Most of us, at least most of us who live in or care about America, have treated the last day or two as a commemorative occasion for Barack Obama. After his first year of being president, people have asked how that year has been. Has he lived up to expectations? Underperformed? Does he confirm or refute his opponents' fears? What will come from now?
I, however, think about something else this week. As a follower of politics, I also wonder about the Obama administration, but today is another, more direct anniversary. On January 21, the day after the inauguration, I was laid off from my last real job. Not that I blame him for that. I down he even had time to enact policy that would suddenly result in me getting fired in those twelve hours or so, and if the universe was somehow karmically attacking us for electing him, I would be a strange target of it.
So I'll worry less about him and figure out my own progress. This...hasn't been a good year. Sure, I had my fun. I played a lot of video games, watched a lot of TV, and read probably less than I should have. But there are other barometers to success, ones more important than that.
Artistically: Overall, I'm happy with my artistic progress this year. I still did less than I should, but I did do more than most. In April I wrote what is probably my proudest accomplishment to date creatively: my first REAL screenplay. Maybe it isn't my favorite creation of all time, but it falls only behind a few of my favorite video game design documents. And while neither the design documents nor a screenplay counts as a full product onto itself, a screenplay strikes me as at least as an artistic achievement unto itself and not a suggestion on how to make an artistic achievement. I'm less happy with my novel made last November, despite actual plans to sell it. But the idea is fine, and I'm in the process of rewriting it, primarily next month. I only did a page so far, but the new direction is already better, and it was met with approval at today's writer group.
Financially: This was not so good. My income was sporadic at best. The first few months and the last few months were nothing. And when did I find a job, it was a temporary one. Things looked like they improved. I did a week of work in April, a few weeks in June and July, and a few months from August to October. In the meantime, I had unemployment, but no matter how hard I looked, nothing else has come up. In the meantime, I looked for something more fulfilling. I mean finally getting a job that involves video games, writing, or at least something creative. No luck so far.
As for outgoing expense, things went fine until at least September, when my last roommate moved out. Since then, my rent cost doubled, and that I can't afford. I've been putting this off, out of distraction or simply hope that I find a new roommate. Why? Because I know what moving means. It means going from a relatively nice apartment to a room or two. It means putting half my stuff in storage for God knows how long. It means the act of moving. It means things are going to be different, and for the worst. But it has to be done very soon, like the end of the month or so.
Socially: Hoo boy. To be fair, I had reason to barely try this year. The poor, broke, and jobless are not the most appealing people to date. Now I had some luck making friends, or at least hanging out with the ones I have. It's just a shame that too many live like an hour away. Hey, maybe when forced to move, if that happens, it can be slightly closer to them! Yeah, that's not much of a silver lining, but it's something. And at least I know that one way or another, things will change this year. Maybe that means something good, like a job I actually care about or even selling something I've written. Maybe not. But at the very least I know if I don't change things under my own hand, things will change anyway. Because the last, desperate change is to move back in with my parents. And nobody wants that, especially my parents.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Friday, January 8, 2010
Reviews: To prove I'm not dead, here's a series that likely is
No, I'm not dead. I've just been busy and a bit depressed. The holidays are great at inspiring both of these things, especially to someone unemployed and who has to move soon because he can't afford the place he currently lives.
This period also was the, at least temporary, end to a much less important segment of my life. My Gamefly account, useful as it's been, has been suspended due to the holidays, or more specifically the influx of games the holidays resulted in. I'm not 100% pleased with Dragon Age and New Super Mario Wii, the first Xmas games I've been playing, but both have been both entertaining and time consuming.
The Gamefly came to an end with Banjo: Nuts and Bolts, the latest of the Banjo Kazooie games that last appeared (in the main series, at least) on the Nintendo 64. It was a series I...huh. I had some affection for. That's the weird thing about Banjo. I remember the games, I enjoyed the games, but while I was nostalgic for the series, I can't say I especially cared for it, either. But we'll get to that element in a minute, because there is a much more crucial issue here: I HATE vehicles in non-vehicle games.
Something like the cars in Grand Theft Auto are normally fine (though the ones in GTA 4 have rubbed me the wrong way, hence why that one's near the back of my holiday games set.) But whether it's the dune buggies in Jak 3, the Mako in Mass Effect, and even Halo's famous Warthog, they just make me seethe. It's not the basic inclusion of a vehicle that's the problem, but the controls of these abominations are almost universally designed to get on my last nerve. If they aren't overshooting turns or getting themselves wedged into hallways or corners, they're taking a slight bump and immediately spinning around or flipping upside down on the first hill. I'm not a car or other vehicle guy in the real world, so maybe some of this is realistic. But I don't care. A vehicle is fine in a close race or when carefully dodging obstacles, not when I have to reset a race for the fifteenth time because a car can't even be trusted to stay pointed in the general direction of the target.
So Banjo: Nuts and Bolts was maybe not the best game for me. It has the same general premise of other Banjo games. The heroes, a bear named Banjo and a bird named Kazooie, explore various platform-centric video game levels to collect umpteen prizes as part of a vague quest to stop the witch Gruntilda. But in Nuts and Bolts, the platforming itself is all but absent, replaced by endless (about 90 of them, all told,) vehicle challenges. Sometimes you use the vehicles the game forces on you, but usually you can get around in machines that the player makes. And the actual ACT of customizing your vehicle is fun (at first.)
But using them is another story. Your fragile little machines are often either too slow to function or so fast that they control like, well, the jet engine on wheels that they often are. Conversely, any vehicle with the weapons or unique widgets needed for a mission is often too heavy and unwieldy to actually use them, at least with skill.
And it doesn't help that this is otherwise a Banjo game. The Banjo series has always aped the Mario series, but to me at least it always missed the point. The levels were huge, beautiful, and full of surprises, but the actual act of exploring them was often either sterile or so excessive to be overkill. In a Mario game, getting a Star/Shine or whatnot always felt like a singular achievement. In Banjo, they felt like items off a checklist. The problem is that as you get farther into a game or the series, each item wasn't just at the end of a series of challenges and possibly guarded by a boss. You had to find a minor NPC, let it ask for help, and accomplish some minor task for them first. Sometimes you had to perform three or four minor tasks, often with their own requirements, just to get one of the 120 primary collectibles (called "jiggies".)
