Greed Corp. is a turn-based strategy game, though it's unusual for the genre. It sets itself apart from ordinary TBS games in that it's partly a puzzle game as well - and thanks to having opponents, it's a dynamic one. In an ordinary TBS game you have your environments, and you move your units around it to try and defeat your opponents units, or to capture more of the environment. Sometimes you have resources, or a variety of units with various uses. Greed Crop. Features all this it has a variety of unit types, resources and environments but the key feature of the game is that the environment is always changing. The main mechanic of the game is that in order to gain more resources, you must deplete and destroy the environment.
The environment in Greed Crop. is a board made up of octagonal panels. The board is arranged in layers between 1 and 6 that serve to create height and depth on the terrain. Beyond the board, there is nothing, save for a vast expanse of bottomless mists.
Your most common, and indeed most valuable piece, is called a harvester. It will give you a set amount of resources for every one of the octagonal panels adjacent to it, and in exchange it lowers them by a single layer. When a panel is out of layers, it crumbles into space, and can no longer be played or built on. The entire game is a gigantic balancing act. In order to get more resources, you destroy the areas where you can build or place units. By the end of the match there's little left of the board maybe four or five out of the original 40 or 50. Each team becomes confined to their own tiny island, firing at one another with mortar shells and trying to gather enough resources to build a plane to fly over to their enemy's collection of panels and deploy enough units to take it over. The end of the game becomes less a game of strategy and more a race. Everyone can see what needs to be done, it all comes down to what you did before the final stretch, and how that helps you get what needs to be done, done. There can be up to four teams in a match at once, making the game a frantic land grab, forcing the player to be wary of the enemy to the left, even as they conquer the enemy to the right. The experience as a whole rapidly shifts from a slow and methodical game of chess to a frantic and heart-pounding conclusion.
Greed Corp. is available on Steam for about 10 dollars. With a few dozen missions and online multiplayer, it's well worth the price if games like this are your thing.
Saturday, 26 November 2011
Alan Wake
Alan Wake follows it's eponymous character, a writer vacationing in a small Washington town to try and get over a 2-year stretch of writers block. However, as it is with all such towns, this one harbors a dark secret though most citizens outside of the local asylum remain blissfully unaware of it.
The asylum happens to be another reason for Alan's visit, as it specializes in treating artist - writers, painters, and musicians, such as a pair of aged rock-stars who believe themselves to be embodiments of the Norse gods Odin and Thor. The asylum even features a game designer for the purpose of an interesting easter egg one of Alan Wake's level maps is drawn on a whiteboard in the designer's room and a quick jab of self depreciation he is described as barely and artist by the asylum's head doctor.
Alan and his wife suffer a fight when the reach the town, and as a result Alan's wife is kidnapped by a dark force living in the lake. Alan awakes a week later in a crashed car, with no memory of what happened that week. Stranger still, he finds a page of a manuscript that tells him what's about to happen.
Regarding Gameplay, Alan Wake is very interesting. It's is a rare Triple-A game that risks a new mechanic. The entire game is based around light and dark. Your enemy is darkness incarnate, so your main weapon is a flashlight. Standing in pools of lamplight keeps you completely safe, and will heal you. Exposing one of your enemies to a source of bright light will incinerate them instantly - which can be extremely satisfying as you manage to light up a lamp just in time to kill an enemy who's preparing to attack.
The game bases absolutely everything around its mechanic; the story, the combat, even simple things that slip under the radar like leading the player through the levels. As long as you can see light, you know which way to go. The light reveals dangers and secrets in the dark. It's an incredibly cohesive game, and it has my applause for that. Many games suffer from elements that don't fit, but this game doesn't seem to have any.
The atmosphere is so thick you could use it in a Rocky training montage as a punching bag. The music is subtle and chilling, barely noticeable as you make your way through a darkened forest. It raises in pitch and volume whenever there's an enemy nearby, adding to an already tense situation with the shock of a scare cord. The levels are dark, creepy, and reminiscent of walking through an actual forest at night - the poor light warps the bushes into looming monsters, approaching from all sides. If the player finds themselves off the path, they'll have a hard time finding their way back to it without the help of lights in the distance. It never slips right into horror territory, as its individual enemies are easy enough to dispatch, but it never stops being tense and spooky.
Of course, it's far from a perfect game. It has a large issue with its level design, in that they're very wide open. While this is excellent for immersion, it has the unfortunate side effect of making it very easy to get lost, as I'd previously mentioned. This is especially apparent in the game's many forest levels, where the environments are much the same and the light is low, making it even harder to find landmarks. There are often lights in the distance leading you where to go regardless, but even still you will find yourself blundering through the bush, dogged by enemies wherever you turn, slowly getting weaker and weaker.
