Interview with Luis Hernandez - Jazzpunk

Interview with Davey Wreden - Stanley Parable

Interview with Lucas Pope - Papers, Please

Interview with Matt Thorson - Towerfall Ascension

Interview with Loan Verneau - Paralect

Interview with Jason Roberts - Gorogoa

Interview with Deirdra Kiai - Dominic Pamplemousse in "It's All Over Once The Fat Lady Sings"

Couch Break Ep. 2

Couch Break Episode 1: Don't Make Leit of My Motifs

I made a radio show (ITS A RADIO SHOW NOT A PODCAST SHUT UP). You may download it for free on Soundcloud 

Enjoy.

Collecting Communities

Well, it seems the companies are following their preened and fatted auteurs to the great trough of Crowdfunding. Not that it's necessarily a bad thing (don't take it personally auteurs, I would hitch myself to that wagon for guaranteed food forever too), and the recent success stories certainly demonstrate the merits of such a funding source. Square, franchise breeder and recent seriously-thats-a-lot-of-money NOT maker is attempting to leverage that collection of franchise genealogy to outsource the actual game making. So. It's a Collective because COMMUNITY. And there seems to be a list of franchises people can choose from, pitch games based on it, people vote, Square nods sagely, and the team in question gets to carry their license in a great parade over to
IndieGoGo and fund the damn thing themselves because they are adults and don't need no mollycoddling.

“So children, can you tell me what this is?”

“Is it a way for game companies to both have ownership of a franchise and make money off of it and also not have to fund the games that drive it?”

“And how would we say that with a well known colloquialism?”

“Ummmmm.... Have their cake and eat it?”

“Gold Star Suzie! You get to eat lunch today.”

Two things currently absent from their website are the franchises in question and how Square would actually make money on it. I'm sure they will have a list smaller than preferred without some franchises people really want to see (I think it's pretty much just old Eidos properties), but that's life with corporations. The further line blurring between the body and personality of franchises is the interesting part of this. To me, anyway. I mean, sure, you can pitch something to the collective that ISN'T part of a franchise and just get Square's help planning the thing, but who cares about Rent-a-Management? The fact that they are allowing people to pitch from the crowd instead of just funding from it (Crowdpitching?) is indicative of the fanward motion of franchises these days.

When I say “Fanward” motion I am referring to the decision-making process becoming more and more fan centric. If the kinds of games that a franchise produces are being chosen by the fans of the franchise, then we must conclude that Square is literally attempting to bring the term Fanwankery one step closer to sickening life. However, it could be a good thing. Too many franchises go the way of the dodo from the inability to understand the appeal, or from understanding the appeal and not being able to do anything new with it. It sucks, and it's hard, and MAN fans can be a goddamn nightmare to deal with. No wonder they want to just throw the responsibility of actually making the things to some hapless goons who would cut their toes off to make their perfect (INSERT FRANCHISE) game. And to be honest, even with my reservations, it's probably a really good idea. Once they detail how they will be involved, in any case. They could just be publishers without actually risking their money, which would suck. Or not, if the removal of financial risk means that they are willing to give the creators enough slack to make the damn game interesting. Could be a lot of things. For now, we wait, hungry, hungry for the FF7/Tomb Raider game WE ALWAYS WANTED. 

IGF Impressions: Rowan Parker Interview

I must apologize for the lateness of my IGF writings. Real Life is rearing it's ugly head, and finding the time to blog is somewhat difficult of late. My sincerest apologies.
In any case, I was lucky enough on the very last day during the very last minutes of the expo floor of GDC this year to talk to Rowan Parker about a few things. We were somewhat rushed, and being my first interview of anybody ever, I was a bit flustered. Still, I am glad that I got the chance to talk and ask a few questions.
-------------------------------------

So, 4am. Definitely less of a gamey sort of game, doesn't have a lot of the same trappings, it's much more of a creative outlet. Was that really what you wanted to do when you started making it?

RP- Yeah, there's no score, there's no points, no goal or high score, which means it's freeform music creation, so, we wanted to craft an experience which can let regular people feel what it's like to be a DJ, bottle the essence of what DJing is and then let them manipulate that soundscape with the Playstation Move, so, yeah, we were more focused on capturing the feeling or experience than making levels.

So, as far as "capturing the essence of a DJ", what does that mean to you? Is it having it all in your hands, or seeing and hearing the music.

