GDR – Wii Hate Hardcore
The recession is supposedly over. That’s what assorted headlines keep saying every month or two, but forgive me if I don’t see it; there’s an absurd number of empty buildings on my hometown’s main drag, I have one friend who isn’t living with one of their relatives, and anyone I know with a job has either had it for years or only got it because they had a parent or similar figure in a place where an additional hand was needed. I sit unemployed for what has almost been half a year already, continuing to wish just about anything would come onto my radar that wasn’t fast food and doesn’t require three years of school. On the note of school, guess what a lot of the unemployed populous is doing? May as well open some career paths while they’re on their butts, I guess.
So I’d hardly call the recession “over” by any stretch, and news keeps popping up that makes me think game companies are feeling the same way. Activision’s cut their music game entries this year to two – a new entry for the DJ and Guitar Hero franchises – as opposed to drowning us in the things the last year or two, and cutting or even closing several development houses. Ubisoft has decided to take Assassin’s Creed to the bank and try to crank the games out on a near-annual basis, and Call of Duty is getting the same treatment. Sega’s also feeling the pain, probably from a number of things, but there’s one that certainly hasn’t helped.
Sega made a point to publish hardcore games on the Wii.
That's what Jack did to the budget, yes.
It seems a bit sad, in a way. Wii gamers were clamoring for decent hardcore titles in last year’s horrid wasteland of party games and shovelware, and Sega tried to deliver, giving them Mad World, House of the Dead, and the Conduit. The end result was that people agreed Conduit controlled admirably but if you’d played any FPS in 10 years you’d seen it all before, House of the Dead was a fun little diversion rail shooter, and both it and Mad World were gloriously over the top in gore and language, with the latter being a game all about creatively impaling, splitting, and otherwise maiming people to death. The games all pretty much tanked, each of them receiving critical praise by and large, but none of them finding commercial success on a platform where gamers had been begging for something. Why did this happen?
The developers forgot that the average Nintendo fanboy is a minor, for one.
Every single title of any quality crying that they’d answer the hardcore gamer’s call on the system ended up being M-rated. This is the system where everyone plays with their grandma in the living room with all the kids watching, and the solution to success was painting the box art in blood and line the in-game dialogue with F-bombs.
Am I the only one who sees something wrong with this strategy? Nintendo has had no lack of success with Mario, Metroid, or Brawl on their system for everyone, but those games never went past a T rating. The Big N knows their audience (both halves of it), and caters to it pretty well when it wants to.
I remember when "hardcore" meant "I not only put up with Kazooie's incessant noise, but I like it!"
House of the Dead had a cop that couldn’t stop dropping the F-bomb, and the announcers from Mad World had a similarly colorful vocabulary. Both games, particularly the latter, banked on the hardcore audience wanting something “mature” in the frat boy sense: the more your mother wouldn’t approve, the better. The catch here is that the Wii is a living room set piece more than a fraternity one, and the disapproving parent in question would probably be present or nearby almost all the time, if they weren’t the one playing the thing. On top of that, most of the mentioned titles didn’t even bank at ten hours, making them hard to justify 40 bucks for when a lot of Wii gamers burned through the mess of content in Brawl like nothing simply because there wasn’t much else to do on the system. These are people who’ve burned through something like a couple hundred hours’ worth of content for anyone who did much shy of instantly mastering the entire game within a few months, your rail shooter is not going to appease them.
Sega has, consequently, decided to nix hardcore support for the system.
The sad thing is that other developers and publishers don’t seem to be getting it, either. Capcom supports the Wii fairly well, but does so via a few Resident Evil games, of which one is a port of a Gamecube title (that for the Wii still looks pretty decent to this day) and the other two are, yes, M-rated rail shooters. Monster Hunter Tri is on the way, so maybe that’ll finally be the hardcore Wii title that succeeds. I wish it the best of luck. Possibly what’s serving them much better, however, is Mega Man 9 and its recent follow-up.
Pew pew.
The exact definition of “hardcore gaming” has been shifting over the years. It once meant that you spent as much time playing games as you could get away with, but now it seems to entail not only that but that the games you play be absurdly hard. Honestly I find it a bit insulting that I’m not “hardcore” simply because I prefer RPGs over Halo or Devil May Cry and it’s “rape your face” ilk, but at the same time I think curtain fire games are stupidly amusing despite my wondrous ability to fail at them simply because of the awe they inspire in spectators. Oh, and I love Mega Man.
