How to do Emergent Gameplay

Lets take an excursion from current issues in games and focus on something a little more positive.

After all, it’s not all so bad and here today I’m going to explore one of the unsung heroes of game design.

Emergent Gameplay.

It’s hard to say when it originally started, or with what game it was pioneered but it’s fairly safe to say, that as long as games have existed, so has emergent gameplay and gamers who create gameplay thanks to the broad definition of the term.

Starting from the top, emergent gameplay is something that happens when assets of a game allow for situations or circumstances not necessarily planned by the developer of the game. This can be the random AI in something like Grand Theft Auto to the unexpected ability to be able to jump higher by rocket jumping in Quake.

Because Arcades.

Emergent gameplay can be said to have started with the arcade’s Golden era back in the late 70′s and early 80′s. The limited nature of the games themselves left much to the imagination and soon people were creating their own ways of extracting more fun out of the media, firstly by beating the game faster, then by challenging friends. This is how the competitive aspect of gaming first came around as people would share their experiences and play against one another for scores.

As ever, I do love a definitive list and emergent gameplay design can be summed up in four categories.

Developer-intended.

Dynamic Intelligence.

Through randomised game design, like maps and AI for NPCs and enemies, the developer creates a world in which every experience is slightly different from gamer to gamer. A good example of this is Grand Theft Auto and the open-world, Dungeon Crawlers like Wizardry and stealth games like Thief.

Creative Freedom.

The devs give you the blocks and you build. The most famous of these is Minecraft, but also games like Animal Crossing and Sims are examples of games where all of the content is user driven and requires a large imagination to enjoy and get the full capacity from.

Player Initiated.

Accidents and Glitches.

Sometimes accidents happen and a glitch is left in a game, exploiting glitches is one of the best kinds of emergent gameplay and has become increasingly popular with the internet.

The level editor glitch in Super Smash Brothers Brawl allows you to create different kinds of levels than those featured ordinarily in the game.

External input.

Some games have a following that encourages certain types of play. Super Metroid became a firm favourite for people creating their own enjoyment. By using “Sequence-breaking” you can Bomb Jump and collect items earlier than usual and so finishing the game in extreme speed, thus prompting a community of Speedrunners.

Recently I heard of another kind of Fan gameplay in Pokémon, called the Nuzlocke challenge. This is where a player can only capture one pokémon from each route and cannot allow a single pokémon to die or else suffer being “released from the box”.

Where we’re going we don’t need roads!

Emergent gameplay has become increasingly popular due to success of games like Minecraft, but it is also because Emergent gameplay is more prevalent in western games than eastern, which previously dominated the market.

This is probably due to western game developers focusing on making more customisable and open games that allow users to immerse themselves in their own characters and their own version of the game world, where as eastern developers cater to demographics and aim to please a group of people that enjoy the same kind of experience allowing for a more linear and controlled game with added story focus.

You can see the same kind of marketing and development with western and eastern comics and the

way that they are categorised. Western comics are grouped into ones like; superhero, fantasy, horror etc, each is a description of the content. Whereas in Eastern comics, particularly manga, they are grouped into; Shonen, Seinen, Shoujo, Josei, generally Japanese will mention the genre’s target audience before going into content genres.

Thanks to the longevity that many games enjoy due to emergent gameplay, (as players are able to entertain themselves using the freedom it allows), more developers are beginning to incorporate aspects of it in their games and sometimes it can be damaging.

This is what I like to call:

Artificial Gameplay

Game elements that are simply just padding to what is otherwise a fantastic game. Sometimes learning “how to do” something is simply about learning “what not to do”.

Bereavement and Atrophy.

The most obvious of bad padding is the achievement systems which inhabit Xbox Live and later PSN and Steam. Instead of simply allowing the users to roam freely with the game and create their own “External input” we’re getting a bit of “Internal input”, IE: Bollocks.

Play in a co-op game with an employee of this terrible game company, Kill 25 enemies with this weapon you never use, nor ever will after this or my favourite, Find 25 of these useless items.

Instead of this fluff why not add in a decent quest?

Free to pay.

Sometimes what would have been considered a nice little addition to the game is now sold back to us as content. The best example here is Tales of Graces, a series that once had fantastic side missions to earn costumes for your characters and now it’s been culled for a purchase based system.

There is a gun in Malik’s holster, so why is he imitating a gun with his hand?

These minor negatives however will soon begin to phase out as publishers realise that people aren’t too interested in them and will always opt for more compelling features over superficial and fleeting whims.

The kind of interaction that Emergent gameplay allows is how the foundations of the gaming culture began and therefore is important to the development of the industry.

Games are the only medium where “emergence” can happen in such a pronounced way. Interactivity blended with creativity.

The next time you play a game, think about how you proceed to deal with a problem.
How many ways are there to solve this puzzle?
How much freedom is this game allowing you, and more importantly do you enjoy it?

How to do Emergent Gameplay

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Written in 1890 and was Oscar Wilde’s only novel, his other works all comprising of plays and poetry.

The novel tells of a young up and coming man in society, the eponymous Dorian Gray, whose beauty mollifies all around him. He is being painted by long-time friend Basil, whose talent is able to capture well Dorian’s good looks.

A new wave friend of Basil’s called Lord Henry, a man of fairly high standing with questionable morals, soon meets Dorian much to Basil’s dismay, who believes that Lord Henry will corrupt him.

