City 16

There’s a room in VVVVVV, an absolute shit of a room, that tasks your character with getting a shiny collectible trinket on the other side of a small box. It looks a little like this:

After the multiple hours it took to complete this task I grew to be thankful for its existence.

“Really Phil, it took you multiple hours to get to the other side of a small box?”

Yes, it did. Like I said the room is a complete fucking bastard of a twat. As you can see, we still have something of a fractious relationship. You see, in VVVVVV, there is no jump button. Instead you reverse gravity, flying up into the air until you reach the roof, at which point you can revert gravity back and start plummeting to meet the ground. As you can see from the screenshot, this room has no roof. Instead it has this:

Like I said, Bastard. Like I also said, I’m grateful for its existence. Why? Because it reminded me that I don’t just take on ridiculously difficult challenges because there’s an achievement involved. I’m also prepared to do them when there’s absolutely no discernible reward whatsoever.

Death.

That might not sound like much but it’s an important distinction. My previous attempt at a high difficulty/low margin-of-error feat of finger dexterity was completing Trine’s last level on very-hard with no-one dying, a task which nabbed a ‘Better Than Developers!‘ trophy. All well and good, and more than a little satisfying on completion, but that satisfaction is tempered by the question, “did I just go through all that for an achievement?” Despite the number I’ve managed to accumulate I guess I’ve still not decided if I’m OK with the whole achievements thing.

Death.

Veni, Vidi, Vici, which seems to have become the shorthand name for this challenge room in VVVVVV, reminded me that actually I just like these trial and error based high-difficulty challenges. It’s the reason I took to the Skate series of games and the reason I’m currently enjoying the WiiWare game Bit.Trip Runner. Perhaps it took me so long to come to this realisation because you just don’t see this style very often in games today. As the industry becomes more profitable challenge is left behind in favour of accessibility, because God help us if a publisher’s latest AAA title is beyond some perceived key demographic.

Death.

That last sentence probably sounded more vitriolic than intended. More accessible games are a brilliant thing because, for the most part, developers are terrible at difficulty. I’ve been playing Darksiders recently and came close to giving up on it for good after encountering the first proper boss fight. In the tradition of boss fights in games (which incidentally are all terrible and need to just fuck off for good) the key to success was in realising which of my character’s array of offensive and defensive manoeuvres could be combined against the boss’ varying attack patterns. In a way boss design harks back to the worst adventure puzzles and defeating one is reminiscent of figuring out that honey on the cat hair makes a moustache, except if you don’t realise it in 20 seconds a giant demon bat will scorch your bollocks off with fireballs.

Death.

Of course that’s just sudden and inexplicable difficulty spikes. When hidden systems in the game can mean the difference between success and failure the frustration levels go through the roof. Take Split/Second, a game which increases the difficulty of rival racers the better you do. The upshot is there’s no way at actually being good at the game, because early success just sets you up for failure towards the end. The general rule of thumb with Split/Second is that, if you’re doing well, the game will be decided at the last corner at which point an opponent will always – always – overtake you. Unless you’re able to destroy the car at that point you will lose and a poor defenseless controller may lose its life against a wall.

Death.

What Veni, Vidi, Vici, and VVVVVV as a whole – what all games that can successfully capture that addictive one-more-go feel of defeating a seemingly insurmountable obstacle – understand is that to be enjoyable the difficulty should be transparent. It gives you six screens that you have to learn forwards and back – or more accurately upwards and down – and then link together in one glorious and flawless run. That is the sole source of difficulty. There is nothing added that would suggest to the player that failure is anything other than their own fault. It even removes the annoyances of the era of gaming that it evokes; there aren’t limited lives and the checkpointing is generous. With no penalty for death all that remains is the challenge at hand.

Death.

And what a challenge. It’s both a beauty and a bastard. You have to learn each room sequentially, learning just how much to manoeuvre left and right, where the key apex points are to swing to safety and, at times, take seemingly counter intuitive actions to line up for the next screen. After a while your brain understands the route and all that’s left is for muscle memory to kick in and let the fingers learn it. At this point it’s best to let your mind wander while the rest of you gets on with it. While navigating an especially tricky section I drafted this sentence, including this clause here where I mention how I’m mentioning this clause. On reflection it wasn’t a great sentence, but it got me through the top flip down to 5th screen so I’m leaving it in out of respect to my past self.

