Here I come to save the day

In my last game of Planescape Torment my Nameless One had a dramatic change of character: he turned Lawful Good. It was the latest step in a three step path that started at True Neutral and carried on through to Neutral Good.

I must admit I was surprised by this: I was all too aware that the player’s choices will ultimately build their version of the Nameless One but I was kind of expecting it to be ambiguously presented – I was kind of hoping that the alignment would be kept hidden away from the player until the very end, like in Ogre Battle 64, thus building suspense and not really giving them something to deliberately aspire to. But then again, Ogre Battle 64 is Ogre Battle 64 whilst Planescape Torment is Planescape Torment, so anyway…

But to be Lawful Good in a game like Planescape Torment is indeed an odd occurrence. This is a game that was deliberately setting out to break from tried-and-tested RPG tropes and seemed intent on making the player anything but the good guy. Indeed, it is hard to be the ‘good guy’ of many other RPGs when the world of Sigil isn’t really one of any grandiosity, the majority of party members are either Lawful Neutral or Chaotic Neutral, and the Nameless One himself has more than a few skeletons in the closet  – and that may have well been precisely the point.

I know that there are some gamers that enjoy being the bad guy and doing appalling things - without any sense of a conscience whatsoever - that would make Joffrey Baratheon or Ramsay Snow envious. But I can’t do that. Maybe through playing games since the eighties being the good guy has been ingrained into my mind. Maybe I’m so used to being the good guy that I can’t bring myself to do anything nasty. Maybe I’ve too big a guilty conscience. Or maybe I’ve found myself being too wrapped up in the artificial world laid out before me that I can’t find it in me to go ahead and ruin it.
Yeah lets go with that.

I don’t think me being horrible in an RPG is a complete impossibility however. If anything I wouldn’t mind playing as a Lawful Evil character because a) it’s where honor walks hand in hand with self-advancement and b) therein lies a challenge worth rising up to….

…Just not now. XD

Beating one's head into a wall

Because WoW graphical glitches will never stop being funny:

"You've got a wall in the way there, mate..."

With friends like these

I went onto Steam this evening and I noticed there must be a bug in effect - for all my friends on my Steam profile are all credited with playing all of my games.

Still, bug or no bug, it was nice to see a large amount of people agreeing with my gaming tastes. And playing To the Moon

Don't look now

On the weekend, I was talking to someone who turned out to be something of connoisseur when it came to horror games. He spoke highly of Outlast, was aware of Slender: The Eight Pages and showed me Eyes upon his ipad. The latter was of particular note: It was claimed it was done by the same people who made Slender and, through a demonstration, Eyes revealed itself to be following the same formula of ‘run from a freaky creature with murderous intent’.

I myself am not into horror games – I myself play games to relax and it’s hard to relax when your Player Character is being chased by a psychotic with murderous intent. However I can see something of a formula begin to emerge through the games mentioned above.  Tell me if the following doesn’t sound familiar: Trapped in a confined space with limited lighting? Threats in the form of antagonists that are of a mysterious nature? Constant danger that is practically relentless? The only action a player can do is running? Little to no chance of victory? Indeed, once one realizes there seems to be a formula to the recent wave of horror games it now becomes impossible to ignore.

I suppose the source of this wave can be traced back to Amnesia: the Dark Descent. Whilst it is kinda nice that that game was a success (for an indy game) and showed up the posers of the survival horror genre, one gets the sense that everyone else has since been looking over Amnesia: the Dark Descent’s shoulder and copying their answers. It would be nice to think that an indy game has become the benchmark for other horror games to follow but I think it more a race to see who can freak out players the most.
But suppose Amnesia: the Dark Descent is the new benchmark. It raises a question: Where can we go from here? Gaming history is littered with games becoming big hits only to inspire clones in their wake. – two such examples being Street Fighter 2 and Final Fantasy 7. Both are regarded as the finest of their genre and nothing that has followed has really matched it (although Virtua Fighter and Soul Calibur may have a solid claim against Street Fighter 2). So if everyone seems intent on replicating Amnesia: the Dark Descent, does this mean the horror genre has nothing left to say?

