Now Hear Me Out: Five Night’s at Freddy’s Gameplay

You guessed it. This month is horror month. I know that it’s predictable, but what did you guys expect? Just because I go off on random tangents every once in a while, doesn’t mean I don’t think things through. That’s right! Some of those random thoughts were done for a reason. I think. Anyway, we are starting off with one of the most popular series of horror games in the last decade. You know which series I am talking about here. Mainly because I already put it in the title. Although I have always found this series to be a bit unique in its approach to the genre. In the Five Nights at Freddy’s game series, your win condition is simple enough. Don’t die. It sounds reasonable enough right? however, what’s special about this game is that in order to prevent yourself from dying, you have to play the most intense game of Red Light, Green Light ever. Many of you reading probably know of this already, but for those of you that don’t… if you fail, you are greeted with a lovely jump scare from some cuddly? animatronic animals (also known in some circles as animaltronics). Looking at the game objectively, it honestly doesn’t really feel like a horror game. Sure there are horror elements to the games, but for the most part the game is mainly built like it is some sort of tower defense game. Hear me out for just a second and you’ll understand that this game is closer to a management simulator than an actual horror game.

You see, the biggest reason for this is the fact that you are in charge of one location and your goal is survival by outlasting the enemy. Now there are plenty of horror experiences where the goal is to outlast those that are trying to destroy you. However, in those cases you usually have some way of defending yourself. In this series, you have nothing but a few places you need to keep an eye on and a few tricks up your sleeve in case things get a little bit too close for comfort. You don’t really gain anything for going through each night except for more knowledge and experience. Oh, you also get the pleasure of not dying sue to a jump scare. You become more adept in recognizing patterns are become more used how the animatronics work. Although the game will always throw a bit of RNG to make sure you don’t get too comfortable. After all, it is your goal to survive so there needs to be a bit of challenge. Each night the challenge escalates to the point you wonder why anyone would even come back to this crazy nightmare for such dirt-cheap pay. It really is like being an actual manager. All your maintenance goes unappreciated by those animatronics who just want you to fit into an uncomfortable suit. They could be a little more gentle at least.

There is a lot of micromanagement that goes into this game series and it creates a similar sort of tension that we see in horror games. The reason is because the stakes are so high. If you screw up even once it is game over and you have to start the night all over again. The reason why the game pulls this off so well is because it gives you a timer of sorts. They don’t call it a timer, but it is. It is that clock telling you what time it is and more importantly, how much longer until the next day. That tension of trying to survive for as long as possible is made even more strenuous by giving us a tangible way of telling time. Otherwise we would just try not to think about and put all of our effort into survival. The game is basically using this as another way of saying that you have to complete the objective by a certain time, the objective of course is not dying. Doesn’t it seem strange to have a horror game give you a time frame of how long you will be trapped in horror land? Not to mention the fact that you can’t go anywhere and are forced to stay for at least five nights? They even give you the option to extend your stay. Such great service. The whole concept is just so different from how most horror games operate. It still works, but that is due to the theming and secrets involved in the story elements. Otherwise it could very well be set up as a different genre. The developer essentially decided to use this kind of tower defense, management simulation and turned it into a series of spooky games that got multiple people jump scared into oblivion. Maybe in another universe the concept was turned into an entirely different game. Who knows? Thanks for hearing me out everyone. See you next week.

Now Hear Me Out: Multiple Endings in Puzzle Games

Now you know I have to mention game story at least once a month. It is sort of an unwritten rule at this point. At least it was until a few seconds ago. Now I am not going to pretend that every puzzle game needs a good story. That would be a bit unreasonable of me to ask. However, a little bit of context can go a long away. Nothing motivates you to work harder in solving a puzzle than getting closer to an actual resolution. At least in the longer puzzle games where I have spent a decent amount of time doing similar puzzles for hours on end. Look, my brain is like a hamster. It needs a little bit of stimulation to get the wheel turning. However, I want to focus on a particular part of the game and that is the payoff. The thing about having a story in a puzzle game is that there has to be some sort of closure for going through all of that. And yet, some games have the AUDACITY to have multiple different endings. Now just hear me out for a minute on why I have mixed feelings towards this concept.

