Stretch

Sunday, 11 November 2012

Saturday, 3 November 2012

Thursday, 13 September 2012

BOG: Game Out Loud Podcast #2

I was brought back for the second episode of the Game Out Loud Podcast. I think I'm getting better at...you know....talking...

http://www.bagofgames.com/2012/09/bog-game-out-loud-episode-2/

Wednesday, 5 September 2012

BOG: Game Out Loud Podcast #1

http://www.bagofgames.com/2012/09/bog-game-out-loud-podcast-episode-1/

This is the first episode of the Bag Of Games: Game Out Loud podcast. It was just called Game Out Loud but then Bag Of Games allowed them to host it at the site. Anyway.

I, along with Ryan from Bag Of Games, were asked to join in on the first episode. So here it is. excuse me if I'm extremely quiet, nervous and stutter-y....it's because I am.

Tuesday, 31 July 2012

Recently I received a very nice comment on my Top 5 Worst Moments In Dark Souls article on bagofgames.com. The commenter, Van Hammersly, responded to a few points I made but I was unable to respond because the 'reply' button stops working after a certain amount of times, apparently. So, I'll respond here. It's very unlikely that Van will ever see this, but hopefully anyone else reading will find this interesting. You could find the article with the comment I'm responding to here
-
First, Van responded to my phrase "A game is there to entertain the player, not assume the player will automatically care about everything it has". He says that that sentence insinuates that there is only one way for a game to entertain the player, and that Dark Souls itself rewards the player for being patient and 'practicing' within its world.

The latter I completely agree with, and what makes Dark Souls a better 'practice game' than something like Another World is that virtually every 'trap' is never hidden from you. For the most part, the only reason you would ever die in Dark Souls more than once (I'll get to that later) is that you're not trying hard enough, and many player, including myself, have revelled in its challenge and engaging gameplay.

Yet, I really don't see how my quote could mean that there is only one way for a game to entertain a player, and it's certainly not what I meant. I'm just saying that a Video Game's primary purpose is to entertain with the components that make it a Video Game. Them being a game that is displayed with video...of course.
-
He then responded to my description of the Crystal Cave area. I explained how the falling crystals didn't do a good enough job of showing the player the path to the other side of the cave, resulting in a boring and tedious road block in the game's progression.

Van called this particular moment of Dark Souls to be particularly tense, as the game gives you a necessarily vague idea as to where the path is, keeping you unsure as to where to go. This, he says, stays consistent with the 'feel' of Dark Souls.

Now my problem with the Crystal Cave is one based on personal experience, yet still has followed me on my two other playthroughs. Simply, the crystals just don't fall frequently enough, or at all. There were several moments where I just stood on the invisible path, waiting for a crystal to land onto an area in front of me...but never did, leaving a big gap that may or may not be safe to step on. There was never a chance for me to pay attention because there wasn't anything to pay attention to.

Also, he says that my tactic of 'running off the path and memorising the layout of it' to be the wrong way to tackle the area, but he goes on to say that a 'leap of faith' is something he found appropriately stressful, even though it's exactly what I was doing. I also don't think that is something the game should make the player do, which is something that really annoys me about many of Dark Souls' areas, especially finding Blacksmith Vamos in the Catacombs.

He also praised the ability for online players to leave messages on the invisible paths to 'mark' them, showing other players where to go, which I find very unfair to those who don't go online...like me.
-
Van then commented on my opinion of the first encounter with Seath The Scaleless, being (spoiler) the number 1 worst moment in Dark Souls, according to my list anyway.

I said before that I admire Dark Souls for always giving the player a chance to survive, and if you die, it's your own fault. But the encounter with Seath breaks that idea, creating a trap that automatically kills you without any warning.

Van said that it perfectly suits Dark Souls, as dying is a 'core' part of the game, and the fact that Seath kills you should be seen as one of the many traps Dark Souls has.

Now, I've played Dark Souls about 2.5 times, resulting into well over 100 hours of play time and I can't think of a single trap that 'imprisons' you and automatically kill you. There are traps that severely hurt you like the statues in the Catacombs, but that isn't the point. The point is you can't stop Seath from killing you, which wouldn't be so bad if you weren't then given the punishment of dying.

