Q.U.B.E.

So I beat Q.U.B.E. today.

It was fine.

...

Right, so that's not enough for a whole post.

QUBE (forget the periods) is a Portal-like puzzle game, but instead of portals you get to move little cubes around with magic gloves. The different cubes do different things, like throw you across a room or raise to different heights. It's an alright puzzle game, with some pretty neat arrangements of ideas.

It's also Portal-like in that you start in a mostly white clinical setting, and halfway through the game everything falls apart to reveal the machinery behind it all. Except QUBE is not nearly as clever as Portal.

I've been pondering why it's not nearly as clever, and it's hard to get at. All the pieces are there: interesting physical puzzles, mysterious setting, cubes. But it feels very contrived in a way that Portal did not.

Here's my theory: Portal is a naturally subversive game, whereas QUBE is not.

Portal hands you a gun that links two spaces in a physically impossible yet completely intuitive way. It's something that you could take into the real world and cause havoc with. It's a subversion of the way we think about physical space.

QUBE gives you gloves that move designated cubes in designated ways. QUBE gloves in the real world do nothing, because there is no real world analogy.

On top of that, Portal places you into a game within a game. GLADOS is playing with you, and you are engaging her directly by moving through the world. It's the relationship of player and designer made transparent. When the scenery falls away in Portal, the game within a game falls away as well. Now you're defying GLADOS, which feels like you're defying the designer (you're actually not, but we all know that. Just roll with it). It subverts the player/designer relationship.

The design in these latter stages of Portal reflect this by dropping all the obvious signs pointing you towards a solution. Now you are exploiting the environment rather than going through GLADOS' prescribed steps. It's a revelation that brings the portal gun one step closer to being real in your mind.

When the scenery in QUBE falls away, nothing changes. The puzzles are still obviously designed (with loving care) by a person. They have obviously prescribed solutions with very clean and precise steps.

So why even make the scenery change if it has no impact thematically or mechanically?

Because Portal did it.

It's frustrating that QUBE, a game that could stand on its own, chose to take so directly from Portal. It could have had its own strong themes, or its own subversions, or it could have just stood as a strong puzzle game. But the comparisons are so direct and obvious, that QUBE looks like a weak imitator of Portal.

There is a Director's cut edition of QUBE that adds a bunch of narration. I listened to a bit of this and, and it's about two people telling you conflicting things about what you're doing and why. One of them is a liar, one of them is telling the truth. Everything else appears to be the same. Again, this feels like a reflection of Portal, but not nearly as substantial and divorced from the game itself.

So that's QUBE. The puzzles are clever, the game is short (this is a good thing), and it reminds me of Portal too much to be enjoyable.

Talion is a paper doll without any changes of outfit

Talion is the main character in Shadow of Mordor. Here is a list of Talion's qualities:

• Grumpy
• Good at sword
• Angry
• Good at jump
• Clothes (one set)
• Likes to murder orcs
• Good at murder orcs
• Gruff
• Beard
• Good at stealthing

Celebrimbor is the secondary character. Here is a list of Celebrimbor's qualities:

• Grumpy
• Good at bow
• Intellectual
• Good at blacksmith
• Clothes (none he's a ghost)
• Likes to enslave orcs
• Good at enslave orcs
• Gruff
• No beard
• Good at ghosting

They both have a wife and a kid. Here are their qualities:

• Dead

Truly this is an outstanding achievement in character.

Memory and Games

Some rambling things I was thinking about, specifically related to memory and 999.

I think I'll remember 999 very well, despite the vaguely generic Anime Murder plot and stylings. Part of the reason I'll remember it is that I ended up doing a lot of math. I'll always remember that Lotus is 8 and Clover is 4, and those hooks help me to remember their personalities, traits, and eventual fates as well. This is very interesting to me - why would doing a bunch of math help me to remember that Snake lost his arm in a car accident and is a great detective?

I think that memory is very strange.  Long-term memories slowly get eroded, but at different rates depending on a number of factors. The feeling for me is this: short term memory is is like a scaffold for a building. The more detailed and engaging the memory, the better the construction will be. As time passes, the scaffold is taken down, and long term memory is the building itself. What remains can be shoddy (my memory of work yesterday) or very strong (memories of my wedding day).

I think this varies from person to person, but my "scaffolds" are made stronger with a few things. A strong emotional reaction, be it good or bad, definitely makes the scaffold stronger. A highly detailed experienced also makes the scaffold stronger, so doing a lot of math combined with detective work (999) will create a very strong memory. Repetition also helps - another strength to 999.

