It feels good to be vindicated. I watched the "making of" video in the game's bonus features, and the creators pretty much came out and directly confirmed the theory in my first post - Jet Set Radio was made by taking a lot of popular trends and just building a game around them. The result wasn't always the most coherent thing in the world, but it did have a certain amount of earnest charm.
I probably shouldn't have played it much past 10 hours, though. Once I finished the story missions, the only thing left to do was attempt the game's various challenge modes in an attempt to maximize my score. And while it was nice being able to explore the levels without being shot at by goons the entire time, I could never quite figure out the game's stunt system, and thus my point scores remained dismally low.
Overall, it wasn't a bad way to kill time, but I never really felt that fire for mastery that inspires a great performance. I wasn't really trying to get better. My goal was always to be moderately diverted until my time ran out. I mostly succeeded at that goal, though perhaps, in the process, I did not give Jet Set Radio the respect it deserved.
I don't think I'll play this game any more, though. I still have a long way to go before I hit the ceiling for mastery, but that's not the sort of challenge that appeals to me. It's all about precision, timing, and well-honed reflexes. Impressive, if you can do it, but frustrating if you can't. And I have little desire to push my way through the frustration just for some nebulous bragging rights.
That said, I did enjoy the game. I'm glad I played it. I liked its goofy, colorful world and rocking soundtrack. I liked unlocking new characters with a variety of bold 90s styles, but would have liked it even more if they had deeper characterization and individual side-stories. If they ever release the sequel on PC, I will definitely consider picking it up.
Sunday, June 18, 2017
Thursday, June 15, 2017
Jet Set Radio - 10/20 hours
In Jet Set Radio, while you're zooming around spraying graffiti, you are simultaneously being chased by a bunch of heavily armed goons who fire weapons at you and disrupt your painting. If you take enough hits, you'll run out of life and have to start the level over, but that's actually pretty rare. They mostly just annoy you and slow you down.
I'm not entirely sure what the point of this mechanic is. The closest I've come to a conclusion is that this overwhelming and disproportionate military response exists purely to make you miserable. I don't mean this as a complaint, or even as comic hyperbole. I mean literally.
See, it all has to do with the meaning of graffiti. At first, I thought it was just a silly thing. A narrative conceit where something rather frivolous in the real world is imbued with an awesome cultural power. Like, this is just a world where a variety of personal and political problems are solved with graffiti. It's a form of comedy I enjoy (and honestly, probably the best way to interpret the game's plot), but the more I thought about it, the more I entertained the idea that Jet Set Radio was using graffiti completely seriously.
In libertarian political theory, there is a concept known as "the homestead principle." The idea is that if you find something in nature that is in a raw and untouched state and you transform it with the application of labor into something that is personally useful to yourself, then in a real, moral sense, you come to own that thing. Mostly, this has to do with land and farms and houses and whatnot, but presumably, if you chopped down a tree and made a boat out of the wood, you would own the boat and someone else could come along and transform the stump and own that.
The purpose of the homestead principle is to establish an ethical basis for a society-wide private property regime. It posits an initially empty world, in which human beings spread out naturally and in spreading out, managed to carve out chunks of personal property without victimizing their neighbors. It is a vision of accumulation through ingenuity and industry, and it is the rhetorical keystone in the argument that redistributing, taxing, or regulating property is fundamentally unjust.
However, there are several major flaws with the homesteading principle. Some, like its anthropocentrism, or its indifference to common goods are beyond the scope of this post, but there is one that is especially relevant. Namely, what happens to homesteading when the world fill up?
And that's where graffiti comes in. Painting graffiti is an act of creation. It is taking something that exists in the world around you, and transforming it through ingenuity and industry. By the homestead principle, if you painted a rock in the middle of the woods, you would own that rock, so why is a wall in the middle of the city any different?
On the surface, it comes down to prior ownership. The rock is not already owned, but the wall is. Except, what if you're born into a world with no more rocks? What if you're born into a place and time where everything around you is already owned, and you have no opportunity to change that? If you start your life trapped in a cage of paper, where not even the space you physically occupy belongs to you?
Is it intrinsically wrong, then, to change the world around you? To alter the environment to be more to your liking? To, basically, homestead an urban space? To assert ownership of your first and natural home, even over the objections of those who have title and deed to the place where you live?
