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atissi · 4 years

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What advice would you give someone who wants to play Pathologic but is also terrified of screwing up really badly because I've played just enough of it to feel like there's no way I can succeed without looking stuff up but I don't want to do that! Just basic tips and/or reassurances if you have any?

Updated: Feb. 27 2021 (since I've finished and am replaying P2)

See, the thing about Pathologic is that it’s not possible to “succeed” like you do in other video games. There’s no happy ending for everyone. In the same sense, you can’t really fail. The game accommodates a wide variety of deaths and mistakes—even in Pathologic Classic HD, you can get a character's ending if you hoard enough medicine by the end of the 12 days, no matter how many people get sick or die. In Pathologic 2, everyone can die, but you’ll still be able to get an ending. Even some of the "bad" endings are fun in their own right. Sometimes, the game will reward you with more content because you failed in the first place.

All that being said, I totally relate to your fears. I’ll start by talking about Pathologic 2 first, since I’m more familiar with it. Then there will be some tips on playing Pathologic Classic HD.

Pathologic 2 is incredibly punishing, both emotionally and mechanically. I’ve seen people adapt to this through 3 different playstyles. I’ll rank them in terms of “least close to the intended gaming experience” to “most close”.

1. Just cheat.

“wrt cheating, as a notorious cheater, id recommend trying to do the game as legitimately as possible regardless! if there are some aspects that you absolutely do not vibe with, even with reduced difficulty (for me that's hunger mechanics), i would say that you can load in items to mitigate this aspect. and, tying in with the second point, if you complete a run this way you can always go back and try it legitimately since you've (sort of) gotten an understanding of the mechanic.” - Onion

If you have really bad anxiety, or just dont have the time available to do the other playstyles, cheating is a way to engage with Pathologic 2′s excellent story. Fiddling with the difficulty controls is allowed. Spawning in endless food for yourself is possible. I can even get you in touch with someone who uses cheat codes in the game regularly to get game assets. If changing the game is what it takes for you to get through it, I think it’s better than nothing. But I’d personally at least encourage you to try an Imago playthrough first. Decide if it’s too difficult for you after that. And again: Pathologic 2 is constantly trying to trip you up. It’s meant to be difficult. Sometimes you’ll fail and the game won’t tell you if you could have prevented it. Just keep going. But like Onion said, cheating works as a supplement.

2. Replay, replay, and replay, until you get it right.

“You can always replay. You have more time than they do. Also save states are your friend.” - Alex

“reload as much as possible, do NOT look things up. your first playthru WILL be bad, and thats good!!! experience it fully yourself first. [and] “reload as much as possible” meaning like: [it] isnt a crime, you can do it as many times as possible. but dont get stressed about doing everything perfectly. its an experience!!!” - Zee

There’s no penalty for using your save states. If you get stuck in a death loop, go back as far as you need to in order to get things right. Hopefully this means starting a day over and using your time more effectively. Personally, I got to Day 7 before realizing I had to restart from Day 1, because I was doing that badly. Trust me, if you’ve gotten one miracle cure and 10 bottles of water by then, you’ll be doing better than I was. My friend Bee had trouble too, and took 92 hours to finish their first playthrough. A replay playstyle takes a LOT of time. But Pathologic 2 is so rich in content that replaying isn’t even as annoying as it could be. And this is also the best way to complete as many quests and save as many people as you want. Whenever you’re scared, just remember: you can always go back on your choices! (Other than the theatre’s death penalties. But nothing can help you with those.)

3. Just go through it.

Again. You’re not supposed to succeed in Pathologic. In the words of the lead translator Kevin Snow, “…I know [Pathologic 2’s] script and this is different from other games: there’s so much story locked behind failure and death. You’ll die, and you can’t save everyone. That doesn’t gate you from story; it gives you more. Resist, survive, but continue.” It’s only when you’re suffering that you experience the story so viscerally. That’s when the choices mean something. Sacrificing your own health or the health of others–saving tinctures for yourself, breaking into houses, killing people, choosing not to help people because you just don’t have time–these are impactful because you’re experiencing the mechanical repercussions of your actions. You are not a removed arbiter of the Town’s suffering. Everyone in Pathologic is having the worst 12 days of their life, and you’re dying right alongside them. Spoilers for Day 4, but I don’t think visiting the Rod and seeing the Tragedians would have affected me so deeply if I wasn’t actively starving for the entire sequence. It served as a reminder that I wasn’t the only one in pain; it was heart-breaking and heart-warming. Which I think is Pathologic at its core.

Try to see your failures in the game as another form of success. You’re experiencing the game as it’s meant to be played. And when you feel bad about all the people you’ve failed, remember that this is all a play. The game knows it’s artificial. You can replay the game after you finish–and feel free to use cheats or lowered difficulties on a replay–in order to get everything right. Your mistakes aren’t permanent! But on a first playthrough, try to tough through the hardships. You’ll have a more fulfilling time.

Other tips

You can use these 3 playstyles in combination if you need to. I let myself die when I feel like I deserved the punishment, or reload when I feel like I don’t. Bee managed to finish Day 11 by lowering the game difficulty in the final stretch. Just approximate the intended gaming experience as much as you can.

As for gameplay guides, I don’t think anyone I’ve met recommends it (at least for Pathologic 2). The game does interesting things with when and where it reveals information to you, often in ways that are deliberately inconveniencing. You want to experience that on your own. I also think Pathologic 2 is relatively good at telegraphing mechanics or quests. compared to Patho Classic. That said, I do have tips that I wish I knew before playing:

Sprint everywhere. I know the town is beautiful. But you’re on a hell of a time crunch. If you finish your quests early you can forage or trade for more resources, or just bottom out your exhaustion bar. Sprinting does not make your exhaustion go up faster, and water is plentiful in the first few days. Just do it! Save your own time!

Save a lot. Even if you’re not gonna die on your way in and out of the Broken Heart, this game is chock-full of choices, down to the resource management. If you waste a swig of twyrine, you’ll want a good save point to reload at. You can load any save point in your timeline, so save as often as you want. Keep track of where clocks are on the map--the game tags these in the building descriptions. (For that matter, keep track of where beds are. I didn’t realize I could sleep at Vlad Sr.’s place, which made me waste SO much time travelling between the Shelter and the Lair.)

Learn the trading economy. Everyone holds items at different values. Even the kids value certain nuts over others. There are also some interesting conversion rates between items, like peanuts to soap to pemmican. Make the most of the items you’re bartering. And for that matter, try to build up a cache of items valuable to little girls, in case you find one with a schmowder. The kid’s caches are valuable for trading too: twyrine can show you the locations.

This is also a good spoiler-free guide to Pathologic 2′s mechanics.

For Pathologic Classic HD, I haven’t personally played it, but I’m under the impression that it’s easier than Pathologic 2 because there are less character perma-deaths and no death penalties. The advice about reloading still applies. Here’s what Ally says:

“id recommend using a spoiler free guide (Bachelor, Haruspex, and Changeling guides) but other than that read the diary and letters carefully and try to keep track of npcs that could be affiliated with quests. also! some quests have different options for endings so there could be multiple ways to complete them. stock up on food on the earlier days, and after the inquisitor arrives because the prices drop. try to stealth kill with melee weapons when you can, and also reserve your bullets. …also make sure to trade with the children a lot! hold onto objects like the hooks and flowers [to get schmowders. Like I said before, to win the game you only need enough cures to heal the Bound.] …another tip is to keep a pen and paper around to take notes. like when i got the tincture recipes instead of keeping them in my inventory i just wrote them down.”

And that’s it! If you need specific advice or clarification, feel free to DM me! I love talking about this game. I can also get you in touch with anyone mentioned in this post (except Kevin Snow LMAO). Pathologic has an amazing story and I want everyone to experience it!!!

#inbox #beepbeep.txt #pathologic

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thetriggeredhappy · 4 years

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👀 hmmmmmm?

ok, the WIP itself is going under a cut because it’s pretty long, but the explanation will stay up here above it.

so the premise was that i wanted more practice with experimental storytelling because, i’ll be honest, i was in a weird place mentally and that’s one way i work shit out. so i did the thing everyone else who writes for the TF2 motherfuckers does and i messed with the understood conventions of Respawn. the idea was that Respawn does three things: first of all, it brings people back from the dead and to a previous save state of them, a singular state at a specific age for all of them. this means that none of them age, because every time they die, that counter just restarts. second, it erases basically all memory from before they died--it resets them to a state before they’d made those memory pathways. then the team often catches up whoever died on what all happened, and they believe it at face value. however, if the whole team dies, they’re basically entirely reset. and thirdly, the system has tweaked them in a very specific way; none of them are very prone to asking questions, and none of them are very prone to going anywhere off-base.

the idea was, there would be a singular repeating opening to every single chapter--or maybe three respawns per chapter or so, depending on length--and every time, one or two words would be tweaked just a little bit in a weird game of telephone. there would be slight deviations in one direction or another, elaborating in different ways, with two constants: seven days after Scout last died he would realize he was in love with Sniper, and that never, ever, ever would they interact or witness a human being besides the ones on the team. this is because scout’s save state is that he’s trapped shortly before he realizes he’s in love, and because the team has no concept of time outside of their base, and unbeknownst to them, the world outside of their little sphere has ended, and they’ve been fighting in the gravel pits for hundreds of years. the announcer is just pre-recorded messages, the other team is also caught in the same system, the bases are entirely self-sufficient, and none of them know that the rest of the world has died.

i realized 1. i could run with this concept literally forever, and this would be like 100k words, and i do not have the time or energy to ever run with it for that long i would Literally Die, 2. i could probably adapt the concept in some ways to be applicable to original work that i could then potentially make money off of because i do think the idea’s pretty good, and then eventually 3. Oh Wait I Sort Of Wrote This Already, I Did A Whole Play On Time Travel, Like A Groundhog Day Thing, I Can’t Do This Again I’ll Die

but since i’m almost positive i’ll never finish it, here’s the work i already have featuring the editing notes as well. the working title was “Loops!AU”. literally absolutely feel free to run with this idea

1. His name is Mickey Lawrence Mundy, and he’s thirty-one years old, and he’s been a smoker for fifteen of those years. He’s tall by American standards and short by Australian, and his parents hate his chosen career path and fashion choices, and his favorite holiday is Halloween because it’s in the fall, his favorite season.

Not a single one of those details would ever be important, out here in the desert far from everywhere, fighting and killing.

The missions start and stop abruptly with little warning, sometimes heralded by the sound of a little motorcycle carrying a girl who’s worth a hundred times her weight in danger, but generally not. He always goes with, even when he’s not so terribly needed, because he’s told to and he gets paid if he does. He hasn’t checked his back account balance in almost two years. He knows it’s probably giving some poor Swiss intern a stress ulcer just looking at it. Rarely does something memorable happen, at most one of his teammates getting taken out and needing to be retrieved, but usually not much of anything at all. They’re important though, apparently. That’s how he’s getting so much money.

His teammates are as remarkable as they are unremarkable—so oddly human despite being absolute freakshows, much like himself. He’d argue with the Spy, avoid the Medic, try and keep the Pyro in his line of sight, and tended to get pestered by the Scout since he was the only person who wouldn’t actively chase him off.

But that last one has been acting strange lately. It’s been a few days since the last mission, which generally makes him pretty antsy, but this is a different sort. He’s been staring at Sniper a lot, eyes sharp from underneath the shade of the brim of his hat, like a wild cat hiding in the brush.

Dangerous, is the word he’s looking for.

2. His name is Mickey "Mick” Mundy, and he’s thirty-one years old, and he’s been bitten by more exotic animals than most people have even seen with the scars to prove it. He’s tall by American standards and short by Australian, and his parents don’t pick up the phone for him anymore for some reason, and his favorite season is the fall because it’s got his favorite holiday stuck smack dab in the middle.

Not a single one of those details would ever be important, out here in the desert far from everywhere, fighting and killing.

The missions start and stop abruptly with little warning, sometimes heralded by the sound of a little motorcycle carrying a girl who’s worth a hundred times her weight in danger, but generally not. He always goes with, even when he’s not so terribly needed, because he’s told to and he gets paid if he does. He hasn’t checked his back account balance in quite some time. He knows it’s probably giving some poor Swiss intern a stress ulcer just looking at it. Rarely does something memorable happen, at most one of his teammates getting taken out and needing to be retrieved from Respawn, but usually not much of anything at all. The missions are important though, apparently. That’s how he’s getting so much money.

Dangerous, is the word he’s looking for.

[[every time Sniper dies and gets reset, change tiny little details about the paragraph above, like a game of telephone, deleting more and more information along the way. have sniper remember details about scout that he shouldn’t know, or circumvent earlier problems without thinking about it—ex. scout has an allergic reaction to something sniper cooks and later sniper cooks a different meal even though previous conversation is borderline identical. have one or two times where scout and sniper get in an argument because one of them died but the other didnt and they don’t remember each other correctly]]

[[final chapter scene, scout shows up frazzled, some conversation, deviating an awful lot from previous scripts]]

“Remember Woodstock?” Scout asked, tilting his head. “Remember when that was a thing that happened, and it was a big fuckin’ deal, all sorts of magazines talkin’ about it, it was on TV and everything?”

“Yeah,” Sniper agreed, nodding.

“But do you remember what year that was?”

“Well,” Sniper said, “I,” Sniper said, “I, well, obviously it was fairly recent.”

“Uh-huh,” Scout said, and it wasn’t encouraging.

“Had to be, what, three or four years ago?”

“Weird, because, uh, because the Doc—I asked him about it, right?—he said it had to have been a few months ago. And Spy said it had to have been almost a decade ago. And Mumbles didn’t know what I was talkin’ about.”

There was silence for a few long seconds.

“Because—because the thing is—“ Scout scrubbed at his hair underneath his hat. “—I, I had that written down. I wrote that down, I, I scratched it a good quarter-inch into solid wood planks. Y’know those planks, on the underside of a bedframe? Right where a mattress goes? I uh, I was cleaning under my bed for once, and I’d apparently scratched it under there. Just—just four words. ‘Ask Spy About Woodstock’. That’s it. And—and he started talkin’ about it like it had to have happened, like, before I would’ve even known what that was, when I was a kid or somethin’. And I’m just wondering—I—“ Scout was finally starting to really stumble, and his gaze kept drifting, snapping back, disorientation settling into the furrow between his eyebrows like rain on cracked desert earth. “I’m just wondering how the hell I don’t remember doin’ that.”

He swallowed hard, and it took several seconds to sink in, the weight of his words. “You…” Sniper started to say, and couldn’t find the last part of the thought.

“Me?” Scout prompted, almost desperately, and how long had Sniper been standing there, jaw gaping?

“Snipes?” Scout prompted from through what sounded like a glass of water, snapping his fingers in front of Sniper’s nose a few times, jolting him back to—

“Snipes!” Scout said far too loudly, and Sniper flinched, and resurfaced with a thought.

“Why,” Sniper asked, “did you write it down somewhere so hidden? Who were you worried would find it before you?”

“And did I write it down somewhere else, and it *did* get found, and that’s why it’s so hard to think about?” Scout finished.

Silence for a few seconds.

“Did… you write anything else?” Sniper asked, voice thin.

“That’s the thing,” Scout said, voice thin from a slightly different direction. “Because, see, I did write somethin’ else, but I didn’t need to find that writing to have known somethin’ was up. Because—“

There was silence for a few seconds, a few more.