Obviously corrupt him he does as Lord Henry begins preaching his ideals to Dorian, who in a moment of anger and despair, wishes that his painting would incur age and ugliness, leaving his own features unmarred.

The story is very Faustian, Gray essentially makes a pact with the devil by dooming his painting to age whilst reaping the benefits of youth himself.

Dorian Gray becomes more and more debauched, leading to his eventual demise.

The novel was a hot topic at the time with many readers and critics angered by the dubious morals and curious relationship between some of the characters. It was edited upon publication in a magazine and was also subsequently edited by Wilde himself after the criticisms after initial printings.

There are three main characters in the book, all supposedly based on different versions of the author, however I feel that there appears to be allusions to the story of Adam & Eve here.

Dorian Gray is young and handsome, at the beginning of the novel he is sweet, young and unassuming, he represents humanity in this allegory. His naivete leads him to ignore Basil’s advice regarding Lord Henry and he begins to converse with him. The unexpected darkness which he is exposed to, is too much for him to bear and he soon goes into a fit of depression. Upon acceptance of the new information, Dorian sees the only real answer as going along with all that Lord Henry says.

Basil is the good conscience of the story and closely resembles aspects of God in Paradise Lost. Through his attempts to hide the forbidden fruit of knowledge and pleasure from Dorian, left him vulnerable to temptation. He loves Dorian in a clearly homosexual way, but also as a teacher. He is upset when he sees Dorian change.

Why is Dorian Gray Roy Batty from Blade Runner?

Lord Henry, the satan and the serpent. He is a unapologetic hedonist whose decadent views on pleasure and the senses inflicts a painful realisation on Dorian when he realises he will grow old and presumably in Lord Henry’s realm of existence, mean little to people. He states that beauty is the most important thing for people and art and that Dorian must enjoy himself all he can so as not to live in regret.

The path with Dorian begins to tread eventually leads him falling into further mishap than Lord Henry, without the perception and the throwaway temperament of the latter, Dorian becomes a slave to his desires and guilt. He begins to enjoy the suffering of the painting, knowing it is not happening to himself. As the book progresses he becomes more and more laudable, echoing some of Paradise Lost’s focus on a antagonist for a main character.

Dorian starts to live a life of duality, where one side of him is charming and proper while the other side hurts people and drives them to self-hatred, much like with what Lord Henry did to him, but much worse as the people he affects do not have the same cold potential he did and they often appear to end up taking their own lives. We do not find out exactly what it is that Dorian does to these people, but his corruption spreads to all he specifically chooses.

Lord Henry’s fleeting attitudes become more apparent in their straying from Dorian’s own dedicated world view as Henry appears to change his opinion whenever it suits him.

In the end, many frights are the only thing that cause Dorian to decide he wishes to change, yet so unhonest is he to himself he soon discovers that he isn’t capable any longer as all actions have become self-serving.

The writing is beautifully pithy, you wouldn’t expect anything less from a talented writer of prose.

What makes the book important however is its enduring commitment to satirising the viewpoint of late Victorian times and also how it can preach certain elements of Hedonistic living while reproaching others. It’s almost as if by hitting every wrong target, we get an exact idea of the many facets of Wilde in this book as each is open and easy to read, much like Gray’s painting.

Wilde looking his usual wistful and somewhat bored self.

What surprised me however, is that firstly how strong the elements of homo-eroticism are, even though they are toned down. Despite their presumed ignorance it didn’t escape readers of the time from realising, as rumours of Wilde’s sexuality were dated before his poorly executed prosecution of Queensberry.

Also I was under the impression that if Gray were to see his own portrait, all of its magical power would cease and he would grow old, but in fact it’s only when he physically harms the picture that this happens. It’s not just age that affects the painting, every lurid act and evil intention is marked upon the oiled face, as stated that this also happens in real life, but I’m not sure what people Wilde knew, but pretty people can indeed be wankers too.

The novel feels evocatively eery and it’s interesting to think about the society to which it belongs and was made in and for, also it’s pleasurable to think how the people which Wilde pokes fun at felt whilst reading this work and possibly whether they were in denial or truly had faith in themselves.

Endlessly quotable, provocative and maddeningly enjoyable. Who doesn’t watch with glee the downfall of the beautiful and the hopeless tragedy we secretly hope we’re better than?

Every generation has a brilliant mind that can pour the evils of their world into a giant pot and manage to stir a thing of beauty such as this out, but none do it so well as Wilde.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

999 DS Review

999 or 9 hours, 9 persons, 9 Doors is a Japanese point and click adventure game for Nintendo DS.

It was released in Japan in 2009 and was localised to North America in 2010, but was sadly not released here in the UK, the game received a sequel, Virtue’s Last Reward for the 3DS and PS Vita, which for some reason they did decide to release in all territories.

The game series is known as Zero Escape in Japan, in reference to the game’s puzzle design and plot regarding a mysterious masked man who traps unsuspecting people and asks them to solve their way out.

In 999 you are Junpei a teenage boy who wakes up on a sinking ship and must escape the room which is filling with water. He soon discovers 8 other people with similar circumstances and must learn to work together to escape from the ship and their captor.

The general game flow involves a story segment, with a lot of dialogue, then adventure segment, usually where you can search around a room in order to solve multiple puzzles to escape.

