The Virtues Of Bad Design

World-building and game design – two conflicting forces?

Sometimes all the elegant solutions in the world, all the polish and smoothed down corners of triple A gaming only serve to remind us how artificial, how fake, the experience relayed to us really is.

The thought struck me while finally catching up on Assassins Creed II last week. Its rendering of 15th century Florence and Venice is nothing if not impressive, and I had a lot of fun playing on the rooftops. But for all the care that went into this detailed recreation, I was having a hard time losing myself in it. In its eagerness to provide an enthralling experience, Assassins Creed II imposes the logic of game design on the vibrant chaos of a renaissance metropolis. It’s clear that a lot of care has gone into hiding them, but for what it’s worth, the seams still show.

Why, for instance, do city officials place posters bearing my likeness on balconies and ledges high above the street, where nobody will ever see them? Why does the Assassin Order go through the trouble of designing elaborate trials for unlocking an ancient set of armor, but loses the Codex pages essential to figuring out the current conspiracy? Why are these then conveniently located in virtually undefended Templar dens spread across the nearby countryside? Why does Ezio go back and forth between killing dozens of Templars in a days work and spending two years brooding on a bench?

These things make sense from a game perspective. The elevated positioning of wanted posters works well for a character that spends most of his time somewhere in between the rooftops and the streets anyway, and it makes tearing them down slightly more conspicuous.
It’s reasonable to make unlocking an entirely optional set of armor more challenging than actually progressing through the plot. That’s not how the world works though. The uncanny realization that everything was so obviously geared to me destroyed any sense budding sense of immersion.

For a world to have its own idiosyncrasies, its rough corners and nooks and crannies, is crucial to its believability. The very first step to accepting it as anything other than a Truman Show experience is for it to convince me that I am but a part of this world, not its center. Not an expendable, ordinary part, mind, but not the end all, be all center of the universe either.

This is exactly why I love Gothic II and its spiritual successor Risen, though my reasoning must seem absolutely bizarre: Those games give you nothing for free. They are tight-lipped about the fine details of combat and character progression, they let you wander around freely only to be slaughtered by creatures far past your reach. They don’t even give you a map. They make you buy one. The feeling of adversity that pervades these RPGs makes progress all the more satisfying.

Or, you could say it’s lazy, inelegant or straight out bad design. I hear these complaints frequently when discussing the titles. They are broken. They are too difficult. The skewed difficulty leads to a sense of inadequacy and incompetence. It’s possible to mess up your build in a way that will render the game nigh unbeatable. Swords are too prevalent, while other weapon types are scarce. Quests don’t give you proper instructions or directions. Some missions even require bribery, tricks and rule bending to solve.

All of these are valid complaints to make. Taste can never be invalid. However, not only do these seemingly glaring flaws not bother me in the least, they are actually what draws me to Risen.

How do you feel about this? Can a game be too smooth? Has elegant design ever thrown you out of the experience, and poor design pulled you in? Am I just cynical in claiming that a game only feels real if it treats me with disdain? Or is nothing I said true, and everything I dislike actually permitted?

Risen 2: Dark Waters

Games, and RPGs in particular, have always been eager to push technology to the limit to give us bigger playgrounds. They let us explore vast kingdoms, entire continents. Some have done away with borders altogether to offer endless worlds, procedurally generated just beyond the player’s horizon. More, more, more: In this industry, big is beautiful.

In a way, the Gothic series has always been a counterpoint to this trend, focusing on small but intricately detailed locales. The games are not sandboxes, but snowglobes: Limited in size, but very reactive. Gothic I & II, set in and around the penal mining colony of Khorinis, offered one of the most lively and rich, albeit tiny, game worlds the RPG genre had ever seen. When developer Piranha Bytes decided to expand to a larger, open world for the third installment, they ended up spreading content too thin while struggling to properly test, let alone balance, the sheer mass of new quests, skills, enemies and NPCs. The result was a bug-ridden, unplayable mess. Piranha Bytes lost the rights to the series during the break-up with ailing publisher JoWood, and nearly went out of business themselves.

So it was with some trepidation I took the news that after the reasonably sized and largely bug-free Risen, Piranha Bytes intended to return to its open-world ambitions with the follow-up Risen 2: Dark Waters. What’s more, the game abandons traditional sword and sorcery for a swashbuckling pirate theme, complete with flintlock pistols and voodoo magic. Not only does Risen 2 part with established settings, it also returns to the broad scope that almost destroyed Piranha Bytes not so long ago: For a project as daring as this, the mere fact that it doesn’t collapse under its own weight is kind of impressive. Sadly, not a lot more can be said for the game.

Despite his victory over Ursegor at the end of the first game (achieved at the price of an eyeball), the world of Risen continues to be ravaged by titans and, with no means to fight back, the nameless hero now spends his days guzzling rum. Having the first two steps of the pirate lifestyle down, when news arrive that a group of buccaneers has found a way to defeat the sea titan Mara, he is sent out to join them in search of the necessary magical artifacts.

While the first Risen focused entirely on the island of Faranga, Risen 2 has you sailing to about half a dozen islands of comparable size, at least, once you earn a ship of your own. The first half of the game, some rough 12 hours, are spent earning the pirates’ trust by taking part in all the necessary social rituals: fighting, looting, drinking and digging up treasures. During this phase, your travel options are limited to wherever your captain plans on going. It’s only once you acquire the first magical weapon that you’re given command of a ship, and are free to go wherever you please.

