Change. Yep. This blog is no longer dedicated to videogames.
Instead, NinjaDuckie’s Experimental Journal will be my random thoughts of the week summed up on a semi-regular basis, with the occasional post reviewing some videogame or other that I might have picked up on Steam or for the xbox. Or in fact some completely random abandonware game or something or other that I feel really deserves a good look at it now its time is long past.
So anyway. First issue. Gay Rights. Are we really doing this again? Yesterday was spirit day, and I wore a purple shirt all day to commemorate how the suffering of gay kids who are being constantly bullied for being ‘different’ will no longer be tolerated. Or something. But one of my friends pointed out something very valid: what of straight or bi kids who are being bullied for the same reasons? Do they not get commemorated also? I’m sorry to say that people commit suicide every day, and while it may be true that many of them are bullied gays trying to come out in a conservative America or tough community, the suicide rates are spread more or less equally among everyone, I think.
Equality in a way people maybe didn’t hope for. Speaking of gay, I made arrangements for a guy to stay over for a weekend in two weeks or so. He just needs the cuddles really.
Getting onto my other point: precognition. I’m starting to believe there really is such a thing as seeing the future, or at least seeing a possible future and locking it into the timestream by your subconscious actions. Too many times have passed by where I’ll have a dream in which a specific order of events will occur, and then a few months later that exact sequence of events happens again, and I’ll catch it before it ends and immediately predict what will happen. It’s actually pretty scary to see, say, a dog owner throwing a frisbee, and get a little spark of deja vu, and immediately recite that the dog will chase after it and in the distance a baby will fall over and cry, and fairly close to you a little old lady will tell her daughter to stop off at Tesco’s to pick up an extra bottle of milk, and then to actually have that happen.
And this happened to me just Tuesday in fact. I’m taking a dream diary again, in case of more occurences.
Today I feel like talking about a game which isn’t exactly a game. It’s called Garry’s Mod, and it costs monies on Steam, although was originally simply a mod that was free. It’s been through ten incarnations and can be shortened to “Gmod”, and has rather a cult following on the internet because of the sheer freedom of things to do in the game.
It’s a custom-made mod of Half-Life 2, and therefore you need at least one Source engine game to play; usually CounterStrike: Source is the best choice because Gmod comes with the HL2 content installed anyway. The basic game allows you to spawn any item from the Source games installed, use any weapon from those games and spawn NPCs from the HL2 games, including just their ragdolls.
The primary weapon that is automatically selected on starting a game is the PhysGun, which allows you to freeze objects in poses, and carefully pose the individual limbs of ragdolls. Posing ragdolls takes SOME getting used to. It is impossible to assume that you’ll be able to pose a ragdoll at a desk simply by starting up the game and getting your hands on the physgun. But the satisfaction from finally getting it done and immediately quicksaving so you don’t lose anything is immense, once you’ve learned how to do it properly. You can then also get the ragdoll to look directly at you and freak the hell out of you the first time.
Other tools gifted to you as a gmod player include the ability to weld things together, stick balloons on things with customisable pulling power, change mass of objects, stick rocket thrusters on stuff (which gets incredibly funny), stick wheels on things. You can turn things invisible or paint them blue and turn them into holograms.
But the real gem in Garry’s Mod is the DLC. There is a MASSIVE database of DLC to get on www.garrysmod.org – after a recent validation system implementation, you have to sync your steam account with the website so that it’s clear you own a valid and legal copy of the game. This therefore entitles you to technical support also. The DLC is very easily installed – every bit comes in a folder with an Info.txt file. You simply stick the whole folder in a Garrysmod directory folder called “Addons” and it’s auto-installed. This does tend to slow down the game start time processing a bit.
I have an Addons folder of around 2.09 GB.
The DLC I’ve chosen to download includes a map of Area 51, a map that’s essentially a greenscreen and bluescreen, pilotable jet fighters and helicopters, atomic bombs, more realistic CounterStrike: Source weapons, the Stargate mod – a mod that enables you to place the Atlantis and SG-1 stargates around any map and link between them using the dialling computers – which includes weaponry and cloaking devices compatible with the core game’s items and NPCs, Halo vehicles NPCs and maps, a black Apache helicopter NPC that flies around the map shooting wildly at everyone, a custom weapon (or SWEP) that allows you to punch like a certain FALCONNNNN (thereby causing the enemy to explode and/or catch on fire), a pack that unlocks the original beta HL2 weapons, tools for creating light bridges and fixing the hydraulics on cars, and multiple extra custom made items and player models/ragdolls including HK-47 from KOTOR, Darth Vader, stormtroopers, past and present Doctor Who incarnations, the TARDIS itself, the INTERIOR of the TARDIS, daleks, the Pillar of Autumn, various spaceships and aircraft, and a map that is a scaled STAR DESTROYER. It’s a beauty to behold.
