I’ve been sort of busy this weekend with social engagements, so I haven’t been gaming too much. I have been playing F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin, which is fairly good, if not anything spectacular. The issue I have with that game is with the jump-scares. I hate jump-scares, be it in any form of media; I think it’s lazy and cheap. Similarly, I also hate flash frames for exactly the same reason.
But ignoring my general distaste for those old horror movie cliches, more than anything else it slows down the gameplay. Honestly, the scares in the game are overly contrived, extremely predictable and, therefore, not particularly scary. And, really, I just want to get on to the bits where I can shoot dudes in slow-mo, causing them to fly off in a delectable shower of blood and gore.
I also played some Modern Warfare 2 Spec Ops with a buddy of mine. Some of those levels are really well designed and completely awesome in co-op play. Seriously, the next person who tells me that Modern Warfare 2 is not deserving of, at the very least, being in the top ten games of year, needs a glove-slap to the face. Okay, it’s definately not perfect, but I cannot think of any other game in ‘09 that excels so much, and in so many areas.
Small Worlds is a small indie platformer (aren’t they all?) that won’t take you more than half an hour to complete. It was actually made for the Jay is Games 6th annual Casual Gameplay Design Competition but has since gained recognition on Kotaku, at which point I stood up and took notice.
As I’ve said, it’s not a particularly long game, is simplistic and, also, not particularly challenging. It is, essentially, a 2D platformer; however, there are no directions telling you where to go or what to do, and you can’t die. In all honesty, it probably isn’t a very good platformer, all standards considered. What it does do, though, is distill an interesting gaming concept into a short, teeny, tiny-sized burst.
Small Worlds is all about the thrill of exploration, which it manages to capture beautifully. Small Worlds doesn’t need objectives for it to work. Small Worlds and its creator, David Shute, understands the basic human curiosity that drives us, and then exploits it. I think that’s pretty shrewd, to be honest, for the designer to know this and act on it, resisting the very real temptation to give the game away (pun not intended).
There used to be a time when games didn’t feel the need to explain every little detail and gameplay mechanic. There were drawbacks to this method, mostly revolving around how players didn’t know what the hell they were doing half the time. But, if you were persistent, and stuck through it, there were riches to be had in those breakthrough, revolutionary moments, those “Ah hah!” moments where you’d finally get it and figure it all out.
As the industry grew, along with its audience, designers naturally felt the urge to make their games more accessable. Quite right, too, because, really, who has the time nowadays to get their head around all that obtuse crap? I mean, c’mon, finally reaching that eureka moment was a triumphant celebration for the player of yesteryear, but having to endure all that frustration is not something I’m willing to go through again. Personally, I’m glad that developers started to see sense and began going to the effort to actually explain how to play their games, rather than just letting the player guess. Anything less is now frequently lambasted as an example of poor game design. Before, that would just have been par for the course, a hump you’d simply be expected to get over as a player.
Still, there is a part of me that has a yearning for that mode of play.
That part of me is also still in school, has infinite time on his hands and doesn’t have to work for a living.
(Small Worlds is available through the link at the top of this article and, now, through the Indie Intrigue sidebar on the right-hand side of this very page. Best of luck to David Shute!)
So I’ve been doing a lot of catching up this weekend, mostly to little or no avail. I’ve still got several games left on my shelf, most of them almost completely unfinished, staring me in the face. Adding to that, I’ve still got more to come through the post and several that I’m playing at the moment – and again, the chances of their being completed to a reasonable standard?
Let’s just say it’s not looking too likely at this point.
One of the games I’ve been playing is Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood. It’s a Wild West themed first-person shooter, and from a technical standpoint it’s actually pretty good. The graphics look really impressive most of the time, and the gunplay mechanics are just great. The problem it has is in its story and characters, both of which fail on fundamental levels. Very simply, the two playable characters in the game are so completely unlikable that you don’t care what happens to them; hence, no engagement. The plot is also an absolute joke – cliched, sophomoric, boring. In other words, whenever there’s the story part of the game to deal with, I start falling asleep; whenever a fight breaks out, I’m glued to my HDTV.
If only they could have just given the player an open world, a silent protagonist, a faction system and prestige/reputation system something like in Sid Meier’s Pirates!, then Ubisoft would have had a real winner on their hands.
Edit: Also, Gul Dukat – or, rather, the actor who plays him – is in this game. For those who aren’t Star Trek fans, Gul Dukat was this really sleazy, slimy bastard from Deep Space Nine, portrayed by Marc Alaimo. He was a great baddie and probably one of the most memorable characters from the show. Unfortunately, he’s voicing one of the playable characters, Ray, here, and all I hear is Dukat. No, even Dukat had his good points, or at least he was interesting. Ray in comparison is just some dumb hick who you’re supposed to care about, but really don’t. Not Alaimo’s fault, of course; just bad writing.
I just finished X-Men Origins: Wolverine this weekend and have found it to be a fairly entertaining experience. There are some small things that are quite forward thinking in that game, like the Statistics screen that tells you how far you off from getting certain achievements. The all-important combat mechanics are also very smoothly implemented, and the only flaw there is in the repetitive and unchallenging nature of the gameplay (which, if I am to be fair, is not an easy task to overcome given the genre). What I can’t forgive the game for is its level of bugginess that made me fail a boss fight a dozen times in a row and the constant re-use of level assets to pad out its length. That’s just not on, son.
I also watched Synecdoche, New York this afternoon. That film is a bit of an overlong mess, but in that way I think it helps reinforce the theme: of art imitating life, imitating art, devouring itself ad infinitum. It’s a touching film and just incredibly sad. I love it for its ambition and the way it beautifully expresses how we attempt to deconstruct and conceptualize our lives in such a way to have meaning, and the tragedy of never really being able to achieve that.
