Let's talk board game mechanics: Tiles

If you're a fan of European-style board games, like me, you'll no doubt have come across some kind of tile-based game. Carcassonne, Galaxy Trucker, Goblins Inc, Forbidden Island, and so on, are all tile-based games with very different gameplay styles. I'm a fan of them all. Tile games have long since been one of my favourites, largely because the very nature of them guarantees a different game experience every time. Because of the sheer number of possible ways those tiles can be assembled, I'm always facing a different challenge while playing.

But there are a lot of different kinds of tiles. And this is where I am looking for input from you lovely readers. You may or may not be aware that I am currently developing my own tile-based board game. I've been working on it for some time, and have already subjected some very forgiving friends and an even more forgiving boyfriend to an awful lot of playtesting. However, I have recently come to the conclusion that I'm still just not very happy with the way I've done the game tiles. So, here I am looking at different options of what I could do with them that would work for the game.

Option 1: Medium/large-ish tiles with four playable spaces on each tile. This is what is in place at the moment. One of the big features of the game is the ability to move these tiles around - flip them over, rotate them, swap their places. The larger tile size makes this incredibly easy to do.

However, finding the right number of tiles to use for the board is something I'm still struggling with. I have a number of special "action" spaces, which requires the tile to be flipped over once used. I don't like putting more than one of these spaces on a single tile, as it then feels like it will influence where the tile is initially placed in game setup. It also just... looks wrong. This means I end up having what looks like an awful lot of blank space on the board where nothing really happens. I don't like the sheer amount of unused space there is on the board, and I can't really condense it any smaller without having to change a bunch of other mechanics and rules to compensate.

Option 2: Small, single space tiles. This is the option I'm seriously considering. Having each space be its own tile would make it even easier to move pieces around. I wouldn't have to worry about having too many action spaces on a tile, because I could simply add in or take out however many I needed to for balancing. It also means I can make the overall playing space a bit smaller, which is something I think would help in a game where the board will potentially change size and shape during gameplay.

The downsides here are fairly obvious. The biggest one is, of course, that means a LOT more pieces to keep track of. It would be much more expensive to produce, because I would need at least twice as many tiles as in option 1. The pieces would have to be smaller as well, which could potentially turn off players if they feel the tiles are too fiddly. This also would increase set-up time for the game. I initially designed this as a quick, easy to learn board game, and this wouldn't fit that ideal - but then again, since then, the game has wandered a bit from that original intention anyway.

Option 3: Large, multi-space tiles that can be put together in different formations. This would be similar to something like Mansions of Madness, where each room is its own tile, and they are put together to form the board. Something like this would be very quick to set up, would require far less pieces, and can still provide some variety, especially if there are extra pieces which can be swapped out to change things up a bit.

Of course, this kind of set-up would make the moving of tiles very difficult. Rotating wouldn't be too bad, but swapping and flipping could be nightmarish, depending on how many players are on a given tile at the time. With tile manipulation being one of the main features, this would probably not go over well at all.

Option 4: A single, full-size board with a few single space pieces for special tiles. Up straight? I don't want to do this. For a game like Last Night on Earth, which uses this mechanic (kind of), it's fine. It's less expensive to produce a single board with a dozen extra tiles than it is to produce a hundred tiles. It still allows for some random set-up, since the special tile pieces can still be distributed randomly over the board. It makes for far less bits and pieces to potentially get lost.

But it completely removes the essence of the idea, which was to be able to move any tile. I don't want to lose this mechanic, as I feel it links closely to the theme of the game. This single mechanic was why I started the game, and I think removing it would also kill any desire I would have to finish the game. However, because I know it is an option in use in other games, I've included it in my list here.

So there you have it. Four options that I'm most familiar with in the various games I've played. Which would you prefer to play with? Why? Have I missed another option? Please tell me in the comments!

Coding, gaming, and Dara O'Briain

I had the pleasure of going to the Cheltenham Science Festival today to listen to Dara O'Briain talk about coding, gaming, and neuroscience. It was brilliant, and nerdy, and interesting, and informative, and all the other good things one of these things should be.

