Demon's Souls

Since I did my favorite game, we'll get to my least favorite game today. I dislike everything that Demon's Souls stands for (and how annoying it is to say). I actually platinum'd the game (not because I enjoyed doing so), in case you were wondering. This was a game made for hardcore gamers (specifically Asian hardcore gamers). I don't really believe there is or should be such a distinction, but the game ensures you must be this demographic and masochistic too. You're going to die. A lot. They don't communicate the mechanics to the player (anywhere)... they almost ensure you die in the tutorial by facing you up against a monster you would be hard pressed to beat this early in an environment quite suited to him. They kill you... often... and, when you do die, you start over from the beginning. This game is openly hostile to its players.

Now, I can understand making your game "hard." This game requires flawless executional difficulty, but there is little "thinking" difficulty even in PvP (player versus player). And, when you fail, you start at the beginning. So, I'd call this difficulty "annoying and spiteful" rather than "hard."

I understand why they did this. Let me explain. The game keeps plunging your balls in a vat of acid, but they try not to make you give up, because if you can just get back to your pretty blood smear, all will not be for naught. You can keep your progress! But, if you can't, you're screwed. Goodbye progress. This is conditional forgiveness. They want you to move through the game very cautiously when you don't know what you're doing by hanging the fear of having to redo what you did over you and by making the entire environment anathema to continued existence. They want you to keep doing the levels over and over again until you've mastered them. And finally get a mental pay off like, "Remember when this was so hard? Now you rarely die here. Good for you. Here's a cookie. Oh, it's laced with arsenic." Something like that, but this payoff is extremely hollow to me because the game isn't about learning, but bashing your face against minotaurs until one finally steps out of the way. That is the inherent problem. I did not feel rewarded for completing a section, I felt peeved at the developers for making it so annoying. Making me worse off than I was before.

If this game had an interesting combat system, I could probably forgive it, but when the most complicated strategy is something like, "Parry and then win" or "Wait till he does this move, and then smack him a few times" I can't say that that is interesting. In fact, I didn't necessarily use all of what was there. Parries I would totally use, but the punishment for failing is generally instant death. Forcing me to go back to the beginning. The parry doesn't even fit within the "caution" part of the game's design. Shield bashes... yeah... not useful. Then the strong attacks were rarely useful. Only really useful for the polearm because it has longer range. Generally it's just a normal attack that has a longer wind-up and a worse stamina/damage ratio. Only really good for "changing it up" in PvP. The lack of interesting choices really shows up in PvP. You pretty much stare each other down until someone dun messed up, then you eviscerate them. The stare down isn't interesting and the stabby part is even less interesting and unrewarding because of it.

I'll top this all off by saying. I hope I get flamed for this. That is all.

My Favorite Game

So my favorite game of all time is Deus Ex: The Conspiracy. Of course, since it's me, it would be a lesser known interesting game full of flaws. Since I will be doing lots of praising of this game, let's get the flaws out of the way. Even for the time, Deus Ex had sub-par graphics. Shooting was actually a pretty weak element and this was a first person shooter... technically... I mean, they let you auto-aim, clearly shooting was not the focus of the game. The voice acting is not always top notch (oh Hong Kong...). Sorry to be so specific, but your brother runs like a retard (it looks like the animation was made for someone moving at least twice the speed he actually moves) and this happens about 4 seconds into the game, meaning someone should've noticed (and cared).

All right, so why do I love this game over all the other hundreds I've plopped in my consoles? Choice. Technically all games are about choice. That's why they're called games and not movies (Final Fantasy 13 might've forgotten this... but, you know, most "games" aren't movies). But the ideal of choice permeates every part of Deus Ex. I enjoyed playing as what I would call a commando type. You sneak in, headshot everyone you meet, knock out the computers, and when your cover is eventually blown, you run to an advantageous position, stand still, and kill everyone who comes to get you. I've completed three separate playthroughs. Just to give you an idea of the choice, in the other two I played a "run and gun" type and in the last I played a walking stun gun. By far the hardest was the run and gun playthrough. I say that because it's usually the easiest... Hell, in Assassin's Creed, I was just a psychopathic murderer. Stealth? Lol.

