I've cleared another couple of levels and I think I'm about halfway through. It's hard to say because the story doesn't seem to have much of a build. You are this guy, Kyle Katarn, and you are working with the Rebellion against the Galactic Empire. And while there's this overarching arc with the Dark Trooper project, your quest to stop this sinister research is mostly just a matter of going from one place to another and finding the arbitrary point in each level that triggers the end of level message.
I'm not sure how I feel about this Kyle Katarn fellow. The game is trying its best to sell me on him, but I'm not really buying it. When you have Darth Vader toss off a casual line about how resourceful and dangerous your main character is, it kind of comes off like you're trying to borrow some unearned coolness.
Of course, the first-person perspective and sparse storytelling may have something to do with it. Aside from a couple of animated cutscenes, most everything I've learned about the Dark Forces storyline has been in the form of between-mission text briefings, and these tend to focus more on plot than characterization or worldbuilding. And I can't really get any sort of read on the character from his incredible feats of martial prowess or cunning infiltration because I never see him directly. My view of the action is limited to the barrel of his gun.
I kind of wound up thinking of Kyle Katarn as a doofus who gets lost in a maze of corridors and who blunders his way from one puzzle to the next, but I have to acknowledge that that's all on me and my poor gameplay skill. Then again, it's supposed to be a major advantage of the first-person silent protagonist that the player may easily project themselves onto the character . . .
Thursday, September 29, 2016
Wednesday, September 28, 2016
Star Wars: Dark Forces - 5/20 hours
Playing Dark Forces has gotten me thinking about the value of playing older games. Because on a purely immediate level, Dark Forces is not what I'd call "fun."
I'm actually not sure what to call it. The interest I have in this game is almost purely archaeological, and that makes it difficult for me to express an opinion of its "let's drop the player in a homogeneously-colored maze and let them figure it out" gameplay.
If Dark Forces were a new game, I'd know exactly what to say - the levels are confusing as fuck, the gunplay is not diverse or exciting enough to justify its existence, and the game as a whole simply isn't very player-friendly. But that's because the standard by which I judge a new game is "am I enjoying myself and does the game manage to avoid doing anything blatantly offensive and/or annoying?" If the answers to those two questions are both "yes," I tend consider it a "good" game and if either of the answers is "no" I tend to consider it a "bad" game.
However, with older games, I feel like I need to consider its historical context . . . when my visceral reaction is to dislike the game. I have no compunction about not qualifying my praise of Super Mario World, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, or Chrono Trigger with "for its time period." Perhaps this is a mental flaw on my part. Maybe I should be considering context for both "good" games and "bad," old games and new. The only reason I can give special treatment to the timeless classics that are still massively entertaining even decades after their release is because I have the benefit of perspective. I am certain that if, in 1995 I had said "In 20 years, Super Mario World 2 is going to knock people out with its incredible art direction and finely-tuned gameplay whereas Star Wars: Dark Forces is going to be painful to look at and almost unplayably primitive in its controls and user interface" I would have been unlikey to have been believed. And it's likely that I would have been mocked for defending a "baby's game on a kiddie system," regardless of the particular merits of my argument.
But why bother? The only reason to be consistent in the application of perspective is to establish a credible critical voice. Since I have no particular need or desire to be a "real" critic, it shouldn't matter. I can react to a game however I want to react to a game.
But then that raises the question - why not be consistent in my lack of perspective? Why not just judge every game based on how it makes me feel today? I guess it's because I don't want to be a total philistine. Video games are a cultural artifact and I don't want to discard an old game simply because it does not follow contemporary fashions or styles. I need to remind myself that technological advancement has transformed the medium over the course of its history, so older games labor under substantial limitations that newer games have overcome.
