Guileless Monk

Sonic Generations is a good game and not just relative to other recent Sonic games. Relative to recent Sonic games it is unbelievable but even relative to all other games it is pretty good. Sure the story makes no sense and isn’t even internally consistent as it is a time travel story, but it provides the thin veneer needed to let us play as both 2D and 3D Sonic in one game, so it does it’s job and doesn’t really get in the way a whole bunch. If it also happened to use the time travel thing to ret-con out the whole ‘Sonic the Werewolf’ thing that would of been appreciated but I guess not necessary.

Neither of them turn into a werewolf in this game, I promise.

Now I’m picking on the story a bit but it isn’t like the story really matters in a Sonic game, they are primarily action games. So if I was able to change only one thing about Sonic Generations it wouldn’t be the story, even if I was allowed to get rid of all the awful parts of the series cannon. If I could only change one thing about the game it would be, no contest, the final boss.

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gamers-to-the-end asked: have you ever discussed the next-gen consoles such as the PS4 and the XBOX720,and made your impressions and opinion about them, (at least for the PS4 since its the only one that got revealed yet) and basically talk about, what you think work and what doesn't work and why. if not then that would be a good topic to talk about, in fact you can create many posts based on it.

I haven’t really talked about them because I love games and don’t really care about hardware beyond the fact that you use them for games. When they talk hardware my general reaction is: “Oh look, numbers.” I’ll see the screenshots and sometimes read about it but if I have to choose between hardware stuff or an article about how Red and White overlap in Magic: The Gathering it isn’t a contest. I’m not trying to be holier than thou or anything, I do enjoy the incredible graphics but I don’t read up on them closely or think about it a great deal in the same way I do game mechanics and so I don’t really have anything add to what is being said and so I don’t try to. As the release dates close in and they get stuff about games and gameplay mechanics though expect me to get a bit more talkative.

One thing I did want to say though is Sony is doing a really good job courting Indies in a way Microsoft isn’t, so gold star for Sony.

theothetheomancer asked: I can't be certain you haven't touched on this, but if you feel informed enough to do so, I think it would be valuable for you to talk about CC. Riot, the company who (perhaps foolishly) added the term and very idea of "anti-fun" to the lexicon of gamers, sets out a general aversion to Crowd Control as one of the cornerstones of their design (because you "aren't playing the game while stunned") and I don't doubt your followers would be interested to hear your take on the matter.

One of the things I love more than anything is when a designer shows their thought process and god damnit all if Morello doesn’t show his work. I struggled with what he meant by “anti-fun” for a while but this episode of Extra Credits helped clear it up for me. It basically is play that doesn’t have any interesting counterplay. I don’t think they have a problem with hard CC like stuns, I mean of their last 10 new champions 8 of them have a hard CC like a stun or knock up and the other 2 do have slows and a blind in their kit which count as soft CC.

Morello’s “anti-fun” hate is typically pointed more at sustained healers like Soraka. You harass her and she just heals it off but she can’t then attack back because she deals no damage, so if you have a Soraka in a lane it pretty much means both sides just ignore the each other and farm until the laning phase is over which is boring. “Anti-fun” is a weird way to say “boring” but that is generally what I take it to mean when he says it.

God, me of 6 months ago was so dramatic.

If you are reading this post then I have failed, because this is a post that I wrote with the intention of never getting published. If you are reading this post it is because I had no other posts written and queued up before this one, which means this is the last post I have, at least right now.

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Fuck it, I have nothing for tomorrow. Maybe I could write something but not something I would like.

Oh well, I’m just feeling down on myself because I was up for a job I really wanted and after 2 interviews and a code challenge I haven’t been able to get in contact with them for a week.

I’ll keep doing the things but I just want a break so I’m just going to let the failure post I wrote to keep myself motivated go up tomorrow.

Adding new mechanics to a game serves two main functions: first is that it makes levels/areas more distinct and secondly it keeps the game interesting for longer periods of time. World of Warcraft not withstanding you can only do the same thing over and over again so many times before you want to move on and so progression becomes a key part of long term player engagement.

So how do you grow your game along side the player? I’m going to split techniques to do this into two overly broad categories: player centric and level centric.

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Considering I write about games everyday (well not Mondays, I program for those) I talk about choice precious little. Choice is one of the most powerful tools games have and is a big part of what differentiates it from other art forms like books or movies. A book can tell a story but a game can have a player live a story, write their own story. So it is worth it to talk about how various games empower players to make choices.

Some games like The Walking Dead make choices explicit and force a player to choose via menu options what they want to do, but games can also force choices on players through scarcity. I’ve previously touched on this idea when I talked about Kingdom Hearts 2 where I said that if they reduced the number of ability points players had to available to equip abilities in that game the player would not just have more choices but more powerful ones as they are forced to choose between two abilities they really want as opposed to choosing which tier 2/3 abilities they wanted to tack on. 

Scarcity of resources makes how the player chooses to use those limited resources more powerful. If a player has enough money to buy all the new equipment a town has in an RPG they aren’t prioritizing their characters or min/maxing, they are just buying the best they can without having to think about it. I think a game that uses scarcity to enable choice really well is the game I Am Alive.

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