Choice is everywhere. In the level design, story, they facilitated many different play styles... That brings me to the story. If you're going to do sort of a multi-path story then FORGET ABOUT MORALITY. There is no "wrong" or "right" choices in Dues Ex. In fact, in my first playthrough, what? Ten years ago? I went with the rebels because I believed in them... when I played again recently I went with the government... because I believed in them. The game didn't change; I did. And it caused me to choose differently. Now that's profound. Would I have chosen differently if I played Mass Effect or Fallout ten years ago? Nope... because they're about morality and when they tried to be grey, it was just annoying that then some of my choices were arbitrarily good or evil. Sometimes I went with the "evil" choice because it was right. Tacking this arbitrary system on top of it only cheapens my choices. The Conspiracy has a story I felt vested in because my choices mattered and I had the power to choose over everything that mattered.

I actually have low expectations of Deus Ex: The Human Revolution (as I have low expectations of all games), but if they can keep the game chock full of meaningful decisions in everything that matters, while not just "following the model" like Invisible War did, I will be quite content. Hope to see good things from Eidos Montreal.

I Shouldn't Have to Write This

So let's take a really short break from all the game design talk. I'm keeping this as short as I'm capable of (read, not very short) because I have a bum finger. Yes, a bum finger. It hurts to type this, but I'm typing anyway, because this is more important than my comfort.

I'm not one to throw myself behind lofty ideals or tell other people how to live their lives. It's your freaking life. You can choose to be anything. Seriously. You want to help out a third world country? Good for you. You want to rake in a whole bunch of money and be a jerk because you can? Go right ahead. You want to make nothing of your life? You don't have to. You don't have to believe like me and you sure as hell probably shouldn't think like me, but stand up for what you believe in.

It seems like it's become the newest trend wave among college age kids to hate on McDonald's because they make money on "making people fat." I'm not even going to countermand that logic, because that's not the point. If you really hate McDonald's, boycott their food. That's right. You don't have to eat it. Enough people do that? And McDonald's will wise up. In fact, they have. Reinventing the look of their restaurants to seem more classy. Still the hate persists. I've seen people hate on McDonald's. That's cool. That's your right, but, if you do, stop eating their food. Many of the people who say this actually do actively boycott their food, but don't say that and then eat it. It boggles the mind. I've seen it before and I was just incredulous.

Now, I don't think McDonald's has done anything wrong. So, I eat there on occasion. What I hate are when people make something in a creative media not because they believe in it, but because they think it will sell. Never seen a Fast and the Furious movie. Never will. Haven't bought a Mario game since Super Mario 64 (which at least had the interesting "theme park" feel of the level design). This has been a more recent revelation and I'm not perfect at it. Sometimes I screw up too (like on most EA games I've ever bought).

For some reason there was and still is this wave of "Modern Warfare-esque" shooters. I already have Modern Warfare... so why do I want your game? Just being honest here, but I'm pretty sick of seeing these games trying to capitalize on someone else's design. They sell however. Which is why they are made. I think people don't like taking chances with their money, but this really has to stop and it'll take savvy consumers to do it.

I recently saw a Gamasutra article which was supposed to be an interview and the very first question was, "It sounds like you made the decision to take inXile in a more triple-A direction with this release." I stopped reading right there. I'm not going to buy their game. Why? This "Triple-A" distinction. Triple-A to me has proven that the game will probably be polished, but not interesting and interesting is what I thrive on. What I live for. It's a silly distinction, but it helps me weed out which games to buy.

I've become disillusioned with the direction gaming has taken and I hope to change it and the first way I'm going to do that is not buying uninteresting games. You can do the same whenever you make a purchasing decision for any art form and I hope you would. There's no excuse anymore for being uninformed.

Change Logs: Victoria 2

I like to think of myself as a buffer state between France and everything interesting.
P.S. don't my borders look like a guy running with a scarf on?

