22.5 - Why Unreal Is Important

The Engine

 The most important gift that Unreal has given to games as a whole is its engine. Even though the Unreal engine required a beefy computer when it came out (A Pentium 166 and 16mb (MEGABYTES) of RAM), the colored lighting, massive outdoor environments, and texture filtering were revolutionary. Keep in mind that this also offered software rendering as well as the option for 3D acceleration. If you were lucky enough to have a shiny new Voodoo 2 3dFX card, you could also have smoother textures, reflective surfaces, and faster rendering. Here is the original fly by footage as seen before loading the starting menu:

I was so floored by this demo, I must have watched it five times before even attempting to begin the game. (This was after we got the 3d card.) There was no way that this could get any better! But, games have continued to improve graphically and Unreal (for me) is on the threshold where mechanics and game play started to fall behind graphical fidelity. I would never say that Unreal has bad game play, but this game and the soon-to-follow Half Life would be the pinnacle of the combination until more recent games and indie endeavors.

The Unreal engine went on to be licensed for use in endless games and created an interesting business model. There were not many engines around at this time (Quake 2, Unreal, Half Life, and Lithtech to name a few) since the Build and Doom engines had gone out of style. As this engine was developed and new versions came out, it became more pervasive in the industry. Just look at the games that use the first Unreal engine. These iterations and progressions have continued through to this very day with the announcement and demo of Unreal Engine 4. And to think that it all began with the launch of a brand new IP fifteen years ago. Do you think that could happen in today’s market?

[A little inside baseball, but still cool.]

The Gameplay

I mentioned that for me Unreal is at the tipping point of all FPSs changing into what we recognize today. What I would consider modern are slow, plodding, cover-based, regenerative health, emotionally heavy, slog fests that have kids calling each other epithets online. Unreal and Half Life changed the feel of these games by moving from abstracted, “conceptual” approximations of locations to real facsimiles of structures. Was this good for games? You be the judge.

It certainly is not inherently bad. Many games have used these to great effect and continue to wow players. On the other hand, games are now burdened with being settled in some kind of ‘reality’ that used to be hand-waved from the get go. Duke Nukem 3d had textures representing windows, but I don’t remember any players going “Well, now this structure is larger up here than down here and this just doesn’t feel lived in”. All that mattered is that the environments felt good to play in and provided interesting spaces and opportunities for combat.

Unreal skirted this line very well (as far as I have played) and does a great job approximating these structures, but providing enough game-ness to make them feel right, too. Sort of an uncanny valley for real life structures, maybe. Personally, I don’t care about how real a place looks if it’s a consistent vision and makes for good movement and gaming.  Games appearing after this seemed to move toward slower movement, dependency on cover, and other modern tropes. This is, of course, not counting multiplayer only games that continued this fast movement and accuracy of aiming mechanics that I love.



What does this all mean?

Nothing, just some thoughts I had while preparing the next real entry. A little behind the scenes info is that it takes me a while to produce each blog post because I like to take notes, sometimes outline, and then read each draft over and over until I can bring myself to push the publish button. I just like getting into discussions about how games are changing and what that may mean. Love to hear other opinions and consider them, so fire away if you’ve got them.

22 - Unreal

After tackling a long role playing game and a 3D platformer, I can’t describe how excited I am to move on to a first person shooter. Although I would consider my favorite genre to be tactical RPGs or larger scale strategy games, I have to say that I probably spent most of my prime game playing time with FPSs. Not only is it a genre I like, but this game is such an influential and historic piece that it is super exciting to get to. I can tell you that after playing it while testing screenshots and video capture, this should be sweet.

The next entry for the blog will be the 1998 classic Unreal. This is a sci-fi first person shooter that tells the story of a marooned prisoner who is forced to explore and attempt to escape an alien world. That’s just what I need: a bare bones story and solid game play. Let’s get into some background for me.



My History With This Game


I remember back in the days of high school. I still got super excited about any new games that were coming out, even though I didn’t have a job yet for money or a computer who would run them. I had a rich history of playing Wolfenstein 3D, Doom was a huge hit, Duke Nukem 3D was making the rounds, and Quake 2 had hit and not yet come to be seen as a major disappointment. In my English class in 1998, my buddy Mark came in, showed me a jewel case, and said, “Check this out.”

I couldn’t believe he had it. The previews from PC Gamer and other magazines I had been looking at seemed… well, Unreal. Huge landscapes with bright colors. The monsters were shooting lasers and modeled in full 3d unlike the sprites in Dark Forces or System Shock. I had not played Quake or Quake 2 because we did not have a Windows 95 machine when they came out, but now we did. I was so excited my stomach was in knots. For some reason, Mark let me borrow the game.

I installed it an was blown away by everything, and this was before I even had a Voodoo 2 3D accelerator card! We’re talking about software rendering with dithered shadows, popping textures and jagged edges. I have a feeling that any younger readers may not understand how huge this was back in the mid to late 90s. I was hooked and played and played and played.

Through the years I continued to play Unreal Tournaments up until 2004 (I think) and had nothing but fond memories for the franchise. Let’s see how it holds up.



My History with FPS in General


I’m going to take a minute here to toot my horn a little bit. Although I enjoy playing tactical RPGs the most, my most ‘successful’ runs of playing games have been in first person shooters. I played Wolfenstein 3D extensively when I was younger and purchased Doom as soon as it came out. I was not very good and used cheat codes a lot, but kids just want to have fun and not necessarily a challenge.

This changed drastically as I got older. After going to college, my friend showed me a free to play online FPS called Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. I had played the campaign for Return to Castle Wolfenstein, but had not tried playing online. At this point it was all over. I was hooked. I would spend hours and hours fighting as either the Allies or the Nazis trying to destroy fuel dumps, steal secret documents, take radar parts, or load and fire a giant rail gun. This would lead me to my first experience with competitive online multiplayer communities.

I joined a clan called Deliverance. We were in the Team Warfare Leage (TWL) and the Cyberathlete Amature League (CAL) in the upper and lower echelons respectively. We were always one of those border teams that were really too good for the lower leagues and kept being bumped to the upper only to have the floor mopped for us. Despite this frustration, it was great to have a group of people to play with all the time and really push my skills further. It made me feel pretty good that I was constantly accused of cheating in public games, but still got whipped in private servers full of the best players. It's also fun to fondly look back at old frag movies of players such as Palehorse of Casualty (One of the best Panzers in the league), Seed from SuaveSports (He was only 13 or something!), and BlackLabel from Rotators (Undisputedly the best clan in both leagues) and remember playing or scrimmaging against them on a daily basis. Sad to think that it won't happen again with the constraints of work and life.

This experience showed me that online gaming wasn't just little kids calling you names and could really be something more tactical, social, and intense. I've always had a soft spot for shooters since and still like to think about it now and again.

[I remember all of these players!]

Why am I so Excited?


I always love revisiting old FPS games that I may not have experienced in the 'right' way. When I was a kid I would always get all the guns, run through the levels, and just mess around. This is fine, but as an adult, I would like to feel a little more accomplishment. After playing Doom 2 again and again several years ago for months at a time (love the mapping community), I fell in love with all the old games and got them on GOG. I actually did quite a bit of mapping in Doom Builder and had some cool levels, but never published any and lost them because of a hard drive crash. It's also rough because these were made in my OCD depression days, so even though some of them were impressive, they brought back bad memories of fighting the engine and program. Oh well.

I'm looking forward to popping back into the moon boots of a prisoner on a crashed ship. (Spoiler: I already tested it.) I have a much better eye for level design and balance and cannot wait to see what went into the game. Nuance, strategy, positioning, and movement are constantly overlooked when thinking about past FPSs and may be going that same direction with the current generation. We're going back to a time when you could carry more than two weapons, health did not regenerate, players could run 50mph in game, and not every game needed to be a political commentary.

Let's get Unreal.

--Backlog Killer

21 - Final Words About Psychonauts

Psychonauts should have been a graphic adventure game.

I don’t mean for that to sound like a pejorative because I really enjoyed a lot of the characters and the thought that went into designing the concepts that dictated the levels. The problem is that the gameplay was bad. The camera controls were off, jumping felt floaty, and the depth of objects relative to Raz was very hard to determine. Considering most of the game mechanics are based around the platforming genre that these problems infest, the game play was very annoying and difficult as tougher challenges were introduced.

On the other hand, the elegance and cerebral nature or the minds/levels that were represented in game show consistent strokes of genius. If I were telling Raz where to go via point and click puzzles and combining senseless items, I would have been much less frustrated about what was happening in the Meat Circus or in Waterloo World. I went into many of these concepts in depth during each update regarding the levels, but I would like to just touch on a few that were really important to me as I was playing.

Translating Crazy

Each level had something unique to say about the mental state of the owner and was executed very well in theory. One of my favorites was the Milkman Conspiracy. Even though I am not a paranoid schizophrenic, I would like to think that I understand a little bit about what it is like to experience an altered sense of reality. While depressed, I had a crushing sense that the world was abstract and that I could sense the meaning of things as a concept, but was unable to experience them in an interface with myself. This emptiness is the best way that I can describe the state because it does not “look” different from what you see every day, but the perception is vastly shifted to something malevolent. Everybody is out to make YOU angry and the world IS an evil place, even if something good happens to you. I liked how the Milkman Conspiracy addressed this by turning the concepts of a standard life and filling it with the reality of what a paranoid schizophrenic would suspect: cameras everywhere, danger, secret agents, and an entire conspiracy just to put you down. This was a great way of abstracting the feelings while maintaining a compelling setting with the twisting street and colorful scenery.

Another one of my favorite levels is Waterloo World, even though actually playing it is painful. The metaphor for dealing with mental illness and another personality is sublime: playing a game against yourself yet you are the same person. Constantly maneuvering around and avoiding certain situations that you know will lead to terrible outcomes and trying to avoid losing is an everyday battle that I used to deal with and others still suffer from. I know all too well how it feels to endure and how it usually ends up being a dead end of sitting in your house and avoiding everything; to prevent even playing the game so to speak.  Tim Schafer, once again, has a lofty thought and concept that is hidden beneath terrible and tedious platforming.


What I think Overall

Psychonauts was fun to think about and explore, but it is not fun to play. There is nothing done here mechanically that is not done better in a more competent platformer. I know games like Jak & Dexter and Ratchet & Clank are supposed to be good so you can start there if you are looking for a similar gameplay experience. What Psychonauts does have going for it is the analytical part of the story and a concept that can only come from keen insight and imagination. The deftness with which Schafer is able to personify and abstract these complicated conditions and feelings is astounding. Unfortunately, this is not enough to make it stick around as an action platforming game. If the game were an adventure, I can see being able to dig into the world, appreciate it, and interject more humor than was possible in this form. Was this done because adventure games were dead at the time? Maybe. Was the game designed this way because consolers wouldn’t be into it otherwise? Probably.

The recent rebirth of adventure games such as the new Sam and Maxes, Monkey Islands, and the more recent Walking Deads is a really new thing and long overdue. If Psychonauts had come out today, I am almost positive that it would have taken that form and been much better experience and even more beloved. Having said that, I think it is OK, but will leave it in the “never touch this again” pile and just think about what the concept of the game meant to me. A comparatively complex narrative structure and lofty thoughts just do not work in this console port and it is a shame because there is a great game buried in the bits and pieces that comprise it.

I give the game three out of five dinguses for the design and effort, but the game play just drags it down completely. It is worth playing so grab it on a Steam, GoG, or Humble Bundle sale if you can.


What’s Next?

[29 means Unreal.]

Well, the next game has been randomly chosen and it is Unreal Gold! I am excited about this because I love first person shooters and have played a good amount of Unreal Tournament in college. (Even though my real love was Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Enemy Territory) I think the Gold edition contains the original campaign as well as the expansion titled Return to Na Pali. I haven’t decided if I will complete both, but if the original goes quickly, I may just do it. I am hoping this one will be fast and furious as I consider myself to be pretty good at FPSs and able to power through pretty well. Keep a look out and I have a few other surprises I may toss in too. I just got recording working so I can track my progress through some of the more interesting levels and maybe provide a tour of what were revolutionary graphics and environments.

That’s about it for this update. Follow my Twitter account (@backlogkiller) for tweets while I am playing and feel free to read the other posts and respond to them if you have any thoughts. Also feel free to leave any Psychonauts postings because I feel like my comments are pretty caustic and am open to second opinions.

I have also updated the games list with a few new entries such as Legend of Grimrock and Quest for Glory 1-5 so check that out, too.


--Backlog Killer

20 - I'm Psycho With Psychonauts

Well, it’s finally done. I’ve finished Psychonauts and lived through all of the terrible parts that are universally feared and derided throughout the Internet. I stand here on the other side of a harrowing ordeal to tell you, dear readers, that these things are true. I will get into it more in the final write up of the game in the next post, but the last two levels I have played have been not only mechanically frustrating, but a bottomless divide from what could have been. I still maintain that the ideas and philosophy behind the design of the levels is awesome, they are just not fun to play. We’ll get through the mechanical story and progress stuff first, and then hit on the pontification in the next few days.

Also, a short announcement: I have made a Twitter account for my BacklogKiller blog persona (@backlogkiller) so you can follow that as I may tweet my thoughts while playing the game or other ideas I have about games in general. You are encouraged to follow if you use a device for sending/receiving tweets.


Bullseye


When we last left Raz, we were one element short of a full Dr. Loboto costume needed to progress further into the ruined asylum. Having attained the straightjacket from Bonaparte and the claw from Von Gouton, I searched the area for the last remaining piece that would be found in the mind of our new buddy Edgar Teglee.

[Please let me help you so I can move on.]

Edgar is a tough guy with lots of tats and deep seated demons, but what else would you expect after what we have encountered so far? With no hesitation, I tossed the Psychic portal onto his forehead and lept into ‘The Black Velvetopia’. Luckily I was greeted with an OK, if not unremarkable, level compared to the previous encounters.

The Velvetopia is in the style of a Mexican city or village inked with the aesthetic of a 1960’s black light acid poster. This visual style is oddly compelling and is a good understated window into the owner of the imagination. As an artist, I would expect that Edgar thinks of things in different ways and any constructions in his mind would not exactly correlate to reality as they would in other characters. It was also pretty cool because the visual style brought back twinges of misty nostalgia for one of Schafer’s previous games, Grim Fandango, that takes place in the Mexican land of the dead.

[Muy colorido. (Forgot all my Spanish)]

Upon entering the level, we see Edgar using giant playing cards to build a platform to reach a beautiful woman in the sky. Very nice, building a house of cards that is invariably destroyed by a rampaging bull in the psyche keeping you from reaching your goal. Well done. Unfortunately, since we are in his mind, this bull is very real and takes out Raz with the cards depositing him at the end of an alleyway that is constantly being barreled down by the belligerent bovine. The goal of the stage is very simple: progress down the alley, use alcoves to avoid the bull, and attain the four queens from the card deck to allow Edgar to reach his goal.