Risen 2 is definitely a lot bigger than its predecessor, but it doesn’t fall into the same trap as Gothic III by mindlessly trying to expand everything. The increase in size is offset by a simplified system of character progression. There are more sidequests, but less care has been afforded to each individual mission. There are more islands, but they are less detailed and contain larger sections of filler material. While I doubt that these decisions are wise, seeing how the series was originally known for its meticulously crafted settings, they aren’t technically wrong. The combat system is a definite step back, with the ability to block animal attacks now sadly a thing of the past for want of shields, but for the most part Risen 2 is on par with the original Risen in terms of quality. Content isn’t the problem, structure is.

The first few hours of Piranha Bytes‘ pirate adventure feel fairly focused, offering a small number of challenges and leaving it up to you to work out which to tackle first. This Gothic as Gothic does, and there few things as enjoyable as figuring out that the reward for fighting some harmless creatures is enough to buy you into the drinking contest, which will help you win a map to some buried treasure, which will pay for the combat lessons necessary to take on the next fight. The first half of the game offers a wonderful sense of challenge as you puzzle out what will kill and what won’t. It all leads up to a surprisingly decent boss fight and early climax halfway through the game, but after Risen 2 finally opens up the difficulty curve starts to fall apart.

Once you earn a ship and crew of your own, you’re free to go after either of the remaining McGuffins first, and Risen 2 seems to be crafted in such a way that any order is feasible. Unfortunately, this means there’s no difficulty progression throughout the entire second half of the game. In fact, since you continue to level up while fighting the same weak enemies, the game keeps growing easier. The final showdown in particular is obscenely short and disappointing, and it’s hard to feel accomplished after 30 seconds of fighting.

Now, this may sound like the first half of the game is brilliant, and the second half terrible, but in truth, the entirety of Risen 2 is something of a mixed blessing: The first half offers more of a challenge, but this also makes the dodgy combat more glaringly apparent. The second half can end up feeling needlessly long for want of challenge, but still spins a rather interesting tale.

All in all, I’m not entirely sure if I can recommend Risen 2: Dark Waters. On the one hand the first Risen, or even its spiritual predecessor Gothic II, offer more lively game worlds and wonderfully unforgiving RPG design. On the other hand, with its quest markers, autosaves, fast travel system and lower difficulty, Risen 2 is probably the closest this (extended) series has ever been to being approachable. The game might not prove entirely satisfying, but it’s certainly worth a look for the pirate motif, if nothing else.

A Canterlot Wedding

Endings are tricky things. Even when they turn out to be everything you hoped for and then some, your enjoyment can be spoilt by the niggling realization that the thing you cared for is now over, or at least in temporary hiatus. When they turn out to be less than perfect, it’s easy to lose sight of their merits over seemingly glaring flaws. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic‘s second season finale, A Canterlot Wedding has left me with similarly ambiguous feelings. My initial response was a haze of giddy glee, but once I started to pore over the details of what I had just seen, I was starting to feel disappointed. In the end, approaching the subject with a calmer mind, A Canterlot Wedding is an enjoyable episode, but not as spectacularly impressive as one could expect from such a climactic finale.

The lucky ponies about to go through the titular wedding ceremony are Shining Armor, Twilight Sparkle’s hitherto unmentioned brother and one Princess Mi Amore Cadenza. Seeing how she learns of her brother’s engagement through the wedding invitation rather than from her brother in person, Twilight has a hard time appreciating these joyous news. Unfortunately his duties as Captain of the Royal Guard have not left him the time to visit his sister, as he explains upon their arriving in Canterlot, also revealing his bride Princess Mi Amore Cadenza to be another formerly undisclosed childhood friend of Twilight, her babysitter Princess Cadance.

What's that sandvich? Kill them all?

The joy of this discovery is short-lived however, as Twilight is surprised to find her kind, fun-loving friend acting stern, mean, sinister even, something her clique is rather quick to attribute to the stress of the upcoming wedding. Naturally, there’s a little more to it than that. As a word of warning, if you haven’t seen A Canterlot Wedding yet, now would be a good time to stop reading. The secret I’m about to reveal is neither well-crafted, nor surprising, but it still might spoil your experience to hear it from me now. You have been warned.

Princess Cadance, you see, is an impostor, the shapeshifting queen of the Changelings, a race of emotional parasites that feed on true love, such as Equestria has in abundance. Since Twilight Sparkle refuses to be fooled by her cunning disguise, she transports her to the caves under Canterlot, where Twilight meets and consequently frees the real Princess Cadence. Together they rush back just in time to stop the wedding, but not in time to prevent the Changeling queen from breaking Shining Armor’s protective spells, allowing her Changeling army to invade the town.

Her true nature thus revealed, Princess Celestia steps in to stop her, only to be knocked out in a matter of seconds, further cementing her status as the least competent regent of all time. Now everything hinges on Shining Armor, who manages to snap out of his trance but is still in no position to use his magic, until Cadance lends him a hoof, giving him the strength to blast the invading force into oblivion with the power of their undying love. Yeah.

I never really was on your side

This kind of Deus Ex Machina magic is not exactly new territory for the show, given that more or less the exact same procedure was used by our group of heroines to defeat the two previous villains. In a world where, as the very title of the show suggests, friendship itself is a kind of magical force, I suppose it’s only fitting that love holds a similar kind of power. The concept is, admittedly, unapologetically corny, but if any kind of plotline calls for a little bit of cheese it’s definitely the cartoon wedding. And yet, I am not entirely satisfied with this conclusion.

My gripe with the ending is not the theme of affection, but the way this theme overpowers other, naturally emerging motifs. Now, far be it from to reject the “Love can help you overcome” aphorism (though I must admit that my jaded heart nearly exploded when I voiced this sentiment), but it hardly feels like the central idea of the episode. Between the introduction of two all-new characters, most of our recurring cast having to get their cameos in and an entirely new villain to beat, A Canterlot Wedding has a lot of content to cram into a tight structure, and for most of its length the actual love story between our husband and bride-to-be takes a backseat to other plotlines.

