Platformers

[Foggle]

Yeah, the first game desperately needs strafing. If they ever do a Ratchet HD Trilogy, I probably won't buy it unless they add strafing to R&C 1. But if they do that, it'll be a day 1 purchase.

I'm not really sure why Ratchet is such a jerk in the first game. I love him in the sequels, but he kind of pisses me off in the original.

[Foggle]

Hmm, very interesting read here. I've selected some of the highlights:

GameSpy: What were the main criticisms of the original Ratchet & Clank, and what did you do to address them?

Ted Price: The ones I saw repeated the most frequently were Ratchet's design and personality, just as a character. And the second one was the camera. So, to address Ratchet's design and personality, we did change his personality this time around. He's less cocky, he is much more friendly to Clank, and he's able to handle himself better in stressful situations without being impetuous, which is what he was in Ratchet 1. As far as his appearance goes, well he's a commando now so he has this commando body suit first of all, with a helmet, and boots. He looks very different as far as his garb. And then he gets armor later in the game which changes his appearance all over again. So I think we're addressing the character concerns pretty well. ...

GameSpy: Which Ratchet do you like better, the original Ratchet with his brash personality, or the kinder, gentler Ratchet of today?

Ted Price: It's a toss-up. Personally, I liked the brash personality because it showed character development throughout the game. The tension between Ratchet and Clank helped show how Ratchet was going from being a wild teenager to someone who was a little bit more responsible. On the other hand, I think the character in Ratchet 2 is a lot more likeable. He's somebody that I would want to be friends with, and somebody who probably wouldn't piss me off all the time, which is what I think the Ratchet 1 character does. But that was our intention.

GameSpy: So your intention was to piss off players?

Ted Price: Our intention was to make players notice that the character had a personality. Sometimes in these games when you've got a character who's furry, and for lack of a better term, a mascot character, they can get lost in the crowd. We really wanted to make Ratchet stand out and be somebody. Even if that wasn't the nicest person in the world, well, we wanted to make him a strong character. ...

GameSpy: Sly Cooper came out around the same time as the first Ratchet & Clank. What do you think are the main differences between Sucker Punch's design philosophies and your own?

Ted Price: Ironically, I don't think they're that different. I think that we both have a history of creating traditional platformers.... We had Spyro ... The Spyro series. They had Rocket: Robot on Wheels. So we come from very similar backgrounds. I think on Sly they took the more traditional approach of collecting lots of stuff and creating more ... Well, for lack of a better term, "platformer-y" challenges. We, since we had come off of three Spyros, really were ready to branch out. We were ready to take the platformer genre in a different direction. For a couple reasons. One, we were tired of the traditional. We needed to do something different. And secondly, we knew that games like Sly would come out. Good games, really solid good games, and we knew that to survive in this market we would have to differentiate ourselves. ...

GameSpy: Switching gears a bit, most people call these games platformers, but you and a few others refer to them as character-action games. Can you explain why?

Ted Price: Well, platformer traditionally means jumping on platforms. So we really haven't had what I would call true platformers since ... say, the 16-bit days. Because platformers really are, in my mind at least, the sidescrollers, where you are jumping back and forth. I mean Crash maybe is a good example of that, just avoidance and character control. But we get pinned with the name platformer because our characters look similar to the characters from those bygone days. You know, the mascot-type characters where the head is out of proportion to the body and everything's a little bit colorful versus the more realistic games.

So it's a misnomer. And that's why we call it a character-action game. The game is based around a character. This is a story about a character. It's not Ghost Recon where you've got a squad of kind of faceless guys, or whatever. There're lots of other games out there that are good examples of something that's not a character-action game, but features characters. All of our marketing images focus on Ratchet. Our stories are about how unique Ratchet is. He's not a typical human being ... he's not Lara Croft.... I'm not going anywhere with this.

Anyway, the question is why do we say character action versus platformer. Mostly because I just don't believe this is a platformer in the truest sense of the word. We have platform challenges, but that's a small, small part of the game.