Now I do like the idea of multiple endings as a concept. It adds to the game by allowing you to experience the game differently each time you play. That means that there is a lot of different ways you can approach the same problem, which is nice. I happen to like flexibility in videogames, especially when it comes to difficult problems. However, the flipside is that when completing a puzzle game and you only get one ending, that means that you still have yet to solve all the puzzles. Now when I try and solve puzzles I tend to have a certain amount of pride, useless as it may be, to try and solve every puzzle that the game has to offer. I may not do it efficiently. It may take me forever to accomplish. I may not necessarily do it correctly and the game will constantly remind me of that fact. However, I will do my best to bulldoze my way forward. Usually this is spurred on by my desire to see how it all ends since despite most puzzles requiring complex solutions, I tend to have a one-track mind. Why do you think I compared my brain to a hamster wheel? So naturally, i can be kind of annoyed when finding out that I haven’t necessarily gotten the best ending because I haven’t puzzled hard enough. I agree that the ending should be the reward for your efforts, but I think I worked pretty hard so why can’t I figure out what I missed? Maybe the hamster needs to refuel. Okay I will stop with that analogy for today. Moving on.

Now I should make it clear that there is a distinction in the different ways multiple endings can be achieved. The first way is when you are acting in a intricately woven puzzle in order to accomplish some sort of goal and the goal you end up at is determined by how you acted at certain key points leading up to the ending. The second way is when there are separate optional puzzles that lead you to tools you need so that you can get a better ending. The first one I can forgive because I feel like I am playing a different game each time. Okay maybe not that dramatic (most of the time), but at least the experience feels different enough to justify another playthrough. The second one though, makes me feel as though I have completed everything. Other games may not matter in that sense, but this is a puzzle game. You are in this for the puzzles right? So, naturally it only feels right to do all of the puzzles. Especially if the story leads you down this path and you can get a better ending through doing more puzzles. However, they like to hide those puzzles from you. You have to work even harder for them and man can that be exhausting. I am already mentally taxed enough going through the main campaign so and least throw me a bone here. Listen, it isn’t really a deal breaker or anything. It just feels like when you get a 99% completion rate and part of your brain is telling you that you can get that last percent without having any clue where to start. It’s not the best feeling, but hey maybe it doesn’t bother you that much and I have thoroughly wasted your time. Thanks for hearing me out anyway.

Thoughts on Physics in Puzzle Games

It’s that time of the week again. Time to give my random assortment of thoughts pertaining to the nature of electronic gaming. To translate so as to sound less pretentious, let’s talk about videogames everyone. Although in fairness, I tend to do most of the talking here. Now to keep up with puzzle game month let’s try to talk about a more advanced feature in puzzle games. That feature is of course… gimmicks. But not just any gimmicks are worth talking about everybody. The gimmicks that we are going to be talking about relate to physics. You know, physics, that word you nearly write as psychics every single time you type it. Or is that just me? Anyway it also allows for some interesting game mechanics in puzzle games. In my somewhat humble opinion, the mark of what a puzzle game good is how well the game mechanic is incorporated into the game and how natural is feel to use the mechanic. The reason why I am applying this to physics mechanics is because these make gameplay a lot more complicated and so if you are able to master the mechanic effectively, then that means the game was at least programmed well. Physics isn’t easy. I know because of the tests I had in high school. So to get it right means you have a good game on your hands. Let’s talk a little bit about those types of mechanics.

The first is a game that may not be super popular, but I find the puzzles to be quite entertaining so I feel the need to talk about it. This games is called Teslagrad and the main gimmick of this game is playing with magnetism. Sounds pretty simple right? Use your newfound powers to switch between polarities so you can move blocks and/or yourself through different challenges as you attempt to climb the tower and eventually defeat the evil king. Now the game is not that long, but the puzzles usually give you new and interesting ways to play with magnets and things become really interesting once you get the cloak that allow you to magnetize yourself. The amount of magnetic currents you ride in the late game is ridiculous and is honestly one of the most exciting parts of the game. you see the best part about having a good physics engines is having the ability to gain momentum since that opens up so many more possibilities for exploration. Take a more well known game like Portal 2. This game, unlike its predecessor goes really heavy on the momentum based gameplay, especially in the second half of the game when you start using the crazy gels from the old science center. That feeling of being able to move freely is something that is an absolute joy to behold. Not to mention it is entirely necessary to navigate through some of the later puzzles, since they really start to love bottomless pits. Whatever happened to just having pits with spikes in them? Wouldn’t that make more sense at least since Chell has those force nullifying shoes? Anyway, the point is that the puzzles become more exciting the more you can use the gimmick to your advantage in the game, since that leads to trying different things and looking at the puzzles themselves differently.