I think it takes more than one of those factors, though, to make a long-lasting memory. I played a lot of Farmville when it was popular, but I don't remember anything about it, so repetition alone doesn't work. Minecraft, on the other hand, is very repetitive but also creates in me a deep feeling of satisfaction and peace, so I remember many more of the things that I've done in that game.

Working on spreadsheets for my job is highly detailed but very forgettable. Making a game is also highly detailed, but very much a labor of love, so I remember the games I made pretty well.

The only exception is a strong emotional reactions. I remember those for a long time, without anything else.

I'm very invested in memory because mine is very bad at times. The period of my life between the ages of 11 and 18 is a huge blur for me, and some days I feel a profound sense of loss. I don't want that to happen again.

DISTRAINT (SB Crosspost)

I've recently started posting a lot on the selectbutton.net forums, and some of these are long-form posts about games. I wanted to save them somewhere accessible. The original post can be found here.

WARNING: I'm spoiling this entire game, also a CW for self harm/suicide

DISTRAINT is one of the least effective horror games I've ever played. It is neither scary in a visceral way, nor does it dive deeply into some sort of psychological horror. Its premises are stated very plainly about 15 minutes into the game and the plot is simple enough to be predicted basically from the outset. Its method of foreshadowing is to simply tell you what is going to happen in a few minutes. Plus it's really ugly.

The premise of the game is that the main character works in a vaguely debt collecting related job, and his job is to seize people's property from them. Just a few minutes into the game he starts hallucinating things like blood on the walls, and zombie elephants. Maybe 20 minutes his dead parents show up to tell him that greed is bad and that's basically the moral of the story.

Oh, and the elephant is literally referred to as the "elephant in the room" and is later explicitly defined as his subconscious guilt given physical form. It's so bad.

The main character ends up seizing 3 homes, then deciding he's going to quit even if it means living in a dumpy, leaky apartment forever. At the last minute he changes his mind because he's made Partner in whatever this vaguely debt-related firm is. Then it cuts to 10 years later and he lost his job because his guilt elephant made him mentally unstable and now he is being evicted.

Then he kills himself.

Oh and also an old lady who died earlier in the game gets to meet her husband in heaven as the credits roll.

THE END

...As much as I'm giving this game shit, I actually didn't hate it. It's sort of charmingly bad and is so blunt with its message that I almost (almost (almost)) like it for being so naive and sincere. I could go into some giant speech about how criticizing the lowest members on the capitalist food chain for not wanting to live in a dumpy leaky apartment is totally missing the point, but...I don't think it really matters.

But it is interesting how not horror-like this game is! Everything is super concrete and obvious, so even jumpscares aren't scary because there's no atmosphere. The puzzles can be a bit trippy (the last house involves taking psychedelic drugs to go through doors that are locked in real life) but for the most part they are very straightforward.

There are a couple of moments where it tries to go for a "horrific absurdity amongst mundanity" feeling. The one I liked was the nursing home where a janitor is cheerily grinding up a body, and you have to take a chunk of it to the Cook because he wants to make meat. The main character is just sort of like "Well, this is gross but whatever" and it's kind of funny/scary. But then it's undermined again by how straightforward and back-tracking everything else is.

So I guess what I'm getting at here is that even things in this game that are actually scary:

Your dead parents chopping up mystery meat in the middle of the night

are undermined by the lack of atmosphere and lack of vagueness:

They immediately tell you they're going to feed you the elephant of your guilt and they want you to quit your job

I know it's obvious to say that "good horror has both atmosphere and scares" but it's amazing how completely gutted horror is by missing one entirely.

Friday the 13th wouldn't be scary if everything was well lit and we all knew that it was Jason's mother in a burlap mask the entire time. It would be funny, but not scary.

Halloween wouldn't be scary if it was set in a bright, crowded wal-mart, and Mike Meyers wore a mask that said "I LIKE TO KILL PEOPLE" on it.

Anyway I'm rambling at this point. Don't play DISTRAINT.

999 - Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

Holy crap there are some SPOILERS below for 999 - Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors. It's a good game, so it might be nice to play it first, but hey, read on if you want to.

I just wanted to write something briefly about 999. Released on the Nintendo DS in 2009, it's a very serious and very funny visual novel. The main plot is about being trapped on a boat with a bunch of people, playing a deadly game involving the number 9 in a bunch of ways. It reminds me most of Death Note, in that its setting is very rule-based. Many of the plot twists are about people bending the rules to suit their needs, or about new rules coming to light suddenly.

