Just in case you haven’t seen this… I think it’s pretty awesome.
Category: Pointless Ramblings
Heavy Rain (spoiler-free)
I just finished my first play-through of Heavy Rain and wanted to capture some thoughts while they were still fresh in my mind.
My inner cynic really wants to tear the game apart. The controls are clunky in that survival-horror kind of way (not that the game is survival horror, mind you). Walking a character around can be really cumbersome, the mostly-fixed cameras (somethings you can pan a bit, and there’s always an alternate views) can make navigating even an open space tricky (particularly when the camera view changes unexpectedly, leading to disorientation) and OMG six-axis controls FTL. I hate it when a game makes me tilt, shake or yank my controller around. In general, the mechanics of the game are kind of janky.
And had I written about the game after the first 30 minutes I wouldn’t have had a thing good to say about it. And y’know, I still don’t have much good to say about Heavy Rain, the Game. But I *loved* Heavy Rain, the Experience.
Quantic Dream has really nailed graphical interactive fiction in this product. The varied pacing can frustrate you in a good way. The first hour or two is actually pretty slow but then there’s a payoff. And that happens throughout the game. Deep into the plotline you’ll have to do some really mundane action that’ll be ‘boring.’ That’s kind of unheard of in a game where the intensity generally ramps up from start to end. But in a movie or a book, having quiet times in between high action points is basic plot development 101, and it works well here.
There’s something about the way they make you hit QTEs that really makes the whole story compelling. For example, I tend to semi-recline a lot while I’m playing a video game. And I did so in some parts of Heavy Rain but when the tension mounted I had to sit up to be ready to shake my controller around. I know that sounds dumb and/or annoying but it really added to the feel of the game. I was leaning forward, attentive, a bit tense, waiting to do whatever I had to do, and that make the whole experience feel different.
So it’s definitely a game that’s worth a play-through. But what about replayability? I definitely plan to play through it again, though not right away. I’m both interested to see what will change if I make different decisions, but also hesitant about how engaged I’ll be by making them. In my first play through I made the decisions that I felt were correct. To go through again and make different ones might weaken my connection to the narrative in that I’m doing things I don’t really believe in. We’ll see what happens when the time comes. I won’t be replaying it soon. Like a book or a movie, I’ll put it on the shelf to enjoy again sometime in the future after my memory of events have faded a bit.
I got up at 7:30 am on a Sunday to jump back into Heavy Rain. I can’t remember the last time a product had engaged me on that level. And after I finished, I just had to sit and think about it for a while. I had to ponder what I’d just experienced. Again, that’s a rare feeling.
Heavy Rain isn’t perfect; there were some plot connections that didn’t make sense (a few times a character referred to another character that, insofar as I know, s/he’d never met…maybe a branch of storyline I somehow skipped?) and the controls were frustrating at times. If the story had been in a movie it wouldn’t have been *that* special (and in fact someone just snapped up the movie rights to the game). But your interaction with the story gives it more power than it would have as a passive experience. There are decisions you have to make that are…disturbing, and you don’t have a lot of time to make them.
In spite of the flaws, Quantic Dream has created something pretty special here. If you decide to play it, just go with it. Set your skepticism and cynicism aside and just experience the ride. I think you’ll really enjoy it. I know I did.
Response to the MBACD
Warning: Not a game related post.
Today in the MMO blogging world a new event launched, the MMO Blog Alliance Charity Drive. I have issues with this.
But before I get to them, I do want to acknowledge that I feel like I know a few of the bloggers associated with this drive, and insofar as I do know them, I fervently believe that they’re people with good hearts who are trying to Do The Right Thing.
I just think this ‘drive’ is a mistake. Maybe my life is different from yours… but in the past I’ve donated to quite a few organizations, none of which want to let me go. It has gotten to the point where now, at this time of year, I start to drown under a deluge of requests for further support. The phone rings (in MA the “do not call” law doesn’t apply to non-profits) and the mail box fills up. Those are the personal requests. Outside every grocery store is someone (sometimes several someones) propositioning me with sad tales of people living a hard life who need my help. Soon Santa will be ringing his bell at the mall. Donation coin cups will be passed around the theater. Coin cups will be next to the register at the coffee shop. TV ads showing starving children, puppies, or children with puppies will pop up 4 times during every TV show. The Giving Tree will go up at work. Kids will knock on the door looking to raise money for some cause… in some cases these causes may even be legit.
