"I'll Play It Later"

Dark Souls without Its Souls: Rewards versus Consequence

2011-11-25T11:13:00.004-05:00

I do love Demon's Souls and Dark Souls for many, many reasons. Over time, however, one curious notion kept picking at my brain: what if these games got rid of their currency? What if Dark Souls had no souls?

Selling Point

For those of you who do not know, Dark Souls and its predecessor have this notorious game mechanic that plays off gathering currency from the slain. If you slay a monster, you get souls. You spend souls to increase your avatar's statistical strength or to trade with merchants. It's currency. The problem (and the root of the notoriety) is that when you die in Dark Souls, all the unspent souls you were carrying drop at the location of your character's death, and you have to run all the way back to this death-spot to reclaim this currency. Did you die before getting back to where you were? You just lost all those souls to a newly-made death-spot.

Demon's Souls got a lot of its popularity through word of mouth. I like to think the dialogue between the mouther to the mouthee goes generally goes like this:

“Dude, this game is hard!”

“How hard is it?”

“When you die, you lose all your experience!”

“Woah! That's brutal!”

Maybe this discourse is a little crude, but if you boil down all the reviews and summaries of Demon's Souls (and Dark Souls), they will always return to the point of souls. When you die, you lose your souls. That just sounds harsh. I think that gamers do like a challenge, despite what publishers seem to believe. When they hear that this game is hard and hear just how hard it is thanks to this nice concrete example, a surprisingly large amount of players are drawn towards the siren's song Demon's Souls sings. And it always starts with the souls.

There is, however, that nagging question in my mind: what if the Souls games had no souls? It may be strange for me to ask this. After all, Demon's Souls gained a huge amount of popularity from its harsh selling point: you lose your souls when you die. Before I try to answer my question, I must back up and answer another one. Why would I want Dark Souls to have no souls?

Grind

I am not annoyed that I lose my souls, this currency, when my character dies. I failed to play at the level the game wanted me to play at. That is fine. What annoys me, however, is that there is even a currency to begin with. If you want to make your avatar stronger, you need to collect souls. If you want to buy new armor, you need to collect souls. You need to keep collecting and collecting if you want to be rewarded with those fancy new items or higher numbers. What this creates is a situation where players will keep killing the same monsters over and over again to collect enough money (because that is all these souls are) to buy what the feel they need to progress, or at least buy what they feel would be cool to own. This is grinding. This is bad.

The worst part about the grinding in Dark Souls is how illusory the necessity of it is. Simply put, you do not ever need to grind in Dark Souls. When they start failing in the game, people think they need to to level up (and thus grind) to beat the boss. The truth is they just needed to beat the boss. Dark Souls is paced so you do not need to repeat content to progress, as long as you play well enough to beat the challenges presented to you.

Despite being titular, the souls are not what makes these games. The souls are just a facade hiding a robust and complex game system of exploration and combat. With a currency system you are led to believe this is a game about collecting the currency to progress. That is not what it's there for, and I feel the Souls series suffers for this misdirection. I know there could be a game here that could do without the currency system, and it would be glorious.

Guaranteed Progression

What would the Souls games look like without their souls? I actually think the games could be akin to Super Metroid from days of yore, where upgrades were obtained via finding items in the world. Imagine Dark Souls where all of your upgrades were obtained solely through items that were either guaranteed to be dropped by special defeated enemies (bosses and mini-bosses) or found as treasure laid out through the world. Now, progression is not necessarily based on these upgrades (Dark Souls relies on key-like items mostly), but finding items through exploration just feels so much more rewarding than spending needless time repeating the same monster-slaying over and over!

I yearn for this game. Or at least, a game like this. The combat of the Souls games and the guaranteed rewards of a Metroidvania together would be my dream game. Except for one thing.

What Is Lost

There is one major ramification for taking out currency in these games. The souls in these games do have a purpose; it may not be the one you expect. Demon's Souls and Dark Souls are games about the failure and the accomplishment of surpassing these failures. The souls, as much I harp on them, accentuate every failure. The games would not feel half as unforgiving as they present themselves to be without the feeling that you are losing something every time you die. Currency and the loss of it gives tension to the game; every venture into the world comes at the risk of losing your hard-earned souls upon failure.

That you gain souls is not important. That you can collect cash is trivial. What is so important about souls, what is so essential, is that you can lose them. Loss is key. Without loss, there is no consequence for your failure. Resetting at checkpoints is old news and is not enough. It has been done plenty of times and doesn't carry the impact that actually losing what you have collected can bring.

That is the dilemma. With currency Demon's Souls and Dark Souls entice players into the trap of grinding. Without souls Demon's Souls and Dark Souls lose their oh-so-vital tension of risk and fear of failure. There needs to be something you can lose to keep the appeal of the game, but what? Honestly, I don't know. The thing you lose must be easily collected, ultimately trivial, but important enough to give the illusion of consequence.

Solutions?

Maybe, just maybe, there can be compromise. What if souls were still there, random drops were there, but everything you could gain from these currencies could be obtained through items in-game. Have items that directly increase stats permanently, free level-ups. Give the player ways to upgrade their character that do not require spending currency but instead require exploration and skillful play. Give health increases after beating bosses. Have power-ups strewn across the landscape. Still have souls as a viable way to increase your avatar strength, but make it not the only way. This could keep that tension and consequence for your actions, but at the same time knowledge and skill is rewarded more than grinding is. I don't think this is the perfect answer, but it is better than the current currencies.

Ultimately, there needs to be some sort of soul reward (i.e. something you can lose) in these Souls games, but what makes the series so great is what you can acquire outside of grinding—the true reward.

Amateur Hour: A Boardgame Design Story

2011-11-16T22:06:00.003-05:00

I have been working on a boardgame off and on (I am currently in the ‘off’ phase) for what must have been the past two years or so. That may sound like a lot of time, but let me emphasize the “off and on” bit. My work with this has been spotty to say the least. I am making this game for fun, and frankly I have very little incentive to work on this other than for my own enjoyment.

With that out of the way, making a boardgame is great! With no need to program or mess with a computer, you can make something relatively quickly and get very immediate feedback!

Let me tell you about my boardgame! It is a tactical game set on a square-grid where you summon fantasy monsters to fight and destroy your enemies’ bases. Think of a mix between a tactical-RPG like Final Fantasy Tactics, a variable card game like Magic the Gathering and the motions and game space of Chess. Key features include a base that you can move around and use to summon monsters, a monster “pool” that all players take from to pick their armies, and umm…moving monsters (the pieces) around on a grid. There is a battle system, a light build-your-army mechanic, and some features that try to facilitate smooth play. All of this probably sounds like a lot of gibberish, and frankly most of these features do not make any sense without going into a little more detail. Without further ado, let’s go into further detail!

A Brief Look at the Boardgame I Have Yet to Name

Ah, that’s right: I don’t have a name for my game yet. I was thinking of something like Clash of the Summoners (or maybe jokingly call it Sorcery: the Summoning), but I would rather worry about the name of the game after I feel done with the damn thing. I am far from done with it, but I will get into that later. For now, we will call this game Boardgame.

Boardgame is a tactical game. What does that mean? It means it is like Chess (or one of my favorite games of all time, Dungeon Twister). You move pieces over an area, in this case a square grid. Much of the game is about area control and situating your pieces over the right positions on the board. In Boardgame, you have a lot of pieces you could potentially control (currently up to 17 pieces of your own on the board at once). At some point, having enough pieces on a board would turn this from a tactical game to a war game, a game where you control a large army over an area, but I would say due to the smaller scale of Boardgame this is a tactical game.

Unlike Chess (but like Dungeon Twister), there is a combat mechanic in Boardgame beyond “bump into a piece and win.” If you have a piece in range of an enemy piece you can engage in combat, which is very similar to a Magic the Gathering style of combat. Your piece has a combat value; you deal damage to the enemy based on this value. If the value is equal to or greater than the enemy combat value, that enemy is defeated and taken off the board. You can have group battles, which is actually a big part of the game due to the large amount of pieces on the board, and there are rules for that system. I won’t go into those mechanics here; this is only a preview after all.

Another element in Boardgame, one that I think makes it kind of neat and unique, is an army-building mechanic. This mechanic is similar to drafting cards in a collectible card game, except the drafting is part of the actual game instead of an outside meta-system. Each ‘army’ in the game (a type of unit), is given a drafting card. During the course of play players take drafting cards and officially ‘own’ that army, making it so only they control the pieces of that army and no one else has control of it. I like this mechanic a lot because it allows for me to add tons of weird pieces to the game without worrying about having specific team colors. It also adds these elements of thinking ‘which army will work best against the other player’s army?’ and ‘how can I cut off the enemy player’s build with what I choose?’ But mainly I like the idea of taking all my left-over miniatures from long-lost boardgames and having them fight each other.

The goal of Boardgame is to destroy your enemy’s (enemies’) base. The base is where your new units are placed on the board. The base can also move around, but it cannot defend itself or attack. That is what units are for. The base is equivalent to ‘the player’ in Magic the Gathering. It is the ultimate target that you must build your army to kill. You must defend your base with units like you must defend ‘the player’ with creatures in Magic, and you must attack the enemy base with units like you must attack ‘the enemy player’ with creatures in Magic.

That is the gist of Boardgame. Build an army, move army around to kill enemy base while defending yours. Now that you might have some basic understanding of what the game is about, I should talk about the history of this game and the changes I have made. I will do this…now.

The History of Boardgame and the Changes I Have Made

Two years of boardgame-making, despite being ‘off and on’, is a lot of boardgame. I have revised, edited, adjusted, balanced and revised this game dozens of times by now. Going into every single change would be far too in-depth and would require more words than I have time to write. A simple history will suffice.

The game started out with the choose-your-own-army mechanic, destroy-the-base goal, combat-values, and something I ended up scratching: dice-as-money. When I started out there was a lot wrong with Boardgame, and I wasn’t surprised. Of course there would be a lot to improve upon with my first build of the game! As a result, I tweaked the game. Then I tested again. Then I tweaked again, tested, and so on.

What I learned was that having dice did not work with the system I set up. I wanted to have dice in the game because I wanted to somehow incorporate all my table-top junk (miniatures and dice) into one system, but I didn’t want to have luck-mechanics like card-shuffling and dice-rolling. Guess what? Dice in a boardgame are meant to be rolled. Ultimately I had to choose between adding luck to my game or removing dice. I chose the latter.

Another problem I faced was movement. Boardgame has a player controlling on average about a dozen units on the board. How do you keep track of how many squares of movement all these pieces can move without being tedious and slowing the game down? I had tackled with this problem for a while. If you have a pool of movement points, moving multiple units takes far too long and moving one unit is far too easy. Ultimately I decided to add a new mechanic to the game: grouping units into a “squad.” A Squad is represented by a square tile. You place units you want to move onto the Squad, and move the Squad as if it were one unit. This allows me to keep track of moving units without too much busy work and also allows for some interesting mechanics with how you group pieces together.

The next big issue I faced was victory conditions. At first I had it so whoever destroyed the other players’ bases won. The problem with this elimination-style goal is that players who lose early suddenly are kicked out of the game, and this game has not been short. Elimination works for short games mostly, but for anything longer than 30 minutes makes sitting around and waiting for other players to finish really freaking boring. Not to mention, elimination-based games could go on at a very variable rate depending on how the game goes. Stalemates can happen in this scenario. Frankly, I am still working on this problem. I want to find a victory condition that gives the game a fixed time limit, but so far I have not found a system that I am satisfied with. I will let you know how this goes.

The last thing I have changed throughout the game’s history, of course, is the balance. Units that are in play, how fast the units move, how good they are in battle, what abilities they have, all of this has been changed an innumerable amount of times. Balance is the number one thing I have struggled with in Boardgame, for good reason. There are ton of variables in Boardgame, and all of them have to be tweaked to a point where the game is fair and unbroken. THIS IS HARD. I do not think I will ever be finished with balance; I can only hope to bring it to a point where I am satisfied with how the play of the game turns out.

Things I Have Learned About Making Boardgames from Making Boardgame

This section is just going to be a bunch of little tidbits I have found to be true thanks to my time spent making Boardgame. Take this knowledge with a grain of salt. I am an amateur with making games; these are just things I feel are important from my paltry amount of design experience.

Keep things moving

Downtime, time where a player is doing nothing, kills a game. It is your job as a designer to kill downtime. Two major things cause downtime: busywork and analysis death. Any time a player is fiddling around with pieces when they could be doing an action relevant to the gameplay is bad. Analysis death is also bad. Giving a player too many options can melt brains and slow a game to a crawl (although sometimes you want a great thinking game, like Chess, so A.D. is somewhat tricky to work around).

Buff > Nerf

When hearing about a change in game balance you will hear two words more often than others: buff and nerf. Buff is a term for making some element in the game more powerful, and nerf is the opposite, decreasing the power of some element. While sometimes a nerf is unavoidable, I always prefer buffing what I can far, far more than nerfing elements of my game. Buffing game elements makes for more exaggerated gameplay; people (at least me) like controlling more powerful elements rather than having less power and control. If something is fun but stronger than other elements of the game, the solution is not to cut that fun element out. The solution is to make the other elements better.

Do not get attached to the game

This one is hard. It is hard to realize an idea you have been tinkering with for weeks or months or longer will not work out, and it is even harder to part with that idea. The ability to critical of your work is probably the most important skill a designer can have. To know when something isn’t working and to know when to edit your creation is an invaluable skill. Do not get attached.

BALANCE, BALANCE, BALANCE

Easily the most time I have spent designing this game has been devoted to tweaking numbers to make sure no one thing is too good a strategy over other ways of play. It is vital, vital, to balance your game. In order to have variegated and engaging play you need the pieces of your game to fit together properly. You cannot have something be too strong or too weak.

The devil is in the details

This is closely related to balance. Most of the time you spend balancing, which itself is the most time-consuming activity I have come across, is going over the details of your game. The most problems you will have will be because you did not finely tune the little details in what you are making. I learned this lesson the hard way, and I am still learning this lesson. Keep a close eye on the details of your project, or they will end up biting you in the ass.

Keep players involved

This tidbit ties in with keeping things moving. Do not let the players spend too much time twiddling their thumbs. Ideally there should be no time where the player has to sit and wait for other players doing nothing. There should always be something the player can be doing, even if it is simply thinking about what their next move should be (i.e. if you are going to keep the player from actively participating then at least make your game complicated enough to keep a player thinking).

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it

What an ancient truth! Do not try to change something if it works. Of course, what is “broken” can be subjective, and “fixing” a problem can often create new problems. That’s why you don’t fix what is not a problem. This is a simple but important axiom both in game design and in life.

The best answer is the simplest one

Overcomplicating things is bad when you can get the same things done in a simpler manner. Especially when you are dealing with a boardgame it is important to cut down on fluff that detracts from the experience you are trying to deliver. You are not working with computer that can keep track of huge amounts of processes. You have a board and people who can move stuff around. Keep it simple, stupid.

Keep the game on the board

Kind of close to the last tidbit, try to keep the core of the game at the center of attention. Do not let the rules stray too far from the play area. That will lead to people having to keep track of unnecessary stuff in their head when they could be spending time thinking about strategy and tactics and all that good stuff.

Offense > Defense

Not just a lesson for the player to know, you as a designer should keep the game lively and engaging. Defense is not good for this. Defensive play can lead to boring, repetitious moves, is not fun to watch, and will result in stalemates more than victories. Make sure to reward offense over defense, or the game gets boring fast.

Busywork is an actual thing you need to worry about

It may be easy to shrug off little bits of fiddling with pieces as okay, but it is vital to reduce the amount of work the player has to do to act. Try to make everything you can as painless as possible to get working. Don’t make a die a counter: it’s hard to find the right number to keep track of and stalls the game. Don’t make it hard to keep track of how many moves you have left on your turn. Busywork is bad and needs to be kept at a minimum!

Know technical writing or have someone else who knows

Want your rules to be clear and concise? Then you will want to know how to write a technical document. That is what your rulebook is. All game designers should take up this skill. It is damn useful to be able to convey to players how to play your game.

Elimination format games have problems in long play

Monopoly has a big problem: you can knock a player out of a game that lasts hours. What the hell are they going to do for that time? Eliminating is essentially making that player have nothing but downtime for the rest of the game. DOWNTIME IS BAD.

Listen to your playtesters!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It may seem like the comments from the people playing your game are wrong, but chances are you are the one who is wrong. Listen to the people playing your game. Observe how they play your game. Do not force them to take an action you think they should do; see what the players will do with the game you just gave to them. Playtesting is a vital part of making a game, and you need other opinions to keep yourself from being too biased towards your game. Remember that spiel about not being attached to your game? That’s what playtesters can help with. Do not ignore them.

Clarify your ruleset

This goes with knowing technical writing, but you need to make sure your rules are clear. How can people play your game if they do not understand what to do?

Be wary of new rules

Similar to “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” new rules are dangerous. Only implement new rules and mechanics if you think they are absolutely needed. Nine times out of ten, more than that probably, new rules bring new problems to the table. Do not go happy-go-lucky with adding tons of features or else your game will collapse into a mess of issues.

“Fun” > Perfect Balance (?)

Symmetrical, totally fair games are not the best thing in the world if they have no engaging play. Before balancing the game (even though balance is utterly essential), make sure the game is actually worth playing. When you’re far into making your game, it is easier to tweak numbers than it is to make something boring interesting.

Conclusions

Well, actually, this game is not finished yet. I need to revise, rebuild, and rewrite tons of stuff before I feel I will be ready to try to make a final product. So really, this game, Boardgame, is to be concluded at a later date. I still need to make a good name for crying out loud! I hope you found what I have learned so far to be interesting, and hopefully this will help you if you think to make a (board)game of your own. It is a rewarding experience.

So I've been streaming a lot!

2011-11-07T12:12:00.004-05:00

This is just going to be a quick blurb to give a notice to anyone who may follow this blog (ha!) but haven't been following my justin.tv channel (well, twitch, but whatever). Basically instead of blogging I've been streaming! I note when I'm going live on my twitter feed, so keep an eye on that if you're at all interested in watching me play games and comment on my playing of games.

And to anyone who reads this blog AND watches my stream, you are awesome. Keep it up!

(stream link here)

Boardgame Roundup Part 5: Final Thoughts

2011-09-20T16:37:00.000-04:00

Now that I've covered the extent of my boardgame collection, now is a good time to recollect and present some thoughts as to what was good, what was bad, and whatever else.

While early on I enjoyed the simple games, I think I always favor the more complicated, tactically rich games. This doesn't mean a game has to be complex rules-wise to entertain me, but the gameplay needs to have depth for me to have the most fun. This need for complexity has a limit I suppose; I don't want a game that takes days or weeks to learn and play. But something that can take an afternoon? I think that's a good time span for one of these tabletop entertainments.

Assuming the game is fun of course. No one wants a game they don't enjoy to drag on for hours.