The reason why friendship saving the day worked as a central mechanic in confronting the two previous villains is that in both of these cases friendship was the central theme of the respective episodes ab ovo. After clearing a number of smaller obstacles by working together as a team, facing a much bigger challenge as a team feels like the logical conclusion. After focusing on Twilight’s supposedly unreasonable hostility towards Cadance, her consequent hubris and a series of entirely unrelated action scenes, it doesn’t feel like the logical climax of this love story, but rather like a desperate save devised at the very last minute.

On the other hand, Twilight’s tricky relationship with her brother and her estrangement from a former childhood friend, the themes that dominated the first half of this two-parter, turn out to be completely irrelevant in the end. Either would have provided ample friendship issues to be addressed in a meaningful way, with lessons concerning the difficulties of keeping friendship alive over long distances or reuniting with people from your past to find they have changed. Instead, we get a throwaway statement about the power of love. “Love can help you overcome” is not a bad lesson by any means, but with the episode behind it lacking in focus and so many other themes cropping up, it is not presented as assertively as it should have been.

Push the ca... Dammit, his episode is just bursting with TF2 references

That’s a problem. Despite its popularity with grown men, Friendship is Magic is still primarily a kid’s show, and I don’t use those words as a slight against adult audiences, but as a term of genre. This breed of children’s cartoons is not just defined by its cheerfulness, light-heartedness and optimistic attitude, but also by the moral tenets it relays to our young ones. As with Aesop’s fables, a strong and clear moral thread is essential to the edifying nature of this kind of entertainment, and in this regard, A Canterlot Wedding fails.

It seems more concerned with providing a spectacle, and while I’m not sure if that’s the right direction for the show, it certainly has its merits. After pinning all potential conflicts on one hilariously evil foe, the episode uses the opportunity to indulge in some cartoon violence, with each of our main characters getting a little moment of heroism and Twilight in particular kicking some severe ass as what I can only describe as a battlemage.

We get some humor, some pretty things to look at, some action to shake it up and a decent amount of song. Its rush to deliver on absolutely every end may have caused a few problems for the plot, but I did find A Canterlot Wedding‘s fast-paced mix of action, comedy, romance and drama to be quite enjoyable. In short, the same vibrant energy that keeps A Canterlot Wedding from providing structured moral discourse also means there’s nary a dull moment from beginning to end. If nothing else, it is certainly a well crafted episode.

As for the ending itself, it may not have been the most logical place to go, but given the breezy cheerfulness of its execution, I’d have to be carrying a stone in my chest not to find myself smiling when everypony starts dancing in celebration of the newlyweds. Excuse me… I think I got… something in my eye…

Love is in bloom

Christmas at 2Fort

I originally wrote this, now admittedly rather tardy, piece for Maet’s amateur gaming publication, The Guardian Force. You should probably go read it there instead, his version looks a lot nicer.

On Christmas Spirit And Virtual Items

Looking past the overtones of commerce, the Christmas season is, or rather should be, a time of humble introspection. At heart, it serves as a reminder to value friends and family over hard cash; a lesson demonstrated by giving freely to your loved ones. This is Christianity’s take on a call for temperance present throughout almost religion. As frequently as they tend to squabble, most faiths seem to agree that if you care at all for your immortal soul, you should not tie yourself to worldly goods. But what if the goods you care for aren’t real?

The rise of the Internet has done truly wondrous things for videogames. Once limited to connecting two people facing the same screen, they now offer us entire continents to roam as we please. In a way, the massive realms of yore provided by the MMO-genre these days are more than just playgrounds. They are increasingly intricate, scale-models of human society, with complex economies and patterns of migration unwittingly created by thousands of people from all over the world.

No matter how fantastical their premise might be, games can never quite get away from human nature. It bleeds into them. We bring it with us whenever we log in; not just our virtues, but also our vices. Our vanity. Our greed. So our virtual communities, far from utopian, are plagued by smaller versions of the injustices and sins all too common in our real world. Take, for instance, the growing importance we attach to virtual items. Some items have always been rarer than others, and those who owned them took a certain pride in doing so. But this used to be tied to gameplay, a matter of owning the most powerful weapons or the toughest armor.

Now we go so far as to hunt for accessories that serve no purpose other than to look pretty and to distinguish ourselves from those who don’t own them. They have become our version of status symbols. Instead of sports cars or designer clothing, we brag about epic mounts and unusual hats. Ironically, the virtual world manages to be just as materialistic as the real world.

Traditionally, Christmas serves to remind us that money is only so much ink on paper. Today, it might be fruitful to go a step further and to keep in mind that your Bill’s Hat, your Dragonwrath Staff and your Diamond Pickaxe of Fortune are only so many ones and zeroes. Their distinct purpose, the only reason they exist, is to bring you joy. If you put them on a shelf to be appreciated rather than used, if they’re gathering dust hidden deep in some virtual backpack or if you’re haggling to turn them into a profit, then you’re doing it wrong.I owe this epiphany to a man called Bear, a Nordic nerd and regular on my Team Fortress 2 server of choice. Some eight months ago, I had gotten it in my head that I really wanted the Sticky Jumper, a sidearm for the Demoman class that allows you to propel yourself across the map without suffering explosion damage. Since it doesn’t drop randomly, most people pick it up at the store for a few cents. However since I didn’t have a credit card, I decided to craft it.