Nobody can deny that Mega Man is hardcore. It has no blood, it has no profanity, but it sure as heck manages to appease pretty much any gamer under the sun by blasting their face off with an anus-kicking. The tenth entry just hit PSN today (as of writing this last Thursday. Ha ha! Ahead. Or, you know, months behind. Whichever.), and somebody’s already beat the entire game in under half an hour. I spent an hour in the single-stage demo and managed to finally get to the cut-off point (no boss? I feel jipped) on Normal mode only after taking the stage on easy just so I’d have time to piece some patterns together without some baseball-throwing punk giving me grief one room before the checkpoint. Kudos to that guy, and more power to him – I hit scoreboards on Sonic games, I don’t touch this (and even the former was ruined for me around the time someone finished Plant Kingdom in under a second, which I’m pretty sure is impossible).
On that note, there’s nothing barring the blue blur from being hardcore either. Regardless of which entry you pick up, you have a game that can and at times will challenge you (especially in the case of the 2006 entry with its abominable coding and Sonic Unleashed’s glorious return of the “THERE IS NO WAY YOU COULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING” traps that the series’ level design has been known for since he first appeared back on the Genesis), and be it via level rankings or chaos emerald gathering will probably shove some replay into things, too.
And it’s that last bit that appeals to seasoned gamers. If you’re game’s not particularly long, you’d best make a reason to go back, and you’d best implement the ability to go back well. One of the biggest stress points for me with Devil May Cry was the fact that if I completely tanked a mission that crappy rank was permanently affixed to my score shy of starting a new game and trying again. Not everyone can beat Mega Man 10 in 28 minutes, and likewise not everyone’s going to S rank whatever you throw at them immediately. The ability to go back and correct that at will gives lengths to games like little else, especially if that elusive top rank succeeds at taking work and practice to get to – as someone who A-ranked all of Sonic Adventure 2, I find some of the S ranks I get in newer entries to be more a reward for getting through a stage at all than one for acing it. Well, that and it’s all about your time now instead of a mixture of that and being able to seek out the big points via style and the rare golden beetle, but I digress.
Sonic Team loves using this angle and having big scary things chase you in it.
Mario and Sonic both had grasps on hardcore gaming long before Dante and his ilk changed the definition, too. The Chaos Emeralds have been around since day 1 for the hedgehog, who later introduced multiplayer, multiple playable characters, and the beast that was Sonic 3 & Knuckles, the full 14+-zone madnessfest with the super emeralds and the one and so far only appearance of Turbo Tails and the other Ultra forms. Granted, Mario had an early leg up on Sonic, having multiple (though less varied) characters right out with his brother Luigi (and later through a bizarro US port of a completely unrelated game, Peach and Toad, which also brought with it character variety). Mario 3 had an absurd number of levels to be tackled in whatever order you could get away with, and Super Mario World upped the ante even further with branching paths, hidden exits, and the Star World and Special Zone. When the SNES and Genesis were duking it out, the kings of hardcore gaming weren’t targeting blood-crazed sailor-mouthed spaztards, they were just making games that started approachable enough to suck you in and slowly but surely revealed to you their true mettle. Anyone could play them, but only the hardcore could get all the super emeralds, or find every stage and exit in Mario World, or put up with Kazooie long enough to get all the Jiggies. It wasn’t about playing horrendously unfriendly games that reveled in violence and profane words, and there sure as heck weren’t any sex minigames. Kids could play them, or even master them, but it didn’t make them one bit less “hardcore.”
What’s my point, then? It’s pretty simple.
Nintendo’s console isn’t the best at pumping out realistic next-gen visuals, by any remote stretch. It’s star games star a plumber flying around planets in a manner that’s managed to be even more of an acid trip than the concept that started Mario in the first place the more you try to describe it, and even it’s more mature games themed around that Samus Aran chick typically stay well within the confines of a T rating. Nintendo knows their audience.
