Steam has been throwing one hell of a Christmas sale, with some games up to 80% off. This has given me the chance to play some games that I wouldn't have bought and others I wouldn't even pirate (if I did pirate games, which I don't).
I avoided console ports and games that were not a negligible money and after browsing the deals for some time I ended up with:
-Braid
-World of Goo
-Indigo Prophecy
-Mirror's Edge
-Painkiller
-Eufloria
-Beyond Good and Evil
-Torchlight
In normal circumstances none of these games would have been worth my money but the considerable discounts and my pay arriving hours earlier together overwhelmed my stinginess.
Let's take a look at these choices:
Braid was an immensely popular game with clever puzzles and a surreal atmosphere. To my ears that means over-hyped and pretentious. The gameplay consists of puzzle platforming with time manipulation, with goes from ingeniously challenging to fiendishly frustrating.
World of Goo is an indie puzzle game that I've actually finished before, when a friend bought it. My logic for buying was that if I was going to support things like Braid and Mirror's Edge which I paid for because it was there, then I had to support something that deserved it.
Indigo Prophecy can be fairly accurately described as an interactive movie, as the gameplay mostly consists of simple actions to get you to the next cutscene. There are also intensive button mashing sequences whenever the makers wanted the player to feel the same level of stress as the character.
Mirror's Edge is some bastard hybrid between a platformer and a FPS. The gameplay consists of first person free running in first person. Yes I know I repeated myself but that was to emphasis the bizarreness of the design.
Painkiller is an oldschool FPS in that you shoot demons.....and that's about it. No hiding in cover, no gimmicky mechanics, just pointing weapons at targets and watching them die.
Eufloria is another little indie game (strangely it was also one of the most expensive) that plays similar to a free game on Kongregate. You control little seedlings as you head out and colonise meteors, so if you hadn't guessed this is not a game steeped in realism or logic.
I remember Zero Punctuation mentioning that Beyond Good and Evil is a game people should play, so why the hell not. I know even less about this one than I do about the others, to the point where I'm not sure what genre it is.
Finally there is Torchlight, a game that would be a clear Diablo ripoff if it hadn't been made by some of the people who worked on Diablo. It's so similar I'm actually curious to see what if anything is different.
That's just a very brief summary of these game. Some have finished downloading and I've played them to some extent while others remain unknown. After some more time I'll do a recap on each game.
But since I'll be going to Brisbane tomorrow, don't expect this anytime soon.
That also applies to the Silent Hill 3 conclusion or a GitS post.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Friday, December 18, 2009
Untitled
I'm always at a lose of how to start and finish a post so let's just get straight to the middle.
Silent Hill 3 places you in control of Heather Mason, the adopted daughter of the the first game's protagonist. After the events of the SH1 Harry and Heather have done into hiding from the Order and what do you know, SH3 starts off with the Order finding where you are.
The early game consists of Heather trying to get home and escape the madness. When you finally do succeed the victory is short lived as you discover that Harry has been killed and where you thought would be sanctuary quite clearly isn't. The rest of the game has Heather on the offensive (sort of) as you track down Claudia, the current head of the Order, for revenge and to discover more about her own past. Oh and she is pregnant with God.
It was at this point that nostalgia made me go play some SH3, which quickly made me lose my patience and then my interest. That's why there is a 24 hour break between the above paragraphs and the below ones.....not that you'd have anyway of knowing that.
Back to the 'review'. Gameplay in SH3 is similar to 1 and 2, as well as the early Resident Evil games: motherfucking broken.
Heather handles awkwardly with two different control schemes. You can use 2-D mode where the directions match the camera which is great until the camera changes its position and you run straight off a pit. Alternatively you can use 3-D mode where up is forward and left and right steer Heather. This avoids the aforementioned camera confusion and makes sidestepping enemies easier but makes up for it by being sluggish and unintuitive.
It's not just movement that is bad; the combat is just as awful. Melee attacks and evasion are fairly poor but the shooting takes the cake and then promptly drops it. You can't aim to save your life which is a shame as that's what you are trying to do. The best you can hope for is that enemies come directly at you and let auto aim do the rest. While playing yesterday this became abundantly clear: I was using the unlockable infinite ammo submachine gun and was still having difficultly hitting my targets.