There is no recipe for creating the Sticky Jumper per se, but it’s one of several (at the time, three) possible results when crafting a secondary weapon for the Demoman. All I needed were some slot and class tokens, a bit of metal and patience. Probability suggested that I could expect to create a Sticky Jumper in three tries. Probability is a bitch. I crafted a Scottish Resistance, then a Chargin’ Targe, then another Chargin’ Targe, then another Scottish Resistance. Short on ingredients by now, I scraped together the tokens for a final try. At long last I crafted yet another Chargin’ Targe.

“Bother this troublesome nonsense!” would be the polite paraphrase of my frustrated outburst in the chat. Noticing my aggravation with what I had crafted, Bear immediately figured out what I was up to. “Trying to craft a Sticky Jumper, Joe?” “Yeah. No luck on my fifth try though” “I bought mine. It is kinda cheap” More people pitched in sharing their own stories, and once again I ended up explaining why I was going through the trouble of crafting it. Bear, in the meantime, had fallen conspicuously silent. A few minutes later, an automated message announced that he had just wrapped a gift.

There’s a rather obvious connection there, but at the time I was slow to make it. “Did you die yet, Joe?” “No, why?” My curiosity piqued, I threw myself off the nearest cliff. A notification popped up, presenting me with Bear’s gift, complete with ribbon and colorful wrapping. Sure enough he had gotten a Sticky Jumper for me, the item for which I had been hunting for weeks.

Even with the added cost of wrapping it, it wasn’t a big gift. But I was taken aback by the fact that someone hundreds of miles away, someone I’d never met face to face and probably never will, bothered to spend money on me. Bear was reaching out to someone who was, despite all the time we spent playing together, a total stranger. It may have been a small gesture, but it was surprisingly considerate; an act of kindness I could not have anticipated. I thanked him probably a hundred times.Later on, I looked at my own treasury; a puny collection of a half-dozen hats dropped in my lap by the game’s routines or crafted after gathering metal for weeks. The economy of the game dictates that each of them was worth several Sticky Jumpers, and yet the lot of them didn’t mean nearly as much to me as the three words in the description of my Sticky Jumper: “Gift from: Bear”.

I loved the gun. This was no rational reaction. It was neither reasonable, detached, nor calm. Then again, it didn’t have to be. It was a gift. I did not appreciate it for its value, but for the wonderful moment of surprise, the seconds of joy crowning weeks of disappointment. Was there ever a more divine use for our virtual piles of gold? Why was I niggardly hoarding everything the game handed me, when I could be handing it to others?

My thoughts turned to the movers and shakers; the people who make a point of owning every hat in the game, the people who spend weeks going through the same dungeon over and over again looking for a piece of epic gear, the people who spend hours on trade servers trying to make a good bargain. Who are they if not the Scrooges of our generation, jaded misers hoarding a pile of digital riches that might brighten the days of a hundred gamers? Eternally discontented, they chase the buzz their wealth used to give them by adding to it, always looking for more and more. But more isn’t the answer. Less is.

Whether he realizes it or not, Bear’s gift has taught me a valuable lesson. So this Christmas, I decided to return the favor. Between his impressive collection of headgear and my humble assortment of items, I had a hard time coming up with a gift. But at last, lightning struck. Bear and I share a guilty pleasure: our fascination with the Huntsman, a significantly less effective bow-and-arrow alternative to the Sniper’s trusty rifle. Despite all the ridicule it earns me, I have been using it almost exclusively since the game first handed me a bow. It served me well for over two years. When I came across my first Name Tag, I gave it the custom title of “Face Invader”, a name well-earned through over 100 hours of sniping. And now it was time to give it away.

You could say that a Huntsman, one of the cheapest items in the game, doesn’t make for a very impressive gift. But I wasn’t just giving him any old Huntsman, I was giving him my Huntsman; two years of my online career and the sum of all those times Bear had fallen victim to my arrows. It was the Team Fortress equivalent of a personal gift.I’m ashamed to admit that I was initially hesitant to let go. After all, I had spent quite a lot of time with that bow and I cared for it more than I probably should. I had doubts. I felt so attached to that weapon that I didn’t want anyone else to have it. It was a weird realization, but at long last I noticed that I did no longer truly savour using that Huntsman. The joy had waned over time. I did not care for it any more, but the idea of not using it felt alien. Without knowing, without paying attention, I had let that item take a hold of me. It was no longer mine so much as I was its own. It was a liability, a burden. It needed to go.

At last, I let go. And in all that time I spent with my “Face Invader” I had not done anything more brilliant, more wonderful, and more delightful than giving it away. I made Bear smile. Nothing I had achieved with that bow could compare to that. And though it feels weird to go back to a bland, nondescript bow now, and though I might miss my Huntsman at times, I know that it’s in good hands. Bear certainly doesn’t have any qualms about killing me with my own weapon. Normally I’d be inclined to get a bit worked up over my virtual demise, but every time Bear pierces my head with another arrow, I get to see those three little words in the description of my assailants weapon: “Gift from: Joe”. And then I smile.

So as you spend the holidays reuniting with loved ones, handing out gifts and (if your loved ones are anything like mine) gorging on delicious treats, keep in mind that in this enlightened day and age, the spirit of giving need not be limited to the real world.

Count your virtual blessings. Perhaps you will find that you might find more joy in giving them away, than you would in keeping them.

Bastion

I originally wrote this piece for Maet’s amateur gaming publication, The Guardian Force. You should probably go read it there instead, his version looks a lot nicer.

