Archive for December, 2006
Cotton reverie
Three drafts sitting on my Wordpress dashboard (not including this one) have all fallen prey to good intentions and apathy, a heady cocktail which leads to lack of writing impetus. One draft extolls the trials and tribulations of a now defunct endeavour, another tells of my process of building web forms, and the other remains sealed against the elements. This diatribe is unique among them in that I had already written a large swathe of vitriol only for it to be mercilessly erased by the clipboard.
For those that know me in person and for those capable of reading between the lines (which say “people who use the term Web 2.0 are fucking morons” and “the iPod is mass-market design, urban living kitsch”) will know my severe aversion to the term “Web 2.0”. My vendetta is really more focused towards the ethos and environment surrounding the term. Latte-drinking, logo-less upstarts who try and tell me about “user experiences” and “AJAX” and all sorts of buzzwords, marketing or otherwise. The technology that The Term encompasses are sound and interesting when placed in the right light, an equally weighted light that doesn’t have a halogen bulb, strobing different colours over Ruby on Rails and XmlHTTPRequest; everything else branded with a vomit coloured table-lamp that I’m sure just screams Web 1.0. Another facet of the “Web 2.0” umbrella is the idea of the “user”. As if this was a foreign concept before, it now falls in line with lots of the other buzzwords. The concept of the “user experience” though is not just valid, it’s paramount, and it’s the technology driving that experience which has been the innovative push; no revolution just evolution.
The visual design of “Web 2.0” though is a personal bugbear of mine. The iconic gradients and vapid, barely illustrative graphics and unnecessarily large text and white-space was at first refined, then flogged and beaten. Beyond the hype and my revulsion of the unwashed masses claiming they have designed something is The Hook. It’s the hook of belonging to a group. Leet (l33t) speak caught and spread so quickly because it become a global in-joke, a way to discern those who know the secret handshake and those who don’t. When the younger users of the net were clamouring for their identity, l33t speak provided it like dialects and colloquialisms do in real life. And now, the people who take their design cues from Apple, wanted to be part of their own group, a rising chorus of “one of us”.
Some design choices are restricted by technology though; not every page is a homepage and dangling curtains is more often than not, the best way to make a template. But such a ridiculous usage of white-space seems criminal on some layouts, as if screen real-estate has become so abundant that we can choose to ignore large portions of the screen, leaving them to the great white void.
So when something like SimpleBits redesigned themselves, I shrugged and rolled my eyes. The steady decline of the once-greats has been slow and inexorable; Zeldman, Holzschlag and Cederholm have all become about their constant jetting around to conventions or about their families. Neither of which are uninteresting, but it seems that once you’ve published a book, you rest on your laurels. But I digress. I commented to one of my friends at the time that as long as MezzoBlue remained stalwart against “Web 2.0”, I could have faith. MezzoBlue was such a pitch perfectly design site; layout, colours, mnemonics, everything just clicked and worked well. The transition to it’s current “design” marked a watershed for me. A lighthouse of where the late-giants are heading.
So my current work in progress for this site tries to be everything that others seem to have left behind (RIP Shaun Inman.com): neat, graceful and intuitive. I do not need to shout my headings, nor gradiate my bars and pander to some group design mentality.
Just Like You Imagined
There’s very little I can say about Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 without it either sounding clichéd or as a double entendre. Adjectives like “relaxing” are just loaded with meaning that the pre-pubescents and FHM-reading masses will titter at and switch off. Getting down to brass-tacks, DOAX2 uses overt displays of digital female flesh to peddle a remarkably similar game to the first DOAXBV. Part dating-sim part mini-game extravaganza, DOAX2 manages to feel incredibly bloodless while buxom girls prounce unashamedly around the screen. Except, they don’t really.
For such an easy game to both construct and map out in terms of play mechanics, DOAX2 feels remarkably empty. The only time you actually get any decent screen time with your chosen female is the volleyball or the often lambasted gravure mode (now enhanced with a photography section). Of course, if you actually want to get any swimsuits or accessories even for yourself, let alone befriending the other characterless inhabitants of the island, you have to play a lot of games, or win a lot in the casino. Team Ninja have shown their usual deft hand for 3D graphics, but once again prove a first year computer science student with Photoshop could conjure up a better user interface than what is in DOAX2.
Beyond the translucent boxes and jaunty font is the feeling of utter disjoint from this sub-bleached island you’re supposed to be a prisoner of. The hotel rooms are nothing more than a steady pan of some accommodation, a blurred backdrop while you menu hop to send gifts. The casino supposedly houses all of the girls, but they’re nothing more than floating buttons, flat two dimensional avatars magnetised to the corners of your screen. Going shopping for items is such a bloodless experience and becomes a chore waiting on the 360 to load the next set of levitating swimsuits for you to never purchase.
Team Ninja could have done so much more to push their game, simple touches like actually putting your character within the scenes you’re playing. Have them wander the hotel room, sit on the bed, hell, look out the window while you’re wondering who you bought the yellow wrapped peaches for. Playing against such nebulous opponents in the casino makes me feel I would be better off playing real online gambling, at least then I can rest assured I probably don’t want to see my opponents as they liberate me from my money.
The mini-games themselves are unforgiving and break the cardinal rule that the first game adhered to: make it feel like a holiday. Instead, it’s just a chore, a meaningless route to get the all important Zack dollars. Volleyball is bleak, and all too often you loose straight rather than playing to the wire. Jet-skiing is the saving grace with simple and intuitive handling and some lovely, if not slightly repetitive courses. Other games like butt-battle, tug-of-war and pool slide are over far too quickly and rob you of any kind of feedback as to where you went wrong, if indeed you did and the computer wasn’t just playing random with you. If indeed you make it to the casino with any money at all, the odds are realistically brutal. It’s hard to believe that if they really want you to collect those swimsuits, or those jetskis that the gambling wouldn’t be at least slightly weighted towards you winning; especially when you’re playing with what equates to a nudey deck of the DOA girls.
The thinly veiled dating-sim boils down to trial and error, starting and ending with what the manual says is your target’s favourite colour and food. Beyond that it becomes a meaningless and protracted series of “give gift, wait for gift to be returned at the end of the day”. Rinse. Repeat.
It’s hard to recommend DOAX2 when it feels like far too much hard work to get nothing done. Somewhere amongst the rampant breast physics and lamentable UI "design" they lost what the original game was so good at: feeling like a holiday, putting a smile on your face and letting you relax.
