#but the problem is all the cutscenes go straight into gameplay so whenever i watch a video the person playing cannot stop moving the camera

[roseworth]

i like watching gaming videos sometimes but i cant do it too much bc i get motion sick too easily and they move the camera too much. i need youtubers to play games with the camera facing directly forward and not moving

[mamthew]

Been playing the Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles remaster some since it dropped, and I have some thoughts on it. It’s been a…really long time since I last played the original, and I never was able to get too far in, since I was so new to video games that I was unable to intuit most of its mechanics. Despite this, I fell in love with the game. For quite some time, it was the only game with “Final Fantasy” in the title that I had played. I played, enjoyed, and beat its three sequels: Echoes of Time, Ring of Fates, and The Crystal Bearers (neither of the My Life As spinoffs, but eh).

This remaster is not a good remaster, but mostly not for the reasons I’ve seen put forth online. The developers didn’t do much to improve the visuals, sure, but honestly the art direction of the game was pretty enough anyway that it skates by on that alone. The load screens are not nearly as long as I’d been led to believe. The gameplay is unchanged from the original, and like…I like the gameplay of the original? That’s why I played the remaster? I want to play the game?

My biggest issue with the remaster is how the online is handled, but reviewers have straight up lied about problems with the online? Like…you have a permanent friend code you can give people. The temporary online codes you can generate are different from the permanent one. Why are reviewers saying your online code changes every 30 minutes and you can’t save permanent friends when that’s demonstrably false? Seems like a thing you maybe shouldn’t be writing in your official review.

I’m going to put my own issues with the online aside for a moment, though. I promise we’ll come back to it, but my issues with the remaster are only understood in the larger context of what the game did as a piece of art and what it no longer does now as a result of the changes. First, then, we’ve got to lay down what Crystal Chronicles did as a piece of art. Crystal Chronicles, I’ve come to realize during this playthrough, is a game about storytelling as collective memory, and much of the game’s mechanics work in service to this theme.

In the world of the game, something happened long ago that released poisonous miasma into the air and made much of the world uninhabitable to the four major races. The game follows the players’ customized characters as they take annual pilgrimages to collect enough “myrrh” from magical trees, which is used to maintain the barrier that keeps their town safe from the miasma. The game is broken up into years; it takes four drops of myrrh to maintain the barrier for a year, each dungeon’s tree only provides one drop of myrrh, and it takes several years for a tree to replenish that drop, pushing the characters’ caravan further and further out each year in search of trees that are not yet spent.

I’ve compared this setting to Death Stranding a few times in the past, and I think the comparison holds up. The game’s story has only gained something from the current moment, too. I go out and risk myself to get groceries, which I then bring back home so I can continue to hole up safe in quarantine until I run low again, and I think the game fairly accurately simulates the rise and fall of that pattern, the balance of risk and safety, and the way the dangerous unknown eventually becomes the mundane with time. Most of the locations in the game are old products of civilization that have been lost to nature, and walking through former farmland, abandoned roads, and empty towns in the game do remind me of walking down empty city streets back when coronavirus was still keeping people off city streets.

The game has several stories running in tandem, but the most central one is the ongoing story of the characters’ caravan, chronicled in a journal. After every new encounter, new area, or completed dungeon, a new entry is added to the journal, and at the end of the year, all the entries are incorporated into a cutscene, so the player can read them and relive the year’s events. The entries are very short and written in a simple style, but they still give the player an idea of how their character viewed the events. These end-of-year cutscenes are actually really enjoyable little rituals, and I’ve been avoiding reading the journal entries specifically so I can experience them for the first time in these retrospectives.

As the years progress, the character’s entries show that their memories of earlier years are fading. “Whenever I close my eyes, I vividly remember all my adventures,” says the entry at the end of the first year. By the end of the fourth year, however, “so many memories from my earlier adventures have dimmed, from the joys of chance encounters to the suspense of my first battles.” The entries also show the ways the annual pilgrimages have changed the player character. “It was an easy fight, so I spent a peaceful interlude over a light meal,” says an entry after revisiting an older dungeon. “I was a little surprised. I never considered myself a fighter.”

The written and oral records of the past permeate this game in so many ways. Before each dungeon, a narrator who is presumably another caravanner who went to the same places in the past introduces the location with either a history of the place or an anecdote about the place. The Mushroom Forest, to her, evokes a childhood memory of her mother. She introduces the Veo Lu Sluice by explaining the history of who built the sluice, what conditions allowed for its construction, and what its irrigation has done for the people since. After each dungeon, the player character receives a letter from a family member, telling them what has been happening in the town while they were away. At the beginning of each new year, the town’s patriarch tells your character a story about the previous caravanner, who mysteriously disappeared after announcing he had found a way to remove the miasma entirely.

It feels like history, generally, has been put on hold. The Lilty military once dominated most of the world, but had to shrink back into their capital city due to the miasma, and the city eventually diminished to a small trading post. The Yukes once were at war with the Lilties, but they’ve allowed trade between their towns again, so caravans can have safe havens to stay in while collecting the precious myrrh. The once-nomadic Selkies were unable to find a new homeland before the miasma spread, and now most are stuck on an island that was supposed to be a temporary stop. We hear much of this history throughout the game, but we don’t see any of it. It’s recorded and known but has little bearing on the culture or lived experiences of the inhabitants of a world where no one can leave their homes.