You see, there is a certain mindset that is absolutely necessary when solving puzzles. You need to know how best to approach a problem before you tackle it and that means that you need to be very clear about all the different cards you have in your arsenal. Physics can be a difficult card to read because you may not understand exactly how the environment will be affected by your actions. However, if you have a firm enough grasp on what you can do, then you can take things one step at a time until you figure out what to do. In Portal, if you see a button, you press the button to see what it does. If there is something blocking you from reaching that button, then your first thought is how should you use portals to access it. You won’t even realize you are doing it, but that is because the game has successfully gotten you in the right mindset. Once you understand the laws of physics in relation to the mechanics you are presented with, you won’t end up getting stuck on any sequences because you understand that the solution is only hindered by your imagination. In a point-and-click game, and yes I am still a little salty, if your miss clicking on one thing, you can never find the solution despite all your efforts since you cannot deviate from the path laid out for you. However, when the game is based on physics, you usually already have all the tools you need to proceed. You just need to figure out how to use them and once you have gotten into the right mindset ,then the amount of hang-ups you will have will be very few, if any at all. It feels like there is more of a difficulty curve here since your understanding of the game’s physics is directly proportional to the amount of time you will spend in a given area, not counting backtracking of course. Is that more fair than not being able to succeed due to having overlooked minor details. I’m not sure. I do know there is a difference though, because when I solve a physics problem I feel smart, whereas after I finally find the path in a point-and-click I feel dumb. Again, still a little salty.

Thoughts on Puzzle Games

Today I want to talk again about puzzle games. After all it is the theme for this month. Now puzzles have always been something I have enjoyed ever since I was a kid. I have worked through many different types of puzzles as I grew up and completed many different puzzles while playing games either by myself or with friends. Yet, today I find myself wondering what it means for a game to be a puzzle game. I know that sounds a little weird, but I don’t think anyone would disagree with me that many games that have puzzle sections in them would not be considered puzzle games. Puzzles are meant to just be another challenge and not the main focus of the game. That shouldn’t sound weird to anyone. So as puzzle become a more important feature of the gameplay, that is when we start to see the inclusion of the phrase “puzzle game.” Now you may hear it referred to as a “puzzle platformer” or a “Metroidvania,” but those are just different ways of classifying a game that incorporates a lot of puzzle elements into its core gameplay. The difference in naming sense is just to give a better sense of the main focus of the game itself. Puzzler platformer should be self-explanatory, Metroidvania focuses more on exploration, deception games focus on deduction, and point-and-clicks focus on clicking every last little thing hoping you don’t spend a hour searching for just one piece of the puzzle. What I want to ask though is what makes a game transition from a puzzle game to just a string of puzzles?

Now I established earlier that the games that have certain special names allow for different ways of looking at puzzle games. they each have there own unique way of being considered a game. However, what if the game has nothing but you searching for puzzles. There is this game I play pretty casually every now and then called The Witness and your task is to find puzzles of varying difficulties throughout the island and eventually finish them to beat the game. as of time of writing, I have not beaten this game. I might do it one day though. The thing is that I walk around and find puzzles and don’t do anything else during the game, so does this mean that I am playing a game. In most puzzle games, in order to solve a puzzle you need to use your skill set to interact with the environment as a way to move forward. However, things work a bit differently in this game. You do have to use the environment in order to find the solutions to the puzzles, but you don’t gain anything from doing this except for more puzzles. The only real sense of progression you get is through the beacons you light up at the end of each section. So I am wondering if I am really playing a game or if I am just solving puzzles? It is possible that I am thinking too much as usual, but I feel like there is a distinction between the two. The environments are interesting, the puzzles are challenging, and the game itself is quite clever in its approach to exploration, so why do I feel like something is missing?

