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The hustlers They weren’t the only act he worked with, but Andrew Loog Oldham’s name will forever be associated with the Rolling Stones and, despite Stone Free not being about the band he “discovered” and helped usher onto the world stage, Stones fans will still find plenty of discussion about Mick and the boys here. However, these mentions are incidental and mostly told as examples illustrating the focus of Oldham’s reminiscing, which is about what he calls “the hustlers” of the music business. Andrew loog oldham stoned pdf online.

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2. Wanda To Kyozou Iso Ps2 Gamestop

Iso Ps2 Fr

1. By Veelk / June 1, 2015
2. Please note that this review contains major spoilers.
3. There are times when parts that aren't special come together to form a wonderful whole. This is the way in which Wanda is good to me, because when you break it down, a lot of it.. just sucks. I am pretty sure by having made that statement, despite the one preceding it, the Cult of Ico is now making arrangements to have me disposed of, so I'll write out my reasoning as best I can before the body disposal people get here.
4. The core of the mechanics is killing the colossi, but to me, there is only one part of this that is genuinely good and engaging, and that's the very start, where you are placed in front of a totally new enemy and you've no idea what to do. Figuring out what you have to do to get on the body of each behemoth is challenging and scary and epic and cool. Some of which were ruined by Dormin 'helping' me out by giving me the direct answer, or enough of one where I'd just go 'Oh, duh. I could have figured that out'. But thanks to him, I didn't. I was lucky enough to sim.
5. Once you get on the colossi however, game over. From that point, it's just a matter of patience. Hold R1 until it stops doing its merry little jig trying to shake you off, then proceed to move to stabbing area and stab and rinse and repeat. I don't want to sound so dismissive because each colossus is unique, but it really is a matter of doing the same thing over and over. Getting on the colossus requires figuring out where the sigil is hidden and what you have to do to make it work. You might have to bait it into attacking you, or trick it into hitting something it shouldn't, or use the environment, or use your horse, or just climb to a particular point, and that's assuming you even know where you're going since you don't know where the target is. In contrast, the actual Colossus Climbs lacked the mechanical variety present in the initial encounter. R1 to survive Colossus DDR practice, move to kill elsewise. Sometimes you have to micromanage your hold resource, but this was rare for me and only really a factor on the last titan.
6. Another thing that made the climbing portions somewhat frustrating is that the wanderer is the embodiment of suck. But it's an interesting kind of suck.
7. It's very rare that we get a playable character who is deliberately designed as an incompetent. From the moment I first hit square, it was clear that this doofus does not know how to use a sword and we should be thankful he knows which end he is supposed to be holding. He runs awkwardly, trips over every damn thing.. I liked that. By giving us a very a protagonist that isn't some kind of badass, we get a protagonist who's endearing specifically because he's out of his league. It's hard to tell because the game uses very minimal and ambiguous characterization, but from how the wanderer animates alone, I felt that he was genuinely brave in a way most badass protagonists are not. I felt he was scared of the ordeal he had to face, knowing how ill-equipped he was, but sought to face it anyway for the sake of his beloved.. whatever she is to him. Of course, because the character is minimal and ambiguous, a completely opposite approach (especially possible given the ending) would be that he is a self-awareness lacking moron who's going around killing the colossi and making deals with otherworld demons for resurrection magic as peacocking for a lay. You know that people have done stranger things for sex.
8. The point is, like a lot of great art, Wanda uses weakness for strength. I said that climbing colossi was a test of patience, and that's because the way in which their movement affected the wanderer was slightly inconsistent for me. I mean, all huge movements stunned him a little, but smaller movements seemed to depend on how the game was feeling about where I was gripping. In some spots, the colossus could literally cycle through his entire movement set and I'd use up all my grip power waiting for stability that never came. But if I moved half an inch, then the wanderer could cross his legs and start meditating. And I caught myself thinking 'which is better?', which is a weird question, right? You'd think that obviously the practical one would be better. But the fact is, the wanderer constantly flailing around helped reinforce his lack of experience and ability against these creatures, and the tiny windows of opportunity he gets are all the more relieving for it. Wanda is an interesting experiment where the game has to lend ability to the player, but they have to frame it in the wanderer's incompetence. Because of that, even though I was clearly frustrated as a player by the wanderer losing his grip over and over from the slightest, tiniest twitch, if that (sometimes, it seemed to happen for no reason at all. The colossi are always in motion, but why would he lose his grip from one of them continuing to move as it has been?), but it makes perfect sense that this kid would be losing his shit. He's an ordinary kid on top of a giant fucking giant! What else is he supposed to do?
9. Stuff like that lent a great deal to the atmosphere. This is an insanely atmospheric game. The act of playing itself has a certain character to it. It's lonely. Your (and the wanderer's) only friend is a horse. The girl you brought gathers more friends in doves than the wanderer over the course of the game, and she's comatose. Other than that, the only other person in the game is a lovecraftian horror that is obviously (even to the wanderer I think) using him. It's also a quiet game. There are barely any animals in the world. Even the colossi make less noise than you'd expect. The wanderer is the only person shouting 'AGRO!!!' in the entire valley. And it's a journey of corruption, though that's mostly reinforced through more traditional narrative means at the end, but minor things like how the wanderer gets progressively dirtier, and also around the thirteenth colossus, where I stopped to asked myself why I had to kill that one. It was the sky snake/centipede, which never attacked me and was mostly just trying to shake me off. It is in such things that Wanda is rich.
