EPTWelcome to Part II! It's been a <em>lot</em> longer than I wanted to be able to get back to playing these games and writing my thoughts about them, but I've been kinda busy? That's a "slight" exaggeration. I'd love to tell you everything I'm working on. I can tell you that I was able to write four grants, completely re-did my personal website, went to the WCS S3 finals, began two massive projects, danced in a Nutcracker production, started a lesson plan to begin teaching in February, and really got rolling on a commission for a friend. So yea, busy, but a great kind of busy. Anyway, clearly I've
<div class="wsec"><a href="http://www.gog.com/game/planescape_torment" target="_blank" title="go buy it!"><img class="rfloat clearfix" src="/staff/wo1fwood/blog/sss2013/nameless.jpg" alt="nameless one"></a><h1>Planescape: Torment</h1><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYgLlzkxOPk&list=PL8804009A91F98915" target="_blank">soundtrack</a>
At last, we come to it. I might be 14 years late to the party but I'm glad I finally showed up, if fashionably late. There's really a lot to like about Planescape:Torment and I should mention that I played with a couple of almost 'required' mods these days, they are:
- Widescreen Fix
- UI Mod
- Fixpack
- Tweakpack
Games such as PST remind me why I love gaming so much. It is on one hand a RPG, but it isn't what we think of as an RPG today as much of the exploration is done through dialogue trees. This is for me simultaneously a great and terrible thing. It's great because the options and paths you can take are many, and can be personalized to a great degree (something dialogue wheels cannot hope to achieve), but terrible because of who I am. I never have been much of a 'reader'. I do read books but somewhat infrequently, and part of that is because I have a slight dyslexia, or at least I'm pretty convinced I do. I have always had a harder time reading words ever since I was a kid as sometimes my brain would labor over understanding a single word or series of words, and then other times it's fine. Well, with such a text driven game this was a minor annoyance as it's so much of the core exploration. This is of course because of the lack of voice actors in the late 90s in games (Fallout, Baldur's Gate 2), where that would have been an insurmountable cost to the developers.
So by many accounts PST is regarded as one of the best RPGs created, and I would tend to agree. Why? Well let me recount the number of things that struck me that were great about it.
The first and perhaps most important thing is that while I had a difficult time with walls of text here and there, the text gave was a huge tell about the game itself, and it's background. See, Planescape is set in Planescape, which was a campaign setting created for D&D (DnD, Dungeons and Dragons, whatever your choice) back in 1994, and having played many many campaigns on the table with friends I have always bemoaned the monumental translation between mediums that games have tried to reach...What am I saying? That RPG's have always aspired to try to be as flexible, as immersive, and as personally crafted as a traditional tabletop setting, and have rarely if ever done so. That's what makes this game amazing.
Within the first 20 minutes I was immediately getting the feeling that I had that kind of flexibility, and I was captivated by the storytelling. Anyone who's played D&D knows this, but the language chosen to describe individuals, settings, places, and the environment around you is here, and at your fingertip to explore. This is the first and most important part about the setting. The text, while 'crude' has the ability to craft a much stronger picture and nuanced detail than any game has reached even today.
"The structure is worn down through what looks like natural weathering. It seems ancient, compared with the other structures around, and very out of place here...but as you turn you notice there are deep cracks in one of the central pillars and you realize someone else has been here recently."
"As you open the massive doors a horrid stench assaults your senses. The air is old and foul and you realize that this tomb hasn't been opened in a very long time. As the air clears you look around to see an incredible stone-carved architecture"
These two examples are a kind of environmental storytelling that games have tried to incorporate into the way they create their games (cinematography, camera direction, dialogue, etc.), yet I still find that we haven't even come close to what PST has achieved here. It's so much of what I love about D&D, but is here in a game. This does show as a reminder however, just how much work would be needed in order to reach this level of detail (naughty dog has only scratched the surface of what is required for this, as a modern example). But I kind of have a leg up here...
I have foreknowledge of a lot of stuff in the setting and story because of my D&D experiences. I read and experienced Planescape in campaign settings, so I knew a little about Sigil, and the Blood War, and how the planes worked, and who inhabits them. I funny enough even knew who I used to be, which was greatly enhanced by that reveal, when it says in your journal that you used to be known as Yemeth. WHAT?! That Yemeth?! neat. :D Of course it had been years, I had to refresh my memory, but I immediately recognized the name. This has a funny way of ingratiating itself to me that wouldn't have been possible without the external knowledge, but is quite welcome.
