Posts Tagged ‘Mac’

Darren is back just in time for a semi-festive show. We spend most of our time catching up on the last few months events and our respective holiday breaks but in the process we do touch on lots of games in-between our stories.

As I said last show do not expect Dans wonderfully detailed show notes every week, and this week serves only to reaffirm that declaration. I can tell you that you can expect us to talk about all the games we played recently, Red Dwarf, bad commercials, me pissing myself, me being taunted by hordes of nerds, the upcoming 2010 releases and our vacations. Unfortunately even with Darren back there is no Frakkers this show, but we do have some music and the return of Darrens Old Games.

Hopefully 2010 will mark a more regular schedule for The DoFuss Show as we stream line the formula, but we make no promises. Enjoy the show and keep an eye on the site this month for some gaming memories of the last ten years.

I am trying to get back in to oil painting, Darren insists on Twitpic updates so keep an eye on that if you care.

 

 Craig Charles had far too much to do with it. [71:33m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

In a year that has seen the industry losing momentum in the face of the economic down turn and many games moving in to Q1 2010 it is hard to pretend that this was the best year for gaming. It is a however year that saw a more constant release of quality titles through out the year than long term gamers have come to expect. It is a trend that looks set to continue; though I do with they would give me a little time to recover from the (still inevitable) Christmas rush.

Due to the general difficulty for me to importing Wii titles my focus has unfortunately slanted away from Nintendo’s device this year. This combined with the iPhone dominating my mobile gaming, it seem looking back that I may have missed a number of titles that some would consider key to this year line-up. But my time is not infinite, and nor are my pockets, so while I have tried a wide array of title some have naturally fallen by the way side.

All that aside I have played a lot of incredible games this year, and honourable mentions for those that didn’t make my top five should are in order. From the downloadable games of the year we have Drop 7 the iPhone, a title that took more of my commuting (and toilet) time than I would care to admit. But it really became worrying when I was choosing to play that over my PS3 and 360. Canabalt, again on iPhone should also be mentioned. A simple platformer with a one-touch interface that proved endlessly entertaining especially as updates arrived, slowly adding new twists to the simple formula. Lastly there are Trials HD on XBLA (which kept me entertained for more hours than banging my head against a brick wall theoretically should) and Pixeljunk Shooter on PSN (that arrived to lick my bleeding forehead).

Trials HD, the gaming equivalent of having your junk trapped in an elevator door.

‘Big games’ that didn’t make my cut has the best licence game of the year, Batman Arkham Asylum narrowly missing the five spot. Its fantastic use of the licence and mind-blowing Scarecrow sections were only slightly marred by its weak ending. Earlier in the year I was loving Street Fighter 4, a nostalgia endued two week coma followed, which could well have taken over the year had I had more local opponents to play with. Mad World for Wii was an incredible and entertaining little brawler that slipped in to wean me of my Street Fighter addiction. It brought some more content to Nintendo’s family machine, but never received the sales it deserved. The summer drought was more muted this year that in the past, but it was still there which gave InFamous a chance to shine as I played it to completion twice, thanks to its variety of missions making it constantly entertaining.

But enough of the preamble and games that didn’t make the grade, what did rise above the other flotsam in 2009? It is a somewhat fluid list, in that ask me tomorrow and it may be slightly different but these five (plus maybe Batman and InFamous) are the games that year have stood above all of their competitors’. So ignore the numbers and just take my word for the fact these are game you owe it to yourself to at least try.

5 – Resident Evil 5 (Multi)

Any who talked to me while I was playing RE5 would have heard me complain about indefinable flaws I found in the game. How it wasn’t scary, or a horror game and how it didn’t ‘feel’ like Resident Evil. I stand by those comments, for me it wasn’t as good as the original game or Resident Evil 4, but when those stand as two of the games dearest to my heart that isn’t as damning as it may sound. Resident Evil 5 kept me coming back for months. I earned every achievement, unlocked every… unlockable… and finished the game some seven or eight times.

Yes, characters still controlled like a tanks, but that is Resident Evil, there are only so many changes you can make before you should really just do something else (which for the record I hope they do now). Despite this the game remained fun with just the right mix of hammy acting to keep it entertainingly bad without being horrible. Combine this with the ability to dip in and out of stages at will and it kept me coming back for both solo and co-op play long after I would usually have put it back on the shelf.

My Chris what absolutely colossal arms you have.

4 - The Path (PC/Mac)

Beautiful, evocative and magical, you would be forgiven for never having heard of this (primarily) downloadable PC/Mac title. Taking inspiration from Little Red Riding Hood the game allows you to control one of seven girls on their adventurer to grandma’s house. There is little for the player to do but direct their girl on their journey to the house (or off into the forest), but left alone near items in the world they will interact and their story and personality.

