Back in the 2-button joypad era, there wasn’t a lot of room for gameplay instructions. Instead, games like Mario and Sonic were structured such that you will learn the use of certain buttons and the purpose of characters in the game as you perform actions. In Green Hills, you’re introduced to speeding through loops and as you jump blindly into nothingness when you’re launched at highspeed, you’d inevitably either kill an enemy by jumping into him, lose your coins by landing on an enemy when you aren’t curled or land in a roll of coins. No matter your intentions, there’s immediate payback for your actions and that’s where the fun is at. Player actions are simpler to predict for sure when there’s only one or two possible actions.

I’d consider games like Sonic casual because they’re easily accessible no matter your skill level. If you look at modern successful iPhone/iPad games, they’re structured around the same principle as Sonic. Angry Birds has the same payback system in place. No matter how you launch your bird the first time, you’re likely to see results in how the building breaks and learn from there. The breaking wood and the score multipliers are a similar concept to coins in Sonic and the question blocks in Mario. Tiny Wings rewards the players with coins no matter how rubbish they are as well and the XBLA/PS3 remake that is Pac-Man Championship Edition gets players to learn the worth of coins the same way too – by gifting it to them for little effort.

The takeaway from this is that the difficulty curve can be separate from the reward scheme. While difficulty ensures that the player is challenged each time he plays, being constantly rewarded helps the player learns as well and boosts the player’s ego. It counteracts with the difficulty, encouraging the player and creating a sense of progress.

As the planet counts down to doomsday, the race heats up and cumulates in a neck-to-neck finish with his nemesis, Machine Head where the both of them then utilize some special metal-stripping, bone-breaking, face-melting Nitro boost – JP on his car and Machine Head, uhm, he just swallows the Nitro pill. Then of course, all hell breaks loose. Watch the trailer.

Now get this. The trailer actually looks like the movie makes sense and it’s actually kind of boring when you compare it to the movie experience. Redline is produced by Madhouse, the studio responsible for Deathnote (didn’t watch that) and Cardcaptor Sakura (it’s bizarre too) and features voice talents like Takuya Kimura who I know from the Gatsby commercials (he’s more famous than that, yes).

Redline is like an illegitimate love child between a Lady Gaga MTV and Speed Racer who’s been smoking crack his whole life. It will cause epilepsy but it’s like watching a train wreck – you don’t know what to make of it but it’s so entertaining and captivating.

Oh yea, I think there’s a love story somewhere too although that doesn’t quite make sense either. But then again, love isn’t rational right?

It fails to work on all browsers I’ve tried for the new Mac OSes – Firefox, Opera, Chrome – and doesn’t run either on my MacBook Air which runs on Lion OR my office computer which runs on bland old Windows 7 (Firefox, IE, Chrome ).

I finally got off my ass today to figure out what’s wrong apart from the obvious which is that less people using eBanking means less work for UOB. I found a pretty simple way not to solve the problem but to bypass it.

1. Using the included Safari browser on your Mac, click on Safari > Preferences on your menu bar.
2. Select the Advanced icon and check Show Develop menu in menu bar. What this does is to unlock a menu that allows developers to select different browser options.
3. Click on Develop>User Agent > Safari iPad

iPhone or iPod Touch works too but I prefer iPad just because the screen size is most similar to a monitor’s.

Now reload the page and it works.

I really doubt that no one’s complained to UOB about this and if it works with a bypass, I really doubt if it’s that hard an issue to resolve.

If you know anyone who’s been frustrated by the same issue, send them to this post.

A scene from a supermarket in Harbin, China.

Hitler.

WTF is this? The ‘phones are completely wireless (har har!) and are basically hollow tubes of plastic moulded to a stethoscope-like form. Yup, the hollow, wireless tubes are not a mistake.

Each set of stetho…I mean, headphones come with white sponge cylinders that you’ve to fit over the ear area or risk poking out your eardrums (I think). There’s some  means to adjust the height of the headphones but I’m not too sure what use that is.

These headphones work by transporting and amplifying the sound from the holes in your armrest to your ears. It’s not like a modern day version of string-and-cups because that requires more technology. This is like a sound-hose. If you pull up the armrest and listen carefully, you can actually hear music coming out from it.

Ridiculous.

Or sheer genius.

I finished Ghost Trick this week and I think the game highlights an annoying trend in what games are lauded for these days. It scored a whopping 83 on Metacritic and has unanimously positive user reviews. The game’s visuals are very amazing and I daresay unheralded on a DS and that distracts from the lack of gameplay. I would consider this an adventure title in the genre of games like Space Ace. Simply put, Ghost Trick plays like a complete animation where events are triggered by performing the right (prompted) action that doesn’t stress you too much on dexterity and coordination speed.

The amount of art effort in there is crazy. Each scene seems custom-animated and scripted and it doesn’t seem like game events can be automated in the sense that actions yield different results in different scenes. Though impressive, that is my main grouse with the game flow. Objects sometimes react completely contrary to what is expected and the learning comes in the form of having to repeat scenes from the beginning to get the right solution. It’s homage to the old days of gaming where you wouldn’t know where a portal or a deadly enemy is until you are killed the first time and I’m sure a lot of people get the AHA! moment but it doesn’t make you feel smart at figuring out the solution because you’re prompted way too often. That AHA! moment happens because you’ve played that scene before and have seen the solution. It’s a cool mechanic in a way but would probably be more rewarding if they ease up on the prompts.

Towards the 3/4 mark, the game starts to introduce new mechanics to spice things up and there are some scenes where you get new abilities to learn ONLY for use during a scene or two. It feels rushed and artificial. That’s also when more prompts are added so you know exactly what you’re supposed to do with the newfound skills. That’s something I really hate too. I’m sure the prompts are added after playtesting results conclude that no one knows what’s going on. It’s the same with the story where everything important suddenly reveals itself (rather ridiculously too) towards the last quarter of the game in very lengthy cutscenes.

Being guided with text instruction throughout makes a game no-fail but it isn’t good design. I think the reason why people are engaged in it is because it’s instant gratification. You don’t need to be frustrated repeatedly or have to pause to think before ‘getting’ it. The smooth-as-Marvin-Gaye animations also help I’m sure because it’s eye candy and no one likes to be distracted from eye candy by unimportant things like pfft, gameplay right?

When it comes to being engaging without frustrating the player, I remember Freddi Fish being a great example of a good balance but my memories of it might be fogged by the ignorance of childhood.

I’ll be playing 9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors next and from the first 10 minutes, it feels a bit boring too.

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I appreciate how intuitive the WordPress template is and I find myself using the Thematic Framework (again) as a basis to start coding from. It’s simple, elegant and you can get a workable template pretty much right out of the metaphorical box. If nothing else, this time round, I’ve become acquinted with the use of Child Themes to customize WordPress with. Very useful and did I mention elegant yet?

My mobile phone service provider is a riot. There are now anti-spam laws which require advertisers to have an unsubscribe message with each SMS sent and you can complain to your service provider if you’re receiving unsolicited messages. There’s nothing much you can do though when your service provider’s the one spamming you.

Hey, at least they waited a week before trying their luck again!

I pre-ordered these Joe Ledbetter piggy banks at the last comic convention here and just got them over the weekend. Check out his blog here for more cool figures. I quite like the mutant bunnies too mostly because they’re 12″ each. They’d make great (expensive) lawn ornaments.