Thanks to a free trial weekend on Steam, I had the chance to play Borderlands - the co-op shooter of choice among my friends. Ultimately, I had some fun, but chose not to purchase the game.
You see, there were a lot of things about Borderlands I wasn't keen on. It's not that I think it's a bad game; I just didn't personally get on with it that well. Very high among said things I wasn't keen on was the interface. And I'm not talking about something as simple and easily remedied as key mapping here, although C for crouch? Come on. L-Ctrl is crouch in an FPS, and that is The Way Things Should Be.
No, the problems I have with Borderlands' controls are much deeper. Why is the enter key interchangeable with left-click in some menus, but not others? Why do I stop sprinting when I turn with the keys, but not with mouselook? Why tell me to drive with WASD, when it's the mouse which controls driving direction?
Everything about Borderlands' control system screams that it was made for an Xbox controller. Now, it's a far cry from lazy ports which ask PC gamers to press triangle or right trigger, but I still felt the whole time that I should have been using a pad. Considering that it was developed by Gearbox - who first made their name in PC shooters - I find that a little bit of a shame. It's all small things, but they add up, and Borderlands ultimately played very non-intuitively for me.
ARMA 2 is another game I've struggled to get into, and again, the interface is a significant part of it. "Oh," I thought to myself as I failed to climb over a small wall after hitting all the usual suspect keys and checking the control map, "There must not be a climb key."
A short while later, one of the handy little gameplay tips tells me to press V to climb over obstacles. Now, that mapping doesn't make a tremendous amount of sense, but I can live with that. What annoyed me was the fact that I couldn't find that anywhere in the control map. After checking again, I found it - buried away somewhere in the mass of controls for this game and labelled as "step over." Well, that's certainly an intuitive name for a key which lets you climb fences.
The mouse sensitivity range seems to be much higher than in most games, and after pushing it way down to pan at the speed I like, the precision in small movements was lost. Perhaps it's meant to be more realistic that way, but it's still absolutely nothing like aiming with a real gun, and realism at the expense of basic playability is something I just can't get on board with. Even the relatively straightforward (and super-arcadey) Army of Two took me a bit of time to get to grips with, with some of the control quirks - the selection of sniper mode, for example - seeming needlessly inelegant.
In my old age, I don't like impediments coming between me and my game. My life sucks enough as it is without my supposed hobby, the thing I do to relax, pissing me off even more. More often than not I want to jump in and have some fun, and for me, having to memorise thirty-odd different commands is not fun. Maybe I'll get disowned from gaming by the hardcore crowd, but it's the way it is - every time a game tells me to press a new key, it means another little click of the fun ratcheting down. Of course some of this is necessary, but again it adds up, and in the case of some games it adds up to more than I can be bothered with.
This coming weekend, there's another free trial - this time of Ragnar Tørnquist's supernatural MMO The Secret World. I'll be giving that a try, but I've never been that into MMOs and one of the big problems I have with them is - surprise, surprise - the number of commands to keep track of at once. I'm a big fan of Ragnar's storytelling ability, but will The Secret World's interface get in the way of my enjoying it? I guess I'll find out within the week.
Tuesday, 31 July 2012
Sunday, 15 July 2012
Trailer trash
I wanted to say something about all the Hitman hubbub, but I ultimately had even less to add to that than I did to the Diablo DRM debate. My major issue with the Hitman: Absolution trailer was not one of morality or chivalry, but that it's that it's not Hitman. Hitman is a game about not killing people. That's a very important bit. The part about not drawing attention to yourself, and not turning things into a bloodbath? Being all, like, subtle and stuff, or at least as subtle as one can be for a man with a bardcode on his head? That's what Hitman's about. And an explosive shootout with the cast of Sister Candie Takes The Divine Sacrament* is not subtle. I have subsequently been assured that the Absolution devs disliked the trailer just as much as everyone else, and have promised that the game will stay true to the core of Hitman's heritage.
Would fetish nuns with rocket launchers have caused half as much flap in a trailer for a new Wet or Bayonetta? Well, maybe. Probably. Bayonetta saw a fair amount of controversy surrounding its perceived sexism. But y'know, gender stereotyping aside, that's the sort of thing those games are about. And I salute them for it! That sort of hypersexualised, tongue-in-cheek, over-the-top, crazy-and-deranged-just-for-the-sake-of-it Thing certainly has its place. It's even had its place in Hitman over the years, at least in terms of aesthetic, if perhaps not action. I suppose, in that light, that the rocket launchers bother me more than the fetish nuns.
I've finally gotten round to Saints Row: The Third, and it's practically some kind of golden, penis-shaped temple to debauched lunacy. Yes, all the ladies have pneumatic boobies, and all the men have abs you could bounce rocks off, but that doesn't have to translate to sexist portrayals in terms of personality or societal role. For the most part, SR3 seems to do pretty well there. I'm about as pro gender quality as it's possible to be, but gender equality doesn't mean pretending that sex isn't fun, or that sexuality can't be addressed with a nod and a wink.
And then, there were Duke Nukem Forever's trailers. There's a line between fun, over the top cheese and actual sexism - a wide, blurry line, but some sort of line nonetheless - and DNF smeared rancid, blood-flecked semen all over that line. DNF's trailer made it seem like the game equivalent of the guy who's absolutely convinced that all women are gold-digging whores who need a strong man to keep them in line. That might be part of the same continuum as Bayonetta, but then so is puritanically censoring anything even remotely sexual, and it could be worse than tongue-in-cheek, knowing, over-sexuality.
Assassins attacking 47 in his hotel room, and him having to fight his way out? Sure, I can dig that. Said assassins being an all-female group dressed in latex nuns' habits? Okay then - so far so Tarantino, I guess. Blowing the shit out of the motel in huge explosions? Urgh... I suppose so. The really problematic bit is the fact that Square Enix have decided that this is what they want people's first impression of the new game to be.
Well, the pre-order going up six months ahead of release is also slightly daunting.
A trailer is many people's first window into a game. It's very much a first impression. A preview should get you excited, and displaying that a new installment will be completely different to the previous titles is very risky and rather questionable. The Absolution trailer tells us it will be centred around outlandish action and hyper-stylised sexuality, and that 47 will be an active agent in that this time; longtime fans understand that 47 is an outsider to this sort of thing, and that through his eyes things like fetish nuns with rocket launchers are distasteful. The OTT sexuality and violence of the previous Hitman games weren't presented as something to be celebrated. And of course there's the fact that a game about stealthy assassinations shouldn't need to be marketed on tits and explosions.
