The third Final Fantasy game, the last for the Famicom, came out in 1990. It never left Japan. The first US incarnation, a full 3D remake for the Nintendo DS, did not appear for another sixteen years. According to the idiosyncratic rules I set for myself when I started this crazy completionist thing, this is the version I was to play.
So, needless to say, I have only a small notion of what this game would have been like upon its original release. But here's how I see it:
The first Final Fantasy had very little flexibility in its character classes. If players failed to create a decently balanced party, they could screw themselves over in the later stages of the game. Final Fantasy II tried to fix this by abandoning classes altogether, and instead having each skill and attribute level up with use. As I explained in my post on that game, the concept itself was innovative, but there were significant problems with the execution, since some skills (magic in particular) were bizarrely difficult to level up. With Final Fantasy III, character classes were brought back, but this time, characters could switch classes at will, and the number of classes jumped to 23. And thus the job system was born, an innovation that is Final Fantasy III's true legacy.
This system, substantially tweaked for the remake, works pretty well. The game even gets a little puzzly, forcing you to change classes to adapt to special dungeons. For example, a couple dungeons have tiny inch-wide openings, that only allow entry after the party casts the Mini spell on itself. Since Mini reduces physical attack and defense to 1, the only way to survive is to change everyone to a magic class and move them to the back row. There aren't too many examples like this, but enough to keep things fresh. Annoyingly, the game wants to discourage experimentation as well, significantly penalizing a character's stats after changing classes for up to 10 turns. It seems to me that if the developers wanted to prevent abuse of the system, it should just limit class changes to safe areas.
So how does the story compare? Well, in the Famicom version, you play as four (probably male) ciphers, as in FF1. In the remake, however, the characters have default names, and even simple backstories. The most fun thing about FF3 for me was inverting the standard RPG archetypes. By the end of the game, the "main" character, a white-haired vagabond named Luneth, was dressed up in white, doling out healing spells. Meanwhile the "token female" Refia had become a badass ninja, slicing up the final boss with shurikens.
(Although the characters have been substantially cute-ified. I guess it's understood that the characters are teenagers, but seriously, the character models look like kids playing dress-up. Even the main villain looks a wee bit adorable. I'm not saying that's necessarily a problem. Just don't plan on taking the game very seriously.)
The plot itself is, in this reviewer's humble opinion, fairly decent. It is very much the standard quest across the world (FF2 was an outlier in this regard), but there are some pretty cool settings, and I do love the idea that corresponding to the "Warriors of Light" (a returning device from FF1), there are "Warriors of Darkness" that save the world when people bring too much light into the world. Shades of FF6 there. All of the classic summon monsters (Shiva, Ramuh, Bahamut, et. al) make their first appearance. There are THREE distinct airships, one of which with the ability to go underwater. The Chocobo Theme is 500% less annoying - seriously, listen to the FF2 version, and you'll know what I mean. Finally, moogles.
So...after playing all three 8-bit Final Fantasies (only one of which on its original system), would I recommend any of them to a general gaming audience? RPGs today have better plots and more detailed mechanics. What's the point of playing something that does neither of those things particularly well?
To answer this question, I'll start by saying that, before this crazy retrospective, I was in a bit of an RPG rut. Skyrim, as great as it is, failed to inspire in me the same pleasure that I had received from games like Morrowind, Legend of Dragoon, and yes, Final Fantasies VIII and IX (for some reason, I wasn't that into VII). These three very simple JRPGs managed to rekindle my love of RPGs, for no other reason than that they forced me to rely on my sense of adventure and strong imagination.
So for anyone out there like me who still gets a little excited about sending four under-aged warriors on a quest to save the world, yes, dust off that NES, and give Final Fantasy a try. I really do think it's worth it.
Saturday, December 14, 2013
Saturday, October 19, 2013
Zelda Runthrough: Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages
Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons are a pair of Zelda games for the Game Boy Color, developed not by Nintendo, but by a subsidiary of Capcom, and released simultaneously. The gimmick here is that the games can be played in either order. A password system (or link cable, if you felt like it) allows you to transfer progress from one game to the other. This allows you to connect the two storylines, and unlock a hidden final boss (which may or may not be a certain pig-headed fella).
The good news is that the games are fun. The developers took the basic template from Link's Awakening, and made lots of improvements. The worlds are each much larger, and filled with more characters. The dungeons are more intricate, and every bit as challenging, and the new items allow for lots of new puzzle types. To summarize, it's more and better everything. This is impressive, considering that the Game Boy Color is little more than the Game Boy with, well, color.
So it's hard to explain why I finished these games feeling so...meh. But I'll try.
One of the heavily promoted features allows you to collect rings and share them between the two games. (The developers must have been thinking about a certain other pair of connected Game Boy games, and decided that a pointless collectathon would get the kiddies excited.) However, most of the rings are earned by planting nuts all over the game world, and waiting for the trees to grow and bear fruit that may (or may not!) be a ring. Since there's no way to control what the tree produces, you'll be getting a lot of repeats and selling them to the ring merchant. Not fun. Add to that the fact that 98% of these rings only give you tiny bonuses, and you can only hold one or two at a time, and you can understand why I eventually gave up on this feature.
Okay, so maybe that's not a big deal. But here's another thing. To appeal to series fans, the games threw in loads of characters from Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, like the Mask Seller and Tinkle. There is no context for their inclusion, and they serve no purpose except to take up a screen, and be included in the massive trade sequences (an undesired holdover from Link's Awakening). In an extreme bit of laziness, the games bring back the Deku Tree as a major character in both games, renamed the (wait for it) Maku Tree.
Again, only a minor annoyance. However, these things are emblematic of a general design philosophy, one that says that a handheld Zelda game will inevitably be inferior to the console-based ones, and the only way to compensate is to pad it out with unnecessary content and fan-service. To be fair, Ocarina of Time sets the bar pretty high, and Capcom must have felt a great deal of pressure to not fuck around with the Zelda formula too much. But the genius, the miracle, of Link's Awakening, is that its developers dared themselves to make something better than Link to the Past, and largely succeeded, against all odds. The Oracle games are better in pretty much every respect than Link's Awakening, and yet they kind of feel like a cop-out.
If I sound grouchy, then it's probably because these games are also extremely long, and a bit of Zelda fatigue is inevitable.
The good news is that the games are fun. The developers took the basic template from Link's Awakening, and made lots of improvements. The worlds are each much larger, and filled with more characters. The dungeons are more intricate, and every bit as challenging, and the new items allow for lots of new puzzle types. To summarize, it's more and better everything. This is impressive, considering that the Game Boy Color is little more than the Game Boy with, well, color.
So it's hard to explain why I finished these games feeling so...meh. But I'll try.
One of the heavily promoted features allows you to collect rings and share them between the two games. (The developers must have been thinking about a certain other pair of connected Game Boy games, and decided that a pointless collectathon would get the kiddies excited.) However, most of the rings are earned by planting nuts all over the game world, and waiting for the trees to grow and bear fruit that may (or may not!) be a ring. Since there's no way to control what the tree produces, you'll be getting a lot of repeats and selling them to the ring merchant. Not fun. Add to that the fact that 98% of these rings only give you tiny bonuses, and you can only hold one or two at a time, and you can understand why I eventually gave up on this feature.
Okay, so maybe that's not a big deal. But here's another thing. To appeal to series fans, the games threw in loads of characters from Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, like the Mask Seller and Tinkle. There is no context for their inclusion, and they serve no purpose except to take up a screen, and be included in the massive trade sequences (an undesired holdover from Link's Awakening). In an extreme bit of laziness, the games bring back the Deku Tree as a major character in both games, renamed the (wait for it) Maku Tree.
Again, only a minor annoyance. However, these things are emblematic of a general design philosophy, one that says that a handheld Zelda game will inevitably be inferior to the console-based ones, and the only way to compensate is to pad it out with unnecessary content and fan-service. To be fair, Ocarina of Time sets the bar pretty high, and Capcom must have felt a great deal of pressure to not fuck around with the Zelda formula too much. But the genius, the miracle, of Link's Awakening, is that its developers dared themselves to make something better than Link to the Past, and largely succeeded, against all odds. The Oracle games are better in pretty much every respect than Link's Awakening, and yet they kind of feel like a cop-out.
If I sound grouchy, then it's probably because these games are also extremely long, and a bit of Zelda fatigue is inevitable.
Sunday, August 11, 2013
Final Fantasy II (PSX, 2003)
Final Fantasy II will be the only title in the series for which, prior to playing it, I had no preconception about. I knew, for instance, that Final Fantasy III was looked down upon, because of the reception of the 2006 DS remake. The second game I knew literally nothing about. What a rare pleasure!
After playing it, I'm not surprised to learn that it's one of the most reviled games in the series. I'm not surprised, but at the same time, my experience was far better than that of many modern reviewers. Final Fantasy II is not a great game, or even a good one, but it is a very interesting progression for the series, and certainly not as bone-crushingly difficult as one is led to believe.
I should temper these remarks by saying that I played the version that appeared in the Final Fantasy Origins compilation on the Playstation - my goal throughout the series is to play each game in the version that first appeared in the U.S. So my version has many small niceties, such as an improved interface, a world map that doesn't require squinting, and (thank you, Squaresoft!) the ability to save to memory anywhere outside of battle, a feature which, I'm not ashamed to say, I made extensive use of. The improved graphics also look gorgeous - it came out at the end of the Playstation's lifetime - although the screenshots I've seen of the Famicom version look quite good as well. However, the strange leveling system is essentially unaltered, so I know why people hate this game.
I will explain. Instead of choosing your character classes like its predecessor, Final Fantasy II has preset characters, allowing for a substantially richer story. To compensate for this, the game essentially lets you create your own classes, by having each stat level up individually upon use. So in order to create warriors, use physical weapons and let enemies wail on you. To create wizards, buy and learn spells, then use them a bunch until they level up. In theory, the system is actually very progressive - for example, it gives you an incentive to use spells frequently instead of pointlessly hoarding MP while your warriors do all the work.
However, the system appears to be either poorly tweaked, or pointlessly cruel to the player. While leveling up some stats, like HP, is natural, and paced well, leveling up magic is horrendously slow, requiring near 100 uses before gaining a level, and 6 or 7 levels before the spell becomes generally useful. If one doesn't want to spend days, if not weeks, creating a competent wizard, there is, however, a bug that lets one quickly level up all necessary spells in 90 minutes of pure unfiltered tedium. This bug was carried over into all remakes, no doubt intentionally. I only read up about the bug after a failed, late night attempt at beating the final boss, following a late-night slog through the final dungeon, with only memory saves, only to find an endboss that was far more difficult than the random monsters around him would lead you to believe. (In other words, every Final Fantasy game ever.)
The good news is that, before this point in the game, I'd had no significant difficulty with it. In part, this is because I play RPGs blind (ie FAQ-less) as much as possible. Since I spend a fair amount of time wandering, I rarely find leveling to be much of an issue. So while the gameplay is seriously flawed, it's not, in this reviewer's opinion, game-breaking, if that serves as any kind of recommendation.
If this game is to be recommended at all, it's because it gives us a chance to watch the series begin to focus on plot. Final Fantasy I gave us the simple goal of reviving the four crystals - though the world was creative and interesting, this goal never changed, apart from some last minute time travel weirdness. The second game is leagues ahead in this regard - though overall it's a simple story of empire vs. rebels, there's a lot that happens - you get sent on little missions, characters join your party (and occasionally sacrifice themselves), and generally have real personalities. And unlike almost every JRPG, this is not the story of one long journey. After each little mission, you return to the rebel's homebase, which changes as the war with the empire progresses. The idea of a game centered around a home city is one I've loved ever since Mother 3. The characters in the base say different things over time - there's even a keyword based dialogue system, which I have no idea why Square abandoned. There's also a lot of dynamism to the world - cities get destroyed. Oh, and there's chocobos.
So, even if the gameplay is a mess, at least they didn't give in and make another Final Fantasy I. It seems to me that if the situation is reversed - good, interesting gameplay but weak story - then this would be well-known as a underrated classic, akin to V or VIII. As it stands, the game is not well-remembered.
After playing it, I'm not surprised to learn that it's one of the most reviled games in the series. I'm not surprised, but at the same time, my experience was far better than that of many modern reviewers. Final Fantasy II is not a great game, or even a good one, but it is a very interesting progression for the series, and certainly not as bone-crushingly difficult as one is led to believe.
I should temper these remarks by saying that I played the version that appeared in the Final Fantasy Origins compilation on the Playstation - my goal throughout the series is to play each game in the version that first appeared in the U.S. So my version has many small niceties, such as an improved interface, a world map that doesn't require squinting, and (thank you, Squaresoft!) the ability to save to memory anywhere outside of battle, a feature which, I'm not ashamed to say, I made extensive use of. The improved graphics also look gorgeous - it came out at the end of the Playstation's lifetime - although the screenshots I've seen of the Famicom version look quite good as well. However, the strange leveling system is essentially unaltered, so I know why people hate this game.
