Planet Sillicon

An unusual situation

By blog on Jun. 24, 2009.

For the last week or so I have been playing The Legendary Starfy. I’m in the sixth world in the game, where I am currently swimming around on rainbows and turning into a Rooster – named Roostar… because Starfy… is a star… oh goodness – who can cluck so loud it effects aspects of the game.

It is all rather rather odd. The thing is, I still don’t know if I like the game. After playing somewhere around ten hours, I don’t know if I like the game. But I keep playing… but it’s kind of irritating… Isn’t that odd!? I certainly think it’s odd. I have never before encountered that in a game. Usually I know pretty much instantly if I am going to like a game, even if I haven’t got the hang of it yet. Or I can play for five minutes and know I don’t really care for the game, and probably won’t pick it up again.

But that’s not the case with this game. When I have free time but am not close to my computer – because if I were close to my computer I would be playing Heroes of Might and Magic 3 – I think to myself, I’ll play some Starfy. But as I am playing it I know I am wearing a slightly bemused expression, an expression that says ‘I don’t know if I like this’, that same expression that people wear when they walk into modern art galleries and stand before a llama shaped topiary – Sims fans will recognise that little gem.

I said to my SO yesterday that I think I will have finished the game before I figure out if I really like it, to which she said that means I don’t like the game. But I am not sure, I sort of do… I just feel that it… is a game I’ve played before packaged in a new pretty wrapper… But it does have it’s own thing going on too… so yeah, still undecided.

I am now the lazy gamer

By blog on Jun. 17, 2009.

I first noticed Knights in the Nightmare when I was puddling around looking at the Editor’s Choice list over on IGN.com. It looked interesting, I don’t mind a turn-based RPG, so I read on. After a few minutes, I figured the game looked alright, but I had to scoot off to do something so I just closed it down and forgot about it.

Now when I was on Penny Arcade earlier, I happened to notice Tycho had written about this very same game. What he said confirmed what I had suspected in those few minutes of looking at the review. Here is what he said.

…I am trying to fashion my mind into something capable of perceiving Knights in the Nightmare. Another psychotic import with an incredible translation from Atlus, the shit that goes on in this game will overwhelm your frontal lobe, leaving you in a state which is neither dead nor alive. Imagine that a man is juggling while standing on a pile of conscious, scowling heads. Only he’s not juggling balls, he’s juggling concepts, like poverty and flavor. As you watch him, you are shaken by the unprovable yet unnerving sensation that there is, somewhere, a secret third hand, juggling a perverse cadre of unballs.

You know what this says to me? This says to me, ‘don’t bother’. Why? Because I am too lazy for the kind of mental obstacle course that this game appears to be. Oh don’t get me wrong, it sounds like a great game, but if I wanted to bust my brain to the point of not having any fun, I’d do my taxes.

And so it is with games for me at the moment. If it is an overly complex game where I have to learn a lot about the game mechanics to get anywhere… chances are I will just opt out and choose to play something a little less in depth and play Starfy. ) I know, I know, I am missing out on the games with the great story-lines when I do that! I will get out of my lazy gaming funk, I know I will, that’s why I don’t push it now.

A Star on the Rise

By blog on Jun. 13, 2009.

In my last post I wrote of my mounting frustration, nay, mounting fury, at gamers being given less in gaming, in terms of content and value, for the past little while. Well, as a result of that, I attempted to go out and find two games that were unique, high quality, and held an intrinsic high value, which could be based on numerous different aspects. The two that stood out were a brand new one, and one that’s a little older but I never got around to playing.

I will start with the slightly older one, Drawn to Life. Whilst this game didn’t get the greatest score, you will notice on IGN that the average reader rating is a little higher than the press rating. I believe this is because this game will have had slight appeal for some, and great appeal for others. I am somewhere in the middle, but my SO for instance, really enjoys that aspect which I think was the draw-back for many a reviewer, the creation aspect. She played Animal Crossing primarily to make little outfits for her sprite. I picked it up today because of two reasons, one, IGN listed Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter as runner up best platformer at E3, and two, seeing as it has been out a while now, it was quite cheap, so I thought why not? I have only had time to load it up and play a few minutes, so far I have drawn a planet and a forest. Even as someone who is more interested in the platforming, world overview game-play aspects, I still find this fun. I can just imagine the fun someone like my SO is going to have with it.