10. There is a sense of care being put into crafting everything you interact with that goes beyond what most other games do. Which is why I find several of the technical flaws that my eyes would glaze over in most other games to be extremely off-putting here. A lot of these were technical glitches that really ought to have been ironed out. After having killed them, I clipped through or was inappropriately positioned with at least 8 of the 16 colossi during the post-kill, black tentacle hentai scenes. Another is the wanderer not sheathing his sword into his sheath when he sheaths his sword. It was likely a memory issue, otherwise I'd figure he'd have an animation for carrying his bow on his back, but it was very distracting how his sword disappears when he has a sheath specifically to carry it. And I don’t understand how they could be thoughtful enough to have Agro run away when you point an arrow at her, but then have her not react to the wanderer swinging his sword at her. Worse, when he hits her, it makes a metallic clinking sound. Wut… Anyway, those are technical issues or else careless mistakes. Others are deliberate design decisions that I feel take away from the game. While I can accept that the wanderer might simply be an archer rather than sword master, I feel that he should have had some bobble to his aim when shooting a bow on horseback. And his durability is way too high. I played on Normal (all that is available in a new game), but I could fall off heights that should have ended with the wanderer's knees poking out of his eye sockets, but got half damage, if that. It severely takes away from the 'I'm only a regular guy' feel that is otherwise wonderfully placed in the wanderer's character, when he makes these impossible feats. It's slightly odd how Wanda has crafted such a portrait that, despite those design decisions being good for the player, I feel they damage the experience that the game is meant to offer. In most other games, these things would just be player-oriented conveniences, but this is not the world for that.
11. And then there are the stunlocks, which deserve a paragraph of their own. This is the fucking worse thing in the game. Okay, so presumably to reinforce again how much of a wuss the wanderer is it was apparently necessary to have like a five-second recovery animation for when you fall down. This. Is. The Worst. It's not that big a problem when you're facing a giant colossus because they're too slow to keep kicking your shit in. It's still bad, because it's just way too long. Five seconds of being helpless in a fight is extremely annoying, even if it only happens once against an opponent where it works against. But then you get the smaller colossus, or the ones that can shoot shit at you. I've gotten killed at least four times because I got hit and the enemy's attack recovery animation was twice as fast as my getting up animation. If you get knocked into a place where the enemy can hit you consecutively, you are FUCKED. And, to top it all off, it hurts the atmosphere because while the wanderer's particular animation might be good for 'Whoa, didn't see that coming', it looks extremely unnatural when you see it four times in a row before dying. Stunlocks suck in general, but at least they look natural in high-speed play. With the slow, deliberate movements of Wanda, it's just dumb, frustrating AND bullshit. Who the hell approved that? Fuck that. Fuck that so goddamn much.
12. Anyway. The world. The design of it is either fantastic, or kinda dull. Again, the vast open fields give weight to the atmosphere. It's hard not to feel alone when you see these huge, HUGE plains stretching out before you, with the only living things in it yourself, your horse, and that lizard on the side you're about to eat. And the same way each colossus is different from every other, the environments never quite repeat themselves either. And they are beautiful places of scenic wonders. The problem is they're.. kinda boring? I know, they're gorgeous vistas that work to create a better experience, what more do I want? Well.. this goes against the minimalist style, but the curious point for me was, when I went to save at a shrine outside of Dormin's casa, I noticed that it said a different name for the place I was in. This, believe it or not, made the places far more interesting to me. They had a name. Which means they've been inhabited before, at least close enough that people had made maps about them designating them as something. Before, they were just pretty and atmospheric, but what do you do with that once you've seen it? But with these names, I realized there was a history there, and that intrigued me. What was this place before it became Dormin's prison? Who did it and why? Why was this place in particular chosen? Was it so they could accommodate all the varying colossi? The opening narration is all we have on it, and it just raises more questions. Characterization here is minimalist, so obviously the world-building would be as well. But they got me invested enough in the world to want to learn more, so it's frustrating to me that there isn't any more. The world is scenic and pretty, but that's all there is to it. All I can do is take my moment admiring it, and then move on, and I wish I could do more than that.
13. Also, it'd help if I had a better way of traveling. Agro does her best, bless her heart, but she's kind of slow and clunky to control in tight areas. A big part of the colossus fights is the quiet interlude and build up as you get closer and closer to their location, and simply traveling on a horse is a very appropriate way for the tone the game is going for. However, Agro just isn't fun to ride, as I got to keep slapping her bum just to keep her moving at her modest top speed. I am not sure precisely what they should have done instead, but I think this might have been a case where the player having a pleasurable way to travel might not have negatively impacted the quiet buildup that the traveling itself gives to the epic conclusion.
14. But the ending is really, really good. It perfectly climaxes the gradual build up of the wanderer's corruption, accentuated with the reveal of how the wanderer wronged the village. I still get the idea that he was a good guy at heart who just wanted to save a life he cared about, but it instills how love has driven him to ruin. He's betrayed his village. He's murdered sixteen beautiful creatures. He might have endangered the world. He sold his soul. It's a tragedy in its finest sense. The sadness of his dying and becoming a literal vessel for the evil god, with then becoming the new seal that keeps him trapped, it's.. it hits you.
