The Failings of Technology

I'm currently trying to learn French. To facilitate this I started by going to the Apple App store and downloaded about half a dozen different trial versions of the various learn French apps. Unfortunately, none of them really stood out as being anything special, that's not to say they were all the same, just that none of them made me want to part with any real money.

Next I downloaded a couple of audio guides, but I found it was far to easy to zone off while listening, and also it was very hard to hear the correct pronunciation while travelling on the underground. So in desperation I decided to do things 'old school' and went to my local library.

Now, while travelling I read through Living French, an old text book from the 50's, and read about the adventures of the Dubois family. A couple of days ago I noticed that most people who were reading around me were doing so with a Kindle and it dawned on me that a Kindle would be terrible for reading this book. The reason being that I am constantly flicking back and forth looking up words and declensions, something the Kindle isn't suited for.

I find it slightly ironic that with all my love of technology and gadgets, the best way I've found to learn French on my own is an old, yellowed book from 1957.

How I Made Skyrim Fun!

Over the years I've played a lot of RPG's. I've player every numbered game in the Elder Scrolls series, except for Arena, but strangely when I first started to play Skyrim I found that I wasn't enjoying it.

The first game in the series I played was Morrowind. I decided that I wanted to play a character that was a master of various combat styles and so picked a Redguard and chose various weapons and heavy armour as my key attributes. After playing for a while I found that having a high level in multiple weapons wasn't worthwhile and was also constantly frustrated by my inability to open locks, cast spells, or sneak. So I rerolled, still using a Redguard as a base, but this time I spread my skills around. I was still primarily a fighter but had lockpick and destruction as key skills to give me some diversity.

I next played Daggerfall. Daggerfall has a very detailed character creation system, letting you choose advantages and disadvantages, so I min-maxed like crazy. My character couldn't use any weapons less than steel in quality but had much higher stats as a result. This made the first few hours quite difficult but in the long run made the game much easier.

In Oblivion I wanted to try out some of the less usual star signs and my first character was a high-elf mage, who regained MP by absorbing the spells cast at them. Unfortunately I kept having to fight people armed with swords and arrows, so my magic meter was never full. Feeling dissatisfied I rerolled as an Argonian who was good at everything. I had a high skill in sneak, lockpick, archer, swords, alchemy and speech. I was also reasonable with some of the magic schools. This made the game easy enough to play through, but the character felt like a generic Jack of all trades.

When I came to Skyrim I started with a Khajiit, and began leveing up the same skills I had used in Oblivion. Once again they prooved useful and I was making good progress, but I found myself getting bored. The character just seemed so generic and lacked flavour and depth. I then found that I just stopped playing the game altogether. This was a strange situation, I had a game from a series I enjoy and in a genre I enjoy, but I wasn't enjoying it. I decided to try the game again, but this time I was going to be a character, not just someone moving through the plot while being good at everything. So I made a Dunmer mage, I realise that in Skyrim you don't actually pick a class but rather equip class stones as you move through the game, but I resolved to only use magic in combat, unless I ran out of MP at which point I could draw a weapon. I also only equipped mage robes on my torso and light armour elsewhere.

I now have 21 hours play time clocked in and am greatly enjoying myself. Because I want to be this character, rather than just do everything in the game, I have refused to progress the Brave Companion's quest line as I don't want to become a werewolf. In some ways I think it is a shame that Skyrim took such a relaxed approach to character creation, although it's better than letting players 'cheat the rules' as they could in Daggerfall.

The Scary Door

Back during GAME's firesale I picked up a copy of Cursed Mountain for £1.98 and about a week ago I finally got around to putting it into my Wii. I went in with very low expectations as the game had received 'mixed or average reviews', with most positive comments relating to the game's setting and intent, with heavy criticism of the controls.

I must say that the game starts very strongly, your character's brother went missing on Chomolonzo (the titular mountain) and you're looking for him. You arrive at the village of Lhando to find that it is deserted, all the food spoiled, and there is a briefly glimpsed strange ghostly entity running about. As you move through the city you collect notes and diary entries which give you hints about what may have happened, but nothing definitive.

It is during this early exploration of the city that you discover the first 'problem' with the controls, you can move at two speeds, slow walk or slow jog which just feels wrong when most other games give you the ability to quickly dash about. However, I like the forced slower pace because it means you can't just run past any game areas that are potentially dangerous (as you walk through the city the camera will often shift to an oblique angle and the colour drain from the screen making you convinced that something bad is about to happen) and secondly it seems more realistic, you are after all high in the Himalayas so the air is quite thin.