Each section becomes exponentially harder, as it requires navigation of every preceding screen before you can even practice what’s ahead, but the slightest hint of progression is a joyous occasion that drives you to get even further. In fact, the most soul-destroying moments are when you suddenly lose control of all co-ordination and can’t get past the second screen… dark times. After a couple of hours I was back at the bottom, at which point I killed myself on the right-hand side spikes in a foolish effort to not land on the wrong side. It should have been demoralising, but I was just so happy to be within reach.

Success! Shortly followed by death.

Just be aware that if you try it before you go to sleep you will have that music stuck in your head all night.

Clearly the free game route is the way to go for now, but after the month long Neptune’s Pride betrayal-a-thon it’s probably a good idea for the next community event to be a little (a lot) shorter. We’re in luck.

Alien Swarm is the newly released 4 player top-down shooter from Valve. It’s also completely free, just go to the Steam page to install it. Games are scheduled for tomorrow evening, just find me in game. If you stick something in this posts comments thread then I’ll invite you in when the game’s set up to make the process a little easier.

If you’re wondering how the game plays, imagine a co-op version of Shadowgrounds or one of around 600 million freeware games and you’d be in the right ballpark. Here’s a trailer to give you a taste. Short version: their are aliens, they come in swarms.

If you want to join our Steam community (now up to a dizzying 6 members!) here’s the page.

UPDATE: As an added incentive, if you complete two campaigns in Alien Swarm, you get a hat for Team Fortress 2. Any excuse to add new hats…

Red Dead Redemption feels like the complete opposite. The world is huge (and feels even bigger because your main method of transportation has exactly 1 horse power) but largely barren. It means the interactions you do come across – and there are plenty of them, from travellers in need of help through to wannabe gunslingers looking to make a name for themselves by duelling the best in the west – feel more meaningful. They’re no less scripted, but the sense of community born out of a place where the environment is deadlier than the inhabitants lends these small world events a degree of authenticity. Even now, after logging about 70 hours with the game, I feel a small pang of guilt when I ignore a man whose wife has been kidnapped to hunt bears.

His survival chance decreased dramatically after I actually learned how to duel.

As I drew closer to my objective I let my guard slip and, without warning, the growl of a cougar and a flashing red screen let me know I’d been careless. Luckily it didn’t land the second, fatal, attack. After I’d killed it I had to pause the game, catch my breath and make a cup of tea. Cougars, man. Fucking cougars.

Seriously: fucking cougars

Elsewhere the story is somewhat of a mixed bag. Each character you can do missions for hangs around a little too long. After your 4th or 5th long horse ride with the same person retelling you their philosophy of the west you start to wish the character didn’t refuse to fire at friendly NPCs. Even Marston himself runs out of interesting ways to tell people he’s trying to save his family far before he stops telling people he’s trying to save his family.

"Hey, John. Have I told you about how I'm a grumpy old curmudgeon trying to bring a little law and order to my town? No, you're probably right, now isn't the time."

More successful than the story missions are the strangers you encounter throughout your travels. These are essentially narrative-vignettes about people trying to make their way in the region; writers looking to capture the romanticism of the era, producers looking to forge a new age of cinema and even just concerned spouses looking for their loved ones. The first ones you come across will all too often result in the stranger turning out to be mental, to the point where you start trying to second guess each person’s particular deviancy, but as the game goes on you’ll find some genuinely interesting characters that you’ll encounter in multiple places throughout the game. Particularly worthy of mention is the ‘I Know You’ strand, featuring an unknown man with a penchant for testing your moral fibre. It’s one of the most intriguing mysteries of the game and its resolution ties-in brilliantly with the final cutscene.

So, a couple of story niggles aside, pretty much perfect then? Not quite. Red Dead Redemption is unusual in recent Rockstar games in that many of the core systems at work are non-diegetic. Take the fast-travel; you just need to set up a camp and with a couple of clicks you can travel instantly to any location you’ve previously visited. Bizarrely the game also includes an in-world fast travel system with coaches that can be hired. Pay for a coach or move a few feet away and travel for free? Unless you’re deliberately trying to preserve the atmosphere it’s not much of a decision.