I will explain. Instead of choosing your character classes like its predecessor, Final Fantasy II has preset characters, allowing for a substantially richer story. To compensate for this, the game essentially lets you create your own classes, by having each stat level up individually upon use. So in order to create warriors, use physical weapons and let enemies wail on you. To create wizards, buy and learn spells, then use them a bunch until they level up. In theory, the system is actually very progressive - for example, it gives you an incentive to use spells frequently instead of pointlessly hoarding MP while your warriors do all the work.
However, the system appears to be either poorly tweaked, or pointlessly cruel to the player. While leveling up some stats, like HP, is natural, and paced well, leveling up magic is horrendously slow, requiring near 100 uses before gaining a level, and 6 or 7 levels before the spell becomes generally useful. If one doesn't want to spend days, if not weeks, creating a competent wizard, there is, however, a bug that lets one quickly level up all necessary spells in 90 minutes of pure unfiltered tedium. This bug was carried over into all remakes, no doubt intentionally. I only read up about the bug after a failed, late night attempt at beating the final boss, following a late-night slog through the final dungeon, with only memory saves, only to find an endboss that was far more difficult than the random monsters around him would lead you to believe. (In other words, every Final Fantasy game ever.)
The good news is that, before this point in the game, I'd had no significant difficulty with it. In part, this is because I play RPGs blind (ie FAQ-less) as much as possible. Since I spend a fair amount of time wandering, I rarely find leveling to be much of an issue. So while the gameplay is seriously flawed, it's not, in this reviewer's opinion, game-breaking, if that serves as any kind of recommendation.
If this game is to be recommended at all, it's because it gives us a chance to watch the series begin to focus on plot. Final Fantasy I gave us the simple goal of reviving the four crystals - though the world was creative and interesting, this goal never changed, apart from some last minute time travel weirdness. The second game is leagues ahead in this regard - though overall it's a simple story of empire vs. rebels, there's a lot that happens - you get sent on little missions, characters join your party (and occasionally sacrifice themselves), and generally have real personalities. And unlike almost every JRPG, this is not the story of one long journey. After each little mission, you return to the rebel's homebase, which changes as the war with the empire progresses. The idea of a game centered around a home city is one I've loved ever since Mother 3. The characters in the base say different things over time - there's even a keyword based dialogue system, which I have no idea why Square abandoned. There's also a lot of dynamism to the world - cities get destroyed. Oh, and there's chocobos.
So, even if the gameplay is a mess, at least they didn't give in and make another Final Fantasy I. It seems to me that if the situation is reversed - good, interesting gameplay but weak story - then this would be well-known as a underrated classic, akin to V or VIII. As it stands, the game is not well-remembered.
Saturday, August 10, 2013
Romeo and Juliet (Franco Zeffirelli, 1968)
After reading Romeo and Juliet, my high school English class watched the 1996 Baz Luhrmann adaptation. Everybody loved it, as I recall. More recently, I tried to watch it again, and couldn't get through more than 45 minutes before reaching sensory overload. Luhrmann, like Christopher Nolan, is one of those directors whose lustre has faded since I was a teenager. (The Andersons, Wes and P.T., are still among my favorites, however.) So after reading the play again, as part of my mad Shakespeare enterprise, I went looking further back, to the 1968 version, directed by Franco Zeffirelli, who previously helmed the excellent Taming of the Shrew, with Liz Taylor shrieking, and Richard Burton humming along to his own theme music.
I was not disappointed - this one is undoubtedly the best adaptation. The first thing to notice is that the leads are the right age. Romeo,16, and Juliet, just 15, put in incredibly raw performances - this should still be the go-to adaptation for high schools, and would be, if it wasn't for our society's growing discomfort with the (tame) scene of nudity. But the energy in this movie is phenomenal - especially noteworthy is the fight scenes leading to the deaths of Mercutio and Tybalt (played by a fierce young Michael York). And while many scenes are omitted, this adaptation is more accurate than Luhrmann's - Juliet doesn't get to watch Romeo die. Also, the characters are far easier to understand - Luhrmann sped up the dialogue seemingly out of impatience. Finally, these characters are just beautiful - Olivia Hussey's face looks like the young and naive version of Maria Falconetti's in Passion of Joan of Arc.
I found the play to be full of surprises, reading it a second time. Our memory tends to strip the plot to its bare essentials, but Shakespeare adds so much nuance - the joy of the Capulets preparing for a wedding that will never take place, for just one instance. We remember Romeo and Juliet as a tearjerker, but many scenes exist for no other reason than to add humor. With all the missed connections and bad timing, the play could be considered a darker version of Comedy of Errors.
Romeo and Juliet is well beloved, but has a mixed reputation among scholars. Though it has few great speeches - the "rose by any other name" bit is extremely overrated - the dialogue feels natural, and for the first time in this Shakespeare marathon, I feel like I can fully relate to these characters, born hundreds of years ago. But that's no surprise, since our entire concept of romance was built around this play.
I was not disappointed - this one is undoubtedly the best adaptation. The first thing to notice is that the leads are the right age. Romeo,16, and Juliet, just 15, put in incredibly raw performances - this should still be the go-to adaptation for high schools, and would be, if it wasn't for our society's growing discomfort with the (tame) scene of nudity. But the energy in this movie is phenomenal - especially noteworthy is the fight scenes leading to the deaths of Mercutio and Tybalt (played by a fierce young Michael York). And while many scenes are omitted, this adaptation is more accurate than Luhrmann's - Juliet doesn't get to watch Romeo die. Also, the characters are far easier to understand - Luhrmann sped up the dialogue seemingly out of impatience. Finally, these characters are just beautiful - Olivia Hussey's face looks like the young and naive version of Maria Falconetti's in Passion of Joan of Arc.
I found the play to be full of surprises, reading it a second time. Our memory tends to strip the plot to its bare essentials, but Shakespeare adds so much nuance - the joy of the Capulets preparing for a wedding that will never take place, for just one instance. We remember Romeo and Juliet as a tearjerker, but many scenes exist for no other reason than to add humor. With all the missed connections and bad timing, the play could be considered a darker version of Comedy of Errors.
Romeo and Juliet is well beloved, but has a mixed reputation among scholars. Though it has few great speeches - the "rose by any other name" bit is extremely overrated - the dialogue feels natural, and for the first time in this Shakespeare marathon, I feel like I can fully relate to these characters, born hundreds of years ago. But that's no surprise, since our entire concept of romance was built around this play.
Sunday, July 28, 2013
Starcross (PC, 1982) - Part 2
When I left off last time, I was entering the giant alien cylinder. After closing the airlock that I came through, I take a bold chance and take off my suit, and find that the ship has air. I find myself in a boring red hallway. No one's here to greet me. Since I was brought here intentionally, I immediately surmise that I'm being tested somehow - the puzzle outside the cylinder would seem to confirm this. I proceed to wander around the cylinder.
Since the cylinder is rotating, up is towards the center of the cylinder, and down towards the edge. There are two "levels" to the cylinder. The "outside" level is a grid of hallways that extends from one end of the cylinder to the other, and all the way around the outside. A ladder in one of the intersections leads up to the "inside" level, which is a giant terrarium, with a small forest and grasslands. The terrarium extends all the way around, which means if you look up, you can see the other side of it. Imagining this cylindrical world is one of the best features of the game - it makes a nice change from the caves which were the standard fare of text adventures up to this point, such as Colossal Cave and Zork.
From the terrarium, I look up to see giant bubbles on the fore and aft ends of the cylinder, which I had noticed from the outside of the cylinder as weel.. The bubble on the fore end is probably the bridge, but it seems completely inaccessible. If I climb an especially large tree in the forest, I come very near the center of the cylinder, where there is no gravity. From there, I can jump and float to the outside of the aft bubble, where I find a locked hatch next to a small silver hole. I should mention that the ship is full of these small colored holes, which accept small colored rods as keys, like the black rod I was given outside. In fact, almost the entire game is spent searching for these nine or so colored rods, which are scattered all over the place. There's no special order in which you find these things, and the silver one ended up being the last one I found, which was more than a little frustrating.
It turns out I have more pressing problems than getting to the aft bubble, since after 100 or so turns the air starts to get thin. This confuses me. If the ship has a leak, or the other alien races (I'll get to those in a second) breathe oxygen, than certainly it would have run out long ago. If I'm the only air-breather, then why would it run out so soon, since the cylinder is massive. Whatever. It turns out I find a room full of machines, one of which produces gases somehow. I can surmise this through a pictorial display that shows a solid block, next to a fluid level, next to a series of wavy lines in red. Solid, liquid,...gas. Part of the game is interpreting these sorts of displays, which I never had too much difficulty with. Unfortunately, the machine requires a red rod. Fortunately, the red rod is not hard to find. It's in the ship's small zoo, in the outside level.. Most of the alien animals in this zoo are long dead. A pack of grues has broken free, and settled in the dark areas of the ship. (These are a Zork reference - I'll let the reader look them up.)
The only inhabitants of the zoo are a pack of rat-ants. At least that's how the game describes them - to spare us lengthy descriptions (Infocom games are notoriously spare with descriptions - thus the classic response "You see nothing special about the treasure chest"), all of the aliens are described in reference to an Earth animal. The rat-ants have built their giant nest out of odds and ends, including a red rod. If I try to take the red rod, an ant comes out and pinch me. I quickly resort to violence, and attempt to hit, kick, and punch the nest. None of these responses work - amusingly, if I try to kick the nest, I am stopped by a bunch of ants. I must be kind of a weakling. It turns out I'm on the right track, though, only I'm supposed to throw something heavy at the nest, such as my space suit. I remember this being an issue in the Zork games as well - for some reason, the designers like the verb "throw" for violent acts, probably because it necessitates that extra object. Aaargh.
Anyways, I get the red rod, at the expense of the little creatures' homes. This doesn't bode well for my first alien contact. At least I manage to turn on the air. Actually, there's another symbol interpretation puzzle with pictures of what turns out to be molecules. If I get it wrong, then the air starts filling up with ammonia or methane. In the learn-something-every-day department, apparently methane smells like charcoal in large quantities. I always thought it was what you were smelling from a fart, but I guess that's sulfur or something else.
So then I proceed with the arduous task of finding all the colored rods, except for the one I want. This brings me into contact with the other aliens on the artifact. The cylinder has four airlocks. One of them I came in. Two of them have alien ships parked outside. The first of these is occupied by a giant talking spider. He's friendly, and tells me he's been stuck here for centuries, incredibly bored. I give him the tape library from my own ship, and he's happy as a peach. He gives me the yellow rod.
The second ship is hard to get to. It was brought here long ago by members of a weasel race, who have since increased and become primitive. One large section of the outside level is covered with a series of dirt tunnels they've built, forming an impenetrable maze (another notorious feature of Infocom games). The only way through the maze is to follow the weasel chieftain, after giving him your space suit. That seems like a bad idea, but you're stuck on the cylinder anyway - the tentacle's not letting go of your ship anytime soon. One of the colored rods is in the weasel's ship, which has been turned into a shrine. However, the weasels quickly kill you if they find you've disturbed anything. The solution - use a transporter disc you find in another room to evade the weasels after committing sacrilege. Another act of deception - you're off to a great start.
What about the fourth airlock? Well, the ship outside it was destroyed, cutting off power in that section of the cylinder. After restoring power with the yellow rod, I ventured outside the airlock (before I gave away my space suit, naturally) to find a ton of debris, and the body of a man-sized reptile. The narrator surmises that the explosion might have been caused by the pilot attempting to leave the tentacle's grip. Well, who can blame him for wanting to commit suicide, forever stuck in a place like this? He's holding onto the pink rod - fortunately, he didn't drop it, or I'd be screwed.
I find the other rods in rooms around the ship - I'll skip them, just because they're not very relevant to the plot. The silver rod I find in the barrel of a ray gun, of all things. The clue is that the gun misfires with the rod in the barrel, but I wasn't picking up on that. With that I enter the bubble on the aft end. Inside I use the white rod to make a bunch of controls appear, which I seem to be uninterested in. A black circle appears, which the game describes as ominous. If I insert the black rod, the ship immediately loses all of its power and the game ends - the black circle seems to be a self-destruct mechanism. I find it strange that the creators of the cylinder would include this option and then not label it in any way. This is just one of many strange decisions on their part.
Besides the self-destruct mechanism, there's nothing in the aft bubble to interact with, so it would seem I'm at a dead end. The only unexplored area of the ship is the fore bubble, but there's no way to climb up there. The solution is sort of ingenuous. I must climb to the center of the cylinder, outside the aft bubble, where there is zero gravity. From there I must fire the aforementioned ray gun to propel myself over to the fore bubble. Although I had figured this out, I kept dying because I hadn't climbed to the exact center - the game didn't do a good job informing me that there was a ladder on the outside of the bubble.
Upon reaching the fore bubble, I find slots for the rest of my colored rods. Fortunately, I managed to find them all beforehand, since I don't have any way of getting back (I used up all of the ray gun's energy getting here.) With these controls, I can select a destination for the cylinder, the speed of my journey, and what type of orbit I want. I send the ship to a circular orbit around Earth. After the cylinder starts on its way, a holographic movie of one of the ship's creators starts up - he hopes that one day, we might use his technology to make the journey back to meet his race. Then the game ends.
All that work, and I don't even to get to meet the alien in the end. Well, that's pretty anticlimactic.
