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Rich moms driving unnecessary luxury SUVs OR My time with Far Cry 2

Far Cry 2 spoils its amazingly diverse world by trying to too hard to maintain the reins as a leading First Person Shooter.  It's really too bad that the game doesn't do exactly what it attempts to set up in the beginning "cinematic".  The intro sequence creates villages of normal people tending animals, rolls your vehicle through aggressive checkpoints where the NPCs scrutinize you but let you go and shows you how gorgeous the world of Far Cry 2 is.

Then you get your first mission and you find out that apparently everyone, including the people on "your side", will shoot at you.  This is the most frustrating element of FC2: you are supposed to choose sides and yet it never matters.  Everyone outside of the cities will fire at you and no one in the cities will.  Perhaps the point is that no one can be trusted, and yet it immediately destroys this fascinating take on a video game that the opening presents you with.  Perhaps that's just the way games have always worked.  Let the opening build a cohesive world and then drop you in the game where the systems have to balance and be entertaining.

But wouldn't it be more entertaining to have those safe outposts that you could flee to?  Then when an enemy jeep is hot on your tail you can arrive safely to have the barricades and friendly guns take out your aggressors?  It's unfortunate that this was not how the game went, because otherwise the game is quite full-bodied and such a meta element to the world would have tied in its shooting so well.  And believe me, the shooting is very solid.  The game offers such fun gunplay because of its open world.  Stealth is a much more tenuous game in the outdoors and the variety of guns and different ideas FC2 brings to the table make it all the more addictive.  It's fun to replay certain sequences with such innovations as buddy back-ups and weapons jamming.  Or just to light the grass on fire and watch it sweep across a field of enemies and perhaps burn down a tree.

The game looks gorgeous when burning things down or blowing things up.  It even looks gorgeous just driving boats and jeeps around or sneaking through the jungles.  It has a dreary color pallet of greens and browns but makes up for it with fantastic lighting and texturing and foliage.  However I do have one gripe with the terrain.  In an effort to make you take certain routes the game does something that has always annoyed me: it puts up impenetrable cliffs.  I detest that solution.  Especially when the map so clearly outlines where giant unwalkable areas are.  Please, put some random routes through those mountains.  I HATE being funneled through regions when I feel that a game is better when it doesn't put artificial barriers in any way.  If I want to spend the time to climb the mountains where no jeep can go just so I can assault a fortress from above, give me that option please.  Don't always route me through chokepoints, especially when you're touting such open-world scenarios.  Chokepoints don't always exist in the real world.

But I like Far Cry 2.  I have invested considerable time into it, even learning how to play a shooter on a console.  I still prefer the ease of mouse and keyboard, but FC2 has lots going for it: new gameplay elements for shooters, an incredibly expansive world, and a gorgeous engine.  It's just too bad it can't break free of certain traditional shooter elements: everyone is an enemy and you always have to pass chokepoints.  Give it a try, I am sure you'll love it.  It's the FPS equivalent of TES4: Oblivion.  Just be wary, it doesn't break as much ground as it clearly wanted to.

2d side-strollers

There are as many 2d platformers produced every minute as babies. Until my recent foray into indie games, I had believed, like so many others, that 3d was the way of the world now. But I have discovered that it is not. No, indeed, it seems that the mass majority of games are in 2d. And I'm trying to decide how I feel about that. So I think it's great that indie developers are making 2d platformers because they are producing games. But it seems like almost ALL of them are making platformers.

It must be due to Gamemaker, I just don't know. Please, though, stretch your horizons. I want to play some new types of games. And I know there are a billion other games out there. But half the time I go to tigsource I see a new sidescrolling platformer. I just don't know how to feel.

Bottle caps

I think the decision by bottle manufacturers to remove the grip from their plastic caps was one of the most ass-backwards move of recent years. I can't open a 20oz bottle of soda anymore. Who made this decision? And who is still backing it? "Hey, let's make it so people can't open their soda bottles unless they have sandpaper on their fingertips!" Bottle caps worked fine 3 years ago, and now they don't. THEY DON'T WORK ANYMORE! The only possible explanation I can muster up is that someone hurt someone by scraping the rough surface against their eyeball and the soda companies determined that they could get in trouble for having a slightly rough surface on their bottle caps. WTF.

All I know is that it just took me far too long to open my iced tea.

Pointing Out Problems, Pt 2: Survival games

Do I hate survival/gauntlet games? I love and hate knowing that I should not win a game. Let me examine further. I love the idea of victory. If I don't immediately see victory within reach, I will probably move on to another game. So this becomes my problem today: to endure the challenges of a game where the end is unclear.

I do NOT endure unclear challenges because I prefer immediate success. If a game cannot present me with immediate goals and rewards, then I will not continue. Tell me what I am going for. Show me what I need to do. Do not leave me in the dark.

That is the point of some games, however. By not playing these games I am not understanding a section of the game spectrum. This section of games grows larger still because I generally dislike the zombie genre.

So here is my task: to beat Omar's Orthogonal Oyster Outing. A zombie survival game with unclear goals. And to clarify, the game does give the goal of reaching a helicopter. However, this is only stated within the readme and at this point I have yet to find any evidence of a copter or its whereabouts within the game. Therefore: unclear goal.

[note: I am also playing through Chrono Trigger, which is epic, and it could be stated that I am unclear on where the game might take me, though the goals are generally clear and close. But I am liking my first true foray into a jRPG.]

Pointing Out Problems, part 1?

If I were a man of few words, this would be easy as pie, but instead I spit out words because I stuff myself to the brim. My problem is as follows: I am not aware.

That's right, dear readers, I, yours truly, the man of this blog, ruler of all that is a[muse]ing, am completely utterly and hopelessly unaware of things. Progressing forward in life I shall attempt to document that of which I am not aware and hopelessly I will document my struggles to overcome this most massive of hurdles/cliffs/mountains(/planets?).

Let's commence at the beginning. My problem today is this: I am unaware of the metaphors behind great writing. I want to believe that things are as they seem, and I am fighting to read between the lines. I just love text! And I love seeing it! Unfortunately, the spaces between the lines are invisible, that point where we're supposed to be unconscious, sleeping. That third of our life of silence and blank existence. Sadly I don't often sleep all that much and I have been missing that thing called silence and sleep so I am no longer conscious of sleep and space and reading between the lines. Perhaps tonight I'll sleep. At least for a few hours. No! Seven hours! I must. (Haha, I can dream. [No, you cannot!])

Thoughts and prayers to my professor

How easily we brush away words. Words contain so little weight with us, and indeed we're taught to learn to ignore and to heed them at the same time. Where does sarcasm melt into sincerity?

I'm writing this because I do not know the state of health of my Spanish professor and I believe it to be poor. All last week I was in San Francisco enjoying the Game Developer's Conference, enjoying life and networking and my career, and completely ignoring my Spanish homework. Which is fine, because it was my choice to do so.

Here to Boston I return and find that my professor has been gone all of last week and again today he isn't teaching. Two months ago when I first began my GDC planning I told my professor that I would be gone. Remind me in a month, he said, he could be dead by then. A sarcastic comment from a professor who we've known to throw as much humor into his teaching as he could muster.

But it seems those words were not so hollow and light as they appeared to me. I am praying for you professor.