Eventually you meet a strange monk who teaches you to open the third eye, which enables you to see runes throughout the city and interact with them using a magic ice axe (it's wrapped in various holy ribbons). Next you finally get to come face to face with one of the ghosts, the first time you simply flail to fight them off, the second time you hack at them with the axe. Then your axe gains the ability to fire energy bursts and the game stops being scary.

The ability to pew pew laser the ghosts, and also get a free heal in the process, hurts the atmosphere of the game. What makes it worse is that it instructs you how to do this in an on screen tutorial after which there is a cut scene that tries to retroactively say that it was a strange and daunting experience. Up until now your character's various outbursts of "what's going on?" have matched your own confusion, but this time I knew exactly what I was doing, I was using this axe shaped gun to defeat a baddie.

This highlighted for me that what makes horror game scary is the unknown and feeling of potential risk. Giving me an energy blaster so early on ruined this. Making me flail at the first ghost before getting up the courage to actually take a swing at the second was the correct way to do things. The game had previously stated that the way to regain health was to burn an incense stick at a shrine, so the idea getting in close to battle a ghost felt risky. Letting me fight from a distance removed this feeling of risk, making matters even worse was that when using this distance fighting method you can perform a finishing seal which will restore part of your health.

It is a shame because if they had made trying to run from the ghosts a legitimate strategy, at least at the start, then it would have created an interesting dynamic, especially considering how slowly you jog.

Thanks for Letting Me Win

A while ago I wrote about needing to have a plan for victory. How, by identifying a way to salvage a bad situation you can win against the odds. Quite often these plan involve having your opponent make a wrong choice.

When presented with a decision, your opponent will always try and take the route that should be best for them. However, people make mistakes and quite often they don't have all the information needed to make the correct decision. Last week I was playing Magic Online and was up against a much better deck. I knew how I could still win but first I needed to draw the correct card and then I needed my opponent to block in a specific way. There was a video but the quality got severely reduced when I uploaded it so I'll have to redo it. But trust me it illustrates how by giving your opponent the opportunity to make a wrong decision you can come out on top.

Going for Speed

Yesterday a new world record for speedrunning The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was set at 22 minutes 43 seconds. This involves using a glitch in the game and a video of the play through can be seen here.

This got me thinking about speed running, playing a game with the intention of reaching the end a quickly as possible. Speedrunning is generally considered to have been popularised by Metroid as this game had five different endings which were determined by the length of time it took to defeat Mother Brain. The 'best' ending is achieved by completing the game in less than an hour and not only reveals that Samus is a woman but you get to see her in a purple bikini.

There are different types of speedruns with the easiest to conduct being the tool assisted speedrun. These use emulators in ease some of the challenges associated with a legitimate play through of the game by enabling the use of save states and also the option of slowing down or speeding up the game's frame rate. Twin Galaxies keep a record of what they consider to be the legitimate records for games on their website and looking there we can see that the record for Super Mario Bros. is 5 minutes 8 seconds and for Metroid is 17 minutes 22 seconds. Generally the rules associated with these records do not permit the player to exploit glitches or use cheats and as such the fastest listed Ocarina of Time completion time is just over 5 hours.

I find it interesting to note that after helping to create the sport of speedrunning the Metroid series revised their ending system to instead rely on what percentage of items were collected during the game.

Power Creep?

It is currently the first week of spoilers for the new Magic: the Gathering expansion, Avacyn Restored. Most of the cards spoiled so far are big flashy rares and mythic rares. And like always seems to happen when a new set is being revealed many players start to accuse the new set of being broken, over-powered and going to ruin the game. The truth is Wizards have been making this game since 1993, and while they do make the occasional mistake, they're not about to suddenly go crazy and destroy the game. The reason so many people then proceed to call foul is because they are not properly evaluating the cards. Take for example this fine gentleman, who has inspired some players to threaten to 'quit the game'.

At first glance a 4/3 for only one red mana seems insane, until you read the text box which says that your opponent can simply take four damage and your monster goes bye-bye. But wait isn't four damage to target player for only one red mana also an amazing deal? Well yes, before this the best you could get for one red was three damage. So if it's power and toughness are under costed, and it's direct damage alternative is also under costed doesn't that make this card broken? The answer is no, for one very simple reason, choice. By giving your opponent the choice of which happens the result will always be the worst one for you. For example if played early in the game when your opponent still has 20 life they can easily afford to take four, latter in the game the other creatures are going to be just a big if not bigger than this guy and as such your opponent will quite happily let him hang around, also because he doesn't have haste your opponent has an entire turn to find a way to remove him from the game.

