Where she been, Oooh she been gone! (Sporadic Roundup #3)

Over the past... several months, I completely forget what I've been doing. So let's talk briefly about what I've been up to lately:

• Dungeons and Dragons 5e -- I'm playing two games at the moment: Shieldhaven's Aurikesh game (as I was, and will be, amen), and also a game called Reborn- a mostly online game run by a friend that I will call Mr. AWESOME. In the former, I am continuing to play my Veytikka Fighter and Beruch Warlock, and have now added a Kagandi Parthé who is a Royal Sorcerer. My Warlock has been the subject of a lot of tinkering and fussing, but really, it was the addition of a couple of new cleric cantrips of Haven's that really helped me have fun in combat (I'm a tomelock, see). So it seems like a lot of the problem was that most of the cantrips at base just weren't interesting enough. Well, and the combination of a) needing to take Agonizing Blast (even though I didn't), and b)  invocations being a little too much like build traps (see item a). But I digress. Hopefully, I'll also get to play a bit of Lost Mines of Phandelver fairly soon, so that will be cool.  
• 13th Age -- we started a game of 13th age, run by another friend I will call Batgirl, and I'm hoping we'll get to play more of that. I am playing something completely ridiculous, but it's been long enough I can't recall a lot of specifics. 
• Life is Strange -- a Square Enix story game. I bought the season pass, and am on my second playthrough of episode 3, having completely fucked up the second episode in one playthrough. Or, well, allowed something bad enough to happen that I had to have a second one to see the other primary outcomes. There's 5 episodes total, and it's interesting to see how they handle the branching consequences. So I'm liking that. 

Also, I am working on a Twine game about books that change based on the order you read them in. I need to brush up on my JS skills so that I can possibly write some macros around more robust array functionality, because a lot depends on whether I can make conditional content around whether one item has a higher or lower array index than another. On the subject of a lot of fiddly, branching consequences. Anyway, when I have a playable demo, I will doubtless post it here-ish. 

I have not been working on either of the tabletop game ideas I have; the one about psions, temporarily called The Red Ones, and the one about cities, working title: A City of Dolls and Monsters. 

And that's the news in brief. 

Yes, Video Games are Art. There. I said it.

This is a common question that's come up over and over: Are Video Games Art? If so, what makes them thus? And so on, and so forth. Typically, the argument is divided by people who don't care for games saying, "No! They're silly kids' entertainment, and cannot be Art!" and people who like games saying something that sounds a lot like, "well, I like them, so they must be Art!" and people who like games, but want to be snooty about it saying, "well, what is Art anyway? And some are Art, and some are not," et al.

But what we're actually talking about here, at a fundamental level is legitimacy: should games be taken seriously as a medium and a format, or not?

And yes, I am using Art with a capital A, because it _is_ to be high-falutin' here. Or some junk. And because I am unable to avoid pretension or fulmination, because I am not as awesome as Shieldhaven. But I digress.

First, we have to separate Art from value judgement. That is to say: whether or not you like something has nothing to do with it's status as Art. There's plenty of bad Art. But the fact remains that movies, books, music, and visual art are all Art, and video games combine these elements with interactivity... thus, Art. But there's another reason too... the economics, the production, and the marketing of video games are all consistent with those for Art of various media.

I shall explain.

Oh ya, Ouya.

So, I haz an Ouya! I've actually had it for a while, but only got to turn it on once before we were caught up in moving and other boring, life-ly stuff. Now that stuff is more settled, here's my general impressions of the system.

I want to like it, you see, I really want to like it. But every time I turn it on, it's one hassle after another... the controller won't connect, the wireless won't connect, there's only 6GB of space... I don't think I've seen an android phone with that little space. And the games I like so far are all a gig or so in size, which is just too bad.

Speaking of games, it's a little like any indie website with a bunch of homebrewed games, except you have to download them on to your sad, tiny hard-drive, and the external storage hasn't had the kinks worked out yet. Either way, I'll be very happy when I can, say, hook up external storage and get it to work without having to look up a bunch of tutorials online.

So far, of the games I've played, I'm enjoying 'Rose', 'Dub Wars' and 'Final Fantasy III' the best, as the latter is much more fun on a console than on my DS. 'Rose' is a point and click puzzle adventure which is dark and creepy, and by far the biggest game on my oyua, at 2.5GB or so. Ugh. Which is a shame, as it's my favorite.

