Let's Play Finale

I know you're all just on the edge of your seats waiting for my next bit of serious content to be released. I know I'm setting the suspense pretty high by taking so long. The thing is, I've been really busy lighting the ugly looking houses in my city on fire so that they can have a beautiful sendoff of gracious flame before being replaced with something more aesthetically appealing... Also school. I've been doing that too.

Anywabork, recording this let's play didn't take much time or work so I'm glad I had it to help keep some form of content going.

    --LazerBlade

Abuse

So I've been talking a lot about Abuse both online and IRL. It is really interesting from a number of perspectives, and there is a lot to say about it. After mulling it over, I came to the conclusion that covering it on this blog would mean the start of a multi-part series, and I wouldn't be able to point some things out as well without actual gameplay footage. I eventually hit up my friend CyberCrash and sat down for a let's play.



I'm not guaranteeing to see this game all the way though, but if we keep coming up with stuff to say and people are interested, we might.


    --LazerBlade

Hotline Miami And Story Games

Any cursory exploration of my game analysis/design content should reveal that I am really into artsy story games. I like a game where you have a reason to be doing what you're doing, and I don't have a lot of patience for games with a pretentious storyline or hours of filler gameplay devoid of context. This is an interesting thing about Yahtzee's triangle. It's not just about how games are balanced, but how people's tastes are. I like context above most else in a game, and you've probably heard me ranting about how game X had a dumb story, or game Y had repetitive gameplay, but none of those personal partialities keep me from really digging Hotline Miami.

Why I Don't Love Fallout

I know it's not Saturday, and I know I've been inactive for weeks. I've been, like, busy, okay? I don't care about trying to stick to a set of specific set game analysis concepts to discuss anymore. I'm going to write about what I like, gun blammit. Maybe that way the content will somehow get less sporadic and stop bleeding to death.

Ahem.

So I've played a ton of Fallout: New Vegas. It scratches a few of my videogame itches really well. While it gives me a massage and provides me with mugs of melted dark chocolate to slurp. I definitely love the strategical aspects and the character building. I love exploring a big world full of interesting characters and choices. I love roleplaying different characters and having them all deal with these choices differently. I love the atmosphere, aesthetic, and depth of the game. But I don't like the original Fallout.

Crono Trigger: Five Minutes After

It is argued between fans of media used for story telling whether or not fridge logic is inherently bad. I personally don't think it to be bad in all cases, but I do believe that certain circumstances can cause it to be so. That is why I've taken to recording my thoughts about a game just after I finish it, coming back later when it has stewed in my mind for awhile. Maybe I'll follow up on things I missed and complain about any story braking fridge logic at that time. For now, I'll just talk about a few things that stuck out to me.

Today's game is Crono Trigger, the first JRPG I have played through from beginning to end. I usually don't like JPRG's, but I liked this one a lot. I set a high bar for if a game was worth my time in retrospective or not, and this game effortlessly sailed over it with plenty of room to spare.

Infiltrator Part 43 - Sights On Editor

Do you think this blog is becoming an Infiltrator dev journal with random game design articles and music updates popping up every once in awhile? Then congratulations, you passed the being observative test! Now shut up and read this Infiltrator dev update because I'm already spreading myself thinner than the peanut butter on your sandwich when your little sister Julibop who prefers Jam makes it for you just to get the giant stack of ridonkulous things I do done.

Infiltrator Part 41 - Video Time

This time you get your Infiltrator discussion in video form!

    --LazerBlade

Storytelling in Games

So you have this great story. It has interesting characters, clever twists, and asks deep and profound questions that make the person who finally receives the story really think. Then, random game pundits in the massive chunk of oddness that is the realm of cyberspace completely forbid the idea of offloading your story to a bunch of cutscenes. "After all, this is an interactive medium," we say, "If we wanted to watch a movie, we would. We are here to play." And no, we-ahem-they don't like the idea of you making the player sit through a bunch of audio logs or pause to read giant chunks of text either.

"Okay, fine!" you say, throwing your hands up as part of your sarcastic concession. "How do I get this amazing story into the game? How can I narrate it? How can I get all of this exposition out without making the player sit through cutscenes or read walls of text?" First, I congratulate you for being truly unique in that you are willing to write a good story for your game, and then be willing to try to find the best way to express it. Second, I would like to answer your question by writing about it in the time when I'm not busy doing school, producing music, creating videogames, experimenting with electronics, or saving the world from trans-dimensional jelly toads.

