Videogame Geriatric

 

I realized that I’ve been playing videogames consistently for at least 30 years.  Isn’t that nuts?  One of the earliest memories I can lock down is being in second grade and renting a Nintendo from the local video store and playing Super Mario Brothers.  I remember playing that and Bible Adventures(the blue cartridge).  Also, my friend had just learned the word ‘bastard,’ but didn’t know it was a swear, so we kept saying ‘bastard!’ over and over while playing the Noah’s Ark levels of Bible Adventures.  Pick up a sheep, throw it into the ark, call it a bastard.  Repeat.  We did get in trouble for that one.

There are some games that I’ve continued to play over decades, and I know I’m not alone in that. Obviously, the big eternals boys like Doom 1/2, Quake 1/2/3, Ocarina of Time, Starfox, and the various Mario games.  Let’s not forget Final Fantasy 7, either. 

I wonder if the teams that worked on these titles ever thought that people would be playing their games thirty years later.  Not only playing, but ENJOYING, and in some cases, discovering for the first time.  For instance, I only played Earthbound for the first time a few years ago, and I thought it was terrific. Even better than Chrono Trigger- yeah, I said it.

I’m currently replaying Quake(the Nightdive remaster), which I haven’t played since I was 15.  It’s so good, especially on a Steam Deck.  By the way, the Nightdive remasters are an excellent way to revisit these classic games, and I highly recommend them.  Now, they just need to do Wolfenstein 3D and Duke Nukem 3D.

But, yeah.  I’ve been playing videogames a long time, and I’ll probably continue to do so.  What’ll it be like being a 70 year old dude playing Doom still?

Nerd Shib

There’s this cool little videogame soundfx quiz that I saw linked on Destructoid.  My score is 33.  I’m stuck on #51 right now.  I know that sound, and I know as soon as I figure it out, I’ll feel like a real bloody idiot.

Here’s the quiz: https://vg-sfx-quiz.herokuapp.com/

Here’s the Destructoid article about it:  https://www.destructoid.com/this-video-game-sound-effect-quiz-will-drive-you-nuts-590271.phtml

We All Have a Hero in our Hearts

Have you ever played an online game and realized that the whole time, you've thought yourself the good guy?  And every time someone kills you, they're either a bastard, evil, or somehow dastardly?

A few days ago,  I was playing Rising Storm as the Axis on some sort of urban map(I really need to learn map names).  As usual, I spent the first ten minutes running to catch up with my team, getting lost, and being subsequently torn to gory shreds. 

Finally, after some time, I managed to find another player in some sort of train station building.  He was on the second floor firing out of a window.  I made my up the stairs and peeked out a window beside him.  A couple rounds impacted on the wall beside me, so I ducked back and decided to cover his back. 

Now, the second floor was more of a balcony that ran around the inside of the building, with a large opening in the middle through which you could see the first floor.  I laid prone with my gun trained on the first floor.  Apparently, my ally was causing some havoc to the other team, because enemy soldiers kept rushing into the building, quickly falling to my gunfire. 

At one point, the return fire from outside grew too fierce, so he left the window as a few more enemies poured into the building.  He dropped down beside me and we dispatched the group. 

At this time, I knew that we had been marked, and there would be a push to clear us out of the point.  Naturally, my adrenaline spiked.  Palms sweaty, eyes wide, breath shallow.  The two of us lay on the floor, guns trained on the area below us, waiting. 

Suddenly, rounds began to explode and tear through the planks between us.  Someone directly below us was firing straight up, hoping to kill us.  As bullets ripped through, just beside my head, I threw a grenade downstairs, hoping to destroy our assailants.  It exploded and I saw a blood splash on the tile.  I crawled over to the stairs, to check if anyone was coming up. 

Once I got there, for some reason, I panicked, thinking I had no ammo left in my clip.  Hands shaking, I checked my clip, counting the remaining rounds.  As I did so, an enemy soldier stalked up the stairs, his pistol ready.  Frantically, I tried to shove the clip back in, but he lined up the shot and all I saw was black.

Initially, I was mad.  What an asshole!  Arrogant bastard, you just saunter up here, smug as you please, and kill me in one shot with a pistol!  What a stupid jerk!

Then, I realized something. In my mind, I was the good guy.  My story was the righteous one.  I was the one who was wronged.  But, looking at it a little more, I began to understand that he probably felt the same way.  Maybe I had killed him a few times already.  Maybe he'd seen his buddies die to our guns.  Either way, we were an entrenched enemy causing problems for his team.  We were the bad guys.  We were the enemy that had to be stopped.  Perhaps he was out of ammo, and his pistol was his last weapon.  Maybe he'd been the one to fire up at us, and his teammate was killed by my grenade.  Then, vengeful and bleeding himself, he'd climbed those stairs, and, vision clouded by blood, body beaten and burned, managed one heroic shot.  Finally killing those assholes who'd been murdering his buddies.

 I wonder what his narrative was.