In short, without being deaf, dumb and blind it is *impossible* not to know that there are needy people and good causes in the world, and I’m all for contributing to these causes if doing so feels right to you.
But the *last* thing I need is another vector for outstretched hands being shoved at me. Particularly a gaming blog. (And yes, I appreciate the irony of me writing this post on a gaming blog.)
Now I’ve been called “Scrooge” (in a kidding way) and ‘mean’ (in an apparently serious way) for this attitude already today. But y’know what? You don’t know me. You don’t know my past, or my habits. You’ll have to take on faith that fact that I contributed often in the past. Not as much these days, both due to my personal financial situation, and more so because of all the spam and the harassing phone calls that charities use. Calling me 3 times in a given week asking me for even more money is not a way to get me to continue contributing to a cause.
And when I have something spare to offer, I don’t need a random blogger (no matter how much I enjoy their insight into gaming) suggesting who I should donate to. Really, are there people out there saying “I’ve got $500 I want to donate but I have no idea who needs it.”? I can’t believe there are. Personally, my Q4 donations tend to go to fire departments (because my father was a volunteer fireman) and a charity that brings toys to kids in the hospital, because when I think Christmas I think kids and toys.
Now, you might suggest I’m over-reacting and to be perfectly honest I’d have a hard time arguing against that. What irked me most about the MBACD media blitz is that it was a media blitz. A bunch of MMO blogs I read all posted at the same time encouraging me to donate to those less fortunate. I likened it to getting 6 phone calls the same evening asking for donations… even if I was in favor of the cause, that’d be pretty irritating. Ferrel pointed out that not everyone is going to see multiple postings and he’s right.
But some of us will and, having no advance knowledge of this organization, it felt like a trap. We’ll lure you in with good talk about MMOs then suddenly hit you up for money!
Again, I absolutely understand that these people are well-meaning and trying to do some good (and of course won’t profit from this campaign in any way). I just don’t think most of us need another group of people urging us to donate, and when you push something on a person hard enough, the response will be pushing back. I suggest that people are getting so sick of being ‘urged to donate’ that they’ll stop donating out of spite. I’m personally getting close to that point myself.
Those of us who wish to donate will, no matter what we read in our RSS feeds. There’re plenty of big budget media campaigns making us aware of the need. Those of us who don’t, or can’t, donate, aren’t going to be swayed by a post on a friend’s blog, no matter how sincere the plea is.
Urging donations is getting close to talking politics (or religon) and I don’t think a gaming blog is the right place for any of these topics.
If you disagree…if you really do want to help and somehow have gotten this far in life without gaining awareness of the many good causes out there, then by all means please do read Ferrel’s post about the MBACD. He, and the blogs he link to, can offer you many suggestions for charities that could use your donation.
[Edit: Clipped a few rantie tangential paragraphs off the head of this post, as advised by my new BFF Brian (see comment #1) since they were really unrelated to the topic and in consideration of the rather solid conversation that has emerged in the comments. The removed ‘graphs were just me grumping about the “Holiday Season” starting too early and the current political incorrectness of referring to “Christmas” rather than “The Holidays.”]
I blame Torchlight
So here we are, all snug in our beds (or soon to be) with visions of sugar-darkspawn stuck in our heads.
It’s Dragon Age Eve. Tomorrow we’ll come home from work, bare our teeth at the family to warn them off, and settle in to enjoy Dragon Age: Origins. (Of course some lucky SOBs are already playing…sounds like some retailers broke the street date.)
I realized yesterday… I hadn’t finished Uncharted 2 yet, and here comes Dragon Age. I meant to finish it. I’m really close to the end (I think/hope…it’s getting to where if it goes much longer it’ll feel like its dragging on); who knew it was going to get hard(ish)?