The next car I want to discuss was revealed today.

Lots of people have looked at this card and proceeded to give a list of all the really good enchantments that could be used to win a game with her. In reality I don't think she's going to see much if any competitive play for two reasons. Firstly her mana cost is too high (I don't mean that a 5/5 flying vigilance for only six mana is over costed, just that there are better things to spend six mana on) and secondly you need to have the aura cards already in you hand or graveyard to get the extra value from her. The aura based decks that have done well in the past have either involved large amounts of card draw, or had a way to search up the desired card.

I remember Wizards R&D were once asked what the converted mana cost of a card which simply read "you win the game" would be. The answer they gave was about nine and it would be a blue card, although it would never be printed because it's not fun. The card would have been balanced because so many competitive decks win before ever reaching nine mana and if your concern is that players might create a combo deck to win quickly, that style of deck already exists with Dragon Storm, which by the way costs nine mana.

The Trouble With Friends

In a competitive two player game your objective is simple, win! As such, quite often your choices are easy to make, you simply pursue the path that should give the best return. However, as soon as the number of players increases your choices can become less clear. Casual alliances and the potential for treason can encourage you to make 'sub-optimal' plays in order to avoid attracting too much attention.

In the game Junta each player is given a role in the corrupt administration. Each position has different abilities and command of certain military units. At the start of each turn the President will distribute the budget as face down bank notes (face down so as to hide the denomination), each player then gets to vote to pass or reject the budget. While there are ways to put a budget through at gunpoint most presidents decide to be as fair as possible in order to try and stave off a coup d'etat.

Junta is designed around social interactions and as such the need to compromise is obvious, but this same requirement will often show up in games where it was never intended. Playing multiplayer Magic: the Gathering is often an exercise in not looking too threatening for fear of having every other player try to eliminate you. It has gotten to the point where players have started to tap all their lands at the end of their turn to show that they have nothing else to do and don't represent a threat during an opponents turn. I find this to be irritating and refuse to do it, because it means that if I later don't tap out I'm advertising a card I want to play at instant speed. The annoying part is that often I get attacked early on simply because I have untapped lands.

Cooperative games, such as Arkham Horror or Pandemic, can suffer from a different problem. Since everyone is working together they will often discuss strategy and tactics, which is fine until a more experienced player starts effectively taking everyone else's moves for them. The thing to remember is that, generally speaking, multiplayer games are designed to be a social affair with everyone having fun, not an exercise in ruthlessly winning, and should be played in such a way so as to maximise enjoyment.

Going the Distance

Last week I finished Super Scribblenauts. Actually, I didn't just finish it I 100% finished it. So not only did I complete all the levels on both hard and difficult mode I also completed all 50 of the special achievements. This made me think about what it is that drives people to fully complete a game. As a general rule I don't 100% games, actually I have plenty of games (some of which I consider to be great) that I haven't even finished. I did however collect all 242 stars in Super Mario Galaxy, and fully complete New Super Mario Bros Wii.

I think that in order for a game to encourage me to keep playing after the end credits it needs to first be a good game and second have the challenges not too difficult to complete. For example I really enjoy and play a lot of RPG games, but I have never fully 100% finished one because the amount of additional effort and time required to find every last secret is just too great. Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem is a brilliant game, but in order to unlock all of the features and the final ending you need to beat the game three times, with there being only a minimal change in each play through, which for me was just not worth it.

In Super Scribblenauts I enjoyed the game enough that I wanted to complete all the levels on both easy and hard mode. Doing this meant that I had already collected around 80% of the achievements anyway, which meant that it didn't seem too hard to collect the rest. In a similar way I was always intending to collect the first 120 stars in Super Mario Galaxy and after doing so I found that I wanted to keep playing, so I went on to collect the rest. Conversely, in Super Mario Sunshine I only collected the minimum number of stars required to complete the game.

I think that having a large number of achievements that players realistically see a way to gaining is an easy way to give a game an addictive element. I've noticed that more and more casual games are using this type of model, although they will usually let you jump ahead by paying a small fee. I will finish of by mentioning that Battlefield 3, has also recently implemented a pay to unlock system, so for an extra $39.99 you can get every item in the game with no effort required.