May 24

I’m Still Alive

I figured I should try and not let a month pass between updates this time out.

My current main activity is preparing for the Connecticon Rock Band tournament. This being my first year running it, I’m trying to do a really good job of getting prizes and things for it, to the slight irritation of my “boss”, so to speak (In short: He loves the initiative I’m showing, but for the sake of reimbursing me, wishes I hadn’t gone and bought stuff right away. Truthfully, this was stuff I was buying even if I had to eat part or of all the cost of it. I’d rather spend a bit more money and have this be memorable.). But it’ll be worth it in the end, or at least I think it will be.

The other thing I’ve been up to lately is writing short stories. I’m in the process of revising several of them, and I’ll share the ideas behind them once I revise a couple more of them. Eventually, what I want to do is self-publish a collection of short stories, and possibly some novels as well. knowing my proclivity for not finishing projects, it’s admittedly unlikely this will get anywhere, but we’ll see.

My Magician speedrun continues to move along. I think I’m one more improvement away from submitting to SDA, which is now under new management. Frankly, I’m amazed Mike lasted as long as he did; as he mentions in the first post, he outlasted two people, one (Both?) of whom assumed site duties after he did. Still, he was the one who got the site where it is today, and he’s left it in good hands. Also, he’ll still be planning the marathons for the site, which is definitely a good thing.

Next time: More Substance?

May 19

Emptyeye’s Excellent Portal Excursion, Part 4/Post-Mortem

While I was setting up to try my pretty-sure-it-was-not-at-all-what-the-developers-intended solution to my conundrum from last entry, I decided to head back into the actual chamber that was giving me an issue and see if maybe there was something I had been missing.

Naturally, there was, and the solution presented itself when I took a second look. Then I was disheartened to find another execution-based puzzle awaiting me right after it. I got through it, though, and actually managed to skip one of the platforms along the way. My solution involved getting up to the platform, then portaling back to the beginning of the chamber using that one portal, and basically doing this, one platform at a time, until my momentum allowed me to see and shoot at the “ramp” type platform to get me through.

Now at this point, please consider that I knew the storyline of the game going in, and I knew I would get to wreck GlaDOS at some point. Having this knowledge in advance, combined with just wanting to get the job done already, probably influenced my opinion on the end of the game.

Because the last test chamber (And here I’m referring to everything up to and including the destruction of GlaDOS) was, to me, not as fun as the rest of the game, but more on that in a bit. I kept playing it, and I ran into “LOADING….” three times. Nothing in it really stumped me for more than a minute or two…nothing in it came close to stumping me like chamber 18 did (The problem with the structure of the game is, again, that shock where you think the end isn’t really the end. While the last chamber was certainly creepy as you crawled around behind-the-scenes, the fact remains that chamber 18 was really the “final exam” chamber, and while the behind-the-scenes stuff introduced some action elements, there wasn’t anything new puzzle-wise. Once the creepiness wore off, I very much felt like “Okay do I get to wreck GlaDOS yet? How about now? How about now?”), which kept me from getting frustrated and all, but Portal is, to me, a puzzle game at its core. Having seen everything it could throw at me from that perspective, I kept waiting for the point where I got to wreck GlaDOS, and it kept not coming until I finally gave up and went to bed, three hours after I had started playing for the day (Part of this was spent in Chamber 18, yes).

Naturally, I picked the game up the next night to discover that I would have, in fact, found GlaDOS had I continued down the hallway I was in when I stopped. The endgame was here! I’ll admit that the final “battle” took me a couple tries, although I figured out what I had to do pretty quickly (One time I stupidly got missiled; another time, I stupidly stepped forward a bit too far and incinerated myself). I’ll also admit that I was nervous as I dropped the Anger Sphere into the incinerator, because I knew I didn’t have enough time to drop another piece in there. Luckily, that was the end of the game.