RP- It's something much more meta than that. The DJ doesn't just DJ in a bubble, isolated, by himself. He or she is a performer, reads the room and the crowd, and needs to be playing to an audience, which is why 4am is always broadcasting live to real people on PSN so you have a real audience who are feeding back into your performance and they can make it quite awkward for you to quit because you feel like you are letting real people down. I think that's very core, very key to that DJing aspect. Of course, you have all the cool filters and sound samples and tracks and stuff at your fingertips as well but it's a social performance art as well, it's not just isolated.

With the visualizers, were there any particular notes you wanted to hit, things you wanted to have in the visualizer?

RP- All of the music is done by Baiyon, he did all of the music for Pixeljunk Eden as well. He has very minimal house, like, electrohouse style, and he had some ideas as well for what kind of visuals he would like to match his music to. He helped give us some ideas for the style, so it's all a very Baiyon-esque deal, very minimalist and chill-out, and that kind of feel.

So coming from this to Pixeljunk Inc, at least from the brief setup you have given me previously and what is on your website, is slightly more gamey by comparison but certainly not a standard product. Coming from 4am to that, what kinds of things are you trying to do with Inc.?

RP- Inc. is a game that we all wanted to play, and no-one else was making it, so we started making it. It was started at a conversation at lunchtime. We were saying, "hey, wouldn't you want to play a game like this where you were making a massive soup empire, and, like, Incredible Machine Terraria Minecraft base, and defending it, and all these things. We kept talking about this dream game where we had all these things from other places, and put them into one game, and we were kinda waiting, and no-one else was making and, and we said, "wait, hold on, we'll just make it". So one of the programmers took his Christmas Holidays off and his personal leave days and weekends and lunchtimes, and he made the first prototype of what we were all designing, and so artists started drawing art and I started coming up with more ideas and it just kind of happened naturally. That's how Pixeljunk games are usually born, and Inc. was that way.

What kind of size team are we talking about with Inc.? Is it pretty small?

RP- Pixeljunk Inc. is three people. (chuckle). We are making a ridiculously ambitious game, and with the smallest possible team. It's just me, I'm the lead designer, and we have one artist and one programmer. So its a bare bones skeleton operation.

For a bare bones skeleton operation though, especially off of this particular Indie conference and with Journey sweeping the GD Choice awards, It feels like the time to be in those sorts of projects. Are you pretty excited for the product you are hoping to put out?

RP- I wasn't really thinking about the conference. 4am got nominated for an IGF award, but while I've been here everybody has just been asking about Inc. and when's the next game coming and can we get cards. It's, we just wanna make the game that is in our heads and once that's done we are just going to go into a cave for three months and just play it, so we will disappear, which hopefully means we have the mod support by then because we wanna do, because it's on Steam we want to support Steam Workshop and provide modding support, so by the time we go into the cave everyone else will be making things for it.

This all sounds really interesting, and I don't want to take up too much more of your time, so last quick question: Which IGF game caught your eye the most? Which one-

RP- Super Hexagon, Super Hexagon, Super Hexagon.

Super Hexagon? Super Hexagon.

RP- Yep, Super Hexagon holy crap that game is awesome, yeah, just... Goddammit Super Hexagon.

Okay, actual last question. One thing I have been hearing, especially when I asked Terry Cavenagh was the idea of Player Respect, of respecting the player, and with 4am I can see some of that in just giving the player the tools and just letting them do their own thing. What does it mean to respect the player in your mind, with your design philosophy?

RP- With 4am in particular it means we are not an orthodox rhythm game. An orthodox rhythm game like Dance Dance Revolution, or Guitar Hero is a game that forces the player to march to its step. Play these beats, when I tell you, and you are a slave to the game. 4am is the complete opposite of that philosophically. 4am is a blank canvas, and the player tells the game what to do. The player has all of the power, and all of the control, which is why it's more of a digital instrument than it is like a game even. It doesn't ask anything of you it does whatever you tell it. So, yeah, with a high skill ceiling that's the most respect that I can give to a player.

Cool. Thank you very much for your time.

RP- No worries.

