Braid: A Different Type of Experience?

By Jo Kim

 

When I first heard that we are going to be playing a platform game in class, the first thought that came into my mind was ‘Well, this is going to be easy,’ but boy, was I wrong. Going into the game, I was half-expecting Braid to be similar to the Super Mario Brothers series. Having played the said game over and over past the years of my life, I thought having a good gaming reflex would help me breeze through the levels of Braid.

Truly enough, the first introductory phase of Braid proved to be what I expected, a typical reflex-based platform game; however, I did notice that Braid had a special tint to its game play, the narrative, which separated this game from its other platform counterparts. However, as I progressed past the initial introduction part, I realized that Braid required more cerebral activity than games like Super Mario Brothers or I Wanna Be The Guy. Braid was closer to a puzzle-type game than it was a reflex-based game.

Collecting puzzles proved to be a rather difficult task, as I had to plan out what to do in order to get the puzzle in the levels. However, thanks to the Braid’s unique feature of “time-reversal” I was able to do these tasks without starting over from the scratch whenever I “died” from controlling errors. This “time-reversal” (pressing shift to reverse for yourself, or walking backwards to reverse time for everything) gradually proved itself as a significant feature of the game, as you needed it to defeat bosses and collect puzzles. It was quite difficult getting used to this feature, as the usage of this ability seemed to differ from level to level, requiring more thinking and preparations.

Having collected all the puzzles in the first level, I did not receive any type of “reward” for my hard work (other than the picture, which I did not care about for the most part, and because of this, I deduced that the puzzles in this game might be similar to coins in Super Mario Brothers or in Sonic the Hedgehog. Following this, from the next level on, I tried to finish the level as fast as possible without collecting these puzzles, as I was more interested in the narration (the dialogue between Tim and the black dinosaur intrigued me for some reason, do not ask why). As I went further and further in the story, I got hooked into it, and I wanted to see the ending; however, this is when the puzzles got me. Because I had not collected any puzzles past level 1, I was not able to proceed into the final level, making all my work of running straight through the levels meaningless. But it was perfectly fine, as I had the internet to dig into the ending.

Overall, Braid proved to be a familiar, yet a fresh approach into the platform gaming field. Its melancholy artwork and background music created a dreamy atmosphere in the game, which allowed me to focus into the game much more. However, its puzzle-based gameplay proved to be a bit too much for me, as my brain does not possess such delicate feature. Nonetheless, the gaming experience was enjoyable, and I recommend it to puzzle-lovers and platform-lovers, as you can kill two birds with one stone by playing this game. For story lovers, the narration in this game is outstanding as well (I can vouch this because I looked at the ending on Wikipedia played the game) and the twist at the end is flavorful. When I have leisure, I will definitely go back and finish the game, just so I can say that I have played the game thoroughly.

Kill Me Later

By A.A. BENJAMIN

 

Braid seems like it was made by some guy who was slighted by love and needed a place to vent.

And…I like that. The idea of a forgiving game creates a zone of warmth and comfort that propels game exploration. Braid is an escape and an innovative game style that has the potential to inspire other games to step out of the stoic guns-bared emotionless realm and into the hearts and minds of our everyday life. After all, game making is art. Just as the writer can lament in her journal, and the painter can brood in an attic and let his heart bleed paint, so should a game maker be able to get his heart broken and then construct a platform game that makes him feel good.

Aside from my judgmental assumptions, there is more magic in this game than the narrative. The creators not only say, “to hell with un-forgiveness” but take it a step further to say “you must make mistakes to win this game.” The gamer must take the stick out of their butt and do it again, and again, and again until they figure it out, or until they so-called “cheat,” snatching that magic key and rewinding themselves to victory. This piece of fictional media opens up our minds to the different realities of life, just as every good piece of fiction should. I read an article once that challenged the idea of multiple lives and checkpoints in video games. The writer wanted to know what would happen if games became more realistic and eliminated the multiple lives syndrome that desensitized us to death.

 Well, Braid does that by going in the complete opposite direction (pun intended). Because like humans the main character continues to live only because he never died. He escapes death and failure only because, like humans, he is able to adapt and learn from mistakes.