So there are other things in this game that are fantastic pieces to this puzzle, and coincidentally things that many modern games (including dragon age) don't do. Kind of like the way that HK47 is awesome in KOTOR, you can be an ass or have a funny sense of humor in this game. Want to talk to the Criers of As-Ennon about their problem? Well if you're smart enough you can convince them to give you the money, and then not do the work they asked of you. LOL, awesome.
There's another moment where you're talking to a woman down in the SW hive, and she's apprehensively looking over your shoulder, and you have the option to examine what she's looking at... such a simple thing of awareness, yet we've forgotten this in modern times (well it's not forgotten, but imagine the time it would take to animate that, yet another reason why we are coming full circle with real actors in games).
You are also able to extert force on 'your' personality in this game as well, just by how you interpret the text. You walk up to a dude and ask:
"I have some questions..."
Why ye bothering me for, I look like a tout?
"What's a tout?"
Someone you go to fer to askin a bunch o stupid questions
cue slightly-sardonic and comedic response, after a brief pause
"I have some questions..."
And this gets me to another great thing about PST, it has an amazing sense of self and a great sense of humor, amongst the more serious elements. Morte is amusing, but no more so than when you pair him with other party members. I also loved the fact that you can fight hard to take out Trias, and then whether it be out of malice, or simply knowing that he's not to be trusted, you can lie to him about sparing his life. After all, he is "the Betrayer". I suppose turnabout is fair play here asshole! And that's another great thing. Not only am I making a choice based on the character I'm playing, but I'm adding my own flair to that choice, which enhances the impetus behind it.
<a href="/staff/wo1fwood/blog/sss2013/market.jpg" target="_blank"><div class="lfloat clearfix"><img class="lfloat clearfix" src="/staff/wo1fwood/blog/sss2013/market_t.jpg" alt="" width="480"></a>
<em>1920x1200 widescreen is glorious</em></div> One last thing or two about dialogue; character internalizations are a common thing to be seen here in Sigil, and the only KOTOR or Mass Effect have even tried to implement the internal dialogue of a character. This non-verbal information, like the environmental storytelling, helps to direct how and what is important, and strengthen characterizations. It certainly plays into the memory loss, but also is great for foreshadowing hints, that you must effectively deduce. Speaking of which...
Finding Ravel was a pain. And as much as I cheated because I couldn't open the locked door to set a series of cascading events rolling (I didn't have Annah in my active party, why would I when it was either Thief, or Priest....hmmmm now who's more usefull. Although funny that choice, as if your clever enough you can have both), I adored the no handholding, no map pins, no this is where you go crap. Forcing me to creatively use my brain to solve problems is such a great thing to be trying to teach me. As an example, I bought the tongue because I had the thought that I could use it to talk to a dead corpse in a mortuary, well it turns out I was wrong on the individual, but not on its intended use, as I gave it to Ecco once I realized she was the intended. And there's plenty more where that came from.
Now as much as I loved this game, what I didn't love was the combat. Having the predisposition to normally take the more interesting route, I chose to be a mage, because with my experiences with 3.5, mages once they get to a certain level are a big problem in battles. Well, that never ended up really being the case. I dunno if it's because its AD&D 2E or if the game tweaked things, but magic was pretty bad in this game. My most consistently damage dealing spell was Magic Missile, which is pretty silly as I had chain lightning at one point, or cone of cold which did less damage...srsly? Well I was able to get through most everything save for massive crashes at the final boss battle, but that brings up one of the coolest things about boss battles.
You can talk your way out of fights. Wait what? Yes, you heard me. Even the final boss. You can fight him, distract him and raise your allies, or even trick him into submission. What other game allows for this? It's such a great option to be able to outwit yourself and win, if you are aware enough to ask the right questions at the right time. I was not originally, but because of my cant-fight-him-because-the-game-crashes I had to look for alternatives.
