Demo Driver 8: Splice
On the one hand, I appreciate that we have arrived at a point wherein a game that would not do well with any plot doesn’t feel the need to engage in even an excuse plot. On the other hand, I’m annoyed that a game can’t be bothered to even give me an excuse plot, so perhaps I’m just messed up.
When I was younger, I had a book report to write about a book that I didn’t particularly care about. The one trick I hat was, well, an array of literary tricks. So I used them. I dove into my big bag of stylistic obfuscation and went nuts, dropping every bit of didactic deception into the requirements as I could. By the end, I had four pages or so of book report consisting of a paragraph of information and a whole lot of flourish.
My teacher gave it back to me with a note that I had written something which served as the ultimate triumph of style over substance. I think Splice would have given it a run for its money, though.
Splice, by the broadest definition, is a puzzle game. By a more practical definition, it’s really a game of stylistic clicking that doesn’t mar the experience with things so superfluous as narrative or feelings or even meaning. It’s a bit of distracted clicking. But it’s very pretty and soothing clicking, which is probably worth something, even so.
Telling Stories: Only a little time
In an ideal world, you would have all the time you want for roleplaying and work. And whatever other hobbies you have, too. Skateboarding, maybe. But reality doesn’t work that way. You have a limited amount of time in a given week, and with enough demands on that time it becomes really hard to also work in 2-3 hours of roleplaying on one night. Let alone on multiple nights.
Your options are simple. Find more time to roleplay, or get better at making roleplaying work without a whole lot of time. If you’ve attempted and missed out on the former, well, time to fall back on the latter. How can you do more with less time?
The simple answer is that it’s tricky, but it is doable. What follows are the best tips that I have for making sure that you still get involved in roleplaying even if you aren’t able to go for marathon sessions on a regular basis, or even if you’re just a bit shy on time for a given week.
Horrific asides
You wouldn’t think this would even register as scary in a game where you fight a space dragon in a world of lava, but here we are.
I loved the Wrecked Ship in Super Metroid. Honestly, I loved the whole game, so in many ways that’s not terribly interesting, but the Wrecked Ship in particular stood out in my mind. Yes, it was clearly a part of Zebes, but it was also this strange interloper, an alien element unconnected to the larger plot. I remember exploring it before it was powered on, then again after it had regained its power, at once intrigued and confused as to its ultimate purpose.
Super Metroid, of course, is not a horror game. But it’s also not the only game that makes use of horrific asides.
A horrific aside is a segment in an otherwise non-horror game that inserts a few elements of horror into play, whether you were or weren’t expecting it. When done right, it breaks up the flow of the game without being jarring, giving a sense that the player is more vulnerable than previously thought, mixing in shades of fear without making the whole game an exercise in terror. Sometimes, it’s even more scary and memorable than when the whole game is focused around the horror.
The Final Fantasy Project: Final Fantasy IV, part 10
Artwork from a sketch by Yoshitaka Amano
After a brief stop at the Dwarven Castle to drop things off with the fattest possible chocobo, it’s time to head to the Feymarch! To do that, I’m sure we’ll have to penetrate a cunning illusion that hides this mystical land, surely secreted away from mortal voyagers, kept behind a veil of – oh, we just fly due west for a couple of minutes and then land on an island.
I suppose this at least answers the question of how Rydia got underground to save the party before, although how she crossed all of that lava is a different question. Maybe she’s a really good jumper.
The Passage of the Eidolons looks a lot like the Sylph Cave but with its colors swapped; to its credit, that actually feels very different and ominous. Lots of hard-hitting enemies in here, but that’s to be expected, since we’re not supposed to actually be here until later in the game. (Probably. Sidequests, you know how they go.) At least we no longer have to deal with Malboros and constant Sleep effects, although the Confusion that can be tossed around is pretty annoying.
Hard Project: Hellboy
Actually Ron Perlman.
I have given up on explaining certain franchises to people without them sounding really weird. This doesn’t bother me, exactly, but it’s in the back of my mind, so these days I think I wind up actively looking for stuff that sounds either impossible to parse, bizarre, or just plain stupid when described in the abstract. Like Hellboy, which is about a friendly demon who punches secret Nazis and folklore horror figures in the face with the key to ending the world.
Okay, all right, the 90s were a different time for all of us, especially when it comes to comics. And despite his decade of origin and those scant details, the eponymous Hellboy is not a snarling antihero, having a demeanor closer to Detective Lenny Briscoe of Law & Order – wearied, a bit gruff, but mostly concerned with doing the right thing and helping people. Yet for all the fun of the very concept, for some reason the dude’s only got two games, both of which were horrible. Why’d that happen?
Recent Work
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Chocobo Dash
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Eliot Lefebvre 