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!
I look at gaming currently and I look at gaming in the past and I just see such a big gulf in terms of how important the “big new things” are. Maybe I’m somewhat abalone in this but I just can’t work up a lot of excitement over recent developments. The iterative process of making computer hardware more powerful continues, as always, and is not used for terribly much aside from better graphics, as always. But I’m thinking specifically here about control schemes.
When I was but a lad, when there were only 151 Pokemon and arcades hadn’t quite died out yet, we were very impressed by the move to 3D and saw that it had potential. (Also screw Mario 64, Jumping Flash was the best 3D platformer ever.) But what was just as amazing was this newfangled thing called a DualShock, or more properly Analog control. We sometimes forget this today but there was a time when controllers did not have such things as analog sticks, just the D-pad and some buttons. Now it’s not like analog control itself was a new thing – heck, even Pong’s paddles probably count. Not to mention the PC joysticks and meese and trackballs, all commonplace at the time; but on consoles this was something else (If you mention the neGcon I will find you and punch you).
But Sony weren’t content with just having a new thing. No, they knew they needed something to show it off, to demonstrate why this new thing battered. They needed…
And now the true purpose of this post is revealed; Puns.
Ape Escape (Another platformer better than Mario 64 incidentally) wasn’t just a great game, and it wasn’t just a demented dose of Japan for my quaint British brain, it was a game that did – or at least convincingly pretended it did – something that you could not do without analog sticks. And that was the key. Not just selling a game that needed a DualShock controller to play, but one which showed you why you needed it, why it was a serious development that would influence games. So it did. Can you imagine a console today without analog controls? Everyone who didn’t already have it on the drawing board scrabbled to ape Sony. As for the cusomters, well, it might have cost a few squid to get the new controllers but tanks to Ape Escape it was demonstrated to be worth it.
See, this is what new motion controls have failed, and are failing, to do. They aren’t showing us what they can do that our existing schemes either outright cannot do, or can only do to a much lower standard (DooM was ported to the SNES remember, no analog there!). There are games which you can’t play without the motion controller but the few which seem to actually do anything that is both a) fundamentally new and b) fundamentally engaging. It doesn’t take a brain sturgeon to see all this! Actually, we can go back to the verboten neGcon here; it offered analog controls but who the heck even had one? Now the Wii and Kinect might be successful but that is very much more down to marketing than having an actual solid library of games backing them up. The few attempts to do something that can’t be done elsewhere, like Red Steel, just seem to consistently be macaquehanded.
Of course it’s not that these things don’t actually have some potential. Wired has covered some pretty amazing things done with the Kinect. They just aren’t getting translated into games like Ape Escape. This is a real shame because gibbon half a chance these new systems could actually be the revolutionary ones they are trouted as being; or at least be a very nice compliment to what we already have.
I’m so sorry but when the opportunity arises I can’t kelp myself, no matter how out of plaice the puns might be. I will try to keep them to a minimum but I can’t promise this will be the sole post packed to the gills with such awful puns! But I shall at least try to keep them to a minimum. Shall we agree to no fish puns on any day of the week, barramundi?
… Address all complaints to – ahem – Pike.
We're not foals. We know what the mane attraction of our blog is.
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!
We do apologize for the paucity of updates this week; Pike has had various matters of consequence to attend to (more here) whilst my Internet decided to be nonfunctional for almost a full 24 hours, then I came back online and just watched Saints Row The Third trailers until I remembered we have a blog that should probably be attended to!
Honestly I’ve not been doing much special in videogaming terms lately. I’m playing Baldur’s Gate, playing Saints Row 2, and messing around with my usual array of 4x/grand strat games. There are a couple of things that might be worth relating though!
First is that I still can’t wrap my head around how great Master of Orion 2 is. I mean I’ve heard all the hype and stuff for years, and I finally got around to playing it, and it lives up to every word. It really is that good. And it has an amazing soundtrack as well!
You may or may not have heard that Sword of the Stars 2 came out this weekend, and that the release was the very definition of a clusterfuck. Kerberos not only uploaded a beta version to Steam but, once they fixed that and had a real version up… it was no better! They’re working hard on getting it up to par, and I’m sure they will given the gulf between SotS at release and SotS today, but Kerberos + Paradox making a game was a pretty amazing recipe for disaster. I think they’re trying to top that time CCP deleted everyone’s boot.ini. Kerberos' Face When
As I said I would I’ve spent some time with Hearts of Iron 3, and I can safely say it’s really not my cup of tea. I’m not a fan at all and I feel that I have given it a fair shake now; I can see what they were aiming for but it just didn’t work out that way, sadly. Oh well, it’s not like HoI2 has gone anywhere!
