Pick on someone you own size

Recently I was playing WoW with some friends when our game was interrupted: A pair of 85 level Alliance players started following us around. They did zero interaction with us and did nothing more than get in our way during combat.
Thus, despite my best efforts not to, I ended up hitting both of them. This sent them aggro and they started attacking us. Now being at the highest level they kept killing my guy as soon as they looked at him. I couldn't resurrect because as soon as I did, they would kill me in a stunning display of corpse camping. And I couldn't walk away because they would find me and kill me.
Eventually, I gave up and, in disgust logged out.

Having been playing WoW since early January, it's been a rather enjoyable experience - but this would be the first time something bad has happened. It was just like in that South Park episode Make Love Not Warcraft and no doubt this type of thing would've happened to many players before me.
In retrospect, those two troublemakers were ultimately looking for a fight - hence them getting in my way. Indeed, it did confirm my initial suspicions about WoW in the possibility of having fun being ruined by a killjoy who wants to beat up other players simply for the thrill of it. I guess wherever you go, there will always be some jerks who want nothing more than to ruin your day.
Of course, those two were later reported but at the end of the day, being harassed by a pair of tools put me in a bad mood and if a game puts you in a bad mood then then would be a good time to stop.
Still, this one bad thing wasn't enough to put me off WoW and I've come back to it since. :D

The ultimate irony is that this happened AFTER my Battlechest free time ran out and I commenced subscribing. Read into that what you will....

Soul Calibur retrospective

I've made mention of the Soul Calibur series in the past and with Soul Calibur 5 just been released, now would be a good time as any to sit down and talk about my experiences with this franchise.

I first became aware of the Soul Calibur in the mid-nineties through the arcade game Soul Edge. I just happened to wandering through my local arcade when I noticed a 3d fighting game wherein the combatants were fighting with weapons. At the time, I wasn't too keen on fighting games: During the early to mid-nineties I recall so many of them around - no doubt made by people hoping to cash in on the success of the untouchable Street Fighter 2. Needless to say, seeing yet another fighting game didn;t really appeal to me.
Nevertheless I think I might have tried Soul Edge once but somehow it didn't make that much of impression - in retrospect this may have been attributed to graphics that looked unappealing and an announcer speaking in a very muffled voice. I tried the first character I saw, Sophitia, and proceeded with my usual fighting game tactic (ie button mashing) but somehow this game didn't set my world alight. Later I heard a friend say that one of combatants (either Sophitia or Seong Mi-na) apparently didn't have an arse - although how he noticed I don't know.

Nevertheless I came the recognise the brand of Soul and the character of Sophitia. This would come in handy years later when I would discover the Playstation conversion Soul Blade and that fantastically rockin' intro:



Around the same time as I saw that intro for the first time (2000) I was aware of the game Soul Calibur. At the time, I was aware this was a big deal for the Dreamcast and enough to achieve the rare gaming distinction of being a system seller. I'd seen the intro and recognised some faces - even if I was puzzled by the name change.
It was only years later that I actually got to play the game in question: First on the Dreamcast and then on the XBLA. I recall being impressed by the graphics, the 3d nature and the music. Plus the fights were both intense & fun and I loved the Mission Mode as well. Indeed, everything about the game came across as being a labour of love and it really showed with the replay value and inclusion of extra features like the art galleries and the opening direction.
And even now, Soul Calibur would have to be one of the few games that have actually age well: when I play Soul Calibur on the XBLA I'm still impressed by how well it holds up against more recent titles and how beautiful it all looks.

But I'm getting ahead of myself: Around 2006 I got a PS2 and eventually I came to Soul Calibur 3. There was no plan to get it: i saw it selling for cheap and I recognized the name. And although I was baffled to see so many unfamiliar faces, I still strapped myself in and invested many hours into the game.
This was more or less my true beginning with the Soul Calibur series. True, it was indeed strange to come into the series when so much has happened and I lacked the prior knowledge, but I eventually picked it all up. It was also kind of interesting to go back through the series and see faces I grew accustomed to in an earlier guise.
So yes, I played through with everyone and built up some favourites with Misturugi, Setsuka, Astaroth, Cassandra, Kilik, Voldo, Nightmare, Xianghua, Raphael and, of course, Sophitia. It did indeed seem odd to see such a seemingly epically story in a fighting game - one kind of got the impression it came from a different game and was shoe-horned into Soul Calibur for some inexplicable reason. Nevertheless, I followed it all - somehow!!! - and even looked back over previous games to pick up what I'd missed.
Also, I found Soul Calibur 3 to really good for social element. I found it a great excuse to sit down with a bunch of friends and crack some heads together: It was fun to see two people duke it out with an attentive audience and even do a tournament.
So yeah, Soul Calibur 3 was great fun to play and enough to win me over. I may not be a big fan of fighting games but Soul Calibur 3 was enough to show me there were some diamonds in the rough. And that is an impressive feat indeed.