So, how does Starcross fair among Infocom's ouevre? Not that well, really. It's quite short, and the puzzles are unimaginative and poorly designed. The story is bare, and ultimately doesn't make much sense. If the ship's purpose is to find other spacefaring aliens and give them a path back to their own planet, then why all the nonsense with the colored rods? Why is the main bridge so difficult to get to? Why does the cylinder trap approaching ships without any possibility of escape? I suppose it might be testing these races, but that seems pointlessly cruel, and even the game itself acknowledges that it came close to being completely unsuccessful - if I were to fail, there aren't any more airlocks.
However, this game was an early step for Infocom, who were trying to break free from the text adventure staple, the cave spelunker, and into something new. The setting is cool, and even if the plot has gaping holes, it's clear that the designer had tried to make something that's somewhat realistic, if not especially innovative, in the sci-fi genre. A stepping stone toward better things, if not much else.
Since the cylinder is rotating, up is towards the center of the cylinder, and down towards the edge. There are two "levels" to the cylinder. The "outside" level is a grid of hallways that extends from one end of the cylinder to the other, and all the way around the outside. A ladder in one of the intersections leads up to the "inside" level, which is a giant terrarium, with a small forest and grasslands. The terrarium extends all the way around, which means if you look up, you can see the other side of it. Imagining this cylindrical world is one of the best features of the game - it makes a nice change from the caves which were the standard fare of text adventures up to this point, such as Colossal Cave and Zork.
From the terrarium, I look up to see giant bubbles on the fore and aft ends of the cylinder, which I had noticed from the outside of the cylinder as weel.. The bubble on the fore end is probably the bridge, but it seems completely inaccessible. If I climb an especially large tree in the forest, I come very near the center of the cylinder, where there is no gravity. From there, I can jump and float to the outside of the aft bubble, where I find a locked hatch next to a small silver hole. I should mention that the ship is full of these small colored holes, which accept small colored rods as keys, like the black rod I was given outside. In fact, almost the entire game is spent searching for these nine or so colored rods, which are scattered all over the place. There's no special order in which you find these things, and the silver one ended up being the last one I found, which was more than a little frustrating.
It turns out I have more pressing problems than getting to the aft bubble, since after 100 or so turns the air starts to get thin. This confuses me. If the ship has a leak, or the other alien races (I'll get to those in a second) breathe oxygen, than certainly it would have run out long ago. If I'm the only air-breather, then why would it run out so soon, since the cylinder is massive. Whatever. It turns out I find a room full of machines, one of which produces gases somehow. I can surmise this through a pictorial display that shows a solid block, next to a fluid level, next to a series of wavy lines in red. Solid, liquid,...gas. Part of the game is interpreting these sorts of displays, which I never had too much difficulty with. Unfortunately, the machine requires a red rod. Fortunately, the red rod is not hard to find. It's in the ship's small zoo, in the outside level.. Most of the alien animals in this zoo are long dead. A pack of grues has broken free, and settled in the dark areas of the ship. (These are a Zork reference - I'll let the reader look them up.)
The only inhabitants of the zoo are a pack of rat-ants. At least that's how the game describes them - to spare us lengthy descriptions (Infocom games are notoriously spare with descriptions - thus the classic response "You see nothing special about the treasure chest"), all of the aliens are described in reference to an Earth animal. The rat-ants have built their giant nest out of odds and ends, including a red rod. If I try to take the red rod, an ant comes out and pinch me. I quickly resort to violence, and attempt to hit, kick, and punch the nest. None of these responses work - amusingly, if I try to kick the nest, I am stopped by a bunch of ants. I must be kind of a weakling. It turns out I'm on the right track, though, only I'm supposed to throw something heavy at the nest, such as my space suit. I remember this being an issue in the Zork games as well - for some reason, the designers like the verb "throw" for violent acts, probably because it necessitates that extra object. Aaargh.
Anyways, I get the red rod, at the expense of the little creatures' homes. This doesn't bode well for my first alien contact. At least I manage to turn on the air. Actually, there's another symbol interpretation puzzle with pictures of what turns out to be molecules. If I get it wrong, then the air starts filling up with ammonia or methane. In the learn-something-every-day department, apparently methane smells like charcoal in large quantities. I always thought it was what you were smelling from a fart, but I guess that's sulfur or something else.
So then I proceed with the arduous task of finding all the colored rods, except for the one I want. This brings me into contact with the other aliens on the artifact. The cylinder has four airlocks. One of them I came in. Two of them have alien ships parked outside. The first of these is occupied by a giant talking spider. He's friendly, and tells me he's been stuck here for centuries, incredibly bored. I give him the tape library from my own ship, and he's happy as a peach. He gives me the yellow rod.
The second ship is hard to get to. It was brought here long ago by members of a weasel race, who have since increased and become primitive. One large section of the outside level is covered with a series of dirt tunnels they've built, forming an impenetrable maze (another notorious feature of Infocom games). The only way through the maze is to follow the weasel chieftain, after giving him your space suit. That seems like a bad idea, but you're stuck on the cylinder anyway - the tentacle's not letting go of your ship anytime soon. One of the colored rods is in the weasel's ship, which has been turned into a shrine. However, the weasels quickly kill you if they find you've disturbed anything. The solution - use a transporter disc you find in another room to evade the weasels after committing sacrilege. Another act of deception - you're off to a great start.
What about the fourth airlock? Well, the ship outside it was destroyed, cutting off power in that section of the cylinder. After restoring power with the yellow rod, I ventured outside the airlock (before I gave away my space suit, naturally) to find a ton of debris, and the body of a man-sized reptile. The narrator surmises that the explosion might have been caused by the pilot attempting to leave the tentacle's grip. Well, who can blame him for wanting to commit suicide, forever stuck in a place like this? He's holding onto the pink rod - fortunately, he didn't drop it, or I'd be screwed.
I find the other rods in rooms around the ship - I'll skip them, just because they're not very relevant to the plot. The silver rod I find in the barrel of a ray gun, of all things. The clue is that the gun misfires with the rod in the barrel, but I wasn't picking up on that. With that I enter the bubble on the aft end. Inside I use the white rod to make a bunch of controls appear, which I seem to be uninterested in. A black circle appears, which the game describes as ominous. If I insert the black rod, the ship immediately loses all of its power and the game ends - the black circle seems to be a self-destruct mechanism. I find it strange that the creators of the cylinder would include this option and then not label it in any way. This is just one of many strange decisions on their part.
Besides the self-destruct mechanism, there's nothing in the aft bubble to interact with, so it would seem I'm at a dead end. The only unexplored area of the ship is the fore bubble, but there's no way to climb up there. The solution is sort of ingenuous. I must climb to the center of the cylinder, outside the aft bubble, where there is zero gravity. From there I must fire the aforementioned ray gun to propel myself over to the fore bubble. Although I had figured this out, I kept dying because I hadn't climbed to the exact center - the game didn't do a good job informing me that there was a ladder on the outside of the bubble.
Upon reaching the fore bubble, I find slots for the rest of my colored rods. Fortunately, I managed to find them all beforehand, since I don't have any way of getting back (I used up all of the ray gun's energy getting here.) With these controls, I can select a destination for the cylinder, the speed of my journey, and what type of orbit I want. I send the ship to a circular orbit around Earth. After the cylinder starts on its way, a holographic movie of one of the ship's creators starts up - he hopes that one day, we might use his technology to make the journey back to meet his race. Then the game ends.
All that work, and I don't even to get to meet the alien in the end. Well, that's pretty anticlimactic.
So, how does Starcross fair among Infocom's ouevre? Not that well, really. It's quite short, and the puzzles are unimaginative and poorly designed. The story is bare, and ultimately doesn't make much sense. If the ship's purpose is to find other spacefaring aliens and give them a path back to their own planet, then why all the nonsense with the colored rods? Why is the main bridge so difficult to get to? Why does the cylinder trap approaching ships without any possibility of escape? I suppose it might be testing these races, but that seems pointlessly cruel, and even the game itself acknowledges that it came close to being completely unsuccessful - if I were to fail, there aren't any more airlocks.
However, this game was an early step for Infocom, who were trying to break free from the text adventure staple, the cave spelunker, and into something new. The setting is cool, and even if the plot has gaping holes, it's clear that the designer had tried to make something that's somewhat realistic, if not especially innovative, in the sci-fi genre. A stepping stone toward better things, if not much else.
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
Starcross (PC, 1982) - Part 1
Starcross is a text adventure by Dave Lebling, the fifth released by Infocom and the second outside of the Zork trilogy, which the developer is most known for today. I'm in the midst of playing this game, and instead of waiting until I finished and writing a more conventional criticism, I thought I would take a cue from some other IF blogs I've read, and narrate, with much simplification, the game as it happens. With most types of games, this task would be either too complex or too dull, but text games, especially the early ones with their rather rote descriptions, lend themselves well to this sort of thing.
Starcross is set a century or so in the future. I play an entrepeneur who buys a small mining spaceship, in order to search the solar system for small black holes. Why the solar system contains black holes, or indeed, what anyone would do with one is not to my knowledge explained. In any case, after months of lonely searching, my mass detector goes off somewhere in the vicinity of Mars. At this point, I come up against a bit of copyright protection - in order to fly to the unidentified object, I must look up the coordinates on a map provided in the game box. In a nice touch, the coordinates I must give to the computer are spherical.
The computer (the in-game one, that is), with some sarcasm, warns me that I'll want my seatbelt on before we activate the engines - if I ignore it, it gladly starts them anyway and fatally flattens me against a bulkhead. Homicidal machine, I guess. The object, on approach, turns out to be cylindrical and clearly made by intelligent beings. I should mention that humanity has not made contact with any aliens before this point. So this would be a pretty surprising discovery - and yet, in typical Infocom fashion, the game leaves me, the player, to do the emoting, and I ride in silence to the alien ship, occasionally interrupted by another snarky comment from the computer.
As I circle around the giant cylinder, which is approximately five kilometers long and one kilometer in diameter, I notice a couple ships about my size strapped around the middle. Also part of the ship appears to have sustained some damage. There's a large bubble, possibly the bridge, on one of the ends. Eventually, a giant metal arm comes out, grabs my ship, and pulls it up against the cylinder. I take a space suit and head outside. Fortunately, I have magnetic boots - otherwise centrifugal force caused by the spinning cylinder would cause me to fly off the edge. I also have a safety line which I attach to a nearby hook, since I know the game has no qualms about killing me for stupid mistakes.
I notice a closed airlock, and some set of 9 metal "bumps" in the shape of my solar system. Apparently, the aliens want to know which planet I'm from. At first, I mistakenly press the "third bump", but that's Venus, since the first bump is the sun. I guess the aliens must already know where I'm from, since the door does not open and I am not given a second chance. After reloading and giving the correct planet, a small bump appears on the solar system at the same distance as Jupiter. My best guess is that it refers to Ceres, the asteroid where my ship was built - by the way, in the future, asteroids are colonizable. In any case, after pressing it a small black rod appears, which is apparently the key to the airlock - it opens as soon as I pick up. I untie my safety line and head inside.
Starcross is set a century or so in the future. I play an entrepeneur who buys a small mining spaceship, in order to search the solar system for small black holes. Why the solar system contains black holes, or indeed, what anyone would do with one is not to my knowledge explained. In any case, after months of lonely searching, my mass detector goes off somewhere in the vicinity of Mars. At this point, I come up against a bit of copyright protection - in order to fly to the unidentified object, I must look up the coordinates on a map provided in the game box. In a nice touch, the coordinates I must give to the computer are spherical.
The computer (the in-game one, that is), with some sarcasm, warns me that I'll want my seatbelt on before we activate the engines - if I ignore it, it gladly starts them anyway and fatally flattens me against a bulkhead. Homicidal machine, I guess. The object, on approach, turns out to be cylindrical and clearly made by intelligent beings. I should mention that humanity has not made contact with any aliens before this point. So this would be a pretty surprising discovery - and yet, in typical Infocom fashion, the game leaves me, the player, to do the emoting, and I ride in silence to the alien ship, occasionally interrupted by another snarky comment from the computer.
As I circle around the giant cylinder, which is approximately five kilometers long and one kilometer in diameter, I notice a couple ships about my size strapped around the middle. Also part of the ship appears to have sustained some damage. There's a large bubble, possibly the bridge, on one of the ends. Eventually, a giant metal arm comes out, grabs my ship, and pulls it up against the cylinder. I take a space suit and head outside. Fortunately, I have magnetic boots - otherwise centrifugal force caused by the spinning cylinder would cause me to fly off the edge. I also have a safety line which I attach to a nearby hook, since I know the game has no qualms about killing me for stupid mistakes.
I notice a closed airlock, and some set of 9 metal "bumps" in the shape of my solar system. Apparently, the aliens want to know which planet I'm from. At first, I mistakenly press the "third bump", but that's Venus, since the first bump is the sun. I guess the aliens must already know where I'm from, since the door does not open and I am not given a second chance. After reloading and giving the correct planet, a small bump appears on the solar system at the same distance as Jupiter. My best guess is that it refers to Ceres, the asteroid where my ship was built - by the way, in the future, asteroids are colonizable. In any case, after pressing it a small black rod appears, which is apparently the key to the airlock - it opens as soon as I pick up. I untie my safety line and head inside.
