Remember Kingdoms of Amalur? How I said if the game flops the city of Rhode Island would have to pay for it? Well its exactly what happened. Somehow they convinced Rhode Island to lend them 75 million but thats not all, they will also cover the loan if they somehow defaulted it. How did they even fuck this up so badly. Well for starters they invested all of the money into a new IP not knowing whether it will even be good. Somehow they figured people would like it enough to support novels, comics, a MMO, and an action rpg all at once. ALL AT ONCE. They decided to do them all at the same time. There was even a sequel for KoA2 in the making, while the MMO is coming out soon in 2013. Soon eh? Its pretty hard to finish a MMO when you fired over 300 employees and aren't paying them.
The problem is the game did alright, it wasn't great and it wasn't as popular as they have expected. In fact they needed more than double break even. Then they sunk everything into a mmo and a sequel and ran out of money before they were even done. They were making games to make money. While everyone does it to make money, they have no idea how to make money and think that if you throw enough big names into it then they'll make enough money to fund the rest of the games they are working on simultaneously. Not just that the company is going to die, the taxpayers have to bail them out, R.A. Salvatore gets to run off with 5 million fucking dollars.
http://www.golocalprov.com/politics/donna-perry-taxpayers-are-owed-transparent-answers-by-the-edc/
Now I know why they couldn't break even. Fucking dick runs off with all the money. They needed to sell over 3 million copies to have enough money to fund their MMO. How the fuck do they expect a new IP to sell over 3 million? Are they completely fucking retarded? But they are not the biggest bunch of idiots, the people at Rhode Island who gave them the loan is. 75 million with no downside if they collapse and fail? Win win situation for them to fuck around. They did and they failed. Way to go.
And just recently they completely died firing all their employees and closing down their studios.
http://www.theverge.com/gaming/2012/5/24/3041662/38-studios-lays-off-entire-staff
Now all their employees are fucked, out of a job and Curt Schilling, the multi-millionaire baseball guy who founded the company used the money from the company to pay off a personal loan and then walked without having to pay a single cent.
According to the report, when 38 Studios moved from Massachusetts to Rhode Island in 2010, it offered employees a relocation program that would see the company sell their old homes for them. However, "some" employees received notice from banks this week that they had missed mortgage payments on their old homes, at least one of which 38 Studios told the owner employee it had sold last year. An unspecified 38 Studios official told the site that it was trying to resolve the situation.
http://www.gamespot.com/news/collapse-of-38-studios-sticks-some-devs-with-second-mortgage-6378649
Talk about fucking over their employees even more. This is the most infuriating thing about this whole ordeal. The people in charge walk away with money in their pockets while everyone else pays for it. They claimed they did extensive research and that MMOs rake in money. So they wanted to make a MMO without any idea on how well KoA would do. That just isn't true.
http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-1.png
http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-2.png
MMOs die off fast and when they do they usually take half the company if not all with them. They are risking all 100% of the MMO by funding it with money they will earn from KoA which they need to sell over 3 million copies at full price. And no one thought this was a bad idea?
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
To the Moon - Even RPG maker games can make money
I find it funny that unknown indie games are thriving and Ubisoft is still complaining about a 90% drop in sales because of the evil pirates. After continuing my Adventure game marathon I found this game. Someone had suggested it on the forums. I looked at it saw a RPG maker game (a program that premakes RPGs for you easily for people who can't make them) and went fuck that. But after hearing a lot about it again and having just finished up Gray Matter I decided to give it a try. At first I'm going "what is this some lame comedy bullshit?" Then I played longer and finally understood what everyone was talking about. The game may look unappealing but the story is great. After playing for the few hours it took to finish the game, the graphics doesn't look so bad anymore. However is this really worth 12 bucks?
The game is almost as short as Dear Esther and theres absolutely no replay value. Why is it worth 12 bucks? For a game you make in RPG maker? Seems like anyone can throw together a game and sell it these days. However I remember saying games with shitty gameplay but good stories should stick to writing books this one is a bit different. It may be an RPG maker game but its an Adventure game at heart. It wouldn't be fun if it was a real game with lots of dumb stuff to distract you and it wouldn't make sense in a book. Its mixing these two together that you get the perfect game, an Adventure game. Without being able to interact with the world and find objects to trigger memories it just wouldn't be the same. Its a shame Adventure games are dying out. I may not have played many of them, but I still find them extremely fun.
Adventure games may be dying but its certainly not entirely dead. It has a very niche audience that are eagerly waiting for more. Double Fine recently started a Kickstarter for a new adventure game and they raised over 3 million dollars to make the game. That is a lot of fucking money from people desperately wanting a new adventure game. A lot of adventure games joined up Kickstarter too and are getting close to reaching the goal. I'm going off topic. When you first start the game you meet up with your two protagonists, Dr. Eva Rosalene and Dr. Neil Watts. The two of you have unique jobs where the two of you give the person another chance to live by granting them one wish just before they die but everything is just a memory. You meet the caretakers of an elderly man named Johnny who is on his deathbed. You are told his wish is to go to the moon and the two of you enter his memories and find out exactly why and by changing certain events in his memory the two of you can make that wish come true. However its never really that simple is it?
Its painful and heartbreaking. The characters are all very likable, and you're always begging for more information but its never given to you. As you go back further in time you learn more and more about them and why they are doing what they did. There is really nothing I can say without spoiling the game. The story is very good and the music isn't bad. It fits the theme pretty well. However as the game ended we were told this is part 1 of many. If this really is part 1 of many then its already 12 bucks for 1 part?. Thats pretty steep of a price for something with barely any replay value with RPG maker graphics.
Do not let the first few minutes of the game fool you. Walking around like an RPG and fighting turn based combat is all for comedic effect. People start off hating the protagonists because they add nothing to the story until later on they realize they're there for the comedic effect to alleviate the bleakness of the game. Its a very depressing game yet touching at the same time. I don't hate this game, in fact I like it a lot. Would this be called an adventure game? It most likely can. People assume its an RPG because its made in RPG maker. It is not. Adventure games are unique in the sense that they rely more on the story to sell the game. However the gameplay is not entirely forgotten. Without proper gameplay, an adventure game is nothing but a story. Its the merging of these two things that we get something amazing. This game did it right.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqkJuSV-23U
Give it a try.
The game is almost as short as Dear Esther and theres absolutely no replay value. Why is it worth 12 bucks? For a game you make in RPG maker? Seems like anyone can throw together a game and sell it these days. However I remember saying games with shitty gameplay but good stories should stick to writing books this one is a bit different. It may be an RPG maker game but its an Adventure game at heart. It wouldn't be fun if it was a real game with lots of dumb stuff to distract you and it wouldn't make sense in a book. Its mixing these two together that you get the perfect game, an Adventure game. Without being able to interact with the world and find objects to trigger memories it just wouldn't be the same. Its a shame Adventure games are dying out. I may not have played many of them, but I still find them extremely fun.
Adventure games may be dying but its certainly not entirely dead. It has a very niche audience that are eagerly waiting for more. Double Fine recently started a Kickstarter for a new adventure game and they raised over 3 million dollars to make the game. That is a lot of fucking money from people desperately wanting a new adventure game. A lot of adventure games joined up Kickstarter too and are getting close to reaching the goal. I'm going off topic. When you first start the game you meet up with your two protagonists, Dr. Eva Rosalene and Dr. Neil Watts. The two of you have unique jobs where the two of you give the person another chance to live by granting them one wish just before they die but everything is just a memory. You meet the caretakers of an elderly man named Johnny who is on his deathbed. You are told his wish is to go to the moon and the two of you enter his memories and find out exactly why and by changing certain events in his memory the two of you can make that wish come true. However its never really that simple is it?
Its painful and heartbreaking. The characters are all very likable, and you're always begging for more information but its never given to you. As you go back further in time you learn more and more about them and why they are doing what they did. There is really nothing I can say without spoiling the game. The story is very good and the music isn't bad. It fits the theme pretty well. However as the game ended we were told this is part 1 of many. If this really is part 1 of many then its already 12 bucks for 1 part?. Thats pretty steep of a price for something with barely any replay value with RPG maker graphics.
Do not let the first few minutes of the game fool you. Walking around like an RPG and fighting turn based combat is all for comedic effect. People start off hating the protagonists because they add nothing to the story until later on they realize they're there for the comedic effect to alleviate the bleakness of the game. Its a very depressing game yet touching at the same time. I don't hate this game, in fact I like it a lot. Would this be called an adventure game? It most likely can. People assume its an RPG because its made in RPG maker. It is not. Adventure games are unique in the sense that they rely more on the story to sell the game. However the gameplay is not entirely forgotten. Without proper gameplay, an adventure game is nothing but a story. Its the merging of these two things that we get something amazing. This game did it right.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqkJuSV-23U
Give it a try.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Captain Morgane and the Golden Turtle - You need a man to get anything done
Well what is this game? Its a pirate adventure game set in the Caribbean. Wait, isn't there another game like that? Yeah one of the most famous adventure games of all time, Monkey Island. Except this game you are searching for turtle island. The game isn't bad its reminds me a lot of Monkey Island but instead of a lumbering oaf that is Guybrush you get this giant asshole Morgane. Morgane isn't as witty or resourceful as Guybrush but she has a crew that can do stuff for her. I forgot where I heard about this game but it caught my attention by being so similar to Monkey Island. Its a spinoff series of another adventure game by the same company called So Blond and share many of the same characters.
