First Impressions: FEZ- interrupted

So, after a long time waiting, FEZ was released for Steam.  And then, shortly after, it went on sale at 50% off, and I bought it.  Even though I don't have a job and should be saving my money.  I've been wanting to play FEZ since I first heard of it!  But for a long time it was only available on X Box, so I had to hold out for 'some day.'

Well, that day is today.  Or, actually it was a few days ago.  Anyhow, I installed FEZ, and it runs.  It doesn't run great, however.  It's a little choppy, really.  Not terrible, but not smooth.  Playable though.  At least through the first two stages.  The third stage ratcheted up the image complexity, resulting in a huge cut to the framerate.  If I had to guess, I'd say it's down to about 5 frames per second.  I believe film runs at 24 frames, and fancy high def film runs at 60.  I've also heard that the human eye can't perceive more than 60.  That's neither here, nor, there-- I guess the point is that I can't really play FEZ.  damn.

Having seen Indie Game the Movie, I am tempted to judge FEZ harshly.  Mostly because the creator, featured heavily in the movie, comes across as too hyperbolic.  But also, I know that he went back and remade all the tiles in the game, to a greater graphical complexity.  I think his efforts show, FEZ is very pretty, but it doesn't do me any good, because that same complexity is very likely contributing to my difficulty in playing the game.  I'm a strong advocate for gameplay first, graphics second.  Otherwise the graphics are a bit more of a window dressing for a game that doesn't play all that well.  

I'm concerned that FEZ has a bit high of a window dressing component.  On the other hand, the central gameplay mechanic - rotating a 2D world - is fantastic.  It really is brilliant, and it appears to be executed pretty effectively.  My biggest argument for this is that I had FEZ dreams the first night after playing it for about an hour.  There's just something so satisfying about the rotating Platforms.  The platforming isn't that great, however.  The jumping is unwieldy, and I find I miss jumps I think I should make. On the other hand, there are lots of fun references to classic games, such as Ocarina of Time and the Super Mario Series.  These are done well without seeming overdone.  More window dressing, perhaps, but it's really good window dressing.  

So, bottom line, based on my impression of the first couple of levels:  The creator may have some issues he needs to work out, but FEZ is, thus far, delightful.  I hope I can get a hold of a better graphics card and finish playing before too long.

-D



P.S.  Oh look, and now it's available for the Humble Indie Bundle 9 - wouldn't you know it?  If I had just held out, I could have gotten FEZ and a bunch of other games for the same price I paid for FEZ + soundtrack.  Oh well, that's how it is with the Humble Bundles:  you win some, you lose some.  Really, you mostly win.  Pretty much always.   

P.P.S. And look again!  It turns out my janky ol mac laptop can actually play FEZ better than my desk top!  whodathunk?  This machine is full of surprises.  Except the overheating after a half hour of play.  That is like clockwork.  In the meantime, I will at least get a chance to take a few more bites out of FEZ.  For this, I am grateful.

First Impressions: Penumbra - Requiem

Penumbra: Requiem, is the final installment of the Penumbra series from Frictional Games.  

P:R is an odd hybrid, considering the series and genre that the game is coming from.  The first two games in the series were straight up survival horror although the second game lacked the hell-bent wolves of the first game, although it was no less terrifying. The game starts right after the previous game ended.  There might be some time that passed, but it's minimal.  However long it takes for you to wake up after being knocked unconscious. So, kind of like the transition between the first two games.

So yes, hybrid-esque.  And I really want to like this game.  Is that not a great way to start a review?  Coming from a survival horror genre, Requiem takes a hard left turn and drives through the guard rail.  I don't know what that means.  Requiem really reminds me of Portal except there aren't any turrets.  Correction, I don't know if there are any turrets, but there are explosive bottles of rejected ketchup from the Heinz Corp.

  

Requiem removes all enemies and turns the game into a straight puzzle-platformer.  You have to go from point A to point C while avoiding pit B.  It's very much out of place and feeling with the rest of the series. I'm currently in conflict with how I feel about the game.  

Okay, the world is the same.  You find yourself, I think, in The Tomb that was heavily mentioned in Penumbera: Black Plague and I'm assuming that your mission is to find your way through/out.  A lot of the puzzles are based around moving one object over to another area where you have to manipulate another object, then go back over there to press that button and run across the floor to make it through that door on the other side of the room, which is full of moving platforms on conveyor tracks.  Get it?