IGF Impressions: Space is the Place... for Panic

I was very lucky to be able to attend the GDC this year, and see the best that this industry has to offer. I must admit, however, that I was unable to explore as much as I probably should have. I was practically chained to the IGF pavilion, playing the games and talking to the creators about said games. It was great, and I will be doing my best to cover every game, or at least give them a mention, in my coming Impressions. Today, we will cover four games in one post, starting with the wildly successful FTL, and going from there into Super Space____, Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime, and Spaceteam. Space. Spacey Space Space. Also, a great deal of CapsLock, as the other common thread for this article is SCREAMING.

rockpapershotgun.com

FTL is a game that (hopefully) needs no introduction. After a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign, FTL has gone on to become a critical darling and favorite of many people. While I certainly feel that any game that has so much praised lavished on it is deserving of the most critical scrutiny, FTL really is a total package of a game. It doesn't miss any of the important beats of the intended experience, the FIRE PHOTON TORPEDOES RAISE SHIELDS FIX THAT ENGINE OH GOD THEY HAVE ION CANNONS kind of crazed frenzy. It is the most complex of the four games, though by no means the most intense. It does have the most lasting session length, with a full traversal of it's randomized star maps taking around a couple hours, give or take. Now, one common thread in all of these games is the chaotic flailing of a spaceship's crew on the verge of annihilation. Note that this does not mean violent death by laser, but also just running into large rocks, or depending on the game, some other, crazier death. However, FTL is surprisingly limited in this regard. When playing the game, the vast majority of deaths will most likely be related to ship-to-ship combat. This is not necessarily to the games detriment, as it establishes at the outset that you are on the run from a hostile military through hostile and pirate filled space; combat is inevitable, very likely, and very well fleshed mechanically.

ign.com

Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime is an animal of another color entirely. While FTL draws a lot from the larger scale of shows like Star Trek and Firefly, managing a crew of anywhere from one to half a dozen, LiDS is about a couple. It is a two-person cooperative game, which at this point is limited to an arcade style survival mode, though there may be more to come later. It also is very combat focused, but since you have to manually drive the ship everywhere in this one (however unrealistic that may be), planets and asteroids are much more dangerous. It is a simpler game; when I asked the creators, the mental collective of Asteroid Base, what their inspiration was for this game, they responded with a single scene from Star Wars: A New Hope. It's definitely a shorter experience at present, with an ever increasing , rather than FTL's series of rising dread as your ship slowly deteriorates, battle to battle. It makes up for this through its coop, and the furious ranting at one another that this produces. Playing with my own partner in crime, it was a harrowing experience, which can be briefly summarized as QUICK SHOOT THAT ONE I'LL DRIVE OH GOD THE SHIELDS ARE ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE SHIP SHITSHIT FIRE THE BIG LASER NO THE BIG YELLOW LASER GODDAMIT WE HIT A PLANET WE NEED THEIR LOVE TO LIVE and so on. The game neatly abstracts the usual scifi technobabble into a cute, easy on the eyes visual shorthand. The shields are blue, the ships wheel (yeah, spaceship with a wheel) and engine are orange, the guns are red, and your health is hearts. You get more health by finding planets, shooting all the bad guys on them, and the remaining inhabitants give you hearts as thanks. Your spaceship runs on love, and the evil space aliens are out to explode you. It's lovably simplistic, like your favorite picture book as a kid, and can hold that same cute and simplistic dramatic tension. It makes you hate and appreciate the other player, unlike some other game.

Digipen

Super Space ____ is that game. That game that you love, it makes you happy after you are done playing it, but goddamn it makes you hate the other schmucks you are playing with. It is some far distant descendant of Asteroids, but with your engines replaced by three people with guns of their own to shoot. It is a chaotic ballet of spinning geometry, every player desperately shooting in all directions, trying to either score points or keep the construction they are tethered to from colliding with the many instant death surfaces that you are trapped with. It is nail biting just trying to not die, and when there are three other idiots all trying to do the same thing, with everything happening too fast to talk, you hate every other person you play with for actively sabotaging the whole operation, because we wouldn't have run into that wall unless you were too busy trying to up your score and I KNOW IT WAS YOU MARK YOU WERE THE BLUE GUN AND YOU HAD THE HIGH SCORE BECAUSE YOU DIDN'T THINK THE GIANT BLOCK ABOUT TO SMASH US WAS MORE IMPORTANT GRAAARGARGHAARH. This fosters and makes fun the experience of too many cooks in the kitchen, with everybody trying to do their own thing and failing because even in space we aren't completely in a vacuum.

