I think I hate this game.
Though, to be fair, I'm pretty sure it hates me more.
My evidence for this theory is the twenty-three times I died trying to fight the Capra Demon. That, in itself, would not be so bad - I'm positive that I've faced worse in certain levels of Mario Galaxy, and Super Meat Boy laughs at a mere 24 tries to beat a boss, but what makes Dark Souls a special kind of hell is that unlike those games, it punishes you for failure.
Whenever you die, you lose your accumulated experience and start back at your last visited bonfire. So, not only did I die repeatedly to the Capra Demon, I was also forced, after every defeat, to make the three minute walk back to his lair. It's like an unskippable cutscene that kills you 5% of the time (it was not a glorious death, either - I'm not 100% sure of the controls apparently, because sometimes my character's post-block counterattack is followed up by a backflip and I'm not sure why - it always aggravates me when it happens, too, because it invariably ruins my attack combo, and in certain circumstances launches me backwards over a cliff).
But the true reason I think Dark Souls hates me is because of the circumstances of the fight itself. They seemed calculated to deliberately fuck with me, the player, by taking the things I've learned in other fights and ensuring that if I tried them, they would get me killed. For example, unlike every other boss fight I'd previously faced, the Capra Demon was in a narrow alcove. Which means that, in order to dodge its attack, I had to target a thin gap between the enemy in the wall. Fair enough. But then the game put an attack dog in exactly the space I'd dodge into. So, I'd roll into an enemy and get stopped right next to the demon. If I attacked the dog, the demon would demolish me. If I tried to roll away, it wouldn't work, and the demon and the dog would demolish me. If I tried to block, the demon and the dog would wear down my stamina and then they'd demolish me.
The first time I got the dodge timing exactly right, I managed to get onto the staircase behind the demon, and then the second attack dog appeared out of nowhere and killed me. Dodging that would carry me back into the demon and the other dog and . . .
The trick, it turned out, was to follow a very precise path, not worry too much about defense, chug a potion at the top of the stairs, and then hope that the demon's unblockable instant death attack did not trigger. Then I'd take out the dogs and kite the demon in the limited space of the battlefield. As long as it didn't do too many super attacks in a row and I maintained absolutely flawless concentration, I could be the enemy.
Needless to say, most of the time, that didn't happen. I fought the Capra Demon 23 times, and I'd say that only 3-4 times did I actually manage to get to the point where I could go on the offense. The rest of the time, the battle lasted less than a minute. And then I'd have to spend twice that time walking back.
Combined with other, minor inconveniences, like the lack of a pause, the mandatory Games for Windows Live registration, the near-constant autosave meaning that if I accidentally attack an npc (because, say, a sorcerer I'd just rescued was standing near some destructible barrels), I'd have to go through with the murder even though I didn't want to (he wound up having a pretty sweet ring, but I'm sure that if he'd lived, he might have sold me some great spells), and I'm convinced that Dark Souls has it in for me, personally.
Maybe I deserve it, for my hubris. I thought I could handle any game, but Dark Souls exists in order to prove that there are things greater than me in this world, and I am, in fact, only a small player on a much grander stage.
Wednesday, September 3, 2014
Sunday, August 31, 2014
Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition - 10/20 hours
Dark Souls has inspired in me a complex stew of emotions. The highs are pretty good - arriving in Undead Parish after hours of slogging through Undead Burg felt incredibly satisfying. But the price for this is that the lows are pretty low - dying a dozen times in the opening area of Undead Burg and having to walk back from the Undead Burg bonfire is . . . less than satisfying.
My overall opinion of the game is generally positive. Exploring, when done with care, is fairly rewarding, and now that I've got a couple more hours practice, I'm starting to move forward more than I'm sliding back. However, I also find it incredibly frustrating. Both for the obvious reasons, and because of little things - like the lack of a pause function.
I understand that Dark Souls has a strong online component, and as a result, pausing is not really part of its core gameplay, but it's so damned inconvenient for my particular circumstances. Most of my game playing is done at work (I know, I know, I've got the world's easiest job), where I have several hours a night to fill, but those hours have around a dozen sudden interruptions. Since, of course, I must drop everything to deal with customers, this has led to a lot of unnecessary deaths. Maybe that's not something I should blame on the game, but pausing is such a basic quality of life feature that I can't help thinking it a major design misstep to leave it out.
