Author Archives: Andy

Ground-breaking roleplaying games (with commentary by yours truly)

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There’s a good rundown over at Gamasutra of ground-breaking electronic roleplaying games. A few quick comments on their list:

First, it does the heart good to see Planescape: Torment at #2 on the list; it’s certainly one of the most literary RPGs ever created. (I’d personally put it at #1, of course, but Fallout was so good I can’t really begrudge its place at the top of the list.) The time I spent playing PS:T ranks as one of my best gaming experiences. I’ll stop now before I’m reduced to blubbering fanboy praise….

Second: No System Shock 2? That seems an unusual oversight, given that game’s excellent fusion of roleplaying with the traditional FPS-style interface. I do note that Deus Ex, which seems to me to owe an awful lot to SS2, made the list. That said, I can see why Deus Ex might have surpassed SS2 as a roleplaying game–in DE, the player faces meaningful choices and interaction with others, whereas SS2 mostly kept you on the run from enemies who didn’t interact with you much outside of trying to kill you. I grudgingly submit to the wisdom of the list-compilers in this case, although SS2 remains a must-play game.

A really scary must-play game. A perfect choice for some Halloween gaming, but good luck tracking down a copy….

Third… Dragon Warrior! I sometimes wonder if anybody else played this game; it’s gratifying to see it on the list. It completely consumed my life for a period of months back in the NES days; it deserves more recognition than it gets for bridging the gap between Zelda-style exploration adventure games and the later Final Fantasy-style console RPG genre. I tried re-playing this recently and found its crude and repetitive console RPG gameplay to be almost unbearable; but back in The Day it was quite something to behold. Also, this game has an absolutely beautiful and haunting soundtrack (even if it did get annoying when looped repeatedly through the NES’ speakers for hours on end). It’s the sort of music you find yourself idly whistling 15 years after you beat the game and packed the cartridge away in storage with your NES.

This game had to be one of the only ones where, upon confronting the final Bad Guy, you were given the chance to abandon your quest and conquer the world at his side. And you could actually choose! (Of course, if you chose to side with the bad guy and betray everything you’ve been working to accomplish, the game ended and played some sad music, which was sort of boring. But hey, at least it was your choice, freely made!)

I used to have the Dragon Warrior world map set as my desktop background, but after a while it started making my eyes bleed, so I reluctantly changed it.

And finally, a general comment: it’s a downright shame that almost all of these games are completely unavailable outside eBay or sketchy ‘abandonware’ sites. Book publishers and movie studios don’t let their groundbreaking titles simply disappear from general availability after a few years–but most of the classics on this list are long gone from the market. While a few of these titles (like Dragon Warrior, as I note above) are too dated to be enjoyed by most gamers today, there’s no reason that the Ultima series or Fallout should be so hard to find. Come on, Game Industry–figure out a method by which you can keep classics like these alive and available for future generations to enjoy!

And now you’ll have to excuse me. I have a date with Shodan, and she doesn’t like to be kept waiting.

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Thursday afternoon annotation challenge

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Kender fans, rejoice! If you just can’t get enough of the world’s most annoying halfling, and you’ve got the cash, you can now treat yourself to a leather-bound, gilt-edged compilation of the Dragonlance trilogy.

OK, I’m smirking at it. But hey, if Dragonlance floats your boat, go for it–I’ve certainly spent more money on less significant cultural artifacts. But personally, I’m not sure if it really feels right to move the Dragonlance novels out of the comfortably cheap, read-’em-in-an-afternoon Elmore-illustrated paperback format into this sort of artificial sophistication.

If I sound like a literary snob, I really don’t mean to. I mean, I wanted to be Raistlin the Brooding Angst-Ridden Archmage With Godlike Powers just as much as any other teenage male, and those Dragonlance novels are right here on the bookshelf next to me. But this reminds me of the day a few years ago I stumbled across The Annotated Dragonlance Chronicles at the bookstore. Annotated? The Dragonlance trilogy? Annotated editions are for, like, James Joyce and the Bible and stuff. What exactly are they… annotating?

So then: up for a little literary challenge today? I dare you to provide a scholarly annotation for the following excerpt from Dragons of Autumn Twilight:

The slug, sensing success, slithered forward, dragging its pulsating gray body through the door. Goldmoon cast a fearful glance at the huge monster, then ran to Tanis. Riverwind stood over them, protectively.

