I occasionally come across things I'd like to write about, but can't find enough to say (unless it's 1am and I feel like rambling; see the previous post). Here's some stuff that has crossed my mind recently:
1) Max Payne 3 needs to be released. I've been replaying the first two, and they were just too damn cool. A really good demonstration of a narrative-focused game that doesn't skimp on the mechanics (Quantic Dream take note). I will point out that Max's gravelly voice, while suited to the character's personality and the style of the game, didn't fit the face until the 2nd game. First time around he looked like John Leguizamo should have been voicing him. I had so much fun diving around and shooting bad guys, while the rich characters and wonderful environments ("wonderful" used here in an odd sense, I realise) helped make the gameplay matter more, rather than the gameplay just providing an alternative to turning the pages of the novel the creators really wanted to write. Yeah, I didn't think much of Heavy Rain.
2) I now dislike Valve a little bit. They forced Troika to release Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines on the same day as Half-Life 2 just because they wanted to have their game out first. Jerks. They killed Troika and the game's sales as far as I'm concerned. Y'know, if you ignore the crippling bugs in the original build of the game. Thank god for the unofficial patch.
3) I really want the world to shut up about Minecraft. Yes, I can see that it's an interesting game, very innovative, I certainly admire Notch for his daring and design work. No, I do not want to pay money for it. Why? Because if I'm going to spend that sheer amount of time in a game, I want more to show for it than a building that does nothing and isn't real. The only project that I really like is that computer someone built in the game, because that shows some expertise and it DOES something. If I wanted a model of the Enterprise, I'd buy one. Why am I so cross about this? Every time I hear about Minecraft or get into a conversation about Minecraft, I keep getting the impression that if I don't love it, I'm somehow wrong in an objective sense. I don't like that because it of course isn't objective. The idea of being dropped into a game with nought but the tools and mechanics and left alone to do what you want is a worthy one to explore, and if that sounds like your cup of tea then fine, more power to you. Go play it. I, however, don't have fun like that. I like a purpose to a game beyond "doing whatever", that's why I hate The Sims. I'll stick to my games that some kind of narrative purpose, and the rest if the gaming world (so it seems) can f@*£ off and play Minecraft.
4) DC Adventures (or Mutants & Masterminds 3rd Edition if you like) looks like a really good game upon reading. If you like role-playing and superheroes, go look for it. If I get a chance to run some of it, I'll let you know how it plays.
5) D&D Heroes of Shadow is also a good book, should appease that player who wants to be evil. I mean, he still can't be, but he can pretend to be. Give him a fringe haircut and let him mope away about how much the world hates him and his magic sword.
Yeah, that's my little bites of opinion there. Comments down below, I imagine someone might just disagree with something :)
Monday, 2 May 2011
Sunday, 1 May 2011
A Disturbing Lack of Faith
I have come back from a really good session of Star Wars Saga Edition. It was the first session of a new campaign set about 1500 years before the films. The premise? All of the characters were Sith or employed by the Sith.
This made me think of something a reader (laydoth) said back when I wrote about the Black Crusade announcement a while back. In short, he said that playing inherently evil characters could exacerbate any PvP friction in a group; having a party wanting to kill each other does happen, even in a heroic game like Star Wars. Could having evil PCs make the game fall apart? Well...no. This is an account of the playing style of one particular player.
This was the guy who pulled a knife on an angry Wookie and publicly insulted a prominent Jedi master. While I admire the balls it takes to just do stuff in an RPG (I see no better motivation, really), it does often put his characters at odds with the rest of the party. Put simply, out of character we're laughing, in character we're facepalming. At least we could stop him from killing everyone in the room by reminding him of his character's assumed heroic nature, as per the themes of the game. Now his guy is acknowledged as being evil, I did fear we'd lose him to shooting all the NPCs and stealing their stuff, teabagging the corpses as he went.
