Category: video games

When Demon Souls came out and everyone on Talking Time was talking about how wonderful/awful the game was I didn’t pay much attention. I don’t own a PS3 and I, generally, don’t play games that endlessly punish the player. When the unofficial sequel to the game, Dark Souls, came out on the Xbox 360 Talking Time is again abuzz with discussions of the game, its difficulty, and how best to play the game. Now, though I wasn’t as distanced from the game, I own a 360, and in a moment of weakness I picked the game up. I opened it up last night and played for about an hour…

What have I got myself into it?

Much like its predecessor this isn’t a game designed with many modern sensibilities. The designers expect you, nay they actively want you, to die. The gimmick being that death just kicks you back to your last save point and you’re stripped of all the experience you’ve gained but you can reclaim it all if you make it back to the spot where you died. There is no map of the game (so far), the manual is a mere three pages thick and fails to explain anything. There are a lot of stats that effect the performance of your character and none of them are clearly explained nor are the equipment, magic, everything systems. If it wasn’t for the internet (game forums, wikis, FAQs, etc.) this game would, for the majority of people who play it, remain opaque. It appears that there are a number of complex systems operating in the background of the game but there seems to be very little in the way of accessing them outside of intense trial-and-error and numerous replays. This game is dying for a meaty manual, one that could better explain the games background, story, and mechanics. Something akin to the manuals that accompanied such games as Darklands, Civilization, or Baldur’s Gate 2.

Sadly, it seems game publishers have abandoned their duty to inform and enlighten the people who play their games handing over that responsibility to either strategy guide publishers (who will charge you a hefty fee, sometimes more than $20, for information that might not even be correct) or the players themselves. I just don’t have the time or energy, right now, to sit down and play a game endlessly trying to figure out information that should have been included in the manual. I’ll poke at the game little more if I have time and maybe I’m wrong about all this, but not from what I’ve seen so far and heard from those who have played it much more than I have.

I wonder why people don’t complain about this sort of thing when the designer says it was intentional but tear developers apart for the exact same crimes in games in which the inscrutability of the game isn’t advertised as a “feature?” Bad design is bad design intentional or not, right?

I guess I’ll just go back to playing Quest for Glory: So You Want to be a Hero?

When I heard that half of the team that created Super Meat Boy was making “some sort of rogue-like” I was sufficiently interested to follow the game’s progress on the developer’s blog. When it came out and I saw the game it had me scratching my head. People’s description’s didn’t help either, “it’s a dual stick shooter in random generated Legend of Zelda dungeons with an item-based leveling system” Uh, okay… What does that even mean?

The creator’s explanation didn’t make a lot of sense either:

Isaac is a roguelike shooter based on the dungeon structure of Zelda (nes). At its core it controls like Smash TV / Robotron in a randomly generated semi RPG world filled with powerups items and special abilities. There is not a traditional leveling system in Isaac, instead we used an item system. Every level will have a treasure room, shop, boss and other secret/special rooms that might contain unique items. Special items come in 4 sets, Usable items, Special Weapon upgrades, Passive upgrades and stat boosters. 90% of items in the game stack, so as you progress your character will change into a monstrous powerhouse not only in stats and abilities but also in appearance… Aside from these core items, Isaac uses its pickup items as resources in what i call micro puzzles. the core resources in the game are Coins, Bombs, Keys, Hearts, cards and pills each of these pickups can be used in different ways to acquire special items, gain access to shops and hidden areas, kill enemies and also affect gameplay in many other ways.

So I downloaded it and have been playing it the last hour or so. And, that is exactly what the game is! So, if you had as much trouble parsing just what you do in this game from the text above I’m not going to be able to help you. Sorry! I can tell you that the game is fun and strangely addictive. Why strange? I don’t like rogue-likes. They take bad game design, turn around, and market said bad game design as the central aspects of the genre. Nothing is explained to the player, visually, aurally, or narratively. Every encounter with an object can lead to a player’s death without any indication from the game. Items, if they don’t kill you when you pick them up, are just as opaque as the rest of the game requiring you to use them in order to determine their use. Some people enjoy rogue-likes, I get it; but, some people enjoy enemas. I’m just saying. Binding of Isaac isn’t as bad as ADOM but it isn’t clear what is ever going on either (unless you’re taking notes, I suppose… But, I’m playing a video game not doing homework!)

My other complaint has to do with the graphic design. I was tired of browns, red, and pinks after DOOM II I don’t know why people are still designing games with such limited palettes. And for whatever reason Edmund McMillen’s character designs just aren’t doing it for me in this game. I haven’t got past the Caves II though so maybe the art shows a little more variety later on. I’m hoping that is the case.

Full review next week(?)