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Tag: video games

  • Pushmo [aka Pullblox] (Intelligent Systems, 2011)

    Pushmo [aka Pullblox] (Intelligent Systems, 2011)

    Developed/Published by: Intelligent Systems / Nintendo
    Released: December 8th, 2011
    Completed: 14th June, 2015
    Completion: Finished all the puzzles.
    Trophies / Achievements: n/a

    I started playing this ages and ages ago, got about half-way through, got bored and stopped, and only recently, with the release of that new Pushmo free-to-play thing (Stretchmo?) did I think “god, I should finish this so I can remove it from the front page of my 3DS.”

    And so I did! To be honest I’m less “finish this immediately” about puzzle-me-dos compared to most other games, generally because, unlike a lot of games, you usually don’t forget how to play it/forget what’s going on in the story/lose the “skill” you’ve built up by playing it if you don’t play it for ages. So, for example, I’ve got a copy of Mario’s Picross on my 3DS that I probably won’t polish off until about 2023 (I thought I’d finished it, but then a whole new chunk of levels unlocked.)

    Anyway, Pushmo. Pushmo has the most adorbs hero—Mallo, who is a wee sumo guy with a emoticon cat face—and you basically use this wee cutie to pull and push blocks so you can get to the top of a structure. It’s a fairly elegant puzzle game; you’re generally dealing with concepts like needing a block above you pulled out further than the block beneath it, so you need to pull another block out, or do some “side-pulls” or take a trip around the structure to come at it from a different angle. It’s all pretty clear and at that level that once you’ve got the basics down, it’s a pleasant mental workout to see how you’re going to do a structure. Occasionally, though, they play a sneaky trick where you have to use Mallo’s platforming ability to do something, which can throw you off (leaping to a block that’s far away, or, the worst, edging out and jumping around a block.) Not a fan of that.

    But it’s good! Pushmo got a lot of criticism when it came out for being really, really slow to get going, but for whatever reason that didn’t bother me. What did bother me—and it’s probably what other people were really complaining about—is that the majority of the levels are just… blocks. It’s not super interesting to look at, and whenever you get to one of the chunks of levels that are art—you know, you’re climbing a flower, or a goomba, or something—it’s a sad wee thrill. And when you unlock the next chunk and it’s just blocks, it’s crushing.

    Of course, the reason for that is that the levels that use art aren’t as tightly designed—there’s a lot of blocks you don’t end up using, so it’s not as “pure.” So there’s a friction in the design there, as where I (the player) want something fun to look at (even though, really, it adds nothing) but if I was always given that, I probably wouldn’t be picking up the fundamentals as well as I should (and there’s always new puzzlely tricks in Pushmo, right up until the end).

    In the end I couldn’t shake the feeling that Pushmo was a bit dull, though, because of all those boring if successful pure levels. Hmm.

    Will I ever play it again? No, and ultimately I’m not that interested in any of the sequels.

    Final Thought: Mallo is popular enough that there are plushes of him, and oh god, squee town right there. Maybe if I’m lucky they’ll put him in a game I like more. Or maybe they’ll put him in Smash…

  • Klonoa: Door to Phantomile (Namco, 1997)

    Klonoa: Door to Phantomile (Namco, 1997)

    Developed/Published by: Namco
    Released: March 10th, 1998
    Completed: 3rd June, 2015
    Completion: Finished the game, but didn’t rescue all the wee guys to unlock the extra vision.
    Trophies / Achievements: n/a

    Klonoa: Door to Phantomile is one of those 2.5D platformers that used to be all the rage back in the day. Remember them? The one that always stands out in my mind is Pandemonium, probably because it was published by Crystal Dynamics and in all the video game magazines of the time. I thought it was completely ugly and was totally uninterested in it; after all, at the time of Pandemonium everyone was going ga-ga for Mario 64 (and, to be honest, at that point I was still mainly a PC gamer.)

    It’s quite surprising to find that Klonoa came out as late as two years after! It’s a slightly strange one, pals. On one hand it’s a short and fairly simplistic platformer (there’s only about 12 levels, some of which can be long-ish) on the other it’s got loads of slightly complex if vague world-building and the kind of plot (and certainly antagonist) you’d expect from a Final Fantasy game or something.

