iDracula for the iPhone provides solid dual analog gaming on a touch screen.

Platform: iPhone/iPod Touch

Price: 99 cents (currently)

Developer: Moregames Entertainment

Publisher: Chillingo

I originally discovered iDracula while browsing the ars technica OpenForum a few months ago but only recently had a chance to try it out. Moregames Entertainment has managed to create an interesting take on the dual analog shooter genre that has been made popular by games like Geometry Wars. For those unfamiliar, a dual analog shooter consists of the user controlling a character, in our case a vampire hunter, from the top down view perspective. You are confined by a rectangular area and can move in any direction with the left analog stick and aim in any direction with the right analog stick. This is accomplished on the iPhone by using two virtual analog sticks on the touch screen which each function identically to similarly placed sticks on a dual analog controller such as those used on the Xbox 360 or Playstation 3. Anyone who has played a game on the iPhone or iPod touch with a virtual control stick is aware of the limitations of this type of scheme…accuracy is not always the name of the game. The lack of a physical stick or button can make it easy for you to miss the mark with your thumb. Once you adjust however you will find a game with tight controls that other developer’s should be looking to mimic.

Gameplay

The core essence of a top down shooter remains…shoot everything that moves while avoiding the enemies and collect ammo, weapons and health to survive as long as possible. However, iDracula is deeper than similar games in the genre because of two features.

The first is the Perks system, which enables you to upgrade your character as you progress through the game. Starting at 3,000 points and doubling from there, a “Perks Available” button will appear in the upper right corner of the screen below the map. You will be presented with four randomly chosen character upgrades and will be allowed to choose one. The choices range from options such as maximum health increases or damage dealing increases to turning your character invincible for 30 seconds with a promise of death at the end of said 30 seconds. How you choose to upgrade your character is completely up to you and Moregames has provided enough Perks to keep the game interesting and varied.

The second feature is the Rank system which provides you with an overall persistent rank title based on how many Omens you have collected throughout your iDracula career. Every so often Dracula will appear and if you are able to successfully kill him, he will drop an Omen for you to pick up. Collect 10 Omens and you will move up from “Noob” to “Amateur”, collect 10 more and you will again increase in rank to “Gunner”…and so on.

Options

There are three maps to choose from and four game modes, with varying enemies for each map. The four game modes function as follows:

Survival – Start with the pistol and fight off the oncoming enemies. Over time the enemies will drop more powerful weapons (8 in total), ammo and health; which you will need to fight off the increasingly stronger and faster enemies. Every so often you will be given the option to choose a Perk from four randomly chosen options. Kill Dracula when he appears to collect an Omen.

Rush – Choose the machine gun, flamethrower or saw. You have unlimited ammo and must kill as many enemies as possible. No item drops or Perks.

Wave Attack – The game consists of waves (or rounds) of enemies. The enemies only drop gold, which you can use after each “wave” to buy weapons, ammo or health. The enemies get stronger in each successive wave. Perks consist only of upgrades to total health, damage, reload speed and income (size of gold drops). Each time you upgrade one of the four options through the Perk window, it increases the level of that stat which carries over to the next wave. Kill Dracula when he appears to collect an Omen.

Super Survival – Like Survival except the enemies are tougher and, in addition to the normal item drops, will also drop instant effect items. These items will activate the moment you touch them and will do things such as freeze the enemies, make you run and shoot faster, etc. They are also on a timer so their effects will eventually fade.

Issues

A few flaws blemish an otherwise outstanding effort. Occasionally I found it difficult to see approaching enemies in either the bottom left or right corners of the screen due to my thumbs taking up a good amount of screen real estate. It doesn’t ruin the game but takes some getting used to. Additionally, for a game which provides a persistent rank system, an online scoreboard and/or friends system is sorely missing and would allow for increased competition among friends.

