Not in real life, of course, it’s way to slow there (Why am I not a robot yet?). But it’s something I’ve been thinking about for awhile in 4X games, and the slower-paced RTSes (i.e. those which have parallels to 4Xs rather than to speedily-resolved conflicts such as those in Command & Conquer or StarCraft).
Here’s the thing I find happens all too often, from Age of Empires to Civilization to GalCiv: I research some shiny new tech, I crank out new units that make use of it, and then by the time they get to the front line… I’ve researched something better. And I hate to throw things into the fight when I can give them a better chance at victory, so I pull them back, upgrade, send them in – and the same thing happens.
Now partly this is my own fault. I identify, quite outside of videogames, technology as being perhaps the single most important factor of human civilization; naturally this attitude transfers into games when I play them, and given how most games which involve any kind of research can be thoroughly dependent on it if you want to win, the attitude is encouraged. Better units, better buildings, new wonders, more options in general.
You thought it started with Civ? Dune II maybe? Nope, this was the first vidya with a tech tree. Though the Civilization board game by Avalon Hill was first of all, a decade prior.
But in these games, things tend to come along too fast for you to keep up with it all. This isn’t terribly accurate to real life; we might suspend production of our appliances during a war or depression or something, but once those are past, the evidence is that the public explodes with eagerness for new technologies like the radio or TV. Technologies are interlinked, often in a hugely complicated way, and games don’t come close to handling this complexity in a satisfying way. At best you’ll get a research bonus to tech X if you’ve researched tech D first. I hope that someone can put together a broader and deeper sense of technological development, one where you don’t always have control (As with SMAC’s blind research), and one where you have enough time to make use of your things before new units surpass them. This would both make development more rewarding and would probably serve to equalize things slightly, as a big tech lead would be harder to get.
Do you guys know of any games that do tech advancement in interesting ways? Do you know of games which just have insanely huge tech trees?
The other day I was derping around on Google and YouTube, and found this:
Gran Turismo this isn’t, but what impressed me about it is how video-game-esque it is, without actually being a video game. This is entirely mechanical. In fact, it uses the same basic principle as a toy I had as a kid, which was basically a plastic box with a steering wheel attached and a screen through which a printed paper racetrack would scroll, with a car-shaped silhouette projected onto it. Turning the steering wheel moved your car, and even though there was really no set goal to the “game”, I’d just sit there and play it forever because it LOOKED cool and I FELT in control of the action. Anyways, it’s a direct precursor to games like Pitstop and Pole Position.
Now, if that’s a bit underwhelming, try this on for size:
First, note that absolutely gorgeous cabinet. Then, check out that beautiful luminescent missile, which grabs your attention right off the bat. And those explosions when he hits a plane! I love this. And again, there’s nothing digital about this– it’s all electricity and mechanics. It was made by Sega in 1969, three years before Pong and certainly several more years before Missile Command or Space Invaders.
Now, speaking of Sega, I have one last thing to show you. This:
Aren’t those sound effects just haunting? And that whole blue saturation thing: it makes for some incredible atmosphere. And again, no “video” to this “game”. I haven’t the faintest clue how it works.
There is a true sense of wonder tied to these old games– there is to me, anyway. When a modern game does something amazing with graphics, it just tells me that computers and software have gotten better. When these games do something amazing with “graphics”, I don’t even KNOW what to think because I have no clue how they accomplished some of this stuff. I feel the same way about movies– these days when something awesome happens in a movie, you think “Oh yeah, computer graphics.” Thirty years ago, though, those effects guys worked some serious magic.
I’m not saying that the old games or movies are necessarily better, by any means– but I am saying that they leave me mystified and very impressed with what they accomplished. And as such, they’re pretty fun to explore.
Besides, you’ve got to have some serious respect for your roots, right?
One of my earliest posts was about Dwarf Fortress, wherein I also made mention of a game called Aurora. In the comments, Repaxan asked me to describe it, intrigued by my claims that it is significantly more complex than DF. Finally, I am bothered to do so!
Aurora is ultimately a 4X game. It is, however, to 4X games what Dwarf Fortress is to The Sims – vastly, impossibly, insanely more complex, more detailed, and more inscrutable. This is what it looks like:
It's like I'm really in 1985!