    Oh, and it’s got the cutest cat-rabbit hero in a Pac-Man cap (note: if you don’t like cats you won’t think he’s very cute, but he looks just like a cat I know, Pixel, so I love him.)

    As a platformer, it’s awkward if interesting—Klonoa has a simple jump and a brief hover that lacks too much lateral movement, but can “grab” enemies and by throwing them down jump higher. It works like a double jump, and although the game starts without too much use of it, by the end you’re using grabs and throws to chain together fairly lengthy climbs, and it’s pretty good!

    I was a good deal less fond of the type of things I’ve been mollycoddled out of by now, though—die at a boss and you have to play the entire level over, and if you do something daft like beating a level with only one life and save, when you start the next level you’re stuck with one life even if you use a continue! One boss (Joka) is a surprising difficulty spike (and I do mean spike, nothing else in the game is as hard) that very nearly put me off this whole thing entirely.

    In this incarnation, Klonoa: Door to Phantomile is somewhat dated, so I’d assume you’re better off playing the re-release on Wii (thankfully just called Klonoa). Either way it’s a charming and pleasingly short little title with a very Japanese sensibility that we seem to be losing.

    Will I ever play it again? I’d play the Wii version if I ever found it for pennies.

    Final Thought: That Japanese sensibility: if you want a perfect example of what has been lost, consider the “we should modify our game so people in the West will like it” re-design of Klonoa that they pitched. I’m not sure I can think of a better example of how utterly incorrect Japanese-style pandering to Western tastes can get, and it’s been endemic in the industry for years.

  • Magic Sword (Capcom, 1990)

    Magic Sword (Capcom, 1990)

    Developed/Published by: Capcom
    Released: July, 1990
    Completed: 31st May, 2015
    Completion: Finished the game by slogging from level 1 to 50, using continues.
    Trophies / Achievements: 100/100

    I must have played this back in the day in the arcades. I remember it really well; the way the attract mode looked amazing, with all these heroes on screen and all this lovely chaos. It’s possible I did but just died so quickly that it never made an impression? Whelp, I’ve beaten it now.

    I like Magic Sword. That doesn’t mean it’s good, but I’m going to get that out of the way. It’s one of those slightly odd “lots of ideas, vaguely implemented” arcade games from the period; you’re a strapping, Conan-esque hero, on his way to kill Drokmar and destroy the Black Orb. You do this by climbing 50 levels of a dungeon, which are all of varying lengths and have secret exits and so on that can bump you forwards and backwards, and while you’re doing this you level up your weapon, and get keys that you can use to unlock other heroes to help you (sadly, only one at a time.) Oh, and each time you rescue a hero they level up too.

    Oh! And your weapon is interesting in that you can’t button mash, you have to hit it carefully once your weapon has “charged” otherwise it’s not full power, which is pretty difficult because the screen is swarming all the time, pretty much.

    I’ll be honest: Magic Sword is your basic coin muncher. While there is some skill (in fighting bosses, for example) you’re mostly just trying to survive, and games where there are points where you just can’t avoid taking a hit aren’t really to be encouraged, eh? But it’s charming, perhaps because of the nostalgia I (and I guess many people?) feel for this arcade era; big chunky and attractive Capcom art, great sound effects and music, and a responsive play-style that makes you want to hit continue.

    At this point, I’m just making justifications for liking this, really.

    Will I ever play it again? Shamefully, yeah. It’s quick and I’d enjoy playing through it with another player.

    Final Thought: A quick discussion of the port: I played this in its Final Fight: Double Impact incarnation, and it’s great. All kinds of display options! There’s also (apparently) a ton of archival art and stuff but, annoyingly, you’ve got to unlock it all by playing the game in lots of particular ways and I just can’t be arsed. Ah well. Here’s an awesome bit of Magic Sword art that’s really stuck with me, though.

  • L.A. Noire (Team Bondi, 2011)

    L.A. Noire (Team Bondi, 2011)

    Developed/Published by: Team Bondi / Rockstar Games
    Released: 17th May, 2011
    Completed: 31st May, 2015
    Completion: Finished the story (all cases with five stars) and half the street cases.
    Trophies / Achievements: 50%

    Someone on Twitter—actually wait, christ, that’s the second or third time I’ve started one of these by referencing Twitter, I’ll have to sort that out but I guess I’ve committed—mentioned this game apropos of nothing, saying something along the lines of “Ah, L.A. Noire, a terrible game executed brilliantly, or the other way around, I can’t remember.”