Not so it seemed. Sure, he did pull a gun on one of the other PCs when he realised he was being paid way too low (the price of Intelligence 9, I afraid), but he also stuck with us even when offered a better job. He didn't just kill everyone, rather he thought about whether or not that would have been best for the group first, as you do when making a decision as to whether or not you should instigate something you can't stop.
If this proves anything, it's that role-players aren't always the violent animals their play style makes them seem. Their characters might bitch and moan at each other, and maybe use one another as meat shields, but none are out to get the rest killed just 'for the lulz'. Role-players are competent enough to consider actions before their characters take them, instead of just doing silly stuff and claiming it was "in character", even when they have every legitimate excuse to. I think Yahtzee Croshaw said it best when he said that "being a dick in a game is only fun when the game doesn't want you to be a dick; being a dick in a dick-simulator is just going along with it".*
So, I think a re-evaluation is in order: Black Crusade might be fine, folks won't be stupid when they can be. If Fantasy Flight make a heroically-themed 40k game, that's when the trouble will start.
This made me think of something a reader (laydoth) said back when I wrote about the Black Crusade announcement a while back. In short, he said that playing inherently evil characters could exacerbate any PvP friction in a group; having a party wanting to kill each other does happen, even in a heroic game like Star Wars. Could having evil PCs make the game fall apart? Well...no. This is an account of the playing style of one particular player.
This was the guy who pulled a knife on an angry Wookie and publicly insulted a prominent Jedi master. While I admire the balls it takes to just do stuff in an RPG (I see no better motivation, really), it does often put his characters at odds with the rest of the party. Put simply, out of character we're laughing, in character we're facepalming. At least we could stop him from killing everyone in the room by reminding him of his character's assumed heroic nature, as per the themes of the game. Now his guy is acknowledged as being evil, I did fear we'd lose him to shooting all the NPCs and stealing their stuff, teabagging the corpses as he went.
Not so it seemed. Sure, he did pull a gun on one of the other PCs when he realised he was being paid way too low (the price of Intelligence 9, I afraid), but he also stuck with us even when offered a better job. He didn't just kill everyone, rather he thought about whether or not that would have been best for the group first, as you do when making a decision as to whether or not you should instigate something you can't stop.
If this proves anything, it's that role-players aren't always the violent animals their play style makes them seem. Their characters might bitch and moan at each other, and maybe use one another as meat shields, but none are out to get the rest killed just 'for the lulz'. Role-players are competent enough to consider actions before their characters take them, instead of just doing silly stuff and claiming it was "in character", even when they have every legitimate excuse to. I think Yahtzee Croshaw said it best when he said that "being a dick in a game is only fun when the game doesn't want you to be a dick; being a dick in a dick-simulator is just going along with it".*
So, I think a re-evaluation is in order: Black Crusade might be fine, folks won't be stupid when they can be. If Fantasy Flight make a heroically-themed 40k game, that's when the trouble will start.
Sunday, 24 April 2011
Guilty Pleasures
I was going to do a bit on the new gameplay footage released for Duke Nukem Forever (source: The Escapist). But, while watching it, something more intriguing came to mind.
During the video (if you watch it, you'll see it yourself), a quote from Xbox Official Magazine is shown: "A guilty pleasure worth waiting for." This got me thinking about what is usually meant by "guilty pleasure". The Urban Dictionary defines is it as "Something that you shouldn't like, but like anyway." That is to say, a thing normally considered to be of low quality that is still enjoyed, even though it shouldn't be. It usually refers to sweets, drugs , or bad movies.
Whatever prediction OXM is making about how DNF (rolling out the acronyms here) is going to turn out on release, I got to wondering whether a game could become a proper guilty pleasure. I mean, let's look at that in other media a second. A "guilty pleasure" movie is usually poorly made: the script might be bad, the actors could be phoning it in hard, the sets might just be awful, but you like it anyway. For me, I'd say Judge Dredd (1995) fits in there. It's cheesy and silly, but fun. Books (corny spoofs or silly fantasy novels maybe) can do the same, I'm sure. But what about games? As I've said, to be a guilty pleasure it generally has to be poorly made but fun, but poorly made games are rarely fun. Even if you can think of one or two (and I'm sure you can) how many are the sort of thing you would feel bad admitting to liking? There's unlikely to be so much consensus of the game's awfulness for that; you can still be ok enjoying it.
