Odin Sphere [PS2]

Released in 2007, Odin Sphere was a bit of a latecomer to the last-gen Playstation 2. That being said, it was a welcome addition to the PS2’s extensive repetoire & a welcome note for the system to finish on (though games continue to trickle out for the system even into late 2008). So what would make publisher Square Enix think that a last-gen, 2D side-scroller would be worthwhile endeavor in a sea of Xbox 360, PS3, & Wii titles? If you can dust off your PS2 & pop in the title, you’ll see why in about the first 10 minutes. The game is positively breath-taking in its visuals and animation. Play on a little bit more (past the first character’s book) and you’ll find a well-developed storyline and great dialogue translation from the original Japanese version.

The game’s context is a young girl up in her attic, reading different books corresponding to each of the game’s five main characters. The storylines intertwine and as you progress through each, you’ll encounter & fight the same characters you’ll play as later on. Each character handles surprisingly different. This plus the spot-on dialogue both add a great amount of depth to the character & what might otherwise be a very melodramatic plot. The writers walk the line very well though & I found myself immersed in each character’s seperate trials and developments moreso than I’ve felt in most other RPG’s.

All that being said, this is still a 2D side-scrolling RPG. How can it still work & be fun without falling back to the original NES Mario Bros-style ultra-long levels? Each area is circular, with exits located along various points of the circle. Essentially, the character can just run in circles forever if they wanted. Exiting each area and entering another allows you to move through a map of locations in each of the different worlds. I’ve never encountered a system like this for 2D games and it gives me some hope that there’s still room for innovation in the genre. Going back to the worlds though, what worlds they are…

Each of the 8 areas are gorgeously rendered and the enemies in each fit perfectly. Anyone purely wanting to see beautiful 2D animation should still check out the game. The backgrounds and visual style of the enemies only help to draw you into what feels like a breathing world, though everything is scripted. Odin Sphere is definitely a testament to what can still be achieved without the use of 3D models & levels (which can be a helpful note to up & coming game designers working in Flash or the like).

One of the last gameplay elements that I think is worth mentioning is the Alchemy system. Granted, this isn’t anything new in terms of gameplay (take one item, add another to it, get a third, greater item) but the way it’s executed along with the rest of the visuals, story, and player controls adds that extra little bit to creating an immersive experience. During the game, you’ll collect blank object vials known as Material. These are your base for creating various potions & concoctions. Each Material has a number starting at 0 and by adding certain elements to it, you can up this number to a 1, 2, 5, 8, etc. You’ll pick up different recipes as you progress which will tell you how to make things like Healing Tonics, Fire Spirits, Antidotes, etc. By adding different Mandragoras (vegetable-like creatures that you jump on to uproot throughout levels) you can create these final potions or experiment on your own. For instance, the typical recipe for a Healing Tonic is a Material of 0 and a Carroteer. However, bumping up a Material to 4 (by throwing in a Napple core & Bone for instance) and adding some Withered Grapes gives you the same outcome. This is great for replayability, besides totally capturing the classical idea of alchemy with adding random things together to see what you get.

Summary:

Although coming out far after the PS2’s prime, Odin Sphere still feels like a must-have for PS2 players; purely for the visuals if nothing else. The game shows tremendous innovation in a seemingly archaic genre & shows that there’s still some room for growth outside of the now standard 3D realm of gaming. Personally I think it’s great a resource for beginning game designers, as well as animators looking for inspiration on truly stunning hand-drawn graphics. Definitely give Odin Sphere a look and see if you don’t fall into this deep, illustrative world.

| Developed by Vanillaware & Atlus, Published by Atlus & Square Enix, 2007 |

Spore [PC]

As of 2008, Spore has been built up to be Will Wright’s magnum opus, and it is definitely a unique and ground-breaking contribution to the video game medium. Full disclosure before getting any further, Will Wright has been & still is one of my game designer idols. I’ve been a fanatic for almost anything ‘Sim’-related for quite some time so following Spore’s development over the past several years wasn’t anything unusual for me. Now that it’s released (sans any future expansion packs, sure to come) and the initial DRM controversy is falling out of the limelight thanks to our blossoming economy, I’m going to weigh in my own observations.

Once my pre-order came in, I installed the game onto my MacBook Pro without any issue & sat down to play through the full, evolutionary gamut that this baby had to offer. Having already played with the Creature Creator before & with Spore Origins on my iPhone, I had a bit of previous knowledge/expectations going into everything. I spent one full Saturday managing my species from its single-cell, carnivorous origins all the way up to its intergalactic misteps with numerous other space-faring creatures (who knew aliens wanted so much money?). My first runthru was on ‘Normal’ difficulty and after a couple other species creations starting at the Creature or Tribal stages, I finally bumped it down to ‘Easy’ & started on the Spacefaring stage. This is where the game really started getting fun for me.