The graphics are pretty good, but character sprites are a little lacking but easily overlooked. Most characters are likable and entertaining minus a few. Voice acting is decently well done. There is a problem though, and that is Morgane thinks of you as an idiot. She needs to point out everything to you. EVERY LITTLE THING. Oh I got a cloth I should go to the pump. Oh the pump is missing a rivet it must be on the ground. Oh I fixed the pump now I can add water to my cloth. The cloth is wet now I can clean the windows with it. I cleaned the windows, Mama is going to be so proud. Arghhhh. Let us think for ourselves you dumb brat. The game starts as an 8 year old Morgane doing chores for her mother and its mostly a tutorial so she gives you a ton of information. As you progress you are given less and less information. Even with so, the amount of information given is still too much. You're supposed to be Morgane, not some loser that follows Morgane around while she explains everything to you a second time because you're too stupid to understand. Yes literally she repeats what just happened on the screen to you. The character says something and something happens oh no heres Morgane breaking the 4th wall, yet again, to explain to you in simpler terms. The inventory is kinda annoying as its extremely sensitive. Moving it too far to the left or right flies across all the pages.
Later on you become the acting captain for your father's ship when you are grown up. At first your crew is slow to trust you but eventually they start growing on you. You as in Morgane. What I liked is that she is both a woman and Spanish. Thats two minorities in video games in one character. Although Morgane is likable and portrayed in a positive light as a capable independent woman, she can never get anything done without ordering a man to do it. For example you need to climb up a wall, you have to call someone to give you a lift. Opening a window? Need a man to open it. Sure the captain's first mate has comically huge strength and is twice as big as the other guy but most of the time the men used are random scrawny guys. He is used when you need to cut through a jungle with a battle axe or threaten away pirates and to act as a bodyguard because its an unsafe area in the French Quarter. Its a shame. Guybrush isn't super strong but as an adventure game we can understand being able to hold random huge objects or lift things that are impossible (until you suddenly aren't!) Because its an adventure game how else are you supposed to fit 50 items in your pants?
I can understand if its a super realistic game but this is a comedy adventure game. Its not as witty as Monkey Island but its not bad if you don't compare it to that. You're able to hold giant fucking totem poles in your pants to save your crew yet you can't open a window because you're a girl and you don't have the strength? Why do you have to go back to call a crewmate to do it? Other than that theres really not much to hate about the game. The game has many references like on a rock formation at the top of a cliff if you investigate with the look button you make a comment about how it looks like a monkey holding up a lion cub. An obvious reference to Lion King. Inside the kitchen you see lots of fish and various seafood hanging on the walls. One of them looks like a metroid. If you keep an eye open for these things you can find them easy. Theres even a my little pony reference. However the puzzles for the game is very easy. Any adventure game veteran would find it too easy but for a novice it should be fine.
Overall, its an ok game but its not great. If only you can get things done without a man. Even so, Morgane is a memorable character with her Spanish accent and sharp tongue. It makes me smile every time someone goes "Hello Morgane (pronounced mor-gain) how are you" because of the way it sounds. Its pleasing to hear an ethnic name and that of a woman in a game. Morgane isn't sexualized either. She is a strong female character (despite needing men to do all the heavy lifting yet being able to hold giant objects like totem poles to save your crew when they get shackled is exempt from this.) A rare breed and more games need to learn to make.
The graphics are pretty good, but character sprites are a little lacking but easily overlooked. Most characters are likable and entertaining minus a few. Voice acting is decently well done. There is a problem though, and that is Morgane thinks of you as an idiot. She needs to point out everything to you. EVERY LITTLE THING. Oh I got a cloth I should go to the pump. Oh the pump is missing a rivet it must be on the ground. Oh I fixed the pump now I can add water to my cloth. The cloth is wet now I can clean the windows with it. I cleaned the windows, Mama is going to be so proud. Arghhhh. Let us think for ourselves you dumb brat. The game starts as an 8 year old Morgane doing chores for her mother and its mostly a tutorial so she gives you a ton of information. As you progress you are given less and less information. Even with so, the amount of information given is still too much. You're supposed to be Morgane, not some loser that follows Morgane around while she explains everything to you a second time because you're too stupid to understand. Yes literally she repeats what just happened on the screen to you. The character says something and something happens oh no heres Morgane breaking the 4th wall, yet again, to explain to you in simpler terms. The inventory is kinda annoying as its extremely sensitive. Moving it too far to the left or right flies across all the pages.
Later on you become the acting captain for your father's ship when you are grown up. At first your crew is slow to trust you but eventually they start growing on you. You as in Morgane. What I liked is that she is both a woman and Spanish. Thats two minorities in video games in one character. Although Morgane is likable and portrayed in a positive light as a capable independent woman, she can never get anything done without ordering a man to do it. For example you need to climb up a wall, you have to call someone to give you a lift. Opening a window? Need a man to open it. Sure the captain's first mate has comically huge strength and is twice as big as the other guy but most of the time the men used are random scrawny guys. He is used when you need to cut through a jungle with a battle axe or threaten away pirates and to act as a bodyguard because its an unsafe area in the French Quarter. Its a shame. Guybrush isn't super strong but as an adventure game we can understand being able to hold random huge objects or lift things that are impossible (until you suddenly aren't!) Because its an adventure game how else are you supposed to fit 50 items in your pants?
I can understand if its a super realistic game but this is a comedy adventure game. Its not as witty as Monkey Island but its not bad if you don't compare it to that. You're able to hold giant fucking totem poles in your pants to save your crew yet you can't open a window because you're a girl and you don't have the strength? Why do you have to go back to call a crewmate to do it? Other than that theres really not much to hate about the game. The game has many references like on a rock formation at the top of a cliff if you investigate with the look button you make a comment about how it looks like a monkey holding up a lion cub. An obvious reference to Lion King. Inside the kitchen you see lots of fish and various seafood hanging on the walls. One of them looks like a metroid. If you keep an eye open for these things you can find them easy. Theres even a my little pony reference. However the puzzles for the game is very easy. Any adventure game veteran would find it too easy but for a novice it should be fine.
Overall, its an ok game but its not great. If only you can get things done without a man. Even so, Morgane is a memorable character with her Spanish accent and sharp tongue. It makes me smile every time someone goes "Hello Morgane (pronounced mor-gain) how are you" because of the way it sounds. Its pleasing to hear an ethnic name and that of a woman in a game. Morgane isn't sexualized either. She is a strong female character (despite needing men to do all the heavy lifting yet being able to hold giant objects like totem poles to save your crew when they get shackled is exempt from this.) A rare breed and more games need to learn to make.
Collector Editions - Another way to spell cognitive dissonance
Collector Editions are for people who wish to feel special. They are filled with nothing but the prestige of owning a collector edition that they spent massive amounts of money on. I don't buy collector editions. Why? Because I rather use that money to buy two games instead. Whats really in there anyways? Usually they include art books, bonus content on how the game is made, and other little stuff that doesn't really add much. Some of the more recent ones includes day one DLC, exclusive ingame items (that can be edited in by modifying the files by changing one line,) guaranteed beta access, and more. These are limited in numbers so people who buy them can feel special. For a 60 dollar game, collector editions go for 80-90 dollars. That is a "normal" collector edition.
What are these super special collector editions then? Well, how about one for 150 dollars? Bethesda for example, claimed that games are too expensive to make so they have to charge their collector editions for 150 bucks. That seems a little steep but people buy it up. Not wanting to be outdone, Kingdoms of Amalur has a collector edition for 380 bucks. Yes 380 fucking bucks. That shit is stupid as fuck. Who in their right mind would shell out 380 for a piece of shit collector's edition for a piece of shit game. The Secret World has one for 250 dollars but it includes a "lifetime subscription." If you're one of those thinking, "Hey that might be worthwhile if you play for an year and a half!" Then go slap yourself on the face. Lifetime subscriptions have never turned out well. The first game to ever do that, or one that I am aware of, is Hellgate London. That game flopped and closed down so fast that no one ever got their money's worth. When you get a lifetime subscription you are taking a gamble that the game won't flop. You are also gambling that you would continue playing the game for that long. Games that hand out choice for a lifetime subscription probably isn't looking forward to staying alive for very long because, why else would they give them out? They'd earn more money without it.
However, one company goes up and beyond everything in pure greed. I have never seen anything this stupid and greedy in my life. This goes beyond the stupidity of EA and Ubisoft. Who is it? Capcom. How stupid you ask, well would you ever pay 1293 bucks for a collector edition that has nothing but a leather jacket designed like the guy in the game? No its not a typo. No you did not read wrong. One fucking thousand two hundred and ninety three fucking bucks. I hope the collector edition comes with a gun to shoot yourself in the head because thats probably the only way you'll live down the shame and embarrassment of purchasing it. I can understand a tiny increase for 80-90 bucks. I can sorta understand 150 bucks for Bethesda, they have a huge fanbase and they are able to milk that much. I can understand lifetime subscriptions if you're willing to take a gamble. But for 1293 bucks there is nothing anyone can possibly say to justify that amount other than if Capcom comes out and says "We're greedy assholes and we want to know who is stupid enough to buy the collector edition because they've been eating up our shit and sucking our cocks for the past few years already by playing our shitty games. We want to know how far we can push it before they realize they're retards."
Maybe then, just maybe, it would be justifiable but that would never ever happen. Until people realize they're being played a fool game companies are just going to shit out collector editions with exuberant prices because they can.
What are these super special collector editions then? Well, how about one for 150 dollars? Bethesda for example, claimed that games are too expensive to make so they have to charge their collector editions for 150 bucks. That seems a little steep but people buy it up. Not wanting to be outdone, Kingdoms of Amalur has a collector edition for 380 bucks. Yes 380 fucking bucks. That shit is stupid as fuck. Who in their right mind would shell out 380 for a piece of shit collector's edition for a piece of shit game. The Secret World has one for 250 dollars but it includes a "lifetime subscription." If you're one of those thinking, "Hey that might be worthwhile if you play for an year and a half!" Then go slap yourself on the face. Lifetime subscriptions have never turned out well. The first game to ever do that, or one that I am aware of, is Hellgate London. That game flopped and closed down so fast that no one ever got their money's worth. When you get a lifetime subscription you are taking a gamble that the game won't flop. You are also gambling that you would continue playing the game for that long. Games that hand out choice for a lifetime subscription probably isn't looking forward to staying alive for very long because, why else would they give them out? They'd earn more money without it.