Defiantly a more relaxed, almost passive, experience compared to most games it is really only for a select group who have an interested in narrative and expression in games. Those that fit this bill will find a Grimm Fairy Tale experience unlike any other title on the market.

On of seven Little Red Riding Hoods, heavier on the 'Red' than the 'Hood'.

3 – Uncharted 2 (PS3)

It is an over used expression but describing Uncharted 2 as cinematic is the only way I know to accurately describe it’s presentation. Some of the most breathtaking graphics and voice work yet seen on a home console combine with set pieces that would not be out of place in an Indian Jones movie to create an experience which is almost as fun to watch as it is to play.

Entertaining start to finish (and with a good multiplayer if you are so inclined) it no sits as a game that I will keep to revisit in the future in the same way I would a movie. It isn’t about the gameplay, which is the same rinse and repeat formula almost though out (bar the stunning train level), it is about the Christmas afternoon action movie. The film I used to watch as a kid that I now own on DVD and keep on a shelf, just to give me a warm fuzzy feeling when I look at it.

Drake looking intense. I don't remember why exactly.

2 - Dragon Age: Origins (PC)

Released the latest of my top five Dragon Age Origins has the advantage of being the freshest in my mind, but having pumped neigh on forty hours into the game in the last three weeks I can declare this one of the best of the year. It isn’t pretty, the game went into development some time ago and the engine seems to have only undergone some mild tweaks since it began. Its lack of visual pizzazz however is more than made up for by hours of unique dialogue delivered by its superb cast. It sucks you in, constantly surprising you with incidental dialogue from both your own party and those around you as you walk through the world making it feel alive.

The incredible thing for me was how it managed to engage me in the minutia rather than the grand story. You quickly find yourself living for your party, the group you collect from various miscreants you meet on your travels. Each reacts differently, and not always predictably, to your choices. A positive act to one will repulse another and you find yourself trying to tailor your answers to appeal to a favoured party member. It is basically the ‘paragon’ and ‘renegade’ options from developer Bioware’s other big title Mass Effect, but applied on an individual level. More than any overarching morality system could this granular system judgment by individuals highlights the uncertainty of choices, how the game offers no right or wrong, just choices on your quest for a greater good.

My dog, I called him Flopsy.

1 – Demon’s Souls (PS3)

Number one spot (today at least) goes to Demon’s Souls. A PS3 exclusive that has managed to constantly draw me back in. Set in a desolate world, devoid of any real life it is cold and lonely. Despite this it has beauty, not only in the graphic fidelity but also in the design. It is grand and somehow tranquillity when you are not besieged by the soulless abominations that lurk behind every corner. It is an environment I may never want to go there on holiday to but it perfectly fits the fantasy medieval setting.

It is a game that is usually challenging, often punishing and at times seemingly impossible. Progress is slow, but rewarding and even at its most devious you feel like you can make progress, if you just grind a little harder. Of course if you are in need of help there is the interesting online component. Uniquely Japanese in its implementation it allows you to be constantly sharing your world, without every really having to share the experience. In the game you spend most of your time a spirit, but when you resurrect you are able to summon other spirits in to your world to help. Despite this there is no voice, no communication beyond a boilerplate set of comments that you can leave scattered on the ground. It’s co-operative, intelligent but ultimately just serves to make you feel more alone.

Not a game for everyone, but a game for me, and it stands as one of the few games this year that is continually on my mind and will keep me coming back well into 2010.

He looks tired for a reason.

That’s it I guess. I am already remembering games I have forgotten, games like PSN’s Shatter, but if I didn’t remember them then I guess they don’t really count right? Either that or I could just keep adding to this for the rest of 2010 in the hope of suddenly finding some ‘right’ answer to the question “What was your favourite game this year?” The truth is though, I don’t think that epiphany would ever come, because there are just so many good games. There are so many in fact that I can honestly say if I stopped buying games right now it would easily be 2011 before I cleared my backlog. Guess I won’t be doing that though so here is to a costly year of 2010 gaming, kicking off for me at the end of January with Mass Effect 2.

If you have been reading the site for some time you will no doubt have realised by now that I am a lover of the survivial horror genre. Well, I would have loved to write something specific for the festivities, but unfortunately I have been far too busy. Luckily however two (maybe three by now) of my reviews were recently posted on Gamepeople where I am now contributing reviews to their Scared Gamer section. Here are snippets to all three and links to the two that are up. Keep an eye out for the third, partly to support me and partly because it’s a review of the fantastic Demon’s Souls the game which makes me want to quit writing to give me more time to play.