My favorite part about this game is the integration of this method into actual gameplay, rather than just a cool “perk” of the game. I was delighted every time I faced a boss and found out that I could not manipulate him in my time-turning shenanigans. It forced me to dissect the pieces of my in-game reality and use what I could manipulate to win (maybe that sounds a little bit scarier than I intended, but, maybe I’m manipulative?) I did not, in fact, beat the game. However, challenges such as these make me feel that I can go back and play again at least a couple more times without the experience being one-noted. I can make different mistakes if I choose, I can accelerate the success of my strategies, and, I can make Tim dance back and forth and remix the music if I so well please.

Venus & Adonis Tapestry

Background: Venus and Adonis Tapestry

Canto III, Stanza 34-38

The player is transported into a lush forest with a small clearing. Enclosed by the thick tree line, the clearing centers around a large stone fountain. You hear faint sounds of birds chirping, water splashing and leaves rustling.  The player can see two figures in the distance to the right of the fountain. Upon approaching, the figures become more distinct.  The player makes out a fair skinned, god-like woman, dressed in black, kneeling over a wounded, blonde haired man dressed in armour. He seems wounded and she weeps over his body. This is quite the peculiar sight since there is no one else around, so the player approaches them.

When the player inquires what has happened, the woman, Venus, tells the player that a boar attacked Adonis and he is quickly dying. He had a habit for chasing animals that were too big to fight. The player is faced with the choice to help the wounded Adonis or to be on his way. If the player chooses to help, he or she is instructed to fetch water from the fountain in the center of the clearing. The player must collect water from the fountain and bring it back to Venus.

However, the water was not enough and Adonis dies. Venus kneels down over the body and begins to sob.  Her mourning is disturbed by rustling in the bushes. Startled, she looks to the left and yells “Oh no! The boar is back! Kill it and avenge Adonis’ death!!” The screen then shifts to the tree line to reveal an angry boar.  The boar then charges towards them and the player must kill him in order to protect Venus and himself. After a gory battle, the player is victorious. Venus rewards the player with armour as a symbol of her gratitude, and continues to mourn Adonis in peace.

NPCs involved

Venus	Godly figure with beautiful fair skin and long blonde hair.  Dressed in black she is kneeling over her gravely wounded lover, Adonis.
Adonis	Venus’ lover who is fair skinned, dressed in Armor, with short blonde hair.  He is laying on the ground bleeding, near death. Venus is kneeling over him.
Boar	A large and strong Boar that charges the player from behind the tree line when Adonis dies. If killed, rewards the player with experience points.

Quests and Dialogue:

1) Revive Adonis:

• Player clicks on Venus to discover that Adonis is wounded: “Help, Adonis is dying! The boar attacked him!! I told him it was dangerous, but he didn’t listen”

  • If player chooses to help (“Oh no! How can I help!?”), they are instructed to fetch water

    • “Fetch water from the fountain! Quick!” -Venus

      • Run to the fountain, locate and fill the pitcher

    • Bring the water to Venus

    • Continue on to quest 2

  • If player chooses not to help, they are transported back into Castle Joyous (“I’m sorry I cannot be of greater help, I must be on my way”)

2) Avenge Adonis:

• As Adonis dies, the boar reappears

• Venus instructs the player to kill the boar in order to save both of their lives

  • “Oh no! The boar is back! Kill it and avenge Adonis’ death!!” -Venus

  • “Don’t worry! I’ll save us!” Fight and kill the boar

    • “You did it! Thank you for saving my life, now I can mourn the death of Adonis in peace. Please take this armor to represent my gratitude.” -Venus

    • “Glad I could help, I must be on my way now”- Player

    • Reward: Venus presents player with armor

  • If the boar kills you, choose to respawn and continue fighting or respawn to designated zone

-Emily Blake, Shao-Yu Chen, and Molly Steckler

A Musing About Games and Gender

In a relatively recent video series on youtube, PBS Game/Show, one of the videos discussed was “Are You Weird if You Play as the Opposite Sex?” (source below). In it, there was quite a bit of discussion into a genre of roleplaying games that allow players to design their own characters. These game include many MMORPGs and single player games, such as World of Warcraft, Mass Effect series, the Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, and many others. After watching the video, I have been thinking a bit about why I sometimes play as opposite genders in roleplaying games.