All the biases in mind, here are some standout games listed in a game-award fashion:

Favorite Strategy Eurogame: TIE between Caylus, Le Havre, Puerto Rico and Through the Ages
I couldn't make up my mind as to which of these I like the most. Maybe Caylus for it's perfect information setup, but all of these games are absolutely splendid. They all have made it on the top ten list of best games on BoardGameGeek, so I'm not alone in enjoying these titles. Runner-ups: Agricola and Dominion

Best Gateway Game: Settlers of Catan
If you have a friend who doesn't know about boardgames beyond the likes of Monopoly and Risk, start them off with Settlers of Catan. It has that trading fun of Monopoly along with a nice building mechanic and some fun dice rolling. If they get hooked, there are richer, more involved games out there; but Catan is where to start. Runner-ups: Carcassonne and Dominion

Best Cooperative Game: Space Alert
Even after only playing this for a relatively short period of time; Space Alert is easily my favorite cooperative games and one of my all-time favorites. Maybe its just it's newness, but everyone I've played this game with has had a positive reaction to it. The CD-soundtrack twist adds a frantic pace and great theme to the game. Get this one; it's a doozy. Runner-ups: Arkham Horror and Pandemic

Best Epic Game: Through the Ages
This is kind of hollow praise for Through the Ages, because frankly I don't own any other games that are truly 'epic' that compare (Horus Heresy is pretty long, but not nearly as fun). Nevertheless, this game deserves mention for eating up a huge amount of time and being fun all the way through. Thumbs up. Runner-up: Horus Heresy (but not really)

I also have a game I absolutely love most, but first I'm going to list a few dubious awards:

Most Life-Sucking Game: Magic the Gathering
I said it before: Magic is a hobby more than a card game. It can consume more time and money than the rest of these games combined. While a fun experience, sure, it demands so much from the player (and their wallet). Enter this collectible card game world at your own peril. Runner-Up: Dungeons and Dragons, Warhammer/Warhammer 40K, i.e. tabletop games and not boardgames.

Most Popular Game That Will Get Old Because It's So Played: Dominion
Okay, this might be a good thing, but Dominion can really get overplayed. A lot of people I see get sick of Dominion because it simply got played to death. Thankfully there are some expansions for Dominion that adds extra variety, but just be careful not to overdo this game! Runner-Ups: Magic the Gathering (haha no it suck your soul), Munchkin

Worst Waste of Money but Awesome Pieces!: Horus Heresy
Horus Heresy is an alright game, but not at what it was priced. Ready? $100. You can get Puerto Rico, Power Grid and Le Havre for around the same price (maybe ten dollars more but still). Although not bad, Horus Heresy is not worth that price. At least it has kickass pieces. Runner-ups: Arkham Horror, Dungeons and Dragons: Wrath of Ashardalon Board Game

The Game I Hate the Most: Munchkin
Although loved by many, I don't enjoy Munchkin. At all. Its humor is exclusive, its gameplay is shallow and somewhat flawed, and the time to play lasts longer than the time it remains fun. It's still better than Monopoly though! Runner-up: Fluxx

Now with the good and the bad out of the way, here is the game I absolutely think is great.

Game I Think Is Absolutely Great: Dungeon Twister
Man, talk about a brilliant experience. Dungeon Twister is a wonderful thinking game with rules that aren't to hard to follow but offer endlessly complex strategies and tactics. I will go as far to say it stands with the likes of Chess and Go in terms of richness. It has variety in the many expansions, it has accessibility with the ability to handicap veterans against newbies, and it even has an appealing theme. Simply brilliant game.
Runner-ups: All those eurogames and Space Alert

That about wraps up my thoughts on the various boardgames I've collected so far. Basically, boardgames are a great way to look at gaming outside of the realm of computers and see what can be done with different technological constraints to make a fun experience. Good stuff.

Next up will be a blog post about the boardgame I'm currently making and some thought processes going into it.

Boardgame Roundup Part 4: The Medium Games (Part 2) and More!

2011-09-19T18:55:00.000-04:00

Last time I discussed some of the less complicated medium games, i.e. the games that have a fair bit of game mechanics and a fair bit of play time. Now we move on to more medium games, but these are the more complicated ones. The rules are even more complex, the play time is still daunting, and the fun factor is still way up there, possibly higher than ever before. Also, since I only have one of them I'm going to talk about a "medium-heavy" game that is probably the most complicated of all the games in my collection.

The following games range from 3.5 to 4.1 in weight on BoardGameGeek. These games are far from gateway games and I would only recommend them after you have tackled some simpler titles and maybe even some of the less-simpler-but-still-not-too-complicated ones.

The Medium Games (Upper End)

Agricola
Average Weight on BoardGameGeek: 3.6

Bear with me here; Agricola is a boardgame about farming, and it is stellar. Yes, a game about farming is really good. How is that? First off, the so-so theme is a veil disguising a rich gameplay experience. Agricola is a worker-placement game where every turn players place their little people (represented by little wooden discs) onto action spaces and perform the action associated with that space. For instance, one player might place a worker on the Gather Wood space and collect all the wood that has piled up on that space while another player places a worker onto the Plow a Field space and puts a field on his farm.

The goal of Agricola is to build the best, most well-rounded farm. Each player is given a farm board, and your goal is to plow fields, plant grains and vegetables, build fences, herd livestock, grow your family and improve your little hut where your family lives in. That's a lot of things to do on the farm, and you only have so many workers for a turn. Not only that, but you have to feed your workers every few turns, with less and less turns between each feeding, and you lose lots of points for not feeding your workers. Agricola is all about efficiency and balancing the number of workers you have (more workers is more actions) with gathering food (more workers is more food you need).

You cannot opt to neglect certain traits of your farms and focus on massing one commodity to score points either; Agricola has a hard cap on how many points you get for one particular thing, and you lose points for not having a type of something. There's a lot to manage on the farm, and it's not necessarily easy. It is a blast to play, however.

My only criticism of Agricola is that the rules are a nightmare to understand. It takes a playthrough of the game or two to really grasp what's going on. Until then, good luck understanding all the mechanics going into this game.

Horus Heresy
Average Weight on BoardGameGeek: 3.6

I talked about how convoluted the rules for Agricola were. Well, Horus Heresy takes the cake on bad rulebooks. Not only is the rulebook massive; it's dense, poorly organized, and filled with misleading statements and exceptions to certain rules and a host of other problems. Ugh.

That said, I think this game is kinda neat. It's a two-player Risk-type game where you move armies slowly across areas to vie for control of the map (or to eliminate the enemy's leader unit). And the two armies are asymmetrical so it leads to some cool, variegated gameplay. There's a neat turn track that keeps track of player order but also adds a timeline to the game where certain events can happen at certain times. There is also a strategy map where you can place order cards (the main way to move and attack in the game) without using as many turns as you would playing the card from your hand. There's a fair bit of depth to game, which I guess is why the rules are so damn frustrating to learn.

The biggest problem I have with Horus Heresy (aside from a god-awful rulebook), is how hard it is to get a game going with this. First, you need to have one and only one person interesting in playing a game; this is surprisingly harder to get done than getting a group of players together. Then, and this is the hard part, you need to convince that person to play a very long game with a lot of rules. See, Horus Heresy lasts about the length of Arkham Horror. It can take a good quarter of a day to finish one game. Combine this with the tricky ruleset and it makes Horus Heresy a hard sell for another player.

Still, if you can get a game going for this and are okay with a rule-heavy, time-consuming game, Horus Heresy isn't so bad.

Caylus
Average Weight on BoardGameGeek: 3.8

Although Horus Heresy probably takes longer to learn, I would say Caylus is where things start to get fairly...involved. What I mean by that is Caylus is a pretty complicated game and there are a good bit of rules. Nevertheless, I would say this boardgame is one of my favorites out there.

Caylus is the 'granddaddy of worker placement boardgames.' What that means is that Caylus is one of the first and more influential games about placing your workers on various spots on the board to do actions that gets stuff done you need to do in order to win. Caylus is a boardgame about building a castle (in the town of Caylus) for King Philip the Fair; his face frowns at you on the cover of the box. You are a master builder who must get your workers (little wooden cylinders) to earn the most prestige (i.e. points that win the game) by building the town and the castle. You collect resources in the form of little wooden cubes that are needed to build new buildings and construct parts of the castle. Building buildings nets you points, building the castle nets you points, and earning royal favors (which are like special bonuses you get for doing certain things) can net you points.

There's a lot to Caylus; a road that determines the order of activation of workers, a corrupt provost that you bribe to keep workers working, a bailiff that moves down the road slowly towards the end of the game, various special buildings that have their unique effects, royal favors that can do special things like give you money or resources or an extra building action, money to spend, resources to consume--there's a lot on the table to learn. It's all interconnected and can be hard to digest the first time through; simply put it's easiest to learn Caylus by playing the game with someone who knows the rules.

The brilliance of Caylus is that there is no random elements: Caylus is a 'perfect information' game, a game with no hidden elements (e.g. a hand of cards) and no randomly determined outcomes (e.g. dice rolling, shuffling, etc.). The game is a setup of pure skill and strategy; the best player will win. Of course, this can lead to novices being trampled against newer players, so Caylus is best played with people around your skill level. Aside from that slight nuisance, Caylus is a rich, rewarding experience worth playing.

Le Havre
Average Weight on BoardGameGeek: 3.8

From the maker of Agricola; Le Havre is a somewhat similar game about worker placement and building and feeding your worker come harvest and all that stuff. The rules for winning are simpler this time; the person with the most net worth (i.e. cash + cost of owned buildings) wins. So all you have to do is accumulate the most wealth instead of, say, make the most well balanced farm using a complicated scoring system. Sounds fairly simple, right? Haha, no. Le Havre is pretty complicated.

In this game about shipping and building in a town, you can choose to A) collect goods from an offering slot or B) set your worker to go into a building and do something. Collecting is goods is simple, goods will accumulate on the board and you can grab them. Buildings are where it gets tricky. See, every building does a different thing and you have to pretty much understand what each of them does and how they work into play. You need to know that building x can turn good y into product z and what you need to make things work. There are a lot of different resources in the game, and each of them has a flipside that represents that the resource got upgraded (you can make fish into smoked fish for example). Add buying and selling, feeding during harvest, and ships, and you've got a recipe for a really complicated dish.

Still, like Caylus, Le Havre is conquerable. The rules are kind of horrible to follow (another Uwe Rosenberg game equates to another mess of explanations), but the game makes sense once played. The game has a lot of great decision making and strategy, and knowing what action to take and when can make all the difference. While I think I appreciate Caylus more, Le Havre is possibly more fun (it has a lot more fun bits to play around with maybe?). Both are great games.

So that wraps up the board games I have in the 'medium' category, and pretty much wraps up my collection in total. Well, except for one game.

The Medium-Heavy Game

Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization
Average Weight on BoardGameGeek: 4.1

Here we are, the game people think is the heaviest game that I've covered so far. What makes this game so complex? Well, to put it simply, Through the Ages has a huge ruleset and a lot of interlocking mechanics. We're talking resource management, action cards, building, choosing leaders, technological advancement, managing armies, happiness, corruption, consumption, politics; all of this and more played through multiple ages of history. Oh yeah, and the game is long, two to six hours depending on which of the three levels of complexity you play at.

Boiled down, Through the Ages is a civilization game, i.e. a game where you play as a civilization and try to be better than the other civilizations competing with you (played by the other players). Usually civilization games involve conquering a map of the world and spending a huge amount of time finishing the game. Well, Through the Ages is mapless, and though a long game takes less time to play than some of the more epic civ games out there.

Mapless, you might ask? Yes, a game about conquering the world has no world to look at. You play Through the Ages through cards (and a board to put the cards on I guess). You have little tokens you put on the cards and that's it. The game has a lot of cards that do a lot of different things, though, so there's a lot to learn here. The game ends when the decks of cards you draw from run out. During that time, you have to take cards, play them, and allocate your wooden workers on them in order to make a victory point-making machine. There's also war, trade pacts, territories to colonize, and more!

Through the Ages is a meaty game that I would recommend only to people who have played some easier-to-learn games first. Once you get to the point where you're comfortable playing a game of this magnitude, however, you'll have a blast. Through the Ages is the best epic game I have (although really the only other ones are Arkham Horror and Horus Heresy, which pale in comparison). Highly recommended for boardgame fans.

Well, that covers the boardgames I've been playing. Next time I'll make some conclusions and talk about which games are my favorite and which I hate the most! After that, some talk about the boardgame I'm making!

Board Game Roundup Part 3: The Medium Games (Part 1)

2011-09-14T11:46:00.000-04:00

Last time I went over some not-too-complicated-but-not-too-simple games. Now we're approaching the deep end of the pool. The following games take multiple hours to play and can be quite complicated, but as a result of these factors these games are engaging and have deep, involved gameplay. In other words, these games are fun thanks to all their extra stuff.

The plurality of my games have an average weight on boardgamegeek.com between 3 and 4--the "medium" weight board games. I'm going to break this roundup into two parts; one for the lower end of the medium-weight category (3.0-3.5) and another for the upper end (3.5-4.0). Without further ado,

The Medium Games (Lower End)

Magic the Gathering
Average Weight on BoardGameGeek: 3.1

Oh my, even if you are outside this boardgaming stuff you may have heard of Magic. It's that card game with those spells and creatures and fireballs and such. Magic is a collectable card game, meaning that the game does not ship with all of the cards at once--far from it. Magic the Gathering has a library of over 12.000 unique cards, and you buy them in either a deck of 60 or in a booster draft of 15. This is Wizards of the Coast's cash cow, and is probably the most popular table-top game I own(ed).

Magic boils down to this: you tap the power of land cards to summon creature and spell cards that help destroy your opponent while defending from your opponents attacks. The basic rules aren't too hard to follow, but the trick of Magic the Gathering is that most cards have text that alter the rules in certain ways. There may be a card, for instance, that lets you play cards from your discard pile, or there may be another that stops an opponent from playing a card that was about to be put down. With twelve thousand unique bits of rules and more being released each year (well, each quarter even), there's a lot of variables to this game.

Deck building is just as important, if not more important, than how you play your hand. Decks must have at least 60 cards, and you can only have 4 of the same card (with the exception of basic land cards and a certain group of rats). The goal of deck building is to try to put in cards that play off eachother and to make it so your deck will work with whatever you're likely to draw. Probability, and buffering against randomness, is a big part of this game. You're drawing cards from a shuffled deck, and you don't want to rely on 1 card out of 60 to save your butt.

I had about 3000 cards of my own (with a lot of identical cards), but I gave them to a friend who was much more interested in the game than I was. Magic is a fun game, but it can become a full-on hobby in itself--a pretty fun one admittedly.

Power Grid
Average Weight on BoardGameGeek: 3.3

Power Grid is a game about managing a network of power plants better than other players. GREAT THEME. Despite being about something that sounds as boring as watching paint dry, Power Grid proves to be a enjoyable experience about managing resources and knowing when to bid and when to pass. See, Power Grid employs an auctioning system where power plants that you need to light your grid are bidded on by the players. Don't spend all your money on the plants though, because then there's the trouble of buying fuel for your plants and paying to expand your grid to new cities. The player who manages to power 17 cities or more first wins.

Power Grid is a game that has a lot of clever mechanics put into a relatively simple ruleset. For instance, resources are bought off a bank that replenishes its supply only a little at a time; as you buy more of one resource the demand for it increases (as does the cost) while resources that are ignored become cheaper and cheaper. Players have to balance bidding for efficient plants with having enough money left over to fuel the plants and expand their grid. Money earned is based on cities powered, so it's important to continually grow your grid.

Overall, Power Grid is a great economy game with lots of fun for anyone with a penchant for numbers. Sure, managing power plants sounds boring, but the gameplay is more than solid.

Puerto Rico
Average Weight on BoardGameGeek: 3.3
Man, the weightier these games get the more random their themes are. This one is about colonizing Puerto Rico and being the best colonizer-person by scoring the most points. That may sound a little vague, but that's because the game has a lot of interlocking mechanics; explaining each individual part doesn't show how it all comes together. You do get points for building buildings and shipping goods; but to get those goods you need to build plantations which need colonists to work them and you need to buy buildings and trade goods to get money to buy the buildings and omigosh I've gone cross-eyed.

The key to Puerto Rico, perhaps, is that none of these actions are done in a set sequence; players go around the table picking role cards that determine what will happen that turn. Everyone does the action associated with the chosen role, so it can very well happen that an action you want to do will benefit another player more. The game is centered around careful selection to optimize what's best for you and least beneficial to other players at the same time.

Geeks on BoardGameGeek rated Puerto Rico #2 game in the database, and indeed Puerto Rico is quite awesome. I highly recommend picking this one up.

Arkham Horror and Its Expansions Innsmouth Horror and Kingsport Horror
Average Weight on BoardGameGeek: 3.4

Yet another cooperative game. This one is a doozy; you can expect three to eight hours of play in a single game (well, maybe only six hours max). Arkham Horror is a game where you play as some character drawn to the city of Arkham and must stop an evil Old One from awakening and destroying the world. Gates to other worlds open up throughout the city and your group must explore and seal these gates in order to win. Or defeat the Old One head on. Good luck with that.

And indeed, this game requires a bit of luck. See, much of what you do is based on dice rolls. This can lead to a lot of chance as to whether you succeed or not. Not to mention that what isn't based on dice rolls is based on drawing cards from a shuffled deck. Random encounters, random outcomes (admittedly you can increase your odds with more dice); Arkham Horror has a lot of chance. This can put off some players when they feel like the outcome of the game isn't based off good planning as much as it is good dice rolls.

Still, Arkham Horror has a fantastic theme, pretty artwork, and lots of pieces to mess around with. It's a massive game with a lot of atmosphere. You can really enjoy this game most when you're playing to see how things turn out rather than to try to win (although trying to win isn't a bad thing). Don't fret if you botched a roll against that monster; see how it the game plays out from there.

The expansions add a little more rules without detracting from the main experience, although the game does suddenly become a lot harder the more expansions you add. Overall I enjoy this game, but it's not my favorite due to its luck factor. If you like to feel you're having an epic struggle against an overwhelming enemy, and can stand a lot of dice rolls, Arkham Horror may have something for you.

That covers the lower end of the medium-weight games. Next up: the Medium Games (Part 2)

Boardgame Round Up Part 2: The Medium-Light Games

2011-09-08T11:24:00.000-04:00

A while back I posted about some light board games; now it's time to talk about some games with a little more meat on their bones; or meeples on their boards. Whichever.

All of the below games have a weight (i.e. complexity) rating on boardgamegeek.com ranging between 2 and 3 out of 5. These are the entry-level games that people start with once they want a taste of something that isn't Risk or Monopoly. Most of the following games are more or less an hour in length; and the ones I've acquired at least are pretty damn fun. Some of my favorite games are in this range, and rightfully so. Without further ado:

The Medium-Light Games

Dominion and It's Expansions, Intrigue and Prosperity
Average Weight on BoardGameGeek: 2.3

If you have played boardgames beyond the point of the mainstream lineup you have probably heard of (and likely played) Dominion. Dominion is a card game where you lay out several stacks of cards and build a deck. Whoever builds the deck with the most points wins. Points are given by certain cards, but in order to obtain those cards you have to 'buy' cards from the stacks that net you deck-building actions, money to buy with, make you draw cards from your deck, and more. The point cards do nothing in themselves so if you claim too many too early your deck will be filled with deadweight.