I also may not have liked the final cut scene so much as you going off to fight in the Blood War (conscripted) seemed a little more than just odd, especially considering who you are, but it wasn't that big a deal as what happened in game is the resolution that you've been seeking and far more important than this final filigree.
With that said, this has been a great experience. If you've never played PST, go get it on GoG as it still has so many things that an RPG fan would love. Planescape is a setting that is very different from what you would be normally used to, and even though I've been there before it's still ripe with new experiences such as this. So do it, it'll be well worth your time.
This experience has also highlighted something that I've been aware of for some time, but due to its striking nature, PST shed a less than flattering light on. As time has progressed and games have become more and more graphically and technically elaborate, but this has had an adverse effect on the creativity and cleverness of games, at least in a general sense. Planescape Torment is so unapologetically clever, so witty in how and what you can do with it that even though it's a 14 year old game, it runs circles around some of the best games today. It makes me wonder why we don't have more games enticing this level of creativity from its user base more, but I hope more developers take note of the need for personal discovery, deduction, and ownership in the genre, as this is what remains with me after all these years. Thanks to PST I have had a great experience in how good things can be if we only choose to think.
<hr><div class="minorfoot">Total Playtime: idk, I don't have steam to tell me, but probably around ~45 hrs would be my guess
Will I Play Again: Probably once more if I do.</div></div>
<div class="wsec"><a href="http://www.ftlgame.com/" target="_blank" title="buy it on steam, but here's their website"><img class="rfloat clearfix" src="/staff/wo1fwood/blog/sss2013/kestrel.png" alt="kestrel cruiser"></a><h1>FTL</h1><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpWNSJjH1d8&list=PLd2RGQLzS3qij5fN4V__lKHF0TLyuNbZW" target="_blank">soundtrack</a>
Or, the adventures of Diego, Nuria, and Fizgig on the Gantrithor... or Diego, Bart, and Jeremy on the Bebop mk ii, or... Well shit, how many times have I died already?
This game occupies a weird place for me. On one hand it is a lot like old school NES games, where you can get through the whole thing in one sitting. You also have one (or limited) life to not fuck it up with as well, and this brings back all sorts of great feelings about that period of my life. But there's something else on top of these accoutrements. Frosting? Strawberries? Nope, it's Randomization! Wait, we're saying that's like it's a good thing here? Well... honestly I've been teetering back and forth on that one.
Even though I've not technically beaten it yet, I figured out pretty early that I had to slowly learn how to press my advantages in certain areas just to be able to survive. Sometimes I've found that it's a matter of managing resources effectively (can I help aid a cruiser under attack, or would that decision put me in a more precarious if not bad situation?), but other times I've found that the game just straight up gives a me the middle finger, laughs at my bruised and bleeding corpse on the floor, and continues to kick it gleefully. Man this game is mean.
A few days later, and about 10 more times through, I think I've sufficiently banged my head on this wall enough to lend my thoughts in at least some manner. After all, one needs to exhibit a cautious stance when hearing thoughts and advice from someone who deliberately inflicts injuries and eventual brain damage on himself. That stain on the wall is a message that somewhere in the monotony and re-hashed attempts I'm finding this little experience revealing more and more layers. It also shows that I'm a tad annoyed with it as well.
Why? Simply put, I want control of my mistakes. With randomly generated encounters It's hard - based on the system - make meaningful decisions on whether to help people, or to engage an enemy or not, or if I should be more cautious with my resource allocation and that particular juncture. I just always have to be more conservative in my decisions. Some of this I am fine with as it adds a level of "never the same way twice", but part of the issue with that nice piece is that while each life is always new it removes my ability to asses a situation and whether I'd want to risk an engagement, or not (long range scanners do a lot, but it's only for certain ship types, or randomly an option if you get lucky).
For example, what if I encountered a distress call, went to help and find the vessel under attack by an unknown ship. In the current setup I have to roll the dice on whether to take a risk and help the ship, or not. But what If I could know what class of ship it was attacking the vessel in distress? "Oh, it's a cargo carrier with a tiny laser?", "Oh crap, it's an assault cruiser!" How do those tactical analyses change the choice I have to make? I don't really need more than that, but that level of information offers a big incentive to me as a player. If I choose to engage the cruiser, it's my own damned fault for dying, whereas in FTL: "Surprise! It's a assault cruiser! You're dead!" How is that fun again? What meaningful thing did I learn from that play through? Well I learned that I'm beginning to hate randomized systems for putting me in a no win scenario.
