Random thought: if apostrophes ('s) are used to contract words (didn't = did not), what is "ain't" short for? Never really thought about it before.
What is Emergeant (possibly spelt wrong) gameplay? Well, I'm going to take the annoying route and write a shirtload before I even answer that question. Read on.
Long time readers (you poor, poor saps that you are) will know the crush I have upon the concept of customisability and openness in games. In many ways this is what attracts me to particular types of tabletop games, since if you get agreement from the other players, you're able to do anything you want. Computer games have it tougher, since you're stuck operating in the parameter's defined by the game, unless you've got an expert team of modders behind you and several months to kick back and waste while waiting for them to pump out the finished product.
One of the reasons I was originally so attracted to stuff in Warhammer 40,000 is the sheer fact you can do almost anything in it. If you have an entire galaxy to work with, it makes sense there are so many things that aren't covered in the rules. The Space Marines (the primary imagery used for the game) are recorded as having thousands of chapters (individually led armies), of which I think they have precise information for about a couple of dozen at most, and names for a hundred or so more. With that degree of option available, players can paint up and design armies in almost any way they like. There always seems to be a method available to make room for anything the players can come up with (within the rules and common sense knowledge of the backstory, of course). This openness is a requirement to make a game I will genuinely enjoy (though Games Workshop really buggered up plenty of stuff with Warhammer 40K).
Why am I repeating myself about my love for open stories? I recently began replaying Mount and Blade. I've gushed about it on this blog before, so I'll save you that pain, but I really NEED to tell how awesome today's gameplay with it was. My main character is the stock standard heavily armed and armoured Knight. He's a total dick who lances people in the face in standing fights, if you refuse to fight him he raids, loots, and burns down villages for his own wealth, and if you try to outnumber him he retreats to one of his three castles (and 1 city) and waits until you go away. The only time he can really be drawn into a fight he may not be ready for is if you besiege his castles/city without him present, at which point he'll raise an army from his standing forces, head to the castle and hold you off.
Now picture this scenario, two of his castles besieged at the same time. The character shows up with his army at the first castle and helps hold off the oncoming forces, but in the process loses half his forces. Here I made a miscalculation. Normally my castle forces are good enough they could probably hold off besiegers themselves, but the second castle I went to was at half strength (not sure why, it's a game I loaded from months ago). So my reinforcement army was at half strength, my standard defense army was at half strength, shouldn't be a problem, right?
Then I find out the attacking force is literally over 1,000 men. I was defending the castle with 100.
Holy crap. It was a white-knuckle battle. You... you PLEBS have no idea how elated I felt when I managed to scrape victory out of the battle. Twice the enemy managed to push through defenses and establish themselves on the walls, and twice I had to drop my crossbow and help directly in the battle to fight them back onto their ladders. When I realised the sounds the NPCs were making suddenly changed from grunts of battle to cheers of victory, I felt triumph.
Then I felt like an idiot because I'd gotten so involved in a computer game.
This is not a scenario pre-programmed into a game, not a scripted sequence, or part of a major battle. This is Emergent gameplay. This is not programmed at all, just through the way the game story unfolded naturally I ended up in a white knuckle tense situation. Knowing that I am one of the few to end up in a situation like this and triumphant despite no advantages on my side is what made it great. When you play a linear game, while some of the challenges can be amazingly designed it is always designed with the idea in mind that it is possible to beat. Through a gameplay situation emerging naturally in an open world, there is no way to know if it is even beatable, all you can do is try your friggin' hardest.
That is also the potential drawback of emergent gameplay. Imagine if through no fault of the player, they end up in an unwinnable situation. That can really ruin the enjoyment of a game, when all of a sudden the character they have worked so hard on suddenly can't go further, all because of things that happened in the background.
To continue with the use of Mount and Blade as an example, in one of my early games I made a character with the idea in mind that he would ally himself with a particular kingdom. Through behind the scenes calculations and battle results, that kingdom ended up on the back foot so strongly that no matter how good (or in some cases, ungood, to use a 1984 word) I was and how much I influenced battles, it still was completely pointless, and I would get my arse whooped no matter what. While, easily enough, I could have swapped the character over to another kingdom or just started from scratch, it left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth to know how easily background events could screw over my plans.
Still, I'd say the benefits are worth the cost.
Game Developers, all eleventy billion of you that read this blog, more open-world gameplay please.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Why FPS' just don't get me
Busy days = few posts
I'm not much of an FPS (First Person Shooter to the uninformed in the methodology of the geek, in which case what are you doing here?) player. If I play a game, it's either since I want to forge my own story in the game environment, or enjoy a wealth of customisation so in depth it makes god himself scratch his prematurely balding head and say "Why didn't I think of that shit?" In this respect FPS' not only fall on their arses, but they fall on their arses so hard that a little known law of physics results in their hips splatting out their forehead.
Both of these things do not come in an FPS, and few enough of them have a story worth writing home about, let alone worth writing down on a piece of paper to begin with. Except to try and work out where they're going to squeeze in a sewer level (then again, I play fantasy Roleplaying games, where sewers seem to be the one section of society that advances beyond the medieval period. Seriously, those guys have plumbing that makes my house look like I'm throwing it out my window in a bucket), and potentially trying to mention the big boss's name once or twice before the grand finale, just so the players aren't thinking "Why am I shooting this bastard" as they unload a truckload of hot steaming lead into his brain and/or arse (some particularly odd sci-fi FPS' can have both being the same thing).
First Person Shooters are, traditionally, so linear you can attach a monorail to the story. Walk down corridor's A through Z shooting anything moving that isn't in the same colours as you, occasionally stopping for a cutscene and/or high-score and/or loading screen. When the only real variations in the narrative consist of "Shall I shoot generic grunt 172 with the pistol or go all out and use the shotgun" there is no real variety in the story. Granted, some people do not WANT variety, but I do. If I play through a game twice and it's the exact same both times I won't find any enjoyment in playing it through a third time. It's like watching a movie. First time you enjoy the experience, second time you analyse the narrative, and third time you wonder why you're not watching something with full frontal nudity.
Customisability is my crack, which makes it odd how unenjoyable I found Spore. It's probably just because Spore felt like you were playing the exact same game with a different skin, no matter how you tried to make your animals different. In an FPS customisability is which collection of death dealing guns you'll tote around like an anti-social maniac in the zombie apocalypse. Sometimes a game will go all out and allow you to choose your armour. Then there are some wild and crazy FPS (all designed for online play) where you choose a Class! These continally fail to gain my attention since I'm far more interested in a roleplaying game where characters can be genuinely different.
Someday someone will make an open sandbox game with nearly limitless customisability of your character. On that day I will happily resign from life and build a basement so I can hang around in it all day playing this game.
This will be doubly beneficial for me, since about this time the seas will turn to blood and there will be a sudden market for snow shovels in hell.
Oh ho, end on that bloody overused "snowing in hell" joke. Well guess what, I KNOW it makes no sense (Dante's inferno describes the deepest circle of hell as being an ice and snow covered plain) and I'll use it anyway. It's cuz I'm a maverick, see.
I'm not much of an FPS (First Person Shooter to the uninformed in the methodology of the geek, in which case what are you doing here?) player. If I play a game, it's either since I want to forge my own story in the game environment, or enjoy a wealth of customisation so in depth it makes god himself scratch his prematurely balding head and say "Why didn't I think of that shit?" In this respect FPS' not only fall on their arses, but they fall on their arses so hard that a little known law of physics results in their hips splatting out their forehead.
Both of these things do not come in an FPS, and few enough of them have a story worth writing home about, let alone worth writing down on a piece of paper to begin with. Except to try and work out where they're going to squeeze in a sewer level (then again, I play fantasy Roleplaying games, where sewers seem to be the one section of society that advances beyond the medieval period. Seriously, those guys have plumbing that makes my house look like I'm throwing it out my window in a bucket), and potentially trying to mention the big boss's name once or twice before the grand finale, just so the players aren't thinking "Why am I shooting this bastard" as they unload a truckload of hot steaming lead into his brain and/or arse (some particularly odd sci-fi FPS' can have both being the same thing).
First Person Shooters are, traditionally, so linear you can attach a monorail to the story. Walk down corridor's A through Z shooting anything moving that isn't in the same colours as you, occasionally stopping for a cutscene and/or high-score and/or loading screen. When the only real variations in the narrative consist of "Shall I shoot generic grunt 172 with the pistol or go all out and use the shotgun" there is no real variety in the story. Granted, some people do not WANT variety, but I do. If I play through a game twice and it's the exact same both times I won't find any enjoyment in playing it through a third time. It's like watching a movie. First time you enjoy the experience, second time you analyse the narrative, and third time you wonder why you're not watching something with full frontal nudity.
Customisability is my crack, which makes it odd how unenjoyable I found Spore. It's probably just because Spore felt like you were playing the exact same game with a different skin, no matter how you tried to make your animals different. In an FPS customisability is which collection of death dealing guns you'll tote around like an anti-social maniac in the zombie apocalypse. Sometimes a game will go all out and allow you to choose your armour. Then there are some wild and crazy FPS (all designed for online play) where you choose a Class! These continally fail to gain my attention since I'm far more interested in a roleplaying game where characters can be genuinely different.
Someday someone will make an open sandbox game with nearly limitless customisability of your character. On that day I will happily resign from life and build a basement so I can hang around in it all day playing this game.
This will be doubly beneficial for me, since about this time the seas will turn to blood and there will be a sudden market for snow shovels in hell.
Oh ho, end on that bloody overused "snowing in hell" joke. Well guess what, I KNOW it makes no sense (Dante's inferno describes the deepest circle of hell as being an ice and snow covered plain) and I'll use it anyway. It's cuz I'm a maverick, see.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Don't see the new Punisher movie
I was all set up and prepared to do a post discussing how so many prime time TV shows seem to want to reference fight club, but so few of them get it, but then... Then I saw the second Punisher movie (the third, if you count the original one a decade or so ago). "Punisher: Warzone".
