This is just a quick note to say that for various reasons I have decided to move this blog over to WordPress.
You can access the new blog here: Button Masher. I have copied and pasted all the posts from here to the new site for convenience as well
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Influential Games
I just read IGN's article on what they believe are the top ten games that influenced where the industry is today (http://au.games.ign.com/articles/840/840621p1.html). A good read and it got me thinking, not so much about what games influence the industry, but about what games influenced me specifically.
I've been playing games since we got our first PC (I remember being the envy of my class when I was the first person to get a computer at home). Then it started with the demos and text based games. There were a couple that I don't remember the names of that was simply white text on a black screen, story based things. I didn't get very far then as my seven year old vocabulary wasn't wide enough to come up with enough synonyms to say what I wanted to even if my imagination was vivid enough to picture the whole world as described in surprising clarity. One I do remember the name of that had some visual elements to it was Hugo's Haunted House. I loved that game and even though I don't think I ever finished it (or the two that followed) the challenge of figuring out first what needed to be done and then articulate it in a way that the game understood was fun, even if the stories were a little shallow most of the time.
I also enjoyed playing platform games like Jazz Jack Rabbit, Jill of the Jungle, Wacky Wheels, and Commander Keen. All of these were demos, installed by floppy disk and run either with MS DOS or Windows 3.1. I believe I finished all the levels for each of those games several times over, but was never really aware that by buying the full version I could play more, a fact I am sure my parents were glad I never realized.
Then we come to the first series of games that had the biggest impact on what I now enjoy playing. The Quest for Glory series. Created by Sierra and so full of bugs they were rendered near impossible to complete (at least until the rise of walkthroughs on the internet with bug work-arounds). In these games the player navigated a fantasy world through a nameless hero (or hero-wanna-be in the first one), saving before doing anything or going anywhere and dying in the most ridiculous ways (my favourite will always be when using a lockpick on yourself when attempting to make the 'thief sign' you end up sticking the lockpick up your nose and you have a chance of either cleaning out your nasal passages, or dying by sticking the pick too high and into your brain). It started (at least in my books) the whole fighter/mage/thief class choice in adventure/role playing games and even now the games I most enjoy follow these three class specs at least to some extent. Through the help of walkthroughs and bug work-arounds I managed to finish games 1-3 when I was older, but I have never yet completed the fourth or fifth games because of the bugs.
I can't mention personal influential games without mentioning Age of Empires (number two mostly). I remember spending many hours with my brother and father trying to set up a local LAN to play a game for half an hour before giving up (I tended to lose a lot against those two). Always interested in history, the ability to play history was fantastic to me and more than defeating my enemy I loved just creating sprawling civilizations.
That kind of leads on to the Stronghold series for the same reasons. Only this time it was harder to create a thriving economy and city without fighting as it was a lot more involved. I was, however, disappointed when my name was not on the list of those the narrator greets by name when opening the game (as opposed to my father and brother, with very medieval-esque names of Peter and William).
Finally comes 2002. Year of Morrowind and full game immersion. To date I have never come across another game where I could start playing first thing in the morning and the next thing I realize it's dark outside (World of Warcraft addiction doesn't count, that was addicting for a whole other reason, which I'll no doubt cover in this blog at some point since game addiction is particularly fascinating to me). True, I restarted it several times over till I found the kind of character class that was just right, but once I got into it I could not seem to get it out of my mind. For a while the guy I was dating at the time and I would copy our save games on to a floppy disk and go around each other's houses and continue playing, watching each other play (yeah we both enjoyed watching game play as much as playing it). Until the save games became too large for floppy disks. Then we went back to normal boyfriend x girlfriend stuff ;) Even now I have not finished all the side quests available, though I have recently reinstalled it and all the expansions, as well as upgrading the game with the Morrowind Overhurl mod and a few others to add to the gameplay experience. Let's see if I can finish those quests this time :)
Now, I'm looking forward to Skyrim (as if that wasn't obvious by now) with high expectations of it having the same immersiveness that Morrowind had but Oblivion lacked (even if Oblivion was very pretty).
I've been playing games since we got our first PC (I remember being the envy of my class when I was the first person to get a computer at home). Then it started with the demos and text based games. There were a couple that I don't remember the names of that was simply white text on a black screen, story based things. I didn't get very far then as my seven year old vocabulary wasn't wide enough to come up with enough synonyms to say what I wanted to even if my imagination was vivid enough to picture the whole world as described in surprising clarity. One I do remember the name of that had some visual elements to it was Hugo's Haunted House. I loved that game and even though I don't think I ever finished it (or the two that followed) the challenge of figuring out first what needed to be done and then articulate it in a way that the game understood was fun, even if the stories were a little shallow most of the time.