But really I blame Runic Games. Torchlight grabbed me by the throat and wouldn’t let go all last week and into the weekend. And I’m still feeling the itch to play more.
So yeah, backlog of great games piling it (let’s not forget Borderlands). I think Dragon Age will be my last purchase for a while. I need to get ahead of this wave!
This game will unlock in approximately 15 hours
Looking in from the outside
Remember all those blog posts about grouping vs soloing and how those of us who soloed in MMOs should “go play a single player game”?
Well, I finally did that. Not by choice, but due to a lingering injury that made playing PC games painful. And at first it really sucked. I was really hooked on Fallen Earth at the time and ached to play it (pun intended) but just couldn’t manage more than 10 minutes before my arm felt like it was on fire.
So I turned to my consoles for solace, and played some pretty fun games. Need For Speed: Shift, Demon’s Souls, Brutal Legends, Uncharted 2 and Borderlands. And somewhere in the middle of all that, I stopped missing MMOs; or at least, the missing eased somewhat.
And what happened next was interesting. I started to notice how much MMO players complain about MMOs. I’m not talking about a scientific poll or anything, but it seems like MMO players are a lot unhappier with their games than non-MMO players are. I find myself thinking “Why are you playing this game if it is making you so unhappy?” fairly often now, even while acknowledging that I was the same way, and probably will be again someday.
I don’t want to come across like the alcoholic who gets all holier-than-thou once he stops drinking, but it is peculiar. I guess it has a lot to do with the amount of time invested. When you’ve established a ‘home’ in an MMO and you have friends there, the benefit of your social network outweighs the detriment of the aspects of the game that bug you. Meanwhile the non-MMOers have significantly fewer ties to any given game (and often, thanks to Friend lists and social networking, they can take their friends with them to the next game without a lot of hassle).
I can’t decide if this social connection to a specific game is ‘good’ or not (though I’m pretty sure I’m in no position to make that determination for anyone but myself). I will tell you that being a non-MMO gamer is a helluva lot more expensive than being an MMO gamer!
What’s strangest of all is this lure of re-labeling myself ‘MMO gamer’ just to be ‘part of the group’ again. Even though I was one of those anti-social soloers, I did feel part of the uber-group that is the MMO playing community. I kind of miss feeling passionately about the cost of a retcon in Champions Online or the problem of Radiance in LOTRO or whether the scarecrows are working right in Fallen Earth…
Maybe that’s why I still have my accounts active. I’m not ready to cut that final string yet.
PS3 haters are still out there
Full disclosure: I own a Sony PS3 (and an Xbox 360, and a Nintendo Wii, and a PC, and a Mac). Call me a fanboy if you will.
Today Syp put up a mocking post about Papa John’s Pizza getting a link on the PS3’s web browser’s default home page. He showed an ad for the service with the text:
Okay, this is sort of a redux of EverQuest 2’s infamous /pizza command, and it’s no less ridiculous than it was the first time. Who is so tethered to a game system and/or so ignorant of how a telephone works that they can’t order pizza without Sony’s assistance?
I’m trying to wrap my head around this comment. Syp doesn’t seem to object to people who are so tethered to their couch watching TV that they pick up a phone to order a pizza, or so tethered to a web browser on a PC that they order a pizza through it. But because the web browser happens to be on a device that plays games (y’know, like a PC does), then this becomes a ridiculous idea and anyone who uses it is ‘tethered to a game system and/or ignorant of how a phone works?’
Talk about hating with a very broad brush.
Or maybe he’s just hating because there’s an ad on the default home page?
Around our house, in addition to playing games on the PS3, watching blu-ray and dvd movies on the PS3, streaming video and music for our media server to the PS3, we also watch internet video on it (admittedly we did more of this before Hulu.com started blocking the PS3). So if we’re watching an episode of a show at NBC.Com and decide to order a pizza rather than cooking, we’re good if we get up and go to the PC in the other room and order it there, but if we open another window in the PS3’s browser and order it, we’re losers, apparently?