I don't think I'm going to make it to the end of the game by 20 hours (and, honestly, I can't even imagine what the end will be like because it has been so long since I've advanced the plot), and I'm not yet sure if I want to take it all the way. Dark Souls definitely has a way of getting under my skin, but it also has a way of filling me with despair. Only time will tell which tendency will win out.
My overall opinion of the game is generally positive. Exploring, when done with care, is fairly rewarding, and now that I've got a couple more hours practice, I'm starting to move forward more than I'm sliding back. However, I also find it incredibly frustrating. Both for the obvious reasons, and because of little things - like the lack of a pause function.
I understand that Dark Souls has a strong online component, and as a result, pausing is not really part of its core gameplay, but it's so damned inconvenient for my particular circumstances. Most of my game playing is done at work (I know, I know, I've got the world's easiest job), where I have several hours a night to fill, but those hours have around a dozen sudden interruptions. Since, of course, I must drop everything to deal with customers, this has led to a lot of unnecessary deaths. Maybe that's not something I should blame on the game, but pausing is such a basic quality of life feature that I can't help thinking it a major design misstep to leave it out.
I don't think I'm going to make it to the end of the game by 20 hours (and, honestly, I can't even imagine what the end will be like because it has been so long since I've advanced the plot), and I'm not yet sure if I want to take it all the way. Dark Souls definitely has a way of getting under my skin, but it also has a way of filling me with despair. Only time will tell which tendency will win out.
Saturday, August 30, 2014
Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition - 6/20 hours
The word of the day is "failure." What does it mean, in the context of a video game? Do I "fail" at Dark Souls when I die a dozen times in a row? Probably not, because dying is a central part of the game's marketing. I'm supposed to die. If I didn't, I wouldn't be playing the same game as everyone else. Dying is normal, and not something I should allow myself to get upset about.
Maybe that is the game's failure mode. Maybe there's an intangible barrier between zany, self-deprecating mayhem ("holy shit, that dragon came out of nowhere and one-shotted me before I even had a chance to react - this game is crazy"), and grim, self-loathing despair ("I keep getting killed by random, faceless, undead - I really suck"). Failure then, would be crossing that line in your heart. You fail Dark Souls when it stops being fun.
But that's pretty abstract. I think it's more likely that you "fail" the game only when you give up. Dark Souls has a story, and that story gives you a goal to work towards, and so long as you keep playing, that goal is never notionally out of reach. It only becomes impossible once you stop.
Sounds good. Except that there is a lot of room in the words "notionally possible." It's an idea big enough to contain "functionally impossible." You could, for example, repeat the same level over and over again forever, always dying to the minion squads before you get anywhere, and fail 90% of the time to recover your lost xp, and thus never get any more powerful, and always be confined to a narrow radius around your bonefire.
And while that has not happened to me yet, my experience of Undead Burg has certainly convinced me that it's a possibility. I've noticed a pattern where I will uncover a new area, immediately get killed by whatever is lurking therein, and then have to spend 3 or 4 lives to get back to the place I was before (checkpoints are few and far between, so every time you die, you have to start back at the same, eventually quite isolated, location), where I then get killed slightly less quickly and thus have to repeat the process again and again until I get it right. And then I push a little bit farther, find a new area, and get killed.
I've yet to get ahold of the rising feeling of mastery that is a characteristic of these sorts of high-end action games. Usually, when I play a level of, say, Viewtiful Joe and it proves to be beyond my abilities, I can repeat that level a dozen times and gradually, the rhythms of the the level imprint themselves in my subconscious, and things that were once difficult become trivial. Eventually, the level itself becomes rote.
That has not happened to me with Dark Souls. I'm still finding the low-level monsters to be a serious threat. I think it's because the checkpoint system is much less generous than in other games. So, I'm not just repeating the "difficult" parts. I'm also repeating the parts I could get through relatively easily, and by the time I get back to where I'm having trouble, the muscle memory has faded. And when I'm "successful" it means that there is a longer delay between the times I get to practice the early fights, and while sheer repetition means I'm able to get through them, I am not at all consistent in the resources I use in the process. So, beating a boss in Dark Souls is not just about taking on the boss, but also about learning the whole damned level well enough that you're not crippled by attrition by the time you get there.