However, one company goes up and beyond everything in pure greed. I have never seen anything this stupid and greedy in my life. This goes beyond the stupidity of EA and Ubisoft. Who is it? Capcom. How stupid you ask, well would you ever pay 1293 bucks for a collector edition that has nothing but a leather jacket designed like the guy in the game? No its not a typo. No you did not read wrong. One fucking thousand two hundred and ninety three fucking bucks. I hope the collector edition comes with a gun to shoot yourself in the head because thats probably the only way you'll live down the shame and embarrassment of purchasing it. I can understand a tiny increase for 80-90 bucks. I can sorta understand 150 bucks for Bethesda, they have a huge fanbase and they are able to milk that much. I can understand lifetime subscriptions if you're willing to take a gamble. But for 1293 bucks there is nothing anyone can possibly say to justify that amount other than if Capcom comes out and says "We're greedy assholes and we want to know who is stupid enough to buy the collector edition because they've been eating up our shit and sucking our cocks for the past few years already by playing our shitty games. We want to know how far we can push it before they realize they're retards."
Maybe then, just maybe, it would be justifiable but that would never ever happen. Until people realize they're being played a fool game companies are just going to shit out collector editions with exuberant prices because they can.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Mass Effect Trilogy - You require a DLC to read this
Since Cent wouldn't write one it falls onto me, again. What is Mass Effect? Well it started back in 5 years ago about a man(or woman), Commander Shepard, out on a quest to save the galaxy. A sci-fi game taking place in the near future where humanity found artifacts on mars that led to a 10000 year jump of technology or something of that sort. Upon arriving at the Citadel they discovered that every specie uses it as their central hub of communication. When I first played the game and stepped onto the Citadel I was struck speechless by it. I admit I enjoyed the first game. Combat was a little lacking that is true. The storyline was ridiculous beyond belief. The characters although somewhat whiny are fairly likable and memorable. But what I remember most was the world. Traveling around the galaxy meeting the species, talking and listening to the history, and seeing the epic tale of Shepard take place. It wasn't perfect, but it wasn't bad either. I would consider it a pretty good game.
During this time, Dragon Age came out and Bioware learned how stupid their playerbase really are. They learned that people loved romances and shitty stories. They also learned that every loser out there would buy every single DLC available. So when Mass Effect 2 came out what we got was an Action FPS RPG that focused more on the combat. They added the cover system where you duck behind cover and leap over when you press the button again while holding forward. This causes a lot of problems because you have to use the spacebar to duck, exit cover, interact with object, leap over object and picking up other guns. That shit is horrible. Can't we separate them? No of course not. Consoles like the same button for everything. In ME3 this is even more stupid because pressing space will let you jump in the direction as well as jump from cover to cover. You can also press space to climb ladders. So half the time you are flying in every direction trying to climb the ladder or duck behind cover while getting blasted by guns. I just wanna get behind the cover but apparently I didn't click spacebar at the right area and I am doing somersaults in front of the wall.
ME2 was made so that anyone who didn't play ME1 would understand what ME2 was about. While that worked there were still a little bit of info missing. If you didn't play the first one it automatically picks the important choices for you and you cannot get the best endings or choices in ME3 because of that. Same goes for ME2 choices for ME3. This sucks because you'll miss out on most of the game. But that is fine because if you don't buy DLCs you will miss out on even more of the game. Unless you read up on Mass Effect Wikia, none of the shit you find out in the next game would make sense.
http://www.gamespot.com/features/who-the-hell-is-james-vega-6366008/
Important parts of the story are explained in DLCs. Why? Because they want to milk more money from the fucking idiots who buy their games. And of course they also add day one DLCs. As I have said before in a previous post, day one DLCs are the biggest bullshit to gaming. Anything they wanted to add could be added before its shipped or patched in. Of course they wouldn't do that because they'd miss out on the 10 bucks. Their excuse was that after the game is ready they had time to make DLCs before it ships to you. But everyone knew that wasn't the case when the leaked script that was out 5 months before it was out had the DLC. The DLC is also included on the game disc and the 10 bucks was just to unlock the content on the DVD. Really? Bioware and EA are fucking giant greedy dicks. So what happens if you never downloaded them? Well you don't get the story! Because it continues the game expecting you to know that. ME3 pretty much requires you to play ME1 and ME2 to understand. That also includes all DLCs. Not to mention choices aren't available to you if you don't.
In ME2 you join up with Cerberus one of the villain groups in ME1. Why? Well its part of the story. I never trusted them but Cent apparently did. If you did any of the side quests in ME1 you would see a ton of shit they done and would never agree to anything they could possibly do in ME2. The storyline revolves around getting a group of people and doing a suicide mission. There is really not much story to the game you just keep collecting people then head off. Because of that I wasn't so sure if the game would be terrible or not. I was waiting for ME3 to finally end the game once and for all. In ME2 they introduced a wide cast of characters which most of them are stupid. Every single person has problems and its up to Shepard to save them with his magical penis. You can romance almost everyone on your team. The people are different for a male or female Shepard. The characters are whiny, the storyline is weak and inconsistent to ME1, and the world is a billion times smaller. One thing I really hated was that we cannot really explore anywhere. In ME1 you can walk around listening to conversation and find out little snippets of information about whats going on in the galaxy. In ME2 all of this is replaced with people from the first game coming back in some way. It felt cool at that time because it was the first game I heard of that had persistent progression between games, but nowadays its so common. Outside of those five lines of dialogue, they do nothing to add to the world but say exactly what they did in ME1 for the people who didn't play. Also they butchered the returning characters pretty badly for example, Wrex in ME1 was a wise Krogan battlemaster with his the best interest of his species at heart, in ME3 he is a hotheaded fucker thats wants to breed with all the women. Why? Because his counterpart if you left him to die on Virmire (the default choice for people who started in ME2 or ME3) is a hotheaded fucker that wants to breed with all the women.
What is the point of romances in Bioware games anyways? They can never get them right but everyone hails them as the best romance writers ever. In ME1 you get the space racist or naive Asari child. In ME2 you get the whiny pathetic "perfect engineered" human, the psycho whiny emotional wreck, or the whiny Quarian waif. In ME3 you get all of those plus a gay dude who probably happens to be the best written and some dumb chick with an assdress from IGN that was added into the game for nerd pandering. These romances just randomly and magically appear with no buildup or anything. They are awkward and poorly written.
When we finally get into ME3 that was when shit hit the fan. First starting the game you'll notice that you have no fucking clue what is happening because it continues the story from a DLC in ME2 and a comic book in between the two games. It is NEVER explained. The only way to find out what the fuck happened is to read it up online. That is bullshit. It completely invalidated all my choices in the previous two games and decided to shit all over it. They basically went "I know you did this and that but since we decided to go this way with the game we're gonna change everything for you and pretend nothing happened." As you're going around going why the fuck is this happening? How the fuck is this happening you realize the biggest fucking flaw in the game. The story has been completely retconned. In the first game you stop the Reapers, a race of sentient synthetic warships, from attacking the Citadel and rendering all species lost without communication. In the third game the Reapers decided they're not going to do that like the past several milennia, instead they'll directly attack Earth and let Shepard and the rest of the galaxy gather strength. That is fine if you really want to retcon the story BUT DON'T CHANGE IT BACK AT THE END. At the end they decided they liked the original story and the Reapers magically moved the Citadel to earth (yes it can move why didn't they do it at the start of the game who fucking knows) but at that time its too late. The galaxy has been united because the Reapers are stupid. That brings me to another point, the Reaper's had a reason for culling the galaxy of organic life but it was considered "too complex" for you to comprehend. Obviously that wasn't true in ME3.
In ME3, Cerberus returns to being evil again and starts working for the reapers. It is a complete 180 from ME2 when Cerberus was helping you defeat the reapers. Why? I don't know it was never truly explained other than the reason that the person behind it, the Illusive Man was indoctrinated before he even formed the Cerberus organization. SO IT MAKES EVEN LESS SENSE? How do you fuck that one up so bad. Although there were some great missions and having returning characters from the previous two games most of them are terrible. Again they retconned most of the choices in ME1 and ME2 so that people who played neither of those games can get ME3. If you killed off a character in ME1 going yeah this is going to bite me in the ass! Someone appears in his/her place and the story is unchanged. So basically what you're telling me is what I did or didn't do in the previous games meant nothing? It was just an illusion tricking me into thinking I had a choice in what I was doing but in reality everything is set in stone already.
I didn't think they can make ME2's exploration even worse but they managed to do it. It is the most tedious and horribly constructed thing ever and I am not going into detail. To summarize you go around clicking scan on a random pocket in the galaxy and if you scan too much reapers come and blow you up. Yes its as dumb as it sounds. Side quests also involve scanning the galaxy. There are no longer mission side quests. Unlike ME1 where you ride the Mako around and explore you get quests that says "find and rescue the Elcor forces" when you talk to the Elcor ambassador. All you have to do is fly over to a planet hit scan and it says "anomaly detected" you fly over click on it click scan planet/moon drag your mouse around launch a probe then at the bottom right a pop up appears "Elcor fleet acquired." I finished the quest right? Then you look at your journal and you see the side quest magically grayed out. And you walk over to the war room and look at what you acquired. You gotten 40 extra military strength from the Elcor fleet! They managed to make everything worse and worse as the series continued. Combat got worse, storyline got worse, side quests got worse and the worst part of all, the sexism seemed to get worse.