The moogle adventurer Stiltzkin asks the player character where memories go once they’ve been forgotten, and it’s a fair question in a world where everyone is as alienated from the past as they are from each other 

The problem is, this isn’t supposed to be a game about alienation, exactly. It’s supposed to be a game about shared experiences and the ways we experience and remember the same events differently, as different individuals. It’s supposed to be a game about combatting alienation through shared experience. This is supposed to be a game in which I share a screen with three other players even as we each also have our own personal screens providing us with different objectives and showing us different letters from our different families. In the original game, the multiplayer was devilishly difficult to actually set up, as each player had to have their own Gameboy Advance, attached to the Gamecube and used as a controller, to control their own character. The players’ characters lived in the same town and were on the same caravan together but competed over who unlocked which powerups and picked up which recipes, meaning everyone’s stat spread and armor was different. Players had slightly different experiences within the larger shared story, and the use of the Gameboy Advances were meant to highlight those differences.

Which leads to my issue with this remaster. In the original, characters were saved to the same file, and every player’s character lived together in the same town. Their families each had different houses in the towns and would eventually provide the party with different supplies, depending on their jobs and the responses they received to their letters. At the end of each dungeon, the player characters would sit together in a circle and each receive a letter from their families. At the end of each year, the retrospective cutscene showed the characters and their families celebrating their return together. Your characters explored towns together, and your fellow players watched the random encounter cutscenes with you.

In this game, you can’t play local multiplayer at all. You can only play online multiplayer in dungeons, and clearing a dungeon with other players only counts towards the host’s file. At the end of each dungeon, the characters sit in a circle as the mail moogle tells all but the host that there is no mail for them. At the end of each year, the retrospective cutscene shows an almost entirely empty town; the character and his immediate family dance alone. Certain secrets have now been relegated to the single-player experience only, and the minigames you could unlock and play with friends were removed entirely. Towns are also exclusively single-player. The game is no longer a shared multiplayer experience so much as a dungeon-crawler where friends and strangers can jump into dungeons to offer brief help.

This creates a strange two-minded state of play, where I see and remember the vestiges of the game that once was while playing a game that’s in thematic opposition to it. As my character explores Tida Village and sees signs of the population that once lived there, I play this remaster and see leftovers from now-removed game mechanics. It’s a deeply unsettling and alienating experience.

The online isn’t inherently bad, then. It reminds me of FFXIV, where dungeons and bosses are their own separate experiences, removed from the rest of the game. But this online is inherently unsuited to the game it is in. Crystal Chronicles is not FFXIV; the developers put together a system of online play for a different game than the one they were remastering.

It would have been possible to change the game to suit this online system, too! The journal entries for dungeons could have also included the names of players who joined them for those dungeons. The online players could have still received letters, but from the host character’s family, thanking them for keeping their loved one safe. New random encounters could have been added between different online caravans, allowing them to trade items or play minigames with one another. The party at the end of the year could have included the families of randomly selected online companions These changes could have could have given us a synthesis of the old and new, and helped to center the chronicles over the crystals.

Instead, though, we have this incredibly flawed remaster, after almost a year of delays, that serves more as an empty reminder of what the game once was instead of actually allowing us to experience that game, or instead of, god forbid, actually building on that game’s premises and promises. I’m still enjoying the game a lot, but the experience is hella soured by my knowledge of how the game used to play. I’m not sure how enjoyable this remaster would even be to someone unfamiliar with the original.

This remaster feels like a purposeful nail in the coffin of Crystal Chronicles; an excuse to show that the franchise is no longer a potential seller. Whether that’s its actual intent doesn’t really matter, though, since I fear that will be its ultimate effect either way.

[hubskitchen]

Hub’s Kitchen Episode 5: Dragon Ball FigherZ Review: The Game Dragon Ball Fans Need

Hey guys, Hub here again, and welcome to Episode 5 of Hub’s Kitchen. Today, I’m gonna be reviewing Dragon Ball FighterZ for the Playstation 4, Xbox One, and Steam. I apologize for not being active for a good while. Blame college and my okay-ish midterm grades and me getting them up for that. I’ve been wanting to talk about FighterZ for a while, and oddly enough, I didn’t think I was I gonna talk about Dragon Ball so soon on this blog. I’ll get to the point: I’m a casual Dragon Ball fan. I haven’t read the manga, but I have watched the original Dragon Ball anime as well as the Dragon Ball Z anime (well Kai anyway because fuck having to watch 291 episodes). Dragon Ball is not a masterpiece in story-telling, nobody’s gonna argue that it is. However, the fighting and character interactions make up for those shortcomings (except for GT. Fuck GT). That, and Dragon Ball Z Abridged. Watch that, it’s amazing. I have played a few DB games before, mainly the first and third Budokai games and the Legacy of Goku games on the GBA, but I haven’t played that many games from the franchise. Anyway, enough with the stalling, it’s time to review Dragon Ball FighterZ!Oh, and be prepared to see names and storylines that might not be familiar to you guys, since I’m not sure if my followers know anything ‘bout Dragon Ball.