One game did sort of spring to mind when I had a think about this was the Fable series. Any of you who have read other bits of this blog will know of my thoughts on the third of these games (check here if you haven't), but the other two do fit a bit more, the second one in particular. Fable 2 was, sad to sad, a rather flawed game. The story was a tad lame in places, the pacing was off a bit (unless you kept only to the main quests, in which case it was just too short), and there was very little challenge for anything other than a casual gamer. A lot of promises unfulfilled, as only Mr Molyneux can non-deliver. Yet, I found myself truly entertained, taking it all the way through to the end and coming back for more every so often. And yes, I did feel a bit uneasy telling certain friends that I enjoyed Fable 2.
Does this mean that Fable 2 was my guilty pleasure? A bad game I could enjoy, something so wrong yet so right? Sounds like it.
I think the way gaming fits into the "guilty pleasure" thing isn't always about specific games; maybe it's much broader than that. Rather than certain games being considered bad-yet-good, occasionally it can get attached to genres. Imagine telling your action-gamer friends that you liked [Job X] Simulator 2011? Sure, it's not embarrassing per se, but it can be a bit odd admitting to enjoying something that should be boring. Even broader than that, gaming as a hobby could be considered a guilty pleasure. Less and less every day, mind, but for demographics not readily associated with gaming (eg women over 30), identifying yourself as a gamer could generate that "wrong but right" feeling as well.
I think I'm just rambling out stuff now, but one should wonder: in a medium where the skill with which something is made is intrinsic to it's entertainment factor, and mistakes in development are usually just annoying rather than funny, could the traditional idea of the guilty pleasure exist? From the look of this entry, it might look like I think I have the answer, but I'm not 100% sure...and I'm not the only guy on the Internet :)
Comments below, please.
During the video (if you watch it, you'll see it yourself), a quote from Xbox Official Magazine is shown: "A guilty pleasure worth waiting for." This got me thinking about what is usually meant by "guilty pleasure". The Urban Dictionary defines is it as "Something that you shouldn't like, but like anyway." That is to say, a thing normally considered to be of low quality that is still enjoyed, even though it shouldn't be. It usually refers to sweets, drugs , or bad movies.
Whatever prediction OXM is making about how DNF (rolling out the acronyms here) is going to turn out on release, I got to wondering whether a game could become a proper guilty pleasure. I mean, let's look at that in other media a second. A "guilty pleasure" movie is usually poorly made: the script might be bad, the actors could be phoning it in hard, the sets might just be awful, but you like it anyway. For me, I'd say Judge Dredd (1995) fits in there. It's cheesy and silly, but fun. Books (corny spoofs or silly fantasy novels maybe) can do the same, I'm sure. But what about games? As I've said, to be a guilty pleasure it generally has to be poorly made but fun, but poorly made games are rarely fun. Even if you can think of one or two (and I'm sure you can) how many are the sort of thing you would feel bad admitting to liking? There's unlikely to be so much consensus of the game's awfulness for that; you can still be ok enjoying it.
One game did sort of spring to mind when I had a think about this was the Fable series. Any of you who have read other bits of this blog will know of my thoughts on the third of these games (check here if you haven't), but the other two do fit a bit more, the second one in particular. Fable 2 was, sad to sad, a rather flawed game. The story was a tad lame in places, the pacing was off a bit (unless you kept only to the main quests, in which case it was just too short), and there was very little challenge for anything other than a casual gamer. A lot of promises unfulfilled, as only Mr Molyneux can non-deliver. Yet, I found myself truly entertained, taking it all the way through to the end and coming back for more every so often. And yes, I did feel a bit uneasy telling certain friends that I enjoyed Fable 2.
Does this mean that Fable 2 was my guilty pleasure? A bad game I could enjoy, something so wrong yet so right? Sounds like it.