That’s the only game screen with graphics, really. Every other page, tab, screen – all the icons across the top lead to submenus and so forth – is basically an Excel page in one form or another. It is not an attractive game, indeed it is intimidatingly the opposite, even for a 4X grognard such as me.
HOWEVER! As with DF, it’s well worth struggling through the initial stages of confusion, because this game is… I don’t even know, holy crap, it’s insane. Sure, sure, lots of games let you design your ships these days, from the shiny and simplistic (GalCiv 2) to the detailed and consequential (Space Empires V), but this is on an entirely different plane. In Aurora, you research the basics needed for a component, then you design the component, then you research the component, and then you can assign it to a ship. In other games you research what amounts to ‘Shootier rooty-tooties’. In Aurora you decide on what kind of energy weapon you’re making, and then you dictate relevant factors such as the size of the laser lens you are using. THEN you research appropriate radar and firecons for your new weapons, and THEN – once you’ve also got engines, fuel, quarters, etc. etc., you stick it all on a ship.
Then you have a process nearly as complex for assigning commanders and giving orders. I’m STILL trying to figure out all the nuances of the latter, and my ships don’t always do what I’m wanting them to do. But, as with DF, the end result is astounding – a game that takes a lot of investment, but rewards it beyond your wildest dreams. Nothing else comes close, that I can think of anyway. Also, you can terraform planets however you want. I have indeed killed the Earth by stripping her entire atmosphere away, and poisoned other worlds by similar sabotages. Which is, you know. Hilarious.
The game is free, and can be picked up the forums. There’s also a Wiki but, unlike DF, I know of no equivalent of capnduck or 51ppycup making tutorials.
This is the culmination of a Civilization IV Let’s Play I’ve been doing; here are Part One and Part Two.
Where were we? Ah yes! Caesar had just declared war on me! Again!
So Caesar sends his stack at Coventry, which I’d retaken several turns prior. I’d moved most of my reinforcements out of there, due to years of peace and assuming I’d be good. Famous last words, I know. It was very quickly down to Caesar’s stack vs. one single Redcoat. Who put up a good fight, by the way, due to my huge tech advantage, but eventually Caesar nabbed it back. What happened next can probably best be described as a game of Coventry Yo-Yo, as I took it back, and then he took it back, and then I took it back again. That poor city. It’s like it’s really Poland or something!
MEANWHILE IN ARRETIUM, it’s Caesar’s trebuchets vs. a big pile of my machine guns, which I’d just finished teching and which I was now hurrying like fist of the North Star. Yeah, that didn’t go so well for him. I guess you can give him points for being plucky, or something.
So about this time everyone voted for me to be in charge of making votes and stuff. So obviously, I asked everyone if they wanted to declare war on Caesar and help a guy out. I mean, wartimes are funtimes, right? Right? …Bueller?
Chickens.
Okay, I’m alone on this one then. Which is okay, because I’ve got a little stack full of Redcoats and Artillery and Caesar is still using, like, swordsmen and stuff.
Notice he's still making trebuchets.
I’ve also got a Great General named El Cid, who apparently was a famous historical leader at some point and only moonlighted as a Final Fantasy character. Kay, sounds good.
I went and mopped up the Roman empire. Rome fell, some other cities that I can’t remember fell, and finally even my formerly peacenik fellows got in on the action and soon everyone was just eating poor Caesar up. While this was happening, I was nonchalantly building the Manhattan Project and the Apollo Program on the side. You know, just for fun.
Anyways, Caesar quickly got down to having about, oh, one city left. Which is when this happened:
And you know, I felt bad. I really did. So I made peace with him. A couple of turns later, Sitting Bull took his last city and his entire civilization was destroyed. We’ll always remember your salad, bro.
Now that the war was over, it was time to focus on more important things, like building a spaceship. Despite having the Apollo Program finished in 1928, I wasn’t quite teched up enough to start building spaceship parts yet, so in the meantime I built dozens of ICBMs, just in case. Hey, the best offense is a good defense, right?
And so the decades went on. I was still waiting for enough tech to start building my spaceship. I was starting to get antsy about it, too, knowing that with the Time Victory option enabled, my time was limited. And then this popped up onto my screen:
I looked at it. I thought about it. Caesar was gone and all of the other civs LOVED me. All I had to do was press that button and I had a Diplomatic Victory in the bag. Game over. I win.
