Fairness, and unfairness in computer games.

State of Decay; I just cleared a hundred metres of zombies. I ran them all over with my car. I’m hovering over this strange ‘Cleo’-device. What’s suddenly growling behind me? A zombie. Did I miss it? Maybe.

Same game; I’m helping out some fellow survivors. Due to a glitch my car gets stuck under the house. I run to the next car. Suddenly there’s a horde of zombies (including some feral) waiting for me who weren’t there a minute ago.

Is the game messing with me? I’m starting to think it is!

Fairness: Outgame.

Here I wish to talk about fairness in computer (video) games.

What is fair? Nazis spawning behind you after you cleared the field in Return to castle Wolfenstein? Some silly toadstool telling you that the princess is in another castle? Or a massive ordeal to get through without any savepoints like Battletoads.

Fairness in games begins and ends with the people making those games. This means that their logic and reasoning is in play here. So; Alex Kidd in high tech-world for the SEGA Master System.

I mentioned this game before on this blog. I think.

To get past a guard-post, during this game, you have the opportunity to craft your own fake passport. There’s a book dealer who sells books on ‘how to craft your own passport’. There’s a shop selling printing presses. I believe there’s even a shop selling paper and ink.

Does this all work? No, of course not. The guard recognizes that your passport is a fake and kills you on the spot.

In fact you have to pray at a temple 100 times to make a ghost shaman appear who gives you a true passport.

Where is this shaman mentioned? Nowhere!

Never throughout the game is the shaman mentioned; let alone the praying 100 times.

So any player would come by the temple; pray a few times –for his/her own sanctitude and move on.

This was the first time in my life when I realized that, sometimes, games were stacked against me!

Just think about it, go to the past with me –hold my hand: me, a young boy, incapable of getting past this guard. So I called the SEGA-GAME-helpline (there was no real internet back then – I’m that old), 50c per call.

The (nice) guy on the other end of the phone told me the answer instantly. He didn’t even have to take time to look it up (which told me how many frustrated ten-year-old-boys called before me – and (nowadays) how little videogames there were out there, back then).

So by paying an extra fifty cents over the cost of the game I was ‘allowed’ to continue my game.

Is this fair? I think not!

Fairness: A distinction.

So, reading the previous, there’s a distinction to be made here. 1. Honesty ‘Ingame’. And, 2. Honesty ‘Outgame’.

I think it’s clear from my above example that number 2. Does occur. There’s no way I would’ve figured out ‘praying a hundred times without the ‘lifeline’ (0,50 cents a beat).

But continue this train of thought to the present.

I mean; is it fair for EAGAMES to charge players extra amounts of money to play a game? I mean they used to call it upgrades, extra content, now they call it microtransactions. I all boils down to the same thing: coercing players to give money to get better at a game.

Is this fair? I think not.

Just like my little Alex Kidd in High-Tech world-example. Gamers should be allowed to play the games they bought without interference from ‘either’ call-in-help (obviously), bad ports,

A welcome hello to Silent Hill: Homecoming, which is unplayable without outside help.

A ‘bad port’ is nothing short that a ‘console game’-producer releasing a game to PC without

checking whether the game that works on a PS3 might actually work on a PC. Negligence.

or, ‘Buy-up’ upgrades. A game should remain a game. But that’s not how economy works.

Nowadays we, the world, are playing against each other. And we all want to beat our opponent.

In Asia this, apparently, works rather fairly. Occasionally a guy gets killed because he sold a (virtual) magnificent sword a (virtual) friend lend to him (look it up).

But, apparently, in western games this fairness isn’t allowed. Here the game is stacked so that those with the most money to spend get better at the game. (Notice here how I used the word ‘get’ instead of ‘are’). No more skill involved. Is this fair? I think not.

Fairness: Ingame.

Having argued that some games suffer from a ‘lack of fairness’ due to outgame influences I also wish to highlight some ingame issues I stumbled upon during my playtime.

Sometimes, there are just games that are too hard to beat either because the programmers were some sadistic b*stards (hello again: Battletoads), because the programming itself isn’t flawless (hello: Lucius III). Or, and this is the point I wish to focus upon, because the programming allows ‘unfairness’.

In any game of Tetris the pieces you get to work with are generated by chance. Tetris is basically a
gambling game with some slight amount of skill involved. Like poker you can have all the skills of reading signs, calculating chance and counting cards; yet, in the end, a big portion of you actually winning a hand relies on the chance of getting dealt good cards.

Tetris is the same; do you stack up high waiting for that one long piece (appropriately named: hero) or do you play it safe and keep your stack low?

If a game is based on chance, I argue that any apparent unfairness should be regarded as unintentional. If you gamble you should be able to take a hit every once in a while.

Take They are billions per example. Now this is a game that is hard to beat.

The reason for this is rather clear from the start. The game deals with zombies. And each zombie is (programmed) set to attack any nearby human (settlement). This works like an infection. So if one zombie spots you, so does the nearest to them, and the nearest and so on. In short: on false move and you suddenly got a horde against you. This is fair.

For those who wonder: Yes, I have a thing for zombie games.