The session was called Coding the Game, and also featured Alex McLean, Chris Cummings, and Luke Clark. Though it was only an hour long, it covered an awful lot of territory. The topic for most of the first half of the session was purely programming. They talked about how many programmers they used in one of their games, how the hundreds of thousands of lines of code are divided up and then put back together, and how you can follow all the rules of good coding right up until a few weeks before release - and then you're breaking every programming rule in the book just to get the game out and working on time!

The second half of the session looked at neuroscience, and how the brain responds to playing games. This was where I found myself only vaguely aware of the things talked about. Risk and reward systems in games I understand, but how those specifically relate to the dopamine effect was completely new to me. There was some very interesting info here, particularly on how the dopamine effect is just as present when a player nearly fails as it is when they simply succeed. It made me realise that, as a player, I feel a greater sense of achievement when I succeed after nearly failing then I do when I simply win. This is, in turn, something I feel like I could include in my own games quite frequently - but not so frequently that playing the game becomes to tense to continue!

In the last bit of the session, there were some questions which led to a variety of different topics being very briefly touched on. There was talk of women and gaming (which was very well handled, in my opinion), PS4 versus X-Box One, Raspberry Pi, getting into the industry without qualifications, fractals in game development (that one kinda went over my head), and so on. There were several other things discussed, but I can't remember them all off the top of my head.

While some of what I heard I already had guessed at, or already knew, there was a lot that I didn't. I came out of the session feeling more positive about game development in general, and my own hope of eventually working in this industry as well. And I got to hear Dara pop a few well-timed jokes as well. Major win for me!

I hate tombs...

Come on, tell me where that line is from.

Okay, if you don't know, I'll just tell you: the new Tomb Raider game! Which I've played through, beginning to end. Which I completed with 96% completion rate (which is pretty darn good for me, since I'm not usually a must-do-everything kind of gamer). Which I have completely and totally fallen in love with.

I love the character of Lara in this game. She really grows up in this game, and watching the character learn to deal with every new obstacle is enthralling. I was completely caught up in the emotion she experienced when she killed a man for the first time, when her best friend was taken from her, when she shifts from hating tombs to loving the adventure.

I loved the gameplay as well. As I played, I realised just how much of this felt like the mechanics could have come straight out of an Uncharted game. The climbing and jumping around, especially with exotic backgrounds and dizzying heights, felt particularly familiar. Yet, even with the similarities, Tomb Raider was able to maintain its own identity, and still be unique. Probably the most noteworthy point is that Nick Drake gets to run all over the world, escaping to a new location whenever things get dull. Lara is stuck on the island, and so the designers are pressed even harder to make sure even areas that have already been explored are still interesting for players.

And the bow. Oh, I love that bow Lara gets. That has got to be the best damn weapon in the whole game. I'm almost tempted to go back through the game only using the bow, and not the guns (except for areas where it's required to move forward), and see how I do. (Note I said almost. Parts of this game were really hard, and I don't think I'd survive long without the pistol in my hand!)

So, other than one little bug (which was nearly gamebreaking, but thankfully a bug-within-a-bug lets you get past it), I found this to be one of the best games I've played in a long time. It was incredible.

Although, thanks to the other half, I now have his proposed idea in my head: Lara Croft and Nathan Drake in a video game adventure together. Please? Pretty please? Would probably be the best game ever...

Diablo: the game and its comic counterpart

Sometimes I write articles for the Proud Lion blog. Most recently, I wrote an article comparing the five-part comic series based on Diablo, and the popular game that inspired it. To check it out, click me!

You can check out the main blog by clicking me instead!

I need another 24 hours of free time in every day, okay?

March is a very busy month for me this year. Not only do I have medical appointments to keep on top of for my wrist (which is reaching the point where I think it might be easier and less painful to just hack it off, but hey, I'm not the one with a medical degree), but I also have a million other things going. Assignments for my uni course. TableTop Day at the end of the month. (More on that soon.) The board game I want to get done. A brand new game that I'm already itching to play more of (Tomb Raider, anyone?). On top of that, I was supposed to be editing my NaNo novel this month. Big shock, that's not going to happen. Ah well.