Now it can be claimed that this is a story justification because, as Yahtzee says, the first four playable characters are "a writer, a clerk, a teenage girl, and a twat." Also, one of the main ideas with survival horror is that combat is often undesirable and unwise. It's just that these things should be displayed by making the enemies tougher or something, not by forcing the player to be in control of an invalid.
The camera deserves more criticism than it has already received. As well as the camera-control interaction it also screws with the player in the traditional way: by just not being where you ever want it to be. It can move on its own or with your input so there's not many of the Resident Evil artistic-and-atmospheric-but-ultimately-unhelpful camera angles. But that doesn't stop it from causing you grief. The most frequent problem for was that I would enter a room, have the camera be facing right at me, and here the telltale sounds of monsters. I'd then have to guess as to whether I had enough time to walk forward and get the camera back behind me, or if I should just enter combat stance and start swinging away.
AS I've already said SH3 is survival horror, which in layman's terms means that the game consists of difficult combat and lots of item hunting. Now I like the idea of a game where you do not want to just massacre every critter that crosses your path, where you have to evaluate whether each enemy is worth the health and ammo loss required to defeat it.
SH3 (and I assume others games in the series too) make this idea as unappealing as possible for me. Some of this ire is due to the controls and some is no doubt due to my own bad playing but that still leaves some blame squarely for the game's design.
A lot of my problems with the design comes from the areas' layout. There are red herring rooms with only a monster or two inside; you've got no reason to enter but you won't know that until you already have. Connecting hallways also often have enemies that you can just avoid as you pass through but between the camera, the controls and the lack of space you will cop a blow. Then you find an item and realise that you have to back track through the entire area again, which makes not killing some of the monsters kind of annoying. And while it is technically possible to sneak past enemies with your flashlight off, you can't see anything because like all horror in existence, IT'S TOO FUCKING DARK TO SEE ANYTHING.
Much of my griping about this design comes from my dislike towards games whose difficultly stems from lack of knowledge, and which therefore becomes noticeably easier on later playthroughs. I've touched on this before and I know that this issue isn't completely avoidable in game design. Nevertheless it still annoys me.
When much of the game's difficultly depends on the player not knowing what to do it seems like the wrong kind of challenge. Sure you can just memorise the most profitable course of action but it is not like you yourself have gotten any better. Just like games reliant of luck-based challenges, this sort of design robs the player of a sense of victory.
At this point of kind of blown my load as for as criticism goes, and I've still got stuff to talk about; design, plot, characters, themes, minor stuff really.
So in true Tangential Thinking style: to be continued.
Silent Hill 3 places you in control of Heather Mason, the adopted daughter of the the first game's protagonist. After the events of the SH1 Harry and Heather have done into hiding from the Order and what do you know, SH3 starts off with the Order finding where you are.
The early game consists of Heather trying to get home and escape the madness. When you finally do succeed the victory is short lived as you discover that Harry has been killed and where you thought would be sanctuary quite clearly isn't. The rest of the game has Heather on the offensive (sort of) as you track down Claudia, the current head of the Order, for revenge and to discover more about her own past. Oh and she is pregnant with God.
It was at this point that nostalgia made me go play some SH3, which quickly made me lose my patience and then my interest. That's why there is a 24 hour break between the above paragraphs and the below ones.....not that you'd have anyway of knowing that.
Back to the 'review'. Gameplay in SH3 is similar to 1 and 2, as well as the early Resident Evil games: motherfucking broken.
Heather handles awkwardly with two different control schemes. You can use 2-D mode where the directions match the camera which is great until the camera changes its position and you run straight off a pit. Alternatively you can use 3-D mode where up is forward and left and right steer Heather. This avoids the aforementioned camera confusion and makes sidestepping enemies easier but makes up for it by being sluggish and unintuitive.
It's not just movement that is bad; the combat is just as awful. Melee attacks and evasion are fairly poor but the shooting takes the cake and then promptly drops it. You can't aim to save your life which is a shame as that's what you are trying to do. The best you can hope for is that enemies come directly at you and let auto aim do the rest. While playing yesterday this became abundantly clear: I was using the unlockable infinite ammo submachine gun and was still having difficultly hitting my targets.
Now it can be claimed that this is a story justification because, as Yahtzee says, the first four playable characters are "a writer, a clerk, a teenage girl, and a twat." Also, one of the main ideas with survival horror is that combat is often undesirable and unwise. It's just that these things should be displayed by making the enemies tougher or something, not by forcing the player to be in control of an invalid.
