Narrative and Games

 I think one thing I really like in games is a strong narrative. But tonight I was kind of thinking of how sometimes there is kind of a bit of conflict between the narrative and the more gamesy aspect of a game. What I mean is that sometimes I get hooked into the flow of the narrative and so the gamesy stuff will start to feel like it is interfering with the flow of the narrative, particularly if it stops me and I have to work on solving a problem.

But at the same time, when the gamesy aspect is too light or easy it can feel a little passive. Like I am playing along with the game rather than playing the game.

So there are two parts of me. One part kind of craves something that is more crunchy. This means like having more rules or systems or mechanics to master. The other part is the part that craves the narrative aspect.

But there is also kind of a laziness factor. If the crunchy part is too complicated or requires too much effort then I have tendency to just give up on learning it and so give up on the game to the extent it requires me to interact with those systems.

Part of it has to do with the somewhat disposable nature of games. There is part of me that feels like most of these various games I play will only be played one time if they are something like an RPG that is very story focused. And even with other kinds of games with greater replayability it can often seem like I will play it for a while and then move onto something else.

One attraction of a game like chess or go is that you know it has a great deal of depth, so the investment in the game seems worthwhile.

So for these reasons, it can seem a lot of times with games that it just doesn't feel super worth it to learn the mechanics and like master the builds because that knowledge of won't really be that useful when I move on to the next game.

But I feel like this is something I would like to change. This is because I really do feel intrigued by the crunchy part of games even though I am not very good at that stuff. One of the fascinations with a game like chess or go is the way players have mastered the technical apparatus of the games. I feel like I would like to get more comfortable learning these systems and how to do things with them. And I do think that there is some kind of transferable knowledge in these things. Basically, many of these mechanics do appear in many games. There may be variations but being familiar with the basics is transferable and will shed light on the ways that these mechanics are different.

I feel there are kind of two sides to this. One is my part in the sense that I feel like I need to make some effort to pay more attention to these systems. But I feel like part of it is the games. I feel like I need to be on the lookout for a game that kind of attracts me enough that it feels worth the effort of digging into.

 

Collecting and Games

 Just thinking a bit about collecting. I definitely have a collecting instinct. Whatever I am involved in I like to collect it. One of the appeals of Magic is collecting the cards. But I also have collected baseball cards, chess and go books, role playing books, and video games among other things.

Judging from video games, a lot of other people have the collecting bug as well because there are often collecting mechanics in games and some games center on this idea, like Pokemon for instance with collecting the monsters and whatnot.

But collecting comes with real problems too. First off, it generally costs money and I am not a rich man. In fact, I have debts I should be paying. Secondly, if you are collecting real world things then you need space to put the collected items. We also live in a small apartment and my stuff already takes up most of the space in my wife's and my room. Thirdly, there is a worry about counterfeit items. Fourthly, physical items can be destroyed by fire or disaster or stolen. They can also be difficult to transport. Fifthly, digital items often have the problem that they are trapped in some specific ecosystem that has a lifespan. If I buy Magic cards in real life they are mine to keep and I can do with them what I please. But cards on Arena are trapped in there and if the company goes belly up then I will lose my cards. Sixthly, collecting needs to be satisfying. I think in some ways this is related to the first worry. Basically this has two sides, first there has to be some sense that there is some effort involved in obtaining the items. Either monetary expense or like some kind of effort. But the flip side is that there has to be a sense of accomplishment. One of the problems with collecting Magic cards is just the sheer number of them. It just feels like I will never have a complete collection in any sense.

So, I guess I have tried to come up with a solution to these and other problems. An idea I had just yesterday was to try to focus on collecting in video games. This of course has the worry about an ecosystem with a lifespan. But I was thinking about trying to compare and contrast different collecting systems in different games. So this copes with that a bit in terms of feeling like rather than putting all my eggs in one basket I can try different systems. I was also thinking about doing collecting in video games that doesn't cost additional money beyond the initial cost of the game but rather collecting through playing the game.

So, I think that would be an interesting project but it remains to be seen whether this would truly be satisfying. I guess the purpose of this post is just to try to put this idea down so I can come back to it and see if the project takes off or if it just dies on the vine.