Summary

None of these issues, however, can detract from the fact that this game is tons of fun to play, is varied enough to keep you entertained for a while and is an outstanding value at the asking price of 99 cents. The outstanding graphics and decent music and sound effects also add to the value. I could easily see this game costing between 5 and 10 dollars on the Xbox Live Arcade or Playstation Network. This is a must buy for any iPhone gamer.

Rating : 5/5

Gameplay video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GiXK1cRmBo

This is the first entry in what may end up being a series regarding interesting figures in the gaming community. Raph Koster, the lead designer of Ultima Online and former Chief Creative Director of Sony Online Entertainment will be my first subject.

Raph began his career in gaming after graduating from Washington College in Maryland with an English degree in 1992 and started work on LegendMUD. From that point he moved forward with his education and ended up graduating with a Master's degree in Poetry from the University of Alabama. He then somehow made the jump from there to the hugely influential Origin Systems and became the lead designer on Ultima Online.

Using this experience Raph then moved to to Verant Interactive/Sony Online Entertainment and began work as creative director of Star Wars Galaxies. With Sony Online Raph grew into the role of Chief Creative Officer and worked on Everquest 2 and subsequent expansions until 2006.

At this point Mr. Koster moved on from Sony to form his own company, Areae, with the intention of creating a software platform that lets users create their own virutal worlds. This plan was realized with the release of Metaplace. Mr. Koster changed the name of his company from Areae to Metaplace and as of today that is where he is at in the world.

I first read about Raph when I came across his blog, simply titled "Raph's Website". Intrigued I typed his name into Wikipedia and began reading about a guy that was recently placed at #11 in the top 20 most influential people in the MMO industry. I then checked out Youtube and found a video featuring him speaking at a industry conference. At this point in his career he has the luxury of being able to speak on topics such as the theory of virtual economies, social networks, and games about tasting a peach, but I found it very interesting to watch.

The topic of the video seems to be the distinction between "playing" and "gaming" and how they should be approached. The primary point that he presents is that games today are essentially giant spreadsheets that keep track of what a gamer accomplishes and assigns them imaginary rewards for reaching different milestones. He then presents the idea of creating a game about the abstract concept of tasting a peach and talks about the questions that brings up.

A point he brings up during the discussion is that the biggest and most successful games on the market are the ones that present very little choices for the gamer, and pegs them into roles that need to be fulfilled or they fail (World of Warcraft is the example). He says that the games that present the most amount of freedom to gamers, with the biggest worlds and least amount of restrictions fail to find an audience and never make it off the ground.

I feel that though Mr. Koster has noble views on what games should be, he hit one of the major issues of game design on the head with those statements. The average gamer cannot function without a defined set of rules to follow and achievements to fulfill. If there is no carrot on a stick for a gamer to chase after then there is no reason for the game to go on. The challenging part of this idea is that also, if the carrot is too far out of reach for them they will stop and move on to something else. This is really the supreme challenge for MMO designers and something most of them fail at. This need for fulfillment through achieving different milestones is something that exists at a basic level in human nature and something that games, especially MMOs, feed on to successful.

There is an interesting question from the audience during the discussion where someone mentions that social networks like MySpace have such large populations that the lowest common denominator becomes the accepted norm so that a baseline for communication can be established. I feel that this also holds true in the social network that exists in games such as World of Warcraft. However, I believe that MMOs have become so popular that this network has extended beyond individual games and rather exists as an MMO community rather then one particular game. When you speak to an MMO gamer they have generally tried a large number of different games and when a new MMO comes out they run out and try it right away. What we see now is large numbers of gamers from different MMO populations converging in a new game and falling back on the lowest common denominator of communication and expectation.

So a problem is born from that base level of expectation. A game designer needs to fulfill what is expected of their game to hook gamers in, but they also have to find ways to push the boundaries and create new experiences to keep gamers there. Creating different versions of the same grinding treadmill doesn't work and that is why we have so many MMOs failing these days. Just look at this announcement today saying that Matrix Online is going to be shut down in two months.