The first boss of Demon's Souls killed you but you kept the souls you earned. It didn't make any sense, but at least the game didn't swipe away your 'hard work' without warning. But here, you have NO way of knowing that Seath is going to kill you, at least not until the fight is already happening, and even then it's probably too late for you to equip a Ring Of Sacrifice.

Van also said that the only way it could be unfair and cruel is if Seath sent you back to the last bonfire you rested at, which raises my next problem with this moment.

It was established in Dark Souls' game play that you would return to the last Bonfire you rested at if you died . So why is it that you get, or even CAN be, put into a prison next to a Bonfire you haven't used yet? Do you stay as a corpse when you die? How do you get sent back to Bonfires in other situations? How do Bonfires respawn enemies? Why do some monsters respawn and others don't? It's these kinds of questions that really makes me dislike a lot of Dark Souls' vague and unexplained ideas that many people lazily call 'interpretive', as if the game they love is perfect in every conceivable way, and if you don't understand...'think' harder!

And finally, Van responded to a sentence I used in response to another commenter. The sentence was: "Exploration should never be mandatory".

Van said that exploration is a big part of Dark Souls and that your journey can feel aimless at times.

I completely agree with that, but a journey feeling aimless doesn't make it explorative. Just because you don't know where you're going doesn't mean you're exploring. And really, you don't know where you're going in Dark Souls, most of the time. You're vaguely told by some random warrior to ring two bells. One is up and one is down. Sure, your path is revealed to you at the same time your character is seeing it, but you're still progressing through the story because you're still travelling down a linear path, and Dark Souls' story can still be completed without exploring at all.

An example of exploration in games is getting an objective in Skyrim but deciding to disregard it and venture off into an unknown area for the sake of it. That is exploring because you're essentially disobeying the game's requests. In Dark Souls, you may not know exactly where you'll end up, but you're still pressing forward. A man who is walking down a corridor isn't instantly exploring if he suddenly becomes blind. Really, the only explorative areas of Dark Souls is The Great Hollow and Ash Lake because you can finish the game without even knowing they exist.

And that's pretty much it. I'd like to thank Van Hammersly for his thoughtful and, most importantly, civil comment. Sorry if I'm talking about Dark Souls too much...I have another article about it coming out in the next few days...you're welcome.

Tuesday, 29 May 2012

Bastion Review

I do have a fondness for simplistic, yet artistic, games like this. They hardly seem to fall low of expectations and often have something for everyone. But, although I can clearly admire the effort put into Bastion, small problems nibble away at the whole experience and left me quite disappointed.

The game does not start before The Calamity; an event that caused the ground to crack away, allowing fragments of it to rise up at the playable characters feet. So it’s difficult to understand how this affects the people and places, because we don’t really know how the world existed previously. Even with the narrator talking about certain locations the world feels depressingly hollow and underdeveloped.

Your character doesn’t react to the environment while other people and the layout of objects give off the impression that The Calamity is not incredibly odd, but something everyone expected and prepared for. This may have been the case but it hardly feels like a problem when everything is essentially fixing itself as you move.

Also, if you fall off the ‘floor’ your character just plunks down onto it again, so the game play itself makes the rules of this place even more confusing.

The ground constructing itself beneath you doesn’t serve much purpose during game play, since Bastion could very easily have just taken place on “Earth” with the gaps in the ground being replaced with basic holes.

Ofcourse it’s a stylish choice, and an interesting one at that, but since the pre-determined paths form as you walk near them I was constantly asking myself ‘Why doesn’t everyone just walk around and rebuild their world over?’

The path you’re supposed to take is consistently clear, only rarely leading you to dead ends filled with useful items. As far as exploration goes, you never feel in danger. I could easily tell where the ground would form so I was never nervous or stressed, almost as if my progression was already laid out.