The camera deserves more criticism than it has already received. As well as the camera-control interaction it also screws with the player in the traditional way: by just not being where you ever want it to be. It can move on its own or with your input so there's not many of the Resident Evil artistic-and-atmospheric-but-ultimately-unhelpful camera angles. But that doesn't stop it from causing you grief. The most frequent problem for was that I would enter a room, have the camera be facing right at me, and here the telltale sounds of monsters. I'd then have to guess as to whether I had enough time to walk forward and get the camera back behind me, or if I should just enter combat stance and start swinging away.
AS I've already said SH3 is survival horror, which in layman's terms means that the game consists of difficult combat and lots of item hunting. Now I like the idea of a game where you do not want to just massacre every critter that crosses your path, where you have to evaluate whether each enemy is worth the health and ammo loss required to defeat it.
SH3 (and I assume others games in the series too) make this idea as unappealing as possible for me. Some of this ire is due to the controls and some is no doubt due to my own bad playing but that still leaves some blame squarely for the game's design.
A lot of my problems with the design comes from the areas' layout. There are red herring rooms with only a monster or two inside; you've got no reason to enter but you won't know that until you already have. Connecting hallways also often have enemies that you can just avoid as you pass through but between the camera, the controls and the lack of space you will cop a blow. Then you find an item and realise that you have to back track through the entire area again, which makes not killing some of the monsters kind of annoying. And while it is technically possible to sneak past enemies with your flashlight off, you can't see anything because like all horror in existence, IT'S TOO FUCKING DARK TO SEE ANYTHING.
Much of my griping about this design comes from my dislike towards games whose difficultly stems from lack of knowledge, and which therefore becomes noticeably easier on later playthroughs. I've touched on this before and I know that this issue isn't completely avoidable in game design. Nevertheless it still annoys me.
When much of the game's difficultly depends on the player not knowing what to do it seems like the wrong kind of challenge. Sure you can just memorise the most profitable course of action but it is not like you yourself have gotten any better. Just like games reliant of luck-based challenges, this sort of design robs the player of a sense of victory.
At this point of kind of blown my load as for as criticism goes, and I've still got stuff to talk about; design, plot, characters, themes, minor stuff really.
So in true Tangential Thinking style: to be continued.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Not Featured: A Hill
Conceptually horror is one of my favourite genres. In practice I find myself constantly disappointed (woah big surprise). In the past I've discussed some of my opinions on horror, and in the future I probably will do a rather more definitive post on the topic, but tonight I want to talk about Silent Hill 3 (it's the only one I own).
If you haven't be following the saga here's a brief overview based off wikipedia and what various people have said.
Silent Hill (1) has Harry Mason looking for his daughter in the haunted town filled with monsters and cult members. If you've seen the movie then you will have some knowledge of the game as the movie is the same as the game in very broad strokes. As it was the first game in the series it gets exempt of any real judgement.
SH2 has James Sunderland come to the town after receiving a letter from his dead wife (warning spoilers preceding). This game is kind of like a side story as far as plot relevance goes as the cult is not present. It is also the fan favourite, dooming all following games to be looked down upon because they aren't Silent Hill 2.
SH3 is (will be eventually) the focus of the post so lets skip it for now.
SH4: The Room was initially an unrelated game before becoming part of the franchise as the gameplay clearly indicates. The story is about Walter Sullivan, an undead serial killer who is killing for a ritual, and Henry Townshend, a man trapped in his apartment and a target of Walter's.
SH: Origins is a prequel if you couldn't guess. You play as Travis Grady at the time of the initial Alessa incident. This was also the first game not by Team Silent. This caused much complaining because apparently only the Japanese are capable of horror.
SH Homecoming has Alex Shepherd returning from military duty (or is he?[he's not]) to find out about an ancient child sacrificing pact to protect several towns from Silent Hill. By this point an astute reader will have noticed that by either design or coincidence every odd game has been Alessa/cult centred, and every even one has been a standalone side story.
Finally there's SH: Shattered Memories which is a continuity reboot, because like all long running series it has to divide the fanbase as much as possible. This is still quite new (not even in Australia yet) so all I've got to go on is my bias towards reboots when I was fond of the original (not to be confused with my bias towards originals when I'm fond of the reboot).