Yes, gamers who grew up on those games, some of whom still play them, are old enough to get in on Madworld, House of the Dead, or whatever else, but why go with some gore-fest when you could introduce your kid to a franchise you grew up loving and both have a good time? Why do hardcore games suddenly have to alienate newcomers? The people pining for hardcore on Wii aren’t after the video game equivalent of Saw, they want the sort of thing that drew us to Nintendo back in the 90′s. If you think about it, there’s a reason for that, too. Back then, when I finally got my first console in the Super Nintendo, I adored me the crap out of some Mario. Back then, even the run-of-the-mill “meh” games like Claymates were actually pretty fun, and Donkey Kong Country fed on my lust for secrets and bonuses that Mario World had so inground into my brain. Anyone could pick up just about any game around at the time, figure it out, and go to town.
The Wii has attracted gamers in the same shoes the present gaming generation was in then. Ratchet & Clank may be kid-friendly and hardcore at the same time, but parents aren’t dropping 500 bucks on baby’s first gaming console. Kids love the Wii, and thus just about anyone with a kid anymore seems to have one of the things, and, well, maybe they wanna take advantage of that with a game that doesn’t suck once in a while, but the kids can still play.
And the kids should play. We didn’t get to where we are today off of M-rated titles. Sure, there’s that breed of gamer that tasted blood in Mortal Kombat and to this day thinks that’s all a game needs to be cool, but I personally never needed several ribcages and a wave of blood to come out of the necks of opponents whose heads I’ve kasploded. Developers seem to have forgotten what the Wii is and represents as a console. It’s not about power or the traditional hardcore experience of sitting in your room alone or with a buddy pushing your limits, it’s about bringing generations together through gaming, and perhaps in the process introducing people that one day will “grow up” into the titles that other console and PC users embrace these days. I seem to recall a slogan that embodied this.
“Wii would like to play.”
Acid. Trip.
And they’ve done that. Anyone can play Mario. If you’re not oversensitive to cartoon violence (read: would let your kids watch Tom & Jerry), there’s nothing stopping you from playing Brawl with the kids. When they get old enough to keep track of where they’re going and appreciate some amount of narrative, Paper Mario has charms for all ages, and Metroid has an intriguing continuity that keeps those interested coming back for more again and again. And while he may have his faults, Sonic’s still around, and kids who aren’t spoiled on the Genesis classics might even find those werehog bits you didn’t like fun. Maybe you can make them do those for you? Kids love flailing, after all.
I’m not saying other systems lack titles that can bridge this generation gap – I’ve mentioned Ratchet & Clank, and Katamari’s pretty amusing regardless of age – but the Wii has made a focus of it. Nintendo’s stuck it’s nose up at traditionalist tastes a bit, certainly, and I can’t say I’m particularly fond of that, but they’ve not been at all shy about making their games this generation something anyone can get in on. That’s the system’s ad campaign, and really it’s point from the beginning. In that sense, it does a dang fine job.
A side note about Sega – Wii exclusives may be out, but if Sonic can milk it, he’ll be there, and they’ll make sure of it. Sonic 4 will be popping on to WiiWare along with everything else, bringing back old-school magic just like Capcom’s been doing with the last two Mega Man titles. And on that, MM10 has an Easy mode that makes the game much more kid friendly while still leaving Normal and the unlockable torment of Hard Mode for the purists and older gamers. Some people have been seriously against easy mode in Mega Man, but given my entire point on this post, I think you can guess my standing on it.
Hardcore has a place on Wii. People just have to remember what the term really means.
March 18th, 2010 at 5:29 am
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March 18th, 2010 at 3:28 pm
A solid rant Gato
, I wasn't sure where you were going with it at first, but by the end I saw your point, and it's a good one. There's an assumption that in order to have a mature level of challenge, I game also has to have a mature overall theme, which, as you, showed is wrong.
The problem definitely is different interpretations on the meaning of hardcore. I'm gonna use wrestling as an example here. Of course professional wrestling is a scripted act, but let's set that aside for this. Normal wrestling involves a lot of painful holds, slams, striking moves and just a lot of pain in general, that's the idea, to beat down the opponent. The ring isn't a nice place, but at the same time there are some concessions in normal wrestling rules. You can't use certain moves, or get outside help, such as the infamous chairshot, which happens all the time anyway, but behind the referee's back. If the opponent manages to get their hands on the ropes then you have to release a submission hold within 5 seconds as well, and so on and such. While still a very challenging environment there are some gestures of lenience.
