Second Impressions: The Elder Scrolls: Chapter I: Arena (PC)

The following will be my second impressions of The Elder Scrolls: Chapter I: Arena, seeing as how I already had a first impression, but I felt that that article was written a while ago (January 2013) and since then, I have changed my approach to the game and therefore, my impressions of the game have changed dramatically.

About a month ago, I was rereading the article I wrote about failing at being able to successfully load and play Daggerfall (TES: Chapter II) and was going over the comments that had been left.  I followed the link that one Roger left which took me to a wiki page for setting up Daggerfall, that by default is in French or German (if the page does not have the "_EN" suffix), but thanks to the miracles of modern technology, Chrome does a wonderful job at translating the pages into something readable by my uneducated mind.  For both the Daggerfall and Arena pages, I was able to download versions of the game where all of the previous DOSBox commands came "pre-installed."  This was not a problem for Arena, but the chance at having to play Daggerfall without the risk of having the game tell me the previous problems I had were again present, was much welcome.  So the downloads commenced followed by the playing.

The first mission I received after emerging from the spectral gate in the Imperial prisons (surprise, surprise) was to escort a woman from the town of Vullain Haven to Wasten Brukbrook in the east.  Now, I figured that that meant that Wasten Brukbrook would be the next town over, so I began traveling on foot.  It was not until I had exited the game to look up the control setup that I discovered "Shift+M."  

This brought up a map of Tamriel (the explorable world), which then brought up a map of the province I was in when I clicked on that.  I was told that it would take me 17 days to travel from Vullain Haven to Wasten Brukbrook, on the southeastern part of Valenwood.

First off, I learned that by pressing "Shift+M" I was able to bring up the world map, and by clicking on a particular province, I am able to travel to any of the city states or towns in that province.  Finding this out was the very definition of a "game changer."

This was when I decided that I would greatly alter my approach to how I play Arena.  When out traveling in a world without topography, getting lost is beyond easy.

That mountain is really just a matte painting and does not count as topography.

My approach to the game goes now as follows.  If I am on a time sensitive mission (escort/rescue/kill the beast), I will fast travel from wherever I am.  Often times these missions give enough time to fast travel to the desired location, complete the goal and return if need be.  I have yet to come across a quest that would need me to speedrun through a dungeon.

If I am on my way from one town to another, I will exit the town by normal means (the city gate) and head in the direction of the town looking for dungeons along the way.  I will explore said dungeon, often collecting gear and other items and once I am either carrying at my weight or inventory capacity, I finish going through the dungeon (because having a completed map is OCD important), killing as many enemies as I can in order to gain experience then once I exit the dungeon, I fast travel to the next town to sell my collected booty.  I could just as easily fast travel between cities, but where is the fun in that?  Plus I would not be at level 15 having not collected even one piece of the Staff of Chaos.

Currently in the game, traveling between cities takes an average of three days, at least in Valenwood.  So 72 hours of straight walking towards the destination.  I then figured out that 1 minute in real time translates to roughly 12 minutes of in-game time.  So if I wanted to be "hard-core," I would have to spend six hours in real time in order to reach a city 72 hours away.  I do not think that Bethesda believed that players would not use fast travel.  Keep in mind that the town I had to travel to was 17 days away plus the return trip would total 34 days.  I personally would not want to spend 68 hours of real time completing that one quest.  On the other hand, I would be very interested to find out if travelling from one site to another is actually possible without fast travel, but that might have to wait for another time.

In other aspects of the game, I am able to appreciate what Bethesda was trying to do with Arena back when it was released in 1994.  In the instruction manual, the creators often reference pen-and-paper RPGs (Dungeons & Dragons) and even with the character creation and how the stats are affected such as Strength, Wisdom, Endurance, Personality (Constitution and Charisma respectively in D&D), Intelligence, et cetera are all direct references to D&D.  Even the armor rating is taken from THAC0 where a lower number is preferable to a more intuitive higher number.  Bethesda had also expanded upon the standard classes of Fighter, Mage, Cleric and Thief and developed the following subclasses, each with their own bonuses and drawbacks.  For example Thief, Burglar, Assassin, Rogue, Acrobat and Bard are all subclasses to the Thief header.  I blindly chose a thief because unlocking ALL THE THINGS!! is better than say, being able to wear enchanted armor.

There are a few annoyances though, as is to be expected with playing a game that was created 20 years ago on a semi-modern computing device that was built within the last five years.  Now I do not know how often Arena was buggy or to what extent those bugs occurred, but at least once a day I am graced by a crashed game in one form or another.  While the crashes are not all too frequent, they are very annoying, especially when I am about to be picking up some sweet fwag!

But at least the Male is bigger than the Happy4 turning right to the zero eighth notes.  Amiright!?

