Here We Go Again
New year: New rash promise to self to be better about blogging. We'll see.
2012 got off to a very quiet start - our now traditional dinner party for the friends who live within five minutes walk benefitted from The Mrs and I being unusually organised about things well in advance, but suffered from everyone being a bit knackered. So the usual post-midnight extension of dinner via a big cheese selection and the evening via several rounds of a random game didn't really materialise, and we saw them off around 1am and were in bed by 1.30. I'm sure it was just the general tiredness, but the hyper-hospitable part of me has been fretting ever since that it was a bit of a rubbish evening.
When not entertaining over the break we gave a fair chunk of time over to the new Star Wars MMO, The Old Republic, which The Mrs for one has been eagerly anticipating for at least two years, and which I have to admit is very effectively filling the gap that my complete turning-off from World of Warcraft had left. I'm in no way as gripped by it as The Mrs, but there's a lot to be said for running around swinging a lightsaber and using the Force to throw heavy objects at bad guys. Makers Bioware have captured the feel of the films really, really well.
As of last night a couple of our old WoW-playing mates have come and joined us on our server, we've formed a little guild, and suddenly the social aspect of the game, which is the thing that makes MMOs work for me in ways that most computer games don't (as previously discussed here more than once) has a chance to take off and really make the game come alive. I shall probably be mentioning this more in the future.
In other news, The Mrs has finally been able to talk about the Top Secret Project that occupied much of his time in the latter half of last year here, so I'm happy to be able to bask in a bit of reflected cool.
Happy 2012.
The Other ‘-craft’ Computer Game
We recently (ie in the last few months) discovered Minecraft down our way, and oh my word it's fun.
It's a game with no goals but those you set yourself - no quests, missions, minigames or anything like that - just a world you're plonked into in which you need to survive (there are monsters that come out at night, or in any area of darkness), strive and (ideally) thrive. To do this you recover materials from the world around you and use them to construct... well, pretty much anything you like, really.
The game's presented in a wonderfully retro style - all cubic blocks and chunky landscapes - and from the moment you arrive it's yours to do with as you like.
The game's still officially in beta, with official launch next month, and can be played in single- or multiplayer modes. Singleplayer has its charm; you have to live completely on your wits and ingenuity; but I've rapidly learned to love multiplayer. The main reason is that The Mrs is running a server on which some of our old Warcraft friends are playing with us, and because of the time difference, we're only on at the same time occasionally. Which means that when we get on, we get to go and see what the others have been doing in our absence - an enormous fortress in a cliff, a pyramid of sand out in the desert, it could be anything.
Something I've discovered to my surprise is that I'm quite enjoying engineering projects; not a thing that would usually be the case in games or in life. I've been developing a rail network between our various holdings, making use of the switches, levers and power sources built into the game to develop quite complicated switching between lines, and I'm currently embarked on a side project that should be a lot of fun before I go back to develop the rest of the network and build actual stations, etc.
I'm a rank amateur at creating stuff in Minecraft though - check out some of this stuff to see the kind of vision some people are applying to the game (not all of the embedded videos in this page are still there, by the way).
The Horror!
I have on occasion previously blogged about Lovecraftian horror as played out in RPGs and boardgames. The Arkham Horror game and its expansions have featured here, as has the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game. I've also read all of Lovecraft's own output on the subject as well as some but not by any means a lot of the related output of other people. There's a great deal to be said for the Mythos as the basis for games of both types; eldrich horrors and secrets-mankind-was-not-meant-to-know offer loads of scope for atmosphere and collaborative, rather than competitive, gameplay (after all, if the world is destroyed by an Elder God, everyone loses). I recently bought another boardgame, Mansions of Madness, which seems to merge the styles of board and RP games by being played out on the former but having a gamemaster figure like the latter. We haven't played it yet, but it looks very interesting.
And late last year, when the nights were drawn in, and the opportunities for atmosphere were at their peak, I ran a one-off Call of Cthulhu session for some interested parties and by all accounts effectively scared the bejeezus out of them (to the point that their characters kept trying to run away and I had to keep making up stuff as I went along to keep them in the action). Hopefully I get to play in the same sandbox for a few weeks later this year.