It would be lying if I said I often play as female characters in games. If one looks at my Mass Effect save files, the ration is something around 2:5 female to male. As a man, I still usually default to being a man in video games as well. While I do not consider this skewed ratio an issue, I have seriously thought about this particular behavior. Is it simply because I am a guy, or because I am uncomfortable playing a women, or perhaps I am unconsciously gynophobic? That last one is a joke, mostly. After thinking about it and getting nowhere, I decided to jump in and start a female Commander Shepard, back when I was playing Mass Effect 2. And I enjoyed it just as much as playing the male Shepard, even when I am getting her…romantically involved with other men, or male aliens (yep, you can do that). The experience was fun, engaging, and maybe even a little bit enlightening.

So understandably I was sorely disappointed with other games such as Skyrim, where playing male or female characters hold no difference whatsoever, aside from the occasional pronouns. In Skyrim, and most MMORPGs, the sex difference is very glossed over, and have next to no bearing on the gameplay or the narrative. At this point, I have actually surprised myself, because I am now actively trying to learn more about the female perspective from video games.

Perhaps, just perhaps, this little habit of mine has contributed to my sense of gender equality. Unfortunately, I still can’t come to any sort of productive conclusion about playing games as the opposite sex, but nonetheless, it has me intrigued, and of course I am not going to quite anytime soon.

-SyC

No-one has to die: Choice in videogames

Okay, so I know this is slightly off-topic compared to everyone else’s blog posts, but I recently played a game and I really want to talk about it and Professor Clayton said we can write about something else if you want to, so…

Basically, I watch a podcast/video series called “Extra-Credits.”  It’s a series that examines issues, problems, and ideas in the game industry.  They occasionally do a video-series called “Games you Might Not Have Tried,” and they did a special one for Halloween.  One game in the video immediately stood out to me and I had to try it right away and I’m glad I did.

The game is called “No-one Has to Die” and the premise of the game is simple.  You are a person who has access to a security computer for a company.  The building is on fire.  There are four people in the building.  Save them.  However, unlike what the title implies, you have to sacrifice one person per level so the others survive.  But what makes this so great?  Also, I really recommend that you don’t read this until you play the game.  Please.  Please play it now.  I linked to it at the end of this article.  Skip down there and play it.  It really needs to be experienced.

Unlike every other choice system in a video game, this game does not present you with any ulterior motives.  In series such as BioShock or Mass Effect, the choice system is its own metagame.  “If I do this, then it will benefit me in the long run.”  No matter what, you always have a that question in the back of your mind when you play those games.  You can not make an altruistic choice.  However, in this game, it doesn’t present you with any other motives.  It is simply your choice who lives and dies.  In between levels, you talk to the people trapped in the building and you have to make the choice of who lives based off of nothing but these interactions.  Do you save the CEO of the company in hopes of getting more information, do you save the arsonist in order to bring him to justice, do you save the man who shouldn’t even have been there, or do you save the woman because the man begs you to save her instead of him.  Secretly, there is a hidden route that lets you save everyone, but the game gives you no indication that this exists.

Basically, what I’m trying to say is that this game does a choice system correctly.  You have no indication of what your choices mean which means that your choices are based entirely upon your emotional connections to the characters.  You feel guilt when you sacrifice someone, and sadness when (in what will probably be your first playthrough) you have to sacrifice either the man or the woman, right after they all but admit their love for each-other.  This is a choice system that more games need to use, because this actually works and I hope to see this in a mainstream game someday.