Marston contemplates the mystery of the fast-travel fire.

Death is handled in a similarly blunt manner with the game displaying a hilariously over-sized DEAD screen and reloading the last auto-save. There are plenty of doctors dwelling in major settlements so why not just have your character wake up there à la GTA? Also, and this is getting really picky, there’s really no excuse for your character to die the moment he steps in a body of water. How much this stuff bothers you is probably dependent on how much you buy into the atmosphere woven by the setting, visuals and audio. In case it’s not clear yet I bought into it a lot, much to the consternation of my flatmate who kept reminding me that I could fast-travel instead of taking 15 minutes to ride my horse into Mexico. I hadn’t forgotten Chris, I was just ignoring it.

TL;DR version: Red Dead Redemption, it’s better than GTA.

Previously on An Hour With: ‘“Red Faction Guerrilla recommends you install Raptr.” Red Faction Guerrilla can fuck off. Jesus Christ, it’s actually launched a Raptr installation executable. Red Faction Guerrilla can fuck right off. Still the patch is done. This had better be one hell of a hammer… Runtime error!’

Yes, my last attempt at running this feature had me trying different executables, installing phantom patches and, finally, shutting down my virus scanner before I could even get the game to run, at which point I had absolutely no desire to actually play the game. Two and a half months later, I’m back to try again.

Why Bother?

Good question! A mixture of that experience and Just Cause 2 had pretty much killed off any interest I had in the game. Luckily for RFG, my Playstation died a couple of months back taking JC2 with it. Sony have been apparently unable to rescue the game from its cold, dead hands. I’ve now re-bought it on PC after finding a cheap-o copy on the Internet. It’s downloading now so it’s seriously RFG’s last chance to impress. Why bother at all? Well, when one of PC Gamer’s writers turns up in the comments thread and tells you that, despite all the shit, it’s worth it, you should probably pay attention.

The Preamble

Anti-virus off. Game launching. GfW Live kicking into life. Update needs downloading. Shit. Luckily, this time it’s all sorted in the time it takes to make a cup of tea. Probably about 10% of my PC gaming experience revolves around making tea. With that sorted the game decides to work properly.

The Playtest

0:00 – Cutscene! The game seems to be bucking the trend of 98% of games set in space in that your character isn’t a space marine. For a moment I’m fooled into thinking the game will be relatively well written. Why? As your character returns to Mars and meets up with his brother he doesn’t say anything along the lines of “Hi brother,” one of my least favourite pieces of awkward character exposition. Instead the brother asks “How’s mum?” which is marginally less clunky. I soon realise how generous I was being, as the rest of the cutscene is awkward story exposition. The EDF have taken over and seem to be oppressing everyone. I’ve played/watched enough science fiction to make a safe guess that EDF stands for Earth Defence Force (Yup, I’ve just checked the manual which confirms it.)

3:00 – Tutorial time. My character announces that he’s here to mine, not gather scrap metal. I’m not here to do either, I’m here to use this large hammer that I’ve just been given. Luckily there’s a big wall between me and where I need to be.

3:15 – Oh dear God. You know, I was completely ready to intensely dislike this game, or at least not forgive it for all the shit I went through last time. That all changed when I first hit that wall. It’s brilliant! The destruction physics are properly amazing. Before long the wall is completely demolished and I’m giggling to myself like a 15 year old that’s spent a little too long sniffing gas out of a deodorant can.

5:30 – The game’s asking me to switch to remote charges to demolish two towers. Unfortunately, at my screen’s current resolution, I can’t actually make out which key it wants me to press to bring up the weapon select menu. My assumption is the number keys and the mouse wheel, but instead of confirming if I was correct (I was,) I take it as a sign that I should keep using the hammer.

14:00 – Yeah, the hammer works pretty well. In my exuberance the second tower falls on top of me while I’m destroying it from the inside. Luckily the developers had clearly anticipated people were going to be this stupid and the character just clips through the rubble, harmed but alive.

