highlights

More on experience

  • Reading time:3 mins read

If EXP and other RPG elements are so horrible, why do they get implemented in just about every other type of game? From platformers to GTA to fighters to shooters to sports games, there’s no other genre that hasn’t been infected by the RPG virus at least a little, and often a lot. RPGs don’t seem to be dying, as much as growing, in both audience and into other genres. So they must be doing something right, right?

Not necessarily something right, in that it’s ideal for its own sake. It’s simply an easy solution for just about any context. Design problem? Balance issue? Afraid the game will alienate people if it’s too hard? Throw in an experience system, and let the player work it out.

For a topical example, see the discussion on Sigma Star Whatever in the other thread, and the people pissed off that its shooting segments depend on levelling-up rather than on skill. From some accounts, it’s to the point where skill doesn’t really matter, as the game will just throw things at you that you can’t deal with through any means other than leveling up.

Another high-profile example. The only reason there’s an experience system in the Metroidvania games is that Igarashi wants everyone to be able to finish the games, and doesn’t want people put off by the difficulty. This is a design problem with many elegant solutions (see Metal Gear Solid — or hell, Metroid). Experience is the easiest, though. You don’t have to think about it.

It’s kind of a lazy out. Which would be, I’m guessing, the best reason why it’s used so much, in so many games. It’s almost a get-out-of-jail-free card if you don’t know what you’re doing as a designer.

On that note: experience is often used as a way to make the player feel like he’s actually doing something in a framework where he’s not really doing much of anything else. When you win a battle, you feel like you’ve accomplished something because, hey, you just collected 156XP! It’s materialistic in a monetary way, in a system where there is no real ceiling to inflation, therefore no implicit value.

This is even more obvious when you consider that as you progress, the difficulty generally scales to match whatever experience you collect. Some games even cause monsters to level up at the same rate as your characters, meaning there is effectively no point to this game system at all.

And that’s what I think annoys most of us, and sends us looking for alternatives.

Then again: although obsessive-compulsive game design is a plague in a general sense, and you honestly can’t make me care about those last few emblems in Sonic Adventure, not every widget hunt is unfulfilling. It’s all about context.

Similarly, if experience points aren’t an annoying mechanism in, say, Dragon Quest, then maybe that has to do with what they mean both in the context of the game’s objective design and in the psychology of the playing experience.

The question, therefore, is: what’s the difference? Is it in how the EXP are gained? How they’re used? What they represent? What’s the context?

I venture a big factor in Dragon Quest has to do with expanding horizons (on the player’s end), and the part EXP play in the facilitation and regulation thereof.

That is, they are the key objective metric. They therefore have purpose, value, and weight. They have practical representative meaning, even if they remain mere representation.

Sonic and Yuckles

  • Reading time:2 mins read

The problem with S3&K, in a word: clutter.

It’s a problem on a micro, a macro, and a lukero level. It’s a problem with nearly every design element from art direction to level design to game structure.

What good ideas are there — and there are some good ideas — are smothered by reams of noise. Sonic 3 was bad enough, both being cluttered and clearly unfinished. Put the second half on, though, and what you get isn’t a complete game. It’s a game that was complete once, then someone fucked with it for six months to make it bigger. For the sake of being bigger. More full of stuff, for the sake of having more stuff in it.

It needs an editor. Badly. A third of the ideas need to be killed. Half of the levels need to be removed. The levels need to be redesigned with some focus to them. Somewhere along the way, someone needs to ask just what the game is attempting to accomplish, both in a grand sense and at any individual moment.

And redraw the damned graphics already. Jesus. Stop pretending all the sprites are digitized clay models. Learn how to use the colors you have instead of pretending you have a larger palette than you do.

A good game could be made from Sonic 3 & Knuckles. It’s not a bad starting point. On its own merits, the thing is just a ridiculous mess.

Speaking as an editor.

This Week’s Releases (Aug 8-12, 2005)

  • Reading time:8 mins read

by [name redacted]

Week five of my ongoing, irreverent news column; originally posted at Next Generation

Finally this week, a good balance: not too many games, not too few. About the same number of Japanese and North American releases. Some mainstream, some casual, and some incredibly obscure and hardcore releases. If only the release calendar were always so even, maybe videogame sales wouldn’t slump so much in the summer. Have at you! (Remember to note the release region.)

Today (August 08):

Madden NFL 06 (DS/GBA/Gamecube/PS2/Xbox)
EA Sports/EA Sports (NA)

Yes, yes. Another Madden release. EA’s stock price goes up, enabling it to buy out another six or seven indie developers who were daft enough to sign publishing deals in the last few years. Or maybe buy out Activision. Or Equador. I understand Saudi Arabia’s government is going through a period of transition. Weird what can happen to a company when it goes public. I wonder what Trip Hawkins thinks of his old labor of love. The company that was founded to promote game designers as authors in their own right.

Oh, whoops. Sorry. Tangent. This is a football game in what I understand is a popular series that began on the Sega Genesis in 1991, on one of those weird custom cartridges that EA manufactured before it bothered to acquire an actual license to publish Genesis games. I am told each incarnation of the game is essentially the same as the previous year’s, with a few slight adjustments and an updated team roster. I am also told that the last couple of games have been a little better than usual. That’s nice. I guess.

The 2006 edition (that is, the one released in 2005) is reported to feature a “brand new passing game” in the “Quarterback Vision Control system”; “Formation Specific Audible”; and some fiddling with the offensive and defensive games. There’s also a “Superstar Mode” single player game, which allows the player to “live the life of an NFL star”. I’m sure this must appeal to a lot of people. If you’re one of them, now you know which mega-corporation to support. Get to it!

It comes down to this…

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Here’s a theory: The worst thing a videogame can do is assume I have nothing better to do than to play videogames.

The problem here is that I still manage to play Nintendo’s recent games, sort of, begrudgingly — so either it’s not the worst thing or EAD hasn’t yet quite refined its process.