Get this game right now. It’s really cheap on steam and you can do so much just “for teh lulz”. Garry’s Mod 9 is free on Steam to download, but you’ll receive no technical support. Gmod 10 is down to £5.99 now, and with CS Source is £14.99 but that allows you to use a LOT more content than if you weren’t using CS. Similarly, you can also buy Gmod10 with TF2 for £14.99.
Briefly, another mod I downloaded recently is called SMOD – the SUPER mod for HL2. It is simply hilarious, there’s no other way to say it. Currently I’m in the chapter Follow Freeman. The mod itself is around 60MB of content but adds so much, including better squad control, better enemies, more enemies, more plot points somehow including a mini-episode where the combine steal your airboat and force you to go down the canals on a jeep. If you cheat and get all the weapons you get some crazy cheat weapons including a shovel that you can beat people around the face with. Any gun without a scope allows you to look down the sights (including the holographic sight on the initial HL2 SMG) and hitting a button of your choice will enter bullet time for as long as your suit’s Aux power will last (the power that also controls your sprint and flashlight). It’s so much fun to hit the bullet time key and dodge the combines’ SMG bullets while simultaneously planting your own in their foreheads.
And the best part? You can install its content in Garry’s Mod.
The rating system doesn’t apply here, as it’s how you play that defines your gaming experience.
It’s been quite a while since I actually posted anything here, so I thought I’d get the ball rolling again by reviewing Peggle and the Company behind it. Leaving the blog dormant was actually not deliberate, for once! I got Peggle late last year, after a friend on Facebook posted many statuses into the early hours of the morning claiming it to be so addictive that you physically can’t stop playing. She was right. Sort of.
For those of you who are not ‘in the know’, here is a synopsis of the game:
You are a student at the Peggle Institute. Your coursework is simple – complete every level in the game, taking guidance from each of the ten Peggle Masters; Bjorn, Renfield, Claude, etc. Levels consist of firing ball bearings at pegs. There are four colours of peg: orange, blue, green and purple.
The aim of the game is to light up all of the orange ones. Depending on how many orange pegs you have hit, the score multiplier increases dramatically. The blue ones still give you points, and are sometimes necessary to be cleared in order to reach the orange ones. The purple one changes places with every turn and is worth a point boost. You get a powerup every time you hit a green peg, depending on which Peggle Master you are using.
Every five levels completed unlocks the next Master to guide you. On the first playthrough you are asked to use only the Master you are studying for but after you complete the game you can use anyone on any level. Powerups are varied, from an arrow that improves your aim to an auto-calculator which actually changes your aim entirely.
On completion of the game you are dubbed a ‘Peggle Master’ with your own certificate and trophy, and may go on to play again or to try the ‘challenge’ and ‘duel’ modes.
With that explanation out of the way, let’s get on with analysing it for its intrinsic value.
Gameplay – 8/10
The main thing, as with any game really, is how you play it. The game itself is very intuitive. It’s so easy to play that even my mum was capable of completing it. Play basically consists of aiming the cannon where you want the ball to go and clicking the mouse button to fire. The ball will head directly for the position where the mouse pointer is, unless there is a peg or obstacle in the way.
In terms of replayability, every orange, green and purple peg is positioned randomly, so you can never have the same game twice. Some levels even consist of moving parts, where pegs will dodge your ball and you have to keep a close eye on where you’re firing.
When you hit the last orange peg on a level, you are treated to some flashing lights and a wall of sound in your headphones or speakers, including fireworks going off. It’s a real confidence booster when you’ve just wasted four hundred tries on the same level.
The game is good for building reactions and judging where something is likely to go given half a chance. The only real problem I have with the gameplay is that sometimes you are forced to utilise a shot which involves bouncing off moving parts or judging a nigh impossible shot where you have to hit something that’s under a barrier. This should not be – it means that the person who really just plays for the joy and doesn’t want to have to think about the shot is unacknowledged.
