Heartwarming Tale of the Day

Hello! Regular posting will shortly resume. Those of you who know me well will know that I’ve been in the process of finding a new job and preparing for that. That starts on the 2nd of November, excitingly.

I also have tons of things to talk about that have gone on recently, what with some decent new games and all manner of other things, but now’s not the time for it. For now, I just wanted to share a heartwarming story posted on a World of Warcraft forum I frequent that shows that, mercifully, not everyone in the world is a complete douchebag.

Ok so heres the story… I come from an RP realm (let the flames begin) joining a guild that centres itself around RP doesn’t care if you have epics, doesn’t care what level you are. Just so long if you abide by the server rules, and enjoy storytelling etc, that sorta thing, you are welcomed with open arms. (that doesnt mean we all wear robes and try to do impressions of Gandalf)

On Moonglade our guild is somewhat respected for its RP, and being a guild officer, i have to deal with a lot of requests from people to join.

A few months ago i was in STV using the neutral action house, and i recieved a whisper from someone “please cn you help me with some quests” usually i’d just tell people i’m busy, or ignore them, but he actually made the effort to spell the word “please” instead of “plz” or the ever confusing “pl0x”

So off i went, with a lvl 34 Human Warrior, and helped this fella out with a few of his red quests.. We chatted a little whilst we played, and it came to my attention that this wasn’t a very old player, as he kept on having to go “becuase dad neds 2 chek the emall” he also clearly had no idea how to play, kept on pointing at random objects and saying “coooooooooool!!”, and by the state of his outfit, it looked like he hit mach 2 and collided with a Dorthy Perkins store.

Anyhoo.. After a few quests, i really had to go, he was a very polite kid unlike most that play, and actually said “thank you very much” instead of “thx” but then he started asking if he could join my guild.. Now i don’t wanna sound big headed, but that sort of player isn’t suited for an RP guild.. Atleast not the one i’m in.. Its like a fury spec warrior wearing all green items, asking to be main tank in an MC run.. Its just a big no no.

So not to hurt his feelings, i just told him we were full at the moment, he didn’t mind, and bounced off into the sunset, again thanking me.

Over the course of the next few weeks, i would recieve messages from him, just random stuff of his progress, the occasional “ding! lvl 50 ” he wasn’t one of these annoying people that you help once, and then they seem to think you’re some sort of xp vendor for the remainder of there leveling process.

A few days ago i was in SW checking the AH, and some people were flaming some poor guy in the trade channel about selling an item for a high price… Afteri while i realised it was this kid that i helped out so long ago.. I didn’t want to get involved and just let the flaming die down, but these idiots on the AH were just being really nasty to the poor kid, sure i know they probably didn’t know his age, but still, you should be aware of that when playing games like this.

Anyway, a few hours later, i get a message from this kid “i got kicked from my guild ” i tried to cheer him up, but it wasn’t happening.. And to be honest i couldnt be arsed trying, and i was tired and logged off.

So yesterday i log on, and say my usual hellos to everyone, and go to the mailbox.. When i get there, i see this kid sitting next to the mailbox, no guild tag, people bouncing around him having fun.. And theres him, all alone, no-one paying attention to a “noob”.. Now i know human race facial expressions never change, but as far as avatars go, this one looked really depressed.

So i message him asking if hes cool, and he tells me hes thinking about quitting, becuase he gets bullied alot at school, and his ex guild mates all said really horrible things to him, and that he knew some of the kids in reality, becuase they go to his school, and are beggining to bully him in school about how he plays WoW etc. We all remember how it was.. I remember i used to get bullied in school for not having any toys, or having an old version of a toy.. Imagine it now, you get bullied about it at home AND school too.

Now this kid had got himself to lvl 62 under his own steam, where as the kids that were giving him a hard time, were all about level 20 and spent the majority of there time in Goldshire asking people to raid Crossroads.

So what did i do? I took the kid shopping is what i did… Bought him his epic (ground) mount, a load of nice armour off AH, which i made sure was well colour co-ordinated AND gave him very nice stats for his level. Bought him 2 very nice rare axes (fotgotten the name) and got a guild mate to put +15 agility on each one.

I also bought him a host of accessories, fun stuff, like a mana wyrm, somedeviate delights, an Orb of deception.. yunno.. all the “coooooool” stuff.

Then i invited him to an outing to Goldshire with 6 other guild friends, to casually walk past these bullies who kicked him from the guild. I then RPed the role that he was a great warrior, and saved me from some horrific fight etc etc blah blah.. The bullies then started to flame him in general chat about “noob” things hes done, so i told them hes one of the best PVPers i have ever met, and he won his epic mount from a bet, by defeating the most powerful PVP player on our realm (whoever that is…. sorry! hehe).

After a while, these kids started to change there attitude, and actually began to beg for him to rejoin there guild.. But i told him not to.. Instead, i helped him make his own guild, i bought his tabard, helped him with his spelling etc. And also helped him recruit enough members to get his charter registered.

Fast forward to today, and i get a mail from this kid.. Except its not the kid, its his Dad, thanking me.. He said i quote

“Dear Falcore

I want to thank you for helping my son in this game, he’s been so excited for days about the new things you bought him, hes also been having a tough time in school latley, and we agreed we would get him this game as an escape, although latley its turned into nothing more than another source of bullying and abuse.

Thanks to you the little chaps smiling again.

Once again, lots of thanks!”

Now all of this cost me a total of 1600g-ish. Money that i was saving for my epic flying mount… But i tell ya, putting a smile on a bullied kids face like that is worth more than every epic in the game.

Moral of the story? Helping makes you feel happy, flaming just makes you an *!*@*#%.

Dear Esther

I remember first hearing about Dear Esther a while back, during one of those interminable “games as art” discussions. It was held up as an example of using one particular genre of gaming (the first-person shooter, in this case Half-Life 2) as an interesting means of storytelling. Half-Life 2 itself is, of course, well-known for integrating storytelling and gameplay together, but Dear Esther set out to be something altogether different. Designer Dan Pinchbeck describes it as a “multimodal, environmental storytelling experiment” which “presents a sparse environment with no embedded agents, relying purely on the player’s engagement with and interpretation of a narrative delivered through semi-randomised audio fragments”. (source)

That’s a very dry description of what this mod is doing, but it’s an accurate one.

Dear Esther places the unnamed player on a seemingly-deserted island, starting on a jetty facing an abandoned house. The beautifully-delivered narration begins immediately, reading from a letter to the titular Esther and gradually developing as the player passes around the island.

The interesting thing about the story is that there are several threads running at once, and the randomised delivery of the audio cues throughout means that after a while, they all begin to blur together until it’s not clear where one story ends and the other begins. Pinchbeck notes that “two plots develop simultaneously: the avatar’s visit to the island following the historical record of a 17th century cartographer, and repressed memories of a car accident”. The way these plots intertwine and seem to share themes and ideas in common, as well as wildly disparate elements too, mean that, in Pinchbeck’s words, “a closed reading, or understanding, of the events is impossible to ever reach.”

In this sense, Dear Esther is a dream come true for people who enjoy finding their own interpretations of games. The mod reminded me a lot of Flower, if not in execution then certainly in atmosphere. Flower makes very little of its story (if indeed there is one) explicit and is very open to wildly different interpretations. One could take it literally or metaphorically – and it is the same with Dear Esther. The game raises unspoken questions about whether or not the island you are walking around is actually real, who the mysterious characters the narrator refers to really are and, of course, who Esther actually is.

