Hello, mostly people. After the truncated intro last time I'm here to kick off this series proper, with this first of... some number of blogs about Troika's Temple of Elemental Evil. Expect a blog on the same subject from lunar luminary VGK when he's done talking about farting royals and anime boobs. We feudin', y'all.

Since I don't want to leave too many spoilers around here, I'll just be discussing my first impressions with the game after playing it enough to beat the first dungeon. What I like, what works well, what doesn't, what makes me want to hurl myself off a cliff. The usual. Also comics.

The Combat

With the initiative, I'm now going to take an attack of opportunity and grapple check the in-depth combat system of 5 foot steps and trip attacks. The combat is by far the best part of this game, as you have something akin to the turn-based combat of strategy RPGs like FFT, X-COM or Phantom Brave (which is also fond of circles and radii over grids) only way crazier and D&Dier. There's so much to keep track of; whether it's your magic users' collective libraries, tripping, going prone, holding actions for an enemy's approach, or for when they try to withdraw to force them to stay put, or even for when they're trying to cast a spell so you can interrupt it. Archers need to be aware of distance and the penalties of firing into melee. Larger opponents need a full array of debuffs to knock them on their asses because they will straight up murder you if they get close. There's also the enemy's reach to consider and taking measured five-foot-steps backwards to avoid attacks of opportunity so you can get some healing done or simply stay out of harm once the hit points get critical.

It's a little daunting at first, but having so many options gives you unparalleled command of your team. Even the toughest fights will have a winning strategy that you just have to hunt around in the radial menus for, or simply be extremely lucky with dice rolls to pull off. I've played each major fight so far a couple of times at least, just because I know I can do better with what is coming - having that foresight might be a cheap way to win, but like Dark Souls (another game I imagine I'll be painfully struggling through before too long) that prescience is not only useful but vital. Ultimately, you have a process that's slow going, but rewarding. If a battle ends and only the Cleric has been knocked unconscious, I consider that a win.

The Magic

The magic-users are a large part of what makes battles interesting, sure, but like in other D&D games that consider plot, diplomacy and intrigue to be as fascinating as hitting ugly things over the head, magic has its uses outside of combat also. I only have the one magic user, as seen above, but even so I feel occasionally overwhelmed with the choices I can make with the guy. Same as with the Cleric, as while I'm tempted to just stick with healing spells there are quite a few powerful buffs in the 3rd Edition clerical handbook. At level 3 there's one for each of the six main stats, all of which have their applications: Whether your thief needs to pick a tough lock, the fighters need some more oomph to take down enemies quicker or the party spokesman needs to convince a guy to give up his magic sword or throw in more cash as a quest reward.

It isn't unfair to say that magic is overpowered in the D&D world. I mean, at higher levels, magic-users become vastly more powerful than any other class, which more than offsets their status as the unfortunate 3 HP wonders they start out as. Magic is all about resourcefulness in the end, though, and the wizard is only as powerful as the player is discerning and ingenious. You can pull off all kinds of coups against stronger opponents with the right spells at the right time, even taking down enemies as fearsome (to low-level parties) as hill giants with a tier 1 Grease spell, allowing all the fighters to just pummel the poor thing with attacks of opportunity as it tries to stand up. You could make a similar case about rogues too, with their array of skills, but as they tend to be dictated by arbitrary dice rolls (needed for staying silent, spotting traps, scoring sneak attacks, etc.) I've always considered the rogue to be more of the gambler's class.

Though I will say that it's completely crazy that the game forces you to lose 100GP whenever you identify something, whether you do so through the vendors or casting the spell yourself. No bardic knowledge to fall back on here.

The Skills

And talking of skills - those little things you put points into while playing Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale that you never really think about again after leaving the level-up screen? They're super necessary here too. While the slightly overlapping Spot and Listen checks seem to be automatic, there's a few you'll be relying on a lot, so it's worth memorizing their place on the radial menu. You have the thief skills, which I rarely use (there hasn't been much call for them yet, though I imagine there soon will be); you have Heal which stabilizes anyone knocked unconscious and bleeding out during combat, crucial for saving their lives; you have Search which helps you uncover doors and switches without resorting to magic; you have Concentration, which is downright essential for Clerics, since they're usually in melee when you need their cure spells; you have a full assortment of dialogue skills - Intimidate, Bluff, Sense Motive and Diplomacy will all give you bonus dialogue options if you're skilled enough with them. An amazing number of quests early on require some proficiency with that particular set, causing some stymieing for first-time players who have yet to fully appreciate the necessity of the skill system.

Not to keep harping on about this game's complexity, but I found myself using these skills a lot more than I have done in similar games in the past. Whether it's because the game is generally harder and I need every advantage, or if they're just pushed to the forefront more than they have been in other D&D games as part of Troika's whole "genuine tabletop experience" package they have going on here, I can't really say for sure.

