🚀 go-pugleaf

Ho-ho-ho!

No, wait; wrong thread. This is the "what have you been playing"
thread, not the Christmas give-away, although that "game" took up an
unexpected amount of my time this month. But between that, actual
Christmas and, you  know, real life I still managed to get in some
time to play some games.

Since we all know the drill, let's skip the rest of the preliminaries
and get right to the list.


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Short and Sweet
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* Firewatch (new)
* Max Payne 3 (replay)
* Kings Quest VI To Heir Is Human (replay)
* Postal Redux (new)
* Dying Light (new)


TL; DR 
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* Firewatch (new)
Ho-hum; another month, another so-called "narrative game".

The problem with most narrative games is that they are extremely
lacking in either narrative or game; they fail at storytelling and
action. With the former, they typically have the player follow a
per-determined story-line in which the players have no stake and thus
no emotional involvement. These games fail in the latter by offering
absolutely no challenge; even taken as glorified "walking simulators"
they more often than lead the player (ever so slowly, to make up for
the lack of anything else) through vacant set-pieces that ultimately
all look the same.  

And, in all fairness, this description would probably describe
Firewatch as well.  In truth, its story is as shallow as most other
games and - like other "walking sims", there are no real puzzles and
no real danger. Similarly, while there is some variety of biomes, in
the end the entirety of the game has you hiking through a forest and
there's only so much you can do to disguise that fact. The big
difference between Firewatch and most of its competitors is that it is
so well written as to disguise the failings of its genre.

Unfortunately, to go into detail about its story would unfairly ruin
the experience for anyone who hasn't played it. Let it suffice to say,
however, that it is one of the better paced stories of any game - be
it of the narrative-game genre or in more traditional games - and
features both excellent dialogue writing and voice-acting. While
ultimately the game still lacks in actual threat or challenge,
nonetheless the story is presented so well that I was well engaged by
the sense of threat and mystery as the tale played out. The writing
leads the player to invest themselves in the character, which only
makes the unfolding mystery all the more captivating. While some found
the denouement disappointing, I thought it an interesting capstone to
an allegory about how we handle our responsibility to tragedy. 

Having said this, Firewatch does suffer from one major problem that is
also common to its genre: it lacks in re-playability. While it has a
strong story, it does not lend itself to repetition; doing so - and
knowing how the story will end - you'll find the game has lost its
allure, its mystery, its magic and you are left again with a rather
lusterless game where you blindly follow the breadcrumbs until you
reach the end of the game. Given that you can get through the game in
a two or three hours, a just argument could be made that one does not
get fair value for their dollar. The developers have tried to balance
this out by offering both a "play with commentary mode" and a "free
roam mode" that unlock after you complete the story the first time,
but those who paid full price for the game may still walk away
disappointed.

Myself, though, I was quite pleased with my purchase. I got an
interesting yarn well-told through some excellent voice-acting and
placed in a graphically - if not too differentiated - environment. I
can't imagine I'll be returning to the game anytime soon - not, at
least, until I've forgotten some of the specific details and can
revisit the setting afresh - but I feel my time and money were well
spent. Firewatch is an excellent example of the genre that other
narrative games consistently fail to achieve.




* Max Payne 3 (replay)
I'll grant this to Max Payne 3: it is one of the pretties ugly games
I've played. Pretty because its graphics are still - three years after
its release - still impressive, with excellent textures, lighting
effects and animations. Ugly because it portrays all the seedier sides
of the world - ghettos, slums, industrial warehouses - that don't make
for interesting visuals. It's all very beautifully detailed, but just
never of anything you'd really want to see in the first place.

It's also very stylish, from the film noir plot to the dramatic cuts
and cut-scenes to the whacked-out-on-booze visual effects. This is,
however, less praise than it might first appear; the game is arguably
too stylish for its own good and often gets in the way of its own
gameplay. I very quickly got annoyed by those visual glitches - the
blurring and double vision - that represented Max's hung-over state;
it was neat for the first level or two but became quite unwelcome as
the game dragged on. The cut-scenes were all very well done but -
serving as interstitials that hid the frequent level loads -
interrupted game-flow in the worst way; just as I started getting into
a battle, the game would pull me into the next cut-scene. Worse, too
often the game reset my weapons after the cut-scene was over; a number
of times it switched me over to an empty gun just as I was thrown into
a battle. Nor did it help that - while perhaps true to the noir
tradition - none of the characters were really likeable. In a noir
film, this is acceptable; you only spend an hour or two with the
characters anyway but I spent 12 hours with Max and friends and very
quickly tired of his self-destructive antics.