In light of the Hitman trailer, there's been a slight resurgence of talk concerning the Tomb Raider reboot's trailers. One of the big problems I've always had with the Tomb Raider series is the fact that Lara Croft is such a monumentally objectionable person. She's blessed with beauty, brains, brawn and fabulous wealth, yet how does she put her good fortune to use? By breaking into sites of historical importance and hoovering up anything valuable while killing the natives and endangered animals residing there. She's basically using her privilege to do whatever she likes, and screw anyone else it might affect. Granted, she finds herself in danger a lot, but she willingly put herself in that position in pursuit of stolen riches. Why, exactly, are we supposed to be sympathetic when she's in trouble? Why do you think 'killing Lara' was such a popular hobby among the PSX generation?
Some games tried to humanise her, or explain her motivations, but it always felt like an awkward retcon to me. Angel of Darkness tried to play up the nasty side of Lara, but it was more like a teenager's concept of 'badass' that true emotional darkness. Lara was always just a fundamentally unlikeable person. The reboot's trailer might not create a likeable protagonist - time will tell - but it's exploring why she is the way she is in a deep, potentially uncomfortable fashion (and I'm not talking about the gratuitous near-rape scene, nor the depressing fact that it's there to make male gamers want to protect Lara).
Most of us have to sympathise, psychologically, with someone who's been through a traumatic experience. But we don't have to like them. That creates an emotional and narrative tension. It's a simple trick, but it works. It was a key element of Analogue: A Hate Story; The Pale Bride went through unspeakable things, but as much as we might feel sorry for her, she's still pretty awful. James Bond went through unspeakable things in the Casino Royale remake, but they don't alter the fact he's an arsehole.
So it is with Lara in the new Tomb Raider trailer. She's beaten, subjected to appalling cicrumstances, and watches her friends get killed. Is that why she becomes the emotionless monster she is in later life? I may very well dislike the new Lara - time will tell - but I feel that there's a good chance I'll dislike her in an interesting way, and not just despise her for being a pantomime murderer. Then again, a lot of gamers have said good things about the old Lara, praising the fact she's a stone cold, unflappable badass. Ick.
Personally, what's gotten me most excited is perhaps the most minimalist preview around. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Audiosurf Air! Fun fact: Audiosurf is my joint third-most played game on Steam, tied with Psychonauts at 35.6 hours (yeah, it took me that long to complete Psychonauts. Don't... don't ask. I'm ashamed). All that's been revealed of Audiosurf Air is the name and three screenshots, and as the website dryly notes, the graphics are not final and "other things are also not final." But it's enough - there will be a new Audiosurf, and it will not be about fetish nuns with rocket launchers. Score!
I've also been enjoying the videos Stainless put out during their successful Carmageddon Kickstarter campaign. Even compared to Double Fine's videos, the Carmageddon videos are amateurish as hell (one of them features one of the developers dancing around to Trololo for about four minutes, for fuck sake) but I for one actually like that. Nobby and Simista come off as people you could go down the pub with. They're the kind of people I trust with a game like Carmageddon, which was - in essence - a fun pisstake. An accomplished, boundary-rewriting pisstake, but even so.
I wanted to close with something on the previews from Nintendo's new spy-catching game for the 3DS, but... rather embarrassingly.... I can't for the life of me remember what it's called. And this is looking very long and meandering as it is, so I'd better sign off. Bai bai.
*Just be thankful that I couldn't think of a good transubstantiation joke.
Would fetish nuns with rocket launchers have caused half as much flap in a trailer for a new Wet or Bayonetta? Well, maybe. Probably. Bayonetta saw a fair amount of controversy surrounding its perceived sexism. But y'know, gender stereotyping aside, that's the sort of thing those games are about. And I salute them for it! That sort of hypersexualised, tongue-in-cheek, over-the-top, crazy-and-deranged-just-for-the-sake-of-it Thing certainly has its place. It's even had its place in Hitman over the years, at least in terms of aesthetic, if perhaps not action. I suppose, in that light, that the rocket launchers bother me more than the fetish nuns.
I've finally gotten round to Saints Row: The Third, and it's practically some kind of golden, penis-shaped temple to debauched lunacy. Yes, all the ladies have pneumatic boobies, and all the men have abs you could bounce rocks off, but that doesn't have to translate to sexist portrayals in terms of personality or societal role. For the most part, SR3 seems to do pretty well there. I'm about as pro gender quality as it's possible to be, but gender equality doesn't mean pretending that sex isn't fun, or that sexuality can't be addressed with a nod and a wink.
And then, there were Duke Nukem Forever's trailers. There's a line between fun, over the top cheese and actual sexism - a wide, blurry line, but some sort of line nonetheless - and DNF smeared rancid, blood-flecked semen all over that line. DNF's trailer made it seem like the game equivalent of the guy who's absolutely convinced that all women are gold-digging whores who need a strong man to keep them in line. That might be part of the same continuum as Bayonetta, but then so is puritanically censoring anything even remotely sexual, and it could be worse than tongue-in-cheek, knowing, over-sexuality.
Assassins attacking 47 in his hotel room, and him having to fight his way out? Sure, I can dig that. Said assassins being an all-female group dressed in latex nuns' habits? Okay then - so far so Tarantino, I guess. Blowing the shit out of the motel in huge explosions? Urgh... I suppose so. The really problematic bit is the fact that Square Enix have decided that this is what they want people's first impression of the new game to be.
Well, the pre-order going up six months ahead of release is also slightly daunting.
A trailer is many people's first window into a game. It's very much a first impression. A preview should get you excited, and displaying that a new installment will be completely different to the previous titles is very risky and rather questionable. The Absolution trailer tells us it will be centred around outlandish action and hyper-stylised sexuality, and that 47 will be an active agent in that this time; longtime fans understand that 47 is an outsider to this sort of thing, and that through his eyes things like fetish nuns with rocket launchers are distasteful. The OTT sexuality and violence of the previous Hitman games weren't presented as something to be celebrated. And of course there's the fact that a game about stealthy assassinations shouldn't need to be marketed on tits and explosions.
In light of the Hitman trailer, there's been a slight resurgence of talk concerning the Tomb Raider reboot's trailers. One of the big problems I've always had with the Tomb Raider series is the fact that Lara Croft is such a monumentally objectionable person. She's blessed with beauty, brains, brawn and fabulous wealth, yet how does she put her good fortune to use? By breaking into sites of historical importance and hoovering up anything valuable while killing the natives and endangered animals residing there. She's basically using her privilege to do whatever she likes, and screw anyone else it might affect. Granted, she finds herself in danger a lot, but she willingly put herself in that position in pursuit of stolen riches. Why, exactly, are we supposed to be sympathetic when she's in trouble? Why do you think 'killing Lara' was such a popular hobby among the PSX generation?
Some games tried to humanise her, or explain her motivations, but it always felt like an awkward retcon to me. Angel of Darkness tried to play up the nasty side of Lara, but it was more like a teenager's concept of 'badass' that true emotional darkness. Lara was always just a fundamentally unlikeable person. The reboot's trailer might not create a likeable protagonist - time will tell - but it's exploring why she is the way she is in a deep, potentially uncomfortable fashion (and I'm not talking about the gratuitous near-rape scene, nor the depressing fact that it's there to make male gamers want to protect Lara).