“Get away!” Tanis said through clenched teeth.

Goldmoon grasped his injured hand in her own, praying to the goddess. Riverwind fit an arrow to his bow and shot at the slug. The arrow struck the creature in the neck, doing little damage, but distracting its attention from Tanis […]

Raistlin ran to Fizban’s side. “Now is the time for the casting of the fireball, Old One,” he panted.

Have at it!

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On the Minus World and the death of mystery

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Ah, the Minus World. What teenage boy during the NES years didn’t spend countless hours of his life trying to unlock the secret entrance to that legendary, and possibly imaginary, hidden level in Super Mario Bros?

The internet, in its all-seeing wisdom, has of course laid bare the secrets of the Minus World. Enjoy watching somebody do what you never could: find that elusive spot at which a simple jump would teleport you to the forbidden halls of the Holy Grail of 8-bit gaming.

The Minus World–which actually turned out to be a simple glitch in the game, not a carefully-planted Easter Egg–has to be one of the earliest and most potent Gaming Urban Legends. Nobody you talked to had ever actually been to the Minus World, but everybody had a cousin whose neighbor had stumbled upon it on accident and knew the precise sequence of moves required to access it. I myself spent more than a few hours in front of the Nintendo with my friend Derrick in search of the Minus World. Scrawled on a crumpled piece of paper in our possession were instructions that claimed to describe the twisting path to the Minus World–I think Derrick transcribed the instructions, scribbling them down as a cousin or friend or babysitter or some other vague authority revealed them in a conspiratorial whisper.

But the instructions never worked. We never found the Minus World, although viewing the video above, I swear we got really, really close. If only….

It seems to me that the golden age of video game myths is over. Back then, there were no strategy guides or incredibly exhaustive online walkthroughs to reveal to you every corner, every secret, every Easter Egg to be found in a given video game. No, back then these things were mysteries–you heard about them second- or third-hand, then rushed home to try and find them yourself. The myths were usually wild goose chases… but they were true just often enough to keep you coming back for more.

I think the day of the Game Urban Legend lasted up to about the release of Doom and its sister games. Doom and its ilk featured countless hidden spaces and Easter Eggs, and I’m guessing that you, like I, spent at least some of your adolescence running alongside the walls of Doom levels hitting the spacebar in hopes of finding a secret door. But that was about when strategy guides were hitting game store shelves, and about the time that people were compiling their collective Doom knowledge on the fledgling internet.

Those strategy guides and walkthroughs gave us the hidden knowledge we sought… and they stripped the veil of mystery away from the games we played and loved. Suddenly, we knew everything–and this gamer at least, gazing into that abyss, longed for the bliss of ignorance, forever lost. Was the price we paid for our encyclopedic knowledge too high?

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Weekend game report: the great Federation-Vudar beatdown

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This weekend, I played my biggest game of Star Fleet Battles yet. My opponent and I each had 600 points with which to purchase a squadron of starships. We each showed up to the field of battle with four ships–my force consisted of a Federation command cruiser, two heavy cruisers, and a plasma cruiser. He was playing the Vudar (a former subject race that rebelled against their Klingon overlords) and fielded a Vudar battlecruiser and three war cruisers. What diplomatic debacle had pitted the peace-loving Federation and the Klingon-hating Vudar against each other that day, none can say.

It was an epic battle–at least in comparison to the one-on-one starship duels we usually play. The Federation and Vudar primary weapon systems are fairly similar–the Feds have their famous photon torpedoes while the Vudar equip their ships with ion cannons; both are heavy-hitting weapons that work best at short range. (The Vudar are weaker in the phaser and drone department, but compensate with a defensive system that can make their ships extremely difficult to hit.) That meant that my opponent and I both pursued the same basic tactic: close to within striking range, concentrate the squadron’s fire on one or two targets, then peel away and maintain a safe distance while frantically reloading our weapons.

