Concert Review: RePLAY - A Symphony of Heroes

Last night, Conklederp and I had the pleasure to attend the Oregon Symphony at Arlene Schnitzer Hall (locally referred to as the "Schnitz" I just found out) with what appeared to me to be a full house.  The music being performed was not that of Beethoven, Bach, Tchaikovsky, Hayden or Glass, but of Soule, Curry, Uematsu, Mitsuda and Yamane.  It was a symphony of music written for video games.  It was very nearly everything my 15 year old self was asking for regarding the recognition of video game music all the way back in 1995.

"RePLAY" is the followup to"Play!," a video game concert series that ran from 2006 through 2010.  For whatever reason, I was never able to attend any of the "Play!" performances, although I assume that if I were to go back and look through my Google calendar I might find that my schedule never coincided with a close-by performance.  This year, RePLAY currently has a very limited schedule with the only other listed performance being in Phoenix, AZ in June.  If you are within travelling distance of that Arizonian town, I highly recommend attending.

I will not list all of the songs that were performed during the concert as that information is available on RePLAY's website, but I will say that there were some surprises.  When I first heard that there was going to be narration between each piece, I was a little put off.  I wanted the night to be about the music, that someone could sit back and listen the music from a video game and enjoy it for the music's sake.  Well, whomever they hired to do the writing did a fantastic job and the narration, although canned, was done by Nigel Carrington, the narrator from Dear Esther.  For me that added quite a lot of credibility to what could have ended up being very cheesy in all the wrong ways.

Another surprise was that bookending every piece was music from Dear Esther composed by Jessica Curry.  This threw me a bit because here you have music from a game that was very well received by "critics," it is not what the larger video game audience would call a video game.  To receive this kind of recognition while featuring music from such franchises as Mass Effect, Halo, Castlevania, and The Elder Scrolls was huge, not only for Jessica Curry but for The Chinese Room, the makers of Dear Esther (as well as co-creators of Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs and the upcoming Everybody's Gone to the Rapture).

After the performance, both Conklederp and I commented about the selection of games that where chosen and the apparently lack of Nintendo.  While some of the selections from Castlevania, Chrono Trigger / Cross and Kingdom Hearts were released on Nintendo platforms, none have been exclusive titles such as Journey or Shadow of the Colossus.  I must admit that I was a little sad that there was nothing from The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros. or Metroid, but someone with a different gaming background could say the same about there not being any music from Sonic the Hedgehog, Call of Duty, or World of Warcraft.  But selecting music from a catalogue of well over I don't know how many games ever made and being able to secure the rights from their respective studio (and/or composer) and publicly perform that music to a paying audience probably has some limitations.  In the end, I knew music from eight of the 19 featured games and those that I did not know or recognize, were still beautifully performed by a great orchestra.

Since beginning in 2004 with "Dear Friends - Music from Final Fantasy," video game music performed in the United States has seen some growth and recognition [citation needed] and I can only hope that it will continue to do so with it reaching, at least, the status that film soundtracks from composers such as John Williams, James Horner, Michael Kamen, and John Barry have been given. There is still a ways to go, but I would like to think we are headed long the right path.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Instrumental 

When Is A Game Too Much Game?

I have a queue of unplayed games and this time I'm not referring to just the games that I haven't played on Steam (although that list might be growing again due to Steam's Winter Holiday Non-Denominational Sale), but also the games for the PSP and 3DS that are patiently awaiting their turns to embed themselves in the emotional center of my brain.  This queue of games has recently gotten me thinking about the amount of time required to play all of these game to their conclusion. 

Now, when I say that I beat a game, I'm not referring to "completing" a game with every available character/car/plane, watching every ending and achieving every single achievement.  I just mean beginning a game and playing through until the credits finish rolling.  If I happen to unlock new features and earn achievements in the process, then bonus points for me.

I recently just completed Dead Island after playing roughly 62 hours.  That is a lot of time to spend on anything, let alone a video game.  Recently though, I have noticed that some games are becoming almost too long, or more likely, I am drawn to games that take up a lot of time.  Between the two of us, Conklederp and I have clocked in 571 hours on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and expansions; I currently have 115 hours on The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and have only just completed the main quest, not to say anything about either the Bloodmoon or Tribunal expansions; on Final Fantasy XII, I spent around 125 hours and I still didn't finish all of the hunts or collect all of the Espers.  When Grand Theft Auto V was released last year, it was touted as having over 120 hours of game content.

When does game content become too much content?

Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem and Dead Space took my about 16 hours each while Amnesia: The Descent took 18 hours, but Gone Home and Evoland both took only 3 hours.  Those were perfect lengths of time for their respective games.  Horror games are a hard thing to do for an extended period of time.  I have never played a horror game that lasted as long as, say Morrowind and maintained that level of tension and fright.  Is it possible to maintain that level of tension for 50+ hours?  I honestly don't know as I feel like game length is relative to both the game itself and the person playing the game.  

For myself, as long as the quests make sense, I don't really mind fetch-quests for which both Skyrim and Dead Island are pretty notorious for.  I understand the argument against them as they do eat up a lot of time, especially if fast travel is not an option, but again, I enjoy exploring and looking at the worlds that I explore.  But, as is the case with anything in life, too much can be annoying.  Too many fetch quests to gather supplies for an outcome that is never witnessed is too much. In Morrowind, I was tasked with taking 20 jars of sujamma (local liquor) to the middle of nowhere.  What irritated me was that I had to reallocate my inventory to accommodate 60 lbs of items and travel to a mine just so that some miners who were most likely slaves, could have their liquor.  What I didn't mind was that I was travelling to a part of Vvardenfell that I had not visited so I was exploring. 

So how long should a game be for it to be both entertaining and fulfilling?

I don't think there's a correct answer here.  

Some games work better as a five hour short story while other games, primarily sandbox games almost demand that they last 100+ hours.  And there-in lies one of my problems:  I like sandbox games.  GTA, The Elder Scrolls, I like these games and I like to experience the worlds and the people who populate them.  I recently just started the Assassin's Creed series and I can see Fable, Mass Effect and Dragon Age on the horizon and I know that I will spend as much time in those worlds as I have in others. 

What I have come to realize while putting down my thoughts, is that I am drawn to long, drawn out narratives.  While I do enjoy playing shorter games like Evoland, Dear Esther and Nightsky that may take up only a couple of hours, I also love spending hours upon hours being immersed in a world and it's fictional culture.  Sure, I'll play some games that I know that I can finish in an afternoon, but maybe with the exception of a few games that I cannot recall at the moment, but that doesn't make them any less worth playing.  Sometimes a game that can be played in short segments is just what I need between the doses of massive epic quests.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

I'm Not Ready To Make That Kind Of A Commitment

Gone Home ... .. .

Jaconian has already written about Gone Home, and I suggest you go read his article now.  I'm writing with his article in mind, he does a great job of not revealing too much, but highlighting the emotional content in a striking and appropriate manner.  He also provides all the background necessary to approach this (non)game.  Suffice it to say, we had similar experiences, so I will try not to be too repetitive, though I'm sure some things will bear repeating.  For example, the following line:

*CONTAINS SPOILERS*

This game is really sweet.  Not as in Totally Sweet! but a gentle kind of sweet.  The voice acting is excellent, and listening to Samantha's diaries is very affecting.  I love what a teenager she is, alienated, but excited by all these new things.  Also, I feel like the mixed-media approach to character building is special to video games.  In addition to her diaries, we pick up what kind of a person Samantha is through looking at her stuff, her room, her work assignments.

In particular the 'Menstrual Cycle: A Novella" is about the funniest damn thing I've read in a long time.  Simply fantastic.  A really neat detail is that later in the game: I found Katie's version of that assignment, and realized that Sam copied it entirely into her assignment, but wrote the story around it.  The tipoff was the last line "isn't it amazing what a womans body can do?" or something like that.  It was the only line that was not relevant to the assignment that Katie included, but Sam copied it verbatum.

One thing I want to note about the Journal entries is that the game is very lonely.  Both in play and as the character of Katie, there is a removal from the action that comes from being alone in a new place, after having been gone for a long time.  When the journal entries read, it's really nice to hear someone's voice.  Especially with how warm and happy Sam feels a lot of the time. I came to feel affection for Sam, both in my role play as Katie, and just as a player/viewer/reader/listener.

There's also a strange sort of voyeuristic intimacy that was mildly disturbing.  As an adult male, I questioned my right to this fictional teenage girl's private diaries.  

I wasn't a big fan of the setting as a dark and stormy night, it makes the whole process spooky, and I'm not sure I needed that.  I didn't understand this choice until I read Jaconian's review and he mentioned that it used a modified Amnesia game engine.    I suppose the spookiness was in homage to that.  Or maybe it was just in Homage to Portland.    Adding to the spookiness is the crappiness of my computer preventing smooth animation.  Can't blame the game for that.

One final *spoiler* - something I picked up from reading an article from clockworkworlds blog about Gone Home.  It reveals a darker story about Sam and Katie's father, and Uncle Vernon.  This is interesting, because of the content, and also interesting because a lot more detective work is required to piece this story together, as opposed to Sam's story, which is the central plot.  