However, the clustered environments can make it tricky to tell if you’re about to step on a gap or just a dark tile, but falling off is only punished with a tiny bit of damage from the fall back. This can make the absurd situation feel weirdly safe, especially since there are some gaps that are so small that it’s impossible to fall through them.

It is purely an aesthetic choice, since combat doesn’t really make use of it either.

As you progress through Bastion you systematically obtain varied weapons to fight equally varied enemies. I was afraid that I would spend all my…gems…or whatever they are on upgrading lesser weapons, which would later become obsolete when I found one more suitable to my playing style. Fortunately, you are given an appropriate amount of time and currency to test out each weapon before finding one that suits you. And, predictably, there are some enemies that can be killed more effectively with certain weapons, so you can’t just stick with one. For me, it was a big hammer and a musket.

No weapon that you receive feels useless, except maybe the carbine that takes forever to aim, and each enemy can take a satisfying amount of punishment from each one. Although there are some enemies, like plants that shoot spikes at you, that have such a wide and long attack range that they're pretty much impossible to kill without taking damage yourself. In those cases, I just ran up to them and smashed them with my hammer as fast as I could.

The upgrades you place onto your weapons are my favourite kinds of upgrades; dynamic and game changing. Granted, there are some boring ones like +15% damage, but many improve the reload and firing rate among other things by relatively large amounts. Each upgrade, the good ones at least, are instantly noticeable and greatly increase your effective in combat.

The game play progresses smoothly and even though the environments can get repetitive the more you play in them, the enemies and situations never become crude upgrades of themselves. The only exception to that are these miner monsters made out of gas, apparently, that just become larger and/or more numerous as the game continues.

Combat itself can get rather manic. I’m positive that a small amount of it is due to my lack of experience using a keyboard. But since you have a plentiful supply of health and healing potions (I think they’re called something else but whatever, they’re potions) you never feel cheated when you get swamped by enemies. You don’t necessarily have to be careful, just quick and skillful. And since the camera angle makes it virtually impossible for you to be blind sighted, combat, although sometimes tricky, never feels overly oppressive.

Like Dante’s Inferno, the fact that enemies are introduced in areas they suit but later show up in completely unrelated areas makes the world itself feel shallow and even claustrophobic. You’ll go to a foggy swamp areas, fight some toad-like creatures, only for them to revisit you later in a non-swamp area. Luckily they don’t appear in places covered with ice, which would have been more ridiculous than this game’s premise.

Since the areas you go to only have small retrospective back-stories or reason for being how they are, Bastion’s world, while still showing mildly different locations, has the explorative feel of a street with a cul-de-sac.

Massive praise has to go to the attention to detail here. I’m not talking about the beautifully artistic look of the locations and enemies. I mean the games acknowledgement of your seemingly trivial actions.

Virtually every aspect of the game is narrated, which automatically makes the journey feel more charming and story book-ish. There are many moments where you are given weapons that you can later replace with others during a single level. When you get the weapon, the narrator comments of it, giving rather subtle clues beneath his narration as to how it works and how to use it effectively, such as “The kid knew he had to stay out of harm’s way when reloadin'”. And when/if you replace it later, he will say something like “He put away his new toy and got something more to his liking”. This is such an impressive and praiseworthy thing for a game to do that it basically breaks the immersion. It makes the journey feel infinitely more personal, and because the narrator never describes your actions with negative inflections you always stay positive and never feel like you're doing the wrong thing.

The narrator commenting on such a numerous amount of things is simply delightful, and gives emotional context and feeling to every situation. This is needed in practically all moments since the playable character has as much personality as Pac-Man.

The story itself isn’t anything special. With not much back-story, simplistic characters and areas in the game that just let you crudely test out your weapons like you’re in an arcade, Bastion doesn’t seem to care about the world it’s creating.

The narration helps the underdeveloped story, but it is most effective when mentioning specific events that happened before The Calamity, since it makes the fact that the ground is rising beneath and falling above you more engaging. Really, the narration is the only thing that makes the vague enemies, story, setting and characters have any amount of interest and understandability. Even enemies that look like Wailmer from Pokémon feel more substantial when there’s a story-teller backing them up.