I think the way gaming fits into the "guilty pleasure" thing isn't always about specific games; maybe it's much broader than that. Rather than certain games being considered bad-yet-good, occasionally it can get attached to genres. Imagine telling your action-gamer friends that you liked [Job X] Simulator 2011? Sure, it's not embarrassing per se, but it can be a bit odd admitting to enjoying something that should be boring. Even broader than that, gaming as a hobby could be considered a guilty pleasure. Less and less every day, mind, but for demographics not readily associated with gaming (eg women over 30), identifying yourself as a gamer could generate that "wrong but right" feeling as well.
I think I'm just rambling out stuff now, but one should wonder: in a medium where the skill with which something is made is intrinsic to it's entertainment factor, and mistakes in development are usually just annoying rather than funny, could the traditional idea of the guilty pleasure exist? From the look of this entry, it might look like I think I have the answer, but I'm not 100% sure...and I'm not the only guy on the Internet :)
Comments below, please.
Thursday, 14 April 2011
Couple o' New Trailers: Space Marine and Dead Rising 2
Here's a couple of trailers I've looked at today. I got these from The Escapist.
The first is the latest from Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine
Ok, well, I can't say this makes me more excited about this new offering from Relic. After all, I've never been worried that they'll mess this up, given how well they've worked with the 40k IP in the past (Dawn of War, anyone?), and that still stands. My opinion has always been that they know what they're doing, let them get on with it. That looks to be correct here. The setting looks wonderful, the character designs are authentic right down to the colours, sounds and details; even the plot sounds suitably epic for a Space Marine campaign (Orks capturing a Titan? Damn straight we're sending in the Astartes!).
One thing that does worry me, as I'm sure it does many others, is that the game focuses around one Marine. For those who don't know, a large part of the Space Marines' flavour within the Warhammer universe is that they work together, as a unit and as an army. It's a whole brotherhood thing. While we've seen hints at teh supporting cast, the player character does seem to be going lone wolf on this one, which seems to go the wrong way. I'm willing to go along with the justification for now that he's a Captain, and therefore perfectly capable of taking on a small horde of Orks alone, I think that Relic will have to come up with a good reason for this in the narrative. The whole "I'm not playing by the rules" hero schtick won't cut it with the Ultramarines, given they wrote the rules.
Other than that, it looks really good, but not totally awe-inspiring yet. I'm hoping for a demo this year. I don't even mind that the Campaign Lead looks like a nervous 8-year-old.
Next, Dead Rising 2: Off The Record:
Is there a point to this, people? I haven't played Dead Rising 2, but I loved the first one, and I can tell you...Frank West was not my favourite character. Not by a long shot. While most of the narrative was poorly written and the cast badly portrayed, I could get by them. Frank just rubbed me the wrong way, and the fact that he resembled a waxwork Neanderthal didn't help. Heck, he's even worse now, what the hell is wrong with you, Capcom? He doesn't have to be handsome, but we do have to look at the screen here.
Back to my point: Why? Why is a remake being made with this guy in it? Why are they ducking out of continuity issues by making it just a "what if?" scenario? Are these the most question marks I've ever used in such quick succession?
According to Eurogamer, this is being labelled a "fan's version" of Dead Rising 2. I am tempted to go ask a friend of mine who happens to be a big fan if this is what he wanted, but it's obvious that the majority (or, more likely, a loud minority) has spoken. Instead of a (I assume) more charismatic hero with a good reason to go risk his life battling a zombie horde like Chuck Greene, what the folks really want is a selfish reporter who is willing to watch people die, and to kill people, just to get a few pictures. Fair play, if that's what is wanted, more power to Capcom.
What strikes me as odd though is why this is being marketed at a spin-off to the second game. I mean, we've been told its got a whole new story, plus it's being played with a different character, and it's being made as a new game rather than DLC. You know what sound's like? A sequel. Call it Dead Rising 3, I reckon.
Either that, or it's clearly not going to be all it's cracked up to be.