Having the game randomly crash has also gotten me to save my game after almost every enemy encounter as I have run into monsters that have killed me in two hits while I have full life.  But my main advice for this game: save often, even after doing inane things like selling swag or before leaving a town.

With this renewed interest in Arena, I feel that I am able to enjoy the game a lot more than my first runthrough, although in the article I did sound quite optimistic despite when I last talked to Dr. Potts, before restarting the game again, I mentioned that my biggest issue was finding my way around the world on a 2D surface.  I will probably put out a post on Friday regarding my choice in character and picking a Bosmer (Wood Elf) female and naming her Silandra, so stay tuned if that happens to be your bag of chips.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

I'm Onto The Next One

First Impressions: Me vs Mirror's Edge

I got this game in some Humble Bundle or another

I tried playing Mirror's Edge last night.  It's not good.  Sorry.  I want to like this game.  I really like the concept:  first person running, leaping, climbing!  It looks really cool when the computer is controlling the action.  But it's tough, and I don't think it's tough for the right reasons.  It's tough to do much of anything.

The first level is a training level.  Well, thats' good, because this game is tough, and the controls aren't terribly intuitive. They even acknowledge in-game that is a training course. But the training level, itself, is really tough.  Also, for some reason the training course is at the top of a series of tall buildings, rather than in a sand-pit obstacle course somewhere. Every time I fuck up, I get to watch myself fall thirty flights of stairs.  Doesn't do much for my immersion into whatever world they're trying to create for me.  Or sometimes, if I stray off course, I am forcibly teleported back to my starting position, where I get to watch the computer example again.  This is annoying and happens a lot, because as I mentioned, the controls aren't really very intuitive.

I tried using a joypad and I tried using the keyboard an mouse.  The keyboard and mouse was slightly easier.  Mostly, I think, because the ability to customize the controls on the joypad is severely limited.  I just want to use the control pad and not the control stick.  Can I?  please?  And, maybe, just maybe I want to use the shoulder buttons for doing quick turns.  No?  Boy this game is tough, and not in a good way.

I got sick of the training level, and moved right on to the first actual stage.  I managed to muddle my way through it, though not without annoying my in-game companion, who started berating me sarcastically for not moving fast enough.  I guess this delightfully one-sided banter is supposed to increase immersion, but instead it just makes the experience suck more.  And I can tell I'm muddling by the sheer number of times I fall thirty feet to my doom, and then bounce right back.  A big part of why this isn't fun is that it seems clear that the point of the game is to perform sequences of moves, not just to spam the high jump over and over until it stops working, and then spam the duck button, or whatever.

And here is where I want to draw a comparison to a great game.  Also a first person game that is not a shooter, not exactly:  Portal.  Portal is a fantastic game.  And, wouldn't you know it, it does a great job teaching the player how to play.  The first ten stages or so are baby steps to how to use the portals and switches and general solve small puzzles.  Then, after getting your sea legs, as it were, the game throws some very complicated puzzles using every technique you've learned up to that point.  It works marvelously.

All I've gotten from Mirrors Edge is that I can go back to the training stage again, and practice each move, one by one, in sequence.  I can't just jump to that one move that's giving me trouble, I've got to work my way to it.  And when I pass that sequence (by sheer luck) I'm on to the next move, even though I really don't have the previous method down.  I going to keep muddling through the levels for a bit longer to see if I can get the hang of it.  

Bottom line:  The makers of Mirrors Edge should have played through Portal and taken notes.  Then maybe I would enjoy playing the game, which has an interesting concept at its core.  

-D

Controller Style Confusion

I was playing Super Meat Boy the other day, or more likely, I was trying to play Super Meat Boy and since I don't have a USB or an xBox 360 controller for computer games, I was forced to use my keyboard.  The keyboard controls for SMB (Not that SMB), uses the arrow keys to move and the space bar to jump and shift to sprint.  I didn't make it through the first level.  I didn't like using the arrow keys to move, although, more specifically, I didn't like using  my right had for directional controls.  That last thought is what got me thinking, because that's a contradictory statement based on my controller preferences for games on other systems.

I started my video gaming life playing the Intellivision and the Atari 2600 and for both of those systems, I played right hand directional control and left hand/fingers buttoning.  With the advent of the NES controller, that all flipped to left handed directional pad and right handed for buttons.  Despite the apparent flip in hand orientation, this layout seemed very intuitive and I never questioned it.  With Goldeneye 007 on the N64, you were allowed to customize the N64 controller so you could decide which buttons moved you, meaning either the directional C-pad or the joy stick.

So now we'll go through the differing control styles that I seem to favor and if there's a reason why.

Consoles Games

The majority of games on consoles and hand held consoles are played by moving around with the directional pad with the left hand or the analogue stick and button mashing with the right hand.  The exception for me though is with FPS'.

