I used to focus on one game at the time, but now I’m thinking it’s better to play several in parallel in order to make comparisons between them easier. You get a better idea of how they relate (in terms of enjoyment or otherwise) than if played serially, which should also make it easier to differentiate between a bad game and just not being in the mood, which is not always obvious when you only play one game at the time.

So, that’s what I’m doing, and right now I’m playing Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, Red Faction: Guerilla and Driver: San Fransisco. And currently I enjoy them in this order:

1. Red Faction

2. Driver

3. AC

I feel like playing Red Faction a lot more than Driver which I in turn like more than AC, which I don’t feel like playing at all actually. That could change though, AC could simply be harder to get into (I’ve not come far into it), but right now I doubt it. I know I will finish Red Faction but I’m not sure about the others.

(Actually, I did finish Red Faction before posting this.)

First time I played Minecraft was with an early version of the pocket edition, very primitive. The world was very small and many items, actions and mobs weren’t yet implemented. I’m still playing the pocket edition, it’s the only edition I’ve played, but it’s come a very long way since then. Even back then it was enjoyable, but even more so now.

It’s a game of creation (everything from simple tools or decorative items to the contruction of enormous buildings or even entire cities), of reshaping the environment by building (or erasing) mountains or lakes or what not, of exploration, of collecting raw materials, of mining, of managing resources, of escaping from or killing monsters, of farming, and much more. There’s a sense of adventure and imagination, and it’s a simulation of sorts. You can draw more paralleles between this game and real life than between most other games and real life. It’s a lot more open world than most games described that way. Not only will you decide your own goals (and they’re more truly your own than, say, if you have a bunch of designed quests or missions to choose from), but also how to achieve them, and you can reconsider at any moment. No two people are going to play the same game.

It has its set of animate and inanimate objects and it has its causal laws you need to obey, but within that framework you can do whatever you want. There are no pre-decided missions or points, and although what you do will fall inside of a few broad categories like creating, crafting and exploring there is a lot you can do within these. There’s so much you can create, so many possibilites. Youtube has tons of videos with impressive creations, but even doing small things like creating a little cottage and securing the area from monsters using fences can be strangely satisfying.

So some introspection is required; you need to discover how you want to play in order to make it fun. I’ve hit a few crises the required me to start playing it differently in order to make it fun again. Luckily I didn’t just give up during any of these crises, and that’s because it always seemed like a game I should be able to enjoy, and I was right, but managing my motivation still became an issue.

One thing I need to keep my motivation going is one or several long term purposes so that my actions, though haphazard, add up to something, a sense of steady, if slow, progress, but I also need to balance that out with some flexibility and follow my emotions in the moment, or the long term goals start feeling like chores in which case boredom sets it before long. Too much of either ruins the fun, not unlike real life, and I’ve also written about that in regard to Just Cause 2.

And then there’s esthetics. There is no way around being practical in the game if you want to get anything done at all, or even just to survive, but being esthetic is a choice, and a pretty good one, to make the game more meaningful and fun. My first structures may not have been very pretty, just throwing blocks of different kinds together to get some protection from monsters at night, but eventually as I had more resources and basic protection I rebuilt much of it into something more pleasing to the eye, and in the process making it more practical too.

And then there’s the problem-solving aspect of the game, and the problems will depend on what you choose to do and hence will be different depending on who’s playing and what they set out to achieve. Recently I wanted to explore by going further from my home, but I was afraid I wouldn’t find my way home again since it’s a huge world. My first solution was to build a huge tower at the highest point near my home. However, that isn’t enough because the tower disappears into the misty horizon pretty soon as I walk in any direction. I’ve considered building more towers within sight of each other, but I think I’m going to just leave a trail of torches. But in any case there are always different ways to achieve some goal, in addition to being able to choose many different goals — open world indeed.

There are always problems to be solved. The need to figure out what to do and the best way to do it. If the game had more realistic physics there would have been engineering problems as well. Right now you can remove the support from any building and the parts will still be there hoovering in the air without support.

Looking back at what I’ve done so far it doesn’t seem like much given all the hours I’ve put into it, I mustn’t be a very efficient player. I suppose much time has went into “drudgery” — grinding –like gathering resources which isn’t necessarily something you’d remember but it’s still something that feels meaningful in the context of the game. I’ve explored a few very big caves and done some serious mining in each, and I wouldn’t be surprised if several hours went into those endeavors alone. Mostly though I’ve been manipulating and improving the area where I have my main headquarters. I built my main house in a forest in a valley surrounded by big mountains. It’s a simple but nice house and I’ve done various improvements in the surrounding area like putting torches everywhere to prevent monsters from spawning (plus it’s pretty in the night) and I’ve put up some fences and I also built a waterfall nearby because it’s pretty, and for a little while (or more like a couple of hours) I tried to raze a nearby mountain to the ground. It was really time-consuming and boring and I decided i wanted to keep the HQ surrounded by mountains anyway. It’s a smaller mountain now but that’s okay, maybe I’ll rebuild it later.