Rage of Empires II

Strategy-style games are not my strength.  I’ve no APM, I can’t tell you the difference between micro and macro, I’ve never beaten a human opponent, heck, I even get stomped by the computer in Starcraft 1.  But, for some reason, I’ve been getting into them lately.  Civ, XCOM, Tropico, Rome, and Age of Empires II HD.

Last night, I played AoE with my friend Emery.  The two of us teamed up against four AI opponents on a random map.  We set the difficulty a level higher than I play, which is to say from Standard to Moderate.  Emery has played a lot of AoE and is very good at the game, more than tripling my score the last two times we played, so I entered the game with confidence.

My starting point as Korea was at the 9 o’clock position, with Emery as China at the 11 o’clock. 

“Haha, good allies!” He told me.

I started with a few peasants, a town center, and a scout who I immediately sent south to explore the surrounding area.  The ground was covered in snow, with a small gold vein to the east and a forest southeast and northeast. 

A few of my villagers built a lumber camp and began to gather wood.  Another built a mill near wild berry bushes.  Food gathering, underway, I began to build houses to support my soon-to-be growing population.  Before long, farms were being built and maintained, gold mined, trees felled, and additional buildings constructed.

Usually, on the default difficulty, I can wait until the second age to build a barracks and train up some militiamen.  I knew that this time I would be facing a more formidable group of opponents, so I created my barracks early and trained about four militia men.  I stationed them on the southern pass of my borders, where any assaulting force would be funneled by the trees.  The eastern pass was bounded, so I thought, by ice and water, so I left that undefended.

It was a good thing that I had some fighters early, because I found out that the Teutons were neighboring me.  Warmongering bastard that he was, he sent early skirmishers at me.  They bypassed my outpost and entered by lands by the east, traversing the ice river.  They caused some havoc with my civilians before I was able to eliminate the threat. 

After this, I began to build a wall.  I wasn't able to completely wall off the border before a force of Teutons and Mongols slipped through and began to harass and attack my supply lines.  Frantically, I trained up as many soldiers as I could to slay them.  My stalwart defenders were able to drive off the aggressors.

Then, the attacks ramped up.  I was soon in a constant battle against an overwhelming tide of martial aggression.  As I tried desperately to finish the wall, Mongols and Teutons constantly streamed through, slaughtering my workers and clashing with my meager military.  Soon, the border became a charnel house, where workers feared to be sent, and where the soldiers fought without quarter in a brutal melee for survival.  For they knew that should the border fall, the Mongol and Teuton hordes would butcher every living thing in their homeland.  And so they fought, grim-faced and hard.

For decades, the unfinished wall only slowed down the attackers.  Armies clashed, swords met, and blood soaked the ground.  Then, finally the battering rams and catapults rolled in.  Morale faltered, and I pulled back.  I ordered my workers to begin building guard towers with interlocking fields of fire to push back the first wave of assault. 

Before long, the wall crumbled and the bloodthirsty hordes streamed in like a river.  The guard towers held true as long as they could, but it only stemmed the tide.  The enemy poured into my farms and homes, killing as they pleased. 

My people mounted a final desperate push, soldiers and civilians alike and were at great cost able to repel the invaders.  Battle-weary, and knowing that the enemy would return, I ordered the civilians to flee north to China.  My broken, tiny army would remain to hold the city.  Knowing their deaths would be unsung, the brave fighters bid farewell to their comrades. 

The remaining civilians made their way north, pledging to remember the sacrifice.

The decades that followed were years of savage guerrilla warfare.  The Teutons and Mongols tried to ransack and pillage my town center, and my bleak-faced cavalry repeatedly smashed them.  Time and again, the horde would attack, and my defenders would crash into their flanks and rear, wreak havoc, and fall back.

Each friendly death was a heart-wrenching tragedy.  Each enemy death was an uncelebrated act of vengeance. 

Finally, after years of losses, only a few men remained.  A final, massive invasion army marched in from the south.  Knowing this was their last moment, they rode forth to meet the enemy, woefully outnumbered.  They roared their challenge and charged.

As they neared their end, a glint of gold appeared on the horizon.  A thousand thundering hooves shook the earth.  A multitude of voices screamed their battle-cry.

China had come.

The tide turned.  Victory was won that day.

XCOMBat Man

There are some games that I really like, but totally suck at.  For instance, I think Red Orchestra 2/ Rising Storm is great, yet I regularly get torn to pieces playing it.  Another is XCOM: Enemy Unknown.

I’ve never played the old XCOM games, so I can’t compare EU to the classic offers; all I know is that it’s terribly fun.  Never before had I played a turn-based tactical game, apart from a Warhammer 40K: Chaos Gate demo that game with a PC Gamer disc years ago.  Come to think of it, though, I played that thing a few times, thought it was great.  Maybe I’ve been missing out on an entire genre all these years?  Whoa.