“Do I… know you from somewhere?” Scout asked.

He wasn’t even looking at Sniper, but his eyes were a shade of—

“Because it feels like just… the way you talk, the, the way *we* talk—“

It was dimly lit in the camper, but his hair shone in the light of the sunrise—the sunset—the—bonfire—sunset?—sun—rise?

“It just feels… familiar.”

He was soft—he was tense—he was soft—had he ever even touched Scout before?—he looked tense—he looked soft.

“It feels like I’ve met you somewhere before.”

He looked tense.

“Is it you?”

“What?” Sniper asked.

“It’s you, isn’t it?” His voice trembled. “It’s all your fault. You’re the one doing this. Why—why the hell else would I have scratched in your name?”

“What?” Sniper asked.

“But—but it can’t be you,” Scout started, talking himself back again. “It can’t be you because it’s—it’s not just ‘Sniper’ scratched down there. When did you tell me? Why did you tell me? Why’d I hide it?”

“What?” Sniper asked.

Scout looked at him, gaze hard enough, fragile enough, glass, sheets of ice, that he fought to find more words.

“What are you talking about? Is it… what did you find?”

Scout looked at him, gaze soft enough, firm enough, decades-old-mattress, rotting springs, that he didn’t dare say anything else.

“I’m gonna ask you a few questions here,” Scout said, voice wobbly.

Sniper nodded.

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

Sniper thought. “I ate a sandwich at the base before I walked over here,” he supplied.

“Before that.”

“Took a shower and all that, fresh off Respawn.”

“Before that.”

“Well, woke up in the Respawn room.”

“Before that.”

“Well, I… I died,” Sniper shrugged.

“How’d you die?”

Sniper was

Sniper

Sniper was

“How’d you die?” Scout asked again, almost exactly the same way.

“Well, I…” Sniper started to say. “…I don’t remember. Probably shot in the head. That happens a lot, I get shot in the head.”

“Let me ask another question,” Scout said. “I come bug you a lot, don’t I?”

“Yeah,” Sniper agreed.

“When’s the longest time I’ve hung out over here?”

“Well, that had to have been…” Sniper started to say. “Well, obviously it’s the time when we…” Sniper started to say.

“When we…?” Scout prompted.

“I…” Sniper said.

“I’ll ask something else,” Scout said, paced one way, then changed his mind and stepped back again. “We get sent to the other bases sometimes. Remember that?”

“Right. Right!” Sniper said, clinging to the scrap of clarity. “We go to a different base every few months until it gets destroyed.”

“And those places have names,” Scout supplied.

“Yes!”

“What were some of them?”

Sniper looked at him. “Well, there was… and… there was a cold one, with… or a…”

Scout looked at him.

“There—with the, with the buildings, and the…”

Scout looked at him.

Sniper looked around his immediate surroundings for clues. He spotted a picture tacked to his wall, blurry and faded and indistinct and damaged, and took a breath, and words wouldn’t come out of his mouth.

“You call your family often?” Scout supplied.

“I do.”

“When did you last call?”

Sniper’s head felt like the picture tacked to his wall.

“Just one more question.”

Sniper looked up at Scout.

“What’s your name?” Scout asked.

“M-Michael—“

No, that wasn’t right.

“Mitch, Mitchel—Mitch—“

No.

“Rich—?”

No, it was,

“Mike—“

No.

Scout’s face was a one-way mirror. “It’s not any of those,” he said, as if Sniper didn’t know. “It’s somethin’ else.”

He was right.

“Your name’s Mickey,” he said, “Lawrence,” he said, “Mundy,” he said, “and I think we might be some of the only people alive on the planet.”

“And I think,” Scout said, “that we’re stuck here, repeating things over and over.”

“And I think,” Scout said, “that we’ve both been the same age as when we were hired for a long, long time, and we keep getting set back to that age.”

“And I think,” Scout said, “that you stuck me at this age on purpose.”

“Why,” Sniper asked, “would I… what, what’s special about it? Why would I pick this age for you? If I—what makes you think that I’m doing it, and that I would?”

“Because I think that every time I wake up after being shot in the head, a few days later, I realize I’m in love with you.”

“What makes you think that?” Sniper asked next.

“Because I realized it again when I saw your name, and it felt like déjà vu. And I’m lookin’ at your shoulders, and I remember exactly what they feel like when I wrap my arms up around them, and how your stubble feels, and what your laugh feels like when I’ve got a hand against your chest, even though I can’t remember ever having touched you in my goddamn life.”

Silence. Sniper felt his breath catching in his chest.

“That’s not possible,” Sniper said, and felt his mind shifting away into denial. “You’re delusional. I’m—there’s just something wrong with our heads.”

“Of course it’s impossible. *None* of this is possible,” Scout said, voice scorched. “It’s not possible to remember feeling things that I’ve never felt before. Just like it’s not possible to be brought back to life, after being shot in the head.”

and that's the end of what i have written for this. so there you go

#shut up me #everybody talks #tf2 #team fortress 2 #speeding bullet #sniperscout

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biscuitreviews · 5 years

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Biscuit Reviews Telltale’s (Skybound Games) The Walking Dead: Final Season

I was a big fan of Telltale’s The Walking Dead series. Season 1 actually ended up being one of my favorite games of all time with the dynamic of Lee and Clementine. Season 2 was great as well despite the awkwardly written episode 3 and the Russian group in the final episode.

Season 3 was just a terrible mess in my opinion. Not only was the story poorly written, but I had quite a bit of technical issues as well with saving errors to where I had to replay entire episodes again to resume my progress. I had to restart the entire season four times because of saving errors and eventually I got to the point where I just marathoned the entire season in one sitting to not have to deal with them again.

When Telltale announced the Final Season of the series I was a bit skeptical as I had such a terrible experience with its third season. I was willing to play through it since it was the Final Season and would mark the end of Clementine’s story. Then came the shutdown of Telltale Games with the future of the final season in limbo. However, Robert Kirkman creator of the Walking Dead comic series began making steps with his company, Skybound Entertainment, to save the Final Season under the banner Skybound Games.

However, the collapse of Telltale Games has also brought forward the debate and discussion of crunch within the game development industry. I want to go on record stating that how Telltale treated their developers was not ok and I hope that game developers fight for their rights for a workers union against these publishers and companies. I hope every developer and employee from Telltale has moved on to a brighter future in their lives.

For this review, I’m going to be looking at the season as a whole rather than a per episode basis.

Also spoilers ahead so if you haven’t played the Final Season, and this goes for Season 1 and 2 as well, I’d recommend avoiding the review until you do so. As far as Season 3, surprisingly you don’t really need to know what transpired in that season for this entry. But if you do want your choices from previous seasons reflected, then you will need to play through Season 3.

The Final Season takes place three years after Season 3 with Clementine and AJ searching for food. They come across a train station and after setting off a trap, it attracts walkers to their location. During the escape, their car gets flipped over and they’re saved by a group from the Ericson School for Troubled Youth. The group consists of students from that school who pride themselves staying within a certain zone to not be seen by others.

Before starting the game, you can access a story builder which will allow you to re-enter or change certain decision points with Clementine’s story. I was actually a bit weirded out by this thinking that my file may have not saved properly or had been corrupt because of the issues I was having with Season 3. However, even after doing the story builder, choices I made in previous seasons not asked in the story builder were still referenced so I’m a bit confused as to why I was prompted to do the story builder if my choices in previous seasons were still respected from the carried out file.

The overall objective in the Final Season is teaching AJ how to survive. The end of the season shows what AJ has learned based off of Clementine’s decisions. Part of me wonders if there were plans to continue the Walking Dead story with AJ or another group of survivors that might encounter AJ. It’s sad that we’ll never know what Telltale’s future plans of the series were.

One of the biggest changes for the Final Season was the placement of the camera. In previous seasons, it was at fixed points within the explorable area. Now, the camera is behind Clementine allowing you to view these explorable areas at a new level. This allows the player to view additional angles not before possible in previous Telltale titles. My only complaint is that Telltale seems to have taken notes from Batman’s Arkham series when it came to this camera view. Similar to the Arkham series, Clementine takes up a good portion of the screen real estate which makes it to where the player has a bit of a narrow view when exploring areas.

Each episode also has collectibles which you can find to decorate Clementine’s room at Ericson, giving completionist another objective to strive for rather than just going through the motions and playing the game.

As far as quality of the season, I felt it was good. I had no qualms with any characters, all of them were written very well. Although there were a couple of awkward spots here and there, I felt they were justified considering that they were all teenagers and Clementine is a new member of this group.

There was however, an area that could have been handled better and that was the events of McCarroll Ranch, an event that happened with Clementine between seasons 3 and 4. There’s even a flashback sequence to this event in the final episode. I thought it was a really awkward place for a flashback of this even considering what transpired in the scene that lead up to the flashback as well as the contents of the flashback itself. I felt that particular flashback should have been in episode 1 to better bridge seasons 3 and 4. Especially since episodes 1 and 2 make reference to this event and are written in a way that the player should have this knowledge already. That was really the only major gripe I had in terms of writing.

The overarching villain of this season was actually a rather nice surprise. I didn’t expect Lilly from season 1 to take the spotlight in that regard. It was a great way to have past choices come back to haunt the player in this way. I also loved that Lilly did try to have Clementine to see her point of view and to try to explain things before making that turn as the season villian..

With that said, this was an emotional season in many ways and served as a great final story for Clementine.

#Telltale's Walking Dead #Telltale Games #Skybound Games #The Walking Dead #TWD #Clementine #The Walking Dead Final Season #AJ #Lee Everett #video games #gaming #video game review #game review #gaming review

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shervonfakhimi · 4 years

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The 2019-20 NBA Champion Los Angeles Lakers Appreciation Post

The Los Angeles Lakers are the 2019-20 NBA Champions. Damn, that feels great to type, so let me do it again: the Los Angeles Lakers are the 2019-20 NBA Champions. I’ve already written before about why this team was so lovable, so let this serve as part two.

I think what makes this championship so sweet, outside of actually winning the damn thing, is the fact that this was far from a guarantee, despite the fact that once we reached the Conference Finals, the Lakers were prohibitive favorites. But the Clipper love from numerous pundits was there after Kawhi Leonard’s run last year. The Bucks’ numbers were astronomical. The Raptors were defending champions despite not retaining Kawhi Leonard. Buzz was there for the up-and-coming Celtics, Sixers, and Nuggets. Surely, the Lakers were right in this mix and above most of these other teams (it’s not like they snuck up on anybody with LeBron James and Anthony Davis on the squad), but this thing was up for the taking. It also might have been the Lakers’ best shot at a title. They will be even better next year, but the Clippers should be too. The Nuggets as well if Michael Porter Jr. takes a leap. The Brooklyn Nets get a healthy Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving back. Jayson Tatum took a leap in Boston. Not just that I’m a Laker fan, but I’d still take the Lakers over any of those teams with two guys you can argue are the best players in the league. But you can make the case for any of those teams, I feel. That the Lakers upended their franchise to put Anthony Davis next to LeBron James and already have a championship to show for it just ensures that all the moves they made to get to this point was worth everything and then some.

What also made this championship so awesome is that it truly took a collective team effort to make this happen. Sure, the stress and attention LeBron and AD put on opposing defenses make the job of those around them way easier than it normally would be, but the players still had to get the job done. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope made GM Rob Pelinka look like a prophet when he called Pope ‘mana from heaven’ at his introductory press conference in 2017, shooting 38% from deep in the playoffs, and hitting arguably the biggest shot(s) of the entire season in Game 4 with about three minutes to go to push a two-point Laker lead up to 7. Playoff Rondo made his triumphant return like Luke Skywalker at the end of ‘The Last Jedi’ and was a constant difference-maker since returning to action in the second round against the Houston Rockets. Want to know drastic a difference there was in Rajon Rondo’s play in the postseason? In the regular season, the Lakers had a Net Rating of -5.2 points per 100 possession when Rondo shared the floor with LeBron James and Anthony Davis. In the playoffs? That number skyrocketed to +12 points per 100 possessions. I can’t understate how wrong I was in writing off Rondo, but boy am I glad to be wrong because he was awesome throughout the entire playoff run.

But that isn’t all. Frank Vogel saved his ‘secret weapon’ for literally the last game of the season, but Alex Caruso was great all season long. His two-man game with LeBron James bore itself out again and routinely accepted and stood out in arduous matchups against Damian Lillard, James Harden, Jamal Murray, Tyler Herro, and Jimmy Butler defensively, along with playing the exceptional help defense we’ve been accustomed to seeing from him throughout his young career. There’s a reason why us fans love him so much. The Lakers had a +3.6 Net Rating with Caruso on the floor in the playoffs, the fourth-best mark on the team with only LeBron, AD, and Danny Green ahead of him. Danny Green’s shooting drew ire from fans, but I always trusted and wanted him on the floor in big moments because he would make similar plays to Caruso, like here against Denver swatting Mason Plumlee and Nikola Jokic in big moments. Markieff Morris made like Denzel Curry and unlocked lineups to feature Anthony Davis at center with Kieff’s ability to stretch the floor. For the playoffs, Markieff Morris shot 42% on 3.3 attempts per game. The Lakers had a Net Rating of +16.5 for the playoffs when Morris shared the floor with Anthony Davis to better free Davis to swarm the paint. Kyle Kuzma may not have become the third scorer many were hoping for, but he totally bought into defense and routinely snuck through crevices in opposing defenses honing on LeBron and Davis. Dwight Howard bothered Nikola Jokic in the Conference Finals much the same way he did in their matchup before the All-Star break back in February. The Lakers had a Net Rating of +19.7 when Dwight was on the floor at the same time as Jokic during the Conference Finals. Even the rook Talen Horton-Tucker had a moment against Houston flashing versatility defensively and playmaking off the bounce (watch out for Young Talen next season). Jared Dudley, Dion Waiters, Quinn Cook, JaVale McGee, and JR Smith brought even more chemistry, camaraderie, and/or accountability to the team. The celebrations on the bench were nonstop. When Talen Horton-Tucker got run against Houston and produced, you could just hear and see the love from his teammates. That always stuck out to me. Before this season restarted, Lakers head coach Frank Vogel said that the third option on this team was going to be ‘the open man,’ implying that anybody on the roster could have both the ability and opportunity to step up when the Lakers need it the most. That couldn’t have been any more true. It truly was a team effort.