Hardcore matches don't have that. The term “No holds barred” originates from wrestling and similar sports, to whit the meaning is, no submission holds are barred from use, everything is fair game. If you want to grab a large piece of metal and beat your opponent's face until it can't be seen under the blood, there's nothing to stop you except them, and likewise you're on your own, you gotta look after yourself, there's no cushy safety net rules to back you up.
This is the sort of thing I take as my personal definition of hardcore gaming. By contrast, a normal game, typically, tends to hold your hand. It varies by genre, of course, but in most games the whole experience is moulded to flatter, almost grovel to the player, recently more than ever. Although most games start fairly easy, and I don't object to that, the majority of titles pad almost their entire length with a series of benign “challenges” that rarely test your abilities, let alone ask of you to improve them, and typically the only “improvement” that an average game asks of you is getting the hang of the controls over the first hour or two, after which you're skilful enough to beat 90% of the whole game because it's once in a blue moon you encounter something that builds on and is an advance of the early level obstacles, not just a colourful rehash. I'm not so masochistic that I can't enjoy such games, nor am I that proud that I sneer down my nose at them, but I recognise them for what they are, and that is a series of gentle ego masturbations designed simply to make you feel good because you beat them, rather than to engage you actively or, God forbid, set a goal that requires a little working towards in terms of actual skill development, rather than the do-the-dishes style of task that only takes working towards because of the time that the physical process takes.
Such games, by which I mean most games, offer little in the way of satisfying achievements based on facing a respectable challenge, working at it and overcoming it. Often the hardest thing I do in a game will be become fluent in the controls, after which almost everything else is application of that skill combined with basic pattern recognition. Very rarely does a game step up and throw you something tricky, and half of those times are caused by some sort of minor glitch or unintentional bad design, such as camera screw, rather than an intended and well-constructed challenge. Now again, I repeat that I neither dislike these games or cannot enjoy them, but I find the enjoyment far more shallow than a game that has some meat to it. I mean, if I really just kicked back I could probably enjoy filling in a colouring book, I'm quite good at relaxing and appreciating simple things, but I wouldn't tout a colouring book over say a really well-written novel, or any number of more advanced, developing and rewarding forms of entertainment. A don't need a mediocre title to suck up to me with liberally-given trophies and victory theme tunes for simple tasks – the sense of achievement feels hollow and empty.
This brings me around to hardcore games. I speak from personal experience here, but I have a good imagination, to the extent that I don't play games as much these days because I get so much satisfaction out of various imagination-based hobbies of mine, such as the RP here on this site. I have within my own being already the ability to entertain myself quite well, and by definition when I look for an outside source of entertainment I'm looking for something that goes beyond what I already possess. A game that I can defeat with my current skills and no effort beyond learning the controls does not give me this, because I am not getting anything new from it, it did not expand my horizons or add to my abilities, rather my abilities cleared it without any development or growth. Basically, when I play a game, I want to feel that I am gaining something from the experience. I want to be presented with puzzles and challenges that in some way, even a small one, engage and refine my puzzle-solving skills and reflexes and other mental faculties. A game that throws down a series of bland, empty challenges is to me as plain and so-so and unable to inspire true enjoyment as a cliché plot full of bland, empty characters and story elements. I'm going on a bit at length here, but I'm trying to get across my attitude and values, because they tie closely to what I consider a hardcore game.
To whit, I consider a hardcore game one that does not hold your hand, but rather challenges you to stand on your own two feet. A hardcore game, to me, is one that says “You are not good enough. Your skills are lacking, you cannot beat me. Either get better, or give up”. To me that is the definition of hardcore, a game that presents you with a challenge that you are expected to get better at before you can beat it. And by get better I don't mean sit back for a minute or take a couple of runs and work out a basic pattern, I mean really work on so that by the time you do beat it you can see a marked improvement in your skills compared to the point you started trying at. Now not all hardcore games are hardcore in a good way, and I'm not saying being hardcore for cheap or annoying reasons is fun, say for example being raped by the camera more than the enemies. However the principle to me of hardcore gaming is an experience that requires you to develop your skills in a meaningful way in order to progress.