But, fairness, becomes questionable when you look at ‘survivor mode’ within the game. In this mode the computer generates a map, drops your town hall somewhere in the middle and places a finite amount of zombies around it.

The object of the game: if the town hall falls the game is over.

So strange situations occur in which you find your town hall strangely placed (e.g. close to a zombie den. Or placed in the wide open even though there is a beautiful sheltered –more defendable- spot close by). Now, I argue, a schism becomes apparent between this ‘computer generated chance’ and narrative.

In the blocks of Tetris or the cards of poker there is no underlying narrative to influence the chance. They are billions, a game set in a world where humans have to fight zombies, nobody, in their right mind, would place their town hall in the middle of an open field. It’s not lot logical from a preservation/human perspective.
The cards are dealt the way they are. But in

The computer generating the map obviously doesn’t understand human preservation logic, it’ll just drop the town hall anywhere. But any human would look at the landscape (chance) and place the town hall accordingly (narrative).

So, I argue that if a game has a narrative at its base an overreliance on chance based dynamics cause the game to become: less fair.

Similarly; that’s why I hate respawned enemies in any First Person Shooter. If I just cleared a section I don’t want to find sudden respawned enemies there if I can’t justify how they could’ve come there from a narrative perspective.

Usually just a door the enemies could’ve come through would be enough to create the (narrative) illusion.

Fairness: skill.

Games are about skill! Not everybody should be allowed to finish them. That’s why there are levels ranging from easy to hard.

Battletoads is an extremely difficult game to finish. There are only so many lives you can gather on the way and then there are a million obstacles blocking you towards the finale.

One could, rightfully, say that Battletoads was deliberately made too hard by the programmers.

On the other hand one might realize that game makers at the time were exploring the capabilities of the players . What were they capable of? It’s an honest question.

Except for those speed runners. Those people are unfathomable.

Fairness, I argue, implies a game based on skill without trying to influence the skill by means of either outside ([micro] transactions) or inside (narrative destroying chance) elements.

And I haven’t even mentioned the auto-saves which makes a lot of games way too easy to beat.

There has to be a balance.

Luckily a lot of games strike this balance just right. But ever so often –after you got your behind beaten in a playthrough- you should ask yourself: 'Did I lose fair and square?'. ‘Was this fair?’

The art of Sierra: coming never?

If you’ve been to this blog of mine more than once you might have noticed something, for instance that I have a whole bunch of links on the left of the screen that I never, ever use or  reference –I can’t even be bothered to check or delete them.

One of the links is the art of Sierra project. Coming up on its ten year anniversary this site is the promise of an artbook containing all the original art Sierra game studios created in its heydays.

Now, legend has it, that back in 2007, one of the creators of the book came across a treasure-trove of boxes after boxes filled to the brim with Sierra-games related artwork. So he wanted to make a book out of it to share it with the world. He got some friends together, made a website and then, pretty much forgot about the whole thing for next ten years.

Then, in 2015 a contributors site went online. Asking people to share what they have. Apparently the treasure trove wasn’t as big as expected.

That’s basically the problem with the art of Sierra. They showcased what they had access to, promised (rightfully) to do it right. But after that no update or anything for years.
I have the patience of a saint but after a last tweet in 2015 and now their official site being eaten away by some virus I’m starting to think the art of Sierra project is dead.

But, as King’s Quest –Sierra’s most famous game series- stated: "The king is dead, long live the king". Maybe somebody else will pick up the travelling cap.

The A to Z of things that annoy me in videogames

I felt like doing a (click-bait) top-‘something’ list. Just some of those things that bug me in computer games. So without further ado...drumroll please.

AI needs saving

Best example: Resident evil 4.

Saving character A no matter what. It happened in Resident Evil 4, The last of us and, most famously, in Metal Gear Solid: Sons of liberty you got her killed for your effort.

Nothing wrong with saving a character as long as (often) 'her' AI is up to scratch. Unfortunately usually the –to be saved- character walks around like a gigantic alarm clock calling all monsters to dinner.

Backgrounds keep resetting

Best example: Wolfenstein (2009).

There is nothing more annoying than walking through a house and destroying everything in sight, then leaving, only to find minutes later that the entire room is in top notch condition again.

If all rooms already look similar it really makes you second-guess if you’ve been there before.

The same goes for self closing doors. How can you explore a house when every door you open, to mark a room searched, automatically closes itself again? Let alone if a door closes on you mid combat.

Conjuring up more enemies

Best example: State of Decay, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, any 2-D scroller.

The Norway level in Return to castle Wolfenstein. You killed each and every Nazi on your path but somehow, as you backtrack to collect some ammo, you find a new bunch of Nazis blocking your path. Where did those bastards come from? The level doesn’t have any locked doors or anything so what...did they spawn from a tree or something?

In State of Decay it is even worse. You just cleaned the area of zombies, there isn’t one for over at least a mile. You turn your back for one second and suddenly a whole group of them spawn right behind you.

I want my enemies to be countable. It’s not a Hollywood movie in which the hero finds himself against an army of henchmen simply because the main villain decided to open up another acme canister labelled ‘instant henchmen’.