I'd liken it to movies, where you can divide the history of film into pre-cgi, pre-color, pre-sound (and others, I'm sure) and watching the old stuff can be awkward and off-putting. The acting in silent movies is usually over-exaggerated and stylized. Black and white films can lose a lot of the texture and detail of the real world. And before cgi, a lot of the more fantastical elements of various genre films looked cheesy and fake. Yet the very best movies made their limitations into advantages, and would be diminished if they had to use more modern technology (see, for example, the controversy over colorization).
And I think that's the way you have to look at old games. You can't go in expecting something modern to exist in a more primitive technological context. The trick is to find the ways the medium shaped the work. If you're lucky, you'll see connections that give you greater insight into and appreciation for games as whole.
And if you're really lucky, you'll discover one of those gems that is elevated by its medium, and which makes its flaws into a virtue.
Unfortunately, I don't think Dark Forces is one of those games. It was the first FPS that allowed you to crouch or look up and down, but I simply cannot connect emotionally with the idea that this is a big deal (especially since the looking is mapped to such inconvenient keys that it plays no real part in the gameplay). And I don't think early 3D ever found art direction that made up for its inherent blockiness and muddiness (and I can say as an old fogy that this was an attitude that was around even back then - as amazing as, say Ocarina of Time or Super Mario 64 might have been, at least some of us knew that nothing on the N64 was ever going to look as good as Donkey Kong Country).
So as much as I have to give props to Dark Forces for adding a vertical element to its levels and thus avoiding the stultifying claustrophobia of its contemporary, Elder Scrolls Arena, it doesn't really offer much else in the way of clever construction or historical significance. I'll play it for the blog, but I think that in terms of both naive enjoyment and critical analysis, I've already seen everything I need to see.
I'm actually not sure what to call it. The interest I have in this game is almost purely archaeological, and that makes it difficult for me to express an opinion of its "let's drop the player in a homogeneously-colored maze and let them figure it out" gameplay.
If Dark Forces were a new game, I'd know exactly what to say - the levels are confusing as fuck, the gunplay is not diverse or exciting enough to justify its existence, and the game as a whole simply isn't very player-friendly. But that's because the standard by which I judge a new game is "am I enjoying myself and does the game manage to avoid doing anything blatantly offensive and/or annoying?" If the answers to those two questions are both "yes," I tend consider it a "good" game and if either of the answers is "no" I tend to consider it a "bad" game.
However, with older games, I feel like I need to consider its historical context . . . when my visceral reaction is to dislike the game. I have no compunction about not qualifying my praise of Super Mario World, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, or Chrono Trigger with "for its time period." Perhaps this is a mental flaw on my part. Maybe I should be considering context for both "good" games and "bad," old games and new. The only reason I can give special treatment to the timeless classics that are still massively entertaining even decades after their release is because I have the benefit of perspective. I am certain that if, in 1995 I had said "In 20 years, Super Mario World 2 is going to knock people out with its incredible art direction and finely-tuned gameplay whereas Star Wars: Dark Forces is going to be painful to look at and almost unplayably primitive in its controls and user interface" I would have been unlikey to have been believed. And it's likely that I would have been mocked for defending a "baby's game on a kiddie system," regardless of the particular merits of my argument.
But why bother? The only reason to be consistent in the application of perspective is to establish a credible critical voice. Since I have no particular need or desire to be a "real" critic, it shouldn't matter. I can react to a game however I want to react to a game.
But then that raises the question - why not be consistent in my lack of perspective? Why not just judge every game based on how it makes me feel today? I guess it's because I don't want to be a total philistine. Video games are a cultural artifact and I don't want to discard an old game simply because it does not follow contemporary fashions or styles. I need to remind myself that technological advancement has transformed the medium over the course of its history, so older games labor under substantial limitations that newer games have overcome.
I'd liken it to movies, where you can divide the history of film into pre-cgi, pre-color, pre-sound (and others, I'm sure) and watching the old stuff can be awkward and off-putting. The acting in silent movies is usually over-exaggerated and stylized. Black and white films can lose a lot of the texture and detail of the real world. And before cgi, a lot of the more fantastical elements of various genre films looked cheesy and fake. Yet the very best movies made their limitations into advantages, and would be diminished if they had to use more modern technology (see, for example, the controversy over colorization).