But of course, those guys were third options for a reason. It’s not bad having LeBron James and Anthony Davis be your first or second options, I suppose. Let’s start with Davis. If there were questions of whether or not the Lakers could win a title, I think those hinged on whether or not pundits believed Davis could step up the way the Lakers would’ve needed him to. Now, that felt particularly silly after Davis averaged 30.5 points, 12.7 rebounds, 1.8 assists, 2.5 blocks, and 1.8 steals per game on over 50% shooting with elite defense in 13 previous playoff games (nine of which coming against the eventual champion Golden State Warriors), but any questions about Davis in the playoffs were quickly answered. He was dominant on both ends. Teams had no answer for him, and if they did, that meant they didn’t have any answers for LeBron. Lumbering bigs like Nikola Jokic, Jusuf Nurkic, Hassan Whiteside, Meyers Leonard, or Kelly Olynyk couldn’t contest Davis’ perimeter jumper, and after trying to take that away, he’d fly to the rim with lobs from LeBron and Rondo waiting for him. Wings like Carmelo Anthony, PJ Tucker, Robert Covington, Jerami Grant, Paul Millsap, Jimmy Butler, Andre Iguodala, Solomon Hill, and Jae Crowder all got their turns going against Davis and he laid waste to all of them, whether it be with his iso face-up game on the elbows, in the post or clobbering the offensive glass. Post-ups and isolations have become two of the less-glamourous modes of offense, but in the playoffs, you have to get offense by any means necessary, and Davis generated 0.97 points per possessions out of post-ups and 1.09 points per possessions out of iso, per NBA.com, both healthy numbers. Davis shot well from basically anywhere on the floor, embodying the persona of a three-level scorer. Davis managed to pull off an effective field goal percentage of 60.2%. The only player to have a better eFG% in the postseason while shooting at least 15 attempts per game and at least advance past the first round? Some guy named LeBron James. Not only was he efficient, but he also was clutch too, as evidenced by the buzzer-beater against the Nuggets in Game 2 and the dagger in Game 4 of the Finals. When the game was within five points in the last five minutes of the game in the playoffs, Davis shined, shooting 75% from the field, scoring 20 points in 26 clutch minutes. No matter the time, no matter who, what, where or when something was thrown at Davis, Davis had an answer. He averaged 27.7 points, 9.7 rebounds, 3.5 assists, and basically 2.5 stocks (steals + blocks) on 57.1/38.3/83.2 shooting splits. He did this all while playing elite, defensive player of the year level defense as well, going from corraling Damian Lillard’s pick and roll prowess to shutting down Houston’s three-point brigade, to stifling the Jamal Murray-Nikola Jokic duet with switches to slowing down Jimmy Butler rim romps simultaneously while limiting Miami’s shooters in Tyler Herro and Duncan Robinson from truly getting comfortable AND stuffing Bam Adebayo at the rim repeatedly (check out Kevin O’Connor of ‘The Ringer’ break Davis’ defense down even further here). Anthony Davis did it all time and time again. He didn’t win Finals MVP but he could’ve. He likely will win at least one of those before it is all said and done.

Unfortunately for the rest of the NBA, I can say the same thing about the man who DID win Finals MVP, even though he is about to turn 36 in a couple of months and just finished his 17th season of basketball duty. LeBron James is still THAT dude, the best player in the league, the ultimate alpha dog, the man who shapes this league like no other can. Do you want a crazy, mind-blowing stat? Well, check this out, courtesy of Michael Pina of GQ. I want you to guess who is who:

Player A: 10.5 drives per game, 60% FG% from shots off of those drives.

Player B: 12 drives per game, 68% FG% from shots off of those drives.

So who are these mystery characters? Player A is back-to-back MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo in the regular season. Player B is LeBron James in the playoffs. Yes, when defenses are honed in on everything you do, LeBron James at age 35 was somehow more lethal plowing through the rim than the extraterrestrial Giannis was rampaging through everyone in the regular season. That seems impossible, but impossible is nothing for the King. When the Lakers smelled blood in the water, it was typically LeBron who made sure to ignite the impending doom awaiting his opponent, whether it be a 36-7-5 performance against the Rockets to take a 2-1 lead, a masterful 38-16-10 triple-double to eliminate the Denver Nuggets and advance to the NBA Finals, or an even better 40-13-7 masterpiece in Game 5 of the Finals that tragically was wasted after a masterpiece from Jimmy Butler in his own right and Danny Green’s three-ball at the end went begging short. LeBron took on defensive challenges in his own right, as he did all season long, most-notably shutting down bubble star Jamal Murray towards the end of the Western Conference Finals. LeBron averaged a career-low in playoff minutes per game at 36.3, but his averages and play were right there with his Finals runs of yesteryear, putting up 27.6 points, 10.8 rebounds, 8.8 assists and 2 stocks on 56/37/72 shooting splits. As mentioned earlier, he was the most efficient scorer in the playoffs among those who made it to the second round at least, and Davis was right behind him. There isn’t much more that really can be said about LeBron James. The end isn’t anywhere near sight, and it likely won’t be for the foreseeable future either.

Which leads us to this offseason. The Lakers have a mid-level exception of about $10million to spend, have the 28th pick in the draft, and will likely be a destination for ring-chasers to snatch one before their careers are over. Anthony Davis is still only 27 years old. Maybe Kyle Kuzma becomes more consistent and is more comfortable next season after buying and playing well in his new role. Talen Horton-Tucker should be a rotation player next year on the wing. They’ll have max money in 2021 when numerous free agents will be on the market. LeBron can continue to age gracefully playing off the 7-foot gazelle that is Anthony Davis. This could be the start of another Laker dynasty.

But this 2019-20 team will likely stick out amongst the pack if things go the Lakers way in the future. This team went through so much, from being in China during the aftermath of Rockets’ GM Daryl Morey’s tweet to healing a mourning city after the tragic passing of franchise icon Kobe Bryant and his daughter and three other members of separate families to the ongoing coronavirus to helping lead in the racial reckoning this country faced in the summer. Through all of this, there were these Lakers, there to help us fans get through it all. Maybe you could use the term ‘distract,’ but damn it at least I know I needed that distraction. And through it all, you could see and feel how much fun these guys had together.

This team was more than a basketball team; it truly was a family, one I eagerly awaited to welcome into my room time and time again once their games tipped. Head Coach Frank Vogel and GM Rob Pelinka deserve a ton of credit for putting this team together and having it gel as quickly as it did. Pelinka was put in a tough spot after the Davis trade and Kawhi Leonard stalling their free agency plans (Vogel on the latest episode of ‘The Lowe Post’ podcast said the team was put together in three hours after Leonard’s decision broke). Vogel sifted through different lineup variations when called upon and cooked up all the correct and necessary game plans to short-circuit all the opponents in the Lakers’ way in the playoffs. They didn’t get off to the strongest of starts (Pelinka especially) and I was skeptical because of it, but those two proved me wrong BIG TIME, and boy am I glad I was wrong. Hopefully, those two hold on to their respective positions for quite a long time.

It stinks the fans in the city of Los Angeles can’t truly celebrate with the team, but that time will eventually come. This wasn’t my first Laker championship to celebrate; I remember being in Las Vegas in 2009 when they won in Orlando and watching Game 7 of the 2010 Finals. I never thought that moment could be topped, yet there I was with tears of joy strolling down my face once the clock struck zeroes in Game 6. After all those years of losing. After all the shit 2020 threw in the face of the world. Something worth celebrating happened. So again, thank you to all the players, to GM Rob Pelinka, to Governor Jeanie Buss, to everyone who played a part.

The Los Angeles Lakers are the 2019-20 NBA Champions. Damn, that feels great to type.

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nerdybookahs · 4 years

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Ah, me and this kind of game… of course I had to get it! It’s also a topic very dear to my heart and I’ve been known to have inward commuter rage a lot since we moved here – and a work commute that should take 55 minutes each way taking 75 minutes on average instead (no, not all German trains are on time…). But now, on to my first impressions of Overcrowd: A Commute ‘Em Up (Steam link – Official website).

First things first, the usual warning:

This game is in Early Access on Steam. Do not buy this game if it’s not enough content or not good enough for you right now! Basically, Early Access is “what you see is what you get”. Even with the best intentions, it’s not guaranteed that the developers will bring the game to an official release. Also, there are bugs and issues as the game is still in active development.

The tutorial is already good enough to get you started, but there’s still lots left to discover afterwards. Then again, since almost everything is still subject to change, a full and complete tutorial would be a waste of time at the moment. But as I said, it’s good! I’ve only been playing through the campaign so far, which is basically different maps that add more and different challenges (like having a brute or a thief enter your station). If you unlock something, e. g. the ability to have three platforms on a map, you take this progress with you to the next map in the campaign. But you can also return to earlier maps once you’ve unlocked more things and continue working on the earlier maps by adding stuff like more platforms etc.

You start with nothing but tracks on the map and then need to decide where you want to build your first platform and your entrance. You can build on different floors, but not on top of each other. That is, if you choose to build on the ground floor, you can’t build anything directly below or above. I think this is because of the game’s engine? But it adds a strategic element that requires you to plan ahead accordingly or save a lot of money before you can rebuild your station later on.

There are objectives to fulfill on the different campaign maps, but there is also always one lose condition: You lose the game when the station’s reputation hits 0 %. Things like vomit on the floor, people hitting other commuters, dead people on the floor – all of this mishaps cause you to lose reputation. You get one save slot for your map. That is, you can’t save several progress states of a map and return to an earlier save if something went wrong. The mean thing is that a small little inconvenience like a brute hitting commuters can bring your reputation down fast. I love the recent change they made here that the auto-save function will be disabled when your reputation hits 10 % or below. So, you can try to save your station and return to the last save point if it didn’t work out and try again. Or you just restart the entire map if you like.

Overall, there is lots of micromanagement and clicking. There is staff you can hire and you decide which priorities each one has for each of the tasks they need to look after. They also have a certain radius of activity and if something happens outside of it, they won’t go there. Of course, they want some work breaks, too, and a nice staff room. Thankfully, the staff do their very best and you can generally trust them to keep the station in check – as long as they get enough breaks, get their salaries on time (or else they go on a strike) and have enough tools required to do their job. You can choose to have your staff autorest or you schedule their rests. I had them on autorest first, but am currently trying out scheduled rests to make sure they all get to rest – but not at the same time! So far, it’s been the much better option for my stations. There are also lots of tools that you need for your station. And you better have more than one of each for the rools that are required often, like the mop. The first aid kit to heal somebody from the gastric flu might be a bit far-fetched, though… and seriously, I’d love for that to be a real thing! However, if you let a disease spread in the station, again, your reputation will drop very fast! The first aid kit is also needed to help people that were beaten by a brute. So I’d always advice you to have at least two of them.

In the beginning, you actually need to call each train to your platform. Once it arrives, passengers leave the train and new ones enter and the train will then leave automatically. But if you forget to call the next train when it’s ready, no train will arrive. This, of course, will make the commuters very angry as they’re going to be late. It’s happened to me countless times when I was too focused on creating a new room or adding more furniture for the commuters or a shop for them to go buy nice things. But thankfully, there is tech to unlock which lets you auto-schedule trains.

You can either play the campaign or a sandbox game. I already mentioned the campaign above. The sandbox lets you choose several different settings. You can choose to have an infinite amount of money, you can increased your starting money and starting bonds, choose to have all tech unlocked at the start and so on. There are also victory conditions that you can optionally enable. And this is just the tip of the iceberg, apparently. I never played a sandbox game and just chose to click on it, so I can tell you what you can choose. There is… a lot, really. Another example: How do commuters react to things like illnesses, rats, heat?

Speaking of heat: This is another thing you need to take care of. Having trains run through your station all day causes a lot of heat, of course. So you will have to add air conditioning and fans. Some items can only be placed on concrete walls. Unfortunately, there aren’t that many concrete walls in your station. You will have to plan around that as well to keep your commuters happy!

I just saw that you can also choose when your staff empties bins, refuels generators and so on. There’s a different threshold for the day and the night, which is a difference! Between 23.00h and 7.00h, there are no trains, so your staff can get some rest – and refuel generators as well as empty the bins. They are there 24/7, after all!

Other than sandbox and campaign, there is also the “Commute of the day”. They tell you to first play the tutorial and the campaign, because the Commute of the Day is supposedly “hard” and I believe them. It mentions building a five track station and the most I’ve had so far was two!

My personal verdict: I think it’s a great “little” game that keeps you busy and occupied. There is always something to do and if there isn’t for a moment, you can watch and check your platforms to see if there’s anything that needs improvement. I wish you could scroll out further as it makes it difficult to see the tracks sometimes. I also can’t say anything about the soundtrack, because I turned it off. The sounds themselves are good, though. It’s easy to hear when something important is happening. The game’s been running pretty well and I haven’t had any crashes or game-breaking bugs. I don’t know if they’re going to add any more features or content, but it looks complete to me. If I didn’t know it was in Early Access, I’d believe it’s a regular released game. Also, the game has the Wuselfaktor which makes this German here very happy!

The usual disclaimer: This is an Early Impressions Review and does not claim to be a fully grown objective game review. It does, however, reflect my personal and subjective experiences with the game. I bought this game with my own money and did not receive anything from the developers.

First Impressions: Overcrowd: A Commute 'Em Up @SquarePlayGames #Overcrowd Ah, me and this kind of game... of course I had to get it! It's also a topic very dear to my heart and I've been known to have inward commuter rage a lot since we moved here - and a work commute that should take 55 minutes each way taking 75 minutes on average instead (no, not all German trains are on time...).

#building & management game #early access #First Impression Review #first impressions #Overcrowd #Wuselfaktor

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operationrainfall · 4 years

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Title Cthulhu Saves Christmas Developer Zeboyd Digital Entertainment LLC Publisher Zeboyd Digital Entertainment LLC Release Date December 23rd, 2019 Genre RPG Platform PC (Steam and GOG) Age Rating N/A Official Website

One of the very first games I reviewed on Operation Rainfall was Cthulhu Saves the World. I don’t remember how I discovered the game, but I quickly became a fan of the madness of Zeboyd Games. The mixture of classic RPG mechanics, absurd humor and distinct challenge made for a fun brew, and though the first game wasn’t perfect, it did serve as a framework for many other fantastic games, including both On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3 and 4 and Cosmic Star Heroine. I’ll be honest, I didn’t think we were gonna get another game set in the Cthulhu universe, and when I discovered Cthulhu Saves Christmas, I got very excited. The question is, was this formula worth a second try? Or should Cthulhu have stayed home with his insane cultists?

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If you’ve played the original game that Cthulhu Saves Christmas was based on, you’ll pretty much know what you’re getting into. If you’re unfamiliar, I’d check out my review of that game by clicking here. It does a great job of showing you generally what to expect, though there are a good number of differences between the two. However, one feature they share is the main premise. In this adventure, Cthulhu is quickly stripped of his eldritch powers by opening a Christmas present. Figuring that Santa is behind it, the angry deity sets out to slay Santa, get his powers back and destroy the world. In that order. He discovers that Santa isn’t actually the culprit, but instead it’s something called the League of Christmas Evil. They have kidnapped old Saint Nick, and by using anti-presents that provide the opposite of what you want, are going to reshape the holiday in their dark image. I won’t spoil most of them, but their ranks include the likes of Jack Frost and a deranged posse called the Yule Lads. Essentially, the League of Christmas Evil is a Xmas adjacent group of miscreants, and I’ll admit several took me by surprise. And as you might have guessed, they serve as the boss fights in the game.

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You might be wondering how Cthulhu Saves Christmas actually plays. Though it’s still styled as a retro RPG, the systems are a mixture of the original game and Cosmic Star Heroine. Each character learns new skills as they level up, and you can equip three active abilities at a time. Most abilities need to be recharged to use again, which is done by selecting your character’s defensive skill. Besides that, each character also has three slots for what are called Insanity abilities. These are totally random, and are mostly drawn from your pool of unequipped skills from your entire team. You’ll also sometimes find really powerful Insanity abilities tied to specific characters, but good luck relying on those to show up. In general, it’s a good idea to put a lot of thought into your main skills, and hope for the best with your random ones. Like any good RPG, skills range from physical to magical attacks, healing, AOE powers, status ailments and more. There’s a flow to each battle, and you won’t want to dilly dally too much since after each attack, every enemy (including bosses) gets slightly more powerful, and some get new skills when they’re the sole survivor.

