Dreamcast Retrospective Day 3: Hydro Thunder

Now this is my kind of racing game.

Screw Gran Turismo.  Get Forza out of my face.  I want a bunch of stupidly fast boats speeding recklessly through totally insane courses that have no basis in reality whatsoever and are way, way cooler because of it.

Hydro Thunder may have been ported to other consoles later on, but I still strongly associate it with my beloved Dreamcast.  Not only were its graphics closer to the arcade version than any other port, but the release date for this little racing gem was none other than 9/9/99.  

This game was one of the cherished few that I brought home with me on launch day and played the crap out of, because that’s what you do with launch games on a new system.  

And this was a game deserving of my time.

Like Crazy Taxi, this is a game born out of a true arcade heritage.  In fact, the first time I played Hydro Thunder wasn’t even on the Dreamcast, it was on a true, honest-to-god arcade machine at a real, existing, miraculously-still-surviving arcade.  It had a big plastic seat that you sat down in, speakers placed right behind your ears for maximum immersion, a large grippy steering wheel, and a spiffy throttle thingy that was a lot of fun to use.

This is why I lament the loss of arcades.  Sure plastic peripherals seem to be all the rage nowadays, and I admit I’d rather play Guitar Hero than Guitar Freaks, but there’s nothing quite like experiencing a game like Hydro Thunder in a true arcade cabinet with the sound cranked up and a big ol’ piece of tape over one of the broken “Insert Coin” slots.

All the more impressive, then, that the Dreamcast version of Hydro Thunder so wonderfully captured the feeling of its bigger arcade counterpart.

This was a fairly no-frills game, but you don’t need any frills with a game like this.  There was no needless career mode to stretch out the game pointlessly.  There was no abundance of modes that are not actually any fun.

There’s just a bunch of tracks and a bunch of boats.  You race on the tracks and unlock more tracks and boats until it gets too hard and you have to keep trying over and over again until you finally do unlock everything but then you keep going back because it’s so damn fun.

Throw in a multiplayer mode and you’re set.  

There were some truly wild courses in this game.  Sure you had your typical tropical island and icy courses.  But what other racing game lets you race through the Greek Isles, plow through some Chinese city in mid-festival, speed through the canals of Venice, venture through a post-apocalyptic flooded New York, and navigate down the Nile and into an Egyptian tomb, all in the same game?

The graphics were absolutely stunning at the time and really helped justify my purchase of a Dreamcast.  It was a real showcase game for the system’s abilities.  Sure it doesn’t look all that stunning today, but what game of this era does?  I think it at least manages not to look like utter crap, which considering how some games from the era look these days is pretty impressive.

While the graphics may be a bit of a rough ride, the gameplay holds up just fine.  The sheer thrill of racing from checkpoint to checkpoint, always just on the verge of running out of time, finding elusive secret paths, and collecting boost meter extensions along the way to keep yourself going as insanely fast as possible by mashing that boost button at every possible opportunity just doesn’t get old.  

I’ve dabbled in Nintendo’s Wave Race series before and, while I usually enjoy them, they’ve never been more than a passing fancy.  Their highfalutin wave physics are fun and all, but, go figure, racing at high speeds on actual waves is really freakin’ hard.

Give me something like Hydro Thunder any day.  It remains one of my favorite arcade-style racing games. 

Sadly, this is a genre not seen in its pure form very often these days.  With even Burnout going open world and games everywhere, the racing genre included, getting more and more complex, the simple thrill of this genre is surprisingly hard to find.  Kart racing games are the only reliable source of this kind of fun anymore and, while they’re plenty fun in their own way, they’re just not the same.  

I actually haven’t played any of the other “Thunder” racing titles, but maybe I should seek them out just to see if they still hold up since there are so few modern equivalents.

It really is a shame Hydro Thunder hasn’t gotten a proper modern sequel.  It really could be fantastic.  

As it stands, though, Hydro Thunder remains a standout Dreamcast launch title that remains fun to this day.  I’m still glad that I chose it to go along with my Dreamcast on the Day of Nines all those years ago.