Digital protection

Best example: Batman Arkham Asylum.

There’s nothing wrong with a company trying to keep a game from being stolen. However, if the failsafe mechanism you put on the game actually prevents players from either playing or (later) re-playing it you have a problem.

This happened with my legal copy of Batman Arkham Asylum. With the big digital copyright safe door it is now impossible to play.

Everlasting cut scenes.

Best example: Ducktales: remastered, any Metal Gear Solid-game

Computer games only recently managed to take stories to a new level. ‘You are the torturer!’ (Grand theft auto). 'Your choices dictate the end’ (the Telltale games). ‘You are this person and this is your story and these are your faults –take it or leave it’ (The last of us).

Before this computer games never really managed to outgrow the B-movie narrative (Alundra: everybody dies). Games tried to put the ‘fate of the world’ on your shoulders. But in the end it all comes down to ‘goodie’ killing ‘baddie’.

The problem, however, is that computer games don’t always recognize that they are telling a 'not very good' story. And, in that sense, there’s nothing more frustrating than an unskippable cutscene wherein some character is going on and on.

A sub-category would be the unskipable cut-scene mid game. So Scrooge McDuck pausing his adventuring to give a lengthy monologue about a coin he just found in the Amazones in Ducktales remastered. It takes the flow out of the game.

Following the law?

Best example: Driver.

You are driving along following all the traffic rules. You stop at a stop sign and the AI car behind you accidentally nudges your rear.

Suddenly the cops are all over you with deadly intent. No matter how good you are, one misstep and suddenly you're the worst of criminals.

Grinding.

Best example: Any Final Fantasy game.

Grinding is like digital training. Doing the same kind of fights over and over again in games for the experience point to make you character stronger (for the next episode of the game).

Grinding isn’t a bad thing per se. You can use it to develop you characters a bit this way or a bit that. But in ‘ye olden days’ there wasn’t a lot of variety of character development. In Final Fantasy 6 you, pretty much, taught every spell to every playable character.

Grinding is annoying if it limits the enjoyment of the game. Skyrim stopped being fun for me because I finished every single quest at level 60. Which meant I still had over ten levels to go before the dark knight would pop up.

Final Fantasy 6 to 10 would usually bring you to the end fight with characters severely outclassed at level 50.

A good game levels you along the way. You can, pretty much, finish it without any additional grinding. A bad (or even terrible game) let’s you grind for three days straight. A worse game, however, leaves you with a barrel full of ruby encased golden rings just because you wanted to up your smiting skill – I’m looking at you skyrim.

Helping characters.

Best example: Rainboy six.

Again like ‘AI needs saving’, helpers have a tendency to stand in the way. Sometimes I think I shot more of my brethrens in Rainbow six than actual villains because those fools decided to disco-dance in front of me.

Other examples would include: you are trying to sneak somewhere but the helper keeps attacking everything in sight. You are trying to hide but your helper pushes you forwards so the enemy spots you. You are trying to flee but lo and behold your helper is standing in the way. You just evaded standing on the trap button, your helper however...

Even more annoying are helpers who, by trying to advance the mission, keep repeating the same line over and over again while you are exploring the area: “Go through the door…Go through the door…Go through the door…”

I know!

Impossible controls.

Best example: Metal Gear Solid and Tomb Raider.

Making Lara Croft jump accordingly while balancing on a cliff. Having Solid Snake actually escape a perilous situation instead of crouching. Or, with PC-ports finding the right button on your keyboard.

More often than not I died because I couldn’t quite remember which button to push on my keyboard.

Jumping is a no-no

Best example: The Silent Hill-games.

You can walk, run, swim, limp, climb on a ledge, handle a chainsaw but you cannot jump.

There are still some games that give you all kinds of handy traits yet our hero cannot jump. It’s one of those ‘barriers’ that don’t work anymore in this day and age.

Also, characters dying when they fall in water...really?

Killing yourself is a no-no

Best example: The Silent Hill-games.

When I played Alex Kidd in Miracle World I would (sometimes) lose a life in the very first level. Instead of continuing I would kill ‘Alex’. After all it’s easier to die and play again than to go on or reset the system and wait for the game to load. So there I was saying: “Here birdy...”

But sometimes you can’t kill yourself. You can’t throw yourself in a chasm in Silent Hill and in other games the hero keeps on taking health packs until he runs out. Actually getting a 'game over' screen in some games is qute the challenge.

Levelling helpers.

Best example: Any MMORPG.

You enter an online roleplaying game fresh: ready to explore. And the minute you spawn there is already a cult hanging around you wanting you to be part of their guild, tribe, whatever.

Those ‘level fifty’ or so are often seen walking together with a low level player defeating high-level monsters to give the ‘new kid’ some experience points.

What’s the point of playing if some guy helps you level faster?

Moving levels.

Best example: Super Mario brothers.

These 2D-levels are usually combined with a death fall. Mario is the worst. A screen that moves and the minute you are too slow and get off-screen you die. So you have to plan your jumps correctly...a bleeding nightmare.