Oh sweet jesus. Surely there are better stories that can be told. That movie was incredibly painful. I believe the metaphor I used on facebook to describe it was "It's like getting your wisdom teeth removed via your scrotum" (to female readers lacking in male genitalia, you'll have to imagine something quite painful and awkward).
1. The child. Sure, her father's dead, but would she REALLY latch on, that quickly, to a tall male who wanders in? Especially since this tall male makes her mother cry first time they meet. What did he do to her before she latched on? He gave her a flashlight. Whoop-di-do.
A note for next time. If you want a more emotional story, have her be afraid of him. She reminds him of his own daughter, so if she was bloody terrified of him that'd really screw with his head.
2. Use some ACTUAL bad guys. It's a comic book story, the only genre where you can get away with larger then life bad guys. Closest they had was 'Jigsaw', who basically was a normal mob boss made ugly. And Jigsaw's "muscle"? His crazy brother. He was nuts, but neither he nor the mob boss felt like larger then life threatening villains.
Throughout the movie it felt like they were trying to make them both into something more threatening then they are, but... They were only human. The opening scene shows the Punisher killing dozens of "only humans". At no point did it feel like he was in danger, especially since his always-worn bullet proof vest took about a dozen bullets at various points in the movie, only about three of which did more then make him blink. In the first (technically second) Punisher movie, they showed how he could be genuinely threatened and get the shit beaten out of him. In this one he felt like the Terminator sans imposing jawline.
Put the Terminator (without jawline) against a nutcase moron and an ugly bastard who cries when he looks in a mirror, and you know who will win before the opening credits are even finished.
3. No emotional connection. The only person I felt even a vague emotional connection with throughout the entire movie was Neumann. Yes, THAT Neumanna. From Seinfeld. That says how poor the movie was. No matter how many 'good men' died, or the pain they left behind, only Neumann got my sympathy.
Oh sweet jesus. Surely there are better stories that can be told. That movie was incredibly painful. I believe the metaphor I used on facebook to describe it was "It's like getting your wisdom teeth removed via your scrotum" (to female readers lacking in male genitalia, you'll have to imagine something quite painful and awkward).
1. The child. Sure, her father's dead, but would she REALLY latch on, that quickly, to a tall male who wanders in? Especially since this tall male makes her mother cry first time they meet. What did he do to her before she latched on? He gave her a flashlight. Whoop-di-do.
A note for next time. If you want a more emotional story, have her be afraid of him. She reminds him of his own daughter, so if she was bloody terrified of him that'd really screw with his head.
2. Use some ACTUAL bad guys. It's a comic book story, the only genre where you can get away with larger then life bad guys. Closest they had was 'Jigsaw', who basically was a normal mob boss made ugly. And Jigsaw's "muscle"? His crazy brother. He was nuts, but neither he nor the mob boss felt like larger then life threatening villains.
Throughout the movie it felt like they were trying to make them both into something more threatening then they are, but... They were only human. The opening scene shows the Punisher killing dozens of "only humans". At no point did it feel like he was in danger, especially since his always-worn bullet proof vest took about a dozen bullets at various points in the movie, only about three of which did more then make him blink. In the first (technically second) Punisher movie, they showed how he could be genuinely threatened and get the shit beaten out of him. In this one he felt like the Terminator sans imposing jawline.
Put the Terminator (without jawline) against a nutcase moron and an ugly bastard who cries when he looks in a mirror, and you know who will win before the opening credits are even finished.
3. No emotional connection. The only person I felt even a vague emotional connection with throughout the entire movie was Neumann. Yes, THAT Neumanna. From Seinfeld. That says how poor the movie was. No matter how many 'good men' died, or the pain they left behind, only Neumann got my sympathy.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Dragon Age: Origins, and why it's awesome.
In an effort to stop the rampant pessimistic and overly critical stance this blog seems to have taken lately, I've decided to dedicate an entire post to something that is awesome. It should come as no surprise that the awesomeness in this post comes entirely from Bioware. No, I'm not talking about The Old Republic MMO (I'm reserving judgement on that), but from the upcoming RPG Dragon Age: Origins.
One of the always appealing aspects of the Western RPG is that you get to choose your own character and build him or her up from scratch. This is great and allows enormous amount of replayability in games, but has the problem in that it doesn't allow for much background. I sincerely doubt my heavily armoured Lawful Evil swordsman who's well on his way to becoming a divine embodiment of "evil arsehole" has much in common in his background with my chaotic good hippy-like Ranger who never wears anything heavier then a cotton shirt, and judging by the number of romantic options he seems to get, often much less.
So how to get around it? Some RPGS seem to just dictate to you who you were and bugger any choices you make on the matter. Case in point 1: Knights of the Old Republic 2, no matter what you choose with your character, your entire history is dictated to you and you need to find it out like an amnesiac cliche (despite the fact your character doesn't have amnesia, and is apparently just so thick he needs his life story narrated to him). Case in point 2: Neverwinter Nights 2, it seems this one village is so diverse it can give rise to anything from a Demon-summoning Warlock to an elite Warrior Paladin. Not bad for a place that only has three visitors a year.
What does Dragon Age do differently? Simple. From everything I've read, upon character creation and after choosing a class, gender, race, etc etc, you choose an origin story. An origin story is less of a dictated narrative and more of a basic social standing (high class noble, enslaved Elf, etc etc), which the game then places you in. Each origin has it's unique starting position, and you spend the opening part of the game exploring your life and informing the game of your normal sort of position in your backstory, how you got along with people, what your moral stance on XYZ is, things like that. Then at the end of your backstory, for some reason or another, you're recruited into the elite group who end up up shirt creek without a washer or dryer, beginning the epic narrative of the game.
I for one am so excited about this concept it gives me tingly feelings in my pants which cannot be contained in there alone, and so spread upwards into my nose affecting the erectile tissue contained there, as well. Are you sufficiently grossed out? Good, let's go onto the next paragraph.
This is taking RPG storytelling in a whole new direction. It was experimented with slightly in Mass Effect, with some background being chosen which had, at best, a tiny effect on the story (primarily just some dialogue changes and one or two minor quests), and I feel it was one of the appeals of the game. Now Dragon Age: Origins has taken this idea and run so far with it there's a gold medal in it for the game if it pulls it off and isn't caught using illegal drugs like "flat out lying in press releases and marketing".
The origins are supposed to have a genuine impact on the game. Dependant on who you are you'll be treated differently by NPCs. Inside the human settlements, Noble Humans will be readily accepted since they can order your castration otherwise, while low-born Dwarfs will be seen as little better then the yappy dog next door that comes over and wets the carpet. However the 'Wild-living' Elves will be completely unaccepted in human settlements, but the moment you go into the wild and meet their cousins you're up easy street, while the humans will be lucky to leave with both testicles still in the right container.
I could be over-emphasising the importance of the origin stories, and they could be little more then icing on top of the game-cake (in which case it needs to be a good cake anyway for the icing to be worth it), but considering it's part of the name of the bloody game (Dragon age: "ORIGINS") presumably they'll put some effort into getting it right. And anyway, it's BIOWARE. I haven't seen any bad decisions from them since "Hey, let's send all our sequels out to this Obsidian mob".
One of the always appealing aspects of the Western RPG is that you get to choose your own character and build him or her up from scratch. This is great and allows enormous amount of replayability in games, but has the problem in that it doesn't allow for much background. I sincerely doubt my heavily armoured Lawful Evil swordsman who's well on his way to becoming a divine embodiment of "evil arsehole" has much in common in his background with my chaotic good hippy-like Ranger who never wears anything heavier then a cotton shirt, and judging by the number of romantic options he seems to get, often much less.
So how to get around it? Some RPGS seem to just dictate to you who you were and bugger any choices you make on the matter. Case in point 1: Knights of the Old Republic 2, no matter what you choose with your character, your entire history is dictated to you and you need to find it out like an amnesiac cliche (despite the fact your character doesn't have amnesia, and is apparently just so thick he needs his life story narrated to him). Case in point 2: Neverwinter Nights 2, it seems this one village is so diverse it can give rise to anything from a Demon-summoning Warlock to an elite Warrior Paladin. Not bad for a place that only has three visitors a year.
What does Dragon Age do differently? Simple. From everything I've read, upon character creation and after choosing a class, gender, race, etc etc, you choose an origin story. An origin story is less of a dictated narrative and more of a basic social standing (high class noble, enslaved Elf, etc etc), which the game then places you in. Each origin has it's unique starting position, and you spend the opening part of the game exploring your life and informing the game of your normal sort of position in your backstory, how you got along with people, what your moral stance on XYZ is, things like that. Then at the end of your backstory, for some reason or another, you're recruited into the elite group who end up up shirt creek without a washer or dryer, beginning the epic narrative of the game.
I for one am so excited about this concept it gives me tingly feelings in my pants which cannot be contained in there alone, and so spread upwards into my nose affecting the erectile tissue contained there, as well. Are you sufficiently grossed out? Good, let's go onto the next paragraph.
This is taking RPG storytelling in a whole new direction. It was experimented with slightly in Mass Effect, with some background being chosen which had, at best, a tiny effect on the story (primarily just some dialogue changes and one or two minor quests), and I feel it was one of the appeals of the game. Now Dragon Age: Origins has taken this idea and run so far with it there's a gold medal in it for the game if it pulls it off and isn't caught using illegal drugs like "flat out lying in press releases and marketing".
The origins are supposed to have a genuine impact on the game. Dependant on who you are you'll be treated differently by NPCs. Inside the human settlements, Noble Humans will be readily accepted since they can order your castration otherwise, while low-born Dwarfs will be seen as little better then the yappy dog next door that comes over and wets the carpet. However the 'Wild-living' Elves will be completely unaccepted in human settlements, but the moment you go into the wild and meet their cousins you're up easy street, while the humans will be lucky to leave with both testicles still in the right container.