There are two big gateway games in this blog post and one of them has to be Dominion. Dominion is a game you should probably play, and you might end up playing it a lot. The game has two big issues people complain about, however. The first is that the theme is dry as saltine crackers--you're a lord in the middle ages trying to acquire the most land, whoopee. The second thing is that people play Dominion a lot and tend to get sick of it after a while. The expansions breathe some life into the base game once people get tired of the same cards, but even so this game can be overplayed. That's not so bad a thing. Oh, and sometimes the game isn't very interactive between players; but oh well.

Pandemic
Average Weight on BoardGameGeek: 2.3

The world is fraught with a global pandemic! Four deadly diseases have erupted and threaten humanity! The players are a crack team of experts who fight this disease and try to stop these contagions before they reach a point of no return and humanity's fate is sealed.

Pandemic is the first cooperative game I've mentioned so far. Cooperative games are not about players competing against each other; instead it is the player versus the board. Every turn players carry out a few actions (move to a city, treat a disease, find a cure), draw some cards, and then play out the spread of diseases--the diseases are represented by different colored cubes. If the cubes spread too much, or run out (or players run out of cards to draw); players lose. If all the cures are found for the diseases, players win.

Pandemic has a fairly simple ruleset and plays at a fairly fast pace; I'd say the average game lasts 45 minutes to an hour. However, Pandemic can be quite frantic. The players have only so many actions they can do before another deadly disease cube appears on the board; and epidemics can occur that cause outbreaks into other cities that can cause chain reactions with other outbreaks and omigosh we've reached eight outbreaks and lost the game. Playing is all about keeping the board under control while players try to find a cure in time. Very exciting game, very fun.

Settlers of Catan and It's Expansion Seafarers
Average Weight on BoardGameGeek: 2.4

I said that Dominion is one of the gateway games on this list. Catan is the other one. In fact, it's arguably a mainsteam game; you'll find Catan on the same shelf as Monopoly or Risk. Although it's worth noting that unlike Monopoly or Risk, Catan is a good game*.

The premise is simple: gather resources based on dice rolling, trade resources with other players, and build towns and other things to score points. First player to ten points wins.

Catan is pretty easy to learn and pretty easy to play and fairly fun overall. It's not my favorite game--I don't like how you can get really screwed if you get some bad dice rolls--but it's not a bad game by any means*. Honestly if there is a gateway eurogame this is it. Catan was my first taste of the better boardgames, and it certainly isn't a bad start.

*Some people think Catan isn't that great, even bad, mainly because of the dice-rolling being a big factor as to how well you'll be doing. I personally think that dice-rolling isn't that big a problem with Catan, but there are some games I like more that balance luck in a more elegant fashion.

Dungeons and Dragons: Wrath of Ashardalon Board Game
Average Weight on BoardGameGeek: 2.5

Oh my, another cooperative game! This one is based off the monumental Dungeons and Dragons tabletop role-playing game (that one with the dungeons and dragons). Tabletop RPGs are epic cooperative experiences where one person plays the devious Dungeon Master who lays out the traps and monsters for the other players to conquer. Wrath of Ashardalon tries to capture the distilled experience of dungeon-delving and monster-murdering into an hour-long session of gaming--without the Dungeon Master. The rules of the boardgame do all the work of laying out the dungeon, filling it with monsters, and getting those monsters to beat you up.

You can get a good bit of entertainment out of Ashardalon, but unfortunately the experience wears thin after a a few playthroughs. Certainly it's entertaining the first dozen times, but after a while the repetive boards and samey monsters takes a toll. There's not enough variety in playing to keep this game interesting for a long time. Still, you can get some fun out of it before your interest fades; and for the amount of miniatures and tilesets the game comes with the price is definitely reasonable. Worth a look if you're interested in getting a bunch of awesome minis.

Space Alert
Average Weight on BoardGameGeek: 2.8

Cooperative game number three! Although rated at a 2.8 on weight, I found this game to have a fairly reasonable ruleset. Also, THIS GAME IS AMAZING OMIGOSH. It may be because this is my most recent purchase, but wow, talk about a good game.

See, Space Alert is a surival game with a twist: you play the game with a soundtrack. No, it's not just for atmosphere; the gameplay hinges on the two CDs you're given to play with. Space Alert is played in ten minutes, wherein those ten minutes you must plan out your actions (which consist of moving or pressing one of three big buttons) in a panicked rush as space monsters attack your ship from inside and out. After the time is up, you play out your actions in sequence and see how well you did.

It's fun. Space Alert is so much fun. You're rushing to make sure you've planned out your actions as best you can and are trying to not trip over the other crewmembers as you hectically move about the ship. Did you remember to refill the reactor before firing that heavy laser cannon? Did you fire that rocket in time to blast the Interstellar Octopus (yes this is a thing) in sync with the pulse cannon? Is someone remembering to keep the ship's computer's screensaver from popping up which due ton bad wiring turns off the lights (this is a thing too)? There's a bunch to keep track of in Space Alert. Thankfully, the game has one of the best handbooks I've read for a boardgame ever. The rules are clear, the tutorial missions are well thought out, and the flavor text is genuinely funny.

I don't see this game getting old any time soon. Play it.

Dungeon Twister and It's Expansions, Paladins and Dragons, 3/4 Players Expansion, Fire and Water, Forces of Darkness, Mercenaries, and Prison
Average Weight on BoardGameGeek: 2.9

I saved the best for last, or at least my favorite. If you couldn't guess by the fact that I grabbed so many expansions for it, I love me some Dungeon Twister. It is a fantastic two-player strategy game with a minimal amount of luck and a lot of deep, intriguing gameplay. It's wizard's Chess.

The goal of Dungeon Twister is to score five points; you get a point for killing an enemy character or escaping one of your characters from the dungeon. You play action cards to do a certain number of actions in which you can move your character, attack another character, use an item, etc. The literal twist to Dungeon Twister is that the dungeon is built with eight rotatable rooms laid out in in a 2x4 setup. The dungeon is rather mazy, so it helps when you can rotate a room to create a path that wouldn't have existed just a moment ago so you can move your characters to tactical locations on the map to assure victory.

Dungeon twister is all about the strategy. The only random part of the game is the initial board layout, and that doesn't make as much a difference as you'd think. You don't draw cards from a deck, you don't roll any dice to see who won a battle, and you don't have to cross your fingers to hope that luck will be a kind mistress to you this turn. I love this stuff.

Each expansion adds a different dungeon and new characters and items to switch out, along with some possible new terrain to traverse. There is huge replayability in this game and huge tactical diversity. You can even play at a handicap against new players so they don't become intimidated their first time in the game.

Dungeon Twister is a ten out of ten game for me. I recommend it to anyone who likes a lot of strategy and hates losing because of bad dice rolls.

Man, this sure took a long time to post. Anyways, next up will be some medium-weighted games and my thoughts on them, assuming I make another post this century. Or maybe I'll offer a look into a boardgame I'm making (it's horrible).

Free Speech, 9-Year-Olds and Moderation

2011-07-01T14:00:00.002-04:00

Seven out of nine Supreme Court judges voted in favor of videogames this month. Specifically, in the court case Brown vs. Entertainment Merchants Association, the Supreme Court ruled that videogames are protected by the First Amendment and that banning the sale of violent videogames is unconstitutional.

I was chatting about this with my family. From two different people I heard the same sentence: “Now we'll have 9-year-olds playing Grand Theft Auto.” I did my part to point out some flaws with that statement.

While it may be that free speech makes it easier for minors to have access to content most definitely not suited for minors, I noted that people seem to conveniently forget that there is a ratings board (the ESRB to be exact) that puts labels on videogames that give a good guideline for the age groups that should be permitted to play these games. I continued to point out that retail stores enforce these ratings and anything that is rated Adults Only (the gaming equivalent of an NC-17 rating) is not put on shelves. Brick and mortar stores even require ID for rated Mature games (the equivalent of a rated R movie) and do not sell those games to minors.

True, this is not under government regulation, but neither are movies. The gaming industry is self-regulated and regulated fairly well, all things considered. Between ESRB ratings, store policies and parental controls on gaming platforms good parents have more than enough tools at their disposal to keep their 9-year-olds from playing games the parents do not want them to play.

I would also like to mention that there is no conclusive evidence that violent videogames have any more a negative effect on children than any other media. I find it humorous how wary my family is of violent games when they let me watch the Terminator 2 on repeat (my favorite childhood movie even!) along with strictly adult animations like Akira and Ninja Scroll. I dont' want to say that this was the right thing to do (I get the feeling at the very least I could have appreciated those movies more at an older age...), but it wasn't a terrible, traumatizing experience that would scar me for the rest of my days. That videogames are thought worse than any of these experiences (especially Ninja Scroll, good grief) is ridiculous.

I don't want to give off the impression that I think rated M games should be played fervently by younger audiences (if only because I hate the sound of prepubescent children squealing over a microphone over an online game). I'm all for moderation of games, as long as it is moderated within the gaming industry. Government regulation is nothing but bad news, and as of now the only reason minors are playing violent games is because of parental ignorance and/or neglect (or one of those incidents where parents let their kids enjoy adult media, hopefully with some parental guidance involved).

A couple of months ago I mentioned that games are mortal. They can be crippled by ignorance and misconception. I worry that the Supreme Court's ruling doesn't make the gaming industry slack on their ratings. If anything, I think that declaring videogames being officially protected by the First Amendment raises expectations for games. Games need to continue to earn their right for free speech. It won't be the mindlessly violent games that prove gaming's worth. It will be the games that show sophistication, maturity (real maturity, not rated M 'maturity') and artistic integrity that serve as a shield against naysayers.

We need more people vocalizing their support for games. There's still a lot to fight for. Right now, an Anti-Streaming Bill is sitting in Congress. If it passes, it will be a felony to broadcast the playing of videogames (the intent is to stop the streaming of copyrighted content like music and movies, but vague writing makes this also apply to games). This is a ridiculous restriction for games. Most of the exposure games get is through streaming, especially tournament play. To make this practice illegal would cripple electronic sports and stop an entire venue of entertainment. It would be like making ESPN felons for filming the NFL live.

My point is that there still is a lot of misunderstanding with videogames, even today. I hope over the years we'll see this medium being protected by more laws rather than hindered by legislation.

Games are Mortal

2011-05-27T09:51:00.004-04:00

Let's talk about Chris Crawford for a second. He used to be a game designer until 1992 or so. He thought that what we call gaming had crystallized into its final form and would not be changing for a long, long time. Crawford abandoned videogames, and charged, literally charged, forward into new frontiers for interactive experiences.

You can see his charge here.

Crawford had been pushing for the creation of, for lack of a better word, artistic games, and he had made some games that got awfully close to having artistic merit. The problem was, the community did not want art. They wanted fun. Crawford saw he was at odds with gaming, and decided to push for interactivity in a different manner than the way games have done.

Fast forward to now, 2011, and a lot of advances have been made in videogames while at the same time videogames are still the same. Sure, now we have fleshed out stories and wonderful graphics and exciting new game mechanics that simply did not exist two decades ago, but ultimately games right now are about winning (with only a handful of exceptions). Fighting battles, overcoming challenge, and emerging victorious—maybe with a movie added in to progress the tertiary plot elements. Some games try to make story part of the gameplay, but rarely do these interactive parts of the story deviate from “say this thing so you can get to the real game.” In many ways, as Crawford had seen, videogames have crystallized into its final form. There were a billion ways videogames could have turned out, but it will be a long time before things change.

Or will it? Mainstream games are in a limbo of derivative, low-risk franchises, but today more than ever we have a strong community making all sorts of games and all sorts of risks and trying all sorts of new things. The indie gaming crowd. These small teams of people can make whatever they want. The sky (and their budget) is the limit.

That doesn't solve the problem that the biggest, blockbuster games are endless worlds of violence and competition.

Why am I bemoaning this, other than perhaps a distaste for seeing games stagnate in a pool of blood and gore? Well, it's because of comic books.

The story of comic books, or graphic novels if that's your preferred nomination, seems eerily similar to that of games. They started out with everyone experimenting, everyone doing what they wanted in a baudy fashion. There was a lot of focus on superheroes or vigilantes or so on fighting crime. Younger people were the main buyers of comics, there was a lot of appeal of a definitively non-adult medium to non-adults.

Comic books got slammed, and slammed hard. The press and politicians swarmed in like sharks on this new hot topic of youth endangerment. Ultimately, comics got censored and censored badly. It took decades before things got back on their feet. Even then, comics today are still widely regarded as superhero stories, despite some wonderful (Maus) exceptions(Bechdel). Fun fact, Maus is not in the graphic novel section of bookstores; it's in the biography section. What a laugh that the best graphic novels are not even regarded for their graphics.

There is a lesson videogames need to learn from comics. Right now the gaming community is looking forward to seeing their interactive medium become as respected and revered as movies, books, music, etc. I'm looking at comic books. Not because I think it would be good if we got the respect comics book get right now; no, I'm looking at how a bustling new art form can be crippled so easily by the misconceptions of the mainstream media and the pens of proactive politicians.

The Supreme Court is considering the case Schwarzenegger vs the Electronic Merchants Association, and a decision from the Court will be made in June this year. Basically if Schwarzenegger has his way rated M games will have a clearly labed sign indicating their rating (worse than ESRB's current system), and these games will be packed differently than other games. Retailers will be fined for selling these games to minors. Basically games will be treated like they were pornography.

Hopefully the First Amendment bars this kind of censorship. But that all counts on if the Supreme Court decides that videogames have (or at least have the potential for) literary, artistic, political or scientific value.

I hope that most gamers can, without doubt, say that videogames have value beyond being a toy, but there are huge misconceptions as to what videogames are. Many people see videogames as nothing more than a toy for kids. Hell, some gamers probably see videogames as nothing but a toy, albeit one adults can enjoy. Some say “Videogames are all about fun.” Nothing more.

If this is the case, if videogames are only for fun, then the Supreme Court will let this law pass. Videogames will be handled like pornography. The First Amendment does not protect toys. It protects art. Fun, while a good thing, does not carry the weight that art does.

This post is a cautionary message to gamers and those who make games. Most of you only want fun. You realize you're mature, and you realize some games are meant to be mature. Nevertheless, you'd rather let your games be fun and leave it at that.

This won't fly forever. We need something beyond the fun, or gaming won't survive. It will suffocate under censorship laws and die. Generations will pass before we see something truly wonderful come out of gaming.

Videogames can be an art form, I have no doubts about that, but this art form needs to form art. The sooner the better. Entertainment alone cannot sustain one's intellect.

So please, if you have any passing interest in high-brow media, look for games that try to do something more than give you a fun experience. Play them. Support these developers.

Developers, fun is okay. But there needs to be more brought to the table. We need a shield against the narrow minded detractors of gaming, That shield is “art.” I don't mean found art, or art in the loosest sense of the word. I mean something definitive that we can all point to and say, “We can make a videogame look like this. We can make videogames have meaning and value to society. This violence and bloodshed you see in all those other games are trivial matters. Our game rises above mindless violence. We have art here, and you can't silence it.”

As much as you might hate art, it is gaming's best defense against censorship. For all the pretentious, the loftiness and snobbery, art is a necessity for any medium that wants to be more than mindless drivel. Art doesn't have to be the frontman of a medium; artistic movies aren't the blockbusters, and literature doesn't make it into the New York Times bestsellers. But it needs to be there. There needs to be a constant push for new and meaningful experiences and ideas. We need high-stake risks made by major publishers. Hollywood knows that their Oscar material won't be top sellers, but they know these are a necessity to keep movies from stagnating. Games haven't learned this lesson. Games are going to stagnate, if they haven't already.

Games are a mortal thing. They can most certainly die off and be viewed as nothing more than some silly fad by later generations. I don't want to lose this medium to political agendas and vicious press. Do what you can to support those few that will take the risks, that will go beyond the conventions and standards and try something new. Stomach your cynicism if you can and see what we can do to make art. Your games are at stake here.

Board Game Round Up Part 1: The Lighter Games

2011-03-12T19:39:00.014-05:00

It is time to get into the meat of those tabled games that I have been enjoying (or not so much for some). Here is a round up of the relatively small but still formidable-to-post-about collection of boardgames I have acquired over the past year or so. Due to the fact that posting about each game takes a bit; I'm going to divide this roundup into several posts. This first one is dedicated to the less complex games.

The games are sorted by weight--a scale ranging from 1 to 5 that more or less determines the complexity of the game whether it is explicit complexity in the rules or implicit complexity derived from the rules.

This will not be a comprehensive review of each game; that would make this post far too long. Rather, this is just a quick look of each game and my general thoughts about each of them.

Let us continue.

The Lighter Games

Wits and Wagers Family
Average Weight on BoardGameGeek : 1.1

The simplest game I own, Wits and Wagers is a trivia game with a nice twist. In addition to guessing the right answer, you attain points by guessing which player's answer is right. The game does not hinge on what you know (although knowledge helps); the key to Wits and Wagers is knowing who will know the right answer.

This twist is a clever mechanic that makes me enjoy the game much more than other trivia titles, although I still had to deal with the fact that this was a family edition of the game. What this meant was that either the questions were far too easy for the group I played with or the questions referenced media that only kids watch; what the hell do I know about Hana Montana?

The family edition also went by a little to fast for my tastes. We did not play for more than fifteen minutes for a single game. I would prefer something slightly more lengthy, and more intelligent. I assume the adult edition fixes these complaints.

Poison
Average Weight on BoardGameGeek : 1.2

Poison can be summed up as a fun card game that serves as filler between other activities (like playing some of the heavier boardgames to be discussed later). Players are given a deck of cards with different numbers and varying colors (red, blue, purple and poisonous green), and the players take turns placing these cards down on one of the three "cauldrons." Whoever places the card that makes the sum of the cards' numbers in a cauldron higher than 13 overflows the cauldron, and that player has to take all the cards in that stack. When the players decks run out, the game ends. Whoever has the least cards wins, although if a player has the most cards of one color, they don't count those cards when scoring.

Poison is a simple card game that is light on rules and quick to play. I recommend it for a crowd that is not into the more complex board games or simply wants to kill fifteen minutes to half an hour.

Fluxx
Average Weight on BoardGameGeek : 1.4

I do not like Fluxx that much. It is a game where the rules change constantly depending on what the players play from their hand. Sure, it has a good bit of laughs the first few times you play, but the chaotic nature of this card game dissolves any sense that there is strategy behind play. It is more of a "play your cards and see what chaos results" game. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but the joke gets old for me fast. There are other versions of this game that have more silliness, Monty Python Fluxx has some interesting cards, but none of them change the core game, and thus my thoughts on the game, that much.

Munchkin
Average Weight on BoardGameGeek : 1.7

Steve Jackson is rather popular with nerd culture. Munchkin is his joke card game about the tabletop gamers who only play to optimize their characters to absurd degrees. They do not wish to roleplay; munchkins only wish to win in a game where there's no real way to win.