But the reason I wanted to talk about it today is that there's something in the way I approached that one-off, and the way I frequently assemble game scenarios in my head that will almost certainly never see the light of day, that I increasingly realise relates to my effort to have a creative outlet. I really hate to think that I'm not creative, even though by the measure of a bunch of people I know I'm not, so I keep trying to find 'projects' to give me a sense of having created something.
Through a lot of last year I worked on a podcast series, and did a few more at the start of this year of a new series that is now done with - they supported a degree of creativity with a very concrete outcome. I love podcasting - it draws on my radio experience, it gives me a chance to talk a lot (:-)) and it feels like there's a tangible created product at the end of it. Likewise, while I could probably have written a few guideline notes for the CoC session last year and winged it (which is very much in the style of gamemastering I used to employ twenty-plus years ago when I first played RPGs), what I actually did was produce a highly detailed document that read for all the world like a pre-packaged commercial scenario. Yes, even though I was going to run it on its one and only outing, I wrote it as if I was expecting other people to use it. See what I mean? Frustrated Creative.
So I have the chance to play later this year is as a fill-in on a summer break in a different game. Four weeks in which to run some people through hell in the name of fun and adventure. And what am I contemplating? Using the opening scenario of a huge, world-spanning campaign that I already have mapped out in my head even though I had no reasonable expectation it would ever be used. Seriously - it's all there, from the opening mystery to the grand denouement.
There's a part of me, if I'm honest, that wonders if this isn't a reaction to having people like The Mrs and some of his friends in my life; people who have written actual published and broadcast works; and a rather sad effort not to be written off as The Mundane One by comparison. Still, even if it is, at least it means if I'm ever forced at gunpoint to run a CoC game at no notice, I'll be able to rise to the challenge.
Not Quite So Massive Now
(Not a post about losing weight, though on one level at least, about dropping some baggage.)Assuming anyone from the good old days (you know, when I blogged properly) is still around, you'll know that I've mentioned before that I play World of Warcraft. I usually back that up with the observation that I AM NOT A COMPUTER GAME PLAYER. And it's true that no other game has ever really held my attention longer than a couple of weeks, never mind the six years since WoW's European launch.
The things that I've tended to identify when analysing why WoW works for me when no other games do usually turn out to be about the game's sociability. The idea that there's a human being behind all those other characters, and I can interact with them; trade with them, talk to them, group with them, fight with them even. And that's all supported by the guild system built into the game's structure.
Which means that over the last six years I've met some lovely people in the game while playing it both here and in the US (and a few wankers and arseholes, inevitably), a number of whom have become real-life friends who both The Mrs and I have spent time with outside of the game, and some others I hope we'll yet have the chance to meet. The game was also a thing that The Mrs and I were able to do together while we were on separate continents so it's meant a lot to us in one way or another, and been a major part of our lives.
So it may come as a bit of a shock to hear that a few weeks ago I logged in, did some basic admin on my various characters, had a bit of a chat with those of my friends who were in the game, flew my main character to his ancestral homelands, and logged out for the last time. My subscription's cancelled, and I'll lose access to my account on the 9th April. The end, as they say, of an era.
If you asked me what's the reason for giving up on the game, I'd honestly be hard-pressed to give just one. It's only a few months since the latest major expansion was released, which not only added new content, it totally recreated the old world in the Cataclysm that gave the expansion its name. When The Mrs and I first heard about it and started to see the advance information we were really excited by it. It seemed like it was almost going to be a whole new game - 'WoW 2' we called it.
And then it arrived, and we blasted through the new content in about six weeks, finding that the whole process of working through the game has been rendered so linear and nannyish that there's absolutely zero excitement to be had in levelling through it, and even the reworked old world, after initially looking so cool, ended up suffering for having been restructured in the same dull way. Nothing feels really challenging any longer, and even though all of this falls out of Blizzard's stated aim to make the focus be the endgame, getting people through the leveling content as quickly as possible, even the first attempt we made on the raid content felt just so much like 'meh'.