Overall,  Gone Home really does all the things I hoped it would.  The emotional content and the attention to detail are fantastic. I dub this the Non-game-game of the year, 2013, retroactive!

-D

P.S.  just some odds, ends and ideas:

Another awesome detail was the note that said "Sam, don't leave all the lights on, you're as bad as your sister" - and of course, at that point I had left all the lights on.  Mostly because this place was flippin' scary! I love that the designers anticipated this.

I realize that Gone Home is very much like Dear Esther, though instead of a landscape, we have objects to examine, and in that way it is more complex than Dear Esther.  Dear Esther is more abstract.  But still, I am very hopeful for the future of games with Gone Home.  I hope that its success will tip off other developers for the future.  Also - must play Dear Esther again.

Imagine this kind of detective work in a supernatural game.  Like, imagine that the house is a stage in a game, that is actually a representation of a persons mind.  Like, professor X psychic style.  Gone Home is a short game, independently produced, but it could very easily be a chapter in a larger story.  This is definitely not the last I've said about Gone Home.  

Full Review: Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs (PC)

Story

First off, you have to understand that this is a game from the people who created Dear Esther, which means that the story might be a little confusing and mysterious.  This is also a game from the people who created Amnesia: The Dark Descent, which means that, as the main character, you're not going to know anything about what is going on because, shocker!, you have some form of amnesia, hence being an integral part of the story/plot yet as the player, not knowing what is going on and exploring the world for the first time.

After I completed the game, I was pretty sure I knew what had been going on, but I still had some questions.  The story in the game is told through your fractured psyche talking to you and finding sheets of journal entries and letters, and never in chronological order.  You might find a letter from December 19, 1899 followed by one from August 5, 1899.  Naturally this form of storytelling is going to be a bit disorienting especially since I didn't play the game in a single sitting.  Additionally, relying on the player to discover potentially key pieces of information before permanently leaving an area puts a lot of faith in the developers.  

Admittingly, I visited the Wikipedia page and read over the plot.  I had a number of "Oh, okay" moments and none of the "Wait, is that what happened!?" variety.  It has made me wonder how much I missed going through and where I missed picking up notes.

Presently, I could see myself going through the game again, knowing what I now know, which is what the industry calls "replayability," but I will probably hold off for a bit to let the game sink in some more.

Gameplay

Gameplay is very simple.  WASD to move, mouse to look, hold "shift" to run and left click to pick up and hold on to certain objects.  Pigs uses Frictional Games' HPL Engine 2, the same that was used for The Dark Descent so there is nothing out of the ordinary or out of place here.  

Because the game was developed by The Chinese Room (Dear Esther), you do a lot of walking although running is also an option, but I only found myself running when I encountered some unnamable horror; I know what they are, I am just choosing not to name them for the sake of not spoiling too much.

Unlike Dear Esther, death is an option, but as there are no save points (of which I was a little disappointed that the relic/artifacts from Penumbra and The Dark Descent weren't brought back as saving mechanisms, but the game does frequently autosave), you will "respawn" in the general area from where you died.

As stated previously, there is no inventory system here.  You also have no health or sanity meter.  There were a couple of times, like after a miss-step and falling down a ladder, that the screen took on a reddish tint, which I took to mean that I shouldn't do that again or I would be dead tone, but after a while the tint went away.  

Graphics

I showed a lot of examples during my First Impressions article about how the game looked while running it at near optimum performance.  But in case you missed that article, here are some more lovely screenshots of that beautiful machine.

Churches are always great places for horrible things to happen

Mapping in the game is achieved by map like diagrams.

Sound & Music

The music to Pigs was written by Dear Esther composer Jessica Curry.  I really enjoyed the score to this game, I think more than The Dark Descent (music composed by Mikko Tarmia) and Dear Esther.  Both of those, while both were very atmospheric scores, they were not very melodic and therefore not very memorable; not that the music wasn't good, it fit the mood and setting of those games very well.  The music in Pigs was really good.  There were a number of cues that I really enjoyed hearing, both as an atmospheric piece and as music that I could listen to outside of the video game setting.

Sadly, the soundtrack was not made available through Steam when I preordered the game, but it is available through Jessica Curry's bandcamp site.  So I may just have to pop on over there (again).

Final Thoughts
As you can probably surmise at this point, I really enjoyed this game.  I was confused at times as to what I had to do and what the overall story was, but maybe that was just me and not a fault of the game designers.  Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs is definitely a game that I would recommend to anyone who enjoys storytelling and survival horror games.  