Infiltrator Part 38 - HUD, EMP, and stability

It seems like I have this internal clock that every few months says "Hey! That HUD could totally be better designed!" I then proceed to completely rewrite the code for it and move everything around. That happened again, but this time I found that I had anticipated this earlier and redesigned the HUD code to be more accommodative to change in the future.

Also, accommodative should totally be a word.

Infiltrator Part 34 - Style Cam

There isn't a whole ton to say about this session. I guess it's mostly because a lot of the work that got done was under the hood where the end user will likely never see. Still, there are some pretty major changes happening on the outside as well.

Infiltrator Part 31 - With a two in it!

The long and painful move from SFML 1.6 to SFML 2 is finally complete. There actually isn't a whole ton of difference, except that now my framerate has taken a giant tan- GUN BLAM IT! Just a minute...

Okay, so now the long and painful-aw skip it.

Infiltrator Part 29 - Debug Draw

After a few days I come up with a good set of rules for the Shredder AI. It's a simple four mode program that I should be able to implement in a week or two. I should get started on it, but first let's just make a few little tweaks in order to make sure the gameplay feels right. I mean, what's the probability of getting sidetracked and going off trying to fix huge bugs you didn't know were there? Pretty big I guess. Deal with it.

Infiltrator Part 27 - Design Explanation #1

The next version of Infiltrator is currently under testing and development. I'm roughing out the base AI code for the shredder enemies but that will take awhile. To pass the time, I'll explain the game design and provide many actual details. I do have a design document of sorts, but it's spread out over several text documents, concept pictures, scribbling on the backs of napkins, and prototypes. While I'm making no attempt to be all formal and complete in terms of this post being the new design document, it will likely be a lot more organized than any of my other notes.

Infiltrator Part 25: Direction

So a little while back I mentioned that Infiltrator had almost enough gameplay and mechanics to form the base of a real game rather than a profitless unending project for fun. Upon reflection, I think if I change the direction this game was originally going I can finish this sucker at some point and have a mildly playable game in my portfolio. I don't know if any of you have know, but neither of the two games I've finished are really that great, much less an accurate representation of my current skill as both are more than two years old.

Gameplay vs. Story

I've done an awful lot of writing about game design. I kind of assumed this was a given, but I've never really stated it before: I think videogames should be an artistic medium. I don't agree with a lot of videogame artists on many points, but we all agree on this one. I think a lot of us also agree that being an artistic medium, it's unique story telling abilities are something we can't give up. This is the driving force behind this post. How do we use gameplay to tell a story anyway?

Choice in Gameplay

There has been a TON of talk about videogame choice and how it should be done. I have no particular reason to believe that what I have to say hasn't been said before, but even if it has been said a thousand times my repeating it can only add pressure toward applying it. That said, I want to talk about implementing choice in terms of gameplay mechanics and systems. I'm not here to talk about the artistic or writing side this time.

Infiltrator Part 24 - Fighting Fighters

This session was actually finished a few days ago, but I wanted to add a few extra features before I wrote about it. I then found out that said features were quite a bit more complex than I thought, and I ended up moving it to the list of long term features. Anyway, I have some interesting new bells and whistles to show you all.

Video Game High Score Systems

So after a short break, I'm back to hit you all with a new article. This time I want to discuss video game high score systems.  These have been around for quite awhile, so there has been plenty of experimentation with the concept, leaving us with a wealth of knowledge we can use to analyze it.

Action RPGs

I like almost anything that takes multiple good things and mixes them well. I like Pizza, programming(a blend of science and art), cross-genre music, a well color coordinated room, and I like action RPG games. But what makes a good action RPG tick? Why do we all love them so? Why must so many articles and analysis' start off with a bunch of questions?

This may be a bit subjective, I.E: why I love action RPGs, but I highly doubt that this won't produce fruitful game design ideas and knowledge.

Mass Effect 3 - Insert Vivid and Clever Simile About Cover Based Shooting here

After gabbing on about the story for an entire article, it's time to talk gameplay. The action gameplay specifically, as I'm saving the RPG like systems and other stuff for later articles.

The original Mass Effect had a cover system that was fiddly and awkward, but still held up well enough. The cover system in Mass Effect 2 was better, but still broken. So the third, final, and theoretically ultimate Mass Effect game should build on the knowledge gathered from the last two games and create an solid, effective cover system right? WRONG! Mass Effect 3 has the worst cover system of all three games.