I don’t remember my first video game. Not because it wasn’t memorable, but because I was, quite honestly, playing them since before I can remember. They were introduced to me very early on in my life. A story I am fond of telling about this involves a scrapbook my parents kept when I was a baby. There is a segment for “Baby’s Favorite Games” which supposedly is dedicated for stories about Peekaboo and Pat-a-cake. My section details Pac-Man, Dig-Dug, Donkey Kong, and Pitstop.
Mister Adequate has a similar story– he doesn’t remember what his first game was, either!
We do have very early memories, though. A few of mine include:
Video games popping up suspiciously in dreams (and nightmares.)
Getting in trouble for saying a swear word during a particularly scary part of a game (I had no idea that it was a swear word! Also, that game was called Lunar Outpost, and it really did get scary after a while.)
My dad holding me up so I could reach the controls of a Super Mario Bros. arcade machine at a store somewhere.
Greatly enjoying a “game” about Christmas on a tiny monitor– I was very, very young for this, because we upgraded to a much bigger monitor in short order. I must have still been in diapers.
Staying indoors during recess of Kindergarden year so I could play Word Munchers on a green-screen IBM. I also merrily did this to occupy myself during a Parent-Teacher Conference, and I overheard my teacher remarking to my parents that I was the class’s “computer whiz”– the first time I’d ever heard the term.
These are some of my earliest memories. I remember more and more as I get a little older, but picking an earliest is hard to do.
Do you remember your first game? What are some of your memories?
Okay, I’ve been thinking all day and for the life of me I can’t devise any kind of serious or worthwhile or even flippant and jejune topic for this so, lest I overtax my brain and end up in a febrile state, I shall fall back on something I presciently set up awhile ago: What are you playing this weekend?!
MEIOU Mod for EU3: Divine Wind
Angevin Empire is Best Empire!
The only major mod to be updated for Divine Wind so far, and it’s pretty great. All those new countries! In any strategy game I fetishize alternative countries and scenarios heavily (If Cascadia is available, I play Cascadia) so this pleases Gaga.
Minecraft No one man should have all dat cobblestone
Because let’s face it, I’m hopelessly addicted now.
Sword of the Stars Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.
I played this a little some considerable time ago and it didn’t click, but I’m giving it another try now because I need the 4X, and it seems to be going better.
Kaiserreich Mod for Darkest Hour Any and every chance I get!
They’re continuing to work on this thing pretty rapidly, and it’s still great.
No. No it does not. Especially when you’re me, and you love Civ and you really love robots. That’s probably why I’ve had a few people recently link a couple of articles to me.
Basically, some geeks (and I use that word with utmost respect, as I always do!) have taught an AI how to read. Not some programming language, but English. Then, to test their AI’s reading ability, they had it play Civilization II both before and after reading the game manual.
Before reading the game manual, the AI won a little less than half of the time.
After reading the game manual, the AI’s win percentage jumped up over thirty percentage points, to a nearly 80% win rate.
This is super exciting to me on a few levels. Firstly, I’m superhuge into the idea of robots and AI. I envision a future where intelligent creatures of all sorts and designs live together in harmony (I ain’t ‘fraid of no Skynet). I think it’s really exciting that an AI has been taught not just to read, but to learn from a human language.
On a slightly less scholarly level, I’d love to see something like this adapted to make better AI in games. I’ve talked before about how I’d like to see improvements to the AI in Civ; bring it on, Civ-playing robot!
So yeah. As I was saying, it really doesn’t get any better. Unless you get a robot playing SMAC. Then it could be better.
Although this would hurt the poor robot's feelings, I've no doubt. :(
Hey gang, I’d like to take a moment to show some appreciation for something underappreciated, and to springboard from that into a broader discussion.
In RPGs, you tend to go to a lot of settlements. And those settlements tend to be, well, tiny. Oftentimes they might imply a much larger population that you simply don’t get to access, but more often the entire settlement is actually incredibly tiny. The world, of course, exists only for your play experience, so why spend additional time designing and implementing redundant stuff?
Well, Summoner – an RPG that was a launch title for the PS2 – said screw that. It doesn’t have a lot of settlements, but the major one, Lenele, is truly massive.
I can’t find a map online so have this instead!
Now, when I say Lenele is big, I really do mean it’s big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way from Org to the Crossroads, but that’s just peanuts to Lenele.
It is the only city I have ever come across in a videogame which is convincingly city-sized (Aside from ones actually set IN a city, like GTA or whatever). Now to be fair it’s not incidental, it’s one of the game’s major settings and one of only a handful of settlements, but it truly is VAST and it’s so, so glorious to run around and get lost down back alleys and have no idea where the heck you are because it’s just this massive warren of streets and alleys and finding some random store tucked away in the middle of it all.
