So, I recently won NaNoWriMo by writing a 50,000 word novel in a month. Glorious, no?
You may be wondering what this has to do with video games. Well, for starters, games played a major role in my novel (everything I write is something I’m passionate about. In 2009 it was steampunk, in 2010 it was creativity, and in 2011 it was games.) But, much more importantly, my finishing up NaNo coincided nicely with three days off from work. Do you know what I am going to do for the next three days?
This.
I am going to play nonstop video games. Yes. Yes. It’s going to be glorious. I’ve already warmed up with some Civ this morning and now that I’ve sorted out some chores I’m going to launch into some delicious Space Empires IV and whatnot. I’ve got quite a backlog built up largely for similar reasons that Mister Adequate went into earlier, and of course there are classics to be played!
I was recently reading this preview for an upcoming game by Paradox, Crusader Kings II. Here’s the final paragraph of the review:
Of course there are problems in a game of this scope, when the mechanics become obscure and events make no sense. When he was five Harold invaded Scotland, forcing the Duke of Lothian to surrender his claim on Northumberland, but a month into the ceasefire he managed to usurp it back and even Harold’s babysitter doesn’t know how. So once again, the only way to really work out the game’s nuances is by sticking with it and putting in the hard graft. The hard graft though, is that much more enjoyable than in the rest of Paradox’s strategy games. We’ll see if it can still be as engaging in the long run when it’s released in February, but the preview does leave a distinct impression: it’s still a spreadsheet, but it’s a spreadsheet with a soul.
The preview’s implication, if you read the whole thing, is that this game adds a personal touch to what would otherwise be another Paradox game by focusing on people and families more than countries. This, the article states, gives the game a “soul”.
It’s an intriguing idea, and it sort of got me to wondering what gives a game this mythical quality of “soul”. Can this soul be found in other games– even games that are widely considered “spreadsheets”?
I'd play a pony spreadsheet game, for the record.
I’ve been playing Hearts of Iron 2 pretty solidly over the past few days inbetween working on my NaNoWriMo. I’ve been playing as Canada, which I find really fun to play for some reason. My main goal of the game was to turn Canada into a surprise industrial powerhouse while also providing some backup for my brothers in arms across the Atlantic.
One of the benefits you have as a player in a video game based on a historic event– in this case, World War II– is that you know when things are going to start happening and you can prepare accordingly. In this case, I was able to shuttle some troops across to France and line them all up along the Maginot Line. My hope was that maybe, if I could provide enough help, we could thwart Germany’s advance into France entirely and mess with history a bit– isn’t that the point of Paradox games, after all?
This didn’t happen. We put up quite a nasty fight but in the end the Nazis overran us. My forces retreated into one lone province, and I remember watching quite helplessly as they put up a last stand there against the Germans. And you know, for one fleeting minute there, I felt that I had failed. Not as a player. Not as a strategist. But as a leader. Suddenly, for a few brief seconds, I could see in my minds’ eye the desperate last fight of a group of soldiers facing the numberless hordes of the enemy. I thought about how a few in-game years prior I had made them say goodbye to their families and friends and sent them across the ocean to a foreign country. I wondered what they must be thinking, there in their little province surrounded by Nazis. I wondered if they thought this was the beginning of the end of the world. I wondered if someone made a stirring, spur-of-the-moment speech, inspiring them not to go down without a fight. I wondered what their last thoughts were.
I wondered all of this and then seconds later they were gone.
They weren’t “real”, per se. They were bits of computer data represented by a couple of pixels on my monitor. But they represented real events and real emotions that have happened before and will happen again, and because of that, for those few brief seconds, I found the soul in the spreadsheet.
And that is one of the many reasons why I will always love this medium.
I could tell you about its story, told at the very beginning of the game, a parody of religious tales which is certainly not the type of thing you’d find in your average video game.
I could tell you about the music, at times haunting and at times heroic, which will stay with you long after you’ve closed the game.
I could tell you about the art style, which is macabre and grotesque and not afraid to be so.
I could tell you about your character, a crying little boy who literally lobs his tears at enemies as projectiles and whose terrible life is told to you in the occasional short but effective flashback. He has no reason to live; he is unloved and unimportant, but he runs away from death anyway, for no other reason than, well… dying is scary and bad.
