The Longest Journey

I'm annoyed whenever I spend more on stuff than it turns out I have to. It happens sometimes with games. I bought Shadow of the Colossus at full price, and before I got around to playing it, it was re-released as a Greatest Hits title, so I essentially paid $20 for non-hideous packaging. Does anyone think that red color looks good? What happened with the Longest Journey games wasn't as bad but it was still annoying. Dreamfall: The Longest Journey was put on Steam for $30 and I jumped on a 10% discount because I was interested in it. A couple months later, my hopes to play the prequel were made easier by its own release on Steam, but it was in a deal with Dreamfall for $25 total, so I ended up paying much more than I had to if I just waited a bit. Oh well, it happens some times.

Being a point-and-click adventure game, The Longest Journey focuses on storytelling over gameplay. There's a lot of running around, discussions, and puzzle solving. As I gave an example of in an earlier post, a lot of puzzles involve bizarre leaps of logic and item hunting, but it's all fun when you figure it out. Usually the game is good about letting you know what to do next, but sometimes it either doesn't make it clear enough or just doesn't tell you, which can lead to confusion. You know what your next goal is, but before it gets triggered you have to go somewhere or do something else, and it can lead to wasted time going back and forth.

The graphics are strange in their duality. The backgrounds and environments are a mixture of photographs, hand drawings, and pre-rendered computer images, and look generally very nice. The real-time character models however, are terrible. They're extremely low resolution, are usually poorly animated, and don't interact with each other or the environment well. This is forgivable for three reasons, though. The game was originally released seven years ago, when most games looked bad; it's not an action game that requires accurate interactions to work; and the art direction and visual design are strong enough that you can appreciate it anyway.

The story and writing are really very good. What's quickly noticeable is how funny the game is. Dreamfall had a few wise-cracking characters (mostly who were introduced here), but it was a mostly serious game that focused on its dramatic story. April Ryan is a much more quirky and light-hearted heroine than Zoe or her future, hardened self from Dreamfall. Her grounded sense of humor permeates the whole game, and the epic story doesn't seem worse for it. Speaking of the storyline, it's quite interesting, telling the tale of a world with two opposite halves, one a vision of earth in the future, the other a land of fantasy. A new group has come to disrupt the delicate balance, and April has to explore both worlds to find what she needs to stop them. The pacing is generally very good - like Dreamfall did, it starts a bit slow but can grab you and pull you forward until it ends before you know it. I only had one problem. Near the end, the pace has been accelerating for a while and you can feel it coming to a climax soon, but you end up having to dawdle around on a space station for a while before you get to the last area. Despite that and a few other hiccups, The Longest Journey is one of the better experiences you'll have with an engrossing story in a game. I'm looking forward to the episodic conclusion to the whole saga that was announced in May.

Adventure Games Are Strange

Just let me describe this sequence to get a key in The Longest Journey to you.

I use a notice about a missing ring to retrieve my gold ring. I use a bread stick from a cafe to entice a seagull to land on a grate which frees a stuck inflatable duck and allows me to hoist up a clothesline. I use the ring to fix a gap in a wire to activate a machine, and solve a puzzle which allows me to take a clamp. I go find the inflatable duck that went downstream. I take the duck, clothesline, and clamp to the subway. I tie the clamp to the clothesline and put the duck over the clamp so it is being held open, and remove the band-aid from the duck so it slowly deflates. While it's doing so, I lower the contraption to the object the key is on, and when the duck is deflated the clamp closes so I can lift up the object with the key on it.

What the hell.

Game Archive 1

Ok, I'm going to post old stuff I've written about games and music here so I have all my crap in one place.

Beyond Good and Evil (PS2)


It's truly sad that nobody played this game, because it is a gem and available for all 3 current-gen systems. It's a mix of Zelda-style puzzle-focused dungeons and exploration with sci-fi themes and a heavy emphasis on stealth. I think the design succeeds more than the actual execution in some parts. Jade isn't the best-controlling main character ever, but the design IS great, and she's the star of one of the better game stories I've ever experienced... I'm not talking about your crazy RPG plots, I'm saying I actually gave a damn about the characters and felt for them. Truly a game that everyone should play. My only real problem was that completing the story required you to collect a bunch of pearls to repair your vehicle, and that can get tedious.

