Jake

Idle Thumbs 184: Super Pools 'n' Ghosts

Recommended Posts

I agree that not every decision needs to set off a tornado in Texas, but here is the point:  A choice is only meaningful if I believe that there may be consequences. It is good if a game offering choices sometimes shows that consequences are substantial. The design.needs the the right balance. If too often I can't even influence the immediate result I lose the feeling of having agency. I enjoyed the TellTale games of this year, but both TWD Season 2 and TWAU went too far in that regard. Too often have I selected the option of doing or saying something courageous and dangerous only to have someone else keep me from doing it in the last second. Too often for me to suspend disbelief.

 

I actually really enjoyed how choiced had effects in Morrowind. You could kill most of the NPCs in the game with no effect, but you could easily break smaller quests and ocassionally break the main quest. So the power of your choices went from, the town has fewer trash NPCs up to dooming the world. So many games don't give you any choice at all. Bioware games give you so many choices, many of which seem small at the time, that you can end up agonizing over the smallest thing on the off chance it will ripple down through the trilogy.

 

I actually really liked that many choices you make Dragon Age: Origins didn't have a clear good or bad. I made several decisions in DA: O regarding the Dwarves that doomed them, I totally thought it was doing the right thing at the time. Dragon Age Awakening has similarly complex decisions. This is the opposite of Mass Effect where almost every decision is black and white.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Oh yeah, also since Monument Valley was mentioned in passing on this episode, worth pointing out that they released some new levels for free today.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Everytime I see the name Code Name S.T.E.A.M., I can't help but think it's an episode of Codename: Kids Next Door.  Also when I heard that the Japanese title was Lincoln vs Aliens, I kept thinking of this

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Oh yeah, also since Monument Valley was mentioned in passing on this episode, worth pointing out that they released some new levels for free today.

 

Sorry, not free, read article too quickly. It's $2 (thought it was saying the base game was $2, but its actually like $5 I think?)

 

Anyway, totally worth it regardless.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Link n' Lincoln

I've been thinking'

Nintendo, have you been drinkin'

Is it water? Is it tea?

Omg it's DLC!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I, too, was puzzling whether Danielle had some bizarre pronunciation of Frisbee (Freeze bee).

Still listening but crying-laughing at the observations about beefcake knuckles.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The response of the general iOS public to the $2 Monument Valley expansion has been disgusting. I like the platform, don't drive all the good developers away please.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm with Sean on the 1989 T-Swift enthusiasm.  It was on sale for 99 cents a week and a half ago or so on the Windows Music Store, and I said what the hell, why not.

IT IS SO GOOD.

In other Sean news, I hope we get Hatoful Boyfriend next week.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I am extremely disappointed with the lack of pigeon discussion on this cast. On the other hand, all the poo discussion did remind me of

And how I feel about the internet a lot lately.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I am extremely disappointed with the lack of pigeon discussion on this cast. On the other hand, all the poo discussion did remind me of

And how I feel about the internet a lot lately.

I think I speak on behalf of everybirdy when I advocate for pigeon talk in the future.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
 

Something Danielle said about Alien Isolation made me think that the systems could work well as a (much shorter) Jason Voorhees game. That would be sweet.

 

Glad to hear Jake agrees with this!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Thank you heaps for reading out our email! Very exciting and we really loved playing Danielle's game.

 

Also, dat advert at the beginning is the best advert I have ever heard. I want all advert to sound like they are being shouted from the next room over.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm reluctant to burst the bubble here, but a quick glance at the wikipedia page revealed that the leprechaun went to space before either of the hood movies.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I actually really enjoyed how choiced had effects in Morrowind. You could kill most of the NPCs in the game with no effect, but you could easily break smaller quests and ocassionally break the main quest. So the power of your choices went from, the town has fewer trash NPCs up to dooming the world. So many games don't give you any choice at all. Bioware games give you so many choices, many of which seem small at the time, that you can end up agonizing over the smallest thing on the off chance it will ripple down through the trilogy.

 

The only Mass Effect choice I remember being in that grey zone was regarding Legion's loyalty mission in 2. Although there were a fair amount of choices that, while binary, felt like they dealt with more grey subjects like when your trust of a companion butts up against your protectiveness of military secrets/protocol. I was really disappointed that there didn't seem to be any choices like what you mention in DA:O where good intentions lead to completely unintended or 'bad' outcomes.

