{"id":18236,"date":"2013-01-02T14:36:53","date_gmt":"2013-01-02T19:36:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=18236"},"modified":"2018-06-29T03:00:09","modified_gmt":"2018-06-29T07:00:09","slug":"denouement-2012-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=18236","title":{"rendered":"D\u00e9nouement 2012: Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

splash_2012.jpg<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n

I played a lot of games this year, but I didn’t get around to reviewing all of them. Here, at the turn of the year<\/del> several days after the new year, I’ve decided to do a half-assed roundup to say all the things I should have said months ago. <\/p>\n

I don’t know if it’s fair to say that we’ve had more false-choice this year than in years past, but we are having more conversations about what choices we valued, what makes for a meaningful choice, and which games were best or worst at offering them. <\/p>\n

Damned if you do, Paragon points if you don’t…<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n

The Walking Dead, Mass Effect 3, Spec Ops: The Line, and Dishonored all incited a lot of discussion about choice. I’m getting the sense that all the bitching we were doing three years ago about wanting more freedom in games has come back around. Developers have made games that turned around and said, “Okay. What do you mean by that?”<\/p>\n

The games this year, in no particular order…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Spec Ops: The Line<\/h3>\n

Spec Ops: The Line<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n

This game was more of an artistic success than a commercial one. While some people rejected the choices you were obliged to make, I sort of saw the whole thing as an editorial<\/a>. I was okay with my character doing Bad Stuff That Was Obviously Bad, because the game was making a point and I was agreeing with it that this is bad. Specifically: Far too many shooters mix the gritty realism of today’s sociopolitical climate with a macho power fantasy, and the result is a genre that is juvenile, stupid, and occasionally reprehensible. <\/p>\n

I’m in favor of games tackling big subjects, so I really enjoyed this one. And the set design was amazing<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Mass Effect 3<\/h3>\n

Mass Effect 3<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n

After my ending deconstruction<\/a>, my Escapist column<\/a> on the Mass Effect 3 ending, my conversation with Film Crit Hulk<\/a> about plot holes, and our 12 hour let’s play<\/a> of the game where we bitched for 11 real-world hours about every way the game could possibly be said to have failed us, I really don’t have anything left to say other than this:<\/p>\n

It could have been better.<\/em><\/p>\n

Serious Sam 3<\/h3>\n

Serious Sam 3<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n

This game was a test of just how far the “But it’s satire!” excuse can go. I feel like this is a take on the Emperor’s New Clothes<\/a>. Someone has told us that this game is satire, and only stupid people will miss the satire. And so everyone plays along, not wanting to appear too dumb to get the joke.<\/p>\n

The level pacing is repetitive. The scenery is drab. The requisite chatter that drives the story forward is both bland and uninspired. Sam delivers his lines in a tone that indicates he’s telling a joke, but there aren’t any punchlines. <\/p>\n

I’ll admit I only played the first couple of hours, so I’m vulnerable to the charge of “you quit just before it got good”. So be it. There were a lot of amazing games in 2012, and the others weren’t front-loaded with a few hours of frustrating brown corridors and urban ruin. I would have rather Sam just stick to what he does best and not fool around with whatever this was supposed to be.<\/p>\n

Legend of Grimrock<\/h3>\n

Legend of Grimrock<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n

I played the original Eye of the Beholder way back in 1990 or so. I don’t remember buying it, which means I must have been playing a bootleg copy. (Note to young people: “Bootleg” was our old timey-time word for “pirated”.) On the other hand, I don’t know where I could have bootlegged it, either. Strange. Anyway: Sorry Westwood Associates<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Aside: Man, is it depressing reading those old developer pages. Westwood ran independently from 1985 to 1998. Then as Wikipedia tells us: <\/p>\n

Acquired by Electronic Arts in 1998, closed in 2003.<\/tt><\/p>\n

Sigh. I would feel better about it if EA at least seemed to be benefiting from the process. Right now they’re like a collector who buys one-of-a-kind paintings, throws them in the furnace, and then lays off 500 people because the price of furnace fuel has gone up. It’s all so stupid and pointless. <\/p><\/div>\n

