BASTION

BASTION IS GREAT!

After I finished Bastion I actually didn't want to replay it, not even with all the new weapons and the added difficulty things I had accumulated (yes, you accumulate difficulty-making things, which you can turn on and off). But I don't care! I'm happy! BASTION! FUN AND DONE!

AND BY THE WAY: It's SOOOOOO much better than Red Dead Redemption (a "game"). And not just in GAAAMEPLAAAAY, but also in storytelling! I think the cowboy game's plot and characters may be better, but the way it storytells? No. Bastion is better. The indie game eschews the high-budget cinematic for a not-quite-Tom-Waits voice that narrates what you do. AND the game actually gives you a big narrative choice! AN ACTUAL NARRATIVE CHOICE!! THAT'S CRAZY IN 2011!! Not to say that all or most future games should give you a massive plot-choosey choice -- But in Bastion, choice feels so fresh, and it feels like that probably because nearly every other game this year doesn't offer any of it.

Plus Bastion's is such a tough choice. A moral choice. And not one of those silly, obviously good, obviously bad ones. Seeing what happened as a result of my choice teared me up (with TEARS!).

But enough bashing of Red Dead Redemption (for now); Skyrim is boring.

I can't recommend Bastion enough. GET IT! What a wonderful world we live in where we get great games like it, for a low price!

I should probably say something more concrete. What's it about or something -- or what the gameplay's like.

I will discuss the gameplay. It looks like a hack-n-slash; like Diablo, except that it has beautiful anime-style drawings for graphics; and you don't click to attack or move; and there's no mana; plus it's completely different. It's not about getting loot (ugh, loot). Why am I comparing it to Diablo? Oh yeah; Bastion's a God's-eye-view, hack-n-slash RPG, one that features dodging. Not that passive, numbers-based dodging; actual dodging! Press that button and you'll roll (or later on, jump) to where you, "the kid," are aimed at. There's also actual blocking with your shield! And if you block just before receiving an attack, you counter that blow for that amount of damage; in a hack-n-slash RPG! Brilliant!

My only almost-issue with Bastion is that there are too many throw-away weapons. When I got to the last battles of the game, I went with the three weapons I thought would give me the most killing power (and I set the difficulty hard enough so there would be some tension). So why design in all those other weapons? .... I guess some people like different play styles. A spear and a flame thrower provide a very different experience. OH! This is a good time to note that the smooth narrator will comment even on your weapon selection when you leave the armory; and it feels goooood. His is a voice so suave that that he narrates almost everything only works. Works.Works. Works. And the music! Oh how soothing and beautiful and adrenaline-pumping it is.

Welp, this is turning into an ad. And it is! Get BASTION! (You'll probably need an XBOX 360 controller or some gamepad, but investigate this 'cause I'm not sure) And get Bastion not merely 'cause it's an indy game; you'll probably find it to be one of your top three games of 2011.

Red Dead Redemption's Gameplay is Boring

Originally this was going to be a thorough review of Red Dead Redemption, but after doing some googling and realizing that there were already (And this number is incredible!) seven billion reviews of the game, I decided that all I wanted to do was stop playing boring, overrated, singleplayer games, leave my bedroom, and see other humans.

But then I came to my senses, "I need to review this! Why?! Because...Because I don't know why!" Okay that's not a good start. But, I do know what I want to say about this game, and in one sentence it is:

The game part of the game is boring. This is because, once you've shot a few dozen people on foot and on horse, you know how to beat the remaining fifteen hours of the main quest line. I'm being serious. To survive the game's shootouts all you have to do is follow a few rules: don't overexpose yourself to bullets and cougars; shoot horses from under enemies if you're playing on Hard; carry medicine and dead-eye refillers; don't get surrounded by enemies; shoot the enemy. And that's it. It is about figuring out what those rules are (you're welcome) and almost never about figuring out anything else or mastering any skill. The gameplay IS that shallow.

The main quest line takes about 15-20 hours to do, assuming that it is all you do, which is what I recommend, since most of the side quests and extra "challenges" tend to be find-and-fetch quests, or another boring shootout. The "rewards" for doing the sidequests are amusing dialogue and money or ammo, something you also get from main quests. And the "rewards" for the "challenges" are money and "fame," which, when great enough, makes most of the citizenry greet and talk about you (John Marsten). And I don't want to talk about XBOX live achievements.