    He got it right the first time.

    Taken purely as a spectacle of effort and polish, L.A. Noire, even four years later, is a marvel. The kind of marvel where you’d have to respect what Team Bondi did, if it wasn’t for the fact that it came at massive human cost (according to rumour) and got the company murdered by Rockstar Games anyway. Here they’ve recreated way, way too much of Los Angeles in 1947 in absurd (if imperfect) detail, have created an insanely subtle facial animation system, and it’s all generally quite stunning, except for the fact that the game system is a terrible garbage hidden-object adventure dribbled into a generic Rockstar third person-em-up.

    Actually—I don’t really hate Rockstar’s “all of our games feel the same” thing that much; there’s something to be said for consistency and they’ve very slowly improved it since the PS2 era, I guess. Certainly, I adored (and remember fondly) Bully, and didn’t hate Red Dead Redemption even though, much like L.A. Noire, there are aspects that are just so garbagey it undercuts everything. What’s funny here, though, is you do the “video gamey” stuff so rarely—you know, the shooting, brawling and car-chasing—that every time it happened I’d forgotten all the buttons, leading to hero cop Cole Phelps usually struggling to detach from cover, or popping out of cover and not knowing how to fire his gun.

    But look, basically L.A. Noire wants to be a really good neo-noir flick, right? Not so much a Big Sleep but a Chinatown or (most incredibly obviously) L.A. Confidential. So you play Cole Phelps, a goody-goody cop with a secret tragic backstory that relates to the war, as he wobbles his way up the ladder, trying to solve lots of awful lady-murders while also dealing with wider conspiracy and corruption.

    Sounds decent enough! Unfortunately the game is this: go to a place. Walk around the place, waiting for music cues that let you know if you can pick a thing up. Is it a clue? ok. No? Put it down then, ya dingus! Then, interview the suspect that’s there. They say things, and you have three options: believe them? Doubt them? Or are they telling a LIE! While working this out, the subtle facial animation system is used so that liars will do clever, subtle things like look off to the side and screw their mouth up in a “what I just said was untrue” way.

    (This is really hard to explain in text, but the actors were clearly told to mug as hard as possible. It’s really, really stupid looking.)

    Best thing, of course, is that despite the mugging they usually make ambiguous statements that it’s really hard to know whether to “doubt” or call a lie, often because they’re functionally true. I’d actually say the whole system is broken—the original options were “coax” “force” and “lie,” which is a bit better, but the weird “you only get one chance to get it right” thing is just pish. Shouldn’t a good cop probably doubt everything a suspect says? Lies always force you to use a piece of evidence to prove it, why can’t I just use the evidence against the suspect in the first place? And so on, forever.

    Anyway, you do these two boring things for the entire game, sometimes broken up with shooty-fighty-drivey times. It’d be nice if this was worth it thanks to the story… but it’s not. Now, I could write a very long article about how ill-thought out the story is, in how it’s presented to the player and, in general, constructed. But I’m just going to give you one good example. The entire middle of the game, when Phelps is working homicide, is more or less on the trail of a single serial killer. You keep arresting people for the crimes, even though you, the player, are like “this is stupid, the wider plot is telling me these people didn’t do it” (even though the game keeps placing these suspects with massive amounts of evidence against them.) So you keep being forced to do stuff you know is wrong, but “correct” to progress. That’s great. What’s even better though is as you play you’re like “hmm, who is this killer going to be, anyway? Has to be someone meaningful, otherwise this breaks all story rules. And how did he plant all that evidence, anyway???”

    No, it’s just some fucking guy that you saw for about three seconds earlier in the game. And they never explain how all the evidence like bloody weapons and stuff got planted. And it doesn’t matter anyway, because not one second of this extensive section of game has anything to do with the overarching plot. At all.

    It’s roughly as worthwhile as the middle hour of LA Confidential, if the middle hour of LA Confidential was the main characters going to Des Moines, Iowa, and taking part in a hula hoop competition. Which it isn’t.

    L.A. Noire is a disaster. It’s lovely to drive around for a while in it, walk about, take in a digital LA… but god, don’t play the “game” part.