I avoid using the phone to order pizza because frankly there is often a language barrier between myself and the person on the other end of the line. When ordering online everything is clearly written/chosen from a menu. Credit card processed. It’s fast and accurate and I can even put the tip on the card, so all I need to do when the food is delivered is sign the credit card slip. I don’t see how its relevant what device the browser happens to be on… that’s the beauty of the web, isn’t it? That it’s more or less device agnostic?
Color me puzzled.
But I still love ya, Syp, even if you hate my beloved PS3!
Gone fishing
I’m sick of being sequentially disappointed by MMO companies. From Funcom’s “Surprise, there’s no content past 20!” to Warhammer’s broken RvR and feeble PvE to Aion’s bizarre beta system and now to Cryptic’s “Did we say Sept 1? We mean until we decide to arbitrarily pull the plug.” to the issue going down between Atari and Turbine.
Not many of these companies really deserve our money these days. Not long ago I joined Syp in proclaiming with pride that I’m a Day 1 MMO player. I see now that by being that kind of player, I’m working to encourage these bad business practices. Half finished games, sketchy policies and a general contempt for the customer — these are the behaviors that get rewarded by our slavish devotion to getting in on the next big thing ASAP.
And I’m personally sick of most bloggers, too. There are a few really top notch blogs out there, but most of them (including this one!) are just soapboxes for whomever is writing them. There’s nothing wrong with that at all. I’m just sick of devoting my time to reading them. Or less venomously, I don’t feel like my life is enriched in any way by reading them, and that there are more productive ways I can put my time to use.
And many bloggers are pompous, pig-headed and arrogant. I’m sure they don’t see themselves that way. And I’m sure they DO see ME that way. Again, I’m not setting myself apart by saying I’m in any way better than the rest. Most of us are just tooting our own horns out here and I’m worst of the bunch in a lot of ways. Much too often I find that I feel ashamed of how steadfastly I’ve clung to a position I’ve taken, without being willing to be gracious enough to accept there’s another way of looking at things.
On the other hand, I’ve found that many bloggers seize on any concession as a point of weakness and just press harder. Whomever backs down in the slightest from their point of view loses.
Surf around and look at some blogs, and particularly the comments. What draws comments? Controversy. Arguing. Bickering. The Blog-scape has become like one giant gaming forum with everyone shouting as loud as they can and no one really listening to what anyone else is saying. Sure, we’ll read a post and riff on it to move forward our own agenda on the topic at hand, but there’s very, very little honest, open-minded dialog going on. No one ever convinces anyone else of anything. We have our opinions, our opinions are the only right ones, and anyone with a differing opinion is just someone to be shouted down, in the form of leaving more comments than the other guy can.
It’s pointless. It’s destructive. And I’m done with it.
I’m shutting down Dragonchasers, temporarily at least. Until I can come back refreshed and recharged. And I’m culling my RSS feed to a bare minimum. There are bloggers out there who I consider friends, and them I’ll keep reading, just because I want to keep in touch with them in some way. And there are bloggers out there who are just smart, talented writers, and I’ll read them from time to time just because reading them *does* enrich my life.
But beyond that, I’m going to try to reroute all the time I spend reading blogs and bickering in comments and worrying about what the next half-finished game to launch will be, into some more productive activity. Something I can feel good about at the end of the day. Even if that something is as simple as spending time talking to loved ones, or taking a walk under the stars.
So to the friends I’ve made, I say “Thank you for being such awesome people.” And to everyone else, so long for now. Try to be nicer to each other. Try to really listen to what the next guy is saying, and open yourself to the possibility that we all don’t see things the same way, and just maybe you can learn something from the person on the other side of your next debate.
Whatever happened to Sacred 2?
Someone (Werit) asked me today if Sacred 2 had slipped down my play list.