It would be like playing Resident Evil one moment, then playing Portal in a haunted mansion the next.  Okay, that game sounds pretty cool and I would want to play that.  That essentially is what Penumbra: Requiem is though, so I'm at a bit of a lost.  And I don't know why I'm having such a hard time coming to terms with how I ultimately feel about this game.  I love the series, I love the company, I'm just having a hard time putting as much time in a single sitting as I did with the previous two games in the series.

That's where I'm at and I'm really hoping that I like it there.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
I Can't Even Wrap My Brain Around How You Do That!



P.S.  I should also mention that Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs is now available to pre-order from anywhere that sells online/downloadable games.  The Gog, Steam, Frictional Games' all have the game available.  So go do that if you've like anything that either Frictional Games or co-developer The Chinese Room has ever made.

Life, Torchlight and Multiple Endings: Special Wednesday Edition

Today's broadcast is brought to you because of aforementioned apartment/condo/housing issues which are still in the process of being completed.

I just "finished" Torchlight about 30 minutes (as of this typing) ago and it got me thinking.  The game took me 25 hours to complete the main story line and now I'm just running random side missions in order to increase my character's level.  This seems to be a lot like the way I have lived my life.  

Bare with me.  

Take my Tank Grontog

Everyone, meet Grontog and his pet cat, Mjolnir.

who took 25 hours to "save" the town of Torchlight and is now embarking on level enrichment, I took 23 years to "complete" my primary educational career before I embarked on, whatever it is that I'm doing.

I could just leave him be and continue onto Torchlight II, or I could level Grontog up to level 100 (he's currently at 41), or I could go through the game with either of my other two characters:

Valkaria and her wolf Fenris:

Not her starting outfit and weapons.

Irwin Blaze and his wolf Ferrous:

I plan on having him focus on fire magic for obvious reasons.

I am somewhat tempted to go through the game again, but I think I have just decided (as in while typing this sentence) that I will go through Torchlight II first before revisiting this game again with a different character, although I have already played Valkaria for about an hour.  Either way, there are a lot of other games that I want/need/have to play so a second run through and/or level enrichment may just have to wait.

That being said, I like when games have either a New Game + option or in the case of open worlds, continue playing after the main storyline is completed, but doing practically the same thing as before.  Now, even though I like this in games, I often don't take advantage of this.  I just don't have the time, especially with RPGs, to spend another 40 hours reliving the experiences that I just finished.  Now, there are some exceptions such as when games offer divergent storylines and you want to see other aspects of the story that were not experienced the first time through.

I think I'll go and play some of Reus, because that was a fun 50 minutes that seemed a lot less intimidating than the 15 minutes I spent looking at Civ. V.

Also, I don't think I can finish Doom II: Hell on Earth.  FPS/motion-sickness is just getting too much for me and I get annoyed at only being able to play for 15 minutes before needing to turn the game off.  

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

And I Looked Back on My Busy Day

To Zelda too.

1980s Link is frustrated that his Franchise has become stale

I started this post on a day I called in sick-- paid sick days were a perk to my previous place of employment.  And, wouldn't you know it, after a crashing into a nap, post sick-call, I woke up with the earnest desire to play Zelda II:  The Adventure of Link.  Then it occurred to me: there is a very good chance that I stayed home sick from school at some point in my childhood and played Zelda II.  That's neither here, nor there, but I have been thinking about the game since getting up.  

Zelda II is often seen as an aberration in the series, the experimentation with side scrolling and RPG elements being too much for some people.  But I loved this game.  It was a family game and I've played it a bunch of times throughout the years, but I've only beaten it a couple of times.  I made similar claims of favoritism regarding Zelda I and those claims are true; but Zelda II occupies a different and very special place in my memory.

I think it's important to note that the clay had not hardened on this game series when Zelda II came out. Hell, it was only the second game in a series that by now spans over a dozen.  There was no reason to think that each sequel would be the same as the last.  As a matter of fact, it occurs to me that Mario 2 (Mario USA) was also radically different from Mario 1.  However, unlike Mario, we had to wait until a new console system came out to get a third installment of the Zelda theme.  

I have to admit that I was a little disappointed in Zelda III choosing to be another top-down game.  Even though that game is probably my favorite game ever. And in retrospect, it was certainly an impactful decision for the whole franchise, as the next in the series, Link's Awakening, was also top down, and every subsequent Zelda game for a portable system has been a top-down design.  

