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?
Thursday, December 3, 2009
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.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
My Life: A Time of Endings
As my life gets more hectic, it's getting tougher to figure out my schedule, especially this week. It's my first 40 hour work week since my last job ended, and in the meantime I'm coming to an end to many things. My D&D game will have at the most 4 games left, including the one tomorrow. Everything from television show episode binges to web series are coming to an end and soon. Honesty, that's for the best, since the above work week means that a lot of what I could take for granted is over. This brings us to the beginnings. Sure, a lot of that are returning television shows. It also means starting a new living situation, though fortunately it might mean just having a new roommate for a few months, starting this new job pattern, and starting studies into a new toolset for a job application. Yes, this is all very complicated, and the message itself is disjointed and a bit directionless. But that's my life as well, and soon that phase will also come to an end. By next week, I at least hope to return to doing these semi-regularly.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Reviews: My First Bethesda, and Still More Zombies. Oh, and my life changes again.
Well, so much for THAT permanent change. The Monday after my last post, I finished my job. Or rather, it finished me. Apparently customer service is not my forte. Not that I mind, though part of me was bothered by the way that situation resolved itself. The real problem was how I had to hit the job running. Week one was "training week," except I had no formal training except for a guide to leaf through. Then during week two, I was tossed to a phone while one of their main customer services representatives was on vacation for more than a week and the entire office was being audited! It never got better. And the entire database was archaic, full of discrepancies and elaborate F key commands that differ for every menu. One day of learning these commands and the myriad exceptions would be enough, but updating the system with a real GUI and links to a map (say, with ties to Google Maps,) would cut the time to handle these questions in half.
Anyway, unemployment returned for a few weeks. I technically started a new job, but I'm in training AGAIN, so we'll see how this goes. So I had a lot of free time to play video games, including last month's birthday present, Fallout 3! This is my first Fallout game thanks to my focus on console games and my first Bethesda for pretty much the same reason. And my opinion? It's pretty good and I CAN'T stop playing it.
As a general rule, this isn't my type of game. Sure, it's an RPG, but it's also a shooter, which are fine except I've played little but them lately. Thank you, XBOX! Beyond that, I enjoy RPGS with strong main characters, but I also am not a fan of the constant sense of loss. In Fallout, you have to worry about how much weight you can carry (except ammo weighs nothing, nice that,) every weapon has ammo, and most importantly, every piece of equipment you have will degrade constantly. You have to constantly progress just to stay in place. Eventually, at least, that doesn't last forever. By the halfway point, the game mercifully gives out enough bonus money for minor, otherwise worthless items and just by adding places on your map. Ironically, the game then goes in the opposite direction in that I get too many rewards. The game has a maximum experience level of 20, making missions beyond that point pointless. That will change only when I spend money to get an expansion pack. As a result, I hit the maximum level after seeing barely half of the entire game! Since I plan on getting the expansion pack eventually, actually playing the rest of the game now would be a waste of the experience I would only get after I bought the expansion pack.
To make up for that, I started a second, evil character and am playing him until I'm ready to get the expansion pack. This time, I went out of my way to avoid experience bonuses, letting me see more of the game, though I still get shocked when I gain nearly an entire level from a single, short quest. Having played this game A LOT now, I can safely say that I'm ready to give my opinion. The best thing of this game is the vast number of options. Sure, you can save a town from destruction by evil forces. Or you can work with those evil forces and even press the button that turns the entire city into a mushroom cloud. The game lets you be as kind or evil as you want. Ally with noble knights in powered armors or massacre the downtrodden for evil indistrialists. Save escaped slaves or be a slaver itself. Return home to save your troubled people or murder and EAT your childhood friend! In fact, the biggest downside to the game (save for a glaring number of bugs still, from people reacting strangely to outright game freezings,) are the lack of options! For my "good person" game, I saved whole cities and am considered a messianic saint, but I didn't feel like I was helping the people overall. Hell, because random encounters get worse to match your level, the wasteland gets consistently more dangerous as you act. Thanks to the open nature of the game, this means tons of unique characters can be randomly killed off.
The one thing I really missed was any form of romantic options. Sure, the romance arcs of similar games like Mass Effect tend to be pretty limited, but at least they gave you an option. If I wanted to date, say, the quirky inventor of your hero's home base (unless you explode said home base,) why not set that up? I understand that no video game can equal your imagination. That's what tabletop role playing games (and, err, your imagination,) are for. But I still felt a bit unsatisfied. Still, that that's the worst thing you can complain about in a game, I'd call that a success.
Slightly less successful was the next game I played, Dead Rising. Dead Rising is a very Romero-esque zombie apocalypse game from Capcom. That was strange unto itself, since it was made by Capcom, who already has a zombie apocalypse series. In fact, they have the series that revolutionized the survival horror genre: Resident Evil. Capcom understandably wanted to make this series nothing like the other one, and in a way it was. Resident Evil was supposedly a survivor horror game, but it was a lot like a normal adventure game full of strange puzzles and labyrinthine police station/dungeons along with super-mutant bosses. If anything, Dead Rising cuts back on the horror in favor of the survival elements. In this one, your goal is mostly just to survive 72 hours and get as many survivors rescued and as many mysteries solved as possible. In many ways, the main enemy isn't the zombie horde, but the clock. Often you have to find a way to escort a horde of survivors with only minutes to spare before the next plot point flag.