I could tell you about all of that in detail, but instead I’m going to tell you about the gameplay.
One of my better recent games.
This game is a masterpiece of simplicity. You run, you shoot, you explore your dungeons and you beat your bosses. This is all done extremely well, of course, but let me tell you about a few things that the game did to tweak this formula and improve it.
Firstly, in true roguelike fashion, there is permadeath. There are no lives and no continues in this game, unless you, by chance, manage to stumble upon a rare item which gives you a bonus life. But those items are few and far between. When you die in this game, you’re dead and you have to start the game over.
Secondly, the dungeons are randomly generated. No two games are alike. This goes together with the permadeath nicely because if you die, sure you lose your items and powerups, but it’s not like you have to redo a bunch of levels you’ve already done. Instead, you get to play through a whole new experience.
Thirdly, there are hundreds of little items and secrets in this game. Because your dungeons are randomly generated, you never know what items you’re going to find. All of the items do something completely different and interesting, and using them is often a surprise because you usually can’t tell what the item or powerup does just by looking at it. The game does keep track of which items you’ve found through the course of your travels, and finding all of these items (and cards, a whole different subset of items to collect) becomes this whole Pokemon-like minigame that keeps you hooked long after you may have otherwise stopped being interested.
Fourthly, the dungeon-crawling itself is just plain solid. It’s simple enough to be easy to learn and the difficulty is tweaked just enough that you’re always on your toes without feeling too overwhelmed– most of the time, anyway.
In short, this is what a 2-D action video game is supposed to be. I’m a sucker for things like the Humble Bundle or Indie Royale so I’ve played a lot of indie games lately, but this is probably the best of the lot.
You can find a pretty full-featured demo of the game on Newgrounds, and the full game is $5 on Steam. If you let the game grow on you, you won’t be disappointed.
My current job involves a good deal of multitasking and being the leader of a group of, well… underlings. I get to tell people what to do and when to do it, I get to solve problems, and I have to bring all of this together in a way that accomplishes what we need to get done in the most efficient way we can. I’m not the world’s biggest fan of this job, but I do have to rather begrudgingly admit that I’m good at it. Which is probably why I inevitably end up in similar leadership roles at whatever job I’m in.
So I amused myself the other day when I realized that there were similarities between work and my beloved strategy games. Both involve being the leader, making decisions on what to do and when to do it, and wrangling a bunch of units exactly where you want them to go. It made me wonder if maybe there was a correlation between my affinity for strategy games and the fact that, somehow, an otherwise very shy, quiet, and passive girl happens to be good at ordering people around at work amidst the daily chaos.
Fluttershy approved.
If there is a correlation, I find myself wondering if I enjoy strategy games because I’m naturally good at leadership, or if it’s the other way around and I’m good at leadership because of years of practice with games. Or maybe it’s a little bit of both. An interesting topic either way. Do any of you guys feel as though there is some overlap between your in-game skills and your real-life skills?
Guys, I’m here to tell you a story about this nasty little bugger called a Hill Gigas:
This guy.
They’re in Final Fantasy 2 and they are not pleasant customers. See, I was doing a dungeon the other day and not just one, but two of them popped up as a random encounter. Expecting your typical random fight, I started wailing on him.
A couple of turns later, two of my party members were dead and the others could hardly put a scratch on the monsters, because they’re immune to Mythril Axes or something.
It was a good ten minutes before I managed to defeat these guys. It was a battle more difficult than any boss fight in the game thus far and I used up probably about 75% of my party’s total mana, but I did it. Feeling pleased with myself, I healed up and continued through the dungeon.
About ten steps later I ran into them again.
See, these guys are a recurring enemy in this dungeon.
I had figured out a method, though. It involves casting first Blink, and then Protect on my entire party, and hoping for the best. The battles are then long and slow, but manageable.
Slowly I inched my way through the dungeon, fighting these Hill Gigas monsters left and right. When I finally got to the dungeon’s boss, a chimera, I prepped up for the fight in the same way I’d prep up for a Hill Gigas fight and was then shocked when the boss went down in about a quarter of the time it took to fight the common Hill Gigas.
Then I teleported out of the dungeon and felt grateful to be alive. What a dungeon. What a monster!