Pinchbeck himself was surprised at the positive response to his deliberately open narrative, noting that “the notion of an unfolding mystery that is never solved actually appeals to [players]” and that “the atmosphere and drive to find out more about the story is enough of a pull to get them all the way through the experience”.

It’s true. Dear Esther presents an intriguing mystery that makes it clear from the outset that there are no specific answers, yet there is a clear “goal” for the player to attain. This was achieved through use of the environment combined with the spoken narrative. Although the environment of the game is very “open-plan”, being based on an island, at no point did it become difficult to determine where to go next, as there was always something that “looked interesting” over the next ridge. As the narrative progresses, a huge aerial in the middle of the island becomes visible with a large flashing red light, and the fact that this is almost constantly visible gives the player some indication of 1) where they are going and 2) how much longer they have to go.

Music is also used very effectively throughout. Haunting piano and string themes drift eerily over the speakers as the narrator slowly speaks his lines. As the story builds to something of a climax towards its “conclusion” (for want of a better word) the music becomes thicker, more intense, and with more mysterious, unidentifiable noises creeping into it. It gives a sense of progression in a game which leaves more questions unanswered than answered at the end.

There’s certainly no denying that Dear Esther, like Flower, is an experience that will make you feel something. That “something” will be different to different people, as Pinchbeck notes that:

“…we have been surprised how many players report being scared. Several others describe the experience as eerie, moving and very sad. These last two are emotions that normally fall beyond the affective range of games, especially first-person games.”

Lewis Denby, writing on Rock, Paper, Shotgun, had plenty to say on this subject, and it’s well worth reading his excellent article. One particularly interesting point he had to mention was:

“I love my Marios and what-have-you as much as the next person, but I still feel games have an incredible untapped potential for negative emotions. Some have tried – Braid stands out for having a bloody good go – but we’re still a little too comfortable with enjoying everything we play. Any stretches of sadness in this medium tend to be restricted to self-indulgence or vapid tearjerker fare, and even they invariably make way for happy endings and bunny fluff.”

Dear Esther, he says, is noteworthy for taking players into uncomfortable emotional territory and refusing to give in throughout. The whole experience is infused with a kind of melancholy throughout, and the final moments of the story as it comes to a close without any real “resolution” are heartbreaking.

All this in a barren, empty landscape with no human interaction, no speech besides that of the anonymous narrator, no guns, no white-haired pretty boys, no anime cutscenes – and yet somehow, deprived of all that exterior fluff, Dear Esther manages to present an intriguing story which has compelled more than a few people to play it through several times and develop their own interpretations further – and all this using an engine which is renowned for its fast-action run-and-gun FPS gameplay. It just goes to show what a little bit of creativity can achieve.

Dear Esther can be downloaded here.

Pinchbeck’s notes on the mod can be read here.

Player Character WLTM companion w/personality, GSOH

“Soldiers!” she cries, as we hear the indecipherable radio chatter behind the door to the cellar we are hiding in, then that terrible bleeping that means they’re going to blow the door and come flooding in like they have done so many times before. I push the clip into my machine gun firmly and she does the same. My trigger finger itches.

The door explodes inwards, and a soldier strides in purposefully, his gun ready to fire. Fortunately, we are ready for him, hiding behind a crate. We leap up and unload a hail of bullets into his head and he slumps to the floor, blood splattering the wall behind him.

“Come on,” she says, heading for the door. I follow. Outside there is more radio chatter and more gunfire. There’s lots of them. I worry that we might not make it out of this one alive, despite her remarkable resilience to being shot in the face and my relative fragility. And I’m the one in the Hazard Suit.

“Gordon, look out!” she cries as a grenade flies in through the door. Quick as a flash, I pull out the Zero-Point Energy Field Manipulator, grab the live grenade and fling it back out of the door. It explodes as it lands, sending soldiers flying every way. I look over to her for approval. “Nice shot,” she says with a smile. Then she turns back to the window to clean up the survivors. I do the same.

After the battle, we manage to deactivate the force field that was holding our car captive, allowing us to get on our way. We sprint back to the waiting vehicle, a battered old wreck that will hopefully get us where we want to be. I hop into the car, and she jumps in through the front and lands in her seat. I look over at her before I start the engine, and she smiles and winks at me, a small gesture that means a lot.

Right at that moment, I fell in love with Alyx Vance.

Companions in videogames are nothing new. The earliest RPGs saw the player tooling around town/fantasyland/space with a party of fellow adventurers in tow, but it’s not been until relatively recently that we’ve had a true feeling of “camaraderie” between a game’s protagonist and their companion(s). When it’s done right, though, it adds a huge amount to a game, and even makes the presence of a silent protagonist less jarring.

Take Alyx above, for example, in a scene from Half-Life 2 Episode 2. (Apologies if that constitutes a “spoiler”, by the way.) Her distinctly “human” responses to situations that she and Gordon find themselves in allow the player to engage on a personal level with what is going on without Gordon himself having to say anything. Half-Life is sometimes criticised for its lack of characterisation of Freeman, but it’s safe to say that as Half-Life 2 has developed through the original game and its two Episodes so far, Alyx has very much become a “protagonist by proxy”, coming out with the quips and one-liners that you might hear a typical character in a third-person action game come out with. The fact that she’s not the player character, though, allows her to be used as a sort of “reward mechanic”. Achieve something good and Alyx will praise you, which always feels nice, even if you know it’s scripted in many cases.

Squad-based shooters would be a fine genre to use this kind of approach in, since by their very nature you have constant companionship of at least one other character. So why are these characters so often generic and uninteresting, little more than “Yes sir, open and clear” when there is such scope for characterisation and storytelling?

The best use of a squad in a game to me is in Star Wars: Republic Commando. From the outset of this game, your character and his three squadmates are set up to be unique characters with their own attitudes – peculiar, given that they’re supposed to be clones, but you can suspend your disbelief for that one, I guess. Throughout the game, there is constant radio chatter between the squad members, a good mix of simple “Yes sirs” and commentary on their surroundings. Proof positive that it can be done.

Beyond Good and Evil is another great example. Throughout the game, protagonist Jade is constantly accompanied by at least one companion character, sometimes more than one. As she proceeds through the areas of the game and comes across obstacles, the banter between Jade and this companion again helps the player to feel more like they are part of a “living world” rather than a lifeless avatar simply solving puzzles and fighting monsters. Sometimes, though, this banter is not simply there to provide a hint on how to solve a puzzle – it’s just there as a means to develop the characters. Jade herself is perhaps underdeveloped throughout the course of the game, though the reactions of her companions more than make up for this.

This approach was taken to another level in Uncharted, where both protagonist Nathan Drake and his companions throughout his adventure are well-defined characters with personalities of their own – and, notably, great voice acting. Uncharted is often quoted as an example of what happens when you let your voice actors have more than one take at each line – you get very naturalistic conversations between them that sound like scenes from a decent film rather than a bad late-night porno.

Uncharted takes the approach of Nate and his companion offering “commentary” on what is happening, much as characters in a movie would do. As Nate and Sully run through the jungle at the outset of the game, for example, they are discussing what they think they might find and how they think things will proceed. This adds interest and also adds to the movie-like ambience – when was the last movie you saw that consisted of the protagonist just running and jumping without saying anything for ten, fifteen minutes at a time?