And I thought about it… and my cursor hovered over the button…
And so the game continued, mostly uneventfully other than having to stave off other civilizations’ frequent trade offers of clams or rocks for my uranium. Finally, though, I was able to start building spaceship parts, and I started to do so, but it was just about that time that an ominous little countdown appeared in the top right-hand corner of the screen:
100 TURNS LEFT.
And you know, for a game that was ending up remarkably peaceful now that Caesar was gone, this was possibly the most nerve-wracking part of the game yet. I had 100 turns to beat the clock, build a spaceship, launch it, and land safely on a faraway planet.
Bring
It
ON.
And so I built a spaceship, piece by piece. Times were good in the Glorious English Empire by this point; cities from other countries were seceding left and right so they could join up with me, I was exploding with culture to the point that I worried I might accidentally end up with a Culture Victory, we had tech, we had Wonders coming out our ears, we had so much money that I didn’t know what to do with it, we had a huge stockpile of nukes in case anyone decided to do something funny in the last second, we had Al Gore building the Internet for us in Warwick, and that Diplomatic Victory box kept popping up and I kept declining it.
Finally, after what seemed like forever, I launched that freaking spaceship.
There are a bunch of crazies aboard; I sure hope they don't split into different ideological factions and cause issues once we land.
And then, ten turns later…
Aww yeah, it feels good to be a gangsta.
Ahhh, what a great game. I had dominated in just about every fashion: scorewise, techwise, diplomacy-wise, culture-wise (I had two cities with Legendary Culture by the end, and four of the world’s top five cities were mine), and I got the spaceship. What sort of accolades would the score screen give me? Surely I had to be somewhere up toward the top with all those historical strategic greats…
...
…oooooor I can sit around at the bottom and be Warren G. Harding, I guess. Yup, looks like the game had the last laugh.
Now what about that spaceship, you may be asking? Did they reach Alpha Centauri safely? What happened to them? Well that, my friends, is a story for another day…
So where were we? Ah yes. I was building a nice stack of rooty-tooty-point-and-shooties and a couple of catapults thrown in for good measure (that part of my tech is apparently lagging woefully behind.) And it was here that the game decided to bestow a little present upon me– this quest:
So, let’s see here. They want me to build a bunch of musketmen, and also have the Taj Mahal and be operating under the Vassalage civic.
…guess who was in the middle of building a bunch of musketmen, had just recently finished building the Taj Mahal, and had switched to Vassalage for the war?
Needless to say this quest was finished very quickly, and although I was tempted to go with the mysterious Golden Age of Muskets as my reward, I opted to go for the free upgrades.
So... what, exactly, would a "Golden Age of Muskets" entail?
So things were getting pretty interesting here, let’s see if I can give you the long and short of it: Monty is still acting suspiciously nice, Sitting Bull still has a vendetta against the world (and keeps asking me to help him kill various people, which I keep politely declining), the English people are enjoying their cultured lifestyle as I tech music, theatre, and literature for them and build them all sorts of wonders– we even got Picasso as a Great Artist, and I promptly sent him to go dump a bunch of cubism on Warwick’s unsuspecting head– oh, and Caesar has called in the cavalry.
Cute little stack there, son.
He proceeds to attack York, which actually ends up being a very close battle– too close for my own comfort. It was time to retaliate. Quickly I rounded up my little stack and took out the rest of Caesar’s, and then made for his closest city: Arretium. I took it easily, but we did sustain some losses. Alright then, England, I know I’ve been giving you music and crap and preparing you for a future of top hats and monocles and tea, but it’s time to take a little time-out tech up for some ADVANCED rooty-tooties.
So I started teching up to Rifling. I figure that once we’ve got that, we’ve got everything in the bag. Meanwhile, I’ve got enough of my stack left to retake Coventry, which I’d lost some time ago. This was right about the time that Sitting Bull decided to give me a present. See, a little while back he’d randomly won the Apostolic Palace election somehow (seriously, how did he get those votes? He’s been at war with pretty much everyone), and now, he decided to use this power to initiate a vote to get everybody to declare war on Caesar, whether they wanted to or not.