Dreamcast Retrospective Day 2: Grandia II

I have long had what you might call a love/hate relationship with JRPGs.

On the one hand, I am inevitably drawn to them over and over again.  On the other hand, they almost always end up boring me to tears. 

This struggle has played out many times over my game playing years.  Unfortunately these sorts of RPGs play simultaneously to the things I love most and despise above all else about video games. 

Only one JRPG has managed to overcome the tall odds, balance all of its elements correctly, and wind up on my list of completed games. 

That game is Grandia II.

I’m not even going to pretend that Grandia II was some fantastic game that blows every other JRPG out of the water.

It really wasn’t. 

What it comes down to, though, is that it had enough of its ducks in a row that it managed to remain charming, interesting, and, most importantly, fun to play over the entire experience.

JRPGs appeal to the part of me that likes an epic story.  They appeal to the part of me that likes to travel to distant lands, to explore uncharted territory, and to explore unseen worlds in a way not possible in any other medium.

The stories hook me with their grand scale.  The presentation hooks me with its high production values.  The worlds hook me with their vast size, dwarfing that of most other genres.

Then I actually play them and get tired of navigating menus for 6o hours.

I know one of the purported benefits of the genre is its supposed value for the dollar, the epic length of the adventurous tales these games tell, but there’s something to be said for quality over quantity. 

In many areas, Grandia II hits only slightly above par.  The story, for instance.  I don’t even remember much about it, to be honest, save for that it was serviceable, a little unoriginal, some of the characters were bland, and it featured a few of the same story elements that I despised many years later in Tales of Symphonia.  It wasn’t nearly as poorly told as the Tales game, but it wasn’t mind-blowing either. 

But it got the job done, moved the game along, and hooked me enough that I wanted to keep playing the game and see what was next.  It also featured a nice, healthy dose of charming, which helped. 

The graphics were nice for their time, full of color and fantasy.  The music was probably all right, but it’s not a soundtrack I find myself repeating over and over again in iTunes years later.

No, where Grandia II really excelled was in its battle system.  This is where a game in the repetitive JRPG genre really lives or dies, and this game nailed it better than any other game I have ever played.  It was the perfect mix of fast-paced action and strategy.  Never getting either too overwhelming or too repetitive.  You were always on your toes and always having a good time, not matter how many battles you had fought.

The game had other nice touches as well, such as the fact that you could see all the enemies on the screen and either avoid them or choose to do battle.  This is common these days, but it was relatively rare at the time.  The curse of annoying random battles has kept me from finishing many an RPG (including another big Dreamcast name, Skies of Arcadia) because they take control from the player and get in the way of exploration, which, to me, is the reason I’m playing the games in the first place, not the battle system.

With Grandia II, I got the best of both worlds: a battle system that was worth playing the game for coupled with a lack of random battles.

I was a happy gamer.

That Grandia II was such a terrific experience for me is actually a bit painful in a way.  You see, unlike some other JRPG series, Grandia has relatively few installments.  Essentially there are only three major entries that I am aware of.  The first is on the original PlayStation and, being a sucker for production values, I doubt it could hook me these days.  The third is on PlayStation 2 and, according to all reports I’ve heard, the story kind of sucks, taking away a lot of my incentive to play it. 

So, since it does not appear my Grandia II experience will be rivaled anytime soon, I’ll just cherish the memories I have of it.  It remains to this day one of my favorite RPGs. 

I place it on a very high pedestal and feel proud to call it the only JRPG I’ve ever truly finished.  The battle system is unmatched and the rest of the game is decidedly entertaining, even where unoriginal.

It absolutely deserves a spot as one of the great titles in the Dreamcast’s library.

Dreamcast Retrospective Day 1: Jet Grind Radio

9/9/09 will mark the tenth anniversary of the beloved but short-lived Dreamcast, which entered our hearts on 9/9/99.  As a tribute to this special console, Zestful Contemplation will be running nine days of nostalgia-tinted coverage of Sega’s last console.  Enjoy.