The story of 999 is also very entwined with the actual structure of a visual novel, which impressed me very much. Visual novels are similar to Choose Your Own Adventure books, in that they typically focus on breadth rather than depth. So instead of a book where a single chain of events happens, they usually branch out into many different chains of events with significantly different results. The game-ness of a visual novel is found in exploring all of these different endings. Getting the "true" ending usually involves using knowledge gained from prior play-throughs...something that the characters themselves would not have access to.

999 plays with this idea of character/player split at the very end of the "true" route. The player and the character simultaneously discover that someone has been guiding them to this end using knowledge gained from the other failed endings. It's as if someone was playing a visual novel, but in the universe of the visual novel itself! It's very interesting, and it brings the player closer to being part of the universe than just a mere observer.

It reminds me of Deadly Premonition in a way. The main character in that game talks to his "alternate personality" a lot. But the alternate personality is really a stand-in for the player, allowing the main character to address the player directly, and for the player to control the main character's actions with an in-universe explanation. It gives the player a direct and very real role in the fictional universe of the game.

The idea of bringing players into the "magic circle" of the game isn't a new one, but I rarely see it performed effectively. Deadly Premonition, 999, imscared, Baten Kaitos...these are the only examples I can think of off the top of my head, and they happen to be some of my favorite games.

One last thought: 999 is a great example of why visual novels are more than simple books, or just games with a lot of words. They can give an experience that a book can't by allowing the player to assume a role in a universe and affect it in unique ways. But their high text-to-game ratio allows a lot more character analysis than a typical game could. Playing 999 is the closest I've felt to being a detective; I was analyzing people's motives, reactions, and abilities so I could make good decisions.

I highly recommend the game, but for your own sake, play it on an emulator. The text scrolls way too slowly and I ended up playing most of the game at 2x speed. I don't think I would have finished it otherwise.

Nintendo Land and hindsight

I picked up Nintendo Land for $10 the other day, and I've played a bit of it with my wife and on my own. It's a fun game with a lot of neat gimmicks that have longer lifespans than I would expect from a bunch of mini-games. It's definitely a mini-game collection, but it feels meatier than most games I would describe like that.

When Nintendo Land first came out it was seen as a showcase of all the neat things you could do with the Wii U's gamepad. This turned out to be terribly true: it's just about all the neat things you could do with the gamepad.

The Wii U is dying at this point, and I think most of us can agree that the gamepad is pretty much a bad gimmick. I can't think of much that it could do that wasn't done on the DS or the Wii better, except for maybe Mario Maker. Even that game is something you could accomplish on a tablet - the TV display is just a nice bonus. Looking down at the gamepad while playing a game is a really awful experience, and the best thing about it is that I can play games with the TV off. But even then I just want a nice, powerful portable machine, not something locked to my living room

I loved the Wii, and I loved the DS. But combining the two was doomed from the beginning. Nintendo Land was supposed to be a shining light towards all of the new things you could do on the Wii U. Instead, it ended up showcasing almost everything interesting the Wii U could do, and with the benefit of hindsight we can see how limited the console truly is.

Terraria, Disgaea, and my stupid brain

I've been playing a lot of Terraria this week, in lieu of doing things that are actually productive. Terraria is a fantastic game, but I've already played 280+ hours of it according to Steam. And the new patch didn't necessarily add anything that interesting. So why am I starting a new character yet again?

I've also been playing a lot of the PSP version of Disgaea, which I already completed on the DS. Disgaea is, again, a fantastic game, but I've already finished it and even did some power leveling back on the DS. So why is it that I feel compelled to dive into the item world yet again?

I think there's something in common here. This past week has been stressful to me for various reasons, and I feel like I don't have control over my life in some ways. I also feel overwhelmed by the amount of things bouncing around in my head, which is distracting me from the things I need to get done. All in all, it's been kind of crappy. So why those two games?

Terraria and Disgaea could not be farther apart in how they play, but the way that they feel in my brain is very similar. Both games occupy my brain almost completely. My spacial reasoning is occupied by digging or trying to find Geo chains. My forward thinking is occupied by planning the best builds to fight the next boss, or by planning on which items I will level up first. My senses are occupied by constant input, either from massive particle effects and lighting changes, or by amazing combat animations. I'm usually doing math in my head at the same time, either counting the blocks I need to build a cool house, or the damage I'm doing to enemies and how many attacks I need to do to finish them off.