I'm reminded of TNG and something that Picard would always do in precarious or potentially hostile situations. First thing out of his mouth? "Tactical analysis Mr. Worf." Wouldn't that be nice? Not having to blindly analyze every situation (and don't get me wrong I wouldn't want to have no blind decisions as that's more nuanced and interesting) would have gone a great length to help with my need of ownership on my decisions. Being able to do a post-mortem on why I died and being able to identify the exact thing I need to change in the next round would be part of my growth and understanding of a complex system, and not "I just clicked the wrong FTL location." As it is, because of that I am only making cursory decisions that may or may not pan out well, and that makes me feel not that I'm playing the game, but rather in the reverse.
It's really too bad that this casts a frustrating light on this, because I really like the setting, the simplicity, the idea of the game, the music (the nostalgia vibe is quite well chosen). It's just this one detail that puts a hamper on everything else...
There are a lot of great things about this game though. The need to manage your various resources in battle, the way you have to manage your overall resources in order to get to where you need to get to (and a lot due to the environment), the way in which you can handle encounters (and the level of creativity in load out and tactical possibilities), and the overall way you can craft the type of captain you want to be, and what kind of ship yours is. All of these things I really enjoy and is why I will come back to it for a good while, especially as it's a compact experience. But for now, my experience has been somewhat short and sweet, and I'm sort of glad it was that way.
Funny I mention the game being somewhat unapologetically mean though...what game do I have next in my cue again? Oh, right.
<hr><div class="minorfoot">Total Playtime: 7hrs
Will I Play Again: Yes, it reminds me a lot of my relationship with older NES games, that I still play even today.</div></div>
<div class="wsec"><a href="http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/" target="_blank" title=""><img class="rfloat clearfix" src="/staff/wo1fwood/blog/sss2013/hearthstone.png" alt="Hearthstone"></a><h1>Interlude: Hearthstone</h1>
So I got a Hearthstone key in late October a few days after I had gotten finished writing my thoughts on FTL and was all set to begin Dark Souls. And I wanted to mention that this is the first beta, besides Dota2 (which doesn't even count really as I got in late) where I actually got a beta key. Having played MTG beginning around 1993-4 and until about 2001 I admittedly have a lot of experience with the general rules of this kind of game, and was definitely interested in how it would play out. I don't really want to provide my thoughts about it here as I've barely played it, but suffice it to say that I've been pretty entertained when I haven't gotten the shittiest of draws, and have been subsequently re-living the same stuff I used to feel about MTG when I was a kid. Also Warcraft II music returns! Holy s@$#!!!!
*Ahem* Now where was I? Ah, yes.</div>
<div class="wsec"><div class="rfloat clearfix"><a href="http://store.steampowered.com/agecheck/app/211420/" target="_blank" title="buy it on steam, uninstall the packaged GFWL and download the GFWL directly from MS"><img src="/staff/wo1fwood/blog/sss2013/solaire.png" alt="Knight Solaire, from Deviant Art"></a>
<em>Gameplay not Indicative of above Image</em></div><h1>Dark Souls</h1><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6neUPNgnIg&list=PL8DA086CFD60E8862" target="_blank">soundtrack</a>
Note: This review is quite a bit longer than most of the others will be because, well, it's Dark Souls.
I suppose the best place to start is to talk about my setup on PC, the obnoxious controls, and the mods that took a game that looked and felt like crap, and made it feel a little more passable. This is important to note because it has some pretty serious problems that keep on cropping up throughout the game. Problems with controls, problems with difficulty, problems with the story, problems with upgrades. Problems abound this difficult, frustrating, and ultimately good-to-great game. I actually spent a total of 80 minutes trying to properly set up the mods, the tweaks, and system in a way where I finally felt like I had a decent enough "edit". Of course I was also dealing with Win 8.1 issues, but that turned out to be a RAM overclock problem after days of testing. Moving on.