The early stages are neat the first time, though I don’t really see myself going back to the Cell Stage unless I’m going to try something new. Spore Origins on the iPhone seems like the best platform for that gameplay, although the PC version does capture the more visually interesting elements of the microscopic world, especially seen in games like flOw. The Creature stage is where the gameplay starts to get more involved. Walking out on land as some slug-like monstrosity on legs or otherwise is a bit thrilling, although I kept finding myself wanting to start out with more options rather than such a limited number of parts. It feels like you can’t really make a full-blown creature & play with it unless you start at the Tribal stage, which has its own gameplay dynamics. Meeting & interacting with other creatures is captivating, although the sheer diversity of such early life is a bit odd practically speaking. I might have preferred to see different nests of the same creatures and something akin to SimAnt show up; allowing the player to expand their nest and grow a population of spiky, 3-legged, eight-eyed omnivores to take over those pesky neighbors. Digging up the bones of dead animals for new parts is engaging though and adds that element of exploration early on in the game. There were times of conflict, though, between practicality and aesthetics where I found myself simply making a big, spiky, venom-spitting creature instead of something that was more visually interesting. The reason being, my pretty, little, orange cocateu-esque species would continue to lose out to all the carnivorous neighbors around me, no matter how well my pack-followers would fight. This may be a weakness in my own style of gameplay, but still frustrating.

Once you progress past the creature stage, your little monstrosity discovers fire and starts their own tribe. The Tribal stage doesn’t have as much of a focus on user-generated content as it does on building relationships with or conquering other species. The player is introduced to outfitting their creature with clothes, but the gameplay seem to take a very formulaic turn. If another tribe is hostile towards you from the getgo, give them a gift. Once they are ambivalent towards you, perform at least 2 successful concerts for them to gain an ally. Wash, rinse, repeat. Of course there’s also the conquer and control approach where you simply have to wipe out a neighboring village’s main hut. Depending on how your creation ended up from the Creature stage, this may be easier or not than the diplomatic route. Another minor accomplishment that is available is the ability to domesticate an animal. What purpose this serves besides having a guard at your village, I’m not entirely sure. When I first domesticated an animal, I was really hoping to be able to start getting alien cheese, or at least be able to use the new pets as food. Maybe in future versions they could even be used as beasts of burden or mounts. Regardless, domestication has very little effect on your progress.

Finishing the Tribal stage leads you to the Civilization stage where things get a little more interesting (though from my play experience it quickly devolves to who can blow up the other person the soonest). If I began the Civilization stage as an Economic or Religious society, I found myself quickly trying to get a hold of a Military city so that I’d have something to defend myself with. As much as I liked trading & being able to buy out a city, the it was nearly impossible to make enough money quickly enough to pay off other Military or Religious cities from wiping me out. The Civilization stage is basically an incredibly simplistic RTS that is completed either in the same amount of time as the Tribal stage, if not less.

Once you’ve conquered your world, you get on to Spore’s most developed and deepest area, the Space stage. Here is where you’ll spend the majority of your gameplay time. I instantly loved being able to terraform planets & create something liveable from a barren rock. Creating Wildlife Reserves out of entire planets was really satisfying too as you can place up to 30 different species on there without threat of extinction. This should be your “best of” storage area where you can pick up you favorite creatures to drop on other planets. One of the difficulties in the Space stage though is the sheer amount of stuff there is. It’s really great that you have hundreds of stars to explore, each uniquely named and with numerous planets orbiting them, also each uniquely named. However, you just can’t remember where every single place is. Navigating to specific worlds for missions or to find the best price on something is daunting at best. I found myself pausing the game numerous times so that I could scour the numerous star systems around me to find that certain planet with the certain rock orbiting that certain star. A Google Maps-like feature where you can just type in a planet’s name & a path will appear would be amazing & take away a lot of the tedious nature of navigating around. Plus, the game starts to suffer the Superman syndrome after you’ve met more than 2 or 3 different alien races; everyone needs help. Literally every 5 minutes there’re numerous messages notifying you of an eco-disaster on one of your planets or a pirate raid or some race demanding money or an intergalactic war starting. If you don’t respond to all of these messages, you’ll lose favor with that specific race or your planet’s ecology will collapse or your colony will be decimated. I wish there was a communication “off” switch where I could just roam around the galaxy with my starship posse, discovering new systems & colonizing different areas. For being an intergalactic civilization, your people can’t do crap without you & your singular UFO.

In the Civilization stage you could set up trade routes & assign different vehicles to guard or trade with different cities among other duties. Why not be able to do that in the Space stage? Being able to build space freighters or small fighters and defensive orbital platforms could help in the tidal wave of micro-management that the player is assaulted with. The best part about it too, the game would be more fun! Your society should be able to take care of itself without you to a moderate degree.

Summary:

So as far as final thoughts on Spore for the PC; get to the Space stage as quickly as possible. The Tribal & Civilization stages are worth a couple of replays, but the bulk & strength of the game are in Space. Get used to micro-managing all your little worlds or letting them degenerate into eco-meltdown or be overrun by hostiles. It’s your choice, you’re the intelligent designer here.

Creating creatures, plants, buildings, vehicles, & spaceships is fun to those especially creative individuals out there. And fans of Will Wright would be those people. This is just the first version of the game, right out of the box. Like The Sims games I expect for Spore to develop significantly through expansion packs with more features that are sure to really make this a shining game. For now, it’s a decent attempt at covering a lot of genres in one go, though by no means a magnum opus.

| Developed by Maxis, Published by Electronic Arts, 2008 |