But back when Zelda II was still relatively new, it was a great game.  I loved the side scrolling, I loved that you got to use Magic and I loved the RPG elements.  Raising levels and an overworld map, two important RPG innovations.  Basically, Zelda II is a completely different game than Zelda I was, and there is no need to compare them.  I think this variation between sequels is great, I wish more game series were like this.  Zelda II was also a true sequel  - the story picks up chronologically after the events of the first game, and Ganon is dead.  

The side-scrolling, overworld map and RPG elements were abandoned after Zelda II, and frankly, I think to the detriment of the series as a whole.  I wish Nintendo had been more willing to branch out and experiment with this series.  I don't mean to sound bitter, but in my humble opinion, the Zelda franchise has grown stale and over-marketed.  I think this can be shown by the release schedule of Zelda games.  In the 1980s, two games were released.  The decade of the 90s saw four games. The 2000s saw seven Zelda games released.  I believe it was during the decade of 2000-2010 when Nintendo missed its opportunity to branch the series in a new direction. But, you know, maybe it's never too late.   

----------------------

Zelda RPG anyone?

Esuna and Kamil - How about Zelda and Link?

And since I'm in love with my own ideas, I want to talk about my old idea for a Zelda RPG.  This was inspired by playing 'The 7th Saga' by Enix on SNES,  something I did a lot of as a teenager.  This was sometime after Zelda III came out, but long before Ocarina of Time.  While playing as Esuna, whom I always played as, I had a moment when I imagined Princess Zelda casting the ice spell.  When playing as Kamil,It wasn't too hard to imagine Link there, sword and shield in hand,  and suddenly I want a Zelda RPG with battle style identical to 7th Saga.  

Now take these two characters above and re-imagine them as Zelda and Link.  Not hard to do eh? Just put a green hat on Kamil and pretty much leave Esuna the same.  At least it wasn't hard for me to imagine in 1996. I thought it would be so cool to play as Zelda and Link fighting side by side.  Mario RPG came out at around this time, and I thought it was a fantastic and innovative game.  In that game, I enjoyed being able to play as Princess Toadstool or Bowser, and I longed for a chance for the Zelda Universe to expand in a similarly clever way. 

It's too bad that we've made it this far without a proper Zelda RPG.  I really think Nintendo dropped the ball on that one.  By Zelda III, the world was lush and full, ripe for development in an RPG style.  The series featured two top-down games and a side scroller with RPG elements.  Further expansion of the series into a multi-genre franchise seemed possible then.  By now, I worry that it may be too late.  Or, is it never too late?  How about it, Nintendo?  

-D

Zelda-- I mean Esuna casting an ice spell.  

Many thanks to:

http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=38230

for exactly the image I was looking for.

Today's Talking Points Brought To You By Fox News Corp., the Letters Ѭ, þ and the number 四

Sorry for the lack of post this last Friday.  

Around 12:30am Friday morning, I thought I had heard the sound of water droplets.  About an hour later, this was happening:

Conklederp and I have had something like this happen before just under a year ago.  In that case we talked to our upstairs neighbors, found out that the problem was on their side thereby affecting our ceilings.  The issue was taken care of and our ceiling was repaired and repainted.  The problem was solved relatively easily.

Jump now to early last Friday morning.  Conklederp and I were considering going to sleep after I had finished putzing around on the interwebs.  That's when the first drops were heard.  Soon after I noticed the counters were wet and that droplets were forming on the ceiling in various places, including around the lighting installations.

We went upstairs to talk to the neighbors, thinking that a similar situation could be easily cleared up, despite the fact that it was now 2:30am and the dripping had not stopped.  To make a long story immediately shorter, 15 gallons of water later, the above photo progressed to this:

Disclaimer: That woman on the left is one of our upstairs neighbors, not Conklederp.

And presently, nearly four days later, we are still at this:

Needless to say my mind has not been in a very video game reviewing-type mood, but I have been getting some game time in, mainly with Infinite Space (still, I know) and a PC game called Symphony (which I've already put four hours into) that will be getting it's own First Impressions later in the week.  Who knows, I might just put something up on Wednesday to make up for the lack of a post on Friday and the overall lack of video games in todays post.

I also just powered through vol. 6 of The Walking Dead and we just started in on Season 3 of the TV series (we don't have cable).  I also picked up the Dead Space comic compilation which I'll get to after I finish Dead Space: Catalyst, which I'll get to once I finish Feet of Clay.

