DIY Edition
The weekend was principally focused on non-gaming activities and the week was fairly packed likewise; I’m not sure if you heard but we’re expecting a new member of the family late summer so my wife has a certain trump card on activities if she chooses to play it and it got some heavy use over the last seven days. This is not to be interpreted as a complaint, mind. When the woman carrying your child not on but actually in her person says, “Hey let’s go shopping for clothes that cover my changing body” you do not reply with, “No thanks, I’m going to kill this giant alien crab instead.”
You just don’t.
What you do instead is try to squeeze in a few games here and there, often late at night with headphones to allow her as much sleep as she can get.
- LittleBigPlanet
In spite of my initial thoughts that my principal joy in the game would come from building my own levels, I have yet to push through the tutorials so I can get to the creation engine unhindered. Instead I realized that the level builder is somewhat reliant on the collectibles you gather from progression through the story mode so I’ve been trying to chip away at that.
The relationshiop between the two halves of the game, the play portion and the creation portion, is obviously meant to be entwined this way by design. But honestly I think I would prefer it to be more decoupled because as a co-dependent system I find that neither are compelling enough. As a platformer the game is charming enough but it relies way too much on the collection-addiction routine that so many platformers are building as their principal reward mechanism. It relies on the players re-playing the same levels over and over to find every last secret and get 100% completion. But that isn’t the way I play games, at least not anymore. Repetition is something I feel like I grant a game as a reward for making me feel like my time has been well spent: I played Resident Evil 4, Eternal Darkness, BioShock and Portal multiple times not because I wanted to collect ‘em all, but because those games acheived something I appreciated enough to experience again.
LittleBigPlanet isn’t in those ranks and as a result I’m stuck in this neverland where I find the game to be intriguing but not especially delightful. If I want to experience the depth of what the game has to offer I have to approach it in a way that is contrary to what I want from it. And there is the block I know will cause me to stumble: For a game that supposes to offer me creativity and freedom, it has hemmed me in to its design philosophy and I already resent it.
The bigger surprise to me now comes from the realization that after giving so many PS3-exclusive titles a try, the software in this generation (which is the only thing that matters at all to me) has been dominated in terms of my individual enjoyment by the Xbox 360. Contrasting the Sony-specifics like Folklore, LittleBigPlanet, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, Heavenly Sword, Ratchet and Clank Future, Resistance and Everyday Shooter to Xbox-only titles such as Crackdown, Gears of War, Halo 3, Mass Effect, Kameo: Elements of Power, Pac-Man Chamopionship Edition and Perfect Dark Zero I think overall the games that you can only play on Xbox outpace the exclusives on the PlayStation. Now I haven’t played all the exclusives on either system (notably Metal Gear Solid 4, Haze, Killzone 2 plus Halo Wars, Fable II and Too Human) but preferring neither Sony nor Microsoft I judge the value of the system on the software it provides and secondarily on the experience it can offer for those games which are not exclusive. Of the PS3 titles above I can cite Uncharted and Everyday Shoorter as good games while Crackdown, Gears, Halo 3, Mass Effect, Kameo and Pac-Man are all solid generational offerings. Perhaps most telling is that I completed all of the listed Xbox exclusives (plus some I didn’t list like Saint’s Row, Bullet Witch and Viva Piñata) while I never bothered completing Folklore, Resistance or Ratchet and Clank. Likewise I probably won’t finish LittleBigPlanet and in fact it’s already in the running for next big-point title to hit Goozex when I need a new points infusion.
Like I said, I don’t have any particular allegiance to a platform, they are merely vehicles to drive my ability to play games. Yet I know that I have a certain affection for all the hardware I own: The vanilla utilitarian ode to hardcore gamers that is the Xbox 360, the universally appealing DS, the sexy unrealized potential within the PSP… but it is the surprising underdog status in the sleek Blu-Ray player slash PS3 that makes it endearing. I want it to succeed because when it hits like with the best BR movie experiences, the straightforward PSN Store pricing and free online play, it feels like it has what I miss in the 360. The glaring ommission in there is “software I care about.” Quite the trump card, that. - Blood Bowl
I played half of a game last week, again with the elves this time against Skaven. I think Skaven and Elves are a little more equally matched initially, although this particular opponent granted me 320,000 gold in inducements so saying they’re a few games ahead of my pace is putting it mildly. The strange thing about inducements is that they can kind of create a weird scenario in which you either induce, say, a Star Player who is then by definition far and away the most talented player on your team and thus a massive target for the opponent (arguably not the worst thing in the world). Or, wishing not to waste all your inducement funding on little more than very expensive Big Guy bait, you induce things like Team Training for rerolls or Apothecaries to keep your guys alive and risk not even using what you’ve induced. You can induce Mercenaries if you want more cost-effective cannon fodder, but cost-effective is relative; a reasonable Mercenary addition is a base lineman cost plus 80,000 gold and they don’t even have the option like Journeymen of joining the team after the game plus they suffer the Loner penalty skill.