Remember when cell shading was revolutionary?

Remember when nobody had seen it before?  When a little game called Jet Grind Radio burst out of nowhere and showed gamers a brand new art style, unlike anything seen before?  

Remember how wickedly cool it was?  Remember how you marveled at how much like a 3D cartoon it looked?  

Remember when the technique wasn’t only reserved for crappy licensed children’s games and could actually be considered a desirable art style?

The prominence of cell shading today is all thanks to Jet Grind Radio.  

The glory days of cell shading may not have lasted long, as the style quickly faded into the realm of novelty except in exceedingly rare circumstances, but Jet Grind Radio showed us the style done right.

I don’t honestly remember whether Jet Grind Radio was technically the first cell shaded game on the market.  It’s certainly the first one that I remember and I believe it was, but that’s not really what important.  It’s not even worth looking up.

Why?

Because what’s really important is that Jet Grind Radio is the first cell shaded game that mattered.

More importantly, it was one of the few 3D games of its day to display a truly unique art style.  With the PlayStation 2 came enough polygonal fidelity that it was actually possible to differentiate one blocky, multidimensional game from another.  No one confuses Okami for Metal Gear Solid 3.  

But Jet Grind Radio was one of the earliest examples that 3D games could truly innovate artistically; that they could bring something unique to the table.

These days artistic style is all the rage.  Throwing more and more polygons has become so difficult and so expensive that developers are finally starting to focus on what really matters: the art style.  From Braid to Shadow of the Colossus to Prince of Persia to Valkyria Chronicles, games are trying harder than ever to differentiate themselves from one another artistically.

For me, though, Jet Grind Radio was the first time that I was really convinced that my beloved medium of games could really do anything interesting artistically, though I admittedly might not have been able to put it quite as nicely at the time.

It didn’t hurt that the gameplay was just as unique as the art style.  Large, open environments to wander around in provided a thrilling mixture of exploration, platforming, action, and even a little puzzle solving.  

Anyone who ever got truly hooked into the game could tell you how much replay value it had, too.  There was tons of stuff to collect and unlock and always another reason to pick the game back up and give it another go.

That was one damn hard game, though.

I have no shame in admitting that some of my most fond memories of the game come not from playing it myself, but from watching a close friend play and show off his far superior skill.  We spent a ton of time together playing this game and it wasn’t even multiplayer.  We just enjoyed watching each other explore the worlds.  

Though it was usually him playing.  He was better, what can I say?

Ok, fine, we used the occasional cheat code.

I said the game was hard.

Our love for the game spilled over to the much-ignored Xbox sequel (and in fact we’ve probably logged more time into that one than the original), but there’s something special about number one.

The soundtrack is like that of no other game I’ve heard before or since (save for the sequel).  The gameplay still remains unique, even in the current gaming landscape full of open worlds begging to be charted and exploration to be had on every disc.  There’s just something different about this one and the blend of disparate elements it offers.  It’s more than the sum of its parts.

Incidentally, Jet Grind Radio featured perhaps the only implementation of a quick time event style gameplay element that I actually genuinely enjoyed (so much so, in fact, that I lamented the more streamlined gameplay of the sequel that cut out the feature in favor of more speed).  Painting that stylish graffiti with button taps and circular motions was far more enveloping than simply holding down a button to paint, especially when you had a gaggle of bumbling cops quickly approaching.

Jet Grind Radio got me to truly like a button-matching gameplay segment.

I told you the game was special.

Dreamcast Retrospective Day 1: Crazy Taxi

9/9/09 will mark the tenth anniversary of the beloved but short-lived Dreamcast, which entered our hearts on 9/9/99.  As a tribute to this special console, Zestful Contemplation will be running nine days of nostalgia-tinted coverage of Sega’s last console.  Enjoy.

There is quite simply nothing like the original Crazy Taxi.

There have been plenty of imitators, mind you; the franchise’s own sequels, to name a couple, both of which sucked.