Graphics: 8/10
The game’s graphics are suitable for the target audience – kids and families. The characters are all rather cartoony, and the backgrounds on levels often depict situations such as a badger sunbathing or something equally ridiculous (a frog in an inner tube for example), which just adds to the humour of the game. There’s not much to say about the pegs themselves, although you do get a meter on the right hand side of the screen which tallies up how many orange pegs you have lit up.
Sound: 10/10
The sound simply MAKES this game. Throughout every level you’ll get some real chillout feel-good tracks played over the back, so you never feel pressured to do it perfectly straight away. I really do love the sound. Every time you hit a peg, you get a ‘dong’, and some classic sci-fi whooshes and zaps are there too, complementing the flashes you get onscreen. The Zen owl powerup gets a very suitable Tibetan gong sound effect when activated.
Whenever you complete a level, you are treated to a choral version of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, which, while shockingly impressive the first few times, gets old, FAST. You almost want the level to just END when it happens so you don’t have to listen to any more chanting. Luckily, there is a workaround for this – you can convert a music file of your own to OggVorbis format, rename it to “odetojoy.ogg”, and drop it in the Music folder in the Peggle directory. It’s quite a thrill when you hit a peg and hear the chorus from Livin’ on a Prayer playing as loud as you like.
It’s also quite a thrill when you clear every peg on a level. The sheer brilliance of the word ULTRA smashing onto the screen with WHOMP noises over the top of your music:
Now, you may be confused as to why there are lambda symbols, portals and what looks like the companion cube in that level. I’ll get to that in a bit.
Overall score: 9/10.
Now Peggle in itself is actually pretty damn good, won’t you agree? A beautiful little timewaster that quickly becomes a timespender, and is soon your most played game.
The company that made Peggle, is Popcap Games. You may already know them for such gems as Bejeweled or Insaniquarium. Peggle is by far the longest and most ridiculous franchise they have now. Peggle was soon followed up by Peggle Nights, the ‘sequel’.
The problem I have with the term ‘sequel’ is that Peggle Nights is basically exactly the same game with differently randomly placed pegs, and different backgrounds. The ingame music is the same as Peggle, and Ode to Joy is still there! Oh, and the story? It’s Peggle. Set at night. Hence, “Peggle Nights”. How imaginative.
Oh, all right. They added another Peggle Master. But the downside of this is that the new Master is so overpowered that you can use her to defeat every level, with no exceptions. I still played it to the end, though, to see what was new. Guess what? You just get a little cartoon of a trophy in this game, too.
Following Peggle Nights came Peggle EXTREME Edition. Kind of like if you filmed Alien using the Muppets. Yes, you read that right. In basic terms, Bjorn the Unicorn has a headcrab gnawing on his face, and every level features custom-made art from the Orange Box and CS:S, including Hunters, Striders, Sentry guns, the Pyro, DOG, etc, and custom sounds for failing and completing a level, including the Heavy saying “YOU DID WELL” and GLaDOS mentioning that “If at first you don’t succeed… you fail.”
It was a good work at humour and appealed to many hardcore gamers as a recognition of Valve’s work, and was released about the time that Popcap made the move to put all their games on Steam, so Valve helped out with some artwork and sound.
After THAT (yes, really) came Peggle: World of Warcraft Edition.
I did not bother to even play this one. I was getting bored of the lack of variation.
As always, Ninja Duck, signing off.
UPDATE! I uploaded a video of the different music I’ve been using in place of “Ode to Joy”, below:
Canabalt is one of the better flash games I’ve been playing lately. It’s so retro and well realised that it deserves a place on this blog.
It’s also a difficult game to categorise, as it doesn’t really fit any normal ‘genre’. Let me sum up the game in a few words:
It’s like if Michael Jackson was the Bionic Man in a game of Mirror’s Edge drawn by the people behind Flashback.
If that didn’t make the slightest sense to you, then here’s the long explanation.
You are an unnamed man, probably just an office worker, who is at work in one of the top storeys of a large building. During work, giant robots land in the city and start destroying it. The aim of the game is to outrun the destruction of the city in the subsequent war. Your character looks handdrawn using pixel art, and is therefore faceless, but the one person I thought he looked like was Michael Jackson, (if MJ was a collection of pixels in a black and white world, no pun intended).
