Demo Driver 8: The Night of the Rabbit (#181)
You said it was night, but this looks pretty much like day to me.
I’ve never felt wholly comfortable mocking point-and-click adventure games. I’m fine sharing my thoughts on the genre as a whole, but the thing is that most of them come across as almost unbearably earnest. They sustain themselves almost wholly on presentation by writing and art. Critiquing the gameplay is an easy shot, and while it’s a worthwhile topic of discussion, it doesn’t change the fact that the game in question is essentially coming to you hat in hand while asking you to be a mildly interactive participant in what comes down to a storytelling session.
At the same time, this is a genre that has some pretty significant problems as a result, so I don’t feel that it’s fair to just leave off mentions of the nature of point-and-click adventure games. They’re not quite as much a non-game experience as the dreaded “Walk Around and Stare” genre, but you’re still stuck clicking about and hoping to have an impact. So you can imagine that I’ve got some conflicted feelings about The Night of the Rabbit right out of the gate.
Telling Stories: Roleplaying and character pets
If you know me, you know that I’m a pet person. To be very specific, I’m a cat person most of the time, but I’ve got a deep and abiding affection for animals of all sorts. Having pets is a big deal to me, and I don’t feel nearly as happy without a few of them in my home. Which says something about me right off the bat, just like the fact that I have two cats mewing their way through my home says something different about me than if I had two dogs or two birds or two ferrets.
Pets are one of those character traits that we don’t tend to think about when it comes to roleplaying. It’s kind of understandable why; we dote on our pets in real life, but unless you have a particularly unusual one we don’t really focus on our critters. But a pet says a lot about you as a person, and there’s every reason why your character’s pets or lack thereof can be a major character element. Read More…
Final Fantasy VII And The Great Big Undeserved Credit
I wonder how many people have sat down and seriously thought about the fact that this image stops being relevant less than ten hours into the game.
So today I got just a little bit angry when I posted on Facebook. Nothing wrong with that, exactly; it happens a lot. Specifically, I said that anyone who claims that Final Fantasy VII is the best thing Square has produced over the past fourteen years is either an asshole or a liar.
I meant it, too.
And the thing is, as soon as I said it, I knew that there was more to say. Because I didn’t say that FFVII is a bad game (it’s not), I didn’t say that it shouldn’t be your favorite game (I don’t care), I didn’t even say that it was the worst thing. But after reading yet another comment about how Square peaked in 1997, something in me finally snapped. I’ve been watching this happen around every subsequent Final Fantasy title after the polygonal lens-flare-festival that pioneered the concept of a multi-disc game on the PlayStation, and it’s gone from being mildly odd to being downright stupid.
Like Rogues?
“Who am I? What am I doing down here? No time for all of that, there’s a giant spider here that somehow has escaped killing up to this point!”
As I survey yet another evening in which I’ve tried and failed to get into what has become a time-honored staple of computer RPGs, I’m forced to admit a conclusion: I don’t like roguelikes.
I’ve tried. Really, I’ve tried, time and again. I tried with Diablo. I tried with Torchlight. I tried with Moria, I tried with countless games that I can’t recall the name of, and most recently I tried with Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. And I’m almost certainly going to try again, because this is a big part of computer roleplaying games, part of the tradition that’s given birth to some of the best games out there. But every single time I wind up losing interest really fast, no matter how intently I’m trying to keep myself focused on the relentless process of killing random monsters to get shinies in a randomly-crafted dungeon.
Actually, I think that’s the part that gets me. The games are nothing but meat.
Cataclysm Does Not Redeem
The Stormwind Full Employment Act remains in force.
So I’ve had a fair chunk of time to play with Cataclysm. Maybe you’ve heard of it. And if I’m going to start using my own blog again (and I am), ranting about it seems like a good place to kick off.
‘Cause there’s a lot to rant about, but it all comes back to the same point: this expansion has really not fixed anything.
Yes, the talent trees have been streamlined. No more having to look elsewhere for talent builds! Largely because the trees have been pared down so far that it’s not possible to screw up. Your choices come down to maybe a half-dozen points to put in situationally useful spots. Or you can choose which of two functionally identical playstyles you prefer, which really comes down to one sharp pointy thing or two. Yay.
Recent Work
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
Chocobo Dash
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
Eliot Lefebvre 