sleepingbeastgames.com

Now, one thing that all of these games have in common is the screaming, the yelps and cries of desperation and fun. All of these games cause them, but Spaceteam makes them the central mechanic. As an Iphone/Ipad game, it is probably the most fun I have ever had with an Idevice, and certainly the most fun multiplayer game nominated for anything this year. Yeah, it really is that fun. It is fairly simple. Every level, every player gets a crazy control panel, and orders. Those orders might be for you, or for your compatriots. They have basically the same thing on their screens; crazy control panel, crazy orders. What ensues is a shouting match of frenzied, crazy orders to one another. SET THE FLUX ANNIHILATOR TO 4! ASTEROIDS, EVERYBODY SHAKE! ENGAGE THE GRAVITOFIELD! PUT THE COFFEE ON! Yeah, there are straight gag buttons and switches. It is SO MUCH FUN. I played it three times, just because. It was equally fun every time. Such cannot be said about most games.

The one common maxim about space is that it is, in fact, rather large. So it seems strange that so many of the space games, especially the four I spoke about above, share so many elements. They are all about a crew surviving, often on the skin of their teeth. But this concept has so much meat to it, and meat so wonderfully juicy to we aficionados, that each time we come back to it, we find something different to focus on. Ship survival in LiDS and FTL, the friction of friends messing up in Super Space ____ and Spaceteam, FTL and Spaceteam both running from imminent annihilation, the shooting galleries in Super Space____ and LiDS, there are just so many mechanical variables, things to include and focus on, that each game feels fresh and interesting compared to the others.

As the indie space in particular grows, we are starting to see a lot of accumulation in variations on a theme. Now, while a cynic could see this as a bad thing, as the loss of originality in the art, I think that it means really good things. These ideas are built off of the same foundation, but being so different, show the potential and diversity within the genre and the medium. There is a lot more unexplored potential here, and we are just starting to really venture artistically. Space is a very big place, and we have a lot yet left to find.

John Payne? Max McClane? OR Roleplaying Behind the Camera

Wow! It has been longer than I like since I posted last. Whatever, just moved across the country. Back to the blogging grindstone, I suppose. Oh the drudgery.

rockstargames.com/maxpayne3

I recently finished playing through Max Payne 3. It was a pretty good manshoot, with enough context to make the linear corridors and shooting of mans from being odious. It was the context, visually rich and well written overall that got me thinking about where the player fits into such a closed narrative. When I finished, I was thinking that the player's input is completely superfluous to the narrative itself, but also vitally important because otherwise it wouldn't exist. The player is just turning pages, hitting the play button on what is billed as a piece of interactive media. However, the next thing I did with my free time is what changed my viewpoint somewhat.
I watched Die Hard.

Wikimedia

Now, the parallels between Max and John McClane are pretty easy to find. Both are grizzled, quippy, and blaze through their situation with a mix of extreme competence and bad decisions. But watching Die Hard, I had a thought. When playing a game, I would almost always be thinking of the main character as me, or that they were intended to be me. There is a supposition that the controlled character in the game is the players avatar, the embodiment of our will in the game space. But in a game like Max Payne 3 the player's agency is limited by the standards of a linear shooter's level design, and the idea of him as an avatar for the player is continuously undermined by Max's constant narration. Now, I really like his narration, but it definitely made me feel distanced from Max himself. I would never speak for myself, never make a decision besides when to pull the trigger (if at all). But, I was directing him along his chosen path, and that is where I found a comfortable position to get involved.

rockstargames.com/maxpayne3

By placing yourself in the role of the cinematographer of Max Payne 3: Favela Freakout, the game becomes much more interesting. The purpose is no longer to survive the shootout of the favelas as an ex-cop from Jersey, it's to make that digital model of an ex-cop from Jersey look as badass as possible. You aren't enacting John Woo slow motion gunplay, you are John Woo. In that capacity, a certain amount of roleplay can occur, which is incredibly immersive. While it may not have been the original intent, it has certainly cast a different, very positive light on what would otherwise be a somewhat samey game.

rockstargames.com/maxpayne3

While a lot of shooters could be played with a similar mindset, I think that Max Payne 3 is particularly suited to it, with the lack of HUD, slow motion mechanic, and the dynamic camera movements and cuts when killing the last foe of a shootout. While it may be somewhat disorienting from a player perspective, not to mention pointless mechanically, as the cinematographer, it's vastly preferable to the having the camera in the exact same over the shoulder shot the entire time (that film would be incredibly boring). The fact that you can both engage your slow motion and keep firing while the target collapses really adds to the player's control of the presentation. All of these mechanics come together to create an almost curatorial position for the player, encouraging action packed, visually arresting gameplay. Sometimes it takes a step back to really get into a piece of art.