The Path

The Path, Tale of Tales (PC, Mac)

“The Path asks a lot of its audience, demanding that players completely submerge themselves in its world and characters. All horror games require an element of role-playing from their audience. If a title cannot draw the player into its fiction then there is no hope of eliciting the base instinctive emotion of fear. In The Path the realization of this immersion is especially challenging due to the nature of its characters and the open narrative structure, but if you can get past these obstacles you are rewarded with unsettling tales of lost innocence.”

Check it out here…

Resident Evil 5

Resident Evil 5, Capcom (360, PS3)

“I squint as we step into the searing Africa sun. Chris Redfield and I have done this before, but that was twelve years ago. It was a different age then, filled with surprise and wonder at what Capcom had created for us in their game, Resident Evil. Now, as we approach Resident Evil 5, we are older, cynical and prepared for what lays ahead. We move forward, cautions but confident.”

Check it out here…

Demon's Souls

Demon’s Souls, Atlus (PS3)

“Demon’s Souls is a game that forces the players to edge their way forward an inch at a time. Every turn is a new opportunity for death. Be it from stumbling upon an over powered enemy or fall down a hole; trial and error is a necessity. Death proves only a minor setback, only robbing the player of souls (experience), which can be recovered if you find the bloodstain that marks your last resting place. Yet the game even makes this feel like too much of a risk to take, ensuring caution at every turn.”

Check it out here…

Tale of Tales (ToT) is a group dedicated to the creation of original interactive experiences. Founded in 2002 by Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn they currently have four (The Path, The Graveyard, Fatale and The Endless Forest) titles available for PC and Mac and one project on hold (’8′). These titles are more akin to interactive poems or storybooks than what would be traditionally be regarded as a ‘game’, but they are engrossing experiences that form deeper ties with your avatar during the short time you spend in their worlds than most games achieve in ten hours.

This interview was submitted a few weeks before Fatale’s release (currently available from the ToT web site) so please forgive any continuity anomalies in my questions.

DF - What inspired you to found Tale of Tales?

ToT - Each other.

We started working together on the day we met for the first time, now 10 years ago. And we never stopped. First we made websites as Entropy8Zuper! and later videogames as Tale of Tales.

We switched to using video game technology because we saw an opportunity to really make the things we could only simulate or refer to in web technology. We played videogames once in a while. And they had had their influence on our work. But we had never considered making games ourselves. Even when we started working with the medium, we had no intention to make traditional games. That wasn’t the aspect we were interested in. We wanted to work with emergent narrative and emotional immersion.

DF - Looking at your manifesto you seem to have some very clear views on the direction artistic experiences in an interactive medium should take. From where did you draw these artistic principles?

ToT - The Realtime Art Manifesto sounds like a lecture but is actually more of a personal shopping list. It serves to remind us that, if we are artists, we should also be designers and if we are designers, we should also be artists. More than anything, the manifesto attacks purity, in favour of embracing.

Some of the ideas in the Manifesto come from witnessing a kind of ambiguity in other creators. We want to stimulate the fine artists to take the medium of games seriously and really make things with it, rather than cynically mod some engine from their ivory towers. And on the other hand, we want to encourage game designers to take up their responsibility as authors, to really think about what they are doing and try to contribute something to people’s lives and society.

Other ideas come from our own play experiences and often frustrations with games. Especially when it comes to the conflict between narrative immersion and the more sports-like aspects of games. We don’t think everything made with this medium needs to be competitive. There should be room for other types of experiences, other types of challenges.

DF - Your first project according to your site was 8, which remains on hold, could you tell me about the title and why it remains a work in progress?

ToT - “8″ was our first game project, our first project as Tale of Tales. But we had worked on many other projects before “8″, as Entropy8Zuper!.

“8″ was to be a fairly large game that takes place in the palace of Sleeping Beauty, during the spell of sleep. The premise of the story is that the princess of the fairy tale never woke up because the wicked fairy returned and sent 8 false princes into the palace, over several centuries. The goal of the game is to figure out how these false princes broke the spell and correct the situation so that the princess and her court may finally wake up.

At the time, we were not able to raise sufficient funding for the production of “8″. Which became one of the reasons why all of our subsequent projects were much smaller in scope. But we could never let go of the story of 8 and its dreamy world. So we always wanted to return to it in some form or other. In the mean time, we have come up with a plan to create a new game, based on the world of 8 but much less difficult to produce. If all goes well, we will start prototyping this project soon.

Production shot of 8

DF - How complete were you ideas of The Path when you began its development?