On that note, it's worth mentioning that the combat can get repetitive fast. As most of the enemies are easy to dispatch it's easy to fall into a pattern when dealing with them. Point your flashlight, shoot twice, rinse and repeat for every enemy you face. Times when you have to fight large groups of enemies, and they can sneak up on you are extremely tense, but on average the combat is a slow point of the game.
It does suffer from issues story wise as well, in spite of its story being very good by game standards. It very clearly takes its inspiration from the works of Stephen King. This fact in and of itself is not a bad thing, but Alan Wake constantly draws attention to this fact. It makes it feel somewhat derivative, where otherwise the inspiration would have been clear but it would have stood strongly as its own work. The 'comic relief' character can also be abrasive at times, though thankfully the spotlight is rarely on him.
The game also has an interesting feature that I can't say I've ever seen before. A lot of games model themselves after movies; there's a single long stretch of gameplay with nothing to break it up, ending in a huge climax. Alan Wake, on the other hand, models itself after a Miniseries. It's divided into 6 chapters, each chapter having it's own defined arc, plot and climax. There's cliffhanger endings, and short 'last time on Alan Wake' segments at the beginning of each. Given the similarities of the game to Stephen King, who's had several books adapted to miniseries, I think it's an appropriate choice of aesthetic. On the Whole, the game feels wonderfully cohesive, excellently designed, and delightfully spooky.
I sadly can't speak of the game's price, nor where you could find it. I imagine it's available to be purchased at any game retailer, or on Xbox Live.
The asylum happens to be another reason for Alan's visit, as it specializes in treating artist - writers, painters, and musicians, such as a pair of aged rock-stars who believe themselves to be embodiments of the Norse gods Odin and Thor. The asylum even features a game designer for the purpose of an interesting easter egg one of Alan Wake's level maps is drawn on a whiteboard in the designer's room and a quick jab of self depreciation he is described as barely and artist by the asylum's head doctor.
Alan and his wife suffer a fight when the reach the town, and as a result Alan's wife is kidnapped by a dark force living in the lake. Alan awakes a week later in a crashed car, with no memory of what happened that week. Stranger still, he finds a page of a manuscript that tells him what's about to happen.
Regarding Gameplay, Alan Wake is very interesting. It's is a rare Triple-A game that risks a new mechanic. The entire game is based around light and dark. Your enemy is darkness incarnate, so your main weapon is a flashlight. Standing in pools of lamplight keeps you completely safe, and will heal you. Exposing one of your enemies to a source of bright light will incinerate them instantly - which can be extremely satisfying as you manage to light up a lamp just in time to kill an enemy who's preparing to attack.
The game bases absolutely everything around its mechanic; the story, the combat, even simple things that slip under the radar like leading the player through the levels. As long as you can see light, you know which way to go. The light reveals dangers and secrets in the dark. It's an incredibly cohesive game, and it has my applause for that. Many games suffer from elements that don't fit, but this game doesn't seem to have any.
The atmosphere is so thick you could use it in a Rocky training montage as a punching bag. The music is subtle and chilling, barely noticeable as you make your way through a darkened forest. It raises in pitch and volume whenever there's an enemy nearby, adding to an already tense situation with the shock of a scare cord. The levels are dark, creepy, and reminiscent of walking through an actual forest at night - the poor light warps the bushes into looming monsters, approaching from all sides. If the player finds themselves off the path, they'll have a hard time finding their way back to it without the help of lights in the distance. It never slips right into horror territory, as its individual enemies are easy enough to dispatch, but it never stops being tense and spooky.
Of course, it's far from a perfect game. It has a large issue with its level design, in that they're very wide open. While this is excellent for immersion, it has the unfortunate side effect of making it very easy to get lost, as I'd previously mentioned. This is especially apparent in the game's many forest levels, where the environments are much the same and the light is low, making it even harder to find landmarks. There are often lights in the distance leading you where to go regardless, but even still you will find yourself blundering through the bush, dogged by enemies wherever you turn, slowly getting weaker and weaker.
On that note, it's worth mentioning that the combat can get repetitive fast. As most of the enemies are easy to dispatch it's easy to fall into a pattern when dealing with them. Point your flashlight, shoot twice, rinse and repeat for every enemy you face. Times when you have to fight large groups of enemies, and they can sneak up on you are extremely tense, but on average the combat is a slow point of the game.