The game is played using just one button- this is X, C, or the spacebar, depending on your preference alone. This is your ‘jump’ button. The arrow keys and mouse buttons do nothing, as evidenced by the pause screen, which appears whenever you click off the game. Anyone who played ‘City Jumper’ – I think that’s what it’s called – when they were a bit younger will get the gist of the game; run across the rooftops, avoid obstacles.
As you’re running, you increase speed dramatically, until you’re at the point where a single step can take you across three buildings. This is why I figured the main character must be some morph of the Bionic Man. No office worker can run at 50mph or jump four storeys, and I don’t think adrenaline is capable of enhancing the body’s efficiency that much. When you need to decrease speed, all you have to do is hit any square obstacle on the rooftops. This appears to halve your speed and allow you to take a little more time in reacting to jumps.
Alongside the small square obstacles that you come across scattered throughout the buildings, those which only take a small jump to get past, such as air conditioning units or crates, you will also face timed jumps where you must leap through a glass window into an office corridor and usually smash another immediately after, you will face bombs dropping out of the sky and smashing into buildings, you must face buildings falling down while you are running across them, and all well over the national speed limit.
It’s an excellent game with which to improve your reflexes, although that’s not a scientifically proven statement. I like the gameplay very much, especially looking at the background when you get a chance and seeing giant robots moving through your destroyed city. It’s not very often you can do that, of course, because when you do you probably smack into a wall and fall to your death.
As for sound, well. The music is suitably tense to begin with – you’re running through an office building that’s shaking and rumbling, and all you hear on the music is repeating synths and low strings to suggest the oncoming horror, like in a typical slasher movie. If you time it right, the second you begin running at a proper speed the action music will come in. It would fit perfectly in a science fiction/action movie such as Blade Runner. The music itself is fast paced but doesn’t kill the tension, as it is on a loop that brings it perfectly back to the tense strings, which when you’re running through a city and you can see the giant robots in the background turning on search lights and things, is the perfect complement.
Also with the sound, when the music isn’t up to full on synth action, you can hear your character’s footsteps, every single one, as he runs across the rooftops and it changes to a metal tap when he runs across the top of a crane. It’s these little details that make the game that much better.
In terms of graphics, it’s realised in a very retro, pixel art style. The character is faceless so no one person can identify with him and make the rest of the players feel less empathy. The reason why I mentioned Flashback earlier in the review is that it really does remind me of the same art style – the character’s movement is realistic because it was based off a moving person. The way the character rolls when he drops from a higher height is a nice touch, or the way he ‘mario jumps’ into the air and then flails his arms trying to get more distance before hitting the ground. The screen shaking when spaceships hurtle by in the background is a great way of making the game feel more dangerous without actually adding to the risk factor. But my favourite part is when you smash a window and roll on a building covered in birds – they all appear to randomly fly away, as a scared flock, in no set direction.
(For this and all future games I’m also going to implement a more specific scoring system, in the following areas: Graphics, Sound, Gameplay, Story. Although as Yahtzee says, I don’t think the player’s opinion of a game can be fully explained numerically.)
Graphics: 10/10. For what it is, the retro type of game, the graphic style is perfectly pulled off and needs no changes. Sound: 8/10. I thought the soundtrack was excellent but I would like to say that there could be a little variation, and there should be a separate button to mute the sound effects and the music rather than having it all or having nothing. Gameplay: 9/10. Again, for what it is, the single button gameplay works in context, but hitting a wall and ‘tumbling to your death’ when you definitely hit the window immediately below it is very annoying, especially when you’re on the verge of beating your highscore. It’s good to know that the track is randomly generated though, as it stops people from simply learning a jumping pattern. Story: 6/10. Here is where we hit a snag. I know, I know, the concept of a story doesn’t seem particularly important when it’s simply a high score beating game, for improving reflexes, but it could do with a backstory at the very least. We don’t know why the robots are here or why they are destroying the city, we don’t know where he’s running to, we don’t even know who he is! An opening cutscene of a news report explaining some things might be good, and easily skippable for people who have played before. An ending for the game might be nice to open up a sequel – Canabalt 2: In the Country – where you have escaped the city and must navigate the countryside to a safehouse.