The gameplay was mixed. Obviously designed for a console, the game was
ridiculously easy on a PC; with a mouse-n-keyboard, I consistently
scored head-shot after headshot with incredible ease. It was so
untasking that I almost never utilized Max Payne's trademark
bullet-time powers because it was almost never necessary to do so. The
combat arenas were disappointingly small too - another restriction
forced on the game by console hardware - and too often the game relied
on re-spawning enemies rather than utilize strong AI or interesting
tactics. Mix in some annoying quick-time events and a lack of
differentiation in levels (functionally, there was little difference
between the battles in the Brazilian favellas, the slums of Hoboken,
or the fishing town on the Amazon) and the combat - while initially
intense - quickly turned into more chore than challenge.

Okay in concept but poor in delivery, I was hard pressed to keep
playing to the end. 




* Kings Quest VI To Heir Is Human (replay)
I was first introduced to the King's Quest series back in the early
'80s; 1983 or '84, I think. I played it with my friend on his then
state-of-the-art Apple III computer (a souped up Apple ][e whose
greatest claim to fame was that one of the official troubleshooting
tips for when it inevitably locked up was to pick it up about an inch
and drop it, in order to reseat any chips that had become dislodged
because the machine ran so hot). Coming from an era of text-only
adventures and plot-free arcade shooters, I was intrigued by a game
that not only had a strong story but was gorgeously rendered with
full-screen, full color images. My pal and I never got very far into
the game - both because Sierra adventures were notoriously
unforgiving, but also because the text-entry interface was cumbersome;
neither of us knew how to type. But I never forgot those wonderful
first moments when I watched my well-animated avatar wander across the
colorful landscape, obeying my every command as I quested for my
kingship.

So it was no surprise that years later (1992, to be precise) that I
was quick to purchase King's Quest VI when it was first released.
Actually, I purchased it twice: in 1992, for the original DOS version
released on 3.5" floppy disks, and a year later for the "talkie"
CD-ROM version that ran on either DOS or Windows. Again I was
enthralled, and even today I consider the sixth game to be the best of
the franchise. For all it is a saccharine-soaked fairy-tale
love-story, it is a /well-done/ saccharine-soaked fairy-tale
love-story, and it holds up to this day, pixelated 256-color graphics
and all.

True, some of its puzzles remain frustratingly obtuse, often solvable
only through trial-and-error and after many, many deaths. Even back in
the day, its controls were a bit clunky, especially with the few
time-based puzzles and all the moreso to somebody who replays the game
since spoiled by twenty-years of game-design advances. And while its
callbacks to traditional fairy-tales are a tradition to the franchise,
at times they made the game feel oriented more towards pre-teens than
adults. But its gorgeous backgrounds, charming storyline, numerous
interesting characters, cheerful music and excellent voice-acting more
than counterbalance these faults. Equally impressive - at least for
when the game was released, if not so much today - was that the game
offered two different endings. My only real complaint is that the
GOG.com version I played used the DOS version rather than the Windows
version; the latter featured improved sprites, video, icons and
character portraits (although in fairness, it would probably be quite
difficult getting a Windows 3.1/WinG version to run on modern
hardware).

That I still consider Kings Quest VI one of those great classics that
every PC gamer should play at least once, even after 23 years, stands
as a testament to the game's excellent design and production values. 



* Postal Redux (new)
One of the more memorable features of 1993's Syndicate was lighting
people on fire with your flamethrower. The little sprites would run
around, arms flailing and screeching in agony until they crumbled into
a pile of ash and bone. It was shockingly brutal and so unexpected
that it was funny; I'm sure I wasn't the only player who purposely lit
civilians on fire just to watch them dash about in their panicked
death throes. Apparently the developers of Postal ("Running with
Scissors") enjoyed this as much as I did, because they essentially
made a game around this trope.

I never played Postal when it was first released in 1996. It was just
one of many isometric shooters released around that time - the
Crusader games, Gender Wars, SCUD Industrial Revolution, Bedlam - and
its only apparent gimmick was that it was purposefully trying to be
controversial (and it was successful too, garnering attention from
Jack Thompson and the "video-games-are-evil" club). But it didn't seem
to stand out in any way beyond that, so it was only until recently
that I bought the game. 

