I didn’t spend much time explicitly playing games this previous week.
I worked on getting a different ending out of Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. Which actually kind of bothers me, in that I don’t find that one as outright spooky as everything that has come before. I know what to expect, and it doesn’t unsettle me like the older ones on subsequent play-throughs still. Seeing the little things that change based on your actions is rather fascinating though. Most obviously, I noticed the person cutout in the diner had gone from a rockabilly musician on my first run through, to a Betty Page pinup on my second.
Also, Lock’s Quest.
Besides that, I’ve been playing snippets of other games that I would call the inspiration for Scale. Ran around in Symphony of the Night, started a Super Metroid game to observe the camera and animations, sucked at Ikaruga some, tried playing some La Mulana but ended up watching clips from a full playthrough on YouTube, and went and remembered how hard Henry Hatsworth is (especially on that second play, damn).
I took a brief stab at some more Muramasa and got up to a new boss on each character, but man, those bosses are getting brutal. I really do want to continue on and marvel more at the amazing art that game offers. I might just put set it to easy mode just so I can go through and see everything.
Work on Lock’s Quest continues still, again 5 minutes at a time.
I’ve already beaten a first play through. The game seems fairly short (read concise), and I like that. The old games used exploration of unknown areas and the constant threat of enemy attack as their main method of tension, and that was all well and good. Compared to Shattered Memories which replaced that with the confusion and heart-pounding terror of the “escape sequences.” In theory, that sounds awesome. But I just found them to be too confusing for their own good. I found I would have to make numerous attempts at the later stages just to feel out the plausible areas to run through to get to the goal. My belief is that the terror in these instances is supposed to be fun, but I found it mostly tedious. The exception to this being the next to last escape, which I will add in spoiler tags for those who don’t wish to ruin it.
In a way, though, I was also slightly disappointed. Again, as the old games had a constant threat of attack and sudden transformation, Shattered Memories decision to do away with combat and focus on the escape meant the only enemies exist within those sequences. Once I figured that out, I felt no tension at all during the exploration phases. Only a deep tinge overshadowed by my desire to continue and find more “points of interest,” like the picture points or artifacts.
One great part of the game was the mechanics of the Wii remote. I seriously cannot see why anyone would play this game on anything but the Wii. The flashlight pointing is very intuitive (although the act of pushing a monster off me generally got me turned around longer than I would have liked because of it). But more so, I was fascinated with the use of the Wii remote’s speaker to play audio clips, and at such a low volume as to require you to place it to your ear, effectively imitating the cell phone motion itself, bringing the player a real feeling of immersion from that simple act.
In all, however, I enjoyed this departure from the series I was used to. And some final spoiler thoughts below.
And finally, to the point of all this. The Silent Hill series is one of those gaming experiences that profoundly altered my perception of games. Whereas I don’t experience much fear in so-called “horror films,” the Silent Hill games have never ceased to terrify me. As much as I love my favorite of them all, SH2, I still find it difficult to sit down and play through it subsequent times because the atmosphere and plot are so well crafted. I have no doubt that there will be some homage to the series, whether it be brief bits of interest or mechanic styles, to be found in my own work, especially my forthcoming metroidvania style, Scale.
A strangely slow week for actually playing games, but a strikingly productive week for creating them!
I put some more time into Lock’s Quest, played some Bookworm on my iPhone while out of the house, and got a few more quests in with my Borderlands buddy, but I don’t feel like I actually gamed too much this past week.
Instead, I spent quite a bit of time actually writing potential code for my currently primary game engine including texture based level layout drawing, pixel shader post processing (including hue/saturation, vignetting, bloom, haze and refraction), simple particles (will probably rewrite this entirely later to hopefully take advantage of point-sprites), and some simple polygonal collision detection.
I’ve attempted to avoid my usual trap of over-thinking the engine design in favor of the mantra of Jonathan Blow: “Always be prototyping!” It’s something of a struggle to just sit down and make something “just work” rather than try to make it optimal from the start, but I always manage to surprise myself when I do follow it, and end up producing something tangible.
Over this last week I’ve continued working through Muramasa and it has remained beautiful. I’ve continued to mentally note little quirks that I think might be useful ideas to expand on for effects later.
In addition to some more time spent on Mario Wii, however, I got to do some more multiplayer. Unfortunately we only have two controllers, but the experience of gaming with one friend, or watching two others play for the first time was great fun.
I’ve never been a huge First Person Shooter fan, but in light of our group gathering, I got some time in with Team Fortress 2. I imagine the experience after some practice and achievement of more options (such as expanded weapon repertoire and a better understanding of the class-countering-class dynamic) would heighten the experience, but as it stands just blowing up friends on a private server was good for some laughs.
As a strange early Christmas exchange, one friend of mine gifted me with a stack of boxed Japanese and Korean games of various sorts purely for the entertainment value, as he came across them quite cheaply. I think I’ll keep them in the packaging though, and continue to admire them for their new sentimental value, rather than attempt to penetrate the language of the moon.
In an attempt to increase the amount of content here, I figured a “What I’ve Been Playing” segment would be some nice filler. But beyond that, it might be a bit informative as to what has been influencing me as a developer.
Lock’s Quest
I’ve been working through Lock’s Quest in short bursts for a while now. I’ve played quite a few tower defense games over time, and was admittedly getting tired of them, but gave Lock’s Quest a chance anyway. I was not disappointed. The additions and changes are more than enough to make it feel like a completely different game type all its own. And even better, it works great as a portable game, since its even divided into discrete chunks of time of 2-4 minutes which makes it perfect to pick up every now and then for a quick couple rounds. The art is beautiful, and I absolutely love the constant animation of the sprites.
Borderlands
I picked up Borderlands when I noticed the PC version dropped to twenty bucks on Amazon briefly. I convinced a friend of mine to do the same, given the condition we’d play nothing but co-op. I had heard it was definitely designed to be played that way, and I was not misled. When you’ve got 1-3 friends you can hop on with, it’s definitely some fun.
New Super Mario Bros. wii
I had been looking forward to this game for a good while now. I was a bit suspicious at first when they first revealed the game and showed off the focus on multiplayer gaming, but my faith in Nintendo and the promise of an updated experience to New Super Mario Bros. for DS did not let me down. The game is fantastic, whether alone or with friends. And it’s not “easy” either. I got through all eight worlds and bested Bowser rather quickly, but I’m still tackling the challenge of 100% completion by hopping on every now and then and tackling a single level until I’ve got the three coins and the secret exit if it has one. Eventually, I’ll have it all!
Muramasa: The Demon Blade
What can I say, other than this game is absolutely beautiful. The game mechanics are fairly interesting, and the play is pretty fun. I’ve been working through on hard mode and enjoying it quite a bit. But in all honesty, the main reason I wanted to play through Muramasa was to experience the art. Given my current plans for art style of RunawayTank! and Scale, Muramasa is a great inspiration for what I hope to accomplish. I’ve gleaned quite a few ideas for art assets, techniques and special effects that I think will look fantastic in my own games.
In all, I’d say this past week has been an interesting combination of just plain fun, and research. Lock’s Quest is a nice quick diversion, whereas Mario Bros. and Muramasa are both entertaining and inspirational.
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