Getting Your Money's Worth

Recently, I purchased The Maw for Xbox Live Arcade. The demo was quite charming, and I was eager to have a new game to play on the platformer-starved Xbox 360. From first glance, one could tell that The Maw had some exceptional production values, and the characters were endearing and attractive. Eagerly, I paid my 800 MS points ($10) and got to playing. Three hours later, I had beaten the game with 100% completion and all but one of the achievements.

Needless to say, I felt cheated.

I know the whole "games are expensive to make!" argument. I hear it every time someone complains of a game being too short, easy, etc. I could probably stomach such talk when it involves some forty-hour epic that enthralls you for hours each time you play. The Maw, sadly, is the exact opposite. Its paltry eight levels can be beaten with 100% completion in under three hours, and once you finish the game, there's no reason at all to go back. None of the stages are particularly clever in design, and there are no secrets, extra items, or anything of the sort to find. You literally see EVERYTHING on your first playthrough. Even the achievements (save one that requires you to play at four separate times in a day) can all be done in one sitting. Hardly worth the purchase price.

Even worse, developer Twisted Pixel has now announced that it will be selling three additional levels via Xbox Live for a hundred points each. This gives the impression that almost a third of the game was left behind to inflate the replay value of what would otherwise be a "play once and toss" affair. Such nickel-and-dime tactics really annoy me, and I won't b buying the levels, achievements included or not.

So what excuse is there now? The game is short, not particularly deep or involving, and a third of it was withheld to be sold separately. Should I just throw up my arms and say "what do you expect for $10?" No, I should be annoyed that the demo, which was so enticing and enjoyable, failed to show a game that was all flash and no substance. The latter, it would seem, comes for an extra price.

If a developer can't afford to release a game, perhaps it's best that nothing should be released at all. I don't want to be sold part of a game now and then have to buy the rest little by little. Why not just sell the whole thing for $15, like Castle Crashers (a much better value and game overall)? I really liked The Maw, and my anger mostly stems from being denied more of it for the price. Platformers are traditionally not as deep as most other genres, and a lack of length can outright kill one after the initial novelty has worn off.

Interviewed during the game's development, Mike Henry of Twisted Pixels commented on what distinguishes The Maw from other games. "The big thing we wanted to push with it was personality. So, I would say that even over and above the actual mechanics of the game and all that, we wanted to make sure it was a memorable experience for the players because they got attached to the characters, and they wanted to know more about the characters, and would be sad when the game was over because they don’t get to continue the adventure with the characters anymore."

He was right, in a sense. I did get attached to the characters and was sad when the game ended. Unfortunately, that was because the game was over by the time I really got to like them.

MadCatz Xbox 360 Arcade GameStick

I picked this up for $10 at Gamestop today. I've heard mixed things about the quality of the stick, but I wanted the spinner control and Astropop. It also came with codes for Time Pilot and Frogger, but I have both of those. I'll probably hold onto to them for use as a prize in an upcoming Sega-16 contest.

The control itself seems pretty decent. I haven't had the chance to check out the spinner in action, but the overall construction of the whole thing is pretty sound. I know I won't be using this for regular games, but it might actually be pretty useful for arcade titles. Even if it doesn't work out, I at least now have a third controller, and I'll just consider it as a bonus that came with Astropop (which is pretty cool)!

Delisting XBLA Games: The Latest Industry Blunder

In an effort to clean up the "clutter" on XBLA, Microsoft is going to delist those games that have been available for at least six months, have a metacritic rating lower than 65%, and haven't had a high conversion rate (the percentage of people buying a title after downloading the demo). According to MS, delisting said games will allow for a smoother and easier experience buying games for the service. To call this policy stupid would be an understatement. There are several things wrong with delisting titles, and none of them have to do with making anyone's experience more enjoyable.

Microsoft's reasoning is that this will help reduce the clutter on the Live marketplace. Say what? Clutter... on a digital store that has no physical presence? Why not just come out and tell the truth. These games are being delisted because Microsoft has gone batshit insane approving every turd proposed for XBLA, and now it wants to clean up by getting rid of the stinkers. The same company that denied Valve's Portal a berth on XBLA went and released Sudoku and Warlords (no good without a paddle!) just a few weeks ago. This is what I'm talking about.

The Xbox maker has made a great move by upping the maximum game size to 350MB, but there really shouldn't be a cap in the first place, just ask Capcom. This line of thinking is why we have a store filled with Frogger and Yaris, and no one's playing them, Jeff Minter be damned. We've heard developers complain about the glut of crap on XBLA before, and MS seems to want a quick band-aid solution to its blatant lack of quality control by sweeping the games under the rug - literally. All of the delisted titles will still be available for purchase via a friend's recommendation, and they're not actually being taken off the servers, just off the main list. You can even still play them online. So they're there... it just doesn't look like they're there. Brilliant.

There's a bigger problem than people not being able to find Dig Dug, one that almost no one is talking about. The threat of delisting not only plagues gamers who might be afraid that a game they've been meaning to buy might up and vanish, it also bodes ill for developers. Think of the company that wants to try something different. The whole selling point of services like XBLA. the Playstation Store, and WiiWare is that they offer developers a place to sell their games without the costs and pitfalls of retail distribution. Selling online allows them to take chances and go for that particular title that might never have had a chance to come to store shelves. If there's a threat of it being taken off the service, developers will be less inclined to think outside the box and take chances.

You might be able to argue that this will also keep them from making crap, but the glut we've seen so far is no one else's fault but Microsoft's. If it hadn't kept approving weak arcade port after weak arcade port, we wouldn't have so many of them. Telling game makers that their new titles have a chance of being delisted could be enough to make them take their wares to the Wii or Playstation 3. And let's be honest, making a game invisible to the general consumer is as good as eliminating it from the service entirely.

I sincerely hope that Microsoft rethinks this foolish policy. There's no need to take any games off the main page, and simply reducing their price a bit and assigning them to a bargain bin section would take care of the entire problem. Hey, if you're going to make it so that the general public doesn't even know the games are there, dropping their prices to 200 or 400 MS points shouldn't be a reach. The more games on the service the better, and one man's Mad Tracks is another man's Puzzle Quest. There's no need to eliminate anything and risk alienating consumers and developers alike.