STORY

Dragon Ball FighterZ takes place within the Dragon Ball Super timeline (aka, in between the Buu saga and Peaceful World arc from Z). When exactly? I don’t really know. I’ve seen conflicting reports from saying it takes place after the Universe 6 arc but before the Goku Black arc, other say it takes place before the Tournament of Power. I’m gonna say it takes place before the Goku Black arc, but I think FighterZ is non-canon anyway, much like the DBZ movies. Anyway, because of strange energy waves that are disrupting their power, the Z-Warriors lost all their power (or strength) and are now on the same level, and believe me, for some characters, that is a good thing ‘cause it won’t be another Goku show (That’s what GT is for). The Z-Warriors also see that a soul is trapped inside the main character of the arc (yes, I’ll get to this), and that by linking with that soul, it allows you to fight alongside the Z-Warriors. Elsewhere, there’s a new character: Android 21. All we know from the Super Warriors arc is that she resurrected some of the classic DBZ villains using the Namekian Dragon Balls, like Frieza and Cell, and plans on doing… things to them. I won’t go into spoiler territory because that’s just one of the three stories. Yes, you heard me right. FighterZ gives you three stories to play. The Super Warriors arc, which focuses on the heroes and Goku being the main character (I mean, he is Goku after all), the Villain arc, which focuses more on the villains and Frieza being the main character (man, Super really loves Frieza. Not that I mean, but still), and the Android arc, with Android 18 being the main character. Having three stories in a fighting game, a genre not known for story? Sounds awesome, right? It does… until you actually play the story mode.

Okay, so here’s the biggest problem with the story mode: There are three, fucking stories in this game, and all of them last roughly four hours long. Doesn’t sound bad yet? Well, throughout the story, you move your characters throughout different points on a map, with limit amount of movements. That never becomes a problem, so ignore that. The bad part starts with the clones. As you’re moving along map, you have to fight clones of the characters, and this gets old faaaaaaast. By the time I got to the Android saga, I was so fucking done fighting clones that I had to listen to different music, podcasts, and have something on in the background because I needed something to keep me going. That’s a huge shame because the cutscenes and the character interactions are great. Whenever you enter a fight with certain characters, you’ll get a cutscene to trigger. Let me just say: Anything, and I do mean anything with Cell is fucking gold. Go look up videos of Cell in this game. He’s fucking amazing. It’s just that having to play 3 stories, fight clones the entire time, and for roughly 12 hours too gets tedious and boring fast. It’s easily the weakest part of this game.

PRESENTATION

Dragon Ball FighterZ looks and sounds fantastic. The Unreal 4 engine was used brilliantly, and the game almost looks like it came straight from the anime. The game even lifts direct pages from the manga and anime, like the Father-Son Kamehameha and the Family Kamehameha, and they look beautiful. The characters animate well in cutscenes and on the battlefield, and many of their signature moves (take Krillin’s Destructo Disk or Kiensan for you weebs out there), look fantastic.

The soundtrack is also pretty good, if a little reliant on hard rock. Then again, I love hard rock, so I don’t mind. Sadly, because of this, the music can all blend together, and the character themes are often ignored. A lot of the character themes are great. My personal favorites being Goku, Yamcha, Hit, Gohan, and Vegeta.

The voice acting is solid too. FighterZ allows you to switch between Japanese and English, and as much as I love Masako Nozawa’s take on Goku, I’m more of a Sean Schemmel guy. Anyway, both voice casts do a great job. Got not much to say about that.

GAMEPLAY

If you’ve played Marvel Vs Capcom 2, then you’d understand how Dragon Ball FighterZ works. For the uninitiated, first off, get initiated, but more importantly, DBFZ is a 2D 3v3 style fighting game. What that means is that you have a team of 3 characters and you can tag them in and out of battle. You have your combos, tech, assists to help you in battle, super meter that allows for heavy-hitting attacks, all that good stuff. In an interesting twist, FighterZ is designed as a fighting game first, and a Dragon Ball game second. Most of the time, it’s the other way around. A lot of Dragon Ball games try to capture the feeling of the anime, even down to the gameplay. From what I’ve seen, the Tenkaichi, Raging Blast, and Xenoverse games tend to do this fairly well. While that’s well and fine, I tend to prefer a simple 2D fighter with Dragon Ball characters.

One thing that sets FighterZ apart from something like Street Fighter is that FighterZ decides to make things simpler for new players. The game has an auto-combo system. What that means is that you can press a button (let’s say square for example), and you can get a combo from that. While this is good for introducing players into the game, it’s gonna get their asses kicked if they try to spam auto-combos online. It’s recommended that you get into practicing the game’s mechanics, which the game’s first story in the story mode helps you come to grips with. Or you could try learning the mechanics in the practice mode.

The roster for FighterZ is pretty solid, but if you’re spoiled by the likes of the Budokai Tenkaichi games with their huge rosters, FighterZ might disappoint you. It has everyone important (Goku, Vegeta, both Teen and Adult Gohan, Frieza, etc) to characters from Super like Hit, Goku Black, and Beerus. The game is getting DLC, and the first two characters confirmed are Bardock (father of Goku) and Broly (one of the most popular DBZ movie villains, and is, to quote his abridged movie, is a “literal giant fucking baby”).

