Finally managed to finish a few games lately... Halo 2 and Half Life 2.  Yeah, I know, very 2004 of me. 

As you might know if you've finished either game, or just followed 'net scuttlebutt, they both have rather... abbreviated... endings.  Both games caused a lot of uproar among their hardcore fans as a result, but having finally gone through the start-to-finish process on both games myself, I think it's a bit overblown.

Halo 2 clearly is setting up for a sequel, and although the recent announcement of an expansion pack didn't promise any single player content I've still got my hopes up.  Alas, being employed at Microsoft doesn't give me any magic insight into what our MGS brethren at Bungie will be doing next.  But ultimately while it was a cliffhanger, the ending of Halo 2 felt pretty good to me in terms of pacing and really ending the game on a high note.  Honestly, I was bothered much more by the plot twist that happens much earlier in the game (which I won't reveal in an attempt to keep this entrry about game endings spoiler free). 

Half Life 2, on the other hand, caught me a little more off guard.  The chapters early in the midgame take a lot of time to playthrough, so I wasn't expecting the last three to just fly through in a single play session.  So when suddenly the credits rolled I was knocked for a loop.  Half Life 1 didn't have the clearest ending either, but at least I felt like a sense of closure. 

Ultimately though, I'm not sure a bad ending is ever really all that bad.  Of course, I'm plenty guilty of this myself -- we were literally scrapping and redesigning the ending of System Shock 1 in the last two months of the project.  Our original plan for the end of SS1 was going to involve knocking you out to a fake DOS prompt and making you think SHODAN had taken over your machine, but it was both too "meta" and cut for time reasons.  But the endings to Halo 2 and Half Life 2 didn't diminish the fantastic time I had with the games themselves.  As they say, it's the journey, not the destination.

I don't think this is true for all games, but it is for most.  If Final Fantasy X had never resolved the plotlines about the nature of Sin, Tidus, and Zanarkand, I think it might've tainted my whole enjoyment of that game.  I think that style of game is clearly the exception and not the rule.

The reality of the matter is that far, far more people will see the first few levels of your game than the last.  So it really makes good development sense to focus a lot of your effort there.  Your hardcore fanbase will finish the game, and it's important to keep those folks energized, so having a tremendous finale is still a laudable goal.  But if it comes down to polishing one or the other, there's no question that having a strong opening is one of the most vital things for a game.

One of the little "dev tricks" I've picked up over the years to try and tackle this problem is to re-order how you actually build the content.  A natural, straightforward approach is to build all your levels in the order that the player will play them.  However, unless you have a very mature codebase and toolset, usually the levels you build first are where you are still learning the tools and all the features of the game aren't in yet.  So start with the levels in the middle of the game, and save the opening level for last -- that way when you implement it you will have the best possible knowledge about your game's capabilities and how to put it through it's paces.

I picked up a PSP on Thursday... perfect timing as I was flying out for business that very day.  Wow!  Don't get me wrong, I like my DS and GBA-SP (especially the SP), but the PSP is just a fantastic piece of kit.   The thing is all screen, and I'm continually wowed at the visual quality of what it can put out.  Every game I picked up supports multiplayer, and actually using it is a breeze.  Assuming the core demographic issues don't cause problems for it, Sony has another great game machine.

Here are my micro-reviews of the launch games I played.

Lumines -- Fantastic.  I'm a big fan of Tetsuya Mizuguchi (Rez, Space Channel 5) so a stylish puzzle game with a strong musical element is all I could ask for.  The way multiplayer works is just perfect.

Metal Gear Acid -- Well, it's Metal Gear Solid implemented as a turn based card game.  Given that strange reality, it manages to capture the Metal Gear vibe pretty well.  Plus, I'm a sucker for card battle games.  I've been enjoying it a lot though it is starting to bog down a little 6-7 missions in.

Wipeout Pure -- On the good side, it's Wipeout, brought to you in all it's Wipeout-y glory.  Techno beats, fast gameplay, cool designs.  On the bad side, it's Wipeout, yet again.  Playing it on the PSP is cool, but it definitely is cut from the exact same cloth as the previous Wipeout games.  Load times are a bit of a problem, but the 8-player tournament multiplayer is a lot of fun.

Whew, just got back from GDC.  Interesting yet exhausting, as usual, but this year it was compounded by still recovering from a bit of a chest cold.  It's really unfortunate to be off your game at GDC because there are so many cool people to hang out with and so many ideas to absorb. 

I helped teach the Game Design Workshop again this year(previous year's notes can be found here on Mahk LeBlanc's site).  Despite some logistical problems due to it being over-subscribed the first day, it was a fun way to kick off the conference.  The workshop gets a great mix of veterans and total newcomers and it is always a blast to see what they come up with for the various exercises.  My favorite this year was in the "Paper Games" exercise, one group did a fascinating version of House of the Dead that had this great two player real-time vibe.  Players had to slap down targeting cards on a 5x5 grid (vaguely like the card games Slap and Rat-Killer) and the physicality of it mapped captured the essence of the original game quite well.

I'm bummed that I missed Will Wright's talk though -- due to planning oversights they put his always immensely popular talk in a far-too-small venue and it was already over filled by the time arrived (25 minutes early!). 

Some talks that I found very interesting... Chris Butcher on the network infrastructure of Halo 2, Jake Simpson on the object system of the Sims 2, and John Underkoffler on realistic futurism.  Peter Molyneux gave some interesting demos of Black & White 2 and The Movies, but I can't say that I got too much out of his talks.

One of the highlights of the show was attending the "Dear Friends" concert, a live orchestral performance of various songs from the Final Fantasy games.  I am a huge Final Fantasy fanboy, and we had incredible seats -- about 6 rows from the orchestra and right across the aisle from Nobuo Uematsu!  It was definitely a memorable experience and may be the defining moment of GDC 2005 for me.

If you like sci-fi strategy games, definitely check out Nexus: The Jupiter Incident.  Despite an awful title and some cringe-worthy narrative, the gameplay is fantastic, really nailing the vibe of being in charge of a fleet of capital ships.  Other games that have tackled this sub-genre have been saddled with critical flaws of various kinds, ranging from horrible interface, to poor production quality, to insane micromanagement.  So far Nexus avoids all of those and delivers a solid "fleet commander" experience.

March is bringing another great crop of games, including Star Wars Republic Commando and Brothers in Arms.  I'm most thrilled about Freedom Force vs The Third Reich, and not just because of my fixation on superhero games.  It's also from my old pals at Irrational Games, and it's self-published so unlike 99% of the games you guy today, if you buy it your dollars are actually going to the creators of the game.  There's a free demo on that website, so you can't go wrong!