The cell blocks of Nova Prospekt will be the longest Gordon Freeman has spent inside in the whole of Half-Life 2, the ninety degree turns and tiled floors recalling the Black Mesa Research Facility explored in the original Half-Life. These areas also see the return of familiar elements from that game: laser tripmines and automated […]
Having obtained the antlion pheromone pod – know colloquially as Bugbait – you leave the resistance camp with an entourage composed of a pair of docile antlions; an additional pair scurries down the cave to join you as you approach the beach. Able to influence and direct the antlions, and with an endlessly replenishing supply, […]
In order to promote my work on Groping The Map: Book 1, I have decided to release a .pdf sample of the first nine pages of the chapter on Nova Prospekt from Half-Life 2. Consider this a “vertical-slice” of the book, as you can see I have made some changes from the traditional format that […]
In any simulated system there are boundaries, points at which the model being used breaks down, where player behaviour is no longer accounted for. The most obvious of these are the physical boundaries of the game space, the chasm too wide to cross or the wall too high to climb. To a large extent the methods for […]
“There ain’t a side of the tracks more wrong than under ’em.” Annotated Walkthrough, 1: Stepping onto the platform at the start of the level one thing is immediately clear, this place is dirty. Compared to the luxuriant excess of the Adonis, or the manufactured joviality of Ryan Amusements, Pauper’s Drop feels old, decrepit. Designed […]
Sequels focused on continuing a story started in the original can be uniquely challenging. Freed of the need to introduce world and characters the focus shifts to expanding the world, and a deeper exploration of the central themes. Providing a bigger context, a broader canvas, on which to explore the escalating consequences of the actions of the […]
As I posited previously games are a form of communication. The ways in which the player is able to express their intent to the game is only half the equation. Players perform actions in the world, using sentences formed from nouns, verbs and adverb-verb pairs, and the game responds by modifying the nouns (objects) and their […]
Any discussion of storytelling in games is going to run up against a barrier at some point due simply to the nature of games as (in very loose terms) “interactive systems governed by rules” seems to run counter to what defines a story. I personally prefer the term narrative as it doesn’t have the same connotations […]