One potential downside is that I was able to complete the game in 8 hours.  That might be a huge turn off to a portion of the gaming community, especially games like Skyrim and currently GTAV, both touting game times of over 100 hours.  I cannot see Pigs maintaining the level of horror/uncomfortability/confusion for more than the time that was given.  Eight hours is the perfect amount of time for this type of game.

Granted it's not your traditional survival horror, but it's one that I came away feeling good about, albeit with the desire to take a long lukewarm shower.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Into That Great Void My Soul'd Be Hurled

Another-Another Humble Bundle of Awesomness

Yo, how's it going?  I'm just stopping in really quick to mention that my sister Mz is in town, and so I'm going to be a bit distracted and won't likely have any posts ready any time soon.  She rode her bike sixty miles yesterday, which is pretty badass.

I also want to mention that the Humble Bundle 8 has some games that I like and have reviewed here.  So, you should go there and give them some money for games.  You should probably have already done this, and signed up for their mailing list, and thus - already know about the Humble Bundle 8.  But I didn't really have a post ready, and so I thought I could talk about that.  Humble Bundle 8 includes games: Dear Esther, Thomas Was Alone and Proteus.  All excellent games.

In addition, there are other games, which I don't know anything about.  They might be good, they might be excellent.  Gee, maybe I should buy the Humble Bundle 8.  I guess I could buy it for a penny or something.  Normally, I make it a point to always exceed the average and get the full bundle.  The average is usually like 8 bucks.  No big deal.  You can afford it.

Alright Dear Reader, if you go and get this bundle today, you will have made this purchase with just under 14 days remaining.  Unless you are from the future, which you more than likely are.  Days, Weeks... Years?  If you're from about six months in the future I'd like it if you could answer a series of questions for me. 

First:  Did the Giants make it to the playoffs?  Second:  Did they win?  Third:  Do you still enjoy your Humble Bundle Purchase?  Fourth:  Do you think it was worth the money you paid for it?  Fifth:  Is 'The Wolverine' any good?  I really hope it is, but this will be the fifth time Hugh Jackman has played Wolverine, and I can't help but wonder how long this can go on.  

Alright, I'm out of questions for those of you from the near-future.  I'll have to come up with some new questions for long-future readers.  And some way to read the responses without having to wait around until the day you finally post them.  Until then, remember back in May, 2013?  Gee, seems like just yesterday,

-D

When Worlds Collide II: Awesome Collaborations for 2013

I'm one of those kinds of people that likes it when two things that I like, happen to separately like each other back.  And through that liking, have their own child instead of my imaginary brain child.  This has been happening since I first found out that J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were friends and were part of/founded a literary group at Oxford called The Inklings.  This continued when I was about 11 and discovered that George Lucas and Steven Speilberg were friends, hence why I was seeing George Lucas on set while watching a documentary about Raiders of the Lost Ark.  It's these kinds of collaborations that make me happy.

One of the first games that I bought via Steam that wasn't part of a Humble Indie Bundle was Dear Esther.  I bought it because it looked beautiful.  Yes, I was judging a book by it's cover and let me tell you, it was god-damn-beautiful.  So Dear Esther was developed by a small company called thechineseroom, which is amusing as they're a British company.  So they made this game, which I didn't fully understand until about the time I finished it, which was after about two hours of playing, but that's beside the point.  The point is, is that it was beautiful and fun.

Moving onto Frictional Games (but not forgetting thechineseroom), they're the company that made both the Penumbra series and Amnesia ~The Dark Descent~.  I've already talked about both games previously here and here, so I won't need to go into either of those again.

NOW, Frictional Games is teaming up with thechineseroom to develop the indirect sequel to Amnesia called Amnesia ~A Machine for Pigs~.  Yes, the title is a bit obscure, other than being slightly obvious with the quote/reference during the beginning of the trailer but other than that, there are both living and dead pigs featured in both trailers for the game.  The point is, is that I've really liked both Amnesia and Dear Esther and this collaboration looks to be pretty amazing.

Okay, now jumping back to thechineseroom, they are in development of another game dealing with a genre that I've been a fan of for a very large portion of my life.  I don't really know when it was that I realized I liked the apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic genre, but it was definitely sometime in the early to mid 1990s, so in my early teenage years.  So thechineseroom's new game will be titled Everybody's Gone to the Rapture.  According to thechineseroom, the game will be in a similar vain to Dear Esther, in that it will be an open world exploration POV game.  

This is almost too much for my brain to handle

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Be Careful Not To Slip On The Puddle