This will be a series where I talk about what I'd like to see done with the game if my words carried stones. This is meant as no disrespect to the creators of the chosen game. In fact, it means I carefully played the game and thought about it in depth. This isn't a "first glance" or a "review" but a thoughtful response to the design of the game.

So, for those who don't know, Victoria 2 is a grand strategy game created by Paradox Interactive (who seem to have a euphoric love of bringing nations to their knees... oh and history) that encompasses the entire world and 100 years of history during the Victorian Era (1836-1936) where (basically) every nation that existed in that time frame can have its rich history casually rewritten by the player. It is probably one of the most ambitious designs ever completed in professional video games with a robust economic and political model, interesting war mechanics, a pop (population) system encompassing all the able bodied men of the world, rebellions, "spheres of influence," colonization, and probably a kitchen sink somewhere in there too. It truly is a fun game (you know, for nerds like me who love making evil plans including conquest and kittens) and I would ask you to check it out (at least so you have some idea of what the heck I'm talking about). Since the basic design is actually quite solid, I'm going to talk about what I'd like to see in a hypothetical expansion (and why).

And I have a list (the list itself isn't that long, but why and what take a lot of space, also, I take no credit for these ideas):
1. More ability to screw with the economic model, specifically, monopolies and trade embargoes. The economic model in the game is a bit like, "Push button. Get cheese." Which factories you have matters mostly for how many points they give you and, since 1.3, the ability to avoid shortages (by producing more than your pops need). There are lots of ways to add to this system and the main reason it probably is the way that it is is because they weren't sure they were even going to get it working without overclocking a supercomputer. Allowing your government and your people to snatch up domestically produced goods and/or from bordering nations you're all buddy buddy with (or kick in the teeth until they like you) for cheap is a start, but that doesn't give players new cool doohickies to try (that's the point of an expansion, right?).

What would really give players something interesting to do would be to be able to set up monopolies and trade embargoes. Setting up a monopoly (say by producing more than X of the world's Y in your sphere) would allow you to help out your buddies while flipping the bird to other nations and opening up wormholes in the bottom of their treasuries. There are some raw materials you could conceivably do this with such as: precious metals, rubber, and oil as well as some factories that open up later in the game such as: automobiles, aeroplanes, radios (especially radios...), etc. And having a monopoly would make your trade embargoes more effective.

That brings us to trade embargoes. The ability to screw over economies is fun (go bankrupt, yes, yes!). You and your bloc (we'll... we'll get to blocs) could decide to embargo a nation (most likely a nation giving one of you a bloody nose or just one that is being naughty) forcing them to buy their goods more expensively from whoever is left... if anyone is left. The reverse is also helpful to the game. If you are embargoed, you'll have to rely more on domestically produced goods or you could lose mountains of paper. Causing you to want to build factories/get provinces which give you the goods your economy, people and government require.

I admit that monopoly and trade embargo systems would seem difficult given the implementation of the economic system in the game because goods don't have a little "Made in China" stamp. This shouldn't actually make them difficult to implement, but require what will code as a sort of backwards workaround and look to the player like exactly what they're supposed to be. I thought I should point this out.

2. Espionage. I believe espionage is truly the most obvious and enjoyable missing system in Victoria 2. Espionage would give the peace time of the game some ongoing conflict. Spies could also act as "The Great Equalizer" because they would be used more so against the powerful (who would sink quite a lump of their excess gold into rending the spy hordes). The game also has no gap closing mechanism for technology, which espionage could provide. Heck, there's very little that our favorite gun-wielding tux-wearing supermen CAN'T do (theoretically). What I think it should be able to do includes the following: foment/support/trigger rebellion (yes, Korea, fall to communism, muhaha! Too soon?), deteriorate alliances, steal research/inventions, get you in hot water from time to time (espionage should be high risk/high reward), allow you to manufacture incidents (one of many possibilities) which provide you with casus bellis (justifications for war), assassinate cabinet members (I'm all about giving previews of future paragraphs this post), and generally cause chaos (BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!).