This even continues throughout battle scenes. Get into a shootout and your companion will contribute to the battle rather than being a useless meatshield who causes a “Game Over” if they happen to catch a bullet in the neck. As the battle goes on, Nate and his companion will shout things to one another, and you’ll hear their reactions to things happening. If a grenade lands near Nate or his companion, they’ll react, not only with a hasty “Oh, shit!” but also with some beautifully naturalistic animations – cowering away from the blast, rolling away, scrambling to escape.

This sort of thing is something that we will hopefully see a lot more of in games to come – and I don’t mean in the sense of your squad saying “Eat shit and die!” every time you shoot a bug in the head, I mean in the sense of feeling like you’re “there” with someone else, someone who you’d fight for, someone who you’d die for, someone for whom you wish there was a “hug” button on the keyboard.

Perhaps we’re not up to the level of a fully artificially-intelligent companion character who can accurately respond to absolutely anything we’d care to do, but we’re certainly getting there. Characters are getting more “human” (or perhaps it would be better to say “more natural”) in their responses, and this, in turn, helps to create a greater and greater feeling of immersion in the game’s world.

Rise of the Bizarre

I’d love to have sat in on the design meeting for Apogee Software’s 1995 FPS Rise of the Triad, now available on Good Old Games. In my mind’s eye, it runs something like this:

“So, gentlemen. That Wolfenstein thing did rather well. Let’s do a sequel.”

“Yes! I love Wolfenstein. Who wants a beer?”

(Beer is chugged. Conversation resumes.)

“Right. So how are we going to make this better?”

“Okay. Here’s the deal. Umm… Hitler was actually being controlled by… like… um… some big corporations.”

“Great. Sounds good. How many?”

“Um. Three. Three’s always a good number. Wolfenstein had three episodes. Plus another three.”

“Right! We could call them the Triad.”

“I think that’s been done.”

“Doesn’t matter. Okay, so Hitler was being controlled by the Triad.”

“Yes. I need another beer. It helps me think.”

(More beer is chugged. Conversation resumes.)

“Okay. So, game-wise, what are we going to add?”

“Rocket launchers.”

“More gore. More gore!”

“Dual-wield pistols!”

“Traps! Spiky things! Flame traps!”

“All good suggestions, but… let’s think outside the box a little.”

“Boss?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t use management-speak. It makes you sound like a douche.”

“Sorry. Where were we? Come on. Think bigger.”

(Silence ensues.)

“Nothing? Really? Okay, maybe this will help.” (Produces a bottle of absinthe.)

(Absinthe is chugged, with much teeth-sucking and head-shaking.)

“Right! That should get those creative juices flowing. Okay, let’s try again!”

“Ooo! Ooo! We need jumping.”

“Yes, but not normal jumping, no. We need springboards.”

“Yes! And floating platforms to jump onto. Otherwise there’s no point.”

“Right. And we can call them Gravitational Anomaly Discs.”

“GADs?”

“Yes. And the elevator ones can be called EGADs.”

“Egads! What a fabulous idea.”

“I see you’re getting it. Let’s have another drink.”

(Another shot of absinthe is consumed.)

“Jesus. Maybe… maybe you… maybe we should have a… y’know… God mode.”

“Ishn’t that, ishn’t that… jusht… y’know… an invinsh… invinsh… invuln… can’t die mode?”

“No no nononono, I mean an actual… actual God mode. Where you become God.”

“Oooo! I likesh it. You could get really big.”

“Yesh. And kill… peoplesh by pointing at ‘em. You’sh an angry God.”

(Hysterical laughter.)

“Oooo! And how about… y’know… as a joke… we also put in a… a… Dog mode!”

“What, where you turn into a dog?”

“Yesh. You get *hic* really shmall and bite peoplesh nutsh.”

(Thunderous belch.)

“Ugh. *hic* This is… ’scuse me… *hic* shounding great. You know what? Shall we just ditch the World War II thing?”

“Yeah. Too much research.”

“Let’s have shome mad monksh inshtead.”

“Monksh with ROBOTSH.”

(Fade to black as hysterical laughter continues.)

The alarming thing about Rise of the Triad is that all of the above features were actually included in a game that was originally intended to be a sequel to Wolfenstein 3D. Now, Wolfenstein didn’t take itself too seriously anyway, what with all the zombies, and a very fat Hitler in a mechanized suit wielding two chainguns, but presumably at some point it became apparent to Apogee’s Developers of Incredible Power, the team behind Rise of the Triad, that a World War II setting wasn’t going to cut it. Instead, the game features a very strange setting, with players battling everything from soldiers dressed in what look like World War I uniforms to robots to monks, armed with a selection of weapons ranging from the straightforward (pistol) to messy (bazooka) to bizarre (drunk missile) to outright insane (Excalibat, which is exactly what you think it is). Add in the God/Dog modes, the ability to fly with Mercury mode, the headache-inducing Shrooms mode and you have a game which is clearly designed for fun foremost with the story being cast aside in tatters.

It’s all the better for it. The sheer speed and insanity of Rise of the Triad is one of the game’s best features. The relatively simplistic, boxy level design design based on an evolution of the Wolfenstein 3D engine means that it’s easy to race through relatively mindlessly, or those who prefer a more methodical approach can attempt to solve some of the quasi-platforming environmental puzzles in order to unlock the game’s secrets.

It’s evidence of a simpler time, when games either weren’t capable of telling a decent story, or it was seen as a secondary thing to do. Half-Life this ain’t. Rather, Rise of the Triad represents a time when gameplay was at the forefront, and shareware games were on the cutting-edge of technology. These days, shareware titles are less prominent in their importance for many people, but in the mid-90s when Wolfenstein and Rise of the Triad appeared, shareware developers like ID/iD/id/whatever and Apogee were very much leaders of the pack, pushing the capabilities of the PC to the limit. This was also a time when “shareware episode” meant “complete game in and of itself” - both Wolfenstein and Rise of the Triad’s free shareware episodes featured ten full levels, which were complete experiences in their own right. Rise of the Triad actually went one step further by making its shareware episode a completely different set of levels to those in the full, paid version, meaning those trying out the game and then going on to buy it didn’t have to run through the same levels again. There were no 30-day time limits or crippling of features – if all you wanted to play was those ten levels, so be it. If, however, you wanted more levels and more features (in the case of these games, more enemies, more playable characters and more multiplayer modes) then you shelled out the money to support the game.

Apogee, of course, later became 3D Realms, which begat Duke Nukem 3D and Max Payne. Rise of the Triad does show that it’s worth delving back into a company’s history as you can often found some hidden gems amongst them, however bizarre they may be. There’s one thing you can’t deny about Rise of the Triad, and that is that it’s immensely creative within the limitations of the time, the genre and the medium. Releasing titles as shareware often freed up developers to do what they really wanted to do – and if that was to have the player assault an island full of soldiers, monks and robots while armed with a magic baseball bat and having the occasional ability to turn into a dog, that was up to them. Occasionally these days with indie titles we see glimpses of the same creativity. It’s important to keep that dream alive, otherwise we end up with a hundred and one identikit brown shooters.

Rise of the Triad 2009 on XBLA anyone?

Bio. SHOCK!

Topical, huh? Yes, I finally completed Bioshock, a game that has been sitting on my own personal pile of shame since release day. It’s a game I have steadfastly refused to trade in because it’s a game I knew I “should” finish before I even considered it. Other games I know I’ll never get around to, so often they’re trade fodder, unless they’re the sort of thing that’s likely to become difficult to find in the future in which case I’ll hang on to them – because ironically, the rarer stuff fetched much lower trade-in values anyway.

But I digress already. Bioshock, then.