My progress was actually very formulaic and I don’t really have anything to add in description. There was little frustration other than the bull pushing me back to the beginning of the alleyway each time I mistimed a dodge. When this would happen, I would have to use previously opened portals to the hub area opened after attaining any queen cards. The problem with this is that each time I would emerge from the portal, a long cutscene would cue showing how high Edgar’s house of cards was making it VERY annoying when trying to use this as a method of quick travel. The choices became either dodge the bull again all the way up the street past previously cleared areas or see the same cutscene over and over. Not a big deal, though, and I wouldn’t put it up with ruining anything. It’s just unfortunate.

[Lots of time spent like this... waiting...]

The only thing that takes place during the platforming I will take time to note is that throughout the level are dogs from the Poker Playing Dogs  painting selling their own works of art that you can hang up in picture frames for various effects. For example, after buying a picture of a guitar and putting it on a wall, it becomes a large ladder allowing you to climb up the strings and to get to out of reach places. These paintings can only be used in very limited number of situations, however, and end up being a very small mechanic in the level.

[Anthropomorphized dogs will never not be cute.]

After successfully dodging the bull and progressing down the road, pictures of the Queens of Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs, and Spades are seen on the wall as portals allowing you to enter much like in Mario 64. Each of these leads to a mini-boss fight against an animal themed Luchadore. This did not make sense to me beyond the Mexican connection until getting the viewmaster reel of Edgar’s memories and seeing that he was a wrestler in high school. Beating these giant wrestlers is very easy and required nothing but using some of my previously acquired powers such as levitation or shield to dodge their telegraphed attacks and beat them up until they went down. Each mini-boss that is defeated results in Edgar building his card platform higher and higher toward the unattainable woman.

[Looks like Vader.]

The last wrestler, a snake themed fellow, was a little bit different. Before this bout, I was instructed to talk to “The Matador” who is on vacation for some reason and letting that bull run around out of control. He was kind of a jerk, but was nice enough to bestow upon me the last psychic power of the game: confusion grenades! Yes, that’s right. Over five hours of gameplay time after they are introduced, I am finally able to use these little buggers and just before the game ends, too! Game design knocks aside, these confusion grenades made it easy to beat the wrestler and get through to the end where we find the final boss of the level.

Throughout the level, the story of Edgar is revealed in the viewmaster reels as follows: Edgar was a talented wrestler in high school dating the head cheerleader. Unfortunately, his wrestling practice and prowess did not leave enough time to give this demanding young lady enough attention so she very quickly moved on to the captain of the football team. Just very basic high school stuff. This felt tacked on and was not built into the level well, but it is what it is.

[Story as old as time.]

Smash cut back to the final boss area: a giant bullfighting arena. We find Edgar’s former girlfriend, who he is trying to reach, telling us to fight against the bull plaguing the level. The Matador is there, of course, but will not help us. It is an easy boss fight that took a high road by not making the player bait the bull into smashing its head into the wall causing it to be stunned. The fight took a more literal stance by asking the player to toss spears into the bull’s back to weaken it as is done in Spanish-style bullfighting. After it is down for the count, Edgar appears and confronts the ex but immediately becomes enraged and transforms into (GASP!) the bull! Bet you didn’t see that coming, either. Surprise surprise, Edgar is responsible for toppling his own house of cards built on hopes and wishes and egged on by the Matador who turns out to be the guy who stole the girl.

[That was the word I was trying to think of.]

The next stage of the fight is a switch-em-up of trying to protect Edgar as a bull and fighting the matador using the same technique of using telekinesis to throw the spears again. Short story shorter: Raz takes him out, the manipulative girlfriend tries to pretend like she is in love with Edgar again, Edgar rejects her and gets over his mental hang-ups. We are kicked out of his cleared mind and rewarded with a special painting of Dr. Loboto.

[All that work for this beauty.]

Editing note:
After re-reading my experience during this level, I just realized how beaten down I’m getting by this point in the game. It’s the same over and over again, great idea and poor execution. In this case the level was inoffensive in its mechanics, but so what? It just was not interesting in the slightest beyond a cerebral experience so I’ll just leave it at that.



Going Up!


After dressing as Loboto and putting the painting left to me on like a mask, I was able to trick the orderly into letting me ascend into the upper levels of the missed opportunity (asylum). This area is not scary and pretty much an empty buffer to slow the player from reaching the final area of the game too quickly. Bland platforming leads to Dr. Loboto’s lab located on top of the asylum. Inside we find the brains of Agents Nein and Milla locked behind a force field that must be circumvented. It turns out that the mad doctor has employed a former patient of the hospital known as Sheegor, a play on the classic Frankenstein henchman Igor, to do his dirty work. She is being blackmailed by the doctor who is threatening to cook her pet turtle, forcing her to help him steal children’s brains. After rescuing the turtle from the lab, we find out that it is sentient and formulates a plan in which its brain is brought to Dr. Loboto to be put into a tank similar to the one fought earlier. The plan goes off without a hitch starting one of the most dramatic boss fights of the game.

[Looks as bland as it plays.]

Just kidding, nothing of the sort happens. The inexplicably large turtle brain takes control of the tank and blasts Loboto into the lake transporting us past the point of no return for a brilliant anti-climax. The game seems to be over: Lilli is rescued, Nein and Milla are re-brained, and Loboto is gone, but now we are forced into a real boss fight. A tank controlled by Oleander’s huge brain comes over the ridge and knocks everybody out but Raz. We have no choice but to load up our powers and begin battle.

This boss fight was consistent with the latter parts of the game by also being very uninteresting. The tank uses its powers of telekinesis to surround itself with concrete and wooden barriers that Raz must destroy using his own telekinesis and pyrokinesis. After removing these obstructions, chunks of concrete can be thrown to break the glass container of the brain. Here’s the lead up to the fight and the boss fight itself if you want to see what I mean:

That’s right, the tank was filled with sneezing powder that is so potent Raz seezes out his own brain. Fortunately, our psychic skills allow us to move our own brain around using telekinesis and put it into the tank with Oleander’s brain leading us to the terminal nadir of the game….


The Meat Circus


I’m not sure how our mental real estate merged, but this area explains the weird occurrences of meat and rabbits in Raz’s mind. Tiny little Coach Oleander was but a young child when he rescued a young bunny that was subsequently slaughtered and sold as food by his father who is a butcher. Combine the past of living in a meat vendor’s store and a life in the circus and you have what it is.

This entire level is nothing but problematic video game tropes: escort mission (check), trial and error platforming (check), introduction of last minute concepts and maneuvers that were not introduced before (check), and contrived puzzle based boss fight (check). The Meat Circus is divided into three parts that must be completed before facing the final boss. This first area is entitled Tent City and focuses on a terrible escort concept. Little Oleander is chasing around his obese rabbit while weird mutant monstrosities chase him around and pummel him. If his health bar runs out, you fail. To allow him to get the bunny, you must use telekinesis to hold it in place so that he can grab it. After capturing the bunny, his helicopter beanie flies him to a more inconvenient location. This happens three or four times.

[Hooray.]

This little game wasn’t the worst part of the level, but it was no holiday either. Each journey to the next rescue location becomes more and more difficult with tasks such as swinging puzzles, bottomless pits, and sword throwers that you must trick into pinning a sword to a rotating wall so that you can use it to elevate yourself. Nothing else happens and it is not fun.

Next up is the “Tunnel of Love” which is not a tunnel at all but a suspended rail that Raz must grind to the end. This was actually the easiest part, but is still completely trial and error because of poor camera control and unexpected breaks in the track that must be jumped over. Not much to say about this one as I completed it pretty quickly.

[Wee.]

After reaching the end, Raz is forced to face a giant butcher representing Oleander’s father. He chases you around with two giant cleavers and has a set of patterns that he will repeat until you figure out what to do. I didn’t mind this battle that much because it is very obvious that when he misses a swing his blade will become stuck in the ground. This allows Raz to run up his arm and clobber his head. Do this three or four times and you are allowed to move on to the nightmare that is The Big Top.

[Pretty frightening design to be honest.]

This is unequivocally the worst part of the game. A doppelganger of Raz’s dad pops in and begins to taunt him by saying he is not good enough and will never be worth anything. After this introduction, the tent rapidly begins filling with water and it is up to the player to climb, jump, swing, float, and curse his or her way to the top before drowning. I had little trouble until reaching a point where you are forced to climb a spiral fence with gaps requiring lateral jumps. This was never in the game before, is made nearly impossible by bad jumping mechanics and camera control, and took me about 30 minutes to complete. This should be a twenty second portion of the level. Think about that.

[Just seeing this picture is raising my blood pressure.]

Butchers and Acrobats


After finally reaching the top of the tent, we find that Raz’s father has teamed up with the Butcher for stage two of the boss battle. The big difference here is that the Butcher’s meat cleavers are on fire and Raz is not able to run up his arms. Fortunately, doppelganger dad throws flaming clubs that we can throw telekinetically at the butcher’s knees to force his head down to fist level allowing it to be punched. Once again, three of four times and we’re done.

After defeating the dangerous duo, Raz’s real dad projects himself into the mental world and has a heart to heart with his son that is genuinely touching. Raz had run away from the circus because he thought his dad hated psychics and did not want him to be a psychonaut when the actual truth is that his father just wanted him to be safe. His father even has psychic powers himself! It made me think about all the scenes that showed Raz’s father tearing up pamphlets and yelling at him and wonder if they were simply overblown projections of the mind similar to those we all tend to conjure. Unfortunately, this reunion is cut short when the remnants of the two bosses who fell into a meat grinder reconstitute themselves as a mash-em-up for one final boss fight. Daddy lends us all his psychic power allowing Raz to grow huge so that he may face the boss and destroy it forever. This just involves running and punching the boss until Raz runs out of psychic energy and becomes small again. He must avoid the boss until the power recharges allowing him to fight the boss at eye level.

Here is the boss fight in its entirety and the ending movie:

So that’s it. Raz reunites with his dad, Oleander’s troubles are sorted out, we become Psychonauts, and everything is back to normal. As we all know, the promised sequel never occurs, but this game ends on a nice self contained note. Hope you enjoyed it!

What’s Next?

Well, Psychonauts is finally finished! I will detail my general thoughts about the game next post and reveal what is coming on the agenda. I liked playing through the game, but, I have to be honest, I felt great about finishing it and not having to play anymore. See you next time.


--Backlog Killer

19 - Psychonauts Stumbles

Oh, boy. Here we go. Psychonauts has turned that corner of This Is Pretty Cool St. onto I’m Hating This Ave. After the last update, the game has gone full on platform frustration. The framing story of the entire game is beginning to have less and less impact on the gimmicky levels to realize my fears that this game was pretty front loaded. That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy the concept of the levels. In fact, I have been very entertained with the ideas of the stages themselves, but playing them is an absolute nightmare. Instead of exploring and trying to get all the items, I have begun rushing through and trying to finish as fast as I can because they just aren’t fun. Perspective problems and janky controls turned on the expletives switch in my head while playing and brought on that dreaded thought: “I’m not having fun.” It has started to feel more like a job instead of a game and I was thinking about what I should do. But, after consulting a faq index, I can see I am almost done, so I will try to finish it for the blog. Unfortunately, my check-ins to Get Glue have revealed that I am in for a pretty rough time by the end of the game.

[Getting some of those kiddie brains.]

Not Great Game PLAY

After sorting out the Milk Man Conspiracy and hoping to get through some more story, I was blocked, again, by another crazy in the asylum. Gloria Von Gouton, a former actress, is standing amongst flower pots painted with audience faces and will not let me take her precious acting award. I’m not sure why I need it, or if I will even USE it, but it has a shiny aura around it and she won’t let me leave with it so I’m sure it must be important. After trying to pilfer it by sneaking around, going invisible, and moving it with telekinesis, it was obvious more drastic measures were needed. The old Psychic-Portal comes out of the pocket and we enter the mind of Ms. Von Gouton.

[I thought Von Gouton would turn me to stone for an instadeath. Then I remembered this isn't Nethack.]

I did not like this level. The area was pretty small and unremarkable, the platforming is frustrating and a contrived, and the gimmick does not have enough legs to last for an entire hour of game play. The entire thing is basically a giant puzzle for two thirds of the stage followed by needless platforming capped with a frustrating boss fight. The idea of the level is pretty sound, but it just does not work in the context of the game which is becoming the theme of this game and, possibly, this blog. All of these ideas that Tim Schafer has are interesting with some meaty ground to dig into, but the decision to cram it into a platformer is inherently flawed. I understand this is a major burden on designers and there is no easy solution, but this seems to be what is happening. It also seems much more common than I thought before really thinking critically about the games themselves for the blog. Planescape did it by trying to tell a detailed story with the non-linear and combat RPG setting. Psychonauts is doing the same by trying to represent deep emotional ideas and character progression in the context of jumping and punching. It’s really tough and I feel bad for Avellone and Schafer who are pushing up against that envelope.

When we enter the scene, we see a theatre stage with a flustered stage director telling us how messed up the play going on is. Being inside Von Gouton’s head, we can rest assured that this play is about her past. I like this little touch because it seems to represent the constant re-examination and obsession with her past causing all of her problems. In practice, this amounts to triggering parts of the play to finish the production so that she can move on. Even though this sounds interesting, actually doing it is not. The play cannot begin yet because the star, Bonita, is backstage crying. This lead actor represents Von Gouton’s inspiration which is also a nice touch.  To start her recovery, we need to get Bonita back in the spotlight, literally, by using a candle which is easily found to turn on an actual spotlight in the theatre.

[I'm pretty sure my inspiration is doing the same thing... where is it?]

After starting the play, we find that the only audience member is a big fat critic named Jasper who is constantly bringing the production down. This is also a meaningful idea since we ourselves are our own worst critics. I can attest to that from my constant redrafting of the blog posts. This critic is not constructive, though, and only berates the actors as they perform. It kind of reminds me of myself playing this game.

There are a few special things about this play. The spotlight has two settings: good (represented by a smiling gold mask) and bad (represented by a green sad mask). When you flip between these, the sets alternate between a happy, cheerful version and a dark and scary Silent Hill versions that are roughly the same in structure. Each of these has a portal that triggers a scene change that you can use to bring down different landscapes making four different versions in total (2 light and 2 dark). The problem is that each time Bonita appears on set, a mysterious phantom of the theatre causes an accident bringing the play to a halt. Because of this baffling development, this version of the play cannot finish. But, by using elements of other scripts lying around, we can finish it by introducing new characters or events. Makes sense, right? Not to me either.

[Jasper the critic telling me about the phantom.]

The first new script is suggested by the critic himself who wants to avoid “boredom” by introducing a mounted knight into the show. When using the megaphone to call the knight into the scene, the warrior just kind of rams into the wall at the rear of the stage. So, we need to change the scenes. By converting the set to the ‘evil’ version, we see a dragon emerge from the cliff in the story that we can use the knight to kill it letting us reach the top of the set to grab another script. OK, I get it. We just need to shift things around. After making several changes including introducing a mail boat into the play, using it to traverse to another set, and then finally bringing in a hot air balloon, we are allowed to get into the rafters to fight the phantom. I felt a little weary after such a simple and cumbersome puzzle. Things would only get worse.