So, what cities/villages/etc. in games have impressed you for one reason or another?
Lately I’ve been playing a lot of two different games: Minecraft, and Terraria (aka 2-D Minecraft.)
I know, I know, I’ve talked before about how I don’t quite “get” this sort of game, or how I prefer SimCity or whatnot. But after several months of false starts it seems that something has finally clicked, and lately I’ll merrily spend hours listening to music while… digging. Digging.
I was practically born playing this particular game, so maybe that has something to do with it.
I’m not sure what’s gotten in to me– I’m usually off playing old strategy games, after all!– but I do have to admit: it’s remarkably easy and quite relaxing to just sit down for any length of time– from a couple of minutes to a couple of hours– and mess around in a game where there is really no point. It feeds some sort of deep-seated need in the human psyche to build and create for no other reason than to build and create.
…or maybe I really am a basement-dwelling obsessive-compulsive geek who finds satisfaction in making things perfectly symmetrical. I mean, that’s an acceptable answer too.
I’m less inclined to be political about these things and try to respect other people’s opinions, so I’m just going to be wantonly belligerent towards her! Huzzah!
Let’s go over a couple of things she brought up. Zelda. Zelda Zelda Zelda. Where to begin? I’ve played most of the Zelda games over the years and I divide them into two categories – “Why are people making any kind of fuss” and “This is very good but not to my taste”. The former is where all the 2D Zeldas fit, and the latter where the 3D ones go. Now don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against 2D (I’ll come back to this in a moment) but the thing just does not work for me at ALL in 2D. In 3D, games like OoT and WW are ones I can see the appeal of, I’ve played quite a bit of them, but they never hook me and I get bored long before the end.
When it comes to top-down adventure, in the 2D Zelda style, I have long maintained that the genre has been far, far better done and that Alundra is truly the pinnacle of the genre. And I know what a hipster I look like saying this! But it really is glorious. It has the charm, depth, clever puzzles, and all that other stuff that people ascribe to Zelda but which I have never seen in that series.
Because you've probably never heard of it
As for Sega vs. Nintendo, Pike covered it quite well. I grew up with Sega and she with Nintendo, so of course we’re going to have diverging opinions and direct our nostalgia differently. Actually, whilst I regard the Mega Drive (Genesis) and SNES as fairly equal (Though really, how good can a console without Treasure’s Gunstar Heroes and Alien Soldier actually be?), I think it was later on that Sega triumphed, because the Dreamcast was the best console ever made and it beat the crap out of all the competition combined, from BOTH generations it overlapped.
Finally, Minecraft. Well, all I will say is that Pike’s time spent would be a lot closer to mine if her shame didn’t cause her to ‘forget’ just how much of it she plays (It’s about three times as much as she admits. I know because I hear her on Skype when she’s playing it).
And she thinks Warcraft III had mediocre gameplay. I hardly need to point out how ludicrous this is.
I know, it’s hard to believe, right? Seeing as we only ever talk about the same four or five here (eheheh.)
But no, it’s true, there are a couple of games we don’t quite see eye to eye on. The Legend of Zelda series comes to mind. Ocarina of Time is one of my all-time favorites. But Mister Adequate– brace yourselves for this one– is not a fan. He’s played a good number of the Zelda games and does not “get” them. Now I can already hear the cacophony of “WHY” coming from our readerbase, but I will refrain from detail here as to let my comrade speak for himself in a future blog post, if he feels so inclined.
Another place where we frequently diverge is in older games, because I grew up a Nintendo kid and he a Sega kid. We do both see the other’s platform as a worthy rival, but trust me when I say that you do not want to start the two of us on an SNES vs. Sega Genesis “discussion”.
Or maybe you do, because the battle would be hilarious to watch.
Recently, there is Minecraft. Okay, actually, we both have a sort of weird complex where we like to pretend that we don’t play it as much as we do. At the end of the day, though, we have to admit our weak spot for the infamous game of blocks, and Mister Adequate has clocked so much more time into this game than I have that it’s silly. And also not open for debate. Sorry, sweetie! (Yes, I poke fun of him for this.)
So yes. We do, actually, diverge on opinions for a handful of games. Scary, no?
Listen to this while reading and prepare yourself for a fairly shallow bout of sheer enthusiasm about a game I like.