In Munchkin, the goal is to reach level 10 before anyone else, thus "winning." Players go through a dungeon represented by the cards in play and fight monsters and backstab their friends all the way to victory.

The rules are rather humorous, and the first few games are good for a laugh. Much like Fluxx, however, the joke gets old fast. Munchkin does strategy a little bit better than Fluxx, but the jokes in Munchkin are more esoteric--nerds will get the jokes while other players will be left going "huh?" I rarely bother with this game anymore. Fluxx is a better gag game in the end, and there are myriads of better strategy games.

Carcassonne
Average Weight on BoardGameGeek : 1.9

Ah, our first "eurogame." Carcassonne is somewhat of a classic. This is the first game that introduced Meeples, an abbreviation of miniature people. Carcassonne is a tile placement game; each player draws a tile from a shuffled, face-down assortment and places it so it connects with the ever-expanding game space. Soon the tiles form a huge map of medieval cities and roads and monasteries and so on. Players place meeples on this tiled world to claim the built cities, roads, etc. for themselves, giving that player points. When the tiles run out the game is over; whoever has claimed the most territory wins.

Carcassonne is a great introduction to the vast universe of European strategy games. The rules are simple enough while at the same time a good amount of planning is involved to win. After being exposed to deeper games, however, Carcassonne loses its luster when one thinks about how the right tile drawn at the right time can make or break a player's game plan. There is a little too much luck in this game for me to like it more, but it certainly is a step above the other games mentioned so far.

And that's all the games for now. Next up will be a deck-building game, a genre-defining resource game, and a game involving twisty dungeons.

A Brief Venture into Boardgames

2011-03-11T21:50:00.009-05:00

A while back I mentioned that I have descended deeper into nerddom with the acquisition of various boardgames. Since that blog post I have delved farther into the depths of cardboard cutouts and sets of dice and decks of cards. It has now gotten to the point where I have been playing more of these table-top challenges and abusing less of the digital substances. I figure now is a good time to talk about the relatively little experience I've had with them.

Why Play on a Table When You Can Play on a TV?

It seems that playing videogames is cooler than playing boardgames, at least when you are under the age of 30 which everyone knows is the turning point where games in any shape or form are very uncool and should not be touched by anyone with a cool demeanor. This condescension from the digital group of gamers seems to stem from the idea that technology has obsoleted the need for tables, pencil and paper. While this may be true in certain areas, boardgames still hold ancient secrets that binary languages have yet to decode.

The truth of the matter is that games have their place both on tables and on the monitor, depending on the design of the game. Some games work better behind the interface of a keyboard or a gamepad, others work better when you can move the pieces yourself. Generally, boardgames excel as a medium for (relatively) small, turn-based, competitive games (although cooperative boardgames certainly exist). The simplest argument for boardgames is the interface. When you have a game that involves multiple controllable characters over a small gamespace (say, the size of a chessboard), it's simply easier to grab a miniature than try and steer a mouse through some representation of grabbing a miniature. As long as you, the player, are not moving around too many things at once, it's just more accessible for you to handle the game rather than trying to tell the computer what to do. Frankly, when dealing with turn-based strategy games that aren't massive like Civilization, especially if the game is abstract, boardgames are the way to go. Sure, they're not "cool" like the latest FPS on the newest console, but for someone who appreciate games wherever they take place, boardgames can deliver experiences you won't really find over the computer.

And really, arguing for or against boardgames (or videogames) is silly. Let's move on.

Weightiness

Weight is a term used by boardgamers to describe the complexity of a game mechanics. Usually a "heavy" boardgame is one with a lot of interlocking mechanics that lasts a longer while, while a "light" boardgame is usually a shorter affair with simple rules (think party games like Trivial Pursuit). Usually if a game is too heavy but too short, or on the flip side if a game is light but lasts too long (MONOPOLY), that game is bad.

Weight is emphasized for boardgames because of how social they are. A good game only is fun when you are playing with the right group of people. If you have people over for laughs, a heavier game like Chess is probably not going to be the life of the party. On the other hand, no one in their right mind wants to play Rock Paper Scissors for two hours straight. To get the most fun out of boardgaming, you need the right game for the right people.

The next post (which will hopefully be up soon), will be a roundup of the games in my relatively small collection. It will be a lot of eurogames (more abstract strategy games usually originating from Europe) with a mix of some party games and the occasional ameritrash (heavily themed games with not so great gameplay and usually stemming from Amurica).

Game on.

Randomness Is Hot Sauce

2011-03-03T13:52:00.006-05:00

I am going to admit a shameful secret: I do not find luck to be an enjoyable aspect to gaming. Oh, it is fine every once in a while, like a dash of hot sauce in a savory soup, but much like hot sauce, pouring luck into a game overpowers all the other wonderful aspects that go into the design of a game.

When you introduce luck into fundamental rules of play, you are making a decision to have your game be a certain kind of experience--a certain kind of fun. Some enjoy gambling, others do not. Rolling dice and hoping for that lucky number seven can deliver a thrilling sensation. Eating spicy foods is an adventure. You are plunging your tastes into an intense, possibly painful, possibly exhilarating experience. Do you, however, eat the spicy food for the intricate mesh of flavors or for the acidic rush?

What I am trying to say with this conceit is that reliance on luck is a different kind of fun than most other factors in a game's style of play. The fun of randomness is a potent one, yes, but it is also a selfish fun. This fun does not play well with other types of fun. Strategy, tactics, "twitch skills" are compromised when random elements are involved. The reason randomness and other game elements are so opposed is because of reward.

Reward can come from different venues. Learning a new skill can be rewarding. Winning a game through tactical prowress can be rewarding. Lining up that perfect shot and bulls-eye'ing that target can be rewarding. And rolling a natural 20 can be rewarding. The problem is, the last one does not come from something the player does, it comes from chance.

It is a personal preference, but I like my rewards to come from knowing that I earned that reward and not because of the way some numbered polyhedron was facing. The occasional bit of chance is fine, but leaning on luck is a ruinous habit. Would you want to eat spicy food day in and day out? At the very least, your taste buds would object. My gaming taste buds can only take so much luck before I become numb to the intricate mixings of game interactions.

On the other hand, Doritos has been making some really great habanero-flavored chips. Eat at your own risk.

Game Roundup, General Update

2011-01-28T17:32:00.004-05:00

Well, I've let this blog stagnate. Let's refresh things a little.

I finished my Demon's Souls Let's Play
This took far too long, but I've finally managed to upload my final videos for this long project. Honestly it should have taken far less time than it did. If I updated consistently I would have been done in two or three months; instead it took me seven.

Game Roundup for 1/28/2011
I've played a decent amount of games recently. I haven't beaten many; go figure. Either way, here are some of my thoughts on my recent games.

Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne. I did not think this game could exist. This is a JRPG--an RPG with very generic conventions (turn-based combat, level up party, fight monsters in random encounters), but with a combat system that is both challenging and in-depth. This game is hard without being unfair. And it's a JRPG! I am amazed. I am about 25 hours in or so. Very good game.

Vanquish. Another creation by game designer Shinji Mikami, creator of Resident Evil 4; this game is Japanese but deals with a genre usually exclusive to western audiences. The result is an amazing anime-esque shoot-em-up of epic proportions. You control a jet-propelled super-soldier who can do backflips off robots and slow-down time in midair, shooting enemies in super-stylish manners. I have not played much of this game, mainly because it is so intense. For me, this is a game meant to be played in short bursts. I definitely want to give more time to Vanquish, however.

Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey. I am still playing this. There really is not much more to say that I haven't said already. It is Pokemon for adults. Actually this game bears a lot of resemblance to Nocturne, but in a more compact format. There are no towns to go through; it's dungeon after dungeon. I think I like Nocturne more, but this game comes close.

Magicka. Wow. I never expected a point-and-click Action RPG to be so fun. And hilarious! This has to be one of the most engaging combat systems in a ARPG to date. Combine elements to make a huge variety of spells, and fight off hordes of not-so-easy monsters with your Magicka! It also is very satirical of role-playing game tropes. I enjoy it immensely!

Monday Night Combat. I think I will have some difficulty explaining this game. Set in a futuristic sport arena, you are on a team of Pros who must escort robots to an enemy's Core, wherein the bots will destroy this core. At the same time, you have to build turrets and shoot down the enemy robots to defend your own core. This concept has been done before in point-and-click, over-the-top-camera games (e.g. Defense of the Ancients and League of Legends). Monday Night Combat, as far as I know, is the first of this type of game to be done in a shooter-style. You select one of several classes to play and run around the arena, shooting and chopping and grenading and charging your way through robots and players alike. I really enjoy this game so far. The class-based system leads for some interesting scenarios, and the arenas are filled with contraptions and devices to play around with. The game also has a very funny take on the idea of a futuristic bloodsport. It's like football with explosions and murder! I will definitely spend more time on this.

I have played a few more games, but these are the most recent highlights.

Hopefully I can resume more blogging soon. Ciao!

Game Round Up 11/28/2010

2010-11-28T15:28:00.004-05:00

This is probably not going to be a consistent thing; I just don't have many issues I want to rant about at the moment.

Before I begin I would like to note that I am still doing a Let's Play of Demon's Souls! It is almost over, you should watch it (skip past the first set unless you can stand bad audio mixing).

Anyways, here is a quick overview of some of the games I have been playing of recent:

Demon's Souls
I will let the Let's Play do the talking. I'm almost done with my current playthrough of the game, and I feel like I have gotten noticeably better at play. I'm actually able to defeat enemy players!

Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale
What a weird and pleasant surprise of a game this is! Recettear flips the Japanese Role-Playing Game (JRPG) on its head. You do not buy items from nameless vendors; you are a vendor that sells items to adventurers. Admittedly, there is a dungeon-crawl portion of the game, but the shopping system is fun on its own right. Capitalism, ho!

Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey
Speaking of weird JRPGs, how about a game where instead of recruiting various other heroes, you recruit the monsters you fight? That is what happens in Strange Journey. You do go through dungeons, try to save the world, etc.; but this is done with a very interesting ally-system. You can negotiate with enemies for items, money, or to recruit them into your ever-expanding army. Of course, you can also just kill them. Strange Journey is like Pokemon for adults. There are other Shin Megami Tensei games that possibly do this formula better, but so far I'm pleased with my playing.

Bayonetta
I have beaten this game before, but only on friend's console. This means in order to have the game completed for myself I have to beat it again. I blew off the dust and put Bayonetta into my Xbox 360 only to find the game is still a challenge, and I was rusty. This may take some time to finish, and my time can only be distributed in so many ways!

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Wow, this game. Symphony of the Night is an exploration platformer where you progress by obtaining new abilities and powers scattered and hidden across the environment (environment being Dracula's giant magical castle). This game and Super Metroid actually created a new genre called Metroidvania (although it is a rather niche genre). Symphony of the Night is a forefather to a bevy of games focusing on exploration and progression, and it kicks ass. Be warned, however: it is easy to get lost in Dracula's Castle. Be prepared to look at a guide to figure out where to go next.

Super Meat Boy
I said Bayonetta is hard. It does not compare to the masterpiece of masochism that is Super Meat Boy. A strange, strange game that has a loose Mario plot and a lot of running and jumping. Except your jumping over and through sawblades, salt (deadly to Meat Boy), spikes and more. This game is so hard. Although each level is tiny--beatable in a matter of seconds--you can spend hours on some of the games hardest challenges (one particular triplet of trials can very well break your sanity and your fingers). I love it.

That's all for now. Game on, everyone!

Game Round Up 11/14/2010

2010-11-14T13:59:00.003-05:00

Since I have no real interesting thoughts or opinions today, I will just blurb about some of the games I recently have been playing.

Aquaria- I'm at the last regular zone, but I need to restock on items so I can be fully prepared for the final boss and all that. I really need to beat this game.

God Hand- HOLY BALLS THIS GAME IS HARD. I was playing for a couple of hours on Easy difficulty before I decided to man up and try Normal. Normal is not a normal Normal. Normal in God Hand IS HARD. I fear for my controllers' integrity; it is only a matter of time before they are thrown across the room.

Demon's Souls- I am currently doing a Let's Play (i.e. a video playthrough with shoddy commentary provided by yours truly) for this game. This is my second real playthrough and I am fairly far into this run. Out of sixteen bosses I only need four more defeated, plus a joke of a final boss. This is really a great game and I highly recommend it if you haven't played it already.

World of Warcraft- Yes, I resubscribed. Woe is me. In December the next expansion comes out and I want to prepare for that time sink. Really the game is still somewhat dull as is but I'm having enough fun to merit $15 a month.

Shank- I just got this game and have played through about three levels of it. Essentially this is a 3D action game compressed and refined into two dimensions. The controls are that of a three-dimensional action game akin to Bayonetta or God of War, and the presentation feels like a Saturday morning cartoon turned bloody. I really dig what I have played so far.

Borderlands- This is not a single player game. Do not be deceived by the single player option in the menu. This is a game meant for cooperative play with friends. I have been trying to find some time to play this with friends, and when I do I have a blast. Borderlands takes a tried and true formula from one genre (action RPG) and grafts it onto the FPS genre with amazing success. My only complaint is that the game has repetitive environments, and would be dull if you were playing the single player WHICH DOES NOT EXIST DO NOT BE DECEIVED.

Batman: Arkham Asylum- Great title that I have given far too little attention to. I finally got around to playing it a little more and I really appreciate the amount of effort and polish that has gone into this game. I especially like how the game does not railroad you; Arkham Asylum gives a feeling of exploration and discovery along with fun combat and scenarios. Besides, there is nothing quite like stepping into the shoes of the Caped Crusader.

Rock Band 3- I thought Warcraft would be bad, this is ten times worse. Well, it would be if I hadn't started to develop something like carpal tunnel playing the drums on Rock Band. Still, I may very well play through the pain because this iteration of rhythm game has truly pushed the genre to a new level, with instruments that have transcended from fake plastic controllers into the realm of real. The keyboards, drums, microphones and the upcoming new guitar all are instruments that can be taken into recording. I'm impressed.

Dragon Quest IX: Sentinel of the Starry Skies- This is my portable time-waster for now. It is a formulaic RPG; you kill monsters over and over to gain levels to beat stronger monsters and get better items to equip your characters with, ad infinitum. This is not a bad thing when you are on the go and waiting between activities.

Minecraft- The most worrisome game I have obtained recently has to be this cubic marvel. It is ingenious in its simple premise. You mind cubes and craft from what you have obtained. Somehow something so basic has become something wondrous and hella addicting. I was worried my time would be annihilated by this title, but years of annihilation via World of Warcraft has given me thick skin. I am used to the draw of addicting titles, and I can control my impulses somewhat better than yesteryear. Minecraft is only a great time waster as of yet.

That is all the games I have been spending a notable amount of time with recently. More interesting posts will be posted at some point. I am afraid this blog is not a high priority, but I do hope I can write some more for here soon.

Afraid to End It

2010-10-19T13:01:00.003-04:00

I have a weird and rather detrimental habit. When I get far into videogames, I tend to shelve them and move on. While at first glance one might consider this discarding as an act of burnout; the initial drive that kept me playing early on has worn out. The frequency of my dismissals, however, lead me to think that there is another mischievous force at work here.

Fear, fear of an end, is the culprit. When a game approaches its end, a terror sets in. What is this horror that preys on my mind?

I think it has to do with spoiling the game, first off. I am one who somehow finds out what the ending of a game will be before I get to that ending. Most of the time this is accidental. I get excited about a game and browse online to see the hype surrounding a title; I want validation for my new-found enjoyment. Look at forums and videos enough and there is bound to be a slip on someone's part about the end of a game. One mouse-over a black box and it is revealed that a surprise ending awaits me.

The fear sets in about here. I dread the pace I go. I do not want my joy with the game to end, so ironically I put the game down for a while to savor my playing. Every time I go to push the on button, a moment of dread seeps into my mind. Soon enough, I stop playing altogether.

What a strange and curious habit! What reason is behind this fear of completion? I can always play the game after the credits roll.

Perhaps there is a switch in my mind--something that brings about a feeling of termination. I do not want my game to be finished. I want it to go on. Maybe that sense of prolonging is what stays my hand?

Hopefully I can overcome this habit. I like to play games and would rather be enjoying them then letting their jewel cases collect dust.

And Ecclesia Beaten

2010-10-14T22:36:00.003-04:00

SUCK IT DRACULA!

Beating a game that I got a year or more ago and finally beating it today is more than satisfactory. My day has been made. It has been made.

Dates and Games for an Unknown Purpose

2010-10-14T21:45:00.007-04:00

October 18-24
Aquaria
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow
Metroid: Other M
Gears of War 2
Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies
October 25-31
Dragon Age: Origins
3D Dot Game Heroes
The Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
DQIX
November 1-7
Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Final Fantasy XIII
Cave Story
Dead Rising
DQIX
November 8-14
Dead Rising 2
FFXIII
Breath of Fire II
Megaman 9
Shin Megamei Tensei: Strange Journey
November 15-21
Dead Rising 2
God of War 3
No More Heroes 2
Grand Theft Auto IV
SMT: Strange Journey
November 22-28
Starcraft 2
Blazblue: Continuum Shift
Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition
GTA IV
SMT: Strange Journey
November 29-December 5
Planescape: Torment
Batman: Arkham Asylum
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
Prototype
SMT: Strange Journey
December 6-12
Torment
Arkham Asylum
Muramasa: The Demon Blade
Resident Evil 5
SMT: Strange Journey

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, Death in Demon's Souls, Formatting Woes

2010-10-14T00:37:00.004-04:00

Rereading some of my blogs has led me to conclude I swing back and forth between games like a yo-yo in a roller coaster. I dropped Dragon Quest IX for the time being to return to the punishing Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia. My former dreams of beating games has returned, and I noticed how close I was to finishing Ecclesia. Little did I know how difficult the final boss of the game would be. Dracula is hard! He and his swarms of bats are the death of me and my poor, pixelated protagonist. Despite the pain sent my way, I will learn from my game over screens and prevail. You are going down Dracula!

Speaking of Castlevania's, a new title from that franchise, Lords of Shadow, appeared in the market recently. This weekend I went ahead and bought the game, finding myself thoroughly enjoying it. I am rather surprised that the game has not been getting better reviews. From the little I have played, Lords of Shadow stands to be one of the best in its genre of 3D action games. Perhaps people just do not like a game that seems so eerily similar to God of War. I have less reservation than others.

I mentioned on how I was on a roll in Demon's Souls before. That ride is over, however; I have finally been slain in a game known for killing. In particular I have succumbed to the inevitable at the hands of the hardest, most hated level in the game, the Valley of Defilement. Poisonous swamps, giant goblins, and slimy insects all want me dead, and eventually got their way. It was mostly the poisonous swamp's doing. I did beat the Valley in the end, but it still stained my impeccable record with a mark of defeat.

Defeat in videogames is one of the lesser worries on my mind, however. Recently the secondary hard drive on which I store all my computer games and video footage has broken down and now throws formatting errors at me. In short my computer wants me to erase my hard drive and will not let me access it otherwise. Saving my precious games and videos will require professional fixing. Oh boy.