None-existent plumbing or: no logic in map building.

Best example: Chrono Trigger.

If you’ve been playing computer games for as long as I have you’ve seen a lot of development in het housing department. Around the 1990’s games houses suddenly gained pluming and toilets.

True, sometimes a household of two only had one bedroom (Chrono Trigger and his mom) – but it was a start.

However, the inability of logical reasoning of housing still persists to this day where computer games forget the necessities every once in a while.

But what is more annoying are those moments you are exploring an open 3D world and walking towards an open field only find out some invisible wall is stopping you (especially if you can see your target).  Why not put a wall there or something? At least something visual to keep the game map logical.

Also games that put a flimsy crooked fence in front of you that you cannot pass or a door you can’t blast open with a grenade launcher should be condemned.

Overpowering the player early on.

Best example: Bioshock.

Some games give a player an edge early on in a game. Wolfenstein (2009) had the time-stopping technique. Bioshock 1 and 2 the bees. The minute you’ve got those weapons/skills in your arsenal the rest of the game is a breeze.

It’s difficult to balance a game between easy and (Battletoads) sheer impossible. But when a game fails in this department it fails hard because people want to be challenged.

Ports and glitches.

Best example: Silent hill homecoming

Around 2005 a new trend in games started to pop up: unfinished games.

Apparently it is cost effective to just sell a game even though it isn’t finished. Another method is by simply transferring a games from a consol to a PC or vice versa without actually checking for bugs.

Quicksaves.

Best example: Fallout 3 and on and Skyrim.

Games try to balance between accessible and difficult. One way of making it easier on the player is by means of the so-called Quicksave. Every step of the way the game saves for you. However, saving every step I make in a game doesn’t automatically make it any better. I want to return every once in a while. I don’t want the game to hold my hand.

I learned this the hard way when I killed all the Ghouls in Fallout 3’s Tenpenny Tower quest. Suddenly the radiohost Three-Dog called me a scumbag every time I turned on the radio. And there was no way of me returning to a previous Quicksave to fix the error because it had already been overwritten.

Though, this questline is a bit problematic. If you help the Ghouls everybody in the tower dies. So it’s not really a win-win.

Revenue

Best example: any EA or Star Wars game.

This is the silly one. Having to buy extra stuff for your game that makes you wonder why the developers didn’t include it in your game in the first place.

Back in the day one could buy a game manual for Final Fantasy 9 on the Playstation. This manual had every trick and secret of the game. Except it wouldn’t tell you. You had to write down a codeword, fire up your computer and fill in the word one some website to unlock the secret.

Then there’s Alex Kidd in High Tech World -an unabashed commercial for Sega.
Imagine that you are in a town with some shops, a temple and, at the end, a guard post where the guard tells you he requires a passport for you to proceed. Now the tool-shop sells a printing press. The bookshop sells a handy book about printing false passports. Do you print the passport? Of course not; you pray at the temple a hundred times for some spirit (you didn’t know existed) to appear and give you a passport.

I’m convinced that this trick was conceived to get kids, like me, to call the SEGA tips and cheats hotline (0,50 per call).

Sufficient to say this kind of reasoning never really went away, but it is still silly.

Sierra-logic

Best example: King’s Quest V.

The game gives you certain items and you just have to used them by trial and error to see which one works. There are no clues given, you just simply click the pie instead of the sword on the yeti and lo-and-behold it works. Don't think, just experiment. It degrades the player to just lucky instead of an intelligent problem solver.

If you know what Ifnkovhgroghprm means you are as ancient as I am.

This technique or guessing was first implemented in Sierra’s King’s Quest V –hence the title- but it still continues to this day in Hidden object games.

You want to cut open a parcel tied by rope. Do you use: A) a knife? B) a saw? C) a pair of scissors? or D) you go all over the place looking for a letter opener? If you answered ‘D’ you know hidden object games.

Tried and tested old-school puzzles.

Best example: Fear for sale: tiny terrors and many other HOGs.

There are some puzzles that have been around since the Victorian age. Like peg-solitaire, sliding puzzles or The Tower of Hanoi. Hidden object games love to include these games in their repertoire. So if you play a lot of hidden object games you will find that you will be replaying peg-solitaire over and over again because the designers were too lazy to come up with something original.

Underwater levels.

Best example: Sonic the hedgehog.

Not only can you not move the way you want to (usually slower). You are also bound to a silly breath-meter that tells you when you are going to drown. I hate those levels. I can’t count the ways I almost had my little Sonic near the exit only to wait for an air-bubble that never came.

Viewfinder

Best example: any first-person shooter.

Those unlimited ammo guns that a locked at a single place (“press F to use”). I never use them but sometimes I have to. So you have this gun and you are firing at everyone and everything while you cannot move and every enemy is throwing everything at you.

Walking back and forth.

Best example: The castaways: the island, Wolfenstein (2009).

Walking back and forth all the bloody time between mission givers and mission. Bad games often place the mission giver and the actual goal a million miles apart. There is some deluded reasoning behind it that all that trekking actually makes for enjoyable game time – it doesn’t.