    Will I ever play it again? No, I really did suck the marrow from the bones of this, even getting mayhem related achievements to see if that made it more fun, etc. It didn’t.

    Final Thought: I have to admit that, having been to LA many times, I wasn’t that blown away by the recreation because it’s not perfect. So something like Cole’s (originator of the French Dip!) isn’t really there, it’s a cafe that looks a bit like it. The Bradbury building is there, but you can’t go inside so… I guess 1947 is, surprisingly, just too far in the past for it to really connect any deeper than, say, looking at photos of old LA. I do wish for an LA that kept streetcars and had a more… how can I say… consistent downtown, but that’s another story entirely.

  • Putty Squad (System 3, 2013)

    Putty Squad (System 3, 2013)

    Developed/Published by: System 3 / Maximum Games
    Released: 22nd April 2014
    Completed: 20th May, 2015
    Completion: Finished Marathon mode.
    Trophies / Achievements: 42%

    Yes, here’s why I played Super Putty. You see, I started playing this on a whim, and it’s such a total wreck I was like “wait, why is this a legendary lost Amiga game?” so had to go back and play Putty.

    Putty, as described, isn’t good, but it is beautiful, and in an alternate universe where someone with a consistent design philosophy made it, it’s great. Putty Squad, in its “on Amiga/SNES” format, is a big departure from the original Putty—gone are the tight levels, instead these big sprawling things. It’s much more a “traditional” Amiga platformer if there is such a thing, largely forgetting Putty’s “puttyness.” It’s still nice looking—if less striking—but loses a lot from the levels no longer being tight vertical scrollers, and is generally, a bit generic.

    Putty Squad’s re-release, however, has some of weirdest decisions ever. First off, we lose all of the  pixel art, which is tragic, and it’s all replaced with what I can charitably describe as “mid-90s CGI.” In fact, it’s so much of that time—think of games like Constructor, which it turns out as I google it was developed by System 3—that I’m suspicious that if the art hasn’t been lying about since then (look at this cover of Amiga Power, or the SNES release cover) or that literally the same person did it now, using the same tools after not having touched a computer since 1997.

    It’s sort of funny? A kind of “retro” no one is really asking for, but released as a 2014 improvement to a 1994 game that wouldn’t really cut it in 1997.

    So, it’s ugly, in a funny way, and you do see way more of the level thanks to the resolution, but above all someone at System 3 decided that the platforming action was archaic and no one was going to enjoy it, so they gave Putty the ability to, at any and all times, pump himself up and float. This means that you can, literally, avoid all of the platforming and huge swathes of the levels. It’s so daft, actually, that I spent some time trying to work out if it was a bug, but it’s not.

    Not to say Putty Squad isn’t still hard—just like Putty (and, it seems, more so than the original intended release of Putty Squad) every level is a mess of enemies you just have to try and survive. So it’s not really a platform game, more sort of a weird muddle where you fly about as a floating putty, landing occasionally to rescue the red putties, take unavoidable damage and then hope you can survive enough to the end of the level.

    After playing Super Putty and this, I can still imagine this perfect vertically-scrolling Putty game that’s a bit puzzley but also a challenging, fun platformer, with amazing pixel art. It would be really good on Playstation Vita. This isn’t.

    Will I ever play it again? No, but I enjoyed this as a piece of history and slice of weird Western-developed kusoge, so I’m going to keep my physical copy.

    Final Thought: If you’re gagging to play a modern update of a western platformer, you can’t go wrong with Rayman Origins. It’s more beautiful than the original pixel art and is just generally a fun wee romp. So there.

  • Super Putty (System 3, 1993)

    Super Putty (System 3, 1993)

    Developed/Published by: System 3 / U.S. Gold
    Released: 1993
    Completed: 19th May, 2015
    Completion: Finished it, but with the unlimited live cheat because christ.
    Trophies / Achievements: n/a

    This opening might be a little “inside baseball” (a reference which is, ironically, “inside baseball” because I have no idea what inside baseball is or was) but recently there was discussion on Twitter about something or other—actually i think it was on Super Mario Sunshine, which I involved myself in because of words I had over it in my write-up of Super Mario 3D Land—and Tim Rogers (Videoball) humorously dismissed Bennett Foddy (QWOP)’s opinion by saying something along the lines of “yeah, but you like Amiga platformers.”