And finally, the one thing I added at the last minute and am now starting to think I'm being too ambitious. Edge Magazine is doing their game development competition. They give out a theme, and you make a game using the Unity game engine. In a month. I was all psyched up, thinking that this year I was going to take a shot at it. I wanted to be one of those people submitting a game and hoping against hope of winning. I even had a kick-ass idea, thanks to my lovely other half (who I've decided is going to be my personal game designer, so I can just develop all the awesome ideas he has).

And then I sat down tonight and started looking at how much work I'm going to need to do to make this game a reality. And I realise there's a reason why the competition runners encourage people to work in teams of up to five people. It's because there is just so much to do! Here's my initial list:

• Write a design document
  
• Finish missing elements in the design
  
• Begin coding the gameplay elements
  
• Learn C# so I can code the gameplay elements
  
• Learn the Unity API so I can code at a decent speed
  
• Design the various characters in the game
  
• Create 3D models of the characters, texture them, rig them, and import them into the game engine
  
• Create the various animations needed
  
• Design the levels
  
• Implement the levels
  
• Testing
  

... So, we all see the problem here, right?

It sucks, really. I want so badly to do this. I really, really want to sink my teeth into this and push myself to rise to the challenge. (I know, I know, going back to normal geek language now.) But the fact is, I don't think I can do it all by myself. Certainly not with all the other stuff I have going on this month. Perhaps, if I didn't have work and uni and a family and friends and a life, I might be able to just scrape by and get it all done by April. But I have all those things, and I just don't think I can do it.

Unless somebody has a magic wand that automatically gives me an extra day for every normal day I use to do my normal stuff. Anyone?

And then I irreversibly changed the world. (Part 2)

More thoughts on the ending of Mass Effect 3! Spoilers throughout, so if you don't want to know yet, stop reading here!

Still here? Okay then. Last time I talked about the resolution of the organics vs. synthetics thing, and explained how as far as story logic is concerned, synthesis made the most sense to me. To finish off my thoughts on the whole thing, I'll focus more on Shepard and her (or his) ending, and the reasoning behind it. (I'll warn you, I'm not particularly coherent and rambling quite a bit. Sorry about that.)

Obviously, everything concerning Shepard's choices is completely down to the individual player. My Shepard chose synthesis, and based on how I played, that felt like the right choice. My Shepard was not particularly hell bent on just taking out the Reapers. The "kill it and everything is better" approach didn't fit her choices. She has spent the whole game trying to sort out people's problems, trying to stop the constant battles that get everyone killed. She doesn't naturally think that killing the bad guy makes everything better, and the way I played the game reflected that. With that considered, synthesis is the only option that, for my Shepard, would make for a satisfying end.

As for Shepard's own personal ending? Well. She died. And I know a lot - a lot - of people were unhappy about that. I lost track of the number of people who complained that after all their Shepard had been through, she (or he, but I'll be using "she" from now on) doesn't get her happily ever after. (Apparently there was some kind of tweak made, so that if you chose to destroy the Reapers and you had enough war assets, Shepard survives. I've seen the YouTube video, and to be honest, the whole six seconds you get of someone in N7 armour surrounded by wreckage suddenly gasping for air was not worth playing through four hours of gameplay all over again.)

My response to all the people who complained about Shepard's death is just this: Seriously?? After all the hell she had to deal with, all the deaths she witnessed and even caused, all the physical trauma she went through, and of course her first death when the first Normandy exploded, what did they think was going to happen? The fact that Shepard hadn't descended into a haze of PTSD by that time was remarkable enough. Can you really see Shepard living through the end of the war unscathed? Living a normal life? Actually having a happily ever after?

I can't. Giving Shepard a happily ever after would have, in my opinion, cheapened it. Her getting through it and being able to live on as if it's all behind her diminishes all the choices she had to make. Her death felt right to me. She had already convinced herself she wasn't going to see the other side of this last mission, and she gave up her life to save everybody else's. This, to me, is the perfect bittersweet ending I'm so very fond of. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, that post is here.)

As I said before, this was, in my opinion, the best ending I could have hoped for. Epic, heartbreaking, and satisfying. And the people who slammed it so badly clearly all have something in common: no appreciation for good storytelling in games.

And then I irreversibly changed the world.

I've spent over 40 hours on Mass Effect 3. Here I'm discussing the ending. If you haven't played it yet, or for whatever other reason you don't want it spoiled, you may want to stop reading here.