That's where we're at.  Sorry to bog y'all with our problems, but hey, what else is the internet for, besides porn I mean?

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

The Sounds of Wind

IRL vs gaming vs challenge vs fun

Typing about my imaginary Gardening game got me thinking about other In Real Life (IRL) activities that may be simulated in games.  There are some obvious ones:  Racing, for example.  I hear that Grand Tourismo series, and its competitors, are all about the ultra-realism in terms of physics.  I hear that Mario Kart is all about ultra realism in terms of fun.  I think they both succeed in their own ways.

But In Real Life, things are always way different from games.  For example:  In games, the risk-reward system is... well, skewed.  When you wreck your car, even in the most realistic of all racers - you don't die.  You don't break your pinky finger.  You're not even scarred for life!  Hell, for that matter, you probably get a continue or something.  This is an extreme example.

It's not just video games. In baseball, for another hyperbolic example, you aren't ritually executed when you are thrown out at first.  This is good, because being thrown out at first happens a LOT.  Hundreds of times every day during the regular season.  But playing baseball is WAY harder than playing video games.  Then again, it pays better, I think.  

But I guess I mostly want to talk about challenge.  There's a pretty fun article about challenging games over at Gamasutra.  I've been enjoying it.  It's got a lot of tasty retro stuff that I love.  It's a long article- thankfully presented in ten tasty bites- I've been reading it over a series of days.  It emphasizes skill building, and expertise at different games. I think I'm more interested in the quality of challenge in games, than the amount of challenge.

Sometimes the challenge is in achieving a perfect balance.  And that balance can be elusive. Following the garden example, proper watering is a real problem when nurturing a plant.  You can fuss with a plant so much that you kill it.  Smothering can be as bad as neglect.  It is this way in other IRL activities, like cooking.  There is also a fine balance struck with cooking.  You can definitely worry a dish into mediocrity, when leaving it alone may have produced something fantastic.  I do this all the time.  Are there any games that demonstrate this sort of delicate balance?

I guess I'm looking for something like this in gaming.  And as I'm typing, I thought of an interesting idea: Achievements .  That is to say, what if a game was released with no achievements whatsoever, and the achievements were submitted by players after they had made them.  Just submit a screencap, and the game moderators will decide if it is a worthy achievement.  Then keep a directory of them.  That could be fun.  Has a game done this yet?  I bet team fortress 2 has.  It seems like the kind of game that would do that.  Anyhow, I'm stumbling into seriously out of touch zone, so I should shut up.

But yeah, it's fairly obvious why many IRL features aren't included in games.  They don't sound fun at all.  Like, for example, the RPG trope of 'life points' and 'potions.'   Got a gaping wound in your belly?  Down a couple potions, you'll be fine.  Life doesn't even closely resemble that.  Most of us don't deal with gaping wounds, just scratches and tiredness.  Food helps, and caffeine, but there are no potions.   There is Nothing that works like that.  

And, like I said, it doesn't sound fun to have to rest your RPG characters because they're tired from walking around all day.  A game where your characters need Exercise, a balanced diet and plenty of rest. BO-ring.  And yet, somehow it sounds interesting to me, to balance the in-game system with more realistic needs.  I often find myself contemplating Player Stat and Item systems for imaginary RPGs that are more realistic, somehow.  I think this means I am a giant nerd. 

-D

September Update - 2013

My last day at work was August 16th.  I immediately went on a multi-day bike ride with my sister, who was in town.  And then, keeping with the family theme, visited with my family over the next couple days.  Finally, the last week of August, I got some time to really enjoy my unemployment.  

I've been blogging my thoughts like a maniac, so you can expect to see an increase in my posting frequency.  I haven't actually spent any time playing video games, which might go to support my theory that I like talking about games more than I like playing them.  I don't mind this much.  It's mostly a timing thing - games take a long time.  Hours and hours, and, despite my unemployment, I find myself to be pretty darn busy.  I'm not bored, that's for sure.  To be fair to games, I haven't really been watching TV, Movies or reading all that much, either.

I also want to point out that I didn't partition very much space to my Windows HD, so I am unable to have many of my steam games installed, especially the big ones (Portal II, Portal).  Which is a bummer, because I love those games.  The obvious solution is to reformat and re-partition my hard drive, which I am avoiding because it takes forever.  But, I may have discovered a workaround for the above problem.  I have installed steam on my janky old apple laptop!  I have a good 60 free gigs on the thing, and a bunch of my steam games work for Mac!  I was pretty thrilled to see this.  Working games include:  VVVVVV, Portal, Braid, Bit.Trip.Runner, Limbo.  Pretty cool, huh?