But we’re moving into the busy season now, so hopefully we’ll have plenty to say over the coming weeks! And of course what we’re going to talk about is old strategy games. Funny story, when Pike and me first planned this we considered making a strategy gaming blog, but considered it too limiting. And now look at us!
Oh yes, and there was the GTAV trailer, wasn’t there? I’m blown away by the graphics and San Andreas is a great setting. I’m actually not too worried if they’re taking a serious route with it; that’s a perfectly legitimate thing for them to want to do, and R* do it very well. But I have to admit, I’m more excited for Saints Row nevertheless.
(66% of consoles have 100% of the games; #OccupyMS+Ninty)
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.
I’ve been playing a bit of GalCiv 2 lately (mostly when I want a quick break from BGT) and in the process I’m messing around with some of the component stats and techs to make it more fun for me. I’m trying to maintain the balance of course, and I’m running test games to see how it plays out. But that’s just the preface to why I was playing GalCiv 2; the real point of this post is what happened when I played GC2.
See, Stardock, who make the GalCiv games, are kind of trolls. They’re on record as saying that the percentage bonuses you are shown on-screen aren’t necessarily accurate; they don’t think such perfect knowledge is something the players should have. I don’t know exactly how large the variables are but it means that if you see something that gives you +5% morale, you might only really be getting +3%, or you might get +7%, and so on.
The other, even bigger trolly thing that they do in GC2 is with random events. Like most Strategy games there are random events of various kinds that are intended to shake things up a bit. Unlike those in, say, Civ, where you get a free promotion or one building in one city becomes more useful, the GC2 “Mega Events” can change the face of the entire galaxy. And Stardock have set it up specifically so that events will fire that cause the galaxy to descend into batshit insane chaos. Two big alliances at peace? Random event causes war. Everyone’s peaceful and not paying much attention to military? Dread Lords show up. Huge, draining war breaks out? Income is doubled. Or halved. Either way it’s pretty huge. These aren’t your daddy’s random events. For instance, last night whilst I was trying desperately to catch up with the Altarians, this happened:
Let me put a Class 28 planet in context. Earth is a class 8. Risa, from the Star Trek series, the pleasure planet? That would be about a 15. The Fantasy Planet in Futurama, where everyone’s wildest dreams come true? Maybe 18. If you go to Church every Sunday and serve God’s will in all you do, you’ll go to a Class 23 when you die. I’d never seen a Class 28. Until now.
Class 46. How did this happen? And the astute may notice it’s surrounded by other, habitable worlds. It’s rare for so many to be so clustered. What happened? What happened was the same insane random event happened twice. This event improves the Class of every uninhabited world by 12 within a certain radius. It happened twice, in two adjacent sectors. The first time it happened I was agog and immediately switched to Full Colony Mode to grab the 20-odd worlds that just went from Class 0 (Uninhabitable) to Class 12/13-ish (I was running with some very strong Planet Quality bonuses as well, which compounded all this further). It also boosted already-habitable worlds, so a Class 9 that had been of moderate priority jumped up to Class 21. And because so many of the worlds remained unsettled between the two firings of the event, a lot of worlds went from Class 0 to Class 12, then to Class 23 or so.
But that world, the Class 46, Nesro III? Well you can see it’s “Uninhabitable” and has a little symbol beside it. You need a particular tech – in this case Barren World Colonization – to actually settle it. These techs are research intensive, but the worlds tend to be of particular quality. This here world, Nesro III, must have been about a Class 22 or so to begin with. Very much worth pursuing under most circumstances, and potentially worth teching towards all by itself. Nobody could claim it because the tech was still some time away. The event fired twice, and it got up to this.
And that, fillies and gentlecolts, is how you do random events. Take note other strategy game designers! And readers, tell us about your experiences where stuff like this resulted in, shall we say, extreme outcomes!
Dear readers I have the most dreadful of confessions to make.
I’m playing Baldur’s Gate.
Why is this so horrendous?
Because this is pretty much the first time I’ve played BG. Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve had the games for years. I just… well, I sucked tremendously at them. I was hopelessly bad. Something about them just did not work in my brain and I was lucky to reach Khalid and Jahiera. I think I got to Nashkel once. Worse yet? I played actual tabletop D&D as a kid. I still remember my first adventure. I know all about hit dice and saves vs. breath and THAC0 and AC and all that stuff. But it just… it didn’t translate for me into the vidya, I guess. I am abominably small-time for not sticking with it but, thanks to this rather spiffy LP Vorgen is running over at Something Awful, I’ve finally managed to get myself into the right mindset for it. I’m actually making progress! I’ve got characters who are higher than level 1! I don’t die to individual Gibberlings who happen to stumble across my camp!
