OK, I Take It Back
I should have bought Space Giraffe a long time ago. I had somewhat enjoyed the demo. I am enjoying the full game much more.
(Specifically, I want to take back the “crybaby” part of my previous post, because it seems to me that when people talk about how “nobody” bought Space Giraffe, I think they really mean nobody. I am not even halfway through the game (taking advantage of the unique score-continuing system) yet from what I can tell I currently sit poised to crack the top 100 on the XBLA leaderboards. Whereas on say, Pac-man CE I sit somewhere around 50,000. Maybe this has something to do with my “gamer zone” or whatever?)
I recently read an article by one Ste Pickford, who Space Giraffe as a case study for what he feels is a trend for games to rely more and more on having an easily accessible and attention grabbing demo. In the end, I think he is a little too blasé about the issue. (I feel that if games “need to to be ‘instant’, and communicate everything the player needs to know quickly and unconsciously via audio visual cues rather than through clumsy tutorial modes and manual pages,” then there will be many games that will no longer come to be. Games that would be perfectly good games, or even great games, that merely require a bit of an initial investment on behalf of the player.) I must admit, however, that my original “Meh, seems OK” reaction to the game did indeed result from the demo not really reaching out and grabbing me.
I could be misremembering, but I believe the demo for Space Giraffe consisted of simply the tutorial. It was good that this is there, as without playing the tutorial at least once I’m pretty sure the game would make zero sense whatsoever. However, the tutorial keeps things pretty simple, and keeps things on a flat, boring web without much distortion.
Later levels really twist this around. The web is crooked, curved, loops back onto itself. The camera is placed above, below, to the side. The length of the web is distorted, so that “straight” lines become twisted curves. For one thing, these sorts of things add to the difficulty of the game. But I realized I kind of loved this game when I noticed that I’d just played the entirety of a level with my head cocked at a 45 degree angle, apparently with the thought that it would help me see over the lip of the web a bit better. I also enjoy the feeling I get when Ms. M. growls in frustration that the screen is filled with gibberish and how can I see anything and I say “Well I can’t see everything, but I hear most of it,” and she just tells me I’m crazy.
All of this could just be the cognitive dissonance speaking, of course, but I’m really glad I finally got around to picking it up. Should have come sooner.