15. So where does that leave me exactly? Honestly, I was expecting to walk away from Wanda not that impressed for all the worship it gets. To an extent, I am still not, given the flaws it has. It fucked up at least one thing every half hour for me. Maybe textures would pop in, breaking the immersion of the world. Or maybe Dormin would ruin a colossus fight for me by giving me the answer. Or I got stunlocked. Or something. But good art isn't about lacking flaws, it's about having a vision brought out that is genuine and real. There are times when the music and animation and art direction and mechanics and story all come together many times to create these tiny moments of perfection, created through imperfect pieces. So many parts of the game suck, for many different reasons. The wanderer is a wimp, and some mechanics are bullshit, and it's got technical glitches, and a lot of design choices are questionable, and I want more expansiveness in the story, and traveling on Agro is slow and annoying. But then everything aligns, just for a moment or two, and looking back… I think when I remember it later on, it’s those moments I’ll remember more than anything else, and that's what probably earned it the deified reputation. I don't know if I completely agree with it, but I understand it.
16. Survarium (2015, PC)
17. For nearly two years VG have been promising something resembling a free-roaming or PvE game mode, and for two years they've focused solely on the PvP test element of the game, that was literally just supposed to be a test/tech demo to get the engine and netcode sorted.
18. I've clocked in a couple dozen hours in the non-Steam version over the past year and now thought I'd give the Steam version a try having not touched it for four months, and things are still looking dire.
19. It is currently on track to be just a generic pay-2-win model, with 'premium weapons/clothing' that have slightly higher stats, along with making it impossible to progress without the usage of premium currency or boosters. This is extremely disappointing given the potential this game had.
20. For all intents and purposes it is still a generic mediocre shooter. TDM, Capture the Flag and King of The Hill, in a couple of very small and bland maps, 8v8 and that's about it. It's recently added in perks (which give a clear advantage vs. new players) and a faction system (just a daily rep grind for slightly better gear, also slow without premium) which is at least something to briefly hold your attention but it doesn't seem to be going anywhere past that.
21. The balancing is awful, the matchmaking outright never works, maps are poorly designed and bland and the business model is geared towards rewarding people who pay vs. people who play. This was lauded as being an extremely immersive post-apocalyptic MMO and it's turned into a Call of Duty mashed together with World of Tanks. The graphics are average, the sound design is very good, gunplay is not remotely satisfying combined with iffy hit-boxes and obnoxious hit markers appearing constantly that make for a sour experience.
22. There are a lot of guns to choose from, nearly all of them being Russian-based, with a single faction's rewards being Western weapons, but it's roughly similar to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. in variety. One of my biggest gripes with it claiming to be an immersive and realistic shooter, is that ten different guns all use the same calibre of ammunition, and it is clearly stated as such, but they've all got vastly different damage values. People of a higher rank outright get more armour and have better weapons, and when you start out you have identical calibre weapons that can't touch them.
23. I, like a lot of people, saw this years ago as trying to lure in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. fans, and their website is very in tune with lauding on about how dangerous the 'forest' is along all of the factions, dangers and adventure to be had. The only thing even remotely similar to the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games is the fact that they've added anomalies/artifacts to the maps that kill you when you get close, which contribute absolutely nothing to the flow of the game and are a novelty at best.
24. Pros:
25. Great sound design
26. Large variety of weapons and clothing (that requires large amounts of grinding unfortunately)
27. You can reach the main menu without needing to spend any gold
28. Poor gunplay
29. Clear and major advantages to users who pay over users who play
30. No fleshed out story, plot or context (bar that you're in a dangerous forest filled with radiation and some scavengers)
31. Poor netcode, hit detection and general network instability
32. To echo many others, if you take a look at the timeline we were given two years ago [ > ] you'll see we were supposed to have a billy bones basic version of the free roaming by the end of 2013. I predict at their current rate of progression we'll probably see it fully released by 2017. Given that this game is very popular in CIS states due to the fact it's F2P and they are a major source of premium currency purchases in similar games, I don't see it dying out or crashing and burning, but it is still a massive disappointment and has turned into a cash cow.
33. Dying Light (2015, PC)
34. We don't often sit down and write game reviews, but we had to make an exception for Dying Light: an outstanding free-roaming, first-person zombie survival game that expertly fuses Dead island, Mirror's Edge and Far Cry. It has been a very long time since we dropped $60 on a game and felt this good about it. We are zombie game junkies, and play as many as we can. This one is hands down the most satisfying experience we've ever had and stands out as head and shoulders above the rest.
35. Dying Light is a zombie game that focuses on atmosphere and player movement. If you've played Dead Island you already know the basic mechanics: craft melee weapons and bash zombies while collecting supplies. But Dying Light employs numerous changes that drastically improve on this.