Here are some not-unrelated forum posts, which I provide without context:

  1. Super Mario World sets the stage for the star hunting bullshit to come along half a decade later and confuse game design for another half-decade after that.
  2. Oh hell. Yeah. The puzzle element of the level design. Which later turned into drek like the Metroid Fusion level design and… everything else Nintendo’s done lately. Making all of Nintendo’s games feel exactly the same, when they each originally had such different things to say.I don’t like that, either. It’s in SMB3 also — though the focus is different there. It’s incidental, and just meant to augment the experience. In World, it’s practically the whole point. Locks and keys. It’s all locks and keys now. Find the right block. Goddamn.
  3. That’s about it. World is about milking the game for all it’s worth. It sets up the whole modern design philosophy of “here’s a bunch of stuff to do — so get to it, because doing things is what the player is supposed to do!” without thinking too much about providing emotional motivation. You wind around and around until you’ve scraped everything out of the game — and not by choice. Not by whim. Not because you’re clever or lucky. This isn’t like the “secret worlds” in Metroid. It’s calculated. It’s what you’re supposed to do. What you’re expected to do, just because that’s what people like you do. It’s like Miyamoto has headed the player off and ruined all of the fun by setting up a theme park where there should have been something special and personal. I find it kind of patronizing. Note that, for its own sake, I don’t really mind Super Mario World. It’s not offensive yet. It’s just less interesting than what came before; given that what came before is perhaps one of the best games ever made, that probably doesn’t mean lots. It’s only in the broader Nintendo timeline that the game starts to irritate me. Cause and effect. Context and consequence. So on.

R&D1 does what Ninten… D’OH!!

  • Reading time:2 mins read

I think I figured it out.

I just read that Nintendo R&D#1 is no more. It’s been absorbed and folded into Miyamoto’s boring old EAD studios. This dismays me, as R&D#1 has always been the one Nintendo studio that actually interested me. (Well, I like R&D#3 also — I’ve no problem with Ice Hockey or Punch-Out.) This was Yokoi’s studio. It’s where Metroid and Kid Icarus came from. The Game Boy. The Wars series. Fire Emblem. Wario Ware, as flawed as it is (mostly for EAD-ish reasons), is one of Nintendo’s few breakthrough game concepts in years.

Now, though, it’s all EAD from here on out.

Shit.

Anyway. The SNES was where EAD, through force of sheer star power, first began to shove R&D#1 to the gutter. Mario and Zelda were Nintendo’s most popular series, so Miyamoto got priority. The SNES was his system. R&D#1 was reassigned to support the Gameboy. Note that the one real game the team made for the SNES, Super Metroid, is often cited as the one real reason to own it. Although I think it’s the most boring in the series, it’s sure head and heels above fucking Mario World or Starfox.

Again, the SNES was Miyamoto’s system. Suddenly there was no more competition. He just got his way. So this is where it all began to devolve. Nintendo just went with what was popular instead of challenging itself, internally (as had been the case previously). Refine what had been proven effective. And this philosophy bleeds out of every pore of the system. It’s like a whole system devoted to a more-competent Sonic Team.

In contrast, the Game Boy was Yokoi’s system. The DS is basically the successor to the Game Boy, and to the whole R&D#1 approach to design. This is the progressive direction, because it has to compete with the popularity of white bread.

And that’s just what the SNES is and always was: the Wonderbread console. The start of Nintendo’s entrenchment.

More observations into the vortex

  • Reading time:3 mins read

The new series is most well encapsulated in the opening and the ending of The End of the World — all of the melancholy wonder there, that the series always seemed like it was trying to get across yet which had never before been so concentrated. About how fleeting life is, and how important it is to understand and appreciate what you, while you, can.

It really is the overarching message of the series — the new one, in particular. It’s kind of the message the Ninth Doctor gives us. Everything has its time and everything dies. He especially is doomed, by his own head and hand. And yet when Rose’s father figures the reason he’s never done anything important is that he was meant to die, he’s told that “it doesn’t work that way”.

The new series is doing a really good job of commenting on the nature of life by crossing it with the nature of time. Being and Time; Heidegger argues they’re the same thing. It’s not a bad argument, from a subjective standpoint. From a human one. From the only perspective we can know.

Which is, incidentally, the new perspective of the series — now that it’s focused on the companions again rather than the Doctor as-such.

Some people have expressed dismay at how they no longer can appreciate the original series as they used to, much to the derision of the hardcore. I think the problem is now there’s a frame of reference for the old stories. Before, they were all that existed — so it was easy to take them for what they were. Now you get to compare with the current production. You can’t help it, really — even if it’s not really a fair comparison. Since there is a “New Who”, the old who by nature becomes “Old Who” — with all the baggage that entails. One of those unavoidable details.

The question then becomes, how do we reconcile the distinction? It’s something each of us has to answer on his own, in his own way.

You know what’s the least dated? The black-and-white stories.

Really. It’s obvious they’re from another era. They’re old. They’re crackly. There’s a completely different headspace to black-and-white film, compared to color.

Check out Tomb of the Cybermen, for instance. It holds up nearly as well as, say, Lang’s Metropolis. There’s enough distance that you have no real inclination to compare it to the new material. It simply is what it is.

Once you introduce color, though, you run into a whole host of psychological problems.

On Licensed Fare

  • Reading time:7 mins read

Occurs to me, the best way to structure a Lord of the Rings videogame is to make it from Frodo’s persective, and Frodo’s perspective alone. Everything else is spiralling around somewhere in the background, out of his control, adding to the atmosphere. Assuming this game were based on the movies rather than the books, it would begin, with no particular prologue, outside the Green Dragon. The player, as Frodo, would amble, slightly drunk, back to Bag End; Sam would be around to help show the way. If the player were to go too far off-track, Sam could say, in a comforting voice, “‘ere, Mister Frodo, you’ve had a bit too much. Best follow me.” And Frodo would stumble around and take a step back toward Sam, with a bit of an acquiescent shrug. Sam would leave the player at the gate to Bag End, maybe pushing a bit, allowing the player to trot up through the door and walk around a little before Gandalf jumps out of nowhere, scaring the player half to death, asking about the Ring.

Within the context of the game, the player of course has no idea what’s happening. Frodo mumbles to Gandalf something about how he thinks he left it in the chest over there; the camera moves to frame it, the player is left free to wander Bag End; Gandalf will start to grow irritated if the player doesn’t go straight to the chest and open it, though. Once open, Frodo automatically fumbles around and draws out the envelope; Gandalf snatches it away, the whole sequence plays. Eventually the player is left free to scramble around for a few moments (there’s an invisible timer of sorts — long enough to be sane, short enough that the player can’t take however long he wants; Gandalf starts to get impatient if the player takes too long) and take whatever in Bag End seems of use. If the player seems confused, Gandalf will bark out suggestions. “Take some food! And try that walking stick over there!” When the player is done, he goes to Gandalf. (If the player just dallies forever, Gandalf interrupts and says they’ve delayed long enough. He might shove a generic pile of stuff into Frodo’s hands.) There’s another short bit of discussion, before Sam gets yanked through the window. Then the game cuts to Gandalf and Frodo walking along the road, toward the edge of Hobbiton, Sam scampering behind, Gandalf berating him. Gandalf offers his advice, and the player is left alone.