And then, when you beat it, a dragon comes out of nowhere and flames you to death before you have a chance to react.
I worry that eventually, the chain will get too long for me, that the really tough nut will be at the end of a series of fights that I'm just barely good enough to get through, and thus I won't be able to accumulate experience (due to losing it all in a place not amenable to consistent recovery) or arrive with enough resources to win, and that as a result, I'll be stuck in an endless cycle of loss. That, in essence, I will "fail" at Dark Souls.
(As a meaningless aside, let me vent a little about Games for Windows Live - WTF is up with games making you sign up for various proprietary services when you try and play them - it should have included an option to opt out, but when I tried, it told me my game wouldn't save, and thus I swallowed my pride and went with it, but this now makes the fourth PC online service I've had to make an account for alongside Steam, Origin, and uPlay. I'll never be able to remember all these passwords).
Maybe that is the game's failure mode. Maybe there's an intangible barrier between zany, self-deprecating mayhem ("holy shit, that dragon came out of nowhere and one-shotted me before I even had a chance to react - this game is crazy"), and grim, self-loathing despair ("I keep getting killed by random, faceless, undead - I really suck"). Failure then, would be crossing that line in your heart. You fail Dark Souls when it stops being fun.
But that's pretty abstract. I think it's more likely that you "fail" the game only when you give up. Dark Souls has a story, and that story gives you a goal to work towards, and so long as you keep playing, that goal is never notionally out of reach. It only becomes impossible once you stop.
Sounds good. Except that there is a lot of room in the words "notionally possible." It's an idea big enough to contain "functionally impossible." You could, for example, repeat the same level over and over again forever, always dying to the minion squads before you get anywhere, and fail 90% of the time to recover your lost xp, and thus never get any more powerful, and always be confined to a narrow radius around your bonefire.
And while that has not happened to me yet, my experience of Undead Burg has certainly convinced me that it's a possibility. I've noticed a pattern where I will uncover a new area, immediately get killed by whatever is lurking therein, and then have to spend 3 or 4 lives to get back to the place I was before (checkpoints are few and far between, so every time you die, you have to start back at the same, eventually quite isolated, location), where I then get killed slightly less quickly and thus have to repeat the process again and again until I get it right. And then I push a little bit farther, find a new area, and get killed.
I've yet to get ahold of the rising feeling of mastery that is a characteristic of these sorts of high-end action games. Usually, when I play a level of, say, Viewtiful Joe and it proves to be beyond my abilities, I can repeat that level a dozen times and gradually, the rhythms of the the level imprint themselves in my subconscious, and things that were once difficult become trivial. Eventually, the level itself becomes rote.
That has not happened to me with Dark Souls. I'm still finding the low-level monsters to be a serious threat. I think it's because the checkpoint system is much less generous than in other games. So, I'm not just repeating the "difficult" parts. I'm also repeating the parts I could get through relatively easily, and by the time I get back to where I'm having trouble, the muscle memory has faded. And when I'm "successful" it means that there is a longer delay between the times I get to practice the early fights, and while sheer repetition means I'm able to get through them, I am not at all consistent in the resources I use in the process. So, beating a boss in Dark Souls is not just about taking on the boss, but also about learning the whole damned level well enough that you're not crippled by attrition by the time you get there.
And then, when you beat it, a dragon comes out of nowhere and flames you to death before you have a chance to react.
I worry that eventually, the chain will get too long for me, that the really tough nut will be at the end of a series of fights that I'm just barely good enough to get through, and thus I won't be able to accumulate experience (due to losing it all in a place not amenable to consistent recovery) or arrive with enough resources to win, and that as a result, I'll be stuck in an endless cycle of loss. That, in essence, I will "fail" at Dark Souls.
(As a meaningless aside, let me vent a little about Games for Windows Live - WTF is up with games making you sign up for various proprietary services when you try and play them - it should have included an option to opt out, but when I tried, it told me my game wouldn't save, and thus I swallowed my pride and went with it, but this now makes the fourth PC online service I've had to make an account for alongside Steam, Origin, and uPlay. I'll never be able to remember all these passwords).