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But wait, there’s more. Each turn, your characters have a meter that fills up. When it’s full, you’re in Hyper Mode, which means your skills will deal more damage and have improved effects. For example, Cthulhu has a self-healing skill that, when Hyper, grants him the Unstoppable buff, which means he won’t die immediately if his health is reduced to zero. This is a very important mechanic, since you won’t get an actual Revive skill til very, very late in the game. The downside to Unstoppable is that if you end your turn with negative health, you’ll die afterwards, and be useless the rest of that battle. So it’s a good idea to quickly heal any character in negative digits. The upside to being in the negative is that you’ll be in Desperation mode, and your attacks really pack a wallop in that state. Finally, like the first game, here you have Unite attacks shared between characters. You’ll eventually have a team of four, and each character has a Unite attack with every other character. These are quite powerful, such as summoning tentacles with Cthulhu and Crystal or healing everybody with Crystal and Belsnickel. Just remember, even Unite skills are better when Hyper. I forgot early on and suffered through many battles as a result. As you can tell, there’s a lot of complexity in Cthulhu Saves Christmas, and for the most part I very much enjoyed it.

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I only have a few small complaints about the combat system in Cthulhu Saves Christmas. Firstly, I hate relying on random factors, and the Insanity abilities were as likely to help me as hinder me, especially in harrowing battles. This was very much the case in the challenging boss fights, which can be unrelenting, at least on the difficulty I chose (Insane, or this game’s version of Normal). My other complaints only came up when I refreshed my memory about Cthulhu Saves the World. That game had branching skills you could choose to learn, whereas there is nothing like that here. I love having complete control over my RPG experience, and I just wish there was a bit more variety to how I helped my characters grow. And speaking of characters, the first game had several you could swap in and out of your team. Sadly Cthulhu Saves Christmas only has one team of four. Though to be fair, each character serves as a distinct class of sorts, such as berserker, healer, etc. Other than those issues, I really enjoyed the combat in the game. Which is good, considering that’s about half of what the experience offers. The other half is the game’s laugh-out-loud funny writing.

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If you haven’t played a game by Zeboyd before, then let me tell you, the writing is always amazing in their games. Very few RPGs I play make me chuckle, let alone belly laugh, and Cthulhu Saves Christmas often did both. One reason for that is the eclectic mix of characters. Take your team for example. Cthulhu is surly and insecure about his stripped-down abilities. He always wants to be feared, and instead gets mostly ignored. Then there’s Crystal Claus, the sweet and saccharine niece of Santa who wants to do good, but is constantly thwarted by the mischievousness of the elder god. There’s a burly mountain man named Belsnickel, who seems pretty normal at first, other than the twisted joy he derives from whipping little children. And then there’s my new favorite, Baba Yaga-chan. Yes, that Baba Yaga, just young and full of optimism. She’s crazy, cute, sinister and much more besides. How can you not love a character who introduces herself by trying to suffocate an elder god with a pillow?

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Besides the wonderful cast of characters, there’s also tons of fourth wall breaking silliness everywhere in the game. It turns what could be a basic RPG plot into a delight, full of skeletal reindeer, time travel, alternate dimensions, alien cats and much more. Put simply, you’ll want to read every word that flashes across the screen, since it’s all so cleverly conceived. Hell, even the way the game uses the narrator is amazing. Honestly after playing all the games in the Zeboyd roster, I really want them to do localization for other series, because I know they would do an amazing job of it. That said, I did find the ending to Cthulhu Saves Christmas a bit of a letdown, especially since the rest of the adventure was so inventive. But that in no way diminishes the rest of the experience.

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Though I do enjoy all the Zeboyd games, they have one unfortunate trait in common: their linearity. Cthulhu Saves Christmas is completely linear, just going from dungeon to dungeon, with some great writing in-between. There’s no optional dungeons or hidden bosses. The only things that mix up the experience, and which are new to this series, are relationship forging sections. Your home base is Christmas Town, which is set in a perpetual state of Christmas Eve due to Santa’s kidnapping. While you’re there, the game encourages you to explore and spend time with your “friends”. Doing so boosts your R’lyehtionship with each teammate. No, you didn’t read that wrong; the pun is intentional. I was pleasantly surprised this game took a page from series like Persona, letting you deepen your bonds with the team. Doing so rewards you not only with more hilarious dialogue, but with equipment and items. I should say, the items used in battle are all single use, but recharge after combat. As for equipment, you only get it in Christmas Town or in chests found in dungeons. It’ll behoove you to explore each dungeon fully as a result, since you might otherwise miss a chest with the equipment you want. I tended to prefer equipment that let me start battles Unstoppable or which turned single-use skills into reusable ones. Much like the first game, there’s a set amount of encounters in each dungeon, and once you’ve fought them all, you can explore freely. Though if you want to grind more, you can fight random battles from the main menu as well.

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Though the devs suggested Cthulhu Saves Christmas can be beaten in 4-5 hours, I didn’t roll credits til about 16 hours in. Perhaps that means I’m not as good at the RPG genre as I’d like, or maybe it’s because I played on the middle difficulty. Either way, I got plenty of bang for my buck, and found the challenge was pretty satisfying. Sometimes basic enemy encounters could utterly destroy me, forcing me to restart repeatedly to get past them. And some of the bosses in the game are really challenging. Hell, the second boss repeatedly wiped the floor with me until I got smart and used better strategy to claim victory. That said, I’m still a little disappointed there was nothing optional to do in the game other than exploring different sections of Christmas Town in your free time between dungeons. Hell, I managed to get all the Steam achievements just by beating the game, which is a bit disappointing. What’s here is great, but whenever I enjoy a game this much, I always want any excuse to spend more time with it. Sadly, once you beat the game, there’s not really a reason to play through it again, since you’ll have seen pretty much everything.

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Visually, I really enjoyed the style of Cthulhu Saves Christmas. It’s a lot like what’s available in Cthulhu Saves the World, just with more fine tuned retro art. Characters have a lot of personality just from their portraits, and the variety of enemy designs is pretty good (though there are several that get reused). The only thing I missed visually are the comic cutscenes from the original. Musically the game is fine, though most of the songs aren’t that memorable. The main exception is a twisted version of “Carol of the Bells” I really enjoyed listening to. There’s no voice acting here, but I also found it wasn’t necessary.

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Honestly, for only $9.99 you get a great experience with Cthulhu Saves Christmas. It’s a very solid RPG with lots of laughs and good mechanics. Though I do miss some features from the first game, it overall does a good job of streamlining things for the better. More than anything, I just wanted reasons to keep playing in this universe. Any sort of unlockables, optional dungeons or hidden bosses would have been very welcome. Though my time with the game wasn’t exactly short, I kept finding myself wishing this was a 30-40 hour game. And while the ending was a bit of a disappointment, I still find myself hoping we get another entry to make this a trilogy. All in all, I’m happy with the latest from Zeboyd Games, and hope we don’t have to wait very long for Cthulhu’s next adventure.

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[easyreview cat1title=”Overall” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”3.5″]

Review Copy Provided by Publisher

REVIEW: Cthulhu Saves Christmas Title Cthulhu Saves Christmas

#Cthulhu Saves Christmas #Cthulhu Saves the World #funny #oprainfall #PC #Retro #Review #Zeboyd Digital Entertainment LLC

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goron-king-darunia · 5 years

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DotNW Remake/Remaster DLC - Marta: Wish of the Age/A New Journey and Richter: Never Ending Thought/Start of Tragedy (work in progress names)

Annon-Guy: Let’s go over some things about the Marta and Richter DLC ideas;

Marta 1: If there’s a stealth section, than Marta’s core headache would be put aside or won’t be immediate. Also, if Marta gets spotted, I think she would immediately run away and wait in a hidden checkpoint spot, allowing you to try again. It would not be fun if you get automatic game overs for being seen (and it would be too sad). (There would also be skits depending how many times you’re spotted. 0 is best and would impress Tenabrae, 1 is tolerable, 5 would be bad and 10+ would leave Marta disappointed and releaved she just got through that mess).

Richter 1: Would Aster and Aqua be playable during the DLC? Does Aster carry a stun gun? Also, I don’t think it would be an automatic fail with the zombies if Aster has HP to spare and Aqua’s helping you. If Aster’s KO’d than it would be a fail, but I think they would just fall back instead of it being a game over.

Marta 2: I think as soon as Marta gets on the boat, she would hide while Tenabrae tries to get it to work (say they have to take because there are Vangaurd soilders leading people out and Marta would get caught if she follows the survivors). Hawk, Alice and Richter would meet up and talk about what’s happening (let’s say Richter and Hawk are being kept in the dark by Alice). After they finish, Richter would suspect they’re on the boat (even before Tenabrae accidently activates the engine because it would probally be a Tethe'alla Noble’s boat). Marta would try to talk to tell about the canon and as soon as it starts, Marta throws one of Decus’ collonge bottles stunning them before Alice and Richter jump on. After Tenabrae gets hurt, Marta would use the palm strike sending the two into the water before passing out. The rest after Marta wakes up would be Marta and Tenabrae’s first month of the Journey proper. The final boss of the DLC should be Alice.

Richter 2: I think the final boss of the DLC would be Ratatosk in his original form. It would be slightly hard sense you won’t have Aster and Aqua helping you in this fight.

Marta 3: Should Tenabrae be playable in the DLC so Marta won’t be alone in the fights?

Richter 3: Should the story end as soon as you beat Ratatosk or as soon as you return to Sybak or Palmacosta?

Marta 4: Should she recap this story to Emil and the Regeneration Crew? (after Lloyd joins)

Richter 4: Should his story happen while he’s rembering how it all happened? If so, should it be after the Temple of Ice or after Alice saves him from Lloyd at Altimira?

Both 1: What sort of places would they go to and how many places? Would they be places from the main game or new unseen places? I think their stories would only be 1 or 2 chapters long.

Both 2: Should they be pre-order bonus’ or should Bandai Namco wait for a week or month to release them (to give players time to play and beat the main story). Although, there will be a warning bite if players try to go into the DLC before playing or beating the main story.

Both 3: Might be random but funny, but say if you get a game over and choose to continue, The Regeneration Crew and Aqua would give Marta and Richter a funny look about Marta and Richter biting it if they’re still alive telling them the story/still alive remembering it. If you choose not to continue, nothing happens.

Both 4: Would the DLC be free or cost $5?

Both 5: Marta and Richter would be locked between levels 5 - 10 in the DLC Stories. *~*~*~* GKD here, adding my response to the bottom because I have more to say than will fit in the tags. I like the idea of checkpoints as opposed to restarting the entire area because that’s always frustrating. However, depending on how far apart the checkpoints are, it may be impractical to have her physically run back. Waiting for a game over screen to pass can be frustrating, but so can waiting for your character to run back 3 sections because you messed up one button input or moved too far to the left or right. Warping back to checkpoints might be better with the implication that she’s running back. For example, have her begin a running animation and have the camera rapidly move back to the checkpoint to find Marta already there, catching her breath in a dark corner as guards walk past. Number of times spotted would also be a great mechanic because it trains you for the Temple of Lightning where the number of times you get struck by lightning has an impact on whether you get the normal or good ending. Especially if the number of times you’re spotted only impacts the cutscene/skit you get and not which ending you get, serving as a bit of a tutorial on “your actions even during gameplay have consequences, not just when we give you scripted choices.” I would LOVE if Aster and Aqua could be playable, but Aqua would probably function only as a party leader token and not as an actual combatant since Tenebrae himself says Centurions do not fight but have monsters fight for them. Aster should absolutely have a stun gun since he has one in Onshuu no Richter. All his artes are gag attacks. Party popper/ exploding beaker of mysterious science liquid for a fire attack. Smoke bombs for a darkness based attack that add a confusion debuff to enemies. Some other gross science slime that has a water element and a poison debuff. Throw stale donuts for a ranged attack. Trusty stun gun for electric element attacks at range. And his regular melee? Really wimpy slap that you can combo into a sequence of: weak slap, shove opponent, stomp opponent, then kick opponent and after the kick, he hops away clutching his foot because he is not adept at fighting and hurt his poor toes by kicking at the opponent wrong and jamming his toes. XD When not playing as Richter, he will, like Kratos, cast first aid on Aster any time he’s below 75% heath and will prioritize him over healing, say, the monsters, even if the monsters are below 50% health. Pontus and Enki from Onshuu no Richter would be constant battle companions since Aqua doesn’t routinely pact with monsters and she had both when Aster was still alive. Nice little Easter egg for fans if they’re named Pontus and Enki in the party roster. Aster getting KO’ed would probably be an auto fail, yeah. My issue with the second Marta scenario is... where would Marta get Decus’s cologne from? I agree with most of the rest though. A one-on-one fight with Alice would be fun. Richter 2 is a big fat yes. Good excuse for us to see Ratatosk’s Original form and another one on one duel. Marta 3: In the same way Aqua should be playable via monsters, Tenebrae should also be playable via monsters. Richter 3: The more Richter content the better, in my book. It would be interesting and heartbreaking to fight with a debuff all the way back to Sybak to show Richter is depressed. I love when game mechanics reflect the mental state of the characters. Marta 4: She could recap it, but I think it’s more interesting to have us play her scenarios as they occur at the beginning as a sort of Tutorial for the game. Richter’s could be played as a recap as he remembers it happening but Martas feel like they should be played in the moment. If Marta did explain to Emil and the others, it should be done as a fade-to-black scene rather than have her tediously explain everything.

Richter 4: Richter’s happening chronologically spoils a lot about the game, so I think playing Richter’s quest as late as possible would be best, definitely during a moment of reflection.

Both 1: Agreed that 1-2 chapters is best. They’d just be bonuses and not the main content, after all. I think some new locations would be fun, but I think there were a few more unvisited places in DotNW that could be added in. So maybe a combo of both new places and old places that the original didn’t let us revisit.

Both 2: I personally hate preorder bonuses. It rewards rich people for spending frivolously. I’d rather have it as a DLC released after the fact or come bundled with the game (with the game marked up, obviously, since we’re paying for bonus content.) Like how the Game of the Year Edition of The Elder Scrolls Oblivion came with all the expansions? Yeah. I’d like it to do something like that. If it comes bundled with the game, perhaps it’s unlockable as New Game + material and only accessible once you’ve beaten the game before.

Both 3: While I think that success is basically guaranteed since we know Marta and Richter have to make it out alive and I doubt neither of them would be retelling it and having your gameplay represent the story they’re telling, that is a funny idea. Richter just “Yeah, Remember when Ratatosk sliced me in the back and I died instantly?” and Aqua just “But... you’re alive right now.” and Richter just shrugs “It’s a figure of speech.” I imagine Marta’s playable scenario happening chronologically rather than told after the fact. Perhaps Richter’s scenario could be a nightmare? I doubt he’d tell anyone about that trauma, and retelling it to Aqua is pointless since she was there. Marta’s failures are construed as setbacks since she’ll never actually get captured no matter how many times you fail. Richter’s failures are construed as nightmares doing what nightmares do: being dramatic and not being reflective of real events. Both 4: If they’re reselling the whole game, I think the regular pricetag would be more than enough to cover the extra labor put into the game. That being said, I’d happily pay $5 for it if it was released as extra content and not packaged with the game. Both 5: While generally I hate level-locking, since these are one-off scenarios, I think that’d be fine to lock their levels low.

