Gamer's Log - Minecraft

The best game to feature tree-punching mechanics.

Minecraft, where do I begin? Minecraft is the most talked about game right now, it seems no one can escape its 16x16 pixel grasp. I had heard whispers of what the game involved and viewed quite hilarious videos involving various structures being unintentionally razed but it wasn't until I heard my friends talking to each other about all the insane contraptions and structures they had built and planned on building in the future that I decided I must buy it. This seems to have been the way Minecraft has gathered ninety percent of its popularity; friends tell friends who tell other friends and so and so forth until we have over one million registered players. Oh yes, and I forgot to mention the game is still in Alpha.

So why is this game so damn good? The first thing I noticed is the way it doesn't force you to think a certain way or throw you into a pre-conceived universe. You begin the game in the middle of a procedurally generated environment made up of cubes coloured with a 16 pixel by 16 pixel texture map, with nothing but a block hand sticking out in front of the screen. What you do from this point on is entirely up to you, the only constant being that at night time there will be monsters and they will try to kill you. The addition of monsters to the game add a welcomed necessity factor to the already enjoyable and addicting building mechanic. During the first night you'll probably only have enough time to dig out a stone dwelling in the side of a cliff with a couple of torches scattered around but by the fifth or sixth night you could possibly have a multi-layered castle fitted with mechanised doors and a moat running along the perimeter.

The brilliance of Minecraft, in my opinion is only unleashed once you're playing on a server with a group of your friends, working together to create a land of wonder and mystery. On the current server I play on for example, I've created the aptly named "Ben Island" which is a hidden underground labyrinth, guarded by giant cobblestone walls and furious cacti.

I'm feeling more of a need to write about all of my creations other than the game itself and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. It's this kind of creativity and social interactivity that has made this game such a phenomenon and is absolutely a wake-up call for all game designers out there. Minecraft is a video game, can only be a video game and will ever only be a video game. Markus Persson (the creator of Minecraft) has fully embraced the medium he's working in and is being rewarded for it.

Voren'thal - 40/M/Silvermoon City

With the release of the latest expansion for World of Warcraft, Cataclysm looming ever closer it became harder and harder to resist the call of the Lich King. Roughly a month ago I answered the aforementioned call and my alter ego Voren'thal was on the other end. He's a pretty cool guy, see for yourself:

Click to embiggen.

So what have I been doing over the past few weeks to prepare for Azeroth to be torn asunder by the ever-growing Maelstrom, you ask?

Smelting!

I smelted so much ore. I dropped my previous professions of Alchemy and Leatherworking and picked up Mining and Engineering instead. It was a good move.

I've also acquired a couple of neat new mounts such as this Swift Brewfest Ram:

And this Bronze Drake:

Since I quit playing over a year ago, Blizzard has added a few fantastic new features which make WoW much more streamlined and accessible such as the Dungeon Finder. The Dungeon Finder is an excellent new way to find a group of fellow players to plough through an instance with, you simply select which dungeon you would like to run (or select 'random dungeon' if you're not picky which will reward you with gold, Emblems of Frost and a nice buff for the duration of your run) and your role and you then join a queue for that instance. The best part of this feature is that it works cross-server, meaning you could have a party of five players with each being from a different server.

There's also an Auction House in Dalaran purely for engineers.

It makes me happy.

I'll upload my thoughts on Dead Rising 2 within the next couple of days. Here's a hint: You can kill zombies with two chainsaws duct-taped to a paddle and it has co-op.

P.S.

For the ladies.

Gamer's Log - Mirror's Edge

A shining example of why not all games should have a story.

I wanted to like Mirror's Edge, and I did for the first few levels; I was free-running across rooftops, sliding down pipes and wincing every time I pressed the wrong button and fell hundreds of feet to the ground below. Mirror's Edge at it's core is a fun, beautiful and innovative game. It's a shame then that the whole experience is marred by an intrusive, linear and inherently boring plot.