15:00 – Shit, the space cops are here!  Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure I was brought here to salvage or mine or something. If the game ever explained why I was knocking the shit out of some towers then I missed it. Anyway, the cops kill the protagonist’s brother (Spoiler!) If I feel any sorrow over this act, it’s only because it’s likely to lead to a lengthy cutscene.

17:30 – Can I hammer something yet?

18:30 – Some posh British woman is further tutorialising me. Apparently I’m working for the resistance now. Extensive research shows me that I can’t smash her in the face with my hammer.

19:00 – In case you’re wondering, the thing that’s covering half the screen in the above screenshot is my character’s coat which, at various points in the game, decided nobody was going to keep it anchored to conventional laws of geometry and started to explore the screen.

28:30 – I’ve spent the last 10 minutes hammering everything in sight in our home base. People, buildings and cars all felt the wrath of my +2 Hammer of Childish Shit. Shortly after the video below was taken somebody got fed up with my destruction and started shooting me. Surprisingly it wasn’t the resistance realising they’d made a huge mistake, but instead the EDF. They feel the full force of Hammer Justice. One of them shouts “We can’t win,” which turns out to be a pretty accurate assessment as the protagonist appears to be a bullet sponge.

30:00 – I’m starting to feel a little embarrassed about my behavior, as well as the fact that population morale is at zero thanks to my actions, so I decide to go and do a mission.

33:00 – Woo! My mission is to go to a place and blow up (hammer) a load of stuff! I happily accept the task and begin driving to the objective.

35:00 – Car controls are typically sandbox in being a little twitchy but also very forgiving of crashing into things, although in Red Faction you don’t so much crash into as crash through. Another feature of the game’s destruction engine is that it fixes a problem that plagues so many action games. It’s impossible to get stuck between two bits of scenery when you can smash one into pieces.

36:00 – I get my first taste of mortality. You’d think years of watching King of the Hill would have taught me basic propane tank safety, but no. As my hammer connects with the tank the game decides it’s had just about enough of my consequence free trail of stupidity and promptly kills me.

37:00 – Okay, let’s try again. This time I might actually use those remote detonators.

43:00 – After a few barely-controlled explosions the space cops are back to stop me. Shooting ensues. It’s all pretty simple stuff and your character is remarkably resilient, even on normal mode. This is actually a good thing, as I made the mistake of playing Just Cause 2 on normal difficulty and, after a while, dealing with the army became a chore. When dicking about is a game’s primary means of fun easy is good.

44:00 – With the mission complete I drive back to base, accidentally parking my vehicle in a wall, and go back to being unhelpful.

45:00 – Colonist: “I wish my parents understood what I was fighting for.” It’s amazing just how po-faced and serious the story is. It’s completely at odds with how any person would ever play the game.

47:00 – As I destroy a skip (which NPCs keep throwing rocks into despite it no longer having sides) the game realises my primary focus up to now and pops up with a text box telling me that if I destroy buildings marked as red on the map, I’ll be lowering EDF control in the area or something. Hidden subtext: if you’re going to be a nuisance, at least be a useful nuisance. This leads to my second death of the game, as the first enemy structure I destroy turns out to be full of fuel.

52:00 – With no immediate objective in sight I check the map and notice a hammer icon. This deserves investigating.

54:00 – Shit! It turns out to be a challenge that requires me to use my pistol and explosive barrels to demolish a building. I can’t even select my hammer! Lying bastards!

57:00 – Oh, I was meant to move the explosive barrels into position before blindly shooting at them. My bad. Restart.

1:00:00 – I fail the mission again, despite having completely destroyed every wall. Seriously, look at the picture above, what the fuck’s holding it up? The ladder? How does that work? As soon as I exit the mission the tower falls over. Then my coat spazzes out again.

Conclusion

The story’s predictably shit and bizarrely serious and the game’s plagued by weird bugs (not just the coat thing, I had plenty of display issues as well.) Still, it seems to be great fun and, despite Just Cause 2 having just finished downloading, will probably see itself getting played a lot more often. Even at this stage, if you can find it going cheap, I can confidently say it’s worth picking up.