Friday, August 29, 2014
Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition - 2/20 hours
I'm afraid I'm not a very good PC gamer. And by that, I do not mean that I lack skill (though I'm not, by any means, great), but that there are things you need to do when playing PC games - various maintenance tasks and general good practices - in order to keep your machine in good condition and your games running smoothly, that I simply am not aware of and thus have long neglected. For example, I learned, while trying to play Dark Souls, that it is necessary to periodically update your video card's drivers.
This may seem like a no-brainer to all the experienced PC gamers out there, but it's not something I've ever had to deal with before. In the past, I'd just put the disc in my console and go. And while, with the most recent console generation, I'd occasionally get something like "your console needs to install an update before you can play this game," it was still nonetheless automatic. I didn't need to remember to do it.
I'm not used to relating to technology in this way. DIY was never really my thing. I like it when things just work the way they're supposed to.
So, Dark Souls and I got off on the wrong foot, because my drivers were out of date, my system specs are pretty close to the minimum, and this particular game is somewhat notorious for being finicky. When I first began the game, it was abysmally slow. It was a little like the action was going on under water. It's probably a testament to my innate stubbornness that I managed to play it for an hour and a half like this before I got too frustrated to continue and started searching the internet for a solution.
And here's where I make an embarrassing confession - even at half speed, Dark Souls still managed to kick my ass. You might think that perhaps that was because the slow execution of my character's moves was throwing me off, but, well, when I finally got the issue fixed and started playing the game at normal speed, enemies that were killing me before suddenly started brutally tearing me apart. And I was still near the very beginning (I'd estimate that I was in an area people normally reach after about a half hour).
I decided to start over and try a new character class, in the hopes that playing the tutorial dungeon at normal speed would help ease me into the skills necessary for the larger game. The first time, I chose a warrior and the second time I chose a sorcerer. Once I found all the equipment, I did a little better with a sorcerer build, but I suspect in the long run it's an advanced option (spellcasting is pretty slow, and thus kind of risky when enemies are not moving as if they're suspended in molasses).
So far, I'm not really "into" Dark Souls. I can see the appeal, and if I ever get skilled enough that my advancement stops being so dependent on chance, I may well get addicted, but unlike certain other action games, it doesn't seem to have an early game "wow" moment. The giant bird that carried me to Undead Burg (a name I admire for its functionality, but doubt would be something people in the setting itself would use with a straight face) was pretty neat, but the plot, in so far as I've been able to follow it thus far, sounds like the sort of impenetrable "epic" fantasy that tends to put me to sleep. I think that in the beginning of time, dragons fought the undead and were wiped out, and in the course of the conflict, both sides used magic that broke the world, and your character is some kind of special undead that will do something or other to halt the world's slide into eternal night, but there was a lot of arbitrary capitalization and proper names to keep track of, so I'm sure I'm losing the nuance.
I will say that other games have taken longer than two hours to win me over, so I'm not dismissing Dark Souls just yet, but I am really hoping that I will soon see something that will make all the dying worth it.
This may seem like a no-brainer to all the experienced PC gamers out there, but it's not something I've ever had to deal with before. In the past, I'd just put the disc in my console and go. And while, with the most recent console generation, I'd occasionally get something like "your console needs to install an update before you can play this game," it was still nonetheless automatic. I didn't need to remember to do it.
I'm not used to relating to technology in this way. DIY was never really my thing. I like it when things just work the way they're supposed to.
So, Dark Souls and I got off on the wrong foot, because my drivers were out of date, my system specs are pretty close to the minimum, and this particular game is somewhat notorious for being finicky. When I first began the game, it was abysmally slow. It was a little like the action was going on under water. It's probably a testament to my innate stubbornness that I managed to play it for an hour and a half like this before I got too frustrated to continue and started searching the internet for a solution.
And here's where I make an embarrassing confession - even at half speed, Dark Souls still managed to kick my ass. You might think that perhaps that was because the slow execution of my character's moves was throwing me off, but, well, when I finally got the issue fixed and started playing the game at normal speed, enemies that were killing me before suddenly started brutally tearing me apart. And I was still near the very beginning (I'd estimate that I was in an area people normally reach after about a half hour).