"War on the Infidels" - sounds like a metal band or something.
So Monty is at war with Caesar, Sitting Bull is at war with Caesar for the second or third time this game already, and I’m on my way to retake Coventry with my little stack. Caesar’s no slouch, though: he’s got units and new armies running all over the place and sniping at my poor little musketmen from afar, picking them off one by one. Still, despite being a bit of a tough fight, we came out of it victorious.
Also, the veterans had promotions coming out their EARS.
Now that I had two towns from Caesar, I figured it was about time to call it good and bunker down a bit and get some upgrades going. See, this is about the period of time when England’s special units really come into play, with those Stock Exchanges acting like a bank on steroids, and with Rifling giving you access to Redcoats, which… well, aside from being an upgraded version of a Riflemen, have got some seriously sexy uniforms.
I'd hit it. And not even with a pitchfork!
So, Caesar and I made peace. It was pretty cool. There were some kerfuffles elsewhere on the world, between the other Civs, but I was content to sit around and build and tech and upgrade for a while and switch to the Emancipation civic just to make everyone mad (for those who are not aware, once someone in the game switches to Emancipation, ALL populaces in the game get angry about not having it until they have it, too. So if you’ve got it first, it’s unbelievably hilarious.)
You know those silly Let’s Plays and Action Reports that people who are funnier than I am are usually really good at writing? Where someone will detail their game, play-by-play, and somehow it’s nearly as enjoyable as playing the game itself? Yeah. I’ve always enjoyed those, and so decided to try my hand at one myself. This is potentially a disastrous idea partially because I doubt I am funny enough to pull it off, and partially because I’m sure I’ll end up being thoroughly embarrassed either by a game where I randomly get slaughtered, or worse, a boring game where absolutely nothing happens. But hey, it might be worth a shot, right? And if all else fails I can always just… NOT publish this post, right? Or at least not make anymore?
So. My inaugural game of choice is Civilization IV. Because I’ve played it long enough by now that I at least have an inkling of what I’m doing and thus am less likely to fail miserably in a public and most embarrassing fashion. That’s the plan, at least. (Watch now as everything goes wrong.)
It's like I can really hear the theme song playing! (Maybe because it's playing in the background as I write this.)
GAME RULES: Five civs, on a standard size map, for elbow room. All victory possibilities enabled, to spice things up (usually I disable all the “lame” victories like Cultural or Time.) I’m playing as Churchill, who is quite possibly my favorite civ. Not just because you get to play as Churchill, which is pretty great, but also because man, those unique units/buildings and those freaking traits. The only downside is his lack of Creative and thus lack of serious amounts of fun with borders, but I’ll live. Barbarians on; come at me bros. No tech brokering, though, and no vassal states, because those are cheap. Choose religions is on, just for fun.
LET’S DO THIS.
ALL DOSE POIPLE. ALL DOSE RESOURCES.
So first thing’s first: awesome starting area and they were even nice enough to put my Settler on a hill for me. And to top it off: a goody hut right off the bat with another Settler, allowing me to go plop down a second base right away! Surely things can’t get better, can they?
…they can. Stone. One tile outside of my new base.
Okay, guys, let’s stop and I’m going to tell you about typcial my Civ IV strategy. It goes something like this: Beeline for the Pyramids, which is a wonder that opens up a bunch of civics that you usually wouldn’t get until later in the game, and also increases your chances of getting Great Engineers, who can speed up buildings and also research tech for you. Once you start getting Great Engies, you can quickly build more things that give you MORE Great Engies and this is how I usually end up with a big ol’ tech lead and often a cultural lead as well (have I mentioned that I’m a Wonders whore?) Snagging the Pyramids first is crucial for this, and while I can usually pull it off, having stone early on seals the deal.
So, happily, I started building things up to snag me some of that delicious stone.
Then… then we get to turn 11. “Christianity has been founded in a distant land.” Well crap. This is usually a bad sign. The civs who jump for that religion tend to be, ah, how shall we put it? A bit zealous? Overly fanatical? Nah, still not quite the words I’m looking for. How about… completely and utterly insane? That sounds about right. (Meanwhile, Judaism has been founded in York. I’d add something to that statement, but it’s pretty funny as is, honestly.)
