PC Game Series Ruined by Consolization

As an ardent player of PC games, I've noticed that longtime PC-exclusive series tend to get ruined the moment they make the cross over to the console market. There are over a dozen cases where an established, successful PC-exclusive franchise turned south almost as a direct result of console limitations, or for changing their design philosophies to match a new target audience. The end result is usually that intelligent, sophisticated, complex game series become simplified and lose a lot of their original appeal.

Consoles are also more prevalent among gamers, so producers can garner higher sales figures with the console market, which entices them to continue catering to the console audience with the next sequel. Which disappoints me, because even though a lot of these series continue to be released on the PC, they often just aren't as good as they once were. So in the full article I'll be taking a look at some of the PC-exclusive series that eventually broke onto the console market, and describing how the transition affected the integrity of the series.

(GGYNP) Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines

"Fine, obscure gems." Part of a periodical series: Great Games You Never Played.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines is one of the greatest RPGs ever, sharing many of the same gameplay elements that made the original Fallout games great. This should come as no surprise, considering that a good portion of VTMB's development team were the key designers behind the first two Fallouts. Developed by Troika Games in 2004 using Valve's Source engine, Vampire Bloodlines is a classic role-playing game with a unique gothic-horror setting.

Bloodlines begins just as you're embraced and join the ranks of the blood-sucking undead. As a new vampire, you learn the rules of the Masquerade -- a self-regulating system vampires follow in order to survive unnoticed in the mortal world -- and quickly become the new errand boy for the head of the Masquerade, Prince LaCroix. As LaCroix sends you on a mission to recover the sarcophagus of an ancient vampire lord, you become the focal point in a faction war to seize (or maintain) control of the Masquerade while preventing the vampire Armageddon.

As an RPG, it shines with a heaping serving of available side-quests and countless ways to customize your character. Choosing which vampire clan to be during character creation is one of the biggest choices you'll make, as each one has its own unique playstyle. Lots of quests have different ways to complete them, depending on your skills and how you want to role-play your character, and most of the decisions you make have some kind of tangible consequences. The dialogue is well-written and well-acted, and the atmosphere is just so rich and immersing.

Bloodlines is such a good game that people still talk about it on messages boards, eight years after its release. Fans love it so much that the community has pieced together an unofficial patch that's made it up to a whopping version 7.9. Bloodlines was Troika's last game, as they sadly went out business following production issues and poor sales. So if you've never played VTMB, then you owe it to yourself (and to Troika) to play this instant classic.

Ocarina of Time Sucks

Before getting any further into this article, please note the date that this was published, and use that to inform yourself as you read through the following text.

Of all the popular games I'd never played, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was probably my most onerous omission. I tried playing it once when I was younger, but got stuck somewhere in the Deku Tree (I think in that room where you get the slingshot -- I couldn't figure out how the hell to get out of that room), quit out of frustration, and never went back. When I mentioned this to a friend recently, he immediately thrust a GameCube disc into my hands and told me to play it.

Now that I've finally played through it, I have to say I don't get what the big deal was all about. This game is so crude and primitive that it was a struggle for me to find any enjoyment in it, and many aspects of its design are just downright bad. How did this game leave such a big legacy behind? Is this really what people have wanted every subsequent Zelda game to be like? Because I gotta tell you, the newer Zeldas are a hell of a lot better than this one, and even the ones that came before it were better. More of my thoughts on this overrated game in the full article.

Impressions of Star Wars: The Old Republic

BioWare recently held a free weekend trial event for Star Wars: The Old Republic, the new Star Wars MMORPG with an emphasis on single-player story-telling. As a fan of the original Knights of the Old Republic games (especially the one BioWare didn't make), I was fairly excited to see something new in the KOTOR line. I hopped on board and gave it a whirl, trying three different classes and leveling two of them up close to the limits of the free trial.

To put it simply, my experience with SWTOR was a repeating pattern of excitement followed by boredom. The problem, near as I can tell, is that it tries to be two different things -- a single-player role-playing game and a massively multiplayer online game -- without being especially good in either category. It's a novel mixture that can be very compelling at times, but the two elements sort of clash and trivialize each other. Consequently, I wasn't convinced to take the plunge and subscribe. Continue reading for the rest of my more-detailed thoughts and impressions.

Super Smash Bros: Melee is Better Than Brawl

The Super Smash Bros series has been a longtime staple of my party-gaming lineup. Ever since the original was released for the N64 way back in 1999, my friends and I have always enjoyed getting together to blast each other into oblivion as our favorite Nintendo characters. Playing Melee after we all got off work on weekends was a regular pastime. We played the hell out of that game.

Seven years later, Nintendo released Brawl for the Wii, and I found it uncomfortable and underwhelming. The physics of moving and attacking felt weird, there weren't very many new combat mechanics, and many of the new features were downright bad or just not that exciting. Going from the original to Melee in the span of about two years was a phenomenal upgrade, but going from Melee to Brawl felt more like a step backwards, which is made even more distressing by the seven year wait. 

I'm sure there are ardent tournament players who could argue that Melee has superior fighting mechanics, but I was never that hardcore to be able to explain the precise details. This article won't be a detailed analysis proving once and for all that Melee is better than Brawl, but is rather the thoughts of a casual player of the series who was disappointed with Brawl, and who finds Melee the more entertaining experience to this day. 

The Path vs Dear Esther vs The Stanley Parable

Art games are a bit of a controversial topic. On the one hand, they sometimes offer beautiful visuals with the potential for an emotionally moving experience. On the other hand, they sometimes don't offer anything resembling worthwhile gameplay. Balancing the two is always a difficult task, and many art games often wind up sacrificing one for the other, for better or for worse.

Since I've recently played a number of more prominent, artistic indie releases, I figured I'd examine the relative strengths and weaknesses of each one. How do indie games like The Path, Dear Esther, and The Stanley Parable compare to one another, and how does each one represent the "art game" genre? How can we improve future game design by learning from these three examples? Continue reading to find out.

Narrating The Stanley Parable

*Note: this review article is of the 2011 HL2 mod. For my review article on the 2013 retail release, click here. 

The Stanley Parable tells the story of a man named Stanley, who works for a company where he's known only as "employee number 427." Every day, he sits at his desk in room 427 pushing buttons on a keyboard, following the commands that stream in through a monitor. He relishes this job, always happy to press the buttons when the orders arrive. But one day, the orders stopped coming in. Puzzled at this unusual circumstance, Stanley leaves his post to find out what's going on.

You assume control of Stanley as he gets up to leave his post, searching the building for answers. A narrator tries to tell Stanley's story a certain way, describing Stanley's thoughts and your actions. But given that you're in control of your perspective, you have the free will to follow his narration or to disregard him and do your own thing. Numerous junctions present themselves with two options, and the story branches into entirely different paths depending on your decisions.

The Stanley Parable is an intelligent bit of metafiction. It's a story about a story, told by a narrator who realizes this is a video game. It explores concepts of free will, gets you thinking a little more deeply about video game design, and offers some witty commentary on the process of playing a video game. It's one of the smartest mods I've ever played, and it's presented with lots of charming style, which makes it truly stand out as an exceptional source mod that is absolutely worth playing.