From then on, it’s forward. The player isn’t allowed back into Hobbiton. (“No… no, I can’t go back now. I’m afraid it’s no longer safe.”) Otherwise, it’s mostly free reign all through the Shire. Not much will happen aside from exploration. The hobbits become visibly exhausted and will begin to stagger if they don’t rest and eat from time to time. The general idea is to keep off the road, although it’s a good idea to keep the road in sight, lest the player become lost. Stray too far and you might have some strange run-ins; with wood elves or dwarves or even orcs. Sort of a Zelda or Dragon Quest idea of borders: although you can go anywhere, it’s on your own head if you act like a fool and stray far. Likewise, the farther from the path, the darker and more menacing the woods get; the greater the ambient noise. The game will send psychological signals, telling the player he shouldn’t be there (especially given the lack of any real means of self-defense except, perhaps, the occasional stone). Maybe if the player strays really, really far, Sam will be there to freak out and plead with Frodo to get back to the road.

The player probably won’t get actually killed or injured. He might be visibly (if subtly) stalked by wolves for a while. Just to give the player the hint. Perhaps if the player does get attacked, and injured a little, a ranger or a wood elf will pop out to slay the wolf and advise the player back to safety. Of course, if the player runs into someone on the road, that person will probably recognize Frodo and start making a big deal about it: “Why, FRODO BAGGINS, fancy seein’ you ‘ere! Why, wait until I tell the blokes at the pub who I ran across out in the middle of nowhere, why won’t they have a scream!” Frodo will automatically respond “Y…yes, nice to see you again. We’d really best be moving on.” “Oy, now that’s friendly! Well, have it as you will… (mutter mutter)” And the passerby would continue walking down the path. The idea is to give the player the idea that maybe he should avoid being recognized.

It will take a long while to walk from one place to the next; that’s a big part of the point. It’s all about the journey, about the sense of place along the way. Sense of distance. Sense of foreboding, as well. The idea that maybe the player is being watched. That the farther you get from home, the more treacherous the world feels, to a point. (This is before the wonder of travelling starts to really kick in, and when turning back still seems like a viable option, even if you know you can’t.)

Likewise, the game will somewhat funnel the player along the “right” path just by virtue of level design, carrots, and the above psychology. Farmer Maggot’s fields, say, will be the most obvious route to go, just because going any other route will be so unpleasant and slow, and Sam will whine so much, that it will in effect be the only viable option. If the player happens to miss Merry and Pippin one place, they will continue to wander around such that the player will meet them eventually, somehow, in some incidental manner. The level design will also ensure this. How the meeting transpires depends on the circumstances. If the player is being chased by black riders already, the dynamics will be different from if they bump into each other in a corn field or along the road.

As for the black riders: it should be immediately obvious to the player when they are coming — from visual, aural, and tactile cues. The idea is to make the player realize he really, really shouldn’t be where he is, and that he should get away and hide somewhere. It’ll be an ongoing menace for a while, keeping the player from standing around too long. If the player gets caught, maybe Merry and Pippin show up and pelt the rider with rocks, causing it to drop Frodo, and tell the player to follow them. Maybe the game is simply over right then and there. The rider rides off with Frodo, leaving Sam behind, weeping. And after a few moments, the screen fades to black, the player hears the sound of Frodo screaming, and the text “This is not the end…” appears.

The player should have the option to put on the ring at any time. Should be tempted. Perhaps when the Riders are near, the game interface does something to sugest to the player to use the item.

The game continues in this manner throughout the entire quest; things that are out of Frodo’s control are out of the player’s. The player is tempted and guided and manipulated just as Frodo is, all for the psychological effect. The idea is to make the player really feel like Frodo. To eventually confuse the hell out of him, and to make him want to take the easy way out of things.

I don’t see this game getting made. It wouldn’t be all that hard, of course. Not really. It’s certainly feasible. It’s just… not where we are, yet. Not how we think about videogames, yet. A shame, as I want to play it.

Shoulda used RenderWare

  • Reading time:1 mins read

You know how, at the start of Space Harrier, the announcer says “Welcome to the Fantasy Zone. Get ready!”?

In the Sega Ages remake, it’s a little different. He says, “GET BUSY, HARRIER! DRAGON LAND IS SCREAMING!!”

That tells you most of what you need to know.

Audio Production for Halo 2

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

“The main Bungie approach to games,” O’Donnell said, “is this is entertainment. When someone sits down, you want to keep him entertained the whole time.” This starts from the moment the console is powered up; over the corporate logos, a custom piece by Steve Vai leads into the game’s opening theme. “The music at the beginning of the game,” O’Donnell continued, “is the overture.” It establishes a theme, to be used throughout the game. From the title screen, O’Donnell pressed “start;” as the game loaded, a motivated piece of music began to play against the Halo 2 logo.

O’Donnell explained he never wants to see the word “Loading”: It’s not entertaining. You always want the player to feel like something exciting is about to happen. “I never want an excuse for someone to get up and leave the game, if possible.” The key to that is flow. O’Donnell prefers to think of audio as a cohesive whole; he would rather not have any one piece stand out.

( Continue reading at GamaSutra )

Juste “Like Alucard” Belmont, indeed.

  • Reading time:9 mins read

Hell. I’m going to do a track-by-track commentary on the Harmony of Dissonance score. I’m going through the sound test here (which doesn’t always have the actual title of the piece — though I’ve mostly got them, too).

title screen – “title screen”

Adequate. Tense, symphonic. It sets the right tone, ending on something of an uncertain chord. Higher-quality samples than used in most of the score. This is part of what clued me into thinking the samples used in most of the in-game music were chosen intentionally. A couple of later pieces are of even a higher quality; they sound like they might even be digital recordings. That seems unlikely, considering how much space that would waste. Either way, it seems odd these high-res samples (or the space for them) were just sitting around, and not used.

name entry – “name entry 2k2”

Yes, this is a piece of weird genius. It’s a heavy reimaging of the name entry theme from the FDS version of Akumajou Dracula, put through a Willy Wonka hallucination. Notice the warbling instruments and strange intervals used in the intro. Add to those the flitting, spinning, up-and-down flute noise and the pedal tone in the background. Bring in the stumbling, crunchy drums, and the jagged, clashing organ chords. Leave the bass to mumble underneath, while the parts on top start to scream, whine, and argue with each other. The tension builds. What really strikes me here, and in future pieces, is how much the individual parts actually talk to each other. They’re speaking, responding, building on what came before. Sometimes misunderstanding, causing even more friction. It’s really organic stuff. Unpleasant in a sense because it brings to mind all of the really bad arguments we’ve had. All of the misunderstandings, all of the nightmares where everything seems completely out of our control. And we’re just left spinning, trying to get through it all.