I have a lot of farm animals in the area, because they can enter the area but not as easily leave, the way it’s naturally set up. But I was getting annoyed with running into them all the time so I built a “trap”, a fenced area they can enter but not leave. So eventually over time, hours, more and more animals got trapped and now most are in that area. Another problem solved, high-five.

And then there’s the tower I mentioned, it’s pretty ugly at the moment, except for the torches glowing in the night, and I want to make it bigger and prettier, and I tamed a bunch of dogs and grew some food (wheat) and many others little things.

And… yeah, I guess that’s it for now.

Sorry for the inactivity, but rest assured the blog is not going anywhere. Just had a lot on my mind for some time, but things are looking up. Recently I've been playing Minecraft, and the plan was to write a post about that, but it turned into chaos as I was trying to cram too much information into it, and then I was getting impatient and decided to write this instead.

I've also been playing Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, and I got a backlog of games such as Wasteland 2, Baldurs Gate (a classic I missed), The Last of Us, and oh I don't know 50 or so more games, most of which I already have in my possession. I also want the blog to go into into futurism as it pertains to gaming: where gaming is heading, what increasingly better artificial intelligence means for gaming, gamification of real life, virtual reality, augmented reality and a ton of other futuristic things that I have been thinking about and been discussing for some time now.

That's the plan but when does anything ever go according to plan. Heck can't even follow my plans in Minecraft without descending into chaos and confusion.

Borderlands 2. Gun porn. Loot porn. Post-apocalyptic/setter-ish environments. First person killer simulator. Strong sense of style. Colorful characters, variety if enemies. Humor that’s both crude and kind of witty, juvenile and self-ironical, and full of references to other post-apocalyptical works. Did I mention gun and loot porn? Guns guns guns.

It’s a very polished game in many ways, down to small details like the menus and how it possible to mark guns in order to know what to do with them. 

And it’s a somewhat enjoyable game if you’re in the right mood. Unfortunately that isn’t enough. Though it’s an accomplished game that I’m sure achieves what’s it sets out to achieve, I’m just not really the target audience. To me the game feels pretty empty and meaningless. The characters are colorful but to me uninteresting. They’re deliberately cartoony (on several levels) which isn’t really what I’m looking for. The quests and the main story are likewise cartoony and uninteresting, but a lot more ambitious that in the first game. Which for me actually might be a negative since I don’t buy into it anyway, so it just steals time from the better aspects of the game.

And that would be the shooting and the gun porn. It can be pretty fun finding new weapons and checking their stats and trying them out, although I have to say it’s a little too much of it — too much looting and too much menu-crawling trying to decide which guns to keep and which to sell. Although I suppose one has a choice, it’s not mandatory to loot or to put effort into choosing the very best guns to keep, but it’s hard not to given the way the game is structured. But even if the game toned down this aspect the difference wouldn’t be huge, the bad parts would overshadow the good.

I’m not done with the game but I’m not at this point sure I will finish it. I think I hope I’m strong enough to resist continuing — it’s hard justifying spending more time given all other games I have — but I suspect I’m going to finish. At the very least I should be able to just do the main story and resist the urge to complete it all. (Edit: turns out I’m too weak to complete a certain part of the main story, so I need to do a few side-quests to level up.)

As for the enemy ai: as with many other games they’re unrealistically good at detecting where I am after being fired upon. For example, if I am at a great distance half-hiding behind a rock and fire my sniper on an explosive barrel behind them, making it explode and cause chaos and hurt — they immediately know where I am and start coming at me, even though they should barely be able to see me at that distance, even less within a second from having an explosion go off nearby. They just don’t need a second or two to figure out was just happened or a short moment to look around; they just instantly know where I am. It’s not a sneaker game or a game of immersion or realism, so I suppose it’s not really a failure, but as a stickler for immersion I do notice these things. And yes, there are also other considerations such as balance and hitting the right level of difficulty, and changing this element alone could very well have made the game too easy.

I’m sure a lot of folks love this game, and rightly so if this is your kind of thing. Borderlands does its thing really well. It just isn’t my kind of thing.

Looks like writing that post on Bioshock: Infinite isn’t coming along very well so I’ve decided to settle for writing a short summary.

Let me just say that the game is awesome, it could very well be my favorite FPS. Not because of anything related to the FPS part of the game (like shooting mechanics), of which I don’t have any particular opinion, but the other aspects of the game, aspects that could have been part of another type of game but happened to part of an FPS (which is fine, while far from my favorite genre I still enjoy it), in particular: the setting, the story and characters, the RPG elements and powers (not spectacular like the setting, but still really good, solid), all those little details like the deliciously looking tonics you drink to get powers. And of course, the one and only Elizabeth, an unusually accomplished and life-like NPC and companion (more on Elizabeth and the AI in the preceding post, here.)