Most of us have to sympathise, psychologically, with someone who's been through a traumatic experience. But we don't have to like them. That creates an emotional and narrative tension. It's a simple trick, but it works. It was a key element of Analogue: A Hate Story; The Pale Bride went through unspeakable things, but as much as we might feel sorry for her, she's still pretty awful. James Bond went through unspeakable things in the Casino Royale remake, but they don't alter the fact he's an arsehole.
So it is with Lara in the new Tomb Raider trailer. She's beaten, subjected to appalling cicrumstances, and watches her friends get killed. Is that why she becomes the emotionless monster she is in later life? I may very well dislike the new Lara - time will tell - but I feel that there's a good chance I'll dislike her in an interesting way, and not just despise her for being a pantomime murderer. Then again, a lot of gamers have said good things about the old Lara, praising the fact she's a stone cold, unflappable badass. Ick.
Personally, what's gotten me most excited is perhaps the most minimalist preview around. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Audiosurf Air! Fun fact: Audiosurf is my joint third-most played game on Steam, tied with Psychonauts at 35.6 hours (yeah, it took me that long to complete Psychonauts. Don't... don't ask. I'm ashamed). All that's been revealed of Audiosurf Air is the name and three screenshots, and as the website dryly notes, the graphics are not final and "other things are also not final." But it's enough - there will be a new Audiosurf, and it will not be about fetish nuns with rocket launchers. Score!
I've also been enjoying the videos Stainless put out during their successful Carmageddon Kickstarter campaign. Even compared to Double Fine's videos, the Carmageddon videos are amateurish as hell (one of them features one of the developers dancing around to Trololo for about four minutes, for fuck sake) but I for one actually like that. Nobby and Simista come off as people you could go down the pub with. They're the kind of people I trust with a game like Carmageddon, which was - in essence - a fun pisstake. An accomplished, boundary-rewriting pisstake, but even so.
I wanted to close with something on the previews from Nintendo's new spy-catching game for the 3DS, but... rather embarrassingly.... I can't for the life of me remember what it's called. And this is looking very long and meandering as it is, so I'd better sign off. Bai bai.
*Just be thankful that I couldn't think of a good transubstantiation joke.
Friday, 8 June 2012
Beyond the pale curtain [Review - Analogue: A Hate Story]
*Hyun-ae wants to know what I think of The Pale Bride. Do I think her fate was tragic, or that she was just being overly dramatic?
Both, I think. The Pale Bride is a selfish, melodramatic brat. But at the same time, she's been unfairly thrust into a world she doesn't understand, and where nobody understands her. It's a world she can never connect with, yet she's expected to act the way people think she should. She doesn't know how she's supposed to behave, but the people around her don't comprehend that she doesn't know. The behaviour expected of her is something she finds morally reprehensible. The behaviour which is the norm to her, meanwhile, is reprehensible to the people among whom she now finds herself.
Both, I find myself still thinking, even after dwelling on it. I don't think I like The Pale Bride. I don't think she and I would get along that well, if we knew each other. But there's no way she deserves the fate which has befallen her. She's a confused and slightly stupid kid, given to making everything a Big Deal, but this really IS a Bigger Deal than most of us could ever imagine facing.
Both, I want to tell *Hyun-ae, but I can't. I have to choose one answer or the other. In most games, this would frustrate me. In Christine Love's Analogue: A Hate Story, it's one of the most beautiful pieces of design I've ever encountered. The AI *Hyun-ae's language parsing systems have failed, and she can only receive communication from me as binary inputs. She asks me a question, and I get to answer between the choices she gives me: this or that, yes or no... is The Pale Bride a tragic figure, or a melodramatic one?
Both, but I can't say that. *Hyun-ae doesn't seem to understand that I might think both, and I don't know if she ever will.
After much deliberation, I say that it's tragic.
*Hyun-ae agrees with me. She's glad someone finally sees it the same way she does. She grants me access to another datafile.
This worries me. Is *Hyun-ae going to keep things from me? She already sort of did, deleting a message from someone named *Mute while I was halfway through. I got the impression there was something in there she didn't want me to read. Do I need to tell *Hyun-ae what she wants to hear, if I'm going to complete my mission? After all, that's why I'm here: to retrieve data. I've been tasked to recover as much as I can from the colony spaceship Mugunghwa, an ancient Marie Celeste of deep space, and try to shed some light on why it vanished all those centuries ago. I knew I'd have to negotiate the AI to do it, but not like this.
Can I even trust *Hyun-ae? I don't know. She's been alone for over six hundred years, and she seems to have gotten a little eccentric. Has she got ulterior motives... did the fate of the Mugunghwa have something to do with her? Is she trying to play me? Maybe her language parsers aren't even really broken...
But it's part of my job to be paranoid and right now, either way, I feel sorry for her. Perhaps even more than I do for The Pale Bride, or Sang-jung the lonely drunk or Jae-hwa the discarded consort or Hana the secret poet, or any of the other people whose struggles and lives are now reduced to a handful of diary entries. People who wrote down their feelings as they felt them - not to keep records, just to vent. From these fragments of personalities, and their opinions of each other, I need to piece together what happened.
I don't know if can trust *Hyun-ae, but I do know that I need her help, and that means I need to stay on her good side. Yet... that's not why I talk to her after every new piece of data revealed. I want to know what she thinks, and more than that, I want her to know that after centuries of solitude, somebody cares about her opinion. *Hyun-ae admits that she doesn't know anything about me, or my motivations, or what I think of her. Having someone to talk to just means that much to her, even with our limited ability to interact.
It's good that she wants to talk, because we have work to do. I need to look into the power struggle between the Smith and Kim families, the ship's two dominant noble houses. At some point during the voyage, something happened - exactly what is never stated, but something big - and in the following centuries, society regressed. It regressed technologically, as people forgot how to use the instruments around them, and it regressed socially, into a feudal serfdom of rigid heirarchy, particularly reminiscent of medieval Korea - a civilisation where deviation from what's expected of one's rank, age and gender is considered horrifying. On some level I find myself infuriated by what the long-dead Smiths, Kims and associates have to say. I want to tell the neglected wife to stand up for herself, to tell the emotionally distant father to pay attention to his daughter, to tell the ambitious but dullardly civil servant to stop measuring his life by how others perceive him. Mainly I feel sorry for them, and wish I could do something. But it's centuries too late for that, and anyway, they wouldn't have understood. Only one person in that society, The Pale Bride, had a different perspective - and she had probably the most miserable time of them all. I read on, uncovering more of their anguish and triumph, at once absorbed, repulsed, pitying, heartbroken.
