Yesterday morning during my usual scan of my rss feeds I saw the trailer video to Time Ducks.

I watched it. It made me laugh. It made me curious. I went to the app store. It’s £1.49. I bought it.

Conventional wisdom would have it that pricing such a simple game (it’s Frogger, with the controls of Flight Control and some basic time manipulation) shouldn’t be more than 69p.

And then I shared the video. And then I blogged about it.

I know about another game coming up that’s about to have a trailer filmed featuring dogs in hats. I can’t wait!

From GamesIndustry.biz‘s article on the new XBox dashboard:

“All the applications are built in that same way, which is really really nice,” [Pawan Bhardwaj, UK product manager for Xbox Live] pointed out.

“It’s really important. One of the examples I have personally have, on my phone the applications that I download, every single one of them is different, they all work slightly differently, and it gets a bit annoying.”

So does he not have a Windows phone? Or is he saying that he finds his Windows phone a bit annoying because everything works slightly differently?

Moshi Monsters: Moshling Zoo has entered the UK all formats chart at number 7. Not bad going for a DS game.

What I find really impressive is the marketing campaign that’s been created for it – I’ve seen AAA console games that don’t get this kind of exposure.

I had a bit of a realisation last night. I can’t remember the last time I looked at a game’s instruction manual. At all.

Fair enough, it doesn’t help that a lot of games I play these days (I would say maybe around 95%) are rented, or downloaded – neither of which come with manuals.

But I haven’t missed the option.

The last two games I bought boxed – Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and Batman: Arkham City definitely didn’t have their manuals fingered. They could, in theory, be misprinted in such a way that by pure chance they detail a cure for cancer – and my lazy reliance on in-game tutorials would be damning us all.

I think maybe Fallout 3 was the last one I read, because the game contained all manner numbers in it and abbreviations that I didn’t understand.

Should I have to read a (admittedly slim) book in order to understand a video game – how to play it, how to navigate the menus, the context of the world it takes place in?

Have we reached the point where even the most complex of games is essentially “pick up and play”, in that they will guide me by the hand until I am ready for the training wheels to come off?

Is it better this way, or worse?

(The answer is “better”, by the way, so give yourself a house point if you picked that one.)

I have been on and off about jotting down my thoughts on Batman: Arkham City, but since I finished the main storyline last night, it seemed an appropriate time.

Overall it’s a great game, there’s no denying that. It’s generally not quite hit the spot for me as much as its predecessor though. And I think a big chunk of that is the move to an open world.

It’s a tricky situation. On one hand, gamers complain about linearity, “corridor shooters”, and being led by the hand. On the other hand an open world creates great big sections of space that are lacking any meaningful content.

The instinct is to fill that space, often with pretty much anything that roughly fits the theme and style of gameplay. So here we have all kinds of other crimes and villains vying for your attention.

My main problem with this, in the way it’s been implemented here, is that it completely ruins the game’s pacing. Some very slight spoilers follow in the next paragraph to illustrate my point.

Dr Strange is threatening to activate his deadly “Protocol 10″ plan within a few hours. Joker has infected a large amount of Gotham’s population, not to mention Batman himself, with his own poisonous Titan-tinged blood, giving them an expected lifespan of hours. Riddler has kidnapped an emergency medical team, strapping each to traps that he expects Batman to solve before they die. Zsasz has also taken some hostages, and will brutally slay them if he isn’t stopped soon. Deadshot is revealed to be working in Arkham City, assassinating political targets at a steady rate. On top of all of that, an unknown serial killer is cutting the faces off other inmates.

So, that’s the setup you’re presented with. Which is the most important goal? The game heaps side quest upon side quest, each explained as a life-or-death situation. Except hardly any of them are. (To add to the confusion it occasionally it also gives you an actual timed section, which you can fail for being too slow.)

This is the problem with trying to pace an open world game (technically I guess it’s an issue with player agency at all, but an open world makes it even harder to guide). Peaks and troughs are harder to engineer. And that’s even before you get to the “content filling” side quests that not only kill pace but also, I would argue, actually hard the game’s otherwise pretty good characterisation*.

With all of these innocents in danger, is it really in character for Bats to mess around trying to glide through Augmented Reality training hoops? Or to spend fifteen minutes trying to guide a remote Baterang in to hitting a Riddler switch so that he can collect a trophy?