GameSpy: So you think the platform elements are sort of pushed aside by the combat and the exploration and stuff like that?

Ted Price: I think they're complimented.... I think combat and exploration are complimented by platformer mechanics. We have platformer mechanics and they're fun. If you can do them well in 3D, it's great to have. Everyone here in the company likes platforming challenges. But they're an adjunct really. The core of this game is fast action and blowing stuff up ... when it comes to the twitch gameplay. It's not jumping on moving platforms. Other games do that. We don't.

GameSpy: Ratchet & Clank did very well in Japan. Did this surprise you at all?

Ted Price: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it didn't surprise me that it did well once it was bundled, but it surprised me that Sony Computer Entertainment Japan bundled it with PlayStation 2, and gave it tremendous, tremendous support. It was an honor, for us, as a Western developer to be picked for something like that. That's never happened before for a Western developer.

Another thing that was surprising for all of us was seeing that once the Japanese consumers started playing Ratchet they responded favorably to the character. That was also new for us, because Ratchet's a very Western character, there's really nothing anime about him at all. To see the Japanese actually digging Ratchet was rewarding, because no one really knows how to sell a game in Japan. I don't think the Japanese developers even know.

GameSpy: They redesigned Crash for Japan. They didn't do that for Ratchet, did they?

Ted Price: We designed Ratchet, first of all. So we accept lots of input from Sony, and Sony actually ... Our Japanese producers did have a couple really good suggestions for Ratchet. The reason that Ratchet has stripes is because of them. The reason that Ratchet has eyebrows is because of him. Ratchet didn't have eyebrows at first, and looking back he looks very strange. But we didn't try to change his design because I think the Japanese producers felt that they couldn't make any suggestions that they could guarantee would work. They made lots of good suggestions, but you know, who knows? I think also that they probably learned from Crash, because they were the same producers who were on Crash. The only thing that was different about Crash in Japan was the marketing materials. Crash the model wasn't any different.

GameSpy: So Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly was a bit of a cosmic tragedy. As one of the creators of Spyro, how do you feel about this? Does it hurt you at all?

Ted Price: Yeah, it was disappointing, because ... Spyro is a great character, and he's a perennial character. Somebody that I think will always have an audience, because he's cute, he's just ... visually very appealing. So we were hoping for a game that would take advantage of the PlayStation 2's technology and do something different. Because it was a challenge that we had thought about. We had really considered doing another Spyro, and we knew that it was going to be tough to come up with new challenges, and so we were looking forward to seeing what Check Six and Equinox would do. And granted, they did some pretty cool stuff with his breath weapons. Unfortunately, it seemed like it was shipped too early with a lot of bugs and we heard a lot of complaints about it. It was a little disappointing. I won't say Fat Elvis, because.... Did you ever read that?

GameSpy: No, I didn't.

Ted Price: It was great. Jason (Rubin) was doing an interview for an interview for ... I think it was Game Informer. This was when Eurocom was doing a Crash game. He said "Yeah, Crash has entered his Fat Elvis days." I don't think Spyro has, fortunately.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Damn, all this talk is really making me want to play R&C games. Perhaps during the summer I'll finally hit those up if I can find them for cheap online. I know that my older brother will let me borrow his PS2 since he rarely ever uses it anymore, so all I really need to do is find the games. It'd be so much easier if they all came in a bundle of some sort, but honestly I'll just settle for what I can get. I'll also look up the Yakuza games while I'm at it, and I'll keep and eye out for God Hand as well.

[Foggle]

Sounds good! Yakuza 1 is a bit of an acquired taste, but you'll almost definitely enjoy the sequel. I can also pretty much guarantee that you'll like God Hand and the R&C games.

I added more snippets from the interview to my post, btw.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Well R&C I already know I'd like from what I played of it with my friend (that is to say that we took turns playing through a few hours of the single-player in UYA, in addition to spending tons of hours on the addicting multiplayer modes). I'll keep my expectations in check for Yakuza 1 since other fans seem to generally feel that its the weakest game in the series, even if it IS still good, but I'm sure Yakuza 2 will be great.