I decided to start over and try a new character class, in the hopes that playing the tutorial dungeon at normal speed would help ease me into the skills necessary for the larger game. The first time, I chose a warrior and the second time I chose a sorcerer. Once I found all the equipment, I did a little better with a sorcerer build, but I suspect in the long run it's an advanced option (spellcasting is pretty slow, and thus kind of risky when enemies are not moving as if they're suspended in molasses).
So far, I'm not really "into" Dark Souls. I can see the appeal, and if I ever get skilled enough that my advancement stops being so dependent on chance, I may well get addicted, but unlike certain other action games, it doesn't seem to have an early game "wow" moment. The giant bird that carried me to Undead Burg (a name I admire for its functionality, but doubt would be something people in the setting itself would use with a straight face) was pretty neat, but the plot, in so far as I've been able to follow it thus far, sounds like the sort of impenetrable "epic" fantasy that tends to put me to sleep. I think that in the beginning of time, dragons fought the undead and were wiped out, and in the course of the conflict, both sides used magic that broke the world, and your character is some kind of special undead that will do something or other to halt the world's slide into eternal night, but there was a lot of arbitrary capitalization and proper names to keep track of, so I'm sure I'm losing the nuance.
I will say that other games have taken longer than two hours to win me over, so I'm not dismissing Dark Souls just yet, but I am really hoping that I will soon see something that will make all the dying worth it.
Thursday, August 28, 2014
Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition - Initial Thoughts
About the Game (From the Steam Store)
Dark Souls is the new action role-playing game from the developers who brought you Demon’s Souls, FromSoftware. Dark Souls will have many familiar features: A dark fantasy universe, tense dungeon crawling, fearsome enemy encounters and unique online interactions. Dark Souls is a spiritual successor to Demon’s, not a sequel. Prepare for a new, despair-inducing world, with a vast, fully-explorable horizon and vertically-oriented landforms. Prepare for a new, mysterious story, centered around the the world of Lodran, but most of all, prepare to die. You will face countless murderous traps, countless darkly grotesque mobs and several gargantuan, supremely powerful demons and dragons bosses. You must learn from death to persist through this unforgiving world. And you aren’t alone. Dark Souls allows the spirits of other players to show up in your world, so you can learn from their deaths and they can learn from yours. You can also summon players into your world to co-op adventure, or invade other's worlds to PVP battle. New to Dark Souls are Bonfires, which serve as check points as you fight your way through this epic adventure. While rested at Bonfires, your health and magic replenish but at a cost, all mobs respawn. Beware: There is no place in Dark Souls that is truly safe. With days of game play and an even more punishing difficulty level, Dark Souls will be the most deeply challenging game you play this year. Can you live through a million deaths and earn your legacy?
Previous Play Time
0 hours
Prior Experience
I'm having trouble remembering at the moment, but I believe I rented this game before, but was unexpectedly busy that week and thus did not play it for more than an hour or so. I may be thinking of another game, though. It didn't make much of an impression on me, whatever it was.
I have heard about Dark Souls by reputation, though. Its legendary difficulty has piqued my curiosity, but I doubt I would ever have gotten around to it, if it weren't for the generosity of Madcat.
Expectations
I've played the occasional difficult action game before. I beat Bayonetta and Viewtiful Joe (on average difficulty). So, I feel like I have a reasonable idea about the trajectory of this sort of game - frustration, incremental improvement, a brief period of mastery before the difficulty increases again. I'd like to say that means I'll be able to handle it with equanimity. However, I've yet to play a hardcore action game that did not make me swear profusely.
I think that's how you can tell if it's a good one.
Dark Souls is the new action role-playing game from the developers who brought you Demon’s Souls, FromSoftware. Dark Souls will have many familiar features: A dark fantasy universe, tense dungeon crawling, fearsome enemy encounters and unique online interactions. Dark Souls is a spiritual successor to Demon’s, not a sequel. Prepare for a new, despair-inducing world, with a vast, fully-explorable horizon and vertically-oriented landforms. Prepare for a new, mysterious story, centered around the the world of Lodran, but most of all, prepare to die. You will face countless murderous traps, countless darkly grotesque mobs and several gargantuan, supremely powerful demons and dragons bosses. You must learn from death to persist through this unforgiving world. And you aren’t alone. Dark Souls allows the spirits of other players to show up in your world, so you can learn from their deaths and they can learn from yours. You can also summon players into your world to co-op adventure, or invade other's worlds to PVP battle. New to Dark Souls are Bonfires, which serve as check points as you fight your way through this epic adventure. While rested at Bonfires, your health and magic replenish but at a cost, all mobs respawn. Beware: There is no place in Dark Souls that is truly safe. With days of game play and an even more punishing difficulty level, Dark Souls will be the most deeply challenging game you play this year. Can you live through a million deaths and earn your legacy?
