This is something rampant and widespread in level-based games, don’t get me wrong. I’m picking on Tomb Raider specifically because I know exactly why it has to be this way, it still bothers the player’s subconscious. It happens a lot in Dues Ex: Human Revolution too, but that at least could be explained by, say, defense turrets and other devices unseen but dangerous until you deactivate them from the inside when you’re ready to leave. That’s plausible.

So the levels are generally something like this:

You start at the bottom there and grapple up some mountain or have your butler in a helicopter or yacht drop you off, then you figure out the puzzle to open the door and proceed through this gauntlet of traps and trials, killing the animals that have been sealed in the tomb for countless years waiting just for you to come. Maybe that’s why they’re so ferocious: they haven’t eaten in a long time. After dispatching all danger and overcoming all ridiculous odds, you finally come to the main room containing the crystal or amulet or key or whatever and proceed to grab it – here there’s two options: one, a secret door in the back opens up and you just run out happily. Two: the temple starts to shake and crumble and you go back through all of those traps again until you get back to the front door where some bad guy with a terrible fake accent thanks you for retrieving the goods for them, proceeds to knock you out and takes it.

Now, I’m entirely happy with this. The games are still entertaining and I quite like them. The puzzle rooms are often clever and that side of the level design is actually fantastic. If you can ignore the very obvious and conveniently placed ledges and gaps that are perfectly sized for Lara, the environments are actually very cool. The way some of the rooms fit together to allow you to do some things while certain areas are activated / switch when not are nothing short of brilliant on the designer’s part – commendable.

But then there’s the bit that bothers me.

All of these tombs, save for some of the darker corridors, are naturally lit by huge chasms in the ceiling. Looks cool, sure, sunlight streaming in. Makes for a workable game, since it isn’t completely sealed and black, which is, you know, nice. But it raises the question: if you have the helicopter there, why don’t you just drop in, grab the crystal amulet of cosmic power and activate the winch to pull you back out. It’d be so much easier!

The better question is why the bad guys don’t do that. They thank Lara for retrieving it because they know the traps would kill them, so they just wait for her to come back out – I would too – but they have helicopters and winches – go for the huge skylights.

Now, it’s a petty nit to be picked but I’d argue that it’s this sort of subconscious disconnect that hurts video games’ realism without you even ever fully knowing it.

Image sources via clickthrough.

It was on Steam sale so I had to pick it up. I paid the extra dollar and a half for the soundtrack, which turns out to be one of my favorite parts.

There’s a divide in this review, and I wish it weren’t true, but I have to throw it out there: I bitterly hate this game. I absolutely love this game.

So, Dustforce is in the same impossibruuu rage quit style as Super Meat Boy and N+ before it and like those games, I am utterly terrible at it. I just, I can’t. I get frustrated by my own lack of ability to do what I want and eventually have to stop because I’m physically seething. It’s not pretty.

And then, when I’m listening to the soundtrack in my car and it’s so perfect and peaceful it lures me back in; it makes it seem like the game is easy and that if I went back right I would be better at it or something. It’s a trap. That’s how it gets to you.

Then you can see why I’m so torn. I love everything about this – the style is great, the gameplay is (when you can do it) silky smooth and there are those moments where you feel truly awesome chaining backflips and wall jumps and attacks together in perfect harmony. The soundtrack, as I’ve mentioned, is spot on with reminiscing chiptune and environment ambiance. The ‘plot’ is simple: you’re a superpowered janitor and things are dirty. Go to it. That’s entirely sufficient. The levels are unlockable as your progress and you slowly build up the keys even if you’re rubbish at it like me, so you can keep going despite mediocre scores across the board. All four characters are playable from the start and are essentially the same save for appearance.

Here’s one of the world records:

Which is just sickening. They make it look so easy.

That is a cool feature though, at the end of each level there’s a scoreboard comparing the times and scores of everyone who’s ever played that level. Crushingly, I’m always near the bottom. On one level I am literally second last. In the world. Ouch.

No, but it’s a great game and I can’t recommend it enough to the types of people who enjoyed the masochism that was Super Meat Boy. Just because I’m terrible doesn’t mean it’s a terrible game by any means.

As we know, Portal 2 is awesome. It’s been a little over a year since it’s release and next week Valve is laying down the community driven map system with editor and I have to say, the UI looks slick. I was worried – there’s a lot of complexity in a test chamber and 3D editor interfaces are generally sort of terrible at intuition. My fears have been quelled, replaced by sheer excitement for the release. May 8th. Ask Siri to mark your calendars.

