So I played Watch Dogs this week. Fun game. Doesn’t live up to the hype of the original E3 demo, but nothing could. Still, as far as open world games go I like it better than average and it does feel somewhat unique.
There were a host of little things that bothered me about my experience, however. And since nitpicking is so much more fun than vaguely praising something, I’ll be doing a bit of that to start.
The story is probably the main thing that doesn’t quite work. That’s because, as with so many games, the gameplay and the story are at odds. Some high-minded people refer to this as ludonarrative dissonance. Not me, of course. I’m never pretentious.
I just finished the latest Legend of Zelda game: A Link Between Worlds. When I first heard that there was going to be a sequel to 1992’s A Link to the Past which is widely regarded as one of the very best Zelda games, my inner cynic took note. I thought it was a really desperate move by Nintendo. They’ve been struggling to get the “hardcore gamer” audience back after neglecting and maybe even alienating them for basically the entire lifecycle of the Wii. What better way than to make a sequel to a 21 year old game, right?
I hadn’t bought a Nintendo game in many years. After hearing all the accolades for this game, A Link Between Worlds became my first purchase for the 3DS.
And it is good. It’s really good. I mean, it’s a Zelda game and most of them are pretty great.
A new year is upon us and that means it’s time to hand out meaningless accolades to various media properties because making lists is fun!
I am quite intentionally calling these “favorite” lists rather than “best of” lists because there’s a lot of games, movies, and music I didn’t experience in 2013 which no doubt deserve attention and praise, but I can’t consume everything in a year. With that in mind, I am limiting my lists to a Top 3 with possible honorable and dishonorable mentions.
In the last year, Telltale Games has become one of my favorite game developers. They have, in my mind, supplanted BioWare as the foremost developer of mainstream, story-driven games.
For the uninitiated: Telltale makes episodic adventure games based on existing franchises. They’re shorter chunks of content that come out over a period of time rather than all at once. Usually a single episode about 2 hours long with 5 episodes in a season. They’re heavy on story, dialog, and simple puzzles. They aren’t “difficult” per se. It’s more about experiencing the story and characters rather than developing gameplay skills. It’s kind of like an interactive TV show or a choose-your-own adventure book, but less dumb than that sounds.
The company had limited success until recently. They made a lot of licensed games that were either based on obscure properties (like Homestar Runner or Sam & Max) or more well-known franchises like Back to the Future or Jurassic Park. The obscure ones didn’t sell as well because of their obscurity and the big name franchise games weren’t well received.
The first Telltale Game I played was Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People which, as a big Homestar Runner fan, I thoroughly enjoyed.
I will always love Telltale for finally giving us Dangeresque 3
Last year, Telltale had their breakthrough success: a series based on The Walking Dead. Many, including myself, consider it their 2012 Game of the Year.
Walking Dead changed things up a little bit. Over the course of the five episodes, puzzles were pretty much abandoned altogether. The main game mechanic became making choices. Who do you save? Who do you share your limited supply of food with? Who’s side do you take in an ugly dispute within your group of survivors? It might sound strange, but this works surprisingly well. It’s far more engaging than yet another zombie shooter would have been (…and was). In fact, it ranks as one of my favorite games ever.
I played the entire saga at once. I was completely enthralled the whole way through. The Walking Dead is perhaps the most gut-wrenching piece of media I’ve ever experienced, but the story blew me away and left me in tears. I love it.
Believe it or not some of the best moments of the game look like this
But I’m a little worried about Telltale now. Was Walking Dead just an anomaly or have they really figured out the magical mix of gameplay and game writing technique? We shall see. Season 2 premieres next week. I’m desperately curious how they’re going to pull off what they’re attempting.
Recently, Telltale announced it will be doing two new series in the coming year: a series based on Borderlands and one based on Game of Thrones. With season 2 of the Walking Dead and the currently-running series The Wolf Among Us, it’s entirely possible that Telltale will have four concurrent game series come 2014. For a company that made only one game last year that’s quite a big leap in output.
This is what really has me concerned. Is Telltale biting off more than it can chew? They’ve hired a lot of new employees in the last couple of years. Rapid expansion is risky in any business but in a creative industry it can be especially problematic. They’re not building a bunch of new coffee shops or burger joints. They’re building story-driven franchise. They’re hiring people to make creative decisions and make things no one has ever made before.
Good creative products always require talent – not just money and manpower. That isn’t something you can just buy. You can hire people you believe to be talented, but it’s always a bit of a gamble. Quick growth means you have a lot of new blood that might not understand the culture and ethos of the your company and the products you’re trying to build.
Point is: I like the Telltale that gave us Season 1 of The Walking Dead and I hope their success and growth as a company doesn’t translate into a reduction in quality. I have no reason to think that yet. The Wolf Among Us is supposed to be great. I’ll be giving it shot soon.