Oh, okay, you're still here. Well, I'm going to start off by saying I remember when Mass Effect 3 (called ME3 for the rest of this, because it's faster to type) was first released. I remember the absolute hysterics that seemed to be pouring over the internet about the ending. Even now, after playing through it and looking up other possible endings, I find scathing criticism for what some members of the public have declared is nothing more than an ending that got slapped on because the developers ran out of time.

Can I just raise my hand and say "get a grip"?

I loved the ending to this game. I thought the reasoning behind the Reaper invasions made sense in a twisted way, even if there were possibly a couple minor holes in the logic. (If the Catalyst has decided that synthetics always rise up against their creators, why haven't the Reapers yet turned on the Catalyst, who claims to have created them and be in control of them?) I thought it gave the player a thoroughly world-changing choice to make, and I love it when games do that.

However. I am right now going to say I thought my ending of choice - synthesis - was the only one that made any flipping sense to me.

This is how I see it. Control: no brainer here. I've spent over 40 hours of game time telling the Illusive Man that controlling the Reapers is a Really Bad Idea. So why the hell would I change my mind in the last five minutes of the game? Yeah, I wouldn't. Unless my Shepard is completely crazy and changes her mind every five minutes throughout the game. Which mine doesn't. So control, not going to happen.

Destroy: Possible. Destroying the Reapers solves the immediate problem of the Reapers killing everybody. But then of course you have the Catalyst, who has already said if the Reapers stop being a solution, he will have to come up with a new solution. The words "new solution" sound an awful lot like "I'll build new Reapers that are bigger, stronger, and scarier that you won't ever have a hope in hell of defeating". If you look at it that way, defeating the Reapers kind of only delays the inevitable. (Unless of course I have this wrong, but I'm not sure. Does the Catalyst cease to exist if the Reapers are destroyed? What happens to him anyway?)

That leaves synthesis. Ideal solution: stops need for Reapers. Makes every organic part synthetic, and every synthetic part organic. Yes, there will be some truly scary complications from this one. Yes, there are no doubt some nasty consequences that they couldn't possibly predict. But at least they won't have some synthetic overlord liquifying them every 50,000 years, right?

I have more to say, but I think I will have to do another post tomorrow to finish my thoughts.

Last night I killed 305,000 people

What? No, of course I don't mean real people! I'm talking about video game people, of course.

Last night I played the Arrival DLC for Mass Effect 2. So if you haven't played through the end of ME2 or the Arrival DLC, this post will contain spoilers you may want to avoid. (Well, there's already a spoiler in the title. So. Sorry.)

Arrival is all about finding Dr Kenson, who has discovered proof of the coming Reaper invasion, courtesy of a massive Reaper artifact they found in an asteroid. The only way to stop the Reaper invasion from arriving in all of two days' time is to use the asteroid to destroy the mass relay in that system. Which, you know, will destroy the entire system and kill everyone in it. About 305,000 people all told. And guess who gets to make that happen?

Unsurprisingly, this is not one of those things where you can choose not to do it. Whatever happens, Shepherd will destroy the mass relay. Which makes sense, because this kind of massive decision would have an equally massive impact on the third game. But it's still difficult watching it happen. My Shepherd is not the kind of commander to throw away that many lives without serious circumstances proving it's the better option.

But it's not a choice. And while Shepherd has the reasoning that slowing the Reapers down has saved trillions of lives in comparison to the 305,000 that were sacrificed, the consequences are going to be hell for her.

Damn good game.

The Cave: Awesome

I got to play through an awesome new game called The Cave. It's on just about every platform out there, so chances are good you'll be able to play it no matter what tech you've got. And you should. Because it's awesome. (Note: This post is, I believe, spoiler-free.)

You choose three of seven possible characters who have to navigate their way through the puzzle-filled cave. Each character has a special ability and a backstory which you can learn over the course of the game. These special abilities allow you to solve various puzzles and get past obstacles in different ways. Admittedly I found some abilities more useful than others, but that could be entirely down to my playstyle rather than a reflection on the design.

Some of the levels are standard, and must be completed regardless of who you choose to go with you. However, half the levels in your game are specific to the characters you have chosen. For example, I chose the Adventurer, the Knight, and the Twins. Each of them had their own level in the cave that could only be solved by that character, and further explained their backstory.