To give an example on common grounds, let's take Devil May Cry. I know you've had some not so nice experiences with that game Gato, but I want to speak objectively of it. I consider DMC, as a series, to be defining of hardcore. I do like the mature, somewhat gory setting of the games, but that's not why I really love them or consider them hardcore. That is all down to the gameplay, which the atmosphere merely builds upon and backs up for me. You said in your rant that hardcore doesn't have to mean alienating, that hardcore can be playable by everyone, and I agree with you. If I may speak my opinion freely, I actually think the original DMC fits that bill extremely well. Let's be fair, setting aside the upsetting problems that you ran into later, the game's intro is actually very well paced and balanced. Anyone with decent gaming skills in general can pick up DMC1 and beat the first enemies they face – you were doing fine against the puppets and the odd Sin (those floating enemies with scythes) in the first two levels, Gato. Although your memories of the game are tainted by what happened, in all fairness DMC has a moderate and inviting introduction to combat, the puppet enemies are somewhat of a threat and reasonably engaging but also not too hard to handle, and you were handling them well during levels 1 and 2, and the other there enemies were equally beatable.
The game obviously took a sharp turn, and our personal opinions a radical split, at the end of level 3, when Phantom, the first boss, appeared. In brief, that's when the game turned evil for you, while I absolutely LOVED it. In my opinion, bosses are supposed to be the high-point of a game's challenge. They should be harder than normal enemies, harder than missions and quests in the main story, and just basically the toughest parts of the main game, IMHO the only parts that should be harder are the top end of the secret stuff and the final boss. I want to the challenged by a boss, that's like the whole freaking point of them to me. Phantom was the point DMC went from pretty damn good to me loving the game, because he beat the crap out of me and killed me dead, at least half a dozen times. I loved that, because he didn't just beat me once or twice while I figured out some childish pattern or trick, but because I was a weakling to him, my skills were simply not good enough to take him on and win. So I fought and I fought, and finally I beat him, not in a fight I could have repeated at the time, but I felt a real surge of accomplishment at overcoming something that to my personal standards at the time was a serious challenge. The game continued to test me in that manner throughout its duration, repeatedly killing me and forcing me to improve, and because of that I derived what I can only describe as an awesome experience from it. The twin joys of achieving things that had built themselves up as challenges I personally respected, and of seeing and feeling that my playing skills had improved tremendously since I began, were the very essence of feeling good about a game and enjoying it. That was all something like a decade ago, and since it I have beaten the whole game on not only normal, but hard, and the fantastically well-named Dante Must Die mode, as well as S-ranking normal. Of those last two achievements I feel a true sense of accomplishment, and something like pride, because it's really not something just any gamer can do, and where once I struggled just to survive normal I can now play with skills I once only dreamed of, and can focus well enough to S rank the entire thing. I grew a lot thanks to that game, my reflexes, intuition, the whole gamut of skills inherent to action-based games, and I love that, and I love Devil May Cry for that. Phantom was the boss that kicked that off, and he's far from a perfect boss fight, the camera can mess with you and in the first battle with him so can the room, but I see those as modest detractors from what is otherwise an essentially freaking wicked experience of being challenged to improve yourself.
In closing, I love continue to your GDR rants Zar, and this is how I show my love, by pouring myself into replies that could qualify as rants all of their own. Keep it up Gato, we love it ^^!
PS: Sonic 2006 was pure masochism, though.
March 18th, 2010 at 10:04 pm
I blame the camera and my bizarre inability to grasp which button made Dante jump for 80% of the frustration I had in that room. The side mission makes up another 15. I'd say 5, but 10% comes from it breaking my resolve not to shatter something with rage. A save point between it and Phantom must be some kind of blasphemy to them or something. Optional or not, that plus permanent lives made the game really painful to play for a perfectionist like me. Sonic may spit the occasional D or dreaded E rank at me (screw you, too, stage I've blocked out of my memory) but at least I've the option to fix it later. Still has the limited lives crap, tho, but it spits the things out like candy. : | Well, Unleashed and most of the others do, anyway. 06 is some temperamental rebellion by the developers to make everyone hate the franchise forever.
And while you may not think Mario is hardcore due to early hand-holding, some of the more difficult challenges in Galaxy just about made Chris' head explode. Something about purple coins and sand pits and… Iunno. I watched him do it on attempt 277 and I think he finally got it.