I could be over-emphasising the importance of the origin stories, and they could be little more then icing on top of the game-cake (in which case it needs to be a good cake anyway for the icing to be worth it), but considering it's part of the name of the bloody game (Dragon age: "ORIGINS") presumably they'll put some effort into getting it right. And anyway, it's BIOWARE. I haven't seen any bad decisions from them since "Hey, let's send all our sequels out to this Obsidian mob".
Friday, February 20, 2009
Why I dislike Games Workshop
Feel free to ignore this post. It's written in the grips of a hangover, and thus it probably makes no sense.
Wargaming is a well known side of tabletop gaming. The flipside of the coin to Roleplaying, if you will. Rather then a focus upon the individual and their efforts to save the world, Wargaming casts it's focus wider, aiming to recreate the feeling of massive battles, all the while depersonalising the tragedy of such events. However, I play the Total War games and love them, so I lose all right to criticise them for depersonalising mass slaughter.
Games Workshop is the Wargaming company I've had most of my experience with. When my brother was in his early teens he was bitten by the bug, and loved his Ork army in Warhammer 40,000. It was a brighter era, back in 2nd Edition Warhammer 40K. The Squigs were funny, crazy little muchroom monsters. The Gretchin were sneaky little gits who stole their weaponry so they could join in the biffs and couldn't threaten anything. Ork guns were as likely to blow up their owner as destroy a tank in one shot, and just as likely to patter out a weak spray of bullets that couldn't dent paper. But, most importantly, it realised it was a game, and as such didn't take itself immensely seriously. Each race fulfilled a niche, not just in the gaming aspect, but in what it provided to the players. If you wanted a deadly serious threat to the world, you'd play as Chaos. If you wanted super soldiers killing everyone despite being outnumbered three to one, you'd play as Space Marines. If you wanted weak-ace humans who's only real bonus is numbers and tanks, you'd go Imperial Guard. Orks provided the comic relief.
Then about the beginning of 3rd edition, everything changed. The focus shifted from providing entertaining stuff for the players, to milking the gamers. The rules now required you to have a large number of troops, even in your basic Space Marine force (the "only a few troopers but each of them highly powerful" army). If you wanted your force to be competitive, you had to buy more basic troopers. Oh, and all the rules. And the codex for your chosen race. And sometimes you were unlucky and they released a revised codex.
The charm and light-heartedness of some of it (namely the Orks) all vanished under a wave of grim, gritty and darkity McDarkdark. I'm not stupid, even at the young age I was reading about all this in 2nd edition I realised how dark the universe was. But it wasn't all dark. The aforementioned Orks were mostly lighthearted, with stories about the docs nailing pieces of metal to an Ork in the shape of an arm, and it working (when the Ork just wanted the wax cleaned out from his ear). Now the 'Docs' of the Orks are grim and threatening evil doers, despite the entire race still retaining their originally comical method of speach and terms. It's as much of a strange contradiction as the latter Harry Potter book's grim setting being populated with "muggles".
I have to admit, having browsed through the 3rd edition rulebook (I believe they're up to 5th, now), I don't mind some of the modifications they made to the rules (such as the changes to the way saving throws work). But it would be willful ignorance to believe Games Workshop altered the rules to focus more on large scale 'army' conflicts over small scale skirmishes (as it was originally designed to be) out of anything other then an interest in forcing you to spend more money.
"Of course they want more money!" you cry, annoyed at me, "they're a business!". I direct your attention to the wikipedia page for "Andy Chambers" (I'm not gonna get the link, you can do that yourself mates). It states that he was the individual who tilted the company away from being gamer orientated (in other words, looking out for the gamers first) to being business orientated. Read up on how he did that.
Flat out withdrawing support for games that didn't provide regular income (Blood Bowl, etc, despite the fact they're now making a computer game about that particular board game).
No longer focusing on their previous loyal customers and providing for them, instead turning their focus onto the younger kids with more disposable income (I.E. Their parents).
Any company that changes it's intended audience like that gets no sympathy from me. Yes, I understand company's are in it to make money, that doesn't mean I have to like their decisions.
Wargaming is a well known side of tabletop gaming. The flipside of the coin to Roleplaying, if you will. Rather then a focus upon the individual and their efforts to save the world, Wargaming casts it's focus wider, aiming to recreate the feeling of massive battles, all the while depersonalising the tragedy of such events. However, I play the Total War games and love them, so I lose all right to criticise them for depersonalising mass slaughter.
Games Workshop is the Wargaming company I've had most of my experience with. When my brother was in his early teens he was bitten by the bug, and loved his Ork army in Warhammer 40,000. It was a brighter era, back in 2nd Edition Warhammer 40K. The Squigs were funny, crazy little muchroom monsters. The Gretchin were sneaky little gits who stole their weaponry so they could join in the biffs and couldn't threaten anything. Ork guns were as likely to blow up their owner as destroy a tank in one shot, and just as likely to patter out a weak spray of bullets that couldn't dent paper. But, most importantly, it realised it was a game, and as such didn't take itself immensely seriously. Each race fulfilled a niche, not just in the gaming aspect, but in what it provided to the players. If you wanted a deadly serious threat to the world, you'd play as Chaos. If you wanted super soldiers killing everyone despite being outnumbered three to one, you'd play as Space Marines. If you wanted weak-ace humans who's only real bonus is numbers and tanks, you'd go Imperial Guard. Orks provided the comic relief.
Then about the beginning of 3rd edition, everything changed. The focus shifted from providing entertaining stuff for the players, to milking the gamers. The rules now required you to have a large number of troops, even in your basic Space Marine force (the "only a few troopers but each of them highly powerful" army). If you wanted your force to be competitive, you had to buy more basic troopers. Oh, and all the rules. And the codex for your chosen race. And sometimes you were unlucky and they released a revised codex.
The charm and light-heartedness of some of it (namely the Orks) all vanished under a wave of grim, gritty and darkity McDarkdark. I'm not stupid, even at the young age I was reading about all this in 2nd edition I realised how dark the universe was. But it wasn't all dark. The aforementioned Orks were mostly lighthearted, with stories about the docs nailing pieces of metal to an Ork in the shape of an arm, and it working (when the Ork just wanted the wax cleaned out from his ear). Now the 'Docs' of the Orks are grim and threatening evil doers, despite the entire race still retaining their originally comical method of speach and terms. It's as much of a strange contradiction as the latter Harry Potter book's grim setting being populated with "muggles".
I have to admit, having browsed through the 3rd edition rulebook (I believe they're up to 5th, now), I don't mind some of the modifications they made to the rules (such as the changes to the way saving throws work). But it would be willful ignorance to believe Games Workshop altered the rules to focus more on large scale 'army' conflicts over small scale skirmishes (as it was originally designed to be) out of anything other then an interest in forcing you to spend more money.
"Of course they want more money!" you cry, annoyed at me, "they're a business!". I direct your attention to the wikipedia page for "Andy Chambers" (I'm not gonna get the link, you can do that yourself mates). It states that he was the individual who tilted the company away from being gamer orientated (in other words, looking out for the gamers first) to being business orientated. Read up on how he did that.
Flat out withdrawing support for games that didn't provide regular income (Blood Bowl, etc, despite the fact they're now making a computer game about that particular board game).
No longer focusing on their previous loyal customers and providing for them, instead turning their focus onto the younger kids with more disposable income (I.E. Their parents).
Any company that changes it's intended audience like that gets no sympathy from me. Yes, I understand company's are in it to make money, that doesn't mean I have to like their decisions.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Another criticism of Halo
First thing's first, a new word invented with the aid of Ernie: Distriss. A Mistress who lives a long distance away.
Now, the meat of this short post. In my usual boredom-fueled Wikipedia reading, I found the following sentence in the entire wikipedia page devoted to the marketing of Halo 3 (does it need this? Not really, no):
'According to Microsoft, the unusual presentation of a model rather thant computer graphics was chosen to look at "the themes that lie at the heart of the Halo trilogy - war, duty, sacrifice, and most importantly the heroism of Master Chief".' (Halo 3 Marketing wikipedia page)
Having seen the diorama in question (here), my first thought is that it shows nothing but the futility of war rather then anything else, but that's not the point of the post. The point of the post is the phrase "the heroism of Master Chief." As other Wikipedia wankers like myself know, along with Halo fans, Master Chief is a cybernetically augmented, brainwashed super soldier taught from near birth to fight. Anyone who's played the games (althought I admit only playing up to the end of Halo 2) knows that he has a personality that can be approximated to a brick with some glue on a corner.
Can he really be 'Heroic'? He's a near-mindless war-drone created solely for battle. For him to charge into battle and combat, especially considering he never friggin' loses, isn't really bravery, it's his nature. It's not like warfare is his job, it's his life. A Fireman is being brave for trying to save lives, even though it's his job. A bird isn't being brave for flying around really high, it's what the bird DOES.
The Master Chief, as a character, even as a narrative device, is just uninteresting. The only thing he is useful as is a reason for the player of a computer game to be massively more effectively then the player's allies and enemies. The Arbiter, who earned near universal scorn in the game, is a hundred times more interesting then the Master Chief, but even his story is really really dully predictable.
One day I'm going to find something to fan-boy about for an extended period of time. Until then I'm just going to rip on everyone elses's favourite things.
Now, the meat of this short post. In my usual boredom-fueled Wikipedia reading, I found the following sentence in the entire wikipedia page devoted to the marketing of Halo 3 (does it need this? Not really, no):
'According to Microsoft, the unusual presentation of a model rather thant computer graphics was chosen to look at "the themes that lie at the heart of the Halo trilogy - war, duty, sacrifice, and most importantly the heroism of Master Chief".' (Halo 3 Marketing wikipedia page)
Having seen the diorama in question (here), my first thought is that it shows nothing but the futility of war rather then anything else, but that's not the point of the post. The point of the post is the phrase "the heroism of Master Chief." As other Wikipedia wankers like myself know, along with Halo fans, Master Chief is a cybernetically augmented, brainwashed super soldier taught from near birth to fight. Anyone who's played the games (althought I admit only playing up to the end of Halo 2) knows that he has a personality that can be approximated to a brick with some glue on a corner.