But the original Crazy Taxi is still something special.

That magical blend of horribly grating music by The Offspring, funky controls that handled unlike any other game or real-world car ever created, and repetitive gameplay made for an experience you just couldn’t put down.

Even if you probably wanted to.

We give things the label of “arcade style” today, but we’ve largely forgotten what it means.  Crazy Taxi was one of the last true “arcade style” games that epitomizes what it means to be designed as a quarter-sucking arcade machine.

The play sessions are short.  The gameplay is shallow.  There’s a distinct lack of varied modes of play.  Your reward for playing is a meaningless score based on your performance.  The high difficulty and cheap tricks to make you fail will tempt you to hurl your controller at the wall.

But you won’t be able to put the blasted thing down.

Crazy Taxi is addictive as hell.  You’ll want to put up with its many shortcomings just to get that one more customer, just to boost your score that little bit more.

A few more minutes of play and surely you can do better.  Just watch.

It’s a wonderful feeling.

We call games “arcade style” these days, sure.  Dual stick shooters, such as Geometry Wars, seem to be especially fond of the label.  The increasingly meaningless branding is slapped on a great number of XBLA games.

But they’re all just imitators.

Crazy Taxi is an honest to goodness arcade title, and one of the last of its breed at that.  Street Fighter IV, from the very franchise that helped to start the arcade boom in the first place, is now slinking onto consoles with far more recognition than its largely ignored and poorly distributed arcade counterpart.  Other franchises have long since given up on the arcade entirely.

Crazy Taxi was the real deal.

There wasn’t much to it, and it wasn’t the type of game that would hook you for hours and hours on end, but it was the type of game that you would never truly get tired of.  You could always pick it up for “just one more game”.  

Even all these years later, I can still fire it up, have a go, and feel as comfortable as ever.  The Offspring screaming, “Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah!” at me on the title screen never fails to bring a smile to my face.  I may listen to the song in other contexts, but this is the one it feels like it was truly meant for.

Part of me yearns for another try at a sequel, or a remake of the original game, or a port with shinier graphics, or even just the plain old original slapped onto XBLA or PSN; anything to make the fun more accessible so I can get my taxi driving thrills without dragging out the dusty Dreamcast.

But truly wishing for such things is folly.  They go wrong far more often than they go right.  There’s something unique about the original Crazy Taxi that I just don’t think could be remade.  

The crappy graphics, terrible control, and repetition of both soundtrack and gameplay are all part of what the game was.  Changing any of that would throw off the blend and make the taste tepid and bitter.

Maybe it’s best to just let it be.  

Not everything needs to be recreated, dragged from the muck and polished up again in hopes of drawing in a new audience.  Sometimes that just serves to make the cracks on the surface all the more visible.  

I like my Crazy Taxi just like it is, damnit, and I don’t think I’m ever going to get tired of it.

MMO Madness

Time and time again I have demonstrated to myself quite thoroughly that I have neither the patience nor the dedication to stick with an MMO for longer than a period of about one month.

My problem is not so much figuring out why I quit MMOs. That is simple enough.

It is because once the shiny coat of newness has worn off I find them repetitive and boring. Doing the same quests and killing the same enemies over and over again, grinding and fetching into eternity all for virtual shiny things is something that I can put of with only for so long, it would seem.

What I’m finding harder and harder to quantify, however, is why I keep coming back.

Why, after repeated attempts at staying with MMOs, after putting them down again and again, and with my trials now spanning two separate games, do I keep wanting so badly to be interested in this stagnant, repetitive genre that I keep telling myself I should have no interest in?

What is it about these games that keeps drawing me back despite all rationality pointing me firmly in the other direction?

I think it’s a combination of things, but the simplest way to put it is that MMOs are an addiction. They are the modern variant on the old arcade machine. They are built to keep you playing for as long as possible and to suck your virtual quarters into the endless black hole that is the publisher’s wallet.

And they’re good at that.