As a DS game, a lot of the controls are touchscreen, however like Another Code much can be played using conventional buttons, puzzles often involve taking items and combining them for use on other parts of the room to unlock parts. However escape and entry from every puzzle door is always the same and uses the game’s main theme. Numbers.

The name of the game is Nonary, where the player must add together singular numbers in order to find a “digital root”. For example, the digital root of 25 is 7 because 2+5 is 7. Likewise the digtal root of 236 is 2, as 2+3+6 =11 and 1+1=2.

Each character of the 9 has a watch on their arm with a number from 1 to 9 on, in order to enter a door, the characters must work together to use their numbers to make the digital root of the door they wish to enter.

The characters are all a little irritating but that makes it more fun when they die.

Although the only playable character is Junpei, you are given the choice of which players will enter what doors in what combinations, however there is very little to choose in each instance, the options have different routes in the story leading to a wide variety of eventual options, and in case you hadn’t guessed it, multiple endings.

The game was a little cryptic at first, however once the first puzzle is over and you understand the general idea, the pacing of the game is much improved and the puzzles feel a little more coherent. Choices that are made greatly influence who will and will not get to live at the end of the game, leading you to making choices based on who you like best, but it won’t always work out as you hoped.

The puzzles themselves are relatively easy and soon become a little repetitive and somewhat dull, however character interaction in rooms takes a little of the edge off some of this. Many elements of the puzzles feel a little forced, as do some of the rooms themselves and the set up of the puzzles. We know that they have actually been made by someone but it all feels a little too unbelievable and far-fetched.

The use of touchscreen and DS controls are a little tame considering the interesting and innovative ideas they could have used. Turning keys is little more than touching the screen let alone utilising the potential to creating deep and meaningful if not at least really tricky puzzles using the stylus.

After completion there is a new game plus which allows you to fast forward through cutscenes and dialogue you have already watched and it also delights any choices you made in the previous game while saving your ending. There are many paths to the same endings meaning that just simply playing the game again and making different choices won’t ensure that you see something new.

The stylus is used to click on areas you wish to investigate.

The story is interesting and the characters are memorable, the setup and progression of the story complements the game and lends itself well to mystery and suspicion of other characters, being that there are multiple endings of which I only managed to finish one, which was by the looks of things the most common ending and also the worst, I can’t comment much on the story and whether it was completely fulfilling, however with each playthrough and choices of characters, new information can be learnt about the true nature of your comrades and possibly your captor as well.

Being that there is a sequel to this, raises a lot of questions to some of the “good” endings and how they are resolved.

The game took little more than 7 hours and with subsequent playthroughs would take around 5 hours. It was a short game but the different endings and various different pathways and areas makes the experience look a lot larger.

In comparison to Another Code, the design of the puzzles, although more general felt a lot better made and the overall story and quality of the game is much higher. Another Code is great as a beginner to point and click adventures for children, but 999 is more difficult logically speaking and the story is very dark even if the gruesome deaths visually don’t hold up carthartically.

A stressfully enjoyable game with interesting gameflow and bad endings galore. It requires multiple playthroughs but most Japanese point and click fans would enjoy it.

999 DS Review

Top 10 Jojo's Bizarre Adventure Characters

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is a manga series created by Hirohiko Araki, each series features a descendant of the first Jojo, Jonathan Joestar.

Until recently there was only the manga and OVA series & videogame, both based on the third arc were released, however an animé has since been made covering the first and second arcs.

In celebration of my acquisition of the Araki created one-shot, Rohan at the Louvre, here are my top 10 characters from Arcs 1-3.

10. COMMANDER STROHEIM

Commands the Nazi extraction of the men in the pillars in Battle Tendency.

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is the only thing in the world, that would make you put a Nazi on a list of your favourite characters because he is likeable and not in a particularly evil way.

9. POLNAREFF

An exciteable Frenchman who joins Kujo Jotaro in his quest in Stardust Crusaders.

He’s an injection of humour into this arc and is a perfect counter to Kujo’s broodiness, despite his depressing backstory of raped sister.

8. SPEEDWAGON

The ever loyal friend of Jonathan in Phantom Blood.

As a weak character, Speedwagon spends most of the first series as the narrator for the action and is able to bring an amusing charm to it.

7. ZEPPELI

Jonathan’s master and friend in Phantom Blood.

Zeppeli is an Italian who is a master of the art of “The Ripple” or Hamon, he has a jester-like quality and has a history with the vampires.

6. NORIAKI KAKYOIN

A fellow student with Kujo, he joins the fighters in Stardust Crusaders.

Often seen with Polnareff, Kakyoin is a strong and intelligent fighter whose stand is able to somewhat possess people.

5. LISA LISA

A mysterious master of Hamon in Battle Tendency.

Ruthless and wise, she puts Caesar and Joseph through difficult trials and is a very able fighter, she holds the stone of Aja, a sought-after gem by Cars and the other men in the Pillar.

4. CAESAR

The reluctant friend and partner of Joseph in Battle Tendency.

Caesar is a narcissistic womaniser that has a fiery and passionate temper, he finds respect for Jojo as a fighter but is somewhat at magnetic odds personally. He is the grandson of Zeppeli and wishes to avenge his death.