Bully (PS2)


It's cool to see one of these sandboxy, open world games that has a tighter approach and doesn't have a gangster theme to it. It's actually not that open, it would have been cool to play the different factions against each other, but all you really do is proceed through the storyline missions, gaining the respect of all the groups before the final showdown. Having to go to class and stuff like that could have gotten in the way, but it's fairly easy to skip class if you want to, and once you've passed them all, not only do you not have to go anymore, but you get a lot of new moves and upgrades that help you out with the rest of the game.

It's slightly awkward at times, but the story is entertaining, and this is probably the funniest video game I've ever played. It's stuffed to the brim with funny moments and dialogue from the various school kids. The combat system is fun too, you have plenty of moves to make fist fights enjoyable and there are a lot of clever non-lethal weapons to play with. It's a bit glitchy in spots, but it's definitely a fun experience.

Call of Duty (PC)

Call of Duty's creators, who split off from the original Medal of Honor team, manage to do something that seemed to be missing from that other World War II series - make it intense. You're never too far from dying and the extremely loud, chaotic battles are broken up once in a while with an uneasy silence.

The game has many great set pieces that make you really feel like a war hero, fighting alongside your allies and comrades... parachuting into D-Day, holding a bridge from a large siege, storming into Stalingrad with nothing but a few bullets in your hand. It does get a little silly sometimes, especially in the British campaign, when you clear out and take down a heavily fortified dam singlehandedly, race to an air base, and hold off several bomber planes with a single turret.

It's a very fun, exciting shooter, enhanced by the presentation which is strong even now, although I wish more time was spent fighting alongisde large groups rather than by yourself or with a few others.

Dreamfall: The Longest Journey (PC)


It's a little hard to rate Dreamfall, but what it hinges on is whether you think a game that clearly ignores gameplay in favor of story is worthy of a good score if that story is good. If you don't you will hate Dreamfall. But I choose to view it as more of an interactive story than a normal game, which is what it was designed to be, and it succeeds well at that.

The gameplay is pretty bad... the normal adventure gameplay is okay, but fairly simple. The main problems come from the stealth elements, which are poorly realized, and the combat, which is completely putrid. It's comically bad. It also makes one of the three characters you play seem completely worthless, as his story is much less fleshed out than that of the other two and all he does is fight a few people.

But what the game focuses on, the writing and story, are excellent. The characters are generally very well developed and sympathetic, and especially in the magical world of Arcadia, often quite funny. Some awkward animations slightly reduce the effectiveness of the dialogue and voice acting which is much more believable than most games. Despite a couple bits like the increasingly cliche creepy little girl and evil mega corporation, the story is a unique and deeply engrossing tale that grabbed me and kept me playing late into the night to find out how it will all end, which unfortunately it really didn't. The game ends on a cliffhanger with many threads left unresolved, and I hope the final game is released somewhat soon so I can see the end. I do know I will definitely be checking out the first game to see what happens there in the meantime.

Gears of War (360)


I still say Okami has the best graphics artistically of any game I've seen, but Gears of War easily takes the cake from a technical perspective. Seriously, it looks amazing. I have the good fortune to have a roommate this quarter who has a widescreen HDTV around 40 inches in size, and the game is really a sight to behold. It sounds pretty good too, with solid voices and sound effects.

It wouldn't be a good game without gameplay of course, and Gears succeeds there as well. I'm really not that big of a shooter fan, but I still had a great time moving tactically through the war-torn environs and ravaging Locust with my trusty assault rifle, with the enjoyable chainsaw at the end. The cover system takes a little getting used to, but it works very well, by the end it was rare for me to end up in a spot I didn't want to be in. My problem is that I wasn't huge on the pacing, there wasn't much of a rise and fall in action. There were quieter moments and slightly bigger scenes, but it seemed to have an intensity level a little too consistent. I might have preferred a few more extended moments of calm to coincide with huge, desperate setpieces. Still, I felt like I could just play the game straight through if I wanted to because it kept pulling me forward with the solid shooting and great graphics.

