{"id":11367,"date":"2011-04-12T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-04-12T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=11367"},"modified":"2011-04-12T17:27:42","modified_gmt":"2011-04-12T22:27:42","slug":"stolen-pixels-250","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=11367","title":{"rendered":"Stolen Pixels #250: A Friendship Built with Lego"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s comic is an exploration of friendship through the lens of cooperative gameplay. Or whatever<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure what happened to the Lego series. I adored the first Lego Star Wars game. I liked a couple of the subsequent games. I was uninterested in those that followed. I am hostile towards the latest iteration<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The games are divided into chapters. Each chapter represents a part of the move, and begins with a little animated short of the scene in question. The dialog is replaced with facial expressions and The Cheat<\/a>-esque mumbling. It’s all very silly and lighthearted. A little bit of puzzling. A little bit of combat. A little bit of (generally horrible) platforming. <\/p>\n

In the original game, I think a chapter might last five or ten minutes. In the latest Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars<\/em>, I think a chapter lasts about a half an hour. I think this is the biggest part of the problem. Instead of doing a puzzle, fighting some dudes, and moving on, you end up fighting some dudes, doing a puzzle, fighting some dudes, doing the same puzzle again, fighting more dudes, then doing the puzzle while<\/em> fighting dudes, followed by another round of dudes and the fighting thereof. <\/p>\n

In the original, I’d chew through chapters quickly. Ten or fifteen minutes of fun? Sure, I can have another. And another. <\/p>\n

But in the new one, I end a half-hour \/ forty minute session tired and irritated. The game only saves at the end of a chapter, so when I get sick of a particular section I still have to push through. (If you quit mid-chapter, you keep all the knickknacks, secret items, and other stuff you gathered, but you’ll still have to start the chapter over from the beginning when you return.) There isn’t more gameplay here, just more repetition. When I beat a chapter, the last thing I want to do is commit to another one. In the original game, chapters were potato chips. Now they’re mixing bowls full of plain oatmeal. <\/p>\n

I know I’m always complaining that games are too short, but this is one case where short was just fine. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s comic is an exploration of friendship through the lens of cooperative gameplay. Or whatever. I’m not sure what happened to the Lego series. I adored the first Lego Star Wars game. I liked a couple of the subsequent games. I was uninterested in those that followed. I am hostile towards the latest iteration. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weekly-column"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11367\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}