In Wolfenstein (2009) the game-designers tried something new. A city under Nazi siege would be your (RPG-like) homebase where you would receive missions to carry out.

However, the person giving the mission and the actual ‘door’ to the mission were often at the other side of town. So you spent a large chunk of the game running from one side of the city to the next like a glorified errand boy before you could actually play a mission.

X is the end (not).

Best example: My Hero and Jade Cocoon.

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” Confucius says. But a journey is nothing without an end –I would like to add.

So, there’s nothing more frustrating than a game that doesn’t end. I’ll forgive the early games like My Hero (beating up the bad guy for the seventeenth time – the guy never learns). But it sticks. It went all the way to the PSX with Jade Cocoon.

Now with games like Fallout and Skyrim there will never truly be an end to any game (unless the quests run out). And with massive landscapes to walk upon and constant respawning enemies (I must have killed most of Pennsylvania by now) the game stays divers.

However, wandering the wasteland gets boring after a while. Everything needs to end sometimes (just not like New Vegas ended – freaking Romans? Really?)

Yes Dave, I can’t do that Dave.

Best example: Tetris.

Like 2001’s HAL couldn’t truly grasp the sense of human reasoning computers can’t grasp the notion that sometimes a random generated move might leave the player without a chance.

So whoever player Tetris will recognize the feeling of waiting for a ‘long piece’ that never comes (or too late). The computer merely randomizes, but the player (sometimes) suffers.

Zooid

Best example: The lion king and any early PC game.

The ‘I just can’t wait to be king’-level in the Lion King is a gamer nightmare. The rich animation of the game makes it very hard to pinpoint the ‘mask’ that would make little Simba hang on to the hippo’s tail. And that’s only the start. After that there’s an ostrich ride that is sheer impossible with a ‘double jump’ nightmare.

In short I’m talking about the mask around a game sprite. An invisible layer -where the code is at- which you are actually playing. The animation layer is just there so you can see your avatar.

The mask is usually a little bit bigger than the animation. If the mask is hit the animation layer plays the ‘ouch’ animation. But if the animation is too complex -consisting of multiple divers frames of different sizes- it becomes quite challenging to make an avatar move through a dangerous field without dying. Your eyes see a small frame but the mask is actually big – dodging bullets or (bird nests) are then quite impossible.

So there you have it! My (personal) list of twenty-six annoyances in videogames. Enjoy.

Lucius 1 & 2 – a (somewhat) game review.

Lucius is one of the many sons of Satan. In his first adventure he discovers his powers and uses it to kill his family and servants. In his second tale he murders anybody indiscriminately. The boy is pure evil and you, as the player, has to be evil with him.

Let’s start with a title explanation: ‘Lucius 1 and  2 – a (somewhat) game review.’
Both the Lucius games are so riddled with errors and mistakes that you can hardly call it a game. Character’s that won’t die, items that float in the air or sudden disappearances from your inventory. Half of both the games is trying to find a way around the silly errors the games throw at you.

But, having said that, the game that remains is simply far too (wickedly) delicious not to like!

The best way I can describe it is by comparing it to Peter Molyneux´s original idea for the Fable-franchise of games.

His idea was (as usual for him) far grander than could be achieved at the time. He wanted to create a game in which the choice of a good or bad path were much more difficult to achieve from the onset. A game wherein every death counts and that the children of the dead could come to hunt you.
What Fable ended up to be was a game in which the choice between bad and good were rather black and white. ‘Do you wish to help kidnappers or protect the family?’ The only moment in the game I (the player) was truly bad was when I sacrificed two murderous criminals to get a rather cool crossbow.

Don’t judges get a salary when they condemn a man?

Lucius, however, is different. In these games you are bad to the bone for the get go. It’s the ground the temple is build upon –if you will. So you play a bad guy (boy).
And in this sense it is far more honest than any other game wherein the hero mows down hundreds of adversaries and still remains good.

Like The Saboteur in which you can drive over numerous civilians and still remain the hero. 

I prefer Second World War-games because of Nazi’s. Nazi’s were (and are) the scum of the earth so my conscious is far more comfortable with killing those (regardless of the children they leave behind or their backstory) than in any contemporary game in which my mind starts boggling about political agendas or cold-war outside influences.

In Lucius you play the anti-Christ; evil incarnate. And playing a game with such a mindset makes you care less about the personal life of each of the characters you kill.

Yet the games do like to play around with it. Each person you kill has somewhat of a back-story (written down in a short synopsis when your mouse hovers over the character).

This game forces you to accept the ‘dark side’ and just go with it. This makes ‘killing granny’ far more easier.

It does happen, though, throughout the games that you sometimes come across characters you do not wish to kill.
Babies for instances are still a ‘no-no’ (even the game programmers didn’t dare to touch upon this subject). And, halfway through the second game, I stumbled upon a gay couple having sex in a bathroom. I was so happy that the game-makers dared to include same-sex love I almost (almost) didn’t have the heart to kill them.

