Sorry, I currently have none. I was blogging somewhere else, but traffic fell off, and in the end I sort of regretted how my content was turning out. Many weeks were about blogging regrets. So I’m back here today to remove the link to that blog because it’s gone now.
The me of 13-years-ago wrote, “I’m painfully aware of how boring it is when all I do is discuss what I’ve been playing lately and why it bores me.” For some reason, I forgot that in the intervening time. It goes to show that past me was wiser than present me, and that’s not how it’s supposed to work.
Perhaps I’ll blog publicly again in the future. Perhaps not. The world has become polarized, everyone is too easy to offend, and I’m not as young and brash as I used to be. I no longer have the confidence I can do anything on my own. But the wounds of my recent failures are fresh, and time will tell if I recover.
Thanks largely to Bioshock 2 and Mass Effect 2, the beginning of the month was highly enjoyable. Unfortunately, the tail end of the month as not fared as well.
If I owned a PS3, then there would be Heavy Rain. No big loss: I’m not sure it does anything that Shenmue didn’t already do better (except graphics… and that’s hardly surprising considering Shenmue was originally developed for the Dreamcast).
The two big PC games to be excited about over the later half of the month were M.U.D. TV and Supreme Commander 2. I’ve played the demos of both games, and I’m not impressed.
As far as getting some quality entertainment is concerned, it’s been a fairly fruitful few weeks.
Two weeks ago, Star Trek Online was released. I had voiced earlier that I was concerned it lacks a sense of “fundamental purpose” that makes a MMORPG interesting. Recently, I decided that this is due to a lack of immersion. I’ve asked for a refund for my lifetime subscription and hope that Cryptic Studios is willing to oblige (if not, it will at least linger as a powerful lesson).
One week ago, I had finished Mass Effect 2. I spoke at length about it: good enough to finish, a qualified continuation of the original, but with some design decisions that made have soured my optimism for Mass Effect 3.
I then moved on to BioShock 2, which was eagerly consumed in the space of a couple days. It was a enjoyable experience that managed to upgrade the original BioShock in nearly every single way. I only wish there was something left of it to play. (The multiplayer was ambitiously executed but passe.)
This weekend, I purchased Fort Zombie (discounted to $2.50 on Direct2Drive at the time of this writing) and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call Of Pripyat (fresh to Steam this weekend). These turned out to be excellent acquisitions whose use of dynamic content and immersion (respectively but not exclusively) put MMORPGs to shame.
I called this entry “A Criteria For Excellence” because I think that being exposed to all these games lately has sort of solidified a better-than-usual understanding of the kind of games I’m genuinely interested in playing. Games which take themselves seriously, with reasonably deep and satisfying gameplay, and ideally with dynamic content that enables a good amount of replayability.
Consequently, the number of games I’m willing to purchase has drastically decreased. I’ve a mental lens that only picks out a specific kind of diamond out of the rough now. Most modern MMORPGs lack adequate immersion to be virtual worldly enough to be worth a monthly subscription. Games in general are simply affairs whose casual player focus excludes me handily.
Games like Spelunky, Dwarf Fortress, or Fort Zombie have shown the way. Without enough alternatives, I should really return to my own game development.
Speaking of which, while BYOND is generally where I want to be (a tile-based multiplayer native platform) I recently made good on purchasing a Student Edition of Above Creative Suite 4 Web Premium while I was still in school. As long Adobe’s educational activation department doesn’t find me disqualified for it somehow, I’ll soon have a very powerful professional suite of game development to look forward to learning the ins and outs of.
This weekend I finished up Mass Effect 2. I was reasonably satisfied, but also somewhat disappointed.
While Mass Effect 2 is generally lauded as the superior product, I would say it’s more of a matter of give and take between the two games.
One annoying aspect of Mass Effect 1 was the cumbersome inventory. Mass Effect 2 compensates by eliminating the inventory entirely and replacing it with an upgrade mechanism. I’m grateful for the lack of bloat, but disappointed in the resulting hit to depth.
Traveling the planet surface in Mass Effect 1 involved a great deal of cumbersome driving. Mass Effect 2 removed planet travel entirely. You take a shuttle directly to your destinations, and ore is recovered via a simple mini-game. It feels as though a substantial mode of play is missing, making Mass Effect 2 feels like half a game compared to the first.
Mass Effect 2 improved the ground skirmish experience via a locational damage and reloading mechanic. However, it changed so radically that it feels like a different game entirely. The underlying RPG mechanics are as comparatively dumbed down as the new inventory is.
There’s an overall shortage of content. I completely exhausted the content of the game (there’s nothing left to do at all anywhere in the game universe) with all the current DLC available installed. It took a little less than 21 hours.(Exploration missions are very minimal, with only about a half-dozen separate arcs of 1-3 missions to be found. Most of the content is related to the recruiting and loyalty missions behind party members. The main quest in Mass Effect 2’s is actually pretty short and forces the player to go through the party recruiting/loyalty arcs to compensate.)