ToT - That depends a bit on what you consider to be the beginning of its development.
The idea to make a horror game with Little Red Ridinghood is as old as Tale of Tales itself. But it wasn’t until Creative Capital gave us a grant for the project that we really started working on it. The grant, however, was donated on the basis of a very high-concept description of the project. It took quite a while to get from there to a real design.

But for us the gameplay elements are secondary to the general atmosphere, themes and emotions we want to work with. In that sense, our ideas were quite complete when we started developing. The actual interaction, or even the idea to let go instead of pressing a button, for instance, came only during the development of the first prototype (the one that became a finalist in the Independent Games Festival). And elements such as the map and even the text on screen were added much later, during the play-testing phase of the project.

DF - What came first in your creation of The Path? Little Red Riding Hood or the theme of innocence, and how did one inspire from the other?

ToT - This is actually an interesting question because it betrays certain assumptions that explain how some people approach our work, or even art in general. We don’t make a distinction between the two. Thinking of Little Red Ridinghood implies thinking of innocence. And of all the other themes that the story touches on. That’s the power of narrative.

So when we say, we want to make a game about Little Red Ridinghood, we implicitly mean we want to make a game about innocence, loss of innocence, seduction, guilt, self-destruction, growing, etc. And we don’t choose Little Red Ridoinghood as some kind of metaphor to talk about these themes. We really want to deal with the story. It’s almost like a ritual. The story, telling the story, thinking about it, has value in and of itself, even if it may not directly mean or express anything. It’s like a heart beating or lungs breathing or a tree growing. Stories like that are part of human civilisation like organs are part of a body. That’s what makes them so fascinating.

The Path manages to be both magical and nightmarish in the same breath.

DF - Little Red Riding Hood has been seen in dark forms before, but you emphasize a loss of innocence with a very modern theme, why did you develop The Path along such sexually suggestive lines?

ToT - We tried to stay as close to the story as possible. To look at it from different angles, yes, but only to see more facets of it, not to add meaning. Many versions of Little Red Ridinghood have a lot of sexual symbols in them. Perhaps in our version, these symbols are made a little bit more concrete. But a talking wolf may have been as concrete to people from the middle ages as a creepy young man in a playground is to us.

On the other hand, the experience of loss of innocence as a combination of extreme delight and violent destruction is something that is very personal to us. So to some extent, we probably used The Path to deal with our demons and lick some wounds. To try and make sense of what things that have happened in our own lives.

DF - Why did you break little red riding hood in to six desperate girls for the story?

ToT - Because 144 was too many! We were originally going to name The Path 144, when we fantasized about calling all our games numbers. So we wanted to have 144 different Little Red Ridinghoods. When that turned out to be impractical, we reduced the number to 6. It was fairly arbitrary. Probably motivated by the fact that the number 6 is often used to denote evil (the number 666 being the number of the Antichrist in the Bible).

We liked the idea of playing with girls with different personalities. And we also liked that they had relationships with each other, which makes the experience of the story stronger. It also adds to the ritualistic nature of telling a fairy tale. Many fairy tales have repetitive elements, sometimes it feels like the narrator is chanting. There’s something about rhythm, about repetition that transcends the rational. Doing something repeatedly somehow adds a certain layer of magic to it. Breathing, chanting, praying, playing. We felt that playing the same game six times would deepen the meaning of each individual story and lift the whole to a higher level.

DF - The Graveyard I believe was a side project you started while producing The Path. What motivated the project and its theme?

ToT - The idea of The Graveyard is older than the start of the production of The Path. But it often takes a long time for us to get from idea to production.

There were two high level motivations to our desire to create The Graveyard. One is formal: we wanted to experiment with realtime 3D in combination with minimal interaction, in order to focus on the narrative, the “being there”. The other is content: we want to create a tool that allowed us to investigate a little bit the idea of being old, of living with death nearby. The latter was probably influenced by Michael’s grandmother who was still alive at the time and very old but very lucid and very conscious of her own approaching death. She often talked about her dying and this made a big impression on us. And finally there was the inspiration of a real place, a cemetery in Belgium that Michael often visited as an adolescent in search of solitude and calm. The interesting thing about that place, that we tried to replicate in The Graveyard, is the harmonious coexistence of life and death, with the rows of graves being surround by slightly unkempt plants, flowers and birds and insects. We want to embrace death as part of life, and learn how to live with it. We don’t want to be afraid of death. We don’t want it to make us sad. Because it’s such a normal thing. We want to discover its beauty.

The Graveyard is a poem about both life and death.

DF - What was the impetus behind releasing ‘the full version’ of The Graveyard when it offers such a similar experience to the demo version?