Then it all drops out, and we’re back to the bass intro. We’ve made a cycle. The tension drops away. We feel relieved. Vivified. And we’re ready to go for another spin.

intro – “prologue (theme of maxim kischine)”

This is, for me, the least interesting piece in the game. And it shows up thrice in this sound test alone, with different titles. With its monotonous, off-kilter Victorian formality, it works all right in Juste’s “decorating room”. As a character theme, though? It feels out-of-place. The thing which I find most interesting about “prologue” is how stuffy it is. Musty. It makes me think of the wallpaper in an old, creepy house.

entrance – “successor of fate (theme of juste)”

One of the major centerpieces of the score. In some ways, it’s the most traditional Castlevania piece in the game. It can sit along other major game and character themes, and not seem too out of place. It’s got more going on, though. I hardly know where to begin.

The first thing I note about it is the detached introduction. After the ornamental organ intro, we get an almost proud, formal strike with those reedy chords. The entire piece is a little more aloof than usual. A little more classical. A little more structured. A little more noble-sounding, while still accessible. In other words, it’s Juste right.

After the main theme repeats a couple of times, there’s a bridge where the uncertain qualities present in most of the music here build up a little. Questions. Anxietes. Before they can get too far, though, the main theme comes back in and stomps them down with a firm, yet gentle thud. And as if to say, hey, don’t worry, Juste really knows what he’s doing, and it’ll be okay, the rest of the notes of that phrase are synchopated a bit, and a warm bass begins to bubble underneath. The corners of the tune’s mouth turn up just a little. That’s my favorite part.

marble corridor – “offense and defense”

Here’s the meat. I’ve written about this before. This is the one piece which would make the score for me, even if everything else stank. I’m not going into detail. It’s too complex. Just listen to how the parts speak to each other, particularly the highs and the lows. Listen to how they spiral. How the tensions get woven and unwoven and lead to new anxieties. This piece is pure paranoia. It’s relentless. Ruthless. It makes me shiver, it makes my eyes water, it makes me clamp my jaw, it makes me very uncomfortable. It’s possibly the most moving piece of chip music I’ve heard.

Hell, I just noticed the piece’s title. That pretty much sums it up, compositionally.

shrine of the apostates – “approach of deplore”

A nice little piece. It doesn’t stand out much, at first. It does grow on a person, though. I like its start-and-stop nature, as if it’s constantly pausing to collect its thoughts. Some interesting chords here. Some nice things going on in the background if you listen closely. One of the lighter, least offensive pieces in the game. And as with many pieces in this score, the bass work is worth noting.

luminous cavern – “luminous caverns”

This seems like an experiment in ominous chords. It’s got some potential, especially after the drums come in. It sounds like it’s building to something rather grand. Unfortunately, it never really evolves. More and more things just get layered on top, making the piece kind of monotonous in the end. That in itself is kind of effective, though, when you add in the throbbing drums. It eats away at the mind. I think I’d trade this specific flavor of torment for something a little more interesting to listen to for its own sake, though. This is maybe a bit too expressionist for me, even.

aqueduct of dragons – “aqueduct of dragons”

Almost a relief after “Luminous Caverns”. As with “Approach of Deplore”, this strikes me as more of an album track than a single. It carries on the tone well, and explores its own slight variations. The best part here is the rhythm. I kind of want it to evolve more, though. I feel like it has more to say that it never quite gets around to, leaving me with a nice little sketch.

chapel in the sky – “chapel of dissonance”

Another standout track, though not quite as multifaceted as the earlier ones. This one’s a crowd-pleaser. It kind of covers the same ground as “offense and defense”, though on less disturbing and difficult a level. It strikes me as maybe a little too obvious how the light, untroubled intro gets contrasted wth the angsty latter half.

clock tower – “clock tower”

Yet another major piece. Up until the tension takes over, the thing which most strikes me is the drum and bass work, and the way everything else feeds off that, rhythmically. Again, I wish it had more space to work with its ideas.

skeleton cave – “skeleton den”

Pure atmosphere. This is filler, really. Doesn’t even attempt to be melodic. It tries a few tonal and rhythmic experiments, particularly toward the end. Nothing exceptional, though. Strikes me as a scratch track that someone shrugged and threw into the game because it held up well enough.

castle – “to the center of the demoniac castle”

This must play more than any piece in the game. It’s the main roaming music, so it has to hold up and be kind of middle-of-the-road, while maintaining a certain tension. And that’s what it does. It’s anxious. It wants to get moving and find what it’s there for, so it can get out of this foul place. It really does help in keeping up the sensation that something is happening, or is about to happen, until you actually get where you’re going.

theme of death – “dark covenant”

I don’t know what’s up with these brooding, unmelodic themes. I don’t understand it in film scores, either. You’d think if you were to assign a theme to a character, you would want something more than just a sprawling mood piece. Something like this just doesn’t strike me as a theme, as such. It is adequate background music for slogging through text boxes, though.

boss (loop patterns a-c) – “Archenemy” (?), “Dark Door” (?), “Knight Head” (?)

I’m not sure if these titles actually goes to these pieces. These are all variants of an okay boss theme. Pretty traditional. Lets you know something is actually happening, for once. I think a boss battle is a pretty good time to kick the player in the face and wake him up. This does it, while still fitting into the general theme of the score.

epilogue 1 – “epilogue 1”

Reminds me of “Prologue”. Funny, that. Puts my mind in a fog.

game over – “game over”

I just about fell over when I heard this the first time. “HAR, HAR”, I said. And meant it. I then added a “Ho Ho!” It still makes me giggle a little, even though I know it’s there. I just forget.

theme of dracula – “incarnation of darkness”

See above comments about Death’s theme.

last battle – “last battle”

Appropriate. Reminds me a little of Phantasy Star series final boss music. There is a certain grandness to it, melodically. A feeling of earnest struggle against something way too strong. It wants to be victorious. It just can’t… quite… reach… the knife. It’s in a bad spot. And this is do or die. Etcetera. It’s satisfying.

epilogue 2 – “beloved person (variation)”

Reminds me of the opening sequence to Castle of Illusion.

credits – “successor of fate (variation)”

JESUS CHRIST HOW WHAT WHY? So, yeah. I guess the soundtrack COULD have been like this. I’m glad it’s not, though.

extra stage music 1 & 2

Boss rush music. What do you want? It’s not written like the rest of the score. That’s because Michiru Yamane did it. Or so I recall.

extra stage music 3 – “vk2k2 (vampire killer 2002)”

One of the only versions of Vampire Killer since the original that I actually like. I enjoy how it gets transposed up a notch after the first repeat. And I like how the “DUNDUNDUNDUN!” bit is handled, with everything dropping out of the background. Sort of weird how it transitions into Clockwork. It works all right, I guess — though it makes looping harder than it should be.

extra stage music 4

Cute. This didn’t surprise me as much as the Dracula Denetsu game over music, though.

theme of merchant – “seller of fine goods”

Fun! I love how low-res it is. Gives it character.

theme of maxim kischine – “prologue”

Argh!

theme of lydie elranger – “beloved person”

It’s back again.

item collection room – “prologue”

Argh!

