The Company of Myself is in indie flash game developed by 2DArray. The game describes itself as "a story about a hermit", but the story proves to be far deeper and certainly far more emotional than its description would lead one to believe.
To start things off, this game is, without a better word... morose. The soundtrack is almost-but-not-quite minimalist, and quite somber. The text that appears onscreen during and after the levels is often haunting and adds to the plight of the "hermit", although it occasionally throws in some fourth-wall related humour to break up the stream of sorrow, which is a fantastic notion, but simply doesn't work as well as it should in the context of an otherwise stark experience.
The game itself is a sort of hybrid of platforming and puzzle elements. The gimmick in The Company of Myself is that the player can press the space bar to return to the start point, with a clone performing the player's actions up until the point in time that the space bar was pressed. These clones cannot be controlled, but can be manipulated in a variety of ways. The puzzles themselves are middle-of-the-road in terms of challenge, no cakewalk, but not "I haven't a clue what I'm supposed to do here" calibre. Despite this, the puzzles are quite fun as a whole, although the final puzzle in particular abandons all types of strategy and manipulation in favour of a far simpler and more mind-numbing solution.
The gameplay, as engaging as it is, takes a definite back seat to the story. Without any spoilers, let me just say that the story is quite depressing, with a moment that puts Portal's infamous Weighted Companion Cube to shame. The ending is shocking, putting all of your past actions in an entirely different and darker light, to haunting effect.
If you enjoy platformers/puzzles and aren't on the verge of suicide, The Company of Myself is, by all accounts, worth a play.
You can play The Company of Myself at http://www.kongregate.com/games/2DArray/the-company-of-myself
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Some Changes
So, I've been obviously messing with the site some.
- For one, I made the post and gadget backgrounds a greyish color. This should help people to read, as the black-on-black background/text area made it hard on the eyes occasionally.
- I've added a separate page for Podcasts.
- We also have Podcasts
- The update to Blogger allowed the separate pages, so yay Google.
- I also switched from the simple media player I had originally used to a newer Yahoo media player. Unfortunately, the post on the Podcast page looks... well... bad. Since it has all the links showing. Not sure if I'm going to stick with this player, due to how it adds media.
Apart from these few changes, business should be as usual, except with hopefully more posting activity. I'd like to get more opinions on the site, so if you want to pass this along to people who may enjoy it, by all means.
Leave your thoughts below, if you feel so inclined.
Friday, April 13, 2012
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Podcast 01: Console vs PC
Using the fancy media bar, you can listen to the first Fans On Fire Podcast.
Okay so I guess I'm totally playing WoW
So this was a game that I never thought I'd play, although I admit that my reasons behind not wanting to play it were silly. But yeah, so now I'm playing it, and I'm loving it.
So what happened?
Well, a few of my friends play it, and they wanted me to start, so I did the trial a few times and came to the same conclusion. This isn't really that fun, but it is relaxing, but there's NO way in hell I'm doing this for 85 levels. Combat felt clunky, like an awfully implemented mix of real-time brawlers and turn-based RPG combat, quests were boring and repetitive, but the environments and presentation were superb.
So what happened?
Well, a few of my friends play it, and they wanted me to start, so I did the trial a few times and came to the same conclusion. This isn't really that fun, but it is relaxing, but there's NO way in hell I'm doing this for 85 levels. Combat felt clunky, like an awfully implemented mix of real-time brawlers and turn-based RPG combat, quests were boring and repetitive, but the environments and presentation were superb.
A few months after my first few attempts at getting into it, I decided I'd give it another go via private server. I really didn't want to spend all that time leveling, but I did want to see some of the end game content. I still just couldn't fathom how this game had so many subscribers when there was so much boring garbage attached to the front 90%.