I applaud Mr. Koster for exploring new ways to bring games to gamers, and thank him for his thought provoking ideas presented in this discussion (he is the guy that does most of the talking the beginning :) ):

I played UFC 2009 Undisputed for Xbox 360 for about 8 hours today, so I’m taking a break and writing down my impressions so far.

My first thoughts as I fired up the game is that it takes a different presentation route then expected after playing the demo. Rather then focusing on you playing as an actual UFC fighter when in Career mode, it makes you create a new fighter from scratch and begins the story line with you in the last fight of an Ultimate Fighter season. From there you work your way up the ranks in Ultimate Fight Nights before making it to the main UFC events.

The career mode is decent but there are some annoying aspects to it. You basically have a different activity you can engage in from week to week leading up to a fight. You can train physical attributes (strenght, speed, cardio) or spar with a partner to increase your skill in various techniques, for example: Striking Offense, Striking Defense, Submission Offense, Submission Defense, etc. It is all decently done but the menu system can be a bear to navigate through. The worst part is the “Email” system, which I have never seen done right in any videogame. You get messages from various characters in the game informing you of different events or requests. I just ignore them now and focus on the other tasks. After a few weeks your fights comes up, you fight, and then repeat the process again. I went through about 9 fights in career mode before getting a title shot. The fights are decently hard, I think Matt Hughes beat me down about 6 times before I finally put him to sleep with a high kick to the head.

Even though I won the title after 3-4 hours of gameplay there are achievement incentives to win the title in all weight classes, which adds a significant amount of replay value to the game. There are also a number of Xbox Live related achievements that add to the replay value. There are achievements from winning a set number of matches going from 1 to 100, which isn’t an unreachable number. There should be a significant amount of gameplay in this title if you hit the achievements and online play.

Speaking of online play, I started the game up at about 10:45 AM on release day, and there was already someone with a record of 142-1. There were a number of other people above 100 wins as well. The game had only been officially out for about 11 hours. I did a little investigation and found on the official UFC 2009 forums that this was a known issue because advance copies of the game had gone out weeks in advance with online play enabled. THQ apparently decided to not do a reset of the ladders, so I guess the whole idea of fair play went out the window on that one. Also there seems to be a wee problem with people quitting before losses are registered, a common yet simple problem to fix that has existed in online games since their inception.

The online play itself is pretty fun. There was a good deal of lag in some matchups but for the most part it wasn’t a huge problem. In my time playing I went 8-6. It looks like if you want to get really good then you need to go all out grappling/submission, wrestling seems especially strong if used correctly. There is a randomness to some of the knockouts that is out of your control but it doesn’t get out of hand.

In the end, the UFC 2009 demo unsurprisingly showcased the best part of the game, in the ring fighting. The career mode is average, but the game shines when the fighters are in the cage.

Here is a clip showcasing the ground game in UFC 2009, get good at it if you want to win online :)

So I found an interesting video from FORA.tv depicting Will Wright talking about how game design and Web 2.0 are intersecting (see the end of the post). Basically he touches on how he believes that most people are narcissistic by nature and the more you power you give a gamer to express themselves through their character or game, the more involved they get in the game. I kind of have to take his word for gospel on this one since he designed the best selling PC game of all time, The Sims.

He then goes on to speak about how Web 2.0 and the whole social networking craze links in to his theory. In my opinion services like MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter are narcissistic in nature since they allow a person to create their idealized identity online. A person doesn’t have to deal with their broken down car, mass layoffs at work, or a pending breakup/divorce online. They can create as glitzy of a profile they want and let others think their lives are the greatest thing since sliced bread. They can also wallow in their own self pity and solicit the sympathy of others to boost their egos. People can do whatever they want on social networking sites and portray themselves however they want. That is why they are mega popular, and that is why Will Wright’s theory should be promoted to fact.

Will Wright’s point also applies to MMOs as well. They have exploded in popularity because they let people create an idealized online version of themself. Who cares if you are jobless 30 year old living in your Mom’s basement when you are a valued member of an elite WoW raiding guild? You can turn yourself into Superman if you want to. That is the allure of an MMO and what draws gamers to them like magnets.