It was all of that, together with the realisation that I was logging into the game and having nothing that I wanted to do, along with the ongoing challenge of co-ordinating time with the people I wanted to play with, all of whom are 5 to 8 timezones away, that made me decide that my time in the game was finally heading to a close. I especially didn't want my antipathy towards the game to somehow become associated with the wonderful friends I have there.
More widely, the pleasure of another previously-positive aspect of the game I mentioned above has been dulled. Since we moved to the US we've been thoroughly embedded in an absolutely huge guild. A guild which has many positive characteristics and some amazing people in it, but which increasingly I've felt has become too indiscriminately big, too monolithic to be responsive to its membership in any meaningful sense, and with a just slightly too "we know what's best for you" attitude for me to be comfortable in it. Of course, it make no bones about what it is and what it wants to be, and I know it will go from strength to strength while I wish it well - that's not the point of this post. The reason I mention it is that this is one of a number of factors that contributed to the (and it's a word I keep using for my feeling about gaming recently) malaise which led me to depart the game.
Interestingly, even though other MMOs have come along in the last few years that The Mrs and I have tried, none of them have managed to hold our interest, but just recently it seemed like the curse was lifted, and a new game, Rift, grabbed our interest enough that The Mrs actually made the switch completely from WoW. I was planning to play both, though for less of the time than WoW used to occupy. But we've both cancelled that too. Short term, we're both enjoying doing other things with our time. Also interestingly, we've discovered that a bunch of people we know are also either giving up the game or taking extended breaks from their play at this point too. MMO-burnout seems to be on the rise.
I should stress that this isn't a 'never again'. If I wanted to go back to that account and those characters I could, because it'll all still be waiting for me. But if I do ever play again, maybe it'll make more sense to play on the European servers so I can get the full experience of an active, populated world. It's not like I won't still be in touch with the friends by other means. But at this point any thought of playing again is very far from my mind.
It's odd - the game's brought me friendship, entertainment, challenge and a lot of fun over the last six years. But while it's strange and a little sad not to be talking to the gang regularly, when it comes to the game itself I'm actually barely missing it.
(Note: Most of this post was written before some events this last week which finally finished off any interest in the guild for me. I've left what I originally wrote on that subject as it was, because I'd already left the game before I left the community this week, so the recent events aren't relevant to this update about quitting the game. I should also note that although I've mentioned that The Mrs and I have both left the game, nothing here should be taken as any indication of his thinking on the subject.)
Wakeful (No, Not Insomnia For A Change)
I've remarked in the past that I don't really do computer games. Yes, I know, I've talked about World of Warcraft, but I've also noted that my ongoing engagement with it is a complete one-off. Apart from occasional bursts of interest in the madness of a new Ratchet and Clank game, nothing holds me for long.
So a few months ago when I was in line in a shop somewhere and saw a display of a game called Alan Wake I didn't pay much attention. Then The Mrs mentioned it as something I might find to be up my alley, so I thought I'd give it a go. Full disclosure - I'm shit at games which involve the use of a console controller with any degree of urgency. Not dextrous enough you see, so I'm always fumbling for the right button as the hideous evil monster comes ravening at me. And then I die. Or I never spot that I'm out of ammo at a crucial moment. And then I die.
So it was with low expectations of my own performance that I embarked on this 'psychological action thriller'. The story (and for once this is a game that really wants you to invest in its story, so it's worth giving some details) centres around the titular character, an author with writer's block who's struggling to get going on his next best seller. In an effort to help him relax and sort himself out, he and his wife travel to a town in Washington State called Bright Falls, set amid lakes, mountains and forests, where they're going to rent a cabin and chill. Except that a mysterious old woman steps in to divert them to a different cabin on an island in the middle of a lake, from which Mrs Wake vanishes. And then things start to get weird.
I think you get the gist.