So what do I think? My opinion is honestly the exact opposite of pretty much everyone else who played the game. The game started out absolutely brilliant, and stayed that way until the post-test chambers, where it started to wear out its welcome with me (Who knows if I’d feel like this had I not stopped right before GlaDOS). Now, part of this was probably being semi-spoiled about what happens at the end, combined with everyone from the Skype chat I mentioned earlier to Ben “Yahtzee” Crenshaw Croshaw saying “The game is perfect, its only flaw is that it’s too short!”. But the other part is that the game set certain expectations for how long each level was going to be throughout it. They gradually ramp up the length, then in the “post” chamber section yank the knob off. I encountered three “LOADING…” screens just in the post-chamber part, after encountering them only in the elevator sections before that. So yes, that’s my sacrilegious opinion: Portal is not too short; if anything, its endgame is too long. And yes, the memes are irritating and the weakest part of the game. I went over the Companion Cube in a previous entry, but “The cake is a lie” had no impact on me whatsoever as well. For one, it may have been creepier had it been written in blood like the “HELP” in Chamber 16. For another, the cake was obviously a lie from the time GlaDOS flat out stated, “You will be baked, and then there will be cake.” You escape the baking, hence, no cake for you. You don’t need the message after that telling you such. I could go into various logical things here too, but I get the feeling the rebuttal is “GlaDOS really wanted you to get that far and destroy her”, which the lyrics of “Still Alive” seem to support.

Still, it’s a fun game, worth playing if you haven’t had the gameplay spoiled for you already. The gameplay is really really good, even brilliant. I can also appreciate the technical achievement of the gameplay, both in the “place portals that teleport you from one to the other” concept, as well as being able to see what’s on the other side of the portals. That goes double for when you can see both Portals and you get this infinity effect from looking at yourself through the portals.

Is it a great game? Yes. Do I understand why it’s as popular as it is? Honestly, not really. Yeah, its great, and quirky and different, but those things are usually the kiss of sales death for a game–the game I’m working on speedrunning right now, Magician, was the last game Taxan ever published, presumably due to poor sales (Although Eurocom, its developer, is still around). And yeah, it had a big company behind it, but even that isn’t enough sometimes–Nightshade had no less than Ultra Games, a subsidiary of Konami behind it, and had you ever heard of it before now?

In talking to some of the other people on Skype, the answer we arrived at was “It piggybacked off of the popularity of two established franchises.” See, Portal debuted in The Orange Box, which also heralded the debut of two highly-anticipated sequels: Half-Life 2 Episode 2, and Team Fortress 2. Portal is a fun game and all, but without that initial “Oh yeah here’s this other game in this big collection you may like it” push it got from that, it’s almost a guarantee that I’m not sitting here writing about it, my resistance to it, or my being flat-out wrong about how it is in relation to its reputation.

May 19

Emptyeye’s Excellent Portal Excursion, Part 3

For something with such famous status, it’s very interesting that Portal’s Weighted Companion Cube doesn’t even show up until pretty late in the game in terms of test chamber numbers (17 of 19), and only stays around for that one test chamber. To hear all the hype around people attaching themselves to this inanimate object and feeling guilty over having to incinerate it (Was it the hearts? I don’t know, more on that later), I figured it would play a much bigger role in the game. This was, honestly, probably the first time I felt that something in the game didn’t live up to its hype/word of mouth.

Of course, maybe I was trying too hard. Generally, I’ve done my best to not let my prejudices for the game’s memes influence what I thought about the experience of actually playing the game, but I’m not sure I could’ve helped it in this case. After solving the three main puzzles in the test chamber, I had an experience that Valve Software probably didn’t expect: Probably succumbing to Hype Backlash, I actually tried to incinerate the Companion Cube too quickly, ignoring the button on the floor (Which opened the door that would, in turn, open the incinerator) and choosing to place the cube directly on the incinerator, then wondering why it didn’t open. GlaDOS’s subsequently informing me that I had incinerated the cube quickly than anyone on record was supposed to make me feel like a heartless bastard, I guess. Instead, I felt mocked, because ironically, I probably would have done it quicker than anyone who ever played through the game for the first time if I were a little less eager to accomplish the task.

The next test chamber is the first point where I was well and truly stumped. I tried to do what I thought the game wanted me to do for a good half an hour or so, and then thought back to the conversation I had when I first played the game:

“You should have tried putting all the objects in the room on the switch.”