3. JONATHAN JOESTAR

The hero of Phantom Blood.

Born into a rich household, he has a complex rivalry with his adopted brother Dio who trumps him at everything, driving Jojo to become more powerful.

Jonathan is at number three as he is a crucial character to the entire Jojo saga and represents an archetypal hero.

I love Jonathan as he has no pretensions and is always trying to give Dio a chance.

Also this is hilarious.

2. DIO BRANDO

Vampire, adopted brother and main antagonist of Phantom Blood/Stardust Crusaders.

Dio secretly killed his father at a young age and was adopted into the Joestar family and treated as an equal. However his hunger for dominance and generally all round evil personality ends up with him putting on a mysterious mask, which turns him into a Vampire.

Dio is an integral addition to anyone’s list and is an internet icon.

He’s at number two because he is one of my all-time favourite bad guys, despite his lengthy back story and his numerous appearances, STILL nobody knows WHY he is so pointlessly evil. He kicked a dog and burnt it to death! For absolutely no reason whatsoever.

1. JOSEPH JOESTAR

Grandson of Jonathan, grandfather of Kujo and main protagonist of Battle Tendency.

My favourite character is Joseph Joestar, he’s a gifted fighter that usually wins his fights by outwitting his opponents, in the manga there are hilariously long and arduous explanations to how he sets up his tricks while he is fighting and he also is a brilliant wordsmith, constantly showering his enemies with insults and making them look like fools.

He starts off without an incredible amount of power, in fact, relatively speaking, he is the weakest Joestar, but he is able to defeat most opponents, if he isn’t just turning tail and running away!

He also appears as one of the team in Stardust Crusaders and really makes up for the somewhat lacklustre member of the Joestar family, Kujo Jotaro. Here, Joseph brings all his wit and humour but is now a much older man, so we have the benefit of seeing him being an old git.

Joseph is the most memorable characters of the series in my opinion and I recommend all those who enjoyed Stardust Crusaders OVA series or the videogame, to seek out the manga and give it a read.

Top 10 Jojo's Bizarre Adventure Characters

The Houses of Iszm

Now and again, I whimsically pick up books that amuse me.

The Houses of Iszm by Jack Vance is one such book.

It was upon hearing of Jack Vance’s death that I decided to rush this one onto the reading list, in order to experience this so-called visionary author.

The novella centres around the Iszic, a race of plant-like aliens who live on the planet Iszm, a very rich but segregated planet whose fame for the Iszic house seeds has led to large amounts of attempted criminal activity from outsiders to retrieve a “female” house seed to sell and germinate around the universe in order to make big bucks.

The Iszic however exhibit almost Nazi-like control on tourism to their planet and are very untrusting of visitors. “It was assumed as a matter of course that visitors came to Iszm with a single purpose: to steal a female house”.

The seeds are incredibly small and theoretically ought to be easy to smuggle, but the Iszic’s ruthless systems manage to keep loss to a minimum.

Sounds just like an invitation for danger then.

Aile Farr is a Botanist coming to Iszm to see some of the unique and prosperous houses and falls under the scrutiny of the Iszic.

After many checks Farr is finally allowed to wander Iszm however a fresh attack on the planet by some mercenaries means trouble for Farr and his “holiday”.

Initially the character of Farr appears to be a professional who is a little disgruntled by the obvious and unapologetic behaviour of his hosts, however there’s a curious change in personality with him as soon as the attack happens. He becomes morally ambiguous, rebellious and cynical, which immediately led me to believe there was some form of twist involved.

One of the most pleasant surprising aspects of the book is the casual and yet somehow serious approach to the narrative.

Considering that the cover of the book gives a sensationalist 50′s monster-sci-fi effect and that there are plant aliens involved means that the tone comes as somewhat of a surprise. It doesn’t feel cheesy at all, even the adopted devil-may-care attitude of Farr’s doesn’t reek of the usual sci-fi self-indulgence and he feels likeable and genuine, whilst also being rather interesting and changeable enough to keep the spirit of mystery and intrigue.

An example of a tree habitation.

The fact that a lot of the main arc of the book’s plot involves the secret plans of the Iszic and some unknown force give it a kind of espionage-feel, twinned with the main character’s personality and the story is a hard-boiled thriller which leaves a distinctly James Bondy taste after reading.

The novella is well written with rich descriptive language, small use of imagery and well set characterisation, if someone asked for a sci-fi novel to show that is a good piece of literature, this would be in the innings.

Although only short, The Houses of Iszm is a satisfying action-sci-fi with some great use of averting conventions and a good sci-fi concept as a hook.

The Houses of Iszm

Tales from the System Shock 2 Pt.1

System Shock is an Action RPG which came out in 1994 for PC, developed solely by Looking Glass Studios, who later went on to create Thief: The Dark Project. It was an interesting game set in the distant future on a space ship, that used two types of screens which you could switch between, one is the normal First-person mode where there are limited pieces of on-screen information around the outer edge and the player can move around normally, the other mode is the HUD mode, where the player can look at the inventory and other information.

The game suffered from lack of refinement and is a product of its age, but in 1999, Looking Glass Studios would return and along with Irrational Games, decided to make a sequel.

Set in the 2114, it all looks like Blade Runner meets Half-Life.

Headed by Ken Levine of Thief and Bioshock fame, System Shock 2 built upon the original as a core Action RPG, however this one would have some more First-person shooter and Survival Horror elements.