I'm very certain that I'd love God Hand. Over on the NG board that I go to from time to time, its basically the only other action game series that the NG fanboys over there hold in just about as much high regard as the NG series itself, and that's saying a lot given how biased some of them can be about other melee-focused action games.

[Foggle]

God Hand is a very nice challenge, tons of fun, and actually quite deep despite outward appearances. Plus, the music is excellent and the cutscenes are stupidly bad in an absolutely awesome way. I'd say Normal difficulty is nestled somewhere between NG Black's Normal mode and NG 2's Path Of The Warrior. Hard is hard, though. And level 8-1 is fucking insane on any difficulty setting.

You absolutely must beat the game without resorting to cheap tactics, though. I have never felt prouder of my video game skills than when I finally defeated Great Sensei for the first time, and there's no way I would have gotten the same feeling had I been spamming cheap moves like some of the "pros" do. I flat-out refuse to use such tactics or glitch games to win, especially in skill-based titles like God Hand and Ninja Gaiden.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Yeah, these games all have their exploitable moves (with NGB its wall-attacks and chaining UTs), and I'm sure God Hand is no exception to that, but like all challenging games it just wouldn't feel right unless you actually beat it by playing the game the way it was meant to be played. Besides, I just don't find any actual fun in spamming the same overpowered attacks over and over again, so its not so much a question of whether it makes a hard game any easier or not, but rather whether it makes the game any more fun to play or not, and obviously that would only serve to make a challenging game into a tedious one. I'd rather die a few dozen times and get a little better each time until I finally beat a tough challenge than spam cheap and boring tactics to make my way through it and have completely no fun in the process at all.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Hmm, very interesting read here. I've selected some of the highlights:

GameSpy: What were the main criticisms of the original Ratchet & Clank, and what did you do to address them?

Ted Price: The ones I saw repeated the most frequently were Ratchet's design and personality, just as a character. And the second one was the camera. So, to address Ratchet's design and personality, we did change his personality this time around. He's less cocky, he is much more friendly to Clank, and he's able to handle himself better in stressful situations without being impetuous, which is what he was in Ratchet 1. As far as his appearance goes, well he's a commando now so he has this commando body suit first of all, with a helmet, and boots. He looks very different as far as his garb. And then he gets armor later in the game which changes his appearance all over again. So I think we're addressing the character concerns pretty well. ...

GameSpy: Which Ratchet do you like better, the original Ratchet with his brash personality, or the kinder, gentler Ratchet of today?

Ted Price: It's a toss-up. Personally, I liked the brash personality because it showed character development throughout the game. The tension between Ratchet and Clank helped show how Ratchet was going from being a wild teenager to someone who was a little bit more responsible. On the other hand, I think the character in Ratchet 2 is a lot more likeable. He's somebody that I would want to be friends with, and somebody who probably wouldn't piss me off all the time, which is what I think the Ratchet 1 character does. But that was our intention.

GameSpy: So your intention was to piss off players?

Ted Price: Our intention was to make players notice that the character had a personality. Sometimes in these games when you've got a character who's furry, and for lack of a better term, a mascot character, they can get lost in the crowd. We really wanted to make Ratchet stand out and be somebody. Even if that wasn't the nicest person in the world, well, we wanted to make him a strong character. ...

GameSpy: Sly Cooper came out around the same time as the first Ratchet & Clank. What do you think are the main differences between Sucker Punch's design philosophies and your own?

Ted Price: Ironically, I don't think they're that different. I think that we both have a history of creating traditional platformers.... We had Spyro ... The Spyro series. They had Rocket: Robot on Wheels. So we come from very similar backgrounds. I think on Sly they took the more traditional approach of collecting lots of stuff and creating more ... Well, for lack of a better term, "platformer-y" challenges. We, since we had come off of three Spyros, really were ready to branch out. We were ready to take the platformer genre in a different direction. For a couple reasons. One, we were tired of the traditional. We needed to do something different. And secondly, we knew that games like Sly would come out. Good games, really solid good games, and we knew that to survive in this market we would have to differentiate ourselves. ...

