Challenge Accepted: Meta challenges
I just can’t stand being told I’m a horrible person too many times in a single day.
As long as we’re talking about challenge, we have to also talk about the things which create more challenge that aren’t a function of any part of game design. They’re not elements of poor design, they’re not fake difficulty, they don’t fall under the header of things that appear to be challenges but really aren’t. Yet they’re still challenging, and they can still knock you flat on your rear just as surely as a genuinely challenging bit of content will.
This is a collection of what I call meta challenges, challenges that are very much there but also have little to nothing to do with the actual challenge level of the game. None of them are coded into the game, but all of them are elements that make playthroughs more difficult, often stalling players entirely despite the fact that they’re obviously not a part of the core experience. Some of them brush up against fake difficulty in a few places, but all of them are still distinct from it by not providing a challenge to every player, just some players.
The Final Fantasy Project: Final Fantasy IV, part 7
Artwork from a sketch by Yoshitaka Amano
Apparently, collecting all of the Crystals will open the path to the moon, which Golbez thinks is super important. Kain also has the Magma Stone, which he’s sure can be used to enter the Underworld, although he’s not sure how or when or why or any of that stuff. That’s some real good thinking there, Kain. Cid is undeterred, however, claiming the group can just fly around on the Enterprise until they find the right place.
I would have thought the Enterprise got destroyed when the Tower of Zot collapsed, but apparently it has a plot-specific autopilot that brought it back to Baron.
Everyone goes to sleep for the night, I assume in the same bed, and then it’s off to find the next place we have to go. Of course, if you’d already explored and found the town where everyone is apparently part dwarf, you can probably piece together what you have to do next. Time for a quick restock and then a trip to a weird little village with a pit!
That’s not really scary
I’ve heard very good things about this game and pray it does not disappoint me.
It’s Halloween! By which of course I mean it is October, which might as well be a solid month of Halloween for all I care. I say this while also having a wedding anniversary and a professional anniversary in October. Halloween all day every day, from October 1st to October 31st. Possibly a bit further in either direction, too. I like Halloween a lot is what I’m getting at.
But as I settle in for another annual trip through every horror-themed movie, game, and novel I can find that I had held back for October, I know I’m going to run into some of the same stupid and tired crap that I find every single year. There’s a reason that for a long while I disliked horror in general and survival horror in games, and it was simply a result of getting so accustomed to crappy half-baked non-horror stuff that gets shoved along with it that I sort of tuned the whole thing out as terrible. I’m better now, but let’s be frank – what’s following is not really scary.
Demo Driver 8: System Protocol One
Not one of the more interesting layouts, but those are kind of impossible to show in a two-dimensional image.
It’s kind of neat how tower defense games, as a genre, have reached a point where they have two distinct sub-genres as a bare minimum. All of them have the same core elements – enemies come from point A and move to point B, make that as difficult as possible for them – but in some games, the path is already laid out. Your job is to place your towers at the right points for optimum damage, as seen in games like Defender’s Quest (which is excellent). Others ask you to build the path, walling your enemies in and creating the most circuitous possible route through walls of cannon fire.
System Protocol One is of the latter variety. I used to think it was my preferred sort of tower defense game, but time has cooled that particular bit of ardor. I wouldn’t say it’s bad by any stretch of the imagination, and it definitely hits the notes it’s aiming for, but I suspect a good portion of my affection comes down to my usual love of anything involving tower defense. Still, it’s an entertaining enough way to spend some time clicking away, so doesn’t that fulfill its purposes?
The Final Fantasy Project: Final Fantasy IV, part 6
Artwork from a sketch by Yoshitaka Amano
While we’ve already had to ditch all of our metallic equipment (i.e. most of the good equipment we’ve got) just to approach the stupid dungeon, there’s one more hoop to jump through – reaching it. That means a trip way to the north to pick up a chocobo capable of crossing rivers, something that’s only vaguely hinted at by the game. It’s easy to miss the very existence of these chocobo forests, so that doesn’t help matter. And, unfortunately, there’s no way to just bring the airship up to the darn thing…
Anyhow. The net upside is that you have to catch a Black Chocobo, which will allow you to fly over, land in the forest, and then get moving. No idea how we’re getting back, but that’s how these things go. Tellah and Yang are quite confident that this cave shouldn’t pose a problem despite the fact that the other half of the party does, in fact, make use of metallic stuff. Also, there’s the fact that Tellah barely has enough MP to sustain casting for long. Also, Yang is kind of terrible. Neither of them thought this plan out at all.
Recent Work
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Chocobo Dash
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Eliot Lefebvre 