Anyway, so far I’m ahead in the game 1-0 and we’ll hopefully finish it this coming week. Playing against a team like the Skaven which have the best chance of a one-turn score (Gutter Runners have MV 9, plus with Sprint they can move up to 11 and Sure Feet makes that a little easier; it’s just a matter of getting that extra +1 MV skill roll or getting the right kickoff roll) means that even the swift Elves need to worry about committing too much to one play. I have to say, with Skaven kicking off and rolling a Blitz, the GR got under the ball and caught it. It was only a missed dodge that saved the first-turn score and it took me the rest of the half to get into the end zone. As I prepare to kick off to him in the second half, I’m pretty fearful that I’ll end up getting the ball back with four or less turns to score and a tie game since it’s pretty clear to me that my defensive strategy isn’t strong enough to hold him off. - Puzzle Quest
The PSP has gotten more of a workout in the last couple of weeks than the DS thanks to the ubiquitous presence of Puzzle Quest as my downtime activity. I play in the restroom, I play while my wife tries on maternity clothes, I play when I have a few minutes to kill before I need to leave the house on an errand. I admit that the convenience of the DS brings to light the sad fact that there is no ideal version of this game: I want the small form factor and handly clamshell-sleep of the DS hardware with the fidelity and control mechanics of the PSP software. Lacking such an option I’m settling for better gameplay than an ideal delivery mechanism as the lesser of two evils. - Left 4 Dead
I’m still finding fun playing in single-player mode. I had my finger hovered over the Versus or Co-op modes at one point but ultimately my fear of having my fun ruined by RIS (Random Internet Strangers) was too great. I still have a few more achievements that I could get in single-player mode (kill 1,000 zombies with a mounted machinegun, survive a campaign with no friendly fire incidents) so perhaps once my incentive to play with AI partners is completely gone I’ll be left with no choice but to brave the unwashed Live masses. And when it comes to unwashed, you’ll find few specimens more raw and pungent than those on Live.
Pray for me. - Scrabble
I finally decided to separate my Facebook games individually because I’m not playing some hybrid and in fact have come to treat each of these pastimes with close to the same level of attention and consideration as any other gaming title, even playing them in lieu of other games I could be engaging with. Scrabble specifically is at the fore of my mind because it’s a game so many others identify with readily and I have games going with my wife, my brother, my parents individually… plus I have games in play that take advantage of the multiplayer facet with combinations of friends and family. I’m a mediocre Scrabble player; I find that there is a game in Scrabble beyond mere vocabulary. For example, the ability to mentally design plays that take advantage of available points-enhancing spaces in late game like (_ ) (TL) I (_ ) T (DW). If you could see a 20-point score on “IDIOTS” from a rack of “DEOLIIS” you can succeed in Scrabble. I’m more likely to see the 9-point “DIET.” - Attack!
Risk is different from Scrabble because at least with the latter game you can more or less just play your own game. The only real influence you can exert there is whether or not you take the score multiplier spots. In Risk your every move has to be calculated against what your opponent will or is likely to do. We’ve been playing several three-player games lately and the difficult part for me is in identifying the true threat while trying to maintain my standing. Generally speaking it seems that in Risk you want to focus most on other players who have established footholds that grant them additional armies in the opening phase, but it can be hard to overlook encroachment on your existing territory. That is, the distraction level of maintaining your fortifications can lead to another player who slowly builds a force that is difficult if not impossible to overtake.
My biggest complaint with Attack! is that while Scrabble is a bit annoying interface-wise, it has no actual usability issues that I’ve found. Attack! on the other hand has a fairly serious issue where if you click the button to advance past a phase won’t verify the selection and doesn’t allow you to back up. Now to a certain degree this makes sense (you shouldn’t be able to back out once you’ve drawn your card in case that would change your attack strategy) but some simple logic to determine if you’ve made any phase actions or not and verify or allow moving back to the previous phase if no actions have been taken in the current would prevent wasted turns and frustration. Especially if the errant button click was due to the game’s inherent lag and sluggish performance.