I also enjoyed playing platform games like Jazz Jack Rabbit, Jill of the Jungle, Wacky Wheels, and Commander Keen. All of these were demos, installed by floppy disk and run either with MS DOS or Windows 3.1. I believe I finished all the levels for each of those games several times over, but was never really aware that by buying the full version I could play more, a fact I am sure my parents were glad I never realized.
Then we come to the first series of games that had the biggest impact on what I now enjoy playing. The Quest for Glory series. Created by Sierra and so full of bugs they were rendered near impossible to complete (at least until the rise of walkthroughs on the internet with bug work-arounds). In these games the player navigated a fantasy world through a nameless hero (or hero-wanna-be in the first one), saving before doing anything or going anywhere and dying in the most ridiculous ways (my favourite will always be when using a lockpick on yourself when attempting to make the 'thief sign' you end up sticking the lockpick up your nose and you have a chance of either cleaning out your nasal passages, or dying by sticking the pick too high and into your brain). It started (at least in my books) the whole fighter/mage/thief class choice in adventure/role playing games and even now the games I most enjoy follow these three class specs at least to some extent. Through the help of walkthroughs and bug work-arounds I managed to finish games 1-3 when I was older, but I have never yet completed the fourth or fifth games because of the bugs.
I can't mention personal influential games without mentioning Age of Empires (number two mostly). I remember spending many hours with my brother and father trying to set up a local LAN to play a game for half an hour before giving up (I tended to lose a lot against those two). Always interested in history, the ability to play history was fantastic to me and more than defeating my enemy I loved just creating sprawling civilizations.
That kind of leads on to the Stronghold series for the same reasons. Only this time it was harder to create a thriving economy and city without fighting as it was a lot more involved. I was, however, disappointed when my name was not on the list of those the narrator greets by name when opening the game (as opposed to my father and brother, with very medieval-esque names of Peter and William).
Finally comes 2002. Year of Morrowind and full game immersion. To date I have never come across another game where I could start playing first thing in the morning and the next thing I realize it's dark outside (World of Warcraft addiction doesn't count, that was addicting for a whole other reason, which I'll no doubt cover in this blog at some point since game addiction is particularly fascinating to me). True, I restarted it several times over till I found the kind of character class that was just right, but once I got into it I could not seem to get it out of my mind. For a while the guy I was dating at the time and I would copy our save games on to a floppy disk and go around each other's houses and continue playing, watching each other play (yeah we both enjoyed watching game play as much as playing it). Until the save games became too large for floppy disks. Then we went back to normal boyfriend x girlfriend stuff ;) Even now I have not finished all the side quests available, though I have recently reinstalled it and all the expansions, as well as upgrading the game with the Morrowind Overhurl mod and a few others to add to the gameplay experience. Let's see if I can finish those quests this time :)
Now, I'm looking forward to Skyrim (as if that wasn't obvious by now) with high expectations of it having the same immersiveness that Morrowind had but Oblivion lacked (even if Oblivion was very pretty).
Thursday, June 9, 2011
6 x glitches = modern_gaming
I was browsing cracked.com the other day (always a fun past time) and came across this article.
http://www.cracked.com/article_19262_6-glitches-that-accidentally-invented-modern-gaming.html
6 glitches that accidentally invented modern gaming. Hilarious! To think all these carefully planned 'features' were actually supposed to be bugs. I have to admit, Lara Croft's boobs was probably the biggest one of all of them that I expected to be deliberate. After all, it was made in the time when really, only males played and made games. Women were only supposed to be teachers or secretaries or other 'suitable' jobs. Thank goodness that's changed for my own sake. It's always fun when I say I like gaming to someone and their immediate response is, "But... you're a girl!" If only I was any good at first person shooters, I could show them what a girl could do.
Anyway, back to the article. My next favourite part was the Space Invaders one. I loved this when I was a kid. In fact I still love it and occasionally look up a web version of it. The glitch, how it gets faster the more you kill, was actually something that didn't surprise me when I read it. See I tried installing it on my parents' computer some time ago. I think I found it on a floppy disk or something and was curious if it would still work and figured my parents' computer was old enough that it just might. Well, surprisingly the floppy worked. The problem was that it was still too fast. As soon as I started it there was a quick "Brrrrrr" sound and then I was dead. Didn't manage to fire off a single shot. I played around a little but then gave up trying to get it to run properly and just found an online version and bookmarked it. Problem solved.