And I realized that there were a bunch of tiny objects at the start of the level. If this actually worked, then I would give up and admit that the game was every bit as brilliant as the meme-reciters claimed it was.

May 19

Emptyeye’s Excellent Portal Excursion, Part 2

After writing the last entry, I played the game for another hour-plus and made some more progress. As of the end of this entry, I just passed the chamber that’s a testing ground for androids that uses live ammunition (In other words, the first part where the game actually tries to kill you). At some point during this play (My notes are not the most detailed), the atmosphere of the game hit me again, going through a hallway that could best be described as “thermal”, with a reddish tint to it. Also, at some point, GlaDOS informed me that I would be missed. How nice of her.
I have to admit that this was the section of the game where my love affair with it slipped a bit. It wasn’t because I’m a moron and couldn’t figure out one of the puzzles (Although in hindsight, I think I was making it harder than it had to be), though, that would’ve been fine. Rather, I knew what the game wanted–heck, it gave me a little illustration to show the concept–and just couldn’t execute it. I eventually got it, via turning up vertical sensitivity on the controls, but it was frustrating to know that it wasn’t my inability to figure out the puzzle but my inability to execute its solution that was preventing me from moving on. Similarly, faced with basically the same puzzle just a little later on, I herp-a-derped for a bit before I realized I could make things a lot easier by simply aiming one of the portals higher up on the wall.
The android course. I presume that, if you haven’t had the story already spoiled for you, this is where you’re really meant to realize that not everything is to be taken at face value, between the “HELP” written in blood on the floor and the glimpse “behind the scenes” at Aperture Science. In terms of the gameplay, though, it was a source of a couple more “I’m a moron” moments, mainly “Oh, duh, I can just portal my way past that laser”. Still, it was actually pretty gratifying to realize the solutions to the area, especially since I used marginally less obvious objects than the provided cubes to take out the turrets (Namely, other turrets, which gave me an achievement no less). Trying to arrive at that solution was kind of amusing, though–first, I tried to block the lasers by using objects to give me cover. When that didn’t work, I grabbed one of the turrets, hoping it would “detect” the others and shoot them before they shot me (The layout of the room should have told me that this wouldn’t have worked. If that didn’t, the fact that the turrets don’t detect other turrets definitely did). Finally, kind of by accident, I arrived at the fact that the turrets could be knocked down, and took note of the bloody “X”s above some of them to realize that I had to drop stuff on them to disable them.

So I’m still moving along, and it’s still really fun. We’ll see if that lasts.

May 19

Emptyeye’s Excellent Portal Excursion, Part 1

So The Orange Box arrived yesterday, and this meant I had to, for better or worse, actually play Portal. I played it for about 45 minutes, and got up to the point where you grab the second portal gun. And despite certain people’s asserting that I “haven’t even played the good part of the game” (Because, knowing how adverse I am to the hype/memes for the game, the obvious play to get me to continue was to hype it up even more), nor have I really had to think yet (Thus confirming my fear that I’ll eventually just get totally stuck and not be able to get any further and everyone will think I’m a moron for it), I’ve actually had a lot of fun with it, more than I expected to.
The first thing I noticed is that the atmosphere, whether Valve Software meant it to be or not, is actually pretty creepy right off the bat, although this may be an artifact of having the storyline spoiled for me before I played. Also, the game defeated my first attempt to do things in a way different than what it intended, when I tried to put a clipboard on a switch instead of the giant cube it intended me to. I was later told by Mr. “You Haven’t Played the Good Part” that my concept would have worked if I had taken it to its logical conclusion of “get ALL the objects in the room onto the switch, not just the clipboard”, but my inability to see said logical conclusion at all…well, doesn’t give me high hopes for my puzzle-solving abilities through the rest of the game.
The padded elevators that take you from room to room are kind of bizarre–and also sort of ironic in the sense that I’m working on a story about two characters unwillingly trapped in a stereotypical padded room. The decor on the elevator looked very much like that.
The game really does introduce portaling concepts in baby steps, one at a time. In the third test chamber, I had my first “herp-a-derp” moment before realizing “Oh, duh, the game wants me to grab the gun.” I had a couple other moments like that in other chambers, such as “Oh, duh, you can shoot into the ceiling,” “Oh, duh, you can shoot a blue portal and then go back into the orange portal I just came out of,” and “Oh, duh, I can open that door and then shoot a portal there.” I expect more such moments as I get into the later half of the game.
One thing I quickly found amusing was GlaDOS’s repeatedly scolding me for destroying test equipment. Sorry, but shooting portals at security cameras is just too much fun. I also liked when she called one of the tests “impossible”. Feeling a sense of “screw you game” (Again, possibly driven by the fact that I already know not all is as it seems), I felt accomplished when I figured that puzzle out, even though in hindsight it wasn’t all that difficult.
Something else I found amusing are the (admittedly brief) load times as you near the top of certain elevators, which may or may not be there on the PC version. I more than once had a “Portal 2006!” joke in my head as I rode these elevators.
Just to return to the atmosphere for a minute, besides the padded elevators I mentioned earlier, there’s at least one “institutional hallway” in going from test chamber to test chamber which I found creepy. The Borderlands-esque music didn’t hurt, either.
So, in all, it’s a lot better than I expected. Indeed, I’m inclined to say at this point that it really is as great as everyone says.