The one thing I can commend this sequence on is its unique disclosure of Gloria Von Gouton’s story. Each part of the cheerful side of the play represents her love of acting and desire to please her mother, but the evil side shows the harsh and forceful way her mother put her into acting school where punishment and anger were used to teach. After looking through her viewmaster reel, we find that she did become successful after all of this trauma, yet her mother killed herself and sent her into the deep end. I was pretty touched by this revelation and saw that the game has much more to offer when not hidden behind the 3d platformer veil. These issues the game is dealing with are very mature and subtly inserted into what looks very much like a kid’s silly adventure. The Milk Man’s firing and breakdown, Von Gouton’s mother issues, and Raz’s own story of rejection by his parents all ring of serious problems that many younger players cannot appreciate. It is just so unfortunate that all this is going on within such a frustrating and confining system.

[Raz on the set.]

After reaching the catwalks above the stage, I was introduced to one of the most arbitrary and frustrating experiences in the game so far. This place is completely uninteresting and just consists of suspended platforms, falling sandbags that clobber Raz over the head to kill him, and a lot of anger. I jumped around and did a bunch of nondescript stuff until I reached the phantom which I am intentionally being vague about. This part was really bad and scares me about the future that awaits me. Moving on…

[Such a nightmare.]

After reaching the phantom of the theatre in the rafters, we find out (Surprise Surprise) that it was our buddy Jasper the whole time and enter into the most frustrating boss fight yet. The box seat becomes a floating Dr. Robotnik-style ship with two fountain pen lasers that fire critical slams at Raz. This is humorous. The fight is anything but. All that is involved is shining spotlights on Jasper from the rafters causing him to crash his box seat allowing you to pummel him. All the while, you are at the mercy of constantly regenerating enemies that will set you on fire and hit you making you lose lots of lives. I hate to be very vague and cold about it, but that’s all it is. Just repeat this three or four times and he is dead. The naughty words really came out at this point and I took a break. It doesn’t escape me that I am criticizing a boss fight with a critic, either. Take a look at this video to get an idea of how it goes:

[Living this is much worse than it looks.]

Now that that’s finished, we get out and see that Von Gouton has recovered and gives us her claw-like award for whatever reason before we move deeper into the asylum.


This may be Schafer’s Waterloo, too.

I’ll be honest. I am starting to not want to play this game and am rushing through it. I don’t really have anything interesting to say about each level other than “this is a good idea that is not and cannot be executed well in this format”. Just take that as an understood from now on. This is another one of these situations when we invade and sort out the life of a mental patient: Fred Bonaparte, descendant of famous Frenchman Napoleon.

[Fred's a looker.]

The guy has some major issues. In the asylum, we see Fred arguing with himself in normal vernacular followed by a reply in a French accent. Obviously a split personality. Going into his mental space, we see that he is fighting a losing battle against his other personality. What is interesting is that this battle is represented in the mental space by a nerdy hex-based war game which is a nice nod to nerd-culture. I thought there would be a lot of strategy and moving of pieces around the board which excited me. Guess what, I was wrong.

[It looks awesome.]

The area is much more than meets the eye initially. The first area of the level is a quiet living room setting with the two players concentrating on the game board. After looking around for a little, I found that it is possible to jump onto the game board. Raz is shrunken down to the size of a game piece and is able to run around to different buildings labeled as farms, carpenters, and castles. I was hoping for a really broad strategy session, but what I found was one of the most railroaded sections of the game so far. You are literally unable to do anything except the correct order to finish the game. In this case, it means going to various locations on the game board, shrinking down to a smaller size to enter the buildings, and talking to the pieces to get them to join Fred’s army. I was bored to tears.

Let me just run through the process quickly. Upon entering, a Napoleonic soldier destroys a bridge to the other side of the map stopping troop movements. I was required to recruit the carpenter to repair this and then get a farmer to join the militia by telling him Fred really cares about the game. After accomplishing this, the exact same thing happened. Bridge destroyed, use the carpenter to fix, recruit another farmer. It was so disappointing, I was wondering if I was doing something wrong. Eventually, after doing this three (!) times, I was privileged to encounter the most frustrating platform sequence yet. Getting around the main hold to open the drawbridge allowing my knight to conquer the castle took me 45 minutes and lots of cursing to get through. I am so worried about the rest of the game.

[I play games because I love repeating the same process over and over.]

Once again, I really like the idea that this person is playing a game against himself and almost trying to outmaneuver his other personality to gain control. I really understand it having recovered from depression and having to constantly tiptoe around the feelings and imposing mist that I anthropomorphize to embody it. It almost reaches a metaphor that could be considered sublime, but it’s just so damn frustrating. Anyway, we get through the area, help Fred recover, after which he grants me his straight jacket that he doesn’t need any longer.

[You're cured, but what about me?! I'll be nuts soon!]

Before quitting for the night, I talked to an orderly who at first mistook me for the evil Dr. Loboto. The guy is near-sighted, but could tell I wasn’t the doc by the fact that Raz isn’t wearing a straight jacket like the doc wears, doesn’t have a claw for a hand like the doc has, or have a green face. Wait… we’ve got two of those things. The straight jacket came from Fred and the claw-shaped award from Von Gouton! All we need to do now is get a green face, defeat the evil Dr. Loboto,  save the camp, and finish this game! Based on the item dispersion, I guess I have to find another mind to enter before continuing.

[Really?!]

What’s next.

Sorry guys, I really tried to punch up the update as much as I could, but Psychonauts is really wearing me down. I agree wholeheartedly with the majority of reviews floating around that the game has great ideas, rich imagination, and lofty goals. Unfortunately, the levels are front loaded with the best coming at the beginning and the latter just seeming to suffer from lack of time and/or money. I feel bad for Tim Schafer because this game came along at a time when games were really undergoing that heavy transition from cottage industry of nerds making programs for other nerds to a multi-million dollar industry dominated by suits. What used to be a passion has been reduced down to dollar signs, production schedule forecasting, and marketing. I hope with his new Kickstarter Double-Fine can really do what they want without any overhead pressure from publishers and can make a modern classic. For now, though, I will try to finish Psychonauts and write a general overview before moving on to the next game from the backlog.

If you have any comments, please leave a message, even if you think I’m being too dismissive and lazy in the updates. It’s just hard to get excited about such a frustrating thing. Check it out next time when we get through the rest of Psychonauts and see how it all ends up.


--Backlog Killer

18 - Descent into Madness

As we continue through Psychonauts, the ante just keeps getting raised. This update we will fight against bio-mechanical military hardware, the Japanese monster movie mind of a lungfish, and the twisted (literally) mind of a paranoid schizophrenic. If I have to complement anything on the game, it's definitely the ideas for the levels. The game play, on the other hand, is starting to fall apart. Let's dive back into the mysteries of the mind.


Weapons Platforms and Water

When we last left Raz, we were heading back into his own mind to rescue Dogan from the mad doctor trying to take his brain! Using our recently earned powers of levitation, I jumped over the conveniently place obstacle and continued to the top of the tower where I was just too late to save Dogan from losing his mind. The impact of this scene was a little neutered because I had already seen that he had lost his brain before, but I'll choose to ignore that. The doctor removed his brain, tossed it into a disposal bin, and moved on to his next victim: potential girlfriend Lili Zanotto! Unfortunately, Raz is not able to reach her before an indestructible barrier comes down before him to block the rescue. All we can do is jump down the trash chute and hope that we can get Dogan's brain before it's used for potentially nefarious purposes...

[Bad guys always leave this kind of stuff laying around.]

Oops, too late. Dogan's brain is collected by a tank and used as a CPU for a full fledged military weapon! This must be what Coach Oleander is up to: taking brains to power his new style of insane machinations! Well, of course, we need to put a stop to this. In gaming terms, this means a boss battle.

I actually enjoyed this battle a little bit more than the last, but still thought it was pretty dumb. I never really understood the purpose of these boss battles after the age of eight and playing games like Mega Man for Nintendo. It seems wacky and sort of archaic with advances in storytelling and game mechanics allowing for a much wider breadth of progression than "Learn these mechanics and then beat this challenge". If it is well done, then that's OK. Dark Souls is a good example (Again, sorry!) because it requires not only the skills you have learned, but also creative thinking, outside the box equipment selection, and general pattern recognition. The bosses in Psychonauts end up being meat bags with some silly trick you have to figure out to defeat them. This trope has become pretty played out and I wish we could get back to either clever bosses that require other gaming feats, or just eliminate it if it can't be done well in the context of the game. Anyway...

The tank rolls around in a blue print world filled with convenient pillars to hide behind while blasting at Raz with shells, trying to run him over with a charge attack, and tossing confusion grenades that reverse all controls for the player. The first two were no problem, but the confusion grenades were nightmare. It is entirely possible to become sort of 'stun-locked' by getting hit by one grenade. Your brain takes a moment to re-calibrate and reverse the controls before which you've already been hit by ANOTHER grenade. This threw me for a loop, but I was still able to beat the tank in one try.

[Reminds me of my dog, giant tumor on the belly. Too soon?]

"How do we beat the tank?" you ask. Well, let me tell you. Every once in a while, the tank will inexplicably rear up like a horse for no reason other than to show you a pulsating green spot begging you to "shoot me here". Doing this flips the tank over like a turtle allowing you to get close enough to beat it senseless. This part was pretty easy, but after taking it down to about 25% health or so, the disembodied brain separated and started flying around like something out of a nightmare. It took the time to land once in a while to pulse concentric energy rings you have to jump over (Think Mario Galaxy) until you can get close enough to beat it senseless, too. This ended up being a war of attrition because either I really suck at these games, or there is just no way to avoid getting hit, but I just kept dying until I beat the thing. I hate this kind of feeling because I don't feel any accomplishment, just like I beat my head against the wall until it broke, which is what happened. The brain went down and I was two or three layers (i.e. lives) shorter. Luckily there is some payoff to explain this boss battle.

[Disembodied brains are kind of just 'blah' now.]

I hate sea food! No, really. I just kind of like shrimp and some sushi. I can't stand to eat stuff like crab, oysters, or squid. It grosses me out. I'm more of a fresh water guy and like to eat fish fillets and that's about it.

After sorting out the tank situation and returning to meet Lili, who thankfully is OK and trying to make out with me (YESSSS!), she is abducted by a giant lungfish and taken into the lake! This is trouble since Raz is cursed to die in water. Plot conveniently, the bathysphere is ready for use and Agent Cruller tells me to use it before briefing me on the next stage of the game: gathering the stolen brains of the children around the camp. This is pretty cool, but I can't promise each parent that their kid will return just as they were when they dropped them off since I'm too lazy to 100% OCD this game. Mission in mind, I set out in the bathysphere to find Lili and figure out what to do next!

[What up?]

The submarine trip does not really go as planned when the vehicle encounters a giant air bubble at the bottom of the lake revealing some kind of ruined village. One cool thing that happens while walking around are that crabs, clams, and fish fall through the membrane of the bubble and flop around while in the lake outside are two monstrous sets of hands waiting to pull Raz in. They will kill you if you leave the bubble, too.

[Ominous.]

Doing a bit of sleuthing, I picked up some deep arrowheads using the divining rod (forgot about that?) and found a giant sunken ship with an ominous bell attached to it. Obviously, I'm going to ring it. My childish nature gets the best of me, though, and the bell wakes up the lungfish beginning an epic and quite enjoyable boss fight!

Unfortunately, I was pretty engaged in the fight and didn't get any pictures of it while it was going on. What it amounts to is the lungfish staying just out of reach and sucking air in to shrink the size of the bubble, and then expelling it to blow debris that can hurt you. Luckily, there are giant boxes of nails that you can break open to hurt him while he is inhaling. After a bit of this, the fish gets tired and comes into the bubble to whip you with his angler's lure. The goal here is to trap the lure in a clam and then punch him while he's trapped. I did this handily and triggered an insane chase where the fish swims around the bubble and uses his breathing to move the bubble along the lake floor, forcing you to traverse the sunken terrain without falling behind. It's a pretty cool new take on the forced movement stages of side scrollers and is very similar to what would be seen in the Mario Galaxy Games in the dark worlds where the lights reveal terrain that does not exist otherwise. (I keep comparing it to that game)

After reaching the second arena, I just repeated the process of nails in the face and then trap in the clam + ground and pound. The fish went down pretty easily and I felt good about the one round battle because, boy, that fight was long and I didn't want to do it again in one sitting.

[From Mohalo games on YouTube.]

After the fight, you can see in the movie that the poor lungfish is modified to perform the bidding of the master. The next step is to use our stolen psycho-portal to enter the fish’s mind leading to one of the most hilarious things in the entire game.


Lungfishopolis

This literally made me laugh for five minutes while I was playing.
Entering the mind of the lungfish, we find ourselves in a pastiche of a Japanese monster movie. But instead of us fighting the giant invader, we ARE the giant invader! The scene begins as a peaceful day in Lungfishopolis, citizens with identical character models talk to each other until they flee in fear from the sight of mega-Raz! All of the old tropes you would expect are here. You can bash small buildings, climb towers to get items, and pick up tanks and throw them. We are in for a fun time now!

[Amazing stuff in this level.]

The goal of the level is to reach the control transmitter implanted in the fish represented by a giant antenna on the other side of the city. The path is circuitous and does not have much deviation. A few rebels want to help Raz for some reason and tell him about new threats and where to go. The game also intersperses mock news reports about military weapons that are being rolled out to fight Raz, culminating in a hilarious King Kong-style scene fighting biplanes while standing on a tower. I also got to grind a monorail which was pretty rad.

[Help me my tiny identical minions!]

After a long trek through the city and using oil tankers as step stones, I finally reach the end of the line at the transmitter tower controlling the giant lungfish. I should just be able to smash it, right? Wrong. What follows is the most hilarious boss fight I have seen in years.

KOCHAMARA! The Japanese super hero version of Coach Oleander!

[It doesn't get any better than this, baby.]

This boss fight was really easy, but had lots of yuks. One of the most bizarre things that I don’t understand about these types of Japanese super heroes (costumes aside) are the insane names for special abilities they have. The Power Rangers had quite a few bad ones, but seeing some of the newer ones over here in Asia is even more strange. While having Dim Sum with my mother-in-law, I often watch the TVs in the restaurant showing various bug-themed heroes shouting commands such as “Hummingbird Mega Blade Cycle!” or some such nonsense. All in English, too! This boss is all about this kind of camp with the guy shouting commands like “Triangle Beam!” or “Overly Intricate Combination!” to telegraph the next move.

A shield I had picked up reflected literally everything and taking the boss down was really easy, but it was also really fun. I just beat up Olea… er… Kochamara easily, but was able to take this time of mindless fighting to really appreciate the masterful art direction going on during the game. This was also a real sea-change in my perception of the game as a whole. There were hints of strange story folding and imaginative environs, but they had not really come together until now. I have found yet another flawed game that really seems to want to go one direction but is held back by another. In this case, Schafer seemed to want to make a really incredible place to explore that has no limits to craziness, but it had to be crammed into a platforming mold. I, myself, would love to experience these areas just as an exploration or puzzle game, but that may not sell very well. What do I know? I’m no marketing expert or game designer. The point is, I have found at least one thing to really appreciate and love about this game which makes the whole thing worth it to me.

[The villain's dying speech.]