Psychology

  • Reading time:11 mins read

So. Videogames tend to be built like videogames. People tend to play videogames like videogames — even if playing them that way hurts the experience. People go to great lengths to do stupid things in videogames just because they must collect every item, do everything that can be done, before they finish. And videogames know this.

Why is that treasure chest placed in that out-of-the-way room that no one has reason to go to? To reward someone who goes down there. Why do most people go down there, even if it’s clearly not the right direction? Not out of curiosity, but because they expect a reward. It’s become a task, almost. (Again, look at how RPGs tend to be made.) Some second-guessing is fun, if it’s clever and unobvious. Much of it is just tiresome. Everyone’s nodding, saying, “Yeah, we get it. We’ve been here before.” And yet there’s this unwritten code, that everyone’s afraid to break. It leads to leaps of logic like the player being expected to wander around and level up for two hours to beat a boss. That’s just plain fucking bizarre. Grotesque. Picture it, for a moment. What FUCKING reason do you have to do that?

Same for the perfectionist impulse, where you must collect everything — just because it’s there to collect. And the games now take way too much advantage of this, as a result of people reacting in that dysfunctional way to start with. It’s a natural compulsion, so the games treat it as if people actually gain joy from it. When it’s really more of a feeling of obligation. A quirk of mental chemistry, because the game presents it as a viable option. And now we’ve come to expect it so much that we become pissed off when we can’t finish a game with a perfect save file. Same with speed runs and sequence breaking for the sake of sequence breaking and all of this inanity that comes out of that stew of boredom, idle greed, and the natural human response to a lack of consequence.

Doukutsu Monogatari makes me wonder. It’s weak here, but. Perhaps a way to discourage, say, hoarding in a game is to make it so you can’t get a good ending unless you play it in a sane, non-videogamey way.

Silent Hill 2 also comes into this a little, as does the discussion about hardware — although you don’t really need advanced hardware for this. Not in a basic sense. I mean. Some version of this goes as far back as Ultima. Further, probably.

I don’t mean imposing arbitrary (or strict story-based) limits, of the kind we’re all so used to and annoyed with. Damn, I can’t get through this door because I have the Zippomat instead of the Gizmodrome. Or I haven’t given this item to this other character, triggering this plot event. So I can’t progress until I do it. What I mean is, sure — let the player do whatever he wants within the boundaries of the game world. Yet if the player is obviously behaving in a manner inappropriate to the situation, just because he CAN, or because he’s used to second-guessing what videogames are asking of him, it will result in — well. Not punishment, so much as consequences.

Someone else can come up with specific examples, I’m sure. As well as too many examples of when a game’s charm comes from exactly that freedom to put your trinkets in a row. Or from subverting the system (though that’s not what I’m talking about here, exactly; I’m all about subversion within the established rules — which is why I can appreciate Nippon Ichi’s SRPGs even as I am unwilling to play them). I’m just working in vague generalities. And I don’t know where they’re going.

What are the possible ramifications here? Is a lack of consequene for the player’s acting like a yo-yo, or like (simply) a gamer, part of why videogames are still so fucking adolescent? Clearly, a good portion of their existing audience — probably the most vocal and obvious segment — would do as well to grow up as the games they’re playing. How much are the two sides encouraging the current situation? What are the dynamics?

It basically is a question of motivation. In Shenmue, there’s such potential to get absorbed in the gamey nonsense — and some people do, and become lost and annoyed. For the most part, though, I just feel compelled to drink in the situation. Play it as if I’m living a life, rather than play it as a game. It’s actually rather boring if you try to second-guess it and to treat it as a typical videogame. I think maybe its fault is that there is little aside from boredom to dissuade the player from going all OCD and missing the point. If you linger too long, I hear that Long Di eventually comes and kills Ryo. That’s a long way out, though. I’ve never had to worry about it, even at my slowest poke of a pace. It’s likely boredom will drive anyone on by then; the only reason to remain, in fact, is to find out what happens if you don’t do what you’re expected to.

What might be an organic solution? I don’t know. You probably don’t want to wall the player in. As much as we like to make fun of it, the “But thou must!” mechanism is pretty omnipresent. It seems to me that it’s best to allow the player to make those bad decisions (sorry, Nintendo!), and to naturally wind up in an undesirable circumstance as a result. That’s the way we learn, y’know? On the one hand, don’t encourage acting like you have a mental problem — so if the player goes there, it’s his own doing. On the other, make him feel like a genuine idiot for behaving so erratically.

I think the latter would be most effective as an end effect, rather than a snap response to walking outside certain boundaries: the game cuts short, or the player gets a bad ending that shoves in his face all of the junk he’s done, or what-have-you. This would allow some leeway for the player to stray. No one’s perfect, after all.

Would a more immediate response help as an additional deterrent? I don’t know. Something in me says that this might just encourage a person, out of curiosity to see what else the game has to say about him. Any attention is a reward of some sort. And a lust for trivial reward is the main motivation for behavior lke this.

Perhaps the issue of motivation isn’t something that can be explained in a rational, mechanical way — since it relies so much on the ephemerals of emotion and tone. And because we all interpret our signals in different ways. The Zelda discussion seems to show that. What motivates me to explore Hyrule is much what would motivate me, were I put in Link’s position. What motivates some others is less experiential; more… baubly. It has to do with the gameplay mechanisms for their own sake, rather than to the end they were implemented to start with. With, in effect, how the game plays as a game. And that mentality has determined where the series has evolved as it has been refined, as it has with RPGs and so many other games.

I want to say that something’s lost here. It’s hard to define to people who aren’t tuned to it to start with, though. Or to explain why it’s so important. Hell, it’s a big part of the reason why I play videogames. And so, I expect, it is with many others before they become distracted or mis-trained because of the mental level that videogames so like to tap into. The feeder-bar level of gratification.

It’s seriously unhealthy, I think, where videogames are now. I think, in a manner, they promote and hone OCD and ADD-oriented levels of behavior and thinking. And although it might sound a stretch, I think that might be one factor in why so many gamers are such… insufferable fucks, to be blunt. And the sad thing is, this is gaming’s audience, so there’s a feedback loop. Games are developed for people who already exhibit these signs, and those games just promote them all the more.