That said, neither game is that hard. The parts of my brain being occupied are challenged, but not that much. It's relaxing in a way that only video games seem to be, at least to me. I've got constantly shifting, realizable small goals, along with overarching large goals that I am always making progress towards. 

I have a few "stress relief," or more accurately "problem avoidance," games. Terraria, Minecraft, Disgaea, Dragon Quest, Peggle. They are pretty different on the surface, but in the end they all occupy multiple parts of my brain so that I'm not really thinking about anything else.

I don't think this is always healthy behavior. It can be very toxic, in fact. But it is something I do, and I think it's something that can be done healthily as long as I'm aware that I'm avoiding shit, and what kind of effect these games have on me.

Terrible Fate

Link is not really an interesting character, and purposefully so. He is a cipher, intended to help the player project themselves into the game. The most boring thing that somebody can talk about is Link's characterization, Link's feelings, Link's personal connections.

I'm here to talk about Link's feelings.

In Ocarina of Time, Link is cast as the Hero of Time. In practice, this means that the player can jump between a time before the rule of Ganon, and a time 7 years later when Ganon is doing his big-bad routine to the whole world. The plot of the game starts with Link as a child. Soon, he transforms into a 7-year-older version of himself without experiencing any time in-between. The cruelest form of time travel - he still ages, but gets none of the benefit of having lived the years between 9 and 16.

In the end, Link saves the world in the future timeline, but returns to his present, when he was 9 years old. The implication is that none of the bad things happened and, therefore, the world didn't even need saving. His role as the Hero of Time is totally negated, and nobody knows what he did.

Another part of the tragedy is that by this time Link has not only discovered that he has no family, but that he doesn't even share a species with those who surrounded him as a child. He can remain in the forest, but he is the only one who will age. The Kokiri who raised him remain forever children. What does he have left? He's essentially an orphan, and it's implied that the only person who even knows him outside of the forest is a princess in a castle town far away. And there's no way he can be friends with a princess.

The direct sequel, Majora's Mask, begins with 9 year old Link racing through a foggy forest riding his horse, Epona. He gets mugged by a Skull kid in a weird mask and loses all of his possessions, as well as his horse, and falls down a hole into another world.

Majora's Mask is a game about impending doom. The moon is going to crash into the world in 3 days, and nobody can stop it (except Link of course). Death is everywhere - the three major masks that Link can acquire are all the faces of dead people, and one of them is a child. Almost everyone is miserable, and even those who have found happiness will be dead in 3 days.

I think this is a perfect mirror for the turmoil that Link must be experiencing. He has no family, he has no friends, and even his accomplishments are taken away from him. He's thrown into a cruel world where nobody wants to speak to him. He finds himself repeating the same 3 days ad nauseam, having almost all of his achievements taken from him every single cycle.

And yet, he starts to make progress. He starts to learn the world, its pitfalls and its charms. He gets to know the strange, miserable people around him, and he begins to use his curse as a way to help those around him, even if it's only temporary. He plays songs of healing for those near death, and finds a way to make their sacrifices (or meaningless deaths) into something that will eventually save the world.

At the end of his mission, he discovers that the Skull kid who mugged him is just a lonely little boy. And even the main villain is a lonely deity who can't find friends to play with him. They are reflections of his emotional state, but he is able to use his likeness with them to learn about them, and in the case of the Skull kid, save a life.

The perfect encapsulation of the theme of misery being turned into progress or even joy, is when Link puts on a transformative mask. Watch this animation:

Link is obviously in terrible pain every time he puts on that mask, yet it is necessary to do this maybe a hundred times during the game itself. The pain is worth the results, and it's a reminder of the sacrifices that went into making that mask.

So Majora's Mask ends up being a catharsis for Link. He may still be miserable, but in helping others through their misery, he can maybe find a way to help himself.

I'm not here to say this was intentional on the part of the designers, but I think it ties in nicely to the Hero of Time legend. It's probably the darkest of all of Link's incarnations, especially when you consider that Wind Waker effectively erases everything Link DID achieve in Hyrule. Majora's Mask is a perfect send-off for the loneliest Link, and it's my favorite of the series.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

I finally watched Star Wars: The Force Awakens. It was certainly a movie with actors in it, huh? Look I'm going to spoil the crap out of this movie so if you haven't seen it then I guess don't read this.