Game Finished: House of Da Vinci 2

 Well, this is just a short note to say I finished the game. The rest was about the same, so basically fairly easy stuff with some more challenging puzzles every once in awhile. So I am satisfied, I have wishlisted a couple of their other games but feel a bit mixed. I liked this one well enough to get through it which is saying something. But there was some feeling at times of like "why am doing all this again?" So I feel a bit mixed on whether I would really be able to get through a second helping. But maybe not right away but later I will be in the mood for this kind of thing again. So one interesting note is the on "How Long to Beat" which is a website that gives times to beat games, it gives about 7 hours. It took me more than 20. So I am unsure whether that is because I am such a bad solver or if it has to do with people using the hints a lot more freely than me. I did use the hints a second time but in the end the only thing the hints made clear that I didn't already know was that I wasn't handling the controls wrong to try to undo a mistake I had made. Anyways, I only paid 119 NT for this which is 71% off. So I feel I got my money's worth. The only other thing to say is that the controls on the deck were a bit awkward at times and made one particular puzzle more difficult than it had to be.

G-eight video game expo

So, recently someone in the FB chat group for magic players at a Growlife (a game store I frequent) mentioned that they would be working a booth at G-eight all weekend so we should come by and visit. I hadn't heard of this but I was looking for something to do Saturday during the day so I searched online and found out that G-eight is a video game expo for indie games held here in Taipei with games from Taiwan, Korea, Japan and the US. This was in line with my recently expressed desire to write about indie games on this blog so I decided to go. It helped a lot that the ticket price for one day was just 300 NT which is about 10 USD.

I have been to the site of the expo many times because there are a bunch of restaurants there including one we like to go to for fish and chips. But I hadn't ever been into the expo space. It is an old converted soccer stadium. Luckily I wandered right up to the entrance even though it is a bit hidden. I felt a bit surprised that overall it seemed a bit small but of course my only point of reference for gaming conventions is Gencon which is huge. I was also surprised at how large the "adult games" (read porno) section is. It was walled off and of course I didn’t go in but it took up a good chunk of the real estate. The other thing that surprised me was how sexualized some of the stuff that was outside of the adult area was. I know this is just part of the gaming culture from my experience of Steam (on online video game market) but was a bit taken aback about how out in the open it was here.

 

So at first I wandered around and just got the lay of the land. Basically there were a lot of "booths" with computers to try out the games. Most of these had lines of people waiting to play. So eventually I walked up to a computer that was empty and the guy came to help me. They seemed to think it was funny that I asked if the game had English because of course it would as it is an international expo. I didn't really like the game much but played it for a little bit just to give it a try. It was one where you would select soldiers to put down on the battlefield between your two cities. You didn't actually control the soldiers on the battlefield. They run around on their own and if they eliminate the enemy soldiers they will attack the opponent's city. There was some confusing mechanic where you could place the soldiers in a grid and combine them to make more powerful units before putting  them on the battlefield. You also have a pretty low limit on how many soldiers you can have on the battlefield at the same time. The graphics were pixel graphics (meaning very low resolution 2D images) and I didn't think it looked good at all. Some pixel graphics are pretty good but not this. So when I was finished I got up and the guy gave a collectible trading card that all the booths have.

So then I was wandering around and looking for a bathroom when Eric spotted me. Eric is the guy who had posted about it. He is quite nice and has a great dog named Pooper that he brings to Growlife. (Pooper was sadly absent from the expo.) I am kind of surprised that he spotted me because he was in the middle of playing the game he was demoing with Fox (another Magic player). We chatted a bit. I find his work situation kind of confusing. He is always kind of vague and has described himself as a pro-gamer and as a "fixer" as in someone who is good at like solving problems and like connecting people. He set up an internship for the twins as an example. He seems to work for a gaming company of some kind but I am not clear exactly what they do but he travels internationally a lot. He was kind of explaining that he was like a cofounder of this game publisher that is based in Shanghai and like used “we” and he was working the table so I thought this was like his job. But then he was explaining he works for them on paper but doesn’t really actually do anything for them. So just another aspect of his job situation that is confusing. So he finished playing with Fox so I sat down and tried his game. I also played against Fox. It was ok. It was kind of a weird concept. It was a tower defense game (meaning waves of the opponents soldiers advance toward your tower and attack it. You have to keep them at bay with your own soldiers who will try to attack the opponents tower. These soldiers are also automated in that you don't directly control them.) But it was combined with a slot machine mechanic. Basically you keep  pulling the lever for the slots and if you win it will award you items you can use in the battle. I liked it significantly better than the first game but I still don't think I would pay money for it. I did ok but Fox won in the end. So Eric gave us some extra trading cards. Including ones from last year that he claimed some people were seeking.