Self-Help Hotline

One of the things about video games as a hobby is that it is seen as a waste of time, similar to sitting and watching television or movies. In the minds of detractors, it is a sedentary activity that, while fun, has little in the way of self improvement. Hotline Miami has become a notable exception for me. And that scares me a little.

If you like the concept this trailer puts forward, go buy the game. Seriously, do it now. At full price, it's $10, it's on sale right now, and it probably will be again for Christmas if you are feeling frugal. It has a pounding, Eighties throwback soundtrack that I listen to daily, and visuals that are the best approximation of a bad acid trip I have seen in a video game. But be careful. It changes you. 

To say that a game has changed you is a strong compliment. Art's capacity to inform and change a person is the most important thing about it. We can all think of a piece of media that changed the way we think, about something small or very rarely about our entire universe. But, as I said above, this game scared me. Because it changed me into a frightening human being. 

I have been seeing a lot of the marketing for Far Cry 3 lately, touting dark and violent subject matter. If you don't know what I'm talking about, check out this promotional video, it spells it out pretty clearly. 

Standard blockbuster action movie-esque game. The tone they seem to want is that you are a man stuck in the heart of darkness, surrounded by violent insanity, trying to fight your way out. Now, this is suitably edgy, and action packed enough to be entertaining, but it, like many of its big budget brethren, feels the need to give you a purpose for it all, a light at the end of the tunnel. It gives you a reason. And that is bullshit. It takes the teeth out of the violence if it has such lofty context, but that is how they make it palatable. It is intended to motivate you in the long term, while the explosions and killing are the short term incentive. Hotline is what happens when you take out that long term incentive, that reason. What you are left with is a serial murderer that is a joy to play as.

Hotline kept me playing and playing (I have completed the game 100% four times now since I got it day 1) because it is fast, fun, and brutal. Death is not a failure state so much as a temporary setback, like running out of ammunition in a First Person Shooter. Ran out of ammo/throat ripped out by attack dog? Hit R, keep killing. One hit, one kill leads to a lovely mixture of extreme caution and pants wetting audacity. I still remember the time I ran into a room and managed through luck and balls to beat them all to death with my bare hands. I was killed not three seconds later by a man with a knife. I hit R, and slit his throat with his own knife before I get to anybody else, just to show him. 

You get into a rhythm with this game. Run in, die, restart, run in, die, restart, etc. You make plans, strategize, finding the path around the level that works. Everything happens so fast, death is made cheap. There is no dying speech, no grandiose cries of pain. In a split second, you (or they) go from living, running pixel men to quivering meat, bleeding on the floor. And as you figure out the optimal way to get through the level, and you build up that rush of adrenaline until your reflexes are as sharp as needles, you get deeper and deeper into it. Every man and dog blurs together, every attempt is just one R key away from the next, and it just keeps going and going and going and

The music stops. Nothing is moving. You are alone in a house filled with bodies. Some are full of holes, other slashed, some even cut into pieces. And it's all your fault. You were the aggressor. You were the antagonist here, not them. There was no reason, just your own enjoyment. And the worst part is, the more you do it, the better you get.

When I started to play this game, It would take me quite a few attempts to beat a level. I was cautious, treating every kill like I was jumping a huge pit. Carefully line up my jump, get a good running start, deep breath, and GO. As I played, it got easier and easier. I got faster, more precise, more deadly. I would see a room of three men armed with shotguns, and no longer see a hazard. I saw targets. I got good at killing. This is the first and only time that a game has actually made me feel like I am getting better at killing. Not fighting, not shooting, not combat. At straight, unadulterated, violent murder. And I love it. It's my game of the year for sure. No other game has made me feel so good and so scared at the same time. You should play it too. I'm sure you'll enjoy it. 

All images used are from Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

The Dark Souls of my Childhood

I haven't posted in some time, and one of the chief reasons is this.

preparetodie.com

Oh man, so much this. This game raised the bar for me for the rest decade. Everything else I have played feels like creative meanderings or vapid wish fulfillment. It's honestly surprising to me how much weight this game has to me now, the cannonball to other game's pebbles. And the reason for this is actually very personal.