“Proper review’s supposed to start at the beginning,” muses the effortlessly soulful voice of Logan Cunningham, Bastion‘s narrator. At least he might, if he were asked to review the game. “Of course, it ain’t so simple with this one…”

Bastion, the debut of indie developer Supergiant Games, is not an easy game to classify. It dresses up like a dungeon crawler, but sacrifices many of the genre’s core tenets in favor of focusing on a strong, heavily structured, linear story. This mélange may not grab you straight away, as you’ll lament the rather stale gameplay long before the aesthetics and subtle world-building add up to anything meaningful. But Bastion is worth enduring. It may not pay off immediately, but boy does it pay off in the end.

The protagonist, known only as The Kid, wakes up to find the city of Caelondia ravished by a mysterious calamity. His world is turned upside down, with bits and pieces of debris floating through the air, gliding up to form paths underneath his uneasy steps. A stranger’s voice fills his ears, guides him, and tells him to head for the eponymous Bastion, a safe haven for troubled times such as these. But no one got there in time. The Bastion is deserted, safe for Rucks, the engineer who built the stronghold. He’s not eager to share details, but the old man claims he can fix everything. He just needs a little help. So The Kid ventures right on into the Wilds, looking for survivors and the parts needed to rebuild.

In terms of gameplay, Bastion focuses more on top-down hack’n'slash combat than on the character-building, item-hunting of Diablo. Its approach is rather action-heavy, a flurry of dodges and well-timed attacks. The independent nature of the inputs, with movement and action tied to keyboard and mouse respectively, enables you strafe, evade, retreat, or take careful aim, and often turns combat into a positively visceral affair.

Yet even with this revised mission statement in mind, the game could still have used a bit more polish as the controls tend to act up on occasion. Swings and slashes have the most annoying tendency to glide off models ineffectually, which fortunately doesn’t affect enemies as much as it does near-indestructible crates. And though I’ve never been able to determine whether this is a real issue or just a matter of hard-to-spot hitboxes hidden against a backdrop of ragtag visuals, every so often you’ll find yourself placing an enemy square in your sights and somehow still end up missing.In between various field trips, The Kid returns to the Bastion to build new shops with the parts scavenged along the way. The Distillery offers passive bonuses by way of magical booze, The Forge lets you upgrade your weapons (which are stored at The Arsenal), while The Shrine lets you kick it up a notch by praying for bigger foes and bigger rewards. The Bastion is also where the many buffs and upgrades earned, usually focused on either critical hits or reliable damage output, can be applied. Yet while this measure of choice is nice to have, it doesn’t keep the game from feeling stale. Ultimately, there’s just not a lot to Bastion. Mechanically speaking, the game is sparse.

Make no mistake about it, Bastion is more concerned with delivering an aesthetically pleasing tale than with providing gratifying gameplay, which wouldn’t be a problem if the story took a little less time to pick up the pace. The visuals, the music, the smooth, sexy voice of Logan Cunningham; all of the individual pieces are there from the start. But after a strong intro, the narrative loses focus, content to provide backstory while letting you wander around. Given the linear nature of the piece, it’s easy to feel abandoned. The narration starts to feel like a gimmick, a way to fill our ears with lore without stalling the frenetic gameplay this genre holds so very dear (occasional bits of self-aware humor not withstanding).

It’s only some three hours in, roughly halfway through the game, that Bastion‘s story is truly set in motion. After all this time exploring the impact and consequences of the Calamity, the game finally starts unravelling the causes behind the catastrophe. The Calamity was no random act of god, but was in fact engineered by Caelondians trying to rid themselves of a native tribe. The few survivors The Kid has been rescuing – all of them natives – soon realize this, and one of the outraged survivors reacts violently. Suddenly the narrative comes to life, and conversely the gameplay starts breaking down.

Bastion keeps a tight leash on its mechanics right from the start, keeping them minimalistic to the point of being crude, showing us just how much it’s willing to sacrifice for its story. The game starts tormenting you. The more you try to rebuild, the more things start to fall apart. Ingeniously, Bastion turns your previous successes to dust and makes you watch as things break down around you. With every sacrifice you start to care a little more. Before long you’re willing to give everything, and you will.

Bastion‘s first half is slow, with every aspect pulling it in a different direction. However the second half, with its immaculate visuals, forceful narration, and absolutely stunning vocal pieces by Darren Korb and Ashley Barett, is a masterfully emotional experience. Bastion climaxes in a moment that is as profoundly deep as it is beautiful, as somber as it is hopeful, as sentimental as it is heartfelt. The game grabbed my heart and wouldn’t let go. It had me tearing up, sitting through the credits and savoring every second of it. It left me dazed, staring at the screen, still lost in Caelondia.

Not many games have the power to move a person to tears. This one does.

Bottom Line: Bastion may not impress as a game, but it’s a damn fine piece of art and song and memorable in every way. I recommend getting the soundtrack edition, at your earliest convenience.

Storm in a Teacup

The 2D platformer has now turned into the gritty, military shooter of the indie crowd: After a few well-designed smash hits turned into huge commercial successes, the genre has risen to ubiquity and now every upstart bedroom developer and their dog seem to think that all it takes to put them on the road to fame is one retro jump’n'run with cutesy visuals. This thought struck me while playing Storm in a Teacup, a simple little Iphone game that was recently ported to the PC via Steam. As you probably already figured out, I wasn’t having fun.

After a series of delicious treats, from the twitchy precision of Super Meat Boy to the somber Limbo, from the mind-bending Braid to the colorful VVVVVV, Storm in a Teacup marks the point at which the genre tilts into oversaturation. Intent to ride the wave created by better games, it seems to be built on the assumption that as long as you include even the most egregiously contrived allusion to childlike innocence (in this case: a plot about some kid riding around in a magical teacup) any game will sell. Its shtick? Press spacebar to jump, tap spacebar repeatedly to jump slightly higher.