And I think that's the way you have to look at old games. You can't go in expecting something modern to exist in a more primitive technological context. The trick is to find the ways the medium shaped the work. If you're lucky, you'll see connections that give you greater insight into and appreciation for games as whole.
And if you're really lucky, you'll discover one of those gems that is elevated by its medium, and which makes its flaws into a virtue.
Unfortunately, I don't think Dark Forces is one of those games. It was the first FPS that allowed you to crouch or look up and down, but I simply cannot connect emotionally with the idea that this is a big deal (especially since the looking is mapped to such inconvenient keys that it plays no real part in the gameplay). And I don't think early 3D ever found art direction that made up for its inherent blockiness and muddiness (and I can say as an old fogy that this was an attitude that was around even back then - as amazing as, say Ocarina of Time or Super Mario 64 might have been, at least some of us knew that nothing on the N64 was ever going to look as good as Donkey Kong Country).
So as much as I have to give props to Dark Forces for adding a vertical element to its levels and thus avoiding the stultifying claustrophobia of its contemporary, Elder Scrolls Arena, it doesn't really offer much else in the way of clever construction or historical significance. I'll play it for the blog, but I think that in terms of both naive enjoyment and critical analysis, I've already seen everything I need to see.
Sunday, September 25, 2016
Star Wars: Dark Forces - 2/20 hours
First things first, allow me to vent a little:
What the hell, a fucking sewer level! What is this shit?
Thank you. It feels good to get that off my chest.
I don't want to complain too much about Dark Forces, because I can recognize that, given its limitations (being an FPS from 1995), it's actually a well-put-together game. Movement is smooth and the controls do what they're supposed to do. There's some good voice acting and animation in the cutscenes, even if the plot is your typical Star Wars expanded universe folderol.
The main problems I have with it stem almost entirely from its age. You can't look up or down. There's no minimap. The hallways look really similar to each other and it can be hard to navigate through them. All stuff I was expecting before I started.
The only complaint I have that is particular to Dark Forces is about the damned infrared visor. I don't know what was going on in the 90s that caused game developers to experiment with low light conditions in games (perhaps the invention of new lighting models), but Deus Ex did the same thing - subject you to darkness and then make your vision dependent on a limited power source. Maybe it's just one of those things that only seems obvious in retrospect, but video games are a visual medium (it's right there in the name), so a game mechanic that takes away a player's sight is already on shaky ground (though one of my favorite Donkey Kong Country levels toggles the lights off and on at period intervals, requiring you to do half your platforming by instinct and memory), but when you tie it to something that can run out, you're basically giving the player a second, less-interesting health bar. I wound up quitting the game when I exhausted all my infrared visor batteries and could no longer navigate through the dark parts of the sewer level.
Aside from that, Dark Forces is fine. It's not how I would ordinarily choose to spend a week, but I'm not in agony or anything. It's interesting from a historical perspective and so far, except for me getting hopeless lost in the sewers, it's been pretty easy. I think if I can get past this hump, I may enjoy myself . . . provided this is not the sort of game that thinks its clever to make its players get lost in a maze.
What the hell, a fucking sewer level! What is this shit?
Thank you. It feels good to get that off my chest.
I don't want to complain too much about Dark Forces, because I can recognize that, given its limitations (being an FPS from 1995), it's actually a well-put-together game. Movement is smooth and the controls do what they're supposed to do. There's some good voice acting and animation in the cutscenes, even if the plot is your typical Star Wars expanded universe folderol.
The main problems I have with it stem almost entirely from its age. You can't look up or down. There's no minimap. The hallways look really similar to each other and it can be hard to navigate through them. All stuff I was expecting before I started.