After coming back out of the lungfish, we are thanked and he/she takes me to the next area where we will try to find Lili and the brain thief. I’m actually a little lost in the narrative now. Next stop: the abandoned asylum!


I wish the milkman would deliver my milk… in the morning.

We are really getting deep in the weeds now. After arriving at the asylum, the fish (named Linda) bids us farewell and tells Raz it can take us back to the camp at any time. I decide to press on and find Lili. Her bracelet was left outside at the base of a cliff, so I knew I’m on the right track. Unfortunately, our path is blocked by a shut gate and a mumbling guard scrawling nonsense on the side of the wall. What should we do next? Obviously, use the psycho-portal to head into the mind of a literal madman.

[Whatever you say, man...]

Again, this level of the game was incredible in its imagination, but I did not have as much fun in this case. The scene presents itself as a mid-50s style home that is inhabited by the guard still scrawling insanity everywhere, only this time he says he knows the conspiracy about the milkman. He tells me to go find him, but I am really not sure what is going on which makes sense since he’s nutz-o.

Leaving the house opens the world to a paranoid schizophrenic’s nightmare/dream world.  Surveillance is everywhere: garbage cans pop open and take pictures, helicopters fly around seeking info, trench coat clad men are on the lookout, and surveillance equipment is omnipresent. In addition to this, the path itself is as twisted as the guy imagining it. Aside from this, the mechanics are pretty boring.

[It looks much better than it plays.]

The level is very uniform and gets boring quickly despite its bright color palette and interesting look. All of the houses can be entered, but just contain a few items and are identical in construction. Maybe this is meant to be a comment on suburban living, but it just seemed lazy in the context of the game. The area also has a lock and key system based on the G-men standing around. Given recent access to a psi-power that lets you see how others see you, they judge Raz based on what prop he is holding. For example, if he is not holding anything, they will not know who he is and arrest him if he enters a restricted area. When switching to other items, they will recognize your occupation and let you into the matching area. A plunger for sewer workers, stop sign for construction workers, duster for housewife, etc. I spent about an hour trying to gather these items just so I could enter a cemetery to retrieve a book for the guard who felt it fit into his conspiracy well. I was then rewarded with a sniper rifle granting me access to the book depository.

[How they see me as a road worker.]

Before moving on, though, I was impressed with one puzzle. There is one real lock at in the level that is on the post office at the far end of the level. There is no way to get this combination, other than using your new power to see through somebody else’s eyes. After setting off the alarm a few times, I finally figured it out when I saw the guard come out, look around, and go back in using the code. After he comes out, you need to look in from his perspective to see what numbers are being punched in on the keypad. (It’s randomized each game!) After entering, I picked up another item for a restricted area, and was treated to a mini boss fight against a ‘nightmare’ after leaving. This was pretty interesting, but another gimmick fight and I’m not sure why it occurred. Anyway, that’s the puzzle and now we move on with necessary things.

[Fighting this nightmare was a nightmare, LOL! I love tagging my own jokes with 'lol'.]

Arriving at the book depository, I took control of a low flying surveillance helicopter to find out where the milkman is hiding. Returning to the hidden house, I entered and found a conspiracy going deeper than anybody could have imagined. A group of girl scouts are waiting for the milk man to arise and come back for whatever reason! I really didn’t understand this part. I got into a fight with the troupe leader who was easy to beat. She turned off the lights to throw me for a loop, but by looking through her night vision eyes, I was able to see where she was and easily beat her. That ‘possession’ power is really coming in handy.

After doing this, the milkman arises and turns out to be the same guy who is guarding the asylum. From his mental vault viewmaster reel (Sorry, lost most of the pictures), we see he was fired from his security job and used Molotov cocktails fashioned from milk bottles to bomb the building and probably killing innocent people. A pretty dark turn, but it does explain his mental breakdown. I liked the level over-all, but it just dragged on too long and was not enough fun. The imagination was top notch, though.

[Oleander broke this guy, too.]

After leaving the mind of the guard, he opened the gate for me, wandered off, and now I am free to enter one of the scariest buildings that can be built: a mental hospital.

[I don't know.]

What’s next.

Not sure what is next, I’ll have to play more and see. Let me say that mental hospitals in real life, in movies, and in games scare the crap out of me. I’m sort of into the idea that physical locations, buildings, or objects can kind of absorb energies that existed around them and resonate them much later. I’m not talking about ghosts, but just feelings of dread and bad vibes you get when entering certain places or holding objects. Movies like Jacob’s Ladder and games like Thief 3 (Shalebridge Cradle!) do not do much to allay this fear, either.
Let me build up my courage, and we will venture into the funny farm in Psychonauts.


--Backlog Killer

17.5 - Mini Update

Fellow backlog killers; I am working on the next blog post, but it has been delayed because we had to take our dog in for surgery and have been dealing with that. Yeah, that’s right, I’m a pet guy and am a softie for our dog. Sue me.  In the mean-time, I thought I would show you an effective device Psychonauts uses for revealing the back story of characters.

I actually like this technique and think it works well within the fiction of the game. I had mentioned that in each of the levels one of the items you could collect were repressed memories kept in memory vaults. When these are accessed by delicately pounding them with your fist, they open to reveal viewmaster reels with painful memories of the person who’s mind you are in at the moment. These can be looked at any time to get some interesting exposition about the characters that may otherwise go unnoticed.

[Remember these? Or am I too old?]

Here are a few examples, the first is a little back story about how Raz came to leave his family to attend psychic summer camp:

After is a little back story on Sasha Nein’s past:

I enjoy these abstract little bits that fill in some gaps that you may be wondering about in characters you encounter during the game. It sort of works like a codex from games like Dragon Age Origins, but it is much easier to digest as a short visual experience instead of a text wall. In a game that is just a straight up platformer with no need to really read anything, this approach is much more appropriate than putting ham handed deliveries or text dumps in the game. This is a mistake that many games tend to make, such as the aforementioned Dragon Age which is mostly a visual experience. Sure, there are some dialogue options, but most of the game is tactical combat and listening to characters talk. Sending mixed messages is a great way to ruin the flow of a game and can result in missed content or just annoying moments that a player will just skip. Way to go, Psychonauts.

I haven’t saved all of these, but if you like them I can post these reels for other characters I run across as well. (But I will not 100% everything so I can’t get it all.)

Coming soon is my journey into the mind of a fish. Wait and see!

--Backlog Killer

17 - Self Examination

I hope all of you invested in the Humble Bundle. I poked my nose into a few of the games and they all seemed really cool. I'm a HUGE fan of horror and scary stuff so Amnesia looks right up my alley while Bastion is a stylized action fest that seems pretty good. I will dig into those later, though. We're still playing Psychonauts, of course! To be completely honest, I have been playing some Starcraft 2 every once in a while. It's a good little game that's really deep, but I just don't have time to get very good at it. I've won a few games, lost a lot more, but it's all about going in the meat grinder and building up your skills. Plus the matching is really good and I usually end up playing people about my level or just above.

Anyway, Psychonauts.


Agent Nein doesn't have a German accent, kind of messing up that joke.

After going through all the struggles of exploring the camp and collecting as much as I could, I went down to receive the "special training" from Agent Nein. I haven't made one sexual joke about secret training in a secret lair so we'll leave it that way, low hanging fruit and all that. The good agent recognizes some special talents in Raz that he would like to explore with his 'Brain Tumbler' machine. So, like any precocious young lad, I jumped in without thinking about it which led me to a place called 'the collective consciousness'.

[I wish my mind were that hip, instead of a mist that ideas decide to pop out of.]

This operates as a level select screen where each doorway represents one level. Surrounding the doors are light up signs indicating if you have retrieved all the special items from that area including the cobwebs, vaults, mental baggage, etc. I like that this was put in the game (ham fistedly, but there) so that the level selection meets with the game world. Despite being shown so many beautiful portals, the only open door available now is the one leading into my own head. So, we head in for a little self examination.

A concerning thing I noticed upon entering Raz's mind was how dark it was and how much meat is hanging around. That seems strange. Not only that, but a weird bunny creature is leading me through the level.

[Yoinks!]

Other than these features, the path was pretty clear with basic enemies and nothing special until I reached a point where a huge flaming-eyed demon kind of deal appeared in front of me! I couldn't move forward and a cut scene took over.

[We've all got those demons, but mine are cuddlier.]

At this point, Agent Nein kindly pulled me out of the brain tumbler as my basic punch and pyrokenesis won't do much against a huge creature like that. This is the point where I started to see some really interesting storytelling going on. I will go ahead and tell you that this level of Raz's mind gets revisited several times during the game and actually does a good job abstractly describing working through your own (or others') demons. Each time you reach a point in Raz's mind you cannot pass, you must attend other trainings to get the skills you need. Not only does this symbolize milestones in recovery or dealing with your own mental state, but also works in the canon of becoming a Psychonaut step by step.

I assumed I would just be dubbed a Psychonaut due to some emergency and move through levels battling the enemy. This is not the case at all. In order to beat this first demon, I need to be trained in shooting by Agent Nein so that I may move on. Unfortunately, because what we are doing is secret, I need special permission from Ford Cruller to enter this training. I thought I was going to have to go through more, but Cruller seems to have his finger on the pulse and just gave me permission, no questions asked, which makes me wonder why it was even included in the game. I simply had to go to the secret lair, get it, and return to the lab.

After getting permission, a new device is introduced in the game: a doorway that can be attached to any being allowing Raz to enter their mind. Using this device, I enter Nein's mind to go through target practice!

[Gateway to the mind/]

Amendment 2: Right to Bear Brains

Agent Nein’s world is a giant modern art cube that seems to have its own gravitational pull. Raz can run around all surfaces of the cube without falling off, much like in Mario Galaxy. Exploration is not possible yet because upon entering the world, I am subjected to a small tutorial about how to shoot bullets out of Raz’s brain. Psychic bullets. To learn this, Nein asks me to destroy tacky art deco lights you may see in a hipster boutique which I thought was pretty funny. He is physically repulsed by their appearance.

[I didn't know anyone besides my mom said 'Tacky'.]

After destroying some ambient lighting, a mechanic for combat shows up as unconscious censors who attempt to stamp out thoughts and ideas that should not exist in the mind of the host. This gives an excuse for their appearance in any other level as you are invading somebody’s mind where you do not belong. Obstacle courses began showing up all over the cube in which I would shut down the release of censors in the mind. In this case, the whole combat thing backfires when suppressing too many thoughts by destroying censors can result in a huge build up of psychic pressure. This may sound deep, but it is really just an excuse for a boss fight.

[Better boss fight than in the new Deus Ex!]

I usually really hate boss fights, but I can’t fault it in this game as it is a platformer. The fight was pretty annoying, though, since the boss could actually run a little faster than Raz and lots of censors kept pouring out of release valves. I was able to close them, but died once or twice by running out of psi energy, jarringly introducing me to a new mechanic known as psi depth. Each time you run out of psychic energy, you move out one layer until you are kicked out of the level entirely. Luckily, you can collect helmets to increase your depth, but, let’s get real, it’s just an extra life.

[More layers than Inception.]

Having fixed the mess that I created in Nein’s mind, I am awarded with the marksmanship merit badge and I am ready to head back into the brain tumbler and confront my demons!

[Got the merit badge and that little thing in the lower right!]

Raz: Demon Killer

Before beginning, I leveled up and Agent Cruller introduced me to my new power: Telekinesis. This is pretty much just what it says on the tin: I get a ghostly orange hand and can move things from here to there. Not sure how this will benefit me, but I’m sure I will need to use it for some challenge in the future. For now, though, I just threw around some garbage cans and then left the training area.
Returning to the brain tumbler, I was quickly dumped back where I left off and left to fight the giant scary demon that went down surprisingly quick. One shot and he was gone, leaving me free to continue exploring. I didn’t get too far before reaching a nightmarish thorny tower and being interrupted by a cutscene.

Poor kid! I was a little upset by this and wanted to rush up to help him, but I found my way blocked by some rotten meat requiring me to attend yet another training course. This time it would be to learn the power levitation from Agent Milla.


Dance Fever

Agent Milla is hanging out at the lake in an area I could not reach before, but because of arbitrary game obstacles removed by Nein, I was given permission to comandeer a canoe. Upon ariving, I ran into Dogen from the cutscene who should have just been a psychic representation. Unfortunately, when looking through his head, it looks like his brain has actually been removed! He wandered off, zombie-like, talking about watching TV. Something really sinister is going on here and it looks like the main conflict is arising!

[Poor Dogen.]

I talked to Cruller at the boathouse who did not recognize me again to rent a canoe letting me get to the dock where Milla was training other campers. After reaching her and telling her I was instructed to receive levitation training, I was brought into her mind.

[Ugh, bad memories.]

Honestly, this level was a pretty big nightmare and essentially just a platforming obstacle course to teach the player how to float on the levitation ball and use it for various techniques to get to hard to reach places. You can rolle on the ball to go faster, jump higher by bouncing off of it, and hold onto it like a balloon to hang glide where you want to go. This is all well and good, but after endlessly going through rings and jumping on light up disco platforms for half an hour I was pretty sick of it. Thank God it was pretty easy because the colors, gameplay, and music were really pounding my nerves. This is from a guy who listens to Autechre!

[A visual representation of a headache. Can you spot Raz?]

I finally got to the end and earned my merit badge letting me float over the meat and on to the top of the nightmare bramble tower to confront the evil doctor! (I hope.) See what happens next time when we confront the evil that has befallen Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp... hopefully.

[Yessss. Give me ALL of the achievements!]

Just a spoiler, we don't get to quite yet.


What's next

I'm going to throw up a bonus short post in the next few days and try to get the next long one out faster. We've had some problems with our pet and things have been pretty weird, but we're assured that she'll be OK! Just some minor surgery and things should be right as rain. In the mean time, leave comments, questions, or discuss anything. Plus, nobody has answered my question yet... I guess it's not fair if you don't watch esoteric American television. That's a hint by the way, think about non-cartoon shows that are on cartoon channels...

See you next time, gang, when we fight military vehicles and giant fish in Psychonauts.


--Backlog Killer

16.5 - A Few Quick Announcements

A little mini-update for all you readers out there.

The first is a bit of a shameful admission for me: I have added some more new games to the backlog. What that means for you, though, is that you can ALSO get some awesome games from this sale. The Humble Bundle has released a new set of games available for download at your designated price! Why should you give any money to play these amazing games? Well, because part of the proceeds to go charity, dummy. The designated proportion of your donation goes to Child's Play, a charity run by games for gamers to give money to needy children undergoing treatment in hospitals world wide. You also have the option to raise your donation to the Humble team for distribution and to the developers themselves for their effort. The games include digital downloads and also have Steam keys to link to your account for those achievements.

The games included are Limbo, Psychonauts (HEYYYYYY!), Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP, and Amnesia: The Dark Descent (Heard it's one of the scariest games ever.). Not only do you get these games, but you also get their official digital soundtracks AND Bastion as an added bonus if you donate over the average amount. Bastion, indie darling of the year, alone is worth the price of entry at almost half the normal price and the proceeds going to charity. Payment options include Amazon pay, PayPal, or Google Checkout. Check it out, help out some kids, and play along with me when I get to these games in the backlog! As of this post, there are still 13 days to take advantage of this deal.