THERE WILL BE MASSIVE SPOILARZ IN THIS POST. IF YOU HAVEN’T FINISHED BIOSHOCK AND INTEND TO, TURN BACK NOW.

It’s not an understatement to say that I was looking forward to Bioshock a great deal as a result of a Squadron of Shame mission on System Shock 2 - this was in our pre-podcast days so don’t go looking for a SquadCast on it… yet. I absolutely adored System Shock 2 and its prequel, which I also played all the way through thanks to the magic of DOS emulation. They were two games absolutely dribbling with atmosphere, and they featured one of the greatest villains of all time – SHODAN. SHODAN was a magnificent villain because she was creepy without overdoing it, she was omniscient and she had a level of power that was never entirely clear to you. It was important not to underestimate her, because she could very often put you into a difficult situation and then mock you from the shadows. The fact that she was incorporeal also helped a lot with the creepiness factor – until the very end of the first game, there was very little you could do to hurt her directly.

Bioshock necessarily took a different tack thanks to its retro-themed 1950s setting rather than the futuristic environments of the System Shock games. An omniscient computer perhaps wouldn’t fit in with the setting, so instead we have two people watching your every move through the security systems in the underwater city of Rapture – Andrew Ryan and “Atlas”. Ryan is set up to be “the bad guy” of the piece, with his constant taunts echoing SHODAN somewhat. Indeed, your whole experience with Ryan is similar to your relationship with SHODAN in the Shock games. He sits in the shadows far away from you, affecting the things that are happening around you. And these are drastic effects he has, too – in one memorable sequence, he kills the forest created in the underwater city, threatening to deprive you of oxygen. The area is flooded with gas and the trees wither and die around you. It’s a powerful moment that pushes home the necessity for you to go forward with your mission to destroy Ryan.

Atlas, on the other hand, is where the “big twist” happens. Atlas is set up from the start of the game to be “the good guy” – your voice in the darkness guiding you onward. Yet paying close attention to the things he says, it is clear that he has his own motivations for you to move forward. When you arrive in Rapture following a plane crash, you have no idea what you’re doing there, and it’s not until Atlas asks “would you kindly…” rescue his family, deal with various problems and finally stove Ryan’s head in with a golf club that you have any clue as to your purpose in that place.

Of course, it’s all been premeditated. Atlas is Fontaine, Ryan’s rival in the underworld of Rapture, and he knows how you work. The trigger phrase of “would you kindly” turns out to be something programmed into your brain to make you do things. You’re under the control of anyone who uses that phrase. Ryan demonstrates this to you with fatal consequences when he hands you the aforementioned golf club and says “would you kindly… kill”, and you oblige. It’s a powerful moment and a nice way of handling the relatively linear nature of the game – the fact that you’ve been surreptitiously manipulated throughout the whole thing was a great justification for what you’ve had to do up until that point.

Following Ryan’s death, there’s some great sequences where Fontaine taunts you with another trigger phrase that gradually causes your health to seep away… and then when you find the antidote, it only half-works, causing violent hallucinations and random, indiscriminate use of Plasmids. Eventually you manage to pull yourself together thanks to another dose of the antidote that you find, and it’s on to the final confrontation.

This is where Bioshock, for me, started to sadly tail off a bit, and a lot of people feel the same way. The sequence where you have to make yourself into a Big Daddy is quite neat, but the gameplay mechanic used here – an escort mission! Ugh! – is rather irritating, unless you enjoy the sight of little girls being shot to pieces with little you can do about it. The feeling of being a Big Daddy is quite fun though – your footstep sound changes to the big clumpy boots that they wear, your grunts of pain when you get hit have the low groaning of a Big Daddy, and your vision is distorted through the diving helmet that you wear.

Finally, of course, there’s the notorious battle against Fontaine. This is, without a doubt, the most ridiculous part of the game, and one which there was really no need for. During your Little Sister escorting, you hear Fontaine suddenly “discovering” gene splicing so that by the time you get to him he looks like something out of Fantastic Four. Oh, and he’s naked. You then have a protracted boss battle with him that pretty much involves you hurling every piece of ammo you’ve got left at him then running up to him and pressing the “Action” button, then repeating this three more times.

Now, as previous posts have shown, I’m a big fan of final confrontations, particularly if the music involved is suitably stirring. But this battle felt so entirely incongruous with the rest of the game. I would have preferred something more along the lines of Uncharted’s final battle (which I won’t spoil here, but those of you who have played it will know what I mean) which is a masterful piece of gameplay that is entirely appropriate for the setting. It’s still essentially a “boss battle” of sorts but there’s nothing stupid about it. There’s no giant monster, for one thing. (OMG SPOILARZ.) Why couldn’t we just have had a plain old shootout with Fontaine as a human, or fisticuffs atop a submarine or something like that?

Sadly, Bioshock’s ending falls into the same trap that many other games have done in the past – great game, fell apart at the end. Indigo Prophecy, aka Fahrenheit, is perhaps the most notorious example of this, but it’s by no means the only one. Many games are rushed in their final stages by pushy publishers keen to get the game out of the door. It’s sad really, because commonly-accepted wisdom has it that the things we take away most from (for want of a better word) “artistic” experiences are beginnings and endings. A lot of games have great beginnings, but shoddy endings. I’d rather that they made the beginning and the ending first and then sorted out the stuff in the middle afterwards. If there’s a lull in the middle, that’s nothing unusual. A lot of books, films, pieces of music, whole albums… many of them lull in the middle but pull themselves together for an explosive (not necessarily literally) finale.

Of course, with games there’s the argument that if you suffer through a lull in the middle you’ll never get to the end of the game. The ideal situation would be, of course, if developers were free to work on their games until they were completely, totally 100% done and dusted to the writers’ and designers’ complete satisfaction. Sadly, in the high-pressure world of commercial video games, this doesn’t always happen, which is why many commercial publishers could, I think, learn a lot from indie developers making smaller games. Take something like Flower on PSN. It’s short, sure, but it’s a wonderfully “complete” experience that takes you on a journey from beginning to end. Some people weren’t fans of the end of Flower, sure, but at least it didn’t feel like it was rushed through – it felt like it was a conscious artistic decision by the team.

One day, maybe we’ll get the perfect game – one that doesn’t need patching, one whose ending doesn’t suck and remains a consistently excellent game all the way through. Bioshock gets so close, so very close… but falls apart at the end. It’s a shame – but that’s not to say that you shouldn’t play it. I’m really glad I finally played it through as it’s a pretty incredible experience. It still looks great, the atmosphere is second to none and the overall story has been thought through well. It’s just that in a rush to tell that whole story, that boss fight had to get shoehorned in.

So, Bioshock? Good. Very good, in fact.

Retro or “Inspired By”?

Tolkoto’s recent Exploding Barrel rant about reviewers’ reactions to the recent Turtles in Time remake on Xbox Live got me thinking. What is it that gets people so excited about some “retro” games and not others? I agree with him, in fact – reviewers’ reactions to Turtles in Time was somewhat harsh, particularly considering it’s only 800 space dollars. Criticising the gameplay of the original by measuring it against modern yardsticks clearly isn’t acceptable… or is it? It’s difficult to say. After all, this may be some gamers’ first encounter with an early-90s brawler (although XBLA has hosted the previous Turtles arcade game along with the magnificent Streets of Rage 2 and the diabolical Double Dragon) – what gives? And how come Castle Crashers – fundamentally the same game in many respects – gets smothered in adoration?