The only complaint I have that is particular to Dark Forces is about the damned infrared visor. I don't know what was going on in the 90s that caused game developers to experiment with low light conditions in games (perhaps the invention of new lighting models), but Deus Ex did the same thing - subject you to darkness and then make your vision dependent on a limited power source. Maybe it's just one of those things that only seems obvious in retrospect, but video games are a visual medium (it's right there in the name), so a game mechanic that takes away a player's sight is already on shaky ground (though one of my favorite Donkey Kong Country levels toggles the lights off and on at period intervals, requiring you to do half your platforming by instinct and memory), but when you tie it to something that can run out, you're basically giving the player a second, less-interesting health bar. I wound up quitting the game when I exhausted all my infrared visor batteries and could no longer navigate through the dark parts of the sewer level.
Aside from that, Dark Forces is fine. It's not how I would ordinarily choose to spend a week, but I'm not in agony or anything. It's interesting from a historical perspective and so far, except for me getting hopeless lost in the sewers, it's been pretty easy. I think if I can get past this hump, I may enjoy myself . . . provided this is not the sort of game that thinks its clever to make its players get lost in a maze.
Saturday, September 24, 2016
Star Wars: Dark Forces - Initial Thoughts
About the Game (From The Steam Store Page)
Behind a veil of secrecy the evil Empire is creating a doomsday army - one that, if finished, will become the final cog in the Empire's arsenal of terror and domination.
Your Mission? Join the Rebel Alliance's covert operations division, infiltrate the Empire, then battle every man and machine the Imperial Forces can muster. Search a vast galaxy for clues, attack enemy bases-all in a desperate attempt to stop the activation of this fearsome new weapon.
Previous Playtime
0 hours
What Was I Thinking When I Bought This Game
This was a part of that massive Star Wars bundle I bought last year. I didn't know anything about it and it didn't factor into my decision to buy the bundle one way or another. I have heard of its sequel, but given the bizarre way this series is titled, I had no idea they were related.
Expectations and Prior Experience
I'm about to dive into an FPS from 1995. I'm pretty nervous about it. I might be unfairly maligning the past, but in my experience, games from that era, especially in the more "hardcore" genres, did not necessarily care about presenting a pleasant or comfortable play experience. And since this is before shooter controls became standardized, I'll probably have to have some awkward key bindings to deal with.
The upside is that Dark Forces seems to be pretty well-regarded, so it's unlikely to be a pure slog. And I do love Star Wars, so at the very worst, I'll learn something about the expanded universe that has since been stricken from canon.
Behind a veil of secrecy the evil Empire is creating a doomsday army - one that, if finished, will become the final cog in the Empire's arsenal of terror and domination.
Your Mission? Join the Rebel Alliance's covert operations division, infiltrate the Empire, then battle every man and machine the Imperial Forces can muster. Search a vast galaxy for clues, attack enemy bases-all in a desperate attempt to stop the activation of this fearsome new weapon.
Previous Playtime
0 hours
What Was I Thinking When I Bought This Game
This was a part of that massive Star Wars bundle I bought last year. I didn't know anything about it and it didn't factor into my decision to buy the bundle one way or another. I have heard of its sequel, but given the bizarre way this series is titled, I had no idea they were related.
Expectations and Prior Experience
I'm about to dive into an FPS from 1995. I'm pretty nervous about it. I might be unfairly maligning the past, but in my experience, games from that era, especially in the more "hardcore" genres, did not necessarily care about presenting a pleasant or comfortable play experience. And since this is before shooter controls became standardized, I'll probably have to have some awkward key bindings to deal with.
The upside is that Dark Forces seems to be pretty well-regarded, so it's unlikely to be a pure slog. And I do love Star Wars, so at the very worst, I'll learn something about the expanded universe that has since been stricken from canon.