Let’s go to another series I have mentioned before to see if we can resolve this issue. The Room series is a point-and-click puzzle game series that I mentioned in the previous post. Each puzzle section is broken up into chapters and you have to use the environment to solve the puzzles at hand. Granted the puzzles are more involved than the ones in The Witness since you are not just trying to draw a path from point A to point B in various different ways each time. What matters though is that you spend time interacting with the environment in a way that makes you feel like you are there. The missing piece of a puzzle should always be you, the player and so naturally when there is progress is the game, you should see it as part of your direct actions. If I am playing a game, I want to feel like I am playing with something. Even if I don’t know the destination or end goal, I want to feel the little victories along the way. I guess if I were to boil down my thoughts on the matter I would put it like this: a game should be something you play rather than experience. I don’t have any problem with good experiences with puzzle or narrative story-telling. I just want to feel like playing a game feels like more than just doing the daily crossword. Well, boing honest I am more of a Sudoku man, but the point still stands. So in the end, I want to be the missing piece to the puzzle, not a guy who wanders around and finds puzzles on the floor.

The Spiraling Logic Cliché

This month we will be focusing on puzzle games. I like to unwind a bit every now and then by trying to challenge my brain a little bit. However, there is something that crops up a lot in different puzzle games to the point that I would like to consider it as a cliché. You see, a puzzle as you are probably aware is impossible to complete as long as you do not have all of the pieces. Puzzle games work exactly the same way, except that typically there are extra steps involved in the process such as finding the pieces and then figuring out how to use them. After all, a puzzle is only considered acceptable if it has only one solution, but also gives you all of the necessary pieces to guide you to that solution. So, it should go without saying that the most frustrating thing in the world is when you are missing just one piece and you have no idea where it could be. What is equally frustrating is having a piece and not having any idea where to put it. The reason this usually happens is that since you failed to understand the game’s logic and spiral into your own logic until you get find your way forward. That is why I call this the spiraling logic cliché. Other people may have a better name for this, but for now let’s go with my idea. Anyway, the reason why I call this a cliché is because game developers usually do this intentionally by making the logic in their puzzle hard to grasp.

Let us take an example and say that you needed to find a way into a car. The car is locked on all sides and you don’t have a key to open it. You can come up with all sorts of ways to get into the car such as breaking the windows or picking the lock, but no matter what your train of thought is, it doesn’t matter if that isn’t the path that you are designed to follow. For instance, maybe you have to pry open the trunk with a crowbar and climb into the backseat. These kind of things happen the most in point and click games. I swear, thee logic for those is astounding and if I am being honest, I don’t think I have ever completed one of those game without consulting a walkthrough at least some point during the game. This is probably just the ramblings of a sore loser, but man I just to not possess the brain power to figure this stuff out. So I just keep clicking and clicking and clicking and clicking and clicking an searching and searching and searching and searching and looking and looking and looking and looking and I can’t find ANYTHING after spending all that time. If you can, then I fully admit that you are better than me at these types of puzzle games. You know even when I play games like The Room series, which are much more tame, I still can run into the same problems. Why is that? Or maybe I am looking at all of this the wrong way?

Maybe the point of all of this is not to speed through the challenge, but to enjoy the challenge of finding things. Even if I did spend an absurd amount of time looking for answers, it isn’t like I always come up empty handed. I guess sometimes the intention of a challenge is not to make us hate the developers, but to feel satisfied when we eventually overcome the challenge. Although sometimes I feel like they take things a little too far. They can be sneaky sometimes by changing things up on you, but I guess that is part of the fun. Personally, I do prefer my puzzles to not be easy, but why does it feel like sometimes I am my own worst enemy when it comes to solving things. I go too far off base and get into my own head and by then there is no saving me. The worst part is that my logic makes sense, I swear it does, and so it is even harder to let go. So I have to take a breather and come back to them later when my brain is feeling less wrong. So I have to unwind in a different game. Goodness my brain is a mess isn’t it. Maybe that is why I easily fall into these spirals. You know, maybe I am the only one who does and this has been a colossal waste of everyone’s time. Who can really be sure? All I know for sure is that I know for a fact I had already clicked there before, I SWEAR!