God of War (PS2)


I can't tell if my opinion was affected by the tons of praise this got. It's definitely a good game. But I really can't see how it deserves PS2 Game of the Year over Shadow of the Colossus, Resident Evil 4 and Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones. Or in the case of awards givers who cut off holiday games until the next year, how it's better than Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal. Anyway, God of War is a fun game. The combat is very fluid and rewarding, as you progress and become more powerful as the game goes on. There's fairly good enemy variety, although I wish we could have seen a few more centaurs and sirens instead of an overdose of undead soldiers and harpies, and that the Cerberus were just there instead of starting as annoying little shits that spawn like popcorn.

The combat isn't why I like it though, what I really like are the adventure elements and the story. Although it seemed a bit long, the Temple of Pandora was a brilliantly designed area, and really pulled off the feel of an epic, hazardous dungeon. And the cutscenes were more interesting than I expected, by the end I understood Kratos a bit more and wanted to help him kill Ares. The animation on Kratos' double jump is pathetic, but the platforming is fairly enjoyable for a non-platforming game. What really hurt the game was the design on the whole end of it, starting in Hades. They were just lazy (or short on time) here, instead of making what could have been a really cool area, they just threw a bunch of enemies on steroids and idiotic spinning spike hazards at you, and it really isn't fun or interesting. We're nearing the climax, I'm not supposed to be getting bored. After that you fight Ares, and the whole sequence with him is no good either. After the creativity of the first two boss fights, Ares is just a cheap bastard who blocks all of your attacks and winning the final conflict is more about luck than skill. The only redeeming part about the end is how they tied off the end with the gravedigger. So, overall, a fun game, but it's lacking in ways that make it hard to call truly great.

Guitar Hero (PS2)


I don't usually play games that I perceive as having no point, sports games, racing games, and music games. But I tried Guitar Hero and decided to pick it up, because unlike DDR and its ilk, I find it fun as hell. In most rhythm games, you're just timing button presses (or footsteps) to some music and getting points. I don't find it very compelling. But in Guitar Hero, you're not playing along, you're actually creating the music yourself. If you mess up a part, you don't just lose points and get closer to failing, the guitar part drops out. When you get it right, it's like you're actually playing these famous riffs yourself, and that makes all the difference. The controls take a bit of getting used to, but before long you'll be rocking out harder than you thought you could. In just a week I've gone from bad to capable of doing well on the hard difficulty. The more complex the tune, the more satisfying it is when you execute it perfectly. It's also a ton of fun with friends. Check it out if you like fun.

Guitar Hero II (PS2)


Guitar Hero is still just as addicting as ever, as you find yourself continually saying "just one more song". It's still great fun to rock out and play some good tunes, although the setlist isn't nearly as good as the first game's. I hardly recognized any of the song names when I first read the list, although I still heard the majority of them before and just didn't know the name. The songs are all still fun to play and usually catchy, but it's just harder to get into a song and really feel cool if you don't actually know it well.

A couple definite improvements are the hammer-ons/pull-offs, which actually work this time and are necessary on the harder difficulties, and practice mode, which lets you work on and experience any part of any song without having to actually be good. Other improvements are minor, GHII is probably a better gameplay experience but it's just not as amazing when you've done basically the same thing before.

Half-Life 2: Episode One (PC)


Episode One is the continuation of, in my opinion, the best first person shooter of all time. The gameplay engine remains simply the most enjoyable to just run around and shoot things in, and Valve's level design is impeccable. Everything here is created with the intention of making a good video game combined with a strong narrative experience. I love the way Half-Life presents its story, it's just a much more immersive world than almost anything else.

I miss exploring the wide open countryside around City 17, and the game is a bit short even for only being 1/3 of a game, so it might not have been as good if it weren't for one thing - Alyx, thanks to a combination of great voice acting and the best facial animation I've ever seen in a game, is one of the most endearing and likable game characters ever. I really care what happens to her, and it wouldn't be the same if she wasn't around, watching my back. This is one of the times where graphics actually matter in pushing a game over the edge. I can't wait to battle Hunters out in the wilderness in Episode Two.