A Critical Analysis of Wario Land 4

[Daniel Primed]

but is written like an FAQ or wiki page - pretty much the opposite of analysis

"How to Read this Book" - "On The book's structure". TLDR seems to be the problem here.

If the Chrono Trigger book you're referring to is the one being done by Game Design Forum, I must say that their Final Fantasy VI analysis was fantastic. I was very impressed. It's a desert out there in games analysis land.

Leaving the thread now.

[Valkyrie-Favor]

"How to Read this Book" - "On The book's structure". TLDR seems to be the problem here.

I read both of those sections carefully. Is it really unfair for me to talk about your approach to criticism when that's exactly what was laid out in the beginning? Not considering every single idea in the book, but the kind of ideas in it?

For that matter, is it fair for you to criticize other game writers without evidence to give you authority? You never mention a single other analysis in your book, and the only indirectly linked one is "The Lives of Three Dying Playfish Games."

There's another fundamental problem with your exhaustive-evidence based approach. Could you even do it with Grand Theft Auto or an MMORPG? When we can no longer fully map out a game and understand everything in its possibility-space, is it just impossible to evaluate properly?

[Valkyrie-Favor]

Since Daniel left the thread, I'm asking those other members who are still reading.What do you guys think of Daniel's basic approach?

I did buy the book earlier, but I hadn't gotten around to reading it until today. I was going to read it on a used nook I bought, but the thing was modded improperly and turned out to be bricked. I ended up wasting several hours trying to fix it, but it was impossible.

Anyway, it strikes me that the book, detailed as it is, meanders. After several hundred pages there's no mention of the book's thesis on game writing, and so far as I can tell there IS no thesis on Wario Land 4 itself. There's a whole lot of pointless or nonsensical categorization - such as "the difference between transformations and mechanics" - but nothing is gained from those distinctions.

mechanics, choice, complexity, specialization, and power.png (89.15 KiB) Viewed 1121 times

It doesn't even begin to explain why the designers might have made these choices, what their consequences are in Wario Land 4, or how they're relevant to other games. This last thing is especially important, since Game Design Companion is supposed to be a critique of contemporary games writing.

Why is the Mario vs. Wario characterization chapter even there?

On "the fattest bit of meat, the mechanics":

Enemies not only deplete Wario’s HP, but slow him down with contrary motion. These factors make it harder to get from A to B. Thus, mechanics which minimise enemies allow the player reach the goal, and in a shorter time. If there were no health system 1 , the link between the attack mechanics and the goal would be all but severed, and the attack mechanics would become a minor, if not irrelevant part of the game system. The attack mechanics are also used to interface with many of the game’s puzzles, which prevent Wario from reaching the goal unless solved. 1 You can make this argument the other way around: if there were no enemies, there’d only be a weak link between the attack mechanics and the goal of the game. Chicken and egg.

So...the developers made a strong link between the player's goal and the moves that allow him to accomplish it. If Wario were invincible, enemies wouldn't impede his progress as much. Deep indeed. The deepest.

Wario can’t ROLL without a slope; HEIGHTEN SMASH ATTACK without a raised platform; CLIMB without a ladder; and he certainly can't swim without water. Thus, the power of these mechanics is limited to the availability of the game element, making them weaker than mechanics without external dependences.

So the more powerful mechanics can be used unconditionally? It doesn't matter if you, say...get hit by an enemy? What about transformations?

BTW, powerful here means most frequently useful. So a roll is weaker than a jump, sure, but this kind of lapse in thinking makes me want read a regular FAQ. The analysis section is still just an ordered list of stuff.

[Nintendork666]

Cool idea for a book! WL4 is excellent in every way imaginable. Don't care about the hogwash cluttering the rest of the thread. Congrats Daniel, if you're reading this.

[dsheinem]

Thought I'd bump this to let folks who were vocal in this thread know that I did a podcast interview with Daniel a while back and recently posted it: http://www.racketboy.com/podcast/racket ... rio-land-4

I think you'll find the interview tackles some of the questions/concerns raised in this thread...

[Valkyrie-Favor]

I started listening and am 48 minutes in.

100% agree with Daniel about getting bored with books about "how a game made me feel." I don't care about random strangers' feelings. The social justice games bloggers couldn't possibly interest me less. But of course they're dominating the game news sites lately...which is why I don't read game news sites anymore and why I barely look at forums anymore. I'd much rather talk about my friends.

And Daniel has always been on the right track with talking about a game's craftsmanship rather than its 'social implications' or whatever.

Podcast hits on the point I brought up earlier: this kind of game writing is always about old games because new games are too complicated to even imagine understanding by listing every object on the screen. They don't even have fixed viewports. You've probably seen the Mega Man X sequelitis video that (rightly) praises Mega Man X for teaching players how the games works as they play, and then say they're better than new games because new games require tutorials. It's not even a matter of age; old flightsims and grand strategy games have had several-hundred-page manuals you need to read before even beginning to play. Some games are simply too complex for a learn-as-you-go design to work, and the trend has been towards higher complexity as the silicon becomes more powerful. Same with all the Super Mario Bros. Level 1-1 analyses...

Because nearly everyone writing about games has never mastered a game, let alone modded or designed one...or designed a masterpiece. I mentioned earlier how everything in the book was just plainly obvious and lacking insight, but not especially so. Those who are actually experts in game design are off designing amateur games, right?

At around 44 minutes, Daniel says Wario Land 4 doesn't lend itself to this type of thing, but it really does because it's a 2d platformer - one of the most simplistic, easily-understood genres - divided into bite-sized chunks. Doesn't this show a complete lack of awareness about the principles the book is supposed to be based on? That videogames are insufficiently understood because they're complex products of careful design? We can only begin to talk about the simple ones!

Nothing I've heard in so far has interested me, so I'm done, I'd rather listen to some weeaboo trance music.

[dsheinem]

Nothing I've heard in so far has interested me, so I'm done, I'd rather listen to some weeaboo trance music.

Best review of a podcast episode ever.

In contrasting Daniel's book with a more phenomenological kind of project such as Keogh's I didn't mean to imply that the only alternative type of analysis is a "social justice" one - in fact, that's not at all what Keogh's book is, for what it's worth.

I mentioned earlier how everything in the book was just plainly obvious and lacking insight, but not especially so.

This reads to me like "your book is shit, but it isn't the stinkiest shit I've smelled." If it's a compliment, it is a very backhanded one.

[Valkyrie-Favor]

Thank you.

Anyway, I knew the other book wasn't about social justice - I was listening after all - and that remark was not a compliment, just a regular statement (I've no use for backwards compliments or for insulting Daniel).

I did end up listening to the rest of the podcast since I was in a boring situation, but not much changed...if you care, don't follow any podcasts - I tuned into this one because of your recommendation. The whole discussion wasn't specific enough that I felt anything meaningful

[Valkyrie-Favor]

Had been added to this discussion in particular, although the podcast was hardly for me to begin with. Rather than talking about what the book says on a WL4 player's psychology, it just mentions 'the psychology stuff', and so on with the rest of it.

BTW, my reccomendation - Aqua Tritone by emaru