All in all, a good game. If you haven’t played the game and would like to, the creator’s site (free of ads and so forth) is here: http://adamatomic.com/canabalt/
If you’d like to play the game in (almost) full screen (and believe me, it makes the experience that much nicer), go here: http://adamatomic.com/canabalt/mega/
This is Ninja Duck, signing off. Enjoy the game, there’s more to come.
Weeeellll now, hello there. You might be wondering what in the hell this blog is going to be.
Well I’ll tell you. I plan on finding experimental games I like, or maybe experimental games I DON’T like, and blabbing on at you for a page about how good they are and what makes them experimental and different from other, similar games.
I’m going to start today with a great game from 2005: SWAT 4.
I’ve decided to talk about SWAT 4 because quite frankly, it astounded me on the first playing. It’s different to most FPS games in that your objective is not to shoot everything that moves, but to preserve peace. Almost every mission you’ll get the objective “Bring order to chaos,” amongst others such as “Save all the hostages” or “Neutralise specific suspects”.
“Bring Order to Chaos,” in basic form, means rescue civilians and subdue the suspects. And by ‘subdue’ we mean you can’t shoot them. Well, you can’t shoot them initially. To play the game, you should go through the training, otherwise you’ll be completely lost. Like me.
When you come up against hostile forces, the first thing you must do under SWAT protocol is to shout at them for compliance. When you press the Use key, you hear through the speakers (or headphones if you’re like me and enjoy everything being in makeshift surround sound) “GET DOWN AND PUT YOUR HANDS WHERE I CAN SEE THEM!”
This is rather satisfying, especially when the subject actually goes ahead and drops his AK and kneels down. Now you have to go and secure the evidence (his gun) and secure the suspect himself by equipping zipcuffs and restraining the wrongdoer. If there are other enemies nearby it may be more suitable to direct one of your team mates to restrain the suspect. This is done through a simple menu brought up by holding down the right mouse button. You can press tab to cycle through your team mates, too.
If the suspect does not stop, or points his gun at you, or opens fire, you have the authority to return fire, and sometimes authority for the use of deadly force. If you did not follow SWAT protocol properly, you get marked down at Debriefing and can fail the mission for shooting a terrorist too early. You also have to remember to restrain civilians, even when they haven’t done anything. Failure to restrain civilians for evac before you leave the mission may cause you to fail the mission entirely. Not only that but you have to report downed suspects, incapacitated hostages injured teammates and so on by looking at them and radioing in to Mission Control.
You would think gameplay where you’re not supposed to open fire and can even be marked down for it would get boring after a while. This natural assumption is assuaged quite easily with the variety in the rest of the game. You can have teammates blow open doors and throw flash grenades in, you can have teammates back you up with shotguns while you pick locks, you can even use their in-helmet cameras to send your team round the building while you hang around outside and have a cigarette. (Not really.) You get to use CS gas, stinger grenades, flashes, C2 breaching charges, lockpicks, optiwands for looking under doors and round corners. “Deploy C2″ becomes pretty to watch as one of your mates prepares to throw a grenade in through the door while the other one counts down under his breath and blows it open with a bang.
Wimpy suspects will stay on the ground, but proper terrorists (in later levels you have to disarm BOMBS) will get back up, pick up their guns and open fire again once you’ve gone past. Some won’t even put their gun down, they’ll pretend to and while you’re looking the other way stand back up and probably inevitably get gunned down by the guy at the back with the 12-gauge.
The game offers you two great moments, though. Suspects barricaded in a petrol station was my first favourite moment. Sierra 1, one of your sniper units, says he’s seen an unknown in his sights in the main office. You were just about to open the door into the main office. You switch to your sniper cam while your team stacks up on the door and aims their wide variety of weaponry at it. Gazing into the sniper cam, you realise the guy is holding a machine gun. Suddenly you take control of the sniper cam and shoot him in the leg, at the same time commanding your team to bust the door open. Suspect down and ready for evac.
The second moment was in an office block. The CEO wasn’t too happy about the police breaking in and ordering him to put his hands up. He wouldn’t crouch down or surrender, kept folding his arms and saying “I’ve got influential contacts in the force, I’d like to see you try and arrest me.” I shot his laptop with a semi-automatic SMG. He still wouldn’t get down. I shouted until I was hoarse and he was being quite obnoxious.
Changed to my secondary weapon and tasered him. Joy.
Overall game rating: A solid 8/10. Some parts of the AI could be improved but BOY this game was good fun.