As for the new games announced, Game of Thrones makes all the sense in the world. I don’t have any first-hand experience with the franchise myself. Never read it; never watched it, but from all I’ve heard it sounds like a great candidate for a Telltale-style adventure game. Making difficult choices and dealing with fascinating characters in life-and-death situations worked well in the Walking Dead’s universe. I’m sure it’ll work great in Westeros.
I am curious what story they’ll tell. By necessity it almost has to be some kind of side story. Obviously you can’t retread the events of the books because that will limit player choice and spoil the mystery of what’s going to happen.
With Walking Dead, there are as many stories as you care to tell: just make up a group of survivors. Maybe it’s the same way in Game of Thrones? I guess it could be similar. Sounds like more characters get killed off than in Walking Dead.
Tales from the Borderlands was the announcement that really surprised me. I guess in one way it makes a lot of sense: it really fits Telltale’s established art style. But when I think of Borderlands story is waaaaay down on the list of reasons to play it. It might not even make the list.
Borderlands 2 executed its story about 1000 times better than the first game, but that was kind of irrelevant. As long as the game had a billion guns and some wacky dialog we would have played it.
I just wouldn’t have thought of this as a franchise ripe for storytelling. I’m sure it’s possible to make something enjoyable out of it. The tricky part will be getting players to care about the world and the characters. They’ve all been pretty disposable up to now. Amusing distractions in between shooting stuff, but that’s it. My guess is they’ll go for comedy over drama. That’s probably good route to take because all of their other licenses are likely to play out as tragedies. Not everything has to be as emotionally gripping and meaningful as season 1 of The Walking Dead. According to the trailer, a lot of people are still going to die in this one, but at least Handsome Jack’s laughing it off.
And now for something a little different! I got into the closed SimCity Beta toward the end of last month and I told myself I was going to make a video review of it. So I did. Behold!
I’d like to do more of this kind of thing. Not just for games (although it’s easier to get game footage than some other things) but for many topics. Plus I want to get back into creative productions. Unfortunately most of the creative ideas I’ve had in the last year do not fit well with my set of talents and skills.
Go figure.
I either need to acquire new skills and fake the talent or fake/force/steal ideas for the medium in which I supposedly work. Stuff like this is pretty simple to do so it’s probably a good place to start.
Far Cry 3 is a disappointment. It is not the game it could have been or should have been nor does it deserve the perfect and near-perfect scores it has gotten from mainstream game review sites.
Let’s talk a little franchise history. I bought Far Cry 2 back in 2008 under the false pretense that it was made by the same folks as Crysis which I had an absolute blast playing. It wasn’t.
The Far Cry series was begun in 2004 by Crytek but Far Cry 2 was an Ubisoft product. Apparently the Crysis series was enough for Crytek so they sold the IP. Consequently I was initially very disappointed with Far Cry 2. It didn’t feature anything like the highly empowering Nanosuit of Crysis. It wasn’t even very much like the original Far Cry. In fact, none of the Far Cry games relate to each other at all. They don’t even seem to be set in the same fictional universe.
Over time, Far Cry 2 grew on me despite some glaring annoyances with the game design like the infamous respawning enemy outposts, guns that would jam on you at exactly the worst moment possible, the very limited fast-travel system, and the bland, repetitive mission design. Far Cry 2 was trying to be something that no other shooter was. Its themes were ambitious. Its immersive design was laudable but problematic. But I kind of like the game. I even surprised myself by playing it twice through.
Far Cry 2 was good and different enough to get me interested in the potential of a sequel. My excitement for Far Cry 3 grew when I heard director Dan Hay talk about the themes and story arc this game would tackle. Even better: they understood many of the complaints about the previous game and were taking steps to rectify them! This was going to be awesome: a beautiful open-world shooter with a dark storyline about the protagonist’s descent into insanity.
I wish they’d made that game. They got halfway there. Some of it works. Far Cry 3 is a good game, but like its predecessor, its design and storytelling flaws keep it from being a very good or great game. And it could have been.
At first I assumed it was one of the many articles posted by a Christian friend. It’s been a fairly popular sentiment among some in the Christian community that males in our culture have trouble maturing into men – a lot more trouble than girls do becoming women.
The usual take by Christian commentators asserts that many men do not grow up after high school and college. They stagnate in boyhood. They aren’t driven toward marriage, a career, or ministry. In a word, they are aimless.
I pretty much agree with that sentiment. Our youth-idolizing culture has the tendency to promote behaviors and mentalities which are counterproductive to maturity. Unfortunately, I am a victim, collaborator, and perpetrator of this trend to some degree.
To my surprise, the article in question was actually not from a friend, but rather a show on gaming culture and design philosophy that I’d liked on Facebook. Huh. That’s kind of the last place I expected to see something like that. This article is a secular take on the problem of eternal boyhood which intrigued me so I read it.
I wouldn’t call it a good article, but it is pretty interesting if only because it’s (for me) from an unexpected source. It’s centered on bad behavior the author has witnessed in online gaming.