Because the moral basis of the capitalist property regime is a series of contracts with provenance tracing back to the original homesteading (and another criticism of the homesteading principle is that there are, more often than not, gaps between now and the "original" transformation, and these gaps, almost without exception, are filled with the most horrifying sort of violence), but put in such stark terms, it becomes apparent that there is an injustice in subjecting modern people to a contract they were not party to.
Especially when the original "improvement" might well have been as simple as sticking a few flags in the earth. And if the first owner built a shack and then sold the land to someone who tore down the shack to build a cottage. And then that person sold the land to someone who tore down the cottage to build a villa. And then later the villa was torn down to build a skyscraper, that's another avenue of unfairness.
A modern person can build a shack just as well as the original homesteader, but we've long since passed the time where a shack can be enough to claim the land, because the land is now worth as much as a skyscraper. But more perversely, some would find fault in these children born in exile, because they cannot, as individuals, acquire and save enough wealth or expertise to build a skyscraper on their own. Their lack of property is held as a strike against them, despite the fact that they never had the opportunity to build what a single person can build. Their exclusion is the justification for their exclusion.
Which brings us back to the violence. It makes a certain amount of emotional and moral sense that an alienated-from-birth city-dweller might assert ownership over their home through the medium of street art. It is a way of saying "this place is my place, I belong here, even if I don't have my name on a piece of paper." However, for property to exist in an ecosystem of contracts, that cannot be allowed. It is not merely extra-legal, it is criminal. The paper-owners don't have this sort of native possession, so they must resort to mobilizing the violence of the state to assert and defend their claims.
Seen in this light, graffiti is a radical act, one which threatens the very underpinnings of capitalist power, and one that understandably provokes a reflexive immune-response from the existing power structure. One might almost think that the contrast between the exuberant and playful pacifism of the player's gang and the over-the-top and disproportionate violence of the NPC enemies (seriously, it starts with a cop just flat-out trying to murder you with his service revolver and escalates from there to tanks and attack helicopters) is a deliberate attempt to critique the ways in which capitalist class relations are decidedly non-voluntary, except . . .
The start of the game features a very stern warning that graffiti is illegal almost everywhere, even while attempting, in that anodyne corporate way, to praise it as a culturally valuable form of self expression. Considering that the end of the game has you chasing after a supposedly magical record that is said to contain a means of selling your soul to the devil, and eventually takes you to the top of a sky-scraper that has been turned into a giant turntable where massive golden rhino statues breath fire at you until you stop them with graffiti somehow, it is more likely that this is just a silly game that was capitalizing on some popular 90s trends.
Which, you know, is fine. Jet Set Radio may not be the banner of a new revolution, but it is pretty fun . . . when those jetpack-wearing corporate security goons aren't knocking me off a roof for the fifteenth damned time in a row.
I'm not entirely sure what the point of this mechanic is. The closest I've come to a conclusion is that this overwhelming and disproportionate military response exists purely to make you miserable. I don't mean this as a complaint, or even as comic hyperbole. I mean literally.
See, it all has to do with the meaning of graffiti. At first, I thought it was just a silly thing. A narrative conceit where something rather frivolous in the real world is imbued with an awesome cultural power. Like, this is just a world where a variety of personal and political problems are solved with graffiti. It's a form of comedy I enjoy (and honestly, probably the best way to interpret the game's plot), but the more I thought about it, the more I entertained the idea that Jet Set Radio was using graffiti completely seriously.
In libertarian political theory, there is a concept known as "the homestead principle." The idea is that if you find something in nature that is in a raw and untouched state and you transform it with the application of labor into something that is personally useful to yourself, then in a real, moral sense, you come to own that thing. Mostly, this has to do with land and farms and houses and whatnot, but presumably, if you chopped down a tree and made a boat out of the wood, you would own the boat and someone else could come along and transform the stump and own that.
The purpose of the homestead principle is to establish an ethical basis for a society-wide private property regime. It posits an initially empty world, in which human beings spread out naturally and in spreading out, managed to carve out chunks of personal property without victimizing their neighbors. It is a vision of accumulation through ingenuity and industry, and it is the rhetorical keystone in the argument that redistributing, taxing, or regulating property is fundamentally unjust.