    Now, I like Amiga platformers, and there’s a reason for this, similar to why I enjoy a lot of games that can be characterised fairly or not as “kusoge”; they often do something absolutely unexpected from what is expected of their genre or accepted conventions. A lot of Amiga (actually, I’ll round this out to “home computer”) platformers come from a strange world where Mario might have been mentioned in passing, but his design wasn’t dominant. Neither was a visual style defined by Japanese artists. As a result, you end up with lots and lots of weird, often wildly unplayable worlds and ideas; everything from sedate problem solving with Dizzy to insane, drugged-out messes like Top Banana.

    I think they’re fascinating! It’s like looking at the evolution of a distant tribe, and then once contact has been made, seeing what happens—seeing Sonic-inspired games like Oscar or (famously) Zool come into being.

    Anyway, here’s Super Putty, and if you’re wondering why I’m playing Super Putty rather than Putty (my original intention) it’s because, and here’s another quirk of home computer games, there was only one fire button on old home computer joysticks. As a result, developers had to get quite… innovative to get characters to do the range of things you’d expect. In the case of Putty, which hinges on Putty’s ability to stretch and morph and absorb, what they did was add an insane lag on your first input. It genuinely takes about a second for Putty to respond. I couldn’t hack it, almost gave up entirely and realized that this wouldn’t cut it on the SNES, where a mildly-improved version was released. Hurrah!

    I think Super Putty is gorgeous. I love this kind of western pixel art—of the era of the Bitmap Brothers, etc.—and if you look at one of the level maps, it’s just stunning. Abstract but evocative, clean and clear.

    It’s a shame, then, that Super Putty is a design mess for no good reason at all. You’ve got a pliable hero with plenty of options for puzzles, and a plot that revolves around collecting robots and taking them to the exit, all in really nice, vertically-scrolling levels. But in classic Amiga-platformer stylee, instead of all that it’s a mad survive-em-up, with millions of baddies spawning on screen, loads of points where you can’t avoid being hit, things that hurt you even though it’s not obvious, and so on.

    Rather than doing anything clever, the game devolves into abusing Putty’s “smart bomb” explosion to try and avoid mobbed areas, gritting your teeth through the enemies you can’t seem to kill for no clear reason, and brute forcing your way through. I certainly can’t imagine trying to do this without infinite lives.

    I must say though, that had I got this in the Amiga 600 bundle I pined for, I’d have played the shit out of it, lag or not, and would remember it fondly. It does look great, Putty is charming indeed, and if it was more of a Dizzy than a Top Banana it’d be perfect. Ah well.

    Will I ever play it again? No but if you can guess why I played it in the first place…

    Final Thought: Apparently the Amiga 600 was manufactured in the town I grew up in, which means that if my dad had known that I’d probably have ended up with a dodgy one from a guy down the pub rather than the flash 386DX I got instead. The PC was the right choice.

  • Stranglehold (Midway, 2007)

    Stranglehold (Midway, 2007)

    Developed/Published by: Midway Studios Chicago, Tiger Hill Entertainment / Midway Games
    Released: September 7th, 2007
    Completed: 12th May, 2015
    Completion: Finished it.
    Trophies / Achievements: n/a

    Kind of a wake-up here to just how old the “previous generation” of video games I’m still living in is, this is from eight years ago, basically making it, and I believe this is the scientific term, “old as balls.”

    Anyway, I’ve been meaning to play through it for ages because I like Hong Kong action (although John Woo has never stood out particularly to me, because he’s done so few films comparatively) and I played the demo in, probably 2007, and remember thinking it was hilarious.

    I think the demo (and first level) somewhat portrays the game under false pretence. Starring a digital Chow-Yun Fat as the same character he played in Hard Boiled in a “how exactly did they get them to agree to that” way, the first level asks the question “what if you covered Chow-Yun Fat in Vaseline and set him loose in a marketplace?”

    It’s hilarious as you slide about on everything, smashing watermelons and leaping about in slow motion at all times while shooting folk, if you remember how John Woo movies were always called “balletic” this is “balletic” in the way a dance recital for five year-olds would be, if you got them all drunk and made them perform on a waltzer.

