What I Did on My Summer Vaca- er, Hiatus

So, if you paid attention to the handy-dandy gadget I put on the sidebar with my twitter feed, you no doubt saw that I implemented that at just the right moment, for directly after, I found a real use for it:  informing you, the readers, that my computer had gone all pear-shaped.  So, I hope you saw that at some point!  Because it's not an intentional outage that I went through, I assure you, merely something out of my control.  The skinny of it is something the internet has, no doubt, told you anyway:  Never buy Norton Anything.  Norton Anti-virus, Internet Security, what have you, just don't shell out the money.  It can, quite possibly, get infected in such a way that it turns into a megalomaniacal super-tyrant who will ruin your computer if not stopped.  And the means of stopping it involve completely wiping the computer.

Thankfully, the guy who fixed our computer has been doing things with computers since I was a kid, so he knows what he's doing, and the important things that were on this computer were saved.  So no worries on that.  He even optimized it (and gave it a half-gig more of RAM, bringing the total up to, uh, 1 gig) for us and it works like a dream now.  A....ten year old, technological hurr-durr of a dream, but a dream nonetheless.  So hopefully, everything will be cool on the computer front.  If only Windows would, uh, stop updating.

Anyways, you likely don't care about that.  You care about what the title says:  What I did with my, er, 'time off'.  And I'll tell you what, it was a lot.  I'd like to make special mention to my PSP for being awesomer and awesomer every time I want to do something with it.  Thanks in part to the world going all mobile-sites, the browser in the PSP is a little more capable than the days or yore, and while it's still not perfect, it's a fine stand-by while we wait for the real treasure:  The Vita's browser.  Which...I imagine will just be the PS3's browser.  But hey, it works fine, and it streams youtube videos.  Hopefully we'll see that on the Vita as well, since that's the only thing that could have made the hiatus more bearable.

I'm sure it'll surprise no one (especially if you kept up with my twitter) that the bulk of my time away was spent with Sucker Punch's latest gem, inFamous 2, which has me feeling all sorts of things; the majority of them being good.  I will open by berating Sucker Punch for making the same mistake in this game as they did the last:  Holding out on us with the really good mobility powers.  Without spoiling too much for you, at a certain point, you get a power that makes getting up to higher places much, much easier, in a way that I akined to being Electric Spider-Man, but that point is not in the first half of the game, much like the Static Thrusters weren't that soon in the first game.  Which is not a good thing!  Stop holding out, Sucker Punch!

My only other gripe would be, in a surprising twist, too much of a good thing.  Namely, quite a few powers locked to the R2 key.  Two are in my head off-hand (one of them being a good side power, since that's what I beat the game on), and it's just too much of a hassle to switch between them.  They both make mobility really, really excellent, and it's just a shame that you can't swap one of them with a different key to make use of the both of them in a quick, easy, and efficient way.

Aside from that, the rest of the game made me various, various degrees of happy, save one part.  Which, if you've beaten the game on good, you know what part and I'm not saying anything else.  Suffice to say that I had to tell myself repeatedly that it's a comic book game, and comic books do that sort of thing all the time and keep going, so I'm not going to worry too much on it.


I know I focused more on the things I was "Ehhhhhh" about, but you have to look at the facts here:  I spent probably 20-30 hours playing inFamous 2, beat it one and a fourth times, and I have precisely three gripes about it, two of which aren't really even bad.  If that's not enough of an endorsement for you, I could very likely gush here for paragraphs about what I loved about the game, but I can just narrow it down here:  Everything I didn't mention above.  Alright?  It's all just perfect.  Go buy it.

Also on my list of things I did, was delve back into the wonderful world of LittleBigPlanet the Second, which made me wonder why I ever left to begin with.  And then I looked at the stack of games I've yet to even touch still and mouthed a silent "Oh yeah" to myself.  However, LBP2 has likely carved out a niche in my everyday while I watch my nephews at least, since they just love love love watching the movies people have created in LittleBigPlanet 2.  Which makes it easy on me too; I can just load it and enjoy as they do!  Though, I do love playing the game, of course.

And of course, dipping back into LBP2 has also meant a resurgence of my ever-long desire to revamp my single published level, Journey's Fall, that I have come to think of as the half-finished manuscript on my coffee table.  I'm proud of it, but it's not done, and I don't know what to do with it; or rather, I do know, but I can't will myself to do so.  And while I might show it off to people who come around and get positive feedback, it could likely never get finished.  Though I really do intend to finish it.  And I do have a few ideas.  We'll see if LittleBigThings will make a comeback, though.