The lack of "horror" also makes the zombie fights less horrific, and they knew it, so they made it more fun. Gone are the evolved super-mutants, with only two varieties of zombies: normal slow, shuffling zombies and slightly more aggressive slow, shuffling zombies. Instead, the boss enemies are all humans gone mad or just evil in the wake of the zombie disaster. The game's appeal comes, at least initially, from an endless hoard of slow-moving, shuffling zombies and the myriad ways you can mess with them.
This coupled with the time and survivor escorting elements, however, made for a game that seemed to hate itself. Yes, it's fun wacky times killing zombies en masse with a lawnmower, or running over them with a car, or putting silly hats on them mid-fight, or beating on them with novelty weapons like huge teddy bears, but if you actually try to, you know, win the game, the difficulty quadruples. Zombies you laugh at when you run past become deadly threats to the five or more very, very stupid people you try to escort to safety. And so you have to go out of your way to save them, which puts you in danger as well, and believe me, nothing is more fun than being grappled three times in a row and having to do quick-time events each time. And so you soon realize you have to forget the joke items and focus on real killing weapons like every other zombie game. The main offender here is a single optional boss fight that becomes an easy mode (or at least less hard mode) option. Defeat him and you get unlimited access to deadly hand-held chainsaws, AND you discover a convenient teleporter that gets you from the single farthest point from safety, a point that normally requires traveling though the most choked zombie points or into a battle with insane convicts armed with a jeep and turret, to within sauntering distance of the safe house.
It makes the game hard to appreciate it. I rented it expecting mindless fun and got something often frustratingly hard. The time limit and stupid victims, who eagerly avoided easy routes to run into swarms of zombies and needed help from inescapable grapples constantly, were a nightmare. Literally. There were some rough nights there. As a game, it worked and it was certainly engrossing (both in pun and non-pun definitions,) but it certainly needed just a little more time to get the rough parts out. And the story had issues as well. It was your usual horror movie cheese, intentionally humorous at times, but it had some clever twists involving multiple endings. If you just survive the 3 days, you get a generally positive ending, but if you finish all the story missions, you can get into longer endings involving secret government conspiracies, obvious sequel hooks, and a fairly uninspired final boss fight. What's odd, though, is the endings don't always make sense collectively. I'll avoid spoilers, but just for an example, one character who is perfectly fine in the normal ending becomes a zombie in the good endings, despite nothing remotely related to this changing. Similarly, the game is really vague about just how you become a zombie. Your fellow survivors become a zombie if they are killed by zombies, sure. But you and pretty much every one of them will get at least damaged by zombies, and yet some parts of the game insist that even a zombie bite could infect you. What, were the zombies just gumming people to death otherwise? Is this Schrodinger's zombie apocalypse?
Ultimately, I'd at least suggest people play these games. Fallout 3 is recommended for anyone with plenty of free time, and Dead Rising to anyone without blood pressure problems. And yes, this is at least two updates I merged into one after the first was embarrassingly late. Things have been weird, lately. I'll get into that more some time in a week or so.
Anyway, unemployment returned for a few weeks. I technically started a new job, but I'm in training AGAIN, so we'll see how this goes. So I had a lot of free time to play video games, including last month's birthday present, Fallout 3! This is my first Fallout game thanks to my focus on console games and my first Bethesda for pretty much the same reason. And my opinion? It's pretty good and I CAN'T stop playing it.
As a general rule, this isn't my type of game. Sure, it's an RPG, but it's also a shooter, which are fine except I've played little but them lately. Thank you, XBOX! Beyond that, I enjoy RPGS with strong main characters, but I also am not a fan of the constant sense of loss. In Fallout, you have to worry about how much weight you can carry (except ammo weighs nothing, nice that,) every weapon has ammo, and most importantly, every piece of equipment you have will degrade constantly. You have to constantly progress just to stay in place. Eventually, at least, that doesn't last forever. By the halfway point, the game mercifully gives out enough bonus money for minor, otherwise worthless items and just by adding places on your map. Ironically, the game then goes in the opposite direction in that I get too many rewards. The game has a maximum experience level of 20, making missions beyond that point pointless. That will change only when I spend money to get an expansion pack. As a result, I hit the maximum level after seeing barely half of the entire game! Since I plan on getting the expansion pack eventually, actually playing the rest of the game now would be a waste of the experience I would only get after I bought the expansion pack.