The other game I picked up today is brand spanking new. The Legend of Starfy, which scored quite well and made the Editor’s Choice list over on IGN. Stafy is a very cute, very ‘Japanese’ little platformer, and Mr Starfy himself is set to become Nintendo’s next big mascot. Platformers aren’t actually my first, or even second probably, choice for games. Sure I like them, but I am more of an RPG fan. But every so often, you can’t beat picking up a game and just pelting through a few levels. Of course, the really, really good platformers are right up there with my all time favorite games, Super Mario World is up on that list, and it pretty much defines the platformer genre. I have only had a chance to load this one up for a couple of minutes, and what I saw was very bright and fun looking. I think children will go absolutely crazy for this game. I am interested to see how it goes, as I know Nintendo’s pulled out some amazing games in their time, and if they think this little star fish could be a new major mascot, then I bet their is some merit to this game.

Leave pipe dreams to Mario

By blog on Jun. 12, 2009.

In my web wanderings, I will on occasion revisit web comics that I haven’t seen in a long time. I took a gander at VG cats, earlier today, and this comic actually hit home. It got me thinking.

Is it too much to ask for games to continue to be innovative? Is it too much to ask that when a sequel is made, it isn’t just a rehash of the same old? Is it too much to ask for complete games, not bits and pieces here and there. Is it too much to ask for good value? Is it too much to ask that, even with games that are an obvious homage to another, that it isn’t different in it’s own special way? No! It isn’t too much to ask! Gamers need to cry out their dissatisfaction with being given the same game five times over in a year with just a slight graphic style difference and a new name. I mean, why does the DS have four – probably more, actually – different games that are practically all just Bejeweled? They are even still making new ones! Squishy Tank may have an awesome name, but it is yet another iteration of the same idea… I hope they put their own spin on it to make it great. As with Henry Hatsworth, they included the visual matching puzzle element, but along side a rather difficult at times platformer… See, innovation!

The Sims 3 is another one that has sorely disappointed, and why? Because a big greedy company by the name of EA got their big greedy mitts all over it and instead of bringing us a real sequel, they brought us what feels disturbingly like a personality based expansion pack, except now you have less than a tenth of the content you had for Sims 2, and they expect you to sink more money into it just to get what you should have gotten with the initial release!!! By the way, I hate you EA.

Occasionally you come across games that make you breath a sigh of relief. Ahh, my beloved gaming hasn’t been entirely usurped by companies just out for money. Ahh, there are still wonderful, compelling, unique games being brought to us.

LOTRO down-time

By blog on May. 29, 2009.

I don’t feel like having any LOTRO down-time right now, but I don’t have a choice. You see, servers are down for maintenance today, so I have to wait. I have to be patient. I have to find something else to do in my regular gaming time because the servers need to be rebooted. But… I don’t want to wait, and to tell the truth, I feel like being petty about it.

I know the servers needed to go down for a while, everything needs a break, an oil change, a fresh coat of paint, I do understand that. But whilst on some days I am perfectly mature and understanding about that, there are other days like today where two hours where I had scheduled to play and now I cannot play is more than a small bother, it is irritating, frustrating, and downright inconvenient. And we all know that I should never be inconvenienced, right?

Okay I think I have gotten my baby rant out of my system now. I knew that the servers needed a good reboot because, really, there are some ongoing issues at the moment that I heartily look forward to being resolved. For one, earlier today I am running around, doing my own thing, when I can’t move. I can look around and see others moving, but I am stuck. My SO tells me from her computer room that she too is stuck, and then she tries logging out and back in whilst I wait in-game. I then see a message in my chat box that I had lost connection to the chat server, I waited longer whilst my SO was unsuccessfully trying to log back in and eventually saw the message that the connection had been re-established. It’s hard to know with any certainty if that was LOTRO or my ISP crapping itself, as the latter is a substantial option.

The other issue that is positively irksome is mobs – that’s a gamer word for the AI controlled foes you kill – becoming confused when you are attacking them. This is shown by a stylized question mark symbol above the enemy’s head. You can’t hurt the enemy when they are like this, and they can’t hurt you. This leads you to get close to the creature in order to break the confusion, and they still don’t come out of it. So you start running off to do whatever it was you were doing in the first place, but oh no, now that Warg isn’t confused, and now he’s wailing on you! It is funny, if annoying, and I hope it was fixed. Now I’m going to go play LOTRO.