3. Blocs along with changes to the war goals and alliance systems. In Real History, the name of the game was secret alliances, deal making behind closed doors, and and trying to impress the big boys so that other big boys wouldn't be able to steal your lunch money as easily. A bloc system would be a loose alliance system layered on top of the "hard" alliances from the sphere system and the "medium" alliances of the normal alliance system. Ok, what would that accomplish uniquely in the game? A bloc system would be a loose enough alliance to eventually polarize much of the world into two major blocs, it would allow you to throw out an idea like, "Let's pick on Egypt cause I'd like Dumyat." and see who else would join in and what they would want before attempting to go to war (thus the change to war goals), and give you a mighty shield from powerful nations you may otherwise not be able to be friends with. Another point to note in favor of blocs is that it's okay to say no. This will not break your alliance like a normal alliance would. There should probably be some penalty, but expulsion from a bloc should generally only happen on government changes or when you've reneged on your promises one too many times.

This gets us to how blocs should be formed. Nations of the same or similar governments should tend to team up (and pull their spheres with them, if applicable). So, like HM's may be fine pairing up with Absolute Monarchies, Democracies should basically hit up everybody like, "I can has cheezburger?", and Fascists should be lonely... very very lonely (you get the idea). This could be activated from the start or researched with a tech. Who starts with these blocks? The most powerful representative of each government type most likely. Who can then start recruiting. Eventually, blocs will roll into other blocs and two major blocs will remain (the Entente and the Central Powers mayhaps). When one bloc provokes another... boy, we may just have a world war on our hands. Bringing me to my fourth point.

4. A world war should be likely to occur. It seems to be general knowledge that a world war was bound to occur in this time period for many reasons. The late game could definitely use more explosions. Not saying that it's bad, but often I have completed the goals I set out for myself and there's nothing left to do for the next 50 years; so I start a new game. Being able to take large swaths of land as an aggressor or rip apart an enemy empire as a defender could really change the dusty old world map quickly (something not possible in the current system... except when the UK eats giant Chinese death states). Whether you were instigating it, trying to stop it, being neutral to watch it unfold, or desperately trying to keep half of the world's armies out of your borders, it would be fun every time and keep me playing to the end.

5. Cabinets. In this game, nations are very impersonal, and there is little reason to change parties once you've gotten the one you want. Both of these could be revised by simply adding cabinets. A cabinet would be a group of named people that comes along with a party. These people would change from time to time and they would give you benefits and/or penalties that could have weighty consequences on a sector of your nation.

I would suggest the cabinet include: general of the army, foreign minister, economic advisor, and head of clandestine affairs. Possibly even a director of research and development to roll the "tech school" system into. Somewhere between 3 and 5 is probably a good number. They could give fairly straight forward bonuses or more sly bonuses. Some possibilities for a general of the army might include: changing stats for all or just certain units, ignoring penalties for amphibious attacks, making overseas personnel cost more, making battles quicker/shorter, messing with supply consumption, angering/pacifying certain types of pops, changing leadership point gain/maximum/officer cap, affecting mobilization in some way, or even modifying when with/against multi-national armies. Those are just "off the top of my head" ideas.

Since these people would change and be tied to parties, you would want to change parties to get their benefits as the game progressed. This would give you more reason to pay attention to elections and carefully use election events. Having a cabinet system would give you more interesting election events, anyways. Allow the developer to have events about specific people named in the game who have meaning. Selecting your party would also require some more thought, because, you will have to probably choose one part of your nation over another (is war or your economy more important to you?).

6. Now there's just the fiddly bits that will probably be added in any expansion no matter what. It'd be nice to see improved AI (AI which would surround, pay attention to combat bonuses/penalties, choose generals for specific tasks, prepare for war, coordinate amphibious attacks, care about attrition, etc). More events (they can get stale). More decisions (decisions are essentially goals and more goals is more replayability). Sprinkling in a few extra nations. Giving rebels two brain cells.

Victoria 2 is a great game with excellent potential to be added and improved upon. Such a great potential, it would be a waste to see the game not get an expansion. If the expansion is in the works somewhere, I would urge the designers not to just think, "What would be cool?" but "What would really improve our game?" This should really be your thought with any expansion pack, but especially a game like this where you literally have a world full of rad possibilities.