What are some deliciously difficult monsters that you’ve encountered in your gaming journeys?
Way back in the day there was a game called Robotron: 2084. I played it a little as a kid– not much, though. This game was not easy, you see. For starters it had a two-joystick control scheme, so you could move and shoot in two different directions– this was the first game to do that. Combine that with weird unworldly sounds, flashing neon lights, and gameplay that just threw you into the middle of the action without so much as a countdown or warmup period, and you can see why this game was fairly unforgiving for a younger player. (It also scared me, but that’s beside the point.)
It was widely hailed as a pretty genius game, though, and now that I’m older I’m able to see why. Not surprisingly, it has spawned several homage games and “Robotron-likes”. Voxatron is one of those games.
Voxatron is not complete. It’s not even in beta. It’s currently in alpha, and even so it’s one of the most fun games I’ve played in a while. A screenshot isn’t really going to do it justice– heck, I don’t know if a video would really do it justice, but here you go:
Basically, the game is Robotron, but with plenty of weapon powerups and 100% destructible environments. Level after level you’re fighting nonstop waves of enemies. Your objective? Survive. Just… survive. If you don’t survive, you restart the level and get to try again. You’d be surprised how many times you’re willing to try again once you really get into the game.
Oh, and there’s a level editor, too, if that’s your kind of thing.
Anyways! For an alpha, this game is extremely promising. It works natively on Windows, Mac, and Linux, and for the next six days you can pay what you want for it as a part of Humble Bundle. I highly recommend it!
Between publishing a book, writing a new book, and working, I’ve been slowly working my way through Final Fantasy II (note that I mean the original FF2, and not what was actually FF4.) Despite going into it a bit apprehensive because people had warned me about it, I’m LOVING it thus far. I’m a good few hours into it and having a blast.
Yeah, it's something like this.
I love the weapon and spell leveling system. I’ve love the keyword system, which seemed gimmicky at first but was quite ahead of its time and still works nicely once you get used to it. I love the plot, which actually reminds me a lot of the aforementioned book I published. Really the only thing I don’t like about it thus far is that the character I have dubbed my mage has basically no mana points and ethers are pricy as heck. Fortunately, she can whack a mean punch with her staff.
All in all I’m having a lot of fun so far. I’ll admit that the first hour or so of the game was a bit of a rough wake-up call if you’re coming into it directly after FF1, but if you can get past that then this game is a real gem. We’ll see if it stays that way!
I played the HECK out of this game, for the record. It was so repetitive and yet so very nerve-wracking toward the end as more and more ghosts piled up and you sat with your trembling finger poised above the keyboard, ready to jam buttons at the split second warning you got before the ghosts all combined into the Marshmallow Man.
I even got to the end a few times, although I don’t think I ever quite beat it. Screw you, Marshmallow Man and your terrible hit detection. Screw you.
As I’ve mentioned before, I recently decided to marathon as many Final Fantasy games as I could. FF1 was my kickoff game, and yesterday I defeated Chaos and saved the world.
To say that it was the most fun I’ve had playing a retro game in months would not be accurate– that title goes to Sonic the Hedgehog 2. FF1 was, however, still a good deal of fun. Grindy and occasionally frustrating fun– this is an oldschool JRPG, afterall– but fun, nonetheless.
One of the things that really surprised me about this game was the story. Most people do not think of Final Fantasy I when they think of games with good stories. And obviously, the story is pretty simplistic. But the simplicity is largely what made it solid and endearing. You really do get the sense that you’re helping to save the world here. And you grow somewhat attached to your team– characters who show absolutely no snippets of personality throughout the entire game, allowing you attach whatever personalities you wish to them.
Another thing I liked was the ending, in which the game breaks the fourth wall and points out that, you know, the Warriors of Light weren’t the only ones saving the world. YOU saved the world. Everything the heroes did in game was orchestrated by the player, thus, the player is the true hero. It’s a personal touch that you don’t see in games all that often, and I thought it was neat.
Overall, it’s easy to see how this game spawned a massively successful series of games. It’s a solid piece of video game history well worth playing at least once.
Onward to FF2! I’ve heard that this is a game that will either make or break one’s desire to continue with an FF marathon, so that’ll be interesting, but I’m quite determined.