GameSpy: Switching gears a bit, most people call these games platformers, but you and a few others refer to them as character-action games. Can you explain why?

Ted Price: Well, platformer traditionally means jumping on platforms. So we really haven't had what I would call true platformers since ... say, the 16-bit days. Because platformers really are, in my mind at least, the sidescrollers, where you are jumping back and forth. I mean Crash maybe is a good example of that, just avoidance and character control. But we get pinned with the name platformer because our characters look similar to the characters from those bygone days. You know, the mascot-type characters where the head is out of proportion to the body and everything's a little bit colorful versus the more realistic games.

So it's a misnomer. And that's why we call it a character-action game. The game is based around a character. This is a story about a character. It's not Ghost Recon where you've got a squad of kind of faceless guys, or whatever. There're lots of other games out there that are good examples of something that's not a character-action game, but features characters. All of our marketing images focus on Ratchet. Our stories are about how unique Ratchet is. He's not a typical human being ... he's not Lara Croft.... I'm not going anywhere with this.

Anyway, the question is why do we say character action versus platformer. Mostly because I just don't believe this is a platformer in the truest sense of the word. We have platform challenges, but that's a small, small part of the game.

GameSpy: So you think the platform elements are sort of pushed aside by the combat and the exploration and stuff like that?

Ted Price: I think they're complimented.... I think combat and exploration are complimented by platformer mechanics. We have platformer mechanics and they're fun. If you can do them well in 3D, it's great to have. Everyone here in the company likes platforming challenges. But they're an adjunct really. The core of this game is fast action and blowing stuff up ... when it comes to the twitch gameplay. It's not jumping on moving platforms. Other games do that. We don't.

GameSpy: Ratchet & Clank did very well in Japan. Did this surprise you at all?

Ted Price: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it didn't surprise me that it did well once it was bundled, but it surprised me that Sony Computer Entertainment Japan bundled it with PlayStation 2, and gave it tremendous, tremendous support. It was an honor, for us, as a Western developer to be picked for something like that. That's never happened before for a Western developer.

Another thing that was surprising for all of us was seeing that once the Japanese consumers started playing Ratchet they responded favorably to the character. That was also new for us, because Ratchet's a very Western character, there's really nothing anime about him at all. To see the Japanese actually digging Ratchet was rewarding, because no one really knows how to sell a game in Japan. I don't think the Japanese developers even know.

GameSpy: They redesigned Crash for Japan. They didn't do that for Ratchet, did they?

Ted Price: We designed Ratchet, first of all. So we accept lots of input from Sony, and Sony actually ... Our Japanese producers did have a couple really good suggestions for Ratchet. The reason that Ratchet has stripes is because of them. The reason that Ratchet has eyebrows is because of him. Ratchet didn't have eyebrows at first, and looking back he looks very strange. But we didn't try to change his design because I think the Japanese producers felt that they couldn't make any suggestions that they could guarantee would work. They made lots of good suggestions, but you know, who knows? I think also that they probably learned from Crash, because they were the same producers who were on Crash. The only thing that was different about Crash in Japan was the marketing materials. Crash the model wasn't any different.

GameSpy: So Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly was a bit of a cosmic tragedy. As one of the creators of Spyro, how do you feel about this? Does it hurt you at all?

Ted Price: Yeah, it was disappointing, because ... Spyro is a great character, and he's a perennial character. Somebody that I think will always have an audience, because he's cute, he's just ... visually very appealing. So we were hoping for a game that would take advantage of the PlayStation 2's technology and do something different. Because it was a challenge that we had thought about. We had really considered doing another Spyro, and we knew that it was going to be tough to come up with new challenges, and so we were looking forward to seeing what Check Six and Equinox would do. And granted, they did some pretty cool stuff with his breath weapons. Unfortunately, it seemed like it was shipped too early with a lot of bugs and we heard a lot of complaints about it. It was a little disappointing. I won't say Fat Elvis, because.... Did you ever read that?