ToT - It was a cheeky gesture for sure. One should not underestimate the humour in our work.

But there was a serious side to it as well: we wanted to ask the question what you pay for when you buy a game. Do we really pay for 150 levels, 26 different kinds of shotguns or 7 races and 14 classes -as the publishers seem to think we do. Or do we pay for an experience? Something to happen to us that would not have happened otherwise. Something that stays with us. That we learn something from.

We also thought that it was very poetic that a difference that is so small, technically (it literally is the difference of checking one checkbox in the game’s code), causes such a huge difference, the biggest contrast imaginable to man: the difference between life and death. The fact that, in The Graveyard, the distinction is so small, is part of its message. Especially because despite of this minuteness, the experience is drastically different. You can know that an old person is going to die, and prepare yourself for it. But every time it happens, it comes as a shock. We wouldn’t want it any other way. And we also don’t want to ignore that experience or pretend that death doesn’t exist. Living life to the fullest includes having an acute awareness of death.

DF - Your latest project Fatale is taking its inspiration from than Oscar Wilde play Salome, that in turn took its inspiration from the biblical tale, what drew you to this story and how clear will its ties be to it religious origins?

ToT - Even in the Bible, the religious aspect of the tale of Salome is rather vague. Its only reason for being in the bible is to explain how John the Baptist died. The whole story is told in a single paragraph. But throughout Christianity, over the ages, the story has continued to pop up in arts and literature. So when Wilde took at as the starting point for his stage play, it wasn’t just the Bible he was thinking of. The story had already gathered a lot of other connotations and associations. Especially the idea of Salome as a femme fatale must have been important to Wilde, considering the ubiquity of this figure in 19th century art and Wilde’s own homosexuality.

We’re always attracted to these old stories. Not because they are old per se, but because they have been part of civilization for so long. Stories like these are like time travellers of which portraits have been made in different time periods. They are so much a part of our culture that it almost feels like each and every Westerner is born with a vague memory of them, as if the story of Salome has somehow become part of our DNA.

There’s many stories like this, of course. And there’s specific reasons why we chose to work with Salome.

First of all, we wanted to do something with the theme of femme fatale. We are interested in the combination of love and destruction that the figure of the femme fatale represents. But we wanted to investigate whether the femme fatale was really as evil as she was portrayed in the 19th century or if there was a part of this character that we could understand, on a human level, and perhaps even sympathize with somehow.

Wilde shows us the passion of Salome. His Salome is not a cool Siren who, unfeelingly, lures men to their deaths, but she is a hot blooded princess who falls in love with the one man who will not, who cannot return her emotions. From Salome’s perspective, John may be seen an “homme fatale”. He casts her into a desperation she can only deal with in a dramatic way. When she asks for the head of her lover, part of her has already died. It’s a sad story, when you look at it this way.

The thing we add to the story in FATALE is a look into the head of the victim. When John was alive, all he cared about was the Messiah. He was a bit of a workaholic and didn’t have time for earthly trivialities like love for a woman. But now that he is dead, things are different. How does this story look through the eyes of a dead man? A person who has all the opportunity in the world to see the facts from many different sides. The idea of this ultimate peace, brought on by death, attracted us.

FATALE is a very different, even for ToT

DF - Fatale’s character designer is Takayoshi Sato, famed for his work on Silent Hill. What began your relationship with him and what did he bring to you creative process?

ToT - Our relationship began with us being fans of his work. Then we interviewed him for our blog and realized that we weren’t wrong. That he was one of very few people in the world who uses 3D modelling as an artform, as a new form of sculpting. It was disappointing to us to see how, after his move to the USA, his talent was not being used where it was most effective, in our opinion. So we wanted very much to show his work in a more optimal context.

When we came up with the idea of FATALE, with the idea of still characters in a style that is more realistic than what we’re used to, we immediately though of him. We shyly asked if he would want to be involved with the project and to our surprise he said yes.

I think his greatest contribution, apart from the sheer beauty of his models/sculptures, is probably the ambiguity of the character of Salome.

Rather than going for the look of a young girl, or that of a grown woman, he came up with a character that was both simultaneously. His Salome could by one of those girls who looks older than she really is and therefore confuses the grown-ups. Her age is hard to gauge and we rely on context to make our assumptions. Maybe she seems mature on the nightly terrace. But imagine her in a Japanese school uniform and she’ll suddenly look like a young teenager.

Her mood is also ambiguous. Sometimes she seems triumphant or even angry, other times she seems melancholy and confused. We really like all these different simultaneous layers.

FATALE is available now from the Tale of Tales site for $7.