Previous Play Time
0 hours
Prior Experience
I'm having trouble remembering at the moment, but I believe I rented this game before, but was unexpectedly busy that week and thus did not play it for more than an hour or so. I may be thinking of another game, though. It didn't make much of an impression on me, whatever it was.
I have heard about Dark Souls by reputation, though. Its legendary difficulty has piqued my curiosity, but I doubt I would ever have gotten around to it, if it weren't for the generosity of Madcat.
Expectations
I've played the occasional difficult action game before. I beat Bayonetta and Viewtiful Joe (on average difficulty). So, I feel like I have a reasonable idea about the trajectory of this sort of game - frustration, incremental improvement, a brief period of mastery before the difficulty increases again. I'd like to say that means I'll be able to handle it with equanimity. However, I've yet to play a hardcore action game that did not make me swear profusely.
I think that's how you can tell if it's a good one.
Wednesday, August 27, 2014
Ship Simulator Extremes - 20/20 hours
Normally, I write a post at around 15 hours, but this time I skipped it, because it would have been exactly the same as the post I wrote at 10 hours, and as the one I'm going to write for 20. And while dullness is not a problem for me, per se, it does make it a little difficult to compose an interesting blog post.
I finished the Greenpeace campaign, and started the tourist one. Ironically, piloting a cruise ship proved to be more exciting than renegade direct-action political protests in the world's most dangerous waters. But it still wasn't exciting exciting. Because the game was still Ship Simulator Extremes. So, you have to rescue your cruise ship with tugboats when it becomes adrift . . . after having spent 20 minutes sailing into and out of ports. Or rescue a passenger that fell overboard . . . by maneuvering around a shallow harbor. I think it sums up the game (and possibly the genre) perfectly to say that the reason it was more interesting to pilot the massive Orient Star is because it is much more lumbering and unwieldy than the Esperanza or the Rainbow Warrior.
I'm not really complaining, though. Part of the romance of the simulation genre is that it can break us free of the crippling overspecialization of a modern, capitalist economy. I will never be a tugboat captain (and after the half-assed way I dislodged the Orient Star, I shouldn't be), but I can, indirectly and imperfectly, experience some of the challenges a tugboat captain might face. Through the simulator, I can get a chance to peak outside my ordinary life and learn something about the world around me.
Which is where (aside from its general bugginess) Ship Simulator Extremes fails. It never bothered trying to educate me. It never explained the ship controls - I'd flip one lever which seemed to make the ship go, and another which seemed to make it turn, but then there were others which did not appear to do anything, and I never found out what they were or why they did what they did. It never explained the theory behind proper boat operations (I'm certain there are complicated physics reasons for why my tugboats could not turn while attached to the Orient Star, but what they were, and how real tugboat captains get around them is never explained). The best part of the game was the Greenpeace videos, and I could have saved myself a lot of time and trouble by just watching a documentary on Greenpeace.
I suspect that I could come to love the hardcore simulation genre. Even with all my complaints, there was still something satisfying about making a tricky turn in a lumbering cruise ship or keeping to my course in storm-wracked Antarctic waters. However, Ship Simulator Extremes is definitely not a good entry point, and my general intellectual curiosity was not enough to help me bridge the gap.
I finished the Greenpeace campaign, and started the tourist one. Ironically, piloting a cruise ship proved to be more exciting than renegade direct-action political protests in the world's most dangerous waters. But it still wasn't exciting exciting. Because the game was still Ship Simulator Extremes. So, you have to rescue your cruise ship with tugboats when it becomes adrift . . . after having spent 20 minutes sailing into and out of ports. Or rescue a passenger that fell overboard . . . by maneuvering around a shallow harbor. I think it sums up the game (and possibly the genre) perfectly to say that the reason it was more interesting to pilot the massive Orient Star is because it is much more lumbering and unwieldy than the Esperanza or the Rainbow Warrior.