36. Atmosphere is perhaps its best asset. The day-night cycle is a crucial component, as there are major changes to mood and mechanics as the sun sets behind the horizon. At night, the tension elevates as you experience reduced visibility and face zombies that are nimble, fast and deadly. You will be tempted to venture out at night for extra rewards. During the day, you battle hordes of shambling zombies that are fun to eviscerate with a broad selection of weaponry. The difference between night and day provides a genuine rollercoaster ride.
37. Combat is another major attraction and feels amazing in this game. From jabbing at things with pipes and wooden boards in the early game, to a slow motion decap later on, it just feels great to kill the zombies. They're an actual threat to you, and you can quickly find yourself overwhelmed if you linger in the streets. There are so many ways to dispose of them. A couple dozen hours into the game we had several different guns, swords, axes, throwing weapons, Molotovs, and a variety of combat moves that let us stomp on their heads when we knocked them down. That's another thing we love so much. This game isn't just another start game, grab a gun, shoot everything game. You don't even SEE a gun till you've done quite a bit of getting your hands dirty. Guns also present their own danger. If you shoot a gun, or set off an alarm, you bring the attention of the masses of zombies in the streets. Not just one or two: they swarm you and it happens fast. The decision to pick off an enemy with a firearm is one you make very very carefully. There are genuine consequences to how you choose to confront your enemies.
38. Parkour movement makes navigating the world immensely enjoyable. You are able to run, jump and climb over buildings with ease. You just look at a ledge and hold the jump button to climb. As you come upon zombie hordes you analyse the area quickly. Do you attack or use the environment to avoid danger? You learn very quickly that your life depends on mastering not only the weapons and combat, but also the parkour. You don't ever stop running and jumping, leaping to and from rooftops, over fences, cars and other obstacles. If you miss a jump, the horde will be right on you, grabbing and clawing and biting, and bringing plenty of their friends along for the snack. Various slides and kicks make dealing with zombies, and human foes, quite interesting. Traps placed around the world can be triggered to slow pursuers or distract zombies, giving you an edge as you learn the world around you.
39. As for progression, we can't say enough good things about it. They have done an absolutely brilliant job with the balance in Dying Light. In the beginning, the first time you poke your head out of the building you start in, you are terrified by the strength of the zombies, and they are everywhere. The entire game grows with your character. Searching boxes early on you get low end gear, but the stronger you get, the stronger the enemies get across the entire city. New zombie types start to appear, even in the daytime. Night time is just a NOPE! Unless of course you rock the stealth thing. We ourselves are too prone to running in with our machetes swinging. Eventually you are driven by the story and quests to HAVE to complete missions at night, and it's a rush from beginning to end. Loot gets progressively better based on your own progress; there are no 'junk' areas of the game where the mobs become laughable and the loot even worse.
40. The single-player is surprisingly entertaining and lengthy, with side quests that are often better than those in the story. Characters are well-defined and memorable, with more effort given to justify the game world. You run between areas, clear safe zones, rescue people and collect items. Story missions might even feature shootouts in indoor levels. Progression comes via a skill tree that unlocks significant character upgrades. You will also learn to craft items like Molotovs and flares to make you more formidable against the various zombie types.
41. Dying Light is also a cooperative game and playing with others is easy. The basic cooperative action works well, aside from rigid animations, and you can undertake just about every quest from the campaign. You can even open your game to a 'zombie invasion' where another player joins and takes the role of a dangerous night-hunter zombie that can instantly kill survivors with a pounce, echoing moments from Evolve. Your goal is to destroy zombie nests before you lose a certain number of lives. Whether playing alone, or with a group of four, this versus mode is actually good despite its relative simplicity. It gets hectic when four players are battling tougher zombies and running all over the open map while being pursued by a night-hunter that can summon exploding zombies.
42. Dying Light is a terrific zombie game that greatly improves on the mechanics of Dead Island and emphasizes the world and how you move around in it. Crafting, action, exploration and free running are all well-implemented in this free-roaming survival gem. The changes between day and night are refreshing and memorable and you can expect to be genuinely frightened when the night comes. With a lot of content and satisfying ways to play in single- or multiplayer, this game can, indeed, please a wide audience looking for a truly action packed experience: from the inexperienced player to the hardened first-person adrenaline junkie looking for the next thrill.
43. Videogame Art: Phantasmagoria (1995)
44. Videogame Art: Volume I
45. Old Man Murray was one of the earlier — let's call them 'alternative' for lack of a better term — videogame sites that, via means of its influence on several other later sites including The Gaming Intelligence Agency and finally Insert Credit, eventually inspired and led to the creation of Insomnia. These sites placed their emphasis more on in-depth analysis over traditional fact regurgitation, conveyed through a variety of liberal writing styles with little to no censoring, and though it is clear today, given the groundbreaking, incomparable results that we have attained here on Insomnia over the last ten years by following this model, that that was indeed the way to go in the field of videogame criticism and theory, the early attempts were very rough, uneven and, ultimately, forgettable. Right from the beginning, exemplified by Old Man Murray itself, all the way to Insert Credit, which was the very last step on this path before Insomnia was born, the writers of these sites focused their efforts more on getting a laugh or a rise out of the reader than actually analyzing anything, and when the analysis eventually arrived it would often be contrived and pseudo-intellectual, with only sporadic flashes of insight that seemed to proceed more from sheer randomness than passion for the medium, experience or wisdom.