Comments please.
The first is the latest from Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine
Ok, well, I can't say this makes me more excited about this new offering from Relic. After all, I've never been worried that they'll mess this up, given how well they've worked with the 40k IP in the past (Dawn of War, anyone?), and that still stands. My opinion has always been that they know what they're doing, let them get on with it. That looks to be correct here. The setting looks wonderful, the character designs are authentic right down to the colours, sounds and details; even the plot sounds suitably epic for a Space Marine campaign (Orks capturing a Titan? Damn straight we're sending in the Astartes!).
One thing that does worry me, as I'm sure it does many others, is that the game focuses around one Marine. For those who don't know, a large part of the Space Marines' flavour within the Warhammer universe is that they work together, as a unit and as an army. It's a whole brotherhood thing. While we've seen hints at teh supporting cast, the player character does seem to be going lone wolf on this one, which seems to go the wrong way. I'm willing to go along with the justification for now that he's a Captain, and therefore perfectly capable of taking on a small horde of Orks alone, I think that Relic will have to come up with a good reason for this in the narrative. The whole "I'm not playing by the rules" hero schtick won't cut it with the Ultramarines, given they wrote the rules.
Other than that, it looks really good, but not totally awe-inspiring yet. I'm hoping for a demo this year. I don't even mind that the Campaign Lead looks like a nervous 8-year-old.
Next, Dead Rising 2: Off The Record:
Is there a point to this, people? I haven't played Dead Rising 2, but I loved the first one, and I can tell you...Frank West was not my favourite character. Not by a long shot. While most of the narrative was poorly written and the cast badly portrayed, I could get by them. Frank just rubbed me the wrong way, and the fact that he resembled a waxwork Neanderthal didn't help. Heck, he's even worse now, what the hell is wrong with you, Capcom? He doesn't have to be handsome, but we do have to look at the screen here.
Back to my point: Why? Why is a remake being made with this guy in it? Why are they ducking out of continuity issues by making it just a "what if?" scenario? Are these the most question marks I've ever used in such quick succession?
According to Eurogamer, this is being labelled a "fan's version" of Dead Rising 2. I am tempted to go ask a friend of mine who happens to be a big fan if this is what he wanted, but it's obvious that the majority (or, more likely, a loud minority) has spoken. Instead of a (I assume) more charismatic hero with a good reason to go risk his life battling a zombie horde like Chuck Greene, what the folks really want is a selfish reporter who is willing to watch people die, and to kill people, just to get a few pictures. Fair play, if that's what is wanted, more power to Capcom.
What strikes me as odd though is why this is being marketed at a spin-off to the second game. I mean, we've been told its got a whole new story, plus it's being played with a different character, and it's being made as a new game rather than DLC. You know what sound's like? A sequel. Call it Dead Rising 3, I reckon.
Either that, or it's clearly not going to be all it's cracked up to be.
Comments please.
Wednesday, 6 April 2011
Bring on the Big Bads
I've had a on-off relationship with table-top warming for the last 6 years. And when I say wargaming, I do exclusively mean Warhammer Fantasy/40,000. It's not that I don't like other wargames, it's just that they seem to deal exclusively in metal models, and I can't stand painting metal. There has to be an unwritten trust between a man and his metal model that the latter will not fall apart at any given moment, seriously annoying the former.
When I'm into it, I'll be all over it, using up large amounts of my money (disposable or otherwise) buying little plastic men so I can pretend to command them to kill other plastic men which I pretend are dying. When I'm not into it, I will miss months of development in what have become rapidly changing product lines. It's for this reason that I signed up for the Games Workshop mailing list, so I could actually have some idea as to what the hell is going on while my obsession gland is diverting me towards something else (usually just as useless and just as demanding on my finances, like LARPing).
Like many companies that specialise in hobby games, GW is in the habit of revamping sections of its product lines with new rules and models, as a means of increasing sales. That makes sense, and I'm all for it. Consumers like shiny new things, so you give it to them. However, the trend for these updates seems to be "mostly the same, a few redesigns on some familiar models and a REALLY BIG NEW THING!!!"