Friday, September 23, 2016
Fallen Enchantress - 20/20 hours
I'm kind of at a loss for what to say about Fallen Enchantress. It isn't a very good game, but it has a lot of individual elements that I like, so I'm reluctant to be too hard on it. The worst thing I'm willing to say about it is that it feels undercooked, like its elements don't quite fit together in a cohesive whole. The character-driven rpg is genuinely good, but then there's this strategy element that doesn't really do anything. In theory, you could build up armies in order to conquer the world, but the AI never forced my hand, so I more or less ignored it the entire time.
The question at hand is "did I learn anything or have any notable experiences during the past twenty hours?" There was that dragon - that was pretty cool. And one of the great things that Fallen Enchantress does is set apart areas of the map as "wildlands" which have unique terrain that spawns monsters and which give you valuable resources when you defeat their boss-monsters. Finding a new wildland and storming through with an invincible dragon was pretty satisfying.
Other than that, Fallen Enchantress was pretty boring, mostly just clicking "next turn" and making decisions about which order to build and research. It's the sort of tedium that I find easy to engage with and as a result I blew through it in three days, but it was so uneventful that it took me almost a day to write this post.
Final verdict - get the standalone expansion. This game is a footnote and knows it.
The question at hand is "did I learn anything or have any notable experiences during the past twenty hours?" There was that dragon - that was pretty cool. And one of the great things that Fallen Enchantress does is set apart areas of the map as "wildlands" which have unique terrain that spawns monsters and which give you valuable resources when you defeat their boss-monsters. Finding a new wildland and storming through with an invincible dragon was pretty satisfying.
Other than that, Fallen Enchantress was pretty boring, mostly just clicking "next turn" and making decisions about which order to build and research. It's the sort of tedium that I find easy to engage with and as a result I blew through it in three days, but it was so uneventful that it took me almost a day to write this post.
Final verdict - get the standalone expansion. This game is a footnote and knows it.
Wednesday, September 21, 2016
Fallen Enchantress - 12/20 hours.
I have a dragon!
It was pretty easy to get, but it wasn't inevitable. You need the last technology in the "Civilization" branch of the tree and you need to have an empty dragon lair inside your territory. It basically comes down to luck and once you get one, it's a game-changer.
Fallen Enchantress dragons aren't invincible, but they do have as many hit points as a full military unit by themselves and at the beginning of each battle they hit the entire opposing force with a fear effect that paralyzes enemy units until they manage to resist and they have an AoE breath weapon that can one-shot virtually everything in the game (actually, up to nine such "virtually anythings" to be precise).
The biggest drawback is that once you get a dragon, it completely deforms your entire combat strategy around it. Now, instead of my champions going after the enemy with sword and spell, they instead use their powers to buff the dragon so it can solo all of the opponents. Having a hasted, giant-form, stone-skinned dragon tends to make the battles pretty one-sided. It's not very heroic, but it works.
The other unfortunate part of getting a dragon is that by the time it happens, it is almost trivial to win with the Wonder victory. That's more of a general balance problem, though. You get the necessary tech way too early and the four magical towers you have to build only take a few turns. It's the easiest way to end the game and short-circuits so much content that I usually disable it at the start of the game (but it's been such a long time since I've played that I forgot this time).
I don't really have an objective for the next eight hours. This really is a less polished version of a game I played to 100% completion so I'm in this awkward position where I want to explore, but I know that there's a bunch of cool stuff I couldn't possibly find until I play the expansion. I think I'm just going to have ignore those feelings until my time is up and then forget about this game forever.
Sounds fun.
It was pretty easy to get, but it wasn't inevitable. You need the last technology in the "Civilization" branch of the tree and you need to have an empty dragon lair inside your territory. It basically comes down to luck and once you get one, it's a game-changer.
Fallen Enchantress dragons aren't invincible, but they do have as many hit points as a full military unit by themselves and at the beginning of each battle they hit the entire opposing force with a fear effect that paralyzes enemy units until they manage to resist and they have an AoE breath weapon that can one-shot virtually everything in the game (actually, up to nine such "virtually anythings" to be precise).