What makes Lucius such a nice game to play is mainly because of the brutality of it all. You (the player) constantly find yourself plotting an planning your next murder without getting caught. But you are also trying to solve riddles.
Here we have a guy walking to a phones every 30 seconds. Accept the darkness and go with it: “Now, what can I do with an electrical wire and a phone?”
It is a murder spree that let’s you get away with it without having to bother about consciousness or whether or not ‘I’ should do this.

The story around it is fun (especially if you like horror-movies) but unimportant. Each level brings you new ways to kill a person. In the end acid and poison are the ones you use when you don’t figure out the best way to kill a person.
So let’s tackle the two games one by one.

LUCIUS 1.
What did I like about Lucius one?

For starters the person who planned the mansion needs a reward. I don’t think I’ve ever played a game in which each and every room was so perfectly placed.

I remember Resident Evil in which rooms popped up that were totally illogically placed in comparison to other rooms.

Did the original Resident Evil game have a kitchen?

Second the way ‘you kill’ is one way and one way only. This isn’t King’s Quest II in which you either kill the snake or throw a bridle on it. The point of the game is figuring out how to kill a certain person and getting away with it/remaining a good boy in the eyes of your parents.
So Lucius 1 is a bit of a morbid puzzle. I’ve got an absentminded teacher and a gun…what to do with them both?

Now you might hate killing your teacher (I did). But in the grand scheme of things it is the puzzle of actually killing him that takes the cake. Whether or not you like the person is a duality this game enjoys to toy around with. But in the end you are still evil and you have to make evil choices.

Heavily influenced by the movie The Omen (obviously) Lucius 1 does try to incorporate a dramatic story. And, even though, it is well (voice) acted and all the main draw of the game is still the kill.
So, interestingly enough –on a person psychological level, I skipped through most of the story because I didn’t want to get too close to the victims.

I have no qualms pretending to be a sociopath in a game. But when a character strikes me as sympathetic I will most certainly dislike killing that person (I’m a normal human being after all).
But this is, without a doubt the highlight of Lucius 1. It’s a puzzle game with a fatal win. But at the same time it plays with your player/human emotions by ‘telling you who the person you are killing is’.

In this sense it is far removed from the Mortal Kombat games.

Sub-zero might be a nice guy but in the end it’s still you against him in the pit. And he is trying to kill you.

You have to ‘push the button’ to proceed. Knowing full well that the person you are killing is kind and just.

If you don’t like it…then why did you start the game in the first place?

LUCIUS 2.
Lucius 2, then is an entirely different game all together. Yes, some of the puzzles are still there. But overall it’s an open-world game in which you get to kill people whichever way you see fit.
You can kill a person with a complicated plot of an electrified phone and a call from a distance. Or you can just pour acid over the poor bloke.

Lucius 2 simplifies the murder spree but at the same time insinuates it.

You can either look for the clues and kill accordingly or you can go all out with every bit of ammo you have and kill with that.

Sometimes just turning off the life support of a patient is enough.

Whereas in the first part it were the puzzles that caused the murders that worked as the incentive. In the second part this puzzle element/motivation is removed somewhat.
Lucius 2, in this sense, makes YOU the murderer. A murderer who, by the way, is constantly checking his supplies of explosives and burnable substances.

Let me highlight some of the more elaborate killings:

• Calling a creepy guy on a payphone and then breaking the ceiling above him.
• Breaking a man´s radio and then letting him be crushed by some barrels.
• Poisoning a heart transplant.
• Locking somebody in a safe without oxygen.
• Setting off a woman´s car´s car alarm and then electrifying her.
• Calling a man and flinging a circular saw-blade at him.
• Pushing a man in a wood-chipper.
• Letting a smoker, smoke near a gas-leak.
• Poisoning a man’s facial cream with biological waste.
• And, of course, an instant classic, steam powered firing an adult toy at somebody.

No, subtlety isn´t Lucius´s game.

You can finish most levels without (hardly) murdering a soul. I would argue that only (about) 30 murders are needed to get certain keys (only because the game doesn’t allow pick pocketing).

An achievement the game makers should have incorporated: An angel boy escaping and killing a demon.

Yet you find yourself constantly worrying: ‘how to kill this soul’ or ‘how to kill that’. Only after the fact realizing that there was a way to kill that person that didn’t rely on you using your inventory.
In Lucius 2 the whole backstory of characters has been downsized to a small biography whenever your mouse hovers over a character. This time around there is no ‘playfulness’ between murder and ‘knowing the character’.

Though, as I mentioned above, it does occur.

Rather Lucius 2 is about killing the world in the most ingenious ways possible. People, therefore, become chess pieces: easily sacrificial. And the fun of it all is figuring out the most ingenious way to discard those people.

Lucius is a dark tale. And I’m happy to note that I just as easily play the Ducktales-remake as well.

Crushing a villain with a pogo-stick in delicious Technicolor…One can find darkness anywhere.

Summary
So why should you play this game?

The basis of this article is about the struggle between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ in computer-games. In any Call of duty-game you are the hero killing hundreds for the right cause. I never liked that concept.
I prefer a more ‘real’ approach. And I found this ‘approach’ in Lucius.
In this fiction you are bad and everybody you meet is supposed to die by your hands. This is a honesty I like.

