Posted by Tycho

The OnLive website is set to launch this evening, unveiling information about (what they hope will be) the future of gaming. Luckily you don’t have to wait until the official launch since CNet has already gotten the scoop. OnLive promises to revolutionize gaming by allowing someone to buy a small device that can be hooked up to a television or computer and stream games.  In concept shots, the device looks to be no bigger than an average T.V. remote, and reportedly can be hooked up to most any computer running a Mac OS or Vista or XP regardless of system specs.

They’ll accomplish this by hosting all the hardware remotely and streaming the games through a broadband connection. As long as someone has a 5 Mbps broadband connection, they should be able to play. A pricing structure hasn’t been released yet, but it’s assumed that there will be a monthly fee in addition to the cost of the games, which can be bought, rented, or tested out.

I would really like OnLive to succeed, but I’m positive that they will fail.

I’m sure that this is the end point that we’ll eventually get to with gaming systems, and it’s the kind of concept that people have been hoping for and dreaming about for a while now, but it seems like to ambitious of a project and too soon. That’s not to say that OnLive will be a total failure. Any fans that it may earn and any hurdles that it might overcome will help pave the way for future releases of similar products. It just seems that in tech, it’s often beneficial to be the second or third to reach the summit, so that you can learn from whomever was first.

When talking about streaming content, the question must be asked of whether or not people will actually be in favor of buying something they don’t actually own. I’ve bitched and moaned before about having too much stuff, and it seems like the only logical solution is to go to an on-line only form of ownership, but there are certain downsides to this. First is that I would never be able to loan a game to a friend, similarly, I could never resell a game that I no longer played to a second hand store. I’ve done this numerous times in the past. The other downside is that I would never be able to buy a game cheaply from a second hand store. I’ve made numerous purchases on games I would’ve otherwise ignored because they were so cheap.

These are a lot of the same arguments that people made about MP3s when they were first released, but despite all that iTunes and similar sites are raking in the dough. There is a bit of a difference between a $.99 song and a $50-$60 game. There’s also the fact that places like iTunes were created in response to a changing media structure. With more and more people downloading MP3s illegally, the record companies adopted a ‘if we can’t beat them, we’ll join them’ attitude and focused less on physical CDs and more online distribution. With games, there’s not as much incentive to make a digital push. There’s no Napster for Xbox 360 or PS3 games, though there is a small community of modders.

The other downside to OnLive is the cost of actually streaming the games. Not everyone will have a 5Mbps connection speed, and even a lot of those who do may be constrained by download caps. I would hate to lose my internet connection because I was playing too much Mass Effect and eating up bandwith.

Then there’s the question of how the streaming will even work. Even with a fast connection, it’s hard to imagine that the games will work lag-free as advertised. When I play games on my PC there’s no lag, but that’s because the machine is two feet away, processing all of the input instantly. How will a server miles away from me be able to read my button presses and transmit it to the actual game in the split second reaction time that most games require. We’ve been streaming music and movies over the internet for a long time now, but that’s a one way street.

Despite the insurmountable hurdles that OnLive will have to go through in order to succeed, I want it to. It’s got at least 9 publishers and a lineup of 16 games helping it out so far.  The sooner we get another source of media in an digital distribution environment, the sooner that others will follow suit.

posted by Juss

The original - and the best?

If Judd Apatow were making video games right now, I think he’d be looking to sign up to produce the next Leisure Suit Larry sequel.  The appeal of this supposedly lovable cretin has apparently passed me completely by; but then I’m no longer an overly hormonal teenager or a sad lonely, balding middle aged man.  Right now I’m somewhere in the middle and just don’t need to play games like this one.

