The Value of a Video Game: Part 2

Now that the tangible is out of the way, let's talk about the game.So what value is there in the game? Since there is so much variety in games nowadays, let's look at the value of three possible portions of a game: single player, local multiplayer and internet multiplayer - and extreme examples of each. 1. Single Player

A lot of good games are single player oriented or have a solid single player element. Without them, a lot of games would get nowhere. It would take too much time to go through everything - so I'm just gonna talk about what I like in single player.

First, there's the story. Some single player games, such as puzzle games like Bejeweled, Lumines and Peggle, are completely lacking in single player storyline. Most of them, however, do - Grand Theft Auto IV, Bioshock, Portal, Tales of Vesperia, and the list goes on. A lot of first person shooters and RPGs are filled with a good story to keep you playing. For some gamers, this is about the only reason to play a video game - a good story.

After the storyline, we have the gameplay - the central element of the game. You can have an excellent story, great graphics, but it doesn't matter if the gameplay just plain annoys you. For turn based RPGs, this usually entails plenty of menus, decision making and strategy. For action games, this usually entails mashing buttons until the enemies drop dead where they stand (while not dropping dead yourself). For platformers, well, there's a lot of jumping. :P

Of course - there's replay value. Some games have insane replay value - racing games are a good example. It's easy to replay most of the game multiple times - and you're expected to do so most of the time. Most other games don't have quite so much - action games tend to extend replay time by unlocking more difficulty levels to keep challenging the player, RPGs on the other hand try to push sidequests and the occasional New Game Plus. While some would claim otherwise, I think FPSes have little replay value in the single player department. Real time strategy would depend on the player and the game. Some people might see the joy in playing through Dawn of War: Soulstorm's campaign with every race, while most people just play it once and go back to multiplayer after that.

Then there is the rather ambiguous and difficult to define satisfaction from completing the game. This satisfaction increased the longer and more difficult the game is - seeing the ending is only part of the utility gained from finishing a video game. There is also the sense of achievement and euphoria - rewards of the past 5 to 60 hours of gameplay.

- to be continued -

Note: This was meant to be longer and include the multiplayer portions, but I've decided to push those to Part 3 in favour of getting Part 2 out to begin with.

The Value of a Video Game: Part 1

Often, one would wonder - how much is a video game worth? For the purposes of this post, and the many after it: let's talk about the value of Halo 3 Collector's Edition. For the first part, let's just look at the visible value your money pays for when you buy this particular game. When Halo 3 was released, the RRP for it's collector's edition was AUD109.95 (if I am not mistaken). Being the shrewd customer, I took advantage of certain market mispricings and a certain trade-in promotion to get hold of my copy for a lot less than that. But that's not the point.

So let's have a look at what you pay for:

  1. Nice plastic cover for the case.
  2. A painted steel case emblazoned with the Halo 3 logo.
  3. Halo 3 Game Disc (this is why you bought the game after all)
  4. A Halo Bestiarum - hard cover book with nicely laid out information on Halo 3's races
  5. Halo 3 Manual
  6. A folded controls cheat sheet/poster
  7. 48-hour XBox Live Gold Trial Membership
  8. Halo 3 Essentials Disc One (with Making of and other videos)

(The photo is just meant to give you an idea of what's inside :P )

So just look at the box, that's the tangible goods you pay for - 2 discs, a steel case, and many many printed sheets of paper - some more valuable than others.

Let's put aside the two discs for a while. Do you see value in the other 6 items?

Some people don't - but I do. The plastic cover may feel stupid - but it is the one with all the details, the nice artwork for the logo, and overall completes the package for retail sale. A lot better than Halo 2's plastic cover mind you.A lot of people are attracted to the steel case - and so am I. The steel case is black, which makes it look sleek - and it's got a big stylized number 3 on it so you know what it is. Ths case is what makes it special and stand out from all the other XBox 360 games in their typical green DVD cases.

The Halo Bestiarum is simply somewhat a small hardcover book filled with info and pictures of the races in Halo 3 and brings you a little up to speed with what's been going on if you haven't been to the world of HAlo before. The Halo 3 Manual is what you'd expect, the mandatory manual. As much as I make it sound like that - I value the manual highly. A game without its manual is significantly less valuable to me, since I buy games mostly for collection purposes. A manual gives it completeness - not to mention it is more often than not, good fun to read. Some games come with thin manuals which are extremely lacking - which I do not like. Thin manuals to me feel sloppy and convey a message that the game doesn't have enough depth or features to put into a manual, or that the company was just plain stingy. We paid for the game - we deserve a fair thickness manual together with it.