Can he really be 'Heroic'? He's a near-mindless war-drone created solely for battle. For him to charge into battle and combat, especially considering he never friggin' loses, isn't really bravery, it's his nature. It's not like warfare is his job, it's his life. A Fireman is being brave for trying to save lives, even though it's his job. A bird isn't being brave for flying around really high, it's what the bird DOES.
The Master Chief, as a character, even as a narrative device, is just uninteresting. The only thing he is useful as is a reason for the player of a computer game to be massively more effectively then the player's allies and enemies. The Arbiter, who earned near universal scorn in the game, is a hundred times more interesting then the Master Chief, but even his story is really really dully predictable.
One day I'm going to find something to fan-boy about for an extended period of time. Until then I'm just going to rip on everyone elses's favourite things.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Statements that never precede a good idea
You get two posts today, since over the next week I shall be posting infrequently. Despite this supposed 'bonus' it is really just a short post, with the meaty part of it stolen verbatum from a bunch of people I was drunkenly talking with friday night/saturday morning (it all blended together).
There are a number of phrases in the English Language that often are used to precede an idea or plan on how a number of individuals should spend their time. Among these phrases there are some that have, throughout the history of human endeavour, NEVER proceeded a 'good' idea. Here are a smattering of them.
1. "First, we'll have some shots, then..."
Any plan that requires a standard drink of alcohol down the throat in the space of two seconds before undertaking is bad. No arguement.
2. "OH MY GOD! I just had the best idea ever!"
'Oh my god' never proceeds 'good'. The best you can do with 'Oh my god' is shock and surprise. And the need to exagerate your plan so it is the 'best idea ever' just states that you're needing to overstate it's case.
3. "Dude! You know what we HAVE to do?"
"Stop you there before you start outlining an evening ahead that will get us arrested and/or lubed in an uncomfortable place that shouldn't NEED lube?"
4. "We'll have a quick nap now, then wake up in a few hours and..."
If you require a nap before proceeding to phase two, you're tired enough that you won't wake up in a few hours. This is one of the less 'bad' prefix phrases, since this is unlikely to end in catastrophe.
5. "You know what?"
No plan that ever relied upon in-depth knowledge of an indefinate conceptual item in language is worth doing.
Edit: Pix is a smartarse
There are a number of phrases in the English Language that often are used to precede an idea or plan on how a number of individuals should spend their time. Among these phrases there are some that have, throughout the history of human endeavour, NEVER proceeded a 'good' idea. Here are a smattering of them.
1. "First, we'll have some shots, then..."
Any plan that requires a standard drink of alcohol down the throat in the space of two seconds before undertaking is bad. No arguement.
2. "OH MY GOD! I just had the best idea ever!"
'Oh my god' never proceeds 'good'. The best you can do with 'Oh my god' is shock and surprise. And the need to exagerate your plan so it is the 'best idea ever' just states that you're needing to overstate it's case.
3. "Dude! You know what we HAVE to do?"
"Stop you there before you start outlining an evening ahead that will get us arrested and/or lubed in an uncomfortable place that shouldn't NEED lube?"
4. "We'll have a quick nap now, then wake up in a few hours and..."
If you require a nap before proceeding to phase two, you're tired enough that you won't wake up in a few hours. This is one of the less 'bad' prefix phrases, since this is unlikely to end in catastrophe.
5. "You know what?"
No plan that ever relied upon in-depth knowledge of an indefinate conceptual item in language is worth doing.
Edit: Pix is a smartarse
Where is the fun?
A long time ago, I managed to win a copy of Painkiller (which I still haven't installed) by sending a letter to a PC gaming magazine proposing one entirely radical idea.
(Note: I often make an attempt to keep this blog child-friendly on the off chance my mother stumbles across it, but in this case I'll make an exception since I'm angry and thus allowed to say naughty words).
That idea was: Games should be fucking fun.
Obviously I didn't use that precise language, but the emphasis was there.
It came when I read in an article one of their contributors defending a games developer who uttered the line "It's not about having fun".
Yes, yes it is you twonk, it is all about having fun. Having fun is the entire purpose of the exercise. These are GAMES, not work, not torture, not an arduous trial. Were games not about having fun, then Microsoft Word can be assured it will reign supreme as the most interactive sandbox game since cavemen started scrawling on walls.
Games, even the ones that aren't bright, cheerful and colourful, even the ones about tough grizzled generic badarse soldiers in armour so heavy it has it's own in-flight movies, should be about FUN.
Let's look at some of the many methods in which a game can be fun
1. "Ha ha! Running over that octegenarian was great" fun: Random hilarious mayhem, bringing a disbelieving grin and laugh to the faces of many a person as they see the pedestrians they hit go careening off into the sunset.
2. "Man, I am so smart" fun: The pleasure of outwitting the computer or another opponent, battling hard and coming out on top.
3. "Dude, that was awesome, good game" fun: The enjoyment from battling (not necessarily defeating) an opponent in a test of skill (rather then merely random numbers), utilising all the tricks and tactics you know.
4. "Holy crap, that was amazing" fun: Watching something so amazing happen in the game that you're almost awestruck.
5. "Oh my god, I cannot believe we did that" fun: The feeling of accomplishment for having done what feels like the impossible, even if everyone else who plays the game manages it as well. It still FEELS awesome.
The moment you bastards start making a game a chore is the moment I will switch off. I have enough chores in real life, I don't need a game to add more. So please, developers, publishers, beta testers, bug fixers, programmers, all people involved in making games, pay attention to this.
1. MMOs, make the fighting feel epic, rather then hack slash click.
2. RTS', make the fight feel like a true battle rather then a skirmish (or in some cases, a pub brawl with wizards. Yes, I'm looking at YOU Blizzard.)
3. RPGs, if I'm playing an RPG, I want to feel like something epic is happening. If getting from one point to another feels like I'm picking up a second job, then I will resign.
4. Everyone, instant unstoppable death is never good gameplay.
5. Bug fixers, find out about all the bugs and FIX them. If I'm playing an RPG and my super mega axe of cut'off'ur-arse vanishes from my inventory, your game is rapidly being uninstalled.
6. Publishers, if a game development company says they need more time to finish the game, give it to them. You'll make more money in the long run if the company has a reputation for putting out quality software at a slower rate (looking at you, Valve) then you will if you force out buggy shit that doesn't have half the
7. Obsidian Entertainment: Fall in a pit you can't climb out of and die from a yeast infection.
(Note: I often make an attempt to keep this blog child-friendly on the off chance my mother stumbles across it, but in this case I'll make an exception since I'm angry and thus allowed to say naughty words).
That idea was: Games should be fucking fun.
Obviously I didn't use that precise language, but the emphasis was there.
It came when I read in an article one of their contributors defending a games developer who uttered the line "It's not about having fun".
Yes, yes it is you twonk, it is all about having fun. Having fun is the entire purpose of the exercise. These are GAMES, not work, not torture, not an arduous trial. Were games not about having fun, then Microsoft Word can be assured it will reign supreme as the most interactive sandbox game since cavemen started scrawling on walls.
Games, even the ones that aren't bright, cheerful and colourful, even the ones about tough grizzled generic badarse soldiers in armour so heavy it has it's own in-flight movies, should be about FUN.
Let's look at some of the many methods in which a game can be fun
1. "Ha ha! Running over that octegenarian was great" fun: Random hilarious mayhem, bringing a disbelieving grin and laugh to the faces of many a person as they see the pedestrians they hit go careening off into the sunset.
2. "Man, I am so smart" fun: The pleasure of outwitting the computer or another opponent, battling hard and coming out on top.
3. "Dude, that was awesome, good game" fun: The enjoyment from battling (not necessarily defeating) an opponent in a test of skill (rather then merely random numbers), utilising all the tricks and tactics you know.
4. "Holy crap, that was amazing" fun: Watching something so amazing happen in the game that you're almost awestruck.
5. "Oh my god, I cannot believe we did that" fun: The feeling of accomplishment for having done what feels like the impossible, even if everyone else who plays the game manages it as well. It still FEELS awesome.
The moment you bastards start making a game a chore is the moment I will switch off. I have enough chores in real life, I don't need a game to add more. So please, developers, publishers, beta testers, bug fixers, programmers, all people involved in making games, pay attention to this.
1. MMOs, make the fighting feel epic, rather then hack slash click.
2. RTS', make the fight feel like a true battle rather then a skirmish (or in some cases, a pub brawl with wizards. Yes, I'm looking at YOU Blizzard.)
3. RPGs, if I'm playing an RPG, I want to feel like something epic is happening. If getting from one point to another feels like I'm picking up a second job, then I will resign.
4. Everyone, instant unstoppable death is never good gameplay.
5. Bug fixers, find out about all the bugs and FIX them. If I'm playing an RPG and my super mega axe of cut'off'ur-arse vanishes from my inventory, your game is rapidly being uninstalled.
6. Publishers, if a game development company says they need more time to finish the game, give it to them. You'll make more money in the long run if the company has a reputation for putting out quality software at a slower rate (looking at you, Valve) then you will if you force out buggy shit that doesn't have half the
7. Obsidian Entertainment: Fall in a pit you can't climb out of and die from a yeast infection.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Why Storms of Zehir is a poor game
Since I always assumed the entirity of my life was leading up to the point where I'm randomly bestowed with superpowers and thus need not your petty 'life skills' I never really made an enormous effort to do something with myself. This leaves me now at 22 with the beginnings of a life of alcohol fueled remorse ahead of me, and completely useless skills such as "dissecting the flaws of a computer game so complex I wouldn't even be able to guess how it was made." Neverwinter Nights 2: Storms of Zehir is one such complex game. The part that was probably most complex in its design process is probably how they managed to make it through the entire game missing the entire point of what a Roleplaying Campaign should be.