Just like all the previous times where I've gone to the effort of establishing some sort of context I guess it's time to end this post and pick it up another time. While I'm aware that it is kind of a dick move to not get around to what I said I would, I've also had enough for tonight so deal with it.
If you haven't be following the saga here's a brief overview based off wikipedia and what various people have said.
Silent Hill (1) has Harry Mason looking for his daughter in the haunted town filled with monsters and cult members. If you've seen the movie then you will have some knowledge of the game as the movie is the same as the game in very broad strokes. As it was the first game in the series it gets exempt of any real judgement.
SH2 has James Sunderland come to the town after receiving a letter from his dead wife (warning spoilers preceding). This game is kind of like a side story as far as plot relevance goes as the cult is not present. It is also the fan favourite, dooming all following games to be looked down upon because they aren't Silent Hill 2.
SH3 is (will be eventually) the focus of the post so lets skip it for now.
SH4: The Room was initially an unrelated game before becoming part of the franchise as the gameplay clearly indicates. The story is about Walter Sullivan, an undead serial killer who is killing for a ritual, and Henry Townshend, a man trapped in his apartment and a target of Walter's.
SH: Origins is a prequel if you couldn't guess. You play as Travis Grady at the time of the initial Alessa incident. This was also the first game not by Team Silent. This caused much complaining because apparently only the Japanese are capable of horror.
SH Homecoming has Alex Shepherd returning from military duty (or is he?[he's not]) to find out about an ancient child sacrificing pact to protect several towns from Silent Hill. By this point an astute reader will have noticed that by either design or coincidence every odd game has been Alessa/cult centred, and every even one has been a standalone side story.
Finally there's SH: Shattered Memories which is a continuity reboot, because like all long running series it has to divide the fanbase as much as possible. This is still quite new (not even in Australia yet) so all I've got to go on is my bias towards reboots when I was fond of the original (not to be confused with my bias towards originals when I'm fond of the reboot).Just like all the previous times where I've gone to the effort of establishing some sort of context I guess it's time to end this post and pick it up another time. While I'm aware that it is kind of a dick move to not get around to what I said I would, I've also had enough for tonight so deal with it.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Subversive Playing
Since I last posted I've gone through several more failed GitS drafts and I've come to the realisation that while I have plenty of opinions, I don't seem to have adequate way of stringing them together in a coherent shape.
I find myself able to word my views better when it's in a conversation with another person, where the other person can pick up the social slack when I falter. So when I'm faced with a blank white screen, hungry for text and order, my opinions seem to wither into vague musings and my inner critic looks down at what I type.
In conclusion, no GitS actual yet.
And now for tonight's entertainment.
As you may or may not know, the FPS Team Fortress 2 is a class based game. Periodically the developers, Valve, release an update for one of the nine classes, offering 3 new alternative weapons/items. This time Valve are updating both the Soldier and the Demoman at once, and naturally there's a twist.
Valve has just announced that either Soldier or Demoman (but not both) will get a 4th unlock. And how is it decided who gets this rare privilege? By pitting the two classes against one another. Until the end of week (I think) every time a Demoman kills a Soldier or a Soldier kills a Demoman it is recorded and which class has the most kills, wins.
Now this makes this pretty interesting. As well as giving people a new goal to work towards it also shakes up the maps themselves as players adapt their strategies to the new class ratios. I found myself being lured back into the game having been bored with it for several months.
In theory this event should lead to plenty of Soldiers on the attack, and plenty of Demomen on the defence. In theory.
Because everyone who has a preferred class wants it to win, people are having to come up with some fairly meta strategies. One has to decide when it is worth risking your class to take down the other because the last thing you want to do is feed the opposing class kills.
I found myself foregoing playing as a Soldier because of the sheer number of enemy Demomen. Instead I was playing as another Demoman, who just didn't kill any Soldiers, as I found it was more productive to the Soldier's cause to not play the class.
And any sort of situation that generates this sort of out-of-the-box thinking is alright by me.
I find myself able to word my views better when it's in a conversation with another person, where the other person can pick up the social slack when I falter. So when I'm faced with a blank white screen, hungry for text and order, my opinions seem to wither into vague musings and my inner critic looks down at what I type.
In conclusion, no GitS actual yet.
And now for tonight's entertainment.
As you may or may not know, the FPS Team Fortress 2 is a class based game. Periodically the developers, Valve, release an update for one of the nine classes, offering 3 new alternative weapons/items. This time Valve are updating both the Soldier and the Demoman at once, and naturally there's a twist.