46. And such was the case with the infamous, at the time, OMM article titled 'Death of Adventure Games' [ > ], which has today however been effectively forgotten (like pretty much everything ever published on these sites). 'Who killed adventure games?' asks the article's author, Erik Wolpaw (who works at Valve today, as a chief writer in the Portal series, among other games), and the answer he gives, after an admittedly amusing elaboration of his position, is that no one killed them, that they 'committed suicide', because their puzzles had become too convoluted and illogical. Simpler, more straightforward and logical puzzles is what the genre needed, and then it wouldn't have died, and lots of adventure games would still be getting made today as if it were the early-'90s. — THIS IS WHAT ERIK WOLPAW REALLY BELIEVES.
47. Needless to say, as any observer of the industry with a quarter of a brain can figure out, this position has no relation to reality whatsoever, but the exact reasons why adventure games nevertheless did indeed die will take a lot of experience and insight to discover, which is where I and this essay come in. And yes Phantasmagoria, at the appropriate time.
48. So why did adventure games die? It is a fascinating reason that leads all the way up to my theory of immersion as the defining factor in art, and therefore videogames: art's ultimate manifestation. The rabbit hole here goes very deep indeed, and the depth of experience, intelligence, wisdom and aesthetic sensibility required to follow it all the way to its conclusion is so mind-bogglingly enormous that I cannot imagine the gamer who would find the way to it on his own without my explanation. If I had died before finishing this essay, I am convinced that mankind would never have found the answer.
49. The short answer, for the impatient among you, is that adventure games died because FPSes today are better at offering the adventuring experience than adventure games had ever been or could be. The long answer is considerably longer and more involved so I'll take my time in laying it out for you.
50. Before we can answer the question of why adventure games died, we first need to understand why they were born in the first place. This is the really tough part of the question, because 1) Most players today don't like/play adventure games, so there's no way in hell they will understand the genre's attraction on their own, if ever; and 2) The few people left today who still play these games are aesthetically dense doofuses, like those who prefer 2D over 3D games or generally older games to newer ones (Doom hipsters and so on), with whom it is impossible to communicate at all, much less explain anything to them; or hipsters who've dubbed adventure games 'interactive fiction' to feel more intellectual and who keep making them today (only of course in a much simpler, uglier and shittier form) because they are so easy to make. Basically everyone who still actively plays these games today is some kind of subhuman loser, and it's therefore completely out of the question for them to understand anything about the genre, or about any other thing in life ever, even.
51. So let me try to explain the attraction of the genre to everyone who doesn't fall into one of the above groups. And to do that I have to show you the genre in its proper historical context, at a time when THERE WERE NO 3D GAMES AT ALL, and your only choice of genres was between absurdly simplistic side-scrolling action affairs where you have a little sprite that jumps around the screen and punches or shoots other sprites, and abstract disembodied tactical/strategy games where you never even see your avatar in the game world at all. Maybe you'd also have some kind of basic flight simulator, if you were into computer games, and that's it. That's all the types of experience that the medium afforded its devotees back in the '80s and early-'90s, and those types of games fully satisfied the majority of the players (since most of them, even back then, were not into adventure games). And that's where adventure games came in.
52. Adventure games, from the very beginning, had been all about IMMERSION. Instead of taking control of a pathetic little squiggly sprite that lives in a single-plane two-dimensional world that consists of a straight line of buildings or whatever, and which spends the entire length of the game running frantically from left to right, in adventure games (and especially the later, fully graphical variety) you take control of a far larger, more well-drawn and animated character who inhabits a more intricate, meticulously crafted and detailed three-dimensional world (even if depicted via 2D graphics) that actually bears some resemblance to human reality. For it is extremely difficult to immerse yourself in a world, like say Shinobi's or Contra's, where the backgrounds are zipping by faster than you can make them out. If you play these games properly you don't even have time to look at the backgrounds at all. And why can't you stop for a second, catch your breath, and go inside a building? Even pure action movies have scenes where the protagonist chills out and rests, or talks to other characters, or does other stuff than engage in 100% non-stop breakneck-speed frenetic combat. If action movies were made like 2D action games, they'd be unwatchable. And that's why 3D action games are NOT made like 2D action games, and why there tends to be a whole lot more to them than pure combat.
53. But we are getting ahead of ourselves. What I am trying to explain to you is that in the '80s and '90s there arose a need for a genre of games that featured SLOWER, more INTRICATE and DELIBERATE interaction with the game world than what was offered by 2D action games and tactical/strategy affairs — the former of which were highly enjoyable for short half-hour or hour-long bursts, but which became tiresome if played consecutively for much longer, and the latter of which were indeed perfectly suited for longer sessions — far, far longer ones (which is why this was the supreme genre all through the mid-'80s and '90s up until the arrival of GTA3, as I'll be explaining in my upcoming Defender of the Crown and Civilization reviews) — but which, by failing to have a recognizable protagonist/avatar on the screen, could not hope to offer the 'playable movie' experience that videogames have REALLY been chasing after since the very beginning. There were some efforts to make the 2D action game slower and more deliberate, more involved and more immersive, by adding exploration to them a la Ys and Metroid and so on, and these were indeed good, successful games, but the interaction with the game world was still incredibly simplistic in those games too, and a lot more could be done in that direction. Adventure games really were the first games where the designer made an effort to make the player BE the character, in that he could actually move him around a relatively realistic environment and order him to pick up and examine things, move about in all directions pretty much at will (as opposed to along a single-plane lane, in a single direction, even, as in the action games), and talk to characters and participate in a story (as opposed to simply hitting or shooting some stuff and then having a story told to him via cutscenes). And the players loved them for it.