Nuts and Bolts kept up this tradition and took it one step farther by not even integrating the tasks as part of the normal world. Instead, each level just has the help-needed characters standing around and speaking to them triggers a mini-game. To make it worse, each mini-game now has some other requirement, usually a timer or score of some sort. You have to finish each mission within a limited time to even get the jiggy, so it's entirely plausible to successfully finish a mission and still get next to nothing for it. AND there now are trophies that you get for each mini-game mission requiring you to do even better than the requirements for getting the jiggy. And each trophy is worth a quarter of a jiggy, so you have to get all THOSE as well to get everything in the game. AND FINALLY (phew,) the other major collectible in Banjo games, friendly animals called Jinjos, no longer can just be grabbed as you find them. No, that would be too easy. Instead, each one has their own mini-game now, tossing another 50 or so mini-games onto the list, those these at least are pass/fail. It's like Rare took all the complaints about too many collectibles into account but misunderstand the reasons for the complaints completely.
As for the mini-games themselves, they aren't exactly impressive. Most, Jiggy or Jinjo, require to transport some other objects from point a from point b, fight off hordes of enemies, taxi characters around, or win races. Oh, gods, the races. One of the reasons I dislike vehicles in games is the need to have to gallivant around areas while driving or flying through a bunch of tiny rings. This game has so many of these challenges that I easily lost count. There are a few boss fights, but not nearly as many as one can hope, and those few are just about dismantling someone else's vehicle, not a real boss fight. Considering how the boss fights, especially the final bosses, of the earlier games are among their most memorable moments, losing these really felt like a waste.
That brings up the original question of why I bothered playing this game, let alone to completion and near-total collection victory (no way in hell was I getting those 90 trophies, though.) Part of it was the memories. The series never really had the characters or world that something like Mario has, where every element is just so full of life and character. Honestly, except for the rhyming, horrific main villain, everyone's a cipher. But the series has its charms. In particular, it has a sense of humor, a self-awareness of how ridiculous this how is and how none of it can be taken seriously. And the levels themselves are often visually impressive. This game fell apart a bit here as well, with too many levels consisting of one big enclosed room with just a few hallways and side-rooms for variety, but even they were awesome in scope. The first level of the game was much better; an artificial farm surround by walls to hint that the whole thing is just a video game. But the game went beyond that, as the edges of the world had literal gears you can climb on, emulating the old days of platformers, and a flying vehicle could climb higher to see rotating artificial clouds, a "sun" in the form of a giant lamp, and the giant gear that operated this entire reality. And then you could leap into the volcano a mile below for fun.
The game's "hub" world, a massive town consisting of six major districts, was especially impressive. It wasn't a Grand Theft Auto city, no, but the way it expands and connects all of its elements made the whole thing more real than your typical action-adventure experience. It's telling that the very last thing I did before I returned the game was travel to the highest point in town, looked at all the lands I had explored and conquered, and sighed as I surveyed the areas beyond the city. What was that bridge to the east, the manor to the south, the farmlands and ocean that probably took up the free time of programmers for days yet did nothing? As I looked around, the music having muted itself as it traditionally does at high altitudes in a Banjo game, I felt that thrill to explore come over me, a sense of wonder possibly gone forever as the platforming games vanish from the face of consoles. If only I had a vehicle there.
This period also was the, at least temporary, end to a much less important segment of my life. My Gamefly account, useful as it's been, has been suspended due to the holidays, or more specifically the influx of games the holidays resulted in. I'm not 100% pleased with Dragon Age and New Super Mario Wii, the first Xmas games I've been playing, but both have been both entertaining and time consuming.
The Gamefly came to an end with Banjo: Nuts and Bolts, the latest of the Banjo Kazooie games that last appeared (in the main series, at least) on the Nintendo 64. It was a series I...huh. I had some affection for. That's the weird thing about Banjo. I remember the games, I enjoyed the games, but while I was nostalgic for the series, I can't say I especially cared for it, either. But we'll get to that element in a minute, because there is a much more crucial issue here: I HATE vehicles in non-vehicle games.
Something like the cars in Grand Theft Auto are normally fine (though the ones in GTA 4 have rubbed me the wrong way, hence why that one's near the back of my holiday games set.) But whether it's the dune buggies in Jak 3, the Mako in Mass Effect, and even Halo's famous Warthog, they just make me seethe. It's not the basic inclusion of a vehicle that's the problem, but the controls of these abominations are almost universally designed to get on my last nerve. If they aren't overshooting turns or getting themselves wedged into hallways or corners, they're taking a slight bump and immediately spinning around or flipping upside down on the first hill. I'm not a car or other vehicle guy in the real world, so maybe some of this is realistic. But I don't care. A vehicle is fine in a close race or when carefully dodging obstacles, not when I have to reset a race for the fifteenth time because a car can't even be trusted to stay pointed in the general direction of the target.
So Banjo: Nuts and Bolts was maybe not the best game for me. It has the same general premise of other Banjo games. The heroes, a bear named Banjo and a bird named Kazooie, explore various platform-centric video game levels to collect umpteen prizes as part of a vague quest to stop the witch Gruntilda. But in Nuts and Bolts, the platforming itself is all but absent, replaced by endless (about 90 of them, all told,) vehicle challenges. Sometimes you use the vehicles the game forces on you, but usually you can get around in machines that the player makes. And the actual ACT of customizing your vehicle is fun (at first.)
But using them is another story. Your fragile little machines are often either too slow to function or so fast that they control like, well, the jet engine on wheels that they often are. Conversely, any vehicle with the weapons or unique widgets needed for a mission is often too heavy and unwieldy to actually use them, at least with skill.
