Parenting Games

Over at Picross.com, we’ve launched Picross 4 Kids. An activity book of picross puzzles aimed at the 6-14 year old crowd. We’d of course be counting on picross loving parents to get this book for their kids, as most 6 year olds don’t have credit cards. Its got over a hundred picross puzzles, integrated with all kinds of friendly cartoons. They’re not just stand-alone puzzles either, its very much like an activity book. There’s mazes, matching games and other fun things with picross puzzles built in.

There’s more info and a few free pdf sample pages here.

I play Contra every other day I or so. I’ve got most of the first level memorized. It feels good to go running thru a level and knowing exactly where the baddies will be and how to negotiate them. Its not “realistic”, but it is what we expect from a good, classic Contra style game. I got past the waterfall on normal difficulty finally. That might not sound like much, but its a big deal because it demonstrates progress.

I can’t wait to play this in co-op, it’ll be a completely different game then. I fully expect it to live up to all my memories of the good old days with Contra, Super C and Contra 3.

I’m very impressed with Contra 4 for DS. Its plenty hard, but I am making incremental progress learning the level design and enemy patterns. I played my first few sessions on normal, but got sick of dying and started playing the easy mode. I beat this in a day or so, and it definitely whet my appetite for the next difficulty. After a few days of playing challenges and the normal mode adventure, I can feel myself getting better. I’m more aware of both screens, I’m remembering where the weapon pick-ups are so I’m less likely to miss them, and I’m trying different and more successful approaches to complicated setups of enemies and obstacles.

I was most excited about the possibility of playing this co-op with the kids. I knew it was wishful thinking, but I was still disappointed to learn that it didn’t allow single cart multiplayer. I feel quite confident that we will one day but a second copy just so I can play co-op with the kids. Maybe after its dropped to $20 bucks in a year or so. Much like I’ve always wanted to play co-op Jackal with my boy, so too, do I want to play co-op Contra. I spent so much of my boyhood with those games, I can’t wait to introduce them to my son. He’s probably too young and uncoordinated to play intelligently just yet, but in another year or so, we’ll purge the planet of the Red Falcon they way any good father-son duo should.

Bought Super Mario Galaxy at Toys “R” Us yesterday. In the 5 minutes that I was in line, I saw 6 copies of that game cross the counter. I get almost all the 1st party stuff on launch day and I’ve never seen that kind of demand for a game.

So the big kids and I sat down to play last night while Kara kept Malon. I got a few stars and then we started playing co-op and I assisted for Thomas. I was really surprised at how quickly he learned to play. He plays New Super Mario Bros. on DS quite proficiently, and he plays a lot of Super Smash Bros. Melee on Gamecube, but that’s just button mashing. This is the first time he’s navigated intelligently in a 3D game. He’s played bits and pieces of Zelda games before, but this will be the first time he gets really invested in a 3D single-player adventure.

I had a great time assisting too. Once he learned that he could approach the goombas with impunity while I had them stunned, he began to confront them with a good deal of confidence. Also I was a big help to him by stopping the big rolling balls, and even just pointing to things on screen was a big help for me. The screen pointer ability is exaclty what a parent needs to play games with their kids. A laser pointer would work just as good I guess (can you point those at a TV screen?). Its nice to be able to accurately direct their attention to on-screen elements.

What a thrill to come across the Metroids again in MP3’s Elysia. Those little suckers have earned a really special place in my heart. They’re scary even in their little glass tubes, and when they break loose you really know you’re in trouble. I probably appreciate the Metroids so much because I saw them in their original incarnation. Back on the NES, when you have to restore your life only 5 points at a time, a few seconds in the grasp of an energy sucking Metroid could mean 10 minutes hovering over a pipe shooting baddies to refill you e-tanks.

I love the way the Prime games reveal the metroids to you. You always get to scan them from the safe side of a secure containment tube. You have to walk around them for several minutes just anticipating the moment when they’re going to jump out and suck your brains. Then all hell breaks loose and your switching weapons back and forth and watching your missile count drop faster than it has for the whole game.

Another good Metroid Weekend. I assembled that bomb in Elysia, flew part of the town over to the leviathan, defending it from an assault (took me 2 tries), and then dropped it and escaped. This opened up the 2nd big boss of the game and with its defeat, opened another planet, where I expect to find Gandrayda, the last bounty hunter, and the MP3 end-game.

Not the ending of the game, but the beginning of the ending of the game. That point where you know that the only thing left to do is to find the final boss and beat it. When you’ve got access to everywhere, and you really feel like you run the place and its just a matter of time until the ending credits roll.

Its a shame that thus far the MP3 bosses haven’t been nearly as good as the previous Prime bosses. At least the formal bosses have been pretty serious let-downs. The Mogengar on Bryyo was fun, but nothing special. And the robot/toaster boss from Elysia was just dumb. So he’s got a few forms, and a few week points, big deal. The “swarm into different formations” boss has been done too many times. I want a large, original, complicated creature for a boss. Add 2 tablespoons of something environmental, and a dash of power-ups in case I takes me a minute to figure it out. The first Prime game had great bosses. Prime 2 Echoes had awesome bosses. Easily the best in the series. Prime 2 also had very original and challenging minibosses. Prime 3 now has some great Mini-bosses. Ghor and Rundas were really good. But the proper, end-level bosses aren’t terribly exciting.