Yet. Videogames can operate on a more human level. How much needs to come from the player, seems to depend on the game. For its time, Zelda promoted a much richer mindset. Myst and Riven piss off the core gamer demographic, which tries to approach them like puzzle games, even as they reward people who come at them looking for something more involving. And even Treasure’s games — say, Ikaruga and Gradius V — have a transcendent emotional quality to them, born out of their self-conscious design. They depend on the player’s familiarity with videogames, to make a grander set of statements about the medium itself, and the way we interact with it.

I guess the situation can be summed as follows:

Q: How do we get players to behave like human beings?
A: We motivate them on a human level.
Q: How do we do that?
A: That’s the key, isn’t it.

I was about to go on, and say something about discouraging unhealthy lines of thought — then it struck me how vague that is. More like discourage OCD and ADD-oriented thought strains. I would love videogames to mature enough to allow, or even encourage, the player to explore unhealthy modes of thought. Silent Hill 2 has a passive reaction to the player’s way of thinking; if the player behaves in a suicidal way, for example, the game decides that the main character went to Silent Hill to kill himself. A more tangible set of reactions might be interesting. Not sure how that might be achieved, though.

A while ago, I explored the idea of an emotional change in the player’s avatar, depending on the player’s actions. For instance, in an RPG, you, the player have the option to wander around and kill things, to grow stronger and more experienced and whatnot — yet you lose a bit of yourself every time you kill. A little bit of civility. Of humanity. And that will affect the way the avatar will interpret and interact with the game world. The more you kill, the more unpleasant the game becomes. The more hardened the character becomes, until he becomes something of a psychotic monster. The type who would just wander around and kill anything he came across, for no good reason. He will be treated as such, in-game. Most important, this can’t be seen from a clinical distance. It has to be done in a way that the player will grow uncomfortable with the way things are progressing.

I think Fable experimented with a bit of this line of reasoning, though it couldn’t take it far — so in the end it became something of a cartoon illustration of ideas someone else might want to reinterpret and implement more seriously in another five years or so.

That quality of discomfort seems the most important one, for barrier-building. As long as we’re dealing in emotions, anyway. Whether that discomfort be moral, ethical, fear-based, or just plain boredom and disappointment must, I guess, depend on circumstance.

Again, I would love to get to the point where it would be possible to make an effective Clockwork Orange of sorts; a truly transgressive experience. I’m afraid that’s not really feasible until we’ve established some barriers, though. Made them standardized. The most transgressive a game you can get at present is something like a Kojima game, which rebels against the assumed contract between game and player on a mechanical, on a conceptual level. That’s all nice. I don’t know if we’re really there until it will actually mean something to do that on an emotional level. And until gamers are accustomed to behaving like human beings, that’s not going to happen.

EDIT: Discussion continued here.

Move-Blocking

  • Reading time:9 mins read

In the original Zelda, the closest thing to a block puzzle consisted of pushing a single block one space. In effect, it’s just a hidden switch; not a puzzle-as-such. A secret trigger. The same as the book or andiron you move to open the staircase behind the bookshelf in the old mansion. Whoa, you think. Who knew that was there.

This is how Zelda works: obfuscation. Any object might hold any amount of potential. You’re never told you can bomb walls in the dungeons — and usually you don’t need to. Yet if you do, you can often make shortcuts or find secret areas. No one tells you you can push against the walls, in the second quest, to phase through. It’s just another hidden quality.

No one tells you you can burn bushes, or bomb rocks. No one tells you you can move blocks. No one tells you about those warp staircases. Or that the statues come alive when you touch them. Hell, is there a reason those stones look like turtles?

This all gives the game environment a sense of mystery and vitality. You have the surface: walls, trees, cliff faces. And then you have another level, where you’re never quite sure what’s possible and what isn’t. Anything could, hypothetically, mean anything. Anything could be anywhere.

That’s where the awe and wonder come from: this sense of endless possibility, once you start making discoveries. Once you get a taste of the world’s hidden logic. It all feels magical. You feel like maybe, just maybe if you’re clever enough, you’ll find something, some secret no one else has ever seen before. I had dreams about this stuff. About a whole other world I’d find, by burning just the right bush.

And the reason this all works, again, is that the world doesn’t feel set out for the player. Beyond the forbidding nature of the overworld — where the game sets barriers just out of difficulty; you don’t want to stray too far, lest you find yourself in real trouble — there’s this whole second layer. It’s totally hidden. If you find it, it’s your own doing. It’s up to you to make of it what you will.

The dungeons don’t exist for the player to go through. They don’t have special puzzles set out in a special order, so that the player can solve them and take all of the dungeon’s treasure and kill all of the monsters. They’re not tests. They’re just there. Because they’ve always been there. Relics of some earlier time, that we can’t know about. They’re meant to be dangerous. Dank, abandoned holes in the ground where monsters have come to lurk. Maybe if you survive you can pull something neat out of there — just because no one else has been stupid enough to enter in centuries. That’s up to you, though.

And so on. This is the quality that I associate with Zelda. It’s what attracts me to the game, from the gold cartride to the music at the title screen, to that cave in the first screen where you pick up your first item — your sword — to Spectacle Rock, to the bizarre hints the old men give, to that place on the upper-right, where you have to climb up through the rocks, to “IT’S A SECRET TO EVERYBODY”, to the way the Power Bracelet is just sitting there, under that suit of armor, right in the open.

You just never know.

It’s what makes it more than just a series of gameplay mechanisms and items and characters. Which is what the series has been since the third game, to one extent or another.

The whole lock-and-key exploration thing, in particular, is a problem. If not inherently, then at least in the approach that we’ve come to accept.

You must acquire tools to expand your range!

…

um.

That’s not what I get out of Zelda. I mean. Technically, yeah, it is a mechanism in the original structure. To say it’s a focus of the game, though, and inherently enjoyable, is kind of like saying… oh, I don’t know.

You’re tarnishing something, with that attitude. Mistaking a process for a purpose. Ritual for meaning.

Maybe it’ll help to break down the tools in the original game, and how they relate to the game’s progression. Offhand, the ladder and the raft are the only two items I can recall which are immediately… practical, in this sense. In that they inherently open new territory. And compared to the way these mechanisms are used in other games, they’re relatively tame.

There are only a couple of docks in the game where the raft may be used. And you don’t really know what the docks are for. You don’t see any destination. You don’t think “Gee, I wish I had a raft so I could get over there…” You don’t even know what’s over there. Or realize you could get there over the water. It doesn’t occur to you. Later you find a raft, and you start to wonder what to do with the thing. You go to the dock, and you’re magically carried away to a place you have never seen before. It all works on a similar hidden level to what I was talking about before. The raft kind of unlocks a hidden purpose — much as the flute does, especially in the second quest.