The gameplay is great, the graphics are great, the stories for the characters are great. I've played through it once, and the boyfriend has played through it once. It's definitely a game that encourages people to play it multiple times though, and I have no doubt I will be doing so soon.

... But I'm still taking the Twins on my next adventure. They are awesome and creepy at the same time. Really. Definitely my favourite character(s).

Well? Go play it! Go!

Must play more game!

I started Mass Effect 2 a long time ago. So long ago that I had forgotten pretty much every mission I had done, and had all but forgotten the new characters (Miranda? Miranda who?). So naturally, when I went to pick it up again last week, I had a bit of catching up to do.

As of tonight, I have put in a hell of a lot of time into this game. I got back up to speed as quick as I could and started doing missions left and right. I fell in love with the characters, especially my Shepard, and I'm finding it very, very difficult to put it away most nights.

Thing is, there is simply so much content that I still have loads to go. I have no doubt that I will not be finishing it before the end of the weekend, and I've already clocked over 33 hours. It thrills me that I've gotten so much gameplay out of a game I bought for all of a few quid in a Steam sale last year.

It also terrifies me. Developing games is one of my "biggie" dreams, one of those that I'm shooting for while holding on to the knowledge that I might never get there. But this is the kind of thing I want to make. Games that keep people going for hours and hours, with characters that literally make you punch your fist in the air, rip out your hair, laugh out loud, and cry. Looking at something like ME2, which took an enormous number of people an enormous amount of time, it makes my little game projects look incredibly small.

But hey. We all gotta start somewhere.

LCG Day

Yesterday was LCG Day at Proud Lion! For those of you unfamiliar with what that means, an LCG is a Living Card Game. That is essentially a collectable card game, but everyone gets the same cards - no nonsense of buying a dozen booster packs in the hope of getting that one killer card, like in other custom card games (Magic, I'm looking at you!). Because everyone gets the same cards, everyone is on even footing. It makes for a much more satisfying game that way.

It was a good day, with games running most of the day. The games played were Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and Netrunner. I had a chance to play the Star Wars LCG for the first time, and loved it. I even won! Although I still maintain it was down to lucky cards and the generosity of my opposing player / teacher.

I get the feeling the Star Wars game will be creeping into our personal game collection at some point in the future. I also can see me eventually giving in to my desire to try the Game of Thrones LCG while I'm at it!

Just the hints you need

This is going to be short. I just want to share a resource that should be in every game-player's favourites list. It's called the Universal Hint System.

Quite often if a player gets completely stuck in a game, they will look to a walkthrough to get them unstuck. Problem is, most game walkthroughs tell you more than you want or need to know. They can spoil game events when all you need is the clue to one puzzle. They also take all the joy out of figuring things out, as they tell you flat out what to do, and in what order.

This is where the UHS is different. The UHS allows you to look up specific sections of the game, preventing you from reading things you haven't done yet by mistake (though its awfully tempting to read ahead anyway!). Once you've found the part you're having trouble with, you are given a series of hints. They start off very general, and gradually become more specific. You decide how many hints you need to figure it out. And if you still are struggling, the very last hint is actually the answer, written plainly.

The beauty of this is that it can sometimes give you just enough of a push in the right direction to figure out a puzzle or strategy point, without totally removing the joy of discovery. I've been using it for years, and as a gamer, I find it sometimes invaluable.

The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition

I finished it! Okay, truth be told, I got slightly impatient and stuck in places, and ended up using hints to get me through for some things (which felt slightly obscure to me, but may have just been me being tired). Either way, I finished it, and playing through it has given me some very definite ideas on how to build my own point-and-click games.

I liked the exploration elements, and trying to find things on the world map was, for the most part, fun. I struggled slightly with the Monkey Island map, purely because the areas you could go to were not very clearly marked, which meant I missed some locations entirely until I googled for help. In particular, that monkey that you feed bananas to so he'll follow you? I had no idea he was there.