#submissions #submission #DotNW #Letters from Annon Guy #DotNW Remaster

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ciathyzareposts · 5 years

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Journey: Won! (with Summary and Rating)

The winning screen you’ve been desperately anticipating for 8 years.

Journey

United States

Infocom (developer and publisher)

Released in 1989 for DOS, Amiga, Apple II, and Macintosh

Date Started: 20 March 2011

Date Finished: 21 May 2019

Total Hours: 23 (including 9 in 2011) Difficulty: Hard (4/5) Final Rating: (to come later) Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)

Yeah, this one requires some explanation.

I was sitting around the other night trying to decide what game to play with the couple hours I had available. I had made some progress with Kingdom of Syree but wasn’t loving it (it’s another Ultima clone), and I was holding out hope I could dispense with it in a single entry. The self-imposed deadline for my next entry was looming and it didn’t look like I’d be able to win that fast. At the same time, I wasn’t keen to start on a complicated game like Darklands. So I did a quick scan of all the games I’d skipped and abandoned over the years to see if I could find a quick win. House of Usher (1980) looked promising, then The Amulet (1983), but both ended up as “NP” (and on my “Missing and Mysterious” list) when I couldn’t get them to emulate.

My eyes then fell on Journey, an adventure game that I blogged about in 2011. By the time I was a few hours into it, I realized it wasn’t even really an RPG (and MobyGames has since removed that designation). But I’d numbered and rated it anyway, so its loss was counting against my statistics. I began to wonder what the problem was. How hard is it to win a freaking adventure game? Why would I have abandoned it? Was I too proud to get a hint? How long could it possibly take to turn this loss around? That last question was particularly important because, as often happens, at this point I had spent longer trying to find a “quick win” than it would have taken me to just play a regular game.

Infocom called this a “role-play chronicle.” What does that even mean?

I read my first and second entries from 2011 and began to remember the title, as well as the core problem: you have to reach the endgame with a sufficient number of reagents still in your possession, or you can’t cast the final spells necessary to win. Since there are a fixed number of reagents to find during the game and plenty of opportunities to use them, you can put yourself in a “walking dead” situation as early as the first 5 minutes and not know until you reach the end, two or three hours later. I was apparently so disgusted with that prospect that I refused to re-start and took the loss. I was more willing to do that in 2011 than I am now.

So I restarted Journey with a willingness to play it through a couple of times if necessary, and it wasn’t long before my “quick win” had taken over not just my few allotted hours but rather the entire afternoon, evening, and night until about 03:00. During this time, I restarted not once or twice but about 30 times, filled pages with notes about cause and effect, broke down and consulted two walkthroughs and still couldn’t win because the walkthroughs were wrong, and finally–14 hours after I started–ended up with the set of actions necessary to get a party from the beginning to the end. And make no mistake–there really is only one.

In case you forgot, Journey is the game that canonically establishes that orcs and grues are the same thing.

By the end, I had a much clearer picture of the game than I did in 2011, and I reached an obvious conclusion that I’m surprised I missed back then: this is the worst adventure game ever made.

Journey hides this fact with nice graphics and typical Infocom-quality prose, but the game’s approach is all wrong–fundamentally an insult to anyone who cut his teeth on both text adventures like Zork and graphical adventures like King’s Quest. Every option it suggests is a complete sham, every hint of an RPG influence a complete farce. And its story isn’t even that original–so much is lifted from Tolkien that he ought to have a co-author credit.

I feel like I’ve seen this somewhere before . . .

Journey (whose subtitle of The Quest Begins exists only on the box, not the game screens) tells the story of a ragtag band of village peasants who set off on a quest to determine why their crops have failed and their water has gone foul. A better-equipped, better-qualified band, led by the village blacksmith, Garlimon, left the same village the previous year and was never heard from again. This new effort is headed by the village carpenter, Bergon, and includes a wizard named Praxix, a physician named Esher, and a young apprentice food merchant named Tag. The game is mostly told from Tag’s perspective, and the game lets you rename him in its one nod to RPG-like “character creation.”

The party later finds Garlimon insane and living as a hermit.

The title differs from previous Infocom outings in that you do not type any of the commands. Instead, you select them with the arrow keys from an interface that distinguishes between high-level party commands (most of which move you to a new place or situation) and micro-level individual commands, aspected to the skills and abilities of each character. Thus, the party leader, Bergon, can almost always “Ask for Advice.” Praxix has a perpetual “Cast” option, and Tag has most of the inventory options. I find the interface inoffensive, but not as revolutionary as the developers were clearly intending.

Some of the options in dealing with a party of orcs.

The party’s initial quest is simply to find their way to a powerful wizard named Astrix who lives on Sunrise Mountain. Once they arrive, Astrix explains that the land is being threatened by the return of the Dread Lord, and he gives the party a quest to find seven magical stones. They must first find four (Nymph, Wizard, Dwarf, and Elf), which will lead them two others, which will lead to the final one, called the Anvil. Astrix believes that the stones are the key to defeating the Dread Lord. In their quest to find them, the party has to negotiate with dwarves, befriend elves, defeat bands of orcs, and explore ancient tombs. In these adventures, they make use of the special skills of several NPCs that swap in and out of the party.

Astrix gives the party its final quest.

If they recover the first six stones, Astrix tells them to seek the Anvil on the Misty Isle. The party must travel to the port city of Zan, dodge agents of the Dread Lord, and convince a captain to take them to the Misty Isle. Praxix has to cast some spells to help the ship navigate. Eventually, the ship crashes on the island and the Dread Lord attacks. Praxix is knocked unconscious, and Tag must figure out how to mix the right reagents to call a lightning bolt and smite the Dread Lord.

Tag saves the party in the final combat.

Just about every episode has some Tolkien source, though mercifully not in the same order as The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings. There’s a dwarven mine that recalls Moria and an escape that not only feels but also looks like the bridge at Khazad-dûm. Another moment recalls the discovery of Balin’s tomb. A ranger named Minar joins the party early on in an Aragornesque episode. There are echoes of Gandalf in Astrix and of Bilbo in the initially-hapless but ultimately-competent Tag. There’s an episode that mirrors the Fellowship hiding from evil crows, and a tense episode in a tavern at the end that recalls the hobbits in the inn at Bree (the solution even involves turning one of them invisible). There’s a Tom Bombadil-like figure named Umber whose nature remains a mystery until the end. The Dread Lord is, of course, an exact analogue of Sauron, and the stones are the game’s equivalent of rings.

Crebain from Dunland!

Tag, just like Frodo, freaks out when he sees some suspicious characters in the Prancing Pony. If they stay at the inn tonight, the party will be killed.

The whole thing is reasonably well-written and would make a serviceable young adult novel, but as a game, it’s nothing but endless frustration. Here is a small list of its sins:

1. It is completely linear. The one saving grace of difficult adventure games is that they are rarely linear. Usually, you can move back and forth between locations and solve puzzles in a variety of orders, taking the time to figure out what must be done in each place. Journey subverts this tradition entirely. You have to choose the right options the first time you arrive in a new location or you cannot return. For instance, there’s one castle where you have the option to go to a left room or a right room. If you go to the right room, you see a chest full of jewels. If you’re not exactly sure what to do there and leave the room, you can never enter it again. This happens repeatedly throughout the game.

The second screen invites you to enter a tavern or “Proceed” down the street. In any other adventure game you’ve ever played, if you proceed down the street, you can later turn around and go back to the tavern. Not here. Hit “Proceed,” and you’re out of town and on your way. It’s pretty easy to hit some of these options accidentally, by the way; one too many ENTERs while scrolling through text will accidentally activate the default option on the next screen. An “undo” option could have helped a lot.

2. A “Back” option doesn’t really take you “back.” Most screens have a “back” option, and sometimes this returns you to a previous screen so you can choose a different direction. But much of the time, it serves as simply another way to go, usually one-way.

A simple choice to go left or right has enormous consequences for the rest of the game.

3. You’re almost always walking dead. As I previously mentioned, if you don’t reach the end of the game with the right number of spell reagents, you can’t win. It is very easy to miss some of the reagents that you might otherwise pick up along the way, and also very easy to accidentally burn too many reagents casting spells. One of the options that burns too many reagents, by the way, is asking the wizard to “Tell the Legends” of magic. Usually, the “Tell Legends” option produces some useful lore about the game world, but if you ask him about magic, he does a little magic demonstration as part of his tale, which wastes necessary reagents.

The reagents are the most egregious example, but there are plenty of others. Fail to purchase a map early in the game–a map that the shopkeeper himself encourages you not to purchase–and you can’t find your way to Astrix. Fail to ask a dwarf companion about some elf legends at the right time, and you don’t have the right words to speak to an elf woman and thus miss your chance to get the Elf Stone. Fail to do a number of things just right in an early encounter with a nymph and you miss the Nymph Stone. Fail to accept a suspicious character into the party early in the game, and you miss later encounters because you don’t have his scouting skill.

The shopkeeper tells you that a required inventory item won’t help you.

Not only does the game give you no warning when something like this happens, but lots of other things happen that seem like they might be mistakes. In particular, party members disappear, get lost, get wounded, and even die on occasion, and you feel like you need to reload–only to discover, 20 turns later, that you can find or heal them in a different location.

4. Some of the walking dead criteria make no sense. Except in a single place where the dwarf Hurth has to “die” (or seem to die) only to be found alive again later, no character can die in a successful game, even if that character is no longer needed. This particularly bit me towards the end, in the city of Zan. If you don’t do the exact sequence of events correctly in several locations, the Dread Lord’s thugs are able to find your party and kill Hurth before the rest of the party members can escape. Even though Hurth’s skills are no longer needed for the rest of the game, his death prevents you from winning.

5. Not only do you get no notifications of walking dead situations, a lot of text is wasted in such situations. It feels like fully half of the game’s text would never be seen by a party destined to win because such text only appears when the party is already walking dead. There are entire areas of the game that, if you enter and experience any of the adventures to be had there, you’ve already gone the wrong way and cannot win.

A lot of text and programming–not to mention the graphics–went into a battle you’re not even supposed to fight. You’re meant to take a different path.

6. A lot of the options are completely nonsensical. Basically, on every screen, at every option, and at every encounter, you have to try every potential option and note the result–keeping in mind that its implications might not be fully realized for several scenes–and then try to assemble the “best” list of options in the right order. Some of the “successful” options you’d never hit upon by logic alone. Most involve the use of spells. For instance, Praxix encounters a stump on the ground in his explorations. If he casts “Tremor,” the stump splits and reveals a passage into the Earth. It’s both nonsensical to assume (without any other evidence) that such a passage would be revealed, and that “Tremor” would be the spell to reveal it. Later, you have to use the “Wind” spell in a random cave to reveal a hidden rune. Other encounters force you to discern at the outset whether you can cast a regular spell or need the extra “oomph” that comes from mixing the regular spell with grey powder, only the game has given you no gauge to determine the normal strength of spells.

7. The game randomizes some variables. Even if you can make an exhaustive list of the “right” options in the “right” orders, you’ll still lose the game because each new session randomizes some of the variables. The most obvious is early in the game, when you’re trying to navigate the paths to get to Asterix’s tower. There are six choices of left or right, or 64 possible total paths, and you don’t know if you’ve chosen right or wrong until you arrive. Each new game generates a different combination of correct paths. Now, technically you can bypass this navigation by casting a “Glow” spell on the map you hopefully purchased in the first town, but after a few sessions of this game, you’re so paranoid about conserving reagents that you’re more likely to sigh and start working your way through all 64 possible combinations.

The name of the boat captain you need to ask for at the end of the game is also randomized.

One of the things that the game randomizes is the color of the reagents that correspond with the different “essences”: wind, fire, water, earth, and so forth. At the end of the game, Tag has to figure out what reagents to mix, and only a throw-away line in an earlier scene about brushing some color of powder from his hands keeps him from, again, having to reload multiple times and work through dozens of possibilities.

Failing to note the “fine orange residue” early in the game makes it nearly impossible to cast the final spell.

The one nod the game makes to its own difficulty is by letting you view Tag’s “musings” once you’ve lost the game. This screen lets you go one-by-one through all the things you did wrong, but only those things that led to your particular demise, and even then it’s maddeningly vague with advice like “conserve reagents,” not “you used reagents when you didn’t have to in this specific place.”

Tag muses on the many things the party did wrong.

Given all I’ve described, I have to highlight this particular paragraph from the game manual:

Your Journey will provide you with many hours of enjoyment and many hundreds of difficult decisions. But unlike other games you may have played, there are virtually no dead ends. Any action you take will advance the story toward one of its many endings. But there is only one ending that is the best.

I’ve never read such a blatant lie in a game manual before. There are no “alternate” endings–every single ending except the victory screen above has the main character reflecting on the literal destruction of the world. And the only way it can say that “there are virtually no dead ends” is because the damned game lets you keep on playing as long as possible even when you’re in an unwinnable situation. That’s not a virtue!

“Not a dead end.”

These various failings are why it took me ultimately 23 hours to win a game that only lasts about 1 hour if you hit all the right options. And that’s with using walkthroughs to help in some areas. With Journey, what you basically have is a cruel Choose Your Own Adventure book that you have to read 25 times, each time getting maybe an extra paragraph. It’s barely a “computer” game, and of course certainly not an RPG. It has no character development, hardly any inventory, and the combats are all scripted.

The most frustrating part is, I’m the only one who sees how bad this is! In the June 1989 Computer Gaming World, Roe Adams–Roe &@&$*# Adams!–practically wets himself, calling it “the best effort to date of any game designer struggling to find a new way for the game to interface with the player,” although he does caution about the use of reagents and mentions some of the more illogical puzzles. He seems to have been seduced by the interface–which is innovative but not all that great–and the plenitude of the graphics. European Amiga magazines gave it in the 80s and 90s.

Only more modern reviewers have failed to be lured in by its promises. In 1998, All Game Guide rated it a 40, called it “shallow,” rejected its RPG credentials, and said that “it fails to take advantage of what a reactive computer can do that a non-reactive book cannot.”

When I got done typing all of this and started searching for other modern takes on the game, I was delighted to see that Jimmy Maher (“The Digital Antiquarian”) had covered it in 2016. As I read his piece, he at first scared the bejesus out of me by calling his initial reactions “a unique and very pleasant experience.” But his opinion evolves as he plays, and eventually we get to the good stuff:

[T]here inevitably comes a point when you realize that everything Infocom has been saying about their game and everything the game has been implying about itself is a lie. Far from being the more easy-going sort of text adventure that it’s purported to be, Journey is a minefield of the very dead ends it decries, a cruel betrayal of everything it supposedly stands for. It turns out that there is exactly one correct path through the dozens of significant choices you make in playing the game to completion. Make one wrong choice and it’s all over. Worse–far worse–more often than not you are given no clue about the irrecoverable blunder you’ve just made. You might play on for hours before being brought up short.

When I rated it in 2011, I gave it a 23 without even bothering to explain the GIMLET. I don’t know what I was thinking with some of the ratings. I gave it 2 points for “character creation and development” when it deserves 0 and 4 points for “magic and combat” when it deserves maybe 2 (some of the uses of magic to solve puzzles are at least well-described). A revision brings the score down to 17. It does best in the “game world” (3) despite being derivative, and in the graphics, which are credited to Donald Langosy. I agree with Adams that they’re well-composed, and the game didn’t skimp on them: practically every scene has a different set.