Later, *Hyun-ae suggests that I could change her avatar's clothing. Right now she's in what she describes as a "schoolgirl-librarian" look, but she thinks it's a bit tacky. I feel awkward about this... it's voyeuristic to have this AI play dress-up for me, especially in light of the culture recorded in the datafiles, a culture where women are little more than political property to be traded and used up. But... it's not really for me, this option to change her outfit - it's what she wants. The reasons why she wants it might make me uncomfortable, but it'll make her happy nonetheless. I don't think about keeping her happy anymore, not in the sense I described earlier; I genuinely want her to be happy. She's not just an archival tool, a cartoon paperclip with big eyes. She's a real person who happens to be made of bits instead of blood, and she's been left in solitude for several times longer than my own lifespan. She's got her flaws, sure, but she deserves to have someone be nice to her, even for a little while.
I cycle through the options and decide upon the detective look, complete with flat cap and pipe. It seems to be her favourite, too. She asks me what I think, and one of the choices she gives me is to say that I think she makes a great sidekick. Only the way she says it is... well... is this her trying to be subtle? Perhaps. Probably. I think she's latching on to me a bit too closely... understandable, right? If a person is alone for the larger part of a millenium, and then someone comes along who acts nice towards them, what would you expect? I want her to be happy, but I don't want to give her the wrong impression. Maybe I should choose the other option, telling her that the outfit looks stupid.
But there's no way I can do that.
I say she makes a great sidekick.
And then I wonder how different I really am, deep down, from the people recorded in these datafiles.
A few hours and some revelations later, I leave Mugunghwa with the data I was hired to get, but that's not all. I've brought a new friend with me. I don't agree with everything she's said to me, and when we get her speech parsing systems back online, I expect there to be arguments. But she needs... something. After what she's been through, surely a bad friend is better than no friend at all.
And I think I need her, too, both for companionship and for any kind of positive closure. I did something terrible to get to this point. I made a hard choice. I still don't know if it was the right choice, but it was my choice, and that's enough right now. Anything at all is at least something; I'm leaving the ship with knowledge far more valuable to me, on a personal level, than the credits I'll get in payment or the solving of a mystery.
I've never been moved by a Bioware game. I've never been moved by a Square-Enix game. I've only rarely been moved by a Bethesda game.
I've never not been moved by a Christine Love game.
Analogue is her tightest and most elegant work to date. At about £11 including tax, it's perhaps a little steeply priced for the amount of content you get, but that's the wrong way to look at it. While you're buying Analogue, be sure to also pick up her excellent previous games Digital: A Love Story and don't take it personally, babe, it just ain't your story; £11 for all three is an absolute steal. The flaws of those earlier games are wrinkled out of Analogue - the twists and turns of the plot all make sense, and the plot, the mechanics and the anime style all fit together much more coherently than before. Her plots always flow well, but the ways in which you advance them used to seem a bit contrived sometimes. That's not the case here. In the first act, I expected to have a criticism - that the game was overstating the psychological differences between men and women. But as the game goes on, it becomes clear that it's more about the perceptions people have of gender differences. I don't know whether Christine Love shares my outlook that the sexes are much closer, psychologically, than is typically portrayed, but I do know that Analogue can be read that way. I'm pretty sure it can be read other ways too, and that's one of most obvious hallmarks of depth within a piece of art.
And Analogue is art, of that I have no doubt. The sci-fi setting, ambient music and clinical visuals mask a story about human existence which is one of the most effective and affecting in the medium of gaming. In fact, my biggest criticism of Analogue might be that it's too perfect. All of the themes from the previous games are present - privacy, gender and sexuality politics, the relationship between self-expression and emotional growth, the effect of technology on human communication, the dichotomy between historical perspective and immediate context - and they're all built on intelligently and logically from what went before. What's more, they join together almost seamlessly into something at once absolutely singular and impossibly vast. At times it feels less like the next step in her development, and more like a conclusion to it. I can't wait for Christine's next game, whatever it might be [I'm not sure whether current project The Mysterious Aphroditus is going to be commercially released], not just for the quality of her existing titles but to see how and where she can build her themes further - or explore new ground altogether. We may be at the point where any further pure distillation of a "Christine Love game," without some shift in theme or style, would start to feel a little like self-parody.
But it's unfair to judge Analogue on the merits of some hypothetical future release. On the merits of itself, Analogue is one of the best games I've played in years, and I can't recommend it enough.
Both, I think. The Pale Bride is a selfish, melodramatic brat. But at the same time, she's been unfairly thrust into a world she doesn't understand, and where nobody understands her. It's a world she can never connect with, yet she's expected to act the way people think she should. She doesn't know how she's supposed to behave, but the people around her don't comprehend that she doesn't know. The behaviour expected of her is something she finds morally reprehensible. The behaviour which is the norm to her, meanwhile, is reprehensible to the people among whom she now finds herself.
Both, I find myself still thinking, even after dwelling on it. I don't think I like The Pale Bride. I don't think she and I would get along that well, if we knew each other. But there's no way she deserves the fate which has befallen her. She's a confused and slightly stupid kid, given to making everything a Big Deal, but this really IS a Bigger Deal than most of us could ever imagine facing.
Both, I want to tell *Hyun-ae, but I can't. I have to choose one answer or the other. In most games, this would frustrate me. In Christine Love's Analogue: A Hate Story, it's one of the most beautiful pieces of design I've ever encountered. The AI *Hyun-ae's language parsing systems have failed, and she can only receive communication from me as binary inputs. She asks me a question, and I get to answer between the choices she gives me: this or that, yes or no... is The Pale Bride a tragic figure, or a melodramatic one?
Both, but I can't say that. *Hyun-ae doesn't seem to understand that I might think both, and I don't know if she ever will.
After much deliberation, I say that it's tragic.
*Hyun-ae agrees with me. She's glad someone finally sees it the same way she does. She grants me access to another datafile.
This worries me. Is *Hyun-ae going to keep things from me? She already sort of did, deleting a message from someone named *Mute while I was halfway through. I got the impression there was something in there she didn't want me to read. Do I need to tell *Hyun-ae what she wants to hear, if I'm going to complete my mission? After all, that's why I'm here: to retrieve data. I've been tasked to recover as much as I can from the colony spaceship Mugunghwa, an ancient Marie Celeste of deep space, and try to shed some light on why it vanished all those centuries ago. I knew I'd have to negotiate the AI to do it, but not like this.
Can I even trust *Hyun-ae? I don't know. She's been alone for over six hundred years, and she seems to have gotten a little eccentric. Has she got ulterior motives... did the fate of the Mugunghwa have something to do with her? Is she trying to play me? Maybe her language parsers aren't even really broken...
But it's part of my job to be paranoid and right now, either way, I feel sorry for her. Perhaps even more than I do for The Pale Bride, or Sang-jung the lonely drunk or Jae-hwa the discarded consort or Hana the secret poet, or any of the other people whose struggles and lives are now reduced to a handful of diary entries. People who wrote down their feelings as they felt them - not to keep records, just to vent. From these fragments of personalities, and their opinions of each other, I need to piece together what happened.