Set on board the Von Braun, a stranded space vessel 42 years after the first game, a man is trapped and tries to escape.

The game appears to be more of a first-person shooter, however there is a hugely customisable upgrade system that is hidden beneath its exterior. Just like with the first game, if you press shift, you enter a management and RPG style mode where the mouse moves over the screen while the player remains still, here you can check your items, logs and other piddly bits of the game.

The first-person mode is a lot more fluid, with a more intuitive system for checking out objects.

What a cute robot. Somehow this feels a little ominous…

The game starts with a spanner, but there are also many different guns, like shotgun and pistol as well as a magic type attack called psionic power, which use up some of your psi points and works similar to HP.

The role-playing system is much ore advanced. The player is able to select a set-up for their character by choosing whether they would like to be a marine, who specialise in combat, Navy who are good at hacking and engineering or OSA which are psychics.

The in-game currency, nanites are used in the majority of the role-playing elements. Most upgrades are done at terminals and are bought, getting increasingly more expensive the more you buy of a certain type.

The game didn’t offer me any advice.

Some of the upgrades include the base stats like Strength and endurance, however there are also upgrades for secondary skills like hacking and psionic power. Implants give varying bonuses like 20% more damage when using a melee weapon, combat skills, like Standard guns, Energy weapons and Heavy machineguns, or you can get O/S upgrades which offer nice bonuses like movement speed increase by 15% or 20% more health from hypos.

The game is notorious for being a landmark in interactive storytelling and also for its main villain, evil computer Shodan.

The beginning of the game begins with a rather Starship Troopers-y cutscene about the companies of the future, our main character, who we don’t seem to know the name of, known merely as Soldier G65434-2, but that’s dull so we’ll call him “Stiffy” for short.

Stiffy is joining the Armed Forces and after the world’s shortest training segment, we get to choose which path, Marine, Navy or OS.

A skip screen if ever I saw one.

At this point I didn’t really know what was going on, so I chose Navy because I like the uniform and also Stiffy needs to live up to his name, then we get some pretty poorly disguised choices for skill point allocation in the form of story mission choices, as it happens I just ended up choosing all of the hacky type ones, which I probably would have done anyway.

And so starts our adventure on the Von Braun, a military ship which will be escorting another one called the Rickenbacker. Well everything seems to be going well, I can’t foresee anything going wrong in the immediate future.

Tales from the System Shock 2 Pt.1

Fear of the Dark?

I’m 23 tomorrow, an age that punctuates life only by how little meaning it has. A more depressing age when one knows that the older one gets, the more of these ages they’ll begin to see.

I suppose anyone can be cynical about age, time and mortality, so in keeping with my outkeeping, we’ll skip the unpleasantries and get on with something else.

In growing, we all reap the rewards of the many experiments we instigate on a daily basis. Life is empirically scientific, as such there is much that I have gratefully accepted over the years, I could go on here about hope and all that other kind of bollocks one often gets when faced with the prospect of responsibility, but that wouldn’t be fun would it?

Of course not, so here are some of the most ridiculous things that I am afraid of, but first, an enquiry into the “fear of the dark”.

Fear of the dark and all that is hidden in its depths often leads adults to change course on travels, let alone children and their lamplight energy consumptions. Not ever having such fear myself, I have always found it rather odd.

The unknown is something that I assume taps into the base survival instinct that we all should share. If the unknown innately is presumed dangerous, why is our desire to avoid it somewhat varying between persons?

With only a little hubristic intention, I surmise it’s that the human ability to be curious beyond other mammals is a defect, whose luck has driven us forward. It is that very curiosity that jumped our evolution, our overcoming of the fear of the dark that brought us tools and power. Our triumph over this fear, is what makes us the gods of the earth.

Or perhaps I just revel in being a hard-arse that’s not scared of the dark.

No Englishman worth their salt could honestly title a post “Fear of the Dark” without the best ever metal band making an appearance.

Phobia – An extreme or irrational fear of simple things.

I once heard, that if animals were able to vocalise themselves in human speech, they would still be incomprehensible, due to the referential context points that animals use as a basis for life, being so vastly different to that which humans communally use.

That being said, my notebook has a somewhat bestial quality to it, a thought that is penned to papered is hardly decodable merely minutes after being expressed.

One of the few understandable things I have gleaned from my own notebook, is that I have a uniquely unprecedented fears of certain phenomenon that I painstakingly note “for posterity”.

Lack of Individualism.

Treading on untrodden snow is a singular joyful feeling which I seldom have the chance to partake.

However, the knowledge that the meteorological gods don’t smile at me, doesn’t get me down, nearly as much as knowing that every second I live and breathe on this planet, the one thing I truly know with any sense of certainty, my own self and by extension my brain, can hardly act independently the to history of time of other existences.

I have no unique thoughts.

As a culmination of thoughts, traits, experiences and physiognomy, I am unique and there is no other. But singular thoughts, I can only presume to have none, with such odds stacked against me.

Which leads me onto the depressing thought of there being a day when there is no new music or literature, as all combinations of notes and words have been exhausted.

How dreadful.

Plug sockets changing.

When I was younger and the concept of circuitry was lost on me, I was ‘fraid that one day, all of the plug sockets in the house would change, making my Megadrive completely useless to me.

