Singularity came out around a year ago but I didn’t get around to picking it up until the Steam sale earlier this summer. In the game you play Special Forces operative Captain Nathanial Renko. You and your partner are sent to the island of Kotorga-12, located off the coast of Russia, to investigate the source of an electromagnetic pulse which disabled an American spy satellite. A second pulse disables the helicopter in which you are riding and you must find your way through the island and uncover the mysteries there in order to escape. For the most part the game is a standard FPS. You run through a more-or-less linear collection of corridors and rooms while fighting enemies and the occasional boss. The game attempts to set itself apart through its story and through a series of puzzles involving something called a “Temporal Manipulation Device” or TMD. The story is interesting. After making your way to shore you soon find that during the Cold War the Soviet Union discovered a substance known as “Element 99” on Katorga-12 and a research installation was built there to uncover its properties. You do this by reading notes and listening to voice logs (left on large reel-to-reel tape recorders) as you make your way through the base. This is probably the most atmospheric part of the game, as you make your way though ruined labs and classrooms. You learn that even though Katorga-12 was presented as a workers paradise, in reality there was a
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Review – Singularity
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Remembering the Bomb
There was a time when I knew how the world would end. I grew up in a time when our elementary school would hold nuclear attack drills with the same regularity as they did fire or tornado drills. Regular PSAs on television and radio would remind us to “Duck and Cover!” in the event of a nuclear strike. In college we were dutifully shown the location of our dorm’s fallout shelter and told how to get to it when the seemingly inevitable occurred. In the 1960s and ’70s we knew with a certainty that is hard to describe or even understand now that the world was going to end, and that it would end in fire. I was thinking about this because I’ve been playing through the various DLC for Fallout: New Vegas. The Fallout series of course is set in the aftermath of a global thermonuclear exchange between the US and China. But in the game the war was long ago; 200 years ago in the case of New Vegas. Much of the world is a wasteland but civilization is slowly recovering. (More slowly than I think it should be, but that’s a quibble for a different post.) In New Vegas life in the Mojave Wasteland is tough, but life is going on. In fact, it seems to be a great, exciting place for adventure. The horror that brought this world into existence is almost an afterthought. Almost. Then I started playing Honest Hearts. First nuke hit SLC inside
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Who’s the Boss?
OK, so last time I was talking about Hydrophobia Prophecy and how much it annoyed me when it suddenly broke my suspension of disbelief by suddenly throwing in elements of what was essentially “magic” into what had been a science fiction thriller. Well, I’m not through beating the dead horse of Hydrophobia yet. Because shortly after gaining magical powers from nanotechnology, our intrepid heroine Kate comes face-to-face with another one of my pet peeves in game design; a boss battle. All along Kate has been facing two things. Environmental hazards (in the form of the ship she is own being on fire and sinking) and the agents of the Malthusians attacking her. These hazards and opponents have been slowly increasing in difficulty as Kate’s resources (and the player’s skill) increase. Then suddenly Kate has magical abilities and, two rooms later, is suddenly locked in a battle with a rocket-firing turret that she has to short out with her water-based abilities then shoot in one of its flashing weak points. There is no room for error; hit the turret and weak point exactly right or die. As I have said many times I play games primarily for the story, I want to experience the story or the world as an active participant, not as a passive observer. Boss fights take me completely out of the story. They are sudden reminders that I am playing a game. At one point boss battles made sense. In the arcade days you needed a way
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Broken Suspenders
Over the weekend I was playing Hydrophobia Prophecy, one of the games I picked up during Steam’s big sale last month. Hydrophobia takes place on The Queen of the World, a city-sized ship built by a consortium of businesses to research solutions to the world’s environmental and population issues. The ship is then attacked by a group calling itself the Malthusians, who think that the best way to solve the world’s problems is for most of humanity to kill itself. Their goal is to destroy the ship and to capture the result of the ship’s research; a nanotech substance that can turn polluted water into pure water. This substance is dangerous to humans in that if they are exposed to it then it will attempt to turn the water in their bodies to pure water as well; a fatal result when the “water” being purified is their blood. The player takes the role of Kate Wilson, an engineer on the ship who must fight the Malthusians and prevent the release of the nanotech. Despite it having relatively negative reviews I enjoyed the game for a while. The environments and setup seemed fairly realistic and Kate was an interesting departure from the normal game protagonist, being a reluctant hero instead of the usual special forces type. (Though I did get tired of hearing her shriek in fright every thirty seconds… deal with it Kate.) It was also interesting to see a game with an anti-twist; the corporation trying to save the
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Review – Amnesia: The Dark Descent
The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. — H.P. Lovecraft – Supernatural Horror in Literature Amnesia: The Dark Descent is a survival horror/adventure game from Frictional Games. However, unlike most “survival horror” you do not spend time fighting the creatures you encounter. In fact, you are not even capable of fighting them. All you can do is run and this, combined with the unsettling aspects of the world you find yourself in, creates a horror game that is truly about horror as opposed to being just another shooter with a handful of disturbing moments. Starting the Descent I commit these words to paper as I fear that neither I nor my sanity will survive this night, yet I am more afraid that my story will perish with me. Know that I have, for purely selfish reasons, committed many crimes against both man and nature. But also know that I am now attempting to set right a chain of circumstances started by myself through my own fear and ignorance. May the blind gods have mercy on me. In Amnesia you take on the role of Daniel, a man suffering from the amnesia of the title. While the concept of the amnesiac protagonist has been (over)used time and time again, Amnesia manages to introduce a new twist by revealing quite early on that you induced the amnesia in yourself deliberately. You discover this quite early on in