Really, it's a best-selling shame that the writing and characters (and music, and sound effects, and visual representation of the old West) are so good in Red Dead Redemption. I finished the game only for its story.

Oh yeah. One more thing. I played the Undead Nightmare DLC. It's worse. The dialogue is weaker. The story is unoriginal. Its special zombies are lame -- they are boring versions of Left 4 Dead 2's special infected, who are probably the only zombies who require that you slow down time; for the other zombies just run backwards while shooting at heads. And yes, I just taught you how to beat the game; yes it's that boring. There's this feeling of half-assedness to Undead Nightmare. Even the voice actors sound less in to it. Although, since this is a paragraph of cons and I would like to end it with something utterly bad, the worst thing about this DLC is that one of the main quests is a fetch quest involving plants.

I cannot recommend Red Dead Redemption, but if you do get it, do NOT get Undead Nightmare, because it really sucks.

What Makes Good Gameplay?

Last night a friend mentioned a gameplay design philosophy. He said, "Simple, but deep = good gameplay." Or something like that. I immediately responded to him with something like, "Why does my underwear smell like poo?!" Or something like that. Then I told him that that design philosophy was genius.

And now it is today! And now I believe that that philosophy is (often) wrong. Or at least the "simple" bit. I also think "easy to learn" in "easy to learn, hard to master" isn't the perfect over-generalization of good gameplay design either. A lot of the best games, ever, have been hard ones to learn, due to their not being simple. My two favorite RTS games, for example -- Company of Heroes and StarCraft (2) -- require a lot of memorization time (not merely skill mastery time, of which they require a lot, specifically for the multiplayer). Those RTS games require a lot of knowledge not quickly learned (if learned at all) without reading or listening to the advice of pro gamers. Knowledge isn't skill; yes, I actually believe this.

But I do agree with the "deep" and "hard to master" parts of those design philosophies. Those words conjure up images of meat. And I like meat.

Limbo (AKA Fun isn't Interesting)

Well, after thinking over my options for three milliseconds, I've decided not to review Limbo. And not simply because I don't want to review it.

Oh wait. That is the reason.

And now that I've gotten the "this is not a review" bit out of the way, I want to say that I do though have something to say about Limbo, and here is what it is: Limbo isn't fun; but it is interesting.

That it is interesting is why we play it.

Limbo is this word "interesting" because of its artwork and its puzzles. It is its artwork that makes you ponder the unhappiness that is your life until you get sex, and the puzzles that make you think the same. (For the record, I don't agree with what I've construed to be Limbo's message. Mainly because said message is a cliche! And all cliches are wrong! WRONG!! ALL CLICHES AND THEIR FAMILIES SHOULD BE RAPED TO PIECES BY MONKEYS!!) Some of you may argue that puzzles, as well, are not interesting to a lot of people. Okay. I agree with all of you; I myself actually think puzzles, in themselves, are boring, which probably discredits everything I have ever said about gaming.

But read the following before you close this page and never visit Stage Zero again!

In my very humble opinion: puzzles aren't anti-interesting. It's not like: "Oh, a puzzle...How boring. I'm going to go do something more interesting, like poison dart frog." Nope. It's more like a developer saying: "Oh, our gameplay or gimmick or whatever has suddenly reached the point of "too much." Let's throw in a puzzle!"

Yes. Puzzles, I am saying, are often just used as a pacing tool. But that's fine, right? Pacing is important. Without pacing, we have nothing....

I was Wrong! Super Meat Boy is Good!

Oh, how good it feels to admit I was wrong! That my former mind was weaker! That I am now smarter than my dumberer self!

Back when I was young and stupid (2010) I wrote that Super Meat Boy was a "monotonous" "penis-crusher" of a game. Well, this year (2012) I've been playing bits of that superb indie platformer, and I have found a play-style that prevents it from feeling monotonous.

And about the "penis-crusher" thing, I'm not sure what I meant with that. The game, now, doesn't seem to crush penis. Maybe the description had something to do with the game being hard, and that somehow that crushes penises.....

But anyways, the monotony thing: the way to prevent monotony from setting in while playing with Super Meat Boy is: to not play with it so often. And that is it! Simple. And it is easy to do since Super Meat Boy isn't an evil addictive game in anyway. At least, as long as you play it on Steam it's not addictive. I imagine that, with XBOX Live achievements being worth "points," Super Meat Boy's super-hard-to-get achievements could be tantalizing, somehow. But at the same time, no; Super Meat Boy isn't addictive. It's just good and hard. For not realizing this a year ago I will now write something beautiful:

Oh Team Meat!