Anyway, after I got home from my gig last night, I decided to play some XCOM.  I loaded up my last save game, and I found myself with my squad facing off against the alien menace at a gas station. Immediately, I positioned my sniper, a veteran of a number of skirmishes, behind a pillar for full coverage.  I put my only rookie behind a car, with my support beside him.  I positioned my heavy behind another car and swung my assault soldier, the grizzled Avery Crane, herself my oldest surviving soldier over to a flank on the left. 

The battle actually proceeded well.  Avery was suppressed for a time, forcing me to pull her back, but my sniper, Hart, was able to easily wipe out the aggressor.  My heavy, Frank, tore a few aliens to pieces with a well placed rocket.  Macree, my support however was gravely wounded, when a muton in a raised position managed to destroy Macree’s cover and deliver a nearly fatal blow.  Luckily, I was able to eliminate the threat before he bled out and get him to safety.  My secondary heavy, Long, received a promotion due to performance, though Macree and Avery were both heavily wounded.  They would both be out of the duty pool for some time.

However, due to the successful completion of the mission, India’s panic was reduced by 3.  Well worth it, especially considering that I lost no soldiers.

Some time passed and an alien abduction was reported, so I assembled a squad of available troops, including a rookie, a veteran of only a single battle, and two snipers, to assault an alien craft. 

We landed in a wooded area and moved towards the UFO.  There was no full cover, so I put my snipers on the wings and slowly moved my troops behind rocks and trees, setting them in overwatch. 

Contact.

A group of mutons and a cyberdisc poured out of the craft.  Hart fired on the cyberdisc, and it retreated.  Frank suppressed a muton, and my other sniper, Parr, managed to kill the second muton with help from my support.  That left the one muton left.  I ordered the rookie, who carried the stun weapon forward and incapacitated the alien.  He was then pulled back. 

Instantly, the cyberdisc returned with more mutons, a muton elite, and drones.  The cyberdisc felled Parr immediately.  The rookie panicked, and fired wildly, which caused my other soldiers, apart from Hart to panic as well.  In the ensuing fracas I lost three soldiers before I was able to neutralize the aliens.  Having no choice but to push forward, I entered the UFO with Hart, Long, and Frank.  The team survived three further assaults, narrowly evading death each time. 

Finally, I made it to the center of the craft.  I positioned Hart in the rear, overwatching.  I had Long and Frank on each side of a door.  Frank activated it, opening the force-field barrier.  Without warning, a new alien sent a psychic blast at Frank, killing him instantly.  The alien’s comrade then mind controlled Long. 

Hart hunkered down for a bit, hoping the mind control would wear off.  No luck.  With regret, knowing it would haunt her for the rest of her life, I ordered Hart to put down Long.  Grim-faced, Hart peered down the sight of her laser rife, and squeezed the trigger.  Long dropped immediately, mercifully. 

One of the aliens moved out of the adjoining room and entered the main area.  Hart, raging, fired a wild round that went barely wide.  With a volcanic fury, she vengefully resighted the alien and drilled the alien’s skull, and it collapsed in a broken heap. 

One left.

Hart crouched down behind cover, reloading.  The last alien swept out.  Merciless, the bloodthirsty creature sent a mind blast at my last soldier.  Already weary and hurting from the extended firefights and the trauma of seeing friends die, and in one case, at her own hand, she could not survive the assault.  Bloodied and broken, her body fell to the ground, her last gasp being one of defiance. 

The dropship returned to base empty. 

What a great game.

 

Why I Love Outlast

Why did I enjoy Outlast so much?  It certainly relied pretty heavily on jump-scares, a horror crutch that often annoys me.  But none of the jump-scares in the game really bothered me, though, there was one that had no accompanying sting that stands out as possibly my favorite moment.  I believe part of the reason I didn’t care so much is that it makes narrative sense to me.  You’re being stalked and hunted by insane inmates of the asylum. It follows that they would surprise and attack you with no warning.  And, past the opening few areas, they sort of fade away.

I liked the feeling of being in a movie.  It certainly helped that your character carries around a camcorder with the intention of recording as much as possible.  It has a nightvision mode that looks right out of a found-footage horror film, complete with grainy resolution and limited visibility.   Entering any dark room was an exercise in creeping terror, much akin to the final sequence in The Silence of the Lambs.  Creeping around in the dark, peering through the viewfinder at objects rendered in a grainy green, catching a glimpse of an inmate’s glowing eyes, not knowing if he’s harmless or intent on murder.  Those moments were definitely the most nerve-wracking.  That’s what most of the game ended up like.  Extended moments of dread, as you creep through this broken asylum.

And, then, when you are chased, it really felt like you were in control, vaulting over desks, slamming doors shut behind you, sliding under a bed to hide. There are moments of pure brilliance, such as when, pursued by two enormous naked murders, I spied an open window.  Immediately, I turned and jumped through it, grabbing onto the sill and shimmying to freedom.  It was all so seamless and effortless, exactly like a movie. Despite the ease of moment and escape, you never feel safe.  You’re always on edge, heart always pounding.  It all felt very real to me, not game-y. 

I dunno, I just really liked it.