Every game and film, every song and radio show, everything would be gone last to the obsolescence of cassettes and cartridges, not to be transferred and remember, fondly or otherwise.

This fear has since been rekindled in the form of modern consoles, as each generation moves closer to closed systems that lack transfer capability and are locked down by those we see as the purveyors of interactive entertainment.

I suppose this is a part of the fear of growing up and maturing a way, as with every change, I feel like we are being pressured into forgetting and shrugging off everything from before, or else be branded a child with automaton-like thinking based on nostalgia and base pleasure alone.

Angry plug, sad plug, somewhat blushing plug…
Hey plug, do you come here often?

All things that anti-matter.

The final fear that I had and still have from time to time, is the fear of anti-matter entering our galaxy in fairly large quantities.

As many of you might already be aware, when matter meets anti-matter a large amount of energy is released, akin to that of a nuclear bomb but on a greater scale. Our galaxy, the Milky Way has mostly matter, like most of the universe, however it is thought that anti-matter used to fill the universe around the time of the Big Bang, it’s frequent meetings with matter presumably being the reason there is less of it now.

Anti-matter is basically the reverse forms of sub-atomic particles, some of which we have in regular use in our modern lives. The cathode ray tube (CRT) that powers your non-flatscreen television has positron (the positive charged version of an electron) flowing through it, unfortunately, I have never been able to find out why this is able to function without causing problems, hence why I have an interminable fear of these strange particles.

They could be anywhere, at any time ready to collide with me, destroying me completely, beyond even atomic recognition and I would never even know.

It’s so hard to acquire practical information on anti-matter, if a large amount entered the solar system, our entire planet could be wiped out and we would have nothing to counter it at all.

Well, I think that I’m beyond apologies on my thoughts and care even less about reproach.

My own fear of not thinking uniquely leads me to believe that most people experience such ridiculous internal frivolities such as these.

But if you ever feel your fears beginning to overcome you, just think of your 3 favourite words in succession and your phone number and I can guarantee you, your perfectly unique thought.

Fear of the Dark?

Approaching Oblivion

I was first introduced to Harlan Ellison, like most of my generation, by reading “I have no Mouth and I must Scream”, after hearing about the 1995 PC game of the same name.

Having grown up on Poe and Twilight Zone, I have an affinity for dark and morbid tales that end in woe, which is why I loved “I have no mouth and I must Scream”.

Set in a future where an all powerful sentient computer called AM has left only 5 humans alive after massacring the rest of the human race, I have no mouth is one of the most brilliantly depressing stories to come out of science-fiction and so when I found Approaching Oblivion, it was a must have.

Approaching Oblivion is a collection of short stories written and compiled by Ellison and collected with the intention of getting together some of his harder to find stories, as well as a few new ones.

There is a foreword by the late Michael Crichton, which offers little to the book or perception of Ellison, but I thought it might be worth mentioning for any Jurassic Park nuts out there and after that is an introduction by the author himself, to be honest, perhaps if it’s a large and overwhelmingly well received book, then I usually would forgive one introduction. But two? There’s more biography here than fiction, this after all being the shortest book of short stories that I own.

After a brief collection of anecdotes somewhat vaguely pertaining to how the book came about the book actually begins.

Knox is a story of ethics set in the future after a change in politics, seemingly inspired by Nazism, this shows Ellison’s communist leanings as main character Knox is swallowed by a world of elitism.

One of the less memorable stories in the collection, Knox is a vague and generic treatment of Fascism, offering little we haven’t seen before in other novels, bringing only a taste of domestic life to the mix, something seen little outside of Philip K. Dick novels, which is somewhat what this reminded me of, one of Dick’s throwaway stories.

Cold Friend is set in a post-apocalyptic stretch of land that ends after only a few blocks of suburban houses. The protagonist has survived the end of the world, due to having died of cancer beforehand. Right, I see. So after waking up, I mean “reviving” our undead hero finds that he is alone on this island of reality and cannot leave as the ground ends abruptly as if ripped from the earth, however, he’s not really alone because there odd people from different time periods that start appearing, and the world’s not really condensed because these people manage to keep wandering into it.

I was thoroughly unimpressed by this one, utterly incomprehensible and flawed, it’s hardly an interesting concept anyway, but illogical plot and aggravating characters do little for this number.

I have no Mouth and I must Scream is a PC adventure game based on the short story.

There’s a few really short stories here,
Kiss of Fire essentially equates to “Casanova gets beguiled by angry lady”. With added exasperation!

Paulie Charmed the Sleeping Woman should have been named Paulie Charmed the Dead Girlfriend and because it gives you a better idea and it didn’t have much ring to it anyway.

I’m Looking for Kadak, is probably the oddest story I have ever read.

Juxtaposing Jewish custom and lingo into a sci-fi story, where a race of alien like creatures have taken up aspects of Judaism, a group of them need to perform a ritual which is being hindered by the fact that a key member is not present, so someone is sent our to retrieve him. The ensuing adventure involves weird alien prostitution, animorphing and talking to rocks. Also there is a glossary at the end, because there’s enough weird to warrant it.

Silent in Gehenna is about a freedom fighter who has been challenging the oppressive government for years when he is caught and forced to work for them and soon discovers the futility of his championing the guilty majority.

