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.

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.

The Squadron of Shame Squadcast #12: No Shame

The long-awaited first 2009 episode of The Squadron of Shame SquadCast is now available for download!

Subscribe now using one of the following links:

Subscribe via iTunes (M4A version)
Subscribe via RSS (M4A version)

Subscribe via iTunes (MP3 version)
Subscribe via RSS (MP3 version)

Direct download this episode (M4A version)
Direct download this episode (MP3 version)

You can also follow the Squad’s updates on Twitter here.

This episode, we delve into Games of No Shame. These fall into several categories – the games everyone loves that you hate, the games everyone loves that you love too, the games that everyone hates that you love and the games you’re terrified of being caught playing.

Also on this episode, Beige talks about jizz and Pokémon, we use the phrase “sucks like a banshee” and Pishu goes a-hustlin’.

Follow us on Twitter for up to date news, including rollout information of our exciting new website now that 1up has witnessed the power of that fully operational battle station that is UGO.

Stay tuned!

Art/Fart

Now with pictures! Happy now?

The idea of “games as art” is an over-discussed topic and has been since the days of the later Final Fantasy games, which many regard as one of many points where video games just started to show their potential to tell interesting stories in interesting ways.

So I’m not going to talk about games as art – at least, not “mainstream” games. I want to take a moment to share a few curious experiences I’ve had recently. I hesitate to call all of these examples except one “games” by virtue of the fact that they’re not really traditional “games” as such, more interactive artistic works, and I think that’s fast becoming a genre of its own – something I’m all for.

A few of these games are probably quite well known by the side of the gamer community that is interested in this sort of thing, a couple of others you may not have heard of. So I hope that by the end of this post you might be inspired to check out some things a little bit outside the box. You may well find them pretentious, boring and crap – I’m sure many people do – but like any work of “art”, there are bound to be differing opinions, expectations and feelings about them.

So let’s jump in with probably the most well-known of the titles I’m going to discuss today. There may be spoilarz ahead… and you can click the game titles to visit the sites for them. (If you’re reading this on Facebook, you might not be able to. Click here to read this post properly.)

Braid

Braid

Braid is a game by Jonathan Blow that represents, to me, one of the interesting things about the Xbox 360 – the fact that this is a console with such diversity that triple-A “blockbuster” titles like Gears of War 2 and independent “arthouse” (for want of a better term) games like this can happily coexist on the platform quite comfortably. With the recent launch of the NXE and the Community Games project, I think it’s relatively safe to say that Braid will not be the last game of its type that we’ll see.

But what is Braid? Ostensibly it’s a platform game that largely centres around puzzles rather than action. The central game mechanic is an interesting “time rewind” system which has an interesting twist put onto it in each of the game’s worlds. In some worlds, you can simply rewind time if you make a mistake. In others, certain areas or objects are immune to time manipulation, so you can rewind time in the areas around the object and remain unaffected by this. In yet others, time winds forwards while you run to the right and backwards while you run to the left. It’s an interesting mechanic that makes for some absolute brain-benders, and I maintain that I’m far too stupid to ever solve the game without help.

Still, the interesting thing about Braid for me, and the thing which divides opinion the most, is the “meaning” behind it all. Each world is preceded by a series of text interludes, describing the main character’s quest to reach a princess in floaty, dreamy, vague language and tying the central mechanic of each world in with the main character’s conflicting emotions and feelings about time, place, love and loss as he proceeds through the game. It’s a fine line between “emo bullshit” and “existential masterpiece” – and there’s plenty of people on both sides of the debate on this one. One thing is certain though, everyone who has played the game has plenty to say about it, whether it’s good or bad.

Passage and Gravitation

Gravitation

These two “autobiographical” games by Jason Rohrer at first glance appear to be simplistic “retro” style games with eye-catching super low-res pixel art. But look into them a little deeper (or, if you need a little prompting, as I did, read the Creator’s Statement that Rohrer has thoughtfully posted for each game) and you’ll find that each of these two games represent a deeply personal exploration of a certain aspect of “life” to Rohrer – with Passage offering a look at mortality, companionship, ambition, love, loss and the balance between these things and Gravitation looking at the concept of fatherhood, the creative process and again, the balance between these things.

Each is represented very simply with the aforementioned low-resolution pixel art. But it’s the little things about the presentation and the games themselves that carry the deeper meaning. In Passage you start on the left of the screen, with more of the “world” – your life – stretching out ahead of you. Very shortly after the beginning, you have the choice of picking up a companion, who then stays with you until almost the end of the game. This makes you unable to reach some areas of the game, but it’s actually quite difficult to consider leaving her behind. If you’re me, anyway.