 

~Nathanial Edwards

All pictures from No-one has to die (seriously, you should play this…)

http://die.clay.io

Sims 3: Vivian Stuart’s Profile

In class on Thursday, we were given the assignment to write a blog of our choice, so I am writing about my experience remediating the Sims 3.  A couple of days ago, my partner Molly and I finally decided on how we are going to present our game, Sims 3.  We figured that since Sims 3 is a family life simulation game, what better way to remediate it than to bring our simulated characters to the real world: Facebook! So far the project has been really fun to build, I mean who doesn’t want to play Sims 3 all day taking screen shots and making Facebook profiles for your characters? I can’t imagine anyone would turn down that life style. So far we have profiles for Vivian and her husband Colin (they just made their marriage Facebook official yesterday.. so cute) and we are working on a “Sims 3: Sunset Valley Neighborhood” page for them to like.  We plan on creating albums for major events in their life and creating statuses periodically to truly bring these characters to life.  It has been challenging at times with getting the right screen shot and such but it is a very convenient way to do a group project.  Molly and I are both very busy and can rarely find time to meet up, but with Facebook, we just need the username and the password and we can edit the project from wherever we are. It has been great! The only potential issue is that I am the only one with the game on their laptop, but we just divided the work so that it evens out. Overall it has been a good time and we am looking forward to sharing it with y’all!

-Emily Blake

Sims 3: Blast from the Past

Playing Sims 3 in class on Thursday immediately made me feel like I was 10yr old again, fighting with my sisters for a turn to play.  Although it was a different version of the game (we played Sims 2), most of the controls are the same, which made it easy to pick it right back up pretty easily.  Molly and I spent the whole class creating a family because of the extensive details that go into creating a sim.  We ended up only fully creating the mom from scratch and randomizing the dad.  From there we used the genetics button to create a child with characteristics from both. This is a new, super cool feature in the Sims 3 and it is awesome. So far I have loved playing the Sims game again.  I really think it is a good game choice for our presentation because of its highly mediated nature.  The screen is always full of control bars and buttons and when you click on anything in the game, multiple options appear for different actions.  You can also see a sequence of actions for each character on the top of the screen.  However, the nature and purpose of the game is to create a family life and invest in the characters’ lives, enriching them with relationships, careers, and housing.  In this way, it is ironic that the game is so mediated instead of attempting to be more transparent and realistic.  This game is very interesting because of this contrast.  I am very excited to explore the relationship between the game’s narrative qualities and its mediated qualities for the project!

-Emily Blake

Video games and poetry – are they really all that much different?

As dorky as it is, I’ve got to say that I probably get excited when our class is assigned a poem more than any of the other forms of media we have been studying this semester. While we can a gather a ton of insights from any of the works we have looked at so far, picking them apart and analyzing them into the ground, I have always felt like poetry has been the classic and most clear-cut example of how the artist (and yes, I am including game designers in this category as well) uses form to reflect, enhance, or even alter the work’s meaning and content. At the same time, however, we can use this way of looking at poetry’s usage of form and content to think about movies, games, and of course novels to bring out even deeper insights that we might otherwise pass over when thinking about their content alone.

One of the core foci of our course is to look at how different media operate to present their content. Going a bit deeper, even, we can look at the various tools each medium has at its disposal in order to achieve the most effective presentation of its content (or narrative, in the case of most of what we’ve been studying). While I could write a whole paper about how this applies to each of the different works, I’d like to mainly draw parallels between how poems–at their most basic level–and games try to synergize form and content.

In the poem we read most recently, John Keats’ La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad, we see Keats employ a variety of poetic devices to match the ideas of a sort of grim fading away to his eminent death. He uses a very short line length, expertly placed line breaks, and even small devices like the em dash to convey the kind of rushed fading that the knight (as well as Keats in real life) is experiencing.

On the other hand, video games contain multitudes of devices like this as well, though most of us likely are not accustomed to looking at them through this lens (I know I sure wasn’t when I began the course). But after thinking about them more critically, paying attention to how games operate and try to advance their content, it becomes apparent that nearly every feature of a game works in some way to achieve something (whether or not each feature is effective is, of course, up for debate and why we have game reviewers). Like we discussed in class, everything from camera angle to the presence of a narrator is an inherent part of the game that serves to present its content in some way or another. Tom Bissell discussed this in Extra Lives with his experience playing Resident Evil, maintaining that the perspectives presented in the gameplay played a huge part what made the game so terrifying, along with every other aspect it used to build its scary atmosphere.

