“ I dont need all the animal rights folks calling me, its dead, and according to Fish & Game, its got no more rights
Headlessness
Founded upon the observation of trifles. A tumblelog.
May 10, 2008
Against the proliferation of guns in videogames: Exhibit A - Bioshock
- A: Bioshock! What a brilliant game!
- F: Meh.
- A: You didn't like it?
- F: It was fine.
- A: But?
- F: You don't want me to expand on that. Trust me.
- A: I do. I really do.
- F: K. It was symptomatic of a broader trend among games developers to include guns in first-person perspective games when there's absolutely no need for them. Bioshock was ruined by below average gunplay.
- A: Wow. You think too much.
- F: The cramped environments meant that the combat was like shooting fish in a lunch box, but the respawn feature whereby, when the player dies, enemies keep their damage levels, is ludicrous. It means you can mindlessly wear the enemy down regardless of the damage you're taking, instead of using the plasmids (basically magic spells), which are the game's truly interesting feature.
- A: Isn't that the player's fault, though? If they choose not to exploit a massive aspect of the gameplay?
- F: Partially, but why not guide the player a little. Throw in some puzzles or some scripted events in which plasmids must be used to succeed; or offer Xbox achievements for avoiding the use of guns; or best of all, take out the guns entirely.
- A: I guess the public isn't ready for the FPS without the S.
- F: That point is often made but I think the success of Portal proves it to be untrue. Half Life 2, and especially Episode 1, while using guns also suggest gamer are hungry for more cerebral first-person games.
- A: I'm going to replay Bioshock without using guns.
- F: Cool, but if you want to make it really interesting, you're not allowed to use the incinerate plasmid directly against an enemy either.
- A: Okay.
May 9, 2008
May 8, 2008
Lost Cities, XBox 360 Live Arcade
- A: What did you think of Lost Cities?
- F: Garbage. A waste of time. Avoid like a reversing skunk.
- A: Wow. That's sniping criticism, it must have made quite an impression.
- F: Oh yes.
- A: How long before you reached this conclusion?
- F: 16 seconds.
- A: Only 16 seconds of play time?
- F: Well, no. Most of that was menu navigation. I probably played for about 5 seconds.
- A: I doubt you can thoroughly critique a game in such a timeframe.
- F: Good point, but why should I have to? When games compete with books, films, tequila and the great outdoors for a share of my attention, why would I spend time on a game with suck lacklustre visual design?
- A: But the graphics have been widely praised in other reviews.
- F: The artwork is fine, but the whole is lesser than the some of its parts.
- A: And is that all you went by? The visual design?
- F: No. I couldn't suss out the rules.
- A: In 5 seconds...
- F: In 5 seconds.
- A: Isn't there a tutorial?
- F: Tutorial schmutorial. Good game design makes this redundant.
- A: In an FPS maybe, but in a card game adaptation? And what about Carcassonne and Catan?
- F: They had better visual design.
- A: The rules, how did you work those games out? They're fairly complicated.
- F: I admit I lost heavily on my first few goes, but I was enjoying learning the rules whilst playing the game, I didn't need the tutorials.
- A: And with Lost Cities?
- F: ...
- A: The visual design?
- F: The visual design.
- A: *sigh*
- F: And sound.