Controls cheat sheets are very normal nowadays - but this one happens to be a nice poster all well, which is a nice touch - I don't use it, I don't use posters, but having it around makes one happy that one bought the game. The 48-hour trial was worthless and still is worthless to most people - it's more of an advertising ploy - some later games came with a more generous one week or one month trial - which is a lot more valuable.

OK - back to the discs. Now, I'm from Malaysia. Piracy is rampant there. I am used to not caring about copyright, acquiring counterfeit discs, and all other nonsense normally associated with a typical Malaysian. If there's one thing you learn - it's that original games and discs come with nice fancy manuals - some people make take these for granted: I do not. I think it's extremely important that you make originals look nice and fancy.

Good looking discs make game publishers look good, they make consumers happy as well. The Halo 3 discs are no different - they look beautiful and well thought out. The discs are a pleasure to look at, not to mention play in my XBox 360 - carrying the Microsoft XBox 360 holograms. On the other hand, some original discs look like crap. Wii discs for one are usually ugly - and PS2 games suffer similar treatment. I find it unacceptable original discs look worse than pirated discs. Effort to make your discs look nice do go a long way to making people convert. I like having presentable discs.

The Force Unleashed Demo Impressions

Well, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed demo was released yesterday, and me being me decided to try it. The demo is about 1.3GB on PSN - and it shows you exactly what to expect when the game finally ships in about a month's time. (It's the same demo in the exclusive GameTrailers videos and I think the same demo that was shown at GC2008.) The demo played exactly as expected, giving you a good sense of power, being able to throw around practically anything that isn't tethered to the ground, and the Force meter depletes in a very sensible way. What do I mean by sensible? It doesn't deplete while you are fiddling with something you've Force Gripped (at least in easy, didn't bother trying harder difficulties), which means plenty of leeway to fiddle with something in the full 3D space (yes, you can control it to move left, right, up, down, forwards and backwards relative to your character, and if you are forceful enough, you can get it to actually rotate).

The way Force Lightning is used seems like a pretty sensible evolution for someone who has a lot of energy to spare, imbuing your lightsaber attacks with lightning and even a small shockwave. You have a sensible air combo with which to attack enemies, and taking down larger more difficult enemies require QTE-esque button pressing, which is fine.

So, what's wrong with it? It seems that Western developers can never get the camera right. (Too Human being the poster child of high profile game with terrible camera. At least in the demo, I'm not gonna even buy the full game seeing how 1up and gamespot tore it up.) The camera isn't broken, but you do occasionally find yourself fighting with the camera since if you can't see the enemy, you can't lock onto them. This means that pressing the lock button in hopes it will give you sight of your next enemy is unfortunately not gonna work. This is actually perfectly acceptable, since you can lock on to quite the variety of objects, so that could cause a problem.

There is the occasional strange bug with the camera, where the camera can somehow end up stuck in a peculiar angle under your character, I'm not sure why, I'm not sure how, but it is annoying to have it just plain stuck. Thoughtfully, a camera center/reset system is in place and is triggered by pressing down on the right stick (PS owners will know this as R3.), which does remedy the problem, although it would've been much nicer if the camera didn't get stuck to begin with.

The game should be pretty good. It'll come down to level design and enemy variety, I guess.

Webcomic - How I Spent my 31st of July

Webcomic - To Summarise My Thursday

Yes, I've played through Soul Calibur IV. I've unlocked every prefabricated character except Starkiller - mostly due to my laziness to learn how to play Yoda well enough to pass Arcade mode. I can't say I love the game, since I'm easily bored by fighting games, but it is still Soul Calibur IV. It feels harder to combo now, although I think that's probably a matter of practising and memorising the move lists as compared to my button mashing of the X and Y buttons.

If you like fighting games or just the Soul Calibur series, this will not disappoint and is most certainly a must-buy for anyone with a console who can play it. Just maybe, not now - and later when it hits budget price status, since I don't really value it at 60 dollars. Not the worst 60 dollars you could spend mind you considering the oh-so-vast number of games for XBox 360 this year.

I was severely disappointed by the Too Human demo but the Tales of Vesperia demo was a pleasant surprise.

Now addicted to:

Waga Routashi Aku no Hana by ALI PROJECT Die, All Right! by The Hives