Alex Livingston

Month: May 2012

  • On The 7th Guest

    A lot of folks read books during vacation. I played The 7th Guest.

    I missed this game when it came out in ’93. This was the midst of the dark time of my gaming experience from late high school through college. Fortunately, the cash-printing iOS machines are bringing all kinds of old games out of the drawer.

    So how does it hold up?

    This game is essentially a series of puzzles strung together by a loose plotline. I don’t think anyone would claim that The 7th Guest revolutionized puzzle gaming, but the chess moves and mazes aren’t really the point. This game is creepy.

    The reward for solving the puzzles is movement through the world of the house. Not trophies or harder enemies. Weird, disturbing sights and sounds conveying the story of a group of people trapped by a madman and set to a dark task. From this standpoint, assuming that the intent of the game was to present an interactive experience which put the player in the central role of a horror plotline and scare the hell out of him or her, The 7th Guest holds up better than I would have expected.

  • Quick review

    Here’s a review of Syrian Folktales by Muna Imady, a pleasant little book I received as part of the Library Thing Early Reviewers program.

     

    Imady has successfully accomplished what we all say we should do: get a hold of the story-tellers and write this stuff down. Riddles, songs, and recipes from the various governorates of Syria flesh out the folklore collection, making this volume more of an introduction to a culture than simply a book of stories. The tales themselves are presented in a sparse form, perfect for the scholar.

  • New Tumblr

    I’m very jealous of people who can draw well. So much awesomeness.

    As I play through the Final Fantasy series, I am doing up sketches of my adventures here.  http://ff25sketches.tumblr.com/

  • Final Fantasy I

    In celebration of the 25th anniversary of Final Fantasy, I am playing all of the main titles in order.

    Yarrrr!

    Final Fantasy I. It’s been a while. I picked up the PSX re-release as a PSOne Classic on PSN and ran through it on easy, fully prepared with FAQs and maps.

    By all that is holy, did we really figure all of this out as kids? I mean, we must have had a Nintendo Power or something, right?

    How do you play this beast?
    Ask the locals. Clues as to what precisely you are supposed to be doing next are hard to  come by. You need to talk to every last citizen of these poor monster-sieged towns to glean rumors and half-memories about abandoned caves, desert caravans, and civilizations long dead.

    Look around you. On foot? Walk the perimeter. Got a new boat? Sail the perimeter. And so on. This is a game about exploration — forget this new-styled business where you can just hop from point to point along the plot and only need to wander if you want the cool stuff. Oh no. You will see ALL the things.

    Fight fight fight. Just like 4e D&D, if you don’t like encounters you better play something else. This game is all about surviving long enough to find what you’re looking for.

    Compared to the platformer-heavy early NES library, FFI plays like Grand Theft Auto III. I can go where I want? Just run around exploring and fighting? Radical! This was early open-world gaming, and banked on the concept that we would love the freedom too much to care about the difficulty. They were right, if I remember correctly.

  • Traveling in Style: Yoon Ha Lee’s ‘The Book of Locked Doors’

    If I were to perform some sort of masochistic analysis of my writing, I am sure I would find far too many scenes where the protagonist is traveling. Coming from something interesting, heading towards something interesting, but pictured sitting in some sort of craft waiting. I think the term ‘bleargh’ describes this well.

    Unless you’re Yoon Ha Lee. Go and check out The Book of Locked Doors, published recently by Beyond Ceaseless Skies.

    The main character goes through nearly the entire story without interacting with anyone. What’s she up to? Riding the subway.Grabbing lunch. Walking around.

    And it’s awesome.

    How? Lee uses description masterfully, showing us the details which pass through Vayag’s line of sight and telling us her reaction as a way of delineating her character, building stakes, attaching us emotionally. You know, all that writery stuff.

    Sure, there’s plenty of running, chasing, and being talked at by a creepy spirit book, but using travel time to build the world and the main character is a superior use of column space. Next time I want to write about someone taking a cloudskipper up to an orbital, I;ll be sure to go back to this kickin’ story first.

  • Retrogaming – Super Mario Bros. Crossover

    By all that is holy, go and play this game. It’s Super Mario Brothers, but featuring a cast of NES greats. Play as Samus, Simon Belmont, Mega Man, the dudes from Contra etc.

    Cool idea, right? Run around the Mushroom Kingdom as various characters. Maybe a ten minute thing, right? Once the nostalgia is over?

    Nope. I settled in and played this thing to death over several nights. Here’s what keeps you coming back:

    • Choose. Will the screw attack work better than the spread gun here? What if I just scale the wall and get above everything? The characters have their strengths, and picking the right hero for the task makes for some cool gameplay.
    • Gear Up. Forget the Fire Flower. In place of the existing powerups have been left the various weapons of each character for your discovery and use. Double boomerang? Yes please.
    • Cheat. Nevermind the whole ‘achievements to show off to your friends’ thing. How abotu achievements which unlock new ways to play? Cheats which can be used to make the game easier, and unlock more cheats?

    This game was definitely built by people who love games and know how to make them replayable. So go check it.