It does suffer from issues story wise as well, in spite of its story being very good by game standards. It very clearly takes its inspiration from the works of Stephen King. This fact in and of itself is not a bad thing, but Alan Wake constantly draws attention to this fact. It makes it feel somewhat derivative, where otherwise the inspiration would have been clear but it would have stood strongly as its own work. The 'comic relief' character can also be abrasive at times, though thankfully the spotlight is rarely on him.
The game also has an interesting feature that I can't say I've ever seen before. A lot of games model themselves after movies; there's a single long stretch of gameplay with nothing to break it up, ending in a huge climax. Alan Wake, on the other hand, models itself after a Miniseries. It's divided into 6 chapters, each chapter having it's own defined arc, plot and climax. There's cliffhanger endings, and short 'last time on Alan Wake' segments at the beginning of each. Given the similarities of the game to Stephen King, who's had several books adapted to miniseries, I think it's an appropriate choice of aesthetic. On the Whole, the game feels wonderfully cohesive, excellently designed, and delightfully spooky.
I sadly can't speak of the game's price, nor where you could find it. I imagine it's available to be purchased at any game retailer, or on Xbox Live.
The Stanley Parable
The Stanley Parable is a difficult game to describe. This is not because of anything particularly confusing within the game itself; TSP is entirely story based, and the story is very straightforward. Rather, what makes the game difficult to describe is the nature of the story. It is a story that is wholly unique to the medium of video games, in that it can be different each time, and most importantly in that it is aware of this fact.
At this point, I find myself struggling with just how much of TSP I can describe without spoiling the experience and the game is all about the experience. The gameplay is virtually nonexistent; the only actions that the player can take are pressing buttons, and making choices.
The Stanley Parable is, at its core, a game about choices. It's also a game about narrative, and about control, but only in how choice relates to them. It's core feature is that it is aware of the choices that the player is making as they play through it. I don't mean that systems built into the game track data and tabulate scores based on them, either. The game features a narrator who is wholly aware of the player and will interact with them. He tries to lead the player along a path, and becomes irate when the player deviates from it.
Again, I don't want to say to much about the game for the fear of ruining its experience. As it is, though, I imagine I've left plenty for you to experience on your own. Perhaps most interestingly, the experience is different from both a player's and a designer's perspective.
To a player, it's deeply compelling, and will make you think about any games you've played in the past particularly those that featured choices. From a designers perspective, however, it becomes something else entirely. After playing it I found myself simply staring at my computer screen. It makes me, as a designer, rather acutely aware of what I do when I lead the player.
That's all I will say about it for now. The gameplay hardly warrants mention; as I've said previously it's barely there, instead narrowing it's focus solely to delivering the narrative, which is does remarkably.
The Stanley Parable is a mod for the Source Engine. It's free to download, so long as you have the engine, which is available through any Valve game, several of which are free themselves(and, of course, excellent). It takes anywhere between 7 minutes to about an hour of gameplay, depending on how thorough you wish to be, making it excellent to play in your free time.
At this point, I find myself struggling with just how much of TSP I can describe without spoiling the experience and the game is all about the experience. The gameplay is virtually nonexistent; the only actions that the player can take are pressing buttons, and making choices.
The Stanley Parable is, at its core, a game about choices. It's also a game about narrative, and about control, but only in how choice relates to them. It's core feature is that it is aware of the choices that the player is making as they play through it. I don't mean that systems built into the game track data and tabulate scores based on them, either. The game features a narrator who is wholly aware of the player and will interact with them. He tries to lead the player along a path, and becomes irate when the player deviates from it.
Again, I don't want to say to much about the game for the fear of ruining its experience. As it is, though, I imagine I've left plenty for you to experience on your own. Perhaps most interestingly, the experience is different from both a player's and a designer's perspective.
To a player, it's deeply compelling, and will make you think about any games you've played in the past particularly those that featured choices. From a designers perspective, however, it becomes something else entirely. After playing it I found myself simply staring at my computer screen. It makes me, as a designer, rather acutely aware of what I do when I lead the player.
That's all I will say about it for now. The gameplay hardly warrants mention; as I've said previously it's barely there, instead narrowing it's focus solely to delivering the narrative, which is does remarkably.
The Stanley Parable is a mod for the Source Engine. It's free to download, so long as you have the engine, which is available through any Valve game, several of which are free themselves(and, of course, excellent). It takes anywhere between 7 minutes to about an hour of gameplay, depending on how thorough you wish to be, making it excellent to play in your free time.
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