Erotophobia is about a man who inspires extreme lust and sexual desire in everyone he meets. You can tell that one is going to be hilarious, yet even Ellison manages to make it morbid!

One Life, Furnished in Early Poverty, is about a man who goes back in time to hang around with his younger self, it acts what I assume is semi-autobiographical about a boy who hasn’t any friends and a family that don’t treat him well, it feels a little bit sad, especially since I can imagine how awesome it would be to have your future self visit and finally have someone decent to play Streets of Rage with that won’t leave mid-game because I’m being “too aggressive”.

It appears Ellison and I share the same devoidal hole of thought.

Catman, my favourite of the lot, is about a father and son whose jobs involve pitting themselves against one another, but only when on the clock, as what I can only surmise is Future cop and Future thief.

It tells a story of a broken family, the mother is controlling, the father is conflicted and the son is on a journey to the “next level” of living.

This one I felt resonated, in the way that several days later I was still thinking about it, more specifically how a videogame would work, as I can imagine lots of new and interesting themes developing from this format.

I especially love the ending, a kind of antithesis to “I have no Mouth”.

Finally, we have Hindsight: 480 Seconds, a story of the people of Earth finally leaving the planet, due to its immediate and impending death. The people of Earth have appointed a single man, a poet to remain and catalogue his thoughts about the end of Earth and his own life, for posterity.

I love how almost everything can be done, “for posterity”, Holocaust? Apartheid? Posterity.

As always, we end on a melancholic note, but this time round, there’s a small hint of positivity.
I suppose the hope of a new start is better than the despair of no-end.

Approaching Oblivion

Gunpoint Game Review

The explosion of indie games recently has led to some brilliant breakout hits like Fez, while some others seem to go a little under the radar like Monaco.

Gunpoint is one such game and like Monaco, playing Gunpoint is one of the most fun things you can do on a PC without wiping your internet history.

Gunpoint is a 2D side-on stealth puzzle game, with elements of action and platforming.

But without getting too bogged down with genre labelling, the experience of playing Gunpoint is very much an immersive one and you’ll find yourself playing through the entire game after initially only intending to put it on 5 minutes.

The main protagonist is Richard Conway, a 50′s private detective styled secret agent for hire, or as I prefer “Mercenary Spy” who becomes embroiled in a conspiracy involving murder and corporate espionage.

On a night when Conway was testing out some high-powered jump boots, a woman from the building next door calls him to talk about a possible assignment involving her company.

Before Conway is able to reach her however, she is murdered.

He soon receives a call from a woman who says that things will be difficult for him if he doesn’t wipe the footage of himself at the building during the time of the murder and so his first mission begins…

The main objective of each mission is to navigate the level and reach the computer terminal and leave the area. There are also some missions with sub-objectives, such as not allow yourself to be observed and also make a pacifist run.

Obviously being a stealth game the biggest obstacle is security, often in the form of guards.

The game implements a “one hit kill” policy and all of the guards possess guns and shoot on-site if you are spotted.

The gameplay initially consists of only being able to move around and jump, Conway’s use of the Bullfrog hypertrousers means he can jump inhumanly high and can land safely from any distance.

Jumps are executed by holding down the left click and dragging the mouse to point the marked trajectory where you wish him to go. Landing from a great height causes noise, which brings the attention of the guards and you can also use the jump to smash through large glass windows.

The showstealing attraction of the game though, is circuitry.

Electronics in the game are connected to circuits and can be manipulated in order to change the situation or gain access to areas. The basic circuit is red, which is the one you can hack without needing to reach any terminals. Using the scroller button, you can change the view onscreen to see all of the currently interactive circuits.

This is an example of the “Circuit-view” you get using your code-breaker in-game.
Different colours show the different closed circuits.

Using the mouse, you can drag the circuit to connect with another, this means when someone interacts with the first object, the second object will activate.

Most of the puzzles revolve around clever use of these circuits and you can do some inventive stuff to aid your game such as knock guards out by opening doors and setting timed events by using the lifts which take time to get to their destinations.

In some levels there are different colour posts, which when activated, allow you to begin manipulating objects on closed circuits of that colour designation, which further increases puzzle complexity.

In between missions there are story segments set up in an instant text messaging format.

Conway sometimes has the option to choose a response, which in some instances, can change the direction of the game.

As Conway played a key part in the incident involving the victim’s death, his assignments from his clients often become dangerously self-implicative and a lot of the wonderful Adventure-styled humour that is apparent throughout the game is derived from assignments he is given in order to discover more about the mysterious man at the scene of the crime, which was himself.

The main problem with the game if any, is its length, at only around 2 hours it was pretty short and also if you wish to pursue the other branches of the story you must clear your data, which is always ominous-feeling.

Humourous dialogue options made me laugh out loud a lot.

The story in the game is pretty interesting, however it wasn’t clear from the start that the entire narrative would revolve around this single death, it would have been much more interesting to have some other, uninvolved clientele, even if it meant they were one-offs.

The last loss of potential was in the puzzles, that despite being innovative, were also not incredibly extensive. I know that it’s a bit unfair to compare to something like Portal, but I think it’s important that a game is compared to one of the greats, not only as a source of inspiration, but also as a confirmation of coming so far to be recognisably and relatively comparable, in other words, it’s a bloody compliment.