Case in point: a new rulebook for the Tomb Kings (basically an army of mummies and Egyptian mythology-inspired monsters) army is out on pre-order. With it come some new Tomb Guard models, and something that looks like a guy riding a snake. These look pretty standard. Then there's this:
WTF is that?! I know what it is, because I looked it up. It's a Necrosphinx. This is the big, bad thing that's going to be sitting across the table from any fool who challenges a Tomb Kings player from now on. It's been happening with nearly all updates in the last 3 months. The Orcs got a Giant Spider, the Skaven (ratmen) got all this nonsense, and even the Grey Knights, a futuristic army of crusading soldiers not know for their monsters, get this Dreadknight. I mean, look at it. It's a giant robot with a friggin' hammer!
And yet, I do think that this is the best part of the wargaming hobby. In every army in every fantasy or sci-fi war, there's always the really big stuff that stands way above the rank and file. Remember that massive battering ram from Return of the King? The AT-ATs from Star Wars? These things are iconic; we not only notice them, we remember of them with that "woah, did you see that?" awe that befits these styles of media. Sure, these products are really suppose to be that got-to-have-them centrepieces of every army of that type (if you don't have one then it's not a real army), but that doesn't matter to me.
Big fantasy battles are really just backgrounds to those few titans in their own epic struggles, so I welcome the big bads onto the table top. Besides, they've been part of the hobby for longer than I know, it's only now they look so damn crazy.
Comments down below :)
When I'm into it, I'll be all over it, using up large amounts of my money (disposable or otherwise) buying little plastic men so I can pretend to command them to kill other plastic men which I pretend are dying. When I'm not into it, I will miss months of development in what have become rapidly changing product lines. It's for this reason that I signed up for the Games Workshop mailing list, so I could actually have some idea as to what the hell is going on while my obsession gland is diverting me towards something else (usually just as useless and just as demanding on my finances, like LARPing).
Like many companies that specialise in hobby games, GW is in the habit of revamping sections of its product lines with new rules and models, as a means of increasing sales. That makes sense, and I'm all for it. Consumers like shiny new things, so you give it to them. However, the trend for these updates seems to be "mostly the same, a few redesigns on some familiar models and a REALLY BIG NEW THING!!!"
Case in point: a new rulebook for the Tomb Kings (basically an army of mummies and Egyptian mythology-inspired monsters) army is out on pre-order. With it come some new Tomb Guard models, and something that looks like a guy riding a snake. These look pretty standard. Then there's this:
WTF is that?! I know what it is, because I looked it up. It's a Necrosphinx. This is the big, bad thing that's going to be sitting across the table from any fool who challenges a Tomb Kings player from now on. It's been happening with nearly all updates in the last 3 months. The Orcs got a Giant Spider, the Skaven (ratmen) got all this nonsense, and even the Grey Knights, a futuristic army of crusading soldiers not know for their monsters, get this Dreadknight. I mean, look at it. It's a giant robot with a friggin' hammer!
And yet, I do think that this is the best part of the wargaming hobby. In every army in every fantasy or sci-fi war, there's always the really big stuff that stands way above the rank and file. Remember that massive battering ram from Return of the King? The AT-ATs from Star Wars? These things are iconic; we not only notice them, we remember of them with that "woah, did you see that?" awe that befits these styles of media. Sure, these products are really suppose to be that got-to-have-them centrepieces of every army of that type (if you don't have one then it's not a real army), but that doesn't matter to me.
Big fantasy battles are really just backgrounds to those few titans in their own epic struggles, so I welcome the big bads onto the table top. Besides, they've been part of the hobby for longer than I know, it's only now they look so damn crazy.
Comments down below :)
Monday, 4 April 2011
If It Ain't Broke...
I've been playing a bit of Lord of the Rings Online this weekend. I might have done a critique of that, but a couple of thoughts hit me while playing:
1) "Hey, this is kind of like World of Warcraft!" Not original, since most MMOs are like WoW. But that brought me onto...