However, there are several major flaws with the homesteading principle. Some, like its anthropocentrism, or its indifference to common goods are beyond the scope of this post, but there is one that is especially relevant. Namely, what happens to homesteading when the world fill up?
And that's where graffiti comes in. Painting graffiti is an act of creation. It is taking something that exists in the world around you, and transforming it through ingenuity and industry. By the homestead principle, if you painted a rock in the middle of the woods, you would own that rock, so why is a wall in the middle of the city any different?
On the surface, it comes down to prior ownership. The rock is not already owned, but the wall is. Except, what if you're born into a world with no more rocks? What if you're born into a place and time where everything around you is already owned, and you have no opportunity to change that? If you start your life trapped in a cage of paper, where not even the space you physically occupy belongs to you?
Is it intrinsically wrong, then, to change the world around you? To alter the environment to be more to your liking? To, basically, homestead an urban space? To assert ownership of your first and natural home, even over the objections of those who have title and deed to the place where you live?
Because the moral basis of the capitalist property regime is a series of contracts with provenance tracing back to the original homesteading (and another criticism of the homesteading principle is that there are, more often than not, gaps between now and the "original" transformation, and these gaps, almost without exception, are filled with the most horrifying sort of violence), but put in such stark terms, it becomes apparent that there is an injustice in subjecting modern people to a contract they were not party to.
Especially when the original "improvement" might well have been as simple as sticking a few flags in the earth. And if the first owner built a shack and then sold the land to someone who tore down the shack to build a cottage. And then that person sold the land to someone who tore down the cottage to build a villa. And then later the villa was torn down to build a skyscraper, that's another avenue of unfairness.
A modern person can build a shack just as well as the original homesteader, but we've long since passed the time where a shack can be enough to claim the land, because the land is now worth as much as a skyscraper. But more perversely, some would find fault in these children born in exile, because they cannot, as individuals, acquire and save enough wealth or expertise to build a skyscraper on their own. Their lack of property is held as a strike against them, despite the fact that they never had the opportunity to build what a single person can build. Their exclusion is the justification for their exclusion.
Which brings us back to the violence. It makes a certain amount of emotional and moral sense that an alienated-from-birth city-dweller might assert ownership over their home through the medium of street art. It is a way of saying "this place is my place, I belong here, even if I don't have my name on a piece of paper." However, for property to exist in an ecosystem of contracts, that cannot be allowed. It is not merely extra-legal, it is criminal. The paper-owners don't have this sort of native possession, so they must resort to mobilizing the violence of the state to assert and defend their claims.
Seen in this light, graffiti is a radical act, one which threatens the very underpinnings of capitalist power, and one that understandably provokes a reflexive immune-response from the existing power structure. One might almost think that the contrast between the exuberant and playful pacifism of the player's gang and the over-the-top and disproportionate violence of the NPC enemies (seriously, it starts with a cop just flat-out trying to murder you with his service revolver and escalates from there to tanks and attack helicopters) is a deliberate attempt to critique the ways in which capitalist class relations are decidedly non-voluntary, except . . .
The start of the game features a very stern warning that graffiti is illegal almost everywhere, even while attempting, in that anodyne corporate way, to praise it as a culturally valuable form of self expression. Considering that the end of the game has you chasing after a supposedly magical record that is said to contain a means of selling your soul to the devil, and eventually takes you to the top of a sky-scraper that has been turned into a giant turntable where massive golden rhino statues breath fire at you until you stop them with graffiti somehow, it is more likely that this is just a silly game that was capitalizing on some popular 90s trends.
Which, you know, is fine. Jet Set Radio may not be the banner of a new revolution, but it is pretty fun . . . when those jetpack-wearing corporate security goons aren't knocking me off a roof for the fifteenth damned time in a row.
Monday, June 12, 2017
Jet Set Radio - 5/20 hours
The only part of this game that gives me trouble is the bit where you zoom around on roller blades and spray stuff with graffiti. Other than that, it's all good.