Related to that is the general art style. I will admit, it was lovely to look at. The graphics were very nicely done. Except, you know, that the graphics were so nicely done it was particularly difficult to figure out what I could click on. Granted, I played it on the iPad, so I didn't have a cursor to scan over things and see what could be clicked. The result of that was that I spent a good amount of time randomly tapping the screen just to see what I could interact with, and I still missed a lot. I think a big difference could have been made if there had been some way to see what objects are scenery, and what objects can be interacted with.

My final issue comes down to the sheer number of actions you can do. The entire bottom strip of the screen is devoted entirely to actions. I discovered that of the ten icons at the bottom of the screen, I used four regularly. Some I used only a couple times when a puzzle required it, such as the push/pull and speak actions. Some I never, ever used at all (open / close, I'm looking at you!). I know some of this is down to the age of the game, and at the time of its release, that kind of gameplay was not unusual. However, since everything else in the game has been updated, I can't help but feel it could have done with a bit of a cut down. A majority of the action buttons could have easily been reduced into a single "interact" action icon.

Even with those points in mind, Monkey Island is a good game. It's a classic in the point and click genre of games, and I would be foolish not to take some inspiration from it.

It's research, I swear!

I mentioned that the boyfriend and I are looking at making a point and click adventure game. What's the first logical thing to do in this situation? Research, of course!

So I downloaded and starting playing Monkey Island, which I've never played before. Because I need to have knowledge and experience in this genre by going through the classics. Which totally counts as research, right?

Right?

(If this is right, surely that means Broken Sword will also count as necessary research...)

The Walking Dead video game

It amazes me that, despite professing myself to be a non-zombie fan, I have become keenly interested in two different video games focused around them. Zombiu, as I've mentioned previously, is one that I've enjoyed watching, and decided to stop playing. The other zombie game the other half has been playing, and I've been watching, is The Walking Dead video game.

I'll admit, I don't watch the show. It's not that I have anything against it, but more just that it doesn't really interest me. So it surprised me considerably when I overheard my partner playing it on his laptop, and I started wondering what would happen next. It didn't take long for me to start glancing over at the screen while he was playing.

By the next day, I gave up all semblance of having nothing more than mild curiosity. He took out the laptop to play, and I came right over next to him to watch over his shoulder.

I love the characters, even the ones that make you want to scream. I love how the game focuses on what the main character chooses to do in tough situations, and the harsh decisions he has to make. I love how his actions, chosen by the player, have such a dramatic impact on what happens later. And I loved that while the zombies were an ever present threat, the game was not about wandering out with a bunch of guns and killing everything that moves (or stumbles).

Even better was that parts of the game left me in tears. Quite often the emotional tone was just right, so on that level, it doesn't surprise me I got so drawn in. There were particular parts of the game that were harsh enough that I definitely am happier watching the boyfriend play than playing it myself. However, I have a nasty suspicion that when the next "season" is released, I'll be planting myself over his shoulder again to see what's happened to the ones that survived this time.

Insta-plot!

So the other half and I were talking about how much we like point and click games, and how we wouldn't mind making one at some point, drawing inspiration from various other games, both classic and recent. One of the most important parts of a point and click game is having a good story.

I was a bit stuck, knowing I wanted to make something, but not knowing what. The best idea I could come up with was a game which started with a run-of-the-mill, completely unoriginal spaceship crash. Beyond that? I didn't know what to do with it.

Enter my other half. In a matter of minutes, he turned the unoriginal spaceship crash into a creative story with an interesting plot and loads of points to expand upon. It's like his brain comes with an insta-plot upgrade that I don't have.

It's awesome. He's awesome. And I'm now uber excited about working with him on this story and making it into something fun in the (hopefully) near future.

Why I won't be playing ZombiU anymore...

(Warning: This post contains mild spoilers. If you're playing ZombiU and would rather not know what's coming, come back and read this once you've finished.

Lately my other half has been playing ZombiU, the new survival horror zombie game for the equally new Wii U. He's been loving it, and truth be told, I've been rather enjoying watching it. There are not a lot of games where spectating is as interesting as playing, but with the incredible amount of tension in this game, it actually works.

Now I am not usually a survival horror zombie game type of girl. I like my RPGs, card and board games, puzzles, point-and-click, and so on. I have an overactive imagination, the stress of survival games makes me tense, and I'm just not a fan of zombies. So I was quite surprised at my own decision to start playing my own game of ZombiU after a few days.

