Retrospective No. 43 WWE 2K14

So I’m one. Thank you everyone who has taken the time to read my posts over the past year. To celebrate my one year anniversary I have decided to go right back to where it all began and the epic title which inspired this entire blog. I got the band back together and tried to relive my youth with the latest title in the WWE game series. The death of THQ (so many acronyms) means that Smackdown vs. Raw is no more. 2K games have taken up the mantle of producing the best multiplayer series in existence and the latest version of this is WWE 2K (get it?) 14.

On first impressions very little seems to have changed since the last time we played. The number of match types, many of the top superstars, the presentation style, the camera angles and the rotating soundtrack of wrestlers themes seems to have outlived THQ. Dropping straight into a fatal four way match we were very quickly up to speed, dishing out punishment as if there had never been a break. There had been a break however and within a minute it was over. A two punch combo then the 1 2 3. This was our very abrupt introduction to the new kick-out mechanic. Abandoning the button mashing of the past, the new system utilises a timing meter requiring players to show more skill to break free. So with an embarrassing lack of intuition and an appalling lack of timing, the match was done with one player running around the room declaring themselves the greatest of all time.

After this initial difficulty the benefits of the new game play mechanisms quickly became clear. The standard singles match is now a much more tense affair as you face real on-screen feedback to your performance and a sense of pressure for pin escapes that was lost in the random button mash. In fact the most successful matches are the ones that use variations on this scheme sure as the steel cage events which crank up the tension as players crawl to freedom. Where the game falls down is when other, easier to achieve forms of victory are introduced. The Royal Rumble has been totally revamped as eliminations are now also meter based. Unfortunately this mechanic is now really easy to exploit into a never ending change of eliminations. The side effect of this was for one player to produce the most dominant performance of all time eliminating 27 of 29 potential rivals to win at a canter while the rest of us sat bored watching the carnage.

Even the main event and the greatest multiplayer extravaganza known to man is not immune to the tinkering. The Money in the Bank Ladder match, the entire reason why my blog exists has been made easier. This doesn’t mean that it has been entirely ruined and some changes such as the improved collision detection mean that ladders and characters don’t just constantly collapse like Bambi on ice. It makes the climb significantly simpler as opponents actually need to interact with the ladder. The disappointment is with what awaits you at the top. Gone is the titanic struggle to find the sweet spot and release the prize. A few minor tweaks and it was down with the match only just clearing the 10 minute barrier. If it hadn’t been for a bit of deja vu and the 400 pound Mark Henry defying physics to be the man stood on top of the ladder I would have been distraught at the neutering of one of the greatest multiplayer experiences in existence.

Much has changed in the intervening years since we were engaged in epic battles for wrestling supremacy. It is hard to argue against the changes being a resounding success. Game play is tighter and less irritating while collision detection and hit boxes actually make sense now. Appearance wise it’s not the great leap forward you might hope considering the time that passed between the releases but the overall product looks more polished. Most importantly the game now feels more like the choreographed displays you might see on TV. The action is much more understandable, you get a real sense of momentum in each match. The result is a game which is more significantly fun but at the same time, less funny and couldn’t properly recreate the epic battles of our past. For all this change however, some things stay the same, and standing tall 20 feet above the ring in both past and present was the behemoth Mark Henry. This beast of a man is truly the greatest wrestler of his age and no amount of tinkering with the format will ever change this.

 

Retrospective No. 3 Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4

My enjoyment of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skate 4 (THPS4) was associated with a certain period of time so I appreciate that your enjoyment of this game might not match mine. In 2002 I loved pop-punk, ska, approachable hip-hop, giggled like an idiot to the antics of the Jackass crew and generally loved skate culture. However, an important factor in appreciating skate culture was the actual skateboarding which required more balance and bravery than I possessed. Having never skated further than five metres in my lifetime I always felt like something was missing. Fortunately, for wobbly cowards like me the Tony Hawk’s series fulfilled my ambitions.

Critical consensus has the series peaking with number 3 and the series’ debut on Playstation 2, but number four was the game for me. Dispensing of the strict structured time limits that had been a feature of the series, THPS4 opted for a free-roaming environment with each challenge having an individual timer.  This allowed for either more in-depth challenges or shorter time limits to ramp up difficulty for other tasks. In addition Neversoft went wild with their event scripting creating some of the wackiest, most challenging and most fun tests yet. Memorable tasks included protecting an escaped elephant from being recaptured in central London and helping a convict escape Alcatraz (almost forty years after it closed.) The latter task was a prime example of what the new quick restart option was invented for, requiring practise and a bit of luck to pull off but surely impossible to successfully implement under the old game model. The game is also freed from the old structures’ limitations which greatly enhanced the variety of challenges on display. The old classics like high scores and collecting SKATE return but each level has enough individuality and variation in its gameplay to really stand out.

Their imagination of the developers stretched even further in level design, where freed from the restrictions of a two-minute time limit they set about crafting the most impressive in-depth levels the series had seen. Levels also no longer seemed constructed with fairly obvious lines that players would need to hit to reach the high, pro and sick scores. Collectables are hidden all over the place and the new feature of adding in obstacles for certain challenges (including a set of floats for a parade themed mission) amplified the variety of gameplay options. The addition of spine transfers to the already solid move system also gave greater freedom on score runs. This edition marked the perfect balance between ease of scoring and the complexity in combo generation. The post THPS4 caveman controls created a fundamental imbalance leading to cheap poorly flowing scoring opportunities that the series never quite managed to resolve. However, returning to previous versions had me searching for spine transfers or reverts to stretch a few more points out of my combos.

For all the improvements that had made it the best in the series so far, my main memory of this game is simply the sheer fun of playing it. From Tony Hawk’s Underground (THUG) onwards the Tony Hawks’ games took a slight deviation towards more realism in the presentation (emphasis on slight). Crazy stunts were still pulled but even this was hindered by a greater interest in plotting over having fun for the hell of it. As the ambition and scope of the games grew and the series matured so did the antics (slightly again). I was still looking to skitch an elephant or obsessively trying to master the snake run on Kona while the series was moving on to cinematic cutscenes with fully integrated storylines. I was looking to pull off a ‘one-wheel fireworks show’ or hit a ‘human dart’ whilst the series was developing new peripherals to make playing the game more realistic. I don’t want realism if I could skate I would but as I outlined above I am terrible at skating. That was why I spent the summer of 2003, mostly indoors, listening to Goldfinger (the band not Shirley Bassey) and playing this game. The early games in the series had a perfect representation of the design mantra ‘Easy to learn, difficult to master’. Anyone could pick up the controls of a Tony Hawk’s skating game, pull off a cool move and score a few points. With perseverance the game could make you feel like a god hitting impossibly long combos, nailing tricks over office blocks and performing superhuman feats. Nowhere was this better represented than in THPS4 and no other game in the series gave you such a good opportunity to show your skills off.