Thoughts on 2D vs. 3D Shooters

I’m honestly not sure what my first experience with 2D shooters was or when I first played one. I would love to say it was Space Invaders but that would make me a liar and I would prefer that if I have to lie to my readers, it wouldn’t be two sentences into a blog post. It is a little embarrassing to admit this, but I am pretty sure my first exposure to 2D shooters as a concept was in a Kirby game. Don’t ask me to remember which one. I understand that is a weird way to be introduced to a genre, but in fairness I pretty much grew up on Nintendo. That and there is some sort of law saying every Kirby game must have a shooter section. I am pretty sure every other experience I have had with the genre has been in a dungeon crawler. Oh wait, I have played Space Invaders since then so nevermind. That being said, I wasn’t very good at it.

My first experience with 3D shooters is a lot less all over the place. I was in high school when my friends introduced me to Halo: Combat Evolved in high school. I was utter trash at it. Especially in firefights because I could not rely on anyone but myself. At least in team matches I could potentially be a decent meat shield. Throughout the years I would occasionally return to the genre, with similar results each time. In fact whenever I was able to get a kill, it was usually because I managed to melee someone from behind when they weren’t paying attention. Not really something I should be proud of, but sometimes when life gives you lemons then you’ve got to suck them dry. Wait… I think that saying was so that you wouldn’t leave a bad taste in your mouth? I feel like something is wrong there, but I should probably move on before things actually get sour. Besides there is only so much time I can spend on how I am not good at shooters. So, I decided that I would at least try to understand why I have so much trouble adapting to 3D shooters.

Now I know what you want to say, it is because you have barely any experience playing a decent shooter. That’s most certainly true. If I hadn’t started to come across the wonderful world of bullet-hells in college, who knows if I would even be able to talk about 2D shooters, let alone shooters in general. However, it should be more than that. I don’t mean to brag, but I have played a good amount of videogames since I have been introduced to them. I wouldn’t consider myself a pro gamer, not by a long shot, but I would consider myself someone who is capable enough to get used to a control scheme after playing for a little while. So the most likely reason is because I just can’t get used to the gameplay style. I am used to going in guns blazing and having different ways to dodge around. 2D shooters usually give me the freedom to do that, whereas in an 3D environment I am not sure where I should run to or who I am even running from in the first place. Maybe I just can’t feel as exciting without knowing who I’m going after and what I’m trying to do. Maybe because 3d games are more complicated, I feel like I need more context. Or maybe I am making excuses here. After all, no matter which one you prefer the objective is the same: defeat everyone else and try not to die. And I don’t need to make this all about me. There are some games I just am not as good at and that’s just fine. So I guess my thoughts after all of this is no matter how trash you are at a certain genre, you can at least write a post about it. Unfortunately, that doesn’t do much to improve skills. Oh well.

Now Hear Me Out: Stories in Shooters

If you know me, you know that when I play a videogame I like it to have a good story. It isn’t a deal breaker if it doesn’t, but I like to at least have some sort of direction and understanding of the stakes. Now in my personal experience I usually see three different ways a story is incorporated into a game. The first type of story is one that is meant to have a tight fitting plot. It is designed to be an interesting story that you can experience along with the gameplay. The second is when the story is part of an overarching storyline where the storyline is part of a larger sequence. The third and final type is when the story is essentially only background noise so that you can spend time focusing on the gameplay. Now, obviously I am generalizing so there are some exceptions, but for the most part I think they play out in one of those three ways. Now I would like you to hear me out on which type I would like to see more of in shooters and, by extension, games in general.

Now let’s start with the third type because I feel like this type is the most prevalent in the industry right now. Many shooters are a one and done sort of affair with many not being referenced much after a few months of spotlight. These types usually, not always, have campaigns that do not add much playtime to the game and are usually only there to justify the game being at full price. Truth be told there is no point in justifying why the videogame companies choose to do things like this, but I feel that if you don’t want to bother putting in a decent story for the single-player campaign, then you shouldn’t be charging full price for the game. A multiplayer experience is great, but without the single-player experience it still feels like there is something missing. The problem I have is that the types of games that have this type of model to them seem to only be doing it to pump out titles as efficiently and as quickly as possible without making the experience feel like it will last for awhile. I just don’t think that is a healthy practice for both the producers and the consumers of these games.

