T w e n t y S i d e d
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “#4 No Love for the Shorties”
#4 No Love for the Shorties
#3 Have Heroes, Won’t Travel
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “#3 Have Heroes, Won’t Travel”
Spider-Man Part 7: Mary Changed
The next chapter has Peter Parker stop by the F.E.A.S.T.Food, Emergency, Aid, Shelter and Training. homeless shelter. It’s owned by a guy named Martin Li. Mr. Li funds the place and helps run it, but the real management work is done by the eternally elderly and saintly Aunt May. Mister Li is throwing a party to thank Aunt May for her years of ongoing sainthood or whatever it is she does at the FEAST center when she’s not walking on water.
Aunt May
I think there's something wrong with my graphics settings, because Aunt May's halo doesn't seem to be rendering.
May is an interesting character because of how unapologetically one-dimensional she is. Usually fans dislike it if a character doesn’t have any flaws. Uncomplicated characters are seen as “boring”. As characters pass from one writer to the next, there’s always the temptation to “make them more interesting” by giving them flaws and secrets and stuffing their closets full of skeletons. But Aunt May never got that treatmentACTUALLY they tried to give her a backstory where she was a super-spy back in the 60s, but that idea seems to have been dropped. I think? I hope so. The whole point of Peter Parker is that he’s just a normal kid in extraordinary circumstances, and that falls apart if you retcon him to be a member of a family of badasses.. She’s been a nice old lady since the beginning. She’s always encouraging and supporting of Peter, and she’s always telling him to do the right thing. She doesn’t have any feuds, grudges, vices, or hangups.
Aunt May works as a character despite her lack of flaws. Then again, she’s usually not treated like a full-blown character. Her status quo doesn’t change very much, she doesn’t have any long-term aspirations, and she’s not involved in interpersonal conflicts the that way Mary Jane or Flash Thompson are. She’s almost an aspect of Peter’s character. She’s the flawless mother figure for him to disappoint, while also acting as his moral center.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Spider-Man Part 7: Mary Changed”
Anthem Doesn’t Care About its Own Story
I know the chasm between gameplay and story divide is normally pretty wide in the AAA space, but Anthem feels like a game where these two halves are at war with each other. My column this week talks about how the Anthem gameplay casually tramples all over the story bits. I realize that the original Destiny had a similar problem, where all of the worldbuilding stuff was dumped into web pages outside the game. I realize this genre isn’t known for its storytelling, but still…
- Just because Bungie did it doesn’t make it okay.
- Why make this a story about a hero character when that goes against the gameplay? If we’re an observer and muscle for the real main characters, then just embrace that as part of the story.
- Isn’t this the whole point of having BioWare make one of these things? I thought the idea was to set this game apart by injecting BioWare-style storytelling into a genre where story is usually neglected, but instead we’ve injected Bungie-style story apathy into BioWare. This game doesn’t elevate the genre, it drags down the developer.
So sad.
But fine. This game is all about the gameplay and the story is for dumb nerds. Accepting that, why is the gameplay so vague about the systems? This is a game about getting loot to make the numbers go up, except the interface designer didn’t want to pollute their pristine interface with dumb boring numbers. So here are some questions I have about the mechanics of this game:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Anthem Doesn’t Care About its Own Story”
Andromeda Part 19: Breaking REALLY Bad
Last week I complained that Andromeda doesn’t offer a lot of real choices. Even in cases where the game manages to offer you a real choice between two different options and even if the dialog wheel manages to make the options clear, it’s often completely unsatisfying because the situation itself is often incoherent. For example:
Oblivion
Okay, you no longer have access to the bacteria that acts like penicillin. Have you tried using, you know, REGULAR penicillin?
If you visit Dr. Nakamoto in the Kadara slums, he’ll tell you that when he came to Kadara he discovered a kind of “bacteria” that had antibioticAs in “penicillin” not “biotic space powers”. properties. But then someone discovered that at high doses it was an addictive psychoactive drug. Sloane began producing the drug to make money and solidify her power.
So then Dr. Nakamoto asks us to “get the formula back” from her, so that he can use it to treat his patients here in the slums.
Dude! You JUST SAID it was a naturally-occurring bacteria, and now you’re calling it a “formula”?
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Andromeda Part 19: Breaking REALLY Bad”
Diecast #245: Warframe, Anthem, Technical Debt
I hope you’re a looter-shooter fan, because that’s what the first 40 minutes of this show is about. If not, we also answer some mailbag questions.
Hosts: Paul, Shamus. Episode edited by Issac.
Show notes: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #245: Warframe, Anthem, Technical Debt”
#2 The Tome of Stuff You Should Know
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “#2 The Tome of Stuff You Should Know”
From The Archives:
The Plot-Driven Door
You know how videogames sometimes do that thing where it's preposterously hard to go through a simple door? This one is really bad.
Lost Laughs in Leisure Suit Larry
Why was this classic adventure game so funny in the 80's, and why did it stop being funny?
The Strange Evolution of OpenGL
Sometimes software is engineered. Sometimes it grows organically. And sometimes it's thrown together seemingly at random over two decades.
Joker's Last Laugh
Did you anticipate the big plot twist of Batman: Arkham City? Here's all the ways the game hid that secret from you while also rubbing your nose in it.
Top 64 Videogames
Lists of 'best games ever' are dumb and annoying. But like a self-loathing hipster I made one anyway.
Borderlands Series
A look at the main Borderlands games. What works, what doesn't, and where the series can go from here.
The Best of 2019
I called 2019 "The Year of corporate Dystopia". Here is a list of the games I thought were interesting or worth talking about that year.
Silver Sable Sucks
This version of Silver Sable is poorly designed, horribly written, and placed in the game for all the wrong reasons.
Philosophy of Moderation
The comments on most sites are a sewer of hate, because we're moderating with the wrong goals in mind.
id Software Coding Style
When the source code for Doom 3 was released, we got a look at some of the style conventions used by the developers. Here I analyze this style and explain what it all means.