Your game is neat!

During twenty-eleven I thought of playing Super Meat Boy,

in Costa Rica, where I couldn't play Super Meat Boy.

This is bad poetry.

To what depths go my low-etry?

"Low-etry" isn't even a word.

Washing machine.

Portal 2 is better than Portal

My original idea for this post was for it to be 240 pages long and composed entirely of sonnets (with every sonnet ending in "I took an arrow to the knee"). But I decided against it. I do like writing sonnets, but 240 pages is 239 pages longer than 1 page. And all I really want to do today is -- tell you that Portal 2's singleplayer is better than Portal's, and then play more Red Dead Redemption (a game about bringing extinction to the wildlife of the West, especially to birds; it's a cool game).

But enough bracketed tangents! The title of this post is "Portal 2 is better than Portal." Not "Why won't the toilet flush my poo?" Therefore I will, in the very next paragraph, begin explaining why Portal 2 is better.

For there are people out there who believe Portal is just better than Portal 2, on the grounds that Portal is Portal and that it is better than everything, even better than itself....

Erm.

Reason number one why Portal 2 is better: is that the average joke in Portal 2 is funnier than the average joke in Portal. I can tell because I laughed a lot more often and with actual thigh-slapping, while playing Portal 2.

Reason number two is: that the funniest jokes in Portal 2 are funnier than Portal's funniest jokes.

Reason number three is: Portal 2's singleplayer puzzles are easier. Therefore the game doesn't run into the pacing problem of: the player standing in a room for half-an-hour, just trying to figure something out.

I think this sort of opinion of mine-- the "easier is better one" -- irks a lot of gamers. And thus I should explain it.

The reason why "easier puzzles" = "better game" in the case of the Portals is that:

1) Portal's puzzles aren't what English-speakers call "fun." They are interesting, a series of experiences, context builders for the story. But not "fun." Therefore-

2) if the singleplayer puzzles were really challenging, then there would be a pacing problem wherein it takes too long to get to the next joke and whatnot.

And now for-

The fourth reason why Portal 2 is better than Portal :D

Portal 2 is more interesting to look at and listen to. There's a lot more variety to the average everything. Its environments even move more. A LOT more even.

And that's pretty much it!

The original Portal has many fans who say it is superior on the grounds titled "It Came Out First" and "It Has No Noticeable Flaws, Something Portal 2 Can't Claim!" And those points are hard to deny. Portal does indeed seem to have come out before Portal 2. And Portal 2 does have flaws, undeniable flaws, evil flaws! (one of mine being that GLaDOS, early in the game, is more annoying than funny, with her near-constant, practically-the-same-joke, three-liners). But when it comes down to it, people need to exercise more and drink less sugary drinks. Also, Portal 2 is better than Portal.

Why Skyrim is Boring

Need proof that there are problems in the world? How about me playing Skyrim for 120 hours and being bored for 119 of them?

........tear :(

But the game press said it was the Game Of The Year! In the same year as Portal 2! So I figured that it would be worth it!

[And I knew I wasn't having a good time during pretty much the whole playthrough, but I kept playing, anyway...]

And after finishing Skyrim, I ended up thinking about it for another 120 hours

:(

Realizing that I had been pwned by the games industry made me want to understand it. A want bolstered by my being pretty sure that what happened to me happened to most everyone else who played it.

And here be my scientific conclusions:

Most of us play a game like Skyrim to get lost. We play it to utterly break from our quotidian lives via living in a fantasy world -- in this case, the kind of world with cloud-covered snowy mountains, massive tundras, mystery-hiding caves and ruins, and car-sized spiders. A world with orcs and romans and goths, with manifold things to do.

And I want to focus on the "manifold things to do" part for just a moment. Just read this list of but a few of the things I did in Skyrim:

1) Became a werewolf

2) Rose zombies

3) Saved a priest from being eaten by cannibals

4) chopped wood

5) killed, like, twenty bears with magic (I had the magic)

6) fought dragons

7) used a lot of dragon shout jedi powers

8) failed to save people from being executed

9) collected 20 red ninroots and brought them to someone because my quest log said I should

10) hired mercenaries and watched them do all my fighting for me (three out of four of my mercenaries died)

11) got in half-hour long fights with all the guards in town.