I've mention Bioware being sexist as fuck and I will say it again. Bioware is sexist as fuck. A whole specie of all female prostitutes? Seriously? Clothing that are impractical as fuck? Its basically the space version of a chain mail bikini. No one should be walking around with a slutsuit with a huge camel toe. The worst part of it is the male gaze. The camera automatically pans around so it zooms in on their ass while you are having a conversation. When they walk away the camera pans and focuses on the ass as they walk off. Shit like that. Why? Why do we need that? For people like Cent who likes to zoom in on their crotch with a high powered sniper rifle? So they wouldn't have to do it the game would do it for them so they don't look like some kind of pathetic sick fuck?
All of these are nothing compared to the massive failure of a ending that the Mass Effect trilogy has. Not only is it disconnected from the main game, all three ending are exactly the same. To even unlock the ending you would need to get over 5000 Effective Military Strength. to get 5000 EMS you would have to play multi player and grind points. There is no way around that unless you modify your EMS which I did. Why do you force us to play a shitty multi player for our shitty single player? Fucking separate that shit. Is it to stop pirates? No they can mod that in. Is it because they are so fucking proud of their multi player that they want everyone to give it a try. Yes thats probably it. I can imagine it they sitting in their office jerking off to the multi player mode that they made while high fiving each other going "How do we get more people to try this fucking awesome shit we made?" Then one guy jumps up and goes "LETS MAKE IT REQUIRED TO GET THE ENDING!" And everyone blows their load from the perfection that is that idea. MULTI PLAYER AND SINGLE PLAYER SHOULD NEVER AFFECT EACH OTHER. Never.
So you modded your game got 5000 EMS and went well what does it really do? There are three endings one is paragon which is the choice that the Illusive Man wanted. The renegade ending where its the choice Anderson wanted and then the neutral choice that only appears if you have high enough EMS. All three choices involve dooming the galaxy and killing Shepard. There is no way around it. You basically use the Conduit from ME1 that magically got retconned and moved to Earth from Ilos. Then you meet the God AI of the Reapers that control them in the Citadel and he's all like "you're the first organic that reached here so I'm giving you three choices and all of them are terrible. Enjoy your ending." But before that he tells you why the Reapers appear every time organics reach a peak of their civilization and harvest them to create more Reapers. Organics and synthetics cannot get along with each other so they appear and kill the organics before they can make synthetics that kill them like the species that created the Reapers. What the fuck? Apparently the ending is so bad that there are petitions to get it changed. A vote on the Bioware forums has 98% of the votes saying the ending is bad. And there is even a charity donation to raise awareness of how terrible the ending of ME3 was. It raised up to $7000 in a day and as I am writing this it is at $32035.
The best part of the ending is after the credit screen, a pop up appears saying that there will be more DLCs. Bioware developers on their twitter accounts say that there is more to the ending don't go apeshit. So basically they either gave us a shitty ending and expect us to pay 10 bucks to get the best ending or they're trying to save their ass and lying to us, again, and pretending that shit is terrible on purpose. They could fix it and admit their mistakes which I think they shouldn't. If you're going to make an ending then stick to it. Don't change it because people whine about it. It is your story, you have the power. But keep in mind that people won't like it. So they're basically stuck here. They're fucked either way. One thing that seems to be happening is that a portion of the playerbase are in denial and think that the ending was all a dream after being blasted in the face by Harbinger's laser. If people rather accept that it was a dream than the ending that was given to them what does that say about the ending? Which brings me to another point. The main villain of the series is the Reaper leader called Harbinger. He never speaks and doesn't appear in ME3 until the very last minute of the game to blast your entire army to death including you. You don't even get to fight him. The real ME3 boss is Kai Leng a Cerberus assassin spaceninja using a spacekatana. All he does is do spaceflips with his spaceponytail and spacesword taunting you. When he beats you he lets you go then sends you emails taunting you. He's like those stereotypical retarded villains that wait until the good guys collect everything swoop in to take it then leave you alive so you can come back and beat his ass. Why? I don't know. Whats the point of his existence? He's evil for the sake of being evil.
There is also the fact that to fully understand ME3 you have to have played ME1 and ME2. An interview with Casey Hudson, the lead developer of Mass Effect, he stated that since ME3 is the finale there will be bigger choices and everything Shepard picks or does will have MAJOR AND DIRE CONSEQUENCES to the end of the game. Really? This is the straightest line I have ever seen. And the ending happens regardless of any of your choices so there is really no reason to pick anything. From what I have heard all but 2 of the 6 writers remained after the original Mass Effect so they had to hire some new writers. They hired a couple fanfic writers on the ME universe and thats how you got a shitty downhill slope. I like how in ME1 you get to interact with the other races and learn so much about the galaxy. In ME2 they expected you to know everything and you were being shepherded into the right path forcing you to ignore everything. In ME3 everyone expected it to offer something more like ME1 since we are visiting the homeworld of every specie and also helping them. But no, its more like ME2, infact its even worse. There are absolutely nothing to do. You don't even get to talk to Hanars or Elcors or anything. If you didn't play ME1 you wouldn't know anything about those two species. Although I do like how people move around the citadel and your ship the Normandy after every mission as if they have a life of their own instead of sitting in their respective rooms.
The worst part is anyone that enjoyed the game is so soured by the ending that it completely ruined the series for them. They do not feel like replaying the game again or even stand looking at the game. It is that bad.
During this time, Dragon Age came out and Bioware learned how stupid their playerbase really are. They learned that people loved romances and shitty stories. They also learned that every loser out there would buy every single DLC available. So when Mass Effect 2 came out what we got was an Action FPS RPG that focused more on the combat. They added the cover system where you duck behind cover and leap over when you press the button again while holding forward. This causes a lot of problems because you have to use the spacebar to duck, exit cover, interact with object, leap over object and picking up other guns. That shit is horrible. Can't we separate them? No of course not. Consoles like the same button for everything. In ME3 this is even more stupid because pressing space will let you jump in the direction as well as jump from cover to cover. You can also press space to climb ladders. So half the time you are flying in every direction trying to climb the ladder or duck behind cover while getting blasted by guns. I just wanna get behind the cover but apparently I didn't click spacebar at the right area and I am doing somersaults in front of the wall.
ME2 was made so that anyone who didn't play ME1 would understand what ME2 was about. While that worked there were still a little bit of info missing. If you didn't play the first one it automatically picks the important choices for you and you cannot get the best endings or choices in ME3 because of that. Same goes for ME2 choices for ME3. This sucks because you'll miss out on most of the game. But that is fine because if you don't buy DLCs you will miss out on even more of the game. Unless you read up on Mass Effect Wikia, none of the shit you find out in the next game would make sense.
http://www.gamespot.com/features/who-the-hell-is-james-vega-6366008/
Important parts of the story are explained in DLCs. Why? Because they want to milk more money from the fucking idiots who buy their games. And of course they also add day one DLCs. As I have said before in a previous post, day one DLCs are the biggest bullshit to gaming. Anything they wanted to add could be added before its shipped or patched in. Of course they wouldn't do that because they'd miss out on the 10 bucks. Their excuse was that after the game is ready they had time to make DLCs before it ships to you. But everyone knew that wasn't the case when the leaked script that was out 5 months before it was out had the DLC. The DLC is also included on the game disc and the 10 bucks was just to unlock the content on the DVD. Really? Bioware and EA are fucking giant greedy dicks. So what happens if you never downloaded them? Well you don't get the story! Because it continues the game expecting you to know that. ME3 pretty much requires you to play ME1 and ME2 to understand. That also includes all DLCs. Not to mention choices aren't available to you if you don't.
In ME2 you join up with Cerberus one of the villain groups in ME1. Why? Well its part of the story. I never trusted them but Cent apparently did. If you did any of the side quests in ME1 you would see a ton of shit they done and would never agree to anything they could possibly do in ME2. The storyline revolves around getting a group of people and doing a suicide mission. There is really not much story to the game you just keep collecting people then head off. Because of that I wasn't so sure if the game would be terrible or not. I was waiting for ME3 to finally end the game once and for all. In ME2 they introduced a wide cast of characters which most of them are stupid. Every single person has problems and its up to Shepard to save them with his magical penis. You can romance almost everyone on your team. The people are different for a male or female Shepard. The characters are whiny, the storyline is weak and inconsistent to ME1, and the world is a billion times smaller. One thing I really hated was that we cannot really explore anywhere. In ME1 you can walk around listening to conversation and find out little snippets of information about whats going on in the galaxy. In ME2 all of this is replaced with people from the first game coming back in some way. It felt cool at that time because it was the first game I heard of that had persistent progression between games, but nowadays its so common. Outside of those five lines of dialogue, they do nothing to add to the world but say exactly what they did in ME1 for the people who didn't play. Also they butchered the returning characters pretty badly for example, Wrex in ME1 was a wise Krogan battlemaster with his the best interest of his species at heart, in ME3 he is a hotheaded fucker thats wants to breed with all the women. Why? Because his counterpart if you left him to die on Virmire (the default choice for people who started in ME2 or ME3) is a hotheaded fucker that wants to breed with all the women.
What is the point of romances in Bioware games anyways? They can never get them right but everyone hails them as the best romance writers ever. In ME1 you get the space racist or naive Asari child. In ME2 you get the whiny pathetic "perfect engineered" human, the psycho whiny emotional wreck, or the whiny Quarian waif. In ME3 you get all of those plus a gay dude who probably happens to be the best written and some dumb chick with an assdress from IGN that was added into the game for nerd pandering. These romances just randomly and magically appear with no buildup or anything. They are awkward and poorly written.