Neverwinter Nights 2: Storms of Zehir (henceforth NNSOZ, phonetically Nsuz) is the 6th game in the Neverwinter Night series, if you count all the expansions, and the third one made by Obsidian entertainment, a company I have slagged out so much in my blog that should I meet someone who works there in person I will proudly proclaim I don't know what an RPG is, and suggest they've got the wrong guy. After this many games using the Dungeons and Dragons license and ruleset, surely they would have worked out one of the main parts of the game are the aforementioned 'Dungeons'. Granted, the definition of Dungeon in DnD is as stretched as 'Tomb' in Tomb Raider, but the point remains that the normal Dungeons and Dragons campaign will, at some point, involve entering an enclosed location surrounded by the hordes of the evil villain, engaging them in mortal combat in an effort to get to the final boss fight.
In Storms of Zehir I'm currently approximately halfway through the game and I just came to a realisation while loading up an area it randomly booted me out of (more on that later). The group of adventurers I proudly lead aren't "adventurers", we're just glorified Caravan guards who occasionally take time off to thwart some obscure plot against our boss and occasionally beat up Kobolds.
Don't get me wrong, there are some things I love about the game. The fact the four main characters are all user made means you get to create a party to your suiting, and since the game can't work on the basis of certain annoying characters being in your party, it can't subject you to pointlessly annoying NPC sideplots like Obsidian are want to do. But this doesn't change the fact that my glorious warrior band are just caravan guards.
Part of the appeal of being an adventurer is going into the unknown, saving the local populace from a grave threat of the monster menace we're vanquishing, and making oodles of cash in the process which you spend on shiney bling that gives +4 to armour class.
In Storms of Zehir you're not even running the merchant company (although with all the work you're doing, it feels like you are). You work for someone else in establishing their merchant company, and are given part of the profits. Upon receiving my first paycheck I instantly turned around and said "wait a minute, this can't be right". I made more in an honest job then I had from looting the rapidly cooling corpses of a group of Orcs I'd come across while they slept, who presumably were up to some no-good or other. Were this the case, I had to wonder, why the hell did anyone adventure at all?
Alright, so I wasn't making any real money in killing monsters (unless they were attacking my trade caravans), so obviously I was doing it to help the surrounding countryside, right? Er, well, not really. Aside from some roaming monster groups which would be homing in on my group like a missile (except my leader was a slippery bastard who could hide like an elite SAS soldier afraid of the bogeyman in a blanket factory), the only monsters I ever found were in their own homes. Occasionally a quest would spring up talking about how they were causing trouble, but most of the time I saw the place on the map, barged in and killed everyone before they could say "No, stop, we're not bad guys".
So I was making no money in adventuring, and randomly killing dudes who'd done no harm just because they looked different from the races in my party. Two strikes against Storms of Zehir. Surely it would deliver in the third, the arching plot.
Er, again, not really. Like I said I'm halfway through the game and basically it just seems to be "sneaky snake people are sneaky, trying to infiltrate the surface world". I'm sure there's some big plot twist coming up (there always is) like you've been working for a Snake person the whole way through or something, but as far as arching plots go "go here, starting trading empire, make enough money to buy god status and make your portfolio 'Breasts'" doesn't really strike me as inspired.
Maybe I'm just being picky, surely if the gameplay is fun there should be plenty to forgive in the story arc department, right? And sure your noble warriors of justice and good turn out to just be rather shiney home invaders and muggers running innocent traders out of business by undercutting prices on everything, but if the combat is entertaining that's all the matters.
Err, about that...
Having enemies NOT scale to the abilities of your troupe sounds like a great idea, giving a greater sense of immersion (the alternative being that every county in the world is colour coded for difficulty for YOUR convenience and you're deliberately visiting them all in order), but it does make things a little less fun when you're run down by a band of enormous ogres so large their puny cousin would be able to beat up your entire party. Generally non-scaling encounters can be fun, but only if it is relatively easy to avoid the enormous pains in the arse, which is difficult when you're attempting to escort a trade caravan that moves with all the quickness of me trying to decide what pizza topping I want.
Even in the fights you're forced to have, sometimes you cruise through the encounter so rapidly you wonder why you even bothered to bring a sword, when surely a rolled up newspaper would have sufficed. Other times you have no choice but to smile politely as the enemy beat you up and steal your maths homework, with the only variable in the fight being "do I reload now or wait to see if I can take out one of these seven bastards?"
Storms of Zehir had all the promise of a good roleplaying game. There was genuine potential when I first heard the announcement that you could cut out annoying NPCs by creating your own party, but then they went and made it solely about creating a trading empire. Adventurer's aren't there to create trading empires, they're there to get paid by a local authority/wizard to walk into monsters homes and beat the crap out of them, in the process finding out the beginnings of a major plot to destroy civilisation by cancelling lunch.
Oh, and if a game's so buggy that opening a treasure chest has a random chance to boot you to the world map, something's gone horribly wrong.
And now, since I just realised I've written over one thousand words about a computer game based on Dungeons and Dragons, in order to restablish my manliness I'm going to discuss sports.
...
Bugger. I don't know anything about sports.
Neverwinter Nights 2: Storms of Zehir (henceforth NNSOZ, phonetically Nsuz) is the 6th game in the Neverwinter Night series, if you count all the expansions, and the third one made by Obsidian entertainment, a company I have slagged out so much in my blog that should I meet someone who works there in person I will proudly proclaim I don't know what an RPG is, and suggest they've got the wrong guy. After this many games using the Dungeons and Dragons license and ruleset, surely they would have worked out one of the main parts of the game are the aforementioned 'Dungeons'. Granted, the definition of Dungeon in DnD is as stretched as 'Tomb' in Tomb Raider, but the point remains that the normal Dungeons and Dragons campaign will, at some point, involve entering an enclosed location surrounded by the hordes of the evil villain, engaging them in mortal combat in an effort to get to the final boss fight.
In Storms of Zehir I'm currently approximately halfway through the game and I just came to a realisation while loading up an area it randomly booted me out of (more on that later). The group of adventurers I proudly lead aren't "adventurers", we're just glorified Caravan guards who occasionally take time off to thwart some obscure plot against our boss and occasionally beat up Kobolds.
Don't get me wrong, there are some things I love about the game. The fact the four main characters are all user made means you get to create a party to your suiting, and since the game can't work on the basis of certain annoying characters being in your party, it can't subject you to pointlessly annoying NPC sideplots like Obsidian are want to do. But this doesn't change the fact that my glorious warrior band are just caravan guards.
Part of the appeal of being an adventurer is going into the unknown, saving the local populace from a grave threat of the monster menace we're vanquishing, and making oodles of cash in the process which you spend on shiney bling that gives +4 to armour class.
In Storms of Zehir you're not even running the merchant company (although with all the work you're doing, it feels like you are). You work for someone else in establishing their merchant company, and are given part of the profits. Upon receiving my first paycheck I instantly turned around and said "wait a minute, this can't be right". I made more in an honest job then I had from looting the rapidly cooling corpses of a group of Orcs I'd come across while they slept, who presumably were up to some no-good or other. Were this the case, I had to wonder, why the hell did anyone adventure at all?
Alright, so I wasn't making any real money in killing monsters (unless they were attacking my trade caravans), so obviously I was doing it to help the surrounding countryside, right? Er, well, not really. Aside from some roaming monster groups which would be homing in on my group like a missile (except my leader was a slippery bastard who could hide like an elite SAS soldier afraid of the bogeyman in a blanket factory), the only monsters I ever found were in their own homes. Occasionally a quest would spring up talking about how they were causing trouble, but most of the time I saw the place on the map, barged in and killed everyone before they could say "No, stop, we're not bad guys".
So I was making no money in adventuring, and randomly killing dudes who'd done no harm just because they looked different from the races in my party. Two strikes against Storms of Zehir. Surely it would deliver in the third, the arching plot.
Er, again, not really. Like I said I'm halfway through the game and basically it just seems to be "sneaky snake people are sneaky, trying to infiltrate the surface world". I'm sure there's some big plot twist coming up (there always is) like you've been working for a Snake person the whole way through or something, but as far as arching plots go "go here, starting trading empire, make enough money to buy god status and make your portfolio 'Breasts'" doesn't really strike me as inspired.
Maybe I'm just being picky, surely if the gameplay is fun there should be plenty to forgive in the story arc department, right? And sure your noble warriors of justice and good turn out to just be rather shiney home invaders and muggers running innocent traders out of business by undercutting prices on everything, but if the combat is entertaining that's all the matters.
Err, about that...
Having enemies NOT scale to the abilities of your troupe sounds like a great idea, giving a greater sense of immersion (the alternative being that every county in the world is colour coded for difficulty for YOUR convenience and you're deliberately visiting them all in order), but it does make things a little less fun when you're run down by a band of enormous ogres so large their puny cousin would be able to beat up your entire party. Generally non-scaling encounters can be fun, but only if it is relatively easy to avoid the enormous pains in the arse, which is difficult when you're attempting to escort a trade caravan that moves with all the quickness of me trying to decide what pizza topping I want.
Even in the fights you're forced to have, sometimes you cruise through the encounter so rapidly you wonder why you even bothered to bring a sword, when surely a rolled up newspaper would have sufficed. Other times you have no choice but to smile politely as the enemy beat you up and steal your maths homework, with the only variable in the fight being "do I reload now or wait to see if I can take out one of these seven bastards?"