 

So then I wandered around some more.  Then I saw a game that looked ok. It was like a 2D platformer. I guess the best way to describe that genre is kind of like Mario Brothers from the original Nintendo system. So someone was already playing so I just stood to the side next to this other guy who I assumed was waiting to play. So this guy struck up a conversation. He asked where I was from. I said US but he didn’t understand at first until finally it clicked for him and he said "Oh USA". Then he asked me if I was a developer or whatnot and I said I am just a player who lives in Taipei. He told me he is a programmer working for a small indie studio. I asked him what games he worked on but he just said 2d platformers. So I asked him if he worked on this game because when he started to talk to me I thought he might be an attendant for this game we were watching but he said no. So then he was asking me if I like this kind of 2d platformer. I was kind of non committal. He asked me what I like to play. I said rpgs (roleplaying games but video games not the tabletop kind) and he was asked me if I like jrpgs (Japanese RPGs which kind of have their own aesthetics and style) or arpg (meaning action RPG, more combat oriented where you control the movements of your character in real time battles). So I said I don’t play jprgs because I couldn’t really remember what arpg stood for. So he was like yah, jrpgs can be kind of foreign. So then he was pressing me a bit about it so I kind of just acquiesced to the whole arpg idea. So then he said I probably like The Witcher (This is a very famous series but in particular the 3rd one which is often ranked as one of the best video games of all time. It is about a monster hunter called a Witcher. They are making a TV series based on it.) So I kind of tried to explain how I felt about witcher one and three but I don’t know how much got through. He said Witcher three is a masterpiece. So then he was asking about my favorite so I said Disco Elysium (this is a very offbeat roleplaying game set in a fictional former communist country. There is no combat. But it as far as I know it is quite famous and is another common contender for best game of all time.) But he hadn’t heard of that which I thought was weird. So that was another communication barrier because it took a long time to kind of communicate the name of the game and I had to spell it for him and then we both looked it up on our phones. So then I asked him what he liked to play and he was like Dark Souls (which are very difficult combat games with no difficulty setting) and Monster Hunter (which is another action game about killing monsters and harvesting their body parts to make better weapons which I have played a bit) and was like bragging about how big a fan he is of those games. So then the guy on the computer got up and it turns out he is the story writer for this guys company. So they started talking in Chinese. Then I kind of realized I wasn’t actually in line to play this game and there was like an actual line so I went over to the line and like waited a little bit to play.

 

Basically you play as a flame spirit in a forest that is being abandoned to some evil spirits and your job is to find the primal flame (or something like that). I kind of sucked at it but I liked it the best of these three games that I tried. The art was nice though not fantastic. I got to a boss that I couldn’t figure out how to beat despite the hints the game gave me. I gave up before the attendant told me time was up. But I was a bit self conscious because it seemed a big line had formed behind me while I was playing.

After that I went out to sit on the grass in the sunshine and record some impressions that this post is based on. Then I decided that basically it was mission accomplished as I felt I had had some good experiences and got a good feel for the expo. I didn't super feel like standing in more lines for games. I was also a bit tired as I didn't sleep the night before and I had to be back fairly early to go to dinner with Ellie and her parents.

 

So overall I would say that it was a win in terms of getting out of the house and doing something interesting around the city. Particularly something related to my interests. On the actual video game front it was a little ho hum. I wasn't super enthused about any of the games I saw or played. In some ways it didn't really get me super excited to be in this hobby. But I am glad I went.

 

Review: The Flower Collectors

This is a short mystery game set in Spain in 1977 right ahead of the first free election since the death of Franco. You play as a wheelchair bound former police officer confined to your top floor apartment and balcony. You are thrown together with a leftist reporter to investigate the killing of one of her would be sources in the plaza below your balcony.

I enjoyed this game and was invested in the story. This can be seen in that I felt pretty disappointed when I thought I wouldn't be able to proceed because of what seemed like it might be a game breaking bug and I was pretty happy when I was able to figure out what I needed to do.