So I started playing on a private server with x12 experience, and this made it work. This made it easier for me to see what WoW was about, and how it could be fun. The early levels of WoW are really just world exploration. Azeroth is the most thorough iteration of a living fantasy world to date. A few elements of the game turn it into a race to 85, but really it's something to savor. Using the refer a friend, I got a quick 85 and immediately starting leveling alts. The hurdle that was keeping me out of the game is now the reason I play. It's still slow, still repetitive, but the detail that goes into the game is unfathomable. All the "throwaway" quests have meaningful characters, stories, and places that continuously add depth to an already colossal experience.
So I started playing on a private server with x12 experience, and this made it work. This made it easier for me to see what WoW was about, and how it could be fun. The early levels of WoW are really just world exploration. Azeroth is the most thorough iteration of a living fantasy world to date. A few elements of the game turn it into a race to 85, but really it's something to savor. Using the refer a friend, I got a quick 85 and immediately starting leveling alts. The hurdle that was keeping me out of the game is now the reason I play. It's still slow, still repetitive, but the detail that goes into the game is unfathomable. All the "throwaway" quests have meaningful characters, stories, and places that continuously add depth to an already colossal experience.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Podcast? Podcast
So, we're doing podcasts!
UncloudTheSky95 and myself have made a podcast for this fair blog. If you've noticed the bar at the top of the screen, you'll notice the fancy new audio player.
So I decided that, instead of being obtrusive with the media player, I opted for something smaller, with our playlist hidden by default. To view the playlist (which will have both podcasts, and gaming music), click the 4 horizontal bar button on the top of the screen, across from the play button.
Hopefully this will mean more content from us, for you. You lucky people. Our hope is that we can add more podcasts, either single person, or panel style, onto the site, which might lead to more actual posts.
Any questions comment below.
If you have any podcast requests, you can leave a comment and we'll consider it.
UncloudTheSky95 and myself have made a podcast for this fair blog. If you've noticed the bar at the top of the screen, you'll notice the fancy new audio player.
So I decided that, instead of being obtrusive with the media player, I opted for something smaller, with our playlist hidden by default. To view the playlist (which will have both podcasts, and gaming music), click the 4 horizontal bar button on the top of the screen, across from the play button.
Hopefully this will mean more content from us, for you. You lucky people. Our hope is that we can add more podcasts, either single person, or panel style, onto the site, which might lead to more actual posts.
Any questions comment below.
If you have any podcast requests, you can leave a comment and we'll consider it.
Thursday, April 5, 2012
My Game Concept (An Appeal To The FPS Industry)
The FPS genre, as a whole, is crowded with shit, plain and simple. Even though I acknowledge that this has always been the case, far too many developers are dumbing down their once-great series or making pointless sequels that only serve to destroy the legacy of a genuinely great series, all for the sake of more sales. I know that sales are important, not only to provide funds for future developments but also for the sake of the studio staying afloat, but sales alone should NEVER be the whole reason for a product's existence. Take Call of Duty, for example. Every game in the series has been nothing more than a new coat of paint over an increasingly-tired formula, that is fancy-looking setpieces and mindless multiplayer for the proletarian masses, rereleased every single year with some new colours and shiny new additions that do absolutely nothing. Regardless of its lack of quality, each title in the series is the highest-selling game of all time, year after year. The absolutely preposterous amount of sales inspires every other major studio to attempt to get a piece of the action, so rather than make a product with some degree of actual quality, they churn out endless CoD-ripoffs which kill any sort of creativity in the genre, forcing it to rot away into eventual oblivion. This is not the way that FPSs should be. All of the big companies in the industry are whores, and the few games that are quality releases are pushed aside as niche titles while everyone makes way for Brown-And-Grey Corridor Target Practice 9.
That's the state of the industry right now, and here's how to fix it.
To me, the three most defining factors that all video games should be developed upon are Quality, Challenge, and Fun. Let me go into more depth on these tenets:
Quality: Make sure the game is well-developed and has loads of replayability and content. All game developers should strive for adding something new and innovative to their game, because owning twenty games and having all of them be, for all intents and purposes, the same is never fun.