Storms of Zehir had all the promise of a good roleplaying game. There was genuine potential when I first heard the announcement that you could cut out annoying NPCs by creating your own party, but then they went and made it solely about creating a trading empire. Adventurer's aren't there to create trading empires, they're there to get paid by a local authority/wizard to walk into monsters homes and beat the crap out of them, in the process finding out the beginnings of a major plot to destroy civilisation by cancelling lunch.
Oh, and if a game's so buggy that opening a treasure chest has a random chance to boot you to the world map, something's gone horribly wrong.
And now, since I just realised I've written over one thousand words about a computer game based on Dungeons and Dragons, in order to restablish my manliness I'm going to discuss sports.
...
Bugger. I don't know anything about sports.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Reasons to be cynical
I've had a few comments from people I know in real life who read my blog that a number of my posts in a row seemed quite cynical. There are two explanations for this, choose whichever one you prefer.
One, I'm a quite impressionable young stallion who has recently enjoyed watching alot of the Zero Punctuation reviews, which has inadvertently resulted in me leaping to the conclusion that cynicism is what all the cool kids are doing these days.
Two, I'm genuinely disappointed with alot of gaming. Surely among the multitude of games, PC, console and 'other', there would be one that would appeal to me and, upon playing it, would engross me so much I wouldn't stop playing it until I realised that unholy smell intruding upon my game experience was me.
Some may say I'm being too cynical, that the games industry has released many gems and I'm just too picky to see it. Well I like to think my pickiness makes me a more disconcerning gamer, and in an industry where Neverwinter Nights 2 did well enough to warrent 2 expansion packs I think this cynicism is well earned.
To use a philosophical metaphor (in a literal sense, not "It's like the man in the room in the chinese room thought experiment", ho ho, academic humour) we're currently in the medieval age of gaming. In the grand experience of Philosophy, it all started with a bunch of Greeks who started asking annoying questions and wouldn't shut up about it, to the point where most mainstream greeks were really annoyed with them. These Greeks established a vast number of the still-used-modern ideas of philosophy, most of them just adapted by the basic principle still in use.
The Romans came along next, and while there were some original ideas, alot of what they were doing was building up upon the original Greek philosophies, pretending it was their own (like they did with alot of things Greek).
Following this period of Greek (and Roman) philosophical shouting came the Dark Ages. This is a period where no one much cared about philosophy, but it was followed by the Medieval period. All philosophy in this period revolved around "How can we apply Aristotle and Socretes to the bible?" in which there WERE no original ideas beyond their masterful ability to put their hands over their ears and shout "la la la, I can't hear you saying Aristotle wasn't even a christian, la la la". In essence they ignored a vast majority of ideas that existed, and those they liked they tried to shoehorn into an idea they were comfortable with.
It wasn't until some guy named Descartes came along during the renaissance and asked a few new questions was philosophy really reinvented. Ok, he was completely wrong on nearly all accounts, but the fact he tried something new was bloody amazing. From him sprung whole bunches of new philosophers and philosophies, all written in other languages so that students who only speak english need to make do with translations that often go as word-for-word as they can, resulting in phrases like "an individuals being-in-experience-without-influence-of-their-being-in-pants" and other awkwardities.
Hang on, this is supposed to be a post about computer games, and I just spent the last four paragraphs summarising down the history of philosophy so much I've probably become completely wrong. But that is where it gets ingenius.
Look back at the 'Old' days. Yes, you remember those. The heady days of the NES, SNES, Mega Drive and original gameboy. The days in which if you wanted to use something motion sensitive it meant you were playing baseball outside. Games of such weirdness in storytelling and gameplay, where the immense variety of games was made possible because, let's face it, making one required nothing more then you to be a nerd, have a computer, and be able to make pixel art (sometimes).
From that period to about a dozen years ago, roughly, was the Greek era of gaming. Alot of new and interesting ideas, experimental thoughts being tried out and abandoned if they didn't stand up to scrutiny. About 12 to 8 years ago was the Roman period, where there were some new ideas but mostly it was just improvements upon the genre's already in place. The FPS was continually advanced, polygons got so impressive they could give Lara Croft pointy nipples (that word isn't going to stop my google-porn-results problem*) and Starcraft had ruined the lives of hundreds of nerds as they had their egos crushed by massed hordes of pixels screaming "kekekeke".
What happened eight years ago to ruin it all? This may be the cynical side of me talking, but to me if feels as though the computer games factory suddenly all packed up and went home, but forgot to turn the machines off, pumping out hordes of similar games in which the only difference is if you're a Space Marine, a normal Marine, or a Viking. It's like the games industry said "Well that's it boys, we've perfected the games, no need to strain yourselves now. Just clone Halo/Starcraft/World of Warcraft/GTA, and reskin."
I understand the limitations of time and money, resulting in games being difficult to find funding unless they're based on a tried and true concept which the publisher feels is highly likely to work. But come on, surely there's room for a few enterprising ideas. On a brief trip back through memory lane, the only big games I can think of in recent years that weren't either sequels or retreads of incredibly familiar gameplay mechanics are Spore (which I disliked) and Mirror's Edge (which I've never played). Everything else is either the eleventibillionth in a series that should have finished at 2, maximum 3, a game using such similar mechanics to other stuff it might as well be a sequel, or a reasonably shallow 'merge' of two different game genres that can proclaim originality but really is still in the shallow end of the pool.
Don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed alot of games over the years. Knights of the Old Republic, the Total War series, Mass Effect, Chaos League, the Armoured Core series, City of Heroes and the original Homeworld all kept me going for ages. But few of them drag me in for extended periods of time.
I think it's why I get so enthusiastic about single player RPGs (ones that AREN'T solely shoot and slacks. If there are genuine options in the dialogue that do more then give you good ending or bad ending, I get excited in my pantaloons), since if you discount the MMOs there aren't many that are so successful they inspire direct clones with reskins. And even the ones that could argueably be like this (Morrowind/Oblivion, Neverwinter Nights, etc) the mechanics are either so unique or outright copyrighted, making copying them pointless. This means that aside from a simple staple of RPGs (agility is avoid hits, strength is carrying crap, etc) they all have to be somewhat unique. I love relearning rules and working out how to manipulate them for my benefit with a characterful... character. It's like learning the ins and outs of sex with your girlfriend in all her disgusting kinks, then breaking up with her for someone with a better body and lower inhibitions. Repeat ten times, then go back to your first girlfriend and find out it's still FUN.
Note to self: Upcoming post, do "Why Neverwinter Nights 2 expansion pack 'Storms of Zehir' went wrong/sucks."
One, I'm a quite impressionable young stallion who has recently enjoyed watching alot of the Zero Punctuation reviews, which has inadvertently resulted in me leaping to the conclusion that cynicism is what all the cool kids are doing these days.
Two, I'm genuinely disappointed with alot of gaming. Surely among the multitude of games, PC, console and 'other', there would be one that would appeal to me and, upon playing it, would engross me so much I wouldn't stop playing it until I realised that unholy smell intruding upon my game experience was me.
Some may say I'm being too cynical, that the games industry has released many gems and I'm just too picky to see it. Well I like to think my pickiness makes me a more disconcerning gamer, and in an industry where Neverwinter Nights 2 did well enough to warrent 2 expansion packs I think this cynicism is well earned.
To use a philosophical metaphor (in a literal sense, not "It's like the man in the room in the chinese room thought experiment", ho ho, academic humour) we're currently in the medieval age of gaming. In the grand experience of Philosophy, it all started with a bunch of Greeks who started asking annoying questions and wouldn't shut up about it, to the point where most mainstream greeks were really annoyed with them. These Greeks established a vast number of the still-used-modern ideas of philosophy, most of them just adapted by the basic principle still in use.
The Romans came along next, and while there were some original ideas, alot of what they were doing was building up upon the original Greek philosophies, pretending it was their own (like they did with alot of things Greek).
Following this period of Greek (and Roman) philosophical shouting came the Dark Ages. This is a period where no one much cared about philosophy, but it was followed by the Medieval period. All philosophy in this period revolved around "How can we apply Aristotle and Socretes to the bible?" in which there WERE no original ideas beyond their masterful ability to put their hands over their ears and shout "la la la, I can't hear you saying Aristotle wasn't even a christian, la la la". In essence they ignored a vast majority of ideas that existed, and those they liked they tried to shoehorn into an idea they were comfortable with.
It wasn't until some guy named Descartes came along during the renaissance and asked a few new questions was philosophy really reinvented. Ok, he was completely wrong on nearly all accounts, but the fact he tried something new was bloody amazing. From him sprung whole bunches of new philosophers and philosophies, all written in other languages so that students who only speak english need to make do with translations that often go as word-for-word as they can, resulting in phrases like "an individuals being-in-experience-without-influence-of-their-being-in-pants" and other awkwardities.
Hang on, this is supposed to be a post about computer games, and I just spent the last four paragraphs summarising down the history of philosophy so much I've probably become completely wrong. But that is where it gets ingenius.
Look back at the 'Old' days. Yes, you remember those. The heady days of the NES, SNES, Mega Drive and original gameboy. The days in which if you wanted to use something motion sensitive it meant you were playing baseball outside. Games of such weirdness in storytelling and gameplay, where the immense variety of games was made possible because, let's face it, making one required nothing more then you to be a nerd, have a computer, and be able to make pixel art (sometimes).
From that period to about a dozen years ago, roughly, was the Greek era of gaming. Alot of new and interesting ideas, experimental thoughts being tried out and abandoned if they didn't stand up to scrutiny. About 12 to 8 years ago was the Roman period, where there were some new ideas but mostly it was just improvements upon the genre's already in place. The FPS was continually advanced, polygons got so impressive they could give Lara Croft pointy nipples (that word isn't going to stop my google-porn-results problem*) and Starcraft had ruined the lives of hundreds of nerds as they had their egos crushed by massed hordes of pixels screaming "kekekeke".