When we finally get into ME3 that was when shit hit the fan. First starting the game you'll notice that you have no fucking clue what is happening because it continues the story from a DLC in ME2 and a comic book in between the two games. It is NEVER explained. The only way to find out what the fuck happened is to read it up online. That is bullshit. It completely invalidated all my choices in the previous two games and decided to shit all over it. They basically went "I know you did this and that but since we decided to go this way with the game we're gonna change everything for you and pretend nothing happened." As you're going around going why the fuck is this happening? How the fuck is this happening you realize the biggest fucking flaw in the game. The story has been completely retconned. In the first game you stop the Reapers, a race of sentient synthetic warships, from attacking the Citadel and rendering all species lost without communication. In the third game the Reapers decided they're not going to do that like the past several milennia, instead they'll directly attack Earth and let Shepard and the rest of the galaxy gather strength. That is fine if you really want to retcon the story BUT DON'T CHANGE IT BACK AT THE END. At the end they decided they liked the original story and the Reapers magically moved the Citadel to earth (yes it can move why didn't they do it at the start of the game who fucking knows) but at that time its too late. The galaxy has been united because the Reapers are stupid. That brings me to another point, the Reaper's had a reason for culling the galaxy of organic life but it was considered "too complex" for you to comprehend. Obviously that wasn't true in ME3.
In ME3, Cerberus returns to being evil again and starts working for the reapers. It is a complete 180 from ME2 when Cerberus was helping you defeat the reapers. Why? I don't know it was never truly explained other than the reason that the person behind it, the Illusive Man was indoctrinated before he even formed the Cerberus organization. SO IT MAKES EVEN LESS SENSE? How do you fuck that one up so bad. Although there were some great missions and having returning characters from the previous two games most of them are terrible. Again they retconned most of the choices in ME1 and ME2 so that people who played neither of those games can get ME3. If you killed off a character in ME1 going yeah this is going to bite me in the ass! Someone appears in his/her place and the story is unchanged. So basically what you're telling me is what I did or didn't do in the previous games meant nothing? It was just an illusion tricking me into thinking I had a choice in what I was doing but in reality everything is set in stone already.
I didn't think they can make ME2's exploration even worse but they managed to do it. It is the most tedious and horribly constructed thing ever and I am not going into detail. To summarize you go around clicking scan on a random pocket in the galaxy and if you scan too much reapers come and blow you up. Yes its as dumb as it sounds. Side quests also involve scanning the galaxy. There are no longer mission side quests. Unlike ME1 where you ride the Mako around and explore you get quests that says "find and rescue the Elcor forces" when you talk to the Elcor ambassador. All you have to do is fly over to a planet hit scan and it says "anomaly detected" you fly over click on it click scan planet/moon drag your mouse around launch a probe then at the bottom right a pop up appears "Elcor fleet acquired." I finished the quest right? Then you look at your journal and you see the side quest magically grayed out. And you walk over to the war room and look at what you acquired. You gotten 40 extra military strength from the Elcor fleet! They managed to make everything worse and worse as the series continued. Combat got worse, storyline got worse, side quests got worse and the worst part of all, the sexism seemed to get worse.
I've mention Bioware being sexist as fuck and I will say it again. Bioware is sexist as fuck. A whole specie of all female prostitutes? Seriously? Clothing that are impractical as fuck? Its basically the space version of a chain mail bikini. No one should be walking around with a slutsuit with a huge camel toe. The worst part of it is the male gaze. The camera automatically pans around so it zooms in on their ass while you are having a conversation. When they walk away the camera pans and focuses on the ass as they walk off. Shit like that. Why? Why do we need that? For people like Cent who likes to zoom in on their crotch with a high powered sniper rifle? So they wouldn't have to do it the game would do it for them so they don't look like some kind of pathetic sick fuck?
All of these are nothing compared to the massive failure of a ending that the Mass Effect trilogy has. Not only is it disconnected from the main game, all three ending are exactly the same. To even unlock the ending you would need to get over 5000 Effective Military Strength. to get 5000 EMS you would have to play multi player and grind points. There is no way around that unless you modify your EMS which I did. Why do you force us to play a shitty multi player for our shitty single player? Fucking separate that shit. Is it to stop pirates? No they can mod that in. Is it because they are so fucking proud of their multi player that they want everyone to give it a try. Yes thats probably it. I can imagine it they sitting in their office jerking off to the multi player mode that they made while high fiving each other going "How do we get more people to try this fucking awesome shit we made?" Then one guy jumps up and goes "LETS MAKE IT REQUIRED TO GET THE ENDING!" And everyone blows their load from the perfection that is that idea. MULTI PLAYER AND SINGLE PLAYER SHOULD NEVER AFFECT EACH OTHER. Never.
So you modded your game got 5000 EMS and went well what does it really do? There are three endings one is paragon which is the choice that the Illusive Man wanted. The renegade ending where its the choice Anderson wanted and then the neutral choice that only appears if you have high enough EMS. All three choices involve dooming the galaxy and killing Shepard. There is no way around it. You basically use the Conduit from ME1 that magically got retconned and moved to Earth from Ilos. Then you meet the God AI of the Reapers that control them in the Citadel and he's all like "you're the first organic that reached here so I'm giving you three choices and all of them are terrible. Enjoy your ending." But before that he tells you why the Reapers appear every time organics reach a peak of their civilization and harvest them to create more Reapers. Organics and synthetics cannot get along with each other so they appear and kill the organics before they can make synthetics that kill them like the species that created the Reapers. What the fuck? Apparently the ending is so bad that there are petitions to get it changed. A vote on the Bioware forums has 98% of the votes saying the ending is bad. And there is even a charity donation to raise awareness of how terrible the ending of ME3 was. It raised up to $7000 in a day and as I am writing this it is at $32035.
The best part of the ending is after the credit screen, a pop up appears saying that there will be more DLCs. Bioware developers on their twitter accounts say that there is more to the ending don't go apeshit. So basically they either gave us a shitty ending and expect us to pay 10 bucks to get the best ending or they're trying to save their ass and lying to us, again, and pretending that shit is terrible on purpose. They could fix it and admit their mistakes which I think they shouldn't. If you're going to make an ending then stick to it. Don't change it because people whine about it. It is your story, you have the power. But keep in mind that people won't like it. So they're basically stuck here. They're fucked either way. One thing that seems to be happening is that a portion of the playerbase are in denial and think that the ending was all a dream after being blasted in the face by Harbinger's laser. If people rather accept that it was a dream than the ending that was given to them what does that say about the ending? Which brings me to another point. The main villain of the series is the Reaper leader called Harbinger. He never speaks and doesn't appear in ME3 until the very last minute of the game to blast your entire army to death including you. You don't even get to fight him. The real ME3 boss is Kai Leng a Cerberus assassin spaceninja using a spacekatana. All he does is do spaceflips with his spaceponytail and spacesword taunting you. When he beats you he lets you go then sends you emails taunting you. He's like those stereotypical retarded villains that wait until the good guys collect everything swoop in to take it then leave you alive so you can come back and beat his ass. Why? I don't know. Whats the point of his existence? He's evil for the sake of being evil.
There is also the fact that to fully understand ME3 you have to have played ME1 and ME2. An interview with Casey Hudson, the lead developer of Mass Effect, he stated that since ME3 is the finale there will be bigger choices and everything Shepard picks or does will have MAJOR AND DIRE CONSEQUENCES to the end of the game. Really? This is the straightest line I have ever seen. And the ending happens regardless of any of your choices so there is really no reason to pick anything. From what I have heard all but 2 of the 6 writers remained after the original Mass Effect so they had to hire some new writers. They hired a couple fanfic writers on the ME universe and thats how you got a shitty downhill slope. I like how in ME1 you get to interact with the other races and learn so much about the galaxy. In ME2 they expected you to know everything and you were being shepherded into the right path forcing you to ignore everything. In ME3 everyone expected it to offer something more like ME1 since we are visiting the homeworld of every specie and also helping them. But no, its more like ME2, infact its even worse. There are absolutely nothing to do. You don't even get to talk to Hanars or Elcors or anything. If you didn't play ME1 you wouldn't know anything about those two species. Although I do like how people move around the citadel and your ship the Normandy after every mission as if they have a life of their own instead of sitting in their respective rooms.
The worst part is anyone that enjoyed the game is so soured by the ending that it completely ruined the series for them. They do not feel like replaying the game again or even stand looking at the game. It is that bad.
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Players vs Spectators
What makes a game successful and popular? It is the players? Or the spectators? When the same question is applied to televised sports, the spectators generate the most revenue and the most interest. But video games have almost always had a larger player base than a spectator base. This hasn't been a problem for decades, but with the rapidly growing strive to reach televised esport status, the need for more spectators is clear.
Games like Quake 3, Starcraft, Counterstrike, Street Fighter, DOTA have all been televised before, and largely commentated and spectated, yet a controversial topic was brought forward by a Korean community member recently: Starcraft was the only sport to draw a significant number of spectators who have barely played the game, while all others have spectators who have at least played it at an amateur level. He believed that this characteristic distinguished Starcraft as a genuine 'sport'.
While his stance is still heavily contested, games striving to achieve tournament and esport recognition should place heavy consideration into making the game fun for spectators, and not just the players. Even in real sports, the respective associations consider and apply rule changes to make the game more exciting for fans to watch, even if it is as the expense of the players. Baseball had different bats approved to increase the rate of homeruns to entice more watchers. Hockey changed passing rules to quicken puck turnarounds and increase frequency of scoring. After all, for these games built primarily around competitive play, it is the fans that will bring in revenue, and the more people who are interested, the more pros will want to pick it up.
That isn't to say any casual drivel can be accepted as a tournament game as long as it is easy to watch. It must be largely recognized to be a deep game requiring mastery and training. But the gameplay should be easy to comprehend for new watchers, smooth to follow for cameramen, quick to tell who's winning and why, fast paced enough to stay interested, long enough to be satisfying, and short enough to not get bored.
If you make a game for tournaments, think about the spectators. I'm looking at you MOBA.
Games like Quake 3, Starcraft, Counterstrike, Street Fighter, DOTA have all been televised before, and largely commentated and spectated, yet a controversial topic was brought forward by a Korean community member recently: Starcraft was the only sport to draw a significant number of spectators who have barely played the game, while all others have spectators who have at least played it at an amateur level. He believed that this characteristic distinguished Starcraft as a genuine 'sport'.