Challenge: The game should be genuinely challenging. Yeah, you can add easier difficulties for accessibility and what-not, but the game as it's meant to be played should challenge the player, make him think outside of the box, and not merely in "THIS GUY TAKES MORE BULLETS TO KILL" logic.
Fun: Do I really need to explain this one? The whole point of a video game is for entertainment and fun. If your game stays true to the first two tenets but abandons this one, your product is a failure. This is the most important of the three tenets.
At this point, I'm just gonna talk about my idea for an FPS that, in my opinion, exemplifies everything that an FPS, and a video game in general should be.
My concept for a game: An FPS that gives you a whole range of superpower-equivalent abilities, like time control, temporary invisibility, flight, and all that good stuff, and then proceeds to challenge the player's skills with these abilities. Linearity would be thrown to the wolves in favor of pure, unadulterated choice. There would also be more additions to the gameplay that would not only be technically astounding but would also actually add to the gameplay, rather than being a simple gimmick. Some of these ideas include an extreme amount of customization in weapons, uniforms/costumes (Potential disguises), and the ability to control each gun's aim individually while dual-wielding. The storyline would have the same basic gist no matter what, but the events, and as a result, the levels and the gameplay would be entirely dynamic.
An ideal section of the game would be like this: There's a hostage that must be rescued before he's taken to a interrogation/torture facility. You're within a few miles of an airport, where the hostage is being taken to in the back of a heavily-armed-but-not-so-armored enemy vehicle. Potentially, you could shoot out the tires of the car, kill the guards and bring the hostage back to safety, but a more probably outcome would be that the impact causes the car to flip or crash, killing everyone, the hostage included. In this way, the player would be truly challenged, as he is forced to come up with genuinely out-of-the-box solutions. One solution would have the player placing some sort of barricade to stop the car momentarily, and then shooting out the tires, causing the guards to exit the vehicle, at which point the player could lure the guards to isolation and then knock them out or kill them, and another solution would be entirely-based on luck or nanosecond-perfect timing, as the player could rush the vehicle, flying on top of it, cutting a hole into the back, very quickly jumping in and grabbing the hostage, flying out and shooting the fuel tank of the vehicle while flying out. However, since the fuel tank is on the bottom of the vehicle, and there's no exact way to tell its location, much less while flying away from it at so-and-so miles-per-hour, so this approach would require either an acute knowledge of the vehicle or sheer luck, making it much less practical, but not impossible (Pretty much badass mode). If the player was to fail to rescue the hostage before the car gets to the airport, there would still be chances at the airport, or even on the plane itself. Let's say that the hostage was forced onto the plane, and the plane is preparing for takeoff. Potentially, you could stealth/fight/whatever your way to the control tower about a few thousand feet away and either force the traffic controller to convince the pilot of the plane that the conditions are unsafe and postpone the flight, or you could kill the traffic controller and get on the mic yourself, using either persuasion or bluffs to call off the flight, or if you really have a way with words, to relinquish the hostage. The success rate of the latter option is lower, but could potentially have stronger results if it does succeed. This is all a variable, however, as the entire thing depends on whether the player makes it to the control tower in time. The player could also do the dirty work himself, either hitching a ride on the plane using stealth, or fly with the plane, at which point the player could do whatever he wants to do. You could enter through one of the bottom shafts, use stealth to knock out/kill the guards and soldiers, and meet up with the hostage, all while never disturbing or alerting the pilot to your presence. At this point, you could wait with the hostage until the plane lands, at which point a whole other set of choices appears. You could knock out/kill the pilot, take control of the plane and fly it back to the previous airport to free the hostage. Potentially, you could do the exact same while the plane is in flight, but the risk factor is much higher, as you never know which buttons the pilot's body could lean on and press, or which way his body will tilt while holding on to the steering wheel. If the player feels he has the experience to counteract whichever consequence of his actions results from his elimination of the pilot, then he can go ahead and do whatever. Or conversely, the player could go loose-cannon, fly on the top of the plane as it takes off, sabotage it by disabling the propellers or jamming the ailerons, whichever way the player chooses to sabotage the plane, and then quickly force his way in, grab the hostage and a parachute and jump out, leaving an active grenade as a going-away present. But should the plane be destroyed or disabled while the player is parachuting out with the hostage or whatever, there's always the chance that the resulting debris falling from the sky could strike the player or the parachute, potentially wounding or killing one or both of the people. There's also the matter of if the player fails to rescue the hostage at all. In this concept of a game, decisions and outcomes play a major part of the story, as well as which direction the gameplay goes for the next mission. If the hostage is tortured, he will almost certainly let slip some very important details about the location of some very important buildings. If this happens, the next mission will take place at one of these buildings, as the player (and the rest of his army/group/whatever, depending on the location) must defend the building from a HOLYSHIT amount of enemies. If the player rescues the hostage using more stealthy and restrained methods, the next mission could be an infiltration mission, and if the player goes loose-cannon, the next mission could be a sabotage or destruction mission. No matter the type of mission, each mission would have the same level of choice as the scenario described above.