I’m loath to even call Storm in a Teacup a game. It’s a jumble of platformer tropes thrown together without thought or consideration: Keys and matching doors, seesaw puzzles, crates to be pushed and moving parts to be avoided. Everything it does has been done before, and better. If it wasn’t for the horribly imprecise controls, you could probably blaze through it in an hour. As it stands, you’re left with a game that deliberately wastes your time, forcing you to take the same cheap jumps over and over again until the 30 seconds worth of looped audio make you want to claw your ears out.

Perhaps you think that I’m holding Storm in a Teacup to unfair standards. The title did, after all, originate in Apple’s App Store store, priced at a mere dollar, and even the PC version is not much more expensive. It’s just a simple little Iphone game, right? Wrong. Fruit Ninja, Cut The Rope, Doodle Jump, Angry Birds and Ninjump are Iphone games. They make clever use of the touchscreen or at least manage to work around its limitations through good design. Storm in a Teacup tries to move an existing concept over to a new platform. It’s a PC game ported to the Iphone, then ported back again. And everything about it sucks.

Don’t let Storm in a Teacup fool you. Behind its facade of flash and color the game is every bit as soulless as it is uninspired, and unpolished on top of it. It’s not Modern Warfare 3, nor is it Battlefield 3. It’s not even Homefront. It’s an unlicensed copy of Terrorist Takedown in what is quite obviously a homemade box, with a photocopied cover and a chipped disk.

Bottom Line: Stay away. Every penny is too much, and every minute I spent with it is one I lament.

10 For The Twitter Age

With a nod to Andrew Walt,  I present ’10 For The Twitter Age’, my taut 2011 retrospective. 10 games I played this year, 140 characters each.

Portal 2: Surprisingly on par with the original for the most part, but significantly less taut. Still, remarkable writing, amazing ending.

Mount & Blade: Warband: First thought: So it’s just an endless series of battles? Second thought: Sweet, it’s an endless series of battles.

Super Meat Boy: Minimalistic, but excellently so. One of the rare cases where repetition leads to mastery, not boredom. Bitchin’ tunes, too.

Team Fortress 2: Multiplayer excellence, now free-to-play. It’s the gift that keeps on giving! Especially now that I embraced giving gifts.

Mass Effect 1 & 2: Brilliant writing, and veritable loads of it. It bends under its own verbosity at times, but it doesn’t collapse.

Alpha Protocol: Broken in some ways, impressive in others. Forces you to choose not knowing the consequences. Cruel, and genius.

Minecraft: Boundless in every sense of the word. Allows for endless creativity, and a glimpse at your own psyche. I turned away in disgust.

Rayman: Origins: At heart merely a solid platformer, but the art team went above and beyond. The soundtrack now ownes my soul.

Echo Bazaar: London dragged underground! Devils and dirigibles! Bohemians and Bats! Criminals and Clay Men. It’s free

Bastion: Crude mechanics and stale gameplay, but beautiful art and song. Moved me to tears. It’s that emotional.

Again, this is not a top ten list, simply ten games I happened to play last year. Spread the fire!

 

Proper Rigor

Caught in the middle of some curricular changes, I was surprised to learn that the follow-up to last semester’s (scientific) Methods I at the University of Vienna is a course now simply dubbed Writing. Both deal with the basics of scientific writing, but that’s where similarities end. Methods was all metric structure and proper citation, trying to get the basic tools and facts into our brains through rigorous repetition. Writing on the other hand covers style guidelines for scientific texts, a much fuzzier subject. There is no one correct approach to hammer into our minds, so our instructor is trying to help us find our own style through laid-back discussion and a variety of creative writing assignments.

It’s by far my favorite course this semester. That being said, some of the opinions I heard were a little surprising. However limited my skill in the craft may be, I see myself as a writer more so than a scholar, so I was less than pleased to learn that some of my colleagues hold the craft in low esteem, arguing that its basic rules don’t apply to scientific texts, that trying to make your work appealing and engaging weakens your thesis and that only a boring mess of fancy words will be taken seriously (I might have rephrased that a little).

I spend a lot of time there biting my tongue, trying not to jump at people and shove my beliefs down their throat. I might argue a little more assertively if the course was just for fellow language enthusiasts, but it attracts people from all kinds of studies hoping for a few tips on how to brush up their thesis, as well as being mandatory for both types of German Philologists: the ones who’ll go on to work as teachers and the crazy people like me who’ll go on to work… don’t know where actually. Likely some sort of stir-fry opportunity. Anyway, I doubt they’d appreciate me flaunting my subject in their face. You G+ people don’t get the same decency.

Looking back now, it occurs to me that I have a habit of defying convention in school and coursework. I play by the rules during exams and in important assignments I make sure to only bend the rules so far, but when the stakes are low I tend to make a bit of a mock of things (and with some success too). To a degree, that was always me rebelling against academia, thinking that its scripture was, by nature, boring and tiresome. I used to think that maybe that meant scientific publication was not for me, but now I think there’s room for me after all, that it is possible to do better than the texts that used to bore me half to sleep.

I understand that scientific writing is made to inform rather than entertain, but who’s to say we can’t do both? I am adamant in my belief that literary virtues shouldn’t be ignored in scientific writing, that essays of both the interpretive and argumentative kind should keep to the basics of flow, that scholarly texts should try to be engaging. In short, that literary science should do its utmost to make its texts interesting.

Polished or dry, how do you like your essays?