The Side-Quests

So okay, enough worshipping the ground that this game pounds me into with each encounter, time to cover something I'm not too fond of so far: The early fetch quests. It seems like a tradition, or an old charter, or something, that every CRPG - D&D or otherwise - eases the players in with a group of simple fetch quests to boost their XP to the point where they are then strong enough to actually fight something without exploding violently. It strikes me as a spectacularly bad way to start any piece of narrative fiction, even with the lax standards video games have set for themselves. You want to start on something exciting to hook people in, not find some apples for the bratty kid in the hut down the street. Getting some old guy's cigarettes for five bucks sure doesn't beat an exciting massacre of your adventuring school - Neverwinter Nights being the perfect example of getting the intro right, with its sequel being the perfect example of the opposite.

Like everything else in this game, getting any advantage as early as possible is downright essential for survival. As such, you're more or less required to get all the Hommlet fetch quests out of the way for that early XP boost. Being level 1 is no joke, especially when some party members have single figure HP totals and the first group of Moathouse bandits will be doing double digits in damage to you. But these quests are so awful. You have to introduce yourself to every carpenter, weaver, tailor, builder, lumberjack and trader in the village and solve their trivial problems. A disproportional number of which involve marrying low-level NPCs that follow you around, for some reason.

The Tough Decisions

Another thing TOEE did that I'm not fond of, but in no way disparaging the game for including it this time, are the situations when you're occasionally forced to make decisions that may well come back to bite you in the ass later on or otherwise deprive you of some treasure. While there is an option to avoid a rather tough Gnoll fight (though this is actually one of the easier ones) by paying them off or using the Intimidate skill to dissuade them of their greedy notions, it's not something you're going to regret either way necessarily. It's a small amount of gold, and you can always just fight them instead for their equipment.

The biggest one so far was the one above, which comes about once you've injured the boss of the area sufficiently and he decides to throw in the towel like a big old wuss. Now while I don't expect him to get too far as a half-dead cleric of Lolth - you know, that evil spider goddess known for torture and betrayal that would definitely tolerate failure in her subordinates, especially those not of her favoured race of Dark Elves - I did not appreciate losing all the awesome gear he was no doubt sporting. Unfortunately, getting him to that point requires defeating around 10 well-armed guardsmen, including one particularly tough archer lieutenant and a couple of beefy sergeants. Should your party be in any shape to keep fighting after this ultimatum is made and you decide to continue swatting the effeminate dickweed, he then summons a bunch of giant spiders from nowhere and keeps going. You have to make that decision to let him go if you want to save and recover and move on, or lose the last 30 minutes of decisive strategic action against his small army of guards because one of his spiders gets lucky with a venomous bite. While I resent having to take it, I'm also kind of glad that option is available. Roleplaying and whatnot.

The Hirelings

The game only allows you to create and take with you five characters initially, which I thought was a little unusual at the time. But then there's no reason why a five person party shouldn't work - clearly I've been spoiled by all the Infinity Engine games and their traditional sextet crews. It turns out though that the sixth spot (and sometimes the seventh) is reserved for any number of NPCs you can talk into joining you. They get a full share of the XP and gold, which they appear to simply grab in a somewhat suspicious "behind the DM screen" automatic manner.

The little burg of Hommlet, the starting village, has some half dozen adventuring types just waiting around for some hacking and looting to come their way. Some are potential traitors working for the bad guys, some are just bad guys with no particular allegiance to anyone (but may well betray you anyway), some are starry-eyed youths with a life expectancy that will plummet once they leave the safe confines of the village and there's also a cool grifter guy with a neat hat whom I decided to hire since Claude still had a way to go with his thief skills. Of course, hiring a skilled rogue and then allowing him to surreptitiously take his "fair share" after every battle is causing me more concerns about the party bankroll than is perhaps worth it.

I've always liked games that do the half-and-half thing with player-generated but nigh soulless PCs and the additional NPC hireling with their own agendas more often than not. Despite Might and Magic IX's many failings, Forad Darre was an interesting wild card you could never be certain about but pretty much took for granted as an additional sword-arm by the time the big twist concerning his character comes around. Ditto with the additional computer-controlled guest NPCs in games like FFXII, whose continued survival - unlike the six main characters who will clearly be there come the final boss - is never assured.

Meanwhile, on another plane of reality...

Vinny & Dave Play Baldur's Gate 2: Another Backhanded Tribute To The Snidavella CRPG Dream Team

Yo, not to be a shill or anything, but I'd highly recommend you guys sign up for a subscription and watch Vinny and Dave's continuing Random PC Game feature. Even if you're a bit dry on funds, you might want to let these videos pile up and pay the paltry five bucks for a single month to get as much CRPG tomfoolery as you could ever want from Whiskey Media's two biggest PC gaming maestros. I love that series to bits.

More Temple of Elemental Evil next week. Or maybe a second part this week. It really all depends on how often I can manage to not die in a game that hates me. See you there!

So. Any followers of mine who also follow VGK, which I imagine is most of you (I'm picturing a Venn diagram with my circle of followers being inside the much bigger circle of his followers, like Jupiter's red spot), should have read by now his first blog about Troika's Temple of Elemental Evil. In it, he explains that he and I are currently engaged in a blog duel about this game, set up (with two generously donated virtual copies of ToEE) by fellow CRPG enthusiast ArbitraryWater.