BRB saving hard drives.

More Updating - Other M is horrible, Dead Rising 2 Get, Demon's Souls Goes

2010-09-29T22:40:00.005-04:00

It seems I am turning this into a blog about random gaming that I am doing at the moment. Oh well, hopefully I will have well-written, informative essays posted on here soon enough, or not.

Final Fantasy XIII has been shelved somewhat. The ever-so-dreaded eater of time, Real Life, has hindered my capacity for gaming. There also may be some small element of dull, linear, cutscene-riddled buffoonery going on with this game that could demotivate me. I will come back to you, FFXIII, but why do you have to waste so much of my time with crap I do not want to deal with?

In my last post there was mention of my excitement and hype for Other M. All of that anticipation has been curb-stomped with a horrible, horrible excuse for a Metroid game. Other M railroads the player using a pitiful plot device, namely that Samus Aran's former commanding officer, Adam Malkovich, needs to authorize her to do anything. That is another thing; Other M is all but entirely story driven, and its story is driven by some of the most horridly written cutscenes I had the displeasure to witness in gaming. What happened to the concept of exploration and non-linearity? The wordless storytelling that Super Metroid implemented so wonderfully? Forget any thought that Other M might by some ham-handed anagram for mother, Other M stands for Other Metroid Game Not Related to the Older, Better Metroids. This is not a Metroid game; this is a farce. On the bright side, the game does have some good controls some of the time. Maybe Nintendo and Team Ninja can take those good controls and put them into a Metroid game.

Now that some of my hatred for that loathsome title is out of my system, I can freely talk about a much better game, Demon's Souls. Yes, I still play this game. In fact, I am making a Let's Play of the game(Let's Play is a term for a game walkthrough with commentary). The strange part about my newest playthrough is that I have only died twice in the eight/nine hours I have traversed the dire lands of Boletaria with my new character, and those two deaths were only at the beginning. This is a strange circumstance; Demon's Souls is renowned for its unforgiving difficulty. Am I that good? Not really.

I recently obtained Dead Rising 2. I loved the first one, this seems to be more of the same. Good times.

My boardgaming has died down some due to the stinging fact that most boardgames require multiple players, and I am having difficulty roping in players for some very fantastic tabletop games. Hopefully I can make new friends. More sophisticated friends who like the sophisticated entertainment that a good boardgame provides.

Lastly, I have been playing some of Dragon Quest IX: Sentinel of the Starry Skies. There is not much to say except that this a game that follows with the idea of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." It is good stuff and a great way to kill time, and portable consoles are a wonderful platform for wasting time.

That is all for now. Play those games, readers.

A Long Needed Update: A Few Quick Things.

2010-08-31T17:05:00.006-04:00

This is just going to be a short set of blurbs about my current dealings with videogames (and games in general). I have left this blog to rot somewhat, but hopefully I can tie it into my current projects a little more. I like to have some writing up when I can.

Without further ado:

I got Metroid: Other M today. I haven't played it but it is my most anticipated title for this year. The problem is seeing these agonizing cutscenes online with Samus droning on about her relationships. Where did the wonderful use of the silent protagonist go? I dream of a day when a Metroidvania once again implements wordless storytelling. Yes, Super Metroid is my favorite game of all time. Deal.

Speaking of horrid cutscenes, I have plodded ever-farther into Final Fantasy XIII. The game is slowly, slowly showing some merits in its combat system. The problem is that this so-called "story" they're vomiting on my screen is hindering my relationship with the promising battle-system. Again, I dream of a game that can take away these horrid plots and cliched dialogues and stand solely on the foundations of good gameplay. Oh how I dream!

Other videogames I have been playing include Shin Megamei Tensei: Strange Journey (fun, portable JRPG grind), Blazblue: Continuum Shift (fun, non-portable Anime-crazy fighter), and Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty (overhyped RTS on first impressions). Dragon Quest IX was recently obtained but I have not had more than a minute worth of time devoted to it, so I will hold of on my thoughts on that game for later.

An interesting development in my nerddom has been a recent fascination with tabletop games. Yes, board games. Settlers of Catan was a gateway into what is now a full-blown obsession with the likes of meeples and chits. In my collection so far is Agricola, Puerto Rico, the aforementioned Catan, Dominion, Arkham Horror, Munchkin, Fluxx, Poison, Carcasonne, and Horus Heresy (which by the way takes up more space than four regular games). So far Puerto Rico is my favorite game with Arkham Horror being a close second, but all of my acquisitions so far have been rewarding.

I am even making my own board game right now! I will admit, the main motivation for this is that I have an influx of left-over minatures and dice from previous boardgames that have been destroyed by the cruel passage of time, and I wanted to put all these small soldiers to good use. It's refreshing to be able to design something and see the immediate result of it, compared to videogame design with which I have to merely visualize what my product will be (since I can't program worth a dime).

If all goes well, I will be posting more on what I am doing with my time and possibly specify on some of these articles. Maybe a discourse on boardgames and designing one? Maybe a rant on slow learning curves? We will see!

Mortal Online Vexes Me Slightly Less

2010-06-16T09:07:00.004-04:00

A patch for this new MMO I am trying appeared Tuesday evening, and with it came a few bug fixes. While there are still a bevy of unfinished features, unreleased content, and even fairly major bugs still all needed to be dealt with; Mortal Online is slowly but surely changing. I for one think it is changing for the better.

Recently changed was the "Gather" abilities, which formerly had to be clicked every single time you chopped your axe into wood or rock, and this process can take hours. Now you simply click once and you automatically keep chopping and gathering supplies, meaning two things. One is that there is less needless mindless labor in this game, two is that the developers have some sense to know how to make their game fun. The most alluring feature of Mortal Online is its potential, a potential that depends on both the players and the developers to realize. Seeing the developers working hard on their game is assuring to say the least.

I get the feeling I have climbed over the hard part of the learning curve and am slowly but surely developing my game character to the point where I can tackle the large, open world instead of anchoring my adventures around the safety of town. In a game that pulls no punches, I think I am getting to the point where I can take a hit.

Mortal Online's is showing its true nature to me ever so slowly; the puzzle pieces are falling into place. The picture hidden behind this jigsaw of rough edges is a diamond, not flawless but certainly worthy of attention.

Mortal Online Vexes Me

2010-06-14T14:27:00.003-04:00

On Thursday I acquired a newly released MMO, Mortal Online. It is made by the indie development team Star Vault and is a sandbox game--that is a game where you shape the world instead of it being shaped for you.

There really is not a game of this generation quite like it. Fantasy Sandbox MMORPGs have gone the wayside since the days of Ultima Online back in the last millenium. Mortal Online follows the ways of Ultima in bringing an experience grand in scope and brutal in implementation. Players can kill other players at any point in time and loot everything off their bodies (meaning if you die you essentially will lose everything you were carrying). There are no minimaps, no chatting with other players beyond your immediate area, no quests, and no hands to hold you while you brave game world. There are a lot of things Mortal Online is not. Why not talk about what it is.

As stated, Mortal Online is a full on player versus player experience. You can go and kill players at any time, bearing in mind certain repercussions for doing so (e.g. other players will see you as a murderer if you kill more than five innocent people). Combat is done through actual aiming instead of locking on to a target and depending on a die roll for your hits. The game does not give you levels, but rather provides you with skill points that you increase by either practice or reading. There is a limit to how many primary skills you can have, stopping characters from overpowering new players and limiting players from being self-sufficient.

Let me place emphasis on this skill system. There are literally hundreds of skills to be had and no possible way to learn them all, even with the three character slots given to you with an account. You will start with only a fraction of these skills, and when you first appear in the game world wearing nothing but rags, you will be all but required to trade with other players to get anywhere. Player interaction is the whole point of MO, and the game lets you know that quite soon in.

These features are all fine and dandy, except that there are a myriad of bugs and flaws with the game that naturally occur if you are playing a MMO made by a small development team. The world is massive, but truth be told, there is not much in the massive world. This is somewhat to be expected when the game relies on players to build a lot of the world (players can even build their own cities for instance), and the game is new which means that there has been very little time for the sandbox world to be molded. I personally detest the need for a massively multiplayer game to require a massive amount of collecting and repetition in order to get anywhere (albeit this is true for every MMO).

For all the flaws in the game, however, I find myself drawn back again and again to Mortal Online. I enjoy it despite being sparsely populated, despite being buggy, despite it missing a load of features that the developers are working to implement.

I feel that Mortal Online will grow on me as it grows into a much more complete game. This is not "The Good MMO" I was looking for; it is something completely different and unexpected.

The Hunt for the Good Hack & Slash/ARPG/Demon's Souls Clone

2010-06-11T15:04:00.002-04:00

As I wait for the game client of Mortal Online to finish downloading, I think I shall talk about a genre that may not be a genre at all, because there's very few games that meet the particulars of this type of game.

The Prerequisites

I want to say I have been looking for an Action Role Playing Game, but that is not true. ARPG's are mouse-driven copies of Diablo II with isometric, overhead views of characters that you steer by clicking on the location where you want them to travel. You click on monsters to automatically attack. Whether you hit or not and how much damage you deal is all based on die rolls and not aiming or proper timing.

I am looking for a fully three-dimensional game, one where you can look up or down and steer your character instead of pointing to the place to travel. I want a game where you aim to hit your opponents and the damage you deal is based on circumstances rather than luck.

There are elements of the ARPG that I am looking for in this nonexistent game. I want the dungeon crawl, a lot of dungeon and very little roleplaying. I want the character advancement be it through gear or experience points or magic currency. I want the random dungeons and their promise of limitless adventure. I want the crazy spells and abilities that make you a one-man army against a swarm of foes. I want the cooperative and competitive multiplayer.

Combining these elements and adding a little polish and shine, in my mind, would make a winning formula for a game, so I'm surprised that there is nothing quite like the game I'm describing. The closest thing that comes to mind is Demon's Souls, but that game is unique itself. I began to search for my game: the good hack & slash/ARPG/Demon's Souls clone. My findings were both fruitful and disappointing.

The Search and the Findings

I looked around online first, finding a one game that seemed similar to what I was describing. Heroes of Might and Magic: Dark Messiah was the first game that came up on my search, a first-person hack & slash with lots of crazy spells and good combat. Very close to what I wanted to find, but the game was built around premade levels and not randomized dungeons. Definitely on my get list, but as they say, "Close but no cigar."

Beyond Dark Messiah, searching on my own resulted in, well, no other results. So I asked a particular forum I visit for help. While many of the responses I got were "you're being too picky," I did learn of a few games that piqued my interest.

Enclave is an old game that involves hacking and slashing and all that, but I was slightly disappointed with the combat system (what I would do for a block ability that actually deflects an opponent's sword), but this is only from a little bit of play--I will have to investigate further.

I also looked into Gothic 3, which seems really interesting, but it is also really, really buggy and unstable. I could only play through the first fight before the game crashed on me and spouted some jargon about memory access. I would probably enjoy this game if I could play it.

A few more games are up on my list, but I haven't found much time to acquire and play them.

The Conclusion

So far I'm rather disappointed in my search. I thought there would be something like Demon's Souls somewhere, if not my dream game. I was wrong.

I can settle with what is out currently, but I it is disheartening to think that what I would feel would be a great game doesn't exist.

Some Thoughts on Games I Beat Earlier in the Year

2010-06-10T14:13:00.002-04:00

I could not come up with anything for today so I will just talk about games I played a while back that I never talked about.

Sonic Unleashed Is Fun Covered in Annoyance
The blue hedgehog's/werehog's recent adventure brought out hatred from many gamers. If you can ignore the horrid story and setting, you can find a relatively fun game--if you can get past the frustration.

You have two types of levels in Unleashed based on day an night. In the sunlight, eaths are frequent because of split-second decisions that all-but require divination. Night stages are riddled with tricky jumps over bottomless pits. Enemies are always the same, though the combat is okay enough.

I think the level design is okay, but to find the fun in Sonic Unleashed you have to realize that it is all about mastering stages and replaying them to get the highest score. Think of this like a rhythm game where you keep coming back to ace those hard song tracks. Unleashed has this type of flow, but you have to dig through some very annoying features to get to it.

Not the best game, but not the absolute worst.

Mass Effect Is Okay
After beating ME, I don't have any particular feelings towards it. It's pretty fun. the story and dialogue are well-done. Combat could be better but it's not terrible.

The game didn't do much for me, but it's certainly enjoyable.

Killer7 Is Absolutely Fabulous
Too fabulous to fit here. I'll fill you in on my thoughts on this absolutely amazing game soon enough.

Brutal Legend Is Awesome, I Don't Care What You Say
This great blend of action and real-time strategy is one of my favorite games of 2009, but most of you got bought into the hype of this being a big adventure game and found it to be a multiplayer masterpiece. Dammit, don't complain that you get diamonds when you thought you were getting emeralds. I will sulk about this more in a later post as well.

That's all for now!

The Hunt for the Good MMO: Part Three, Defining "Good"

2010-06-08T20:05:00.003-04:00

Since I have not found many more MMOs recently now might be a good time to explain this whole "Good MMOG" business. While I have a lot of specific details that appeal to me, there are some very general points I feel need to be met for an MMO to be truly enjoyable.

Always Value Fun Over Scale
A mistake far too many MMOs make is putting in these long, uneventful sequences of travel to present a huge scale of the world at the expense of the player's enjoyment. What especially comes to mind are the flights between towns in World of Warcraft. It may be fun to oversee some scenery once, but the minutes spent traveling in the game that could be spent blasting monsters become a painful reminder of how much WoW wastes the players time.

Base the Game Off Skill, Not Probability
To reference World of Warcraft again, the competitive circuit is often criticized for so many random elements factoring in the gameplay. Sure, skill is important in the game, but so is having the right numbers at the right time and the right gear to increase the chance of getting the right numbers. In my humble opinion, this is bull. Give the players a chance to do the craziest things given enough skill, even being able to win a victory even when outnumbered four to one (which is something that you can all but never do in WoW by the way).

Solo Play Should Be Viable for Most Content
In ye old Everquest, players had no chance against monsters by themselves, even at lower levels. In WoW, in order to get decent gear you have to group with at least five other players. All but the most group-oriented of challenges should be built for one player, with incentives for group play that do not overshadow solo play.

Have a Challenge at Every Part of the Game
Another thing that bugs me to death. Most of these MMOs have very little challenge until the final parts of content. Simply having hard material at the end of the game is not acceptable. Often MMOGs require trudging through hours of droll content to obtain the materials needed for these hard, fun parts of the game. Developers, if you are truly concerned about letting a large player base access your content without feeling overwhelmed by difficulty, then make different difficulty settings. Make more than two difficulty settings however, players' skills range far more than two binary choices, thank you very much.

Make the Simple Gameplay Fun and Polished
A game doesn't work without a good game dynamic built at the root levels of play. Thousands of hours of content will not matter if the combat is clunky the whole way through. Make the game fun, at every level of play (including leveling to the end game).

The main point I feel MMOGs need to learn is to not waste the player's time on boring content in order to access the entertaining parts of the game.

The paradox, of course, is to keep the game entertaining for thousands of hours without having to make a nigh-impossible amount of content to last that time. I have some ideas that could keep players occupied, but that's for a later post.

I made a video this weekend.

2010-06-07T13:55:00.002-04:00

It's on YouTube. Some people think it is funny. Click to see the video.

The Hunt for the Good MMO: Part Two, Dragonica

2010-06-07T10:01:00.000-04:00

My hunt for an MMO that is fun to play continues!

While Dungeons and Dragons Online has a lot of great features, it has some shoddy design choices as well. The combat especially feels like it's all relying on the dice roll (which it is).

Dragonica is sort of an opposite to the likes of DDO. Where the latter game is built on theorizing what choices of abilties and features you select for your character are the best, Dragonica is built on a visceral combat system much like the arcade beat-em-ups like Double Dragon and Streets of Rage. You chop, blast and shoot your way through hordes of creatures until none are left standing. Knock enemies into the air, jump and perform mid-air attacks on these suspended foes, and then pound a giant hammer on top of prone opponents (you may not be using a hammer for the last part).

Beating up opponents and stringing a crazy combination of attacks together is by itself very fun. This sense of fun on the most rudimentary levels of the game is a key component for a good game that I see missing from a lot of MMOs. There may be endless, varied content, but all that is for naught if playing the game is not entertaining in some way.

Of course, even great gameplay gets old if you play the same content over and over, which may be the fate of Dragonica from what I have played. The missions are repetitive and uninspired, with such assignments as "kill 20 wolves" or "collect 10 stumps." It pains my eyes to see the worst parts of WoW's quest-system implemented here. I cringe when I am sent to collect X number of item Y from monster Z, and so far I have not seen a quest that does not variate from this banal formula. The extremely fun combat is what makes up for the lackluster mission-design, but that fun will not last if stretched over a huge, repetitious treadmill of a world.

I am starting to suspect the standards of which I want my MMO to be raised to are astronomically high, but at the same time I think there has to be a better MMO than these. If not, there should be, even if I have to make it myself.

The hunt will continue.

The Hunt for the Good MMO: Part One, DDO

2010-06-04T18:25:00.000-04:00

I played WoW for quite some time, more so than any other game (perhaps combined). With this play time comes some shame and disgust directed at both the game and myself. I criticized myself for having what at some points was nothing less than an addiction, and looking back at my time with the game I wonder what got me so sucked in to the game. I know at first I was enamored by the scope and intrigue that draws in so many who have never enjoyed an MMO before. Of course, after so many hours--days even--of play this magic soon fades and I was left with...what? The identical missions? The mindless repetition? The belligerent players?

It was the challenging parts of WoW that kept me there for so long. You have five, ten, twenty-five, even forty people raiding a dungeon full of fierce monsters that can make mince meat of an individual character; I can safely say that WoW presents some of the most challenging, exhilarating experiences seen in any game. The problem was how much filler there is between these encounters.

I like my games engaging in some way. WoW did so by presenting challenging encounters, but to get to these encounters I had to spend days of game-time leveling up, getting the armor and weaponry to survive in these hard dungeons, and find a group of people who want to complete challenging content as much as I did. This treadmill got old, and finally I cancelled my subscription to World of Warcraft this May. I was running on fumes in that game for months; only the social bonds I made with a few good players kept me going for so long. WoW was great some of the time, but that time has long gone.

Playing WoW so much had me look at what I didn't like about its design. It also left a craving for something that was as wonderful as those epic battles I enjoyed so much. I realized that I still want to play the challenging, engaging, in-depth, cooperative and competitive struggle that was all-but exclusive to the MMO genre. I want this experience, but I want this experience free from the taint of repetitious filler required to enjoy the harder content. I want gameplay that does not make concessions to create the massively multiplayer experience. I want good fun. My hunt has begun for the Good MMO.

Here is this first MMO I've stumbled upon.

Dungeons and Dragons Online: Stormreach
I have heard of this title before, but I was while entrenched in the gameplay of WoW. I thought DDO was going to be a clone of the MMO I was already playing, so I ignored it. Now that the game has become Free to Play (sometimes referred to as F2P), I created a game account and tested the waters.