What happened eight years ago to ruin it all? This may be the cynical side of me talking, but to me if feels as though the computer games factory suddenly all packed up and went home, but forgot to turn the machines off, pumping out hordes of similar games in which the only difference is if you're a Space Marine, a normal Marine, or a Viking. It's like the games industry said "Well that's it boys, we've perfected the games, no need to strain yourselves now. Just clone Halo/Starcraft/World of Warcraft/GTA, and reskin."
I understand the limitations of time and money, resulting in games being difficult to find funding unless they're based on a tried and true concept which the publisher feels is highly likely to work. But come on, surely there's room for a few enterprising ideas. On a brief trip back through memory lane, the only big games I can think of in recent years that weren't either sequels or retreads of incredibly familiar gameplay mechanics are Spore (which I disliked) and Mirror's Edge (which I've never played). Everything else is either the eleventibillionth in a series that should have finished at 2, maximum 3, a game using such similar mechanics to other stuff it might as well be a sequel, or a reasonably shallow 'merge' of two different game genres that can proclaim originality but really is still in the shallow end of the pool.
Don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed alot of games over the years. Knights of the Old Republic, the Total War series, Mass Effect, Chaos League, the Armoured Core series, City of Heroes and the original Homeworld all kept me going for ages. But few of them drag me in for extended periods of time.
I think it's why I get so enthusiastic about single player RPGs (ones that AREN'T solely shoot and slacks. If there are genuine options in the dialogue that do more then give you good ending or bad ending, I get excited in my pantaloons), since if you discount the MMOs there aren't many that are so successful they inspire direct clones with reskins. And even the ones that could argueably be like this (Morrowind/Oblivion, Neverwinter Nights, etc) the mechanics are either so unique or outright copyrighted, making copying them pointless. This means that aside from a simple staple of RPGs (agility is avoid hits, strength is carrying crap, etc) they all have to be somewhat unique. I love relearning rules and working out how to manipulate them for my benefit with a characterful... character. It's like learning the ins and outs of sex with your girlfriend in all her disgusting kinks, then breaking up with her for someone with a better body and lower inhibitions. Repeat ten times, then go back to your first girlfriend and find out it's still FUN.
Note to self: Upcoming post, do "Why Neverwinter Nights 2 expansion pack 'Storms of Zehir' went wrong/sucks."
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Reason for disliking GTA
Having played one of the GTA games for a while on my mini-holiday, I have come to a realisation.
I always appreciated the idea of a grand open sandbox world in which a character can act as he pleases, so it always confused me as to why I didn't like the GTA games. Now I finally know.
For me, Sandbox games imply you can create your characters personality by choosing how he acts. In the GTA games, the characters are never someone I can sympathise with or genuinely wish to get ahead in life. They may be realistic characters, they may represent a facet of modern urban life that try as we might we cannot easily wish away, they may even have slight comedic turns at times, but that doesn't change the fact that outside of a minor amount of simple human concern I wouldn't feel particularly moved if they crashed one of their stolen cars into a lamp post and suffered broken bones. There is very little about the GTA characters that I am able to empathise with.
Yes, I realise the GTA games are not meant to be a moving narrative emotional drama within the gaming genre, but come on, how am I supposed to want to see the main character succeed if I don't LIKE him. If any of the main characters of the GTA series and I were in a car together on a long drive, we would have NOTHING to talk about.
Man, considering how big a nerd I proclaim myself to be, I really don't like alot of the common nerd games. Halo, Grand Theft Auto, Warcraft, Half Life... I must be an Indie nerd, or something.
I always appreciated the idea of a grand open sandbox world in which a character can act as he pleases, so it always confused me as to why I didn't like the GTA games. Now I finally know.
For me, Sandbox games imply you can create your characters personality by choosing how he acts. In the GTA games, the characters are never someone I can sympathise with or genuinely wish to get ahead in life. They may be realistic characters, they may represent a facet of modern urban life that try as we might we cannot easily wish away, they may even have slight comedic turns at times, but that doesn't change the fact that outside of a minor amount of simple human concern I wouldn't feel particularly moved if they crashed one of their stolen cars into a lamp post and suffered broken bones. There is very little about the GTA characters that I am able to empathise with.
Yes, I realise the GTA games are not meant to be a moving narrative emotional drama within the gaming genre, but come on, how am I supposed to want to see the main character succeed if I don't LIKE him. If any of the main characters of the GTA series and I were in a car together on a long drive, we would have NOTHING to talk about.
Man, considering how big a nerd I proclaim myself to be, I really don't like alot of the common nerd games. Halo, Grand Theft Auto, Warcraft, Half Life... I must be an Indie nerd, or something.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
R2-D2, an analysis
Wow. Ladies and gentlemen, this is my blog's 150th post. That is a reasonable milestone, and shows a sign of age in the blog. How appropriate then that it falls upon today, my 22nd birthday. It seems that both for me and my blog, a time has come whereupon maturity must reign. We have both grown and developed over this time, one more then the other. I like to believe that as I have matured into what I like to believe is a fine specimen of a man, and as such I like to think this blog has become a genuine example of enjoyable recreational writing. And now, onto the post.
R2-D2 is a giant douche.
I know this topic has been covered before on other blogs, and in many arguements about the effects of the new trilogy on the Star Wars saga, but it is the case.
Let's assemble a collection of facts as visible in the movies.
1. R2-D2 was very familiar with Obi-wan Kenobi prior to the old trilogy. R2 helped Obi-wan and Anakin rescue the Chancellor.
2. R2 was aware that Anakin was Darth Vader. He was present on the lava planet when Obi-wan and Anakin fought, seeing Anakin go crazy-monkey-arse on everyone. The only part that was in any potential doubt was if Anakin went on to become Darth Vader, but considering he was hanging around on the rebel base afterwards where it was all being discussed, surely it would be mentioned at least ONCE around him. If not... you'd have to be stupid not to make the link. Obi-wan wins a fight against Anakin, suddenly Anakin's replaced at the emperor's side by a dude who needs life support to survive.
3. R2 was aware that Luke and Leia were brother and sister.
4. R2 never had his memory wiped, like C3PO did. 5. R2 is more then a mere automated Droid. He is capable of independant thought and decision making. This can be seen in numerous instances in the various episodes. Some notable examples (found in the old trilogy, at the time of most of R2's douchiness) are:
5A. Trying to entice C3PO along on the trip along the sands of Tatooine with promises of adventures.
5B. Actively lying to Luke (via C3PO) in episode 4 in order to get the restraining bolt removed.
5C. R2 making a bunch of protesting sounds when they were closing the door on Luke in episode 5, followed by a disappointed 'whine'.
5D. He displays anger by zapping an Ewok after they release him.
This is among other examples.
6. R2 is capable of independant decision making. This is shown when he stops repairing C3PO despite orders to do so, so he can fix the Millenium Falcon.
So, when we put facts 1 through 6 together, we come to a very specific conclusion.
R2D2 is a bastard.
When he tempts Luke into helping him by promising to show more of the princess booty, it could be argued at that point he hasn't made the link between "Luke Skywalker" from the planet Tatooine and "Anakin Skywalker" from the planet Tatooine, despite having met Uncle Owen's family before and been on THAT EXACT PROPERTY before. He may just be that thick. But then he meets Obi-wan (who claims not to have met him, probably why R2 was treating everyone like he was. He felt annoyed at being snubbed), who mentions Luke's "great Jedi Knight father". Surely he made the connection there.
R2 accompanies the Senator who adopted Leia back to Alderaan. So he should know that the Senator adopted the child (or one of them) that Padme had. From that he could easily deduce there were twins, and that Leia are brother and sister.
Yet he tells neither of them that fact, nor that their father is Darth God-Damned VADER.
If you need further proof? He doesn't even bat an eyelid when he's told C3PO, his constant companion, is going to get his memory wiped. He just. Doesn't. Care.
R2-D2 is a douche.
R2-D2 is a giant douche.
I know this topic has been covered before on other blogs, and in many arguements about the effects of the new trilogy on the Star Wars saga, but it is the case.
Let's assemble a collection of facts as visible in the movies.
1. R2-D2 was very familiar with Obi-wan Kenobi prior to the old trilogy. R2 helped Obi-wan and Anakin rescue the Chancellor.
2. R2 was aware that Anakin was Darth Vader. He was present on the lava planet when Obi-wan and Anakin fought, seeing Anakin go crazy-monkey-arse on everyone. The only part that was in any potential doubt was if Anakin went on to become Darth Vader, but considering he was hanging around on the rebel base afterwards where it was all being discussed, surely it would be mentioned at least ONCE around him. If not... you'd have to be stupid not to make the link. Obi-wan wins a fight against Anakin, suddenly Anakin's replaced at the emperor's side by a dude who needs life support to survive.
3. R2 was aware that Luke and Leia were brother and sister.
4. R2 never had his memory wiped, like C3PO did. 5. R2 is more then a mere automated Droid. He is capable of independant thought and decision making. This can be seen in numerous instances in the various episodes. Some notable examples (found in the old trilogy, at the time of most of R2's douchiness) are:
5A. Trying to entice C3PO along on the trip along the sands of Tatooine with promises of adventures.
5B. Actively lying to Luke (via C3PO) in episode 4 in order to get the restraining bolt removed.
5C. R2 making a bunch of protesting sounds when they were closing the door on Luke in episode 5, followed by a disappointed 'whine'.
5D. He displays anger by zapping an Ewok after they release him.
This is among other examples.
6. R2 is capable of independant decision making. This is shown when he stops repairing C3PO despite orders to do so, so he can fix the Millenium Falcon.
So, when we put facts 1 through 6 together, we come to a very specific conclusion.
R2D2 is a bastard.
When he tempts Luke into helping him by promising to show more of the princess booty, it could be argued at that point he hasn't made the link between "Luke Skywalker" from the planet Tatooine and "Anakin Skywalker" from the planet Tatooine, despite having met Uncle Owen's family before and been on THAT EXACT PROPERTY before. He may just be that thick. But then he meets Obi-wan (who claims not to have met him, probably why R2 was treating everyone like he was. He felt annoyed at being snubbed), who mentions Luke's "great Jedi Knight father". Surely he made the connection there.