And then there was Soul Calibur 4. This was a game I avoided. Yes I saw other people play it and yes I eventually ended up playing it at a friend's place but somehow, this just didn't hold any appeal for me. I could say that from what I saw, there didn't seem to be much different from the previous iterations(s) but I think the main reason was what had happened to the characters.
Most of the problems can come down to the designs. Now I can imagine the more powerful hardware of the PS3 and 360 may make for a bigger canvas upon which to work from and yes indeed the character models in Soul Calibur 3 look light years better than their Soul Edge counter parts but I didn't like the character designs in Soul Calibur 4. I enjoyed those in Soul Calibur 3 so to see them in Soul Calibur 4 made them look completely different in comparison - but the changes weren't for the better. Some of them looked silly and, in the case of the female fighters, sexed up to the point of ridiculous. In particular, Setsuka: I liked Setsuka in Soul Calibur 3 and there wasn't anything wrong with her design but to see her in Soul Calibur 4 looking completely different makes me wonder: 'Who are you and what have you done with the real Setsuka?'!
Also I think the character design of Sophitia in Soul Calibur 1 is far better than those in Soul Calibur 4 AND Soul Calibur 3.
And Kilik! What did they do to you man?! I loved Kilik for his heroic integrity so to see him, in the cut scenes, acting like an emo was indeed painful to watch.
In addition, the inclusion of characters from the Star Wars universe was, to me intrusive and enough for a deal-breaker.

So with a new Soul Calibur game now available, what do I make of it? Well I like the idea that the game is set seventeen years after no.4 and as a result many of the returning characters have aged to some degree. But I don't know: I enjoyed Soul Calibur 1 and 3 so maybe that is enough for me.

Come to snuff the rooster

The weirdest game I've ever played? It’s a question I’ve never been asked but the hell, I’ll go with it anyway. Now I’ve over two decades of game experience under my belt so there is a wealth of material to work from. But when it comes to weird game, one immediately comes to mind: A game on the Commodore 64 called Cock’In.



Also known as Chicken Chase, I played this game when I was a kid in the late eighties/early nineties. As was the case with most games of it’s era it wasn’t the most complex game: It was set in a henhouse and the player controlled a rooster set with the task of protecting a hen’s eggs from a host of invaders ranging from hedgehogs, rats, foxes and snakes - this was done by pecking at the intruders and forcing them to flee.
And like other games of the eighties, it was an endurance test: The general goal of the game was to survive for so long and the player’s score, which was continually increasing, was based on how long they lasted.



It sounds simple but here’s the weird part: This game is an analogy for sex! I never realised it at first (call it due to being of a young, impressionable mind) but there is some really odd sexual overtones. See the screenshot above? Take note of that door in the middle which has a love heart on it. At the commencement of each life, the rooster automatically enters the door only to reemerge seconds later. Then the hen emerges from the door, lays an egg and then returns to the inside of the door.
That may sound odd, but remember what I said about this game being an endurance test? That to succeed is to survive? Well in-between intrusions from the invaders. The player can go into the door – once there they can spend some as long as they choose and the longer they do, a series of love hearts appear at the top of the screen. And upon emerging from the door, the hen then comes out and lays a number of eggs (on top of the one’s already laid) corresponding to the numbers of hearts that came up.

So yes: You are impregnating a hen in order to keep on playing.

And that isn’t all with the game: The longer you spend on the other side of the door, the slower the rooster’s movement speed gets – fortunately by finding a worm that can appear at random intervals, the rooster can find a speed increase.
Anyway the only way to lose this game is to lose all the eggs – whether through them hatching (which leads to a chick that runs to the door and then enters it) or the eggs being gobbled up by the invaders. And when all the eggs are gone, the player loses a life: This is represented through the rooster automatically going to a corner –which is then followed by the hen that comes out the door with a club (or something) and proceeds to smack the rooster repeatedly over the head. Really I couldn’t make this up if I tried.

So yes Cock’In takes pride of place of the weirdest game I ever played purely for being a game based around the concept that having sex is the way forward (one can only wonder why there was a name change with this game). Indeed, it’s kind of weird to look back at games from the eighties and see the type of stuff they got away with.
And to cap off the true bizarreness of this game, here’s the box art:


images from: lemon 64

Inner Your Head

Don't have much to say for today's post. As has been the case for millions before me, I've been so much WoW to the expense of a whole lotta other games. So for today I'd like to take the time to talk about a game that I played many moons ago and remember quite fondly.

As established earlier, there was a time, late nineties to mid-2000s, when I wasn't really that interested in gaming. That's not to say however that the interest had completely died off - I still got some use out of an Atari Lynx and I was still playing DOS games on my PC. One such game was one I remember playing extensively and enjoying: Inner Worlds.