Also on the rather long list of accomplishments is the fact that I have, indeed, scratched one game off of my "To Finish" list:  Grand Theft Auto:  The Lost and Damned.  Though, that's the only positive note about it, as TLAD is, for a lack of a better term, completely and totally poor.  I wanted to like it.  I really did.  Because I liked GTA IV!  At least, I did.  Coming back to the mechanics after such an extended period of time made them feel archaic by comparison.  It was rough getting back in, especially considering the lovely missions and the absolutely fabulous mid-mission checkpoint system, but after I got them back down...well, I managed to finish the game.  (I will note, that obviously, I hated the missions and checkpoints.)

Note to Rockstar for future reference:  If you have a goddamn shootout with five waves of people and then a bike chase to kill even more people on bikes, maybe you want to put a checkpoint somewhere in there.  I cannot put into words the amount of frustration one feels when you're down to just one guy left to kill and you end up dying.

Twice.

Only to have to restart the whole goddamn thing over again.

Twice.

Especially if one of those times is, technically, your own fault because you don't remember how to switch weapons on a vehicle.  Gee thanks, game!  What am I going to do with goddamn pipe bombs on a motorcycle against other guys on motorcycles?  The answer?

Accidentally kill myself.

Yeah.  That was just.....I'm sure you can imagine what it was.  And all in all, I can appreciate the scale of the later missions, but that doesn't mean I liked them or thought they were done well.  While the last missions arguably reaches Three-Leaf Clover levels of grandeur, the execution is much less appealing and even becomes a bit sloppy, like the rest of the game.  (I know it's just an expansion, but it's full-featured enough.)

Directly after, I started up The Ballad of Gay Tony, and it's like friggin' night and day.  The Ballad of Gay Tony, I only got through the first mission before I turned it off, but I was happy while playing it.  Because it was fun.  The animation is noticeably better, the voice-work is wonderful, and the direction is just much, much better overall.  I do believe I'm going to have fun with it.  But time will tell, of course.

Rounding out the list of things I did is the all-encompassing term of "Portable Gaming", by which Phantasy Star Portable 2 and Rune Factory 3 were my main games.  Anyone from the school of Phantasy Star Online will appreciate the gravity of the statement, "I got my main character from Level 80 to Level 82" whereas everyone else will likely shrug at the two levels of advancement.  But those of us that know, know, that that is not something to shrug over.  As for Rune Factory 3, I had my second child on my main file and started a new one because why not with the intent on getting all the girls to like my character so he'll have supreme pick when it comes time to get married.

I might even be forgetting a thing or two here, but the short of it is that the computer is back and better than ever, and I had a lot of free time in the meantime.  But now Kupowered is back in business!

Random Thoughts - Older Gaming vs. Newer Gaming

So, I picked up and started playing a rather older game a few days ago (I think I'll try to keep it anonymous for now in an attempt to make more conversation for the Weekly Wrap-Up) and managed to finish it off today and it left me fairly conflicted, really.  I like it, but goddamn, do I hate playing it.  And it really got me thinking of a lot of older games that I'd have problems playing today, not because they wouldn't be as good, theme-wise and such (what you're more apt to remember in a game as time goes by) and why that's sort of a thing.  And while I won't really touch on all the issues involved, I do want to touch on a few points that I thought through earlier.

I think the biggest difference between the Newer caste of games and older caste is that, while both attempt to be entertaining above all else (though not necessarily 'fun' in some cases), their approaches to this end vary greatly.  In my opinion, older games tried to sell you their entertainment value through their concept, outside lore (manuals) and charm foremost, which honestly worked for a lot of them.  The more notable example that comes to mind being Mario in Super Mario Bros.  About all there is to it is concept; a plumber (which you wouldn't be able to tell on looks alone) in this weird, trippy world who runs from left to right, eating mushrooms, stomping things and saving a princess.  In the gameplay front, you have running, jumping and shooting fireballs sometimes.  It is, nearly by definition, barebones.

This is by no means me saying that old games are bad because they were often as shallow as a puddle; far from it.  Just that there's no subtle nuances in gameplay, little evolving mechanics and the like in general, leaving your game to sink or swim on whether it's charming and/or entertaining in concept and delivery.  Obviously much of this is from technical limitations, but that's not an excuse, just a general fact of it all.