A common criticism of the brawler genre is that it’s “too simple”. But let’s take a look at another genre in the form of the PSN’s recent brick-breaker Shatter, which has garnered almost universal praise since its release a couple of weeks ago. Shatter is, let’s not kid around here, Arkanoid. Okay, you have a “suck” button. And a “blow” button. (Stop sniggering at the back.) But fundamentally, it’s still Arkanoid. You’re a bat-shaped spaceship hitting a ball into bricks that are floating in space with some flimsy justification laughably called a “plot” buried somewhere in the Help menus. There are powerups, including one where you can just shoot down the bricks. Pretty much the sole point of the game is to achieve as high a score as possible – and high scores are something the game does well. It’s a simple game. Everyone loved it for this fact.

So in terms of gameplay, Shatter adds little to the Arkanoid formula save a few fancy bits of physics, some HD art and a kickass soundtrack that I love and Feenwager hates. So why is this game awesome and Turtles in Time a bit steaming turd to reviewers? God knows.

The important thing is, of course, what the player thinks of all this. Those who enjoy the brawler genre or have fond memories of playing Turtles in Time on the SNES will have an absolute blast with the new XBLA remake. Similarly, those who enjoy bouncing things around and smashing walls will love Shatter. But are people more predisposed to like Shatter as it was designed from the ground-up to be a new game rather than a “re-imagining” of Arkanoid? Arkanoid LIVE on the 360 released to mixed reviews and has, it seems, been mostly forgotten already. Shatter, on the other hand, gives me the impression that people will perhaps be more inclined to give it a go, particularly given its very generous price point ($7.99 in the US store, £4.79 over here) as a result of the few things it does a little bit differently.

This pattern follows us around a great deal. LittleBigPlanet for PS3 is a 2D platformer, and unashamedly so. Yet plonk someone down in front of that, then down in front of, say, Rolo to the Rescue and see which they prefer. Actually, that’s perhaps not strictly accurate. Plonk someone down in front of an HD version of Rolo to the Rescue sold for $10 on XBLA or PSN and ask them which they prefer. Would the answer still be LBP? Judging by what has happened with Turtles in Time here, it may well be, though many players, particularly those who have played and loved both, may feel a bit differently.

This has been yet another rant without any real point but do feel free to comment if you have any feelings. I’m planning a new music post very soon – those take a bit more preparation though.

TWANG! Waggle! Kick! Punch! It’s all in the mind!

Those of you following me on Twitter may be familiar with my Jedi Health Kick blog. Perhaps you’re reading it already, in which case you’ll know I recently picked up a copy of EA Sports Active in my latest attempt to hammer and chisel my woeful body into a shape vaguely resembling human. It’s good stuff, and for anyone doubting the value of Wii Fit as an exercise programme, you can rest assured that EA Sports Active gives you much more of a battering than Wii Fit ever did thanks to the fact it actually takes you through set programmes (although, of course, you can create your own also) rather than leaving you to your own devices and relying on your own self-discipline which – let’s face it – your lack of is probably the reason you came to titles like Wii Fit in the first place!

The thing I like about it is how “videogamey” it makes the whole experience. Being a supergeek as I am, I like anything that rewards achievement in a noticeable way. I’m a sucker for slidey bars, percentage markers and trophies. Ironic, really, that I never got into sports, since sports are also filled with slidey bars, percentage markers and trophies. Anyway, the fact is that EASA is full of these things. You get trophies not only for successfully completing workouts, but for smaller things like doing a certain number of laps around the virtual track across all your workouts, doing a certain number of squats, burning a certain number of calories and the like. These are all goals that you would probably set yourself if you were one of those people who are “into fitness” and can motivate themselves, but for the gamers (or the lazy) amongst us, it helps to have something to remind us that even smaller achievements are worth celebrating.

Anyway, to cut to the tenuous link: there’s been a lot of discussion surrounding motion control and full-body control recently, particularly after E3. Some seem to think that it’s “the way that games are going”, with the idea of us standing up to play games and running the risk of hurricane-kicking our TV a very real possibility. Others are very much a fan of the traditional controller, believing that it is something fundamentally “gamey”. I’m inclined to fall into this latter camp, but the motion control thing has some obvious health benefits which are clearly demonstrated by titles like EASA.

The question is, of course, do you want something that is primarily an entertainment device to provide health benefits all the time? Look at other media. TV and books offer health benefits sometimes – you can watch a yoga DVD or read a lifestyle book – but for however many of these there are, there are an equal if not greater number of “junk” items to enjoy – pure, unadulterated enjoyment with no pretense of “doing it for your own good”. In this sense, while motion controls are cool and groovy, I’d like to hope that the controller isn’t dead just yet.

A key part of the experience is tactile feedback. While motion controls allow you to feel your own body moving, when it comes to actually touching or hitting something, you don’t feel anything. This is also a problem with touchscreen controls – a joypad on a touchscreen will never match a real joypad until a technology is developed where you can “feel” it. I also question how some genres would work with motion controls – take an FPS, for example. How do you look up? If you REALLY look up, then you can’t see the TV any more, so unless Halo Natal comes with some sort of 360-degree “vision ball” that you have to stand inside to play (which would be awesome, incidentally) then you’re resorting to flailing your arms around in some arbitrary gesture or pointing something at the top of the screen.

I think there’s work to do – and I just hope that people aren’t going to embrace these new technologies too completely. I very much like them and think they’re going to be a lot of interesting fun to play with – plus I think all of them provide plenty of scope for further titles like EASA and Wii Fit to improve gamer lifestyle, which can only be a good thing – but let’s hope the controller isn’t dead just yet, hmm?

Microsoft at E3

Just finished watching the Microsoft E3 presentation. As most people could have predicted even before seeing what was on offer, reception was somewhat mixed.

Predictably, everyone creamed themselves over the Modern Warfare 2 trailer and gameplay footage which I, ever the rebel, remain relatively indifferent about, though it is remarkably pretty. Halo fanboys spooged copiously over ODST and the “secret” Halo title, Reach. This I am completely indifferent about. When Bungie said they had a “top secret” project to announce, I was hoping they were going to show a new Myth game or something like that… but no. Bungie make Halo and nothing else now, it seems. Fair play, it’s made them an awful lot of money but seriously guys, something new once in a while really wouldn’t go amiss.

Other notable mentions went to Crackdown 2, sequel to the underrated open-world funfest from a while back – and for my money, one of the best implementations of co-op (or perhaps it should be more accurately called “concurrent play”, since you can both happily charge off in opposite directions if you want to) I’ve ever seen.

Then there was Splinter Cell: Conviction, which does look like it’s trying some revolutionary new tricks with presentation. Rather than having mission objectives and cutscenes taking players out of the action, many things appear “projected” on the walls, be these instructions or even flashback cutscenes. It was a really interesting approach, and the game looks to be supremely cinematic because of it. It’s certainly enough to get me interested in Splinter Cell again, a series I haven’t touched for quite some time.

Then there was Alan Wake, a game which many were worrying had fallen into the abyss of vaporware. But no – we saw it, including some gameplay footage. It looks to be something of a cross between Max Payne and Silent Hill, with, like Splinter Cell, some interesting presentational features. Wake’s narration of the action hearkens back to Max Payne’s overblown drawl from his games, and the use of light and dark is reminiscent of some scenes in the Silent Hill series. It certainly looks incredible, too, and could well be the thing that makes 360 owners feel a bit better about not having Heavy Rain to play.

