So the team is back from Europe and the public has played the Pyrodactyl build of Good Robot for the first time. Here are the notes and observations from this ad-hoc playtesting, along with my commentary:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Good Robot #35: EGX Feedback”
The pitch is colder than a witch's glare after an inappropriate comparison, and the sky, which is the exact color of death, is the gods’ own smothering pillow. Today is our first match against a high elf team called the Surf Somethings. If the races of the realm were represented on playing cards, high elves would feature on the king of hearts and halflings would headline the instructional card for drunk 52-card-pickup.
At some point while I’m staring at the rippling, glistening muscles of the high elf team as they gambol and stretch merrily, drunk on pre-victory, someone in a striped jacket asks if I want heads or tails. “No thanks,” I say. They decide that means heads, and with this call my luck budget goes towards securing us the kickoff.
The Surf Buddies are watching in fascination as my team assembles on the field. I guess they've never actually seen someone field a halfling team before. So we had that in common, anyway. One way or another, we were both about to discover if it was possible to underestimate these lardbuckets. Pervince Potatoe, way at the back of the field, looks back through the freezing air and throws me a conspiratorial wink.
The crowd is a little quicker on the uptick than you'd expect of Blood Bowl aficionados and have already realized that they are not going to get an entertaining match today. The rioting delays the match a little; we're going to have a shorter first half as a result. This means less time for us to be scored against and less time for us to score, which, all in all, probably works out to our benefit.
And then there’s no more delays or excuses. The whistle blows.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Half Time CH2: Hobbit Breaking”
My column this week is about why System Shock is an amazing game that you probably won’t enjoy unless you played it two decades ago.
True story:
I got stuck on the very first level of System Shock 1. I spent hours wandering around, trying to figure out how to reach level 2. I’d been everywhere and totally filled in the map, so I could see I wasn’t missing any rooms. But for the life of me I had no idea how to proceed. Did I miss a puzzle? A boss I needed to fight somewhere? A hidden door?
Eventually I bought the hint guide. I think it’s the only one I ever bought. The hint guide is the only part of the game I have left. (The floppies died ages ago.) The guide was kind of expensive, but I was really into this game and it was driving mad that I couldn’t proceed. And then it turned out that the guide didn’t help. It didn’t even acknowledge the difficulty of reaching level 2. It was just like, “Make sure you have enough bullets before you proceed to level 2!”
It turned out it wasn’t a secret. The game was built on a grid. In a particular room there was a button on the wall. If you stand directly in front of the button and press it, then the square you were standing on would go down. It was an elevator, and it would take you down to the exit to level 2.
However, I was standing too far back from the button. When I pushed it, I could hear the “elevator moving” sound. But because of the way the interface worked, the bottom half of your field of view was usually covered with menus and crap, so I didn’t see the floor tile move. I looked left and right, expecting the button to have opened a door or wall nearby. Elevators were a new thing to me in games, and this floor tile didn’t exactly jump out at you.
“Ah! Maybe it’s opening a secret door elsewhere!”
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Experienced Points: Why is System Shock a Big Deal?”
Show notes: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #123: Tony Hawk 5, Star Citizen, Patreon Hack”
Did you miss the hangout last month? Don’t worry! Because really, that’s a very silly thing to worry about. But also don’t worry because here is the whole two hours and forty minutes of it:
Link (YouTube) |
Yes, I lied. That was only the first hour and twenty minutes. Sadly, the second half is shrouded in mystery, lost in the depths of time, or perhaps simply featured in Part 2:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Kerbal Space Problems – Reloaded”
Morrowind‘s narrative is settled around a religious schism between the “real” gods, who are worshiped by the occupying Empire, and three home-grown mortals-turned-gods who are worshiped proudly and a little spitefully by the unwillingly colonized natives. Unsurprisingly, there's a complex lore and backstory behind this state of affairs, and I admit that this is where I would normally check out; this sort of thing is so commonly tiresome in fantasy. An author creates a convoluted narrative of gods and wars and legends and thinks the reader will find it as interesting as they do, if only they relay every detail precisely. The result is a plodding, ponderous shaggy dog myth that competes for headspace with the dozen other lores the player had to memorize. What these fantasy authors fail to realize is that history is not story. It’s the tools for telling a story.
This is one thing that Morrowind gets exactly right.
How did the self-made gods come into being? Great question! I don’t know. All I or anybody else knows is that there’s a half-dozen different accounts all believed passionately by factions that bring their own prejudices and needs and grudges onboard. The history of the tribunal’s divinity resembles a real history: a he-said she-said conflict of mythologies and folk accounts that sparks heated arguments and debate even between people on the same side. History as a debate is much more interesting to learn and follow than history as an inventory, and conflict over who is right is more interesting that conflict over who is stronger.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Altered Scrolls, Part 9: Small Considerations, IPISYDHT#3”
Link (YouTube) |
I realize it’s a running joke on this show for Josh to play unconventionally and for the rest of us to rage about it, but let me drop the shtick just long enough to point out what a mess this boss fight is.
So apparently this fight is scripted to end when Calo “dies”. But the game doesn’t tell you that, and I think it’s perfectly reasonable to want to deal with Davik first. But then Davik is almost immune to damage and your squad mates obsessively cancel orders to go back to beating on Calo. This becomes all the more befuddling later when Calo shows up for another boss fight on another planet.
As if being defeated by the player isn’t enough of a death sentence, Calo then blows himself up with a detonator. And is then hit by an orbital beam. And then some scenery falls on his head. Why inflict all this damage on him when the plot mandates he needs to show up later? And of course, once you fly away, Calo has no way to escape the planet, which is currently being bombed into gravel. Which means the encounter should kill Calo five times over: Once from the fight, once from setting off a grenade in his own face, once from the death-beam, once from the falling scenery, and finally from being left behind on a planet where everyone is doomed to die.
(It actually doesn’t show the detonator go off. I can’t tell if this means the orbits death-beam hit him before he could set it off, or if this is just a byproduct of 2003 animations and cutscenes.)
Why compel the player to attack the person that needs to survive this fight? Why subject him to so much overkill if he needs to show up later? Why portray Davik as the guy who is immune to damage, when he’s the one who dies? Why make a boss fight with two foes, only one of which you’re supposed to fight, without explaining the goal to the player? I guess the player is supposed to do this fight several times and then intuit how to beat it through heavy meta-gaming?
What a mess.
How do you know the rules of the game are what the game claims? More importantly, how do the DEVELOPERS know?
Here is how I'd conquer the game-publishing business. (Hint: NOT by copying EA, 2K, Activision, Take-Two, or Ubisoft.)
A look back at one of my favorite games. The gameplay was stellar, but the underlying story was clumsy and oddly constructed.
I teach myself music composition by imitating the style of various videogame soundtracks. How did it turn out? Listen for yourself.
You know how videogames sometimes do that thing where it's preposterously hard to go through a simple door? This one is really bad.
This is a massive step down in story, gameplay, and art design when compared to the 2014 soft reboot. Yet critics rated this one much higher. What's going on here?
Cities: Skylines is bound to have a sequel sooner or later. Where can this series go next, and what changes would I like to see?
A video discussing Megatexture technology. Why we needed it, what it was supposed to do, and why it maybe didn't totally work.
Here is a long look at a game that tries to live up to a big legacy and fails hilariously.
An interesting but technically dense talk about gaming technology. I translate it for the non-coders.
T w e n t y S i d e d
