Kinda want more history games

Despite my esteemed accomplishments in all academic fields, I've never been much of a "history guy", probably less because I wasn't interested and more because in school you get such a broad overview of so many events that it's hard to be drawn into anything. It's not easy to develop a love for the Aztecs in exactly 15 minutes of lecture time and three multiple choice questions on the exam. Here in my old age, I have time for boring things like history and moreover find myself less and less interested in fiction (particularly bad video game sci-fantasy).

A while ago I wrote something about the potential for games to be "non-fiction", and lately I'm finding myself driven to find such games. It's less that I find games unfulfilling as is and more that it'd be nice to have a medium that will keep me engaged with the things I'm learning. A medium diametrically opposed to, say, books. Modern hyperactive culture short attention span etc. just let me enjoy my life okay?!

The lame thing about non-fiction games is the narrow selection. There are plenty out there; I'm sure if I only ever played historical games I could be occupied for the rest of my life. Unfortunately that would mean I'd only be playing strategy, first-person shooting, and flight games, and that my history-learning time would be devoted 80% to the European theater of World War II, and 20% to the war in the Pacific. Want to learn about the English Civil War? How about the Russian Revolution or Nebuchadnezzar? Try a book. As far as video games are concerned, civilization started with the Roman Empire, which fell just in time for the first medieval castle to go up kicking off what we know as "The Middle Ages", so called because they are the period between Rome and World War II. I'm really only barely exaggerating. I guess ancient Egypt, Greece, and Edo Japan show up too, though usually with fantastical trappings that dilute the historical impact. And the occasional Wild West game, even the sorta-realistic Red Dead Redemption, is set in the Hollywood West, not the boring one that actually happened. Your best bet for covering all the bases is playing an Evolution of Society game like Rise of Nations or Civilization, and those are pretty much as non-non-fiction as it gets (last I checked Otto von Bismarck wasn't defeated by Genghis Khan's army of missile tanks).

Some good games that have taught me about history are Romance of the Three Kingdoms VII, Age of Empires II, and Assassin's Creed II. It's nice that the Assy Creed series actually breaks from the genre constraints of historical games, and I've kept with them mostly because I like the wealth of information (despite the tepid gameplay and the extremely dumbass portrayal of historical figures as contemporary film stock characters). Romance of the Three Kingdoms VII presents the political history of China from the late Han to the early Jin period, something you probably didn't learn about in American schools. Of course, the other twelve or so games in the series (not to mention the Dynasty Warriors games) tell pretty much the same story, so that gets kinda old kinda fast. Age of Empires II, though set in those much belabored Middle Ages, gave me a better impression of the more significant medieval powers, how the Crusades went, etc. It didn't feel super accurate but hey I learned about the existence of figures like Saladin whom otherwise I wouldn't have known. 

Most recently I've been playing Birds of Steel, a WWII flight sim on 360 that summarizes the major aerial battles of the Pacific front. While the WWII thing was definitely a turn-off at first, I quickly learned that I had a lot to learn about 1.) just how many different kinds of planes there were (a fucking lot!) and 2.) how aircraft carrier and naval battles played out with the introduction of planes. If you think about it, boats that carry planes instead of guns is kinda a weird idea. Did you know aircraft carriers arose partially due to international treaties restricting the size and armaments of battleships? I do now! Since the main challenge of the game is just getting your plane to fly where you want, the variation in aircraft doubles up as interesting gameplay AND education (e.g. bombers were super lame to fly). 

Anyway there's not really anything to take away here. Just me saying that one day, it would be nice if more of history was covered by more kinds of games, since the Middle Ages weren't really that big a deal (I think they're considered pretty culturally blank and basically a holding period until history got going again). Considering the smashing success of Assassin's Creed, I'm somewhere between surprised and disappointed that semi-fiction gaming isn't exploding as we speak. I mean, they have to hire writers for big-budget games anyway, it's not like it would be harder to get a history major than a creative writing major who has failed to get any of his Heinlein-derivative short stories published. So if you have a new creative idea for a game about an unusual period of history (e.g. Scandinavia), contact me right away!