Now you might be thinking since I harp on story so much I would like to see more of the first type I listed earlier when talking about videogame stories. Well you would be right, but that is mostly because of the fact that I mainly want them to balance out the oversaturation we seem to have of the third type. There aren’t too many shooters that have a serious focus on story, but when they do they can be really good. In the end a good story will always last longer than a multiplayer server. the thing is that most good stories involving shooters tend to deal with darker and depressing themes. That is fine, but it is not the thing that you would want to come back to each time for some fun. Ultimately the reason why we play videogames is to have fun and unwind. So, multiplayer tends to win in that regard since playing with other people is usually more fun than playing by yourself. The exceptions of course are any games in the Mario Party series as that only destroys friendships.

So truth be told I believe that the second type is that one that I want to see the most of in the industry. You know, more games along the lines of Halo where there is an overarching story that you can come back to it and it has a story that is at least meaty enough that you can be comfortable with the weapons going into the multiplayer. Is it me, or are there less and less games in the shooter genre that actually have tangible story threads with their predecessors? It is too much to ask for a bit of context while we are taking down our enemies? Just wondering if we can have more series lead to bigger stories and bigger conflicts while also allowing for fun multiplayer modes and experiences. That’s all I ask. Does that seem too greedy, because if it does then I think you are not greedy enough. Seriously, how many series in the shooter genre have established themselves long enough to be relevant and actually fall under this category? Sandbox games don’t count here. Look, you may think that the current way games are done is fine, but I think we at least try for a bit more variety.

Regenerating Health Cliché

One thing I didn’t go into specifics on is the mechanics on more modern day shooters. The entire structure for them has changed and there are certain things one can expect to see from them. One of the most notorious is regenerating health. Now while it wasn’t an entirely new concept, I don’t expect that people who played classic shooters would have believed that it would become a staple part of the genre. I’m pretty sure that starting in the 2000s everyone starting making the shift over to this formula. Although the Halo series manages to pretend they don’t by having a regenerating shield which at least makes more sense. Regenerating health is something that doesn’t make a lot of sense when you really think about it. You take about fifteen or twenty bullets and then instead of bleeding out, you hide in a corner and all of a sudden all of your wounds go away. Unless you are some sort of superhuman then by all accounts that many bullets just leads to death. Now to be fair, some shooters do start out by saying that you are some sort of super soldier, but the majority of the more realistic ones do not have any such excuse. So you have to ask then, or at least you should ask, why do they put regenerating health in as a game mechanic? Well, it would be because it is a mechanic needed for the experience. Let’s take a look at how this mechanic works.

Now shooters used to be very fast paced. They would have you keep moving and shooting anything that entered your line of sight. You could use whatever you wanted to kill the enemies before they killed you. However, the game has now changed. The goal is still the same since you still don’t want to leave a single enemy alive. The only problem is that due to the heavier emphasis on realism, to our now have to reload and can only carry limited amounts of weapons and ammo. Also, every single enemy will get the drop on you as soon as one is alerted. Presumably because the enemies all have some sort of psychic link with each other. So naturally, you will end up needing to hide a lot when you lead to reload or get some ammo or maybe just take a breath. That’s is where regenerating health bars alleviate some of the pressure and help even the scales. Since you can’t just go in and start shooting with reckless abandon, you need to pay attention to the timing. You have to figure out when to shoot, when to reload, when to dodge, when to take cover, when to grenade, when to use the bathroom, wait…. ignore that last one. Anyway, things get a lot more tactical and so having more control over your health bar should make it easier to make decisions when you need to make them. You don’t have to worry about how much health you have if you know you can get at least some of it back so long as you don’t accidentally stick your pinky finger out of cover. They’ll come for those pinkies man. So you need to play smart if you want to succeed. With all that being said, doesn’t this justify the mechanic’s placement in so many shooters. Absolutely not.