Now, second announcement is that friends of the blog, Kole and Gary of Watch out for Fireballs, have just released a new episode focusing on the Macventure games including Deja Vu, The Uninvited, and Shadowgate. These are some of the oldest graphic adventures having been developed for the new Mac GUI in the mid 80's and ported to the NES later becoming a part of many lives in my generation. While you are at Duckfeed.tv, check out other great shows such as Those Damn Ross Kids (A discussion of funny news stories between brothers Kole and Kyle) and Stand Under the Don't Tree and Riddle Me This (A modern video game discussion show).

I hope everyone is having a great week and look out for a new update for Psychonauts soon.


--Backlog Killer

16 - Let's take a camp tour!

Rest easy, readers; I have played a ton of Psychonauts since my last posting. I am really enjoying the unfolding of the plot and the actual structure of the game. I had no idea how complex and elegant it would be because of my experiences from playing previous 3D platformers in the past, and I will go on to expound its greatness while blogging. On the other hand, the gameplay is pretty much what I was expecting: not very good. It is marred by difficult and floaty jumping mechanics with not much help regarding depth perception. The camera also moves around clumsily and can be used to judge jumps better, but the inaccuracy of the keyboard does not help going in subtle directions. This makes me really wish I had played it on a console or could figure out how to get my game pad working in the game.  These experiences range from mild annoyance to mumbled curses at the inanimate TV and, from comments I have seen regarding the game on GetGlue and other areas while researching, I can be assured it will only get worse. I am not looking forward to that, but I am looking forward to seeing where the story goes. It is quite well integrated and folds in on itself in several turns that I wasn’t expecting.

I have also started a little contest for people reading the blog. If you know the source of the quote indicated by the asterisk (*) you can win a free copy of Psychonauts! Check the bottom of this post for details.

So, without further delay, let’s continue with Psychonauts!


Psychic Camp

[Always know what to do next in this one.]

After being instructed by Agent Nein to go to his lab for extra training, I set off to explore the open world of Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp. The entire camp is comprised of six areas including the children’s bunks, main lodge, parking lot, lake, the reception area, and the wilderness. There are also several other ‘hidden’ places in the camp I will walk about later. These can all be reached by interconnected pathways when walking or by an underground railway system accessed through hollowed out logs making travel much quicker.

[Like Indiana Jones, but not really.]

Each of these areas contains at least one major location of note such as the main lodge with the camp store or the lake with its boathouse. Not all of the plot essential buildings are immediately accessible, but you are free to explore anywhere else to your will and there is a lot to see. Hidden areas containing psi cards, psi markers for leveling up, arrowheads for spending at the camp store, and even special hidden items to be found in a scavenger hunt are all over the place.

[Always checking this screen.]

The first area I visited was the Main Lodge where I poked my head into the store. I did not have enough money to really buy anything except a couple of psi cores to make psi markers to level up, but there were some interesting items to be had including a vacuum to collect mental cobwebs, a merit badge that attracts mental health widgets to me (as they tend to run away), and a ‘dowsing rod’ to collect deeply buried arrowheads worth more than just 1 credit. Unfortunately, I found there was a barrier of entry when the enigmatic old man from the intro of the game (who holds many jobs around camp, more to come on that) told me I “didn’t have enough levels for that”. Alright… hold on, the dowsing rod requires  psi-level 10 while the vacuum requires level 20! Not to mention the fact that they cost an arm and a leg. This is going to be a real long term strategy with a high level of entry that was mentioned earlier by Sam in the comments.

[That stupid dowsing rod.]

I don’t mind artificial barriers being put in a game as long as they are pretty well hidden in the lore and part of the DIEGETIC PROGRESSION of the game. What is a little annoying, but a bit nit-picky, is for them to say, “Oh, you just can’t have this because see this number here? You don’t have it.” Many games do this and is often a necessary evil, but it really kicks you out of the game to quantize something that could be better worked into the fiction.

Let’s derail and talk Dark Souls for a minute. When you pass the tutorial area, you are dumped into the Firelink Shrine with no idea what to do or where to go. The designers could have closed all but one of the three possible ways you can go artificially to funnel you there, but that would destroy the open world illusion of complete freedom and non-linearity. Their answer was to fill two of the three paths with creatures you really have little chance of defeating, especially as a new player. I love this kind of older school approach that tells you ‘Don’t go here’ by punishing you rather than putting up a wall. Many games I remember used to do this such as Wizardry, the Elder Scrolls, or Baldur's Gate (sorry, RPGs on the brain) and it really lends to the game world. In contrast, telling the player “You can’t have this because numbers” and making you go back hours earlier in the game to get some collectibles seems a little beneath what I have found later in this game in terms of story design. But maybe I’m just being silly.

Moving on.

[This says 'Go away' just as much as a wall.]

Camp Activities – An overview of each area

Let’s take a look at each of the areas you can visit at the camp.

The Kids’ Cabins

This is where the game opens and I did a lot of exploration in the first post. It is pretty small and only has one ‘hidden’ area, a cave, that is pretty easily found. It is created to be a playground where the new player can run around and practice the basic movements that will be necessary later: running, jumping, bouncing on trampolines, climbing nets, climbing poles, and swinging on branches. It is a good intro with no danger to mess you up if you can’t make it. It’s also very small and is easy to locate all of the psi cards and other similar items.

[Hanging out at the cabins with this peeping tom.]

Main Lodge

I already touched on this a little bit. This area really does not have much besides the lodge itself and a large grassy area surrounding it that has some deeply buried arrowheads. It connects to the parking lot, kids’ cabins, lake, and wilderness. I have been coming back a lot to go to the store, but there is really no other reason to return once you have all the psi cards.

[I'm a better DJ than this kid.]

The Lake and Boathouse

The lake area contains an entry garden area, lake shore, a boathouse (staffed by another old guy), and a boardwalk leading to a bathysphere that can be seen in the distance. Unfortunately, this is inaccessible since Bobby Zilch and his toadie are torturing a fish and won’t let you pass. I was able to use my double jump and do a little floating to get most of the cards on the first visit, but this didn’t help too much because of how the game handles water. Slight spoilers coming, so skip the next paragraph if you are playing along.



*Story*
Raz’s family does not want him to be a psychonaut since his father is the survivor of an attack by psychics who cursed all of the ancestors to die in water. To visualize this, the game shows an actual hand come out of the lake (or other body of water) to try to grab you. You get about two bounces on water before you get pulled underwater to whatever fate awaits you. In this case, though, it is just to crawl out of the lake sopping wet. I imagine that later in the game this will lead to a death.
*Story*

[STAY OUT OF THE WATER!]

The Parking lot & Reception Area

The parking lot is just what it says and not terrible interesting. It has just a few cards and not much else to do, so we move on to the reception area. This part is pretty interesting and has lots of hidden and hard to find places to explore. A council fire had lots of buried arrowheads and foliage to search. Moving in further is a thrown together home made out of trailers and containers for the camp custodian. Once again, it is the same old guy running the shop, boathouse, and performing other menial duties. Looking around more, I was able to find most of the psi cards, an old cave with a bear in it, a small graveyard (no idea what it’s about yet), and a mine car rail that I could slide along to access the final psi cards. After clearing everything, though, I couldn’t find much else to do.


The Wilderness

The final area of camp, the wilderness, is a really big area with lots of scary stuff in it… well, one scary thing: big black bears that can use telekinesis to beat you up. Fortunately, I had leveled up and earned the psychic power of Pyrokinesis to light things on fire so I could just roast the bears and then beat them up for the kill. This area has loads of hidden cards and buried arrowheads to find to save up for that overpriced web vacuum. It also has our old guy buddy as a park ranger who enters us into the camp-wide scavenger hunt for 16 items. After finding eight, we get a 4 level promotion. The second eight net another 4 level boost. We will get to work on that soon.

[Help me hoagie man!]*

Ok, now that I have gone through all the normal places, I did say there were some hidden areas of camp. The first one we find is "Agent Cruller's Lair” after the sentient mine car offers to take us there. Incidentally, this is the only other talking mine car I have experienced since Might and Magic 2. Upon entering the cavern, we finally get to see our old buddy, who we now know as Ford Cruller, and get a dose of truth. The camp is actually built on top of a giant deposit of Psitanium, a mineral used to focus the psychic powers of those with the talent making it the perfect place for the camp. The cave is a Dr. Evil style control room with monitors keeping an eye on world affairs that may need the assistance of the psychonauts. It also contains two very useful machines: one that makes psi cards out of mental cobwebs (useless for now, stupid vacuum), and a machine that combines nine psi cards and a psi core into a challenge marker to raise Raz’s rank by one level. Now we can finally put all these to use.

[Saving up the psi-cores to burn down the trailer park.]

For now, this is every area to be found once the camp is opened up. Not small, by any means, but generally just fun for running around and hunting psi cards and other collectables. After doing this for an hour or two, I decided to move on and finally take Agent Nein up on his offer for extra training.

[No sharks with frickin' laser beams in this lair.]

Finally getting somewhere.

Finding Agent Nein, or Sasha to be more familiar, was pretty easy after exploring so much. I actually found it before looking at all the areas, but for the sake of direct and linear writing I skipped that part. Hope you forgive me. In the wilderness is a fenced off area containing lots of strange, spiked metal domes that look similar to those machines that make your hair stand up at the science center. When looking around for these, I heard a kid yelling for help and crying from one of them. I hate hearing kids crying, so I had to bash them all until the middle one opened and the kid in there said Bobby locked him in. I hate that guy.

It turns out these were constructed as an experiment to block psychic waves from reaching test subjects to render them almost blind in psychic perception which seems pretty cruel. Anyway, in the middle of the dome were small four pins. Remembering that Nein had given me a button, I used it on the pins and unlocked a hidden door leading to his lab and opening the quick travel option using the mine cart (which I LOVE).

[>use button on pins]

The lab is not very interesting with some odd architecture allowing for jumping and finding hidden psi cards. After quickly finding these, I talked to Sasha who told me he wanted to experiment with his ‘Brain Tumbler’ machine which can be used to self-analyze and enter your own head. Sounds like scary stuff, knowing what it is like to be so introspective, but we need to move on! I had a choice about continuing or waiting, but, since I had explored so much, I decided to bravely leap in. Check out next time when we see what waits for us in our minds! …or is it? Wait and see.



What’s next?


After writing this entry, I realize I probably have enough for two or three more updates which really makes me feel good since I felt like I was falling off a little. I hope I can get a few more out and keep playing the game to completion soon since I hate to disappoint.
In other news, I will be adding a few games to the backlog and will reupload the updated list after Psychonauts is done. Going up will be Quest for Glory 1-5 have been purchased from GOG and I am also considering getting The Legend of Grimrock. If it comes up next on the draw, I will get it as well since I love old school dungeon crawls.Bioshock: Infinite has been delayed, so I have opened up that purchase to X-Com when it comes out (the strategy one) because it just looks pretty good and Firaxis is making it. Take a look.

[Really looking forward to this.]

As always, leave any comments, tips, or recommendations you may have regarding… anything. Games, books, music, films are all things I am into.  Also feel free to share the blog with your buddies if you like it or if they like Psychonauts.

See you next time when we go to Agent Nein’s shooting gallery and get deeper into the plot of…. Psychonauts.


--Backlog Killer


*If you can tell me where this quote comes from, you can win your own copy of Psychonauts from GOG.com courtesy of me, the Backlog Killer. If you already have Psychonauts, you can choose any prize at or under 9.99 on GOG.com.

Quick Update

Hello fellow backlog killers,

I know it’s been pretty long since my last update. Don’t worry! I’ll be following up soon with (hopefully) significant progress in Psychonauts. I’ve gotten into the swing of it and what to expect so it’s become easier for me to play. That’s not to say that I necessarily am suddenly enamored with platformers, but I am enjoying myself significantly more than I was before. Keep an eye out for that.

Also, I know I based this whole blog around chipping away at my sizable backlog and not moving forward until I finished it… but I’m still a guy who loves games. I’ve added a few titles that will be on the list after Psychonauts is done. GOG.com just added the entire Quest for Glory series a few weeks ago that I picked up, and I am also thinking about picking up Legend of Grimrock to scratch that OCD dungeon crawler itch. The point is to remain in control of purchases and this is well within these bounds, considering it’s the second and would be third pieces of software I have purchased this year. It’s even more understandable after hearing the sad news that Bioshock: Infinite has been delayed until early next year.

These have been busy weeks in terms of work and social engagements. In my free time I’m splitting most of my gaming time between playing Starcraft 2 with my friend and playing Psychonauts by myself.  Hopefully I can start to get in more than an hour every two or three days.

--Backlog Killer

My Neuroses in Games

Big Announcement Edit:

You can now access the Backlogkiller blog directly from the domain name www.backlogkiller.com Thanks to Gary Butterfield and Kole Ross for the unexpected gift and helping to get rid of this blogspot business in the domain name. I hope you all continue to enjoy it, and let's see if we can't finish all these games. (By the way, I've cheated and added a few more. Oops!)

If you would like to contact me, you can always leave a comment or you can now send me an e-mail at backlogkiller@backlogkiller.com Thanks to everyone reading!



Now, on to the original posting...

This used to be a bigger problem, but it still bothers me: I get pretty anxious and overwhelmed while playing games when faced with too much to do or places to explore that are seemingly interminable. Now, I don’t get into heavy breathing or panic or anything serious, but I do tend to kind of just give up and say in my head “Well I don’t want to deal with all this right now!”  Depending on my mood, I may power through it or turn it off and come back later. I think it may be because I used to be a bit OCD when I was sick and needed to finish everything, but it may also have to do with my imagination and how much more I think may occur than is truly possible.

For example, the main camp of Psychonauts is made up of several areas that are loaded separately (i.e. Kid’s Cabins, Main Lodge, Meeting Area, etc.), but you are not told how many there are and they appear to be extremely large when just entering them. On top of all this, there are the inventoried lists of things contained in these areas such as how many Psi Cards, Psi Markers, or Scavenger Hunt Items (discussed next update) there are to collect. What really puts the nail in the coffin for me is that you can’t attain all of these items until you have leveled up or gotten upgrades that I assume will come much later in the game. A typical scene is me entering a new area and then looking at the screen without moving for a few seconds, imagining it going on for miles and miles, and then trying to determine how many nooks and crannies I’ll have to thoroughly explore before I will be able to move on. Extrapolating how much time this will take just folds in on itself and ends with me going “Oh, crap. This is just too much to worry about.”

 I simply cannot stand to have something facing me that I can’t solve at that moment or does not at least seem to have a determined destination or goal. If a task does not indicate you cannot complete it then, I don’t like it.

Case in point: in the first level of Psychonauts (Oleander’s war-themed obstacle course), the game introduces the concept of mental cobwebs. These are dusty places of the mind not often accessed that block areas of the level and can also be collected to make other items. The problem is you do not possess the vacuum item required to collect them at this point. I’m already tuned out a little bit because it’s TOLD ME “Yeah, these are here, but you’re going to be forced to come back and do this.” Hate it. Even after getting out, I found out I have to level up to rank 20 AND collect 200 arrowheads to buy the thing? Oof, tough pill for me to swallow.