When one game takes over

By blog on Apr. 29, 2009.

Sometimes you start playing a game, or even return to a game, and then once you have started that game, it takes over all your gaming time.

I installed Sim City 4 on my PC a couple of days ago, and now I haven’t been playing anything else! I have to admit, I missed the game when it originally came out, so this is my first play though, and I am having a lot of fun.

It looks a little odd, this little box on my HD monitor, but what the hey, good games are timeless! I am still getting the hang of it, trying not to bankrupt my city, trying to bring in enough of a population that I can actually make some headway, and generally having a good old time. It’s always fun when you don’t really know what you are doing with a game, and yes there is a good tutorial, but I can’t really be bothered going the whole way through it… I am just like that.

Other games have done this to me too; Rune Factory 2: A fantasy Harvest Moon on the DS for instance. Since I started playing that, I haven’t made any progress whatsoever on Hatsworth or Ninjatown, and these are all very enjoyable games. I think it is the building type games that do this to us; The Sims and Civilization are prime examples of this type of game and what it does.

Any game that brings out the ‘one more turn’ or ‘just a little bit longer’ mentality seems to bring a screeching halt to the playing of any other game. They suck you in, make you think only of getting just a little further in, and before you know it, it’s 2:00am and you realise you haven’t moved in three hours. I actually know of an incident when my SO was younger and still living at home. She went off to bed one night, whilst her mother sat playing the original Sim City on the SNES. When my SO got up the next morning, her mother was in the same place… still playing the game…

That’s obviously going too far, but you see what these games do!? You see!? Bah, I am off to play more Sim City 4… I am working to get my city population over 2,000.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. made my eyes bleed

By blog on Apr. 23, 2009.

As I mentioned earlier, I bought Far Cry 2. I was really in the mood for an FPS (First Person Shooter)and I knew my system was up to this game. Whilst the game installed I flipped through the game manual and looked at the map. I love games with maps, I got the collector’s edition of Mines of Moria in part because of the cloth map, which still lives in my desk drawer.

So. Game is installed! I eagerly clicked on the desktop short cut… blackscreen! Desktop! Flicker, flicker, flicker… |-| I rebooted and tried again, and every time I get a different issue, but so far I have never been able to get into the game to a point where I can actually play… :## I can watch two of the first three load screens, and then occasionally a little bit of the intro, and that’s it. I can’t effing believe it. >:XX

So after trying for a few days to fix it, I was so angry I didn’t care about it. I remembered another game that I had wanted to play, but when it was released it was so buggy I couldn’t play it. Well I downloaded it from Steam again, and now I have been playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl for the past few days.

It has satisfied my desire for a good shooter, and something a little free-range in game play. Heh, I think I just coined a new gaming term. )I have been wandering the wasteland of this game for the past few days and I have to say, it plays well. It rewards good skill in the player, and has a pretty eerie feel overall.

I have one issue. Visual effects… At first, the head-bobbing was so bad I felt nauseous after barely a minute. So I promptly downloaded the Oblivion Lost mod and viola! No head-bobbing! But, there is still certain visual issues. If your character requires sleep, the visuals get very fuzzy and sickening, but the main issue I have is with a certain type of foe. It uses a psionic attack which grabs the visuals from a distance, draws the screen very quickly down to focus on the monster, and then flings it back as if your character has just been grabbed by the collar, moved to be an inch away from the monster’s face, and then flung back one hundred meters to invariably hit a wall. Can you imagine what this looks like on my screen? And when this isn’t happening, the mere presence of this creature in the area makes the visuals so hazy as to somewhat like you’ve just downed ten pints in ten minutes.

Apart from all that, I am having fun with the game. )

The lure of beautiful games

By blog on Apr. 22, 2009.

I have been trying, and failing, to play Far Cry 2 which I bought the other day, but that is another post, today’s is about a couple of great games that I stumbled upon rather accidentally.

After looking at the beautiful screenshots and great review, I decided to get Braid. There is something so magical about a beautiful game with haunting music, and the water-coloured backgrounds of Braid are certainly beautiful. So refreshing when there are so many games with jarring backing tracks and visuals that, whilst realistic, are overly harsh.

First impressions of the game… It is very, very fun. In the early stages especially. The gameplay is refreshing because it combines both classic 2-D platforming, but with game mechanics that are new and invigorating. The fact that you have no lives, per say, but instead a function to reverse time… it is really very fun and unique.

