Other than that tournament example, though, it's not so bad because if you survive the combat, any previously dead teammates will be alive with 1 hit point so you can just revive them again.

Games I Grew Up On: Adventures of Lolo

One of the earlier puzzle video games I played growing up was Adventures of Lolo for the NES.  Lolo's girlfriend, Lala, has been kidnapped by the evil King Egger (definitely a theme with NES games...) and Lolo must climb the 10 floors of the tower and defeat King Egger to save her.  Each room of the tower consists of a puzzle where Lolo must grab all the heart tokens without getting killed by Snakeys, Skulls, Almas, Medusas, Rockys, Leepers, Gols, or Don Medusas.  Some of these enemies kill Lolo with a touch, others merely block access to places.  Specific heart tokens will give Lolo the ability to shoot at enemies and encase them in eggs that he can safely push around (some enemies cannot be egged).  There are also tokens to make bridges over water (that Lolo can't cross otherwise) and hammers to remove a single obstacle per hammer.

Adventures of Lolo is still one of the few true action puzzle games I've played to date.  Portal and Portal 2 had moments here and there where timing was required, but not with enemies chasing you down (stupid Almas...).  Most other action games with "puzzles" are mostly just block puzzles where you need to put Crate A into Slot A and Box B into Slot B.  As a kid, I think I might have managed to get through maybe half of the game.  In college with an emulator and save states, I was able to beat the whole game.  Then, after college I managed to beat the game on the original system, but it's definitely a brain twister and a half.

Lolo got two more games after this and Lala was not only not captured in the third one, but you could play as her if you wanted.  I think my favorite part about Lolo and Lala is that they were enemies in Kirby's Dreamland and later became staple Kirby enemies named Lololo and Lalala.  Also, given their super simple geometric shapes, Lolo, Lala, Leeper, and Rocky were my first creations in a brief foray into sculpting I had a few years ago.

Kirby about to put the hurt on Lala

Instant Death

Time and again I've come across this game design decision that only makes sense in a few places and that concept is instant death.  Instant death comes in a lot of varieties: you touch the spikes in a Mega Man game (harsh but fits within the harshness of the game), you fall outside the world (necessary for play to continue even if it's a bit ridiculous), an enemy uses a spell on you that has a small chance of instantly wiping you out.  It's that last one that gives me the biggest problems, especially when there is no way to dodge said spell.

I can't come up with one legitimate reason why it would be okay that a random, unavoidable die roll could instantly bring your game to a halt.  It doesn't show skill on the computer's part.  Since the player can't do anything to stop it, it's not a test of skill for the player.  It's like creating a game where the end result is a die roll to determine who wins.  No one would want to play that game because player input isn't even needed.

The only two cases I can come up with where any instant death is viable is if you're building an arcade game or punishingly difficult game where the purpose of the game is to frustrate the player/make them die frequently or if a player falls down a pit or outside the world where there isn't a way to get back normally.  This last one is actually completely necessary because the alternative is to make the player wander around trying to figure out how to escape what is usually a bug in the level design and then either restart the game or (more likely) turn it off and never play again.  Sure it's frustrating to die because of this, but at least it's (usually) the player's fault for jumping in a pit.

Games that do have the instant kill spells/attacks generally give ways to minimize or eliminate the chances of the problem by giving equipment they can wear to make those never successful, but that's not fixing the problem.  That's working around the problem and taking up a valuable equipment slot the player could use to equip something that makes them feel awesome instead of wasting it on something to stop bad game design from killing them.  At that point, you might as well just eliminate that equipment slot and the instant kill attack at the same time and be done with it.  You've eliminated the interesting choice from the game for all players except for people who like to gamble with their chances of success.  If that is the purpose of adding instant death, then there are better ways to achieve it.  You could give the player the risky attack so it's their choice to use it or not.  You could add a casino to your game so players can get that feeling outside of the combat.

There are board games where the winner is decided by random luck like this (e.g. Candyland and Chutes and Ladders).  There's a reason people stop playing these games once they grow up a little.  Winning or losing a game through pure luck is not an enjoyable experience for anyone.  So eliminate the random chance and eliminate instant elimination.

Review: Better Off Ted

Better Off Ted is a sadly cancelled show that I didn't find out about until well too late that has now become one of my favorite TV show series.  The show takes place in a fictional company called Veridian Dynamics that builds...well...whatever the company feels like it needs, like exploding pumpkins, test tube grown beef, or bulletproof plates.  The show focuses on the head of the research department, Ted, his boss, Veronica, his co-worker/love interest, Linda, his daughter, Rose, and two of the greatest scientists ever, Phil and Lem.

Generally, each show involves some ridiculous research product, some life lesson for Ted, a hilarious commercial by Veridian Dynamics (even better than those commercials in RoboCop), and some wacky science gone wrong by Phil and Lem (who are totally not mad scientists...).  It's got big, evil, faceless corporation humor, odd couple humor, awkward romantic situation humor, and just sheer random humor all tossed in together.  If you have Netflix, I would highly recommend you watch this show, it's only 26 episodes.  I'll just leave you with a commercial for Veridian Dynamics:

Games I Grew Up On: Careers

One of the earlier board games with both choice and hidden goals that I played was a game called Careers.  The goal of the game is to get the right amount of Fame, Money, and Happiness that you wrote on your "Secret Formula" at the beginning of the game by going around the board traveling down various career paths such as Farming, Sea, Hollywood, etc.  Certain careers' squares were more geared towards one stat (Hollywood got you a lot of fame), so choosing the right career was an interesting and important choice in the game.  Most of these career paths have minimum requirements to enter (e.g. you need to have a certain degree by going through the College career path) and reward you for going through them multiple times.  Sometimes you would get Opportunity or Experience cards - akin to Monopoly's Chance and Community Chest cards - that let you either move a specific amount, bypass career requirements, or immediately go to a certain career.

As with most older board games, a lot of the game is determined by luck (if you don't land exactly at the start of a career path you want, you can't start going down that path), so I think it would be an interesting idea to revamp this game with a little less die rolling and a little more decision making.  The simplest way is my favorite method of replacing a die roll: a deck of cards numbered 1-6, every player has a hand of 3 cards or so and gets to decide which card to use to move forward, and then draws a new card.  It still has some elements of randomness that dice have, but it lets the player strategize a little more.  It would also be interesting to have some way to affect the other players.  I don't really remember there being any Opportunity or Experience cards that you could use on other players for example, but that might be interesting.

This definitely was an interesting game to play growing up that was one step more advanced than The Game of Life.  They are essentially the same game, but this has more interesting choices (if the die lets you have your way).  It was also an interesting way to teach young minds about potential career paths, the importance of going to college, and how it's okay to want no fame or money, but lots of happiness.