Valve has just announced that either Soldier or Demoman (but not both) will get a 4th unlock. And how is it decided who gets this rare privilege? By pitting the two classes against one another. Until the end of week (I think) every time a Demoman kills a Soldier or a Soldier kills a Demoman it is recorded and which class has the most kills, wins.
Now this makes this pretty interesting. As well as giving people a new goal to work towards it also shakes up the maps themselves as players adapt their strategies to the new class ratios. I found myself being lured back into the game having been bored with it for several months.
In theory this event should lead to plenty of Soldiers on the attack, and plenty of Demomen on the defence. In theory.
Because everyone who has a preferred class wants it to win, people are having to come up with some fairly meta strategies. One has to decide when it is worth risking your class to take down the other because the last thing you want to do is feed the opposing class kills.
I found myself foregoing playing as a Soldier because of the sheer number of enemy Demomen. Instead I was playing as another Demoman, who just didn't kill any Soldiers, as I found it was more productive to the Soldier's cause to not play the class.
And any sort of situation that generates this sort of out-of-the-box thinking is alright by me.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Bump
Yesterday I decided that I should do a Ghost in the Shell week, with a post each night discussing a feature of the franchise as a whole. Since there wasn't a finished post from Sunday, one can conclude that this idea did not prove successful. Worse still, I started on the one topic that I thought I could talk about at length only to find that I said all that needed to be said with one paragraph.
Go team.
So GitS Week will never be. I will however endeavour to do a post or two summarising the major concepts I wished to praise and/or condemn. If I'm feeling adventurous I may even try to make it entertaining AND insightful, something I constantly struggle with.
Go team.
So GitS Week will never be. I will however endeavour to do a post or two summarising the major concepts I wished to praise and/or condemn. If I'm feeling adventurous I may even try to make it entertaining AND insightful, something I constantly struggle with.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Choice
My mother and I were looking over our Foxtel plan to see if there were any packages we could cut. It is a dilemma we have faced before. The few channels we watch are scattered over the various deals Telstra offers so we end up paying for several dozen channels we don't want.
Confused by some of the more esoteric titles for the packages I sought out the official website to see what they contained, only to find that all the deals had changed recently. Perhaps the new arrangement would prove beneficial and result in more bang for our buck?
Short answer: NO!
Long answer: The new packages manage to be even worse than the previous ones. After some brief number crunching I worked out that to keep all of our current channels would cost even more. Thankfully our plan will remain on the old deal as long as we don't modify it at all.
What I can't figure out is why we the consumer have to bugger around with these packages to begin with. Wouldn't a system were people just individually bought the channels they want be better for everyone? The viewers would get want they want and I'm sure that Telstra could come up with a pricing system where they don't lose money (hell they'd probably be able to squeeze more cash out of people than they already do).
Further more this system would clearly show which channels are the popular ones which I'm sure would be desirably news for those in charge of advertising.
Though I shouldn't be surprised by this current situation. I've always believed that the basis of all business is the rule that you should make it as easy as possible for consumers to give you money, and time and time again I've seen companies ignore this. The really infuriating thing is that somehow they are frequently successful.
Satire. Subtly not included.
Confused by some of the more esoteric titles for the packages I sought out the official website to see what they contained, only to find that all the deals had changed recently. Perhaps the new arrangement would prove beneficial and result in more bang for our buck?
Short answer: NO!
Long answer: The new packages manage to be even worse than the previous ones. After some brief number crunching I worked out that to keep all of our current channels would cost even more. Thankfully our plan will remain on the old deal as long as we don't modify it at all.
What I can't figure out is why we the consumer have to bugger around with these packages to begin with. Wouldn't a system were people just individually bought the channels they want be better for everyone? The viewers would get want they want and I'm sure that Telstra could come up with a pricing system where they don't lose money (hell they'd probably be able to squeeze more cash out of people than they already do).
Further more this system would clearly show which channels are the popular ones which I'm sure would be desirably news for those in charge of advertising.
Though I shouldn't be surprised by this current situation. I've always believed that the basis of all business is the rule that you should make it as easy as possible for consumers to give you money, and time and time again I've seen companies ignore this. The really infuriating thing is that somehow they are frequently successful.
Satire. Subtly not included.
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