Thursday, June 20, 2013
Love's Labour's Lost
There are no fewer than four couples who come together in this romance. Yet Love's Labour's Lost carries a pretty dismal view of love, which is all the more ironic since the agreed-upon chronological ordering of Shakespeare's plays puts this one right before Romeo and Juliet. The plot is un-complicated - three scholars swear an oath to forgo women while they study, but fail en masse, each falling head-over-heels for one of three ladies who visit their court. Being intellectuals, they woo with language, each secretly writing poetry for their beloveds. (This is a source of comedy, but being Shakespeare, the poetry is excellent, and I'm considering using one of the sonnets for our own wedding.)
Language and its manipulators forms the real theme of this play, with lots of witty wordplay that modern readers can only appreciate at a snail's pace. As is typical with Shakespeare, much of the humor is supposed to come off as pretty bawdy - it's no surprise that these "lofty" minds are not so pure, but here the women also get their share of dirty jokes. Actually, the women seem to have a better time of it overall in this play, in contrast to the misogeny of comedies like Taming of the Shrew. One of the more fun things about Love's Labour's Lost is that the men fail entirely at impressing the ladies with cheap tricks, and end up looking like complete idiots. It's a small wonder that they aren't completely rejected, but instead are forced to hold off for a year before they can get some. In the end, it doesn't seem very likely that most of these guys will follow through with that, which makes this one of the most unromantic romances ever. (The only relationship in the play that seems like it will last begins with an unexpected pregnancy - Judd Apatow was clearly taking notes.)
Shakespeare subverts the modern ideals of love that we now trace back to Romeo and Juliet. In one of the most bizarre monologues, Berowne, who seems to me to be nearly as despicable a protagonist as Richard III, finds being in love to be a complete waste of time - according to him, the woman he loves is ugly, stupid, and probably a slut.
So in that respect the play's interesting. Unfortunately, all of the confusing wordplay keeps it from being much fun to watch in performance. Clare and I skipped the much-maligned and extremely loose Kenneth Branagh adaptation - with musical interludes, I kid you not - and resorted once again to the BBC version. They transplanted the action to an 18th century court, which actually worked quite well, since all of the witty banter is a clear predecessor to Moliere and the like. Unfortunately, it didn't rescue the play from the issues I mentioned.
Language and its manipulators forms the real theme of this play, with lots of witty wordplay that modern readers can only appreciate at a snail's pace. As is typical with Shakespeare, much of the humor is supposed to come off as pretty bawdy - it's no surprise that these "lofty" minds are not so pure, but here the women also get their share of dirty jokes. Actually, the women seem to have a better time of it overall in this play, in contrast to the misogeny of comedies like Taming of the Shrew. One of the more fun things about Love's Labour's Lost is that the men fail entirely at impressing the ladies with cheap tricks, and end up looking like complete idiots. It's a small wonder that they aren't completely rejected, but instead are forced to hold off for a year before they can get some. In the end, it doesn't seem very likely that most of these guys will follow through with that, which makes this one of the most unromantic romances ever. (The only relationship in the play that seems like it will last begins with an unexpected pregnancy - Judd Apatow was clearly taking notes.)
Shakespeare subverts the modern ideals of love that we now trace back to Romeo and Juliet. In one of the most bizarre monologues, Berowne, who seems to me to be nearly as despicable a protagonist as Richard III, finds being in love to be a complete waste of time - according to him, the woman he loves is ugly, stupid, and probably a slut.
So in that respect the play's interesting. Unfortunately, all of the confusing wordplay keeps it from being much fun to watch in performance. Clare and I skipped the much-maligned and extremely loose Kenneth Branagh adaptation - with musical interludes, I kid you not - and resorted once again to the BBC version. They transplanted the action to an 18th century court, which actually worked quite well, since all of the witty banter is a clear predecessor to Moliere and the like. Unfortunately, it didn't rescue the play from the issues I mentioned.
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
The Music of Bioshock Infinite
Shortly after the main character of Bioshock Infinite arrives in Columbia, he comes across a barbershop quartet on a floating stage, singing a slow, wonderful rendition of the Beach Boys' 1966 classic "God Only Knows". The game takes place in 1912, and the song (as well as the nearby sign advertising "Music of the Future!") is our first indication that time travel will be involved in the plot.
This is one of several "anachronistic" songs that appear in the game - songs from the late 20th century that have arranged to sound contemporary to the period. Most of these are actually pretty tough to pick out, since they blend in with the music that is supposed to be contemporary. (I say "supposed" to be, since 1912 is just before the advent of recorded music, so most of the soundtrack was written in the 20's and 30's.) CCR's "Fortunate Son" is turned into a solo gospel song, and "Tainted Love" is stripped of synthesizers and turned into a high-tempo blues.
The original Bioshock was set in 1960 - it takes place in an underwater city that isolated itself from the rest of the world some time before that, so the soundtrack features a lot of swing-era jazz - no time travel involved here. As someone who listens to a lot of music from the time period, I am somewhat conflicted about the way that the series uses these songs. On the one hand, I appreciate the effort to give the game its proper historical context, and I have to admit, if I'm going to have to listen to Bobby Darin croon "Beyond the Sea", I'd prefer to do it at the bottom of the ocean. On the other hand, the developers are counting on that chilling juxtaposition between the placid, innocent music and the terror of being spotted by a Little Sister.
The real predecessor here is of course the opening cinematic to Fallout (and its sequels), which introduces its desolate nuclear wasteland to the comforting tones of The Ink Spots' "Maybe". It's perhaps the greatest cutscene of all time (I actually slightly prefer its sequel, but I'm a huge Louis Armstrong fan). But with the Bioshock games, and Fallout 3, it's veering close to cliche, similar to the way horror movies use classical music, as emotionally moving as it can be, to evoke the apathy and cold intellect of its villains. It cheapens the impact that old music can have, and besides, it's not what I want to be reminded of every time I listen to Django Reinhardt on my iPod.
Perhaps the developers of Bioshock Infinite were sympathetic, since most of the "old-timey" songs featured in the game are not licensed, but original versions. It's worth comparing some of these doppelgangers with the real deal, just to see how difficult it us to recapture the magic of the era. For example, the rather lifeless version of "After You've Gone" that appears in the main menu doesn't hold a candle to Bessie Smith's - admittedly, it's unfair to expect it to.
What is clear is that the performers had fun recreating the warbly, nasally vocals popular among male vocalists of the period - hear the game's version of another 80's classic, "Everybody Wants to Rule the World", which is strangely fun. My own tastes run to instrumental jazz performers, but in listening to these I've had to put up with a fair number of singers of this style. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you one of the strangest of the bunch, the utterly unique Lillie Delk Christian (who would have long ago vanished into the dustbins of history, were it not for her recordings with Louis Armstrong and most of his Hot Five.
This is one of several "anachronistic" songs that appear in the game - songs from the late 20th century that have arranged to sound contemporary to the period. Most of these are actually pretty tough to pick out, since they blend in with the music that is supposed to be contemporary. (I say "supposed" to be, since 1912 is just before the advent of recorded music, so most of the soundtrack was written in the 20's and 30's.) CCR's "Fortunate Son" is turned into a solo gospel song, and "Tainted Love" is stripped of synthesizers and turned into a high-tempo blues.
The original Bioshock was set in 1960 - it takes place in an underwater city that isolated itself from the rest of the world some time before that, so the soundtrack features a lot of swing-era jazz - no time travel involved here. As someone who listens to a lot of music from the time period, I am somewhat conflicted about the way that the series uses these songs. On the one hand, I appreciate the effort to give the game its proper historical context, and I have to admit, if I'm going to have to listen to Bobby Darin croon "Beyond the Sea", I'd prefer to do it at the bottom of the ocean. On the other hand, the developers are counting on that chilling juxtaposition between the placid, innocent music and the terror of being spotted by a Little Sister.
The real predecessor here is of course the opening cinematic to Fallout (and its sequels), which introduces its desolate nuclear wasteland to the comforting tones of The Ink Spots' "Maybe". It's perhaps the greatest cutscene of all time (I actually slightly prefer its sequel, but I'm a huge Louis Armstrong fan). But with the Bioshock games, and Fallout 3, it's veering close to cliche, similar to the way horror movies use classical music, as emotionally moving as it can be, to evoke the apathy and cold intellect of its villains. It cheapens the impact that old music can have, and besides, it's not what I want to be reminded of every time I listen to Django Reinhardt on my iPod.
Perhaps the developers of Bioshock Infinite were sympathetic, since most of the "old-timey" songs featured in the game are not licensed, but original versions. It's worth comparing some of these doppelgangers with the real deal, just to see how difficult it us to recapture the magic of the era. For example, the rather lifeless version of "After You've Gone" that appears in the main menu doesn't hold a candle to Bessie Smith's - admittedly, it's unfair to expect it to.
What is clear is that the performers had fun recreating the warbly, nasally vocals popular among male vocalists of the period - hear the game's version of another 80's classic, "Everybody Wants to Rule the World", which is strangely fun. My own tastes run to instrumental jazz performers, but in listening to these I've had to put up with a fair number of singers of this style. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you one of the strangest of the bunch, the utterly unique Lillie Delk Christian (who would have long ago vanished into the dustbins of history, were it not for her recordings with Louis Armstrong and most of his Hot Five.
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
The Walking Dead (continued)
To add to (and slightly contradict) what I said a couple days ago, I thought I'd share this anecdote, part of my experience with the game. In the second-to-last episode, my group of survivors was making a quick getaway from a building full of zombies. One of the characters, whose name need not be divulged, gets in trouble, and my character Lee stops him from falling down a stairwell shaft. At this point, the game gives you the choice to drop him to save time.
Doing so would be a pretty heartless move, but the game provides some context for it. This particular character has been less than useful until now, being more of a hindrance than a help. He's well aware of this fact, and as he hangs there he actually asks you to let go of him. Also, the zombies are swarming up the stairwell, and in real life that might be incentive enough to drop the kid and run. But all this aside, it's still a pretty easy decision, and the vast majority of players saved him, as reported in the stats after the episode. Except me.
I played the game on Xbox 360, and when the game asks me whether I want to save him, I hammer on the 'yes' button. Or rather I hammer on an entirely different button, which I mistake to be the 'yes' button, but which actually does nothing. I'm an experienced gamer, but in the heat of the moment, I forgot where the X button was. When nothing happened, and the timer was about to run out (presumably indicating the zombies were about to kill me), I start to think that the game, for some crazy reason, doesn't want me to save him, and I press the 'drop him' button instead. In other words, I mistakenly, purposefully killed him.
At this point, I start to feel more than a little upset at the game, and at myself for being so stupid. Before the idea of restarting crosses my mind, I've already passed a checkpoint. The auto-save system is designed exactly to prevent re-dos, and so (probably) the only option would have been to restart the whole episode, which was nearly over at that point. I decided to keep playing, but I felt no less awful.
Other characters asked me what I was thinking, what could possibly have led me to drop him, and my only response was to remain silent, feeling shame. Lee had made a mistake. Or had he? Whenever something awful like this happens, we search our memories over and over again, wondering why we did it and trying to hide from the possibility that we meant to do it. In this case, the source of my mistake was clear to me, but Lee will never know exactly what was going through his mind.
Games occasionally allow us to make mistakes. If we don't button-mash fast enough in Metal Gear Solid, then Snake will give in to the torture and Meryl will die. But even so, we know Snake meant to save her. I would argue that no game before Walking Dead, and then only by sheer accident, has let the player express frailty of will. How a game could do this intentionally?
In my experience of Walking Dead, this was Lee's darkest hour, something he could never forgive himself for, and would not even try to justify to others. Don't get me wrong - to this day, my stomach churns just thinking about it, and I wish it hadn't happened. But it was the most crucial point in my character's development, and for me, it's one of the most emotional moments in my history with games.
The most meaningful choice in this game is the one I couldn't make correctly.
Doing so would be a pretty heartless move, but the game provides some context for it. This particular character has been less than useful until now, being more of a hindrance than a help. He's well aware of this fact, and as he hangs there he actually asks you to let go of him. Also, the zombies are swarming up the stairwell, and in real life that might be incentive enough to drop the kid and run. But all this aside, it's still a pretty easy decision, and the vast majority of players saved him, as reported in the stats after the episode. Except me.
I played the game on Xbox 360, and when the game asks me whether I want to save him, I hammer on the 'yes' button. Or rather I hammer on an entirely different button, which I mistake to be the 'yes' button, but which actually does nothing. I'm an experienced gamer, but in the heat of the moment, I forgot where the X button was. When nothing happened, and the timer was about to run out (presumably indicating the zombies were about to kill me), I start to think that the game, for some crazy reason, doesn't want me to save him, and I press the 'drop him' button instead. In other words, I mistakenly, purposefully killed him.
At this point, I start to feel more than a little upset at the game, and at myself for being so stupid. Before the idea of restarting crosses my mind, I've already passed a checkpoint. The auto-save system is designed exactly to prevent re-dos, and so (probably) the only option would have been to restart the whole episode, which was nearly over at that point. I decided to keep playing, but I felt no less awful.