Like many DOS games of it's era, Inner Worlds was made up of three installments. The first one was freeware, available for free distribution, but in order to get the rest of the game, players had to pay for the other two installments. I however managed to get my claws on all three and play through them.
Although not well known as other DOS games of the early to mid nineties, the development of Inner Worlds is well-documented: It was made a group called Sleepless Software - a team of three people which, through the magic of the Internet, grew into twenty seven people from nine different countries. In addition, the music was provided through an Internet contest where musicians from separate corners of the globe could submit their work for a place in the game.

But onto the game itself: It was a platform game where the player controls a werewolf by the name of Nikita. She is able to change between a wolf and a human at will and she goes on a quest (at least in the first installment) to defeat an evil demon....thingy within a castle. Throughout the quest Nikita gradually grows stronger, obtaining spells, status upgrades and weapons to use. And in the next two installments, Nikita goes outside and beyond the castle to face more demonic forces before eventually heading into a volcano for the final showdown with the imaginatively named baddie Claws.


The first level!

When I first played this game I was unimpressed: It looked like a relic from the by then obsolete 16 bit era, there were a lot of goofiness about it (like the text that randomly appears), the exposition seemed somehow forced in and it didn't really seem to be that interesting. But for some reason I still don't understand I decided to stick with it (maybe because there was little else to play at the time) and somehow the game won me over. Whilst there were some slow parts of the game I did find myself enjoying the music and finding the bad guys to have some really inventive designs.
The game however really kicked into high gear when Nikita leaves the castle. The music got even better , the bad guys got scary, the settings show a diversity and the goofiness takes a back seat for a more serious tone. As such, it was enough to keep me hooked right until the end of the game - alas I was unable to beat Claws in the final confrontation (damn!)


A location from the second world (I love this level's theme)

Looking back over a decade later, there certainly was a lot going for this game. Having learned about the diversity involved in the development phase, one would expect this game to be something of a Frankenstein's Monster with a lot of elements held together with a lack of cohesion - and it does show. I made mention of the change between the first and second installments and it really shows: it was as if the developers had some really good ideas but they put them all in the second and third parts, thus leaving the first part lacking in comparison. It does seem an odd move seeing as the first part was freeware and was, essentially, a hook to get players interested in the rest of the game.
Aside from that, there are some miss fitting graphics that looked like they'd stepped out of an entirely different game, ideas that appear only once & never after and exposition that seems merely dumped into the game as if it was there through obligation - most of it comes via a wall of text at the beginning and seems forced and trying it's hardest to be something epic and grandiose. Particular elements are also reused to underwhelming effect: By way of example there is a the huge spider in the third installment. It comes after the end of a huge build up to it and is definitely a tough boss character. But in the next level, that intimidation factor is undermined through Nikita having to defeat some clones of the spider! Take about running a well-executed idea into the ground.


And here's what the third world looks like

But what I find particularly engaging about Inner Worlds is that the gameplay seems to be the most compelling element. Whilst the graphics lack cohesion and the exposition seems laughable in it's attempts to make the player care, the gameplay alone is enough to carry the game. The platforming is great fun and the werewolf idea is a strong one indeed. In addition, the RPG elements is well integrated - I always found it great to get a new spell and how it changed my perception of the the game and how to beat it. In retrospect this combination of platforming and RPG was something of a new idea: Yes it was still following Super Metroid's lead but it was before Castlevania Symphony of the Night which is at least worth something. Indeed, I can imagine PC owners would've been delighted to have something like the great Super Metroid to call their own.
But what strikes me most about the gameplay is that there are times when it seems the development team put more thought into it than the rest of the game. It does make for a fascinating oddity in this day and age when gameplay is often shafted aside for telling gripping stories and having mind-blowing visuals. Thus it does feel that Inner Worlds has done the exact opposite - it's like a visitor from a parallel dimension where game technology went the other direction from what did happen in this world.

In addition, the music was great. It may have come from diverse sources but never once does it get dull. Okay sure the first part had some limp moments but the rest of the music was both moody and atmospheric and even, at times, hectic. It does seem a shame a CD was never released because damn I'd buy it!


One of the many enjoyable themes in this game

Alas, the game wasn't really that big a hit: The development took three years to complete (instead of the intended one) and as a result, it came out looking dated to the games of the, by then, fifth generation. As such, Sleepless Software never made another game.
Still, Inner Worlds was a fun game and truly a lost gem in the history of gaming. Sure it may not work in some places but when it does it works a treat.
It a great game to me and that is indeed enough.

Beachhead

Every WoW player has their favourite location - mine happens to be Stranglethorn Vale.