I'm not a huge Star Wars fan, though I'm not a detractor either. I do love the world, a mixture of sci-fi and fantasy, a bit medieval and a bit futuristic. My first experience with Star Wars was probably Shadows of the Empire on the N64, and I was obsessed with that game. The soundtrack especially captured my imagination, and flying an X-wing or whatever the ship on Hoth was called, was really excellent.

I went back and watched the original trilogy with my dad and enjoyed them thoroughly, even knowing all the spoilers. They're pretty solid movies, right? Big ships, big explosions, big emotions. A slightly esoteric world with a very easily digestible plot. Perfect for kids to eat up with just enough depth to keep adults watching. And Light Sabers are just...really awesome.

The prequel trilogy was pretty much garbage to me, but I wasn't that excited for them in the first place. As stand alone movies, they are very much weird, messy, heavy things that don't really flow well or make a whole lot of sense. I did love the pod racers and I played the Pod Racer N64 game pretty heavily at one of my friend's house. Honestly the whole thing didn't impact me much, but I was definitely over my Star Wars thing at that point.

So The Force Awakens gets announced, generates a huge amount of hype, everyone's saying this will be a return to form. I'm thinking, what form? A big flashy movie with an easy-to-digest plot? I've always thought the most interesting things about Star Wars have been the side projects and weird fan creations, not the movies themselves. But still, I got a little excited.

It's telling that even in a short essay about this movie, I feel the need to describe my history with the franchise. This is very much in line with what The Force Awakens was trying to do: make a movie that stands on its own, but pleases people who are familiar with the world and characters. And it does that! It's fine! It's one of those movies that if I saw with no context, I probably would not give a second thought to. I would be confused about some plot points but mostly just write it off as "another action movie."

But it does have context! Lots of it! The original trilogy was about a rag-tag group of underdogs fighting against a largely established oppressive government. It was about a select group of magical people who controlled the destiny of the universe, for better or worse. It was about a laser blasters that looked like crossbows, and technologically advanced swords that could reflect bullets.

I felt the momentum of the original trilogy affecting The Force Awakens a lot, but...it didn't really make sense. The Force Awakens feels almost like a remake of A New Hope, but it isn't brave enough to disconnect itself from all the history and baggage that comes along with being a Star Wars Movie. This creates some weird situations. The heroes are a rag-tag group of underdogs, but they're actually sponsored by the established government. They're fighting against what would amount to a group of terrorists in the modern world, but they're essentially terrorists themselves. It's a mess! And it's not even discussed in the movie, except by the bad guys! Very strange.

And why are they calling themselves the Rebellion, except for historical purposes? What are they rebelling against?

And then there was the characterization of the returning characters, particularly Han and Leia. They were very charming, and I really liked their playful dialogue in particular. But again this aspect was dragged under by the baggage of being an Important Sequel. Their discussion about their son going to the dark side was about as emotional as a conversation about where to go for lunch. I didn't buy it at all. If they were new characters, then there would be no need for all this "what happened between movies" plot revealing dialogue.

I feel like a lot of this is informed by wanting to be completely unlike the prequel trilogy. Where the prequels are tackling the downfall of a ruling government, The Force Awakens is about underdogs fighting space Nazis. Where good and evil is a bit murky in the prequels, everyone is clearly on one side or the other in this movie. Where the prequels had about 6 million Jedis with their own Light sabers, there are exactly three Jedis and two Light sabers in this movie. Where the prequels had lots of dialogue about the plot, the new movie tries to jam a bunch of plot dialogue into as few lines as possible.

Look, what I'm saying here is that the movie should have picked one or the other. Be an interesting sequel to the originals AND the prequels. Tackle the idea of what the Empire would look like when it's weak. Show how the Republic would handle that now that they're in charge. Let us see how the characters we love have changed.

OR be a remake (or totally unrelated movie) and let us just live in the Star Wars universe with some fun, interesting characters that have no baggage. Fun dialogue, eye catching action, familiar ideas with new twists. Light and airy or heavy and serious, but no baggage please.

But trying to shoot right down the middle means that the movie is just...fine? Not bad, but not amazing. It doesn't have enough new ideas to be an amazing movie in its own right, but it doesn't take the old ideas to any interesting places either.

Also, is there any better indication that this is a by-the-numbers sequel than the whole "It's like the Death Star about 100x bigger!!" thing?

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (SB Crosspost)

I've recently started posting a lot on the selectbutton.net forums, and some of these are long-form posts about games. I wanted to save them somewhere accessible. The original post can be found here.

