Bandwagon

As you probably have noticed, I've got a Twitter account now. I signed up so I can keep in touch with all my vocal readers who have stuck with me for so long. I did this because as an earlier post hinted, there are times when there is something I want to say but it is not worth writing an entire post about it (not that it always stops me).

While writing the Indigo Prophecy 'review' I realise most of my thoughts would have been better suited to brief, as-they-happened messages rather than trying to stuff them into an overview at the end.

So now there's Twitter for all the minor things that I want to voice regardless of whose listening.

Steam Sale Review: Indigo Prophecy

Ever since the Steam sale all I've talked about are the games I bought and why they mostly suck. I'm sure if I had readers some of them would be getting sick of the lack of diversity but screw them, this blog is all about catering to a small pool of interests: namely mine.\
Plus anime and video games are about all I can speak about with some extent of knowledge.

Just like the last few times I've posted, I've just finished playing another of the ten games, and so naturally I'm going to do a review of one I finished weeks earlier, because accurate recollection just leads to deeper reasoning and we don't want that.

Wait what?

Alright we'll do the most recent game:
Calling Indigo Prophecy (or Fahrenheit depending on where you live) a game is quite a stretch as even the developers refer to it as an interacting movie. If you were to give it a genre, I suppose adventure game would be the most apt (you know, the genre that died out years and years ago).

The plot kicks off with Lucas Kane murdering some random in a restaurant bathroom while in a trance of sorts. The early game consists of you playing as Lucas as he tries to cover his tracks and work out what happened, and also as two detectives who are trying to track Lucas down. As the game progresses things get out of hand with Mayan Oracles, unexplained AIs, and an Illuminati-like conspiracy (who stylistically remind me of SEELE). I'll expand on this in a minute but first I'll address the simpler stuff.

Actual gameplay comes in a few varieties. There's moments of direct character control where you can interact with your surrounds to some extent, kind of like a sandbox game except the only things you can do is advance the plot. These parts of IP unfortunately become less and less frequent which is a shame because they are the most interesting when done well. Take the very start for example: you have to clear up the murder scene and then escape without being noticed. I hid the body and cleaned Lucas' bloody hands but it didn't occur to me to clean up the blood stain on the floor. Whoops.
While the freedom this mode offers is a refreshing change, how you perform actions is less so. Rather than just presssing some sort of context sensitive 'use' button, you must hold down the mouse button and move the cursor in the indicated direction/pattern; this is to create a greater sense of immersion or some bullshit. On a side note, one would expect this game to be on the Wii since the control style's would fit perfectly but apparently IP is on everything but the Wii.
The main two other types of gameplay are the "physical challenges". The first is essential Simon Says, where directional inputs appear on screen and you have to mimic them fairly quickly. These tend to be more tedious than difficult. The second type is just straight out button bashing, where you hammer left and right to slowly increase a meter and then keep it maxed till the action ends. This is to make you the player empathise with the challenges your character is going through but all it did for me was make me want to play something else. Yay immersion.

The graphics have the horrible burden of needing to be realistic but don't have a massive budget to full back on. They are functional (you know what you are looking at) and adaptive (the characters can perform some more depending gestures and actions) as one expects from the Source engine (complete assumption, citation needed), but that's about it.

I'm running rather long so for the sake of brevity I'll just mention so of the more major irksome elements of IP.

As well as a name change, some versions of IP are censored (guess what Australia got). The only things removed was some nudity and a couple sex scenes, one of which was interactive. The developers state that these removals don't impact the story and that is what really annoys me. I can live without seeing Carla's nipples how can they say that those scenes added nothing but leave parts like the basketball game and the boxing in? In a story-driven game character interaction and relationships are kind of important, and if sex can't contribute to this what can? The aforementioned basketball and boxing parts barely contribute at all however, as the former is a trivial plot point for a secondary character, and the latter contains some generic banter between two characters but has no relevance to the plot what so ever.

We the player have to control multiple characters in IP: Lucas, Carla and Tyler. The second two people are detectives after the first. This means that you are essentially playing against yourself and since the game won't progress until you do whatever is required you can't sabotage the investigation or just hand Lucas in.

I should point out that I rarely like how magic works in fiction and so when it is an integral part of the plot I get irritated. I know that all sounded a bit nerd-ragey and tangential but it is relevant to IP in that the game falls into three 'guidelines' magic often follows:
1 - Magic can only be beaten by magic. This divides everyone and everything in the world into relevant and irrelevant. In the last chapter of IP, Lucas and Carla go to confront the villains, but since Carla is just a lowly mortal human, she does not contribute to the ordeal.
2 - Magic contains a handful of arbitrary rules for certain circumstances. So you need to see visions of a prophesied child? Then sacrifice people, by proxy, with three cuts to the heart. You need Matrixesque abilities? No ritual required.
3 - Magic can do virtually anything (when it isn't being constrained by arbitrary rules). As I just hinted, Lucas effectively becomes Neo when he develops super-speed, super-strength, flight, telekinesis and probably other stuff I'm forgetting. None of these seem to have any requirements for use apart from magical talent.

And now the plot. Or rather not. while writing this I've kept rearranging things to try and make some sort of ordered logical review but like IP that sort of coherence isn't going to be present. There isn't one giant plot hole or anything like that to identify, but patches of moon logic that sprout up every now and then, and nothing short of riffing on a LP will do it (in)justice.
Or playing it yourself.
But don't do that.