And it doesn't help that this is otherwise a Banjo game. The Banjo series has always aped the Mario series, but to me at least it always missed the point. The levels were huge, beautiful, and full of surprises, but the actual act of exploring them was often either sterile or so excessive to be overkill. In a Mario game, getting a Star/Shine or whatnot always felt like a singular achievement. In Banjo, they felt like items off a checklist. The problem is that as you get farther into a game or the series, each item wasn't just at the end of a series of challenges and possibly guarded by a boss. You had to find a minor NPC, let it ask for help, and accomplish some minor task for them first. Sometimes you had to perform three or four minor tasks, often with their own requirements, just to get one of the 120 primary collectibles (called "jiggies".)
Nuts and Bolts kept up this tradition and took it one step farther by not even integrating the tasks as part of the normal world. Instead, each level just has the help-needed characters standing around and speaking to them triggers a mini-game. To make it worse, each mini-game now has some other requirement, usually a timer or score of some sort. You have to finish each mission within a limited time to even get the jiggy, so it's entirely plausible to successfully finish a mission and still get next to nothing for it. AND there now are trophies that you get for each mini-game mission requiring you to do even better than the requirements for getting the jiggy. And each trophy is worth a quarter of a jiggy, so you have to get all THOSE as well to get everything in the game. AND FINALLY (phew,) the other major collectible in Banjo games, friendly animals called Jinjos, no longer can just be grabbed as you find them. No, that would be too easy. Instead, each one has their own mini-game now, tossing another 50 or so mini-games onto the list, those these at least are pass/fail. It's like Rare took all the complaints about too many collectibles into account but misunderstand the reasons for the complaints completely.
As for the mini-games themselves, they aren't exactly impressive. Most, Jiggy or Jinjo, require to transport some other objects from point a from point b, fight off hordes of enemies, taxi characters around, or win races. Oh, gods, the races. One of the reasons I dislike vehicles in games is the need to have to gallivant around areas while driving or flying through a bunch of tiny rings. This game has so many of these challenges that I easily lost count. There are a few boss fights, but not nearly as many as one can hope, and those few are just about dismantling someone else's vehicle, not a real boss fight. Considering how the boss fights, especially the final bosses, of the earlier games are among their most memorable moments, losing these really felt like a waste.
That brings up the original question of why I bothered playing this game, let alone to completion and near-total collection victory (no way in hell was I getting those 90 trophies, though.) Part of it was the memories. The series never really had the characters or world that something like Mario has, where every element is just so full of life and character. Honestly, except for the rhyming, horrific main villain, everyone's a cipher. But the series has its charms. In particular, it has a sense of humor, a self-awareness of how ridiculous this how is and how none of it can be taken seriously. And the levels themselves are often visually impressive. This game fell apart a bit here as well, with too many levels consisting of one big enclosed room with just a few hallways and side-rooms for variety, but even they were awesome in scope. The first level of the game was much better; an artificial farm surround by walls to hint that the whole thing is just a video game. But the game went beyond that, as the edges of the world had literal gears you can climb on, emulating the old days of platformers, and a flying vehicle could climb higher to see rotating artificial clouds, a "sun" in the form of a giant lamp, and the giant gear that operated this entire reality. And then you could leap into the volcano a mile below for fun.
The game's "hub" world, a massive town consisting of six major districts, was especially impressive. It wasn't a Grand Theft Auto city, no, but the way it expands and connects all of its elements made the whole thing more real than your typical action-adventure experience. It's telling that the very last thing I did before I returned the game was travel to the highest point in town, looked at all the lands I had explored and conquered, and sighed as I surveyed the areas beyond the city. What was that bridge to the east, the manor to the south, the farmlands and ocean that probably took up the free time of programmers for days yet did nothing? As I looked around, the music having muted itself as it traditionally does at high altitudes in a Banjo game, I felt that thrill to explore come over me, a sense of wonder possibly gone forever as the platforming games vanish from the face of consoles. If only I had a vehicle there.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Reviews: Doom, Boring Boring Doom
So, I finished another National Novel Writing Month this week. I can't say it was my best work. On the plus side, I think I know the problem. I need a better voice for the story itself, for one thing. But I can get into this more next week. For now, I'm going over another video game review. The last game I played to completion was Dead Space.
Dead Space is a survival horror game, and like other games of this genre, it is intended to work both to excite the players through normal game play and to invoke fear as any scary fiction is. Obviously the former affects the latter, but I my response to each element is so different that I will treat them separately.
The game takes place in the far future on a space station on the outskirts of human civilization, in the fine tradition of movies from Alien to Event Horizon. You play Isaac Clark, an engineer and part of a team sent to investigate and repair the station, only to learn that by the time they got there, the place is overrun with monsters and most of the crew is dead.
In terms of game play, it's a pretty decent game. You play the game from behind Isaac's back in a situation nearly identical to Resident Evil 4. You can directly aim at targets to hit specific body parts, and the game uses this cleverly by giving enemies weak points on not just their head, but also their limbs. You can blow off one or more arms and legs, and enemies will react appropriately by crawling at you should their legs be gone or even stagger around blindly without a head! There are the usual advancement and customization options, including multiple selectable weapons, upgrades to your weapons and armor, and money to collect and use for new weapons, armor, and supplies.
Nothing here is original, though the setting is very notable. The space setting includes many areas that are now in a vacuum, giving a limited time that to do your job and escape and altering your sound and game play, while other areas (often the same ones) are in zero gravity and let you leap to nearby walls or ceilings. The end result is a very enjoyable game, one I defeated twice in a row in rapid succession, with only two issues that tend to bother me. The first is yet another game that emphasizes enemy grapple attacks, which require wild button flailing to escape each time and occur far to often. The other is a bad habit of enemies popping out of literally nowhere behind you. I understand this is a clever monster tactic, and it makes sense in a game that already warned you about popping out of ventilation ducts and such, but I never thought the game didn't give you enough visual or sound warning that these things attack you.