So, Will Wright, you are a much smarter man then I. I mean the guy just left his job at EA to form a think tank.

NCSoft/Paragon Studios has announced a second expansion for City of Heroes. Entitled "Going Rogue", the expansion will examine the gray areas between good and evil and allow characters to change their morality through special missions. Through the morality system hero characters will be able to access areas formerly only available to villains, and vice versa.

The timing of this announcement seems a bit odd, considering that the CoH player base is in turmoil at the moment over the newly released Architect System in the game. To summarize what happened, a system was released in the game that allows players to create their own missions (quests) and release them to the public. When the system hit the live servers players attacked it like a fat kid attacks a cake and proceeded to create hordes of missions that exploited various bugs to create a power leveler's farming paradise. The normal game basically came to a stand still and the only thing available to do was run bugged farming missions with names such as "Meow Mixxx 9.0".

I was personally playing CoH at the time and had to cancel my account over the whole thing. It neatly demonstrated that today's multiplayer gamer will actively exploit any flaw in any game system to get ahead in any way possible. I mean, the game went from a laid back casual friendly atmosphere to an EXTREME HARDCORE FARMING BUILDS ONLY! grind fest literally overnight. It felt like I had logged on to a completely different game.

So, what makes the timing of the press release funny to me is that it is an obvious attempt to sweep their little blunder under the rug and show their players the next shiny new thing that they get to keep paying their money for. A Lead Designer from Paragon Studios event admits that there is "(admittedly) very little information we've released at this time" regarding the details of the actual expansion.

I'm glad that the developers learned from their mistakes here and are doing the right thing by banning exploiting players. I hope that other MMO developers are keeping an eye on this, because if they give an inch in their system their players will have no problem taking a mile from them.

It’s a slow news day so I’ll link an interesting article on mmorpg.com. It discusses historical based MMOs and specifically one set in the Wild West era in US history. The author talks about his vision of what a Wild West MMO should be and different game mechanics that would be involved.

To summarize, he describes an FPS PvP driven game based around “reputation” earned and lost on either side of the law through gun fights, cattle rustling, bank robberies, bar brawls, things of that nature. He touches on other MMO aspects such as crafting, economy, services, and so forth.

Sounds like a cool idea but I see a major flaw, there would pretty much be no end game. There are only so many gangs to bust up or high noon gun fights to sling bullets in. I think the focus of the game would have to be shifted to the other MMO aspects such as exploration, crafting, and survival.

Think of Oregon Trail on steroids. There you are constantly fighting for survival against disease, hunger, and raiders. A wild west MMO would be an excellent scenario to inject the feeling of danger into. Who cares how many bandits you can grind out in one sitting when your character’s body is being ravaged by a particularly savage case of dysentary? How long can you hammer away on an anvil repairing cart wheels when your dude hasn’t eaten in 5 days? What happens when you come back from a successful hunting trip and find your house/wagon ransacked and burned to the ground?

A huge problem with MMOs these days is that there is no feeling of mystery or danger involved. You can just go to each game’s version of WOWHead, type in a quest name, and instantly get a step by step set of instructions on how to complete every quest in the game. You can even download plugins that points you where to go and gives you popups on what you should be doing.

I would picture a western MMO as starting out as a clean state. Just the original US states and a vast expanse of wilderness and the occassional frontier town to the west from there for players to explore and populate. If there was an ever changing terrain of players moving and towns popping up it wouldn’t be practical to establish any sort of detailed map on a website. There would be mystery and danger involved, like how the old west really was.

So yeah, you could incorporate the FPS elements into the game that the original author was speaking of, but that should only be a part of a larger picture. I’m hoping that the next generation of MMOs evolve past the do X amount of quests and kill X amount of creatures until you hit the max level mold that developers are beating into the ground right now. Hopefully they move towards dynamic areas and dynamic content that can’t be tracked and cataloged on 50 different websites.