To make up for that, I started a second, evil character and am playing him until I'm ready to get the expansion pack. This time, I went out of my way to avoid experience bonuses, letting me see more of the game, though I still get shocked when I gain nearly an entire level from a single, short quest. Having played this game A LOT now, I can safely say that I'm ready to give my opinion. The best thing of this game is the vast number of options. Sure, you can save a town from destruction by evil forces. Or you can work with those evil forces and even press the button that turns the entire city into a mushroom cloud. The game lets you be as kind or evil as you want. Ally with noble knights in powered armors or massacre the downtrodden for evil indistrialists. Save escaped slaves or be a slaver itself. Return home to save your troubled people or murder and EAT your childhood friend! In fact, the biggest downside to the game (save for a glaring number of bugs still, from people reacting strangely to outright game freezings,) are the lack of options! For my "good person" game, I saved whole cities and am considered a messianic saint, but I didn't feel like I was helping the people overall. Hell, because random encounters get worse to match your level, the wasteland gets consistently more dangerous as you act. Thanks to the open nature of the game, this means tons of unique characters can be randomly killed off.
The one thing I really missed was any form of romantic options. Sure, the romance arcs of similar games like Mass Effect tend to be pretty limited, but at least they gave you an option. If I wanted to date, say, the quirky inventor of your hero's home base (unless you explode said home base,) why not set that up? I understand that no video game can equal your imagination. That's what tabletop role playing games (and, err, your imagination,) are for. But I still felt a bit unsatisfied. Still, that that's the worst thing you can complain about in a game, I'd call that a success.
Slightly less successful was the next game I played, Dead Rising. Dead Rising is a very Romero-esque zombie apocalypse game from Capcom. That was strange unto itself, since it was made by Capcom, who already has a zombie apocalypse series. In fact, they have the series that revolutionized the survival horror genre: Resident Evil. Capcom understandably wanted to make this series nothing like the other one, and in a way it was. Resident Evil was supposedly a survivor horror game, but it was a lot like a normal adventure game full of strange puzzles and labyrinthine police station/dungeons along with super-mutant bosses. If anything, Dead Rising cuts back on the horror in favor of the survival elements. In this one, your goal is mostly just to survive 72 hours and get as many survivors rescued and as many mysteries solved as possible. In many ways, the main enemy isn't the zombie horde, but the clock. Often you have to find a way to escort a horde of survivors with only minutes to spare before the next plot point flag.
The lack of "horror" also makes the zombie fights less horrific, and they knew it, so they made it more fun. Gone are the evolved super-mutants, with only two varieties of zombies: normal slow, shuffling zombies and slightly more aggressive slow, shuffling zombies. Instead, the boss enemies are all humans gone mad or just evil in the wake of the zombie disaster. The game's appeal comes, at least initially, from an endless hoard of slow-moving, shuffling zombies and the myriad ways you can mess with them.
This coupled with the time and survivor escorting elements, however, made for a game that seemed to hate itself. Yes, it's fun wacky times killing zombies en masse with a lawnmower, or running over them with a car, or putting silly hats on them mid-fight, or beating on them with novelty weapons like huge teddy bears, but if you actually try to, you know, win the game, the difficulty quadruples. Zombies you laugh at when you run past become deadly threats to the five or more very, very stupid people you try to escort to safety. And so you have to go out of your way to save them, which puts you in danger as well, and believe me, nothing is more fun than being grappled three times in a row and having to do quick-time events each time. And so you soon realize you have to forget the joke items and focus on real killing weapons like every other zombie game. The main offender here is a single optional boss fight that becomes an easy mode (or at least less hard mode) option. Defeat him and you get unlimited access to deadly hand-held chainsaws, AND you discover a convenient teleporter that gets you from the single farthest point from safety, a point that normally requires traveling though the most choked zombie points or into a battle with insane convicts armed with a jeep and turret, to within sauntering distance of the safe house.
It makes the game hard to appreciate it. I rented it expecting mindless fun and got something often frustratingly hard. The time limit and stupid victims, who eagerly avoided easy routes to run into swarms of zombies and needed help from inescapable grapples constantly, were a nightmare. Literally. There were some rough nights there. As a game, it worked and it was certainly engrossing (both in pun and non-pun definitions,) but it certainly needed just a little more time to get the rough parts out. And the story had issues as well. It was your usual horror movie cheese, intentionally humorous at times, but it had some clever twists involving multiple endings. If you just survive the 3 days, you get a generally positive ending, but if you finish all the story missions, you can get into longer endings involving secret government conspiracies, obvious sequel hooks, and a fairly uninspired final boss fight. What's odd, though, is the endings don't always make sense collectively. I'll avoid spoilers, but just for an example, one character who is perfectly fine in the normal ending becomes a zombie in the good endings, despite nothing remotely related to this changing. Similarly, the game is really vague about just how you become a zombie. Your fellow survivors become a zombie if they are killed by zombies, sure. But you and pretty much every one of them will get at least damaged by zombies, and yet some parts of the game insist that even a zombie bite could infect you. What, were the zombies just gumming people to death otherwise? Is this Schrodinger's zombie apocalypse?
Ultimately, I'd at least suggest people play these games. Fallout 3 is recommended for anyone with plenty of free time, and Dead Rising to anyone without blood pressure problems. And yes, this is at least two updates I merged into one after the first was embarrassingly late. Things have been weird, lately. I'll get into that more some time in a week or so.
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