Working on concept drinks for Arnold movie night

I have become locally known for my high-concept theme-mixology (see: Frankenshot, 2008; Holy Diver, 2010), but I'm currently a bit stumped. I'm trying to get something going for my upcoming "Arnold Schwarzenegger Movie Night" (open invitation, business casual attire expected) and can't quite pin down what makes the original Man of Steel tick, in drink form. To give you an example of my typical conceits, here's the recipe for my latest creation (it got rave reviews in local bartending publications):

The Godzilla Bomb

-1 half can Sapporo or Asahi if you're out

-1 oz sake

-2 drops green food coloring

Drip the food coloring into the bottom of a shot glass. Pour in the oz of sake - it will mix on its own and turn a very dark green. Pour the beer into a regular beer glass. Drop the sake shot into the beer and immediately chug.

What happens here works on a lot of levels. The Japanese beer is a synecdoche for Japan and the green sake represents Godzilla (he is usually portrayed as green, but also a creation of Japan). The impact of the shot in the beer symbolizes the devastating effect Godzilla has on the nation of Japan. The cocktail works on a second level (most of mine do), as the green "bomb" is also a metaphor for the atomic bomb. The instantaneous spread of the green color to the entire drink when the "bomb" is "dropped" suggests the atomic fallout that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as Godzilla himself was originally conceived to represent. It's a drink that inspires philosophical contemplation, and that's what's important in mixology.

So my first idea for an Arnold drink is something like a Belgian Trippel (European + extra "strong" alcohol content) mixed with Muscle Milk (to build show muscles while you enjoy a beverage) served in a steel tumbler (Arnold only drinks from steel tumblers as his grip is so strong that he inadvertently crushes glasses). But who wants to buy a fifty pound can of Muscle Milk to make a dozen drinks for a party? It's just impractical.

I'll update you as soon as I have some better ideas. It'll come to me, I'm sure. It always does.

America's Next Top Hack and Slash Part 1: What is a Hack? What is a Slash?

Both as an attempt to research/define the genre and because hell I like them, I've been on the prowl for a hack and slash that really clicks with me. What is a hack and slash? Something that has no concrete definition in the primary gaming discourse. The term is thrown around to mean everything from beat-em-ups with swords (Golden Axe) to click-fest action RPGs (Diablo) to 3D action games with swords (Devil May Cry). Crazily enough, the term originated as a description for any tabletop D&D campaign heavy on combat (and was thus later applied even to such turn-based D&D video games as Baldur's Gate, Fallout, and Icewind Dale). Read without context, that's leaves it about as meaningless as "beat-em-up" (a term which I reclaimed already).

Black Isle's Icewind Dale represents the most traditional D&D notion of a hack and slash. An RPG with combat.

That's not good enough for me. I mean, I'm not gonna go burn someone's house down over a meaningless term - I've been through that with "the cloud" and around year five of the prison sentence I realized it wasn't worth it. But after defining brawling (combat with enemies who can counter), there remains a wide swath of melee combat action games uncategorized. And it is immensely tiresome to write "melee combat action game" every other sentence. You wonder why I haven't posted in so long? That term right there.

Naturally I want to try to define the type of non-brawling combat that stars in top-down games like Ys, Gauntlet, Beyond Oasis, Dynasty Warriors, and Torchlight - whether they all fall into a single category remains to be seen. I'll need some games to analyze more closely and I'd prefer ones that gravitate as close as possible to the traditional notion of an action RPG "hack and slash" (Diablo) so as to retain some of the term's original flavor. For now our working definition can be "isometric melee combat games", though it'll become more refined as we go.

I could play Diablo III, but I could also spend the $60 on at least six non-Blizzard-taxed games

The problem in instantaneously summoning such a game from my library is that the mouse/keyboard interface of Western action RPGs adds an additional variable; an extra barrier to comparison with other combat I've examined. Whether the interface precipitates a different type of action or the same action simply feels different through a different interface is hard to tell. If I really wanted to dig into that subject I'd grab the console version of Diablo III and compare it side-by-side with the PC (which I may at some point do). But for now I think it's more straightforward to factor out the extra variable by choosing an isometric action game that was designed for controllers in the first place. Which until the 7th generation was essentially a unicorn and is still not a particularly common thing.