Naturally, I played it. (for all you geeks, that’s the VGA remake and not the original)

Perhaps I should cut this game some slack for being one of Sierra’s earlier outings.  But I’m not going to because it cut me none.  The first noticeable thing about this game that pissed me off right royally is the stupid age protection scheme wherein you have to answer questions to prove that you’re over 18.  Being British I couldn’t answer most of them as they were largely about American Presidents, so already I felt pretty bad having to resort to cheating before I’d even started the game.  The second noticeable thing was that my main character was some retarded middle aged dweeb who, understandably, hadn’t yet had sex with a woman.  So, I’m thinking, why do I want to play a game as this guy?  Surely I want be some handsome knight on a noble quest, a young boy discovering his true destiny, or at the very least a virile manly cop beating the crap out of society’s wrongdoers.  I loaded this up thinking I was going to be playing a manly game for manly men about SEX.  But nope.  Apparently I get to be the dork.  This game is rapidly going downhill for me and I haven’t even got started yet.  Oh well, I think, I’m playing a dweeb but at least there’ll probably be a good storyline attached.  Adventure games are all about the storyline, after all.

The remake

Well, Leisure Suit Larry is not so keen on giving away its secrets in that area either.  No, it’s not stupid enough to tell you what the point of the game actually is.  You have to work that out yourself in much the same way that you have to work out to buy the whiskey from the bar, so you can give it to the collapsed drunk so he gives you a remote control so that you can change the channel with it 9 times, so that the pimp let’s you through the door.  Yes, it’s that obvious.  So again, I look it up.  Apparently, according to the internet, the aim of the game is to get laid.  That’s not an especially compelling storyline, is it?  But don’t worry because once you’ve managed to sleep with the local prostitute it all changes.  You then have to get married and get laid again.  Well, Ok, I figure that getting laid in a computer game should supply me with a certain amount of entertainment.  Well, guess what?  Even though I had to undergo the torture of having to answer questions on Richard Nixon to prove that I’m old enough, when you get to the sex scenes, they’re all censored.  Yes, byt this time I started feeling despondent and I’ll tell you why – because of what I had to suffer to get to this point.

Infuriating as they can be at times, the puzzles in the game are for once not the most annoying thing by a long shot.  What’s actually annoying is everything else.   This game plays like a dog: a really obstinate pissed off Rottweiler.  That stupid Sierra icon system is made even worse by the addition of taste and smell icons,and one to remove your clothing.  This is not great, given that you don’t need to taste anything to complete this game and it means that hours are spent selecting the right icon to use.  Added to that, all the icons look the damn same.  It would have been quicker to type the words into a text parser.  Yet there are greater headaches than this.  The game is split up into a few locations – the bar, the convenience store, the disco, the casino etc and you have no idea which one you need to be at.  Fine – explore.  Only, every time you want to go somewhere you have to hail a taxicab and endure a non-skippable sequence which involves the taxicab going faster and slowing down before you reach your destination. This doesn’t encourage exploration of the game world, it makes you determined to avoid unnecessary trips.  Then there’s the fact that using a taxi costs money.  The only way to get more money is to play at the casino.  I didn’t sign up for umpteen rounds of Blackjack, I wanted an adventure game, but I have to endure them to progress.  Of course, there’s no clue to how much money I need so guess what happens?  Right, the $250 I win is not enough so I run out of money after my bride to be takes $200 and can’t pay for the cab back to the Casino to get more.  This was roughly where I lost patience and threw my PC into the toilet.  I haven’t even mentioned that when Larry enters the casino for some reason he walks at ¼ speed, or that there’s a 15 minute long comedy routine of one-liner jokes you have to endure.

So, beyond the gamers identification with the lead character and the promise of some sexual scenarios, is there any reason to grapple with the game and take the few hours it would actually take to play and finish it? (it’s a fairly short game provided you don’t get deadended financially like I did.).   Well, the real shame of it is that underneath it all, game creator Lowe clearly has a fine wit and a great sense of humour and the game does deliver some good belly laughs every so often.  Every room is littered with funny descriptions, a good example being the bar toilet, which is scrawled wall to wall with amusing graffiti.  The excruciating embarrassment of buying condoms at a convenience store is well represented by a longish sequence where the storekeeper asks you if you prefer mint, ribbed, coloured etc and at the end of it he yells out “Hey everyone, he’s buying…. x” and a whole bunch of people leap out yelling “YOU’RE A PERVERT”.  Having had my own awkward condom buying encounter, that one struck a comic nerve.  When you meet a girl in the disco she shows no interest in you whatsoever and scowls.  As you hand over roses, chocolates and a ring the expression rapidly changes amusingly to a grin and the girl offers to sleep with you – but only if you’ll marry her first.  The joke is brazenly politically incorrect, yet I can’t help giving Lowe the benefit of the doubt and thinking that he is actually winking at potential misogyny of his audience here not trying to persuade them that this is somehow a better version of reality.  That the girl later ties you to a bed also suggests that Larry is really going to need try a little bit harder to genuinely connect.  Like Apatow though, for Larry success ultimately comes a little too easily and so any sense of genuine feminine empowerment gets wiped away in a smug air of “I got to have sex in the end anyway”.  Disappointing, but not unusual.