The biggest drawback is that once you get a dragon, it completely deforms your entire combat strategy around it. Now, instead of my champions going after the enemy with sword and spell, they instead use their powers to buff the dragon so it can solo all of the opponents. Having a hasted, giant-form, stone-skinned dragon tends to make the battles pretty one-sided. It's not very heroic, but it works.
The other unfortunate part of getting a dragon is that by the time it happens, it is almost trivial to win with the Wonder victory. That's more of a general balance problem, though. You get the necessary tech way too early and the four magical towers you have to build only take a few turns. It's the easiest way to end the game and short-circuits so much content that I usually disable it at the start of the game (but it's been such a long time since I've played that I forgot this time).
I don't really have an objective for the next eight hours. This really is a less polished version of a game I played to 100% completion so I'm in this awkward position where I want to explore, but I know that there's a bunch of cool stuff I couldn't possibly find until I play the expansion. I think I'm just going to have ignore those feelings until my time is up and then forget about this game forever.
Sounds fun.
Tuesday, September 20, 2016
Fallen Enchantress - 3/20 hours
At three hours, I've played the tutorial, a bit of the campaign mode, and a little bit of a regular game. The big thing I'm noticing is that combat got a serious upgrade in the expansion. In Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes your different combat units got special abilities based on their equipment, making unit composition and placement much more important. Also, the way you level your champion units is more robust in the expansion, which only makes sense.
However, the core of the two games is essentially identical. It's got the typical 4X trappings - cities gather resources from the countryside and build improvements to increase those resource yields, becoming more powerful as the population increases and allowing you to build improvements and units faster while you research technologies to give you ever more improvements and units to build. But where Fallen Enchantress differs from most 4X games is in its focus on champion units.
Champions are unique characters with individual names and backstories who wear equipment you find in ruins (or buy from stores) and advance along an rpg-progression. These Champions are the backbone of a turn-based tactical combat minigame (well, technically, your generic units are more powerful in the middle-game, once your starting champion gear is obsoleted but before you start getting end-game gear and spells that leaves them in the dust) where you fight a variety of fantasy monsters in order to gain experience and loot.
Other games have done something similar (notably Endless Legend, which is a better game overall), but Fallen Enchantress really does have a knack for making its champions feel like significant characters. Exploring the map, completing quests, and gaining treasure is like an rpg inside the larger 4X. It's pretty satisfying, especially when you go for the epic quest victory (although this particular observation comes from my memories of Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes and not from my current playthrough - this could get awkward).
I probably won't go back to the campaign mode, just because the normal mode goes by pretty fast and I'm eager to get to Legendary Heroes so I can play the game for real (sorry, original version of Fallen Enchantress).
However, the core of the two games is essentially identical. It's got the typical 4X trappings - cities gather resources from the countryside and build improvements to increase those resource yields, becoming more powerful as the population increases and allowing you to build improvements and units faster while you research technologies to give you ever more improvements and units to build. But where Fallen Enchantress differs from most 4X games is in its focus on champion units.
Champions are unique characters with individual names and backstories who wear equipment you find in ruins (or buy from stores) and advance along an rpg-progression. These Champions are the backbone of a turn-based tactical combat minigame (well, technically, your generic units are more powerful in the middle-game, once your starting champion gear is obsoleted but before you start getting end-game gear and spells that leaves them in the dust) where you fight a variety of fantasy monsters in order to gain experience and loot.
Other games have done something similar (notably Endless Legend, which is a better game overall), but Fallen Enchantress really does have a knack for making its champions feel like significant characters. Exploring the map, completing quests, and gaining treasure is like an rpg inside the larger 4X. It's pretty satisfying, especially when you go for the epic quest victory (although this particular observation comes from my memories of Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes and not from my current playthrough - this could get awkward).
I probably won't go back to the campaign mode, just because the normal mode goes by pretty fast and I'm eager to get to Legendary Heroes so I can play the game for real (sorry, original version of Fallen Enchantress).
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