Like every fighting game these days, Dragon Ball FighterZ has an online mode. Sadly, this review will not be going over that because I have not played any of them yet ‘cause I don’t have a Playstation Plus subscription at the moment and need to renew it. From what I’ve heard, the online has had several problems, from games losing connection, to having a hard time finding matches, etc. Doesn’t help that the game has this stupid lobby system that you have to be online for. Sure, there’s an offline lobby, but it’s still kinda lame that the game has to have an online lobby to begin with. There recently was an update that I heard fixed some of the problems, as well as adding a Party Mode of sorts, but again, ‘cause I don’t have PS Plus, I can’t verify if that’s the case for me.

OVERALL

Dragon Ball FighterZ is definitely a welcome addition to both Dragon Ball and fighting games in general. While the story mode was a bust outside of great character cutscenes, and the game having some noticeable online problems, FighterZ excels in the most important area: the fighting. Fast-paced, frantic, and easy to play, you don’t need to be a Dragon Ball fan to enjoy this game. I highly recommend it.

And that’s it. Sorry for the lack of depth, but I wanted to try to be quick and to the point with this review, seeing as how it was my first game review. Anyway, on the next episode of Hub’s Kitchen, I’m gonna review my second movie on this blog, and one I’ve had requests for. That movie, is Coco. ‘Til next time guys. I’m Hub Pie, and thanks for reading!

[aurelliocheek]

Iron Danger: The Story of the Story

Story beats and dialogue are finally seeing the light of the screen.

A conversation between the characters tells the player that the healer can be found nearby.

The development of Iron Danger proceeded in an equal combination of fits and starts on the one hand, and leaps and bounds on the other. From the writer’s point of view, the most interesting step appears, as story beats and dialogue, written months ago are finally seeing the light of the screen. All the while I’m going back to those earlier pieces of writing, updating them to conform to changes in the game’s mechanics, level design, characters, enemy roster, and so on. As a result, the script is constantly in flux which is an interesting aspect of game writing. Nothing is set in stone before the game is finished and shipped, but then again, without a solid script, there’s no way to make progress on the actual levels in such a story-driven game. So in this article, we take a look at the process of writing the story that we started building our levels on.

It Starts With A Secret Ingredient When I first started working on Iron Danger, I talked with our lead designer about the story, and he gave me the kernel of it. He had been planning the game for a while and wanted the story to have real emotional resonance, not just one event after another. His insight was that to guide our writing and design in a direction that would produce that resonance; the story should have an underlying metaphorical level: we should treat the story as an allegory of an inherently resonating core metaphor, like a symbolist painting or poem. I thought that was a brilliant approach, and we agreed immediately to construct the story on his core metaphor. We would not make the core metaphor explicit, but its dynamics would provide us with a foundation, on which to construct a coherent story and game experience. The events of the game and the supporting characters, seen from the point of view of our heroine, would symbolize experiences and forces, respectively, relating to this core metaphor. What a kooky, romantic way to write a game!

The dynamics of the core metaphor provides us with a foundation on which to build a coherent story and game experience.

Concept To Outline The core metaphor provides us with an idea. But ideas are cheap, as any writer will go out of their way to tell you. So, the next step was to turn that idea into the outline of a story. For this purpose, I wrote up a sequence of major events over the course of the game, in a table with one column for gameplay events, and a second one for the underlying meta-level meaning. This table went through a number of revisions until I was happy with the logic and structure of both sides. The meta-level was instrumental in making the surface-level story work. Whenever I was in doubt about an event, or some element seemed off, I looked at the meta-level meaning and used the logic of that side to figure out how to fix the surface-level problem.

When I was happy with my table, I turned it into a 3-page prose synopsis, divided into chapters. We dug into this synopsis with the lead designer and other members of the team, seeing how it could be improved, and translating it into an idea of the kinds of game content we would need. If I had invented a character or a place, someone needs to turn that into a game asset. And if I had written an event, say “Kipuna collapses from pain”, that implied another entry on our coders’ and animators’ checklists. Based on such considerations, we moved some of the characters and events around, fusing or removing extraneous ones, and tightening the whole skein a notch. Throughout it all, we kept the meta-level story in mind, to make sure we didn’t lose sight of the emotional core of the game.

To give the player hints, we can get the characters to look at something, or we can have them talk about it.

Scenic Route Once we had a good story synopsis, it was time to refine that into a list of actual scenes. We think of movies consisting of scenes, but games, of course, are made of levels. Right? Well, the approach we took was that from the story point of view, a level would consist of one or more gameplay scenes, interspersed by shorter, story-focused scenes that would just advance the narrative instead of serving up actual gameplay. I went through the prose outline, splitting it up into scene-sized chunks. These I labelled either:

cutscenes, in which the player would more or less passively watch a short presentation of information,

gameplay scenes, the meat and potatoes of actually running around, fighting enemies, and solving puzzles, and finally,

interactive cutscenes in which the player would control the main character in exactly the same way as in core gameplay, but with the focus on dialogue.

  These were further arranged into levels, sequences of scenes that would carry from one to the next seamlessly, each level separated from the next by a cut implying the passing of time.