If you’re feeling patient and you love Apatow then maybe this game will appeal.  However, there’s not enough good in it to make it the retro classic it has become in the minds of many and I can’t help thinking/hoping tha,like King’s Quest, it’s the superior nature of the sequels that people have truly latched onto.  I’ll be playing them - I’ll let you know.

Since I’ve restarted school, I’ve noticed that my previously annoying tendency of procrastination has transformed into a full-blown maelstrom of time wastery. When something needs to get done, there’s nothing I want to do more than not do it.

With that in mind, I was delighted to discover this simple net-app, called Ball Droppings. A ball drops from the top corner of the screen, and you need to set up a platform for the ball to bounce off of. When the ball bounces it makes a little blip. Set up another platform, get another bounce, get another blip.

Eventually there’s balls and platforms everywhere and you’re inundated with a cacophony of blips, bleeps, and bloops. Like the amazing Line Rider, there’s no score or goal, it’s just a free form project to do what ever you can to have fun.

I can only hope that soon youtube will eventually start hosting videos of the amazing patterns that I know people will start making.

Posted by Tycho

To hype coincide the release of the Wolverine movie, Marvel has decided to celebrate Wolverine appreciation month in April. To celebrate, they are releasing a slew of comics with special covers done in the style of famous artists. Some are too cool for words, others are merely cool.

You can read the article and view a couple more covers here.

My weekend just planned itself.

Those of you with access to steam may have already noticed that the weekend deal starting today is the Oddworld series (which includes Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee and Oddworld: Abe’s Exoddus) for 75% off. This is a cracking good deal, and I expect each and every one of you dear readers (all 3 of you) to take this offer up. You can get the games seperately for $2.50 each or buy them together for $3.75 total. Not to sound like an informercial douche, but that’s less than the cost of a super fancy delux-o coffee with low-fat no sugar soy whipped non-dairy creamer.

Aside from the outstanding price, you should get the games for their cleverness and humor. The games involve a rather weak, ugly alien creature who is trying to escape from an evil corporation that wants to turn him and his friends into snack treats. Your only real weapon is mind-control, which you can use to (wait for it) control the minds of the guards that would otherwise be out to kill you. You can then make the guards do various things, push buttons to let you in to previously locked areas, kill other guards, or even walk off the edge of a platform and into a bottomless pit. The first part of the first level is basically a walkthrough, telling you what to do for every scenario. On one screen, you run into one of your co-workers, who is busy scrubbing the walls. The walkthrough tells you to go up to a lever and push the action button. When you do, a trap door opens underneath your coworker, and he disappears with a slowly dimming, “AIIIEEEEEEE!” Followed by an eventual thud. You don’t really expect for a tutorial to screw you over (the more coworkers you save, the better your score) but Oddworld lets you know that you should take everything with a grain of salt. Just because you can do something doesn’t necessarily mean that you should.

The game is part platformer, part puzzler, part stealth. You sometimes have to hide from the guards as much as possible to get past certain areas, while other times you just have to run like hell and hope that you jump, sneak, or roll at the exact right moment. It’s less Mario and more Flashback with a little bit of The Lost Vikings thrown in for good measure.

Believe it or not, these graphics are actually better than the ones in the version I played as a kid.