Bastion isn’t anything new. Personally, I was very used to the art style from Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes.

The concept of reforming floor isn’t a part of the game play in any major way, and isn’t explored enough to feel important, especially since you start with it already happening and never play without it, making The Calamity feel uncomfortably normal.

Combat is enjoyable thanks to useful weapons, distinct enemies and fairly dynamic upgrades. Yet you can very easily be surrounded and pummeled by enemies, which doesn’t become a huge problem because you can roll away and attack them easily.

The world Bastion creates is sadly underdeveloped. It is more focused on putting in good game play that reacts well with all its components then actually placing meaning behind what’s happening. There’s an ability that allows you to jump that you only get during the climax, which seems like a pretty random place to put such a classic improvement to the game play. And there are many times when you are introduced to a new enemy and the narrator says something to the effect of “Those things. They live here. Watch out for them”.

On a small level I found the look and feel endearing. I finished it all in 1 day, and I never felt like leaving it, which is one of the biggest compliments you can give any game. I wanted to keep playing.

Monday, 14 May 2012

Star Wars: The Old Republic: Revan

Anyone who knows me is aware that I hardly ever read. It’s not that much of a stretch to say that I never read at all. But few books have had the effect that Star Wars: The Old Republic: Revan just had on me. Honestly, I couldn’t put it down…even when I had a headache on a four hour plane flight.

SW:TOR:R (yeah, I’ll call it that) Spans a surprisingly long time; taking place between Star Wars Knight of the Old Republic and Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, before jumping to the after effects of the latter. It references these games sparsely but appropriately, bringing back necessary characters that play vital roles while even having arcs of their own. Events like The Mass Shadow Generator incident is mentioned but not dwelled on, so the novel constantly has a sense of drive and doesn’t just gives fans some nerdy nostalgia…which I would have been happy with. Even popular characters like HK-47 and Kreia are just talked about but never show up.

Unfortunately, the vast history of the characters is a hindrance to the book, but it would have been almost impossible to avoid it. Many moments, especially near the start, contain huge amounts of exposition to form the back-story of people and places. If I wasn’t incredibly familiar with both KOTOR games, I’m afraid I may not have been able to understand the presence some of these characters and locations possess.

Not that it would matter since SW:TOR:R is quick to jump into its own story with old and new characters going along for the ride. It focuses solely on two characters (excluding a third who has some little chapters to herself), Revan and Darth Scourge. Each man’s story dynamically cuts back and forth from each other, and has some of the best cliff-hanger sentences I’ve ever read. The overall story itself is actually deceptively short but the characters that are introduced have a clear journey throughout the book and never overstay their welcome. The book is big enough to give descriptions of each person and place, while keeping the progression at a steady pace. Many characters like Sechel and Revan grow and change so their personality is explored throughout the novel and not just shoved into one spot before letting loose…most of the time.

Unfortunately, the whole novel seems to build up to a climax that never really finishes, as if it’s just hanging in the air ready to come back down as a conclusion. This is definitely the intention, since SW:TOR:R is primarily an introduction to Star Wars: The Old Republic, the MMO taking place after KOTOR 1,2 and this book, but more closure would have made it feel more complete and satisfying. The universe it creates is deliciously Star Wars-y, with hammy dialogue and settings, which helps illustrate the images it’s explaining. That may just be for me but I was easily able to visualize every single scene as if I were watching a movie. When all the main characters finally meet up, they’ve all had enormous amounts of experiences for the reader to get invested, while also feeling retrospectively engaged by their previous adventures. Everything these characters do can get pretty unbelievable and even awkwardly convenient, but just as a story, it greatly assists the reader in understanding their behavior and reactions, since we learn how they deal with certain situations before things get much more difficult.