I found a refreshing experience that had gameplay features WoW lacked. No quest was pure filler--every time a distressed citizen gave my hero a mission, there was always a dungeon linked to this mission. There are no "kill 10 boars" or "collect 8 pies" in DDO. You go into the dungeon, kill the boss, get the treasure. This simple concept is brilliant. If there was a thing I loved in WoW, it was the dungeons. Dungeons and Dragons Online is all dungeons! You can even select a difficulty level for these dungeons. If the normal difficulty was not challenging enough for me, I could do hard. If hard was not enough, I could try elite. The challenge is there.

This game would be perfect for me were it not for the ruleset. Ironically enough, Dungeons and Dragons Online following the rules of the pencil and paper Dungeons and Dragons drags down the gameplay. A lot of the choices you can make to develop your character feel inconsequential and unimpressive. I liked how WoW consistently gave you abilities that dramatically changed how you played and regret that DDO does not follow suit. When I next level up in DDO my barbarian will get a feature that makes him more likely to detect a trap, big deal. When I level up in WoW my warrior will get a new action that turns his sword into a boomerang that he can throw at opponents. DDO's combat is not bad, it's just not as thrilling as WoW's. Then again, I am only so far into the game; when I advance further I suspect there will be more to it.

In short, I like the flow of DDO (go to dungeon, kill monsters, get loot), but I am not so pleased with the underlying mechanics. Oh, and sewers are the least thrilling environments to explore; DDO has lots of sewers. This is not my ideal MMO, but it's good.

Later:
The hunt continues with Dragonica.
I write my opinion about the whole "games are art" debacle.
A retrospective of Project "I'll Play It Later," and the possibility of a relaunch.
Bayonetta, Metroid: Zero Mission, Brutal Legend, Killer7, Mass Effect all get blogged about.

State of Playing Later: May 2010

2010-06-03T07:32:00.000-04:00

A lot has been going on in the gaming portion of my life. One of the things that has not been going on much is me updating this blog, something I regret. Even if I'm not trying to play 37 games in 15 weeks, I should still be trying to update consistently. Here's to hoping June is going to be the start of me turning a new leaf, where I will tell the world of my exploits of the interactive nature.

If there is one thing I'm now doing consistently in my gaming, it is that I am streaming live on a bi-weekly basis! Every Tuesday I am on Justin.tv and every Thursday I am on UStream.tv. I am still working out the kinks in my recording equipment, but I've got the audio set up rather well and the video isn't too horrible (at least I'm not recording off a camcorder). I start streams around 9 P.M. EST and try to keep going until midnight.

I have also been doing some video recording of my gameplay, which I am also trying to do on a consistent basis, but I'm somewhat sluggish when it comes to the actual editing of my videos. I was hoping to do a Monday to Friday set of updates for videos, but it may have to be only once a week. I do have some funny and possibly entertaining stuff lined up, however, and there are is even some stuff already uploaded from the past month (I'll post what they are below).

The games I have been playing on and off stream this month have been few but I have put a fair amount of hours in each of them. The first is 3D Dot Game Heroes, a love-letter to retro gaming, especially to The Legend of Zelda. You could almost say it's a parody or a copycat down to the letter, but I like to think of Dot Game Heroes as a tribute more than a mockery. It does have its own brand of referential humor (you will find gaming jokes out the wazoo here), but it doesn't cross the line of irreverence.

I have also played a little bit of the online component of Brutal Legend, a very fun game that was the first of a series of games that pulled me away from the original "I'll Play It Later" project. Though falsely advertised as an action-adventure game a la Zelda, Brutal Legend is really an Action-RTS, a genre with only a handful of games to its name and often overlooked. When gamers went in expecting an action game and got this RTS component, many were disappointed and word of mouth got around of this let-down. A few more insightful gamers looked past the hype and saw Brutal Legend for its own worth, and found an incredible blend of Action and RTS mixed in such a way to make a wonderful multiplayer experience. I am terrible at this experience and very rusty. I recorded a few online matches, but most of them were of me getting terribly served. I still have some footage I need to upload, so expect more updates of this to come.

By the middle of May I was away from my usual gaming rig (went a few states away to watch my sibling graduate from college), and equipped myself with a Computer Role-Playing Game (CRPG) for the journey. In this case, I brought along Baldur's Gate. The one thing you must never underestimate is the addictive quality of an RPG, especially of the CRPG flavor. Despite being over a decade old, Baldur's Gate has kept my attention and hasn't let go yet. The worst part is that I'm not even half-way through the title--it is a massive undertaking. I could easily spend days of pure game-time lost in this world of swords and sorcery, and this time-sink is expounded by the fact that I restarted the game several times already to make a character that I could live with playing the entire way through the game. Slowly but surely, I will finish Baldur's Gate.

When I do not feel like sitting down at the computer or in front of the TV, I have been playing my Nintendo DS, and one particular game, Shin Megamei Tensei: Strange Journey. You could call this a Japanese Role-Playing Game (JRPG), and as far as JRPGs goes, this is one of the better games out there. The sub-title is appropriate here for the gameplay is indeed strange, but also wonderful. You traverse dungeons and encounter demons, but where the game deviates is with the feature of being able to negotiate with these demons, and even get them to join your party. There are literally hundeds of demons to talk to and ally with, so you could say the mechanics in the game are unconvential, even if still falling into a notoriously conventional JRPG genre.

Lastly, I have been craving Massively Multiplayer Online games (MMOs). On the 2nd of May, my account for World of Warcraft (WoW) expired, and while I am satisfied that I am not playing what has become an exercise in tolerance of repetious, dull gameplay; I am still craving a multiplayer dungeon crawler of the likes provided by the MMO genre. Thus the hunt for a better MMO experience began, and there indeed may have been games more fun than WoW found. The first was Dungeons and Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited (DDO), a free-to-play title that was so engaging that I decided to subscribe to the premium service. The game flow is simple: you obtain quests from non-player characters, go complete the quest for experience, gain experience and loot to upgrade your character, and repeat. The twist to DDO is that every quest involves a dungeon of its own, and each dungeon can be done alone, and all but a few can be completed with other players. Even better, dungeons have different difficulty levels, so there is incentive to repeat quests, but at a higher difficulty level, where your abilities in combat are challenged to their limits. And the combat is fun, moreso than most of WoW. While I have heard there is not as much content in DDO as in WoW, I have to say DDO is the most enjoyable leveling experience I have played in a long time.

There are some issues that bug me that are not only in DDO, but in MMOs in general. These nitpicks are too numerous to go into this blog post, but suffice to say I have some ideas for a large multiplayer experience that could alleviate some of the issues I have with the genre. I first want to explore the MMOs out there first to see if my ideas have been executed within a game already, but I have a strong doubt that they have not.

And that's about all that has gone on in May. Below are some links to videos and stream channels as well as some plans for the future of this blog.

Link to my YouTube channel, Let's Play Now!: http://www.youtube.com/user/Trynant

Link to my Ustream.tv channel, I'll Play It Live: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/i-ll-play-it-later

Link to my Justin.tv channel of the same name: http://www.justin.tv/trynant#r=cuWumyc~

Upcoming stuff for this month:
Blogging about my gaming experiences and some random thoughts about gaming in general.
More gameplay videos, opinion videos, and joke videos.
More streaming (biweekly!).
More gaming (a lot of it)!

Worth Your Consideration: Demon's Souls

2010-05-03T22:33:00.001-04:00

Advocates for the maturing of videogames sometimes claim that videogames should explore their gameplay fully, or rather a game should know the implications of its gameplay. Masterful games are made with each design choice chosen not because previous successful games did the same thing, but because it is the right decision to make.

Demon's Souls is masterful--a masterpiece even. The craftsmanship of Demon's Souls alone makes it a gem, but this gem shines all the brighter when one considers how the individual pieces of the game are horrible ideas by themselves. The most horrific aspect of Demon's Souls mechanics is its difficulty. Saying that Demon's Souls is hard carries little weight; what makes Demon's Souls truly (dare I say it) demonic is why its hard.

Combat is challenging and restricting. Your health and magic do not replenish by themselves; you must rely on consumable items, limiting the amount of mistakes you can make. You cannot mash buttons to hope to win fights, for your attacks deplete a stamina meter; if it runs out, you are defenseless. Monsters will ambush you, and even the weakest of enemies can kill your character in a handful of hits.

Hazards are everywhere. Darkness conceals pits that lead to your death. Mighty dragons incinerate the parapet you are crossing. There are no invisible walls protecting you from a fall to your death (this becomes particularly noticeable in a fight on a bridge against two brutes that knock you about). A huge swamp is filled with poisonous water, slowing you down while whittling away at your health. Oh, and if you have an internet connection, other players can invade your world with the sole goal of making you dead.

Failure carries severe consequences. When your character dies (and your character will die), you are kicked back to the beginning of the level. All the enemies you had slain reappear. Any souls (the game's combined currency and experience points) you haven't are left behind at the the spot of your death; you have to fight all the way back to your hard-earned cash. If you die, you lose half your maximum health and can only get it back by beating a boss. You cannot reload from a save point to erase your mistakes. Invaluable merchants do not return to life if you slay them, and there even is a man who will kill these vendors if you are so unwise as to free him and let him live.

This trinity of difficult combat, environments that hate you, and severe penalties for failure are fundamental mechanics in Demon's Souls. The game is hard, and you could almost see it as being unfairly so. I died and had to restart a level because I fell down a pit I could barely see in a dark prison; surely From Software is playing some cruel joke on us.

No, Demon's Souls is not a joke. If you look past its outer shell of difficulty, you will find brilliance in its designs.

The combat is hard, yes, but combat rests entirely on your skill and never on the luck of the draw. The controls feel right, and the permutations to how you design your character for combat are nigh endless. Not only do you choose from dozens of different basic weapons each with their own weight and feel, but you can upgrade these weapons in a multitude of different ways. Maybe you want a long sword to deal fire damage and upgrade it to a Dragon Longsword +5, or perhaps you want your uchigatana to deal more bleeding damage and add the Tearing aspect to it, causing wounds dealt to foes to be even more hurtful. Maybe you want to avoid lowering your shield when you attack, so you find a winged spear that can attack while you are blocking. Maybe you want to focus on magic. Or maybe you want your character to channel divine power into his or her weapons. Or maybe you want to sneak around and shoot targets with your bow from afar.

How could you appreciate the intricacies of combat if the game only presented foes that would go down in a hit. Why bother with all this wondrous complexity when you could mash buttons to continue further in the game. That would get boring. Instead, Demon's Souls rewards your mastery of its mechanics.

The hazards. The pits. The ambushes. How could these unfair design mechanics be made to complement the gameplay? From Software really shown through by coming up with a rather unique and unprecedented solution to deal with their devious level designs: use an online component. Demon's Souls has an in game messaging system where a player can choose an assortment of messages to leave lying on the ground for other players to read. "Don't fall into this pit." "Attack this person." "I'm in trouble, please recommend this message!" If you recommend a message, the person who wrote it is healed and the message's rating goes up, indicating that perhaps there's some truthfulness in the system. Where other games are ruined by spoilers, Demon's Souls embraces hints and revealing facts. A game that takes into account the community trying to work together to beat the game. Imagine that!

The online aspect does not stop there. Bloodstains appear throughout the game, and touching them reveals a player's last seconds before they met an untimely death. This can be helpful in knowing that perhaps a fall into a pit nearby can kill you, or that there is a nasty foe ahead.

As well as being able to attack other players through the use of a certain item, you can also use another item to leave a sign on the ground that other players can interact with to summon you into their world. This makes for a cooperative experience in case a dungeon is too difficult to go alone or there is an attacking player that you need help with. Players who are summoned that complete the level with the host player are returned to life and sent back to their own game, while the host player is rewarded with progressing farther into Demon's Souls.

If you could just breeze through the game, if there were not penalties for failing and the game was not challenging, none of these mechanics would matter. Why leave messages that help the player if there is no threat to the character's life? Why help other players if you can easily beat the game yourself? After finishing Demon's Souls, would you feel like you've done anything at all?

Demon's Souls is a masterwork built from elements that are normally detrimental to a gaming experience yet changed in a way to better the overall play of the game. The designers of Demon's Souls wanted one thing most out of the game, and that was for the player to feel accomplished when playing. Through the use of challenging material and the resources to fairly beat this challenge, From Software has achieved their goal. Demon's Souls is a game about accomplishment, and it comprehensively explores how to deliver accomplishment to the player. It may not be art, but the craftsmanship of this game is remarkable.

And you know what? It's not that hard. Maybe.

Quick Updates - More to Come

2010-04-22T16:03:00.000-04:00

I took a week off from computers and videogames, and while it was not that bad the experience was unimpressive to say the least. I've been told I have a problem with computers and games and honestly it doesn't seem that this is necessarily a big problem. Oh well, there's more to talk about.

I have updated my Backloggery profile to include all but a few of the games I have in my library at the moment. The total amounts to 2 completed--i.e. 100% completion--games, 50 beaten games, and 180 unbeaten games: 232 videogames. Sheesh, I have a backlog.

I want to get back into blogging and recording, but this time it won't be under one giant project of completion. Instead, I will be writing and recording reviews, anecdotes, gameplay highlights, and possibly walkthroughs. I've decided not to do any Let's Plays (i.e. unedited playthroughs of games oftened accompanied by live commentary), for I do not have the skill required to make an entertaining raw video like those of LPs. From what I've seen, most Let's Plays lack this entertainment value as well.

Expect a write-up of some of the games I recently finished or have been playing, such as Metroid: Zero Mission and Bayonetta.

Until next time,
Trynant

Indefinite Hiatus

2010-03-27T13:10:00.000-04:00

At the beginning of this year, I had hopes of starting "I'll Play It Later 2" and making a recap video of "I'll Play It Later" summing up my failed experiment and trying to draw a lesson or a realization about my methods of game-playing. These projects may not come into fruition for a while. The short answer as to why I am doing this is that I simply have lost interest and can't make myself commit to beating games I don't care about. The long answer is below.

I made my New Year's resolution to beat my backlog of games before I start buying new games. I broke this resolution this month.It started with playing a demo of a game and finding it too good to pass down, and continued with a realization of many of the games that I have left unbeaten.

While there are some exceptions, the games I have lying unfinished are there for a reason: I don't want to play them. As I get older my tolerance towards playing lackluster games has decreased. For me to fully enjoy a game it has to be of exceptional quality, and many of these games aren't at that level. Sure, there are some must-plays sitting around; I'll get to them at some point, but even when I play those games I won't be doing so with this project.

"I'll Play It Later" has become more of a chore than a hobby. Setting up recording and blogging is becoming too much effort for just playing a game. I actually feel less incentive to start playing a game when it involves having to arrange and assemble my computer to record and store videos. I want to enjoy my games, not feel adverse to playing them.

Maybe when I can get more of a grip on life I will start this up again. For right now, however, I'm not ready to dedicate myself to an undertaking of this magnitude.

It's been fun for while it was going, but "I'll Play It Later" will have to wait.

I still want to use this blog for various posts regarding my thoughts on gaming, but it won't be on a set schedule or anything.

Have fun everyone.

A Quick Update

2010-01-12T18:00:00.000-05:00

Vacations certainly suck my will to produce videos and blog posts. For me, Christmas holiday was filled with laughs, games and a lack of focus to make the next update. Now that I'm back to a normal routine, I think it's time for a small status update.

I am debating the necessity of a recap video. My previous post explains my hiatus quite well, and little has changed since then other than my extensive play of more games. I will discuss what new occurrences have transpired.

"I'll Play It Later" is going to start up again either this week or next. What this means is that a new video will appear, and a new goal set will be written.

I have started streaming videos again. This time, I have high-definition capabilities and it should show in pre-recorded videos if not live stream. I am still quite inexperienced with setting up sound, voice, and quality video; as I go along I can make more adjustments to bring about a better experience for everyone.

All that I can promise for now is that the game Demon's Souls is being played, and I want to write about my feelings for this wonderfully unforgiving release.

Lastly, I now have my stream channel embedded in the blog! I tend to do broadcasts in the evening at the moment. Stop by and say hello.

The Story of My Hiatus: Beware Ironic Appellations

2009-11-23T11:57:00.000-05:00

This post marks the end of my hiatus, and with any luck I can resume my playing of some unfinished games and the recounting of my exploits.

I won't make any guarantees, but I want to have some video recaps of previous weeks that I recorded, and I want to make a video recap of what the hell I've been doing all this time between my postings. Those should be up soon.

And now for a recount of my absence from this blog.

In hindsight, I should have been wary about titling this blog I'll Play It Later. Though I meant for the title to be ironic, as this was an attempt to play my games now, in a Nietzsche-minded turn of events I became like the monster I tried to fight; I started to follow the mindset I so haphazardly thought to be a simple jab of facetiousness. I did start to think that I could play my games later.

What I should have done is named this blog "I'll Play It Later" instead of I'll Play It Later. The difference is that of lackadaisical portent. Strange wording aside, I would be reminded that "I'll Play It Later" was something I need to stop saying, instead I'll Play It Later seemed to indicate that I really would end up playing this games later instead of sooner. Well, I forgot to shield myself with those grammatical barriers of quotation, and now I find myself between a rock and a hard place.

It has been months since my last entry. Although I have played through and even completed some of the games on my list, there have been weeks where I have ignored the games laid out in front of me and spent my time with other distractions. The short story is that I got sidetracked by a vacation, and then a bunch of great and highly addictive videogames were released and destroyed my integrity. If you want to know the gritty details, read on.

I actually was playing my games and even beating some of them up until the middle of October. The stylish and avant-garde Killer7 was the highlight of my endeavors throughout this time, for beating that game not only marked the first time I played a game in this project from start to finish without any aid but also marked the first time I seriously devoted myself to recording my playing of these games. I also finished Mass Effect, played quite a bit of Mirror's Edge, became infuriated with Sonic Unleashed, and broke open a lot of wooden crates in Half-Life. I recorded my playing of each of these games, and I even have videos of my playthrough of Killer7 on YouTube. Things were going okay, but that all changed soon enough.

During those weeks of play, I started screwing up in school, and that started to spiral out of control. Needless to say, I had to prioritize my academic career over this side project, so my video editing and blogging were put on hold. I still have to create a video recap of Week Five and beyond, but this is just the tip of the iceberg.

The weekend when I was supposed to be finishing the Half-Life series and the week after when I was supposed to be playing Deus Ex and Odin Sphere happened to overlap the week of Fall Break for my school. For this small vacation I went back to my hometown and relaxed with friends and family. Unfortunately this relaxation and the lack of the computer where I store all my videos and video-editing software hindered my playing of the games of the weeks. I never finished Half-Life, let alone the Half-Life series, and Deus Ex and Odin Sphere were ignored. One would think that upon my return to school I would resume my academic and gaming balancing act; little did I know how easily one can be lured by the siren's call of a good game, let alone several great games.