Inside Nano

So today I’ve finally passed my own prediction for NaNoWriMo and hit 5.000 words. That’s just a bit short of the 18.333 words I’d need by now to stay on target, but since my default word count for this month would have been 0, I still hold this up as some sort of triumph. My new goal is to reach 15.000 words by the end of the month, which would mean keeping my pace through a first of tests and exams, whereas the only things holding me back so far have been my own side projects. Like learning how to build bbcode tables. So far it has been a very insightful experience. Let me tell you, nothing takes you to the pathetic boundaries of your mastery over another language like trying to write a novel. Practice makes perfect I suppose.

Anyway, I promised earlier that I’d share my exploits here no matter how crappy, but I’ve hesitated after learning just how very crappy they were. To my shame I must admit that I spent some time editing the following passage rather than sticking on more words at the end, but it’s still mostly delicious wordsauce straight from the tangled mess of spaghetti I call gray matter. It certainly has its flaws, more than a few, but I would like to point out that my preamble about the outright shittyness of it all was no attempt to stop you from pointing out the low quality, just a reminder that I’m already aware of many of its shortcomings. For the benefit of learning from the experience, I’d still appreciate you ripping it clean in two. Just don’t expect me to thank you for it, not right now anyway. Here goes.

7 days ago, he had gotten a second meal. At the time, he had thought the food meant the arrival of a new day, as it had the 28 days before, thought his mind was starting to fail him and he had spent the next hours sitting on his straw mat, staring at the walls of his cell, desperately trying to perceive the passage of time. When the turnkey returned his eyes were red, but he knew that it was too soon. From that point on he knew what was going to happen, and the additional comfort gave him little solace. His meals grew better and better, he was bathed, shaved, given new clothes. After three days of luxury an officer of the guard had paid him a visit, telling him what he already knew. He was going to be executed in Fanrek plaza 3 days hence.  It had been obvious, it had been obvious from the day they put him into this cell. Of course, he had hoped, but hope had turned into anxiety and anxiety into fear and fear into grim determination. He was prepared.

Now his day had come, his death was walking down the corridor to meet him, and at long last Garek was surprised. “Taurn, is that you?” The man inclined his bearded head ever so slightly “Indeed it is, Sir. The King assumed you would be more comfortable around a familiar face. Are you ready?” “Yes. Let’s be done with it” Taurn unlocked his cell, but stepped into his way when walked through. “Give me your hands” “Is that really necessary? I’m not going anywhere” Taurn had produced a piece of rope, and started tying his wrists together. “I’m afraid it is. His Grace insists. After you, Sir” They walked to the dungeon hall, where 8 guards fell in beside them. “I haven’t been out in a while, might I ask if there’s any word from the north?” “I’ve heard tales of snow and ice. Other than that, nothing new. The northmen still haven’t returned in force yet, so we still hold the passes” “Who holds them?” “I’m not entirely sure. There have been a few changes among the higher ranks” “Changes concerning you?”  “I’ve been removed from command. Some doubt my loyalty, considering the nature of my… allegiances” “Should they?” “You are going to be executed for treason Garek, could you tame your loyal fervor for a second?” “I dedicated my life and death to The King, Taurn” “You don’t mean to tell me you’re looking forward to this” “What I mean to tell you is that if my King sees fit to kill me for a traitor, I will answer dutifully” Garek let his eyes wander over the armed men around him “Perhaps you shouldn’t be talking this openly. I am a traitor, after all, and I don’t want you to share my fate” “I wouldn’t worry about that” “You haven’t forgotten what I told you, right? Do not interfere”

Their path had led them through the winding corridors of the palace dungeon, and finally up and up to the rich halls above. Taurn led them to the main hall, but toward the side exit. “Can’t have you walk out through the King’s door now can we?”. Outside the sun was just about to rise over the rooftops of Fanrek plaza. Morning. Shielding his eyes against the sunlight, Garek let his eyes sweep over the cobbled square below the steps of the palace, where half of Thawglade seemed to have gathered around the wooden platform next to the fountain. Noblemen were seated around the palace steps, surrounded by their packs of guards, but the square itself was brimming with commoners, held back by the city watch. He saw farmers, craftsmen, potters, blacksmiths and, around the back, street vendors and whores peddling their respective goods. “I didn’t realize people are that eager to see me dead” “They’re eager to see you. Fangar means to make an example of your death, to scare off other dissidents” “I had assumed my co-conspirators had suffered a similar fate” The notion seemed to amuse Taurn “Yeah, except that would leave the palace awfully empty” “And what did you mean he means to set an example” “You’ll see” “Taurn, please, do not interfere. Do me a favor and follow that one last order” The crowd around them stirred as they came nearer, a hundred voices were shouting a hundred things. Garek looked over his shoulder to see The King and his council seated on the balcony of the palace. Taurn led them down and around the platform, to the staircase, where an officer of the royal guard stood waiting. “That’ll be far enough. We’ll take him from here” “Stand back soldier. I have very specific orders by councilor Sebar to deliver him..” “To the platform, aye, but not further. I act on orders placed by the King himself” Taurns eyes went back and forth between the man and the guards at his side, his face blushing with anger before he regained composure “Very well then” Garek was rather glad about this change. He had the niggling feeling that Taurn was going to do something stupid.