And the ladder — well. It’s automatic, in a similar way though on a smaller scale. It isn’t dramatic at all; it’s just practical. Hell, a ladder isn’t even perhaps an ideal item for its use in the game: for bridging gaps. It’s just, it works. The game doesn’t make a big deal of it. It’s just — “oh, you know, you can use this to cross gaps now.”

I don’t know that there are too many places where the player just can’t progress without a ladder. Most of the map, most of the dungeons are open either way. Sometimes, though, there are gaps. The player is used to it. He isn’t waiting for a way to bridge them. He just accepts that he isn’t able to cross them. The game makes the barriers clear enough.

And after he gets the ladder, he still can’t — not unless the gaps are very narrow.

The tools, when they come about, present themselves as useful or wondrous rather than as neccessary. (In truth, you do need them; that isn’t the immediate concern, though.) In future games, you don’t have that. You just expect the items. You never really appreciate them, for how handy they can be, for the extra levels they bring to the experience, because you NEED them to progress.

It sounds paradoxical in a way; you never really value them, because they’re too precious. Precious to the point where they’re obstacles because you don’t have them. And when you find them, you don’t think “hey, neat!”: you think “Oh god, finally.” Or, worse: “Oh, there it is. Now I can do x.”

Ugh.

How logical. How… insensitive.

The deal is — gameplay mechanics aren’t interesting or fun just because they exist. They exist to solve some kind of problem. That problem should usually have some emotional component, or consideration — since, ultimately, the goal of a videogame is to engage, to affect the player.

The player is not engaged, not affected, implicitly because he has a task and is told to complete it: there’s a barrier; now find a way across! Keep expanding! Affecting the player is a more subtle, more indirect process. The more mechanical, the more mathematical your design, the more artificial it feels. The more the player feels like he’s just being taken for a ride (in one sense or another), rather than having a human experience of some sort.

I think maybe the most interesting items in Zelda are the ones that don’t need to be there. The magic wand — there’s no reason for it, except that it’s special. It serves no purpose in the quest, lending that much more reality to the items which do serve a purpose. It’s more plausible that they’re not just there because the player will need them. It feels more like luck that the player can find a use for them.

And hell, there’s even a magic book — even more useless than the wand, as it serves no purpose but to add a second, unneeded function to the original, unneded function. Yet it’s in another dungeon, as another treasure linked to a previous treasure. These were treasures to someone, and now they’re treasures to Link, and the player.

The boomerang and magical boomerang are helpful, but never needed. The magical one, especially; it’s just another upgrade. And heck, they’re not even treasures in an official sense; you just pick them up from felled opponents. You MAKE them treasures.

Would the game not be as interesting if I actually needed all of this crap? I think that is so. I feel it is so. It’s special because it’s special to ME; not because I need it. I need my latch keys and my state ID, but they’re not special to me. What I consider treasures are the things which help me, which make my life more full — yet which I could, technically, function without.

I could survive without good food. That makes it all the easier to appreciate. I could survive without what people I care about (and they might not always be there for me); that makes me care about them. When you’re young, you don’t give a huge damn about your parents because you need them to survive. When you’re a teenager, they even become an obstacle for that same reason. When you’re older, and you don’t depend on them anymore, you can learn to appreciate them as people instead of as parents.

You see what I’m saying?

Silent Hill 4: The Room (Xbox/Konami) ***1/2

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

I have been away for a few days. On the bus today, as I reflected on my return, I began to tense up. It was strange to feel; I thought I was cured of this. I haven’t had this sensation since I left home and found my own apartment. Then it struck me: bills. Obligations. I don’t have the rent this month. Reality. Fuck.

As long as I’m away, at least I am removed from these problems. I might be hit by a car, or I might get jostled by a street person or yelled at by a light rail employee or frowned at by a cashier at the market, or I might just lose my way — yet it’s a fantasy violence. I grit my teeth, shudder a bit, and move on. None of it matters.

When I come home, it matters. It’s all that matters. Home is reality. Today, I’m safe. No bills. There are no new surprises. I can relax. I am safe, for now.

This is the kind of horror that The Room depicts.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

The Car Door is Miyazaki

  • Reading time:4 mins read

The Castle of Cagliostro is better than I expected, even knowing its reputation. What struck me after seeing it — aside from how reminded I was (and with good reason) of Cowboy Bebop: Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door — was how imperfect the movie was. How imperfect Lupin seemed, in comparison to how he might have been. After all his effort and his skill and lucky chances, he, indeed, in a move which must put a gleam in Robert McKee’s eye, fails his mission.

This is part of the standard screenplay arc; the hero must rise to a height, then fall so he might rise again. See any boxing movie ever made, and note the moronic misunderstandings every couple must face three-quarters of the way through a romantic comedy, just so the man can make it up to the woman and they can realize how stupid they were for acting like completely different people just long enough to create tension. The difference here is, although we have a pretty good idea that Lupin will succeed, somehow, in the end, it never is certain. When he does succeed, he does it not because the plot demands it (although again, it does) so much as because he has earned it: not because he must, but because he might.

This works because we see him fail. Lupin is a flambuoyant man. He swings for the ropes, and although he knows what he’s doing, there’s a certain element of risk built into this behavior. Sure, Lupin can control himself — but that’s different from being in control. And with as small a window of success as his stunts need, if it’s not one darned thing it’s another.

Take a look at the episode on the rooftop, where Lupin intends to cross the several hundred yards of empty space, to a tower. He has one plan; life has another. That he is rescued by a sight gag — should we always be so fortunate — does little to dampen the near-disaster he put himself into. By the time Lupin does so suddenly, and arbitrarily, fall, we are prepared for it. We aren’t prepared in that we expect it; just in that it comes from somewhere. Yes, these things happen — and oh damn, he almost made it. It feels unfair, and frustrating — because we know on another day he might have succeeded. Chances are, he would have. Those are just the odds. What is all the more upsetting is that it is not until then we fully realize all that had been riding on Lupin. Even his archantagonist, Zenigata, had been on his side; with Lupin’s failure comes that realization so many antagonists come to: that without the protagonist, they have no reason to be.

The solution, then, is to stack the odds. The rest of the movie plays out much as one might expect: all the characters play to their strengths; the world is set to its normal order, perhaps a little wiser, perhaps a little sadder. We get perspective on the unending battle of the TV series. We feel wistful. And the oddly-silent credits roll.