R2 accompanies the Senator who adopted Leia back to Alderaan. So he should know that the Senator adopted the child (or one of them) that Padme had. From that he could easily deduce there were twins, and that Leia are brother and sister.
Yet he tells neither of them that fact, nor that their father is Darth God-Damned VADER.
If you need further proof? He doesn't even bat an eyelid when he's told C3PO, his constant companion, is going to get his memory wiped. He just. Doesn't. Care.
R2-D2 is a douche.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Armoured Core love
Thank god for the Armoured (I refuse to use the Americanization 'Armor') Core series of games.
1. It is a series of games about giant, agile robots blowing the snot out of everyone and everything around them. Even with an incomprehensible storyline, it's AWESOME and genuinely enjoyable.
2. Enormous amounts of customisation, leading to players designing their ideal robot with ease, then feeling pangs of guilt as they have to replace that (currently) useless laser canon on their shoulder with a missile launcher, even if only for one mission. This degree of customisation is absolutely brilliant, and is something all giant-robot games should strive for and attempt to emulate. Aesthetically, even though I'm more one of the bulky mid-tech style robots, the Armoured Core design is quite beautiful and varied, going from streamlined slender light 'bot, to bulky tank-tracked brute force machine.
3. I'm good at it.
You heard me. One of the reasons I view this game as superior to many others is the entirely selfish reason that I AM GOOD AT IT.
It takes me a few minutes when I pick the game up after a 12 month break, but upon replaying my friend's copy of AC4, I was able to defeat enemies that are meant to be enormously difficult with a scary amount of ease.
I'm not a savant at it or anything, I struggle with plenty of the missions, especially on hard, and there are still enemies in the Simulator I just can't beat, but... I do scarily impressive at it. And it gives me a chance to try and exercise the tactical side of my brain. I do radical redesigns of my beloved Scythe MK-II AC (creating the Scythe DF and MB. Direct Fire and Missile Boat respectively) dependant on what is required for the fight. From there I alter my in-game tactics dependant upon the AI strategy employed, keeping close to ranged-fighters, keeping distant from close-combaters, etc etc.
I love these games.
Coming up: First impressions of Grand Theft Auto, having actually, finally, played the bastard.
1. It is a series of games about giant, agile robots blowing the snot out of everyone and everything around them. Even with an incomprehensible storyline, it's AWESOME and genuinely enjoyable.
2. Enormous amounts of customisation, leading to players designing their ideal robot with ease, then feeling pangs of guilt as they have to replace that (currently) useless laser canon on their shoulder with a missile launcher, even if only for one mission. This degree of customisation is absolutely brilliant, and is something all giant-robot games should strive for and attempt to emulate. Aesthetically, even though I'm more one of the bulky mid-tech style robots, the Armoured Core design is quite beautiful and varied, going from streamlined slender light 'bot, to bulky tank-tracked brute force machine.
3. I'm good at it.
You heard me. One of the reasons I view this game as superior to many others is the entirely selfish reason that I AM GOOD AT IT.
It takes me a few minutes when I pick the game up after a 12 month break, but upon replaying my friend's copy of AC4, I was able to defeat enemies that are meant to be enormously difficult with a scary amount of ease.
I'm not a savant at it or anything, I struggle with plenty of the missions, especially on hard, and there are still enemies in the Simulator I just can't beat, but... I do scarily impressive at it. And it gives me a chance to try and exercise the tactical side of my brain. I do radical redesigns of my beloved Scythe MK-II AC (creating the Scythe DF and MB. Direct Fire and Missile Boat respectively) dependant on what is required for the fight. From there I alter my in-game tactics dependant upon the AI strategy employed, keeping close to ranged-fighters, keeping distant from close-combaters, etc etc.
I love these games.
Coming up: First impressions of Grand Theft Auto, having actually, finally, played the bastard.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Holiday time!
As you can see, I haven't updated as regularly as I should, as a responsible blogger.
Well, work has been busy, and now I'm going away for five days. So to tide you over, I am attempting something new. A stream of consciousness post. NOTHING in this post shall be edited, it shall simply flow from the previous, with the only editing allowed being fixing up spelling mistakes.
This could backfire immensely.
Recently I've begun replaying the two Knights of the Old Republic games side by side, comparing the two. Please, PLEASE Bioware, don't abandon the single-player KotOR series. This needs something else, something done genuinely RIGHT so it doesn't end on a sour note (KotOR2) leading into a big flat tuba 'blaart'. An odd analogy, I admit, but it fits with the 'note' comment.
I've already discussed parts of the reason I disliked Knights 2 in a previous post, so I won't go into it again, but... come on Bioware. And actually do it YOURSELF this time, don't just pass the job on to Obsidian entertainment like you do with all your sequels, leading to inferior products.
There is a train of thought here. RPG games that disappoint. Someone needs to tell Peter Molynew... Molynus... The guy who made the Sims and Fable, what precisely "open world" is. Open world, in a nutshell, means that when you play the game three or four times over, you should be able to get a genuinely different experience. And I don't mean "I married generic person 1 in game 1, and generic person 1 a bit later on in game 2", I mean GENUINELY different. Random events shaping things and making it nearly impossible to replay the same story twice, choices beyond "Pinnicle of goodness and awesomenarity" and "puppy-sodomiser" (that isn't going to help my current google search result problem, which I've explained in previous posts).
As a genuine offer, computer game companies of the world, put me in an office for three weeks straight with a word processor and a "How to write video game design documents" and I will deliver to you a design that, if implemented right, will make me ORGASM IN MY TROUSERS, and potentially sell very very well. Note I said orgasm there, not Nerdgasm. Nerdgasm's are extreme expressions of self enjoyment sans trouser-stain.
The word 'sans' is not used often enough. I try to slip it in where I can, but no one notices (or if they do they just think "he's trying to sound smart again"), but really the greatest use for this word possible is "sans trousers." Trouser, banana and cheese are the three most inherently funny words in the English language. Other words, such as Vulva, rely solely upon a simple premise in that you do not expect to hear those words, and that is their sole entertainment value. Trousers, banana and cheese are just inherently funny to say. Try to say those in a dramatic sentence and you will fail.
"Someone stole my trousers!"
"I was given a concussion by a hurled banana"
"He was stabbed with some cheese"
No matter how serious the subject matter, it is just not possible to make them dramatic.
Really, pants in general aren't dramatic. I understand the humour value of the following sentence relies upon the fact that in the UK "Pants" means underwear, but one of my favourite ever Zero Punctuation phrases is:
"It ceases to be grovy pants and ends up just being pants".
Pants is also a funny word. Really, there is no word for the things you put around your waist that go down to your legs that can be anything BUT funny. Try to put Pants in a dramatic sentence. It will fail.
Ok, stream of consciousness over.
Wow. That is a scary stream.
See you all in about a week.
Well, work has been busy, and now I'm going away for five days. So to tide you over, I am attempting something new. A stream of consciousness post. NOTHING in this post shall be edited, it shall simply flow from the previous, with the only editing allowed being fixing up spelling mistakes.
This could backfire immensely.
Recently I've begun replaying the two Knights of the Old Republic games side by side, comparing the two. Please, PLEASE Bioware, don't abandon the single-player KotOR series. This needs something else, something done genuinely RIGHT so it doesn't end on a sour note (KotOR2) leading into a big flat tuba 'blaart'. An odd analogy, I admit, but it fits with the 'note' comment.
I've already discussed parts of the reason I disliked Knights 2 in a previous post, so I won't go into it again, but... come on Bioware. And actually do it YOURSELF this time, don't just pass the job on to Obsidian entertainment like you do with all your sequels, leading to inferior products.
There is a train of thought here. RPG games that disappoint. Someone needs to tell Peter Molynew... Molynus... The guy who made the Sims and Fable, what precisely "open world" is. Open world, in a nutshell, means that when you play the game three or four times over, you should be able to get a genuinely different experience. And I don't mean "I married generic person 1 in game 1, and generic person 1 a bit later on in game 2", I mean GENUINELY different. Random events shaping things and making it nearly impossible to replay the same story twice, choices beyond "Pinnicle of goodness and awesomenarity" and "puppy-sodomiser" (that isn't going to help my current google search result problem, which I've explained in previous posts).
As a genuine offer, computer game companies of the world, put me in an office for three weeks straight with a word processor and a "How to write video game design documents" and I will deliver to you a design that, if implemented right, will make me ORGASM IN MY TROUSERS, and potentially sell very very well. Note I said orgasm there, not Nerdgasm. Nerdgasm's are extreme expressions of self enjoyment sans trouser-stain.
The word 'sans' is not used often enough. I try to slip it in where I can, but no one notices (or if they do they just think "he's trying to sound smart again"), but really the greatest use for this word possible is "sans trousers." Trouser, banana and cheese are the three most inherently funny words in the English language. Other words, such as Vulva, rely solely upon a simple premise in that you do not expect to hear those words, and that is their sole entertainment value. Trousers, banana and cheese are just inherently funny to say. Try to say those in a dramatic sentence and you will fail.
"Someone stole my trousers!"
"I was given a concussion by a hurled banana"
"He was stabbed with some cheese"
No matter how serious the subject matter, it is just not possible to make them dramatic.
Really, pants in general aren't dramatic. I understand the humour value of the following sentence relies upon the fact that in the UK "Pants" means underwear, but one of my favourite ever Zero Punctuation phrases is:
"It ceases to be grovy pants and ends up just being pants".
Pants is also a funny word. Really, there is no word for the things you put around your waist that go down to your legs that can be anything BUT funny. Try to put Pants in a dramatic sentence. It will fail.
Ok, stream of consciousness over.
Wow. That is a scary stream.
See you all in about a week.
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