Exploring Exploration

My previous roommate Jerry pitched an interesting idea to me one day. What if exploration was the game? This got my hamsters spinning. It is usually an aspect of gaming that receives little thought beyond a few inside jokes and "we bribed the programmers to do this" decisions. Many games have little trinkets, doodads, and generally helpful objects thrown around in corners. Still, even games with lots of hidden elements like Donkey Kong Country 2 (which had great music) aren't primarily about exploring or even necessarily properly reward explorers.

This links us into game playing styles. Many people hit those buttons for different reasons (shocker I know). Some people play to win, some people play to have fun with their buddies, some people play to get away from the fact they have no money and nothing to do, they can play to act, to see what happens , or even to explore. None of these are mutually exclusive, by the way. So, why does an explorer play games? I had to think a lot about this, but I believe I've narrowed it down to two main reasons: to see what they find and because the journey is interesting.

What they find can, of course, be generally useful items, but, to the explorer, finding the best gear isn't nearly as interesting as finding Easter Eggs like: pop culture references, a bit of writing, back story, a hidden place/route, or a gag item. This is because explorers are drawn into the world of your game (exactly why I explored every inch of the Deus Ex games) and nothing breaks up a casual stroll like a good joke. They also like knowing information that not everyone would know. Then they can whip out this "secret" information out in casual conversation with their gamer friends and feel awesome (I know I do >_<).

When it comes to secret rooms and routes, the tougher the better. Where you meander off to needn't actually be too impressive, it's really getting there that's the fun part (and then showing your friends when they don't believe you and being like, "Oh yeah, you owe me a Mudkip now, homes.").

Any game can be spiced up with a few easter eggs to give the explorers something to look for, but what would a game only about exploration look like? There are many ways to thread that needle, but I will share with you mine. In an exploration game, I would have you be an ordinary dude, no magic wands, stretchy limbs, or pyrokinesis. Travelling across a strange and foreign land. There would be many mechanics not present in many of the romanticized overly heroic games of our time: disease, injury, climbing, river crossing (so swimming), gliding, befriending cute animals/pacifying scary beasts, hunting/foraging/crafting, stealth, creating fires, and trap avoidance. Getting around would really be the game and you would have a lot to see, do, and experience. The game would be sparsely populated (you know by actual people), but everything would be placed with purpose. Purpose the player could figure out by exploring.

A town might have strange and alien tribesmen who don't speak your language. They seem to live in an impossible environment and have, uh, unique customs. You could learn about their people and, even, find a "Rosetta Stone" like item to allow you to now speak with them (and not be pumped full of poisonous darts on sight). Or there may be an abandoned cave on the top of a mountain that is full of skeletons (the non-moving kind). By looking at the placement of their bones you can find out that this was once the home of a grouping of ingenious Kobolds (whose traps are still around... watch out!) who defended their home to the last man woman and child by what appears to be a band of giant bears (who you can incidentally find). You may even find a hastily written note by the Kobold King (who is actually no Kobold) just before he was slain defending his throne.

The exploration itself might even be a game mechanic as it is in World of Warcraft (yay, bonus experience!) and Desktop Dungeons. If you haven't played Desktop Dungeons, I suggest you give it a try. In that game, exploration is the only way to regenerate your health/mana creating an excellent dilemma for the player. Do I use up most of my health and mana now taking on a tough monster I can barely beat? Or look for easier prey (I've lost many a game by taking a boss in a challenge dungeon on too soon). The known contrasts with the tantalizing possibilities of the unknown.

A Close Look at Health Bars

Health bars of some sort are used in just about every type of game from racing games to first person shooters to role playing games. It's rare to find a game without some form of health bar system and it's easy to see why. Health bars are simple. They only require a few variables (max health, current health, possibly health regeneration). They are simple for "math crafting" purposes and players can understand them at a glance (that dude's health bar is low, he's almost dead; that dude's health bar is full, he's as fine as frog legs). They have a "heroic" model of the universe in that, until you reach 0 health, you're just as capable as if you had full health. Your avatar moves just as quick, can still fight just fine, and even sit on a coach drinking tea without any of it leaking through the holes in your carapace.