Evocative graphics are one of the game’s few positives.

The most surprising thing about Journey is that it was written by Infocom-founder Marc Blank, author of the original Zork series as well as the Enchanter series and several other Infocom titles. It certainly has his quality of prose, but it’s hard to believe that he didn’t understand why the basic approach was so much worse than the open-world games for which he was famous. Maher’s account of the game’s development suggests that the developers were in love with the interface: “an experiment to find out whether you could play an interactive story without having to type.” There’s nothing wrong with that, but it doesn’t explain why the interface had to so relentlessly drive the player forward, to punish him so severely for minor mistakes, and to waste so much of his time in unwinnable scenarios. Fortunately, it didn’t begin a trend. I like to think that Blank himself was dissatisfied with the result, which is why we saw no more games in the “Golden Age Trilogy,” as the secondary title screen has it.

I like to think that the next two would have been Destination and Return.

So there it is. In an attempt to get a “quick win,” I managed to waste a lot of time and get myself highly frustrated on a non-RPG, for no benefit except to increase my “win” percentage by 0.31%. This does not bode well for an eventual return visit to, say, Wizardry IV, but we’ll see.

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/journey-won-with-summary-and-rating/

#retro games #dos games #retro #crpg #adventure #amiga #oldcomputers #8bit #16bit #blog #repost

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adambstingus · 5 years

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Puberty Sucks But Second Puberty Is Just The God-Awful Worst

As you somehow keep holding on when the rodeo horse of life tries to buck you off so it can face its ultimate foe (the rodeo clown of life), you’ll eventually reach a kind of second puberty. The first time, you transformed butterfly-like from child to slightly grosser child. Once all your body’s jagged edges and weird lumps settle into place, you enjoy a prime that’ll last about eight minutes, and you’ll be too drunk or high to remember it.

Second puberty will hit between 28 and 33. The physical changes you’ll undergo — the ones I’m experiencing now — aren’t too dramatic, but are different enough to be unsettling. It’s a harbinger of horrors to come. It’s like Batman getting that vision of the Earth reduced to a dusty wasteland controlled by Darkseid in Batman v. Superman. I want to be Batman in that scenario, but it’s become increasingly apparent that I am the wasteland. As evidence of my physical dilapidation, I present the following.

After 9 I Can — And Will — Fall Asleep Anywhere

I’ve been afflicted with a punctual form of narcolepsy. No matter how caffeinated I am, I will fall asleep instantly if certain easily met conditions are present:

1) I have recently eaten dinner after having made dinner, which I do every night.

2) Most of my weight is heaped onto something comfortable. The definition of what can be comfortable is wide enough to include leaning on a wall coated with satin paint (the most comfortable of paints).

3) It is at least 9 p.m.

When those three elements combine, I involuntarily enter, exit, and then reenter a deep state of unconsciousness that I will deny having entered if caught in the act. Vehement denial, punctuated with wild fits of slurred vulgarity, is another symptom of this recently acquired disorder.

g-stockstudio/iStock When one of my molecules touches one couch fiber after a late dinner.

If left untreated, the debilitating sleepiness can lead to waking up in a frightened daze at 3:30 a.m., not fully remembering how I got onto this comfy thing from wherever I ate dinner, be it the dining table in my apartment or the Five Guys a mile away.

Falling asleep early sounds great, but not when I have a wife whom I’d like to remain conscious enough to hang out with after work, because like an idiot I married someone I love and want to be around. Boy, I’m really paying for that dumb mistake.

I’m Suddenly Allergic To Life

To my recent unpleasant surprise, allergies aren’t something you’re stuck with your entire life. They are for some people, and my heart goes out to them. I don’t know why we don’t have annual telethons raising money to help lifelong seasonal allergy sufferers pay their Claritin and tissue bills. My mom’s side of the family is where this new nemesis of mine comes from. They didn’t feel the torment of allergies until well into their 20s. I followed a similar path.

Twenty-eight is when things started to go awry. Scratching one small eye itch could trigger an itch that could go on for days and stop just before I took a back-scratcher to my corneas. Things have ramped up since. One sneeze within 10 minutes of waking up is my body’s way of telling me I should sprinkle some blueberries and Benadryl on my morning oatmeal and call it a day. I don’t know what it’s like to breathe through my nose without fear that if I inhale too vigorously I’ll set off a chain reaction of sneezes lasting hours that very well could blow my brain out the back of my skull.

c8501089/iStock Why does this frighteningly appropriate stock photo even exist?

There’s such a wide variety of allergy pills and nasal sprays that finding the one that works best for me is nearly impossible. Once swallowed, some pills will take one look at your genetic makeup and go full diva as they refuse to work with that clown show of body. Have you ever torrented a band’s entire discography, only to realize you don’t have the time to listen to 73 albums, so you delete everything but the greatest hits? That’s shopping for allergy pills. One of the brands I’m not immediately familiar with might be a gamechanger, but I can’t risk blowing my life savings on an absurdly priced pack of pills with a brand name I didn’t see advertised during an award show or an NBA game. I’ll stick with the hits everybody can sing along to — Claritin, Zyrtec, Benadryl.

Xyzal.com They ran out of nonsense letter combos for pills halfway, so they restarted from the beginning of the alphabet.

Sorry, Xyzal, but I don’t know you, and I get the inkling that saying your name out loud summons a long-dormant demon. I just can’t take that risk.

I Can Drastically Change Pants Size In The Blink Of An Eye

Technically I’ve worn the same pants size since middle school, but that’s a little disingenuous. I’m a first-wave millennial; we were some of the last kids to think tripping over our very baggy pants was the first step to cultivating an air of supreme dopeness. If I go about my normal diet, everything will be fine. But one Taco Bell pig-out session, or more than one slice of pizza, or more than one beer, and soon I’ll reach the full potential of my middle-school-era JNCOs.

It’s so drastic that I want to take this show on the road. I’ll wow skeptical crowds by swallowing a slice of chocolate cake, and with a magician’s dramatic wave of my hands make any discernible separation between jawline and neck disappear before their eyes. They’ll be looking around for the wires or prosthesis, but they won’t find any. Some will call me a simple trickster; others a heretic. But the truth is that my metabolism is shit and I have to eat like a bird so I don’t look like a boar.

To make sure it wasn’t just me, I asked around. John Cheese told me that once he turned 40, his weight started fluctuating 30 pounds in both directions. He seriously has to keep two wardrobes: one for the fall when he shoots up to 235 pounds, and one for the spring when he drops back down to 200. If you’re thinking that weight change happens over the course of six months, think again. He gains and loses 30 pounds in a matter of weeks, changing absolutely nothing about his diet or exercise routine — the one he has aptly named “I Don’t Exercise, Ever.”

Please, if you’re in your early 20s, listen to me: Enjoy eating however much of whatever you want while you can, because within a handful of years, every ounce of junk food you eat will be converted into a pound of fat in the exact spot that determines your clothing size. Have fun jogging the width of Texas to burn off one bite of donut. When you’re young, your body is a furnace that instantly incinerates whatever you put in it. Eventually it will be a landfill where things slowly decompose over centuries, poisoning the groundwater.

My Shit Literally Never Stank Before I Hit My 30s

I don’t want to brag or nothing, but for a long time, I could’ve taken a hearty dump during a crowded house party and no one would’ve been the wiser. I left no odor behind. My body converted the stink into pure energy. I believe there was a point in my life when close study of my body’s internal workings could have led to the design of a more efficient internal combustion engine, thus slowing climate change, thus making my ass the savior of the human race.

And then I got older and my dookie stench roared in with the fury of a long-dormant demon named Xyzal awakening for the first time in centuries. I just wish I’d been able to appreciate what I had before it was gone. Hypothetically, if you and I were in the same room, and I were shitting in that room, you wouldn’t have known it until you heard the plop plop of the water, because I could never figure out how to muffle those. But by scent alone? Nah. Too ninja for you. You’d never know it.

I’m just happy my stink powers activated in the same era as the advent of Poo-Pourri. I don’t want to turn this column into an ad for a bottle of essential oils you spray in a toilet to conceal your turd funk, but that stuff is amazing. If I made the smells I do now 10 years ago without Poo-Pourri, I wouldn’t have friends and I wouldn’t be married. I’d be living in an adobe in the desert, where there’s nothing alive to offend.

My Teeth Are Sensitive Little Snowflakes

Every new transformation in second puberty comes with a small shame. Parts of your body are losing function and you can’t do anything to stop it. You can iron the wrinkles out of your balls to make them look 20 years younger, but you’re just filling pot holes in a road as it’s being carpet-bombed. All I can do is accept it. I’ve only just begun accepting every unfortunate transformation I’ve already mentioned. But my sensitive teeth and I will be locked in a mythical eternal battle between good and evil so grand it will one day inspire the creation of a religion. Wars will be fought in its name.

When my teeth suddenly became sensitive to cold temperatures, I felt I had fundamentally failed at being alive. I can’t belt out an “Aw fuck!” when I lick an ice cream cone without ceding some confidence. I can’t feel like I’m in the prime of my life when I double over in a blinding-white flash of pain because I made the fatal mistake of eating cold salami slices straight from the fridge.

It’s stupid to say I like eating, because if I didn’t like it, I’d be too dead of starvation to say it. But I’m certain I like eating a lot more than you do. Anywhere between 50-65 percent of my day consists of grunting orgasmically as I chew. So you have understand how crushing it is to have something that makes me so happy cause me so much physical pain. It got so bad that at one point my teeth would leave me screaming in pain if a cool breeze wafted across them when I smiled. My teeth were training me to fear happiness. That’s the psychical damage you lay on the person you’re keeping the pit you’ve dug in your basement.

There are toothpastes that help. But brushing too enthusiastically is one of the things that caused the sensitivity to begin with. I’m trying to mend a gunshot wound by shooting it. And that’s a good summation of the state second puberty has left me in. I’m just fucked forever, so I guess I should try to look at the bright side: I’ll get to watch my body spontaneously do weird things for the rest of my life, like I’m a living video game glitch.

Luis is perpetuating the cycle as he digs into a pint of Haagen-Dazs chocolate-chocolate chip. In the meantime, you can find him on Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook.

For more, check out 7 Creepy Physical Changes Your Mind Can Make in Your Body and 6 Freaky Things Your Body Does (Explained by Science).

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out Why ‘Big’ Is More Terrifying Than You Remember, and watch other videos you won’t see on the site!

Also follow us on Facebook. You’ll be alright.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/puberty-sucks-but-second-puberty-is-just-the-god-awful-worst/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/180632214782

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allofbeercom · 5 years

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Puberty Sucks But Second Puberty Is Just The God-Awful Worst

After 9 I Can — And Will — Fall Asleep Anywhere

I’ve been afflicted with a punctual form of narcolepsy. No matter how caffeinated I am, I will fall asleep instantly if certain easily met conditions are present:

1) I have recently eaten dinner after having made dinner, which I do every night.

3) It is at least 9 p.m.

g-stockstudio/iStock When one of my molecules touches one couch fiber after a late dinner.

I’m Suddenly Allergic To Life

c8501089/iStock Why does this frighteningly appropriate stock photo even exist?

Xyzal.com They ran out of nonsense letter combos for pills halfway, so they restarted from the beginning of the alphabet.

Sorry, Xyzal, but I don’t know you, and I get the inkling that saying your name out loud summons a long-dormant demon. I just can’t take that risk.

I Can Drastically Change Pants Size In The Blink Of An Eye

My Shit Literally Never Stank Before I Hit My 30s

My Teeth Are Sensitive Little Snowflakes

Luis is perpetuating the cycle as he digs into a pint of Haagen-Dazs chocolate-chocolate chip. In the meantime, you can find him on Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook.

For more, check out 7 Creepy Physical Changes Your Mind Can Make in Your Body and 6 Freaky Things Your Body Does (Explained by Science).

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out Why ‘Big’ Is More Terrifying Than You Remember, and watch other videos you won’t see on the site!

Also follow us on Facebook. You’ll be alright.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/puberty-sucks-but-second-puberty-is-just-the-god-awful-worst/

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gamerestart · 6 years

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My Personal History with Electronic Games: 4 of N

Previously on Game Restart: [it’s a series]

The thing about arcades is that arcades are expensive.

Adjusted for inflation, a quarter in early 80s money is approximately 63¢ in today’s money at the time of this writing. Most people probably aren’t used to spending money after the initial investment in the console and then the game for their home, but imagine spending that for every three tries, lives, or continues.

And some games in the 1980s were 50¢ (or $1.25 as of 2018). Many remember Dragon’s Lair (I certainly do), one of several LaserDisc based games which rocked arcades back in the day, and games like these certainly commanded a pretty high price. I have to admit, my total investment in that particular bit of entertainment probably amounts to no more than $1.50 in 80s money. Nine lives all ended in failure, and then the bank was broke.

I didn’t investigate any of the others, though I was morbidly fascinated by the gory bits present in the attract mode for Bega’s Battle standing in the entryway to the base exchange in Yokota.

Still, on occasion, I’d spring for Pac-Man, but since most of these games demanded a lot more than home console versions, they tended to end pretty quickly. I was more keen on spending my video game money on books, specifically game books, specifically, books, like, for example:

Among others. Modules were $5.50, rulebooks for the Moldvay/Cook Basic/Expert were $6.00, and I want to say boxed sets were something like $12, but that included dice and sometimes another module, too. The hardcover books ranged from $15 to $18 (for the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Masters Guide). I was also into Star Frontiers and paperback game books like Joe Dever and Gary Chalk’s Lone Wolf series.

Arcades got a little play, but I spent much less time in them than I spent in libraries. And clearly, I could certainly kill some time gazing at the books at the Stars and Stripes bookstores over the summers (or at Waldenbooks, stateside).

When it came to money, what I wasn’t spending on Zoids, I was saving for books, which frequently came to me used. I spent a lot of time amassing my collection of role playing game materials, and most of it I’ve kept since those days. Virtually everything else, like the video games, Commodore 128, and toys, were either lost or sold somewhere along the way. Moving a lot meant regularly purging; I purged books absolutely last and only if it was absolutely necessary. I did my best to keep the books, but the Vectrex and Atari 2600 never properly belonged to me anyway.

Moving was big, and was done every two years without fail—even if it was literally down the street on base. Once our stuff was packed up and shipped out, we had a short empty stay in our former residence—always as empty as it was whenever we first arrived two years prior—and then either drove or flew out to the next destination. Often, there would be extensive road trips regardless, because that’s when the vacations would be timed: between Dad’s assignments, over the summer so we missed as little school as possible.

May, 1984 involved a trip to pick up some cousins and we hied forth to Orlando and Disney World and—with the greatest possible anticipation by myself—EPCOT Center. I might play games in medieval-styled fantasy worlds, but at heart I’ve always been a futurist, and this marvelous new place promised to speak eloquently to me of better futures.

I voraciously consumed science fiction in print and whatever I could get on television or in theaters and home video. Star Wars at the drive-ins had been a favorite of mine since I was seven. The Empire Strikes Back made a greater impact, but was more downbeat, and I’d seen Return of the Jedi only the year before in an outdoor theater in Antigua. Anything else was delayed to home video. Living abroad often meant missing or being otherwise behind whenever it came to pop cultural stuff. Base TV (AFRTS) also didn’t have commercials, so we only saw local programming, not the stuff people were being subjected to stateside.