The spreadsheet containing all this became one of our main tools for managing the production, with required assets listed for each scene, and each one assigned to a specific level designer. Although we all collaborate on each other’s levels, one person finally bears the responsibility of bringing the level to completion and making sure it hangs together. (Yes, I’m one of the level designers too, as are the lead designer, the producer, and the lead concept artist; nobody wears just one hat in our team.)

One of the earliest features that our programmers built into the first Iron Danger prototype was an examine action.

Two Steps Forward, One Giant Leap Back Of course, no big project — even a moderately big one like ours — proceeds from point A to B in a straight line. Time and time again, I find myself going back to the story outline with revisions, and small changes to our level spreadsheet are always ongoing. That’s how it should be, too! A game isn’t a piece of writing, and its story isn’t told when it’s written down: it’s only when we’re actually playing what we’ve built that we can figure out what really works and what doesn’t, and so we jump back frequently and make the changes to the story that our experiences with the game, half-finished as it is, tells us are needed.

So, what is the core metaphor? It doesn’t matter. If we’ve succeeded, the story will be entertaining and evocative, and if not, only knowing about it would not improve things. It’s nothing unique — on the contrary, it’s almost universal — and once you know it’s there, you can probably guess when you’ve played the game if we’ve done our jobs right. Now, I’ve got to fix some dialogue to take out references to an enemy we replaced with another one — seems like the right time to add a more in-depth look at the fundamental practices for creating dialogues.

The characters learn and make decisions through dialogue.

The Three Goals Of Dialogue  Aside, of course, from providing work for voice actors, the dialogue in Iron Danger serves — you guessed it — three purposes:

Providing gameplay information to the player

Carrying the story forwards

Displaying the personalities of the characters and background information about the game world

  Those are three goals that sometimes might not have anything to do with each other, while other times being intimately connected. So I want to show you how we were trying to hit those goals when writing dialogue.

The three goals of the dialogues have not been set up in a vertical hierarchy, because each one flows into the others.

It’s Over Here, Dummy You might not think so, but communicating stuff to the player can be really hard. On the user interface side, pointing out the relevant slab of pixels can involve moving it, putting a highlight around it, making it blink, enlarging it, changing its colour… the list goes on. These are all tricks that use the inborn tendencies of our eyes and brain to guide our attention in the visual field. But we’re more complex than the average mammal, and we have an additional mechanism that most of them don’t: we tend to pay attention to what other people are paying attention to. There are two ways we can use this in our game: we can make the characters look at something, or we can have them talk about it. That latter option is one of the main uses we put dialogue to.

Of course, it’s not just about telling the player where to look; it’s at least as much about providing information the characters have, that the player does not yet have because of the limitations of an artificial game world. That’s why one of the earliest functionalities our coders built into the first Iron Danger prototype was an examine action, for when the player wants to inspect something the heroes come across during the game.

We wanted to have an experience reminiscent of older point-and-click adventure games and isometric RPGs, where the characters are surrounded by a large variety of objects of interest that the players can inspect at their leisure. While we don’t focus on complex puzzles, inventory management or the like, examining objects is still a core part of gameplay, giving the player advice on what to interact with and how.

The conversations should advance the story, give the player real information about what to do next, and round out the characters and setting.

What’s Going On A large slice of Iron Danger’s total word count (I’m not sure if it’s actually a majority, but it’s a lot) is in the form of back-and-forth conversations between two or more characters — that is: actual dialogue. Much of the story is presented in this form: the characters learn and make decisions through dialogue.

It’s all skippable… but if you do skip it, you’ll probably miss a big chunk of the story. In fact, we don’t want to put in any story-carrying dialogue that’s redundant in combination with gameplay. If we decide to tell something through player action, we don’t need to recap it with dialogue, except occasionally to clarify something.

Put In Some Flavour! You could say these three goals are arranged in order of necessity: players need vital information to play the game. They want to know what’s happening in the story they’re playing. And the rest? Character personality and background? It’s just nice to have. You could say that… but I’d disagree with you. These goals haven’t been set up in a vertical hierarchy. Each one feeds into the others, making them more meaningful.

The background details and personalities motivate the player to care about the world and the characters, so the events of the plot gain emotional force. And the plot is vital to motivating gameplay: if you know that the heroine is looking for a shard of ancient power, you, the player, are going to be looking for one in the game. And going all the way around the circle, the gameplay is what brings out little details of the game world and the characters.

The short examination notes are written from the perspective of each specific character, and different characters notice different things.

Mix It Up In addition, the interdependency of the three goals brings us to one core aspect of dialogue that works: it serves more than one purpose. Information that only helps gameplay is almost always dry. Dialogue that just advances story is typically boring, and usually skipped outright. And chit-chat that does nothing except show off the characters or the setting is useless. But combine two goals and nail both, and you’re, well, not guaranteed that the dialogue is worth the player’s time, but at least it’s a start. And if you manage to hit all three, you’re doing something right.

So, optimally, we’d like our conversations to move the story along, provide the player real information on what to do next, and round out our characters and setting, all at the same time. Whenever I write an exchange that manages to do that, I pat myself on the back.