As you progress through the game, you gradually move across the screen towards the right side, meaning that at the beginning, you are looking forward to what is ahead, while at the end you are looking back on where you have just been. Shortly before the end, had you chosen to take your companion with you, she dies, leaving you as an old, lonely man left to trudge on towards his own death alone. This moment, although it is represented simply by the companion suddenly turning into a gravestone and the speed of movement of your character suddenly cutting to a quarter of what it was originally, is a hugely touching moment due to how understated it is. For me, it put across the idea that death is unglamorous, is unavoidable, but there is always someone left behind to trudge on without the person who is gone. I found it to be quite a beautiful, thought-provoking sentiment that is all the more poignant when you read Rohrer’s description of the meaning behind the game.

Gravitation, conversely, does not deal with a subject such as death, but rather the struggle that a creative person has between his art and his family. The game starts with you playing “catch” with a child figure. Each time you bounce the ball back to the child, a little heart appears above their head, but you cannot make any progress in the game itself by doing this. To score “points”, you have to leap up a huge tower, with gravity that is constantly changing, presumably representing varying degrees of motivation (or “mania” as the Rohrer puts it), and collect stars, which fall to the ground and form rocks. Following this, you have to drop back down and push these blocks into a furnace.

The twist is, the more stars that drop, the less able you are to get to your child to play with them, as the rocks that appear form directly in front of your child, blocking your way to her, and this also seems to have an effect on the gravity of the game. So it becomes a balancing act between play with your child and the “work” of pushing the blocks into the furnace.

These two games are two of my favourite examples of this subgenre because of their simplicity of presentation and gameplay, and the amount of “interpretation” that can be had by looking more closely at what is happening. I think it’s also really interesting to see “autobiographical” games, as Rohrer calls them, and he himself points out that this is not something that many developers have done as yet.

The Majesty of Colors

The Majesty of Colors

This is another game that chooses to use 8-bit style pixel art as its means of presentation, giving it a distinctive look and character that seems entirely appropriate for the game. I can’t pin down why this is, but I love it. This is also the first of two games hosted on Kongregate, which originally became my favourite Flash games site purely for the presence of Desktop Tower Defense following my brother’s recommendations, but seems to be developing into an interesting community of indie developers, “interesting game enthusiasts” like myself, and illiterate 12 year olds who just want to play stuff with badly-drawn animé-style characters. Fortunately, like the Xbox 360, the groups seem to coexist quite happily, meaning we get titles like this.

In The Majesty of Colors, you play a betentacled sea monster. The game opens in black and white with balloons floating past your face and the “monster’s” inner monologue represented as text across the top of the screen. Grabbing a balloon and bringing it close to the monster’s eyes suddenly brings the world into vibrant colour, and the story itself begins. Essentially, the player can choose to manipulate the humans who appear on the scene either through violence or helping them, and this eventually leads to one of five endings, each of which involves the “monster” (whom, it transpires, is actually a person having a dream) awakening in very different ways.

I kind of don’t want to say anything else about this one, because I believe it’s worth experiencing. It’s a simplistic game with not a lot of “point” to it as a game, but it’s very much an interactive work of art to me.

Coil

Coil

The first of two games by Edmund McMillen, Coil is a self-professed game with no instructions that requests you “keep an open mind while playing”. It’s presented in a rather abstract manner, with mouse-driven mini-games interspersed with Braid-style text interludes. The story of the game appears to be deliberately ambiguous to provoke discussion, but the consensus from many people seems to be that it is about a woman who was raped and the feelings she develops towards the child that is the product of that incident.

Like The Majesty of Colors, I believe this is a “game” that’s somewhat open to interpretation, and another that will probably split opinion. The lack of instructions can make it challenging to progress, but it’s worth persevering with the story to see what you think of it.

Aether

Aether

Another from McMillen, Aether seems to be a rather personal story about childhood feelings of inadequacy in the eyes of others. Players swing through space atop the back of a curious blob-like monster trying to solve simple puzzles on planets to restore colour to their lives. The game is a somewhat abstract “journey into imagination” that seems to represent an individual’s struggle for validation and acceptance by others. It also has some fabulously hypnotic dynamically remixing music which really helps with the atmosphere.

So there you have them. Pretentious crap or an interesting method of displaying a work of art and telling a deeply personal story? I vote the latter, though I am more than prepared to hear people disagree, which they no doubt will!