I like to round out things in chunks and 100% everything I can before I move on to feel truly comfortable. As you can imagine, games like Skyrim, Grand Theft Auto, and many others must be a nightmare for me. While this is true, I am usually able to keep going and finish. (Typically not 100%) What makes the capital ‘B’ But is that I never feel completely immersed in the game because I am always worrying about what needs to be done. I am always looking at it from the “meta” (ugh) perspective of playing a program of event sequences and progress levels rather than a fully realized world.

Now, this isn’t just what happens while I am playing games. It also occurs when reading books, watching movies, or even listening to comedy. I am always trying to separate the context of the materials with what is trying to be accomplished in a larger sense. I know your douche detectors are going off like car alarms, but it really explains why I am into what I like. Sadly, I have a very difficult time losing myself in a world that is being created because I am trying to attribute something greater to what’s being presented, deservingly or not, and breaking everything down to event markers. Not only does this limit my fun in many cases, but also causes me to make insane connections and reach for conclusions that I look at later and think “Boy, that’s crazy/overwrought.”

On one hand, I want to play these games and get sucked into them. I REALLY wanted to get into Skyrim, but I just kept having terrible thoughts like “I don’t want to take another quest because I’ve seen this cave 20 times already” or “Well, maybe I can do this randomly generated quest first so it will be grayed out next time I talk to this NPC”. It’s nuts. On the other hand, I would like to be challenged by what I am doing. I’m uncomfortable with being a passive consumer that is not putting anything back into what I am playing or watching. In my opinion, good art/games/whatever should require some input of the consumer to meet the creator halfway to have the best effects.

Planescape: Torment touched on some of my anxieties by presenting huge non-linear areas with dozens of NPCs to speak with, but I had the advantage of playing it in the past and knowing its limitations.  What it did do extremely well was force me to meet the content provided by requiring me to read text and use my imagination to determine what was going on. It also had many larger themes waiting to be explored and were framed nicely by major events in the game such as the reuniting of the past selves and the commentary on tropes. This isn’t even going into the role playing decisions you can make.

So, how do I backpedal from this uppity hipster douche Helldump? Maybe I can’t. I really like games and I think everybody has their own opinions and things they like, but, personally, I am afraid I have gone too deep into the mire of complex and weirdo games because of my previous depression that I can’t enjoy other simple things. I would love to play a game where I’m thinking “Yeah, I’ll hit this guy with a sword then go look in this cave”, but I always just get bored thinking “That’s it?” I guess I’ll slink back to my cynicism, hardcore dungeon crawls with number crunching, and strategy games with inscrutable UIs, but I know  I’m missing out on tons of other things. I would love to enjoy a game that puts itself out there earnestly and does not pretend to be any more than it is.

This post is petty and whiny, and I have no doubt that many out there will disagree, but that's how it is for me. Maybe there is something to it, maybe not. Who cares?

15 - Made it through basic.

I’m getting worried about writing long posts about Psychonauts because it doesn’t really leave much to interpretation or anything that may lend itself to self indulgent writing. So far, it is exactly what it looks like on the front: run, jump, and punch your way through things without dying to make it to the next level. Some of the tropes are cleverly represented. Instead of ‘dying’, you run out of mental health and are forced to exit the course to save your sanity. Powerups are represented as figments of the imagination that I mentioned in the last post, and any unexplained superpowers are easily attributed to the psychic gifts or hand waved away by being in somebody else’s mind. This does allow a wide berth for imagination, but doesn’t do much to revolutionize gameplay or become too cerebral. (Forgive the pun.)

None of this is to say I don’t like the game. I am actually enjoying it quite a bit as I am not usually drawn to games of this type. I think the last one I really sat down and played may have been Maximo for the Playstation 2, but that was so long ago it can’t be right… Maybe it is. Anyway, in college I went mostly into first person shooters and continued into hardcore RPGs and strategy when I got depressed so I didn’t come to platformers too often. This is a good break for me and may lead me to playing more in the future.

I may try to space out the posts to cover more ground each time because lots of times there is not too much to write about. I’ll try to keep up posting fairly often, but I do apologize for being later on this one than usual. I feel tension start to build as time goes on from the last post because, even though there aren’t too many of you readers, I do hate to disappoint you. Plus, lower post frequency means I am not getting through this backlog which is also bad because there are lots of new games coming out I want to try, Legend of Grimrock being one of the majors. Luckily, I’m not a big Diablo guy and have a long period of time before the new Bioshock (just announced it’s delayed again!) comes out so I’m sitting pretty right now.
Anyway, we head back into Oleander’s head and continue his challenges.



Like Herman’s Head, only more people.

We last left Raz sitting at a large red button that, to be honest, does not look safe to push. Well, it is required and is actually a training mini-game used to teach the player how to punch quickly and accurately. Boards pop up with either enemies or babies painted on them and you need to quickly destroy them while discerning if they are friend or foe since punching babies isn’t really the point of the game. The coach said I can get a “special prize” if I destroy enough targets in 75 seconds, but I never reached that threshold and have no desire to waste a lot of time 100%-ing the game to find out what the special prize is. If you know what it is, go ahead and tell me!

[Don't tempt me into OCD.]

[It's like Whack-a-Mole but with babies.]

The perspective of the game makes this little test quite hard because the perspective is difficult to judge. This is a problem of all 3D platformers, but is already becoming a problem here. Distances look closer when staring head-on and are difficult to judge when performing jumps. A little foreshadowing for later…

[I guess he opened the gate for me not being a complete dummy.]

After that was just more practice platforming and swinging on horizontal poles like Aladdin. In one section of swinging, I was unable to figure out how to turn around to face the other way because the tooltip passed by too quickly. Just like any game you get nowadays where the manual is either some piece of junk slip of paper or, as in this case, non-existent or online, I was unable to quickly find out how to do this. I had to go to the Internet to find out pressing “F” would accomplish this twist. I rarely run into problems like this with my experience playing video games, but this one left me wanting a physical manual which must be the first time in hears. I wish I had all my old stuff here with me because I would gladly insert a shot of my spiral bound manual from Fallout or fat and creased Wizardry 7 manual still bearing the scars of clandestine reading in 6th grade classes. But I don’t, so just try to imagine the glory.

[Stuck because of controls. Which button lets you win?]

One thing I do really like about this level, at least, is the art directors went hog-wild with the design to represent the inside of Oleander’s head. It really feels like you are trapped in the mind of a half-cracked army Colonel living in a world where he’s no longer needed. Barbed wire is silhouetted against the mustard gas sky. Airplanes and zeppelins coast around appearing as birds of prey through the trampoline cargo netting. Bombs are going off around the player. Howitzers covered in snow drifts fire shells. Bunny rabbits are wearing Prussian helmets. The whole deal.

[Scary in a not too threatening way.]

I hope my assumption that the rest of the game will follow in suit with no revolutionary mechanic additions other than difficulty is ill founded and cynical, but I think it is probably not. I proceeded through the course by swinging from landing gear, climbing trench ladders, and grinding down rails in sneakers to arrive in an empty room because the coach thought “nobody would make it to the end”. Something intriguing was here, though. Before Oleander found me, I entered an adjacent room that was completely white and made out of stone; a jarring difference in tone from the rest of the level. At the end of this was a curtained window that, when approached, flagged the entry of the coach who kicked me out and congratulated me.

What was that window? Is it an unguarded place of Oleander’s psyche? I already unloaded lots of his mental baggage (literally suitcases in the levels) and opened some of his darkest secrets out of pig safes, but this seemed to be something more. Unless there are cosmic horrors outside the window telling Eric Zann how to compose music, I don’t know what it could be. This hints at more which is a relief for me because I was all buckled up for some standard fare.

[Like Willy Wonka... sort of. I dont' know. Too old?]

After emerging from the course, I was given my first merit badge and told to head out and kill time until my next test. That jerk Bobby Zilch wanted to beat me up for ‘making him look bad’, but this was thankfully delayed by the appearance of one of the other counselors known as Sasha Nein who appears to be a semi-German hipster just a few evolutionary levels above Dieter from Sprockets. He handed me a button and told me to go to his lab for some enigmatic ‘additional training’ which was added to my task list.

[Achievement, too. That little Steam pop-up is a rush!]

We’ll look around the camp a bit, but that will be the next stop.

[Und now vee dance!]

What’s next?


I’m going to try to get some serious progress done before the next post unless something dramatic happens. It may sound like I am bagging on the game a lot, but I’m not, really. The game is fun to play with its core mechanics. The settings are interesting and the writing is consistent and imaginative. It is not very meaty, however, in the way Planescape is in terms of lending material for interpretation. It is what it is, which I can appreciate and there are many other games on the backlog just like that. It’s only a little jarring after the last journey.

I may interject any ideas I get from the game that aren’t directly related to gameplay while progressing to generate discussion in additional entries. Torment was so rich and heavy I did not have any time to get abstract with it in terms of the game and gaming ideas, but there is a lot to talk about as games get more mature and more corporate and will continue to become more interesting as time goes on. We’ll get into those later, though.

Join me next time when we head to the secret lab to talk with Sasha about his plans for us.



--Backlog Killer

P.S./Edit:
IGN Has just named Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp as it's 13th most interesting game world in the history of gaming. Check out the article!

14 - Starting Psychonauts

Well, now we are back into the blog and I am excited. The last few weeks have been pretty hectic with trips to China for family things, work, and seeing friends so I haven’t been able to write as much. I hope all of you listened to the Watch Out for Fireballs episode about Planescape: Torment. Kole and Gary had a good discussion that will only get better with this week’s episode where they can get into more overarching meanings and story beats (I heard it clocks in around 4 hours). I am looking forward to that to see if any of their interpretations or take-aways line up with my own. I really liked how I was able to dig a little deeper into the game and take much more out of it than I initially thought while keeping a (possibly too) critical eye using the blog.

Anyway, that’s for another time. Let’s move onward in the Backlog Killer with Psychonauts!

[I didn't realize you could run all over this brain on the title screen.]

[See?]

First impressions.

I was pretty on the nose with what I thought Psychonauts would look like based on the box art. The game features an exaggerated art style that is pretty indicative of many cartoons and media from that era. It reminds me of old shows I used to watch on Nickelodeon such as Ren & Stimpy or Rocko’s Modern life. I assume that most of the characters are ‘human’, or the analogue in that world, but they all have vastly different proportions and varying sizes of… everything.

[Love these designs.]

The writing is very good and comes through as mature and professional which is consistent with Tim Schafer’s other works. It moves at a good clip and is economical as a good movie script should be. This very rarely happens when I am playing games, but I actually laughed out loud a lot at the jokes. Callbacks, comic timing, and other things you never see done well in games really come through here. Check it out:

[Bobby Zilch is such a jerk.]

The game play itself is exactly what I was expecting. Very similar to Mario 64 or Crash Bandicoot, the camera rotates around your character (named Raz) while you jump and punch. I was immediately at home. It also comes with all the downfalls of this type of platforming play in a 3d environment, most notably the problems of perspective and distances. I really hope this doesn’t come back to bite me.

The game also includes detailed OCD elements like finding cards to rank up, arrowheads to use as currency, and other secrets that look like they will reveal themselves. I usually don’t go in for this stuff, but it’s really getting to me now. I ran around the initial hub gathering everything for 30 minutes and still missed one. This still upsets me when I think about it…

[Picking up arrowheads.]

Now that I know what the game is going to be like, let’s get into the story!

What the heck’s going on here?

The introduction video above does a good job setting the scene. Raz is a boy with psychic powers ostracized and feared by his family who works in the circus. He runs away from his former life to the Psychonauts summer camp to use his abilities to become a psychonaut. Based on the dialogue of the camp leaders, it appears that Raz has impressive abilities and control for his age setting him up as a classic hero ready to take down some shady enemy in the future. After going to sleep, making a save game file, and waking up from sleep, we step outside and are told to attend an introductory training course with one of the camp leaders.

At this point you are set free and allowed to explore and run around the initial area which is operates as a tutorial/obstacle course. There is no time limit on when you need to get to the training, but I was very nervous after getting boned in the latest Deus Ex game for goofing around the office and causing the death of some hostages by arriving later... loved that part. Anyway, you run around getting a feel for the jumping physics, learning to climb objects, and experiencing how exploring can really help you.

[Map of the first hub.]

Buried around the camp are purple arrowheads that operate as camp currency and cause sparks to fly out of the ground at their locations. I think these respawn as I am pretty sure I picked up several from the exact same locations. The camp also has cards scattered around it that you can collect to form into challenge markers to level up your abilities. I will try to get as many of these as I can, but in the interest of the blog and my sanity I don’t think I will be doing a 100% completionist run. I know those grey Steam achievements will mock me, but I’ll just have to get over it.

[I tried to find all of these but couldn't do it.]

I also talked to a cool little guy named Dogen Boole who is a cute kid in footie pajamas and a tin foil hat to control his insane power. He can blow up things (see squirrels) on command and seems in minimal control, but is really sweet. Definitely my favorite character so far.

[Absolutely love Dogen.]

After finding semi-hidden areas, listening to funny conversations with other campers, and finding what seems to be a shoe in a block of ice, I ran up the ramp for the basic training course with Morceau Oleander who looks like an old Prussian military officer. He has set up an obstacle course in his mind based on his old military experiences for all the kids to run through and practice their abilities. Thus we enter the more advanced basic training of the game.

Basic.

Oleander’s obstacle course seems to be the first real “level” of Psychonauts. It introduces more advanced concepts of the game such as double jumping, shimmying, and collecting what are known as “figments”. Figments are remnants of memories in the mind of the person you are in and are represented by two dimensional sketches appropriate for the area. The obstacle course is a war zone filled with cannons, airplanes, rockets, and cargo netting so the figments are commonly drawings of soldiers, blimps, and things like that. I did collect a lot in this area and went up one rank, but I started to get a little frustrated with collecting them. The two dimensional nature of the figments makes it VERY difficult to judge where they are, especially when they are moving around over platforms. I can imagine this will get worse in the future.

[The first level. Military themed.]

[Those 2D figments explained.]

So I ran through the course until the first checkpoint. This path included double jumping over larger pits, moving platforms on vents, climbing along walls, and even a hidden underground path with more reward figments. Near the end I encountered a minefield with Dogen hanging out front because he keeps blowing up and getting sent back to the beginning. I like the kid, so I helped guide him through the area and felt pretty good about it. After being transported to part two, I decided to take a break for a while.

The next point is more of Oleander’s course with added obstacles. I hope that after finishing the rest of the camp opens up. I am looking forward to leveling up, but something tells me I won’t make it to 100.

[After the first check point. Don't know what happens when I hit this button...]

What’s next?

So far I’m enjoying the game. The visuals are whimsical and good looking while the dialogue and story is interesting and funny. I hope to uncover more of it soon in the next entry for the blog. I also like the fact that it moves a bit quickly. This is a big deal to me because as much as I enjoyed the last game, it took a lot of time and a large amount of blogging to cover. This one seems like it may work as sort of a break for me, which is great.