    Unfortunately, while the rest of the game features just as much stuff to smash, the novelty wears off fast, as it becomes pretty transparent that the level design boils down to “trap the player in an arena until they kill enough baddies, run to the next arena, repeat.” Well, apart from the level where you have to endlessly destroy tables with drugs on them/place bombs (feels the same) and a really dull turret bit.

    And tragically, Chow-Yun Fat is totally wasted, as there’s a skeleton of a plot that makes far less sense and is far less compelling than your average Hong Kong film—and they usually made those up as they went along.

    It’s all a bit dull, and not helped by the fact that I’ve already played through Sleeping Dogs, United Front Games’ Hong Kong actioner, which is varied, fun and totally gets the genre right down to the compelling story. I can’t really blame Stranglehold for not being as good as a game that came out five years later… but I will anyway.

    Will I ever play it again? Nope. I don’t really regret playing it, though.

    Final Thought: Completely forgot to mention that there’s a boss fight in the middle that grinds the game to a halt because you’re not supposed to leap around during it and (in fact) I got stuck for ages because I had no idea you could crouch/crawl. Whoever it was that decided games should always have a bit where they’re like “ah-ha! now you’re not supposed to play the game the way you’ve learned for hours” should be forced to walk on their hands and eat with their feet for a year.

  • Metal Gear (Konami, 1987)

    Metal Gear (Konami, 1987)

    Developed/Published by: Konami
    Released: July 7th, 1987
    Completed: 10th May, 2015
    Completion: Finished it.
    Trophies / Achievements: n/a

    I’ve been meaning to play through the entire Metal Gear canon chronologically for a long, long time. Probably because I own almost every game in the series bar a few non-canon entries? And so I’ve started by finishing this, Metal Gear for the MSX2.

    I’m not particularly familiar with the MSX despite being a huge, huge fan of 1980s computers—I grew up with an Amstrad CPC 6128, so just about as obscure—so Metal Gear is the first game I’ve “played” on one (well, emulated, via Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence on Xbox 360).

    If you’re wondering, an MSX2 is… very much a 1980s computer, apparently. Metal Gear is simplistic and “of it’s time.” Graphics are repetitive, animation limited, input clunky. It’s not worlds-away from something you’d imagine playing on the Commodore 64, maybe, and certainly not massively steps ahead from the much derided NES version (and I’m always surprised by how clunky a lot of the NES’s games are.)

    Pretty much, Metal Gear is this: you wander about a military complex, releasing POWs, picking things up, avoiding or killing enemies (stealth works, if rudimentary—and if you get caught, you usually only have to run off the screen) until you eventually finish it. It’s actually not too punitive compared to a lot of these early games; you can stack up loads of health and ammo by repeatedly re-entering certain rooms, there are no mazes (thankfully) and not that many “why would I know to do that?” puzzles (though there are definitely more than enough to make it worth looking up an FAQ when stuck.)

    I’ve been doing the podcast Loose Cannons for a few months now (look this isn’t a pointless plug, stick with me) and one of the things we’re trying to explore by looking at the output of a movie studio, Cannon Films chronologically is what you can learn from the early releases that informed their output from then on; for example, Cannon’s early distribution of cheap erotica leading it to produce some itself. Here, I look at Metal Gear, which is a canon Metal Gear game, and there’s really not much to say. In fact, if you read the story synopsis on wikipedia you come away with more. At best, there’s one moment of fourth-wall breaking, I guess.

    Metal Gear is an 1980s computer game. It’s not unpleasant, it’s just of it’s time. The end.

    Will I ever play it again? I have no reason to, and no one else has any reason to ever play it, I’d probably say. Which sounds harsh! It’s not actually bad. It’s just… old.

    Final Thought: I’m not going to bother playing Snake’s Revenge, because it’s non-canon. I’ll be back with Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake at some point in the future. I’m looking forward to it, as it’s from three years later and post-Snatcher, which means big changes, I bet.

  • Mass Effect 3 (BioWare, 2012)

    Mass Effect 3 (BioWare, 2012)

    Developed/Published by: BioWare / Electronic Arts
    Released:     March 6th, 2012
    Completed: 7th May, 2015
    Completion: Completed it with one of the good (but not best?) endings. Or something.
    Trophies / Achievements: 640/1550

    So there’s me, right at the end of Mass Effect 3, and I’m like “hmm.”