Alright, let’s scout around and see what we’ve got, then. Sitting Bull. He always seems to hate me for some reason that I can’t put my finger on, but on the same token he usually doesn’t attack unless provoked and just sits there in the corner silently hating you, so I think I’ll live. Julius Caesar. Invited me in for salad. Bro potential. Suleiman. He tends to stick to himself and avoid everyone. Not bad.
…
…
Montezuma's default state.
…aaaaand Monty. And he’s already mad. This is gonna be a fun game.
So there we are. I’m ignoring everyone for now, though, since I’m just buzzing away here in jolly old England– I’ve hooked the stone up to my two cities and am going to have both the Pyramids and Stonehenge about fifty turns into the game. Just to spite everyone else, I queue up the Great Wall next and have it done before we even hit turn sixty.
That was fast.
Things continued to go really well. My next project was to queue up some scouts and figure out where the ocean is, because the Great Landlocked Nation of England is just not gonna fly. So I went ahead and did that. The ocean is, as it turns out, not too far away– on the other side of a random desert, but eh, I’ll live. I founded a new city over there and continued plugging away. I snagged the Oracle within seconds of queuing it up and thus got my free tech. London celebrated We Love the Prime Minister Day in freaking 1240 BC. I got a Great Spy which I promptly sent up to our pal Monty. Sitting Bull converted to my religion. I was building wonders in mere handfuls of turns. And to top it all off:
Yeah, you jelly.
Yup. Tesla. Not that it makes any difference beyond being a randomly generated name for your Great Engy, but come on, it’s FREAKING TESLA. I always consider it a bit of a good luck sign when I get one of my favorite historical boyfriends.
Life in England was pretty blissful for a while until London got mad at me for their city being too overcrowded, so I did what any caring and just Prime Minister would do. I sacrificed several thousands of my citizens to build The Hanging Gardens. Hey, they didn’t complain about overcrowding after that. And then it was back to building and teching.
Now by this point, the world was pretty clearly split into two religions. You had Sitting Bull and I sitting around being Jewish, and then everyone else was Christian. So far, no conflicts… yet. With something like this, though, it’s bound to happen (have you seen Fiddler on the Roof?) so just in case, I made some extra archers in each of my cities.
After that things started to go terribly smoothly– too smoothly, for a game with Montezuma involved. Nothing really exciting happened… some Barbarians showed up and then turned around and left; I did some trades; I got some wonders; I got Great People up the wazoo; and I snagged Liberalism (and thus another free tech) in 980 AD, which is pretty darn early by most standards. Score-wise, I was leading by an insanely silly margin at this point: I was close to tripling everyone else. That stone at the beginning of the game really went a long ways.
Just look at all those delicious techs along the top there. Mmmmmm.
SO THERE I WAS. It was 1000 AD and the people of England had Universal Suffrage, Free Speech, and Free Religion. And, um, Slavery. But hey, you can’t have it all, right?
I started to get a little worried. Was this game really going to be this easy and boring? Was nothing going to happen? Would I end up winning some sort of Diplomatic victory before the second half of the game? Would this be the most boring blog post I’ve written thus far?
I shouldn’t have feared: Caesar declared war on Sitting Bull. And then promptly turned around and told me to give him techs, or suffer the consequences. Now this pleased neither Pike nor Gaga, and honestly I was itching for something to happen at this point, so I told him where to stick it. So Caesar declared on me. Excellent. Suleiman turned around and declared on Sitting Bull. Finally things were starting to pick up a little! Wunderbar.
Caesar then proceeded to toss a big ol’ stack at Coventry, my newest city and one which happened to be sitting right on the Roman borders. I sort of expected I was going to lose it as collateral damage when I told Caesar where to go, and lose it I did. No big deal; there was nothing important in that city anyway. Instead, I just focused on bulking up defense in other, more important cities. This was easy to accomplish: I could build pretty much anything in London in a turn or two.
Things continued to get interesting. Caesar derped around for a bit– not sure what his plans were, but he certainly didn’t seem to be a threat anymore after taking Coventry. While he tried to decide what to do with his handful of horse archers and chariots I idly started researching a little tech you may have heard of.