While his stance is still heavily contested, games striving to achieve tournament and esport recognition should place heavy consideration into making the game fun for spectators, and not just the players. Even in real sports, the respective associations consider and apply rule changes to make the game more exciting for fans to watch, even if it is as the expense of the players. Baseball had different bats approved to increase the rate of homeruns to entice more watchers. Hockey changed passing rules to quicken puck turnarounds and increase frequency of scoring. After all, for these games built primarily around competitive play, it is the fans that will bring in revenue, and the more people who are interested, the more pros will want to pick it up.
That isn't to say any casual drivel can be accepted as a tournament game as long as it is easy to watch. It must be largely recognized to be a deep game requiring mastery and training. But the gameplay should be easy to comprehend for new watchers, smooth to follow for cameramen, quick to tell who's winning and why, fast paced enough to stay interested, long enough to be satisfying, and short enough to not get bored.
If you make a game for tournaments, think about the spectators. I'm looking at you MOBA.
The small details should be missed.
Whenever I think back to previous immersive gaming experiences, the main factor that I find neglected are the small details. Perhaps it's something comedic that's happening in the background. Or a faint, passing sound in the distance. Or the tiny gouges in the wall that are omens for a greater nemesis. Or the hint dropping for a masterminded scheme in shadows. These elements, while small, synergize with primary gameplay and setting to accentuate a brilliant game.
Games in the 90's started to have the technology and capacity to harness and manifest these masterful details, and while not every game that did this were financially successful, they all became memorable experiences and left unforgettable legacies. The progression and modernization of gaming has not discarded these fine touches, and the resurgence of success of heavy-immersion games with significant atmosphere has only strengthened this philosophy.
Yet, something is lacking. Notably so. Almost to the extent of crippling the entire effort of the responsible developers. Only recently did I come to pinpoint what the problem was: the developers didn't want us to miss the details. They tried too hard to make sure players would notice and experience every fine detail. They would move to camera and zoom in on exactly what they wanted us to see. They would stop the gameplay so that players could hear that faint squeaking. They would make characters audibly or visually respond to the details. Protagonists would commentate on the fine detail he noticed, just in case the player missed it.
The producers find this reasonable, and I understand. If they paid a developer to add in content, this content better directly attribute to raising the game's score and quality. Leaving it to the chance of whether or not the player was perceptive enough to receive it is a bad gamble with an investment.
But when the extras are forced into the game, shoved into the players face, you don't feel in control. You don't feel the need to be perceptive. You don't feel frightened or intimidated. You don't feel like there's anything you may have missed, and you don't want to play again. Every time I reread a book or rewatch a movie, there are fine details that I glanced over at first, but then come to appreciate on subsequent views. If immersion is crucial, then part of that immersion is to be believable. And in a believable situation, you will miss some details, and you'll only be able to see everything you should if you let your imagination run away with it. The mind and imagination are the strongest weapons a developer can harness against us. With them, they can make us see what isn't there. Or believe things that were never true. Or shock us when we are the ones revealing the untold truth to ourselves. The only way to do that, is to let our minds be free, and stop guiding us with painfully exposed and over-elaborated details. We'll become more perceptive, allowing our minds to wander into the depths of the game.
Games in the 90's started to have the technology and capacity to harness and manifest these masterful details, and while not every game that did this were financially successful, they all became memorable experiences and left unforgettable legacies. The progression and modernization of gaming has not discarded these fine touches, and the resurgence of success of heavy-immersion games with significant atmosphere has only strengthened this philosophy.
Yet, something is lacking. Notably so. Almost to the extent of crippling the entire effort of the responsible developers. Only recently did I come to pinpoint what the problem was: the developers didn't want us to miss the details. They tried too hard to make sure players would notice and experience every fine detail. They would move to camera and zoom in on exactly what they wanted us to see. They would stop the gameplay so that players could hear that faint squeaking. They would make characters audibly or visually respond to the details. Protagonists would commentate on the fine detail he noticed, just in case the player missed it.
The producers find this reasonable, and I understand. If they paid a developer to add in content, this content better directly attribute to raising the game's score and quality. Leaving it to the chance of whether or not the player was perceptive enough to receive it is a bad gamble with an investment.
But when the extras are forced into the game, shoved into the players face, you don't feel in control. You don't feel the need to be perceptive. You don't feel frightened or intimidated. You don't feel like there's anything you may have missed, and you don't want to play again. Every time I reread a book or rewatch a movie, there are fine details that I glanced over at first, but then come to appreciate on subsequent views. If immersion is crucial, then part of that immersion is to be believable. And in a believable situation, you will miss some details, and you'll only be able to see everything you should if you let your imagination run away with it. The mind and imagination are the strongest weapons a developer can harness against us. With them, they can make us see what isn't there. Or believe things that were never true. Or shock us when we are the ones revealing the untold truth to ourselves. The only way to do that, is to let our minds be free, and stop guiding us with painfully exposed and over-elaborated details. We'll become more perceptive, allowing our minds to wander into the depths of the game.
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Saving - Turning the simplest things into something complex
Saving is something that I noticed recently that we've taken for granted. Sure it sucks when you can't find a save point or you have to go to an inn or something but it could be so much worse. Depending on the game saving could be like a JRPG where its only available in set locations or inside inns. Or it could be like a PC game where saves are available at anytime. Then theres the retarded fucking bullshit of console ports where saves are fucking autosave only and won't let you save. Everything is saved automatically to the account you logged in as. So the only way to save is to keep going until you reach a checkpoint and look for the spinny autosave shit at the bottom corner before quitting the game. Of course it warns you that quitting might lose all unsaved progress like an asshole. Like it'll make a difference? You never gave us a save button or option we have to guess if it really works or not.
Lets look at some games with bad saving system. Alice: Madness Returns have you create a profile and then log into that profile. After logging into the profile you can edit options, check unlocks and other shit. Even quitting the game requires you to select a profile too. Say you clicked your game and then realize oh shit I gotta go time to quit. NOPE THERES NO QUIT. You have to select a profile log in select quit then it asks if you wanna quit then you can quit. Sure its minor but its a simple fucking thing like quit to desktop. They shouldn't have you log in first to quit the game. How does this have to do with saving? Well you don't get to save ever. You have to keep an eye out for the autosave clock at the bottom right corner. I suppose its because it didn't want you to save after completing something minor like a jump or puzzle so if you die you have to start over. But what about safe areas? Why do we have to wait 10-20 minutes of content to get to an autosave?
The sad part is there are more console ports that do the same shit. Alan Wake does the same shit but at least the save points are more common. Now L.A Noire is the biggest pile of shit ever. Not only are the saves far from common it never tells you when it saves or not. So all you can do is hope that it saved and quit or wait until you finish your case and start a new one. Which could take anywhere from a hour to two. Fucking bullshit. Who decided to not include saving? What about the worst console port ever in the history of games, Fable 3? Not only is there no menu you have to go into your private room when you click the option button and then navigate the room to the wall where you enter another room to find a save mannequin. After talking to the mannequin you are able to save then you navigate out of the room. To another to quit the game. Fuck you.
Some games make it hard to save while others don't give you the option. What about games that save too much? Look at games like Kings Bounty or the Witcher. The games are good but they autosave way too much. By the time you actually save they already made ten separate copies of autosaves. By the time you're halfway through the game you already have 5 gigs of saves in your save folder. Eventually a patch was released to fix those problems but its still dumb as shit. You wouldn't need 100 copies of autosaves, why can't they be limited? At least they fixed it.
I never noticed how bad saving has become until now. It may be a simple and insignificant part of the game, but it shouldn't be overlooked. Its simple, its hard to mess up, yet a bunch of games do this. Even games that are good do this.
Lets look at some games with bad saving system. Alice: Madness Returns have you create a profile and then log into that profile. After logging into the profile you can edit options, check unlocks and other shit. Even quitting the game requires you to select a profile too. Say you clicked your game and then realize oh shit I gotta go time to quit. NOPE THERES NO QUIT. You have to select a profile log in select quit then it asks if you wanna quit then you can quit. Sure its minor but its a simple fucking thing like quit to desktop. They shouldn't have you log in first to quit the game. How does this have to do with saving? Well you don't get to save ever. You have to keep an eye out for the autosave clock at the bottom right corner. I suppose its because it didn't want you to save after completing something minor like a jump or puzzle so if you die you have to start over. But what about safe areas? Why do we have to wait 10-20 minutes of content to get to an autosave?
The sad part is there are more console ports that do the same shit. Alan Wake does the same shit but at least the save points are more common. Now L.A Noire is the biggest pile of shit ever. Not only are the saves far from common it never tells you when it saves or not. So all you can do is hope that it saved and quit or wait until you finish your case and start a new one. Which could take anywhere from a hour to two. Fucking bullshit. Who decided to not include saving? What about the worst console port ever in the history of games, Fable 3? Not only is there no menu you have to go into your private room when you click the option button and then navigate the room to the wall where you enter another room to find a save mannequin. After talking to the mannequin you are able to save then you navigate out of the room. To another to quit the game. Fuck you.
Some games make it hard to save while others don't give you the option. What about games that save too much? Look at games like Kings Bounty or the Witcher. The games are good but they autosave way too much. By the time you actually save they already made ten separate copies of autosaves. By the time you're halfway through the game you already have 5 gigs of saves in your save folder. Eventually a patch was released to fix those problems but its still dumb as shit. You wouldn't need 100 copies of autosaves, why can't they be limited? At least they fixed it.