I don’t mind if games are long or short as long as the playing respects the player. I would have no problem playing a well constructed three hour game if it is offered at a competitive price. The whole deal about having a “standard” game time or needing at least 20 hours of play is absurd and scary to me. This kind of arbitrary requirement can lead to padding, rushed parts, and game play that is simply not fun. Increase in indie output filling this niche makes me very happy. I may write more about this in a separate entry.

For now, it’s good to be back and let me know if you’ve played Psychonauts and have any suggestions or tips on things I shouldn’t miss!

--Backlog Killer

13 - Psychonauts

13 – Psychonauts

One of the biggest reasons I started the blog is I was fairly comfortable that I would not burn out because of the wide variety of games in the backlog. Psychonauts brings that into clear view and is a fantastic break after the marathon that is Planescape: Torment. After looking at How Long to Beat, it seems like the game will take around 10 to 15 hours to finish which sounds good to me. I am a big fan of games with a strong sense of humor and can’t wait to dig into this one as the last was a bit of a downer to say the least.

What is Psychonauts?

Psychonauts is a platformer/adventure game developed by Tim Schafer and his company Double Fine Productions, which makes this is a really topical entry to come up considering their recent (and very successful) Kickstarter campaign. It is about a group of promising young psychics in a secret US training facility disguised as a summer camp. You take the role of Razputin “Raz” Aquato who has fled his family’s life in the circus to become a psychonaut and follow his dreams. This is about all I know about the game because I have never played it and haven’t read anything about it. I have only only started it up to test screenshots and only heard everybody say it’s great.

The game was released in 2005 for Windows, PS2, and Xbox. It was later released in 2011 for all of you Mac users out there when I guess they finally figured out that double booting and partitioning wasn’t as fun of a game. I had seen the box on the shelf in stores, but it blended in for me with other similar games of the time including Ratchet and Clank and Crash Bandicoot. Also, like most college students, I was short on spendable cash and wouldn’t go for something unless I KNEW it was a slam dunk. I bought this one on a Steam sale 3(?) years ago and didn’t even install it showing pretty good judgment and self-control on my part.

Why so excited about this game?

The designer and lead writer for the game, Tim Schafer, is a legend in the PC gaming world of adventures games. Classics such as Maniac Mansion, The Secret of Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, and (a personal favorite) Grim Fandango have all come from his beautiful hairy brain. I played Maniac Mansion for NES when I was younger and didn’t really get it, but Grim Fandango really pleased me to no end when I played it in high school. Schafer’s mastery of pacing, humor, and pastiche really are amazing. Another huge part of his games (and others from Lucasarts) is that you could not die which really made me upset in lots of other adventure games (i.e. Sierra adventures). I do not think this will hold true in Psychonauts, though.

[Game writing all-star.]

His writing has a very deliberate silliness about it that is controlled and not just there for the sake of having a joke. Lots of the dialogue and events that happen occur organically from the subject matter which is pretty interesting for me as a comedy nerd. Puns and quips do occur, but the controlled aspect of the writing fits with the narrative of the story making it much easier to swallow than, let’s say, a band of skeletons doing high kicks in the underworld for a cheap laugh. It is easy to accept and indicates a completely thought out and real world.

I should not go without mentioning that the game was co-written by Erik Wolpaw who also wrote lines for the original Portal. I’m not sure what he is doing now, but his Wikipedia mentioned he was on extended leave from Valve after being diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. I wish him well if he has not yet recovered.

Here we go…

I hope I can make the first post relatively soon since I’ve been super super busy these past few weeks. Hang in there let me know if you have any suggestions about playing the game. See you soon in the world of Psychonauts!

--Backlog Killer

Watch Out for Fireballs - Torment

Hey guys, just a quick update to post a link and a thank you to Gary and Kole over at the Watch Out for Fireballs podcast that I played Planescape: Torment in tandem. If you didn't read about it before, it's a retro video games podcast that is similar to a book of the month club, but it happens twice a month! This episode talks about the first half of Planescape (up to the Clerk's Ward) and touches on a lot of great topics. Be sure to listen to it and the conclusion that will come out in a few weeks.

Watch Out for Fireballs Episodes Page

You can also join their Facebook page that I post on regularly and check out other good shows on duckfeed.tv. Stand Under the Don't Tree and Riddle Me This is a modern games podcast that takes the form of friendly discussion. Those Damn Ross Kids is a humor program that Kole does with his brother in which they discuss funny news stories and riff on them. If you like My Brother, My Brother, and Me, you will probably like this as it's a similar concept except with news instead of Yahoo!Answers advice.

I'd also like to thank Kole and Gary for using the blog as a reference and, hopefully, getting more people to come. I think my insight may be pretty commonplace, but I sincerely appreciate the 'shout out'. I'm also proud of my analysis of meta-game as representation of life after depression, I did feel good about that one. ;]

--Backlog Killer

Coming Soon

Hey guys, hope you’re all doing well. I am looking forward to beginning Psychonauts soon and my quest to conquer the backlog will resume quickly, but I am going out of town (to mainland China) this weekend for some family stuff and won’t be able to write as soon as I had hoped. I’ve been relaxing and cooling down since the epic journey that Planescape: Torment was and kind of readjusting for the idea that the next game may not be so long or, dare I say it, a commitment. It’s refreshing.

I’ve stuck to my ideals of not getting any new games (OK, I did get Silent Hill HD collection for PS3, but I already owned that for PS2), and have just been reading and playing some older casual games I have. My wife and I have replayed Peggle and Peggle Nights in their entirety which is a great thing to do. She’s not great at many video games (hope she doesn’t read this), but she may be better at Peggle than I am. I’ve also been messing around with Magic the Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers which I picked up several years ago. I remember I was disappointed when I bought it a few years ago to sate my OCD tendencies because there was no deck building. Now, however, I really like the restrained puzzle aspects it offers as a diluted and palatable MTG experience. If you’re looking for some good critical thinking and short in and out gameplay, give it a shot. A new 2012 version has been out for a while and I hear that 2013 is in the works, too.

[Nerdiness... becoming... too powerful.]

I’ve also been trying to get into Starcraft 2 as my birthday was last week and it was bought for me by my buddy who is quite good at it. I’m really terrible at RTS and am pretty scared of it, but maybe I can get a foot in the door and enjoy myself. It’s definitely a blast from the past back to middle schools days of playing the original over the modem. I’m looking for other people to play with because of time differences, so if you’re into SC2, let me know and maybe we can match up and you can destroy me.

[Lots of research going into this, thanks dApollo.]

Look out sometime next week for the background info on Psychonauts and the following updates about what seems to be an awesome change from somber Planescape.


--Backlog Killer

12 - All About Planescape: Torment

Here we are at the end of Planescape and I am pretty satisfied with how it went. Although I did complain a lot about the combat, the game was very well made and has a great story to it. The mechanics may have not fit the subject material, but I am glad that somebody was brave enough to make a game like this that puts a lot of responsibility on the player to read, invest in the story, and try to put some meaning behind it. This would never get made in the modern game market, unless it took place in the burgeoning indie scene.


About the game part of the game.

[Awesome picture from Brainy Gamer.]

Planescape: Torment’s artistic sensibilities are some of the strongest I have experienced from this generation of games. I played and loved Baldur’s Gate and similar titles, but they were dry in that you knew what everything would look like going in. We’re in wooded area x to find the magical y of strange name to return to character n. This formula gets flipped into some strange calculus function that becomes all sorts of crazy in PST. You’re not restricted to the normal 1) Good choice 2) bad choice or 3)neutral I don’t care choice. You can talk the character out of doing something, you can do the quest, you can lie to them for no reason other than to be a jerk, or you can promise to do the deed. It seems like fluffiness and unneeded content, but it really helps with your characterization and to feel like you’re making some impact in the world.

This leads into the writing which is some of the best in any video game I have played. I won’t get into saying that it’s equitable to a novel, because it’s not. Let’s be honest, these games didn’t have that kind of budget, and even if they do, they won’t write heady or subliminally enough to go over the average person’s head for fear of losing a large section of players. Planescape demands that the player/reader follow these lines of thought, make decisions based on their feelings and not simply ‘game the system’ for the best results. It also made me stop to think about my own life in terms of story beats that I will get to later.

The art and sound work is excellent with a different style from any other similar title I have played. I don’t really know what they could have done to make it better with the engine limitations so I will leave it at that.

Finally, I never got to show off the spell effects of the game. In fact, I never got to USE the high level spells because by the time I had leveled up enough, I was at the end of the game. This had to do with missing lots of game content, but that’s OK because we have YouTube. Check it out:

[The Mechanus Canon.]

[Celestial Host. I had this one!]

[Conflagration.]

[Meteor Storm. Had this one.]

[LIGHTNINGBOLT. Nah, Deathbolt.]

[Abyssal Fury. Had it.]

[Symbol of Torment.]

What the story meant to me.



Earlier in the blog, I think in entry 1, I was talking about how I had bought a boat load of games because of a rough patch in my life. I actually went through a bit of a depressed period where I would focus entirely on video games and hermit myself in my house to play them, no matter what else was going on. It beat the Sisyphean task of going out into the city and doing stuff, and was pretty debilitating sometimes. I’m still a bit of an agoraphobe, but I think it has more to do with growing up in a small town where people are more polite to each other. Living in a big city, such as Hong Kong, can be pretty shocking sometimes. People pushing you and bumping into you with no care, shoving themselves onto trains before you even get a chance to get off, passing in lines and carelessly ignoring traffic laws all gets pretty old. Even though I consider myself pretty much recovered, I still get sore about these things sometimes.

What is really bad is owning and living with the things you may have done in the past that you aren’t proud of. This is what I really connected with in the story. During the depression, I was kind of a prisoner in my own head. I would get angry and flip out for no reason, avoid others because it was too much of a hassle, and try to forget everything by going all OCD on games or sports or whatever. I don’t know how to explain better than David Foster Wallace did in Infinite Jest when he describes it as constantly being under attack by your own body. It is literally impossible the consider other people because you are in so much physical and psychic pain that it is like torture and you can just barely deal with yourself. That it is "a level of psychic pain wholly incompatible with human life as we know it". The worst part of what happens is to your relationships. As a person who was a bit sick and is now better, I can see a black and white difference and feel the change. The one who is with that person is just a normal person doing their best to deal with the situation. In many cases, the partner will sacrifice his or her own well being to satisfy the one they love because they don’t know what’s going on, only that this person is hurting and they want to help. This can turn into a self defeating cycle in which you always sacrifice what you want to do to help the other person. Trust me in that this can put major stress on a relationship and also leaves scars.

After recovery, we still have some trouble with the shadows from the past. Even though I am a normally functioning person, I still look and sound the same. Certain facial expressions or sounds will trigger a Pavlovian response in which my wife will revert to submitting to what I want to do, or what she thinks I want to do. Even though we are doing very well and this is a problem we are working on and defeating, the game made me think about it.

The Nameless One has things in his past that he has no control over now. He can only do what he feels is right in this immediate life. That does not change what past incarnations have done nor does it make the events any less real. This is how I feel. I remember incidents that happened, seemingly outlined in dark fog, that I feel like I had no agency in. I know this is entering  cop out territory because I could have been seeking help, but didn’t know anything was wrong. Now I need to own those mistakes and make up for them. When the nameless one absorbs his other incarnations, I saw this process occurring. I’m not two people that were split then and now, I am one who needs to own and deal with what happened. It’s very liberating.

Also, the characters that choose to fight along with you even after going through so many terrible experiences resonated with me. Morte has been following the longest and has seen the best and the worst of the Nameless One, but he continues to follow him because, I feel, he thinks he’s a good person deep down. I can attribute this to my wonderful wife who has stuck with me through thick and thin and never been anything but supportive. That’s not to say everything was easy, but we have never doubted each other and never will.
These observations are things that have grown on me since I last played the game and would have never even crossed my mind as a teenager. Experience and time makes it necessary for us to revisit media such as books and games to gauge our own growth as those pieces are always constant and unchanging. I found out that I have grown up and value time differently: the combat and padded parts of the game annoyed me, but I have also grown emotionally and can attribute abstract ideas to my own experiences and maybe connect a little to what the author may have intended, even if he/she didn’t. This is the meeting point of the artists who write and create and the consumer who reads and watches. You can never know what the other person is thinking as they are writing; they simply release a piece of art that you absorb and interpret. Your attribution to their writing meets their intention and makes a sort of bond in the middle that should always occur while consuming good media. I love this feeling and am glad that it was able to happen in some measure while playing Planescape: Torment.



Oh yeah, I forgot to review it. I give 5 hot wet kisses to the game despite the horrid combat. (I hope you like Check it Out with Dr. Steve Brule or you have no idea what that means.)

[Maybe my favorite show on TV right now.]

What’s next?


Well, I’m going to take a week or two off from the blog to do some reading and more casual gaming stuff before beginning the next game. I’ve been on a literary tear and have been averaging a book a week which is pretty good for how much time I have. I’ve finished The Ruins (Scott Smith), Books of Blood Vol. 1 (Clive Barker), The Silence of the Lambs (Thomas Harris), and am reading Vol. 2 of Books of Blood. Next I’m going to move onto Vineland by Thomas Pynchon, one of my favorite authors. After that one, I’ll only need to read Mason & Dixon and I’ll have read his entire book collection which is awesome. I'm really looking forward to it.

Oh yeah, what’s the next game? Well, I stated several times that Sherlock Holmes is a no-go which disappoints me to no end. I really wanted to play it, but I can’t stomach it -- literally. So, let’s go to the random number generator (www.random.org). The next game will be…

Checking back to number 44, we find it’s Psychonauts by Tim Schafer! I am looking forward to this one having played and loved pretty much all his games that I’ve played: Indiana Jones Adventures, the Monkey Island Games, Grim Fandango (Amazing), Full Throttle, and Maniac Mansion. It’s a great pedigree and I hope this one will follow in those footsteps.

See you in a week or two for Psychonauts!

--Backlog Killer

11 - Finished Planescape: Torment

This is the last entry about playing Planescape and will be followed by my thoughts and final opinion on the game.  It took quite a while, but I’m happy to have seen success with this system and my ability to keep up some semblance of a posting schedule. I’ve gotten over 1,000 views and am feeling pretty good about the project. I just wanted to say I appreciate all readers and thank you, even if you are just reading in passing.

Now, onto the game.



Are you sure we’re ready?

[This is the final portal.]

Things have come full circle. We find ourselves next to the slab where we started the game, staring at the final portal. Joined by my comrades in torment, we prepare to enter and find the truth. Trias told us that to activate the portal, The Nameless One must tear a piece of skin off and write your regret in blood. Painful, but necessary.

[The last cover up is revealed.]

[I like you too, buddy.]

A wonderful scene occurs in which all of your followers re-affirm their support of you, some more poignantly than others. Morte is particularly emotional when talking about your current incarnation compared to others. This resonated very heavily with me as you will see next entry. After having been through Hell and high water with The Nameless One, Morte is finally standing at the end of a terrible era. He’s dealt with craziness, overbearing practicality, evil, good, and just about any other point on the spectrum of human emotion. The fact that, after all of this crap, he will follow me into almost certain death was a bit emotional as a player. Well done, game.