I quickly realised that watching someone play it is tense enough - and that when playing myself, I was even more tense. So tense that it was actually making me quite nervous to play, and even though I was greatly enjoying it as a game, I couldn't bring myself to look at it for more than an hour at a time, and usually with a day in between to break it up a bit.

Of course, my partner is not so easily frightened as me, and got a massive head start on me as well. Fast forward to the section he was working on last night. Looking for something for a quest... in a children's nursery.

Yeah, I'm not cool with that.

I'm not saying it's a bad design choice. I have no problem with the developers including a section where a nursery has been overrun and the teachers all turned. (Side note: there are no kid zombies. I am exceptionally glad of this.) It's just that it's so. Damn. Creepy! Add to that the freaky ghost zombie who you have to "kill" three times, and even then doesn't give the impression it's down for good? Eep!

So yeah. I watched him play that section, both of us getting a bit freaked out by the very well designed sound effects and environment, and me deciding that watching this level is bad enough. I do not have the will to sit through that section again, let alone play it myself. And since it's part of the storyline, I can't just avoid it.

So although I'm finding ZombiU to be an awesome game, it is one I will have to sadly set aside for myself. (But it's okay, my other half is still playing. And he's also decided he doesn't want to go back to the nursery anytime sooner than he absolutely has to.)

NaNoPrep!

I've had far too much to do lately. Between getting addicted to enthusiastic about Borderlands and all it's DLC, learning the ins and outs of Unity, job searching, organising various appointments, and reading, I've also started doing all sorts of prep work for this year's NaNo. Because it starts in two weeks time.

Eep! *scrambles to get everything ready before November 1st*

I've mentioned before how much I love NaNo. I still love it. And I love being one of the MLs (Municipal Liaisons) for my region, because it means I get to help other people achieve their goal of writing 50k words in one month. I get to cheer them on when they're doing well, I get to prod their imaginations if they get stuck, and I get to push them to do just that little bit more to get to the end. And I get to sit in various coffee shops and pubs while eating loads of chocolate all in the name of this mad writing frenzy.

Of course, while doing all of that, I also have to write my own 50k novel. Right. Okay. I can find the time for all of it, right?

I certainly hope so. For the moment, I have some more ML prep work to do. Let's see if my time management skills have improved since last year, shall we?

Us v. Borderlands

(For reference, this is about the first Borderlands game, not Borderlands 2!)

As may be apparent from my posts, I'm not usually a FPS kind of player. I have a weakness for shooting games in traditional arcades, but on the computer, or a home console? Not so much. Which is why Borderlands is such a surprise for me.

I've played through a good chunk of the game before, with some friends. I did actually enjoy it, though my unfamiliarity with the controls and the general play style meant I wasn't anywhere near as good a player as the others! However, a tech issue meant one of them lost all their character data. We just didn't have the heart to start the game over again at the time, especially since we were waiting for other games to come out that we could play together (Guild Wars 2 anyone?).

Fast forward to now, when I've started playing it again, but this time with the boyfriend. It's been an interesting experience, to say the least. In the beginning, we found it very, very hard. We couldn't seem to find enough jobs that were the right level, the missions themselves had us dying several times, and for me, getting to grip with the controls was really, really difficult (I'm not great with a PS3 controller). Then we came across Bone Head. We spent a total of at least an hour, maybe two, on that one lousy boss. We spent the whole of that time getting killed again and again and again and again and... Well, you get the idea.

Basically, it boiled down to being absolutely no fun at all. We were miserable, annoyed, and about an inch shy of throwing our controllers at the TV (okay, maybe that was just me). So we looked it up online in the hopes of getting some help, and the best thing we found was a way to kill the stupid boss from town, of all places. We jumped up onto a high rock in town, peeked over the wall into Bone Head's compound, and took him down from there. Normally defeating a tough enemy leads to a good feeling of accomplishment. This one just left us angry. How on earth would we make it through the rest of the game, when we couldn't even defeat one boss in the first few hours of gameplay?*

But we didn't stop playing. I'm not really sure why, but the next night, we fired the game up again. We picked up every mission we could get, even if it was far above our level. We started with the lowest, and picked our way through every skagg, every bandit, that dared to walk in front of us. (Having a rocket launcher vehicle helped a great deal in surviving all of that!)