But nobody plays survival horrors for the action alone. They have to at least try to scare you, and the game does that. That is where things get tricky, though. I know part of that is a personal issue. As I think I said before, monsters make me giggle. I treat the arrival of Pyramid Head like they greeted Norm on Cheers, and horrible abominations just make me want to make my own designs worse. But there are other kinds of fear in games. There is the classic "startle" fear, where something comes out of nowhere, even if the thing is technically not a threat. And there is simple environmental fears, where an oppressive and hostile location is enough to inspire, if not outright panic, at least a continual dread. This game is good at this element, with everything from ominous chanting and songs over the station intercom and the corpses of dead cultists to entire rooms coated with dripping organic material and the still-living victims trapped in nightmarish forms.
And it's here that I had some complaints. Throughout the game, your run into the rare survivors on the space station, though I use the word "survivor" is very loosely. Most of the survivors are either dying from wounds, driven mad to the point of suicide, or both. After a while, the inevitability of these events ruing any shock value. Oh wow, another crazy person shot herself in the head? Shock. It's not like you can do anything about it. You can't give medical attention, intervene before the crazies kill others or themselves, or even kill them yourself to shorten their suffering. There is even one woman who doesn't do anything or suffer any wound; she just stands somewhere, giggling. And you can't do squat! No dragging her to safety, no helping her recover, you can't even say sorry. Two minutes later all the air is dumped from the area and she's dead anyway.
So why should I care? I can understand that your main character is voiceless and his only back story or personality is tied to a girlfriend who worked on the station and may be in danger throughout the game. But it disaffects you after a while. That's why the similarly-named Dead Rising was much more terrifying to me, despite being the wacky, lighter zombie apocalypse. There were tons of obviously doomed survivors, but there were almost fifty people you could also rescue, but most were not obligatory. You could fail to find them in time or lead them to your doom, and if they die horrible deaths, it's because you failed. After all the years of games, screaming walls of flesh or half-human monsters with spike tentacles growing out of the backs don't scare me. The clock does.
Save for Dead Rising, this was probably my favorite of my recently rated games. It was frustrating at times, but also fun, with an atmosphere that doesn't near that of Silent Hill but at least is a good imitation. But as a scary game, it could have been much more effective just by combining the fear with the game play better and by investing me a bit. What's so scary about dead space without live space, after all?
Dead Space is a survival horror game, and like other games of this genre, it is intended to work both to excite the players through normal game play and to invoke fear as any scary fiction is. Obviously the former affects the latter, but I my response to each element is so different that I will treat them separately.
The game takes place in the far future on a space station on the outskirts of human civilization, in the fine tradition of movies from Alien to Event Horizon. You play Isaac Clark, an engineer and part of a team sent to investigate and repair the station, only to learn that by the time they got there, the place is overrun with monsters and most of the crew is dead.
In terms of game play, it's a pretty decent game. You play the game from behind Isaac's back in a situation nearly identical to Resident Evil 4. You can directly aim at targets to hit specific body parts, and the game uses this cleverly by giving enemies weak points on not just their head, but also their limbs. You can blow off one or more arms and legs, and enemies will react appropriately by crawling at you should their legs be gone or even stagger around blindly without a head! There are the usual advancement and customization options, including multiple selectable weapons, upgrades to your weapons and armor, and money to collect and use for new weapons, armor, and supplies.
Nothing here is original, though the setting is very notable. The space setting includes many areas that are now in a vacuum, giving a limited time that to do your job and escape and altering your sound and game play, while other areas (often the same ones) are in zero gravity and let you leap to nearby walls or ceilings. The end result is a very enjoyable game, one I defeated twice in a row in rapid succession, with only two issues that tend to bother me. The first is yet another game that emphasizes enemy grapple attacks, which require wild button flailing to escape each time and occur far to often. The other is a bad habit of enemies popping out of literally nowhere behind you. I understand this is a clever monster tactic, and it makes sense in a game that already warned you about popping out of ventilation ducts and such, but I never thought the game didn't give you enough visual or sound warning that these things attack you.
But nobody plays survival horrors for the action alone. They have to at least try to scare you, and the game does that. That is where things get tricky, though. I know part of that is a personal issue. As I think I said before, monsters make me giggle. I treat the arrival of Pyramid Head like they greeted Norm on Cheers, and horrible abominations just make me want to make my own designs worse. But there are other kinds of fear in games. There is the classic "startle" fear, where something comes out of nowhere, even if the thing is technically not a threat. And there is simple environmental fears, where an oppressive and hostile location is enough to inspire, if not outright panic, at least a continual dread. This game is good at this element, with everything from ominous chanting and songs over the station intercom and the corpses of dead cultists to entire rooms coated with dripping organic material and the still-living victims trapped in nightmarish forms.
And it's here that I had some complaints. Throughout the game, your run into the rare survivors on the space station, though I use the word "survivor" is very loosely. Most of the survivors are either dying from wounds, driven mad to the point of suicide, or both. After a while, the inevitability of these events ruing any shock value. Oh wow, another crazy person shot herself in the head? Shock. It's not like you can do anything about it. You can't give medical attention, intervene before the crazies kill others or themselves, or even kill them yourself to shorten their suffering. There is even one woman who doesn't do anything or suffer any wound; she just stands somewhere, giggling. And you can't do squat! No dragging her to safety, no helping her recover, you can't even say sorry. Two minutes later all the air is dumped from the area and she's dead anyway.
So why should I care? I can understand that your main character is voiceless and his only back story or personality is tied to a girlfriend who worked on the station and may be in danger throughout the game. But it disaffects you after a while. That's why the similarly-named Dead Rising was much more terrifying to me, despite being the wacky, lighter zombie apocalypse. There were tons of obviously doomed survivors, but there were almost fifty people you could also rescue, but most were not obligatory. You could fail to find them in time or lead them to your doom, and if they die horrible deaths, it's because you failed. After all the years of games, screaming walls of flesh or half-human monsters with spike tentacles growing out of the backs don't scare me. The clock does.