Okay, so sarcasm aside, this is a pretty tough game. I did get a few more finger cramps playing it, but more than that, my progress has been slowed by brain cramps. So much of the game requires you to act with such near-perfect precision that even when I'm doing well, there's this knot in my apprehension that needs a couple of hours to relax itself out.
The big culprit, I think, is the grinding rails. They're only a couple of pixels wide, and while I think there's a degree of stickiness to them that attracts your character on a near-miss, the miss has to be pretty damned near because there have dozens of times when I've completely whiffed a jump to or from those fucking things.
Although, even that wouldn't be so bad, if it weren't for the time constraints. Especially in the race missions, you have little ability to plan and virtually no ability to recover from a mistake. The narrowness of your victory conditions can be pretty stressful.
Which isn't to say that I dislike Jet Set Radio, just that it takes a lot out of me, mentally. It's been a long time since I swore at a game, but this is definitely a "swearing-at" sort of game. Although, to be fair, I'm probably really swearing at myself. Perhaps the game is overly demanding, but perhaps the problem is that I let my focus slip one time too many and turn the possible into the impossible.
It's a line any difficult game has to walk - its challenges must feel fundamentally fair, but they must also push the player to their limit. I can't yet say whether Jet Set Radio clears the bar (primarily because of its unruly camera), but I've been making steady progress, and I'm just vain enough to elide the difference between "fair" and "allowing me to win."
Okay, so sarcasm aside, this is a pretty tough game. I did get a few more finger cramps playing it, but more than that, my progress has been slowed by brain cramps. So much of the game requires you to act with such near-perfect precision that even when I'm doing well, there's this knot in my apprehension that needs a couple of hours to relax itself out.
The big culprit, I think, is the grinding rails. They're only a couple of pixels wide, and while I think there's a degree of stickiness to them that attracts your character on a near-miss, the miss has to be pretty damned near because there have dozens of times when I've completely whiffed a jump to or from those fucking things.
Although, even that wouldn't be so bad, if it weren't for the time constraints. Especially in the race missions, you have little ability to plan and virtually no ability to recover from a mistake. The narrowness of your victory conditions can be pretty stressful.
Which isn't to say that I dislike Jet Set Radio, just that it takes a lot out of me, mentally. It's been a long time since I swore at a game, but this is definitely a "swearing-at" sort of game. Although, to be fair, I'm probably really swearing at myself. Perhaps the game is overly demanding, but perhaps the problem is that I let my focus slip one time too many and turn the possible into the impossible.
It's a line any difficult game has to walk - its challenges must feel fundamentally fair, but they must also push the player to their limit. I can't yet say whether Jet Set Radio clears the bar (primarily because of its unruly camera), but I've been making steady progress, and I'm just vain enough to elide the difference between "fair" and "allowing me to win."
Friday, June 9, 2017
Jet Set Radio - 2/20 hours
Jet Set Radio was originally released in the year 2000. Having this much distance from its original historical context, I'm not entirely sure how I'm supposed to relate to it. The thing is, it's really, really "90s" and I'm not sure if it's meant to be an ironic 90s or if it's really an earnest 90s of the sort that I've long since forgotten.
What do I mean when I call this game "90s"? Part of it is a surface-level assessment - the colors, the fashion, the music, the in-line skates. Another part of it is baked into the very premise of the game - the protagonists are rebelling against an ill-defined authority with the power of graffiti and extreme sports. It's a science-fiction game that doesn't necessarily make any references to the real-world decade, but the whole of its presentation definitely roots it in a very specific time period.
It's interesting to compare it to Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, because that game attempted to emulate the feel of the remembered 80s, and subsequently wound up being more 80s than the 80s ever were. Jet Set Radio doesn't really have that issue. Yes, it's goofy at times, but it's the goofiness of something old and slightly embarrassing. It doesn't seem to undermine itself to speak to a self-aware audience.
Actually, the more I think about it, the less likely it seems that it's meant to be appreciated ironically. I feel like if this game were made today, as a "tribute" to the 90s, it would be faster and bolder and much more EXTREME. As it is, you get points for doing tricks on your skates, but the tricks themselves are relatively simple. In the ironic version of the game, you'd probably start by doing a 1080 and then work your way up from there. Also, you'd probably save the game with dial-up internet or something.