With the introduction of Darth Scourge, it’s easy to feel like the book is drifting too far into unfamiliar territory and may introduce characters before crudely discarding them with no closure or impact. Luckily, the book is large enough to accommodate Scourge’s early journeys, some of which feel immensely important at the time of reading them but drift away later on. In fact, Scourge’s tasks do drag slightly, at least when compared to the entire novel as a whole. I basically forgot most of what Scourge previously did while I was reading the book’s climax. Many of his chapters feel too vague and investigational, like he’s figuring out something that he’s pretty much told eventually and less like he’s working towards something. Yet, I was still engaged, at least on a basic level. For one thing; he’s a new character that interacts with other new characters, so although this book essentially draws history from three video games, it does have its own sense of identity and growth.

I did instinctively care more about people I knew from the games, but the characters that are introduced and then killed off bring weight with them through specific descriptions and masterfully flowing dialogue.

The novel, however, should have explained the characters more, if just slightly. Malak, Bastilla and even The Exile (Called Meetra Surik here, which is even more random than the Random Names KOTOR II gave me…) aren’t explored in any great detail, which can make them feel pretty hollow compared to Revan, Scourge and others. But then you’ve got The Emperor, who is barely developed in the entire novel, which weakens the impact of the climax as well as the introduction to Star Wars: The Old Republic (whatever the introduction is to that game). This is weirdly unsettling since I assume he’s the person sitting on the chair on the back of the book itself. Revan actually has the opposite problem, if only temporarily. The start of the novel is crammed full of back-story, involving a lot of KOTOR 1, which could have been expressed a lot shorter or spread out through the novel. This again shows how overwhelmed Drew Karpysyn is when writing something that involves so much known history. He doesn’t bite off more than he can chew, but there are some ‘story speed –bumps’ to get over.

Ofcourse the book is for Star Wars fans, which is lucky since it doesn’t really go in depth on the concepts and cultures of the universe. I don’t think it ever truly explains a lightsaber, and if this was the first Star Wars thing ever made I would have been incredibly confused as to what The Force actually is. And even if this was the first Star Wars thing I ever experienced, it doesn’t elaborate too much on locations, situations, appearances and people enough for me to work to understand what the book assumes I already know. (Try and wrap your head around that sentence)

The descriptions themselves, although brief, are incredibly bold and cutting. The words “T3 never stood a chance” made the past nine years of my KOTOR playing life rush back to me. Drew Karpysyn seems very aware of this, treating the deaths of characters with an appropriate sense of coldness and simplicity.

His precise descriptions work wonders when explaining physical settings, such as the surface of the planet Nathema that made me feel like I was literally choking. Even an incredibly important place like Dromund Kaas is depicted minimally; although its appearance isn’t brought up nearly enough. When the cloudy sky comes up after about 200 pages it’s like a jarring reminder, so I had to remember back to every other scene that took place on this planet and splice in a cloudy sky.

Fortunately, no time is spent holding back the dialogue and action. Action scenes are very distinct. Many are interrupted by the introductions of new elements, others are just short battles and the rest are broad enough for you to just focus on the methodical steps of the main characters. No second is left alone; there was even a moment when it was explained why Revan couldn’t just rush at someone while they were charging their Dark Side lasers!!!!! Actually, when it’s a duel between Jedi it’s nearly always ended or at least delayed by Force Lightning. It’s still effective when it happens, but the descriptions may as well just constantly say “pain was coursing through his body like fire” every time.

Star Wars: The Old Republic: Revan is just a great book, in a very traditional sense. Characters are introduced, who then play specific and dynamic roles before moving onto the next objective. Characters die, even ones you wouldn’t expect until the very second it happens. And although the ending wasn’t very conclusive, it was still a satisfying experience throughout. I really do appreciate Drew Karpysyn’s understanding and references to the games, something I hope Star Wars: The Old Republic embraces…I haven’t played it yet…somehow.

Stretch

Stretch

Sunday, 11 November 2012

Top 10 Best Video Game Music Of 2012

Saturday, 3 November 2012

Don't ask...

Thursday, 13 September 2012

BOG: Game Out Loud Podcast #2

Wednesday, 5 September 2012

BOG: Game Out Loud Podcast #1

Tuesday, 31 July 2012

A Dark Souls Response

Tuesday, 29 May 2012

Bastion Review

Monday, 14 May 2012

Star Wars: The Old Republic: Revan