I need to stress that the core gameplay of Mirror's Edge is fun, you play in the first-person as what we Earthlings refer to as a parkourist although within the world of Mirror's Edge they are known as "Runners". Unimaginative name aside, this is where the game truly shines. That is, the running. In Mirror's Edge you are running a lot and you are required to constantly think about where you're going while doing your best to avoid the platitude of obstacles the levels throw at you. It's amazing what a change of perspective does to differentiate Mirror's Edge from Prince of Persia or Assassin's Creed, the rush you get from jumping over a thirty foot gap between buildings intensifies tenfold when seen through the eyes of the character doing so. Likewise, the horror of not quite making it the full thirty feet is intensified just as much when seen through the eyes of the plummeting protagonist. It's a good thing that the experience of falling is a notable one as it will happen many, many times. Death is a frequent occurrence in this game as one would assume in a game where split second decisions are always required and the difference between pressing the left trigger 0.1 seconds after you jump and 0.2 seconds after you jump is the difference between life and death.

Another positive attribute Mirror's Edge boasts is its beautiful art-style. The world you play within is entirely white, with patches of red, blue and green added to not only break up what would be a monotone landscape but also to direct you where to go with a concept known as "Runner vision". Runner vision is the equivalent of an arrow pointing you in the direction you need to go, though not as blatant. When you build up speed and momentum in Mirror's Edge, the objects in the world which you are able to interact with become red and therefore stand out like a sore thumb. These objects may include a box you can jump off, a pole you can climb up or a plank of wood you can leap from. Runner vision is a great way for players to have their hand held through these levels without them feeling like they have no control or choice in where they're going.

If the two preceding paragraphs were all there was to this game it would be fantastic, there could be the 20 or so levels to complete, each with their own time trials and online leaderboards to compare your time with others. There could have even been a level-editor to ensure eternal replayabilty. Nope. Instead of the game being centred around a solid gameplay mechanic we have a dull story about a city overrun with corrupt officials and a rebel group trying to blah blah blah... It's been done hundreds of times before and this instance is no more interesting than the last. Regardless of the fact that the game has an unnecessary story albeit a horrible one at that, the major problem is how much the story interferes with the playing of the actual game. Despite the cutscenes placed between each level, on occasion the game will suddenly break away from the fast-paced adrenaline-fuelled gameplay to an in-game cutscene filled with nothing but dialogue where you can't even control the direction your looking. In a game with such a heavy emphasis of the concept of the player being the avatar they control it is such a slap in the face whenever I'm brought out of my immersion and placed within a scene where I have no power. It's incredible how different these scenes are when you are able to walk and look around, the Half-Life series did this to perfection; seldom was I not moving around the room thwacking everything with my crowbar (people included) when I was forced into an area of pure dialogue, and guess what?

It was fun.

Gamer's Log - Chime

It sounds like "Trine" and is equally amazing.

Before I destroy my keyboard out of the frustration of trying to get past 100 percent on the fifth level of this game, I thought I'd write about why it was good enough for me to drop five of my dollars and six hours of my life the first day I even knew this game existed.

Chime is a perfect combination of Lumines and Tetris, usually the combination of anything and Tetris is enough to garner my attention and luckily enough it just so happens that this one's a keeper. The mindset required to excel at Chime is much more similar to that required to excel at Tetris more-so than that required to excel at Lumines; the strategic placement of blocks to form quads is very reminiscent of creating four rows of tetrominoes to create a tetris (these are all the correct terms, take my word). Combine this game mechanic which is already insanely unfairly targeted towards obsessive-compulsive perfectionists such as myself, with an incredible soundtrack that organically responds to your placement of the blocks within the grid and you have yourself a recipe for addiction.