Other characters asked me what I was thinking, what could possibly have led me to drop him, and my only response was to remain silent, feeling shame. Lee had made a mistake. Or had he? Whenever something awful like this happens, we search our memories over and over again, wondering why we did it and trying to hide from the possibility that we meant to do it. In this case, the source of my mistake was clear to me, but Lee will never know exactly what was going through his mind.
Games occasionally allow us to make mistakes. If we don't button-mash fast enough in Metal Gear Solid, then Snake will give in to the torture and Meryl will die. But even so, we know Snake meant to save her. I would argue that no game before Walking Dead, and then only by sheer accident, has let the player express frailty of will. How a game could do this intentionally?
In my experience of Walking Dead, this was Lee's darkest hour, something he could never forgive himself for, and would not even try to justify to others. Don't get me wrong - to this day, my stomach churns just thinking about it, and I wish it hadn't happened. But it was the most crucial point in my character's development, and for me, it's one of the most emotional moments in my history with games.
The most meaningful choice in this game is the one I couldn't make correctly.
Monday, June 10, 2013
The Walking Dead (Xbox 360, 2012)
I started reading the Walking Dead comic when I was in college, and the series was about 25 issues in. I was immediately drawn by the creator's focus on what would happen to ordinary people, forced to spend every ounce of their energy on day-to-day survival. The zombies almost seem like an afterthought at times - it becomes pretty clear early on that people have to worry far more about each other than about the undead. Six or seven years later, I'm now 107 issues in, and though the characters are much stronger, and their situation is somewhat more stable, things are still pretty much as grim as ever. Life goes on - there is no light at the end of the tunnel. I'm just as hooked as ever.
As a fan of the series, and of adventure games, you can guess that I was pretty excited about the adventure game, developed by Telltale, one of my favorite studios. And it's fair to say that the game surpassed all expectations, earning game of the year accolades from across the industry press. It certainly deserves all of its praise. So with that in mind, let's talk about how this game could have been even better.
But first, some words about what Telltale was trying to do. Many critics have expressed their surprise at the resurgence of the "classic" point-and-click* adventure game, with games like The Walking Dead. The definition of the adventure game has always been more about what isn't there and than what is, so I don't have a problem with applying the label in this case. But The Walking Dead is actually part of a very new trend, arguably starting with Quantic Dream's games, especially Heavy Rain.
I understand that Heavy Rain is not to many gamers' tastes. Like Indigo Prophecy, it's a weird mix of psychological thriller and science fiction, with many plot elements that I would not tolerate in other media. It also tries hard to maintain an intense mood all the time, and doesn't always succeed, usually because the mechanics are, well, ridiculous. But when Clare and I played it, none of that mattered. The game just worked for us, mostly because by some combination of design and chance I was never forced to restart a checkpoint, always getting through every situation on the skin of my teeth, my heart racing like crazy.
The real strength of this new type of adventure game, if we want to call it that, is pacing. Every potentially sticky part of the genre, from puzzles to exploration, is streamlined to keep the sense of momentum, in the service of maximum suspense. And I think it's the success of this approach that is going to radically change the genre, and possibly the whole games industry with it. Both of these games were suspenseful as hell.
The tremendous pacing in The Walking Dead is under-emphasized. The back-of-the-box selling point of The Walking Dead, and a focal point of many of the reviews I've read about, is choice. As I've written before, choice is overrated.
What is crucial to all games of this type, in my opinion, is the illusion of choice. This is actually what makes Heavy Rain a significant improvement over Indigo Prophecy. The earlier game, with its many Simon Says segments, feels like playing a minigame in order to continue watching a movie. In Heavy Rain, many of the mechanics are practically as silly, but the crucial difference is that the game encourages intent. You always know exactly what your character is trying to do, and in fact you've instigated this action (even if it may be the only option available), and dammit you're going to twirl your analog stick like a fool until you get him or her to do it. The Walking Dead also has similar moments of genius, where in a flash of insight (inherited from the adventure game model) you quickly find a solution to your problem, and you do what you can to carry it out. Most importantly, you don't stand around like a fool, wondering if you missed out on any content.
There are many instances of both games where I'm not sure if there were alternative approaches to my immediate problems. I'd like to think that there were, and the game is one big, open sandbox where I'm allowed to do anything I want, but I'm never going to test that hypothesis. For me, those situations are in the past, and these are not the kind of games where I enjoy testing the limits.
Where The Walking Dead runs into issues, despite its greatness, are in the capital-C "Choices" that are featured so heavily. Occasionally, the game asks you to make an important decision. A few of these are interesting thought experiments - do you try to have morals in a world where survival is paramount? (The unexpected results of one of these choices leads to one of the more far-fetched plot elements, but that's another issue entirely.) Most of these choices are somewhat obvious, at least for the type of character that I feel the game is trying to promote. And some of these are stupidly arbitrary - do I let person A or person B die? Well, obviously I would try to save them both, but the game doesn't seem to accept that option.
Even if all of these choices were interesting, we are left with the same problem that has plagued choice-based games since Knights of the Old Republic. Without really giving anything away, I'll say that there are two major paths for your character in The Walking Dead - be the guy who tries to save everyone at the expense of the whole group, or be willing to sacrifice everything to protect the one thing you care about. Whether you choose one or the other is probably a matter of personality more than anything else. However, when you allow either one, you prevent your writers and your voice actor (who's quite good, by the way) from strongly expressing the character's personality, and in the end, he's forced to become somewhat of a cipher.
Telltale tries to compensate for this by giving the main character a reason to hide his past. In the end, I didn't really connect with Lee, because I could never quite figure out how I should be playing him. (The main NPC, Clementine, is much better defined, and it's not hard to understand why she's so beloved by fans of the game.) The fundamental problem is that personalities are complex things, and I have yet to play a game that allows anything other than the most basic dichotomy. At least in this case the dichotomy is slightly more interesting than good versus evil.
That said, the game is amazing, and I'm not trying to keep you from playing it. Extremely excited about Season 2!
*The phrase 'point-and-click' at one time distinguished mouse-driven adventure games from those with a text parser. Now it appears to denote the whole genre itself, separating it from action-adventure games. This despite the fact that many adventure games are not played with a mouse, or even a cursor. How strange!
As a fan of the series, and of adventure games, you can guess that I was pretty excited about the adventure game, developed by Telltale, one of my favorite studios. And it's fair to say that the game surpassed all expectations, earning game of the year accolades from across the industry press. It certainly deserves all of its praise. So with that in mind, let's talk about how this game could have been even better.
But first, some words about what Telltale was trying to do. Many critics have expressed their surprise at the resurgence of the "classic" point-and-click* adventure game, with games like The Walking Dead. The definition of the adventure game has always been more about what isn't there and than what is, so I don't have a problem with applying the label in this case. But The Walking Dead is actually part of a very new trend, arguably starting with Quantic Dream's games, especially Heavy Rain.
I understand that Heavy Rain is not to many gamers' tastes. Like Indigo Prophecy, it's a weird mix of psychological thriller and science fiction, with many plot elements that I would not tolerate in other media. It also tries hard to maintain an intense mood all the time, and doesn't always succeed, usually because the mechanics are, well, ridiculous. But when Clare and I played it, none of that mattered. The game just worked for us, mostly because by some combination of design and chance I was never forced to restart a checkpoint, always getting through every situation on the skin of my teeth, my heart racing like crazy.
The real strength of this new type of adventure game, if we want to call it that, is pacing. Every potentially sticky part of the genre, from puzzles to exploration, is streamlined to keep the sense of momentum, in the service of maximum suspense. And I think it's the success of this approach that is going to radically change the genre, and possibly the whole games industry with it. Both of these games were suspenseful as hell.
The tremendous pacing in The Walking Dead is under-emphasized. The back-of-the-box selling point of The Walking Dead, and a focal point of many of the reviews I've read about, is choice. As I've written before, choice is overrated.
What is crucial to all games of this type, in my opinion, is the illusion of choice. This is actually what makes Heavy Rain a significant improvement over Indigo Prophecy. The earlier game, with its many Simon Says segments, feels like playing a minigame in order to continue watching a movie. In Heavy Rain, many of the mechanics are practically as silly, but the crucial difference is that the game encourages intent. You always know exactly what your character is trying to do, and in fact you've instigated this action (even if it may be the only option available), and dammit you're going to twirl your analog stick like a fool until you get him or her to do it. The Walking Dead also has similar moments of genius, where in a flash of insight (inherited from the adventure game model) you quickly find a solution to your problem, and you do what you can to carry it out. Most importantly, you don't stand around like a fool, wondering if you missed out on any content.
There are many instances of both games where I'm not sure if there were alternative approaches to my immediate problems. I'd like to think that there were, and the game is one big, open sandbox where I'm allowed to do anything I want, but I'm never going to test that hypothesis. For me, those situations are in the past, and these are not the kind of games where I enjoy testing the limits.
Where The Walking Dead runs into issues, despite its greatness, are in the capital-C "Choices" that are featured so heavily. Occasionally, the game asks you to make an important decision. A few of these are interesting thought experiments - do you try to have morals in a world where survival is paramount? (The unexpected results of one of these choices leads to one of the more far-fetched plot elements, but that's another issue entirely.) Most of these choices are somewhat obvious, at least for the type of character that I feel the game is trying to promote. And some of these are stupidly arbitrary - do I let person A or person B die? Well, obviously I would try to save them both, but the game doesn't seem to accept that option.
Even if all of these choices were interesting, we are left with the same problem that has plagued choice-based games since Knights of the Old Republic. Without really giving anything away, I'll say that there are two major paths for your character in The Walking Dead - be the guy who tries to save everyone at the expense of the whole group, or be willing to sacrifice everything to protect the one thing you care about. Whether you choose one or the other is probably a matter of personality more than anything else. However, when you allow either one, you prevent your writers and your voice actor (who's quite good, by the way) from strongly expressing the character's personality, and in the end, he's forced to become somewhat of a cipher.
Telltale tries to compensate for this by giving the main character a reason to hide his past. In the end, I didn't really connect with Lee, because I could never quite figure out how I should be playing him. (The main NPC, Clementine, is much better defined, and it's not hard to understand why she's so beloved by fans of the game.) The fundamental problem is that personalities are complex things, and I have yet to play a game that allows anything other than the most basic dichotomy. At least in this case the dichotomy is slightly more interesting than good versus evil.
That said, the game is amazing, and I'm not trying to keep you from playing it. Extremely excited about Season 2!
*The phrase 'point-and-click' at one time distinguished mouse-driven adventure games from those with a text parser. Now it appears to denote the whole genre itself, separating it from action-adventure games. This despite the fact that many adventure games are not played with a mouse, or even a cursor. How strange!
Thursday, June 6, 2013
Comedy of Errors
Over the past few months I've been engaged in yet another completionist project in the literary realm - an attempt to read all 38 of Shakespeare's plays. After finishing the Henry VI / Richard III tetralogy, I was quite relieved to see that the next play on my list was The Comedy of Errors. Although Richard III can be considered a rather dark comedy, I was definitely in the mood for something lighter. Errors, as anyone can guess from the name, is an extremely silly farce with a simple plot. A set of twins, with matching twin slaves, is separated at birth. When full-grown, they end up in the same town, and much confusion and general silliness ensues.
Of the third Shakespeare comedies I've read so far, this is definitely the one that keeps most of its humor today - it's a little more focused than Two Gentlemen of Verona, and more politically correct than Taming of the Shrew. Interestingly, much of the wordplay is still funny today - it has fewer expired puns.
After reading each play, I'm rewarding myself by watching an adaptation of each. For this I am eternally grateful to BBC's attempt to produce every one of Shakespeare's plays, sometime in the 80's. It's actually quite surprising how many of his plays have only this one film adaptation. As to be expected, the production values are quite low, but the acting is usually decent enough, the dialogue is at a reasonable pace (I'm looking at you, Olivier!), and they usually try to use the whole script, no matter how awkward that can be in some cases.
Their production of Errors - the only one I could find - is really good, sort of a hidden gem in my opinion. They add enough physicality to make it fun, without distracting too much from the script. Bizarrely, Roger Daltrey of the Who plays the twin slaves, both named Dromio, and does a surprisingly good job. The real joy to watch is the great Charles Gray, best known for playing the Criminologist (with NO NECK) in Rocky Horror. I tell you, that guy can class up even a Shakespeare play.
Of the third Shakespeare comedies I've read so far, this is definitely the one that keeps most of its humor today - it's a little more focused than Two Gentlemen of Verona, and more politically correct than Taming of the Shrew. Interestingly, much of the wordplay is still funny today - it has fewer expired puns.
After reading each play, I'm rewarding myself by watching an adaptation of each. For this I am eternally grateful to BBC's attempt to produce every one of Shakespeare's plays, sometime in the 80's. It's actually quite surprising how many of his plays have only this one film adaptation. As to be expected, the production values are quite low, but the acting is usually decent enough, the dialogue is at a reasonable pace (I'm looking at you, Olivier!), and they usually try to use the whole script, no matter how awkward that can be in some cases.