If you’ve heard much about Alpha Protocol, an espionage-based RPG from Obsidian, you’ve probably heard things like “It’s okay”, “Buggy”, “Mediocre”, etc. Metacritic shows that the average hovers around 65% (Slightly higher on the PC version), and it generally has failed to inspire, as well as being confirmed not to have a sequel in the works.
You know what I have to say to that?
BULLHOCKEY
Mike Thorton knows how to blend in.
Alpha Protocol is AWESOME. It’s one of the better games I’ve played in the past few years, certainly outside my preferred Strategy genres. Yes, it is a bit rough around the edges due to time and budget constraints and yes, people have reported bugs aplenty (I haven’t encountered anything worse than a graphical glitch myself, but that’s an entirely subjective experience of course). The leveling isn’t perfectly balanced, with pistols and stealth being rather overpowered and some others falling by the wayside.
But these are minor nitpicks in a glorious game. Alpha Protocol has a great cast, a ton of missions, and everything – EVERYTHING – you do has some consequence or another. It might grant you a stat boost, or it might change the entire ending, but whatever you do it’s going to change something. You can choose to kill or spare pretty much anyone in the game, you can take different attitudes towards everyone, and you fight an 80s-obsessed Russian mobster who is coked out of his skull. Unless you do things in a different order and make friends with the right character, in which case you can just poison his cocaine and the fight goes way easier.
The depth and intricacies are amazing and well worth it by themselves, but the gameplay is still perfectly solid even if not exceptional and let me tell you, pulling off a perfect stealth run makes you feel like a total badass. So if you get the chance, don’t listen to the critics, listen to me and play it!
As you may have noticed if you’ve followed us for a little bit of time, we here at the Android’s Closet Incorporated subscribe to the theory that video games are a valid form of artistic expression. Not everyone agrees with us, of course, and that’s fine– but Mister Adequate and I are pretty heavily biased in that direction. We’re both writers, and we’d both like to think that we can recognize and appreciate a genuinely good narrative in any form. Hence why we’re big, big fans of Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri. Because not only was the gameplay solid, but the story– worthy of placement along side the best of science fiction novels– blew us away.
As it turns out, our initial assessment of the quality of the game’s story was accurate. Too accurate. SMAC’s story, you see, was a Herbert novel long before it was a game.
This one, specifically.
I didn’t know this until yesterday when I randomly ran across a reference article somewhere pointing out the game’s inspiration. At first, I thought it was an interesting little tidbit– lots of media homages other media, of course, not a big deal– but the more I read, the more I was shocked and then the more I was genuinely bothered. The game pretty much pilfered the book’s plot wholesale, even down to borrowing a couple of names. Oh, and those amazing tech quotes you get as the game progresses? Guess what book had similar quotes before every chapter? Yup. Suddenly, the game that I’d felt I could hold up as a paragon for originality and storytelling in video games was actually just taking it all from an existing novel.
My face, most of last night.
The Five Stages of Grief promptly followed:
Denial: “But… but… it was just an homage, right? They aren’t really that similar… right?”
Anger: “WHAT? How could you guys do this to me, Brian and Sid? Why didn’t you tell me!”
Bargaining: “Oh Gaming Gods, can’t I please just go back to my blissful ignorant existence beforehand? Back when SMAC’s story was the best original story in video games?”
Depression: Mostly in the form of unintelligible IMs that I sent to Mister Adequate for about an hour. And that brings us to…
Acceptance:
See, I’ve been thinking, and I’ve realized three things. Firstly, despite the many, many similarities– the game did make a few fairly notable changes to the plot, most obviously in the ending, which diverges wildly from that of the book, at least as far as I can tell (I haven’t read the book; I’m going off of Wikipedia here).
Secondly, the whole discovery did not change how captivating the game’s story was to me the first time I played.
And lastly, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the very fact that the game is so very heavily inspired by an existing work of art merely cements its status as art. I have long been a proponent of the theory that the best artists are not just the people who invent tropes, but also the ones who take existing tropes and rearrange them or retell them in a new and interesting manner. Everyone’s done it, the best authors and filmmakers have done it (note how this book also inspired the movie Avatar), and heck, I’ve done it– the book I’m currently working on pilfered so much from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea that it’s silly– so who am I to talk?
So in the end, I can live with this. What Alpha Centauri did was take the deck of cards that was an existing story, shuffle those cards around a bit, and present them to the audience through the unique prism that is video games. By doing so, they were able to bring the audience into the story in a way that a book alone couldn’t do. Shakespeare did something similar when he breathed life into old legends and had the resulting plays performed for the masses. I’m okay with that analogy.
Also, SMAC is still a damn fine game, and you guys can all expect a Let’s Play on it soon.