I never noticed how bad saving has become until now. It may be a simple and insignificant part of the game, but it shouldn't be overlooked. Its simple, its hard to mess up, yet a bunch of games do this. Even games that are good do this.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Kingdoms of Amalur - A single player MMORPG
Kingdoms of Amalur managed to seamlessly merge MMORPG and single player RPG together. Is that a good thing? No. What it ends up is a game where the quests are stupid fetch quests, boring quest hubs, quests having nothing to do with the main storyline. Hell I had more fun doing MMO quests than the quests in KoA. MMO are about playing with others while single player RPGs are about the story and following the story of the hero as he/she does shit. When KoA was announced everyone was excited to see big names such as Ken Rolston, the lead developer of Morrowind and Oblivion, R. A. Salvatore an actual real fantasy writer, and Todd McFarlane a comic book artist. Such big names for such a small game. Too many chefs in the kitchen maybe. But the worst part of this is, to start this company the city of Rhode Island gave them a 75 million loan to make this game and another MMORPG based on KoA. Not only does this suck they are simultaneously making KoA and KoA:MMO at the same time not even sure if KoA would be a hit or not. If they do suck and go under, it would be Rhode Island that loses money. Too bad.
KoA plays like an action RPG. It sounds really nice because action RPGs are fun as shit but there is a flaw. All the ideas for KoA are alright, but every one of them is flawed in a way. There are many types of weapons and magic and you can reset your hero at any time by talking to an NPC. The monsters you fight in this game are the same from the beginning of the game to the end of the game. There is no variance other than boosting their health or damage. They do the same predictable moves and attacks. Difficulty does not rise. The game itself is the easiest action game I have ever seen. Blacksmithing breaks that game even more by making your character invincible. Even without blacksmithing it is easy. You keep learning new moves, the monsters never do. Big bosses you would think would be hard, but they made it so easy you can beat it with your eyes closed. Mainly because they don't want people who suck at games to not be able to finish! Even on the hardest difficulty a giant boss the size of a city would bite you for maybe 10 damage. While a regular Niskaru Bloodhunter would do 100-150 damage a hit and hit 10 times by the time the big boss takes to bite again. Why so easy? Its not like you have to fight the boss anyways. You automatically win when you go into fate mode because you automatically do an execution and kill it.
After playing around for an hour you notice that combat is boring and repetitive, what about the quests? Think of this game like an MMO. You have quest hubs where you can collect boring side quests. These include, killing 10 creatures, collecting boxes, deliver shit, and other boring fucking shitty quests you see in MMOs. You go into dungeon that are nothing but a long hallway as you stab your way though everything, reach the end and then turn around and go out back the way you came in. You must think not every quest is like that. No every quest is like that. There are like 500 side quests in the game and they are all exactly like that. I managed to get halfway into the game before I gave up on all side quests. They don't do anything but give you exp/rewards. They add nothing to the story, to the lore, to the world. They are just pointless exp/reward farms. Another thing about the game is loot is randomized. Like a MMO where you have random statistics on your gear. These drop randomly from monsters, looted from chests, or bought from NPCs. These can be broken down by blacksmiths and salvaged for parts to craft something. In the first quarter of the game I crafted a weapon that was stronger than anything I could find in the game already. And it was just a tier 2 dagger. When I reached the final tier I was so powerful that nothing could stand in my way. You don't really need to pick up those garbage to salvage anyways. The best crafting loot are from killing harmless crabs and cows. Apparently dried guts added to anything grants critical %. As a rogue I have bonus critical damage from talents, skills, passives, gears, everything. I crafted all my gear with bonus critical % and bonus critical damage. My backstabs were doing 98k a hit when monsters at the end of the game had around 2k-3k health. My regular swings had 100% critical rate and I was doing 1.5-2k a hit, 3k if I use my bow. I had a 15% chance to fully heal myself everytime I swing my daggers, which are fast as shit. Do I ever die? No.
The main quest has you traveling all over the world and you may find something called faction quests on your way. There are 5 factions in the world of Amalur. The House of Ballads of the summer fae, the Warsworn warrior guild, the Travelers thief guild, some dumbshit mage guild I can't remember, and the House of Sorrows of the winter fae. You would think these quests would be better than the average but it really isn't. The only decent one is the House of Ballads, the rest are just standard quests you find in any MMO. The mage guild ends suddenly for no reason and you become the archmage for no fucking reason. The real Archmage gets imprisoned in a prison and suffers for all eternity and no one gives a flying fuck to rescue him. They just replace him with you and you go on your merry way while he's imprisoned in the mage guild. Great story eh? Warsworn you follow some dumb random chick around all day and then suddenly a bad guy appears and is like "kill your friends and you get power!" I was like fuck off I don't wanna do more quests and I turned around and left and then suddenly I was the hero of the Warsworn, a Truesworn even though I didn't do anything to the fucking Niskaru Lord. Travelers you go around following orders from some dipshit until a fucking plot twist sends you to frame the Heirophant. GUESS WHAT!? She knows of your plan to frame her and what does she do? Tell you to frame your friend instead of her. What do you do? Frame her. She gets framed and the quests magically end. House of Sorrows you follow a bunch of dipshit winter fae around who wants you to find the guy who stole a milennia of sorrows and is going to use it to cause people to kill themselves from sorrow. Turns out the guy has been tricking you and you managed to kill the entire House of Sorrows from your dumb naiveté. You go around find out that dumb chick that has been following you the whole time was the reincarnation of the weeping king and she uses her magical powers to seal the sorrow in the magical fae world and you become the last remaining member in the House of Sorrows. Way to fuck up everything asshole. Better to not bother getting involved in the first place.
These quests have you traveling all over the fucking world. The worst part is the zones are like MMO zones. Pretty to look at but really nothing there. You walk around with nothing to interact with and barely any monsters around. You find random quest hubs or quest areas and dungeons. Other than that traveling around is like going around in WoW without a mount or flight point. You get to fast travel by clicking the map on a location you've been to before, thank god, but that doesn't help when you only need to visit a place once because its far as shit away and take like 20 minutes to walk there. The main quest basically have you walk around and follow some dumb slut elf and some drunken loser around all game then fight and kill a God. The End.
There are also quite a few bugs I found. Using the reckoning mode before a cutscene will cause the monsters to freeze there forever unable to loot or kill them with just the F button highlighted when you walk close. Hitting F does nothing they are just stuck there in limbo for all eternity. Using different reckoning moves can get monsters stuck in walls or the sky where it is impossible to loot them, while other times reckoning mode makes you end up on top of a dead monsters making you unable to walk around like in ME2 where touching walls make you walk upwards and get stuck in the walls. Its like that for monsters instead. Backstabbing sometimes cause you to backstab a different enemy than the one you have selected. For example, there were two kobolds one at the other end of the room and one infront of me. I sneak over backstab and a mini cutscene appears where I grab the guy throw him on the ground and stab him on the neck. Next thing you know the guy at the end of the room explodes in blood and flies away and dies while the guy infront of me start stuttering fading in and out of existence like some kind of existence seizure. I go what the fuck? And I backstabbed again killing him this time.
The only positive thing I can think of in this game is that gear looks the same on men and women. You don't have chainmail bikinis. I made sure to play a female so I could see for myself. People said it was a positive portrayal of women. I thought that was a right step. Then you have the loser Alyn Shir the slut elf who walks around wearing nothing but leather bandages with half her ass exposed. The developers made sure to add ass jiggle physics like breast physics and its the first and only game to have ass physics in a game. What the fuck?
Overall the lore had potential, the combat was fun for the first hour then got boring, the quests were a mess, the storyline was interesting enough to finish but not memorable or good at all. Worst part is they claimed the game would take 200 hours to finish without doing any side quests at all. WHAT THE FUCK!? Its not even 200 hours if you do all the side quests in the world. Are the testers so bad that they fucking take 200 hours to do something or they shitting out their mouth. I think its the latter. This game felt more like a MMO that halfway went "you know people might not wanna pay 15 bucks a month for this" and changed to a single player. The worst part? They ARE making a KoA:MMO. It is currently in development and has been since KoA started. They are working on it simultaneously. Am I the only one that is going what the fuck? Why would you make an MMO version of a game where you have no idea if anyone wants to play. After this shitfest of a game what makes you think people would want to play KoA:MMO? Its like if Bioware decided to make a DA:MMO while making DA2. Looks like Rhode Island is going to lose 75 million.
Never ever trust reviews on EA games either. They are known for bribing the reviewers.
KoA plays like an action RPG. It sounds really nice because action RPGs are fun as shit but there is a flaw. All the ideas for KoA are alright, but every one of them is flawed in a way. There are many types of weapons and magic and you can reset your hero at any time by talking to an NPC. The monsters you fight in this game are the same from the beginning of the game to the end of the game. There is no variance other than boosting their health or damage. They do the same predictable moves and attacks. Difficulty does not rise. The game itself is the easiest action game I have ever seen. Blacksmithing breaks that game even more by making your character invincible. Even without blacksmithing it is easy. You keep learning new moves, the monsters never do. Big bosses you would think would be hard, but they made it so easy you can beat it with your eyes closed. Mainly because they don't want people who suck at games to not be able to finish! Even on the hardest difficulty a giant boss the size of a city would bite you for maybe 10 damage. While a regular Niskaru Bloodhunter would do 100-150 damage a hit and hit 10 times by the time the big boss takes to bite again. Why so easy? Its not like you have to fight the boss anyways. You automatically win when you go into fate mode because you automatically do an execution and kill it.