Unlike some, I enjoyed this game more than the first in the series, though the first had the distinct advantage of being more realistic (while not exactly realistic). Infinite is pretty out there in more ways than the setting (play to find out), but in very interesting and original ways. I’m definitely in the camp that loves the last 30 minutes. I also much prefer battle in open areas as against the cramped battles in the first game.

Not completely done with this game yet — I want to try and possibly finish the game in the (difficult) 1999 mode, and also play the DLCs. But I’m in no hurry. Currently playing Borderlands 2. Stay tuned.

I’ve finished the game (spoiler: I loved it!), but I have a few other things to say before writing a concluding overview. This post is spoiler free and addresses AI in the game.

Don’t have a ton to say about the enemy AI. The one act of what seems like cheating I noticed is that they’re (sometimes) unnaturally good at spotting you, even across large distances and if I’m looking at them from behind an object that covers most of me. Or worse: I sneak away from battle and around the building to ambush them, but as I turn the corner they’re already facing me and start shooting immediately. What the heck? But I suspect it’s not so much deliberate cheating (e.g. for the purpose of creating a bigger challenge) as much as the enemies simply lacking sophistication in this area. It isn’t a sneaker game after all, you’re not really supposed to take out enemies that way, so there’s not much point in having sophisticated code for detection.

Saw a video showing the exact opposite thing, the protagonist walking right behind an enemy (in a quiet area), and even in what seemed like the enemy’s field of view, without being detected. Again an example of unsophisticated and unrealistic detection algorithms, but in this case noticing less than what you’d expect (maybe they notice/magically know too much during battle and too little otherwise).

This is not especially detrimental to the gameplay but does break immersion to some little extent. It’s a great game, even downright fantastic, not trying to put it down, it’s just I’ve started to develop an interest in observing AIs, apparently.

The most important and groundbreaking AI in the game aren’t the enemies at all but, of course, Elizabeth, your companion. They’ve done a great job with her, she’s just awesome. I don’t know what to say that hasn’t already been said elsewhere many times, but she helps out a lot, she continually reacts to things in the environment, she has emotions and attitudes, she looks at things that interest her, she hides or otherwise protects herself during battle; she acts on her own. It’s not all just to make her real and relatable; she’s also useful in different ways: helps with supplies during and between battles, she picks locks, she solves riddles. And she’s of course an important part of the narrative (in multiple ways), whether she wants to or not. 

There are many videos on youtube where they talk about developing Elizabeth and where they demonstrate various things she does (some of which you might not even notice playing the game e.g. from rushing through an area), in particular all work they put into humanizing her, to make sure she doesn’t do “gamey” things like being to passive or reactive, such as just standing still and staring when you stop (real people tend not to do that, they have their own set of feelings and interests and act on them).

I’ll be back with an overview of the game.

So I finished the main quest recently, but I still have the DLCs to play. There is a lot to like in the game, and some things to dislike and the dislikes are more my personal opinion than objective faults.

The main attraction for me is sneaking around and either taking out your opponents one by one or just sneaking past them not even letting them know you were there. This is a choice; you can kill all your opponents if that’s your thing, but this is far less interesting and frankly it also makes the game too easy. That said, I still killed enough to have the dubious honor of getting the high chaos ending, which I half-heartedly tried to avoid. I was too impatient.

I don’t enjoy the game as much as Deus Ex: Human Revolutions, the game I can think of that Dishonored resembles the most, but they’re different enough to not really compete with each other directly anyway, the very different settings and stories. They end up feeling very different, but in terms of gameplay (sneaking, dealing with enemies, upgrading abilities and weapons, and so on) they’re similar, and if this is your thing you should absolutely play both.

I wasn’t entirely sold on the dark and grimy steampunk-ish setting of Dishonored. It’s right from the start striking and compelling in a twisted sort of way, but for me it gets old and depressing after a while, whereas the environment in Deus Ex remains attractive not only throughout the game but long after (to this day even, I’d like to visit that world again, but if I ever visit Dishonored again it’ll be for the gameplay and not the setting). I think I might have enjoyed it more if it was actual steampunk, although that would have made it less original I suppose.

The story is simple but good. It’s competently told, solid and fairly straightforward, which I much prefer to the convoluted unbelievable mess of so many other games. 

Don’t take my earlier posts on the game ai to mean it’s bad; it’s good as far as I can tell (the cheating I mentioned is rare).

Could write a lot more, about the character building aspect (decent but not impressive) or music (pretty good) or graphics (okay) and so on, but this is enough. 

Currently playing Bioshock Infinite, some hours into the game now. Expect a report.