54. Not all of them of course, not even most. These are the guys who have no idea what I am talking about right now, and who are perfectly content with the essentially mindless running-around-a-screen mechanics of 2D action games. That's all the interaction that these people crave from videogames; from their computers even. They don't need any more, and if you try to give them more their brains will probably auto-detonate. But for me this pathetically basic level of interaction wasn't enough, not by a long stretch, and I became heavily invested in the genre starting with classic text adventures from Infocom and moving on to text/graphic hybrids like Deja Vu and finally to the well-known graphical masterpieces of Sierra and LucasArts, all the while checking out also lesser known, or less accomplished, efforts by largely now-forgotten companies like Brøderbund, Dynamix, et al.
55. Now what must be emphasized and drilled into your brain at this point is that, especially once the graphical games came on the market, the adventure genre was at the CUTTING EDGE of aesthetics. This was literally THE genre for graphics whores at the time (i.e. for art lovers: because that's what a 'graphics whore' is: an art lover, like Raphael and Michelangelo: all art lovers have always been and will always be 'graphics whores' in the language of internet aspies who never leave their rooms). I know all this sounds absurd to you young casuals today, whose only experience of these games is tiny little squashed screenshots you might have come across in videogame message board threads (posted most likely by hipsters who hate TODAY'S games that feature cutting edge aesthetics..), but back in the early '90s the adventure genre ushered in the VGA revolution — touting titles with 256 colors on screen compared to EGA's previous 16 — with graphics that, by the standards of the time, looked to us 'photorealistic', and sound and music that for the first time in personal computer history required the purchase of specialized sound cards that cost nearly as much as a console system costs today. That was the era when the PC finally blew past the, mainly British-led, home computer scene dominated by the Amigas and the Atari STs (never mind the console scenes, which looked downright prehistoric by that time, and with a selection of games that — from first to last — seemed unpardonably shallow, childish and simplistic), and I was right in the middle of it, buying a new PC, and, from a certain point onwards, even building them myself, almost every year in order to keep up with developments.
56. So what I am trying to convey to you is that adventure games were cutting-edge eye-bleeding mouth-frothing SYSTEM SELLERS at that time. I bought a brand new PC for Space Quest IV (and Wing Commander). I bought another new PC, that I built myself, part by part, in 1991, for Monkey Island 2 (and Wing Commander II and Strike Commander). These games were so unbelievably detailed and gorgeous that booting them up for the first time was a near-religious experience. Think Crysis in 2007 if you are old enough to have at least played that game when it came out, and you should be able to understand what I am saying.
57. And then there were the puzzles. It is ridiculous to suppose that anyone of us who played these games back then ACTUALLY ENJOYED TRYING TO SOLVE THE PUZZLES. I mean, I can see why a young person who never lived through those days might assume that — after all, why would you play a game if you don't particularly enjoy its mechanics? — but it is inexcusable for someone like Mr. Wolpaw who lived through those years AND is at the same time trying to put himself forward as some kind of authority on the subject. Adventure game puzzles have been mostly inane from day 1 for the simple reason that, if they had NOT been inane, players would be waltzing through these games in 20 minutes and asking for their money back. When you have a game that is composed of 30 or 40 screens — or whatever very low number of screens the typical adventure game is comprised of — which screens do not demand any feats of physical dexterity in the form of action game mechanics to traverse simply because these are not action games but THINKING games, you NEED illogical bullshit puzzles to keep the player engaged inside these 30 or 40 screens for the 20 or 30 hours that it will take him to feel he has got enough 'value for his freaking money' out of the game. Of course everyone, players and developers alike, would have rather preferred to play a game with 2,000 or 3,000 screens covering entire cities or countries across international locations with complex, multi-layered plotlines that rival novels and movies and dialogue trees and decision-making that affect every aspect of the plot and the game's conclusion, but there was simply not enough money, nor to mention experience, to make these games back then, any more than there is now. And of course, if such a game were made, it wouldn't need bullshit illogical puzzles to keep you occupied for 20 or 30 hours, since merely to traipse through the 2,000 screens and complete the gigantic dialogue trees I am talking about would take whole days if not weeks. But the game would have had to be sold to you for 5,000 dollars a pop in order to cover its costs and keep its developers afloat, so you still wouldn't have felt that you got 'your money's value' out of it, and that's why these games were not made back then, and why they are STILL not being made.