*whistles innocently*
Sitting Bull then showed up begging for help in his crusade against… well, the world, apparently, since as it turns out he’s the worst enemy of literally everyone in the game at this point. I considered this for a minute, and realized I could probably handle it, but I wanted to put it off just a bit longer while I teched rooty tooty point-and-shooties, as we call them here in Churchill’s Glorious Republic.
Meanwhile, Caesar’s anemic army had decided to show up again and was now marching around in my territory, generally making a big fancy show and not doing any damage at all before finally turning around and leaving, but not before destroying a farm in a rather petulant display, presumably just to scare me.
The disturbingly quiet Monty finally started showing his face around this time as well, asking me for favors and techs. Feeling rather full of myself, I decline most of them. He’s getting slightly cross, I think.
Meanwhile, our buddy Julius has (finally) gotten himself another big ol’ army and sends it right at York. His entire stack is promptly destroyed by my longbowmen, and I’m cooking up a little present of my own: a stack full of musketmen.
By this point, international relations all around are continuing to decline. Sitting Bull hates everyone but me, and our own tentative pact is pretty thin. Monty isn’t happy with me because… well, he’s Monty and to top it off I’ve been a jerk to him this entire time, just to taunt him. Even the normally laid-back Suleiman is starting to get annoyed. And Caesar, well…
...somebody's mad at me.
He’s not too happy either.
What’s going to happen next? Total Global English Domination (it’s like it’s really real life in the Victorian era!)? Everyone else turning on me? Monty building up a surprise army that he’s been hiding from me this entire time? Englishmen everywhere renaming Caesar Salad to Liberty Lettuce?
I’ve messed around with it before, but I was never able to give it the full amount of attention it really deserved. Partially because it liked to crash at inopportune moments (guess that’s what happens when you’re playing a 12 year old game, though), and partially because there always seemed to be other games that were competing for my attention. So all my attempts at the game mostly involved me derping around and never getting to finish an entire game because it would crash or I’d get distracted or something. Recently, though, inspired partially by a pretty neat Civ IV mod called Planetfall, I actually sat down and played an entire game and allowed myself to be swept up in the story and the atmosphere.
Oh
My
WORD
It’s like, if you threw Civilization, some of the best quotes I’ve ever heard in my life, and this insanely great science fiction story into a blender and then spiked it with the most addictive drug you can think of, you’d get SMAC.
I DON’T EVEN KNOW
Guys. Just. Okay. First, I’m going to talk about the characters. They get mad. Easily. A lot easier than they do in, say, Civ IV. They’ll come after you if you so much as look at them funny, unless you manage to appease them with a tech or something, and who wants to do that?
So you’re fighting a lot.
While you’re doing this, you’re also trying to deal with the native life on Planet. Which is incredibly deadly and has this backstory that will send chills up your spine.
Then, Planet starts talking to you.
(Planet is basically GLaDoS before GLaDoS existed, by the way. In that Planet has this bizarre and thoroughly great way of talking and says things that will make you giggle for minutes.)
So you’re trying to figure out this mystery, and you’re still fighting this war and trying to manage your bases and trying to tech and trying to deal with the native life (although you can start using the native life to your advantage if you get on good terms with Planet), and then spoilers happen and more spoilers happen and pretty soon you’re on your way to transcending mere mortal humanity.
Sounds pretty great, right?
Except by this point, if you aren’t careful, you’ve got even MORE on your plate to deal with. Like your own people rioting because you didn’t manage them correctly. Like your enemies flinging around missiles that actually permanently destroy portions of the map. Like rising oceans that will wipe out your carefully tended bases without a single warning. Like everyone racing you to become one with Planet.
I DON’T EVEN KNOW
Has a video game ever been so tense? Has a pile of pixels on a screen ever made me grip my chair so hard? I don’t think so.
This game is far, far more obscure than it should be.
And I think it’s my new favorite. And I haven’t had a new favorite video game in at least a decade. Not because I’m stubborn. But because this is the first game I’ve played in ten years that hasn’t made me add “It’s almost as great as…” under my breath after my accolades. Games like Starcraft or Ocarina of Time were my favorites for years because, back then, they blew my mind on multiple levels and set a whole new bar for what video games could do. SMAC has done that again. I’m just disappointed that I didn’t figure this out, I dunno, in 1999 like I should have. Better late than never though, right?