Their production of Errors - the only one I could find - is really good, sort of a hidden gem in my opinion. They add enough physicality to make it fun, without distracting too much from the script. Bizarrely, Roger Daltrey of the Who plays the twin slaves, both named Dromio, and does a surprisingly good job. The real joy to watch is the great Charles Gray, best known for playing the Criminologist (with NO NECK) in Rocky Horror. I tell you, that guy can class up even a Shakespeare play.
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
Frances Ha
When I was in college, A New Yorker article turned me on to the films of Andrew Bujalski and Joe Swanberg, the key directors in the "mumblecore" movement. Mumblecore is a somewhat meaningless term that has since been applied to any independent film that stars twenty-somethings. Bujalski and Swanberg themselves didn't like the term. But the style of filmmaking they pioneered was extremely radical, and it certainly deserved to be given a title. Their films were a revelation for me - here were actors speaking and behaving, to use a cliche, nothing like actors, and more like people I would meet every day at Reed. Both directors use largely improvised scenes and dialogue, but have the aesthetic sense to create something beautiful and raw with it.
Bujalski started the movement (his first film Funny Ha Ha came out in 2002), but has only released three films - a fourth is coming out this summer. The first two are excellent, but since then his style has evolved into something that is still great, but slightly less unique. Swanberg has been incredibly prolific - he put out 6 feature-length films in 2011 alone - but his later films can be difficult to see due to a general lack of availability on DVD.
Hannah Takes the Stairs was the first mumblecore film I saw, and it remains my favorite. For a long time, I attributed to Bujalski, but in fact it's Swanberg's, although Bujalski stars in it. The real star of that movie, who shows up in all of Swanberg's best (see Nights and Weekends and LOL), is the incredible Greta Gerwig.
All of this is meant to preface my thoughts on the movie Frances Ha, which stars Gerwig, who also cowrote the screenplay with the director, Noah Baumbach. This terrific movie is certainly not mumblecore - it was made with a strong script and exacting directorial vision. However, Gerwig's character shares a lot of similarities with the one in Hannah Takes the Stairs, with a slightly more happy-go-lucky bent. And I'm pleased that Gerwig's amazing acting style has survived her emergence a few years ago into the mainstream, since she has a naturalness that is truly unique and always fun to watch.
My only complaint with the movie is that Baumbach's story arcs are always a bit conventional, even if the way that he approaches them is not. This is very much a movie about a girl who is failing at life, until she finally figures shit out. But the character herself makes the movie great.
My local theater is awesome enough that it had a Skype Q and A with Gerwig after the film. Clare asked a great question, but I couldn't, because I wasn't sure how I was going to do so without gushing about how much I love her past films. But someone did ask her about her mumblecore films, and she made it clear that she was happy with the direction her career is going - word on the street is that she has yet another movie with Baumbach in the works.
Bujalski started the movement (his first film Funny Ha Ha came out in 2002), but has only released three films - a fourth is coming out this summer. The first two are excellent, but since then his style has evolved into something that is still great, but slightly less unique. Swanberg has been incredibly prolific - he put out 6 feature-length films in 2011 alone - but his later films can be difficult to see due to a general lack of availability on DVD.
Hannah Takes the Stairs was the first mumblecore film I saw, and it remains my favorite. For a long time, I attributed to Bujalski, but in fact it's Swanberg's, although Bujalski stars in it. The real star of that movie, who shows up in all of Swanberg's best (see Nights and Weekends and LOL), is the incredible Greta Gerwig.
All of this is meant to preface my thoughts on the movie Frances Ha, which stars Gerwig, who also cowrote the screenplay with the director, Noah Baumbach. This terrific movie is certainly not mumblecore - it was made with a strong script and exacting directorial vision. However, Gerwig's character shares a lot of similarities with the one in Hannah Takes the Stairs, with a slightly more happy-go-lucky bent. And I'm pleased that Gerwig's amazing acting style has survived her emergence a few years ago into the mainstream, since she has a naturalness that is truly unique and always fun to watch.
My only complaint with the movie is that Baumbach's story arcs are always a bit conventional, even if the way that he approaches them is not. This is very much a movie about a girl who is failing at life, until she finally figures shit out. But the character herself makes the movie great.
My local theater is awesome enough that it had a Skype Q and A with Gerwig after the film. Clare asked a great question, but I couldn't, because I wasn't sure how I was going to do so without gushing about how much I love her past films. But someone did ask her about her mumblecore films, and she made it clear that she was happy with the direction her career is going - word on the street is that she has yet another movie with Baumbach in the works.
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
Zelda Runthrough: Majora's Mask
One of the most important duties of the critic is to give proper due to forgotten and underappreciated works of art. With this in mind, I posit that Majora's Mask's relatively recent change in the public eye, from poor OoT copycat to beloved black sheep, is one of the greatest achievements of gaming's community of critics. This game has finally gotten the recognition it's due, and plenty of gamers now consider it their favorite in the series (and depending on my mood, I occasionally join them).
I have a complicated history with this game myself. After using my paper route money to buy this game and the N64 expansion pack I needed to play it, I was so disappointed with this game that I left it unfinished until a couple years ago. There are plenty of reasons for fans of Ocarina to be disappointed by its successor. The graphics look almost identical (despite the expansion pack), and the re-use of every single character model and mini-game makes Majora's Mask reek of cash-in. The three-day mechanic throws you for a loop, adding a layer of anxiety and claustrophobia, in contrast to the pre-GTA open world feel of Ocarina. And there's no sign of adult Link, one of my favorite aspects of the previous game.
One of the most bizarre things about Majora's Mask is that the game feels so different from Ocarina, despite looking and playing almost identically. If Ocarina is about being a kid dreaming of adulthood, then Majora's Mask is about facing harsh realities during adolescence. Suddenly, you're aware of the clock ticking, and of everything being about to change forever, and you struggle to hold on to the last vestiges of childhood.*
Majora's Mask is the darkest Zelda game since Zelda 2. If you let the three days pass without playing the Song of Time you watch a horrifying cutscene of the world ending (and lose three days worth of work, which I found out the hard way). The Sword of Damocles in the form of a giant, angry ball of rock hangs over your head at every instant. Yet there are pockets of light in the form of the wonderful side quests, where you bring joy and solace to the inhabitants of Termina. And even though you know that these accomplishments are completely erased with every rewind, you can't help but stay in the moment.
I may never put my finger on what makes this game so good, despite its many flaws. The original name of this game was Zelda Gaiden (Sidestory); this fact gives me the impression that the designers wanted to make the game personal, that they knew it wouldn't appeal to everyone. Along with all of the greatest Zelda games, Majora's Mask exists to invoke the past. What sets it apart is its willingness, for just three days, to take off the rose-colored glasses.
*I first played this game when I was 13 and my parents were getting divorced, so my interpretation is quite personal.
I have a complicated history with this game myself. After using my paper route money to buy this game and the N64 expansion pack I needed to play it, I was so disappointed with this game that I left it unfinished until a couple years ago. There are plenty of reasons for fans of Ocarina to be disappointed by its successor. The graphics look almost identical (despite the expansion pack), and the re-use of every single character model and mini-game makes Majora's Mask reek of cash-in. The three-day mechanic throws you for a loop, adding a layer of anxiety and claustrophobia, in contrast to the pre-GTA open world feel of Ocarina. And there's no sign of adult Link, one of my favorite aspects of the previous game.
One of the most bizarre things about Majora's Mask is that the game feels so different from Ocarina, despite looking and playing almost identically. If Ocarina is about being a kid dreaming of adulthood, then Majora's Mask is about facing harsh realities during adolescence. Suddenly, you're aware of the clock ticking, and of everything being about to change forever, and you struggle to hold on to the last vestiges of childhood.*
Majora's Mask is the darkest Zelda game since Zelda 2. If you let the three days pass without playing the Song of Time you watch a horrifying cutscene of the world ending (and lose three days worth of work, which I found out the hard way). The Sword of Damocles in the form of a giant, angry ball of rock hangs over your head at every instant. Yet there are pockets of light in the form of the wonderful side quests, where you bring joy and solace to the inhabitants of Termina. And even though you know that these accomplishments are completely erased with every rewind, you can't help but stay in the moment.
I may never put my finger on what makes this game so good, despite its many flaws. The original name of this game was Zelda Gaiden (Sidestory); this fact gives me the impression that the designers wanted to make the game personal, that they knew it wouldn't appeal to everyone. Along with all of the greatest Zelda games, Majora's Mask exists to invoke the past. What sets it apart is its willingness, for just three days, to take off the rose-colored glasses.
*I first played this game when I was 13 and my parents were getting divorced, so my interpretation is quite personal.
Sunday, June 2, 2013
The Swapper (PC, 2013)
The indie game movement has brought back a lot of genres that larger publishers weren't willing to touch anymore. First and foremost among these is the puzzle platformer. The forerunner of this movement, Braid, channeled themes from Super Mario Bros in a way that a lot of gamers found pretentious. I've read pieces, even from game critics I respect, who happily ignored the text at the beginning of every world. While I wasn't especially taken with the "story" of Braid, I did admire that its developer Jonathan Blow wanted us to explore the symbolism of his mechanics, and by proxy, those of SMB as well. (Nintendo should really be paying more attention to Blow, since SMB desperately needs to get out of its own damsel-in-distress rut.)
The Swapper is the latest game of this type. Here the mechanic is instant cloning. You have the ability to create clones of yourself with a sort of projection gun. These clones copy your exact movements. Your gun also allows you to transfer your "consciousness" between clones, since only the clone you're in control of can use the projection gun and pick up items. The puzzles here grow quite elaborate, as the environment has lights that partially restrict the use of your guns, and late in the game, gravity switching is involved. I'm a pretty seasoned puzzle lover, but I found some of the later ones in this game extremely difficult - one maddeningly simple-looking room kept me occupied for close to two hours.* When I finally figured it out, the accompanying elation made my day.
The game has a surprisingly strong story for being so short and puzzly, a sci-fi space venture that references the meaning of consciousness, and involving some telepathic rocks. I never got too involved by it though, especially since the game's interpretation of consciousness is akin to that of Freaky Friday's, and not to be taken too seriously. Although I'm not against a story in a game like this, it was the puzzles are what kept me engaged.
What absolutely needs to be said about this game (and Braid too) is that it is beautiful. This game, in its own 2D way, replicates what it would feel like to be in space far better than most games and movies, and some of the coolest sections in the game are these puzzleless zero-gravity areas, where you're using the force of your swapping gun to push yourself around, trying not to be too distracted by the gorgeous space scenery behind you.
Metroid is the obvious reference here (with the perspective, and the doors replicated exactly). I have to say, if the next Metroid game visually looks anything like this, I'll be thrilled.
*I tried taking a break, but my mind kept wandering back to the puzzle while I was watching the Judd Apatow comedy This is 40. This is not to speak ill of the movie, which was terrific. I'm not sure this is worth its own blog post, but I've found Apatow's later comedies to be strikingly good, despite their rather droll-sounding premises (Adam Sandler has cancer and is mean to everybody, and so forth).
The Swapper is the latest game of this type. Here the mechanic is instant cloning. You have the ability to create clones of yourself with a sort of projection gun. These clones copy your exact movements. Your gun also allows you to transfer your "consciousness" between clones, since only the clone you're in control of can use the projection gun and pick up items. The puzzles here grow quite elaborate, as the environment has lights that partially restrict the use of your guns, and late in the game, gravity switching is involved. I'm a pretty seasoned puzzle lover, but I found some of the later ones in this game extremely difficult - one maddeningly simple-looking room kept me occupied for close to two hours.* When I finally figured it out, the accompanying elation made my day.
The game has a surprisingly strong story for being so short and puzzly, a sci-fi space venture that references the meaning of consciousness, and involving some telepathic rocks. I never got too involved by it though, especially since the game's interpretation of consciousness is akin to that of Freaky Friday's, and not to be taken too seriously. Although I'm not against a story in a game like this, it was the puzzles are what kept me engaged.
What absolutely needs to be said about this game (and Braid too) is that it is beautiful. This game, in its own 2D way, replicates what it would feel like to be in space far better than most games and movies, and some of the coolest sections in the game are these puzzleless zero-gravity areas, where you're using the force of your swapping gun to push yourself around, trying not to be too distracted by the gorgeous space scenery behind you.
Metroid is the obvious reference here (with the perspective, and the doors replicated exactly). I have to say, if the next Metroid game visually looks anything like this, I'll be thrilled.
*I tried taking a break, but my mind kept wandering back to the puzzle while I was watching the Judd Apatow comedy This is 40. This is not to speak ill of the movie, which was terrific. I'm not sure this is worth its own blog post, but I've found Apatow's later comedies to be strikingly good, despite their rather droll-sounding premises (Adam Sandler has cancer and is mean to everybody, and so forth).
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Final Fantasy (NES, 1990)
In addition to the Zelda runthrough, Clare and I are also doing a Final Fantasy runthrough, probably at a much slower pace. This one I'm a bit hesitant about - there's plenty of duds on this list, and I'm wondering if I'm glorifying the Playstation-era titles in my memory. But there's plenty of games that I'm extremely curious and probably wouldn't play otherwise, so here goes. They're also a lot more fun with a partner - in fact, all JRPGs are, which is the main reason I lament the genre's switch to handhelds.
