Shallow Depths

June has been a month of set-up and new beginnings for me.  Here on Personal Gamer I began by deciding to overhaul the comment system, and ended up redecorating the whole place.  I'm still tweaking minor things no one but me will probably ever notice.  I'm glad this tendency of mine only applies to my virtual homes or I'd run through a lot of furniture and trimmings.

Meanwhile, my own game review column is starting up on Game People.  As Microcosm Gamer I'll be looking at how games recreate elements of the real world, and how they inform my life.  A bit wanky arguably, but I happen to enjoy that sort of thing.  I know if I tried to write for a more standard review site I would get bored very quickly.

My first microcosm review is on Nier, and builds somewhat on my initial impressions here.

Having experienced Nier, Heavy Rain and the original Silent Hill recently I've been looking at a lot of game plots about fatherhood.  More specifically, about a father trying to save their child.  And on a basic level they were all the same -- a self-sacrificial struggle at any cost.  I think it's worth noting the unhealthy aspects of this take on what it means to be a parent.

There is more than that going on in Nier though, so it's been interesting to write about.  There is a lot about the game which would normally put me off, but somehow I forgive it.

 I recently finished playing Professor Layton and the Curious Village.  Yes, the first Layton game -- I haven't had my DS for very long and have a lot of catching up to do.

I've been thinking about what makes a puzzle satisfying.  Too easy and it's not really worthy of being called a puzzle.  But too hard and I'll soon check a walkthrough rather than fruitlessly bashing my head against it.

Everyone finds different things challenging, though.  For example, my partner has me well and truly beaten on number problems, while I have an easier time with spatial puzzles.  Puzzle difficulty is quite individual.  That said, I've yet to meet someone who didn't consider that map puzzle in Riven too damn hard.  If you have played it you'll probably remember the one I mean.

Another common problem with puzzles is lack of detailed localisation.  I sometimes need to stop thinking like an Australian.  I forget that what I call the first floor of a building is the second floor in the US (and presumably Japan?).  Date formats and holidays also mess me up sometimes.

These cases where my nationality is a detriment to gaming are relatively infrequent in the scheme of things, but it’s something I’ve been quite conscious of recently.  I dread to think how often game puzzles assume things like normal colour vision.  That's not something I'm likely to notice myself.

(Actually, I take back what I said about my nationality only rarely being a problem.  Delayed release dates and over-pricing are a constant disadvantage to gaming in this country.  But that’s another issue, and one that’s been tackled much better elsewhere.)

I'd include age as a factor making appropriate puzzle difficulty harder to set, but honestly I was way better at this stuff when I was younger.  My skills in basic maths and puzzle-logic have atrophied over the years.  Provided you are old/educated enough to understand fractions you'll probably do as well or better than me.

A game like Professor Layton contains a lot of puzzles of course, so I think it gets away with the potential problems with game puzzles relatively well.  Only a couple put me at a disadvantage for being an Aussie, and with that many puzzles at least some were bound to have the right level of challenge.

I suppose the hint system is one approach to making the challenge level appropriate for a broader range of people.  But I found that was usually either no help at all or practically gave away the answer.  Writing good hints must be at least as difficult as coming up with good puzzles.

This discussion is probably coming across fairly negative, and I don't really mean it to.  It's precisely because of all these issues I admire good examples of puzzle games.  There is a good reason for Professor Layton's popularity.  It's probably dealing with the difficulty issue almost as well as a game of this type ever could.

I love the Silent Hill series. I particularly enjoy trying to understand how the town interacts with a character's psyche.  The logic can change a lot with each new character. For example, a religious symbol may be powerful in one game and completely useless in another. Add the residual impact of past events and emotions, as well as elements attributable to the town itself, and you have a lot of complexity to work with.

I've studied other people's analyses, particularly SilentPyramid's plot analysis on GameFAQs (long and spoiler-heavy), and Translated Memories (prettier but less in-depth, still heavy on spoilers). I've spent a lot of time trying to get my head around the parapsychology. By now I at least have my own basic understanding of how Silent Hill operates. I even started trying to create my own pencil-and-paper roleplaying game based on the same ideas, but that's been slow going.

But I have a confession to make: I've never actually played a Silent Hill game.

I've watched Silent Hill 2, 3 and most of 4 be played. I've seen the movie, and read some of the comics (maybe that was getting a bit desperate). I even own The Silent Hill Experience. I never usually get this fanatical about anything. And still, I've never sat down and played a game.

I have decided it's high time I fixed this situation. Silent Hill 1, Origins and Shattered Memories have been sitting on my shelf egging me on. I expect this will be the first of several posts on the subject.


Mission: Silent Hill 1

Starting with the original Silent Hill may have been a bad idea. I struggled to adapt back to a PS1 game. Harry Mason controls more like a car than a person, and freezes in place for a second or two every time he takes damage. I didn't get very far before becoming frustrated with the limited ammo and flying enemies. It is survival horror, I'll grant you, so running away rather than fighting everything makes a lot of sense. But the clunky movement really made it too much for me. I would like to be getting freaked out by the game itself rather than my own inability to, say, turn around.

So, I gave up and returned to backseat gaming to see SH1 to its conclusion. As someone who has studied so much about Silent Hill there were no particular surprises in the story, of course. And if I want to get analytical I'm much better off discussing Silent Hill 2, or even 3. Possibly some other time :)

So, mission failed on my first attempt at becoming a Silent Hill player. I am happy to have at least seen the original Silent Hill. It still has a lot of creepy atmosphere and enemy design, and the control issues would have been worth putting up with if I wasn't being so noobish. I'm a bit of an easy touch when it comes to survival horror games, so that may also have been a factor.

I'm having a quiet long weekend, and so I've been on a bit of a game binge the last couple of days. This may have been a bad idea, as my shoulder now hates me.

I have another guest review up on Game people, for Endless Ocean 2.

Yes, I really am afraid of the ocean. I quite enjoyed writing about that. Thinking about it now, I suppose I'm interested in the relationship between games and fear. Not so much intentionally scary games, but how elements in games relate to facing fears. Is a virtual world an easier place to deal with things? I suppose Endless Ocean 2 is an example where this applies for me, though I wouldn't say it made me any more likely to seek out ocean experiences in the real world.

I suppose in this case I am using a game to substitute for the real thing, rather than as a transitional stage. I don't think that has to be a terrible thing. And it doesn't mean I couldn't use a game as a stepping stone if I really wanted to overcome a fear. I could argue I successfully used World of Warcraft as a social training ground, though progress there is always ongoing. There is no "quick fix" a lot of the time, and games are only one part of a much larger story.

News today is that I have a guest review of Sleep is Death on Game People. Game People is a site aimed at providing intentionally anecdotal and subjective game reviews from different types of people. So, I fit in there and am intending to write more reviews for them in the future. This will (and has been) impacting my post frequency here, but isn't the death of my blogging by any means.

Sleep is Death was a strange game, and I'm feeling a bit mixed about my review of it. That is perhaps appropriate, since I was also pretty mixed about playing it. I'm very glad not all games require quite so much work from me.

I'm not used to having an editor, so it feels a bit odd reading occasional altered sentences and slightly different emphasis. I can certainly benefit a lot from editorial input, but it will take some getting used to. I have been enjoying myself, though, and it's always nice to get some recognition and be invited to write something.