Also, I think if his health meter was about half what it was Phantom still could've kicked my tookus all over left field. I never in my life would have remotely guessed that weak point without being told because I come from the school of “If you touch an enemy you die. Instantly.” Again, DMC is full of things that are really hard for me to grasp simply because the mentality of the entire thing is so different from what I typically play, and thus I think half the challenge I find in it is unique simply to me in that it hardly follows any of the rules I grew up taking as undisputable fact. It's gotten more common for games to work a different way now, but of them I'm a bit disturbed to say DMC is still probably the most interesting and entertaining of the bunch, and the only one that pissed me off, but at least didn't bore me to tears.
As for challenging bosses, Mega Man 10 had that until I started watching the time attack replays. O___o; If you know how to use their weaknesses right you can murder those poor saps in the span of on average about 4 seconds. Someone took out Nitro Man with the finesse of a balarina in a manner I could never imitate in my life. Most challenging boss ever? do you have the ice weapon? Then no. Not at all. can you shoot with perfect timing and kill him in two jumps while spinning back and forth aiming in the exact right locations to lay spikes down where the guy is going when if you ever miss you can't shoot a second spike until the first goes away? i mean cripes! I envy that man's ability to not bleed on the PS3's d-pad. Thumb hurts just looking at it.
The reason I feel hardcore doesn't have to mean “rapes you” is because most of the games that I've considered as examples have plenty of things that well could rape your face off, but they simply aren't mandatory. They may make up 60% of the experience, but it'll be something like MM's trophy to beat the game without ever getting hit. In DMC's case, it can well still be mandatory, but I think the gae as a whole would've benefitted by embracing the Metroidvanian approach that seems tucked under it all. There's very few times where you're not on the clock in some chapter or other when the setting and the fact it was originally an RE game both make the level design scream that it was meant to be explored a bit more methodically than it wound up being. I want to wander around that castle, not have my save file lock me in a room where my only option is to fight some boss that's pissing me off. Heck, let me go out and do the side mission first if I want, or just go slaughter random crap for kicks while I look around. Not to over-cite it, but nobody (save the time attack people, apparently) has an easy time with their first run through a Mega Man game, often even if they have an order chart next to their screen at all times. The bosses can be punishing, certainly, and the stages almost twice as much so thanks to Mr. Happy Bottomless Pit Mcgee, but you're never constricted to just one thing. Likewise, a proper Mario game will have plenty of things that could punch you in the face, and someone after a challenge will walk into one a mere step away from death, but you've always the option to go refine your abilities elsewhere on a different stage or challenge. Even in the older entries, Mario World had the Special Zone in it, and not just anyone could finish that without a serious effort. Those that can usually go on to Kaizo for their sick enjoyment. Aside from that, unless you consider hand-holding to be “PRESS THIS TO JUMP,” the series has traditionally kinda left you to figure things out give or take an introductory stage to that bee suit you just found.
Iunno. I guess I prefer challenge when it's hidden for people worthy of it, or possibly even when it's only there for people who want it. I'm not about to beat Disgaea the way you did, but the option is always there to push yourself in bizarro ways.
March 18th, 2010 at 11:08 pm
As I said on MSN, I don't actually have anything against Mario, and am well aware he can be one hardcore mofo, as can the challenge value of his games. I haven't played many of them either, a tiny bit of the original 2D ones, and some 64, but in any case I respect the plumber's ability to bust out challenges that are simple in concept and yet vicious in execution. And then of course the romhacks just get downright inhumane.
As far as DMC goes, as I've said I will never call it perfect, just awesome and classic. It was a PS2 launch title, one that pioneered a bold new genre, and given what went into it to achieve that I can forgive it's linear build, which per force meant you kinda needed to put the challenge in the mandatory part because there was nowhere else to put it. I mean, the secret missions are there sure, but they're a very small part of the package.
The camera isn't perfect, compared to the third game it's not as fluid a game engine, and the lack of level selection, while giving it an old-school feel, is somewhat limiting as well. They at least worked on that last one. DMC2 has level selection once you've beaten the game on normal, and in 3 you don't even need to do that. The inability to change the button setup is an odd lapse, one we've just had to put up with as far as the PS2 era goes, but the buttons feel a bit more logical by 2 and stay so in 3 at least.
March 24th, 2010 at 7:56 am
We totally agree! We want to play a fun game with an interesting story that won't give our 2 year old nightmares. It's all about balance of substance.