The first destroyer of my time would be Tim Schafer's Brutal Legend (umlaut not shown). A game that at first appears to be an Action/Adventure title but slowly reveals itself to be an Action/Real-Time Strategy game, Brutal Legend left many players with a sense of dissatisfaction when they learned the game was not what it advertised itself to be. Others were pleasantly surprised or even ecstatic about the true nature of the game. I was in the latter group. Brutal Legend gripped me like no game had done in years, and despite some debatable flaws with the title I could not stop obsessing over the game. Even when I wasn't playing I was browsing message boards talking about the title or thinking about strategies for the game's excellent multiplayer component. I was shocked at how little love the game was given--everyone whom I have shown the game to has at the very least liked it, but I can understand some of the public's polarization towards Brutal Legend. It's a game that up until release presented itself to be an Action/Adventure game, when it really was a game that involved a heavy amount of commmanding troops in battle. When you leave players in the dark about a core facet of gameplay, it's only par with the course that a lot of them are disappointed. No doubt I will return to Brutal Legend and defend the title with my honor, but my journey into the pits of gaming addiction did not stop with this excellent release.

Oh how horrible I am for thinking I could handle more games! Even worse than more games were my selection of games to play. After my obsession with Brutal Legend quieted down, I looked to purchase more addicting games. Three games, and none of them were quick play-it-then-sell-it products. No, I had to pick up the gruesomely addicting Borderlands, the unforgiving-as-it-is-compelling Demon's Souls, and the colossal beast of game they call Dragon Age: Origins.

Out of these three new terrors Borderlands consumed me first. It is a simple game; the player selects one of four characters and shoots his or her way through a wasteland, finding bigger and better guns and armor as the game continues. The game is a hybrid of two genres, the First-Person Shooter (FPS) and the Role-Playing Game (RPG). This combination has been done before--the games Bioshock and Deus Ex belong in this genre--but rarely if ever has the blend of the two genres come together in the way that Borderlands does. What the game does is take the action-oriented style of games such as Diablo, where there was a minimal amount of story and more focus on combat, and molds the style into a shooter format. For those unfamiliar with Diablo, that game was more or less a giant hamster wheel. It was an endless cycle of killing monsters that give the players' characters experience and loot that give them stronger powers and attributes that let them kill stronger monsters that give better experience and loot, ad infinitum. Borderlands is this same wheel. Like Diablo, characters become stronger through killing monsters. Like Diablo, stronger characters can go and kill stronger monsters that leave the player better items and experience to kill even stronger monsters with, ad infinitum. This grinding wheel results in a very effective addiction, where the player is compelled to play for that item or ability that is just always few monsters away. I was a victim of this cycle, and Borderlands grabbed me from start to finish. Thankfully, the game did not maintain its power over me once I killed the final boss; I snapped out of the charm put upon me when I realized I had pretty much experienced most of the game. Sure, there is a second playthrough option where your character can replay the game with even more powerful monsters, and there are multiple character classes to choose from, and...no! I must resist the urge to play it again!

The possibility of returning to Borderlands is no cause for alarm, for Dragon Age: Origins has successfully secured the throne of my wasted time. I obtained this game and Borderlands at the same time, and Borderlands won my time first. This would soon change, however, for where Borderlands is like the straw that is quick to kindle yet quick to die out, Dragon Age: Origins is like a sturdy, slow-burning pile of firewood--slow to light but once it catches fire burns for a long, long time. Scratch that; Dragon Age: Origins is a pile of firewood next to a wooden mansion. It is a massive, massive world of action, intrigue and romance. It is a role-playing game, like Borderlands perhaps, but instead of relying purely on action thrills Dragon Age combines tactical combat with in-depth, impactful character interactions and a story that pulls no punches. There is violence, there is tragedy, there is romance (sometimes with the same gender--this game pulls no punches), and there is a lot of all of this. I have yet to finish Dragon Age: Origins, even after playing for two-days worth of game-time, but the pull of this game is strong. I would feel miserable if this game relied on cheap thrills for its addictive powers. Thankfully, or unfortunately depending on one's perspective towards addicting games, Dragon Age: Origins is a rich experience, and that is why it is such an addiction. There is an end to the game, however, and hopefully when I reach that end those metaphorical flames will subside. Either way, the story is far from over.

To rub salt in the wound, I then made the sorry mistake of purchasing a little game called Torchlight. Remember that whole mention of Diablo? Well, Torchlight is an almost exact replica of the Action/RPG grinding wheel that is presented in the first Diablo, and as a result this new dungeon-exploring, monster-slaying game now torments me. Torchlight may even pull me away from Dragon Age because of its use of the potent hamster-wheel formula.

The worst of all of this is that if I miraculously pull myself away from this set of addicting products I could easily fall into the mires of Demon's Souls and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. That's right, I managed to acquire yet even more games that I am told have hours upon hours of addicting gameplay. I have less of a backlog and more of a backjungle.

There is a stereotype going around these days that is labeling the modern gamer as someone with no self-control. They must have the newest and hottest titles and cannot resist a game for the life of them. I am sorry to say that I am fitting very well within this stereotype. It's no surprise that the holiday season is the busiest time of year for games, and it's just as unsurprising how gamers bemoan the loss of their lives during this period.

I wish there was a better story behind this absence from "I'll Play It Later." Instead, it looks like this project has turned out to be another cautionary tale of a videogame nerd that couldn't control his spending, leading to a myriad of unfinished--sometimes untouched--titles, begging to be played. Specifically, out of some thirty-five games, four have been completed. For six weeks I shelved "I'll Play It Later," watching it gather dust from neglect.

There is some silver lining in this downpour, however. I have two weeks left, and there is time yet to play the last two games on my list. For this week there is PlaneScape: Torment, and for the last seven days of this madness lies Persona 4. I'll be honest here; these are big games, each of them probably too big for one week of play. Then there is the fact that this week is Thanksgiving week, a time of family and friends and not as favorable to videogames as other weeks. Persona 4 is a game that can go on for 80 hours. Though I have played a good amount of this game, it still has dozens of hours lying in wait. But damn if I do not at least try both games, play them and play them well.

I'm changing the title of this blog from I'll Play It Later to "I'll Play It Later." Those quotations really should have the encapsulated the phrase at the start, and not after these long and battered weeks. I was far too carefree with a phrase that signifies nothing if not procrastination. I let it stop being ironic, and the phrase "I'll play it later" turned into the truth. I gave into the lure of the new and addictive games out there, and I crashed and burned for my mistakes.

The wreckage of these fifteen weeks, however, is one that can be salvaged. I partook this endeavor with no clue as to how things would turn out, and now that the end is in sight, I can look back at this crazy idea and see what I can do better in the future. I already have some ideas that could work for next time.

Next time. I don't want to say anything is certain, but I do want to try this again. An organized, declarative crusade against my unfinished games seems to be the best way to finish them, and then hopefully, against all odds, I can shelve a backlog that has been haunting me for years, know that I did play those games after all.

Again, this week I will be playing PlaneScape: Torment. Expect an update on that by the end of this week, as well as some updates on previous weeks that I actually played games but never got around to posting on.

A week of trials, tribulations, and recording-software

2009-09-23T11:30:00.000-04:00

Week Four: Beyond Good and Evil, Cave Story, and the continuance of Dead Rising and The Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess.

I think last week was rather interesting in terms of my progression on this project. To go off on a tangent, I think the term "project" could easily be replaced with "marathon." I am playing a large amount of games over a long period of time; that sounds marathonic to me (and no, marathonic is not a word).

Back to the interesting matter of week four. I think what made this week stand out was how many things went on at once. For one, I broke a rule and kept playing two games from last week; this extended the amount of games I set myself to finish to five instead of three. Secondly, I felt that this week I really did play more than any other week, but still managed to not finish any one game. And finally--perhaps most importantly, I began to use video recording software to an extensive amount.

Let's do this in order and talk about rule-breaking. The particular rule in this situation was that I shall put away a game whether I finish it or not by the end of a week. And, like I said, this rule was broken. I continued to play The Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess and Dead Rising. This was a bad decision for one large reason: I simply could not play these two games in addition to playing the three games assigned during the week. I crammed in three fairly large games for the week--adding the last two is like a camel going through the eye of a needle. I should have left Dead Rising and The Twilight Princess rest on my shelf until I had a guarantee that I could play them without interfering with other activities.

I mention that I played more games in the week than the past, yet failed to beat a single one. This has to do with a second bad decision: I alternated between games before finishing a single one. Well, this was also a huge mistake because it resulted in me getting far in a lot of games but not beating a single one. For instance, I made it about half-way through Cave Story and then switched to playing The Twilight Princess. I ended up not finishing either game, though if I played Cave Story a little more I could brag that I finished yet another game out of the many I set to play these fifteen weeks.

And lastly, there was the recording. I went and fiddled around with recording software and the capture card (a device that can display console games on my computer) on this week. How deep the rabbit hole goes! I failed to grasp just how much effort was required to make a video, or at least make a proper set up to record videos. For every hour I spent playing games I must have spent twice that amount recording and editing videos. While I managed to finally get myself to a level where I can record and edit videos without a painful amount of time investment, getting to that level cost me game time. If I devoted myself to only playing my games and ignored the video aspect, I would have finished some if not all of the games assigned, even the ones I continued from the week before.

I have failed again to complete my set of games. I do not feel to phased by this, however, because I can see the progress in my play-ability and time-management skills. I feel confident that I will do better this week and beyond. I am getting better every day, hopefully this improvement will make an external appearance.

Perhaps I should mention the games I played and what impressions they left on me for what little time I devoted to them.

The first game I played for the week was Dead Rising, a video-game that can be best summarized as an interactive form of Dawn of the Dead. The setting is a classic scenario. Your character is trapped inside a mall, and the mall is filled with zombies. I hope this sounds familiar. In game terms, Dead Rising is a "sandbox game", that is a game where the player is given a bunch of toys in an environment to play around with. In this case the environment is a mall with zombies and the toys are anything that isn't nailed to the ground. Needless to say, a there is a lot of zombie-killing whose deaths are caused by a variegated set of improvised weapons (and some legitimate weapons), ranging from benches to teddy bears to soccer balls to shotguns to lawnmowers to to chainsaws to excavation drills (the correct term for those drills are "augurs"). If you can tolerate some gore, Dead Rising can be rather hilarious. It also can be a rather thought-provoking game. These zombies came from somewhere, and if you choose to follow the main story in the game (you can choose to just wander around in the mall instead), you'll find a tale of sadness, insanity, abuse of government power and revenge. Strangely enough, the zombies in the game are secondary characters. The story revolves around the survivors. It's quite brilliant, actually.

And I played only a couple of hours. I continued from a save point that was very far into the game, but I switched to a different game, forgetting to finish Dead Rising. It's a shame, really, because the game is truly wonderful.

The game I tried after Dead Rising was Beyond Good and Evil. Again, a truly wonderful game, and again, a game I spent far too little time with. BG&E is an action-adventure game (I hope that is a rather self-explanatory genre name for readers unfamiliar with video games), featuring elements of stealth, puzzles and good old-fashion combat. It blends these elements, along with an engaging story, an entertaining cast of characters and a wonderful setting, into one great gem of a game. In fact, this game is more like a hidden gem, because it didn't do to well commercially, but it soon became a cult classic in the gaming community. I only played a smidgeon of the game this week, although I had played a lot of it from before, and basically all I did was sneak into a laser-fortified military base and steal some pearls that are used as currency in the world. After that, I put it away and went to another game.

The third game of the week, Cave Story, is possibly my favorite game of the week. A freely downloadble game available at this link, Cave Story is an open-ended exploration game that has been specifically categorized as a Metroidvania. Metroidvania games are ones that root from Super Metroid--once heralded as the best game of all time. The features of these games include exploring a somewhat non-linear space (i.e. you wander around a lot but ultimately are on a set path) looking for power-ups and points of gameplay that allow you to progress to the next area. I for one do not think Cave Story is a pure Metroidvania because a lot of the progression in the game is based on story elements and not obtaining powerups that unlock more areas--something that is considered a key element in a Metroidvania game. This doesn't stop Cave Story from being a superb piece of work; it is easily one of the best, if not the best, game you can download for free online and has even done so well that it is being adapted for the Nintendo Wii as a full-fledged game (well, technically it is a game for download on the online store). This is the game I spent most of my time with, yet still didn't finish. It is hard to equate how far I made it into the game, but I would estimate that I was half-way to the end.

Cave Story brought up an interesting problem with my ruleset for this project. Cave Story as a "hard mode" in the sense that if you do the right things at the right points in the game, you unlock a final, secret area that is much, much harder than the rest of the game. Technically, you could treat this as trying to complete a game on its hard difficulty, in which case I would just go for the normal ending instead of playing through a really hard dungeon. The problem, however, is that there is not selection screen to pick "hard mode," therefor I am not playing the game on a hard difficulty, it's just that I'm unlocking a harder area to get a true ending. I ruled that if a game does not have a difficulty selection screen, then I go for the best ending, even if it's considered "hard mode." Well, I never had to worry about that, because I ended up failing to get far enough into the game to worry about such things. Oh well.

The final game I played this week was The Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess. This game is part of a series that consistently delivers remarkable action-adventure games in which the main character Link will go on a quest to save a princess and throughout the story encounter various dungeons where he must solve devious puzzles to collect special items that unlock the final area. Like Beyond Good and Evil and Dead Rising, I had already played through a large portion of this game, and in fact was three dungeons out of nine away from the ending. Well, one and a half dungeons later the week was over and I decided to call it quits.

I realized that it's a bad idea to continue a game from the week before into the next week, even if I'm close to the finish line. I learned a lot about video-recording, and now I am at the point where I can make decent videos without losing a lot of gameplay time, and am getting better at editing my recordings. Lastly, I think I am almost at the sweet spot of time managing to finally beat games assigned in the week. We will see.

This week is Killer7 and Mirror's Edge, prepare to hear about them soon!

Twitter HAX

2009-09-22T09:55:00.000-04:00

It seems the link to my Twitter feed is linking to a totally different person than me! I had to remove it, hopefully this will be fixed soon.

A blog about my fourth week of gaming is coming up soon.

(Not) Capturing the Moment and Getting Beatle'd

2009-09-15T00:46:00.001-04:00

I am beginning (or continuing rather) to think I have set the bar too high for myself this semester. I did not beat Dead Rising nor The Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess. I was so wanting to finish these games, however, that I have decided to press into this week and finish off those two games. It's not like I play many games during the week anyways.

Fallout 3 was a success. I went and did all of the requirements to obtain the "good" ending, which constitutes playing as a good character and doing various side missions as well as not blowing up the world. Unfortunately, when the ending cinematic played it would skip frequently, ruining my watching of the end. Oh well. To add to this, there are downloadable expansions for Fallout 3 which I have yet to finish. They are for another week.

The real problem I had for this week was with trying to broadcast my videogame-playing. After obtaining a capturing device for my videogame consoles, software to record my screen and my computer games, and going through two online streaming sites; I still have yet to figure out how to properly broadcast gameplay.

Currently I can record videos, then voice over them during a second recording and then save these recordings online. This works okay, but my attempts record live have failed so far. If anyone who reads this blog can comment on how to fix this, please inform me!

One person politely pointed out one other reason as to why I may not be finishing my games in a punctual manner. I happen to be a Guitar Hero/Rock Band addict. I play on each "instrument" at their highest difficulty (although I do not try singing that often), and with literally over a thousand songs available between the franchises I have spent a significant amount of time with these games. Maybe my time with these music rhythm games rival that of World of Warcraft, a significant feat indeed. In fact, if I replaced the time I played Rock Band this month with time on other games, I would not need to post about my failures--I would have finished those damn games that keep staying unbeaten.

Despite the distraction it offers, I do not regret my time with Rock Band and Guitar Hero in the least. The genre is an incredibly enjoyable way to appreciate music and have fun. My latest purchase of this set of games, The Beatles: Rock Band, is truly a masterwork. Having three people sing "Yellow Submarine" is one of the better moments of gaming I have experienced. Anyways, I know there is a lot of hate for these types of games, and I will neither persuade you to like these games nor will I discuss them much in this blog with the exception of this post.

Strangely enough, even with my guitar-game addiction, I feel confident that I will finish a good portion of the games I set out to finish this semester. Although these past three weeks have not been a good sign of things to come, I am thinking I am (slowly) improving in my game-beating skills.

It will be an interesting run, either way.

Oh, and you can see a recording of a portion of my dismal, dismal play of Dead Rising at this link:

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/2164803

How I Will Play My Games: The Specifics

2009-09-10T11:52:00.000-04:00

Some issues that were brought up about this project.

Do I just go for any ending and skip most of the content? Do I not do any side quests for the game made mostly of side quests? What difficulty do I play games on? Well, here are the rules, along with some repetition of what I've said before.

1. I consider a game "beaten" when I get the optimal or "best" ending. As an example for this week, Fallout 3 has multiple endings based one what I do in the game, I will try to complete as much of the game to get that ending. This includes doing a lot of optional quests, but will get me the most complete ending. If a side quest doesn't affect the ending to any degree, I will probably ignore it. If I have extra time once I beat the game, I will go back and play through as much of the side missions as I can.

2. Although I go for the optimal ending, that doesn't mean I go for a 100% run of a game. That means side-quests, secrets and bonus stages are secondary to my play, and they will probably be ignored.

3. I play the game on whatever is the default difficulty. Usually this is Normal, or Medium. Some games make Hard the default difficulty, in which case I would man up and play at that level. I made the mistake of playing on Easy with Doom; that won't happen again. If a game has a secret ending that is a "hard" ending, I will still play through that, unless it has ridiculous requirements to achieve and is less of an ending and more of an optional area.

4. If I don't beat a game within the week, I shelve it for later. I still will write about what I have played, however. This blog is about my experiences more than a need to beat everything, although there's some of that in there as well. If, however, I get really close to an ending to a game and don't want to give up, I will continue a game into the week after and beat it there.

5. No cheats, mods or game-skipping glitches allowed. I am adverse to the ideas of cheating to get through a game, and as such I will play the game fair and straight up. I don't think there will be any exceptions to this rule.

6. While there may be no cheats, looking at strategy guides and walk-throughs are very much allowed! This project is going to be hard enough as it is; I don't need to spend hours searching for the next place to go that I would not find without looking at a guide. As such, expect me to know what's going to happen in a game and to spoil the plot for you.

I will be streaming my gameplay around 9:00 P.M. EST and then will upload my recorded sessions onto YouTube. I will post links to my channels in related blog posts.

Embedded Stream, Capture Cards, and More CRAZY

2009-09-10T11:41:00.000-04:00

Stream is embedded onto the site now, in case you didn't notice the thing right above this blog.

I got a capture card on Tuesday and have been testing it out. I can now record/stream games on my consoles onto my computer. Hurrah!

I am still trying to figure out how to use the darn software, however. I really do not like using the screen-recording software provided by Live Stream (ProCaster), and in fact am not sure if I really think Live Stream is the site to use for streaming. It seems to have some limitations that other sites possibly might not have.

If anyone knows much about streaming from a capture card or just streaming a computer game, please let me know.

With Difficulty I Say I Was Doomed

2009-09-08T11:37:00.000-04:00

Reporting on last week; I did not complete any of the games I set out to finish.