Anyone reading that introduction and thinking "sounds like a Stephen King thing" would be absolutely right. The developers' intention to pay homage to King is glaring. The man is actually mentioned a few times in the narrative. And the narrative, sadly, is the weakest thing in the game, which is a pity as the act of storytelling becomes fundamental to the structure of the whole thing, and having the core tale told so weakly is a massive flaw.
The psychological part of the game revolves around the mystery of Alice Wake's disappearance, and a week of Wake's life immediately following her loss which he doesn't remember. During that week, he seems to have written a manuscript which tells the story of events that then happen to him in the game. One of the mechanisms that is central to the whole thing is that you, the player, find pages from this manuscript scattered along your path, some giving insights into what happened previously, others offering hints of what's to come. You can see how the developers thought this would benefit the suspense thing; you're basically told about some of the stuff that's going to happen to you ahead of time, but you have no way of avoiding it. Unfortunately, after a few of these it starts to feel a little dull - if it was a more sparingly used tool it might be more effective. None of this, however, is helped by the leaden style in which the pages are written, and that in turn sadly matches the monotonous tone of the spoken narrative as throughout the game Wake talks to himself and you, mostly telling you things you already know.
Even worse, though, from a narrative point of view, is that along with certain helpful game items, some of the manuscript pages are off the beaten track, or easy to miss as you run through the more chaotic events. So in reviewing my progress through the game I would find that some small number of pages had been missed in each 'Episode' (the whole thing really wants to be a TV series). Meaning that some of the 'Previously on Alan Wake...' recaps would be the point at which key plot points are revealed to me, which is pretty shoddy. Worse, and I'd actually say unforgivably, the recap of one particular episode's end at the start of the next includes information that simply wasn't there the first time round. If you're going to make your game be all about the telling of a story, playing fast and loose like that is just outrageous.
So I'm less than impressed with the story here. The action thriller parts, however, I'll give some credit. Note that I've never played any of those horror game franchises like Silent Hill, so for all I know this is weak sauce thrills by comparison, but personally I found it very effective. At various points in the game you'll find yourself at night in a creepy locale (forest, ghost town, lumber yard, mine) being pursued by Taken - local people who have been taken over by a literal dark force. These people are shrouded in darkness, which needs to be burned off with a light source before they can be damaged. At certain times clouds of darkness begin to swirl around you as a precursor to waves of enemies moving in, or dark-possessed objects flying at you. This creeping around in the dark element is very effective. Even when you're not being assaulted the atmosphere is sufficiently tense that you'll (or at least I will) jump at the slightest thing. At one point I was investigating an abandoned cabin, and totally by chance as I turned around my flashlight beam crossed a window, revealing a human shape running by outside. I may have dropped the controller in shock. I know I came about as close to crapping my pants as I have since I was a baby.
I've seen it argued in other reviews that the combat sequences get a bit repetitive, which may be fair, but the variation of location and the escalating nature of the enemies kept me pretty involved, at least until towards the end, when my growing irritation with the narrative cheating was actively affecting my enjoyment of the game. I ran through the last two episodes more for the sake of not having left the thing unfinished than for any sense that I wanted to see what happened at the end (which is just as well, because it has one of the worst, most cliched endings in fantasy fiction. Possibly more than one in fact - yes; it's that kind of a conclusion).
I think the most significant thing I can say about the game is that having picked it up within a week or two of its May release I played it five or six times in short order (I gave myself a rule about only playing it after dark for heightened effect) then basically forgot about it until this weekend. That's not a good sign, really, is it?
I was slightly thrown, having looked to check when it was released, to see that the game's Wikipedia entry lists a lot of 5/5 and 9/10 reviews from people presumably a lot more familiar with what makes a good video game than I. There's a lot of talk of tension and atmosphere which I'll support. Also I'll agree that the landscape it uses looks beautiful. But I worry about what else is out there if this one is such a shining example of plot and pacing as so many suggest. Because if this is a good example of those things in games, then it's probably as well I don't play more.
High marks for tension, but far lower for the narrative that it wants so desperately to be taken seriously.