    I’m like “hmm” because I realise that even though I thought I had installed the special BioWare-makes-the-fans-happy-really-sorry-how-abrupt-the-ending-was-please-stop patch, I, uh, hadn’t. And I really, really couldn’t be arsed waiting for it to install and then playing through what might turn out to be a significant chunk of the game again to see the “proper” ending.

    So I didn’t and watched my ending “again” on YouTube with all the stuff they added.

    Now. I’m not really a fan of… uh, fans. In general, I’m one of those sorts that thinks that authors should put out their work exactly as they want it to be, and be done with it. The author dies to the audience, the audience, to the author, never existed.

    However, if the ending of Mass Effect 3 was as BioWare intended, they’re fucking idiots. No, lazy idiots. The extended cut is a botch job—stitches things together just enough that you’re like “yeah, fine, whatever” but it’s actually quite embarrassing to think they thought the original pass.

    (Whether that’s more embarrassing than fans peeing their pants in such an astonishing baby-tantrum that they went to the Federal Trade Commission in the US, I’m not sure.)

    Speaking of authors—BioWare is interesting, isn’t it? If you were to ask me who the main creative force of a lot of games were, I could name a person quite easily. Fable III—another example of a game with a garbagey ending and promises it couldn’t keep—you can place your anger at Peter Molyneux’ door. But with Mass Effect 3, or any BioWare game, I’d struggle to name any person who worked on it. Wikipedia says this bloke Casey Hudson was the director, so I’d assume the buck stopped with him. Never heard of him.

    (To move on from authors to auteurs, if you’re wondering, I don’t feel the auteur theory fits for every work. But even in a huge video game, I think it’s important that one person or a small group of people shepherd the work into a consistent whole. Otherwise you end up with drivel. And we often end up with drivel.)

    In this case, I wonder if the buck stops with Electronic Arts. EA are generally parodied as evil (I think they’re still topping the worst companies list, aren’t they?) despite the fact that everything has consolidated so much when you get down to things they’re just another massive corporation (so, evil, but no more or less evil than any of the rest of that shower.)

    Here, however, the corporate bells and whistles on Mass Effect 3 are egregious. Mass Effect 2 might have had some DLC characters and that kind of shite—pay another $20 or miss out on three chapters from the latest Game of Thrones book, imagine it—but Mass Effect 3 makes the decision that, you know, if you really want to get the best endings by raising your “galactic readiness” you should spend a lot of time playing multiplayer. And you should play the tie-in iOS game. Oh, and the tie-in app!

    If you don’t do this—or, if like me, you don’t actually realise you’re supposed to do this and can’t really do this, because it’s several years later—you’re fucked (I think you can get the best ending if you 100% the game with the extend cut patch, but I’m not totally sure. I certainly wasn’t sure what I had left over to do to get it.)

    So what you have here is a story, a narrative, a creative work, whatever you call it, absolutely and totally at the whim of a corporate treatment that says something as vapid as “we need people engaging with the brand in a holistic manner across multimedia.” Or something. Mass Effect 3 becomes “content” to be exploited.

    It’s a disaster, and to be honest, the majority of Mass Effect feels like a franchise spinning it’s wheels. No matter how you get there, you get to an ending that I characterise as “the Deus Ex.” If you’ve ever played a Deus Ex game you probably know what I mean (they all do this): you’ve just made a million decisions through the game, and right at the end they give you two or three options, usually represented with big buttons or something, none of which are exactly “good” or “bad” and none of which have anything to do your choices previous. In fact, the ending of Mass Effect 3 is almost exactly the same as the original Deus Ex if you think about it.

    Even more so than Deus Ex where it’s a let-down, here you’re like “what? This has nothing to do with the rest of the game at all???” It’s baws.

    (If you want to complain that actually, the endings you can get do relate to your decisions because of the way you collect “war assets,” there are still basically up to three endings. Everything else is so mild as to be meaningless.)

    Anyway, my point isn’t that the ending is bad and therefore I’m annoyed. My point is that I don’t think Mass Effect 3 could have been good in the culture it was developed in. Who cares about quality when you’ve got content to exploit?

    Will I ever play it again? Ha ha no. And it has made me doubt I’d play Mass Effect 4 when it inevitably comes along.