Save for Dead Rising, this was probably my favorite of my recently rated games. It was frustrating at times, but also fun, with an atmosphere that doesn't near that of Silent Hill but at least is a good imitation. But as a scary game, it could have been much more effective just by combining the fear with the game play better and by investing me a bit. What's so scary about dead space without live space, after all?
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Rantings: Doing My Good Deed
This discussion actually starts with a review. A few weeks ago, I completed the game Iji for about the fourth time. You may not have heard of this game, and I'd understand, because it's a completely free indie game available, as far as I know, only on computers. Iji is basically a 2-D shooting/action game. You play as Iji, a hapless girl who survived a planetary attack by aliens and turned into a combat-capable cyborg to fight them off. You run around through ten levels, fighting or evading aliens with the occasional boss fight. So far, it's pretty standard. It has plenty of appealing features, including well-animated if simplified characters, an excellent soundtrack, three secrets per level, and RPG-elements like gaining experience and using it to customize your character by improving your maximum health, attack strength, weapons you can carry, and more unusual abilities like strength to kick down stronger doors and larger enemies.
But what really caught my attention in the game were the story and the control you have over it. The game is both incredibly detailed and gritty to an almost nihilistic point. The detail comes from the conversations and the motivations of enemies. Even the final boss is a flawed but relatable figure, earning sympathy despite being responsible for countless deaths. In the meantime, as you progress through the game, you get logbooks from all sides of the enemy groups, from soldiers both in favor of and against their leaders to hackers and criminals seeking to exploit their own forces, to scared and desperate soldiers panicked about their own lives and those of their loved ones.
They also write about you. And these reports, along with the rest of the discussion, change based on your actions. And despite being a cybernetic super-soldier with a morphing weapon, you can happily avoid fights. In fact, if you deliberately avoid killing enough soldiers, you can attract allies among the enemy ranks, form nonviolence pacts, and even avoid entire boss fights! The game keeps track of all your kills, and if you follow a pacifism run, you can end up with zero kills at all. Well, you can end up with any direct kills, at least. Conversely, if you blow your way through every alien in your path, not only will the logbooks and conversation treat you as a murderous lunatic, but Iji herself will speaking differently. If you kills enemies in the beginning, she'll actually apologize to the enemies she kills, but this will stop with time, and eventually she'll start screaming at her foes and laughing at their deaths.
All of this contrasts nicely with a similarly-themed video game I recently played, Mirror's Edge, which I believe I already discussed. We have the same skilled heroine fighting against an evil empire, and in both cases while violence is an option, it's neither necessarily nor encouraged. Faith, a skilled parkour enthusiast, can steal guns from enemies and use them, but it slows her down immensely. And if you don't shoot any enemies (not counting a plot point where you have to shoot a truck with a sniper rifle,) you even get an achievement called Test of Faith.
But unlike Iji, it doesn't matter that much in the game. There is no real point in terms of the story. For one thing, death itself is not an issue. No, you don't have to shoot anyone, but kicking them off buildings where they fall to a horrible death is A-OK! That's even obligatory at one point in the game, where she does that to a villain via cut-scene. And the plot won't be affected by your actions either way. They same police will shoot you on sight regardless of how you treated them before, so barring some personal satisfaction all you're doing is making the game harder (and believe me, it makes a few places where you have to fight much harder.)
These two games illustrate a fairly recent gameplay feature called the "Karma Meter." In addition to simply playing to beat the game, the player can alter the flow of the game, or at minimum the ending, based on how good or bad a person you play as. What that entails is based on the game. In Mass Effect, you are a loyal marine out to save the galaxy no matter what the player chooses, and you can be either an idealistic "good cop" or an intimidating "bad cop." Fallout 3, conversely, lets you be a savior who rescues captives, wipes out entire towns of slavers, and sacrifices yourself for the good of others, or a horrible monster capable of blowing up entire cities for personal profit, murdering your childhood friend, EATING people, or enslaving children.
Am I a fan of this feature? Yes, in general, but it comes at a price. I believe I spoke of the range between linear storytelling and free-form, totally customized gameplay. Neither is bad, but the simple fact is that every branch of a linear story, that story can't be as concise. Letting the player choose, for example, to betray a friend at a crucial moment can have significant impact in both ways, but you just won't have as much time or development cost and space to plan each ensuing path as you could if one path was the only choice. But making excellent stories on both paths is viable. In three of my favorite ideas, one has a normal "bad ending" and a more complex "good ending" by accomplishing special tasks, another has branches towards good, evil, and simply crazy routes, and a third game potentially alter reality based on your actions so the events of the game are either a crusade to save the world or the hallucination of a psychopath.
But a good karma meter needs some standards. First of all, a karma meter needs to be sensible. Fallout 3 has that problem with a few choices. In one instance, killing a man who murdered an entire city full of innocents and is willing to destroy another town simply due to bigotry will result in...negative karma? The technical reason is the character was a more sympathetic one earlier and their karma state couldn't be changed afterward, but it breaks suspension of disbelief and makes the entire game's ethic system seem compromised. Even Iji has a few issues. Your pacifism run prevents you from killing anyone directly, but to accomplish it, you must set a trap that kills someone and help an ally kill another even though you don't fire that last shot. You can also kill people by indirectly sending vehicles or shrapnel at enemies or standing near other targets when an explosive attack flies at you, letting them be damaged by it as well.
The second standard is how much it affects the game if you stick to it. In Iji, the pacifism has almost no effect on the ending. At most a line or two changes, but the rest of the game shows the fruits of your action. Fallout 3 is another positive example. NPCs will comment based on your actions, and some characters will even give you free supplies. The main radio station in the game will also comment on how good or evil your actions were in their various missions and introduce you based on your overall good or evil rating.
The last standard is much harder and is tied to the system's complexity. If a system tracks just one thing, like your kill count, that's fine. But many systems track everything from thievery to murder on the same scale. Usually murder costs you more, but the results are still just numbers. You could go on a city-wide killing spree, and if you give pittance to a few beggars it might balance the scaled, even if you then kill that same beggar! Arguably, certain actions should knock you below maximum range and no actions should correct it, or at least only the noblest actions should correct it. But then what about reform? Can't even the darkest of people get the chance to make things right, at least in the escapism of a video game?