Communication in online gaming and particularly the Xbox Live service has a reputation for filthy and immature users. The stereotype is that these services are filled with thirteen year old boys whose favorite insult is “gay” and don’t tolerate losing, girl gamers, or anything that doesn’t fit their shallow, limited view of masculinity. And they say horrible things about your mom a lot, apparently.
This is a problem with more than just kids on Xbox Live
I don’t know how accurate that is. I tend to play single player or PC games online and the culture is quite different there so I’ll take this guy’s word for it.
While I’m glad to see this is being addressed in some manner, I do have concerns with how it is addressed in the article. He kind of undermines his own point in a couple of ways.
For one, he asserts that men have it better than women. As a rule, he asserts, men have more political and social power than women have had and currently have. I’m sure he’s right in many ways, but in making this point he calls the occupations of teaching and nursing – professions where women outnumber men – “dirty and underpaid.” I donno. Maybe he’s right about that too, but that could easily be construed as a insult toward people of those professions. I know a lot of nurses and nursing students and max respect to them. That’s a hard major!
More disturbing than that, however, is the author’s forceful tone. He stops just short of inciting violence and slander against people who he accuses of violence and slander. Fighting fire with fire doesn’t seem right or smart particularly when many of the perpetrators probably aren’t bad kids. They just lack good examples.
There’s lots of interesting starting points in this article for additional discussions: topics like online anonymity, dealing with bullies, and, of course, male maturity. Those all deserve their own posts or series of posts at some point in the future. For the moment this is some fuel for thought.
I’m late to the party on this one. No, I haven’t started playing Minecraft nor will I. The game, if you can call it that, seems like a gigantic time suck. It’s the sort of thing I could get into if I had unlimited time on this earth and didn’t feel guilty about such things.
I found this video while poking around Shamus Young’s website. Shamus is a interesting commentator on gaming, game design, programming, and nerdy stuff like that. His community has their own Minecraft server which is featured in this quite impressive video.
Minecraft, for the uninitiated, is a strange open world game focused on building. The graphics are kept very basic. It looks like it could have come out in the early days of 3D gaming.
See what I mean?
The focus is obviously not photorealism. Rather, the focus is on the core gameplay mechanics. This simple graphical style allows for vast procedurally (automatically) generated worlds to be created which means there’s a vast amount of space for players to build in. There are two main modes: a free build mode focused on creative building and a survival mode featuring enemies, health, and resources more like a traditional game.
The server featured in the video, I believe, is running in the free build mode. And the creations of the players are absolutely stunning. Watching the video (and I watched all 11 minutes which is rare as I tend to get bored of these sorts of videos) I was impressed in the same way I get impressed by large, intricate Lego creations. Man, I love Legos… I could go play with them right now…
Woah. No. Back on subject. The minifigs will have to wait. Like until I have a kid or something.
Here are the points I wanted to make in all this. First, building stuff is awesome. I love it. Legos. K’nex. SimCity. RollerCoaster Tycoon. Minecraft. There are tons of awesome building toys out there and they’re wonderful outlets for creativity and expression. Again, I refer you to the video above. Video games are not all about shooting zombies. Okay, survival mode does feature zombies, but… hey! Look at this picture of Lego Chicago!
Second point: “primitive” graphics are not only perfectly acceptable, they can actually be a benefit. More basic graphics emphasize the player’s imagination. They also allow for system resources to be allocated to generating that huge world map and allowing for vast construction projects which would be impossible in, say, CryEngine 3 or the latest Unreal Engine unless you’ve got one monsterous computer.
I’m not saying anything new here. There have been lots of people arguing this for years. Gaming has, in many ways, lost some of the soul and imagination it used to possess. Partially that’s because the people who say this have gotten older and lost some of the wonder with which children look at the world. Part of this is the natural maturation of the gaming industry. But a lot of it is the relentless pursuit of presentation and the neglect of substance because that’s apparently what sells. Sad, really.
Watching that Minecraft video brought back memories of exploring more primitive, but more imaginative gaming worlds. It also reminded me of my days messing around with RPG Maker 2000 trying to create a game of my own and never really finishing but having a lot of fun in the process anyway.
RPG Maker 2000 – an awesome tool from back in the day for making basic games without knowing any real programming
I don’t want to be unfair. I love me some pretty graphics. But I love this too. We could use more of this kind of thing in gaming. More of this kind of thing in general. People wouldn’t complain about kids playing video games so much if more games inspired this kind of creative interaction. Games need to be about more than “shoot dude, repeat, repeat, repeat.”
While watching I got to wondering if someone could or would make a Bethesda-style open world adventure/RPG game with the Minecraft engine. I would love to explore worlds like that provided there was a story attached. At some point in the future the developer has said he will open-source the engine. Perhaps then?
Anyhow. Now I get the big deal about Minecraft. It’s quite a cool thing. I myself won’t be playing it although I wish I had the time for it or something like it.
In the last year, Telltale Games has become one of my favorite game developers. They have, in my mind, supplanted BioWare as the foremost developer of mainstream, story-driven games.
mattgoldammer.com 