Ultimately, what I’m trying to say is that there is an endless amount of crossover and parallel between any of the various media we have studied – not just in their usage of narrative, but also in the way we are able to think about each medium and how it operates to present its content. The effectiveness in doing so, however, will remain for us to decide.

– Logan W

LOTRO: A Test of Patience

While I revel in the ability to run around for hours in a virtual environment while still convincing myself that I’m being productive, I must say that it has gotten to be a bit tiresome at times. My one biggest complaint about LOTRO is that there is just
so
much
running.

I picked up the controls to the game very quickly and I have enjoyed juggling the various quests I taken on; however, again and again I find myself just running back and forth between the various areas in this vast world of the game.

Now, I do appreciate how that adds to the experience of the game as well as contributes to the narrative. It enhances that sense of journey–of being just a tiny figure in this massive world. It goes along with the long and tiresome journeys we read about in the novel. With this being said, my patience runs rather thin when it comes to video games and I would rather not spend a significant portion of the time just running from location to location.
I did recently learn about the auto-run key, so that along with riding horses has eased my frustration on the matter, though the quests are still often more a test of my patience than anything.

I’ve only come across one quest so far that was even remotely challenging. I had to sneak around these goblin-like creatures and pick off one or two at a time in order to finally reach and kill the Goblin Chief. I later realized that this quest was definitely meant to be conquered with a partner or team, but I still enjoyed the challenge of taking it on by myself. Other than that, my quests have mostly been a matter of taking the time to run and find or deliver various objects or creatures. But maybe I just need to get to a higher level first.

All in all, I’ve enjoyed exploring this enormous world; however, I’m just hoping that as I progress, the challenges and quests will become much less wearisome than they have been thus far. I also really look forward to being able to work with the other players on quests and toward a shared goal, as I have yet to experience that.

– Logan W

To War – Reflections on Lord of the Rings Online

What would Tolkien have said about LOTRO? I wish we coulc know. Because this is one heck of a way to explore the rich mythology Tolkien has created.

In the familiar trilogy, the story is mainly focused on the Fellowship of the Ring and its adventures during the War of the Ring. However, given that there is a full-scale war going on, what happened everywhere else? Did the elves, humans, and dwarves  just sat around and waited for Gandalf and Aragorn until the few momentous battles occur at Helm’s Deep and Minas Tirith? LOTRO seeks to fill this gap, and I think it did a very good job of it, so far.

I have played LOTRO  briefly once before, but for some reason I found the narrative so much more engaging this time around. The story line of the epic quests provided a nice view of the beginning of the War from a fresh perspective, of forces from both sides working to gain more advantage (aside from fighting for that one magic bullet, that is) for the looming War. These forces included many elven guardians, dwarf champions, human vagabounds, unlikely hobbit warriors, Southern raiders, local scoundrels, ring-wraiths and many more. These narrative made Middle-Earth so much more lively and colorful, providing details I have never imagined in, for example, Bree before. It is also nice to see characters, places, and events mentioned in the original material and see many characters come to life and fleshed out. I felt a pang of excitement and urgency while helping Aragorn in ensuring the safety of Bilbo and company, could not help but feel alone and confused trekking the Old Forest, and stood in mild confusion talking to Tom Bombadil.

Aside from the narrative perspective, playing LOTRO has been a fairly standard MMORPG, where target selection is done by clicking the mouse, and extra abilities are with pressing progressively large numbers of buttons. While this in itself is not a huge problem, it does show that Turbine (LOTRO’s maker) did not try very hard in pushing the envelope or challenging RPG conventions (many of which are set by another MMORPG, World of Warcraft). Granted LOTRO was created in 2007, fairly early in the history of MMO games, Turbine could have made more effort in designing a better tutorial, for instance.

All in all, I feel LOTRO is a great MMO game, despite certain shortcomings. It has great narrative, amazing world-building, and serves as a great exploration of the original material. While the gameplay itself is not very innovative, it plays smoothly and is, most importantly, fun. I believe I will continue to play LOTRO and slowly make my way through the epic quest line, if only to see what happens to Skorgrim, push towards Angmar, take on a Balrog, and even participate in Helm’s Deep (soon-to-be-released).

-SyC