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Review – Borderlands
Pandora. I have used the last of my savings to travel to this world. There are no regular transports here and the crew of the tramp freighter that dropped me off seem surprised when I told them I would be staying. And looking around I can see why; the starport is nothing more than a cleared area in what looks to be a junkyard, the local wildlife has already attacked me twice and the place smells like a landfill. But, if the rumors are true, it is also the location of a vault of lost, Eridian technology. If I can find the Vault, I can sell it’s location and contents for enough credits to let me travel to the core worlds and live the rest of my life in luxury. I just have to find it first. I have used the last of my credit reserves to take a bus to a town in wastelands near where the Vault is said to be located. From there I can start my search. Borderlands came out around a year ago but I ignored it at the time because I was somehow under the impression that it was a multi-player only game. I have since learned that while it does have multi-player support it is primarily a single-player game and I picked it up earlier this year during a Steam sale. And I am glad I did because I discovered that it is actually quite a fun shooter. Welcome to Pandora I have
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Review – Minecraft
I have found myself on the shores of a strange land. I do not remember how I came to be here or know where I am. There are no signs of other people or habitation as far as I can see. I will explore, and see if I can find some indication as to where I am. Minecraft is an open sandbox style game being produced by Mojang Specifications. Players are dropped in an uninhabited world where they can explore to find resources they need to build tools and shelter to protect them from the hostile enemies that come out at night. That’s pretty much it. But despite what sounds like a very basic premise, the game offers a surprising amount of depth, detail and fun. I have managed to fashion a few simple tools for myself from the trees growing in this land and have used them to excavate a small cave for myself in the side of a rock wall. I had to do this because I have discovered that I am not alone in this strange place. Strange creatures walk the land at night and they have proven their hostility towards me. For now I crouch in this dark hole, but when the morning sun rises I will began my search for more resources with which to build weapons and armor for myself. To do this I will have to establish a safe base of operations and start mining for the materials I will need. When you
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Review – F.E.A.R. (First Encounter Assault Recon)
I was making my way slowly though the basement of the building, trying to find a way up to the main floor, when I found the first bodies. I’ve been in enough combat that bodies shouldn’t bother me anymore, but these did. Not because they were bodies, but because it looked like they had been partially eaten. And not by rats like the one I had shot earlier. These bites looked human. F.E.A.R. came out several years ago when I had an older machine that couldn’t handle it. Later I got a machine that could and looked for the game but by that point it was gone off the shelves. As a fan of survival horror games I was still interested in playing it and so was pleasantly surprised last month when Steam suddenly put the original F.E.A.R. and its expansions on sale. So I finally got the chance to play it. Even though the game has been out for five years now I still wanted to give my Paleogamer impressions of it. I finally got up to the main floor. The doors have been locked from the inside, so either things happened too fast for anyone here to escape or for some reason they didn’t want to. I’m going to… What was that? Strange… I could have sworn I just saw a child run down the corridor. Why would a child be here in the midst of this carnage? If she is here, I need to find her and
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RPG – RP = ?
I love RPGs. I love the opportunity to become someone else in a game; becoming a valiant knight, a stealthy spy, a hard-bitten mercenary or a roguish star pilot for a brief time instead of a middle-aged office worker. So when BioWare, probably the premiere RPG gaming company out there, releases not one but two RPGs within a few months of each other, it should be a RPG gaming feast. And with Dragon Age: Origins this was fulfilled. My newly created Grey Warden was soon making his way across Ferelden. Fighting Darkspawn, picking locks, making traps and mixing poisons to aid in his quest, he was eventually able with the aid of his companions to defeat the Arch-Demon and save the world. Just in time too because no sooner had I finished then Mass Effect 2 was released. I had played and enjoyed the original Mass Effect so I quickly loaded it up, imported my character from Mass Effect 1 and launched into space to once again save the galaxy. And just as quickly realized that, even though I was enjoying the game, it wasn’t an RPG. As I said a few paragraphs back, the attraction of playing an RPG is playing a character that isn’t me. Hand me a sword and I’d probably cut my own leg off by accident before I could hit an actual Darkspawn with it. But this isn’t a problem for Dirk Rapier, human rogue and Grey Warden. I add points to his combat skills,
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The Illusion of Choice
In my last few posts I have been talking about stories in games and how the best games have stories that follow the classic, epic pattern of the Hero’s Journey. The downside to this is that, despite being the “hero” of the story, as players we aren’t really telling our stories. Instead, we are simply actors in someone else’s story; improvisational actors in an outline created by someone else. Several people have given me examples of games that do allow you to affect the story. I agree that there has been some progress made in that direction, but in reality the effect of your actions is still fairly minimal. The story remains the same and your effect on that story is only an illusion. Many games have no choices at all, the Half-Life series for example. The most control you have over the story in Half-Life is choosing what weapon to use in a given encounter. There aren’t even any side branches or side quests to become involved in. You either proceed along a fixed route while killing enemies as you meet them or you simply stand around until you get bored. Just an actor following the script. Other games give you some choices but in the end they become meaningless. Most RPGs for example let you take on various quests in any order and allow you to choose which companions accompany you on most of them. (Though even there you sometimes are forced to take certain companions on certain
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