I was more a fan of our space program, and NASA. My elementary school in Antigua was named after the astronauts of Apollo 1 (Chaffee, White, and Grissom), and there was a small mural of the astronauts inside the building.

Heck, it was a small building, holding grades 1-4 in one room, and 5-7 in the next. There was a small library—read Watership Down for the first time from there—and a few bathrooms and closets but that was it for the most part. It was a very small school. Eighth graders were sent elsewhere, I forget where, but it was moot in my case, since I would be repeating seventh grade when I got to Japan. Being held back for “developmental reasons” always struck me as bullshit. I could have been out of school one year earlier. I got back at everyone by failing the ninth grade, but that backfired and I was moved into the tenth grade on Adak anyway. I may have honestly earned a bit of my opposition to establishments which practice hypocrisy back then. The world of adults made no sense, and they were too inconsistent with the rules to be trusted.

But this was a trip to remember, and I was looking forward to it.

Apart from the long drive with cousins, there was always entertainment. Reading in a moving vehicle was still something I could do at that time, so I did that a lot. There were also a very few portable electronic games. Crazy Climber (from Bandai), a “Monkey Business” wristwatch (also by Bandai), and an VFD (vacuum fluorescent display) game I’d resurrected from dead—purchased for about a dollar at a yard sale on Antigua. It came with considerable battery corrosion from four AA batteries, and I actually spent a lot of time trying to recover it to a working state. Some soldering was required (my Dad helped with that part) and I was able to get it working again. It was Star Hawk by Mattel, the first electronic game I would ever fix. Anyway, these saw some use, but these would be mostly forgotten when we arrived at the campsite.

KOA campgrounds were all over the US (near as I could tell), and we’d spent a lot of time in them, driving all over the country, saving money (I assume) on hotel bills. We set up tents, visited bathrooms, gazed at the swimming pool, and … and then …

And then it rained like a swimming pool poured through a sieve for almost the entire week. I didn’t care: Disney World/EPCOT were too nearby to feel anything but slightly dampened anticipation.

The only dry spot was the KOA laundry and check-in building where the snacks and vending machines were and—

And there it was. One arcade console by Atari—still close enough to the heyday to inspire excitement even in a jaded, dampened, and world-weary twelve-year-old—and no mere upright cabinet console this, and certainly not the blocky-chunky pixels of the Atari 2600 home console but the clean vector graphics I would later associate with the Vectrex; this was a cockpit to climb into to save the rebel alliance from the Death Star. (And it had some early voice samples from the film itself.)

Star Wars was fifty cents to play. Half a dollar. Cripplingly costly.

Objectively I knew I needed to save money for the Disney experiences which were the entire basis for the whole trip, but I also must needed to play it. It’s one thing to grab a friend’s X-wing (er, with permission—I never had my own), and run around the playground like a lunatic blowing up the enemy, one gets tired of that kind of exercise. Also there are compromises like Luke technically being unavailable so a Micronaut Time Traveller had to step in and save the day, but imagination is as fierce and unyielding as it is malleable.

This was the summer of 1984, and I probably spent 70% of my budget into that damned machine. The parents did not object. It was rainy, and we had been holding out for better weather, and it was warm and dry nearer to the glow of the screen. X rays are like that. And what was I going to do otherwise? Go swimming? That was like walking.

The rain relented slightly, and I had a fabulous time at EPCOT and Disney World (adventures to recount later), and it turns out, even after coaxing one last play before we packed up camp and left, I was unable to end the Death Star. That fight would have to continue later.

Back to 2003, at a Tacoma Fred Meyers, I wander into electronics, just to see if there was anything new. I may have been killing time for the next bus home. Fred Meyer doesn’t seem to do this any more for home consoles, but they had a video game kiosk set up for the Nintendo GameCube.

Nintendo. I’d heard of them. Why not. The demo is playing Rogue Leader: Rogue Squadron II. I grasp the controller, and feel my way around playing for a bit.

And I’m back in 1984, sitting in the cockpit of an X-wing, trying to ‘splode the Death Star.

In 1995, graphics like this would have been mind-blowing. But I regularly used SGI hardware far more capable than any video game console, and there wasn’t that much difference between this and the PS2. Perhaps the GameCube was better overall, but that’s not the whole experience. Running down TIE fighters and crashing into walls is.

I bought the game. I bought the GameCube (Indigo, because, reasons). I bought a copy of Luigi’s Mansion. And I bought a wireless Wavebird controller all on the same day.

It would take a few months, and I certainly didn’t know it at the time, but this machine would put dust on the Sony PS2.

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knownshippable · 7 years

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Role-Playing for One: Revisiting the Fighting Fantasy Gamebook Series

https://gamebooks.org was used as reference for this piece, with background from http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-08-16-you-are-the-hero-a-history-of-fighting-fantasy

I've always loved reading. When other kids were playing our school's custom made tennis ball tag game (largely an excuse to whip tennis balls at people), messing around in class or just generally engaging in grade-school mayhem, I always had a book handy.

I read in class when I was done my work (and sometimes when I wasn’t). I read on car trips. I read on the bus rides home, or while walking. I read when I had nothing else to do. I read at home instead of going outside, or even instead of video games; my usual escapist pastime of my formative years.

By the summer I turned eleven, I was reading literally anything I could get my hands on, from the Animorphs series, X-Files episode novelizations, ‘Young Adult’ novels about first aid, or even the Star Trek technical manual. I will even admit to having read crappy novelizations of Ninja Gaiden and Blaster Master at some point.

In my defense - it was a different time.

So, while kids my age were at summer camp, my idea of a day out was either going to my local bookstore or biking over to the library. I'd spend entire afternoons wandering the air-conditioned stacks, checking books out armfuls at a time, then spending stretches of days inside alternating between console RPGs and reading stacks of books by my bed.

It was around that time, on one of my trips that I first found a gamebook.

You probably know them as the Choose Your Own Adventure books. At very least, you’ve probably seen the covers. The concept behind the series is simple: books with non-linear page numbers dividing the narrative into decision points, ending in a number of ways based on your decisions throughout.

The series has always been the poster child for utterly ridiculous deaths - and some of them were downright gruesome for a series that was aimed at pre-teens. An illustrated scene featuring your character being strangled by a Yakuza assassin is just the tip of the iceberg. In fact, as a connoisseur of truly awful video game character deaths - a trait developed from a childhood playing adventure games, I can confirm that some of these are actually pretty gruesome.

I was content enough in my discovery, but little did I know that the well went deeper. I still hadn’t heard about Gamebook Adventures. While the Choose Your Own Adventure series got its start in the 70s, the concept of a gamebook that was also a role playing game didn’t materialize until the start of the Fighting Fantasy series of books, starting with 1982’s The Warlock of Firetop Mountain.

The book was penned jointly by Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson both of Games Workshop founding fame (Not to be confused with the man behind Steve Jackson games - who confusingly started writing Fighting Fantasy books as well) as an attempt to describe the substance of tabletop role-playing to a wider audience. The end result was something else entirely; a self-contained RPG adventure with Choose Your Own Adventure trappings.

The concept proved decently popular, and Fighting Fantasy exploded to include almost seventy entries in 25 years, including Sorcery!; a story told across 4 separate books that allowed players to transfer their character between them.

But I wasn't aware of them until the 1990s, when I fished a copy of Appointment with FEAR from a shelf of dog-eared paperbacks at what was quite possibly the world’s most disorganized used bookstore. It’s easy to see why I bought it - It’s pretty hard to say no to a cover this cool.

When I got home, I remember just about flipping out when the book asked me to go get some dice and a pencil to fill out a character sheet. And even though my first run probably ended in failure - most of them do - I was hooked.

I was hooked because, for me, the Fighting Fantasy series was a relief. Beyond it being a cool concept, it allowed a scared, lonely, depressed kid lacking in friends and safe places to see what was so engaging about pencil and paper games. The books hint at what makes pencil-and-paper gaming what it is: skill checks, dice rolls, inventory, combat, and world building, since most of the books take place in the world of Titan - a stand-in for the world building of Dungeons & Dragons without needing the critical element - people. And I love them for it.

These days, a handful of the books have made their way to mobile devices, boasting quality of life improvements like and bookmarks, which saves me trying to read a paperback while trying to hold it like a bowling ball - fingers trying to save various decision points to go back to when you failed.

And fail you would; Fighting Fantasy books are the worst of D&D dungeon design that we love to hate so much - or maybe just hate, depending on your taste. Dead end skill checks that force a restart of the entire book, insufferable mazes that required reams of graph paper to map properly, entire branches of the book that served as red herrings, and even unwinnable states, triggered by forgetting to pick up a key items early in the story. Some of the books boast an instant-death kill-count well in the 30s, not counting combat deaths. I’m working through House of Hell right now, and haven’t gotten more than a few encounters in before dying to some seemingly harmless choice.

While some of the earlier entries show their age, there’s still a lot of worth here - with some caveats. There is a lot of nostalgia at play here. If you’re not the sort of person that likes to make their own maps in video games, or write down notes, this might not be the right fit for you. Many of the Fighting Fantasy apps, published by Tin Man Games on iOS and Android, have a mode where you can “Play like an old-school cheater!”, allowing you to bypass skill checks or item checks that normally lock you out of choices otherwise.

While I certainly don’t think they’re perfect, I do still think they’re worth a look, especially at their price point on mobile - less than $3 on the Canadian Apple or Google Play stores. I don’t guarantee you’ll find them great, but hopefully you can find something of value looking back over what I have no trouble calling a criminally underrated series.

#fighting fantasy #gamebook #cyoa

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symbianosgames · 7 years

Link

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

There’s a cute bit in the Philip K. Dick story “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” where one character warns another about the lurking threat of kipple, all the useless objects that clutter up our lives.

“When nobody’s around, kipple reproduces itself,” he says. “No one can win against kipple, except temporarily and maybe in one spot, like in my apartment...but eventually I'll die or go away, and then the kipple will again take over. It's a universal principle operating throughout the universe; the entire universe is moving toward a final state of total, absolute kippleization.”

Games are full of kipple. Empty cardboard boxes, old crates, coffee mugs, desks piled high with papers you can’t read and manila folders you can never open.

But Arkane’s latest, Prey, does something neat with kipple -- it weaponizes it.

Like most games you might call "immersive sims" (Deus Ex, Thief, BioShock, System Shock), Prey asks players to spend a lot of time rooting around in cabinets, trash cans and other nooks/crannies in search of hidden gems: useful resources buried in the rubbish.

Unlike those other games, Prey makes that rote and repetitive action scary. It introduces an enemy early on called the Mimic, a common but utterly alien creatures that tends to hide by taking the form of a piece of kipple, then leaping out when the player draws close.

While the nuts and bolts of actually fighting Mimics once they’re revealed can be annoying (they’re small and move erratically), their sheer existence make every otherwise innocuous, kipple-strewn corner of Prey’s Talos I space station feel threatening and alive.

And shucks, that space station. Can we just take a minute to appreciate the way Prey handles space, and sets the player up to tell their own stories within it?

The game came out a month ago at this point and I know it may have slipped past a lot of people (there are a lot of games!) but after finishing it, I wanted to quickly call out some of the neat things Prey does that are worth celebrating.

Holistic level design

Prey takes place on Talos I, a fictional space station orbiting Earth’s moon. Once the player moves past the opening scene, pretty much the entire station is accessible, and the player can also get outside and jet around the station’s exterior (though they take damage if they go too far.)

That means pretty much every space in the game is understandable and accessible from multiple perspectives, both internally and externally.

A player can spend five hours moving through the station from the Arboretum to the Hardware Labs, then exit into space through an airlock and retrace their path externally in a few minutes. If they happen to float by a viewport on the way, they might glimpse the aftermath of a particularly frenetic fight they had two hours ago, or spot the open hatch of a maintenance duct they crawled through to circumvent said fight.

This is important because it reinforces the illusion that the player is somewhere else. It makes Talos I feel like a real place, a holistic environment that can be explored, learned, and mastered.

This kind of environmental design isn’t easy -- there’s a reason most games run through a linear series of discrete levels -- but when done right, it helps the player feel embodied in your game.

There are lots of great examples of other games that nail this sort of holistic level design, but I’m just going to take the lazy way out and say it’s like Dark Souls. That game had fantastic, complicated environments that all fit together perfectly, lulling players into feeling that they were exploring a real place. Prey achieves something very similar, with the added benefit of being set on a floating space station that can be circumnavigated from the outside.

Dynamic enemy placement

Also like Dark Souls, the lion’s share of Prey is devoid of friendly life. Thus, the game's interlocking environments are chiefly defined by what enemies you find there and what stuff you can pick up.

The enemies also respawn or repopulate across Talos I in some fashion, ensuring (for better and for worse) that players can never fully relax when backtracking. More importantly, there are moments when the nature and number of enemies spread across the station changes in accordance with the narrative.

That gives players new challenges in known settings, keeping those locations feeling fresh and, more importantly, rewarding players for learning and exploiting the environments of Talos I.

Fluctuating power curves

Prey takes a lot of direct inspiration from games like System Shock, Thief, and Deus Ex, asking players to navigate Talos I while fighting/tricking/sneaking past enemies and collecting items, weapons and upgrades.

Since those resources are placed throughout the station and basically the whole thing is open to players from the jump, there are lots of different paths players can carve through the game -- and lots of ways that progression can be impacted by how threats shift and change.

For example, let me lay out my emotional journey through Prey. After about an hour, I was intrigued and felt pretty safe: I had plenty of healing items, a weapon or two, and (naive) trust that the game’s designers had balanced the difficulty level (Normal) so that I couldn’t totally ruin myself.

This seems fine

Five hours in, I was ruined.

I’d burned through all of my healing items, ammunition, and upgrade tools. All I had left was a wrench and a few EMP grenades, which were useless against the monstrosities that stood between me and everything I needed -- a shotgun, for example, or the fabrication plans for medkits.

I considered restarting the game, but decided to stick with it and sneak past everything in my way. I was terrified. Prey was the worst!

Ten hours in, Prey felt too easy. I’d managed to get both a shotgun and the medkit plans, as well as some schematics for other Useful Things. I was practically bursting with ammo and healing items, and I’d learned the enemies and environments well enough to know no fear.

This is it, I thought. This is the part in every game where you make the jump from underpowered to overpowered. Assuming the endgame was nigh, I caught myself thinking wistfully about how much more immersive and real Talos I had felt when I was inching through it in total abject terror. It would be kind of nice to go back to being underpowered, I thought.

Twenty hours in, I decided it wasn’t actually that nice! I was totally out of healing items (again), out of ammo (again!) and barely surviving as I sprinted across the station, using every trick I knew to try and get away from the enemy.

By this point I’d cleaned out most of Talos I and was having a hard time replenishing my resources and getting from zone to zone, much less accomplishing quest objectives. With no immediate endgame in sight, I thought again about giving up -- or at least reloading an earlier save.

After ~26 hours of play, I finished Prey. I had to make some late-game upgrade choices to counter troublesome enemies, and chase some side objectives that took me through new (resource-rich) areas of the station, but at the end I felt, if not godlike, at least god-ish.

Most games like this take you from the same start to the same end; the player starts at the bottom of a smooth power curve and spends the game climbing to the top. Prey stands out because it affords the player space to slip, fall, and get back up again, only to slip up in a totally new and terrifying way.

I mean space in a literal sense as much as a figurative one. When lead designer Ricardo Bare talked to Gamasutra earlier this year about the team’s approach to level design, he said the goal was to create a kind of “mega-dungeon” in space “with lots of immersive, simulation-based systems.”