Steam Sale Review: Red Alert 3

Wow two posts in two days. It's like Christmas when you realise that all your non-immediate relatives got you gifts that while acceptable are not particularly desirable; nice but nothing to write home about.
A brief history: Although initially a prequels to the Tiberian series, the Red Alert series became an alternate timeline to allow the similar game lines have differing tones. So while the Tiberian games are set in a comparatively serious grimdark near future, the Red Alert games are set in a campy Cold War gone hot scenario with a shaky timeline.

Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3's plot kicks off with the twice defeated Soviets travelling back in time to assassinate Einstein who's inventions allowed the Allies to win the last two games (this is also a neat homage to the original RA which has Einstein do the same thing to Hitler and set up the game's premise).
This disregard for causality puts the Soviets into a better position but also creates a third superpower, the Empire of the Rising Sun. Smooth. An odd side note is that while nuclear power is now non-existent, Chronosphere tech (what let the Allies win the last two games) is still present.......weird.

Each of the three teams get their own mutually exclusive campaign which seems a little outdated. Mission briefings consist of live actors treating you like a commander, a staple of the Command & Conquer franchise, and a good excuse for gratuitous cleavage and hammy acting.

Actual gameplay is a functional mix of classic C&C mechanics and more modern RTS ones. The graphics are pretty and the voices cheesy but fine.
As befitting RA's tone, the unit designs are fairly far out, with each team getting progressively more absurd: the Allies have helicopters with freeze and shrink rays, tuxedo wearing spies, and attack dolphins; the Soviets armoured warbears, cannons which launch troops safely across great distances, and the capability to crash orbiting space stations as an attack.
Neither of the original teams have anything on the Empire though. Their basic rifleman can pull out laser katanas, several of their vehicles can transform between ground and airforms, their ultimate ground vehicle is a giant samurai mech, and their commando Yuriko Omega is an emotionally-damaged psychic schoolgirl.

Surreally, there are people who think Yuriko is not anime enough

So far I've just talked about the facts without getting into my opinions that much. It's because RA3 generates a real 'meh' from me. The game feels like less of a real game and more of an improved re-release of RA2. I think this is a problem that is present for any non-story based sequel.

A side effect from playing RA3 was that I felt rather nostalgic for older C&C games. So I installed Generals (the black sheep of the franchise) and found that it was not as good as I remembered. I was also tempted to play either Tiberian Dawn or RA1 but realised that nostalgia does not compensate for years of regression in graphics, handling and general design. Hell I was even a little wistful for Tiberian Sun, a game I detested when it was newer.

I guess that's the joy of horribly biased memory.

Steam Sale Review: Not Really

Whenever I view something that is either head-explodingly brilliant, fist-pumpingly exciting, retch-inducingly terrible.....you see where I'm going with this; whenever something results in a strong emotion or two I consider writing up a post. Key word, consider.

As you may have noticed from the lack of updates I don't really get around to doing it very often...or at all for some weeks. Because while I frequently spend my time in the shower composing choice phrases which then turn out less clever or logical in reality than in my head, I don't get around to the actual act.

Really I need to just learn how to use Twitter or something because what I frequently want to do is just deliver a brief paragraph on what just happened moments ago while the emotions are still raw. This would satisfy my immediate need to be recognised, and would allow me to cover many more topics than I currently do. Quality would dip though as posts would be much less informative, interesting or really anything substantial.
Here are some examples of what things would be like if I adopted a more social-networky style:

Now and Then, Here and There: Holy crap did they just imply what I think they implied?

Real Life: Hmmm nothing good on TV.

Team Fortress 2: FUCKING LAG. People keep shooting me from around damn corners!

Real Life: Seriously, I've got Foxtel and there's nothing worth watching....HOW?

This was initially going to be a lead in paragraph or two for other Steam game review but I kind of got side tracked if you hadn't noticed. Maybe I'll do one this weekend.




But don't hold your breath.

World of Goo: Electric Boogaloo

Previously:

While fun, the mechanics are nothing compared to the aesthetics.

The visuals, sound and plot all come together to create something that teeters between wondrous and heartbreaking like so many kids movies from our childhood. I can't adequately explain the tone of WoG nor how it achieves it so I guess that's all.

I've been regretting ending the WoG review like that, but I've only just realised just how much of a dick move it was. I had forgotten the above line where I said that I hadn't described the best aspect of the game yet and then proceeded to not do so. It's the equivalent of a TV series or a movie building up to a climatic showdown and then having it occur, offscreen. And what kind of bastard would something like that?

Not me, which is why I'm going to make that extra effort and finish what I started.

WoG has a adopts a cartoony visual style, to the point were people are deliberately drawn as though done by a child. Early levels are bright, pleasant and reminiscent of the first world in many Sonic games:
But as you advance...
...things get...
...darker...
...and more surreal.
The music follows a similar progression: early music is fast paced and exciting but in later levels it becomes haunting or just plain weird (screaming children feature in one song).

As for the plot, don't expect much. There is a vague goal in each chapter but you probably won't know until you've finished it. There being only two actual characters present in the game doesn't help matters along.

But it doesn't matter because the plot isn't what matters in WoG, it's all about the tone. And that is tongue-in-cheek self-aware humour, with the occasional bit of tearjerking depression.
It really says something when someone like me is slightly moved by animated goo balls. Years of gaming have resulted in me having a psychopathic but practical approach to gameplay where I won't hesitate to murder my way to victory. But in WoG, the joyful squeals of the little goos as they gleefully sacrifice themselves managed to get to me.

Okay I kind of trailed off there and now I've lost my train of thought, but that's alright because I'm essentially out of things to say. I wish I could think of a decent way to wrap this up though.