Even after the mods which make mouse/kb combos work it was still kind of poor, especially considering the difficulty curve in this game. With other games this might have been acceptable but with Dark Souls the bad controls added another level of difficulty, in that you are fighting with the game's controls while you're trying to fight monsters (it even informed how I played the game overall, as in very defensively oriented). Trust me, even after 70 hrs of playtime, I still feel the same. When I want a single attack into a defensive posture, that doesn't mean attack again, or attack in a different direction, or roll towards the enemy. You might say "but wo1f, what if your timing was just off?" While true in some areas, I spent some time investigating the timings and can guarantee these are bugs. More on this later though, as this leads into a much bigger topic.
<h2>Difficulty?</h2>An attributing factor to this larger issue is when I began to realize that Dark Souls "difficulty" is artificially inflated. What do I mean by that? Well this will take some explaining. As I carefully watched enemies to determine how to best kill them I noticed that their behavior wasn't ever 100% predictable with a number of monster types. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but in a game that walks on such a fine line as Dark Souls I found it pretty hard to justify adding in this behavior (I'm almost convinced they are bugs after my entire playthrough), because of the luck it introduces to the system. Perhaps more importantly, the lack of player agency.
Skeletons are a very good example of this kind of behavior. After having to google (and I did this a lot) that maces were better for skeletons I equipped one and hoped to finally be able to take on these bastards very early in the game. I knew they had 3-4 different attacks, a defensive posture, but what I didn't expect was that sometimes when I had successfully bashed them leaving them broken/stunned into pieces temporarily, I would be timing my subsequent hits to keep them in that state only to find out that they would - at random intervals - be able to attack before they had finished reconstituting. These attacks of course felt like they were free and with my luck they almost always tended to be of the "three slashes that cut my HP to under 1/3" kind. As you can imagine this became very annoying as there was/is no way to predict this or counter save for deliberately not trying to chain attacks (something I eventually erred on throughout the rest of my playthrough)...
Another example came in Anor Londo when fighting the Sentinels. I would be trying to time my position, and defensive posture to maximize my farming, cause you know, that's a big thing in Dark Souls. But apparently both my hitbox and their damage area are quite large. I would be going through their legs only to get clipped in the head and knocked down (with shield up, plenty of stamina), or time my attack immediately as I had the opening when they bashed their shields on the ground only to find out that I would get hit myself and get mini-stunned. What!?
That is the kind of stuff that I hate in "hard" games, because due to poor programming I keep seeing non-fluid combat to the detriment and sometimes death of my character. And of course these are only two example of a myriad of times where timings were supposed to do something, but did the opposite for no good reason. I kind of dealt with it, but this marred the experience as it cheapened the overall feeling of defeat and success in the game whenever I would encounter it.
There were other things that really annoyed me about combat, but I'm gonna chalk that up to the "worst console port I've ever seen" thing that is Dark Souls on a PC. Some of these things included (and mentioned previously):
- Attacking after I had just given a command when I had not executed a second one
- Initiating a block command, and an enemy would go right through it.
- Initiating a command and the game would execute something else.
- Performing a coup de gras and an enemy would ignore this and attack me anyway.
<h2>The Inner Light</h2>OK, so now that I’ve mentioned some of the things I really hated from the combat system I should offset that by talking about the things that I felt were exemplary. First and foremost, not only do weapon types have a direct relationship to the monsters you fight (albeit less awesome relationship than I initially thought), but the creators of Dark Souls did some fairly deep research into fighting stances, attack styles, and defensive postures. This isn’t just about the animation and look, but the functionality behind it as well.
As an example, as I progressed through the early portions of the game I noticed immediately that there were different fighting stances, styles, all revolving around the type of weapon that you were equipping (or the enemy). I was immediately struck by how close some of these animations and stances were to actual sword fighting styles, and that made me really excited. Why?
Well I probably should mention at this point that I learned how to fence in college, so I was immediately picking up these cues because I learned them myself. Specifically however, when you fight Undead Knights they at some point raise their sword in a neutral position directly pointing at your face. To someone who fences, that immediately told me (because his standard stance was not this position) that he was trying to goad me into attacking him so that he could parry/repost (in which I would not oblige). I was so happy when I later tested that hypothesis for curiosities sake, that this is exactly what happened. Also because of this knowledge, I understood that fighting him with a thrusting weapon would also be the best approach as thrusting styles tend to be much quicker than slashing ones, and much more a defensive posture than a more open sabre-like style.