While we might be in direct competition with each other, his seems like it'll be a slower-paced, more expansive look at Troika's perhaps best-received game without vampires in it. Unless there are vampires in this one too. Oh man, and I'm still grappling with all the saving throw rules here. My blogs will of course, be more of a visual abridged version of some of the games highlights. Also the battles where I die a lot. Those were fun, so look out for those. Both will no doubt contain heavy spoilers, so I guess you should also be aware of that. Being aware of things is definitely how to go about your beeswax in this game.

I shall now introduce the Mento Mob Players, as dictated by ArbitraryWater when he gave me the unlock code. You'll recognize a few familiar faces here, I'll bet:

Here's me. Standard fighter and vanguard, intended to be more of a burly meatshield than anything else. I'll be doing all the cleaving and the damage soaking. I have almost no skills because Intelligence is pretty low, so I'll be there to growl at everything that doesn't need whacking.

VGK is our resident spellslinger, a half-elf who is (supposedly) not evil but seems rather prone to random spouts of insanity, such as claiming he's some ancient moon monarch. He's specialized in Conjuration (summoning shit, though not Aeons unfortunately) and his forbidden schools are Transmutation (making shit go all shiny) and Illusion (making shit that ain't there). I figure as long as I got Evocation (fireballs'n shit) and Abjuration (magical shields and defenses that block shit) I'll be all set. Prove me wrong, ToEE! I know you want to!

ahoodedfigure is our party cleric, with the domains of knowledge and healing. Hence the "smartypants cleric". He'll be instrumental in keeping the team alive, which is why I fully expect him to set off every trap and be the first to get eaten by every monster. Because that is what this game seems to be alllll about.

Claude is our wise dwarven friend, a barbarian (later barbarian/rogue) who worships an unpronounceable god "of the road", which I think suits a dude who looks a bit like Willie Nelson. I gave him this super mellow elderly wizard voice so he's always a soothing influence over the party. Sort of makes me feel less mad about losing half my party to another giant spider ambush. Looking forward to hearing his barbarian rage activated with that same voice.

Finally, ArbitraryWater, with whom I was given carte blanche. It sounded like a good idea to have another solid melee fighter presence in the party, but one more engineered towards doing harm than being a big old wall like myself and thus is getting all the weapon focus/specialization feats. I mean, I could've gone that route with another spellcaster, but I am so bad at managing spells in these games. I'm just about okay now, while VGK only has level 1 magic and cantrips, but it'll get hairy before too long especially if I have to keep track of two whole sets of spells. Arbitrary rolled really highly on his stats for whatever reason, so I'm using him as my rearguard because I am totally jelly.

Starting Out

So that's it for my party. Next blog will feature my first few awkward steps in the game as I attempt to overcome the dreaded curse of being first level, where all my characters are apparently made out of tissue paper. This'll involve a bunch of fetch quests in the starting village of Hommlet, which I will discover almost always requires a high Diplomacy skill or some other skillset I neglected to put points into. Then it's off for more fun times in the swamplands moathouse, with all its horrible archer bandits and monsters. See you there!

Oh, and here's a comic about the introductory shop process. I failed at it! Spectacularly!

Or to be more precise, a blog about games that base their gameplay around creating words. There's been plenty of board games made in the past about constructing words to score points; chief among them being Scrabble and Boggle, both of which have received many video game adaptations over time. So this isn't a blog about those. Instead, I'm going to concentrate on a few examples that use words and letters in a bizarre or interesting way.

This week's a kind of short one, because I'm currently embroiled in a mighty challenge with a certain royal of interactive entertainment that I really should be getting on with. So either a "I'm so sorry" or "You'll be glad to hear" (delete as appropriate) about this bite-sized blog. Still got some comics though, don't worry.

Scribblenauts/Super Scribblenauts

5th Cell Media's Scribblenauts series is the current chief of this format, and one that still boggles (sorry) the mind when regarding how they managed to map a sprite to who-knows-how-many nouns in the English language that don't include alcohol for some reason. Oh Nintendo.

Scribblenauts' entire gimmick is having a situation or puzzle to solve, and having the protagonist cause items to spontaneously exist by writing their name in his notebook. Kind of like a reverse Death Note. Coupled with the "Puzzle stages" - which require very of the platforming action they purport to include and are more the thinking puzzles that the DS has always excelled at - are the "Action stages", which are literally Satan. That might sound like hyperbole or an inaccurate use of the word "literally", but Scribblenauts stages are literally the fallen angel Lucifer, cast down after his war against God to dwell for all eternity in a dark, forsaken place. I'm glad Super Scribblenauts relegated them to optional stages, but maybe for the next one they can go right ahead and delete them all together. This way they wouldn't have Abaddon in their game? Just a thought.

Bookworm Adventures

So PopCap makes a lot of casual puzzle games. While I'm blowing your minds, I'll quickly move onto Bookworm Adventures, one of their many products that should've grabbed the attention of the casual internet-browsing gamers before FarmVille snatched them all up. Bookworm Adventures stars a bookworm on an adventure or two, such is PopCap's pragmatic approach to naming their games. In order to get where a bookworm needs to get to, the little guy has to fight famous literary figures in a Boggle-style brawl to the death. Create words, factor in power-ups and bonuses, and take out your opponent before they do the same to you. Each enemy has their own array of special abilities, such as jumbling your grid of letters or causing poison damage over time. These enemies tend to range from ancient mythological figures right out of Homer's donut-fevered dreams about Odysseus and Hector of Troy to vampires and wolfguys out of more modern (well, 19th century more modern) classical tales of the macabre.