Finally, the konami code. That part of the article I thought was fantastic as I completely believed that this was deliberate, sort of like the easter eggs mentioned earlier. To hear that it was an accident, that it was cheat code that wasn't supposed to be left in there, was great. And now everything (PC at least) has cheat codes and if they don't players are disappointed. Truth be told it's rare that I ever use cheat codes, and no I'm not lying. I've used them to get around bugs (there was a really annoying one in Oblivion where a quest giver had fallen through the floor. I had to find where he fell through and fall through myself, talk to him about the quest, then turn my acrobatics skill to 500 so I could jump out of there). Sometimes, after I've completed the game once and am playing through a second (or third or fourth or fifth) time I'll play around with the various cheat codes just to see what they do but that's about it.
Oh except when I was young. Dad used to play Duke Nukem 3D and Quake and all the Dooms and for the most part I just enjoyed watching. I'm like that, I enjoy watching people play games as much as I enjoy playing them. And stuck to the side of the computer box was a note with a bunch of random letters and words on it. Cheat codes for the various games. Using them I was willing to play the shooting games and particularly loved Duke Nukem and Quake (I didn't like dying all the time as a kid).
On a side note, I joined LinkedIn today. If you know me you know my name and can look me up on it :)
http://www.cracked.com/article_19262_6-glitches-that-accidentally-invented-modern-gaming.html
6 glitches that accidentally invented modern gaming. Hilarious! To think all these carefully planned 'features' were actually supposed to be bugs. I have to admit, Lara Croft's boobs was probably the biggest one of all of them that I expected to be deliberate. After all, it was made in the time when really, only males played and made games. Women were only supposed to be teachers or secretaries or other 'suitable' jobs. Thank goodness that's changed for my own sake. It's always fun when I say I like gaming to someone and their immediate response is, "But... you're a girl!" If only I was any good at first person shooters, I could show them what a girl could do.
Anyway, back to the article. My next favourite part was the Space Invaders one. I loved this when I was a kid. In fact I still love it and occasionally look up a web version of it. The glitch, how it gets faster the more you kill, was actually something that didn't surprise me when I read it. See I tried installing it on my parents' computer some time ago. I think I found it on a floppy disk or something and was curious if it would still work and figured my parents' computer was old enough that it just might. Well, surprisingly the floppy worked. The problem was that it was still too fast. As soon as I started it there was a quick "Brrrrrr" sound and then I was dead. Didn't manage to fire off a single shot. I played around a little but then gave up trying to get it to run properly and just found an online version and bookmarked it. Problem solved.
Finally, the konami code. That part of the article I thought was fantastic as I completely believed that this was deliberate, sort of like the easter eggs mentioned earlier. To hear that it was an accident, that it was cheat code that wasn't supposed to be left in there, was great. And now everything (PC at least) has cheat codes and if they don't players are disappointed. Truth be told it's rare that I ever use cheat codes, and no I'm not lying. I've used them to get around bugs (there was a really annoying one in Oblivion where a quest giver had fallen through the floor. I had to find where he fell through and fall through myself, talk to him about the quest, then turn my acrobatics skill to 500 so I could jump out of there). Sometimes, after I've completed the game once and am playing through a second (or third or fourth or fifth) time I'll play around with the various cheat codes just to see what they do but that's about it.
Oh except when I was young. Dad used to play Duke Nukem 3D and Quake and all the Dooms and for the most part I just enjoyed watching. I'm like that, I enjoy watching people play games as much as I enjoy playing them. And stuck to the side of the computer box was a note with a bunch of random letters and words on it. Cheat codes for the various games. Using them I was willing to play the shooting games and particularly loved Duke Nukem and Quake (I didn't like dying all the time as a kid).
On a side note, I joined LinkedIn today. If you know me you know my name and can look me up on it :)
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Skyrim Gameplay Demo
Ok so those of you who know me will know that I love Bethesda and all their games and am seriously looking forward to their new game coming out in November: Skyrim.
Following Bethesda on Facebook means I get updates on the game and this video was shared. It looks AWESOME. Just a warning, if you don't like game previews don't watch it, but if you enjoy them, or if you don't intend to play Skyrim you should watch it :)
(in case the embedding doesn't work: http://www.g4tv.com/videos/53441/The-Elder-Scrolls-V-Skyrim-E3-Gameplay-Demo/)
That looks REALLY impressive, and makes me even more eager to be able to write for a game like that :) I mean the AI is just insane and incredible. Not to mention pretty, we must never underestimate the pretty, I mean that was one of the main selling points for Oblivion after all hehe.
