Super Hamster: Curse of the Kooky Cult - Revision history

Aderack at 15:39, 17 June 2016

2016-06-17T15:39:35Z

Aderack at 12:54, 7 June 2016

2016-06-07T12:54:18Z

Aderack at 17:28, 28 January 2016

2016-01-28T17:28:30Z

Aderack at 17:26, 28 January 2016

2016-01-28T17:26:31Z

Aderack at 17:25, 28 January 2016

2016-01-28T17:25:36Z

Aderack at 17:21, 28 January 2016

2016-01-28T17:21:15Z

Aderack at 17:20, 28 January 2016

2016-01-28T17:20:44Z

Aderack at 17:14, 28 January 2016

2016-01-28T17:14:43Z

Aderack at 17:13, 28 January 2016

2016-01-28T17:13:18Z

Aderack at 17:12, 28 January 2016

2016-01-28T17:12:31Z

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 '''Website:''' [http://www.jameswmorris.com/ JamesWMorris.com]<br />
 '''Related games:''' ?
-}}'''Not to be mistaken for Alan Caudel's ''[[Hamsterman]]''.'''
+}}{{Disambig|Alan Caudel|Hamsterman}}
 A basic principle that even experienced game designers tend to overlook is that any creative work is a conversation. In the case of a videogame, the conversation is more active than usual. Unlike a painting, you can't look at a videogame as an objective thing that exists in its own right, in absence of your interpretation.

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 '''Website:''' [http://www.jameswmorris.com/ JamesWMorris.com]<br />
 '''Related games:''' ?
-}}A basic principle that even experienced game designers tend to overlook is that any creative work is a conversation. In the case of a videogame, the conversation is more active than usual. Unlike a painting, you can't look at a videogame as an objective thing that exists in its own right, in absence of your interpretation.
+}}'''Not to be mistaken for Alan Caudel's ''[[Hamsterman]]''.'''
 In the case of a painting that would still be a mistake, as without an observer the only fact of the thing is that it consists of pigment on a stretched canvas; in our presence and our ability to interpret the world before us, we're the ones who bring meaning, and translate the pigments into a story. Yet, the pigment is arranged in a static and objective orientation, which remains the same regardless of our insight or otherwise as to the substance of its communication. Even if you don't internalize what's going on with the picture, you can point at it, describe what's going on, and skim off a basic idea of its literal content.

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 This is all clever, fairly well-executed stuff that shows an ambition to push the tools beyond their surface value and create something larger than the materials at hand. By the virtue of the game's substance, ''Super Hamster'' should be one of the best and most notable Game-Maker games of all. And yet, it feels like for all the game's ingenuity it feels like the player's involvement kind of fell by the wayside. If you can't get past the first level, you're not going to experience the game's many virtues -- and the sum of your impression will be based on a seemingly endless death maze littered with Elvis impersonators and lava lamps. Which is interesting, but it doesn't quite fill the player with a drive to persevere.
-On the merits of its ambition and content, ''Super Hamster'' is good, solid stuff. It just needs an equally solid editorial pass to incorporate player expectation, if it expects the player to stick around to see how good it is.
+On the merits of its ambition and content, ''Super Hamster'' is good, solid stuff. It just needs an equally solid run-through from the player's perspective, if it expects the player to stick around to see how good it is.
 == Story ==

@@ Line 37: / Line 37: @@
 This is all clever, fairly well-executed stuff that shows an ambition to push the tools beyond their surface value and create something larger than the materials at hand. By the virtue of the game's substance, ''Super Hamster'' should be one of the best and most notable Game-Maker games of all. And yet, it feels like for all the game's ingenuity it feels like the player's involvement kind of fell by the wayside. If you can't get past the first level, you're not going to experience the game's many virtues -- and the sum of your impression will be based on a seemingly endless death maze littered with Elvis impersonators and lava lamps. Which is interesting, but it doesn't quite fill the player with a drive to persevere.
-''Super Hamster'' is good stuff. It just needs a solid once-over to incorporate player expectation, if it expects the player to stick around to see how good it is.
+On the merits of its ambition and content, ''Super Hamster'' is good, solid stuff. It just needs an equally solid editorial pass to incorporate player expectation, if it expects the player to stick around to see how good it is.
 == Story ==

@@ Line 37: / Line 37: @@
 This is all clever, fairly well-executed stuff that shows an ambition to push the tools beyond their surface value and create something larger than the materials at hand. By the virtue of the game's substance, ''Super Hamster'' should be one of the best and most notable Game-Maker games of all. And yet, it feels like for all the game's ingenuity it feels like the player's involvement kind of fell by the wayside. If you can't get past the first level, you're not going to experience the game's many virtues -- and the sum of your impression will be based on a seemingly endless death maze littered with Elvis impersonators and lava lamps. Which is interesting, but it doesn't quite fill the player with a drive to persevere.
-''Super Hamster'' is good stuff. It just needs a pass from the player's perspective, if it expects the player to stick around.
+''Super Hamster'' is good stuff. It just needs a solid once-over to incorporate player expectation, if it expects the player to stick around to see how good it is.
 == Story ==