As the system gets more complicated, it requires more effort, but the rewards will be more than worth it. If you care enough to give the game the choices, you should give those choices the respect it deserves.
But what really caught my attention in the game were the story and the control you have over it. The game is both incredibly detailed and gritty to an almost nihilistic point. The detail comes from the conversations and the motivations of enemies. Even the final boss is a flawed but relatable figure, earning sympathy despite being responsible for countless deaths. In the meantime, as you progress through the game, you get logbooks from all sides of the enemy groups, from soldiers both in favor of and against their leaders to hackers and criminals seeking to exploit their own forces, to scared and desperate soldiers panicked about their own lives and those of their loved ones.
They also write about you. And these reports, along with the rest of the discussion, change based on your actions. And despite being a cybernetic super-soldier with a morphing weapon, you can happily avoid fights. In fact, if you deliberately avoid killing enough soldiers, you can attract allies among the enemy ranks, form nonviolence pacts, and even avoid entire boss fights! The game keeps track of all your kills, and if you follow a pacifism run, you can end up with zero kills at all. Well, you can end up with any direct kills, at least. Conversely, if you blow your way through every alien in your path, not only will the logbooks and conversation treat you as a murderous lunatic, but Iji herself will speaking differently. If you kills enemies in the beginning, she'll actually apologize to the enemies she kills, but this will stop with time, and eventually she'll start screaming at her foes and laughing at their deaths.
All of this contrasts nicely with a similarly-themed video game I recently played, Mirror's Edge, which I believe I already discussed. We have the same skilled heroine fighting against an evil empire, and in both cases while violence is an option, it's neither necessarily nor encouraged. Faith, a skilled parkour enthusiast, can steal guns from enemies and use them, but it slows her down immensely. And if you don't shoot any enemies (not counting a plot point where you have to shoot a truck with a sniper rifle,) you even get an achievement called Test of Faith.
But unlike Iji, it doesn't matter that much in the game. There is no real point in terms of the story. For one thing, death itself is not an issue. No, you don't have to shoot anyone, but kicking them off buildings where they fall to a horrible death is A-OK! That's even obligatory at one point in the game, where she does that to a villain via cut-scene. And the plot won't be affected by your actions either way. They same police will shoot you on sight regardless of how you treated them before, so barring some personal satisfaction all you're doing is making the game harder (and believe me, it makes a few places where you have to fight much harder.)
These two games illustrate a fairly recent gameplay feature called the "Karma Meter." In addition to simply playing to beat the game, the player can alter the flow of the game, or at minimum the ending, based on how good or bad a person you play as. What that entails is based on the game. In Mass Effect, you are a loyal marine out to save the galaxy no matter what the player chooses, and you can be either an idealistic "good cop" or an intimidating "bad cop." Fallout 3, conversely, lets you be a savior who rescues captives, wipes out entire towns of slavers, and sacrifices yourself for the good of others, or a horrible monster capable of blowing up entire cities for personal profit, murdering your childhood friend, EATING people, or enslaving children.
Am I a fan of this feature? Yes, in general, but it comes at a price. I believe I spoke of the range between linear storytelling and free-form, totally customized gameplay. Neither is bad, but the simple fact is that every branch of a linear story, that story can't be as concise. Letting the player choose, for example, to betray a friend at a crucial moment can have significant impact in both ways, but you just won't have as much time or development cost and space to plan each ensuing path as you could if one path was the only choice. But making excellent stories on both paths is viable. In three of my favorite ideas, one has a normal "bad ending" and a more complex "good ending" by accomplishing special tasks, another has branches towards good, evil, and simply crazy routes, and a third game potentially alter reality based on your actions so the events of the game are either a crusade to save the world or the hallucination of a psychopath.
But a good karma meter needs some standards. First of all, a karma meter needs to be sensible. Fallout 3 has that problem with a few choices. In one instance, killing a man who murdered an entire city full of innocents and is willing to destroy another town simply due to bigotry will result in...negative karma? The technical reason is the character was a more sympathetic one earlier and their karma state couldn't be changed afterward, but it breaks suspension of disbelief and makes the entire game's ethic system seem compromised. Even Iji has a few issues. Your pacifism run prevents you from killing anyone directly, but to accomplish it, you must set a trap that kills someone and help an ally kill another even though you don't fire that last shot. You can also kill people by indirectly sending vehicles or shrapnel at enemies or standing near other targets when an explosive attack flies at you, letting them be damaged by it as well.
The second standard is how much it affects the game if you stick to it. In Iji, the pacifism has almost no effect on the ending. At most a line or two changes, but the rest of the game shows the fruits of your action. Fallout 3 is another positive example. NPCs will comment based on your actions, and some characters will even give you free supplies. The main radio station in the game will also comment on how good or evil your actions were in their various missions and introduce you based on your overall good or evil rating.
The last standard is much harder and is tied to the system's complexity. If a system tracks just one thing, like your kill count, that's fine. But many systems track everything from thievery to murder on the same scale. Usually murder costs you more, but the results are still just numbers. You could go on a city-wide killing spree, and if you give pittance to a few beggars it might balance the scaled, even if you then kill that same beggar! Arguably, certain actions should knock you below maximum range and no actions should correct it, or at least only the noblest actions should correct it. But then what about reform? Can't even the darkest of people get the chance to make things right, at least in the escapism of a video game?
As the system gets more complicated, it requires more effort, but the rewards will be more than worth it. If you care enough to give the game the choices, you should give those choices the respect it deserves.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
My Life: A familiar story
Yes, I plan on doing an "idea" update. I still will in a day or more. But things changed again, and my mind is kind of directed on other things. Today, my latest temp job, well, became temporary. So I'm unemployed. Yet again. The good news is that this comes just before Nanowrimo, so I have a few days to prepare for that. The bad news is, well, I like money. And now I have to worry about unemployment benefits and the job hunt, in addition to the normal panic finding a roommate and everything else.