Of course the problem with issuing broad statements like the one above (aside from generally coming off as a know-it-all which is obviously not my intent) is that there's always ways that the statement is just not true.  The first few Legend of Zelda games being notable exceptions to the "Few evolving mechanics" statement, in that they're -mostly- about evolving mechanics.  Getting new items, new weapons, stronger versions of what you've got already is the name of the game, while also retaining somewhat of the "go for charm and concept" theory I'm placing to Mario and most of the other games from my youth. 

Whereas most older games seem to put concept at the forefront, Newer games tend to focus more on something of a more cinematic feel, trying to ensure that you're entertained constantly.  The setpiece-to-setpiece design of some games is evidence of this, and what some will complain about as games nowaday being "too easy" is further showing of this.  Which, I won't say games are 'too easy' nowadays, just that they are easier for all the right reasons.

Older games, as technically constrained as they were, had to take short-cuts here and there to pad up the difficulty and, at times, the length of the game.  Things that were acceptable back then in terms of methods and amounts of damage the character is able to take, ways the character could die or otherwise fail, and the consequences of death/failure are far different now, again in my opinion for the better.  But that just speaks more to my theory on newer games focusing more on the presentation; being able to take more damage, nearly no OHKs, and ways to make the consequences for death a little less oppressive to progress.

I think it's also shown off in general design in newer games, the concern for presentation, I mean, through gameplay design and the faith developers put in what they create.  This, of course, refers mostly to Open-world games where you're left with the option to make your own Point A and Point B in most circumstances, as there's enough variance and nuance to the existing gameplay to make it possible to do what the developers want you to do without putting the path directly before you.  After playing something of an older platformer and comparing it in my head to newer games with platforming elements (inFamous, Assassin's Creed) the difference is really clear, yet hard to place, to piece out, really.

In the older game I played, every level/area was set up directly as a "go here to go there to go there" type of thing, which clearly beat into my head that yes, I was indeed playing a platformer game where you platformed because it was a platformer.  Point A was clearly defined and the path was as well, so eventually Point B was where you got, the challenge was just ensuring you got to Point B.  Whereas in newer games that have platforming elements, the challenge usually lies in picking your course to get to wherever your Point B is. 

Taking inFamous for an example, say I were to need to get up to the top of a building while being on a shorter building.  If we say that I've got my movement abilities maxed, that gives me quite a few options.  The most linear being, of course, jumping down to street level, running towards the building I need to get up and straight up jumping/climbing it.  Or, depending on the scenery, I could jump up a few other things, grind a neighboring rail/wire towards the building and jump/glide to it.  Or I could just get to a similarly high rooftop and jump from rooftop to rooftop to get there.  Just as long as there is a Point B, there are various ways to get to it.  It's because the gameplay mechanics are so much more advanced that there doesn't need to be a defined route for most of what you need.

Of course, the downside in preferring presentation to crafting this sort of vague, yet charming world/concept is that sometimes you simply can't express what you want, and/or you can't make it entertaining enough.  Most modern shooters that some people would refer to as "Cut-and-paste shooters" or "Bald Space Marine Shooter #1412" suffer from this in that they're so focused on trying (and oftentimes failing) to make this gameplay that has been widely accepted without thinking out the concept well or executing it well enough.  What you end up with is something very shallow and bland, with the dissociation from one element to the other showing as plain as day.  Final Fantasy as a series (more notably the later installments) could definitely be accused of this (not saying one way or another if it's true or not, as that's for another time, of course and I still haven't played XIII) since it's basically the poster-child for my "Presentation is key" theory, focusing rather intensely on graphics and the like, while some would argue the game aspect of it suffers for it.

Overall, I'm not praising one school of thought or damning the other, even if it seems like I might be, as obviously there's a place for both ways of thinking, considering that some older games still are great, while some newer games are as well, for their own reasons.  I was merely considering the differences (in what I've observed/inferred) between old and new game design earlier and thought it might be an interesting article to write up.  Hopefully I don't come off as too preachy or condescending or the like, and presented my views on the pros and cons of what I think both schools of thought were in a clear way even if I'm not right on either count. 

Since, I mean, it's just, like, my opinion maaan.

Quick Note - Carmageddon and Other GTWMG

Go and watch this.

Trust me.  You'll love it.

I guess I can embed it too.  Let's see if I can get it nice and big.



(Nice. Originally shown to me by Haplo.)

Working on updating the Games that Weren't my Games now.  Will be updated shortly!

Update!

The Ones that weren't my Games has been updated, so go see if you can spot the new ones!

Can I type Update more?