My exact reaction while playing SMAC.
Also, if Sid Meier and Brian Reynolds haven’t been promoted to godhood yet then I don’t know WHAT is going on.
If we’re going to improve videogames, then we need to do something which might seem a bit counterintuitive – we need to look at games which got it wrong. Que? Don’t we need to look at what went right and emulate it? Well sure, but we also need to look at what went wrong, and why. Sometimes this is very obvious, of course, and needs very little investigation. A game with a bad control scheme is always going to suffer, for example, regardless of the rest of its merits. More interesting, perhaps, is to look at games which fall into that very broad, but very overlooked, category of “Yeah it’s not bad I guess”. Mediocre, average, adequate, the games which don’t get many people excited, don’t do anything too amazing, and you probably won’t want to buy new but when you find it cheap a couple months later, won’t necessarily be a bad purchase.
For me, Spore is a first-class example of a second-class game. It had all the ingredients for being a classic; a legendary designer, a man who has literally invented a genre; his development studio, Maxis, responsible for some all-time greats, as we have discussed on this very blog; and that video from 2005, the video, the one which got us all so ridiculously excited.
This. Looked. Awesome.
And Spore, in the end? Spore was a much less interesting game. It looked like it was going to revolve around evolution and development in a really meaningful, enjoyable sense – you would experiment to figure out what worked, you would have different things that were beneficial depending on what kind of critter you were building, all sorts of things like that. Vehicles would have utility depending on how you shaped them, and buildings might to some extent as well. None of this was true, at least not beyond the cellular stage, where placement of parts did make a difference, and gave us a taste of what we were hoping for.
Then it all came crashing down. Your creature’s strengths and weaknesses weren’t determined by the design at all, just by the stats of the body parts you acquired. Which wouldn’t have been a bad compliment to the designing by itself, but replacing it wholesale? Nope. Oh, and the huge, cohesive world which it seemed like we would have to roam and explore and hunt over, with a dynamic ecosphere? In actuality other creatures just hang out near their nests, in groups of 10-15, and do nothing beyond that. The tribal stage was much the same. Rather than the Populous-esque experience which we were hoping for, it was a very simplistic, very easy affair. Not high crimes in itself, again, but contrasted against the potential, thoroughly disappointing. This is after all Will Wright we are talking about. And how we awaited the City/Empire stage! Oh my, this was going to rock. A cross between SimCity and Civilization! Who among us hasn’t dreamed of such a thing? But alas, t’was not to be. The design by this point had become completely aesthetic. Even the cursory customization of the previous stages was essentially gone now. There were no items to add to increase your buildings’ durability, for example, or to make them produce more money, or anything like that. The city building aspect was merely a simple puzzle game, revolving around where to place buildings in the grid. The empire was hardly more developed, though at least they made the concession of having different ways to take over other cities. Did I mention that once you reach a certain point you can just hit a magic button and win the stage?
L-R: EA; Our Dreams
Then you go to space. Space, space, space. It was always billed as the top dog of the Spore stages, the thing which everything else was building up towards. So maybe it was okay. We can take it, the other stages aren’t really bad, they’re just not great, not what we were hoping for. Well clearly they spent all their time on the Space stage, making it the best it could be, right? … right? Guys?
Who is responsible for subjecting our eyes to these... horrors?
Well, it is big, at least. The space stage in Spore is massive, that can’t be denied. If only there was much to do in it. If only terraforming was an interesting and involved process that was at least somewhat different according to each world’s unique situation. If only you could go and do stuff without being called back to deal with a crisis every ten minutes. If only the design of your spaceship mattered. If only you could make choices between speed, fuel, armaments, armor, etc. If only, if only, if only. And that’s really the story of Spore – taken by itself it’s not a bad game. What is there is fun enough to play a bit of, and the designing is at least visually engaging and somewhat enjoyable, even if not consequential. But even without Maxis, without Will Wright, without that video presentation, the potential is so clear, and it falls so far short. The end result is an extraordinarily shallow experience, which has very very little replay value, in a setting which feels exactly the opposite of what was hoped for – it’s not a big dangerous world you must struggle to adapt to and overcome, it’s a world designed specifically for you to play around in. Which would be fine if there was a lot for you to DO, except the sandbox is so lacking in sand, or a bucket and spade, and I think the cat peed in the corner of it. Now I accept that hype is playing a part here, it can’t not, but that only raises the question of why they thought moving so radically away from the GDC ’05 model was a good idea. Before Spore came out everyone was going berserk over that video.