After circling our wagons and making sure everything is ready to go, we stepped through the portal into…



The Fortress of Regret



This is the real endgame and, unlike the rest of the journey, you can die. We become separated from the rest of our party who must all fight for their lives in this place that should not be. Deposited outside, I ran across the ghost of Dionorra for the last time. She tells me that the nature of my immortality lies in the life of others in that when I die, another’s life is taken in trade for my resurrection. Since we are on a completely different plane, too many deaths will result in the true end. New mechanic. I also took the time to tell Dionorra that I understand what happened in the past and, even though I don’t love her, I care for her as a broken piece left from a former incarnation. I didn’t feel much of a connection with this plot thread, though, as it was too far removed. Maybe I’m just a terrible person.
After that, we step into the last area of the game: the interior of the Fortress of Regret.

The entire map of the area contains almost no interactive points and is a mad dash from shadows that are produced as a result of every death you have had. This is not, of course, a reflection on your performance because you’ve already had an uncountable number of deaths before rising for the first time at the beginning of the game. Of course, the more you do die during this portion of the game, more shadows will appear as a result.

After entering the fortress, we see a cut scene in which the Transcendent One who taunted and killed Ravel earlier seduces Ignus to fight against us. He was a tenuous ally anyway, and now it looks like he has become my enemy. Now we are free to wander about the fortress, although this is not advised because tons of shadows you cannot even HOPE to defeat all of are chasing you around trying to rip you apart. It now becomes a giant game of tag that is, somehow, not nearly as annoying as Curst, the outlands, or Baator. In the course of the mad dash, I found a hint left from myself that indicated that activating a variety of “war machines” that look like futuristic canons. After touching these, you witness a cutscene in which each of your allies falls to the Transcendent One defending you to the death. This is pretty affecting as most of these followers (Especially Morte and Da’akon) have seen both the best and worst in you and still care enough to die for you. I liked this part until I thought back from the end, which is weird and I will touch on later.

After activating all the war machines, a portal opens into a chamber containing a crystal and Ignus who is waiting to light me up. This was a tough battle and I was able to last through his tough spells until we duked it out fist to flame. I was not at all sorry about killing Ignus because his madness/lack of characterization made him very difficult to empathize with. Luckily, this is the only character this happened with. I touched the crystal, fell into darkness, and found myself…



Three’s company, but one is better.



…in a room facing three of my former incarnations: the original super-practical personality that initially wanted to be immortal, a crazy incarnation with multiple personalities and schizophrenia, and a purely good incarnation. This part of the game seems to represent reconciling with your past and accepting your wrongs. Pretty deep stuff for a game, right? This will also be discussed next post. The point of this scene is to talk to, understand, and convince each incarnation to become one once again and own your past. The good incarnation is easy as he is willing to join you for the greater good of life and move on. The practical incarnation is very tricky and wants to absorb YOU so that he can remain immortal and continue on the journey. He was pretty cunning, but was luckily full of hubris. He thought his mind was stronger than me, but because of my insanely high intelligence (25), he had hoisted his own petard and became trapped in his own mind while I absorbed him.

The final incarnation, crazy man, was a bit trickier to absorb. He had left the encoded journal in the sensate hall and admitted to killing the language master. Because of his paranoia, my character chose to talk to him in the secret language he learned to trick the ‘other voices’ in order to speak privately. Because of this, he became calm and acquiesced. I’m glad I read that journal because I am pretty sure the only alternative is to fight him melee and, let me tell you, he is tough. I tried it out and died repeatedly. If you ignored that puzzle box, I hope you were a fighter.

[I guess the Nameless One was a psychotherapist in a past life.]

[With our new knowledge we can use the sphere.]

[The name. Sorry about missing assets, this happened a lot.]

After becoming whole again, we move to the final part of the game.



The Real End



Here we are folks. The end. The final part. And, even though I was very happy to finish my first game for the blog and get to a new genre and setting, I was a bit sad that such a great game will be over. I haven’t been able to flesh it out for you to see very much, but the game is so rich in dialogue and writing there is no way I could do it justice in this blog. I encourage you to go play it immediately. Get it from GOG for the best version or dig out those CDs again. It’s really a unique experience and is so meaty that I’m sure I missed well over 30% of the game that is just as good as what I experienced. I’ll talk about it more in the next blog, but just know that I had a great time and now it’s time to end it.

I found myself on a platform floating in void, inky blackness all around, with my allies lying in the center. Dead. I approached the Transcendent One for the final confrontation.

If you hadn’t guessed by now, the big boss of the game is the physical manifestation of my mortality which is, apparently, neon green. This was really awesome. I asked why the TO was trying to kill me and it stated that as long as we are separate, it cannot die. It can literally live forever, as can I, as long as we are separated. Once we are joined and die, however, it is all over. Or, of course, I could kill it and that would be the end as well. Here lies the choice.
You are able to end the game in several different ways that range from good to bad:

Bad: Remember that blade made for us by the golem in the siege tower ages ago? Yeah, it’s still there and can be used now that we are in a plane separated from the others. Doing this kills you without your immortality so, even though you enter oblivion, it is a state of undeath that is torment in its own way. This movie rolls if you get that ending.

Ok ending: If you choose to fight the Transcendent One, you are in for a huge battle that is really tough. I didn’t even try this because I was not specced for battle and would have gotten ripped to shreds. It is very possible, however, and is met with this ending vid.

I chose the best ending. Remember that bronze sphere we got for Pharod that I picked up? It was actually a deactivated sensory stone that one of my incarnations had knowledge of. When I used it, it revealed the entire past life I had originally lived as well as my true name. As we know, your true name is power, and with it you can do almost anything. (Hint: Don’t ask what the name is because they never tell you what it is, much like what’s in Marcellus’s briefcase in Pulp Fiction) Using this name, I threatened the TO with the power associated with it and commanded him to rejoin with me. He did, and I was greeted with a cutscene and the ability to die.

[I know what you are.]

[Let's stay together.]

Before passing on to the lower planes (Some lives were pretty horrible), we have final conversations with the recently resurrected companions. I was not sure how this worked in terms of a story beat because it felt like a cheapening of the deaths that occurred earlier because the stakes were raised and then destroyed for seemingly no reason.  What it is, however, is simply a goodbye from all the characters and the chance to say any final words. I wanted to focus mainly on Morte because he seemed to be the most similar to my character. Living without knowledge of his past (He forgot how he died and his living memories after being in the pillar of skulls) and going from one nightmare to the next with you. I enjoyed this the most followed by an emotional goodbye from Annah whom I romanced earlier. It didn’t go further than making out, but I’m kind or glad because sometimes sex in games can seem weird and awkward, much like real life. Get it? Anyway, the cavalcade ended and we are left with the final cutscene: The Now Named One descending into the lower planes as a complete being to continue onto whatever comes after.

[Goodbye Da'akon.]

[See you, Morte.]

[The end.]

What's next?


The next entry will be my feelings on the game and how it touched a very personal part of my life.  It will come shortly and be followed by the announcement of the next game. Sherlock Holmes will not be happening because of motion sickness that I mentioned last post, so we’ll have to go a new direction.
See you next time.

--Backlog Killer

10 - Scraping By

A prison for my soul, or a Deva.

[This was my reality for several hours.]

This is the absolute worst part of Planescape: Torment. Trying to free this Deva is pushing me to the edge of quitting, but I can’t because I’m almost done and I need to get this off my backlog. I’ve talked about it endlessly, but this game is not about combat and should never have had anything approaching it. I feel pretty strongly about it and consider it to be a major flaw in the game’s design. Whether this was Chris Avallone’s intent or not, I couldn’t say, but it’s leaving me with a really bad taste in my mouth. I have spent one or two hours fighting guards, fighting bugs, and fighting sanity to get through the prison gates to retrieve this sword. It doesn’t push the story forward. It is simply there to make you fight through the guards for whatever purpose I can’t fathom.

I will try to not dwell on this too much, but this part really reveals a lot to me about my past. I don’t remember this sequence at all in my memory of playing the game when I was younger. I didn’t have a problem with it at the time and it seems like it passed through my memory filter, which is pretty good, untouched and out to the aether where non-notable experiences are left to drift eternally. I have changed as a person. This should be obvious, but it’s a tough thing to swallow when you’re a young man growing older. I don’t have time to waste anymore. I have a wife, I have friends, I have a full time job, I have a dog, and all that crap that comes with life. I certainly still have time for games, absolutely and unequivocally, but I don’t have time to be wasted with needless padding and elements that add no tangible meaning to the game. I do attach a lot, I mean A LOT, of meaning with game concepts in PS:T regarding my life and past that I will talk about when I finish. I’m talking about story or gameplay, neither of which is improved by this.

Challenges and hard games are not a turn off for me. In fact, I really enjoy them. I’ve completed both Dark Souls and Demon’s Souls several times, I beat the Myst series up to Myst 4 (It’s SO HARD!) with no FAQs or guides, and I’ve beaten Nethack with almost every class  (Some of them offline). What is different is that these games are defined, at least partly, by their mechanics that are considered difficult. The DSouls games are all about combat that is well rounded, smooth, and rewarding. You will die a lot, but nothing that happens that can be blamed on anyone but yourself. Myst, as we all know, is entirely puzzles that are the means as well as the end. Nethack is a pretty brutal roguelike that is built on the tradition of learning new tricks each time you die and restarting to make it further until you win. It is always expected and the major goal of the game. The link between them all is these aspects fit the entire framing of the game design. Something tells me that fighting guards in a prison to get a piece of steel is not what was meant to define Planescape and it suffers for it. If you are telling a story, you do not want to frustrate the reader/viewer/player to the point of quitting. If this happens, you have failed as a writer.

[This makes me happier than winning the game.]

Anyway, I got the sword.



I hope you appreciate it.

[Take the damn thing!]

After returning the sword, the Deva (named Trias) said that my mortality is being held at a place called The Fortress of Regret. Unfortunately, he doesn’t know how to get there or where it is, but there is somebody who does. A character named Fhjull Forked Tongue owes him a favor and may know how to get there. After telling me this, the angel jumped through the ceiling and went on his way. Taking a hidden portal out of the prison (THANK GOD!), I ended up in The Outlands where Fhjull lives.

[Thanks for the tip, tough guy.]

[Welcome to the Outlands.]

[This sums up the Outlands experience. Notice all the dead NPC portraits.]

Want to know what was waiting for me? A small map of a desert with nothing on it but a giant skeleton and tons of monsters to chase me around immediately after arriving. More of this stuff? Luckily, I was able to run from the encounters without too much trouble. I escaped into the skull of the giant skeleton where Fhjull makes his home. Compelled to help me after having been blackmailed by Trias, he told me I should head to ANOTHER plane called Baator where a pillar of skulls may know the location of the Fortress of Regret. This place is a lower plane similar to hell and is where Fall-From-Grace came from. So, of course, that’s where we went.

[Thanks for the tip.]

Want to know what was waiting for me? A slightly bigger map with scorched rocks and a ton of monsters chasing me around immediately after arriving. See where this is going? It may LITERALLY be impossible to destroy everything for easy passage. Characters would get surrounded and killed while I made a mad dash for the skull pillar making resurrection and other measures necessary. This was very annoying, too. Finally, I made it to the pillar of skulls that I had seen while using the Dream Maker in the great forge.

[Pharod makes a come back.]

This huge pylon is made up of the skulls of criminals, liars, and thieves all meant to spend eternity in agony and hunger. A great little scene takes place here where it is revealed that Morte was pulled from this pile of skulls by The Nameless One in a previous life ages ago. They want Morte back and will give you answers if you surrender him, but I figured this is a pretty jerky thing to do and would be evil which wouldn’t fit my character.

[Morte discloses his origin.]

[Explaining his apprehension.]

[This has happened a few times, I guess.]

Instead, I sacrificed myself by casting my body to be eaten a few times to find out where the portal to the Fortress of Regret is and how to get out of Baator. It didn’t know where the portal was, but it said I had passed by it many times. That’s strange, I didn’t see anything. Who knows where it is? “The liar Trias knows.” Some angel that Deva is. I sacrificed myself again to learn how to escape from the plane (For a loss of HP each time I went into the pile to be eaten). Returning to the Outlands, I talked to Fhjull who taught me how to get back to Curst so I could confront Trias and get my mortality back.

[The key to the portal is regret.]

Now Curst really IS cursed!

(Sorry for the lack of screenshots. I was pretty tweaked at this point.)

I returned to the city to find it in ruins. Trias had come back for revenge and to condemn the city for its actions. I would be angry, too, but this is pretty bad. All hell has broken loose and is powering the deva’s strength. To defeat the angel, you need to do good deeds to weaken him until he is vulnerable. Now, technically you can immediately fight him, but he is tough. I did a few good deeds including freeing a woman from thugs, convincing looters to leave a warehouse alone, and dissuading anarchists from causing more trouble. After doing this I attempted to get into the building where the Deva was. And I do mean ‘attempt’.

Yet again, I was met with a staunch wall of combat. I could run from battle in Baator and in the Outlands, but Curst is so crowded and full of monsters I was constantly being harassed and dying. Then, when entering the building to fight Trias, I was met with EVEN MORE combat. I tried to run past the monsters in here, but the hallways were so crowded I was forced into combat yet again. I won’t beat the dead horse more than I have to, but let’s just say lots of profanity was uttered and another long break was taken.

After finally making it up to the Deva, I was not surprised to find that, just like everything else in the last quarter of this game, there was no way to talk your way out of conflict. I was forced to fight Trias to the death. I died three times before finally beating him because he ran out of spells to cast, I guess.  After which, he asked me to spare his life if he tells me where the Fortress of Regret is. I said I would, since I’m a good guy (see sucker), and he told me. The answer was pretty shocking and cool. After I knew, I was able to convince the Deva that he was wrong in his actions and sent him back to the higher planes shamed about what he had done which is some consolation.

[Finally ready for the end.]

Now it’s time to go back to the Mortuary in Sigil. The portal has been there all along, I just didn’t know how to activate it.


Other stuff.


I have actually finished Planescape and am typing up the entries for the finale and my feelings about the game as a whole. Be on the lookout for those. I have also run some tests and found that the Sherlock Holmes adventure, Nemesis, will not be my next game. I got severely motion sick just during the intro because of the way the game is drawn and was also unable to take screenshots. I don’t know what it is, but all the characters look stretched abnormally long and the perspective makes me sick, which is strange because I still have no problems playing first person perspective games. So, sorry about that, gang.

I also would like to thank Kole Ross and Gary Butterfield for mentioning the blog on their great podcast called Watch Out for Fireballs. If you came here through them, I hope you stick around and comment on anything you think is interesting. If you haven’t heard their show, check out their last 2 hour show on Silent Hill 2, one of my favorite games. They’ve changed the schedule, so Klonoa is next followed by Planescape: Torment, but all of their episodes are awesome and worth a listen.

After the next two entries, I will take a break for a week or two to play some other things (see: Silent Hill HD Collection), but I will be back. So hang on, and let’s see if we can get through all these games.


--Backlog Killer