I love platformers. They’re probably my favorite genre of video games. The new trend in games seems to be to make games in the sand-box style with an open world. You can do almost anything and there’s really no rules as to how the game should be played. While I am intrigued by the freedom these games offer, and rather enjoy putzing around in a virtual world with no real purpose  (imagine that), I’m also turned off by them. As the worlds become bigger, and there’s more to do in them, I find myself torn about what I should do. I’m a completest by nature, and whenever I find something new in a game world, I feel compelled to find everything. Spider-Man 2 is one of the best examples of this. Beyond the story line, you can run around a virtual new york and find 100 tip markers. There’s also a bunch of skyscraper tokens scattered amongst the roof tops of the (wait for it) skyscrapers. Then there’s the photography missions where you have to climb and crawl to various points on buildings to get the perfect angle for a shot. After a while, it becomes too much and I find myself giving up the game as hopeless because I know I can never complete everything.

It’s nice to have a game where the world may be large and varied, but is still constrained to levels, with a specific end goal in sight. Platformers like Ratchet and Clank, Jax and Daxter, and Super Mario Galaxy are perfect examples of this. There usually is some extra incentive to go back and replay levels (beating a time-trial, collecting a certain amount of coins or gems or bolts) but these I see these as goals that can be accomplished with varying degrees of difficulty, but not daunting never-ending tasks.

While most people can site Mario and the Super Mario Bros. series of games as their first introduction to the platform genre (freaks, losers and weirdos probably will choose Sonic), my first real introduction to platforming was on the Atari 2600 through Roderick Hero and Pitfall Harry from H.E.R.O. and Pitfall II respectively. I never played the original Pitfall when I was young, and after playing Pitfall II I never felt the need to. Whereas Pitfall was just an endless series of screens and traps going from left to right, Pitfall II had you climbing up and down ladders, going from the leftmost screen of the game to the rightmost screen and then back, and even catching a balloon to quickly bring you up from the bottom of the game area back to the top.

Pitfall Harry is still just a passive adventurer, though. All he can do is jump over or duck under the various dangers that surround him. There is no way to strike back or kill any of the game’s dangers. However, none of the animals in Pitfall II really harm Harry either. They just send him him back to the last save point, while taking time off the clock. Given the steep difficulty level of most Atari games, this made Pitfall II relatively easy. Despite this, I never completed the game. My sister did once, she was probably 8 or 9 at the time and the three extra years of dextrous development probably aided her more than anything. A large part of the game is pattern recognition with the various beasts, with the last third of the game involves running under flying condors and bats. The condors have a fairly slow frequency and are easy to duck under once you get the hang of it. The bats, on the other hand, have a much faster frequency. You can still manage to run under them, but it takes much more skill and patience.

The mountain lion is the last thing you collect on your journey, implying that he's more important than your own niece.

In order to win, you have to rescue Harry’s niece, Harry’s pet mountain lion, and find a giant diamond ring. Oddly, finding Harry’s niece is the easiest to do, with finding the mountain lion being the last. There’s also a bonus for collecting a cave rat, which is entirely pointless, because if you rescue the mountain lion all you have to do is go left one screen and you collect the cave rat. All in all, Pitfall II was a nice way to spend a couple hours, and it was made even more enjoyable by being able to use save states and not having to repeat large sections of the game over again because your finger slipped on the controller while trying to run under a bat.

While Pitfall II involved one huge world and no actual way to die, H.E.R.O. consists of 20 different levels (which are designed differently but all basically look the same) with a number of ways to die. The first few levels just have spiders and bats, which pretty much do nothing but wait to get killed, but soon you run up against moths, snakes, and water-bound tentacle monsters. As if this weren’t bad enough, in the later levels, most of the walls and even some of the platforms turn into a molten state, and if you touch them you die. Luckily, the hero, Hero, in H.E.R.O. (which stands for Helicopter Equipped Rescue Operation) has a personal (wait for it) helicopter attached to his back, so he can fly around the levels.