In other gaming news, a trailer that caught my attention:

A trailer of enigma no doubt. But gah! That’s in game footage. They wrote the graphics engine because they didn’t like any of the existing ones. It’s first person puzzle single player co-op (whatever that is). The teaser art (also in game footage) looks like this. You can find that trailer song here. They’re writing a blog and making notes about all of the development. This is the sentence structure of Brennan Letkeman swooning. Consider me a fan of this indie studio and all that they’ve done so far. Even if the game release itself is utter rubbish, that trailer is something to be proud of.

So good, you guys. So good.

via

I appreciate any concept artist who can move so fluidly from characters to props to environments. Bradley Wright, you are the man.

Honestly, I wish I could post more but I’m already way over my vertical usual, so I’ll just have to redirect you to his wall of awesome. Seriously, I’m in awe at the sheer amount of work here. Fantastic.

In preparation for my graduation and moving I’m trimming the fat from my life and trading old useless things for either more valuable or less voluminous things such as video games. I still don’t have any time to play, but someday if and when I ever get sick I’ll be set.

Today I got Brink. It’s a game that didn’t review very well and sort of fell off the radar for most gamers. I’ve only played the first few levels and already I agree, but more importantly the art style is fantastic. It’s vaguely Mirror’s Edge in it’s sharp architecture and clean, smooth lines but with the chaotic ruin of Portal 2‘s beginning chambers (Brink’s environments have either been abandoned for some time or are active slums).

I remember being really excited when the first teaser trailers came out but when the debut price hovered at $50 I didn’t bother. So, it’s a bit late, sure, but we can still draw inspiration from it.

The parkour in the trailers, by the way, is grossly over played. The in game version is pretty meh. Still, just ignore him and watch the environment:

It’s a cool style and I’ve been in Blender making a few airports and malls. I’m reminded of the Wipeout Uber Mall and perhaps that’s another perfect game to visit for inspiration.

Here’s the deal, lots of media people are talking about the “wasted potential” time because people are playing games like Farmville. The thing people forget when doing the math for hours wasted playing these games is that the people who play these games aren’t typically the people capable of curing cancer. That’s why they’re playing Facebook games. So, is X million hours really “wasted”? Still probably, but it’s certainly not fair to say that we’ve lost X million cancer-curing hours.

Problem 2:

These exploits arguably fall into line with something Van Cleave had said about how people can be heavy gamers and still find balance. “I know plenty of people with other activities and interests, their health, family, friends, and work, and who game 10 to 25 hours a week. And on top of that, they’re good parents, they have a good job. That sounds pretty healthy to me,” he said.

Uh… 10-25 hours a week? At just over an hour a day I’m willing to bet they’d be right at home next to most families’ TV watching schedule. When did average TV watcher become “heavy” gamer?

I’ve probably made this argument before, but I’ll say it again: video games can’t be any worse for you than passively watching tellie. Hand eye coordination, problem solving, reflex twitching, teamwork, Mountain Dew drinking. You know, all those wholesome things. All those things you don’t do just sitting there spineless on the sofa.

So play on! You could be doing a lot worse.

Or, for extra awesome points, actually do something awesome like cure cancer or develop a cultish religion based on this blog.

This game was part of the Humble Indie Bundle a friend gave me for Christmas and I hadn’t actually played it until the other day. I’m actually really glad I discovered it because it’s the perfect break game – you can play for 5 or ten minutes at a time and then resume working.

It’s a danmaku shmup which is to say skin-of-your-teeth sheer insane bullet hell type. I’m terrible at these. Most of the gameplay is me alternating between giddy “Oh my goodness how on earth am I still alive” teeth gritting and heart panic that my usual cardio workout would be jealous of. In other words: fantastic.

The soundtrack is awesome, the plot is ridiculous and entirely fitting. The pixel-perfect sprite work reminds me of the old Yukon Trail games we used to play on the elementary school computers. It all comes together into this little ball of excellence that spites the polish of any big name game.

Then there’s these bonus levels:

That look so easy when other people play them and are entirely impossible when I try it. I’m not sure how many times I’ve played that particular bomb one, but I remember the first time distinctly: “Oh, 15 seconds, that can’t be that hard. The first half is entirely calm, so it’s really only 8 or 9 seconds that you have to dodge and survive… OH MY GOODNESS NO” *ship explodes immediately*

And from there a Super Meat Boy-like masochist addiction was born.

All in all, it’s awesome. Buy it. Not just to support the indie devs, but because it’s a game that honestly holds it’s own. It’s the perfect coffee break length and despite being digestible in small chunks will provide hours of quality heart-palpitating fun.

I just finished Bastion this morning and might I say, right off the bat, it’s definitely worth whatever they’re charging for it these days. I bought it on the Steam sale a few weeks back and just got around to it recently – totally worth it.

