Demo Driver 8: Tomb Raider: Underworld (#148)
Nyan nyan nyan etc.
I have said in the past that prior to the reboot, I’ve never had much interest in tombs or the raiding thereof. I’m aware that a lot of people do like the franchise and it has things to recommend it; I’m also aware that it tends to be buggy and filled with somewhat dodgy play control, coupled with a lead character that’s long jumped back and forth between cheesecake titillation and being a remarkably confident and self-assured lady in charge. It was, as a whole, something I could live without.
Tomb Raider: Underworld is sort of the immediate precursor to the reboot, so in some ways it’s kind of similar and in others it’s completely different. It’s an interesting peak at what was the apex of the original design progression (even if it was itself part of a rebooted series), as well as a look at why the franchise needed to be rebooted again a few scant years later. As an actual game… well, that’s another story.
Telling Stories: Fueling the maze-builders
Two weeks ago, I put forth what I think is a fairly simple philosophy for getting storylines moving in games – I don’t build the story. I just lay out tools, and the other people involved happily build the maze themselves with a minimum of prompting from me. I’m proud of the article and think it’s pretty completely on-point. What I didn’t go into depth about was how you do that.
Sure, it’s all well and good to say you assemble tools, but I’m willing to bed that if you put some lumber and some tools in the yard and then hide, you will not find people coming by just to build you a shed.
A lot of it comes down to tricks that work during tabletop roleplaying and are easily ported to roleplaying arcs just as easily, with a few added tricks brought on by the nature of the beast. So once you’ve got a plan in mind, it’s time to start putting your tools in place and using them to let players assemble a maze you never even had to sculpt.
Challenge Accepted: Being better than you were
Not this kind of growth. This is different.
For the past decade or so, the term “RPG elements” has been thrown around frequently and with such fervor that you could be forgiven for assuming it’s the official brand of ball used by Major League Baseball. Really, what it means is that games have discovered and embraced character growth, the idea that the loser you’re playing in the first level will be able to flick battleships away with a minor hand gesture by the end of the game. Upgrade, improve, level up, get better stuff, leave the worst stuff behind.
Character growth is something that I could honestly spend months talking about, period, as well as discussing how growth ties into rewards (which I have talked about) and the many sorts of growth that are out there (which I haven’t, but I should in the future). But this is a feature all about challenges, and the fact of the matter is that character growth is kind of a bastard for challenges. Because you have to take it into account, and yet at the same time you can’t predict how players are going to use it in the slightest.
The Final Fantasy Project: Final Fantasy IV, part 3
Artwork from a sketch by Yoshitaka Amano
Tellah’s left the party, but in his place, we have Edward. You know, the character who has long been seen as so catastrophically useless that his very uselessness is seen as a punchline. In other words, the game continues to be Cecil and his Amazingly Unhelpful Companions, right down to the fact that Edward joins at a remarkably low level and is thus outpaced by a child in overall progression. Then again, it’s not like he was lining up for battle before his home was assaulted, so I suppose it’s not really his fault.
A bit of grinding is advisable, helped substantially by the fact that the ruins of the castle still contain HP and MP restoration springs for free. Despite that, the world map outside of the castle is home to enemies that shan’t help substantially; it’s better to try and get in a bit of level buffing via the Antlion’s Den. That means hopping on Edward’s complimentary royal hovercraft and taking a ride over rocks and shoals to the northeast. It’s a fairly short trip.
Timing your purchase
Re-buy these games, only in the exclusive versions that we didn’t give you the option to buy before and that only exist because so many people bought the original version!
Video games are the only product I can think of that make when you buy as important as how you buy. Sometimes even massively so.
In the earliest days, of course, there was no difference whatsoever. You bought the game when it was on the shelves, just like other stuff. Considering the time, you were walking over to the shelves across a field of shag carpeting while proclaiming loudly to everyone in earshot that your current fashion statement wouldn’t make you look like an argument against the concept of clothes in thirty years, but it was 1978. You could hardly be held responsible for that.
Eventually, some bright spark had an idea. I’m going to assume it was a lady named Judy Gamespot. She figured there was no reason not to just sell the games before they came out if you already knew they were coming out. Other industries had been doing it, it was no great stunt to say that you wanted to buy the next issue of X-Men before it was actually out. Why not let consumers do the same with games if you already know they’re coming out?
Recent Work
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Chocobo Dash
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Eliot Lefebvre 