You probably got I was going to say yes for a second didn’t you? Well, if I were going to defend this topic I wouldn’t have titled this as being a cliché in the first place. I just wanted to make the point clear that I don’t hate the mechanic itself, but I do not like the way it is currently used. You see regenerating health makes the most sense in games that are built around having lots of cover and needing to find certain vantage points. The pacing is meant to be controlled that way and so it makes sense for things such as regenerating health to exist in shooters that have that type of mindset. So tell me why we have this same mechanic in almost every single game that has come out as a AAA title in the last ten years. I understand I am being a bit dramatic, but do we really need this mechanic for everything? We even see it in stealth games now. STEALTH GAMES. At least in a shooter you have to get the bad guys, but you don’t have to do any of that in a stealth game. I don’t get it. Are you just supposed to hide and suck your thumb after you get caught so everyone forgets about you and moves on? Weren’t games supposed to be getting more realistic? The least they could do is make it a consumable item that you could find more of depending on the difficulty you play on. Something more than just peace out and come back later when you feel like this time I might absorb enough bullets before needing to run away. Heck at least in Far Cry 3 it made sense that the main character could breeze through all that. He was so juiced up that he may as well have been superhuman. Although if he really wanted to be indestructible he should have taken whatever Nathan Drake used to survive half of his adventures. Look, I am not asking for a lot here. Okay, maybe I am, but can we at least take moments to consider why regenerating health has to be the default and only option for so many games? I’ve given up on shooters because at least that formula works, but if I ever see a dating sim with regenerating health then I might just lose my mind.

Thoughts on the Shooters of Today

This month I am going to venture out of my comfort zone and so we will be talking about shooters. The reason this is outside my comfort zone is because while shooters take up a considerable part of today’s industry, I am not very good at them. I don’t want to say I am awful, because I am very stubborn and in denial, but it is not my usual genre to wind down and relax with after a long day of work. In fact, I don’t know if I even wind down at all nowadays. Usually I am just trying to finish at least one of the current hundreds of games I have on backlog. Yes, there are certain shooters included in this category. So, that I smoothly and expertly got things back on topic, I want to talk a little about shooters mean to me and what I think of their progression throughout the years. To be fair, I haven’t really played videogames for long enough to encompass everything that I am about to cover, but let me just talk for a bit and see where this goes.

So shooters have gone through a lot of changes since they were first introduced. At first you were in an arcade shooting alien lifeforms in Space Invaders and then forty years go by and you are playing the latest installment in the Call of Duty franchise. Things have gone a long way since the concept of a shooter was first introduced. I would say that there were two major changes to the genre as the years went on. And no, I am not talking about graphics because that should be a given here. The first big change is that there seemed to be a shift in the target audience of the shooter genre. What I mean is that there was a shift where shooters decided to focus more on the multiplayer experience than on the single-player experience. That’s not to say we don’t have shooters that have a focus on single-player campaigns, but that is no longer the industry standard you see today. Games like Doom and Serious Sam are not nearly as prevalent as games in series such as Call of Duty or Battlefield. I am not saying that there is a problem with the focus on multiplayer shooters. As someone who spend most of his life playing single-player games, usually this kind of genre didn’t appeal to me, but that isn’t to say that it isn’t fun. If it wasn’t they wouldn’t be able to keep making the same kind of game each time and still make a profit. If it still works then why change it? I’m pretty sure that has been Nintendo’s business policy for a while now. So, sometimes it is just easier to turn your brain off and start blasting. This leads me to the second big change that shooters have gone through over the years.

Now it could just be me, but I feel like a lot of early shooters involve shooting monsters and aliens. Especially aliens. We really seemed to be afraid of them back then. Nowadays I feel as though most shooters involve you shooting other people or at least other avatars. This makes more sense from the whole multiplayer shift thing that I was talking about earlier. If you somehow missed that, then you may want to get some new reading glasses. That is provided you have reading glasses of course, I wouldn’t want to assume. If I am being honest, I am not entirely sure of the reason for this change other than trying to make games feel more realistic. Maybe that’s the reason people see videogames as more violent than before when we were just trying to take out aliens. However, it shouldn’t matter what the target is as long as we are having fun. So I do want to say one thing for all those people out there who get all riled up about this sort of thing. It’s just a videogame. The only harm that might come of it is a kid breaking his hand by punching through his monitor. There is no reason to get that heated in the first place. Sorry to say kid, but breaking your hand won’t help you not be trash. Videogames should be a way to have fun and unwind, so if blasting a person in the face is more your style then it’s up to you. I personally don’t care as long as there are certain boundaries that we all agree to respect while we are having fun. I may be terrible at shooters, yes I am freely admitting it now, but at least I am honest about it and can find my own ways to have fun. Usually, it’s to go to the single player campaign, but in fairness I didn’t do any better there either. So to sum all this up, shooters have become increasing more competitive and realistic, but try your best to unwind and not take things to heart. After all, paying for a new monitor and medical bills is probably not the best outcome to losing in a firefight. If it’s Mario Party though, totally understandable.