It’s pretty amazing, of course; there’s a reason the games are renowned so very thoroughly. I’m still barely anywhere in it and I’m completely engrossed. I just wish I’d managed to get my brain to understand how they were supposed to be played years ago.
Are there classics you should have played that just didn’t work out for you? Did that ever change when you tried them again? Do LPs and such help other people get into certain games like this?
This is how I react every morning when I realize I can play more BGT
Hey guys, Pike here. For today’s blog post I thought we’d try something new: this post will contain the thoughts of both myself and Mister Adequate, all in one spot! I’ll say something on a topic and then my esteemed colleague will give his own opinion. Heck, if this works out well we might do it even more in the future. For now, though, I thought we’d talk about something that is big news in the gaming world right now: Blizzcon.
I probably don’t need to inform our audience of the new World of Warcraft expansion, Mists of Pandaria, but just in case you’re an alien species who has just landed on Earth and decided to check our blog first thing, here’s a link.
Here’s our first impressions:
Pike’s Thoughts:
I think the first thing that struck me was total amusement. I’d heard the rumors of “Mists of Pandaria”, of course, but wrote it off largely because it seems like the Pandaren idea was one of those things that Blizzard never quiiiiite took seriously, to the point that they’d had the idea in the past and nixed it. (Am I the only one who remembers the Pandaren rumors flying around back before BC? Metzen’s statement that they were originally slated for BC and then replaced with Draenei did not surprise me in the slightest for that reason.)
Once the initial amusement faded away I decided that there were a lot of promising things here. The whole idea of having a neutral race that chooses its destiny at level ten is, in my mind, brilliant and long overdue and should have been done a long time ago with goblins. I love the idea of Pandaren as a race in general. I love the idea of a monk class and a brewmaster spec, and especially that dorfs can be said class/spec.
There were other things that didn’t excite me quite so much. The focus on a Horde/Alliance conflict didn’t really effect me either way, beyond Metzen’s enigmatic comparison to Warcraft 2 which caught my attention because I’m a geek like that. The idea that talent trees are essentially going away is something I’m iffy on, but I can see where they’re coming from. Pokemon Pets sounds like a fun idea on paper but in practicality it sounds like one of those things that is going to be too much of a hassle for me to bother getting into (see also: archaeology, spirit beast collecting, most holiday achievements, and all the other things WoW has introduced over the years that are great and all but which I have no interest in).
Anyways, ultimately my reaction to the expansion was roughly 50% “This sounds GREAT” and about 50% “This sounds meh/could go either way”, which, to be honest, is pretty good considering that there was really no “I HATE this” involved. That said, my overall interest in WoW remains low. As long-time readers know, my WoW playing over the past year and a half or so has been very off and on and largely dependent on whether I deem messing around on an alt for a few hours a week to be worth $15/month at any given moment. I love me some pandas, but I don’t even think they’re going to change anything for me, personally. Not when I’ve got so many other games to play!
Got all that, Spike?
Mister Adequate’s Thoughts:
M.o.P.
The funny thing about MoP is that it gets abbreviated to MoP. The other funny thing is that I actually think Pandaria is a really cool addition and I’m all for it. I was hoping they would show up in a much earlier expansion. I am definitely very excited by the fact they can choose which side to join, and I’m seriously hoping (but not at all expecting) that the “Alliance vs. Horde” thing bears some fruit because for a game called Warcraft there’s a distinct lack of, well, War.
I’m also massively excited for the new Monk class. I’ve always been a bit perplexed by their reluctance to add new classes – it’s not like the current ones have ever been balanced anyway. So it’s hugely exciting to see a new one on the way and quite honestly I think that alone will be enough to sell MoP to me.
But aside from what I outline above I’m quite a bit more pessimistic about it than Pike is. I’m not at all convinced that the pokemon angle is a sensible one, for a start. I’m not aware of all the details yet of course but I’m tremendously suspicious of the new talent changes. I’d been wanting them to return to how they used to be, and then become considerably MORE complex and in-depth, not reduced to something that’s barely an afterthought and gets introduced at Blizzcon as “Talents are gone!” The game needs to stop pandaren to customizing appearances and get back to customizing your characters as combatants. And if they do care about appearances so much, just rip off City of Heroes.
So I can’t say I’m desperately enthused about the expansion at this point. It’s got a couple of core things I really, really like, and a bunch of ancillary stuff I’m either disinterested in or downright skeptical of.
(Also if you are the aforementioned alien species can we borrow your spaceship?)