This made me so happy, as beforehand these enemies were very tough in linear spaces but less so in open areas. Some you can outright abuse their lack of rotational speed to fight them, including some bosses. But with a simple weapon swap, they became much easier to deal with. Unfortunately this idea ended up being a bit more rudimentary than I had initially thought, so that changing weapon types wasn't as much a necessity overall. I say unfortunately as in my early blindness, having to swap to the situation was a very cool flavor that I wanted more of, and eventually realized wasn't going to happen. While it's not entirely necessary (though it would help with adaptation issues), this is an area that could see major improvements as I really didn't like the lack of forcing the player in these directions. The game is subtly suggesting that there could be a more complex interaction between a halberd wielding player, and a sabre wielding player that could make combat even more dynamic than what I experienced, and I want to see that.
Funny I mention defensive styles above, because I also found that the Estoc is straight up the best weapon in the game if you're gonna play defensively, and for one single reason. You can attack while blocking. Sure it uses more stamina, but that's a small price to pay for 100% defensive postures. It also has the cool attributes of being the longest ranged thrust weapon and one of the best stats (balder's got nothing on this sword imo).
<h2>From the Past</h2>There are other great things about Dark Souls as well. I actually liked the throwback feeling of having to grind in order to level enough to advance. Very old school Final Fantasy-like. Actually, that brings up a super interesting topic, in that Dark Souls gameplay is like a giant love letter to Japanese gaming in general. What's borrowed?
- Z-Axis targeting from Zelda OoT. Very cool to see again, even though it would kill me from time to time I loved that this enabled 3rd person combat to be much more complex (yo, Bethesda, look at Dark Souls as the Elder Scrolls would be sick with these kinds of improvements)
- Level designs or attributes taken from all over Super Mario 64 and various Zelda titles
- Level grinding (yes I kind of liked it in this setting)!
- Level progression and waypoints
- Metal Gear :trollface:
- Boss fights... sorta?
- Piano music at a boss fight... (I'll talk about this later)
One last thing about the music. It's actually really tragic that the music is what it is. Partly for the canned elements that felt entirely out of place, but also the following. I listened to the soundtrack afterwards, and was noticing a lot of cool textures, and subtle colors that you never heard in game due to all the other environmental effects swallowing up the more subtle elements. I can't be sure but if I were to guess, the composer and director needed to talk to each other a little more as there were things that the composer did that were entirely ignored, or not obviated in such a way as to present the cool parts better.
As a side note, if you're gonna have a traditional choir/orchestrated setting, please for the love of all that's... make sure the choir and the orchestra are singing in the same fucking key. Yea, I'm serious. I did appreciate the multiphonics though, as well as the Ballet Mechanique references (Seath).
<img class="lfloat clearfix" src="/staff/wo1fwood/blog/sss2013/ornsteinsmough.png" alt="Ornstein and Smough">So, the Story? Wait there's a story? Well yes. The opening cinematic is kind of vague, but it unfolds kind of well (the overall "why" to the game is still an oddity for me though). It certainly doesn't use much exposition to get the story across and I partially think that's part of Dark Souls charm, but this certainly could be improved upon. It's not necessary to expound on everything, but a little bit here and there could have gone great lengths to make the game more accessible to a wider range of players. One big thing it could have done, and I think should have, would be to give a description of bosses and have subtle hints as to how to approach them. That might have been a subtle enough hint as to make the boss fights a little less frustrating.
Some of the big story platforms here are the items themselves, and here again, the crappy PC port rears its head. I actually had to stumble on the fact that you could read item descriptions and stat requirements, rather than be shown this in an easy way. Probably the worst part about the port because I played 1/3rd of the game without knowing that this was even an option. Really awful, and because the designers didn't think about how to obviate the access to that information well enough. This would have solved my issues with not knowing what weapons to use, what stats to allocate for, how to upgrade, any and all of the extended story elements, and anything else in this realm. One big massive problem that causes an otherwise great game to look and present itself far, far worse than it actually is. This is the #1 thing that has to change in Dark Souls 2 as it has so many widespread ramifications.