Following Bethesda on Facebook means I get updates on the game and this video was shared. It looks AWESOME. Just a warning, if you don't like game previews don't watch it, but if you enjoy them, or if you don't intend to play Skyrim you should watch it :)
(in case the embedding doesn't work: http://www.g4tv.com/videos/53441/The-Elder-Scrolls-V-Skyrim-E3-Gameplay-Demo/)
That looks REALLY impressive, and makes me even more eager to be able to write for a game like that :) I mean the AI is just insane and incredible. Not to mention pretty, we must never underestimate the pretty, I mean that was one of the main selling points for Oblivion after all hehe.
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Grand Opening!
Ok! I have finally given in to the temptation and have created a blog. Go me, giving in to yet another popular move. Ah well, move with the times and all that.
Anyway, I started this blog with the intention of writing about the game industry, my opinions on such things, maybe a review of a game or two depending on what I feel like. The idea of which is to force me to continue reading about the game industry in general, record my thoughts on it and critically analyse various games I'm playing or have played.
I should set up a schedule now shouldn't I. I mean that's what these full time bloggers do, a certain post on a certain day and all that jazz. This feels very weird, talking to myself, but I'm sure I'll get used to it. How about a game review sometime in the first week of each month and some other random article or opinion sometime for each of the other three weeks. There that's good enough now until I get the hang of this.
So since this is the first week of June (just) it's a game review. And I suppose it's good timing since I'm kind of between games at the moment having finished Witcher 2 and not having any new games to review. So it only makes sense to review Witcher 2.
Unless you've been living under a rock for the past six months or so, you will have heard about the Polish game Witcher 2, sequel to Witcher 1 (duh) and based on the Wiedzmin book series by Andrzej Sapkowski, though only two of them have been translated into English.
ANYWAY! There might be a couple of minor spoilers but nothing major story wise, I promise!
Witcher 2 is an action/adventure role-playing game in which every decision you make affects how the story plays out. It's shorter than the first game, only three chapters instead of five and personally that was a bit of a disappointment, but more into that later. There's a lot changed from the first game; the combat has changed, the way skills are developed is different, even the side quests take on a different and more realistic feel.
First, the combat. Now when I play a game I'm usually more interested in the story than anything else so I'm not too worried about the other elements. Nonetheless, I do like a little challenge so I started playing the game on normal difficulty. Well. After dying five times on the first real combat I flicked it back to easy and occasionally still had to think about the combat. Gone was the timing clicks, and now it's more twitch combat and strategy with planning before battle. The problem with playing it on easy is some of the boss battles can be a little dull (for example there's a scene where the witcher is running from a dragon which is supposed to be a quick time event, except on easy there is no quick time event, you're just running in a straight line. Boring). As the game continues and points are put into the various tree branches (I went with swordsmanship) the game gets easier and easier to the point where, again, combat is boring. In the last chapter the combat was so easy I doubted there was anything I couldn't do so I decided to challenge it. There is a 'room' that is literally full of guards who hate me. So what did I do? Go in there and pick a fight by throwing a bomb into the middle of them. Yeah, that'll teach them for picking on a witcher. I probably killed between 20 and 30 of them before I was eventually killed. I tried about three times and didn't succeed with any of them but I'm not very good at thinking on my feet during combat so someone who is better at the combat could probably do it. Apart from that, there was not a battle I even had trouble with. Next play through I'll persevere with normal and hope that it gets better.
Ok side quests. In the first Witcher there was a plethora of side quests, most of which consisting of go there, kill that, get this from the body and bring it back, and don't forget to read the book about the monster first. It was repetitive but I like to complete every side quest before doing the main quests so I did every single one. With Witcher 2 there were a lot less side quests and they were quite different from the simple grinding style. For example, there are two 'witcher' quests in the first chapter but you need to act as a proper witcher would in order to complete them. For example, as with the first game, you had to find a book about the monster to learn about them. Then, for one of the monster infestations, just killing them wasn't enough as they already returned. You had to find their nests (that are not marked on the map) and figure out a way to destroy them, which you're not told. True witcher work!