Of course, now I have a new adventure: seeing what games will actually play on this crappy old thing, and, beyond that, how long they'll play before the computer overheats.  Seriously, this laptop gets so hot, it burns my leg! So it is no longer, functionally, a 'lap' top.  Anyway, further adventures in Steam, hooray!  Next stop:  steam for linux (if I can ever get that to work). 

I did stop by Kongregate to play some flash games, as indicated in my previous post.  Flash games are mostly short-run, so they work better with my current lifestyle.  I've also been on a blogging tear since settling into my unemployment.  I've produced maybe six draft posts this week.  Of course, it remains to be seen if they will see the light of day.  These random, multi-topic posts are the easiest. I like doing them, it's nice to just sort of 'check in' without having to make some sort of point.

The way I begin postings usually goes in one of three ways:  1) I come up with a topic and write a few paragraphs, 2) I come up with a topic and write a few sentences, 3) I come up with a topic and write a few pages.  Then I sit back and let the post ruminate for a couple of days before returning to it.  The first approach is the most reliable- often times the post is nearly fully formed when I finish the initial writing.  The second will sometimes develop into a post, if it's an idea I am inspired by.  The third approach rarely turns into anything coherent.  Sometimes I will chop up a multi-page rant-fest and turn it into a couple different postings, but just as often, the draft sits in perpetuity, never to be finished.  It's not writers block in these cases, it's editors block.

Alright, on to the climbing gym, the bike kitchen, the thrift store, the yoga studio, the laundromat and Hamburger Patties, which is closing on September 2nd  :(


-D

Monthly Update: September 2013

Welp, PAX Prime has once again graced the Pacific Northwest with it's presence (and is currently in an unprecedented Day IV).  The Labor Day weekend for me however was spent at work, so much so that I'm going back today.  I was going to hit up Safeway on my way home too, but now remembering that a lot businesses celebrate holidays and might be closed or have modified work hours.  Not us!  We're Amur'can!

Self loathing aside and back to happy times.  Like a game D'Octorpotts got me called Papo & Yo.  Which is a really spiffy game.  I saw it on Steam for quite a while, but for whatever reason had never looked into it.  Then I played it.  It's a somewhat uplifting game with pretty dark undertones of alcoholism and child/spousal abuse.  

Right, happier things.  

As some may have predicted, the re-Kickstarter campaign for Shadow of the Eternals failed to reach their $750,000 goal.  However, the game was greenlit as part of Steam's Greenlight indie gaming place/thing, which is good news.  This doesn't seem like the game is going to be shelved and the company will implode, so there's still hope, even if it is just a fools hope.  Thanks Gandalf.

In similar news, fellow [ENFORCER] Jupiter of Earth (aka Jupiter) is working for/with Sword & Spirit Software to make a game that looks/sounds a lot like a mix between Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem.  The game is called Shades of Sanity and they started their own Kickstarter back in mid August and it will run until Friday September 27th, 2013.  Their target goal is $200,000 and they're currently 5% of the way there.  Here's to hoping, and better hoping than Shadow of the Eternals.

I have not a whole lot else to report in the wide world of video games.  I did recently find out that The Elder Scrolls Online will adopt the apparently poisonous pay model for their game.  The first month will be free followed by a $15/month fee after you purchase the game for around $50-60.  That's pretty much what I expected.  I'm still on the fence if I want to delve into this monster.

Infinite Space is continuing to be played, despite an obvious error in programing by Nude Maker and Platinum Games where celestial objects observed and discovered in other games affects if you discover them on your current game (even if you delete all game files by saving over them, which is the only way to delete saved files).  DKC Returns hasn't been played in a number of weeks because Infinite Space is just too engaging.  Torchlight is still being delved into.  Ace Combat Assault Horizon hasn't been played in over a month because of annoying/aggressive/bastardly vicious Ruskies that just won't die (ie let themselves be shot down) in the later half of a long level.  Plants vs Zombies 2 is seeing a resurgence in both gameplay and the number of popups to buy stuff.

So that's where I am currently at.

Oh, and the book Letters of a Woman Homesteader is doing a great job of reminding me that I'm not as much of a wilderness bad-ass as I would like to be.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Pussy, Pussy, Pussy. . .