MMMman

@flappy: The driving really fast part is really starting to appeal to me, especially around the countryside parts of the map. I always avoid the motorbikes, but last night I took Franklin up around the North East of the map on a dirt trail along the coast. Oh my, it was both fun and stunningly beautiful, the world design on display in parts of SA is truly spectacular. After that I went on a mission to buy drugs and shot thirty guys on Grove Street. Hmmph, that distinction makes me a bit sad.

On swimming, though; it is pretty fun by itself, but if you throw in a few water slides - then, my friend, we're having a good time. She's spoken about learning a few times in the past, though never got around to it. Could make a good New Year's resolution perhaps?

@hailinel: Time zones are wonderful things; you've covered pretty much my exact responses to this while I was still asleep, so thanks! It sounds as though you are thoroughly burnt out on the game, which is a little further down the road than I am at the minute, but it looks like we share the same misgivings about the mission design choices. I'm really trying to pinpoint when my tastes changed, because it seems to have just crept up on me to the point where now I'm unsatisfied by most combat-heavy games, or at least the super big budget ones. I seem to remember enjoying, say, MW2 quite a bit at the time, but MW3 made me want to cry. They are really obvious examples, I know, but those games are almost identical - maybe that's part of the problem - so it's easy to plot my waning interest between the two. Maybe I just hate video games now? Surely not quite yet

@demoskinos: It isn't really that the violence exists, per se, but that it is implemented so often as a means to conclude a wide variety of scenarios. I appreciate that I'm playing a game about bad people who do bad things, but at the same time these bad people aren't mass murderers, they are criminals. Video games have always existed - and thrived - upon hyperbole and exaggeration, but there has to be a point of terminal velocity here; things can't simply keep getting more and more ridiculous. As a few of the people before me have already stated; it is not the violence itself, but its increasingly out of place status, that is problematic. As Rockstar have become better and better at making their worlds mirror - in both image and opportunities - our own reality, they have implicitly shortened the distance between the two. In many ways, as I said in my write up, San Andreas is the closest we've yet come to a digital version of the places many of us live in right now. Massive scale violence taking place alarmingly often suddenly breaks this illusion, reminding us that however close to our actual cities and states SA may appear, it is still simply a fabrication. To that end I'm not "bemoaning violence in a game that is a unapologetic boilerplate crime drama", I'm bemoaning violence that is so grand and bombastic that it breaks the otherwise stunningly realised illusion that it takes place within.

@vod_crack: I nearly stopped playing right at the beginning because of the weird aiming, it took a while for me to get used to it. It almost feels as if you have to adjust your cross-hair a single axis at a time rather than smoothly aiming at something. The weapons are also pretty inaccurate with a lot of muzzle rise, which seems a little strange in an action-heavy title. Still, once I'd become used to it all I found it a bit more comfortable, though never quite enough. Pretty much the bottom line on most of the game's mechanics really.

@jeust: DO IT, seriously, you'll find it interesting if nothing else. Having just had a look though, it seems to have become somewhat of a collectors item; twenty whole dollars on amazon US, FIFTY Great British pounds on the UK site. I truly didn't expect that.

@veektarius: I think that's pretty true, though as Jacob said it isn't the not considering failure that is the bad part, it's not being able to adapt when failure, or the threat of it, comes into view. I don't fund 'the kickstarter' projects for pretty much that reason. I pitched in a fiver or something small on Haunts before that fell off, though I reckon the 'kickstarter guarantees a solid return on your pledge' line of thought is truly over. That is sad in a way because I think people are a lot more cautious when it comes to backing tiny games now, but people need to understand the risks associated with their investment because it is just that; an investment and not a pre-order.

@coinmatze: Haha, never trust a businessman, ey? Unless he genuinely did LOVE it, though I think that's pretty unlikely.
I'm happy it got bumped too, though I have no idea how @sideburnt managed to find it, and I'm pretty sure I haven't paid anyone to boost my internet visibility this month. I'll just put it down to good luck I suppose!

@razkazz: It's good to know I'm not the only person to have played it in the last couple of years! I found the (kind of) non-linearity of most of the levels to be really interesting, especially the HUGE area inside the mountain where you can look back at where to were an hour or more ago. Granted though, they do remove any feeling of structured authorship over the experience, beyond the start here/get to here traipse through the massive environments. Here is the design doc I mentioned in the article, you might find it interesting as a bit of bedtime reading.

@mrfluke: Thanks or the shout-out. It might have been spotlit when I originally posted it, though it's been a while since then, so maybe it wouldn't hurt!

I don't know why I haven't tried another of these articles, it was super interesting doing all the groundwork for it. Could be time to start bothering developers about games they made 5+ years ago again!
Thank you both for the encouragement.

@konig_kei: Haha, not quite yet. It's still worth picking up if you have a spare couple of hours, even if just as a curiosity piece. Even though it's only a few years ago, development for consoles has changed so much. The budget they had, from what I've gathered, was going to make it difficult to make a well-polished 10-15 hour game. If, however, it had been a more common practice to develop for download - remember, they started working on it in 2006 - I think their vision could have been well realised in a smaller form. I find this sort of thing fascinating, I really do. Strange that the piece has resurfaced after nearly nine months, too, especially with Patrick focusing on this sort of thing a bit more closely these days.

@sideburnt:

Oh wow, glad to hear you had a good time working on it. I enjoyed my time playing it and was regularly saddened by how most aspects of the game were almost there, but nothing worked as well as it should have. I was really grateful when Jacob agreed to talk to me about its development and am still really interested in exploring games that don't quite hit the mark and the reasons behind that happening.

I expected the game to be a complete crock given the terrible reviews, so I was really surprised to find that it's actually an inspired game that simply didn't realise its full potential. Nearly every mechanic and design choice from Damnation has been replicated after the fact - usually with better results, granted - and I find it rather sad that it isn't given any consideration at all.

Are you still working in the industry, just out of interest? Tell me where to go if that's a bit of a rude question!