As it is, I'd describe it as "peak 90s" - the people who made it probably intended for it to be over-the-top with relentless cool, but it was not a cool out of time. They probably had no idea how well it might age.
And I don't want to say it's aged poorly. It's more that I've aged poorly. I was 18 when this game came out, so I'm firmly in its original target audience, but I no longer understand why the kids barrelling through crowded streets on rollerblades and spray-painting graffiti over every available surface are the heroes. I love the style and the sound of this game more than I'm entirely prepared to admit, but I've now got 17 years worth of bitter lessons about the true nature of power and authority, and subsequently can't think of the game's central conflict as anything but hopelessly naive.
Overall, I'm enjoying the game, despite the fact that I think it could stand to be about 1000% more woke, although I have run into a problem that may slow me down significantly - playing it for too long begins to hurt my hands. Not a lot. I'm not in agony or anything, but I have experienced a few trigger cramps. I'm probably just out of practice on account of not playing a controller-based action game since January, although it's also possible that since it requires such precision maneuvering I've been pulling the triggers too hard as a kind of stress reaction. I'll see how I'm feeling in a couple of hours. Hopefully the problem will clear up on its own.
What do I mean when I call this game "90s"? Part of it is a surface-level assessment - the colors, the fashion, the music, the in-line skates. Another part of it is baked into the very premise of the game - the protagonists are rebelling against an ill-defined authority with the power of graffiti and extreme sports. It's a science-fiction game that doesn't necessarily make any references to the real-world decade, but the whole of its presentation definitely roots it in a very specific time period.
It's interesting to compare it to Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, because that game attempted to emulate the feel of the remembered 80s, and subsequently wound up being more 80s than the 80s ever were. Jet Set Radio doesn't really have that issue. Yes, it's goofy at times, but it's the goofiness of something old and slightly embarrassing. It doesn't seem to undermine itself to speak to a self-aware audience.
Actually, the more I think about it, the less likely it seems that it's meant to be appreciated ironically. I feel like if this game were made today, as a "tribute" to the 90s, it would be faster and bolder and much more EXTREME. As it is, you get points for doing tricks on your skates, but the tricks themselves are relatively simple. In the ironic version of the game, you'd probably start by doing a 1080 and then work your way up from there. Also, you'd probably save the game with dial-up internet or something.
As it is, I'd describe it as "peak 90s" - the people who made it probably intended for it to be over-the-top with relentless cool, but it was not a cool out of time. They probably had no idea how well it might age.
And I don't want to say it's aged poorly. It's more that I've aged poorly. I was 18 when this game came out, so I'm firmly in its original target audience, but I no longer understand why the kids barrelling through crowded streets on rollerblades and spray-painting graffiti over every available surface are the heroes. I love the style and the sound of this game more than I'm entirely prepared to admit, but I've now got 17 years worth of bitter lessons about the true nature of power and authority, and subsequently can't think of the game's central conflict as anything but hopelessly naive.
Overall, I'm enjoying the game, despite the fact that I think it could stand to be about 1000% more woke, although I have run into a problem that may slow me down significantly - playing it for too long begins to hurt my hands. Not a lot. I'm not in agony or anything, but I have experienced a few trigger cramps. I'm probably just out of practice on account of not playing a controller-based action game since January, although it's also possible that since it requires such precision maneuvering I've been pulling the triggers too hard as a kind of stress reaction. I'll see how I'm feeling in a couple of hours. Hopefully the problem will clear up on its own.
Thursday, June 8, 2017
Jet Set Radio - Initial Thoughts
About the Game (From the Steam Store Page)
Tag, grind, and trick to the beat in SEGA’s hit game Jet Set Radio!
Fight for control of Tokyo-to, mark your turf with graffiti, tag walls, billboards, and even rival gang members! Perform tricks and flips on magnetically driven in-line skates, but watch out for the local police force!
Previous Playtime
0 hours
What Was I Thinking When I Bought This
Someone gave me a heads-up that this game and Golden Axe were free for a limited time (sorry, it was awhile ago, and I've forgotten who it was), and while I had my doubts, simply because of my already large backlog of games, I decided to ignore them. After all, you can't beat "free."