Now, amazingly, after finishing another two sessions of play, we've found that the game has become fun again. While there have been some tough areas, and a handful of times when we both died repeatedly before finally getting through a mission, we are enjoying the game. We've not had another Bone Head incident. As a bonus, we've actually reached the point where we are slightly higher level than the missions recommend, as opposed to much lower. For whatever reason, the game is far more fun once you've actually gotten past level 10. I can't help but wonder if the second Borderlands game has rectified this. Whereas a week ago I wouldn't have dreamed of playing the second one, I now find myself wondering if it will appear in any sales over the holiday season...

* From what I understand, Bone Head is one of two bosses that are seriously overpowered in this game. You'd have thought the beta testers would have picked that up after dying the hundredth time, right?

Are you still playing Diablo 3?

A lot of people have been asking this question. Diablo 3 was meant to be Blizzard's big smash of a game for this year, the third instalment of an incredibly successful series. It was meant to be a game that would be constantly replayable, and have people happily prowling its dungeons for years. And yet, it's becoming more and more obvious that, somewhere along the ten year development road, Blizzard messed up. The number of people still playing Diablo 3 is nowhere near the number of sales it had, and I think I can pick out at least a few reasons why.

Number one: no offline mode. I mentioned this in my previous Diablo post, about how you must be online to play the game at all, no other option. I was not the only one irritated by this. A lot of other people complained, and it proved to be a huge downfall for both Blizzard and the players (particularly as being required to be online to play was not advertised before hand, as far as I'm aware). I think I know why they've done it this way - to facilitate the Auction House - but it sure sucks. My opinion? You should have been able to play offline whenever you like, but the moment you try to connect to the Auction House to buy / sell things, THEN require the internet to upload your character info to their servers. Would that have been so difficult? Really?

Number two: difficulty. The difference in difficulty between normal mode and nightmare is apparently incredibly vast. A lot of cynics out there think the reason for this is to encourage people to spend money in the Auction House for better gear. I, unfortunately, also believe this. There is absolutely no reason to make a portion of the game so difficult that any equipment you find in that section is too weak for you to survive through it, unless you intend to make money off of people by making them buy better gear with real money. If this was not the intention, why not make the difficulty of the levels in line with the gear you get from those same levels? I've not yet gotten past normal mode, but already I'm dreading it.

Number three: the patches. The focus of this game used to be on finding the coolest items you can. That was always the joy I had, in finding something unique, or the last piece of that armour set, or a weapon that makes all the enemies turn into blood splatters the minute you walk into the dungeon. However, there have been patches to this game that have, effectively, pushed the game away from that idea. Patch 1.0.3 is the worst offender. A great deal of the numbers that handled when, what kind, and how much loot is dropped have been reduced, making it far more difficult to acquire items of worth unless you spend hours and hours of time in the hope of picking up ONE good weapon or armour piece. In addition, things in the game environment which used to drop items (such as barrels and other destructible objects) no longer drop them at all, and in fact will rarely even drop gold. The direct result of this? I no longer bother to destroy the hundreds of barrels / urns / various other destructible things in the environment. I walk right past them, because I know there's nothing of value in them. They have effectively become unnecessary clutter. And why has that been done, one might ask? Give you one guess.

I can't help but notice a theme here. Every problem I have with this game so far has been directly connected to Blizzard's insistence on including that bloody Auction House. It feels like they are sacrificing good game content in the hopes of scraping money out of the bottom of their players' barrels. Oh wait, except barrels don't have anything in them any more, do they?

So here's my plan. I'm going to continue to play my current character until I finish the normal difficulty. (We won't even get into the long rant about how I had to scratch my level 36 monk and start over because they also killed attack speed by 50% in a single patch, and my monk could no longer hit things fast enough to kill them before being killed herself.) Once I've beaten the game on normal, it's going to get put away. I refuse to spend my money in the Auction House. I refuse to so much as look at it, because I see it as a waste of time, money, and resources. Perhaps I'm being stubborn here. Or perhaps Blizzard will realise how badly they messed up when their players get tired of everything they loved about this series being stripped away.