As a consequence of the main quest being so short, Mass Effect 2’s story is not as nearly as deep or gripping as the original. Though I’ve read reviews that praise the ending of Mass Effect 2, I felt it was barely satisfactory.
Overall, Mass Effect 2 flows better, but it lacks substance. Compared to the first game, the experience has less sense of exploring virtual space and more simply hammering through scenarios. If this is what we have to look forward to in Mass Effect 3, the magic of the original may have been lost forever.
So it is that I plopped down $240 on a Star Trek Online lifetime subscription.
Was it because I’ve enough geek in me to have a thing for Star Trek?
No, but I’m sure that helped.
Was it because the gameplay is fairly tolerable – a rarity for an MMORPG?
No, but this, too, probably helped.
Was it because I have great and unwavering faith in Cryptic Studios?
No, after Champions Online, Cryptic Studios /cons dubious to me.
Was it because I believed I would honestly get ($240 divided by $15/mo) 16 months of play out of this?
No, that would really surprise me.
Honestly, it was mostly a combination being curious about what owning a lifetime subscription to a major MMORPG would be like and having mentioned (both here and on the official forums) that I’d never pay a periodic subscription for an MMORPG again.
I knew exactly what I was getting to, and yet, I still have some buyer’s remorse… the main trouble is that this game lacks so many of those important, yet subtle, MMORPG touches.
There’s no real virtual worldly landmarks – even where you can find landmarks, there’s an infinite number of copies to make each landmark feel insubstantial.
Lacking landmarks, I feel as though I’ll never really bump into other players as I would in an old fashioned MMORPG.
The other players’ presence is quickly mentally streamlined out of lack of necessity. Perhaps because the balance is set in such a way that you need them for nothing.
As is usually the case, there’s no real dynamic content: barring developer additions, the universe never changes. The only thing that changes is your character as they climb to the maximum level. As far as a true RPG narrative goes, it lacks.
The above video, which is a parody of MMORPG gameplay, demonstrates how a sort of camaraderie builds in a true virtual space. That I feel this is missing is the true source of my buyer’s remorse: it’s just not as fun having a lifetime subscription to a game that lacks the essential point of what makes an MMORPG feel like one.
So, knowing that they have obliged requests in the past, why don’t I go ask Cryptic Studios for my money back? It’s because there is no alternatives to look forward to. Take it or leave it, this what all new MMORPGs are like these days: heavily instanced, completely static, and casually accessible to the point of losing themselves.
Maybe it’s not true buyer’s remorse. Maybe I’d make the same choice again now. $240 for a lifetime subscription? What an excellently frugal idea – an extra expensive subscription whose main purpose is to powerfully remind you why you need never purchase another MMORPG subscription in your lifetime.
I’m still spending way too much money on worthless junk, but I have cut down somewhat from my first week of being back in the black. Whereas last week I spent about $200 on stuff, this week I spent about $110.
Who were the lucky purveyors of fine entertainment who managed to weasel yet more cash out of this student? Bioshock 2 and two animes from Kyoto Animation.
The first week of Spring 2010 has thus far been punctuated by miserable failure. Nevermind that my homework isn’t particularly completed — the first week largely being an orientation week, it wasn’t particularly assigned, either.
No, I’m more concerned that I spent perhaps a quarter of a budget that was intended to last me 5 months on a week. Some of this was for my books, which is commendable enough. The rest largely went to eating out (a decidedly lazy habit of mine) and entertainment expenses.
I’ve plenty to entertain me already, and could probably entertain myself regardless, and therefore any entertainment purchase is hard to justify. However, I like to think that, at least as far as entertainment expenses go, I’ve been frugal:
~$45 on a Dungeons and Dragons Online, but on things that will persist forever rather than become inaccessible in after only 3 months of $15/mo subscription payments.
~$60 on Mass Effect 2 which, as far as I’m concerned, is a mandatory gamers’ purchase on a magnitude that may be seen maybe twice in a year.
And then there’s ~$45 I spent on Global Agenda, a soon-to-be-released game from Hi-Rez Studios… which is, of course, what I’d like to talk about today.
As I approached the end of Fall 2009 semester, I was tasked to put together a 12 minute presentation (I opted to do a video) for my Art and Technology class. It went poorly – I was lucky to escape from class with a grade of C on the basis of having done good work prior to my final. In retrospect, I think I may have sabotaged myself.
Nevermind my senioritus had pushed my procrastination into chronic levels, the problem in this case is that my chosen topic had a subconscious ulterior motive. I thought I was trying to indicate that, within the purely digital realm of computer game creation, there was an unbridled basis for the imagination to create. What I was actually subconsciously doing was telling Modern Art that, even if I understood well enough to write some good reflections on it, I disagreed with much of it, I thought many examples were being overly vague and pretentious, and was demonstrating that far superior work could be found even in popular video games.
Unless the class is being taught by Andy Rooney, you can expect that to go over very poorly in a Fine Arts class.