It's a game that might sound very familiar to anyone who enjoys Word Fighter or Dungeon Scroll (on an unrelated note, how the hell did the makers of Dungeon Scroll get that past ZeniMax's lawyers?) Layering an RPG level-building gimmick over a classic puzzle game staple might be about as overdone as adding cutscene QTE takedowns or horribly priced glowy gun DLC to your game, but all the same still manages to sound more enticing than the usual dry word games like those listed at the top of this article that rhyme with "Babble" or "Scrobble". For instance.

Base Jumpers

Base Jumpers is a goofy little platformer-slash-competitive multiplayer game for the old Atari ST and Amiga home computer systems which very few people on Giant Bomb will have ever played. Not in a "this is me being an elitist playing games no-one's heard of" way, but a "this game had a target audience of hundreds" kind of way. If you need proof, go to its wiki page and note how long and detailed the description of the game is. I know right? But back in the land of relevance, Base Jumpers has a completely arbitrary bonus point system based on madly catching loose letters that drop out of defeated enemies and smashed containers. Because it is a very fast-paced game, these letters tend to disappear quickly and players won't really be paying attention to them anyway as they have a vertically auto-scrolling screen to escape from.

Now, a lot of older action and platformer games have collectible letters. For the most part they simply spell out something related to the game and grant the player an extra life or continue (see KONG in any DKC game). But what stuck with me about Base Jumpers is that if the player collected three letters that just so happened to create a word, things would get crazy. Points, lives, bonus damage, bonus time, and all sorts of advantageous, disadvantageous and completely ineffectual special effects occur. Couple this with the already frantic and desperate gameplay - this is also simultaneous four-player - and you have something akin to Dead Island's notorious Truck Wars: Completely batshit. It's a wonderfully pointless feature that must've required a lot of work just to enhance a game's chaotic atmosphere. I'd love to see it reappear in other party games and competitive multiplayers, especially the ones that depend on that sort of manic insanity. It's not something you notice until it flashes on-screen closely followed by something completely unexpected.

BONUS COMICS!

Super Scribblenauts

Star Fox 64 3D

Deus Ex (With Bonus Alternate Ending Action)

Oh my, where am I going with this? Daggerfall; the second Elder Scrolls game and probably its most troubled and Dead Island; a game where men be all acting like zombies on an island. Similarities aplenty despite a 15 year age difference, different genres and complete diverse settings? You'd better believe it! After reading all the words following these ones, of course. And then there's comics! So.. stick with it. Please.

I was working in the lab late one night, when my eyes beheld an eerie sight..

Anyone whose sum total experience of Daggerfall is watching Dave and Vinny struggle through the opening dungeon might think the undead are central to that game, with the amount of noisy attention they were attempting to elicit for themselves, but truly they are only a very small part of a menagerie of common RPG beasties. Where both games draw a parallel is how they build spooky tension with their use of sound. Each enemy type in either game have a unique sound: Without initially knowing what monsters make what noise, the novice player is both terrified and disorientated by the guttural (or guttering, in the case of Daggerfall's grizzly bear) cries coming from every direction. Even after gaining some experience and being able to identify what lies ahead, a certain amount of trepidation sinks in before that enemy actually appears. Dungeons (or Dead Island's equivalent, like the hotel and abandoned town buildings) range from a cacophony of sounds to dead quiet, with perhaps the latter being more concerning.

Son of a Glitch

You can't really talk about either of these games without discussing how damn broken they are. In both cases, I feel this is a case of their scale overshadowing the actual coding competency to make sure everything in those huge worlds works like they're supposed to. Glitches can have an interesting divisive effect on how a game's received: It immediately chases off many of the casual weekenders, coming in for a quick play to see if it's worth their time. It's the fans, the ones who get invested with what the games do right, that are willing to suffer for their fun. Bringing up the glitches just makes them sigh and make their apologies, "Heh, yeah, that's _____ for you", while immediately changing the subject to what they like about the games. It's like an unusual case of Battered Wife Syndrome. Maybe this time it won't come home drunk and clip me through a wall.

Swing & a Miss

Should you happen to switch on analog controls for Dead Island (and why wouldn't you?), you'll notice a striking (sorry) similarity to Daggerfall's traditional "click and drag" combat. There's a strong immersive element to being able to control your character's swing and seeing those blows connect to the monstrosity that's all up in your face. Unfortunately both systems have their slight flaws, again based on that universal issue that there's so much else going on at the same time that nothing's quite as polished as it could've been. Daggerfall's combat is directed entirely by dice-rolls, meaning certain blows just whiff through opponents despite them standing approximately five inches away and screaming so hard that your neighbors call the police. Dead Island appears to assume that you're holding all your weapons in your teeth, with a zombie's arm-span often outreaching that of your own plus a two-foot long machete. Unless you choose a weapon with a decent length to it - most blunt weapons fit this better than the bladed ones, protipz - you'll find yourself wondering if objects in the front view mirror aren't actually further away than they appear.