All About The Point Of View The examine action is, again, one way we try to approach this target of hitting two goals at the same time. When the player examines an object in the game, this prompts a short piece of text — a bark — from the currently selected character, just a line or two. But these barks are written from the point of view of that specific character. And different characters notice different things. Sometimes it’s even worth your while to examine the same object with two different characters, to gain twice the insight, both into whatever you’re checking out, and the characters!

Joel Sammallahti Lead Writer

Joel started out in the game business as a concept artist, drifted into designing narratives and game mechanics, and came onboard Action Squad in 2017 as the lead writer. He’s mostly responsible for the game’s storyline, level progression, and dialogue.

The post Iron Danger: The Story of the Story appeared first on Making Games.

Iron Danger: The Story of the Story published first on https://leolarsonblog.tumblr.com/

[returnofdedsec]

Oh bro. I got you. Im gonna separate it into between twl categories: gameplay and story. Spoiler free btw

Gameplay:

It’s fun, if you shut your brain off.

It looks good, but most of london feels boring and dready. I had more fun prancing around chicago than i did wdl

Driving is a lot more smooth, and feature an autodrive mechanic.

The sneaking aspect is a little harder to get around to, because it’s not as “automatic” as it was in wd1 and 2, and if youre peeking around a corner, or there’s slots between your cover, you WILL get spotted, so sometimes fighting feels like the only way to go.

The “you can play whoever” rapidly becomes disappointing.

I didnt expect every character to be totally different, ofc theres going to be repeating models, assets, voicelines, etc, but they all just feel so empty and cookie - cutter. Whenever they speak, or feature in a cutscene as a pre-rendered model and are seen interacting with someone who’s straight up mocap - rigged, it breaks all immersion, and a serious scene just gets turns into me making jokes about my character.

As for the team members, sure they all have different abilities, which makes some characters better to go into areas in others, but there’s gadgets like spiderants, drones with homing missiles, auto-stun brass knuckles, and they all make it so you dont even have to switch characters. I literally cldve played the whole game with one character

Plus, there’s a team cap, so you can only have 15 dedsec members, plus 15 recruits, at one time. And a lot of the time, the recruitment missions are repetitive, and just a drag.

I think the main problem was they tried to make wdl SO open, and SO “accessible,” that is completely backfired, and is now an empty, repetitive mess.

The story:

It makes me want to rip my hair out.

For one, it completely backseats the “hacktivist” aspect thats so core to the wd series. I felt completely cut off from the fact that this is a game about hackers. it replaces the previous lessions about the fears and dangers of technology with empty missions about paramilitary companies and crooked governments, which is fine, but it completely fails.

I got so excited to see named npcs that i rlly just wanted to vibe with them the whole time. Getting calls ever 5 minutes and only hearing their voices really had me “am i gonna actually MEET you dude?” Six different times.

All of the main antagonists were pitifully weak. None ever stood up to the same level as wd1. They werent unlikable, but their story missions were painfully stupid, and boring. The main villain, zero day, was fucking RIDICULOUS and it had me mad as hell by the end of the game

There was no heart put into the story of wdl. No love, no passion, no long-term fan attention. Its just a bleak, weak excuse of a story wrapped in a “cyberpunk” bow

If you want a mindless dreck of a game, sure, get her watch dogs legion. But if you want a GOOD game, try something else

Watch dogs: legion is, and i am not kidding in any capacity, a 4/10 game

[retrorendum-blog]

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune - Review

Title: Uncharted: Drake's Fortune

Available On: Playstation 3, Playstation 4

Reviewed on: Playstation 3

Info: Naughty Dog, 2007

WARNING SPOILERS FOR UNCHARTED

Story:

Uncharted is one of the few games that manages to feel like more of a blockbuster movie mixed in with interactive game play than a straight up video game, which in itself is impressive. It takes obvious notes from movies such as Indiana Jones and National Treasure, and even games such as Tomb Raider. That being said, this game, as well as the rest of the games in the series, feels like an improvement on those franchises because of the quick and witty humor that Drake himself provides. The story of the Uncharted series follows the adventures of a young-ish man named Nathan Drake, who is fascinated with the past and the treasures it holds. The game starts out with Drake finding the coffin of his ancestor and world-renowned treasure hunter, Sir Francis Drake in the middle of the ocean, only to find out that Drake faked his own death, went on an adventure, and left a series of clues behind to guide his predecessors to the long lost treasure of El Dorado. On his quest to follow in Sir Francis' footsteps, Drake is joined by the lighthearted and curious blonde reported Elena Fisher, as well as the grizzly old war man Victor "Sully" Sullivan. Together these characters dodge booby traps, kill pirates, solve puzzles and crawl through crypts to the end of the game, giving the whole this the feel of a great adventure. The thing that really makes this game shine as a movie-like production is how smooth the cutscene transitions are. Going from playing to watching doesn't make it feel as if you're just a passerby, it feels like you become Drake and are there to get him through his obstacles.