So yeah, Spore: There’s a reason I list it as my most disappointing game ever. Which again, is not to mean worst – it’s worth picking up if you come across it for a few bucks, and it’ll keep you entertained for a few hours quite happily, maybe more depending on how you take to the designing stuff. But for me, for what I was hoping for? It falls so far short I don’t even know quite how to express it. It really breaks my heart to see something with so much potential fall so far short.
The other day I acquired VVVVVV, an indie game that looks and plays similar to a Flash game, but Steam was having a special so it was only $2.50 and I’d heard good things about it so I bought it. Can’t beat a video game that costs less than a gallon of gas, right?
Though to be fair I guess that's not much of an accomplishment these days.
So anyways, this game is based around the rather gravity-defying gimmick of being able to switch between walking on the floor and walking on the ceiling. That might seem like a pretty simple gimmick, but you’d be surprised: this mechanic single-handedly turns the game from your typical retro platformer into a puzzle game that still somehow requires lightning-quick reflexes. Or you die. For the record, you die a lot in this game. Fortunately, the game designers were well aware of this, and you have unlimited lives and respawn near-instantly.
This brings me to my next point: each puzzle is neatly self-contained within either a single room, or a very small selection of rooms. So theoretically, if you have perfect reflexes, you can finish each puzzle within about five seconds. This is a delightfully evil tactic on the game designers’ parts, by the way, because the fact that you can see the end of every puzzle juuuuust out of reach, combined with unlimited lives and instant respawn on death, means that instead of getting frustrated and quitting, you’ll just keep trying, because it’s just RIGHT there and you’d might as well give it ONE MORE SHOT and then ONE MORE TRY and then JUST ONE MORE and then… yeah.
Directly after this room is the Puzzle From Hell.
Anyways, combine some seriously catchy game mechanics with some seriously catchy chiptune music, and you’ve got yourself a game that you’ll quickly lose an hour or so to. It’s not particularly big and flashy or anything, but if you’ve got thirty minutes and want to lose your mind, this game is the way to go.
Picture related: this game is like the top series there.
I’ll cut right to the chase: I really don’t care for multiplayer most of the time. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not as though I’ve sworn a vow against it or anything, I enjoy a good game of Team Fortress or Halo as much as the next person. But it’s just an aside, something that I do now and then for fun, just as every now and then I play some co-op with my good friend Barry Manilow (long story). But there’s a whole segment of gaming that seems to be almost exclusively or exclusively caught up in the multiplayer side of things. And I mean, I can grok that. Nothing better than a real human opponent (Not yet, anyway, and this doesn’t count in chess) for matching wits against – and yet I don’t care to. Which, if you’ll let me indulge my ego, isn’t to say I can’t. Back when I played Red Alert 2 I was horrendously good at it. It just doesn’t really appeal to me, and I’m not entirely sure why, but I have an inkling.
See, I'm just too cool for school (and for sayings that were in date at any point after LBJ was in office)
Here’s the thing: I like to play games my way. I like to derp around, to explore here and there, to try stupid things with weapons, to experiment with different strategies and whatnot. This is all well and good with friends, but in any game where other people are expecting me to do something productive, it just doesn’t seem to work out so well for me. I feel rather constrained by it all, and I don’t particularly like other people being dependent on me when I’m just wanting to mess around with some ridiculous glitch I’ve discovered or something. Interestingly I still like MMOs a great deal; I’ve played my share of WoW over the years, and a fair bit of EVE Online and City of Heroes too, as well as dabbling in quite a few besides. But I’m always solo in these things; I don’t want to have to worry about keeping others alive or what have you, because when I screw it up I feel really bad! Contrary to the title of this post, I don’t actually mind if others mess up unless it’s making the same mistakes repeatedly or something.
I was wondering how others feel about all this sort of thing. Do you prefer single player or multiplayer? Do you care at all? Do you worry about letting the side down to a point of excess?