Is it in character for Batman to interrupt his travel to prey on a group of gang members who are standing in the middle of the street, because crippling them (and do keep in mind these guys are already in the middle of a high security prison) will gain him XP so that he can level up and buy new upgrades?

Oh yes, there is gaining XP and levelling up now, so that the inconceivably rich crime fighter can get new gadgets. And only in one case is this new gadget unlock delivered in a way that fits in with the world, rather than just being part of the meta-game’s “oh and now Batman has sonic Baterangs”.

I feel like I should stop there. Writing more makes it sound like I didn’t like the game, which isn’t true. After all, I kept going even through the seemingly random difficulty curve (by far the hardest fight in the game, for me, was at roughly 3/4 of the way through the story – the ending got just easier) and the lack of ability to change the difficulty setting mid-game (struck me as a “designer knows best” bit of bullishness).

* There have been some accusations of sexism, but I am not sure I agree. Certainly, in the very early game there is a lot of “bitch” in the dialogue, primarily from Two Face and his gang. As you continue this drops out completely, with later gang conversations expressing admiration over Harley’s actions and even some degree of concern for Catwoman (“she should be careful in here, some of these thugs haven’t even seen a woman in years”), leading me to believe more and more that the offending dialoge is deliberate characterisation. And having some sexist characters in a game, does not make the game itself sexist.

My main complaint about characterisation is actually in the take on the Penguin as some kind of weird cockney thug with a bottle in his eye, who’s lost any pretence of class and constantly threatens painful torture against his enemies and cronies.

You like Run From the Sun, right? And you like Facebook, right?

Now since you’re a smarty man, you probably think I’m going to write something like “then today’s your lucky day, because now you can play Run From the Sun on Facebook.”

Well hold on to your butt with both hands, because now you can play Run From the Sun on Facebook in two different ways!

I’ll give you a little bit of a moment here to just read over that last bit again until you’re comfortable with it (you may also want to free up at least one of your hands so that you can click on some links that are coming up).

The two slightly different flavours are: on GameGround’s arcade, where you can take part in tournaments to win actual Facebook Credits (which are like money, that you can spend on all sorts of things in various Facebook shops and games).

The other variation is on Adult Swim’s arcade. Their arcade saves your progress on their servers, which you’ll find very useful if you play on more than one computer (perhaps you like to sneak a game or two during work hours).

Not a sketchbook design, this one, but I’m going through my document archives sorting everything in preparation for hoofing it into an online backup* and I came across this which I thought I’d share.

Essentially it’s a “rub your tummy and pat your head” timed minigame. With one hand, you have to wiggle your fingers like bait to entice fish up to the Catch Zone where the fisherman will automatically grab them for you. With the other hand you have to shoo away any gulls that will try and fly off with fish that get too close to the surface.

There’s really not much more to it than that!

* Yeah, the Indie Stone situation did make me think about my backups. And not just for work documents, as important as they are – I have years of irreplaceable photos stored away as well.

Though I’ve got my computer Time Machine-ing to a portable drive, and a RAID 1′ed network drive keeping copies of everything important, these are all in the same building. Which is fine for hardware failure, but not so great in the event of dastardly thieves, or acts of God (juggling, etc.)

So I’m going to give CrashPlan a go and see how it works out for me.

The first entry in what’s probably going to be a very occasional series.

Anyway, I hate that RPGs (that’s role playing games, in case you thought I was talking about rocket launchers – which admittedly might happen later in the series if I run out of things) force me to make choices about my character before I’ve even set foot in the world.

Do I want to be a human, or an elf? The elf has higher dexterity, but lower strength. Is that useful? It is going to be a problem for how I play? I’m not even sure how I want to play yet – maybe I will run around hitting people with a sword, or maybe I will use a bow and arrows.

But maybe arrows are really hard to come across.

Or maybe I should focus on social skills and talking my way out of problems? I’ll probably still want to be able to kill enemies occasionally though. Won’t I?

Maybe I could buy my way out of trouble, but I wonder if money will be scarce. I mean, there are skills for crafting stuff here – surely they wouldn’t exist and be offered to me unless resources were abundant and tools were rare, right?

Should I just focus on magic? I’m not sure how magic works.

The point is, right at the start of a game a player has no idea. At all. Yet so many RPGs lock you in to making important character choices at this stage, some of which could really harm the experience you get from the game.

Most of the time I just hammer everything in to whatever skill sounds most like it’ll benefit me for smacking people in the face with a pointy metal stick.