<h2>Frustrations</h2>As for my biggest annoyance in Dark Souls? Of course it's the boss battles. Well actually, it's a combination of the bosses and the idiotic waypoints, sometimes separate, sometimes not.
I'll just say this, I hate how games are so console driven today even though I understand why. Especially on the PC, where save states have never been an issue, waypoints continue to be the dumbest thing in existence. OK, so for Dark Souls I have to take a step back as part of what makes this game what it is, is the having to retread your steps in order to get to a place again. This is sooooo old school and what I alluded to with the early age of Japanese games. NES games? What save states? You just restarted the level. Clearly they used this idea when constructing the waypoint system, but it also had pretty deleterious effects, especially in a game that clocks in at over 60hrs for an average playthrough. Never did I ever carry more than 5k souls on me, or any humanity. The threat of dying to something stupid was just too high, so it actively discouraged all but this kind of behavior. Another side effect of this is that I straight up needed help at certain bosses, and had to go looking up solutions on google later because I never saw the summoning glyph, where you need humanity to see in the first place, but lose your humanity on death.
The other main problem with this old school approach is that so much of my time was straight up wasted. I would traverse one area, only to die at a boss later down the road, then be forced back to that last waypoint. Sometimes this was warranted, but many times this could have been more cleverly set up, as it was - and certainly felt like - a colossal waste of time. As an example, there were many times where I would be able to traverse the area with no issues, so in effect I would be wasting 2.3-5 minutes of my time each re-hash if I died at the boss (which of course happened often). I would assume that this resulted in more than 2/5ths of my entire playthrough time being "wasted" in my eyes. 44hrs of total playtime seems a lot more digestible overall, and tweaking the waypoint system to be a little more accommodating would have helped a lot with treating with less tolerant players.
Look, I understand your masochistic tendencies From Software, but in 2011-12 this kind of gameplay should be more finely crafted, and not swung at with a club (even with the retro design, I overall still feel that my investment of time was wasted in too many cases, and could have easily been placated with minor changes).
As with the Boss battles, some bosses were annoying but manageable, others... Well, let's just say that some of the boss fights were incredibly frustrating. My biggest complaints come from the Bed of Chaos, Iron Golem, Ornstein & Smough, and perhaps the four kings. Some because I couldn't defeat them without help, some because I needed to know how to upgrade my weapons better and only became more doable after reading on a wiki (which a game shouldn't be forcing most of its player base to be doing), and some because they were the rare occasion where they actually needed me to get out of my normal play style in order to beat them. Again this goes back to my weapons quip and how more constant variety would have helped shape in an invisible way that certain bosses might need a certain flavor. But as I mentioned, that idea wasn't exactly fleshed out as well as it should have been in my eyes.
I also had a few occasions where I actually fought a boss only once or twice, and that was all I needed. This happened at Seath, Pinwheel, The Gaping Dragon, and Gwynn. Only the final one did I need to fight twice, and only because I hadn't figured out the facepalm timing yet. Actually Gwyn was kind of a letdown after all the other bosses as he turned out to be pretty easy. Sure it's because of my defensive style that I chose, but, nonetheless. Probably the biggest annoyance I had with bosses was the Iron Golem where the camera angle only shows you looking up and not around you. I can't tell you how many times I dodged only to fall off the cliff, or be knocked off. Wait... Scratch that. The Bed of Chaos is the dumbest boss. Part of the problem with that fight is that there is no fight. It's just "run this way before time runs out." Kind of like the Four Kings, but much more of a time waster. Overall I just didn't like the bosses. Some great ideas, some really dumb ones, and all really hinging on the context of the system, which could have been addressed by the developers better.
Other minor anoyances were:
- 9/10 times you have to die in order know how to fight a boss properly. This is more that there wasn't a hint strewn around for the more aware players to grasp.
- The monster ai would ignore you, but once you fight another monster that was clearly out of their range they would run in behind you and gank away. "You made the wrong call, try again." While "hard", it's more of a "trollface" than anything else. I overall didn't like the periodicity of this happening as it just felt cheap. Hell, what am I saying, it is cheap.