Pile of Shame: Oct 08

I’ve had a personal pile of shame lingering for many years now of video games that I bought, played, loved and never got around to finishing. It seems to keep growing, and PC games seem to be ones that I am particularly guilty of leaving ignored for some time. So it was with that in mind that I started to delve into said pile of shame to actually finish some of them. Prior to this post, Divine Divinity was the game that kept me occupied. I remember when I first bought it, my PC wasn’t quite up to the job of running it particularly quickly, so that put me off playing it a bit. When I bought a more powerful PC, it was left on the shelf in favour of more fancy-pants games that showed off my shiny new processor and graphics capabilities.

Now I’ve got my even-more-powerful-than-that Mac happily Boot Camped up to the gills, I find I’ve been returning to the older games more and more. I think the fact that I can run said older games at 60+fps at 1920×1200 is one of the somewhat attractive aspects of this arrangement – especially when I consider that the intro to The Witcher, which I also picked up recently, ran at approximately 1.5fps at 1920×1200. Ouch.

Anyway, now DD is out of the way I’m going to talk about one game in particular which I’ve always had genuine affection for because it’s just so utterly charming. It’s moderately well-known in certain circles for many reasons, but I think there’s an equal or possibly even greater number of people out there who won’t be familiar with it at all. So what is it?

No One Lives Forever

No One Lives Forever, of course; or, to give it its full title, The Operative: No One Lives Forever, hereafter referred to as NOLF for the sake of my sanity.

NOLF is a first-person perspective shooter from the era of games such as the original Deus Ex. DX is actually quite an apt comparison to this game as both proudly boast of the player’s ability to approach situations in a manner of their choosing (normally boiling down to either bursting into a room making lots of noise and shooting everyone in the face, or sneaking into a room quietly and then shooting everyone in the face) and the then-trendy “stealth action” elements.

Where NOLF shines is in its characterisation – both of the game world and of the people in it. NOLF’s world is a brightly-coloured Sixties-inspired caricature of the world of secret agents and acronym-based criminal organisations. Many have compared it to Austin Powers but NOLF’s humour is in many places far more subtle and less slap-you-around-the-face-with-a-vaguely-phallic-object-whilst-shouting-”Laugh dammit!” than Myers’ ouevre. The protagonist Cate Archer, for example, is far from being a wisecracking caricature. In fact, she’s actually quite a realistically-portrayed character battling against the sexist tendencies and chauvinistic attitudes of many people from the Sixties who just happens to get into some spectacularly over-the-top scenarious, including, amongst other things, falling out of a plane without a parachute and having to steal one from an enemy goon on the way down.

This is one of the brilliant things about NOLF – juxtaposition. Cate’s deadpan and sarcastic delivery of many of her lines (including some brilliantly cutting comebacks to aforementioned chauvinism) contrasts brilliantly with the absurdity of some of the situations she finds herself in. Couple this with the famous “overheard conversations” which few games have handled quite as brilliantly as this game, and you get a great spy tale with a wonderful sense of humour infused throughout.

One thing struck me while playing this game, and it was this: first-person shooters used to be fun. I don’t know what it is about recent FPSes but I just don’t enjoy the new ones. I’ve never been inclined to finish a Halo game since the first one, I have absolutely no interest in Crysis and don’t even get me started on Gears of War. Yes, yes, I know, it’s a third-person shooter but it might as well be in first-person for all the blood, gore, shooting, unimaginative gameplay and brown backdrops. (Yeah, you heard.)

NOLF and other games of its era (and earlier) were something else, though. I haven’t been able to pin down exactly what it is I find so compelling about them, though. Maybe it’s the fact that they’re more colourful. Maybe it’s the fact that the gameplay is more varied – for all the great set-pieces in Halo, you were still running around sci-fi themed areas for the duration, whereas NOLF sees you doing everything from diving out of aforementioned plane to doing a deep sea dive to heading to a brilliantly camp Sixties space station, with different gameplay conceits to take into account in each environment. Or maybe it’s the fact that the protagonist is an interesting, compelling character that you feel inclined to stick around with for the duration of their journey. I know I couldn’t give a crap about Master Chief as he’s dull as ditchwater as a character, at least in the way he’s represented in the Halo games – the books may be another matter but as Halo interests me so little I’ve never felt inclined to check it out. Cate, on the other hand, is intelligent, sexy, sarcastic and has a wonderfully dry sense of humour.

I think many modern developers and publishers could learn a lot from revisiting some games from five to ten years ago rather than churning out identikit shooters with pretty graphics. I’d love to see a modern sequel to NOLF. Who knows if it will ever happen?