Visuals/ Music:Uncharted's graphics are nothing to write home about, but are good enough to keep you engaged in the story and (somewhat) feel the emotions of the characters as they go along their journey. The contrast of settings you traverse is exquisite, from vibrant jungles and raging rivers, to claustrophobic tombs and dark caves, all of which use the colors they are provided to really make the world of Uncharted come alive. The music on the other hand, is incredible. From the moment you pop in the game, the epic Uncharted theme begins and sets the mood for the grand adventure you will soon embark on. Throughout the game the music makes the levels memorable, matching the diverse levels with equally as unique songs to finally complete the atmosphere of Drake's Quest. The voice acting for all of the characters is really quite impressive, especially when in a heated conversation. The script is quirky, and the way the actors voiced the characters so well makes them relatable and human. The one thing sound-wise that may interrupt your immersion in the game is Elena, and how she reacts whenever Drake dies. Her exaggerated gasps and wails sound almost forced, and is the one time I would say the game's voice acting really failed.

Gameplay: The game play of Uncharted isn't anything unique, but the way that the gameplay archetypes are presented is what makes this game unique. It mixes classic cover based shooting similar to Gears of War with terrain platforming from Tomb Raider, both of which are tried and true. The only problem with these different level types being mixed is how painstakingly obvious it is when you're about to enter either one. The shootouts are open areas with an insane amount of low walls and broken down buildings to hide behind, and the platforming sections are very vertical and contain tons of ledges to hang from. The combat in the shootout sections is simple enough but the repetition and fast transitions from platforming can be very overwhelming. The shootouts become an all or nothing battle, you with your pistols and grenades versus hordes and hordes of enemy grunts that sometimes feel like it never ends. There's a good variety of guns to choose from, but most become so situational that it's almost a chore to use anything but a basic pistol and an AK. The hit detection is also sometimes wonky, as you might get a clear headshot on a grunt from 10 feet away, and it might do nothing but knock his hat off and alert him that you're there. The game is also plagued by obnoxiously and unnecessarily difficult quick-time events that require you to press circle to roll out of the way, or (and this is the real problem), mash triangle an ungodly number of times to get a gate open. My final complaint about this game is the lack of collectibles. For a game whose focus is on being a treasure hunting adventurer, you might expect there to be chests of gold or figurines around every corner, but the truth is there are only some 60 odd collectibles to find in the entire game, which is kind of a letdown.

Verdict: Uncharted is an incredible game and a hilarious experience, and Drake's Fortune just leaves you wanting more of Nathan Drake's witty personality. Luckily you can satiate that craving for cleverness by playing Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception and Uncharted 4: A Thief's End. Uncharted is a must own or a t least a must try for any PS3 or PS4 owner, and I highly recommend it to everyone who enjoys comedy or action. Uncharted: Drake's Fortune gets an 8/10, it might be flawed in some ways, but it's wit and quick thinking makes up for all of those problems.

[thedogcouch]

Watch Dogs 2 review

Game Information SystemPS4, Xbox One, Get WriterUbisoft CreatorUbisoft Montreal Releasedate2016-11-15 Cost at StartD/A

Most importantly otherwise, Watchdogs 2 is just a sport about being youthful, furious in the program and sure that do you know whatis greatest for that globe.

On just how much you are able to relate solely to that situation, just how much you prefer it might depend.

As within the first sport, Watchdogs 2 spots you within the part of an undercover vigilante, a hacker harming safety defects in telephones and personal computers in a mission to reveal corporate problem. And such as the first sport, Watchdogs 2 collides headfirst using the same ethical problems confronted by hackers in-real-life: in the event you manipulate a damaged program simply because you are able to? Who’s it ok for you really to pursue? How far is much?

Unlike its precursor, nevertheless, Watchdogs 2 ditches the deadly importance, even while it challenges having a few large problems. The irritable vengeance story of the very first sport hasbeen changed in cheek firmly having a tongue, skewering the technology business and also Valley most importantly. This tone that is fresh feels as though a far more organic match to both tradition and also the open world style, also it results in a sequel that is clearly a much more enjoyment — even when it gives a few of the defects of the unique sport.

Marcus is just a more down-to-planet, definitely more pleasant major personality

Following a occasions of the very first — where a criminal hacker totally required along a personal protection system grounded within the structure of Detroit — technology organization Blume reconstructed its omniscient computer program, ctOS, and distribute it to towns over the Usa. Watchdogs 2 is placed within the Bay Region in Florida, wherever an Oakland-centered hacker called Marcus Holloway ties up using the blackhat combined DedSec to once more face-off against ctOS and Blume.

Where Watchdogs protagonist Aiden Pearce was a gruff, lone-wolf vigilante out for vengeance, Marcus is just a more down-to-planet, definitely more pleasant main figure. He and his pals that are DedSec are — eliminate me — millennials that are they ‘ve got design, they create enjoyment of every additional.

They invest lots of period equivocating about whether or not theyare hipsters.

Watchdogs 2 isn’t a sport. Marcus reaches least in continuous conversation together while he is no longer working alongside his teammates straight. Entire hours of the overall game receive to creating these figures out, to the stage where I did sonot actually recognize I started to truly enjoy them. Figures like Sitara, a DJ who offers the graphic-design sensibilities of DedSec, grew me as normally of friends like a real life number. Face-mask, I actually discovered to adore Wrench -worthy, loud mouthed basketball of power who wears a Silly Punk-impressed that flashes emoticons through its glasses.

The goals you handle in Watchdogs 2 are about as diverse and wacky whilst the throw of figures. From infiltrating an in-sport Google clone’s pretentious university to hiking your tag to be left by the Goldengate Link about the town, side-missions and primary missions period through set-piece occasions in a speed that is breathless. You are seldom requested to review a place and small space is left by the sport for duplication in its strategy.