    Final Thought: You might have noticed that despite being frustrated by its problematic aspects I didn’t dislike Mass Effect 2, while I consider this one a disaster. Well, Mass Effect 3 has improvements—it looks better, combat is evolved—but it’s just not compelling. It gets off on the wrong foot immediately, I think. The stakes are so comically high—the game begins with Earth being invaded—that flying back and forth and doing missions and stuff just doesn’t seem to make any sense. I was constantly like “wouldn’t everyone on Earth be dead already?”

    Yes. I didn’t find a space opera “believable.” But the whole things ultimately makes about as much sense as Fable III and if that isn’t a sick-ass burn I don’t know what is.

  • Groove Coaster (Matrix Software, 2011)

    Groove Coaster (Matrix Software, 2011)

    Developed/Published by: Matrix Software / Taito
    Released:     July 28th, 2011
    Completed: 2nd May, 2015
    Completion: Finished all the tracks in normal, gave up partway through hard. I’d seen all the content though.
    Trophies / Achievements: 34/62

    Since early man carved the first iPhone out of limestone on the African savannah, tapping his finger on the screen in time to music has been something he has wanted to do. He started with things like Tap Tap Revenge, but by the time he’d evolved into hipsterlopithecus, he demanded that the things he tapped on have some kind of relation to things from culture he could at least pretend to vaguely remember, and so the Space Invaders-themed Groove Coaster was born!

    That sounds like I’m being hard on Groove Coaster, but it’s a rhythm action game which starts with a very simple concept—your avatar (probably Space Invadersy) follows a track, points on the track appear, tap the screen when your avatar passes them. It slowly evolves so that sometimes you have to hold, some times you have to swipe, etc., but the main thing is you tap the screen in time when prompted. It’s about as simple—as digital—as rhythm action gets, which in itself is kind of interesting.

    You see, I don’t think Groove Coaster is any good at all when it tries to be challenging, and it made me realise something about a lot of rhythm action games, certainly the most well remembered ones like the Guitar Hero franchise—that they’re not really about the skill of performance in the way video games generally are. They’re more like playing music than is obvious I suppose: as a musician it’s a rare talent indeed to be able to just pick up some sheet music you’ve never seen before and play it with a band that already knows the music. In a video game, generally you want to be able to react and recover; you want to be able to perform, or believe you can succeed, from the moment you know the rules. Music is—usually—about repetition more than innate skill, and so are rhythm games; you might fail that track several times because of a noodly bit in the middle, but once you get it, get that muscle memory down, you’re golden.

    I think that’s a fairly obvious realisation, but I think this is one of those “personal realisations” where you feel out what it is you like about, and find interesting in, the medium you’re talking about. Here, with Groove Coaster, I was finding it this lovely, pleasant, spacey game to play shortly before I went to bed—tap in time to the music, while the visuals flashed in front of my sleepy eyes—but as soon as it became about the challenge, I stopped liking it.

    And Groove Coaster has a bunch of quirks, anyway. Because the track your avatar keeps following often moves and changes direction, the amount you can see in the future is severely limited (and at times, the “beats” you’re supposed to hit dance on screen at the last minute, anyway.) The tapping you perform might at one point correspond to the melody, at another, the drums, and it switches between them with no warning or visual representation. And there are invisible “ad-libs” that I could never quite work out.

    Basically, Groove Coaster sort of makes you believe it’s a casual tapper, but it’s actually just as serious about repetition and perfection as any Rock Band title was. It doesn’t mean it’s bad—though I’d argue that its quirks are flaws—but just that it’s not something I found interesting past the point where I’d heard all the songs a few times; the challenge wasn’t rewarding. That’s in stark contrast to the fantasy of a Rock Band game, where as you play on harder and harder levels, you feel more and more like you’re “really” playing the song. Here, you’re just… tapping on the screen, so it doesn’t have the leeway to forget what you’re doing is just trying and failing at challenge that requires repetition and learning more than skill.

    Will I ever play it again? No, and I’m not particularly interested in the free-to-play version Groove Coaster Zero, but if I ever saw it’s wonderfully named arcade edition, Groove Coaster 2: Heavenly Festival I’d give it a shot in multiplayer mode which sounds like a lark.

    Final Thought: Don’t get me wrong, I’m a sucker for Space Invaders style, too. They really are perfectly designed little buggers and I use a fancy Taito Station tote with Space Invaders on it all the time. And I’d totally buy this rug in a heartbeat.