One such game I did recently get through is Lord of the Rings: War in the North, one I really enjoyed for its stripped down leveling and looting in favor of tactical action. It's what got me on this whole kick. War in the North is good stuff, pretty much exactly what I'm looking for in terms of gameplay - challenging action, arena combat, ranged/melee mixing, skill based targeting, and defensive mechanics (blocking and dodging). Something I can get my teeth around. The only real shortcoming is that it's a bit limited on the enemy front - most foes are a basic iteration of the standard grunt, the shielded grunt, the slow bruiser, or the ranged archer. It's also not isometric perspective - not that that REALLY matters, just that I'd like to get a game as close as possible to the top-down archetype (since the perspective of this one makes for an easy counter-argument that it's just an RPG aping DMC conventions). It's a fall back, but the truth is, if there aren't other games out there in its bracket, this search will be meaningless anyway.

The "Fellowship's little brothers" syndrome seems to afflict every LOTR game. As if the idea of an alliance of a dude with a pointy-eared dude with a short dude is really fundamental and intrinsic to Middle-Earth.

When I get to playing, I'll try to take a look at these basic questions to help me understand what's going on during the combat:

• What is my goal in battle?
• What persistent factors are there to manage? Health? Mana? Inventory?
• Are there priority classes of enemies? Ones that need to be taken down first? Why?
• What is the spawning behavior of enemies? Fixed position? Arena-style? Infinite?
• What is my opposition?
• What type of attacks do enemies have?
• What type of defense do enemies have?
• What is the size of enemy groups?
• How are enemy types distinguished?
• How are enemy types mixed?
• How do the enemies react to the player?
• BOSSES????
• What options does a player have in combat?
• At what point are those options available?
• What drives one choice over another?
• How are those choices paid off?

Naturally, good answers for these questions require more than demo-play. But that's of course the point of picking a handful of games to stick with it.

So next time on part 2 I'll be listing up some 360 demos I've checked out, how they stack up, and whether any is truly fit for the title of America's Next Top Hack and Slash for Consoles That Actually Has Some Combat To Analyze, Definitely Not DeathSpank.

Terranigma: Story and Game, Setting and Structure, Podcast and Podcast

Terranigma was released on the SNES in 1996

Remember all those times we LP'd Terranigma? and how we only got like halfway through Chapter 2? The sequel is finally here! This time it's a podcast.

Also good news: this time there's serious video-game-related discussion. One of my personal favorite topics (after melee combat, of course!) is the interplay between narrative and form - i.e. how a game tells its story through gameplay, and how story colors, characterizes, and assists gameplay. As much hemming and hawing as there is about what constitutes a "video game" and when it's just "interactive art", for me the answer is quite simple. A video game should have a meaningful video* component, a meaningful game component, and continuous interplay between the two. A video game that can't do both well is only half a work, and a video game in which they don't work together is just as incomplete. A couple posts on the subject: on Cybernator, ActRaiser 2, and the Genesis Sonic trilogy.

*where "video" generalizes to mean presentation as a whole, i.e. video, audio, and script. It's not perfect but hey we call cinema "movies", "film", or "video", all terms that technically refer to imagery recording. 

As usual for the Commune, we start at a core level to try to build things up. No one ever got an A on a paper for writing "Charles Dickens has a good story, and this is how". For Terranigma I thought it would be interesting to look at setting and its interplay with structure (the abstract gameplay manifestation of setting), since Terranigma is mostly an exploration (adventure) game and setting is one of the easier story elements to define and establish. 