Because if I frame it as a competition it’ll hide the fact that I fail at sound financial management!

A story: Once upon a time Runic Games released an action RPG called Torchlight. I bought this game through their website, feeling good about supporting the poor indie developers. I then noticed the kingdom of Steam had a version which included the magical Steam Cloud feature, perfect for a small game that can be played on notebooks and my parents’ PC. “Fuck,” thought I. One day the people at Steam had a sale and started selling Torchlight at a low, low price. I bought the game again.

Skip forward a few months and while exploring the wilderness of the Internet, ever watchful for trolls, I saw a message planted for all passers by. It read, “Torchlight keys now work with Steam.” “Fuck,” thought I. The End.

Yes, it turns out I’m an idiot. Luckily though, this idiocy can directly benefit you because I have a spare copy of Torchlight that can be activated through Steam. If you would like it just comment with something along the lines of, “Yes, I would like to gain rewards from your complete lack of patience and financial restraint you silly bastard.” Closing date is midnight on the 8th June, I’ll randomly pick a winner from any comments left.

If you want to know more about Torchlight then Rock, Paper, Shotgun has you covered.

A couple of months ago I recklessly started a Steam Community for the site. It’s probably about time I tried to set up a few games.

Problem: Of the current members there don’t seem to be many games in common that wouldn’t require many more people than we have.

Solution: Pick a free browser based game that everyone can access.

So I’m planning to set up a game of Neptune’s Pride, a free browser based multiplayer strategy game. The benefit of this particular game, besides the cost, is that it seems to have had most of the complexity of 4X strategy games stripped away in favour of diplomacy (and backstabbing) between players. And if you’re thinking “I don’t really play many strategy games so I’ll probably just be shit,” yeah, me too.

As for time investment: It’s a long form game taking place over weeks/months but because events occur so slowly you’re probably only going to need to drop in once a day for a few minutes to queue up moves and research. Although I am guessing here based on what I’ve read of it.

For a basic overview you can see the site’s introduction page here. For a more detailed look at what you’d be getting yourself involved in by signing up Rock, Paper, Shotgun did a game diary of a playthrough between them and PC Gamer here.

If you’re interested just put your name down in the comments thread of this post. Assuming enough people sign-up we’ll probably get started in a week or so.

1. It’s an adventure game.
2. It’s about a Jewish community in New York.
3. The style is classic film Noir except, instead of playing a cynical Private Eye, your character is a disenchanted Rabbi.
4. Most conversations give the option of a ‘Rabbinical Response,’ which basically turns your next statement into a question.
5. Disenchanted Rabbi would be a great band name.

• IF I enjoyed ir/rational THEN I will write a post about it.
• I am writing a post about ir/rational.
• THEREFORE I enjoyed ir/rational.

ir/rational is a short game by Tom Jubert, writer for the Penumbra series. It’s short. It’s free. You should probably play it. Not good enough? Maybe a can make a rational argument to persuade you.

• This is a gaming blog.
• IF you are reading this blog THEN you are interested in games.
• ir/rational is a game.
• THEREFORE you should play ir/rational.

Now for the less rational (irrational?) stuff. ir/rational is a text based puzzle game. It requires you to use propositional calculus to solve an increasingly complex series of arguments. This is actually a lot less daunting than it sounds. Once I’d grasped the concept, initially struggling through the first couple of puzzles, I became a lot better at seeing the logical patterns for the subsequent, supposedly trickier, levels. This isn’t a criticism of the game however. It doesn’t become easier, later levels do require a lot more working out, it’s just trains you to think through your argument before clicking that big Continue button. It’s a tactic that can be evidenced in all great puzzle games, minimising the frustration to the player and instead letting them feel the thrill of successfully solving problems.

Around the framework of these logic puzzles hangs an almost playfully dark and humorous story. Your character wakes up with no memory of what has gone before in a room with no discernible exit. While the set up may sound familiar to anyone who has played an escape-the-room webgame, it doesn’t take long for ir/rational to announce its own unique style.