 

Regarding choices "meaning anything" Jake's suggestion for having a character simply mention the aftermath of one of your choices would definitely be enough for me. The thing that bugs me about choice in games isn't a lack of branching, but a lack of any acknowledgement of your choices.* Dropping in simple nods like Jake mentioned where the player's thoughts can be echoed by the characters would definitely solve that problem. I think some of the reason some people prefer the systems based or branching based reactions is because they work even if the narrative fails to connect. Most of the time those systems clash against the narrative's attempts to connect with the player though. Alpha Protocol's character relationship system is one of the only ones I can think of where explicitly gaming your connections with people matched perfectly with the James Bond concept of treating ever person as a tool to completing your goal. Dragon Age: Origin's system of collecting and bestowing gifts on your party to make them like you makes a lot less sense, especially in the context of being in an urgent world saving situation (although having your party react to your decisions is effective).

 

*I actually had an e-mail read about this regarding Ashley in Mass Effect 2.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

One look at Codename S.T.E.A.M, and my brain immediately thought "American history meets Freedom Force!"

 

Definitely adding that one to my wishlist.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm reluctant to burst the bubble here, but a quick glance at the wikipedia page revealed that the leprechaun went to space before either of the hood movies.

shit! 5 must have been in the hood sorry about that.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

What a fun episode. I really liked hearing the discussion of arcade games at the end. I am an avid arcade fan even though I only have a limited set of experiences with them growing up. I'm also incredibly jealous of people who are real skilled at an arcade game, since it implies that they either pumped a lot of quarters into a machine as a kid, or somehow owned the machine. While I didn't transport it across country when I moved, I own a Space Invaders Deluxe cabinet that I bought for very cheap five years ago from a person who needed to get it out of his garage. When I bought it, I definitely thought: "I'm going to get so good at Space Invaders" but what I actually learned is that "Space Invaders is very very difficult, and only gets more so." I played it a lot and never found that groove. It's still a handsome cabinet, and it's in great condition, but damn is it a tough game.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Chris kind of brushed aside whether or not BoI has anything particularly deep or interesting to say about abuse and religion.  I don't know what Chris' childhood was like, but I wonder whether someone's own childhood changes how they perceive Isaac.  I wasn't abused per se, but I had a pretty fucked up family as a kid.  Like, not in the way where everyone's family is fucked up, but some serious mental health issues in two different members of my family which seriously warped the way I viewed the world for a long time.  Things I thought were "normal" as a kid turned out to be radically out of tune with almos.  As an adult pushing 40, I'm just starting to come to terms with the long term effects of my childhood.  Knowing what Edmund has said about his own childhood, and how BoI is an exploration of some of that is really interesting to me.  Because it's less about having something deep to say about abuse or religion, and more about someone working to process deeply fucked up elements of their past in a creative manner, and that's something I can both identify with and learn from.  

To me, it's less about the narrative of BoI and more about the meta-narrative, that Edmund has gone through some challenging and abusive times, but come out of that and is personally dealing with those through his art.  For all its poop and blood and demons, I find BoI to overall be a really inspiring game.

Plus it's just tons of fun.

Oh, and as for co-op, as far as I know there is nothing that is specifically designed for co-op, but several of the optional Challenges do favor bring a co-op partner with you.  As there are 4 challenges where Isaac cannot fire any tears, and must depend on alternative damage sources (flies, bombs, space bar items, etc), and a co-op partner is a tremendous asset in those.  Having my wife along is a big reason I was able to get through all those.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

shit! 5 must have been in the hood sorry about that.

 

I totally get it. Those movies were just like staples of something you saw at video stores (rather than something you'd go to see in a movie theater), and were therefore outside of any clear reference of time where you would organize them chronologically.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Although I feel like the larger continuity of the Mass Effect games has been fumbled repeatedly in frustrating ways, they've been really good at doing the small callbacks to previous decisions, both internally and particularly across games. I mean, really, there's no way they could do major plot branching based on decisions in an entirely separate prior game. It's hard enough to do it in a single game, and almost nobody's actually pulled that off (The Witcher 2 being a notable recent exception). But just having those little nods does a huge amount for feeling like Mass Effect 2 or 3 is respecting past decisions made in Mass Effect 1 or 2, respectively. (Very little propagates through both sequels.) Deus Ex is another game that gets a lot of mileage out of that sort of design. It's actually a really railroady game in terms of the overall plot, but there are so many smaller details that change based on your actions that it's not immediately apparent.

 

On a different note, Codename STEAM sounds rad as hell but I am getting confused because multiple places are referring to it as an RTS, yet Danielle said it was turn based. (Of course, I've even found an article that leads by calling it an RTS and then in the very next paragraph talks about it being turn based.) So, er...which is it?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

That's a really great point, all the callbacks in ME2 and 3 work well. They have the added bonus of taking the place of completely unknown lore that would normally fill those spaces.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now