ANYWAY.<\/p>\n

Back in the day, there were three color modes: <\/p>\n

    \n
  1. VGA, which featured a mind-blowing 256 total colors.\n<\/li>\n
  2. EGA, which had just 16 colors.\n<\/li>\n
  3. CGA, which had FOUR colors. And not any four colors. There were two fixed sets of colors<\/a>. The screen was either {black, cyan, magenta, white} OR {black,green,red,yellow}. Really. Both combinations were eye-searing. I always wished there had just been a third choice that was just four shades of grey. It would have done wonders for graphics.\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I was unlucky enough to be stuck in CGA mode. For reference, the screenshot above would have looked something like this:<\/p>\n

    Not quite right, but you get the idea.<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n

    That’s not perfect, and I think I loused it up when I saved as .jpg instead of png, but this should give you an idea of how the game might have looked in 1990. (Ah! I wasted my time making that. Here is actual gameplay footage of EoB running in good ol’ CGA mode<\/a>. Damn that thing was ugly. A vast majority of the screenshots you’ll find out there are in VGA mode.)<\/p>\n

    The game was a pure dungeon crawler: Push buttons, put rocks on pressure plates, run mazes, avoid traps, and find keys to open doors. You moved around from a first-person perspective, although it wasn’t a free-camera 3D kind of deal. Imagine playing Wolfenstein 3D<\/a> if you could only move exactly 1 block at a time and only turn your head exactly 90 degrees. It was… disorienting to try and grope your way around mazes when movement was instant and there was no sense of transition from one position and perspective to the next.<\/p>\n

    Despite the eye-destroying color palette and the tedious gameplay, I spent ages playing Eye of the Beholder. Bloody ages<\/em>. <\/p>\n

    The Legend of Grimrock<\/a> is pretty much the exact same gameplay, but with modern graphics. The traps, doors, monsters, and turn-based combat are all there. You are still stuck moving on a grid. (Although the camera can now move smoothly, since the world is made of real polygons and not overlapping images. This actually makes the game easier in some ways, simply by making it less visually confusing.) The modern lighting makes it possible for there to be a few new puzzles that are based around seeing light or patterns of shadows. <\/p>\n

    It’s hard to be really objective with so many years between data points, but I can’t escape the conclusion that Grimrock just had better puzzles. They were proper puzzles, and not just brute-force tests of trial-and-error or pointless maze-running. (Although Grimrock did throw in a teleporter maze, presumably for old time’s sake. I appreciate the attention to detail, but ugh<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

    This is as close as you can get to the original without going out of your way to use the stone-age tech. They didn’t “streamline” away any of the gameplay when building this thing. This is 1990 gameplay, love it or leave it. <\/p>\n

    It actually shows how much less patient I am now than when I was 18. <\/p>\n

    shamus_1990_vica.jpg<\/a><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n

    That was a long<\/em> time ago. Today I approach games differently, and I play them for different reasons.<\/p>\n

    Grimrock was fun for a while. I probably sunk 12 hours into the thing, but I don’t have that same “I can’t let this game defeat me!” mentality I had in 1990. At some point I became really fatigued with the whole experience. I had been fighting the same monsters in the same area for a long time, and I just didn’t care to do more. I felt like I needed a new dungeon motif or another nibble of story to keep me going. <\/p>\n

    I quit the game without reaching the end, and even now I don’t think I could go back. I’ve had my fill of that gameplay. Maybe in another 20 years I’ll be ready to try again.<\/p>\n

    Still, this is a wonderful old-school homage. It’s only faults are the ones it inherits from its forbears. Nicely done, and worth a look. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I played a lot of games this year, but I didn’t get around to reviewing all of them. Here, at the turn of the year several days after the new year, I’ve decided to do a half-assed roundup to say all the things I should have said months ago. I don’t know if it’s fair […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[613],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-industry-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18236","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=18236"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43121,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18236\/revisions\/43121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}