His new keeper took him up the wooden stairs to the platform itself, bare and level safe for a few guards, and the block facing the crowd. The block on which his life was to end. His grim reaper, a hooded figure, was already waiting. The headsman walked up to them, silently presenting his axe. Awkwardly raising his tied hands, Garek ran a finger down the blade. “You keep a fine axe” he noted, before absolving the man “There is no shame in killing a traitor. I forgive you” His guards had informed him of this tradition, but apparently protocol offered no stock phrase. Hopefully his words had the desired effect. The headman nodded and went back to the chopping block and, turning around, Garek noted that his watchdog had taken to pacing back and forth between the guards posted at the corners of the construction. Unsure of what to do with this brief moment of respite, he turned to face the crowd, the thousand faces staring at him from the streets and windows of the Silver Hill, the people he had defended all his life. What was it they were shouting, what was it they saw in him? Garek straightened. They were safe, it was all that mattered. Someone else would raise up to defend Thrand, and the line would go on. His watch ended here, he had done his duty and yet… he would always be remembered a traitor. People rustled and started pointing. Garek turned around to see that one of the King Fangar’s councilors had risen from his seat and walked up to balustrade. It was about to begin.

“Garek, son of Thrand” He began, his voice projected on by the snowseer at his side “By the authority of Fangar, son of Fandred, third of his name and King of Thrand you have been brought here to answer for your grievous crimes in front of crown and people. You have been found guilty of plotting to dethrone your rightful King. Do you deny your crimes?” Garek inclined his head “No, m’lord” And why would he? Disputing claims of treason presented by his own King was treason in itself. “You are a traitor, and the law passed on to us by our most wise ruler dictates that there is only one sentence for this crime” “Aye” Garek said, but lacking a snowseer of his own the words would only reach his personal royal guard, who had stepped behind him. “In the name of your King, I sentence you to die” The stuffy man half-turned to face Fangar, who gestured approval. “Executioner, take his head” The royal guard had walked over to him, dagger in hand “Don’t try anything foolish now” “You have my word” Working the blade back and forth, he cut the ropes binding Garek’s wrist “Any last words?” “No” Garek shook his arms and moved his fingers, before realizing the idiocy of the gesture. “Do me favor and strike clean” he sighed, getting on his knees in front of the wooden block “I’d sooner end this in a single clean cut” This was probably something he shouldn’t say, but now felt like the time to violate protocol. Garek closed his eyes. Wood croaked and leather creaked as the headsman next to him changed his footing and gripped his axe tightly. Voices, mumbling. Faint hammering from the Street of Nails. Then there was only his own breath. Wind in his hair. The rythm of his heart, beating. Angry voices, the sound of steel rushing somewhere, screaming.

Screaming! Garek opened his eyes again and saw people running, people shouting, guards fighting … other guards? He turned to face a sound on his left, and saw that his death had dropped his axe and was now stumbling backwards. He got back on his feet. “Stay right were you are” his keeper reminded him before turning, sword in hand, to face Taurn, the brave fool. Garek yelled, but the ranger was already upon the royal guard. Taurn caught his strike on his own sword, before driving a dagger into the man’s armpit. “No! Taurn what do you think you’re doing!” “What does it look like? We”re saving you Sir” He paused, gestured to two of the men behind him “We should hurry now, if you’d kindly follow me to…” “No” “What did you say” “I said no! Are you insane?”  “I’m sorry Sir” Taurn sighed, closing the distance between them. He put a hand on Garek’s shoulder “but you don’t get a word in this” His instincts kicked in and Garek caught the first strike, but then Taurn’s ironclad elbow was closing in on his face. He tumbled back, spitting blood “Leave me here” “No” And then the world went dark.

Achtung, der Blogging!

I’m still busy not keeping  my NaNoWriMo quota (You can use this link to keep track and yell at me), so today’s post is some recent college work for a course on writing. German, for once, which alienates one of my readers, but might please the other (for there are literally only 2). Careful now, on my mark… switch language!

Ähem. Ja, hallo erstmal. Der folgende Text ist eine geforderte Eigeninterpretation von Peter K. Wehrli’s Katalog der 134 wichtigsten Beobachtungen während einer langen Eisenbahnfahrt für die Übung Schreiben und funktioniert genau genommen auch ohne irgendwelche Vorreden.

Film ab.

Die 5 Schritte zur erfolgreichen Bewältigung einer morgendlichen Aufzugsfahrt

1. Zweifel, der

Ob man die Wohnungstür auch wirklich zugesperrt hat. Natürlich hat man, aber lieber nochmal nachsehen während der Lift langsam nach oben rattert.

2. Ekel, der

Angesichts der schwärzlichen Pfütze im linken, hinteren Eck der Kabine. Regenwasser, an Schuhsohlen hereingetragen? Oder vielleicht doch das Produkt einer undichten Nachbarskatze, oder gar eines undichten Nachbarn?

3. Eitelkeit, die

Selbstbetrachtung im Spiegel an der Rückwand. Sitzt die Frisur? Aber sieht sie auch zwanglos ungewollt genug aus, wie das Resultat einer wilden Nacht, so als wäre man gerade aus dem Rausch des Jahrhunderts wiederauferstanden?

4. Ungeduld, die

Induziert durch den völlig unnötigen Zwischenstopp im zweiten Stock, bei dem die Aufzugtür nach quälendem Warten nur einen leeren Gang enthüllt. Es sei denn man zieht gerade selbstverliebt vor dem Spiegel Grimassen, in dem Fall sieht maan sich plötzlich der süßen Nachbarin von schräg unterhalb gegenüber. Versteht sich. Freundlich grüßen, dann peinlich schweigen.

5. Seelenfrieden, der

Das Gefühl einer Reise die ihren natürlichen Höhepunkt erreicht hat. Lebensweisheiten und Metaphern. Die Tür öffnet sich, und man verlässt den Kokon aus Stahl und Draht friedlich, reingewaschen, befreit, wiedergeboren. Hat sich bei mir auch nach mehreren hundert Versuchen noch nicht eingestellt.