Finally the length. As I said earlier the game felt quite short especially when compared to the last one. The game boasted 40 hours of game play, excluding side quests. This may have been true on normal with dying often and restarting (especially if you forget to save as autosave wasn't that often), but I finished the game in two or three days, and I don't play constantly all day every day as some gamers do. This was disappointing since the first game took me a couple weeks to complete and even then there were some side quests I stuffed up and didn't complete. However, I did feel it finished properly. There were essentially two story lines throughout the game, finding the assassin of kings and why he's killing royalty, along with a more personal quest in regaining Geralt's memories. The memories quest line didn't finish, leaving it open for a sequel, but it did round off nicely, like the end of a chapter :)
Ok it's getting late so I'm going to have to wrap up. Over all I was happy with the game and it was a satisfying play, if a short one.
Anyway, I started this blog with the intention of writing about the game industry, my opinions on such things, maybe a review of a game or two depending on what I feel like. The idea of which is to force me to continue reading about the game industry in general, record my thoughts on it and critically analyse various games I'm playing or have played.
I should set up a schedule now shouldn't I. I mean that's what these full time bloggers do, a certain post on a certain day and all that jazz. This feels very weird, talking to myself, but I'm sure I'll get used to it. How about a game review sometime in the first week of each month and some other random article or opinion sometime for each of the other three weeks. There that's good enough now until I get the hang of this.
So since this is the first week of June (just) it's a game review. And I suppose it's good timing since I'm kind of between games at the moment having finished Witcher 2 and not having any new games to review. So it only makes sense to review Witcher 2.
Unless you've been living under a rock for the past six months or so, you will have heard about the Polish game Witcher 2, sequel to Witcher 1 (duh) and based on the Wiedzmin book series by Andrzej Sapkowski, though only two of them have been translated into English.
ANYWAY! There might be a couple of minor spoilers but nothing major story wise, I promise!
Witcher 2 is an action/adventure role-playing game in which every decision you make affects how the story plays out. It's shorter than the first game, only three chapters instead of five and personally that was a bit of a disappointment, but more into that later. There's a lot changed from the first game; the combat has changed, the way skills are developed is different, even the side quests take on a different and more realistic feel.
First, the combat. Now when I play a game I'm usually more interested in the story than anything else so I'm not too worried about the other elements. Nonetheless, I do like a little challenge so I started playing the game on normal difficulty. Well. After dying five times on the first real combat I flicked it back to easy and occasionally still had to think about the combat. Gone was the timing clicks, and now it's more twitch combat and strategy with planning before battle. The problem with playing it on easy is some of the boss battles can be a little dull (for example there's a scene where the witcher is running from a dragon which is supposed to be a quick time event, except on easy there is no quick time event, you're just running in a straight line. Boring). As the game continues and points are put into the various tree branches (I went with swordsmanship) the game gets easier and easier to the point where, again, combat is boring. In the last chapter the combat was so easy I doubted there was anything I couldn't do so I decided to challenge it. There is a 'room' that is literally full of guards who hate me. So what did I do? Go in there and pick a fight by throwing a bomb into the middle of them. Yeah, that'll teach them for picking on a witcher. I probably killed between 20 and 30 of them before I was eventually killed. I tried about three times and didn't succeed with any of them but I'm not very good at thinking on my feet during combat so someone who is better at the combat could probably do it. Apart from that, there was not a battle I even had trouble with. Next play through I'll persevere with normal and hope that it gets better.
Ok side quests. In the first Witcher there was a plethora of side quests, most of which consisting of go there, kill that, get this from the body and bring it back, and don't forget to read the book about the monster first. It was repetitive but I like to complete every side quest before doing the main quests so I did every single one. With Witcher 2 there were a lot less side quests and they were quite different from the simple grinding style. For example, there are two 'witcher' quests in the first chapter but you need to act as a proper witcher would in order to complete them. For example, as with the first game, you had to find a book about the monster to learn about them. Then, for one of the monster infestations, just killing them wasn't enough as they already returned. You had to find their nests (that are not marked on the map) and figure out a way to destroy them, which you're not told. True witcher work!
Finally the length. As I said earlier the game felt quite short especially when compared to the last one. The game boasted 40 hours of game play, excluding side quests. This may have been true on normal with dying often and restarting (especially if you forget to save as autosave wasn't that often), but I finished the game in two or three days, and I don't play constantly all day every day as some gamers do. This was disappointing since the first game took me a couple weeks to complete and even then there were some side quests I stuffed up and didn't complete. However, I did feel it finished properly. There were essentially two story lines throughout the game, finding the assassin of kings and why he's killing royalty, along with a more personal quest in regaining Geralt's memories. The memories quest line didn't finish, leaving it open for a sequel, but it did round off nicely, like the end of a chapter :)
Ok it's getting late so I'm going to have to wrap up. Over all I was happy with the game and it was a satisfying play, if a short one.
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