NEWER POSTS

Experienced Points: Next-gen AI and Next-gen BS

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Mar 25, 2014

Filed under: Column 78 comments
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My column this week is a bit about why next-gen consoles probably aren’t going to bring us any next-gen AI. Although to be fair, it’s been a while since I heard that claim. I was hearing it quite a bit in response to the “The next-gen graphics don’t look so next-gen” comments when the consoles were first being announced.

And while I spent some time talking about strategy AI, I’m not sure how applicable that is to consoles. How often do consoles get complex, multi-layered, turn-based gameplay? They sure aren’t getting Crusader Kings or Civilization anytime soon.

This new gen is off to a strange start. Third party titles have fled Nintendo. Sony’s console is less than six months old and they’re already rolling out new stuff for it. The XBone isn’t NEARLY the disaster I anticipated. That’s is a good thing for the industry in the long run, although I wouldn’t have minded seeing the market rebuke Microsoft a little more firmly for their hubris and creepy approach to digital “rights” and privacy.

I haven’t been following the PS4 vs. Xbox narrative very closely, but every couple of weeks I seeNot that I bother reading the actual article. a headline or forum post detailing how one console is beating the other. Some things never change, I guess.

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

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Thief Autopsy Part 1: Prologue

By Shamus Posted Monday Mar 24, 2014

Filed under: Video Games 106 comments
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So Thief has come and gone. Based strictly on how much discussion it’s generating, I estimate that upwards of six people bought it. It’s not generating buzz the way Tomb Raider or Human Revolution did. It’s not generating controversy the way Duke Nukem Forever did. And it’s not getting public derision the way Aliens Colonial Marines did. The game is barely a month old, and the conversation is basically over already. 6.9/10. Meh. Which is a shame. This game is not nearly the train wreck that Aliens: CMJudging by reviews. I haven’t played Colonial Marines. was, and I hate to see it forgotten so soon.

So let me do my part by meticulously picking at the game and pointing out all the flaws. Partly because in the world of games it’s better to be criticized than ignored, but mostly because that’s what we do here.

The various appendages of this game simply don’t fit together. Normally I blame these kinds of problems on bad writing, but in this case I think the game suffers from a severe case of re-writing and script tampering. Examining the story feels like an archaeological dig where we try to figure out what era the disparate pieces belong to.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Thief Autopsy Part 1: Prologue”

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

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Skyrim EP18: King Catbert

By Shamus Posted Friday Mar 21, 2014

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 149 comments
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Link (YouTube)

Let the record show that at the eight minute mark the cast of Spoiler Warning said something that might be construed as mildly positive about Fallout 3. Not sure how that happened, but there it is.

On the subject of making the game more comical, let me point you to this video by Anthony Burch: Dying is Funny, Comedy is Easy. Burch is half of the bother-sister team that does Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin’ and the guy behind the best parts of Borderlands 2. He makes the case that games with inherently silly mechanics (and Skyrim is about as silly as they come) should consider making the tone of the game match the mechanics.

I wouldn’t want all games to be comedies, but I would love it if a few more of them embraced their inner murderclown and stopped trying to be so angsty serious grimdark all the time. I have no idea what that would look like in the context of a Bethesda game (and I’m not really suggesting that Elder Scrolls should become a comedy series) but it’s an interesting thing to consider. I think I’d rather comedy than this ultra-bland boilerplate Medieval fantasy. Later in the game we get to some bits of the main quest that I do care about, and the shallow dialog and lack of roleplaying really infuriates me. Comedy would be better than that, for sure.

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

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Skyrim EP17: Viking Funeral

By Shamus Posted Thursday Mar 20, 2014

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 108 comments
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Link (YouTube)

Since Chris decided to confuse everything, let me set the record straight: This is Sheogorath, this is Shinnok, this is Shub-Niggurath, and this is Cole MacGrath, who is a superhero and not a country singer. Go figure.

Chris, un-ironically: “You know what sucks about vampires?”

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

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Errant Signal: Thief (2014)

By Shamus Posted Thursday Mar 20, 2014

Filed under: Video Games 58 comments
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Link (YouTube)

The frustrating thing about this game is that it’s interesting for all the wrong reasons. I could probably do a half dozen articles on its gameplay, disjoint story, tonal deficiencies, clever ideas, mixed level design, long dev cycle, confusing approach to canon, regrettable attempts at melodrama, unintentionally comical villain, and earnest attempt to live up to its legacy as a Thief game. This isn’t a game, it’s a crime scene. “What happened to this franchise? Who did it, and why? Will they strike again?”

But there’s no reason to write those articles, because nobody cares. Nobody is playing it. Two weeks ago my column on the game got just 12 comments, which is the equivalent of having the internet nod its head reflexively while not actually listening to me as I prattle on. The game is less than a month old, and the story is over already.

Sometimes a flawed or broken game comes out and the outraged consumers can sustain a nice round of podcasts, video rants, webcomics, blog posts, and animated .gif memes. It happened for Aliens: Colonial Marines. It happened for Duke Nukem Forever. But it’s not happening here. Nobody cares. The sales figures on this thing must be abominable.

EDIT: I looked it up on VG Charts. They don’t have PC numbers, but according to their figures Thief has sold 771,036 copies so far across all console platforms. For comparison: On the PS3 this month, it sold less than Skyrim.

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

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Skyrim EP16: Wolves Aren’t Evil

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Mar 19, 2014

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 118 comments
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Link (YouTube)

Imma spoil this for you, for your own good: Josh totally murders Lydia in this episode, and it takes a couple of minutes before anyone realizes it happened. Re-watching this now I knew it was coming, and I laughed. I mean mourned. Not laughed. I don’t know why I said laugh. That would be terrible. Anyway, watch for it. It’s all the more hilarious poignant that nobody knows it’s happening.

If you want to see the footage of ragdoll “physics” in Thief Deadly Shadows, Chris put together a nice collection of them here.

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

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Experienced Points: Cloning is Good for You

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Mar 18, 2014

Filed under: Column 76 comments
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I just want to say a few words in defense of cloning. I mean game cloning. Not biological cloning. I don’t know anything about biological cloning, except for that one terrible TNG episode where the writing was horrible and the cloning debate was so goofy and muddled it sounded like two Amish guys arguing Mac vs. PC.

Where was I? Oh, videogame cloning, right.

Of course, all of this stems from the recent Candy Crush controversy. On Facebook Jennifer Snow pointed out that King was kind of obligated to defend their Candy trademark, or they could risk losing it. That’s an interesting wrinkle to the discussion that I didn’t touch on in the main article (maybe I should have) so let’s talk about it here:

What I think King SHOULD have done is to trademark “Candy Crush”. That way if some idiot came out with “Candy Crush Story” or “Candy Crush Adventure”, then King could take them to court and I think most people would be okay with that. But instead they trademarked “Candy”, meaning that nobody anywhere is ever allowed to have the word candy in their game, and then King is “obligated” to sue everyone who tries. That’s completely unreasonableThe fact that they were GRANTED trademarks on common English words is also part of the problem.. And then they trademarked “Saga” and went after completely unrelated games in unrelated genres where the claim of “market confusion” is ludicrous. They’re not trademark trolls because they’re defending their trademarks, they’re trademark trolls because they grabbed broad, overreaching trademarks and then enforced them way beyond what I think would be considered a reasonable requirement.

King has lost / given up one of these trademark fights in the US. But they’re still holding onto it abroad. Here’s hoping they either clean up their act or get spanked in court.

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

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