- The areas where you can shoot arrows through have such massive invisible geometry that I wasted a ton of arrows. Thought you had space to shoot an arrow? Think again. :/
- This isn't a minor annoyance, it's probably the hardest part of the non-boss game. Silver. Archer. Knights. Not only are they annoying, but they also could shoot through solid walls to kill me. Probably another PC port problem (or more likely mod problem), but. Still a bad PC port.
- Being killed by Solaire's dialogue. Wat. This is like MGS3? Gotta change controller ports to beat... FF the dialogue and you can defend properly. It did make me think, but it's still not something I'm gonna want to see in Dark Souls 2 at all.
- Gwyn's daughter's boobs. What is this DOA all of a sudden? Did I mention that Dark Souls take a lot from Japanese games?
<hr><div class="minorfoot">Total Playtime: 74hrs
Will I Play Again: If I do, it won't be for a good while. It is more likely that I'll get Dark Souls 2 instead of a second play through as I feel that this game lends not to multiple play throughs. At least for me.</div></div>
<div class="wsec"><a href="http://supergiantgames.com/index.php/media/" target="_blank" title=""><img class="rfloat clearfix" src="/staff/wo1fwood/blog/sss2013/bastion.png" alt=""></a><h1>Bastion</h1><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLA0vB9LCTM" target="_blank">soundtrack</a>
The final entry to Part II of this write-up is a title you'll likely go sweet on. Somethin' that comes a knockin' only once in a good while. You see it, and without a second thought you open your arms to its style, and know in your heart that you're gonna have a good time together. It's as if you've always been friends, but are only reconnecting again after a long absence. This is what Bastion is, a game full of style and charm, and joy that you just can't say no to it.
It's this kind of feeling that I get from playing Bastion. On one hand it is a refreshing retro design for a game, but also takes many cues from previous "adventure" games and uses those ideas in its own unique way. It's much like early adventure/rpg games of my youth. It has a very striking penchant for a style that I could only describe as a cross between Diablo and Film Noir. Perhaps more aptly, like Frank Miller's Sin City. The AARPG style while vastly different reminds me a lot of Diablo (perhaps it might remind you of torchlight? I never played either of those). And then, add in a deeply stylized and richly narrated backstory and you get all kinds of cool elements pouring out of your mind. At times I felt like I was playing Zelda or Chrono Trigger, other times exploring or listening to Cain in Diablo. Other times, it felt like it was drawing upon Trigun (90's anime) and the style it had. All in all it's a curmudgeon, and impossible to resist as a game goes. I also liked how the game is keenly self aware of what it is, and plays into this.
Now, while I loved the style from the get go, it wasn't until the song "I dig ma hole, you build a wall..." started playing that I knew that this game had a great sense of itself. Unlike Bioshock Infinite, where that folk song felt somewhat forced within the setting, this one felt right in line with itself. And this leads me into the soundtrack in general. The OST for Bastion is also kind of a curmudgeon of styles or ideas, but it constantly has a recurring thread into the treatment of the music that connects each successive piece to the others, and creates a strong cohesion even with the disparate elements, while still allowing for a great deal of flexibility within each track. This is also helped - at least in game - by the persistent narration throughout the piece.
I couldn't have planned this title better. After 74 frustrating hours of Dark Souls, I get to finish this part on a short and great AARPG (I guess that's what you would call it) that I finished in just about 1/10th of the time it took the previous game. Also, I died less than five times in total for my entire playthough, and after that last one this felt so weird, and so refreshing. Bastion is a game that is short but great fun with a lot going for it, and is certainly one that I will come back to many times. It says "don't be a stranger now", and I feel like I'm compelled to oblige.
<hr><div class="minorfoot">Total Playtime: 6hrs
Will I Play Again: Absolutely.</div></div>And that does it for Part II! I'm sorry that this took so long to get out, and I'm sure Part III will be a while before I can even get to that (life is very busy), but I promise that It'll be worth the wait. Also, I plan to take an interlude and play Thief when I get a chance in-between as I am very excited (and somewhat having trepidations over) to experience one of my favorite IPs returning. Will it suck as much as the news, or will it turn out to be the great surprise of 2014? Tune in, in about (maybe less).
Also, Happy 2014 TL! Here's hoping we have a great year, and hopefully can look forward to big things on the horizon.