The interesting thing about the story is that the character you play would be, in most situations, entirely unlikeable. His almost faultless application of logic and and general angry sarcasm make him… Well let’s just say that, before the memory loss, I doubt he was invited to many parties. In pitting him against an entity of pure logic, however, it allows the character’s humanity to shine through, highlighting the battle of wits between the two. It’s an interesting angle that keeps the story element interesting throughout the game.

I’m now in danger of spending longer writing about it than I did playing it (it really is quite short) so, in summary, ir/rational is a fun and interesting little puzzle game. Check it out.

Bloody hell, it’s been a while since I’ve done one of these. Can I even remember how to make one? Oh yeah, I play a game for an hour and then write about it. Of course! Well this should be easy then…

What Is It?

An open world game set on Mars. Massive hammer based destruction seems to be the focus. Beyond that I’ve got no idea. I did play the demo, however, and hated it.

Why Did You Buy It?

Legions of people saying that the demo was a poor reflection of the game, which is actually brilliant fun. Also this video. Also Game selling it for £5 over Christmas. Also the allure of hammering things.

The Preamble

Before I play the game, I have to start the game. This logic is undefeatable. Unfortunately I can’t find the bloody thing because there doesn’t seem to be a THQ, Volition or Red Faction Guerrilla folder in the start menu. Ah, of course. This is going to be one of those games that ignores the years old tradition of putting the executable files into an easy to sort through centralised set of nested folders, instead choosing to use the caustic wasteland of shit that is the Vista Games folder. This will need to be rectified.

I’ve got two reasons for using Steam as a centralised platform for launching all my games, whether they were bought through Steam or not. The first is, as a game launcher, it’s light years ahead of Vista’s awful Games folder. The second is that it adds the Steam overlay to non-Steam games, meaning they don’t crash to the fucking desktop when Rock, Paper, Shotgun’s Steam group announces one of their seemingly hourly TF2 matches. With RF:G added to the fold, shit can finally get hammered.

Runtime error! Fuck. Hmm, maybe my illicit Steam antics are causing issues. Time to brave the wastelands of the Games folder.

Nope, not that. To the Internet! Oh, my flatmate must be up because the Internet’s down. I really need to get around to resetting that bloody router. Still, at least I’m not playing a Ubisoft game (burn!)

The router’s remembered how to deal with two connections again… To the Internet! The only thing I learn from my search of ‘Red Faction Guerilla runtime error’ is my propensity for misspelling guerrilla. Maybe the game’s been patched? It has! Although the only patch download I can find is hosted by Gamespot, who want me to sign up to get it. I’ve gone this long without needing a Gamespot account, I’m not about to get one now.

Oh. Shit. RF:G uses Games for Windows: Live. This does mean it would auto-update patches but, crucially, only if I could start the fucking game. The game’s website is the usual flash-enabled hell of pointless screenshots and over-hyped feature lists. No help there then.

I’ve finally found the patch! Hidden on the community forum in a technical help thread. There’s also some advice for what to do if you can’t start your game.  Surprisingly none of the advice is “play a better made game,” which is what I’ve been leaning toward for the last 10 minutes. Okay, I’ll play along and update my graphics drivers.

I forgot, Nvidia’s auto update site doesn’t work properly in my Firefox browser. Hey, Internet Explorer, you’re going to get some work for a change. Make the most of it. Unsurprisingly I’ve already got the latest graphics driver update (well, excepting the one they removed for breaking people’s fans) this patch better work.

“Red Faction Guerrilla recommends you install Raptr.” Red Faction Guerrilla can fuck off. Jesus Christ, it’s actually launched a Raptr installation executable. Red Faction Guerrilla can fuck right off. Still the patch is done. This had better be one hell of a hammer.

Runtime error!

The very last suggestion in the technical help thread is “Uninstall and reinstall the game.” I’m certainly going to follow at least half of that advice. First though is the slightly bizarre suggestion of turning off all spyware and anti-virus software. How the fuck is that going to help? Is the game offended at the cowardice of using a full suite of security tools? Whatever, I can’t see it working but I’ve jumped through this many hoops already. Say goodnight, Bitdefender.

You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

The Playtest

Fuck it, I’ll do it another day.

Ride an explosive barrel off into the sunset.

I think I may have found my new Mercenaries 2/Saints Row 2/Prototype.