I’m just sayin’. - Bananagrams
Part of the Scrabble bonanza on Facebook has been a renewed interest in tabletop Scrabble as well. We have a copy at home but it didn’t make the cut of games pulled out for easy access when we unpacked in our apartment a year ago so it is going to take a bit of effort to dig in and fish it out. In the meantime I found this game that my parents gave me for my birthday which I guess can also be played with regular Scrabble tiles. It’s similar to a boardless Scrabble except that you start with seven tiles and build your own crossword out of it rather than creating a shared board. As soon as someone uses all their tiles, they announce “Draw” and all players take a new tile. You can rearrange your crossword anytime you like but the challenge is not to get too far behind everyone else since the winner is the person who completes their crossword first after all tiles have been drawn. The way the game seems to progress is you stay fairly close early on and then someone finds a good base and a few lucky draws, they start adding and making minor adjustments, consistently intiating new draw events while the other player(s) work furiously to keep up.
In the game Nik and I played, I found my groove once I used “miscreant” as my base and tore through much of the pile but after being behind for most of the game Nik hit on a winning formula right as the draw pile waned and came out victorious in the end. I thought it was a very fun game and something I’d certainly play again although the speed of the game would seem to be pretty dependent on the initial draw and the number of players. With two the game lasted about 20 minutes (granted it was also our first time) and that felt long for a game that is supposed to be played in rounds. - Conquest of Pangea
I picked this game up for a song at last year’s DunDraCon and only now, over a year later, had the chance to give it a try. It is basically an area control game in which the inital areas are grouped into landmasses that start connected but drift apart as the game progresses. When the continents have separated it takes extra effort to expand your control into them which means the balance of power in separated areas becomes more heavily tilted to whomever controlled the most prior to the separation.
The game’s presentation is pretty nice but I felt to a certain extent like they put a lot of their money into bits of the game that were really unnecessary from a gameplay perspective. Did we really need drawstring cloth bags for the pieces and yet semi-lame cardboard punchouts for the rafts? The principal mechanic at work is a series of action points which serve both to allow you to progress as well as to attack and defend limit-reached areas. This makes most of the game a matter of balance between aggression and defensive abilities since some of your other capabilities are tied to special dominance-based cards. Since some action points refresh each turn it seemed like whomever received refreshing points with no other abilities tied to them first took a commanding lead, it was a bit wonky in terms of game balance. There are also a lot of weird random elements in there as well: The lengthy setup phase makes possible games where some dominance cards never become a factor and the per-turn time card frequently grants head-scratching bonuses or setbacks. All told, it wasn’t bad and I’d probably play it again but it has that air of a game that relies on the right mix of random elements coming together to be really strong, almost like it needs the equivalent of Catan’s base setup. Lacking that, I don’t know if I’d want to plough through enough games to find that sweet spot and I wonder if even were it found it would live up to similar, but better titles.
Parting Shot
I threatened to do it and this week I went ahead and canceled my World of Warcraft subscription. I realize my infatuation with the game was very brief but truthfully it is the kind of game I would have to just have lying around for me to get the full effect from. I guess I never considered this about myself but I’m way too ADD about my gaming to have something like WoW tie me down for very long. Especially since WoW is seemingly endless and has ceased to offer me enough of a coherent narrative to provide any significant carrot once I felt like I had at least tasted most of what the game had to offer. I suppose I put about as much time into WoW in three months as I did into Oblivion in about that same time frame and when you boil it down I paid $60 for Oblivion and a total of $50 for WoW so the experiences were comparable for a mild savings on WoW.
If you grant that I also paid an additional $20 or $30 on add-on content for Oblivion I could probably squeeze another couple of months out of WoW down the road to even them out, but there’s no way I can move into the WoW expansion content neither for comparison to Oblivion’s sake nor for my current interest level in WoW. It’s also not even a matter of gaming value, the truth is that it’s becoming harder to make my own fun in WoW. Perhaps this is a product of my class selection but I dislike the notion that a game can be compelling only if you play it a certain way. Right now I’m barely interested in logging in for a few hours a week and my thoughts of making 60 by the time my paid time has ended are now distant. It’s not something I mourn, it’s merely a statement of truth.