That’s why they’re so hard to put down. Just like the arcade machines of yore, they do a great job of keeping you hooked, only this time it’s not “one more quarter, Mommy, please!” it’s “one more month, Mr. Visa, please!”.

They’re an addiction.

I can understand why people spend half their lives playing these games. I can understand why people get obsessed with them. I can understand why people ruin relationships over them.

Luckily I get bored really easily, which is probably the only thing saving me from that exact same fate.

I never thought being easily bored would work in my favor, but there you have it.

I do think MMOs have their high points. Most notably, they offer a sense of scale and magnitude that no other more traditional single player game can match. The sheer scope and size of these games is only possible when you have a continuous stream of subscriptions pouring in to finance the operation.

Mind you, most of this massive space is repetitive wasteland of some sort or another filled with laughable amounts of the same creatures over and over again, but even so there is an appeal to this setup for me. The size of these worlds makes them feel more real, more epic, and more fun when you finally reach a high enough level to move on and see what wonders await you in a new area.

I wish exploration were featured more prominently as a part of the quests these worlds provide. Instead, the old mantra of necessary addiction keeps coming back to gum up the game design gears.

They can’t let you focus on exploring because they need to keep you in one place as long as they possibly can. If they let you explore, you would see all there is to see far too quickly. You might get bored of seeing the sights and you would stop paying them money.

Therefore the focus is not on this aspect, but on killing as much crap as possible and on the “experience” it grants you and the shiny things you find along the way which, notably, are good primarily for acquiring more “experience”.

This need to keep you stuck in one place for as long as they can manage is one of my eternal frustrations with the genre. It’s why I’ve put these stupid games down so many times. Sooner or later, this tricky balance between trickling out progress to the player to distract them from the fact that the developers are tying their shoelaces together to make progress more difficult becomes tilted; it begins to lean too far to the side of repetition and backfires for a less patient player such as myself, causing me to get bored and leave.

But I keep getting drawn back in.

I see trailers and teases of new areas being added and new races to play and new quests to go on. I see new high level stuff that is tantalizing and more exciting than what I ever got to play.

What if I was able to reach this stuff? Wouldn’t the game be more fun? Wouldn’t the game be worth sticking with then? Shouldn’t I just give it one more try to see if I can finally reach that high level zenith and see what all the fuss is about?

After reluctantly picking one of the things back up, I quickly remember that I have to slog through the low level stuff first and since that takes seemingly hundreds of hours of doing the same thing over and over again, the likelihood of me reaching that level is low. The shiny cool stuff is shimmering off in the distance like a mirage of a vending machine in a desert while I’m stuck in a corner of Nowheresville killing spiders for hours, nary a drop of tasty soda refreshment in sight.

It doesn’t stop me from being reeled back in and giving it another go, though.

Perhaps the most reasonable theory to explain the mysterious hook these games have on me is their easily accessible nature. The gameplay is far from deep, but it is easy to pick up and perfectly fun, in a mindless sort of way. Combine this with the lure of virtual shiny things, the occasional adventure with a friend, and cool places to explore, and maybe the draw isn’t so hard to figure out after all.

MMOs are the gaming equivalent of a cheesy television cop drama. They’re mindless entertainment at best and they don’t even try to push the boundaries of the medium, but sometimes you don’t need to push the boundaries. Cheesy cop dramas have their place and I think MMOs can too, even for someone like myself.

As long as they don’t take over and become all that you do.

Maybe that’s the key to retaining my interest in these games. Maybe the focus shouldn’t be on slogging through the crap just to get to the end. Maybe my outlook is all wrong.

Perhaps I should instead embrace the mindless fun of killing things and leveling up and worry less about the end game. I’ll get there when I get there and hopefully it’ll be worth the wait when I do.

In the meantime, I need to learn to enjoy the ride more. MMOs are far from perfect, but even amongst the tedium there is fun to be had, and maybe in my impatient race to the end I’ve lost sight of this.

Or maybe all MMOs are tedious grind-a-thons with nothing new to offer and little lasting appeal except to obsessed weirdos.

I’ll let you know in a month.