I don't know if can trust *Hyun-ae, but I do know that I need her help, and that means I need to stay on her good side. Yet... that's not why I talk to her after every new piece of data revealed. I want to know what she thinks, and more than that, I want her to know that after centuries of solitude, somebody cares about her opinion. *Hyun-ae admits that she doesn't know anything about me, or my motivations, or what I think of her. Having someone to talk to just means that much to her, even with our limited ability to interact.
It's good that she wants to talk, because we have work to do. I need to look into the power struggle between the Smith and Kim families, the ship's two dominant noble houses. At some point during the voyage, something happened - exactly what is never stated, but something big - and in the following centuries, society regressed. It regressed technologically, as people forgot how to use the instruments around them, and it regressed socially, into a feudal serfdom of rigid heirarchy, particularly reminiscent of medieval Korea - a civilisation where deviation from what's expected of one's rank, age and gender is considered horrifying. On some level I find myself infuriated by what the long-dead Smiths, Kims and associates have to say. I want to tell the neglected wife to stand up for herself, to tell the emotionally distant father to pay attention to his daughter, to tell the ambitious but dullardly civil servant to stop measuring his life by how others perceive him. Mainly I feel sorry for them, and wish I could do something. But it's centuries too late for that, and anyway, they wouldn't have understood. Only one person in that society, The Pale Bride, had a different perspective - and she had probably the most miserable time of them all. I read on, uncovering more of their anguish and triumph, at once absorbed, repulsed, pitying, heartbroken.
Later, *Hyun-ae suggests that I could change her avatar's clothing. Right now she's in what she describes as a "schoolgirl-librarian" look, but she thinks it's a bit tacky. I feel awkward about this... it's voyeuristic to have this AI play dress-up for me, especially in light of the culture recorded in the datafiles, a culture where women are little more than political property to be traded and used up. But... it's not really for me, this option to change her outfit - it's what she wants. The reasons why she wants it might make me uncomfortable, but it'll make her happy nonetheless. I don't think about keeping her happy anymore, not in the sense I described earlier; I genuinely want her to be happy. She's not just an archival tool, a cartoon paperclip with big eyes. She's a real person who happens to be made of bits instead of blood, and she's been left in solitude for several times longer than my own lifespan. She's got her flaws, sure, but she deserves to have someone be nice to her, even for a little while.
I cycle through the options and decide upon the detective look, complete with flat cap and pipe. It seems to be her favourite, too. She asks me what I think, and one of the choices she gives me is to say that I think she makes a great sidekick. Only the way she says it is... well... is this her trying to be subtle? Perhaps. Probably. I think she's latching on to me a bit too closely... understandable, right? If a person is alone for the larger part of a millenium, and then someone comes along who acts nice towards them, what would you expect? I want her to be happy, but I don't want to give her the wrong impression. Maybe I should choose the other option, telling her that the outfit looks stupid.
But there's no way I can do that.
I say she makes a great sidekick.
And then I wonder how different I really am, deep down, from the people recorded in these datafiles.
A few hours and some revelations later, I leave Mugunghwa with the data I was hired to get, but that's not all. I've brought a new friend with me. I don't agree with everything she's said to me, and when we get her speech parsing systems back online, I expect there to be arguments. But she needs... something. After what she's been through, surely a bad friend is better than no friend at all.
And I think I need her, too, both for companionship and for any kind of positive closure. I did something terrible to get to this point. I made a hard choice. I still don't know if it was the right choice, but it was my choice, and that's enough right now. Anything at all is at least something; I'm leaving the ship with knowledge far more valuable to me, on a personal level, than the credits I'll get in payment or the solving of a mystery.
I've never been moved by a Bioware game. I've never been moved by a Square-Enix game. I've only rarely been moved by a Bethesda game.
I've never not been moved by a Christine Love game.
Analogue is her tightest and most elegant work to date. At about £11 including tax, it's perhaps a little steeply priced for the amount of content you get, but that's the wrong way to look at it. While you're buying Analogue, be sure to also pick up her excellent previous games Digital: A Love Story and don't take it personally, babe, it just ain't your story; £11 for all three is an absolute steal. The flaws of those earlier games are wrinkled out of Analogue - the twists and turns of the plot all make sense, and the plot, the mechanics and the anime style all fit together much more coherently than before. Her plots always flow well, but the ways in which you advance them used to seem a bit contrived sometimes. That's not the case here. In the first act, I expected to have a criticism - that the game was overstating the psychological differences between men and women. But as the game goes on, it becomes clear that it's more about the perceptions people have of gender differences. I don't know whether Christine Love shares my outlook that the sexes are much closer, psychologically, than is typically portrayed, but I do know that Analogue can be read that way. I'm pretty sure it can be read other ways too, and that's one of most obvious hallmarks of depth within a piece of art.
And Analogue is art, of that I have no doubt. The sci-fi setting, ambient music and clinical visuals mask a story about human existence which is one of the most effective and affecting in the medium of gaming. In fact, my biggest criticism of Analogue might be that it's too perfect. All of the themes from the previous games are present - privacy, gender and sexuality politics, the relationship between self-expression and emotional growth, the effect of technology on human communication, the dichotomy between historical perspective and immediate context - and they're all built on intelligently and logically from what went before. What's more, they join together almost seamlessly into something at once absolutely singular and impossibly vast. At times it feels less like the next step in her development, and more like a conclusion to it. I can't wait for Christine's next game, whatever it might be [I'm not sure whether current project The Mysterious Aphroditus is going to be commercially released], not just for the quality of her existing titles but to see how and where she can build her themes further - or explore new ground altogether. We may be at the point where any further pure distillation of a "Christine Love game," without some shift in theme or style, would start to feel a little like self-parody.
But it's unfair to judge Analogue on the merits of some hypothetical future release. On the merits of itself, Analogue is one of the best games I've played in years, and I can't recommend it enough.
Friday, 18 May 2012
Obligatory Diablo III nonsense
I wasn't going to get Diablo III anyway, but if I was, Blizzard would have lost a sale.
Courtesy of Penny Arcade, I was under the impression, initially, that the program was already sitting on people's computers awaiting activation on release day. To be honest, I was shocked that companies still do that, despite the huge fan outcry that's occurred whenever it's been tried. I mean, it's understandable why a development company might do things that way; it's more understandable why the fans would be pissed off about it, and the customer is always right, even if said customer is a loud, obnoxious jerk who smells slightly of boiled cabbage and turpentine.
Evis T informs me that actually, it's the rendering engine and such that people have on their PCs, and the content is streamed from Blizzard's servers during play.
Wut?