Giving a Hoot About Loot

Oh boy, loot. Since RPGs immemorial, the best part has always been gathering so much treasure that you can swim in it. But soon after eviscerating yourself with all the magic swords and axes mixed in with the gold you've been doing the breaststroke through, there comes a time where you want more from a good loot system than simply quantity. So, I guess I mean quality then. Dead Island's loot system is a very perplexing take on the traditional color-coded loot system beloved of Borderlands and many MMOs before it. In a completely arbitrary order of importance, it goes from White to Green to Blue to Purple to Orange. However, none of these colors actually mean anything: Often these orange weapons are as effective as their less rare brethren, and the game explicitly tells you as much. There's no particular reason why they would be more valuable, besides the fact that most of the orange weapons I found appeared to be named after movie references. I guess even when the world's gone crazy and the dead walk the earth, we can all still appreciate a good old Family Guy-esque movie shout out. It makes Daggerfall's method of assigning value based on the type of material and craft gone into a weapon look positively quaint by comparison.

Surgeon General's Warning: Leveling Up is Hazardous To Your Health

Ah, the perils of a dynamic leveling system. In Dead Island and Oblivion (which I know isn't Daggerfall but bear with me here), a clever trick was used so the designers wouldn't have to create too many new or palette-swapped enemies: A system where enemies level up as you do. This system, in case you're wondering why it isn't used outside of notably drug-fueled experimental batshittery like Final Fantasy VIII, is notoriously difficult to balance. This is despite the ironic truth that the system's very purpose is to provide constant equilibrium. Somehow, if you continue to level, the game gets progressively and severely more difficult. Not in the good, "on purpose" way that a game might get harder - that would be by creating more challenging goals and increasing the number and tenacity of your opponents, designed in such a way to test a more experienced player along a steady difficulty curve. Instead I mean in the way that enemies unfairly gain more health than you do and unfairly do more damage to you, and then have all those aforementioned "traditional" hardships added on top of it. I believe Dead Island's implication is that all the skills you've been learning should grant you an advantage, regardless of how even basic-level enemies you were cleaving through just moments before are now vastly more powerful. Either that's the implication, or "don't do any side-quests, don't stop for anything, no looting, no exploring, just go go go" which, to be fair, is also a fair strategy to follow should one find themselves in a zombie apocalypse.

I'll Leave You With What We All Came Here To See: Hardcore Nudity!

Boobs! Butts! These games have them. I actually don't concur with Jeff's observation that the zombie ladies landing butt-side up were meant to be gratuitous at all, because - and since I realize this is the internet I might well be alone with this opinion - my anaconda don't want none unless you got skin and a pulse, hon. Likewise, Daggerfall's nudie paper doll equipment screen is really so you can dress up your pretty but ineffective Nord bard in clothing as well as armor. Okay, allowing the player to purchase and collect underwear is perhaps a little gratuitous, I'll accept that much. I do recall finding bras as loot after killing these quite unfriendly vampire ladies and wondering what the hell my character's deal was.

Conclusion

My conclusion is.. uh, that.. I guess they're both video games? Will that do? To the comics!

Comics!

Dead Island

Deus Ex: Human Revolution?

SUPER SPECIAL BONUS COMIC!

So y'all might be wondering why I got me a golden medallion around my knightly neck. Sure doesn't seem like I'd pay $50 does it? I mean, unless you're unfamiliar with my frugal nature, which I guess would be all of you. But this magnanimous donation was made by the same guy who paid for my copy of Chantelise in that one series of comics that started all this MS mess o' mine. You might be wondering why a dude would do such a thing (I know I am), so to paraphrase his words: "I'm a wacky vegan and was likely to spend all that money on nutritional yeast from Trader Joe's anyway." Works for me I suppose.

As per our agreed terms, I'm now creating works commissioned by him about any topic deemed suitable for a video game website. So most of these will be video game related. FYI. My super-appreciative thanks again to WM user omghisam.

The (Kind of Abridged) Story of Mento's Career at Gizmondo Studios Manchester

In case you're bothered by the fact it was so short: Yeah, you and me both, buddy. There'll probably be another one of these very soon to make up for it.

Off on a crazy tangent today folks, with this here thing I wrote about vertical cities.

Regular Mento blog readers, the numbers of which rapidly dwindle each time Mento refers to himself in the third person, are aware that I base my weekly theme around the games I played that week. Well, this time I only played one: Eidos Montreal's Deus Ex: Human Revolution. There are various intriguing questions raised by this Franco-Canuckian knucklefest about the morality of human genetic augmentation, a man's struggle with the half-machine he's become and the possibility of a rampant corporate culture threatening to overpower and replace the world's present governmental structure. But instead I decided to ignore all of those in favor for something about cities that go up and down more than they go left and right, because those are cool. This is a blog for smart peoples.