So sit down, grab a mug of graham crackers, and enjoy the Commune Podcast 26, starring Golem (Greg L.), Adrian, Wariofan63, and Myself. We really gotta work on the mixture of real names with handles though. Link:

http://www.vgthought.com/commune/podcast/26

Ninja Gaiden 2 and random thoughts on defense in brawlers

It's been a while, so let's get lazy. I figure the way I got into a writing groove in the first place was to kick out half-assed ideas, so maybe that's the way to get going again. The slowdown in posts has been partially by design (in that I was starting a new writing project), but I never expected to stop writing altogether as I have since March. There were hiccups with the new project, but the bigger problem is that I somehow got the impression at the beginning of this year that I had a quality standard. The brain was all "you're becoming a better writer because you're making a conscious effort to improve!". Unfortunately it came to the point where I felt like I couldn't post just anything because I had (personal) great expectations to uphold. That's the point at which I should've realized that the only reason I ever enjoyed writing was exactly the lack of standards. Getting less terrible wasn't moving me toward any goal, I just liked the feeling that I was a better writer. But I don't like it more than I like the freedom of being able to write whatever I want. 

So I'm going to start writing again, and it's going to be just as bad as it was in the first place! This post will have absolutely no point except to connect some really high level ideas without any explanation whatsoever.

While you're at it, be attitude for gains

I've been playing some Ninja Gaiden (2) recently and realized it's a really nice example of a modern (non-beat-em-up) brawler. I've always noticed that the series is extremely tense and gives me a heart attack to play, and revisiting the combat after coming up with my now-famous definition of a brawler it's clear that exactly what makes it so tense is how brawlery it is. That is to say, every single enemy is a serious threat. Even once you've whittled a group down to the last werewolf, you can't just stun-lock him with a combo or hold up your guard indefinitely to wait for an opening. You can't tell whether he's going to throw werewolf body parts from afar or bust out a normal combo or get close for a were-hug, and you need to dodge, guard, or counter-attack respectively. You have to watch what's happening and react accordingly with learned tactics - there is no time you can go into a default pattern because the enemies have movesets to take advantage of any static/redundant state. Thus that last werewolf is just as active a threat as a whole swarm of them, and you can never relax. It really drives home the necessity of unpredictability in engaging 1v1 combat. 

The other thing that's really tense and totally off topic is that the camera never shows you as much of the combat as you feel like you need to see. No doubt a lot of people would consider that Really Ass, but it's definitely frantic, scary, and adds unpredictability. Technically there's no reason camera angles can't be part of gameplay. There's just that whole unspoken compact that they're at a level of abstraction above challenge. Which is in place for good reason. Because it's cheating to leverage reality and visual expectations for convenience and then retract that assurance for difficulty. If you want to make a game about it being hard to see things, that's what your game should be about. It shouldn't be 90% about needing to see things and 10% about not. 

Back to brawlers, whatever I just said also makes me wonder if, moreso than the nebulous enemy "well-balance", the key to identifying brawlers is the enemies' ability to defend. All the games I mentally identify as pure brawlers are those with blocking/dodging foes (D&D Tower of Doom, Technos beat-em-ups like Renegade, Red Steel 2, Assassin's Creed) and those that feel fencey (TMNT, Guardian Heroes, No More Heroes 2) have some defenders but not all (and hence could be said to be composed of some % brawling gameplay). The games that made me feel like not all combat was brawling, e.g. Devil May Cry, X-Men, and Shank are extremely sparing with enemies that can block or counter your attacks. 

That makes sense with the alignment of the style with fighting games. In fact, wrapping all the way back to the original (historical) understanding, is there really any distinction between brawler gameplay and fighter gameplay? Seems like fighting gameplay is really just a restriction of brawling to a 1v1 context. Maybe I should've defined them together and made it easier to establish that brawlers are fighting games and other actioners (the DMC type) are not.

Clearly to pursue "the ability to defend", aka "defense", needs a definition to make any of these ideas even remotely viable. Because what makes putting up a shield different than just walking away? Are they different? Are there games where the enemies aren't even capable of so much as walking away? Perhaps Devil May Cry or Arkham Asylum? I think actually my mental distinction between action games and action-RPGs (Diablo II, X-Men Legends, Sword of Mana) is that in the latter games there is no active concept of defense (obviously you might have defensive statistics or abilities) - attacks don't take skill to land.