Next on the Pile are the X-COM games and NOLF2, along with The Witcher, which I’ll post some thoughts on soon.

SquadCast: Persona 3

It’s the first of our irregular special side-mission podcasts today as we explore the world of teenagers pointing guns at their heads, the tarot and giant penises riding chariots. Yes, you read that correctly. Persona 3 is an incredibly long game – too long, perhaps, for a Squad main mission, so those of us who have played, finished (or “almost” finished) it decided to get together for a chat and a chin-stroke.

This podcast also features Beige and Pishu’s report from PAX 08, our regular Personal Piles of Shame section and selections from the soundtrack of the game.

Featuring: Chris “RocGaude” Whittington, Mark “Beige” Whiting, Chris “Papapishu” Person and Pete “Angry_Jedi” Davison.

Subscribe using one of the links below:

M4A Enhanced version via iTunes
M4A Enhanced version via RSS

MP3 Standard version via iTunes
MP3 Standard version via RSS

Antiquity, Rarity, Hilarity

I’ve got three games to talk about today. Depending on my stamina and how long it takes dinner to be ready, this may take more than one post. But I’m sure you can cope with that, and I’ll endeavour not to finish on a cliffhanger… unlike current DVD-du-jour Alias which is currently driving Jane nuts with the cliffhanger that every single episode ends on. Me? I love it, but then I’m a sucker for that sort of thing and could happily sit and watch a whole box set in one go. I’m that lazy.

But I digress. Let’s begin this triptych.

The Antiquity

Divine Divinity

Antiquity in question is actually not that old, hailing from 2002, but it’s actually been sitting on my shelf gathering dust almost since I bought it for full price back upon its release. I’ve started it several times but never played it in any great depth.

“What is it?” I hear you ask. Well, it’s a game with a ridiculous name. Divine Divinity, to be precise, which I can only assume is more meaningful in the original Flemish. It’s an RPG by Belgian developers Larian Studios, who remain relatively little-known to this day, but are currently working on a sequel to DD.

Why did I start playing this? Well, several reasons. When I’m between “big releases” on the consoles, I often think about picking this game up again and playing through it but inevitably something else distracts me. This is much the same reason I have never completed Baldur’s Gate II, despite the fact that I would very much like to. The main reasons I’ve decided to stick with it this time include firstly a thread over on the Quarter to Three forums discussing “Diablolikes” in anticipation for the as-yet-undated release of Diablo III, where DD’s name came up, and secondly remembering that DD was one of the earliest suggestions for the Squadron of Shame to cover, being a game that garnered considerable critical acclaim on its initial release but is still a relative unknown.

So what is it, and why did it gain such acclaim? At first glance, it appears very much to be a Diablolike, right down to having an interface lifted almost wholesale from Blizzard’s classic. However, it’s once you get into the gameplay that it becomes very apparent that it’s an extremely well-thought out game with a lot more depth than the hack-and-slash of Diablo. If you must compare it to things, it’s a curious blend of Diablo, Baldur’s Gate and Fallout – taking, as it does, the real-time “twitch” combat and single-character focus from Diablo, the huge world, character interaction, quest systems and ability to strategically pause from Baldur’s Gate and the interesting barter-based trading system from Fallout.

It’s a blend that works well. What we end up with is a game with considerably more variety than Diablo (not that that game’s purity works against it – on the contrary, it is probably one of the contributing factors that makes it so addictive) and the depth of story and interaction of Baldur’s Gate without any of the scary intimidating (for some) cogs and gears of AD&D 2nd Edition.

Plus it’s huge. We’re talking Baldur’s Gate II huge here. You spend a considerable amount of time in the first village and the dungeon underneath it before going out into the wider world. And said world is pretty huge – particularly due to the fact that what initially appears to be the “overworld” map is actually just a fraction of a much bigger game area filled with things to kill and quests to complete. Part of the joy of the game is just exploring this world and discovering what it has to offer, but there’s a well-structured quest system in place to give you a bit of direction too.

In the foreword to the game manual, the game’s designers note that they hope that people will find “their own way” to play the game, and while there are always obvious limitations on any RPG system to do EXACTLY what you want, I do get the impression that you could play DD quite happily as a Diablo clone, wandering around the wilderness and killing things for experience and only completing storyline-critical quests. On the other hand, the way I’m playing is more like a “traditional” (for want of a better word) RPG where I’m travelling between places and attempting to complete quests in an efficient manner.