It has not. My entire playlist has slipped down. Due to poor planning on the part of upper management at my job, the past few weeks have been rather hellish insofar as having to work a lot of extra hours, extra stress, and so forth. I haven’t been playing anything, aside from some LOTRO, and that I play as a kind of reward. Y’know “OK, I’ll write the data validation scripts for this page, then I’ll kill 10 bog-lurkers, then start the next set of scripts.” (I chose LOTRO because I needed some coin to pay my in-game rent.)
The silver lining is that I’ve killed the 180 bog-lurkers required to complete the deed in the Lone Lands! 🙂
But in spite of what XFire says, I sure didn’t play LOTRO for 14 hours this past week. Much of that time was me logged in, the game running in the background waiting for the next ‘reward’ of killing 10 more lurkers.
This week is E3, and I’m stoked to follow it virtually. After that madness ends (G4TV is showing something like 22 hours of coverage and I intend to watch all of that, plus countless web videos and blog posts) I hope to go back to Sacred 2, probably starting over with a character I can take more seriously than the sexpot Seraphim.
Hmm, wait, that’s not right either. My boss finished Infamous and is going to lend it to me, so I’ll be playing through that first, and THEN going back to Sacred 2.
Bottom line, I didn’t lose interest in Sacred 2…I just got pulled away from it.
RFF – First week of summer (Wii)
So as I alluded to in my last post, the end of Spring holiday held its share of disappointments (I’m talking about Rune Factory Frontier here).
First, there was a festival celebrating the opening of the beach, which shook everything up. Lute wasn’t in his normal spot, and by the time I found out where he was (near the church, apparently) it was too late and he’d gone home. So my big forge room remains empty for another week.
Second, Day 30 was actually the first day of Summer, not the last day of Spring, so I lost some crops as they withered to dead grass.
Third, there was a contest at the festival, which I participated in…and failed at, much to the amusement of all the available young ladies present. *sigh*
But life goes on! This week, and today is Wednesday or Thursday of Week 1 of Summer in Rune Factory Frontier land, I’ve already expanded the kitchen area, and I’ve *already* harvested a crop of onions. How so fast?
The power of Runeys. I haven’t mentioned Runeys yet because I’m still figuring them out. Runeys are these kind of spirit things that float around in the world, and if you have a balanced Runey population, your land will become prosperous and things will grow more quickly. You collect Runeys via the (wait for it) Collector (hmm, or is it called a Gatherer?) which feels like a Ghostbuster Ectoplasmic Vacuum kind of thing. So I collected a bunch and set them free around my farm and now I can harvest animal fodder every day, and my onions went from seed to harvest in less than a week. Yay!
Runeys appear over mature croplands, apparently… but they also eat each other, so there’s some kind of balancing thing going on that I haven’t fussed over much yet.
However inside dungeons, instead of Runeys appearing from mature crops, you get these Rune Point Stone things that replenish your supply of Rune Points. I’ve got 2 patches of strawberries growing on Whale Island’s dungeon, so I pop over there, harvest berries, top off my Rune Points and I’m good to go for a while longer. More work!
Anyway, we’ll see how things go during the next holiday; hopefully Lute will be back and I can get both a better Forging Station and better Kitchen Equipment. We’ll see if the money holds out.
So far this week, not much dungeon diving. I did tame a new monster: an ant… so now I have a sheep (I can harvest wool from him) a cow (milk), a squirrel, (who runs around my farmland harvesting ‘wild’ weeds, which can be valuable), a goblin, (who harvests veggies), and the ant will be my combat partner, at least for now (He can harvest veggies too, if need be). These monster pets aren’t particularly efficient yet but I’m hoping they get better with practice. For now they just save me some time, but I still have to do some collecting/harvesting myself.
And finally, the purpose of this post. If you have a Wii, and my inane blatherings about this title have piqued your interest, Amazon has it on sale (today only, I believe) for $29.98. It lists for $50, but I think I paid about $40 at Best Buy a couple weeks ago.
I found a great website devoted to these games: http://www.ranchstory.co.uk/?games/Rune_Factory_Frontier. Gamefaqs has a lot of info too, and honestly for Gamefaqs, the community is decent, but I prefer visiting ‘indie’ websites when I am able to.
