08.17.08
Posted in Games at 19:50
Took a lot of effort to resist the temptation of calling this post “Braid Blows”, but I thought that would be a bit of a low… Blow.
Ahem.
I’m through Braid, though I haven’t yet completed it. The game consists of 5 worlds (numbered from 2-6) with a 12-piece jigsaw puzzle each. Each actual puzzle in the game yields one piece, and when you’ve completed the jigsaw, you’ve solved the world. You can, however, move through the worlds without solving all the puzzles, so while I have made it through the final world, I’m still missing 1 piece in world 5 and 5 pieces in world 6.
Braid is an important game, and a major part of the continuing effort to explore the artistic potential of the game medium. Braid’s major contribution in this context is an effort to merge narrative themes with the gameplay, using gameplay mechanics as metaphors for the existential problems the protagonist, Tim, is facing.
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- Game: Braid
- Music: Jami Sieber - Undercurrent
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07.19.08
Posted in Games at 16:38
Now I know how Australian gamers feel. I only just realized Rock Band has been released in Europe for a while. The PR machine was running in the highest gear back in the autumn when Rock Band was released in North America, but when it was finally released “in parts of Europe as a timed exclusive on Xbox 360 on May 23, 2008″ (from Wikipedia) we didn’t hear a peep. It’s like Harmonix doesn’t really give a shit about the European market. Not sure what to make of that.
I was excited about it in the fall, but I’m not all that interested anymore. I think I’ll save my cash for the Metallica-version of Guitar Hero 3. It’ll probably be a half-assed money-grubbin’ PR stunt, but I know all of Metallica’s songs too well not to own this game. I doubt the loss of my purchase will mean much to Harmonix, but the fact that Rock Band has been completely absent from my consciousness may hint that they’ve sold very few copies in Europe. If anybody can find the numbers, I’d appreciate it. I’m simply going by the fact that I don’t know anybody in Europe who has this game, and I know quite a few Guitar Hero enthusiasts.
I do nurture a vain hope that Harmonix and their publishers will take that as a hint: It’s a simultaneous release or no release at all, thankyouverymuch. This ain’t Australia, after all.
- Game: The Nameless Mod
- Music: We Are Scientists - The Great Escape
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07.15.08
Posted in Game design, Games at 19:19
Overall I’ve enjoyed my vacation on Darkshore. Spent a lot of time on the beach. Didn’t get much of a tan though. My girlfriend turned into a bear a couple of times, so that was a little freaky.
- Uthar the Warrior, heading home to Stormwind from Darkshore.
How do you roleplay in World of Warcraft? With great difficulty. It’s not really a game that fosters immersion - every time you even begin to forget you’re playing a game, the rules are shoved into your face again. Enemies fade in out of thin air, bears cheerily drop battleaxes when you kill them but somehow fail to yield any claws most of time, NPC’s will mourn the death of their beloved although your own death can be rectified in the time it takes your spirit to run from the graveyard to your corpse, and food consumption has level restrictions.
WoW doesn’t want you to forget you’re playing a game, it wants you to learn the rules and then powergame the hell out of them. It wants you to keep chasing those extra 0.5 DPS forever and ever. Now that I’ve tried playing both on an RP and a non-RP server, I can say with reasonable certainty that - barring any RP guilds that have thus far managed to elude me - the only difference is that RP servers have slightly fewer characters named “uberdruid” or “UrDad”.
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- Game: World of Warcraft
- Music: Little Jimmy Reeves - Sidetracked
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07.10.08
Posted in Game news, Games at 09:14
Yes, that is a rather fanboyish title, but Bioware Corp. have so verily deserved it. Six years after the release of Neverwinter Nights, they release the final patch 1.69. “Patch?” you ask, “it must really have been broken if they’re still patching it after 6 years.” Well, patch is probably not the right word for it. The last significant bug in NWN was fixed years ago. This is more of an update. Here are the “patch” notes. And a quick summary:
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07.08.08
Posted in Games at 10:43
In cooperation with World of Warcraft, Narcissism Incorporated is proud to bring you another entry in our “Obsessed with fictional worlds” series.
I had a somewhat stirring yet peculiar experience yesterday. After wrapping up our business in the Ghostlands at level 18, Nick and I bid the native lands of the Blood Elves farewell and travelled via Undercity to Orgrimmar, with the intention of going through the Barrens to the Stonetalon Mountains where our adventures would continue.
Passing through the ruins of Lordaeron over Undercity again after a 2 year absense, I was struck by a sense of familiarity that made me note the circumstances of my return to WoW until that point: Though I was back, I had chosen to return to Azeroth in a zone that I had not previously visited (since the Blood Elves’ homelands were introduced in the Burning Crusade, and I stopped playing before it was released). Though it was the game I played 2 years ago, it wasn’t a familiar environment.