58. So the bullshit puzzles were a practical necessity, not the goal of the exercise. We didn't fucking build 1,500-dollar computers to spend all day pixel hunting static screens and trying to combine every single item in our inventory with every single other item in the entire game world to get a fucking door to open and move to the next fucking room. The goal was to spend some time in these detailed, intricate environments, and feel for a few hours like a policeman (Police Quest), a sleazy adventurer and PUA (Leisure Suit Larry), a pretender to a throne (King's Quest), a Caribbean pirate (The Secret of Monkey Island), a university student solving an Agatha Christie-like mystery (The Colonel's Bequest), or Indiana Jones (Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis). And while the Indiana Jones depicted in the 2D action games of the time had almost nothing in common with the cinematic Indiana Jones, the adventure game variant, due to the genre's superior capacity for immersion and varied interactivity, came far closer to that ideal, and so did all fiction archetypes that these games chose to tackle. And like I said, the players loved them for it. Not all of them of course, but certainly the ones with sufficient capacity for patience and imagination.
59. What I am getting at is that adventure games sold themselves almost exclusively on the strengths of their aesthetics. The puzzles were merely there to detain you in the individual rooms for a little while so you could take the atmosphere in. And of course if you are detained in a room you are IMMERSED in it, whether you like it or not. And given how pretty everything generally looked in those games, we FUCKING LOVED IT AND ASKED FOR MORE. No one was actually proud of themselves for managing to find their policeman's gun in their policeman's home after searching for it for two hours. In a movie or in a logically-designed game the policeman would ALREADY KNOW WHERE HIS FUCKING GUN IS IN HIS FUCKING HOME without having to spend all day searching for it before going out into the street to arrest a criminal. But there was no other way to make the genre work financially than this, and that's why it was made the way it was.
60. Not that there wasn't ANY PLEASURE AT ALL to be had from solving the puzzles, of course. Softcore Gaming 101 contributors who play everything with a FAQ would never suspect this, but figuring shit out on your own and moving on in these games was lots of fun — but mostly because of the 'moving on' part. We were so excited to see the next screen, and what would happen to our character and the story, that we would have done anything to do so, even spend half a day solving bullshit puzzles if that's what it took. And that's exactly what it took, all throughout the '80s and the '90s.. until Phantasmagoria arrived.
61. By Griss / June 3, 2015
62. Some games have a timeless quality, and lose nothing as the industry advances and our expectations of certain genres and their mechanics change. Other games that are beloved are more a product of their time, and probably needed to be played when they were released for a person to fully understand just what the game meant to people, or how unique and groundbreaking it was — or wasn't. I can't help but feel like Mother 2 is the latter kind of game in many ways. Don't get me wrong — I'm not saying that I didn't enjoy it, but it was flawed, far more so than I expected. I was charmed, but I was also bored just as often, and I can't ignore that. So let's break this thing down into pieces like Ness smashing up an Octobot with a baseball bat.
63. Setting
64. The setting of the Mother games is, I believe, the main factor that makes them so beloved. The moment you realise that you're a normal kid in a normal world rather than a fantasy wizard or orc-slaying warrior or what-have-you is so refreshing. When you get to Onett and realise the game will constantly skit more po-faced JRPGs with constant humour and fun NPC dialogue it's easy to fall in love with this little world. You actively want to seek out every NPC because what they have to say is usually whimsical or humorous in some way. This alone puts the game miles ahead of most JRPGs — in this one respect.
65. Yes, the game does bring you to the classic desert/ice/fire levels eventually, but each has a special 'earthbound' twist, and there are places you go in this game that are so unique that have no equivalent in almost any other JRPG, like Moonside or Magicant. In particular, Dungeon Man is a piece of hilarious meta-commentary on game design that was about 15 years before its time, perfectly executed. These places are pretty unforgettable, and Nintendo did a great job with the overall atmosphere of a normal American world tinged with a psychedelic strangeness, making everything feel just a little bit nostalgic but also a little bit unsettling.
66. Aesthetics
67. Mother 2 is incredibly basic looking for a 1994 SFC game. The sprites are simple, and there's a shocking lack of animation in pretty much all areas of the game, making things look a little dead and sterile while you wander the world. But it's hard to care too much about that because the art direction shines through, and the world the game depicts is utterly charming. From the all-American towns and pizza parlours to the ludicrously inventive enemy designs (Dali's clock, really?!?), Mother 2 has a style all of its own, and it's one of its greatest strengths.
68. While the visuals are strong but dated, the music is utterly timeless, and was my favourite part of the game. This is one of the strongest soundtracks I've ever heard, and a huge amount of the considerable emotional appeal of the game comes from the music. Songs like Home Sweet Home, Onett, Twoson and Scaraba made me feel nostalgic for a game I'd never before played, and wistful for my childhood. I'd stay in an area just to hear the songs loop. It's rare that a game's music gets its claws into me this much, but there was no way I wouldn't beat this game, if only to hear all the music.
69. Mechanics
70. So far you'd think it was all roses, right? But a game is meant to be played, and here Mother 2 starts to fall down. The battle system is weak, and ends up being very dull. Most of the time you simply mash the bash command. Early in the game you don't have enough PP to really use PSI abilities, but even once you do the range of useful attacking options is pretty much one or two per person, and a choice between 'hit one guy' or 'hit all guys'. There's little strategy involved. What's worse is the amount of random chance built into all battles. Everyone has a strong chance of missing attacks (worse if you're dumb enough to buy the wrong weapon), while the enemy AI is as dumb as an RNG and will constantly waste turns. It leads to situations where you can easily win one battle because the enemy wasted two turns and you hit him each time, or lose because you missed and he decided to use a strong magic attack twice. You have no control over this, there's no tactics involved, no fun to it.