It must be a testament to the incredible gameplay that I barely care that there only six playable levels in Chime, each with its own unique grid-shape, set of blocks and more importantly its own song which plays consistently throughout your time in the level and while I don't plan on downloading any of these songs onto my iPod any time soon that does not necessarily mean that they're bad songs, in fact, it doesn't mean that at all. What it does mean, however, is that they are symbiotically infused with the levels in a way where one simply could not exist without the other. For example, I could listen to Still Alive forever, it is a musical trophy representing the time I had playing through Portal (seeing as though I never got that damned cake...), however, the version remixed for Chime is significantly more drawn out and while it doesn't bring the instant delight and joy of the original, it allows you to enjoy the song for what it is while you're still horribly aware that you have twelve seconds left to fill the remaining eight percent of the playing-grid.

I feel that for every good thing I say about Chime is something good I'm saying about Steam: the bringer of Chimes. Without this amazing service being what it is I would have never seen this game for sale in the first place. In addition to the simple fact that Steam is a platform from which Chime could be released, it is also fully supported with online leaderboards, stats and achievements. Because the fucking game wasn't addicting enough, apparently.

I was having a conversation recently about how much to put a price tag on a game; to you charge for the length of the story-mode; the overall experience; the multiplayer; how much it took to develop the game? Whatever pre-conceived points existed for that debate have now been shattered by Chime. Five dollars. I paid five dollars for one of the best games I've played all year and most likely will be playing for a very long time. How can a company like Activision justify charging 110 Australian dollars for a game like Prototype when Chime charges five and gives a portion of that to charity? They can't, that's how.

I'm on the verge of a rant that would be better saved for later so I'm going to quickly conclude so that I can play some more Chime before I have to go to sleep and wake up to do many non-Chime related things.

So, in conclusion...

Buy. Chime. Now.

Gamer's Log - Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure

While he isn't the most compelling protagonist, Zack is the centrepiece of this fantastic puzzle-adventure game.

Let me preface this post by stating how unenthusiastic I am about the mainstream video game industry at the moment. It's an amazing feat when I can sit down and play a game for more than fifteen minutes without getting bored by cutscenes, dull visuals, horrible controls or bad game design. Zack & Wiki is a brilliant game, it's not trying to be anything it isn't which is a rare find these days. The puzzles are hard without being too hard, the visuals are colourful and full of life and the core gameplay is unhindered by any other elements. Zack & Wiki is everything a game should be.

Within only a few minutes of inserting the disk I was already playing the Zack & Wiki, solving puzzles, waving my Wiimote around and hunting down pieces of a dead pirate named Barbaros. The brilliance of Zack & Wiki's game design lies within the way it rewards the player with HirameQ, a silly name for what is generally referred to as "points". You get H-Q for everything you do that progresses you through each level, from pulling a lever to smacking a fireball at a spider using a tennis racquet made out of a spider. However, there is a catch as if getting points for doing these tasks wasn't enough, you will also be shown how many points you could have attained based on how efficient you are at the task at hand (I can't express how discouraging it is to receive 100/60'000 H-Q for putting a totem into a totem-shaped slot in the ground). Even though I'm yet to finish Zack & Wiki I'm already itching to go back and redo each level to perfection.

Another reason to love Zack & Wiki is the impressive way it utilizes that cunning piece of technology known as the Wiimote. Basic movement of Zack is done by pointing the Wiimote at the screen and clicking where you want him to move to. The beauty of the game, however, lies within the interaction between Zack and the many, many unique objects he encounters throughout the game at which point the Wiimote becomes whichever object you are currently using. For example, let's say that you decide to use a CentiSaw (a saw made out of a centipede for those of you unfamiliar with insect-based tools) to cut down a tree, you are required to perform a cutting motion, with the Wiimote acting as the saw, another good example is when you are required to swing the Wiimote like a tennis racquet to propel a fireball at an enemy spider. Of course, various Wii games have already implemented similar mechanics to this before (Cooking Mama, Wii Sports: Tennis) but it has never been as successful outside of the mini-game scenarios those games present them in. Zack & Wiki blends the use of the Wiimote seamlessly into the core gameplay and that's what I believe makes it such a great game - it embodies everything which got me so excited about the Wii back in 2006.