I grew up in a rural neighborhood. Contact with other kids was sometimes sparse, but what I lost in social contact was made up for by geography. I had a lot of room to play in, and a lot of time was spent outside ranging about, with friends or not. Collecting a menagerie of sticks to thwack at offending shrubbery with, adventure was abundant. As I outgrew this vague outdoor play, my videogame consumption filled in the free time gap, and my favorite games for the longest time were the Zelda games.

The parallels are pretty obvious. Miyamoto himself has cited a childhood traversing the woods near his home as the inspiration for Zelda's free ranging design. I played any I could get my hands on. My first ever game was Link's Awakening, Elementary School was Link to the Past, Middle School was Wind Waker, and High School was Twilight Princess. I was weaned on Zelda. It is only natural that my taste for Zelda matured to one for Souls.

Now, all of this may seem obvious. Tastes change as we mature, this is known. But the more I played it, the more it started to become almost eerie.
A lot of the environments of Dark Souls are dead, abandoned edifices, slowly being claimed either by natural forces or the mysterious and deadly creatures that populate the game. Growing up where I did, I was often recruited by my parents to aid in the maintenance of the property, whether through landscaping, construction, demolition, or dealing with the variety of wild animals that could intrude at any time. I am fairly certain that, among my friends, I have the dubious distinction of having had to kill animals with my own hands, to eat or just cull, and also witness the deaths of many more. And then there is the minutiae of living in such a place, the texture and smell of rotting wood, the creaking sound of a floor that is older than your grandparents, the ivy worming its way through the walls, the clouded glass in the windows, ancient furniture pieces that are completely unrecognizable. Even outside I would find bones, animal bodies, a rusted out car chassis, or even an unmarked well. This atmosphere of decay is something I am intimately familiar, and something that Dark Souls is steeped in. Crumbling castles, ruined and rotting towns, all part and parcel. It's a very dark nostalgia, and it has some interesting parallels. But it goes even further than that.

IGN 

Just looking at the above image gives me a little chill. As part of the game, you must eventually make your way into The Abyss, an endless expanse of pure darkness in all directions, to defeat the Four Kings that reside there. It's pretty creepy on it's own (see for yourself), but I have context that makes it absolutely terrifying. When I was a small child, I nearly drowned while swimming in a friends pond. One of my abiding memories of that is looking down and only seeing inky blackness, feeling myself slowly sinking, and the cold creeping up my body. It gave me a fear of deep water that persisted for a few years after. I had to have one-on-one sessions to learn to swim, teachers in regular classes couldn't convince me to so much as put my feet in the deep end. So when I play Dark Souls, and I descend that dank, moldering spiral staircase in the bowels of the New Londo ruins, and it ends in this:

ledr.com

I freeze. It took me several minutes, during which I got up from my chair, went outside, and walked around, before I could screw up the courage to take the plunge. I only died the first time fighting the Four Kings, because I couldn't look at the screen without getting bad vertigo. I managed to beat them the second time by equipping the strongest armor I could and swinging wildly; I could only look at the screen sidelong in spurts. It's the most scared I have ever been by a video game. It took me completely by surprise, and it was at that point that I realized just how deeply this game reaches for me. It stopped reminding me of my childhood and started to evoke it so strongly it was like being haunted by myself at age 8. So many little things would trigger spells of Deja Vu, like climbing down a hole on the giant roots of a dead tree, or the way my character would swing a sword. A more perfect union of childhood and adulthood I have not been able to find.
Dark Souls is not a perfect game, I would not presume to call my own appraisal anything but subjective. However, no game has ever touched me as deeply as this one has in my entire life. I think my pick for Game of the Decade may already be decided.

The Joys of Heisting

I rarely get into multiplayer games.
As a kid growing up, I could count the number of friends I had on both hands, sometimes just one. I also lived a fair drive from most of them (about an hour round trip sometimes), so I didn't get out much. As such, I tend to gravitate to single player experiences, stuff I can play by myself. But I do have a particular love of co-operative stuff. I have always liked playing through things like Halo with a friend locally, and occasionally I will get swept up in some PC co-operative offering. The Left 4 Dead series is quite good, but doesn't have the hooks for long term play for me. Killing Floor was a brief obsession of mine, but I am not going to talk about that right now. Right now, I have only one game on my brain, and its Payday: The Heist.