I argue that Lucius is more of a complete game because (in this narrative) this little sociopath doesn’t feel at all. In Lucius 1 there was still a game going on between me (the killer) and the victim and how much I might have liked him/her. But when part two rolled along the only feeling the player (me) feels is that whenever I kill a person I then realizes that there was a simpler way to kill.
As Lucius became darker from game 1 to 2, so did I.
A lovely game but play some Ducktales afterwards.

The way some companies deal with free stuff

Take the first Sims-game for instance.

Maxis brought out that game with full intention of selling add-on disc after add-on disc. Only to realize early on (probably somewhere in the development phase) that people themselves might make some add-ons.

In fact it isn’t that much of a stretch to believe that those people who could program would help or even teach the ones who could draw.

So within days the Sims community was filled to the brim with hundreds after hundreds of shiny wallpapers for your house. Celebrity after celebrity skin to live in your house. And all kinds of objects from various types of skateboards to adult toys (it’s still the internet after all).

In fact, I always find it rather amusing to keep in mind that the first alteration of the Sims-game wasn’t necessarily a new wallpaper – it was removing that annoying blur when a person was showering.

When I played the game (and I’m always late when it comes to these kind of things) I had a cornucopia of wallpapers to choose from. Especially since the Gothics and Emos had taken a liking to the game I could build my own personal castle.

Which caused Maxis to, later on, develop add-on discs in that direction. Making magic was one of those (helped by the popularity of the Harry Potter franchise no doubt).

Now why this introduction concerning this rather old game? Because I wish to talk a bit about content between developer and user. In Maxis’s case, I argue, the official content was still the best. Moreover, the various add-on discs still sold like hotcakes. So Maxis allowed amateur designers to have a go at adding content to the game.

Though I doubt they would’ve been able to stop it if they wanted to.

Now take another example: DAZ.

DAZ is a 3D program that allows the user to pose a character (male, female, child or some otherworldly characters), dress them up like a Barbie doll and render a photo or even a short movie from it.

The only catch is that this isn’t a game that comes with the basics of necessities. The user has to buy everything! And I mean everything. A potted plant – 7,95. A new dress – 8,42 (discount). A penis – 40,- (it’s the internet after all).

So the program may be free of charge. The stuff you wish to use will cost you a pretty penny.

But now we get into troubled waters when we consider the internet. There are numerous people that who offer a (slightly different –but very good) potted plant –for free!

That, I believe, is the issue DAZ is facing.

I am sugar-coating it a bit of course. In truth it isn’t all ‘capitalism versus free folk’. There are quite a few creators of content who ask a pretty penny for their work. I can’t blame them (that is, unless it is ghastly to look at).

I actually tried to use DAZ once and I found that it wasn’t the program that didn’t work for me (though they layout does overcomplicate matters). Rather it was the fact that I suddenly had a million folders with bits and pieces scattered all over my computer. Seven folders within each other containing a texture. Twelve other folders within each other containing the one object file. If you like clicking things this is a dream come true. For me, I more than once cursed: ‘Now where the heck did I leave my potted plant?’

A now, for a few years, we have steam's Source filmmaker.

Now this isn’t made for realism (neither is DAZ, really). But it is there to fill the need for creativity.

Like the Sims filled the need for a user to create his/her custom house so does Source filmmaker fills the need for the user to create his/her own scenes from a game.

It’s a nice thought to believe that the Sims prepared all those Millenials who were teenagers back then on moving out.

Source filmmaker offers the users the tools to create a scene using the bits and pieces from the actual game itself and the internet responded with glee.

It’s not technically legal when a user uses an animation from a copyrighted game. But in the ‘free usage-law’-spirit of things the users get up to some great little movies.

Including computer-game-pornography; it’s the internet after all.

They even create own textures and objects to use in the program. And everything is (pretty much) allowed. Except, of course, -we live in a capitalist world after all- to get the program you need to register on Steam.

Donkey Trump - game.

Just a little game I thought up the minute Donald Trump started talking about his silly wall. I mean he's really like an old James Bond villain with Yosemite Sam for his sidekick.

Anyway, I figured I'd have some fun with this wall of his and make a little parody out of it. Nothing terribly offensive (I hope). A simple sprite replacement and bingo Trump becomes Donkey Kong.

UPDATE: it appears that Firefox and flash had a marriage dispute (and forgot to tell the kids) so some people can’t see the flash file. But, you can download it HERE.

5 ways computer games play with my emotions.

Computer games differ from movies and literature in the way that a lot of the events happen to you the player. Not John McClane, not Harry Potter. No; silly old you behind the keyboard or joypad. So that’s a great way for game-designers to play with a person’s emotions. Here’s my little top five of computer games that managed to make me do and feel things I normally wouldn’t have (done).

5. Forcing me to be a villain.

This is the easiest one on the list. Simply create a level in which you, the player, have to do a truly heinous act to be able to continue the game. There are several examples nowadays. Like –as a terrorist-  shooting civilians in Call of Duty. Or torturing a person in the latest Grand Theft Auto.