After playing around for an hour you notice that combat is boring and repetitive, what about the quests? Think of this game like an MMO. You have quest hubs where you can collect boring side quests. These include, killing 10 creatures, collecting boxes, deliver shit, and other boring fucking shitty quests you see in MMOs. You go into dungeon that are nothing but a long hallway as you stab your way though everything, reach the end and then turn around and go out back the way you came in. You must think not every quest is like that. No every quest is like that. There are like 500 side quests in the game and they are all exactly like that. I managed to get halfway into the game before I gave up on all side quests. They don't do anything but give you exp/rewards. They add nothing to the story, to the lore, to the world. They are just pointless exp/reward farms. Another thing about the game is loot is randomized. Like a MMO where you have random statistics on your gear. These drop randomly from monsters, looted from chests, or bought from NPCs. These can be broken down by blacksmiths and salvaged for parts to craft something. In the first quarter of the game I crafted a weapon that was stronger than anything I could find in the game already. And it was just a tier 2 dagger. When I reached the final tier I was so powerful that nothing could stand in my way. You don't really need to pick up those garbage to salvage anyways. The best crafting loot are from killing harmless crabs and cows. Apparently dried guts added to anything grants critical %. As a rogue I have bonus critical damage from talents, skills, passives, gears, everything. I crafted all my gear with bonus critical % and bonus critical damage. My backstabs were doing 98k a hit when monsters at the end of the game had around 2k-3k health. My regular swings had 100% critical rate and I was doing 1.5-2k a hit, 3k if I use my bow. I had a 15% chance to fully heal myself everytime I swing my daggers, which are fast as shit. Do I ever die? No.
The main quest has you traveling all over the world and you may find something called faction quests on your way. There are 5 factions in the world of Amalur. The House of Ballads of the summer fae, the Warsworn warrior guild, the Travelers thief guild, some dumbshit mage guild I can't remember, and the House of Sorrows of the winter fae. You would think these quests would be better than the average but it really isn't. The only decent one is the House of Ballads, the rest are just standard quests you find in any MMO. The mage guild ends suddenly for no reason and you become the archmage for no fucking reason. The real Archmage gets imprisoned in a prison and suffers for all eternity and no one gives a flying fuck to rescue him. They just replace him with you and you go on your merry way while he's imprisoned in the mage guild. Great story eh? Warsworn you follow some dumb random chick around all day and then suddenly a bad guy appears and is like "kill your friends and you get power!" I was like fuck off I don't wanna do more quests and I turned around and left and then suddenly I was the hero of the Warsworn, a Truesworn even though I didn't do anything to the fucking Niskaru Lord. Travelers you go around following orders from some dipshit until a fucking plot twist sends you to frame the Heirophant. GUESS WHAT!? She knows of your plan to frame her and what does she do? Tell you to frame your friend instead of her. What do you do? Frame her. She gets framed and the quests magically end. House of Sorrows you follow a bunch of dipshit winter fae around who wants you to find the guy who stole a milennia of sorrows and is going to use it to cause people to kill themselves from sorrow. Turns out the guy has been tricking you and you managed to kill the entire House of Sorrows from your dumb naiveté. You go around find out that dumb chick that has been following you the whole time was the reincarnation of the weeping king and she uses her magical powers to seal the sorrow in the magical fae world and you become the last remaining member in the House of Sorrows. Way to fuck up everything asshole. Better to not bother getting involved in the first place.
These quests have you traveling all over the fucking world. The worst part is the zones are like MMO zones. Pretty to look at but really nothing there. You walk around with nothing to interact with and barely any monsters around. You find random quest hubs or quest areas and dungeons. Other than that traveling around is like going around in WoW without a mount or flight point. You get to fast travel by clicking the map on a location you've been to before, thank god, but that doesn't help when you only need to visit a place once because its far as shit away and take like 20 minutes to walk there. The main quest basically have you walk around and follow some dumb slut elf and some drunken loser around all game then fight and kill a God. The End.
There are also quite a few bugs I found. Using the reckoning mode before a cutscene will cause the monsters to freeze there forever unable to loot or kill them with just the F button highlighted when you walk close. Hitting F does nothing they are just stuck there in limbo for all eternity. Using different reckoning moves can get monsters stuck in walls or the sky where it is impossible to loot them, while other times reckoning mode makes you end up on top of a dead monsters making you unable to walk around like in ME2 where touching walls make you walk upwards and get stuck in the walls. Its like that for monsters instead. Backstabbing sometimes cause you to backstab a different enemy than the one you have selected. For example, there were two kobolds one at the other end of the room and one infront of me. I sneak over backstab and a mini cutscene appears where I grab the guy throw him on the ground and stab him on the neck. Next thing you know the guy at the end of the room explodes in blood and flies away and dies while the guy infront of me start stuttering fading in and out of existence like some kind of existence seizure. I go what the fuck? And I backstabbed again killing him this time.
The only positive thing I can think of in this game is that gear looks the same on men and women. You don't have chainmail bikinis. I made sure to play a female so I could see for myself. People said it was a positive portrayal of women. I thought that was a right step. Then you have the loser Alyn Shir the slut elf who walks around wearing nothing but leather bandages with half her ass exposed. The developers made sure to add ass jiggle physics like breast physics and its the first and only game to have ass physics in a game. What the fuck?
Overall the lore had potential, the combat was fun for the first hour then got boring, the quests were a mess, the storyline was interesting enough to finish but not memorable or good at all. Worst part is they claimed the game would take 200 hours to finish without doing any side quests at all. WHAT THE FUCK!? Its not even 200 hours if you do all the side quests in the world. Are the testers so bad that they fucking take 200 hours to do something or they shitting out their mouth. I think its the latter. This game felt more like a MMO that halfway went "you know people might not wanna pay 15 bucks a month for this" and changed to a single player. The worst part? They ARE making a KoA:MMO. It is currently in development and has been since KoA started. They are working on it simultaneously. Am I the only one that is going what the fuck? Why would you make an MMO version of a game where you have no idea if anyone wants to play. After this shitfest of a game what makes you think people would want to play KoA:MMO? Its like if Bioware decided to make a DA:MMO while making DA2. Looks like Rhode Island is going to lose 75 million.
Never ever trust reviews on EA games either. They are known for bribing the reviewers.
Monday, February 20, 2012
Dear Esther - A game without gameplay
I heard about this game I think about an year ago. Someone had a LP of the game and I scanned through the description and then didn't bother watching it. After seeing the remake come out I decided to give it a try. What is this game to be exact? Well, its not really a game. Its an experiment. They were trying to use video games as a form of art. While the game is beautiful to look at, the narration amazing, and the music hauntingly melancholic, it was lacking. Perhaps what it was lacking was length. The story is so short that you can barely feel an attachment to it.
The game itself would last about an hour if you go where you are supposed to. You might be able to drag it out by exploring a lot and at most you'd spend maybe two hours. Such a short game for 10 bucks? Is it worth it? No. Would I recommend it to anyone? No. If it was cheaper perhaps. However if you want to see new "art games" come out then the 10 bucks would go to a good cause. Good graphics and good narration alone cannot possibly make up for the 10 dollar price. Most of the complaints about this game is the pricing. Even though they earned back whatever they spent on it in a little over 6 hours by selling 16000 copies, many had buyer's remorse and felt cheated. Its why I never buy games without playing a demo or "trying it out" first.
I cannot possibly go into the game without spoiling things. You are basically a nameless narrator on a uninhabited island. You may wander anywhere but there is always visual clues on where to go. Such as paint on the walls, a blinking aerial in the distance, or the moon lighting a path. Its impossible to get lost really, but if you do go off the main path you can hear more about the story. Every time you reach a certain point, the narrator will start talking giving a little about the story. Its never in chronological order and its purposely vague and ambiguous. Some points will have random prose that differs every play through. As you get closer to the end you see the paint on the wall become more erratic and common, the narrator's voice becomes more agitated and the prose become more confusing. Until you reach the climax and the ending where everything makes sense, or it doesn't.
The story is well written and I really enjoyed it. It fits perfectly with the background and the music. Will more of these games come out? I don't know. Do I want to see more? Why not. If no one experiments then we'll never get anything new. Its a nice idea, but its a little flawed. I wouldn't call it a good game because that would imply that there is some form of game play. However I cannot say that its completely bad because that would imply the game pissed me off or was annoying as fuck. Its sorta stuck there not really wowing anyone nor is it disappointing anyone. Its like stuck in perpetual limbo. Perhaps one day this will be the game that creates a revolution but don't count on it. Its probably just going to be forgotten under the weight of Call of Duty, Final Fantasies, and other copy paste games.
The game itself would last about an hour if you go where you are supposed to. You might be able to drag it out by exploring a lot and at most you'd spend maybe two hours. Such a short game for 10 bucks? Is it worth it? No. Would I recommend it to anyone? No. If it was cheaper perhaps. However if you want to see new "art games" come out then the 10 bucks would go to a good cause. Good graphics and good narration alone cannot possibly make up for the 10 dollar price. Most of the complaints about this game is the pricing. Even though they earned back whatever they spent on it in a little over 6 hours by selling 16000 copies, many had buyer's remorse and felt cheated. Its why I never buy games without playing a demo or "trying it out" first.
I cannot possibly go into the game without spoiling things. You are basically a nameless narrator on a uninhabited island. You may wander anywhere but there is always visual clues on where to go. Such as paint on the walls, a blinking aerial in the distance, or the moon lighting a path. Its impossible to get lost really, but if you do go off the main path you can hear more about the story. Every time you reach a certain point, the narrator will start talking giving a little about the story. Its never in chronological order and its purposely vague and ambiguous. Some points will have random prose that differs every play through. As you get closer to the end you see the paint on the wall become more erratic and common, the narrator's voice becomes more agitated and the prose become more confusing. Until you reach the climax and the ending where everything makes sense, or it doesn't.
The story is well written and I really enjoyed it. It fits perfectly with the background and the music. Will more of these games come out? I don't know. Do I want to see more? Why not. If no one experiments then we'll never get anything new. Its a nice idea, but its a little flawed. I wouldn't call it a good game because that would imply that there is some form of game play. However I cannot say that its completely bad because that would imply the game pissed me off or was annoying as fuck. Its sorta stuck there not really wowing anyone nor is it disappointing anyone. Its like stuck in perpetual limbo. Perhaps one day this will be the game that creates a revolution but don't count on it. Its probably just going to be forgotten under the weight of Call of Duty, Final Fantasies, and other copy paste games.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