Man, I love this game. Something about it just pushes all of my buttons, more than Killing Floor or Left 4 Dead, and I think it's because it draws from both. From Killing Floor, it gets the classes and level progression, and from Left 4 Dead, it gets the objective based gameplay, though it makes it a level or two more complex.
In Left 4 Dead, there are rarely any tasks beyond getting from Point A to Point B. It occasionally breaks this up with bits defending from waves of enemies, or running around collecting needed items like gas. It's simple but effective. Payday adds in additional wrinkles, such as in the First World Bank level, where you need to monitor an automatic drill that jams periodically while also going to the other side of the level to erase security footage, while also keeping control of various civilians around the level. Also, the police are almost always trying to stop you in some way, either through brute force assaults or sending in special units through the vents while you think you have down time. Adding in just one more thing to worry about besides the enemies adds an extra level of tension. Thankfully, it never has more than three or four things to worry about, so it never becomes too overwhelming.
These overall objectives add an important element that many other multiplayer games on the market lack: a tension arc.

http://www.musik-therapie.at/PederHill/Structure&Plot.htm

I have never really liked a multiplayer game that just involves killing things for this reason; each individual match lacks this important element. While the diagram above is the tension arc for a three act plot structure, in a good work of linear media (game, movie, book, etc.), a great many smaller pieces are also made up of tension arcs, even to the smallest things like shooting a gun (rising tension as you start to fire, increasing tension as you expend the clip on the target, and the denouement of reloading). This game uses these arcs extremely well. Police Assaults are a constant flood of law enforcement, and every time they come at you it gets harder and harder, but they almost always do end, after a while. Each objective takes time to complete, whether through direct interaction, such as herding a VIP you need to transport, or through only periodic interaction, such as with the aforementioned drill. Either way, there is an arc to the objective, from the low tension at the outset, or near the climax, when you have only 20 seconds left on the drill, but two teammates are down and bleeding, you are down to your pistol and two SWAT with riot shields are creeping towards you. It's really exciting what context can do to make a game more interesting.
I could go on about how authentic it feels to those modern heist movies, with the clown masks and brief audio vignettes before each level, or how they randomize just enough to make it interesting and unique each time (guard and civilian position, makeup and length of police assaults, even adding or subtracting objectives), or how you can complete some missions almost entirely by stealth and coordination, and only near the very end have to resort to violence. But to me, a lot of that is just icing on the cake. Now if you will excuse me, I have cash to grab.

Images from Photobucket, except where noted.

On The Importance of "Let's Plays"

I am a Let's Play addict.
There. I said it. Maybe now I can stop reading them.

Nope. Guess not.
So why do I love Lets Plays so damn much? I think I can break it down into 3 reasons, after reading and watching enough Lets Plays to make and omnibus and adapt it into a cinematic trilogy, and they are as follows.

1. Faster and Cheaper to Appreciate
One great benefit of reading or watching a lets play of a game is that you can take in all of the narrative struggles of game characters, as well as get an idea of the mechanics and difficulty of a game without having to play it yourself. The Lets Player in question will often truncate their gameplay experience, so you can make your way through the entire run of a 200 hour rpg in a day or so worth of reading. This allows for a lot more game appreciation for your time. Additionally, you don't have to pay for the game yourself, which is nice.

2. Fun Commentary
Some Lets Plays offer more than just letting us play vicariously through the Lets Player. Sometimes the Lets Play is worth it for some comedic value, or some informative purpose. For instance, a lets play of a classic RPG where the player breaks it mechanically for all to see like Ivan Drago, or a group of friends commenting on just how terrible a bad game gets. These Lets Plays let us imagine that we are playing with them in some respect, watching over their shoulder and commenting as they play. These sorts of Lets Plays often involve multiple people, or the player will stream the process live, letting the viewers of the stream also commentate.
The thing about this point is that we are still substituting a normal gaming experience for an inferior, but cheaper product. But there is one more reason, and the real reason I love Lets Plays so damn much.