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 [[File:SuperHamstera12.jpg|320px|thumb|This is from the TV Station level where our hero confronts a Bob Ross impersonator and must flip his blinking beacon from red to green. Why? I don't remember exactly.]]
-Still, we have save states. And the game is so very charming. So, there is motivation to push on. As we do so, we are inundated with wacky cultural references -- from monsters to background details to the character's move set. And then the game makes such effort to employ Game-Maker's systemic properties -- its counters, its gravity and solidity, its animation -- in ways that enhance the game's variety, adding to or breaking up the game's basic mechanics just as they start to feel familiar.
+Still, Game-Maker does provide us save states to abuse. And the game is so very charming. So, there is motivation to push on. As we do so, we are inundated with wacky cultural references -- from monsters to background details to the character's move set. And then the game makes such effort to employ Game-Maker's systemic properties -- its counters, its gravity and solidity, its animation -- in ways that enhance the game's variety, adding to or breaking up the game's basic mechanics just as they start to feel familiar.
 And then there's the game's sense of a narrative. Although ''Super Hamster'' is more of a linear action game, it uses its structure to build on the storytelling in the more adventure-based ''[[Crystal Mania 4]]''. As with many Game-Maker games, Morris based ''Super Hamster'' on an ongoing series of comics -- yet almost uniquely he chose to employ Game-Maker as a medium for continuing the comics' narrative. Between levels the player is fed into an illustrated scroll of expository text, that helps to weight previous actions and to set up the game's next scenario.

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 The levels are big and distinctive, and all of them make excellent use to the map. They are also all quite linear. As a consequence, whenever the player dies there is an extraordinary amount of retracing to do. The monsters in the game tend to be small and static, so in principle they should be easy to avoid -- but in the event that you touch one, the character will freeze, and the monster isn't going anywhere, so one injury animation will segue into another, until the character's life is drained. One mistake, and you're as good as dead. Consider that even the best Game-Maker games tend to allow limited nuance in their controls, and we have a recipe for some swift disenchantment.
-The game lulls the player into a false sense of security, as it legitimately does not seem very difficult -- and yet just finishing the first level can be a test of patience, particularly as navigating the monsters only gets more troublesome as the level goes on. If you spend fifteen minutes navigating a level, you don't want to be sent all the way back to the start to try again -- with the knowledge that your own skill doesn't really guarantee success to the extent that one might expect.
+The game lulls the player into a false sense of security, as from moment to moment it genuinely does not seem very difficult -- and yet the consequences to just one misstep mean that just finishing the first level can be a test of patience. Chances are if you make an error it will be toward the end, as navigating the monsters only gets more troublesome as the level goes on. If you spend fifteen minutes navigating a level, you don't want to be sent all the way back to the start to try again, with only a dwindling confidence in your agency over whether or not you succeed.
 [[File:SuperHamstera12.jpg|320px|thumb|This is from the TV Station level where our hero confronts a Bob Ross impersonator and must flip his blinking beacon from red to green. Why? I don't remember exactly.]]

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 ''Super Hamster'' is an ambitious project that sits understandably to the left of the scale. It is a charismatic game, with its own well-defined style and tone, that it employs consistently through its many variations in design and its many interesting setpieces. For all of its many ideas -- more ideas than it seems to know what do with -- the game can be frustrating to play. It's frustrating, because the game has so much good to it -- and yet it seems more interested in chasing its own creative process than in ensuring that the player is still there to experience it.
-The levels are big and distinctive, and all of them make excellent use to the map. They are also all quite linear. As a consequence, whenever the player dies there is an extraordinary amount of retracing to do. The monsters in the game tend to be small and static, so in principle they should be easy to avoid -- but in the event that you touch one, the character will freeze, and the monster isn't going anywhere, so one injury animation will segue into another, until the character's life is drained. One mistake, and you're as good as dead. Consider that even the best Game-Maker games tend to allow limited nuance in their controls, and we have a recipe for some quick frustration.
+The levels are big and distinctive, and all of them make excellent use to the map. They are also all quite linear. As a consequence, whenever the player dies there is an extraordinary amount of retracing to do. The monsters in the game tend to be small and static, so in principle they should be easy to avoid -- but in the event that you touch one, the character will freeze, and the monster isn't going anywhere, so one injury animation will segue into another, until the character's life is drained. One mistake, and you're as good as dead. Consider that even the best Game-Maker games tend to allow limited nuance in their controls, and we have a recipe for some swift disenchantment.
 The game lulls the player into a false sense of security, as it legitimately does not seem very difficult -- and yet just finishing the first level can be a test of patience, particularly as navigating the monsters only gets more troublesome as the level goes on. If you spend fifteen minutes navigating a level, you don't want to be sent all the way back to the start to try again -- with the knowledge that your own skill doesn't really guarantee success to the extent that one might expect.