2) "Do MMOs seem to copy WoW because WoW just happens to have cracked MMO gameplay?"
It's no secret (in fact it's the lament of many gamers) that the AAA games industry lacks innovation right now, at least compared to earlier times. Many games just seem to be rehashes of popular titles with different wallpaper, and it's a source of frustration seeing a lot of talent go to waste on rip-offs and copies when new ideas could be nurtured with the right effort and money. Of course, money is too much to risk these days on experimental ideas that don't guarantee profit, not when we already know what sells.
I'm not going to waste any more time on discussing innovation as a thing now. Better minds than I have far more to say on that. What I wanted to talk about was a rather plausible (and almost justifiable) reason for the seeming lack of new ideas in the medium.
We've pretty much cracked it right now. Think of a genre of games, and I bet you can think of one game that pretty much worked out how best to "do" that genre, and is now copied to death. MMOs, as pointed out, have WoW. Fighting games got Street Fighter. Action games have God of War. Shooters seem to get a new one every so often: Doom, Quake, Halo, Call of Duty right now. It does make sense that when making a game, if someone else has made a game (or games, as I'd say a lot of RTSs are amalgams of tried-and-true mechanics) that does want you want really well, you'd want to take something from that and try to shape it in your image a little. Take God of War, for example. You want to make an action game, but Sony basically got hack n' slash awesome down ages ago. You could try to go in a totally different direction that, yes, could bring about a new age of innovation (that's how these aforementioned game began), but you also risk falling flat on your face if your bold experiment fails.So, the option to take more than a bit from God of War sounds more tempting.
I'm not going to say that innovation in gaming doesn't need a sound kick in the arse, because it does. I'm just putting in the point that we shouldn't dismiss the reasoning that someone else has cracked it as a poor excuse; because until the medium undergoes a really big development (I imagine it'll be when someone figures out how to utilise motion controls properly), it's the truth. We've got games more-or-less sorted for now. Don't be so hard on the developers.
Unless it's a truly shameless rip-off, in which case don't buy their shit.
PS: I draw an exception at puzzle games. They have a lot more room to innovate, seeing as there isn't a right way to make a puzzle.
1) "Hey, this is kind of like World of Warcraft!" Not original, since most MMOs are like WoW. But that brought me onto...
2) "Do MMOs seem to copy WoW because WoW just happens to have cracked MMO gameplay?"
It's no secret (in fact it's the lament of many gamers) that the AAA games industry lacks innovation right now, at least compared to earlier times. Many games just seem to be rehashes of popular titles with different wallpaper, and it's a source of frustration seeing a lot of talent go to waste on rip-offs and copies when new ideas could be nurtured with the right effort and money. Of course, money is too much to risk these days on experimental ideas that don't guarantee profit, not when we already know what sells.
I'm not going to waste any more time on discussing innovation as a thing now. Better minds than I have far more to say on that. What I wanted to talk about was a rather plausible (and almost justifiable) reason for the seeming lack of new ideas in the medium.
We've pretty much cracked it right now. Think of a genre of games, and I bet you can think of one game that pretty much worked out how best to "do" that genre, and is now copied to death. MMOs, as pointed out, have WoW. Fighting games got Street Fighter. Action games have God of War. Shooters seem to get a new one every so often: Doom, Quake, Halo, Call of Duty right now. It does make sense that when making a game, if someone else has made a game (or games, as I'd say a lot of RTSs are amalgams of tried-and-true mechanics) that does want you want really well, you'd want to take something from that and try to shape it in your image a little. Take God of War, for example. You want to make an action game, but Sony basically got hack n' slash awesome down ages ago. You could try to go in a totally different direction that, yes, could bring about a new age of innovation (that's how these aforementioned game began), but you also risk falling flat on your face if your bold experiment fails.So, the option to take more than a bit from God of War sounds more tempting.