May 09

Emptyeye’s Excellent Portal Excursion

In 2007, Valve Software released The Orange Box, featuring five game–Half Life 2, HL2 Episode 1 and 2, Team Fortress 2, and the surprise hit of the package, Portal. You probably know Portal, even if you hadn’t played it. Ever hear “The cake is a lie”? or “Still Alive” by Jonathan Coulton? Then you know Portal.

Here’s the thing. Over the last year or so, Portal went from something I had simply never played to something I actively went out of my way to avoid playing thanks to its memetic status. Essentially, I refused to believe that underneath a bunch of idiots parroting the game’s entire script was actually a really fun game, despite watching it at several SDA marathons.

Well, I decided I had to change that–to at least try and put away my preconceptions on the game and experience it as best I could. So I made a certain Skype chat I visit a deal–if someone were to send me a copy of Portal for the XBox 360 (Long story short, Steam is a big stupidhead that insists I don’t know what city I was born in), I would play it. And one of the people in the chat took me up on it.

So I’m going to play it. And thinking about it, I realized that I’m basically the ultimate, well, test subject (If you’ve played the game, you’ll understand why this is amusing) for “Is Portal a good game?”. The reason is that I had the story, the memes, the ending song, etc. all spoiled for me. But the actual gameplay and puzzles…those I’m unfamiliar with. So it’ll be interesting to see if the game holds up when you strip all the stuff that made it popular away (And yes, it was pretty much popular only because of “The cake is a lie” and “Still Alive”. The success of You Have to Burn the Rope, which is basically just a catchy ending song, proves it).

I’ll likely be writing about the experience here. Stay tuned for that.

-EE

Apr 30

I Am Terrible at Updating This Site

Indeed.

Japan Relief Done Quick is done. From an “SDA-as-a-Whole” perspective, it went incredibly–putting the marathon together in just two weeks, over $25000 were raised for Doctors Without Borders, and people seemed to like both the Commentator’s Cheat Sheet and the PC Game Collection I donated towards it. From a personal perspective, please do me a favor and pretend it never happened.

I’ve been making some changes in my life lately. Immediately after JRDQ, I went offline for a week, with the exception of any website I needed to do work at my day job. To the surprise of a bunch of people, including my wife, I actually made it the entire week. And I think I’m better off for it; for one, I’m actually capable of doing stuff like “washing dishes” or “playing some of the many games I haven’t beaten yet”, and not being addicted to Skype even during the weekdays. For another, I’m more productive at work, or when I’m not productive at work, I’m at least unproductive in a way that won’t also get my boss into trouble.