'Dub Wars' is a pretty neat Galaga-ish game, where the music controls your weapon systems and you fly around avoiding bad guys with your ship while trying to hit them with whatever weapons you happen to have at the moment. But the music is very good, and has helped make some progress in getting Shieldhaven to appreciate Dubstep. :D

I've also played "Pinball Arcade", but can't recommend it for the Ouya, as the controller triggers are too sticky and laggy to be good flippers. Also, I've already purchased most of the tables I want for the ipad-- which has considerably more space-- and have no desire to pay for them again to play on a less responsive platform. Which is really sad, as I like the big screen, but eh.

Either way, I still believe in what they're doing and want to give their SDK a spin at some point, so I'm holding out hope for improvements down the line.

And that's the news from the indy console front.

For Love or Consoles

Like everyone else who cares about console gaming, I've been following the news from E3 about the Xbox One and the PS4 with great interest, and a lot of schadenfreude. And it is my responsibility (or some junk) to appraise you, the gaming public (or my tiny fraction thereof) of my thoughts.

The short version: I won't be buying an Xbox One; I will be buying a PS4.

The whys are pretty straightforward: the xbox 360 was a fair success, and I have a lot of money sunk into those games-- both from the xbox store, and in disc form. If they're not supporting that anymore, and all that money becomes so much vapor in the face of the new console? I have no reason to go for the new console. It is likely that anything new I want to play that they could offer will have a Steam version, or a PS4 version, and the listed exclusive games so far? I only kind of care about Project Spark, and if Little Big Planet wasn't enough to get me to buy a PS3, I doubt the same will be true in reverse here. Also, the always-on internet brings up shades of EA and Origins, which rubs me eternally the wrong way. Being published by EA is kind of a strike against any game, to me, unless it's name is "The Sims".

On the other side, the PS4's announcement that they'll still support disc play where you can resell/share said discs with whomever you want is a big moral victory for them. On top of that, the $399 price tag undercuts Xbox One's $499 price tag, although it's still stupid high.

On the tippy top of that, there's the fact that, as I indicated above, I don't have a PS3, and so have no investment in their previous catalogue of games. So for those for whom that's a concern... well, fair enough. They do seem to be invested in making their game backlog available digitally, though it would annoy me to have to re-pay for everything in a format that's going to eat HD space.

Anyway, it amuses me (and I think this was the case in the last console generation switch), that Sony is kind of in a better position precisely because the PS3 was dominated by the Xbox 360. I've already held onto my PS2 this long; it's no skin off me to keep it, and it's not worth enough to trade in anyway. Also, I'm kind of hoping that Microsoft's shitty, uncool business practices and limitations will prove it's monetary downfall in this cycle, that the initial launch of the Xbox One will be a failure (and anything running on a full server model always has the best launch evar amirite?), and they'll have to revamp their strategy based on what folks actually want.

In the meantime, I am still waiting for my damn Ouya to arrive.

Schrodinger's Bioshock Part 3: on Disappointment and Deus Ex.

Because I can't leave well enough alone, I realise I still have things to say about Bioshock: Infinite, somehow, someway. This is because, the further I get from it, the more lingeringly disappointed I am in how it played. And I realised during one of my habitual Long Ass Road Trips with Shieldhaven, that part of why is because I've played (and still need to finish) Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Bizarrely, rather than wanting to continue in the mechanical legacy of its predecessors, it felt very strongly as though Infinite really wanted to be like Deus Ex-- but failed. That is to say: It wanted a Pacifist Playthrough option.

Schrodinger's Bioshock Part 2: The One About Story (They're All About Story)

So, now that I've taken some time away from it, let's talk about the story of Bioshock: Infinite. You know, the most interesting things about it. Many, many spoilers to follow, but for those of who who haven't played it yet, I'll begin with First Principles: where it succeeds, it succeeds admirably; where it fails, it provides a sort of meta context on inadequacy and a fundamental misunderstanding of it's medium. And there I leave you, because admittedly, if you haven't played it, what follows will not make much sense.

A note.

Just so it is Written:

I am currently playing Planescape: Torment for the first time.

Holy shitballs, why did I not play this ten years ago!?

(And I'm still in the !&@^!&%@$! Hive. :P )

xoxo,
Kainenchen

Schrodinger's Bioshock.

So, yeah, I played it, I beat it, and you know what? I'm not going to talk about the story. Not right now, anyway. Or maybe I will, and maybe I won't. I guess you'll see at the end of the post.

What I want to talk about tonight, ladies and gentlemen, is gameplay. To begin with, Devin's side of this review pretty much sums up everything I thought about actually playing the game. Combat, as it starts, mostly felt grafted on, clunky, and in the way of getting to the next part of the drama I am here to see. Which makes it a real shame that the presence of the combat is the only thing that actually makes this a game.

(Are there spoilers under the cut? The only way to know is observation.)