I'm not going to say that innovation in gaming doesn't need a sound kick in the arse, because it does. I'm just putting in the point that we shouldn't dismiss the reasoning that someone else has cracked it as a poor excuse; because until the medium undergoes a really big development (I imagine it'll be when someone figures out how to utilise motion controls properly), it's the truth. We've got games more-or-less sorted for now. Don't be so hard on the developers.
Unless it's a truly shameless rip-off, in which case don't buy their shit.
PS: I draw an exception at puzzle games. They have a lot more room to innovate, seeing as there isn't a right way to make a puzzle.
Wednesday, 23 March 2011
Chronicles of Arax Review
Or: "Dungeon Crawling for Recluses"
I was going to write a review of one of the Gothic games, having just bought them off Steam super cheap-like. However, I found playing the first one too fiddly early on (couldn't work out how to talk to the first NPC you have to meet, maybe I'm not ready for a game made when innovation meant "be different even if it breaks the game"), so I've decided to give my two cents on a little RPG I found for free: Chronicles of Arax.
The basic premise is that only 1 player is involved in the adventure, which comes in the form of a 'choose your own adventure' style dungeon crawl. You are given a pre-generated character at the start (no character generation might sound odd, but this game has been made to be more of a time killer than an evening filler), and fight through encounters randomly rolled from a table. When you need to do something, you roll a dice depending on the relevant stat (abilities are measured in dice rather than numbers: you might have a Strength of d6 and a Reflexes on d8) and try to get a particular number or higher. In fights, you roll Fighting Skill and see who gets the highest. It's really one of the simplest games to play I've ever come across.
Treasure is easily worked out too. Each encounter lists exactly what you get for killing the baddies; sometimes you have to roll on a table for the more exotic magical items (the table in the core book is small, but it turns into a massive d100 table in one of the expansions). Simple and standard.
I went through the adventure in the core book with my brother (I rolled for the monsters), and we found it to be really fun. The encounters are varied within a theme (orcs mostly), so it all fit together despite the random element. The items were well distributed so it didn't get too easy, and the skill challenges are difficult enough that you'll fail sometimes but not often.
I'd had a go at it by myself before and, well...this where solo stuff falls down: it just felt like a lot of dice rolling, and only dice rolling. Anyone who plays RPGs knows that it's all about the social interaction and shared experience between the group. There's none of that in a solo game, where you just have a book and some dice and hopefully enough patience to slog through before RSI sets in.
And once you slog through...that's really it. There's no guidelines for writing Quests and no monster stats outside of the encounters where the monsters themselves appear. There's only three Quests published right now, so once you're done with them, you're done for good, unless you fancy replaying them with another character type (of which again there are only three), which doesn't sound too inviting to me. In fact, unless the developer, Crystal Star, brings more Quests out, the lovely abilities characters can gain may be wasted.
My final gripe with this game is the way the character types are balanced. They aren't. The character given in the core book, The Adventurer, has a fighting chance of getting through a Quest if you're lucky and the monster aren't. The other two however, which come individually in expansions, are way overpowered. The Battle Wizard might have a hard time with his first quest, but after he levels up and gets some spells he's gonna blast his way through. The final character, the grandly named Knight of the Steel Fist will just zoom through the encounters easy as pie, simply because he starts with plate armour and a really high armour and Fight Skill stat. Even if the bad guy hits him, he's unlikely to damage him; and even if damage is dealt, the Knight has so many wounds it doesn't matter. Put simply, the character types aren't so much classes as badly made difficulty modes.
I much as all that annoys me, I'm tempted to let it slide for now. It's only a recent release, and RPGs do tend to need a bit of tweaking and errata before they get really good. I can't deny I had a good time playing it as well, it just bothers me that I had to find another person to enjoy a so-called "solo adventure game".
If you're up for a old-school dungeon-crawling time killer on a slow day, pick up Chronicles of Arax. It's free for the core rules and the expansions are only $1 each. Just don't expect to be able to take it too far for the time being.
Chronicles of Arax was created by Crystal Star Games.
The game can be found for free on DriveThruRPG.com
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