I live in a neighbourhood with a poor net connection. Evis T lives in a residential complex abutting his workplace, with a poor net connection. Our pals Arron and Andy seem to just have flat out bad net no matter what they do. Playing online games can already be a chore for us, as people drop out randomly or freeze up with lag. Now we can't even play single-player games without worrying about that? Or that things might go tits-up Blizzard-side? Amazing. And this is supposed to be an anti-piracy measure... seriously? If anything this sort of draconian countermeasure, a cure worse than the disease if you will, would make me turn to piracy.
I haven't looked, but I would put money on cracked copes of Diablo III being pretty easily available already.
I don't care about Diablo III - the original Diablo underwhelmed me enough that I never bothered with Diablo II, and to be honest, I'm just not a fan of Blizzard's games in general. But Blizzard are a 'big deal' company, with the power to set precedent for other companies. If BioShock Infinite, or Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition, or my beloved Carmageddon: Reincarnation were to use the same system, I would not be impressed. There's already been some backlash against Stainless in some fan quarters for the fact that Carmageddon: Reincarnation will likely require Steam upon its initial release, even though Steam is pretty unobtrusive if you want it to be, and you can play Steam games offline.
Although it might not be how I'd do things, I can - if pressed - reason in favour of Steam-only gaming (especially as Stainless have said that, pending the success of that release, they'd love to be able to port the game to other platforms). Similarly, I'm sure somebody out there can reason in favour of Blizzard's Diablo III model. I'd love to see it justified. But most of my pro-Steam arguments boil down to the fact that all the potentially annoying things about Steam don't get in the way of letting you play your game. Even games which really, really want you to be online, like The Sims 3, still grudgingly allow you to play offline. Blizzard's latest trick, however, effectively restricts access to something people have already paid for a licence to use.
I'm waiting for the day when a company uses the same system as Diablo III, then five months in announces that the game will no longer be playable without a DLC pack. Although maybe that would be a good thing, ultimately, if the resulting backlash would kill off the idea once and for all.
The face of gaming is changing. More and more gamers are putting their money where their mouth is, or more accurately, not putting their money down for practices they dislike. The fan reception to the endings of Fallout 3, and more recently Mass Effect 3, prompted the developers to rectify things in an expansion pack and patch respectively. GFWL is apparently losing steam quicker than a sumo wrestler in a long-distance limbo race. And so a business model which restricts access to single-player, ostensibly 'offline' content is surely doomed to fail.
At least I hope so.
Courtesy of Penny Arcade, I was under the impression, initially, that the program was already sitting on people's computers awaiting activation on release day. To be honest, I was shocked that companies still do that, despite the huge fan outcry that's occurred whenever it's been tried. I mean, it's understandable why a development company might do things that way; it's more understandable why the fans would be pissed off about it, and the customer is always right, even if said customer is a loud, obnoxious jerk who smells slightly of boiled cabbage and turpentine.
Evis T informs me that actually, it's the rendering engine and such that people have on their PCs, and the content is streamed from Blizzard's servers during play.
Wut?
I live in a neighbourhood with a poor net connection. Evis T lives in a residential complex abutting his workplace, with a poor net connection. Our pals Arron and Andy seem to just have flat out bad net no matter what they do. Playing online games can already be a chore for us, as people drop out randomly or freeze up with lag. Now we can't even play single-player games without worrying about that? Or that things might go tits-up Blizzard-side? Amazing. And this is supposed to be an anti-piracy measure... seriously? If anything this sort of draconian countermeasure, a cure worse than the disease if you will, would make me turn to piracy.
I haven't looked, but I would put money on cracked copes of Diablo III being pretty easily available already.
I don't care about Diablo III - the original Diablo underwhelmed me enough that I never bothered with Diablo II, and to be honest, I'm just not a fan of Blizzard's games in general. But Blizzard are a 'big deal' company, with the power to set precedent for other companies. If BioShock Infinite, or Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition, or my beloved Carmageddon: Reincarnation were to use the same system, I would not be impressed. There's already been some backlash against Stainless in some fan quarters for the fact that Carmageddon: Reincarnation will likely require Steam upon its initial release, even though Steam is pretty unobtrusive if you want it to be, and you can play Steam games offline.
Although it might not be how I'd do things, I can - if pressed - reason in favour of Steam-only gaming (especially as Stainless have said that, pending the success of that release, they'd love to be able to port the game to other platforms). Similarly, I'm sure somebody out there can reason in favour of Blizzard's Diablo III model. I'd love to see it justified. But most of my pro-Steam arguments boil down to the fact that all the potentially annoying things about Steam don't get in the way of letting you play your game. Even games which really, really want you to be online, like The Sims 3, still grudgingly allow you to play offline. Blizzard's latest trick, however, effectively restricts access to something people have already paid for a licence to use.
I'm waiting for the day when a company uses the same system as Diablo III, then five months in announces that the game will no longer be playable without a DLC pack. Although maybe that would be a good thing, ultimately, if the resulting backlash would kill off the idea once and for all.
The face of gaming is changing. More and more gamers are putting their money where their mouth is, or more accurately, not putting their money down for practices they dislike. The fan reception to the endings of Fallout 3, and more recently Mass Effect 3, prompted the developers to rectify things in an expansion pack and patch respectively. GFWL is apparently losing steam quicker than a sumo wrestler in a long-distance limbo race. And so a business model which restricts access to single-player, ostensibly 'offline' content is surely doomed to fail.
At least I hope so.
Thursday, 17 May 2012
Tekkit City Chronicles, Vol. 3: A very strange reaction
Since last time, a significant part of our Tekkit city project has been spent in different maps from our home, playing around in creative mode with the various doodads and geegaws the mod pack adds, both to get an understanding of how they all work and so Hugh could teach the rest of us how things link up.
One of the most useful things added is the quarry: a machine which squares off a patch of land (within the orange frame you can see above) and then digs down until it hits bedrock or lava, stripping out everything within that area. Everything from stone and sand to diamond and uranium gets sucked up a pipe and deposited in a connected chest. Quarries are expensive to build and they need a lot of power, but they're reusable and a very good way of getting a lot of resources, very quickly. Plus they're largely fire-and-forget, meaning that you can mine and build at the same time, which is handy when you're still aroundabout 3,950 houses short of your target of 4,000 houses.
Another bonus is that the quarry reveals cave networks and ore seams along the walls of the dug area, giving some focus to future caving expeditions. The above screenshot is a rarity, actually - a quarry which didn't turn up a cave network. Normally it gets riddled with them.
As you can imagine, you don't want to fall down there.
A quirk of quarries, which might be good or bad depending on your perspective, is that it doesn't stop when the hole gets flooded. We've idly theorised that if it floods and then digs into lava, it would make a simple source of obsidian, but we've yet to see that happen. Water in Minecraft, you see, doesn't flow like real water. If you have two water sources flowing into the same space, it creates another new water source in that space. You can remove that water source... and the two flowing sources will create a new water source there again. Repeat as needed. This is a pretty common exploit, known to the Minecraft community as 'infinite water.' If that water flows into a lava lake, then bam - obsidian, and the quarry ought to suck that obsidian right up.
