Need More Time.. Oh Wait!

Over the last week I’ve added yet more to my list of unplayed games.  I would normally say “I need more time”.. but I’ve now finished work, and it’s Christmas!  Though I’ll soon have to start on some projects, it means I do have a lot more free time 🙂

Today was partly spent trying to achieve a Gold Badge in the adrenaline challenge mode of Defense Grid: The Awakening.. trying, but not succeeding.  I completed the map, but didn’t score highly enough to get gold.

Earning a Gold Badge, and thereby getting the Flurry achievement was one of the objectives of Valve’s latest sale and competition: The Great Gift Pile.. collecting coal and winning prizes, with the chance to win everything on Steam via the Epic Holiday Giveaway on the 2nd Jan.  Everything on Steam.. wow.. I really wouldn’t have enough time!

Last week, I acquired Empire Earth: Gold Edition via GOG.com.. Empire Earth and expansion The Art of Conquest were being given away to anyone who came to the Good Old Games site!  Empire Earth is a real-time strategy by Stainless Steel Studios, said to be somewhat like my beloved Age of Empires, but going from the Stone Age all the way to the Space Age.  Looking forward to this one..

I previously noted that I’d won a copy of EA’s Alice: Madness Returns for the 360, through DR Gaming‘s 12 Days of Christmas giveaway on Facebook..  the game arrived this week, and better still, it came with a bonus Xbox LIVE code for the original American McGee’s Alice!  I remember playing the PC version of this game during my first Christmas together with Tim, on his recommendation 😉

Via a GameSpot UK competition, I won a Cyborg RAT 9 gaming mouse and “gaming surface” aka mousemat 😉
I’ve handed my address over and now await the postman!  Great timing too.. my mouse has been failing intermittently for a while now!  I also won a copy of Orcs Must Die! for Tim, through Day 2 of Splitkick.com’s Holiday Giveaway 2011.  Note: I’m not keeping track of the number of competitions I haven’t won 😉

Yet other new games have arrived thanks to the Humble Indie Bundle.. the contents of Bundle #3 have been added as bonus gifts for those who paid over the average!  This bundle contained Crayon Physics Deluxe, which I got from the Humble Introversion Bundle, and Lazy 8 Studios’ Cogs, which a friend gave me earlier in the year, as well as VVVVVV, Hammerfight and And Yet It Moves.

VVVVVV is a 2d platformer by Terry Cavanagh, with an interesting gravity-switching mechanic which you use to travel and avoid hazards.  I’m hopeful that this doesn’t require too much flailing at the keyboard to manage, otherwise I’ll find it more frustrating than fun.  Hammerfight, by Kranx Productions, is an aerial combat game where you control airships outfitted with hammers and swords!

The final game of the list is Broken Rules’ And Yet It Moves.  It isn’t a horror game, as I first thought when I heard the title, but a 2d puzzle where you control the orientation of the game environment as well as the player character.  This is the game I’m looking forward to most out of the three as I expect the puzzles to be quite fun!

Void

Void is a Source-based puzzle game made by students at the DigiPen Institute of Technology, where the player can access the past to alter the present, solve puzzles and escape!  I was told about this one earlier in the week, and was rather excited by the idea 🙂

The player can look into the past using time glasses, allowing you to see objects you might want to use, or an alternate route through the room.

The past looked a lot nicer than this grimy, ruined present!

You can also rip open time and create a bubble of the past in the present.. for example, I used it to climb a staircase which has been destroyed in the present.  Elsewhere, I pulled bubbles of water from the past into my path so I could swim across otherwise impassable routes.

These rips don’t last long, so you want to do your planning and looking around with the glasses, and then use rips to solve puzzles.

While the puzzles for the game progression itself were all rather easy, I was stumped by one of the collectible portraits, hung high in one of the rooms.  I tried using rips to walk along a balcony to get closer, but was blocked by the railing, and when I thought I’d managed to get one of the display cases to appear, I seemed to fall through it rather than land on it.  Maybe this part wasn’t finished..

I loved the design of the game, and though it looked a little rough in places, expecting much more from a mod or student work is hopeful at best.  The only part that really bothered me was the tips from the Books of Knowledge.. the later ones gave me tips after I’d already discovered them, and I think they would have been better placed nearer the start of the game.

The game is rather short, though there is a mention of more to come.. maybe this team of students will get hired to make a full game 🙂

Are Games Too Short?

The subject of game length has come up again at work this week, with complaints about Homefront’s short single player campaign of four to five hours.  I got rather annoyed with the double-standards of some people whining about Homefront but being perfectly happy with the length of the single-player campaigns in the Call of Duty series.. they’re all about the same length!

Personally, I think five hours isn’t enough if that’s the entire game.. I really wasn’t happy when I completed Half Life 2: Episode 2 in just a few hours.
However, in most games there are extra modes, and for Homefront and the Call of Duty series, there is a lot of playability in the multiplayer part of the games.. though if you are only interested in single-player, that’s no consolation.

A short game with great action and really memorable sections should be considered far superior to a longer but less fun game.. but it seems that some people dismiss a short game as being poor value for money regardless.  I wonder where this leaves us for the future.. I hope it doesn’t lead to devs padding games with boring travel sections or pointless dialogue..

While talking about Call of Duty 4, we all agreed that the single-player was rather short, but overall the game was fantastic.. even months after playing, we remembered parts of the game we enjoyed.. such as the One Shot, One Kill mission, which stood out as a real highlight.

Another game I look at favourably is Half Life 2, which was a lot longer, but was also paced nicely so that you could stop and look around between the more action-based parts if you wanted to.. and when devs have gone to the effort of creating a good game environment, I’d feel I was wasting that to speed through as fast as possible.

As for pacing.. I recently had early access to a game with rather annoying, nagging NPCs which made me push on all the time and I found myself getting angry with it, especially since I knew the game was fairly short.  Sure, I could have ignored the NPCs, but their constant barked orders were irritating.. this just spoiled my enjoyment in looking around and made me want to get things over and done with just to shut them up.

That’s not the feeling I want in a game, if I’m honest.. so short and rushed rates badly in my books.

I saw an argument last year for games being too long.. since many gamers have unfinished games in their collection, they must be getting bored before finishing them: therefore games are too long.  Now, I have a horrible record for completion, but this is nothing to do with the length of the games in question.  The reasons I don’t complete my games are a lack of time after the grind of work, lots of cheap games (I’m looking at you, Steam sales!) leading to there being more in my collection, and the fact that when I do have time, my friends are around to play as well.. and I’m hardly going to tell them to sling it while I get on with a single-player campaign.  Recently I would also blame WoW, as it’s rather too easy to just pop on for half an hour, which turns into a few hours that could have been used to advance the story in another game.