And that’s how it played out. On the initial pass, I learned what happens when four Vudar ships all concentrate their firepower on a single Federation vessel: said ship goes BOOM. I lost my command cruiser, but my surviving ships quickly exacted revenge by damaging his battlecruiser and destroying a war cruiser while they tried to escape. We both backed off and stalked each other for the next few turns while we reloaded weapons, then I charged. In the ensuing chaos I lost a heavy cruiser and took down one more of his war cruisers, leaving us each with two fairly battered surviving ships. Reflecting that no sane starship captain would continue an engagement after suffering 50% casualties (and noting that it was creeping towards 11:00 pm), we called it a draw.

Going by the point value of ships destroyed, he did manage a technical victory–he scored an official Marginal Victory and I suffered a corresponding Marginal Defeat. But that’s about as close to victory as I’ve ever gotten against this particular opponent, so in my mind I had done the Federation at least somewhat proud.

I’ve got no brilliant observations about the game, except that it did show me that SFB does not necessarily become unmanageable when you play larger battles. Having multiple powerful ships adds a lot of tactical options–and the amount of concentrated firepower they can pour at a single unfortunate ship is a bit scary. And I also learned that splash damage from exploding ships is nothing to be laughed at–one of my heavy cruisers (rather unluckily) took serious internal damage when the plasma cruiser went down in flames.

All in all, a great match. I don’t know when the next match is, but now that I’ve witnessed the awesome firepower of a starship fleet, I’m going to have a hard time being satisfied with just one or two measly starships…

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All alone and happy in Azeroth

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Although it’s updated somewhat sporadically, Scott Miller’s Game Matters is one of the more thought-provoking game blogs out there. While catching up on my reading there, I came across an interesting post suggesting that World of Warcraft‘s extreme popularity is due at least in part to the fact that almost alone among massively-multiplayer games, it can be played alone. Says Miller:

There’s one overriding reason I played WoW, while I never played previous MMOs: I could solo all the way to the top. Not once did I group to enter an instance. Occasionally I grouped with players in the same area doing the same quest, and occasionally with a friend to share a quest, but 95 percent of my experience was as a solo player. And that’s how I prefer it. I like to be able to jump into the game and play without waiting to form a group, getting right down to the business of fun.

It’s a relief to see somebody else admit that, because I’ve had a similar experience with WoW and have wondered how common it is. For a multiplayer game, WoW works surprisingly well as a single-player game. I enjoy grouping up with other players a bit more than Miller apparently does–when the teamwork comes together, the experience of conquering a tough dungeon as part of a group is a real thrill–but I confess I’ve rather guiltily enjoyed a lot of the game without interacting much with my fellow players.

Miller then asks the obvious question: if you’re going to play the game solo anyway, why not stick with single-player-only games like Morrowind and its ilk, and avoid paying the montly Warcraft fee? It may sound strange if you’ve not experienced it, but his answer is dead on: it’s somehow just more fun when the world is populated by “real people,” even if your interaction with said real people is quite limited. Crossing paths with other lone adventurers in the far corners of Azeroth, making my way through the teeming, diverse crowds of Orgrimmar, and knowing that the potions I’m selling at the auction house are being bought and used by other real people–there’s just an intangible thrill to it all. There’s a hard-to-define depth and sense of immersion that simply isn’t there in even the most elaborate single-player games.

So it’s good to know that on those days when I just don’t feel like interacting with other players–when I just want to hike off into the Badlands without having to chat it up with guildmates, when I don’t feel like spending an hour organizing an expedition into the Wailing Caverns–I’m not alone. Solo players of World of Warcraft, unite keep goin’ it alone!

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Some miscellanea: kung-fu fighters and not-so-scary government conspiracies

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I was in Chicago last week for a conference–and while the conference was reasonably fun, my annual trip to Games Plus was even more so. Each year, as a reward for surviving several days’ worth of networking and schmoozing at the conference, I travel to Games Plus to browse the aisles of that gaming Mecca.

My acquisition this year was Weapons of the Gods, a wuxia martial-arts game set in mythic China (think Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). This is one of those games I purchased at least partly so that I can boast that my gaming library includes it–my game bookshelf (OK, make that bookshelves) contains RPGs covering most every genre known to man–fantasy, sci-fi, horror, western, pulp, samurai, and various combinations thereof), but nothing that would be of much help should a group of angry gamers burst into my living room and demand that I run a mythic China RPG right now. (Hey, it could happen!)