A vertical city, similar to but not exactly like the arcologies of Sim City 2000, are a hypothetical sci-fi construct where we decide to build upwards as we run out of room on the horizontal plane. This is because of architect reasons. General similarities with these settings are:

• A sort of urban segregation system, where the poorest live at the bottom and the richest live on top. Generally conditions are no so great for the poor folk, as they don't get a lot of sunlight and have to deal with all the rich people garbage that gets thrown down.
• Sometimes the "ground floor" of these cities are filled with monsters of some kind, with a limited amount of fortification blocking them from the non-monster people above.
• Occasionally there will be floofs. Not to be confused with the Oscar winning Daniel Day Lewis picture, "There Will Be Floof." Or these things.

Project Eden

I'm starting with Project Eden because of this fantastic intro video, that demonstrates both how one of these tiered vertical cities tends to work and also how ineffective 2001's graphical technology was at making faces don't look like mutants or early hominids.

Project Eden follows a crack team of specialists that the player switches between to solve puzzles and progress to the end of each stage: Carter, team leader and the only member to have clearance for many security checkpoints; Minoko, the young hacker needed for many of the consoles and panels in the game; Amber, a giant robot that can survive most environmental dangers and Olaf, who can block the ray-guns of Tomator's alien henchmen with his sturdy wooden shield. Each stage in the game tends to be a few floors below the previous, and markedly more dangerous. It's impressive how badly things have gotten - it's as if each time something bad happens, the city just builds a new level and migrates up to it.

Beneath A Steel Sky

Beneath a Steel Sky is a classic cyberpunk graphic adventure that's actually been free to play on GOG for a while now. I mean in a legitimate free to play way, where all the content is there for you to enjoy and not sitting behind micro-transactions.

Like with Project Eden, the vertical city is the game's chief setting: The player controls the foundling Foster who, along with his wisecracking robot buddy Joey, needs to find a way out of the monolithic Union City after he's stranded there when future-soldiers kidnap him for reasons that become clearer as you play the game. Many of the game's sequences are simply finding a way to get to a higher (or lower) floor of Union City, using items lying around and Joey's ever-changing robotic form to proceed.

Star Wars: Jedi Knight

Jedi Knight's most immediately striking feature, besides the completely awesome 90s FMV intro, is the typically Star Warsy city of Nar Shaddaa: A vertical city full of smugglers and informants. Informants like 8T88, who Kyle Katarn (the protagonist) is there to meet when the game begins.

Nar Shaddaa is full of dangers, mostly of the "falling off an edge into nothingness" sort. Jedi Knight just so happens to be one of those early 90s FPS games where jumping puzzles were ubiquitous and mostly crapshoot-y. So that's good. Despite the early blocky graphics, though, Nar Shaddaa creates an impressively treacherous environment, and is perhaps the biggest vertical city on this list. It's certainly one of the deepest! Ask Kyle! He knows!

Final Fantasy 7

I figured I'd get internet-keelhauled by the comments section if I left off Midgar. So...

Midgar.

It's also a vertical city.

Cough.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution

So now we move onto Deus Ex: Human Revolution's Hengsha - a Chinese miracle of architecture mostly funded (and controlled) by the Tai Yong Medical biotech corporation. Though the Upper City is briefly spotted (and is your typical overbearingly white and clean utopia) Jensen spends much of his time hobnobbing with the Triads and hookers of the Lower City: a darkened slum of capsule hotels and oppressive PMC patrolmen.

It's also a city where there's more convenience stores than there are houses. I'm not about to tell people how to run a business, but something's amiss there, surely? Then again, most of the apartments appear to be on roofs and need jumping augments to reach, so maybe I just saw a much higher proportion of stores than homes. The future is a strange place.

An Announcement of Sorts

A while back, I wrote a couple of blogs about a massive internet poll to find Japan's favorite video game music. They collectively managed to create a tracklist of an amazing 700 songs, from which I pulled the games that most frequently appeared and wrote a little about them. You guys remember those blogs, right? They had words and pictures? Yeah, those ones.

Now HG-101, the #1 video game site for incredibly detailed rundowns on obscure-as-hell vidya (as opposed to the #1 site for incredibly detailed wikis on obscure-as-hell vidya, which is right here naturally), is holding a similar competition for us Westerner types. I'm still working on my own list, but I'm also asking anyone on here that's interested to make their own and submit it on their forums. They're accepting lists of up to 100 (less is also fine, I'm guessing), with a YouTube link to each track desired but not compulsory. I may be severely overestimating how many people actually read these blogs and are also willing to spend several hours making a huge list of video game tunes, but I know a few of you (buzz_clik and VGK especially, and I'm sure there's others) know a lot more video game music than I do and could put together something pretty special.

Be sure to make a blog on GB with your list if you decide to go through with it. And if you just want to post a couple of your favorite VGM in the comments instead, go right ahead. I could use the input.

Bonus Comics

Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Hey all! As of writing this, the Live Show is ten minutes away from kicking off. Instead of twiddling my thumbs in anticipation, I crafted yet another Whiskey Media stickpeople comic of what I predict might happen in the next eight hours! Most of you reading this will have watched the show by now, so we'll see how close I was. 
 

What is up, fellow Bombardiers? Time to introduce yet another new feature I'll probably never revisit: Fine-Tuning!