The point of the game as a whole would be to give the player some great new tools for him to experiment with and have fun using, and then to challenge the player to use them to the best of his ability, each time pushing the limits of what was thought possible in the game. It would have a shitton of replayability and quality content, it would be accessible to the new players on easier difficulties, but would be truly challenging in the best way that a game can be challenging on the hardest difficulty, and most importantly, it would be fun as hell. After all, isn't being fun what games are all about?
The Three Tenets of game design detailed above should be the most important things for all game developers, yet very few FPSs nowadays actually keep them in mind, while most forsake them for the sake of gaining the most amount of money with the least amount of work. Games should be games, not products. It's time something changed.
That's the state of the industry right now, and here's how to fix it.
To me, the three most defining factors that all video games should be developed upon are Quality, Challenge, and Fun. Let me go into more depth on these tenets:
Quality: Make sure the game is well-developed and has loads of replayability and content. All game developers should strive for adding something new and innovative to their game, because owning twenty games and having all of them be, for all intents and purposes, the same is never fun.
Challenge: The game should be genuinely challenging. Yeah, you can add easier difficulties for accessibility and what-not, but the game as it's meant to be played should challenge the player, make him think outside of the box, and not merely in "THIS GUY TAKES MORE BULLETS TO KILL" logic.
Fun: Do I really need to explain this one? The whole point of a video game is for entertainment and fun. If your game stays true to the first two tenets but abandons this one, your product is a failure. This is the most important of the three tenets.
At this point, I'm just gonna talk about my idea for an FPS that, in my opinion, exemplifies everything that an FPS, and a video game in general should be.
My concept for a game: An FPS that gives you a whole range of superpower-equivalent abilities, like time control, temporary invisibility, flight, and all that good stuff, and then proceeds to challenge the player's skills with these abilities. Linearity would be thrown to the wolves in favor of pure, unadulterated choice. There would also be more additions to the gameplay that would not only be technically astounding but would also actually add to the gameplay, rather than being a simple gimmick. Some of these ideas include an extreme amount of customization in weapons, uniforms/costumes (Potential disguises), and the ability to control each gun's aim individually while dual-wielding. The storyline would have the same basic gist no matter what, but the events, and as a result, the levels and the gameplay would be entirely dynamic.