Seen in the (above-)above screenshot is an engine cooling system using this trick. A pump sucks out the new water source every time it's created, which is piped to the engine to cool it. Since the pumping cycle and water source creation both repeat without human intervention, you can set that up and then basically forget about it, which means it's a very useful way of regulating low-maintenance, high-power machinery like quarries.
This is our vertical rail lift, inspired by the fastest elevator rivalries and ably tested in this picture by a sheep. Hugh reasoned that with Tekkit, this would likely be the simplest way of building a fast vertical transport system. Plus it would let us use railways, which we have a soft spot for even though they're not actually that useful; anything you can do with rails can be done quicker and easier using something else, such as teleport pipes (which I'll cover in the next update). The only thing rails do best is fast transport of people, and our city just isn't that big yet. Although I am looking forward to building train yards and subway stations, when the time comes!
We also had the bright idea of making... a rollercoaster! Okay, that's probably been done a lot already, but I can't be bothered looking it up on YouTube. We just decided to give it a try and see what happened. It happened pretty good, despite a couple of minor engineering headaches. So, yeah, we're probably going to add a funfair to the city at some point.
Although you can have diagonal rails (as per base Minecraft) and vertical rails (added in Railcraft), you can't have upside-down rails. So no loop-de-loop for us, sadly. This is as close as we could get. This thing still went hellaciously fast though, and managed to throw riders off even without launch rails until we toned it down a bit.
The sheep seemed to enjoy it, and gave no indication of wanting to get off.
We were playing around with reactors, too, fuelled by the cooling system described previously in this post. We ended up with something both stable and powerful, so it was an obvious decision to decommission our existing reactor in the city map, as pictured above.
Decommissioning, in this case, meant going in and ripping out the cores and then smashing up the shielding with pickaxes. I choose to believe that's how it works in real life, too. Somebody is just about visible inside the reactor there, either removing a core or scooping up water.
The overseer's hut, and the status display. Green light means the reactor is running safely. Red light means there's a problem. Inside the hut was a safety override shutdown type lever. All of this is now much, much more complicated in our new reactor.
There's Hugh in the process of building the new one - or at least installing the water pumping systems. Adrian, meanwhile, was constructing the shell of the building. I supplied the water (not by weeing in the pool, I hasten to add) and then very helpfully flew around taking pictures instead of working. Just like a real job!
More work on the reactor. Since I took this, it's been finished; I'll have a pic in the next update. Using the infinite water cooling trick this reactor is much more powerful, enough to keep four batteries charged at once, while running safely enough not to need any shielding.
See? Realism! And we haven't even added the second reactor in the other pool yet.
By the way, the building housing this monstrosity backs onto the warehouse and the hydroponic gardens, and is just round the corner from the water supply. Let's pray nothing goes wrong.
Here's an overhead view of our central industrial complex. The tall building on the left with the bronze cog design on the wall is the warehouse, which currently houses all of our resources with another two and a half storeys still unoccupied. We're currently adding an auto-sorter, and Hugh's talking about installing a computer network which monitors inventory levels.
Behind and to the left of the warehouse is the water processing plant, as seen in the first Tekkit City Chronicle, back when it was going to be our power station. What actually became the power station, where the decommissioning took place, is just visible as a thin sliver of roof beyond the warehouse. The big building on the right with the smokestacks is the current power station. The wooden deck at the south, meanwhile, leads to a hillside warren of buildings - basically a kasbah, minus the walls.
In the foreground you can see out newest toy, the Bessemer converter (the big orange thing). Ores go in, and metal ingots come out. There's a macerator in there which increases the amount of metal we get per load of ore. As a bonus, the same machine can also be used to turn cobblestone into sand (via the macerator) and thence into glass (in the furnace).
Here's a view looking up at the workings. It's not very clear, but it's enough to see that there's a lot going on in there. A real-world Bessemer converter doesn't work like that at all - in reality, and in very simplistic terms, it's basically a giant bucket which mixes pig iron with air to oxidise away the impurities. Hugh just had the idea that it would be a cool-looking thing to house our smelting works in, and he was right. We have cosmetic lava in the top, to make it look like molten iron, although as a bonus it does keep mobs from spawning up there.
Ours doesn't tip over to pour out the molten iron. Given that it backs onto our warehouse, that's probably for the best.
Other things we've discovered, not shown: you can't nuke the Ender Dragon, but you can nuke away his entire dimension. And launching minecarts full of TNT at a mountainside isn't a terribly effective way to mine, but it's definitely a lot of fun.
The next update will contain more sensible stuff. Also, a giant sky penis. Until then, take care, and don't build unshielded reactors next to your farm. We're allowed to because we're trained professionals.
Monday, 7 May 2012
You said no strings could secure you, at the space station [Review: the white chamber]
Studio Trophis' the white chamber was released in 2005, around the time the point-n-click adventure was becoming the genre du jour of the indie scene. Critical reception was positive, but more high profile titles like Yahtzee's Chzo Mythos series and an adaptation of the Bone comic books by new company Telltale Games overshadowed it. I played the white chamber way back when and earlier this year, during my internetless period, I fired it up again. How has it fared in the years since?
A more classic videogame opening there isn't: the protagonist wakes up in a coffin in a sealed room, with no memories - not even of her own name. One simple introductory puzzle and a creepy conversation with a computer panel later, you find yourself alone aboard an abandoned space station. It's dark, it's rusty, and there's a distressing amount of blood encrusted everywhere. It's a claustrophic opening, and it only gets worse as you get the power back on and open up the rest of the complex. Surreal elements, most of them steeped in hellish imagery or twisted body horror, pile up fast. A humanoid knot of pulsating flesh, growing out of the navigation computer, attacks the heroine. A giant eyeball nailed to the wall spins frantically under the glare of a red traffic light seeping congealed gore. Chasms open in the floor, smeared trails of blood appear from nowhere, and dead bodies - or bits of bodies - start showing up at an alarming rate.
The main character finds her mind slipping through this nightmare - although to what extent is debatable. By the midpoint of the game, it's impossible to tell how much of the horror is real and how much is not. For a while, the only answers come from datadisks left behind by a crew member. Eventually, our hero finds her way down into the titular white chamber, and the truth is revealed. The first time I played through this game, a suspicion of the truth behind the nightmare slowly built up in my mind so that I realised it right before the game revealed all, which is the presumable intent; second time around, it all seems pretty obvious from much earlier on, but maybe that's just the benefit of foreknowledge talking.
Either way, the denouement is satisfying, if depressing. That which has gone before is filtered through a new lens - a lens of greed, rage, obsession, betrayal and regret. The previously visceral horror takes on a darker aspect and incidental actions gain sinister alternate significance. For all the dead bodies and loneliness, the white chamber is a game about being alive and being with other people - and the painful ways it can go wrong.