This is the easiest of them all. And I don’t really like it. But the game forces me to do it if I want to continue and (eventually) finish the game.

A more ‘open’ choice was given in the first Fable game. The whole premise is that the player can just as easily become a villain as a hero, depending on the choices the player makes throughout the game. In the end, however, these choices were rather black-and-white. Kill the good guy/kill the bad guy. A more nuanced or deceitful choice would have made the games far more interesting. Which is the main critique the game got at the time.

Interestingly enough, in the game Saboteur, I can drive my car over -God knows how many- civilians,  shoot them even, and at the end of the game I’m still the good guy. So, strangely enough, this ‘forcing me to be a villain’ only works when the game emphasizes the fact that I am playing a villain.

As a final thought: In Silent Hill 3 you go around the gameworld killing monsters. Then, late in the game, a character named Vincent mentions that those weren’t monsters at all. That you were in fact killing innocent people. He’s only joking. But that would have been an interesting twist. Going in the game thinking you are the hero, end up becoming the villain.

4. Forcing me to love.

“Aeris lives”. Anybody who knows what this means can read on. The rest, continue to the next paragraph.

In Final Fantasy 7 Aeris dies. Murdered by Sepiroth (that bastard). At the time I didn’t understand why it hurt me so much as it did until I understood what had happened. Real life happened.

Imagine your first true girlfriend or boyfriend. You invest time in the relationship. You are still trying to figure out if the two of you are going to be together forever. You hang out, cuddle, kiss until BAM a drunk driver kills her/him. That’s what happened in Final Fantasy 7. I had spent hours leveling her character to get a strong member for my party (plus I always preferred the more feminine girl over the more tomboy Tifa-character. So I often picked her for my party.) and without warning she got stabbed.

So part of me was struck because I lost the girl I really liked. But another part of me was shocked because I just spent hours invested in her that – in the end- were unneeded.

Naturally the second time you play this game you don’t spent a lot of time levelling Aeris, she’s going to die anyway. As it turns out Tifa is a lovely girl also.

3. Forcing me to be a pervert.

Silent Hill: the room. Like any other Silent Hill game is a horror-story which –partly- involves you killing monsters but with one fun twist: For large chunks of the game you are stuck in your apartment unable to get out. After five minutes in that apartment the walls really start closing in on you. You can’t turn on the telly, you can’t read a book, in short; you are bored stiff. So you start looking out the window, spying on your neighbors.

Then you find a whole in the wall to your (attractive) next door neighbors’ bedroom and you start spying on her. Anything for some human contact.

What happens later on in the game is even more fun. Like Hitchcock’s Rear Window, your next-door neighbor is in danger. And you are incapable of helping because you are still locked in your room. This creates tension because –through your voyeurism- you’ve become attached to your neighbor and now there’s a danger that you might lose her; lose the human contact.

I thought I bought a horror-videogame but as it turned out the game explored my peeping-tom side which I didn’t know I had.

2. Forcing me to flee.

I like to take thing head on. If there’s a problem I want to deal with it right away. Now, I’ve been perilous situations several times in my life  and each time I noticed about myself that I was reviewing the situation. “Can I do this? Can I do that?”

The point is, even in extreme situations there is a choice: you can either fight or flee.

Now; take the game Clock Tower. In this particular game they take away this choice. There is only one choice: flee.

The game is simplicity itself. You are a girl named Jennifer. Locked in a mansion (without a front door apparently) trying to get out. There is demonic child chasing you holding a large pair of gardening scissors. Each time you hear him coming your need to run and hide. And that’s the only thing you can do –run and hide.

Knowing that heightens the tension. You are constantly afraid the scissorman is coming for you. Forcing you to find another hiding spot. Forcing you off your quest to find the exit of the mansion.

The same happens in the last act of the aforementioned Silent Hill: the room. Suddenly evil spirits start to come out of the walls of your apartment. This boring room you were locked in suddenly becomes a dangerous place to be with a fun fact: you can neither (truly) fight, or flee. Panic!

1. Forcing me to be God.

S.O.S. by Vic Tokai. A capsized ship. 2100 souls on board. You’ve got one hour to escape a bring as many survivors with you as humanly possible (seven in total) or the ship will sink. Play it alone, you can get to the boiler-room/ exit within ten minutes – five even if you try really hard. But then the ending will tell you that you died.

Now, if you want the best ending you’d better get some survivors with you. And herein –as the Bard would tell us- lies the rub. Because each survivor has his or her own problem. So sometimes a survivor doesn’t want to go with you just as readily as you’d want. It takes time to convince him/her.

Example: two girls. One is deaf and in shock, the other one won’t go with you if the first one doesn’t go. How to get them? By spending several minutes writing and trying to convince the deaf-and-shocked girl to come with you. Several minutes you don’t have.

So the next time you play the game you decide not to take these two girls along because they take too much time. Instead you only take the ‘easy’ ones. So you find yourself walking past these girls while they (or at least the talking one) scream at you to help them. It’s like playing God. You get to decide who is to live and who is to die.