Still, what we got is better than it need be. Better than, maybe, it should be, for what it is. A movie based on a long-running cartoon: this ain’t the kind of place you expect to go looking for truth, much less of the standalone sort. The characters jump into play with no real introduction; if you don’t already know the cast, why would you be watching a movie like this? No introductions are really needed, though. Relationships are implied, and used to the extent that the movie implies them. No one needs announce himself, as the personality is evident. One look from Lupin, and you know who Fujiko is — even if you don’t, really. She isn’t in the movie enough for it to matter, anyway. If you’re still burning for information, she clarifies the matter towards the end, saying nothing that first look didn’t.

I don’t know if I need to see this a dozen times. Then, for what the movie is, maybe it would be a failure if I did. It is worth the time, however.

Oh, and Konami almost certainly borrowed from this when designing Castlevania.

Texas Gunfire

  • Reading time:7 mins read

Doom is very different in philosophy and design from modern FP shooters.

Doom is built like a console game. Heck, Romero idolizes Miyamoto. Commander Keen came out of a demo that he and Carmack whipped up for Nintendo, showing how to implement the scrolling from Super Mario Bros. on a PC (which, I guess, was a feat at the time). Howard Lincoln yawned. The Texans made their own game.

Quake is, indeed, more the prototype for the modern shooter. It’s also kind of boring in comparison — at least, for me. Here they paid less attention to actual design; more to just getting a 3D engine up. That, and getting Trent Reznor involved. I mean, they already had a template with Wolf3D and Doom. Quake was just technology. They filled in the blanks with gray textures and asinine Lovecraft references. It feels like they were bored, doing it — as well they should have been, I guess, since that’s not what they cared about anymore. And this was about where Romero started to flake out, too. Whether the rise of Superprogrammer was the cause or result of this, I don’t know.

Doom isn’t concerned with being a first-person shooter as-such, since the genre didn’t exist at the time. Instead, it is an attempt to rework the rather barren Wolf3D into as vibrant a design as possible. To do something substantial with the concept, if you will. It’s kind of the same leap as from Quake to Half-Life, because it’s the same mentality at work.

Doom’s console sensibility extends from its controls (as with Wolf3D, it’s made to be played without a mouse; the mouse only really enters when you have a Z axis to worry about) to its level design and (as someone noted) pacing, to its monster designs, to its set pieces and its idea of secret areas and items.

For one, the game just drools charisma. We all can rattle off most of the monsters in Super Mario Bros. and Zelda. We know Brinstar like the backs of our hands. There is a certain iconography even to the level design: even if on a cursory glance it might not stand out as anything special, it bores into the consciousness just as well as a cheep-cheep or a zoomer. Everything is placed preciously, exactly because there is no template to fall back on.

And, as we know, there is a certain subconscious pacing built in, for how the game introduces concepts. You run to the right, jump up and hit the flashing object overhead. It makes a chime sound and a coin pops out. You’ve clearly done something well. You hit another block and a mushroom appears. It must not be harmful, unlike the enemy you either ran into, jumped on, or jumped over a moment before, as it comes out of a block like the one which rewarded you with a chime a moment before. When you touch it, you grow. Since you’re bigger, you can more easily reach the platforms above you. You try jumping and can break the bricks. Keep going right and you hit a pipe. Then two enemies. Eventually a pit. Then a fire flower. Then a koopa troopa.

And. So on. It all sounds simple, yet so few people get it right. And since it’s supposed to be invisible, so few people notice on a conscious level when it’s missing.

Doom does this, yes, on a mechanical level. Yet it does something else, too. It paces the atmosphere. I maintain that the best part of Doom is episode one (the Shareware episode) of Doom 1. After you leave the manmade environments, where something has gone really awfully wrong, and enter the abstract flesh-tents of Hell, the game has pretty much blown its wad (pun very much intended). Then the game just becomes about shooting, and I don’t much care for it. Episode one has a certain stress to it, however. You wander the station, looking for something to restore your ailing health. The lights go out. You hear snarls in the distance. You know something’s out there — but where?

And then there are just so many hidden passages. You never know what wall might open, and how. Or what you might find (like the Chainsaw). It’s kind of like Zelda, again. Often you can see things in the distance, or through windows, that you just plain can’t access through normal means. This gets you exploring.

The whole mindset that the game creates, with all of this — the mindset that it asks for — is different. It’s more introverted. More careful. The game is as much about exploration and generally owning the gameworld as it is about blowing shit up.

There’s a certain balance here, from level to level. Just study how things are laid out. It’s no mistake that the shareware episode is the best; after all, it’s the one that id needed to be good, if anyone was going to register.

>How would you say the modern FPS has deviated from this Doom mindset? And starting where, exactly? Doom II? Duke Nukem 3D? Quake?

I don’t know. I became disgusted with the whole degenre around the time of Q3 and UT. I like what I’ve seen about HL2, from this distance. It reminds me of, uh, Myst.

…

Quake’s probably a good place to start. Or maybe you could begin with all of the knockoffs of Wolf3D and Doom, which used the same engine yet didn’t do anything interesting with it. They helped to pollute the mindspace a bit, I bet, and distract from the reasons why Doom was as excellent as it was.

Quake’s the landmark, though, for all the obvious reasons. I mean, it led the way, from Quake to Quake II to Quake III, to a technology-oriented philosophy. It doesn’t matter what you do with the engine; it just matters what the engine does. Throw in a few rules and some network code, and you have a game.

I’m oversimplifying to an insulting degree, I realize. On the one hand, the whole multiplayer thing, although it appeals to me in NEGATIVE INCREMENTS, meaning a piece of me dies every time the subject comes up, has attained something of the same distinction that a versus fighter has in comparison to a sidescrolling brawler. It’s a place to show skill and piss on other people (even more so than with a fighter, for various reasons), and if that’s your kind of thing, there are a lot of excellent games to help you vent that testosterone.

On the other, you have the Half-Life-inspired movement toward using the form for a more holistic experience — expanding on exactly the part of Doom that the Quake thread gave up on. Halo sits on this end, mostly — though a little more to the right, toward Quake, than HL. If you were to count Metroid Prime as a FPS, it would be about as far to the left as possible.

>Masters of Doom says that Quake’s formative years were sort of the epitome of development hell. […] Carmack was going off into his abstract, workaholic computer world and Romero was becoming increasingly arrogant and was slacking off more than usual. The end result, then, was a Doom clone where the engine was designed independently of the levels, which were designed independently of each other, which is why they’re so goddamned bizzare and incongruous.

Yeah! I remember that, now. I guess that’s whence came Daikatana.

For my part, I did enjoy Quake at the time. It’s not half-bad. It’s just — it leaves me empty.