Significantly, Watchdogs 2 draws back only a teensy bit in the “load the chart with symbols” method of openworld gameplay that’s arrived at determine writer Ubisoftis steady of openworld games. There is still lots to complete lots of methods you are able to shed oneself discovering the planet all night, within the sport. However it what is there mostly entails operating the right path through skillfully created areas that sense less universal than almost anything within the first sport, and is never frustrating.

Alongside its clean method of globe and objective style, Watchdogs 2 additionally starts its planet up instantly. Irrespective of two or one little updates which you’ll uncover briefly in to the sport, you may generate anyplace about the chart and access something in the start. From Sausalito to Oakland Mateo, you are able to go-anywhere within the Bay Region immediately, and should you feel like playing around each area is saturated in unlockables and identifiable attractions to discover. As somebody whois existed in Bay Area for five decades, I got lots of pleasure in tracking accustomed websites down. Watchdogs 2is digital edition of the town is reduced, without doubt, however it definitely catches the taste of the location I really like.

Marcus’ toolset interact and to discover with that globe has developed mainly, and from Aidenis for that greater. The tool inside your combat ctOS is the telephone, that allows one to crack into something attached to the structure in the town — that will be to express, almost anything. Want to get? Crack a technology cell that is regional, contain it create a sound that attracts the shieldis interest, till they distribute after which make the guard. Require a diversion that is larger? Make use of the computer gear of a regional vehicle . Through anyone experience, you are able to discover a large number of paths with a few digging, whenever a wise technique comes and it is excessively gratifying.

Beyond these accustomed hacking resources, Marcus has two unique improvements within a quadcopter to get a bird’s-eye view along with the type of drones: an vehicle for floor pursuit. Coughing the right path through tasks in Watchdogs usually thought just like a problem; the drones permit Watchdogs 2 to accept this notion much more, placing you in circumstances where battle abilities are totally eliminated and also the only method through is cautious navigation and adjustment of issues within the atmosphere together with your drones. They truly are excellent resources that drive to achievement for actually wiser degree style with increased pathways.

Watchdogs 2 additionally becomes a far more literal problem in a commonly used coughing mini game. To manage machines that are more complex, tracks must be connected by Marcus to one another, flipping around “bones” to make sure that the ability moves within the path that is correct. These are simple but function between your tenser sneaking of the primary sport like a good change of speed. The overall game periodically attempts to then add trouble by producing these mini games timed, but they never really questioned me.

What I did so discover difficult — and never for that correct factors — was Watchdogs 2is firing. As the game centers around going stealthily through places and coughing, Marcus may also bring lots of effective weaponry by 3D publishing numerous weapons (among the more laughable items of the overall gameis undertake today’s technology, although it will occur in-real-life to some restricted degree). Outside two or of one factors, I had been never pressured to make use of weapons. Nevertheless, as issues improvement, I had been positioned into progressively difficult circumstances where the overall game prodded me begin firing and to provide in. “You Are within an adversary compound’s center, encased by a large number of pads,” it appeared to state. “Would Not it’s more straightforward to simply break the weapons? out “

In a game title saturated in intelligent turns on open world and stealth gameplay, weapons in Watchdogs 2 really are a total disappointment of creativity. The address-centered firing functions fine it’s really a dull utilization of period in a global with a lot of more fascinating methods to communicate. Additionally, it seems totally at-odds using the tone of the number of hackers of this sport. Once a disease is being uploaded by the team to fake installing or a well known social-network documents to reveal a politician, they run into like there of would-be a pleasant group Hoods. Once theyare firing along a large number of FBI agents police and universal team members it becomes only a little tougher to obtain behind the trigger, sotospeak. The cutscenes more often than not paint DedSec being an Unknown-esque number of tranquil hacktivists, which suggests the question are weapons at all, beyond the stun-gun that the overall game is started by you with?

That isn’t the only real location where Watchdogs 2is tone falters. Most of the tasks Marcus assumes are far more difficult compared to sport cares to notice. Right into an adolescent womanis webcam to frighten her, you crack in one single, to “train her a training” that himself should n’t be streamed by her online.

DedSecis major, target-accusing thinking: Operating your cam is vulnerable, and she might be stalked by somebody.

In another unpleasant number of side-missions, you get almost all their cash removed and an arrest warrant or crack ATMs and choose whether each arbitrary civilian attempting to make use of the ATM warrants to get a lot of cash. These options are made by you centered off some moments of conversation and small thoughts of info.

Watchdogs 2 gives some lip-service towards the indisputable fact that these hackers should find it difficult to prevent getting the things they dislike. By utilizing all-powerful application that is to control the planet, might they be poor whilst the companies they truly are battling against? However in the finish, lips support is all it’s. Again and again, DedSec holds the part of judge, court and (whenever you choose weapons) executioner, with small actual self awareness.

In a strictly comedic tale — plus one with less focus on killing people — this may function, but each time Watchdogs 2 attempted to become more severe, I acquired cut from the sportis foolish alternative reality.

from Welcome to the Dog couch http://www.thedogcouch.com/watch-dogs-2-review/