First off, I found the setting to be interesting and the story was definitely engaged with it. The plot of the game is very connected with the political situation and also with your history as a police officer. I also thought the story was engaging with multiple threads going on in terms of the main characters around the plaza. The setup with the cop in the wheelchair confined to his home and the lefty journalist who can go out and poke around is interesting even if it is kind of a bit derivative from Hitchcock's The Rear Window. Additionally, limiting the story telling to just that one plaza but having it be a microcosm of the national struggle works pretty well. I also thought the voice acting was pretty good. It was neither monotone nor overly dramatic. Lastly, the existence of some achievements (little badges you can earn that indicate things you did in a video game) that I didn't earn indicates that there is at least a bit of unexplored depth.

On the flipside, the game is quite short. Just 3-4 hours of game time. Secondly, the graphics aren't great. Related to that, the gestures of the people are pretty exaggerated and a bit immersion breaking. I guess in some ways my biggest complaint is that it feels a bit less like a video game and bit more like a story with some mildly gamey elements included. Basically a lot of stuff the game just tells you very directly what to do. The pinup board for making deductions and sussing out the story is pretty simple and it just tells you whether putting something in a given box is right or wrong. There are some timed sections but even these are quite easy and straightforward. Related to this, there are some choices to make but overall things felt very linear. Also, with the few choices you do have it felt like it was obvious what the "good" choice. A minor complaint is that the start of the game is a little slow. This is kind of fitting for someone confined to their apartment with nothing much to do but reminisce but I was slightly borderline on whether I would really continue playing or not in the early stages. One fairly big issue but it could just be me was one place that I thought was very counterintuitive. Basically you are supposed to call down to some children in the street directly below your balcony. I assumed this involved interacting with them directly by calling out to them by shouting. But the game doesn't let you do that. And unlike almost everything else in the game it doesn't tell you what to do. I felt it was so obvious that I should be able to shout down to the kids that I thought it was a bug that I couldn't. In fact you just have to go in and pick up the telephone to get the quest to get the phone booth number using your binoculars. This does make sense in terms of not wanting to draw attention to yourself but it was confusing enough that I thought the game was broken.

One last issue that was neither really a positive or a negative but a bit curious is that the people are animals. Meaning your journalist friend is a racoon, your former partner is a dog, the waiter in the cafe is a fox. I didn't dislike this aspect but I also kind of question why they felt the need to do that particularly when the setting is a really specific real world historical setting. It seems to create some distance from the reality of what the game is talking about.

So, my overall opinion is that I liked it and recommend it but it is quite short and linear and the gamey aspects feel light and a bit tacked on.

Review: House of Da Vinci II

 This is another game that I haven't finished yet but have spent significant time with. Basically I picked it up as something lighter to play when I wasn't up to Suzerain. It is a puzzle game with a light story.

Basically this is 3D puzzle game. You manipulate objects to find secret ways of interacting them with them. The story is set in Italy in the late 1400s and early 1500s. Cesare Borgia and Leonardo Da Vinci are the two characters you interact with.

I have enjoyed my time with the game I think primarily because the puzzles aren't that hard but they aren't trivially easy either. So generally I have been able to proceed at a fairly good pace and make progress without too much frustration. Some of the puzzles have challenged me a bit more which is good. There is a hint system. I used it once early on basically just to see what it was like but I am a bit stuck and thinking of using it again. For the most part things make sense and don't feel arbitrary or dumb. I also think the visual aspect is pretty good. It is an attractive game. The story is mostly in the background but does give some motivation to the whole thing. It has a bit of sci-fi that plays into it and a bit of a mysterious conspiracy. I found these engaging but your mileage may vary.

As to the negatives, for the most part I found the puzzles a little too easy. A lot of them don't really require you to really figure anything out but just to manipulate the objects and like put them together. The difficulty in my current section is kind of a step up so maybe part of that is just some intended progression. Secondly there is a story that gives some motivation to the process but at the same time the story is pretty thin so specific puzzles still feel somewhat unmotivated. There is a little bit of a feeling of "why am I doing all these puzzles?" That is to say that there doesn't seem to be that much reason why all of these puzzles are put in your way. This is of course a problem that all puzzle games have but for some reason I felt it here more than when I was playing Talos Principle or Portal 2.

So, my overall opinion is that I recommend it but I didn't find it as engaging as Talos Principle or Portal 2. It is also on the easier side of things.

Goal Accomplished: Suzerain Review

In my previous post about goals I wrote that I intended to play the game Suzerain and write a review. I stated that I wanted to do a full playthrough but I would consider the goal accomplished if I played 10 hours. 