While the helicopter is totally bitchen, it doesn’t really help Hero kill any of the baddies in the level. Have no fear, because Hero comes equipped with a few sticks of dynamite for each level. Most of these are needed to blow up walls that block your way, though, and in latter levels ALL of the dynamite is needed to complete the level. It’s also nearly impossible to kill the moths or snakes with dynamite. So what’s Hero to do? Only shoot laser beams out of his helmet. Mario had fireballs he could throw only after collecting a mushroom and a flower. Hero had frickin lasers from the get-go.

The point of the game is to get to the end of each level and rescue a trapped miner. This gets very difficult once you reach the tenth level or so. Luckily the Atari game had an option which let you start out at different points throughout the game, so you could instantly start on level 15 instead of having to play through the game every time you wanted to try and beat it. Even with this, the game was unforgivably difficult. Using an emulator and save states I probably reloaded sections upwards of 20 times. Still it was a blast to play through.

Like King’s Quest II, someone has taken it upon themselves to remake H.E.R.O. with better graphics. I couldn’t be happier about this, because for most of my life, I figured that I was the only one that ever played this game, since I never see it talked about or referenced any where. It’s a real shame because it’s probably the best game I played on the Atari.

Yes, this looks a little shitty, doesn't it?

Nostalgia aside, let’s face facts here, the original King’s Quest games were a little bit shitty, which isn’t to say that they weren’t monumentally groundbreaking. For the first time they allowed the player to move a 3D character around and to interrogate a fully realised 3D environment (and by fully realised, I mean not very well realised at all,but that’s all history), but sadly, playing them now is an excruciating and unique form of torture. It’s a nightmare wrestling with that bloody text parser, wondering which random, unrecognisable item on the screen is worth examining and having your player die by constantly dying, falling off of cliff faces. Narratively, they hardly fare any better. Compare the Original King’s Quest adventure, for instance, to the far superior graphics-free text adventures from Infocom during the same period like Planetfall, wherein an intriguing (and frequently funny) plot is revealed to the player slowly as a reward for good game-play and perseverance. I recently played the original King’s Quest: Quest for the Crown and found it a boring, plodding affair which amounted to nothing more than King Graham embarking on a treasure hunt to retrieve three magical items to save the Kingdom. Furthermore the puzzles were obscure and stupidly difficult, giving the player no real reason to care about any aspect of the game or gameplay.

However, fond memories of wrestling with the virtually impossible King’s Quest III as a child (I never did manage to kill that blasted wizard.) has kept me intrigued by this franchise. Good reviews of AGDInteractive’s recent remake, boasting improved graphics, speech acting, an icon click user interface and a new, improved storyline just about convinced me to give it a go, even though I still have so many adventure game classics still to play. I downloaded the game for free (yes! For FREE!), honestly expecting to be bored of King Graham’s Quest for his Bride-to-be within the hour, but found myself playing throughout the whole day unable to switch the damn thing until I’d found the gems, freed the bride and thwarted the evil witch Hagatha. I had to get to the end of this game even when my dinner was cold on the table and my cats were peeing all over the furniture. Housework be damned, for I was in the middle of doing battle with an evil Vampire lord!

Actually, not much of the Original Kings Quest 2 really remains in place here. The basic plot framework and central concepts have been kept. King Graham, bored and seeking a bride sees a vision in his magic mirror of a damsel trapped in a tower and decides to go and rescue her. Finding himself in an unknown land he soon learns that if he can find the three gemstones (in the original its three keys to open a magic door) he’ll be able to go through a portal to another realm to save her. Pretty standard stuff you think, and for sure, in Sierra’s hands it certainly was. AGDInteractive, on the other hand, have simply used this as a jumping off point to create a unique and charming fantasy gaming experience. Like all good narrative games the charms aren’t self evident and you have to patiently play through the first hour on blind faith. Initially the experience felt something like this:

“Ok, a screen with trees and rocks. Pretty. Ok, more trees. Oh, more rocks. Oh, I can put my hand in this hole and oooh a mallet. Now, a lake. Now more trees. A house I can’t get into. More trees. More rocks. OOOHH how many goddamn screens are there like this anyway?”