Speaking of meaningless human activity, I’ve started playing Borderlands. I’ve said it elsewhere, but I’ll repeat it here: it’s a rewards structure wrapped up in pretty packaging; it’s the gambler’s fallacy of believing in the possibility of something better being just around that corner – or, in this case, after completing that next quest. None of this, of course, makes it a bad game. What it does make it, is hollow. And the moment you realise the futility inherent in that type of gameplay is the moment you’ll stop playing and find something “better” to do with your time.
Or you can just shrug your shoulders, do like I do, and play for the sake of it. After all, what does it matter if you just think you’re having fun, anyway?
No post this weekend. Modern Warfare 2. Enough said.
Seen Akira? Seen that bit where Tetsuo starts devouring the planet? Okay, well, this is kind of like that, but a lot less terrifying and a lot more humorous.
read more…
It’s been a busy weekend. Friday afternoon, after catching around 2–3 hours sleep following a night shift, I carried my weary frame along to the Eurogamer Expo.
It wasn’t too bad. I got to play a few games myself but mostly ended up waiting and watching others at the booths. I also took the opportunity to listen to Mark Morris and Chris Delay, they of indie developer Introversion, talk about the problems they encountered in getting Darwinia+ onto XBLA. It was great to hear them talk, both funny and interesting, and I wish them all the best when it finally releases.
One game I’m retiscent to talk about is Heavy Rain. I watched people play the demo on the floor of the Expo, but, unfortunately, I didn’t get the chance to play it myself. It’s my only real regret, to be honest, that I missed out on that. I have been criticising the game, perhaps unfairly. I’m trying to keep an open mind about the game, and to that end I have ignored most of the press and hype that’s being created around it. What I will say is this: it does have the appearance of a point-and-click adventure game married to some QTE action sequences, and I think that the narrative – somewhat of an unknown quantity at this moment – will have to be something quite special in order to compensate. Personally, I think the game looks to represent a retrograde step in terms of storytelling – but that’s just my opinion, and there’s every chance I could be wrong in that.
I’ve pretty much finished with Beautiful Katamari now, having finished the main game and completed as many achievements I can be bothered to get. I would have considered buying it, but then I saw the accusations surrounding the DLC – i.e., that Bandai had intentionally locked additional content on the disc and the “DLC” consisted of nothing more than an unlock key. Great job, guys, because you just lost yourselves a sale. A shame, really, since I really dig the tone and play-style of the game. Too bad Bandai decided to puke all over it with their corporate greed. (Sigh.)
Anyway, with that out the way, I’ve moved onto Batman: Arkum Asylum. Now that’s a high quality product! It really is such a well crafted, well designed game – and it knows its limits, which is important. To be quite honest, I’m too tired right now to go into massive detail, but I’d have no hesitation recommending it. It’s probably one of the best, if not the best, comic book superhero game I’ve played.
Last weekend Robert Bowling, Creative Strategist for Infinity Ward, casually dropped a large, megaton-sized bombshell on the PC gaming community: Modern Warfare 2 – sequel to 2007’s critically acclaimed, best-selling hit – won’t have dedicated servers or mod support built-in.
Since then, e-petitions have been signed, journalists have tweeted, and other industry figures have weighed in. Public opinion seems to be split into two camps: most are outraged; others are nonplussed. Meanwhile, Bowling has attempted to calm the waves of discontent through a blog post, defending Infinity Ward’s decision and reassuring the PC community that this is, in fact, a step forward.
Tom Bramwell, editor of Eurogamer.net, had this to say in response:
IW man’s blog about why IWNet is a good thing suggests he doesn’t understand why the concept so upset people in the first place.
And this is the point. The heart of the issue doesn’t lie in a list of pros and cons; it lies in a philosophy – a set of principles that have been at the core of the PC gaming experience for as long as it’s been alive.
Got a cold, so I won’t be up to much this weekend. I will probably be attempting to finish off Halo Wars while starting Red Faction: Guerrilla on the 360. I’ll also be going back to Empire: Total War, since I’m kind of curious to see what all the updates inbetween have done to the game. I’ll also be watching The Lookout, which supposedly showcases rising-star Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s talents as a Proper Serious Actor in Hollywood. (I kid. If anything, Brick did that for him in 2005.)
I’m just going to say a quick few things about Halo Wars. I rented the game to see how well Ensemble succeeded in making a traditional RTS game for a console. The answer is that it’s pretty functional and, in the majority of times, works fairly well. However, when you need swift, nimble movement, when you need to select troops on an individual basis quickly and efficiently, the game can’t accomodate that. If only they’d hid this flaw better, but they actually created a level where you do have to be able to do this, and when the pathfinding fails and you aren’t able to react in time – through no fault of your own, but the controls – it’s a bit of downer.
Halo Wars is fun, and the presentation is really excellent, and Ensemble should be commended for their strong efforts, but this isn’t the game to revolutionise RTSs on a console.
Oh, and Peep Show was excellent last night. Best yet for the series.
So, I just watched Vicky Christina Barcelona, and it’s surprisingly good. Penelope Cruz is amazing in it and won a well deserved supporting actress Oscar for her portrayal as the batshit crazy Maria Elena; likewise, Javier Bardem exudes sensuality and an emotional intensity as Juan Antonio Gonzalo. Woody Allen weaves actually a quite complex narrative involving two American tourists – the Vicky and Christina of the title – who have very different ideas of love and whose philosophies are thereupon shaped by a chance encounter with the magnetic, sexy, Juan.