I'm close to finishing SotN and I had a bunch of thoughts I wanted to put here before I forgot.

There are a few ways of doing effective worldbuilding. To take two examples that come to mind: Mario 64 vs. Banjo Kazooie. Mario 64 does not really do worldbuilding. Each painting is a small, enclosed or floating space, like a little garden with clear limits and boundaries. Banjo Kazooie is functionally the same but with a few differences. Each world implies a larger world outside of it that you can't get to. Things like impassable hills and fences, or doors that can't be opened, or oceans that seem to go beyond the playable area - they show that Banjo is being transported somewhere, not just the inside of a magical painting.

Aria of Sorrow is more like Mario 64. It's an enclosed space with specific goals and challenges that don't imply much more is going on. Symphony of the Night constantly feels like it has unplumbed depths. Rather than using physical markers, like Banjo Kazooie, SotN does world building by being incredibly secretive and impenetrable.

One thing I'm thinking about specifically is the item drops from enemies. Many of the enemies have very, very rare item drops. Practically, most players will see maybe 5% of these drops. Most of the items are not very useful, but they are rare, and many of the weapons even have secret attacks triggered by certain button combos. I think this lends the game a deep air of mystery, where each person who plays the game has a slightly different experience. Many conversations I've seen about SotN focus on the "Wow, I didn't know you could do that!" factor.

That extends to the mysterious nature of Alucard as well. He's got totally secret, undocumented spells that you can stumble on by pressing buttons in a certain order. His stats are different depending on how you perform in the first battle. Sometimes he turns into a gargoyle instead of turning to stone when hit by a Medusa Head. He's got all sorts of secret animations involving different contexts. He's not impenetrable, but I certainly don't identify with Alucard the same way I identify with Soma. He feels like another entity, not an extension of myself.

The castle itself has tons of weird secrets. There's a face near Dracula's throne room that looks like a face in the normal castle and a different face when it's upside-down. There are (apparently) rooms you can only reach by doing a super jump as a wolf (???). Famously, there's the room where the priest gives you grape juice...unless he stabs you. And of course the Inverted Castle is the major example of a bizarre secret.

Even the menus hide secrets until you've discovered them! What kind of options menu has ellipses instead of words on it?

Hell, there's even some stuff that was probably unintended. I think that the experience listings for each enemy that the Librarian gives might be wrong - the Dodo should give 777 exp but it's closer to 2000. This makes me wonder how much other stuff he tells you is wrong, or whether the items function as described. (Turns out that experience given is based on your level compared to theirs, so it's intended, but still weird)

There's a bunch of meta-stuff going on in the years since as well. The glitches that allow you to visit rooms you shouldn't or break out of the castle, the changes between various releases, content hidden on the disc...

I'd believe almost anything you told me about SotN. This game isn't just a legend in itself, it creates legends.

In the end, it's not really an incredibly mysterious game, but it feels like one. Sure, you can look up all of this information online, but just playing the game as intended, there's no way you'll see every single thing the game has to offer in less than 100 hours. I can't think of many games that make the world feel real through secrets like this.

The funny thing is that this didn't strike me at all until my second playthrough. I had played all of the GBA games and Dawn of Sorrow before ever touching this game, so SotN didn't seem that special the first time. But this second time through I've encountered so much that I didn't see or notice in the first game. I think it's really built around the idea of playing multiple times, or at least talking to people about the game.

Anyway, that's what I've been dwelling on. I'm near to finishing the game, assuming I don't grind for more weird items. I'm happy to say that this game is probably the best of the Igavanias, and it's definitely my favorite now.

Rejuvenation

I'm taking this old dusty blog of mine and re-opening it. I've done a bit of cleaning, and changed the goal a little bit. Instead of writing nice, polished pieces, I'm instead using this as a media diary of sorts. So I'll be writing smaller pieces more frequently. The intention is to keep a catalog of things I've played, watched, read etc.

I'll also be using this as a place to store some of my posts on Selectbutton.net since I think they are basically blog posts anyway.

Check out the new About Me page, and my work-in-progress Media Diary for 2016.

Thoughts on Mass Effect

Mass Effect has been out for 7 years and yet somehow I have avoided any major spoilers about...well, everything. I went in blind - other than knowing that it was a space opera, and that the ending of Mass Effect 3 was contentious for some reason.

Boy, I reaaallly like this game. I feel stupid for waiting 7 years (7 years!!) to play it.