Expectations and Prior Experience
I'm coming into this game completely cold. I'd heard of its sequel Jet Set Radio Future, but even then, I know nothing about it. I didn't even realize it was a sequel. I certainly don't know what it's about or how it will play.
I'm optimistic, though. It seems to be well-regarded (though its sequel is moreso) and the screenshots from the Store page make it look like a colorful and fast-paced action game, which is something I like, in theory. I might get frustrated if it proves to be too difficult, but even then, if the story, setting, and characters are charming enough, I expect I will power through.
Tag, grind, and trick to the beat in SEGA’s hit game Jet Set Radio!
Fight for control of Tokyo-to, mark your turf with graffiti, tag walls, billboards, and even rival gang members! Perform tricks and flips on magnetically driven in-line skates, but watch out for the local police force!
Previous Playtime
0 hours
What Was I Thinking When I Bought This
Someone gave me a heads-up that this game and Golden Axe were free for a limited time (sorry, it was awhile ago, and I've forgotten who it was), and while I had my doubts, simply because of my already large backlog of games, I decided to ignore them. After all, you can't beat "free."
Expectations and Prior Experience
I'm coming into this game completely cold. I'd heard of its sequel Jet Set Radio Future, but even then, I know nothing about it. I didn't even realize it was a sequel. I certainly don't know what it's about or how it will play.
I'm optimistic, though. It seems to be well-regarded (though its sequel is moreso) and the screenshots from the Store page make it look like a colorful and fast-paced action game, which is something I like, in theory. I might get frustrated if it proves to be too difficult, but even then, if the story, setting, and characters are charming enough, I expect I will power through.
Wednesday, June 7, 2017
Spacebase DF-9 - 20/20 hours
I read a theory online that the "DF" in "Spacebase DF-9" is an homage to Dwarf Fortress. I can't say for sure, because I've never played Dwarf Fortress, but I've heard things, and I expect that if the theory is correct, it is more aspirational than a reflection of anything the game actually accomplished. Certainly it felt, at times, unfair, but that's more because some basic system wouldn't work properly than because it's a meticulously detailed simulation of a cold and pitiless world.
For example, I built a base that could withstand "the big one" with only minimal casualties. I'd researched all the different technologies and had a strong and stable economy. And then a randomly-generated ship docked with my colony and my people started wandering into it one by one. Since there were three raiders on that ship, I wound up losing half my colonists this way until I wised up and got my builders to tear a hole in its side. Although, by that time, all my technicians were gone, my various machines were in poor repair, and when meteors struck my main power generator, half my perimeter turrets went into shutdown. That allowed another group of raiders to get in and slaughter all my remaining colonists.
Once I got into the death spiral, it was near impossible to pull myself out. My population growth was purely drawn from passing space ships, and thus subject to the RNG. And my colony was physically so large it could not be sustained by a reduced population. Maybe if I were better at the game, I could have pulled it out, but since I couldn't directly order my colonists around (and they followed my indirect orders only casually and at their own pace), I have hard time seeing what I could have done differently.
I get what this game was going for - you build something and then have the world test it, time and again until it either breaks or you're satisfied it can withstand anything. It's a methodology that encourages you to build something functional and strong. And it's an approach I've enjoyed in the past - Kerbal Space Program is basically the same idea. However, I think the difference between KSP and Spacebase DF-9 is that failure in KSP stemmed primarily from a failure to apprehend the proper design, whereas in this game, you could do everything right and still run into a streak of bad luck. Maybe it's possible to build something large and impregnable, but when your people will wait around a crowded pub for dinner and starve themselves rather than walk across the hall to the automatic food dispenser; when your technicians will fly into an occupied pirate ship in order to repair its damaged systems; when your security forces will continue to attack an unconscious body rather than take it to the brig; these things feel like they are entirely out of your control. If success and failure are not purely a consequence of design, that kind of takes some of the steam out of a game whose primary strategic challenge is, in fact, design.
Really though, my objections to Spacebase DF-9 are not quite so lofty. I didn't like seeing my stuff get wrecked. The fact that the main force wrecking my stuff was an NPC faction I could never defeat or even directly confront just exacerbated matters. It kind of felt like an injustice. Raiders could just show up and (especially in the early game) do damage to my base, and even if I stopped them quickly, I'd still have to clean up their mess. It's not really the biggest problem I've ever had with a game, but the existence of this permanent imbalance definitely had me thinking, on at least a couple of occasions, that the game hated me, personally.