Portal makes full and complete use of the portal system and puzzle mechanic, it became further complex in the second instalment, Portal 2, also giving the same revolutionary treatment from the first game to the multiplayer option. Portal never left any of its potential untapped. There will never be another game that can do portals better than Portal.

But Gunpoint doesn’t do this. There is so much of its potential left to be explored.

Which is why I love this game.

Penthouse Playground – The groundbreaking level I made in Gunpoint’s level editor.
When I say groundbreaking, I meant that somewhat literally. I kept ruining the ground.

Weird? Not really, I have NEVER touched a level editor before in my life, I’ve never played with Lego.

But this was the first ever game that I made a level for.

What is really a flaw in the game, for me gave me the incentive to actually create something for once in my life and for that I am extremely grateful. In fact, I have ANOTHER level idea lined up, which I got after seeing some fan levels, which usually leave one feeling so exasperated.

The issue of the length is the main drive for all of the problems in the game, the story and the puzzles could have become more elaborate given more length and time, but for £6 it’s still a bargain.

Brilliant British humour, with touches of 90′s Adventure game pastiche, addictive excitement of the heist and the fun of jumping through walls. Oh, and punching people.
I don’t give review scores, so think of a high number and go buy this game.

Gunpoint Game Review

Howl's Moving Castle

Most people know Howl’s Moving Castle as a Studio Ghibli film that was released in 2004, but the popular animé was based on a book by Welsh author Diana Wynne Jones in 1986.

When asked by a small child to write about a moving castle, Jones came up with this novel set in a lavish fantasy world called Ingary, where magic and demons exist.

The main character is Sophie, a chronically procrastinating young girl who lives with her step-mother and two younger sisters in a Hat shop that has been in the family for generations. Her father has passed away and her step-mother is left with getting the children started on the rest of their lives. For the younger sister’s she sends them to be apprenticed and work, while for Sophie, she leaves her the Hat shop in the hope to keep the family business going.

Sophie has always resigned herself to a boring existence due to the perpetuated idea that the eldest of the children are doomed to a curse of mundanity. She feels that due in part to her average looks and lack of charm that she’ll never really amount to much and so accepts unhappily her life as shop assistant, passing by the time by talking to the hats and thinking to herself.

Soon, however Sophie’s rubbish life is shattered permanently by the entrance one day of a beautiful witch who violently bewitches the unprovoking Sophie into an old hag.

I couldn’t find an image of this anywhere so had to take a picture.
He looks a bit ill.

This last injustice renews Sophie’s resolve to go and find her fortune, so she sets off immediately.

She soon discovers a crawling castle, chugging along at a slow pace and embarks it. It is here she discovers a fire demon called “Calcifer” with whom she agrees to free from his contract with his master, in return for Calcifer turning her back to a normal girl.

She soon meets Calcifer’s master and anti-hero of the story, the Wizard Howl, a vain and enigmatic man who spends his time grooming himself and accosting young ladies in order to make them love him, so he can then ditch them. He is a coward and spends most of his time avoiding responsiblilty and escaping the clutches of the dreaded “Witch of the Waste” who also cursed Sophie.

The novel is fairly ample at around 300 pages and the pacing remains consistent throughout. The overarching plot is a little loose and unsatisfying but moment to moment the novel shines, Howl is an amusing and oddly likeable character and Sophie is relatable and invigorating.

Some of the minor characters such as Calcifer and Michael are also enjoyable and the characters’ interrelations and dialogue is clearly the best thing about the book.

The way demons work was rather interesting, Calcifer is a fire demon and needs a constant supply of fuel in order to stay alive and keep the castle together. He has sworn a pact with Howl which means he must stay and look after the castle and can’t leave.

The castle is like the Tardis, the outer layer is mostly higgledy piggeldy stone and is rather tall, but inside it only has a few rooms. The main room with the chimney in has a door which leads to another door located in another part of Ingary. When the coloured lock is moved, the corresponding door changes. This means they can go into many different villages without having to physically move the castle there, this does however mean that anyone can knock on the door and bother them, and seemingly two people could do that at once.

Studio Ghibli’s Howl’s Moving Castle.

The world appears to resemble a folklorish land where the general populace is whimsical and unassuming, allowing for some good comedic elements when Sophie must venture outside the castle, however not enough time is spent getting to know the world and the people in it, it’s very much character-driven.

Not all of the time is spent in the world of Ingary, as around midway into the book there is a short and swift setchange to Wales, giving the book a Blyton-esque vibe.

The character of Sophie is especially charming, her development throughout the book and her rightous attitude easily makes you cheer her on, probably because you can easily imagine this girl embracing being an old woman and wreaking havoc on others.

The reason why I picked this book up was because I when I saw the film, I was a little disappointed.

Howl was irritatingly whiny and pointless and Sophie felt somewhat vapid from around the middle to the end of the film. Instead of a steady development into a fun and outgoing character, she became a soulless love puppet ready to be inserted into the next Disney film, which I feel is wholly unrepresentative of other Ghibli works.

Although reading the book, I wouldn’t say it’s vastly different to the film and it hardly expands on the themes and ideas which you want it to, the magic remains only as a secondary device and there isn’t a very interesting subplot, but it does tidy up all of the problems of the animé, adding in more appealing characters and some better comic relief, albeit with a little more British charm.

Howl's Moving Castle