12) chopped some more wood

13) mined iron

29) and many other exciting things that most of us don't do in "real" life.

It is a massive fantasy product! And I'm sure my desire to find every interesting thing in it is why I was willing to be bored for 119 hours.

Most of the time, you the player won't be experiencing the interesting moments unless you follow a strict guide for how to play Skyrim; but how many of us wants to do that? And even if you follow guides, you'll still have to grind through boring stuff. There's just so much boring in between the good stuff.

I probably spent a third of my Skyrim time exploring, in the hope that what I'd soon discover wouldn't be another dungeon/cave/ruin, or another elven dagger, or another group of the enemies I just fought. There are so many dungeons/caves/ruins/elven daggers/etc. sprinkled all over the place that it makes the fantasy world seem less real and more stupid. There are so many enemies in Skyrim, it felt as if there was a line of code in the world making it so I had to fight something every few minutes of travel, as if the world thought I'd get bored from lack of enemy contact.

It doesn't help that many of the enemies are boring to fight, as Skyrim's combat is very much composed of pausing the game to drink health potions, not made more fun by the fights largely being one-sided affairs -- the difficulty level of the game scales so that either you can beat almost every enemy with just one or two strategies, which take little skill to implement, or the game's so hard that you're pausing every twenty seconds to drink a health potion. I.e. if the battles are challenging at all, they're really just become a pausy drinking game, in which you do some attacks, take a lot of damage, pause, search for a health potion in your inventory, unpause, and repeat until the enemies die. (Maybe on PC there's a way to avoid this, but I was determined to play with an XBOX 360 controller).

The level design doesn't really help, probably because there isn't much of it. I don't know how many dungeons, caves, and ruins there are. But the amount perhaps is too much, as most of them are pretty much the same.

Most of Skyrim's dungeonscavesruins/levels go like this: A simple maze, with a boring puzzle somewhere (the puzzles are usually matching games in which you must match animal symbols with animal symbols somewhere else to get a door to open). There will probably be booby traps, and yeah there are enough different types of traps that they're kind of interesting (especially when they kill you). At or near the end of the dungeon there'll be a boss battle; the boss is almost always a more powerful form of the things you were just fighting; the boss might have minions. Behind or on the boss is a reward -- which is usually loot, a new dragon shout Jedi power, or a quest development.

It seems like half of the game is spent in boring fights and exploring, and that another fourth is spent listening to the boring people of Skyrim say boring things, like: "Boring. Boring. Boring." No seriously, I find it amazing that Bethesda managed to record so much boring dialogue and not feel weird about it (or maybe they did). I think what happened in the development offices was something like this: Bethesda put in so many characters and were so determined -- more determined than anything else -- to make believable their Middle Earth cliche fantasyland that they said to each other, "You know, I don't really wanna spend time making all these virtual people I don't care about interesting. Let's just make the NPCs say things that would make sense -- given the history of Tamriel and their role in it -- and let's make sure they talk a lot, A LOT, about their personal histories and the history of Tamriel, for world-building reasons, and let's ship this thing and make money." Yep, something like that happened.

So maybe a fourth of this game is, at the least, interesting.

I feel like the best thing about Skyrim (and it is a good thing) is its visual art, especially that of the land Skyrim itself. Seeing giants and their mammoths migrate across the vast, unforgiving-looking tundra, backdropped by tall, snowy, cloud-covered mountains (almost all of which you can walk to) is really immersive, especially with those wind-blowing sounds and that subtle (epic) music. And I could go on about this; the visual art is good, also steeped in cliches, but good.

But despite that I can't even recommend the game based on the immersion-value. I can't recommend it even for that, because it just isn't immersive enough. It's not merely the bugs that prevent it from reaching the desired level of immersion, nor the awkward gesticulations and tone shifts in conversations. It's the lack of computing power and the ambitious fantasy they're trying to achieve with it. It's when a dragon lands, ready for battle, and you think you're going to experience something great, but then the dragon crawls around like a geriatric, and awkwardly decides to fly around again. Or the other dragon that barely survives a battle against three measly town guards. Or the epic, civil war battle for a major town, involving thirty troops!

You know what, even if this game were immersive enough, I wouldn't recommend it. Too much of it is boring.

Review score: 3 chickens / 1 Dragon