So, some themes that have come up in the first couple of hours:

I like the idea of humans being late-comers the space scene. It definitely puts Shepard in an interesting position - not the pawn of some gigantic empire, but not fighting against some evil controlling overlord either. It's nice to be sort of unimportant in the grand scheme, at least at first.

I do have a problem with this scenario though. Apparently, humans have quickly excelled within interstellar politics, and are demanding to be part of the council, which has existed 10-20 times longer than humans have been in space. I get the feeling I'm supposed to agree with the humans in the game, but considering that there are other space-faring races who have (a) been around longer and (b) probably understand the politics better but are still not in the council, it actually seems pompous to me. Specifically, it seems like a very USA-like attitude, the sort of exceptionalism that we really get behind. I hope that there is more complexity to this argument later in the game.

The three major alien races are a bit bog-standard unfortunately, although it's not all bad. For instance, the all female race is actually the most intelligent, longest lived, and most diplomatic species in the game. They were also the first to get into space. This is in contrast to the typical male-centric interpretation of sex-crazed man-eating green-skinned space ladies that I'm used to.

But then we have the typical Warrior Race (TM) and the Hyper-Intelligent Race (TM). It seems like the individual characters are treated with more respect than their stereotypes though, so that is good.

The soundtrack is fantastic - I love the mix of 80's space-synth tracks and the more orchestral tracks.

I'll be writing more about Mass Effect as I play further through it. Consider me a time travelling gamer from the year 2007, and enjoy my first journey through the series.

Assassin's Creed - initial thoughts

With the rise of the Xbox One, I've decided to finally catch up on some of the core 360 games that I never really got to when they were full price. I just got Assassin's Creed and played it for about 30 minutes this morning. I had no idea going in what the game is about except murder-fying people in a simulation, and getting lost in a crowd subsequently.

So far, I really like the premise of playing a simulation of an ancestral memory. It reminds me of York addressing the player directly as Zach in Deadly Premonition. When York talks directly to me as if I was some personality in his head, it makes me feel like an agent separate from the actual events of the game - which in essence I am, as the player. Same thing for Assassin's Creed: by addressing the fact that the whole game is a simulation, it makes me aware of the simulation and draws me in as a real actor in the following events.

I also like how they refer to the control scheme as Puppeteering. I just thought that was charming. I also like that the setting is somewhere other than  Space, The Old West, or Big City X.

Other than that, I have no idea what is going on. It seems a lot less like a bro-shooter kind of game than I'm used to, which is good. I prefer being a scalpel to being a chainsaw anymore. Maybe my age is showing.

Eft to Newt

Eft to Newt is a Twine game about being a talking, sentient Axolotl salamander, although this mechanical description doesn't really say anything significant about the game.

At one point, a living statue looked at me and said "Holy shit, a talking salamander!" At another point, I was captured by rogue government agents bent on evolving the human race based on salamander hormones or something. At yet another point I was eaten by a genetically engineered snake-like creature that dripped different colored ink from its claws and fangs. I learned quite a bit about the life cycle of salamanders in the mean-time.

It's disarming and genuine, and it wouldn't work as anything but a game. It's mythical in scope but practical in application, like living in a fairy tale as a side character.

It's very funny.

To say it has a branching narrative would be a lie - it goes beyond that. I imagine it more like the spokes of a wheel that move in completely different directions from the same starting point.

It has a lot of words, and it's going to take a while to read everything. Despite that, each playthrough is very short. Every ending is the "7th ending" which is just so charming and I don't know why.

I don't think I stopped smiling while I played this game, except for the weird mazey bit in the abandoned pen store. Even that was forgivable because of the strange stuff that happened there.

There is an option to "Consider going into baking professionally." I obviously chose this option.

Eft to Newt is about being different and finding empathy in unlikely places, and is very wonderful. If my thoughts about it are scattered, that's because the game is so varied. Despite this, everything strikes at the same theme.

It's available right now on Gum Road for exactly $2. Every dollar is going towards saving the Axolotl Salamander because Michael Joffe is an excellent person. You should read and play more of his stuff at his blog, Video Games of the Oppressed.

DISCLAIMER: I received this game for free as a review copy, I guess, but then I bought it anyway. So there.

Pokemon ROM Hacks and Mystery

I like to play games for a number of reasons - to be challenged, to explore something unknown, to connect with other people, to find comfort in familiarity. Pokemon falls strictly in the last category. It is possibly the closest thing I have to rosary beads, more of a habit than anything. Something to remind me of my childhood, my adolescence, my first job.