71. On top of that, there is a serious weakness in the real-time HP system. If a party member gets knocked out, it's a race to heal them. However you can never be as quick with your heals as the auto-battle system, leading to you relying on that system if you want to survive, and giving up your control of the game to, well, the game. The game can play itself faster and better than you can play it. On top of that, watching someone die because they took mortal damage after you committed to a PSI attack with a long animation is very frustrating. Late in the game a Starman's Ghost or Final Starman will typically be able to one-shot Paula and Jeff at the same time with a single Starstorm, meaning constant healing is necessary. At this stage all the flaws in the battle system are seriously apparent and each one is just a chore as you push through to the end.
72. On top of that, the overworld mechanics are nothing special. There are no puzzles to solve, the dungeons are basic, and your characters are definitely on the slow side. A run button halfway through would have done wonders. This is exacerbated by the constant and annoying slowdown whenever more than two enemies are on the screen. Worse than this is the constant frustration of item management, as the game throws all manner of utterly useless items at characters who simply can't deal with them all. What about the difficulty curve? It's all over the place: the first two hours are by far the hardest in the game, Threed is a nightmare and then you won't be challenged again for the rest of the game until the final half-hour or so.
73. All of these issues combined with the dull battle system make actually playing Mother 2 a bit of a chore. Take the setting and music away and I just don't see how anyone can claim that the core 'game' here, the 'rules of play', are anything but sub-standard. It feels like they were considered less important than all the clever moments and commentary. It feels like a game designed by a comedian, philosopher or novelist rather than by a game designer, which is something I never expected of Nintendo. I've not heard of the director, Itoi, since (correct me if I'm wrong, I didn't look him up), so I suspect Nintendo might have come to the same conclusion. Brilliantly creative mind, but not a videogame designer.
74. Story / Characters
75. But so what, right? Lots of JRPGs have dated and mediocre mechanics saved by a decent atmosphere and/or story, and frankly I was expecting Mother 2 to be exactly that. The problem is that that story.. isn't there. There's actually no story to talk about. I was pretty shocked at this. There's a bit of exposition in the beginning, but then Ness just travels the world for seemingly no real reason, with no 'story beats' to keep the main plot ticking over. There's no urgency to the action, no clarity as to what's going on or why. Who is Gyiyg? Why does he destroy the world in the future? Is he behind the strange actions of the people and various problems the towns are having? It didn't seem so. What's with the pregame image of spaceships attacking Earth? Never happens. Why is Ness the chosen one? Why is Ness collecting music? Why is Gyiyg letting him? The worst is the treatment of the actually present bad guy, Pokey. He appears maybe three times, and his motivations and actions are completely vague. Is he a brat? A bad person? Is he mind-controlled? I was legit shaken when he turned up out of nowhere during the final battle. I mean, what? I had him pegged as a comic-relief rival character.
76. The player characters are another issue. I actually liked them less at the end of the game than the start, because by then I realised that they aren't characters at all, just empty vessels drawn in the broadest strokes. You've got memorable characters like 'Boy' (brave, strong, the chosen hero!), 'Girl' (physically weak, but mentally strong! gets kidnapped! twice!), 'Nerd' (timid but useful! relies on his more powerful friends!), and 'Foreigner' (wacky and weird! can't eat normal food or use our items!) There was just nothing to them, and no reason to care about any of them. You know who I ended up caring about more than anyone? Apple Kid. Because he was a cool guy and had the most lines. When Apple Kid is your standout character (along with Bubblegum Monkey and your dog, for christsakes) then you've messed up somewhere.
77. People make the final Gyiyg fight out to be something very special, but it wasn't for me. I was ready for the game to end, and lucked into figuring out how to beat him very quickly (I was disappointed because at first I thought I'd stumbled on the most amazing Easter Egg ever, rather than the solution). The one place Mother 2 nails the story, though, is the 'Return of the Hero' phase of the classic hero story. Getting to return home and wander the world after the final battle was really surprisingly emotional. I like that a lot, more games should do it.
78. Conclusion
79. Most games are mediocre and forgettable. Many are worse than average in all respects. Many great games are lots of fun and make you think but can't make you feel. Many really fun games to actually play are ultimately forgettable for whatever reason.
80. So what to make of a game that wasn't much fun, didn't challenge me or make me think, but DID make me feel, and WAS unforgettable? How do you judge a game like that? I just don't think I can write off the 'game' part as unimportant as others obviously do when judging Mother 2. I can't separate the systems from the setting. I was bored too often. The story let me down. Yes, I also loved visiting a new, wacky town and chatting to people while listening to music. That's not quite enough, not on its own, to make a game great. The interactivity of Mother 2 was its weakest point, and when it's a videogame in question that's got to cost it points. As such I often felt like this wonderful and inventive world would have been better off as an animated movie.
81. So, Mother 2. It's a classic, alright. A game I won't forget. Does it stink? No. You can't scratch and sniff the gamepad, after all. But it's a mediocre game, and that's a shame.

Wanda To Kyozou Iso Ps2 Gamestop

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