What Am I Playing At? #3

It's been a while since I last did one of these (see parts one and two), so we've got a lot to cover. Let's cut to the chase:

Heavy Rain (PS3): One of the main reasons I ended up buying a PS3 last month was because I kept seeing descriptions of this that said, "if you care at all about videogames you MUST play this game". And it certainly is quite something: at moments mind-blowing, oftentimes an embarrassment, but nonetheless consistently compelling throughout the first play through. I'm hoping to eventually write something meaningful about it, but think I should probably play David Cage's earlier games Fahrenheit and Omikron: The Nomad Soul before I do.

Heavy Rain: Are we now over halfway through the Uncanny Valley?

Games?

Do do do please check out this hip new online magazine I've somehow blagged my way into becoming a staff writer for. It's all about videogames that perhaps shouldn't really be called games, and it cuts a jib I very much like. I've only got one short piece on Psychosomnium in this issue, but I'm looking forward to getting more seriously involved in forthcoming ones (the publication of which hopefully won't clash so much with my musical commitments).

Anyway, here's a snippet from Ashton Raze's editorial to whet your appetite:

"Sure, gaming narrative may not have reached the sophistication of Shakespeare, and we may not have found our Citizen Kane, but that extra level of interaction, that control we have, the resonance with our avatars and their fates, it's really something else. Games can do almost anything, they can allow us to be almost anyone, they can provide virtually any experience and in time, as the medium grows and matures even further, they will. Games can be anything they want to be, or the player wants them to be, and with GAMES? we intend to show this."

How to Keep Busy (part one)

For reasons that for the moment have to be kept hush-hush, wink-wink, shush-shush, pinch-your-ear, look-at-the-sky, no-not-here-over-there kinds of quiet, I need to work on improving my knowledge of the independent videogame scene. The neat little video below of 235 free-to-play indie games has given me a terrifying indication of the scale of the challenge ahead. I've played barely 20 of the games shown. THE SHAME.

Yet if there's anyone capable of staying glued to their PC for hours on end, obsessively twitching at their keyboard, and trying to find the "looks-like-a-bog-standard-platformer-but-is-actually-a-paradigm-shift-inducing-wonder" game among them all, then I hope it might just be me.

Wish me luck.

Canabalt

This game really stinks. People all over the Internet are writing love letters to it right at this very moment, even people I respect, like Charlie Brooker and Alec Meer.

Please don't believe them. It's a horribly unfair game. There's only one button. And death is frequent and cheap.

I must also have JUST ONE MORE go before bed.

Play for free here if you want the next fifteen minutes of your life to magically disappear.

Seizuredome Review

I mentioned it here shortly after I first played it, but now you can find my full review over on Savygamer. I aimed for a slightly more personable style this time, which I think has sort-of worked, although reading it back now I feel like I should have done better with that clunky fourth paragraph.

Seizuredome

For the past couple of days I've been mostly playing games by Cactus Software. Jonathan Söderström is the brains of the operation, and what's interesting about his games is that they're nearly all made in less than the space of a week, while often doing something a bit subversive (or at least unusual) conceptually. They're also all free to play.

I've still scarcely scratched the surface, and hope to write something a little more substantial once I've been able to spend a bit more time with them all. Yet Seizuredome, pictured below, is a fast and breezy 'point, shoot and dodge' kind of shooter, that gives a gentle introduction to the mad charm of his work. Coming in at less than 6MB, it shouldn't take you long to download either...

A pathetic high score

The Path

"I’ve become a willing participant in the rape and murder of seven young women. I say “young women”, but five of them you’d definitely call girls. What worries me is that I’m not sure I even regret it."

Another review for SavyGamer. I like it a little more than the last one.

The Artful Jumper

The best design is elegant and simple, and this is probably worth taking 10-15 minutes of your time to check out:

David Shute's Small Worlds

New Videogames Express

What videogame journalism needs is a magazine that's a bit like what the NME used to be (before it decided to go after the Smash Hits readership). I imagine a mag which is indie in outlook and spirit, but still covers some 'mainstream' stuff so as to stop it disappearing up its own arse completely.

Pretty much everything gets worse over time. Except perhaps videogames.

It seems almost inevitable really. Thanks to digital distribution platforms like Steam, well-written and informative websites like Rock Paper Shotgun, and powerful mobile devices like the iPhone, the independent game sector is easily the most exciting thing happening in videogames at the moment. So let's have a look at some pictures and see what I would cover if I was going to launch the first issue in November:

Machinarium
Contender for cleverest and most beautiful game of the year?

The Path
Poignant work of art or dangerous rape simulator?

Dwarf Fortress
Why play the most inpenetrable game ever made?

Defense Grid: the Awakening
Can tower defense games find an audience on the 360?

Ben There Dan That
Are point-n-click games back for good?

Democracy 2
We put George Osborne through his paces and ask, "if he can't reduce the Malaganga budget deficit, what hope does he offer for the UK?"

Miami Shark
Is it possible not to love something this ridiculous?

So there we are. That's a pretty thorough proof of concept I'd say. Now I just wait for Future or Imagine to drop me an email asking me to be the Editor of this exciting magazine of the future.

Isn't that how these things work?

The Shivah

To celebrate Yom Kippur this weekend, indie developer Wadjet Eye Games have been giving the Shivah away for free (usual RRP $4.99). It's reminded me both what's great and what's incredibly annoying about 'point-n-click' adventure games.

What's great? A story that's steeped heavily but irreverently in Jewish tradition. You play as Russell Stone, a disillusioned rabbi up to his eyeballs in debt and whose judgemental and negative sermons have turned off nearly his entire congregation. He's on the brink of bankruptcy when an old "friend" of his is murdered and he's bequeathed $10,000. Naturally suspicious, the police come calling and the adventure begins.

The graphics are crude but effective. Just like our Rabbi Stone.

The writing's good, the voice-acting plausible, and you're left with a real desire to get to the bottom of what's happened. Sadly, this is where my dislike for this kind of point-n-click adventure game kicks in, and I get hugely annoyed at the obtuse puzzles that obstruct me from solving the mystery.

"I promise lady, I didn't steal your curtains."

I appreciate that pleasure can be had from suddenly making a break-through in a game after being stuck for a while. But what's absolutely key to that being a successful game mechanic is for the state of 'being stuck' to be almost as much fun as 'getting unstuck'. For instance, games where you've got an interesting area to explore or (more commonly) things to shoot at have the potential to keep your interest even if you're not "progressing" in the traditional sense. But it's all too easy to get bored in games when you're given nothing to do but go back and forth between the same old screens, skipping the same old dialogue, and are left praying to Yahweh that you stumble on a solution.

Many people move from on from this point to say that games like the Shivah shouldn't be made as games. They should be made as films or books, where the pretence of interactivity doesn't hamper the fun part of unravelling the plot. I disagree. Dialogue has the potential to be much more interesting when you're given an element of control over it. The Shivah does this particularly well by letting you choose between responses that are, for example, 'reassuring', 'aggressive' or 'Rabbinical' (the latter meaning you answer a question with another question). Crucially, these decisions have a meaningful (or at least convincing) effect on the subsequent tone of the conversation.

Anyway, the Shivah is well-worth playing. If it's still free when you read this then it should be a no-brainer, but even for $5 it's not going to break the bank and has enough interesting ideas to make it worth a look. I'd just recommend that if you lack patience like I do (or perhaps that should be lateral thinking?), you might want to go use the guide here to help you along.