Now, as tempting as it is to go all "back-seat designer" and talk about how I could improve a treasured but stuck-in-a-rut franchise with my crazy ideas, I'll err on the side of caution and humility and simply talk about how I would take the many games in said franchise and merge the best parts together for an idealized package. No introducing brand new, untested elements; everything discussed already exists in a game in that franchise (or from one that's very similar.)

The franchise in question would be Nintendo's excellent atmospheric action-platformer Metroid. Having come off the (un)expectedly great Other M, with all the additions that Team Ninja made (both good and bad), I was inspired to think about what my perfect Metroid experience would be.

From: Super Metroid

• The basic template, of course. Super Metroid remains one of the most concise, enjoyable metroidvania experiences, so it's from this old-school (for a certain age group) classic that we create our base for the perfect Metroid.
• The 2D setting. I appreciate that the 3D Metroid Prime games were a decent compromise to bring the 2D gameplay to a 3D world, unlike many other franchises that have made the jump in the past. But even so, the Prime games sometimes felt like fitting a square peg in a round hole, especially when you're trying to make series mainstays like the Screw Attack work. Other M tries to have its cake and eat it too, with its viewpoint switching, but it still doesn't quite feel natural enough. I think the best bet is Shadow's Complex "all but 2D" approach. Or perhaps a really lavish sprite-based 2D game.
• A dialogue-free narrative. I won't suggest that Samus' adventures with the baby metroid that imprinted on her is the be-all and end-all of storytelling in video games, but I found I vastly preferred it to conversations and pathos. Samus has a mystique that was sorely tested every time she freaked out at Ridley or discussed her experiences by flatly intoning sentences from a teleprompter.

From: Metroid Prime

• The scanning. Now, before you all start typing angry hurtful words, I specifically mean the aspect of scanning that was a method of introducing background information in a non-intrusive or compulsory way: Having to constantly scan buttons to activate elevators was clearly not the most effective use of that feature, nor was giving every broken pillar or corpse its own pointless blurb. Using it to identify what equipment was necessary for what barrier (and then having that information added to your map, perhaps), the weaknesses and background of enemies and reading reports for further backstory are the sort of things where scanning either helped out or otherwise delivered exposition without any interrupting cutscenes.
• The visors. Of course, having various visor displays (being allowed to change Samus' view to infra-red and x-ray, for instance) work best with Prime's first-person viewpoint, but it'd be easy enough to translate to a 2D side-view by simply filtering the screen in the same way. Having alternate ways to view the world created some interesting boss fight strategies and additional exploration opportunities. Surprised it never appeared outside the Prime games, given how popular "Detective Vision" became a few years later with Batman: Arkham Asylum.

From: Other M

• Self-replenishing health and missiles. Other M introduced an interesting way to restock on missiles (and health, to an extent) by "concentrating"; allowing the Varia suit to refill your stock of presumably energy-based missiles. It creates a system where you effectively have infinite missiles, and can bring yourself back from the brink of death (you have to be in critical condition to restore health, and only by an energy tank or two), but only when you aren't being attacked. It means corridors of respawning enemies can be quickly dispatched, with a brief restock before moving on, making backtracking slightly more bearable. But in boss fights, you're taking a calculated risk if you try concentrating, unless you pick an ideal moment where the boss is either stunned briefly (normally opening them up for a barrage of attacks) or if there's a brief gap in their attack pattern. Couple this with the fact that enemies no longer drop missiles or health pick-ups, and you have an interesting and occasionally more challenging variation.
• Post-game bonuses. After defeating the final story boss of Other M, the game allows you to return to the game's ship setting for more exploration: All currently non-acquired items are now highlighted on the map to hit your 100% item completion (in fact, 100% is impossible until this mode.) And in case you don't feel like 100% completion is enough of an incentive to keep playing, there is a bit more story and a hidden boss - having 100% items when you reach that guy (a gloriously 3D-revamped Phantoon, I'll go ahead and spoil it) is a big help. And, of course, the self-destruct goes off shortly afterwards and you have a brief window to get back to your ship. It wouldn't be a Metroid game without it.

From: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

• Weapon variation. Samus tends to upgrade her weapon in set increments, with each new increment opening up new exploration options and giving her a fixed damage bonus. Metroid doesn't have any of the RPG trappings that the newer Castlevanias have gone for, perhaps for the better, but all the same it should embrace its Contra-style shooter roots with an adaptable weapon system: Players could be given the choice between a spread-shot (more coverage, less focused damage), a faster rate of focused fire, a more powerful charged shot or other such "double-edged sword" variations as the situation calls for it.
• Inverted Planet Zebes. Okay, I'm being silly now. Time to call it a day.

Bonus Comics

Metroid: Other M

Deus Ex?

Hey guys. Wondering whether or not to subscribe in order to see Vinny & Dave's playthrough of Daggerfall? As someone who watched the whole sordid affair of old-school video game wizardry from two self-proclaimed CRPG wunderkinder, I decided to make a (very) abridged comic version for all you non-subs so that you could judge for yourselves.

This is their courageous story.