Enter the Mega-Dungeon

By way of example he mentioned the studio’s 2002 first-person RPG Arx Fatalis, which took place inside a giant network of caves.

But my dumb stupid brain went somewhere else -- to the sorts of “mega-dungeons” that are popular in some tabletop role-playing game circles, especially in the 20th century.

If you didn't play D&D or whatever in the '90s, know that these were often sprawling, isolated areas with ridiculously complicated layouts (think like, a 12-level underground dungeon surrounded by a network of caves) and, most importantly, threat levels that varied depending on how far players were willing to explore.

That means players could effectively set their own difficulty by choosing how deep to delve. Pair that with the relative freedom tabletop RPGs afford players in choosing how to circumvent challenges, and you get an experience that's often light on narrative (there's something real bad going on in these caves/dungeons/ruins! Check it out!) but well-suited to letting players tell the story they want to tell.

Making games that give players lots of room to tell their own stories is tricky business. I think if you look at Prey, you'll find some good examples of how that can be done well.

Players can go almost anywhere and do almost anything (including finishing the game) relatively early on, but Talos I’s interconnected environments are filled with enemies of varying difficulty, letting players choose how to play and what to risk. The threats in those environments change over time, rewarding players for learning the levels and increasing the odds they’ll go through dramatic shifts in power level as they adapt to new challenges.

Of course, there’s a big downside to all this that you’ve probably already sussed out. Prey gives the player finite resources, but the enemies seem nigh-infinite. You might clear out a section of the station, only to come back hours later and find fresh monstrosities lying in wait for you.

That has a chilling effect on the player’s creativity; after all, why risk experimenting with new weapons and tactics when you know that freezing an enemy with the industrial-strength glue gun and bashing them to death with your wrench will A) be ammo-efficient B) totally work and C) present minimal risk of damage?

70 percent of the time, this works every time

This problem really rears its head in the end-game, when the player is likely to be criss-crossing Talos I and facing new enemies while moving through spaces that have already been picked clean.

Still, it's a minor complication in an otherwise great example of good level design and interesting power/challenge systems. I know a ton of interesting games will come out this year (like every year!) but if you have the means to take a look at Prey, do so!

And if you want a bit more from Ricardo “Mega-Dungeon” Bare, check out this hour-long conversation Gamasutra Editor-In-Chief Kris Graft and Contributing Editor Bryant Francis had with him while streaming Prey on our Twitch channel last month. (I’m not in it, so it should be pretty watchable!)

Alternate blog titles: Beat, Prey, Love; Prey You Catch Me; Let Us Prey; The Prey's The Thing

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ciathyzareposts · 5 years

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Legends of the Lost Realm: Summary and Rating

Legends of the Lost Realm

United States

Avalon Hill (developer and publisher)

Released in 1989 for Macintosh

Date Started: 26 October 2018

Date Ended: 24 December 2018

Total Hours: 32

Difficulty: Hard (4/5)

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at Time of Posting: (to come later)

Legends of the Lost Realm is a Macintosh-only game from 1989, based heavily on themes from Wizardry (1981), The Bard’s Tale (1985), and perhaps Might and Magic (1987), with some survival elements inspired by the Alternate Reality series (1985-1987). Six characters, initially drawn from fighter, thief, shaman, and magician classes, explore the large castle of Tagor-Dal, with the ultimate goal of finding one of the Staves of Power, necessary to overcome the conquering nation of Malokor. A first-person exploration window (in which you cannot see enemy parties) is navigated with a mostly point-and-click interface. Combat is turned-based, with a complex magic and skill system that makes good use of the various character classes. Combat difficulty, experience point rewards, and the economy are all terribly imbalanced, making for an extremely difficult early game. Five sequels-cum-expansion packs were intended, but only one was ever produced.

***

When I wrapped up my last entry on Legends of the Lost Realm, I was actually quite motivated to keep going. I seemed to have gotten over a hump and I was looking forward to finding out how the puzzle map would be used in gameplay.

Entering The Catacombs. I didn’t last long here.

A few things happened after that to sap my interest in continuing. First, the difficulty curve returned in a big way. Once I finished the four towers, the only two major places left to explore were the Catacombs, accessible from the magic shop, and the Great Tower at the center of the map. In both cases, enemy parties encountered on the first level so far outclassed my own party that I would have had to grind for hours to defeat them.

I started to grind anyway, but it was getting a lot longer. Some of the enemy parties in the Great Tower serve up significant experience rewards, but the combats are long. For instance, there’s a fixed combat with 80 bats in one hallway, and it reliably delivers about 1,000 experience points. The bats hardly ever hit, so it’s easy enough to restore what little damage they cause. But I can only reliably kill 2 or 3 per combat round, so it takes over 30 rounds–and almost as many minutes–to defeat this one party.

The beginning of a long, boring session.

The same is true of more deadly parties, like the dozens of fighters and archers that attacked in another hallway of the Great Tower. Even if I leveled up two or three times, I’d have no luck against this group. The only hope of defeating such large, powerful parties is to acquire mass-damage spells. Mages never get those until they change classes to wizards, and even then they don’t get them until character Level 4. That’s a lot of grinding.

One of the Great Tower groups I had no chance against.

But even then, I was prepared to give it a shot. Unfortunately, I ran into my third problem: the emulator keeps crashing. Sometimes it crashes while I’m just walking down the hallway, which is bad enough, but sometimes it crashes after I’ve saved and quit the game, after I’ve selected “Shut Down.” That’s worse. And in those cases, when I restart, even though I saved and quit the game, because the Mac didn’t “shut down” properly, everything reverts to the way it was before the previous session. Is this really how a Mac worked? You’d save stuff but it wouldn’t really save unless you held its precious little hand and read it a story when it was time to go to bed? What kind of sadistic machine was this?

I don’t know whether to blame the emulator for in-game crashes or not. They usually happen right after I notice that the game’s fixed encounters have stopped appearing, so that sounds more like a game problem. Either way, getting anywhere in this game is hard enough without having to flip a coin at the end of a multi-hour session and hope your progress is saved. The last crash came just after I’d done enough grinding to level up and change my thief to a ninja. Losing that progress deflated me enough that I decided to throw in the towel. I slept on it for a couple of days just to be sure.

Ninjas in the Great Tower often attack “from behind,” screwing up the character order and imperiling spellcasters.

I couldn’t find any walkthroughs for the game, but someone did take the time to make a wiki. It shows that the Catacombs would have been two levels, the first another maze of holes for which I would have needed to find a bunch more 50-foot rope. The Catacombs would have led to three other areas of one level each: the Goblin Galleries, the Troll Tunnels, and The Lair. Each would have delivered items or clues necessary for various Great Tower levels.

The Great Tower is 11 levels. The first level–the only one I explored–is broken into four sections, each accessible from a different entrance on the town level. Each “approach” requires the party to defeat a guardian (samurai, mountain giant, enchanter, and high wizard), and each requires a different object from the four corner towers to be in the party’s possession.

Whoops. I never found the ring, so I need to enter a different way.

The other levels promise a maze of staircases, teleporters, and various navigation obstacles. The map puzzle would have come into play on Level 7, which is largely open and requires the party to walk a particular path. I had the pieces assembled slightly wrong, but I think that would have become clear when I actually got to the level, partly because I would have known the starting point, and partly because there is a small walled area that would have rendered some configurations impossible.

The game apparently culminates with a fight against a dragon on Level 11, after which the party finds the Staff of Life. The endgame screen–and boy, would this have been disappointing–suggests sequel material that never arrived.

The entire game is basically just a test to prove your worthiness.

Altogether, I imagine it would have taken me another 40-50 hours to finish the game, and I would have still been blogging about it in February. That just wasn’t in the cards this holiday season.

If there’s one thing I’m disappointed not to have experienced, it’s the specialty classes. Only towards the end of my last session did I finally start getting upgrade options; specifically, my shaman could change to a healer and my thief could change to a monk or ninja. My fighters would have received the options to change to barbarian, blademaster, or samurai at Level 9, and my magician could have become a witch, wizard, or enchanter (and possibly a sorcerer; this class is mentioned on the spell cards but not in the manual or on the “change class” screen).

Around this time, I would have started to regret keeping “Pete,” who at some point I rechristened “Gideon.” The game allows you to dual-class or move to a specialty class but not both. As a fighter/mage, Pete would have started to lose some of his utility, and I’d definitely be wishing for a new pure spellcaster. I probably would have changed my thief to a monk or ninja, moved him to the front rank, dumped Pete, and created a new magician, hoping to grind him quickly to higher levels.

My thief can switch to a more useful class.

The specialty classes are done better here than in most games that offer them. First, the characters retain the skills of their previous classes when they switch, so you don’t necessarily want to jump to a specialty class right away. Perhaps you want to ensure that the shaman gets the full suite of shaman spells before he becomes a healer. Second, the specialists really specialize. The healer is good only at healing, for instance. Every single spell on his list either heals or cures a condition. The blademaster is all about the blade: he can reforge it, identify it, even sharpen other party members’ blades, but don’t put anything else in his hand.

Choosing among the mage specialists would have tied me in knots, which is why I would have wanted a second one. The raw magician is mostly about exploration-based magic. His compass, light, detection, and auto map spells get more powerful but that’s about it. He has mass-effect spells that are supposed to weaken enemy parties (e.g., “Impede,” “Sap Strength,” “Slow”), but I never really saw much effect from them. For any mass-damage spells, you need a witch or wizard. The wizard particularly specializes in elemental magic (“Fire Protection,” “Storm Winds,” “Summon a Fire Elemental”), but the witch is what you want against undead. The enchanter specializes in summoning as well as spells that enchant items. The sorcerer (if it exists) doesn’t come with any spells: he writes his own, based on the effects, strengths, and targets of the other classes’ spells. But you can’t turn him into an omnipotent juggernaut because each spell he creates subtracts from his maximum spell points. That’s clever.

I suspect that in the end, I would have concluded that all of this specialization is mostly wasted in a game where the enemies aren’t very memorable and the combat system isn’t very good. I also suspect that the system was scaled for the many planned expansions (see below), and that in a normal first-game campaign, characters would have a tough time hitting the cap of even a single class. Still, Legends deserves high marks in the “character creation and development” category.

While we’re talking about marks, here’s my best-guess GIMLET:

2 points for the game world. The boilerplate evil-wizard framing story hardly gets referenced in-game. You don’t even get to defeat the evil wizard; you just get one step closer.

Alas, you only get to get 1/7 of the way to assembling the equipment you need to “cleanse the land of the evil of Malokor.” Not quite as epic.

5 points for character creation and development. There isn’t much to the creation process, and as we’ve seen, rewards are uneven. But the dual- and specialty class systems coupled with with class skills offer a rare level of customization and class-specific role-playing.

0 points for no NPC interactions. Anything that technically might count as an “NPC” is really more of an “encounter,” and even if I were to give 1 point for these quasi-NPCs, I would immediately subtract it for the tax man.

3 points for encounters and foes. The monsters are nothing special, but they do have the standard set of special actions and defenses. Other “encounters” are mostly puzzles, and mostly of the navigation sort, which are my least favorite. People who like those puzzles and use terms like “level design” will perhaps add a couple of points here.

4 points for magic and combat. The Wizardry base basically works, but the game is a bit too stingy with its spells to offer the tactical depth of Wizardry.

I still never figured out what this was about.

4 points for equipment. Speaking of stingy. On the positive side, the game offers a lot of equipment slots. On the negative, in 32 hours I basically finished with the equipment I bought in the first three hours. You find a baffling variety of items that seem to have no use, and the characters’ backpacks are far too small. I’m giving it an extra point, though, because screenshots from the wiki suggest there was better stuff to come.

3 points for the economy. The system is more complex at the beginning, when you’re trying to outfit the party and pay for character deaths and retrievals. By the 20th hour, however, most of my money was getting stolen by thieves and otherwise simply going to resurrections and healing. It would have been nice if there had been some high-value items in the shops.

2 points for a main quest but no side quests, alternate endings, or role-playing decisions.

2 points for graphics, sound, and interface. The black and white textures are fine, but they’re just textures. By 1989, I should be seeing useful things in the environment. There are a sparse and unremarkable number of sound effects. I never got used to the interface. Like most Mac games, it involved too much clicking. There are some keyboard backups, but they mostly involving having to hold down multiple keys, which reduces the convenience of the keyboard. There are far too many poorly-documented or undocumented commands.

2 points for gameplay. It gets some credit for mild nonlinearity and replayability (with different classes), but overall it’s too unbalanced, too difficult, and too long. The food, drink, and sleep system is particularly obnoxious.

That give us a final score of 27. I note that the best elements are mechanical (except for the interface); the worst are thematic. The creators, who bragged in the manual that the game represents “the most complete and accurate fantasy role-playing game ever written,” made a better engine than they did a game.

Dennis Owens reviewed Legends in the June 1990 Computer Gaming World. Like me, he criticized the sparse graphics, early-game difficulty, and some poorly-documented controls. Unlike me, he was in love with little touches like the ability to create arrows from sticks and feathers (you have to have a samurai to do this, and anyway it’s really not that hard or expensive to just buy arrows). Given a lack of any information in the manual about the quest, the encounters, the puzzles, and so forth, I would suspect that Owens didn’t get very far, though I thought it was CGW’s policy to require reviewers to finish the game.

The CGW review is the only one I’ve been able to find so far, suggesting the game didn’t make much of a splash. The “sequel” from the same year, subtitled The Wilderlands, is really just an expansion pack that lets the party exit the Catacombs into a wilderness area, where they can try to find a second piece of the staff. The manual suggests that future installments would have been called The Necropolis, The Ocean of Dreams, Malakor, and Black Sorcerers, and like The Wilderlands, they would have allowed adventuring directly from the castle hub. One wonders if the developers were inspired by Alternate Reality (given the dedication to food, fatique, and environmental factors, probably). But not only did Avalon Hill drop the series after 1989, they never published another RPG again.

The “Wilderlands” used the same box and just added a sticker.

Lead design on Legends is credited to David Cooke and Charles Collins, neither of whom have any prior or subsequent video game credits that I can find. It’s possible that they developed the game independently and then shopped it to Avalon Hill, as both the RPG-only and Mac-only genres are rare for the publisher and Cooke and Collins aren’t credited on any other Avalon Hill games (some of the other staff are). Unless we hear from someone involved, we’ll never know. The developers’ names are both quite common, and I couldn’t find any obvious candidates to contact.

Pulling away from Legends of the Lost Realm is a little disappointing, but probably necessary for sanity’s sake. Unfortunately, this doesn’t bring us much closer to the end of 1989 because it elevates to the list another long, difficult Mac game: Theldrow.

***

A year or two ago, when I started calling my final entries “Summary and Rating” instead of just “final rating,” I did so because I intended to put a single-paragraph game summary after the header information. My idea was that people who didn’t want to read an entire series of entries on a game could get a quick snapshot from the final entry. Unfortunately, I forgot about the “summary” part almost immediately, until now. You can see my first attempt in this entry, and eventually I’m going to try to go back and add summaries to other multi-post games. Single-entry games will remain as they are.

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/legends-of-the-lost-realm-summary-and-rating/

#retro games #dos games #retro #crpg #adventure #amiga #oldcomputers #8bit #16bit #blog #repost

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