So that's my concern for now. That's soft of kept my attention away from Iji and karma meters, but we'll get back to it soon, I promise. Even despite writing some 2,000 words a day in the very, very, very near future.
So that's my concern for now. That's soft of kept my attention away from Iji and karma meters, but we'll get back to it soon, I promise. Even despite writing some 2,000 words a day in the very, very, very near future.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Reviews: A whole of lot of flies, not enough ointment
I'll cut the actual reviews short this time. The only game I played since last time is Mirror's Edge, which seems to continue a theme I've seen a lot in my Gamefly rentals. It's a good game, but one with heavy flaws. That's true for pretty much every game I rented this way, including Dead Rising, Zack and Wiki, and Assassin's Creed. Call of Duty 4 is the only exception. I'm starting to appreciate Gamefly for exactly that reason. The games I bought or that were bought for me recently (by some definitions of recently,) are things like Super Mario Galaxy, Bioshock, Mass Effect, and Fallout 3, and while all of them are imperfect, as is everything, they seem much more coherent. Fallout 3, with its many glitches, comes the close, though it's also far too in-depth and long to even consider just being a rental.
The issues that these Gameflied games have are much more serious, with most threatening at least briefly to undermine the entire game or at least stop me from enjoying it. Mirror's Edge's positives include sheer innovation, the very possibility that you can play it without shooting anyone, and the moments where everything just works: when you effortlessly leap across rooftops, catwalks, and other convenient platforms like the trained and intuitive athlete like you're supposed to be. It's negatives include the incredibly precise leaps that require absolute perfection and thus result in dozens of deaths before you can advance, the obligatory or near obligatory fight sequences, and the minimal objects you have when you do fight. It doesn't help that you can maybe survive three attacks before dying. But I stuck with it until the end and tried some of the bonus material before returning it. That's a stop above Zack and a step below Dead Rising, where I beat it twice in a row. In fact, time has only made me appreciate that one more. Not only does it have the scariest enemy I've seen in years (the clock, I mean,) it's the only game that actually gave me nightmares. For a horror game, this is a plus!
I think of a scale when I evaluate these games, at least lately. The qualities and flaws are on both sides of the scales, and if the latter outweighs the former, the scale collapses and the game goes home. That's...true for pretty much all reviews, but more coherently designed games don't really need this treatment. I enjoy the games enough that the flaws are only occasionally noted, while these more questionable games have long stretches that make me question while I'm playing it. Dead Rising's resonating emotions and options outweigh the sheer stupidity, while the hours of wasted time and frustration from Zack removed the puzzle-solving excitement. Mirror's Edge are a generally positive flow with spikes of irritation. Call of Duty 4 had very few problems that I found, but my general disinterest in modern warfare and first person shooters lowered my positive reactions, though the game's famous set pieces were extremely compelling.
I find that the time it takes to beat a level and just advance also factors in. A level of Mirror's edge often took 45 minutes to an hour to finish, with two or three points were I got stuck each time. Dead Rising usually got me SOMETHING every ten to fifteen minutes, especially when I finally knew what the hell I was doing. The fact that I often had to restart levels from scratch was one of the big problems with Zack and Wiki.
Now, there was one issue I had with Mirror's Edge specifically that was less a joy versus anger scale problem and more a thematic one. In this case, it was the choices between passivity and aggression and its role in the story, or sadly the lack thereof. That's worth a more thorough evaluation, though, and comparison with another game entirely. We'll get to that next time, hopefully this weekend, and finally do a thematic discussion instead of another review or rant about my life.
The issues that these Gameflied games have are much more serious, with most threatening at least briefly to undermine the entire game or at least stop me from enjoying it. Mirror's Edge's positives include sheer innovation, the very possibility that you can play it without shooting anyone, and the moments where everything just works: when you effortlessly leap across rooftops, catwalks, and other convenient platforms like the trained and intuitive athlete like you're supposed to be. It's negatives include the incredibly precise leaps that require absolute perfection and thus result in dozens of deaths before you can advance, the obligatory or near obligatory fight sequences, and the minimal objects you have when you do fight. It doesn't help that you can maybe survive three attacks before dying. But I stuck with it until the end and tried some of the bonus material before returning it. That's a stop above Zack and a step below Dead Rising, where I beat it twice in a row. In fact, time has only made me appreciate that one more. Not only does it have the scariest enemy I've seen in years (the clock, I mean,) it's the only game that actually gave me nightmares. For a horror game, this is a plus!
I think of a scale when I evaluate these games, at least lately. The qualities and flaws are on both sides of the scales, and if the latter outweighs the former, the scale collapses and the game goes home. That's...true for pretty much all reviews, but more coherently designed games don't really need this treatment. I enjoy the games enough that the flaws are only occasionally noted, while these more questionable games have long stretches that make me question while I'm playing it. Dead Rising's resonating emotions and options outweigh the sheer stupidity, while the hours of wasted time and frustration from Zack removed the puzzle-solving excitement. Mirror's Edge are a generally positive flow with spikes of irritation. Call of Duty 4 had very few problems that I found, but my general disinterest in modern warfare and first person shooters lowered my positive reactions, though the game's famous set pieces were extremely compelling.
I find that the time it takes to beat a level and just advance also factors in. A level of Mirror's edge often took 45 minutes to an hour to finish, with two or three points were I got stuck each time. Dead Rising usually got me SOMETHING every ten to fifteen minutes, especially when I finally knew what the hell I was doing. The fact that I often had to restart levels from scratch was one of the big problems with Zack and Wiki.