So, Final Fantasy 1. Well, I don't have much experience with 8-bit RPGs, but I can tell you that I liked this game much better than Dragon Warrior, which I didn't finish, but whose obnoxious world map theme still haunts me to this day. It's well known that Squaresoft before Final Fantasy was known only for making clones of other developer's games. This might be a Dragon Warrior clone, but it's one that makes its predecessor look pretty shabby. Final Fantasy has a huge number of towns, whose citizens all dye their hair in a town-consistent color scheme. It's got talking dragons that live in holes in the ground. It's even got a cave of fun-loving dwarfs that greet you by saying "Hooray!" What's not to like?
Well, okay, there's not really much else to recommend this game. The characters (picked from a choice of classes) don't speak. The plot, which is mostly saved up for the end, is about an errant knight who gets sent back in time in order to release a slew of elemental demons and cause an unending time-loop...somehow. It manages to be both confusing and almost non-existent at the same time, and it doesn't have the saving grace of decent characters. The battle system is serviceable, but there are far too many palette-swapped enemies, and I envied Clare her ability to knit while I grinded. But there are certainly worse games out there.
I'd played a bit of the Playstation remake a couple years ago, and it feels like a completely different game. The translation is overhauled, and they turn it into a quite pretty 2D RPG. But this only serves to make the game more boring in my opinion. One plays a game like Final Fantasy in order to marvel at its idiosyncracies.
So, Final Fantasy 1. Well, I don't have much experience with 8-bit RPGs, but I can tell you that I liked this game much better than Dragon Warrior, which I didn't finish, but whose obnoxious world map theme still haunts me to this day. It's well known that Squaresoft before Final Fantasy was known only for making clones of other developer's games. This might be a Dragon Warrior clone, but it's one that makes its predecessor look pretty shabby. Final Fantasy has a huge number of towns, whose citizens all dye their hair in a town-consistent color scheme. It's got talking dragons that live in holes in the ground. It's even got a cave of fun-loving dwarfs that greet you by saying "Hooray!" What's not to like?
Well, okay, there's not really much else to recommend this game. The characters (picked from a choice of classes) don't speak. The plot, which is mostly saved up for the end, is about an errant knight who gets sent back in time in order to release a slew of elemental demons and cause an unending time-loop...somehow. It manages to be both confusing and almost non-existent at the same time, and it doesn't have the saving grace of decent characters. The battle system is serviceable, but there are far too many palette-swapped enemies, and I envied Clare her ability to knit while I grinded. But there are certainly worse games out there.
I'd played a bit of the Playstation remake a couple years ago, and it feels like a completely different game. The translation is overhauled, and they turn it into a quite pretty 2D RPG. But this only serves to make the game more boring in my opinion. One plays a game like Final Fantasy in order to marvel at its idiosyncracies.
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Zelda Runthrough: Ocarina of Time
Surprisingly, this runthrough marks the second time I've played this game all the way through. In fact, before I started this game, Ocarina of Time was actually fairly low on my list of Zelda favorites, just because there was nothing in it that really stood out for me. I've heard it said more than once that every Zelda game after Ocarina is just a pale attempt to capture the same magic, but that seems pretty untrue to me. In fact, if any game copies its predecessor too much, it's this game, which cannot unfairly be called a 3D remake of Link to the Past. (One could try to say something similar about Majora's Mask, but all in good time.) It's pretty clear why I don't replay it very often, because it takes a frustratingly long time to get to the good parts, like riding Epona.
But, yeah, this game is pretty amazing, and I needed to be reminded of that fact. As a remake, it adds the heart and soul that the developers discovered in Link's Awakening; the same cannot be said for the rather dry Super Mario 64. The gameplay is also incredibly fun and addictive, and remarkably simple when compared to the modern collect-athons. There's a reason that Majora's Mask would rehash every single minigame from Ocarina (and not really come off any worse for it).
So now I have no idea what my favorite Zelda game is. From Link to the Past through Majora's Mask, and continuing to Wind Waker), Nintendo found ways to surprise people with every new incarnation. Were the Beatles that lucky?
But, yeah, this game is pretty amazing, and I needed to be reminded of that fact. As a remake, it adds the heart and soul that the developers discovered in Link's Awakening; the same cannot be said for the rather dry Super Mario 64. The gameplay is also incredibly fun and addictive, and remarkably simple when compared to the modern collect-athons. There's a reason that Majora's Mask would rehash every single minigame from Ocarina (and not really come off any worse for it).
So now I have no idea what my favorite Zelda game is. From Link to the Past through Majora's Mask, and continuing to Wind Waker), Nintendo found ways to surprise people with every new incarnation. Were the Beatles that lucky?
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Fats Waller: "Your Socks Don't Match"
This strange song has been occupying my thoughts today.
For those who don't know, Fats Waller holds a cherished place in the pantheon of pre-war jazz. While Louis Armstrong was the unbeatable soloist and singer, and Duke Ellington had the best arragements, Fats Waller was probably the greatest entertainer.
This song is an enigma. It begins with Waller at the piano. Waller played in an era where the piano was often the only percussion instrument, and his stride style of playing usually keeps a fast and heavy beat, with the left hand dancing between octaves like Mingus on steroids. Here, backed by a drummer on hi-hat, Waller luxuriates a slow and easygoing blues for 1:30, actually half the song. And it's beautifully melodic playing.
And then the rest of the band kicks in, without much more energy. A guitar and trumpet sections keeps the blues theme going to great effect. And Waller starts singing. Here is the first verse, to the best I can figure it:
I like the devil in your chin
I even like that sugar way you grin
Still you ain't nowhere, you ain't any kind of cash
Dog-gone woman, your socks don't match
and later on, Waller speaks between verses, and the song turns more bizarre:
The shoes you wear, oh, they reveal your holes (!)
Seems that both of them are of different hue
They seem to be strangers baby, why don't you amalgamate and get them things together
I think you should introduce it too, yes, you gotta do them kind of thing
To put this song in some kind of weird context, this is actually a "sequel", if you will, to his bigger success, "Your Feet's Too Big". That song played in the credits of the Michel Gondry movie Be Kind Rewind, whose plot centers around an unusual attempt to rewrite Waller's biography (and whose star Jack Black stands out in my mind as the contemporary musician who maybe comes closest to Fats' style of comedy). But where that song is jumpy and boisterous, this one is tranquil and full of strange wordplay (notice the double entendre and the drunken pronoun-switch on the last line). Unsurprisingly, it wasn't as successful than its predecessor.
Fats loved to screw with the lyrics of his and other people's songs. He frequently added lines for humor, even into corny songs like "I Can't Give You Anything But Love". I heartily recommend watching him play his most famous song, "Ain't Misbehavin'" in a scene from Stormy Weather. It's not only worth it just to watch his mesmerizing expressions, it's probably the best recorded version of the song.
For those who don't know, Fats Waller holds a cherished place in the pantheon of pre-war jazz. While Louis Armstrong was the unbeatable soloist and singer, and Duke Ellington had the best arragements, Fats Waller was probably the greatest entertainer.
This song is an enigma. It begins with Waller at the piano. Waller played in an era where the piano was often the only percussion instrument, and his stride style of playing usually keeps a fast and heavy beat, with the left hand dancing between octaves like Mingus on steroids. Here, backed by a drummer on hi-hat, Waller luxuriates a slow and easygoing blues for 1:30, actually half the song. And it's beautifully melodic playing.
And then the rest of the band kicks in, without much more energy. A guitar and trumpet sections keeps the blues theme going to great effect. And Waller starts singing. Here is the first verse, to the best I can figure it:
I like the devil in your chin
I even like that sugar way you grin
Still you ain't nowhere, you ain't any kind of cash
Dog-gone woman, your socks don't match
and later on, Waller speaks between verses, and the song turns more bizarre:
The shoes you wear, oh, they reveal your holes (!)
Seems that both of them are of different hue
They seem to be strangers baby, why don't you amalgamate and get them things together
I think you should introduce it too, yes, you gotta do them kind of thing
To put this song in some kind of weird context, this is actually a "sequel", if you will, to his bigger success, "Your Feet's Too Big". That song played in the credits of the Michel Gondry movie Be Kind Rewind, whose plot centers around an unusual attempt to rewrite Waller's biography (and whose star Jack Black stands out in my mind as the contemporary musician who maybe comes closest to Fats' style of comedy). But where that song is jumpy and boisterous, this one is tranquil and full of strange wordplay (notice the double entendre and the drunken pronoun-switch on the last line). Unsurprisingly, it wasn't as successful than its predecessor.
Fats loved to screw with the lyrics of his and other people's songs. He frequently added lines for humor, even into corny songs like "I Can't Give You Anything But Love". I heartily recommend watching him play his most famous song, "Ain't Misbehavin'" in a scene from Stormy Weather. It's not only worth it just to watch his mesmerizing expressions, it's probably the best recorded version of the song.
Monday, May 27, 2013
Zero Dark Thirty
Katherine Bigelow wants to make war movies that put aside politics and stay close to the facts. I commend her for being the first director to succeed with a movie about Iraq. (Although for me In the Valley of Elah was more compelling than Hurt Locker.) But the newer movie has some deep and glaring problems.
I will be honest and say that I was slightly dreading this one, because of the depiction of torture. The makers of this movie have stated that they wanted to let viewers make up their own mind about the CIA's detainee system post 9/11, and I believe them. The fundamental problem is that neutrality on this issue necessarily comes off as silent consent. The narrative that the film subscribes to is that the information given by tortured detainees led intelligence officials (or one highly devoted official, but we'll get to that later) to focus their efforts on a possible courier to Bin Laden.
Many people have written about why this is inaccurate, and I'm not going to repeat the facts here. However, even if torture did provide crucial information in this pursuit, the movie does not really offer up a crucial question: does that information really justify the means of obtaining it? Perhaps this question is lurking in the background, but if this is really an insider's account, as the text at the beginning claims, than why not have the characters make their opinions known. (Instead we get one torturer taking a desk job because he feels he's "looked at too many men naked," and later a woman shaking her head slightly when listening to Obama denounce torture in an interview.)
When I actually watched Zero Dark Thirty, I could see that the whole torture issue is just one symptom of a larger problem; this movie doesn't just avoid politics, it avoids any kind of message at all. So it's reasonable to ask why it even exists. If Bigelow felt the need to say that behind the raid in Abbottabad were years of painstaking and unrewarded effort by hardworking and incredibly devoted agents, then forgive me for saying that that's not exactly a revelation. If the movie is meant as a fictional character study of one particularly feisty woman devoted to an incredibly personal manhunt for ten years, then fine, but I think Bigelow fails on this front as well. Chastain is a fine actress, but the role has little development and the last third of the movie consists of her being right about everything.
Speaking about this last part, Bigelow again dances around an extremely important and currently relevant issue, when the CIA leaders debate on whether to act on so little intelligence. However, instead of any reasonable justification, they decide to send in the helicopters because Chastain impresses everyone with her confidence. It's not only irresponsible, it's silly and boring.
By far the best scene of the movie (and this really surprised me) is the obligatory depiction of the raid itself. It's here that Bigelow's "just-the-facts" approach really pays off. This scene could easily have been something that high school teachers would show to students ten years from now to show America's clean and cathartic break with the war on terror. Instead we get the truth, which is a less-than-perfect assault where women got shot for being hysterical, and a dozen children are forced to huddle while men dressed in black point guns at them. Of course the soldiers are just doing their job, and as such it stands as a chilling reminder of why there is a difference between the police and the military. It's exactly the sort of thing we should be showing to high school students; it's probably the best depiction of a modern military action.
Edit: Speaking of which, happy Memorial Day! :/
I will be honest and say that I was slightly dreading this one, because of the depiction of torture. The makers of this movie have stated that they wanted to let viewers make up their own mind about the CIA's detainee system post 9/11, and I believe them. The fundamental problem is that neutrality on this issue necessarily comes off as silent consent. The narrative that the film subscribes to is that the information given by tortured detainees led intelligence officials (or one highly devoted official, but we'll get to that later) to focus their efforts on a possible courier to Bin Laden.
Many people have written about why this is inaccurate, and I'm not going to repeat the facts here. However, even if torture did provide crucial information in this pursuit, the movie does not really offer up a crucial question: does that information really justify the means of obtaining it? Perhaps this question is lurking in the background, but if this is really an insider's account, as the text at the beginning claims, than why not have the characters make their opinions known. (Instead we get one torturer taking a desk job because he feels he's "looked at too many men naked," and later a woman shaking her head slightly when listening to Obama denounce torture in an interview.)
When I actually watched Zero Dark Thirty, I could see that the whole torture issue is just one symptom of a larger problem; this movie doesn't just avoid politics, it avoids any kind of message at all. So it's reasonable to ask why it even exists. If Bigelow felt the need to say that behind the raid in Abbottabad were years of painstaking and unrewarded effort by hardworking and incredibly devoted agents, then forgive me for saying that that's not exactly a revelation. If the movie is meant as a fictional character study of one particularly feisty woman devoted to an incredibly personal manhunt for ten years, then fine, but I think Bigelow fails on this front as well. Chastain is a fine actress, but the role has little development and the last third of the movie consists of her being right about everything.