Personally I think horror games work best when they sneak up from behind, pull the rug from underneath the player and gradually break the player’s will. Isn’t that right Eversion?

Can you afford it?

Here's a car ad that played a lot on Australian TV back in early nineties. It was memorable largely due to an unforgettable jingle:

Original video located here. Accessed 18th September 2013

The reason I'm bringing this up is I always think of this ad whenever I see the loading screens to Burnout 3 - you know, the one's that seem concerned as to whether I have driven certain vehicles or visited certain locations.
That and I find the juxtaposition between such a cheerful sounding jingle against such a violent/intense/rage-inducing game like Burnout 3 utterly hilarious.

Sex Pistols

A punk rock version of the Red Dead Redemption closing theme Dead Man's Gun.

Original video located here. Accessed 16th September 2013

I'm sorry, what?

Trike up!

Recently in World of Warcraft, I managed to get my claws on a Goblin Turbo-Trike. Now I have no interest in generating a goblin character but I must admit it is funny to see some of my current characters use a mount that was not custom-made for them:

Rithendal may have done the hard yards to get the Turbo-Trike but it does present the problem of his feet forever touching the ground whenever he uses it. Expect many a shoe sole to be worn down

 Meanwhile, Kyuzo looks hilariously unimpressed with his new mount. 

A Heart of Iron

Here's something I would like to know, regarding the artwork to the latest iteration to the Kingdom hearts franchise.

Original image located here. Accessed 11th September 2013

Did anyone look at this and immediately think Sora was sitting on the Iron Throne?

Come on I can't be the only one's who thought this

Still I bet he made that throne from the swords of a thousand fallen enemies...

Fun with Meta

Not much to say today. However on the weekend I went to a convention - MAIcon! And it was there that i saw this:

Bottom of the Barrel (no.4): Belial

It's been awhile since I'd last done one of these so lets talk some trash.

I want to tell you all about a game called Belial which appeared on the Commodore Amiga. Now, I may be cheating this time around as I've never played this game and only became aware of it through youtube. But what there is defies belief:

Original video located here. Accessed 6th September 2013

Where do I start? The entire game is a rip-off of Ghosts N Goblins! The graphics look terrible, the PC sprite is directly lifted from the Commodore 64 version of the game, the difficulty is absurd (perhaps more so than it's progenitor), the boss fights laughable and the whole thing stinks of being done by some pirates working out of their bedroom with a half-arsed approach and only concerned with sucking dollars from suckers.
But most striking of all is, for me, the music which is a recreation of Kraftwerk's 'Das Model'. Funny. i wouldn't have associated a song about consumerism to be associated with a horror-themed game. Mind you, it is peculiar to see this game from the passage of time - it looks bizarre, strange and, in a way, comical. Still, I hope Ralf Hutter took legal action...

Armageddon it

In a way, it's kinda weird revisiting the dungeons of WoW at a higher level. For as is my understanding, it is where the bigbads reside and, subsequently, where the real narrative meat of the campaigns lie.
Therefore it is weird to go back to the dungeons now at level 90: Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Liche King and Cataclysm each faced some world-ending threat (not that Azeroth is a world worth saving) so one can imagine that because the player character wasn't there to stop it, Azeroth would've been trashed beyond recognition. So what did happen when the PC was elsewhere? Were the baddies all waiting for him/her to show up? Indeed, it is strange to consider an invasion force stagnating just because some particular sod went in a different direction. Or did the invasion force had to settle for someone else?

Fezes are cool...apparently

On the weekend I did something I've been putting off for a while: Obtain Fez from XBLA!

Boy has this game got a reputation. One where critical acclaim and behind the scenes trauma walked hand in hand. I've seen a lot of positive response and then I saw the difficulties involved in getting this game made (courtesy of ace doco Indie Game the Movie). A reputation of the intimidating kind? You could say that.

At time of writing, I've played about two hours and the game is so far proving to be charming. I like the graphics, the puzzles are challenging and so far a sense of depth is slowly creeping up behind me.

Not much else I can say at the moment but if Phil Fish has really quite making games then at leats now he has ten bucks to help him out on his way