Now, there was one issue I had with Mirror's Edge specifically that was less a joy versus anger scale problem and more a thematic one. In this case, it was the choices between passivity and aggression and its role in the story, or sadly the lack thereof. That's worth a more thorough evaluation, though, and comparison with another game entirely. We'll get to that next time, hopefully this weekend, and finally do a thematic discussion instead of another review or rant about my life.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Reviews: Where Free is Too Much
Like a lot of people, I've lost some interest in the Wii lately. Fortunately, Nintendo has a lot of new games coming out that caught my interest, but it shouldn't have to just be Nintendo. I want to get more third-party games, but there should be more out there than a dork murdering assassins with a light saber (not that I won't get that sequel, too.) I did try one game recently, though: the well-received if largely unsuccessful Zack and Wiki. I don't think anything is surprised that the game didn't do well. The Graphic Adventure genre was nearly dead anyway, with the exception of much cheaper games already tied to popular characters like Strongbad or Sam and Max. What surprised me, though, was how much I disliked the game. I got the game on Gamefly, where besides a monthly fee the games are free to play as long as I want until I'm ready to return it. I usually beat the game first, but here, I quit in disgust about two levels from the end.
There were a few things that bothered me about this game. The normal game play itself was fine, with one exception. There was too much use of the Wiimote (AKA the "waggle" stuff,) some of which merely hurt my hand, but quite a few that didn't work. The worst, and one of the things that finally put me off the game, was the "sword-fighting" in the penultimate level. Not only was it unwieldy and hard to block or attack, but three mistakes and you're defeated and killed! More on that point in a minute. I wasn't too fan of the game's art style, either. I love a lot of anime and Japanese-based design at large, but it can easily become too much. And this game, with its bunny pirates, high-pitched screaming monkeys, and hammy overacting pirate women, was too much. The graphics didn't exactly demonstrate the power of the system, either, not that it matters much for a game in this style.
But these weren't the things that made me give up on the game. What made me give up was the "lives" system. You see, nearly every level in the game has several ways for your character to die or otherwise lose permanently. When you die, you have only two options: start the level (which could take 15-20 minutes for the longer ones,) from scratch, or use up a limited number of lives to continue. That's bad enough for a graphic adventure game, but the real problem is the limited number of lives. It's not a limited number of lives per level, it's a number of lives per game! You only have a handful, and you have to buy more. And each life costs more than the last. To never redo the dozen or so puzzles you could have endured before yet another untimely death, you'd have to get dozens of lives and even grind for money! Have the people who made this game ever played an adventure game?
The question, I suppose, is why the combination of impossible control commands, often purely random deaths based on trial and error design, and having to replay entire levels added up to the last completely given up game for years, and the similarly flawed Dead Rising compelled me to beat it twice and still want to play it more should I find a cheap copy? For starters, as annoying as the AI and some game play issues are in Dread Rising, save points were plentiful enough that you rarely lost more than a few minutes. Wow, save points? Imagine an innovation like that in Zack and Wiki! But I think part of it was the feel of the game. I initially assumed Dead Rising was the easy zombie game, but after I learned otherwise, it was reasonable to assume a Mature-rated game based on a horrific zombie apocalypses. Zack and Wiki is so obviously a children's game that it comes into violent conflict with the difficulty. Hell, besides the limited lives, it also penalizes your score for beating the level. Where does that sound familiar? Devil May Cry, the ultra-violent, adult-themed action game famous for its difficulty. What's the point? Hell, why not just penalize the character's score and leave it at that? A player tries a level, dies a few times, beats the level, and if they really care, they can repeat the level again flawlessly. That's how I handled Dead rising. I beat the game with a bad-ish ending the first time, and then I did it again with the best level and while rescuing all the survivors. That may have literally given me nightmares, but in the end, it felt good. A monkey that turns into a bell can't say as much.
There were a few things that bothered me about this game. The normal game play itself was fine, with one exception. There was too much use of the Wiimote (AKA the "waggle" stuff,) some of which merely hurt my hand, but quite a few that didn't work. The worst, and one of the things that finally put me off the game, was the "sword-fighting" in the penultimate level. Not only was it unwieldy and hard to block or attack, but three mistakes and you're defeated and killed! More on that point in a minute. I wasn't too fan of the game's art style, either. I love a lot of anime and Japanese-based design at large, but it can easily become too much. And this game, with its bunny pirates, high-pitched screaming monkeys, and hammy overacting pirate women, was too much. The graphics didn't exactly demonstrate the power of the system, either, not that it matters much for a game in this style.
But these weren't the things that made me give up on the game. What made me give up was the "lives" system. You see, nearly every level in the game has several ways for your character to die or otherwise lose permanently. When you die, you have only two options: start the level (which could take 15-20 minutes for the longer ones,) from scratch, or use up a limited number of lives to continue. That's bad enough for a graphic adventure game, but the real problem is the limited number of lives. It's not a limited number of lives per level, it's a number of lives per game! You only have a handful, and you have to buy more. And each life costs more than the last. To never redo the dozen or so puzzles you could have endured before yet another untimely death, you'd have to get dozens of lives and even grind for money! Have the people who made this game ever played an adventure game?
The question, I suppose, is why the combination of impossible control commands, often purely random deaths based on trial and error design, and having to replay entire levels added up to the last completely given up game for years, and the similarly flawed Dead Rising compelled me to beat it twice and still want to play it more should I find a cheap copy? For starters, as annoying as the AI and some game play issues are in Dread Rising, save points were plentiful enough that you rarely lost more than a few minutes. Wow, save points? Imagine an innovation like that in Zack and Wiki! But I think part of it was the feel of the game. I initially assumed Dead Rising was the easy zombie game, but after I learned otherwise, it was reasonable to assume a Mature-rated game based on a horrific zombie apocalypses. Zack and Wiki is so obviously a children's game that it comes into violent conflict with the difficulty. Hell, besides the limited lives, it also penalizes your score for beating the level. Where does that sound familiar? Devil May Cry, the ultra-violent, adult-themed action game famous for its difficulty. What's the point? Hell, why not just penalize the character's score and leave it at that? A player tries a level, dies a few times, beats the level, and if they really care, they can repeat the level again flawlessly. That's how I handled Dead rising. I beat the game with a bad-ish ending the first time, and then I did it again with the best level and while rescuing all the survivors. That may have literally given me nightmares, but in the end, it felt good. A monkey that turns into a bell can't say as much.
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