It’s a really excellent game, but I can see the size and length putting some people off. I’m certainly glad I’ve decided to give it a chance though, as I’m really enjoying it and fully intend to see it through to the end.

The Rarity

Ulala

This is a game I actually didn’t think existed. I remember reading about it before it came out and then it disappearing without trace. The game in question is Space Channel 5 Part 2. I adored the first game on the Dreamcast and then again on PS2 when it was re-released, despite it being absolutely 100% the most gay game on the planet. And I don’t mean that in an Internet-Fuckwad-”Gay-means-crap” sort of way, I mean that this game is super-gay. Don’t believe me? Watch this clip.

Convinced now? But didn’t you find it utterly infectious? That’s the charm of Space Channel 5, a game which is essentially Simple Simon in a camp 1960s sci-fi parallel universe. Part 2 is more of the same, but it has the dubious honour of being one of the rarest PS2 games ever, at least here in the UK.

The reasoning? It has Michael Jackson in it for a few minutes, and was released around the same time as the TV report that suggested that MJ might be… you know, a bit wrong in the head (like no-one knew that already). As a result, the game was hastily pulled, never to be seen again – so much so that boxed copies of the game now go for up to £100.00 apiece. Yes, US-based readers, that’s about $200 for one game without any peripherals or anything.

Fortunately, I had a stroke of luck in a browse through Amazon and managed to locate a seller who had the game for considerably less than £100 because it wasn’t brand new, but it was pretty much untouched. As a result, I scored the game for under £50 including shipping, and I didn’t think it was going to get any cheaper than that to get my hands on a genuine rarity.

But enough about the hard-to-findness. What’s it like?

Again, it’s super-gay, and super-fun. The gameplay remains fundamentally unchanged, though it adds both a strange two-player mode where one player is in charge of directional inputs and the other is in charge of pressing X and O to “Chu!” and “Hey!” as appropriate along with a survival mode. There’s something about it, though, that makes you want to play it again and again, even though the whole game can be beaten in about an hour, and I think it’s the infectious cheerfulness of the damn thing.

With the number of damn games that have been predominantly brown ever since Quake came along, it’s always refreshing to play a game with lots of bright colours and cheerful music, where even the villains are entertaining rather than threatening. It is impossible to play either Space Channel 5 game and not come out sporting a huge grin on your face. And that’s worth a lot – to have something that’s genuinely uplifting to play is always a pleasure, and it’s something we seem to get a lot less these days as graphics improve to the point where the Holy Grail of “photo-realism” is getting closer and closer.

The Hilarity

Castle Crashers

Castle Crashers hit Xbox Live Arcade this week after three years of anticipation and I’m pleased to report that it’s an excellent game bringing back memories of chugging 50p pieces into the Turtles, Simpsons and Asterix arcade games (and being inevitably frustrated by the shoddy home ports).

It’s also, to tie in with what I said about Space Channel 5, genuinely funny. Developers The Behemoth make a point of creating visually appealing games, as Alien Hominid will attest, but CC is filled with so many laugh-out-loud funny visual jokes that again, it’s a game that makes you smile, and a game best experienced with friends, while drunk.

I’m out of time. There may be more discussion of any or all of these titles later. For now, I hope that’s given you a taste of my current gaming. Screw big releases, these three are keeping me more than busy enough for the moment!

The Squadron of Shame SquadCast #7: Okami

Released today is the seventh episode of The Squadron of Shame SquadCast focusing on Clover Studios’ beautiful game (poncey as it sounds, there really is no other way to describe it) Okami. Along the way we take in a lengthy journey into the depths of Papapishu’s mind (fueled by Dance Mania and ADD meds), discuss why good is boring and evil is awesome (and Braid is either a work of art or emo bullshit) and delve into the “this could go on for months” territory of Eastern vs Western game design philosophy.

We also, as usual, discuss our personal piles of shame, including comment on Geometry Wars 2, Braid (twice), Soul Calibur IV, Star Control 2 (hold on, haven’t we done that one already?), Siren: Blood Curse and, much to Pishu’s disgust, EVE Online.

This episode features a triumvirate of hot Chris action, with Chrises “RocGaude” Whittington, “Iscariot83″ Hernandez and “Papapishu” Person making an appearance, along with myself, Mark “Beige” Whiting, Tom “sinfony” Haley and George “Regulus Loves EVE” Kokoris.

Grab the M4A file here, or the MP3 file here. Alternatively, subscribe in iTunes or via RSS.

Enjoy! Please feel free to post comments here or on the Squadron of Shame’s club page on 1up.com.