I’ve also come to the conclusion that I’m basically destined to flit from project to project and hobby to hobby and never really finish anything. And at last, I’m fine with that. My current time-killer–ask me in two weeks, it’ll probably be something different–is writing short stories of all kinds. This started out because I had an idea for a world/novel in my head, that was nothing more than a bunch of unconnected stories with no real force tying them together. Eventually, I just said “Screw it”, and wrote them as stand-alone stories. I’ve basically finished one, and am working on a bunch more, some tying into that original concept, others being completely standalone.

Who knows, maybe something good will come of this “writing” thing.

-EE

Mar 26

Marathon Organization Done Quick

With the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan, combined with the fact that without Japan, there would probably be no video game industry as we know it today, the fine people at Speed Demos Archive saw fit to quickly organize a charity marathon for Japan. This one is both shorter and a lot more casual than the last marathon–for one, we won’t even all be in the same location this time, and for another, if people want to use emulators (No slowdown or re-recording though), that’s actually allowed this time around.

This is actually good news for me, since it means I can stream Magician for it (The game’s almost total lack of sales, combined with it being a game more suited to playing than watching, mean it’s not really a good choice for the once-yearly “big” marathon SDA does)…a fairly representative speedrun that I did while trying to get an SDA-worthy submission (Which is still ongoing) is available here, albeit in a slightly squished form. Oh, also, I can see in the Caverns much better than you’ll be able to.

The bigger news here, though, is that I’ll be donating basically my entire collection of PC games to the cause in an effort to spur donations. My “lair” in my apartment is a rather large mess as it is, and i don’t play any of these games anymore, so I figure everyone wins if I just donate the entire lot to this cause.

I’ll be putting up another post later tonight that details everything I’m giving away. Suffice to say that the minimum donation to have the potential to win the lot is less than the price of just one of the games in the collection, let alone the entire thing.

Mar 02

Creative Projects, GO!

Amazingly, I’ve been slowly working on some of the projects I mentioned a few entries ago.

The card game is coming along. I have the “mechanics” of about 30 of the cards down, and I’d like to get another 30 or so made before I start doing some testing of it balance and mechanics-wise. Then…I’m not quite sure what I’ll do with it after that.

My speedrun of Magician met with its first real success a few days ago, with a run clocking in at 17 minutes and 31 seconds recorded to DVD. The main advantage to it, truth be told, was the ability to figure out precisely what I’ll have to do to improve it–being able to pause and playback was a big help in figuring out exactly how much Mana I need in certain spots to execute some of the quickest strategies.

I hope this productive spurt continues.

-EE

Feb 26

Raskulls- Fun Game

One of the games I saw on UltraJMan’s stream was an XBox 360 game called Raskulls. Having received a bunch of Microsoft Points for Christmas, this seemed like a reasonable purchase for 800 Points, or $10.

Raskulls plays most similarly to Mr. Driller (Although Silver noted a resemblance to Dig Dug; indeed, Mr. Driller was conceived as Dig Dug 3), in that you’re generally attempting to zap colored block out of your way to make larger formations of colored blocks to zap away to make progress. Raskulls doesn’t just move down, though–you can move in all four cardinal directions, and you even have a small jump. There are also some power ups that you can use to cut through massive swaths of block, hit blocks in a very precise line, etc.

The main single-player mode of Raskulls is the Mega Quest mode, where you try to earn medallions to progress. Although at its core, the game is most similar to Mr. Driller, things take a very different turn here. Some of your tasks include defusing bombs, and racing other Raskulls to the end of a course. Sometimes there are additional tasks involved–getting to the end of a course without getting crushed, for instance, or within a time limit. There’s a surprising variety of stuff to do within the “smash colored blocks” template.

There’s also a Grand Prix mode, which is just a series of races to the end. It’s a refreshing change, though, and you can pick from one of a multitude of characters which you unlock in the Mega Quest. You can also play this mode multiplayer, either locally or on XBox Live.

In all, it’s a worthy $10 purchase, even though the game isn’t particularly long–I had all the medallions in the Mega Quest after a week or so. The controls are responsive, the graphics and sound work well enough for the type of game it is, and “(Pirats) Till We Die” is the second-greatest ending credits song in history (Screw “Still Alive”, “I Am the Wind” is obviously number one for all time).