With each new world that you unlock, there are six in all, you are introduced to a new game mechanic. In world two, you find objects that are green and sparkly, which means they are resistant to you reversing time. There are objects in later worlds that can be affected by your doppelganger, which appears as you reverse time.

I thoroughly enjoy the puzzle solving nature of this game, they are difficult without being too difficult… in most cases. And as for the game being so short, I am finding it worth the money I spent on it. I am also really enjoying the story line, it is intriguing, original, and refreshingly adult!

Another game that I recently stumbled upon and have thoroughly enjoyed is a independent game by the name of Crayon Physics Deluxe. This is a very fun, if a little short lived, game where you use a crayon to draw ways to get a little red ball to a little yellow star, using physics. The music is very nice and soothing, like with Braid, and I sometimes play just to hear the nice backing tracks.

It is a nice thing, in the gaming world, to stumble onto games that are fun, unique, don’t glitch constantly, and don’t cost an arm and a leg!

Taking the next step in gaming

By blog on Apr. 18, 2009.

As a follow on from my previous article, where I state that games are now a medium of entertainment for adults as well as children, I would like to look into the evolutionary steps gaming can take in the future.

Gaming has grown up. No longer are we faced with the same Good versus Evil dichotomy that Super Mario Bros brought us in the ’80s, no, games have grown from there. Today’s games give us gritty characters with morally ambiguous choices. We can play as the paladin like bastion of goodness, the everyday person who is by and large neutral, or the dark self-serving villain, we now have the choice. Games are accommodating more and more complex characters and narratives, and gamers are thrilled with this new era of realism.

There are those, such as Roger Ebert, who believe gaming will never be an art form, that it’s very nature precludes it from gaining the title of art, but many other respected authors, artists, game developers, and game players, disagree with great vehemence. Gaming is becoming widely accepted as an art form, with exhibitions of concept art now taking place, and serious academic work being put into defining why some video games should be considered art.

Whilst the stigma of games being for children lives on, gaming as an art form can’t really get into the air and soar. If game developers are held back from certain content, that is already acceptable in literature and film, then how can this medium compete on a level playing ground? We have read about the darker side of the human nature for the past few centuries, look at Matthew Gregory Lewis’s The Monk as but one such example. And yet, could you imagine the outcry should anyone try to include Lewis’s often grotesque actions of Ambrosio in a game? Well a game in this day and age, Custer’s Revenge will always baffle me as to how that got through.

I find the denouncement of adult content in games often reminds me of that Simpsons episode where the statue of David comes to Springfield museum and the censor group that Marge started because of cartoon violence goes mad with trying to ban the statue for being ‘indecent’.

Film, comics, and animation are among the most recent additions to the world of fine art, and it occurs to me that all of these mediums had to fight for their place in the fine art pantheon, gaming is the newest, but we can be sure it won’t be the last.

Games – For kids?

By blog on Apr. 18, 2009.

As a gamer, it is entirely frustrating to be told that ‘games are for kids’ or that you are somehow immature if you enjoy playing video games. Researchers here are a bit slow on the uptake in regards to this particular topic, the BBFC Video Games Report has a line in its findings that states ‘Professionals believe that the number of adult gamers is growing.’

The average age of gamers in the UK is now over 23, in the US it is now 33, and in Australia it is 28 with 8% being over 60! How the heck does that suggest that games are for kids? Kids games are for kids, adult games are for adults, it is really that simple.

And yet, there are still issues about what may or may not be depicted in a game. There are horrid, tasteless, highly violent films like Saw and Hostel which get classification and are deemed okay for a specific audience, but people go nuts over games like GTA Liberty City that offer people a free world to roam around in, but also have violent game missions.

Why is it that people still hold onto archaic notions that violence in games causes children to act out violently? Studies have been conducted into this issue, and found it to be completely false. Is society in general just that slow? I actually heard a doctor on the radio saying that new studies show that gaming is good for children because it increases their eye-contrast sensitivity and builds up neural pathways that haven’t previously been strengthened!

So come on people, lets stop blaming terrible acts on games, stop treating games as if they are a silly waste of time, stop treating gamers like they are immature, and start to recognise that most of us are gamers now, and we needn’t be ashamed of that fact! Video games have been around since the early ’70s, they aren’t going away, and the medium is just becoming more and more advanced and open to amazing and wonderful games.