You might say that it’s not entirely fair, and it’s a matter of taste, and perhaps you’re right. But then, what if you’re not? To accept bad taste as a new taste would imply that there’s no such thing as good taste – something a modern artist is quick to deny, but can they prove it?
What I do know for certain is, as far as personal taste is concerned, I prefer a bit more reason to my rhymes. I prefer masterpieces, like an opera, not some stoned guy recording himself talk on camera. To be deliberately illogical and vague in order for people to make up their own interpretations and buy it strikes me as dishonest.
Much like my final presentation, when you never knew what you were attempting to communicate, you’re only mumbling, and have no right to earn acclaim for what people think they heard. Perhaps the dividing line is there, as how else can they rate your ability to present a message than to compare what was received with what you were trying to send?
Today, I discovered a game that blurred the lines even for someone who would so clearly (if callously) define them such as myself. This is The Path, developed by Belgian Tale of Tales.
It is generally served up as “a short horror game.” Indeed, it is capable of generating some pretty nerve-wracking moments, as it does everything in its power to unchain the player’s’ imaginations before hinting them towards macabre thoughts. However, it does not seek to simply frighten, it is really more along the lines of modern interactive fiction.
The Path spins the tale of Red Riding Hood from the perspective of six sisters, chosen to embark through the forest to their grandmother’s house one sister at a time. To heed your instructions and follow that path directly to Grandma’s house produces a boring-but-safe-result, and is branded a failure. For a Red to succeed in The Path, she must leave the path and find the Wolf.
As far as being a game is concerned, The Path would seem relatively weak. Though it is beautiful both in terms of environment and the interface and has dynamic music accompaniment, it seems boggled down with pacing issues and you can get stuck on invisible walls. Controls often feel sluggish and, given the surreal backdrop of the forest, it is sometimes difficult to see.
However, much of this is planned, because The Path deliberately confuses, obstructs, disorients, and mystifies. Though it may resemble an adventure game, items collected are never used, but rather shed light on each Red’s personality, which is both the backbone of the game and completely optional. Even the scoring screen generated at the end of each chapter is done tongue-in-cheek.
Like Modern Art, The Path defies interpretation. I would interpret the 6 Reds as being the past selves of the grandmother (who is apparently on her death bed) remembering her life, dreaming of one last adventure, while making peace with the past. Another person would interpret the 6 Reds as being real individuals with everything else being a metaphorical symbol of their coming of age and/or enduring personal tragedies. These are only two of many possible interpretations.
Would that I had only found The Path prior to giving my presentation! Here is a game that bears much of the earmarks of Fine Art while simultaneously being so well done that I could not accuse it of being pretentious trash. I probably could have focused completely on it for my 12 minute presentation and have met the mutual satisfaction of myself and the Fine Arts class. Oh well, that’s retrospect for you.
Being a full-time college/university student for a little over 4 years now, I really learned to pinch my pennies. That shiny $60 game released today may well be worth $20 a few months from now if you’re willing to wait it out. Instant gratification is all well and good… but there’s something to be said for frugality.
My current favorite of the lot: Mechanarium. Sure, completable in one evening, but a real feast for the senses and with puzzles that are just right in terms of difficulty.
Indeed, between Direct2Drive’s “21 days of Christmas” sale and Steam’s Holiday sale, it has been a very good month to be a frugal gamer. I suspect I can blame the recession for a lot of this – with everyone’s wallets being a bit tighter, purveyors of fine digital entertainment have been forced to make compromises. Some of the more interesting deals I picked up:
Genre-rocking immersive behemoth Grand Theft Auto IV for $7.50 (75% off).
Quality medieval games Drakensang and Mount and Blade for $5.00 apiece. (Over 80% off,)
Excellent indy games Audiosurf and Braid for $5 each. (75-80% off).
Innovative if forgettable genre breaker Mirror’s Edge for $5.00 (75% off).
Indy city builder/RPG hybrid Hinterland: Orc Lords $6.50 (75% off).
A city builder RTS with RPG undertones, Majesty 2: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim for $7.50. (75% off)
In addition to the “wow” deals above, I also pulled some pretty decent 50% off deals such as:
Quite good indy-made Mechanarium and Torchlight for $10 apiece.
Behemoths of yesteryear, Prototype and Command And Conquer Red Alert 3 (including Uprising expansion) for $20 apiece.
Quality indy adventure games of Samorost 2 and a package of Zombie Cow adventure games (“Ben There, Dan That!” and “Time, Gentlemen, Please!”) for $2.50 apiece.
This is to say nothing for the gifts I received this year, including the complete Lucasarts adventure pack, Red Faction: Guerrilla, Borderlands Zombie Island DLC, and Left4Dead 2.
Overall, my gaming cup runneth over once again. Through, like many aspiring game designers, most of these games won’t get more than a few hours of play from me, it seems I’ve now a goodly amount of research materials.
Digitally Staving Off Boredom 