Having said that, it's not to do with quests or content - no this is more to do with the setting. I love how everything is rendered and the jungle/tropical environment. Everything looks like it was ripped out of a travel guide to Hawaii and filled with appropriate monsters (Raptors and tribes of Ogres and Trolls).
I've seen many RPGs may draw inspiration from medieval England so to see a different setting is quite pleasing. So it certainly is a different, and welcome change, to see a setting that is more a tropical island. Killing monsters in a place resembling one of the many islands in the Pacific? Sounds different but I'm in!

In fact why isn't the tropical setting used more often as a setting in RPGs? As mentioned above the whole medieval-England motif has been run into the ground so to see something completely different would make for a welcome change. The tropical island shows a lot of potential with a setting made of jungles, beaches and rocky mountains. And there is the potential of having villages made of simple buildings and filled with people speaking in Jamaican/Polynesian. And the monsters could present a opportunity for some exotic creatures rather than the usual Orcs/goblins fare (and maybe a headhunter tribe while we're at it). Indeed, the only other RPG I can think of that made use of the tropical island setting would be Final Fantasy X with Besaid Island - And admittedly, the further I got from that place the less interesting the other locales in the game became.

Ultimately though both Stranglethorn Vale and Besaid Island represent small portions of their respective games. Yet complete games have been built around smaller ideas. So, is there anyone willing to make an RPG around a tropical island setting?

I'd play it!

Talkin' 'bout My generation

Here's a random thought that came drifting into my mind: Has there ever been a game where one plays across a number of generations? I think the first that comes to mind would be Phantasy Star 3 and Dragon Quest 5 but, today, they're relics from the 16-bit generation. Indeed, it make me wonder in this day and age, when so much thought goes into the gaming story and how to present it, why such an idea hasn't been revisited.

So why not dust it off? Seeing as RPG's these days, like Mass Effect, tend to be built on making decisions that can come back later and bite the player on the arse, it would be an interesting take on the concept.
That begin said, I would like to play an RPG trilogy wherein the player uses one character in the first game, then their child in the second and their grandchild in the third! And as the trilogy progresses, the play can meet characters, both NPCs and party members, throughout that may appear young and vital in the first game and then old and wizened in the third. And the player can make choices throughout the first game that effect future generations: Thus it then becomes possible to be a complete bastard in the first game and thus present the next generations the task of doing some kind of redemption - or being an even bigger bastard. And through exploring the world across three games, it is possible to see it change through the progression of time.

The only problem I can see is that players may balk out at having their favorite character being replaced by someone new and unfamiliar (Metal Gear Solid 2 anyone?).
And who the hell sets out make a trilogy anyway?

Meeting of the Minds

Last week I talked about the characters I've been using in WoW. Now a player of WoW having multiple characters is not unheard of. It seems having multiple characters is a good enough excuse to try new things and take a different approach to playing WoW. Thus it is possible for a Horde player create an Alliance character. And it encourages new routes and areas to explore and new races and classes to experiment with. Nothing wrong with that but as far as I can see, it does raise a problem: Namely a lack of focus.

How does one prioritise between characters? Any RPG is pretty much going with a character through a very long journey and watching them evolve in both strength and personality – they are pretty much you, the player, and with them a bond is established comparable to a parent’s love of a child. Thus to have multiple characters tends to break this sense of focus and make a scattering of the RPG formula/character bond. And indeed it makes an interesting contrast to, say, Mass Effect, because no matter what changes I make as a player in appearance and the character class, the person I'll control will still be Commander Shepard in name and voice. No matter how many changes I make it'll still be the same character (and it should also be noted that Mass Effect is a much shorter game than WoW). Thus, juggling multiple characters seems more and more like a parent prioritizing their time between children.

And seeing as WoW is a very sociable game, it does seem odd for people to disappear and operate under a different name. Okay so there’s nothing really wrong in being in separate guilds and mixing with different people but it does seem strange to see two of the same player’s characters in a guild list and seeing one drop out and the other come on immediately afterward – if anything, for me, it does break the immersion.
So whilst having multiple characters is nice, there does exist the thought that when one is used the other two are siting around and grumbling when they’re turn is coming around. In addition is it is weird to disappear as one character only to come back and find the people you've come to know online way ahead of you in the terms of levels - and they wonder where you've been.
Plus, having multiple characters kind of restricts the exploration element: Indeed I've enjoyed just wandering around checking the various regions out but such an aimless activity seems a bit dumb when you have two others dudes awaiting attention.

Personally, I use three characters because I wanted to experiment and try new things - as they say a change is as good as a rest. But I think to best manage multiple characters is when there is a great distance between levels - which is not the case here (Rithendal 36, Beldrath 27 and Grimcrag 19 at time of writing). So whilst it is nice to do things differently, getting to level 60+ is looking a tough prospect at the moment.........

But at the end of day I can conclude that whilst it may seem so easy to prioritize but difficult to pull off. Well WoW, looks like you got me again you sick bastard....