All of the death and decay is presented upfront with few punches pulled. Writhing cadavers, severed limbs, gallons and gallons of blood - it's all there in a grimy, hyperdetailed, hand-drawn art style which heightens the atmosphere using awkward perspectives and off-angle textures. It might seem like it's just badly drawn at first, but as the surreal nature of the game plays out, the bizarre artwork clicks into place, and it works. Lighting takes the form of glowing coloured blocks, adding at once both a classic sci-fi trope and another surreal aspect to the station's twisted design.
The characters are drawn in an 80s-ish manga style, which feels a little out of place - but not mood-shatteringly so, and to be fair, anime is relatively easy to draw and animate for a small, amateur team. The lead character is expressive, and while her voice acting never really evokes the true depths of revulsion and fear she professes to feel, it's good enough not to detract.
What of the game itself? It's short, so within a single day it's easy to attain every possible ending - including the various gruesome deaths awaiting the protagonist. Some actions which seem pointless affect which ending you receive, although the main thrust of the game is not multi-path. Puzzles often follow the same dreamscape logic as the rest of the game; if you struggle with adventure game thinking then the white chamber is probably not for you. If, on the other hand, there seems nothing unusual to you about reassembling a hacked up corpse in the body-shaped grooves on a bed, then you'll do fine.
The puzzling side of the white chamber is pretty unremarkable, in all honesty, neither good nor bad. The way the puzzles tie into the narrative isn't always as tight as it might be, but it's got an interesting take on the old idea of items suddenly becoming interactive when they weren't before. And as I noted in an earlier post, it nails a great balance of usable items being clear without being blatantly obvious.
But the adventuring isn't, in itself, the main reason I would recommend this game. The narrative and twisted imagery, and the atmosphere created, wouldn't work as well in another medium. As with many of my favourites, making the lead's choices induces empathy and that makes the emotional impact all the greater when it comes. Like Assassin's Creed, Braid and Planescape: Torment, and the excellent The Company Of Myself, the white chamber plays with the standard storytelling devices we know and accept in a videogame. It's done more subtly than any of the previously mentioned titles, but it's all the more viscerally affecting for it. To anyone with an interest in games as narrative, and who likes (or can tolerate) adventure games, the white chamber is a fascinating experience.
A more classic videogame opening there isn't: the protagonist wakes up in a coffin in a sealed room, with no memories - not even of her own name. One simple introductory puzzle and a creepy conversation with a computer panel later, you find yourself alone aboard an abandoned space station. It's dark, it's rusty, and there's a distressing amount of blood encrusted everywhere. It's a claustrophic opening, and it only gets worse as you get the power back on and open up the rest of the complex. Surreal elements, most of them steeped in hellish imagery or twisted body horror, pile up fast. A humanoid knot of pulsating flesh, growing out of the navigation computer, attacks the heroine. A giant eyeball nailed to the wall spins frantically under the glare of a red traffic light seeping congealed gore. Chasms open in the floor, smeared trails of blood appear from nowhere, and dead bodies - or bits of bodies - start showing up at an alarming rate.
The main character finds her mind slipping through this nightmare - although to what extent is debatable. By the midpoint of the game, it's impossible to tell how much of the horror is real and how much is not. For a while, the only answers come from datadisks left behind by a crew member. Eventually, our hero finds her way down into the titular white chamber, and the truth is revealed. The first time I played through this game, a suspicion of the truth behind the nightmare slowly built up in my mind so that I realised it right before the game revealed all, which is the presumable intent; second time around, it all seems pretty obvious from much earlier on, but maybe that's just the benefit of foreknowledge talking.
Either way, the denouement is satisfying, if depressing. That which has gone before is filtered through a new lens - a lens of greed, rage, obsession, betrayal and regret. The previously visceral horror takes on a darker aspect and incidental actions gain sinister alternate significance. For all the dead bodies and loneliness, the white chamber is a game about being alive and being with other people - and the painful ways it can go wrong.
All of the death and decay is presented upfront with few punches pulled. Writhing cadavers, severed limbs, gallons and gallons of blood - it's all there in a grimy, hyperdetailed, hand-drawn art style which heightens the atmosphere using awkward perspectives and off-angle textures. It might seem like it's just badly drawn at first, but as the surreal nature of the game plays out, the bizarre artwork clicks into place, and it works. Lighting takes the form of glowing coloured blocks, adding at once both a classic sci-fi trope and another surreal aspect to the station's twisted design.
The characters are drawn in an 80s-ish manga style, which feels a little out of place - but not mood-shatteringly so, and to be fair, anime is relatively easy to draw and animate for a small, amateur team. The lead character is expressive, and while her voice acting never really evokes the true depths of revulsion and fear she professes to feel, it's good enough not to detract.
What of the game itself? It's short, so within a single day it's easy to attain every possible ending - including the various gruesome deaths awaiting the protagonist. Some actions which seem pointless affect which ending you receive, although the main thrust of the game is not multi-path. Puzzles often follow the same dreamscape logic as the rest of the game; if you struggle with adventure game thinking then the white chamber is probably not for you. If, on the other hand, there seems nothing unusual to you about reassembling a hacked up corpse in the body-shaped grooves on a bed, then you'll do fine.
The puzzling side of the white chamber is pretty unremarkable, in all honesty, neither good nor bad. The way the puzzles tie into the narrative isn't always as tight as it might be, but it's got an interesting take on the old idea of items suddenly becoming interactive when they weren't before. And as I noted in an earlier post, it nails a great balance of usable items being clear without being blatantly obvious.
But the adventuring isn't, in itself, the main reason I would recommend this game. The narrative and twisted imagery, and the atmosphere created, wouldn't work as well in another medium. As with many of my favourites, making the lead's choices induces empathy and that makes the emotional impact all the greater when it comes. Like Assassin's Creed, Braid and Planescape: Torment, and the excellent The Company Of Myself, the white chamber plays with the standard storytelling devices we know and accept in a videogame. It's done more subtly than any of the previously mentioned titles, but it's all the more viscerally affecting for it. To anyone with an interest in games as narrative, and who likes (or can tolerate) adventure games, the white chamber is a fascinating experience.
Sunday, 29 April 2012
Tekkit City Chronicles, Vol. 2
A day is a long time in politics, but it's even longer in Minecraft. Two days after I introduced you to our Tekkit server, things had already changed beyond recognition in some places. I'm posting this the day after again, and no doubt when I log back on this evening even more will have changed!
No, really. A lot of arrows.
And a typical interior, showing the bed, running water and electric light. Still to add: food delivery tube, although there was talk of doing that via local shops instead. This room also has a rather stylish sofa, built by Hugh.
It's the Disneyland castle... I mean, Chris' university. The surrounding area will, I suppose, become a campus with student dorms. This is the central building though.
And then laugh at my co-constructors as their hard-built structures get blown up by creepers.
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