So, I have been a bit mixed. I passed the 10 hours threshold two weeks ago. So in that sense it is goal accomplished. I just have some mixed feelings about the game and haven't played since then. On the one hand I have enjoyed playing so I would like to continue but at the same time it is a weighty game that I feel like I have to be in the right mindset for. I also seem to have moved on to some other games. So, I have been holding off on writing the review just because I thought it would be better to finish it first. However, just feeling like I wanted to work on the blog tonight and this is a bit of unfinished business and the indications are that despite enjoying it I am moving away from it.

So, for a basic rundown, the game is a politics simulation. You play as the newly elected president of a smallish country. The countries and the map are all fictional. However the setting explicitly uses the 1950s as the setting and it is very clearly a Cold War basis. There are two competing large scale alliances, one a capitalist one, and the other a socialist one. The technology of the time is also appropriate to the real world setting of 1950s with the space race, nuclear power, and the first ICBMs being developed. Your country is pretty small so it is caught between these two alliances and a big part of your strategy has to be deciding how you will play this. However, the lead countries of these two alliances are both off the map so much of your foreign policy is about negotiating with the other countries in your immediate vicinity. This involves trade deals, immigration policy decisions, and security arrangements like alliances but also other issues like joint missions. You also have to deal with a host of domestic issues from a recession to constitutional reform as well a rioting and protests. The game play is conducted through a series of dialogues from meetings or social events where you hear from your advisors or other people and make decisions about the issue at hand.

So, on the positive front I would say the game is quite engaging. This can be seen in the fact that when I play I tend to play for a good chunk of time like 2 or 3 hours. In playing I really feel like I care about the decisions and the consequences. I think this is because the writing is pretty good. I also feel like the game engages with my actual opinions but also challenges them. I feel like I try to play according to some of my actual principles but I find I can't always do that because of the situation in the game presenting sufficient drawbacks to my preferred position. This is interesting and I feel it does make me appreciate the difficulties of being a leader, particularly an elected leader. The advisors are also real characters with opinions and biases rather than the neutral bland advisors of a game like Civilization. They give conflicting advice and you have to make your own decisions.

Secondly I feel the game is also engaging because it isn't a pure sandbox like Europa Universalis IV. There is a story that unfolds and scripted events. However the game does a really good job of making these feel natural so you still feel like you have a lot of control but it feels more engaging than just managing sliders and meters. There are actual substantive issues coming up that require decisions that don't have clear cut answers.

I also really appreciate that there don't seem to be "right" answers to a lot of the decisions you face. It feels like it is possible to play the game in a variety of ways. It seems like all the answers you can choose have both positives and minuses. There seems to be some value in consistency but it never feels like there is only one choice.

So, if I have a lot of praise then why have I stopped playing? First off, the game is very text heavy. The map is attractive but the game is basically entirely about reading dialogue, descriptions, reports, bills, and even a variety of newspapers. The results of your decisions are almost entirely presented to you as text as well. The advisors are just small icons next to their associated dialogue. To a certain extent this is pushing at the boundary between a video game and a sophisticated choose your own adventure novel. I feel it is interesting but it is pretty cerebral as opposed to visual. I feel my imagination is up to the task but this kind of thing is not always what I want when I think of playing a video game. There must be a lot of gamers who would be turned off by this much reading and this little visual stimulation.

I think perhaps more importantly there is a feeling that I can best describe as "I have my own problems." Basically because of some of the things I mentioned above there are a lot of problems presented and your country is struggling in a variety of ways. And because when I play I care about the results, there is some resistance to picking up the game. It is exciting to play but also takes some mental strength to play. This is particularly true because there are no easy answers as I said above. Everything comes with drawbacks. So basically you have to be willing to face up to sussing out these difficulties each time you play.

One small annoyance is that I have been playing on my Steam Deck (a handheld gaming device). The interface is such that the map is best navigated using the sticks and buttons. However there are some items that seem like they can only be accessed using the touch screen. This would be ok but for some reason each time you switch between these two input methods it calls up the game menu which then has to be dismissed and then you can do what you wanted to do by clicking or touching again. Most of the time you use the sticks and buttons though so each time you want to use the touch screen you have to go through this twice. First to switch to touch, then to switch back to sticks and buttons.

So, overall my assessment is that it is a very well made game that I recommend. However, it is challenging and extremely text driven. So only get it if you are ready to really think about your decisions and even your own values.