Play on though and you begin to see the bigger picture; how everything is interconnected. Being based on an old adventure with fairly free form puzzles, King’s Quest 2 presents its entire world for you to explore all in one go, but as you make your way to the town, meet some of its characters discover the library, the antiques shop, and Hagatha’s cave it begins to develop into something much more intriguing. Whilst the game never morphs into a fully-fledged narrative like modern classics such as The Longest Journey, gradually King Graham starts to be led by the nose a little, only allowed into one area, for instance, until he’s finished with another. Night falls, for instance and the town closes and the mysterious church opens up. Trips to the library allow you to read books on the history of the town and its magical citizens. Certain mini quests , to retrieve a Nightingale for the antiques shop owner or an ancient tiara for the local vampire not only give the game a lot of colour but also reveal characters with a lot of personality and interest. Some are resolutely evil; some are not what they initially appear to be. Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother, for instance, turn out to be part of the local vampire family. Additional depth is added to the game by some wonderfully affecting cut scenes, the most noteworthy being when you retrieve the second gem. The cloud spirit asks you to prove your worth in order to obtain the gem and does so in an almost Dickensian way, showing you scenes from your childhood and your desolate future, asking you how you’d respond to these events. This not only adds to your view of King Graham’s character, but also builds into the King’s Quest mythology and making it an overall richer experience

The other real draw, of course, is the game’s humour. At times I wasn’t sure if I was playing a King’s Quest game or Monkey Island. To be fair the overall construct of the game isn’t as humorous or intelligent as the Lucasarts classic, but AGDInteractive have done their best to make every scenario and every encounter as engaging as they can. And to AGD engaging often means hilariously funny. There’s much goodness to choose from, but my favourite character is the local librarian, a play on the traditional stereotype she resolutely refuses to sign you up to the Library even though there’s no reason not to, meeting every one of your reasonable requests with a sturdy “No”. Eventually you get to the point with her whereby you have a card (stolen, of course) but it’s not signed and she won’t let you use the desk pen in order to sign it.

I’m always personally more interested in narrative conceits than great graphics and sound, but gameplay is still important and KQ2 fares pretty well in that department. The graphics are light years ahead of the original although most modern gamers will probably still scoff at them. What’s important to me though is that the screen designs are frequently attractive, making you want to know what’s on the next screen and excited when a new area opens up. The icon interface is frankly a little frustrating, asking you to right click to choose between a talk icon, a walk icon and a use one. Tedious at best it’s frustrating in timed sequences that lead to your death if you don’t act quickly and sometimes these appear out of the blue when you don’t have an up to date save handy. The puzzles have been completely redesigned from the original game are frequently clever and fun and only sometimes impossible to figure out. There’s the age old Sierra problem of not always knowing if you’ve picked up everything you should have or if you’re just not using what you have in the right way. There’s also the occasional moment when I felt it poorly signposted as to what to do next. For instance, having used the magic carpet to ascend a cliff then come back again, it didn’t occur to me that I’d have to return to that area when I figured I’d already finished with it! Still, if you like these games you are patient with these problems and good at using walkthroughs like I am. What’s really relevant is that the puzzles have been re-jigged to much positive effect, leading the storyline and adventure onwards rather giving you too much endless walking about and searching to do.

To sum up, AGDInteractive have produced something incredibly special here. The sceptical will simply not play this, wondering why we need an updated version of an old classic. The rest of us will be rewarded with one of the finest of adventure gaming experiences, one that both fills our geeky need for nostalgia but also gives us new and exciting challenges, new characters to meet, places to explore and puzzles to solve. Did I mention that this is all free? Congratulations and thank you for providing this piece of high quality entertainment AGD and for not only keeping alive, but solidly improving on a wonderful gaming franchise.

I’m now right off to download their latest, Al Emmo. Alas, not free, but hell they actually deserve the cash.

10/10

Awesome links

Kings Quest II: Romancing the Stones Game Site
AGDInteractive (formerly Tierra) – Play their King’s Quest One or Quest for Glory 2 remakes for free, or brand new adventure Al Emmo and The Lost Dutchman’sMine
JustAdventure Game Review

Sweet!