Of course, I had brought along some RPG reading material to the conference to help me survive through the several days until my Games Plus trip. My evening reading this year consisted of Conspiracy X and the new d20 version of Dark*Matter, both of them set in the government/alien/conspiracy genre and quite clearly based heavily on The X-Files.

Both are great games, but is it just me or is the whole government-conspiracy angle decidedly less compelling than it was a decade ago? Back in the early 1990s, it was perhaps shocking to learn, when confronted with a mysterious event or sinister cover-up, that The Government was responsible. Imagine, our own government doing something shady behind the scenes! These days, I’m so jaded that I’d be shocked to hear that the government isn’t responsible for a given sinister conspiracy. Whether or not the government-conspiracy angle is still scary, I may soon find out–both CX and D*M are on the list as potential candidates for my annual Halloween Game Day.

In the meantime, I’ll try and hark back to the day when “trust no one” wasn’t a perfectly reasonable way to approach politics, government, and everyday life…

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It makes no sense

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I can certainly identify with these journalists, faced with the challenge of making sense out of David Lynch’s latest movie:

Asked if the film was supposed to make sense, Lynch told a news conference following a press screening: “It’s supposed to make perfect sense.” […]

Lynch was in no mood to help journalists fathom the film’s meaning.

When asked to explain the appearance of three actors wearing rabbits’ heads, one of whom stands in the corner doing the ironing, the 60-year-old replied: “No, I can’t explain that.”

I can appreciate Lynch’s desire to not out and explain the symbolism behind his movie before mainstream viewers get a chance to try figuring it out for themselves. But I think I’m going to have to side with the bewildered journalists here. I can testify that Lynch’s films, while interesting in a what-the-heck-is-going-on sort of way, definitely do not “make perfect sense,” and if Lynch is under the impression that they do, then somebody’s confused, and it ain’t just the people watching his movies. Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive are two of the least comprehensible films I’ve seen in my entire life. I’ve seen some truly noble and tortured attempts online to wring coherence out of both of those films, but to little avail.

I love a good perplexing book or movie that requries concentration, discussion, and even research to interpret. Some of my favorite such stories are those that, even after I’ve read and understood them, still leave me with the nagging sense that I haven’t really uncovered everything the creator intended me to find–those are books and films I can revisit years down the road, always finding new bits and pieces of meaning. But if you don’t provide the audience the contextual clues they need to even begin deciphering your work of art, then you might as well just be making the film for yourself, because nobody else has the slightest clue what you’re trying to say. Maybe Mulholland Drive makes perfect sense to David Lynch, but I’ll go ahead and bet that 99% of its viewers were left scratching their heads when the credits rolled. He’s certainly created something that’s vaguely impressive, but a work of art that speaks to people? Not so much.

So go ahead and keep making movies, Mr. Lynch. But try not to act quite so surprised when nobody seems to know what the heck you’re trying to say. The rest of us are busy entertaining ourselves with much less artsy fare–things like Arrested Development, with such populist and unsubtle scenes as this:

Rita: Is that a story?
Maeby: Not yet. It doesn’t have an ending. He’s in LA, she’s in Japan–how do I get these two characters together?
Rita: Maybe they could walk.
Maeby: Across the ocean?
Rita: If it’s not too deep.
Maeby: No… deep is good. People are gonna say “What the hell just happened? I better say I like it,” ’cause nobody wants to seem stupid.
Rita: I like it!

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l33t L1nuX haxxor

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Last week, I managed to get XGL running in Linux. (Given the infamous difficulty–at least in my personal experience–involved in successfuly implementing anything video card-related in Linux, I think this qualifies me as some sort of extreme hacker.) At the moment, XGL basically adds a number of nifty features and eye candy to the Linux desktop. It’s still a bit rough around the edges, but it looks really nice, and several of the features are right on par with the Mac desktop features they’re clearly imitating. Other goodies include some slick-looking window animations and assorted 3d-ish effects. Here’s a few screenshots, of the fancy desktop-switching eye candy and the OS X Expose-style window selector respectively:

I don’t think it’s going to have Mac users tripping over their discarded MacBooks in a frantic rush to embrace Linux–at least, not until XGL takes less than a days’ worth of tweaking to install and get running. But it’s certainly nice to have a Linux desktop that looks as nifty-keen as a Mac desktop for a change!

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