An ideal section of the game would be like this: There's a hostage that must be rescued before he's taken to a interrogation/torture facility. You're within a few miles of an airport, where the hostage is being taken to in the back of a heavily-armed-but-not-so-armored enemy vehicle. Potentially, you could shoot out the tires of the car, kill the guards and bring the hostage back to safety, but a more probably outcome would be that the impact causes the car to flip or crash, killing everyone, the hostage included. In this way, the player would be truly challenged, as he is forced to come up with genuinely out-of-the-box solutions. One solution would have the player placing some sort of barricade to stop the car momentarily, and then shooting out the tires, causing the guards to exit the vehicle, at which point the player could lure the guards to isolation and then knock them out or kill them, and another solution would be entirely-based on luck or nanosecond-perfect timing, as the player could rush the vehicle, flying on top of it, cutting a hole into the back, very quickly jumping in and grabbing the hostage, flying out and shooting the fuel tank of the vehicle while flying out. However, since the fuel tank is on the bottom of the vehicle, and there's no exact way to tell its location, much less while flying away from it at so-and-so miles-per-hour, so this approach would require either an acute knowledge of the vehicle or sheer luck, making it much less practical, but not impossible (Pretty much badass mode). If the player was to fail to rescue the hostage before the car gets to the airport, there would still be chances at the airport, or even on the plane itself. Let's say that the hostage was forced onto the plane, and the plane is preparing for takeoff. Potentially, you could stealth/fight/whatever your way to the control tower about a few thousand feet away and either force the traffic controller to convince the pilot of the plane that the conditions are unsafe and postpone the flight, or you could kill the traffic controller and get on the mic yourself, using either persuasion or bluffs to call off the flight, or if you really have a way with words, to relinquish the hostage. The success rate of the latter option is lower, but could potentially have stronger results if it does succeed. This is all a variable, however, as the entire thing depends on whether the player makes it to the control tower in time. The player could also do the dirty work himself, either hitching a ride on the plane using stealth, or fly with the plane, at which point the player could do whatever he wants to do. You could enter through one of the bottom shafts, use stealth to knock out/kill the guards and soldiers, and meet up with the hostage, all while never disturbing or alerting the pilot to your presence. At this point, you could wait with the hostage until the plane lands, at which point a whole other set of choices appears. You could knock out/kill the pilot, take control of the plane and fly it back to the previous airport to free the hostage. Potentially, you could do the exact same while the plane is in flight, but the risk factor is much higher, as you never know which buttons the pilot's body could lean on and press, or which way his body will tilt while holding on to the steering wheel. If the player feels he has the experience to counteract whichever consequence of his actions results from his elimination of the pilot, then he can go ahead and do whatever. Or conversely, the player could go loose-cannon, fly on the top of the plane as it takes off, sabotage it by disabling the propellers or jamming the ailerons, whichever way the player chooses to sabotage the plane, and then quickly force his way in, grab the hostage and a parachute and jump out, leaving an active grenade as a going-away present. But should the plane be destroyed or disabled while the player is parachuting out with the hostage or whatever, there's always the chance that the resulting debris falling from the sky could strike the player or the parachute, potentially wounding or killing one or both of the people. There's also the matter of if the player fails to rescue the hostage at all. In this concept of a game, decisions and outcomes play a major part of the story, as well as which direction the gameplay goes for the next mission. If the hostage is tortured, he will almost certainly let slip some very important details about the location of some very important buildings. If this happens, the next mission will take place at one of these buildings, as the player (and the rest of his army/group/whatever, depending on the location) must defend the building from a HOLYSHIT amount of enemies. If the player rescues the hostage using more stealthy and restrained methods, the next mission could be an infiltration mission, and if the player goes loose-cannon, the next mission could be a sabotage or destruction mission. No matter the type of mission, each mission would have the same level of choice as the scenario described above.
The point of the game as a whole would be to give the player some great new tools for him to experiment with and have fun using, and then to challenge the player to use them to the best of his ability, each time pushing the limits of what was thought possible in the game. It would have a shitton of replayability and quality content, it would be accessible to the new players on easier difficulties, but would be truly challenging in the best way that a game can be challenging on the hardest difficulty, and most importantly, it would be fun as hell. After all, isn't being fun what games are all about?
The Three Tenets of game design detailed above should be the most important things for all game developers, yet very few FPSs nowadays actually keep them in mind, while most forsake them for the sake of gaining the most amount of money with the least amount of work. Games should be games, not products. It's time something changed.
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