Oh, and there are no graphs. I've said it before and I'll say it again, a building-type strategy game without generous data visualization aids is only half complete.
I probably won't ever play this game again. I liked it well enough, aside from the parts that where I died through no fault of my own, but everything I like about this game was done better in Startopia.
For example, I built a base that could withstand "the big one" with only minimal casualties. I'd researched all the different technologies and had a strong and stable economy. And then a randomly-generated ship docked with my colony and my people started wandering into it one by one. Since there were three raiders on that ship, I wound up losing half my colonists this way until I wised up and got my builders to tear a hole in its side. Although, by that time, all my technicians were gone, my various machines were in poor repair, and when meteors struck my main power generator, half my perimeter turrets went into shutdown. That allowed another group of raiders to get in and slaughter all my remaining colonists.
Once I got into the death spiral, it was near impossible to pull myself out. My population growth was purely drawn from passing space ships, and thus subject to the RNG. And my colony was physically so large it could not be sustained by a reduced population. Maybe if I were better at the game, I could have pulled it out, but since I couldn't directly order my colonists around (and they followed my indirect orders only casually and at their own pace), I have hard time seeing what I could have done differently.
I get what this game was going for - you build something and then have the world test it, time and again until it either breaks or you're satisfied it can withstand anything. It's a methodology that encourages you to build something functional and strong. And it's an approach I've enjoyed in the past - Kerbal Space Program is basically the same idea. However, I think the difference between KSP and Spacebase DF-9 is that failure in KSP stemmed primarily from a failure to apprehend the proper design, whereas in this game, you could do everything right and still run into a streak of bad luck. Maybe it's possible to build something large and impregnable, but when your people will wait around a crowded pub for dinner and starve themselves rather than walk across the hall to the automatic food dispenser; when your technicians will fly into an occupied pirate ship in order to repair its damaged systems; when your security forces will continue to attack an unconscious body rather than take it to the brig; these things feel like they are entirely out of your control. If success and failure are not purely a consequence of design, that kind of takes some of the steam out of a game whose primary strategic challenge is, in fact, design.
Really though, my objections to Spacebase DF-9 are not quite so lofty. I didn't like seeing my stuff get wrecked. The fact that the main force wrecking my stuff was an NPC faction I could never defeat or even directly confront just exacerbated matters. It kind of felt like an injustice. Raiders could just show up and (especially in the early game) do damage to my base, and even if I stopped them quickly, I'd still have to clean up their mess. It's not really the biggest problem I've ever had with a game, but the existence of this permanent imbalance definitely had me thinking, on at least a couple of occasions, that the game hated me, personally.
Oh, and there are no graphs. I've said it before and I'll say it again, a building-type strategy game without generous data visualization aids is only half complete.
I probably won't ever play this game again. I liked it well enough, aside from the parts that where I died through no fault of my own, but everything I like about this game was done better in Startopia.
Sunday, June 4, 2017
Spacebase DF-9 - 11/20 hours
So, it's going to be one of those types of games. I guess I let myself believe that the raiders were somehow incidental to the game. That with a big enough colony they would become nothing but a nuisance, to be cut down by my security forces before they even had a chance to cause trouble.
I realize now that the raiders are the entire point. They're coming to kill you and wreck all your stuff and it's not a matter of if, but when. There was a point where I thought for sure I had things under control. My station was large and prosperous. I had defensive turrets covering all the entrances. And yet, at around the time I got my twentieth resident, I triggered a random event called "the big one." Wave after wave of raiders swarmed my base. I lost track of how many there were, exactly, though when they'd slaughtered all of my people and blew up the last of my oxygen generators, I managed to inadvertently complete the Goal for killing 50 intruders.
The same pattern repeated with my next base, the first one I played with the unofficial patch. It wasn't the pirate mega-raid, but it was a similar string of misfortune. The raiders would get into their special ships that could fly under my base and subsequently pop up in my undefended interior areas. They'd get maybe 1-2 civilians before security finally took them down, but it was enough. I started losing people faster than they were getting replaced. I didn't reach final extinction, but I was faced with a base where every damned thing was broken because fucking raiders kept killing off my technicians.