GameSpy: No, I didn't.

Ted Price: It was great. Jason (Rubin) was doing an interview for an interview for ... I think it was Game Informer. This was when Eurocom was doing a Crash game. He said "Yeah, Crash has entered his Fat Elvis days." I don't think Spyro has, fortunately.

Not to harp on Ted Price (he's a nice guy), but he makes no sense here.

Why does being a "mascot" define a game more than the actual gameplay does? How is Ratchet not a platformer but Mega Man is? You do the exact same things in both just in different ways. No they're not traditional platformers like Spyro (which isn't a 16 bit game so... I dunno where he was going with that one) they are called Action Platformers which is what they have been called since Mega Man X showed the difference between the two styles.

Using a cute "art style" doesn't define the genre of game because no one is ever going to convince me that Mirror's Edge isn't a platformer because it isn't 16 bit and looks realistic. It's about the content not the surface. His description about using characters and not using "faceless guys" doesn't make sense either. That's basically saying Super Mario Galaxy and Duke Nukem 3D are the same game because they star characters. Which is... well, wrong.

Honestly, it seems that a lot of Western developers seem to find it some kind of stigma to be labeled a "platformer", like it's an inferior genre of game or something. And I'm not sure why, they are most popular style of game there is and millions of people love them. Why wouldn't you want to be associated with that? It's one of the most important genres in gaming, why is it a bad thing to be associated with them?

[gunswordfist]

My baby brother got Ratchet & Clank Crack In Time I believe 2 days ago. How good is it?

[Foggle]

Ted Price pretty much acknowledges that he's rambling on about nothing in the interview, though. It just sounds to me like he doesn't see a game as a "true" or "traditional" platformer unless it contains nothing but platforming challenges, and he's saying that Ratchet doesn't count as one for him because it also has other elements like shooting and spaceship levels. Also, remember that this interview is back from 2003 when that stigma about platformers didn't really exist yet (as far as I know).

My baby brother got Ratchet & Clank Crack In Time I believe 2 days ago. How good is it?

It's pretty good. Not as awesome as the PS2 games, though. I like it more than Tools of Destruction, but not everyone does. Regardless, it's great no matter how you look at it, IMO.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Yeah, but I don't think you'll ever find anyone not calling a platformer or at least an action platformer. They're the only things you consistently do in the whole main series even when side stuff like flying or racing aren't consistent. Attacking and platforming.

Mascot Action game is just too vague and nondescript, really.

By the way, a R&C HD collection is currently rumored for release very soon. If I can get a hold of it and the Jak one (as well as the PS3 ones) then I might be pretty busy this summer when the PS3 is free. 

[Foggle]

I'd definitely pick that up if I didn't already have my PS2 versions. But like I said, if they add strafing to R&C 1, it'll be a must-buy.

[gunswordfist]

Alright, that sounds good. My brother will be getting Tools Of Destruction in 2 weeks.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Check it out

The new Sly game is peaking my interest (shame it was pushed into Fall where it will get buried), from what I'm hearing it has the hub worlds from 2/3 but the platforming style of 1 in its place. If they hit all the right marks, this could be brilliant. Especially if they either cut the minigames or at least have them more focused on stealth or platforming minigames, then they could finally make the Sly game I've been waiting for. However...



^People are complaining about how that looks. 

More photos

[Foggle]

^People are complaining about how that looks. 

OMG WEAR R ALL THE POLYGONSZ?!!? NOT BROWN ENUFF!!

Seriously, though, graphics looks great, game looks great. If they merge the scope and consistency of 2 with the gameplay of 1 and remove the mini-games entirely, we'll be looking at a serious GOTY contender.