The game that the kids and I play together most often is Super Smash Brothers Melee. All the options for teams and handicaps and slow-motion make it a perfect game to tailor just to our specific father/child needs. It also makes it a real beast of menu screens that have to be navigated. Though I play it with them a lot, there also times when they play by themselves or with their cousin, and I’m not there to manage menu navigation. This is forever causing trouble as someone accidentally goes back a screen and then no one knows what to do to get back to the character selection.

With the release of Super Smash Bros Brawl in December, I’m going to really concentrate teaching the kids how to navigate these menu screens and manage these options by themselves. They can read enough to understand most of the menu options and with a little instruction about the general “advance to next” and “return to previous” processes, they should be able create and play the game types that suites them best.

I also want the kids to play more of Brawl than they do of Melee. Not longer hours, but more different parts of the game. I want them to play the single player modes and use the practice mode and explore the other game altering settings. This will be a perfect opportunity for them to get to know an interactive experience on a deeper level: a level where they understand that they can customize the game to their specific preferences. There will be times when they want team games, and times when they don’t. I want them to understand how different and cool that coin games, stock games, and sudden death games can be. Smash Bros suits a lot of different needs and I want them to understand how to manage that experience without having to rely on me for everything.

There’s definitely some weak moments of combat in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. The Prime bosses have always been a lot of fun, but some of the regular enemies amount to little more than shooting gallery dummies. I think this sticks out more in MP3 because you’re encouraged to go into Hyper mode on some enemies, and if you don’t, you just find yourself shooting the same guy 10-15 times, at point blank range, while he nonchalantly looks about the room or slowly winds up for his next attack. By this point, games should have evolved to the point, where anytime you shoot a baddie, he should flinch in some appreciable way. Goldeneye 007 did this 10 years ago, and did it exceptionally well. It’s a sorely missed feature in MP.

After getting the screw attack on Bryyo and briefly exploring Bryyo ice. I got another call from Mom Brain that the G.F.S Olympus had been found. This gave me another “planet” to visit, but more importantly, a deserted space ship wreck to explore.

I guess these wrecked ships in the Metroid games stick out because they’re so different from the rest of the game. A Resident Evil title is out to scare you from step one. Every single building, pathway and creature is designed to be scary. But with most of a Metroid game being standard sci-fi fare, when you get to the “haunted house” stage, it really stands out.

Even the wrecked ship in the Super Nintendo’s Super Metroid had a bit of an eerie feeling about it. It’s been 7-8 years since I’ve played that part in Super Metroid, but isn’t there a dead space marine with bugs crawling on him there shortly after you enter it? I’m not quite that far into my Virtual Console Super Metroid adventure. I’ll get there soon enough though.

Metroid Prime’s wrecked ship was cool because of a few well placed scripted events, and because as you move through it, you recognize that this is the same ship that you where in when you started the game. Backtracking is no uncommon occurrence in a Metroid game, but it’s most enjoyable when the area in question has undergone significant changes. And the realization that you’re backtracking is slow to set in.

Metroid Prime 2 didn’t have a spooky wrecked ship, but it had plenty of backtracking over the Light and Dark versions of Aether.

With the “haunted house” stage being a singular event in the game, the “scare the player” techniques seem more potent. The phazon slime creature could have been a good enemy anywhere in this game, but seeing the bright glowing enemy in a dark hallway of a wrecked ship is far more intimidating that it might be in a more normal Metroid environment. Also, having these enemies hidden under boxes, and release upon the explosion of said box, again, could work anywhere, but adds so much more here in the wrecked ship.

Its a shame I spend so much time wishing the kids were older. I’m assuming that game playing skill will come with age, and it will to some degree, but there’s plenty that can be learned with just practice. I should have the kids playing more games with me I guess, but we don’t have enough 4 player games to go around.

We play Smash Bros together, but it’s mostly just a button mashing game for them. Super Smash Bros. Brawl might be the first game I can present to them and expect us to all develop our skills evenly. I’ll have an advantage of course, but I’d like them to understand melee moves, projectile moves, smashing and defending. Surely they can begin to piece together some type of fighting strategy. I’ll concentrate on teamwork against a common cpu baddie with them and see if we can create any more focus in their playing that way.

One of my good friends has a 6 year old who’s beaten Halo 2! Now I don’t think that’s an appropriate game for a 6 year old, but I’m excited about the fact that this child has mastered the controls of a very complicated and difficult game. I keep waiting for Jackal or Gauntlet to come out on the Virtual Console because I think those are slow enough for the kids, and we could really enjoy some co-op. But I’ve wondered recently, what it would take to get a good match of Street Fighter out of Thomas or even Daisy. To think that I’d have a high-quality Street Fighter player in the same house as me would be a dream come true. Its just a matter of time right?