Warning: Fallout 3 main quest spoilers. Do not read if you don’t want spoilers for “Following in His Footsteps” or “Scientific Pursuits”. Quests in Role Playing Games can feel very similar. Go to an area, talk to a specific NPC, kill some creatures, find an object and return it to an NPC, add these elements together in […]
I often wonder what games are trying to say. Playing Fallout 3 I’ve found myself receiving an explicit reward simply for finding a new location. The fact that there might be new items, characters and quests in that location, or that the act of exploration itself might be rewarding isn’t consider a strong enough incentive. The game decides […]
Apparently I’m a nice guy. At least that’s what my trusty Pip-Boy 3000 (Model A) tells me. I’m glad it does this because I probably wouldn’t have known otherwise, what with people commenting on how nice a person I am or how much of a “goody two shoes” I’ve been. Fallout 3 is giving me a curious sense […]
Games are about the exploration of space, both in the physical sense of exploring a virtual environment, and the abstract sense of exploring the possibility space provided by the game; the mechanics available and the dynamics that develop from them. In both cases there are two distinct types of explorable territory: functional and logical. The […]
Having just completed a mission for Nasreen I was heading to a distant safe house when my dune buggy was rammed. Jumping out I threw a Molotov at the pursuing vehicle. The Molotov hit the driver setting him on fire and killing him almost instantly. Ducking behind my dune buggy I drew my silenced MP-5 […]
The (dead) cat is out of the underwater city it seems, the first teaser trailer for BioShock 2 (Possible full title BioShock 2: Sea of Dreams), available as bonus content on the Playstation 3 release of BioShock, has found its way online; as such things always do. I’ve mentioned BioShock numerous times on this site, […]
The news that StarCraft II is to to be released as the first in a trilogy has caused some controversy. The variety and tone of comments on the matter has swayed from the conciliatory to the openly hostile, to the abusive. I have quoted an example of two such comments, culled from popular game industry news […]
What is the purpose of a sequel? From a corporate perspective it’s a means of establishing a brand, a franchise, and increasing revenue through recognition. As a fictional work it’s to expand the universe, grow the narrative and revisit familiar characters. What is the purpose from a game perspective? Chess might have evolved over centuries but […]
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 […]
Some games are simply frustrating. They are not necessarily difficult games, they just feature some section or encounter that is out of balance with everything surrounding it. I’ve been playing through God Of War and reached such a section. It’s an environmental puzzle which requires me to maintain my balance while walking along a series of beams […]