Speaking about this last part, Bigelow again dances around an extremely important and currently relevant issue, when the CIA leaders debate on whether to act on so little intelligence. However, instead of any reasonable justification, they decide to send in the helicopters because Chastain impresses everyone with her confidence. It's not only irresponsible, it's silly and boring.
By far the best scene of the movie (and this really surprised me) is the obligatory depiction of the raid itself. It's here that Bigelow's "just-the-facts" approach really pays off. This scene could easily have been something that high school teachers would show to students ten years from now to show America's clean and cathartic break with the war on terror. Instead we get the truth, which is a less-than-perfect assault where women got shot for being hysterical, and a dozen children are forced to huddle while men dressed in black point guns at them. Of course the soldiers are just doing their job, and as such it stands as a chilling reminder of why there is a difference between the police and the military. It's exactly the sort of thing we should be showing to high school students; it's probably the best depiction of a modern military action.
Edit: Speaking of which, happy Memorial Day! :/
Sunday, May 26, 2013
Bioshock Infinite (Xbox 360, 2013)
I took a break from my Zelda playthrough after Majora's Mask to play Bioshock Infinite. As is the general consensus, it's a terrific game with a great story. The Bioshock games, of which I've played the first and this new game (skipping the second, which changed developers and got mixed reviews), are about idealistic American "enclaves", set in the past but with futuristic technology. They're also credited with bringing a philosophical outlook to the modern high-budget video game. The first game focussed pretty heavily on Objectivism a la Ayn Rand. This game hits even closer to home, showing the dark side of American exceptionalism, racial purification, and Christian fundamentalism.
I wanted to start out positive, because I really did enjoy this game. In fact, since the designers did so much right, it's worth asking them what might be a pretty dumb question. Why does this game need to be a first-person shooter? Couldn't you tell a story just as good with a different gameplay mechanic? I understand that Booker DeWitt is not welcome in the flying city of Columbia, and why its leader believes he is a threat. I understand why he's willing to risk everything to accomplish his mission. I don't understand why that means it's sensible to turn him into a killing machine. These are not deformed "splicers", as in the first game, but quite real and healthy human beings that are dying by the hundreds.
Bioshock Infinite is an extremely violent game. Now I play games with many degrees of violence, and to be frank, this usually doesn't bother me. This doesn't have to be a moral issue, or an issue of children being desensitized. Honestly, this is just a game that would be significantly better if it had ditched the guns. Perhaps I wouldn't have felt this way when I was younger. It occured to me when I picked up this game that I've played at most 2 or 3 first person shooters since Call of Duty 4 came out. As I've gotten older, this is one genre I'm beginning to grow out of (and I still play JRPGs - go figure). Clare doesn't like watching them, and they're finally starting to make me queasy too.
The sad truth with this game is that it would probably be impossible, at least in this era of video games, to make something so beautiful, something with such high production values, without forcing the main character to carry guns around and point them at things. Perhaps someday there will be a Bioshock game that, without hypocrisy, will tell the gamers of the future about how America was once obsessed with firearms.
I wanted to start out positive, because I really did enjoy this game. In fact, since the designers did so much right, it's worth asking them what might be a pretty dumb question. Why does this game need to be a first-person shooter? Couldn't you tell a story just as good with a different gameplay mechanic? I understand that Booker DeWitt is not welcome in the flying city of Columbia, and why its leader believes he is a threat. I understand why he's willing to risk everything to accomplish his mission. I don't understand why that means it's sensible to turn him into a killing machine. These are not deformed "splicers", as in the first game, but quite real and healthy human beings that are dying by the hundreds.
Bioshock Infinite is an extremely violent game. Now I play games with many degrees of violence, and to be frank, this usually doesn't bother me. This doesn't have to be a moral issue, or an issue of children being desensitized. Honestly, this is just a game that would be significantly better if it had ditched the guns. Perhaps I wouldn't have felt this way when I was younger. It occured to me when I picked up this game that I've played at most 2 or 3 first person shooters since Call of Duty 4 came out. As I've gotten older, this is one genre I'm beginning to grow out of (and I still play JRPGs - go figure). Clare doesn't like watching them, and they're finally starting to make me queasy too.
The sad truth with this game is that it would probably be impossible, at least in this era of video games, to make something so beautiful, something with such high production values, without forcing the main character to carry guns around and point them at things. Perhaps someday there will be a Bioshock game that, without hypocrisy, will tell the gamers of the future about how America was once obsessed with firearms.
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Zelda Runthrough Part 2: SNES Era
A Link to the Past (SNES, 1991):
This game is the epitome of Zelda. It's a common refrain that all Zelda games after Ocarina of Time are remakes of that classic. If that's true, then considering that Ocarina is in essence a 3D remake of Link to the Past, then we owe a lot to the sole Zelda game for the SNES. It's easy to forget that the series could have gone in so many different directions after Zelda 2. The developers decided to scale back from the larger size of that world, in order to focus on a smaller, more detailed Hyrule. Somehow the world doesn't feel smaller, because each area has a different theme and feel. However, the inclusion of the dark world does continue the more depressing tone that originated in Zelda 2.
I didn't play this game until a year or so ago. After I did, I was ready to call it my favorite in the series. It felt like an awesome compromise between the soul-crushing difficulty of the NES incarnations and the hand-holding of later entries. The puzzles made sense, and yet solving them felt like a major breakthrough. This time I was slightly less entranced. The dungeons feel a little too combat-heavy - not in itself a bad thing, but constantly refilling my 4 fairy jars began to wear on me after a while. Maybe I just suck at this game.
As the last major 2D Zelda on consoles, this game is drop-dead gorgeous though.
Link's Awakening (Game Boy, 1993):
Handheld games don't have a right to be this good. I'd played both this game and its predecessor before, but back-to-back it's incredible how this game improves on Link to the Past in nearly every respect. It's got better dungeons, with cool puzzles, minibosses, and different music for each. It's got dynamic NPCs that travel around, have conversations, and generally react to your presence. It's got new items, including a feather that lets you jump around like your pants are on fire. And somehow it does all this with hardware that was embarassingly bad for its time. In what kind of dream world does the existence of this game even make sense?
But seriously, I'm ready to place this game among my all-time favorites. My 'original hardware' stipulation game me an excuse to buy an old Fat Boy (which I haven't owned since I was 10 - L.A. was the second game I owned). There's no getting around the dim screen, but the speakers are terrific. By the way, L.A. has awesome music.
A footnote: Link's Awakening might be the most light-hearted Zelda game - it has a great sense of humor. And as much as I love darker entries like Majora's Mask, the series can stand some lightening up.
This game is the epitome of Zelda. It's a common refrain that all Zelda games after Ocarina of Time are remakes of that classic. If that's true, then considering that Ocarina is in essence a 3D remake of Link to the Past, then we owe a lot to the sole Zelda game for the SNES. It's easy to forget that the series could have gone in so many different directions after Zelda 2. The developers decided to scale back from the larger size of that world, in order to focus on a smaller, more detailed Hyrule. Somehow the world doesn't feel smaller, because each area has a different theme and feel. However, the inclusion of the dark world does continue the more depressing tone that originated in Zelda 2.
I didn't play this game until a year or so ago. After I did, I was ready to call it my favorite in the series. It felt like an awesome compromise between the soul-crushing difficulty of the NES incarnations and the hand-holding of later entries. The puzzles made sense, and yet solving them felt like a major breakthrough. This time I was slightly less entranced. The dungeons feel a little too combat-heavy - not in itself a bad thing, but constantly refilling my 4 fairy jars began to wear on me after a while. Maybe I just suck at this game.
As the last major 2D Zelda on consoles, this game is drop-dead gorgeous though.
Link's Awakening (Game Boy, 1993):
Handheld games don't have a right to be this good. I'd played both this game and its predecessor before, but back-to-back it's incredible how this game improves on Link to the Past in nearly every respect. It's got better dungeons, with cool puzzles, minibosses, and different music for each. It's got dynamic NPCs that travel around, have conversations, and generally react to your presence. It's got new items, including a feather that lets you jump around like your pants are on fire. And somehow it does all this with hardware that was embarassingly bad for its time. In what kind of dream world does the existence of this game even make sense?
But seriously, I'm ready to place this game among my all-time favorites. My 'original hardware' stipulation game me an excuse to buy an old Fat Boy (which I haven't owned since I was 10 - L.A. was the second game I owned). There's no getting around the dim screen, but the speakers are terrific. By the way, L.A. has awesome music.
A footnote: Link's Awakening might be the most light-hearted Zelda game - it has a great sense of humor. And as much as I love darker entries like Majora's Mask, the series can stand some lightening up.
Friday, February 1, 2013
Zelda Runthrough Part 1: NES Era
Last year, I finally finished the first two Legend of Zelda games for the NES. I've since decided to continue on and play the rest of the series (in order, on their original hardware). This is a good excuse to replay some beloved favorites, and catch up on quite a few games that I've missed out on. As I play them, I'll post some random thoughts here on the blog - don't expect anything very comprehensive.
The Legend of Zelda (NES):
I have a lot of mixed feelings about this game. On the one hand, it's one of the most expansive, fun-to-explore adventures on the NES. The wide variety of tools at your disposal are fun to mess around with. There's an awesome thrill to be had when you discover a new passageway, or decode some oblique hint from a friendly old man that you wrote down hours ago. The game has a sense of humor too, for its age. One of my favorite moments is burning a tree down to discover a hidden cave, entering it, and then being fined by its inhabitant for destroying the entryway.
However, finishing Zelda 1 was one of the most frustrating gaming-related experiences in recent memory. Being stuck in this game is a real drag, because you can have no idea what you should be looking for, or where to start. Also, it takes far too long to collect rupees (there are no twenty-rupee crystals). More than once, I lost my metal shield to one of those awful body-hugging things, and then had to spend at least 30 minutes grinding to afford another one.
To top it off, I had the constant and realizable fear that my save game would be lost for no reason. In a previous playthrough, this happened after I finished 7 dungeons. Nothing like that to up the anxiety level.
Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link (NES):
Ah, the black sheep. This one's actually quite a bit of fun, in the right mindset. All of the items are now used passively - all of the combat takes place with the sword and shield. (Magic plays a role in defense and healing.) The gameplay actually feels quite a bit like Castlevania - as in that game, it's quite easy to get knocked into pits, especially late in the game. (The comparison is ironic, because I think Konami stole considerably from Zelda 2 in turn to make Castlevania 2.) The punishments for failure also get considerably more severe.
However, Zelda 2 is the first game to have actual towns (and quite a few at that). The dungeons are a lot smarter, with a lot more variation. And the combat can be pretty fun, especially after you learn the down strike, which lets you bounce on enemies' heads with your sword.
Which game is harder? For me, it's something of a toss-up. Some of the hidden passageways in Zelda 1 are far too difficult to find. Locating the silver arrows (which no one tells you are necessary to defeat Ganon) would have been impossible for me without help. On the other hand, the final dungeon in Zelda 2 is an extreme endurance test (even getting to it can be extremely difficult), and I needed serious help to beat that game as well. Overall, they were interesting experiences, but too flawed to be among my favorite games.
The Legend of Zelda (NES):
I have a lot of mixed feelings about this game. On the one hand, it's one of the most expansive, fun-to-explore adventures on the NES. The wide variety of tools at your disposal are fun to mess around with. There's an awesome thrill to be had when you discover a new passageway, or decode some oblique hint from a friendly old man that you wrote down hours ago. The game has a sense of humor too, for its age. One of my favorite moments is burning a tree down to discover a hidden cave, entering it, and then being fined by its inhabitant for destroying the entryway.
However, finishing Zelda 1 was one of the most frustrating gaming-related experiences in recent memory. Being stuck in this game is a real drag, because you can have no idea what you should be looking for, or where to start. Also, it takes far too long to collect rupees (there are no twenty-rupee crystals). More than once, I lost my metal shield to one of those awful body-hugging things, and then had to spend at least 30 minutes grinding to afford another one.
To top it off, I had the constant and realizable fear that my save game would be lost for no reason. In a previous playthrough, this happened after I finished 7 dungeons. Nothing like that to up the anxiety level.
Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link (NES):
Ah, the black sheep. This one's actually quite a bit of fun, in the right mindset. All of the items are now used passively - all of the combat takes place with the sword and shield. (Magic plays a role in defense and healing.) The gameplay actually feels quite a bit like Castlevania - as in that game, it's quite easy to get knocked into pits, especially late in the game. (The comparison is ironic, because I think Konami stole considerably from Zelda 2 in turn to make Castlevania 2.) The punishments for failure also get considerably more severe.
However, Zelda 2 is the first game to have actual towns (and quite a few at that). The dungeons are a lot smarter, with a lot more variation. And the combat can be pretty fun, especially after you learn the down strike, which lets you bounce on enemies' heads with your sword.
Which game is harder? For me, it's something of a toss-up. Some of the hidden passageways in Zelda 1 are far too difficult to find. Locating the silver arrows (which no one tells you are necessary to defeat Ganon) would have been impossible for me without help. On the other hand, the final dungeon in Zelda 2 is an extreme endurance test (even getting to it can be extremely difficult), and I needed serious help to beat that game as well. Overall, they were interesting experiences, but too flawed to be among my favorite games.
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