Hey guys. No major theme this week, just going over some miscellaneous stuff. Just like the title suggests, in fact. As usual, anyone who wants to skip the words and go straight for the comics can scroll to the bottom. Anyone who doesn't want to see the words or the comics can go.. watch some Quick Looks? I guess? What do people usually come to this site for? Go do that, with my blessing.

Fixing Things

So the two new games I played this week were Red Faction: Armageddon and de Blob 2: One's a disturbing, future-set action game with strong themes dealing with guilt, redemption and the perils of terrorism from a militant cultist cabal, and the other was some shooter set on Mars. Though clearly very different games, I did find two things they have in common: Magnets and fixing things.

Magnets are a little dull to talk about though. I mean, how do they work, am I right? "Poles attract", that's what she said? Sigh. Screw magnets. They were the best things in Red Faction: Armageddon though: I actually put the difficulty down so I could hurl enemies around with the magnet gun without worrying too much about getting shredded because I was supposed to use real guns on everything and play it like the horribly generic TPS game it was trying so hard to be.

The other theme, and one that recalls Dr Breen's conversation with Gordon Freeman as the latter was on his way to ruin the former's shit, is that both games deal both with the common video game theme of destruction and its less frequent opposite aspect of reconstruction: RDF's best new gimmick (I.e. one of the few that weren't carried over from Red Faction: Guerrilla or is a spiky alien/new gun, which make up most of the additions) is that the main character could use his magic.. sorry, nanotechnology glove to rebuild structures that he had either destroyed, or come across in a pre-dilapidated state. Unfortunately, despite a few forced sequences ("The bridge is out! Oh no!"), there's rarely an opportunity to use this feature in an interesting way - It's really just a way to fix the linear critical path of walkways in case you broke any of them. Kind of a shame, because the times where you're fixing something important could've been explored further in a proper sandbox like Guerrilla. It does make those annoying "protect X from damage" missions slightly more bearable if you can repair them along the way.

Similarly, de Blob 2 is all about "fixing" Blob's world by restoring colour to the surroundings. Buildings are filled in with colour, propaganda posters are replaced with vibrant murals, trees go from barren to blossoming, and so on. Any given sequence will tend to culminate with hitting the "Transformation engine", changing an enemy's stronghold into something far more innocuous. Kind of like the end of The Yellow Submarine, even. It's an addicting feeling, as you go from lifeless black & white streets and structures to almost garishly brightly-coloured locales with dozens of partying blob things, the music quietening down to a whisper and building up again as you restore more of the immediate neighborhood. It makes for a very enjoyable and good-natured experience, which is perfect if you just spent 10 hours playing a dour sci-fi shooter with ugly, spiky aliens. For example.

PAX

Ironically, the most exciting news came after PAX - that would be the Persona announcements - but it sounded like a fun time for anyone who went. I want to especially thank anyone who liked the comic I made for it: I had intended it become a small part of a larger community feature on everyone's PAX experiences, but it seemed no-one else was willing to send the interns their PAX community content. It's a good thing I have no sense of shame.

PAX, to me, seems to be becoming more like an E3 for the Indie game circuit, but I can't say I saw anything that wowed me. Besides that Antichamber game, which looks completely bizarre and obfuscating and I can't wait to try it, the rest were either out already or explored the same old themes of 2D platformers with weird physics gimmicks, tower defense and a word fighting game that looks amazingly similar to those Bookworm Adventures games that PopCap put out a while back. Which brings me to...

AV Club's Sawbuck Gamer

The Sawbuck Gamer feature, run every two weeks (or a fortnight, as we say over here in jolly old "we have more words for things, y'all" England) on the AV Club, is perhaps one of my favorite articles from that site, or from any site for that matter. Each article highlights a handful of very cheap or free games - found across the internet, mobile phones and other downloadable marketplaces - with brief descriptions and ratings and a link to the program for people to try out. It does strike me as a little pointless that they highlight games they don't find very good, rather than letting them slip past a wider audience as nature and the will of the internet had intended. The games they do like, however, are generally worth tracking down. The article I linked to has two gems in the Tanooky Tracks point and click puzzler and the genre trope defying Experimental Shooter, very reminiscent of those excellent achievement-parodying games with the tiny elephant.

It's something I wish Giant Bomb had their own variation on, because they've demonstrated - both with their heavy coverage of the making of Bastion and the fact there's such a strong community spirit here - that they're keen to do more for the little games out there that need some attention. My slightly snarky comments about the PAX 10 aside, there are some truly imaginative Indie games out there that the major gaming sites are happy to skip over as they offer no lucrative site-sponsoring bonuses. I appreciate that it's yet another thing that Giant Bomb doesn't have the manpower to cover, though. Maybe get one of the Kingterns on it after the Fear Gauntlet ends.

Bonus Comics

Deus Ex

de Blob 2

Red Faction: Armageddon

I made a PAX thing because Ethan told us to. Almost afraid to post it.

Okay it's here:

EDIT: Oh poop, I forgot Patrick. Well.. he's in the Whiskey Media helicopter, just out of frame. The rest are on foot because Ryan refuses to go near a helicopter. Patrick's also not at the panel because he was called away due to a family emergency - but it's okay! It turned out it was just a false alarm.