I really should have seen it coming. Megaman 9, Everyday Shooter and Doom in one week? The first two games could take an entire week on their own, let alone be mashed into seven days. I did, however, make progress enough in each game that it is worth mentioning.

Doom
For those of you who aren't familiar with gaming at all, Doom is a classic that was redistributed on the Xbox Live Marketplace. It was the first-person shooter (FPS) that popularized the genre. If someone asks what the first big FPS was, say Doom. On a side note, Doom was one of the main points of evidence for the controversy of violence in videogames. It features the main character shooting zombies and demons with shotguns, the result being a lot of blood and corpses. Go figure.

There really should not have been a reason for me to beat this game. It was not particularly difficult, nor did it have mind-boggling puzzles that left me wandering for hours. No, the reason I did not beat Doom was because it tricked me! First, I continued from a saved game file that I started a year ago, thus forgetting what difficulty I was on. Turns out I was on easy, and apparently the game does not let you advance the first quarter of the game unless you try harder difficulties! I did not find out about this until late Sunday night, thus sealing my fate to not finish this classic FPS. Perhaps the lesson I learned was to look up online how long a game I'm playing is, lest I get tricked into thinking I beat it.

Megaman 9
Ah Megaman, what a wonderful series you are. Well, at least up to the mid-nineties. Once you started featuring games on the first Play Station I lost interest, but you occupied my childhood with your excellent, excellent gameplay. Megaman is a is a 2D side-scrolling action game. Your goal in every game is to kill eight different bosses located in eight different areas, and then fight in a series of final stages until you defeat the main boss (in this case, Dr. Wily).

There is a pretty simple reason to why I did not finish Megaman 9. Much like its predecessors, this game is very, very, very hard. Bottomless pits, fatal spikes, and enemies upon enemies that knock you into aforementioned pits and spikes all make for a harrowing experience that requires a hefty amount of time to master. Maybe, maybe if I put all my time into Megaman 9 and ignored having a life I could have squeaked by. I actually did pretty well for what I did put into the game (a friend of mine helped a lot, who switched off with me--he played more than I did, in fact). Out of those eight bosses, five were killed. For only a small fragment of the week, I consider that a very good amount of progress. Thanks, friend who played most of the game for me.

Everyday Shooter
The last item on my list suffered from severe difficulty as well. Everyday Shooter. It's a short game, with only eight levels, and if you do not get a game over the game will last only for about an hour. The thing is, you will get plenty of game overs. Everyday Shooter is like many shooting games such as Galaga, Space Invaders or Asteroids. You wander around an environment shooting enemies that move about on screen. Each level lasts for a certain period of time; once the time is up the level switches. The twist for Everyday Shooter is that each level plays a song, and instead of sounds of explosions and gunfire sounds, your character (which is a dot by the way) makes sounds that complement the song played by the level. Not only that, but each level has a certain mechanic that tries to mirror the feelings given by listening to the song. One level, for instance, plays a somber melody, and your character is surrounded by clouds and shining orbs that shoot birdlike creatures at you. It feels like you're in the middle of a smoggy, rainy day and are dodging raindrops, as well as trying to find some sunlight. Each level presents something different, and it's awesome.

And I can't finish it. It is just too hard. The third level is especially brutal--I've only beaten it once. It would take me far more than one week to beat Everyday Shooter, but I would absolutely love going back to this game and finishing the last song in the last level. I do get the feeling I will get back to this game and master it, eventually.

Summary
Despite my failures, I do feel like I have made some accomplishments. I was very distracted this week, yet I still made significant progress in each game relative to the time I devoted to playing them. I am getting much better at organizing my time, and I don't think I will be playing any game that is as difficult as the ones I have played this week. Games will be beaten.

Other Games
In other news, I have acquired several new video games and have gotten a chance to try them all out.

Batman: Arkham Asylum is an excellent game, easily the best superhero videogame out there. Haven't played much of it, but hearing Mark Hamill voice the Joker and facing all the villains from the old animated series just fills my heart with joy.

Prototype is an ultra-violent power fantasy, which is fine every now and then. Karate-kicking a helicopter is rather satisfying, after all.

Guitar Hero 5 is rather interesting. I am a huge fan of the guitar/drums rhythm games, and though I had serious doubts, GH5 did not disappoint me as much as I expected! It is very hard, however, when trying the later songs. The Beatles: Rock Band is coming out tomorrow, I will definitely be playing that ASAP.

I also tried a little bit of the Massively Multiplayer Online Game, Eve Online. Despite my hesitation with MMOs, this one seems promising enough to actually play, and from what I hear Eve does not require as much of my time as World of Warcraft took. Or at least, not at the frequency WoW had.

This Week
I shall be playing and finishing Fallout 3 (not including the downloadable content), Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess and Dead Rising. All of these games I am nearly finished with, and none of them are as hard as the games I played last week. You should actually see me beat some games for once!

Streaming in an Hour

2009-09-04T20:03:00.000-04:00

In an hour, at 9:00 P.M. EST, I will start streaming Everyday Shooter!

You can go to the stream at www.livestream.com/playlater to see the stream. Yeah, ads suck, I'll try to find a better stream site later, but until now, this is the best I've got.

See you there (well, that is if anyone actually reads this).

I Have a Life? WoW!

2009-09-04T20:00:00.000-04:00

Watch out everyone, this might be a long one. Thankfully, I will divide it up into sections. There's several points I need to make, so just skip to any that would interest you.

Yes, Aubrey is Also a Guy's Name. Yes, That Means I am a Male.

I'm a guy. A nerd who is a guy, what a surprise. This can be a problem, however, because Aubrey is more often than not a feminine name. I am here to tell you that it is not exclusive to the a single gender. Aubrey was a male-exclusive name and only became gender-neutral by the middle of the century. The name also happened to be the name of my grandfather. So please, don't go thinking I'm some hot, attractive lady-person who likes games. You would be kidding yourself. Although I do look good in a dress (don't ask).

Backloggery

So I decided to use a little tool called Backloggery to record all my (un)beaten games, thanks to a recommendation by Shoptroll at the Beyond Unreal Forums (BUF) (WARNING: Off Topic has offensive and probable Not Safe For Work content). Those are not all of my games, nor all my unfinished games, sadly enough. Well, that will have to wait. Just to note, not all of these games are going to be on my schedule, such as Batman: Arkham Asylum, I'll play them rather in my "off-time" (as if playing games on the official list isn't off-time already).

A Game I Used to Play, Now Not So Much

Here's one point of the blog I'm trying to get to, something that is indicated in the title. I suppose any readers I might have are aware of the time-vampire that is World of Warcraft. I regret to say that I was once very addicted to WoW, and once part of the "hardcore" scene. This game has sucked out half a year of my life in pure game-time alone (this is actually about half the time of most players at my level of involvement with the WoW). I had all of the good items; I participated in the hardest boss fights (well, not the hardest).

Now I barely touch the game. This is not because of some radical epiphany that made me rethink my life and suddenly drop the game. I still have a game subscription, and my level 80 warrior is sitting there, waiting for me to play. And I still hop on from day to day, but never enough to do anything significant with my time. You know what the reason really is? WoW got boring.

To get from one place to another in WoW, you have to fly. This can take over ten minutes. You can't do anything in the game except sit and wait for your character to arrive at his destination. To get money fast, you have to do what is known as farming, or grinding. You do the same monotonous task over and over again, sometimes day after day, to get the amount of coin or tokens you need to get where you want to be. These are a couple of many things that irk me about the game. The sum of all of this is a boring experience that fails to entertain by any normal game's standard.

There is fun stuff in WoW, but it's buried this morass of dull tasks. The good parts of the game was worth all the crap I had to put up with, but recently the servers that host the game have been having issues maintaining the fun areas of the game! Now that I can't enjoy the only good part of WoW, there's really little reason for me to constitently play the game. In five minutes I could either play an exhilarating match of Street Fighter IV, or wait for my character in WoW to move from one area to another. Which do you think I would rather do? Sorry to everyone who've I played with, but damn, WoW is just not fun anymore. Maybe some other time, when they add more to the game, or fix the bugs that keep me from playing it, will I enjoy myself again. For now, other games will more than suffice.

I'm a Little Behind
Despite an extensive amount of free time, my gaming time has been rather brief this week. I really shouldn't have an excuse. I'm ahead in my schoolwork, there's no WoW to occupy my time and no extracurricular activities occupy any large amount of time. So what's the deal? Is it friends again? Yeah, that's part of it. I hang out with my friends a lot; this distracts me from single-player games. Is it the difficulty of the games this week? That is part of it. Everyday Shooter and Megaman 9 are monsters. They chew me up and spit me out, mocking my pithy attempts at mastering their challenges.

Really, though, it's that I have set up a large amount of activities to do, and end up cycling between them all, or obsessing over something other than games. For example, I have recently been trying to design a video game of my own with several friends, and that has distracted me significantly from doing other fun activities. I also want to get better at guitar, become more fluent in Japanese, make my room look like something other than a junkyard, etc. The point is, I am setting myself up for failure because I am trying to do to many things at once. Until I sort out a reasonable schedule to fit all of the crap I need to do (which may not be much for some people but a lot for me); it is entirely possible that I'll be playing my games later rather than sooner.

Or it could be that Megaman 9 is inexcusably difficult. I mean really Capcom, what are you smoking?

Oh No You Didn't, It Just Got Real

I got a comment (well, more than one), that was more or less about the nerdiness of this blog. The question has been asked: if I have all this time to play games, why not spend my time doing better stuff--partying, drinking, and to quote, "getting drunk and having sex all the time?"

I guess this question deserves an answer.

As far as alcohol and parties, most of what people enjoy in college is not my cup of tea, or liquor in this case. I don't like drinking to get drunk. I enjoy a good draft, but the crap people ingest to get a buzz confounds me. Guzzling Busch Lite and stumbling around at keggers to wake up hungover and not remembering what happened the night before has yet to appeal to me.

Someone once told me that the only important things in life were "money and bitches." I find that outlook on life to be a really bleak one. There's so many great experiences and joys in the world that to filter all into cash and sex....sure I can see the lure, but, I feel fine living life the way I live it. I guess it's personal preference.

The other thing is, I'm not playing games all the time. It is a past-time, not the center of my being. It may not sound like it in the blog, but that's because this blog is about video-games, not everything I do in my life. I may talk about something outside of games once and a while, but that's not what this blog is about.

This is a simple blog about some nerd who wants to beat a lot of games in a short period of time. Nothing more, nothing less.

Update On Steam

2009-09-01T19:56:00.001-04:00

I was a little over-eager with the live-streaming. It probably won't be up until this weekend due to that mysterious thing I'll call "things other than this project." Oh well.

Now With Stream!

2009-08-31T23:24:00.001-04:00

http://www.livestream.com/playlater/

After talking with a friend I decided to setup an account on Livestream. You can now sometimes see me actually play the games I am trying to complete. Hours aren't set up yet for sure, but I would guestimate you would see me after 9 P.M. or so. See you there, imaginary readers!

I should also be getting a capture card soon enough to broadcast games on my consoles as well. We'll see how this works out....

Week 1: It Got Complex and the Night Was Short

2009-08-31T17:14:00.000-04:00

For the first week of game-playing...well I got side tracked.

Let me tell you something. Friends suck. Don't ever have friends. Especially if you have a large amount of multiplayer games (or just a few really entertaining ones), do not let it be known how awesome your gaming repertoire is. These things they call friends will come over into your abode, make you enjoy yourself, and leave you with the inability to do stupid things like play a massive amount of single-player games. Get rid of all your friends if you want to sit and play games all day.

You know what? School sucks too. You learn important skills for the real world and it takes away time to play games and do other unproductive activities. What a ripoff. Don't go to school.

Life sucks. Don't have one. It will get in the way of the important things, like videogames.

So let's get onto what I actually did play this week.

First off, Shadow Complex for Xbox Live Arcade. This game belongs to the Metroidvania genre, i.e. it's a game that is a lot like Super Metroid. More specifically, it is a two-dimensional, side-scrolling, kinda non-linear platforming action-adventure game where you explore various places and find upgrades that open up new places to explore.

Now, a good Metroidvania will seem to be very open-ended, but after going back to the game you find it to be more linear than it first seemed. Shadow Complex walks this thin blue line rather precariously. It does a good job of giving the player a feel that he can explore in all directions (except in the third dimension!), but one thing causes the game to feel really linear: the map screen. The map will display a blue line to the next objective, and you can straight up follow this objective throughout the entire game. Sure you will miss a bunch of side items (I only beat the game at 58% completion or something ridiculously low like that), but you will see a large part of the game nonetheless.

Not only is there this blue line, but the map gives a very extensive hint system on where secret items and pathways are. If you are in a room with a secret item, you'll see a question mark. If there's a secret path, you'll see the door on the map leading to it. Now it takes some thinking to figure out how to get these items a lot of the time, but obtaining every item I came across was made very easy thanks to the map.

This is nitpicking, however. Shadow Complex is still a fantastic game and a great purchase for only $15 dollars. Chair, make a sequel please. Until then, I will go back to this game and enjoy it as much as I can. Later. There are other games to play.

Let me compare Shadow Complex to another Metroidvania, one that helped title the genre, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Unlike Shadow Complex, there are no blue lines leading you to your next objective. There are no dots or question marks showing where the secret items are. This is a game from the days of yore where exploration was hardcore, and you could loop around a place for hours trying to figure out where to go next. In fact, that's exactly what I did this week, to a nearly frustrating degree. I had to end up looking on GameFAQs to see where I needed to go. But by the time I discovered my next destination, Sunday had passed by. That and I had been too busy with school and friends (see the rant at the beginning of this post).

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is one of the greatest games of all-time, and deserves your time and attention. I would heartily recommend playing this one to anybody who likes even playing videogames. I'll have to go back to this one as well, some day in the future.

Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode One did not get played this week. I have played a slice of it a while back, and it seemed like a funny and mostly entertaining role-playing game, but beyond that I cannot make a judgment on the title.

So that was my first week. If I could describe it in one word, that word would be "Fail." Nevertheless, I will still continue with my planned schedule. If I don't complete the listed games in a given week, I will place them down, play them later (maybe the title of this blog is less ironic than I thought it would be), and move on to the next set of games.

This week, it's Doom, Megaman 9 and Everyday Shooter. The latter two titles make up for their brevity with their EXTREME difficulty. Wish me luck.

It's a Little Complex

2009-08-27T17:43:00.000-04:00

So I managed to play some of Shadow Complex, but it seems my Xbox is custody of my friends and BlazBlue. Not to say that's a bad thing, BlazBlue is an excellent game (if not a little frustrating when one loses), but it's hard to play a game on a console being used by others. Should I kick friends out to play? Nah. Need to do work anyways.

As far as what little I played, I really do like Shadow Complex. My only gripes are that it's a bit too linear and that blue line diminishes the sense of exploration. More later.

Oh Hey, I Have Other Stuff to Do!

2009-08-26T11:50:00.000-04:00

I really shouldn't be posting this. I have a busy schedule and have to get work I actually get evaluated on finished. Nevertheless, it should be explained that if these games seem completable in a 14-15 week time period, there are some additional factors that could prohibit my project.

I am a college student. This means I have to do schoolwork. Though what I am taking right now is not necessarily challenging material, it nevertheless requires effort. In other words, I actually have to spend time on it.

Then there is the schoolwork I need done outside of my curriculum! I learned some Japanese several years ago, but now I am so rusty I couldn't tell you good day (okay, maybe I can say "koniichiwa"). I still need to take two more semesters of the language, so that is on my to-do list.

Next there is other hobbies. I read books. I have a sizeable amount of them to read (far less than my videogames thankfully). This takes time out of my day. I am picking up guitar as well, and want to do better than just strumming half a dozen chords and playing "Malaguena." I play table-top games as well; even more time is taken out my week.

And guess what else? As a person who enjoys videogames, I am also working with some friends to actually make a game. The scope of the project is massive, and somehow I have ended up as the leader and the guy to tell people what to do. We're still on the ground, and it looks like I need to fuel the group into action. They're students as well though, and they have just as much busywork as I do if not more.

So maybe I'm just a weakling for thinking all of this isn't doable as well as playing through a score of games, but there is a sizeable risk of not only leaving my games unfinished, but messing up schoolwork as well.

This project, however, is one of time management. I feel if I can accomplish the beating of these games, I will be able to grasp the slippery, temporal beast of prioritization and keep a firm lock on it. Through these games, I may open the gates of success.

Or fail miserably; we'll see.

Warning: Art Thoughts Ahead

2009-08-26T01:23:00.000-04:00

I think I am pretty far into Shadow Complex, though I have yet to find a FAQ that reveals the length of the game to a point where I can properly place my position.

That is not what this post is about; I am going to warn you of a terrible side of me. I, despite being an videogame aficionado, like art. Even worse, I like to see videogames that are art. You have been warned.

Of course, art is such a vague term I could just about apply it to any object in my room. Art is one of those semantic chameleons (thank you Chris Crawford for such a wonderful term). But what I am wanting is a game that can be considered "high-brow." Why would I want such a horrible thing is anyone's guess. Who knows? Maybe art is actually a good thing every now an then.

Thankfully, I will probably leave this art talk out of most posts, with the strong exception of Killer7.

Lastly, just because I like art (in games) doesn't meant I enjoy a good piece of entertainment as well. If I only could stand the highest of the high-brow, I probably would not be playing games at all, least of all doing this project.

Time Schedule for Massive Game Playing

2009-08-25T18:32:00.000-04:00

Here is the layout for what games I am going to play on what week. Too much? Too little? You decide!

August 25-30
Shadow Complex
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness Episode One
August 31-September 6
Doom
Megaman 9
Everyday Shooter
September 7-13
Dead Rising
Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess
Fallout 3 (excluding expansions)
September 14-20
Beyond Good and Evil
Madworld
Cave Story
September 21-27
Mirror's Edge
Killer7
September 28-October 4
Mass Effect
Sonic Unleashed
October 5-11
Half Life series
October 12-18
Odin Sphere
Deus Ex
October 19-25
Little Big Planet
Fallout 3: The Pitt, Broken Steel, Point Lookout, Mothership Zeta
October 26-November 1
Fallout
November 2-8
Fallout 2
November 9-15
Baldur's Gate and Tales of the Sword Coast
November 16-22
Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn and Throne of Bhaal
November 23-29
Planescape: Torment
November 30-December 6
Persona 4

Mission Statement

2009-08-25T18:18:00.000-04:00

My name is Aubrey, and I am a notorious procrastinator. Even my passion, videogames, is left to gather dust when I just keep putting the next game off. "I will play it later," I will say to myself.

This year is going to be different. I have decided to do a little project. I will complete a series of singleplayer games and blog about my experiences with each title. The amount of videogames given in the time that I have to complete them all makes my task daunting, and perhaps impossible. Who knows how things will turn out? Maybe I'll put this blog off for later, never playing a game through its entirety. Maybe I will finish early, and suddenly find myself free from the shackles of unfinished games.

If I do not procrastinate and keep writing this blog, I will tell you, reader, about my experiences, be they successful or dismal.