Raiders who, incidentally, were able to slip past my exterior defenses because the game's baffling 3/4 perspective means my turrets can only point towards the bottom left or bottom right of my screen.
Needless to say, my initial optimism about this game has dried up.
Funnily enough, though, the cause is not what I thought it would be. Yes, there are aspects of the game that are clearly unfinished - the limitations on camera and building angles are actively hostile to the type of game it wants to be; even after 8 versions of the official patch, there are still path-finding bugs; as far as I can tell, 75% of your security options don't even work (certainly, I've never seen my security people successfully arrest someone and throw them in the brig, or even bring an unconscious person to the infirmary); and on top of all that, there's not enough interesting stuff to build, so much that if a person were not an obsessive builder, perfectly capable of tiling the map just for the pleasure of doing so, they might almost welcome the inevitable tide of destruction, just for the sake of having something novel to do.
I'm not sure what I want from this game any more. If I had to put it into words, I'd say "an infinite string of good luck, such that I never have to face the numerous time bombs built into the very structure of the game" and, failing that "a long-term bias towards events that add settlers to my population and away from events that take settlers out of my population" so that the general trend of my base is towards growth and expansion. And yet I have a feeling that even the more moderate second option is just a polite way of saying "I want it to be over."
My best bet is that knowledge and experience will allow me to simulate the second option. If my defense gets tight enough that losing settlers is rare, then maybe it will feel more like a cute colony-building game and less like a brutal fight for survival where the odds are stacked against you.
Why do games keep insisting on teaching me to embrace failure? Don't I get enough of that in my personal life?
I realize now that the raiders are the entire point. They're coming to kill you and wreck all your stuff and it's not a matter of if, but when. There was a point where I thought for sure I had things under control. My station was large and prosperous. I had defensive turrets covering all the entrances. And yet, at around the time I got my twentieth resident, I triggered a random event called "the big one." Wave after wave of raiders swarmed my base. I lost track of how many there were, exactly, though when they'd slaughtered all of my people and blew up the last of my oxygen generators, I managed to inadvertently complete the Goal for killing 50 intruders.
The same pattern repeated with my next base, the first one I played with the unofficial patch. It wasn't the pirate mega-raid, but it was a similar string of misfortune. The raiders would get into their special ships that could fly under my base and subsequently pop up in my undefended interior areas. They'd get maybe 1-2 civilians before security finally took them down, but it was enough. I started losing people faster than they were getting replaced. I didn't reach final extinction, but I was faced with a base where every damned thing was broken because fucking raiders kept killing off my technicians.
Raiders who, incidentally, were able to slip past my exterior defenses because the game's baffling 3/4 perspective means my turrets can only point towards the bottom left or bottom right of my screen.
Needless to say, my initial optimism about this game has dried up.
Funnily enough, though, the cause is not what I thought it would be. Yes, there are aspects of the game that are clearly unfinished - the limitations on camera and building angles are actively hostile to the type of game it wants to be; even after 8 versions of the official patch, there are still path-finding bugs; as far as I can tell, 75% of your security options don't even work (certainly, I've never seen my security people successfully arrest someone and throw them in the brig, or even bring an unconscious person to the infirmary); and on top of all that, there's not enough interesting stuff to build, so much that if a person were not an obsessive builder, perfectly capable of tiling the map just for the pleasure of doing so, they might almost welcome the inevitable tide of destruction, just for the sake of having something novel to do.
I'm not sure what I want from this game any more. If I had to put it into words, I'd say "an infinite string of good luck, such that I never have to face the numerous time bombs built into the very structure of the game" and, failing that "a long-term bias towards events that add settlers to my population and away from events that take settlers out of my population" so that the general trend of my base is towards growth and expansion. And yet I have a feeling that even the more moderate second option is just a polite way of saying "I want it to be over."
My best bet is that knowledge and experience will allow me to simulate the second option. If my defense gets tight enough that losing settlers is rare, then maybe it will feel more like a cute colony-building game and less like a brutal fight for survival where the odds are stacked against you.
Why do games keep insisting on teaching me to embrace failure? Don't I get enough of that in my personal life?
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