Kojima also snuck onto stage and dropped the fact that a new MGS game starring Raiden would be hitting 360, and Square showed off some FFXIII footage. Both will likely be great, but there was nothing there we hadn’t expected.

The main part of the keynote revolved around the Project Natal technology, which allows real-time motion capture and voice recognition, allowing players to interact with games without needing a controller. It was made very clear at the outset of the presentation that this was primarily intended to be a means by which non-gamers could be attracted to interactive entertainment – but of course, this hasn’t stopped hardcore gamers bitching and moaning as they always do.

We saw a number of demos, including some questionable real-time avatar motion capture and animation and a fun-looking tech demo called Ricochet (essentially body-controlled Breakout). We also saw how Natal will allow users to interact with the Dashboard in a distinctly Minority Report manner by swishing their hands around and, much to the disgust of Atheistium over at viera.nu, allow their avatars to try on girly clothes while having a video chat. (To be fair, this was pretty cringeworthy, but I don’t see it being a huge part of most gamers’ lives.)

It was Peter Molyneux’s work with Natal that provoked the most interest and curiosity, however. Presenting a virtual human called Milo, he demonstrated the capabilities of Natal along with software by showing someone interacting with Milo by speaking naturally and using realistic gestures to interact with the virtual world. At one point, Milo invites the player to look into the water and a real reflection of the player appears on-screen, with the ripples in the water responding to their “touch”. It was a pretty incredible sight, and a glimpse of what the future might hold, especially for games like Oblivion. (Thanks to Ajguy for suggesting this.) Imagine being able to hold a naturalistic conversation with an NPC rather than tediously clicking through a list of topics.

As I mentioned earlier, reception has been mixed. Natal is undoubtedly amazing technology (assuming it works) but the self-professes “hardcore gamers” of the world are already up in arms about “dumbing down”. But the fact is, just like the Wii is not a system for these people, Natal and its features are not designed for this audience. What Natal will allow Microsoft to do is broaden their audience from the core of gamers to families and other non-gamers. With the introduction of other services on the Dashboard such as last.fm, instant-on 1080p movies (I remain cynical about this, given the general crapness of my connection) and live TV from Sky, the aim is very much to turn the Xbox from a simple games system to an all-purpose multimedia box that sits under the television as the centrepiece of your digital life.

I don’t think that’s such a bad thing. No-one suggested once that hardcore gamers would be left out in the cold – quite the contrary, in fact, with the announcement of big titles like Modern Warfare 2, Crackdown 2, Left 4 Dead 2 (yayz!) and numerous others. What Natal will do is simply open up the field of interactive entertainment to more people. If all they want to do is prance around like a pillock in front of their TV, then let them. But there’s always the possibility that they’ll get interested enough in the hobby to join the growing number of gamers out there and enjoy this rapidly-changing medium.

I think that’s quite a pleasant image of the future, in fact. Let’s see what happens.

What is Your Alternate Reality?

I’ve been banging on about ancient 8-bit RPG Alternate Reality since the last SquadCast now and am finding the process of revisiting it with an adult’s mind (i.e. one that understands what an RPG is) equal parts addictive and frustrating. The reason for this is that Alternate Reality itself is an incredibly ambitious game with very grand designs… yet its difficulty level at the outset is absolutely maddening… and yet (again) this difficulty level makes it incredibly addictive. You start think that if you could just get a little further… or if you hadn’t tried to punch that knight in the face while not wearing any armour… things would be better.

At this point, let’s pause for a typical playthrough from beginning to inevitable early death. Strap yourself in, we’re going to another world.

It’s a typical day in the city. Perhaps I’m on the way to work, or on my way to meet a friend. But disaster is waiting just around the corner, because…

Holy shit! Aliens! AAAAHHH!!

And now they’re abducting people! Interestingly, I’m not the only one abducted… it looks like the ship picks up three others. (I’m not sure if these other three people are ever mentioned… or perhaps it’s a reference to the fact you have four “save slots” on your character disk)

Uh-oh… we’re leaving. But where are we going…?

Ah, yes, space. Of course. They are aliens, after all. Wait a minute, I know how we can lift our spirits…

A little sing-song! Maybe this won’t be so bad…

As the song ends, two sets of big scary doors slam shut and I’m locked in a green room where I am invited to “become a new person”.

When the doors slide open again, I’m in front of a gate with a force field over it. Numbers rotate over the gate. As soon as I step through the force field, the numbers freeze in place, defining who I am to be in this new world.

There’s a flash of… lightning? Static? Something, and then…

Apparently I am “joined”, and ready to enter an alternate reality.

(In the subsequent loading break, you have to swap disks twice unless you have more than one drive. You thought you had it rough with JRPGs.)

And here I am at the Floating Gate, ready to begin my adventure. You’ll notice my statistics are distinctly average. From left to right, we have Stamina, Charisma/Charm, Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom and Skill/Dexterity. These have a potential initial maximum of 21, so Stamina, Charisma and Skill are pretty good, but Strength, Intelligence and Wisdom are pretty feeble. Fortunately, Skill is probably one of the most helpful stats early in the game, as it allows you sufficient mobility to avoid attacks from early enemies.

So, first job? Find a weapon. You begin your adventure in the city of Xebec’s Demise with only the money given to you by the strange portal at the beginning, no equipment and only some basic clothing. Fortunately, your starting area is the City Square, with the Floating Gate in the middle and shops all around. So, let’s take a look.

A smithy, huh? This sounds promising. I know he’s in at the moment, too, because I can hear him hammering away inside. (And yes, you actually can. This is just one of the cool “environmental effects” that you hear throughout your travels). So, let’s pay him a visit.

(Single-drive users can expect a disk swap at this point.)

The Best Armorers, huh? Sounds expensive. However, as the smith seems quite happy to stand there singing while I browse his wares, I take my time and consider my options carefully.

7,424 coppers? I was right, this place is expensive. In fact, there’s nothing I can even nearly afford in here. I tell him to forget it rather than risk offending him by making him a paltry offer (which might make the smith reluctant to deal with you in the future, when you could potentially afford his wares – one of the many things that AR keeps track of in the background). I step back onto the windy streets, still distinctly lacking in equipment. Time to explore.

As I leave the Best Armorers, it starts raining, which makes it difficult to see where I’m going and slows me down. Thunder crashes and lightning flashes. But at least I haven’t run into any ne’er-do-wells as yet.

Spoke too soon. A wandering zombie notices me but doesn’t have time to act. I don’t fancy taking it on in my current state, so I run for it. Fortunately, I managed to get away before it was able to do anything unpleasant to me.

A little further down the road, I surprised a rabid-looking Giant Rat. I elect to leave it alone as I don’t fancy adding a disease to the list of my woes. It’s still early days in this strange place.

After a little exploring (and a Hobbit surprising me, then running away without saying a word) I hear the sound of a smithy again… but there’s no doors in this building. Curious. I press against a wall and find myself slipping straight through it. A secret door!

Sure enough, it’s another smithy. Occums Weaponsmiths, to be precise. It’s cheaper… but still way out of my price range. Curses.

Outside, it’s still raining, and worse, I run into a Goblin. Desperate, I try and sweet-talk it into stepping down and maybe giving me some of its treasure and equipment. The conversation doesn’t go well, with the Goblin responding to my polite request by trying to stab me. This place is just like Southampton. Maybe I haven’t gone anywhere at all.