Without ruining anything or giving away spoilers, I just wanted to briefly go over why it’s great:

The world comes up around you, and often has a few side trails that you can follow for extra powerups and such, but in order to coax the pieces to form the path, you have to run towards the emptiness in a sort of leap of faith. It’s an interesting gameplay mechanic because although the path is usually marked in subtle ways using props and decoration, there’s a certain element that draws you into his uncertainty and exploration. It’s engaging.

The narrator is brilliant. His voice makes up 99% of the dialogue in the game – the hero is silent – and somehow manages to talk the entire time without getting annoying. There’s something lulling in his voice and timing that’s really well done. The soundtrack is likewise perfect:

It has that twangy Firefly vibe to it which really works with the sort of lone wanderer cowboy attitude the Kid’s got. Again, the narrator talking over that with his soothing drawl is just so, so perfect.

The gameplay itself is sort of dungeon hack and slash in a way, and the variety of weapons is really well designed: each weapon has a very distinct role and use so you’re constantly playing with combinations (you can carry two at a time) to find the ideal mix for your playing style. In the end I liked the machete, which allows melee swiping and a snipe throwing capacity if you wait + the blunderbuss shotgun thing, which is twitchy and has a wide angle of damage making it perfect for those enemies that only pop up for brief instances. You trade accuracy and power for speed. The pacing for weapon introduction is neat, and they introduce a new weapon up to and including the last level with a mode that allows you to start the game over keeping all your perks. I wouldn’t say it’s really a game made for replay value, but the experience more than makes up for that.

It’s shorter too. I mean, compared to other games coming out these days (cough cough Skyrim). I can’t imagine it took me more than 10 hours, and I spent a lot of time sight seeing and looking in corners for hidden things. I like that, though. I have tons of 50+ hour games that I’ve never finished and therefore feel unresolved. Bastion has an awesome ending and left me deeply satisfied for the journey of it all. Ultimately, at their roots, I think this is what games should strive for. The greatest games that I can think of do this well. Shadow of the Colossus, Limbo, Portal… these are all games with a proper journey regardless of length.

The art and environments are dripping with atmosphere and is complimented by a lot of subtle sound design. I don’t need to say much more, really. I still like entering the shops – the arsenal and the brewery specifically. They just feel inviting, like the roaring fires inside are somehow warm and comforting. There’s just a well design ambiance to the places you go be it jungle or ice palace.

Seriously, just spend the $10 (or less!) and buy it. It’s well worth your investment.

As we know, I’ve been a huge fan of Mirror’s Edge since long before it came out on PC. So it’s interesting that I only just picked up the iPad version – which was one of the first real iOS games back in the day – now, because it just became free.

Overall, I liked it.

I’m not sure it would really stand on it own, but having played through the real version so many times it brings back a sort of nostalgia for me. The textures are identical and the style translated well to the platformer view. The gameplay is more like Canabalt than anything, but with more buttons / more in game choices. I did appreciate that you can play the entire game with one thumb making the various swipe actions, although there are balance beam parts where you have to rotate the device physically which means you can’t play the game laying on your side on the couch or wherever. That’s slightly annoying. The levels are fairly straightforward, and there are side routes (that to say, above / below routes) which can save time or avoid enemies or have runner bags which, like the real game, are just a hidden collectible thing.

It’s pretty repetitive, to be fair, but it has those moments where you time everything perfectly to execute cool maneuvers and, like the real game, those are the moments that really aren’t found in other games. There’s that fluidity found in both which really captures that cool runner feeling, that these superpowers are a natural extension of your control. I’m glad that found a way to achieve that.

And, given that it’s now free, why not pick it up?

I was excited when I found out there were releasing a new Trackmania and got a chance to play the beta a little bit here. Some thoughts:

It’s more Trackmania, for better or for worse. I’ve loved every game since the very first one and it’s been really cool to watch it grow from an indie game in the $15 rack of Radioshack to a fairly large racing platform with thousands of servers around the world. Canyon doesn’t stray far from the original formula which is both relieving (they didn’t ruin it) and somewhat disappointing (having played every TM before it, I’m sort of bored already).

Because there’s only one environment they’ve spent a lot more time perfecting it and the car’s balance with drifting and twitchy controls seems spot on perfect. Thankfully, the annoyingly top heavy Canyon cars of previous generations is no where to be found here. It’s more comparable to the Coast cars, but with a proper turning radius and lighter on the feet.

The track creation tools are quite a bit smarter in this generation and more contextual, so one part might fulfill a variety of roles depending on how it’s placed – this is awesome because the part list would go on forever if it wasn’t simplified like that. It takes some getting used to, but everything’s there somewhere. It seems a lot smarter at letting you know what you’re doing wrong, instead of TMU’s habit of just saying ‘no’ and leaving you to wonder how you need to change things to make it work.

Overall, I’m liking it so far. It’s pretty much like you’d expect, and once the real servers get up and populated I suspect some awesome, awesome tracks will start coming out of the wood works.