Done with Dishonored, time for Bioshock Infinite. (There will be at least one more post on Dishonored.)

A game I expect to enjoy. And now that I think about it it’s the perfect follow-up game to Dishonored, because it’s so light and sunny whereas the darkness in Dishonored was wearing me down, especially the more I played. I expect to have nothing but praise for the setting in Bioshock Infinite, it looks gorgeous in all the videos I’ve seen. The setting in the first Bioshock was awesome, there is something really darkly and eerily poetic about a city under water, but like the setting in Dishonored it became kind of depressing even as it kept being fascinating (which the setting in Dishonored didn’t really, but the game has other virtues.)

I doubt the story will rival that of the first Bioshock, but I’m sure it’ll be good! It’s just that the story of the first Bioshock is among the best ever in a video game, it’ll be exceedingly difficult to surpass.

Not usually a fan of shooters, but the developers cram so many good elements into the Bioshocks that all is forgiven.

Lastly, I really like having a (likable) companion in a game which is another advantage this Bioshock has over the others.

I’ll have more to say when I’ve actually played the game, but that’s just the details. That I’ll like the game is a forgone conclusion.

Encountered another case of cheating (and of triggering), this time more subtle. Let me describe. So there was these two infected folks in a building, and one of them just standing in one place staring in a certain direction. I waited to see what would happen. Nothing, she just stood there looking down the hallway, the way I had planned to enter.

All right, so I started looking for another way in, which I found. So now I could approach her from behind instead, sneaking up on her putting her to sleep (actual sleep, not death), but… As I entered the building from that side she suddenly started moving in my direction.

She didn’t hear or notice me (the game tells you when that happens), but it’s unlikely she came up with this idea by herself, so to speak. More likely her new behavior was triggered by the game to not make it too easy for me to take her out, so she changed her behavior because of me even though she hasn’t noticed me.

The problem is it breaks immersion and elicits a feeling of inauthenticity, it’s saying: this world doesn’t exist for itself and it doesn’t follow ironclad rules like reality. The characters aren’t properly and neutrally simulated, but programmed to adapt to, challenge and entertain you the player (that is, programmed in accordance with what the developers think will entertain the player.)

But cheating and triggering, if it can be avoided at all, doesn’t entertain me as much, maybe because I notice them so clearly, I can see the wires coming from outside of the game world and their purpose.

Games could be made more neutral, more like true simulations.

So I was playing some more Dishonored and noticed something annoying: the ai is cheating. I’ll explain how in a moment, but let me first say how that effects me (and probably others).

Primarily, I’d say, the problem is it breaks immersion. The game is basically breaking the established rules, and the rules are the laws of that universe. Couldn’t happen in real life (rules can be broken but not natural laws — e.g. an army can’t materialize out of thin air just to make reality more challenging to someone.) But it’s not that it feels unfair like it would if a human cheats in some game your playing, but more that the game is revealing that it is player-centric, i.e. that the game world doesn’t exist as its own entity but as something to entertain you. Ultimately that is what it is of course, but (paradoxically?) it’s a lot more entertaining and interesting when it doesn’t seem and feel that way.

This cheating also adds a tiny bit of hopelessness. Even if you play perfectly it’ll still get you if the developers want and there’s nothing you can do about it, and you don’t know when it will happen again. It’s like playing chess with someone who’s occasionally allowed to make an illegal move. How would you strategize with that element thrown into the game?

I say tiny bit because I trust the developers won’t overuse this trick, at least not as blatantly as was the case this time.

So let me describe what happened.

I cleared out one level of a big area and started to go up one level using the stairs, sneaking as to not be discovered. Then I heard a shout behind me, turned around a saw two guards coming at me. Where the heck did they come from? Guess I missed clearing out a room or something. I reloaded (possibly after a chase and a fight) to the moment right before taking to the stairs. This time I waited to see where they would come from. I waited and waited, no one came. Okay, so I’ve come upon a triggering event that isn’t triggered when I just stood waiting.

This is not the cheating, but let me add that triggered events too break immersion to some extent, they too feel gamey. That’s a topic for another day though, but the reason is very similar to why cheating breaks immersion.

Okay, so I needed to trigger the event, I went up the stairs once more, but this time I walked backwards so that I could look in the direction of the expected guards, and at a certain point I hit the trigger and two guards appeared out of thin air in the middle of the stairs. I was like… really?

I get that they’re trying to create some excitement, but preferably they should do that while staying within the laid down rules, and I don’t think that includes creating guards out of thin air right behind you.

This is tiny example of cheating (and triggering) and one that by itself doesn’t matter much (which may even be just a bug), but it’s a good example of something bigger, the immersion-breaking effect of “gamey” tricks that make the world feel inauthentic. 

This is a topic I will write a lot more about.