Thoughts on Kingdom Hearts III

I think we all knew things had to end like this. Or maybe it was just me considering I came up with this plan from the beginning. I couldn’t help myself. It was too tempting to not hold off my general thoughts and ramblings of the final conclusion to this saga that has taken nearly twenty years to get to the third game. Seriously though, Kingdom Hearts II came out in 2005 and its true sequel came out nearly fifteen years later. Man, the wait must have been brutal to those people eagerly anticipating it. However, they are at least better than Valve since they are able to create the third installment of a videogame. It’s not like I have a serious emotional investment in these games to be honest. The main reason is because I haven’t really played any of them. In fact, the whole reason I started this month in the first place, other than a severe lapse in judgment, is because I found this series to be interesting. I have harped on about how complicated the storyline is time and time again, but I can’t help but be impressed with this epic storyline that has been going on for about twenty years now. That being said, that mainly applies to the story as a whole. I am not talking about each individual game since they work best as a collective series. To further elaborate, let’s actually start talking about Kingdom Hearts III.

Now let me start off by saying that the endgame where everyone comes together to save the day was everything I hoped for in an JRPG. However, I can’t help but feel that the payoff was built off by the groundwork laid by previous games in the series and this one just kind of killed time until its conclusion. Look, imagine if you were just starting this series and for some insane reason that us mere mortals could never hope to understand, you decided to start with this one. I know it sounds crazy, but if we could just go along with this hypothetical scenario for a little bit. Now, imagine you start going through different Disney worlds to get stronger so that you can unlock your powers and yet you never seem to awaken them until you have gone through the prerequisite amount of Disney worlds. In fact, some of them especially seem to just have you along for the ride with barely any actual presence in the world itself. Looking at you Frozen world. I just feel like you are just killing time and adding some things in to set up later games in the franchise. Like that whole black box thing that doesn’t come up until the end of the game. What was the point of that side story. Also, WHAT’S IN THE BOX? Sorry about that, I just couldn’t help myself. I’ll see myself out……….. not really though. Anyway I feel as though certain things could have had a bit more time to flesh them out.

I want to talk about how replicas suddenly became magic and how nobodies have their own hearts now. I feel like that sort of came out of nowhere. Was I super excited to see the reunion of Roxas, Xion, and Axel? Absolutely. Was I confused as to how it all worked out? You know it. Maybe I blinked and missed some dialogue somewhere about how they can just easily extract allow hearts to return to being human like it is nothing so long as a replica is within spitting distance. I mean Sora had to work hard to unlock Ventus’ heart! I think? Maybe? Actually, I still am not sure if the beginning of the game actually contributed to that or if maybe he just found out that the power was actually inside him all along and so now he is obligated to use it. It could go either way, but it still doesn’t explain when Roxas and Xion found their way out of Sora’s heart. Xion I can maybe understand since she was fighting with Sora and he might have release her heart unconsciously during the battle. However, there is no way he was clued into the whole Roxas plan so I have no idea how that worked out. Maybe I am just to dumb to understand what was going on at certain points or maybe I was just by cool fights that I missed some details here and there. I don’t really know for sure, but maybe that will have to just remain a mystery for me. After all, the game is still pretty good, it just could have maybe used some more side notes for dumb people like me as to how Sora is as bad as Samus Aran in keeping her powers between games. Or am I missing something else? Probably. But those are my thoughts so blame this series if you found all this confusing, because frankly I still am confused. Entertained, but confused.