3. The Narrative of the Player OR The Constructed Narrative
Here are a few links to Lets Plays that fit this criteria which I wholeheartedly recommend. Some are just incredibly hilarious, others are dramatic, and some are both. These Lets Plays are the reason I have the Lets Play Archive in my bookmarks bar ahead of Facebook. Not all of these have constructed narratives, and may amount to little more than commentary, but they do tap into one of the important reasons I love games so much, and make them such a unique medium: The capability of radically different experiences while playing the same game. I have already gushed about Fire Emblem in this blog last post (which you should read for context, it's not that long), but this is why I also like to read and play along with Fire Emblem Lets Plays. Its a lot of fun to see how the other person is doing in the game, like how their roster differs from yours, things they found that you missed, and how they approached situations differently. Its a fascinating exercise. But what is much more compelling is when a Lets Player creates an entirely different narrative by adapting the events that happen in the game to a narrative that they construct, sometimes entirely on the fly, or by creating artificial challenges for themselves. These Lets Plays become more like written stories about the game, rather than a direct transcription. It's really compelling, and I love to marvel at their progress, or their audacity.
So that's why I read these things. I have considered starting my own, but I can't think of a good game to do it in. If you have any suggestions, comment or send me an email.

Image from lparchive.org

All Hail the RNG!! or Coaching Gamblers

I have been playing a fair bit of Fire Emblem lately, and I started to wonder about it's distinct appeal. I really can't think of other games that I play in the same way as it. I do like other tactics games, like the Final Fantasy Tactics games and the Disgaea series, but I always return to Intelligent System's second party series.  And I think I may have pinpointed why. If you know how Fire Emblem works, skip the next few paragraphs until you see " So, knowing all of that mechanical crap, ". It'll be considerably shorter, but more convenient.

Some explanation of the basic mechanics of Fire Emblem: The game is about a fantasy band of heroes lead by a central character, who is often a lord of some description. You command them in a series of grid based tactical missions against other armies. They come in a large variety of classes, often with the potential to upgrade into another, better class as the characters gain experience and level up. There are distinct statistics to keep track of, a rock paper scissors relationship of weapon types, and magic on top of that. This is a fairly easy concept to understand for someone fairly game literate, and is far less complicated than other iterations of the genre. But it has three fairly important elements that make it distinct and compelling.

First, instead of a stable of customizable troops, each recruit is a distinct character. While the game rarely takes the time to define the characters in the main plot, there is always some flavor for every character, either through optional scenes or Support Relationships. Support Relationships, or Supports, are conversations that characters can have with each other. Usually there are only 3 for each pair, and the characters gain bonuses for remaining near characters they have a Support with.

Second, the benefits of leveling up are somewhat random. How this is achieved is through what is known as an individual growth rate. A character has a growth rate for each statistic, which determines the percentage chance that a particular stat will increase by 1 at every level. Growths are rarely higher than 60% for an important skill, say Strength for a career Axeman, but there are definitely stats that a character is more or less likely to gain. But, there is always the chance that the aforementioned Axeman may not get an increase to Strength in 5 levels.

Third, Statistics in Fire Emblem are small, easy to understand numbers, as you can see in the screenshot of Rolf above. The equations for determining what a statistic does are also very easy and predictable. For instance, if an attack hits an enemy, then the damage is the strength of the weapon and your character's strength statistic, minus their defense. There are a few other potential modifiers, such as the weapon triangle (that rock paper scissors thing) and Supports, but they don't add a whole lot of complexity. The highest a character's strength can usually get is somewhere in the mid to high 20's, so its pretty easy to calculate everything.

So, knowing all of that mechanical crap, why does that make Fire Emblem so compelling? Because it makes every level a tense experience. Since your stats are fairly small numbers, every level matters a lot for a character's overall effectiveness, and their role on the battlefield. The random chance of getting stats you need means that the Cavalier you have been trying to nurture for half of the game is rendered entirely useless by the Random Number Generator, or RNG.

Oh Godammit!

On the other hand, every character could potentially be extremely lucky, and become a godly machine of death.

Keep in mind that Mist here is a healer.

This element adds a lot of replayability to the game, making each playthrough result in a different final team out of your gang of plucky heroes. The various combinations create a different net of potential Supports, allowing for a different character driven story to supplement the main plot. And there is always the chance of a once in a lifetime roll of the dice, resulting in terrifying creatures of majestic death dealing prowess.

Every number glowing green is a stat that is maximized. Just... wow.

This potential for a crazed endgame party of monstrous power is what keeps me coming back to this game, coaching these little fantasy characters through their adventures over and over, rolling the dice to see if they finally come up Death God. Because I want to see my healer beat the crap out of the final boss too.

Header image courtesy of Photobucket, others from Fedule's Fire Emblem : Path of Radiance Lets Play