When Turok: Dinosaur Hunter came out on the N64, I was pretty new to FPS'.  I had played a bit of Doom and Castle Wolfenstein, but only very little, and only enough to know that I didn't like that you could only look left and right, but not up or down.  But with Turok, my world was opened, and I gladly entered.  The controls for Turok were that you moved with the C-pad and looked around with the joystick, which is what I used when I began playing Goldeneye, which had an even greater amount of semi-customizable (new word) control styles and I quickly fell in love with 1.2 Solitaire, the same controls as Turok.

What drew me to moving with the C-pad buttons, controlled with the left hand instead of the joystick which would be controlled with the right hand, was the fact that I felt that I had more control when looking with the joystick and the C-pad felt very stilted.  Granted, moving with the joystick, you could go between walking and running, but I felt that was a bit unnecessary.

Oh yes, and the y-axis controls (up/down) had to be inverted.  Why?  It just felt more natural for me.

This control style held true for the other FPS' that I've played on consoles, which coincidentally were also made either by Rare or those who split off from Rare to create Free Radical: Perfect Dark, TimeSplitters, TimeSplitters 2 and TimeSplitters: Future Perfect.  Additionally, any time that I play any FPS' on a console, I always have to go to the controller customization and tinker around until I can move with the left joystick and look with the right and making sure that the controls are inverted.

The only problem I've run into with the above mentioned control scheme was with Halo and Left 4 Dead II, both games had the ability to jump which took my right thumb off the movement controls to be able to jump. I don't recall if there was complete button customization or presets to choose from, but I remember that I wasn't happy with the control set up.  Oh, and with Perfect Dark: Zero, which only had one control scheme and it was something that I didn't like and couldn't get used to.  I think I fired a single shot, opened one door and turned the game off.

PC Gaming

Control styles in PC games can be a bit more varied, but my preference for "moving" is with the WASD keys.  Going back to SMB, I can't stand moving by using the arrow keys with my right hand.  I feel very uncoordinated and clumsy.  However, with platformer PC games, I still feel very clumsy using WASD with my fingers instead of using a directional pad with my thumb.  I mean I could probably fumble my way through SMB with either the arrow or WASD controls, but it would take a lot of frustrating time.  Think going through Super Metroid with only WASD for movement.  However, with VVVVVV,  despite the fact that I haven't beaten the game yet, I find using the arrow keys to move around very easy to get used to.

As for FPS' on the PC, it's all about WASD for moving and the mouse for looking.  With the mouse y-axis being inverted.

Huh.  I guess it's slightly simpler than I had previously thought.  But when playing any game, on any system, I know that I might have to tinker around with the controls to suit my personal taste.  And when transitioning between say, Doom III and Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (Which I like a lot more than Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and I'll cover at a later date), I know that my brain won't have any troubles moving from one control style to the next.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

up-up-down-down-left trigger-right trigger-left trigger- right trigger-b-a-select-start

And now I present to you the ultimate in controller design:

It can only be called "Awesome."

Legend of Zelda - Combat and Sound

In my previous post about the Legend of Zelda's aesthetic of simple, consistent visuals and open world exploration, I found it difficult to talk about those elements and not include two other, ever-present elements: Combat/Play Control and Sound.  These elements synch up so perfectly with the visual aesthetic, that the game would play very differently if there were changes to these areas.

Regarding Combat/Play Control:  I am  combining these two elements because I am defining combat simply as play control while under threat of attack.  You don't have to strike an enemy to be taking part in combat. When exploring the overworld map, enemies are obstacles just as much as trees or rocks.  Many times all the player wishes to do is to get through the screen and on to the next screen, but flying arrows or Peahats prevent that.   

I think one subtlety that Zelda does really well is to have Link pause for a brief moment whenever he attacks.  This adds a sense of control that free swinging and running would have been without. The one-two button combination of keeping a sword for the A button and an item for the B button is the defining innovation of Zelda's combat system.  Any player who has made it through the game is likely to have mastered the ability to fire a boomerang at a diagonal, with deadly accuracy.  When I'm wandering the map, I may just want to stun a few enemies and move on.  The unmistakable sound of the boomerang striking an enemy instantly assures me of my success, and I need not break stride.

Regarding Sound:  while it's not the same as graphics, it is arguably equally important in a similar way.  Similarly limited as the visual aesthetic, Zelda doesn't have a wide array of sounds, but the sounds it does have are consistent and fantastic.  The funny, dull sound of Link receiving damage, the satisfying sound of shooting the sword when attacking at full power, the scene-change trigger sound of footsteps.  These sounds couple with the graphics to guide me through the game. 

On the overworld, the delightful Zelda fanfare is very fitting for joyfully wandering around, the song is light and whimsical.  No pressure, the world is open to you, do what you want.  When you enter a dungeon, the droning dungeon song does it's job.  This place is not a happy place.  You're not going to find a faerie around the corner, you really don't have anywhere to run.  It's time for business.  

-D