I'm not really complaining, though. Part of the romance of the simulation genre is that it can break us free of the crippling overspecialization of a modern, capitalist economy. I will never be a tugboat captain (and after the half-assed way I dislodged the Orient Star, I shouldn't be), but I can, indirectly and imperfectly, experience some of the challenges a tugboat captain might face. Through the simulator, I can get a chance to peak outside my ordinary life and learn something about the world around me.
Which is where (aside from its general bugginess) Ship Simulator Extremes fails. It never bothered trying to educate me. It never explained the ship controls - I'd flip one lever which seemed to make the ship go, and another which seemed to make it turn, but then there were others which did not appear to do anything, and I never found out what they were or why they did what they did. It never explained the theory behind proper boat operations (I'm certain there are complicated physics reasons for why my tugboats could not turn while attached to the Orient Star, but what they were, and how real tugboat captains get around them is never explained). The best part of the game was the Greenpeace videos, and I could have saved myself a lot of time and trouble by just watching a documentary on Greenpeace.
I suspect that I could come to love the hardcore simulation genre. Even with all my complaints, there was still something satisfying about making a tricky turn in a lumbering cruise ship or keeping to my course in storm-wracked Antarctic waters. However, Ship Simulator Extremes is definitely not a good entry point, and my general intellectual curiosity was not enough to help me bridge the gap.
Ship Simulator Extremes - 10/20 hours
Wow. I'm spending a lot of time in harbors.
I get it. Of all the maneuvers a ship has to do in its day-to-day operations, entering and leaving the port is the most fraught with potential mishap, requiring the most careful and precise use of the ship's controls. It's the place where you're going to encounter the most obstacles, and have the most scenery to see in the background.
On the other hand, it kind of makes the campaign mission descriptions seem a bit like false advertising - SAVE THE WHALES! (by spending 5 minutes maneuvering on the open sea and 10 minutes each entering and leaving Sydney harbor). It's a little disappointing.
But, maybe I just don't get the genre. Maybe the missions are just an excuse. Maybe the real point of the game is watching the different ships pass by famous landmarks. It was pretty cool seeing the Sydney Opera House, and I enjoy the camera mode where you can wander around the decks as if you were a passenger. Yet, I suspect that even if digital tourism is the entire point of the game, Ship Simulator Extremes is not a great example of the form.
I'm not usually a huge stickler for graphics, but it seems to me that if looking at stuff is the whole point of the game, there could stand to be more detail to the ships and environments. As it is, a quick walkthrough is enough to see the whole ship, and the harbors look more or less the same. So, piloting mostly involves a lot of waiting.
I guess it's a pretty causal way to pass the time, though. Maybe not every game requires high levels of engagement and attention. Maybe there's a place for a game you can occasionally monitor while watching the Simpsons marathon.
I get it. Of all the maneuvers a ship has to do in its day-to-day operations, entering and leaving the port is the most fraught with potential mishap, requiring the most careful and precise use of the ship's controls. It's the place where you're going to encounter the most obstacles, and have the most scenery to see in the background.
On the other hand, it kind of makes the campaign mission descriptions seem a bit like false advertising - SAVE THE WHALES! (by spending 5 minutes maneuvering on the open sea and 10 minutes each entering and leaving Sydney harbor). It's a little disappointing.
But, maybe I just don't get the genre. Maybe the missions are just an excuse. Maybe the real point of the game is watching the different ships pass by famous landmarks. It was pretty cool seeing the Sydney Opera House, and I enjoy the camera mode where you can wander around the decks as if you were a passenger. Yet, I suspect that even if digital tourism is the entire point of the game, Ship Simulator Extremes is not a great example of the form.
I'm not usually a huge stickler for graphics, but it seems to me that if looking at stuff is the whole point of the game, there could stand to be more detail to the ships and environments. As it is, a quick walkthrough is enough to see the whole ship, and the harbors look more or less the same. So, piloting mostly involves a lot of waiting.
I guess it's a pretty causal way to pass the time, though. Maybe not every game requires high levels of engagement and attention. Maybe there's a place for a game you can occasionally monitor while watching the Simpsons marathon.
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