I respond in kind to the Goblin by punching it in the face. It’s a feeble attack, but at least it connects, which is more than can be said for the Goblin’s attacks. With my high Skill, I nimbly avoid and parry all of his blows and manage to knock the foe to the ground without sustaining any injuries myself. Unfortunately, the Goblin doesn’t seem to be carrying anything of value. I do, however, gain a total of 59 experience points from the whole encounter.

Night falls, and it’s still raining. I surprise a Fighter in the street, but he looks tough so I decide to avoid him while he’s still surprised. I begin to think it might be an idea to try and find somewhere to spend the night. It’s clear the City is an inhospitable place, but I imagine this becomes even more apparent in the night-time.

In search of an inn, I get mugged by a Skeleton. What a bastard. Fortunately, I manage to get away before he can attack properly. But how much did he steal…?

I check my pockets. Fortunately, I don’t seem to have lost anything irreplaceable, and I still have a few copper coins to my name. Enough to spend the night somewhere, hopefully.

I encounter a Dwarf a little further down the road. I’m not sure if he’s friendly or unfriendly, so I decide to turn on the Charm and see what he has to say about that. Bizarrely, he dies. I think this is AR’s way of telling me that this was a successful encounter, not that my tongue was so silver he simply collapsed and died in wonderment at my words. Possibly. Whatever actually happened (and I guess we’ll never know), I now have 205 experience points. Not yet enough to reach level 1 (You have to earn level 1! The indignity!) but a step closer, nonetheless.

A Troll shows its face next. It looks scary, so I try and disengage from it and escape. I do so, but not before it steals some of my water and food. This isn’t going well.

For a worrying moment, despite working with a map (an absolute necessity, as this was, of course, the days long before automapping) I think I’m lost, and I haven’t bought a compass yet. Fortunately, I get my bearings shortly afterwards and manage to stumble my way to the doorway of Mom’s Bar, where the giant rat I ran away from earlier (possibly) is waiting for me. The rat tries to steal some more of my food and water then tries to bite me, but I dodge it and duck into the bar to get out of the rain.

The bartender informs me that the band are on a break, but invites me to watch a dwarf dancing. Since I’m hungry and thirsty, I decide to take him up on his offer and sit at the bar watching the dwarf and listening to his quirky music.

I order some water and a food packet to take with me. This only costs me a few coppers, fortunately, and should give me enough sustenance to get through the night… I hope. I step back out of the door. I wonder if it’s stopped raining yet…

It has. But it’s still dark and I need a place to sleep. I stumble through the city streets some more, pausing only for another giant rat (the same one again?) to steal the food packet I just bought.

Eventually I come across a welcome sight – a door marked “Inn”. Unfortunately, as I reach for the handle, I’m attacked by a Gremlin. I ask it very politely if it wouldn’t mind awfully stepping aside if it would be so kind, and it dies at my words, finally giving me enough experience to reach level 1. Not only that…

TREASURE! The Gremlin drops a potion. I can’t work out what it is, but it tastes dry and is red in colour. I decide not to quaff it right now just in case it is deadly poison, which is entirely possible in this harsh world. The Gremlin also drops a shield, which looks “mundane”, apparently. I pick it up and wield it on my off-hand, not caring that I look ridiculous wielding a shield but not a sword. Cutting a rain-drenched yet distinctly self-satisfied figure, I barge into the Green Boar Inn.

I elect to spend the night on the common room floor as despite having my first taste of acquiring treasure, I’m not exactly flush with cash. I hand over 10 coppers and spend the night on the floor, asking to be woken at 9am the next day.

(Aside: This is, I think, the longest I’ve ever survived. It figures that the one time I decide to show you a “typical playthrough” and make reference to “inevitable early death” I’m here for ages.)

I step outside the door and give a charming greeting to a passing commoner. The commoner is obviously in a bad mood and promptly stabs me in the stomach. I try and apologise, but he stabs me again, so I run away, bleeding a bit. I’m also now very hungry and very thirsty. Time to pay that tavern another visit.

Seriously hungry and thirsty now, and my stats now starting to drop from thirst, I impulsively spent my remaining coins on food and drink – some grape juice, a couple of food packets and some chocolate cake. When I leave a few hours later, I’m still thirsty but I’m not hungry any more. Plus I enjoyed the band’s song.

Back on the street, the sun is setting (Already? I must have been in that tavern longer than I thought) and I encounter a Thief. I charm him successfully and take his two pieces of silver that he was carrying – this equates to twenty copper pieces. It paid for the chocolate cake if nothing else.

Incidentally, reading the official guidebooks and cluebooks for The City indicate that successfully Charming someone is indeed killing them – you pretend to be their friend then stab them in the back. So to the Dwarf I met earlier… uhh… sorry! This is something you have to be careful of in your time in the City. Encounters fall into three categories – Good, Neutral and Evil. You can safely do whatever you like to Evil creatures. Attacking a Neutral creature (and these include most of the humanoid ne’er-do-wells such as thieves and fighters) first before they do anything to you is considered an evil act… and tricking or charming a Good creature is a very evil act. As you might expect, dropping your reputation in this way is a sure-fire way to get the whole city pissed at you.

In a case of art mirroring life, I find myself “very thirsty” again, much as I am feeling now, sitting here writing this with a sore throat. Keen to prevent my already feeble statistics (in-game) from dropping any further, I head back to Mom’s Bar to rehydrate myself.

I order three glasses of water and sit at the table for a while, sipping them. It’ll be time to sleep again soon, which should help me recover the injuries I sustained with my ill-advised encounter with the Commoner earlier. The band sings an entertaining if unnerving song about not going into bad parts of town at night for fear of being set on fire.

I stagger out of the tavern and head back towards the inn. Perhaps tomorrow will be a more productive day.

I wake up and, once again, I’m hungry and thirsty. Time for breakfast at Mom’s Bar.

Unfortunately, I get jumped by a Swordsman outside the inn. The swordsman steals all my coppers then cuts me up with his sword. Fortunately, he proves easy to Charm. I hold my hands up in truce until he comes over, then I snap his neck. Unfortunately, he seems to have eaten my coins, so I’m now penniless, hungry and thirsty.

I’m not proud of what I do next. I use my not-inconsiderable skills of persuasion to “convince” a passing Courier to part with what he was carrying. Unfortunately, he was the walking equivalent of a white van with a “NO TOOLS ARE KEPT IN THIS VAN OVERNIGHT” sign posted on the back, as he is carrying nothing but a bitter-tasting potion which disappears in a puff of smoke when I attempt to quaff it.

I do hit level 2, though, so it’s not all bad news.

I’m reaching desperation point now. I come across a Fighter and attempt to sweet-talk him out of some coins. This fails and I get hit again. I manage to run away before too much injury is done to me, but things are starting to go downhill.

Saved! I find another tavern – this one called the Misty Mountain. But they want three thousand copper coins before they’ll let me in. Given that I don’t have any copper coins whatsoever, I am quickly ejected from the premises.

I begin to feel that my demise might be on its way. Death is peering over my shoulder. I slink back onto the street, dejected, weary and very thirsty. I manage to dredge up a food packet from my pocket to satiate my hunger for the moment, but there’s no water anywhere to be seen.

Unable to help myself, I stumble into the path of a robber and attempt to beat him back, but I fail. He takes my last remaining possessions and runs away. By now I’m parched and starving, and I can feel myself weakening moment by moment. I must cut a pitiful sight.

I collapse somewhere around the city’s walls and am confronted by a guard. My attempts to mug the populace out of desperation have not gone unnoticed, it seems, as he attacks me without warning. By now, I am grateful for the attention. I put up some meager resistance but secretly, within, am hoping for the sweet release of death as this existence has become too difficult.