Recently I have been playing Pokemon: Liquid Crystal, a remake of the Crystal version based on Fire Red. If that doesn't mean anything to you, no fears. It's basically a fan remake of an older game based on a newer engine. It's like rewriting Beowulf with modern English, or remaking Robocop with CGI except not awful.

So it's a remake, but it's also ROM hack made primarily by one person, frequently updated for the better part of 6 years. That means that there are some...new features. For instance, the day/night cycle from Crystal returns, but as far as I can tell it's only visual. It has no real effect on the game. There are also new weather cycles based on the season it is in real life, which basically amounts to getting pelted with hail occasionally. It's also a lot harder than the original since the trainers have much stronger Pokemon.

The weird thing to me about this is that I play Pokemon like someone reading In Watermelon Sugar for the hundredth time: I know what's coming up, and that is where I find pleasure. But now I'm coming across unfamiliar paragraphs, slight changes of wording, and entirely new chapters. I have a good idea of what's going to happen, but it's always tinged with a feeling of slight strangeness.

Even worse, I haven't actually played the original Crystal, only the slightly older and inferior Silver version. So I don't know what's new to Crystal and what's new to the ROM hack.

All in all though, I'm enjoying it immensely. It's a lot like playing Pokemon for the first time, helped especially by the lack of full documentation or walk-throughs for the hack. The frequent updates also mean that any documentation I do find is probably out of date. It's a unique experience and I'm happy to have it.

SSX and distraction

SSX is a beautiful thing - SSX3 in particular is one of my favorite games to this day - the combination of insane stunts, adaptive music, and insanely long courses continues to be pleasing.

I knew that SSX on the Xbox 360 would not be the same before I even bought it. In particular, I knew that the courses were not linked together into one insane run like SSX3. But the first time I jumped out of that helicopter, and the massive beats of Foster The People's Houdini started playing, I had hope. When I failed and failed again to stick a landing and landed straight on my face, or careened off of a cliff into the abyss for the third time, I knew there was something special here. This game had me hooked.

And then it got weird. The "online" features of the game started to get mixed in with the offline features in confusing ways. Was that powerup placed by a person, or is it built into the game? Will I have enough currency to buy the boards I need, or will I need to buy some sort of DLC to finish the game in a reasonable time? Are these leaderboards local? Is it my neighborhood, or my friends, or everyone? I had no idea.

It threw me out of the zone - that sort of magical place that games inhabit when I'm not thinking about anything but the game.

I've noticed more and more games doing this - getting me into the zone before abruptly knocking me out again. Often it's things like DLC ads, or bizarre currencies that I have to buy with real money to avoid grinding. Sometimes it's just the question of "how much of this is supposed to make me spend money?"

It makes sense in a free to play game, sort of - you have to interrupt people's games so that they want to keep playing, and will pay you real money to do so. But in a game that I bought for $60, what's the point except to make sure I don't buy the sequel?

I really hate the free to play model personally, and I hate the idea that's it's leaked into games that I legitimately bought. Honestly it's one of the biggest reasons I've pretty much stopped buying AAA games - I think I bought maybe 3 last year, and none of them new.

I guess the lesson to be learned here is "don't interrupt the zone unless you want to piss people off." Or maybe just don't buy games from EA anymore.

Scoring in Stronghold

Stronghold is a game about being the highest position of authority in a castle - that means building the castle, assigning people to jobs, ordering troops about, and other things that a lord would do. In turn, it's also about making decisions on what to sacrifice - bigger rations to make people happier, or smaller rations to keep them from starving? High taxes to provide public services, or low taxes so people will come to the castle?

I've been playing through the campaign for the first time, and had to defend my people from a pack of hungry wolves. I was able to fend them off with archers, but lost a few woodcutters and hunters in the process. This made me feel bad, of course, but sometimes not everyone lives.

In the end, I was given a score, part of which was 10,000 points for not losing any troops. This surprised me, since I had lost peasants - but then I realized that even though wolves had torn apart a number of unarmed peasants, it didn't count against my score because I hadn't lost any archers.

The funny thing about scores is that they encourage certain behaviors and act as an implicit approval of those behaviors. The logical extreme of this scoring mechanism would be to never put my archers at risk, and use my peasants as fodder to stave off the attacks of the wolves. This is the opposite of what I would have thought - to use my archers and other military units to protect the innocent peasants from harm.

I suppose it's wrong to try and impose my modern morality on lords form the middle ages, but it certainly struck me as odd coming from a modern game.