As it turns out, my initial reactions were correct; this is a shallow
game. On its most basic level, the shooting mechanics are acceptable;
I point, I shoot, things die. This simplicity, however, is never
backed up by anything else; the game lacks in graphics, interesting
level design, good sound or music, AI, puzzles... even challenge. It's
shooting is about as sophisticated as 1985's "Robotron", except
without that seminal's game waves of enemies constantly charging
towards you. It's fun for about five minutes, and then boredom quickly
sets in. The shock-humor of the game - the aforementioned people on
fire, the gut-shot victims crawling about begging for mercy -
entertain for another few minutes before that too quickly becomes
repetitive. In addition, the levels themselves are fairly short and
you can waltz through the core game in a couple of hours (there are
bonus levels, but they are just more of the same). It's a tiresome
shooter far surpassed by almost any modern games and even most of its
contemporaries. 

 
* Dying Light (new)
The other day I played one of Capcom's "Dead Rising" games -  I forget
which one since they are all sort of the same anyway. I generally
enjoyed the large open world and huge hordes of zombies, but disliked
the zanier aspects of the characters and plots. I wonder if Techland -
the developers of Dying Light - felt the same way because their game
is essentially a Dead Rising clone with the wackiness stripped away.
In some ways this made the game more enjoyable, but at the same time
Dying Light felt characterless and flat in comparison.

Functionally, the game is quite impressive. It has a huge open world -
made even larger with the addition of "The Following" DLC pack. Given
their size, I was rather astonished by how fast the maps loaded, even
on a slow mechanical hard-drive. The frame-rate was silky smooth, even
with settings maxed and on an older GPU. The parkour-focused combat is
slick and easy to learn, and the move-set is impressive; I was very
quickly doing slide-kicks, grapples and vaults as I hacked my way
through the undead horde. The actual gameplay-loop was less exciting;
Dying Light takes its cue from Ubisoft's open-world games, littering
the landscape with side-missions and collectibles that aren't
individually very exciting but at least offered a reason to free-roam
the game's giant map ("The Following" DLC at least added a useful
alternative in the form of driving challenges with the addition of a
car). 

A major downside of the game for me were the weapons; variety was
largely mechanical in nature, and it utilized a common/rare/unique
color-coding system similar to Diablo (or Techland's own "Dead Island"
games). Technically, the game features thousands of weapons but in
actual gameplay it pretty much boils down to "blade", "hammer",
"pistol/rifle" and "shotgun", with the major differentiation being how
much damage was inflicted. More concernedly, weapons only have limited
durability, and break after too much usage. Although I understand the
idea behind this mechanic - having your best sword break during a
fight can be a terrifying adrenalin rush - in practice the weapons
broke far too quickly, making the constant scrounging for new gear a
dull grind which artificially extended the game's length. 

As much as I enjoyed the melee combat, I was less enthralled with the
first-person parkour; the perspectives never quite looked right, and
never felt as fluid and natural as, say, the third-person platforming
of the Assassin's Creed series. It didn't help that climbing down was
far more difficult than going up, and too often I fell to my death
instead of lowering myself down level by level. While games like
Mirror's Edge and Dying Light show that first-person parkour is
possible, it still isn't my preferred method of in-game acrobatics.
The game's strengths are its exploration and combat, not its
platforming. Unfortunately, certain missions of the game stress the
latter, to their detriment. The final mission is especially terrible
in this (and it doesn't help that the end-boss is defeated in a series
of dull - and completely unexpected, since its a mechanic that isn't
used anywhere else in the game - quick-time events). 

When it stuck to its strengths the game was largely enjoyable, but it
was not a very memorable experience. While it is a striking
improvement over its predecessor - the Dead Island Franchise - it
still has a number of shaky bits. Hopefully the developers will learn
as much from Dying Light and their next game will actually be
something I can whole-heartedly recommend, but its not something I can
honestly do with this one. 

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And that's how I rounded out this year's gaming. I hope you guys had
as entertaining a 2016 as I did. Be sure to let us all know how you
spent this last month by telling us all:

What Have You Been Playing... IN DECEMBER 2016?