I am slain by his greatsword and crumple to the ground, never to be heard from again.

Alas, I am dead.

So there you go – in slightly longer format than I anticipated, but never mind.

Alternate Reality: The City is one of those games that is infinitely better when you treat it much as I did above – as a “playground” where you make your own story. This is largely because the game has no aim as such – partly due to its design, and also partly due to the fact that the whole series was never finished – a crying shame, as the whole series had a huge amount of potential.

For the unfamiliar, the series was originally planned to be split into several interconnected volumes – The City (and the Dungeon beneath its streets), The Wilderness, The Palace, The Arena, Revelation and Destiny. Only The Dungeon ever made it out onto shop shelves – as a separate game rather than part of the original City package. The Dungeon had much more structure and actually had an “end” too – or more specifically, a point that clearly led onto the final two chapters, Revelation and Destiny.

Revelation and Destiny were the interesting-sounding ones. Towards the end of The Dungeon, the player character was supposed to acquire a keycard, which could be used to enter the Revelation area where everything suddenly became a bit more futuristic. The player would find themselves walking the corridors of an alien spacecraft, looking out through windows into a dramatic spacescape, while Destiny would allow the player to finally discover the truth – that abducted humans had been placed into a form of suspended animation within “cocoons”, each living out their own parallel life in the city of Xebec’s Demise and its surroundings.

Hold on a minute, you might think. This all sounds a little bit familiar. A bit Matrix-y if you will. And you’d be right.

Philip Price, author of the series, claims he once met a pair of movie directors who wanted to discuss Alternate Reality. It’s never been verified whether or not this was the Wachowski brothers, but there are certainly plenty of similarities between the two series, and it makes a nice story for geek folklore nonetheless. It’s a crying shame that Price never got to realise his ambition, however, as the whole thing would have been a magnificent achievement had it come to fruition.

As it is, The City and The Dungeon stand as two extremely interesting (not to mention playable and addictive) curios – role-playing games that were many, many years ahead of their time that arguably could finally have their original intentions fulfilled nowadays. It would certainly be interesting to see Bethesda working on a re-imagining of the series. But I guess we’ll never know.

Some great info and links on Alternate Reality can be found here and here. Check it out. Oh, and here’s that glorious intro sequence in full – a five-minute long intro on a 48k machine isn’t bad going, is it?

POKEY my SID

Forget Sega vs Nintendo, it’s time for the battle of the old sound chips.

As I commented on the recently-released 8-Bit Computer Retrospectacular Squadcast (which I really do recommend you go and listen to – it’s our best yet), I was an Atari boy growing up, largely because that’s the system we had at home – there was none of this “own every system” malarkey that goes on now, partly because the systems were a lot more expensive in relative terms than today’s consoles, and partly because pretty much the same stuff came out on all of them anyway.

The bitterest battles that we Atari people fought were against the might of the Commodore 64, a machine of roughly equivalent power and capabilities to the Atari 8-bit series of computers. Both had very similar specifications, so it was common for owners of the two systems to try and outdo each other whenever possible. This constant effort of oneupmanship often took the form of trying to outdo each others’ graphics as seen here in this equivalent screenshot from Alternate Reality: The Dungeon on Atari (first) and Commodore (second).

Alternate Reality: The Dungeon (Atari)

Alternate Reality: The Dungeon (C64)

Atari fans were quick to point out that clever programmers were able to get 256 colours on screen at any one time while the Commodore often seemed to have a more limited colour palette. But then Commodore would strike back with something like this shot, the title screen from Draconus (again, Atari first, C64 second):

Draconus (Atari)

Draconus (C64)

Facepalm. “Hey, where’s all your colours now, Mr Atari?”

Graphics were all very well and good, but some of the bitterest battles were fought on the aural front, with both systems having a great sound chip far ahead of anything else at the time – Atari being armed with POKEY, Commodore with SID.

Okay, I may be exaggerating when I say “bitter battles” but it’s clear that there was some rivalry here. Some compositions sound clearly better on Atari while others are clearly superior on the C64. And it’s the SID chip’s sound which has endured in today’s chiptunes. There’s still POKEY players and archives out there, sure, but nothing on the scale of, say, the High Voltage SID collection, an exhaustive library of pretty much every piece of SID chip music, both retro and contemporary, you would ever want.

So, let’s take a look at a few examples. That is why you’ve read this far, right? To hear some funky old chiptunes? All right. Here we go.

Zybex – Adam Gilmore

Atari version:

C64 version:

Two versions of a cool song that you’ll be familiar with if you’ve read my past entries on game music. Adam Gilmore worked on a lot of music tracks for both the Atari and the C64 (including the theme for Draconus, pictured above) and was clearly very familiar with how to get the best out of both of them. It’s difficult to say which one is the best out of these two – or even if there is a “best” one. The Atari version, to me, has a cleaner sound, while the C64 version has some more interesting synth effects.

Warhawk – Rob Hubbard

Atari version:

C64 version:

Rob Hubbard was one of the undisputed masters of the 8-bit sound chips, with games featuring his music frequently marketed due to that fact – even if said music only appeared on the title screen, as was the case with most games, including Warhawk here. In many cases, the demands that pushing the sound chip hard enough to produce complex music put on the processor meant that having in-game music was often impractical.

I’ve gotta hand it to the C64’s SID chip here, the Warhawk theme sounds hugely better on it – partly because it seems that Hubbard actually wrote a more complex piece of music for it. Listen through, though, and you’ll hear the kind of effects that you’d expect to hear on a standalone synth – vibrato, tremolo, chorus, echo – it’s impressive stuff.

M.U.L.E – Roy Glover

Atari version:

C64 version:

A much older and simpler piece of music than the kinds of things Rob Hubbard dreamt up, the M.U.L.E. theme is still a catchy little piece. For my money, I prefer the POKEY version of this one as the sound envelopes that are used, particularly on the melody line, just give the whole thing a bit more “fullness” than the C64 version which sounds a bit “dry”.

Action Biker – Rob Hubbard

Atari version:

C64 version:

Oh dear. It’s clear where Mr Hubbard’s loyalties lie now, isn’t it? The pathetic, short loop used in the Atari version of Action Biker becomes an actual piece of music on the C64. Thanks. Thanks a lot.

Digital music

Bonanza Digi (Atari):

Digi Freaks Digi (C64):

What many people didn’t realise (even now, in some cases, and definitely not in the early days) was that both of these sound chips were more than capable of reproducing and sequencing sampled sounds, leading to much more realistic-sounding pieces. Of course, the sound quality is nothing to write home about, but there’s something gloriously 80s about the sound of “noisetracker” pieces such as these – a phenomenon which continued with the 16-bit machines, particularly with the C64’s 16-bit successor, the Amiga, whose sound chip was so far ahead of Atari’s equivalent effort for the ST (which in many cases sounded inferior to POKEY) it was ridiculous.

So there you have it. A few selected examples from the Atari and C64’s sound chip back catalogues. Back in the day, I was genetically predisposed to hate everything Commodore but on reflection, there are many examples of its superiority in music production. There’s certainly got to be a reason that the sound of the SID chip has endured as long as it has and remains popular to this day, while POKEY remains relatively obscure. I’ll always have a soft spot for those Atari sounds, though.

If you’re interested in making chiptunes, this plug-in for VST- and AU-based DAWs provides a good way to get started for low-cost, while fans of the old NES sound should check this (free!) one out.