Oh yes, I was going to write something else last week, wasn’t I?

There have been a number of articles written recently on the evils and horrors of casual / social games, and how they can be improved. Mostly they seem to be written from the point of view of a more traditional gamer, who wants things like synchronous multiplayer and action. I’m not convinced writing Facebook games for a demographic who will take any and all opportunities to wax lyrical on the evils of the platform is a good idea though – I’d rather make games that have a chance of connecting with their audience.

As such, I’ve been playing a lot of these things on various platforms recently, trying to get a firm understanding of what makes them and their players tick.

One I was very excited to have a go at is Glitch, which does contain some of the “desired” traditional elements. It’s all wrapped up in a multiplayer platform game, after all.

There’s no denying the game is charming, and has a very good sense of its own personality – I don’t expect to see anyone claiming that it’s a cheap clone of some Zynga title, and attempting to clone it would be tricky beyond the basic mechanics.

To give you an idea, here’s something – it’s not often you find yourself emailing the “Mr X has invited you to be their friend in this game” emails for something. But Glitch’s style is in everything it does.

FreakyZoid? I hear you ask: Who is this FreakyZoid?!? What do they want from me? Are they real? Is this a trick? What’s going on? Is this FreakyZoid a robot? Some kind of test? WHY ME?!?

To which I say: woah there, pickle! FreakyZoid probably just added you so that they could contact you while playing the game. To send mail, or challenge you for races.
See? It’s all cool, and not weird or freaky at all! (Disclaimer: unless it is)

For example. Or how about…

Beeski has added you as a contact on Glitch. Probably so they can contact you in the game.

Why? Who knows. But it might well be the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Years from now, sitting, watching the suns setting behind Jethimadh Tower, you might look back on this moment and say “Beeski? Do you remember that time you added me as a contact? And all the crazy adventures we’ve had since then?” And Beeski will smile, and nod.

“Good times, FreakyZoid” Beeski will say. “Good times.”

The problem I have with Glitch is pretty much entirely what’s in the Rock, Paper, Shotgun writeup.

Despite its dressing, the game’s still completely mired in the “social game” thinking that you should push your players away after ten minutes of play and put timed progress bars on everything.

In Glitch’s case it does the game no favours as early on your options for playing around with the world are limited until you have developed the skills needed. Developing these doesn’t require any interaction on your part, beyond clicking a button and then logging back on some number of hours later.

Unfortunately this means I’ve made no meaningful bond with the game during early play sessions, which in turn means I feel no investment in my character and no potential loss about abandoning them.

As lovely as Glitch is, I just can’t be bothered returning to it.

Yes, I’ve been quiet for the last couple of weeks. Sorry.

There have been two main reasons for this. Or three main reasons, but one of them is “been working” and that’s fairly boring because despite a lot of graft there aren’t any exciting new screenshots to show. And as much as I’d like to think my readers are cleverer than the average ape, I secretly suspect you still mostly get excited when I tickle your visual brainy bits.

One of the other reasons is Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Which is a game so good I played it through twice, almost back to back. Not quite, there was a brief period of trying to play Crysis 2 in between, but I quickly got bored / annoyed (I feel there should be a word specifically for this combination. “Annored” or “Boyed” maybe).

Deus Ex is very good, despite its numerous little (and not so little if you believe the anti-boss fight hype) flaws. It’s a game that manages to combine shooting and stealth and exploration and minor RPG elements in a way that I find entirely intoxicating, hence diving almost straight back in for a second play.

Yes, there are issues. The acting is pretty much crap, too many conversations are linear, the opening section is boring (these last two grate more on a second playthrough), many of your available upgrades are rather too limited in use, the battery recharging system could be improved, some of the achievements have suspect conditions (I’m not going to try another Foxiest run since it didn’t tell me why I failed the last one), the bosses are definitely a weak point, and probably lots of other things as well.

But it is way more than the sum of its parts.

And it contains one of the better hacking minigames I’ve seen.

Aside from getting stuck deep inside my current game of the year, I also did this, which took some time training for.

And raised (at current count) £596 for the Sick Kids Friend Foundation, which is great. There’s still a little bit of cash to come from my charity game.

The sponsorship page is still open, so if you were waiting to see if I could actually perform before you put your money in, now is the time!

So now we’re up to date. Perhaps my next post won’t be so long. It might even be tomorrow. If I remember.