This heroic model is important, because it is often the ideal of a game's design. Epic fantasy world? Check. Swords taller than people? Check. Hair less practical than our massive swords? Of course. Not needing months to heal between each fight? DUH. A truly realistic model would actually be rather frightening and annoying for most games. In a health bar system, a house cat can't normally pounce on your face and break a nail off into your brain killing you instantly. In real life? Well, they have Darwin Awards for a reason.

It is certainly not the only model, however, and not suited for every purpose (unlike Duct Tape). The other most common model is that of our favorite old 80's arcade games. A state-based model! Ok, that probably means nothing to you. This is the system wherein everything holds a tiny warning label saying, "Hey, yo, dude, this'll totally kill you if you, like, touch it. At all." Then you go, "Pfft, it's just a rock." And you trip over it and your kidneys become external organs. This also illustrates the main downside to it as well, there is no punishment besides death. This means your world is filled with mountains of spiky death, because chickens are just as deadly as Ogres. Every time you screw up in the slightest, your squishy bits fly across the screen. This can be rather frustrating because those squishy bits are keeping your spiky blue haired character alive.

So, what if you don't want your character to die to nasty spit balls, but also don't want them to be wading through fireballs going, "Well, that was mildly warm, I suppose." There's a whole host of other systems out there for your designer's heart to gnaw on. These are just the two "juggernauts." Other systems will better model bleeding, recovery, injury, even fate. Some of the stuff generally ignored in a normal health bar system. And here I will model one of my favorite contenders (meaning I didn't come up with it). I was planning to use it for a semi-realistic WW2 pen and paper RPG (that did nothing but get me a cool scholarship).

In this system you have different categories of pain possible such as: near-miss, boo-boo, "Ok, that really hurt," bad injury, and fatal death. They need to be arranged in a hierarchy. The ones higher in the hierarchy, you get more of (e.g. you can take 3 body shots but only 1 headshot). And now is where the interesting mechanics comes in. When someone attacks you, they inflict a certain category of damage. A Nerf bat may inflict only "light damage," but a truck hitting you inflicts "extreme damage" (though I used a system with bullets whereby, the more accurate the shot, the more your vital organs are compromised). However, if you've used up all of your "scratches" health, then it deals damage of the NEXT CATEGORY. You die when you can't mark off a lower category because none exists (or when the category of damage is "instant death").

This base idea is also ripe for modification like a Borg drone. I had personally modified it so that whenever you lost all of a category, you got an injury which did Bad Stuff (tm) to your hearty little warrior. Also, I had a category of damage (the highest) called "Blood" that you couldn't receive directly, only by having untreated bullet holes. Such that continually bleeding would eventually turn your body into a cold lifeless husk (unless a medic smacked you with an Ace). This is a great compromise between state-based and health. You basically just have different kinds of health. You can die instantly or slowly, be injured, but not out, be dangerously low but press on. It's especially good for a turn-based system.

What else is there? Well, there are also condition tracks. Anyone nerdy enough to have played or heard of the Star Wars Roleplaying Game: Saga Edition (because we all know you wanted a Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition sneak peak, what? That was only me?) will probably get the basic gist of my insane ramblings. A condition track is really nothing more elaborate than a state-based system with more than two states. Allowing you to actually be injured instead of "enjoying the sunshine" or "enjoying the hereafter." Someone pokes you with a pointy stick and you move down the states, slowly getting more impaired, until your family can no longer recognize your mangled corpse. This is for people who want to have a couple of steps between breathing and not breathing where each has significant repercussions for your hero.

These are just a few ideas. Trying to list even all the types of health systems they tested out for the aforementioned 4th Edition would probably fill up a Dark Grimoire From Beyond the Deep with knowledge. Hopefully you have achieved enlightenment and will now be able to unlock the Seventh Gate or just realized that you take health systems for granted in games and they are imperfect (as is everything, especially Computational Linguists).