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- Game: World of Warcraft
- Music: Steppenwolf - Born to Be Wild
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07.05.08
Posted in Game news, Games at 15:16
I’ll be the first to admit it: I love open world games. They cater to my powerful explorer gene. They facilitate the escapism that I so dearly need, they give me the freedom to get lost in a huge fictional world based on rules that are complex enough to entertain me for hours, yet simple enough to eventually understand and master. And thankfully they are extremely popular these days.
I’ve recently spent upwards of 70 hours playing GTA4. I’ve just been sucked back into World of Warcraft. Not long ago, I was riding around in Oblivion’s Cyrodiil, creeping frightened and unnerved through STALKER’s Chernobyl, jumping from sun to sun in Dark Star One’s damn near infinite universe, and sailing the Carribbean seas in Pirates! And before that, I spent hours upon hours dodging Boiling Point’s bugs for the chance to drive through the massive jungles of their fictional South American banana republic.
In short, I really love open world games. I love them most when they are shooters or RPG’s, when there is a story to experience. And the rest of 2008 and 2009 will be a good time for me. A really good time indeed. Here’s a quick list of the games I anticipate the most:
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- Game: World of Warcraft
- Music: ACDC - Big Gun
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07.04.08
Posted in Games at 12:35
I bought World of Warcraft yesterday. Again. This time online, so I can play on American servers. I bought Burning Crusade as well, and since I doubt I’ll ever reach level 60, I’m going to be playing a Blood Elf mage with Jewelcrafting so I know I’ll get my money’s worth. And so I’ll see the nice Blood Elf starting area, because the fantastic environments is what I love most about WoW.
There are two reasons I’ve decided to give WoW another shot. First of all, I never played with people I know the last time. Sure, I picked the same server as Kathrine from Greenpeace, but I had no job and no education to look after at that time, and she had full time work at GP, so I out-levelled her pretty fast and then I had to team up with random people, which always seemed to mean elementary schoolers who could barely spell their own names. Secondly, I missed an important point the last time around: You’re not supposed to do every quest.
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- Game: World of Warcraft
- Music: Limp Bizkit - My Way
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07.02.08
Posted in Game design, Games at 15:54
Whoops, looks like I have temporarily failed at blogging. It’s not that I’ve been insanely busy, just that I’ve been a little low on energy recently. I have had time to play games as always, of course: Mainly Titan Quest, but also Perfect Dark Zero which I played in co-op with my friend Torsten. I’ve played it a bit in solo and as with most other games, it is far better with two players. It’s a decent enough action game, but it has at least one major weakness.
As far as I can tell, Rare tried to make a stealth action game. In my opinion they failed, and as a bit of a stealth game connoisseur, I’ve been trying to figure out why.
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- Game: Perfect Dark Zero
- Music: Sons & Daughters - Darling
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06.18.08
Posted in Game design, Games at 23:59
Character progression systems in roleplaying games is something I feel pretty strongly for. Growing better just seems to be one of those primal urges, like collecting better equipment, but generally without the luxury of being able to change your mind and switching out your items at will. When you’re levelling up, your choices are usually a lot more permanent than when you’re out looting, and for that reason, you grow more attached to them.
After playing quite a few (though far from all) CRPG’s on the market, I’ve developed a pretty good idea of what sort of character system I prefer. The main rule is that every upgrade to your character should be significant. The more important a new skill or ability is, the more I enjoy the game. I’d rather have a steady trickle of important upgrades to my character than sudden level-ups full of invidivually insignificant improvements.
Case in point: Compare Diablo 2 with a Dungeons & Dragons game such as Neverwinter Nights. In NWN, you receive a constant stream of experience points which don’t matter at all until you reach a specific limit which triggers a level-up, and then you get a broad range of improvements across all categories (skills, feats, spells, attack bonus, hitpoints). Picking feats and spells are interesting, since each choice you make is significant, but as for attack bonus and hitpoints, the progression is generally slow enough that you don’t notice a particular difference once you’re around level 5 and up. The difference between 50 hitpoints and 60 hitpoints can make a difference in a fight of course, but it doesn’t change the way you play the game.
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- Game: Titan Quest
- Music: Mary Jo feat. Cairbre - Bang Bang, Mystery Man
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06.14.08
Posted in Game design, Games at 15:48
Having completed GTA4 last week, I was in need of a new distraction, and Homeworld - lying installed but utterly unplayed on my desk - seemed to require too much cerebral activity for my current needs. I’ve been following Shamus‘ episodic dissection of Flagship’s Hellgate: London, and for some reason I was reminded of my intentions to purchase Titan Quest once the price dropped to something affordable.
Titan Quest was released in 2006 to mixed reviews. To call it a Diablo clone would be about as fair as calling The Witcher a Baldur’s Gate clone or Call of Duty 4 a Quake clone, but TQ does fit snugly into what has been excellently called the “Third Person Looter” (TPL) genre. It’s a top-down game that allows zooming but provides no camera rotation(!), and the gameplay, like most games of its kind, is extremely simple:
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- Game: Titan Quest - Immortal Throne
- Music: Embrun - Gigoloco
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