There’s a hole (MMO shaped) in my mind
I didn’t really make a Decision to stop playing MMOs. It just kind of happened, mostly due to an economic crunch that has since eased. I keep thinking “Now I can afford a sub again!” and Angela would love me to rejoin her and our friends in EQ2, and I keep saying I will… but I don’t.
I missed MMOs for a few weeks, but then I started feeling a kind of lightness of being. Like some weight had been lifted from my shoulders. It has taken me a while to figure out what’s going on, and I think it has a lot to do with the out-of-game cost of playing an MMO, namely keeping up to date on changes and feeling a vague pressure to ‘keep up’ (or ahead) of the curve, or even just feeling like “I’m paying for it, I should play it.” At least I think that’s what’s going on. I’m still not 100% sure.
Maybe I was burnt out without realizing it, and this feeling is just the burnout lifting? Whatever it is, it feels good, like a long-standing care has been lifted.
But what’s even stranger is the social impact this has had on my life. Now keep in mind I’m a die-hard solo player in MMOs; one of those people that is often told he should be playing a single player game since they’re much better than playing an MMO solo.
First of all, they aren’t better. Not for me. I keep starting single player RPGs and finding them unfulfilling. Even critically acclaimed games like Fallout 3 just feel empty and dead. I haven’t gotten very far in Fallout 3, just in Megaton, but when I hit that town and all I see are NPCs following their pre-programmed wander routes, it just feels lonely and pointless in a way that MMOs never do, even when I’m not talking to or interacting with other players. Other players add life to the experience, even without direct interaction. Single player RPGS just aren’t as compelling. (Though I loved Fable 2, but I think the difference was that I was also playing an MMO at the time, so I had that ‘living world’ itch being scratched elsewhere.)
Anyway, back to the social impact. My RSS feed is filled with MMO bloggers. Lots of them have been writing long, well-considered posts about MMO design, how to move the state of the games forward, what’s broken and how to fix it. Really thought-provoking stuff.
And I just don’t care.
And that makes me really sad, because a mere few weeks ago I was enjoying the hell out of debating these points with these smart people. And now, I just find I have nothing to add to the conversation, and even find myself sometimes thinking these people are wasting their energy in debating this stuff. Huh? Where are THOSE thoughts coming from? I *love* being an armchair game designer! Anyway, this all leads to my standing on the sidelines watching, and I no longer feel like part of the community of MMO bloggers. That carries a great sense of loss.
And, as an add-on to that, I’m not posting a lot here, either. Now a big part of that is the blogging gig at ITWorld. My ‘word bag’ has only so many words in it every day, and I’m finding it’s pretty low on words by the time I get done a day at work, a day of twittering, and written a blog post or two (9 posts in the past week over there). My ‘hour bag’ runs low, too. I’ve been meaning to write this post for several days but just don’t find both available time and available energy intersecting conveniently.
On the bright side of all this, I’m re-discovering the joys of (non-rpg) single player games. I’ve been playing the hell out of this little “Aquia” game on the new DSiWare platform, and am finding Rune Factory Frontier (the latest “Harvest Moon” game for the Wii) to be incredibly compelling.
I think I need to just follow my muse and morph Dragonchasers into a single player gaming blog for a while. I’m not sure what that will do to the audience…will having ‘off-topic’ posts drive away people who would stay subscribed to a quiet RSS feed? I guess I’ll find out. I mean I’ve always been a little bit ‘all over the place’ with my book reviews and the odd “check out these neat thing” posts, but Dragonchasers never really took off until I really started focusing on MMOs.
Every day brings new adventure, though. Doing the ITWorld Blog has felt incredibly rewarding and is, I think, helping me to slowly get my writing chops back. And the money from it is what ended the financial crunch I referenced above, so both artistically and fiscally, I’m very, very grateful that gig fell in my lap. Maybe some day I can transition to writing full time. Who knows? Stranger things have happened.
PS Props to anyone who got the B5 reference in the title of this post. Vorlons FTW!